Reshackled

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit work of fan fiction. My Little Pony © Hasbro.

-=Chapter 1=-

Drip.

Drip..

Drip...

Small drops of cold water slid along the stone ceiling of a dark, damp dungeon that had not been used in years. Rats, insects and the forces of nature had taken their toll on the long forgotten dungeon. That part of its status had recently changed, however, when it was charged with the detention of its first prisoner since its abandonment.

The sole captive stirred ever so slightly, noticing first the cold hard surface he was laid out on, followed by the smell of earth and mold. Groaning softly, he shifted around and put a hand on his forehead. Something felt wrong, very wrong.

He realized he didn't know where he was or how he got there, and there was barely enough light to see the wall next to the window where faint beams of moon light flowed in. But the thing that alarmed him the most was how his body felt when he touched his head; his head felt hard and bald, and he could only feel it with his palm, not his fingers. He rolled his hand against his cheek, only to find it wasn't a hand at all. All he found was a stump.

The prisoner's heart raced as questions filled his mind. Where am I? Why don't I have fingers? What's going on?!

His mind tried to pull up the events of the night before, but he drew a blank. What did I do? Wait... What's... what's my name? Why can't I remember my name?!

He tried to stand up, only to fall backwards. Something was wrong with his legs too. And there was a new pain on his back, like he landed on something that shouldn't be there. Panicking, he crawled towards the lit wall on his belly, which made a light scraping noise. The chains attached to his legs scraped and clinked on the ground behind him. He raised his arm to the light, then retreated when he saw a black shaft filled with holes rise in front of him.

What was that?!

Tentatively, he raised his arm again, and saw the porous stick return. He tried to bend his wrist, and the hoof-like appendage he saw obeyed his neural command.

What the... "What the fuck happened to my arm?!" He put both on the wall, and found that apart from the formation of the pores, they were identical. Black chitin took the place of hair and skin. He felt around his naked body and saw the carapace extended all over him. What was worse, his body no longer had a humanoid shape.

He turned around and stood up with his back to the wall and observed his body in the light. Black carapace, a blue shell on his back, tattered insectoid wings, and a short gray horse tail. He looked like a cross between a small horse, a hyena, and some kind of insect. He slowly raised his shaking hooves to his face and felt it. Tattered ears, round head with enormous eyes, a horn on his forehead, and a muzzle tipped with sharp bat fangs.

He closed his eyes and hit the back of his head against the wall, trying to wake himself up, and was rewarded only with very real pain. Slowly sinking to the ground, the prisoner buried his face in his forelegs and fought the urge to sob.

"This can't be real. It can't be. This is impossible. This. Is. Impossible!" He shouted the last word to no one in particular.

He slapped himself in the face. Get a grip! There has to be an explanation to all this. Now let's see. I'm in a dungeon, my body is misshapen and mangled, and I don't hear anyone around. It's not a dream, because I never feel pain when I get hurt in a dream. I could be hallucinating. Maybe I was drugged, and that's why my body feels weird. That might explain why I can't remember my name, too. Then the hallucinations might be making my body look the way it feels.

He looked down at himself again. And I look like something a dog chewed up and hacked on the floor.

He got down on his hooves, finding it easier to stand on all fours. He tried to walk, and fell forward, smashing his face on the floor.

"FUCK!" he screamed, grabbing his bleeding nose. He groaned and held it tight until the bleeding stopped, and then stood up and tried to walk again, managing not to injure himself once more.

He clenched his eyes shut and winced. "Who am I? Who am I?" He continued to ask himself this question over and over, but an answer never came.

But he didn't have time to think about that. Wherever he was, he was going to die one way or another if he didn't find a way out soon. He started to search his cell, inspecting the bars. They were rusted pretty badly, clearly a place that was seldom, if ever, used. But if he managed to get out, then what? He didn't know the layout of the place he was in; he could easily get lost or wander into a trap or an ambush.

The insectoid turned and looked up at the window. He jumped and scrambled at the wall, trying to get up. An instinct took hold, and his hooves became sticky enough to grip the wall. He didn't allow himself time to contemplate these strange instincts, and climbed up so he was eye level with the small window. Outside looked like the side of a ravine with a river flowing through the bottom. Maybe he could escape through there.

He put his forehoof on the bar and tried to figure out how to grip it. His sticky hooves didn't work well on the slick metal, so instead he wrapped his wrists around the bar and gave it a solid tug. The metal didn't budge. He tried another bar, and got the same result.

The prisoner dropped to the ground and sat on his haunches. He sighed and looked around. The situation seemed hopeless.

Shoot the lock, he thought to himself, then cocked his head.

"Shoot the lock? Did I just think that?"

He staggered over to the iron bars and looked at the rusted padlock on them. It looked extremely old, the kind that could easily be picked open with a paper clip or a hairpin, if he had fingers.

"OK," he said to himself, "I can't shoot the lock if I have nothing to shoot it with. Oh, what the hell am I even talking about? I don't have fucking fingers!" He sighed and walked in a circle. "OK, ignoring my crazy voice thing, I'm going to calm down, and just do the rational thing anyone would do in this situation..."

He promptly ran headfirst into the iron door and slammed into it as hard as he could. "LET ME OUT YOU FUCKERS! YOU CAN'T KEEP ME HERE FOR NO DAMN REASON! I KNOW MY RIGHTS!" He banged on the door several times and then fell backwards again, holding his sore head between his forelegs.

Growling with feral rage, he stood up again and charged the door once again, but this time, instead of bouncing back, his body erupted into a green flame that pulled him forward and burned clean through the door. He then smacked against the stone wall and stuck to it for a moment before sliding off onto the ground.

"OK," he wheezed, "What the hell did I just do?"

The prisoner looked at the cell door. The tips of the bars where he'd burned through were still glowing red hot with little wisps of smoke rising off of them. He smirked to himself. "Well, beats shooting it."

He got up and shook himself, then rolled his joints to loosen up and get a feel of his new body. It was hard to say if breaking out of the cell itself was the easy part or the hard part. Compared to figuring out a way to become human again, it was most likely the easy part. The hardest part was a near draw between finding someone who could cure his, as far as he could tell, mutation, and finding someone who would trust what looked like, from what he could make out in the dark, a bug monster.

Carefully trotting down the dark, abandoned corridor, he navigated the maze of twists and turns until at long last, he found an exit. This door was wooden and moldy; it splintered easily against a single shoulder bash.

Stepping out into the cool night air, he took a deep breath and looked around. The castle, if it could be called that, was just as ruined and worn down as the dungeon he woke up in, more so in some places. Entire sections of the walls had crumbled into rubble, and a hallway with shattered stained glass windows stood exposed to the elements where shredded curtains and tapestries waved slowly in the wind. One still intact window depicted a vicious-looking black alicorn clad in blue armor. Fragments of other images showed large-eyed equines in various styles, and crumbled statues lay in the shapes of different horse-like body parts.

The prisoner snorted. "Whoever built this place really had a horse motif going on."

He found more equine artwork around the ruins, even parts of a horse-shaped suit of tin armor. Curious, he picked up the parts and reassembled them. The completed suit wasn't big enough for a full-sized horse, and the proportions matched that of the ones in the pictures. It looked to be more the size of a mini pony, but with thicker legs and a much blunter face.

"Am I even on Earth anymore?" the insectoid asked himself, "This just seems too... alien."

He decided to accept the idea that this was all real, knowing that if it was, he couldn't afford to just sit and wait for whatever dream it may be to pass; he needed to prepare himself for whatever came if he wanted to survive. That meant trying to learn about his body, what he needed, and what the locals were like. He also needed to think up a name for himself, should he encounter anyone. While he probably looked frightening, it might be easier to communicate with others if he could at least give them a name and show he wasn't some mindless beast.

Trotting around the dilapidated castle, he came to a fountain that still held clean water in it. The spout came from the wall and poured into a shallow pool on the floor, probably using a nearby river as a source. He stepped up to the water and looked at himself. His face was as black as the rest of his body, but his eyes were solid, icy blue without any whites or pupils in them. He squinted and flexed his eyelids, finding they still worked like they did before. His vision was normal too, so they weren't compound eyes, just solid and unreadable.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of him. It was shocking at first, but soon the idea of a black-suited Spiderman popped into his head, and the idea was too funny for him to just ignore.

"Hmm," he pondered, "Venom? No, that would definitely scare people. What about just Dave? 'Hi, I'm a bug pony named Dave.' Yeah, freaking retarded." He sighed and took a drink, still going over name ideas. "Beetle Juice? Heh, heh, not likely." He looked at his legs. "Uh, Swiss Cheese? No, shouldn't do that. These legs could probably have some kind of condition."

He tried to think back as far as he could. He could remember only bits and pieces of the human world he left behind, barely anything personal. The first moments he spent in this world, if it really wasn't Earth, were in an old dungeon, bound and imprisoned. Even though nobody was around to keep him prisoner, that was how he started. Chained, barred, shackled.

The last word clicked in his head. Shackled? Another idea came to mind, and he said it aloud. "Shacklebolt." A grin slowly formed on his face. It sounded cool, it wasn't too scary, and it fit the situation.

Having decided on an identity, Shacklebolt resumed his exploration. Now he was searching for food; he was starting to feel hungry, and wanted to make sure he had something on hand, or hoof, to eat.

The warm air indicated it was still summer time, the same season it was his last night as a human, or so it felt. The events of that night were unclear, growing more and more fragmented towards the end. Shacklebolt silently prayed his amnesia was only temporary.

The insectoid found a tree with very sweet-looking nectarines growing on it. A nectarine tree in the middle of a dark forest like this? It hardly seemed a suitable area for such fruit to thrive, but they did somehow. It just seemed so out of place near the crumbled walls of the castle.

Shacklebolt decided to pick one of the succulent fruits and try one. It was as tender and juicy as he expected it, but something about it felt off. He swallowed, and he felt full, but he didn't feel satisfied. Finishing the entire thing, he still felt just as hungry as before, only now, he was a bit heavier. Fruit obviously wasn't his body's intended diet, so what was?

"I can't stay here any longer," he told himself, "I need to find someone. Oh, God, I hope I don't have to drink blood."

Shacklebolt wiped the juice off his face and threw the pit into the castle shrubbery. He looked at his wings and tried to feel them. They fluttered a bit on command, but upon trying to lift off, he accidentally shot himself forward and crashed into a wall. Deciding that was a stupid idea, he opted to practice running instead. He stumbled and fell a few times, but managed to get the hang of it without killing himself.

"OK, status report," he said to himself as he ran, "My body has been mutated into a weird bug thing, I'm in a place that apparently worships horses, and I can't seem to stop being hungry after eating. In conclusion, I have no idea what the fuck is going on."

Soon, he came to a ravine with a rickety wood and rope bridge connecting either side. The set up didn't look very good. On one hoof, he could trust the bridge and cross it, and on the other, he could trust his wings and fly over. Experience told him he shouldn't try to fly again until he was in a safe place, and ravines usually didn't prove to be very safe for practicing anything, except dying. He chose the bridge.

Carefully placing a hoof on the first plank, Shacklebolt made sure his footing was sound before proceeding. The plank held, and he heaved a sigh of relief before continuing on. Shacklebolt didn't notice the worn-down rope at the end, and as soon as he reached the middle, the bridge snapped. The wood fell out from under his legs, and in his panic, he wasn't able to get his wings going again.

Shacklebolt braced for impact, closing his eyes so he didn't have to see the rushing water racing up to meet him.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 Estimated time remaining: 15 Minutes