"Why can't you do it?" Jacob asked, glancing worriedly down at the little pot with its sprig of oregano. He had his wand back too, though he was fairly sure it wouldn't do anything.
"I told you already." Harley nudged him forward. "Just because I can do some magic doesn't mean I can do all of it. I'm not a pony."
"But I've seen you teleport!" Jacob set the plant down at one corner of the diagram they had chalked on the concrete, the last of the raw ingredients he would need. The book was still open—one of a handful of titles on unicorn medicine found in the safehouse library, and it seemed to know how to treat almost anything.
Allie was at the center of the diagram, resting on a pile of blankets and still unconcious. Of the safehouse's other occupants, only Katie seemed to be watching, though she was also playing something on her 3DS.
Harley loomed over him. "I'm a damn changeling, kid. Soulsucking, lifebreathing, parasitic horror. We can't give a fucking thing, only take."
"Bullshit."
She folded her arms. "Excuse me?"
He did the courtesy of responding in the same whisper, so the whole room wouldn't hear. "Not… about you being a changeling, that makes sense. The other thing…" He whimpered, something he never would've done three months ago. It was all he could do to suppress his tears. "You saved our lives multiple times. You could've left us and ran yourself, you could've left us to fend for ourselves, could've left us at the safehouse even. You didn't. You're always telling us that moping and self-pity aren't allowed, well you shouldn't break your own rules."
Harley didn't answer. Jacob watched her, not breaking eye contact. A few tears made it down her face before she could wipe them away with the back of her arm. Jacob reached out and rested a hand on her arm. All the while they were quiet enough that only Katie was watching.
"We didn't choose to get our lives stolen. You didn't choose how you were born."
"I know." She squeezed his hand, unmoving for another minute. He didn't rush her. Eventually she cleared her throat, and seemed to brighten. "Anyway, it's true we can't do healing magic. And many other kinds. That means healing is on you."
Whatever else he might think about Harley, Jacob trusted her. Even if it meant he would have to take Allie's life into his hands again. Healing magic probably doesn't kill by accident, right? It would be pretty bad at healing if it did.
"Alright." He sat down a foot away from the resting pony, on the other patch of bare floor, holding the book in his lap. "You ready?"
In answer, Harley drew back the hammer of her revolver, and pointed it at the pony on the other side.
"Try not to actually use it." He glared. "Last time I had to save someone, it gave me a damn horn. If I lose my feet because of you, I'll kick you with the stupid stubs."
"They aren't stupid!" Katie's voice came from behind him. "It's easier to balance with hooves than you think!"
He winced, remembering she had been listening. "I didn't mean it! Or, I did mean it, but not about you…" He groaned. "Sorry." He didn't trust himself to say anything else, or to look back at what she might be doing. At least she didn't get up to leave.
"Just remember your classes," Harley said. "It'll be easy."
"Oh, sure." He ran his finger down the page again. "Unicorn doctors train for six years, but three months is fine."
She bared her sharp teeth at him. "Putting it off won't make it easier."
Jacob groaned, then started to read. The words came easily to him, and so did the sensation of magic. Pressure started just behind his forehead, accompanied by a faintly yellow glow from his horn. The sound of video games faded into background static, and light from outside the circle became mere shadow.
There were many reasons someone might not wake up. According to the books, the most likely cause for Allie was backlash from the powerful spell she had experienced. It also happened to be the easiest potential cause to fix, since it didn't represent real damage to her body. She kept breathing, so her brain can't be that damaged, right?
"Three gifts for the suffering soul," he said, then gestured to them in turn. Though Jacob had serious trouble with levitation, it came easy enough this time. "Water from the sky, life from the soil, and fire from the ether. Remember the harmony that was." They turned to ash before his eyes. The water clouded, the candle charred rapidly down, and the oregano shriveled to black stubble. "Unseal the lock, break the secret seal, and let me in."
The appartment was gone, with its concrete floors and the sound of video games. Harley's gun, Katie's smell, all of it.
For the second time in his life, Jacob was a pony, fully and completely. His coat was brown, with cream color on his muzzle and near his hooves. He was naked, though just now it seemed not to matter.
Concrete walls rose high around him, a hallway in a giant's house. There were steel doors here and there, and sometimes water or worse liquids seeped out from under them. The lights above were flickering and inadequate, driven by gas generators and thick cables.
He knew where to go, if only because the hallway faded to blackness behind him but seemed to continue as he went forward. He couldn't reach the knobs on doors that had them, and wasn't strong enough to push them open besides.
He passed through a massive door left open, bigger than he would've expected on a bank's safe. On the other side the dirt and fluids were clean, the floors polished and the lights bright. Not much further and he reached an empty waiting room, as he would've expected to find in a hospital. There were no people, only the sounds of distant screams.
There were lots of locked doors and one that was open. He picked that one, and followed it until the floor changed to rough stone. Cells rose around him on both sides, cells too small to house a human prisoner. But perfect for a pony. The fronts were acrylic, and each one was cloaked in shadow. Occasionally he saw a vague outline shrunk into a corner, but tapping on the glass produced only agonized screaming.
He nearly wet himself the first time it happened, and so he didn't repeat the experiment. If this was real I'd have to get these ponies out. There were more sealed doors, and a few open ones. He took ramps between levels, past tens of thousands of cells.
Eventually he saw his first human figure, pushing a cart down the hall. "Hello!" he shouted, waving with one hoof. With a jolt of terror, Jacob realized he recognized this woman. She was the same one who had nearly arrested him, the one who had perpetrated the end of his normal life. Had she made his target suffer too?
The woman didn't so much as look back at him, continuing forward. She was pushing some kind of wheeled cart, which banged and creaked as it went.
"Hey!" Jacob started into a trot, not having any trouble with the movement despite having never done it before. It was still hard to catch up—human legs were long! "What are you doing down here?"
This time the woman answered, though she continued forward at a meaningful trot. "Put her away."
Her. He looked down, and sure enough the crate she was pushing did look big enough to hold a pony, even an adult stallion like himself. They weren't exactly giants. If I'm a pony, Allie must be too.
"Where are we?" he asked, managing to keep pace even though he was getting winded.
"Containment."
"Why are you putting her into containment?"
"Protect the world," she answered. "If the infection spreads, the whole world could end."
He gritted his teeth. "You aren't real." No answer. "Alright then." Jacob blasted her. Unlike the real world, he didn't actually need to know a fighting spell. He just willed a blast of energy from his horn, with all the confidence he had ever used when healing. It came, and pierced the woman like she was a hologram. She screamed, but there was no blood. Cracks spread down her human shape, and she exploded into mist.
The cart didn't fall over with her gone—there were tracks set into the floor. It creaked to a stop along the ramp, and then the sound stopped.
Jacob walked up to the edge of the cart, inspecting it. A crate was clipped to it, made of sturdy metal and pierced with air holes. He couldn't actually see in, though. "Are you in there, Allie?"
There was a muffled noise from inside, and a little motion. If it was words, he couldn't understand them.
"Don't worry Allie, I'm a boss at lucid dreaming. I've got a dream journal and everything."
He searched for some kind of locking mechanism, but found none. Only a control panel, one stationed too high up on the box to reach. This might've been a serious obstacle, if he were really here. Fortunately, none of this was real.
Jacob imagined a knife he had read about once, one Subtle enough to slice through bone, steel, and universe alike. It clattered to the ground in front of him, its metal blade shimmering like oil on water. He didn't touch it, but instead drew on magic again. What he couldn't control in real life was easy here in imagination, and it levitated into the air with ease. He moved it slowly towards the cart, then cut through the boxy frame. It split without resistance, and the whole thing banged to the ground.
"Get down on the bottom!" he shouted. "I'll cut you out!" What would happen if he used an imagined knife on a real mind? He didn't want to find out.
There was no response. He moved the knife up to the edge of the crate, and as before it cut without the slightest resistance. Sparks emerged from a few of the crate's air holes, none of which could touch him. He cut only along the top, opening a pony-sized hole in the top of the crate.
He caught the free section in more magic, then tossed the lot to the ground far out of reach. "Alright Allie, you're free."
There was a long silence. "My name's not Allie, it's Elise."
"Okay Elise." He didn't know what the one inside the cage might mean, but it didn't really matter. The book had been very clear that only the real person would be able to argue with him. Figments, like the scary woman, could only answer basic questions and keep doing what they were doing. "You're free."
There was a sniff, and the sound of muted tears. "I don't… don't deserve your help."
"That's the second time you've told me that." Jacob advanced, his horn glowing again. He lifted the whole crate off its broken cart, with strength he suspected he would never have as a real unicorn. He set the box down on its side, so that the window was facing him. "I still think it's wrong."
Sure enough, it was Allie inside, curled up against the back of the padded crate. Intricate circuitry and engineering were evident in the design, but just now he didn't care. Allie was his only mission. She looked pathetic, her mane matted as though she had been crying for a long time. She was crying now, though there were traces of annoyance in her.
"You wouldn't have saved me if you knew," she said, looking up at him through the opening. She didn't actually move. "So many lies… but it was too late, couldn't take it back…" She shivered, burying her face in her forehooves. "Just let me die. You shouldn't have stopped it before."
"I didn't know." Jacob walked to the edge of the crate, but he didn't actually try to climb in or pull her out. There wasn't really enough space for two adult ponies in there, at least not without getting quite intimate. "But I think I know now. Somehow you knew coming to us was going to lead the army too. Maybe this is the place they brought you, to put the tracking device under your coat where we wouldn't find it."
She jerked, looking up again with shock. "How do you know?"
The truth was that they hadn't been sure before exactly what the thing was. Allie's reaction seemed like strong confirmation, though. He acted as though it was. "It came out when you, uh… landed." He winced. "We were attacked the day after you got there. We didn't have to be geniuses to suspect you."
She was crying openly now. "You were supposed to be horrible people! Cutting the infected apart, selling their organs to finance your expansion! Slaves to the world's first intelligent virus. Monsters living in your own filth, mutating into those horrible things that kill in so many horrible ways…"
"Is that how they got you to betray us, Allie? Feed you all those lies about what ponies were like? You were so in tune with the magic the show gave you that you changed entirely on your own, and you still believed ponies were capable of that?"
"My name isn't Allie!" she shouted, a little anger making its way into her tone. "I am Special Agent Elise Avery, member of the FBI's recently established Extranormal Containment Task Force. I've been trying to protect the world from you since the first infections started over a year ago."
Avery. The name matched a face, a face he had very recently blown away with magic. It had been a little strange that in a place that looked like its people were missing, one human would have stuck around when all the others vanished. But if that human was the dreamer too…
The same human that had tried to arrest him. She had taken his life away, then destroyed his new one too. For a moment, Jacob thought about turning his back on her and leaving her to her fate. His spell would only work if he could convince the sleeping soul to come with him willingly, after all. If he walked away, she might stay in a backlash-induced coma until she withered away. "You're right, Elise. Maybe you do deserve to die."
Then he looked in on her again, and saw how awful she looked. Saw the regret in her eyes strong enough that she had crawled into her own mind and prayed for death. Jacob didn't know if what he felt was something human, or some new aspect of himself imposed by the transformation.
Either way, compassion conquered anger. His stiff posture relaxed, and the glow growing at his horn faded. Was this how Celestia felt before she sent her sister to the moon? Only Jacob wasn't here to punish. "But punishing you wouldn't help the ponies who died. They gave you love and care, gave it to me and all my friends when all your goddamn people wanted to do was lock us away somewhere like this." He gestured over his shoulder at the cells.
"Maybe one day, Celestia will judge you. But not today. Today it's time to start repairing the damage. You aren't just some helpless victim, who maybe saw a few things as she was doped and operated on. You're one of them. You know how the ones hunting us operate. You know their goals, and maybe you know where they take our friends who they steal away." Again he gestured around them, at the endless cells.
"Of fucking course you feel bad about what you did. I think that's because you actually wanted to protect people, but you found out too late you were on the wrong side. Well if there's anything left of whatever nobility made you want to protect people in the first place, listen up." He reached in with his magic, lifting her out through the hole and dumping her out on the ground in front of him. Elise didn't resist, but instead held still, her whole body shivering. She wasn't that heavy.
"Maybe if you'd done something that wasn't as bad you could just die and be done with it. But you've done too much harm for that. Now 'Special Agent,' it's time to fix some of the harm you caused. You can't bring back the dead, but maybe you can do good by them and prevent more deaths. So get off your ass and help us save some people."
She whimpered, struggling to wipe away her tears. Jacob offered no comfort to her, as he had done to Harley only a little earlier. Unlike the changeling, Elise's pain was deserved.
Then she straightened, rising to her hooves. "Okay."
Parasitic. Nice chapter; do I hear "epic rescue mission?"
Aptly called the.... Subtle Knife. It also cuts through dimensions.
Somehow I totally missed this when it first came out. Guess I have some catching up to do!
Okay, I kinda got to ask. It's been a few chapters now, and... why is Agent Avery that guilty so fast? Like, she turned around to the side of ponies at breakneck speed. It's even confirmed in this chapter, the day she showed up is the day they attacked. How could she even have a ounce of certainty that the ponies are the good guys? I would think a secret agent would know a thing or two about subtlety and the fact that ponies could have kept their more horrible sides on the downlow to keep their kidnapped targets trusting enough.
But no, she didn't really have time to interact with anyone, and then there's the attack and Jacob does his magic thing to heal her and even before he had time to finish, she goes "I don't deserve your help".
The story had made a point that she had to be a volunteer or else someone forced into it would have just switched side on the spot, but really, that's what Agent Avery did anyway.
I just... I am strongly puzzled by how you structured that plotline. It had very little emotional impact on me despite the potential.
I stand corrected.
And I would agree with 7482731. Despite all niceness and kindness and charity ponies do, their motives are blurry and story didn't concetrate on them much at the moment.
We know what the Agency does: it locates «infected», captures them and sends them to a place I'll call Site R, where all infected are locked in cells. This way the Agency is trying to stop the contagion but this isn't the most effective way since the true source of infection is unnoticed by them.
But the main thing is that we know why Agency does this: they want to keep the magic from spreading and by the way they search for the cure, for the way to turn infected people back to the normal state. Yes, their methods are very extreme, but they do this because they want to keep that little of an order that we gained not so long ago. And even when citizens get captured, Agency doesn't lose hope. They could just kill every single infected, but instead they keep them alive, supporting with water and food (most likely). Agency does that because while infected are dangerous, they are still citizens of America, Agnecy believes that they can turn them back to normal.
And meanwhile, we have ponies and their Unity. Its nice, ponies teach you how to use your abilities, you may gain new friends, have an ability to go to Equestria or help other people to get to the Unity...
You understand what I'm about to say, right? Well, we still don't know what do ponies want. Seriously, we don't. We know what ponies do, but we don't know why ponies do that. Yes, you might say that they are doing this becuase they are kind and want to help people BUT there is a major detail that can completly change the way we look at Equestrian side in this story...
Click here for Part II
Plot twist! (Though expected)
7482731
I wonder if part of the transformation's mind-altering component makes them more trusting of ponies the more they're transformed. It's been mentioned that bringing an agent into Celestia's presence would get them all the information they'd need about their opponents. I've been thinking that standing in Celestia's presence might give enough of a dose of magic to fully transform them, and that if that also makes them more trusting of the ponies that that would be sufficient reason for them to believe all they need to do is get an agent into her presence.
If that's the case, Avery has had basically the same thing done to her. She might have been very inclined to see the best in the ponies as soon as she arrived and they weren't doing anything that made them look like complete monsters.
Click here for Part I
...you might say that they are doing this becuase they are kind and want to help people BUT there is a major detail that can completly change the way we look at Equestrian side in this story. It is very easy to miss while not reading carefully, but I'm glad that I did.
The show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If you forgot, this is the show that presented us fourth generation of My Little Pony and was a foundation for Brony Fandom, which, after some time passed, created the site we are currently on — FimFictiom.net, a plece where people can publish their literatural fanworks based on the show or its universe.
But let's not get off route. This show does exist in the universe of Friendly Fire, and since the movie also came out, we can hypothize that action takes place in the year 2017 or later.
We know that after the end of the show and after coming out of the MLP:The Movie, bronies started to gain strange abilities and disappear. As revealed later, Equestria was the one who standed behind production and scenarios of the show. We know the unoficcial name of the show, given by Harley: «propaganda», but Harley is a changeling and it looks like even she wasn't given a full picture.
Ponies, however, should call the show somehow. And they do. This is the part that eliminated my trust to the equestrian side: the name of the show they've given.
You know how it happens in our world. For example, Chernobyl. Soviets built there a massive radiocomplex called РЛС «Дуга», or RLS "Arc", or RadioLocationingStation "Arc". But this is the name given by military, its true name. Most of people of its time only knew the common unoficcial name: "Russian Woodpecker".
This is almost same thing we have with the MLP:FiM in this story. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, this is how we know the show is called, but it's only a mask, designed by tricky ponies. They have another name for it, much more terryfiyng name.
Thaumic-inducing historical transmission
Yeah, "historical transmission" part doesn't sound that terrifying and can be replaced by "propaganda", just as Harley does. But the first part... Repeat it a few times, try to understand it: Thaumic-inducing. Honestly, english isn't my primary language and when I saw it for the first time I immedeatly googled it's definition and understood, that didn't miss.
Again, we know that Equestria rescues people with abilities, but then we put parts of the puzzle together: ponies have created the show + pnies call the show "thaumic-inducing".
This is... This just turns everything upside down. If I'm thinking right and those parts are connected right, we get that ponies are bad guys here, actually. They know that Lighttenders exist and that humans don't like magic and eradicate all their users. But they still try to bring magic back to Earth or, correctly saying, awake it. They do it with help of the thaumic-inducing propaganda show. The show connects a large group of Bronies and this is where thaumic-inducing component starts to work. There is two ways, actually. First one works if Harley was misinformed by purpose and Equestria actually sent enough of magic to awake powers. Second one works even if Harley wasn't desinformed. We can hypothize, that magic was always (or almost always) on Earth and Euqestria used small doses of magic to influence awakening. When awakening was influenced, our fellow bronies done all the work that left, since we know that even thoughts about magic may cause it to awake in individual.
And this is where we get. Equestria is the one responsible for all this carousel: through their show they awoke the magic in humans and when the transmission ended, ponies went to an agressive phase: they landed on Earth, set an outpost and started to collect «magified» humans. This theory answers the question about Unity: «Why would ponies have such an advanced outpost on Earth?». Our answer is: «This was a part of their plan».
But yet, we still don't know WHY. Why do they want to awake magic on Earth? Why do they collect and teach humans? And, what is most important, why do humans change into ponies? I believe that it isn't just "natural reaction of humans on high amounts of magic", I believe there is an equestrian trace in this.
Anyways, this is just a theory. A FANFICTION THEORY. And I don't want to get copyright strike
Thanks for reading.
Loving the Dark Materials reference. This chapter was awesome keep up the good work.
Dat Subtle reference.
Well, that was sudden, but they can use all the allies they can get.
Wow... this was awesome. Also appreciate the Dark Materials reference!
7483152 If that's the case...
Then the ponies are a bunch of manipulative puss brains.
Coming from the governments perspective.
To be fair to agent Avery, I don't think she took his normal life away. Her arrival was the catalyst, but really it all began with the shows inception. Sure, she's done questionable things and worked against their operation but I don't think she was ever glaringly evil. Maybe in the field she was more than a little clinical, and I do think her acceptance of the captives maltreatment is an issue, but she was only ever looking out for her people. She's certainly to blame for the deaths of hundreds in Unity, for sure, but not for ruining Jacob's life. That would be the pony's fault.
Well lookit this I found some bamboo with orange stuff on the ends! (Brings up to eye) ooooo sparkly
7483203 Granted, your comment here is a little over a month old now and there's likely new evidence one way or the other in chapters I haven't gotten to yet, but there is one more wrinkle to all of this that you seem to have missed: the Equestrian monsters that have shown up. Harley does not have a rosy opinion of the ponies, and with their incompetence when it comes to subtlety she'd have noticed if they were the ones responsible for the Equestrian monsters that have shown up, like the bugbear wrecking some government housing mentioned in the chapter where Harley originally rescued Jacob, Danni, and Eric, or the timberwolves that tried to kill Jacob in the first chapter.
Not seeing people transforming into those monsters seems like a large chunk of Avery's conflicted feelings, this indicates that the Agency thought that the magical infection resulted in people being transformed into those rampaging monsters, making their very aggressive stance much more reasonable, as well as their labelling of the ponies as terrorists. Elsewise they would be called a human trafficking organization most likely if all that was suspected of them was the kidnappings.
Sunset also said that someone else from Equestria had brought monsters over, and that the ponies thought the Agency or someone with them was using the monsters as attack dogs.
While the ponies' motives are still in question, what we have here is a classic scenario of a third party pitting two dangerous rivals against each other to weaken both to the point where they can be easily overwhelmed. This is also a scenario that is easily derailed if either side ever simply communicates, so the third party would want to position one of their members to be able to block that as much as possible. Positions like a senator running for president.
....poor Elise ... I think Chris will not like this...