It appeared curious as to why I was here. Understandable, but unnecessary. But I will let it pass just this one time.
I was patient, so I let it hover there over the surface of the black star, content to let it coil itself into ever-complicating tangles as it puzzled over my appearance. It didn’t even seem to recognize me, that much was apparent.
It would have been a lot more scared if it had.
But alas, the fear was lacking in this altercation, although that mattered not, I could be a very good teacher.
I started to examine my fingernails, and this action had an immediate effect on the entity as it started to writhe even more in agitation. It had obviously remembered the action as being somewhat… disrespectful. That was the exact idea I was trying to convey anyway, so it might have been good that it caught on.
This particular entity needs to remember who gives the orders here.
It spread out, as if to look intimidating in my eyes – a foolish move – and began to slowly approach me, drifting through the dark starry void that surrounded us. I looked away from my fingernail as it came closer, not even bothering to lower my hand from its position near my face.
A pair of eyes appeared in the dark mist, slitted reptilian eyes of the deepest green, the colour of pestilence, gazing at me with malice, demanding to know what I was doing. A maw of jagged teeth appeared next, emerging from the mist, saliva dripping from it as if it was anticipating eating me.
If that were the case then it would be sorely mistaken.
The being spoke, “Foolish creature, what reason would you have to call me from my slumber?” It spoke with an odd hissing accent, and the breath on the idiotic creature could fell a cow from a hundred paces away. A drop of saliva flew from the maw of the snake-lookalike and found a resting place on my suit. I flicked it away with a quick wrist movement from my already raised hand.
My mind was completely certain at that moment that it didn’t remember me, for if it had it would never have spoken to me like that. That was the only thing that saved it from immediate extermination.
I let out a heavy sigh and returned to inspecting my fingernail. “That’s funny, to the average bystander it would seem that your slumber was less of a slumber and more of a, let’s say…” I gave it a quick glance before looking back at my finger, “Banishment?”
That was the final straw for its patience as it started growling, softly, but slowly rising in volume. I could hear the sound of its teeth grinding together in anger. Its eyes narrowed as it began to speak again, “I will not ask of how you know of my fate, but to approach me in my domain, and to anger me in my place of rest, to even touch my star…”
It looked me right in the eye, “For that you must die.”
Just as I thought, it hadn’t gotten any smarter over the millennia since I’d seen it last. Still, it had at least improved on its sense of drama a little. And at least now I get a chance to show it who’s in charge around here.
The cloud shot out two tendrils of gas in an attempt to touch me, and they wrapped around my arms, I let it try and pull me apart, the key word being tried. In mere seconds it realized that it was getting nowhere and tried instead to simply encompass my in its maw. The face in the cloud got closer, can closer, and the mouth opened wider, and wider, until all that I could see was the shining white teeth, wet with anticipation.
The mouth was about to close on me, and I could practically sense the satisfaction that it would get from swallowing me whole, assimilating me into its being.
But that would never happen. I spoke but a single word.
“No.”
But the word wasn’t the important thing. As I spoke it I imparted a fragment of my will into it, forcing power through the sound. The teeth immediately stopped their approach and the face recoiled as if struck. But I didn’t relent.
“You think that I am but a simple being, one that could be treated as you will.”
As I spoke the face continued to back away, and the tendrils that surrounded my burst apart in a white flash.
I think this was the moment when it finally recognized me. mainly due to its sudden desire to escape as quickly as possible.
But that option was cut off in an instant. I spoke a quick word, and a moment later it was bound by the chains of power that had encircled it. I turned it around in its binding to face me, and the look it was giving me was one of pure helplessness and terror.
I gave it a cold grin, and it shuddered, “Hello there old friend…”
I think I even saw a tear at one point sneak its way onto its face. It continued to shrink in its binding until it only showed me an image of one of the disgusting creatures that inhabited the land that it had tried to overtake. Pitiful really.
I raised an eyebrow, “No answer? My my, you would me with your actions.” I tightened its prison and was rewarded by a quick shriek of pain, “Now, I don’t care for small talk, so I’ll only say this once, and I want a good answer.”
I leaned closer, my head almost touching its as we both hung suspended in the starry void, a manic grin on my face. It shivered.
“I have a business proposal for you Corruption, and I would be honored if you accepted it.”
----------
I try to help, but sometimes, things take on a mind of their own, and in the end the show must go one. For I am but an instrument showing a window into their life…
-Author
Chapter 18
Facing Facts
Light
It’s surprising really just how quickly someone’s expectations of life can be torn apart. It’s like there’s some giant force that can change the entire direction that you might be travelling in with the drop of a coin, a cosmic influence if you will.
Mine was nothing like that. Mine was just realizing the truth that I’d overlooked and forgotten my whole life.
That my world wasn’t real, that everything I had based my actions off of until this point had been influenced by that thing, the thing that had taken away my identity and left me as a broken shell on a tiny planet in some unknown galaxy in some unknown universe, if Luna’s explanation was anything to go by.
To be honest, it was a bit far fetched, but worse than that was the realization that it was all true.
Somehow, that bastard had gotten inside of my head at some point and erased everything. And by that I mean everything. Sure, there would have been some basic subconscious things that he couldn’t have gotten rid of, but if I had forgotten them I’d probably have been dead, and again according to Luna that’s a near impossibility.
I’m not sure just how long I spent bent down, having keeled over onto my hands and knees at some point during my introspective rant, but it sure as hell felt like a while, and it probably was. I’d tried as hard as I could to remember something, anything that would lead to a conclusion that wasn’t relating to him, but I could only remember those four words.
”Time to forget, brother.”
After that there was only a flash of light, and after that…
Nothing.
And then there was me finding Fire, finding the rest of the gang, everything up until this point. But there was nothing earlier. It was as if I’d just appeared on Earth, clothes and all, ready to meet up with the other four and start fighting. I even had some hazy impressions that I’d had a family of sorts. It was like my brain hadn’t been able to cope with there being nothing to use as a reference at all and had just given control to my subconscious.
Which was probably a good thing. Somehow, my subconscious hadn’t been erased completely, and faint ideas had bled into my new life and sort of, generated my backstory. Even the instinct to fight the Director had been programmed into me, hardwired into my ‘young’ brain.
Or at least, that’s how I like to think of it. It was, in all likelihood, a lot more complicated than that, but I don’t care.
All I know is that the Director, that backstabbing dickhead, had known me for a long time, and that he’d erased my memory.
He’d practically destroyed me.
Every attempt to think back to before what I like to call the Incident was rewarded by blankness, and a headache from straining like hell. Everything after that I can remember just fine, even the moment when I just appeared on Earth in the middle of nowhere.
And it made me angry. To know that my original life had been hidden from me the whole time, that I’d probably been completely different to how I am now, and that it had all been taken away in one fell swoop.
And then it made me sad, to think of who I might have left behind, the ones who might have known me at some point during my extended life.
And so I stayed there, crouched in a small huddle in the middle of the floor in that tiny cottage, content to just think, and strain to remember. I can faintly recall having heard Celestia issue a command to the rest of the ponies, and hearing them file out into an adjacent room a few seconds later. Then hearing a pair of hoofsteps approach until they were right next to me.
I felt a small pressure on my back as a hoof was placed ever so gently upon it. I lifted my head and looked up to see both Celestia and Luna gazing at me with eyes full of compassion and sadness. In all fairness they’d lived for a long time, and had probably dealt with things much worse than what I was going through.
But it made me feel good anyway to know that they cared, even if it was just a little.
I sniffed quietly and wiped away a tear that I didn’t even know was there. A smile crept onto my face as I tried to look even a bit composed, but they saw right through it.
I bet a lot of people wonder what it’s like to get hugged by two semi-goddesses at the same time, and ponies at that, but I’ll just tell you this.
It feels good, really good.
There’s something strange about touching something living, especially if you know that what you’re touching cares for you in some way. It gives you some irrational idea of happiness, and even if you know that something bad is about to happen, you just don’t care.
At that moment, that was exactly how I felt. I just sat there, content to float on the current of happiness that were going through me as I sat there being glomped by two worried princesses.
But all good things must come to an end, and this was a case of that. I stood shakily and finally managed to put on a convincing smile for my company. It seemed to cheer them up a little too.
Luna took a small step closer to me, “I take it that you managed to remember something.”
Close, but no cigar. “If you could call it remembering, I just hit a wall, but I know enough.”
“And what have you realized?” Celestia asked.
I sighed, “Luna was right. She was right about everything. About being an Element. She was just right.” I took a quick glance at my clothes, almost as if to reaffirm my newly-realised – or should it be newly-remembered – status as a True Element.
Luna rested a hoof on my shoulder, leaning up slightly to reach me, “I can’t imaging how this must feel for you…”
“To be honest, it’s not that bad…” I sighed again, “It’s just the fact that everything up until this point in my life has been a lie. I didn’t even have a family or anything, I just thought I did.” A terrible thought occurred to me.
Does that mean that I lied to my friends the whole time? That they never really knew about me? And to think that everything about their life I remembered…
I snapped back to attention as I realized that I was drifting away from the conversation at hand. The two princesses were looking at me with concern, “What’s troubling you so much Light?” Luna asked. Celestia gave her an incredulous look, making the night Princess blush, “I mean, apart from the whole… you know…”
There was an awkward silence as Luna shuffled, her face a crimson beacon in the small environment. “Well…” I started, but then something occurred to me, “I haven’t told you about my world have I yet?” They shook my head, “Well, I think that may help to explain some things to you, but you might want to bring the others back, I don’t much feel like repeating myself.
“Okay, so I’m going to explain some things, but I don’t want any interruptions, got it?” I gave a pointed look at Twilight, and she immediately looked at the ground, her cheeks burning. The others in the group nodded, Fluttershy looking sheepish.
Actually, Fluttershy kinda always looks sheepish, so lets just say, for convenience, that she’s always looking sheepish around me, I can be a little scary at times, believe me, I know.
“Right, now, where to begin…”
“The first thing to know is that where I came from things were a lot different to here. Possibly the most obvious difference is that there wasn’t magic, at all, nada, gonski, nothing. The closest thing that we had to it was probably me, and a few friends that I had, I’ll talk about them later.
So in this world, there was no magic, but we had technology that could easily make up for it any day, so advanced that you could get from one side of the world to the other in the space of a day. Not that you’d want to of course, it all looked the same.
The second major difference is that while we had a strong ruler, a bit like Celestia and Luna here,” Twilight gave me an annoyed look for not including their titles, “He might’ve been a little too strong. He literally controlled everything. The whole world was pretty much identical. I mean, sure there were areas where development just wasn’t easy, or practical fro that matter, but everything else was controlled by his.
His name was the Director.
Everyone following so far?”
Twilight looked like she was about to ask a question – go figure – but that would take too much time, “So anyway…
I fought against the Director, and I wasn’t the only one. There were a few other groups that tried to make a stand, but they were all wiped out. I’d had a band of five…”
I stared into space for a second, but caught myself quickly, “Anyway, I lived in this uniform shithole of a planet, and almost my whole life was spent fighting. All of the law enforcement was corrupt, controlled by Him, and they would alter normal people to make them ideal candidates for the… conversion process…”
There was a round of shudders that swept the room as I said that, and all of the ponies looked too disturbed by what I said.
“Now, Luna, you asked what I was thinking about…
You see, there were some bright spot in my life, four to be exact. Their names were Fire, Earth, Wind,
and Water.
These four were the only ones that I could trust. We’d all had a tough time at the hands of the Director, and we all wanted to fight. The most important part being that we actually could.”
I slowed down and gave a deep sigh. Rainbow looked like she was about to ask something. “So what happened to those fo-“
Applejack punched her in the shoulder and made a pointed look at me just to make it obvious. Rainbow looked more than a little embarrassed.
I smiled weakly, “No, it’s alright Applejack. To answer your question Rainbow, they’re gone now. They all died.” This was a bit of a shock, and the whole room was quiet, “Yeah, I know, believe me I know…
So yeah, I lived in the armpit of the universe, and I fought all the time. And if you’re wondering how I got here Twilight, yes, I can see the question written on your notepad, don’t bother hiding it now, yeah, I don’t know how I got here, I was about to get killed by the Director and then…”
I trailed off with my hands in the air in a questioning gesture, and Twilight looked extremely suspicious all of a sudden, but I decided to leave that for later.
I turned to Luna, “The biggest problem is that I can’t remember anything before I was on Earth fighting the Director, except for hovering in some random void place and hearing someone telling me to forget.” I decided to leave out the whole ‘I’m your brother thing’, no need to complicate things…
Luna gave me a look, you know the one, “Well, I could take a glimpse inside your mind to see if I can find anything before that…”
Sweat beads sprang onto my face, but there was no alternative, she had to look, “Okay then, but only look for before, cool?”
She gave me a strange look, but agreed to my conditions. Moments later, her horn was glowing and she had her eyes closed in concentration.
I waited…
…
…
GASP
“What was it?!”
Luna was panting hard, and she had a startled expression. I leaned forward, eagerly awaitin-
“Nothing! There was absolutely nothing there!”
I was shocked, completely shocked. I rolled onto the backs of my heels, “What do you mean nothing?!”
“What we- I mean, I are trying to say is that there’s no memories at all! There’s nothing there before your time on Earth!”
I was grasping as straws here, “Is there anything you can do?”
She looked like she was about to say something, but Celestia placed a hoof on her shoulder to quiet her. Luna looked curious, but comprehension dawned on her face, “You don’t mean…”
Celestia nodded, “Yes sister, I do…”
I was more than a little confused, “What? What are you talking about?”
Luna turned towards me, “Light, there is one possibility for you to get your memories back, but it may not work, and the pony that we need to talk to may not want to help…”
“I’ll do it! Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”
“You must first realize that he might not agree to help, and he can be more than a bit temperamental at times. And if he gets angry at you…”
“My comment still stands.”
Luna nodded, “Very well. If you wish to know what we will do,”
She looked at me, directly in the eyes, “We need to have a talk with Time.”
Far, far away, a small person on the comments page suddenly leapt a metre into the air, “I knew he’d bring Time into the fic! Fucking called it!”