blackpest

by mushroompone

Share

There was a moment--a long one--where nopony quite knew what to say.

Rarity was staring at me and, although she said nothing, every thought was written plainly in her expression. There was a depth of concern and confusion which could only accompany the admission of a crime which had never been committed; as if I’d fessed up to stealing the ocean, or foalnapping Princess Celestia.

It was a reflection of my own distress--an acknowledgement--but a profound misunderstanding of it.

I could almost see the questions forming on her lips: Why? Why so upset? This is nothing to lose your head over.

But my chest was heaving.

“I’m--” I choked on the words, and my breath hitched. “I’m--”

Rarity gave me a look which silently asked me to wait, and turned to Rainbow.

“Rainbow Dash?" she called.

Rainbow stiffened a little, but her eyes were glued to my face.

Rarity cleared her throat. "Could you give us a moment, please?” She said it so sweetly and calmly, you'd never know a thing was wrong.

Rainbow remained frozen to the spot. Her eyes ran over me, over Rarity, desperately searching for the explanation.

“Alone?” Rarity pressed, through a set jaw.

At last, Rainbow blinked. “Oh!” She paused, shook her head clear. “Yeah, I’ll… yeah. Sorry.”

She departed in a little skitter, and shut the bedroom door behind her. The tiniest breath of air from downstairs managed to squeeze into the room-- a calming, wispy breeze of tea and biscuits. How badly I wanted to rewind. To not give into temptation.

Rarity turned back to me, and the stress hit me once again, full-force. Right in the sternum, like a bag of bricks. Like a swift punch.

“Twilight,” she said, softly. Gently.

I made a sort of strangled sound and took a shaky step back.

Rarity hesitated. She looked at me the way one looks at a frightened animal; a compulsory gentleness, a recognition of my fragility, and a fear of getting too close.

She sighed and shook her head. “What is going on?”

I bit down on my lip. I couldn’t speak at all.

“You’re not acting like yourself, darling. Not at all,” she continued, her voice low and smooth. She took a step towards me. “I don’t understand why you would hide something so…”

She searched for the right word for a while.

Stupid?

Pointless?

Embarrassing?

Inconsequential?

She closed her eyes, cheeks taught. “Help me understand, Twilight. I’m trying so hard to understand.” She laughed. A sad, strained sound. “All this-- this unnecessary obfuscation, this distance… you insist you’re doing alright, but I only see more and more evidence that you aren’t.”

My chest hitched again.

“Talk to me.” Rarity smiled a bit. A sad smile. “All this extra time I’ve been making for you… I want to talk to you. I want to hear what’s going on inside your head. I can see that you’re fractured, and I--”

“I was scared,” I said.

And, again, it was like it was out of my control. Words falling out of my mouth without thought or meaning, as if my tape recorder had unfurled along my tongue, rolling across Rarity’s bedroom floor.

She blinked. “Scared?”

I nodded, a desperate action. “I was-- well, I thought that--” I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s m-magic. I thought it would-- that it could--"

Rarity cocked her head and waited patiently for me to continue.

I could feel the words pushing at the back of my tongue. “I didn’t-- I was just--!”

And then I started to cry.

It all felt so silly, as so many things do the moment you start to cry. In every tear was a small, dark droplet of bundled-up anxiety, leaving only a pale hole of shame and stupidity.

"Oh, darling!" Rarity whispered.

She rushed to me and embraced me, gently but insistently.

The sound of the cicadas ebbed. I let myself continue crying, barely reigning it in enough to be considered polite. Not that I think it would have mattered to Rarity; her slippered hoof was hooked around the back of my neck, plastic curlers clattering like cheap windchimes in my ear as she nuzzled my cheek.

Rarity stood very still. Her breathing was calm and even. She did not complain, not even as my tears soaked the fur on her throat and shoulder.

"Hush, now," she murmured, pulling me closer. "Everything will be alright."

I didn't even know why I was crying. If anypony had asked, I wouldn't have had an answer.

"Everything will be alright," Rarity repeated. She kicked off her slipper and stroked my spine with one hoof.

The tears left, as many do, a sense of nauseated hunger in their wake. I felt that speaking left me with a solid chance of vomiting or crying more, but I decided to take a risk.

"I'm sorry," I said, and another little hiccuping cry escaped me. "I'm sorry, Rarity, I should have talked to you."

Rarity laughed, a dry and toneless sound. "Now, how could I expect you to do that?"

I sniffled and pulled away from Rarity.

She looked tired. Her eyes had a drooping darkness to them as she looked back into mine. The shadow of a sad smile still hung at the corners of her mouth.

I cleared my throat. "Huh?"

Rarity closed her eyes. "Well, that's where this is all coming from, isn't it?" she asked. She lifted a hoof and tried to tuck her mane behind her ear, only to find a bundle of curlers. "I didn't believe you when you said Cadance was-- was a--"

The word wouldn't come out.

Rarity shook her head and straightened up. "Why should this be any different?"

Oh.

Was that it?

"N-no, Rarity, I--"

Rarity held up a hoof.

I closed my mouth.

"I don't expect it will make a difference," Rarity said, eyes trained on the floor, "but I swore to myself after the wedding that I'd never doubt you again."

I wiped away some of the tears on my cheek with one hoof.

In my mind, I tried to untangle those remaining dark threads of paranoia and fear. All I could find as I tore manically through the knotted mess were loose ends of individual terrors. Every connection only darkened to an imperceptible mass.

Even in the pale, post-cry emptiness, the knot loomed larger than I could perceive.

It was possible, I suppose.

It was possible that I had been acting this way because I didn't trust Rarity.

The thought made me want to burst into tears all over again.

Rarity looked up at me. "We used to trust each other with everything."

I put a hoof to my mouth. I don't know what good it did, or what good I thought it would do, at holding back the things I wanted to say.

"I'm asking you to give me a chance to rebuild that trust," Rarity said. "Please."

If my mind had been in any sort of working order, I might have been struck by the way she used 'I' instead of 'we'. The way Rarity placed so much blame on her own shoulders for something all five of my friends had had a part in.

But I didn't think that far.

I nodded. I couldn't think of a single thing to say, so I nodded.

Rarity's eyes brightened. She, I suppose, didn't have anything to say either. She laughed in disbelief, and embraced me once more.

"You lead the way, alright?" She murmured in my ear. "We'll win the game together."

It sounded innocent. Almost fun.

"Okay," I agreed. A little giggle snuck out, though it tasted the same as the crying had. "After tea."

Rarity smiled, though her eyes still looked dark and droopy. "Of course. A mare after my own heart."

She turned to leave, then held open her hoof, as if for a hug.

I sidled up beside her. Rarity wrapped her foreleg around my shoulders, and we walked together to the bedroom door. It was a small thing, but the comfort was simply enormous.

Rarity opened the door with her magic.

There was a distant sound-- a sort of ceramic clattering. Rarity's ears pricked, and she listened carefully.

Even I could hear somepony chewing, loudly and with some emotional vigor.

"Eugh." Rarity pinched her ears down against her head. "Does that pony understand even a single social cue? For goodness' sake…"

She released me and trotted down the stairs, looking like a lion stalking a gazelle.

I followed behind, a little slower. I resolved to let the confrontation play out without me.

Rarity turned a corner and marched into the kitchen. "Rainbow Dash!" Her shrill voice was punctuated by the sharp sound of a dropped plate. "I thought I told you to leave!"

Rainbow choked on whatever baked good she'd been shoveling into her mouth. "You said a minute alone!" she shot back, likely spraying crumbs everywhere. "I smelled cookies!"

"Ugh!" Rarity stomped one hoof. "Somehow the rules of polite society have escaped you entirely, haven't they?"

I crept down the stairs, listening from afar as my friends bickered.

They felt very far away.

Rarity's boutique was still filled with mannequins. Lined up like good little soldiers, despite their frilly costuming. I stood there, staring at them, waiting for the green flash of light and the hiss and the teeth and the humming of the wings and--

But it was just the cicadas.

I trusted Rarity.

I did.

I swear it.

"You can be such an ignoramus…" Rarity muttered.

"H-hey…" Rainbow said, hesitantly, as if searching for the meaning of the word somewhere in the back of her mind. "I thought we were gonna talk about the game and stuff."

Rarity sighed. "Maybe some other time, alright?"

I peered around the corner and into the kitchen.

Rainbow did indeed have a little feast for herself made up on one of Rarity's nice plates, which she seemed to have dropped into the countertop in shock when she was confronted. She snapped her wings in against her sides when she spotted me.

I cleared my throat, and Rarity turned to look, too.

"We can talk about it," I said.

Rarity's mouth went taught. "Twilight, really, you don't have to--"

"I want to." I swallowed hard. "I trust you guys."

Rarity's eyes softened.

Rainbow seemed even more lost, but I was content with leaving her to her confusion.

As I stood there, in Rarity's kitchen, the morning sun glinting through the window and the air heavy with bergamot and ginger, one of the dark threads tugged loose. To my disappointment, it held no more meaning alone than it had as part of the knot. It was a nebulous, fuzzy thing… a fear that I couldn't quite name.

And yet, with my friends, it was isolated. It was fading.

Rarity rolled her eyes and sighed, although this one was much more in jest than in distress. "I suppose I'll put on water for another cup of tea?" She looked to Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow stuck her tongue out. "Eh, no thanks. Do you have orange juice?"

Rarity said nothing. Her magic swirled quietly around the fridge, producing a nearly-empty carton of orange juice, which she shook in Rainbow's face.

"Thanks!" Rainbow greedily snatched the carton from Rarity's magical grip, twisted the cap off with her teeth, and guzzled straight from the spout.

"Ugh," Rarity scoffed. "You'd think she'd been raised in a barn."

I chuckled.

Rainbow shrugged the comment off and popped another cookie in her mouth.

Rarity's magic appeared once more, this time around the mugs of tea on the kitchen table. In a moment, they were steaming and ready to drink.

"Come now, Twilight," Rarity said, gesturing to the chair where I typically sat. "Why don't you tell us about what you've found?"

Rainbow nodded, then belched. "Yeah, where'd you get that thing, anyway?"

Rarity made a small sound of disgust.

"Um." I maneuvered a chair out from the table and sat down stiffly. "Th-the woods."

Rainbow's eyebrows pulled together. "Like… the woods the woods?"

"Yes, darling, in the Everfree," Rarity replied, sipping daintily at her tea. "Twilight and I found it a few weeks ago."

“You found a video game in the woods?!” Rainbow’s jaw hung open. She set her gaze on me. “And you kept it?!”

I blushed heavily. “I-I thought somepony lost it!”

Rainbow cocked her head. “So… you kept it?”

I opened my mouth to respond, and the thoughts got stuck at the back of my throat.

Why would I do that?

Rarity chuckled nervously. “You’re mischaracterizing us!” she said, setting down her tea. “We took it in for safe-keeping! We didn’t know what it was, and we thought it might be damaged if it sat out in the rain.”

Rainbow sort of narrowed her eyes, glaring at Rarity in suspicion.

Rarity’s eyes flicked all around the room, landing briefly on my own, then darting up towards the ceiling. At last, she let out a huge sigh. “Alright, fine. We wanted to snoop.” She looked over at me, sympathetically. “Well… I certainly wanted to snoop.”

Rainbow turned her suspicion on me. “But you didn’t know what it was?”

I looked down into my own cup of tea. “Um… no.”

“Doesn’t Spike have a Super Neightendo?” Rainbow asked. “I thought he said you bought it for him for his birthday…”

“I don’t know video game stuff!” I exclaimed, pounding my own hoof on the floor in exasperation. “Spike was the one who… who told me it was a game.”

“Rares, you didn’t know what it was, either?” Rainbow asked, her snide superiority now directed at Rarity. “Have you guys been living under a rock? Like… the same rock?”

“Oh, hush,” Rarity instructed, waving away Rainbow’s smirk. “Don’t blame me and Twilight for our lack of interest in such things. Last I checked, video games were a foal’s passtime, anyway," she said, with a noisy flip of her curler-imprisoned mane.

Rainbow stuck her tongue out at Rarity.

Rarity mirrored her friend’s rude gesture.

Rainbow doubled down with a raspberry, which Rarity haughtily declined to return. Rainbow clearly considered this to be a win.

"So, how'd you get it working?" Rainbow asked. "Rares said it was broken, right?"

I took a deep breath. "I thought it was," I said. With my magic, I reached around and pulled the game out of my saddlebag. "It didn't work normally at all. Spike tried to play it and it barely did anything."

I set the game on the table.

Rainbow stared down at the game. "But?"

She reached across the table and grabbed another biscuit, stuffing the whole thing in her mouth.

"Slow down, Rainbow!" Rarity scolded.

Rainbow waved it off.

I coughed. "Well, that's because it's…" I shifted in my chair. It was hard to get the words out; they felt so silly. "It's magic."

The girls stared at me blankly.

I stared back.

"Meaning…?" Rainbow prompted.

I nickered softly, squared the game's corners with the checkered tablecloth. "Usually, these sorts of games run on electricity. You plug them in, a current flows through the contacts, and the code runs the game," I said. "Of course, that's a vast oversimplification. There's--"

"We get it, nerd," Rainbow interrupted, spraying crumbs. "What's with this one?"

Oddly, Rainbow's belligerence and disinterest only served to make me more comfortable. I guess this is what having friends was all about.

Rarity shot me an apologetic look, but I only smiled back.

"This one runs on magic," I said. I held up the cartridge for the girls to look inside. "When I connect my magic to the contacts, it runs the game."

Rainbow's confusion and excitement very nearly projected into the air between us. "Where?"

"Um…" I shrugged. "E-everywhere."

"Everywhere?!" Rainbow's eyes went wide as dinner plates. "Like-- like everywhere? Like in real life?!"

"Goodness," Rarity murmured into her tea. "That sounds interesting."

"Interesting?!" Rainbow Dash was vibrating so hard she was practically leaping onto another plane of existence. "You found a video game in the woods that turns real life into a magic adventure?! And you think it's just interesting?!"

That almost made it sound like… fun.

Was this supposed to be fun?

"Rainbow Dash, calm down this instant!" Rarity scolded. "I won't have you screaming and carrying on at this hour."

"What's it like?" Rainbow continued, undeterred. "Is it a fighting game? Racing? Stealth? Does the game give you magic powers?"

I looked back down at my tea. "I dunno," I said.

Rainbow faltered. "You don't know?"

"Well, I…" I cleared my throat. "I didn't get to that part, exactly.”

Rainbow’s eyebrows twitched closer together. “What part?”

I lifted my mug to my lips. “The… game part.”

I took a sip of my drink and kept my eyes trained on a distant point of wall.

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. “Let me get this straight: you found a video game in the woods?”

“Um… yes?”

“And it runs on magic?”

"Yeah…"

"It turns real life into a game?"

“For pony’s sake, Rainbow, we get the point!” Rarity complained.

“But you haven’t even played it?!” Rainbow Dash threw her head back and let out an enormous cry of exasperation. “I can’t believe you guys! Finding a secret video game in the woods is the sort of thing that’s supposed to happen to me!”

Rarity scoffed. “That has to be one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said to me.”

But Rainbow could hardly be talked down. “What else have you guys been doing without me?” she demanded, beginning to pace about the room. “Did you go treasure-hunting? Sky-diving? Ghost-hunting?”

“Of course not!” I shouted back. “This was just something stupid that I-- that we found in the woods! It wasn’t a big deal!”

"Well, we've gotta play it," Rainbow said matter-of-factly. She stood up, chair squealing against the kitchen tile.

Rarity huffed. "Can't have a single hot cup of tea without interruption," she muttered, taking another long draw from her mug.

"Uh--" I blinked. "I-I didn't even tell you what it's called."

"Okay," Rainbow said. "What's it called?"

I set my jaw. "Blackpest."

"Great! Let's go play blackpest, then," Rainbow commanded, pounding a hoof on the table.

I opened my mouth, then closed it, making not a sound. I probably looked not unlike a carp gasping for breath. "But-- but--"

Rainbow sighed and rolled her eyes, flopping back down into the chair. "Let me guess: you've spent the past few weeks stressing about the right way to do this, probably taking tons of notes and generally acting like a dork."

I folded my forelegs over my chest. "Well, I don't really like you calling me a--"

"Save it, dork," Rainbow said, a hoof held up to silence me. "If we let you do this your way, you're gonna be stuck going in circles for months! The only way to play a game is to play it."

Play it.

Play it.

"I hate to say it, but I think Rainbow's right," Rarity said.

Rainbow puffed out her chest with pride.

Rarity reached over to touch my hoof with hers. "We'll be right here with you."

She didn't say it, but the silence which hung in the air said it for her: if anything goes wrong, we'll pull you out. Your friends are here to keep you safe. To trust you.

"What about everypony else?" I asked.

Rainbow scoffed. "Yeah, I'm sure Fluttershy would love playing a haunted video game you guys found in the woods." She laughed. "Sounds like her scene. Totally."

"Darling, everypony else is out of town,” Rarity said.

Wait… no, they weren’t. They couldn’t be.

Rainbow’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling as she considered it. Eventually, she nickered and shook her head. “Ah, shit. You’re right.”

They were?

It scared me that I hadn’t known that. How had I not known they were gone? How long had they been away? Had they told me? Had I missed it? Had I just been locked away that long?

“They… are?” I mumbled.

Rarity looked at me with almost as much fear as I felt. “Well… yes, Twilight,” she said. “Fluttershy is tracking the sea serpent migration, Applejack is helping her cousins with the zucchini harvest, and Pinkie is at some… expo, or something.”

“Baker’s convention,” Rainbow corrected. “In Las Pegasus.”

It was almost familiar. I could almost remember being told these things, almost remember being hugged goodbye.

Rainbow laughed and held out a hoof to me. "Hey, shit memory crew, ammirite?"

I reached out and bumped her hoof.

Rainbow grinned goofily.

Rarity gave me a sympathetic smile.

I tried not to be scared of my very, very shit memory.

"Well?" Rainbow leapt back up out of her chair. "Start it up! Start it up!"

I looked to Rarity, maybe for approval, maybe for help.

She nodded. "In your own time, dear."

I took a deep breath.

I connected.

Comments

[Warrior of Virtue]

Rarity turned a corner and marched into the kitchen. "Rainbow Dash!" Her shrill voice was punctuated by the sharp sound of a dropped plate. "I thought I told you to leave!"

Rainbow choked on whatever baked good she'd been shoveling into her mouth. "You said a minute alone!" she shot back, likely spraying crumbs everywhere. "I smelled cookies!"

I'm with Rainbow. If someone says they need a minute, that usually means you leave the room, not the house.

[SIGAWESOME]

Player 2 and Player 3 have joined the game?

[Fylifa]

I admit, if the story ended here in this chapter, it would have been an almost marvelous expectation twist. The creepypasta game? No, the true thing was Twilight's PTSD from her friends not believing her. No magical curses here, just your average, everyday anxiety in a world without prozac that alone can be scary enough!

“But you haven’t even played it?!” Rainbow Dash threw her head back and let out an enormous cry of exasperation. “I can’t believe you guys! Finding a secret video game in the woods is the sort of thing that’s supposed to happen to me!”

This line though, this made me laugh so hard. I love Rainbow's introduction into the story and the very hearty double boot to the ass flank she gives to Twilight to get on with it after Twilight has been spending weeks nursing her inner hamster-on-a-wheel-of-worry