//------------------------------// // Freedom can be a bad thing(Rewritten) // Story: The true Psychopath // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// Twilight had already spent two weeks trying to rehabilitate Psycho, but he wasn’t changing at all. The unicorn wanted to rip her mane out in anger, but her lack of progress at least brought amusement to the guards. Perhaps she was linked to Crimson Gaze who was being pestered to a similar degree by a certain pink pony. The pegasus was now being ‘attacked’ by a fashionista who thought that the usually angry mare would have her mood improved if only she wore some nice dresses and had a makeover. Touching her mane and tail were two things that Red Crow absolutely detested. The pegasus had felt bad omens upon her awakening, and even though she looked outside in hopes of finding the source, nothing stuck out. Everypony followed their usually routines and the weather was still partially clear. Walking down the stairs, the mare’s communications device started vibrating, and so she answered. “He is going to make his move!” the rough voice alerted. “My spy tells me he’s taking care of the details, but your target will be free today! Get to Canterlot as quickly as possible and try to persuade to follow us. If he refuses, capture him through force!”  The caller hung up immediately after. Crimson looked at her device in both confusion and disgust. “Well, I know what to do, then.” She equipped a segmented polearm that she placed between her shoulder blades, effectively hiding it under her wings. She carefully stepped out her home, suspicious of anything around her, and charged to the train station after locking her door. She was sweating nervously, uncertain if she could stand the abilities of her target. Twilight groaned and dragged a hoof across her face. “Okay, so I know we haven’t gotten off to a good start...and we didn’t make any progress at all over these two weeks.” She took in a deep breath. “But, you want to get out of here, don’t you?” “Only if I can be with my best friend, which is you,” he coo’d. He sported a creepy grin. “What? No!” Twilight cried in refusal. Psycho gave her a smug look. “Then the Illogic, she will never leave. She wouldn’t have anyways, but you know,” he spoke with an aristocratic dialect. “Hon hon.” Twilight grabbed her mane. “You are SO annoying!” she exclaimed. One of the guards whispered to another next to him. “Now she knows how we feel.” The other guard chuckled quietly. “Then perhaps manners would be better.” He gestured his head to a hat on a hook nearby. “You see the hat there on the hook?” Twilight looked at the hat on the hook. It was a surprisingly well conserved top-hat despite there being a part missing. It was a cut starting from the middle of one side and ending at the middle of the top, creating a right-angle formed chunk missing from the hat. “Yeah? When did that even get there?” “Because you loved to be with me for so long that the world around you becomes blurred?” The lavender unicorn gagged at the words. Psycho pouted. “What about the hat?” Twilight managed to say. “It’s my favorite hat, and I’d like to wear it again. VERY comfortable. VERY!” he bellowed. “Sadly, I can’t reach it. My little hoovsies are trapped in dis container. Ah cannae du eet!” Twilight shrugged. “Okay. I don’t see what harm a little hat can do.” Twilight encased the hat in her magic aura, lifting it and slowly levitating it onto Psycho’s head. The ‘comedian’ from earlier started to ponder about what he had heard, and his loud mumbling followed by spastic movements attracted the attention of his comrades. “Wait...A hat? He can’t wear one can he? Or was it… BY CELESTIA! TWILIGHT, DON’T-!” But it was too late. The hat was already on the colorful stallion. All eyes were trained on Psycho who hadn’t budged in the slightest since getting his hat, and the guard gave a sigh of relief. “I guess it was just a false alarm.” “I guess it was!” a voice said behind him. Everyone turned to see that the colorful stallion was standing behind the guard, smiling. “Whew! Imagine if that weirdo got out. Bad things would happen, I’m sure.” He tilted his head to the side and started chuckling. Twilight worded ‘what’ silently on her lips and looked back to the cage, still standing upright as if it still had an occupant within. Poking it only once ,saw the mass of metal plop limply onto the ground, startling the mare. “How did you...?” she tried to understand. “Awwwww! You helped your BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEST friend,” Psycho exclaimed. He grabbed Twilight, twirled in the air, and gave her a very long, very painful hug. “But we must part for now!” he spoke with a hoof over his face. He was suddenly dressed in a footballer’s armor and holding Twilight up like a ball. “Hop hop! Hop!” “Hey, what are you doing?!” Twilight shouted in a panic. “Ten-twenty-eight! Four-fifty-two! I can only count to four! HUT!” He threw Twilight with extreme strength, causing a guard who jumped to catch the unicorn to slam through the thick stone walls and somehow come out unscathe. “Catch hi-urk!” The guard who attempted to give an order found herself sinking into the stone floor that now possessed the consistency of pudding. Psycho stood on his hind legs and pointed upwards. “To the comic book store!” he shouted. “You can’t get through solid rock!” the same guard shouted at him. Rocket flames burst under Psycho, pushing him through the ceiling that simply undulated like water when the stallion passed through it. “I’m swimming!” Psycho shouted cheerfully. “THAT’S NOT SWIMMING!” The stallion came back down in a split second, looked at the two guards still brandishing their tridents, and spread his forelegs. “Lishen here, laddisshshshshh,” he started. “ANTI-GRAVITY DANDRUFF!” He sneezed loudly, projecting a literal smog of sparkling dust at the ponies and having them float onto the ceiling. The stallion saluted them and let a little tear drop from his eye. “The village is saved for another day!” he said. Resuming his rocket trip, a tiny mountain village inhabited by micro pones waved him goodbye and cheered happily as their ‘savior’ left the dungeon. “Quick! Go get Celestia and Luna!” the sunken guard shouted. “He only listens to them.” “But what about you?” another asked. “I’ll be fine. This is just pudding. Just go, and take Twilight with you.” The guard nodded and took Twilight to the elevator. She was too much in shock for what she had just done, and didn’t know how to approach her teacher. “It’s okay,” one the guards comforted. “You couldn’t have known. We already don’t know how it got there or who even brought it there, and we were there on guard the whole time. I just hope the princesses will know what to do.” Screams were heard outside the castle walls. Windows had ponies glued to them while others in the gardens had bushes and trees chasing after them. The Psychopath burst out of the roof of the castle entrance -clad in a kilt and wearing a chicken around his hat- without passing through the floor. ”Frrrrrrrreeeedooooooom!” he shouted with rolling Rs. The pegasi guards who saw him tried to restrain the colorful, crazed stallion, but those who tried were met with failure. Psycho even sat on one of their backs wearing a turban and meditating. “I do love my magic carpet...but I find it is too slow.” He pulled on the mare’s tail, creating a revving engine noise and making her blast off at high speeds uncontrollably. “Much better,” he calmly agreed. The pony was screaming in fear, and her comrades just couldn’t catch her. Psycho, on the other hoof, stood atop her back on one hoof and held up a magic wand. “You were all such good ponies, that I’m going to bring magic to your lives. Swish and flick!” All the pegasi, including the one being ridden on, tried to scratch their backs, but they couldn’t. Their hooves were blocked by their wings. The stallion twirled his new evil mustache in response. “Muahahaha! I said it was magic, but only for me!” He covered himself with a black cape, getting blinded in the process and falling down hard onto the ground. Getting untangled was a chore, but the stallion inadvertently smacked away the attacks of nearby royal guards, slapping one on the face and causing her to bash a comrade’s helmet down with the side of her sword.  Finally free, Psycho smiled, put a hoof on a lever, and yelled. “CATAPUUUUUUUUULT!” He was in a war machine that manifested itself from who knows where, and launched himself over the walls, leaving the castle behind him. Psycho’s satisfaction was interrupted by something that was bothering him, so he took his hat off and started digging into it. “Let’s see. What am I forgetting?” Ponies walking within the white streets of Canterlot noticed a colorful sheen in the sky and looked up, several concerned about what it could be. “Hmmm…” Psycho hummed. He was oblivious to the fact that he just passed through a building, destroying its walls. “OF COURSE!” he shouted with a very deep and masculine voice. He pulled a massive machine out of his hat which was three stories tall. It rolled along on two massive wheels of metal, a jumbled, poorly welded torso, and a giant, tri-jointed metallic arm. Its other arm was just a steam-roller-hammer, exemplified by the glowing eyes on the ‘head’ of this machine that Psycho rode. “CRUMP ‘EM EY’LL!” The machine clumsily rolled through the streets, demolishing a literal stone block on its landing and destroying the tiles comprising the streets. He rolled down the streets, bouncing and breaking, and decided to give himself a drunk look for but a moment. “It’s just a prank, braaaah…” he burped. He waddled on the machine’s head in a drunken stupor and ‘accidentally’ threw a vial filled with pink liquid at a house, turning its walls into hard candy with an active ‘rave’ pattern. Any ponies that Psycho got really close to would get further away without noticing as the colorful stallion prevented his machine from actually harming anyone. “Theh Crinkle-Smecka is gon’ crump yaz eyll!” he shouted. “Theht’s kez youz lotsa fun teh crump ‘n cromp!” A voice came from the head of the machine, calling to the colorful stallion. “Oy, there’z fings on theh blinky screen!” “Da bugz iz cehmin’ behck?” Psycho inquired. “Quechkleh! Git outta ‘ere!” The pegasi giving chase were met by two cannons growing out the back of the machine and shooting smoke bubbles at them. The objects exploded, coating everypony in a harmless form of soot but leaving The Psychopath to make his escape. “EXCELSIOR!” he shouted. He was thrown in the air by his machine exploding harmlessly somehow, stiff and upright, then slowly rotated back downwards. A voice yelling ‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’ surrounded Psycho before he  vanished into his hat that vanished itself afterwards, leaving the royal guard diving towards him to hit the black clouds of the explosion and become embedded in them. A bystander, wracked with fear but also curiosity, stretched a hoof to the smoke. Surprise crossed her face. “Wh-what is this? Cotton? How…?!” Crimson Gaze arrived half an hour later, discovering that she was too late. Psycho had already made his pass and left everypony in shock, confusion, and some manner of discomfort. The mare stomped her hoof angrily, huffing rapidly back towards the station when one of the heavy guards approached her. “Yeah?” she started. “What do you want?” “I want the feather of a red crow. Do you have any?” The mare raised an eyebrow. “Yes I do, but I think I left them on an icy shelf.” The informant nodded and sighed. “I’m sorry, but the target was more...unexpected than I thought. Before I could even get to his hat, it had already vanished. He somehow put it back on and escaped the dungeons. I have no idea how it happened. I was getting ready for my shift…” he trailed off. “That said, you should try to find and befriend a ‘Twilight Sparkle’ to better understand what happened and to know how to approach him.” He leaned in towards the pegasus. “Princess Celestia tasked her with rehabilitating him. She should know more than I do on this subject matter.” The Red Crow’s lower lip twitched. She hated to ‘befriend’ anything, even if it was necessary to the success of her mission. “Where can I fi...Hello?” In the mere moment that she cringed and closed her eyes, the informant had already disappeared. “Hm. Looks like I could still do with some stealth training.” She heaved a sigh. This was going to be a long day for her and Twilight.