//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: Destined for Greatness 
// Story: S.B. 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

	The colt was led to a house in the woods. Not especially quickly, though; Mr. Donkey, it seemed, did not have the capacity to move quickly. Mostly, it seemed like he just meandered slowly, complaining angrily under his breath and largely ignoring the colt walking beside the wheels of his empty cart. 
This was not especially problematic for the colt. He did not have much to say, nor was he able to move especially quickly on account of his crippling hunger. 
Upon reaching the house, Mr. Donkey parked the cart in its designated area and enlisted the help of the colt to secure it so that, as Mr. Donkey stated, “none of them darn kids will take my cart again and go joy-pulling all over the darn town”. The colt was not sure what “joy-pulling” was, but he had a pretty good idea what the donkey meant. 
When he was brought inside, the colt was quite surprised to find that the air was warm and comfortable, even though the sun had started to set. He was equally surprised to find that the house did not smell like old ponies, has he had been expecting. It instead smelled like a combination of old wood and baked goods. 
Upon entering the house, Mr. Donkey took off his protective hat to reveal that he had amazing hair. 
“Oh wow!” said the colt. “Your hair!”
“What about my hair?” said the donkey, defensively.
“You have mane like Dave Mustang!” 
As a donkey who clearly had an extensive knowledge of hair and the ponies who possessed it, Cranky actually smiled slight. “Why yes,” he said. “Yes I do.” He then called to the rear of the house: “Matilda, I’m home!”
A female voice called back. “Did you have fun fishing with Hondo, dear?”
“If by ‘fun’ you mean listening to him drone on and on about his daughters for three hours.” Cranky paused. “But we did get to talk about the game a little, I guess.” He began walking down a narrow side-hall past the frontroom to the back, where the female voice was coming from. He did not seem to care at all where the colt went, and ignored him completely. The colt, though, followed him closely. 
“I also got the cart fixed.”
“And how did that go.” 
“Terrible. Just terrible. Trixie was there. She spent two hours arguing that her cart ‘didn’t need wheels’. It isn’t a cart if it doesn’t have wheels! That’s just a…some sort of wheeless cart! And then some moron wanted to buy a tachanka. Turns out he didn’t even know what that was!”
“The homeworld of the krogan?” suggested the colt. 
Mr. Donkey ignored him and stepped into the kitchen. The colt was immediately greeted by the smell of something edible or at the very least marginally so. A female donkey with upright ears and a white collar around her neck turned around from what she was doing and smiled. The colt had never seen a smile so happy and true, and was surprised to see that it was not the only one present in the room: Mr. Donkey was smiling as well. Not a small smirk or vague recognition of something hurtfully amusing, but an actual, genuine smile. 
Then the female donkey’s eyes shifted toward the colt, and her smile faded. 
“Oh my,” she said. She seemed to resist taking a step back, but instead kept her composure remarkably well. “Cranky, who is this?”
“I found him hiding in a bush.” He tapped the colt sharply on the back of the head.
“Ow! Please no hitting!”
“He’s also apparently an idiot. I mean, come on, kid, do you just go home with the first old guy who asks you? What if I hadn’t been on the level? For all you knew, I could have been trying to do something terrible to you.”
“Like…like what?”
“I don’t know,” said Cranky as he gruffly sat down at the kitchen table. “Bake you into cupcakes or something, that’s what ponies do, isn’t it?” He muttered something else as he picked up a newspaper and started reading. The colt saw the front article, as it was facing him: “Shrubbery saboteur strikes again! Locals powerless to protect plants due to lack of city guard! Militia to be mustard!” The editor, apparently, was not very good. 
“I don’t- -I don’t want to be backed into cupcakes,” said the colt, his voice raising several octaves. “Please do not make pastries of me!”
“That’s an urban legend,” said the female donkey. The colt’s fear immediately subsided; her voice was the first he had heard in a long time that was actually calming instead of screaming insults at him. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“You’re…you’re not?”
“No! What would give you that idea, anyway?” The colt did not respond. “Well,” said the female donkey, looking concerned. “My name is Matilda, and you’ve already met my husband, Cranky. And your name is…” She looked to her husband, as if expecting him to give an introduction.
“Didn’t ask,” grumbled Cranky from behind his paper. “Didn’t have cause to.” 
“Oh.” Matilda turned to the colt. “Well, then, what exactly is your name?”
The colt opened his mouth, but then immediately closed it and shook his head.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“The kid probably doesn’t have one,” said Cranky. “I mean, he was living in a bush.”
“I do have a name,” protested the colt. “It’s just…not a good one.”
“It can’t be that bad,” said Matilda. “And I’ve heard some pretty bad names in my day. Pony naming conventions are…unusual.” 
“Unusually bad,” commented Cranky.
“Well,” said the colt, considering for a moment. “It’s…” he muttered something inaudible. 
Cranky looked over his paper. “Don’t try to pull a Fluttershy, kid. It’s not cute when she does it, and it sure isn’t cute when you try to.” 
“Shadow Bloodfang,” repeated the colt, this time louder. 
The room fell silent. Even the crackling of the fire in the oven seemed to stop, as though the appliance itself was preparing to ridicule him. 
“Shadow…Bloodfang?” Matilda smiled. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Shadow.”
“Pplease, I don’t mean to be making an imposition, but if you could, and you don’t mind…can you use the abbreviation S.B.? I don’t like my real name. I think my parents may have hated me.” 
“You aren’t the only one,” said Cranky, gruffly. “There was a filly in town named ‘Spoiled Milk’. Got married to ‘Filthy Rich’.”
“I knew his grandfather,” laughed Matilda. “His name was ‘Stinkin’.” She covered her mouth with a hoof as she giggled. “And their parents certainly didn’t hate them.” 
“I’m not so sure about that. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with Spoiled? Sweet Moonbutt, I wanted to shove an apple in her mouth to make her STOP. I probably would have, except for how much it’d have made her look like a pig.”
“She doesn’t look like a pig,” said Matilda. She paused, and her muzzle scrunched. “Well…maybe just a little bit.” She looked down at the colt who was standing in front of her, in awe that she was actually having a conversation in front of him that did not involve what seasonings to use to cook him or how he was ugly and unwelcome. “But now that you bring it up, where exactly are your parents?”
S.B. shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Oh my,” said Matilda, gasping as she realized what he meant. “I’m so sorry.”
“I came to Ponyville because I heard it has an orphanage, and was wanting to apply for a space. Even though I don’t think they’d want me…”
“Orphanage?” Matilda looked to Cranky and then back to S.B. “Well…there used to be an orphanage. But it burnt down almost twenty years ago.”
“Oh no!” cried S.B., suddenly very distressed. “Those poor orphans!” 
Matilda blinked. “No no no,” she said. “The orphans were fine. They got out.”
“Of course they got out,” muttered Cranky. “What do you think this is, a Candlemass song?” 
“Yes,” said Matilda. “All those fire drills paid off.” She paused. “I heard they got transferred to Cloudsdale…at least until all those earth fillies fell through the clouds.”
“They fell?”
“Well, Cloudsdale was over the ocean at the time, so they were fine. But all those children would be adults now. But I’m afraid they never rebuilt the orphanage.” 
“So…there isn’t one?” S.B.’s heart immediately fell. “Oh,” he said, turning back toward the door. “Well then, I guess I’ll just go to the next town over. Maybe this Cloudsdale still has orphanage. I will go there next.”
Matilda looked through the kitchen window. The sun had now completely set. “But it’s night! You can’t go out there all alone!”
“I can’t?”
“No! Children shouldn’t be out at night like that! You could trip over something, or get lost- -”
“Or eaten by one of the various monsters that live just outside of town.”
Matilda glared at Cranky, but S.B. was confused. “But without the orphanage, I have nowhere to go. That means I should stay outside.”
“Is that what you usually do?”
“No. Usually I sleep in trashcans or ditches.” 
Matilda appeared greatly surprised by this. “Well, you’re not sleeping in a trash can tonight!”
“But I don’t want to sleep in the fields! I wake up covered in dew, and one time a team of breezies tried to carry me off…I only barely got away!” 
“From breezies?” said Cranky. “Yeah, that’s not something you want to admit.” 
“You can stay here tonight,” said Matilda. “We do have a spare room, and we hardly ever get guests. Well, guest’s that aren’t Cranky’s sister.”
“And she has to sleep on the ground floor. The joists just weren’t built for that strain.” 
S.B. stared up at Matilda wide-eyed and gasped so audibly that the room fell silent again, save of course for the sound of warm air entering his tiny lung. “Really?” he said. “You- -you would do that?”
“We’re not going to send you out at night all alone!”
“Why not?”
“W…why?” Matilda looked confused again, but also strangely concerned. “Why would you ask that?” She shook her head. “Never mind. You’re dirty and wet. Do you want to go get clean before dinner?”
“Dinner?” S.B.’s eyes immediately lit up. He looked down at his coat; one fortunate aspect of being mostly black in color was that stains did not show up well. His red accents, though, had gotten darkened to the point of being almost maroon. To his horror and great embarrassment, he realized that he must have smelled terrible. Still, he ignored his shame and smiled. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Donkey! I’ll be right back!” 
He started to walk toward the door, but Matilda stopped him.
“That’s not the right way,” she said.
“But I saw the hose on the side of house when I came in. I assume that is what you meant? That I shall be sprayed down with cold water?”
“De-lousing powder is in the garage,” said Cranky. 
“I get de-loused too? I am indeed greatly indebted to you both.” 
“The hose- -no, that’s not what I meant. I mean, if that’s what you prefer, I suppose you can, but wouldn’t you rather use the washroom?”
“Washroom?”
“Yes. It’s upstairs. We have hot water.”
S.B.’s eyes got so wide and his gasping so deep and long that within two minutes of learning that he would be allowed to take a bath with actual, real hot water, that he passed out on the floor. 

For the next half hour or so, Matilda largely forgot about their strange guest. Her and Cranky were not nearly as old as everypony in town seemed to think, but they were still well past middle aged, and had become somewhat set in their respective routines. This was only further amplified by the fact that they were both donkeys, and members of their race were known for stubbornness and rigidness of routine. 
So, she went about finishing preparing dinner as well as checking the central woodstove to ensure that there was enough heat. Although summer was quickly approaching and the days could be quite warm, the nights would often be rather chilly, especially in the somewhat distant region of the forest where the Donkey’s lived. Their home was quiet and peaceful, but it was built on the very edge of Pegasus weather control. 
When she returned to the kitchen, she found Cranky still reading his paper. The table, however, had been set while she was away, including a space for S.B. Matilda smiled
“So,” she said, checking a set of high-fiber rolls in the oven, “what did Hondo have to say about his daughters?”
“A lot,” said Cranky. At first that was all he seemed to be about to say, but he did eventually continue. “You know how he is. Rarity trying to open a fourth branch in Cloudsdale, and the other one getting her cutie mark.”
“Sweetie Belle. Her name is Sweetie Belle.”
Cranky lowered his paper. “All these pony names. Why do they make them so hard to remember? What happened to naming people ‘Bob’ or ‘Marc’ or, you know, normal names?” 
“She’s the little white unicorn with the bicolor mane. She hangs out with Applebloom and Scootaloo.”
“Scootaloo. That’s the perfect example! Who the heck names a kid ‘Scootaloo’? That’s not even a word. And Applebloom…” He paused, considering. “Is that the red one, or the orange one?”
“She’s pale yellow. Applewood’s youngest daughter.” 
Cranky paused again, but this time appeared more distressed. He had not spent a lifetime in Ponyville like his wife had, and he had never known Applewood or Sea Apple in person, but he knew what had become of them. 
“Yeah,” he said, picking his paper back up and flipping to the conservative politics section, like he always did when he became slightly more distressed than normal. It always made him feel better. “Hmm,” he said. “Donald Rump’s doing pretty well in the polls. I wonder if he can pull it off this time. It’d be nice to have one of our kind leading parliament again.” 
“It doesn’t matter. We do live in an eternal autocracy, after all.” Matilda smiled. “Of course, if you grew a horn and a pair of wings, I’m sure Celestia and Luna would let you into the oligarchy. They might even give you a castle.”
“I don’t want any horns or wings. I don’t even know how Hondo keeps his head up with that thing. And wings? I hate flying. It makes me airsick. And the dander…no. I was put into Equestria a donkey, and I’ll leave as a donkey!”
Matilda leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I know, honey. And that’s the way I love you.” 
“Well, I’d love you even if you did have wings. Or a horn. Heck, even if you were one of those thestral things. Although I wouldn’t sleep upside down. No way I could with my arthritis.” He looked back at his paper. “Not even sure how I would get the bed up there…”  
Matilda returned to the oven, but stopped in front of it and momentarily looked up at the ceiling as though she could see through it. “That does bring up the question, though. What exactly is he?”
“No idea,” said Cranky. 
Matilda looked at him. She knew him well enough to know when he was lying, and she knew that he was now. He knew something. She also knew, though, not to push him. If it was important, he would tell in time. Trying to force it out of him was lying trying to force him to do anything, or like him trying to force her to do anything. They were donkeys, and it was simply not their way. 
“Well, whatever he is, he’s probably going to need towels,” said Matilda, realizing that washroom currently contained only a very small one. 
“I’ll get some,” said Cranky, standing up slowly.
“You don’t know where they are. And besides, you know how bad the stares are on your knees.” Or, more accurately, she knew how long he would complain about his knees if he were to climb the stairs for a reason that he thought was only marginally necessary. “Just make sure the rolls don’t burn.”
“There in an oven! With fire! How in Equestria am I supposed to do that?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way.” 
Matilda went to one of the ground floor linen closets and acquired a small pile of towels, and then proceeded upstairs. Despite being almost the same age as her husband, Matilda tended to be much more spry and agile. She had not lived as hard of a life as Cranky, and her surprisingly youthful appearance contrasted- -in her opinion pleasantly- -with his wizened one. 
Upon reaching the door to the washroom, Matilda knocked on the door. S.B. had apparently not closed it completely, and it swung open easily. 
S.B. was standing in the center of the floor, apparently trying to dry himself with a towel that looked tiny even in his already diminutive hooves. He and Matilda froze and stared at each other for a moment, and then S.B. released a sound that could be at best described as a loud squeak before he plunged back into the bathwater and vanished beneath the surface. 
“I’m sorry!” said Matilda, averting her eyes. “I came to bring towels, and I didn’t- -”
She broke off suddenly, not being sure exactly what to say. If anything, she had been somewhat surprised by S.B.’s appearance. Now that he was clean, his appearance was even more striking: where before he had been dark gray and reddish, he was now jet black with bright red stripes and accents on some parts of his body. With his hair wet, Matilda had also been able to see that he had two small and cow-like horns on either side of his main unicorn horn, something that she had not seen at first. 
Most importantly, though, was that she had seen what was on his flank. She had been sure before that she had not seen a cutie mark- -it was something that she and many donkeys tended to look for- -but now she had quite clearly seen one. It was a circular, spiraling object colored white and brown. Matilda thought about it for a moment, and realized that it was a cinnamon bun. 
“It’s okay,” said S.B., surfacing and looking at Matilda over the edge of the bathtub with his mismatched eyes, each with its pupil narrowed to a somewhat disturbing vertical slit in the light. After a moment, he pulled himself out of the bathtub. “I don’t normally wear clothes anyway. I was just a little surprised.” 
“I was just as surprised, I think.” Matilda gave him a towel.
“Because of what I look like.” It was not a question, but an assertion. As if he already knew, or at least thought he knew. 
“You do look…different.”
“I look hideous,” said the colt, drying himself. “You don’t need to hide it. I know. And I accept it.” He paused. “Or at least I try to.” 
“You’re an alicorn,” noted Matilda. 
“Not really.” S.B. stretched out one of his batlike wings. It quivered violently, as if even moving it slightly was almost impossibly difficult. “Alicorns are supposed to be pretty, and beautiful. I do not know what I am, except that they call me ‘Mary Sue’.”
“But you’re a colt. Right?”
S.B. looked up at her, seeming somewhat glad that she had not seen enough of him to confirm his gender. “Yes, I am. That’s just what they say.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know. I think it means I’m a bad pony, though.” 
He dried himself a bit more, and then paused at his cutie mark. He looked up at Matilda. “You wouldn’t happen to have some spare charcoal, would you?”
“Charcoal? Why?”
“For this.” He pointed at his flank, and Matilda suddenly understood why she had not seen it on their first meeting. 
“You want to cover it up, don’t you?” She looked at him. “But why? A cutie mark is supposed to be something that makes you special.”
“But you don’t have one.”
“Well, I’m a donkey. Donkey’s don’t get them.” 
S.B. looked down at his flank again, and seemed almost as ashamed as he had been back in the kitchen. “It’s something my parents always told me to do,” he said. 

When S.B. was dry, he went downstairs. He had not felt so clean in a long time, and his normally matted mane was now light and poofy to the point where he was able to completely concealed the demonic horns on either side of his skull and to hide all but the tip of his central horn. 
The only problem, of course, was that the contrast between the black and red portions of his coat had increased immensely. This made him feel even more self-conscious about his ridiculous color scheme. He wished more than anything that he could just be a nice, ordinary color, and he felt terrible for subjecting Cranky and Matilda to his unpleasant appearance. 
“I was only gone for five minutes,” he heard Matilda say. She sounded more amazed than angry. “How in the wide world of Equestria did you burn them that fast?”
“I don’t know! I just don’t know!” replied Cranky. 
“And look, they’re raw in the middle…I don’t even know how that’s possible.”
“I told you I was a bad cook!” Cranky sounded quite distressed that he had ruined dinner. 
“Well, then, it’s a good thing you married me, then, isn’t it?”
About this time, S.B. poked his head into the kitchen. He expected them to be fighting, or perhaps yelling by this time, but instead they were smiling and looked so happy. This confused him greatly, as he could not understand how that was possible. 
Cranky noticed him almost immediately, despite facing the opposite direction. S.B. jumped slightly, surprised by Cranky’s uncanny perception. 
“There you are,” he said. “What in Equestria took you so long? Probably using all our hot water! That stuff’s expensive, you know!”
S.B. gasped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I thought- -”
“Cranky,” said Matilda, disapprovingly. “It doesn’t cost any more than a few extra logs of wood on the fire. And we would have used them anyway. I think it’s going to frost tonight.” She looked at S.B. “Now aren’t you glad you’re not outside?”
“Yes. The frost, it hurts so much.”
“Well, that does explain the feeling in my knee,” said Cranky as he went to the table. “And my back. And my sinuses. And just about everything. It’s probably going to rain again tomorrow…unless it snows tonight.” He frowned deeply. “It had better not snow. If it snows at this time of the year, I’m going to march right into the Weather Department and give them a piece of my mind!” 
“Snow is bad too,” said S.B. “It is scary to be waking up under a snow drift.” 
“See? Finally somepony who understands! Snow isn’t pretty. It’s ANNOYING.” 
Cranky continued to grumble a low rant about how much he detested snow, but Matilda ushered S.B. to his seat. S.B. took a few tries to climb onto the chair; it was large, and he was not familiar with the use of such things. When he finally stabilized himself on it, he was just barely tall enough to peer over the table. 
As he stared across an actual table in amazement, a plate was placed in front of him. S.B. stared at its contents, finding it covered in a wet, greenish material that smelled very strongly of decay. 
“What is this?” he asked. 
“Sour silage,” said Cranky. “What were you expecting, a plate of candy?”
“We were supposed to have rolls too,” said Matilda. “But they got…well, they’re not so good for eating right now. This is what we were going to have for dinner otherwise.”
“It’s good for the digestion,” said Cranky, taking a bite of the stinking mash. “Trust me, if I had eaten like this when I was your age, I wouldn’t be having the problems I am now!”
“I know it’s not normally what children like to eat, but- -”
She was interrupted by the sound of S.B. putting his entire face into the plate and greedily devouring his portion of silage. It definitely tasted like what it was, which was acidic fermented grass, but to him it seemed to be the most heavenly thing imaginable. Even the texture was perfect: even with his defective dentition, S.B. was able to chew and swallow the substance easily. 
When he was finished- -which took about a minute- -he looked up and, after a brief moment’s pause, burst into tears. 
“Oh my,” said Matilda.
“That’s what’ll happen if you eat it too fast,” said Cranky. “I could have told you that.” 
“No, it’s not the silage,” said S.B. “I’m just…I’m so happy…”