//------------------------------// // Chapter Five: The Effects // Story: The Fall // by Writer12577 //------------------------------// Rainbow ran. The scenery swished past her eyes as her hooves drummed the lumpy path that led to the hill just outside Ponyville. Her chaser, an annoyed Rebel with a knife in his mouth, was running just as fast as she was, making sure that Rainbow wasn't going to get away easily. The hill was getting closer and closer, but so was the Rebel. He wanted to avenge for his comrades that had just gotten killed in a Royal Army attack. He had nothing else in his simple mind than running after the rainbow-maned mare and stabbing her to death if he would be able to catch her. But Rainbow had plans, too. On the very top of the hill was a small stash of weapons. She had been there hiding them so the Royal Army would have a back-up plan. Now they would come in handy. She forced her hooves to pick up the pace as the uphill started. Her hooves protested, but she ignored the pain and just kept running. Better have aching hooves than get stabbed to death. But the pure hatred boiling inside her chaser was encouraging him to stretch the limits of his body in order to get revenge. Rainbow was losing her lead slowly but surely. Even if she would make it up before the Rebel would catch her, she would not be able to reach the weapons in time. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t try. The Rebel might trip, he might suddenly run out of stamina or he could just give up. The possibilities were limitless. So Rainbow forced her hooves to make the final push towards the now-visible trunk that held the weapons. Just as she was about to reach out for the small pistol lying on the ground, the Rebel tackled her, causing her to painfully fall to the ground. It took mere seconds for the Rebel to recover from the jump. Soon he was standing over Rainbow, holding a sharp knife on her throat. “Any final words, bucking traitor?” The voice was deep and filled with pure hatred. “Burn in hell, Rebel scum!” Rainbow shouted. She would die in an honourable way. “Very well then.” The Rebel raised the knife up, preparing for a stab. “But you’re going to burn first!” Just as the Rebel shouted those words, a large, sharp spear came through his forehead. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he let out a small moan. The death was almost immediate. Suddenly the spear got pulled out of the head of the now-dead Rebel, causing his lifeless body to fall on the ground with a soft thud. The grass got all bloody in no time, causing it to get a sickly colour compared to the surrounding, pure green grass. Rainbow lifted her head up and saw Pinkie slowly walking towards her with a familiar spear in her hooves. “Whoa Pinkie, that was close. Thanks for saving me,” Rainbow said in a surprised tone. Pinkie wasn’t a regular killer. As Pinkie came closer, Rainbow could see that something was wrong. The eyes of the pink pony were deep and emotionless. Her usually poofy mane was now flat and flowing down the sides of her head, coloured in a slightly darker tone of pink. As she was just inches away from Rainbow, she opened her mouth and spoke in a deep, sad tone. “I guess I’m a natural…” ----»«---- Rainbow’s usually huge appetite was nowhere to be seen. The small chocolate-chip cookie that she called “breakfast” was lying on the table, half eaten. Every now and then Rainbow would slowly try to push her snout against the sugary cookie that would restore her energy, but just as the tip of her snout touched the surface of the cookie and the sweet scent that had a hint of dark chocolate in it reached her mind, her brains forced her to pull back. It had been like this for a good twenty minutes by now. A try, a refusal and a five minutes break. The rhythm was yet again the simplest. The big bosses of the Rebellion had already left. Rainbow had managed to overhear some parts of a discussion between two Rebels that had lurked out of the camp to have a quick smoke. “Big dealies in the capital city-thingy” were the exact words. Those two were going to have a hard time trying to explain their actions to their sergeant later on. The houses were going to be raided. It was just a matter of time. The Rebels might come tomorrow, they might wait a week. But they would come and Rainbow had to be ready. But when your blood sugar is on dangerously low levels, defending yourself gets a bit harder. That’s why Rainbow was feeling a tiniest bit depressed. But depression was an old friend of hers. She had gotten used to it years before the deaths of her friends. She could overcome the effects and live normally, tolerating it with no visible problems. And eventually it would fade out, leave her alone, just to come back another day. There, yet another simple pattern that was defining her fate. She was bound to these small things that still were the most important pieces of a lifecycle. They were not visible, yet they were always there to remind you about their presence, making sure that you would not forget what you were designed to do. Rainbow believed in cutie marks, unlike the Rebels. A simple, magical mark defined their destiny, yet it was not permanent. One would be able to change it if one would want. Rainbow had seen this happen. Colgate, the town dentist, had changed her fate. She had overcome the blessing- or curse- of a cutie mark. She had left her job as a time-keeper and set up the very first dentist’s office in Ponyville. It had been a well welcomed upgrade to the town ran by sugary businesses. But Rainbow had never felt the urge to change her destiny. She had always loved the look of the mark in her flank. It was full of awesomeness, making it clear that the carrier of the mark was just as awesome as the mark. She was bound to go fast since her birth. The other patterns were different. They appeared and disappeared in completely unpredictable order. One was alive for a couple of minutes, while one would follow you for the rest of your life. They were fascinating, yet still so annoying. A thing that could be both overestimated and underestimated. Rainbow had the ability of sensing these patterns easier than the other ponies. She was able to tell when a pattern was affecting her current move, when one was born and when one was torn apart, released from its duty. And at this very moment, the patterns were crushing her under an incredible weight that was still light as a feather. She could easily lift it up and throw it away, but at the same moment it felt like she was carrying a mountain on her back. There was pain, but then again the pain was not there. The memories were flooding into her mind, infecting it with pictures that she immediately recognized, but yet she still hadn’t seen them in her whole life. On the other end the memories were torn apart in order to make room for new ones. The cycle was endless, yet simple. Five minutes had passed. Time for a try. Rainbow opened her eyes, locked them to the unfortunate little cookie on the table and began slowly lowering her head. The cookie was growing bigger and bigger as she kept going, making the half-consumed treat look too big to fit in her mouth as a single piece. When her snout finally touched the cookie, it didn’t immediately pull up. Her snout was just millimetres away from the chocolate-y surface of the cookie, sniffing softly. Rainbow inhaled the scent and let her brains consume every single bit of it. It got copped down into smaller bits that got absorbed into her brains, causing an immediate alert. Rainbow’s mouth opened. Her head dropped to the table and the cookie got caught inside. It was trapped. There was no place to go anymore. As Rainbow realized what had just happened, she quickly yanked her head up from the table and began chewing furiously. Loud cracks could be heard as the poor cookie got ground into pieces small enough to swallow. The incredible taste of the cookie mixed with creamy filling took her tongue over, causing a sudden spike in the amount of saliva generated. Soon enough Rainbow’s mouth was filled with a mixture of chocolate-chip cookie dust, creamy white filling and pure saliva. The feeling was familiar, yet it was still so far away. But that didn’t matter. The most important thing in the whole surrounding world was that she was consuming the cookie. She had won the battle. She was the winner. Suddenly the taste left her mouth. A slight surprise hit her, as she was trying to understand what had taken the wonderful feeling away. But soon she realized that she swallowed. It was completely usual for a pony, yet still she wasn’t sure if she could do it again. Rainbow licked her lips. The downside of such amazing thing as a chocolate-chip cookie is that it tends to leave your mouth all dry. But luckily, a cure has been invented. It’s a simply fascinating thing called “drinking”. But what was it what you drank? Rainbow let her thoughts wander for a few seconds. When she called them back, she got a pretty mixed-up answer. Some told her that there was no such thing as drinking. Some were trying to convince that you were supposed to drink more cookies. The rest were strenuously trying to tell her that she should drink something that was in the liquid form. Rainbow wanted to believe all of them. They were her thoughts after all. Not believing them was like not believing the thing you said to yourself. But apparently some of her memories were trying to lie to her. That wasn’t a very nice thing to do. Rainbow was the reason they even existed, and now they were lying to her. It made her a bit angry. It was up to her to choose the right answer. She took her time thinking about every single littlest thing her memories were feeding her brains in tries of providing at least some proof to their suggestion. After a good while of thinking, she had made her decision. The first answer was a bit weak. Sure it could be possible, but she had so many memories about drinking in general. It could not be a fake memory. The second one was a bit stronger. But as she scrolled through her memories in order to understand the size of cookies, she had to reject that theory too. Cookies were too big to stream down your throat. So, number three was the answer. She’d have to find some liquid. She knew what liquid was. She had loads of it hidden into the closets of her cloud house, out of the reach of the sharp eyes of the bad police ponies that wanted to steal her precious liquid. And as she dug deeper into the veil of thoughts, she remembered that she had even more liquid here in her temporary house. They were hidden into the leftmost cupboards of the room she was in. She couldn’t remember the name of the room, but it was not necessary. So, she sent out a series of commands that ordered her hooves to lift her up from the chair she was sitting on and take her to the liquid. Her hooves took their time, but eventually she stumbled up from the light-brown chair and her hooves started taking her into the direction of the stash. Stash, a brilliant word she just found from the depth of her mind. As soon as she reached the “stash”, she was forced to face yet another riddle: How to open the solid barrier between her dry mouth and the sweet, sweet relief. Luckily for her, her hooves knew a way. Her right forehoof got pulled back in a swift motion and suddenly rocketed into the centre of the barrier. A loud crack could be heard and the barrier crumbled. Her hoof got pulled back and placed to the floor. It had solved the riddle in mere seconds. Rainbow was proud of her hoof. She reached out for the bottles filled with the sweetest nectar that the world had ever witnessed. She grabbed two and pulled them out of the cupboard, almost smashing the rightmost into the frame of it. But as the bottles came visible in her eyes, she was disappointed yet again. They were sealed with a simple brown holey-thingy that was not letting anything through. She had some more digging to do. The result was found a bit faster this time. A few non-related thoughts passed by, and there it was. Uncork it. Rainbow slowly and carefully uncorked both bottles and let the sweet aroma take over. She felt a sudden urge to chug down every single drop. And in her current condition, she was no-pony to resist such urges. Soon both bottles were lying on the floor, every single drop consumed by the apparently very thirsty Pegasus. But drinking can be dangerous. As soon as Rainbow took her first breath of oxygen after the load of alcohol, her brains decided to switch to safe mode. The last thing she saw before collapsing to the floor was a cyan Pegasus mare, playfully running around with a certain orange earth pony mare that seemed a bit too familiar to be a creation of her own mind. Rainbow smiled for the first time in days as the pleasant memory took over.