In the Days After, One Bone Pone goes around in the Equestrian Wasteland accidentally meeting legends and creating a few of his own.
A skeleton pony travels the newly formed Equestrian Wasteland in search of answers to questions that can only be found by living life to the utmost extent.
It's a very good thing that he's a skeleton, because he's not very good at staying alive.
Just knowing how to do it isn't enough. You got to actually do it to get things fixed. And let's be honest, you're probably going to screw it up anyways. You still have to do it it the end though, so grit your teeth, because it's going to hard. Unknown
The miracle of birth is long, unnecessarily drawn out, painful to look at, and excruciating for all involved in the process, typically ending with one or more participants fainting and/or dying.
My birth was a private event witnessed by the cameras overlooking the vat that I had been growing in for what I presumed to be quite some time.
My mother was a vat I named Tav. I don’t remember much at that point, but that’s quite normal for babies if I remember correctly. I do remember it being quite wet and coughing up liquids after I was dumped into the harsh artificial lighting of the room.
I suppose that’s where the similarities between myself and babies end. After all, I was designed to hold all the knowledge of Equestria within me for safekeeping. The War was reaching its final steps and my creators saw fit to try and save the knowledge of Equestria in the event of the worst case scenario. Evidently, they were right to do so as the Last Day had coincided with the completion of Project TúshūGuǎn.
Being an artificial child, I skipped several stages of child development and had the immediate ability to walk. I wandered through the corridors of what I now know to be the Ministry of Arcane Science’s dumping spot for the intelligent yet unhinged individuals under Twilight Sparkle’s command until I found a door. A heavily armored door with a large lock and security system.
Remarkably easy to pick if you had the diagrams in the back of your mind guiding you through all the ways in and out. Had I been even a bit more patient in seeing the outside world, perhaps I would have discovered what I had looked like at the time.
But I wasn’t and I wandered out into the main lobby of what is now called Tenpony Tower, into the empty streets of Manehattan. It’s reinforced exterior would protect it during the onslaught of Megaspells, but one side would be damaged.
I’ll admit that one may have been my fault, seeing as I accidentally opened the door on that side in my hurry to get outside. And by doors, I mean large gates controlled by an easily hackable system. If they didn’t want it to be so easy to open, they shouldn’t have used such a basic operating system. Pipbuck’s had a better OS for crying out loud.
Alarms and klaxons were ringing as the gates opened on that side. Ponies were shoving one another, screaming at one another, all trying to get past me into the building. Slipping through the flood, I continued out onto the empty streets and gaped at my first glimpse of sunlight shimmering off the window of an ice cream shop.
Standing in the middle of the street, I looked at all the vibrant colors of Manehattan in its heyday. I continued wandering, going against the flood of ponies toward what would be known as the Manehattan Blast Zone.
It was beautiful to look at all the vibrant signs of life, even if only through a memory. It would be my first and only experience with sunlight for a long time.
The Manehattan Blast Zone as many ponies recall through a memory of a memory of a memory was just that. A blast zone. What most don’t realize was that it was a park. A park that used to be filled with ponies living their lives.
I would like to say that I looked up into the sky to see the balefire bomb descend, but I would be lying. I was actually sitting and listening to a radio left out on a bench. It was my first taste of music and I hated and still hate the very first song I listened to.
The megaspell descended and celebrated my birthday with fire, fury, and pain. Don’t want to set the world on fire, my boney ass.
Anyways, see my point? Long, drawn out unnecessarily, painful to look at, and absolutely excruciating for all involved in the process ending with at least one or more individuals falling asleep at the end.
Invitations for everybody. Food will not be needed. Informal dress and all day. Celebrations all day ending with a grand finale of the blowing of the candles as done by the Megaspell. The Grim Reaper will be there to take you home after everything is done. Cleanup will be unnecessary, so have fun.
Now you’re wondering. Why is it so long? Weren’t you born when you dropped out of your mother vat named Tav?
Au contraire, my dear friend. That was simply my coming out of the egg. I was but a mere caterpillar and I’m just going to stop because this is getting pretentious.
I consider the time when the megaspell hit to be my birth because that’s when I became myself. My awesome, slightly sociopathic self. It’s when I got the body I know and use everyday and it’s when I went from being full on sociopathic to being only slightly sociopathic.
Anyways, that’s the story of my birth. A mother that’s a vat and a father that’s a bomb. Family gatherings are a fun time in my household.
Sorry. I’m distractible. Introductions are in order I believe.
I’m Os.
These are the records. Have a nice time accessing them.
Chapter One: Really, It's Just the Second Issue of the Origin Story
I don't focus on what I'm up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest Venus Williams
According to the text, The Pony Body In Health And Illness, 37th Edition, the pony body is made up of twelve individual systems. They are the integumentary,muscular, skeletal, nervous, circulatory, lymphatic,respiratory, endocrine, urinary/excretory, reproductive, digestive, and thaumic systems, all of which work in conjunction to keep the individual pony alive and functioning. To lose even one of the systems could wreak havoc on the rest.
Of the twelve officially recognized systems, I am missing ten of them. The rest were quite literally burnt to ash by the megaspell. All I had left were the skeletal system and the thaumic system.
While I do not miss the urinary/excretory system, have no particular need of the lymphatic system, and am firmly dispassionate on the issue of the reproductive one, I can honestly say that I would willingly kill somepony of the worst or even mildly offensive character for any of the systems to do with the senses.
I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel, couldn’t even breathe. To say that I was in total darkness would be a bit misleading seeing as I didn’t even have a concept of darkness to compare it to at that point. So much time has passed from then and now, that I look back with a strange detachment at my terror of the disconnect that I felt from the world.
Back then though, when the memory of having a near perfect body was still fresh. I went from having perfect vision to nothingness, going from being able to hear all the sounds of Manehattan to the loudest silence ever, even the small sensation of wind on the skin, I lost all of it.
it was the most terrifying thing being a pile of bones and latent magic. Having lost all my senses, all I knew was that I existed in the Nothingness that was existence then. It became my mantra to keep from losing myself during the Nothing time. Just repeating mentally, “I’m Here. I’m Here. I’m Here.”
That time still has its effect on me today.
Of the two systems I had left, the one that truly saved me was the thaumic one. The thaumic system is the one that channels the flow of mana through the body of the pony. It is what reinforces the earth ponies musculature to its greatest strengths, the system that gives pegasi flight, and the secret behind the unicorn’s ability to manipulate the world around them. All three species of ponies have varying thaumic systems to supplement their known abilities.
I can safely say that mine is unique to myself. Over an unknown course of time, at the very least, a few weeks, I slowly built what was the beginnings of my body today. Using my bones as a structure to build off of, I slowly assembled a very realistic model of the average pony’s skeletal system, creating joints in the appropriate places and quite a few in what was not.
By all common sense, it should have been impossible. Thankfully, I have always been and always will be an idiot who ignores paltry things such as probability and possibility. My method of creating a body made out of bone and magic was repeated trial and error. I failed a number of times, accidentally explosively losing bits and pieces. I still have no idea where my tailbone went as of this entry.
As my efforts rebuild my body grew less explosive, I slowly began my trials in adding some type of way of observing the world around me. Despite my many efforts, I did not manage success in recreating the original senses that my body had.
Instead I recreated the Thaumic Senses. Or rather I advanced them far beyond what most ponies normally have.
The Thaumic Senses are what allowed ponies of old to sing songs that were filled with harmony on the spot, with a music that would suddenly burst to life. It is what allows ponies to see magic when it is actively used and unfiltered through a medium. A good example would be the magical grip of unicorns or the faint glow of a Sparkle-Cola Rad.
Just as there are the five traditional senses, there are five Thaumic Senses to correspond to them. The most commonly used are Thaumic Sight and Thaumic Hearing. According to the test, Miracles Of The Ancients, it was often noted that before the Celestial Diarchy’s time there were cases of blind ponies that could see what others could not and deaf ponies that could hear the spirits of the past.
Upon the completion of the creation of a body and a way of observing the world, I began my journey.
When I “opened” my “eyes” for the first time, the very first thing I saw was green. A complete wall of green. If I had the ability to blink, I probably would have at the sight of so much green. Despite my young age, I still had access to one of the largest repositories of pony knowledge and it was in agreement with my opinion that it was simply impossible for there to be so much green and that toxic shade.
The green slowly faded as I instinctively adjusted my Sight to accomodate for the sheer amount of radiation in the area. What I saw was even more depressing. The clouds were a dreary greenish grey, the ground an equally dreary greenish brown, and the space in between a dreary green.
This was the Manehattan blast Zone. I visit my second birthplace from time to time and it is still that same dreary green. I could say there were husks of trees scattered about, but even the husks of the trees had been burnt away by the sheer heat of the Balefire Bomb. Not too far away, I could see large crater in what was presumably the crater left by the bomb.
I stood there for a while, calculating the numbers of the amount of heat needed to do such a thing and trying to reverse engineer the size of the bomb. Not once did I wonder how many ponies died to such a thing. I was purely concerned with how it happened and what the exact effects.
I was a bit of a sociopathic fucktard back then. I blame the lack of love and care I received from my mother, Tav.
Having satisfactorily calculate the yield of the bomb, 63 Terajoules or 15 kilotons of TNT if you were interested by the way, I then began figuring out my new joints. Several falls later, I figured out how to place my hooves in a pattern to generate forward locomotion.
Slowly, the bright green tint dimmed to a duller one and I saw the warped and twisted fence of the park. Grinning as I have been forced to do ever since my rebirth by balefire, I tried a gallop towards one of the gaps large enough to fit my body through.
I made a few meters in before I tripped on nothing, flipping sideways into and through the gaps of the gate.
It was odd seeing my own boney ass. White is the first color I saw that was not tinged by the perpetual green radiation in the Equestrian Wasteland. A momentous occasion, but I’ll be honest. I wish it wasn’t my boney ass.
Focusing intensely, I reassembled my body and immediately fell on my face. One of my forelegs had not rejoined the main body and was lying a good three meters away. It had somehow gotten stuck in a trashcan.
Hobbling over to it, my limb leapt straight out of the can before reattaching itself with a pop I wriggled it before trotting aimlessly into the suburbs. Despite the terrible events that had just happened to me, I was surprisingly not bitter at all and was having a jolly good time.
Ah. Innocence. It’s like a kid who bursts into tears when they scrape their knee, but forget all about it as soon as something cool comes along. Except in this case the scrape of the knee is the lost of most of their body. I was a screwy kid back then.
Everywhere I looked was outlined in green. Before I improved my Thaumic sight, the green silhouette of objects was the only way I could see, so I guess I should thank the pervasive radiation that still lingers today for allowing me to see objects with no natural magic.
Rubble of broken buildings were everywhere. On the few walls that were left standing, I could see charred silhouettes of those unlucky enough to not find shelter in time, tinged with the remnants of their soul, a mural of the final moments of the victims of the Balefire bomb.
It felt wrong, so wrong to be the only thing moving in what I had experienced and knew was once a busy section. The whistling wind through the buildings was a small comfort to remind me that I was here and not in the Nothing.
Even as I strained my Thaumic hearing to hear for even the slightest sound of life, all I heard was a dull pounding. Rhythmic and determined in its monotony, it repeated its desire to kill everything within that heard it.
Naturally, I didn’t like that one bit. The poisonous green, the life killing pounding of the unseen drum, didn’t like that one bit. So I traveled away from where it was strongest, in search of anything.
The further I traveled from the center, the more I grew terrified.. The pounding of the drum remained as did the green tinge a constant reminder that death was coming for all. It terrified me. And since I had lived with terror during the Nothing, I got pretty pissed at being terrified.
So I began searching for life. Just to be petty to my own fear. And I did it, by wandering aimlessly through the ruins.
Access to the greatest library known to ponykind, filled with literally hundreds of ways to do search and rescue, several dozen blueprints for tools tailor made for searching, and every single spell to scan for life and/or sentience.
And my idea of searching was to wander.
I have a confession to make. While younger me was lovely, little bundle of sociopathic innocence as all babies are, younger me was also one dipshit of a moron.
As I wandered aimlessly in search of life, you can probably guess that I would find nothing of note. Radroaches weren’t even a thing at this point. I quickly grew bored of the emptiness and began galloping to end the monotony.
Compared to the stillness of the Nothingness, galloping was everything I could’ve asked for. It was movement of the finest sort, with all the colors of the world moving to bledd together into a wonderfully quick yet slow tapestry, and when I moved fast enough, I could even imagine that I could feel wind on my non-existent skin. I will never grow tired of galloping.
Quite literally. Stamina is based on the body. My body is made of bones and magic. My stamina will only ever run out when my mana is exhausted. And if my mana should ever become exhausted to that point, I’ll just be a pile of dead bones, so the point is moot.
Broken buildings slowly blurred to whole ones and I only sped up in excitement. Then I saw a winged figure land in front of me, about 50 meters away from me. I was both excited and terrified. I had found somebody still alive, but at the speeds I was going at, I was going to hit them at a speed that was likely to kill them.
Have I mentioned younger me was an idiot? I know I have, but let me reiterate. Younger me was an idiotic dumbass whose only saving grace was that he was so dumb, he didn’t know how to die properly.
My body, unhindered by useless muscle and organs, was quite light. The average pony weighs about a 85-90 kilograms. Bones make up about 15% of the body’s weight. Doing some basic math, my body weighs on a good day 14 kilograms. A bale of hay weighs about 30 kilograms for comparison.
Using all the knowledge built into the back of my mind, I had subconsciously designed the fastest possible running method possible based on earth pony training regimes and magic techniques. A well trained earth pony can reach speeds of 100 kilometers an hour.
Now imagine a very light object traveling at that speed trying to brake suddenly by digging their hooves into the ground.
I’ll tell you what happens when a bone pone does this. For one thing, all four legs of the bone pone get stuck into the ground in large furrows. In this case, they don’t snap because they, along with all the other bones in the skeleton pony’s body, were magically reinforced to be some of the hardest things to destroy in the world.
But all that tension has to go somewhere.
So it goes to the next worst place. The joints. In the average bone pone, i.e. me, all the cartilage was burnt away and is now replaced by magical energy. Being held in magical energy in this case is similar to being held by very strong magnets. Normally, it would stick close together, but there’s a whole lot of kinetic energy being redistributed all of a suddenly.
The magnets snap apart which in this case meant that the bone pone loses all four legs to be posts in the ground, learns to fly without the aid of wings at a very low altitude, and learn what the world looks like when your skull is literally filled with dirt.
It’s brown. A really shitty shade of brown. Not quite as bad as the darkness of Nothing, but a bit worse than the green tinge of radiation, all in all, it’s just as shitty as all the colors I hate the most.
Before I could lament the humiliation of such a fate, I heard the angry strumming of a metal guitar being played with a knife. The dull pounding of the drum of death was ironically being killed by what I can only now call death metal.
“Don’t know what the fuck you are,” a scratchy voice, filled with buried anger, said softly,”But I think the Enclave will pay a nice bit for whatever the fuck you are.”
My skull popped off as a claw pulled it off my main body. A few nauseating shakes after, my vision cleared and I looked into the fierce golden-white aura of Gilda the Talon. Not that I knew her name back then, of course, but memories make fools of us.
She shook my poor skull slightly, barking,”Oi. Anything in there?”
I didn’t say anything in response. Didn’t know how to at this point or even why I should. At this point of time, I was still basically a child in my mindset. A very clever child who knew damn near everything, but still a stupid dipshit of a kid.
Gods above, I hate younger me SO much. I think I would try to kill him out of sheer frustration if I ever did meet the bastard.
The gryphoness looked side to side before lifting my skull, reciting,”Alas, poor Yorick!”
My head was swung to the side as Gilda indulged in her hobby of screenplay. My sockets faced her as she continued dramatically,” I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!”
“My gorge rises at it.” she snarled,” Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft”-here she pantomimed a kiss with me before continuing-”Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?”
Yes. Gilda, one of the most ruthless mercenaries in The Days After, Hunter of Rainbow Dash, and founder of the organized Talons that we know and tolerate today, was a huge dork for Shakespearean drama. I curse my youthful naivete for the many missed opportunities on this piece of information.
“Not one now to mock your own grinning?” Gilda’s aura flickered warmly as she finishedd her powerful soliloquy,” Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.”
Looking back, I wish I could say that I was trying to say something profoundd or witty in response to that. In truth, what I was trying to say was that I was getting dizzy and sick from all the sudden flinging around.
I also failed at communicating that, on account of having no lungs or even a voice box. I just kind of chattered my jaw a bit, making a clacking sound.
It is to my eternal pride that I am one of the few beings to have ever made Gilda, feared Hunter of the Wastelands, shriek in a girly pitch.
Unfortunately, Gilda responded to surprise as she did with most things. By shooting it aggressively with her signature anti-air cannon.
Perk: Bare Boned Bandit: You’re a skeleton. Nothing much to say, but you’re a walking, talking skeleton of a pone.You should really be quite dead, but since you’re not, it’s safe to assume that it’s going to be quite hard to kill you. Do bone pones even need anything to function? All survival skills maxed out. All Resistances Maxed Out. Diplomacy takes 75% penalty if you do not have a prior relationship or a disguise on.
Chapter Two: Yup. Third Issue of the Origin Story.
Being shot by an anti-air cannon was a hell of a way to discover that I was bulletproof.
As my head came down from its suddenly renewed flight, I began reassembling my body. Since my head was in motion, it could not be recalled to the main body. Fortunately, my legs and torso were still relatively free and quickly reassembled without Gilda’s notice.
I have no idea what Gilda was doing, but I took the brief respite from the gunfire to have my legs hop over to my body. Despite not being able to see my own limbs, I had firm sense of where they were in relation to one another and began moving them to one another. Proprioception at its best and then improved on with magical BSery.
As soon as my head bounced to a stop, my reassembled body kicked it up to land on my neck. It landed backwards in way such that I could see the golden-white wings of Gilda expand to be double its original size.
Obviously, Gilda’s wings did not grow. What she did was channel her magic into her wings, giving her boosted flight. Most times when a pegasus and/or gryphon takes flight, the magic in the wings simply condenses. Skilled flyers will spread their magic out to better grasp the air in the sky and give themselves a short but devastating boost in speed.
Either way, it terrified the shit out of me if I could shit, so I span my head to face forward. I began running towards the biggest thing that I could see, a large green scooter on top of a building.
Bullets followed me all the way through, but I’ve always been fast on my hooves and deftly outran her bullets, tearing down the cracked and broken path. Quite a few times, I tripped over a ledge and took a few tumbles that scattered my bones everywhere.
I immediately reformed running, but I always wondered what i looked like from the outside. A skeleton running, tripping and collapsing before turning into what I assume to be a rolling ball of bones, then reforming back into a skeleton.
Idle wonderings, I guess.
I eventually made it to the building, only to find that the door was locked. Not wasting time, I ran to the side and broke through the window to enter the building, taking the time to notice that both R’s had fallen off the large sign, leaving it to read ED ACER.
Running past the tables of half assembled scooters and wagons, I ran toward the office section of the Red Racer warehouse, trusting in that vague feeling that I would find something there, anything that would help me escape from the angry gryphoness.
Past the cubicles, past the largest office, past the bathrooms, I ran before my gaze saw a square panel built into the wall. Skidding to a stop and for once, not falling apart, I slapped it and opened a panel in the wall, revealing a security panel.
I instinctively entered the password, CMC3BFF, into the system. A door, built seamlessly into the wall, opened in response and I slipped through. As soon as I entered, it closed.
Good thing too, as I heard the angry thrum of metal strings on the other side. I kept very still, careful to not make a sound and listened to Gilda’s search for me. Eventually, she roared in frustration and the building whines in discomfort as she lets loose with a burst of bullets.
When the metal strings slowly faded, I knew the scary gryphon had left and I collapse against the wall and began shaking. It was physically impossible for me to cry. But I could shake in fear of what had just happened..
After I finished recovering from my breakdown. I got back up again and began exploring one of the many hidden research facilities of the Ministry of Awesome.
It’s not a very interesting expedition compared to the others I would take in search of answers. I just wandered the complex aimlessly, at a loss of what to do.I had just found proof that life existed, but it had proven dangerous and scary.
Like the child that I was, it was scary, so I stayed away from what I perceived to be dangerous and stayed inside my safe place. Which was a little forgotten laboratory.
This particular laboratory was a lab in name only. Red Racer, a company owned by Scootaloo, was indeed a front for many black ops projects run by the Ministry of Awesome, but this particular one was merely an area to brainstorm ideas, commission experiments, and keep records of everything.
Really boring stuff that I already knew.
You know that bit in the beginning where I talk about Project TúshūGuǎn for a bit and then completely forgot it for a good while? There is no bigger story to that. I am it. It is me. As soon as I came out of Tav, I was me. I am still me.
Me just happens to be the only connection to the largest repository of unbiased and unfiltered information of knowledge that would have been lost. My Project is one of the kindest that the Ministries have ever dealt in.
My purpose was to preserve and spread the knowledge of Equestria in the event of a mass extinction event, such as the Last Day. I was to be a teacher, one of the noblest professions to ever be. I know exactly how I was made. I know my purpose. And I knew what I could do. One of my many blessings is that I was born into this world knowing exactly how and why I was put on this plane of existence.
I just wish that I had lived up to it better…
Bah. Enough depressing stuff. While I designed this thing to hold a crap ton of memory, it sure as hell doesn’t need to be filled with stupid crap that doesn’t matter.
My journey through the laboratory was merely just idle wandering. At this point of time, the Library had not fully activated yet and the knowledge of Equestria flowed in and out as if they were idle thoughts.
I was growing mentally quickly, but my maturity was little better than a foal who had discovered that monsters were indeed real and worse than they could have ever imagined.
In my wanderings, I would find the main computer in my wanderings and while I could see it quite well, the control panels and monitors outlined in a very thin tinge of green, I realized that while my Thaumic Sight was great for getting a raw view of the world, it couldn’t really make out small details such as words and letters on a document or the defining features of a pony.
I wanted to test out my knowledge on something that I knew would be fun.
This would mark the first time I actively drew on my knowledge of Equestria. My first quest would be to set out to create an artificial eye for my own personal use. Thaumic Sight was all well and good for the small things, but for this, I needed an eye. And I was going to make one.
The art of enchanting was always my favorite of the old magical arts of ponykind. While earth ponies had their agriculture and subtle enhancements on their own bodies, pegasi could fly and manipulate the storms, and unicorns could change the fundamentals of the world, enchanting is unique in that anyone with the patience to learn the rules and runes of it can enchant.
Ironically, the ones who were the best at it were the filthy zebras who started this whole mess… Oh come on! I thought I got rid of the pre-programmed racism years ago. My creators, while noble in their intent to preserve knowledge, had their fair share of flaws.
Anyways, I was going to enchant myself a pair of eyes. Using the power of logical runes! They who master the runes, masters enchanting, and they who master enchanting, master the art of making really cool shit!
Runes are a language unto themselves. Unlike the Equestrian alphabet, the written is not based on phonetic sounds, but on concepts. A single image represents a single concept. Fire has a symbol, water has a symbol, time has a symbol, death and life have their own, and so on and so forth. There are so many ways of combining them, from combining two or more to create a new symbol for a new conept, to changing sizes of symbol in proportion of one another to subtly change the meaning of the rune, to inverting them so that it was the opposite of what the original was and so many other ways, that it takes literal lifetimes to truly master them.
They’re so cool. They encompass the idea of heritage, the culmination of a study, where a master passes it down to their apprentice all their knowledge, the apprentice masters and creates new one, and passes it down more and more and the cycle continues for all eternity and I am so honored to have all this knowledge and I am getting distracted.
Sorry. Teaching cool crap is literally what I was made for.
Finding a suitable item to enchant was a bit of a problem. To create an eye, I would need something that could refract light such as a piece of glassware. While microscopes were plentiful in the lab, the glass lenses were too tiny.
I did try them, but I broke quite a few trying to shove them into my skull.
Eventually, I found the perfect item. Bottles. Specifically, Sparkle Cola bottles. Rip off the labeling and you get yourself a makeshift telescope if you had eyes from the get go. If you don’t, they make perfectly good makeshift eyes.
Using a power tool inside one of the hidden workshops, I cut off the neck of the bottles, leaving only the body and base for my subject.
I then used a small knife, held in my skeleton hooves with sticky magic, to carefully carved the runes for connection all around the rim of the very bottom, creating an intricate ring around the heel of the bottle. Once I was satisfied with that, I carved in a large symbol for light into the base of the bottle,enclosing it in the symbol for capture.
The idea was that as light passed through the base, it would capture the image similar to the retina of an eyeball.
I completed the final steps of the enchantment process by pouring magic as the activation catalyst. My jaws clattered as the ghostly white aura settled into the runes, dimming slightly. I had successfully created the Coke Eyes Mk. 1.
Setting the completed objects to the side, I shoved my hooves into my sockets to begin creating the corresponding runes of connection. As the Coke Eyes Mk. 1 were then, the most they could do was simply collect images. If I really wanted to see, I would have to have a way for the enchanted bottles to transmit the images to my mind. Hence why I carved runes of connection into them and why I was about to do one of the most idiotic things possible.
The Dummy’s Guide to Enchanting begins with the warning, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENCHANT YOUR BODY WITH RUNES.
Back when Equestria had a functional government, it was highly illegal to even tattoo a rune onto the body.
The first ten pages of Runic Magic: A Comprehensive Guide to Enchantment is one long warning of the dangers of carving a rune directly onto the body. The original list is quite graphic, explaining in precise and gory detail of all of the possible implications of this. It ends on the note that there are easier, quicker, and far less painful ways to kill yourself.
To carve a rune into your body is to provide a conduit for pure unfiltered magic to run through. It is possible to survive it, but it is very, very painful and can leave lasting effects on your Thaumic system. You would be safer eating a uranium isotope to gain superpowers. It would do less damage to your magic too.
I could not scream, but as I channeled my magic to activate the runes, I could feel pain. It was not all encompassing like the intense inferno I had suffered recently, but rataher focused directly where my eye sockets were and especially in the area where I carved the runes. It was intensely hot, intensely cold, and it was constant in its delivery. My jaw dropped quite literally in a silent scream as the pain suddenly swelled. I began shaking and I forget the next bit as the pain became too intense. When I came to my senses, I found that my bones laid strewn across the workshop. My standing theory is that I literally shook myself apart in pain. I shakily reassembled myself, gingerly touching my sockets.
Nodding to myself, I acknowledged that that was painful and probably a bad idea, then grabbed the Coke Eyes Mk. 1 and shoved them into my sockets.
I looked around and grinned. I mean as a skeleton, I always have to, but- Oh you know what I mean.
I could see the real world and color, after not being able to see was amazing.
I returned to the computer room and set out to reprogram the terminal to run Pac-Pony.
...Yeah. I became a shut in for a few months, living in the forgotten laboratory of Red Racer. I found President Scootaloo’’s secret stash of comic books and read every single issue of the Power Ponies, dug through her collection of Daring Do books, and basically treated the outside world as if it didn’t exist.
Not my proudest moment. Also not my best choice since it meant that I was learning life lessons from literary characters that I became far, far, FAR too invested in. I still live with the consequences of my “cool” ideas.
Like I said. Younger me was a fucking dipshit that I would happily kill to hide the evidence that I was ever that stupid.
Perk: Run And Hide: When your enemies tell you that you can run but never hide, you will prove that you can, in fact, run and hide quite successfully from them. Sneak skill is doubled whenever you flee from a hostile encounter.
Chapter Three: FINALLY! The Last Issue of the Origin Story
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Charles R. Swindoll
You know...I think I would have stayed inside the laboratory forever had the Smooze never tried to kill me.
I remember my time in that laboratory as some of the best moments of my life. I had a safe place where I didn’t have to worry about some random asshole trying to steal my skull. I had a state of the art computer that could run Pac Pony and other arcade games in great graphics. I had comic books! The complete collection of Power Ponies and the Collector’s Edition of the Daring Do novels including the little known Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring. That last one was probably forcibly forgotten for good reason, but still! It was a nerd’s paradise!
I didn’t even need food or water. I’m a bollocking bone pone. What organs do I have to feed? Nothing but bones here. Hydration? I’m bone dry all the time. Sex? I was a perpetual boner. Yes. I find myself very humerus.
Back to the point, I had no reason to leave. Outside was a shitty place to be as proven by my encounter with a crazy, trigger happy gryphoness. If you disagree with me, you’re either delusional as fuck or you’re being a dumbass. No sane being enjoys living in the Equestrian Wasteland. Not a one. Unless you have a confession to make?
Life was simple for me. It was hedonistic in nature. Whatever I felt like doing, I did. Read a book, grow bored and put it away. Write fanfiction. Remake cool shit in the workshop. Craft a weapon or talisman to replicate an ability from the story. Just things the average nerd did before the Last Day.
I would have stayed forever inside that lab if the black slime of hatred that was the Smooze hadn’t dropped in on my sixth reread of Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring.
Before you judge me, I would like it to be known the novel, Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring is more than mere smut and has an engaging storyline with an actually interesting side character in the form of Spirit Shaft, a disgraced Zebra shaman who travels with her-
Okay. Fine. I’ll focus.
I was sitting in a corner of the biggest office where the library was. Owned by one Scootaloo. A name that had a passing familiarity as it should, since she was one of the chief designers of my project.
At one point, it had been somewhat clean and orderly.After I had, for lack of a better word, lived there for a few months? I’m guessing. I never kept track of time well. I lived there for a while and it became a bit… messy what with all the discarded papers that I had used to draw, write fanfiction, and doodle designs on.
I guess you could say that I was living in my mother’s basement, eh?
The background ambience was a tad bit melancholy though. A soft electronic violin that whispered fond memories of a time of innovation. Thaumic senses let you observe the magical nature of things as mentioned before. Pony kind’s magic has always been intrinsically tied with our emotions and magic lingers. When I use Thaumic Hearing, I listen not to the physical sounds of the world, but the magical sides of things. It basically means I get a nice background music thing going on all the time along with hearing the true intonation behind the words that ponies say.
Looking back now, I can see why my first home had such a sad song of reminiscence..
I hadn’t gotten around to creating a proper set of ears and thank gods that I didn’t, because if I had grown dependent on them like I had with my amazing Coke Eyes Mk. 1. Thaumic senses are completely broken and I love them. One of the… surprisingly many good things of being a bone pone.
My first inkling something was wrong when a cheerful rhythm began playing. There was no logical reason why it sent a shiver up my spine, but it did. It was a very peppy song, with a simple repeating harmony to keep with the slight variations on the melody. It was a very happy song and it completely terrified me with good reason.
It played as though it was all encompassing, spreading everywhere and echoing inside your head. Invite me in, it said. Invite me in and just let me take over and I’ll do all the hard decisions, so why don’t you let me in?
Tad bit rape-y, wouldn’t you say?
I was getting ready to get the hell away from the music when black sludge began dripping from the vent. One of my many, many readings was a graphic novel rendition of the infamous Aliens series.
Naturally, I got the hell out of there.
Breaking the door in my hurry to get away, I ran down the corridors to get away from it. Black sludge cut off my path though, forcing me to change it accordingly. Classic herding strategy, especially in a small, labyrinthian complex such as the Red Racer laboratories.
Had I taken the time to think, I would have realize that I was being sent away from the only exit, the way I came in. since I was an idiot, I didn’t and ran towards the last safe place in my mind, the workshop where I worked on my Coke Eyes Mk. 1 and other projects.
As soon as I opened the door, the black sludge leapt forward and caught my entire body, pulling me into its gelatinous masses.
Of the colors I hate the most, black holds a special place in my soul. I’m fine with it when it is accompanied with other colors. But alone?
I hate it. I try not to, because that’s what the color itself wants, but… it takes a stronger will than mine to not hate.
I only had a full body for a day, so I didn’t experience all the sensations that one with a full body can. I can make imitations of taste and smell, but I’ll never know if I have them accurately. Sexual pleasure is something I can forever only fantasize about.
But pain is something I know intimately.
As soon as I was pulled into the Smooze, the cheerful music took a more oppressing beat. It hummed, let me in. Let me control. No worries, just let Mr. Smooze in.
I struggled in the mass, occasionally poking my head out of the mass, taking in the bright light as a reminder that I was still here and not There.
The Smooze being the dick it was pulled me back each and every time.
It’s black ooze filled the inside of my skull, the ribcage, and yes… Even there. I hadn’t figured out how to mimic touch yet at that point and I am FOREVER thankful for that. It used to be a joke, but in this case, it is remarkably apt.
It popped out one of my Coke Eyes Mk. 1, the right one, and took advantage of the Runes of Connection to force a direct connection between itself and my innermost magic, my sense of self and then began molding me to better suit itself.
Up to this point, I could safely call myself innocent. Though I had the skeleton of a full grown earth stallion and connection to the largest library of knowledge Equestria has ever known, I had no fear but the child’s fear of the unknown, no hate save that of those cartoonish villains in comics and novels, and anger was something I played pretend with.
When the Smooze began its modifications to my soul, I shot straight past the angstiness of being a teenager, past the mild despair and apathy of an adult, and straight into the depths that is the mind of an immortal.
For reference, the Smooze is this really old monster from a foal’s tale that was taken from folklore that was taken from legends written on the caves of a forgotten civilization. Long and short of it is that the Smooze is the culmination of all the bad crap in life, the hate, the feat, the apathy, the anger, all that jazz. It’s main goal is to feed itself and when you feed on crap like that, what do you do to make more of it?
Natural enemies to it are, you guessed it, the good things in life such as joy, friendship, family, and oddly enough, knowledge. It’s hard to fear what you know.
It tried turning me into a duplicate of itself, wanting me to use my connection to the Library and its knowledge to create more hate, create more anger, create destruction, and become a monster that would completely destroy the rest of Equestria. Failing that, destroy me and ensure that Equestria is thrown back to the dark ages so it can feed on all and live forever.
Or something. I don’t know. I do my best to forget all megalomaniacal goals since they’re all so stupid and petty. It’s either become a god among mortals, live forever, destroy something, conquer something, or blah blah blah. Who the fuck cares, am I right or am I right?
They all do terrible things, they all justify it in some way or just don’t give a flying crap, and they’re all mad little monsters running around, uncaring of who and what and anything they destroy and twist for their own amusement.
It succeeded in a way. It took my body as a puppet and left vague imprints of itself all over the knowledge that I failed to protect. I was taken on a joy ride where I was taught all the lovely intricacies that went behind the mind of the Smooze. Or what passed for one.
I learned that it saw me as it worst enemy. The Smooze hated everything as mentioned before, but it was a special kind of hate. The kind where you don’t want the thing you hate to disappear, you want it to suffer, you want it twisted, you want it broken.
Knowledge was its natural enemy. To know something intimately, such as your family and/or friends, even a stranger, it becomes difficult to hate.
Seeing as I was theoretically knowledge incarnate, knowing most of what Equestria has ever known, I was its enemy in its mind. And I would surely try to kill it and fix everything that it had ever broken.
Kind of funny really. I was all set to hide in my little laboratory, all set to hide from the world. Fear had already kept me locked me up tighter than any chains.
In possessing me for that period of time, it taught me how to hate. And I hated the monster who tortured me. I hated it harder than it hated the world and it latched on harder and then bleh. It goes black and I wake up surrounded by dead bodies, one working Coke Eye, and a deeply unsettling urge to hurl despite never having eaten anything.
What? Expecting some deep realization? This is wrapping up the origin bit. Everybody knows you don’t really have the deep realizations in the origin bit of a shitty spinoff story.
This is what my story is. Just a crappy spinoff story of the tragedy that is the Equestrian Wasteland. But I’m not going to let that stop me.
In case you’re wondering exactly what I did next, I just ran off aimlessly, trying to get away from the pile of dead bodies as one does from their very first mass murder.
Perk: Soul Sucker: Anything with a soul is under you necromantic domain. They’re nice, filling, and oddly tasty. 5% increase in crit damage and 50% of all magic damage dealt to a target is returned as health.