Cutie Mark Camp Blues

by Moonbeam Thought Writes

Murphy’s law. Or close to that.

List of Damages aqquired through Incident 032B
Requested by: Grand Chancellor of the Council For The Betterment Of Equestria’s Youth, Applebloom
Fact checked by: Heat Shield, officer on duty at the time of the Incident
Provided by: Secretary to the Desk of Steel Bars, Manager of Ponyville Correctional Incarceration Facility

Building damage costs:
-1,068 bits for the warped iron bars
-5,009 bits for the ruined concrete
-1,000 bits for the cleanup crew

Misc. costs:
-therapy bills for officer Heat Shield for the next few months, approximately 450.70 bits
-cleanup bills for the uniforms of officer Heat Shield and private Rubber Duck
-the paper and ink used to file the reports on the Incident, and to create this list.

---

One week before

The woods weren’t that dark. He had no real reason to be as scared as he was, and yet still, a prickle ran down Cobblestone’s spine. Tartarus, even the hair on the back of his neck stood on end whenever his thoughts returned to the late-night hike through the Everfree forest.

The thoughts of that night churned endlessly through his brain as he approached the Nurse’s Cabin, nestled comfortably at the edge of the trees, and, even as the sun slid behind the canopy of darkness; shrouded in shadow. Did it ever occur to Sage Mercy that the cabin many were expected to call home as they healed was a bit too… Close to the forest? Dark and gloomy? Much like a sitting duck? He couldn’t quite put a hoof on the atmosphere that radiated from the wooden structure.

The building dipped out of sight behind a snowdrift, and Cobblestone’s legs worked overtime to crest it and have his destination back in sight again. When he finally struggled back up to the top, two beings were in the process of slipping out the front door, the paler of the two fiddling with something on the door behind them. He didn’t recognise that one, but their companion? That was an entirely different story.

Light grey colouration and a long, lilac mane? What was the purportedly sick filly herself doing out of bed? Ducking back below the snowdrift in order to not be seen, the purple colt made a snap descision. In the moment, it seemed only logical. Emphasis on ‘in the moment’.

Adjusting the beret on his head so it sat at a cheerfully lopsided angle, but was still secure, he waited a few seconds before peeking back up over the drift. The pair was at the edge of the forest now, and not facing his direction. He was about to finally make a move to follow them, but the other pony- the one he couldn’t quite place -took one last look back at the world outside the woods, and he was forced to dive back down to cover.

After what felt like an hour, but could have been as long as seconds, passed, he slowly raised his head back over the snow. The pair was nowhere in sight. Muttering curses, Cobblestone was about to turn back and head to his cabin. He would have, if it weren’t for one small detail.

Hoofprints. A clear set of them, easy to follow and distinct in the snow. Perfect.

Striding with effort back over the ridge of hard-packed snow, he followed the pair of tracks as far as his sight would reach, before they disappeared into the trees.

His steps quickly morphed into a swift trot, endless lengths of pure white ground and hardy plants fading into a blur as he raced towards the tree line.

There was a moment of hesitation, after all, common sense dictated that you didn’t follow a filly who probably just looked like somepony he knew into the incredibly dangerous patch of overgrown and possibly carnivorous plants in low visibility. But his need to know what was going on dampened the voice that whispered that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to do this. But as the trees loomed imposingly above him, stretching their boughs high into the gradient of sunset that painted itself across the ceiling of Equestria, he could hear voices. At first, it was just snatches of noise on the breeze, but as he took that first step into the forest, following the hoofprints, they got just a touch louder, and snatches of noise became indistinguishable words. He smiled a tiny, curious smile, and continued further into the Everfree.

As night descended on swift wings, bringing life to the shadows and spreading navy darkness across the sky, Cobblestone’s smile dropped. It was getting hard to see, and the hoofprints were getting harder to follow. It was evident that he couldn’t continue that much further without some kind of light source.

Unicorns. Magical, mystical mares and stallions with beacons of immense power sitting on their heads in the form of a horn. When you have so much raw arcane energy just… there, ready to use at any time for any reason, you tend to forget it’s existence. The average unicorn usually knows five or six spells, mostly related to their special talent, and never make excessive use of that horn sitting pretty on their crown. Magical burnout is also a deterrent, but not incredibly likely to occur.

Luckily for Cobblestone, that was when he remembered his horn. With a spark, it ignited, illuminating his surroundings in a cool grey light, and making it easier to see the tracks he was following. A thought bloomed in his mind, the idea that tracking could be what finally earned him a cutie mark. And with renewed vigour, he followed the trail deeper into darkness.

---

“Vig, for the last time, you cannot just give me head pats! I am not a dog!”

“Awww is the pupper angry? How cute!” She reached up to repeat the action and I quickly ducked away.

“I swear to Twilight, I’m not going to hold myself back from killing you this time.”

“Nice try. Somepony else beat you to the punch! I’m already dead!”

“So you say every time I threaten you.” I muttered under my breath.

Vig only laughed to show she heard me. The forest was getting pretty dark, and every so often I would glance up at the sky, checking that no celestial objects had suddenly appeared since last I checked.

“Will you re-lax already? If you shift suddenly, I’ll just punch you out of it again!”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just, well…”

Vig took a sip from the transparent bag she held in one hoof. The contents of the bag sloshed unsettlingly, leaving red trails across the bubble of air at the top of it.

“Oh, yep, I know the feeling.” She took another sip.

“Do you- do you promise that you’ll snap me out of it again?”

Vig rolled her eyes, but went through the motions again for my benefit. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

There was something so unusually comforting about those words, like some cosmic force out there was going to hold the pony who made that promise to it. It was why that particular form of agreement was so popular.

The clearing we were on our way to loomed suddenly out of the woods, a break in the trees reminiscent of an island in a storm. I stepped into it first, pushing through the sweet-smelling bushes that lined the edges. Vig followed after me, taking in the cool night air contemplatively.

“Do you reckon we were followed?” The question came suddenly, and I turned to face her.

“Why, did you see somepony following us?”

“No, no. I just could have sworn I heard a heartbeat out there…”

“Since when can you hear heartbeats?”

She stuck out her tongue. “Since I died, smart flanks.”

I stuck my own back out at her. It was childish, yes, but was I just going to let her get away with such an inflammatory gesture? No. No, I was not.

I turned back around to face the other side of the clearing, where the moon would surely be rising any minute now. I turned and braced myself for the night ahead.

The heavens certainly knew their timing, and like clockwork, a small edge of glowing white appeared over the tops of the trees. I took in a deep breath, and tried desperately to slow my heart, which beat a kilometre a minute. As it slowly rose over the tops of the trees, revealing a large, gleaming circle hanging bright in the sky. I unconsciously took a step forward, drawn to the silvery light pooling in the clearing.

It started like it always did. Shivering, shakes skating up and down my body. The feeling of strangeness. Otherness. This was my calling, the flame to my desperate moth. My mind was adrift, a lone boat in a mist-filled ocean. The light drenching the area was positively sublime, and I couldn’t help but drink it in. Another step forward, my hooves twitching and wavering.

Enamoured with the light, I let it wash over me, rolling my shoulders forwards and back, arching my spine.

Disorientation welcomed me like an old friend, and dizziness followed swiftly after, leaving me to sway slightly. When the nausea started, I was almost expecting it.

A low crackling, which, paired with the odd pop or unnervingly loud crack, alerted me to the fact that the change had started to truly dig it’s heels in.

A slight itchy warmth, and suddenly my coat was made up of long, coarse fur instead of the tiny monochromatic hairs that usually sat over my body. I held up one hoof, only to watch as new fur swept neatly over it, obscuring any hint of the pinkish flesh that was previously barely visible underneath.

I gave myself a light shake as the bones rattled a little, sliding into their correct places. I rotated my shoulders, hearing a satisfying clack once everything was in the right place. I didn’t need to check to see how my formerly lilac equine tail had changed, and neither did I spare a glance for my hooves when a stabbing pain shot through them.

It all felt so unnervingly natural. It was almost like changing out of tight, stuffy clothes and into baggy loungewear. Except loungewear didn’t usually tend to cause a transformation from one species into something entirely else. As the unshakable core of my being was stripped away into otherness, I could feel the strange peacefulness of it all weighing down on my mind, stifling unbridled fear and squashing horrified disgust.

I ran my tongue over the points of long, sharp fangs that now filled my mouth, and blinked furiously as my sight distorted, before refocusing in terrifyingly perfect clarity that made my head hurt. I had just gotten used to the new, sharper vision, when the world fell silent. It was back in less than half a second, bursting back in an explosion of sound, and forcing my ears to lay flat back against my head.

And it was all so peaceful. So tranquil, as if shedding the form of the regular pony was just a thing that happened, and it was nothing to be scared of. But it wasn’t over. A voice- one that felt so familiar, as if it was the other side of a coin whose face I was on, wild, rough and free. It teared into my head, slashing away at sensible thought or reason.

Wild, rough, free and, well, there was not quite another adequate word for it but monstrous.

The moon had risen. The night was young. I was free.

---

Vig took another sip from the blood pack, quietly watching her friend as she became a monster. There wasn’t anything to be done about it, except wait for them to stop transforming into a ‘wolf-beast-thing’. Moonbeam’s words, not hers.

The creature formerly (and probably still) known as her friend turned around with a snarl building in her throat. She had long fur, sharp fangs, paws and claws. Seemed high time to knock some sense into that filly.

Except… the slitted, deep blue eyes weren’t locked on her. The beast’s gaze slid past Vig and landed squarely on something behind her. Or somecreature. There was that small thumping sound again, coming from both in front of her and behind. She’d previously written it off as some woodland creature sitting in a tree somewhere behind her.

Deciding that the possible danger from whatever Moonbeam’s eyes were locked on was going to be more dangerous than the definite danger from what was in front of her, she turned around slowly.

Oh. Oh buck. Of course it’d be just her luck to turn around and find Cobblestone of all colts standing there. His dark grey mane was messy under the hideously askew blue beret, and his eyes were wide, flicking between the red-eyed and fanged filly holding a bag of blood, and the wolf-like creature vaguely resembling somepony he’d had positive associations with in the past.

So of course she just had to say it. This would obviously be the wrong situation, in hindsight, but at the time, Vig was on her last nerve. In the past few days, she’d died, drank blood (several times), watched her friend turn into a monster (also several times), and been burned by the mere light of the sun. Vig was having one Tartarus of a camp.

“This totally isn’t what it looks like.” She really just had to say it.

That was about when Cobblestone started screaming. And on her other side, Moonbeam burst into a howl. So Vig took what may have been the last calm, peaceful sip of blood pack of the night.

She turned just in time to see her friend raring to attack the poor colt who’d stumbled upon the pair, and quickly ducked before yelling for the other pony to do the same. With a grand leap, that Cobblestone would have been the clear target of, had he not ducked, and suddenly the werewolf was a few hoofsteps away from the half-dragon. He, thankfully, did the smart thing and ran off into the woods, letting out another scream. Moonbeam stood where she’d landed, stock-still.

Whelp. The plan to smack sensibility back into a certain grey filly was still on. Given her luck, Cobblestone would probably be blabbing his flanks off about the monsters he saw in the forest as soon as he got back to his cabin.

“Bridges to burn, bridges to burn.” She muttered. Which had the unfortunately little-thought out effect of pinning Moonbeam’s attention directly on her.

Vig sighed. It was not going to be a short night by any meaning of the word.

---

Cobblestone’s heart pounded as he galloped through the forest. There! Light through the trees! He sprinted towards it, not bothering to look back and try to see if that… that… monstrosity was on his tail.

It had looked equine. It had looked so Twilight-damed equine!

And that wasn’t the only resemblance the beast had shown. Lilac mane? Light grey fur? Tartarus, even the blue eyes, as much of a twisted mockery of the filly’s eyes as they were, were perfect down to the shade.

It was Moonbeam Twilight-damned-to-the-pits-of-Tartarus Thought.

And then he was through the trees, still running as hard as he could. The light came from a cabin window, shining as a lamp in the void. The Birch Cabin. Perfect.

He’d tell the world.

He’d slay the monster.

And hopefully get a cutie mark in heroism for his troubles.