//------------------------------// // The Encounters // Story: Octavia's Final Stop // by Waxworks //------------------------------// When next she opened her eyes, Octavia found herself on the very edge of light cast by the lamppost. She pulled herself to a sitting position and glanced frantically about. Where were the flashes? How long was she out? She gave herself a quick once-over, and found that she was still intact. No injuries, and she was still in that ugly sweater. Much to her dismay, there were no more flashes, either. She waited, straining her eyes trying to see in the murk, but there was nothing there. No flashes, no noise, no cries of any kind, and no hoofsteps. “Well buggerfuck!” Octavia muttered, kicking the ground. She made her way back to the lamppost, cursing herself for a fool. She sat down next to her cello and stared grumpily off in the direction she thought the thing had run with that suitcase. She didn’t know, and could barely tell anymore. She couldn’t even see which direction the rails were. Octavia did a double-take. She couldn’t see the rails! She used to be able to! She looked in a circle around her, she couldn’t see the bench anymore either! Everything around her was just black and foggy! That meant… the lantern was going out! That was not good at all, that was the worst thing that could possibly happen! If the lantern went out, she’d have to stumble around blindly in the dark with that thing hanging out watching and waiting for something to happen to her. Or maybe it would finally make something happen to her. It hadn’t seemed really keen on the lantern light, so it might be sensitive to it. The flashes seemed to indicate that as well, given that it was crying out in pain. Or what passed for some sort of pain. She didn’t know if that was actually a pained noise or not. The path was clear, though. She had to get that lantern down and move on before it went out completely! Octavia looked up at the lantern, pondering. She needed that thing down from there. She had only so much time before everything went dark, and she needed to be out of there. She assessed what she had at her disposal: Sweater, check. Cello, check. Saddlebags… saddlebags? Octavia couldn’t find her saddlebags. She looked under her cello, behind it, and even opened it up briefly to look inside, but all that was in there was her cello and bow. That tosser out there must have taken them while she was unconscious! “You can just go and bugger yourself, you know that? Why not take the whole mess instead of being such a cunt and stealing one item at a damn time, huh?” Octavia shouted at the darkness. There was no response, but she could hear hoofsteps out there. Slow, steady, and not too far away, which was actually a little scary. She picked up her cello and hugged it to herself, warily eyeing the swirling fog where it sounded like the hoofsteps were coming from. This was her livelihood. Her work, her hobby, and her talent. Without something to make music with, Octavia was just another earth pony. She could sing, but so could many others, and she wasn’t as good at singing at some ponies were. Her cello was what she had settled on years ago as her instrument of choice, and she’d be damned if it was taken from her without a fight. “If you want my stuff why not just kill me and take it?” Octavia shouted at her invisible stalker. “You’ve had so many opportunities, just kill me, and then you can have it all! Why are you so desperate to keep me alive? It doesn’t do you any good, and it’s only preventing you from having what you want!” After saying that, Octavia stopped. Reasons for why started flitting through her head, and all of them came to one conclusion: She was needed alive. For what reason she didn’t know, but she was needed alive. That’s the only possible reason it hadn’t killed her yet. Octavia strapped her cello to her back, looked up at the offending lantern far above her head, then turned to the darkness. There was only one way to test her theory, and she wasn’t going to find it here. She slowly shuffled toward the darkness, until she was at the edge of where she could see her hooves. The fog obscured portions of her vision as it drifted lazily about, thicker clouds wafting here and there. Octavia lifted her hoof and brought it closer to the edge of the light. She jumped as a crash suddenly sounded from behind her, and the sphere of illumination she was in flickered. Octavia spun around quickly to see what had happened, eyes frantically casting about the area she could see. The lantern had fallen. Her one source of light in this Celestia-forsaken place had dropped from its hook and crashed to the ground. Thankfully it hadn’t gone out, and in fact was blazing slightly brighter than before, but as she hurried over to it and picked it up, she was alarmed at the implications of that. The remaining oil inside had splashed upward out of the reservoir, and was quickly being consumed by the flame. Octavia opened up the lantern and reached a hoof in, trying to smother it just a little bit, so that it wouldn’t burn down so quickly. She had no success. Worse than no success, she managed to get some of the oil on her ugly sweater, which immediately caught the flame and lit on fire. “Oh shit!” Octavia yelled, and almost dropped the lantern. She put it down quickly and started patting at her sleeve, trying to smother the flame. It didn’t go out with the first few pats, so she stomped about a little, trying to get it under her hoof. She dropped to the ground and put her hooves underneath her, then tried to roll. She was stopped by her cello attached to her back, so she unclasped it, sliding it to the side, then rolled about frantically. After a few rolls, she looked at her sleeves, and was relieved to see that the fire was gone. She stood up and looked over to her cello, to see the thing lifting it off the ground where she’d thrown it in her flailing! She didn’t see the suitcase, but it had her saddlebags on, her scarf, and now it was taking her cello! It blinked at her, its violet eyes sparkling eerily in the light, then turned and bounded into the fog. Octavia had forgotten her fear. It was taking her cello and she was not going to let it get away without a fight! She grabbed the lantern and took off after it! She didn’t know what direction they were headed, and she frankly didn’t care. The train platform had offered nothing except a false sense of security while this beast robbed her of everything. She could hear its hoofsteps just ahead of her, and she followed doggedly after it. The lantern illuminated nothing except the ground, and she dimly registered the platform of the train station changing tile patterns as they ran. She kept following the sounds of the hoofsteps, not noticing the light of her lantern flickering and shrinking until her vision of the platform below her disappeared entirely, leaving her in a small sphere of light, just around her head. The flame flickered pitifully. Octavia couldn’t see much of anything anymore, but she could still hear the hoofsteps. As she stopped relying as much on her eyes, and more on her ears, it became clearer which direction her assailant was going. She glanced down at the light she was carrying in her mouth and snorted derisively. It was no use to her anymore. She tossed the lantern aside, and plunged herself into darkness. There was a brief flare of light as it impacted the platform, then, blackness. She opened her eyes wide, thought it helped her not at all, and listened for where the hoofsteps were coming from. There! She turned and chased after the sounds of hooves besides her own clopping on the smooth tiles of the station platform. How long it must be, to harbor a chase of this length. She wasn’t going to lose the monster in the darkness, though. Her cello was on the line! That was HER cello, her livelihood, and the thing she cared about most in all of Equestria. It symbolized who she was more than anything else, and she didn’t want some beast getting its hooves all over it. Suddenly the hoofsteps stopped, and Octavia ran to where she last heard them, but found nothing. She quieted herself down, breathed slowly and carefully, and listened, perking her ears up. She swiveled them left, and right, alternating, trying to hear something, anything, that might give away the crook. She thought she heard a noise, and leaped in the direction it came from, snarling and waving her hooves wildly. Nothing. “Damn you! Give me back my things!” Octavia shouted, losing her temper. She stamped her hooves, yelled inarticulately, and screamed at the fog. It was everywhere, and now it was dark, and she had no idea where she was. She could be on the tracks for all she knew, or she could be in the middle of a town. This infernal fog made it impossible to tell. Octavia stopped and sat down, trying to relax. She breathed in slowly, then exhaled, calming herself down one breath at a time. She was freaking out and really needed to relax a little bit. Panicking would get her nowhere. As she breathed, she thought about what she could do. She was in the middle of the fog. She couldn’t see a thing. She could only currently hear wind. The wind itself, as if to add further insult, was getting colder. It might have been just her imagination, but Octavia felt like the temperature was dropping. The loss of her only light might have something to do with that. With nothing to see anymore but oppressive darkness, it was making her feel like she was colder than she actual was. Still, it would have been nice to feel warm instead. Octavia’s ear swiveled around backward, and she turned her head. She thought she had heard something! She stood up and carefully stalked toward where the sound had come from. Her head was tilted to the side, since she could only rely on her ears at this point, and she kept the side of her head trained to where the sound was. She heard it again! A quiet shuffling sound, as if somepony was sneaking about. She carefully and quietly tiphoofed over, and when she thought she was close enough, she struck, leaping at the sound! She landed in a pile of something soft and slightly slimy. She felt a few small creatures crawl over her in a bid to escape the sudden intrusion of a large pony in their disgusting home. “Ewwww, gross.” Octavia complained. She extracted herself from the nasty mess and flung scraps of cloth off her hooves. She reached out and gingerly touched what she had jumped into. It was a pile of clothes, though that term could only loosely be applied to what she had found. It was a pile, yes, but ‘clothes’ was a maybe. She prodded at it and pulled a few articles free, trying to feel them and see if they might fit. She was still getting really cold, and the sweater just wasn’t doing the job. Even if the items were dirty, she could bathe once she was free of this place and safe at home. She groped and prodded, pulled and subsequently threw away many items, but she found a few that worked. She even took one that was torn and wrapped it around her neck as a makeshift scarf. It felt kind of gross, but she wasn’t cold anymore, and that was one positive thing in this mess she was in. Now that she was warm, she sat back and listened again, trying to find somepony in the darkness through hearing alone. She sat and waited with her eyes closed, trying to remove the unsettling swirling of the darkness in her vision so that she could better focus on just one sense at a time. There was nothing for quite a while, but eventually she heard an angry voice in the darkness. It sounded impatient and frustrated, but she wasn’t going to complain, that was a voice, and it was a target. If it wasn’t who she was looking for, maybe they would know of some way out of here. Her own little spot at the station was long gone, and she didn’t think she would ever find that post again unless somepony lit the damn place up, so a new place would work fine. She loped easily off into the darkness. The platform was flat enough that she wasn’t really worried about bumping into a wall or tripping. Her hooves clopping on the tiles gave a nice little echo whenever there were walls nearby, so she could pretty easily avoid them. Her long legs carried her easily through the darkness, loping along with quiet taps as her hooves lightly hit the platform tiles. She could hear the shouting and angry cursing as she got closer to the source, though she couldn’t see anything yet. She didn’t know if the fog was too thick, or if the pony that was out there didn’t have a light. It wasn’t too far-fetched to assume they didn’t have a light, since her own had burned out after not too long. If they did indeed come from this area, then they would likely have only so long before their own lantern gave up the ghost. She slowed down as she got closer, trying to triangulate exactly where the pony was at. They didn’t sound like they were too far, so she had to run into them eventually. She stalked around, and around, walking back and forth, back and forth, listening carefully, until she had their position exactly mapped out. They were standing there talking to themselves about something she couldn’t quite understand. The pony was talking really quickly and had a heavy accent, but they seemed confused about something according to the tone of voice. She couldn’t quite be sure if this was the pony she had been following, but she didn’t want to take chances. That thing she had seen that stole her stuff was strange and misshapen, and she didn’t know that she could take it in a fight. She was about to speak when she heard something that she didn’t think she’d ever hear again: The whistle of a train. A train was coming? A train was coming! Finally something good was happening! She could leave, go home, albeit without her stuff, but she was going to be safe again! Her friends would help her out with bills until she could get back on her hooves after this miserable experience, and she could start working again. It would be lovely. She just wanted to be gone from this awful place! She turned her head toward the whistle, but she realized then that she had no idea where to go. All she could see was black, and the whistle was so loud, there was no good way to figure out where it was coming from! If she didn’t find the platform, she was going to miss it! She couldn’t stay stuck here, she needed to get to the train platform! She had assumed she was on it, and the tiles under her hooves had stayed roughly the same since she’d arrived, but was this where it was going to stop? Why was there no light anywhere?! She focused her ears again, trying to find that pony she had been stalking. She could hear it speaking, sounding relieved and grateful that the train was finally coming. She focused on the voice alone, and walked slowly toward it. If this pony sounded relieved, they were probably in a place they could get on when it arrived. She moved closer, and closer, slowly but surely. She could hear the train clacking ever nearer, but still there was no light to be seen. Just when she was curious if there ever would be, she took a step forward and a searing pain hit her as a blinding whiteness filled her vision. She snarled and finally heard the voice properly and understood it. “Hurry the bloody hell up, you tossers! It’s almost bloody caught me!” A feminine voice said. She heard the train pull up and slowly come to a stop, and she pushed forward again, but the painfully bright light burned her eyes. She blinked, but it did nothing to help the pain. She squinted, and suddenly the light was not quite so bright, and she could faintly see what was happening. Octavia got on the train, her cello strapped to her back, and her saddlebags affixed to her sides. Vinyl’s scarf was wrapped tightly around her neck as she pushed onto the train, the operator welcoming her inside to safety. In his hooves, he held a bullseye lantern he had trained directly onto the creature following her. “You buggers took your sweet time.  The bloody thing almost caught up with me. Was that the purpose, there, lettin’ me get caught by it?” Octavia said accusingly. The operator slid the door shut and locked it, then slid the hatch shut on his lantern. His hat was still pulled low on his head, but he smiled out the window, and didn’t say a word. The creature watched the train forlornly as it slowly pulled away from the dark station. She had no idea what she had just seen, but she knew somewhere, deep down, that she had lost something incredibly important, and she would never get it back. She remembered faces, activities, and other things she knew were important, but were quickly fading from memory. She wanted to cry, but her new eyes wouldn’t let her, so she just let out a mournful whimper and trudged away into the darkness. Her long, spindly legs carrying her quickly nowhere in particular. She wasn’t cold, her filthy clothing kept her warm, but she didn’t know where to go. There was no sound, no light, and not much beyond the platform itself. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and she could see shapes, but there wasn’t much to see. She had been abandoned in a horrible place for reasons she did not understand. Nothing happened for a time, she just walked and walked. She saw a couple other creatures similar to herself, but she didn’t want to meet them, and they didn’t seem interested in meeting her. She did not eat, drink, nor sleep, and her body never seemed to need it. She just lived, and forgot. One day, she heard a train, and although she didn’t quite understand what it meant, she knew she had to go see it. It was important. Deep down, she knew the train was important. She raced through the darkness, her long legs easily carrying her across the darkness to where the whistle had sounded. The featureless blackness gave way to her, and her eyes guided her eventually to a small pinprick of light, sitting on a unnaturally long train platform placed conspicuously in the black void. Upon arrival, she saw sitting there in the middle of the pool of light a single pony. Alone, with her luggage stacked neatly under the single lantern in the darkness, she sat. Her silver mane shone in the light as she adjusted her glasses and collar. There, sitting next to her on the ground, was a single suitcase. The creature watched, waited, and bided her time. Soon, the silver-haired pony would have to sleep. She could be this pony. Then she could leave this place. All she needed was to dress up as her, and get on the next train out. So the creature watched, and she waited. And when the pony slept, she crept closer, and took her glasses. She knocked over something and the pony awoke with a start as she made off with the item. “H-hey…!” Mayor Mare blurted… THE END.