A shock of magical energy flowed into the console where Sicarius Blade slept and woke him. Sitting up and surveying his room, the midnight blue unicorn adjusted himself to the mental shock of a magic wake-up call. The magic energy from consoles could literally mess with your sense of being, but at the moment, all it had done was instantly awoken him. Looking over at the mood-altering “F.E.E.D” attachment, more commonly known as a the “mood organ”, Sicarius thought about connecting the organ to the console and setting the half magical, half mechanical machine to a setting which would always wake him up in a good mood, but he simply sighed at the thought as he heard a groan and a yawn beside him. Iron Sheen was awake now, reminding him that it was no use trying to artificially create a better mood upon waking up to the current situation.
“Good morning,” Sicarius greeted his wife cheerfully.
“Morning,” she yawned in reply.
The pegasus sighed deeply, not even bothering to raise her body from her console. The winged mare’s beautiful silver mane covered her face and muffled her voice, which only made it sound more hopeless and melancholy, or perhaps, that was only Sicarius’ imagination. He couldn’t remember the last time his wife had sounded happy to see him, or anyone for that matter.
“You’ve got to get yourself out of bed,” he chided her. “You can’t just hole up in here forever. There’s a world out there, you know.”
“There is?” Iron Sheen mocked sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, your sarcasm is still intact, so how about you try being happy for a change.”
“What is there to be happy for? My family is gone. They all emigrated. All except me and you. There’s a so much dust in the air that you can’t fly far above ground level, so I’m permanently grounded.”
“Honey, I told you would could get you a simulator. All I need is another good break, and we can have you soaring again with the best damn simulator money can buy.”
“I don’t want a simulator!” she snapped in a dramatic and angry fashion before sinking back into a melancholy tone. “I want to fly for real, and I certainly want to fly in a way that doesn’t involve anymore executions of innocent ponies!”
“Now you hold on a minute!” Sicarius spat angrily. “Don’t you get on that high and mighty pedestal of yours about those Clones. You’re a hypocrite! You didn’t have any trouble when I brought how fat stacks of cash last time I had a big break!”
“I am not! I was- We were using the money to give back to life after all that killing. We were giving it to Gumbo!”
Tears formed in her eyes. She curled into a ball in her console, reliving a bad memory. She shuddered with the emotional pain, and soon began violently shaking her head as if to shake the thoughts out of her skull. Sicarius trotted over to her, shaking his head sadly.
“You don’t have to put yourself through this! Don’t you know that you’re only making this worse on yourself? Just get the console to a nice setting. Maybe a 243 or another setting that could take those memories right out of your head and replace them with new ones. Do it enough, you won’t even remember you had them!”
“I don’t want to forget! I’m so tired of all this talk about ignoring the problems and the hard feelings! That’s why I let myself be depressed, and later this month I’ll give myself a happy day. This isn’t this month’s happy day. I’m not gonna blindly stumble through reality as if it doesn’t exist. These feelings are real. That console makes things fake!”
“Oh, come on, now! Just lay down and rest a while, would ya’? I’ll enter in a code for ya’, alright?”
Sicarius moved toward his wife and used his horn to begin fiddling with the wires that connected the mood organ and the console. Iron Sheen glowered at him and reluctantly lifted herself up into a sitting position and flew to the other side of the room.
“No! The last thing I feel like is dialing in for another day of fakeness!”
“At least watch some tv, since you’re out of bed now!” Sicarius said exasperatedly, turning on the news.
“No,” his wife declined, “I enjoy the pain of the silence.”
“That’s just sill-”
“It’s not silly! I miss the birds chirping! I miss the flowers blooming without a bunch of magically treated fertilizers! I miss the sun! Oh God! God, I miss the sun!”
“I miss my wife!” Sicarius said, now seething with anger.
“Well bring her some real happiness or hope or clarity and maybe she’ll come back! And turn that damn tv off!”
“S you can go back to wallowing?”
“Yes! I want to be depressed. I want to have real emotions that aren’t created through exposure to magic! I want to not kill any more helpless Clones! Oh, those poor Clones.”
Sicarius gave a very irked grimace and grunted in annoyance, mumbling under his breath to control his temper. He put a hoof to his head and groaned angrily to himself.
Finally facing his wife, Sicarius spoke, “Just lay down and rest, honey.”
“No, turn the tv off!”
“Alright, alright! I’m turning it off.” he spoke calmly.” Sicarius spoke calmly as he reached for the remote. “Just lie down, now alright?”
“Not ‘alright,’” she grumbled as the tv turned off behind her.
“Don’t worry, you’ll feel better.”
“For all the wrong reasons,” she mumbled as she clopped back to her console.
“Just relax! You look tired! Don’t you want to go back to sleep?”
Sicarius asked slyly as he used his horn to dial in a the number code 335, which was the code that made a pony trusting of their spouse’s advice on all matters.
Iron Sheen mumbled something, but she was too deep in her depression to care if she was actually understood or not. After exposure to the magic of the 335 code, she obediently laid still while Sicarius dialed in the code 546 to put her to sleep and the code 447 to wake her up with a happy, bright outlook on life. Sicarius felt drained as well after the argument, and he decided to lay down as well and wake up with the 547 order, which would give him confidence in facing the day.
Fifteen minutes later, the unicorn snapped back into consciousness. He looked at the time, finding that he only had about 20 minutes to head for work. He rushed around the apartment, levitating his I.D. and other important documents into his coat’s inside pockets before teleporting the garment from one side of the room to the hanger next to him. Sicarius grabbed the drab, brown coat with his teeth and put it on, straightening his collar in the mirror. He observed his furrowed brow, accented with his thick, black eyebrows and and hardened brown eyes. With a deep sigh, he looked at the clock. Ten minutes until he had to leave. Just enough time to go upstairs to the roof.
Confident that he could visit the roof and still get to work on time, the unicorn galloped out of the apartment building and up the stairs, only slowing as he reached the doorway to the roof. It wasn’t proper to look as if one was in too much of a hurry to greet their animal. He walked past a few grass plots with animals in them. One was occupied by a baby bear who was rolling around playfully in the grass. Another had gotten a dust shield conjured around it and housed a couple of birds. It was very rare to see birds, and Sicarius couldn’t help eyeing the creatures enviously. Eventually, he came upon his personal grassplot, which also included a large tub filled with water. There were multiple filters attached to it, keeping the water fresh and clean. The bones of dead fish floated in the water.
Sicarius knelt down and grabbed a leash coiled at the side of the large tub. His horn lighting up, he attached it to the collar of a half-submerged alligator sitting docilely in the water. He tugged lightly on the leash with his magic, and the obedient alligator followed him onto the grass. It’s greedy eyes followed him, looking for any signs of fish. For a second, he glanced down at the large creature. He scowled; just the thought of this creature, no, this thing, made him upset.
He heard hoofsteps behind him. Looking up, he saw one of his fellow apartment tenants trotting over to his own animal. Carrying a brush in his mouth, the earth pony began to brush the coat of his Rocky Mountain Goat.
“Any day now, old girl! Any day!” he exclaimed softly yet excitedly as he patted the stomach of his prized goat.
Finally noticing his fellow tenant, he turned and smiled, “Good morning, Sicarius!”
“Mornin’ Buck.”
“Did I tell you the good news? My goat, she’s pregnant!”
“That’s great news,” Sicarius responded grumpily.
“Isn’t it? She’s gonna be a mother! Oh, and I’m gonna have two wonderful goats! Can you imagine? A little goat kid running around up here? I’ll have to expand my plot…”
Buck continued on, losing Sicarius’ interest for a time. The unicorn instead focused himself on levitating a bucket half full with fish over to the side of the tub.
The alligator eyed the bucket suspiciously, still glancing at his owner for any signs of food. Sicarius’ scowled again.
“...I can’t imagine how amazing it will be caring for two little-”
“Ever consider selling that kid of yours, Buck?”
Buck stared blankly at him, “No, I haven’t.”
“Care to?”
“Now, Sicarius. You can’t possibly expect me to sell away my beautiful Sheela’s newborn!” he said, patting the goat on the head.
“I’ll pay handsomely. I’m gonna get a big break soon. I’ve been tracking down this Clone for weeks now, and I’ll nab it soon. I-”
“Sicarius, you can’t just buy away a Rocky Mountain Goat just like that! Just browse through any Sidney Animal catalog. There won’t be any there! People don’t just sell rare animals like that.”
“You don’t understand,” Sicarius argued. “I really want to own that goat.”
“You have your alligator! Isn’t he enough for now?”
Sicarius sighed, “Actually, I don’t.”
He turned around and shot what looked like a laser beam out of his horn. The blue beam hit the oblivious alligator, temporarily distorting its cloaking device. The half mechanical, half magical animal’s inner working were revealed to Buck. Sicarius turned back around to face to face Buck slowly.
“See?”
Buck gasped, “Oh my! Has- has it always been this way?”
“No,” Sicarius sighed, “I used to have a real alligator. Iron’s father gave it to us when he emigrated as an anniversary gift. The little guy was barely a foot long when we first got him. He was supposed to live for a long time. Reptiles tend to.”
“Then what happened?”
“Do you remember that time I took Gumbo, that’s what I called my alligator, to the vet because he was sick?”
“Oh, yes! I remember! You saw that he was sluggish and barely moving in the morning. You tried to get him to go in the water and eat something, but he wouldn’t go. You managed to get him to eat some fish from your hand, and he seemed to be alright for a few minutes, but then he vomited the fish back up and was sluggish again.”
“Right. When I took him to the vet, I found out that he was sick. Alligator blood, it’s like antiseptic! It takes a lot to get an alligator sick. If one does get sick, it will probably die. It’ll die just like Gumbo died. I didn’t know what to do, so I called up a service that sold fake animals and brought a fake alligator back home.”
“I’m so sorry about all that,” Buck stated. “Maybe you could still afford to buy yourself another animal. Cats are real cheap! So are mice! I think Sidney even has a good deal on pregnant mice going on right now. You could probably afford to house twenty of the things, they’re so tiny.”
“I don’t want a cat or a mouse. I like big animals like Gumbo or your goat. I want to get another animal but on this city police salary, there’s no way I can afford it. If only I’d known that gumbo was going to die the last time I got a big break. Retired four Clones in one month. I need that again.”
“I’m real sorry about all this, Sicarius. I had no idea about Gumbo.”
Sicarius sighed, “It’s fine.”
The unicorn’s horn lit up and the bucket levitated off the ground and dumped fish into the water. The machinery making up his “alligator” came to life, and the fake animal happily snapped its jaw up and down. Sicarius let it off the leash, and the “alligator” ran to the tub and jumped inside, scarfing down mouthfuls of fish. Sicarius glanced down at his watch.
“I have to get to work. See ya’ around, Buck.”
“Sicarius!” buck called out after him. “I- I won’t tell anyone here in the building.”
A despair of the kind Iron Sheen had gone on about seized him in that moment. His head told him to say thanks and just keep walking. He went against his first thought as melancholy set in.
“It may not even matter, anyway.”
“How can you say that?” Buck replied. “The other tenants, they’ll look down on you. Maybe not all of them, but I know for certain that some will. It’s not as if it’s illegal not to own an animal like right after WWT when people thought that not caring for an animal is unempathetic, but the feeling is still there.”
“I suppose.”
“I really think you should consider a mouse. You can even get a full grown mouse for a little extra.”
Sicarius turned away and bitterly spoke, “Your goat could die. One day, you could come home, and it could be lying there dead.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you.”
Buck’s words fell on deaf ears as Sicarius clopped away. He headed straight for the stairs and disappeared through the door, not even bothering to look back.