Madness loves company
The gray colt looked at me with wary eyes, scrambling to hide behind a garbage bag. At the size he was, it would work too. Except for the part he peeked over the edge of the green thing, allowing me could see his striped mane.
“H-how do you know my name?” He asked, his horn flashing briefly with purple light.
Tilting my head, I frowned.
“I’m crazy?” I shrugged, hoping that would not alienate him.
“Nu-uh! That doesn’t explain anything!” The little guy protested, momentarily coming out of his hiding place.
So much for a friendly start.
“Well, it does explain why there’s a bunch of squirrels flying around your head.” I pointed with one claw, toward the swarm of rodents spinning around like helicopters.
At the sight, Shining Armor screamed, bolting toward the dead end, running as fast as his little legs could carry him.
Arriving at the base of a stone wall, trapped, the little colt slammed his head in the corner, cowering ineffectually.
Though if I tried, I could imagine him having disappeared. Chuckling, I skipped cheerfully toward the little unicorn. This was kind of funny.
“What are you doing?” I bounced, Pinkie Pie style.
“Go away!” He yelled, bucking once, blindly, which nailed me in the jaw.
He was a foal, but I still felt the pain and heard that ‘crack’. Massaging my chin, I probed my lower jaw with my tongue, reeling a bit at how weird this felt. Testing my fangs wasn’t hard though, so finding the one that threatened falling didn’t turn into a challenge.
Spitting both blood and the offending fang, I laughed.
“What’s with ponies and hitting me?” I pouted, eyes glistening with crazy. “I’m not a bad pony! I’m a bad, bad, man!”
I waited for a second, holding back my laugh with both front legs, eying the foal that was sure to crack up at any moment now.
“Huh?” Shining Armor finally heard me and turned around, confused.
He was greeted to the sight of me rolling on the floor, cackling like a hyena.
Hey! Did those exist in Equestria? Oooooh, I had to ask Zecora!
“What’s a man?” His childish curiosity won over his fear, though he trembled and crouched when my eyes fell on him.
Wiping a tear and rolling onto my hooves, I held back another fit of laugher, occasionally letting out a snort or a high-pitched giggle. During that time, the colt had gone from squirming to trembling.
“It’s a hairless bipedal mammal, sort of a cousin to monkeys,” I said with utmost serious.
He snickered. Somehow, his body language still translated as terrified to me.
“That’s just silly.”
“It’s not. I’m a man.” I put on a moody face, kicking a pebble away, mildly put off.
“You don’t even look like a monkey! And you’ve got fur!” Shining Armor protested, eying me from horn to hooves.
Oh goody, the one time I wasn’t spouting nonsense, I was being thought of as crazy. Freaky irony thing…
“You could have just believed me, you know?” I sniffed, washed over by a sudden and silly sadness.
I grabbed the nearest garbage can and took a chunk out of it in one bite. It was a little like butter, not that I really remembered what butter tastes like… WHAT DOES IT taste LIKE!?
Not important.
I swallowed down the scraps of metal, dutifully chewing like Mom taught me. She knew all about eating good meals. Somehow, that never included garbage cans… why? They’re tasty.
“HEY! What are you doing?!” The little foal charged me, trying to push the thing out of me hooves.
“Eating a comforting snack?” I looked down on Shining Armor, still attempting to push the can out of my reach. ‘No deal, Shining, I’m hungry.’
His jaw dropped. “Why would you want to eat that?”
“Why not? It’s full of iron.” I shrugged, taking another bite.
“IT WAS MY HIDING PLACE!” He shouted, horn flaring with light.
Reeling backward, I winced, trying to blink away the sudden pain in my eyes. Too much light… do not want…
“But I was starving!” I whined, dropping down to his level with a loud crash that had the colt startled and shaking. Taking a few steps back, he tried to put some distance between us, but, well, we were at a dead end. “The apples tried to eat me, so I couldn’t eat them… and my stomach kept rumbling on the inside.”
“Huuuuh…” Shining, lost for words, slowly curled back into his corner, glancing around.
A twitch over our head made me snap mine upward, scanning for a possible threat in this ever growing chaos. The little guy, however, tackled me and lifted me enough to hide underneath, even as tears of panic danced in his eyes.
That bundle of shimmering pony settled under my chest, I was left unsure of what to do. My mind kept telling me to invent myself a psychologist doctorate and give him a pancake. My heart, on the other hand or hoof, was humming some cheesy song. My inner second self Berbatron however was trying to will a rocket jetpack into existence.
Finally, I opted for the simple solution.
Rolling over, I fell on my flanks and lied there, unwilling to move anymore. The thought had occurred to me that turtles can’t get to their feet by themselves whenever they tried what I had done.
Shining let out a yelp of panic at the disappearance of his hiding place and jumped in the garbage again.
Something clicked in my brain.
I giggled.
“I get it!” I jumped to my hooves, grinning wildly. “Discord made you a wimpy foal!”
“Did not!” Came the sullen childish reply.
“Oh?” I tilted my head, before grabbing and throwing a bag away.
His body now exposed to the eyes of anypony in the vicinity, the colt shrank, shaking.
“You’re not that gray, so I guess it’s a partial discording…” I remarked, lifting his chin with one claw. He flinched at the touch.
“D-don’t touch me!” The colt’s voice wavered weakly and pushed my paw away.
“Soooorry,” I threw my head backward, lulling right and left. Through the cracks between the rooftops, I could vaguely make out flashes of colors. “Pretty.”
Another yelp and Shining had dropped down on the ground.
“Hey, hey, hey…” I jumped over a piece of trash and landed right next to him. The sound of my hoof falling down made him flinch harder. Troubled, I lowered my head to his level. “What’s wrong? Why are you scared of the pretty lights?”
“I’m not scared!” He sniffed, refusing to look at me. “A-an-and those were big monsters!”
“I could have sworn they were just lights, shaped like triangles and floating on clouds of poison… but I’m not very reliable to make sense of things.” I shrugged. Clearly, the colt had to have known better. Who’d rely on the crazed pony… guy… monster… thing?
“A-and like with all monsters,” he said, doing his very best to keep the shaking out of his voice. He seemed to pause though, once he looked at me, biting his lips. “You… you must plan out well before you attack, so I’m going to return to my hiding place now.”
“Sure!” I smiled enthusiastically. “I munched on it, but nothing will see you through the gaping missing third of the can!”
Shining, well into his motion to get back into his safe place, froze. Small twitches danced on his skin, moving his pale gray fur around in a very smooth motion.
“B-b-but…!” He muttered, shooting terrified glances everywhere. “If I can’t hide, they’re going to get me!”
Well, I could certainly understand the sentiment. I once tried to hide from my inner demons by jumping down a waterfall, only to discover that the bottom was most likely covered in razor sharp rocks. Luckily, I had a hand-glider handy, so that ended well.
“You know what you need? A toaster!”
He almost fell face first into the pavement at that. “Huh?”
“Yes, so the scary monsters that try to get you will be toasted!”
He… he stared.
I could not tell why.
‘Meh, I’ll live. I always do… even when I’d rather not. Hehe… sometimes things get real boring… sometimes they should just disappear.’
Like fear and guilt. Those were crappy feelings that no one should have to experience. Joy, bubbliness and peace were so much better.
“Okay, let’s get going,” I declared bravely, smirking.
“What?” Shining Armor blinked.
“This is boring. You’re all stressed out, you need to have fun!” I put on a particular emphasis on that last word, all ten voices distorting to fit in a single sound. “Come on, let’s visit Ponyville. It’s only my second time around here.”
“No!” He screeched, panicked. “I don’t need fun! I need a safe place to hide!”
“Hum…” I frowned, thinking hard. “You could hide under my wings!”
I flexed said appendages, extending and retracting them to give the colt an appreciation of their length. For the record, they were both big enough to completely cover him up. From the look on his face, he was not completely dismissive toward the concept.
“Think about it, it’s a much better place. If somepony were to look in your can, then they would find you, because it would never move by itself. So, really, they only need to look in one place at any time. My wings can move. I can move, most of the time, petrifiedmomentsnotwithstanding!”
‘Eh?’ I blinked, glancing back to the spot the colt used to be, a second ago. There had been kind of a little whitish blur and he had disappeared. Where was he?
My eyes scanned the alley again, going from the littering trash on the pavement, to the stone walls of some buildings and the one forming the dead end Shining Armor seemed fond of. They lingered on the blinding light given off by the other end of the alley, a twinge of envy and fear squeezing my heart for a split second.
Hiding was very tempting, comforting, nurturing and maternal even, but it involved limited movement. I loathed limited movement. Life was all about staying on the move, unless moving would kill you, then it didn’t.
Muffled sobs brought me back on Equestria. That sound… it… it almost woke up something inside me. Perhaps it was a bit of what I used to be. A part of myself reached forward, with the intent to ease and comfort.
“Shining Armor?” I called and got rewarded with a whimper. “There you are? Why’d you hide?” I plunged my paw into the pile of bags and pulled the first struggling thing I found.
Screaming and kicking, he fought back my grip, calling for help loudly multiple times, only to abruptly shut up and cover his mouth each time.
This pitiful spectacle silenced any idea of fun I had, instead replacing them with a sober worry. “What’s with you?”
“You were going to kill me! I heard it in your voice.”
“That’s just silly!” I snorted, mind bubbling at the nonsensical words. “It was probably Ripperjack.”
“RIPPERJACK?! WHERE?!” He screeched, voice cracking.
“Ooooh, you know him?” Smiling in spite of the newly acquired ringing sound in my ears, I put him on the ground. “Can you tell me about it? I have a feeling I ought to know…”
“How can you not know about the most evil pony in the history of Equestria?!” He eyed me like I had gone mad.
Someone’s late to the punchline…
His stern glare aggravated as I snorted.
“Okay, okay, I give. No need to get snippy about it. In fact, nopony should get snippy about anything. It just creates rift between ponies and that’s the fastest way to lose somepony... forever!” My brows furrowed. “Wait… that’s not how it goes.”
“That’s not how anything goes!” The colt seemed about to reach breaking point.
The edges of my lips twitched upward at that. There was just something heart lifting about the growing anger and frustration of the foal. It made me want to mess with his head.
This was fun.
Eh? W-where had that come from?
“N-no matters… Not a problem… T-there’s plenty more where that came from,” I muttered, looking away with wide shifty eyes.
“Now what…?” Shining Armor muttered, his face crunched up in suspicion.
No idea, Shiny. I had gotten a bit random since a certain past experience.
“Well, I was saying that my wings would be perfect for you to hide.” I flexed them again, for emphasis. “Think about it: my wings can move so that any observer trying to spot you at any angle will only see my wings. Plus, we’ll be moving around, so you will never be in one spot for more than a moment, MEANING that they will never get more than one chance to see you in the particular hiding place, overall making it a lot safer than just staying in this dump!”
“Huh…” The poor foal looked like he was desperately trying to think of a response to that, but could only think of arguments that supported my cold, perfect affirmation.
I would know, considering how often I faced that problem. This meant…
“Sweet! I’ve gotten myself a sidekick!” I stood on my hind legs, joy bubbling up inside me. 'Not alone, not alone…' I thought.
“From now on, I will refer to you as Hiding Armor!”
My little sidekick’s eyes widened until they were akin to saucers.
“WHAT?!”
“Come on! Let’s go live some adventures!” I shouted, before taking off, a small unicorn struggling to stay on my back.
“Oooooh, was that an Ursa Major? We really should check it out, I’ve heard they’re huge!”
“NO!” Hiding screamed, desperately tugging at my horn, hoping to get me to turn back.
“Why not?” I whined.
“Because you’re crazy!” He yelled, biting on my ear now.
That was a sound logic and true.
“Okay, no Ursa then…” I sighed, head dropping down to the level of the checker motif ground.
Ponyville was slowly – or was that quickly? Who could tell when the clocks asked ponies for the time of the day? – turning into a very logical place. For example, houses that were uncomfortable in their current location would simply ask for directions and find a better place for their foundations. Since they were very polite about it, I couldn’t quite tell why Mayor Mare fainted when the town hall went for a walk. That was kind of rude of her.
Trotting around the town, I tried not to let that affect my opinion of her. Perhaps she was just stressed by her job. It couldn’t be easy to run the most apocalypse prone town in Equestria.
My smile returned when a cloud offered me a piece of candy and did the same with Hiding. While the colt eyed the free candy with disdain, I ate it gratefully.
“Wasn’t that nice?” I jumped, skipping over a bottomless puddle.
The little unicorn was very much not convinced.
“It’s like I’m being taken care of by a stoned guard on laundry duty. They’re the weirdest ponies you could ever meet,” he grumbled, clearly not happy with his position in the world.
Feeling like being nice, I grabbed him with my tail – or it did that by itself, who knows? –, and swept the colt under my pegasus wing, like I had promised.
Subconsciously, the colt relaxed at being hidden from sight, mostly. Not that, in my humble opinion, he needed to hide; the only evil here were the apples. ‘It’s always the apples… even on Earth. You know what they say: ‘An apple a day keeps the Doctor away’. The Doctor is a good guy, so…’
Flawless logic.
“Can we just go home now?” He grabbed my leg for attention, his voice just that close to begging. “We’ve already gone past the deformed clown and the dancing spiky plant…”
“Where’s ‘home’?” I tilted my head, confused.
The colt pushed some of my feathers away, looking up to me through this gap. At first, his mouth opened, but it closed without a single word begin said. Hiding Armor frowned. “I… I don’t know…”
“I thought it was in Canterlot? Or the Cristal Empire, maybe?” I said casually, eying Screwball fighting a pirate bunny. “You guys do live in that tower, right? You can’t possibly take the train between the Royal Castle and the Empire every morning and night.”
“How do you know these things?!” The little unicorn shouted.
“I’m crazy!” I giggled.
“That explains nothing!” His eyes narrowed, boring through my skull.
“It does when you say it!” I protested.
“No, that’s just you be-” He stopped short and growled in frustration, before shooting me a dirty look. “You’re a stalker!”
With that, he brushed my feathers back into place, hiding him from view. Before I could say anything else, a sharp pain at the edge of my wing made me flinch. Why are there nerves ending in my feathers?!
A second later, he pulled and my wing had taken the shape of a cocoon holding him.
This was uncomfortable…
So, walking with a weight under my wing and tipping my already precarious balance, I went on further into Ponyville.
It struck me as odd that the streets were so filled with activity now, when they had been empty earlier. It was as if life had suddenly caught up with the town.
Ponies had left the safety of their homes, most involuntarily, it appeared. Why else would Filthy Rich be trying to escape a bunch of giant bees waving taxes records in his face? Same goes with Miss Cheerilee teaching a crowd of elderly ponies on the value of fishing.
Alright, granted, that in itself was not strange for her, but the fact that the purple mare was standing in a cage over a weird cartoony heatless campfire tipped me off.
She was not using her blackboard! Even when it was right next to her!
‘Sharp as ever.’ A transparent bucket of metal appeared as these words echoed.
“Madam Bucket. Long time no see!” I grinned.
I stumbled, almost tripping, because of a sudden movement from Hiding’s hiding place. Muffled noises reached my ears, but I could not make out their meaning.
“Hiding Armor? Something’s wrong?” I asked, leaning my ears against my wing.
I reeled backward when the colt screamed, making my ears ring.
“I don’t want to know! I’ll become crazy like you!”
My eyes pricked with tears. Feeling downtrodden, I sat down, hanging my head low. “That hurts…”
For just a moment, I felt movement in his cocoon of feathers, as if he was shifting with unease. Then, it stopped, leaving me alone to wonder what to think.
“Excuse me, good sir…” A voice called for my attention, even as it elicited a whimper from my trusty sidekick.
Whipping up my head toward the sound, I blinked, now facing a troop of buffalo dancers. Tall, lean, all muscles and fur with little to no fat on them, they seemed very much like professional athletes. Strangely, they were all very gray. I didn’t know buffalos could have that coloration.
“Oh, hello misters. Can I help you?” I tilted my head to the side, trying very hard not to stare. I knew those guys. I knew I knew them.
“We’re looking for the chocolate arena.” The biggest of the bunch scratched the back of his head. “We were asked to perform there and we need to get there before it melts or it gets eaten by a thoughtless pony.”
…Chocolate arena?
I stared at them, mouth slightly open. For the briefest of seconds, I imagined the delicate, sumptuous, decadent golden caramel oozing off the light brown pillar holding the structure together. The smell alone would give any living being in a miles radius diabetes.
An awkward moment of silence passed as my stomach grumbled, loudly.
“Hum…” I muttered, wiping my lips with my snake-like tongue. “I have no idea… sorry.”
Surprisingly, Hiding was the one that groaned in exasperation.
“We just went past that!” His muffled voice came out of under my feathers. “It’s next to the Carousel Boutique! Over there!”
“What?!” I shouted in shock, my wings opening in the same motion.
I cringed, as the weight of a foal was shifted from a relatively close position to the very end of my feathers. Worse still, the weight was accompanied by a slight pain and the sight of Hiding Armor dangling from the nick of his teeth was a good indicator.
“How did I miss that?!” I asked the foal, who refused to answer, biting even harder into my wing.
“Well… huh… we’ll get going, sirs. Thanks for the info,” the buffalos said, taking their leaves after a small nod at us.
“It was nothing,” I replied absentmindedly, still trying to pry an answer from my uncooperative sidekick.
Hiding glared, prompting me to take matters into my own hooves and paw. This would not do… With an annoyed sigh, I shook my wing twice. Strongly.
It did the trick. The weight on it disappeared, even as a panicked scream filled the air. Turning my head, I barely had the time to see a white blur soar through the sky before crashing through the windows of a sophisticated house.
Normally, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to that, as much weirder sights were common occurrence with Discord’s influence spreading over Ponyville. However, I also noticed a distinct lack of unicorn colt anywhere near me.
It clicked. “Oh.”
I dashed toward the stylistic building, pouring enough strength into my legs to completely beat all of my personal records.
With a magnificent leap – yes, I thought it was, stop snickering –, I went through the exact same window. As my body passed the frame, dozens of sharp masses of pain burst on my skin. Flinching, I closed my eyes for just a second too long.
One hoof too awkwardly, my balance slipped. Very suddenly, the inside of the boutique turned upside down and more pain erupted precisely in my right wing, now crushed under my body.
“Awwww, that landing sucked…” I moaned, grimacing.
“Hum… you know…” A young voice rang to my ears, but not my sidekick’s.
I blinked, before turning around.
I was treated to the sight of a bundle of foals, tangled together, with unnaturally grey coats.
“Rarity might not like all that blood stainin’ her floor…” A filly remarked casually, waving a hoof dismissively.
Confusion filled my head. Three fillies… with less energy than actual sloths… lying together on the floor of the Carousel Boutique.
Who could be so lethargic in such a place?! It literally tasted flair and class! My mind already felt more sophisticated just sharing the same air as the mannequins!
“Who cares?” The pegasus of the bunch grunted, not about to make any more effort than that.
“Not me,” the other two chorused.
“Hum…” I raised one claw, in the manner of a kid wishing to question a teacher. However, I immediately lowered it, because no such question had popped up in my mind. Instead, I chose to be more practical about it.
With a sniff, the location of my sidekick became evident, namely right behind the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Stretching my neck, the difference became clearer. There was a fourth foal in the pile and that one was unconscious.
“Well, girls, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my sidekick and go out to have some more fun!” I skipped over to them, grinning childishly.
“Suit yerself…” Applebloom shrugged, her eyes dull with boredom.
Delicately, I picked up the injured colt with my left paw, carefully examining him. He probably landed on his head and got concussed.
Oh well, ponies never died so that was not a problem.
With a swing, I threw my sidekick over my back, like a bag of potato. His weight pressing securely on my shoulderblade, right between my wings, I trotted toward the door.
And stopped dead in my track, my whole coat standing straight on its ends. A cold shiver went down my spine, then backtracked and did the whole thing three times over.
My ears twitched, as the lack of sound beside the multiple sighs of the three fillies had me worried.
The fabulosity in the air was at an unacceptable level.
Stern, my face twisted into a snarl as I approached the lazy fillies with the intent to scream their heads off for not wearing pimped-out dresses and financially worthless gems!
Taking my threatening stomps fairly well, none of the fillies even glanced my way.
That was fine, but the fabulosity was dying here!
“Girls, this won’t do!” I lowered my head to stare directly at Sweetie Belle. She looked at me as if I was transparent. I was, maybe, but this had nothing to do with the problem at hooves. “This simply won’t do! There’s only so much swag you can brush off before it becomes a mortal offense!”
“Do we have to do something about it?” The little unicorn asked with a hilariously raspy voice.
“Yes!” I nodded furiously.
“Pass,” they all said.
“But-”
“Not interested.”
“Think of the fabulosity!”
“If we do something, we might get our Cutie Mark.”
“And we don’t want that.”
Well, that was a powerful discording. Also, unforgiveable.
Why, that monster had turned those adorable little walking disasters and turned them into well-behaved calm little fillies! That was enough to make my vision turn red.
All to my righteous anger, I did not notice it until it was all over me.
A sense of weightlessness hit me like a truck, as my legs left the ground and my neck twisted from a rebound. On my ribs, an overpowering pressure pushed, driving razor sharp claws into me. Had my lungs not be emptied of their air, I might have let out a cry of pain.
It truly came once I crashed into some of the mannequins.
Limbs tangled in uncomfortable positions, unconscious colt at my side now covered by a silky green scarf, I felt my head tilt heavily, even as my mind fought to regain some control. Through a veil of confused sensations and tilted-over pony shaped objects, I could barely make out a fluffy giant thing.
It had a big ribbon tying some of its hairs on top of its head.
And it hissed.
“Oooooooh, this is not good.”
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Giant Opal? GIANT OPAL!? This is not going to end well.
2105520oh sweet god your rite!
2105520>>2105626 Indeed. Fun fact: anything that Havoc's broken mind registers as a threat should send normal people running.
I'm surprised there aren't more fics of the Cutie Mark Crusaders determined not to get a cutie mark, after getting burned one too many times trying.
Wait I forget... What exactly does the main character/narrator look like?
5015226 It's a strange concept. I suppose that it's generally because if you don't use Discord's magic, it's hard to make readers buy that they can decide to never get a cutie mark convincingly. Or maybe people just didn't think of it. *shrug*
5015542 Honest Havoc looks somewhat like the unholy hybrid between a pony (as he has the basic size and shape of one) and a draconequus. So, his coat is red and gray, mostly red though with a number of gray spots. He has one bat wing and one fluffy feather wing. He's got the tail of a lion, though it's prehensile. His left front leg is that of a griffon. His eyes are like a reptile's, yellow and with a vertical pupil. He has very sharp fangs and the tongue of a snake.
Yeah, that's about it. He's one confusing critter, isn't he?
He makes a good point. We should all start eating trash cans to get extra iron.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, sooo... maybe don't move? Is that how that logic works? I dunno anymore. I'm beginning to think that I might be just slightly more sane than Gary.
Good point. Oh gosh, I'm agreeing with a crazy person.
I am okay with this.