• Published 22nd Dec 2015
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Human Rituals - Aegis Shield



A human stays among ponies, mystifying them with his odd traditions and customs.

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Tattoos

Human Rituals
Tattoos
(1 Year, 6 Months Since Arrival)

I mumbled through my morning routine as I usually did. I was more than a twinge nervous, to be honest. Twilight’s “human studies” had wandered towards the physical lately, and my lack of artistry skills had led her to the conclusion that I needed to be medically examined for a physiology section. As in, naked. After securing a good number of bits (“but it’s for science!”) and a big number of favors in return, I’d agreed to be cross-examined by twilight and a local medical pony. For science.

It had been an interesting holiday season, and finally I was able to leave my windows open now that spring had arrived. Watching the ponies stampede about during ‘Winter Wrap Up’ had been an experience all its own. Who knew an entire town could be pulled in for a singular project like that? Work and school halted, mail didn’t come, everyone just ran about getting rid of snow, escorting birds and the like… It reminded me of home, when all the school kids went home for a week to harvest tobacco with their families... A-anyway, I’m getting distracted. It was spring again, okay?

A firm knock told me it was time. I opened the door to my private room and found a scarlet stallion waiting for me. “Ah, hey Big Macintosh.” I smiled a bit bashfully. He gave a slow, solemn nod. Truth be told, I wasn’t really thrilled on the idea of being poked and prodded by a bunch of mares. So, I’d paid off Big Mac to come and be my witness so I didn’t get molested or anything. This only equated to him being in the same room with a newspaper or something, but it made me feel a heck of a lot better. “Thanks for coming.”

“Eyuup,” he said, disinterested. We didn’t really get along that well, since I’d been kicked several times for ‘sneaking up on him.’ Wasn’t my fault his hearing was bad. I’m sure Applejack had given him one of her ‘most dependable friendship’ sorts of speeches to make him come. There weren’t a lot of stallions I knew in Ponyville by name, and Spike wasn’t really of age to be seeing anything like this, so that only left Big Mac.
“All set, Nei-i-i-gh?” Twilight was waiting, bouncing on her knees just a bit as we approached.

“Yeah,” I nodded. I was herded into a large drawing room that had been set with forms, charts to be filled out and such. A white mare with a healthcare plus sign on her rump stood waiting. She nodded, offering a friendly and practiced smile.

“This is Nurse Redheart, she’ll be helping me today,” Twilight said with an enthusiastic lift of her wings. As she spoke, the snowy white mare pulled on a pair of latex gloves with a snap.

“You’re not going to be probing me, are you?” I said, a little alarmed.

“What?! No!” Twilight said. “Why would I?!”

“Just checking…” I trailed off, shaking my head a bit. Twilight pulled the curtains and shut the door so we wouldn’t be spied on.
She pulled a recorder, clicking it on. “There’s about four hours of tape on this recorder. When the times up, you’re free to go!” she said. “Think of it like an hourglass.”

“Sure," I nodded.

“Ahem-hem!” Twilight stopped to compose herself to speak to the tape recorder. “This is Twilight Sparkle, aspiring scientist and… uhm… Princess of Friendship!” She giggled a little like being a Princess was still a novelty for her. “We are here for a complete physical examination of our friend ‘Nei-i-i-igh, a sapient and sentient creature from another plain of existence!” she did a tippy-tap dance while she spoke. “For his safety, I am joined by a medical professional, Nurse Redheart. Say hullo!”

“Hullo.”

“—And also a local friend of the same gender for personal safety concerns, Big Macintosh. Say hullo!”

“Eyuup.” Big Mac said, sitting behind a study desk with a newspaper already open. He wasn’t really there to watch, it seemed. Better for him to not see too much.

“Alright, let’s begin! Go ahead and disrobe for us, Ne-e-igh?” she asked.

I hesitated for a moment, “Er,” I said. There was a long silence.

“Oh right, ah,” Twilight stopped a moment to encourage me. “I know nudity is taboo where you come from, but you don’t have to worry about it here. There’s no other humans around!”

“Right,” I grumbled at her, thinking of the money and ‘science’ there was to be had. As I got undressed, I piled my clothes neatly to one side on a chair. Big Mac glanced up, but little else as he licked a hoof to turn the page of his paper.

“Hm,” Twilight said, pondering where to begin. Her tape recorder floated next to her. “Subject ‘Ne-i-igh, nicknamed ‘Peaches’ for the color of his skin for this study, stands…” she paused with a tape measure. “Precisely 18 hands tall, weighing…” she waited for me to stand on the scale. “190 units.” Nurse Redheart stood nearby, ready to take a heart rate, blood pressure, take a small blood sample and the like. Twilight spent a long time counting my teeth, pawing at my leg hair, examining my fingers and toes, and quite a bit more. She wanted to compare the bottom of my feet to my palms. She marveled at how thick the skin on my back was compared to that on my face or hands. With my permission she got a small snippet of my hair, a toe-nail clipping, and a swab from my mouth. “Peaches is also—what?!” she stopped while standing behind me. “Your butt!” she said with shock.

“What about it?” I said, turning about.

“You have a cutie mark! You always told me you didn’t!” Twilight said, rushing forward with a primitive camera to photograph it. “How did you hide this from me for over a year?!”

“You mean my tattoo?” Twilight’s translator band on my wrist buzzed. Really? They didn’t have a word for tattoo? They had body paint, Halloween costumes, nose piercings, make-up, but no tattoos? I felt a headache coming on.

“What is that word you just said?” Twilight held up her recorder for me to say it again.

“It’s a tattoo,” buzz, “It’s uh… ink in my skin.” I tried to put it in words the translator band would take.

“Somepony branded you?!” Twilight said, aghast. "No pony has been branded since the tribal wars thousands of years ago. Earth ponies were treated like slaves under the pegasi and unicorns! This is terrible!"

Nurse Redheart leaned, frowning clinically. “This is artwork, Princess, not a brand. He wasn’t a slave or anything.”

I stood there, sagging forward a bit while the two mares examined my backside for science. “How can you tell?” Twilight whispered rather loudly.

“The red here is layered into several tints. If he was a slave it would be a simple burn or symbol. Something that could be mass-produced quickly and easily. Numbers, or a company logo,” Nurse Redheart said.

“Did somepony own you?!” Twilight scampered around me to know. “What does it mean?!”

“It’s body art,” I said slowly. “I paid for it myself.”

“What do these runes mean?” Twilight asked. Her ‘humish’ was still broken and scattered, so she couldn’t string anything together without the translation band being recalibrated for her eyes.

“I... I love Mom,” I said lamely. Twilight stared at me. Nurse Redheart lifted a hoof to snicker as quietly as she could.

“Heh,” Big Mac said softly without looking up from his paper.

“College was an interesting time,” I defended. “It’s a… standard human tattoo.”

“Humans let themselves get branded with ink in their skins to say they love their mothers?” Twilight said, puzzled. “Didn’t it hurt?”

“I… don’t remember,” I said, blushing and looking to one side. I'd never been drunk before, and never again since. “A lot of people get a lot of different tattoos for a lot of different reasons. When my country went to war, my Dad got a tattoo of our nation’s flag on his shoulder to show his support, since he was too old and frail to fight.” I paused a little, "I knew a girl in college that got paw prints on her hips to show she liked doggysty... doggys." I amended that one since I was being recorded.

Twilight drank in the knowledge, touching her hoof to her chin. “Do all humans have these ink arts on them?”

“Oh no, not at all.”

“But there’s all different reasons to have them, and what they look like can be anything?” Twilight said. I nodded. “And it’s voluntary?” I nodded again. She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Ohh, time’s ticking, we’ll have to have a longer conversation about this later!” she went for her camera and some chalk after that. She started photographing me from every angle. My hands and feet were of particular interest. She had me stretch and bend in different ways to see if I could or if it took effort. She traced marker lines on my shoulder-blades to accentuate them. “Nurse Redheart, if you would?”

The white mare gave me a lead plate for my boy bits and took several full body shots of my skeleton with a waiting machine. “I’ll have these developed and sent to you, Princess,” she promised.

It would take me some time to get over the fact that Twilight was going to obsess over a simple tattoo and try to connect it with pony cutie marks. She later explained that ink in the skin wouldn’t suite a pony since they had fur—it would go to waste. She then asked me if I wanted a cutie mark, if I could explain how getting a tattoo worked, and if I wanted another one to represent a cutie mark in pony society. I turned her down pretty flatly. Rarity could just take the back pocket of my pants and put a big symbol on them, if it meant that much to her. But what would my pony-butt-symbol-cutie-mark thing be? I wasn't sure.