The things that end up on record
“Processing?” asked Sundance as he was led into what appeared to be a mad scientist’s lair. There were machines here, odd contraptions that he couldn’t recognise, and the walls were covered in curious crystalline growths that pulsed with unnatural light that made his eyes ache. “Processed into what?”
“Twilight’s safety must be ensured,” was Moondancer’s clinical response.
“I assure you, I’m harmless. Well, except for maybe how I smell.”
“We’ll see.” Moondancer’s voice was a cool, emotionless deadpan. “First, you get to have your picture taken.”
“My picture?” That didn’t sound so bad, and Sundance was somewhat relieved. “Still a little concerned about this processing, uh, thing.”
“Thaumatography.” Moondancer whirled around suddenly, without warning, and now stood nose to nose with Sundance. “Vinyl Scratch and Sumac Apple invented several new types of cameras. One of them allows us to photograph magical fields and emminations. Spectral dweomer thaumatography allows us to see spells, illusions, illusory cloaks, fields of alterations, polymorphs, metamorphs, polymimetic surface alterations—”
“I don’t know what that means,” Sundance said. “Tomatography?”
“It means,” she said with great care while ignoring his quip, “that no matter what you look like on the outside, we can see what you look like on the inside. If you are a changeling, or a mimic, we’ll be able to see past your illusions, no matter how sophisticated and well-protected.”
“Is this whole processing thing really necessary?” he asked. “I didn’t come to be processed.”
“It is very necessary.” Moondancer’s monobrow formed a relaxed V; it rather looked like the colony of coarse hairs all decided to head south like a flock of migratory swallows who packed their coconuts for a trip to some distant far-off tropical beach.
“Are you going to, uh, probe me?” asked Sundance.
Moondancer, her head tilted off to the left, paused to consider this question. “Do I look like some dreadful space alien from a Luna’s Day matinée science fiction double feature?”
Squirming, Sundance wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in this nightmare scenario. “Maybe just a little?”
“Do you want me to probe you?” Her monobrow V formed a somewhat sharper angle above her oversized, chunky glasses.
Before Sundance could think about his answer, his mouth betrayed him: “Yeah. Maybe. Kind of.”
“And ponies say that I am socially maladjusted and have trouble connecting with my fellow equines.” Her expression became rather deadpan, though her monobrow remained on fierce alert. “Look… you must be processed. We have to check for anomalies. Magical talents that warp or otherwise distort local reality in some way. These sorts of talents are distressingly common and subtly powerful. Twilight has encountered them before, and she makes every conceivable effort to avoid making the same mistake twice.”
“Also,” she added with a sniff, “you’re not just a pervert, but you’re a smelly pervert. That’s going down in your file.”
“Oh.” Sundance restrained his reaction and withheld his need to express his regrets. When he got home, he was going to tell River Raider that he was a smelly pervert, and that it was now on his permanent record. Why? He didn’t know why, but he hoped that maybe it would temper her opinion of his sickening, disgusting goodness. Who longed to be a naughty pervert? Sundance, that’s who.
“Once, a long time ago, Twilight encountered a pony whose magical talent influenced her behaviour. It altered her decision-making and caused her to do things that she would later come to regret. She failed to learn from this though, and it happened again. Now, she is proactive with her protections, which is why we check for anomalies.”
“What happened?” Sundance found himself wanting to know. Needing to know, perhaps. This was intriguing.
“Go and sit down in front of the reflector screen right over there, and I’ll tell you,” she replied. “Sit on the stool. Go on. Cooperate.”
“Is this… is this going to fry my gonads? Like an X-ray? Should I cover my bits with a lead apron or something?”
“You know, we haven’t actually checked for that. I’ll fill out some paperwork after we’re finished.” Left front hoof raised, she gestured at the stool whilst she levitated a bizarre camera off of the table. “Go sit down, please.”
“But my gonads—”
“Can be scientifically observed after the fact. Twilight pays well if you participate in a study.” Again, Moondancer gestured with her hoof. “Go and rest your gonads upon that stool.”
Cursing his submissive nature, Sundance dutifully sat down upon the stool, and then shifted his body around, unsure of how to protect his future foals from whatever was about to happen next. Moondancer powered on the camera; it whined, buzzed for a few seconds, and a red light flashed once. She held it up, patient, and cast a sidelong glance at the curious camera.
“Twilight once banished a pony from Ponyville. She did so under magical duress, without knowing that her behaviour was influenced. Another pony’s talent held influence over her ability to make decisions. Later, things got sorted out, and Twilight pieced together what had happened. Of course, she apologised, and she made things right, but she failed to learn her lesson. Eventually, she would be exposed to grift magic, which is charismatic in nature and influencing. She failed to take proper measures, and was again influenced by passive magic. Inveigled, perhaps? That might be a better, more accurate term? I don’t know. Could be wrong.”
The red light flashed again, and this drew a resigned sigh from Moondancer, who waited.
“As far as I know, I don’t have a magic talent,” Sundance said whilst he crossed his hind legs tight together with the hopes that his thighs could somehow protect him. “Though I did recently learn that I could discharge lightning.”
“Oh… that’s going down in your file. Twilight is well-defended against the electricity, but it never hurts to be careful. Random discharges cause unexpected consequences.”
“I would never hurt Twilight—”
“You would if you were mind-controlled, or geased.”
“But I—what?”
“This is why we process you. Twilight had an assassin attempt to kill her in her study. It was somepony she knew. She was able to break the mind-compulsion spell and save her friend. Still, it was quite traumatic.” Moondancer gently shook the camera, and then snorted. “It’s taking its sweet time to warm up today.”
This was an awful lot to take in. Somepony, a friend, tried to kill Twilight. In her own study, no less. Slowly his mind began to grasp the necessity for all of this—whatever all of this was—and he resigned himself to being poked and prodded. It was logical, sensible, and it allowed him to spend time with this weirdly attractive mare. Physically, she wasn’t his type—but something deep within him told him that she could thoroughly dominate him if she so pleased—which was quite a thrilling prospect. He would be utterly powerless against her magical onslaughts… not that he would resist.
Magical strength was still strength, and this mare radiated scary raw power.
The camera emitted a green flash, and Moondancer said, “Cover your thunderballs, I’m about to take your picture.”
Sundance and his gonads couldn’t tell what effect the camera had on them, other than they felt peculiar. He’d sneezed several times due to the stench of ozone, and was now lightheaded during his period of recovery. Moondancer cast an annoyed glance at the camera, which now flashed a red light once again, and Sundance guessed that more pictures would be taken.
He glanced over at his saddlebags, which rested on a nearby table, and then had himself a look around the room. Nothing was recognisable to him, with the exception of the camera and the furniture. Strange machines stood near the walls. Some contraption hung from the ceiling above him. The floor had shiny metal plates that glowed with an electric blue light.
“Tarnished Teapot was the pony that Twilight banished,” Moondancer said whilst she patiently waited for the camera to finish charging. “They are good friends now. Close. She trusts him a great deal, and he is one of her confidants. Just like I am. Though sometimes I don’t know why I am. Twilight and Tarnish just got back from killing a lich. It’s a bad, bad day when Twilight, Tarnish, and Dim show up at your evil lair. Tarnish’s unique talent allows him to destroy phylacteries without consequences. Most ponies would die from the resulting explosion of negative energy, but not Tarnish.”
Then, quite out of the blue, she added, “There are times when I rather want to become a lich, just to see what it is like, but that would mean living in fear of those three arriving at my hidden lair of unspeakable evil, and that’s just a bad scene waiting to happen. Sometimes I wonder if I could kill a lich. I think I could. Maybe one of the weaker ones. Not sure how I’d handle the phylactery though. Princess Celestia told me that she teleports them into the sun to safely dispose of them, because the blast could destroy her, but I lack the means to teleport stuff into the sun, which saddens me. Things that threaten Twilight and my friends would find themselves quite warm.”
“Do you have a lot of friends?” asked Sundance.
“Foals, mostly,” she replied, sighing out each word. “For some reason, I don’t get along too well with most adults. I suffer from social ineptitude. My therapist told me that I’m not good at picking up on social cues. But this is an advantage in my job.”
“It is?”
“Very much so. Right now, you are undoubtedly uncomfortable, and I simply do not care. This affords me a certain sense of pragmatism; I can do things that make you uncomfortable and I am not overly bothered by however it is you are feeling about the invasion of your privacy.”
“That is an advantage,” he said to her to be agreeable, although he wasn’t sure how he actually felt about it. She would make for a dangerous dominatrix, the kind that did not abide safewords. Something hidden deep within his innards turned cold and caused him to shiver. The probing might even persist after he begged for it to stop. Just what sort of dreadful sexual fantasy was this, and why did he find it appealing?
“That’s nice of you to say.” She started to say more, but the light on the camera flashed green. Her brow furrowed, her lips pursed, and then her head bobbed with satisfaction. “Say congealed lactate extract of hoofed quadrupeds.”
Sundance’s confused expression was frozen forever in time when the camera went off…
“Sunburst, are you there?” Moondancer spoke into a small mirror with an agate handle. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Moondancer, I can hear you,” a voice from within the mirror said.
“Are you ready to begin the procedure?” she asked, her lips mere inches away from the now darkened surface of the mirror that no longer showed her reflection.
“Yes, do begin. Starlight will maintain the portal. Nurse Starchy is ready.”
“Ah, good. Starlight is wonderful at maintaining the portal. A sudden, unexpected closure would cause quite a situation. Heh-hoo-hoo-heh.” Moondancer chuckled for a time—an ominous sound—and set the mirror into an intricately carved wooden holder on the table before her. “Before we start, Sunburst, I wanted to apologise for walking in on you mid-marital coitus with Starlight—”
“Oh, that’s fine, no need to apologise for—”
“I probably should have left,” Moondancer said, oblivious to the distress in the voice that came from the mirror. “But since you ceased your vigorous thrusting after I barged in, I thought that you were ready to discuss our findings.”
Sundance heard a soft sigh from the mirror.
Then, much to his surprise, he heard a muffled feminine giggle.
Two glowing crystal pylons began to crackle, and then an indigo haze blazed around them. The nostril-tickling stench of ozone grew strong, and a pinprick of vibrant light appeared between the pair of pylons. Sundance watched, curious, and wondered just what it was that he saw, because he’d never seen anything quite like it. As the blob of light intensified, he felt a tug on his body, some unseen force gently pulled on him, and the light strands of his mane floated towards the portal’s direction, as did Moondancer’s.
“Now, this is a portal,” Moondancer began, “and you’ll be putting your foreleg into it so samples can be taken—”
“Say again?” Now alarmed, Sundance squirmed on his stool and wondered how he might wiggle his way out of this situation—which didn’t seem likely.
After a sigh of resignation, Moondancer tried again. “Now, this is a portal, and you’ll be putting your foreleg into it so samples can be taken. Nurse Starchy will prick your frog for blood, and a sliver of your hoof will be extracted.”
“Portal?” His stomach turned clammy with sudden sweat and Sundance wiped himself with his right foreleg. “What if it closes suddenly?”
“As luck would have it, your foreleg would be in the Crystal Empire, where it could receive the very best medical attention. All of the best doctors to be found on this continent are up there—”
“What about the rest of me?” asked Sundance.
“From what I understand, Ponyville General makes you sign papers that nullifies your right to file malpractice—”
“Woah, wait now, I’m not so sure about this. You want me to stick my leg into a portal that stretches all the way to the Crystal Empire?”
Nodding vigorously, Moondancer gestured at the glowing blob of light between the two crystal pylons. “It tickles a bit, so try to hold still. Nurse Starchy is a real go-getter when it comes to blood, so that might sting a bit. She’s practical, Nurse Starchy. Better to get too much blood than too little blood.”
“Had I known about all of this, I might not have come.”
“Oh, we would make you come.” Moondancer’s tone turned dangerous; cold and unpleasant to the nth degree. “Had you not shown up, you still would have found yourself in the waiting room. Surely Booker told you that.”
“Now that you bring that up, he did mention something about that…” As his frozen intestines slithered against one another in gut-wrenching terror, Sundance had a reminder of his power over others. It was just the sort of reminder that he needed; he had power over Hollyhock—considerable power—just as Twilight Sparkle had absolute authority over him. Surely there was some kind of lesson to be learned here, but right now, as of this minute, however important it might be, Sundance wasn’t sure what it was.
“Now, if you would… please, rise from your stool, go over there, and place one of your forelegs into the portal. Nature thoughtfully provided us with a backup in the event that something goes wrong.”
“Oh, I’m about to leave my stool behind, alright.”
The feminine giggle could be heard from the mirror once again, while Moondancer’s expression remained stony and resolute. Sundance, realising that he had no choice, no options, no way to escape this unpleasant plight, rose from his stool. He spent a moment shaking each leg, he stretched a bit, and then wondered if he had time to say goodbye. Which leg would he sacrifice? One of his legs had to go into the portal. With his thoughts on Holly, and also on the little ones in their shared care, Sundance decided it was time to do what needed done.
“Go on,” Moondancer instructed with a wave of her foreleg.
Teeth clenched, lips pressed tight together, Sundance raised his left foreleg, waved it about whilst he made his silent farewell, and then he jammed it into the glowy nexus of light. Right away, he wished he hadn’t, because everything felt weird—real weird. Unspeakably, inexplicably weird. His brain began screaming that something was horribly wrong, but his brain was a primitive, rather stupid organ that could not possibly understand the complex realities of portals that brought two vast distances together.
“My leg doesn’t feel right,” Sundance whined.
“Right now, your leg is infinitely long,” Moondancer said with an absolute lack of reassurance. “The actual length cannot be measured, due to a variety of factors at play. We’re not even certain just how many layers of reality we’ve burrowed through to create the portal. Twilight created the anchor points, and she insists that it is perfectly safe. All we can do is take her at her word.”
“Might I ask a question?”
“I believe you just did, Sundance.”
“What would happen if I were to put my winky through the portal?”
While these words existed in the air, Moondancer’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Just a moment ago you balked at the very idea of putting your leg in there. Now, you want to want to put that in there.”
“Just, uh, um… like in theory. What would happen in theory?”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked Moondancer.
“Because,” he replied, emboldened and somewhat stupid. “I’d rather like to say that I’ve had an infinitely long winky without lying. Might be a great way to break the ice. Meet girls. Impress others in conversation. With all the magical means to detect lies, and those who could read minds, they would know I told the truth, and that would be impressive.”
“Deviant.” Moondancer spoke with a cold, clinical tone that lacked any sort of warmth. “That’s going in your file.”
“Whatever comes though the portal, I’m getting blood from it,” a different feminine voice said from the nearby mirror. “I’m not picky.”
Sundance felt a curious sensation, as if his hoof were squeezed, and there was great pressure upon it. After it was immobilised, he felt a soft scraping—it was no worse than his usual hoof maintenance—but he worried about the prick that was sure to come. Everything felt so far away, perhaps because it was so far away. The Crystal Empire was a far-off place, but the distance was longer than he could understand due to portal complexities.
The camera beeped, and Sundance let go a startled whinny, but thankfully he did not jerk his leg back through the portal. Moondancer pulled something out of the camera, something shiny and smelly, something that made Sundance’s eyes water. With a casual flick, she sent the object through the portal, and he tried not to think about how his leg was in there. Ears pricked, he could hear the sounds of hoof-scraping, and wondered how long it took for the sound to reach him. The very complexity of this thought caused his stomach to drop, and he felt increasingly stupid.
A sudden, unexpected jab to his frog made him yelp, but the pain was quick to go away.
“Once we’re done here, Sunburst will use divination to know all there is to know about your mark, and any magical talents you have will be discerned. Once he has done that, you will go into the brain-washer, which is a special type of shower we’ve developed that will scrub your mind of outside influence, compulsion spells, and geases, should you be affected. It is remarkably pleasant, the brain-washer, and I occasionally use it to clear my thoughts when my brain feels cluttered.” Moondancer adjusted her glasses, lifted her mane away from her face, and then she almost—but not quite—smiled.
“Um, if you don’t mind”—Sunburst’s voice had a curious echoing quality to it—“we’re going to need a feather, too. I understand it hurts, and I am very sorry. Moondancer, could you please pluck a live feather with blood and send it through the portal?”
“I can,” Moondancer replied. “Sundance, do you wish to volunteer a feather, or will we go about this the hard way?”
With a sting in his wing and a throb in his frog, Sundance waited patiently. It was all he could do at the moment. A part of him wanted to try and flirt with Moondancer, but he knew that right now was not an appropriate time. He didn’t know why he felt so flirty and brave, but he did, and he rather enjoyed his newfound confidence. His terror was subsiding a bit, though he felt a little peculiar because Moondancer held up the magic mirror mere inches away from his cutie mark.
At least his leg was no longer in the portal. A patch of hair had been shaved off from just above his fetlock, his hoof was trimmed, and blood extracted from his frog. It wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him, and he would endure. This was, for all intents and purposes, bureaucracy, and Sundance could endure bureaucratic processes like nopony else he knew.
“This mark doesn’t match anything else in the registry,” Sunburst said from the mirror. “It is wholly unique. There are lots of sunflower marks… thousands of them on file, but nothing quite like this one. The mark represents both land and storm, with connections to both. It isn’t often that a pegasus has a mark that directly connects them to land. Geo-focused marks are rare for pegasus ponies, but not unheard of.”
“So do we have anything yet?” asked Moondancer.
“The diviner is still divining,” a feminine voice said from within the mirror.
“That much is obvious, Starlight.” Moondancer tapped her right hind hoof against the floor and continued to hold up the mirror close to Sundance’s backside.
“The sunflower is a connection to the sun, of course. A bridge between land and sun. The means by which the sun transfers energy to the ground, with the sunflower functioning as a go-between. If the mark was just a sunflower alone, this would be so much easier. But the stormcloud complicates things considerably. Something is actively trying to thwart my ability to read these symbols.”
“Huh?” Sundance turned his head around and saw a pony squinting in the mirror.
“Magic doesn’t like to be studied,” said Moondancer. “The more complicated the magic is, the more it resists. Complex magic has complex means to mess with our efforts to figure things out.” Eyes narrowed, monobrow furrowed, she shook her head. “My own mark has an unknown element to it that nopony can discern. My talent is magic and a component of that happens to be enhanced cerebral functions to study said magic, but there is an as-of-yet unknown element that resists identification.”
“I don’t know if I want to know the meaning of my mark,” Sundance said to whomever might be listening. “Won’t that spoil the mystery? I mean, it might be nice to know, and a part of me does kind of want to know, but that kills all the joy in thinking about it and what it might be.”
“You don’t have to know,” Moondancer said to Sundance. “But we do. We don’t have to tell you if you wish to preserve the mystery.”
“But, if I do have a talent, I think I’d like to know about that.” Sundance considered his words for a time, wondered if he meant them, and pondered if he should retract them. Did he really wish to know? Would it better to somehow discover it on his own? This made him reconsider his position about knowing what his mark meant. Maybe he needed to know—it might make him a better baron if he understood himself. How might others benefit from his increased understanding?
He concluded that he had no idea what the right thing to do happened to be.
“Oh, Sunburst seems to have gone into a daze. Give us a moment.”
“Sure thing, Starlight. See if you can get him sorted out.” Moondancer didn’t seem particularly worried, and she kept the magic mirror held mere inches away from Sundance’s mark. With nothing to do, she began to hum, but it wasn’t exactly musical.
Sundance also waited, and his ears pricked at the sound of Moondancer humming. There could be no denying it, he was attracted to her, though the degree of attraction varied. She was at her most attractive when she was scary—it became a purely physical attraction at this point—yet there was something to be said about her mind, which he also found appealing in a way that couldn’t be put into words. Her intellect was stunning, even if she just so happened to be one of the proverbial mad scientist types. The fact that she was older only added to her appeal, though he couldn’t say why.
“You have a scar.” The tone and pitch of her voice changed and Moondancer now sounded vulnerable. “I have scars… I was captured by changelings and tortured. It changed me. My scars are a text of sorts that catalogue these changes. I am no longer what I once was. For the longest time, I thought I was broken. Maybe I still am. But now that I have endured the worst, I know what I am capable of. It has made me capable of protecting my friends. I can endure what they cannot.”
Sundance’s head swiveled around completely, and he looked the disturbed mare in the eye. She trembled, her ears quivered, and with each quick, shallow breath she took, her nostrils contracted and flared. He watched as she fidgeted within her oversized sweater, and he wondered what he might see if he looked beneath. There were different degrees of nakedness, he’d discovered.
“I can’t let what happened to me happen to them,” she said in cold deadpan.
“Hang on, we have some results. Sunburst needs a moment to recover. Give us a moment, I’m going to get a cup of tea into Sunburst. He’s a little out of sorts.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.037 seconds
Total duration
678 users online
984,577 hits today, 2,561,572 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.®
A sudden thought, Sundance's magic is connected to the land of the Sunfire Barony which in turn is connected to Celestia. If Sunburst were to probe Sundance's magic deeply enough would he encounter Surprise Alicorn Level Magical Defenses and be in trouble?
I shall abide as I dangle from yon cliff.
INTERESTING I think Moondancer is enjoying her part way too much. AS for Nurse Starchy she has a job to do and she is going to do it one way of another
It's Spoileriffic!
That is an understatement.
I really don't blame Sundance for being very discomforted. XD
That... actually does sound kind of nice. It would be just the thing for those nights when my thoughts are ON and won't shut off so I can sleep. The death spiral of what-ifs and other anxieties.
Am I the only one that caught the Rocky Horror reference??
9948938
Yaaaaay! Cliff dangling
I assume you might make it so that his mark controls him some, but would it be any different than a birth defect, really? It's beneficial, and it came only from himself and his ancestral duties to the environment.