Mirrored Experiences

by Knight of Cerebus

Any Port In A Storm

Tempest avoided mirrors as a principle. Nothing she saw staring back at her ever struck her as especially flattering, and vanity was a vice that she and the Storm Army had mutually held in contempt. A memory came to her, unbidden. Herself and the Storm King, staring at reflections not too different from these. A pair of simian paws around her withers, the Storm King's carefree smirk sizing her up and down.

"That's what I like about you, Shadow. You were born this cutsey wutsey little filly, but look at you now. Hardened by the real world. You're what every little pony should be. Tough, resourceful, smart. When Equestria is under my paw, I want those fuzzy, candy-coloured weaklings following your example." He'd poked a digit at her chest, and she'd felt, for just a minute, a little bit more complete.

It had been a lie, of course. That shell of cynical pride had fallen away the moment the Storm King had betrayed her. She'd thought she'd found a kindred spirit in the Storm King. She'd been stupid. What about the Storm King suggested he knew anything about hardship? He was a king, a warlord. Had she ever even see him fight his own battles? But anything had felt better than being incomplete. Damaged.

And with that gone, what was left? She was back where she started, and only allowed to start again but by the grace of a pony she'd called her enemy. Another memory came bubbling up.

She looked over the Princess of Friendship. The reports had called her an enigma. Once a magical protegee who focused exclusively on the study of spellcraft, she'd abruptly jumped into the limelight as the mastermind behind the defeat of several tyrants even the Storm King had dreaded facing. Nightmare Moon. Discord. Tirek. Her student had toppled Queen Chrysalis, no less.

"How?" Tempest said to the bashful-looking alicorn in front of her.

Twilight tilted her head. "Well, under Equestria Pathways Restorative Justice Act I can put the onus in restoring your debt to society on you, rather than enforcing a fixed punishment. There's good precedence for its successful implementation in several cases, especially with the recent defeat of Queen Chrysalis at the hooves of several EPRJ program beneficiaries!"

Tempest blinked at the sincere smile before her. She'd thrown this pony in a cage. Forced her to watch her home burn to the ground. Marched her past her parents and friends in shackles. And somehow this person was genuinely looking forward to giving her a chance to live a better life. Nothing about the moment made sense.

"Individual acts of apology and reconciliation need to be negotiated between you and the parties you wronged, of course." The Princess of Friendship prattled on. "But ponies can be very forgiving. You should talk to a pony named Minuette at the Canterlot Timekeepers Association. She can be a little, y'know, peppy, but I think she'd have a lot of inroads to finding common ground with--"

"No, I mean." Tempest cleared her throat, cutting her off. "How did you know, that...That I would...be better, than the Storm King. That I would care about your friendship." She rubbed one hoof against the other. Her gaze remained rooted to the floor. The pony who had volunteered to lead a charge against Princess Celestia couldn't stare an honest friend in the eye.

Twilight's voice came out small. Not proud of her achievement, but afraid of something. Maybe the same thing Tempest was. "I didn't really know for certain. I wanted to do better than I had, that day. I'd let a lot of good ponies down, and...if I was going to spend the rest of time as a statue in the Storm King's castle, I wanted my last moments to be moments worth remembering."

That made some sense to Tempest. Being honourable in the face of defeat. Trying to hold onto her values in her last moments. But what Twilight said next...

"And also...I know a bit about being...the way you said you felt. I don't have, y'know, any scars or anything...like that." Tempest could feel Twilight's gaze on her horn and hated it. Hated it to her core. But the words that came out next hit her like a punch to the gut. "But I do know what it's like to feel like a part of me is missing. I have this...I'm not exactly..."

Tempest looked up to see the Princess of Friendship and saw herself trying to explain what had happened to her horn. The same pose. The same tone. That fragile, flagging hope that they would understand something that cannot be understood. That they would care about you as a person instead of cringe and look away. That the broken part of you was not so terrible that they would keep to themselves and walk away.

"It's called 'scrupulosity', although some medical textbooks have started calling it 'obsessive-compulsive behaviour'. I won't, uh, bog you down with the details. And I remember being bullied for it, like the way you sort've...implied your friends did. But, eventually, I found friends who cared about me, even then. And my friends promised they would help me keep a handle on it. Work through the things in life that were holding me back. And they did. We did it together." She smiled a type of smile Tempest had never seen before, then.

"And I just thought...somebody should be there for you. To help you with that, that sense of...well, like you described. And now it sounds sort've presumptuous, I know, because physical problems and mental problems aren't the same and it's a false equivalency but I--"

She'd been shocked that Tempest had pulled her into crushing a hug. But she settled into it happily, herself. It had only been later, facing the implications, that Tempest knew she couldn't stay. The answer had been there the whole time. She'd been so...angry, at the entire world. The unfairness of being broken, when so many got to be whole. But her endeavor to hurt the world back had been pointless. She didn't need to break everybody else. Everybody else could help her feel whole.

And she had ruined that. So she'd very politely and gratefully told Twilight that she would be taking sabbatical to find a way to pay off her debt to Equestria herself. And then...what? Nation after nation. Zebras and buffalo and diamond dogs and bird creatures. Some quick, halfhearted friendships. But nothing that really repaired this burning feeling inside of her. That sense she was broken in two ways, now. One that had always been forgiveable. Her horn, her scar. Things sincere friends could have cared for. Admired. And one that was not forgiveable. Her actions. Her folly. The ruin she'd brought on countless lives for something so petty and...small.

So now she stared into the mirror that a Klugetown vendor smiling with far too many teeth was offering her for three thousand bits. She had five hundred.

"How do I know it will work?" She said to him, raising an eyebrow. She was already weighing her options. Everything she knew said the dealer was anything but honest. She didn't want to part with her hard-earned bits. Even carrying this many would have been a risk for most ponies. But she didn't actually need the mirror. She just needed to go through. A plan began to formulate in her head.

At this, the dealer stuck his claw through the mirror, then pulled it back out. He wiggled the digits to show the magic mirror hadn't caused any due harm.

"That tells me it's a portal. Not that it goes to another world." Tempest kept her gaze icy and unimpressed.

"You want a look through? That's extra. One hundred bits for the viewin' pleasure."

Tempest considered simply forcing the creature aside. A quick-up-and-down of the pudgy creature told her he wasn't especially athletic. The quills on his back wouldn't be an issue in a frontal assault, but this particular breed of Klugetowner could curl themselves into a ball, meaning an ankle sweep wouldn't keep him stunned. He didn't need to outrun her, either. He could simply sit in front of the portal to deny her. Still. She could simply steal his bits and lure him away from her target. It would be easy.

He wasn't a particularly pleasant-seeming creature, either. And she'd worked hard for her bits, doing security detail in Ornithia and hauling gems in Diamondia. It would be easy. It would be simple. Tempest growled to herself. The only thing stopping her from pushing through him and into this new world was the sense that she'd be adding to a different kind of debt.

"How much to go through?" The merchant blinked. Then shrugged. Money was money.

"Three hundred." He said, throwing out an offer.

"One eighty." Tempest countered. This, this she could do.

"Two eighty." He said, testily.

"Two thirty." She raised the offer to something reasonable.

"Two fifty." His tone turned final.

. "Done." She said, at last. "Two hundred and fifty bits for the transportation." She stuck out a hoof, satisfied.

The merchant darted his eyes down, searching for deception. When he saw none, he flashed that toothy grin again, extending a claw. They shook, and Tempest pushed towards the mirror.

"Safe travels." The merchant said, halfheartedly. It wasn't even really that he seemed satisfied that lightened the load on her withers. It was just the knowledge that she hadn't broken anything on her way through his world. That sense that when she worked at it, she wasn't an engine of destruction anymore. The scarred and damaged visage in the mirror parted, and Tempest stepped through to the other side.

Tempest noticed her balance was off the moment she stepped through the portal. She instantly shifted to a crouch, scanning her surroundings. She was in a dark room, the only light coming through the cracks in a door at the other end. There was enough light to see shapes, colours and outlines, but not enough to get a full handle on her surroundings. She could make out chairs and wardrobes, blankets draped over them haphazardly. Crates full of objects she couldn't make out were tucked to the sides of the room. Everything pointed to a spare room, or a storage space. Safe. Next, she felt around the floor. It was level. Sturdy wooden planks glazed over with varnish. So why was she off-balance? If the floor wasn't throwing off her balance--

With a start, she noticed that the portal had shifted her body. Some kind of transformation magic? She narrowed her eyes, looking over her new form. A quick assessment told her she had been changed into some kind of scrawny flat-faced Yeti with all of its fur shaved off. "Huh." She looked over one bald and spidery arm. Not the worst thing she could have been transformed into. Part of her filed away the idea of sharing the experience with Grubber and the other Storm Beasts. Common ground they might appreciate.

She kicked out her legs. Long and thin, but ending in sturdy combat boots that helped keep her balance on one leg. She smiled in approval. the portal hadn't taken her goods with it, either. Rather, they'd been reworked into a new wardrobe for her. Presumably one that fit this world better. Her scarf and rucksack remained unchanged, but her black robe had been replaced with a pair of tight black pants and a matching jacket. At least the mystery spell had remembered her fondness for leather. She idly wondered which monster these skins once belonged to. So long as it wasn't a horse...Underneath the jacket was a dark purple top that matched her mane in colour.

She hauled herself onto her back legs, flexing the digits on her forearms. Her full height was quite impressive in this form. No magic, true, but it was easier to see. Her stride length was longer, and, when she investigated her grasping forepaws more closely, she guessed she could climb much more easily if she tried. She could live with th--The thought cut off when she caught sight of her right hand. Ugly, jagged scars loudly announced that there were stumps where fingers should be. She compared the injured dominant hand to its uninjured counterpart. Where Yetis had three fingers total, including a thumb, her healthy hand held five. The ruined hand held only two, with her thumb and two forefingers healed over as if they had been torn off.

Tempest clenched her teeth and her fists as one, feeling herself begin to shake. Months of chasing rumors, searching for an entirely new world. A new start. And the mirror that took her there had seen fit to find some new way to cripple her to match her broken horn. No matter where she went, no matter what she became, that single moment of bad judgement would haunt her into eternity. She noticed that her fist didn't even form properly on the crippled hand. The outlines of bones on the back of the hand twitched and clenched, but the tiny stubs of fingers couldn't comply. Even the simple gesture of rage was impossible for her.

All in a rush, she let out a scream and kicked out at the mirror behind her. Her back leg connected with nothing. She punched the frame of the mirror, but this only dented the shimmering portal's outline. The spell remained intact, mocking her. Red fury swam in her vision. With another scream, she grabbed the mirror by its frame, preparing to let gravity shatter whatever cruel entity decided her scars should haunt her even here. Heavy, shuddering breaths reached her chest as she prepared to smash the twisted spell, whatever it took.