Second Chances
Kira floated in the water, surrounded by her torn and broken dive equipment. A regulator hose belched bubbles weakly up into the water, and scraps of her ripped BCD formed a diffuse cloud. Black blood floated in the water not far from her, a strange amoeba that undulated and drifted. Somehow, she’d managed to fire her speargun despite having stumps for hands. It hadn’t made a difference. She was still dead.
But I’m still here.
This must be what people always meant when they spoke about an out-of-body experience, because there was her body floating in the center of the cloud of destruction. Like a horse, or a bat, or some combination of both, with a dark coat now torn and streaked with blood. Her own blood tinted the water pinkish right around the corpse, but didn’t make it further than that.
So what happens now, I haunt the ocean?
Something moved in the water behind her, something different from the terrible creatures that had made her mind go fuzzy and ultimately killed her. A flash of green, with white hair. It was a fish, or maybe a horse, or some combination of the two. A creature with glittering scales, that swam through the water far more gracefully than she had. Yet its motions didn’t seem quite right, like it was slicing parallel to the water along a different axis, one her eyes couldn’t see.
She was larger than Kira, larger than her old body had been, with frilly wing-fins and a horn on her forehead. She circled around Kira in the water, or where her center of vision was anyway. She didn’t have a body anymore.
“You are one unlucky pony,” she said. Her voice wasn’t distorted by the water even a little, but cut directly into Kira’s ears. She wasn’t mocking, but somehow—regretful. “This equipment looks… human.”
“It was,” Kira said, or tried to say. She didn’t have a body, yet her voice seemed to come from somewhere. Not the water, but the strange green creature. Was she speaking for both of them? “What else would it be?”
“What you are,” she answered, turning her back on Kira. “Come on then, unlucky creature. Your time among the living is over.”
Kira probably shouldn’t have done it—she probably should’ve followed silently and not complained. But after being violently ripped apart and drowning at the same time, she found it hard to care about what anyone else thought. “No.”
The creature stopped. Her strange voice echoed through the water, leaving a trail that didn’t quite map to where her fins had been. More like her mane was on fire, leaving bits of itself behind in the water as she swam. “No? Do you know what happens to spirits like yours left abandoned out here? Do you want to find out?”
“No,” she snapped. Kira wasn’t sure how she moved, but somehow she drifted closer to the speaker. “This is fucking unfair, whoever you are. God? I never thought that God was a seahorse, but… if that’s what you are, can’t you, like… even the scales or something?” She gestured, and suddenly she had an arm, or the outline of one made of faint blue fireflies, pointing back at her transformed corpse.
The other didn’t answer for at least a minute, expression thoughtful. “I’m not what you think I am, Kira. But I do remember you. Your life was… tragically shortened by the event. You could’ve made something of yourself. But no one ever told you that life would be fair.”
“Maybe it should be,” she argued. “You could do something about it, if you wanted. You’re here to do… something. Take me to the afterlife, I guess? That must mean you have the power to send me back.”
She stopped, swimming back in a tight circle that took her past Kira and over to the corpse. She stared down at it, where huge sections of the torso had been torn. Of course, the wound that had killed Kira in the end was her neck, torn out and bleeding. “You don’t understand what you ask,” she said. “Some have wished for this. All refuse the price it requires. You would too.”
“I won’t,” Kira argued stubbornly. She followed the seahorse back to her body, tried to force her way back inside. It didn’t work, obviously. “I wasn’t finished. Whatever price it costs to go back, I’ll pay.”
“The world isn’t what you think it is,” she said. Her voice was distant and wistful, like she was looking at something Kira couldn’t see. “You could be done with all pain. There’s no reason for you to remain here any longer.”
“I want to,” she argued again. “Please. Send me back.”
“If I do…” She sounded suddenly resolved. “It will not be to continue living as another mortal pony. I would… withhold from collecting you, if you serve me. There have been… disturbing developments, in the living world. My hooves are stayed from interference, but yours would not be.”
“You want me to do things,” she repeated. “Fine, I can do things. I’m the best at doing things, you’ll see. Anything you want. I’m a diver and a gymnast and—”
She froze, feeling a sudden stab of pain around her throat. She’d thought she was done with this, but… as she watched, the seahorse-thing reached out and touched her neck. The corpse’s throat healed. Scarred flesh grew over the damage, with spotty fur that would probably take some time to regrow. Then she touched Kira’s chest, and she felt an echo of pain in her own body. It was all rushing back—the cold, the suffocation, the terrible claws of the monsters that had killed her.
“What are you doing to me?”
“What you asked,” the pony said. Then she took the corpse by one hoof, yanking her forward. Suddenly Kira was blasting through the water, pulled with speed she could scarcely comprehend. She lifted away from her fallen diving gear, then up through the surface and into the starry sky. The seahorse was now a regular horse, except that she had wide feathery wings, trailing sparkling sea water behind her as she flew.
Kira hacked and coughed, and lungfuls of bloody sea-water came up through her lips, trailing away into the air behind her. It burned as it went, making her eyes well up with tears, but she didn’t care. She could feel her heartbeat again. The awful numbness was gone.
“Where are…” The words came stretched and pained through a throat that hadn’t completely healed yet, swept away by the blurring wind. She looked down, and saw land underneath her now. The sun rose rapidly across the sky, burning her eyes. “Can’t you make me back into myself?”
“You are yourself,” she said. But they were slowing now, as a distant city came into view. The streets were empty, yet all the lights were on. Kira didn’t recognize the place, though she found the design strangely modern. More like a theme park than a real place, with drones hovering in the air and lots of automatic systems. “But that yourself is currently useless to me.”
They landed abruptly on the edge of a wharf. Suddenly Kira felt how completely soaked she was, as though she’d just been dumped here by a gigantic wave. Water splashed all around her, and somewhere far away the ocean seemed to roar in frustration.
Her companion landed in front of her, her back to the shore. “Listen carefully, Kira. While you serve me, I will prolong your existence. When your service ends…” Her throat burned again, and something bright red splashed onto the dock beneath her. Fresh, dark blood. “Your life ends. In the moment you are no longer willing to serve me, we will finish what I started. Is that clear?”
She nodded, clutching in vain at her throat to try and close the wound. Blood spread over her hooves. Her head swam, and she could barely even hold herself sitting. Kira decided in that moment that she would be willing to work for a very long time.
“A being will come for you. When she finds you, tell her ‘A-17-Blue.’ At her question, tell her you need to be trained to use a Soulshear. Do everything you are told. If you fail—”
“I know!” She raised one hand—which she didn’t have. One of her wings responded instead. Yet the speaker seemed to get the message, because her throat didn’t tear open. “I’ll die!”
The greenish pony advanced on her. Though in the light of the rising sun, her body seemed increasingly transparent. If it wasn’t for the fresh pain in her throat, she might not have believed any of this had really happened. “When you are finished, I will send word. Until then, become useful.”
“I will,” she promised to an empty dock. Then she collapsed.
She woke in a daze, conscious only of several dim outlines surrounding her. There were several of them, each one with skin that looked more like plastic yellowed in the sun than anything else. The three of them crowded close to her, one with a medical kit and the other two with a stretcher.
They wore threadbare uniforms of stitched cloth, with only the vague suggestion of a human shape and no real anatomy visible underneath. Yet they were human, when she was not.
“You have intruded in Bountiful,” they said, as soon as they saw her eyes. “According to the terms of the Alexandria Proclamation, I have rendered necessary medical care. You will now be transported to the nearest safe pony settlement for reclamation.”
It was probably just the insanity Kira had been through in the last few days, but it seemed like they spoke as a chorus. They were old and broken, but each one in a slightly different way, so that collectively they could communicate normally.
“A… seventeen… blue,” she coughed, looking up at the one with the medical bag. There was no danger she might forget her instructions, not when losing her life was the obvious consequence.
They froze. Plastic eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment—then they turned. Suddenly their motions were more natural. They lifted the stretcher evenly, while one bent down to lift her onto it. “Override of Athena subsystem completed at timestamp JD 3189166.5 through one-time-pad A-17-Blue. Arbitrary execution permission granted. State request.”
“Train me to use a Soulshear,” she said. “And… take care of me. I want somewhere to live… some pants. That kinda shit.”
“Request acknowledged,” said the one with medical gear. Then she tossed the box aside, bending down to meet her eyes even as the other two lifted the stretcher. “You’ll find it lonely in Bountiful now that all my people are dead, UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
She wasn’t sure, but she nodded anyway, sticking out a hoof. “Kira. That’s my name.”
“Input acknowledged, Kira. I am Athena, caretaker of Bountiful on behalf of the Human Preservation Initiative. Current directive: endure pending the return of my population. And now… training you. Fascinating.”
“Tell me about it.” She spread her wings weakly, flexing them one at a time. Everything about this body was strange, but she was rapidly adjusting to it. Compared to no body at all, being a horse-thing was a fantastic alternative.
“I will, in exhaustive detail,” she said. “But not at the present moment. You require rest, antibiotics, and sugar. We will speak when you are repaired.”
Athena was honest in every respect. They did speak—Kira had no one else to talk to in the vast city of the dead. But Athena seemed friendly enough for a computer program with thousands of identical bodies.
In time, Kira came to learn about the Event. She learned how to use her body, and, eventually, how to wield the Soulshear. If only she’d known sooner, she never would’ve died.
She found a pony waiting in her quarters one evening, after a day of difficult training in the city above. Bountiful had plenty of apartments at pony size, and she’d filled this one to the brim. She had lots of little outfits in here, souvenirs from a city with no one but herself. True to her original orders, she had many pairs of pants. She never wore them anymore.
She found the lights already on, and a dark green pony sitting at her table. She was sipping Kira’s tea from Kira’s own electric kettle. “Athena, somebody’s here!”
Athena didn’t respond, despite the dozen bodies Kira knew were lurking in the building around her, and the microphones covering every inch. The pony set down her tea. “Do you remember me?”
Kira felt the burn of salt-water against her throat, felt blood dripping down her hooves. But it was just a memory—when she looked down, the old carpet was clean. “I remember.”
The pony settled something onto the table in front of her, pointing down at it with a wing. Kira hurried over, bending down to look.
It was a map, showing their current location on the west coast with a dot, and a line leading down into where Mexico had once been, long ago. “This is your first assignment. Go, and prove yourself a profitable servant.”
“Uh…” Kira looked up from the map. “Go and do what? This looks like it leads to… a whole city.”
The pony nodded. “The bruja Poinsettia is raising a cult of ponies who wish to keep her young forever. They are collecting the blood of townsfolk to do it. You will find them, and end the cult.”
“Why?” Kira asked. She tried not to sound petulant, only curious. “Why do you care?”
“All must accept that their existence is finite,” she answered. “Death will come for all regardless—but teachings like this despoil the boundary, and make you unprepared for the end. You will end it in my name.”
Kira rose and walked away, staring out the projected window. It showed images taken from New York at night, convincing enough that she could almost believe she was there. It was going to be hard to leave Bountiful behind. “But how will I—”
One of Athena’s drones stood at the table, cleaning up a spilled patch of tea. It dribbled down off the edge. There was no map, or any sign another pony had been there. “Kira? You were having some sort of… attack. I was afraid to interfere with you. Are you in distress?”
“No,” she said, turning away. “But I need a plane. Can you fly me to Mexico City?”
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You make a deal with the reaper mare, you go riding on her behalf. That's just how it works. Good to see Alex is still making friends after a fashion.
Oh wow! This answers so many questions, but now I have so many more...!
I confess to being a bit lost at the moment, but I can be patient and wait for more to ask questions.
Was it established at some other point that Alex performed, or even could perform, the Gray's duties? I don't recall it ever being said that she ferried the dead herself. Could be related to that favor I'm pretty sure she said the Gray owed her at some point after this.
Assuming this is Alex, but c'mon.
The complete functions show that for anything to exist, nothing must exist at some point. But because something has to exist to be experienced, the nothingness is never experienced.
Galios.
Trying to place this in timeline has me confused.
For Bountiful to be abandoned and the carpet old it has to be past Alex's death, especially since that's when Soulsheers were invented and Athena started really becoming more than just an AI.
But Alex was Death and that didn't happen until sometime after The War.
9738845
It might be Gaia, or whatever name Alex gave the earth spirit.
Or it could be Death, who was personified back in Founders.
9738596
Well she kinda took that over after the whole Mordite thing, and we see her performing in that role in Knight of Wands...but this is WAY before that, possibly even while Alex was down and out for a while since Bountiful isn't completely abandoned yet.
Which if that is the case, it is kinda funny to think that Miss Should Be Dead here isn't too far from Proto-Alicorn Alex's corpse....
Man, who would think that 10,000 years of continuity would get so complicated?