//------------------------------// // Genophobia // Story: A Mark Of Appeal // by Estee //------------------------------// There were things they had planned for, and things they had not. The cleansing: that had been part of what they had seen as the conclusion all along. When Joyous reached the evacuation point, she landed well away from the Guards, in a designated spot where the wind swirled around her, keeping everything locked inside. There was water waiting there, and cleansers of all kinds, including a hastily-purchased bottle of Dr. Groomer's Supermild Eighteen-In-One Foal-Castille Soap. The same treatment was to be applied to the exterior of her enchanted saddlebags: the workings which had been placed upon them would keep their contents dry, safe, and contained, but the outer surface had to be made safe. Nopony was to approach her until she had scrubbed down on a surgical level, until anything which could infect others had been removed, for the threat was now something more than what her unshielded presence created every day. But her words could still escape from confinement, even if they had to be shouted through the swirling air. And that led to the things none had prepared for. The sisters had realized that they would need cleaning, at least in burning off anything which might be coating the suits. Neither had initially figured for needing to apply the same treatment to two dozen minotaurs. But Joyous had sounded the alert, and the Guards were ready when they all emerged from the hidden road. Multiple fields took over for Luna's efforts, well before anypony could spot or wonder at the odd tint dancing around her covered horn. All ignored the attempts to claim pain at burning which did not exist as Celestia silently created the finest coatings of ash on biped and quadruped suits, all contaminants rendered into something which could produce no more than the briefest coughing fit, and a swift breeze removed even that possibility. None had considered the implications of having the minotaurs in their custody. Of having to continue confining them all the way to the nearest settlement, trotting down the main street of a community which had been honored to have the Princesses visit, kept the celebration going into the night, and thus was in a perfect position to see a full rainbow of glows forcing ochre-covered bulls towards the police station. There had been no advance discussion of what kind of story they would present to explain why the ponies had raided the drug growers, why they had protective suits of their own, and the sisters had... not talked to each other during the trot to the town. The lie presented had to come from the Guards, and it came in the form of a promise to explain things later, something nopony was sure could be done at all. More hours were spent awake under Moon, and all of them were caused by that station. The captured minotaurs had to be stripped down, and officers were found who would fit their suits. Those willing to believe in the protection were escorted past the outer defenses. Ponies and minotaurs took the camp apart deep into the night, all the way back to Sun. Notebooks were brought out, crude specimens which held not a tenth-bit of caring about anything recorded. Samples, substances they knew and ones which were still being tested, for that horrific value of "test" which the leader had seen as the only one worth bothering with. They were careful, when they went among the flowers. More samples were gathered and isolated, some by the minotaurs, others by ponies -- or rather, by a single unicorn. For Chocolate accompanied the return team and brought back more blooms than anyone, keeping them with their native soil, arranging them in his saddlebags within pots so that they would continue to grow naturally. It would, he said, help with the tests, to have fully living specimens. And he did the gathering unsuited, as ponies and minotaurs stared at him in horror and sorrow. There had been so much planning, and none of it had accounted for Chocolate. He moved quietly, especially for such a large unicorn. There were times when it almost became impossible to hear him. Others when virtually no one truly wanted to see him, because it was so hard to peer through the curtain of pain. The minotaurs knew what the flowers did to their own, believed him to be the first pony case, and... it was hard for them to believe they were not simply looking at a corpse, one who had yet to stop moving. But they cared, so many of them. They cared about the fate of a complete stranger, somepony they'd never known, somepony they would never have the chance to know. For there had been lies told, or at least postponed -- but none of them had been about what had caused the exposure. The sisters would not allow lies to spread about sacrifice. Not this time. The minotaurs respected that. Two softly asked if Chocolate would do them the honor of dropping by their homes of their Ancients, when the time came. One Guard quietly told the surgeon that the armor he'd been loaned for the parade was his to keep, and then galloped away before the tears could truly begin to flow. Vanilla had times when he could not approach his friend, others where the two had to be physically separated. The ridiculous mane never tilted up and to the right, or left, or anywhere else, for all the surgeon would let himself see was the here and now. The second trip back from the drug farm was a mourner's procession. Upon reaching what had been the evacuation point for the second time, Chocolate washed himself again, this time using supplies provided by the police. He did so expertly, with a surgeon's precision, and would not allow any to approach him until he was sure it was safe. Even then, he tended to keep himself somewhat removed from the others and, when they reached their newest inn, requested a single room for the first time since reaching Mazein at all. His partner silently watched that request for solitude and, as soon as the room had actually been entered, broke it. The sisters were nearby, the walls could have been thicker, and so both heard the stallions talking long into the day, well after both should have collapsed from exhaustion. But they were doctors, and the experiences of their internships had left them used to long shifts, dredging up energy for now which would have to be paid for later. And at the moment, neither was all that concerned about later, for it seemed as if now was all they had. They talked, diagnostician and surgeon, and very little of it might have been about the cure. The siblings tried not to listen as they sat in their own neighboring bedrooms, and so both found their hearing turning inwards, listening to words from the past, ones neither had ever wanted to hear again. A rotating shift of Guards moved outside Joyous' room and waited for spent weeping to turn into slow breathing, desperately hoping that breathing would continue. Eventually, they all slept. And then the nightmares began. It had taken a full day to pretend they'd recovered. Celestia had sent word ahead to the rest of the tour stops, letting them know that the group had been detained. There had been time for that, and it was the same time in which she knew news had been sent speeding towards Polis. So far, the local police had been too distracted by their own end of the cleanup to do much in the way of normal inquiries. She suspected Referee Moonsault would be a little more careful about making time, and so when she went to see what the Doctors Bear had been up to, a small, distracted part of her was still trying to work out exactly what could be said. It was something which had to be thought about. It was -- something else to think about. Both physicians were looking through notebooks, and none of the writing in those texts was their own. Two horns were ignited on the partial corona level and every so often, mutually horrible fieldwriting recorded a few details. Celestia looked at the spread of papers across the twin beds, then examined the notebooks a little more closely. "Those are from the dealers?" Chocolate distractedly nodded. "The police already took pictures of all the pages. They said they didn't have any problems with letting us have them for a while as long as we gave them back before we left." A green flicker shifted to the next heartless chapter. Vanilla didn't look at his partner. And then he did. "They -- don't mind giving us just about anything right now." Celestia made an effort, forced herself to casually trot closer. "What have you found?" "That they didn't care," Chocolate quietly said. "About anything." "Except their own survival," Vanilla sighed. "His own, anyway. Those sentry towers weren't for holding off the police, Princess, not as first intent. They were there because the group we raided was watching out for other dealers." The next mustering of her resolve left her sitting between the beds. "Why?" "Because they didn't care," Chocolate told her. He took three breaths, all slow. "And it was bad business. Princess, most minotaur drugs -- the illegal ones -- aren't anything close to fatal. It's possible to get into a situation where they'll kill you: someone on sienna root might just charge what they're seeing as the screen and go off a cliff. And the addictions don't do anyone any favors. But the substances themselves... they may wear on the users, they'll make it easier to die, but in and of themselves, they're not fatal. Not on one normal dose." "You thought they might be new at this," Vanilla continued. "You're right. They were. Long-time dealers learn to worry about repeat business. This bull, the one in charge -- he believed there weren't enough drugs out there. He wanted to tap new markets, and his idea of a market was that he would get someone's money, and if that someone died, then there was someone else out there, every time, who would fall for it, and..." The brown eyes briefly closed. "He used what he thought was a scientific method. They were looking for natural drugs. So they'd go out into the wild zones and harvest plants. Anything they hadn't seen before. The minotaurs who did that were called the test squad. When one of them found something -- anything -- they would be isolated with it. Breathe it. Stew it for tea. Just outright eat it. Everything possible, until they ran out of options, found an effect, or --" a deep breath " -- died. And as soon as they found an effect they could sell, that's where the testing ended." It took nearly all of what she'd recovered over the last day to get the words out. "How many?" "Died?" Chocolate looked directly at her. "If those little cross-outs mean what we think they do? About a dozen. And that's just for the notebooks we've been through so far. You can't just go eating everything, especially if you're doing it in bulk to see if any possible effects come in at what you're guessing is a higher dosage. Trace toxins build up. Things are still in the body when the next test starts, and if you're still weak... Princess, there was one way off the test squad, and the police are going to be pulling the bodies out of the compost heap today." "They went for the desperate when they hired testers," Vanilla softly said. "Anyone who just needed money that badly. And the pay was great. You just couldn't leave to spend any of it. And once they died... he took the money out of their little cell, and offered it to the newest member of the test squad. I know this bull now, Princess: I know him through his writing. Everyone was either a sucker or a test subject. He didn't care. He just wanted the money, and anyone who died because of him deserved to, because why should a sucker get to live? Harshest with his own, and if they tried to leave..." "There are other dealers in Mazein," Chocolate finished. "I won't pretend they care about their customers. But they do care about not drawing attention. About remaining a background problem. And this bull, who only cared about the money, was putting dying minotaurs into the hospitals. He was making everyone think about drugs, look for them more than ever. Some of them decided they had to find the new operation and shut it down. Fatally, as a lesson to anyone else who might think about caring so little. A couple of moons ago, this group lost one of their sellers to the competition's efforts, and that's when what they saw as security measures really stepped up. All those traps -- they were meant to be used against other minotaurs. They were still working on anti-pony defenses, especially when they didn't have any ponies. If we'd gotten there a few weeks later, there probably would have been some magic in place -- and that would have meant more cases, assuming he didn't just get rid of them..." Sunlight came in through the room's primary window, and most of the beam fell between the beds. The light and heat were there. It just was hard to feel any of it. Celestia found the strength for the next sentences. Somewhere. "Find one effect. Sell it if they could. And move on. Nothing about cures." In chorus, "Cures are too much work." Chocolate took over from there. "There's always another sucker, and why would anyone voluntarily come down from their high?" "But -- just testing on minotaurs?" "Ponies are a fairly small minority in Mazein," Vanilla passively said. "Not much of a market, when you're trying to get established. He probably wasn't planning on pony testing for a while." "So he was guessing," Celestia went on, trying to keep the desperation of her words. "When he said it would --" and couldn't finish. "In a way," Chocolate calmly replied. "When he said it, that was as much as he knew, and he believed it, because it had been true for everyone else. But that's still how we have to treat it, Princess. As if it could be fatal. And even if it never goes that far... you and Princess Luna talked about this with us, just before she -- showed us the chart. My talent is active. My body may not die. My mind will. I could become the world's greatest surgeon. Or I could start pulling ponies off the street and doing exploratory procedures, looking for something I could treat." The words had been even. Controlled. Rational. And Celestia wondered how much that had taken. "How are you feeling?" As four-word sentences went, it struck her as being a completely useless specimen. "Nothing yet," Chocolate quietly answered. "We've had reasons to believe the progression is slower with ponies, Princess. We were only able to pin down Mazein because the Releases were here so long. We have a date for when they were among the flowers -- at least, for when Joyous was with them -- and it was two moons after that before any real signs of neglect started to register in her memory. Of course, that's with pegasi and her searching through her foalhood, but... nothing yet. And with Joyous -- we're not seeing any real intensification so far. It's possible that whatever this sets off can only be triggered once. But we don't know yet, and it's something we'll have to keep watching for." "We need some more time with the notebooks," Vanilla added. "The police will want them back soon. And after that -- now that we have the flowers, Princess, I think Chocolate and I need to go back to Equestria. We need our own facilities and equipment. There are pony doctors in the local hospitals, which means they have some of what we need -- but right now, I want to keep things --" and she watched him gather his own strength "-- confined. We talked about this with Princess Luna, when she was in earlier. She's agreed to teleport us back after we clear the edge of town." Which meant they'd seen more of her than Celestia had. The younger might not have been avoiding the elder -- but Celestia's own ongoing efforts made that question rather moot. "I understand. We'll check on you --" although that wasn't going to be together, because it was best to space out the trips and right now, going with her meant going with her "-- as much as we're able to, until the tour ends -- but that's no more than twice a day." They both nodded. Her next words had been said before. They had been said several times since they had all come back from the dealers' farm. The repetition would never bring them to the point where they wouldn't hurt. "Is there anything I can do --" -- and Chocolate said "Can we talk in the hallway for a minute?" Vanilla glanced at his partner. "What's up?" "I just need to ask the Princess something." "What?" Four letters carrying a lifetime of concern. "Give me a minute, Vanilla. Please." The smaller stallion slowly nodded. Celestia looked at Chocolate. Nodded, stood up, and waited for him. He waited until the door was completely closed, then softly said "Watch him." She didn't understand. "Doctor?" "I know it's a lot to ask," Chocolate quietly went on. "But... we try crazy things, both of us. And if this reaches the point where I start to -- slip, or even before that... he might decide crazy is all that's left. Crazy is that flower, Princess, exposing himself in the hopes that a boosted talent will help him find a cure. He doesn't need it. I believe in him more than that, even when he doesn't believe in himself. Just -- keep an eye on him, when you can. When I can't." "Doctor Bear --" she started -- and couldn't finish. "You have duties," he softly added. "More than I want to think about, most of the time. You don't get to play around and just kid each other and do a little shizzling on the side. I know you don't have the hours to watch him full-time. Just -- when you can. Especially if I die. His parents are gone, his brother is... unreliable, and he never really found anypony. He found a long line of anyponies, he kept going back to one, and -- it never worked out. I'm all he has, and..." He smiled, and the brilliant white teeth caught the light. "...we're a little bit married..." It cost her, and the price seemed to be nearly everything she had left. But Celestia smiled back. "When I can," she vowed. He nodded his thanks. "I forgot to ask Princess Luna earlier. When you see her...?" The smile flickered out. "Yes." And she trotted away. She wanted to find a library, or possibly a legal consultant. Celestia's knowledge of Mazein's laws generally centered on those which affected trade. The police had told her there might be some problems with the arrests, especially if the head bull's lawyer decided to become creative. Celestia needed to find out exactly what that could mean, and that meant venturing into the local settled zone, possibly back to the police station for a talk with their chief. Unless she found out what they were up against -- -- hoofsteps, coming into the hallway at the back end. Solid ones. More solid than those of nearly anypony else, thanks to that greater height and mass. Celestia kept moving. "And so the answer to a question is gained," came the steady voice from behind her. "That is what the world's largest hypocrite looks like from the rear." Luna was the only witness in the hallway, the only one who saw her sister spin around, moving far faster than nearly any other pony could have. "How dare --" the elder began to declare, the words moving faster than her body, landing with what was possibly meant to be a strictly preliminary impact. She was moving fast, and her words faster still -- -- but neither was faster than Luna's reflexes. And so two words were all there were. Luna watched, and briefly marveled at the harsh master that was instinct. Celestia's first logical move should have been to ignite her own horn. But instead, the right foreleg came up, and a hoof awkwardly rubbed at the dark blue field clamping the elder's mouth closed. "Shut up," Luna said, and the words felt rather close to a growl. "Just shut up. I know it is hard for you, after so much time alone with few who would dare to interrupt, even when it was most necessary." She took a hoofstep forward, then another. Felt her head lower, her posture moving into that of the stalk. "But that is my role, is it not? I have to stop you. When you are being stubborn. Unreasonable. Stupid. That little bit of magic? I know you can counter that. Equal and opposite, so much of the time, but we are under Sun and you could undo my working with a modicum of effort. It might lead to a fight. We could hurt each other... oh, we are so good at hurting each other, there are times when I believe we were designed for it. So that each might stop the other, were it truly necessary. At the moment? It is not. It is simply necessary for you to shut. up." Her head had gone down, as part of the stalk. She would have to look up in order to meet the elder's eyes. She was sick of looking up, and so a secondary effort seized white legs, bent them at the joints and brought her sibling crashing to the floor. "You hypocrite," Luna hissed, feeling the heat of Sun against her left flank as she stalked down the isolated hallway. "How many things did you try, in order to save him at the last?" And now the white horn had ignited, she could feel the intensity of that field pushing against her own, hotter and hotter as the powerful muscles added their own strain... There were words they did not say to each other. Not since the Return, not in the time leading up to abeyance. With just a few syllables in the right place, wounds which had only pretended to heal could be set to gushing agony. Each had a wealth of such words for the other, gathered over more time than either cared to think about, and neither would ever say them. Because they were words that could not be taken back. To say them was to inflame the wounds, deliberately inflict the deepest of agonies, and for forgiveness to occur after... unlikely at best and at the true worst, a hope so faint that it was best left to something approaching prayer. Luna took what might have been the last breath she would ever have while a sibling loved her, and let some of them fly. "What kind of abomination did you work at the very end, in the belief that it would give him a chance to yet be saved? Is there a rule you did not break, hypocrite? A barrier you failed to shatter in not merely calling on him, but attempting to call him back?" The white horn dimmed. Purple eyes closed. All struggles stopped. "You remember the horror," Luna shot at the elder, watching the words beat against the huge body. "As do I. The eyes, oh yes, I remember the eyes, yellow lost forever, the red of blood, the blood of all those whose strength he ultimately took for his own. You remember jealousy leading to something very close to insanity, the anger over it not having been him, that we were chosen when it should have been him, is that not what he believed in the end, when he was still there to believe anything at all? That it should have been him granted power, and never understanding that his desire for it was the reason it was never given. And perhaps there was something left of him at the last, under the false blood, when you went to him on his deathbed and worked that abomination. Something which heard you and recognized the birth of a new kind of horror, in the name of trying to save him -- or were you attempting to punish? That one failure would become many, over and over again, when the renewed price being paid was no longer truly his? What went to him in the dungeon, in the last moments of his lost life, when he was buried within his own body? A companion? Or a monster?" The white body sagged against the floor, mass dragged down by something stronger than gravity, along with being more constant and cruel. "You remember the horror," Luna repeated. "But is that all you remember now, after a thousand years with nopony there to remind you of the rest? You think of him, and you think of anger and jealousy and red eyes and that spell and the Tarturus-damned Amulet. You remember what he became. But I was lost among mirrors, endless mirrors, internal burial, and perhaps it gave me the capacity to appreciate one who might have gone through the same." She had to fight herself for the next words. To keep her body moving forward, her legs straight, her mane and tail filled with stars. To let the true pain only come later, when it would have so much company. "For he reached for what he could never be -- and I wished to become what I had once been -- and in the end, in spite of our differing goals, we found the same result. Each of us... lost ourselves. He for a lifetime, and then, with your abomination... and I was among mirrors, with nothing to look at but the events which had led me to that fate. All of them, sister. And it was pain, it never could have been anything else -- but some of it was a different kind of agony, one you know rather well. The pain of looking upon what you can never have again, the places you will never visit, the pony you can no longer be. The pony who was. The ponies. I looked into mirrors... and I saw the pony who came with us, when there was nowhere else to go. The one who found it in himself to approach us, after a time, as something more than reluctant traveler. Do you recall his words? He said... we had a strange alchemy, all of us together, something which made us more than the individual elements should have created. It was -- an interesting experiment, to mix so many different personalities. He wanted to be part of it..." She had made the elder cry, and that was the least of it. "But we buried those memories, did we not?" Luna pushed on, forcing herself to move closer. "We buried him. We remembered only what he became, and so we did not wish to remember at all. But I had time to... reflect. And if we had not buried the best of him along with the worst, we would never have had to worry about forcing our workings through the suits. We would have been fully capable well before reaching the flowers. Chocolate Bear would be working on an attempt to save Joyous and the affected minotaurs, with no thoughts towards his own healthy body. You refused to bring back the best of him, and I, even with so much time spent in reflection, hesitated... How long is our list of victims, created in the name of maintaining a false purity? Add up all the ponies who died because we would not call, and then possibly include one more into the total. Dozens, surely. Hundreds? We buried him, and then we gave him company..." The white body had been shaking for some time. The elder's head was trying to tuck itself out of sight, and not under the wing, for instinct was cruel. "I called on him," Luna said, crossing the last few hoofsteps, "as he once was. I called on the pony who existed in the moment it became possible to call on him at all, the one whose unchanging shadow has crossed every second with us. It took me more time than it should have to find him within myself, after so much denial. But that shadow was there in the end, waiting for me, as he waits for you to remember him. I called on my friend. And he did what he always did, what he would do for you in an instant. He grumbled, and perhaps he rolled his eyes a bit, yellow eyes, and then he saved us, because the pony who existed in the moment it happened loved us, myself as his friend, finally and truly his friend, and..." She stopped. There were more words. After so many centuries, there would always be more words. But the damage had already been done. Luna stood over the fallen, shaking, weeping body. The pony every part of her wanted to drop down besides, lie against, comfort. Make the pain which had never truly faded go away, even when it could not. "Hypocrite," she said, turned tail on the elder, and trotted out of the inn. The inn's gardens were rather basic. There wasn't all that much landscaping involved, and certainly no one had thought to place benches suitable for accommodating alicorns. In the end, it was just some trees, a few edge-trimmed bushes, and flowers, none of which put the viewer in mind of seafoam. It was quiet, small, and rather exposed to Sun. Sun illuminated the dark body huddled in the center of those gardens. The one which, judging by the little whimpers, the beams almost seemed to be beating down upon. The dark body did not move as the hoofsteps approached. Eyes remained squeezed shut, head turned away from the intruder. All the better to continue gazing into the most hated of mirrors. Two ponies in that garden. One standing, one huddled. "Forty." No response. "I've been counting. Just for the few first decades. I'm already up to forty." The dark body curled a little tighter. "Luna... please look at me..." No movement. And then the head came up. Dark eyes opened, blinked tears away. "...I," the younger just barely got out, "...somepony... somepony had to say... and I know what it did, I... I will understand if you wish me to --" The elder sank down. A white wing stretched out, offered protective shadow as it pulled the smaller in close, felt the vibrations from the shaking body moving through feathers and fur. "We hardly ever say his name, do we?" the elder quietly noted. "Unless it's something like... what happened after the eclipse, we talk around him most of the time. Hardly ever about him. Even in the middle of all that, you wouldn't say his name..." The younger nodded, and the tightly-pressed horn left a trail of disrupted short white strands. "Do you remember now?" the smaller asked. "Will you let yourself remember?" The hesitation was not a short one. "...will you say it with me?" This pause was much briefer. "Why?" "You already called on him. I --" and this time, it truly took everything she had "-- tried to call him back. Maybe we should just try talking." It got a tiny snort. "Very well. On your count, then..." They looked to each other. Then to Sun and Moon, for whatever strength might be found there, and finally to the past. Where the pain was. Where the strength to live with that pain had been born. "Star Swirl," the sisters told trees and leaves, bushes and flowers, none of which could notice. And nothing rustled or moved, not from more than an ordinary breeze. There were no sparks, no surge of feel from the sudden arrival of magic. Nothing was called back except memory. Sometimes that was enough.