When Rainbow and I are sure we’ve evaded Blackwatch, we don’t stop running. We keep going, following my monster sense towards wherever Pinkie is right now. Once we have her boat, we can get off this Tartarus forsaken island. The ponies here are too racist for my tastes.

I super jump up onto the roof of a tall apartment building, and Rainbow does the same. She’s learning how to use her powers quick. I’d say I’m surprised she has the same monster powers I do, but I’d be lying. We both were trapped in a Blackwatch lab. Whatever happened to us while they held us captive can’t be too different from each other. It seems natural for us to have the same condition.

After a minute or so of running on top of rooftops, I hear a dull thud behind me. I stop and turn around. Rainbow is lying face first on the floor, legs spread eagle. Based on context clues, the thud was her tripping. Apparently she isn’t as used to these powers as I thought.

“Had a nice trip, buddy?” I say as I rush up to my fallen friend. “I hope you packed your bags for it.”

Rainbow doesn’t lift her nose from the ground. She holds up a hoof to wave off my comment. “Don't worry. I fell on purpose.”

My eyebrow goes up. “Okay. Why would you fall on purpose?”

“Because I can!” She cheers as she rolls over to face belly up. “I’m free! I’ve been cooped up in a cage for a month! There are no spells shackling me to the wall! I can fall over all I want now!”

Alright, I can dig that. She’s exercising her freedom. I’d do the same thing if I were in her position. Actually, I was in her position a day or two ago, but I didn’t do the whole freedom thing. It didn’t cross my mind. “Wait, they shackled you to a wall?”

“Unicorns would come into my box every few hours and cast spells on my hooves to keep me stuck on the wall. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t move, it was agony.” Rainbow gazes up at the night sky. We’re far enough away from the fire to not be overcast in orange. It’s a plain, black sky. Manehattan has too much light pollution to see the stars. It’s one thing Griffonstone has over this place. “Once not too long ago it would pain me to say this, but now is appropriate. I can’t wait to see the sun rise.”

“What, you don’t like saying sappy things?”

Rainbow closes her eyes. “Something like that.”

The pegasus stretches out her wings and basks under the starless night. Her breathing turns slow and deep. She’s savoring every moment of her new freedom. Watching her is making me jealous.

How come I didn’t get this freedom feeling Rainbow is having now? I was trapped in a lab almost as long as her. I should’ve been dancing in the rain right after breaking out. If anything, I was confused. I was bouncing between places trying to get some meaning out of my new life.

Maybe that’s it, I was confused. I woke up from a coma and went on my way without any directions. Rainbow here is lucky. I came to set the record straight and sacrificed life and limb to break her out. She may not know everything that’s going on, but she knows enough to land on her feet and run.

A question pops up in my head. “Hey Rainbow, do you have any amnesia?”

Rainbow’s eyes pop open and she bends her head towards me. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“A couple days ago I escaped Blackwatch too. And when I did, I came out with a nasty case of amnesia. All my memories for the past year, I think it’s a year, are all hazy and distant. I’ve been getting bits and pieces of the past, but other than that I can’t remember jack.”

The pegasus pushes herself up to a sitting position. “Blackwatch held you captive too?”

I nod. “They had me strapped to a table.”

“And you don’t remember any of it.”

“Everything up to my escape is a blur, and even that is hazy.”

Rainbow frowns. “Aren’t you the lucky one.”

“How is that lucky? I can’t remember jack!”

“It’s lucky because you don’t know what Blackwatch did to you. I, on the other hoof, do remember. I remember everything.”

“Like what? What happened?”

“Horrible things, just awful.”

I sit down next to her. I think we’ll be here for a while. “Did they cut you open to see how you tick?”

“Oh, they did that, but it wasn’t a big deal. Sure, they’d cut open my belly and get a good look at my guts, but my body always healed itself afterwards, and there wasn’t much pain to begin with. It was embarrassing if anything, kind of like sitting naked in front of an art class that’s taking a peek inside me and poking at my spleen.”

“That’s… an interesting way of looking at it.” Certainly not the impression I got from the comic books.

Rainbow shrugs. “I won’t lie, I enjoyed the attention after a while.”

Now that’s weird. “Alright, if that wasn’t the bad part, what were the horrible things they did to you? Did they dip you in acid or something?”

Rainbow thought to herself for a moment. “There were a couple acid baths. Those weren’t pleasant. They set me on fire once or twice. And then there were the sword stabbings, the beheading, the full week of sharks, the peacock incident. Those nerds are a weird bunch. One scientist, Strangeglove I think was his name, liked hooking jumper cables to my wings and electrocuting me. I think he got off on that, and after a while, so did I.”

“Sweet mercy, that’s horrible!” I shudder when the last image pops in my head. “Ew.”

“Yeah, it sucked. But all that mutilation and torture made the most horrible thing I experienced bearable. I wish I had your amnesia, Gilda, that way I’d forget the most awful part of being in that box.”

My wings flare out as Rainbow hypes me up. “What? What is it?”

Rainbow throws her head back in the most dramatic way possible. “The boredom!”

My wings droop back down to my sides. “The boredom?”

“It was awful!” Rainbow cries. “I don’t know how long I was trapped in that box. When those scientists weren’t cutting me open, they turned off the lights and left me strapped to a wall. I was almost always in darkness, unable to move or entertain myself!”

I remain silent. The disappointment is too overwhelming to form a response.

Rainbow continues. “I passed the time by counting my heartbeats, and then I messed my pulse up because I figured out how to control my heartbeats and I threw off my biological clock! And then I messed that up too because after that I tried to break my record for counting heartbeats I forgot how to control them and had to relearn it all over again!” Rainbow pauses to take a breath. “On a related note, I now know how to play the Equestrian national anthem with just my pulse, as well as a few country songs and show tunes.”

I know freeing Rainbow was a good thing. I’m glad I got her out. Just something about this new context throws me off for some reason. “So the boredom was the horrible thing, not the invasive experiments?”

“Considering no one ever took me out of the box, the experiments were the highlight of my day. Don’t get me wrong, I hate all those scientists and I hope they all dissolve in a vat of shmooze, but they were at least something different from the dark boredom of the box.” Rainbow looks up at the sky and taps her chin. “But I’ll give the nerds some credit. I did learn a few things about myself. I’d never thought I’d enjoy an intestinal massage.”

“Ew ew ew.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“I will knock it all day long. I don’t need someone’s hooves feeling my guts, thank you very much.”

“Who knows, maybe your captors got nitty gritty with your insides and you enjoyed it, but you forgot all about it because of amnesia so you don’t know.”

“I swear I will clip your wings and chuck you back in that box.”

Rainbow throws her hooves up. “Alright alright, I’ll cut it out.”

“Good.”

We stay up on the roof for a while. Rainbow is still taking her time to relax. I’m letting her have her fun, even though I want to get off this island as fast as possible. Anyone who went through what she did deserves a break. To be clear, I’m talking about the experiments she went through, not the boredom.

I won’t say it, but Rainbow had it easy in the box. She had some breathing space. I assume the scientists fed her, and dealt with her calls to nature. Rainbow doesn’t reek, so something was cleaning her. Sure, one month trapped in darkness sounds bad, but try surviving a winter in Griffonstone.

For five months, you’re trapped in a small hovel with three different families huddled together for warmth while the streets fill up with deep, deep snow. There’s no room to move without bumping into at least five other griffons. The chamber pot always has a line, and the guy who has to go out in the blizzard to dump that crap off the side of the mountain is always you. They can’t light the place up because the building catches fire with the smallest of sparks. No one takes a bath because there are no baths. It’s miserable the entire time.

The young griffons have it the worst. The kids are at the perfect height level to smell all the adults’ farts. The big griffons are always stepping on the little ones and yelling at them to get out of the way. If there was a poor harvest, the youngest are not making it to spring. Hey, we all got to eat.

“And let me guess, you walked through ten feet of snow, uphill, both ways, in hot summer weather, with no shoes or socks and a buffalo on your back.”

My head snaps towards Rainbow, whose mouth is curled up in a large grin. “Hey, that was private!”

Rainbow shrugs. “If you want privacy, then you need to learn to stop narrating your thoughts.” The pegasus pushes herself up on all fours and stretches her neck. “Anyways, you do have a point.”

“Yeah. You haven’t seen anything until you spent a winter in Griffonstone.”

“No, not that,” Rainbow says, shaking her head. “We need to get off this island as fast as possible.”

“That too.”

Rainbow arches her back, cracking a few bones. “You said something about a boat. Well, where’s the boat?”

“I was leading you to it. Pinkie is setting it up for us. I don’t know how she’s getting it, but she told me to meet her wherever she is.”

“Huh, Pinkie’s involved. Why am I not surprised?.”

“Yep. Just be mindful. She’s a bit of a nervous wreck right now.”

“Noted. Which direction are we going?”

“We are going”-

I pause. Rainbow rolls her hoof for me to continue. “We are going… where?”

I was about to look the direction my monster sense was pulling me towards, but something caught my eye. Over on the Manehattan skyline, the Genicorn building is lit up like a bonfire. Airships are buzzing around it. Little explosions are going off all over the place. The big thing I notice is the large ball of flesh throbbing on the top of the tower.

The flesh ball is big enough for me to see all away from the other side of Manehattan. The large mass is a pink and red thing, with black tentacles coming out of the bottom and crawling down the Genicorn Tower. That wouldn’t happen to be that eye monster I broke out, would it? Huh, glad I’m not over there anymore.

“Gilda?”

I shake my head and look to where Gilda sense is pointing me towards, which is far from the big flesh ball. “Sorry, got distracted.”

As I start walking, Rainbow looks over at the flesh ball. “Isn’t that where we just came from?”

I nod, not bothering to look back. “Yep. I think that’s the eyeball monster.”

Rainbow gives a quick laugh at the building. “Good. I hope it tears through all the nerds in that building. Saves me the trouble of coming back to seek vengeance.”

That is a bit odd hearing that come from Rainbow Dash. I let it pass and point in the direction of my Gilda senses. “Pinkie is that way. She should have the boat by now.”

“Then by all means, let’s go.”

We both take off at the same time, though Rainbow is adamant about taking the lead. I glance again at the Genicorn tower. Something about that flesh ball is setting off alarm bells in my head. It’s not from Gilda sense or anything monster related. It’s a gut feeling. My gut is saying that thing is bad news.

Good thing I’m getting out of this city. Don’t want to deal with that thing!