• Published 23rd Jan 2012
  • 1,861 Views, 37 Comments

A Thieve's Redemption - Gsbrill



A new pony comes to Ponyville looking for easy money, but finds a new purpose in life

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Chapter 6 - Black Past

Once again I found myself in the same exact situation I was not too long ago. Starswirl had put the two guards to sleep and broken my restraints, but soon the spell wore out and they were awake and questioning how did I free myself. I just shrugged and let them do their jobs without much resistance as they tied me with some ropes that were lying around since there were no more shackles available. Starswirl stood silent, and so did I and the guards.

My notion of time had completely disappeared inside the dark candle lit basement, and I had no idea of how many hours I had been in there for. The guards didn’t seem to mind, but the silence was driving me mad. After the crowd that protested outside the doors left, the only sound that could be heard was the continuous breathing of the guards, the eventual owl outside that seemed to be the only living being to inhabit the area at night, and the sequential explosions in the distance.

Well that didn’t sound quite right.

Soon the other two guards rushed into the basement as if some natural disaster had hit the town.

“Ponyville is being attacked! We must ensure the safety of the citizens. The two of you, come with us!” said one of the guards, trying as hard as he could to maintain a minimum composure.

“But we must guard the prisoner”

“Alright, you stay and keep guard” he pointed to one of them “and the other one come with me.” And just as fast as they had come in, they left, and the silence returned, but not for much longer.

A semi transparent head popped in the room from the ceiling. I opened my mouth to say something but he put a hoof to his mouth signalizing for me to stay quiet.

“Is it safe Quill?” shouted a voice from above. He facehoofed and answered with an irritated tone.

“Do whatever you want”

“Okey-dokey! There it goes!”

The guard looked up with curiosity, and less than a second later, another explosion cut the air, this time right above us. A large portion of the hoof gave in, falling right above the guard, and on top of the pile of rubble I saw a black and pink blob, fallen on her back, with a large bag strapped on her neck.

“Pinkie just what the hay is that?”

“Oh, hi Ember! What is what? The bag, the outfit, the hole in the ceiling or the whole thing?”

I took a deep breath and tried to stay as calm as possible.

“First, the outfit”

She was wearing a black “vest” that covered her entire body in black, except for two small holes in the back and her head, which was completely visible, rendering the entire disguise completely useless.

“Oh that’s my burglar outfit! Well, technically it isn’t mine, I just borrowed it from Rainbow Dash so I could sneak past the guards, but it’s too hot in here so I just took the head part off”

“Why does Rainbow Dash have a burglar outfit?”

“Funny you should ask, I never thought about it”

I sighed. This wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

“Pinkie, why are you here? Why did you explode the ceiling?”

“To get you out of course!”

“And why would you possibly want to get me out of here? You heard the princess, I’m a thief, just another criminal, and now I’m probably going to be stuck in a cage for the rest of my life. You should just leave before you get in trouble”

For the first time since I met her, Pinkie stopped smiling and spoke with a grave and serous tone.

“Ember, I’m not leaving you here. It’s not fair that you get arrested after saving us all like that. You could have died. I could have died, if it weren’t for you” she looked down at the ground all along as she spoke.

“Well Pinkie, let me tell you something: THE WORLD IS NOT FAIR! Ponies like you that live a good and peaceful life don’t understand how it is to have to fight to survive, to steal your own food, to get beaten up by cops because of two bits.” Those words stung me. I didn’t want to yell at her, but I wanted to make her leave. I couldn’t let her be caught there, even if it meant making her hate me.

“I don’t care. I’m going to get you out of there, either you want it or not” she looked down at the ground all along as she spoke.

“Pinkie, just get the hay out of here! My leg is wounded, there’s no way I can get away like this”

“You can fly away. You have wings now” The tranquility in her voice felt alien to me. It was like she was somepony else.

“But what about you?”

“I’ll find a way”

“JUST GET OUT OF HERE DAMNIT!”

The room stood silence for a few seconds, and I thought I could hear her sob for a second.

“Tell me Ember. If you could choose the kind of life you could live, what would you choose?”

“Something far more peaceful than this I suppose” I gave a half hearted laughter.

“But how would you live?”

“It doesn’t matter”

“Just tell me”

“With you!” I nearly shouted without thinking, and just let the words flow like a flood “It wouldn’t matter where or how I would live. I just wanted to be with you. But for now I just want you to be safe. Get out of here before the guards come back. Before you become like me”

She walked slowly towards the bars, still looking down, but I could see her smile, even if she wasn’t looking at me. She grabbed a strange object from the bag, a brown package with wires connecting it to a small panel with buttons with numbers on them. She attached the object to the lock on the door and began to type on the buttons.

“What’s that Pinkie?”

“Oh, nothing important”

“Pinkie, that’s really important, what is that thing?”

“I’m going to blast the door”

“Is there no way to reason with you?! Let me put it bluntly, if you do this, you’ll be helping a thief. A thief that stole from the princess herself and dozens of others. You’ll be a criminal, you’ll have to leave this place and live on the run just like me. You’ll have to abandon all of your friends and family. Just because you wanted to set me free. Do you still want to do it?”

She looked up from the device, her cheeks were slightly red and there was a bright smile on her face.

“Well, I guess we’re partners in crime then!”

I loved her. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, but I had fallen completely for this mare. Although it made me sad to see her lose everything she had just for me, I couldn’t help but smile. So I just sat down and let her do whatever she wanted to.

“I suppose those explosions back there were your doing then?”

“Eyup. I needed some distraction for the guards so I set some bombs around town. Don’t worry, they’re just loud, they don’t actually do any damage. Any big damage at least”

“And what’s exactly that thing you’re using there?”

“Just something I brought back from the rock farm. We used it to crack some bigger stones back there”

“How big?”

“Reeeealy big ones. I think it’s called… D5 or something”

“Don’t you mean C4?”

“Yes! That’s it! Did you work on a rock farm too?”
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I was taking a walk through the apple orchards to clear up my mind. I just didn’t know how to deal with this problem. In one side, there was what I thought was justice. That pony, Ember, had stolen from many people, and even stolen royal property, a powerful magical artifact nevertheless. I thought that the right thing to do was to take him to court and send him straight to jail, to punish him for his crimes.

But in the other side, there was the issue of Ponyville. All of the townsfolk were on his side and none of them seemed to care that he was a criminal. All that they cared about was that he had saved them all from Trixie. When Rarity called me I could swear she was overreacting again, but I saw the damage that was caused and knew what would have happened if nopony had intervened.

“It seems that you are troubled Twilight. What is the matter?”

It was Celestia’s voice inside my mind. The remnants of her consciousness that inhabited there, and she had acted like a counselor until now, always calming and helped me in various situations.

“I just don’t know what to do Princess, if I arrest this pony, I will be treated as a merciless tyrant, who ignored a great deed. But if I don’t, then it would mean that I am incapable of maintaining order and seem weak. I just don’t know what to do”

“Have you listened to him yet?”

“Who? Ember?”

“Yes”

“But why? I have evidence of everything he did, he is certainly guilty!”

“Just do it Twilight. Maybe it isn’t his fault. You have to know when to show strength, but also when to forgive past sins”

“Alright, I’ll go then. Those fireworks already woke me up anyway. Tell me Princess, do you know of any celebrations at Ponyville today?”

“Twilight I already told you to stop calling me Princess already. That’s your role now, not mine. And in case you didn’t notice, those were explosives, not fireworks.”

“Eplosives?! And you didn’t tell me?!”

“I thought you had already sent the guards. Remember that I only have a slight perception of the world around you from here”

“That pony could be trying to escape! I need to go see what happened!”

I started running towards the basement where Ember was being kept, when a voice from behind stopped me.

“Just where the hay do ya think you’re going without us miss?” Applejack called with a slightly irritated tone. Along with her were Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Rarity, who were all waiting on the farm for the verdict on what was going to happen to Ember.

“I think Ember is trying to escape. You can come if you want but I heard explosions”

“Yeah, I think that the rest of Ponyville also heard those. Let’s go then!” Rainbow Dash rushed forward, prompting everypony else to run after her. In a few minutes we were already at the door that lead down to the basement, and I opened it swiftly with a burst of magic.

“Keep that thing away from me! You’re going to kill both of us!”

“Come on, don’t be a scaredy-cat, I know what I’m doing. Hi there Twilight!”

“Oh come on! Aren’t you guys going to leave me alone for a second here?!” Ember protested from inside the cage.

“What are you doing here Pinkie? I thought you were at the clinic resting” I asked, a bit afraid of the answer.

“I’m here to rescue him, and nopony’s going to stop me!” She proclaimed like the hero of one of those cheap action movies, rescuing the damsel in distress, while standing between us and the cell, with a determined look on her face, but always smiling,

“And why in tarnation are ya trying to get this fella out?” Applejack asked and the others waited expectantly for a decent explanation, including me, but was Ember who spoke.

“I blackmailed her into freeing me. I’m the only one responsible, she had no choice but to cooperate”

“And what exactly did ya use to do it?” Applejack seemed skeptical about the whole story.

“Excuse me?”

“Ah said what do ya have that ya could possibly use to blackmail her?”

“Erm.. I… have her parents hostage!”

“Lookit me sugarcube, ah’m the element of honesty, and ah can smell a lie like that from a mile away. Her parents are on a rock farm miles away from here. Just tell us the truth, it’ll be better for everypony”

“IT’S BECAUSE I FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM!” Pinkie let out a guttural scream, causing a wide range of reactions in the room, from Fluttershy who got as red as a tomato to Rainbow Dash, who couldn’t stop staring at her with her mouth agape like she had turned into a newt. I only managed to let out one word.

“What?”

Ember sighed. “Well, no sense in hiding it anymore. We were going to get away together. But now, please, if you’re going to punish somepony just punish me. She didn’t even manage to free me”

“Wow. That’s just…wow. That was weird. The strangest thing is that I came here to say that I will hear your side of the story. I want to know if you really deserve to be arrested”

The two of them looked at each other and smiled brightly.

“So you mean you’re going to free him?” Pinkie said with a newfound excitement.

“ONLY if I gather evidence that his crimes were justified, and considering the fact that he saved the lives of many ponies. But I will make sure myself that there are no lies this time”

He managed to get up and rise his head with confidence, despite the ropes around his legs and wings. “I don’t need to hide anything else”

“Well then, let’s begin”

I began to channel the spell and everypony in the room looked at me surprised. I believe they were expecting an interrogatory of sorts, but that would be ineffective. Starswirl floated at a coner of the room and waved a hoof to me, which I ignored. I wonder if he had anything to do with this. There was also another spirit that I didn’t know, who looked just as interested as the other ponies.

“Princess, may I ask, what are you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to look inside your mind and project the images of your past. This allows me to see all I need without any warping of the facts”

“Then show everything from the beginning”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. The very beginning of my life. You asked me for the truth, then I am going to give it to you without any restrictions, for the first time as long as I can remember”

I looked at him, slightly puzzled. Nopony had ever been this acceptant to open its mind like this, and he sounded very confident. Might as well do it.

The light from my horn formed a purple tendril that entered his forehead, and from it came a light that hit the nearest wall. The process seemed to be absolutely painless and he just stared in amazement at the light that came from his own head and projected itself in the form of a black square at the wall.

“So, is it going to be like a movie?” Rainbow Dash asked, sounding more excited than it would be adequate for the situation.

“Well, I never thought of it quite like that, but yes, you could say that”

All that could be seen was the black square and some deep breathing sounds.

“So, did it start yet?” asked Rainbow Dash once again, her excitement slowly disappearing.

“Yes, it did start. Ember did say to start from the beginning, so this is it. The very beginning of his life”

The image suddenly turned to a bright light, and the sound of crying filled the room.