//------------------------------//
// Origin Story 
// Story: Stories in Pastel and Gray 
// by Tehponiplz 
//------------------------------//


Book 1: Origins
Chapter 1: Pretentious Title


Cheerilee, Ascended * Things Better Left Unsaid * The Right Word in the Right  Place * Join Your Compatriots * Fall From Grace * Practical Lessons *  Backgammon for One * A Legend is Sick



"I don't know about this..."
"The best nights I've ever had always start with those words!"
Cheerilee  stared at her companion, whose eyes were barely visible behind the ruby  lenses of her sunglasses, and felt a touch of unease.
The feeling vanished as she looked down over the edge of the roof, and saw the ground forty stories below.
This was clearly no time to feel uneasy.
This was a time for blind panic.

It had all started in a bar.
The worst nights she'd ever had always started in a bar.
She had been complaining loudly. As usual.
She had moaned about how prosaic her life was. As usual.
She had been drinking. As usual.
What was NOT usual was the pony next to her.
"If you're bored, I've got a suggestion..."
This, she supposed, was her punishment for using words like 'prosaic' when 'bored' would have worked just as well.

Now she stood on the roof of the Manehatten-Chase building.
Her cape billowed in the wind as she stared out over the city.
Cheerilee took a moment to run that last thought by her brain again. Something seemed off.
Wind? No, that wasn't the problem. Wind was perfectly normal.
City?  That was a BIT odd... She vaguely remembered coming into Manehatten,  its massive skyscrapers rising to either side as the car she lay  sprawled in drew near.
Cape? Yes, that was it. She was wearing a cape.
Vinyl was also wearing a cape.
Cheerilee  was usually very good with words, but at the moment, she struggled to  find the right word for two ponies in capes on a skyscraper roof.
'Insane?' suggested the part of her brain not responsible for being pummeled by her inevitable hangover.
Yes, that was it.
She turned and tried to run.
"Eager to get to the chase, eh?" Vinyl said approvingly (and, as it happened, entirely incorrectly).
In a glow of magic, Cheerilee felt herself being turned around, her headlong dash now taking her over the building's edge.
How had it come to this?

In  the dim light of the bar, with three glasses of scotch in her, and a  fourth ready to join its compatriots, 'superhero' had seemed such a  romantic idea.
She knew the DJ. Or at least, she knew OF her. She had always seemed so interesting, so exciting.
And  as scotch number four went down, you could almost believe that her  companion really was a crime-fighting heroine straight out of a comic  book...

Now, she could believe her companion was a stark raving lunatic in a spandex costume.
She could have, but at the moment, she preferred to believe that she was plummeting to her death.
This  was a sensible thing to believe, but as Vinyl dropped down beside her, a  wild grin on her face, the thought that came to the fore of Cheerilee's  mind was how much more flattering tights were on her companion than on  her.
She wasn't out of shape. Not as such.
True, she hadn't been to the gym in a while.
True, 'ice cream night' now happened more than once a week.
True, Vinyl was saying something with a look of concern on her normally jovial face.
Her brain kicked her urgently, trying to get her to pay attention to that last bit.
Vinyl  was making hoof-spreading motions. They seemed familiar, as though she  had made them before, while Cheerilee stood nearby, trying to fight off a  hangover.
'Cape' came back. 'Cape' was insane. Also, germane.
Another one of THOSE words. She really needed to cut that out.
Germane. Relevant. Applicable. Pay attention, stupid teacher horse.
Finally  giving up on communicating with the rest of her, Cheerilee's brain took  hold of her hooves, grabbed the edges of her cape, and spread them as  Vinyl was demonstrating.
The cape (which was insane, the rest of  Cheerilee chimed in unhelpfully), caught the wind, and the teacher pony  jerked into an awkward glide, slowing just enough not to injure herself.
This was also helped by the mugger who broke her fall.

The two ponies went tumbling down the alley, end over end.
As they rolled, the would-be mugger kicked out at her, striking her in the belt.
Belt? "Shut up" her brain told her.
"Alrighty!" agreed the rest of her.
A grappling hook shot out of the compartment on the front of her new belt.
Cheerilee's brain and the rest of her gave up and went off to play backgammon together.

In the real world, the mugger became entangled in the cable, his legs bound tightly together as Cheerilee came to a sudden stop.
He kept going, however, slamming into a nearby wall and collapsing senseless into a neatly tied bundle.
Cheerilee simply lay there as Vinyl and the almost-victim came over.
The pony she had saved looked shaken, but awed.
Vinyl, on the other hand, was beaming like a maniac.
"I  knew it. I KNEW it!" she enthused, helping Cheerilee shakily to her  hooves. "You're a natural-born hero. That was absolutely PERFECT!"
The unicorn mare put her forehooves on Cheerilee's shoulders.
"You and I are going to be LEGENDS," she said, grinning.
Cheerilee nodded vaguely, and then threw up on her.