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0615 HOURS
ONBOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS
NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA
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Until the cell door had swung open and her entire world had come crashing down in a nigh-apocalyptic moment of revelation, Twilight Sparkle had been perfectly content with reading about the discovery of the steam-powered locomotive and its impact on the history of these “humans.” While she had found the book she had been granted to be a tad lacking, she did find the history of an entirely alien race completely fascinating, especially the differing reactions they had to new technologies.
“Amazing,” she muttered to herself. “Without the power of the princesses, they seem to have flourished, but at the expense of their environment! My word, what price might they have paid for progress? And was it worth it?”
She turned the next page, and pulled her head back as a cardboard cutout shot out at her, this one being of a man the book described as “Andrew Carnegie,” whatever that name could mean. She sighed. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been complaining: she was just a prisoner, after all, and the humans could very well have just laughed at her request for more information about their world and history. Still, she was having difficulty deciding if her being granted such obviously child-oriented literature was an attempt to withhold information, or just a dig at her intelligence. Honestly, she hoped it was the former. At least that would mean the humans had some respect for her as a thinking individual, whereas the latter would just piss her off.
She tossed the book in with the small stack she had been granted and gave the small ring around her horn another frustrated scratch. Was it just her, or was it honestly beginning to itch? Her horn had never itched before, but right now, she could swear it felt like an entire colony of ants was marching through it, their little legs scratching along its…
Pausing, Twilight stood on all four hooves, rearing up as far as the metal chains wrapped around her waist and her wings would allow her. She breathed in, holding her hoof to her chest, and out again, cleansing her mind as Cadence had shown her…except that brought Cadence to mind…which in turn brought her brother to mind…and then her parents and her friends and Celestia and dear sweet Celestia was she ever gonna see anypony again would she just die down here in this…
In… she breathed. And out.
All in all, Twilight didn’t think she had much to complain about. Her room was well-lit and comfortable, especially now that she’d been given a throw-pillow to lie on instead of the cold, tile floor. She just wished the buzzing from the light panels above her wasn’t so obvious. They were marvels of technological advancement, surely, but in the silence of her cell, that buzzing was driving her nuts!
She gritted her teeth against it, trying to remember her breathing, only to snort in frustration and wind up starting over a few seconds later. She had repeated the cycle at least a couple dozen times when she heard footsteps approach her cell door. This time, she stood as tall as the chains would allow, glowering at the door, trying to display as fierce a look as she could. Last time, when her captors first arrived to check on her, they had found a pony quivering in fear, barely able to stand from being unconscious for so long. This time though, she would be sure they would find a Princess.
Chin up, she thought. Keep your chin up, your wings flared out, and glare. Look scary! Ooh, but not too scary, that might send the wrong message. Wait, is scary the same as intimidating? Oh no! I need to look that up, where are my…notes…
Her thoughts came crashing to a halt like Celestia's carriage after a few dozen Appletinis. The door rushed open with a pneumatic hiss, and a lighter-skinned human stepped through, first drawing her attention before her eye was drawn to the white blur at his side. He was speaking with it in a tongue she didn’t recognize as her view slowly shifted to the blur, slowly revealing blue highlights and a voice that spoke strange words but in a tone she knew better than the back of her own hoof. Her eyes widened, her throat constricting. The tall, intimidating princess disappeared as she shrank in her own shock and wonder, her wings sinking until the feathers touched the ground.
For a few seconds, her throat locked up, unable to voice anything but a barely-audible squeak. She gazed at the white blur as it kept jabbering away with its incomprehensible language and familiar speech, trying to force the words out through the stunned, blubbering idiot she felt ready to become, until she finally squeaked his old nickname: “BBBFF?”
He looked up at her from the clipboard in his grip. His eyes widened. The pencil he had been holding fell from his grasp, clattering to the tiled floor. His jaw hung agape, closed, then opened again as if to say something, except nothing came out.
Finally, her own pure joy overwhelmed her shock like a tsunami over a beaver dam. ”Big brother!” She gasped, skipping towards him in joy. She had to stretch the chains out as far as they would go, and even then she could only get within a foot of him, that was enough. Tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks as she drank in the first familiar sight she’d seen since being locked in this awful place. The alien creature at his side moved to block her, but she still managed to peek around him, poking her head around human’s torso and grinning at her brother.
“Shining!” She gasped, still craning her neck around the body in her way. “Sweet Celestia, Shining! I’m so glad it’s you! Oh gosh, what are you even doing here, did they catch you too!?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he looked at her with the gaze of a pony that has been trotting along in the sands of some desert wasteland for days on end and just saw their first drop of water on the blade of a leaf. He reached around the human, shoving him to the side to look at her. His hoof reached out, touching her cheek.
“Shining?” She asked, eyeing him queerly. That look was really starting to weird her out now. “A-are you okay?”
“Shuōhuǎng zhě…”* he rasped, his hoof remaining on her face.
“I’m sorry, what was that? You’re not making any sense big…” she finally noticed the scar on his cheek, and a few things rapidly clicked into place. “…brother…”
“Shuōhuǎng zhe!” He repeated, his touch leaving her face only to backhoof her across the cheek. She fell to the tile as he reared over her, motioning to repeat the strike. “Shuōhuǎng zhě!”
“Shining!? What’s happened to you!? What’s going on!?” She cried desperately, hoping to reach the pony she knew somewhere inside this one.
“Shuōhuǎng zhě! Shuōhuǎng zhě!” He repeated the phrase over and over again, moving to strike, but quick as a flash, the human responded. His limbs (‘They call them hands,’ some rational part of her that was somehow still functioning informed her) lashed out against the white unicorn, faster than she could even believe. One moment, the human was just recovering from being brushed aside by Shining Armor, and the next, he was on top of the unicorn. He shrugged, and Shining Armor fell to one knee. The human shrugged again, and this time she could just barely make out the blur that was his hand, delivering another blow to Shining’s head. It didn’t knock out the unicorn entirely, but from the way it moved, Twilight figured knocking Shining out wouldn’t have been much of a challenge for the human. All it did was stun him, allowing the human to wrap his arms around Shining’s neck in a choker hold and drag him back out the door, still screaming those words over and over again.
“Shuōhuǎng zhě! Shuōhuǎng zhě!” His cries echoed off into the hallway like accusations handed down from the judge’s podium as he was forcibly carried off in the grip of the human, the man’s arms locked around him like a vice, the extensions on his hands (‘Fingers!’ that little rational part cheerfully reminded her again) digging into his flesh. She privately thanked whoever might be listening once the door slid shut again and the accusing cries were finally cut off, leaving her with her thoughts and that phrase echoing over and over again in her mind.
“Shining Armor,” she said quietly, looking at the door in utter terror. “What happened to you? What’s going on? What’s…oh Celestia above…what’s happened here!?”
The door and the empty room offered no answers, so after a few minutes curled up in a little ball of feathers on the tile, she finally trotted back over to her throw pillow and grabbed another picture book off the pile. A few minutes into her reading, she noticed a few drops cascading down onto the pages, but dismissed them as some sort of fluid from the ceiling, perhaps fuelling the light panels. It took her a few more minutes to realize they were her tears.