Chapter VI: Cannonball
“Here. Drink this. Ungh, and try to be quiet about it.”
Flash opened his eyes slowly, and regretted it quickly. He’d only ever had a hangover once before, and that was only because it had been his first time drinking, so he didn’t know when to stop, or that he should drink water to ease the effects of dehydration. As much as he could manage to think, it made sense that the narcotic shot he’d been given would cause a hangover when it wore off, too. But that was the only thing that made sense.
The living room was rushing in and out of his brain through his eyeballs with every heartbeat. As quietly as Twilight Velvet was trying to move, her hooves dragged thunderously across the short carpet between the painfully orange couch and the coffee table where she had set down a glass of greenish-brown liquid. Despite the drapes being fully closed, an offensive amount of light was seeping around their edges and rebounding off of Velvet’s white coat, photonic knives stabbing directly into Flash’s eyes.
As the younger Twilight slept on the couch, the the elder shuffled past, the sun’s rays reflecting off of her coat brightly enough to penetrate fluttering lavender eyelids. Raising her chin off of the couch and rubbing her eyes, Twilight Sparkle yawned and smacked her mouth a few times before announcing, “Good morning!” entirely too loudly.
This cheery greeting was met by a chorus of groans from everypony in the room who did not share an alicorn’s metabolism and regenerative ability. Night Light and Twilight Velvet felt far too old to have been drinking as much as they did last night, and Flash Sentry felt far too have been drinking as much as he did to be as too old as he wasn’t. Flash wasn’t sure that made sense, but he was sure that it made more sense than the fact that he was somehow in the Lights’ living room instead of his dungeon cell.
While his muddled mind was slowly grinding its way toward putting his hazy recollections into any shape that made sense, he absentmindedly nibbled on an itch that appeared on his left wing. A wing which was whole, and covered in an appropriate quantity of feathers. His face froze with his lips wrapped around the feathery joint and his eyebrows locked in a wrestling match with each other.
Flash spit out his wing, licked his lips, and practiced extending both of his wings, flexing the lean appendages with a look of wonderment on his face. Night Light batted the feathers away from his ticklish nose, making some grunting noises that he probably had intended to be words.
With a deep breath, Flash leaned back and asked, very quietly and to noone in particular, “How did I get here?”
Velvet, who had climbed back into her chair and was now reclining with a wet washcloth on her forehead, spoke into the dark room from underneath her sunglasses. “When two ponies love each other very much, they—”
Night snorted a reluctant laugh, winced, and then whined, “Hun, please don’t make me laugh.” Opening his eyes and squinting at the perplexed pegasus, he said, “Drink your, uh, thing. It’ll clear things up.” Night motioned toward the glass of watery green slime that matched the half-empty one he was holding.
Eyeing the drink suspiciously, Flash poked the glass with a hoof. The disturbed surface wobbled in slow motion, miniature rainbows chasing ripples around the oil slick on top. The nausea that had been hiding beneath his headache suddenly began boiling to the top of his consciousness. Curling his upper lip and raising one eyebrow, Flash asked, “What… is it?”
Velvet gulped down a sip of her own glass, then grimaced and said hoarsely, “I never invented a name for it. It’s a mixture of eggs, spinach, strong coffee, and salt. And other stuff. It’s—” Velvet held a hoof over her muzzle, covering what Flash hoped was a burp, then continued, “delicious. You really will feel better, and you’ve got that meeting with Princess Celestia before lunch. That’s, like, an hour.”
Flash blinked repeatedly. Each time his eyes opened made his world and his smile a bit brighter. Despite the constant war his heartbeat was waging on his ears, the grudge his stomach was holding against the world, and the beverage that may have been moving on its own, Flash was happy. He would be happier without the hangover, though.
To that end, he decided to brave the unnamed smoothie. Quickly.
That and a cold shower later, Flash wasn’t feeling too bad. Gliding down the stairs, he noticed that Night and Velvet were mostly functional, and engaged in conversation. After alighting upon the couch and curling up with a smile, Flash squirmed until he had sunken deep into the soft, old cushions.
Seeing the blatant good mood plastered all over Flash’s face, Night said, “Well, somepony is chipper! As nervous as you were last night, I thought you’d be chewing your hooves off by now.”
“I am actually not nervous at all!” Flash announced, holding his head a bit higher off of the cushion.
“That’s great. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Well, Celestia could chop off my wings and stick me in a prison cell to be forgotten, while telling everypony that I’m a horrible criminal,” Flash stated matter-of-factly.
Night and Velvet had both dropped their jaws, and their eyebrows were shifting constantly between horror and confusion. Velvet found her voice first. “Umm, that’s, uh. I guess, that would be the worst thing imaginable. Wouldn’t it?”
Princess Twilight Sparkle cleared her throat as she stood at the end of the hallway with her mane still damp, poking a twisted corner of a towel into one ear. “Flash has always had quite the vivid imagination. If you tell him to imagine the worst possible case, he really, really” —Twilight narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice to a growl— “really does.”
As she sat down next to him and threw the towel over his face, Twilight rolled her eyes and said, “Which is why Shining will never again tell him to ‘hope for the best but prepare for the worst.’”
Flash halfway lifted the towel off of his face with a wing and said, “Hey, Spike LOVED that zombie fortress!”
“A post-apocalyptic fortress does not belong in the middle of an Empire ruled by love and—”
Night, still looking like he had witnessed Flash murder a whole lake full of baby ducklings, interrupted Twilight. “Princess Celestia would never do that. It’s not within her character. What could possibly make you even think that she would ever do something so horrific?”
Raising one hoof as if he was in a class, Flash hesitantly spoke up. “Uh, actually, she did do that, to nine ponies, right after the Lunar Rebellion.”
Twilight perked up at that, because she loved a chance to correct anypony. “Actually actually, most historians believe that Princess Celestia didn’t want to have any Groundings at all. But she believed that the Earth ponies and unicorns would rebel and start a race war if she didn’t allow a very few.”
Flash rolled his eyes, chuckling at the familiarity of that statement. It wasn’t the first time that Twilight told him something that he knew already — or something that she had learned from him in the first place — and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
“Still, though,” Night insisted, “why would you even think of that?”
Flash chewed on the inside of his cheek, pondering how much to reveal. “I… I had a nightmare last night. I guess you could call it an alcohol-fuelled manifestation of my worst fears. But I see how ridiculous that was.” He smiled at his new family, who returned thrice the warmth. “Thank you all so much. I can’t imagine how I went through life before I had all of you to lean on.”
Velvet leaned over the arm of her chair to rest her head on Night’s shoulder. Lifting his foreleg so she could pass hers underneath, Night kissed her on the forehead. Velvet sighed, and glanced up at the clock above the fireplace. “We love you too, Flashy, but you’d better get out of here before you’re late for your meeting with the princess.” She chuckled, adding, “And the other princess.”
As Twilight led the way to the front door, Night said, “Flash, it’s good to see you getting your confidence back. Don’t be afraid to have a conversation with Princess Celestia. Just dive right in!”
Twilight gave a lopsided grin and raised one eyebrow as she grasped the door in her purple magic. “Dive in, huh?” Flinging the door open wide, Twilight leapt into the flood of brilliant daylight, bellowing, “CANNONBALL!”
Flash chuckled, rolling his eyes as he trotted out the door, spreading his wings to take off after his princess. But when his eyes had adjusted to the light, she was not soaring through the skies of Canterlot. As far as Flash could tell, she wasn’t there at all. But that was not what had stopped his heart.
The skies of Canterlot were not blue.
Not entirely, anyway. There was a stripe of pastel blue, but also stripes of pink, pale lavender, and aquamarine, slowly waving like a flag.
Her flag.
Yanking his gaze back to ground level, Flash saw that all the buildings of Canterlot had become a uniform chocolate brown, with no windows or doors. When he turned to run back into the safety of the comfortable living room, Flash saw Twilight. A purple unicorn, too-long bangs covering her entire face, stood in front of where the door should have been.
Upon trying to extend his wings, Flash yelped in pain as the bone’s rough tip pushed against the stitches where the flesh had been pulled together over the ends of his stubs. His breath gone, the wingless pegasus sank to the cold, brown floor as the cityscape closed in and congealed into a solid wall around him.
Flash wondered when he had opened his eyes. The morning light was dragging itself under his cell door, its diffuse puddle beginning to lap at his muzzle where it lay on the floor. Standing and stretching his fatigued muscles, Flash winced as pins and needles started washing away the numbness in his legs.
Gingerly shaking each hoof as he lifted it, Flash agonizingly made his way to the little sink. A single pedal on the floor indicated that there was no option for hot water. Unsurprised, he pushed down on the pedal and sighed at the weak dribble of water that fell from the faucet. Putting more weight on his tingling leg, the trickle improved a bit. It was just enough water that he could believe it was possible to wash the drool, vomit, and tears off of his face.
Without a cup or a dish, washing was a frustrating and time-consuming ordeal. Flash briefly wondered whether it was a good thing there was so little water, because bathing would be a full-time job that might keep him busy. Night watch in a guard shack could be boring enough, but a lifetime in this cell would probably drive him crazy. Then again, crazy might be good, if he could be insane enough to ignore his situation.
Flash snapped to his senses, realizing that he’d been wasting water while deep in thought, and lifted his hoof to shut off the flow. Upon further thought, Flash realized that he was not paying the water bill.
He vindictively stomped on the shiny pedal, listening to the soft hiss in the pipes and the quiet splashing of the stream impacting the bottom of the steel basin. Yes, if he spent all day standing on this pedal, he could really stick it to Celestia. She would see her water bill skyrocket, but by how much?
The stream of water pulsed and sputtered as Flash squinted at the dribbling faucet, while he estimated the flow rate, recalled the water price on his last billing statement, and did a quick calculation. If he left the water running all day and night, even sleeping on the pedal, then Celestia would spend almost three bits in a year to pay for Flash’s extravagant water use.
Flash heaved a dramatic sigh, then turned and walked three steps to his ‘bed.’ Stopping himself just before he rolled onto his back, he instead climbed onto the shelf and lay on his stomach, resting his chin on the folded blanket. Planning his career as a vengeful mastermind had occupied almost five minutes of his time.
It was very quiet, this deep in the rock. There were no soft bits of conversation drifting down the halls, no patter of raindrops landing on the roof, no appliances or ventilation system whirring a symphony of white noise. There was only a literal mountain of stone surrounding him on all sides, silently doing absolutely nothing.
Needing to hear something, but deciding that he wasn’t crazy enough to start talking to himself just yet, Flash got up and began pacing in the little room. His dark-adjusted eyes scanned the room for any details he’d missed. Only smooth, painted stone fell under his scrutiny, though he noticed a seam running under the paint for the entire length of the cell’s floor. The plumbing disappeared into the floor on the other side of the seam, which was where the mountain’s stone met the concrete that covered the pipes.
Upon directing his attention toward the door, he noticed that the brown paint had darkened and even bubbled in a few places around the edges, as if it had been burned. Of course, it was a solid door with no locking mechanism, so it had been welded shut. Despite the fanciful stories of high-class pegasus jewel thieves who used their own feathers to pick locks, Flash doubted the necessity of a solid, welded door. Even the strongest Earth pony could not have bucked a standard prison door off its hinges.
Flash bucked the door anyway, turning around and kicking it with all the savagery he could muster. He only managed three kicks before he realized how weary he really was. And hungry. The last meal he’d eaten was about twenty-four hours ago, and he had spewed that all over Sanguine’s surgical gown.
The feeling of tiredness was a welcome one, and Flash hoped that he would be able to get some actual rest since all of his first night was spent in more hallucination than slumber. But upon closing his eyes there was no sleep, there was only a big pile of memories, slithering over each other like snakes, each one writhing and twisting as Flash tried to make sense of them. Most of his memories that were worth keeping were memories of or about Twilight.
And as each memory came to the surface, Flash saw Twilight’s every word and action through a lens of hindsight, full of new meaning and hints foreshadowing her future infidelity. Clenching his eyelids closed as hard as he could, Flash realized just how stupid he had been to build his entire life around one mare. He’d had a good career before he met Twilight, but only because he’d had nothing else worth investing his time and effort into, nothing that had ever mattered, not until he’d bumped into a beauti—
Skrrrrrrrkkkk
Opening his eyes and sitting up, Flash quickly wiped the tears off of his cheeks as if somepony might see him crying. Had he imagined the noise? As tiny as the room was, it only took him a moment to look around and notice the shallow metal dish that had slid underneath his door.
Flash eagerly jumped off the bed, and landed sideways, rolling onto his side and pinching his wing stub against the stone floor. His wings no longer helped to stabilize him, even in such tiny trajectories as bed-to-floor. He ignored the pain as he pushed himself mostly upright, and slid the plate away from the door, pressing his face down as low against the ground as it would go, trying to see the pony who had delivered his meal.
However, the slit was too low to the ground for Flash to see more than a few inches into the hallway. And there were no hoofsteps echoing his way, either. Hollering his thanks to the unseen deliverer of sustenance, Flash turned back to his dish.
The hungry stallion lifted the round silvery bowl carefully onto his bed/table, then examined the substance within. It was cold, pale gray, slightly translucent, and some disturbing combination of runny and jiggly. Experimentally sticking his tongue into the goop, Flash decided that it was rice, simmered until the grains had nearly dissolved into the excess liquid. Something like a halfhearted risotto.
Flash hated risotto. It was nothing more than an attempt to sell gruel to rich ponies, some sort of a retaliatory conspiracy by the starving-artist school of culinary thought. At least since Flash was a prisoner, serving him gruel was appropriate, and he wasn’t paying fancy-restaurant prices for it. In fact, he was less offended at this meal than he had been the time he had discovered what risotto was when he’d ordered it at the Bitalian place in Cloudsdale.
Licking the shallow plate clean, Flash noted that the metal had about as much flavor as the gruel did. The simple calories were as devoid of nutrients as they were of taste. The warden would eventually have to provide him with some fresh vegetables if he didn’t want Flash to die of some horrible vitamin deficiency. As he wondered if there would be another meal for dinner, he glanced back down to the floor, noticing something else casting a long but tiny shadow.
He hadn’t developed the dexterity to pick up the tiny item with his hooves. Feathers for pegasi, and magic for unicorns; only Earth ponies usually bothered to get that precise with their blunt forelegs. So Flash stuck his face down to the floor and immediately realized that he wouldn’t be getting any fresh vegetables. Or flavor. Ever.
Pinching the vitamin pill between his lips, Flash put some water into his plate before washing the pill down his throat. Setting the dish down on the tiny sink, he turned back to his little brown room, and wondered what he was going to do.