It took several minutes of hugging, sobbing, and apologizing before Adorabelle managed to calm down enough to explain things to Violet Edge. During the whole thing he just looked weirded out and wouldn’t hug her back. At least one thing was the same.
“You…” Violet Edge stared at Adorabelle. “Are we siblings or a couple or…?”
“Um…” Adorabelle realized she had a sitcomish opportunity to tell him that what she wanted to be reality was real. “It’s, like, it’s complicated. I love you so much but you usually act cold…”
“Oh.” Violet Edge stared over Adorabelle’s shoulder. “I… I’m kind of a jerk.”
“Oh, like, no, you’re fine…”
“But… but you’re so beautiful, so… why didn’t I want to accept you as my girlfriend?” Violet Edge furrowed his brow in concern.
It wasn’t exactly a compliment; he seemed more interested in learning more about himself than he was in telling Adorabelle how he felt about her. Adorabelle still felt the need to nuzzle his ears in response anyway.
“I think it’s, like, you didn’t think you were, I dunno, worthy of me or something…? Which totes makes zero sense, because you’re, like, a super intelligent attorney wannabe while I’m, like, a total ditz…”
“I’m a what?” Violet Edge said.
“Um…” Adorabelle pulled back. “An attorney is, like, um, a guy who argues…”
“I… I think I remember factual information,” Violet Edge said, looking puzzled. “I just don’t remember who I am. And, um, not that I don’t appreciate your company… it means a lot to have a friend, given what just happened… but… is there anyone more unbiased that I can hear about myself from?”
Adorabelle blinked. She’d never really thought about that. Violet Edge’s guardian was a no. Maybe her dad? Was he biased?
“Okay, like, I think I know somepony. You’re coming home with me!”
“Thanks.” And then Violet Edge smiled. It was a little worried, but it was still more genuine than Adorabelle remembered seeing on him in, well, pretty much forever. “I’m sorry for giving you so much trouble…”
“Oh, but, like, it was my fault,” Adorabelle whimpered. “I’m not sure what exactly I did but I know it was something stupid…”
“Is it… safe to ask what?” Violet Edge asked.
“No, like, probably not; let’s hurry to the courthouse.”
She and Violet Edge cantered back into the main district of Canterlot side by side.
“Do all of these places, like, look familiar?” Adorabelle asked.
“The place where we were before looked more familiar, but this one looks more beautiful,” Violet Edge said.
“Hmm. Maybe, like, you reverted to being a child, because, like, you live here now, but you lived there then.”
“Please use clearer nouns; I’m losing you…” Violet Edge said.
“Sorry. Look, like, we’re here,” Adorabelle said, scampering up the steps of the courthouse. She turned to look at Violet Edge. He had a vague, thoughtful look on his face.
“Something wrong?” Adorabelle asked.
“I know this place… I was here a lot… I think…” Violet Edge said. Then he brightens a little. “My dad! My dad works here! Do I get to see him?”
“Er…” Adorabelle winced. “He’s… um… not here right now, but, like, you get to meet my dad.” She paused. “So if you remember your dad, do you remember other stuff, like, your name and stuff?”
“I mean, I already know my name is Edgy because you told me so,” Violet Edge said.
“Oh, um, like, oh no no no, that’s just my nickname for you. Please try and remember your real name,” Adorabelle said.
Violet Edge closed his eyes. “Um… Edgy… Edge… Violet… Purple.” His eyes snapped open wide. “Purple…”
“No, like, colder,” Adorabelle said.
Violet Edge’s breathing suddenly sped up. “Purple… Everything purple…” He slowly leaned over to one side.
“No!” Adorabelle dashed over to grab him as he fell.
“I’m dying… I’m dying… I’m dead…” Violet Edge closed his eyes and let himself go limp.
“No no no! You’re not! Please don’t do this!” Adorabelle cried, tearfully hugging him. “Help! Somepony! Medic!”
“What’s wrong!?”
Adorabelle looked up to see one of the detectives she’d met a few days ago staring at her anxiously. She honestly had forgotten which one he was by now. Wordlessly, she held out Violet Edge’s limp body, and the police stallion’s expression shifted to horror. He lay Violet Edge on the ground and moved Adorabelle’s forehooves over the prone pony’s heart. “Do you know CPR?” he asked.
“M-mostly,” Adorabelle said.
“Well don’t if you don’t know. I’ll be right back.” The detective didn’t run away; he bounced. And he didn’t even bounce like normal ponies; he used only his hind legs, his front hooves being apparently for balancing. It would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so serious.
Adorabelle fretfully moved her hooves around Violet Edge’s chest, trying to remember the right position. Nothing would work. Edgy would die and it was all her fault multiple times over. Why was she so stupid and reckless?
A loud thump behind her made her start and she turned around to see the detective, perched precariously on his hind hooves, with a huge bundle of a light orange flower with fern-y foliage clutched in his forehooves.
“You take the petals off to give to him; I’ll hold his mouth open,” the detective said. “Telekinesis is better for these.”
Adorabelle obeyed, stripping the petals in seconds.
“We only need two flowers to start… I kinda overharvested…” the detective said, rubbing the back of his head.
A few seconds after swallowing the petals, Violet Edge started to stir.
“He’s alive…” Adorabelle sobbed.
“Best not wake him yet,” the detective said. “That didn’t go over so well last time…”
“Last time?” Adorabelle said, confused.
“Oh… I guess you wouldn’t know,” the detective said. “This is actually how Mr. Edge and I met. Sort of. I mean, we knew each other before because we were in the same building so often, but…”
“Oh. Wait.” Adorabelle pressed her ears against her head, embarrassed. “Which one are you again…? I met so many of you at once that you all kind of blend together…”
“Gumshoe.” Gumshoe seemed a little hurt at being forgotten.
“Oh, right, the one petting the mint colt. Is he fine now? Did he really stop being blind and deaf?”
Gumshoe nodded. “He’s fine… until he messes up again. Like all of us.”
Adorabelle tilted her head, confused.
“Anyway, back to the original topic, one day I found Mr. Edge wandering around the city memoryless and took him back to the station for a talk. Eventually his guardian found out and snapped him out of it though, but we’re still friends.”
“Oh, like, that’s wonderful! I worry a lot he doesn’t have enough friends,” Adorabelle says. “Wait. Snap him out of it? It’s, like, reversible and Perfect Karma knows how to do it?”
Gumshoe paused. “I guess I just assumed memory retrieval spells were something all unicorns learned…?”
“No, like, not even close. Outside telekinesis and light there’s no spell that all unicorns know,” Adorabelle said.
“Oh… you guys are not nearly as impressive as you make yourselves out to be then are you?” The question didn’t even seem pointed, but that was probably because Adorabelle wasn’t in the category of ‘arrogant unicorns.’
“I mean, like, every unicorn knows a few spells beyond that but we don’t all share a spell list. Except in the GUA and other ponies whose talent is, like, just magic, but they’re all high level unicorns who can learn lots of spells and stuff like that.” Adorabelle stroked Violet Edge’s forehead, arranging his gray mane around his horn.
“They? Not you?” Gumshoe asked, cocking his head.
“What do you- oh… yeah, the other ponies at GUA are high level unicorns, but not me really. Actually, a lot of unicorns there are just smart, like Edgy, not powerful. But I’m not that either.” Adorabelle sighed. “I was just born with one trick and I’m allowed there so they can study it. I’m not really one of them…” She met Gumshoe’s eyes. “You’re, like, a little like me too, aren’t you? You stood off to the side when the other police were doing their friendship thing and the chief punished you for it didn’t he? Why?”
Gumshoe rubbed his scruffy black mane. “It’s simple, really. I learned early on that nopony in the Manehattan Youth would really stick their necks out for me when it mattered. And if they won’t do anything for me… I don’t want to do anything for them.” He looked to the side. “Simple as that.”
Adorabelle would have pressed for more details, but Violet Edge suddenly stirred.
“Edgy?” Adorabelle asked as he opened his eyes.
“Where am…” His eyes widened and he flipped over. “The debate finals! What am I doing here!? I’ll be late-”
“Oh no, no, no.” Adorabelle stuck out a hoof to stop him. “No. Like. Those already happened. You won. It was awesome.”
Violet Edge stared blankly at Adorabelle for a moment, then slowly turned to Gumshoe. “Did I…?”
Gumshoe nodded slowly.
Violet Edge pressed a hoof to his forehead and closed his eyes in pain. “Stupid, stupid…”
“Wait, no, don’t be mad at yourself!” Adorabelle whimpered. “It was my fault. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s not. It’s mine. Stupid…”
“It’s none of your faults,” Gumshoe said. “Adorabelle didn’t know and you can’t help it.”
“Can’t help what?” Adorabelle asked Violet Edge.
“Don’t explain if it’ll trigger it again,” Gumshoe said.
“I’m not a baby,” Violet Edge snapped. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that… You’d better get back to your job or you’ll get in trouble.”
“If you’re sure you’re okay,” Gumshoe said.
“I’m fine. We’re going back to my guardian now.” Violet Edge pushed himself into a standing position. “Take care of yourself.”
Gumshoe nodded and headed back down the sidewalk.
“If I do seize up again, just fetch Perfect Karma; he knows how to deal with it discreetly,” Violet Edge said as they headed for the courthouse.
“But, like, what happened?” Adorabelle asked.
Violet Edge waved one hoof vaguely. “There’s this traumatic thing that happened when I was little. You remember it right?”
Violet Edge was probably talking about his dad’s death, so Adorabelle nodded.
“Apparently it was too much for my little colt brain to handle, and I cast a memory erasing spell on myself reflexively. Self-induced amnesia, the doctor called it. And if I try too hard to remember it or if something forcibly reminds me of it, it happens again.”
“Oh,” Adorabelle said. “That’s why Aim keeps throwing, um…”
“Bears.” Apparently the word wasn’t enough of a trigger right now.
“Right… she throws bears at you to try and make you helpless and/or to try and get you to forget everything so she can ‘remind’ you that you’re a couple or something?”
“Who knows how that girl’s mind works? I can only assume,” Violet Edge said. “And it worked. A lot. There’s lots of moments when I first moved in with Perfect Karma where my memory’s just a perfect blank. Not everything comes back when I recover.”
“I’m so so so sorry I made you forget the debate finals…” Adorabelle said.
“Why? What did you do?” Violet Edge paused. “No, on second thought, better not.”
“No,” Adorabelle agreed. “But it wasn’t an accident. It was me being stupid…”
The two hurried through the courthouse, winding up the stairs to Adorabelle’s dad’s office. Sterling Scales usually had a general idea of where Perfect Karma would be; even though they weren’t exactly coworkers, they were both some of the only ponies who worked exclusively on murder trials.
“Oh… wait,” Adorabelle said as they grew nearer. “Is that why when I asked if you knew of the MCI when it was happening, you just stammered oddly and said no? Because you have so little memories of that time period that you don’t remember what happened then?”
“Kind of,” Violet Edge sighed.
Dark suspicion festered in Adorabelle’s heart. If Violet Edge didn’t remember that time very well, maybe he was somehow involved in the MCI. Maybe this wasn’t even the real Violet Edge. What if Violet Edge died in the Missing Children’s Incident just like Freddy said and this was somepony else with Violet Edge’s memories? Was that even possible? That sounded like a question for Doctor Whooves. Too bad she’d have to wait until tomorrow to ask…
Or, wait, wasn’t it the weekend? She totally couldn’t remember anymore; the week just all blended together.
When the pair reached Sterling Scale’s office, they could hear arguing.
“I really think she does dislike her condition,” Sterling Scales was saying.
“We can’t always get what we want,” Perfect Karma replied.
“It just seems cruel to keep her locked up, stuck in her own insane mind, when just a year or two in the stars would cure her,” Sterling Scales continued.
There was a loud bang, a sound Adorabelle would recognize anywhere: the definitive sound of a lawyer slamming authoritatively on a desk.
“And you should know, shouldn’t you!?” Perfect Karma said. “That’s why after your own brother was there for two years, you went according to the psychologists’ judgement and signed off on letting him come home. Go on and admit it, Sterling; you’re no different than me. You and I both know that sometimes you have to stuff your skeletons in the closet to save face, even if they still have flesh on them.”
“N-no, no, no, it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like that!” Sterling Scales sobbed.
Adorabelle slammed the door open. “It’s me!” she called out happily.
Perfect Karma was half standing on Sterling Scales’ desk while Sterling curled up in his chair, tears in his eyes. When Adorabelle entered, Perfect Karma scowled and backed away.
“Why are you bullying my dad?” Adorabelle asked.
“We’re having a heated discussion. That’s different,” Perfect Karma said.
“Well, like, your ward lost his memory again so go outside and help him,” Adorabelle said.
Perfect Karma snapped to attention. “What!?”
“Exactly what I said. And, like, next time tell me that I can accidentally make my best friend turn into an amnesiac by showing him a bear, okay?” Adorabelle frowned at him.
“Adorabelle…?” Sterling Scales said, confused.
“You are not allowed to know about that!” Perfect Karma shouted at Adorabelle.
“Too late. Now stop talking and help him before he forgets the debate tournament.” Her voice abruptly grew softer. “Please. It’s all my fault…”
Perfect Karma walked past her and out Sterling’s office door to where Violet Edge sat in the hallway, resting himself against the wall.
“Adorabelle, what happened?” Sterling Scales said.
Adorabelle ground her hoof into the red carpet nervously. There was no way she could tell her dad the whole story. That would require admitting she’d been to Freddy’s and planned to keep going there.
“I was trying to help Violet Edge get over his fear of bears, so I showed him a bear, and that triggered a self-memory wipe,” she said.
Sterling Scales’ expression grew serious. “What bear?”
“Just, like, a bear I found around.”
“Where did you find it? Do you still have it?” Sterling Scales was actually starting to look panicked.
“Hey, like, what’s the problem?” Adorabelle asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But like, if I tell you where I found it, will you tell me why it’s important?” Adorabelle asked. “Quid, like, pro quo and all?”
“No, not ‘quid like pro quo and all,’ because families are not economies,” Sterling Scales said, coming out from behind his desk to circle Adorabelle. “I’m your father. It’s my job to protect you and keep you safe. And part of that is not giving you ideas.”
Adorabelle glared at him. “And, like, you’re also a brother, and part of being a good brother is not abandoning him to Tartarus in the sky because there’s something you’re hiding!”
Sterling Scales’ looked shocked. “I’m not hiding anything!”
“You literally just got done saying you had to hide things from me!” Adorabelle shouted. “Is Perfect Karma right? Could you have let him come home, like, eight years ago and just didn’t?”
Sterling Scales slinked back behind his desk. “It’s more complicated than that…”
“How so?” Adorabelle said, her tone accusatory. “Tell me!”
“I…” Sterling Scales’ ears drooped. “I… I can’t…”
“Well, like, then you’ll have no problem with me telling Bronze Coin this new news.” Adorabelle flounced off. She kept expecting her dad to telekinetically drag her back, or at least call out to her, but nothing of the kind happened and she made it out of the office without him doing a thing.
Iron Hoof had a point; he was kind of weak…
***
The initial wave of visitors to the new arrivals from Gemini was receeding. This time, Adorabelle only shared the ride up the mountain with two detectives, an elderly mare that was probably someone’s mother, and Teflon Slick again. There was no getting rid of him.
Adorabelle fretted a little that Bronze Coin would be mad at her for not visiting the other days of the week, but when he walked into the visitor’s cell and looked up at her, he broke into a sad smile.
“You’re back,” he said. “My gosh… so beautiful…”
The psychologist scribbled some notes.
“H-hi,” Adorabelle said. “Sorry I haven’t been around… I’ve been busy…”
“I… I know you must be…” Bronze Coin swallowed, looking like he was fighting tears.
Adorabelle looked at her uncle, so deep in gloom it warped his entire body. Maybe the real reason her dad hadn’t stopped her was because he knew full well it was an empty threat. How could she tell him “by the way, you could come home now, but my dad is making you suffer more than you have to because of reasons he won’t tell me?”
“Busy with what…?” Bronze Coin continued.
Adorabelle glanced sideways at the psychologist, wishing he wasn’t there. But maybe she could phrase this vaguely.
“I’ve been, like, learning more about the Missing Children Incident, trying to fill in the gaps, hoping to learn something…” Adorabelle felt herself tearing up. “Something to bring you home…”
“Heh.” Bronze Coin rubbed the tears from one eye. “You’re so much like your mother.”
“But dad’s being a pain and he won’t tell me anything and he, like, turned the prosecutor’s office against me too,” Adorabelle said. “And he won’t even tell me why he’s being a pain.”
“What do you know, though…?” Bronze Coin asked. He stared at the floor. “Do you know… who I…?”
“No,” Adorabelle said, wanting to get off this topic as fast as possible. “Well, like, not exactly, but I learned who one of the witnesses is…” Violet Edge would take too long to explain so she skipped that part. She didn’t even know what the deal was there. “Oh, and I learned one of the victims wrote the words ‘Purple Stallion’ on the wall, so, like, that narrows it down.”
“Pur… purple…?” Bronze Coin’s eyes widened.
“You remember—” Adorabelle started.
“Shush!” Bronze Coin held one hoof out to Adorabelle in a ‘stop’ gesture while he held his forehead with the other, eyes squeezed shut in concentration. “Purple… purple… all I see is purple…”
Adorabelle nodded and then realized he couldn’t see her, but didn’t want to break his concentration.
“His… his voice… he said…” Bronze Coin suddenly started.
“What? Who is he? What did he say?” Adorabelle said, leaning closer.
“I don’t… I don’t remember a name or a face or anything… just… just purple… everything looked purple… and he said…” Bronze Coin inhaled shakily. When he spoke, it was very slowly and carefully. “‘I’ve never tried this on a pony before, but aggression is aggression. 15 should do it.’” He looked at Adorabelle expectantly.
“That’s all?” Adorabelle said, double-checking.
“The rest is a blank until I r-realized what.. what I’d… done…” Bronze Coin shudders and rests his head in his hooves.
“B-but it sounds like you were just the victim of a spell! It’s not your fault!” Adorabelle said.
“Adorabelle… I… I wanted to believe that for so long, but for my treatment to work I can’t believe lies…”
“But what if it’s not a lie?” Adorabelle said.
“My brain was scanned soon after I was arrested and nothing was found. There’s no known spell on record that can alter brains and be removed without a trace that fast.”
“But what if there was a new one? It sounded experimental. Maybe. Because, like, he said he’d never tried it on a pony.”
“No, stop, stop, stop!” Bronze Coin grabbed at his head. “It’s not true, it’s not true, I’m just a monster and that’s all I’ll ever be because they don’t know how to fix me!”
“That’s not true!” Adorabelle said, trying to shout over her uncle’s ramblings. When it didn’t work, she pushed herself forward towards him, nothing on her mind but reaching out to comfort him, to wrap her forelegs around him and tell him it would be fine…
When her comforting hug was met with panic, Adorabelle thought maybe she should be angry. Here she was, trying to give her uncle some physical contact to calm him down, and he was staring at her and trying to squirm away like Violet Edge, like he thought something was wrong with her for doing such a thing, but she was to confused at his reaction to be mad.
“Adorabelle, get back!” he shouted.
“Why—“
And then she felt a sharp pain in her neck, causing her entire body to tingle like it was falling asleep, and she fell limply to the side, her body no longer responding. She’d been hit by this a lot when she startled Safeguard; it was a spell to interrupt nerve signals. Standard issue for prison guards.
As she fell her face pointed towards the window between the prisoner’s cell and the visitor’s room, and she saw the psychologist staring incredulously at the glass separating them. An oddly shaped hole was melted into it.
An Adorabelle shaped hole.
She’d completely forgotten about the glass in her haste to make sure her uncle was okay. And so she’d… walked right through it.
She hadn’t known she could do that.
***
Adorabelle had no idea how Safeguard managed to hear about the incident, but he did. Before she regained any feeling in her limbs, he appeared to whisk her away to a small examination room in a Magical Anomaly Containment Unit facility. This wasn’t the first time Adorabelle had been to MACU, given her anomalous talent, and it wasn’t the first time the MACU head Safeguard had wanted to interrogate her.
The first had been the day of her GUA entrance exam. She’d failed every bit of the test miserably and the testers had locked themselves in a nearby room to, probably, discuss how they were going to break the news to her, and Adorabelle had gotten impatient and yanked the heavily locked door open to ask if they were finished yet.
Some of them had panicked, while others had the presence of mind to not make much of it, but Safeguard was contacted, and she’d gotten an impression of just how dangerous her powers could be.
Now here she was again, with Safeguard circling her, looking on edge.
“You just stepped through the glass,” Safeguard said. “Did you have any notion that you could do that?”
Adorabelle shook her head vigorously. “I’ve, like, never done anything like that before and, like, I wasn’t planning to, really. I’m sorry I broke it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Safeguard said. “This is a new facet of your powers we’ve had no indication existed before.”
“All I’ve ever done before was locks….” Adorabelle said, fiddling with her hooves. “Like, what does this mean?”
Safeguard sighed. “I don’t know.”
The next few hours were spent in interviews and analysis. Some of the workers were familiar, some not.
By the time she got out, woozy from drawn blood and other samples, it was very dark. She looked up at the stars and sighed; she really needed rest, but she promised Freddy she’d tell him about what Mechanical Flight had to say, so there wasn’t much help for it.
Then again, Mechanical Flight probably wasn’t returning to Cloudsdale right away, since Cloudsdale was clear on the other side of Equestria this year. Maybe instead she could find out where Mechanical Flight was staying and actually gain some useful information. Something besides his vague fearful shouts.
Where to start on such an investigation? What would her mom do?
Make Mechanical Flight cry if his reaction was any indication… no. No, that wasn’t right. Her mom wasn’t that bad.
That established, Adorabelle set a course for the palace to try and pick up some gossip. Starburst and Celestia were such friends; surely she’d hear something about where he was staying, right…?
Unless of course it was so late that he was already gone and everyone was asleep…
Adorabelle got as near the castle as seemed safe without looking like a creepy spy and circled around it, looking as best as she could like a tourist or an insomniac out on a stroll. Meanwhile she lit up her horn in her eavesdropping spell, focusing on searching for the names and voices of the two Rainbow Factory workers. The babble of voices was hard to pick apart, but she kept searching for ten minutes, then twenty…
“Have you seen Mechanical Flight?” Starburst’s voice asked somewhere in the castle.
Adorabelle paused and checked where she was. Not only could her spell hear Starburst, she could see Starburst hovering near the castle wall, talking with a guard.
“Or a cyan unicorn mare with sparks in her mane?” Starburst pressed. “Because I’m scared he went with her…”
“Do you mean his wife?” the guard asked.
“Yes! Yes I do! Oh drat…” Starburst kicked off the wall above the guard’s head and flew off towards Canterlot. “Thank you!” he called over his shoulder to the guard.
“Not that direction…” the guard halfheartedly called after him. Then he sighed. “Dang it.”
“What was that creep asking about?” another guard asked the first one.
“Looking for that electric mare who came up earlier hunting her husband down. Said he needed to spend a night with her because he kept dodging her while he was in town. What a weirdo…” the guard said.
“Didn’t she attack him when she saw him though?” the other guard asked.
“It wasn’t an attack; she just shocked him a little. Pegasi have that happen a lot I’m sure and anyways, they really are married. She carries the certificate around with her because apparently ponies don’t always believe her…”
“I guess if he married her he must like it…” the other guard said.
“Yeah… anyway, I was trying to tell Starburst that they went to the south, but he just flew off to the north because I guess he thinks he knows best or something. Think I should bother chasing him?”
“Nah; it’s none of his business what his employees are into,” the other guard said.
They then started talking about hoofball scores; Adorabelle ended her spell and galloped off to the south.
This was an even longer shot than wandering around the castle, probably, but after she got a fair distance from the castle she started her eavesdropping spell again, trying to hear Mechanical Flight’s voice. He had to be somewhere here. Probably a hotel, so she wandered around an area with lots of inns.
There wasn’t really anypony up this late. There were some parents comforting babies and other small children and some other insomniacs, but it was mostly pretty quiet. Ideal for hunting down a single pony… unless of course he was asleep. That was always a possibility. Maybe the guard was wrong and he really did just have a nice evening with his wife; Starburst seemed worried and she couldn’t imagine Mechanical Flight being comfortable in a room with a mare but… yeah, on second thought, she didn’t believe he’d just had a nice evening with his wife. Adorabelle found herself walking faster.
“Please leave me alone…” Mechanical’s voice whimpered.
Adorabelle snapped to attention and raced towards the source of the sound, arriving outside a small motel.
“Alone?” said a different voice, female, but grating. “Alone is what I’ve been for nearly a year because youse keep hiding in that little factory of youses. And now youse back, youse gonna give me some attention, comprende?”
Adorabelle found the door the voices were coming from. This was tricky, since the motel door was obviously locked. Well… maybe it didn’t latch correctly. She told herself this was completely possible as she pressed her full weight on the door.
She stumbled in and shouted “It’s me!” before the two screams of the ponies inside drowned her out. She had enough time to briefly take in the small room, with Mechanical Flight hoofcuffed to the bed and a slim, sexy blue unicorn mare standing on the bed over him, when the mare turned to her and lit up like a firework. A lightning bolt surged from the mare to Adorabelle, too fast to dodge.
Screaming, Adorabelle fell to the floor, writhing in agony as the electricity shook her whole body. Finally it stopped long enough for Adorabelle to breathe.
“Whadda youse doing, scaring us like that?” the mare demanded. “Youse just turn around and get back out, youse hear?”
Adorabelle lay there, twitching, sobbing. Her original plan of barging in and saving Mechanical Flight now seemed foolish.
Mechanical Flight had shifted slightly to stare at her; there was pity in his eyes, but he made no move to even express disapproval.
Adorabelle tucked her legs under her but didn’t stand up yet. “I-I’ll tell the cops.”
“Tell them what? That I reflexively and nonlethally shocked somepony who barged into my locked hotel room? Yeah, the only pony getting a charge will be youse, creep girl.”
Dang it, she was right; this was breaking and entering. What had Adorabelle been thinking? Oh, right, the all-purpose excuse: “I’ll, like, just tell them I thought it was my room. Like, my powers are on record; Safeguard will bail me out.”
The blue-grey mare lowered her eyelids. “Youse bluffing; what powers could youse have that’d make youse special enough to have a hotline to Safeguard?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Adorabelle said, smiling angelically.
“Not working. Out.”
Adorabelle looked at Mechanical Flight again. The poor stallion was just as twitchy as ever and being electrocuted probably didn’t help, but he shrunk away from her compassionate expression. There was only fear in his eyes. “Y-you should j-j-just leave…” he whimpered. “It’ll be… it’ll be easier on… on everyone…”
Adorabelle folded her ears back. She couldn’t leave him like this, but she hadn’t even bothered to come up with a plan; she’d just barged in without thinking and now maybe there was nothing she could do anymore…
What would Freddy and his friends do in a situation like this…?
And like that, inspiration came to her. Instead of leaving, she dashed into the small bathroom and slammed the door.
“H-hey!!” she heard the mare shout. There was a loud hammering on the door and the power flickered, but the latch held. “Whadda youse doing? Youse can’t hide in there forever! Get out!”
Ignoring her, Adorabelle assessed the small bathroom. The ventilation shaft she was hoping for was right above the toilet, but the spool of dental floss, probably left by a previous guest, gave her inspiration too. She quickly tied the floss around the doorknob, trying to make it so that a good hard tug would open the latch too, not that she had time to test it.
“Oh, that’s how youse wanna play? I can wait,” the older mare said.
Adorabelle climbed onto the toilet and telekinetically pulled off the grate on the air shaft; it was a good thing she was skinny and small. Taking the floss in her telekinetic grip, she climbed inside, careful to let the thread unwind as she crawled.
“Look, I’m sorry for being so scary,” the electric mare said unconvincingly. “If youse come out now, I promise not to hurt youse, okay?”
Adorabelle squirmed along until she was next to a grate in the bathroom next door; she hoped no one was staying there. Pulling this new grate off, she lowered herself into the next door bathroom. Then she quietly nosed open the door.
She was in luck; the next door room was indeed empty. The floss was running low on lead though, so the next part would have to be fast. She lit her horn to make the way clear, then jerked the floss hard. At the same time, she dashed out the motel door back onto the balcony and ran back to Mechanical Flight’s room, with the door still open.
“Ha!” she heard the electric mare saying from somewhere in the bathroom. “Youse shoulda known better than to hide in a metal tube! I’ll turn youse crispy on the count of five unless youse surrender!”
Adorabelle dashed as quietly as possible to Mechanical Flight’s side. “Where’s the key?” she whisperd to the wide-eyed stallion desperately.
Instead of answering, he just tugged his hoof away. The hoofcuffs didn’t just unlock; they fell into several separate links like a magic trick.
“Five, four, three, two…” the mare counted.
Adorabelle grabbed Mechanical Flight’s forehoof and half-dragged him out of the hotel room as the mare counted to one and all the lights in the motel started flickering.
Neither checked to see if they were being pursued; they just ran. Through the quiet streets, past motels and shops into a residential district and out again.
Finally they stopped on a small high-rise shopping street for breath. Adorabelle guided Mechanical Flight over to a small bench, where he collapsed, shaking, sweating, and sobbing. Adorabelle tried to stroke him comfortingly but he flinched away from her touch, so she just sat there awkwardly wishing there was something she could do.
When Mechanical finally spoke, it was to whisper, “She’s going to kill me…”
“No she won’t,” Adorabelle said. “We’ll go to the police-”
“No no no no no no no!!” Mechanical Flight screamed.
Adorabelle reeled back in shock. “Wh-why not?”
“She’ll just kill me even more then!” Mechanical Flight said, stumbling off the bench with wings spread wide, ready to take off at any moment. “Nothing will stick! She really is my wife and so she really can do that!”
“No she can’t!” Adorabelle shouted back. Then, softer, “No, no, like, it’s still illegal to hurt you even if you two are married-”
“You don’t know Shocking Snap like I do,” Mechanical Flight said, trembling again. “She’s even been arrested before and it didn’t work. She was out in a few days. If I accused her of something she didn’t do then nothing but pain will come from that.”
“Something she… didn’t do?” Adorabelle cocked her head. “Wait, uh… did you want to be there or not?”
“I was… careless….” Mechanical Flight bit his lower lip. “I should have stayed closer to Starburst, and then we could have just gone home and not run into her…”
“That wasn’t the question,” Adorabelle said.
Mechanical Flight hid behind a lamppost. “Please don’t unlock me! I don’t want to talk about it!”
“Okay, okay, fine!” Adorabelle said. Why couldn’t he just let her rescue him? What was his deal?
Mechanical Flight stayed behind the lamppost, shivering.
“You… you really don’t want to leave her, do you?”Adorabelle said.
“It’s never about what we want, is it?” Mechanical said. “We just endure what we have to. What we’re given. We can’t just run away.”
“…We?” Adorabelle asked. “You mean, like, you and me?”
“Stallions,” Mechanical Flight said, slowly going back to her side. “You’re the ones with all the power so we go and do what you want.”
Adorabelle leaned away from him. “N-no, not like that. I’m not powerful. Where’d you get these ideas?”
Mechanical Flight sat next to Adorabelle, as far away as possible. “My dad and Iron Flight and Starburst are some of the bravest stallions I know and they know they can’t fight mares. My dad knew you can’t even run away. I learned from them.”
That was sad… Wait. “Huh? You don’t think your dad ran away?” Adorabelle said, blinking. “But Iron Flight said…”
“That’s what they all said.” Mechanical Flight started shaking. “Maybe they didn’t get it or maybe they were too scared to face the truth, but that’s what they all said.”
“Scared to face what truth?” Adorabelle said.
Mechanical Flight wrapped his forelegs around himself like he was trying to hold himself together. “That… that place… killed him. All five of them. Those monsters. Those sick, twisted machines…”
“What? You mean Freddy’s and Freddy?” Adorabelle said.
“You’ve seen them,” Mechanical Flight said, getting twitchy. “You must know if you’ve seen them. They’re nothing but killers.”
“N-no, no they’re not!” Adorabelle said, panicked.
“Oh, they are, they are. Built to kill. To rip and shred flesh from bone. Without remorse.”
“Stop saying that about my friends!” Adorabelle cried.
“But it’s the truth. That whole place was nothing but death.” Mechanical Flight turned aside. “That’s why it had to go.”
“…go…?” Adorabelle felt sudden dread in her stomach.
“Yes.” Mechanical Flight seemed calmer now. “It’s all burnt to ashes now. I stopped them. No one has to die anymore.”
Adorabelle started shaking. “No… no… you didn’t… you didn’t…!”
Mechanical Flight had a peaceful smile on his face. “It’s over now… Everyone is free…”
Adorabelle shook Mechanical Flight by the shoulders. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “What is wrong with you!? You killed entirely innocent creatures in some kind of sick attempt at justice! They aren’t the monsters! You are the monster!”
Mechanical Flight’s expression turned to one of fear, but Adorabelle could see no guilt in his eyes. He was just anxious because a female was near him. Of course.
Adorabelle pushed him away and ran towards the bridge to the chocolate district. It had to be a lie… it couldn’t be true…
When she reached the bridge, she slowed to a stop. Something was there that wasn’t before: a shimmering, translucent, silver barrier.
Then she cursed herself for stopping. If she hadn’t, then maybe with her talent she could have made it to the other side.
“Chocolate District’s closed for the night.”
Adorabelle screamed and whirled around to find Starburst and Mechanical Flight standing behind her. “D-don’t do that!” she shouted at them.
Starburst had one wing around Mechanical Flight like the latter was a baby chick. “My apologies; I just wanted to thank you for finding him for me.”
Adorabelle shook with fury again. “He said he burned down Freddy’s!” She pointed accusingly at him and he flinched away.
“N-no… no I didn’t…” Mechanical Flight said.
“Yes you did! Less than an hour ago!”
“She lies!” Mechanical Flight whimpered, pressing tighter into Starburst’s side.
“Shh,” Starburst told him, talking like a mother with an infant. Then he turned back to Adorabelle. “You must have misunderstood. If anything burned down tonight there would’ve been more of a fuss. I flew over the Chocolate District earlier and there were no flames, or smoking ruins.”
“But…” Adorabelle said.
“Shh,” Starburst said, but harsher this time. “It’s very, very late and my engineer is incredibly stressed out; now is not the time for this. We’re all going to go home and get some rest; if you have any further complaints you know where to find us.” Starburst tried to wave Adorabelle away.
Adorabelle slunk a little ways, then turned and said over her shoulder, “Hey, what do you mean the Chocolate District is closed?”
“Prissy unicorns block the bridge when it’s late enough at night because they’re convinced if they don’t, criminals will go over the bridge and kill them in their sleep. Or so the story goes,” Starburst said.
“I’ve never seen it before though…” Adorabelle said.
“It only goes up at 1 AM and little fillies like you have no business being around here that late anyway,” Starburst said. Then, pointedly, “Speaking of which…”
Adorabelle hung her head. “Yeah… I… I guess it’s late…”
Starburst guided Mechanical Flight away, then looked over his shoulder. “We really do owe a lot to you. What you did was very brave.”
“Or maybe just stupid…” Adorabelle muttered darkly to herself. Somehow, realizing that the pony she rescued might be just as twisted as the one she rescued him from dampened any joy she might have felt from being the hero.
She pressed one hoof against the barrier. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she whispered to it.
At least tomorrow was Sunday and there were no school activities this time…