Prevention

by Mind Matter

Passade

“How we died? Is he serious?”

Twilight cast a glance over the gathered ponies. Rainbow Dash, having asked the question, was looking at her in an almost angry confusion, while Applejack appeared closer to exasperated; Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity each wore near-identical looks of worry, though individually directed at Twilight, Rainbow, and Applejack, respectively. Twilight took a breath.

“That’s what he said. Apparently Pet and the timeline jump are ‘intimately related’ to how everypony here dies.”

“Well, yeah. Didn’t he say his timeline collapsed? I don’t really know much about this stuff, but the universe falling apart kinda sounds not survivable.”

“Oh, it isn’t.” The other five jumped as the voice suddenly appeared behind them; Twilight just blinked and turned her head. Broken grinned and gave her an almost impressed look as he entered with Pip and Spike. “I don’t have first-hoof experience, obviously, but the two leading hypotheses were ‘complete disassembly of everything in the universe at the subatomic level’ and ‘everything in the universe pulled into an infinitely small and long line.’”

“So that’s it, right?” Rainbow did a low flight over to Broken, landing a short distance from the stallion and giving him a light glare. “We either got shredded or stretched. You could have just told Twilight that, you know.”

Broken stared blankly at the pegasus before closing his eye and planting his hoof below his horn. “I said that’s what happened when the timeline collapsed. I didn’t say that you lived to see that.”

“An’ how, precisely, would you know we didn’t?” Applejack interjected over Rainbow’s attempted response. “Assumin’ y’didn’t kill us yerself, of course, which is a pretty big assumption, Ah’ll admit.”

“No, no, you’re halfway right.” Broken grinned. “I’m fairly sure that didn’t directly kill any of you, but everypony except probably Applejack and maybe Rarity would have survived without my activities. Dawn… Dawn might have made it through everything, I can’t exactly say.” The stallion’s eye twitched, and he took a breath before turning to Twilight. “I’m assuming everypony’s caught up, then?”

“As much as they can be.” Twilight replied. Broken nodded.

“Right, then. First-“

Rainbow coughed. “Hold on. I have a few more questions.”

Broken blinked. “Ask, then.”

“Are you sure you don’t know who Pet was?”

“Yes. I thought Twilight would have established that.”

“But if you tested all those unicorns for how well they could do timeline stuff, then wouldn’t it have been kinda noticeable if one of them had their special talent in it?”

Broken blinked again, rather deliberately, and brought his hoof to his temple. “…Pet’s special talent wasn’t timeline jumping. Nopony’s was, otherwise we’d’ve had lifelong blankflank unicorns up until the practice was developed.”

“But you said she couldn’t do any magic very well except for the timeline stuff. Isn’t unicorn magic power strongest for your special talent? And how did Dawn know Pet could do timelines in the first place if you got rid of everything related to the research on it?”

“First, Twilight was part of the research team, she probably had a list of the ponies who were exceptionally strong in it, not to mention copies of the reports. And I said that the only magic Pet could do properly was timeline magic. She could’ve been stronger in something else, like illusion or thermal manipulation, but…” the stallion sighed. “...listen, when Dawn hired her, or captured her, or however Dawn obtained her, she had Cotton Candy cut off Pet’s cutie marks. Just… just took a knife, skinned her flanks, burned the wounds shut. Forced her to wear covers over them so that nopony could see. Whatever Pet’s talent was, Dawn didn’t want anypony to remember it. Including Pet herself.” He shifted his hoof to his eye, rubbing it harshly. “You need to understand, Pet was basically invented by Dawn. There was, little, if anything, left from whoever she’d been before, and that includes what she knew about magic. She could do timelines properly because they were the all-but-one of the only spells Dawn had ever taught her.”

Rainbow nodded, grimacing. Broken glanced around the room; when no other questions were raised, he began.

“They gave me a week off, to recover from... our first meeting. No Dawn, no Pet, nopony except the doctors.” A grimace. “When that week was up…”

---

The door opened. Shining didn’t look; had he wanted to, the metal brace around his neck wouldn’t have allowed it. He simply listened as a pony walked, slowly, to his bedside.

“Sir Shining?” A mare’s voice asked. Slowly, the stallion’s eye turned, finding a green mare giving him a questioning look and a careful smile.

An alicorn giving him a look and smile.

Shining closed his eye tightly. He turned himself (as much as he could) away from the mare, taking a sharp breath as the chains pulled at his fresher injuries.

“Sir Shining?” The mare tried again.

Shining ignored her.

“Sir Shining, I have a message from Mistress Dawn for you.”

Shining growled, but didn’t speak.

“Sir Shining?”

Silence again. The mare stayed still for several moments before leaning in to whisper beside Shining’s ear.

“Sir Shining, Mistress Dawn told me to bring in Lady Thalia if you were bei-“

Quicker than he likely should have, Shining swung himself around, rolling close to the edge before the chains dug into his wounds to catch him; the bite of steel into flesh made him hiss. When he opened his eye again the mare had moved several steps away from him, shrinking back further as his gaze fell on her. Her wings flexed forward almost as if to block an attack; the horn on her head sputtered, but didn’t do anything that Shining could see.

Probably pegasus raised, then.

“What’s wrong? Scared of the big bad Loyalist?” The mare didn’t move beyond a slight lowering of wings. Shining gave a growl. “Tell me what the bitch wants.”

“The… the ‘bitch’?” the mare asked, her head tilting.

“Dawn.”

“Mistress is not-“

Shining twitched his bandaged ear. “If you came in to talk, you’ll need to come closer. I can’t hear much past the gauze.”

The mare stared at him for a few seconds before she seemed to remember that she could move; when that happened, she quickly nodded and took a single step towards him. Shining gave her a flat gaze before sighing.

“That’s… better…” Shining coughed. “You were saying?”

“Mistress Dawn is not a ‘bitch’, Sir Shining.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Female dogs usually just eat what they kill, not bring it back, claim it’s alive again, and use it to murder thousands of others whilst inspiring rebellion, murdering the rightful rulers of a formerly-peaceful land, and installing themselves as incompetent dictators.” Shining gained a grin as the mare’s eye twitched. “A real insult to bitches, that comparison. Now what was that about an ‘audience’?”

“Ahem.” The mare rather deliberately cleared her throat. “I-in any case, you have a busy day planned, Sir Shining. Mistress Dawn wishes for you to receive a tour of the castle-“

Shining cut the mare off with a barking laugh. “I have no need to ‘tour’ the place I raised my family.”

“There have been changes since you left, Sir Shining-“

“Unless you plan to kill me with them or let me escape using them, there aren’t any changes I give Faust’s flank about. And my spies have told me about most of them anyway.”

The mare blinked at him, then continued, sounding slightly less sure of herself. “Er, followed by sitting in on a session of Parliament-“

“I have no interest in watching that murderous whorse tell a bunch of sychophantic foals how to better exploit the country. Next.”

“A-an observation of guardspony training, particularly Risen operations-“

“If you’re stupid enough to show your enemy how your army works, then I’m rather pissed we haven’t managed to kill all of you yet.”

“With a f-final stop for a supper in, in celebration of your most joyous recovery, a-and then a private discussion with M-Mistress Dawn in her chambers.”

Shining actually took a moment to stare at the mare before he bared his teeth. “My ‘joyous recovery’? From what? The torture Cotton Candy put me through this morning? Dawn’s little ‘joke’ a week ago? The, the bomb you monsters set? You’d need a fairly bucking ingrown horn to think that I’ve ‘recovered’ from ANY of those!” His voice was rough, turning his yell into something of a roar. He didn’t mind, given that it seemed to be scaring the subplot in front of him rather effectively. “Listen up, you… you abomination against Faust: I want you to go back to your little ‘Mistress’, and I want you to tell her that if she has anything she wants ‘privately discussed’ with me, she can come down to this damned cell and blast her verbal shit at me down here! But she isn’t going to have me paraded around the castle she stole from the Princesses she murdered unless she takes my legs off and drags me along on the bloody, ragged stumps.” The stallion took in a few breaths, spitting a chunk of bloody phlegm to the floor whilst maintaining his glare at the now quivering mare in front of him. He twitched his ear, but didn’t speak, as he heard her start to whine from behind her wings. She took a few shuffling steps away, saying something unintelligible.

“Hey!” The stallion barked, making the mare jump and stare at him through wide, drowning eyes. He flicked his ear again. “I wasn’t bucking kidding. If you talk, you stay close enough for me to hear it.”

“I-I jus-“ the mare stopped and swallowed heavily, taking the few steps back towards the stallion. “I wanted t-to ap-pologize, for, for… wh-what happened a week ago. It was not meant to be a joke, S-Sir Shining.”

Shining blinked, then leaned towards the mare as much as his bindings would allow. “And just what in Faust’s name do you think you’re talking about?”

“My, my colouration, Sir Shining. Mistress Dawn planned for me to meet with Princess Dazzle and surprise her with our resemblance, as a p-present for her, to show her how beautiful she already was and would be when she was grown, b-but then, then everything happened, and Mistress was so busy, and she simply didn’t have a chance to change me to something else before our introduction…” The mare trailed off as Shining continued staring at her, his face in shocked confusion instead of pointed fury.

“Th…that was you?” Shining’s voice was smaller, closer to how he’d sounded before everything that had happened. “You, you were the alicorn? Dawn’s ‘Pet’?”

A quick nod. “I-I am Pet, yes, Sir Shining. Um, Mistress is teaching me the spell, to, to change how I look, and I’m not as good at it as she is, but I could show you! If you want, I mean…”

Shining’s eye narrowed for a few seconds before closing completely as he tried to catch the laugh that had snuck its way up his throat. He succeeded in altering a booming hoot to a coughing chuckle, which he managed to maintain for as long as his eye was still closed. When he opened it again and saw her unchanged expression, what little mirth was present dropped from his mind. The stallion blinked, hard enough that he saw stars afterwards, but he waved a hoof in what he hoped was an affirmative gesture.

The mare – ‘Pet’ – smiled, an actual smile rather than the plastered-on thing she’d worn when she’d first come in. She stepped back, spreading her wings and hooves as if to brace herself for some massive exertion; as such, Shining was rather more than surprised at the instant alteration to the mare in front of him. There wasn’t an eyeblink between her shift from a green-coated, blue-maned alicorn to a white-coated, grey-maned earth pony, and the suddenness of the change left Shining with a headache as his brain fought to keep up. Pet shook herself and let out a breath, glancing back up at the wide-eyed stallion; her smile faltered as she saw the precise shock in his eye.

She can do that she can do that ‘not as good at it’ she can do it better she can do it to others

“I-I can’t hold it, not for very long…” the mare said; true to her words, her coat was already tinged green again, and within a second she’d snapped back to her previous appearance. “But Mistress Dawn, she, she can do it so well, it’s like she actually turned me into an alicorn, or a unicorn, or-“

“St-op,” Shining cut her off, the latter half of the word yawning as his mind recovered itself enough to let him speak. He blinked, still trying to reconcile the two (three, counting her mimic appearance from the previous visit) mares he’d seen into a single pony. “St, st, jus- You can’t be serious. No, nopony can just change like that, not so…” Shining’s eye narrowed as the gears in his head clicked, and he looked the mare up and down with even harsher scrutiny.

“Sir Shining?”

“How much do you expect to steal from me?”

“Wh… what?” The mare’s voice quailed, the full word much quieter than the initial attempt. Shining bared his teeth, his voice hissing through them.

“I don’t know where you hid these fifteen years, insect, but when I break free from here I’ll make sure you die like rest of your kind.” His lips curled up at the warm memory. “Writhing on a spit.”

“Insect? Sir Shining, I-“

“No pony can just change their appearance like that, not so solidly, not without leaving something behind to reveal them.” Shining felt the venom leak through his voice. “Changelings, on the other hoof-“

“Changeli- no, no! I’m a pony, Sir Shining!” The voice was frantic as it cut off his accusation. Shining almost raised his brow in surprise at her sudden vehemence, but managed to hold his gaze on her. Her wings had spread anxiously, and she stared at him with desperate eyes. “I know that you may not trust me, Sir Shining, but you must believe that I am not one of those… those evil beings! Please!”

“Prove it.”

The supposed pony seemed to freeze. “What?”

“You say you aren’t a changeling. Prove it. Do something that a changeling can’t.” Shining closed his eye and turned himself back, taking a breath as he waited for the changeling to either flee or try to kill him. He would have welcomed either.

Though I’d have a better chance to destroy it if it tried now. Might have to track it down if-

Very suddenly, there was a muffled shriek of pain from beside him.

Shining’s eye shot open just as the first splatters of blood hit the floor, his head turning almost as quickly. Pet was holding one foreleg in her mouth, a large blob of red flowing between her teeth and down her chin. Both of her eyes were locked on the door to the cell; the metal slab shook slightly, but nopony stepped in to investigate. Pet held her gaze towards the door for fifteen seconds before slowly loosening her jaw and allowing her leg to drop. Quite quickly, a stream of blood trickled down her hoof to meet the pool that had formed from her chin.

“Bleed.”

Shining’s eye moved to Pet’s face. Her eyes were back on him, and they were disturbing in how clearly they held pain.

“What?”

“B-back when you got rid of all the changelings. You told the newsponies that there was one thing they couldn’t do that we could.”

“Bleed.” Shining said, standing on the podium in front of a vivisected larva. “No matter what stage of life, no matter what disguise they wear, changelings do not bleed.”

“You- y- g-go get that bandaged up, dammit!” Shining shouted, making the mare jump; she didn’t move far, whining as her bleeding leg tried to extend disconnected muscles. “Don’t move the damn thing! Hold it up, you can walk on three legs!”

“Do you believe me?” Pet asked. Shining stared at the mare, realization slowly winning out over anger and shock.

“Wh- oh for Faust’s sake, yes! You’re a pony, that much is bucking cle-“ she changed she changed she’s a pony and she “-eeow in Faust’s name did you do that?” The stallion managed to finish his thought, bombarded by fragments of panic that he didn’t have time to sort through. “That, that was instantaneous shapechanging, ponies aren’t supposed to be able to do that, we’ve never…” Shining’s tongue caught on his teeth. Pet’s brow had furrowed, and she stared at him in what looked like a careful inquiry.

“Sir Shining?” she asked, several seconds after he’d returned to wordless blinking and near-gagging. He didn’t answer immediately, trying to take the time to settle everything in his head down and focus on the task at hoof.

“Pet.” Shining spoke, causing the mare to jump as he used her ‘name’. “Y-you said that she can do… do that, to you, can just change you at a whim, and nopony can tell that you’ve been changed?”

Pet’s stare shifted to a more curious look, but she nodded nonetheless. Shining felt the block of ice in his chest edge ever closer to falling down through his stomach.

“Have y- has she done it to anypony else?”

“Oh, no. I’m the only one.” Pet blinked, wincing and shifting her weight further from her injured leg. “I mean, there were those zebras and other ponies Mistress tested it on, but I’m the only one who didn’t die immediately after.”

The ice disappeared as quickly as it had come. Shining didn’t bother holding back a relieved sigh; the entire resistance against Dawn could be shattered if she replaced a few higher-ups with identical spies who knew enough to slip under suspicion. If she was too proud or idiotic to realize that…

…then how would she manage it in the other direction?

Shining’s breath hitched before he could even recover from his relief, and he affixed Pet with a gaze that made her brows furrow and wings rustle.

“Pet? Pet, Pet, Pet…” Shining gave a mix of a laugh and a growl. “I have a… proposal, I guess, for you and the bitch.”

Pet’s eyes narrowed at the latter title. “What would this proposal be?”

“It’s rather simple, actually. Just go and tell her that I’ll… cooperate, to the best of my ability, with whatever the buck she wants me to do.” Shining gave what he hoped was an innocent grin. “In return, I want you to teach me the shapechanging spell.”

Pet blinked. “You’ll ‘cooperate’?”

“I won’t try to kill everypony I see and blow up the castle for good measure.”

Pet blinked again, deliberately. “I’ll… I’ll see what Mistress says.”

“Good. Now stop being a Faust-damned moron and go get that leg fixed.”

Pet stood, awkwardly limping towards the doorway. The door opened before she got there, two guards stepping in to help her out of the room. Before the metal slab could swing closed behind them, however, a bright pink hoof caught the edge and sent it swinging in again.

“Hiya again, Shiny!” A voice like the scream of a foal grated along Shining’s eardrums. “How’d you like it if I taught you a song?”

Author's Note:

....well THAT took a bit bloody longer than intended.

Sorry for the wait, folks. Real life in general got rather... nonconducive to writing for a while. Things aren't quite as sticky anymore, though, so hopefully I can actually continue working on this.

And yes, I am aware of the (possible) discrepancy between what Broken said and what Pet remembered.

Comments

[Evilpresident]

Hey, back from the dead again? Good to see an update once more. And two chapters at that

[thedarkshark24]

Oh I know what pet is.