//------------------------------// // Stories in The Starlight: Dreams of the Forgotten // Story: DigiDestined of Harmony: Digital World Chaos // by Masters-of-the-Elements //------------------------------// Digidestined of Harmony: Stories in the Starlight: Dreams of the Forgotten     “You will remain here until the overseer had everything ready for your transport,” Said a black robot-like digimon with a blue shoulder and a red shoulder.  “And don’t try anything funny, I will be watching you the enough time you’re here.”     Starlight watched as the digimon, HiAndromon, if she remembered right, closed the door and she heard a faint click.  With a faint sigh, the young unicorn-turned-human looked around her room.     The room was very plain, just four stone walls, an eye-level window with prison bars in it, and a queen-sized bed right in the center.  About the only other thing in the room was a nightstand to the right of the bed.  Otherwise, the room was barren.     “What can try when I don’t even have my magic,” Starlight muttered to herself as I looked around the room.     When she couldn’t find anything that might have helped her with an escape, Starlight walked up to the bed and took a seat on it.  She looked at the door and frowns as she thought things over.     “If I still had my magic I could teleport out of this place,” Starlight muttered to herself as she looked over her shoulder at the window.  “Or I could use that spell I learned to shrink myself and slip through the bars and escape quietly.”     She spent the next five minutes thinking of all the spells that she could have used to escape.  But quickly stopped as she realize she was only putting herself in a foul mood, and decided just to take a quick nap.     Starlight frowns when she saw her shoes, and looking under her right one found some mud and dirt.  She was about to use her magic to untie them and her frown turned bitter when she was remained of her magic-less state.     “You know what,” Starlight muttered to herself, as she looked the bed, “Who cares if I get a little dirt and mud on these velvet bed sheets, even though they had clearly been washed recently.”     Starlight sighed and looked back at her shoes.  She has been spending a little too much time with Rarity, was the former unicorn thoughts as she lean down.  She frowns as she tried to get a hold on the laces and found it much harder than she first thought, the laces kept slipping from her clumsy grip.     Starlight’s face became set as she went to work, spending at least a minute and half to gain better control of her new hands.  She wasn’t satisfied when she was able to grab the laces and untie her shoes.  So, she spent the next five minutes untying and retying her shoes until she felt like she had total control over her new limbs.     Once she was satisfied with her progress, she took off her shoes, socks and jacket and put the jacket onto the nightstand, before lying on the bed.  She stared up at the ceiling trying to put everything that happened to her together.  Unfortunately she couldn’t put things in place, and she decided to try and get a little sleep, though she doubted she could to sleep with everything that had gone on. (…)     Turn out that she was more tired than she first thought, as she fell asleep five minutes after laying her head on the pillow.  The human Starlight frowns when she saw her former pony-self, Glimmer, for lack of a better name, overlooked a familiar town, and knew what this dream meant.     She was dreaming about the time she discovered the village that would be a starting point to rid Equestria of the curse that were cutie marks.  The village was perfect, it was an isolated mining town.  That meant that the town was far enough away from other town that nothing unexpected should happen, and that would give her enough room to carry out her noble goals with little problems.       And if that snowboarding stallion was a sign, conceiving the ponies of this town that cutie marks were the root of evil was going to be an easy feet, was what Starlight knew that Glimmer was thinking as she grinned arrogantly and walked into the town.     Starlight watched as the dream move at a quick pace, as her old-self talked to ponies around her age or slightly younger than her and told them that the source of their grief wasn’t the their conflicting world-views, but their cuties marks.  Things went easier than she had expected, the ponies were onboard without much work, and within two and half weeks, most of the younger ponies were convinced that it was cutie marks that where the problem and not to follow them when they first appear.     Glimmer, once she had converted all of the youths of the town to her cause, decided it was time to tackle the more closed-minded residences of the town, and thanks to a young baker she knew the perfect place to start.     So, leaving her little group behind, she made the track to the house in the center of the town.  The house stood out more than the rest due to the many trashcans filled to the brim with parts from different devices.  Starlight remembered feeling uneasy seeing this of all this, but she remembered her older self pushing down this uneasiness and walking up to the front of door.  She raised a hoof and was about to knock, only to miss the mark when the door opened.     Glimmer let out a light gasp as her hoof lightly hit the owner of the house right between the eyes.  The pony, a middle age unicorn stallion, seemed only mild surprise by the sudden blow, but shrugged it off as he moved another full trash can into the roll before he looked at Glimmer nonchalantly.     “Oh, it’s you,” the stallion said nonchalantly.  “You may come in.  You want to talk to me about something, right?”     Caught completely by surprise, Glimmer simply nodded and followed the stallion into his house, with the human Starlight following behind them.  Glimmer was surprised by what she found in the house.  The place was littered with parts striped from different machines, taken apart to the point where she couldn’t tell what machines they came from.  Strangely, the parts were in some sort of organized chaos, they were placed in spots that look like they serve similar function.  Even more surprising was the floor, it was clean, no parts littered the floor.     “See anything you like?” the casual tone of the stallion brought Glimmer out of her stupor, and she looked at the stallion getting a good at him for the first time.     Surprisingly, the stallion was nearly completely black; a black mane blended well with his black coat.  The only thing that separates the mane from the stallion’s coat was a thin purple strap running down the center of the mane, which Glimmer noticed was a straight forward cut.  There were light wrinkles around the stallion’s mouth and eyes, and the eyes were a deep shade of purple that Glimmer had ever seen in her life.     Also, the eyes seem to pierce deeply into Glimmer even if the pony in question was just giving the mare a causal stare.  Finally the stallion cutie mark...Glimmer quickly looked away from what she considered the worst thing in Equestria and looked the stallion in the eyes.     “Yes,” Glimmer said after taking a moment to compose herself, “Have you ever felt like you life would be better if you didn’t have anything to determine your destiny by?”     The stallion gave a Glimmer a look that the unicorn didn’t pick up on, but the current human Starlight recognized it immediately.  It was pity...the stallion was pitying her past self ands she knew why.     “Kid, let me stop you before you go any farther,” the stallion said softly, “whatever you’re about to say about cutie marks, I will just take it as the words of a grieving child.”     Glimmer was taken aback by this comment.  Stunned into complete motionlessness, Glimmer could only watch as the stallion began to collect some parts and study them.  Glimmer finally recovered and leveled a fierce glare at the stallion's back.     “What did you meant by that?” the young unicorn asked sharply.     The stallion looked at Glimmer with that same look as before, and said, “Kid, I had seen your types before.  Something in your life molded you into the mare that stands before me.  Ironically, most ponies like you had tried to accept what happened to them and move on.”     Starlight felt her past self’s anger continued to build, but the stallion didn’t notice, or didn’t care; he just grabbed a lens from an old movie projector as he continued to talk.     “You, however, are one of the rare types, one you can’t let go of that pain, so you redirect into something common, like a cutie mark.  Hmm, if I compacted this by a few centimeters it might work,” the stallion mused to himself as he looked over the part.     Starlight couldn’t take this stallion’s words anymore, and exploded into a furry.  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF MY PAIN, YOU POOL EXCUSE OF A PONY!!?”     The stallion sighed as he put the lens into a box marked “maybe” on the front and looked at Starlight with a calm expression.  “Kid, tell me what’s on my flank, and please just say what you see.”     Starlight scowled as the stallion turned and show his flank to the enrage unicorn, but answered none the less, “It’s a pickaxe striking something.”     “Right,” the stallion said calmly, “And what does that mean to you?”     Starlight’s patience was starting to run thin with this stallion and was about to put the middle-age pony in his place, when she was shot down by a casual look from him.  What was it about that stallion’s eyes that seem to pierce her mind in such manner that she couldn’t keep herself composed?     “Y-You’re a miner, right?” Starlight replied, her voice trembling a little.     The stallion sighed as he took another part and placed it another box, one that was nearly filled and label “not” on the front, after a short study.  “While it’s true I am a miner, it wasn’t because of my cutie mark that I chose my job.”     This confused Glimmer…surely the stallion’s cutie mark was the reason behind his current job.  The stallion must had sense the young unicorn’s confusion because he looked at her with a sympathetic eye.     “Kid, my cutie mark represents my talent in mastering different tools, not just a single item.  Because of this flexibility, I could have been a construction worker or even a sculptor.  Even this-” the stallion waved a hoof around his part-filled house, “-my hobby of trying to make a typing machine that doesn’t need ink or paper is an extension of my mastery of tools.  But, I choose to use my skills to become a miner to honor my father and grandfather who I lost at a young age.”     Glimmer was at a loss.  No, she must had misheard, there would no way that a single cutie mark meant so much.  Yes, that had to be it; the stallion was simply fooling himself, just so he could give his otherwise meaningless life some form of meaning.     Starlight couldn’t help but faceplate as these memories flooded her.  It was almost embarrassing, watching her dream/past-self going through this meaningless dance as she made up these excuses just to justify her goal to rid cutie marks form the face of Equestria.  She wanted nothing more than to reach out and scold her dream/past self for her childish action.     Unfortunately, she was in a dream, and thus was forced to just watch the dream to it end.  Or she would, if a sudden noise hadn’t pierced through her dreaming mind. (…)     “…You better get up,” HiAndromon shouted through the door, “The overseer is coming soon.”     Starlight opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling, the events of her dream still playing in her mind.  She remembered that she tried to convince the stallion that he was wrong, but he would hear none of it, and eventually shooed her away.  She remembered leaving the stallion’s place feeling both bitter and determined to prove that the stallion was wrong and she was right, which led her to discover how to take cutie marks from other ponies.       She had planned to use that newfound power to take the stallion’s cutie mark, but that planned was ruined when she learned that he had volunteered to watch the mines and chased off a pack of diamond dogs, and was never seen again.     Starlight sighed as she let all of these thoughts fade into the back of her mind and she set up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.  She put her socks and shoes on and as she was lacing up her footwear she drafted back to that time once again.  She had remembered feeling jaded that she didn’t get to take the stallion’s cutie mark, but she eventually pushed the memory of him deep into the back of her mind.  If it wasn’t for the device she found that led her to this place, she probably would have never remembered the stallion at all.     Sighing for the third time in the last minute, the transformed unicorn looked over her work, making sure the laces to her shoes were tied good enough, and stood up, grabbing her jacket off the nightstand.  She walked up to the door as she heard the lock clicks and the door opened.  She walked through the door without a moment of hesitation and just nodded at her guard as they waited on the overseer.     “I wonder what happened to you.” Starlight whispered under her breath.  “I wish I gotten your name, I wish I could tell you have right you were.”