//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - War of Change // Story: Natural Selection // by Kickback //------------------------------// Wait, it's just about to break, its more than I can take, Everything's about to change, I feel it in my veins, its not going away, Everything's about to change. Slipstream was tired. Her jaw opened wide as she let out a powerful yawn, staring blankly up at the television screen, the remote to control it's display hanging limply off the armrest by her left hand. She was the only one home. It seemed that was the regular case for the past few nights. Before, it was just her and her brother alone in the house and she couldn't remember when it was all three of them. Slipstream didn't even know the fourth, she was certain he was dead. Still, she could be thankful, this was far better, in her opinion, than living at the orphanage. Even if she knew if Kickback had his way, they'd still be there. He didn't like their mother and neither did she, at least, in the beginning. Slip was starting to warm up to her but neither her brother, nor her mother were making much of an effort to get along and she knew it was just for her sake. Slipstream loved Kickback. Despite everything, she knew she could count on her big brother for anything and he would always be there for him, no matter what. She looked over towards the front door and sighed. Where was he? She glanced towards the clock that hung high on a wall in the kitchen, peering at it from her distance she could make out that it read out quarter to eleven. Slipstream sighed again. She had been waiting too long and had now accidentally cut even more time off her sleep, she groaned, irritated at that thought. With a flick of her wrist, the television's screen became void of picture before she sat up, yawning and arching her back as she stretched. Slip smacked her lips together as she trudged towards her bedroom. She would see Kickback in the morning and if not, at school. She was always thankful that he stuck by her there, even proudly introducing her to his friends when she began high school. She liked Vinyl, she thought the DJ was cool. She even knew certain things about her that her brother didn't, or at least, suspected. That was a given, however, she noticed how Kick acts around people, even his friends. He was never one to be the life of the party but rather was content to merely sit aside, smiling that tiny smirk of his and only speaking when spoken to, most of the time. Slip had a sneaky suspicion that Vinyl had a certain outlook of Kickback, one that caused her to stare at him for longer than appropriate and whenever she would call her out on it, she'd blush and deny it. Slip let out a giggle and she nestled herself in her bed. Her head dropped lazily onto the pillow and she curled herself up closer to herself. It was cold but her thick blankets helped out some. As she closed her eyes, she swore she could hear a voice speak to her. It almost sounded like an apology. Nodding politely to the old light green lady behind the counter, a gesture that was gladly returned by the woman in question, she took the metal tray in her hands and exited the line with her food balanced precariously in her grasp. Her dark cerulean eyes scanned the large room, the tables bustled with her fellow students as they chatted amongst themselves, all seeming to be categorized by some un-written rule. What was clear, however, was that she didn't know who anyone was nor did she know who she would fit in among. Colgate was uncertain. Her large, sparkling blue eyes darted left and right as she slowly carried her tray through the weaves of tables. Most of them were packed, not leaving any room for a newcomer to take a seat and even if there was, she wasn't sure she welcome in any of them. Colgate was a smart girl and had a keen eye for character in people. She was thankful of that as it managed to steer her away from any trouble, the last thing she wanted was to make an enemy out of some pretentious bitch on her first day at Canterlot High. Colgate supposed that made her a tad overly-sumptuous but more often than not, it's worked in her favour. Suddenly, she caught sight of a fairly crowded table but noticed a couple of empty seats. Immediately, her attention was brought to a singular girl that sat there with an aura of superiority around her. The girl's hair was a fiery two-toned mass of gorgeous red and yellow strands and her eyes were a as light blue as the sky. Colgate could only make out the white, metal studs that dotted around the opened collar to her black denim jacket and simple light purple shirt with the image of a sun printed on it. Her expression as she talked amongst the others that occupied the table made her seem friendly enough. With cautious optimism, she took a step forward. Only to be stopped by a wall of yellow. "HI!!" It greeted. "Ah!" She yelped. It took Colgate a few seconds to register what she was seeing. She shook her head and look back to find two wide bright green eyes and an impossibly large, beaming smile staring at her. She took a step back to compose herself and took in the figure before her. A tall, lanky, dark yellow boy with poofy, culry brown hair stood in front of her. Donned in a button up, striped shirt. She nearly cringed at his sense of fashion, the thing was sporting black with red, white, yellow and purple stripes, all going in random directions. "Are you new here?" He asked, giddily. Colgate cleared her throat. "Yeah?" "Awesome! Come on, sit with us!" Before she knew it, she was yanked by her wrist by...Who was he, again? She was about to ask but was promptly thrown into an empty seat. Miraculously, she found her tray placed safely in front of her on the table. Colgate was confused. She looked to her left and found a girl sitting next to her, her two-toned spiky blue hair bobbed as she nodded her head to the music blasting into her ears from the DJ-grade headphones she wore upon her head. She greedily took a bit out of her sandwich, not really noticing her. Colgate looked to her right and found yet another fellow female. This one was looking at her with a cocked eyebrow with a set of five cards held openly in her hand. She brushed a lock of snow-white hair behind her ear as she stared at Colgate with an uncertain look shining in her oddly dull purple eyes. "Umm...Hi." Colgate offered. She didn't reply, instead choosing to cast a deadpan look over to the boy that dragged her here. "Cheese, who is this?" Cheese, as he was evidently called just smiled at her. "She's my new friend, Colgate!" Colgate perked up. She hadn't even hinted at her name. "How did know-" "She's new here and now we can all be buddies!" He cheered, cutting her off. "How..." She began, looking back over to the newcomer. "...Delightful." She groaned, sarcasm dripping from her words. "Awww, don't be like that, Trix'." Colgate heard a new voice. Loud, bombastic but genuine. She turned her head to see it was the girl to her right, apparently, she had finally chosen to be a part of the conversation. "Besides, we are kind of a small crowd, it might be cool havin' a new face around here." Colgate noticed her offer her a toothy, friendly grin. "Name's 'Vinyl Scratch'." She pointed a finger towards the girl across her. "You've already met Trixie." "That's 'The great and powerful Trixie' to you." She scowled at Vinyl, flicking a deck of cards in her hands back and forth, almost mechanically before she looked back to Colgate and offered a smug little smirk. "Charmed." "Ummm...Likewise." "Anyway." Vinyl spoke up again, prompting Colgate to look back at her. She pointed over across the table. "That's Slip..." Her blue eyes casted a glance over to the light red girl, prodding at her mashed potatoes with a somewhat solemn expression on her face. Vinyl gestured over to the guy that brought her to the table. "...This is Cheese and-" She paused as her hand waved over towards the direction of an unoccupied seat at the end of the table. "Hey, where's Kick?" "Dunno! Haven't seen'im all morning!" Cheese happily mentioned, ironically Colgate was confused, again. "Kick?" "Trixie hasn't seen him either today." Colgate looked over to the girl and saw her dull expression, starring at her cards as she shuffling them around. "Not that Trixie cares, mind you. She just thought she'd mention it." "Who is-" "Slip, where's your brother at?" Vinyl asked. Slip scowled down at her food. "What makes you think I know where he is?" She spat with disdain. The others were all slightly taken aback by her tone but Colgate just sat there, clueless of what or whom they were speaking of. "Well, doesn't he, like, I dunno, live with you?" Vinyl's voice became steadily more aggressive with each word she spoke. Slip just scoffed. Everyone went silent at that, almost out as if expecting her to talk again. She didn't. "So? Where is he?" Slip's shoulders slumped. "I don't know." Vinyl's eyebrows cocked from behind her glasses. "Whatdd'ya mean; 'You don't know'?" Slip's eyes snapped to the DJ with spite. "I said I don't know!" Her glare lingered for a moment longer before she looked back down at her food. "He left the house last night. He didn't come back and he wasn't there this morning. I figured he might've gone to school a bit earlier than me..." A half-hearted grin crossed her face as she let out a brief chuckle. "...But he's kind of a creature of habit, so I didn't follow up on that thought." Cheese seemed to catch wind of the conversation at that point. "You tried giving him a call?" He offered. Colgate and even Trixie looked to him in slight awe, his tone was quiet, composed and genuinely concerned. As if on cue. Vinyl brought her phone down from her naked ear, oddly enough, no one saw her with it a second ago. "Straight to message bank." She looked over to the newcomer. "Well, guess ya won't be meetin' him today but ya just might if ya stick around with us." She looped a loose arm over Colgate shoulder. "Trust me, you won't find a better bunch of friends in this school." Colgate looked around the table and before she knew it, a little smile worked it's way onto her face. "You're sure as sugar about that!" Cheese chimed. He gulped the last remnants of his sandwich with gusto and reclined back in her plastic chair. "Hope he's okay." Slip offered a thin smile. "Yeah, same." Vinyl added. Trixie shied away from the others and looked down to the floor, she spoke in a hushed tone, as if not wanting the others to hear her. "Me too." It took a special kind of person to make a career out of working at a hospital. It took a special kind of person with a certain interest in death to make a career out of working at a morgue. Dr. Scalpel was one of those certain special people. It was quiet in the office late at night, she sat upright in her chair in the revolving chair behind her moderately expensive wooden desk, she always felt it was important to keep a straight posture. There was nothing to special about her workplace but it was her's and that was enough, wasn't it? Her hand scrambled around frantically with a pen held loosely in her fingers as she scribbled down the last of the details from a homicide that happened last week. She had only received the body yesterday. Victim was killed instantly by a single gunshot wound to the chest...how boring. To anyone else, this may have seen disrespectful and very inappropriate, perhaps even worrying but Dr. Scalpel had been a mortician for...how many years was it? She could worry about that later, all that mattered was that she had seen every case there was to see and frankly had gotten bored of the method that most of these killers take. Sometimes, she gets lucky and there's a serial killer with a very unorthodox preferred way to 'off' someone, if you will. Now, that was the way to do it, with imagination. Sometimes, when she was alone, she thought about how she would commit her murders if she was a- She stopped herself, her dull lime-green eyes stared dead ahead, she paid no mind to the loose strands of black hair that swayed across the glasses. At that moment, Dr. Scalpel thought that she might have been going insane. Her ears caught the distant sound of wheels rolling along a solid floor but the clatter of the double doors being barged through the doors to room is what broke her out of her daze. "Doc?" "Officer Smoke." The mortician regarded the police officer with a friendly smile, this was hardly the first time that she and the cop had crossed paths under these circumstances or otherwise. In he walked, his short, light brown hair slicked back under his short-brimmed hat. Dr. Scalpel often questioned why she had rarely seen him in his standard blue uniform and to present himself, looking more like a detective than a cop. Still, she thought he looked, if she was honest with herself, quite handsome in that dark leather vest of his. She could deal without the horrid stick of a cigarette poking from between his teeth. Scalpel could never stand or understand why people would want to voluntarily consume deathly chemicals through their mouths or otherwise. She could look past that, however, it wasn't necessarily her business even if she considered them friends. She supposed it was a trait that fitted his name. "Got a couple of bodies for ya, Scalp'." The doctor cast her eyes to the thin sheet on top of the table he wheeled in, the outline of a, as he said, body lay under it, motionless. She internally groaned, she had had enough time on the job to see a boring case when she saw it, even before she got a knife into the body. Everything was there, arms, head, torso, legs, everything was intact. However, she did find it odd that there was no blood anywhere seeping through the sheet from the body. She scoffed at that, it was a probably a strangle victim. In her musings, Smoke had stepped back outside and retrieved another body. "This one seems a bit straight forward. We found him on the concrete with this one-" He gestured to the first body. "-about a hundred stories up with the glass to the room shattered and dead on the floor. Dunno what killed him though." Scalpel didn't reply to that and instead decided to have a quick look at the first body. With a quick flick of her hand, she pulled the tarp off the face of it. In the corner of her eye, she could see Smoke's features noticeably yet not dramatically fall. "He's just a kid. Barely older than my son..." "You shouldn't empathize with a corpse, especially when there is two of them. For all we know, he was the killer here and the other one just managed to get a fatal shot in before taking the express elevator to the ground floor." Smoke's eyes widened a touch but he managed to let out a nervous laugh. "I guess you're right but still...poor kid." He gave a look to the other body and merely sighed. Scalpel seemed to welt a bit at his emotional display. "I'm sorry, guess I'm getting a bit too used to this, heh." "Do whatcha love, doc." He yawned. "Alright, well, 'night." "Goodnight." With that, Smoke walked out of the morgue, leaving Scalpel alone with the latest two subjects in her career. Octavia considered herself rather ordinary. There she sat in one of the school's most popular hang-outs, Sugarcube corner, nestled in her regular booth. She glanced down and watched in silence at the waving tendrils of steam rising from her coffee cup. She gave a quick lick of her lips and out of feeling the slight dry touch to them, she lifted the how liquid to her maw and took a quiet sip. The bitter flavour brought a smile to her face. Her eyes scanned up the table and she spotted a the finest tip of a snow-white finger and that's when Octavia remembered that she was all but alone. She followed the hand up the forearm, decorated in assorted bracelets, up to the electric cyan, spiky hair that fell over hidden shoulders and finally to the the shining magenta goggles that concealed her friend's eyes. Vinyl Scratch sat there in her side of the booth, one elbow leaning on the table while she rested her cheek on her fist, twiddling her thumb around on her phone that she kept at eye-level. Octavia hardly believed that she was paying any attention to her and if she was, she looked just as well as she did. Sometimes, it confused Octavia as to how her and the DJ were friends, quite close friends at that. Sure, she didn't sit with her group during breaks at school but she had numerous classes with her and ironically, the two seemed to just click. Something she found quite odd, after all, Octavia was a cello player, something everyone knew. Sometimes that felt like the only thing people knew about her and even sometimes she thought that...well, that was all that needed to be known about her. This girl sitting across from her was a DJ, also something everyone knew. She had her headphones on so much that it was considered an oddity that you would hear the spiky-haired music lover ever utter a single word, an honour if that word was spoken to you, specifically. She supposed her...rather mixed-up group was far ahead from used to it. Octavia would always look over and see her talking up a storm with that party-animal, Cheese Sandwich, that over-zealous magician, Trixie and those other two. She could remember the young girl's name was Slip Stream but for the life of her, couldn't remember the older brother's name. Octavia considered herself quite ordinary. Octavia considered Vinyl Scratch anything but. Yet despite their opposing nature Octavia was glad she was her friend. "Heh Heh..." "What?" "This pic of me and Kick'." Vinyl flipped her phone around as Octavia leaned forward to see what she was referring to. On the thin rectangular glass screen was a photo of Vinyl standing next to the other boy in her group. Her hand looped around his shoulder as his own lay half-heartily just above her hip. Her goggles were swinging precariously by her opposite hand and possibly the biggest beam Octavia had ever seen was planted without mercy on her face. The taller figure looked less-than-thrilled about the situation but gave a thing smile nonetheless, his opposite hand firmly in his pocket as his eyes rolled upwards, the black and white strands of his hair drifting lazily in front of his eyes. It was then that Octavia noticed the neatly, obviously edited-in text that displayed itself in curvy, oddly light red lettering. Kickback and Vinyl - Best Friends Octavia resisted the urge to snap her fingers and plant a firm palm against her forehead. That was his name. She let out a brief laugh, allowing a playful grin to spread itself across her dull-grey features. "And I thought we were the best of friends, Vinyl." She joked. If Vinyl looked up at her as she turned the phone back towards herself, Octavia couldn't tell. "We are, Octy'." She chuckled. "Just Kick' here is my best guy friend." Everything about that sentence could be reworked into something entirely different to what it meant and Octavia, being a teenage female high-school student, almost jumped at the first chance she got to do just that. She didn't however. She let it sit for a good few seconds, letting the silence seem like a safe-haven for all things platonic. Then she struck. "Oh? Is that all?" Vinyl's head didn't tilt in her direction but if she looked at the grey-skinned girl sitting across from her, she would've seen the largest shit-eating smirk that Octavia had ever plastered on her face. "Whadd'ya mean?" "Well, I think you two look rather cute together." Octavia was cackling in her head. She could picture it now, Vinyl would blush and shyly deny it then she would press forward and Vinyl would get overly defensive, which in-turn would make her angry, which would lead to her saying something. Something she didn't want her to here, something she didn't want anyone to hear and she would be in on the secret. Octavia was always a fan of drama, she would push Vinyl in the right direction, guiding her heart to the one that she holds close to it. It may take days, weeks, months or even years but if she's lucky, she would manage, in the end, to see Vinyl reach her goal. To become enveloped in the arms of her love, they'd kiss and she's be there, roaring with victory in the side-li- She heard a deep, raspy chuckle across from her. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, Tavi'." Octavia blinked, watched with a slightly open jaw as her friend swiped away at her phone. "You go ahead and giggle all ya want about me and Kick', can go and think whatever you want and shit." She laughed again. "Honestly, I think all those drama classes and those books you read are messin' with your head, girl." Octavia deflated a touch. "Sorry, Vinyl. I just thoug-" "But." Vinyl lifted a hand to her glasses and slowly, almost teasingly brought them down from her eyes. Octavia stared as her friend blinked a couple of times before staring back with bright magenta irises. She smiled briefly before looking back to her screen, Octavia noticed the slight lowering of her eyelids as she gazed back at her phone. "I guess I am kinda into him." Octavia blanched. "Just wish I knew where he is..and if he's okay." The tray clattered to the ground, the metal hitting the porcelain creating a deafening ring that screamed throughout the building. A foot was planted, shaking in it's cheap black shoe. The leg followed up to a simple dark skirt, a simple aqua-marine shirt, shielded by a white coat and finally, up to the face of one particular mortician. Dr. Scalpel stared, trembling as the look of abject terror and confusion was etched across her face. At least once in a person's life, they've done something that they wish hadn't done and instead had done something else. This was definitely was one of Scalpel's moments and the option she should've chosen was going home, reading a book, perhaps an erotica and go to bed. She wished she had done that but instead, she had decided to stay at the morgue and perform an autopsy on the latest cases given to her. Now, the good doctor is a professional. During her work, she is always composed and steady, never surprised and never unprepared. She also doesn't tend to talk to herself other than when she's doing her voice recordings for certain cases but that's for work. Personally, she isn't prone to speaking when she's the only one around and is always composed during her work and in general. So when she takes a step back, blanches at what she sees before her and her mouth speaks her mind, all while alone and in the morgue, one knows that the certain something that caused such is due for such. "What. The. Fuck?" Nothing. Scalpel had laid out the body of the...intact victim on a surgical table. Getting through the clothing was simple enough, the guy was wearing a grey hooded vest, easily opened by a zipper and a white, collared, button-up shirt when he died and obviously, still was. She went to feel around the frame of the body, gliding her hand over his dark red skin. Anyone that caught her doing so would think she was crazy or to be more specific, a necrophiliac. She scoffed at the idea, the victim obviously didn't spend alot of time in the gym, that is to say that the victim wasn't necessarily out-of-shape, just not overly toned. Scalpel had to admit that, facially, he was rather cute. She paused. Shook her head. And went to take a surgical knife from the tray next to her. With care, Scalpel lowered the eight-inch blade to the body's stomach. It took her a moment but she suddenly found herself quite curious. She had checked around the throat, finding no sign that the cause of death was suffocation and when she opened his shirt, she found no blood. Something she found rather odd as didn't she find blood on the corpse when it was brought in? It had been ages since a dead body had peaked her curiousity so much, she found herself grinning thinly as the blade made contact and with a bit of extra pressure, she cut through the skin with mild ease. To her surprise, little-to-no blood spilled from the entry, which made sense, she supposed. Didn't it? No, the heart may stop beating but the gallons of blood in a living body just doesn't simply disappear...this sparked her to press forward, she simply had to know. Know what? Exactly. With only the thin plastic of her gloves protected her from the grime and dead tissue that lurked from within the corpse, Scalpel pried apart the cut she had made with both hands and peered inside. Odd, she didn't see anything. She shrugged and plunged deeper. Still nothing. Weird. Grabbing a small torch that lay off to the side on the same tray, Scalpel shined the light into the bloody crevice, expecting intestines, a liver, kidneys, a bladder or the outline of a spine. There was nothing. Realising this, the doctor jumped back, knocking over her surgical tray and staring with blatant horror at the...what she thought was a human body. That brings us up to now. "What in the Hell are you?" Nothing. Nothing in the world could prepare her for what she saw next. She could've watched twelve children butchered mercilessly by a demonic clown and she still would've had the same reaction that she did right then. As if her words were a cue in a grand theatrical play, what she could describe as red and black...tendrils surged from the body. The visage was nauseating as they swarmed around the body. They seemed to focus on the cut, enveloping it in a writhing mass of sickly colours and shades. Through the blur and her own terrified bewilderment, Scalpel watched as the wriggling web seemed to...close the wound that she, herself, had made. She desperately wished this to be a dream, a horrible nightmare brought on by too many late hours and caffeine but the image was so ironically real, she almost threw up. Finally, it stopped. The tendrils seemed to seep back into the body. The incision sealed tight, as if it never happened. Scalpel dared not move an inch nor take her eyes off the body less she accidentally awaken the...whatever it was that was in the room with her. She tried her hardest to calm her breathing but the sheer horror of it all left her a hyper-ventilating mess, never had she felt so helpless. So scared. Yet despite how focused she was on the body... ...she didn't even notice the pair of dark green eyes snapping open under his grey hood.