Chapter 20: A History Lesson
“After school.”
I sat there in Reynolds’ quarters, taking a breath I rested back in his swivel chair, feet kicked up onto his desk. I bit my lower lip and thought about his heated warning back in the dining room. “These walls have ears that do not wish to hear specific things.” Talk about ominous. Letting off a sigh I scratched my chest and adjusted my bra straps before I slid my feet off the table and sat up with perfect timing due to the door opening behind me.
The faint sounds of grumbled frustration caused me to turn my head with a raised eyebrow. “Something wrong?” I asked as I saw the heated old man toss his belongings onto his bed, the door slid shut behind him and he cast me an irritated glance.
“Yes,” he said bluntly, his voice rasp. “There is something wrong; something very wrong.” My teeth jammed down on my tongue and I gulped. Reynolds let off a deep breath and waddled over to his closet. Opening it, I saw he had a water dispenser inside.
What an odd place to store your water. I started to walk towards him, my hand naturally rubbing the back of my neck. “I take it you’re mad because of me?”
Reynolds straightened himself out and turned towards me before shaking his head. “No, I’m not angry at you directly...” he sighed. “More or less, I’m frustrated with myself.” Reynolds took a small, metal cup and filled it with water before turning to me and holding it out. “Want a drink?”
I nodded and reached over to take the cup. “What are you angry about?” I asked him nervously as I took a sip of the rather cold water.
“Past events. It’s a long story,” Reynolds grumbled as he filled his own cup and took a large drink.
“Man, I have all the time in the world,” I told him as I took a large drink myself. I went over to his bed and sat down, my eyes widening. It was memory foam.
Reynolds sighed. “I guess we do,” he said softly as he finished his cup and immediately poured himself a second one. Taking a smaller sip he went over to his desk, under which was a locked cupboard. Fishing into his pocket, Reynolds produced a small key and unlocked the door to the small compartment. Moments later, he would come out with a faded, brown leather journal, which he turned and tossed at me.
I caught the journal, which I quickly noticed was bound shut, with ease and looked at it. “It’s your diary, I remember you writing in this all the time.” I looked up at him. “I’m surprised you hadn’t filled it completely by now.”
Reynolds chuckled. “Aside from me writing tiny, I took many breaks, mainly between my times in the cocoons.” He breathed deeply and slowly walked over to me. “Neither Celestia nor Luna know of my possession of this book, and on many occasions, I had to take various amounts of sleeping pills and set up barriers around my room to keep Luna from entering my head.”
I straightened myself out and blinked, Reynolds could see the shocked look on my face when I turned to look up at him. “You really don’t want them knowing about the book,” I said.
Reynolds nodded. “Or any of my other plans...” He took a seat beside me on the bed.
“What do you mean?” I turned to look at him and also scooted away a bit.
“Ponies aren’t really ones to respect privacy, especially the sisters,” Reynolds mumbled quietly. “To be honest with you, Chloe...” He trailed off and looked at me, his face icy. “I despise those two.”
My eyes widened and I leaned back a bit. “Wh-why?” I asked in a tiny voice.
Reynolds turned and leaned a bit, his wrinkly arms resting on his knees. “They forced my hand, believe it or not. I’m practically their prisoner. I don’t want to go too deep into my past with these wretched clods...” Reynolds shook his head. “Aside from you, they took everything from me. From us.” He gazed up at the ceiling before looking at me.
I blinked slowly and looked Reynolds in the eyes. “Took what?” I asked.
Reynolds shook his head and tapped on his journal. “Read it,” he said. “Start on page two hundred and read on from there.”
“But what about The Remnants?” I leaned towards Reynolds, my arm gesturing outwards. “Why did you hit me when I brought them up?”
The old man cringed and closed his eyes. “Page 252...February 17th 15045 0600,” Reynolds said softly. “It was the start of the Equestrian Expansion.” Reynolds took a deep breath. “Everything had gone to utter shit just as it seemed to be going well...” he sniffed. “I thought I was in control, we had everything we needed I thought... I thought Jamestown was the sign of a new beginning.”
I blinked and shook my head. “What? You started a town?”
Reynolds nodded and got up. “Come here, I have pictures.” I sat the journal aside and stood up and followed him towards his desk, and opened the locked cupboard and took out an envelope. He opened it and dumped dozens of pictures onto the desk, my eyes widening and tearing up at the sight of them.
“I started Jamestown thirty years before the Equestrian equivalent of Manifest Destiny,” he said quietly as I reached down picked up an image of a middle aged Reynolds standing beside two young men who seemed to be in their really late teens or early twenties in the middle of an amateur looking wheat field.
“How come in the logs you sent me you never mentioned anything of Jamestown?” I asked as I picked up another image of Reynolds standing with a few burly men in military camouflage, my eyes locking onto a familiar face on the far right. He was a tall, dark skinned man with a graying beard, in his hand was American assault rifle. I couldn’t make out the model, though, I was never great with firearms to begin with.
“Most of the logs I sent was before Jamestown was even a thought in my mind. Half of the people in these photos were still inside the artificial wombs in most of these images,” Reynolds sighed. “And uh...afterwards...” he took a deep breath and turned away from the photos. “How much do you know of imperialism?”
I blinked and turned to look at Reynolds. “Uh...” My eyes shifted a bit. “I know it’s not a good thing?”
Reynolds nodded. “For the most part yes, it isn’t. For the one committing the act, it's usually good, as for the victims, it's godawful,” Reynolds explained at sat down.
“I take it you were a victim?” I asked shifting my eyebrow upward.
“Like hell we all were!” Reynolds gritted his teeth. “When the Equestrians started advancing eastward, we were caught within the expansion radius. You see, Chloe, they may preach peace and harmony, but back then, it was nothing but xenophobia and control.” I blinked and Reynolds continued. “They saw me and my science as some kind of fucking dark magic; the technology we were using to reproduce ourselves; the population bombs and my cloning experiments Fuck, even our water pumps, generators, everything! It was unnatural to them, therefore they dubbed it dark magic.”
“What happened?” I asked, still with a tiny voice.
Reynolds leaned towards me. “Purification. They rode in on their flying chariots and charged in at us from every angle, they surrounded the whole fucking town without us realizing it. We hardly had any weapons, most of the guns eroded away over the years; we had some but not many. Most of us had to fight tooth and nail… Lets just say we didn’t stand a chance...”
“What’d they do to you guys?”
“Purified...” Reynolds repeated softly. “We were all exposed to vast amounts of magic...” He glared up at me and then clarified; “The SOL Virus.”
My eyes widened. “They’re all...”
“Not all of them died, surprisingly,” Reynolds said. “A good chunk of us actually survived the ‘cleansing’.” I bit my lip and sat down on the swivel chair. “After they were done, they destroyed everything; the embryos, our homes, weapons and technology. They wiped Jamestown off the map and forced the survivors into wagons and we were shipped off to the capital to be trialed.” Reynolds took another large breath and let it out in a drawn out sigh. “I was made prisoner, the others... I don’t know...” He gazed up at me. “Chloe, if you’re saying that this pony of yours said he knows of the Remnants, then that means that the others made it out, or perhaps may still be alive.” Reynolds got up onto his feet and slowly began to walk towards me, a wide smile on his face, his eyes glistening. As he approached me, he reached out and placed an arm on my left shoulder, our eyes locking. “I want you to go, Chloe, if you find them, we just might be able to have the comeback we deserve.”
I blinked a few times and shook my head, Reynolds frowned. “This doesn’t make sense,” I said softly.
“What?” Reynolds said sounding shocked, his hand letting go of my shoulder.
“You’re a prisoner, right?” I looked at him. “And the Equestrians saw cloning as dark magic... Th-then how come you’re roaming freely and cloning me?!”
“I explained to them the fundamental of magic, and showed them my research. I’m not Celestia’s head scientist, but I’m also stuck within the confines of the castle,” Reynolds said. “I told you already I believe that I cannot leave here. Young Chloe was also born in secret and when Luna found out about her, she was nearly killed but I threatened to commit suicide if they did.” I blinked.
“How were you able to come to McKinley vault?” I asked.
“I came here a few thousand years before Equestria existed, the original capital a few hundred miles south of here. After the fall of Jamestown and Luna’s failed coup, the capital was conveniently relocated here,” Reynolds sighed. “Look, Chloe, I know this sounds weird or that I may even be lying, but seriously, read the journal, all the information you’ll ever want to know is in there.”
I took a breath. “I just...this is a lot to take in...like seriously, this sounds like a whole other fucking story.” I stepped around Reynolds and flopped onto his bed. “I don’t even know what to think anymore… Everyone we knew is dead, you tried rebuilding civilization and apparently the ponies are fucking Nazis all of a sudden, you’re really a prisoner, and me... What about me?” I looked at Reynolds. “If the ponies are really anti-human, why am I the only exception?” I shook my head and curled up on Reynolds bed. “Ugh... My fucking brain hurts.”
“I know this is a lot to take in, Chloe. For all we know, they could be trying to change, that’s why they haven’t done anything to you. Perhaps you are an exception. Just like Little Chloe.” Reynolds sat on the bed again.
I groaned and rolled onto my back. “I think I need a few drinks,” I said sarcastically and Reynolds chuckled.
“I have some whiskey in the recreation room. If you want, we can discuss more in there.”
I took a deep breath. “I’ll take the whiskey, but hold off on the history lesson for now.”
Reynolds chuckled. “As you wish, Chloe. I apologize for hitting you earlier.”
I laughed quietly. “You can apologize by getting me shit faced.” I glanced up at the old man and saw him blushing heavily. I snorted. “If I wake up naked next to you, I sure as hell will need to be purified.” Reynolds cringed and looked away, my eyes widened. “Oh, shit, too soon?”
“Just by a handful of millennia,” Reynolds smiled at me.
I grinned. “Ah, nothing a few drinks won’t solve.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
758 users online
1,144,937 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Holy throne...
Let the purification begin anew. Good chapter.
Well shit, thats heavy...
... Wow. Did not expect any of this...
... There is still something he's not telling...
*Edit* Now there's a thought. Maybe it's not that she is immune but that her body readily accepted the nanites/magic whatever. Mayhap she adapted to them instead of becoming immune to them. Wonder what that could possibly mean.
Celestia and Luna are thousands of years old and hindsight is 20/20 they very likely regret their actions, and with how Equestria has advanced technologically they clear realize it's not "dark magic" at all. Also I think it's clear little Chloe was born BEFORE the Nightmare Moon incident and she and Reynolds where in the cacoons when Luna was gone, maybe in this reality the genocide helped lead to Nightmare Moon?. The sisters keep the truth from the ponies because they have become what they always preached they where and learning their ancestors where party to genocide would destroy them. Luna and Celestia are the only ponies who where alive and responsible and don't want their people to feel that guilt and Reynolds would tell everything if he was allowed free. Yes not a good position but thus is life.
Ahh, xenophobic and bigoted ponies. Time to take this off my "to follow" list.
7792101
Dude, go rewatch the Heartswarming Eve episode and tell me that you can't believe that ponies that could barely get along with each other would have any friendly feelings towards non-ponies. Heck, just look at what the USA did to the Native Americans to get a good idea, and we're all the same species. Reynolds has been skipping entire eras, so he's not only still, understandably, bitter about what the old ponykind did to him and Jamestown, and probably doesn't realize, or care, how much Equestria has come since then.
7792101 Also keep in mind that was all lore/backstory Reynolds told Chloe, 20 chapters in we haven't seen a single xenophobic/bigoted pony.
Sounds like a bullshit story.
7792097 Magic
You missed the word an in this sentence.
7792101 Jumping to conclusions a bit there hey mate? Give it a chance and lets see what happens.
7792161 I can't help but wonder why the ponies are behaving the polar opposite of what Reynolds made them out to be.
I don't trust Reynolds... Something about this doesn't add up.
Won't lie. When I read all that just now in the document you linked for editing, I was a bit put off. The only time frame in pony history where the ponies could feasibly have worked together to 'purify' [what are they, Protoss?] the humans is AFTER the unification described in the Hearth's Warming backstory. I find it a bit hard to believe that an indeterminate period of time after deciding, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't hate those that are different from us," pony kind did a complete 180 and hopped on the "Destroy All Humans" bandwagon.
After a little bit of time to think about it, I imagine that a lot of this is Reynold's personal bias. It's clear that he lost someone he considered dear to him during first contact or the following misunderstandings soon after. Anything in is journal is probably tainted some good.
7792307
Keep in mind that was thousands of years ago. It took place in the 15000s where as the story now takes place in 18036. Peoples ethics and ideologies change over time, they're still wary (as seen with the locals in the previous chapter) but they aren't down right brutal as Reynolds said in the past.
7792364
The pony's united to form Equestria around the time of Hearthwarming Eve. Reynolds is telling the story of the Equestrian Equivalent of "Manifest Destiny", the time period in which Equestria started to expand their boarders eastward. So in technicality what happened to him happened after Hearthwarming Eve.
Though I will say that you maybe onto something.
Congratulations good sir, you have accomplished something that has only happened once before: I am ACTUALLY angry after reading this. That takes really good writing to pull off! Bravo! Here's hoping Chloe goes and calls them out on their s***. Seriously, bigotry is one of my only berserk buttons, and you have activated it in an absolutely horribly wonderful way. I eagerly await more of this story. (None of that was sarcasm. It takes skill to pull ANY kind of emotional response from a reader, and you pulled it off)
Now I just wanna see how Chloe reacts to finding out she raped whatshername. ( the only reason I could think of for there to be tears on the directions she received)
7792383 This rather unsettling reveal would explain why Reynolds seemed to enjoy torturing Twilight before.
But his story about the fate of Jamestown (a town ironically named after the old English settlement when they first arrived to North America) and the humans that settled there... Idk... Something about all this just doesn't feel right.
Either the Sisters really believe they saw something unholy behind his science that resulted in mass genocide...
...Or Reynolds is a liar and he's hiding something sinister from Chloe.
7792101 So, you're going to make assumptions after only hearing one side of the story? We're talking at least a thousand years in the past. Reynolds still remembers it well because he was in chryo in between eras. I'd suggest getting info from the ponies before making assumptions.
I think I feel sick after reading this. You sir have succeeded in making me want to pronounce divine judgment upon the ponies. Especially the sisters. Now why the humans didn't have any weapons seems a little foolish if they had all of these other pieces of technology.
7792441
Pretty sure way back during the unification, ponies were still on everyone's hit list; from gryphons to dragons-- especially when they moved into land claimed (either physically occupied or just because they can see it from their castle) by non-ponies. Tack on the saying, "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" while adding some rabble rousing fear mongering and you got an easy target for medieval ponies to wipe out in the flimsy guise of self-defense from dark magic.
However, I do find it... curious that Reynolds has no idea what happened to the people hauled off to the capital for trial. If they were imprisoned, executed, or even set free, you'd have thought he would have known their fate. Right?
And what of Little Chloe? If Luna was going to destroy her because she was an unnatural abomination, why on Earth do the Princesses dote over the little girl? Shouldn't Luna be a lot less friendly? I mean, not even a sneer or a grimace.
I'm with you in suspecting Reynolds isn't telling the whole truth. And Chloe should probably try to corner one of the Princesses and see what they have to say about it all. Maybe in the middle of all this he-said-she-said is the real truth. (Or Chloe could get ahold of one of Zecora's supermagic potions to see back in time? Heh!)
Man, Chloe should just barge into the throne room, haul back and bitch slap the FUCK out of Celestia. And as the guards tackle her and haul her off, just scream at her "JAMESTOWN YOU BITCH! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!
I dont trust reynolds at all
7792620 Time my friend. Reynolds said most of their weapons eroded away over the thousands of years they had them.
7792625
Oh shieet, I forgot that was totally a thing.
7792832 then make new ones. Also how did the other technology not erode away in a similar manner?
7792988 All the other items were inside the vault protected, they were outside on the surface during Jamestown's lifespan. Also creating guns are more complex then you might think, yes they made spears, and bows and arrows. But guns requires alloys, which means you need various metals, gunpowder also requires sulfur, charcoal and potassium I believe, and other various complex mechanisms.
They did create basic swords and spears and bows.
Hmmmm, sounds legit.
Just noticed this error in the main page description of your story;
An extra "to" in there.
Speak of a major twist. Wow, that put a whole new spin on the entire situation.
7793086
What're you talking about? They only need enough skill points and you can cobble a gun from scraps and duct tape.
Now, if Fisto was still toddling around... that is an unnatural abomination worthy of immediate destruction.
7794297 I appreciate the mistakes, but please send them to me via PM
7792833
Fairly sure it can only be used by an allicorn though. :/
7793767 what are you talking about celestial most likely keeps FISTO in her room
7792408 I believe the reason there were tears on the note is because of the part where Chloe called her Eva. Just throwing that out there.
What the heck, man! This story is just tragedy after tragedy! I don't know how much more I can take.
P.S. I'm not sure whether to believe Renolds or not. It doesn't seem to add up based on some things other commenters have pointed out.
7797969 That makes significantly more sense. I derp.
7797975 Well the story was originally tagged as a tragedy
This is a special kind of drug induced nightmare, isn't it?
7798401 Oh you changed, huh? Make us feel like it could end happily. That's a special kind of evil. ;P
7798060 Heheh. You're good. We all derp sometimes.
7798401 Well...um...shoot...I guess you're right, but man, it still sucks.
I am starting to wonder if Celestia and Luna would survive a bullet between the eyes?
it is defiantly time to take control back.
that kind of feels like that came out on now
OK, so this is the chapter that reveals the princesses and their subjects carried out acts of cold-blooded genocide on helpless civilians...
I guess that's what the AU tag was for. The characters of the canon princesses wouldn't allow it.
fundamentals
I wonder what would happen if little Chloe would find and read this journal...
Maybe something like this?
36.media.tumblr.com/23f008b883c2585b565705b416d2f6bd/tumblr_nvntye4Fs31rrj814o1_r1_1280.png
I mean, hey, her mother has a dark counterpart so why not?
Well, just when we all thought this couldn't get any darker, it did. If I were in Chloe's shoes, I wouldn't know who to trust. One thing's for certain: Luna didn't act even remotely surprised when Chloe told her about The Remnant. This is obviously not the first time Luna had heard of them. At least Reynolds decided to tell Chloe something. Of course, the near-genocide of an entire species isn't exactly the best way to start a conversation with a total stranger, so I guess it makes sense that Celestia and Luna wouldn't tell Chloe about the incident, even if they didn't do anything (that at the time seemed) wrong.