//------------------------------//
// Chapter 24 
// Story: The Human Pet 
// by RushyFiction 
//------------------------------//

Having chained your right hand to the pipes, Flamethrower rests her front hooves on the edge of the pipe and gives you a firm look over. Unsure of what to do, you simply sit there until the pegasus motions for you to get up and bellows out a sharp, commanding whinny that instinctually forces you to comply. Flamethrower jumps into the tub and sniffs you over with a suspicious look in her captivating orange eyes. Eventually, she seems satisfied and floats over to you to pat you on the head reassuringly before nodding and flying into the other room.

"What the hell?" You mouth. Probably one of those that thinks I'm an animal.

You look around, trying desperately to find a way out of your new conundrum, but quickly realise there's little to no chance of escape. Not just because of the handcuffs, but because of your continued inability to walk safely on clouds. For now, the metal tub is the only thing keeping you from smashing into the ground underneath the city. So you are stuck as flame pony's guest. Hearing the rustling of clothes, you move as far away from the pipe as possible and peek through the slightly ajar door, where you catch a glimpse of your captor pulling up the zip of a familiar blue spandex outfit with her teeth. The sports team from the advertisement!

She must be a fan or something. Would be nice if she got me some help before cosplaying, though.

Without further ado, the wild-looking pony speeds out of the window, leaving you alone. In desperation, you pull a pen out of your pocket, break the casing and fruitlessly jam it into the keyhole of the cuffs, but end up accidentally cracking the plastic container, spilling ink over yourself. "Bah! Fuck!" you exclaim and toss the ruined thing away, inadvertently causing it to disappear into the cloud. "... okay." You look around the bathroom incredulously. Who the hell decided 'oh yeah, we're gonna live in the fucking clouds where all our shit falls down to the earth when we're not looking?'

After washing the ink off as best you can, you pull at the pipe with your imprisoned hand, clanging the cuff against it. Seeing that the pipe extends into the cloud, you stand up in the tub and extend your arm into the white ceiling, directly above the pipe. At your touch, the cloud briefly flashes an odd pink color and the pipe immediately comes loose with a snap and hiss, your hand having apparently severed the magical connection holding it there. You drop the now leaking pipe onto the tub and pull the cuff off of it, leaving the latter idly hanging on your arm.

"I should be an escape artist." You mutter. Now what? Loose or not, you still had the itty-bitty problem of being stuck high up in the sky on clouds you couldn't walk on. Maybe if I can at least get out of here, I can find help.

Very carefully, you step onto the edge of the tub, praying that it doesn't flip and leap onto the toilet bowl. Once you regain your balance there, you reach over to the hanging towels and grab all of them so you can tie them together along with the rags of your cloak. You tie the makeshift rope to the lever controlling the toilet flush and climb down through the cold, wet cloud to the floor directly under you.

You find yourself hanging above a fairly opulent living room. Well, opulent to you, maybe. Given the Roman trappings you'd seen everywhere when you rode in on Daredevil's back, the giant fireplace, expensive-looking portraits of ponies in heroic positions, gold chandeliers and fluffy cloud armchairs were probably all par for the course. The winged ones are quite literally upper class, you realize.

Unfortunately for you, the only non-cloud substance in your immediate vicinity that you can land on is a glass reading table. Your raggedy cloak rips a little, nixing any ideas you might've had of returning to the bathroom upstairs.

You swear loudly and lower yourself as much as possible before swinging back and forth. "Okay... come on... I can do this." You mumble, feeling cold sweat on your forehead. Forwards. Backwards. Definitely on the next one! NO, wait, not ready yet! Okay, and... jump!

Letting the tied up towels go, you land straight onto the glass table with a loud thunk and stand tall, beaming and correcting your black bow-tie like... a... boss.

Crick. Criiiiiiiiick.

You freeze and, moving your head with the gentlest of motions, focus downward where you see slowly expanding lightning bolts emerge in the glass from under your feet. The table keeps creaking as your body weight sways on it, ready to shatter any second and send you falling through the cloud city to your death.

In a last ditch attempt, you try to jump off the cracking table and onto a shiny green carpet, though you're only able to grasp onto the edge, the rest of you dropping into another cold, unpleasant cloud. This one's a lot thicker than the secondfloor, however, and you end up surrounded by damp, thick mist, unable to see or even breathe very well. A magical force prevents the carpet from falling through the cloud with you, making it seem stiff and unyielding under your fingers. At least it helps you to hold on.

You hang onto the carpet for your life, not strong enough to pull yourself up. "H-help!" You finally sputter, not caring if you're gonna be sold to a zoo at this point. "Somebody... help! Help!"

Almost immediately, you feel a warm pair of hooves wrap tightly around your midsection to your immense relief. You release your grip on the carpet and let the pony pull you out of the cold, thick cloud and onto Flamethrower's carpet. As the hooves pull away, you get a good look at your savior and gape.

"What the heck are you doing here?"

Shaggy the bat pony just cocks his head to the side and looks at you fondly, as if his sudden appearance to save you was not ridiculously convenient at all. You notice a glinting silver medallion around his neck, with the emblem of the curved white moon on a black background, aka Princess Luna's butt symbol.

After a moment passes, he walks closer and sits down next to you to nuzzle your hand a little, with a wide smile on his furry face. Unable to resist the cuteness, you rub his back. "Yeah, I guess it's good to see you too. Well, it actually kinda literally is, since I was about to die and all..."

Remembering that you still need to find your friends, you stand up. "Hey, Shaggy, you mind giving me a lift?" You do mimic the Superman takeoff with your hands, hoping to get your point across... somehow.

The bat pony pointedly lies down onto the carpet like a sleepy dog, licking the sharp canines that jutted out of his mouth.

"Okay, no lift." Sighing, you relax next to him and absent-mindedly scratch behind Shaggy's pointy left ear on instinct. "Guess we'll just hang out here." As the two of you sit and wait, you pull out your worn notepad to doodle, only to realise you'd destroyed your pen. "Aww, man..." you whine. "And I just had to leave the cards home."

You drop the notepad on the floor, catching Shaggy's attention. The pony pulls it over to him with his hoof and opens it up, revealing your alien lettering. As his blood-red eyes widen, you wonder what they look like to him. Also indefinable lines? Or maybe blocks? No way to know. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but this word problem is really annoying." You quip.

Curiously, Shaggy lifts page after page, eventually opening up on your very first attempt at drawing that legendary creature of contradictions. Well, those are some good words. I'm really underappreciated as a poet.

The sight of the thing you'd nicknamed Bizarro seems to catch the bat pony off guard as he drops the pad on the carpet and immediately shuffles behind you, peeking out as if expecting the picture to come to life and start chasing him. "Now, now, don't be like that!" You pat the overly nervous bat pony's mane. "I know I'm not a professional, but there's no need for that sort of behaviour." Is Shaggy actually Luna's guard, or just some special case of hers who keeps following people around?

To prove there is no threat, you pick up your pad and go through the pictures, one by one. Shaggy doesn't appreciate it, however, and jumps off the carpet and onto the cloud floor, eyeing the drawn pictures. You roll your eyes at his childishness. Fortunately, the slam of a door interrupts your silent artistic stand-off and you stuff the pad into your back pocket as three winged ponies speed into the living room. All three of them are dressed in that same blue spandex and pilot goggles you'd glimpsed earlier, with drawn white bolts circling the hooves and a bigger one running down the chest. In the center was the fiery pony you were already familiar with. On the left was a stallion with a very deep blue mane color and a baby blue coat. The last one, a mare, had a slightly darker blue coat than the stallion, and a magnificently bouffant white mane that was whipped backwards much like Flamethrower's, giving you the impression of a polar opposite.

Speaking of the devil, Flamethrower whinnies loudly and points at you aggressively. The other two try to move towards you, but Shaggy blocks them off, rearing in front of you. As you'd noticed before, his words were all inaudible, but now his red eyes were angry and burning. You had no idea what the argument was even about, but at one point, the bat pony held up his moon medallion with the frog of his hoof, obviously invoking Luna's authority for... something. This quiets things down a bit and before you know it, Shaggy wiggles underneath your legs and stands up tall to take flight with you on his back. Surrounded by the sports pegasi, you fly out of a window, heading towards the marshmallowy Colosseum in the distance. Unlike your traffic jam experience with Daredevil, however, the winged ponies seem to instinctively move out of your way. And why wouldn't they? One's a fierce as fuck bat and the other's a bona fide alien with wiggly fingers.

You take a deep breath as the five of you approach the arena, not knowing what to expect when you got there. One of those days, Anon. One of those days. Again.