Swinn stretched and yawned. Sun was streaming in the window, and she could tell it was going to be much hotter today than it was last night.

Last night. She thought with great glee of the wonderful fortune right in their hooves.

Hey, Dell! she thought, accessing their psychic link. Wake up!

Nothing happened. There was no response.

Dell! Swinn psychically screamed. Wake up!

After a bit, Swinn rolled over and whacked Dell on the shoulder. "Hey, Dell AUGH!"

Dell was up in a flash. "What? What? AUGH!"

The two sisters reached out and touched each other's foreheads, talking in perfect unison. "Your horn! My horn! AUGH! What happened? Heeeeeelp!"

They ran in circles screaming for a moment.

Dell collapsed on the floor, sobbing quietly. Swinn studied herself in the mirror. She could see a shiny circle on her forehead that was slightly lighter colored than her fur in the place where her horn used to be, but that seemed to be all that was left of her beautiful, beautiful horn.

"We have to think about this logically," she whispered. "How could this have happened? Who would have wanted to…"

The answer came to her almost instantly.

"Dell!" she shouted. "Get up. I know who we need to look for."


"Hey, you!" Swinn shouted. "You know an earth pony named Sebastius Mareton?"

The innkeeper looked up from her sweeping. She said something in Marabian and went back into the inn.

"Not another one!" Dell wailed. "Why why why why WHY is Mareton making this so hard for us? Doesn't he understand?"

"Shh." Swinn pulled her sister into a hug and rubbed the top of her head. "It's okay. Don't worry. Mareton has too much at stake here for him to just take off…"

The innkeeper reappeared, gesturing frantically. "Come, come. Mareton."

The Swinndell sisters followed her up a set of narrow stairs to room number 216. "Mareton," the innkeeper repeated, pointing at it.

Swinn and Dell banged on the door vigorously with all their front hooves. The innkeeper fled.

When the sisters finally got tired and took a break from knocking so hard, a cold voice from inside said "Come in."

"It was unlocked?" Dell said, collapsing on the floor.

"He's probably laughing at us right now," Swinn growled, pulling the door open.

The room was sparse, and the bed had not been slept in. Sebastius Mareton sat in a wooden chair with a blanket draped over most of his body, reading a book. He glanced at the sisters briefly and grinned wickedly. Of course he was grinning. He had the upper hoof now.

"Well, if it isn't Swinn and Dell," Mareton said. "Long time, no see. To what do I owe the pleasure of this-"

Swinn knocked the chair over as she tackled Mareton and started searching all his clothes. Dell ransacked what there was of the room to ransack, taking the bed apart and checking behind the night table. Then both girls tore through the clothes in the closet.

"Hey!" Mareton said. "I don't appreciate you coming in and ruining my HEY! That jacket is expensive!"

"Oh, shame," Swinn snarled, ripping it in half.

"You could just ask me first," Mareton growled.

"What? And do what you expect?" Swinn grabbed Mareton's chin and yanked it towards herself, which was followed by a small 'splorch' sound.

"OWowowow," Mareton shrieked.

A thin red line appeared on Sebastius' neck around where the cut had been made last night. A bit of blood oozed out.

Swinn gasped and let go. Sebastius Mareton rubbed his hoof on the cut. Then he looked up with fury in his eyes.

"Whatever you girls did to me," he said in a barely restrained shout, "undo it. Now. Or you will spend the rest of your lives as mundane, magicless horses."

Swinn and Dell locked eyes. Both of them started having a mental conference with each other before remembering that they couldn't anymore. So Swinn pulled Dell into the closet and shut the door.

"What are we going to do?" Dell whispered, trying not to cry.

"There's only one thing to do, Dell," Swinn sighed. "Our hooves are tied. We'll just have to do as he asked."

"But how?" Dell cried. "Don't tell me you'd do any better the second time! What if we turn him into something even more inequine? Or worse- what if we kill him for real this time?"

After a moment, Swinn shook her head.

"You're right. I don't think I can fix it. We'll just have to go back to the surgeon and beg him on our knees for another favor." She sighed heavily.

They opened the closet door. Mareton was in front of the mirror.

"Well?" he asked, turning to face them. He'd tied a white bandana around his neck, probably to hide the cut, but blood had soaked through and stained it red.

"Eww, take that off!" Dell said. "You look like a carnivore who just finished eating!"

Mareton looked at the mirror again, then with a sigh turned his body so that his neck could be in a more comfortable position. "Eww, you're right." He ripped it off in disgust.

"We've talked it over," Swinn said. "We won't fix you ourselves. We're taking you to a friend of ours who will do a much better job."

Mareton tried to whirl around on them, and fell over. "How do I know this isn't a trick?" he said from the floor, acting like nothing had happened.

"What?" Swinn said. "You think we'll try anything when you're holding our horns hostage?"

Mareton slowly got up.

"Okay," he growled. "Help me get ready to go, then."

"What do you mean?" Dell said.

"You don't seriously think I'm going to go out looking like this, do you?" Mareton shifted around awkwardly on his legs. "I don't want to look like an easy target for thieves."


"Does this street look familiar to you?" Swinn asked.

"No, I was nearly unconscious during the whole thing," Dell said. She turned to Mareton, concern on her face. "Are you sure that isn't hot?"

"I'm fine," Mareton insisted.

In an effort to look like a normal pony, Mareton had put on a long cloak that swept the ground, so his awkward way of walking was mostly undetectable… although anypony who bothered to observe Mareton's motions would have noticed the odd way he balanced and the strange way the fabric rippled. The cloak came with a hood, which covered his neck to hide the cut and the way his neck was twisted. Then he had draped the hood over his face to hide the missing eye.

Cloaks were hot enough as it was, but Mareton's cloak was black to hide any bloodstains. Dell didn't see how Sebastius Mareton kept from suffocating.

"Hey!" Swinn shouted. "Anypony speak Equestrian?"

"I speak Marabian!" Sebastius snarled.

"I don't trust you as a translator after that incident in Ortogona," Swinn hissed back.

"Feckelia really can mean either 'kiss' or 'money'!"

"Yeah, right."

A little colt tugged on Dell's sleeve. "Hey, hey, hey. I speak Equestrian. I speak real good."

Sebastius rolled his eyes.

"We're looking for this… this… doctor," Swinn whispered. "Uh. He's an abada, and…"

"He got medicine, work real good?" the colt whispered back.

"Um…"

The colt yanked Sebastius' hood off.

"Hey!" Mareton shouted.

"Ah, ha-ha, I see," the colt said, rubbing Mareton's face where the missing eye used to be. "I know what you need."

"I know what you need," Mareton said, swinging his hoof at the colt only to punch the air above his head.

"Heh heh, you not punch real well. You need doctor. I show you doctor, you pay me. Pay much."

"How much?" Mareton said.

"How much you got?"

"I want to hear your price first," Mareton insisted.

The colt shrugged. "Eh… make it… you got 500 jangles?"

"That's nearly 32 bits!" Swinn cried.

"No deal," Dell said. "200 jangles."

"300."

"Done!" Mareton shouted.

"Half first," the colt said.

There was a pause.

"What are you waiting for?" Swinn whispered to Mareton.

"What? You can't expect me to pay to fix a problem you created."

"You're richer than us."

"Who cares? Pay the colt. Now."

Swinn sighed heavily. "You have got to be kidding me. This is asking too much."

"This is your fault and now you pay the price."

"Fine." Swinn pulled out a coin purse and counted out bits. "But this had better be good."

"Oh, I take you right where. You see."


"This is the doctor's office?" Mareton surveyed the boarded up building with a look of skepticism.

"It not look like much," the colt admitted, "but he best doctor world over. You believe?"

"We believe," Dell said. She knocked on the door. "Hey, surgeon! It's Swinn and Dell. We have a question!"

They didn't hear anything.

Sebastius twisted his head around to look in the window. "I don't see anything. It looks like an abandoned shop."

"Huh?" Swinn pressed her face against the boards on the window, peering between the cracks. "But… but there were a whole bunch of knives up there a while ago…"

"Knives?" Sebastius said.

"Oh, yeah," the colt said, shrugging. "Yeah, that doctor, he move sometimes."

"He moves?" Dell demanded.

"Oh, how shocking, he moves," Sebastius snarked. "Did you think he'd run into a cockatrice?"

"He move sometimes," the colt repeated. "But I know where he go."

"Where?"

"Pay me for this trip first."

"Waaaait," Swinn said. She knew a con when she heard one. "How do we know that you'll actually lead us to the doctor this time, and not just to some abandoned building, where you'll say 'oops, looks like he moved again'."

The colt blinked at her. "I speak slow Equestrian," he said.

Sebastius said something in Marabian.

"Ah," the colt said. "I no con. I good heart. I orphan. Orphans no lie."

"Your gang told you that mentioning dead parents is a good way to sucker folks out of money, didn't they?" Swinn said.

"No, truly. I no lie. Honest." The orphan paused. "I learn Equestrian from orphanage, and they ask us write song in Equestrian. You want hear song?"

"No, we don't!" Mareton shouted.

"Aw," Dell said. "Let's hear it."

Swinn shrugged. "Whatever." She tried not to look interested.

The colt closed his eyes and began to sing, with suspiciously better Equestrian than he usually spoke in:

"I'm alone in world so wide

Feel so lonely deep inside

I see black shadows, want to hide-"

"Oh, for crying out loud, shut up!" Mareton shouted. "Nopony wants to hear your sob story!"

"I liked it," Dell said.

"Yeah, just shut up Mareton," Swinn said. "Just because you have no heart doesn't mean that others can't be moved."

Sebastius cocked an eyebrow. "Hmm. Interesting. Do you mean to tell me that all I have to do to get ponies to trust me is to sing a poorly written song about how horrible my childhood was?"

"Well…" Dell said.

But it was too late. Mareton launched into song.

"Hey, welcome newbie, to our humble sanitarium.

"Shame about your dad, but hey, we all know that you killed him.

"You are a Problem Child and that's probably all you'll be,

"But we'll do our best to make you a weak and wimpy Normie."

"That's not really-" Dell started to say.

"Step one, violence will be punished with more violence,

"Two, counselors asking probing questions,

"Three, just forget about your freedom,

"Four, hope you like electric therapy!"

"Oh, come on!" Swinn said. "They didn't have electric therapy when you were a kid!"

"Hey, who are you going to believe?" Sebastius asked. "Some publication on sanitarium safety written by a bunch of psychologists who didn't want to lose their jobs, or me?"

"The former," the SwinnDell sisters said in unison.

Sebastius rolled his eyes. "Anyway, the next verse goes:

"Hope you don't care that we read your mind 24/7 in this place.

"Who knows what's in these needles? We just want to cause you pain.

"The goal of the exercise is to make you too terrified to move,

"And then you won't kill another innocent pony again."

"He's not going to sing the chorus again, is he?" Dell asked.

"Oh no," Swinn said. She shoveled a hooful of coins into the colt's satchel. "Quick, lead us out of here!"

"You got it, missy!" The colt ran off down the street, and Swinn and Dell charged after him. Mareton's singing echoed in the narrow alley as they ran away.

"Step one, violence will be punished with more violence,

"Two, counselors asking probing questions,"

"Three, just forget about your freedom,

"Four, hope you like electric therapy!"


Author's Note: Sebastius Mareton's 'Asylum Song' was lovingly based off of (heartlessly stolen from) Sherclop Pones' Orphanage Song, and the tune is the same. Go search the song on YouTube if you haven't heard it before; you're sure to find it. And then check out other videos from Sherclop Pones.

Though frankly, it tests my suspension of disbelief if you've heard of me, but not Sherclop Pones.