OFF/Pony
ZONE 0.0
She descended like a god.
From the Nothingness she came, her eyes closed against the new light of the Zone, her hooves crossed, her lips curled instinctive into the ghost of a smile. The Player had arrived, and the world received her.
The pegasus Cheerful Skies opened her eyes, and saw all around her was white. She could see nothing but blinding... Cloud, perhaps? Yes, she thought it might indeed be cloud. She supposed that meant she was almost there. It was loading, preparing. Exposition, really.
A voice that had no substance spoke to her. It was flat, unpleasant but not overly so. More of a mild sort of voice, as if it were unimportant and without any need of true warmth or distinction.
"What is your name?"
"I am Cheerful Skies!" she answered, her voice bright, her smile a flash of color in the pristine void.
"You will be assigned to one called the Batter. Her old name is gone. She is on a quest to purify the zones. Make sure that she accomplishes her mission."
This meant nothing to Cheerful. She did not know what a zone was, nor did she grasp who or what a batter was. But that didn't matter in the slightest, really. It was time to do her part! Whatever that might mean. Her head was all but empty, a dark sea that stretched on in all directions with nothing to break it up. No islands, no boats.
"Who are you?" she asked the voice.
There was no answer. Her smile faltered, but only for a moment.
Cheerful closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, the white was gone.
In its place was an earth pony. She wore an obviously old baseball jersey, and on her head sat a dirty cap. A bat of ash was around her on a sling like Cheerful imagined a sword might sit, and her eyes were hard, shadowed. She was muscled, fit, her orange coat hiding a physique that screamed power.
Cheerful had eyes only for this mare. The rest of the world eluded her. For a long moment, they stood in what the Player could only imagine was absolute silence. If there was sound beside the two of them breathing, she couldn’t hear it. Her eyes and this stranger’s eyes were locked. She felt a stirring in her mind and in her legs and in her chest. She thought that she might begin to shake, but she did not. The moment passed. She was bewildered in the quiet.
The Batter spoke, a stalk of straw in her mouth.
"Heya."
"Hello!" Cheerful responded, happy now that the moment had passed. Her smile was ever present. "You must be the batter! I—"
"Yeah. I'm the Batter, an' your the Player. Stands to reason. Good to have ya along...?"
The Batter's eyebrows rose. Cheerful blinked at him, her face slack with confusion.
"Name. Your name," the Batter drawled, scowling.
"Oh! I'm sorry! Cheerful Skies!" once more, her smile blossomed. The little blue pegasus shook out her wings, finally realizing it was cold.
"Cheerful. Eh, it'll work, sugarcube. C'mon, then."
With that, the Batter turned, and Cheerful's eyes were freed. She looked around and as she did she was filled with a nameless feeling.
They stood on a platform in a colorless, opaque sea, flanked by four floating metallic boxes at the corners. The island that had received her from the Aether was connected by a bridge to a strange structure like stacked children's blocks. It was yellow, as was the surface below her hooves. A calming sort of yellow. She didn't mind it.
Like a child, Cheerful followed the batter.
They walked across the slender bridge that cut through the churning opacity, and the cheerful little pegasus began to ask questions.
"So, where are we? Who are you? What are we going to do? What's my jo—"
The batter glanced over her shoulder. "Are ya gonna ask questions the whole dern way?"
"Um... No, I guess I don't have to... I just don't know very much and it's all sort of sudden! There has to be exposition."
The batter sighed. "This story ain't got any. What do you know already?" she asked. She tugged her hat and kept walking on.
Trailing, Cheerful Skies recounted her lesson like a student's recitation. "You're the Batter! You're on a holy mission to purify the zones. Um, whatever those are. And whatever that means."
"Ya don't know what zones are."
"Not a clue!" she replied dutifully, and finally caught up to the Batter.
For her part, the bat-wielding mare stole a glance over at Cheerful with narrowed eyes. "So ya don't know anythin'. Anythin' at all."
"I know I'm a player and that my mission is to aid you," Cheerful answered her, firmly. She knew this very well. It was, in fact, what her brain was full of—helping the Batter on her mission.
"That... That'll do," the batter said gruffly.
They were at the foot of the tall structure, and Cheerful stopped walking to look up at it in vacant awe.
"So big!"
"I suppose."
The batter had also stopped, but her gaze was level. "Which way, girl? We goin' up the stairs or we goin' through one of the doors?"
There were two doors, but one of them was blocked. To the left there was a narrow, winding stair. As she stepped closer, the Player realized that this relatively featureless building was unlike the metal ground beneath her. Carefully, ever carefully, she touched the wall. A word detached from... Something. It rose to the forefront of her mind, slowly rising up to the air above the waves.
"Stucco," she said. She grinned, pleased. "Stuuuuucccccooooo."
"Hello? You gonna pick? Yer the Player."
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I got distracted. It's stucco! See?" she poked it with her blue hoof, her head whirling between building and mare, her sleek black mane like a hurricane's arms. "Did you know?"
"Yes."
"Well at first, I didn't, but—"
"Choose."
She hummed in thought. She wanted to see what was inside, but she wanted to go up too! She could...
"Fly? I can—oh, I'm hurrying batter! Let's go through this door."
They did.
It was a boring sort of room. Directly in front of them, there was a series of numbers.
4-8-2-2-C
And nothing more. It was blank, warm yellow, perhaps the most empty thing that the Player had ever seen in her short time. Which, of course, was not much.
The Batter walked out, and the Player followed her mutely. The sequence floated in the dark sea of her mind, along with the word stucco and what the sky had told her.
"Up then, I guess!" Cheerful was undaunted. The Batter said nothing in reply.
They climbed the long stairs, and Cheerful hummed a little song. Somewhere, in the distance, was the sound of slowly dripping water. She saw a vision, almost out of the nothingness itself, of a cave with little pools. Clear pools, nothing like the opaque sea that stretched on in all directions. What did it mean? It was off, somehow.
"Batter, how will you purify the zones? What does that mean?" Cheerful Skies asked.
The batter mare said nothing.
They continued to climb, the Batter leading and the Player following in dutiful vigilance. Or was she leading? Pushing? She felt as if...
Her hoof paused on the stair and she stopped them both. The Batter froze, like there was a chain between them. Cheerful was quiet, her empty mind a little less empty, her understanding of the world slowly altering. Her eyes bored into the Batter, focused on the mare that would not answer her questions. Her cheer was subordinated by something.
"What are you doin'?" The Batter asked.
"I'm not sure. I control you."
"Yes."
The Player was enraptured. She grinned her ever-present grin and released the batter. "I didn't know that!"
"Whatever."
Cheerful and the Batter reached a landing. It jutted out from the tall yellow structure, and there was nothing on it. Cheerful Skies was beginning, in the echoing cavern of her mind, to sense a pattern. The world was empty. In her mind, something was bubbling to the surface, but what? She didn’t know. She only knew that there was a door, above them, with stairs that led to it. The two ponies made to walk across the landing towards the door.
She didn’t see him come. One moment, there was no one but the Batter and her Player, her Puppeteer, and the next there was a bizarre cat in front of them. No one spoke. No one, of course, but the cat.
“You, mon ami, are a ghost.”
It was a direct statement of inalterable fact. The cat who laid this down like the law of the world, licked its paws for a moment. The Batter fidgeted. Cheerful cocked her head.
“Ah, but you must be a ghost,” he continued, looking up at the Batter with narrowed eyes. “You can not be a single thing else besides it. You see, no other living things can exist in Zone 0, so you must be figments of my imagination. Well,” he yawned, and Cheerful Skies drew back at his long, daggerlike teeth. “Well then. I am aching to know your name, my dear elusory intruder. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Judge.”
“I’m the Batter,” the mare with the bat replied, tugging at her cap. “An’ all that. I’m on a mission to purify these zones. A sacred kinda mission.”
“Ah, that is lovely, but you must forgive me. I was addressing primarily the puppeteer, not the puppet.”
The Batter glanced over her shoulder at Cheerful for a brief second, and then shrugged. “Her name’s Cheerful Skies. Can’t talk to us none.”
“I can too!” Cheerful said. Her ears pinned against her sides, and she narrowed her eyes at the Batter.
“Ah. That is unfortunate.”
The Batter coughed. “Can you help me, then? Us, whatever.”
“Help? Well. I am a cat, and there are things that cats can do. We rub ourselves around the feet of mankind, and they delight in it! Such is life.”
Cheerful Skies walked closer, curious. She waved her hoof in front of the cat’s face, still a little afraid of his massive teeth. She noticed now, as his eyes did not waver, that he could not truly see her. In fact, as she further examined him, she found him rather thin. Boney. Strange. She had no frame of reference.
“I don’t need that,” the Batter said flatly behind her.
The Judge’s tail waved back and forth. His ears flicked. “And what could a being such as I do for one such as you, a protoplasmic sort of entity?”
“On a quest,” the mare shot back, voice flat and unkind. “Gonna purify the zones, all of ‘em.”
The Judge stretched, purring. Cheerful would have found it endearing, but something about him was... off. Maybe? She didn’t know. His voice was pleasant.
“Ah! Yours is the most laudable of goals, I would say. Most extremely laudable. I would love to be the one to assist you along the way as your guide. And... Cheerful, was it? Mon cherie, that is a wonderful name.”
“Tell him I say thank you,” Cheerful Skies said, turning back to the Batter and standing beside her.
“Says thankya,” the orange mare relayed.
The Judge purred. “It is my pleasure. I can only faintly see you, alas, but I am sure you are quite lovely. Well, as far as guiding you, this is Zone 0. It is rather empty, fortunately for you two. However, the other zones beyond this one will not be. You may encounter dangers, and so I would advise you to work together the best you can. Through that door is a puzzle. It shouldn’t be too hard. Did you enter the room below?”
“Yes.”
Cheerful Skies was silent, remembering the bare room. She recalled the sequence.
“Well then, if you remember the sequence, you will be fine. I will wait for you further along. I am glad for you, I think. I almost believe you are real. Hm. Perhaps.”
He was gone in a second, simply disappearing. Cheerful gaped, but the Batter showed no sign of a response. She simply moved on, and Cheerful Skies accompanied the orange mare up and into the next room.
Inside was another room of warm, featureless yellow walls. Faintly, Cheerful thought it was curious, that the rooms of this awfully tall place were so dull. They weren’t unpleasant, really! Just... boring. Yes, that was the word, she knew that word. It wasn’t like stucco, where it had to come up from the surface to breathe. That one she knew right off the top of her head!
On second observation, this room wasn’t that empty. She saw now a three by three square of floating boxes with one off by itself at the bottom, like the ones that had surrounded the first platform, her landing place. Curious, her ears folded against her head, she examined them. Nothing seemed to keep it up. It floated almost defiantly, as if to say that it was simply the way of the world that it should, and there was no explaining it. She had no frame of reference, and accepted it.
But it was still rather boring. There was only one other door, and it was closed. The Batter, ignoring the Judge’s advice, headed straight for the door and pushed at it. Predictably, it did not give way. Cheerful watched her in silence as the Batter sighed.
“Wonderful.” Her face was shadowed. It was not quite downcast, no, but it was different. Tired, perhaps? Maybe angry? Though she could catch the way her Batter’s mouth twisted, she could not read it. It was beyond her.
“It’s okay!” she cried, wishing to forestall whatever it was. “I remember the sequence!”
“Well, push ‘em then. Or whatever.”
The Player turned to the boxes, and summoned the otherwise meaningless string of numbers to her mind. It was right before her, almost, as if given birth by her thought in the air. She counted the boxes: one, two, three... that was the top row. Four would be the first of the second row, and so she touched it decisively. Nothing happened.
The little pegasus blinked.
“Welp,” the Batter said, voice harsh. “Looks like I’m t’ do it all on my lonesome. Shoulda figured, you bein’ the Puppeteer an’ me the puppet.” She snorted something like a laugh. “Move aside then. Four?”
“Oh... I’m sorry,” Skies said as she retreated. The Batter looked at her. “Yes. It’s the fourth one.”
The batter touched the floating yellow box with a hoof, and immediately it was transparent. The dutiful Player took note of this, filing it away under things that would be Important.
She led the scowling Batter in the correct sequence, with the C being the box at the bottom of the square, off by itself. When the Batter touched the last, the closed door simply vanished. They glanced over at it, and then each other, and shrugged. The Batter wasted not a word or a breath commenting on the phenomenon, but passed through. Cheerful plodded along after her.
From there, Player and Batter descended a long stair and went through a strangely slender door at the foot, finding themselves once again outside.
There was nothing but a walkway to a small platform with a floating red box.They approached it together, though Cheerful’s eyes were not on it. Instead she looked out over the vacuous sort of sea, finding it curious but not knowing why it should be so. What other way could a sea be but calm white, thick and resistant to the wind’s manipulation? If there was wind, which there wasn’t. The air in Zone 0 was still, as if it had never stirred. She suddenly wondered if there had ever been wind here, and where she would know of wind. She tried to remember—
“You gonna stand there? Can’t well move without ya,” the Batter said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Oh! I’m sorry, Batter! Yes, I’m coming!”
She trotted over to the red box, and as she did something changed in the air. She could not name it. She almost thought to, but there was no time. It was gone, and the Judge was sitting on the box. Both ponies stepped back.
“You are not a ghost,” the cat said sharply.
“I ain’t.”
“You misled me, apparition. Or, rather, I should say that you are not an apparition. Yet you let me believe such,” the Judge said, his voice flat now, as if he waited for a certain answer, as if he had been waiting a long time. Cheerful did not know why she felt this way, but she did, and as he spoke she noticed that his fangs showed. It was in purpose, she knew it, and did not know why or how she knew.
The Batter puffed up, her green eyes aflame.
“I didn’t mislead you a bit, cat. I only toldja the truth when we spoke a few minutes ago. I just didn’t try to hard to make you understand I was real. Wouldn’t a done an ounce of good no how, so why waste the breath? It don’t mean a thing, whatcha think on that particular subject.” She spat off to the side, and yet Cheerful saw that the stalk of hay was still there as if it would never leave.
The Judge licked his paw, and seemed satisfied. “I suppose. Anyhow, your mission is truly purification, then. I believe you, I think. I suppose it’s better that way, if I believe you.”
“It is,” the Batter said, and the tension drained from her stance. “Every last place. All the Zones, pure.”
“It is what I wish as well. It is for the better, really. Now, when you touch this box, it will take you to the Nothingness. Do you understand?”
The Batter sniffed. “Course.”
Cheerful Skies did not understand at all. She frowned. “Batter, what is the Nothingness?”
The orange mare said nothing to her Player. She didn’t even look at the blue pegasus. Cheerful felt invisible, and her wings fidgeted on her back.
“Well, will you go, then? Will you begin your quest?”
“Yeah. You got the card, Judge? Whichever one gets me there.”
And then the cat grinned a smile full of teeth like the night full of stars. The Player shivered.
“Of course. Let this be a lesson to you, Batter—oh, and you to, mon cheri. Yon Batter needs you to remember things for her, to see and to feel.” He squinted, looking to and fro until his eyes lit on her, and met her own. “You are very important. I almost see you, like a mirage. It has been so long since there was a pegasus in the zone, did you know that? A very, very long time.”
“Well, thank you for—Oh! He can’t hear me. He’s nice, Batter, would you please tell him so? I say thank you.”
“She says ‘thank you,’ I suppose,” relayed the grudging mare who tapped her hoof. The noise drew the Player’s eyes and she watched the hoof go up and down with rapt attention, like a kitten with a string.
But the Judge would not be hurried. “And she is quite welcome to the hospitality of my home! I shall, of course, be seeing both of you along the way.”
The card appeared and the cat vanished into the aether without a word. The Player was beginning to understand that this was how the Judge worked, now, and so did not gape at the now vacant space. Instead, she watched the Batter remove her hat and wipe her brow, before taking the strange card. It was red, and a word came to her mind: plastic. It seemed important.
“Your mane. It’s short.”
The Batter glanced back at her, eyebrow raised in question.
“I’m sorry, it surprised me. I don’t know why. Maybe because mine is long. Did you cut it yourself?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t quite a scowl on her face. It was more of a flat line, but the little pegasus who had fallen like a god now looked away like a scolded foal.
“It’s uneven. If we find some scissors I could cut it for you. I’m sorry, did I say something wrong? It seemed like the right thing to say. I don’t know.”
The Batter huffed. “Sure. Whatever.”
She slipped the card into her shirt’s pocket and touched the red box.
The lights went off.