//------------------------------// // Chapter 5:Stop, just please stop // Story: Heart Beats // by Colt Bolt //------------------------------// The most radical act anyone can commit to is to be happy - Patch Adams “Open the gates!”  A royal guard ordered from the top of the concrete wall as lights and lasers beamed out through the windows and ceiling.   The first layer of security, two giant wooden doors, swung open to reveal two thick iron gates, looking more than enough to stop a whole migration of dragons. A gush of wind blew through the entrance. The cranking of gears and creaking of bolts blasted my ears as the final gates opened. I entered the front room where two large metal scanners were.   My muscles in my legs tightened, “Ok, I’m just going to run around the scanner and sprint for the exit… Oh, what the buck, this has to be one of my worst ideas."   “Hey Silver Hoof!” a brown female pegasus with a croaked voice called, zooming down next to me before I could react. “Come on, the celebrati- whoa, what happened to you?”  She pointed to my bandaged head.   “Oh, umm, I tripped on a rock and fell into the pits of Tartarus.” I gave a nervous laugh, hoping that she would laugh it off.   “Yeah, right,” rolling her eyes, “now come on.” She beckoned for me to follow her. “Everypony is celebrating the extinction of the Changelings.”   I’ve given up thinking that at least one guard would pity our species. But then, why would they? To avoid suspicion, I followed the brown mare, going through many rooms and corridors with a spectrum of streamers, blasting music and a variety of party food.   I began to daydream, remembering the first time I tasted normal equine food.  I was still a little hatchling and changelings were living secretly among ponies. My older brother used to say, ‘Don’t come running to me when you eat anything other than love,’ which was a metaphor, but I didn’t fully understand the world at that time.   So I went out, breaking a few rules, and bought a simple cupcake with chocolate icing on top at a nearby store and carried it home. The sweet smell of it placed a smile on my face. Just looking at it made my mouth water. But sadly, when I took my first bite, my tastebuds disagreed. As a matter of fact, the taste stunned me so much that I accidently swallowed it down.Then, all Tartarus broke loose.   My stomach started to growl, not in a hungry way, but in a groaning and moaning way. The next thing I knew, a month worth of love came out of my mouth and onto my hooves.   “Ah, the good old days.” I thought sarcastically as we kept on walking.   “Hey, Silver Hoof.” the mare waved a hoof in my face while I daydreamed. “Hellooo? Equestria to Silver Hoof”       “Wait wha- . . . who, when, where?” I startled, almost forgetting where I was.   “So how is Water Sprout going?”   “Who?”   She lowered her chin and eyebrows. “Your wife. Gosh, how badly did you hit your head?”   “Oh, yeah. Water Sprout. Umm, she’s doing fine. Doing her everyday pony related things, taking care of the pony kids. Working at the pony water factory….” I was mentally facehoofing myself, knowing how stupid that sentence was. She gave me a suspicious look.   Cupping my mouth, I gave a fake yawn. “Well, won’t you look at the time. Gotta go. Bye.” Galloping off through the corridors to find an exit, her response was to facehoof, passing it off as having too many salt licks. “Come on everypony,” she announced. “Drinks are on me!” Everypony cheered righteously.   ***   After I was sure that no pony was near me or watching me, I stared at a fire escape map nailed to the wall. When I read the word fire, it triggered my self-memo to burn every royal guard zoomed back into my head.   “Kill” I alarmingly turned my head around but nopony was there.   “Burn” The voice said again.   “Feed” That’s when I remembered.   “Go away! You’ve already killed enough ponies today!”   “DESTROY!!!” A burning pain surged through my head. My eyes began to roll to the back of my head as they were given a red tint.   “AHHCK!!” I screamed, rolling on the floor kicking and screaming, grasping my brain.  “GET THE BUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!”   I felt its cold tip slither into my spine, slowly taking control of every bone, every muscle and every nerve until it was in full control. All I could do was watch the horrors that appeared through my eyes. Everything was the as same before, except this time, everything was moving at a normal speed. I got up and gave the map a good look. A chuckle came out of my lips and I began to walk to the gates from where I came in.   By now, every guard had too many salt licks or mugs of cider to even walk. There were pegasi hanging from poles and chandeliers, earth ponies snoring in awkward positions on couches and tables, and unicorns whose horns became a black, burnt-out color.   I kept walking through alleyways and even more party rooms until I reached a wooden door with rusted iron strips reinforcing it. Next to the door, on a chair, was a snoring, brown earth pony guard who was drooling down into the barrel of his rifle. A glass bottle of alcohol hung from his other hoof.   Multiple keys, fitting into a ring, dangled from his belt. One of them was the way through to the voice’s destination. I expected the monster inside of me to somehow stealthily pinch them, but what it had in mind was completely different. Instead of grabbing the keys, my hoof clutched onto the bottle, unexpectedly waking up the guard.   “Huh, wha?” The earth pony, barely awake, partially opened his eyes as I thrusted my hoof, holding the bottle, to his head. The bottle shattered into millions of pieces, some landing on the floor while the rest jabbed into his skull. He fell to the ground, groaning and covering his throbbing head with his hooves. I stared at his body squirming in agony before I looked at the broken glass bottle, which now had razor sharp tips.   “Perfect weapon for eliminating an obstacle.”  I bent my legs getting ready to pounce and end another life.   ”STOP!” the color in my eyes flickered between red and blue. “Just please stop.”   “Why do you care? Isn’t this the same kind who hunted our species to near extinction?”   “I care because….because….” I groaned in frustration.   “Don’t you want to keep your promise to Chrysalis?”     I opened my mouth to return fire, but as if there were cotton balls shoved down my throat, nothing… there was nothing I could come back with. Giving in, I relaxed my grip.   “Hmm, I thought so.” He mentally dropped a barrage of rocks onto my back that came down onto me like a ton of bricks. A loud crack was heard coming from my spine as my eyes returned to a dark red. I was too speechless to even howl at the amount of pain I was experiencing. Before I knew it, the monster inside started to hack at the guard’s head. I pumped my hoof up and down while the victim’s red liquid spurted out onto my face.   Tears ran down the side of my cheeks. “I don’t k-know why I care but it just feels so wrong.”   “Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep on doing this until it’s not wrong. How about that?” My hoof started to viciously jab near the navel.   This kept on going on for minutes until I stopped sobbing. The earth pony’s face and body didn’t even look like a pony anymore. His jaw was connected by a single strain of skin and intestines were spread out across the floor.  A pink stream of love raced towards my tongue.   “It wasn’t that bad, now was it?”   I remained silent, my face buried in my hooves and unable to feel anything below my abdomen. The voice nicked the keys off his belt as it rotated my head to the door. It took more than one attempt to find the right key, but when I did, it elicited a short but loud click from the door. As light seeped through the opening door, a ruffle of gears clinked and clanked. I didn’t know what to expect to find, but there were barrels. Barrels upon barrels, stacked upon even more barrels of black powder. The voice brought up my hoof to show me a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.   “Ever smoked before, Smoulder?” He slid out a roll, lighting it then placing it between my lips. The gray, gassy substance burnt the back of my throat as it engulfed the insides of my mouth.  “It seems that the guard back there was a smoker.”   I kept my mouth shut, not giving any expression. “Aww, come on. Don’t be like that to me. I might seem all mean and nasty, but in all honesty, I’m you. So basically whatever I do, you do and vice versa.” I didn’t open my mouth a single bit while the voice started to pour the powder on the floor, making a swirled line. “Fine, I’ll share a secret with you. Did you know that guard you just killed back there didn’t have very much love? Meaning that the only ponies I bet loved him where his parents.”   “You son of a BITCH, you killed him.”   “Like I said, anything I do, you do.” The voice tsked. “Anything like this!” Taking one last puff of the drug, my hoof dropped the embering cigarette onto the floor. It started to make a sparkling sound while the fire rapidly ate up the powder, like a swarm of parasprites following a line of food.   The monster inside didn’t hesitate to move. I kicked open locked door, shoved drunk ponies to the side and onto the floor, ran up a few flights of stairs, and soon flew off the top of the wall. I allowed gravity to slowly glide me softly to the ground as I turned back towards the wall.   The voice pretended to put on some shades. “Time to watch the fireworks.” It began to count down, swinging my hoof forwards and backwards with each number. “In three, two, one...”   It threw my hoof out expecting something massive to happen, but nothing came. I smiled wildly, knowing that whatever it had planned didn’t work. Bringing my chin up I bragged “Ha, you fai-” A flash of blinding light dashed across the empty plains.   BOOM!!   I fell to the floor, feeling a burning shock wave ram me into the ground. My armor was stripped off. For a few seconds,  I was blinded by the explosion. Covering my eyes, I waited for them to stop stinging.. The amount of light from the explosion disabled my ability to see anything and my ears were ringing from the volume of the blast wave. The blood in my veins flowed faster through my body. I just wanted to take one breath, curl up into a ball and never inhale again.   Eventually, my senses began to slowly come back to me. I felt a low rumbling vibration that shook the ground as screams, yells and cries could be heard. The sound of fire crackling droned in the air, but the sound of wall’s collapsing concrete overpowered it.   Soon after that, my eyes recovered only to meet a blood red sky. I got back up, noticing that I was in control of my actions again. I brushed myself off and started to walk north. I didn’t bother to look back as I knew that if I did, only grief and pain would encounter me. But that didn’t stop me from remembering what I had done. The thick smell of blood seeped into my nostrils, slightly strangling my throat.   I don’t fully remember what happened in the next few hours, and I especially don’t want to recall the emotions I experienced, but I will remember who did this to us: Celestia.   ***     My body created a long silhouette as beams of light streaked over the eastern horizon, giving me warmth. I felt the smoothness of the fresh, lush grass underneath my hooves as I took a big breath in through my nose to smell the pollen and the early morning dew, instead of the rotting fumes of corpses and waste I’ve adapted to. I gazed to the north horizon to see a few lumps in the distance and the sandy terrain. I was getting close to Dodge Junction.   Inspecting my aching hooves, I had forgotten that I didn’t change appearance after the blast. Turning my head around, there was nothing but endless flat plains.   I took a seat on the floor, tapping my chin. “Hmm, who should I look like temporarily?”   For some unknown reason this took ages to think about. “Think think think.” I started to poke my head to clear my mental blank. “Ugh, why is it so hard to think of a random identity?!” Throwing my hooves up, I flopped onto the ground.   The only idea that came to me was the form of the pony I had a nightmare about. Seeing no other options in my metal blank, I closed my eyes as green flames wrapped around me. I inspected myself for any discrepancies. “Everything seems fine. No holes, no fangs, no croaky voice.” I sighed as I stared at the buildings in the distance. “Time for Phase Two.”   ***   “Welcome to Dooooo-dge JUN-ction!” a yellow earth pony wearing a brown Stetson hat wildly waved his front hooves in the air “I’ve never seen you here before.”   “I would just like to know wher-.” Before I could get to finish my sentence he shoved me across town.   “I know, I’ll give you a grand Dodge Junction tour!”   “Please, I only want to kno-.”   He stopped in the middle of a busy cross junction. “Boggles the mind don't it?  The settler ponies built all of this a few years before AAAAAAA-pple-LOO-sa was founded!.”   Opening my mouth, I tried to speak, but he just kept interrupting every time I attempted to talk. Whenever I tried to walk away, he’d just push me to a new location. It seemed that this place had no end to it.   After he wasted thirty minutes of life I could never get back, he finally stopped. “Is there anything I could do for you?”   Once the world around me stopped spinning, i was able to reply. . “W-Where’s the train station?”   “Aww, can’t you stay for a while? You just came here. Oh, I know what would make you want to stay a little longer! A feast! ” With his two hooves on his lips, he gave out a high pitched whistle.   Out of nowhere, all of the townsfolk came galloping out of their houses, carrying plates, cutlery and all sorts of products made from apples. I didn’t know what was scarier, being discovered by drunken teenage dragons, or being force fed ‘poison’.   “AHHHHH!” I ran away blindly in the opposite direction, only to slam into something solid seconds later. “AHHH- oofff.”   I rebounded off the obstacle and a stallion with a low tone followed, “Hey! Watch where you’re going.”   I tilted my head up only to nearly lose control of my bladder at what I saw if I didn’t remind myself that I was in a disguise. A black royal guard equipped with shadowy purple armor poked a rifle to my forehead.   “That’s enough, Sharp Shooter.” Ordered a blue alicorn who’s mane looked like it was made out of the night sky.   “UUGH, of course, I had to bump into one of the princess.”   “Are you ok, pegasus?” she reached out with a hoof.   I got up on my own, fearing that she might cast a spell on me if I touched her hoof.  “I’m- I’m ok.”   “Hmm, I’ve never seen you before. Are you new around here?”   “Oh, umm...” “Don’t buck up now.” “I’m not from Equestria.” “Oh, great thinking Smoulder. Now she’s probably going to ask where I come from. I barely know the west end of Equestria.”   The princess of the night raised her eyebrow, “Are you from Saddle Lanka?”   “A little further than that.”   “New Eagleland?”   “A bit further than that.” She was closing in on me. Sweat poured down the side of my head and the princess knew something fishy was going on. The sound of a train’s horn went off. “Gotta go, have a train to catch.” And with that I was up and over to the way the horn came from. “Too close. Way way way way way too close.”   ***   “May I have your attention please, the train to Las Pegasus has changed to platform four, the train to Las Pegasus has changed to platform four. Thank you.” The station echoed with the tapping of hoof steps. Some were fast while others were at a normal pace. I’d never seen anything so modern in my life. The roof was so high, that I thought I was still outside. The activity and motion of all of the ponies made me relate to a-... well I could think of anything to match so much movement.   The system of getting a ticket wasn’t very different, although I did see a few ponies just tap a post with a card causing it to beep and open two small door barriers.   “Where to?” A red mare in her blue uniform and cap asked from her box office.   “Umm,” I took out my map from my saddle bags and gave it a grave look, carefully selecting my choices   Appleloosa- I swear if I meet another pony with an Appleloosan accent again, I’m going to kill myself. Ponyville- nope, isn’t that where the elements of harmony live? Canterlot- I would rather put a sign up saying “Kill me, I’m a changeling”.   “Come on we ain’t got all day, you’re not the only customer.”   I quickly said the first city I saw. “Manehattan!”   “The express train to Manehattan it is.” I paid her with most of my bits.   “It just had to be the most expensive place to travel, didn’t it?”  I rolled my eyes.   A few anticlimactic minutes passed as I decided to wander around the station while waiting for the train to come. The worst thing about being a changeling is that most of the ponies’ foods smell so delicious and mouth-watering, but we still can’t eat them. I would be better off drinking cyanide than a cup of hot chocolate.   An announcement alarm went off, “May I have your attention please, the express train to Manehattan will arrive in three minutes on platform two. Please stand behind the yellow line until the train has come to a complete stand still. Thank you.”   I ran through the peak hour grind to the designated platform. As soon as I reached it, a loud screech pierced my ears.   “Ow!” I rubbed my ears and pulled my head up.     The train didn’t look like the one I expected, pink, bright and powered by steam. Instead it was a giant, silver, steel centipede. Stepping onto the train, I handed my ticket to the conductor and took a seat. Not many ponies were in this carriage, just a few here and there.   The doors closed as the pistons of the train began to do their labor. My eyelids felt like they had dumbbells strapped onto them. Putting my disguise on ‘auto-pilot’, I slowly cried myself to sleep with a smile, drifting away from Equestria.   “Well Chrysalis, I did it. I did the impossible. Thank you.”