Chapter 17: The Therapist
Nightmare, Noun: A terrifying dream in which the dreamer experiences feelings of helplessness, extreme anxiety, sorrow, etc.
"I don't understand. What did I do wrong?!" Alpha cried, struggling to get free from the cuffs that were binding him to the metal table.
"You spared a mare from her death. You protected her, saving her from injury or death. Under normal circumstances, you would already be dead, fed to the machine, but I have specific orders from the Princess to keep you alive."
Beta awoke and manually took over control. "Shit, not again." He muttered as he felt Alpha trying to take control subconsciously. Beta could feel Alpha's pain as he twitched in an effort to stop his friend from screaming out. Once the pain and the twitching subsided, He felt Alpha nudging at him, his own way of saying "I'm okay, don't worry. Let me back in." Beta looked up and saw Charlie, still sleeping silently on the bed. Nodding slowly, he pushed himself off the chair and onto the ground. Reaching under the bed for the metallic braces and putting them on, he quietly made his way to the door and left the room, closing the door as quietly as he could. He then let Alpha take control.
"What was that for?" Alpha muttered as he looked around the hallway.
"If I hadn't taken over, you would have screamed and cried out, waking up not just Charlie and Delta, but the whole Hospital." Beta replied.
Alpha sighed as he realized what happened again. "It's getting worse; the nightmares. It's always about THAT day." He looked down the hallway on his right and saw John pacing back and forth in front of a window. Alpha walked towards him. "Hey, how is she?"
John looked up, saw Alpha, and smiled in relief. "Better now that she is here. The doctors are working on her." He said, nodding towards the window.
"Will she be alright?" Alpha asked, peering through the window. Inside the room there were bloody hoof prints everywhere as the doctors rushed back and forth, left and right, as they frantically tried to help save the orange filly's life.
"I don't know. I hope she will be." John said without taking his eyes off of the window.
"Their main concern will be internal damage and bleeding."
John looked down at Alpha. "What do you mean? What about the hooks in her wings?"
"The hooks in her wing DID puncture all the way through, but it did not hit any major arteries or blood vessels. Whoever did it to her was a professional. This means that A. Alpha and I will find the asshole and kill him slowly and B. she won't die from them. However, the RF is a horrible place, they don't sanitize anything. The worst thing that can happen to her wings is that they can become severely infected."
"And how is this supposed to help me?" John replied.
"I'm not finished yet. As for any and all external wounds that you can see, none of them are fatal. The same cannot be said about internally."
John's eyes widened.
"Internal Bleeding is really hard to…" Beta looked for the right word. "Fix, per se. If the damage is with her stomach and/or intestines, she has a low percentage of survival, EVEN with my help."
John quickly looked back at his daughter.
"But any internal damage is extremely unlikely. The worst internal damage she has is that her two front legs are broken, besides that, nothing else." Alpha peered through the window at Scootaloo. "She will live. But this event will not go away easily. We are still having problems with it even though it happened 3 years ago."
John slowly turned to Alpha. "What do you mean?"
Alpha shook his head. "It's nothing. I'm fine." He replied.
The door opened behind Alpha and out came a doctor. "Mr. John? I have good news and bad news." The doctor said as he closed the door.
"Bad news first." John replied.
"Your daughter's wings are infected. Severely infected. No amputation is needed, but it will cost you." The doctor said.
"How much?" John asked.
"50 Bits."
John looked at Alpha. Alpha looked back and slowly nodded in reply, then turned around and headed outside.
"Okay, I'll do it." John said as he nodded to the Doctor. "Can I go and see her?"
"She will live, and yes, you can." The doctor said with a smile.
Alpha was in the lobby when he saw the Therapist, the one who was stabbed in the leg with the sedative. Alpha realized that she was an Alicorn. Her skin was purple while her mane and tail were purple with a pink streak down the middle. Her cutie mark was a purple star with smaller stars around it. She was slowly coming to. He walked over to her and helped her up, standing by her so she can use him for balance. "Are you okay?" He asked her when she realized who he was.
"I've been better. I was just stabbed in the thigh with a needle laced with a sedative." She said as she glared at him. With a grunt, she pushed off of him, swaying side to side as she regained her balance. "Never mind me, are you okay?" She asked him, staring at his right wing brace. The Therapist watched as his eyes flickered red to brown as Beta and Alpha talked. "That isn't normal." She said as she leaned towards Alpha.
Alpha's eye stopped flickering right as she said that and was now red. He blinked and stared at the therapist, listening to her. She took a step back, cautious.
"What we have been through isn't what you would consider right or normal."
"We?"
"Correct. You are talking to Two ponies here, not just one."
"Oh? And who are you?"
"That is not important. What is important is that what John told you is true."
Her jaw dropped open. "How did you know I was talking to him? No pony was in the room besides us, and that room is completely sound proof!"
"It does not matter how I know what he was telling you. What matters is what he told you is true."
She turned around and nodded to her left. "Let's go into my office, we can talk there."
Alpha nodded as he followed her down the hallway and into her office. "Keep your guard up, I do not like this. I feel like I'm being watched."
"I know the feeling, Im getting it too."
He entered the office and looked around. The office walls were painted with a boring orange. There was a sofa and a chair on the right, a desk cluttered with pens, papers, and folders on the left.
"A cluttered desk shows a cluttered mind." Beta said aloud.
"Hmm? Oh!" the Therapist said as she realized what Beta meant. She shook her head in deep thought. "Lots of ponies need help. What are your names?"
"I was about to ask you the same. The name is Beta."
Her eyes widened as she spun around and stared at the young colt. "The Beta, as the Beta from 900 years ago? That went on a murderous rampage, killing all that he hated?!"
Alpha nodded. "The one and only, and I am Alpha. And you are?"
The Therapist sighed and sat down on the chair near the sofa. "The name is Twilight Sparkle." She held a hoof up. "I know, I know, "What is a Princess doing here?" I came here because I am once again on Celestia's lessons." She took a deep breath and lowered her head. "So much stuff is going on now, between this "Rainbow factory" and "Celestia is a monster," I'm having a hard time to keep up with all of it." Twilight looked up to see Alpha, his head tilted to one side and his right eye red. "Well, sit here on the sofa." She said as she patted the sofa. "And tell me what happened."
Alpha did not move. He looked around the room, getting his bearings of where he was. After he was satisfied, he looked back at Twilight and shook his head.
"What's wrong?" Twilight asked.
"We will not tell you, but we can show you." Alpha replied as he walked towards the sofa and unfastened his bag. Twilight watched as he took out a jar of what looked like blood.
"Why do you have a jar of blood?"
"It isn't a jar of blood." Alpha replied as he picked it up and offered it to Twilight. "Open it."
"Why?"
"The rainbow factory is essentially a torture house." Alpha explained as he got on the sofa and lied down. "To create rainbows, you need a huge amount of magic. Apparently, Young Pegasi blood is made up of untapped magic; insane untapped magic."
"Almost as powerful as yours." Beta remarked.
"And how do they get this magic? Where do the pegasi come from?" Twilight asked.
"The Pegasi are the pegasi who fail the flying test in Cloudsdale. All of those who fail don't go to exile, they are sent to the factory, "Never to be seen again."" Alpha nervously sighed. He started to extend and retract his right wing slowly, thinking of the RF.
Twilight tilted her head. She knew from other past patients who claimed that the RF was real had a hard time explaining how the magic was created. But she needs to know how it was created. "How is the magic created?"
Alpha was visually shaking in fear now, trying to push the repressed memories back down. "It's not created, its…its" Beta tried to find the right word. "It's stolen. They kill them. They torture and kill them. They have a machine that pretty much drains their blood and transforms it into rainbows. If you think what I did when I was alive was bad, then the Rainbow Factor IS hell."
Alpha nodded to the jar beside him on his left. "That jar is not just filled with blood. Open it and it turns into a rainbow-colored liquid." He said.
Twilight stared at the jar of blood, scared and curious of it at once. Slowly, she grabbed the jar and uncapped it. She dropped it in shock as she watched it turn into its original state. Alpha tracked the jar as Beta caught it with his magic. The cap for the jar flew out of Twilight's hoof as Beta took it and closed the jar, the liquid inside turning back into its blood-red state. She looked up at Alpha to see him looking at her.
Twilight began to shake her head in disbelief. "That isn't real. This has to be a dream." She said as she began to realize what John said explained. What all her patients today explained. It all began to make sense. "All the patients, the wounds they had, they stories they told, It's all real?" Alpha nodded. "It shou- WOULD YOU STOP THAT!?" She screamed at Alpha.
He realized what he was doing and retracted his wing once more. "Sorry, it's a nervous habit."
"Why do you have that thing over your wing anyway?" She said, calming down.
"It's not over my wing. It is my wing." Alpha replied calmly. He looked to his right and watched as Beta took off the brace, showing her what was left of his right wing; the burnt, cauterized piece of flesh that was left. "It was taken off the day I turned 11. It was a punishment because I saved a red mare from hurting herself from my welding torch." He closed his eyes and tried his best to break down as he remembered that nightmarish day. "I was supposed to die as punishment, but the guards said "Under normal circumstances, you would be dead already, fed to the machine, but I have specific orders from the Princess to keep you alive." He reopened his eyes and turned to look at Twilight. Her eyes were wide open, all exhaustion pushed away. Her mouth was open, in shock of his story. Alpha gritted his teeth as Beta slipped his brace back on.
Twilight closed her eyes. "This has turned into a nightmare." She opened them to see Alpha refastening his bag, the jar of blood gone.
He turned around and open the door. Before he left he turned around and looked at Twilight. "You don't even know what a Nightmare is yet." He looked forward and left, leaving Twilight in a state of shock and fear. Alpha walked through the lobby and into the hallway. He peered through the window into Scoot's room and saw John hugging Scootaloo, crying in joy that she was awake and alive.
"Seems like we saved her."
Alpha nodded in reply as he walked to Charlie's room. "Let's see how he is doing." He was about to open the door when he heard something metallic hit the floor. Beta instantly rose within him, his guard up, looking for danger. Alpha looked around, the hallway to his right and left was empty. He pushed the door open to see Charlie/Delta still asleep. He closed the door and turned around.
"What's wrong?"
"That sound sounded much like armor." Alpha said as he walked down the left hallway.
"There is no way they could have found us. I teleported us away from the factory! Unless they learned how to track where a pony is going if they teleported, which I highly doubt, they could not have found us."
Alpha looked around. He felt like he was being watched. And if he had that feeling, it was because he was being watched. He stopped dead in his tracks and swore. "Fuck!"
"What?"
Alpha slowly shook his head. "Twilight, That Bitch! She must have sent Celestia a message."
"She did." Said a voice to his right.
Alpha looked to his right, down a dark hallway. There, in the middle of the hallway, glowed one purple and one green eye in the darkness.