You Wouldn't Believe Me if I Told You

by PinkiePiedPiper

Chapter 13: Discovery and Respite

I don’t own MLP: FiM. That belongs to Lauren Faust and Hasbro.

You Wouldn’t Believe Me if I Told You

Chapter 13: Discovery and Respite

It was dark. Nights usually are.

The whole forest had gone quiet; no more fighting, screaming, gunshots, or explosions were heard now. It had been a very busy day, and everypony just wanted to rest for a few hours. Even Trixie, with her half-sane mind, knew that at some point she would need rest. When everypony else was asleep was a good enough time for her.

Claiming the stars from Berry Punch and Scootaloo had been simple enough, each body disappearing in some way or another. Rainbow Dash, however, had not gone quietly. Literally.

As soon as her star had been tapped she had begun to glow. Trixie had heard a humming noise coming from the brightening pegasus. As she grew more radiant, the humming sound shifted into a loudening high-pitched squeal. Trixie dove for cover just as the still hanging corpse burst into a rainbow-coloured explosion and engulfed the tree in multi-coloured flames. The heat was intense, and Trixie was not entirely out of the blast radius. She could feel it as her tail and what was left of her mane were singed.

Within seconds the tree was absolutely gone. The ground was scorched in radiating concentric rainbow rings. Trixie was shaken and lightly toasted, but otherwise alive. She checked how much damage had been done to her mane, this time using her new sickle as a mirror. The flames had imbued her ragged mane and disheveled tail with their pigment, giving them a colouration not unlike the scheme of the late Rainbow Dash. That gave her an idea.

She emptied out her saddlebags and wrapped her bandages around her middle. She took her map, crumpled it, and stuffed it under the bandage to simulate the presence of a wing. Her water bottle was crushed and used on the other side. For all intents and purposes, she now looked somewhat like a badly damaged and burned Rainbow Dash.

She settled down in an unburned bush. After consuming the various vegetable contents of her rations bag, she placed her new sickle and crossbow next to her. Secure in her shelter and satisfied with her full belly and eight stars, she fell asleep almost instantly.

Some distance away, a group of four ponies were also settling down for the night. Twilight Sparkle, using the knowledge gained from several camping and survival guides she had read, had started a fire in a clearing, expertly set up and executed as per her habits.

Bon Bon and Ditzy sat on the opposite side of the fire from Twilight, munching half-heartedly at the last of their food supply. Before they had stopped for the night, Steve had checked his life-signs detector, or LSD as Twilight had renamed it, much to Steve’s amusement. It indicated only two other blips from their big one. This had affected them all deeply. Steve hung his head, wishing he had been out there defending other ponies rather than hiding in a tree. Not that he had been up there for all that long, but still he beat himself up for it. Bon Bon and Ditzy cried. Twilight, realizing the uselessness of future efforts to reunite the Elements of Harmony, decided that the only thing left for them to do was survive, and to defend themselves if necessary.

“When it’s necessary,” Steve added.

Steve had attempted to build a shelter from branches, but with no tools, rope, extra materials, or fingers, he quickly gave up his endeavour. The sticks he had collected were instead used to fuel the fire. Twilight quickly assigned him the duty of firewood-gatherer and sent him off to get more.

It was dark in the forest. Steve had a hard time finding more wood. It was pretty much everywhere, but he just could not see it. The only time he found some was either when he stepped on it or accidentally kicked it, forcing him to grope around for where it had gone.

He was trotting back to the fire through the forest with a sizeable load of wood in his teeth, wrapped in his bandages for ease of transport, when he found a rather large branch with his front hoof. It did not budge. His momentum carried him head over hooves into the bushes. He opened his mouth and gave a yelp of surprise, both releasing the wood bundle and alerting the camp to his situation. He landed on something cold and soft.

All three mares were instantly sitting up and on alert. Twilight scooped up a burning branch from the fire and put it in her mouth.

“Stay here, girls. I’ll be right back, but keep the gun handy just in case.”

Bon Bon nodded, raising her uzi in one hoof.

She ran in the direction of the sound, fearing that some other pony had sprung upon him.

Steve suspected approximately what he had landed on and sprung back to his hooves and called out. “I’m alright, I’m ok. But I think I found something...unpleasant. Bring a light!”

Twilight slowed down to a safer pace when she heard him, adjusting her course slightly towards the source. “I have one!” she replied, somewhat muddled by the stick in her mouth.

She pushed away the outer branches of the bush and stuck her head in the hole. The fire illuminated the whole inside, revealing a grisly scene. Twilight dropped the burning stick in shock. The thing Steve had landed on was none other than Applejack, who, minus the blood-stained fur on her chest, oddly seemed as though she had not been injured except for a few cuts and scrapes. She was still grasping a white bottle, her hoof obscuring the label. The collar on her neck was bejeweled with eight stars. Just in front of her was a very pale-looking Applebloom, who had stopped bleeding from what was left of her left foreleg. The axe head was still there in the trunk, coated in blood, and just above the severed limb itself. She still only had her two stars.

Twilight dove into the bush to Applejack’s side and began to desperately search for any sign of life. She was cold and stiff, utterly unresponsive and unyielding to Twilight’s efforts. Steve likewise checked Applebloom. Although she was dead, she still felt relatively warm. A quick study of his LSD showed that there was now only one other blip from their own.

Steve looked at Twilight and shook his head. “She must have died in the last few hours. She is still warm, and the LSD isn’t registering one of the blips from before.”

Twilight bent down and, though teary eyes, studied the symbols in the stars.

“Hers, Big Mac, Fleur, Sweetie Belle, Flim, Flam… Fluttershy…” She stopped for a moment to regain her composure. “How did you get so many?” she wondered aloud. Raising her head to Steve, who was laying the deceased filly by her older sister, she asked, “You… you don’t suppose that she… that Applejack-“

“No way!” Steve burst out. “No way in hell Applejack would attack and willingly kill any of her friends and family. She may not be the Element of Loyalty, but she would never do that!”

“But how would you explain all these?”

“Same way you did, I bet,” Steve replied, gesturing at her own extra star bearing Cheerilee’s cutie mark. “She must have found some old battle scenes or something, or at least got them in self-defence.”

Twilight mulled it over briefly, her mind clearing from her emotional fog, and nodded her head in agreement. “Of course! She must have been protecting Applebloom when she died. Now the only question is: what the hay happened here?”

“You look for clues in here,” Steve replied, “and I’ll check around out there.”

As Steve left the bush, Twilight moved straight for the bottle. Upon opening it, she noted that half of the contents were missing, leaving a half-full bottle of liquid-gel pills. Recapping it, she studied the label by the firelight. She gave it a confused look.

Steve, meanwhile, had just about poked an eye out on the handle of a long curved katana protruding from a tree trunk. Grasping the hilt and bracing one leg against the tree, he pulled at it with all of his strength wiggling it slightly to get it loose. Once it began to budge he lessened his efforts to avoid losing control when it came free. He grasped the hilt in one hoof and brought it back into the lighted area in the bush.

“Find anything?” Steve asked.

“Yes I did, this white bottle of pills. How about you?” Twilight asked without looking away from the bottle.

“I got this sweet sword! It was just stuck in a tree over there.”

“Wow! That must be an old silver blade! Look at how it’s tarnished!”

Steve placed it on the ground to be safe. In the light, the pointed end of the sword was gleaming and bright, but the end by the hilt was significantly darker and tarnished.

“What kind of pills did you say they were?”

“Not sure,” she said, “I don’t understand this label. Have you ever heard of ‘arsenic sulfide’ before?”

Steve’s eyes widened in realization. Grasping the hilt of the sword, he drove it down into the ground until only the handle remained visible.

“Silver tarnishes in contact with compounds containing sulfur. On Earth, people used to use silver utensils and cups to detect poisons, and many poisons contain sulfurs. Whoever was using this sword must have also owned that bottle and poisoned the blade!”

Twilight dropped the bottle, suddenly aware of the pills’ purpose. It did not take much imagination at this point to figure out why Applejack had died with seemingly so few wounds.

“So somepony poisoned the blade and cut Applejack with it,” Steve voiced their thoughts. “But whoever it was, Applejack must have beat them, because there is nopony else nearby that could have done it, and they would not have just left her here without taking her stars. Whoever it was must be one of the stars on her collar, because we both know it wasn’t Applebloom.”

Twilight continued the trail, “Well, I know it couldn’t have been Sweetie, Big Mac, or Fluttershy. That I know for sure. That leaves Fleur, Flim, or Flam.”

They both stood for a moment and considered the options. But given the lack of further evidence, they decided it was best to not assign any blame. Looking at each other simultaneously, they both knew what needed to be done. Steve stood by Applejack, and Twilight by Applebloom, and they touched the stars on their dead friends’ collars.

Immediately, the fire flickering on the stick behind them leapt violently into a frenzied burn. Both Twilight and Steve dove out of the bush, which was soon engulfed in flames, spreading unnaturally quickly and sequestered to that bush. The blaze ended as abruptly as it had begun. There was no dying down or fizzling; it was just gone. As was the bush, corpses and all. Steve now had nine stars. Twilight had four.

Steve recovered his bundle of sticks, and they slowly walked back to camp, much to the relief of Bon Bon. Ditzy was asleep. Twilight told Bon Bon what they had found, distressing her again. They decided it best to leave Ditzy asleep and oblivious. She had had quite enough distress for one day.

Twilight took a look at the LSD. Aside from their group blot, there was still only one other blip out there some distance away. Judging by who’s stars were unaccounted for, the determined it had to be Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Trixie, Sapphire Shores, Lyra, Berry Punch, or Scootaloo. Whoever it was, she had eight stars of her own, so there was a chance of her being extremely dangerous. Twilight laid down several feet from Steve and tried to get some sleep.

Steve thought about everything that had happened in the last few days. It was almost too much for him to take in. Just two days ago, he had left his family’s seaside cottage for a walk down the beach. It had been a little stormy, so he had promised his parents that he would be careful.

And he had been, even up until he had found that sea cave. He had not been sure why he had decided to explore it in such bad weather by himself. He had felt as though there was some kind of force drawing him in, calling him to enter despite the danger. No sooner had he turned to leave the cave behind when a large wave had come crashing into him, tossing his helpless body deep into the cavern. Next thing he knew, he was on the floating plot of grass with video game and cartoon characters in a book villain’s game. Stoking the fire in silence, Steve looked up to the sky absentmindedly.

“Call me crazy,” he began slowly, still focussed skyward, “but isn’t that a cotton candy cloud?”

It was indeed a cotton candy cloud, zipping to and fro across the sky. And it was not alone. There were about a dozen that Steve could see at any given moment, but they were too fast and it was too dark to get any sort of accurate count. They were not yet raining chocolate, thankfully, and nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary.

Why now? Why has it taken so long for them to show up? What changed since we started?

“Ummm…Bon Bon? Twilight?”

Bon Bon, however, had dropped off to sleep, and Twilight had probably not been too far behind her.

Ditzy stirred awake. After a stretch and an adorable yawn, she cracked open one eye and directed it at Steve.

“Steve?” she said groggily, peering through a half-closed lid.

Steve turned his head to face her, “Yeah? What’s up?” He decided to avoid mentioning the clouds, as there really was nothing anypony could do about them anyways.

“So is it true what Twi said?” she asked. “Are you really a pony from another world?” By now she had managed to get both eyes open and seemed more awake.

“Well,” he replied, “I am in fact from another world, not this one or Equestria. I’m not even a pony, or I guess I wasn’t one before today.”

“You weren’t?” she asked incredulously. She gave her chin a rub, “What were you, a dragon? A griffon?”

Steve smiled and shook his head. “Not quite. I am actually a human.”

Ditzy’s eyes skewed with confusion.

“Humans stand upright on their two legs, and have two arms with hands.”

“So like… a dragon with no tail or wings?”

He gave a hushed laughed, “I guess you could say that, but we don’t have and scales like a dragon, either; just bare skin. That’s the reason why humans wear clothes.”

Ditzy, proud of her analogy, began to look sleepy again. “One more question.”

“Fire away.”

“Why is your name ‘Steve’?”

“My parents gave it to me. Why?”

“What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know if it has a meaning other than as a name.”

“Oh…” she looked confused again, but was only barely conscious this time. “Do all humans have weird names that don’t mean anything?”

Steve paused for a second. He knew some names had meanings behind them, but they never really described a person for who they were. In this area pony culture made more sense to him than the human one he had been raised in.

“I guess we do, Ditzy.” He replied at last, glancing up at her from the fire.

She gave a light shrug. Then she looked him in the eyes and nodded her head in Twilight’s direction, careful not to wake Bon Bon, who’s head was rested on her shoulder and was pressed against her side for warmth.

Steve looked at Twilight. Her mane and tail had some sticks and leaves in them from earlier and were moderately disheveled. Her legs were curled up under her for protection against the chill of the night, and she was shivering slightly. In normal circumstances, Steve would have given her his blanket or a coat, but he had no blanket and the only coat he had was part of his skin. His black vest did not offer much insulation, being mostly decorative.

He looked back to Ditzy, who gave a tired smile and nodded again. With a falsely begrudging sigh, he hoisted himself onto his weary legs, tossed the rest of the wood onto the fire, and walked over to the lone unicorn. Easing himself down, he pressed against her side gently so as not to wake her. He then remembered that his supplies had been wrapped in a light sheet. Steve slowly turned his head around to his saddlebag and extracted the sheet with practiced skill. He gave it a shake and tossed it over his shoulder and over both of their backs. It was not much, but it helped. He heard a light sigh come from the lavender mare, and he noticed her small mouth curl into a slight smile. Personally grateful for the warmth already building at his side, he tucked his head to the opposite side and attempted to sleep. He was quickly successful.

Comments

[Gigabyte]

Sniff, oh well, just the MURDEROUS, JEALOUS, BOASTFUL BITCH LEFT!

oh and the savvy group if good guys.

I wonder when their FIRST encounter will be?

[PinkiePiedPiper]

1444804
there is still much story to go...