Truth be Told.
“You're a fake... I'm a fake... we're all god damn fake. What the hell have we turned into?” He muttered to himself, staring dreadfully into his own tattered reflection.
The things that made everypony feel whole and loved by others was once considered a taboo, but it had escalated into something far worse than what anypony would have expected. It was a basic form of living in these days, and anyone without it was treated no better than rotted hay. The egocentric hierarchy of society was based of of it, and there was nothing anyone could ever do to fix the situation; fake was now sought after and considered to be refined beauty. Not all of it ever went to plan as one would hope with their new-found beauty, there was a slight chance that your body may not take to it too well and end in less than pleasantly. For the few that have ever had the reactions, they hid in the shadows away from those who wished to loathe the abomination that was their body.
It was a quiet day throughout Ponyville, the rich galloped through the cobbled streets with light clicks chasing their hooves. They were most always on their way to boast about one of their new 'adaptations', as they had come to call it, or even the ones they just scheduled. They never thought about was the process of it all; surgery removing the living, organic flesh, and replacing it with a substitute, all of it able to be sculpted to the customers greatest desire. All in all, their life was centered around that of their newest adaptations, and what made them more beautiful on the outside. But while that of a true horror rested deep within their minds, the story begins just beneath their feet.
Underneath that of the beautiful cobbled streets and the ponies that walked upon them was something more vile than any of them could ever come to know. They often wondered who pumped their fresh water, their sewer waste, and how practically every other necessity was delivered without it actually being delivered. Those that reacted, and those that could not afford to have the atrocities others were committing to their bodies worked below the streets under the harshest of conditions known to ponies. They were fed barely enough to keep them alive and well enough to work, and those that fell ill were almost always executed on site. To be fair to those who lost their lives under the streets, it was safe to not consider it work, but rather slave camps. Slave camps under every city and road, spanning across the once beautiful and luxurious Equestria, hidden away from prying eyes under the earth.
There was never an escape from what they endured besides the warm consolation of death. These ponies were brutally beaten on a constant basis, bones broken and skulls bashed in. But they somehow seemed to work, even with their injuries as if they were some sort of zombies. They no longer had the personalities they once had, or even the memories of the surface. Everything they knew was the dreadful hallways their slaved every day under.
The halls were lined with rusted pipelines, some carrying fresh water, while the others carried anything from fresh sewage to that of methane gas. Water dripped from the cement ceilings and ran down the concrete walls, forming small puddles in every depression. Even with all of the potential hazards from suffocation due to poor ventilation, random pipe bursts, and the occasional cave-in, there were other things lurking in the tunnels that scared the slaves, and even those that were supposed to protect them. Even though the slaves meant almost nothing to any given pony, there were those who were sent under with heavy armor and heavy weaponry just to fight off the beats that lurk below. But sometimes, they weren't even enough to keep those... things back. There are times when stories pass by about entire camps being liberated, but liberated has a much different meaning in the world under. Liberation is just another form of death, but with less of a pain than the word itself, bringing some hope to the slaves.
All that was to be known of these creatures was their intensely violent nature, and almost nothing more than that. They could take insurmountable amounts of damage and pain, but they still had the ability to move on. The only thing that ever kept the ponies of the under ground safe was the fear that these creatures held for death, or else there would be nothing left of what was already an unknown world.
During the sunset of the fifteenth day of the new year, ponies slaved within the caverns just as they always had; patching pipes, clearing clogs, and transporting various items from town to town. But there was something much stranger about this day that nopony could put their finger on. There was something in the air; slightly different but not enough to make a major difference. The air had almost a metallic, iron like smell to it. What made that strange was the fact that little to no iron was used in the making of any pipes or patches in the underground. And this day, they had not yet received a single order as they had been promised.
Late into the night, some of the slaves ventured into the halls to the other cities just to get some answers, just as they had been ordered. Before they could get far enough out of sight, they came running back at a full sprint, fear settling over their eyes.
“They're coming...” One whimpered, the others curling into the fetal position.
It wasn't long before the prevalent scraping noises could be heard echoing through the halls. As the sound grew closer, so did that of the same metallic scent. Each pony slowly began to realize what that specific scent had been: blood. The blood of their comrades, a river running red and filling the halls with the scent of death.
In the days to come, shops ran out of food, milk, eggs, you name it. It was all gone and used by the residents of Ponyville, and they were starting to become very eager as to when they would get their 'necessities'. These necessities consisted of their fresh caviar, the most exquisite Daffodils in Equestria, and most importantly – more of their much sought after adaptations. Only if they knew the true meaning of adaptation, and what it meant to those who now watched over them with eager eyes.
Slowly, each resident of Ponyville started so seem somewhat different as seen through Fluttershy's eyes. Most of them no longer talked about their latest surgery or adaptation, but then again she hadn't ever been too fond of doing those things to her body. Just the fact that they no longer boasted about that of what they had, and the fact they no longer cared about caviar was strange to say the least. Living life with the crowd that always has to be the better looking no matter the cost was a strange thing, but it did teach her a thing or two about being real in life, and what it really meant.
Fluttershy was the only one that had continued to live in Ponyville, for the most part because she was the only licensed veterinarian within a twenty mile radius. And with her job, came the appetite of quite a few hungry critters. Day after day when she went to town, there wasn't any cat, dog, or even bird feed left to speak of. She was barely breaking even just trying to feed herself. Weeks began to pass, and nearly all of the ponies of Ponyville left their animals at her shelter to heal from broken bones, sickness, and anything else that may have happened to them. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence that they not only stopped caring about their useless caviar, but they now stopped caring altogether for that of their trophy pets worth hundreds of thousands of bits.
The less than normal behavior of the citizens of Ponyville had gone on long enough Fluttershy's eyes. She could handle the change in behavior of the ponies, because it was actually nice to not hear about every little part of their body that they enlarged just to get the prettier mares or colts. In any case, it was her time to take action. She just couldn't handle seeing so many animals abandoned on a whim just to sit at her own home when they had one of their own.
Fluttershy walked up to the first door in town that had used her as a medical service, the home of Diamond Tiara. She hovered her hoof just above the door, unsure of whether or not she would be knocking too loud, or too quiet. In a frantic choice, she did them both; knocking with force the first and softly the second. Diamond Tiara opened the door, a bleak and emotionless expression plastered across her face.
“Uhm, Hi... You kinda left your cat at my place to be taken care of, do you remember that?” Fluttershy asked in a soft, squeaky voice. Diamond Tiara stared back with the same expression, not a hint of concern on her face. She waited for a few moments, but Tiara failed to respond. “Ehm... Would you like to come pick Princess later today?”
“No,” Tiara quickly replied slamming the door in Fluttershy's face.
“Oh... My...” Fluttershy mumbled under her breath, sulking away to the next home.
No matter the words she used, or the pleads she gave, not one pony in town wanted their pets back. To top it all off, they all used the same emotionless expression with a single word: No. By this time, Fluttershy was beginning to feel the early onset of a depression. It wasn't the people in town that were causing her the emotional distress, it was rather the care of the animals that worried her the most. She had no food to feed them, and she was even beginning to portion off her own rations to help keep them healthy during these times. She was on her way back home through one of the many backroads, trying to enjoy what she could of the country.
“These ponies just make me so... angry...” Fluttershy said to herself softly, kicking a pebble in hopes of expending some stress. What she didn't expect was the strange clanging the pebble made as it disappeared into the grass.
She slowly entered the field, the grass almost covering her head. Searching for the pebble, or even where the sound had originated from seemed to interest her, especially when she doesn't remember there being anything metal this close to her own home. Fluttershy searched for roughly 15-20 minuted through the grass, with nothing to be found. With a sigh of defeat, she headed back towards the beaten path, just to step onto a solid surface with a light clank. She looked down, where there was a hole roughly the size of an average pony, partially covered with a metal plate.
Through the cracks, light shone down into the hole, lighting up a small patch of matted pink fur. Fluttershy shook her head, trying to make sure she was seeing what her eyes were seeing. Down below in the hole, lay Diamond Tiara in a pool of blood. The sound of light droplets falling into other pools could be heard, as her eyes opened slightly, catching a glimpse of Fluttershy.
Diamond Tiara's body was covered in splatters of blood, other ponies bodies laying nearby with chunks of flesh torn from their faces where adaptations might have been. Her back legs were twisted and gnarled, pointing in directions legs should never be facing.
“He... Help... … … me...” Tiara sputtered through her lips, slowly being dragged away into the dark by an unknown creature.
Fluttershy was now hyper-ventilating, never having seen anything that gruesome in her entire life, even as a medical pony. Some things just aren't meant to be seen, and for her – this was one of those things, as Fluttershy promptly passed out just to the side of the metal plate.
There wasn't much that Fluttershy could do to control passing out, it was just something that happened after witnessing some traumatic event. She woke in a sweaty panic, figures towering all around her. They let out an almost growling hiss from the back of its throat, a near threat to emphasize how powerless she was over the entire situation.
“You are... so... different than all the rest...” It called to Fluttershy with a hiss. “They want everything, and get it. But you... you only want what you need...”
“But... but why-y are you doing this...?” Fluttershy asked quietly, unsure of whether or not it heard her speak.
One of the creatures that towered around her lowered its head, looking straight into Fluttershy's eyes. It looked eerily similar to Diamond Tiara, but had large fangs protruding from either corner of its mouth, dripping with blood. “Why?” it asked. “You must not know of what we have endured for your pony kind to have this ethereal look most craved to no end... Have you ever wondered where this magic material that made ponies 'prettier'?” It asked.
“...Ye... Yes...” Fluttershy replied under her voice.
“Ponies came to our land, pillaging through towns with these intentions for 'peace'. They claimed nothing more than to need what we had worked so hard to earn,” it told her, the eyes getting visibly red. “They took our young ones, and used them as a substitute for their own old age, replacing their old and fragile body parts with that they cloned.”
“We... are an adaptive species. We have found ways to make the world work for us during hardship, and we even figured out how to force our own bodies to take the shape of whatever we desired. You see, this is where ponies found their greed to become ever stronger, killing us and using our own flesh as an additive to their own bodies, believing for some time that they owned it.
“We warned them, many a times, that they could not hold us back forever, but they refused to believe such a thing. They thought we couldn't rise from the ashes, but we did – and now we take the place of those who raped out cities in the bodies they thought they owned.
“You...” it growled at Fluttershy, “Are not like them in the slightest. Your body is pure and one of your own, not of something you took by force. We could always take from you just as they did from us,” it said with a devilish laugh, “But that wouldn't make us any better than them, now would it?”
“Uh... well... I... uh, no?” Fluttershy replied questioningly.
“There are some things out there that should never be touched... and that is of the true beauty your kind once held,” The Diamond Tiara figure whispered into her ear.
“Don't let the surface fool you,” it called to Fluttershy, walking to the distance as Diamond Tiara, fangs hidden below.
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... Wow.
This doesn't seem to be based on the youtube vid I posted on your front page at all!
1958119 This was written before the fact, my friend.
It sure is cool to hate the modern world, isn't it? How can we just sit back and watch MTV when people are starving in Africa? How can we send text messages when we used to talk face-to-face? How can we be so obsessed with body image that we forget what's important?
This fic has introduced me to you and your work, and I don't think I'll read anything else. I don't have anything against you as a person, but the world is more complicated than that, and nothing can be fixed with good intentions and liberal ideals. Personally, I'm a Libertarian, and I think people should do whatever they want, and if they want to look pretty in plastic, let them. After all, I'm wearing a zebra-striped hat and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses. Indoors, because I like to be ironic.
i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/322/431/fcc.gif
It was dark...but...good.
(Sidenote, pic is from Regidars page because its awesome)
1958148
Well... congratulations, the way you worded that review convinced me to read the story when I normally would have passed on it.
Ehh, it's kind of mediocre, bearing little resemblance to FiM. However, I don't think the story means quite what you think it means...
Thank you for the mental image of ponies with silicon tits...
1958196 Well, as long as nobody actually agrees with me, we're okay. All I took from it is the usual schtick about how it's wrong to be obsessed with body image, how we profit from the misery of others, and how much I hate people who pretend to be Michael Moore. Really, we don't need more Moore!
1958148 That's one way to look at the story, but not my intention....
1958240 Do you plan on explaining your intention, then? I don't mean to seem rude, but just saying it's 'not my intention' and then not explaining immediately is annoying and you shouldn't do it.
1958210
I see it as more of a more classical utopia/distopia duality; the shiny happy utopia, supported by the hellish distopia of slavery beneath (With the added bonus of other-species exploitation and potential genocide). It makes the Heinlein comment somewhat ironic, when a quick scan of his works turns up some stories that used a similar setup...
1958253 There are many different ways in which this could be interpreted, one being the one you mentioned. The general thought of things, though, while writing was to never judge a book by its cover. Yeah, I went off to the left or right at times, or maybe even a lot, but that is just generally because of the fact I let my mind drift when I write and write what I may. Not trying to be a complete dick by putting your thoughts and ideas down, it's generally interesting to see what other people see in what I write.
I understand why you may not want to read anything else of mine, and that is no issue to me. The world is a complicated place my friend, and there is always more than what meets the eye.
1958271 My issue is less with the presentation, and more with the fact that everypony is evil because they like to look pretty. Now, I hate vapid celebrity idiots as much as the next guy, but in all honestly, I'd rather watch Jersey Shore than anything by Janeane Garofalo. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment that way.
I've always thought of the body as being a canvas, which is probably why I hate it when people seem to get upset about treating it that way. Sure, I was handsome two tattoos and three piercings ago, but I don't give a crap if people think I'm ugly just because of this awesome tattoo (seriously, it's like Odion from Yu-Gi-Oh), and I don't like being treated like less of a person because of it. And yes, this is an issue I've had to deal with. God, being a libertine is hard work sometimes.
1958313 Let there be light, ideas and people shrouded in the darkness.
Judge before, regrets flow heavy should luck not be in your favor.
1958339 i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/190/450/75652%20-%20The_Great_And_Powerful_Trixie%20Trixie%20are_you_a_wizard%20meme.jpg?1319430857
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw4418_small.jpg
> changelings
1958313
Erm... You're comparing tattoos to mass slavery and genocide. Those are a bit worse than just trying to look pretty.
I mean, unless the ink for those tattoos was made out of pureed orphans or something, but I don't think that would help your argument...
1958787 You mean you don't murder orphans for your tattoos? Then... What do you make your tattoos out of?
1958313 If the worst thing you have to deal with is someone thinking you're less of a person for having piercings and tattoos, then I envy you. While it's hard to deal with people judging you based on your looks, surely you must have wanted people to think something if you went through all that work on yourself in the first place. It's a two-way road, and furthermore don't expect everyone to like the same kind of art let alone interpret said art the same way. I call it the bee-job: if you *choose* to get a job working with bees, don't complain when you get stung.
For me, I will never need a tattoo to show someone what I like or believe in until language itself and/or geek t-shirts are abolished.
As far as the story goes, it's a fimfic story, not a sci-fi social commentary like Metropolis. I'm not really sure what there is to gain out of inflating a message that wasn't there.
1959604 It's just what I got out of it, no need to get nastier than me.
That was rather disturbing. I don't mean that in a bad way, necessarily.
There were a couple of grammatical errors if you care to correct them.
Either add a "what" to the beginning of this sentence, or get rid of the "was" in the middle.
Pronoun confusion. Is it singular, or are they plural?
I think something is missing from the end of this sentence.
Either "many times", or "many a time".
And finally:
This may be nitpicking, but these sentences are sort of unnecessary, as their information is implied by the situation.
Also, the paragraph that starts...
...changes tenses in the middle.
Don't hurt me!
This was an interesting concept. Food for thought, certainly.
1961773 No hurt, my friend. I always appreciate it when someone comes along and finds some fixes.
People who exchange their real bodies for fake ones are just insecure. They hate themselves, and getting a fake body part is just screaming out that fact.
I personally don't like fake people, but I also know that I can't do anything about it and i'm not their boss.
I don't have any fake part on my body... I have no tattoos, I have never dyed my hair, I have a real ass and and real boobs, i don't wear color contacts, i don't wear fake nails, nothing.
But would you consider braces fake? Hmm...
1964851
Best way any woman can be.
1962156 Then it was my pleasure.
1964851 What about tooth implants? I was born with a genetic "glitch", and five of my adult front teeth never grew in. The insurance companies call it cosmetic, but without my retainers (which will be replaced with permanent implants soon), I have gaping holes in my smile, and a problem eating certain foods. Burn victims too, have a completely understandable need for "cosmetic" surgery. You could say that it's just for self esteem, but really, who would feel comfortable walking around in public for the rest of their life, with horrible body scars? People would stare. They could be discriminated against. Even nose jobs have their place, if someone breaks their nose.
)
I don't like the concept of tattoos and unnecessary cosmetics myself, but I also know some people don't like beards, or seeing me wear shorts in the winter. It is truly their choice. (Sorry, I go on long rants when I'm sleepy
Well... This is quite... Wow. I can't word it. But I suppose that those killer-things were the Changelings, right?
God damn, Tumbleweed...
That was an amazing tale.
Oh... my...
Amazing! I really enjoyed this--thanks!
5726302 Thanks! This was one of my more... unique stories. I'm glad you liked it!
Whoa.
Creepy. Dark. AWESOME. 
Were the creatures in question changelings? They talked about how they're an adaptive species and how they can shapeshift - plus what other species would ponies use for what is essentially plastic surgery with biomass?
Although I wasn't phased by this story in the slightest, I have to applaud you for it. Well done!
Even though this is labeled as "complete" please do a second chapter and/or a sequel.