//------------------------------// // 16. Piece of the Past: The Enchanted Pancakes // Story: Time Ticks on // by Golden Script //------------------------------// Back in my old world, I was a curious creature. My body was always very slim. People usually amounted this to the fact that I never ate. Or, at least, I never seemed to. When I woke in the morning I would go downstairs and begin my day with, not a bowl of cereal, but the television. When Christy would wake up, I might go and eat something with her, but it would be nothing larger than a protein bar, or something of the like. When I focused on something, like one of my infamous projects, I could go the whole day without a bite of food or sip of water. Because of this, many of my friends would joke about my weight, saying that I would curl up and die if I kept fasting myself, or, on the rare occasion that I did eat something substantial, that I might get fat; playing on the thought that the reason I didn’t eat was because I was worried about gaining pounds. Of course, none of this was true, but when I have something better to do, I often forget about food. This is why when Discord appeared with a plate of pancakes I nearly fell to my knees in hunger. “Michael, are you ok?” Asked Luna worriedly. “Perfectly fine!” I said as I stood once again. “Just a bit hungry, is all.” “Then it’s good that I brought something for you to chew on!” Discord chirped. “Here, have some breakfast!” he held the plate out to me, and I’m ashamed to say that I was on the brink of tackling that plate and feasting on its contents. At the last moment I pulled myself away. “I’m sorry, Discord, but I can no longer fight as your champion.” I said, making sure to keep the plate out of my line of sight. “What? You're backing out on me? And after everything I’ve done for you!” he shouted melodramatically. “Yes. You have lied to me, Discord. You said that you are fighting to keep freedom, but you are fighting for your own form of slavery.” I said, anger entering my voice, if dulled by the pain in my stomach. “Oh, that really is a shame. I would have given you power beyond all belief if you’d helped me win. Enough to get you home.” He said, looking to me hopefully. I considered it for a moment, decided that it wasn’t worth getting home if I left this world in shambles, and subsequently told him so. “Sorry, I don’t think that I want your food.” I tried to put as much anger as I could into the word “your” but it sort of fell apart around “want”. “ENOUGH!” Luna yelled out, loud enough to blow the plate out of his hand. “Discord, stop enchanting Michael with your confectionaries.” She said as she stood between us. “Ok, I will, but have the pancakes.” He snapped and a new plate appeared in his hand. “It’s the least I can do to apologize.” The plate was held out towards us. “Luna, I’m kinda hungry. What’s the worst that can happen?” I whispered to her. “Fine, take your cakes of the pan.” She said as she walked back to her place beside me. “But you’ll end up like Celestia.” She mumbled to herself. I ignored her, seeing as I face similar comments all the time and I was very hungry at the time. I grabbed the plate, quickly cutting a piece of the cooked dough and stuffing it in my mouth. The moan that followed was one of ecstasy. The next few slices were slower and dipped in syrup, but just as good. When I’d finished the entire plate, leaving only small splotches of syrup and a fork, I stood up and handed the plate back to the Draconequus. “Thank you for the food, now we should get go-” I wasn’t able to finish the sentence as I crumpled to the ground, clutching my stomach. ----- LUNA’S POINT OF VIEW Michael had just finished his pancakes. He handed the plate back to Discord and returned to my side. “Thank you for the food, now we should get go-” he was interrupted by himself falling to the ground, groaning in pain in the fetal position. “What did you do to him, Discord? Reverse the effects!” I yelled angrily at him as he simply floated there, smug expression and all. “Oh, I did nothing, though his pancakes don’t seem to be agreeing with him.” Discord stopped floating, walking over to Michael with a newly donned lab coat and stethoscope. “Open your mouth and say ‘ah’.” He held a small wooden stick out towards Michael’s face. I scanned him for magic, but unlike before, where he had no magic at all, he now had a steady flow of arcane energy streaming in his veins. I attempted to pull this energy out of him, but that only caused him to scream a bloodcurdling cry of agony, which halted my attempts. Moments later Michael stopped writhing on the ground, instead becoming eerily still. I took a tentative step forward. But I had no need to move any closer because his head whipped up, suddenly looking around as if he were a scared animal. “Michael, are yo-” before I could finish he was at my throat, holding me down against the ground. “HOW COULD YOU!” he yelled in my face, spittle flying all over. “You lied to me, just like he did! Only you… your lie was much worse. How could you do that to a little filly? What would possess anyone—anything—to do something so horrible? What is wrong with you?” he whispered the last question with tears in his eyes. “What?” I choked out, not understanding what he was saying. “You administered your tests and you play dumb afterward.” He took a moment to think. The pressure on my neck decreased, followed by Michael standing up and walking over to Discord. “What’s wrong? I don’t understand.” I coughed, trying to clear my throat. “I’m going to stay with Discord. The lesser of two evils, as they say.” He turned his back to me. “Tie her up, and I’d appreciate it if you gagged her, too.” the words were hurtful, but the way he said them showed just how much pain he was in just saying them. And my bindings were instantly replaced, along with some cloth in my mouth to discourage speech. ----- MICHAEL’S POINT OF VIEW MOMENTS BEFORE “Thank you for the food, now we should get go-” the world turned black as I was saying “going”. I took a moment to blanch at what had just happened. “Well, now that you’re fed, I can show you the truth and what I mean when I say ‘freedom’.” Discord appeared in front of me out of the darkness. His face was that of dead seriousness. “Discord, I know what you do to the ponies. If you are here to trick me again-” he cut me off. “Of course not. I’m just here to show you the information that the Celestial Sisters have hidden from you. My secrets have been revealed, why not theirs?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “What secrets?” was the only thing I said before he motioned behind him. I promptly vomited in the void. Or I would have, if I were able to. “What is that?” I gagged out. “That is what the sisters have been doing to their subjects for over a thousand years. This pony has been exposed to a virus, one that mutates the host. If this is what you want to fight for, then be my guest, but know that if they win this battle they will continue this ‘research’ for the ‘better’ of pony-kind.” He did air quotes, but his face remained stern. “How do I know that you’re not lying to me?” I asked, still not comfortable looking at the… thing before me. The image changed, thankfully, this time to a normal stallion. “This is Inkwell.” Discord gestured to the pony. “He is the leader of Ellura, the company that conducts these experiments.” I watched as Inkwell walked down a hall, looking through panes of glass that held subjects in similar shape to the one shown before. It took all of my willpower not to gag once more. The image changed to show the same stallion walking down a hall that was much better furnished. He walked through a large set of doors that had a large sun symbol carved into it. “And this… is Celestia, Luna’s sister.” Discord said as a pair of guards opened the doors to uncover a normal sized horse with a pure white coat, wings, and a horn. “No… this can’t be true!” I barked as I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the cold, hard facts that have been disclosed to me. “It is true. And if you need more incentive…” he trailed off as I opened my eyes once more, only this time I couldn’t close them again. It was madness. Pure, unaltered madness. Hundreds of ponies were strapped to tables or chairs and injected with several needles, their bodies thrashing around violently shortly afterwards. Some died on the spot, others kept thrashing for minutes, and others stopped. The ones that didn’t survived were… disposed of; the ones that did were hauled off. From there they were put in cells—like the ones I’d seen Inkwell walking past—and observed. When only a little time had passed their fur began to fall out, showing the rotten flesh beneath. Very few didn’t have some form of decay by the time they were next interacted with. After days, weeks, months, even, the subjects became brain dead or were shipped off to a facility where they’re put in combat situations. From there they’re deemed useful or disposable. The useful ones are dubbed B.O.Ws. You can guess what happened to the “disposable” category. The view in front of me flashed pictures of ponies. But they weren’t ponies, they couldn’t be. How could something as beautiful as life ever be distorted into something so grueling? The pictures I had seen were enough to nearly make me go mad, for they were all dead, dying, or somewhere in-between. Finally, it zoomed in on one image. This image was one of a little filly, no more than eight or nine years old, sitting in a white room. She didn’t move for a while, her head facing down so I couldn’t see her face, which made me think that the madness was finally over. That’s when I looked at the image more closely. There, at the very edge of the “screen” was a lump- no, two lumps. They were motionless, but fairly large—about the size of two fully-grown ponies. Realization struck. They were her parents. She’d killed her own parents because of this thing. And it was all the royal sisters’ faults. The madness continued. For several hours, the madness continued. It never stopped, and the images were burned into my brain. The thousands of screams of agony, the hundreds of deaths, the willingness of the team that did this to the poor beings all bounced in my head like a sick rubber ball. I cried. I cried for these ponies that had died for no reason. The vision returned to the little filly in the cell. Suddenly a pony in a hazmat suit burst in, put a metal collar on her neck, and pulled her out of the room forcefully. She struggled the whole way, screaming incoherently. Somewhere in the garble of her shouts I swear I heard “mommy” and “daddy”, but I’ll never be sure. A voice tickled my ear, but the sound it emanated was not humorous in the slightest. “Her name was Christina.”