14 - Perverted Kindness
Twi stared at the corpse of a pony named Sparkle. Her rot blackened smile was still pinned up with splinters of bone placed by a previous Twilight gone mad. While she knew the image was probably intended to be cheerful, to show how much that Twilight appreciated Sparkle's good spirit, it had ended up looking nothing less than demonic. It was high time Sparkle be allowed to rest.
Twi turned away from the corpse to first examine all of the items she had gathered. Books, notes, a few pictures of her friends she'd recovered, some of the better cuts of meat, a few bone tools, and anything else of use she'd managed to acquire so far. Nothing was missing—save for the murderous Twilight's journal, which she had decided to leave behind. It was in terrible condition anyway, and she wasn't sure the others wanted to see it after what she pulled with Sweetie Belle.
With everything accounted for, she could finally get on with what she had come to do, then immediately take her stuff and join the others afterward.
Twi opened her mouth and pulled her lips back just enough to ensure her teeth stuck out, then extended her neck toward Sparkle's muzzle. She would avoid actually touching the body as best she could, but she needed to get those splinters out. They had been lodged in firmly, from the top and bottom, and only became even more solidly stuck in there as the pony they were attached to rotted around them.
After the first few tugs, Twi realized that she would at least have to hold onto the carcass with her wings to keep it from toppling over as she pulled. It took far more force to get the first one out than she expected, and even with wings in place, the body still almost came down right on top of Twi. That really would not have been pleasant.
Successive splinters got progressively easier than the last as Twi fell into a rhythm, but it was still a time consuming process. The muck covering them made Twi gag every time, even as accustomed to the locale as she was, and their slipperiness caused her to repeatedly lose her grip. She refused to quit though. This pony deserved more respect than that. They all did.
Usually Twi wasn't in a position to offer anything and so she pushed them from her mind, convinced herself she didn't care for the dead, but now there actually was something she could do. She could actually undo the mutilation, at least to a degree, and restore one tiny fraction of sanity to a single corner of her world. It wasn't much, but it would have to be enough.
The last of the bone splinters came free, and Twi rested back on her haunches with a relieved smile. It was done. Somehow, Sparkle seemed relieved too, as if a great weight had been lifted and her spirit made free, though Twi knew it was impossible. That pony was long gone from here. It had just been a trick of the imagination, though one Twi allowed herself to indulge for the time being.
Just sitting there, staring into Sparkle’s face quickly became too much for her, and so she decided on impulse to gently take the body between her forehooves and lie it on its side as if sleeping. That done, she took a ratty old cloth and laid it over the body like some sort of crude burial shroud. Only with that completed did she finally allow herself to be content with her work. There was obviously no way to actually bury her, after all.
"Rest well, Sparkle. I never met you, but if that journal spoke true, then I very much would have liked to." Abruptly, she began chuckling. "Of course, maybe I already have. Maybe Light was much like you, at least at first. Maybe I was too.” She shook her head. “She and I probably could have gotten along better, but I'm sure you know how things tend to go, whatever our intentions. You no doubt had plenty of troubles in your time here as well, however blessedly short it seems to have been."
"Speaking to the dead?"
Twi whirled around, stunned by the unexpected, soft-spoken voice emanating from behind her.
“Fluttershy? How long have you been standing there?”
“Oh, just long enough to sate my curiosity.” The pegasus smiled, taking a step toward her with one wing cradling some object Twi couldn’t quite make out. By how it was held, it seemed Fluttershy was actively trying to hide it from her.
"Uh, why exactly are you here?" Twi glanced around for a weapon, just in case. "Shouldn't you be sleeping? Was the sedative not enough?" She spotted one: a bone shiv lying next to her gathered belongings.
"Oh, it was plenty. The others are so very sound asleep." Fluttershy's smile would have been considered warm, if it weren't for the strange look in her eyes. A look that was distinctly not Fluttershy.
Twi's eyes widened in horror as she stepped away from the pegasus and toward the shiv. "What have you done? What are you going to do?"
"You know," Fluttershy started, completely ignoring her questions, "Sparkle is glad you've turned things around. She really is at peace now."
"She's long dead. Don't pretend that you can speak for spirits. It's disrespectful."
"Spirits?" Fluttershy rubbed a hoof under her chin in thought. "Hmm, no. But I do see angels—or, well, an angel."
"I see..." Twi stared into Fluttershy's eyes, trying to figure out what exactly that strange look was. It was almost as if something else were in there, taking up residence alongside that sweet, naïve pony Twi knew. "Have you been hallucinating? It's a known side effect of a tortured mind." Twi gulped, realizing that if Fluttershy was that far gone, anything she said could set the other pony off. "You know, Light and I can help you. We can talk this through, find out what's wrong, and work toward a solution. Together. As friends. You'd like that, right?"
Fluttershy shook her head, her smile falling away into a scowl. "No. You're just trying to trick me. Well, it won't work. I know better than to trust you—you who would see us all dead."
"I don't—"
"Don't lie!" The pegasus interrupted with a very un-Fluttershy scream. "You wanted to kill me. You wanted to kill Sweetie Belle. Who's next? Rarity? Light? No! I won't let you!"
"Fluttershy!" Twi took a vigorous step forward, hoping to scare the pony into backing down, despite how much that step made her bad leg throb. "This is insane! You need help!"
"You think I'm crazy!" Fluttershy's eyes lit up with the white-hot flames of rage. "How dare you! I'm not crazy, you are! And if I must be the one to save us from you, I will!"
Twi slammed into the ground as Fluttershy crashed into her, her wing unfurling to reveal an axe of bone, covered in a liquid of the darkest purple. Alarm bells rang in Twi's head as she immediately recognized it for what it was: snake venom, enough to kill in a single, good cut. In a moment, it became clear to her that Fluttershy had come for the express purpose of ending her life, and no amount of talking was ever going to sway her.
Twi held Fluttershy’s axe back with her wing, making sure to push against the haft rather than the coated head. Meanwhile, she twisted her neck to put her horn between herself and Fluttershy’s muzzle, threatening impalement and thwarting the yellow pony's attempts to bite her.
With Twi’s forelegs locked up in keeping the other pony off her, she opted to pull in a hind leg, tucking it in between the two ponies’ bodies, then kicked as hard as she could against Fluttershy’s chest the moment she’d earned herself enough space to do so with her other limbs.
The pegasus fell away in a sprawl, and Twi took the opportunity to dive for that shiv she’d spotted, tucking it in amongst her feathers the moment she reached it. Her right wing now transformed into a thrusting weapon, she spun back upon Fluttershy, who had recovered and appeared to be staring at Twi's wing. Had she seen Twi hide her shiv there? She had tried to do it covertly, but it seemed her opponent was playing this far too carefully to miss something like that.
Fluttershy jumped backward onto a corpse, then jumped again, this time straight at her target.
Twi set herself to take the jump straight on, ready to block Fluttershy's axe with a wing and hoof whilst striking with the shiv in her other wing and keeping her horn low to use as an additional weapon.
She didn't get the chance. Mid jump, Fluttershy furiously flapped her wings, giving herself an extra foot or two of air. While flying in the pocket dimension was impossible, gaining just a little bit of lift—with significant effort—was well within the realm of possibility.
Fluttershy crashed into Twi for a second time, having managed to bypass her defenses with the unexpected timing and height of the attack.
Twi's left shoulder burned as something sharp cut into it, an injury she prayed had been caused by anything other than that poisoned axe—a bit of bone or Fluttershy's teeth perhaps. Simultaneously, she felt her right wing pinned by one of Fluttershy's rear hooves, preventing her from using her makeshift weapon. Worse than any of that though was her lack of vision. Pink had filled her world as Fluttershy mane fell on and around her face, leaving her operating on sound and touch alone.
Panic crashed into her as surely as Fluttershy had, a result of her realizing just how bad her situation was. Pinned down, poisoned axe, blind, injured. She might as well have been dead already. Nevertheless, she wasn't ready to give up, and so she kicked, and screamed, and thrashed against her assailant with everything she had. While she succeeded in giving Fluttershy enough trouble to leave her focused on keeping Twi pinned, and thus unable to strike with the axe, she proved unable to actually better her situation any.
When it became clear that she couldn't prevent the pegasus from dealing a killing blow for much longer, she resorted to the only tool she had left in her arsenal: begging.
"Fluttershy, please!" she choked around the long, pink mane. "Don't do this. It isn't like you. You're not a killer. You're too kind for that."
"Shut up!" Fluttershy screamed in a voice so unlike her that had she not been right on top of Twi, she would have thought it came from a different source entirely. "I'm here to stop a killer. In fact, if you think about it, this is the kindest possible thing I could do. I'm saving lives, protecting my friends!"
"No!" Twi cried out as she felt tears beginning to stain her face. "I haven't killed anypony, and I was never going to. I only wanted to let them die on their own terms!"
"Liar! You wanted to kill me, and you would have if Light didn't protect me. That wasn't 'on my terms.'"
"I thought you were brain dead!" Twi flinched as she felt Fluttershy's axe-holding wing move away, a likely precursor to that weapon coming down upon her. "Wait, wait, wait, wait! Please. I know you want to protect your friends. I remember the manticore, the dragon, the cockatrice, and more. When your friends are in danger, you become one of the bravest ponies I've ever known. Truly. But did you have to kill any of those creatures? No! You stopped them, saved those you care for, and maybe even made a new animal friend in the process. You don't kill. It isn't the Fluttershy I know and love—the one I've called friend ever since we took on Nightmare Moon together."
There was a pause, silence as deafening as the blood pounding in ears, then her attacker moved away. It was only by a couple of hoof-lengths, but even that was enough to allow Twi to blow the hair out of her face and meet the other pony’s eyes.
In Fluttershy, she saw doubt, fear, guilt, confusion, and sorrow, but no hate, no anger, and definitely not whatever that foreign look was that Twi had seen earlier. She couldn't believe it, but it looked like Fluttershy was actually backing down. Apparently, saying the right thing could do the trick after all, despite her earlier dismissal of the notion.
Tears sprang up on Fluttershy’s face as she took a long, shuddering breath. “Twilight? Oh, no. What have I done? I... I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. She just talked and talked, and I didn’t mean to listen but... but...” She began to choke on her words, cut off by the sobs bubbling to the surface.
If anything, the pony seemed utterly horrified, and even surprised, by what she had just tried to do. It struck Twi as odd, as it was not the reaction she expected from a pony being talked down from murder. It was more like Fluttershy had been woken from the worst nightmare of her life, only to find out it had all been real. Such analysis only led Twi into disconcertion, leaving the entire situation a giant question mark within her mind. Regardless, she knew her next moves would have to be careful, yet decisive. She wouldn't put it past the other pony to revert back into a killer. After all, she still wasn't entirely sure how Fluttershy had been driven toward murder to begin with.
She decided to start slow, placing a hoof on her friend's shoulder—a hoof meant to reassure, so that she might lower her guard, and thus, the weapon she still held. "Fluttershy, you are clearly sick. I don't blame you for this, but you need mental help. More, you need to trust all of us over this so-called 'angel' of yours. It is nothing more than a hallucination, caused by poor sleep and a traumatic situation. Do you think you could bring yourself to trust me? To trust your old pal, Twilight Sparkle?" She made her best attempt at a warm smile, all while silently hoping Fluttershy wouldn't pick out her deceptions.
The axe clattered to the ground, Fluttershy herself collapsing from a fatigued mind soon after, and Twi heaved a sigh of relief. Said relief was short lived as Twi realized just how much her shoulder was burning. The stupid, bloody thing felt like it'd been set on fire for Celestia's sake! She knew it meant that her worst fears had come true, and that she didn't have much time. She had to move, lest this wound of a pony be allowed to fester, becoming a threat to the others. Her biggest problem, of course, would be what to do after that. Fluttershy had already used the last of that miracle cure as a sedative—slipping it into the meal she'd prepared for the others, no doubt.
Twi leaned down next to Fluttershy, pulling her into a hug with her left wing. "Hey, it's going to be okay. I'm going to take care of you. I promise."
"I'm so, so sorry," Fluttershy wept hysterically. "Please forgive me. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry..."
"I'm sorry too." Twi glanced at her right wing, and more specifically, at what it held.
"For wha—"
A shiv of bone came down, piercing that yellow neck and sending blood spurting out onto the ground and all over both ponies.
The sobs from Fluttershy were immediately transformed into terrified screams, but Twi did her best to ignore it even through the heartache it caused. The moment the shiv was out of her target's neck, she kicked the axe away with one of her rear legs and forcefully pressed Fluttershy against the ground with her left wing and good forehoof.
"No! Please, no!" the yellow pony sobbed. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I won't do it again. Please, I'm scared. I don't want to die!"
"I didn't want it to be like this, Fluttershy." Twi stabbed her for a second time, this time missing the neck and catching her in the shoulder. "I don't enjoy this, but you've left me no choice." She stabbed again, same place. "The unfortunate truth is," she stabbed again, striking the wing Fluttershy had pulled up to protect her vital organs, "there is no helping you. None of us are equipped to deal with your condition." Another stab, once again taking the wing. "You see, I'm a goner anyway, and you're too much of a threat to leave around for the others—especially when they don't know how bad you've gotten." She stabbed yet again, leaving the yellow wing a riddled red mess. "You say you just want to protect them, but I don't trust crazy. Who knows what fresh insanity you'd show tomorrow?"
She raised her wing to stab once again, then let it fall as a sudden wave of dizziness almost knocked her off her hooves, a deafening ring filling her ears.
Fluttershy's frantic pleading became unintelligible, a garbled mess, as her blood seeped out of her wounds and soaked into the mane hair splayed out around her. Pink ran crimson, and terrified howls echoed off their prison's walls.
Twi shook her head, trying to both expel the dizziness and ignore her stupid heart, which kept telling her to let her friend live. No, heart, brain was at work, and it said to eliminate any and all threats.
She raised her wing again, but the shiv suddenly weighed almost as much as one of Pinkie's party cannons. Or, more likely, her limbs had gained the strength of Gummy’s nonexistent teeth. And that blasted ringing! She'd half a mind to box her own ears to make it stop.
The pain in Twi’s shoulder was no longer isolated there, now burning like a wildfire spreading across her whole body. It made it hard to think, hard to focus on the task at hoof. Fluttershy was little more than a red and yellow blur in her vision, a blur that had taken the brief reprieve as an opportunity to struggle against her. Was it Twi’s imagination or had that strange look from earlier returned to Fluttershy’s eyes? Impossible to tell with the damage to her vision.
Twi shook her head violently, trying to will the pain away, or at least the weakness. She still had to finish this.
She slammed both of her front hooves down upon the pegasus, internally cringing at the spike of pain that jolted through her bad leg in response, then lowered her horn so that she might finish this with a single lunge toward Fluttershy’s face.
Only then did she realize that Fluttershy had freed her previously trapped forelegs.
One hoof came down upon the side of Twi's muzzle, knocking her attack aside, while the other struck at her crippled leg, directly connecting with the wounded joint. A sickening, snapping sound accompanied the latter blow, and all thoughts of pressing the attack were gone.
"AHHH!" Buck! Frak! Frickity, buck, buck! Bucking mother's milk in a blasted, bloody, flaming, light-forsaken cup!
Every expletive Twi could think of ran through her mind as the leg bent in on itself, the previously damaged bones underneath fracturing with the force of the blow. For all the good that leg would do her now, it might as well have been amputated.
She wasn’t sure when or how exactly it had happened, but she found herself on her back, staring up at a cold-eyed Fluttershy, the twin pains of poison and fractured leg driving her body to the very edge of consciousness.
“You betrayed me, Twi. You told me to trust you, made me believe that we could all be friends, then you stabbed me in the neck. But, lucky me, you missed the artery.” She picked up Twi’s shiv with one of her wings. “Shall we see if I’ve a better aim?”
“Screw you.” Twi forced her eyes to stay open, trying to stave off the black for just a little longer. “If you’re gonna kill me, just do it. I’m not here to chat.”
“Aw,” Fluttershy tilted her head to the side with a mock pout, “you’re not going to beg this time?”
"I don't think that trick would work twice." She winced as somepony took a jackhammer to her nervous system. "Now, are you going to do this, or are you going to let your cowardly poison do the job for you?"
"You want a quick death, is that it?" Fluttershy sneered. "Well, how fortunate you are then! It just so happens, I'm inclined to grant your request."
The shiv came down, and all was black.
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10578696
Star Trek teleportation is incredibly inconsistent. We've seen it make multiples of one person (Riker) combine and then later separate two people (Tuvok and Nelix) with no one even considering the possibility of keeping the combined persona (Tuvix). In another episode, Picards is possessed by an energy being, and it beams his body into a nebula and vaporizes him, but Geordi is able to recreate Picard since 'his was the last pattern in the buffer'
We've seen that it can be used as a form of stasis (Scottie) but this never came up again, but it can also trap people in between spaces?? as seen in an episode focusing on Lt. Barclay. In that same episode, we see that, despite people always freezing, and them seemingly having no thoughts between the beginning and end of teleportation, Barclay remains concious throughout the entire process, is able to move during said process, and is able to grab Starfleet officers who were 'trapped' between teleports.
So yeah, Star Trek has no idea how its own teleportation works.
10613338
Yeah, I’m starting to see that. XD
This is getting really disturbing.
btw
struck
hair
10613813
Dang. Once again, I must thank you for so quickly finding my typos. I’ll get to fixing them right away.
And I hope it isn’t too disturbing. I’m not a fan of death purely for shock value or being needlessly dark where it doesn’t suit the narrative.
I need one of these stories that is less horror and more like the Martian.
hell I might make it...
You killed my favorite character leaving four unwanted ones...
10614311
Dew it. I’d probably read it.
10614362
She was your favorite? Ouch. Sorry. The plan from the very beginning had been to kill her off.
10614552
I understand
I liked her character growth. I'm pretty sure our spare will peice events together. Though i worry Fluttershy has poisoned a lot of potential water/food in making a poisoned weapon.
10614606
To be honest, she was probably my favorite character to write for. It’s why I kept her around so much longer than I originally planned. I definitely enjoyed playing with her atypical morals and the fact that she only mostly held on to her sanity. And Light is probably my least favorite, if just because I almost never like the main character as much as the supporting cast.
As for the poison, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I wouldn’t expect anything of that scale. There’s only so much venom that can be extracted from one small snake.
10614630
True... dilution is a thing and the stomach is better at handling poisons than open wounds; though that's not saying much. There should still be a several foot radius around the snake of illness inducing "liquids" that might potentially be fatal; assuming somepony doesn't develop an immunity.
I feel she kept sane by stepping into a stable form of insanity
Sane people don't survive these things; it's the crazies that do...
EDIT: For the sake of any newcomers scrolling through the comments before having read the story, I decided to add some spoiler tags to this one. Nevertheless, premature comment reading is not recommended.
10614705
Ah, I thought you were referring to an intentional poisoning of the food supply by Fluttershy--something she wouldn't do at that stage anyway. My bad. Yes, the area in which she dissected the snake would be, and is, hazardous. Luckily, the presence of the snake's corpse still sitting there should be enough to discourage any eating of the meat around it.
As for stepping into a stable form of insanity, I think that is a fantastic way to describe it. They have to change to survive, and unlike Fluttershy, Twi found a way to do it without hearing voices and becoming violently paranoid. She merely changed her value system to suit the new environment.
As a wise man once said;
"What i believe is whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"
And to quote a different character (with similar sensibilities);
"People don't just change like that. It happens little by little til one day you wake up realizing you're a stranger in your own skin."
Which is why (pardon the vagueness as i don't like spoiler tags) both can be considered insane (when compared to their doubles in Equestria) but by the speed each one took i consider one "the new sane" while the other decidedly not. Which is why i liked the early chapters with Twi and Light playing off each other and Light having an existential crisis.
I wonder if and when the others will discover what fluttershy had done... can't imagine they would sit well with that.
10625480
They won't discover right away, but it's really hard to cover up the fact that one of the five ponies there is missing, and neither Light nor Rarity are stupid. Things will definitely have to come to a head, sooner or later.
Aww, why, Twi? Why did you kill her? She was actually possessed, you didn`t have to do that!
Eh, it was good to begin with but my god has the narrative gone downhill ever since the "angel" was introduced.
10616117
Could you please share what's the second character?
First one was Joker obviously, and if you have similar anti hero I want to watch it. Please?
I look at the tags, I look at the chapter title, and then I look at the note, what do you call "disturbing" here, because the title and the note is giving me some mixed feelings....
Regardless I'm going to read the chapter, I figured I might as well post this comment before I read the chapter.
11774374
The way one of the characters in this chapter cries out and begs was labelled as disturbing by a family member of mine.