Misty POV
"Just who is he? How can anypony think like that?" Twilight asked
"You already know who he is, though I don't think he would appreciate anyone besides me or the princesses calling him by his birth name. As for how he can think like that, he even after all these years still has a messed up view of the world, and messed up mind set."
"Why would he even think like this? What could twist his mind so much he just acts like nothing happened after killing so many ponies?"
"Ah want to know that too. It just ain't right." Applejack said with the others nodding in agreement
"Human Nature." I told them
"What?" asked Fluttershy surprisingly
"He calls it Human Nature. Neither of us know who said these things, but they kept proving to be true in his eyes as before he met me the best you would ever hear about would be a multi billionaire donating a few thousand to charity.
'We are as the world makes us'
'you may ask what else is darkness but hate and rage, I'll ask what else is light but conceit and blissful ignorance that fuels the dark's hate and rage'
'what else can you be when all the world wants to see is a monster'
'human nature pursues strife'
'if you kill someone, someone else will kill you, this hatred binds us together'
'land, religion, ideology, resources, love, spite, or just because, no matter how pathetic the reason it's enough to start a war'
'even with a heart of gold one may still find themselves to be an outcast in paradise'
'talking about peace while waging war is something only humans can do'
'simply by existing, people hurt others without even realizing it'
'even innocent foolish children will grow up as they learn what true pain is, it affects what they say, what they think, and they become real people'
'the secret to pain isn't knowing how to properly inflict it, but knowing how not to feel it'
there's more I could tell you, but I don't feel like making a few dozen more quotes when I don't even know who said them."
"What you mean to say is humans are just violent monsters." Twilight said
"No. He changed, his family used to tell me how sweet a person he was as a child, but after spending years being tormented for no justifiable reason he could think of with no one helping him he just gave up. He once wanted to be a doctor or a veterinarian and because of everyone either abandoning him or giving him shit he gave up on that too. 'Humans are nothing but arrogant, gullible, easily manipulated, violent, miserable fools who are all happily marching to their deaths, pushing or dragging others to it' he once told me, history and personal experience taught him that."
"What do you mean by tormented or neglected?" Fluttershy asked
"His school life was absolute hell for him and home was barely tolerable because of his brother who his parents did nothing about. The worst he ever did to anyone first was ask them not to do something that was annoying him or offer to help them and they did the equivalent of telling him to go fuck himself or in a few cases threatening him. Then he has to deal all their friends ganging up on him because their one friend from earlier doesn't like him, teachers who did nothing but offer to move him at best, Ryan being autistic, needing glasses, needing a cane because of one of his knees and the foot on that same leg being problematic wasn't helping his situation at all. He spent 5 days a week until graduation with nothing to look forward to in school but other students giving him trouble and teachers doing nothing, he even shouted at a teacher one time 'if you want to help me then do something about these fucking worthless pieces of disposable human trash' and slammed the door in another kid's face and he still didn't suffer any consequences." They had difficulty comprehending how schools could be so unreliable if their shocked or in Fluttershy's case sad expressions were anything to go off of.
"Why didn't he tell his parents? They could have helped him right." Twilight asked
"They might have been able to help, he could have told his parents, but if he can't rely on the school to do what it's supposed to then how can he expect his parents to get better results than him when everyone made no effort to hide their actions ahd still nothing was done. He had enough one day when 4 students attacked him in the stairwell and a dozen other students blocked the exits, one had a concussion, one had a broken hand, one had a broken jaw, and the other a broken leg. The school tried to expel him, a student with a clean record for defending himself against 4 known trouble makers, but he only hit 2 of them, the others either fell down the stairs or got thrown into a wall. He barely won against the school, but those students only got 3 days detention even though they started a fight with a cripple, stole his cane and damaged it, and broke his glasses. They should have been expelled if not thrown in juvenile detention and the families pay for Ryan's new cane and glasses, but they didn't. He had no friends because everyone kept hurting him in one way or another."
"How could he not have any friends growing up?" Pinkie asked
"Would you want to be friends with someone who is always hurting you or surrounding themselves with people who do? Why would you even try to befriend someone who does nothing but give you reason after reason to hate them, to want to hurt them?" Her mane and tail deflated as she looked away before asking
"What did his brother do?" Applejack and Fluttershy wanting to know as well having brothers themselves
"When he wasn't in school being bullied and humiliated, he was being bullied by his older brother at home. His brother was an arrogant asshole who only cared about what he wanted and only what he had to say WHEN he had to say it. He was always starting trouble and even fights which Ryan tried to avoid as well. Seeing the interactions between them I could see why he hated his brother and had as few interactions with him as possible. What he thinks truly set him off in the 'throw away unnecessary emotions' or 'embrace emptiness' kind of way was when he was arguing with his brother one time, his brother from what I saw was incapable of proving his point or even the foundation for it. He would interrupt several times going on for about 10 minutes and ask you a question, if you answer yes he wins, if you answer no you basically start over, if you try to finish what you've been trying to say for 10 minutes which wouldn't have taken any longer than a minute had he not constantly interrupted or 'commented' as he put it by that point then he takes that as a yes." Those two already didn't like him.
"The event that truly set Ryan off was when this was happening his older brother by 4 years was acting like he was 5 instead of 18 or 19 like he should have been, started covering his ears and humming as loudly as he could. Ryan who was already having a bad day because of school and and was sick at the time tried to pull his brother's hands from his ears. He responded by pulling Ryan's face into his knee, damaging his glasses he had spent months trying to get aligned right, and giving him a bloody nose. Ryan's parents told him he was in the wrong because he put his hands on his older brother first, and no punishments were given. He started becoming more and more heartless by the day. Eventually he stopped caring because it no longer hurt him, he grew numb to the pain"
"Just how much did he change?" Rarity asked
"Slowly discarding all love and compassion, loyal only to himself, took advantage of everyone he could, hurt anyone who gave him legal permission to do so and crippled them for life, cut spirals into his arms up to his fingers to remind himself he was in hell, killed animals for fun, found joy when others were hurt in anyway, believed if someone died then they deserved it for the simple fact that they died, wanted to join the military so he could kill people or get killed." All of them had horrified expressions already.
"He spent his time trying to think of unrestrained ways to torture people, threw his cat into the woods after it died of age not even burying it, left his own mother for dead after going around a corner and seeing her get stabbed twice, she barely survived by the way, he didn't even call for help or even chase the man who did that, he just calmy walked away as if it was normal." Fluttershy had passed out by this point
"He went from innocent child with enough love to feed a hive of these changelings I read about recently, who wanted to help people simply because why not into a borderline psychopath with a desire to see the world on it's knees, shattered if necessary, or in flames. He went from angel to a demon so evil he could think of ways to make the most evil people to exist look like saints, even heroes in comparison, justifying murder, rape, slavery, and even genocide. The only thing separating him from a psychopath was that he didn't start or instigate anything with other people. There were only 2 reasons he lived long enough to meet me, he saw suicide as the cowards way out, and he wanted to see whether or not he was right about humans not living for another 30 years. Humans didn't even last 2 years after we met."
"He was that bucked up in the head? He should have been in a mental hospital or locked up. Why would you even go near him?" Rainbow asked
"I've always been able to tell when someone was hurting just by looking in their eyes. The priest at the church I used to go to would tell me it was a gift, that I should use it whenever I could. I wanted to help him because he was in that much pain. He had been suffering alone for so long he forgot the pain still even existed, all I saw in his eyes was so much pain he hated everyone simply for existing. I couldn't let him live on like that, not when the only thing he needed to prevent him from degrading so much was one person to understand him, one person to say 'you're not alone' or 'I'm your friend'. If he was and still is a monster, then what does that make everyone else? People who went out of their way to make him miserable on a daily basis, people who saw what was happening and chose to watch instead of help him like a decent person would, people who are supposed to help, but prioritize writing 2+2 on the board or telling him to stop when he is whispering at less than half the volume of another student's tapping or something stupid like that. The closest thing he ever got to a friend before he met me was a teacher saying he had 'pretty eyes'. He needed help more than he needed mind altering medication or the judgement of the ignorant assholes he had to put up with on a daily basis."
"How? How can anypony live like that?" Pinkie asked, her mane and tail now deflated and tears in her eyes
"As Ryan would say, 'believe it or not, very easily, I did it for years afterall'. I'm going to join him now. He may no longer need sleep thanks to those mutations of his, but I'm sure he would like company so he has a reason to. It was nice chatting with you." I said before taking my leave