Slingers

by Enter Madness

Brightly

The train station bustled with activity. Everywhere one looked there was something going on. There were ponies at newspaper stands, attracting passers by with calls of “Extra! Extra!” and vending the latest gossip to the masses; there were ponies boarding trains, ponies getting off trains, and ponies buying train tickets. The station was filled with the sounds of laughter and conversation, punctuated by train whistles as the metal behemoths arrived or left. The smell of fresh street food permeated the air. It was the everyday hustle and bustle of Canterlot, and for most ponies it was just the way things were.

Brightly Lulamoon hated all of it.

The young, light-blue unicorn with the silver mane was incredibly uncomfortable in crowds. The large mass of ponies seemed to press down on him from all sides. He couldn’t move; he wouldn’t be able to stand it at all if he didn’t have a friend sitting with him on the bench that served as his refuge. Brightly had his eyes shut and was taking deep breaths to keep himself from hyperventilating. He jerked to the side when he felt a hoof on his shoulder.

“Are you okay, Brightly?” It was Rose, Brightly’s best friend. Her name came not from the color of her coat, which was more of a peach, but from her dazzling scarlet mane. He felt comforted by her smile. He nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” he said softly, repositioning his glasses on his face. The crowds were always easier to deal with when Rose was around. She leaned back, her smile growing a little wider.

“Good. I was worried I would have to drag you home again.”

“That was one time!” Brightly protested. “I already told you, I—“

“Calm down, Bright,” she responded with a laugh. “I’m only joking.”

“Oh. Yeah, heh, I knew that.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Sure you did.”

“Hey, aren’t you kids a little young to be here by yourselves? Where are your parents?” An old grey stallion with a business suit and hat on had stopped to speak to the children. Brightly froze. He didn’t do well with strangers.

“What’s it to ya, bub?” Rose challenged, imitating the way the Canterlot street toughs talked. She got to her hooves and the stallion took a step back, despite being nearly twice her size.

“Hey, easy now, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, taking another step back. His voice was trembling.

“Then why don’t ya mind your own damn business, huh? Go on, scram!”

The stallion turned tail and began hurrying in the other direction. Once he was a good distance away, Rose collapsed on the bench in fits of laughter.

“Did you see the look on his face?” she asked in between giggles. Brightly just gave her a stern look.

“That wasn’t funny, Rose,” he said. Even though Rose was eleven and he was only nine, he often felt like the more mature of the two. Some ponies around them were now pointing and whispering, and Brightly could feel his agoraphobia returning. He took some deep breaths.

“Lighten up, Bright,” she responded, slugging him in the arm with her hoof. Brightly winced.

“Ow!”

“Oh, don’t be such a foal. You need to learn to stand up for yourself once in awhile.” As she said this, her eyes lingered on Brightly’s chin. He reached up with his hoof and gently prodded the affected area, producing a dull pain as he did so. The memory of a the previous week floated to the front of his consciousness.

(*)

Brightly left Sister Jewel’s office with an enormous smile on his face, carrying the letter she had just given him. There was no stamp and no return address, but Brightly didn’t even notice. All that was important was what had been inside the letter. He got to go to school! He levitated the parchment in front of his face to read it through again.

Dear Mister Lulamoon,

This is a letter of congratulations on your remarkable aptitude scores for the entrance exam to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. You scored exceptionally well in almost all aspects of the exam, and I am proud to say that you not only passed, but have been considered for an advanced program offered by one of our prestigious donors. If you are interested, take the 9:30 a.m. train to Upper Canterlot exactly one week from when you receive this letter. There will be a pony waiting to escort you and your new classmates to where you will be staying. Bring a suitcase, as you will be staying at our facilities. Room and board are provided. -Best Wishes,

M

Contained within the envelope was a ticket for the train mentioned in the letter. Brightly was practically shaking with excitement, making it difficult to hold the letter still. He placed the letter back in his mouth and navigated the halls of Little Hooves Orphanage back to his room. He passed familiar bare walls and bare floors, and even a few other children, but he paid them no mind; he was lost on his own thoughts. Brightly had taken the exam with no expectations of success. He had been convinced that at nine years old, he was beyond any chance of escaping from the orphanage, but now here he was, going off to school. He giggled with glee.

When Brightly reached his room, there were three stallions waiting for him outside. He recognized them as the bullies who regularly terrorized him.

“Well, if it ain’t the little pipsqueak,” the oldest one, an earth pony named Dirk, said. Everypony called him “Dirt” behind his back, on account of his coat and mane color. He was at least a foot taller than Brightly, and much more muscular. Behind him were his two cronies; Wingding, a pink pegasus stallion, and Lady, a pale unicorn mare. They backed up Dirk’s words with sneers.

“What ya got there, pipsqueak?” Dirk asked, snatching the letter from Brightly’s mouth with his hoof. Brightly leapt after it, trying to grab the letter back.

“Give that back!” he said. “That’s mine!” A hard shove from Dirk quieted his protests and sent him roughly to the ground.

Dirk glared at the piece of paper as if it was going to bite him. After a long moment of concentration, Dirk passed the letter to Lady.

“Read it to me,” he commanded “I’m, uh, too tired to read it myself.” Behind Dirk’s back, Wingding rolled his eyes.

Lady acquiesced, reading the contents of the letter out loud in the hallway. When she finished, Dirk turned back to Brightly, who had picked himself up off the ground. Dirk’s demeanor had changed drastically. His eyes were full of a vengeful fury that Brightly had never seen before, and it terrified the small unicorn. Before he could react, Dirk had punched Brightly square in the face, knocking him to the ground again.

“So, you think you can just up and leave, huh!?” Dirk delivered a swift kick to Brightly’s stomach, causing the small unicorn to groan. “You think that you deserve to leave this miserable Tartarus pit, while I’m stuck here to rot, is that it!?” Another kick, harder this time. “Answer me, you little prick!” Another kick to the stomach, followed by a kick in the face. Hot tears began pouring from Brightly’s eyes. Wingding put a hoof on Dirk’s shoulder.

“Whoa Dirk, calm down. You’re really hurting him.” Dirk just pushed him away and stomped on Brightly’s stomach. Brightly felt a warmth in his throat as he coughed up blood onto the floor.

“Hey Brightly!” It was Rose’s voice. “Guess what? I—“ Her words died in her mouth when she rounded the corner. Dirk turned to face her, and as their eyes met, time seemed to stop. Brightly passed out.

When he came to a few seconds later, Wingding and Lady were nowhere to be seen and Dirk was on the ground in front of him. Rose was straddling the brown earth pony, holding his mane in her left hoof and hitting him repeatedly in the face with her right. Her hoof and his face were both covered in blood. Rose’s expression was twisted with rage. It scared Brightly. He reached a hoof out and touched Rose’s leg. She stopped and turned to him, then back to what she was doing. She leapt off of Dirk and vomited on the side of the hall, sickened with herself.

Then, Brightly passed out again.

(*)

“Bright? Hello, Equestria to Brightly.” Brightly shook his head, returning himself to the present. He muttered an apology.

“Whatever you say, weirdo,” she responded. Brightly was about to protest when he saw the playful look in her eyes. He settled for a smile instead.

CHOO-CHOOOOOOO.

Brightly and Rose looked up to see a train rolling into the station. The electronic sign above the front window announced that it was the 9:30 train to Upper Canterlot.

“That’s our train,” Rose said, hopping off the bench and pulling her luggage with her tail. Brightly followed close behind with his own suitcase, not wanting to lose his companion in the massive crowd of ponies. After giving their tickets to the conductor, the two orphans boarded the train. All the seats were already taken, so they were forced to stand. More and more ponies started packing into the car until Brightly thought he would suffocate. He started hyperventilating, his vision going a little blurry from the excess oxygen, when he felt Rose’s hoof reach over and grasp his. He looked up and found that they were so close their snouts were almost touching. Rose leaned forward and planted a quick peck on Brightly’s nose. His light blue coat turned beat red and he looked away, but he was smiling despite himself. The crowd no longer seemed so bad.

The train ride was short; the trip from the Lower Districts to Upper Canterlot only took about ten minutes. When they had reached their destination, a voice came over the speaker.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, this is your conductor speaking. Thank you for riding with Canterlot Rail Company. Please be careful exiting the train as there is a gap between us and the platform, and I hope you enjoy your day in Upper Canterlot.”

The automatic doors slid open and a wave of ponies poured out of the train, pulling the two fillies in their wake. Once they were free from the tide and could get a look at their surroundings, the two young ponies gasped. Upper Canterlot Station was spectacular.

The ceiling vaulted a hundred feet into the air, culminating in a mass of gilded arches and strange, abstract paintings. The floor was a bright white marble, polished to a mirror-like sheen. It reflected the top of the room seamlessly, creating an unsettling effect that made the room feel a lot larger than it was. The station was at least five hundred feet from end to end, and there were massive archways that led out into the streets of the richest part of the city. There were gargantuan columns placed intermittently around the whole station, keeping the roof from crashing to the ground. Even the ponies looked nicer. They wore fancy clothes and hats adorned with the feathers of countless different types of birds, and they all walked with their noses up in the air and their eyes closed, as if they were too good for what was going on around them. Rose leaned over to Brightly.

“They look like they just smelled something sour,” she whispered. Brightly giggled, but tried to stifle it when two of the elitist ponies walked by. They cast him a condescending glance and turned their noses even higher, muttering a “hmph” before leaving. This made the foals laugh even harder until they burst out in loud guffaws.

“Miss Rose? Mister Lulamoon?”

The fillies suppressed their laughter and looked over the pony who had approached them. He was a tall, alabaster unicorn with a gleaming white coat and a black question mark adorning his flank. He carried himself with an air of pride.

Rose cleared her throat. “Yes?” The stallion smiled.

“Excellent. If you’ll follow me, please, your classmates are already waiting.” He turned and began walking away. Brightly looked at Rose, who shrugged and started following the pony. Brightly followed suit. They soon spotted their destination—there was a small group of other fillies standing near a newspaper stand. Brightly counted five in all.

There was an orange filly with a red mane and a glowing red cross on her flank, who looked about Rose’s age. There was a set of twins, one male and one female, both a dirty blonde color with matching manes. The boy had a six-pointed star on his flank, while the girl had what looked like a spark of electricity. They looked to be the same age as Brightly. Next was a large grey stallion with a three intersecting loops for his cutie mark. They intersected in a strange way that Brightly had never seen before, like somepony took the infinity symbol and attache another loop to the top. He was clearly the oldest by at least a year. Finally, there was a tiny filly the color of the inside of a clam, who couldn’t have been any older than six, and whose flank was still blank. Brightly turned and examined his own cutie mark, as well as Rose’s. They were a black sphere with blue mist swirling around it and a double-helix, respectively. Despite their differences, they all had two things in common: they were all unicorns, and they all had magic-related cutie marks.

“Now now, settle down,” the white pony said. “Now that you are all here, we can proceed to our destination. If you wish to ask me a question, you may call me The Proctor, and I will answer it as best I can. Now, any questions?” The fillies all looked at each other nervously, until Rose slowly lifted her hoof in the air. “Yes?” The Proctor said, raising an eyebrow at the little unicorn.

“Where are we going?” All the other children nodded.

“I’m afraid you will have to just find out when we get there. Now, any other questions? No? Alright, then let us be on our way.” The Proctor began walking away at a hurried pace, leaving the children scrambling to catch up.

“Come now, you must keep up. Don’t fall behind.”

As they left the newspaper stand, a headline caught Brightly’s eye.

Skirmishes with Griffons Grow More Serious: Is Equestria on the Brink of War?

“Brightly, come on!” It was Rose.

“Coming!” Brightly called before running to follow her and the rest of the group, already forgetting about the headline.

As they sped through the streets of Upper Canterlot, Brightly barely had time to admire the scenery. Everything was like the train station; bright white marble and gilded doorways, and ponies too concerned with themselves to pay attention to the outside world. It was so different from Lower Canterlot that Brightly could hardly believe it. There were no beggars, no dark alleyways, and no suspicious activity that he could see. Everything just seemed better up here. Rose seemed just as impressed as he was. Brightly found himself watching her just as much as he was appreciating how the upper crust lived.

Soon they had weaved their way through the streets and arrived at their destination. The Proctor stopped outside of a plain white building with no discernible features. The only thing breaking the façade was a single red door, which the group was now gathered around. The Proctor pushed the door open with his magic and ushered the children inside.

The inside of the building was just as plain as the outside. The walls were bare save for a few magical lanterns, the floor was bare, and there were no other doors or windows in sight. It was just this one room.

Once all the children had gathered inside, The Proctor followed and shut the door behind them. They all turned to face him, expressions varying from confused to nonchalant to terrified.

“Now, I suppose you are all wondering why you’re here, are you not?” The children nodded. “Well, you are here because of an exam you took. Specifically, the entrance exam for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Every so often, when a group of exceptionally talented young unicorns applies, the group I represent is notified. We then carefully pick a select few for purposes that will be revealed to you should you choose to accept the invitation. Now, the group I represent is very secretive; very few ponies outside the group itself are even aware of its existence. You need only know this: we are a group of ponies dedicated to the good of Equestria, to fighting against any threat to the safety of its citizens, whether it be magical or otherwise.

“If you choose to accept the invitation extended to you by this group, you will be given room, board, and a home to call your own. You will be trained and given a very specific skill set which you will use to do as you are told for the good of Equestria. It will not be easy. It is dangerous work, and ponies have been killed in the line of duty, but it is a noble pursuit that they died for. I must warn you: your families, if you have them, will not miss you. Everypony who you have ever interacted with will claim to have never heard of you. We will see to it that all of their memories of you are erased. You will be given a new identity, and you can never return to the life you had. This is irreversible; if you choose to stay with us, you stay forever.

“However, if you choose to reject the invitation, you will be returned to your family or respective locale with your own memory of this experience erased, and you will be given a full ride to enroll in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. We will never contact you again, and you will be blissfully unaware of our very existence. I understand that this is a lot of information to take in, so I will allow you some time to think it over.”

All the young unicorns in the room just stared uncomprehendingly at The Proctor, who seemed not to notice. He simply walked over to the wall and laid down, closing his eyes and lying very still.

“So, what do you think?” Rose was the first one to break the silence. She was addressing Brightly, who mulled the question over, considering his response.

“This is crazy. I wanna go home, but at the same time, I don’t.”

Rose nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, what is he even talking about? The good of Equestria? What’s that supposed to mean?” Brightly shrugged.

“I guess, it's like the royal guard or something, just more secret. I don’t know, Rose, let’s just go. We can enroll in the school together.”

“Hold on a sec, Bright. Think about it: we could help ponies. We could be heroes, and you heard what he said. ‘A home to call your own.’” She looked into Brightly’s eyes, and he could see sadness in them. “I don’t want to go back to the orphanage, Bright. I really don’t.”

Brightly was torn. On the one hoof, The Proctor said this job would be dangerous. Ponies had died, and Brightly wasn’t exactly a force to be reckoned with. But on the other hoof, here was his best friend, his only friend in the world, pleading with him to stay with her. It was a big decision, but thoughts of what was waiting for him back “home” finally persuaded him. Brightly sighed, defeated.

“Alright, I’ll stay,” he said. Rose squealed with delight, tackling Brightly into a hug. After a moment’s hesitation, he hugged her back.

Maybe it’ll be fun, he lied to himself.

“Well, has everypony made a decision?” Brightly started at the sound of The Proctor’s voice. He hadn’t even heard the pony stand, let alone move all the way back across the room. He examined the faces of all the children, who all nodded. “Excellent!”

He went down the line, asking each pony in turn if they wished to stay. He finally reached Brightly and Rose, who both nodded. In the end, the little orange filly, the blank flank, and the twins left, leaving the older stallion, and the two orphans.

“Alright,” The Proctor said once everypony had decided. He pointed a hoof at the ponies who had chosen to leave. “Stay here,” he commanded. “Two ponies will be out soon to escort you back to your homes and take care of the arrangements.” He then pointed to the rest of them. “As for you, follow me.”

The Proctor turned and started walking toward the back wall. The children who had chosen to stay followed. When he was close to the wall, The Proctor’s horn started to glow. He swiped his head from left to right and the wall faded away, revealing an elevator. He pushed the call button and the doors slid open. The children followed him inside. There was only one button inside the elevator, and the pure white unicorn pushed it in.

All ponies present got a strange weightless feeling as the lift raced downward. Soon, the trip was over, and the elevator came to a stop with a ding.

As the door’s opened, The Proctor spoke.

“Welcome to the rest of your lives.”

Comments

[BlueLightning3033]

I must admit I'm already hooked, can't wait for the next chapter.

[Enter Madness]

1749709
Thanks! The next chapter should be up sometime next week, and please don't forget to rate the story if you like it. Also, tell your friends!

[Garbo]

One grammar edit: It's Garbo802 (802 stands for the area code of the state I live in: Vermont).
Otherwise, yeah. I'm definitely going to try and get this as much attention as possible. This one's a gem.

[Deil Grist]

Hmm. Fairly short and an interesting concept. I'll read this next week as soon as I'm done with finals (or during one of my many study breaks XD).

[Ringbearer31]

Nice Nice