Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Gathering Intel

After thinking some about the giant blue dragon who ruled this land, how narrowly we'd managed to avoid the red one from the last one (and temporarily ignoring the red one who slept cuddled up to a life-size teddy bear), and how few people we wanted to lose, from the pups on up... we tried to do things a little more subtly as we approached the capital. (Otherwise known as the place where all the hangers-on and bureaucrats gathered around their dozing master, accompanied by their families, servants, attendants, the traders who brought their necessities and all their families, and so on and so forth. Back home, a similar sort of process was the only reason Ottawa was any bigger than, say, Barrie.)

So we landed the Mikoyan to pretend that the propellers were just some new-fangled motors for a sailing ship - obviously with plenty of drawbacks, though still useful enough for us to try to keep the workings secret. I demoted myself to livestock and wetnurse, and eavesdropper of anyone who happened to be chatting while in earshot. Red stayed as captain, the crew kept up their jobs, and, for the moment, Lord Firebough kept out of sight - him secretly coming to say hi to the neighbors and see if diplomacy could be done with them being the most obvious secret explanation for what we were doing.

I was still trying to figure out what I'd written out while drunk. I had a few theories, none of which I had much evidence for. One was that the overall diagram was some sort of magical circle, like I'd used to try to help funnel my magic when I'd been curing Blanche. There were some parallels with some of the diagrams in my photocopies of the forbidden texts, but nothing that clearly stood out. Another idea was that the whole thing was itself a spell, an artificial version of the ley line convergences which Blanche had originally theorized. Then there were possibilities like it being a message transmitted through me by some interesting entity, or a complete load of nonsense made up by my drunken self as a joke, or plans for an interdimensional gateway, or a memory from some piece of fiction I'd once read, to even less likely possibilities.

With some discussion, we came up with three main ideas for figuring it out. One was to find some scholarly wizard who'd actually been trained in such things to give an opinion - but magic seemed rather thin on the ground up here in the Northern Wastes, so we'd probably have to wait at least until we got back to Equestria. Another was to start dumping magical power into it, to see what would happen. Given that 'what would happen' could range from summoning unlimited wealth to turning everyone within a few miles inside-out, we considered this to be a bad option, unless we came to a situation where an unknown risk of annihilation was actually a good choice. The other suggestion which seemed to have some merit to it was for me to get drunk again, to see if I either regained my memories, or if my drunken thought processes would be similar enough to be able to puzzle out what the earlier drunken version of myself had thought of.

I, at least, was generally against this third plan - I didn't like being drunk, even just the parts of it I could remember. I also knew that certain branches of my family tree had inclinations towards alcoholism, and the best way I'd been able to come up with to avoid falling victim to the same problem was, well, not to start drinking. I considered the one-night bender to be an exception due to extreme circumstances. I'd lowered the bar for myself that far - but if I lowered it again, then it would be all too easy for me to lower it again and again, to 'a drink a day is good for your health, right?', to being physically incapable of performing the mental feats necessary to keeping Equestria in one piece. I tried explaining this to Red, Blanche, and Amethyst, and listened to their counter-arguments - the only one of which had any actual merit being the odds that the mysterious spell-thing might be something that really could help us save Equestria.

I was still quite reluctant, and by the time we got to the capital, still hadn't agreed to give it a try.

---

Cud-chewing was really quite meditative, when I let it be so. The bridle was itchy for a while, but after the Musketeers made adjustments, I almost stopped noticing it.

I was going to find some way to get back at whoever suggested putting the bell around my neck. I tried to remember if the ship's medicine chest had any laxatives, and if so, how easily the taste could be disguised.

What I found astonishingly annoying was having to go without my glasses again. Couldn't read a thing, and everything farther away than the dock was an unrecognizable blur.

I did keep a few wands and gems in the bottom of my manger of hay, in case of emergencies. And in case of real emergencies, I swallowed my best pair of opals. Cow stomachs have a section, the reticulum, where the worst of the indigestible stuff gets put, and it can hang around there in years. And, even if they didn't, a quick 'volare' would allow them to be eventually recovered. But in the meantime - they let me use magic without a wand, or even any visible source, as long as I was able to spend the necessary time concentrating to recharge them between uses.

But for the most part, I stood in the middle of the deck, my bridle tied to the mainmast, slowly chewing hay or cud. For hours and hours, while one crewpony pair or another wandered ashore to find out how the locals did things. A lot of people would think that I might be bored out of my skull after a while. They might be right - if, by 'a while', they meant the months it would take just to start working through all the stuff that'd been jammed into my skull since turning into a cow, let alone all the stuff I'd picked up back on Earth.

Still, I appreciated it when Stoke finished knocking together a few more deck chairs, and the permanent floating poker game was moved outside and next to me, so I could at least listen in while everyone gabbed about the city, and the people within. Starting with the parts of the place sailors were most expected to go, and as they learned about the other places, getting their bearings, so did I.

It was all going quite swimmingly - right up until the moment I had the thought that it was all going quite swimmingly.

I was really starting to get annoyed with narrative causality.

---

Onto the gangplank strode... somebody. Human-sized and very roughly human-shaped, overall quite reptilian with purple scales, plus bat-wings, claws, pointed snout, a pair of horns - a lot like Spike imagined himself as a knight rescuing rarity, including some armor, and a big black cloak with a complicated clasp. Or at least his evil twin, with those big, angry black eyebrows.

He pushed right past Gallant Heart, who was supposed to be guarding the plank, as if the earth-pony wasn't there. Pretty much everypony on deck immediately drew their wands, but at a raised hoof from Captain Red, didn't sleep-zap him on the spot. He walked right up to Red, and sneered down at her.

"You," he said, in perfect Equestrian English. "Bring the young Lord Firebough here." Red jerked up from her chair, stumbled a bit, and started walking to the stairs. As she went, she turned and gave the drake fellow a glare, and growled, "Get him!"

Most of the crew immediately sang out their "Do re mi!"s... which seemed to bother the drake not one whit.

I was getting somewhat annoyed with magic-resistant dragons.

I got more annoyed when, as the crew rolled up their metaphorical sleeves to go back to their more usual methods of physical combat, he simply swept his gaze across them all, said "Lie down"... and everyone there, including me, simply did as he commanded. It was as involuntary as blurting out the truth while under a 'Veritas' spell - he gave the command, and my legs folded up underneath me without my brain seeming to get involved.

Mind control. Great.

Berry Blast and Tranquil Valley started charging up their horns, and some of the random objects around the area floated into the air as they lifted ropes, blunt objects, and anything else that seemed useful in their telekinetic grasp... until the drake glared at them and said, "Stop that," whereupon all the stuff fell to the deck.

Micro was off-shift, probably asleep - I hoped that Red could get word to her, or to anyone who the drake hadn't affected yet. Everything was happening fast, but we were getting pretty close to a state of affairs where if any of us managed to kill this fellow, I'd hesitate before even half-heartedly trying to revive him - even if I gored him myself. I still had my opals - I could probably get one word out before he ordered me to stop. I'd have to pick my moment, and my word, carefully.

Red climbed back up the stairs, carrying Firebough by the neck like a kitten, despite his vociferous (if untranslated) protests. She walked up to the intruder and spat him onto the planks, took in a breath to start saying something-

"Silence," he ordered, then looking around, added, "All of you, while I'm here."

Crappity crap crap.

He stared down at Firebough for a few seconds, then back up at Red. "No need to try to hide anything - I know all your secrets. Your flying ship. Your wands of sleep. Your alliances with assassins."

... hunh?

"Come with me to my master." He looked down at Firebough, and said, "Kom mid my til mine herre," which was easy enough to figure out.

Then he looked at me, and said, "Come, lunch." Or possibly "Kom, lunsj."

I found myself getting to my hooves, and, silently, following him, Red, and Firebough off the ship.

---

I couldn't talk, my body wasn't letting me do anything but walk along with the three of them between the buildings - all I could really do was think.

I wasn't thinking happy thoughts.

Finally, we walked into one end of a longhouse bigger than the rest - and came to a stop. We couldn't go any further, because a draconic head bigger than all four of us put together was resting on the ground right in front of us.

The drake walked right up to it, and kicked it in the chin. The eyes slowly creaked open.

"Wake up, dad," he grunted. "I brought him, just like you said."

He pointed a thumb at Firebough, then glanced at me. "I also brought you a snack. Open up."

My viscera decided to do an emergency purge, and as the top of that jaw slowly levered itself wide, my bowels evacuated themselves, and I found my mind focusing on trying to remember whether or not 'evacuate' was based on a Latin root.

"You," said the bipedal dragon, pointing at me, "into his stomach," pointing at the head - and behind it, the long neck, stretching back to, presumably, a torso containing where I'd been ordered to go.

I watched as my hooves almost delicately stepped over the fangs, onto the tongue - and then I stopped seeing much at all, as I pushed my head down into the dragon's throat, the rest of me quickly following into the hot, wet, slimy tunnel...

I'd had better days.

Comments

[Lithl]

Midnight posting. My favorite! dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Twilight_crazy.png

[Destructorspace]

... Looks like Missy is going to be doing some heavy research into mind control soon. Oh well, at least she's paranoid enough that it shouldn't get bandied about like the sleep wands, since no one knows about the time travel thingie, at least that Missy has seen.

[DataPacRat]

Author's Note: Useful rule of thumb for writing: If you can't think of something to do, make your protagonist's life worse; preferably, as worse as you can imagine.

1341869
You're welcome. (And now off to beddie-bye for me...)

[Nighzmarquls]

I can feel the vorephiles...

I know they are there...

[GroaningGreyAgony]

Will Missy escape from the dragon's innards using a laser she built from a flashlight and a partly-undigested ruby? Find out thirty minutes from now!

But seriously, if she builds a robot while in an alcohol-induced fugue state, I'm outta here. Robots wouldn't work well in this universe; they have no tails.

[UltraNerdPrime]

hmm... is "Indigestion" based on a latin root?
also: maximized vomitere
EDIT: It's funny how absolutely nobody is actually expecting Missy to die after walking headfirst into a stomach that can digest gemstones in a reasonable amount of time, even to the point of discussing what Missy will do after getting out.
I guess It's just a feature for protagonists though, they can be injured but the story is terrible if they die.
anyone think Missy will even be injured?

[I Thought I Was Toast]

oh my... at least they should be less magic resistant on the inside, or at the least the organs will be vulnerable... I assume Missy will survive via magic, but the question is how she will beat the dragon. If dragons are internally magic resistant the only option is to kill him by damaging his internal organs... It would probably involve creating tools from something like the stomach acid... Perhaps freezing it into a blade? I suppose there could be a more passive way like turning something in his stomach into something that induces vomiting, but with magic as Missy's main weapon, and a dragon's magic resistance, I'm not sure how simply escaping like that would help... The blue dragon probably wouldn't be willing to listen to reason, and could easily eat her again and this time chomp to make sure she dies.

So much to speculate on...

[AppleTank]

1342671
*raises eyebrow.
Dude, if the main characters die, stories would be very short indeed.
I have entertained the thought of writing a story where the main characters change multiple times because they keep getting shot or incapicated in some way until the end, where the one who survives it all is a lackey, a guy who just tags along in the back. Or the guy who keeps cameoing, but never is in the thick of the action. Or something.

[Forevermore]

The teenage dragon with the mind control powers should kill Firebough and replace him as Missy's companion.

Seriously, the mind control dragon is an absolute badass while Firebough is a whiny/sadistic prick.

[DataPacRat]

1342115

1342671
Part of it might be the first-person past-tense format - the story is, essentially, some future version of Missy talking about her memories. This does tend to imply that she survives in some fashion.

1344000
One of the first Aeon Flux shorts might be of interest to you - the protagonist keeps getting killed and replaced by a new one.

[Organized Chaos]

Okay what.

[PetitPoney]

There's a place where you wrote that ponies say "do re mi". Of course it doesn't work, dragon or not. :p