The pegasus took me through another hallway, which seemed to be designed with the same fancy old-fashionedness as the room I woke up in. He made a couple turns, and eventually we ended up in what seemed to be a grand entrance room, as if to a castle. In the room were seven other ponies, not counting us.

“All right, I found a ninth!” the stallion leading me called to the others, catching their attention. I tried to look them over, but I was being half-shoved, half-dragged right into the group by my self-made escort before I could memorize any faces or features.

“Think any others are gonna pop up?” a pegasus mare asked. She had a coat the colour of papyrus; a short-cropped light auburn mane and tail, the latter of which nearly touched the floor; and brown eyes that seemed partially disinterested, partially worried. Her cutie mark was a blank open notebook, which I took to mean her talent had something to do with reading.

My escort shrugged. “Beats me. I only found you guys from wandering around.” He patted me on the shoulder roughly. “She literally ran into me.”

A whistle came from the small crowd. “Damn, she just crashed into you?” The voice turned out to be coming from a dark blue stallion, who had a grin on his face. “Guess being around me is turning you into a chick magnet too.”

I rolled my eyes at the pegasus’s remark...wait.

As the two stallions got into some sort of argument, I looked around at the nine of us, myself included. All of us were pegasi. In addition, all of us had some kind of metallic watch on our left foreleg.

“What’s going on here?” I asked after getting in between the two stallions and preventing a scuffle. “I don’t know who any of you are, I don’t know where I am, and…what is going on?!”

“Honestly? We don’t know that ourselves,” a burgundy mare with a light orange-brown mane and tail said with a shrug, her burgundy eyes locked onto my own blue ones. “Whoever brought us here is probably watching us, so we’ve decided not to really talk about ourselves.”

I understood her logic, but still, I sighed. “Then how are we supposed to talk to each other? It’d feel dumb for me to call you ‘miss’ whenever I want to talk.”

She surprised me by not answering for a few seconds, her eye twitching slightly, then turning around and walking right over to a wall, which she proceeded to bash her head against. With every smash, she yelled a word. “I! AM! NOT! A! MARE!”

I blinked, slightly confused before finally understanding. She - he, rather - came back over after gaining a small bruise on his forehead. I rubbed my neck sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine...you’re not the first to make that mistake.” He sighed, clearly not enjoying this.

“She’s right, though,” another stallion broke in. He was royal blue, had a yellow mane and tail that were both rather unkempt, and wore a pair of headphones around his neck. He had a cutie mark of a microphone attached to a pair of wings. His hazel eyes had, until that point, been locked on either the floor or the feminine stallion as he assaulted the wall with his cranium. “We...kind of need names.”

“Huh...never really thought of that,” the stallion who was previously my guide said thoughtfully. “I’ve just been using words like ‘buddy’ and ‘man’.”

“Why don’t we come up with code names?” a new voice suggested. It was a dark orange mare, with a long light blue mane. Her entire colour scheme reminded me of a sunset...which, wouldn’t you know it, was her cutie mark.

The pony my guide had been arguing with snorted derisively. “Code names? What are you, seven?”

“Yep!” the mare proclaimed proudly. At our confused looks, she held out her left foreleg, showing her ‘watch’ off. “See? Seven!”

Sure enough, she had a 7 on her ‘watch’. The stallion who mocked her was about to continue when a cream-coloured stallion cut him off.

“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” he said, taking the mare’s side. “It’d give us something specific to call each other, and keep anypony watching us from finding out anything about us.”

The mare beamed. “Then I’ll be Dawn!”

“Dawn?” I asked, a little perplexed. I would’ve expected her to name herself Sunset, or something similar, judging by her cutie mark and colours.

“Yeah! Seven in the morning is around the time of dawn, right? So it fits!” The rest of us either shrugged or said nothing. Dawn, as she was now called, smiled and turned to a stallion I hadn’t yet heard speak. “You next!”

The stallion had a red coat, which contrasted well with his blue mane. He had a peculiar style, having it combed in the front yet spiky in back. His tail was a completely different colour, being a mixture of cream and orange. His cutie mark was a bunch of electrical sparks, but it was almost hidden by a brown collared cape he wore. Along with the cape, he had a thin bronze necklace. The last thing I noticed about him were his green eyes, which were looking incredulously at Dawn.

“Do I need a code name?” he asked, seemingly not liking the idea. Dawn nodded eagerly, and he sighed. “Well...my number is four, and ponies have four hooves, so...I guess that’s what you can call me. Hooves.”

I glanced at his ‘watch’. Sure enough, the number 4 was right on it.

“I’ll be Uno,” the burgundy stallion spoke up then. “It means ‘one’, so...yeah, nice and simple.” He held his ‘watch’ up, revealing the 1 on it. As he did so, I took the time to look him over, and noticed something rather peculiar: he lacked a cutie mark.

I was about to ask him about it, but then a different pony spoke up, and I had to hold off for a while.

“I’ve got the number 2,” declared the dark blue stallion from before who had been about to argue with my escort, lifting his leg to show his ‘watch’. I finally got a good look at him; in addition to his blue coat, he had a messy light purple mane and tail, along with green eyes. “Coins have two sides, right? I’ll go with Coin.”

“If we’re going in numerical order, I should go next,” my guide spoke up afterwards. “I have 3, so...Tri? Triangle?” He smiled. “Angle. That sounds fine.”

Hooves had already gone, and he was number 4, so the next one was 5. This one turned out to be the papyrus-coloured mare who had first spoken when I arrived. She held up her ‘watch’ to prove her identity, as we had apparently established as a tradition.

“Since we’re basing our names on our numbers, I’ll go with Thursday,” she decided. “It’s the fifth day of the week. Kind of an odd name, but...well, it’ll do.”

The next one, number 6, was a stallion who had yet to speak. He had a cream-coloured coat, a mane and tail with two shades of blue that were both somewhat long, light blue eyes, and a brown scarf around his neck. His cutie mark was a symbol I recognized as representing Libra.

From his demeanour, I gathered that he wasn’t used to being in groups like this. It took him a moment to realize all eyes were on him before he finally spoke.

“Uh...well, I’m 6...” he said unnecessarily, showing off his ‘watch’. “Um...there’s six Elements of Harmony, right? I’ll be...Element.”

Yep...definitely not used to social activity.

Dawn, being 7, was next, but she had already gone. That meant, being 8, I was next instead. I felt a little surprised as eight pairs of eyes all landed on me.

I tried to think of something as I showed my ‘watch’ off; partially because everypony else had, and partially to stall for time. “Um…”

Before I could even voice an idea, Coin waltzed right up to me, pressing his side against mine. “Foals start getting their cutie marks at eight years old, right? Why not call yourself Cutie? Definitely fits in my opinion.” He grinned.

Glaring almost as hard as I was blushing, I forcefully shoved him away from me. Angle, Hooves, and Thursday all rolled their eyes, apparently being used to this behaviour. I wondered just how long these ponies had been together before I showed up.

“I’ll go with...Note,” I finally said after my embarrassment died down. “Like an eighth note in music.”

They accepted it, and I became known as Note to them. It felt extremely odd to rename myself, but it was a necessity.

Last to go was the stallion with the headphones. He looked just as nervous as I had felt, but took a bit longer answering. Which, considering he didn’t have to deal with Coin hitting on him, was saying a fair bit.

“...Cloud,” he finally said. “Like...cloud nine.” He showed his ‘watch’ off. Sure enough, he had the number 9.

“So that’s all of us?” Hooves asked. We all nodded. “Then let’s see if we can start finding a way out of here.”

Author's Notes:

OC credits! From 1 to 9, skipping 8 since that's Asylum...

"Uno", AKA Enigma, was submitted by enigmaMystere.
"Coin", AKA Light Arrow, was submitted by KenSES64.
"Angle", AKA Throw Ring, was submitted by ApplePie Lord.
"Hooves", AKA Drakyl Hedge, was submitted by TundraStanza.
"Thursday", AKA Paper Wing, was submitted by Literature.
"Element", AKA Star Keeper, was submitted by LightningDust.
"Dawn", AKA Evening Sky, was submitted by Garino.
"Cloud", AKA Hovermic, is my own OC. The reason I chose to use one of my own characters rather than a submitted one wasn't due to lack of good submissions, but rather because...well...you'll see in a later chapter.