//------------------------------// // Act I, Scene 6: Seeds of Her Fate // Story: If You Give a Little Love... // by Quillamore //------------------------------// It was a rare day in Manehattan where the streets were deserted. The only apparent sign of life on Bridleway Street that day was a class of foals strolling through the sidewalks with their schoolteacher, occasionally stopping by individual flats where parents eagerly awaited their children. Saddlebags covered the sidewalks, each except for three hoof-stitched with particular cutie marks. Thankfully, the environment was quiet, or at least as quiet as the bustling metropolis could be; oftentimes, it was much harder for Miss Euphonia to fulfill her duty to protect her students. One could never be sure where the criminals were hidden; unattended foals could easily get themselves into deep trouble and while she would far prefer for the city to be safe enough at least for them to simply trot home when they wanted to, she couldn’t deny that change didn’t come quite so easily. Besides, even if all the criminals were to magically disappear, there was still the matter of those students who wouldn’t be comfortable on their own in the streets that could too often trigger the worst of memories. The earth pony mare smiled as the class approached the famous theatre that bore this road’s name, one that never failed to induce excitement and sparkling eyes in the young children. To their innocent minds, this was one of the most beautiful buildings in Equestria. But passing a gaze at the pegasus colt with the Daring Do costume beside her, she couldn’t help but notice that something was indeed off today. While most of the students still reacted in the same way as usual, Euphonia’s latest-blooming three, a group of blank flanks who dubbed themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders and tended to keep apart from the others, seemed unimpressed. Two of them almost looked to be glaring at it, while the filly next to them merely ignored it and stared at her moving hooves, her mane covering her face. Phoenix Stripe and Starrider were easy enough to handle once you got used to their shenanigans. At this point, Euphonia had dealt with the tawny pegasus and the teal unicorn filly for enough years that they weren’t much of a problem, but their friend was another matter entirely. Aside from a few instances of misunderstood bullying, her personality itself tended to be nonconfrontational and introverted, but she hadn’t exactly come to the school from the best starting point. After hearing about the incidents involving her, Euphonia had tried her best to improve security so the other students would never have to experience the same. But waves of guilt of and the feeling that she would never be able to help this particular filly near enough would always come regardless and the more she saw that blank look on her face, the more she just ended up feeling uncomfortable. “What’s the matter?” Euphonia wondered as the theatre drew ever closer. “Can we go a different way, Teacher?” Starrider questioned, giving her a nervous glance. “You’re making Babs feel bad.” “I’m fine,” her brown earth pony companion protested. “You really don’t need to bring it up—“ “But isn’t this where she lives?” the teacher asked. “Babs lives by the newspaper place now, with her sister,” Phoenix explained. “It’s a long story, but that’s because—“ The young colt was quickly silenced by a tiny, split-second glare from Babs, who shook her head at him. “—Babs’ fake mom invited this really mean mare over to the theatre, somepony who knew the ones who hurt her,” Starrider continued. “So she got scared and went over to her sister’s flat.” At hearing this, Euphonia gave the three foals a harsh glance not quite on the level of punishment but nevertheless enough to get their attention. “Starr, Ms. Pommel has every right to love Babs as much as any of her relatives would. Just because they didn’t meet in the same way as you met your mother doesn’t make her any less of one.” “But she’s awful!” the unicorn filly protested. “She always has to work and never gives her own daughter any time with her. She doesn’t let her go off on her own with us. And she thinks she can just suddenly make up for hurting her before. At least Bambi lets Babs crusade with us while she’s working, and at least she doesn’t have to think about all that bad stuff when her sister’s around.” Babs suddenly came to a stop after hearing this, blew her bangs out of her eyes, and gave a quick grumble. “I know things haven’t been the best for me, and you two are really just trying to help,” Babs muttered, “but you don’t need to bring Coco into it. She did what she could; it just didn’t work out. If anypony’s the problem, it’s me.” “Miss Euphonia, I can walk the rest of the way back. I…just need to be left alone right now.” Babs was starting on her way past Bridleway towards a new and hopefully better world when she heard Euphonia’s voice echoing in the distance. “Running away doesn’t have to be the answer. Avoiding the family you need to face can make them worry even more.” **** In the meantime, a bluish-white earth pony stallion emerged from Coco and Suri’s office, exasperatedly running his hoof through his messy gray ponytail before straightening his glasses. The show was finally beginning to gain momentum and the actors and actresses were beginning to really get into their roles, but he’d been at a loss for their hairstyles. As one of the most prominent Bridleway stylists, it was almost a given that Remy Ciseaux would be quickly hired by Mosely Orange for his latest production, but the assistant costume designer had been giving him so much grief lately that frankly, he was in a slump. It was anypony’s guess why Mosely would hire a no-name knockoff artist for the position while lambasting the senior costume designer for practically the same thing, but seeing as Remy had never been with anypony on this production team before, he figured it only courteous to stay out of their affairs. Looking to the clock, he found that the workday was nearly over, counting down the minutes and hoping to Celestia that his obnoxious producer wouldn’t show up and suddenly make them all work overtime. He hadn’t been getting much sleep for the past week or so in several futile attempts to increase productivity, and he didn’t appear to be the only one affected by the rush to catch up: to his dismay, Suri had handled most of the costume talks and on the few occasions he did end up finding her much more tolerable superior, Remy remarked that Coco looked even worse than he did. Rumors flitted about the theatre concerning her, with the only known fact regarding her was that, as an emergency backup measure, she had applied to another production, My Fair Filly, in hopes that she could at least have an assistant position should her imminent firing become reality. She would rush in between her two jobs, often the last to leave, and before long, the other workers would watch in hushed whispers, dreading the possibility of a stress-related accident occurring. Such a liability hadn’t occurred in one of Remy’s jobs in a long time, and he couldn’t help but wonder if there was some underlying issue behind all this. Not that he particularly knew the mare well, but he could at the very least deduce that she’d probably been used to working such long hours, as those in unsavory and exploitative jobs are wont to be. And yet, there was some sort of emptiness emanating from her, something that couldn’t have just been caused by physical pain. Coco no longer made friendly contact with her coworkers or chatted with the director, just doing her work without a single word, punching her metaphorical card day by day with no change. For somepony who was supposed to enjoy her work and claimed to be living her dream, she sure didn’t have the happiness that would usually come with it. Sooner or later, when he tried to ask anypony else about it, they refused to answer or would come up with some theory that didn’t scrape the surface. Come to think of it, Scene hadn’t been quite right for the past week or so either by what little Remy knew of him as an acquaintance. He now avoided the costume department at all costs and on the rare occasions in which his job mandated him to check in on the workers there, he would always try his best to accomplish the task and leave as soon as possible. Above all, he went out of his way to break the usual chain of command, refusing to address Suri as the next-highest in the department and exchanging only a glare at her before moving on to lower-ranking employees for the answers he required. On a whim, Remy decided to head back to the dressing rooms at the end of the day to see if Coco was still there and decided that if she was, he would attempt to talk her out of her usual overworking. They had the weekend off and, in his opinion, she deserved the break more than anypony. Success shouldn’t have to come at the cost of anypony, he felt, and it would only be so long before they’d start to exploit her diligent nature; that was just the way high-pressure jobs worked. Instead, however, something else at the window caught his eye before he could even reach his intended destination. It was a schoolfilly with a saddlebag, too young to even have a cutie mark. She trotted alone, measuring the area with occasional glances in all directions, taking care not to go into any shady areas. Her face was blank and put up a front of bravery, but held a slight tinge of fear nonetheless. “When will parents figure out that foals shouldn’t be left alone in the big city like this?” he muttered to himself with a sigh. “Aren’t schools supposed to have buddy systems for this?” Well, he thought, the filly did appear to be passing along the same direction he’d have to take to get home, and the clouds were only further darkening. If he would’ve known her, it would’ve only been logical to accompany her home, but bringing a stranger into the mix would likely make things more dubious for her. So, finally deciding he’d only really be a further burden to the situation, he shoved it aside and cantered along to the dressing room before stopping once more at the window, quickly realizing that the filly did in fact look familiar. “Ms. Pommel’s daughter!” Remy yelled, bursting out of the front door and instantly regretting it. ‘Ms. Pommel’s daughter?!’ he thought, cursing himself. That isn’t something you shout at ponies in everyday life! Familial relations don’t work as methods to address other ponies, at least not in this day and age! So much for being a ‘smooth Prench stallion’ like the rest of your darn family! Nopony would want to be helped by such a suspicious weirdo like that. “Um, do I know you?” the filly responded, cocking her head in just as much confusion as Remy had dreaded would happen. “You sure don’t look familiar to me, and you just so happen to know Coco? Isn’t that the first thing suspicious ponies tend to do, claim they know somepony important to you? Anypony could assume that you’re just trying to abduct foals with the way you’re acting.” “Um…I’m not trying to abduct you?” the hairdresser responded. “I know that doesn’t sound believable at all, and would probably be something a kidnapper would say, but I have proof, I swear. I work in this theatre; now just hang on while I get my ID card.” “You need an ID to work on Bridleway?” “Yeah, don’t ask me why it works that way, because it makes no sense,” Remy muttered while trying to rummage frantically through his untidy wallet for what he needed before finally finding it behind just about every other piece of clutter he kept there. “But here it is, so there’s no need to be suspicious or anything. I don’t really know her well yet, since she’s new to the job, but I work with your mom.” “Hairstyling, huh?” she responded. “Well, I guess you would be pretty involved with her, then. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this isn’t a false ID; I need to get home anyway. I really don’t have time to question all this much more. And I really shouldn’t hang around here, anyway. Y’see, something kind of happened, I ended up running away from Coco, and I’m not sure I can face her after that. My fear ended up getting the better of me and it was really embarrassing in the first place, so I’d rather give up that part of my life and start fresh.” “Do you even have someplace to live, then? I mean, assuming you lived with Ms. Pommel all this time and now you, well, don’t, I’m really hoping you’re not sleeping in a box on the alley or anything dangerous like that. Even though I barely know you, it feels wrong to imagine a filly living that way.” “I’m used to living on my own, actually, but I live with my older sister now. She works on the newspaper down the road. I was actually just on my way home from there; I’ll be sure to take a different route next time so I don’t bother you.” “Trust me, with the stuff I’ve had to deal with this week, you’re the last thing that would bother me,” Remy admitted, noticing that rain was starting to bolt through the sky. “But if your sister isn’t expecting you home for a while, I think it’d be better if you took shelter in the theatre. The storm’s supposed to subside in about a half hour, I hear, but it’ll get pretty bad out there on your own. I may not be a bad criminal, but there would be plenty out there who could take advantage of you like that. You must be cold from walking in this weather, too, so you should probably warm yourself up, too.” “I guess that’s reasonable enough,” the filly answered. “I have friends I play with after school a lot, so my sister is used to me coming home a little later as long as I’m not too long. Besides, I trust the theatre ponies. Or at least most of them.” At this thought, she tensed up as she reached the door, suddenly hesitant to come inside. Rain piled on her mane, but she remained stationary as if lost in thought, and suddenly the seemingly talkative filly from before seemed to disappear, overtaken by fear. “Um, Remy, is it?” she wondered, staring at the entrance. “Or should I call you Mr. Ciseaux?” “Remy is fine,” he replied. “What’s the matter?” “Is the costume pony inside?” “Ms. Pommel, you mean?” “N-no,” she stammered. “The other one. If she’s here, then I don’t want to come in. She was the reason why I ended up—“ Despite the gravity of the situation, Remy still ended up letting out a light chuckle. “Suri tends to have that impression on ponies,” he quipped. “She can be a bit domineering for most ponies’ tastes, so there’s no need to feel weird about being scared of her. She’s gone for the day, by the way. We should be fine.” “That’s a relief. She’s half of the reason I’ve been trying to avoid this place lately. Do you mind if I vent a little to you while I’m warming up? I’m sorry, but I’ve been holding a lot of stuff in lately, and the counselors at school say it’s supposed to work. It hasn’t worked for me yet, but I figure we have time to kill in the first place and there’s nothing really better to do. If you agree, do you promise you won’t tell Coco I was here?” “A definite yes to the first question, as I have no problems helping ponies, but…Ms—er, Coco has been really hurting a lot, and I get the feeling that hearing about you would make her really happy. It seems like she misses you.” “I honestly wish I could’ve thought that far, to realize how running away would have made her feel, but I just don’t feel like I’m ready to face her again yet. Maybe I’ll never be able to, for all anypony knows.” As the two approached the stylist’s room, taking care to check if anypony else had come in while Remy was out, the stallion realized that this could be the way to restore order to his stage, even if just through a seemingly small act. He was no counselor, but he might as well give it a try, right? “Why don’t we start with the beginning stuff?” he questioned. “If things get too hard for you to discuss, we can avoid them, but I can’t help you if we never get past the first point, if we close ourselves off from deep connections.” “Sure,” the filly answered. “Then I suppose the first thing you ought to know is that my name is Babs Seed, and that I wasn’t always Coco’s daughter. I’m not even sure if I am now, but what I know is that I wasn’t anypony’s family back then, just somepony to be used by others. To be honest, I’m not even sure if I used to really be anything.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Remy asked. As he expected, Babs wasn’t able to tell her story all the way through without interruptions. Despite her tough exterior, she often paused in the middle of a sentence as though the words themselves were haunting and wounding her. But what he hadn’t expected was just how much of a sinister past the new Bridleway ponies had been through. Admittedly, he had heard about the illegal fabric ring before—it had been all over the newspapers at the time—but such stories can be rather easy to forget in the near-constant stream of big-city scandal and can be prone to overshadowing by further gossip. But hearing it from a pony who had not just been there, but had actually suffered from it—that nailed the issue in far more, even if he barely knew the victim in question. Just having a name and face to match to a problem made it that much more concerning. “Considering she’s been tangled up in all these shady dealings,” he mused after a few minutes of reflection, “how is that Suri was never prosecuted for her crimes? Better yet, she shouldn’t made it past the background check. Usually, we’re a lot more stringent about the types we let in, especially since show business is by nature so prone to controversy.” “The director here insists it’s because the producer fell in love with her,” Babs replied. “But as for your other question, I honestly don’t know. For some weird reason, I wasn’t even approached by the court to stand as a witness for the case. Maybe it’s because I’m a minor or they think it’d be too hard on me, which are both pretty true, I guess. But in a weird way, even if it means having to face her here, I’m kind of glad Suri wasn’t arrested. When I really think about it, just avoiding her has far less consequences than what could’ve happened had they truly punished her. Because if they wouldn’t have allowed her freedom…then wouldn’t that mean Coco would end up in jail, too?” “I’m not really sure how that would work. I mean, while she participated in it, you could argue that it’d be awfully unreasonable to arrest unaware accomplices. But at the same time, it’s something that could have happened regardless.” “That’s what I think, at least,” Babs continued. “Even if us living together didn’t go as planned, I still want to be able to support Coco somehow, and I definitely don’t want to hurt her. So if one of us has to make a sacrifice, I’d rather it be me. If I’m around her for too long, ponies might end up making a connection. My sister already wants Coco and Suri behind bars just for being associated with my past, so it’d be best if Coco just ends up removing herself completely from that part of her life, for both her reputation and her career. And eventually, that’ll mean having to give me up as well. So I just figured, well, the sooner the better, the more time she’ll have to get used to it.” “But then what will that mean for you, if I may so ask? Even if you think the sacrifice will help her in the end, what will it do for you? Is it really worth giving up what you want for something that may not even turn out the way you had hoped?” “I honestly don’t know anymore,” Babs confessed. “Really, I just wish there was a way for me to live with both my sister and Coco without either of them getting into trouble for it, but I’ve mostly resigned myself to the fact that that won’t happen. Why are you so concerned about all this, anyway?” “Well, in a way, it’s my job,” Remy explained. “I may not be the best when it comes to talking to ponies in public, but I know that they’re going to come to me anyway when they’re stressed and need to talk. For some weird reason, that’s something that’s sort of expected of hairdressers; when ponies have nothing else to do with their lives, when they’re just asked to sit still for a certain amount of time, the emotions they feel inside, that they’ve been holding in for so long, just flow out. It doesn’t matter if they know the one causing these feelings; after awhile they just find they need to confess things to somepony, and often, we stylists are the most convenient neutral parties.” Just then, the filly, as if by sheer bad luck on Remy’s part, just had to ask him the one question he couldn’t answer. “So was that what brought you here? Or was it something else?” “Honestly, I don’t know what brought me here,” he responded after several minutes of silence, embarrassedly trying to conceal the fact that he didn’t know a single thing about why he did what he did. “But then again, does anypony? When you look at it, it’s really weird: we just get some symbol out of the blue, and we think that maybe that’s the answer, but really, couldn’t a little bit of that just be our desperation to want something to tell us what to do with our lives? And we judge ponies based on whether they find out who they are before or after everypony else, as if life isn’t a constant search for just that. It’s easy to do stuff like that when our destinies just so happen to match up with our passions, but what if they didn’t? What if, in another side of time, you’d had your cutie mark all along, had it for years, been one of the youngest to have one?” He soon realized his mistake at having posed a deep philosophical question of such a young filly and promptly facehooved. Silence reigned once more, both lost for words, the other probably trying her best to process what the hay just spewed out of his mouth. But, several moments later, he discovered that what she’d been feeling was a completely different hesitation. “Wouldn’t that mean,” Babs wondered after several moments, “that, if everything else was the same with my life, that—“ “Your destiny would be, quite literally, to be forever trapped in the one thing that would hurt you most, to never truly be free. And there are those who would go around justifying it by saying that you being left to live in a life of mistreatment and shady business aligns with your fated talent. Not to be insensitive of course, but there’s only so far that we can go as ponies by relying on outside forces to decide our lives.” “Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like what that one mare believed in that village?” the filly asked, raising her eyebrows at the conversation. “Coco’s friend came to town and she was telling us about somepony who believed stuff like you did that kinda ran out of control. I may not have a cutie mark yet, but I’m not gonna let you just take them from—“ “Oh, no, I said nothing about completely getting rid of cutie marks; please don’t think that,” Remy clarified. “It’s easy to make that mistake; extremists like that have always existed, and I-I’m not always the best at making myself clear anyway. What I’m saying is that you just have to take it with a grain of salt.” “And how does that help with my problem, exactly?” “You asked me what brought me here. I can’t tell you that, but what I can tell you is that you don’t need to wait for something to bring you a certain place. Your actions take you to places that you don’t necessarily know about, that seem like destiny. And judging from your decision to come inside the theatre and trust me, it looks like deep down, there was a part of you that actually hoped Coco was still here to accept you.” “I-It wasn’t for that! You know as well as I do now why I can’t just come back running to her. There’s too much between us, and throwing my sister into the equation—“ “Then if it wasn’t for Coco,” he spoke, “it certainly wasn’t for me, somepony that you barely even know and wouldn’t trust otherwise. What other options are there?” Babs approached the door in annoyance; while she appreciated the other pony’s opinions and a chance to vent with a neutral party, his meddling was beginning to grate on her nerves. Couldn’t he just see that there were some issues that he couldn’t help? Why couldn’t he just accept that things weren’t quite so easy for her? “I know, I know, it’s probably not what you want to hear, or to answer, for that matter,” he muttered as she trotted out. “But at least think about it and when you feel comfortable again, you can always come back. I won’t tell on you, but there is something I want you to do for me.” Curiosity, getting the better of her for once, led her straight back towards the hairdresser, who had suddenly and strangely left the area. She turned for side to side, wondering why he could’ve left so abruptly, before a strange object blinded her vision. “Hold on,” she could hear Remy mumbling as she squirmed in panic. “I just need to pull this a little further…here.” Looking at the mirror he had presumably retrieved while he was away, Babs noted that a plain, uncut brown wig was atop her head. It was a much darker color than her fur and a bit too long for her small body, just barely short enough to keep her from tripping on it. Elastic had been placed along her head to hold the artificial mane from coming off, slightly chafing her skull as she moved it. “Sorry for sneaking up on you like that!” Remy answered, chuckling. “It’s not really made for comfort, is it?” “I actually don’t care so much about that. I’m just wondering why in Equestria you put a wig on me.” “This is going to sound really weird, but…I want you to keep it. I assume that, as a craftspony, you know how to cut, right?” Babs merely nodded slowly, still more than a little confused by the conversation. “Well, since you’re looking for your talent and all, I figured you might want to try it out,” Remy confessed. “It may not be much, but at least it’ll be better than stressing about your future, right? When you feel comfortable coming back here, could you at least come see me and bring it over so I can see what you did with it?” “You can be so weird,” Babs sighed after the request, “but I’ll see what I can do. Thanks, though.” And, just like that, Remy forgot to take her home in the midst of the other problems that had run rampant today. It seemed, however, that she too had overlooked the fact, already trotting off on her own towards her sister’s apartment and, the stylist hoped, towards her destiny. **** That had been several days ago, still vivid in Babs’ mind as her head leaned on her desk at home, half out of indecision and half out of sheer boredom. Not much had happened since then, and surprisingly, Bambi hadn’t reacted all that much to her sister’s lateness that afternoon. As planned, she’d become surprisingly used to it; not that Babs actually told her the entirety of what’d happened, though. She’d just run into a hairdresser with her fellow Crusaders, a fact that, despite her friends not being with her, wasn’t entirely false. Even if it had been a complete lie, though, Bambi was all too wrapped up in her sisterly obsession to notice, seeming far more interested in how the wig made Babs, in her words, “look just like a baby fawn” before herself succumbing to cuteness-induced stupors. Though such coddling would normally exasperate the younger sibling, in this moment she was personally thankful for it. With nothing else to do, she looked back to the wig that had started all this trouble, now placed atop a head-shaped piece of foam that Bambi had bought, already loving the idea of her baby sister taking interest in such a glamorous profession. Personally, Babs herself hadn’t had much desire to work on it and had tried to shove off the incident, but now she wondered what harm it could really bring, to humor her sister and the strange stallion she’d met. She hesitantly grabbed the scissors near her right hoof, cutting only small strands at first but quickly finding her footing despite the actual handiwork being amateur at best. It wasn’t a talent that came naturally to her, that’s for sure. But, rather than giving up, words from before began to flow into her mind. “A job…that helps ponies cope,” she whispered. “More than the actual cutting…maybe I really do have the power to make myself useful somehow…to help others.” Several hours passed like heartbeats. Slowly, surely, she began to feel at one with her work, blocking out all else. Even the cutie mark that was beginning to form on her flank that she’d only noticed when Bambi asked about it in the morning. And, in the heat of both moments, even the uncanny, unconscious resemblance that the finished wig bore to Coco’s own manestyle.