//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: Ebonheart // by Raugos //------------------------------// PORT HAVEN, NEW EVERFREE – 15:41 Local Time [Six hours after Incident] Kiln Bread lay on his back, staring at the slate-grey composite plating on the ceiling of his detention cell. Not that he had a lot of experience, but as far as prisons went, this seemed like one of the nicer ones, with a clean, tidy bed on one side and a sink and toilet in the corner. The table and chairs also looked like they could pass for furniture in a budget hotel, aside from the fact that they were bolted to the floor. Though they hadn’t slapped a suppressor ring onto his horn, any magic he channelled simply dissipated like steam in a desert. Possibly anti-magic runes under the flooring, or maybe a large ingot of black Arcanite. Either way, his horn was useless. Stripped of his clothes and belongings, he could only lie down and nurse the swollen joint of his right foreleg, acutely aware of the myriad bruises he’d accumulated all over his body. Admittedly, a dislocated knee and some bruises was getting off quite lightly for a crash like that, though. He just wished that the paramedics hadn’t been so rough in resetting his joint. Once they’d patched him up, the security team had basically left him to rot in isolation, and that was hours ago. No amount of banging on the door or waving and yelling at the camera on the ceiling got a response, not even when he invoked his rights as a citizen of Equestria. He was getting hungry at this point, and he wondered if they even had lawyers in this part of the galaxy. His thoughts inevitably wandered back to his encounter with Ebony. It was uncanny how little had changed in the seventeen years since he’d last seen her, when they were growing up on Equestria… * * * “Ebby, wait up!” Kiln gasped as he plodded after her. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to race me to the top of the hill?” She even turned around and danced on the spot as she waggled her wings at him. “Look Ma, no wings and I’m still faster than you, hee-hee!” That did it. “Rawr!” he cried. Her eyes widened when he suddenly dashed forward, and she went “Eeeeee!” as she turned tail and scampered away from him like a squirrel. “Faster, Tickles, he’s catching up!” He pounced, but missed ended up eating some dirt only because he tripped on a lump of grass. Ebby still reached the top of the hill well before him, but he was secretly relieved to see that she was finally winded like a normal pony. Seriously, a scrawny filly like her shouldn’t be that much better at running than him, even if he was a bit big-boned for his age. They flopped onto their bellies, huffing and puffing away as they rolled stones down the grassy slope to the field next to Baltimare Elementary. Farther in the distance, skyscrapers rose up to the clouds, with their ships looking like busy bees going to and fro from the landing pads at the top. “You’re crazy fast. How do you keep running like that for so long?” “I have a magic heart.” “Right.” He rolled his eyes. “And I’m Princess-Commander Twilight Sparkle.” She pouted. “I’m serious!” “As serious as when you’re talking about Mister Tickles?” he said with a raised eyebrow. Ebby’s ears went flat, and she glanced off to the empty patch of grass next to her, where her imaginary friend must be. She then gasped and raised a wing in front of Kiln’s muzzle, as if she was shielding him from an invisible attack dog. “Hey, there’s no need to call him Chubby Tubby!” she said to thin air. “I… I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” She turned to him. “Right?” Kiln swallowed when he looked into her amber eyes. He liked Ebby despite being a weird-looking batpony and all, but this whole thing with her imaginary friend was the one thing he didn’t like about her at all. They were going to be in middle school next year, for crying out loud! Ponies already made fun of her for having an imaginary friend at this age, and he sometimes got teased for playing along. He didn’t want to, but then she would make that unhappy face and he didn’t want her to stop being friends with him but he also didn’t want everypony else to think he was a foal and—argh, why was it so complicated being friends with her? He kept trying every now and then to see if he could push her to admit that Mister Tickles was just an imaginary friend, or that maybe she was just super into that weird ‘roleplaying’ his big brother sometimes did on special occasions, but nothing worked. Tickles was around her all the time. Their teachers had given up telling Ebby off whenever she whisper-repeated stuff to him in class because he didn’t understand something. “Kiln?” He blinked and looked away. “I… yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to talk as if Tickles wasn’t real.” Ebby glanced at the empty spot for a couple of seconds, then smiled and nodded. “Tickles is sorry about calling you names, too. Hoofbump him?” At least Tickles was a batpony like her. It was awkward enough pretending to play with an invisible pony, and he didn’t want to think what it would be like if Tickles was something really freaky, like blob of goo or a tentacle monster. With a sigh, Kiln reached out and jabbed his hoof at empty air. Ebby’s ears immediately perked up, and she clapped her hooves. “Yay!” “So…” Kiln wiped sweat from his brow. “You were saying something about your magic heart?” “Right!” She sat up on her haunches and rubbed her chest coat with her hooves, pushing the floof around until she parted them to reveal a long, narrow stretch of pinkish, ropy skin running from the middle of her ribs down to the top of her belly. The scar was almost as long as a ruler, and he winced when he thought about how much it must’ve hurt. “Tickles says you don’t need to be scared. It’s not painful.” “What happened?” “I was born with a congenial heart disease.” She smoothed her coat and grinned. “I don’t remember much about when I was a teeny tiny foal, but I saw the pictures. You wouldn’t believe it, but I looked grey as a ghost back then, and I was all tired and sleepy all the time. Nothing at all like I am today!” He blinked. “You’re right. I can’t believe it.” She giggled. “Anyway, the doctors said that I didn’t have long to live—maybe a year or two, I think. So my Papa decided to get me a magic heart! He got some super-smart ponies to cut out my weak heart and put in a new one, which lets me do normal things like run and fly like everypony else!” “So you’re a cyborg? You have an artificial heart?” “I dunno if it’s artificial…” She rubbed her chin with a hoof. “I’ve seen the X-rays Papa hides in his drawer—don’t tell him I snuck a look. It doesn’t look like a robot’s heart—no wires or blinky lights.” “Still, there must be something special about it if it lets you run like a cheetah…” She looked to her side, then turned back to him. “Tickles wants me to remind you that it is magic.” “Right.” He peered at her chest again and shook his head. “Wow. I wish I had a heart like that. Or maybe a spell to give me something similar. Then maybe I’d get picked for the buckball team for once…” Her ears flattened. “I’m not sure if you’d want one exactly like mine, though.” He tilted his head. “What? Why not?” “It’s, um…” Ebby looked around, then scooted closer to him, dipped her head and whispered, “I’m not sure why, but Mama’s not happy about what Papa did for me. Sometimes, when they think I’m asleep, I can hear them arguing about me. It’s like she thinks he did something wrong to me, but I dunno why, and they pretend it’s nothing whenever I ask them. And there was this one time I heard Papa yelling at the doctor on the comms…” Kiln had no idea what to say to that, so he just kept his mouth shut. His mother always told him that was better than saying something wrong or stupid about somepony else’s family. Luckily, Ebby changed the topic easily enough. “I’m hungry,” she announced. Kiln’s stomach agreed with a loud rumble. He then yelped when Ebby snapped at a passing moth. “Oh, eww!” he cried as she munched away happily. She then snorted and stuck her tongue out at him, showing off the horrible mess of moth guts mixed with drool. Cringing, he turned away with a huff and trotted over to find something normal ponies could eat. There were some daffodils growing nearby, so he brought back a bunch to share. They then lay on the backs, nibbling on tasty petals as the grass rustled all around them in the cool breeze. High in the sky, far above the clouds, they saw a large cruiser pass overhead on its way to the spaceport. “Someday, I’m gonna fly one of those,” said Ebby. “Yeah, that would be nice.” Kiln never got to see her get her attend flight school. He didn’t even get to see her graduate. In their second year of middle school, he remembered that one day she came to class all irritated and snappy, and it was the first time she’d ever yelled at Tickles. And just when it was getting awkward with everypony staring at her, she suddenly freaked out and started thrashing on the floor, covering her ears and screaming that her head was going to explode… The school nurse came and carried her out, and Kiln later heard that Ebby’s mother, Indigo Dew, had come to take her home. He didn’t know which hospital she’d gone to. She never came back to school. And not long after, he found out that all of the Dews had moved. Nopony knew where to. It was only many years later that he learnt that her whole family had separated. * * * Kiln Bread’s eyes snapped open when he heard hoofsteps outside his cell. On second thought, a lot had changed, too. Ebby’s father had left out a distressing amount of information in his briefing, though it wasn't entirely his fault. I’ve messed up, big time. He should’ve known that something was up when Marsh Dew just called out of the blue, asking to help him make contact with his wayward daughter…