The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Secrets And Foals

With a wet shiver, Starlight dropped onto the raised bridge connecting Percival's manor to the Izvaldi hospital, taking shelter beneath its roof from the rain. Jamjars followed close behind.

"Brrbrrbrr..." Jamjars shook out her mane, trembling. "Okay. We need to dry off. And then we move onwards! You wouldn't have a spell for that, would you?"

Starlight shook her head, teeth chattering. "Just crystals, lifting things and teleporting. You?"

Jamjars stiffly shrugged. "Everyone can lift things. And no. Just my friction and camouflage spells." She glanced toward the hospital entrance. "Well, we're not getting any warmer out here. Come on."

"The hospital?" Starlight frowned. "I thought you were interested in what's inside the mansion!"

"Oh, we found plenty interesting in the mansion," Jamjars assured, getting up and moving, her tail too wet to flick properly. "Now it's time for a different lead. The hospital is the way to the schoolhouse, and the schoolhouse is apparently built on top of an orphanage. Kero, Izvaldi, Ironridge foals... Remember? What do you want to bet there's something worth finding in there?"

Starlight raised an eyebrow. "You'll probably find a lot of sleeping foals."

"Nah." Jamjars reached the hospital door, tested it, and found it unlocked, the lights still on beyond despite the late hour. "I'm sure someone will be staying up. I just want to know if any of the foals here are from Ironridge. Kero's mercenary foals? That'll tell us whether things are connected for sure."

"But we already know that?" Starlight followed her inside, relieved to feel that the building had heating. "When we were getting our very first welcome tour and Percival was leading us around, he told us they tried to help ponies abroad, and talked about Kero bringing back Varsidelian war orphans and disadvantaged Ironridge foals? Remember?"

Jamjars' eye twitched.

Starlight blinked. "You forgot, didn't you?"

"Ugh!" Jamjars stomped. "I was there! How could I have missed something like that?"

Starlight shrugged, realizing they were leaving a considerable trail of water and wondering if they should be concerned about being followed. "Probably because you were busy overreacting to the Firefly Sisters. Remember that? You almost fainted across my back."

"Right. I... Heehee..." Jamjars somehow managed to turn a little pink despite being frozen. "Right. Never mind, then. Okay... in that case, we know we're on to something, so there's more to be found by digging deeper. If anyone expects me to believe this is just for charity when Percival ordered that to happen in the first place, they have another... Towels!"

A fresh linens cart for restocking rooms was parked along the hallway, its attendant having apparently wandered off. Jamjars nearly dove in headfirst, stopping herself at the last moment and more modestly rubbing herself down with two or three in her aura. She threw another to Starlight.

"Are you sure?" Starlight gratefully got to work on her mane, pausing once it stopped dripping to start blotting at her fur. "Kero is from Izvaldi. That doesn't mean anyone in Izvaldi is telling him what to do."

"Eh..." Jamjars rolled around on her towels, wiggling herself against them. "Yeah, but Percival built this school, and if he's having Kero bring those foals back here, it means he wanted it in the first place. Look, I know lies and underhoofed dealing when I smell them, okay? I'm a professional at this."

Starlight gave her a dubious look. "Or maybe Kero came to Percival and told him he had a lot of foals that he didn't know what to do with, and Percival thought maybe helping them would make him look good. And it's clearly impossible Percival did it to be nice..."

"Hey." Jamjars stared her straight in the face. "Do you want to believe the worst of Izvaldi here or not? They were taking care of Puddles, their mercenary had the stone needed to fix her, they're obviously up to no good. So if they're up to something there, it's safe to assume they're up to something here, too."

"Fine..." Starlight sighed, finishing with her towel and wrapping it around her tail to ensure she wouldn't trail more water. "But as someone who ran away from home, I can tell you everyone here is going to be happy they have a place where someone actually cares or else more concerned with getting adopted than where they actually came from."

Jamjars booped her on the nose, grinning. "And as someone who also ran away from home, I can tell you they might resent being created based on some dumb mercenary's desire to get paid and then shuffled around in circumstances where there's far too many of them for them to be cared for or raised properly." Her grin turned to a scowl. "This is serious business, Starlight. We're not talking about numbers or objects here, like smuggling moon glass. We're talking as two young mares who had to make do with self-reliance because some idiot parents made is without being prepared for what they were getting into, and we're talking about a long list of foals someone hired a company of mercenaries to bring into the world in the worst circumstances possible." She glared into Starlight's eyes. "I dare you to tell me you can't take that personally."

"I..." Starlight swallowed from Jamjars' intensity. "You might be right..."

"Right or wrong, I'm definitely mad, and I sure am capable of doing something about it," Jamjars huffed. "Come on. Let's keep... Huh." She trailed off, staring up at the ceiling in front of them.

"Huh?" Starlight tilted her head, following Jamjars' gaze and seeing a few navigation signs, but nothing interesting.

Jamjars slowly stepped forward. "Hey Starlight," she said, looking down a branch to another waiting room. "This hospital has a maternity ward, you know?"

Starlight glanced at the signs again. "Uh huh. So?"

"The place where mares come to have foals?" Jamjars nudged her to follow, turning down the hallway. "What do you want to bet that's also where they keep population records and things? Birth certificates, you know..." She raised an eyebrow. "Wanna make a bet? I'll bet you if Izvaldi is more involved with all the Ironridge foals who get moved to the orphanage than just a charity case, they'll have data or birth certificates for them here, too."

Starlight frowned. "Jamjars, your logic makes no sense! If Kero was able to get things like that in the first place, why wouldn't he give them over along with the foals? Wouldn't they have them either way?"

"Not if someone wanted to hide that all the foals' fathers were one mercenary," Jamjars confidently corrected. "If Kero had something to hide from Izvaldi, he'd either change any documentation he gave or not give it in the first place. But if he doesn't, he'd just leave them alone."

"Or he might change them anyway?" Starlight tilted her head.

"He might." Jamjars shrugged. "And if he does, we'll learn nothing by looking. But if he forgot, we definitely learn something. And we're here, so why not look?"

"Ugh. Fine." Starlight folded her ears, giving up on questioning Jamjars' course of action. The filly had her own brand of logic, and as long as it didn't get them locked up as heretics beneath Gyre, they would be fine. "You lead the way..."

Jamjars trotted into the maternity ward with Starlight close behind. The lights were dim and the counter unstaffed, which Starlight thought was a little odd given the nature of the thing, but it was good for them. Plenty of chairs and potted plants adorned the waiting room, along with informational posters showing stages of development and good sleeping posture and other uninteresting medical things. Jamjars poked her head down hallways and through doors leading to rooms for ponies that needed them, looking instead for an administrative room or an office. "Not here... not here..." she murmured as she searched.

"Here?" Starlight tapped a door that was actually locked.

"Wonderful!" Jamjars trotted over, concentrated, and telekinetically managed to open it from the other side, sticking her tongue out at the door. "Who even bothers with locks anyhow? Probably just trying to keep out weird griffons."

The door led to a back room that was swiftly illuminated by both of their horns, filled with filing cabinets, big inflatable balls, a few storage boxes and several rolling racks of medical equipment. An empty entrance led behind the reception counter, where Starlight found an appointment ledger open to the following day's date. She scanned it with minor interest; five unfamiliar names were scheduled for checkups. In a city the size of Izvaldi, she had no idea if that was high or low.

"Here we go..." Jamjars hummed behind her, teetering on two legs as she reached up a cabinet. "Records? No, these are directions to houses for making house calls. This one? Ugh, these are for the mothers... Come on, give me something about the mercenary foals!"

"Are you sure you're looking in the right place?" Starlight frowned, trotting back in after her. "They could have nothing here at all and you'd never-"

"Aha!" Jamjars interrupted her with a quiet cry of victory. "This is... Wait, huh?"

Starlight peeked over her shoulder. Jamjars was levitating three folders marked Ironridge, Varsidel and Yakyakistan. "I thought these were them, but there's one for Yakyakistan too?" She frowned. "Whatever. Come on, what else could possibly be in the Ironridge folder in a maternity ward's filing cabinet...?"

The pages weren't birth certificates. They were charts, looking like progressive revisions of the same thing each delivered about a month apart. Jamjars quickly parsed to the newest, a set of several pages stapled together, and started reading without showing Starlight.

Her pupils slowly shrank.

"What is it?" Starlight pushed in alongside her. "Were you actually right? Let me..."

The leftmost column was always a mare's name. Second to the left was sometimes a name, sometimes marked Unborn, mostly towards the top. Then was a date, probably either a birth date or a due date. If those were mothers and foals, she didn't see a name column for the fathers, so Jamjars wasn't about to be vindicated there... but the next columns gave her a double-take.

One was an image, printed small, always a pattern that looked suspiciously like a cutie mark, different for each one. Some rows at random read Unverified, but most were filled, even for the foals marked as not being born yet. Most were accompanied by a one-sentence description, things like 'Talent for gardening' and 'Talent for math'. The final column was blank at the top, until she scrolled near to the bottom of the last few pages, where a select few entries for the foals born years ago read Transferred.

"T-This..." Jamjars touched an entry near the top with a trembling hoof. White Chocolate. Unborn. A date estimate. A small picture of the cutie mark Starlight recognized as fading from White Chocolate's flank so long ago in Ironridge.

"Using moon glass," Jamjars breathed, looking vaguely stabbed. "On a mare who is pregnant and blank. Transfers the mark inside to the foal instead."

Starlight swallowed. "That's what it looks like."

Jamjars put the paper down and looked up at her, eyes burning. "That's what they're doing. It all adds up! Izvaldi gave Kero the moon glass. He lied in his will about it being unrelated. They had him go to Ironridge, look for m-mares who wouldn't be able to do anything about it, u-used them to..." She trembled, about to erupt. "Now they're bringing them back here. They're collecting ponies with these! Not multiple-personality ponies like what happens when most blank ponies use moon glass and get another moon soul stuck in their bodies with theirs. They're using ponies like my mother to grow bodies for these... these..."

"Like Valey..." Starlight's ears fell. "But why? What does anyone gain from this? Who would benefit? Or even have the idea to do something like this in the first place?"

"Don't know, don't care." Jamjars calmly floated the files back where they belonged, sealing up the cabinet and preparing to leave without a trace. "And they won't be able to care either once I've finished ruining them."

Comments

[Zapdroid]

So if the cutie marks inside moonglass have a soul, and you can transfer that soul do an unborn foal, what happens to the foals original soul? Does it develop simultaneously, is it crushed by the intruding one, or has it not had a chance to be created in the first place?

[Mini-Joe]

yeah go jamjars! beat them up!

[Boopers]

Wasn't that unborn foal cutie mark thing known for a looong time already? The more interesting question is, why does White Chocolate's foal have the same cutie mark cute Puddles had? This is not something they can possibly miss. And what does the document say about the talent of her foal? And how could they take all those foals from their mothers without anyone noticing? Or maybe they just brought a few that ended up as orphans?

[Czar_Yoshi]

9476201 The main point of Kero doing this with mares who were hit the hardest by Ironridge's changing economy and not well-able to take care of themselves or their children was so he could come in and say "So hey, this was my employee's fault and I feel bad about it, need a hand in taking care of them?" It was a while ago, but this is how his mercs described the situation as being handled when they were taking about it after finding the will.

Readers guessed this was what the moon glass cutie marks were doing a while ago, also during the part of Ironridge where they raided Kero's villa, but no one picked up on it in-world. In their defense, Jamjars wasn't present, Maple was having a minor freakout over Puddles' obsidian and afraid that they were getting drawn into another conspiracy or political drama, and most everyone else was either distracted by the fact that the mercs got paid to do that in the first place or figuring out what to do about Maple's concerns. But I can't very well let the characters learn and also take something like this completely in stride without reacting, so... here we are.

As for White Chocolate and Puddles, both did indeed have snowflake cutie marks. This isn't saying there's nothing there, but when half the pegasi in the show have weather-related cutie marks, keep in mind it's probably a safe guess that theirs aren't the only snowflakes around.

[Venlinelle]

Whoever predicted this half a million words ago, congratulations!

[sploopy slooder]

once i again i say this.......but thats fucked up.