//------------------------------// // 15 - Dreaming // Story: Spilled Ink // by Fiddlove Enfemme //------------------------------// I stared deep into the campfire, the flames slowly burning away at the chunks of wood, turning to coals, and eventually to ash. A powerful metaphor, if I could even find something to compare it to. Everyone was asleep. Our watchman was on his regular patrol. Soon, when it was bright enough, we'd keep on motoring. Where? East. To the only place I still had family left. The others were going there for different reasons, but until we actually got there it only made sense for the five of us to stick together. My rifle, clean, unfired, lay across my lap. I held a magazine in my hand, feeling the weight of all those bullets. It had surprised me way back when I'd signed up, how heavy, how deadly such small little things could be. These ones were just a touch smaller than your largest finger. For some reason, I decided to look up into the sky. At the edges it was beginning to brighten, but the stars were still bright, and the moon was full. The snapping of a stick in the distance got my attention. In a blur I shouldered and pointed my rifle at its source. My body, a finely oiled machine, waited on edge, using every sense to figure out if there was any danger. A single red light flickered in the distance. One. One two. One. One two. I lowered my rifle and a familiar face emerged from the darkness. "Hayes." I greeted her coldly. "Don't worry. I was just using the... uh... johns." I nodded, but then I frowned. Something was... different. It was wrong. Hayes wasn't even supposed to be here. It was me, Zimmerman, Knight, Lavalley, and Williams. Five of us. Hayes was one too many. "We don't have any johns. In fact, you never left the base with us. You stayed." I said, slowly raising my rifle at her. "Come on, don't-" I cut her off. "You aren't Hayes. And this isn't real. If it were, I would be able to read what our vehicle says on the side. It should say "Fencibles", but it doesn't. Five minutes ago I looked and it said "Marines". Right now it says "Housing Unit". This is a dream, so drop the fucking act." "As you wish," Not-Hayes sighed, and the campsite melted away. It was replaced by a sea of stars. Far away, every direction, those tiny motes of light shone on. I kept my form, holding my hands out in front of me. But I no longer wore my plate carrier, or any part of my uniform. Instead, I was wearing an old and stained grey graphic tee shirt, with black jeans, torn and dirtied. Hayes was no longer there, instead replaced by... some sort of horse? No... a pony. I remembered now! I'd... woken up in Equestria, just over a week ago. No memories at all. I had not seen this particular pony before, but she had seen me. She was tall, her coat as dark as the night. Her mane and tail were the stars themselves, flowing mystically around us. Atop her mane was a dark crown, and around her neck was a jewel with the emblem of the moon, which matched the one on her flank. Wings and horn both, had she, as elegant and awe-inspiring as any would ever see. "Nightmare Moon..." I whispered. "Once, and regretfully so, but no longer," said she. "I am Luna, Royal Sister of the Night. Retired Princess of Equestria." "I didn't know princesses could retire," I joked nervously. "Verilly, it was not mine idea, but mine sister's. One thousand years of peace and protection weighs heavily upon her mind, her failures the heaviest of all. Her conscience does not, however, dissuade me from doing my duty to my little ponies. I stand the long watch through the night, wary of any dangers. Dreams are my domain, and as such, Sleep is as well." Luna explained humourlessly, her voice echoing around me. "So it's you who I've been seeing in my dreams." The ruler of the night nodded thoughtfully. This is true, however, quelling your night terrors is not the purpose of my visit. I come as a matter of Equestria's security, and partially to satisfy my own morbid curiosity. At first I could not access your dreams, due to otherworldly interference." "The parasite..." I said to myself. "As you are now aware, this was due to no fault of your own, but that of the insidious parasite inside of you. As you fought against its influence, the picture became clearer, and what I saw was... unsettling. You do not come from this Equestria, nor does the parasite. In fact, you do not come from this very plane of existence." Luna continued to explain. That puzzled me. What exactly did she mean? "You are an outsider, the likes of which are rarely encountered within Equestria. You were cast adrift from your plane of existence, and came here." Everything began to waiver and distort. Only Luna remained strong, though she began to flicker. "There is little time. The parasite awakes, and soon it will begin its attack anew. I know only of one being with the knowledge to remove it, but she will need assistance from your Changeling friend. Seek out Zecora, the zebra shaman in the Everfree. She will be able to guide your healing." Luna said quickly as she began to blink out of existance. "But wait, how will I find-?" Cold water splashed onto my face. A rude awakening. A single bright light was being shined in my eyes, forcing me to squint as I tried to take in my surroundings. I couldn't see much, just a cold stone floor below the chair I'd been tied to. My hooves were bound, my claw boots removed. No saddlebags either. It was only me. Around me, I heard the pacing hoofsteps of a pony. They were deliberate, angry even. "Well, well, well. You're quite the enigma, do you know that?" came the soft voice of a mare. I said nothing. "Alias? Ink Blot. Real name? Unknown. Occupation? Unknown. Family? Unknown. Intentions? Unknown. Status? In custody. We'd hoped to bring you in quietly, but you, ahem, forced our hooves." the voice continued. "A week ago, you appeared out of nowhere, from the forests, quickly ingratiating yourself with a number of ponies across Ponyville. Including one pony we've been tracking for quite some time. Do you know who that might be?" a second mare's voice asked. I said nothing "Alias? Quill. Real name? Kevin. Occupation? Author. As well as suspected Changeling infiltrator. You're going to tell us about him, and then you're going to tell us about you." the second voice continued. "For every question you answer, you get points. If you get enough points, you get a prize. If we don't like your answer, we'll... encourage you to do better. Do you understand?" I said nothing. "Listen, we have a list of names here that belong to ponies in town that you've befriended. It wouldn't be much trouble to bring them in, question them about you. Would you like their names?" I still said nothing. "Ragtime Jones. Ginger Hearts. Radiant Star. Pennyfarthing. Applejack. Cinnamon Swirl. Pinkie Pie. Gyro of Griffonstone. Starlight Glimmer. Perhaps one or more of them have already been replaced by other Changelings? Surely you have some sort of loyalty to your own kind." Damn it. "If you so much as lay a finger on them, I will rip your heads off." I growled. "Ah, so we've touched a nerve." said the first voice. But the second voice was confused by something, "Fingers..?" she trailed off. "Ignore it, the Changeling's trying to throw you off." "Maybe we should ask Ocellus-" "Ocellus? She'd flip, then Thorax would find out, and then there'd be an investigation! We can't risk that, we're onto something here!" the first voice cut her off angrily. I scoffed. "And if you haven't noticed, I'm not a Changeling. Not even close." "Oh, you aren't, are you?" the first voice rounded on me, her mane just barely catching the light, giving me a glimpse of pink and blue curls. "Then explain this? You appeared in Ponyville just over a week ago. We check your records. Oh, how conveneient? You have no records. No ID, no birth certificate, no place of residence, no friends, no family. And not just with Ponyville, but nowhere in Equestria has any record of a unicorn individual by the name of Ink Blot, with your physical characteristics. You know what that means, punk? That means you don't exist." "But I'm right here, aren't I?" I countered. "And assuming I was a Changeling, I sincerely doubt my disguise would have survived getting hit upside the head. Besides, shouldn't you have developed a device that can properly detect Changelings? Why bother interrogating when you could identify them effortlessly?" "Because we haven't, okay?" the first voice shouted. I was left in silence for a few minutes while the two voices left the room to discuss something. I took the opportunity to look around, doing my best to figure out what kind of room I was in. The floor was made of stone, but it wasn't quite even. It looked to me like a series of roots had grown underneath and disturbed them. I couldn't quite make up the walls, but that probably didn't matter much. If this was a purpose built room, then they'd have a two-way mirror to observe me at all times. If not, then they would still be keeping an eye on me. Oddly enough, while I was tied to the chair, the chair wasn't secured to anything. With that, an idea formed in my head. I began to rock side to side, building up momentum, raising the chair up on its right legs before crashing back to its left legs. After a few seconds of this, I fell on my side to the floor. I wasn't able to move much, but I could wiggle. and so I wiggled slowly in the opposite direction than the voices had left in. However, it was not long before I heard them return. "Could you give me a hand here?" I asked before they could say anything. "What do you mean, hand? Why did you say hand?" asked the second voice. "Ignore it, he's trying to get inside your head. Don't let him." the first voice chastised. Nothing was said while they moved closer to me through the darkness of the room. But that was when my crackpot plan paid off. For a moment, one of the mares accidentally stepped into the light, revealing her minty green coat. That was all I needed. I'd seen both of them before, plenty of times they'd been covertly hidden around town, sitting on a bench, blending into a crowd. I didn't know their names, but assuming I got out of here just fine I'd be able to track them down again. And that was an edge I could potentially use. The two mares lifted me back up, and shoved me back into my original position. A golden glow surrounded me, projected from the unicorn's horn. "So let's say you aren't a Changeling. Explain all of the holes in your story, then. Where did you come from?" the second voice challenged me. "I don't know." I simply said. "What is your real name?" "I don't know." "Why are you here?" "I don't know." "Who is your family?" "I don't know." "Then what in Celestia's name do you know?!?" the voice yelled angrily. I blinked and sighed. "Only what you do. I woke up in the forest last week, without my memories. I spent a day working for the Apple family, then went to Starlight Glimmer to see if she could do anything about my memories. She couldn't, but proposed that I spend time in Ponyville making friends to try and trigger emotional responses that would help me to bring back my memories. That's what I've been doing." "The spell indicates truth, but it's not the whole truth." the second voice said as the light above flashed a sickly green. "The Changeling, explain the Changeling!" the first voice urged me. "I didn't know he was a Changeling, I just wanted to be his friend. He was apprehensive, but offered to look into my memory problem. When he did, I accidentally forced him into revealing himself. He said he just wants to live his life. He's been living in fear since the wedding invasion failed. In fact, he never went to Canterlot at all that day. He stayed in Ponyville along with his infiltration team, who were later captured and presumable tortured by your organisation." I tried to explain. The light above flashed green again. "If you aren't involved in this, why did you investigate the town hall? Why were you so wary of your surroundings? Why did you flee along with the Changeling?" "Because one of the things I learned about myself is that I used to be in the military. And not an Equestrian one, not one with shiny brass buttons. I fought in a war. A real war, where lives were on the line. Where people died. I investigated, I watched, I fled because I identified threats." I muttered, my mouth saying things before my mind had even realised it. The light above flashed green. "Truth? This doesn't make any sense..." the second voice protested. "But why? None of what you're saying makes any sense!" the first voice agreed. "Reality is stranger than fiction." I mused for a moment. I couldn't help but chuckle at how these two mares, asking the same questions that I had, came to a completely incorrect yet still valid answer. They came to the answer that made sense to them given what they knew of their world and the circumstances around it. Which was the final piece of the puzzle. The dream came back to me, the words of the night sister as fresh inside my head as if she'd just spoken. I smiled and said, "Because I don't come from this world. I'm an outsider, cast adrift from my home and sent here." The light above flashed green, and stayed green. "What..? But how?" the first voice asked in astonishment. "I'm asking the same question." I tried to shrug, but the bindings were too tight. Once again, the two voices left the room to convene. I had a feeling that they were discussing what to do with me, considering I was not a Changeling. I thought briefly about what they could do, but only one option made sense in my mind. I knew they existed, I knew what they did. If left unchecked, I could potentially blow the lid off their whole operation. Somehow my memory problem seemed a little less urgent. After a long time, I heard the door open, and the two mares re-entered the room. The first voice sighed. "So, maybe you aren't a Changeling. Maybe we targeted the wrong stallion. That still leaves one question; what do we do with you now?" Ah, the question I had just asked myself. "As you can imagine, we had to think long and hard about the answer. We can't exactly have you going and blabbing about us, after all." the second voice continued, "After some discussion, we came to the only logical answer." I braced myself for their answer, ready for whatever they would visit upon me. "We're letting you go." "Wait, what?" I blurted out in shock. "Lyra, hit the lights." the first voice said. A series of lights around the room hummed to life, projecting a warm yellow glow. Now I could see all of the rather threadbare room. Along the leftmost wall, a series of cuffs and chains hung from rusted fittings, while a table covered with odd implements sat just out of reach on the opposite wall. Clearly, this room had not seen use for a long time. The two mares were indeed the same mares who I'd fought in the old basement. One, the earth pony, had pink and blue curls and a cutie mark of three candies wrapped in striped foil. The other, the unicorn, was a minty green that reminded me vaguely of toothpaste, her mane and tail having stripes of white amongst the green. Her cutie mark was a lyre. "As an apology for unjustly imprisoning and submitting you to interrogation, we will allow you to leave, on our terms and conditions." the earth pony said. "Those being?" I asked. "Firstly, you tell nopony of our existence." she began. "Secondly, you continue your life as if nothing had happened." the unicorn added. "I'll need some clarification on those before I accept," I frowned. The earth pony stopped me, raising her hoof dramatically. "That's not all. Thirdly, you must join our organisation. This is not up to negotiation." Stunned, I said nothing for a moment. I hadn't been expecting that. It seemed like an unnecessary risk, letting a near-complete stranger join your ranks, let alone allow them to continue their life without interference. When I finally worked up my nerve to speak again, I said very little. "Why?" I asked. "Well, now that you know we exist, we can't let you go. It's our only option. It's also how I joined, funnily enough," the unicorn chuckled, "I'm Agent Heartstrings, Lyra Heartstrings. Call me Lyra" "I'm Agent Drops. Sweetie Drops. But most ponies know me as Bon Bon, now." the earth pony introduced herself as well. "Would you untie me, please?" I asked politely. Lyra moved to do it, but Bon Bon stopped her. "First, you have to explicitly agree to our terms. We have a contract you need to sign and/or hoofprint as certification. Afterwards, it will be put to a cipher and destroyed." "Why even have a physical contract at all, if it's just going to be destroyed?" I questioned. "Just sign the damned contract, okay?" Bon Bon snapped. Lyra conjured a contract from somewhere, appearing in front of me in a flash of golden energy. Bon Bon stepped forward and removed a large ring that had been placed on my horn. The golden glow of Lyra's magic faded, and the contract dropped to the ground. I looked at it as it lay there on the floor. Bon Bon looked at me. Lyra looked at her. "Well?" I looked back at them sheepishly. "I can't do anything while I'm tied up here. "Just use your magic." Lyra frowned. "I can't. I don't have any." "What do you mean, you don't have any?" Lyra asked. "I don't know how to use magic." I admitted. The light above me flashed green. "That's awkward." Bon Bon said. Eventually, they let me out of my restraints, and I signed the contract. I couldn't explain why it felt binding, considering that it was now a pile of ash in an old fireplace long forgotten by society, but it did. It hadn't been much use to me while I was tied up, but everything felt so much clearer to me. whatever Quill had done, it worked. I could think about most things without running into memory problems, though some things still eluded me. Places, names, associations, it was all still clouded. But now? I could remember everything. I just had to try. "This place used to be an old prison, decades ago. SMILE purchased the rights to it through a shell company, and established it as their base in the Greater Ponyville Region. It connects to the bootlegger tunnels, allowing access to the entire town." Lyra explained as we walked through the old stone hallways, littered with the remnants of old equipment. "SMILE had numerous branches, dedicated to combating various threats to Equestria. I was part of the Bugbear Task Force, though it was shuttered when the bugbears pushed for peace. I was planted in Ponyville with a secret identity, but eventually I was reactivated to join the Changeling Task Force. That's when Lyra joined, as my new partner." Bon Bon said. "After Thorax deposed Chrysalis with the help of Trixie Lulamoon, Starlight Glimmer, and Discord, operations slowly ceased. We never got deactivated, because Chrysalis and her supporters were still at large. The Task Force slowly decreased, until it was just a dozen or so agents." Lyra continued. "Thankfully, that included us." "But..." Bon Bon sighed, "When Princess Twilight took over, she gained access to the organisation's files. All of them. And she didn't like what she found." Lyra shook her head. "Twilight and I, we were friends when we were kids. I know her pretty well, or at least I like to think I do. she's thorough, very thorough. You give her data, she wants to look through all of it personally. And she's damned good at parsing it all. A lot of the agents in the CTF, well..." "They weren't gentle in their methods of figuring out who's a Changeling or not. The numerous disappearances while the CTF was active were due to Changelings, right? Not all of them. Some were regular ponies, taken by SMILE, who were never seen again. The interrogations would sometimes get messier than necessary. A lot messier." Bon Bon said gravely. "When Twilight found out, she closed down all of SMILE to restructure. We got cut loose, mostly because she trusted us when we said we didn't know how bad it really was. The other agents have been MIA ever since. Knowing Twilight, she locked them up somewhere they couldn't hurt anypony." Lyra finished, her voice lowered solemnly. I nodded in understanding. "So, you started keeping track of potential Changelings in case you were reactivated again." "Precisely." Bon Bon agreed. "When Chrysalis was finally defeated, her support base withered away. A lot of them were surprisingly open to Thorax's method, but some are still loyal to the fallen Queen. We wanted to be on the lookout for a potential resurgence, so we got back to work. Unofficially, of course." "I get it. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I get it." I nodded again. Lyra stopped in her tracks and stared at me. "You did it again. Why did you use that word?" "What work?" I asked. "You said "foot". First you said finger. Then you said hand. Now foot. Why?" Lyra questioned intently. "Lyra, drop it, not everything is a reference to-" Lyra cut Bon Bon off. "No, there's something important there. I can feel it." She was right. Why had I said those words? They didn't mean anything... I think. Come to think of it, most ponies used words like everypony, somepony, anypony. But I used words like everyone, someone, anypony. And usually, I thought of individuals as people, while everyone around me used ponies, or in the case of Gyro she said griffs. Something didn't add up. My blood ran cold as I hit a block. I tried to think, but I got bogged down, I got mired in thick, black smog. My mind began to cloud once more, and I could feel it. It was the parasite. Quill had only injured it, not killed it. Once it recovered it would more than likely kill me. Who knew how long I had left? I needed to work quickly. "Tell me." I ordered her. "Well, you see, when I was a foal-" "Oh, here we go..." Bon Bon sighed. "- I was deeply invested in the field of Anthropology." Lyra continued, glaring at Bon Bon. That word, something about it sounded familiar. "What's Anthropology?" "Anthropology is a theoretical field of study, regarding the traits, evolution, society, of fictional creatures." Bon Bon said. "Mostly theoretical. There is some cultural evidence that such creatures may have at one time existed, or continue to exist in some unknown capacity." Lyra clarified. Bon Bon shrugged. "Either way, it was one of the first things Lyra and I bonded over. Personally, I enjoyed it as a thought experiment, understanding and exploring minute details of a fictional world, but Lyra was a little too into it at the time." "Hey, I was young, fresh out of school, still not quite sure what to do with my life. I like to pretend all that time wasn't wasted with delusions of grandeur." "These creatures," I began. "What were they like? What were they called?" "Bipedal, like dragons. Two feet, two legs, two arms, two hands. They had big heads, full of brains, eyes that could see for miles. They didn't have particularly sharp teeth, but they were like ponies and could eat meat as well as plants. They could eat just about anything, really. I don't think they had any claws themselves, but they domesticated a lot of animals to serve under them." Lyra explained, waxing nostalgic. "Individually, they weren't exceedingly good at anything. They didn't have cutie marks like we do, but working together they could accomplish great things. Ironically, despite Starlight Glimmer disavowing the ideology, it does take a lot of cues from Equalism." Bon Bon continued. Come on, the name! What was the name? "You know, there never really was much agreement on what to call them. There were a lot of names, and a lot of name calling in the Anthropologist community." Lyra commented. "Well, what was the most common one?" I asked roughly. The two of them thought for a moment. "Human." Lyra said quietly.