//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: Awake // Story: The Filly Within // by Detsella Morningdew //------------------------------// Sweetie took her hoof off the library's only wall that was devoid of bookshelves, letting the paper float down to the floor. She only hoped that her note looked different enough to all the other pieces that littered the room after the night's conversations. She made her way awkwardly to the door, having relearned the required gait a few minutes prior. The doorknob itself was a minor problem, as her hooves no longer seemed to stick to anything, but the rubber of her frog seemed to work if she applied the force at a tangent. She could have used her jaw, but based on the several hoof-shaped dents in Twilight's floor, it was a lot easier to break things like this. Even though it was probably nothing to worry about, Twilight probably wouldn't appreciate tooth marks in the metal. She was a lot stronger. Either that, or I'm way heavier. Maybe a little of both. Ponyville looked a lot different at three in the morning. It was certainly brighter than she was expecting. But her vision also was a lot more grainy for some reason. The background junk her ears were picking up was different, too. There was less of it than the library, even though there was the same number of ponies present - zero. It was low enough that every one of her movements created an easily definable pattern in the numbers. So she could recognize her own movements. She just had no idea what they were supposed to sound like to a normal pony. Better still, moving faster or slower changed the sounds in predicable ways. Less predictable were the sounds of her hooves on the dirt path. But after a few blocks of walking, even that set of data had a sort of "flavor" to it. ...I'm a robot. The thought came out of nowhere. She still had magic, if that spell Twilight did actually worked. But she wasn't a changeling. Why a robot? Those were the kinds of things you saw in movies, or those comics that Spike kept trying to get her interested in. They weren't supposed to be real. She stomped a hoof, and she absentmindedly noted that it was significantly louder than usual. The catharsis was significantly less than she had anticipated. One number that she hadn't been looking for spiked aggressively, though. That was a little strange. Why did that changeling know me, then? Why don't I remember any of it? Three years. That's when Rarity said Mom and Dad found her. She had asked. Found me. Not adopted me. The other Crusaders just thought it was cool. Well, for the most part. Not even Scootaloo could ignore the drawbacks right in front of her. But they still were friends. They still wanted to hang out, even if she would never get a cutie mark, ever. And she was still Rarity's sister. That's what she said, at least. I can't help but feel like I'm not the pony they should have as their friend. As her sister. An odd string of numbers caused her to rotate her ears, pinpointing an odd sound. Taking away the sounds she made, and the sound of her hooves on the dirt (an action that only got easier as time went on), the numbers looked all too consistent. The same exact number positive as negative, with a rather incredible regularity. And there were more of the sounds. They weren't quite as... easy as the one she noticed first, but they still... Okay, "look nice" is probably not the way to describe that. But it kinda is. The number of times per second that the numbers jumped from positive to negative changed quite often, and many sounds overlapped other ones. But that was definitely not how voices worked. Or most other sounds that she had heard before. She briefly considered it. Well, it's not like I have anything better to do. She turned off the dirt path and made a beeline for the sound. It wasn't exactly a long trek, or even a hard one, but it brought her almost to the edge of Ponyville, where the intensity of the patterns seemed to spike the hardest. The sounds came from a smallish house. Putting her ear against the side of it caused the intensity to increase exponentially. It was three A.M. But whatever pony lived here was probably awake. Sweetie knocked. The sounds stopped half a second later. A bunch of noises that must have been hoofsteps reached her ears, then a pony opened the door in front of her. She was a white unicorn with a crazy looking blue striped mane. She was also wearing some weird kind of sunglasses. At three in the morning. Sweetie vaguely recognized her, so none of this was a surprise, but she certainly wasn't a common sight. The unicorn immediately began talking. Which would have probably been useful if she could hear. Silently, Sweetie berated herself for not actually bringing paper with her. Which probably was unfair, since she didn't actually have saddlebags, or a reliable way of holding things, except perhaps a quill. Since the unicorn in front of her didn't actually seem to be freaking out about her appearance (something else Sweetie probably should have thought about before knocking), she decided to use her skills at charades to communicate the fact that she couldn't speak. She didn't have many skills at charades. Despite that, she did get the message across eventually. It took less time to communicate that she couldn't hear either, once she actually got a piece of paper. Now for the task of telling her that she came here because she heard something odd. Oh. ...Okay, let's start over. She scribbled out the previous page, making the unicorn (Vinyl Scratch, she introduced herself) look rather confused. I can hear, but I don't understand any of what I hear. The sounds from your house looked strange. She grinned widely, then paused slightly, before scribbling something on the paper. Was I that loud? Sweetie stopped to think. I have no idea. It looked only a little louder than my hooves on the dirt, but I don't know how loud I am now. How do you know if things are loud? Experiments. The numbers are bigger, both the positive and negative ones. Vinyl gasped and trotted into the next room. When Sweetie didn't follow, she poked her head back into the entry hall, saying something Sweetie couldn't understand, but could guess quite easily by context, reading lips, and the fact that she was gesturing with a hoof. The room Sweetie entered was really strange. Soft, bumpy stuff covered every wall, there were no windows, and there were several electrical looking devices all over the place, including the one thing she actually recognized - the turntable that was often at Pinkie's parties. Which was probably why she recognized the unicorn, if only a little. But the creepiest part about the room was that as soon as Vinyl closed the door, there was no background sound, period. She didn't have much time to dwell on it, though. Vinyl already had sat down at her sound equipment and pressed something. The numbers were perfect. Positive to negative, the same on each side. The same numbers each time. They changed at the same rate, too. Vinyl took a pencil in her magic, and pulled over some empty sheet music. Is the sound square? Sweetie frowned, and picked up a pencil as well. What do you mean, square? Like, what does the wave look like? On a graph? Sweetie blinked. A graph? She looked at Vinyl closely. Well, okay. I guess interpreting the data differently is what I'm trying to do, but I don't see how graphing anything will help. Sweetie was just glad that math tasks were easy. Disturbingly easy, as a matter of fact, but she didn't want to think about that at the moment. Okay, yeah, if I connect all the dots, the graph does have almost exactly right angles. Yeah, I think I see it now. Vinyl grinned, then pressed a different button. What did that look like? Okay, now there were still angles, but, like, in the other direction. They made points at the top. The data was a lot less clean, but it still looked nice on a graph. Triangles? I think? I'm not sure how to describe it. The adult unicorn pumped a hoof in the air, grinning widely. She also said something, but Sweetie couldn't understand it. Obviously. This was getting seriously annoying. What is it? The excited unicorn finally managed to put pencil to paper again. I think I know how to get you talking again.