You're Wanted: I'll Always Protect You

by SciWriter

Learning about Evil

Author's Note:

WARNING:

Doctor Gray is NOT a nice pony. From here on the story will often get dark with some pretty creepy elements. Gray manipulates his victims through fear and confusion, the things he does will often be disturbing.

That being said, I keep going back and forth on Twilight's behavior. Yes I believe she would care alot about Lightning's situation, as she's a helpful pony in general and hates seeing others suffer. However... well you'll see in the story. Tell me what you think.

Also, I've decided to keep to just this story until it ends. Bouncing between the stories is getting confusing.

Lightning nodded her head. “Where should I start?” she asked.

“How did you meet him?” asked Twilight.

Lightning thought. “That’s not so bad to think about. He didn’t always look the way he does now… well he kinda did, but he had normal teeth and normal eyes… and a normal sized mouth, but you would figure that. I kinda doubt they would let you adopt foals looking like that.” Vinyl snickered at her protégée’s joke. I resisted the temptation to laugh, but that was kind of funny. “From what he told me, he had been going from one orphanage to the next looking for a special foal. He needed a pegasus with a good amount of unicorn magic somehow in her. He said I was rare indeed. Most pegasi with unicorn parents, mother or father, might have some unicorn magic, but no real control over it, and it doesn’t develop very well. Me, he wasn’t sure how I came to be.”

“But when or how did you actually meet?” Twilight reiterated.

“In the orphanage of course,” Lightning answered. “Melony, the head of my foster home, had been saying I was getting out of control, especially with how attached I was to Dusk. She was going to force us apart, so you can imagine how happy I was when a gray pegasus pony showed up and asked to adopt me and Dusk at the same time. He said I was special and what Dusk and I had was special. For the first few weeks, he was so nice.”

She continued. “He had a beautiful house in Canterlot, I think it was three stories tall. He gave both me and Dusk our own rooms, some really nice food and all kinds of sweets. He even gave Dusk a few toys. My room was pink and Dusk’s was blue… think I would have preferred blue, but at the time I didn’t complain, it was waaay nicer than the orphanage. He even read to me each night. I just… how could I have known anything was wrong? I still don’t understand. I don’t believe he ever really loved us, so why did he do all of that for us? It was so wonderful for those two week. Only one bad thing happened.”

Twilight’s ears perked. “And what was that?” she asked.

“I really can’t remember how many days it had been since we had started living with Gray, but one day Dusk was playing with the toys the doctor gave him, but found his favorite was missing. Really Dusk had other toys he liked better, but he was also getting attached to what he was given. It was a small red stuffed dragon. Dusk and I went looking for it through the house. I don’t know how it got there, but we found it in the furnace on the second floor. It hadn’t been burned yet so I decided to fly in and get it. Dusk tried to stop me, saying he was afraid of me getting hurt. Suddenly the flames started coming up and Dusk started crying, watching his toy. I jumped in and saved the dragon. I gave it back to him, but he threw it away and hugged me tight, screaming at me to never do something like that again. I did have a few burns, but they weren’t serious.”

“That sounds, risky, but not too bad…” I noted.

Then she said something that set my skin crawling. “When I looked up from my brother crying on the floor, I saw doctor Gray standing there. He didn’t come running to me… he… he didn’t look scared that I could have gotten hurt, he just smiled… I think he had been watching.” Lightning shifted on the bed. “It was kinda creepy, but I decided not to worry about it, since he was pretty nice and all.”

Twilight gritted her teeth in a nervous grin. “I hate to ask this, but, when did you realize something was wrong?”

“One day I woke up and went to Dusk’s room to play, but he wasn’t there. I went downstairs to find him. I found him on the breakfast table. He was in a cage and crying. Both of his forelegs were bandaged but they were still bleeding. His neck was chained to the bars. Doctor Gray then told me he had broken Dusk’s font legs. Unless I wanted him to break his back legs too, I had to do what he said.”

Twilight’s ears went down. “So… I mean… Dusk got better right?” Lightning nodded. “So… what did he make you do?”

Lightning closed her eyes. “Do I really have to talk about it?” Twilight nodded. The filly looked up again. “I was born with unusual abilities, a kind of tele-teli-telikin- the ability to move things with my mind. That’s what scared other ponies about me before… well before this became a thing,” she waved a hoof and electric energy flashed from it. “For some reason Gray wanted me to be able to control electricity. He tried to explain sometimes, I think something about trying to create a… “discount alicorn” as he called it. He hit me with a bunch of spells for several days, none of them I understood. After a few spells I was able to generate sparks with my mind, however I would shock myself whenever I did, hurting myself. I didn’t like using my new powers.”

“And whenever you refused to use them, he would threaten Dusk again?” asked Twilight.

“Sometimes. Other times, at first, he would just tie me up, attach me to a few wires and shock me until he got tired of doing it. I tried to fight back a few times, but my mind powers had been changed so much I could only use electricity, which only hurt me. He said he was trying to increase my… resistance… I don’t know, it just hurt, it really hurt… please I am done with that part of my life, it’s over, it’s over, my life is better now.”

“Lightning I-“ Twilight tried to respond, but Lightning wasn’t listening.

Lightning started shouting. “NO! It’s over! Is HAS to be over! Do you have any idea what it was like? One of his favorite things to do was throw me in this kind of see through box with a divider. There was a button in the box. I was on one side, something I loved was on the other. If I pushed the button I got shocked, if I didn’t, the thing I loved would be burnt, chopped, crushed… Dusk, my toys, my books… what do you want me to say? I don’t understand what he wanted. He just liked hurting me okay?” she slowly got up and pulled a pair of saddle bags from the ground. She pulled out two small pony dolls, one of me and the other Apple Jack. “The Element Bearers, they were my favorite heroes, my favorite toys. Fluttershy let all ponies know that anyone could be kind. He burned her I front of me just for fun. Twilight was their brave leader, fighting to save Equestria from dangers big and small, she made me feel safe. He shaved her mane and tail and then dropped her in the other side of the box. I wanted to save her, but I could only shock myself a few times, and that wasn’t enough. He burned her too.” Fluttershy, without any notion of asking permission, got on the bed next to Lightning and pulled her into a wing hug.

Lightning started crying, but continued, not letting Twilight try to steer the story back on track again… actually I think Twi was just as speechless as myself by this point. “Rarity, the most beautiful pony, giving to anyone in need… I could only take four shocks for her, so she was chopped in half and burned too, her beautiful mane catching fire so fast… he threw me the pieces but I couldn’t save them. Honest Apple and Rebel Rainbow, best of friends and worst of enemies, Trixie told me they protected all the children of Equestria… I protected them, I got shocked seven times for each of them, but I had too… I don’t know. I had to save them… why was I only strong enough for them? Pinkie just made me feel happy, so funny and jumpy, kinda like me when I’m happy. I couldn’t take more than five shocks for her. She was smashed with a hammer.” Lightning pulled out two more toys. They looked like Apple Bloom and… I could only guess the remains of a Sweetie Belle toy. “No one really sells Cutie Mark Crusader dolls, in fact most ponies don’t know who they are. However Trixie sold them for one bit a piece. Pretty cheap, so Melony bought them for me to shut me up back when I was six. I had all three. They were on the other side of the box, I could only take three shocks and a blade fell on them. Apple Bloom and Sweetie fell before the blade hit them, Scootaloo’s plastic catching it. She didn’t break so her friends survived. She was ruined, and just for fun Gray burnt Sweetie’s hair, but he let me have my two not ruined toys back.”

I cringed. Of course Scootaloo was the one who was destroyed. Course now that I thought about it, maybe now it made sense that Lightning called my daughter the bravest filly alive. Maybe that nickname didn’t really come from Trixie.

Finally Lightning pulled out a stuffed animal. It was so sad to look at, but she hugged it to herself. “I’ve had this one since before I can remember,” she sobbed into it. “Luna…” The stuffed creature was singed in several places, her proud mane and tail were trimmed and scattered. It had stitches around its neck and legs and its eyes didn’t match. “Daddy, my real daddy, Torkuda, paid to have her fixed. Gray did so many things to her. He laughed afterwards… I don’t know if Doctor Gray would have really killed Dusk, but I always hit that button when he was on the other side of the box. Sometimes it hurt so much I couldn’t… I black out. I came to and sometimes Gray would tease me that Dusk was dead… one time he made me believe Dusk was buried under the house… he had me tied up and put me over the spot where he said he buried my brother. He made voices, impersonating Dusk screaming for help-“

“That’s enough,” Twilight said, finally finding the wherewithal to respond. Myself, I was still shocked that I was even hearing something like this. “You don’t have to tell us everything that happened to you. Just what’s… relevant…”

“Like what?” asked Lightning. “He just did things. I don’t know why. He would try to explain, but what he said didn’t make any sense. Shock me so I wouldn’t be shocked? Force me to shock myself so I wouldn’t care about the pain? How does that work? That stuff with some kind of magic… I guess it worked, but how?” In my own head, sure I understood what that stuff meant, as an athlete I understood conditioning. But make no mistake, there is a HUGE difference between conditioning and what I was hearing about. Course Lightning used her powers now with no pain at all so… no, the results didn’t matter, what the doctor did was torture plain and simple. You see, conditioning… why explain it? I just wanted this doctor dead. I actually regretted that I couldn’t figure out a way to destroy that monster all the ways he destroyed Lightning’s toys. “You want to know why he looks the way he does now? He used to look normal. However eventually he started to talk about immort- immortality. He said there was a light path to living forever, but it was too hard for most ponies. There is also a dark path. I don’t know how it works, but what I understood, he had to become a monster and… and he had to kill someone… “in a room swelling with fear”… He cut his own face and cast spells on himself. He tried to kill Dusk, but Luna found us just in time…” Lightning started to smile, a rather evil gleam in her eyes. “I heard the doctor scream when she attacked him. “I laughed. I laughed so hard I scared the bat ponies with Luna. His screams were so funny. I didn’t see what she did to him, but I hope it hurt, I hope it hurt so much that-“ Fluttershy put up a hoof.

“That’s enough of that. You let us worry about getting rid of this monster,” Fluttershy said.

Twilight shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not enough. Knowing the doctor’s character doesn’t tell me how to fight him. What can Doctor Gray do? How did he break your wing without anyone seeing? How did he disappear? How did he fly without flapping? Self mutilation, a few spells… there’s nothing that can make that possible in your story. What can he do? What that isn’t well… I don’t know, normal?”

“I don’t understand how his power works.” Lightning responded. “The… experiments he did on me to make my electricity powers work better… he said I was an experiment myself. Just an experiment. I’m not the… “finished product”. He said he wanted to learn how to isolate different types of magic. Light, sound, heat, projection, electricity, colors… so many things. Electricity on me was just an experiment.”

“Is there a finished product?” asked Twilight.

Lightning shook her head. “He was supposed to be the finished product himself. Whatever he would control, he was supposed to control it WAY better than I control electricity. But thank everything, thank all of it, Luna finished him off. He was stopped… he was stopped, stopped, stopped… he wasn’t stopped was he?”

Twilight closed her eyes. She looked down and to the right, doing her best to control her breathing, obviously having a lot of emotions running at the moment. “He will be, trust me.” She looked at me. “Rainbow, come with me.” She walked out of the room. I followed.

Anger started to rise up in me. I didn’t understand how anypony could do things like that. The only reasons Lightning gave sounded like total bullshit. Immortality? Conditioning? Isolating magic? Something impossible and a few base concepts, that helped him sleep at night while torturing a filly? Twilight walked out of the hospital and I just followed barely aware of my surroundings. I was just so angry. My anger eclipsed any fear I felt.

Twilight finally did a heal turn and I almost smacked my face into hers. “IT DIES! IT DIES! IT DIES!”

“You mean he dies?” I asked.

“IT! That THING doesn’t deserve to be called a pony!” she stomped her front hooves. “Torturing a little filly, breaking her toys for fun, threatening a beautiful friendship, manipulating a little girl… he dies by my hoof!”

Okay so this was… Twilight? “But we don’t know anything about how to fight him.” I pointed out. “Look Twi I-“

Twilight glared at me, then rolled her eyes. “Weren’t you listening?” she asked. “He was trying to ascend through darkness, create cheap alicorns and then his power, she said it, it’s projection. Think about it. Everything we saw, that explains all of it. None of it was real, just projections, illusions. We find the real pony he should be easy enough to kill.”

“Twi… look I’m angry too… but you and I, we’re better than this. We don’t kill-“

“Sombra, Chrysalis, Trek,” Twilight interrupted. “I watched as my brother and his wife sent Chrysalis flying to her doom, Sombra was shredded and Trek was placed in hades forever. Remember? And you know what? Is it such a crime for me to admit that I’m glad they’re all gone? I want this guy to get blasted too. Maybe not kill but…” she shook her head.

“Twilight?” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Twilight has her moments… and they’re way worse than mine.

“I-“ Twilight paused. “You’re right, what I’m saying doesn’t sound right. I just… look, I know none of us know that girl too well, but you saw her face, you saw her toys… how could anyone be so mean to a little filly? It makes no sense. It’s enraging it’s… really scary. I keep imagining myself in that box…” she shook her head. “But really,” she started again, “He’s just an illusionist, so how hard can he be to beat? Especially now that we know that. I mean it’s not like every time I so much as look right I think I get a glimpse of those eyes… it’s not as if that means he could be watching us right now and we wouldn’t even know. He can apparently make himself invisible.” Twilight and I started looking around us.

I wasn’t exactly petrified, and I got the sense that neither was Twi, but the possibility of that guy watching us that very instant did send a few chills down my spine.

Twilight started walking away. “I’m gonna go get Spike to send the princesses a letter. Lightning did mention Luna after all, maybe she knows something.” she said. “You go back and keep an eye on Lightning. Remember, if I’m right, this guy is a master of illusion. Keep your wits about you. Don’t trust your eyes.”

As she left ear shot, I mumbled to myself. “”Don’t trust your eyes”, most comforting words ever spoken.”

Comments

[RainSoar-best]

Wow, I never thought that Twilight could get so angry. I mean, I understand why, but damn. I literally had to take a few steps back. Heck of a good chapter, though. I Would most likely have the same reaction as her as in I want to see this person, or pony, dead. And off of this world where he can't hurt anyone else. Anyways, great chapter, keep it up!

[SciWriter]

6727378

Yea he's a bad guy. No spoilers on his fate though, sorry.

I think a lot of fimfic writers are either okay with rewriting the characters' personalities a bit from the show (which is fine) or they forget that Twi and her friends are anything but special forces operatives. Stuff kinda like this is dropped on them because they're the element bearers, but they were never prepared for it. And if the last episode of season four is any indication, they really can snap. By this point, I think Twi especially is probably developing anger issues. Spike is likely the only thing keeping her from going nuts. I think in the end, it's a good thing Twilight's throw down with Trek didn't end in her winning by overpowering him in anger. Pretty sure we would have a very different character if that happened. (Yes, I know it's a show, Goku witnessed his world blowing up how many times and never changed, but I'm, for the moment, trying to see how things might have worked if they were close to real.)