//------------------------------// // Penance // Story: Smoke & Mirrors // by Doctah WAAwee //------------------------------// The only sounds in the car that stored the humans was a faint clicking sound, and the sound of buzzing. Amias silently strode across the cages that housed his non-sentient brothers and sisters... Each one of their rib cages could be seen. Some of them were covered with flies, the faint buzzing sound they produced was the only thing that penetrated the silence that was present in the car. Amias sniffed the air, there wasn't even an inkling of the smell of decay. ALL of the dead human bodies didn't even have signs of rot, decay, or anything on them. 'That's strange...it should reek of death in here.' That thought alone sent chills down his spine. 'did they have a way to preserve dead bodies for months on end? They were going to sell these humans as meat...did they have a way to do it that didn't involve chemicals? That would mean that they wouldn't have to keep them alive to sell them, to make profit...' He almost wanted to vomit at that realization, but after he held back the bile that rose from his stomach, he became even more determined to stop this from happening. The one's that are alive still have a chance to survive and live through this. He continued through the dirty dank hallway until he reached a door. It was big, solid, and rusty. *Kla-click!* It took about two seconds to unlock. Looks like Rainsugars greed is coming back to bite her.The door itself had a little resistance to it because it was rusty, and the hinges could use a good oiling. The car was shrouded in darkness. Clean marble floors are the only thing Amias can discern. The caravan had stopped moving for the night. As he went through the halls, the sound of light snoring could be heard throughout the car that he passed. One room had its lights on and the sound that was coming out of the room... Was defiantly not snoring. Moving on, he passed that room and unlocked the door that led to the next car. They're were five cars ahead of this one, the one he was in now was another living car. The names of the ponies occupying the room were labeled on the door. He really didn't have time to look at every individual label. After that car he encountered the cafeteria. *Growl* 'Looks like I'm still hungry, and since I'm not desperate enough to eat flowers...' He went into the kitchen to try to find something to eat, There was a section that said 'Human' so he tried to see if anything was in there... Well if you count rat crap and unidentifiable bags of goo as food...well there you go. He checked in the 'regular' food supply to find some prepacked fruit salads, fruits, vegeta-bles, and other healthy food. He looked over to a crate of apples labeled 'SAA' and took one, the last one actually. He looked at it and took a bite... He promptly devoured the poor apple a la cookie monster. 'This apple...it's like Jesus himself was an apple farmer...this is by far the best thing that has happened to me in this crazy world.' After he finished his apple that was baptized by Jesus Christ, he went ahead in his journey. "Who's in the kitchen?" Amias stopped dead in his tracks, then he realized what an idiot he was for doing that, and hid behind a sack of potatos. "Rayshine, if you took the last Sweet Apple Acres apple I swear I'm gonna buck you senseless!" 'Finally! A male voice!' The clip clop of hooves was heard, it was coming closer and closer to the fridge were his potato bag of concealment was next to. 'Maybe I should've found a better spot.' The sound was getting louder, Amias had to do something quick before he was caught, he could have just hypnotized the dude when he came close enough, but Amias was panicking and that little fact didn't go passed his mind. 'C'mon focus what do I...huh?' The reason for Amias's confusion was that fact that black smoke covered his body for some reason. He looked at his arm to see that...he was invisible! 'WhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-' The sound of a fridge being opened broke him out of his 'episode'. "Damn it Rayshine! I told you that was my apple!" The voice said. He ran towards the exit of the car, leaving Amias alone... He didn't look behind the potato bag...there was no reason to become invisible... Redundancy, you're a bitch. 'So the first time I go invisible...I don't even need it...wow.' The next three cars were all residential, so nothing special there. The Car before Rainsugars personal quarters was a little weird...the doors were white and had no labels, none at all. And also the locks were WAY more advanced than anything he had his before in this place. 'Maybe if I focus...' Amias calmed his mind and imagined disappearing, he looked at his arm to see that it worked. 'Just in case...' It took a lot concentration to do this, so he picked the lock as quick as he could...it took him a whole twenty seconds to do it. 'MAN these locks are hard! Rainsugar spared no expense!' After he was done, he opened the door... It was dark...very dark. Amias got a very bad feeling about this car, something wasn't right here. Something so unholy and disgusting that it produced an aura of dread and doom. 'What did I just find?' As he went deeper into the room...he found it. Everywhere...about two to three spaces apart... Were cribs...holding a little human baby in each one. Amias couldn't even breath, a deep rock formed in his stomach. His invisibility wore of because of the shock he was in. He looked over to one of the cribs, the baby was quietly sleeping, alive. There was a clipboard in the front of the babies crib. Male, 20 pounds. To be sold to: Galus. Location: Break Beak Point in the Griffon kingdom. ... 'What?' The sound of a clipboard hitting the floor echos through the room. 'They...sell...babies?' Amias vomited all over the clipboard. Something in Amias broke out...he was angry, more angry then he ever was in his entire life. Smoke started to form and leave Amias's body, his body slowly disappeared behind the veal of smoke. Amias continued through the car until he reached a door. It wasn't white like others, it was blue, fancy, and reminded Amias of the monster that caused this place to exist... 'Rainsugar...' The door opened and the smoke continued on, the car was one big, fancy room. There was a desk with a big book and a map on it, but Amias ignored it for now, all that is on his mind is finding Rainsugar. And she couldn't be anymore easy to find, she was sleeping on a queen sized bed in the middle of the room. Amias now had knowledge of what he could do...his rage unlocked things in his mind that he never knew existed there... He knew what he can do to her...to make her pay... Rainsugars dream was a recurring one. It was of her, living in the lap of luxury, after finally selling that human in Canterlot. She drank the finest of wines, had the best clothes, she was personal friends with the princesses themselves, she could get any stallion she wanted by just a wave of her grey mane...it was perfect. That is...until it all started to become shrouded in black smoke. "Enjoying the high life?" A dark voice said. "W-w-who said that!?" Rainsuger screamed, she was just attending a royal party with the princesses until they disappeared in a miasma of black smoke. "Your newest addition to the caravan of course." That black smoke started collecting, beginning to form into arms, legs... It was Amias...but he was different. He didn't form completely. His legs were still smoke, his body floating in the air, black tendrils of darkness forming from the smoke that covered his being. His eye's were still black and off-white... "Wha-what-...what are you!?" She screamed, she tried to run away but black tendrils shot up from the ground and held her still. "...I am the result of your greed and cruelty." Amias disappeared in his smoke and then reappeared right next to her. "I could end your life right now...beat you, crush your skull in, strangle you..." Black tendrils wrapped around her neck. Not choking her, just reaffirming the fact that he could choke her. She started to cry. "P-p-please! Don't kill me, I'll make it worth your while! I'll give you anything! I can give you money, I can give you...my body-" Amias laughed "You would stoop so low as to have sex with a human? Wow...I actually expected that.' Rainsugar's eyes widened in confusion "H-h-human?" she got a closer look at Amias's face, then it hit her. "Y-your...the new human we caught..." She said. Her eye's couldn't get any wider, but her mouth opened to it's widest. "Surprised?" She started to violently shake her head, blinking over and over again "This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening..." she whispered. She opened her eyes to see that she was in her room...she was drenched in sweat, and there were tears coming from her eyes. She sighed. "Whew...it was just a nightmare..." "Are you sure about that?" Rainsugar screamed and jumped out of her bed, she opened the door leading out and started to run down the cars. She ran, and ran, and ran...but she never got closer to the door leading to the next car. "Kinda cheesy, but you get the point." She looked back to see Amias, slowly coming towards her. She tried to run faster, but it didn't work. "There's a door leading outside right next to you." She went to the left...and promptly slammed into a wall... "How did you not see that coming? Following advice from a giant shadow nightmare monster?" "You can't be real! Humans can't talk, their just dumb animals!" She screamed as she tried to slide back. "That is a very poor choice of words given the situation you are in." Again his shadows wrapped around her, binding her. Amias moved his face directly into hers. His black and white eyes meeting her blueish gray ones. "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. I know why your like this...shh" he stroked her mane, gently "shh, it's alright honey, the monsters gone now." Rainsugar looked up to see...her mother, stroking her mane and trying to comfort her. "Mommy?" "Yes my dear...it's alright, just a bad dream my girl..." Her mother was a beautiful mare, she had a cyan coat, with a grayish-yellow mane. "But...it seemed so real...and he was-" "You actually believed that?" Rainsugar looked up to see Amias looking down at her. Her eyes widened in shock. "How...how...did-" "I know who your mother was?" Amias finished, he started to laugh "I know...everything about you...you want to know how?" She didn't react. "When I was put into this world, I started to find that I have these...gifts...and when I stumbled upon your dirty little secret...well let's just say that those 'gifts' became fully developed." "Dirty..little-" "The fact that you sell human babies as food for the griffons!" He screamed, cold righteous anger flowing though is every word. "The ANGER I felt when I found out...took over my mind and unlocked the skills that would've taken me YEARS to learn, or even find out I had!" His anger gave way to a dark smile as he started laughing. "And now...i'm going to use those skills on you..." An image popped into existence in front of them. It was a picture of a human. He wasn't very good looking by Amias's standards, but in Equestria, this guy was very good looking. "Before this human came into your life, your parents handed everything to you. They bathed you in love, money, and everything you could ask for..." he chuckled "But then he came into the picture. They started to love and care for the human they bought, and in your twisted little mind you thought that every second they catered to the human could have been used on you...you grew jealous of the human, and your parents started to buy you less and less stuff." Then another picture came up...it was a picture of a griffon. "Then one day this griffon confronted you, saying that he would give you a VERY generous amount of money in exchange for your families human...in the middle of the night, you led the human towards a designated drop off site and he gave you enough money to start your new life. You never saw your parents again and you didn't care." Rainsugar was shaking like a leaf, this only made Amias smile. "Pretty soon the money you got from the deal was almost about to run out. You could have lived an entire lifetime with the bits you got, but no, your insatiable appetite for the newest and greatest trends quickly burned a hole in your wallet...so, you began to sceme." The picture of the griffon was replaced by a first person view of... "You were only 14 at the time, so you couldn't get an actual job...so you became a 'whorse' as it's called. This little video here is your first time...too bad your race doesn't have hymens, it didn't really sink in that you lost your virginity to a random stallion twice your age." That was replaced by a picture of a stallion. "You worked as a 'whorse' under the hoof of a stallion named 'Chrome Cane'...your name isn't actually Rainsugar, it was Time Rend, that's just your 'professional title', because of your knack to...'make it rain' when things got exciting in the bedroom...or an alleyway, a classroom, anywhere really." The image got replaced again with a picture of a bag of bits being held by a pair of blue hooves. "After you saved enough money, you got your human trading license and bought your very first caravan, where you illegally hunted wild humans and sold them on the griffon black market. You used your special talent of preserving either inanimate objects or dead organic matter to preserve the humans who died of starvation, saving money on human maintenance and hoarding all the money for yourself..." Then another picture came...it was the baby that triggered Amias's rage. "Then...you met a griffon willing to give you 10 times what you already receive from selling adult humans to capture and sell human BABIES to him...something about the meat being even more delicious then it already is." The image dissipated into smoke. He turned to Rainsugar, he gave her the 'Super Saiyan Glare' and spoke "you ransacked human nests...swindled human adoption agencies, defiled honest and hard working stallions and threatened them with black-mail, you went to every low there possibly is in this world...you are the most evil being I have ever seen in my life." He put his hand out in front of her "what I'm about to do to you is something that I hope I will never have to do again...you will feel the pain of being hunted, killed, skinned, cut up, cooked, eaten, digested, and expelled, for EVERY human being you sold the cycle will continue on...and after this I will personally make sure that this caravan will go to Ponyvillie, where your team will be arrested...and the humans who have survived your neglect will be saved." She was crying so hard that she could barely even form a coherent sentence "p-p-please! I'll change, I-i-i'm sorry! Please have mercy!" "Oh I am showing mercy. After you go through this process, your memory of me, and your evil life will be erased. You will have a clean slate and 10,000 bits to start a new life in Ponyvillie..." He glared at her...his eyes started bleeding. Then... "Don't mess it up this time." Everything in Rainsugar's view became negitive, and she collapsed. Amias opened his eyes, feeling the blood pour down his face. It hurts...so much. Rainsugar was writhing, and screaming in pain on the bed...but no one could hear her, Amias made sure of that. He turned around to find Rainsuger's personal bathroom, he limped to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror... This was the first time he saw his own eyes since they changed. He gave them a good look before commenting. "That's creepy." He took a towel and cleaned off his bloody face. He had a splitting headache, so he tried to find something to cure that. He did, it was a green bottle that said: 'I-live, magical relief from headaches, migraines, and hangovers'. "Wow...let's just hope it actually IS magic..." He popped one and, true to it's label, his headache was a thing of the past. "*Sigh*...sweet relief." He took a crap (very awkwardly, since the toilet was very close to the ground) and left to look at the papers on Rainsugar's table. The book was a business ledger. It had the names of clients, repeat clients, monthly income, the works. The map on the other hand had routes upon routes upon routes. "Rainsugar was thorough, I'll give her that." He sighed. "Now that Rainsugar is taken care of, I'm going to have to hypnotize the stallions that haul this caravan, the cooks so they will feed the humans who are still alive...and basically every one of these ponies..." He looked up towards the ceiling "God, if this is some sick way to make my dream of being an ACTUAL magician a reality, then bravo...but I could really use a hand here."