Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Well, my promise for weekly updates in September turned into… not one single update in September. Well, nothing to do for it but try for weekly updates starting now. Though, honestly, I don't know who I'm kidding by thinking that I'll ever finish this thing. Over the past two or three years my mind and body have just… left me. I'm broken. Nothing happened, I just inexplicably broke. Can't remember anything, can't focus, can't do anything right. Frequent updates? Anything fresh and new? Not a chance. It's time I faced that. I'm not who I used to be. In fact, I'm not anyone at all.

It's funny… sometimes I feel like my grandma would know what to do. But if she was still alive, I never would have found the path in life that I'm currently seeking out. So on some level it feels right. But at the same time, am I really on that path, or am I just stuck in one place forever and ever? I don't know. It's so strange and complicated.

On the upside, this story is now two reviews shy of 500, but with my luck, this will be the time when nobody ever reviews this story again, so it'll be stuck just below 500 forever. Here's hoping I continue to get one review per update, as has been the standard for some time.

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Three

Snarl awakened, his head throbbing with pain, and he wearily rose from the cold floor to his usual four-legged stance. Looking ahead, his vision blurry, he could see Spike, watching him carefully, while Twilight stood a distance away. Both were on the other side of the magical bars of a cage.

"Snarl!"

Spike darted forward, wide-eyed and fearful, searching the details of Snarl's face carefully. Snarl looked back, his eyes green and sad.

"Snarl," Spike said again, relieved.

"Spike. What did… aggh!"

Snarl arched his back, in sudden agony, his bloody wings folding over his back. He stared at them in horror.

"Oh, no," he rasped. "I can't believe this happened… what did I do?"

"You hurt a few folks," Spike said solemnly. "And burned three changeling eggs to death."

"Oh my goodness," Snarl peeped. Devastated, he curled his entire body into a circle. "I just can't believe it."

"Snarl, why did this happen?" Spike said tightly. "How?"

"There's another me, Spike," Snarl murmured. "Inside my head. He takes over, and he does things. He ruins everything for me, all while pretending he's doing things for my sake."

"What?" Spike breathed.

"When I like something, he takes it. And when I dislike something, he destroys it. No matter how much I don't want that to happen. He destroys everything. It's all he cares about. And I was… jealous… of your life. How you grew up so comfy and cozy here in this world of pretty ponies while I was out in the wild struggling to survive. So of course he decided he should wreck your life and it for himself. …Myself. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about him earlier. I thought you might be too afraid of me if you knew what I had inside. And I didn't want to do anything to risk… being able to stick with you. So much for that."

He slowly uncoiled himself. "Unnnhh, these wings," he strained. "It always takes forever to heal."

Twilight stepped forward. "So, this other self," she said. "What do you call it?"

Snarl glared. "He doesn't have a name. He doesn't deserve one. He's not a real dragon, he's just some nasty bug in my brain."

"And how long has he been with you?" said Twilight.

"My whole life."

"Okay," said Twilight. "Let's talk about this. Come on, Spike."

Twilight ushered Spike along, and the two of them slowly ascended the stairs. Once they reached the library, Twilight swung the door shut with a menacing note of finality.

"What are we gonna do about this thing, Twilight?" Spike said softly.

"I don't know," she said darkly. "This notion of an 'other self', perhaps one that's a result of trauma of some kind… it's kind of the holy grail of psychology, you know?"

"Right, right… and those wings… he knew about them. They've burst out like that before."

"Yeah," Twilight said grimly. "Those are certainly… disturbing. I have wondered a few times why you were the only dragon we've ever encountered who didn't have wings. The other young dragons at the migration mocked you for it… and even on the two occasions you've changed into an adult form, you still didn't have wings. I was always so confused by that."

"Wow," Spike remarked. "Two occasions. It's true, I have turned into an adult dragon twice. I've had an eventful life."

"Yes, you have. I'm deeply sorry about that."

"And then Snarl came along and he didn't seem to have wings either, until… until he did," said Spike, picking up Twilight's thought. "Do you think I have those same wings… inside me? Why would that be? Why would our family line or whatever have internal wings?"

"I can't answer that any more than I could answer our assumption that you didn't have any," said Twilight, shrugging. "Do you want me to check? I can examine your skeleton…"

"That's all right," Spike said hastily. "I can live without knowing. I'd never use them even if I had them."

"Well, regardless," said Twilight, "at least one thing we know you don't have is an evil alter-ego."

"No… no, it seems that doesn't run in the family," said Spike. "So… what are you going to do about this?"

"I'll…" Twilight stammered. "I guess I'll scan his mind… and then try to write up a spell to excise the alternate… um, self. I mean, if you believe him about there being an alternate self…"

"Did you see him, Twilight?" Spike demanded. "Just look at the difference! It's obvious more than one dragon lives in that body."

"I suppose I've never seen a ten-year-old who was that good of an actor," Twilight said hesitantly. "Though, I had no idea he was so verbose either… I guess he kept himself to himself, I can't judge what he is or is not. Anyway… I'll see what I can do."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A day later, Twilight had prepared an enchantment. Snarl's wings had been withdrawn back into his body, and the wounds on the sides of his back had been sealed and cleaned.

"All right," said Twilight. "Keep still. I'm going to try to suppress your evil other, erasing him from your brain completely."

The blue-eyed Snarl lunged at her, hissing, clawing against the magic bars.

"Back off!" Twilight barked, zapping him with magic to knock him back.

He tensed up, coiling meekly. His eyes turned green again. "Go for it," he said glumly. "I won't miss him."

"Just stay calm," Twilight said soothingly. "Don't worry, I won't erase you by mistake. It's especially targeted to get him."

"Sweet," he said half-heartedly.

Twilight took a deep breath and reached deep inside herself for the magic required, carefully scanning the page of magic glyphs she had over-hastily written.

The magic slowly crept from Twilight's horn to Snarl's head in the form of a semi-solid, pulsating tendril. This strange appendage entered Snarl's head through his nostrils and the corners of his eyes, and he began twitching, crying out in pain.

After a brief moment, all of the magic disappeared. Twilight hunched over, panting, and Snarl's eyes opened slowly. One was green, the other blue.

"Well now," he said softly. "This is… interesting. No, we can't—you can't do this! It doesn't work that way! Oh, I think it does now. You can't get rid of me now! No—yes—no!"

He clawed at his own face and cried out as the strike drew blood.

"Oh, now you're in for it. No—you're really gonna—yes! Nothing is worth this! Then die!"

"What did you do?!" Spike demanded.

"I'm sorry!" Twilight said frantically, scanning her written page. "It's… the psychic… look, we're talking mental manipulation, that is extremely complicated!"

"He can't live like that, Twilight!" Spike cried.

"Of course he can't! I'll just… ugh, hang on…"

Snarl was rolling back and forth on the ground in his cage, clawing at his own body with his hands and feet, his tail pounding against the floor as he attempted to sting himself. Twilight shot a burst of energy at him, and he went limp, peacefully asleep.

"Let's… go back upstairs and work on this," Twilight said softly.

They did so. When they returned to the ground floor, Spike immediately turned on Twilight. "What the heck was that?!" he roared. "Now both personalities control his body at the same time? Is that supposed to help?"

"It went wrong, Spike," Twilight retorted.

"We have to get rid of that blue-eyed freak, not give him more power!"

"I KNOW, SPIKE!" Twilight bellowed. "I know! Okay? You see that pedestal?" She jabbed her hoof toward the egg pedestal. "You see how it only has two eggs on it? I don't know if you remember, Spike, but three days ago there were FIVE! I can't sleep at night! I am not going to stop working until the hideous monster freak that killed three of my children is dead! Dead at my hoof! Killed! Annihilated!"

Spike recoiled in fear, and Twilight instantly softened. Silence hung over them for a moment.

"Also," Twilight continued, "Snarl is your brother, which means he's my brother too, so I'm going to do everything—everything—within my power to ease his suffering."

Spike hugged her. "So… what can we do, Twilight?"

"I don't know," said Twilight. "Psychology has always been a horribly neglected branch of both magic and science. I can't master it well enough to do this, not in any reasonable period of time. No, we can't let him keep dealing with this torment for another moment. We have to free him now."

"And how do we do that?" Spike said apprehensively.

"We can't," Twilight said plainly. "…I can't. What we need is assistance. We need somepony who already knows everything there is to know about magic that alters the mind. And I may know a guy. Somepony who's spent most of his six hundred years studying it."

Spike's eyes widened. "No…"

"Yes," Twilight said fiercely. "We need Vorpal Blade."

"N-no, Twilight, you don't have to—"

"You got a better idea, Spike?" Twilight said dismissively. "Yes, I do have to. I must."

"Uh-huh," said Spike, the weight of the situation pressing down on him. "So… calling up a monster to get rid of another monster. I guess that works in the movies. Kind of. Always at a terrible price, though…"

"Vorpal Blade isn't a monster, he's a pony," said Twilight. "I can deal with a pony. I'll bring him here and he'll do this for us."

"How are you gonna find him?"

"I… I think I have a way," Twilight said thoughtfully. "Princess Luna taught me how to wall off my mind in my dreams so he can't invade them again. If I turn that magic over onto its back, I think I can invade his dreams."

"And you honestly think he'll help us?" said Spike.

"I will make him help us," said Twilight with absolute certainty.

Spike gave a little smile. "If anypony could do that, Twilight, you could."

"Thanks," said Twilight. She wasn't smiling.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

That night, Twilight dreamed of a canyon. The canyon was narrow, featureless, its walls as high as the sky and what little floor it had stretching from horizon to horizon.

"Vorpal Blade," she called out. "Vorpal Blade, are you there? …I need your help."

She waited. After what seemed like hours in the haze of her dreams, but she knew couldn't have been more than a minute, she got his reply.

"You're… asking for my help? How very peculiar."

She whirled. He was standing behind her as though he had been there all the while.

"Before you reject me sight unseen—" she began.

"Do you see me rejecting you?" he said, grinning. "No. No, this is fascinating. If you're coming to me for aid, you must be up to something really interesting."

"It is," said Twilight. "It's something well within your talents and interests."

"Then by all means, let's not waste another moment on pleasantries," Vorpal Blade said in glee. "Give me the lowdown, Smiley."

Twilight took a deep breath before proceeding. "Celestia and Luna found a dragon in the wilderness of Nara, shortly after destroying your treasure hoard."

"You might not want to open by bringing up my own most painful memory," he said dryly. "Do continue."

Twilight glared. "The dragon. He's called Snarl. We believe he's Spike's biological brother. Anyway, he's been living here, and he has… an alternate self, an alternate personality."

"Split personalities?" said Vorpal Blade, intrigued, leaning toward Twilight.

"Yes," said Twilight. "One, the real Snarl, is a docile, gracious little boy. The other is violent, hateful, needlessly destructive, and more than willing to kill for no reason. I need to destroy the evil one. I tried to cast a spell, but it resulted in both personalities inhabiting the body at the same time, fighting with each other, hurting themselves. I can't do this, Vorpal Blade. I need your expertise."

"Say no more," said Vorpal Blade. He vanished.

Twilight panicked, and through sheer force of will, she woke herself up.

Sitting upright in bed, she saw the distinctive, spiky outline of Vorpal Blade standing in her bedroom.

In a single instant, the room was illuminated in Twilight's signature pink light. Before Vorpal Blade could react, all of his mechanical appendages had been yanked out of his body, lengths and lengths of radiant silk drawn from every muscle, and his body encased in a bubble.

He looked around, his blank white eyes serene, his possessions floating outside of his small, magical prison.

"Well!" he said, suddenly sleepy. "Well, gotta give you credit for that one, Smiley. Good job, quick-draw!"

And with that, he fainted.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Vorpal Blade woke up to find himself in the basement of Golden Oak Library, encased in a force cage. He stood up shakily, to find Twilight standing outside the cage looking him over.

"Oh, hey," he said casually, flinching at a pain in his head. "Ugh. Why do I feel so crummy?"

"When's the last time you took off all that Mecha and Golden Thread?" she asked.

"Um… never?"

"Dude!" Twilight exclaimed. "It's a miracle I ever reached your consciousness. How are you capable of sleep with your brain and muscles constantly working like that?"

"Why don't you mind your own business?" he grumbled.

"Yes," said Twilight. "My business."

She stepped aside, revealing to him the unconscious Snarl in the other force cage.

"This is the little brother, then, is it?" said Vorpal Blade. "Well, I hate to state the obvious, but I can't quite touch his mind from in this cage."

"You'll get your chance to examine him," Twilight said briskly. "I just need to set our terms first. You've been anchored, so you're not capable of teleportation. My mind is once again firmly shielded against any manipulations you might attempt, as is Spike's. If you try to escape, then I feel I should warn you that, some months ago, not long after Granny Smith's funeral, I went around the country lifting the curse off of everypony whose mind you've ever fogged. Now every living thing in Equestria knows your face, knows your name, knows what you've done. No longer is anything stopping them from believing every horrible thing I've said about you. They remember all their lost treasures, all the damage they've suffered at your hooves and those of your cohorts. Could you fog all their minds again quickly enough if they all know you on sight?"

Vorpal Blade smirked. "Covered all your bases, I see. So, when I cure your guy here, then I'm free to go on my way?"

Twilight chuckled. "Your optimism is charming and infectious. No, absolutely not."

He clicked his tongue, nodding in acceptance. "Very well. I'll heal your dragon for you, because I'm just all too curious about what's going on in that noggin of his. You just let me know when we're ready to begin."

"Good to hear it," said Twilight. "I'll go and get ready." She turned to go, but almost immediately turned back to him. "Oh, and by the way? Consent."

"I'm sorry?" he said, puzzled.

She returned to face him. "Consent," she stated with a vicious grin. "When you invaded my dream, you asked me what the difference was between Crazyface's sexuality and, say, Rainbow's. I had no answer, because I was dreaming and my mind was all fuzzy, but as soon as I woke up, I realized the answer is consent."

He smirked again. "Oho, I'd wager it took you longer than that to come up with that."

"No, it didn't," she spat.

"Perhaps not." He chuckled. "I didn't realize you were that young."

"Beg pardon?"

"Quaint new notion, this obsession with consent. All of a sudden it seems like it's so important…"

"Um, yeah!" Twilight exclaimed. "Yeah, it's important! It's the difference between sex and a sex crime, you asshole. Kind of an important part of society."

He grinned, baring his teeth in an unsettlingly pleasant way. "It's cute that you still feel the need to prove that I'm wrong and you're right. Like you need to reaffirm that I'm the villain or something. It's sweet, really."

"By the blood-bathed stars, I hate you so much," she sneered.

"Yeah, I know," he sighed.

She tilted her head. "What's this? That's not funny to you anymore? That's interesting."

"How is Crazyface, anyway?" he said casually. "I heard you apprehended him."

"I did," said Twilight, "but I'm not the one to ask about how he's doing. I have no interest in his well-being whatsoever. He'll be put to trial when there's time for it, I'm sure."

"I see," he said seriously. "Well, just for the record, he generally does make it a point to get a clear statement of desire from most of the fillies he hooks up with."

"Oh, 'most', how charming," Twilight said through pursed lips. "But a thirteen-year-old filly can't give consent, she's too young."

"Yes, well, that a thirteen-year-old still counts as a 'filly' is a fairly new concept as well."

"I realize that. But sometimes to survive one must embrace the new."

"Indeed! I completely agree."

They stared at each other briefly.

"If you're waiting for your moment of triumph where my argument falls apart, I'm afraid I can't grant you that moment of satisfaction even if I wanted to," Vorpal Blade said brightly. "The new is incredibly odd sometimes. It seems these days, ponies can do anything to each other in the bedroom as long as there's mutual consent."

"Um, yeah?"

"Yeah what?"

"Yes, that is correct," Twilight said, with as much condescension as she could muster. "What's your question?"

"You mean to say that's actually ethically sound to you?" said Vorpal Blade, raising an eyebrow.

"To society, yes," she snipped.

"Woof, I've been more out of touch than I thought," he marveled. "One wonders how I've blended in with modern times as long as I have… I suppose it helps that I all but mind-wipe everypony I meet." He chuckled. "So! We were going to prepare for… something? For the patient?"

"Right, yeah," said Twilight. "I'll be right back."

She headed for the stairs, but turned around again. "The evil personality?" she said, nodding her head toward Snarl. "He murdered several of my adopted progeny, Vorpal Blade. Burned them in their eggs. If you screw this up, intentionally or otherwise, you'll pay the price. If you try anything funny, I won't hesitate to kill you, even if it means leaving Snarl without his cure. Cure him, and I let you live."

"That's our deal, then?" he said warmly.

"That is our deal."

He bowed to her. "A pleasure doing business with you, I'm sure."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Endnotes

This chapter references two plot threads from previous chapters which, in order for this chapter to work, had to have been resolved completely offscreen sometime between when they were introduced, and now.

One is Twilight travelling Equestria curing all the ponies whom Vorpal Blade "healed" into being incapable of suspecting him of his crimes, which she mentioned planning to do waaaaay back in Chapter 35, but never actually seemed to do, because I just couldn't find a way to fit in into the goings-on.

The other was introduced in Chapter 101, the chapter in which Vorpal Blade invaded Twilight's dream, when Twilight wrote Luna a letter asking for help to make sure he can't do so again. I knew that Twilight would get these lessons, and independently figure out from them how to reflect the magic back and invade Vorpal Blade's dream, which I knew she'd have to do in this chapter. I always knew this would happen offscreen because I didn't think such a lesson would be interesting enough to merit its own chapter, and I figured it'd just be introduced here. What I didn't realize is that only now, with Vorpal Blade in Twilight's clutches (and keeping in mind Twilight had no way of anticipating that he would instantly appear in her bedroom after she contacted him), I would also have to establish that he could no longer work anonymously in Equestria, that all the work he'd done on that front had been undone.

So, maybe I could have gotten away with one unseen plot thread only being established now, but having to establish two in one chapter, well, that just makes me look punkass cheap, don't it? I wonder if there are any other things in this story that happened offscreen that I'll have to establish after the fact.