//------------------------------// // Lyrics // Story: Mancala // by Schismatism //------------------------------// When you're in an unfamiliar, weird, and almost impossibly frightening situation, the mind goes into a state not unlike shock. It forces the emotional state aside, so that a person can get out of where they are, and into a relatively safe spot, so that they can finally have the mental breakdown which has been impending upon them for the last while, and - possibly - pass out, if necessary. That's why so many people say that they feel 'numb' when they're in a situation with which they're unprepared to deal: it's what one might call a survival mechanism, if that weren't so counterproductive to survival in today's age. It beats the 'fight or flight' mechanism, in some ways, and in others, it falls rather hilariously short. That's kind of why I hadn't thought on why I could use the zero-point 'hoof-fields' or, as some call them, 'TK fields', which seem to be exuded from the frog of a hoof. Or why I could speak Equish. Or why I could walk on four legs, even. There was no conscious action there, and so the Centipede's Dilemma never even occurred to me at that point. Later on, certainly... well, we'll get to that. In short form, while half of me was still numb by the experience of landing in a seemingly fictional, alien world, in an abtruse form which, frankly, still annoyed the piss out of me, the other half was delving into the other half of the enigmatic equation which read 'instinct', and it had flipped the proverbial coin and landed on 'flight'. Perhaps this had to do with changeling genetics combined with ... oh, all manner of other things. After all, changelings were pony-formed in nature, hive-based, and more likely to focus on the survival of the hive than anything else. So a weighted coin, but even so, I wasn't even in my right mind in the first place. Which is why I found myself leaving behind my bag, my tablet, and everything but my chitin and that damned slice of gem-studded nori, and dashing down the halls as though I was about to be on fire. "Make a hole!", I screamed as I careened down the hallway like a lunatic pinball, knocking over an unattended IV pole or two, disrupting bedpans, and generally making myself seem like someone you Did Not Want To Run Into. Thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, the hospital staff decided that they would comply with the orders of the lunatic changeling galloping down a straight path with something glowing on her leg. Equally thankfully, I still had the presence of mind to screech to a halt once I spotted a nurse who looked like she knew the layout, nearly coming to a very painful end as Doctor Horse equally screeched past, leading to a painful-sounding crash. Too much on my mind. Don't care. The powder-blue mare with the lavender mane looked like she was being menaced by a manticore, but I ignored that for the moment. "Nearest exit! Window, door, what!" I shouted with all the literary finesse of an Arts Major. "Th-the stairwell's there," she managed to spit out, shaking like a leaf. With a smile which led her to take two steps back, for some reason, I nodded firmly, and dashed for the aforementioned door. Like all good doors, it opened immediately upon a tug, giving me... Giving me the view of a stairwell which only led up, and a view of a courtyard unobscured by wires, but rather limited by the stains on the unadorned glass windows. My eyes widened, my breathing quickened, and then I recognized something I hadn't even considered. With a dash back, I began to engineer my ingenious, magnificent escape. 30 seconds later, those peeking through the windows may have noticed a steel bedpan smashing a stairwell window into dust. Thank all the gods for safety glass, I muttered to myself, almost wondering how ponies had managed to come up with that particular invention, before recognizing that now was absolutely and completely not the time. I'd found myself in the courtyard of the hospital, the gemstones glowing even more ominously than I'd expected, and... I didn't know what was going to happen next. Couldn't know what was going to happen next. As loudly as I could, I gave a shout: "Everybody! Get as far away from my position as possible! I'm not going to say that this is going to go boom, but if it does, it goes boom!" Once again, to my continual surprise, nearly everypony backed off. Everyone who was a patient in the hospital made it a point to get out of the blast range, as best they could, and then a little further if they could manage. Everyone who was a part of the medical staff backed off a little further, but close enough that they could keep an eye on patients if necessary. Sane enough. If anyone got hurt in what I was increasingly sure would be an explosion, one which would possibly involve me... Well, there'd be no better time to run a destruction test... would there? The old phrase, 'I never signed up for this', had never felt quite so ... poignant to Doctor Horse. He'd been at Ponyville General for the last ten years, and in that time, as his head physician, had never seen a changeling, let alone one so mentally... strange as this. She evidently genuinely believed that the impossible was a simple puzzle, and talked about things that were beyond even his capacity to describe. The mare was clearly insane, and yet... Yet, the casual conviction with which she stated her claims shook him to no small extent. In his admittedly limited experience, he had only once met a mare with that peculiar combination of madness and certainty, and what she revealed was... something he felt he should have no further interest in exploring. The pink filly from a small rock farm was eventually released into the general population, as they called it, and seemed to have caused no harm - and yet it tickled a part of his brain, an itch he could never scratch. At least, he was sure he'd never see her again. As the doctor finally climbed out of the shattered windowpane, he finally got a good look at the cobalt blue mare, looking murderous at her own arm, before raising up to the heavens and screaming, "Antipode!" In an instant, his vision became clouded with fog. "Antipode!", I shouted, with most of the force I could muster. Not sure why, come to think. It just was the first fire and ice spell which came to mind. A spell which had broken kingdoms, sealed islands, and... I paused as I observed its effects right now. Fog. A combination of water and fire had formed ... steam. Or, more appropriately, in this case, fog. Well, there were worse options. You could do a lot with fog, after all. And best of all, considering I was standing in a freaking hospital courtyard, it hadn't destroyed anything whatsoever. Right now, though, it was getting in the way. I frowned slightly. I mean, come on. Fog. Really? I'd have to probably do better than that in the future, but right now, I decided to consider myself thankful and move on. A part of my addled brain decided that I had to continue to be relevant to the situation, or get sidelined, and so I gave a small shout to the gathered crowd. "Is everyone okay?" "Think so," said a voice I thought I recognized as a particularly ... vocal pony. With a light grunt, I decided I'd solve two problems at once - and took three small stones from around the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Focusing for a few moments, I took a deep breath, and a small but vocal part of me decided to be a bit more artistic this time. "As the mountaintop crumbles, let Wind and Earth combine." Explosive as the fog was, this one was the opposite. I felt a small... 'pulse', I suppose you could call it, around the TK field surrounding those three pebbles. One simply crumbled into dust, while the other two became soft sand as air pierced the holes that willingly opened in the rock. After a moment, I felt that stop, and carefully shook some of the sand away, to reveal... Well. Heh. I wasn't thinking it'd be anything artistic, but I looked down at the two tiny, stone magatamas in my hoof, and had to smile slightly. I'd hardly win the 'artist of the year' awards, but they were cute. Maybe I could put them in amber later or something. That was when I started to shake. The good Doctor Horse hadn't quite known what to expect when his patient had gone barreling out the window, wound up in the courtyard, and done... whatever she'd done. Her horn hadn't even gone to a corona, her field hadn't even pulsed, and yet somehow there was what he could only describe as a pea soup fog throughout the courtyard. A stray piece of the bubbled glass crunched underhoof at random, but he disregarded the thought for now, trying to make out what figures he could as he approached the changeling mare. His ears nearly pinned themselves back as he heard Divided Gem shout out a question to everypony. Well, that, at least, was encouraging: she was still putting the safety of others before herself. His heart gave another thud as she murmured what sounded like a small spell to herself, but... nothing seemed to happen. At least, nothing seemed to happen to anything around her. She shook her hoof, as though shaking off a tiny bit of dust, and indeed, some sand sprinkled to the ground. Then she gave out a choked laugh. One of the things Horse noticed as he approached was that the gems which were previously glowing with a remarkable light no longer were. Instead, they'd gone to a duller shade, though now and then they still gave off a glint. That confirmed his suspicions that they were enchanted, and possibly recharging at this point. But if that were the case, and they were so weak that this was all they could do, then why...? With a step or two forward, he noticed that Gem was shaking like a leaf. Again. It was hard to really tell, but she looked like... oh. A panic attack. Or the downfall from... "Nurse! Any nurse around! Get us a chair and some water!" And some painkillers, he carefully didn't say, because not only did he not know what drugs his patient would react negatively to, he couldn't even begin to guess what she was already on. There are fewer things more terrifying to a doctor than not knowing in the slightest way what to do. They have, after all, been trained for nearly everything. But in every field, in every job in the world, in every life, one does what one can. So... buck protocol. He stepped forward, and, terrified as he might have been of the consequences, he nonetheless gave his patient what she seemed to so desperately need. A hug. We like to think we have a pretty good way of holding things back. Don't think about it, we say, just focus on the next objective. Let life swallow the bad things up, think only about the good things that have come your way. Build a dam. Come on, though. Any engineer who builds a dam knows - heh - dam well what happens when it collapses. And that's just what I'd been doing. This rickety structure which dammed out all the memories, all the failures, all the points where we'd already broken. Amber McAllen, that was her name. My big sister. The woman whose life always seemed focused with pinpoint precision on ruining mine. Sisters, right? She'd walk in with a teasing comment, and ten-- no, let's be honest, three seconds later whatever stray thoughts were in my head wound up consolidating into a steadfast desire to punch her right in the kidney. Whatever you're thinking: no, that's none of your business. Moving right along, despite our occasionally fierce interactions, Amber and I were pretty close, which led to a tearful departure indeed when my big sis decided to move from good ol' Toronto to Texas, of all places, to pursue her Masters in construction and architecture. Well, alright, I tell a lie. We punched each other on the side of the head and went out for pizza before she left -- but still! There's gotta be some pathos here, right? But... here's the thing. Before she left, I gave her one half of a yin-yang symbol, glazed ceramic on the end of a piece of silk twine which I'd somehow wheedled away from the art staff when they were looking elsewhere. I, of course, had the other. I figured that it would be a fitting commemoration to hold the two of us together. We'd both loved the Phoenix Wright series, and a half of a yin-yang symbol looked rather like a magatama. Amber evidently agreed, because she clearly figured that my internal organs would look much better outside, judging by the sheer volume of hug she was giving me. By the time I'd finished rearranging my ribs so they no longer looked like a demented xylophone, I'd missed my sister skipping down the causeway (so to speak), but I had enough air in my lungs to shout one thing. "SCREW YOU, AMBER!" That wasn't the end of it, of course. The two of us kept in constant touch, to the point where more than one ostensible 'friend' of mine around the Toronto School of Art made eyeroll-worthy statements about an 'internet boyfriend'. After the first armlock and noogie - on air, of course, because how could I keep my dear sister from such a delicious sight? - I managed to stave him off for long enough to get some relative peace. It never lasted long, but often the sight of brandished knuckles was enough to get that jerk to leave us alone for at least a decent conversation. (Yes, girls - and guy - I know he had a crush on me, and no, I wasn't interested.) At that point, though, I know I'd strolled down memory lane far enough, in part due to a CERTAIN MARE deciding to knock her decidedly hard hoof against my noggin. A certain green mare. A certain green mare with decidedly hard hooves and a very firm temper. When I finally slipped off of memory lane and back into the steadfast hooves of what I'd passingly call reality, I blinked at the faces staring down upon me. I was back in the bed once again, this time with a weight on my head which I might... wait... With a tilt of my head from side to side, I confirmed that A. the item was near the base of my horn, and B. it was heavy. At that, I nearly laughed, but kept my composure well enough that my companions hadn't seen too much amusement. Well, most of my companions, anyway. Scarlet simply narrowed her eyes, and brought those two damned cans over again. For a moment, I prepared for an assault. I mean, what would you do? The mare had practically thrown a can at my face! But before Scarlet could do more than hold it an inch from my nose, Cobalt murmured, 'Drink.' Drink? From a can that'd been that shaken up so thoroughly? Well, I was game, I suppose. But... I was also given towards pranksterism, and such an opportunity could most assuredly not be passed up. I began the prank with a simple, "It's just soda, guys." Naturally, none of the three accepted this perfectly rational explanation, and the two cans came within millimeters of breaking my muzzle once more. This time, I decided upon a rather more sensible solution. "I'll drink from both cans," I began, before tapping my horn slightly. "But I'm afraid it's Scarlet who'll have to open them." Surprisingly, the unicorn raised no objection to this, and simply gave me a small smile which had me curling up in my bedsheets a moment later. Ye flippin' gods could that woman project a lot of teeth for a herbivore. Another part of me wished for home, and then yet another - and judging by the two ponies curled up next to the sink, I wasn't the only one who'd gotten the treatment. "You made her smile," was the only whimper I heard from Cobalt - before I turned my head and all I saw was teeth.