22 - Number One Assistant
By the time the afternoon rush had died away, Spike, Twilight and Obtrillion were gone, disappearing into the hidden recesses of Obtrillion’s sanctuary. Twilight’s old life was lost; the stench of the lies and the ponies who told them was disappearing from her nostrils, but not everything from that life needed to be done away with.
Spike… had lied to her, but he had never been like Shining Armor. After Twilight woke up from her blackout, Spike had never acted the same: he had helped her finish the Manehatten project because he had to, and after that he’d withdrawn to his cave, probably because he felt guilty for deceiving her. Shining Armor, on the other hoof, had spent decades smiling into her face every day and lying about Zohan and Obtrillion.
It made sense. At his core, Shining Armor had always been a soldier; following orders without question. Celestia had taken advantage of that loyalty, twisting him into her enforcer, and now Twilight realized the depths to which she had decayed his core values. Spike was his own person; and he loved Twilight. He may have tried playing both sides in a vain attempt to keep the peace, but when it came down to the wire, he chose her over Celestia, just like he always had and always would. At the very least, he had earned the right to explain.
She trusted him.
Obtrillion slid a false wall back into place and sealed the steel gate shut behind them, “You can let go of the jamming spell now, Mom; they’ll never track Spike’s signal in here.”
All baby dragons that hatched in Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns had a microchip implanted in their tails which released a beacon when they matured so they could be relocated to the Everfree Forest. Twilight didn’t know why Spike had never matured permanently, except that it was somehow connected to The Migration; but the implant remained, and it still gave off a similar wavelength to the Sun Guard’s cocients.
It had only taken a little reconfiguring of Twilight’s cocient for them to use it to find Spike, and it wouldn’t take the Sun Guard long to do the same, once they realized he was with them. Twilight had cast a jamming signal over his tail so they could get away, but before Spike could safely leave here, something would have to be done to permanently extinguish the signal.
Something else took precedence, however; took precedence by far.
Twilight held her breath as the trio made the short distance to the main lounge, then breathed deeply before turning to her oldest friend in the world, now that Shining Armor was gone, “Spike… tell me what happened to me during my blackout.”
Spike looked at Twilight, and then to Obtrillion who was staring at him with an intensity that exceeded even Twilight’s. “Umm… did you kill Swift Kick?”
“It was just a stun spell.” repeated Twilight.
Spike gulped, glancing at Obtrillion, “Ummm, why is your side grazed?”
“Shining Armor tried to kill us. Now please; what did you do to my mom?”
Spike took a step back, “Is he-”
“Shining Armor’s alive,” hissed Twilight, “Stop stalling, you’ve lied to me for most of your life; tell us what happened!”
The clapping of Fidora’s hooves caught everyone’s attention, as she appeared, wearing a lightly smattered apron, halting when she saw Spike before slowly continuing to Obtrillion’s side. “Is that a… dragon?”
“His name’s Spike,” said Obtrillion, “Celestia gave him to Twilight as a servant when she first began her training. He complied in my family’s massacre, and my mother’s mind wipe but he claims he was forced to. He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”
Fidora looked at Obtrillion quizzically, “Can’t you tell if he’s lying?”
Obtrillion gave Spike one final hard look and then shook his head, “No. I’ve never seen dragons this close before, and Spike’s mind is too different from a pony for me to read, but my mom says he can be trusted; so that’s what we’re going to do.”
Spike sniffed Fidora uneasily, “What do you mean… ‘read my mind’?”
“Obtrillion’s a telepath, the first one to be born in over a thousand years,” said Twilight, “This is Fidora; she’s his concubine.”
Spike’s nostril’s flared; “Concubine? As in ‘she’s his slave-wife?’ And you’re OK with this!?”
“Slavery’s not always evil,” declared Twilight, “in fact, sometimes it can be very good. Now please, what happened in my blackout?”
Spike’s forked tongue flicked out a moment, then he sat down heavily; “Can I… get some time to catch my breath?”
“Please,” implored Obtrillion, “I’ve waited my entire life to hear this. Don’t deprive me any longer.”
Spike looked at Obtrillion long and hard for a few moments, then back to Twilight; “… Last week you loved Shining Armor, trusted Celestia, and hated slavery. Maybe you’re OK with twisting your whole life around in one day; but dragons like going centuries without change. Can I… have a few hours to catch my mind up with what’s just happened?”
“Do as he says,” commanded Twilight.
Spike swallowed, “I-I’m tired; it was complicated and this is something I’ve been trying to forget for seventeen years.”
“Eighteen years,” corrected Obtrillion quickly, “Twilight woke up from her blackout eighteen years ago.”
“Yeah, there, see?” sputtered Spike, “I’m so tired I can’t even count! If I tried to tell you the story on the fly now, I’d probably get it really messed up and have to keep correcting myself. If I could just have a little bit of time to think, and if we could get back to this tomorrow morning I know I would do a much better job at telling the story.”
“…Fine!” Grunted Obtrillion after a long and discouraged moment; pointing to the empty room next to Twilight’s. “You have two hours to put your story together, and then we want the truth.”
Spike looked like he was going to try to barter for more time, but was too tired to even do that. He nodded wearily and then ambled into the second guestroom, closing the door behind him.
Fidora cantered quickly down one of the many side passages, and returned with a tray of ointments which she mixed carefully and began massaging into Obtrillion’s grazed side, as he rested on a couch; his eyes darting uneasily between Twilight, and Spike’s door. “Are you sure he can be trusted?”
Twilight didn’t know. Two days ago she would have sworn to the loyalties of Shining Armor and Celestia, but she couldn’t believe that everyone had willingly betrayed her, “I think so. But in either case he’s seen where we live, so we have to keep him with us at least for the time being; and we’ll need to find a way to remove the implant before he can leave the safe house.”
“That won’t be a problem” assured Obtrillion, “We can use your cocient to pinpoint its location easily enough, and then I’ll cut it out.”
“… Are you sure you can do that without hurting him?”
Fidora smiled, kissing Obtrillion on the cheek, “Your son is one of the best surgeons who has ever lived. Remember, Ragarrock once blasted off my entire right arm; Obtrillion reattached it, and it works every bit as well as it did before. I’ll bet you can’t even find the scar.” To prove herself, Fidora offered her leg up for inspection. Even with magically enhanced vision, Twilight wasn’t sure she could make out the scar; there could be a slight crease between two stripes… but that could also have just been her imagination.
“I confess I’ve never operated on a dragon before,” Obtrillion added, “but I’ve studied detailed diagrams of their anatomy, including the muscular layout of their tails. I could probably take the microchip out, without painkillers, without him feeling a thing, but I’ll give him an anesthetic, just to be on the safe side.”
Twilight nodded, pouring herself a cup of tea from the table, as she tried to calm down. She began reviewing everything she knew about her blackout period, so she could tell immediately if Spike’s story didn’t add up. “Why did Celestia call you ‘The Nightmare Child’?”
Obtrillion grew strangely silent, the edges of his mouth falling, “I’d… rather not talk about it.”
“Please, this is something about your life I need to know.”
Obtrillion sighed, “It’s what they called me at the orphanage; I couldn’t help it.”
“What happened?”
“When I was an infant, my telepathic powers were already manifest, but I couldn’t control them, and I was constantly radiating fear to everyone around me. For the first few nights they tried putting me in the nursery with the other infants, but when they did, all the other babies would instantly begin crying. They eventually made a room for me in the corner of the storage basement, as far away from any of the other children as possible, where I spent my early life in solitary confinement.
Taking care of me became a punishment among the nurses in the orphanage because if the nurse who was with me ever fell asleep, she would always have horrible nightmares, and so they called me The Nightmare Child.
It took me until I was three before I could turn the fear radiance off, but by then it was too late. All the adults expected to feel afraid whenever they came near me, and so it became a psychosomatic effect. If new staff ever joined, they would follow the inherent reactions of their peers, they wouldn’t feel afraid of me, but they would pretend to so they wouldn’t be seen as abnormal; and in time their fear became real.
I spent every day listening to hooves beat on the roof above me; I heard talking, laughter, singing, but I was never allowed to come up. Some of the nurses pretended to like me, but I always knew that they didn’t want to be there. Others could barely stand feeding me, and would loudly wonder if they’d be punished for ‘accidentally’ dropping me on my neck.
None of my nurses ever wanted to talk or play with me, or even touch me. After I taught myself to read, they found that giving me a book or a scroll was the easiest way to keep me quiet, so every morning I was taken to the library, while everyone else was having breakfast, and was allowed to take any books I wanted. I spent my days reading them and practicing magic because they were the only things I was allowed to do.
When I was five, the orphanage got a new headmaster. He came to see me and I was finally able to convince him that I wasn’t a monster. He was willing to try to integrate me with the other children; but they wouldn’t accept me. They knew that I had been held in isolation ‘for their protection’, and they had learned to fear me from the adults. Their fear grew to hatred, and was made worse by the fact that I was the only child there who wasn’t a zebra.
Within a few days, it became obvious that I was working at the level of kids twice my age, making everyone else jealous and hate me even more! I could hear what they were all thinking about me and so… I learned to defend myself before one of them tried to kill me.”
The corners of Twilight’s eyes were moist, but she didn’t cry; Obtrillion was the one who had suffered, and he wasn’t crying. She couldn’t show weakness, “Did anyone ever accept you?”
“Yes,” said Obtrillion grimly, “The ones who thought they could use me. When they saw how good I was at almost everything, some of the older kids were willing to pretend to be my friends if I helped them with their studies; and I did. I pretended to be fooled by them, but every day I read their minds and knew that none of them really liked me.”
Twilight wiped away a tear that was crawling down her cheek. It wasn’t fair; she hadn’t been there to wipe away her son’s tears, and she didn’t deserve better than him, “But how would Celestia have known you were called The Nightmare Child?”
“Because she’s in league with Raggarock.”
“You can’t know that for certain.”
“I didn’t” said Obtrillion slowly, “… until today. During the war, Raggarock had bands of elite mercenaries from all across the world working for him. One band in particular was especially ruthless; no one knew who they were, or where they came from, but there were whispers that they were undercover Equestrian Special Forces.
I was never able to confirm or deny the rumors until today when I saw Shining Armor; I recognized him. He was the leader of the band which slaughtered… so many of my followers. If it hadn’t been for him, I could have won the war, and we wouldn’t be hiding for our lives now.”
“Are… are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“… No.” said Twilight finally, “That doesn’t make sense; if he’d fought in the war he would have known your name, and so would Celestia. There would have been no need for them to have called you an outdated title.”
“Well what else is Celestia going to say? ‘Murder your nephew and drag your little sister back to me so I can gore out her only memories of freedom and happiness?’ It’s words again Mom, everything comes down to the way you say things: ‘Obtrillion’ makes me sound like a person, ‘The Nightmare Child’ makes it sound like I’m not even alive, like I’m some kind of monster.”
“You’re not a monster!” insisted Twilight.
Obtrillion looked at her solemnly, sniffling as a small smile creased the corners of his lips, “You… really mean that don’t you?”
Twilight tried to think of something she could say, but came up empty, words were inadequate. After a moment, she got up, crossed the lounge room and wrapped her arms around her son’s figure. “You’re not a monster.”
Obtrillion tensed; Twilight hoped that he would return her hug but he just lay there rigid and a moment later he teleported out of her hooves. Her disappointment was culled a moment later when she saw he was looking at a mysterious cloud of green smoke that was feeling its way along the roof, looking for a way out.
Obtrillion shot a ray of light at it, hitting it dead center and forcing it to rematerialize into a scrap of parchment that fluttered to the floor. Obtrillion snatched it up, stared at it in frustration and then passed Twilight the note inflicted with Spike’s handwriting:
Shining Armor; Twilight and her kid found me and I pretended to be on their side so they wouldn’t kill me. We’re in a base in the sewers, but it’s empty except for us and a zebra mare who is Obtrillion’s concubine. Obtrillion is a telepath and he’s got Twilight mind controlled.
Go to the pump shed at the corner of the street where we set up base, go down three flights of stairs and take the second left, then the third right, next take the first hall to your left; the entrance to the hideout is behind a fake wall between two big pipes. I scratched a circle outside.
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Oh, Spike. How stupid could you be? Just when you were reunited with Twilight, too.
This is not going to end well (for Spike); I can just tell.
The upside it that his message didn't get out. But again, that's not good for him, in any way that you look at it.
SPIKE! Oh man, this too funny! I've just replayed Portal 2 (finished not 30 minutes ago) and have this story doing a 'betrayed by a person you called an ally' came at the perfect time!
“You’re not a monster she repeated.”
1. Misplaced your quotation mark.
Well... Anyone up for dragon stew that tastes like traitor?
Maybe it's me, but I still feel that Obtrillion is just way too OP and it's just too damn convenient that he intercepts everything. It really kind makes it feel forced. Also, regardless of canon, it wouldn't be much use as a letter sending magic if it physically had to travel as smoke without dispersion the whole way. It also seems rather dumb that Obtrillion has a spell for everything. How the heck would he know anything about dragon letter sending or any ways to interrupt and why should it even be interruptible?
5440755
Obtrillion can't influence Spike like he can ponies and zebras, but he was able to see Spike's mind well enough to know what he would try to do, so he sent him into a room with only one exit, knowing that the letter smoke would have to travel through the lounge, and gave Spike little enough time that if Spike expected 'help' within two hours , he'd need to send the letter immediately. Obtrillion then positions Twilight with her back to the door, 'faces her' and he waits.
Trust me when I say that Obtrillion's power level was very carefully considered for about a year before I posted chapter one of LOTH. In raw might he's far from being the most powerful character out there, his main strength is that he's cleaver.
Obtrillion knows a LOT of things which should raise suspicion as to how. I've shown you a few so far, and more will come. Keep reading.
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Ponies/ horses are actually omnivores; but although Timbucktoo is a very diverse city, eating meat/ blood is something that's almost unanimously taboo... almost.
5436204
Twilight Sparkle saying "slavery is not always evil" is a pretty questionable thing to say. I find it easier to believe she's been mind controlled than to believe she believes that
5445137
In the context of the conversation Twilight had with Fidora in chapters 17-18, her statement is reasonable; and Spike may have even agreed if she had elaborated on the varying definitions of slavery, (Ex: saying a nursing mother is a slave to her newborn).
Obtrillion was able to manipulate her just enough, that Twilight would have assumed Spike understood what she was thinking and how she meant that statement. Spike on the other hand, took this (and the fact she'd just tried to kill Shining Armor) as proof that Twilight was completely mind controlled by Obtrillion, therefore it would be impossible to reason with her.
Obtrillion cannot control anyone outright, or override their free will. What he can do is direct the focus of you subconscious, so you only notice what he wants you to notice, and selected emotions get blown out of proportion.
5445137 Hmmmm, that's a very good point, garfan.
I just wonder when Twilight is going to figure out when her son is mind-controlling her?
(If, indeed, she actually is being mind-controlled.)
Soon, I hope...for everypony's sake in this.
Just have to wait and see what happens next, I guess.
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5445405
"Wha? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
I think that's more likely Spike's response
5445581 Ah, okay. Thanks.
Still, things don't seem to bode well for Spike...or his already tenuous...relationship with Twilight here in this chapter.
5445677
He was trying to keep a pretense of loyalty/ cooperation remember.
5445688
You are very right.
5445720 Thanks. I just had a bad feeling about that when I read that letter at the end of this chapter.
5440823
You're not really going to change my mind, at least not at this point. Obtrillion's character just screams the male equivalent of Mary Sue. I'll try to remember to consider it in light of the whole story, but it really kind of rankles. I always have mixed feelings about stories where the plot seems forced rather than a natural progression of events. -- Also, Telepathy is just way too powerful here. As it is, it seems ridiculous that he can just mentally overpower anyone (or at least know what they're thinking) and that he wasn't killed rather quickly. I guess it feels a lot like he isn't really clever, just really powerful.
*clever
5457485
I think I know what you mean, but could you please extrapilate some?
P.S. There is still loads more characther development for Obtrillion; explaining the depth of his abilities. You should consider however, that if Obtrillion could mentally read or overpower everyone, he wouldn't have lost the war. Who have you seen him manipulate so far, and what do they all have in common?
5465892
Ultimately I suppose it's just a feeling and perhaps Twilight and Fidora are exceptionally vulnerable to persuasion. It just seems very odd that neither of them ever so much as considers that they might be being manipulated. Everything Obtrillion does seems to go exactly as planned. Also, it appears that every time Obtrillion goes to do something it succeeds utterly without fail or interruption. There doesn't seem to be a single of a failure or mistake thus far, although I suppose such things could be omitted in the present to convey that on purpose. I intend to reread it all at some point, so maybe I will find some more specific examples.
5466206
Obtrillion had wanted to kill Shining Armor; preferably through Twilight but doing it personally would have satisfied him. Also his injuries in that fight had not been planned, and neither was his near-death experience. Shining Armor is too dangerous to toy with.Now he has someone who could kill him in single combat, and a battalion of elite troops tracking him.
As for Fidora, I'll just say that Obtrillion had six years to influence her before they got separated; plus, her culture would have imprinted on her from birth that, until she had children, her greatest goal in life is to serve her husband/ master and make him happy. She's not acting out of her nature, just living it to the extreme; (though not without her shortcomings.)
I think you're confusing nature with nurture there. She may not be acting inconsistently with her upbringing, but I don't think it's entirely consistent with her nature.
5482981
Possibly.
I'll also remind you that Fidora is playing Twilight in her presentation of Obtrillion, she might be doing the same with herself.
5483130
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. The wording is confusing.
5485855
Sorry, must have been tired.
Everything we know of Fidora (which isn't much) comes from her own testimony, and we know she's a willing con-artist.
5486378
I see. Thanks.
Willing, yes, but also possibly operating under certain delusions.
P.S.
Something of a random comment, but I think the world and plotline notes kind of clutter up the story description. You?
Also,
You've got and 'r' in your 'the' and you've misspelled 'summary' I believe...
Cosmetic? LOL. I think you mean 'cosmic' or something of that sort, although that's a bit of a stretch considering Equestria is hardly all of the cosmos, but I digress.
I think they are held at bay 'by' a secret group.
ect? You mean 'etc' (et cetera, translated: and all the rest; implies other unmentioned members of a list)
5486538