Author’s Note: I don’t own MLP or Amnesia: Justine
Unchained
Alois’s stamina was almost out and he still wasn’t as far away from those mad women as he would have hoped, I wish that this damned collar was gone, it feels like it’s getting heavier he thought as he ran, sweat was pouring down his body, making it feel like someone was jabbing needles into his wounds; Justine had been fond of needles for the first few weeks of his torture, but then she had moved onto more unpleasant methods of causing pain.
He could hear one of them coming up behind him, closing the distance rapidly, he listened and heard the voice of the woman, he thought it was the soft-spoken one, say “Wait! Please wait!”, the way her voice sounded, sad and desperate, reminded him of how he sounded when he was pursuing Justine, only her voice didn’t have that odd distortion in it.
He felt a thorny branch slice his cheek open and he raised his hand to the cut out of reflex just as the woman called out again, this time she said “I know my friends were mean to you, but I can help you.”, she sounded so sincere that it completely distracted him from focusing on using his senses to navigate and his left foot suddenly went down a hole made by some animal, Alois’s body fell to the ground while the left leg stayed in the same position, there was a tremendous CRACK!! and Alois let out a scream as pain shot through his leg.
Fluttershy was rapidly tiring, but she pressed on regardless, she was the only one who hadn’t backed away at the sight of the strange creature, she had seen the horrific wounds on his body as well as his unnatural thinness and her heart had gone out to him, she had been caring for animals for long enough to know when when injuries had potential to be fatal and this creature’s wounds looked like they were close to getting infected.
Fluttershy heard a scream followed by a choking, gasping sound, she picked up the pace and it didn’t take her long to find the creature.
It was laying on its side, clawing at the collar around its throat, Fluttershy, pushing aside her natural timidity, got closer to examine it and gasped, the damage that the collar had done was worse than she had previously thought, it had chafed and rubbed the skin so much that it had actually worked its way past the skin and buried itself into the muscle, there was so much dead skin and blood around the wound that Fluttershy felt tears come to her eyes; It must be so painful, the poor thing.
Then her eyes traveled downwards to his legs and she held a hoof to her mouth in silent horror: the left leg was twisted and mangled, the creature had got its foot trapped in a rabbit hole and had completely destroyed the bone.
Fluttershy looked around before looking back to the thing, she needed to calm it down, she got closer and said “Hello? You need to calm down or you’ll make all of your injuries worse, okay?”, the creature stopped struggling, but kept its hands on the collar, “Okay, that’s very good, I’m going to grab your shoulders and sit you up, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t try to run, your leg is in very bad shape and it will hurt a lot if you put any pressure on it.”.
The creature hesitated, then nodded and Fluttershy gently began to move it into a sitting position, as she did it made tiny, pitiful whimpers like an injured puppy, Fluttershy felt her heart grow heavy at those sounds, once it was fully upright the creature released its hold on the collar and placed its hands over its hollow sockets, Fluttershy walked around to its front and noted the visible ribs and pelvis bone, blushing when she saw the thing’s privates.
She was snapped out of her embarrassment by the sounds of soft, shuddering sobs, “Ohhh… w-w-why did this h-happen to me?” he wept “I-I thought I was free… I thought….” the rest of his words were drowned by the sound of running hooves, Twilight and the others emerged from the thicket, panting and on edge.
Rainbow Dash flew to Fluttershy, “What the hay is wrong with you!!?” she bellowed, Fluttershy stood her ground and said “He’s hurt Rainbow Dash, what do you expect me to do?”, Dash threw her hooves in the air in exasperation, “I dunno, but did you ever stop to think that he might want to… I don’t know, EAT us?!”.
Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and got closer to her friend, “Look at him.” she said in a voice that held no room for rebuke, Rainbow Dash sighed and moved in closer to look at the strange creature, who was silently shaking, her eyes locked on the collar, then roved past his scarred torso and settled on his broken leg, she tried to resist the pity that she felt welling up inside her, but her natural toughness wasn’t doing much to help.
Fluttershy beckoned the rest over and they tentatively obeyed her, Pinkie, being Pinkie, got the closest with her face almost touching his, the creature was still shaking and covering his eyes, but he had stopped whimpering, Fluttershy saw Pinkie frown; being a pony who practically thrived off of happiness Pinkie always hated to see somepony sad, even if this particular creature wasn’t a pony.
Applejack and Rarity moved closer in tandem, Rarity looked disgusted at the sight of the blood, turning her nose up slightly and averting her eyes, Applejack lowered her head and sighed, obviously feeling guilty.
Twilight, being the most curious out of all of them, got nearly as close as Pinkie and bent to look at him, her large eyes darting from one limb to another.
It was Fluttershy who broke the silence.
“He’s hurt Twilight, will you help me take him back to my cottage?”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened, “You can’t be serious.” she said with utter befuddlement, “ What if there are more of him? Don’t you think they’d come looking for it? What if it’s just playing a trick on us?”
Fluttershy heaved an exasperated sigh and looked her friend dead in the eyes, “If that’s the case then I’ll accept full responsibility for whatever happens. But I think that you’re overreacting.”
“You think I’m overreacting?!” Rainbow Dash said in total shock “Well I think you’re UNDERreacting, for all we know this thing could be some kinda evil spirit like Discord!”
“But Discord was reformed.” said Pinkie Pie, Dash shot a glare at her candy-haired friend.
“Can’t you just have Twilight use a healing spell on him or something?” asked Rarity.
“Sorry girls, but I’m not sure I have enough energy to fix all of the things that are wrong with him” Said Twilight, “He’s malnourished, dehydrated, blind, suffering from exposure and he has more cuts than skin, I’m honestly surprised that he’s even alive.”
It was at that moment that the creature fell over onto his side and didn’t get up.
Fluttershy ran to the creature and lifted him up.
“Is he-” began Rarity, but Fluttershy cut her off with a shake of her head.
Fluttershy turned to Twilight, who saw her worry-filled eyes and trembling lip, without even needing to be asked she wrapped the creature in her purple aura and lifted him off the ground, the look of happiness and relief on Fluttershy’s face overpowered the death glare that Rainbow Dash sent her way.
“C’mon Flutters, lets get him back to your place.” she said with a smile.
Once they were inside Fluttershy’s cottage the real work began.
Twilight levitated the creature into the living room and laid him down on the couch, Fluttershy had her fetch some washcloths, a pail of warm water, a needle and thread, various ointments and a bundle of bandages.
“Okay, what do we do?” asked Twilight once she had finished laying everything out.
“First we need to get that collar off of his neck, but we need to be very slow and careful, the metal has worked its way into his neck and we might cause more harm than help if we’re not careful.” said Fluttershy as she began to wet the washcloths.
Twilight watched as her timid friend began to slowly scrub the blood and dead skin around the collar away to reveal the outer edges of the raw wound underneath, she had always been fascinated by the change that Fluttershy underwent when she was helping an animal, she was confident, resolute, her hooves didn’t shake, she never seemed to sweat and she was the one who gave orders to whomever was helping her, be it Angel Bunny or one of her friends.
After Fluttershy had finished cleaning the area she called Twilight over and instructed her to use her magic to remove the collar as gently as she could, Twilight focused her magic and began to saw away at the bars that held the outer ring of the collar in place, after that was finished she tossed the outer ring and the bars aside and began to undo the latch screws that fixed the inner ring in place.
Then, with great gentleness, she levitated the two halves of the inner ring away from the wound, which began to bleed almost instantly, Fluttershy cleaned the blood off, sewed up any tears in the flesh that she found, disinfected the whole thing and then bandaged him up.
After that she set about removing the thick chains that had been wrapped around his body, wincing as she pulled several hooks free from his battered skin, by the end of it Fluttershy had removed about 6 feet of filthy chain.
Fluttershy sat back with a small smile, “I’m so glad nothing went wrong” she said, “Now all we need to do is set his leg and clean and bandage his cuts.”
Twilight nodded and then looked at the creature, noticing the blood around his eyes she said “Umm… Fluttershy? I just noticed something about his eyes, if those are where his eyes are supposed to be.” she beckoned her friend over and watched as her expression went from relieved to pitying and then to horrified.
“Twilight” she breathed “It looks like somepony…. b-burned his eyes out.” she turned to Twilight with tears in her eyes, “Wh-who would do something like this? I don’t even think Queen Chrysalis would be this evil!” Twilight went to comfort her, but Fluttershy gasped and said in a shaky voice “Wait…. the chains, that horrible collar, the cuts and eyes…. oh no, Twilight I think he was-I think he was tortured.”
The horrified silence that followed spanned only a few seconds, but it felt much longer than that.
Fluttershy’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor a sobbing wreck, Twilight, feeling tears of her own begin to blur her vision, wrapped her forehooves around the sobbing mare’s neck and hugged her.
“it’s just s-s-so a-awful” she stammered in between her crying “I’ve n-never s-seen something like this b-before… what did he do to deserve this?”
“I don’t know, Fluttershy” said Twilight “But if we can find the culprit we will and we’ll bring him or her to justice, I promise you that.”
Just then the creature let out a long moan and began to stir, the two ponies shared an uncertain glance before they moved towards him, hoping that he would be a friend and not a foe.