The Unofficial Records of a Mare in Black

by the7Saviors

12/13/1000

There's been a dearth of fieldwork lately, so I've had a bit of downtime the last couple of days. The boss is having us do deskwork mostly, but that's not really a problem for me. I may be greener than freshly cut grass where most of my job is concerned, but if there's one thing I can do just as efficiently—if not more efficiently than my seniors, it's deskwork. I sorted and wrote all of my reports in about three days and was given some time off a few days ago.

Normally I'd be down in the labs helping the other researchers see what makes some of these 'treasures' tick. I hinted at this before, but the other part of my job has honestly become my favorite part of the job. With my credentials, I was able to land a part-time position as one of POUT's OOPArts (Out-of-Place Artifacts) researchers, so I get to mess around with some of the insane things we find in a controlled environment. I realize it can be just as dangerous as being out there in the field, but we eggheads are considered a valuable asset to the agency, and as such we're guaranteed a certain degree of safety—at least in the labs.

For us eggheads who are greenhorns, it's a bit of a different story. Our job description states that all agents are required to gain at least a minimum of two years worth of field experience. This is regardless of whether or not we want to be researchers or field agents or what have you. My ultimate goal is to become a researcher full time, but I need to survive my current position as a jack-of-all-trades rookie first. I have my issues with the way this job structure works and I've brought it up with the boss before, but all I got in response was a shrug of the shoulders or a shake of the head and some horseapples about how 'he doesn't make the rules he just lays them out'.

It sucks, but what can you do?

Maybe if I moved high enough up in the ranks I could actually do something about it, but until then I'll just have to make sure I don't die long enough to earn my full-time researcher job. Getting back to the point I was trying to make though, a lot of the paperwork I was doing was mostly research reports detailing what we'd found out about the Left Eye and what we found... was nothing. Zero. Zilch. We couldn't even get it to activate again, most likely thanks to the damage it had sustained from Tempest's lightning strike.

Oh, yeah. I haven't mentioned my partner's name up until now, have I?

Her name is Tempest Shadow.

No, that's not her real name, but I get the feeling that's probably what she would've gone with even if our job didn't require us to use an alias outside of the agency. Yeah, it sounds like something an edgy teen would've come up with, but none of us have the proverbial stones to question or make fun of the name. Besides that, her actual name is even more ridiculous so we're all just fine with calling her Tempest Shadow, and honestly, it isn't the most 'out there' name I've heard. My alias, by the way, is Dusk Shine. I don't know, I thought it was appropriate, and feels right somehow.

Getting sidetracked again.

Long story short, I finished all my paperwork in record time and was given some time off, which I've been enjoying for the last few days. Tomorrow is my last day before I have to put my nose back on that grindstone. I spent some more time with Sunset and also got an opportunity to meet up with Prism Streak, another pony I met who works for the SMILE agency. Given her boisterous and self-aggrandizing personality, we wouldn't normally click but like Sunset and me, we had something in common we could bond over.

Evidently, we were both victims of the CSGU incident.

Remember how I mentioned POUT talking about some pegasus they had to find? Yeah, that pegasus ended up working for SMILE somehow. She hasn't told me how she wound up with the job, but from what she tells me, it was by pure chance. Sort of. She was originally offered a position in POUT, but she found out about SMILE and decided that was more up her alley. They gave her a chance and she managed to prove she wasn't just all talk. Prism Streak is her alias, but most ponies in her line of work have taken to calling her the 'Runaway Rainboom'.

Apparently she was racing across the sky and broke the sound barrier when the OOPArt we uncovered (which has been dubbed the 'Wizard's Tuning Fork' by the research team and what I called the 'black box' in my first entry) was activated. The unique thaumic energy she unleashed gave what should've been a normal sonic boom some very interesting properties. I was too busy causing a thaumic explosion to see the effects, but I'm told it was a beautiful sight. The 'Runaway' part comes from the apparent fact that her crash and the resulting collateral damage caused by said crash was just as spectacular as the 'Rainboom' itself.

For reasons I can't fathom, she wears the nickname with pride.

I didn't and still don't understand how somepony like her could work in such a secretive environment given how boastful she is of her own abilities, but she makes it work somehow. I have a couple of other acquaintances in both POUT and SMILE and one in RIDES, but that's really all they are and I don't get a chance to talk with them all that much. If the rumors I've been hearing around the office are true, then I might end up having even less time to see anypony I know.

Rumors have it that the higher-ups are going to be assigning agents to start working undercover for an extended period of time. Various suits will be posing as ordinary civilians in different towns and cities across Equestria while on the lookout for anything that shouldn't be here—be they monsters or OOPArts. It's supposed to be mostly SMILE agents, but there might be a few members of POUT from my division participating as well. I don't know if I'll be chosen, given my lack of tenure, but it's a possibility I'm not really sure how I feel about.

Some of the senior agents are allowed to live offsite so long as it's within the city, but most ponies who work for POUT or SMILE or any of the other agencies are given barracks to live in within the facility we have below the castle. It's kind of like the Royal Guards, but from what I'm told our barracks are much nicer. Having lived in our barracks and having been given a tour of the Royal Guard's barracks through my connection with my brother, I can honestly say this is one hundred percent accurate. My room is essentially a home away from home. All rookie agents are required to live here and for those with experience it's optional, but most of the vets choose to live in the barracks anyway.

You know, because of how nice they are.

Having said that though, it's not like I have any real attachment to my room. I don't think I would mind working undercover, but I guess it would depend on where they decide to have me stationed. I'm not going to worry too much about it right now given that they're still just rumors—rumors that are likely true, but rumors nonetheless. Instead, I'll talk about something I've been meaning to discuss and have been holding off for way too long. The last talk I had with Sunset was an enlightening one, and I won't go into detail for Sunset's sake, but as far as I was concerned, I was able to open up a bit more.

She actually got me to talk about my first assignment and having talked about it with her and having gotten it off my chest, I think I can write about here. Really, everything I've written up until this point was me trying a bit longer to put it off, but the more I think about it, the more I feel it would be best to just get it over with. Again, in hindsight, it probably wasn't even that big a deal, and Sunset managed to put things in perspective for me about the whole thing, making me see my issues in a new light. Besides, it's not a very long story anyway.

The short version is that I had an encounter with myself from another timeline and things didn't exactly end well between the two of us.

The longish version is that I was sent out on my first assignment with Tempest Shadow basically right out of training. According to my boss, I showed a lot of promise as a POUT agent and he wanted to test out my investigative capabilities ASAP. I wasn't so confident, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that when he was so optimistic about my future. Our job was to investigate reports of a table that had appeared out of seemingly nowhere in the middle of an empty field out near Ponyville.

Yes, a table.

I had to raise an eyebrow at that one, but evidently the table in question was giving off some strange thaumic readings. Things started out normally enough; Tempest and I reached the field where the table was supposed to be without any incidents. At first glance, it looked like a simple—albeit rather large—circular white table. It looked like it might've been a fancy dining table, though given the size of it, it might've been something used for meetings or conferences. During our investigation, we discovered the table was made out of some kind of pure white crystalline material that didn't appear to match anything Tempest or I knew of.

A thaumic scan revealed that there was a lot more going on than what we could see. Not only was the crystalline table practically oozing unknown magic, but there were clear signs of recent temporal displacement. In short, it was an OOPArt if I ever saw one, and it needed to be secured immediately. Anything that showed any evidence of temporal displacement technically fell under the jurisdiction of both the RIDES and POUT agencies and to that end, we had to contact a member of RIDES to assist us in the containment process.

They were there to essentially make sure the ponies handling the object in question and the object itself didn't cause any crazy time paradoxes that would tear the fabric of reality apart or some such horrifying nonsense. This might sound ridiculous coming from somepony in a similar profession, but I really don't envy their job in the slightest.

In any case, we contact RIDES and we've been waiting for a good ten minutes when we hear somepony shouting something from above. Tempest and I look up to see what we initially think is a pegasus mare in the distance. As she gets closer it quickly becomes apparent that yes, it's a mare, but definitely not a pegasus—or maybe it would be more accurate to say she was more than just a pegasus. However you slice it, the mare turned out to be an honest-to-Goddess alicorn.

Funnily enough for me, that mindbending fact took a backseat when I realized that alicorn matched my appearance right down to the streaks in her mane and the tone of her voice. There were some obvious differences, of course; the biggest one was that I didn't have wings and another was that the other me looked as though she'd gone through Tartarus and back. Her mane and tail were an absolute mess. The look in her eyes (my eyes I kept thinking at the time) said she'd seen things nopony should ever have to see. It was a horrifying sight, made all the more so when she finally landed and turned her wild gaze on me.

We stared into each other's eyes, and let me tell you, if looks could kill, I would've died right on the spot.

It was like she had some kind of personal vendetta against me, and I was so shocked that I couldn't do anything but stare. I remember she started screaming something about the table but I was too scared for my life to remember exactly what it was she said. All I could think about was that haunted and borderline murderous look in her eyes. Tempest tried to talk her down, but all that did was turn her more insane and before I knew what was happening deadly rays of magic were flying all over the place.

I managed to shield myself from any real harm (my skill in shield spells owed very much to my brother) but in my sorry shaken state that's about all I could do. Tempest did all the actual fighting and as tough as she is, the other me was an alicorn. My partner put up a good fight—a really good fight—but it still almost ended up being her last. Since I'm laying all this out now, I might as well mention that even as horrified as I was by the whole thing, somewhere deep down within the most primal part of myself I still found the whole thing exhilarating.

It was kind of the same thing as what happened with the assault on the cultist's ritual and it's only now that I can admit I felt something similar back then. I actually never told Sunset about that part because I'm still trying to figure it out myself. It doesn't make any sense given that ponies are primarily prey animals and our first instinct should be to flee at the first sign of danger. Yes, through evolution we've learned to conquer that instinct for the most part, but it's still there and it can still manifest under the right conditions, but this?

This feels like something different.

I don't know, like a lot of things lately I'm probably just looking too deeply into it.

Whatever that's about, I can deal with it some other time. The fight between my other—drastically more insane—self, and Tempest ended with my partner's loss. The only reason she wasn't vaporized by a giant magical laser was that the team we'd called from RIDES showed up and detained the other me before she got the chance. They were able to trap the madmare in a stasis field long enough to slap the strongest anti-magic horn ring they had in their arsenal on her.

I learned that day that RIDES really doesn't mess around when it comes to temporal anomalies. They came prepared and dragged the other Twilight kicking and screaming and spitting back with them to wherever they go to put displaced creatures. They eventually knocked the mare out, but not before I heard her give this loud, wordless, heartbreaking wail. I tried to ignore it but to this day I can still hear it perfectly in my mind. It was like she'd watched somepony close to her die a horrible death.

After she was taken care of, I contacted another team from POUT to collect the table because Tempest Shadow wasn't really in a state to do much. She wound up hospitalized for a few days and my other self was taken into RIDES custody where she might as well have dropped off the face of Equus for all the information I was given about her. I tried asking a couple of times, but I got nothing. My guess (my hope) is that they sent her back where she came from. I wasn't part of the research team at the time so I didn't know what became of the table or what it did and my superiors won't tell me either.

I found that odd given that most records were released to us after a certain period of time. Then I heard later that the Princess had issued an internal gag order on the case concerning my alternate self and the table. The case was shelved, the table and alicorn secreted away to nopony-knows-where, and nopony under any circumstance was to discuss what happened with anypony for any reason. That was the biggest reason excuse I hesitated to write about the incident up until now. Now that I've written it out though, I'm not sure how I feel. I don't exactly feel like a weight's been lifted off my withers, but I also don't feel worse off for having laid it all out either.

One thing I do know is that now that it's on paper, I need to take several additional measures to make sure nopony else finds this journal. If my job wasn't at stake before, it definitely will be now and my memory probably won't be safe either. I told Sunset about it, but I'm no longer worried about her talking about the incident or my journal for that matter. When I told her what might happen if word got out that I was telling her all of this, she offered to cast a geas of absolute secrecy on herself so that she couldn't tell a soul.

One thing I want to make abundantly clear is that I did not ask her to do this. In fact, I advised against it because if you even attempt to break free of a geas—whether it be cast on yourself or whether somepony else casts it on you—the effects are very... unpleasant to say the least. There's a reason geas spells aren't used to guarantee secrecy in POUT or any of the other agencies and why we use the reflection deflection spell instead.

I was sure Celestia hadn't taught her that spell, but then again I'm not sure where else she could've learned it. The restricted section of the Archives maybe? It was Old Magic, one of many spells thought to have fallen out of use literal ages ago. I told her I wasn't worth such a magically binding oath, but she did it anyway like it wasn't even a big deal. This mare, this crazy mare who I haven't even known a full month, was willing to go so far as to cast a geas on herself to keep my secrets.

If that isn't true friendship, then I don't know what is. Either that or Sunset is just as insane as the other me was.

As for the incident itself...

I keep saying it probably isn't that big a deal, but having to think back to it—both when I was talking to Sunset and writing it all down here—I can't in good conscience continue to say that. It was a very disturbing experience for me and I'll never be able to forget it. Even if I'm subject to the reflection deflection spell, I'm convinced the memory will always be there, lurking deep inside my subconscious mind. It was traumatizing and I'm ready to freely admit that, but whether or not I'm ready to accept what happened and move on is another matter entirely.

They say time heals all wounds, but nopony ever talks about the nasty scars those wounds can leave behind. Having written all this, I'm going to go to bed and try not to think about it anymore. Tomorrow's my last day off before I have to start working again and I'd rather not spend it brooding over what can't be helped.

Comments

[JustFalcon]

EHYYYY Tempest.

Also, Mad-Alicorn Twilight? Sounds like Starlight's Plan worked in this universe then. Perhaps that is how this Pseudo-universe exists? Hm...

[Venerable Ro]

Rainbow's braggadocio makes for the perfect cover, nopony would ever believe that she's more than she appears.

And it seems they had a run-in with a timelost Twilight. Always troublesome they are, iterations that for one reason or another passed beyond the event horizon into the infinite expanse of possible timelines. It's a tragedy really, especially when they can't find it within themselves to accept it.

[Tonto the Trotter]

I like how the jargon is managed, it feels official and I like how it just ties in these agencies and how they all cooperate for the most part. The story is a great mix of the SCP Foundation, Men In Black, X-Files etc. I dunno if you ever plan to follow up on the other Twilight, but I like the implication that this shows this world is just a bit more 'off'. Compared to the original MLP timeline.

A few other anomalies that Twi could investigate.

Mirror Pool - Another anomalous artifact to investigate and potentially place a site over to keep it hidden.

Alicorn Amulet - Clearly a dangerous artifact contain it asap.

Abandoned Rainbow Factory - Based on the Creepypasta, a dark and dillapdiated version of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory is discovered, containing the bodies of hundreds of murdered pegasi. Used to make the rainbow liquid. And still being operated by a few crazed employees, including a madmare variant of Rainbow Dash.

Previous Generations - Ponies that have the designs of the previous generation, MLP Ponies.

[The Cynical One]

For every success there's a failure hanging in the multiverse... never considered the fact that Twilight's table troubles would have sent countless numbers of Alicorns pinballing across the multiverse in this story. With every triumph another errant flaw lingers... and this one was simply around too long. I pity that Twilight. Oh well. The future begins one step forwards and thus we move onwards!