//------------------------------// // Who am I? // Story: ???: Ace Attorney: Turnabout Buttons // by Magic Step //------------------------------// The room was dark; the air was stale. A pair of golden eyes glowed, beckoning to me. Golden eyes and gleaming teeth and silver claws. I stared at them in terrified fascination, frozen and unmoving. The throbbing in my head woke me up. I opened my eyes to see green and brown shapes. It took me a second to recognize what they were, like my eyes were very slowly bringing the world into focus. They were trees and grass. This was a forest. A very muddy forest, judging by the wet feeling under my body. The next thing I remembered was that I was not meant to be viewing the world from this low to the ground. A second later, I remembered what lying down was, and realized that was what I was currently doing. Then I remembered what standing up was, and that I should do that instead, if I wanted to stop getting wetter. I remembered that I had appendages called legs to stand up with. As I slowly urged my muscles into motion, recalling the function of each, I found out that I had four. They were surprisingly flexible; for a moment all I could do was wiggle each one, fascinated by their movement, with a vague feeling of shame in the back of my mind that I was doing something so… juvenile. Then I realized my legs needed to be underneath my body if I wanted to stand up; right now they were at my side. After some contemplation, I figured out how to roll over. The motion so greatly reoriented how the world looked that it made me feel dizzy, and I had to stay in a kneeling position for a moment to regain my bearings before I could attempt any more motion. What was going on? This was wrong, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have to be recovering all my data about the world piece by tiny piece, right? How much was I supposed to know, though? I had no reference point. I decided that, instead of standing up, I would try to figure out who or what I was. Slowly, I managed to turn my head to try and look at myself. My legs had hooves at the end and were covered in very light grey fur, nearly white. They also had bigger fur—no, sleeves, those were sleeves—purple sleeves around them. They were very soft sleeves; I gently stroked one. Very nice. Then I used my hoof to feel my head and neck. I had hair… no… a mane. But not a mane long enough that I could bring it in front of my eyes to see what color it was. There was also a strange spike on my forehead that I didn’t remember the purpose of. I also had some cloth tied around my neck. It was very fluffy in front, but too tight around my neck for me to see when I looked down. In the back it had a hard… knot, it was called. A very tight knot. I prodded it a bit with my hoof but I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to undo it. Why had I put something around my neck that I couldn’t take off? Slowly, not wanting to make myself dizzy again, I stood up. I was a little surprised how stable I felt on my four legs. Carefully I lifted one and my weight naturally shifted. How coordinated it all felt. I ran my hoof along my now-exposed chest and found that the sleeves were attached, not to a shirt, but a jacket. The inside of the jacket had all kinds of knobs. Oh… buttons. Those were buttons. And where there were buttons on the inside, that meant pockets. But the buttons were too small to manipulate with my hooves. Why had I made life so hard for myself? Was there something I was forgetting? Or did I have someone else’s clothes on for some reason? I wondered if there was more to the world than just trees. Maybe I’d find something that would jog my memory. I started walking, amazed again at the remarkable coordination between my four legs. A moment later, I remembered how to canter. I also recalled what a gallop was, but after a few seconds of it I decided to nix that; it made me too winded and who knew how long I’d have to keep moving? The ground had a gentle slope to it, and at the bottom I found a strange noisy substance that felt cold and wet on my hoof, and had a strange pull to it. This was a… a river… no. It barely covered my hooves. This was just a stream. I felt an aversion to getting wet because I had a vague notion it would damage my clothes, so I walked through on tip-hoof, gently so as to not splash. When I was on the other side, I realized the stream wasn’t the only thing making sounds. There were strange sounds, like nothing I’d heard before in my admittedly pathetic memory. I cantered toward them so I could hear better. When I neared a particularly thick set of bushes, I attempted to push my way through them, and as I did, the noises stopped. Then they started again, sounding like harsh, angry barks now. I stopped to concentrate. I remembered now… sort of. These were sounds used to communicate. I wasn’t alone in the world; there were other intelligent beings. But I couldn’t remember any specific ones, and my brain was too muddled to remember what the sounds were. If I closed my eyes… “…You listening!? What’s wrong with you!?” Then something sharp across my muzzle. Pain. My eyes flew open. Another creature was standing a few inches away from me… another pony, I thought. He had an olive green coat and a straw-like yellow mane and his eyes were narrowed into a glare. “S-sorry,” I said. My tongue felt thick and heavy, and my voice sounded alien to my ears.  “I must be acting weird… I’ve lost my memory.” “Go away out of that,” the stallion scoffed. “That’s not a mite funny.” “No, it’s not, it’s really not!” I said. “I’m lost and alone and even if I wasn’t I don’t even know where I’d be going if I wasn’t lost because I don’t know what the not-forest bit of the world is like and I don’t remember who lives where and I don’t remember you…” The olive stallion’s expression slowly shifted from annoyed to recognition. His mouth quirked into a smirk. “You’ve really lost it all then?” His accent was strange and melodious and not much like mine. “I… I’m sorry,” I said, not completely sure what the correct thing to say in this situation was. I stared at his hooves. “Um… if we used to be friends, I’m sorry I forgot.” The other stallion chuckled. “Friends? That’s all right. We can jog your memory again. Come with me.” He rested a strong foreleg around my shoulders and guided me around the bushes. “Hey lads! Pull your socks up and look what I found!” He led me to a strange, rustic campsite. The firepit in the center had gone out and was surrounded by five logs, each with a small tin cup nearby. Crude tents made from patchy fabric, branches, and bark were everywhere, and so were wooden platforms in the trees. But there was nothing slapdash about them; everything looked like it had been gradually refined over the years, added to and improved. It all seemed lived in. Three more stallions and one mare were lounging around the campfire. The mare was all blue and had oddly sharp brown eyes. One stallion was rather fat but had a scary club strapped to one side; another was a bright red, lanky stallion strumming a strange stringed instrument; the last one was small in stature, but the most muscular of the three. Not that any of them were slouches. I also noticed for the first time that two… no, all of them had pictures on their rears. Unlike the grass, the trees, my hooves etc., the name and purpose of these strange pictures didn’t immediately spring to mind. The pictures were all starburst effects with different weapons. “Our lad’s lost all his memory,” the stallion said. “So we’re gonna remind him how he’s one of us, got it?” The four ponies broke into huge grins and crowded around to get a look at me. “First of all, I’m your mate Russel Dorset,” the olive green stallion told me. “We’re all equals here but I’ll modestly say I’m the ideas guy.” “That you are, Russel,” the wire-red stallion said. “I’m Scarlet Flame and I keep this camp all shipshape. We often spend weeks out here at a time, without ever needing to return to civilization.” “What’s my role then?” I asked. “And also… what’s my name…?” “You just gotta look at yourself to tell it t'ain’t in being the muscle,” the fat one said. The mare whinnied in amusement. “Bet even I’ve got more strength in one ear than you have in your back,” she said. “Shut it eejit,” Russel hissed. “Hmm?” I turned toward him. “Nothing… anyway. You’re the decoy, my lad.” Russel smacked me so hard I tipped over. Everypony laughed. “D-decoy!?” I said, scrambling to my hooves again. “What for!?” “Luring in rich pinheads,” the fat pony said. “That’s why you’re in that stupid jacket. Makes you look like one of ‘em.” Scarlet Flame had a white scarf on and the fat pony had a jacket. Russel had a strange rough wool jacket on with lots of buttons, all of them wrapped in elaborate thread patterns. None of them looked as soft or fine as mine. “Wh… what is luring…?” I had a fuzzy picture in my mind, but I wanted to be crystal clear what my job was. “Baiting, trolling, fishing, you know!” The formerly silent smaller pony seemed to be getting impatient with me. “You attract the attention of others and make them follow you, to get them to go where you want!” “Luring in rich p…” the word was distasteful to me. “…rich ponies for what…?” I asked. “What happens when they follow me?” “…do you know what rich means?” Russel asked, making the smallest pony sigh heavily. “It has to do with having nice clothes I think…” I said. “Not quite.” Russel suddenly looked… different. It wasn’t really happiness, though he was grinning. I couldn’t remember the right word for it. “Rich means you have tons of stuff. Clothes, food, a giant house, lots and lots of slaves… and they don’t need to lift a hoof unless they feel like it.” Then he looked grim. “Poor means none of that. You spend your days and nights trying to scrape together enough to keep the kids from starving right before your eyes.” He stomped his hoof, and his eyes filled with fire. “And here in Lucktown we say that if you’ve got a lot, it’s your job to share with those who’ve got none, and that’s how it’ll be, even if we have to take it by force.” I felt ill. “How much force?” “Maybe none at all, if you do a good job, pretty colt,” the mare said, winking. “That’s the job of a decoy, you see. Make the target let their guard down. Make it easy to take ‘em by surprise.” “Don’t wimp out on us,” Russel said, punching me in the shoulder. “This is your life, whether you remember it or not. We’re your lads; we’ve always been there for you and you’ve always been there for us. Quid pro no and all.” “Quid pro quo,” I said reflexively. Then I started. “Come again?” Russell asked. I felt energy surge through my body. On its own accord, my hoof rose into the air to dramatically point at Russel and I felt myself shout “HOLD IT!” Russel blinked at me, confused. “Why so loud?” “That's a bit overdramatic, doncha think?” Scarlet Flame said. I resisted the temptation to set my hoof back down. I felt like if I did that, I’d lose some kind of control I had over the situation or something. “All of you are liars!” I shouted. “There’s no way I actually work for you!” “Based on what? Is your memory back?” Russel smirked. “N-no, but, but it doesn’t make any sense when you look at the evidence!” “Oooh, evy-dahnce?” the mare said mockingly, wiggling her eyebrows. “What evidence? You have three minutes worth of memories!” Russel growled. “The evidence is those cups!” I pointed to the tin dishware around the fire. “There’s only five of them!” “Your cup’s in the wash…” Scarlet said. “And there’s only five logs, and five tents!” I said. “Don’t tell me my log is in the wash too. All of you are lying!” “Ack, arguing is hard-wired into him,” the shortest pony said, rolling his eyes heavenward and smacking his forehead. “Hush you moron!” the fat pony said. “No, give it up,” Russel said. “It would have been a gas if it worked, but, well, it didn’t. Oh well.” He didn’t look disappointed though; he looked amused. “So… who am I really?” I asked sheepishly. Russel smirked silently at me for a few seconds. “Why would I tell you that?” I blinked. “Um.” “You had your chance, lad. You could’ve run with us and maybe redeemed yourself, but it’s true what they say that blood will always out.” Russel turned to his friends and jerked his head at me. “All yours. Have fun lads. But try and keep the forelegs and that pretty head intact.” The grins of the four ponies facing me reminded me of a new word: wolfish. They slowly circled around me. I felt my stomach flip. “W-wait, no, what are you--” One of them bucked me hard in the ribs; all the breath exploded out of my lungs and I fell over onto my side, wheezing for air. I instinctively tried curling up into a ball, covering my head with my forelegs. Hooves pounded down on my body like jackhammers, giving me no time to recover, to think, to fight back. I felt the cracks forming along my ribs and the bones in my forelegs screamed in pain from being battered: one of them had grabbed my hind leg and was trying to bend it in a direction it didn't want to go, but fortunately didn't seem to have the strength to break it. I think I was screaming, but I couldn't hear over their shouts of glee. They started concentrating their attacks on my head; each blow sent white spots dancing across my eyes. Finally, one hard blow crashed down onto my skull, and everything went black. *** The throbbing of my head and the ringing in my ears were the first sensations I felt as consciousness returned to me. Then, past the ringing, I could hear a strange, rhythmic scraping that summoned a clear mental image of a wooden contraption on rails called a sled. I couldn’t supress a feeling of annoyance that the only memories that came to me easily were so painfully trivial. I briefly cracked one eyelid open but the light was too painful to me so I shut it again. I shifted my hooves and sharp pain stabbed one foreleg, making me whimper. And the effort of whimpering made my chest hurt. “Hurts don’t it, rich kid?” the mare’s voice said. “He’s coming to?” Scarlet said. “Don’t stop scattering those flowers!” Russel shouted. “If that mangy mutt gets on our trail it’ll be all your fault.” I felt a sob escape me. Something soft and childlike in my soul felt broken; my memory of only minutes gave me no frame of reference to comprehend such cruelty and hate. Crueler still, I had no other experience to draw on to put this in any kind of context. It seemed likely that the world was full of ponies like these and no other kind. Even if I hadn’t been too injured to run away, there was no where I could run to. And for all I knew, maybe I deserved this treatment after all. The sled scraped to a halt; I heard a sweeping and shuffling sound of dead leaves, then the sound of a metal hatch. “Don’t we need to give him a ring?” the mare asked. “Anypony who literally needs his mot's help to pick up a feather is no threat to us,” Russel replied. “Now let’s be gentle lads; if he dies on the way down it’ll be too easy on him.” I felt a cloth under me shift and then slowly I rose into the air. My exclamation of surprise hurt my ribs again and I heard muffled chuckles. Then after I swung forward a little I touched cold metal. Cold angled metal. Instinctively I knew what was happening. My eyes flew open and I saw that I was perched at the edge of a metal slide that lead into the dark ground. My hooves flailed as I tumbled forward and I could hear laughter as my world spun. Russel said “Have fun on the bottom, rich pony.” I descended into complete darkness, and the square of light from the hatch overhead was soon cut off. Everything was quiet.