//------------------------------//
// Chapter II - Crossroads 
// Story: Morbid Curiosity 
// by AssaultTurtle 
//------------------------------//

	Crap. He really is not moving.

He would have moved by now if he was trying to trick you. And those weird scars you can see on his legs and face, those definitely were not there before. They kind of look like a tree.

…

Or a lightning bolt.

"No, no, no, no." You say, shaking your head trying to get rid of the dark thoughts creeping in on you and throwing your rainbow mane around. "Anon, you got me. I'm creeped out for real this time. You can move now, I lost." You walk up closer to him, and raise his hand with your hoof. "So stop being a jerk and just say something, alright?"

You drop his limb. It falls like a sack of potatoes. There was no saving reflex, no reaction. Nothing. Like he was…

NO! He isn't. He is just playing with you Rainbow, he's being an ass.

…

Right?

You look at his mouth. It's split open just a little bit, like he was having an afternoon snooze. Of course, that had to be it.

"You just decided to take a nap then, right?" You give a nervous laugh and a worried smile. "It's okay, I don't mind that much. Just..." You carefully lift his eyelid. His eye doesn't move around and his iris doesn’t shift its shape. "... just..." You lean in closer to his face, trying to listen in. Trying to hear air coming in and out of his mouth, his nose, but to no avail. "... just..." You suddenly notice that your vision is getting somewhat foggy, but it's not the most important thing right now. You move you head back, and put your wing in its place, trying to catch the small gusts of air from his nostrils with your sensitive feathers.

But there was none to be found.

"... just don't be dead, alright?"

He didn't respond. But he will respond. Not right now, but when he wakes up. Maybe in an hour, maybe tomorrow. 

	Yes, he is just tired from all the running. That's why he ran out of breath, right...?

But your denial grows weaker and weaker. Some part of you already knows what you have done. And try as you might to stop it, it looms over your mind. You still don't want to accept it, and still resist.

But not for long. You feel an overpowering cold resonating from your chest, like the blood in your veins was replaced with liquid ice. Your resolve slowly gives in, and the last glimmers of your own arguments fade.

And then you give in.

Just like that.

You realise that you have hurt Anon. Hurt him like no other pony before. You don’t even understand how exactly, but he is knocked out cold. You will be lucky if those scars are the only thing he will end up carrying away from it when he wakes up. And if you’re not lucky, then he will never wake up. Not in an hour, not tomorrow. Not ever.

Because he has died. He is dead. And it was you who killed him.

"A-anon?" You ask, even though you're not sure why.

He can't talk you moron, you made sure of it.

You notice that you're running out of breath. A myriad thoughts start running through your head, not one of them positive or happy. The horrifying chill has reached your hooftips by now, and you feel like your heart is struggling to pump the cold blood in you. Your racing thoughts slowly become clouded, like the sky you were preparing for a stormy day.

Suddenly you realise that your vision is shrinking as well. Acting on the deepest levels of learned reflexes, you perform a specific kind of controlled breathing, the one pegasi use when in a tight turn of a fast flight. 

A familiar feeling of oxygen reaching your brain in full capacity calms you a bit, and allows you to think again.

Sweet Celestia, did you need to think right now.

The cold seems to have receded somewhat. Good, it was rather distracting, and you need to focus.

"Dammit, Rainbow, think."

Did you just say that out loud?

Whatever, nopony is around. And if they were, talking to yourself is not the biggest of worries for you anyway.

So, thinking. Anon is seriously either seriously hurt, passed out or dead. The latter of which would mean that you have killed him. The only human to arrive in Equestria in all its history, and you just… Like it was nothing.

You force yourself to look at his face again. He looks so peaceful, like he was actually sleeping. Save for the scars that is.

For some reason you feel like it would be less awkward to talk to him.

"You know I didn't mean to do it, right?"

"Or did you?" The rogue area in your mind that tried to break through your denial before responds.

"I never meant to harm you, it was just supposed to be a prank."

"But you did harm him. Far worse, you MURDERED him." The penultimate word said by your conscience with such force that it was left resonating in your skull.

"No no, you don’t know that. And I... I-uh, how could I know a small zap with lightning would be this bad for him?" You say with an increasingly cracking voice.

"Because he told you. Because Twilight told you. And you were too DUMB to listen," the voice in your head shouts, slowly starting to sound like Twilight Sparkle.
.
"Twilight is afraid of lightning like a filly, I thought that she just found someone else with the same fear in Anon. I was sure she was justifying herself."

"And you were so self assured that you bet his life on it. How pathetic."

"I was not betting on anything, I worked with lightning clouds for so long now that..."

"That you disregarded pleads for mercy and instead became a MURDERER?" Your inner self yells, echoing another word. It hit a perfect resonating frequency with the first one too, resulting in a physically painful crescendo going in your cranium.

"MURDER... DUMB... MURDER... DUMB... MURDER..."

Until you snap.

"I. AM. NOT. A. MURDERER."

...

Silence...

The realization of what has just transpired dawns on you. You just argued with voices in your head, by shouting at a passed out friend who you so happen to have knocked out yourself a couple minutes ago.

You give a short, nervous laugh. You're insane. You're going crazy. But hey, that might be a good thing actually. Instead of being thrown into a dungeon, you will be locked up in an asylum. Yes, the food is probably better. Heh.

Wait...

Suddenly you realize what you just said, internally this time. You're going to be locked away for what you did. That's what they do to… Ponies who caused harm to others. 

You feel the relapse of panic setting in.

"I c-can't go to the d-dungeon." You explain to Anon. He seems rather indifferent to that. "I will never be able to become an actual Wonderbolt with a criminal record."

Oh. So THAT'S your concern, huh?

"Plus Celestia is going to kill me for hurting the only human."

That does sound rather problematic, too.

"And Twilight will kill me for being such an idiot."

Probably, yeah.

"And Rarity..."

Oh filly, Rarity.

"She will kill me even more than Celestia and Twilight. Shit, I told her to wait myself." You once again tell Anon, who seems to not realize the direness of fashionista’s impending berserk rage. "And now she might never tell you that she had a crush on you."

And finally he answered you, even though you could clearly see his lips not moving. At least that's the only reasonable explanation, because you've heard quite clearly Anon shout

"WHAT?"

You recoil in shock from the totally-not-dead body. A body that should nevertheless be unconscious.

"A-anon?" You ask timidly.

...

Nothing. Was that in your head too? It sounded so real.

You muster the courage to slowly sneak closer to him. His chest is still resting flat. Eyelids still closed, just like you left them. He looks just like a dead body would look. That is not a sentence you hoped to come up with today, especially since he is NOT dead. Just gravely injured.

So did that mean you were hearing voices now too? Your previous argument was with yourself, even if that other "you" had Twilight's voice. This one felt different though, like it came from outside. And to be honest, not even from the body, but…

You turn your head to the right, and look at a roadside bush.

...from over there.

Sudden rustling of the leaves you were looking at almost sent you flying, but you overcome your initial instinct to run, and instead shout "Hey, who is over there?" Once again, the only answer was the sound of silence.
You decide to walk over there, despite your trembling hooves.


* * *


Crap.

She definitely heard you. Shouting like that was probably a bad idea, but come on. Rarity? Crush on you? What the hell, she was always playing this I'm-far-more-exquisite-than-you-so-don't-even-look queen of the world kinda mare, not giving you any attention.

...

Except when she was so eager to work on your clothes when you first got here.

And prepare furniture for your house.

And when she asked you for a help with some kind of exhibition of her works not long ago.

Holy shit, the pieces are starting to fall together. When you recall her behavior every time she was not behind that iron curtain of a facade, she acted… strange. You've always played it off as a xenophobia, being an alien and all that. But what Dash has just said shines a new light on the marshmallow mare’s behaviour.

Implying she was telling the truth, and not going even crazier that is. The image of her shouting at your body comes back before your eyes, and you involuntarily shudder, upsetting leaves on a brush you were standing next to, causing them to give a soft flutter.

To your terror you notice that Dash is looking straight at you. Well, was looking, before she almost jumped out of her hooves. Fuck, she heard that one too? Just what kind of ghost are you?

"Hey, who is over there?"

You freeze. She did not run, as you thought she would. Instead, she started slowly walking towards you. You do your best to not make any sound as you inch behind the bush somewhat. You were supposed to be invisible, but clearly there were some things you were not told about here, seeing how you alerted a mortal twice already.

You hear uneasy hoofsteps come closer to your hiding spot. Through the semi-transparent shrubbery you can see a multicolored mass slowly creep towards you. You try to breathe as quietly as possible, not knowing anymore what exactly you can do without being spotted. It seemed like she didn't notice you when you walked behind a bush. Or when you actually materialized back in this world, even though that sounded like a pretty loud crackle to you.

Wait, materialized? Does a ghost materialize? You know, being all immaterial?

Huh, that's not exactly a question you've had to consider before. But then again, the same can be said about a great many things that happened to you today. Such as ‘why is the gateway to pony afterlife a ravine made out of clouds?’ Hell, even ‘is the gateway to pony afterlife a ravine made out of clouds?’ If someone asked you that yesterday, you'd probably look rather confused, not knowing why would that be one's mental image.

A rainbow mane poking around the green plant cuts your philosophical debate short. You try to persuade your heart to not beat so loudly, but it seems deaf to your reasoning. As the pegasus pokes her head around the corner, she scans the area nervously.

"H-hello?" You can hear her voice crack at the end.

She seems to be taking this whole situation rather poorly. Still though, probably beats being dead, huh?

...

Only that you were not dead, remember? And as far as having died goes, it wasn't that bad. You've had way worse when you were alive. Before you can realize what you're doing, you snort in a weak replacement for a laugh. Not weak enough however, because right now Rainbow Dash was looking straight at you.

You hold your breath. Both literally and metaphorically.

Her magenta eyes are staring right at yours, but she doesn't say anything, nor does she otherwise react to you. In fact, her eyes were not looking at you.

They were looking right through you, like you were truly invisible.

She squints. "This is not funny, okay? Whoever you are, stop hiding and s-show yourself, a-alright?" She sounds more like Fluttershy than herself right now. Save for the voice of an alcoholic, that's still there.

You try breathing really slowly. As luck might have it, the blue pegasus chose this moment to move closer to you. You have no idea if that was random, or as a result of air escaping your lungs.

Hang on a second. You have no lungs. They lie discarded and broken on the road a few meters away from you. Why are you even breathing?

You try to not breathe in this time, watching as Rainbow sheepishly half-crawls towards you. Everything inside you screams that you need air after a moment, but you don't feel dizzy, nor do you feel physical pain. You're just very uncomfortable with this. Some primal shard in your ethereal brain tries to force its way in and make your lungs expand once more. But you manage to quench that inner rebellion, and keep yourself deflated.

Dash was really close now. A step or two, and she will end up colliding with you. You're not sure how that would end, but seeing how you managed to move the leaves on the bush, you seem to have some kind of physical influence. Although you'd really rather not right now.

She makes a step. On her face you can see both fear, and confusion. But also anguish? A rather miserable combination altogether either way. 

Another hoof rises into the air. Shit, she will touch you. With all your willpower you try to focus on disappearing. Just wish that you’re not there, believe that her azure limb will pass right through you.

And so it does. The hoof reaches your leg and phases right through it, completely undisturbed by the contact with you. It does not seem to slow down, or turn in any capacity. It just keeps going, like there was nothing there.

Because there is nothing there, remember? You try to stay focused on that fact. Although you are still very new to this whole ghost business, you'd rather not find out if suddenly becoming material again with something inside you is problematic.

Don't think about it. It will not happen. You are just air. No, less than that. A cosmic void, empty of any matter or resistance.

Rainbow lands her leg on the ground and presses her body forward another bit. She has her eyes nervously jumping from the bush itself to the spot right behind it. If anything was hiding here, she would've seen it by now. But given the circumstances, she probably does not think 100% rationally right now.

Not that she ever does. If she did, you would not be here after all, now would you? She takes another step, by now seeing the entirety of the area behind your faithful shrub. Your legs are sunk into her chest. Or her chest is sunk into your legs, you couldn't really tell. It's probably one of those "is the train moving, or is the train station moving" kind of questions, but taken to the extreme.

The pegasus does another quick sweep of the area, and backs away slowly. She does not seem more confident than before, not having found the source of weird noises. After backtracking from behind the bush, she turns around and walks back to the pathway.

You breathe in. It feels nice, if a bit unnecessary. You allow your thoughts to wander about once again, not having to focus so hard anymore, and try to take in what just happened.

You had a living, material creature walk right into, no, through you and not even notice it. You were truly a ghost now. This day was shaping to be more and more odd. Especially since it was the day that you came to be inside Rainbow Dash.

You try your best to not snicker at that thought, barely managing it. Having made sure that you won't start giggling like a schoolgirl, you peek around the bush again.

Then you realise that you are invisible, and just walk out in the open. Dash has reached your body and lied down in the dust besides you. Or what used to be you.

...

This really can get complicated, can it not?

Either way, the pegasus seems to have given in to the anguish completely. You kinda feel sad for her now. It does not make you forgive the murder, but just adds into the cauldron of emotions and experiences of this day. You did come here with a goal in mind, and you haven't reached it quite yet. But seeing how Dash is taking it, this might not take long at all.

To be honest you almost expected her to hide the body and forget about the whole thing. But she was really hit hard. Maybe a bit too hard, remembering the "yell at the corpse" episode. With that in mind, she seems awfully quiet right now. Her eyes just staring at your head, and her rainbow mane concealing all her thoughts from you, now that she wasn't screaming them out loud that is. 
You wish you could get inside her head right now. Well, you can. Literally. Okay, let's rephrase - you wish you could know what she is thinking right now.


* * *


This is not good. None of this is anywhere near good. Anon is unconscious, and most likely hurt. You also managed to piss off two alicorns and Rarity.

And if that wasn't enough, you were going insane. First arguing with yourself, including screaming at nothing. Then hearing voices. Then this weird, cold numbness traveling from your hoof down into your chest.

You sigh. The panic seems to be gone by now, and your thoughts regained clarity. All that's left by now is regret. You wish you didn't ignore Twilight. You wish you listened to Anon. None of this would've happened then.

But it did. And now you had to fix it somehow.

You raise your head from the dusty road. Wonderbolt training covered first aid on injured and passed out teammates. But you didn’t listen. Plus nothing, not even weather control, ever prepared you to handle accidents caused by lightning bolts. Because they were harmless.

Some specks of information begin appearing in your mind however. Something about removing an unconscious flyer from the sun, and putting them on their side. Then calling for help.

Calling for help! You raise to your hooves in an instant. Of course. You should just go get Twilight or Fluttershy, they would for sure…

They would for sure ask a lot of questions. How did he got hurt, how did you find him, why were you there. And worst of all, Anon would tell them the truth when he woke up. The truth about you chasing him and hurting him.

But you probably can’t avoid that. You did hurt him, and unless he loses his memories, he will know it. Then again, it probably was best to deal with Anon yourself, sorting it out between you. Maybe if you can fix it by taking care of him, he will be less mad at you. Plus it was just the right thing to do after what you did.

You look around. Roughly in the direction your house was, you could see a majestic oak. The canopy was thick and opaque, giving a lot of shade underneath it. And as an added bonus, it was rather out of the way, so chances of other ponies finding him by accident were slim. And they could get a wrong idea. It was almost like a murderer hiding a corpse.

You shun that thought and walk around Anon. Positioning yourself above his head and putting your forehooves below his shoulders, you get ready to carry him. He could stay safe under the tree till the evening, and then you could safely transport him to your home with fewer eyes to see you.

With all your strength, you take to the air. Sweet Celestia was he heavy. You resort to dragging his legs along the ground, while struggling about a meter above it. It was quite a workout, which caused you to not notice the sudden scent of almonds that hit your nostrils.


* * *


You are Anonymous. But you are also rather confused what that means exactly at the moment. You are still the spirit of yourself, as far as you understand - a soul unchained from the body, at least temporarily. And as far the body in question goes, well… 

It's currently being dragged along the grassy land of Equestria by the freshly-baked pegasus murderer, Rainbow Dash. Also known as Thundercunt Prime, or whatever other nickname you came up with today. As to where she was taking you...

Uh, what formerly was you, or at least part of you. As to where she was taking your body, you were not sure. Frankly, you were rather curious how she would handle this. Going batshit insane and screaming at the corpse was at least promising an interesting show. At first anyway, since she seems to have calmed down a bit after that episode. And apparently she now had a plan in mind.

Either that, or she was just improvising. Yeah, probably the latter. She never was one for elaborate preparations, to put it gently.

You decide that it would be a good idea to follow her, since by now she was far enough away to not hear your footsteps. As you pass over the path she caught you on, you notice a dark spot on the ground. That must be where the lightning struck. And from it there was a clearly visible imprint of something being dragged to the side.

You sigh. She didn't have a plan. At this rate she will get caught before you're even done with her, and before she gets to learn anything. It would also make your resurrection quite a public story. So you decide to cover up the most obvious drag trails, replacing them with your footsteps turning to the other side. Now it looks like you just decided to go off-road for whatever reason.

Right, now to catch up to mare of the hour. You try focusing again on being immaterial, and find it easier this time, or so you think. It allows you to cross the sandy surface with no marks though, so it must have worked.

After triple checking that there is no trace, you are about to turn around towards Rainbow only to feel a hoof on your shoulder.

You freeze. A bunch of questions run through your head very quickly. Why is there a hoof on your shoulder? Whose hoof is it? If it is Rainbow’s, why is she back? And how the hell can she see you, let alone touch you? Hell, how could anything touch you? You were a ghost, there shouldn't be a pony able to interact with ghosts. Was it another undead soul? You didn't exactly consider that before, but if you were concealed from mortals' eyes, why wouldn't other creatures have the same trait? And maybe now all those spirits will become revealed to you, complicating matters even further? Would they be friendly? Would they even communicate with you? What would they look like? Were they as scary as some of the monsters you've seen back in your old world? You believe those were called "teenagers".

And even though it felt like a good couple seconds to you, it only took you a blink of an eye to ask all of that. In that timeframe, the mysterious owner of the hoof did not bother to make anything clearer to you, forcing you to act. You turn around, trying not to do it too jumpy.

And you fail. You feel a dull pain in your neck as you remind yourself that you're not an owl. But with the help of the rest of your body (at least the immaterial part) you manage to look behind you. And fall over onto the pathway that was now behind you, because you saw what you didn't exactly expect to see.

"What's the matter Anonymous, you look like you've just seen death," said Death.