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// What We do Here 
// Story: The Truth of the Alicorn 
// by ThunderChaserCreate 
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	"I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome you to the Academy," the elegantly disturbing (or maybe disturbingly elegant?) mare announced, acting as though she hadn't just locked me into her laboratory. 
"We are a science-based learning center, mostly geared toward biology and, more specifically, caballiology, the study of ponies. We include hooves-on experiments, written work, and dissections as part of our curriculum. The colt beside me is my assistant, Chip. You will treat him with the same respect you will treat me." 
Her hips swung with her gait, showing off a cutie mark with two vials of colored liquid. I supposed she really was a scientist. The pony stepped on a particularly creaky and termite-ridden board, which appeared to trigger the fall of particularly lethal-looking chunk of ceiling. She evaded it easily, but it shattered over the head of the mangled stallion. She reached over with a tentative hoof and brushed the remaining crumbles out of his mane, "Any questions?" she asked iniquitously, broadcasting another deceitful grin.
I simply stood, staring at the room before me. It was full of scientific instruments: tubes of bubbling liquid, clicking and whirring machinery, various dials and gears spinning in different directions. 
Beeping, grinding, and buzzing sounds came from assorted metal structures, with screens monitoring things that looked like heart rate and breathing. Everything in the room, instead of being polished and well-treated, was coated in a thick layer of filth. There wasn't a machine in the room without a good-sized dent or two, and many of them continually stalled or had an odd fluctuation every few seconds. Despite it's condition, the system was impressive, even if only through it's ingenuity.
Rain Song, of course, knew none of this. She was very young, and it was at least nine hundred years before these particular appliances would be fully understood and accepted. Therefore, she looked up at the odd pair of ponies before her, and, for the first time, got a really good look at them. The mare was a slender earth pony with a yellow-orange coat, the color of autumn leaves. Her mane, while smooth and flowing, was a shocking red that rivaled the light of the sun for pure brilliance. Around her neck hung a mask, meant to filter impurities out of the air. It had a tangled mess of tubes that snaked over the surface of the metal, connecting like the branches of a tree into one large tube that fed clean air to the mouth. She was wearing a heavy leather jacket, that was covered with pockets, most sewn on by hoof and made of random materials. The pockets were too deep to see inside, or for anything to poke out of the top, but they tinkled with each step. Her eyes glinted with malice, ready to do anything to get me to participate in her 'learning center.'
The stallion had scars and stitches all over him. His cutie mark was odd, only sort of half-there, but a recognizable moon. There was a ghost of something over it, something I couldn't quite make out. As he dragged himself around, his hooves made a hollow thunking sound, much different from the usual clopping they're meant to make. His face was contorted into a sort of permanent half-grin, which is what the sloppily sewn stitches with black wire I had first seen were for, it appeared. His ankles were raw and scarred badly, as though he had been struggling against shackles.
"Umm, questions, right? Where do I sleep?" I asked.
The mare's smirk instantly became a grimace of annoyance, "What do you care? Don't you want to know about the machinery?" she demanded, lifting her hoof to gesture at the nearest machine, "You see, this one here--"
"No..." I interjected, kicking at a pile of sawdust, "I want to know what exactly we're doing here."
The mare lowered her hoof, a smirk curled across the right side of her mouth, "Oh, yeah? You really want to know?" She turned to the colt, "What do you think, Chip? Should we start our lesson?" the colt blinked once, very slowly, "Good!" She put her hoof around my shoulder, and I caught a whiff of something stale and metallic, blood. she pulled me to her side and bent down a bit to talk right into my ear, "I think it's time you meet the other students."
She grasped my hoof with an iron grip, dragging me into another tiny room. This room had an actual door, but it was made of a thick, double-layer steel and had a port-hole window. The lock was heavy, and could only be closed from the outside. The inside of the room was in pretty bad shape, with one sagging mattress on a box-spring that was torn up and full of splinters, as though a homeless pony had used it for firewood. The walls had streaks of some kind of glue running down them. Something had definitely covered the walls, but it had been torn down.
It was full of very young ponies, of all different types and ages. Earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns were packed into the room, most of them aged from five to eight. However, a white-coated pony stepped forward, who must have been about twelve or thirteen. She had a short mane that was  pink. Even though she was older than everypony else here, she still didn't have a cutie mark. She almost seemed to be protecting the others.
"Well, introduce yourself to the others and get some good rest. We'll start in the morning," the mare said, voice depicting exhaustion.
"Is this a padded cell?" I asked, turning to look at her only after I had asked the question.
The mare's eye twitched, "ENOUGH QUESTIONS!" she shouted, slamming the door and trotting away.
"Hello," the white pony said, " My name is Sun Rise. I think I'm the leader. I'll protect you from them, and, if I have to, these ponies from you. Do you understand?" she asked hesitantly, taking a bold step toward me and flicking her tail. It was clear she was afraid, but she was very brave. She wasn't sure if I was with her, or with the strange professor and her eerie accomplice.
"S-sun Rise?" I stuttered, taking a step away from her and backing against the door.
The pony's face softened, "Yes. I'm sorry if I scared you, but we need to be careful. I am Sun Rise, but these ponies call me Celestia."