//------------------------------//
// An Abused Privilege 
// Story: The Pony Of Vengeance 
// by BradyBunch 
//------------------------------//

It was black. The inside of Count Privilege’s eyelids were completely black. That was the first thing he could remember. The first thing that mattered.

The second thing he could remember was that his head hurt. A lot. It was the pain in his head that made him stir, actually, and he weakly, slowly, opened his eyes.

At first he thought he hadn’t--he could still see only black in front of his face. But after he blinked a few times to make sure that yes, he was, in fact, opening his eyes, they had adjusted to the oppressive darkness and he was able to make out the faint dark shapes of several things.

There were a few tables filled to overflowing right in front of him. Their silhouettes were tall and bulky atop the tables, and the space he was in was small and crowded. The lights were off, and he could feel like he was lying at a diagonal angle on something. He felt a tight strap around all four of his hooves, digging into his flesh.

He tilted his head to the left to see what it was. He could see a thick leather strap around his hoof, all right, and that strap was in turn attached to a table that he was lying on. The table felt hard and cold beneath his body.

Count Privilege at this point was rather confused, and more than a bit miffed. What was he doing here? He missed his soft, velvety bed. He missed the soft body of his third wife at his side when he laid down in it. He missed the spacious interior of his opulently furnished mansion, just outside the Manehattan borders. Why wasn’t he there?

He turned his gaze to stare straight ahead. And he gave a yelp of surprise and jumped backwards so his head hit the back of the diagonal table he was lying on.

At the opposite end of the small, dark room was a pair of glowing red loops looking him in the eyes.

Count Privilege’s breaths came short and fast. It was him! He tried valiantly to struggle against his restraints, but as he twitched his right arm he felt a jolt of pain run through his arm. He turned his gaze to his right arm and saw a long, bladed feather sticking out of it at an odd angle. An unbelievable amount of dried blood had surrounded the wound and had run in a thin river down his arm to his torso and had frozen into a hard blood clot.

“Aww, wittle Count Priviwege is hurt!” the silhouette at the other end of the room said in an annoyingly mocking tone. “Would you wike some milk? Hmm? Pwecious wittle baby.”

“Ironheart,” Count Privilege snarled in what a voice that he tried to make hard and authoritative, but it instead came out as a thin gasp. “How--what--”

The tall form with the softly, softly glowing eyes came forth on two clawed legs. On each footfall, Count Privilege could hear a distinct clink, and he could observe his bladed tail swishing back and forth like a snake on the concrete floor, creating a deafening scratching noise with each motion. Count Privilege gritted his teeth and folded his ears back at the hideous noise that rose in pitch with each second.

“What are you making that face for?” Ironheart asked in such a calm voice. His form wasn’t even distinctly visible yet, and his eyes were still the only thing that didn’t look like a silhouette on him. “I haven’t even started on you yet.”

“Wha--what are you going to…”

Ironheart’s metal fist snaked out and latched onto Count Privilege’s forearm, right underneath the wound in his arm. He leaned his head forward so that the Count could finally see his face. It was grimly gleeful, his mouth twisted into a tight-gritted upwards grin. His facial structure was so unnaturally similar to that of a normal pony that it was disconcerting to Count Privilege to see it on anything that wasn’t made of living flesh.

“I am going to make you feel,” Ironheart whispered in the deepest voice Count Privilege had ever heard, dripping with malice and wrath. “Everything that you put me through.”

“Wh-wh-what I p-put you through?” Count Privilege stammered out. The pain in his arm was so distracting to him that he could barely speak.

Ironheart twisted his arm again, and Count Privilege shrieked. Then Ironheart let go.

“You truly had no idea what lengths I was driven to because of you,” Ironheart whispered malevolently.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Count Privilege screamed.

Ironheart whipped the back of his hand to Count Privilege’s face. It left a mark under his eye, and Count Privilege let out a groan of pain.

“Oh, yes you do,” Ironheart snarled.

“I haven’t done anything to you!” Count Privilege yelled at him. The mark on his face was bleeding.

Ironheart’s gaze sharpened until his eyes were as thin as daggers. “A decade ago, you worked on a project directed by Princess Celestia. A decade ago, you decided to fund a project and supervise the workers laboring for you. And out of all the worthless little brats assigned to work on the project, one of them stood out to you.”

Count Privilege gazed up at the monstrous entity. “Alpha Nevada? Is that... really you?”

“That’ll cost you a rib,” Ironheart remarked. He reached forward, pinched the bottom rib on Count Privilege’s left rib cage and squeezed.

Snap

Count Privilege let out a despairing shriek that echoed and echoed around the small cavern. It hurt! It hurt so much! He had never before experienced that kind of pain in his life. The furthest he had gone down that path was the occasional trip, getting banged on the elbow by a desk, and a paper cut. He was completely and woefully unprepared for this.

“You dare compare me to that creature?” Ironheart was speaking. “I am nothing like him. The main difference between us is that I’m alive.”

Through the haze of pain, Count Privilege was able to make out that small detail. Struggling for breath, he asked, “What...do you...mean?” Why was Ironheart being so cryptic with him? What did he want?

“Oh, I killed him,” Ironheart said remorselessly and dismissively. “He made the mistake of visiting Manehattan one time a few years ago for a vacation of his. He didn’t watch over his shoulder. I slit his throat from ear to ear, buried a stake in his heart, and buried him seventeen feet deep head down first under the sea.” He smiled gleefully. “Ohoho, you’re not happy about that, are you? Oh, you’re so mad, and you’re so outraged! The pwecious wittle baby’s soo fussy!”

Count Privilege was indeed outraged, and he was indeed wrestling against the leather straps holding him to the table. Alpha Nevada had developed a link with Count Privilege when they had first started working because of their similar interest in rising to the top and viewing competition as an enemy. And now…

Now…

Now he was just another victim of Ironheart. Now he was just another meaningless martyr.

Because of Ironheart. All because of Ironheart!

“No, Count Privilege, I’m not that piece of filth. I’m not.”

“Who?” Count Privilege asked desperately. “Who are you?”

“I am the pony that has become more than a pony.”

Count Privilege tilted his head to the side, his side still crying out with excruciating pain. “You still aren’t answering anything!”

“And that’s the thing! I don’t have to do your will anymore, Count!” Ironheart declared. “I no longer have to bow to your whims and your wishes and your desires.”

“TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!” Count Privilege roared in pain at him.

Ironheart looked smug. “Beg for it.”

“PLEASE! TELL ME THIS INSTANT!”

“Ohoho! Somepony’s being a demandy-pants!”

“I WANT TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE THIS INSTANT!”

“Beg, Count. Beg for it.”

Count Privilege calmed himself down enough to legibly say, “Please, Ironheart! Please, tell me who you are!”

Ironheart gave a sinister smile and leaned his head in so close to Count Privilege’s face that the Count could see the inner workings of Ironheart in between the curving faceplates in his cheeks and forehead. “I am your employee.”

Count Privilege looked confused.

“Oh, don’t pretend like you had nothing to do with me. I know that you intended to have Alpha plagiarize the blood, sweat, and tears I put into serving Celestia. I know that you saw me being hurt, but did nothing to stop it. I know that you loved showing Bright Mind his place, and placing impossible burdens upon his back for fun. I know you treated me like the scum of the earth. I know that you drove Bright Mind to do the impossible--to create an artificial machine and implant his own soul inside of it.” He gave a small chuckle. “Does that clear everything up, Cunt?”

Count Privilege had frozen solid.

No…

No, it couldn’t be!

“No…” he whispered in absolute shock. His breaths made his stomach rise high, and made his ribcage pang with pain. “No, it...no! It...it c-c-can’t be y-y-you! You...you died! I saw your body! You can’t be real! You must be lying!”

“I am many things, Count Privilege,” Ironheart allowed equably. “But a liar is not one of them.” Out of his fist jutted a small razor-edged knife. “How naughty of you to accuse me of such.”

Count Privilege was incapable of speaking. It was too shocking for him to process. He had almost forgotten about that annoying little prick in that project to develop weapons that he didn’t know how to work. It was from that long ago, and he was still bitter and angry over it?

Then, incredibly, Count Privilege began to chuckle, hurting his rib. He didn’t care. “That’s what you’re so mad at me for?” he asked incredulously. “All those years ago, and you’re still bitter at me over something so trivial?”

Ironheart’s fingers pinched around his cheeks, forcing him to keep his mouth open. His foot had reached upward and had clenched him in the groin, making him bellow through his open mouth. Ironheart wasn’t just pressing lightly, either; he was pressing hard, and Count Privilege knew that Ironheart was intending on killing him right then and there. His testicles felt like they were about to burst open. His claws were really digging in, too, and they were sharper than he thought they were. And just before he was sure that he would really, actually have his groin be ground into powder, he released his foot.

“It’s trivial to you, of course,” Ironheart breathed in his face. “It’s always trivial to the tormentors. Such as how your life is trivial to me right now. But torment is never trivial to the tormented. It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. You may forget, but I never do. You may forgive yourself, but I will never forgive you.” He let go of his cheeks.

“I never forgave you either,” Count Privilege tried to retort feebly.

“And look where you are now because of that,” Ironheart said simply. “Bound to a table, with no chance of surviving to see the next day. Oh, you truly do have all the power here, Cunt. All of your money and all of your words mean nothing here now.”

Ironheart smiled then. “That’s something I almost forgot to mention, actually. Since I’m logged in to every electronic in the city, I have complete access to all of your bank accounts and business stocks. I figured, since you’re not really going to be alive for much longer, that I ought to do something useful with all of that money you’ve got.”

Count Privilege made an aggressive noise, but it sounded more like a scaredy-cat noise. “Wh-what did you... DO?” he roared at him.

Ironheart only gave an annoyingly simpering grin. “I cashed every stock and balance you ever had, raked in every last coin from your dead criminal associates, combined everything into one massive account, and gave it all to charity bank accounts all over Equestria. Really, the animal shelters and adoption shelters all over the country are praising your name right now. You should be proud.”

“NO!” Count Privilege wailed in despair. He had spent years amassing an enormous fortune, and here it was, undercut from him in an instant. “MY MONE-E-E-EY!”

“Ah. I knew it.” Ironheart gave a sickeningly terrifying grin, so close to Count Privilege’s face. “Wittle Count Pwivilege only cares about his money. Not his wife. Not the people he plans to rule over. Not his passion for love or life. You focus on the one thing you think will stay with you forever--money.

“And I gave instructions-- and a hefty sum of your money-- to a demolition company to tear down your mansion, as well. It should be well underway by now. And there’s one more thing.” His eyes brightened even more. “Don’t think that your lewd activities were unnoticed. I set up secret cameras to observe every single barmaid you lured over to the corner. I have recordings of every one of your little patty-cake games with them.”

Count Privilege’s breathing got faster. His broken rib cried out in even more pain. “Don’t you...don’t you dare...if you sent them out, I swear I’ll--”

“Too late!” Ironheart interrupted him.

“I wasn’t finished talking,” Count Privilege said haughtily.

Ironheart slashed the small knife blade across his lower thigh, and a long, dirty cut appeared in his leg. Ignoring the gasp of pain from the politician, Ironheart said, “I wasn’t done either.”

He admired his handiwork. “As I was saying, Cunt, I sent the recordings to your wife anonymously yesterday morning. She’ll be seriously reconsidering a relationship with you now. Especially with a dead pony.”

“Not...not my wife!” Count Privilege cried. “Not...not her! I love her!”

“Why do you think she matters?” Ironheart casually asked. “Money’s the only thing that matters to you. You and I both know it, and now she does as well.”

Count Privilege glared up at him with all of the hate he could muster.

“Murderer,” Ironheart crooned. “Adulterer. Thief. Give me one reason why I should not beat you to death.”

“Let the past die,” Count Privilege pleaded, stretched helplessly out on the metal table. “It was so long ago!”

“Of course I’ll let the past die,” Ironheart said with another broad smile. He held up the small knife blade in front of his face. “I’m going to kill it myself.”

“Mercy,” Count Privilege whispered. “Please. Mercy, please!”

Ironheart stopped. He looked down, appearing to be thoughtful.

“Mercy,” he said, almost as if to himself. “That’s a funny word. If you think about it, it’s the greatest of gifts any one pony could bestow upon another. A second chance to redeem yourself.”

Ironheart shook his head. “But from my own experience, you appear to have no conception of the word mercy. It’s such a small word, but you don’t know what it means, you stupid idiot. From everything I’ve seen you do, to me and to others, you had no conception of when to stop. You didn’t know that you were doing terrible things for your own enjoyment. You pushed me to the breaking point. You had everyone hate me and hurt me, and when I tried to get your help, you gave me a simpering sneer and turned away.”

Ironheart paused and held his gaze upon Count Privilege until the politician lowered his head to avoid staring into his eyes.

“And after the lies, after the pain and deceit, after the hate you directed at me…” His voice dropped to a deathly whisper. “You... have the gall... to ask... for mercy.”

Count Privilege was waiting, anticipating his death at any moment.

“Very well, then.” Ironheart relaxed himself. “I will show you mercy.”

Count Privilege twisted his face into one of relief, then one of confusion.

“You get a share of mercy equal to that which you have dispensed.”

Quicker than the eye could see, Ironheart pressed the tip of his small knife blade into his nemesis's lower gums. Privilege’s diamond-colored eyes wavered in desperation as he felt the tip puncture the sensitive flesh in his mouth.

“Now, I believe you need some dental work.”

And he started to push and saw his double-edged blade into his dark pink gums.

An astonishing amount of blood poured out of his gums, collected in his lower lip, and dripped out of Count Privilege’s mouth. The blood was thick with mixed saliva, and Count Privilege was soon covered in it. The noises coming out of his mouth were awfully unnerving. It sounded like the damned souls in Tartarus, being held prisoner by the demons holding them down. But this was so much more real than Tartarus because here, there was a body that could be hurt, a fragile piece of flesh that could easily be torn, as opposed to an immaterial spirit suffering mental and emotional torture.

“You know why you’re bleeding like that?” Ironheart asked of him harshly as he applied even more pressure to his pushing into his gums. “It’s because you’re not flossing. You idiot. Why haven’t you been flossing, you idiot?!” He swiped the knife out of his gums, slicing his right cheek in half.

Tears were pouring out of Count Privilege’s eyes and mixing with the blood all over his face, turning his visage into a horribly disfigured remnant of his original state. Awful noises came out of his despairing, gory mouth.

“Why are you crying?” Ironheart demanded of him, smacking him in the face again. “Why are you crying? Stop being weak! You’re better than that, so stop being so weak and grow UP ALREADY!”

He kicked him in the stomach so hard the table he was strapped to got shoved backward, and a large purple bruise appeared right on his sternum. Undoubtedly his snapped rib had sustained more damage, and Count Privilege was really making the terrible noises now, making more blood pour out of his mouth and onto his chest like a gruesome waterfall.

“It’s your fault for feeling the pain, Count! If you’re feeling pain, it’s your fault for allowing that in, not my fault for giving it to you!”

Count Privilege began to bluster and make admittedly pathetic noises as more blood poured out of his damaged mouth and painted his torso an unsavory red.

“Oh, shut up,” Ironheart snapped at him. “You’re so strong and powerful and influential. Figure out a way to stop me instead of your filthy whining.” He shifted two of the fingers on his right hand into a short-range pistol and pointed it at the Count. “I SAID DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, YOU OLD HORNY SLUT!”

Bang

The bullet had lodged in his back hoof, easy to aim for when the target was spread cross-eagle. Even more blood rushed out of his hoof as well. Ironheart could see that at this point, there was going to be more blood out of him than remained in him. So he then leaned up close in his face to allow the suffering Count to see his victorious expression.

“Please!” Count Privilege said, but with the way his mouth was now open and deformed, it sounded more like “Weapse!”

“No,” Ironheart said simply. He swiped his left fist upward, and the Infinisteel fist, at an unstoppable velocity, passed through his spread crotch. A sickening crunch could be heard as a piece of his pelvis was chipped off and lodged in his flesh, and his lower outer organs were torn to pieces. Blood dripped to the ground beneath, and his pubic skin and busted organs were torn and hanging off at a strange angle.

“You know,” Ironheart casually said, ignoring the screams bellowing from the battered and abused Privilege, “You know, this isn’t even what I really wanted. What I really wanted to do was to make you feel all of the stress and disappointment I had to have heaped upon my back when I worked for you. What I wanted to do was have you be my personal slave, and to criticize everything you did for me and to call you lazy after a hard day’s work. I really to call you stupid and unproductive and useless whenever you did something right. I wanted to demean you to the point where you would be the one believing that you really did mean nothing, and you would be the one to kill yourself.”

He smiled cruelly. “But I also wanted to beat you to death with my bare hands, so I suppose I would have to sacrifice something.”

Ironheart ripped the leather restraints off of the Count’s hooves and hurled him to the floor. Even more despairing noises came from the Count’s mouth, and blood followed him as he traveled from the table to the ground. He struggled weakly to wriggle away, but he stopped when he felt himself unable to stand up.

“You know, I’m surprised,” Ironheart commented. “I would have thought you would have blacked out by now. You’re more resilient than you appear to be.”

Ironheart kicked him in the stomach, and he went limp.

“All the better for me, though!” He stooped down. “You know, I’ve been dreaming about the day when I would kill you for such a long time now... and it's like I always dreamed. Add to that the ponies and griffons I’ve already killed, and everyone else that’s going to die tomorrow, and it’s been a pretty good week.”

Ironheart kicked him again, rolling him onto his belly.

“You’re so powerful, Count! Figure out a way to stop me!”

He kicked him in the stomach again. Only a little moan came from him now.

“Oh, you’re not so strong after all? I knew it! You’re nothing! You were always NOTHING!”

He kicked him again, then stomped on his belly.

“WORTHLESS! YOU’RE WORTHLESS!”

Ironheart rammed his foot into his groin again. It was like he had kicked an unresponsive chair.

“LITTLE PIECE OF CRAP!”

He knelt on his torso and drew his head up with his left hand. His head was sticky with blood and was all but unrecognizable, but Ironheart hit him square in the jaw. The damaged gums attached to his jaw made his teeth wiggle back and forth, and one of them fell out and lodged in the back of his mouth.

He grabbed Count Privilege’s ear and pulled back hard. A loud rrrrriiiiip came as he tore his ear off, and Ironheart threw the disgusting thing aside. He grabbed a large clump of his silvery mane, coated and hardened in blood from the wounds all over him, and tore it out from its roots.

Ironheart continued to hit him to let out his feeling of frustration, pent-up from years and years of worthlessness and hate and shame and humiliation. He continued to hit him long after Count Privilege was dead at last, and his head was smashed open like a hollow egg, and little sticky bits of him were all over Ironheart’s fist and face and arm.

It was only ten minutes after Ironheart was sure that he was dead that he stopped at last. Ironheart stood up, panting hard from screaming and punching and beating and ripping and killing. He looked at the indistinguishable, scarlet remains that were once his enemy in complete disgust.

He thought that his revenge would feel triumphant and energizing. For the longest time, he felt like he was going to feel so much better after his victory. But looking at the mass of broken flesh, and the appalling pool of blood in his basement the pile of flesh was lying in, he instead felt sick to his stomach.

Confused and angry, Ironheart continued to gaze on his broken, beaten form. The more he looked, the more he felt sick. At first, he attributed it to the disgusting way he looked, with an ear torn off and his body beaten to a mushy pulp and his head smashed in. But the longer he looked, he realized that the reason he felt sick was that he was the one that had done it.

He looked down at his hands. From his fingertips to his elbows, they were covered in fresh red blood. Some of it had seeped into the cracks and crevices in his armor plating, and it would probably never get washed out. The blood would never be entirely gone from him.

Trying to ignore the sick feeling in his insides, Ironheart elongated his right arm into a shotgun, pointed it at the corpse, and fired at point-blank range. The body jolted as the buckshot hit him, but otherwise made no response. The shotgun pump jerked back and forth automatically, and he fired at the dead corpse again.

Ironheart fired five more times at the dead body, making more holes appear each time. It didn’t make him feel much better, though, and after the seventh shot he finally twisted around in a nauseated manner and stomped out of the basement door.

At this point, he was just beating a dead horse.





It was done.

Ironheart was free at last.

So why did he feel worse now than he did before?

Ironheart placed his head in between his knees as he hunched over on his couch in his sterile white lair. Directly in front of him was the Manehattan Project, now uncovered by the brown tarp. The last bolt had been pounded in, the last screw had been tightened, and the last bit of polish had been applied to it.

Ironheart had a headache. It seemed to be everywhere in his skull, both pressing from the inside of his head and from the outside, like his head was caught in a vise grip. His Infinisteel heart also hurt. It felt like it was too big for its proper place and made his chest uncomfortable.

“What... did... I... do?” Ironheart whispered to himself. He was confused as to why he felt so awful. Revenge was supposed to be sweet and cold. Like ice cream. But instead of the sweet feeling, Ironheart only felt the brain freeze.

He kicked the table in front of him in annoyance as he made the analogy. It had been so long since he had tasted anything sweet before. Being a machine now, he didn’t need to eat, even though he had a fully functioning digestive system made out of Infinisteel.

So long since he had tasted anything sweet. How could he achieve tasting anything sweet, when he constantly felt infuriated and confused?

Ironheart let out a snarl of disapproval to try to get his mind off of things, but it didn’t work.

It was always like this, now that he thought about it. Always he was of the impression that the world was a fallen, dark, and tempestuous place. But never before now had the thought entered his brain that he had helped contribute to making it so.

“No!” he cried as soon as he thought so. He stood up abruptly, banging his shin against the table edge. “No, I’m the sanitizer! Not the one that’s made it dirty in the first place!”

It wasn’t your fault that the world’s dirty, no. But you go after those that murder and commit felons and act untrustworthy to their fellow people. Look at you here, now. You’re murdering. You’re making the world a dark place. If there was another Ironheart out there, he would disapprove of what you’re doing and come after you and kill you.

“No!” Ironheart cried again. "Of course not!" He felt incredibly angry all of a sudden. He wanted to tear, to rip, to kill something. It was a compulsion more driving than Ironheart had felt before. More driving than the force of loving or spreading the gospel of friendship.

How could he love others if everyone in the world was a pony that was weak, or stupid, or foolish?

How was it that Twilight and her friends were able to do it?

“Go and ask them.”

Ironheart snapped his head up. It sounded familiar--so familiar to his memories. It couldn’t be--

“You idiot. Why are you thinking that you should deserve love? You get a share of love equal to that which you have dispensed.”

“Who are you?” Ironheart roared, swiveling his head around. “Where are you?”

“You know perfectly well who I am, Ironheart.”

Ironheart could see it now--he could see his face on the table in front of him. It was a nerdy face, one that made him feel disgusted to see. He recognized the large glasses, the drooping eyes, the breathing through the open mouth. He recognized the butt-ugly polo shirt he had on, and the frizzy dark mane atop his head.

“Go away!” Ironheart roared at him. “I abandoned you long ago!”

“You abandoned somepony, all right, but you will never be rid of me. No matter how hard you try, I will always be a part of you.”

“You are the life I left behind, Bright Mind. You are the pony I learned to hate. Go away and show your face no more.”

“How can I?” the face said, almost imprinted into the swirls of grain on the wooden table. “I am what is in the mirror. But the reflection doesn’t show what’s on the inside, does it?”

“I hate you, Bright Mind. And I always will.”

“Why?” the face asked.

“Because you’re weak. Because you did nothing to stop the tormentors in your life.”

“You hate me because I’m weak? How different are you from Alpha Nevada? How is your mindset any different from Count Privilege’s?”

Ironheart kicked the table, intentionally this time. “I killed you, and you’re not real.”

“But what comes out of my mouth is the same,” the face pointed out, shifting to the side, making the swirls of grain in the wood sift like wheat. “Whether it comes from my mouth or the mouth of the Elements of Harmony.”

Ironheart shifted his arm into a long shotgun and fired at the table with a resounding concussive BOOM that echoed around his white lair. Splinters flew into the air, and the wooden table collapsed.

“That was unnecessary,” Bright Mind commented, from all around him now. “Your poor table’s done nothing to you personally, and you go ahead and attack it and destroy it? Oh, wait, that actually makes sense, now that I think about it.”

Ironheart spun around furiously, trying to find where the voice had come from. He spotted it on an opposite wall, grinning like an idiot and squinting even harder at him from his oversized thick glasses. He had a pencil in his mouth now, and was chewing on the end of it like it was candy. Ironheart took a splinter of table in his hand and, in a fit of rage, hurled it across the room to strike Bright Mind in the face. The face made no reaction.

“What else are you going to do?” Bright Mind asked, spreading his hooves. His appallingly drab polo shirt was too small for him, and the sleeves moved to his armpits as he spread his arms. “Kill me?”

“SHUT UP!” Ironheart roared at him. He furiously kicked the remains of the table clear across the room, shattering and scattering them as they flew. “SHUT! UP! EVERY MINUTE YOU SPEAK IS MAKING SOMETHING INSIDE OF ME DIE! SO PLEASE! FOR THE LOVE OF CELESTIA! JUST! SHUT UP!”

The fervent declaration echoed all around the room, making it seem much louder than it really was. His voice was so loud that the Manehattan Project trembled on its foundations for just an instant. It had no effect on Bright Mind, however.

“Fine, then,” he said in his slurred and deep voice. “Fine, then I won’t say anything. You, on the other hoof…”

“DO NOT USE THAT EXCUSE ON ME!” Ironheart roared at nothing. “There is nothing we share in common! I killed you many years ago, and it was the happiest day of my life when I woke up to find myself turned into a god!”

“No,” Bright Mind said, in an annoyingly patronizing tone. “I’m not going to say anything I’ve said. Even though who you are now started with the thoughts you had when you were me. But now, right now, I’m going to make you remember what you’ve said.”

And Ironheart heard his own deep, quiet, and powerful voice come back to him, all around him.

From everything I’ve seen you do, to me and to others, you had no conception of when to stop. You didn’t know when the time was over. You didn’t know that you were doing terrible things for your own enjoyment.

Ironheart froze. He had just said that to Count Privilege, hadn’t he? How would it apply to--

Wait. Hold on a second. He had a point.

He didn’t know when to stop. He didn’t know when it had crossed the line. He was killing to make himself feel better, not to give justice to those that deserved it. He was killing to justify his darkness. It was a hellish circle. The output of darkness made his own evil rise to the surface. And he could feel his own darkness in his mouth. It felt burned on the surface of his tongue and made his insides clench.

“Stop it,” Ironheart whispered. “Stop it.”

You’re so powerful, Ironheart! Figure out a way to stop me!

The blunt answer was like a slap in the face, only normally he wouldn’t feel the slap. This particular slap actually made him reel his head back and made his heart skip a beat.

Oh, you’re not so strong after all? I knew it! You’re nothing! You were always NOTHING!

“NO!” Ironheart refused, firing into his wall over and over again with his long shotgun. The pounding cacophony of the gun blasts hurt his ears and drowned out his shouts of refusal. But the words came on, as strong as ever. Only they weren’t his own words.

Now you’ve become the very monster you were fighting to destroy. The rest of your victims were monsters, but you’ve killed more than all of them combined. You’re nothing but a slave to your own desires, like the people you kill to satisfy your lust for feeling better about yourself. You’re succumbing to your own desires. Oh, Ironheart, you’re simply the strongest person ever! How strong you must be, to fall to the level of hurting everyone you don’t like. Like a whining baby. That’s what you are, Ironheart. A whining baby that didn’t get what he wanted and is blaming everypony else for it.

Ironheart stopped firing into the wall and stared off into space. There was smoke rising, coiling, and twisting from the barrels of his gun and from the remains of the wall he had shot into. The room was filled with smoke, and he could barely see through the smoke to the opposite side.

He really was no different from Alpha Nevada and Count Privilege. He hated the nerdy, cringeworthy image of himself as much as or even more than they did. The three of them shared a common characteristic, and the characteristic was this: If you didn’t measure up to the standard of perfection, you hated them and hurt them.

You hated and hurt them because you were scared that’s what you would become.

Or what you could have been.

But how could you look at an inferior form of life and find something to love about them? They were worth almost nothing. How could you look at a willing sinner and love them? How could you observe the faults in a person and overlook them and not call them out on it?

What to do? What to do? There must be some way to make him feel better. But how?

How?

How could he know what truly mattered?

Bright Mind’s voice continued to speak.

It’s almost torturous to know that you’re wrong, to know that you were actually contributing to the darkness in the world. But how could you do it? How can you find and achieve true happiness when the world is dark and cold, and you now know that it was partially your fault, and there was nopony to blame but yourself for your actions? When your stomach feels like it’s going to shrivel up, and your head feels like it’s going to burst open, and you feel so soiled and wrong by everything you’ve done?

And then his mind drifted to Twilight Sparkle and her friends.

How was it that they were able to live in the world and not hate everyone else for it? How could they survive knowing their useless condition? The condition of not being able to change the mindsets of ponies?

“But I don’t want to change!” Ironheart admitted loudly, pressing a hand to his head. “I don’t want to change! What about me? What about my troubles? What about the world becoming a better place for me? I’ve already changed from being weak into being strong! Why do I need to adapt yet again to the whims of the dark world?” And for a moment he became enraged again, and he wanted to smack something in the face.

Ironheart sank back onto the couch and pressed his face into his hands. The vision--for that’s what Bright Mind’s face obviously was--had ended by now, and there were no dismembered voices drifting around him, and there were no more disturbing faces from his painful past. But the damage had been done. His table had been splintered, and the wall opposite Ironheart had been chewed into by a heavy barrage of buckshot.

What power did he truly have again? He had the power to kill, and he had loosed the restraints holding him back, which was all that truly mattered. The power to inflict pain was the only thing that truly mattered, because that's how you got people to do what you wanted.

But where had it gotten him now? What had it given him?

He had gotten his revenge, that’s what!

But what good had it done him?

Now his enemies would never hurt him again. That’s always worth the effort, isn’t it?

Friendship, hatred. Friendship, hatred. Friendship was magic. Friendship could solve absolutely every single problem you would ever, ever experience because it was just so insipidly blind.

But friendship was supposed to get rid of your enemies, right? If you were friends with everyone, nopony would hurt you ever again! It would be the same result as if he had killed everyone on the planet that was a threat to him and his progress in technology and ethics.

And yet hating others felt soooo good, gave you so much satisfaction when you finally picked a scab off your back in complete disgust that had been there giving you pain for as long as you could remember. Ponies were like that. Ponies were like scabs. Annoying and painful and stayed there longer than you wanted them to.

He didn’t know what to do anymore. He knew that he needed to remedy himself, that he wasn’t perfect, but he also knew that friendship had failed him. If it wasn’t friendship he was looking for, and it wasn’t hating every single being that came across his path, then what was it? Friendship wasn’t the only thing that mattered. It couldn’t be.

But how was it that it worked for Twilight?

Ironheart took his hands out of his face. He knew what he needed to do.

He quickly trudged down to the basement door of his lair and pulled out an unused garbage bag from a slot on the wall before opening the door and stomping down the steps to collect the bloody remains of his nemesis.

As long as he was going out to dispose of the garbage, he might as well meet with the Mane Six.





Twilight, Spike, and the rest of the girls came into their apartment after a long day. The events of what had happened had taken up the entire morning and afternoon. Now, in the late evening, they were all longing for their beds.

First, in the morning, they had talked to both the police commissioner and the mayor in the mayor’s office about evacuating the city of Manehattan. While there, Twilight learned that the first expeditionary troops to Manehattan had arrived the night before.

From after the meeting had ended and the orders had been distributed to evacuate the citizens of Manehattan, Twilight and the others had raced on over to the train station and found more troops piling in under the direction of Princess Cadence and her brother, Shining Armor. After an initially warm welcome of “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!”, the conversation had turned deathly serious. Princess Celestia and Princess Cadence would be arriving the next morning, and already military guards in gleaming gold armor were shuffling out to patrol the streets and help guide the evacuation.

The evacuation itself was well-executed. Apart from a few resilient individuals who refused to leave their homes simply out of stubborn survival instinct, most of the ponies, under the direction of the police departments, had seen that they wouldn’t stick around with an underground killer on the loose. Within several hours of the evacuation order being issued, trains full to bursting were already transporting civilians out of harm’s way. The Maneway was never busier since the time it was first built.

Twilight’s role in the evacuation had been as a guide in the Maneway to help the civilians reach their trains and lose nothing. It proved to be a herculean effort. Ponies jostled everyone else and didn’t say excuse me. Whistles blew, belongings were loaded, conversations went on over the massive sounds going on in the train station. For every train that left Manehattan full of civilians, there was another one that arrived carrying the Royal Guard.

Twilight noticed that sometimes the trains went over their normal capacity in order to accommodate those civilians that wanted to depart Manehattan. There were tears of farewell, cries of goodbyes. There were ponies separated from their mothers, and lovers from their special someponies. There were brothers looking after their younger siblings as the trains pulled out with them on board.

And at the end of the day, Twilight, Spike, and her friends were looking for some rest at last. Meeting up with the rest of her friends, who had all helped in the evacuation still underway in the streets, Twilight pushed open the door of her apartment.

It looked alright at first. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Nothing was tipped over. Nothing was displaced. And yet Twilight felt as though something in the room wasn’t normal. She paused after going just a few feet in.

“Twilight!” Spike groaned from directly behind her. “Come on! Go inside already!”

“Hold on,” Twilight said, cutting Spike off with a hoof to the side. “What’s that?”

On one of the girl’s beds was a sealed missive with an insignia they couldn’t make out. Twilight came over to the bed to examine the seal on the front. And she stopped dead in her tracks.

The seal was dark maroon and in the shape of a peace symbol.

“Twilight?” came a timid voice right next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ironheart,” Twilight breathed. “He’s been here. He left us a note.” She used her magic to hold up the tightly furled scroll and show off the disturbing seal.

Rarity let out a small squeal and recoiled. “Oh, gracious! He’s actually been here? How’d he get in?”

“Through the window?” Pinkie Pie guessed.

“What does it say?”Applejack curiously asked.

Twilight broke the red wax seal--at least, she hoped it was wax; once the disturbing thought had entered her head, she tried to dispel the notion--and unfurled the letter. Holding the letter in her magic aura, she read the letter aloud.

Princess Twilight Sparkle,

If it appears we’re in the middle of a war, I wish to propose a temporary truce. Out of anypony else in the city of Manehattan, you seem the best equipped to answer the questions I have for you.

At 9:00 this evening, come to the roof of your apartment building. Whether you come or not, I care not, but you must know that regardless of if you show up, I will. No matter what.

I had to go and drop some garbage in the bay. I will be back.

--Ironheart