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// Chapter 3: For Want of my Previous Life 
// Story: For The Swarm 
// by VanishingAct 
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Parasprite tears are blue. I owe this knowledge to my realisation that night.

I had lost my old life.

I should explain. My life was pretty mundane up until now. Nothing serious really happened, bar that one series of events. The most excitement I ever got was rushing to turn the house alarm off after walking into the house at the end of a school day. School was pretty uneventful. Go, work, talk with friends about inconsequential things and return. There wasn't much there to cause drama, no 'who's going out with who' 'cause it was all guys, and no real worry of failure or stress because it was selective, meaning you were either smart or had genius level intellect. Our own little world, sheltered from the outside world.

I had my friends, a few but they were there. They consisted of the people who had more substantial personalities than the wannabe badmans or the trying too hard nerds at our school. We did things normal friends do, like go to the park, play football (soccer for you guys that call it that), talk about random shit. We sometimes fell onto the topic of the meaning of life. Bar the answer '42', we usually ended up saying it was meaningless.

Meaningless. I used to wonder whether that meant nothing I ever did really mattered. Given the fact that I wasn't doing anything substantial with my life, it really seemed like it didn't. I was to wander the Earth, get a job, work and die, as unknown as I was the day I was born. 

I never liked that idea. I never liked knowing that I was insignificant. That I couldn't change anything. And there were a load of things I wanted to change, first and foremost, prejudice. It is a logical fallicy to judge an individual based on others' actions. That's the way it works in my mind anyway. An action cannot be attributed to an entire group of people, just because a few in the group do it. If only other people realised that.

And I couldn't make them realise either. I'm 15 for crying out loud! No-one would stop to listen to you. Just keep living their same old lives, profiling people by how they were born and raised, rather than the person behind the body.

It frustrated me.


It really frustrated me.


But what was I to do?

Mill around on the internet, that's what.

I discovered MLP as I was entering Year 10. I watched and laughed at how a show who's target audience was young girls could enamour so much of the internet, myself included. I watched and marvelled at the near perfect world the ponies had, and sometimes lamented that our world couldn't be like that, and that I couldn't do anything.

And then my dad would come back from work. And I don't know what it was, but he made me feel that maybe there was some meaning to it all. Maybe there was some way that I could help. He made me feel like I could climb any mountain, reach any goal. He had this phrase; 'Anything is possible. You just have to believe it is.'. I listened to his words, in his prescence believing them, but doubting as soon as he left the room. I wanted to keep that belief with me forever.

I loved my dad. I loved him so much.

But it was all gone now. He was gone.

I was never to have that belief ever again.

'Fuck...', I whispered to myself. Just that, over and over. I had no other words.

I was in one of the several guest bedrooms of Trottingham Palace on the pillow of the large four poster king sized bed. The other three Parasprites were on the other side, sleeping where my feet would have been, were I human.

The curtain fluttered even though the window was shut. I payed no notice, instead choosing to wallow in my own misery.

A gray light surrounded me. Suddenly I was filled with memories in my head, of when I was younger, playing with dad, laughing at the pranks we pulled on mum, my dad failing to shuffle in epic fashion.

Then it went further back, all the way back to when I was born. Mum and dad naming me, bringing me back home, giant smiles on their faces. I felt a spike of anger at that but I cooled it off.

'Strange.', a honeyed Trottingham accent said plainly. 'Most don't react so badly to their parents' smiles.'

I froze up at this. 

'Who's there?!'

The curtain fluttered again and then...

'I'm here.'

I turned to my left side to see the voice. Standing before me was a grey alicorn with warm orange eyes. He looked upon me with unadultered kindness as if he was my own father. 

I then remembered him from the youth club, the man sitting at a table next to Filio and Storgia's, sipping his drink and looking on at the rest of us, a sense of peaceful happiness in his eyes.

I looked back at his pony form, his pure white mane, parted in the middle, lying straight down, the tips of the hairs fluttering in a nonexistant breeze, as Princess Celestia's mane does. I always attributed that to the immortality of the alicorns. Does that mean that-

'Unlikely. While I may have increased longevity, I don't think that I am immortal. My aunts are the only true alicorns remaining. Myself and my siblings are but simple mutations of regular ponies' genetic structure.'

Were my thoughts really so loud?

'No, I'm just an attentive listener. Prince Agapé Cadenza, pleased to meet you.'

Were I in the mood to talk, I would have greeted him and then bombarded him with the several questions I had accumulated over the evening, but I wasn't so I didn't. We lay in silence for a minute or two. The Prince then decided to speak up.

'Want to talk about that anger spike?'

'It's personal.'

'Oh.'

There were a few more seconds of silence.

'Another time?'

'Another time.'

He had incurred those memories in an attempt to make me feel better, right? Well it hadn't worked.

There were a few more moments where we didn't talk, in which Agapé walked over to the window and looked out over the city, something that was regularly done by all three of the brothers, I had now realised. He held a wry smile on his face, finding an invisible joy in the air.

'My brothers probably didn't elaborate on who I am, did they?'

'No.'

'Heh, it's always easier to hear it from the ponies' mouth anyway.' said he as he turned towards me, those ethereal tips of his mane still fluttering. 'They call me the Sovereign of Unconditional Love, which can mean different things to different people. The first, and may I admit the one I most loath is patriotism, the love of one's country...'

I know the feel. It's not-

'Not the country that makes the person.'

'Could you please stop doing that?! I like to know the feeling that I'm alone in my head!'

'Force of habit. Sorry.'

He turned back to the window and continued. 'The second is far more palatable. It is the love that my aunts and to a lesser extent we siblings feel towards our subjects as their rulers and vice versa.'. That at least explained his near constant serene smile on his face.

'See a pattern, here?'

'What pattern?', I didn't really recognise much similarity between the two, besides the fact that love toward the Princesses could possibly breed patriotism.

'Well, maybe this next one should make it more blatant. It's what you feel for your father and what your father feels for you.'

That did nothing more than bring more tears to my eyes, staining the bed with the blue dye. I wasn't able to get the thought out of my head, He's gone, he's gone, he's gone.

'...Fuck.'

'I'm glad you are feeling this way. It means you can appreciate what it is I preside over.'

'Glad? You're glad that I'm an emotional trainwreck?!'

'I wouldn't call emotions caused by losing one's father being an emotional trainwreck. I know how it feels myself. This is perfectly normal.'

'Wait, your dad is-'

'Oh, no, no, but I've seen many ponies struggle with bereavement, and believe me, you are doing better than a lot of them.'

I found some sort of solace in his words, and felt slightly better as a result. We lay in silence once again, choosing to remain in our own heads, thinking about what we wished.

Eventually, Agapé continued with his lecture. 'The link between them is that all three rely on a relationship with something or someone that is absolutely helpless and needs to be cared for, looked after, nurtured. Patriotism is an exaggeration of that feeling to encompass the land that you live on.'

I nodded lazily, only half listening, my mind still on my father. Pull yourself together, people have been through this and worse!

'I'm telling you this for a reason you know.' That brought my attention back to Agapé, his voice becoming ever so slightly sharper. 'As your father once cared for you, you must now care for them,' he said, pointing to the sleeping bodies of Jesus, Joseph and Brian. 'And it won't end here either. You will need to show your entire swarm the same care that he showed you.'.

My mind slowly pondered the gargantuan task of looking after just the three I had with me today, let alone a whole swarm. But then Agapé turned to me and something profound, that probably changed my mind.

'And I couldn't think of anybody better to do it.'

'Bruv do you even know who I am?! I'm bloody 15, for fucks sake, I can't go-'

'When we entered your world we were given 3 weeks to find our champion. We wanted one who was one with all three of our attributes. We sense those who are attuned to them by seeing a sort of aura around them. You were the one that exuded the highest amounts of all three. You were the person we needed.'.

So I wasn't just some Tom, Dick or Stanley that they'd found? That they'd actually had to seek me out?! Wait, that only means one thing. I have meaning.

Of course you have meaning, Be- I mean Aniseed! Else Filio wouldn't be going on about 'mending the world'! Else I wouldn't bloody be here! Well if this is what my meaning is, far be it for me to shy away from it!

Yeah. In my original world, I couldn't change a darn thing. Here however, that was gonna change. I'm gonna stop this racism, even if it means I have to eat someone's Tartarus bound genitals!

Yeah! I'm gonna do it. I'm bloody well gonna do it!

'I'm gonna fuckin' do it Agapé!! Wait, where did he go?!'

He had left as soundlessly as he came, the only trace of him being here was the open window.

'Confound these ponies, they drive me to social revolution.'.



Author's note: This chapter was basically to introduce our third Prince and GM, Agapé, and to give an insight into our hero, Aniseed.

This is the first time I've written anything 'feely' or emotionally charged, so comments are requested kindly.

That's all, thanks guys and stay hideous.

-TheAirHideous.