My Life as a Hybrid

by ChaosDoomscythe

Chapter 15: Confusion of the Mind and Body

There was the sound of glass shattering as two forms slammed and crashed through a tall, pristine stained-glass window. One of the forms had a coat as pure as the sky, colored in white, and giving off a subtle glow that shined with all the radiance of the sun. The other form had a coat of dark colored fur, as black as the darkest void; a void where light entered, had all the life and joy sucked out of it, and had its withered remains crushed into absolute nothingness.

And that is exactly what the black furred form intended to do. Suck all of the life out of the white furred forms eyes and then crush- or rather, incinerate- its withered remains into nothing.
Into less than nothing.

Into the void known as oblivion.

I… I don’t understand… I can feel it.

I shouldn’t feel it… but I can.

‘Why…’

I just purged all of my emotions from my body as I cried my heart and soul out… I shouldn’t be able to feel anything right now!

But I can. I can feel it welling up inside me right now… and as I stare into her eyes- her eyes filled with worry and concern- I realize…

She can see it too.

‘Why… did she...’

But I don’t understand! Why am I feeling this?!

But this…. If feels… off…

Wrong…

So wrong…

And far too familiar for my own tastes…

“Shadow Flare…?”

She called my name… his name… our name…

Hearing her voice… the feelings are building up faster.

This… this isn’t…

‘Why… did she .. comfort me?’

My body is tensing up… She’s hugging me tighter.

I can feel it… It’s building up further… threatening to break the dam of my restraints… threatening to overflow uncontrollably… This isn’t right…

For the first time, I don’t want them to overflow.

Why is this happening? I don’t want this! This shouldn’t be-!

Something is wrong… something is horribly wrong…

Rage…

That voice!

My eyes widened…

Hers did as well. She saw it… something in my eyes….

My eyes!

I can see the red creeping in around the edges… my mind was beginning to get fuzzy… unfocused…

Anger…

Her eyes widened again….

“No… Shadow! Shadow, stay with me! Don’t let it take control!”

What’s happening to me?

These aren’t my emotions… these aren’t my feeling!

Something’s…

Have to warn her... she doesn't deserve...

My eyes… completely red…

My mind…. Hard to... focus…

The voice…

I… Can’t-

Hatred! Revenge!

WRATH!

“Ce-… Celestia….…Run…!”

Celestia kept her forehooves raised as much as she could to try to block as many of the incoming strikes as she could, for all the good it did her. She had grown too lax in her time as a ruler, and though she still had all the magical, physical, and mental strength she did so long ago, her reflexes and combat skills were severely lacking compared to then. Living in so long a time of peace-and eating so much cake- she thought, had severely decreased her speed and reflexes over the years. Couple that with the exhaustion she already felt from how long this fight had already dragged on, she could barely block the flurry of flaming strikes coming at her from nearly all sides.

Even as she and Shadow Flare fell to the ground below, the glass from a shattered window falling with them, he was still assaulting her. A raging barrage of punches and kicks aimed at any exposed part of her he could reach kept her from opening her wings. She knew, that even if she did, he’d almost immediately target them, and disable one of the only means she had to escape if it became necessary. Though, odds are, even if she did try to fly away, he’d be on her in mere seconds. While she was fast- very fast despite her size-Shadow was decisively faster. Though she had no intentions of escaping. She was going to try her best to reach out to him, to get him to calm down so they could talk this over.

If only she knew how futile that would be.

Her back slammed into the ground, sending cracks all through the cobblestone pathway from how fast and how hard she fell. She didn’t even have the chance to yelp from the shock before all the air was driven from her lungs; a result of the impact of all four of Shadow Flare’s hooves slamming down upon her under-carriage. She never even got the chance to try to regain her lost air before a burning hoof struck her on the side of her left cheek, then her right, then her nose, then her throat then her horn.

That last one would have had her screaming if she had the air to expel.

With her magic now temporarily disabled, and her mind now struggling to focus with a fog of pain covering it, she could only lay there as her beating continued. Suddenly, the blows stopped. Celestia took the time to suck in a deep breath of air, only to let it out in a pained groan. As she regained her focus and pushed out as much pain as she could, she managed to open her eyes. She looked up, only to see him standing on top of her with one of his forehooves on his own head, his eyes clenched shut. There was a constant snarl across his face, and he was shaking his head back and forth. He snorted out more flames, and though they touched her, these ones strangely weren’t hurting her. She prepared to try to lodge him off. He raised his head, opened his eyes, and cast his furious gaze down upon her. His left eye twitched, and as she stared into his eyes, what she saw surprised her.

He was fighting his own anger, trying to regain control…

And he was losing.

She let out a gasp as he suddenly grabbed her arm and flung her over his shoulder with all his might. Reflexively, she spread out her wings in an effort to correct her trajectory. She realized her mistake the very moment she made it.

‘Oh, Faust darn it!’

She hadn’t even moved ten feet from her previous position before she felt a set of gem crushingly sharp teeth and fangs clamp down on her left wing, completely halting her movement. The sudden stop clashed with her momentum, and her entire body jerked right before that wing came out of its socket.

Her scream echoed throughout the entirety of the open courtyard, and was no doubt heard by many of the still conscious guards and citizens of Canterlot…

…and that was before her wing caught fire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The train pulled into Canterlot station, and ponies began to disembark one after the other. One particular pony- a royal blue Pegasus with a scraggly white mane and a cutie mark of two pure white wings with a golden halo sitting behind it- trotted off the train car with a pair of shades over his eyes. As he stopped, he took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“Ahhh~… Canterlot! Smells like…. Well… like… snobs? Yeah. Snobs sounds about right. Hehehe.”

The stallion quickly made his way out of the train station, and onto the cobblestone roads of the capitol of equestrian. It was his first time there, and while he wanted to enjoy the sounds, and sample some of the delicious food he could smell, he unfortunately much more important priorities to attend to.

“Man… I really hope that what Emerald said wasn’t true. You better not have done something seriously stupid, bro, ‘cause I am not about to bail you out if-“

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

The stallion stopped in his tracks, as did every citizen in Canterlot. While they all suddenly looked up in fear at what they heard, remembering the events of the past few weeks, his face taking on a pained visage as one of his hooves raised to rub at an ear. He pulled up his shades and finally opened his eyes, his faded red irises looking up into the sky, towards the top of Canterlot Mountain, where the roar originated from. The Pegasus stallion grimaced, before letting his shades drop back down over his eyes and releasing an explosive sigh.

“…. Dude, bro, Shadow…. If that means what I think it means… I’m gonna pummel you so badly when I get my hooves on you. Seriously, I told you not to go and do something dumb, and look at what you do! I’m gonna- UGH! Celestia darn it! YOU HAD ONE JOB!”

The Pegasus spread his wings and flapped them hard, taking off towards the mountain, where he had no doubt his friend was. But when he took off, he either failed to notice or simply didn’t care when a massive gust of wind was released from his wings and blew everypony and everything in the immediate vicinity head over hooves in a sudden tumble, none of them stopping until they collided into something. As they all got up and began yelling at him for his callousness, he was far more preoccupied with his own thoughts.

“Hang on, Shadow Flare. Big brother Sky Shock’s on the way! Just… don’t do anything else stupid, please…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“Sister, what’s happening to him!?”

“He’s been possessed!”

“WHAT?!?" Came the voice of eight other ponies.

Celestia stood next to Luna, the Element bearers, Cadence, Shining, and the Solar and Lunar guards standing behind them at the ready as Mantle did his best to hold down the thrashing chimera-hybrid. A sickly black, green, and dark blue aura was radiating off of his form, and he had been forced into his Changeling form. He struggled furiously as he tried to escape the massive beast pinning him to the ground, multi-colored flames spewing from his mouth, his nose, his ears, his mane and tail, any part of his very body.

“Princess?” Twilight quickly approached the two, but stayed behind them in the wake of Shadow’s growing rage. “Is there anything we can do to help him?”

Luna turned to her sister. “What of the Elements? Surely they can purge him of whatever dark forces-“

Luna stopped speaking when she saw Celestia sadly shaking her head. “We cannot risk that. The Elements of Harmony are always at odds with forces of Chaos. Shadow is a being with a soul of chaos, so there is a good chance that, along with purging him of the darkness, the Elements could seriously harm him, turn him to stone… or worse.”

“Even if we can’t use the elements,” Rainbow Dash floated above them as she watched shadow’s thrashing grow worse, “we gotta do something to help him! We can’t just leave him like that!”

“B-But… what can we do?” Fluttershy meekly flew up behind Rainbow Dash, flinching when she heard another snarling roar.

“We can… I don’t know…” Rainbow’s face suddenly lit up when an idea came to her. “Wait! Fluttershy! You can use your stare on him! That should-“

Fluttershy had paled when she heard Rainbow’s idea, so much so that Rainbow stopped talking after seeing the expression on her friends face. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! I can’t do that to him! Not after the last time!”

Shining and Cadence turned to the mare, both with curious looks on their faces.

“Last time?" asked the unicorn as his wife continued.

"You’ve used your stare on him before?”

Fluttershy meekly nodded, and lowered herself down to the ground. “It happened after I saved him from Mantle. After Zecora helped create an anti-venom, he woke up the next day when Rainbow stopped by.”

Rainbow spoke up next, continuing where Fluttershy left off. “I had heard rumors of something big happening in the Everfree the night before. You guys remember right?” At the Ponyvillians nods, she continued. “I went over to Fluttershy’s house to make sure she was alright. But When I got there, Shadow woke up, and started freaking out. Even with all his injuries, he was still really difficult to hold down. Fluttershy had to use her stare to try to calm him down, but…”

“According to shadow… when I used my stare… all of the emotions he kept bottled up inside of him had suddenly forced themselves to the surface. He lost complete control of himself, and… he… he… the look in his eyes…”

Celestia walked up to Fluttershy, and calmly nuzzled her to calm her down. “Tell me what happened, my little pony.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath and looked up at Celestia, but when she went to speak, she found she couldn’t. She let out a small sob, and curled in on herself. Rainbow landed and draped a wing over her to comfort her, and decided to tell the rest of it herself.

“He… freaked out. Really, really badly. He overpowered me, and took off, Despite how messed up he was, he was still really fast. I had to tackle him into a cloud. But instead of trying to get away, he grabbed me and wouldn’t let go until he had cried himself to sleep from exhaustion.” Rainbow raised her head and looked over at the struggling Changeling, her face dropping when she remembered the things he had been wailing in his despair. Mantle had transformed into his larger form in order to keep him pinned down, but even then, it looked incredibly difficult. “The entire time, he just kept screaming things like ‘Why did you leave me,’ ‘I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt you,’, and ‘please, come back.’ I’ve never seen anypony so broken like that before.”

“I w-wont...” they turned back to Fluttershy at her soft admission, somehow heard over the ferocious growls, roars and snarls of the two struggling beasts. “I won’t use my stare on him ever again. I promised myself I wouldn’t I-I can’t… He…He told me that he couldn’t even look me in the eye because he knew he’d break down again, whether I was using the stare or not… I… I can’t do that to him!”

“I’m afraid there may not be much else we can do for him then, darling.” Rarity walked up to Fluttershy and placed a hoof on her shoulder to calm her, the rest of her friends doing their best to comfort her as well. ”If we cannot use the Elements, and poor Fluttershy refuses to use her stare on him, then I’m afraid I don’t know how we can help him…” She raised a hoof to her chin, looking deep in thought. After a few moments, she muttered “Unless…”

Everypony present turned to the fashionista at her brief comment, Luna being the one who spoke up. “You have an idea?”
Rarity turned to face Celestia. “Princess, are you certain he has been possessed? That it is not simply his anger at seeing you that has him so furious?”

Celestia nodded, then turned to look back at the struggling duo. Mantle was sweating harshly as he did all he could to keep his uncontrollable friend pinned down. “When I looked into his eyes, I saw a rage in him that did not belong to him at all. He recognized it himself, and that is why he struggles now. He told me to run from him, because he did not, in that one moment, wish to see me harmed. He is trying to fight it off as best he can. Some dark force has invaded his mind and body, and he’s doing all he can to fight it. I fear that is a battle he will not win, however.” She turned back to Rarity, who looked pensive.

“Then perhaps there is a chance. Do you all remember when I-“

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Everypony turned to look as dark beams of magical energy shot out of the ground from under Shadow and struck Mantle in his underbelly. He was repelled and thrown so high up that he smashed his head into the ceiling, before falling back to the cave floor, unconscious before he even hit the ground. Fluttershy tried to rush forward to make sure he was alright, but the others held her back, despite her protests.

Slowly, the possessed Changeling stood up, his mane and tail now transformed into pure black flames waving back and forth harshly, as though they were a raging inferno waiting to be released. His fangs were far more pronounced than they should have been, and each of his teeth looked ready to crush diamonds into dust. He slowly turned to look at all of the assembled ponies, the Royal Guards moving into a defensive position to protect them.

The changeling began to chuckle darkly, before rising into an incredibly loud and evil filled laugh that promised nothing hut pain and torment in the near future. Slowly, he raised his head, and looked at the assembled ponies before smiling darkly. To everypony’s complete surprise, his eyes were entirely black, the irises included, and his pupils had turned to a sick teal color. When he spoke, there were two voices there, one of them Shadow Flares, but the other one decidedly more feminine, and incredibly familiar to them all.

“Hello, you sun-loving little pests! Did you miss me?”

Celestia and Luna could both only gasp at what they heard, both having instantly recognized who the second voice belong to. At the same time, they both muttered its name…

“…Nightmare…”