Plebeian

by Sleep Sonata


Broken

So this is what it’s like to be dead. Not much to it. I always thought I’d be enveloped in some white light, and have to walk towards some cottage where I’d spend the rest of eternity. Instead, all I saw was black, like my eyes were completely shut. Turns out, they actually were. I felt a little dumb, but what did I care. Nopony else was around to see it. I might as well open them, and see what the afterlife is actually like.
Not quite what I was expecting, to honest. Everything was white, for sure, but it wasn’t the blinding beam I thought it would be. Once I actually got used to being able to see again, I realized it was a few lights, an what seemed to be a drop tile ceiling. Seemed awful institutional for an afterlife. Maybe that was my punishment.
I started to feel the rest of my body, from horn to hoof. It tingled at first, but eventually I began to feel through them, and I found I could get some articulation. I seemed to be wrapped up in something. Something soft. I wondered what could be enveloping me, but since my eyes now worked, I could see plainly that it was a blanket, and I was in a bed.
Well that’s nice. I thought I could finally get comfortable after days of nonstop worry. I cast my gaze on my surroundings, but all I could see was a turquoise curtain enveloping my entire field of view. It seemed very familiar, but I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d seen this environment before.
As my mind was whirring furiously to make figure this out, the curtain was drawn open by a soft blue pony wearing scrubs. At that moment, you could almost hear all the pieces clicking together in my brain; The drop tile ceiling, curtains around my bed, and now this pony in scrubs. I was in a hospital.
“You’re still with us! The doctor seemed to think you’d become a vegetable.” She had an extremely chipper demeanor, which caught me a little off guard. I think she could tell, since from then on she toned her enthusiasm down to a more reasonable level. Still, I could tell she was holding back.
“What happened?” My voice was quite weak. I didn’t realize how winded I was until I tried to talk. My words were quite and a little slurred, but the nurse still managed to decipher what I was trying to say.
“You’re in Ponyville General Hospital. You came here a little worse for wear, I have to say.” I was hoping for a little more detail than that. I wanted to press her for more information, but the door to my room swung open at that time, and told me all that I needed to know.
Everyone I’d met on my journey was standing in the doorway. Lightning were there, and at first I felt elated. I knew for sure that they were OK. But my heart sank when I saw Gemini and Polaris.
I couldn’t tell what they were thinking, but I could probably guess. I turned my head away from them as much as I could, trying desperately to avoid eye contact. Hw could I face them after all I’d put them through, and even tried to throw their lives away? I could feel tears welling in my eyes, each one rolling down my face and leaving a bitter salty taste in my mouth. I wished I could have punished myself more. The sisters probably thought I deserved suffering.
“Stardust dear! We were all so afraid for you!” I could understand what the words meant, but I couldn’t understand why they were coming from Polaris. I turned back to face them, and I could see he four of them all standing by my bedside, each with a compassionate smile on their faces.
“What? Why?” It wasn’t what they were expecting to hear, but it was the only thought on my mind.
Gemini was the first to answer. “Why do you think? We wouldn’t abandon a friend like you, especially since we owed you so much for ditching you.”
“When the police in Cloudsdale found us, we told them, after the freaked out about finding a thestral, to find you, and they told us you were checked in here, which had us worried sick! ‘What happened to her?’, we thought. We got here as fast as our four hooves allowed.” Polaris hadn’t lost her unbearably motherly demeanor. I was glad they were both OK.
“Wait, they were okay with finding a bat?” I have to admit, that bit caught me off guard.
“They were a bit puzzled, but they managed to contact the Princess and she agreed to help her! Isn’t that amazing!?”
I was about to well up with glee, but then my eye gazed over to Lightning, and I noticed the bandage wrapped around her midsection. I assumed that they stitched up the gapping wound left by the amateur amputation. “Lightning, I’m so sorry.”
She gazed back at her bandage, and gave me a curious smirk. As she did so, I noticed something wiggling beneath the gauze. “You better be. My wing is kinda sore.”
Sore? Just sore? What the buck? “You lost a wing!” That sudden outburst prompted a bolt of pain to radiate along my spine and up my neck.
“Almost. The docs said they reattached it. Not perfectly, yet. But with a bit of PT, I oughta be able to fly again.” This seemed like a fairy tail ending. Everyone was alright, including me, and all the bad events had been undone. It was perfect.
“So,” I squirmed into a somewhat more upright position in bed. “how did I get here? I thought I fell from Cloudsdale?”
Polaris let out a chuckle. “You did, but you fell into the Ponyville reservoir. The water wasn’t a pillow, for sure, but it at least slowed you down enough to save your life. One of the weather ponies saw you fall in, and brought you here.”
Gemini spoke up after her sister. “It messed you up pretty bad though. They said one of your legs was really broken, so it might never heal back to what it was.”
That’s where the pain was coming from. At least now most of the blanks were filled in. “Guess I’ll need a brace for this, huh? How is it, Lightning, that you played all those rough and tumble sports in school, and I’m the one with the debilitating injury?” She appreciated the irony, as did every pony else. A little humor help lighten the mood. I needed it, we all did.
“Okay ponies,” the nurse interrupted our bonding. “Miss Stardust needs to rest now.”
“Don’t worry Dusty,” Lightning gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be by again tomorrow. You oughta be good to check out then.” I gave her a nod. Once all this business with the duplicate and Gemini was sorted out, I could finally get back to a normal life. You’d never think a mare like myself would enjoy normalcy, but after all I’ve been through, I couldn’t ask for anything more.
As the four ponies filed out, Polaris turned back, “Stardust, I just want to say, thanks for not giving up on us. Your duplicate said you wanted us to die, but we didn’t believe her. We knew you would pull through for us.”
Now I wished the pain from my leg was all I felt. what was I to say, the truth. No, not now. “What are friends for?” With that, she departed, and I was left to simmer in my own lies.

The library at the academy seemed much less welcoming than it had when I was first taken down there. I couldn’t quite put my hoof on what one specific thing, but the everything about my surroundings said ‘neglected’. The walls had obviously not been cleaned in a long while, coated in a blanket of dust and cobwebs. The air was stale as week old break, making the journey down there especially taxing with only three good legs. No one had seen Chi Chi for a while, so he couldn’t help me. I’d only been gone for about a month, and this place more closely resembled the castle of the two sisters than a prestigious school library.
When I reach the door to the main chamber, it opened with a distinct creak, revealing nothing but the blackness inside. There weren’t even any candles lit inside. With a luminous spell, I was able to see the state of the library, or what was left of it. The entire floor was littered with torn out pages and broken covers. Sometimes, the shelves themselves were toppled over. Had a dragon been through here?
Whoever it was that tore through here, they didn’t care about the knowledge kept here. I tried to get in the mind of some pony who could have done this, but I couldn’t come to a conclusion. Petty thieves couldn’t have known about this place, let alone gotten in here. No one at the university could have possible done this. There was too much valuable information here. They would destroy it in such a way. Even if they were suddenly to become deranged, this wouldn’t be the place a scholar would choose to ransack.
Nothing made sense, and yet it was real. I could see that this had happened, but I couldn’t imagine how. I looked around the room for a clue, a hint, anything to point me in some sort of direction as to what had happened.
Then it caught my eye, the door with the forbidden sign. It wasn’t where it used to be. Rather, it wasn’t here at all. The spot on the wall where I remembered it being was just stone and mortar. But it had to be there. Doors don’t just disappear.
The room should still be there, so I tried to use an ambience spell to figure out exactly what had happened. Sure enough. I found the room, and with a teleportation, I popped into my favorite tomb of forbidden knowledge.
I cast my light across the tiny room. It was the polar opposite of the rest of the library. All of the bookshelves were still in their upright positions, completely intact. However, they held no books. Every single tome had been taken. There was not a single written word left in the room.
Or so I thought. There was a small scrap of paper left on one of the shelves. My eye was drawn to that spot, being where I found the duplication spell. Having taken every other volume out of this room, why had the thief left this behind? I decided to read the note, and to my complete surprise, it was addressed to me.

Hello Stardust,
Sorry about the mess. I was in a little bit of a hurry looking for that book which I only now realize you must have taken with you. I feel a little foolish to be honest. You’re much more capable than I ever gave you credit for. A duplication spell! I never thought you’d dig that deep.
But that’s in the past, and I look to the future. Always have, always will. Which is why I have departed, never to return. I had hoped that the academy would be a more controlled environment for experimentation than everfree, with much more resources to draw upon. however, I now realize that, after two attempts, any slip ups by the subjects are far more noticeable in this setting. Two disappearances in as many years? Far too conspicuous. As such, I’ve moved on to a place where I will hopefully have more luck, and do more for ponykind.
By the way, good job on finding this note. Ambience is a handy spell.

I should have felt defeated. I should have felt despair at the thought that the pony who was really responsible for my suffering, and had been conspiring to do so for a long time, had escaped judgement. Chi Chi had caused all of this.
Instead, I was numb. I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t even angry. But I was certain. I knew with all of my being that Chi Chi would pay.

The cabin stood alone on the hill, it’s black outline contrasting against the grey winter sky. I tipped the cabbie a 6 bits, and sent him on his way. It had been a long trip, so he deserved the compensation. It was the least I could do, considering where he’d taken me. The White tail woods were way out of the way of most roads, so this was a true road trip. This was my destination, the place I had looked for for 3 years.
Anypony else would’ve thought that this was some old frontier homestead, long abandoned once the southern frontier began to become the go to wild land. Indeed, I could hardly believe that any pony would even bother to build the thing, let alone live in it. Even from a distance, I could see the state of disrepair the cabin was in. The chimney was partially collapsed, and the tiles on the roof were occasionally blown off by the wind. The only component of the place that was remotely intact were the windows, which had been shuttered.
This was Chi Chi’s hideout.
Trotting up to the door, I was alone with only the sound of my rusted leg brace to accompany me. I stared intently at the door the entire walk up, not once looking away, in case the mad doctor tried to make a move. The wind was howling, stinging my eyes while I stared unblinking at the home of my nemesis. I didn’t care. It would all be worth it.
I didn’t bother to knock. Chi Chi didn’t deserve the courtesy. The door was unlocked anyway, making my job of breaking in that much easier. The inside was as dilapidated as the outside. In this single room dwelling, all of the furniture seemed to be rotting away, with only a small food store in the corner to show that any pony lived here at all. The rest of the cabin was filled with books, which I could only assume he’d cleaned out of the forbidden room.
“It’s rude to intrude on some pony else's privacy. Have you no manners girl?” I didn’t want to hear that voice again.
“After what you’ve done, I would call you a pony.”
“It is you! I was wondering when you’d come to resume your studies. I’ve been busy working out the kinks in your duplication, but I’ve yet to test it out for sure.” He was clueless. Had he really forgotten what he’d done to me? It was enough to make me laugh.
“You’re funny, doc. For a second, I thought You’d actually forgotten about all of the suffering that caused me. But you’re not that stupid, are you?”
“I’m hurt, Dusty. You think I would have forgotten about the most talented subject I’ve ever had? Why, Gemini could only hope to hold a candle to what you can do. I can see us discovering some amazing magic together. How about it?” He was that dumb.
I moved towards him, slowly, to get him excited for what I might say. He was getting giddy, which would make this all the better. “Here’s my counter proposal.” From my bag, I drew the same knife that the duplicate used to butcher Lightning, and slid it into Chi Chi’s chest.
All the blood drained from his face, and began to flow onto the rotting floorboards, where it belonged. He was speechless, staring directly into my eyes, while I just smirked back at him, savoring the moment. There was no point in calling for help, and he knew it. This was his end.
And that was it. Equestria was safe, though no pony else knew it. That’s okay. I wasn’t after any reward or prestige for saving lives. I was about revenge. I didn’t know any pony else he’d tested on, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was that he had paid for what he did to me. I had nothing else to do.
I was about to begin my trek home, but when I opened the door once more, There was a fierce snow storm raging outside. Figures the pegasi would schedule a storm about now. Oh well, it’s not like I had anywhere else to go. Might as well hunker down until it passes.
Luckily, Chi Chi had plenty of food stored here. I guess he knew the storm was coming, and stocked up. I would be comfortable here for the time being. I took some of the logs he had laying in the corner, and started a fire while I munched on some hey. It was simple, but it was all I wanted.
After a while, I actually started to get bored. I wasn’t sleepy, and the sound of the wind would’ve kept me awake anyway. What was I to do? Of course, I couldn’t help but notice the vast quantities of books the doctor had hoarded in his shed. I had been forbidden to read any of them at the academy, but now, all by my lonesome, I might as well take a peak. I levitated one at random, dusting it off to more clearly see the title.
‘Races and Transformations’. I wonder how Gemini did it.