Chapter 2: Investigations

Great. Per-fect.

Round of applause, Mr. I'm-gonna-creep-the-shit-out-of-everypony Owner. Why would you make that?!

Just… I don't understand ponies - there all fucked up. Massively.

I think I'm done.

Anyway - Blitz had a pretty decent day-mare (cos it's not a nightmare if it's in the day, right?), where, for some reason, he was being chased around his house by the Ani-Ponies, except he informs me they were much creepier. As in, gigantic teeth, fire manes, falling apart, huge stones and crystals. Pah. What an imagination. I always knew he was the creative type - hence his cutie mark. Dance. I don't blame him though. Those things were scary.

So he came round here - shaking me awake. Not the best thing to do after the night we had, but anyway. Take two.

Y'know when you get that feeling of that things can get a lot worse? Hmm.

I'm really dreading this.

In a heartbeat, it felt like, we've found ourselves returning to that forsaken building - the "World of Fun" that was anything but. Blitz and I exchanged a nervous glance as we met in front of its darkened doors.

"I don't want to go in…" he muttered, stepping back the smallest bit.

I nodded my head, "I don't want to either - but it appears that Mr Fuck-Up hasn't given us a choice."

He urged me to continue with a baffled look.

"I… I rang him earlier." I began, starting to explain my earlier engagement, "He said we're going nowhere until this week is up. Looks like we're stuck here."

"But we still don't have to go in!"

"What - and look like the town idiots - a sudden coward? No way. I'm either going to come out victorious, or die trying." My usual headstrong-ness shone like a brightened bulb. Blitz gave a single, forlorn humph.

"No wonder you never come with us!" I sighed, half-jokingly, at him. It was true - he practically never came on any kind of quest with us, brave has he may be. But no, not sticking around to help save Equestria. I secretly hope he's not gonna leave me on my own this time. His eyes shifted awkwardly before I continued, "You'd really leave me alone?" I asked sadly, my own opticals falling to the floor.

"You know I wouldn't…" he said, suddenly appearing guilty for even thinking about it. He pressed up against me in a more-than-friendly matter, and this time, I let him. See? Easily forgiven.

"Now, we ought to get ourselves comfy, am I right?"

He gave a reluctant, shallow nod in agreement, giving both of us the permission to enter through the glass panels. We cautiously, slowly, paced in, staring in every corner of the Mane Hall to see if they were waiting for us. He began to head towards that dusty, old Office, before I stopped him in his tracks.

"Should we check these Ani-Ponies out properly?" I suggested with a hoof wave, and perhaps pushing my luck with him, however he passively asked:

"Why?"

I paused for a moment or two, before adding, "To see if they give us any idea how to survive. Or help Sad Twinky." I'd made it my mission - the only true reason I'd made my return. Robot or not, I had to help her - out of duty, perhaps.

Either way, I was going to sort this. And I wasn't leaving here until I had.

Blitz agreed with my idea - for once, as he'd often say (jokingly) that I was "too reckless", or "gonna get myself killed", and would make cute-ish remarks such as "Has my mysterious mare got us tangled in some kind of nightmarish mess again?" Sometimes, honestly, he's too adorable for me to handle. Just friends though. I suppose, anyway. Right, we're off to see this maniacs.

The corridors snaking to the Showstage spiralled like falling snow, sending us down countless different ways. I'd decided that, while doing so, we may as well acquaint ourselves with the place. Doors jutted out of walls in different areas that all looked identical to the last. You could get lost in this place, I'm sure. Again, another sadly dulled door past us in silence, however it didn't go unnoticed like the last two. Something pulled me towards it. Definitely different to the last.

"Do you see that?" I asked Blitz, who had stood by my side as I analysed the warning sign on the door. It threateningly read, "Dangerous. Do not enter at any means." Something back there was important, and obviously the creepy owner wanted us nowhere near it. On the contrary…

Blitz sighed, "You seriously want to go in there?" as I lined my eye up with a hairline of a keyhole.

"Ah-ha." I hummed, enthralled in my new challenge, as I leant in from all different angles, trying to see the faintest glint of something. No luck so far.

"And the one time you really need Crystal for something…" I groaned, knowing my fellow nightguard would finish it off, for a) knowing me so well, and b) as he's had the very same problem himself.

"-She's nowhere in sight." He chuckled, nervousness tinged in his voice.

I mumbled, squinting through the hole, "She'd no doubt be able to make a key… out of some kind of stone, anyway-" Then, I stopped. Something was indeed in there. It glinted in a matte way - like it had given in on life. With this place, I didn't doubt the fact that it had done at some point.

"Blitz! Look!" I cried quietly, as I invited him to peer in through the keyhole. Reluctantly, he slid towards it, lowering his head in alignment with the hole.

"I don't see anyth- Woah!"

He stumbled backwards, landing on the floor with an odd-sounding dunk.

"What is it? Surely a piece of metal isn't that much of a revelation…"

"No!" he cried, waving his hooves angrily in the air, "there was a… a…an eye! Staring right back at me!"

I held back the urge to roll my eyes, and merely stared at him in disbelief.

"Look for yourself!" he jerked an ordering arm towards the door.

I sighed, before giving in. If I did, it'd probably calm him down a bit - showed I "believed" him. Oh well - it'll be his mind playing tricks on h-

Aaaargh! Shit!

A scarlet eye, furrowed in confusion, stared back at me with the intensity of a raging fire.

"Believe me now?" Blitz trembled, as we both shuffled away from the door. Hell did I!

I cried out, eager to gallop away and see the less mysterious things, "Let's go!" I leapt up and trotted hastily, a worried Blitz chasing my tail.

Little did we know, that our only true friends in this place lay behind that door, vulnerable and unknowing of us - and also threatened by the Ani-Ponies. A single, broken, shallow cry for help was murmured to our retreating figures, before slumping into shutdown once more.

We reached the Showstage in a state opposite to the one we wanted to enter in - instead of showing those Ani-Ponies that we weren't afraid of anything, we showed up panting, gasping and babbling to each other about the "creepy thing behind the door". Twinky's -1, Ponies - 0. Ugh. Not like they'd (probably) noticed - a firm 11:17 sat above the entrance, marking their relative death - for now, anyway.

Cast in a pale moonlight, a stage of mahogany and oak stood in silence, flanked by a cascade of scarlet curtains, sweeping their tassels along the tarnished wood. And on it, it was them. All six of them, lined up in order, like ornaments on a side. Expressionless. Lifeless. Harmless?

Clearly not, from last night. But to anyone otherwise, they were nothing important. Mere statues created for foals' entertainment. But; they were anything but.

They were killers. Murderers of the worst kind - and could never be in trouble for it.

I stared up at the now silent pony animatronics, silently whispering to Blitz, "They look a bit different now…"

"Indeed…" he nodded shallowly, "They do."

Slightly awe-struck, you could say, by the sight of these robots standing above us, staring idly out across rows and rows of strewn chairs, we slowly made our way to them, closer with every hoof we inched forward. The shrill calls of cold tiling under colder feet filled our ears with clops. Nothing could stop us.

Or, maybe memories could? And, I don't mean the recent memories of our confrontations. I mean:

The memories of death staining the floor.

Literally. My eyes strayed from the threatening robots to a mere stain on the cream tiling. Just a dim, hardly-there tinge of red in a pool, lay near the corner of the room. Almost as if something - or someone - was cornered there. And pretty much ruined there. That was what had happened; the pieces of the jigsaw were starting to move into place. For one, stupid moment, I kinda felt sorry for the Ani-Ponies. They were left there, isolated except for the night-time, when no one was awake (except us two idiots), and forever put in front of their wrongdoing; left to dwell on their cruel mistake, and suffer for it.

Maybe they'd been driven insane by being put in front of such a sight - after all, they were programmed to entertain and insure safety with the foals and fillies that often wandered in here. Yet again, this was the very worst place a young pony could be in for protection. In fact, they'd most likely fall to the jaws of the very same… beings that were their guardians. Just like Shadow…Things had gone so wrong somewhere in time, and now: it'd never end.

"I know what I have to do…" I thought aloud, my determined look spreading across my face.

Blitz's eyes remained fixed on the faint stain, "And that'll be?"

"I have to save them."

"Who?"

"Everyone."

"How?"

I paused, pondering on the fact of how to actually achieve my near impossible mission, "…Free their souls…" I murmured - the only solution that actually made sense to me.

"You what now?" Blitz had never really been knowing on the kind of supernatural, spirit knowledge I looked into when I was younger. After all, it was my best trick to get rid of the bullies - just summon a spectre or two, or tell them some kind of true story about places they loved most…

I'm going off of subject, but either way, it worked.

"Twinkle?" he jolted a little bit, as he stared at me in disbelief, "Now I know you're a unicorn, like me, but surely - what in Equestria are you banging on abou -"

"If I can somehow free them of their thought - the Ani-Ponies, I mean, or in some way be able to take them away from here - or reprogram them or something, I could possibly change why they are like this. I have to get into what they're thinking. But, first, we have to prove to them that we're worth telling."

Silence, and a few, perplexed blinks - just the reaction I was expecting.

"Survive the week, Blitz. The month, maybe. But I can't leave here without ending all of this. And, Sad Twinky is definitely inhabited by the living pony's spirit - we have to break her out. And I know it won't be beautiful, but - "

"This is crazy."

Three words that ended my plane of thought - my insane babbling flying out of the air in one go, like a bubble being burst in a shower of soap.

"You're gonna kill yourself one of these days, Twinks." He sighed at me, his saddened eyes staring into mine, as his hoof traced the small indentation of teeth marks on the tiling.

More suggestions to the torturous affairs that took place here.

More clues for me.

"I know I will Blitz." I shrugged, not particularly bothered, "But we all die someday. I'm just doing as much as I can beforehand - I'm not gonna be a pony who sleepwalks through this daydream. I'm going to be real."

Blitz seemed to ponder on that for a moment, before saying, "…I guess you're right really - but putting yourself in danger isn't going to help you, is it? No early graves, Twinkleheart." And then he kissed me on the cheek (daft stallion he is), and whispered down my ear, "Cos I don't want no more nasty surprises. "