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A NotARealPony.com FanFiction...
The
AMAZING SPIDER-COLT
--╚╔═╗╝--
"Seven...Eight...Nine...Ten!"
The little colt uncovered his eyes and looked around the room. Nopony was there. He didn't think that anypony would be there. It would ruin the game.
He stood up from his seat on the staircase and stepped down onto the carpet. He glanced around, wondering which way his father had gone. He was always the best at Hide and Seek. His father, that was. He himself was second in that category. He was always found, but he also always found the ponies he looked for. And this time would be no different.
He glanced over at the door leading into the sitting room. It was ajar. The little colt smiled, and trotted towards it. Dad was making it too easy this time.
He entered the sitting room and looked around again.In one corner of the room, a TV was currently running one of his dad's favorite programs. Canned laughter sounded from it, and he stared momentarily at the bright screen before turning his attention to the rest of the room. There was no sign of life. Or at least, there appeared to be no sign of life. That was the point of the game.
The foal shuffled past the TV, moving towards the door that led to the next room. Along the way, he noticed something odd about the curtains. Was that bulge normally there...?
He smiled, and tiptoed to the curtain. He could see a pair of expensive black loafers sticking out awkwardly from underneath the curtain. He hesitated, reaching out slowly, then swiftly grabbed the curtain and drew it back, ready to yell "Ha! Found you!" when his father came out. Instead, he agilely stepped out of the way as a broomstick with a hat on it tumbled out from behind the curtain, pushing the loafers out of the way and clattering against the floor. The foal sighed and moved on, disappointed and glad at the same time that the game could continue.
He stepped out into the hallway, peering down each side suspiciously. Picking a path, he trotted down the hall, looking for any sign of movement, or anything out of place that would clue him into where his father was hiding. He stopped at a nook sitting at the end of the hall, near his father's study. Sitting in front of a few pictures of their family were a spare pair of glasses. They weren't the foal's, but he tried them on anyway.
Whoa, he thought, looking around at the strange, super-focused world around him. It was like having super-vision, and he thought for a moment that it might help him win the game. Then he imagined his father getting mad at him for taking (and maybe even breaking) the glasses without his permission. So he took them off (back to normal vision) and set them down on the nook again.
He was about to turn and head in the next direction when he heard a tapping coming from the room he was standing outside of.
The colt entered the room with another smile on his face, knowing his dad had to be in there. What he found instead of his dad made his smile disappear twice as fast as the broom had.
The room was a mess. Scattered papers fluttered everywhere, and the wind and rain outside was louder than anywhere else in the house, due to the fact that one of the small window panes that made up the glass veranda door was shattered. The tapping he'd heard was the sound of the door closing again and again as the wind blew it in and out. He saw that the coffee mug he'd gotten for his father last Hearth's Warming was lying on the floor, shattered. That hurt the most.
"Dad?" he called out. He hoped his father wouldn't think he was trying to cheat. When he heard no hoofsteps, he called again, louder. "Dad!"
To his relief, the old stallion came trotting into the room. He stood in the doorway and surveyed the area, his face pensive and (uh-oh) angry. The colt thought for a second that his dad might blame him for this, and he opened his mouth to explain. But his father shushed him and picked him up with his wings, setting him on a nearby stool. Then he moved over to his desk, looking through the papers quickly. He called for the foal's mother, and when she came in her attention immediately went to the frightened little boy sitting off to the side.
While she comforted the foal, his father pulled open a drawer, then pulled the entire thing out of the desk. He picked a pencil up and positioned it on a spot on the drawer, and pressed it firmly down. Something slid back, and the stallion pulled out a large gray file that looked rather full. He shuffled through the papers in it, and the foal saw a funny-looking symbol amongst them:
When his dad was done shuffling through the file, he shoved it in his trusty briefcase and trotted over to the chalkboard behind the foal quickly. He picked up an eraser, got up on his hind legs, and wiped at the numerous equations and figures on it, turning his work to chalk dust in seconds. Then he gestured for the little colt to go with his mother, out to the car. His mother nodded, and took him down from the stool. She led him out the door, and his father followed, his erasing work finished. He tossed the eraser aside, where it bounced off a Lucite case and settled on top of a pile of torn papers. Inside the casing, frozen in the Lucite, was a silver spider, propped up on a needle-like pointer.
The little colt had no clue what was wrong, but it had to be something bad. They had never had to go to Uncle Ben's without any packing before. Visits like that were always fun for him. He loved his Uncle and Aunt.
He looked into the kitchen again, where his parents were still talking to Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Both of them looked worried, but when May looked up and saw he was watching, she gave him a comforting smile. It was supposed to make him feel better about what was going on. But it didn't.
After a long talk, his parents were ready to leave. First, though, they had to leave something for Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Him.
"But I want to go with you," he complained when his father broke the news to him. The stallion crouched down and rested a reassuring hoof on his son's shoulder.
"I know, Featherweight. But you have to stay with Uncle Ben and Aunt May for a while." He smiled, like Aunt May had, trying to be reassuring. "Someday, you'll understand." Then he stood and turned to leave.
His mother objected much more than his father did to leaving their son behind. She stayed at his side, brushing her hooves through his bushel of brown hair constantly, tears in her eyes.
"...and he doesn't like the crusts on his sandwiches, and he sleeps with a little light on at night..." She was pulled away by his father before she could say anything else, and the two stepped out the door. The colt stepped forward too, trying to get his parents to stay.
"Dad!"
The stallion turned to him, and nodded.
"Be a good colt," he said. Then he shut the door, and the couple stepped out into the rain.
The foal watched them go, wanting nothing more than to follow them and go on whatever adventure they planned to have. And he would have gone after them, too, if Aunt May hadn't knelt down and tried to comfort him, looking out at the receding ponies along with him. She whispered that they would come back, no matter what, and that they loved him enough to leave him here with them, safe.
The little colt never saw them again.
Nine Years Later...
--╚╔═╗╝--
Of the many things I am, I am not the "popular colt" in school. I doubt that I ever will be, really. Do I care? Not remotely. But some days the question just itches in the back of my head: Would I be treated the way I am if I was popular? The answer: Of course not, idiot.
When I say that I wasn't popular, I didn't mean it like I was constantly avoided by every pony in Equestria Science High School. On the contrary, most students (and teachers, unfortunately) knew who I was: I was the kid with the camera always around my neck. Never mind that I was top of my class in Applied Sciences (our school's specialty, in case the name didn't give it away), or that I was a pretty decent skateboarder, if I do say so myself. I was that freaky dude who was always snapping photos of one thing or another, with actual film, and not good old digital memory, like normal ponies use. Of course, I was an excellent photographer, being the hired help for any photo shoot the school admins needed. Which, in turn, got me ponies I didn't know asking if I could take a picture of this, that, or maybe both. Still, that was the highest amount of interaction I got from those ponies, and the next day they'd forgotten my name.
Some days would be fine: picture for the basketball team, decent lunch, easy A in Equestrian History class, heated discussion about what movie to review for this week's issue of The Foal Free Press, home, fiddle with technological junk, sleep, repeat. Some days would be better, like whenever we were assigned a construction project in Applied Sciences (Mr. Comet saved an entire locker for whatever I was making). Other days would suck flank. Today was one of those days.
If I had to start it somewhere, it would be at lunch. I was pinning up a photo of the Debate Team in the main hallway when something large and hard came out of nowhere and struck me on the side of the head. The sound it made when it hit the floor told me it was a basketball. I winced, not at the impact of the ball on my skull, but at the tack I had been trying to pin through the photo digging into my hoof. The sound of stifled laughter made me turn, and it wasn't surprising to see that the culprit was none other than my good friend Rumble Flash, surrounded by about half the basketball team, all of them in fits of laughter.
He held back his giggles for a moment to say, "Sorry, dude," before bursting into another fit of laughter. It was odd how funny he and his goons found a ball hitting somepony was. Even if I hadn't been the victim in the situation, I don't think I would have laughed as hard as these bozos were laughing. I could also tell that Rumble was about as sorry as he was good at algebra.
"Morning, Rumble," I said, smiling pleasantly enough. I pulled the tack out of my hoof and stuck it in the photo, lining it up with the rest of the pictures on the school bulletin. The Flash Gang, as I so fondly called them, passed by, and as I pulled out another tack, Rumble greeted me back.
"Good morning, Featherweight," he said, still with that arrogant smile on his face. He trailed behind the rest of the Gang a little, and shot forward suddenly, flaring his wings and feigning a punch. When I flinched, he turned around and trotted away laughing, folding his wings back and following the rest of his goons.
I sighed, and slid the protective glass plane back into place over the pictures. I stared at the faint reflection of my face of a moment, ruffled my hair, and decided that I needed a daisy sandwich right now.
On my way down the hall, a young mare trotted up to me and coughed. When I gave her a closer look, I recognized her as Silver Spoon, one of my old childhood...acquaintances. She wasn't exactly the friendly type when I'd met her, but she was kinder than her partner in crime, Diamond Tiara. She was better now, in general, but those memories from the elementary school were what kept me from socializing with her at all. Except now, she was the one making a move.
"You're Featherweight, right?"
Well, she got it right, at least.
"Yeah?"
She smiled, like it was an accomplishment to remember somepony they'd known for almost a decade, and said, "I really like your pictures."
A compliment. Nice. I smiled back and replied, "Thanks, I guess."
She looked down at the ground, suddenly coy. "Listen, are you busy Friday night?" she asked.
Wait, what? was what I almost asked her. In reality, I stared at her with my mouth open like an idiot for a few seconds, then quickly responded, "No. No, I'm not..." The rest of the sentence escaped me.
Silver Spoon smiled up at me again. "Well, I was wondering..." She took a step towards me, and I almost backed away from her. What the hay was she doing?
"...could you take some pictures of my coltfriend's car? They're for his birthday."
Oh. Duh. Pictures.
I stared through her for what felt like a full minute, letting her real intention sink in. When it finally occurred to me that she wasn't going to ask me out anytime soon, I spoke up.
"Oh, yeah, that's really nice. That's really...considerate of you, to do something like that for your coltfriend..."
Actually, getting him pictures of something he already looks at every day wasn't that great a present, but I wasn't going to give her any advice. Instead, I pulled my board from the straps on my backpack and twirled it a bit. I told her that yes, I'd check my schedule and see if I could fit it in. She thank me, said I was the greatest, and turned back to her little clique of friends. I tossed the board on the ground, and as I wheeled away from the group, I heard my name and a few giggles that sound condescending. I decided then and there that my schedule was actually a little too full at the moment, and that I wouldn't be able to take those photos for Ms. Spoon and her coltfriend. Sorry.
That was the second thing that messed with my head that day. What happened next was what any sensible pony would call the worst of my set of high school sob stories, mostly because what happened next literally messed with my head.
I stepped out into the main school yard, and trotted towards the cafeteria. I took about two steps before stopping again. It was Her, sitting there on the bench nearby, her bright purple-pink mane fluttering in the breeze. Her beautiful purple eyes were focused on a book, and she took no notice of me. Not that I expected her to. I was just some colt on his way to lunch. Except that now I was staring directly at er. Blatantly.
I gulped, and pulled my camera from underneath the jacket I was wearing (always around my neck, remember?). The gorgeous orange mare I was staring at took no notice of me as I snapped a quick photo of her and let the camera rest on my chest again. Sighing, I moved on, wanting that sandwich more and more with each passing moment.
My journey to the cafeteria lines was halted once more only a few yards later, this time by a sizable crowd watching a spectacle that was apparently better than any lunch could ever be (the pigeons were going crazy nearby). I was curious too, and slid into the cloud of students to see what was going on. What I saw made me forget about my daisy sandwich.
Rumble had a colt gripped tight in his wings, something that made him well-known in the bullying community. I recognized the kid as Chowder, another friend from elementary. He had been overweight all his life, and was constantly picked on for it by anypony on a sports team. Rumble was no exception, and today the torture of choice was shoving the large gray colt into his own lunch plate. It didn't surprise me to see that nopony was trying to stop him: they might have been too afraid to do it, but I knew it was probably because most of them were enjoying the show.
"Come on, Chow, eat your veggies!" Rumble was saying. He caught sight of me staring distastefully at the display of harassment and called out to me. "Hey, Feathers, take a picture!"
I shook my head and stepped forward, ignoring the ponies behind me concurring with Rumble's idea. "Put him down, dude," I told him, sounding more like I was asking a question. I looked at Chowder sadly and said, "Don't eat it, Chowder."
"C'mon, just take the picture!" Rumble said again. I heard the annoyance in his voice, something that should have clued me in to walking away. Instead, I took another step towards the pair of colts and repeated, "Just put him down, Rumble." I was getting annoyed, too.
He asked me to take the picture again, and again I refused. This time, though, I was tired of his little stunt. So I used one of the only surefire ways to get his attention. I used his real name.
"PUT HIM DOWN. CLOUDY."
He obliged, giving me a look that told me I was going to pay for what I'd just said. Not many ponies knew his birth-name (his parents had changed it after elementary school, when he was the one being bullied), and those who did pretended not to. The line I'd just crossed was a very bloody one, and it was about to get bloodier.
Today, though, I was feeling extra dumb, so I stepped towards Chowder, who was on the floor wiping food off of his face. I started to ask if he was okay when Rumble's hoof connected with my chest. Pain exploded in my rib cage, but I didn't have the time to scream. Another hoof slammed into my face (the same side as the basketball), and I fell to the ground. I could hear the dim Ohs and Ouchs of the crowd around us, but I mostly heard the sound of my body protesting to the beating it was getting. I wasn't built for this.
"GET UP, FEATHERS!" Rumble was yelling. I happily obliged, trying to get to my hooves long enough to get the hell out of there, but Rumble would have none of that. Halfway to my hooves, he spun and kick his hind legs back, bucking me in the stomach. The world dimmed considerably, and I went down again. Everything was muffled, but I could still see the wincing faces around me. Faces I would remember the next day, when I came to school with bruises and scrapes, faces that would not look me in the eye when they lied to me about how much fun it wasn't to watch me get my flank handed to me by Rumble Flash.
Through the red fog clouding my vision, I focused on an overhead figure that I figured was Rumble. I managed to gasp out, "Still not taking the picture," before he bucked in the gut again. Now I wasn't so sure I could make it to fifth period today. I was surprised I wasn't coughing something up already, and wondered what I would say to Uncle Ben when I got home.
"STAY DOWN, FEATHERS!" Rumble yelled, and turned to trot away. The fuzz around me was slowly lifting, and I made out another figure trotting through the crowd into the ring I was currently laying in. I recognized her as she stepped over me and called out Rumble's name. He turned to face her, and she starting telling him off sternly. The crowd around us laughed at something, and dispersed as Rumble trotted off. The mare who'd stepped into the ring looked back at me, and our eyes met for a moment. They looked just as beautiful as they had in the picture I'd snapped not five minutes ago. Then she trotted away as well.
I lay on the ground for another minute. Somepony kicked my camera, and when I looked in it, I saw that that somepony (or maybe somepony else, whatever) had stolen the film inside.
Flankholes.
I made it to class on time, though I was still dejected to have lost my film. There had been school pictures in there that I'd have to snap again, and of course there was Her picture. That one I couldn't get back, but I could snap a different one.
I trudged into the classroom and sat down at my desk, still fuzzy from the beating. I was staring blankly at the chalkboard when somepony in front of me turned and started talking to me. It was Her again. I didn't even know she was in this class with me (or I didn't remember, which was a much more troublesome thought).
"That was really cool of you," she said. "It was stupid, though."
She thought I was cool.
I stared at her blankly some more, and jumped a little when she spoke again.
"You should really go see the Nurse about that." She gestured to some part of my face (I guessed it was the part that felt like it was swelling and on fire), then said, "What your name?"
I hesitated to answer. She didn't know my name?
"Y-You don't know my-"
"No no no," said interrupted, shaking her head. "I know your name. I just want to make sure you know it."
I stared at her a while longer, trying to understand what she meant. Then I realized that she thought I might have a concussion, and I blurted out, "Feathers."
She stared at me, eyebrow raised. I realized my mistake and added, "Featherweight."
She smiled. "Good." Then she turned back to the front of the class, where our dear English Literature teacher was still scribbling Shakesbearian phrases on the board. I stared a little while, then asked, "You're Scoot, right?"
She still had that cute little smile on her face when she turned back to me. "Yeah," she replied, nodding. "Scootaloo."
I nodded back. I knew her name, and my name. That was enough for now. I settled my head back on the desk and pretended to listen to Mr. King for another forty minutes before the bell rang.
When I got home later that day, Aunt May Flower was making dinner. I grimaced as the smell of the incoming meal hit my nostrils.
"Spaghetti and wheatballs? Seriously?"
Aunt May rolled her eyes as I trotted into the kitchen and snatched a milk out of the fridge. I sat myself up on the counter as she answered back, "You're perfectly aware of the choice you have to go hungry for the night." She turned to look at me, and the smile on her face dropped off so fast I thought I was in a time warp for a second.
"Celestia, Featherweight!" She covered her mouth with a hoof, and moved towards me cautiously, as if I might explode. She touched the swell beneath my lip gently (it still hurt) and shrank back. "Who did this to you?"
Telling her it was a bully would do no help, so I made up a lie on the spot. I'm good with those kind of things.
"My skateboard," I said, gesturing to said board lying on the floor in the hallway. "I was just on my way home from school when it came out of nowhere, and I hit blacktop. It snuck up on me, I swear!" I put my hoofs up in feign innocent, but my jokey attitude had no effect on my Aunt. She was about to say something when a clunking sound came from the kitchen entrance, and Uncle Ben came waddling into the room. He was on his hind legs, and his face was hidden by a large cardboard box filled with very old-looking trophies. He set the box on the island in the kitchen, and Aunt May's face contorted into one of disgust.
"Benny Hill, you get that disgusting box out of my kitchen this instant!"
Crisis avoided.
My uncle peeked out from behind the box. A grin was fading from his weathered face.
"But these are my old trophies from my music-making days!"
"Well then, by all means, leave that disgusting box in my kitchen," she replied sarcastically. Uncle Ben did so, unaware of the sarcasm in the remark, and turned to me. He spotted the swollen lump, and whistled.
"Skateboarding," I explained before he said anything. Aunt May tsked.
"Why do you ride these kinds of things?" she asked nopony in particular.
"Because it's dangerous and stupid," Uncle Ben replied. "Remember when we were dangerous and stupid?"
"No," she replied flatly, and walked past him to the dinner table to clear it.
"Well," he said, "we were, trust me." Now he was talking to me. Uncle Ben grinned again. "We're all that way at one point."
He turned to leave, and I noticed that he was trailing water. Lots of it.
"Whoa, where's the flood?" I asked.
"Follow me and I'll show ya!"
"Are you serious?"
"Yep!"
I hopped off the counter, transferring my milk from hoof to wing, and followed.
The basement was flooded, it turned out. It had started almost an hour ago, and Uncle Ben had spent the last forty-five minutes bringing anything that was worth saving out of the basement and up into the rest of the house. The new storage area for the numerous boxes would be the attic, until somepony fixed the leaking pipes. That somepony was me, incidentally. I was better at this kind of thing than I was at lying about myself.
I explained the problem to Uncle Ben, and when I told him I could fix it by tomorrow, he looked at me like I was Celestia herself. Not that I looked like a girl at that moment.
"I still can't believe," he said finally, "that your cutie mark is a simple camera, when you can do anything that involves going down to the hardware store."
I smiled modestly. "You know why it's a camera, Uncle Ben."
He nodded back, and headed up the stairs. "See if there's anything else you want to save before the water gets to high, alright?" he called down. I told alright, and I went searching through the dank wet underneath part of my home. It was about two minutes before I discovered the briefcase.
It was hiding behind a box marked VINYLS FROM BENNY'S COLLEGE DAYS. The title made it seem important, so I'd moved it to where it could sit and wait for me to carry it upstairs without being soaked by the water rising from the floor. I was going to go ahead and haul it upstairs anyway, but I noticed there was a sort of cavern behind where the box had been. I bent down and peered inside, and was shocked at the sight of the briefcase. I recognized the initials immediately:
Gene Splice. My father.
I brought the briefcase up with me, leaving the old box of vinyl records to die in the flooding basement. I held it in my wings, and didn't take my mind off of it as I entered the dining room. I paid no mind to my Aunt and Uncle, who no doubt knew what I was holding, and I scanned the briefcase, turning it over in my wings. It was leather, legal back then, very illegal now, and looked as though it cost over a thousand bits. It was faded (being in a basement for a decade will do that), but the initials stood out, their own colors still full and clear. I only looked up when Uncle Ben laughed.
"Hey, I forgot all about that thing!" he said, smiling. "It was your dad's."
I nodded blankly. I ran a hoof over its surface, and reached for the clasp. I remembered this case very clearly, now. It was the case he'd packed that last night I'd seen him and my mother. He'd put in some files from his work, and
the little colt was scared, not just of the lightning outside but his father's anger at whoever had broken into their home. His mother was glancing over at him as they drove down the freeway, and each time she looked behind her at the frightened little colt in back she gave him that smile that said that it was going to be okay. He didn't know yet that it wouldn't.
His father was handling the briefcase furiously, and the colt was worried he'd break it if he treated it that way for much longer. But soon, his father stopped, and he opened the briefcase
and nothing was there. The inside of the briefcase was empty. I looked over at Uncle Ben as Aunt May came into the dining room. I was confused.
"Why would he leave this?" I asked. I felt slightly sick, like I did each time my father was brought up. It was a bad habit that I could never break.
"There's nothing in here," I continued.
Aunt May spoke up. "Featherweight, your father was a very secretive stallion." She said it as if that would answer my question. I nodded.
"Yeah, I know." I felt like crying a bit. It was an emotional problem, that's what it was. I reached into the bag and felt something inside besides the lining of the briefcase. I pulled out a clipping from a newspaper. It was old, in black and white, and of the two stallions in the picture, I only recognized one. I showed Uncle Ben the picture, hoping for an answer.
"Do you know who this is?" I asked.
I was disheartened when he shook his head. Aunt May did the same, and I dropped the clipping back in the bag. Then I turned and headed up the stairs to my room, ignoring my aunt's calls to prep for dinner.
I wanted to look at this alone.
Benny Hill watched his nephew go trudging up the stairs, looking dejected. He sighed to himself as his wife took a step towards the stairs, telling him to please wash up for dinner. When she turned back to him, she looked as though she was going to cry.
He told her to go and finish up the wheatballs. He would have a talk with the boy.
As she stepped back into the kitchen and he thought of what he would say, Ben thought of the clipping Featherweight had shown him. He remembered the exact date of when that photo had been taken and released, and how happy he'd been that his brother wasn't just some teased scientist anymore. He thought of the other stallion in the photo, Gene Splice's dearest friend and lab partner.
He wondered what to say to the boy.
When I said that the briefcase was empty, I had been thinking about the papers I'd seen my dad shuffling that night. In truth, the bag held several items in it that I sorted through and examined.
There was a calculator, which was nothing more or less than that. There was the newspaper clipping, which was pinned to my bulletin board now. There was a glasses case, and inside were a pair of glasses that I recognized as the one's I'd put on the night we'd played Hide and Seek. I remembered the events of the night quite thoroughly. I stared at the glasses for a while, then made a sudden decision.
I stepped into the bathroom and removed my contact lenses. I'd worn them since eighth grade, and putting on glasses for the first time in years felt strange. To my surprise, though, when I put on my father's glasses, I didn't see the same world I'd caught a glimpse of a decade ago. His prescription and mine were almost exactly the same. My eyes adjusted easily, and I continued to wear them when I took out the sole remaining object in the breifcase's pocket.
It was a name tag. On it was a photo of my dad, and the label said he belonged to someplace called OSCORP. I set it down, and stared at the image of my father for a minute. He looked calm, maybe happy, definitely proud of himself. I saw little details that proved I was his son, and I smiled. Then I turned my attention back to the bag. That couldn't be everything in it.
I opened it wide, and looked for any extra pockets. There were no zippers to be found, no odd creases to be found, nothing that bulged on the surface of the briefcase except for the spots where the lining met the leather of the-
SNAG.
My hoof had caught on something. There was another pocket there. I slid it open, and found myself confronted with an image I'd seen in my dreams. It was a file, hiding in the secret pocket, and the top of it bore the symbol:
The same symbols. The same file. The same briefcase.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
I turned to the remote control to my left. I fiddled with a stick, and the deadbolt that I'd programmed and attached onto my bedroom door myself slid shut. Then I pulled the folder out and opened it.
Inside was a treasure trove of equations and symbols. Leaflets of summaries and algorithms and other scribbles danced before my eyes. Finally, I found the same pattern as before: the double-zero appeared at the bottom of the last page in the file.
"Decay Rate Algorithm," I muttered, reading the title next to the double-zero. There was a long, unintelligible equation following it, and before I could examine it properly, Uncle Ben knocked on my door.
I quickly hid the folder and scattered the things I'd found around the floor of my room. I leapt into the seat at my desk as the bolt on the door slid back, and I was fiddling idly with my computer mouse by the time Uncle Ben stepped into the room.
His eyes widened when he saw me with the glasses on. "You look just like your father," he said. He looked down at the desk, and picked up a Rubik's Cube with his wing. He turned it over as he trotted to my bed, sitting down on it and staring at the Cube. He glanced up at my screen, caught a glimpse of my screensaver, and smirked.
"She's pretty," he said, and I realized my mistake. My screensaver was of the debate team (I took digital photos just in case my dark room blew up one day), and the picture was focused on the orange pegasus in the middle. She was grinning photogenically at the camera, and I couldn't help but blush a little when Uncle Ben called me out on it.
He changed the subject quickly, though.
"Listen, Featherweight," he began. "I know that it's hard, what with your parents being so secretive about their work. They hardly ever told me anything, either, truth be told." He sighed, turning a column on the Rubik's Cube. "But I want you to know that your father was a great pony, no matter how different you might make him out to be. And we know that you can be just as good a kid as him. Even better, in fact."
He stood to go, his little pep talk done. He set the Rubik's Cube back where it had been, having turned only the one column on it. He stood in the doorway for a while, looking pensive. Then, finally, he spoke.
"Dr. Caramel Connors. That's who that guy in the picture is. Old friend of your dad's." He smiled briefly, and turned to leave.
"Hey Uncle Ben," I said suddenly, stopping him from leaving. He turned back to me, and I smiled and said, "You're a pretty good Dad." And I meant it.
He smiled, nodded, and left me to my devices. I slowly shut the door and turned to my computer. I glanced up at the clipping, looking at the colt to the side this time. I noticed for the first time the odd angle of his body, and after a minute of staring I saw through the magic illusion of the photo: Dr. Caramel Connors had only three legs. The forth was missing, and the stump was hidden behind my father's billowing lab coat. I shivered, and turned back to my computer screen. Opening up a webpage, I typed in the first of many keywords I'd search through that evening.
Search: Dr. Curtis Connors and Gene Splice
I was going to find that stallion if it was the last thing I'd ever do.
