I'm Real

by Feeling Grand

Chapter 8

"Huh...?"

That's all that came out of my mouth. My breath was weak and tired... I was too exhausted to think of the words that Rainbow had spoken and the pegasus just gave a huff out. Her body felt relaxed, and she just carried me to the living room before saying to me.

"Alright get off, you need to sleep."

I stretched my arms up, yawning and feeling drowsy. But I obeyed. I got off her back and went over to the couch. I lay on it, my body aching and feeling so sore and tired.

I looked across to the empty cabinet in the distance, where the TV had been days ago that had started off my whole adventure.

I stared across at the empty spot and only yawned. I closed my eyes.

~x~

When I opened them again it was still night. I could hear the birds outside twittering just the slightest. I felt a lot of my energy had come back, but wondered why the room was so dark and quiet.

I tiredly sat up on the couch and looked at the time to see it say six o clock. I didn't know what time I had come back to my granny's home at, but I felt I must've slept for only five hours.

I stood up and went to my room. I turned on the lights as I headed to my wardrobe to find a new outfit, but the bulbs flickered a little in their light, which spooked me. I got changed into a clean T-shirt and shorts, and put on new shoes and socks.

I called out nervously, "Rainbow...?"

There was no reply. I walked around the desolate house till I found her asleep on a seat just outside the door. Keeping watch I had guessed, and I gave a tired smile. I came over to her and shook her weakly, whispering.

"Rainbow..."

"GAH!" She yelped, shooting into the air the minute she had been awakened, and looked around cautiously for the intruder. She only sighed when she saw me look up at her, and she flew down next to me, giving a nervous smile and saying.

"You scared me. I... I thought you were her..."

"She's gone, Rainbow." I said quietly, trying to reassure of this fact and Rainbow only nodded her head quietly. Though somehow, I don't think she believed it in her heart.

"Come on..." I said to her, and waved my small hand for her to follow me. She swallowed nervously, and walked into the house till we reached the hallway and I pointed up at the string hanging down from the ceiling.

"Can you pull that down for me...?"

"Why?"

"I need to see something in the attic."

"What?"

"Please, Rainbow." I begged barely, not wanting to have to explain, and she looked at me, confused. Cautious.

She could tell I had changed after that final battle... that something in the core of me had changed and that I was a different girl to the one she had met only a few days ago from behind a screen.

"Okay..." Rainbow said to me quietly. She flew up towards the roof and grabbed the string with her teeth, pulling it down and the ladder to the attic, fell. I moved back just as it hit the wooden ground with a bang, and I looked up into the dark square entrance above. I took a gulp, but began to climb the ladder.

Rainbow flew in before me and scouted the area, cautiously, as I entered into the dark upper room. I looked around for a switch, but Rainbow quickly found it and turned on the light. The room looked messy. The destroyed TVs were still in the corner in the distance, the electric cage in place, and the books still on the desk with the information I sought.

I hurried over to the desk and looked through the books. The light flickered a little, all the lights in the house seeming to have dimmed a little since we had returned, and finally I found the book that was dated from the ninety sixties.

I opened it up, and read the words my grandpa had written when he had been alive and a young adult in the year 1967.

Something incredible has happened today. As I had just created my own television, it became static and the beautiful Grace Kelly I had watched seconds ago from the movie, spoke to me. She looked at me. She was alive behind the screen... and I knew I had to find a way to get her out.

I turned the page to the next date and continued to read on.

1968

I finally believe I have cracked the code to release my beloved from her cage in the screen. I had configured the settings to my invention "The Releaser" so I can connect the TV up to the it and let her become real. Become alive. Become finally mine.

1969

An odd occurrence has happened with Grace. She's discovered she can return to her original state and age of creation by exploding electricity. She's delighted by this, happy she can never die, but I fear the worse. It's not natural, and I have asked her to promise not to use this power. To grow old with me. She has agreed, but I can tell it is much to her reluctance. But if she is to fall pregnant, she now knows that activating this power could kill whatever possible baby we could have. So I believe her reluctance has been overcome with the desire to have children. I am happy about this, that maybe one day... we could start a family.

There were no more words after I had finished that page. I flipped the paper over to see photos of Grandpa's and Grace's family that had come from the years that passed. The babies all had my grandpa's brown hair, but I knew secretly now they possessed my grandma's power and electric blood.

I just couldn't understand why my grandma had turned so crazy when I had brought Rainbow into the world. She had just lost it.

Had she gone senile? Had she grown evil with jealousy and envy that she was no longer special and the only one? It could explain why she always destroyed the TVs when grandpa had created more life from within them... but still... I was just so confused by it all.

I noticed Rainbow Dash was beside me and had read the words with me. The pegasus looked up at me quietly and said.

"I'm sorry, Anna..."

"Why?" I asked and she just sighed.

"I'm sorry that she changed... became bad... that she had to be killed."

"But what if... she was always bad..." I said sadly, thinking about this and Rainbow Dash only stared at me, lost.

"Like you said," I said to her. "Some people are just bad... some people are just... e-evil..."

"Do you want to cry?"

"No," I said, and meant that. I didn't want to cry ever again. Though I would find myself crying later on that day when the sun had risen. And the tears wouldn't stop till everything had come to pass.

We came back down to the hallway below and I went to my bed, falling asleep again. Rainbow told me she was going to keep a look out again, and the pegasus sat outside as the night soon turned to dawn.

When I did open my eyes, it was finally ten in the day, and I got up, feeling all my energy had finally come back. I hurried out eagerly to the door just to see Rainbow was looking out to the sky from her seat. Her magenta eyes seeming sad and distant.

They just shone with a little water as she watched a plane go by so high up.

"Rainbow...?" I said.

She blinked her eyes softly and looked over at me with a sad smile, saying.

"Yeah, Anna?"

"What's wrong...?"

"I just..." she said to me, and got up from her seat by fluttering her wings. She landed down beside me and looked in my eyes. I took a few steps back, lost.

"I have to go."

I opened my mouth a little in surprise. I didn't understand why she was saying this.

"Why?" I asked, and she gave a soft smile, her eyes looked down to the ground. "Where...?"

"I don't know where... but anywhere there aren't humans..."

I didn't understand why she was saying this.

"Don't you want to stay in these woods...? You can live in the caves... there's fruit in the trees."

"And always be on the lookout for people?"

"There are not many people in these woods... you're more likely to come across animals."

"And be seen as just an 'animal' myself..." Rainbow said in spite and I looked at her confused.

"You are more than an animal."

"Probably your scientist, if they got wind of me, would want to put me in a lab and test me like a rat."

"Rainbow..." I said, sadly.

She looked up at me, and just sighed. She said quietly, as her eyes turned back to the ground and her voice was so weak.

"What am I meant to do, Anna...? What to do with my existence now...? What?"

"Stay here... with me."

"You are only a child... if you were an adult, you would be like them..." she whispered the next word that made my eyes widen, "Bad..."

"I'm sorry we live in a bad world," I said to Rainbow, my eyes getting watery. It seeming the only one who could hurt me now was that pegasus as she was all I had now in my life, to protect me... to look after me... to be a mother, a sister, a friend.

But was I really being a friend to her?

"Maybe you should go," I said to her, quietly, and she gazed her eyes quickly back up to mine, startled in hearing this. "Maybe if you keep on flying you'll find a place you can call home. Maybe you will be free from us. So go, R-Rainbow!" I said, teary eyed and she looked at me, lost. "Go and be free!"

Rainbow just stared at me, as tears were near falling from my eyes, and she scuffed a laugh.

"Anna... where can I go? I want to go... but... but like Grace said... humans have basically taken over this world... destroyed it."

"Go to Antarctica!" I begged her. I only wanted Rainbow to be happy. "Go to the Amazon or under the sea! Just leave me!"

I fell on my knees, crying pitifully when I had told myself I would not let anymore tears fall. Why was I still such a baby?! Because Rainbow Dash wanted to go away... and I wanted my friend to stay.

But my dad would be coming to pick me up soon... and then... what would he do when he saw her?

What would he do?

I felt Rainbow nudge me on the side as she approached me and indicated me to get on her back.

"What is it, Rainbow?!" I begged and she just smiled.

"One more flight... for old times sake."

I swallowed, but nodded my head and agreed. I got on her back and she flew off into the sky with me holding on tightly.

I looked down to the far below forest and watched as the sun hit against us, and showed us off to the empty woods.

I held onto her tightly, but I wasn't afraid anymore. I just wanted her to be happy with whatever she chose.

She eventually flew so high that I became a little worried, as I looked down to the ground in the distance and how it looked so far.

I held onto her neck tightly and I heard her only say.

"Without worrying about that crazy granny trying to kill me... it's... peaceful here."

I felt a little bit of fear rise in me as I looked at the ground so far below.

"But... it's not home... home to me existed in that screen... when I was nothing."

She suddenly dropped through the sky, and I screamed till she pulled up with a gust of her wings and flew back towards the house. She landed on her hoofs and I fell off in total terror.

"I just... I don't know what to do... I don't know where to go... to exist... when all it is is just... this..."

I sat there, dizzy on the ground. I blinked surprised when I heard a car driving up the dirt road in the distance and I yelped at Rainbow quickly.

"HIDE!"

She looked ahead of her to see the vehicle approaching, and she quickly flew into the woods... disappearing.

And I wished that I could say I saw her again after that... but... but I didn't.

I just wished I had known at the time... that that simple flight into the woods... would be the last time I'd see her.

But I had thought I would get to say my goodbyes. That she would remain in these woods for me to always find her when I sought her. But in reality... things can disappear so quickly.

I never got her answer. If she was to stay here... or go...

If she would exist with us... or apart forever.

I got up as the car approached and I quickly saw it was my dad's car. I hurried over to the parkway, and he pulled up.

He looked wrecked... tired, exhausted... and miserable.

"Anna, I'm back..."

"Dad!" I said to him and swung my arms around his waist in happiness. "You came back for me!"

"Of course...?" He said, slightly confused when I said this and quickly moved me away as he came into the house and looked around.

"Mum?!" He shouted, looking for grandma. I heard him shouting for her a couple of times and I just swallowed, afraid.

He came back out to me and asked confused.

"Anna? Where's your grandma?"

"She's... she's gone..."

I didn't know what else to say, how else to explain. He looked at me lost and I continued, a lie all I could answer with.

"She went into the woods a couple of days ago... and... didn't come back."

"What?" he said, his eyes becoming wide in horror and he ran towards the trees. He put his hands to the sides of his mouth as he screamed into the wilderness.

"MUM! MUM!"

I watched as it all happened so quickly.

We searched for the day, the police came... The area was looked over... she was reported missing... but all I cared about was Rainbow Dash... and where she had gone to.

If she was even still hidden somewhere among these trees... or gone...

Was she gone too...?

We stayed the night at my grandma's house. I looked out the window of my room in hopes of seeing that blue pegasus... but I saw not a thing.

I could hear my dad weeping in the guestroom... crying... and I didn't know what to do or say to him.

I didn't know what I could do.

I approached him finally when dawn came and he was asleep in his bed. I looked at him, worried, and shook him weakly. He stirred a little bit and I swallowed, scared.

But I had to say.

"Dad... she's gone... she's gone..."

He still had his eyes closed, his body worn and wrecked and I stuttered out, ashamed.

"Because of me... she's gone..."

I looked at him for a few seconds more, before turning to leave and stopped when I heard him sit up on the bed with awakened eyes.

I was at the door, and he looked at me quietly, whispering.

"Anna... how did you know she was gone?"

"Because... I-"

"I never even told you."

I looked at him confused, and he just sat there, his eyes agape, his body exhausted and him half confused and half asleep in his state.

"I just know... that she's gone."

He looked at me. He seemed not to know what to say before the words left his upset lips.

"I'm so sorry, Anna..."

"No..." I said back, afraid to say it, but continued, "I am, dad..."

He shook his head and lay back down on his pillow, shaking in his bed as he whispered to himself over and over.

"The treatment was just too much for her... she couldn't hold on for me... for you..."

I didn't understand what my dad was talking about. Grandma wasn't having treatment... she wasn't ill when I had killed her and I peeped out.

"Huh?"

"She loved you, Anna..." he only blubbered out. He closed his eyes and tried to fall back into unconsciousness. "Just know, she loved you..."

I left the room, a little shaken up from what I had experienced and only went over it in my head as I lay in my bed.

When he had said 'she loved me', all that went through my mind was when Rainbow had told me she loved me.

But now she was gone... without a word to say goodbye... to say sorry that she had to hide.

She had just gone so quickly and I missed her.

But who was my dad talking about?

~x~

I only realized the next day.

~x~

"You mother... is gone..."

I couldn't believe it when he said it to me. He had wanted to not tell me for the longest of time, but he told me the next day when he had brought me into the lounge room by myself.

"She's... she's dead..."

"How...?" I begged to know, "Why? WHY!"

I broke down in tears, falling to my knees and just cried in so much pain from this.

"She loved you, Anna..."

"IF SHE LOVED ME, WHY DID SHE GO?!" I shouted at him. WHY DID SHE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE I COULDN'T!

Why did Rainbow Dash have to go!

Why did mum have to go!

IF THEY LOVED ME- WHY!?

"She didn't have a choice."

I knew he was lying. My mum had a choice! She could've stayed with me and not gone somewhere I couldn't follow. She didn't have to go to that hill, where the valleys collided and the stars fell from the pink sky. She should've let me stay with her there! Not told me to go.

"She left me!" I shouted, tears pouring down my face. "She left me and she's not coming back!"

"I'm sorry, Anna..."

He knelt down beside me and hugged my small body close to his. I tried to push him away, so angry and heartbroken, but my dad was stronger than me.

"I'm sorry..."

My tears dampened into his shirt. And I cried...

I never got to say goodbye to Rainbow Dash... I never got to say goodbye to mum...

And childhood left me that day... for as I got older... I wondered if she had ever really been in my life... Rainbow Dash... Grandma... my mum... for they all could've been the hopes of a girl growing up and wanting something more.

The unimaginable to happen... the bizarre and amazing to exist.

~x~

It was 2027.

I was twenty-one. I had returned back to my grandma's house as it had been passed down to us in the will, and I had moved back to reclaim back some of that imagined reality I had once thought was real.

The doctors had seen me have breakdowns in my adolescence, imagining I was hearing the voices of my deceased relatives... of a pony...

I had been diagnosed with psychosis.

Those four days when I had been at my grandma's house as a ten year old seemed so fantastical now that I went over them in my head. I lay in the guest room. Just alone in the forest by myself. In the dark of the night.

But I knew it had been real... I knew... it had been real.

I reached my finger up to the ceiling... and a small zap of electricity sprung forth from the tip.

I smiled... and whispered to myself.

"You were real... I know you were... I know you're out there still..."

And I'll find her... one day again...

I will...

Author's Note:

Well, that's the end of the story. Hope you liked it if you came this far. I'm just glad I finished it finally.
Bye!

Comments

[TheWhisperInYourHead]

mmmmm fuzzy and dark feelings, my favorite and in the right proportions too, please do make more stories like this.

[Doctor Disco]

Yes.

And... meh.

[TheWhisperInYourHead]

also, the new highlander looks promising.

[Feeling Grand]

8261909
I actually have never seen Highlander, but I looked up to see what the movie was about, and I now see a lot of similarities between my premise and its.
Ah well, just co-incidence I guess.

[TheWhisperInYourHead]

8265926
i am going to ask this straight, are we going to get a sequel? will Annas cousins awaken their powers as well?

[Feeling Grand]

8270279
I was thinking of doing a sequel, with Anna on the search for Rainbow Dash. I don't know how I could evolve her cousins though, the healing power and electric power also are passed on by a recessive gene that was carried in Grace's yellow hair (Cos electricity is yellow, and Grace's hair is yellow... it's complicated, but that's how it works in my head. Which is also why none of her aunts or uncles on her dad's side have the power cos they all have brown hair- which is also why they didn't know about it.) But some of Grace's cousins might have yellow hair, though it is a rare recessive gene- I just never really thought of it.
I might do a sequel, but it probably won't be started for a while, and most my stories (including this one) take 6 months or around that, so who knows?

[Ahuras Wrath]

While I enjoyed this overall, I do have some reservations. For one, the idea that people from TV-land (for lack of a better term) and those descended from them have powers over - and conversely are vulnerability to - electricity just seems, well, forced. I assume the author was going for something similar to the Superman mythos where kryptonite is harmful to Superman because it's from his home planet. In effect, Superman, a Kryptonian being, can only really be harmed by a Kryptonian material. (This idea goes back to the ancient Egyptians.)

But electricity is only provides the power. What sets the television apart from other household appliances is not just that it receives information, but the method that it uses - radio waves. (With the exception of cable and ) From my own point of view, it would be more satisfying if Anna's abilities/weakness (and those of her grandmother, and Rainbow Dash) had been related to radio.

The other two weaknesses show up near the end. After reading about Anna's mother going missing I was left scratching my head. Why? Was she afraid for her daughter? The other is Dash's bizarre (and somewhat cringeworthy) remark:

"Anna... where can I go? I want to go... but... but like Grace said... humans have basically taken over this world... destroyed it."

Not only does it make no sense for her to say this, but it is completely false. The current Holocene extinction is but a pale shadow of Jurassic extinction, to say nothing of the Oxygen Catastrophe. Indeed, the biosphere as a whole ii far beyond our powers of destruction. And where would she get her knowledge of current environmental events? She has only been exposed to Anna and her grandmother, and has no source of information on the outside world.

Personally, I think this story would have worked better as an existential horror. For Rainbow Dash, discovering the everyone she's ever known are not people but automatons following a script, and existing but not really living, would have had a profound impact on her mind. How would she deal with that? The Dash of the earlier season seems to have a fair amount of insecurity that she hides with bravado. She can face a dragon without fear, but can she face a truth that shatters everything that she had known?

[Feeling Grand]

8286790
Thanks for the review/comment.

Anna's mum didn't go missing. She was "sick" (had cancer) and had died, that's why Anna saw her in the valley with the pink sky and falling stars. That was meant to be a near death experience, and Anna didn't know at that point her mother had died. That's also why she was at her granny's. Because her mother was sick, and as it said in chapter one, Anna missed her mum's brown hair, because her mother was bold (from chemotherapy)

It's not so much that electricity is their weakness. Grace and Rainbow Dash are essentially made up of electricity, not just because of the TV, but that is also how the cage machine that brought them into the real world created them. It took their signals, converted them to electricity to bring them through the electrical wires and then their bodies were created by the electricity being so compacted that it grouped together into electric neons and formed their bodies.

Hope that explained some of the story. I guess I didn't make that clear enough in the actual fic.

As for this being more suited for an existential horror. I do think that would've been an interesting idea, now that you mention it. I tried to put some interesting thoughts into this, but the story was meant to be an action thriller drama. I wanted to focus on making it action packed and kinda a more popcorn type of fic. I do think adding those elements of Rainbow Dash thinking over the fact that her TV show was never real could have helped enhance the story, but Anna is only a ten year old. Rainbow probably wouldn't have discussed it fully with her. That's why I snuck in the scene of Rainbow talking to Grace about deeper matters, (before the realization it was the granny) simply because Grace was an adult too.

Hope this helped explain a few things! :)

Thanks for the feedback!

[Ahuras Wrath]

8288888
Um, I'm afraid the explanation doesn't make much sense. Electricity isn't a substance, but the transfer of energy from from a source to a destination. An electric wire isn't an electron "hose" that emits electrons, but more like a train track. If there's a break in the tracks, then all the trains on it come to a halt. Think of the old kind of Christmas lights where if one burnt out, then they all went out. When you say that the device compacted the electricity, do you mean that it converted electricity energy into matter? Because the amount of energy required for even a fraction of a person's (or pony's) mass would be more then the worlds daily energy production.

I think this is one of those cases where the process of the Grace and Dash becoming real would have been better off left unexplained. For example, in the movie Last Action Hero, the magic ticket that allows Danny to travel into Jack Slater's world (and vice versa) is never given an explanation. In fact aside from that it once belonged to Harry Houdini, we know nothing of it's past. And in that case, the lack of explanation doesn't hurt the story.

[Feeling Grand]

8290495
Yeah, that's what I meant. It converted it to matter.

I didn't take into account how much electricity would be needed to do that, but that's how it's done. I also go by the study that when the atoms are zoomed up on, they are actually energy. So the same would hold true for Rainbow and Grace, except they would be electric atoms with electricity essentially at the base. I took some liberties in the story, though and this is more like pseudo science.

I only gave an explanation to kinda why electricity was their weakness, them being essentially it at their core, to explain that when Grace was being exposed to it, it broke up her molecules and dispersed her electrical structure.

Probably a plot hole I guess, but most stories will have them, and I'm no expert in science, just utilizing theories and rhetorics I've read for my own fun, even if the science I use doesn't make complete sense.

Thanks for the thoughts. Ta.

[The Blue EM2]

I remember reading this a while back. Happy to see you decided to finish the story.

[V-H-SClop]

very nice fanfic, I'm late, but I'd love to know if dash went somewhere or had a terrible fate

[Switch Swap]

Sequel?

[6-D Pegasus]

This was one of the very first stories I ever read on this site, and is still the first story on my Read Later shelf and one of the first stories on my Favorites shelf. The ending made me cry hard, but made me also want to seek out more stories like it.
So thank you for helping building my love for pony stories that still holds to this day