//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 // Story: The Shadow of Sombra // by Lupus_Umbra //------------------------------// Ponyvile, as it turned out, had a lot more to offer than food, sweets, and books. The town was packed full of stores that all seemed busy. Granted, I hadn’t really had a chance to explore the city before now. Between finding shelter the first day and waking up in the hospital today, I couldn’t really say that I had too much time to explore. But now that I finally had the time to do something, the women that surrounded me took it upon themselves to show me around the town. If I was being honest, I enjoyed the walk, it was a warm day that had a slight breeze running through, the people were talking, the stalls were busy, and the air had the faint scent of ozone that followed from yesterday’s rain. And though I was reluctant about it at first, the company wasn’t too bad either.  After we had taken off from the hospital, the girls would all take turns telling me about the town as we went through, none of them afraid to tell me their favorite stores or where not to buy what. Especially Rarity, apparently I should never buy fabric scissors from Velvet Date, they have a tendency to never cut straight for long. For two hours, we went like that, learning where many shops were and walking through the town. Sometimes the girls would ask me a question, nothing too personal, it was mundane stuff. How old I was, what my favorite food was, and if I had any favorite books. It was nice to not need to figure out a story for simple questions, I only had to be honest. “So, Darling, why don’t you tell us where you got that cloak from?” Rarity asked, pointing down to the cloak that was wrapped around my waist. Reaching to it, she took it between two fingers and rubbed, feeling the fabric. “It looks quite old and frankly, almost ready to be replaced.”  “Really?” I asked, taking the cloak off my waist and unfurling it. It looked the same as it did yesterday. That is to say, dirty, but not too dirty. “It doesn’t look bad, maybe it needs a clean, but that’s it.”  “Sweety, there are rips and tears everywhere. That’s not to mention the stains.” Rarity explained, standing next to me and taking the cloak to stretch it. The others took that as a cue to gather around and look at it.  “Oh my,” Fluttershy said, putting a hand to her mouth and looking at it, and once again, the others took that as a cue to agree. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought they were linked in thoughts. “I’m seein’ three stains on my side alone,” Apple Jack said, pointing out each of them. “This one is dirt, grass, and… is this one blood?”  At those words, Rarity gave a slight shriek and tossed it back to me. I caught it and went back to wrap it around my waist.  “As I said, it only needs a cleaning.”  “Why is it so important to you Sombra?” This time Spike asked the question. Turning to him, I saw that he was eyeing it as well. The question could have sounded mocking, but from him, it was just an innocent question. “I’m sure that rarity could replace it when you go in for a new set of clothes “Well… I don’t want to replace it, Spike.”  “But why, Angelus? I know I can make you a better one.” Rarity, still looking at the cloak, followed. “I may focus on fashion, but I can also make a cloak that can function. Do you want to be warm? I can line it with fleece. Do you want it to last in the rain? I’ll make one with latex.” Rarity continued to go on and on about how she could make a better cloak. And they all did sound nice, but it just didn’t sound right. Not to mention that her attitude was starting to get on my nerves. “I don’t want to replace it,” I started, feeling some heat enter my voice. “Because it was a gift from my grandpa.” The group went quiet after that, realizing what I said, I took a deep breath and made warped my cloak around my waist. “It was one of the few things that I have left from him.” I gave Rarity a glare. “And while it is dirty, old, torn, and all sorts of bad things. I don’t appreciate how you disregard my things, whether they’re significant or not.” “D-Dear, I wasn’t saying anything bad about it.” Rarity stuttered, trying to recover from all that she said. “I was just saying that maybe it was time to replace it. You know, I didn’t know I was so important to you, but you know, it was just so dirty that I thought I had to-” She tried to say more, but Rainbow Dash cut her off with a hand to her mouth. It was a good thing that she did, the more that she spoke, the more I felt my irritation rising. But I forced myself to stay quiet, she was young and beautiful. She probably didn’t put too much thought into what might hurt people, and probably wasn’t used to people pointing the insult if they did. After all, you didn’t want to get on the bad side of the person that was making anything for you, or a person that was pretty enough to put most women on earth to shame, that was an unspoken rule.  “I’m sure that she didn’t mean to insult it, Angelus,” Twilight said, trying to calm what she thought was going to be a teenager’s rage. “She doesn’t put too much thought into what she says when it comes to clothes.”  Rarity gave a squawk past Rainbow’s hand, but she made no move to remove it. I sighed, letting my anger settle and finishing my cloak.  “It’s fine,” I said curtly, walking forward to the rest of the town. The rest followed and they continued to show me the town, Pinkie decided that she had been quiet for long enough and started to run her mouth about the shops we went by. “Over there is Sadie Saddles, she makes saddles for those who need them for their horses. Oh and over there is Archie’s Quiver, run by Archie he is the go-to man for the hunters in town. And we can forget about-” Angelus tried to follow her words, looking in every direction that she pointed to, but once we got to the end of the road, we ended up in the middle of the Ponyvile. In the middle was a large circular building, with multiple windows and a large balcony that circled the entire second floor.  “Let me guess, it’s the city hall,” Angelus said, interrupting Pinkie just as she was about to speak. “Yep, this is where most people go when they want to know more about the city or talk to the mayor. It has a map that was updated last year.” Pinkie confirmed, bouncing on the balls of her feet.  “Maps huh.” I put a hand to my chin and looked at the doors of the building. There was a line for some reason, it only had five people “Maybe I should go get a map, just in case I get lost.”  “Oh you don’t have to do that darling,” Rarity chimed in. “I’ll go get one for you, you can just wait over by those benches over there.” Pointing to our left, I followed and saw benches surrounding the building. “Besides, there are still questions that everyone wants to ask, ill just save mine for the end. They aren’t important anyway.”  Without giving me a chance to answer, she walked off to the line of people, and the group dragged me off. I looked around and saw the gazes of men around the girl's age, they seemed to be envious. I could only gaze enviously at them, wishing to fulfill their wish of being in my place. Let them see how ‘wonderful’ this experience was. But they were young and didn’t realize that most activities that involved a group of girls would leave you more drained than fulfilled.  When we had finally reached the bench, I immediately prepped myself to be bombarded with questions. All trying to connect me with this Shadow Mage, but surprisingly, when the first question came, it wasn’t even related to that.  “So Angelus, about you and your grandfather, why don’t you tell us about him?” it was Twilight that asked it, I raised a brow at that. I thought that she was going to be the first to ask a question, but nothing related to that.  “What do you want to know?” I asked, it sounded curt and it had suspicion in it, but I didn’t want to give up more than what they wanted to know.  “Well how about how you met him?” Fluttershy said nods and sounds of agreement followed. “You said that you were picked up by him, right? Surely he was a kind man to do that to someone he didn’t know.” I leaned back on the bench, remembering that day like it was yesterday, and I laughed.  “Are you sure that you want to know that? It’s not exactly the greatest story.” I chuckled, and everyone looked confused. How could something that wasn’t a great story be linked with the way I was laughing? But none of them had objected, so I shrugged and started talking. “You see, the first time that I met the old man, he snapped my wrist like a twig.”  “What?!” AppleJack screamed, both confused and angry at what he just said. “He broke your wrist when you met him? Why would he do that ?”  “Well you see AJ, I wasn’t really a good kid growing up on the streets. After I was kicked out of the orphanage, I didn’t really have too many options on what to do. So I would steal any food that I could, eat any trash that was edible, and fight any street rats that came trying to steal from my stash.” they all had looks of horror and shock on their faces as I told my story, seeming to not believe a word that I was saying. And I couldn’t blame them, it was a little hard to tell these stories, but it was my life. “But you see, when you do something like that often, the others would get smart and gang up on me and take the food for themselves. So I had to resort to other methods of getting food. The only idea at the time that came to me was robbing people.”  “Why?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Why was that your next option? That’s the last thing that anyone should do, especially a kid.”  “Yeah.” I sighed, leaning back on the bench. “It was my last option.”  “You really had to do all that Angelus? Eat out of the trash and fight people?” Spike looked sad as he asked that. Like he just realized that not everyone started out so well. He probably didn’t realize it, I haven’t seen a single homeless walking around since I got to this town. I probably spoke of how good this world was that people made enough money around here to not worry about housing. But then again, this was only a smaller town.  “Yeah, I did Spike, but that stopped after I met the old man.” I smiled as I remembered his face. “I remember I was following him in a shady part of town. It was probably my fourth or fifth time doing this, so I wanted to lead him away from a crowd. So I went behind him with my knife, nothing more than a long rusted nail, and told him to go to an ally. He did what I said and I told him to give me all his money and whatever he had. Only, I really didn’t get that far.”  “What happened,” Pinkie asked, she was eating a bowl of popcorn that she pulled from…somewhere. I stopped questioning it and reached over for a handful. It was salted and buttered. “Well, he turned around and broke my wrist,” I said around a mouthful of popcorn. “Told me that if I was going to rob someone, I’d have to pick my targets better. The best advice I was given.” “You took that as advice?” AppleJack deadpanned. “It sounds more like a threat.”  “Well I took it as advice because he didn’t kill me, he just gave me some money and left.” “Wait so he didn’t pick you up right there?” Rainbow interrupted.  “Yeah, why would he pick up a kid he just met?”  “But what was he even doing there in the first place if it wasn’t to pick you up,” Twilight asked, and that was where things started to get tricky. I couldn’t say what he was really doing there, it would put me through more trouble than it was worth.  “He was there doing a job, if I remember right, he was trying to find a man's daughter and bring her back to him,” I explained, and it wasn’t too far from the truth, he really was trying a find the daughter of a man. The thing was that he was hired to drag that daughter back to her father for stealing twenty million dollars and running off with his business rival's son. It was the classic Romeo and Juliet story. He caught them trying to escape to Belize of all places.“He finished the job before even considering coming back for me. When he did, said that he wanted to apologize for breaking my wrist and took me out to eat. One thing lead to another and then I started to travel with him. “So what does he do, is a hunter like you, except for people?” Spike asked, and I shook my head. “That a bounty hunter and no I wouldn’t call it that, he could do that, but he did more.” I scratch my head as I tried to think of the right word. “He did odd jobs.”  “What's that?” Spike asked, I made to answer, but surprisingly, Twilight beat me to the punch. “Well, they are usually jobs that don’t last long and don’t really pay well.” She then looked to Angelus. “And they usually have to do with repairing and cleaning.” “Yep, that's what it is.” I left it off at that, reaching towards Pinkie and getting an extra handful. I stayed quiet as I enjoyed the treat, but it seems Twilight wasn’t done talking. “Angelus, does that sound like an odd job to you?”  “Well, he did a little of everything.” I shrugged. “Needed a wheel fixed? He was there. Got locked out of your house? Boom, he opened it fast then you could with your key. Need to find someone that went missing? He’ll have them back before dinner.” I could go on and on about his own advertisement, but I think the girls got the point. “There really just wasn’t a job that he wouldn’t deny.”  “So he was a handyman, a bounty hunter, and a cleaner?” Rainbow asked, uncertainty in her voice.  “Among many things yes.”  “Alright, you know what, I’m changing the question?” AppleJack blurted out. “If this keeps going on, I feel like we’ll never hear the end of it.”  “That's fine with me.”  “How did you end up here?” She questioned, a serious look in her eyes.  “Oh, that’s a good one?” Pinkie said, pointing to AppleJack and nodding vigorously. Another question that I expected, and once I didn’t really have a good answer for. How do you tell someone that you teleported into a lake?  “Actually, that probably could work.” I was in a world full of magic and spells after all. But what would I say for who caused it. I had a good idea, but again, actually revealing who it could be was a bad idea. So I threw that one out the window and decided to just tell the truth.  “I was lost,” I said simply. I got varied reactions from the girls. Disbelief, confusion, some anger, but mostly the former.  “You were lost,” Twilight said slowly. “You somehow managed to stumble into a forest, walk Celestia know how far, find and save the kids, and then manage to find Ponyvile?”  “Well not like that exactly.” I hunched forward, trying to think of something that wouldn’t sound too farfetched, yet too difficult to confirm. “Well as I said, my grandpa did odd jobs the entire time that I was with him. So growing up, I kinda didn’t have much in the way of proper education. So I took up after him, I did jobs that people would pay me for.”  “Ok, we can understand that, but what does that have to do with you getting lost in the forest,” Rainbow asked, walking over and standing on my left, crossing her arms. “Most people around the forest are smart enough to go nowhere near the forest without a plan. And those who aren’t don’t last five minutes before running back out.”  “Well, I wasn’t smart enough,” I said simply, the others stayed silent, waiting for me to explain further. “I went to the forest for a job. I was only told to search the area on a map around a certain area of the forest for gems to study with a small group. Apparently, there is supposed to be an area that can create very fine gems.”  “And you just accepted it? No questions asked?” AJ asked, walking behind me and leaning on the bench I was in. I didn’t know if she was doing it on purpose, but with the way that AJ and Rainbow Dash were positioned, they gave off the feeling that they were trying to trap me. It didn’t help that the others added to it by standing in front of me. Made me wonder if they’ve done this before.  “Well, I wasn’t exactly in the best position to ask questions,” I explained. “How were you not in the best position to not ask questions, Angelus? Do you even know the place where you got the job?” I shook my head, not even thinking of testing my luck with that. “I would like to think you’re smarter than that.” Twilight sighed, it kinda irked me that she spoke to me like that, but I imagined that it was coming from a kind place. Like a sister scolding her brother that what they did was wrong. So I didn’t even try to challenge it. “Doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re hungry.” I chucked humorously like I just told a joke.  “What?” Twilight gaped “When they approached me to take up that job I was starving and elbow deep in a garbage can trying to find my next meal,” I explained, looking at the building and seeing that Rarity had entered and was going to be done soon. I only had to try and make it a little longer. “They offered me food up front and money later, so long as I did what they asked. I was too desperate to even think twice at the thought of a good meal so I said yes.”  I liked what I had going so far. It was starting to explain a lot of things, such as the gems that I had on me, how I ended up in the forest, why I didn’t ask questions, and some more. It didn’t have much truth in it, but all you needed was a kernel of truth to make a lie believable. And no one knows where I really got the gems from, only that I had them and gave them away. As long as that diamond dog I stole from doesn’t ask questions I should be good.  The group stayed silent after that, not yet sure what to ask yet, and I didn’t want to talk without being asked a question. So for an awkward two minutes, we didn’t say anything. The one who broke the silence was Rarity, holding the map up as she won it as a prize. Confused as to why everyone looked so down. I stood up and grabbed the map, thanking her when she handed it to me, and opened it. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up, it was Apple Jack.  “Hey sugar cube.” she gestured over her shoulder. “Why don’t we get something to eat.” not even one second after the mention of food did my stomach growl like a starving beast. I remembered that I haven’t eaten anything since those chocolate muffins that Mrs. Cake made. Looking at the others, they all had thoughtful expressions on their faces, and somehow, Pinkie’s hair seemed to deflate slightly. Looking back at Apple Jack, she looked a little hopeful when she asked me. “Sure AJ.” I folded the map and put it in my back pocket. “I would love something to eat right now.”