My Little Doubt

by Knackerman

Game Over

There were no words to do justice to just how dumbfounded Twilight felt. She could only gape at the yellow pegasus, unable to process what she was seeing. Fluttershy was unscathed, unblemished. More than that, she had the same sweet smile on her face that she had seen the last time they were in...well for want of a better term the 'real' world. "There's no way this is real. This has to be a lie."

"What 'has to be' a lie?" asked Fluttershy, tilting her head to one side.

"This isn't like Applejack's trick. I looked into your cold dead eyes, I could smell your blood pooling beneath your body. There's no way you could survive that...no way you should be walking around here like nothing is wrong!" Twilight felt her own legs wobble and slip from beneath her. It was a wonder she'd made it this far with the wounds from the axe's cruel bite still streaming blood.

"It seems there's no way that you should be walking around, Twilight," said Fluttershy with a note of sympathy in her voice. "I can help you walk, if that's okay with you. I should warn you though, it might be wise of you not to trust me. You see...I'm the 'changeling'." Fluttershy's smile stayed sweet as honey as she said, "Though I never had to get my hooves dirty before. Everything Pinkie Pie said is true, to an extent. The poor dear was a mess long before she came to my sanctuary. It really seemed like she was losing the will to live. I couldn't just turn away a friend. The sense of loneliness and despair after losing a loved one...in order to alleviate that grief, even just a little, I guide my friends to the path of revenge. For some it's the only kindness I can offer. All they have to do is look into my eyes and all their troubles melt away."

"You don't mean...The Stare!?" asked Twilight in disbelief.

Fluttrershy laughed and took a seat on one of the many cardboard boxes in the room. "Don't be silly. It's a nice little trick but nowhere near powerful enough to work on adult ponies. Well...it isn't usually, but with the right mixture of herbs and chemicals, it's amazing what the power of suggestion can do for these poor lost souls. With Pinkie Pie it was particularly easy, the poor dear. I'm afraid she would've been quite lost without me." Fluttershy gazed down at the pink pony, her eyes showing nothing but sympathy behind her own rose tinted tresses. "After you left for Canterlot, I'm afraid it was all downhill from there for poor Pinkie. Why, she didn't even have time for her family anymore. Her parents were worried sick about her, I'm sure."

"Her parents...what do you mean her parents?" questioned Twilight as she tried to piece together what Fluttershy was saying. "I thought she said her father was dead!"

"Well, yes and no. It was just something I suggested to her to help her deal with the real pain of loss she was suffering. Having her kill her father served both as a test and as a way of dealing with the suppressed hatred she felt for him. I'm sure if she could only remember what she did to him, she'd thank me for my help." Fluttershy leaned in close as if she were about to impart a particularly delicious secret. "Want to know the loved one she really lost that upset her so? It was you, Twilight. When you disappeared for half a day and never came back...or more precisely came back as a whole different pony. To her, you died that day and you still haven't come back. I could tell she was so angry beneath all her tears, but the only thing she could lash out at was herself. So I had to make a little story for her, a little lie, to make it easier for her to work out her...urges."

"Fluttershy, why? Why would you do something like this to your friends!?"" demanded Twilight.

" 'Hunt down the changeling, work together with your friends, but always remember the changeling is not one of you' " whispered Fluttershy. "You already know that when I was a little filly, I wasn't a very good flier. For a pegasus of Cloudsdale, this made me a shameful failure and an object of ridicule to almost everypony I knew. But not my parents. They loved me even though I could barely fly from one cloud to the next without them by my side. Eventually though, the teasing and torment got bad enough that we moved down to the ground. I could tell it hurt my parents that they were no longer up among the clouds that were their birthright, but they wanted a better life for me, one where I wouldn't come home everyday from school in tears. Sadly, that wasn't to be." The yellow pegasus gazed off into the middle distance, picking up Angel and giving him a snuggle. "Children can be so cruel...they'll find anything about you that's different, anything at all. Anything that makes a pony different can make her a target for everypony else. Since I wasn't a blank flank for very long, at least that obvious torment was taken away. Instead, they made fun of something that was much more hurtful, much more personal. They laughed at the fact I was afraid to fly. 'She can't possibly be a real pegasus,' they'd say 'she must be some kind of overgrown chicken.'"

"The worst was when one little colt, who had once lived in Canterlot, overheard the others and started accusing me of being a changeling. I guess he took the idea of the game Doubt a little too literally. I don't know if he really thought I was a changeling or not, and I probably never will, but all the other children started treating me like I wasn't even a pony. Like I was some kind of freak. It was horrible." Fluttershy's expression darkened with the memory. "Despite all that though, my parents continued to try and protect me. They were convinced that the other ponies just needed time to get to know me better, when really the opposite was true...everypony treated me with much more kindness and courtesy when they didn't know me at all. When I told them I just wished everypony would leave me alone and forget about me they would gently scold me and tell me not to say such things. 'After all we love you, and we'll be together forever,' they said. I think that might be the first time my parents lied to me, though I can't be sure. What I do know for sure is that after the Timber wolves came out of the forest, there wasn't enough left of my parents to bury."

Twilight just stared at Fluttershy, completely at a loss for words. She'd known her for so long, yet she'd never heard any of this, not even from Rainbow Dash. The yellow pegasus continued, "With my parents gone I did what I had to just to survive. I dropped out of school, stopped going into town, I tried to drop off the face of Equestria. But it wasn't all bad. Since my parents were dead I could finally enjoy the one thing about living on the ground I truly loved. Animals...that's about the time I found Angel Bunny here, and he's been my comfort and companion ever since. I decided that while I might want to live apart from pony society, I enjoyed the company of animals. For any other pony my age, it would've been suicidal to go out looking for animals to make my own private zoo, and maybe I was kind of hoping something would happen to me so I could be with my parents again, but I discovered a talent I'd never expected. I discovered The Stare." Fluttershy's smile lit up the darkness as she continued, "It made things so easy! For the first time in my life, other living creatures were listening to what I had to say, doing what I told them to do! And then I had an epiphany. If I had only been there when my parents were attacked, they might have still been alive. Worse, if I had only know about this ability sooner, I might never have had so many problems with other fillies and colts my age. I wonder if you can imagine the depths of self loathing and hatred I felt for myself when I figured that out." Flutterhy reached out a hoof and stroked the side of Twilight's face. "But there's only so much you can hate yourself, before that hatred turns outwards. I realized I had just been a little filly. The world had no business being so harsh and unforgiving to me. It took a long time, but I realized I hadn't done anything wrong, it was everypony else who lied about there being something wrong with me! It was their fault my parents were dead, not mine. If only they had shown me a little kindness, things might have gone very differently. But instead, I decided that if that was how the world really was, then only revenge would make it right."

"So your vengeance was to have all of your friends kill each other? That doesn't make any sense!" cried Twilight in confusion.

Fluttershy laughed gently as she said, "Don't be silly, this was a long time ago. There have been many, many games and there have been far more 'changelings' than just me. You see I learned early on I wasn't the only one who was pushed around and tormented in this world. There were other ponies just like me. And just like frightened animals they responded to The Stare. It didn't take me long to find the right mix of herbs to enhance the effect, after all this was what I used to tame most of the animals I kept at my house. Derpy was a good 'changeling' you know. She was the winner of so many games." Fluttershy paused. It took a moment before Twilight realized, with complete disgusted, that the pegasus was basking in the memory. "You'd be shocked at the amount of grief Derpy has gotten over the years for her slight disabilities. I mean at least she wasn't afraid to fly. However the world, in its cruelty, still managed to push her from one job to another, from one tormentor to another. Nopony ever satisfied to keep her around longer than it took her clumsiness to manifest itself. I was actually a little sad to see her go. She never failed to kill everypony else in the game. Watching her unconsciously act out her revenge fantasies was quiet...stimulating." A sick smile spread across Fluttershy's face, causing Twilight to cringe. "She was already pretty badly deteriorated though. What with the drugs I used on her, well she just became more and more erratic. But she was still somewhat useful, I suppose. Knocking you all out and bringing you here was very helpful. It's just I was already planning for a new 'changeling' to take over from her." At this Fluttershy stood and moved over to Pinkie Pie's sad, slumped form. The pink pony was still gasping for air as a steady stream of blood gushed from her throat. "She just couldn't compare to Pinkie Pie! There was so much pent up aggression behind her smile. So much suppressed pain and anger. But..."

"You stay away from her! She's not some pawn for you to play with! None of us are!" screamed Twilight. She immediately regretted it as Fluttershy locked eyes with her. Twilight had gazed into the eyes of Nightmare's and of Chaos itself. She had seen the unfeeling, insectile eyes of true changelings sweeping calculatingly over her form. She had stared down dragons. But never, in all Twilight's days, had she looked into a set of eyes so choked with such cold, controlled, hatred. A killing lust sprung up from the otherwise adorable pegasus, stabbing into Twilight's mind through her eyes. It let her know that here, sitting before her was death, and not a natural death but one long and protracted and filled with the kind of tender affection and attention to detail that could only be manufactured by the truly disturbed. Twilight had never experienced 'The Stare' before, and she never wanted to again. She could now understand how it had been used to tame lions, tigers, and bears.

"Hush. You were so full of questions before. Don't scream when you find out the answers." Fluttershy continued to hold Twilight in her gaze. "Of course she's not just a pawn. A pawn would've done as she was told. But everytime, at every turn, when it came time for her to act against you, Pinkie balked. It happened first when she was helping me inscribe the sigils on each of you. Those are less magic than a clever parlor trick, but it gets the job done. Even so, Pinkie couldn't be moved to mar your flesh. Before my eyes she snapped out of her hypnosis. It was uncanny. Everytime you were by her side the story I had crafted for her would crumble. I figured it couldn't be helped and just left you without a sigil, since doing so would lead for you to be suspected and isolated. Perhaps one of the others would even kill you, thinking you were behind everything." Fluttershy opened her saddle bag and tugged a small package out of it. It was the present Twilight had sent to Pinkie Pie weeks ago. "You see, this was in motion for quite some time, but you just had to keep thinking of your friends. You, among all of them, just had to show that goofy, sweet pink pony the attention she so desperately craved. You ruined all my careful planning, Twilight."

"What planning?" asked Twilight eying the package. "You still haven't told me what this is really all about. Why us? Why now?"

"Isn't it obvious Twilight?" asked Fluttershy as she scooped up Angel Bunny and placed him in her saddle bag where the present had been. "As I said, I've been doing this for a long, long time. What I do I see as a kindness beyond anything else in this world, and to stop now would, well...I couldn't imagine leaving all those poor ponies to suffer alone. To continue doing this, I need my privacy. Didn't you ever wonder how we could save Equestria twice, stand before all of Canterlot, and still live in relative obscurity? Didn't you ever wonder how it was I was chosen to reform Discord, instead of you? I can control how other ponies think, I can bend even the most powerful to my will. But there's only so much I can do when everypony is looking. Becoming a Princess, Twilight, was just about the worst thing you could do. All eyes being on you means all eyes were on your friends. It would only be a matter of time before I was caught...so I had to take measures to make sure you were eliminated and then I, well, I'd just disappear." The yellow pegasus stepped around her fallen and bleeding friends and walked right to the door. Standing before it the spells twisted and turned, but they didn't respond to her. Instead she held out a small crystal key...and unlocked the final door. "It's not a total loss though. You three will just starve to death down here instead. I doubt anypony will ever even find the bodies. We won't be meeting again. So this is goodbye, Twilight." With that she stepped through and slammed the door behind her, leaving Twilight in total, blood soaked darkness.

Comments

[Ecstatic]

"The poor dear was a mess long before she came to my sanctuary. It really seemed like she was losing the will to live. I couldn't just turn away a friend. The sense of loneliness and despair after losing a loved one...in order to alleviate that grief, even just a little, I guide my friends to the path of revenge. For some it's the only kindness I can offer. All they have to do is look into my eyes and all their troubles melt away."

Mind = Raped.

Eventually though, the teasing and torment got bad enough that we moved down to the ground.

Look who lied to the CMC when they asked for your Cutie Mark story, Flutters.

The world had no business being so harsh and unforgiving to me.

Truth.

It's just I was already planning for a new 'changeling' to take over from her." At this Fluttershy stood and moved over to Pinkie Pie's sad, slumped form. The pink pony was still gasping for air as a steady stream of blood gushed from her throat. "She just couldn't compare to Pinkie Pie! There was so much pent up aggression behind her smile. So much suppressed pain and anger. But..."

The Feels for the poor abused manipulated Pinkie Pie take war to the fact that she still psychotically killed her friends.

She had stared down dragons. But never, in all Twilight's days, had she looked into a set of eyes so choked with such cold, controlled, hatred. A killing lust sprung up from the otherwise adorable pegasus, stabbing into Twilight's mind through her eyes. It let her know that here, sitting before her was death, and not a natural death but one long and protracted and filled with the kind of tender affection and attention to detail that could only be manufactured by the truly disturbed.

Best. Lines. Ever, make sure your death is catered with loving care!

Fluttershy opened her saddle bag and tugged a small package out of it. It was the present Twilight had sent to Pinkie Pie weeks ago. "You see, this was in motion for quite some time, but you just had to keep thinking of your friends. You, among all of them, just had to show that goofy, sweet pink pony the attention she so desperately craved. You ruined all my careful planning, Twilight."

You are Evil, Fluttershy, everything you are is horrible now, Pinkie loved Twilight. And you? You stole her birthday present and turned Pinkie against her. May you receive what you deserve for your unspeakable atrocities, Twilight needs her magic back to subdue Flutters without killing her, because really? Death would be merciful.

[djawsa]

Stop Raping My Brain!!!!!

[PaulAsaran]

Y'know, I did find it odd how Fluttershy flew back into her home on the first chapter right before the shit hit the fan. And obviously the rabbit masks were a strong clue by their very existence. Maybe I missed some further clues that it was Fluttershy all along; even so, I still think this is a bit too much 'dues ex machina.' Fluttershy had to go and explain everything in a whole chapter's worth of monologue, which to me is a bad sign. I'd have been more impressed if she instead put a bunch of pieces together from hints that had been thrown about through the entire story.

Still, not a bad twist. There's just one thing that still bugs the hell out of me: if this is Fluttershy, who was that they found pinned to the wall in the first room? From Pinkie's explanation in the earlier chapter, it seems she actually thinks she killed Fluttershy. Is that because Fluttershy mind-fucked her into believing it, or did some other unfortunate pony end up on the wall?

[tgb089]

I was expecting that iconic line before Fluttershy closed the door: "Game over!"