//------------------------------//
// 03 - Deep Breath 
// Story: Second Chance 
// by Cxcd 
//------------------------------//

Princess Celestia had lived a very long life. If her lifespan was cut in half from where she currently was, she still would’ve had more than enough stories to fill up an entire library. That is, of course, if she could’ve remembered each and every little thing that happened to her.
But in her two-thousand-ish years of life, (she couldn’t remember exactly how old she was, although it was around there, somewhere,) she had never, not once, seen something as ludicrous as this. For years, she had hunted down the Flame family, to the ends of Equestria, and even beyond into the Griffon Empire. Not once had she ever considered pity on any of the members of the family. Yet, as she briskly walked to the hospital ward of the castle, she was… concerned, to say the least.
Sunfire, the father and ‘leader’ of the small family, used to be one of her students. Not directly learning under the Alicorn of the Sun, but attending her School for Gifted Unicorns. She had seen him many times through the hallways, and hadn’t even really known his name until he started causing… let’s say, problems for the school.
“Is Mister Sunfire ready, Doctor?” Princess Celestia asked as she came to the front of the clinic. The doctor, an old an aging stallion with a white coat and faded gray mane, cleared his throat and straightened his back, upon seeing the Alicorn.
“Of course, your highness.” He said respectfully, stepping out from behind the counter. “Although- we did decide to move them all together into the same room. It’s not protocol, but since they are all family, we thought it be best for them.”
“Not a problem, Doctor.” Celestia said. The castle’s Hospital was less of a hospital, and more of an infirmary. It wasn’t the Canterlot hospital, and it was mostly used for injured trainees. And, whenever Celestia was befallen with a sickness, she would use the wing, as well. Although she hadn’t gotten sick in the past…
Celestia paused in the hallway.
Past… four-hundred years? Four-hundred and fifty?
She continued.
Yes. That sounds about right.
“They are in here, your highness.” The doctor nodded towards a closed door, and with a bow, he backed away.
“Thank you, Doctor.” She nodded back. With a deep breath, she quickly ran a scan on the room for any potential traps. None there. Then, she scanned the rooms next to the room. Nothing. The window outside of the room? Not a thing either. After about four or five minutes of running every single scan she could possibly imagine, and suspiciously finding nothing, she took a step back, away from the door, and began working her own spell.
On the floor infront of her, the hospital tiles giving way and moving, a picture-perfect copy of Celestia rose from the ground. This one was a little blurry around the edges. With a few more minutes of tinkering, the illusion solidified into something passable. With a satisfied nod, closed her own eyes. A moment later, the doppelganger’s eyes opened. The doppelganger eyed the real Celestia.
“Is that really what I look like?” She asked nopony but herself. With a shrug, she opened the door.
The first thing she noticed was chaos.
All across the floor was just… items. Pens, plates, pillows and even an empty IV stand. All of the bed linins had found themselves tangled, spread about like an angry foal that didn’t want to go to bed.
“God isn’t real, and this is proof!” A young voice said. Without warning, a colt sped across the room, his hooves unmoving as if he had been flung. Which, by all accounts, he had, by a young mare.
Celestia blinked, watching the chaos unfold with a morbid curiosity.
It was obvious that Sunfire’s plan- whatever it was- had backfired tremendously. Sunfire, now laying against the wall upside-down, had a dark gray, nearly black coat. His mane was usually laid flat against his head. This time, however, it seemed to dawn something similar to an Afro. But, instead of the cranky old stallion, this Sunfire was merely a colt, a byproduct of the spell going terribly, terribly wrong.
The mare that had thrown him was Fire Bird. Celestia hadn’t known her very well, outside of a few scuffles before they ditched Equestria for the Griffon Empire late in their lives. She had a white coat and a pink mane, and looked similar to Celestia before her ascension, if a Unicorn and not an Earth-pony. During their scuffles, she was no taller than the average mare. But now? She was still no taller than the average mare, but it was glaringly obvious that she was young. Perhaps just old enough to be considered an adult. She had the build of a lanky, awkward Pegasus, despite being a Unicorn.
Finally, Celestia’s eyes landed on Flame. He was a little colt, obviously the youngest out of anypony, and was supposed to be Sunfire and Fire Bird’s child. He had a gray coat, a mix between both parents, and an unusually bright yellow mane. And he was cowering beneath the bed.
“I’ll show you god, you little twerp!” Fire Bird yelled. She tried galloping towards Sunfire, who was now trying to push himself off of the wall. Unfortunately, it seemed as if Fire Bird wasn’t accommodated to her lanky features, and instead fell flat onto her face.
“Ha! Take that, you shit!” Sunfire tried standing up, and once more, fell down, his chin smashing onto a metal tray that, at one point, held medical instruments. Where those sharp and dangerous medical instruments went? Celestia wasn’t exactly sure.
“Um… Pardon me?” Celestia asked, taking a step through the door. The effect was instantaneous, the two bickering ponies freezing as if they were caught in a spell, and Flameslinked backwards, deeper under the bed.
“Uh…” Fire Bird sat up. “You look… familiar…”
“I sure hope I do.” Celestia looked around with a forced smile. “I see you three have… redecorated the room.”
“Not our intention!” Sunfire groaned, rubbing a hoof against the back of his mane. “These… stupid bodies suck.” Sunfire sniffled, pulling out what looked like half a sandwich from his mane. “So. What are you, some kind of diety? A god?”
“W-What?” That caught Celestia off-guard a little bit, letting her tilt her head in confusion.
“I mean, the… ponies kinda worship the ground you walk on.” Sunfire shrugged. “You should hear how the nurses talk about you. You’d think the moment their ruler turns their backs, it’s all gossip. That’s how our presidents work, anyways. But you? You’re all sunshine and rainbows.”
“Well…” Celestia looked around at the other two ponies, who seemed to still be mildly shocked at her presence. “I do try my best to keep my ponies happy.”
“Err- pardon me, Princess?” Fire Bird asked, raising her hoof as if she was a student in a class. “But… where- I mean, I don’t mean to- err- where the hell are we?”
“You are in Canterlot.” She explained. “You three, in particular, are widly regarded as war criminals.” This made the three of them, even the one under the bed, gulp nervously. “But… seeing as there is… an underlying issue here, we will postpone any sorts of punishments.”
“Oh, good.” Fire Bird nodded. She warily, like a newborn deer, tried to stand up, her legs shaking violently. “I don’t mean to be the one to tell you this, Princess, but we are not who you think we are.” She raised a hoof off of the ground incredibly slowly, and planted it onto her furry chest. “I am not the pony you call…” Her eyes quickly glanced down at the clipboard at the end of her bed. “...Fire Bird.”
“Well, I think that’s quite obvious.” Celestia regarded, taking a step further towards Sunfire, who was sitting up and glaring around the room. “You see, every pony has something called a ‘signature.’ And not the thing you write down on documents. Rather, a pony has a specific magical signature for each and every being. These signatures are completely unique and, as far as we know, impossible to change.” She leaned down and tapped her horn to Sunfire’s horn. He shivered, feeling as some sort of… feeling from his inner core was unexpectedly surfaced.
Like a hologram straight out of Star Wars, an image appeared above Sunfire and the Princess. It was an incomplete and scrambled rainbow, with colors all out of order, and even a few that repeated. Then, Celestia lit her horn again, and this time another scrambled rainbow showed up just below the first one. It was obvious that the two were completely different, and the one that came from Sunfire seemed almost less complete, with more black spots and gaps.
“As you can see,” Celestia turned to the other two ponies in the room, even if one was hiding under the bed and she wasn’t exactly sure if he could see her. “these two projections do not match. The bottom was recovered from a crime scene naught a decade ago, and the top one I scanned from this Sunfire just now.”
“Why does mine look like that?” Sunfire asked, gesturing at the top one broadly. “It looks… unfinished, almost.”
“Many reasons.” She turned to face him once more. “It may be because of the spell that backfired. It may be because you are now in a younger body, and therefore have a less developed signature. Or, it could even be because of your species before hoof.” She took a glance at Fire Bird. “Therefore, I do not believe that the ponies I am talking to are the same ones I met all those years ago.” She smiled. “May I know your names, little ones?”
“It’s Abigail.” Abigail said, giving a small wave.
“Charles.” Charles said in a grody voice, although his now undeveloped vocal cords betrayed him. “And under the bed is Leo. He’s a little… skiddish. Especially after all of this.”
“That is quite understandable.” Celestia nodded, approaching the bed. She crouched down until she was laying on the ground, a convenient spot not covered in litter. “Are you alright, my little pony?”
“He isn’t a kid, Princess.” Charles rolled his eyes. “We’re all adults. Even if we don’t exactly look like it right now. Trust me, the last thing I wanted was some nurse baby-talking to me like I was four.”
“Yes, that may be true, that he isn’t a kid,” Celestia started. “But that doesn’t mean his emotions were unaffected by the change.” This seemed to garner the attention of Abigail, who flinched back, sitting down quickly.
“What does that mean?” She asked quickly. “Our emotions? Like- these pony bodies are screwing with our emotions?”
“In a sense, yes.” She nodded. “Your minds are used to being flooded with a specific types of hormones. A specific mixture, like a potion. All three of you were yanked from your bodies, where your mind was adapted for your specific prescription, and placed in these new bodies, where things may not be the same.” She turned back to the colt under the bed. “Are you alright?”
The colt’s orange eyes shone back through the dark shadows under the bed. They flickered as he blinked, unsure of trusting the larger mare.
“C’mon, Leo!” Charles said. said with a sigh. “She isn’t going to hurt us. She’s like, god, or something.”
Leo let out an audible sigh- the first sound Celestia had heard the colt make- and he slowly crawled to the outside of the bed. He sat up, his cheeks matted from the obvious tears he had been making. Celestia hid the grim expression behind a carefully placed smile.
“Are you quite alright?” She asked for perhaps the third time. Leo gave her a little nod, wiping the drying tears. Although he was now out in the open, she didn’t dare try and physically comfort him. “What’s wrong, my little pony?” Leo gulped, looking between his two friends.
“I-I can’t walk.” He mumbled. Charles responded by letting out a snort.
“None of us can! We’re all-” He was interrupted by a silver plate being flung at him by Abigail.
“That’s fine.” Princess Celestia said. “Do not worry.” She carefully reached out a golden-clad hoof, and let Leo’s head rest against it comfortingly. “The castle can provide a physical therapist to help you.” She looked at the other two ponies present, Abigail having stumbled her way next to Charles to thwack him on the head. “That goes for you two, as well. Physical therapy can start as soon as tomorrow, if you two would like.”
“That’s great and all, but how are we supposed to get home?” Charles asked.
“I would quite like to see my family again.” Abigail cocked her head. “If that isn’t too much trouble, Princess.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” The princess stood up, giving Leo a soft and comforting smile. “I will have my best scientists on it immediately. They will be happy for a new challenge, of course. Those ponies twiddle their hooves everyday anyways.”
“Great!”
“But…” Leo looked around the room, his eyes counting the three other ponies. “I’m sorry, Princess, but where is Andrew?”
Silence permeated the room as realization dawned on all of them, except for Celestia, who simply looked around with worry.
“Andrew?” She asked. “I’m sorry, but who exactly is Andrew?”





Andrew’s eyes shot open. An overwhelming sensation of bile and rot developed almost instantaneously in the bottom of his stomach, and within a few seconds, his throat battled the urge. Despite the situation he found himself in, his mind was perfectly sober. He remembered the sun- the bright yellow sun, he remembered his lead foot on the gas pedal, and he remembered the car crash. It was a logical line of thinking to conclude that he was in a hospital. And, most importantly, he knew what was clawing up his throat.
He leaned over the hospital bed’s railing and let it go. The vomit was a sickeningly red hue as it splattered across the tiled floor. Wires dangled off of him and rolled over the edges of the hospital bed as blurry figures suddenly came into his vision.
They pushed him down onto the bed, as he heard a click. He blinked, focusing his eyes as he tried to make out the faces in front of him.
They were monsters.
He didn’t care that he was in a hospital anymore, as a creature resembling some kind of mutated cat-owl hybrid pushed his shoulders down. He let out a scream, grappling with it’s messed up hard nubs. It tried talking, but all Andrew heard were incomprehensible gibberish as the corners of his visions darkened.
Andrew tried fighting for as long as possible. He saw visions of the girl standing atop the black lake. He saw himself, leaving his sister behind as he abandoned his family. And, most importantly, he saw his own regret. It was a pulsating, angry red mass somewhere deep within his heart, like a tumor. Before he could study his own mistakes for too long, however, he finally felt his muscles relax. And, for the second time, he went limp, and everything went black.