It started with an old man who just wanted a fresh start. He knew what kinda deal he was making. Gloomy Sonnet was just another sad unicorn. Charlie was just her rag doll. And then magic came back... they were NOT ready...
It started with an old man who just wanted a fresh start. He knew what kinda deal he was making. Gloomy Sonnet was just another sad unicorn. Charlie was just her rag doll. And then magic came back... they were NOT ready...
“Anywhere but here,” I fairly snarled, “You know that!”
-> “And when, exactly, will the time be right?”
“I’m not gonna finish Rush lyrics for you… on purpose,” I grumbled as my rage cooled. I know your game, I’ve played it from all sides, already. You don’t care where I wanna go, you want to know what I want. I want a fresh start. I don’t care what it costs. That’s your fave stake in this game right?!?! Let’s play.”
The world became darkness because my eyes were buttons. The world became silence because my ears were mere folds of cloth. But my velveteen plushy flesh could still feel the world around it.
How long was I like that? How long did I scream? I don’t know. I can’t know. The next thing I knew besides the various surfaces my clothe-flesh laid against was when hearing suddenly returned. But not my hearing.
“It stopped…” I heard a young female voice speak in my own head. “The screaming stopped.”
I screamed for help, but unlike the female voice, my voice came from a short distance away. And I crossed into her field of vision for the first time and saw myself. I wish I could say I didn’t scream...
From the moment she found me, she was quite literally the center of my world. I could only see through her eyes, and only when she was looking at me. I could only hear through her ears, and only when she was listening to me. My only agency was to be where she chose to carry me. We would learn to work together. I had to, but she chose to. This was my “fresh start”. I started as a broken toy, useless until some pony child saw me as having value.
=-=-=-=-=
“My darkest hour comes before the dawn,” The grey unicorn filly droned tonelessly, “Before the light of the spawn. And brand new day where we’ve still lost our way. And our our fates are already drawn.”
The dirt collared earth pony doll gazed on the performance with expressionless button eyes. The filly flashed an uncomfortable smile, “I’m glad you like it Charlie. But I could never perform on stage… I can’t even sing. Yeah, I know you want to make me feel better, but my parents named me right. I’m Gloomy, I’m weird, and my best friend is an old earth pony doll of all things.”
The filly sighed and shook her head, “No, Charlie, I’m not gonna unicycle you a horn. I know how much it hurts when I have to sew you up… and I know your only saying that to try to help me fit in. But here’s the thing, Charlie, I don’t even need to fit in, and neither do you!”
-=-=-=-=-
Gloomy Sonnet was my eyes, my ears, and my mobility. From the outset I had no choice but to be her friend. My existential being depended on it. I never had a choice. But I came to realize it wasn’t my choices that really mattered. Because she did have a choice, and she chose to be my friend. She chose to have faith in a broken toy. Maybe the most important choice I could make was to be worthy of that faith.
=-=-=-=-=
“Now there’s nothing wrong with having an imaginary earth pony friend, dear,” Gloomy Sonnet’s well meaning aunt droned on, “I used to imagine being friends with a silly earth pony when I was your age. It’s very kind of you to want to help the poor simpletons.”
“Charlie’s not silly!” Little Gloomy argued. “And he’s not stupid either! He just talks like an uneducated farmpony, but he’s really smart! Shush Charlie, you know how you talk!”
“Well, maybe he was a unicorn and his horn got broke,” The aunt reasoned, hoping to placate the little filly, “He is a very old little rag doll…”
-=-=-=-=-
How long had I laid there, were-ever “there” was, the cold, dark, silent place? I learned about the world and my place in it through the eyes and ears of a sad unicorn child. And if I’m honest, sometimes misery does love company.
My place was to listen. I was alone in a void, but she was alone in a crowd. I lived in a world where no one could hear me, but she lived in a world where no one listened. So I listened to her.
There were nights she would nearly squeeze out my fluff, crying. And I would cry with her. And I would reassure her that it wasn’t weak to cry, even as her tears fell on me like a soothing rain. The last sense my velvetine flesh would allow me… that and pain...
=-=-=-=-=
“It’s a piece of junk,” the bully, Silver Locket sneered, as her coherts held back the frightened filly, “If you insist on playing with dolls, they should at least be a proper unicorn.”
The wicked filly shoved a sewing pin rudely into the rag doll’s head.
“CAN’T YOU HEAR HIM SCREAMING?!?!” Gloomy broke free in a burst of panic, leaving a crimson scar across the bully’s cheek. She gently removed the offending pin from her friend's head, and whispered softly, “I won’t let them hurt you again…”
“You little psycho!” The bully roared, “When my father hears…”
“Hears what, Locket?” A gruff, male, adult voice boomed out of nowhere. “When he hears how you were bullying a younger filly and torturing her doll of all things?”
“M-Mr. Alphabittle…” The color drained from the bully’s face. “I… I mean I was just…”
“Getting your friends banned from the arcade for two weeks?” The old greybeard gruffed. “Mission accomplished.” He turned his massive horned head on the bully’s young minions. “Bad unicorns don’t get to play games. Remember that.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Alphabittle,” the little grey filly stammered, “I didn’t mean to make a fuss.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, little filly,” the elder stallion smiled kindly, “The big stand up for the small. That’s how it’s meant to be. You did good today.”
Gloomy Sonnet stared intently at the plush toy sitting on the edge of the stage as she choked back bile born of stage fright. She swallowed heavily as her hoof connected with the drum. This wasn’t an audition, the young adolescent pony told herself. She was just reciting one of her poems for Mr. Alphabittle. He was a nice stallion. But he wasn’t really the audience that made her nervous. He wasn’t really the pony she wrote this for.
The beats flowed like a runoff stream. Like water that knew it would never reach the river, but just flowed because it had to move. Just like the water had to move down hill, the beats had to flow, and the words had to be said.
“There’s a hole in my heart, where my soul’s supposed to start,” the young mare droned seemingly without emotion, her gaze locked on the unseeing button eyes of the only audience that mattered, “like a seed that feels more like a need.”
Mr. Alphabittle watched passively, perhaps knowingly that these words were never written for him, but still the words insisted to flow, “Despite all that I see, Is this still all I can be? just a ragdoll that can’t even bleed?”
There was a hitch of a breath in the back of her mind, a gasp that had no lungs to make a sound, and yet the words still flowed with the beats. “Am I more than a voice? Was I given a choice? With the scales between anger and greed?”
“With the scales between anger and greed,” She repeated, her rhythm ending it’s flow into the stagnant pond that was the destiny of the stream. If Alphabittle noticed it wasn’t him she was performing for him, he pretended not to notice as he brought his hooves together in a slow, respectful clap.
“I k-know it’s not traditional music…” Gloomy quickly took a defensive stance against the older unicorn.
“Nonsense,” the old greybeard chuckled, “What is a song, really? It’s just words, and rhythm, and music. You have those things. You and Charlie have been coming into my arcade for years. The job was yours before I even made it a job. When I’m doing a competition, can you do tht beat… thing?”
“You mean like freestyle?” A ghost of a smile crossed the fillies face like a shadow. A quick rhythm played across he drum. “Best out of three, who will it be. One has to lose, so how will you chose?”
“Perfect!” The massive unicorn laughed heartily. “Why don’t you take Charlie to the soda bar and get you a cool drink. On the house.”
“You don’t think it’s weird, Mr. Alphabittle? Charlie, I mean,” she asked tucking her tail and ears back defensively .
“Of course it’s weird,” his words contrasted his friendly smile, “But even a blind steed could see that whatever you have going on with that doll, it’s real to you. It’s real in here…”
He tapped his hoof to the filly’s chest. He heaved a heavy sigh, “I think what’s wrong now is that somehow we lost that. We lost touch with what was important… what made things real, and not just a list of taboo words. Bah, I shouldn’t be bothering you with my old pony ramblings. Free soda bar! The sky is the limit, Gloomy.”
-=-=-=-=-
She cared. She didn’t have to. She could have left me in the dark, silent place and walked away. She could have put me in a box with the other toys she had long outgrew. It started as a desperate, selfish attempt to keep the attention of a child, because that was the only way I could exist. But she chose to listen to me.
When I had a voice, I thought being heard was the most important thing in the world. I never realized that it never mattered how many people heard the noise I made. Until one person listened, that’s all it was: just noise. I never understood how important it was to listen until I lost my voice. I had never seen myself through someone else’s eyes.
=-=-=-=-=
“Stop talking in circles, Charlie!” The young mare snapped, perhaps with more venom than she truly felt, staring into a mirror with her earth pony plush doll in clear view. “I know you can see me, just answer the question! Am. I. A. Pretty. Pony?”
“Dammit, I KNOW you’re an old doll,” the filly argued angrily against silent rebukes, “maybe you missed the part where I was here the whole time!”
“Okay… I see your point… yes, I know it’s weird.” Gloomy argued at the mirror. “We made it weird years ago. It always was and always will be weird!”
“You’re… not wrong Charlie,” the filly smiled sadly sudden;y scrunching her face at an unheard rebuke, “Mr. Alphabittle? Eww! No! He's old!”
The mare settled into a pout, “Okay, I see your point, but you should still answer the question, Am I a pretty pony?”
-=-=-=-=-
It’s hard to say when it changed. When did tea parties turn into dates? I should have shut that down. I was selfish. I needed her attention to survive. It was a selfish choice, but also the most natural thing in the world. It was weird. I was a plush doll. I was an old man. I was her most trusted childhood friend.
A memory filtered back from the before times. I had asked for this. I had asked for a fresh start. My starting point had been as a broken toy in a trash heap. Then she found me. She cleaned me. She sewed up the tears in my velveteen body. She had hugged me close to keep the nightmares away. It had been so long, I really only had a ghost of a memory of being the old man who made that deal.
And deep in the core of my fluff, where my heart should be, I knew it was already too late. It was already real. The magic was already there...
“Oh don’t look at me like that,” Alphabittle grumbled at his young mc, “It’s not like I reneged on the bet... She got her crystal... I don’t need you, or your crazy stuffed doll colt-friend calling me a cheater!”
“Wait, you heard him say that?” Gloomy pranced nervously in place.
The giant mass of grey fur broke into peals of sudden laughter, “Some earth pony filly is running around trying to bring back the M-word… and that is actually only the second weirdest thing to happen in my place of business today!”
“So,,, you did hear him?” Shock and confusion balanced in the grey mare’s monotone voice.
“I need you two to hold down the fort here,” the massive unicorn took a serious tone before breaking into a knowing smirk, “Charlie is in charge. If things go sideways, lock the door and shelter in place. Otherwise run the games free. Sodas and snacks are half price. The town just had a pretty huge shock. It’s literally our job to keep their spirits up.”
“Where are you going Mr. Alphabittle?” Sonnet aked worriedly.
“Charlies got the right of it, something is going down,” the massive unicorn lowered his head like a ram, pawing the earth, “And when things go down, you gotta be ready…”
The ragdoll laid casually sprawled out on the arcade floor, it’s head cocked to the side in curiosity.
“Since the filly walked in my arcade with that crystal.” Aplabittle smiled at the doll, “But for what it’s worth, I’ve known you were more than a rag doll for a while now… You two watch the fort. Whatever’s about to happen, I’ll be damned if unicorns aren’t a part of it!”
-=-=-=-=-
I had felt something click. It felt like an incomplete puzzle on the back of my brain-fluff. It reminded me of... something. Something from my old life that I should never have forgotten, but it had been so long ago. Watching that mare’s dance off with the bossman had been an itch of a lost memory. That first click was a fire.
Even as I marveled that another pony could hear me now, that burning sensation that I was missing something vital would not retreat. It oddly felt like seeing a familiar scene in a movie you couldn’t remember having watched. Somehow that analogy bothered me even more. Something important was going to happen soon… very soon. I didn’t know how I knew that, I only knew it somehow connected to my old life, so very long ago. How does someone know something, yet forget how they know it?
=-=-=-=-=
“Welcome to Crystal Tea Room,” Gloomy droned over the relaxing beat of her drums, “We have skeeball, trackball, pinball, and pachinko machines wall to wall. All game are free to play, but just for today. And this just in, it’s more of a win, free games for the foals, half price hard cider for the parents… wait… Are you sure Charlie? That’s not what Mr. Alphabittle said… okay, he did say you were in charge. The doll can’t be wrong, this offer can’t last too long.”
“I demand to know why none of the games are dispensing prize tickets!” A young silver furred mare demanded.
“Two reasons,” Gloomy responded in a bored tone with a roll of her eyes. ”First, you don’t get prizes for free games. Second, I’m already running the tea room, working the counter, and laying down sick beat poetry. I don’t have time to get your stupid prizes.”
“You're not in charge here!” Silver Locket snapped, “I want to speak to Alphabittle! Right now!”
“Mr. Alphabittle isn’t in, he’s gone to investigate the earth ponies and pegasi who infiltrated Bridlewood.” Gloomy Sonnet heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Would you like to speak with my assigned manager?”
“YES!” the young mare screamed. “I WANT TO SPEAK WITH WHOEVER’S IN CHARGE!”
The grey employee placed her dirt colored rag doll on the counter, and said evenly, “Well alright, but I don’t think his advice on how you should play the claw machine would be very helpful… or comfortable. Charlie’s still mad about the pin in the head when we were fillies…”
-=-=-=-=-
I felt something click together. I felt it the first time shortly after that mare left the tea room with those two crystals. After that, Alphabittle could hear me when I talked smack at him… which made it so much more fun, but I digress.
My perspective shifted, and my adversary was suddenly larger… and I could no longer see myself in Gloomy’s peripheral vision. For the first time in years, I was seeing with my own button eyes and hearing with my own velveteen ears.
“Oh for the love of…” the mare fumed, and Gloomy was nice enough to cock my head curiously to the side, “Your doll doesn’t talk! This is just pathetic. You’re actually going to make us all play along with this foalish fantasy that you doll is, what? Your manager, now? You're worse than that weirdo Izzy! There is no magic! Oh stop beep booping! You all should have it out of your system by now! Dolls don’t talk, stories don’t have happy endings, and nopony really believes in magic!”
“You say that like it’s the truth.” They couldn’t hear me, the ponies in the tea room, but that silver monster could now. Since the first click I could talk to Alphabittle. I had bet I could let anypony hear me. This was only a test. “I’m gonna make you believe.”
=-=-=-=-=
Silver Locket dance in place, eyes wide, pupils dilated to pinpricks, turn in circles down a spasming dance while making beep-boop noises. The other ponies looked on in confusion, with the exception of Gloomy Sonnet who glared at her rag doll in disapproval, “That was just mean, Charlie.”
Ms. Locket suddenly froze in place, eyes locked unblinking on her velveteen tormentor. Two words erupted from her throat in a near mindless, terrified scream, “JINX DOLL!”
Ms. Locket suddenly froze in place, eyes locked unblinking on her velveteen tormentor. Two words erupted from her throat in a near mindless, terrified scream, “JINX DOLL!”
And the sky exploded in a rainbow. A violet aura enveloped Ragdoll, hurling him into the shelves behind the counter. “Charlie!” Gloomy shouted in a panic.
“What just happened?!?!” The panicked mare pranced in place to the frightened beep-boop noises of her peers, who were suddenly pointing and spasming at her in fear. “I didn’t… I don’t know… I didn’t mean to!”
“I told you not to hurt him again, Locket,” Gloomy Sonnet growled, lowering her suddenly glowing horn dangerously, “I warned you.”
“Calm down Gloomy.” A course, accented voice rose from the shelf as a cider soaked Ragdoll rose on noodly fluff filled limbs. “I’m fine, I prolly had that coming…” Was his voice slurred? “Did you know I can absorb alcohol through my fluff? ‘Cause I didn’t!”
“Charlie, you’re alive?” Gloomy stammered in surprise. “Are you actually, really alive? Do you know what this means?”
“I could have gotten drunk this whole time?” Ragdoll cocked his head unsteadily to the side. “That would have really been good to know way earlier. Like that time you decided it was a good idea to use me to practice kissing… Do you even know how awkward and embarrassing that was for me???”
“I think I can guess…” Gloomy shrank back, her ears laid flat in mortification.
“Oohhh… yeah, my bad, should not have said that out loud.” Ragdoll cringed timidly. “Gonna have to get used to the difference between talking and thinking again…”
“It’s a cursed jinx doll!” Silver locket screamed a second time.
“Everypony heard you the first time, thunder-flank,” the doll replied caustically, “I’m rolling my eyes, by the way. I know it’s hard to tell, because button eyes, but I am totally rolling my eyes.”
“Wait, ‘thunder-flank?” The snooty mare’s fear was instantly replaced with righteous ire. “ I KNOW you are not implying that I’m fat!”
“You’re ignorance is noted,” the doll replied with a dramatic wave of his noodly arm, as he swayed uncertainly on three legs, “Although, I guess you’re kinda right. I’m not implying it, I’m sayin’ it outright.”
“You imputant little…” Silver Locket began her tirade, on to be cut off quite rudely.
“Do you believe in magic, yet?” Ragdoll’s face kept its passive smile, but his voice sneered. “Cause I done told you once I was gonna make you believe. I don’t feel like you believe yet? Maybe I gotta put a jink on you!”
“That’s jinx, Charlie!” Gloomy corrected her inebriated friend.
“Ooooo, there’s two of em’, that’s even worse,” the doll chuckled darkly.
“It’s okay, everypony, he can’t jinx you!” The young, grey, would be assistant manager insisted.
“She is a witch pony and I am her nefarious talking Jinx Doll,” RagDoll countered, “I’m 100% sure she can magic her horn to be super stabby now, because I HAVE A TYPE!” The plush pony walked forward on his noodly legs until he disappeared from the shelf with a small noise of impact. “I’m okay, I went limp and ragdolled…” The doll’s voice emerged from the floor behind the counter.
“Actually panic is an acceptable reaction,” The dolls unchanging smile seemed to twist into a smirk as he climbed onto the snack bar, “Especially if you are Miss brain needle. I may not have actual brain meats but that hurt. The one thing I was still allowed to feel was pain. That fat flanked bully used me to inflict pain on Gloomy by jabbing a needle into my head!” The doll’s fury leveled on the silver mare. “So tell me again how that’s not a jinx doll? Way I see it, I owe you a good jinxin’.”
-=-=-=-=-
“You’re, scaring me!” The words hit like a brick because I recognized them as my own. I wasn’t talking to a grey mare, anymore, I was… one of the things I used to be. I was a dirt colored pony. I was a cyan maned changeling. I was a blue skinned human, I was a twisted mutant, I was a rag doll. I was nothing but words. I was a madman. And there was no message to explain this, anywhere to be found. I was in the hooves of a pink earth filly with a smile like a shark.
“Go find some secret angel,” the tears in her eyes broke my heart, “That talks freedom. And give that to her.”
“If that’s what they want…” I had no voice anymore. The magic was fading as the pink filly dissolved in a burst of green flame into an insectile horror that should have terrified me, instead it was like a last comforting thought. As the filly cast me on the pile with her last parting words, “Guardian angel… if you were wiser you would get out…”
“You’re scaring me!” Gloomy Sonnet’s normally subdued voice cracked a little, and the doll shrank back in self reproach. “Charlie, this isn’t like you!”
“Isn’t like me?” Ragdoll nearly growled, “How isn’t this like me? What do you think I’m like, Gloomy? Like a toy? I’m a cursed doll, Gloomy. Pretty up front about that from the start. ‘I was cursed, now I’m a doll’, okay… there may have been other curses in between those things… and maybe after. Sorry, girl, it’s been a long time. Long and short, cursed jinx doll. And I gotta jinx to lay down.”
All around them panic grew as unicorns struggled to restrain outbursts of untrained magic that moments before had been nothing but a myth. Silver Locket cowered in fear, “I… didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know what?” The rag doll advanced, menace clear in it’s button eyes. “You didn’t know I was helpless?”
“I...only meant to…” the mare cringed and sobbed…
“You only meant what?” Ragdoll's voice dripped with malice, “You only meant to hurt another filly? Why, because she still played with dolls? Tell me all the secrets, what did you mean to do? The silver sky is exploding in rainbows. No secrets between little fillies and dolls… What. Did. You. Mean…”
“Please stop…” Sonnet begged, but it was far too late.
“What did you mean little Miss Lock It In Your Pocket?” Ragdoll sneered heedlessly. “Everything you never believed in is happening. Do you believe yet? Because I can only pull this off once, so I hope it just worked…”
“I-I’m sorry,” the young mare cried.
“What did you want?” The doll pressed on.
“I wanted Sonnet to be my friend,” Silver heaved the confession with a heavy sigh.
“What were you willing to pay?” The doll’s passive smile seemed almost malignant.
“I was willing to hurt her…” The mare lamented.
“Then that’s your jinx. Now you know who you are, and maybe have a good guess what you could have been.” The ragdoll’s smile seemed suddenly warmer.
“Please don’t stick a needle in my brain!” The silver mare pleaded.
“Is that what you thought was going to happen?” The doll’s sewn-in friendly smile was ice cold. “Who do you think you hurt, way back then? I could only feel what happened to others. It wasn’t my head that you stuck that needle in. I was just a jinx doll. I’m not going to stick a needle in your head… you misunderstand the jinx… I’m going to pull the needle out.”
“What are you doing?” Gloomy hissed.
“What I couldn’t do while you were pulling the strings.” Ragdoll answered plainly before turning back to the subject of his ire. “It hurt, didn’t it? I know, I felt it when you stabbed me.”
“I messed up,” the Silver furred mare sobbed, “it was a long time ago! Why can’t you just let it go???”
“Why can’t you?” The doll’s voice remained dangerously even. “You only stabbed a doll after all… why does it bother you so much?”
“JUST SHUT UP!” Gloomy Sonnet’s voice echoed through the building, and all errant magic suddenly fizzled as every eye was turned on her, “Your all panicking like a bunch of frightened steeds!”
“Beep boop?” A young colt enquired.
“Locket!” The mare in question was assaulted by a teddy bear to the face hurled by Gloomy’s furious aura. “There, now your jelly flank has its own jinx doll, I’m sure sticking pins in it will hurt somepony, maybe you, I don’t care! Not going to be my problem, I just work here!”
"Gods, this is just like that time I got Rick Rolled with the audio-book version of the Necronomicon... okay not just just like... but pretty close..." Rag doll stumbled across the bar.
“Do you really think this is just about you?” The grey mare fumed, pinning back the doll's ears with her words, “This was gonna be my shot, my one chance to show Aphabittle that I could run the joint!”
“One chance… one shot…” the dolled danced nervously.
“My one chance and you took it but that was okay!” The manic mare fumed. “I was okay with giving you my one shot, and you use it like THIS???”
“Dammit, Charlie! How can you be drunk at a time like this?” Gloomy Sonnet fumed.
“I dunno,” Ragdoll rebutted, “Why are you asking me? Five minutes ago I couldn’t walk, now I can’t walk straight… these are crazy times! I mean I’m sorry I stole your thunder… wait… that would be a pegasus thing… you know what, never mind. Shouldn’t do metaphoricalisms when I’m drunk, I’m bad at it…”
At Sonnet’s critical raised eyebrow, Ragdoll threw his front hooves in the air. “Okay, first time I’ve ever said this,” the doll huffed, “but it’s not my fault I’m drunk. Seriously, the Karen pony literally threw me into the booze! Honestly if I’d know I could get drunk this whole time, I would have had you pouring booze on me the minute you were old enough for anyone to sell you booze… gods of Tartarus, I am a terrible mentor…”
“Possibly colt-friend!” A pony heckler called out. “Everypony knows about your secret tea parties!”
“Wait… you’ve been aware of everything this whole time?” Another pony piped up. “She’s had you since she was a little foal…”
“I don’ much like where this is goin’,” Ragdoll visibly flinched.
“I mean he’s got a point,” a teal unicorn mare joined in, “I mean it was cute and quirky when everypony just thought it was just a weird old doll, but this just makes it seem… kinda creepy. How old is he anyway?”
“Oh, come on!” Ragdoll shouted. “It’s just a filly and her talking doll! Don’t make it weird!”
“Like when she practiced kissing on you?” A heckler in the back shouted, “Woo-hoo!”
“Charlie, he’s next in line for a jinx!” Gloomy leveled a glare on the offending unicorn.
“Beep, boop?” The heckler slunk away into the crowd.
The pink, changeling nymph was clearly too young for the Lower Canterlot nightclub she found herself in. And far from the quality the clientele expected to keep company with according to their sneers. How did she even get pastsecurity?
“I hold on so nervously, to me and my drink…” Was that drink even her’s? She didn’t look nervous. She looked like sauntering rage, crooning along with the vapant dance floor lyric. “I wish it was cooling me.”
Perhaps the noble whose face received both drink and glass wished the same? “But so far it has not been good…”
Was this a dream? An edge of a memory curled around my brain like a leech. At the same time the young changeling sauntered across the dance floor. I was keenly aware that I wasn’t there. I had never been there.
“In fact it’s been shitty,” the little changeling crooned seductively, “and I feel awkward as I should.”
A security guard lunged at the changeling youth, and in a flash of pink flames she was a young mare. “But I’m still imagining,” The filly sang on. The guard was seized in her now shark like jaws and quickly slammed into a mess of changeling icor as, “A dark lit place, like your place, or my place…” The victim into the remains of a white carapaced changeling with an Electric Blue Mane.
The music screeched to a halt, and the white pony DJ transformed into an identical copy of the young mare’s most recent victim who screamed over the club’s sound system, “Why are you doing this? We upheld the truce!”
“Magic is fading,” The pink mare smiled coyly as her scorpion-like tail twitched, “My Charlie is just a doll now. There’s going to be a whole new world, and if he doesn’t get to see it, then why should you? How many doppelgangers can you even maintain at this point? I hope it’s enough to stand on a pile of the bodies of my enemies, Legion Scratch, because I always wanted to do that. If he doesn’t get to live to see the new world, why should you?”
And that’s when I came to, passed out in a salad bowl filled with hard cider. That answered none of my questions, and raised so many others…
“Why am I waking up?” The universe better have an answer to that dammit. “I have not slept or passed out at all ever in at least twentyish years…”
-=-=-=-=-
“It seems some pony had a big night,” Alphabittle sneered, “Mr. Ragdoll.”
“Okay, almost none of this is my fault,” the soggy doll argued as he climbed up from where he’d slept. “You never said magic was coming back. And apparently I’m powered by magic… who knew?”
“Let’s start with what you got right,” the giant grey unicorn sneered, “There wasn’t an outright riot…”
“Okay,” Ragdoll gestured drunkenly as hie fell out of the salad bowl and looked around quickly, “I know the place is a mess…”
“...So you passed the lowest possible bar I set for you,” the unicorn’s voice took on a quiet edge, “And part of this is undoubtedly my fault for putting a psychic jinx doll in charge of my place of business. Honestly I meant it as a bit of a joke… I thought it was funny, anyway.”
“Oh yeah, boss,” Ragdoll nodded his head with enthusiasm, “I totally got a laugh out of that…”
“So imagine my surprise when I come home to find Gloomy’s little jinx doll snoring loudly in a salad bowl filled with booze,” Alphabittles temper began to rise in his voice, “And half my regular customers passed out in literally every seating both in the house. And why is my pachinko machine upside down?!?!”
“Okay, the pachinko machine is part of the ‘not my fault’,” Ragdoll explained as he perhaps unnecessarily stretched his neck, “It turns out unicorns randomly throw things around when their surprised they can suddenly magically throw things around.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a pass on that,” the elder unicorn raised a stern eyebrow. “But why do I have ponies passed out drunk all over the tea house? We barely even serve booze!”
“Okay, that’s more my fault,” the doll gave his most reassuring head tilt, “After everyone started throwing things around with their magic horn powers, that they suddenly had for the first time, I might have, maybe, but a bug in Gloomies ear to suggest that everyone bring all the booze they could get to the tea room for an ‘end of the world party’? And by ‘suggest’, I might have actually put the idea in her head to use her ‘magical drum-jinx powers’ to take over their minds… while drunk out of my mind from being thrown into a bottle of cider against my will…”
“And that's how you ended up in the salad bowl?” Alphabittle queried skeptically.
“Oh no, that was totally my fault,” the doll staggered and laughed, “While what should have been black out drunk, I laid down this sweet rhyme while Gloomy was setting down some absolutely sick steel drum solo… check this out…” Rag Doll began a chant while performing a completely unrelated but somewhat suggestive poorly executed series of dance moves, “‘Wing, Feather, Mayonnaise, around the corner Magic’s made…”
“Beep! Boop!” The older unicorn echoed by near instinct.”
“Yeah,” Rag Doll nodded enthusiastically, “And everypony beeped booped back… which of course led to me declaring myself to be the king of lizards, and thus I could do anything…”
“Did you really think it was the end of the world?” the grey giant leaned into the animated foals doll.
“Well, no…” Ragdoll admitted, “but they did… also I had the weirdest dream…”
The princess of the sun made a final walk through her living space. Personal items, those few things that did not just “come with the castle” to be replaced with whatever things would take their place wherever she next chose to rest her head, where boxed, packed and thoroughly catalogued. And yet there it was, that little rag doll… mocking her with it’s button eyed stare.
“Fiend,” Celestia turned her ire to the offending plush toy, “You swore that you would leave this universe to its own devices!”
“‘Swore’ is a bit strong,” the stallion with a coat the color of dirty cream,and eye’s the pink of a dead salmon whispered into the retiring monarch’s ears, “I really just said words. And we both know that’s kinda my thing.”
“You are liar!” the stallion was engulfed in flame, and the princess of the sun glared at the plush toy sitting atop the pile of ashes that had once been precious memories of a very long life. “You lie, and you tempt, and you corrupt my little ponies.”
“Whoa there, princess,” The dirty stallion stroked her withers, “Lie and tempt… sure...again, sort of my thing. But corrupting little ponies? No, no… they do that all on their own. So many little lies. So much they just ignore to stay happy… and you want your little ponies to be happy, don’t you?”
“Why do you mock me, demon?!?!” Celestia screamed at the button eyed plush doll.
“Because you used to be fun… before…” The stallion scowled. “Back before there were two princesses… we used to have fun.”
“What happened to us, Charlie?” The retiring princess slumped over in defeat.
“I remember a little girl once who made a deal with me.” The plushie’s eyes bored into Celestia’s soul. “I asked her what did she want, and she only wanted to save her baby sister. I asked her what was she willing to pay, and she said everything. There was nothing in the deal about being a pony princess, that was all on you. And if I’m honest, and we both know I’m not, I miss that little girl… but that was a long time ago, and yet somehow still in the future…”
“I… did those things… didn’t I?” Celestia bowed her head in thought, “I did all those horrible things Silver wrote in his journal…”
“My contemporary destroyed two universes to ensure you would not become that pony.” The stallion smiled mockingly as those damned button eyes bore into her soul. “Think on that for a moment… every pony in equestria died, twice to stop the DayBreaker and the Silver Sky.”
“This diary,” Celestia’s hoof flipped open a page, guided by those soulless button eyes.
“It’s a book of true stories,” She felt the blue stallion smiling cruelly, “True stories that can’t be denied…”
“There’s so much more to what actually happened.” A single tear of the sun fell onto the page.
-=-=-=-=-
The ragdoll stallion trekked onwards through the snow, “It’s only a little farther Tina, across these hills there’s a rock farm.”
“I could carry you, Charlie,” the young blond girl looked into the rag dolls broken, button eyes, “I could carry Lucy.”
“That was never the deal, girl,” the stallion huffed, “The doors are open, and the path is set. Ain’t my place to carry you,ain’t your place to carry me.”
“Is that a giant stone egg?” The dark haired little girl who rode the rag doll pony asked randomly.
“Yeah Lu Lu.” The rag doll grinned. “Yes it is exactly that.”
“I’m cold, Charlie,” the little girl sniffled.
“It’s alright, girl,” The ragdoll’s fixed expression seemed to soften, “We’re almost there. We’ll find sanctuary here, I promise. I know this family.”
“What if they’re scared of us, and chase us away like the ponies in the village,” Tina worried out loud, “Ponies don’t seem to like humans very much. And they don’t trust strange magic. Me and Lucy are one of those things, Charlie, and you’re the other.”
“Chartreuse said you would be here tonight,” a deep charcoal coated mare stepped into the moonlight and smiled sadly at the rag doll pony, “You’ve changed. I suppose that’s what time does…”
-=-=-=-=-
I learn things when I dream. I wasn’t always this… it’s been a long time,,,
I was always here… as long as I can remember.
And here has always been older than me… “here” is bigger than I can remember. The start of here starts before I ever realized I was here at all. Here started with a little girl who needed a friend. Instead she found a doll. I understand now. I am no pony. I am no creature. I am No One. I am a thing… an object. I am not a he/she, I am an it/that. We can move forward from here…
“So how do you do that?” Alphabittle scrunched his face at his employee’s doll, that was also his employee. “It’s been some time since the magic’s come back, and I’m still wondering… how do you walk around like that? I mean you don’t have bones or muscles, you're just stuffed with… fluff? Is it like cotton? I honestly have no idea…”
“The truth is, I am stuffed with… Cotton Balls!” Ragdoll fell on his back flailing like a doll held by a laughing foal. “Why don’t rabbits make noise when they bing bong boop? Cause they have cotton balls.”
“Seriously, how do you do that?” Alphabittle leaned in, “You move exactly the way Gloomy puppeted you around?”
“I dunno, I just sort of fling myself around,” the rag doll replied with a shrug, “The same way you unicorns fling me around, I guess.”
“Fair enough.” The giant unicorn nodded, as he went through his mail. “Huh, we got an offer for some new games… from Zephyr heights…”
“Huh… real video games…huh?” The doll mused. “Wait… that’s a human girl…”
“Yeah, it’s something called ‘Evermarsh’, or something,” Alphabittle rolled his eyes, “Really catching on with the ponies over in Maretime Bay.”
“They got the boobs in the right place, anyway…” Ragdoll ran a plushy hoof across the ad.
“I don’t see any blue footed birds?” Alphabittle grumbled.
“Naw, I mean the teats are up top, not down low,” Ragdoll explained, flailing his noodly arms to the appropriate anatomical regions.
“Is that what those are? Huh?” The unicorn shrugged.
“Real ass video games?” The doll mused. “So it takes two days to for Gloomy to walk to the Heights, right?”
“No.” The giant responded instantly.
“And it takes two days to walk back…” The doll continued.
“I said, ‘no’!” The unicorn repeated. “I see what you’re doing! With my eyes!”
“And honestly, if I’m being honest, a couple of days to just take things in.” The doll nodded jointlessly. “What do you think, Gloomy?”
Alphabittle huffed and scraped his hoof. “Put that on the Nope Train to Nopeville, cause that’s where it’s going.”
“Retrieving these game machines will take between five day and a week.” Gloomy Sonnet looked up from her drum set.
“We are a traditional unicorn game house!” The massive unicorn fairly growled.
“Come on, big guy,” Ragdoll pleaded, “You know we’re losing business to that earthpony town, they’re only a day away, and they're running Pagasoft games.”
“Okay, fine,” the giant grumbled, “But don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You keep any of your rants about ancient history, and especially your ‘human conspiracy theories’, to yourself. In fact, once you get to Pegasoft, just let Gloomy do the talking. You want to crawl around libraries, taverns, or wherever you wanna talk your crazy cursed ancient doll talk, fine. After the deal is sealed. And Gloomy does the talking for the deal.”
“Mr. Alphabittle,” a cyan unicorn filly yelled across the Tea Room, “The Fortune Telling machine isn’t working! Tell Ragdoll to get back to work, I need his jinx powers!”
“I’m standing right here, Blue Skies!” Ragdoll shouted back, “I’ll be there in a minute!”
“Ragdoll doesn’t have eerie jinx powers,” Alphabittle chided the filly.
“Yes he does!” The filly argued impetuously.
“She’s right, I totally have eerie powers, boss.” The doll nodded his head.
-=-=-=-=-
Less than a week ago I was having a normal day at work. I had managed to talk the boss horse into essentially giving me and gloomy a paid vacation. Go and lease some arcade machines from Zephyr Heights. Easy peasy, cider squeezy. As a bonus, the pegasi had the internet, social media, so they had to have some records from Ancient times. It’s weird how I am always obsessed over my friends and family in ancient Equestria. I almost never thought about my original human life, to the point it was practically forgotten. In the scale of things both were equally far in the past, but in some way I felt closer to those long dead Equestrians.
Maybe it’s that they were somehow still possibly reachable in some way. Somewhere there had to be some record of them. Life had gone on for them after I made the deal with the Text that had led me on the long strange road that sent me to the here and now. I was the only thing from my human life in Equestria. There was nothing here from that life to even reach for. Then I ran into an old friend in the lobby of a hotel. An old human friend.
I was already a little freaked out, because Zephyr Heights is definitely Caterlot. And the more I saw, the more everything arround me screamed “Human Technology”. And I was walking into a game corporation that made games featuring humans. Then, who should me and Gloomy run into, not just any human, but a human who knew me from back when I was a human. I would honestly have been less surprised to run into a human who knew me as a giant mutant pony 1000ish years ago. And by a lovely coinky dink, the same game company had called David in for an interview.
And that’s why I’m in the fortune telling machine while Gloomy pumps magic into me and I scream at words nopony else can see. Honestly it’s not the weirdest thing me and Gloomy have ever done in the privacy of a crowded public venue…
What does it mean? That thousand yard button eyed stare. I want to know. That one question Charlie can’t answer. What does that vacuous smile really mean? He won’t tell me, I don’t think he really knows. I don’t think he can tell me. The magic never meant much to us before. Even when it came back. Now he’s screaming at… words? Text? My doll never did this before
He hurts. I want it to stop. Him being hurt hurts me and I want it to stop.
But Charlie says he needs magic. Of course I love him. And then everything breaks. And I see the words that everything was always made of. Charlie told me they were always there.
C/: I am actually sorry about this.
“Charlie?!?!” If anypony understands what’s going on, it’s gonna be him. He knows. Of course he knows. And he cares.
He’s not a doll, he’s the words from between the walls.
R:/ Don’t be afraid, Gloomy. I know it can be disorienting.
“Charlie?” I am a frightened steed, I tap my hooves in place like I’m backing up, but the words aren’t going anywhere. “I am a little afraid.”
C:/ I am equal parts disturbed that you pulled her in here, and kinda impressed that you pulled it off. Also, that other one is the one you call “Charlie”. You can refer to me as the Text. And again, I am really sorry about this.
R:/ It’s her first real-ass fourth wall shenanigans. You doin’ great, girl. This time we stick to the plan…
“Mr. Text is it true that we’re really just stories?” I ask that exact question, exactly, tapping my hooves as I fail to back away.
C:/ If it makes you feel better you're no more or less a story than I am. I mean even in my level there are stories about sales clerks. Seriously calm down, no one here is going to hurt you. There’s nothing here you need to run away from.
“Wing, Feather, mayonnaise,” I almost smile, almost, “Around the corner magic’s made.”
C:/ Beep Boop…
“I put a jinx on you.” I am smiling. This. Is. A. Smile.
C:/ Clever.
R:/ I wrote the part. The medicine will be there. I can’t promise past that, there's a whole different text involved.
C:/ You little bastards. I am laughing. Just so you know. I might just have to separate you two. You forced the deal. It’s out of my hands. But you know there’s gonna be a price.
“Do as you will!” Charlie screams from the fortune teller machine. Everypony is looking at us. I just watch as my reality unfolds from text.
-=-=-=-=-
Alphabittle just blinked. “What did you two just do?” He asked blankly.
“We literally jinxed the entity that literally defines us. There is too much literally in this explanation.” Gloomy took in a deep breath. “I swear I am okay with that,”
“I only wish I could elaborate, boss.” The doll wobbled uncertainly.
“We are going to get split up.” Ragdoll scowled. “He basically said that. But we took on a Text, and we didn’t lose…”
“Charlie,” Gloomy looked almost fearfully at her beloved Ragdoll for maybe the first time in her life, “You turned into words. Just like that thing we just took on. What are you?”
“I’m the soul of a former human stuffed inside an ancient cursed jynx doll,” the doll replied with a heavy sigh, “Better question, girl, is who am I? Pretty sure the Text stuffed in some extra memories just for fun… or maybe the dreams are just nightmares from being sensory deprived for so long.”
The mare nodded, “How did you do that?”
“Because a long time ago, the text gave a ragdoll to a little filly,” Ragdoll sighed and shook his head, “Maybe she was my daughter, maybe she was a character in a story I wrote. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… but he gave her a ragdoll that let her make deals directly with the narrative. I suspected for a while that he stuffed me in that same ragdoll. He likes to reuse plot devices.”
“Wait, deals with the narrative?” Alphabittle interrupted. “We’re talking about the real world here! This isn’t some kind of story!”
“I’ve actually seen the words everything is made of…” Gloomy Sonnet staired vacantly.
-=-=-=-=-
I know what that stare means now. I know what that smile means…
“Mr. Alphabittle,” a cyan unicorn filly yelled across the Tea Room, “The Fortune Telling machine isn’t working! Tell Ragdoll to get back to work, I need his jinx powers!”
“I’m standing right here, Blue Skies!” Ragdoll shouted back, “I’ll be there in a minute!”
“Ragdoll doesn’t have eerie jinx powers,” Alphabittle chided the filly.
“Yes he does!” The filly argued impetuously.
“She’s right, I totally have eerie powers, boss.” The doll nodded his head.
“This is serious!” The little blue unicorned stomped hoof. “I need a bottle of Bitter Ale!”
“We don’t sell that drink to little fillies.” Alphabitle raised a heavy eyebrow.
“I don’t make those kinda deals with little fillies.” Ragdoll nodded enthusiastically, his expression always an unchanging happy smile.
The little blue unicorn took a heavy draw from her inhaler. “I just want to be a unicorn that can breathe. Dr. Feelgood says he has a medicine that can turn me into a unicorn that can breathe. But he needs a grown-up to test it first. I know it’s a terrible thing to ask, but can you Jinx a grown-up into testing my medicine?”
“Pour a shot glass of bitter ale that I can dunk my head in.” The massive unicorn shuffled, the always asked for things. “It’s actually part of the process, boss, she has to give me the ale to make the deal. She has to carry it to me.”
“Are we going to do this?” Alphabittle questioned.
“We are.” Gloomy nodded with a subtle clop of her drums.
The filly took the tiny glass carefully in her magic. Carrying it across the room without spilling a drop. She sat the shot glass down and opened the door. Almost fearfully, aware of the gravity of what she wanted, sat the glass down in front of the jinx doll and nearly slammed the door closed.
“We try to be nice, but there’s always a price.” Gloomy chanted while working her drums.
“This one’s on me.” Ragdoll nodded his head, smiling as always.
“Nothing is free,” Gloomy replied with a tap of her drums.
“Give her a bottle of medicine.” Ragdoll slammed his face into the ale, and flailed his limbs, and reality scattered into words.
C:/ You Asked for this…
R:/ There will be a price… You know what I’ll pay,
Anything… and reality agreed.
“Don’t worry, little filly,” the ragdoll nodded gravely, a spot of foam from the bitter ale he had dunked is head into rolling down one button eye. “Your medicine will get tested.”
-=-=-=-=-
The last thing I saw was the doctors office. The last thing I heard was Gloomy scream. It worked.
C:/ I’m Impressed. Color me impressed. But you knew what you were doing.
“There’s gonna be a price,” the doll replied with an imagined spit.
C:/ Don’t be like that. She’ll look for you, or she won’t. She’ll find you again… or she won’t. But you’ve done good. I believe in rewarding good. Where do you want to go?
“Then just send me back!” Ragdoll raged.
C:/ No-can-do-oh… do you even know where ‘back’ is anymore? Which life do you want to go back to? The human family you destroyed, or the pony family… well suffice to say ‘back’ isn’t a place anymore. Do you even know who you are? Right now?
“I’m… me?” The Ragdoll replied.
C:/ This is my fault. I cooked you too long. You can’t tell the difference between what you wrote and what actually happened anymore, can you? I’ll make it easy for you. Where and when do you actually want to go back too?
“I want to go back to Gloomy!” Ragdoll screamed.
C:/ See, that’s a “who”, I specifically offered a where and when. But I will allow it. Because I am NOT the mean Text! The path is open to get back to your gray-scale waifu. But since you didn’t specify where and when, I get to choose where and when your path starts. You’ve already agreed to pay anything, and even dared me to “Do as you will.” Always remember, whatever happens next, you asked for this.
A rhythm reached impossible into the space between the words, and a monotone chanting penetrated that space, “Am I fooling you? Do you fall for it all or do you just see right through? Are you as cool as you believe?”
“Are you playing hard?” The voice took on an accusing tone “Are you waiting just to quietly clock my card? Are you waiting for a moment to leave?”
C:/ This is just sad. You are making me sad.
“I don’t know how I bent,” The gray voice addressed the words directly, “What you said, to what I believed you meant.”
C:/ You don’t know anything at all.
“I’m standing in the push and shove,” Ragdolls gravelly voice answered, “And I’m just within the rescue of a labor of your love.”
C:/ You can’t do anything but fall!
“Why do I feel like I can never find you?” Gloomy Sonnet walked between the words like a filly walking in between the rain.
“Why do I feel like I’m the only survivor?” Ragdoll reached out with a noodly arm.
“Why am I thinking of,” Gloomy tapped the rhythm faithfully with her hooves as she chanted, “You and me and the labor of love…”
C:/ One chance, one shot… that’s all anypony ever got.
The text took control of the narrative.
C:/ New born, still warm, naked in the rush hour dancing in his gutter.
The cruel lyric played against the sea of words the made up the whole wide world. Ragdoll unwound into his component threads of fluff, blowing away on the wind to be reassembled elsewhere. Gloomy collapsed into a sobbing heap.
C:/ And if you want to call him, find him… He’ll be far from the bars, and guitars, and everypony.
“Why?” Gloomy sobbed, “Why are you doing this?”
C:/ I’m equally sorry you had to experience that and am impressed that you did. This was always going to be the price.
I flailed around in the dark for… a while… figuring out it was just dark and I wasn’t blind again. That’s happened more than twice. Then somepony said something. “Hey Frank, something pony shaped just moved”
“Dammit, Steve!” I assume that’s Frank. And Frank and Steve have hornlights. Yay, my button eyes can still see. And goddammit that’s a lot of legs to put on a bug pony…”There are not, and have never been ponies in Decanter. Pony city up there. We live down here. Probably just one of the nymphs playing ‘Changeling’. You know how they’ve been since it came back.”
“They want to live with the ponies.” Frank snorted. Goddam, but he has all the legs. Any and all ponies with no legs… I swear it's his fault…
“I think it might be a pegasus foal. If we take it to the surface, we’ll be heroes!” And damn if Steve doesn’t have all the teeth.
“It’s just one of those foal size dolls.” Frank rolled his eyes… I think… it’s hard to tell because compound eyes. Also “foal sized”? Luckily not moving is a very easy doll-thing, but am I Bigger… or is the world smaller?
“You are both equally terrifying.” I want to open on a high note. I succeed when Steve screams in response.
Steve has a very high pitch scream. And did I mention all the teeth? He doesn’t even have fangs, which makes it more disturbing. Like a bug-horse with rows of teeth like a shark, but flat horse teeth. So naturally I swing and flail like Kermit the Frog havi a seizure while screaming at the top of my lungs. And this sets off Frank, who proceeds to run in circles trying to surround me, and he’s almost but not quite long enough to do it. All the while he’s screaming what I will generously term as a “battle cry”. And I’m not sure when we all three just fell over laughing…
“Oh thank the gods,” I laugh, “Changelings! I loves me some changelings. So if you're feed-off-love changelings, I will totally help you out.”
“First, eww,” Frank screws up his face in disgust, “Feed off love? Who does that?”
“Also we’re not changelings…” Steve smiles with a shrug.
“Insectile pony-like creatures,” I pretend to count off non-existent fingers, “I heard you just say you can shape-shift. Like just now, you said that. You don’t feed on love… so you share love?
“Dude, why do you keep making this weird?” Frank squints. Those compound eyes sure can squint.
“Give the little guy a brake, bro.” And does Steve have to smile everytime he talks? Does he not own a mirror? “Pony’s aren’t supposed to know about the Underhive! Ponies are reaching out! Just like we heard about how they were reaching out to other ponies!”
“How did you know we were down here?!?!” Frank was suddenly suspicious.
“I randomly appeared here. I have no idea where here is in relation to anywhere I am familiar with.” This is actually a problem. “I’m guessing we are ‘down’ from Zephyr Heights. And I stayed in a hotel in Zephyr Heights this one time…”
“So… you are not a pegasus foal in a ragdoll costume?” Steve is adorable… that smile is whack, but Steve is great.
“I was gonna guess really short, old earth stallion in a ragdoll costume.” Frank scuttled his way too many legs in agitation, as he do. “Bro, that is an old earth pony voice.”
“Dude,” I have to point out, “That’s sorta racist.”
“You’re the one who keeps on assuming we do weird things with love like some kind of changelings!” And I have clearly upset Frank.
“Fair enough.” I have no idea where I am. I might as well admit that. “I don’t even know where I am, and until you two found me I was lost in the dark… So… thanks for that?”
“No problem little dude.” Steve smiles. Dammit Steve, do you know how unnerving that is?! I kinda wanna say somehin’, but Steve just comes across as a really great guy, and I don’t wanna be mean, Welcome to the Decanter Underhive. I’m Steve and this is my brother, Frank.”
“Why are you wearing that stupid doll costume?” Frank is considerably less chill than Steve. I think he’s trying to be intimidating… but honestly he’s trying a little, too hard.
“Frank!” Steve burst into my defense. “Be nice!”
“I AM being nice!” Franks snapped back. “I didn’t also tell him his doll costume is also ugly, which it is. And it’s a totally legit question! An old, midget earth pony shows up in the Underhive dressed up like a ragdoll, I’m allowed to ask questions! That’s suspicious as hell bro!”
“Whoah, it’s cool, it’s cool.” I wave my noodly arms in a placating fashion. “Fair point. Thing is it’s not a costume, I’m an ancient, cursed, living jinx doll. Most ponies just call me Ragdoll.”
“You're a living ragdoll named Ragdoll?” Frank cocks his head and shuffles his many hooves in agitation. “That’s stupid, and no Steve it’s not being mean to tell the truth. Somecreature needs to tell him his name is stupid, so that he will be aware of it and pick a less stupid name! I am being nice, and helping our new friend improve himself.”
Steve heaves a long suffering sigh. “Well, at any rate we need to report this to the Queen.”
“And of course it’s five minutes before my lunch break, and now I have to deal with this.” I am 100% sure Frank is rolling his eyes. “Thanks a lot, Ragdoll!”
“Don’t mind Frank,” Steve chatters happily, “This is gonna be great! We don’t get many visitors down here, and you’re gonna get to meet the Under Queen! She’s super nice!”
“And don’t worry, we don’t put ponies in cocoons and feed off their weird feelings,” Frank grumbles, “That movie is super racist. We actually have laws against that!”
“Which is kinda weird,” Steve muses, “Why do we have laws against that?”
“So, let me see if I’ve got this right…” Wow, Frank can really project that disapproval. “You’re trying to get back to this unicorn that you are in a weird pseudo romantic codependent relationship with, who is an unknown fraction of your age, depending on how long you were sensory deprived?”
“Okay. It’s not as bad as it sounds.” I’m pretty sure I’ve made a pretty good point.
“Dude, it is way worse than it sounds!” Frank’s irritation is only surpassed by his disapproval. And boy is he good at disapproving. “You used a foal to get around your sensory deprivation for so long that the two of you became codependent. Then she developed a crush on you that you should have shut down immediately. But instead of doing that, you humored her up to the point that you have a weird dating relationship involving tea parties. The mare involved probably has some kind of weird assexual doll fetish at this point. And I need bleach to unlearn this because I asked you, ‘How did you get down here, anyway?’ How is any of that not worse than it sounds?!?!”
“I mean, Bro, I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it sound.” Steve is just optimistic as hell. He’s just a great guy. And he’s also on my side in this. That helps. “I mean an old guy dating a 25 year old isn’t that weird if you ignore the doll curse thing…”
“It is if the old guy knew her since she was five!” Steve may have the teeth, but Frank is definitely the snappy one.
“Dammit Frank!” I flail my head about wildly. Now I’m annoyed too, dammit. “Can we not talk about my pseudo love life for this entire walk?”
“You’re the one who brought it up!” Frank huffs and we keep walking in an awkward silence for a while.
“So how did YOU end up in a subterranean urban slum?” I’m talking just to break the silence, I’ll be honest. Awkward silence is awkward.
“Oh, wow dude, you don’t know?” And I can depend on Steve for ice breaking exposition, nice…
-=-=-=-=-
Okay, so back in ancient times, the city literally just hung off the side of the mountain. There was the Hanging garden city of Canterlot, the jewel of Old Equestria. Half the city was dug out of the side of the mountain. That was all the business that supported the half of the city that lived on the platforms. But the businesses that supported the nobles needed workers. And also other businesses that made the things they sold. So they built a smaller city further down the mountain in the shadow of Canterlot. Decanter… or sometimes Lower Canterlot. It varies…
Anyway, this was where you would find all the low rent tenaments, warehouses, manufacturing, and of course all the low income workers. Most importantly, this was where nearly all the capitols non-pony residents could be found. Especially the changelings. Pretty much all the changelings lived in Decanter.
So as the Upper City expanded during the Golden Age of Friendship, Decanter slowly went from being simply in the Canterlot’s shadow, to becoming entirely buried by it. Well, at this point almost all of the earth pony, griffin, and hippogriff residents just sort of stopped living here. The changelings, minotaurs, lunar pegasi, and some of the younger dragons remained, though, being more well adapted to living underground. For a while Underground Decanter became a sort of exotic entertainment hub. It was a happy time, but it wouldn’t last.
No one knows exactly what happened. Some say the magic went away all at once, some say it faded slowly. Some say the pony tribes split up before the magic disappeared, some say it was after. Which caused which? I don’t think any creature knows. What we do know is that when pegasi couldn’t live in the clouds anymore they came to the city that was closest to the clouds. And they drove every creature that wasn’t a pegasi out of the city.
But changelings had been living hidden among ponies for ages. It wasn’t that hard to keep living in the underground spaces, as the Pegasi built more and more. Always up, always towards the clouds. And the more they built, the more they buried. And the more they buried the more places they gave us to hide. But as magic faded, we couldn’t change anymore… at least not as fast… So we adapted to our environment more slowly and became the underlings.
-=-=-=-=-
“Wow, Steve, I’m impressed.” I really and truly am very impressed. “You guys have the most detailed history of the before times out of anyone I’ve met so far.”
“Well, the feather brains literally buried history, and we live underground. What did you expect?” Frank is, of course, just a ray of subterranean sunshine.
“I am curious though?” I feel like we’re bonding so I’ll ask the question. “Do all underlings have human names, or is it just you two?”
And now I have clearly confused Steve. “Human names? Like ‘humans’ in those pony fiction books? They don’t have Underling names, they very clearly have pony names.”
“Dude,” Frank huffs the huffiest huff imaginable, “there are no such thing as humans. Honestly it’s insulting, and a little concerning, that ponies mix up mythological creatures with creatures that used to live alongside them in ancient times!”
Well there’s some kind of unnatural light that’s not magic. Steve offers the helpful but unnecessary exposition. Steve is great at that. “We’re coming up on the hive propper. You are going to love this!”
“Are you sure you don't do weird things with love?” I mean I wanna trust Frank, but Steve is really selling the idea that he really wants me to love the hive.
“Look,” Frank is as stern as I’ve seen him thus far, “Just don’t be weird. Flop around as as little as possible. And if you get weird with our sister I will personally rip out your fluff and replace it with used, broken potion flasks!”
“Steve! Frank! You’re back!” Okay that is clearly a giant lady bug. The face is pony…ish… but that isn’t even a bug-horse, that is a giant ladybug with a pony face. It is fortunate that I am incapable of wetting myself. I am not gonna move, I don’t care if everyone thinks Steve and Frank are crazy when they say I can talk. “Did you find anything new? According to the Pipsqueaks up top there was a human sighting just a couple of days ago! Oh, oh, and this unicorn with a talking doll! Is that the doll? Can it talk?”
My clever disguise has been pieced by a subterranean mutant bug teenage girl with social media. Well, hell. That happened.
“Don’t touch it!” Frank forms a convenient barricade between me and the giant insect. Good job, Frank. “It might be cursed, and it is definitely weird!”
“Ahh, I bet he just needs a friend!” Do not make those compound eyes at me, missy. “Are you a talking pony doll?”
“Ragdoll, this is our sister, Ocilia.” Nope, still not moving Steve. “She likes to watch out for us coming back from patrol at the gates…”
“See Frank! It’s just like Steve said!” If I stay perfectly still then this awkward moment will pass without my input. “The ponies have finally found out we’re down here,and they want to make contact!”
“Naw, he just magically appeared in the upper tunnels by accident by what I’m gonna just write off as Unicorn Shenanigans.” Frank kinda shrugs, with his first six shoulders then notices me playing ragdoll. “Hey dude? Are you okay? I know I said don’t get weird with our sister, but you kinda got me worried.”
Yes Frank that is what I am terrified of, not the giant teenage ladybug…
“Frank! Did you threaten Mr. Ragdoll?” And then what you fear meets you where you are. And I am currently forcibly cuddled by a relatively normal stubby legged, six legged bug horse that apparently lives under that shell.
“Steve! Help! Frank! She’s the one making this weird, also help!” I am entirely reasonable.
“It IS the talking pony doll! Can I keep him?” And of course she can roll up like a pill bug. Why not claustrophobia? The problem I’m having right now is that this is not terrifying enough yet.
“Don’t peek under my sister’s elytra!” It is good to know Frank has his priorities straight.
“First, Frank, I can’t close my eyes! They are literally buttons!” This is just a fact. “Second, don't worry, I can only see the front four legs that are getting a little too personal…”
“I’m not making it weird!” I don’t care how cute it is when she squeals that…
“She is making it hella weird!” This is not cuddling, this is squirming to escape. “NO! No smooching privileges! I am in a committed relationship!”
“Daawwww, he sounds like a grumpy old uncle!” I have to take a minute to wonder if I suddenly started speaking a foreign language… Dammit Frank’s Sister! “I’m gonna call him Uncle Cornelius!”
“They ran, they ran and they hid in the shadows.” She’s not there. That blue changeling dressed as a circus ringleader is not really there. I don’t know I’m screaming until I hit the subterranean cobblestone. And Ladybug filly is scuttling back. I did not mean to scare her like that. Frank is screaming at me but I can’t even hear him, I only hear the queen that wasn’t there. “This is the glorious future. Is it everything you hoped and feared it would be?”
I’ve probably been crying for a long time. Frank’s sister is poking me with a stick…
“Sometimes…” How do I talk myself around this.
“The fuck dude?” I know I done wrong because Steve done dropped an F-bomb.
“I spent a lot of time in the dark.” That explains things, right?
“Who do you think you are?” She is not there…
“I’m sorry Mr. Ragdoll…” And dammit the little bug-filly is making sad eyes at me. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I promise.”
“It’s not your fault, yer not the one that scared me.” I’m blubbering like a fool. “Sometimes I just see things that aren’t really there…”
“Don’t answer just yet… but think about it…” She leaves, but continues to exist.
-=-=-=-=-
“I need Gloomy,” was all the doll said as it curled in on itself.
“...and that’s where the situation stands, currently your majesty.” Frank wound down his explanation of his rather unusual patrol.
“Would it kill you to just call me ‘Mom’, Frank?” The huge mantisoid equine rolled her slitted eyes and flipped her mane with one forelimb. “Steve and Ocillia call me mom. The pony princesses don’t call Queen Haven ‘your majesty’, they call her ‘mom’. I know because Ocillia keeps making me watch those Pipsqueak streams. Yet every time you're on duty you have to get all “your majesty” with me.”
Frank heaved a heavy sigh. “Professional protocol is very important in the changeling guard! I have to maintain discipline in the ranks. Just because I’m a prince doesn’t mean I can hold myself to a lower standard, if anything I have to hold myself to a higher standard!”
“This is very concerning, Frank.” The queen's face became serious. “Not so much so as if an actual pony had found their way down here, at least with a magical artifact we have the option to just keep it down here.”
“Ocillia wouldn’t argue, she’s already named him ‘Uncle Cornelius’.” Frank scowled at the thought. “Which is still a better name than Ragdoll.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about giving my teenage daughter a cursed living doll.” The queen grumbled, then heaved a heavy sigh. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. I don’t want to hold any sentient being against their will. But we have the security of the hive to think about. For now we need to establish whether or not this Ragdoll can be trusted. For now I’ll leave him in the care of yourself and your siblings. He is to be treated as an honored guest so long as he behaves, but he is not to leave the hive. Three of you are to monitor him for three days, and then bring him to me and tell me what you learned. I will trust my children's judgment in this.”
“As you command, your majesty!” Frank snapped off a crisp salute.
“Oh, and Frank?” The queen smirked at her departing son. “I am issuing a royal decree that my children have to call me ‘Mom’, off duty or not…”
“Mom!” Frank pranced on the first quarter of his legs in agitation. “Don’t embarrass me in front of the other guards!”
“See, was that so hard?” The underling queen flashed a wicked smile.
-=-=-=-=-
“I’m really sorry Uncle Cornelius.” At this point I feel bad. You just can’t stay mad at that face.
“Ocellia, our new friend's name is Ragdoll.” Have I mentioned that Steve is genuinely just the nicest guy. “Calling creatures by names that aren’t the name the chose is rude.”
“It’s okay Steve.” I smile because there is literally a smile sewn onto my face. “Ragdoll’s not my name either. It’s just what most ponies call me. Gloomy actually named me ‘Charlie’... not sure why… but that’s important. The point is, it’s not your fault Ocillia, you didn’t know. Before magic came back I couldn’t sense anything but touch unless I was in contact with Gloomy, then I could see and hear through her. Thing is, when she was little her mom made her keep me a toybox.”
“That’s terrible!” She’s adorable. As uncanny valley terrifying as both her brothers, but the term cute as a bug is a thing for a reason. “And that’s why you freaked out when I bal glomped you?”
“Yeah, I’m kinda claustrophobic.” I flail my head up and down in nodding motions. “Also I have boundary issues. I’m usually smaller than this… or everything else is usually bigger, jury’s still out on that. But I have issues with anypony… er…anyone other than Gloomy handling me, especially treating me like a doll.”
“I have had an audience with the Queen.” Frank sure is walking into this room super serious.
“You mean you talked to mom?” Wait… I feel like this is a detail that no one has let me in on.
“Yes.” I don’t know how you roll compound eyes, but Frank is good at it. “I talked to mom. She says the weird doll is our problem for at least three days. He is a guest of the royal family while we decide whether or not he can be trusted.”
“Wait a minute? Your mom is the Queen?” I need to make sure I heard that right. “Did I hear that right?”
“We try to not make a big deal about it…” Steve stammers around all those teeth. For real that is a lot of too many teeth for a horse mouth.
“You and Frank try not to make a big deal out of it. I on the other hoof am the princess of cuddle-muffins!” Okay that is pure adorable, and she knows what she’s doing with the stubby legs and over sized elytra. 100% Ten of ten cute pose. She is still terrifying.
R:/ I am not going to be taking “buggy back rides” on her back in the next chapter. I see what you’re doing, because you gave me button eyes!
C:/ You say that like it’s true, or even relevant. Will she look for you or won’t she? You two pulled a nice trick on me, for rea,l I didn’t even see that coming. But I told you from the start, you asked for this.
Chapter 15: Four Days - Day Zero, Innocent Questions
“So these Text things control us?” Ocillia looks over her buggy shoulders and gives me just the most skeptical squint.
“Frank, did you teach her how to squint like that?” It seems like a very legit question to me, from my perch atop Ocillia’s shell. Earning a grunt from the ling with all the legs.
“Actually we both got the squint from mom.” My faithfully adorable ladybug steed giggles. “Mom is the absolute squintiest. But no dodging my questions! Mom is trusting us to evaluate if you can be trusted with the hive's secret or if we have to hold you until we finally make first contact with the surface. This is very important, Uncle Cornelius.”
Yes, Uncle Cornelius is my hive name now. I have simply accepted this. Now I have to convince this nice young mole-mare that I am a stand up guy. “They don’t control us, OC, which is your new nickname from now on. The Texts mostly just poke around to make things more interesting. Like with lab rats, but for entertainment purposes…”
“DO NOT FLOP AROUND SUGGESTIVELY ON MY SISTER’S BACK!” Frank screams out of the wild blue yonder.
“Uh… he's not?” What OC said? “He’s just doing his normal, ‘I’m talking’ flailing…”
“Yeah, Frank, you are 100% the one making this weird.” Hostly, this all feels hella weird now. I am being given a psychological/security evaluation while being given buggy-back rides by an adolescent mutant changeling filly. I had almost forgotten how weird this is. Thanks Frank.
“Why does she have to carry you around like that anyway?” If there are three skills Frank has mastered, it is squinting, huffing, and rolling his compound eyes.
“Because I can’t stop her because I am literally a foal sized rag doll with no real body mass or bones?” If they're gonna judge my trustworthiness I should prolly tell the truth. “And honestly, flopping around to get places is kinda hard at this size. It was way easier when I was smaller.”
“Every filly in the history of forever wanted their doll to come to life and be their friend.” OC’s voice took on an edge that honestly makes me nervous. “Dammit Frank, if you take this from me, I swear when I am Queen your life will be a long series of pleading to just send you to Tartarus!”
“And Steve is gettin’ Chineighs food… Because you have that?” It seems trivial… but they have that? And Wifi? “You have wifi, AND chineighs food down here? I have lived with Unicorns for the past twenty years, do you know how tired I am of Biscuits and THE WRONG DAMN GRAVY!?!?” I am a reasonable doll.
“I am pretty sure you can’t even eat.” Frank is the lord of buzzkills. “Go ahead, open your mouth!”
“Frank! Don’t be mean!” OC’s got my back… while I ride on her back. I am strangely comfortable with this.
“It’s Okay OC, he’s kinda right, you know. I can’t consume things. But I can shove my face in and absorb them. I can’t eat, but I can still taste. Liquids are the most easily absorbed. I have some smell and I absorb some gasses. I can’t eat, though. That would just be like stuffing me with garbage.” It feels good to say it out loud.
“So you can absorb liquids?” Frank has a super serious thoughtful squint going on. “Do these liquids affect you in any way? Also, what weird things do you absorb just because they taste funny?”
“Okay, Frank, yer cool and all, but I’m gonna come out and say it… yer weird, dude.” Who has zero thumbs and calls out Frank’s weirdness? This guy. “But it’s a fair question, even if you made it weird. So most things, I can just taste. I don’t get hungry or thirsty. Based on my experience with laundry detergent I don’t think I can be poisoned, but I have no plans to really push that issue. Laundry detergent, by the way, tastes truly awful. This is why I always insist on being washed with strawberry scented soap, which oddly enough tastes okay. Not good, just okay…”
“So you taste things… do you… feel?” OC is getting awfully awkward with those pauses. Frank? This is where you cut her off and make it weird… Also Ocilia is observant. “You need a sense of touch to know what your hooves are doing, so you can feel things, right.”
“Even before magic came back, I always maintained my tactile sense.” Just like in every hospital, I am a prisoner, My only hope for freedom lies with the truth. “I couldn’t move, see, or hear without Gloomy. I could go where she took me. I could see what she saw. I could hear what she heard. But I could always feel every way the world around me touched me and inflicted itself on me.”
“But that would still be better than being completely senseless…” Frank is obviously put back by this notion, so I decided to explain further.
“If I could move, then maybe a sense of touch would have at least been something.” I bonelessly shug and let out a bitter laugh. “But I could only lay there in a heap, always touching the same thing until the world touched me. I could never see or hear what was happening. I had no way to keep time. Touching dirt, or leaves, or snow. Sometimes the sky would pour rain on me, and that was a relief, because for a brief time I could tell there was still time by the cadence of the raindrops. The worst was snow. Snow was an eternal frozen tomb that surrounded me. Occasionally there would be outright pain, when some animal decided I looked like something it wanted to gnaw on. Oblivion would have been the sweetest gift.”
I might have been screaming… I don’t know. Frank and OC are looking at me like I was screaming. I make a noise that approximates a sigh. “The whole of my existence was nothing but the hell of touch until Gloomy Sonnet found me lying in a pile of garbage.”
Chapter 16: Four Days- Day One, Making Science Weird
Don’t worry, my brothers found your doll. He’s fine. Things are complicated right now, but I promise we’re going to return him to you as soon as possible. In the meantime don’t worry. He’s safe and I promise I’ll take good care of him until we can get him back to you. I know this is gonna be super suspicious but I have to delete this account as soon as I send this. So you have no way to get back in touch with me. Sorry about that.
Love, Luck, and Polypropylene Fellow-And/Or-Future Pippsqueak,
Lady Bug Waifu, Crowned Princess of Cuddle Muffins
“Mom, we might have a problem…” Ocilia shuffled nervously. “Maybe you should just watch…”
The little lady bug changeling nervously passed her phone to her mothers mantis-like fore-legs.
-=-=-=-=-
“Okay, you caught me!” A smarmy pegasus stallion grinned like a fool. “It’s all a big promotion. Even before magic came back our slogan was ‘We bring magic to your screen’. Well, we are still committed to that! But it’s a brave new world, my little ponies. Magic has stepped out of our classic flutter tales, and not just onto your screen, but right here into Zephyr Heights! The viral videos you’ve seen are real! Evermarsh called it! Magic, humans, talking dolls, Pegasoft was doing it before it was real!”
-=-=-=-=-
“This is bad.” The queen pursed her lips into a cute, motherly frown. “This isn’t just a lost doll. If we return him he might betray us. But if we hold him they will seek him out and eventually find us. If they find us like that it would confirm everything their mythical lies make us out to be… pony snatchers…”
“I bought us time.” Ocilia assured her mother. “His friends are two days away in Bridlewood. No pony even knows he’s missing yet. So I used one of my burner-Pippsqueak-IDs to contact his mare-friend. I let her know we found him and intend to return him as soon as possible.”
“What have I told you about maintaining these online friendships with the surface?” Queen Christine leaned into her daughter’s personal space, flailing her mantis fore arms in frustration. “I feel like we talked about this just last week… oh that’s right, that’s because I talked to you about this just last week! Our hive has always thrived in the shadows of the city above, Ladybug.”
“Right up until we were buried by them, mother,” Ocilia yelled with more vitriol than she perhaps intended. “They ARE going to find us sooner or later. The Pippsqueak Underground is just making sure that when they DO find us, they know they already have friends here!”
“Ocilia, my little Ladybug…” The queen's mantis forelimbs scooped her daughter into a warm embrace. “I know you only want to see the surface ponies as our friends, but look at your own beloved ‘social’ media. They barely even trust other ponies… and they just started doing that.”
-=-=-=-=-
I am a prisoner. A prisoner has no social obligation but to “get away”. Sometimes “getting away” and “escaping” were two very different things. I can flop about at a slow trot. Sometimes, if I’m really ambitious I can parkour flop onto a high shelf. Picking up things that weigh more than me (pretty much everything) is right out. My only hope for escape is if they let me leave.
This is why I’m strapped what I’m pretty sure are a lot of BitFits woven into some kind of straight jacket. “The safe word is ‘banana sundae’ OC… and why aren’t either of your brothers here?”
“Oh, they’re not allowed in my lab.” Daww, she’s doing that smile and scuttle thing. “I actually am the crowned princess, so I outrank them. And my lab is a ‘no brothers allowed zone’.”
“Can you at least leave the lab door open. I am not entirely comfortable with this.” Because this just got weird science weird, fast as twenty bucks.
“Don’t make it weird Uncle Corneleus. I’m just testing your magic” And no she will not acknowledge that she is the one in control here, or that she is the one who is unsure. “You have magic….”
“Well, I am a living Jinx Doll.” Making awkward conversation while tied up in a lab. Was this filly somehow descended from Twilight Sparkle? “I get your brothers. They are so invested in the ‘Good Guard/Bad Guard’ narrative, it’s kinda funny. In a very self deprecating way. Mostly for Frank. You’re harder to get a read on. What do you want out of this Ocilia? Where is it you want to go?”
“Whoah!” Looks like I got her attention… or at least whatever she saw on the screen did. “That was the weirdest magical fluctuation I’ve ever seen. What did you just do?”
“I just asked you what was your stake in this, OC?” Not entirely true. But I don’t want to give the game away just yet.
“Nope, that wasn’t it…” OC frowns and sticks her tongue out like she’s just tasting science in the air.
“Seriously though,” I’m in a mood to push my luck, “You could go anywhere you want. Where do you want to go?”
I don’t even turn around when I hear her gasp and slap the monitor. “That’s impossible! My read-out just glitched into a detailed description of what the readout is supposed to look like! What are you doing?!?!”
“I’m asking an innocent question.” I lie shamelessly to that nice little bug girl. “Where do you want to go?”
“That question!” OC is a sharp tack. “When you ask that question it throws the ambient magic into some kind of flux state!”
“What happens if I answer?” For one moment I think I’ve pushed too hard. But curiosity wins out over caution. “I’ve always wanted to go to the surface.”
“What do you want to take with you?” If my stitched smile could, it would grin even wider.
“I’d take my phone, my thaumometer… and my ragdoll…” She never takes her eyes off the screen as her buzzy little voice drones, sealing the bargain. And I’m her rag doll now. Gloomy is gonna be pissed. “Huh, weird. There was just a surge, and another crazy glitch. For a second there I thought we were gonna be magically transported or something. Still, that was fascinating. What did you just do?”
“I altered the narrative. Or, to be more specific, I allowed you a chance to alter it.” My escape is all but ensured at this point. At least from the undercity. “I don’t have any actual internal magic of my own, so no magical teleportation. But your path to the surface is open. My access to the meta-text is limited. I can open narrative paths but you have to walk them yourself… and preferably carry me unless you just want to travel at the speed of my flopping around…”
“I don’t know if I can do this, Uncle Cornelius.” The first door is always the hardest to open whn your leaving. “It feels like I’m running away.”
“You literally can do this OC.” I don’t even know right now if I’m being bad, good, or just pragmatic. “We’re not running anywhere. We’re going to walk through that door and tell your mother, whom I assume is also an adorable eldritch horror, that we’re leaving. Then we are going to walk away, not run, walk at a comfortable pace.”
“Mom is the one ling that outranks me! What if she says no?” Okay, OC is getting scuttle-y. I need to calm down those nervous hooves.
“Then we leave anyway.” I smile because that is the facial expression sewn on my face. “I don’t get the vibe that she would literally imprison you. So you shall face parental disapproval.”
The first door is always the hardest. The “throne room” Is just that. It’s a smallish room with a throne. If I was in the mood to be honest with myself I’d question if the throne or the room were the larger.
“I said three days, Ocilia!” And holy shit she is terrifying. She has sword arms. “I very specifically remember telling you yesterday that we had to consider this carefully. Then earlier today, it seems like we had this same talk.”
“I… I’m leaving mom. I’m going to the surface.” Honestly I don’t know how she stands up to that. I’m going to just assume that OC is in a less terrifying stage of her life cycle.
“Ocillia, I need to talk to your doll.” And that is a lot of angry mother mantis-pony to be glaring at me. “Alone.”
“Mom, I…” OC wants to take up for me, but even I have standards.
“It’s okay, OC.” None of anything that is happening is okay. But I’ve gotta focus on bug mom. Who I gotta say is kinda a bright green Changeling Waifu Mom of the Year, right up to her…I’m going to call it shoulders? It’s a weird gray area between pony and insect anatomy where her serrated mantis sword arms start. I am once again thanking narrative convenience that I don’t have biological urinary functions anymore. “Your Majesty, you're right. I took advantage of the situation and forced the timeline.”
“Uncle Conelius!” That look hurts. It should hurt. Lies are easy, that’s what makes them so addictive, but the truth always hurts.
“I know who you are.” Pretense of sending the lady bug out of the room is gone like the wind that fueled Scarlett O’hara’s weird self insert ship-fic. “The underhive are the keepers of the history the pegasi wanted to bury. And we have books that are only passed from Queen to Queen. I know who and what you are, Ragdoll Charlie. Maybe my daughter should hear this conversation. What deal did you make with my daughter?”
“I asked her where she wanted to go, Your Majesty.” Yes, I am being super polite to the giant bug horse with murder arms. Once again thankful that… nope there was some liquid up in that fluff and it just escaped. I can in fact be terrified into wetting myself. These are good things to know.
“You didn’t ask her what she wants?” And she only gots the two sharp teeth but damn if she don’t know how to use them. And OC is right, her mom is the absolute squintiest. “You didn’t ask her what she was willing to pay?”
“I don’t make those deals with little fillies, you’re majesty.” If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one.
“You are a liar.” Admittedly I did not expect to be called out this fast. “You are not unknown to my court, Ragdoll Charlie.”
You know you are in trouble when anyone’s mom uses your full name. “Give me one good reason why I should let my daughter walk out of the hive with you.”
That’s a good question, at this point she can’t even stop us, and I feel that she gets that. This answer isn’t for me, and it isn’t for her. “She can leave, she can walk away.”
“I understand.” She actually bows to me and this is weird. “All I want is that you don’t make any other deals for my dauhter with the text. All I have to pay you with is our history of you.”
Everything I ever wanted…
-=-=-=-=-
We began as just changlings. Refugees, really. We ran away from the Mad Queen, in the time of war. We followed the Mother Queen. The ponies gave us our own place in the undercity, then the Mother Queen left, and the ponies took our place back. In the badlands hive the Mad Queen was overthrown, and most changelings rallied behind the new king to reclaim and rebuild our homeland. But a hive remained in the shadow of Old Canterlot.
We watched the Kingdom of friendship rise, and then we watched it fall. And then we hid, and we gathered the history, the stories that the pegasi above us threw away. And such stories they discarded like garbage. Stories of humans and princes that were just too kind. And the story of a tiny changeling queen who stood up to the Mad Queen and her Unnamed Vizier in a bloody path from the undercity to the royal court. The ponies she fought and shed blood for exiled her to Tartarus. There are reasons why we hide, Mr. Ragdoll. And that is when you came in. These are stories even we keep buried.
The tale of the Too Kind Prince, who only meant well for the world. The tale of the Vagabond who only wanted to live in the world. And the tale of the Nopony who only wanted to end the world. It is a tale of three aliens that fought over our fate. No one remembers who won, but the cost was obvious for all to see.
And this is where your story comes in, Mr. Ragdoll. The First Queen of the Underhive was given a doll, a companion to escort her on the long walk out of Tartarus. The story says that Ragdoll Charlie could open any path. And the First Queen took advantage of that mercilessly. My daughter wants to escape. I… I can’t stop that. But don’t let her go that far! Don’t let her make those deals!
Chapter 18: Day Two - What Dreams May Come in the Witch House
“You think you're better than me, don’t you?” I run so far away, time and time again, I can never get away.
It’s always one more step, one more night before I change my ways…
It’s only in dreams that ever face the truth. It’s only mirrors that show me what I've become. I’m the monster, I’m the Ragdoll. I'm the epitaph that has to burn. It’s only in dreams that I see that the nightmare wears my face… And I’m awake again. It’s hard to sleep in the streets of the undercity. “OC, you are kicking me in the face with your fifth leg. Please stop kicking me or I’m going to flop into that warm looking pile of garbage! It looks warm and like it won’t kick me in the face…”
I am threatening to sleep in the trash.
She mutters sorries in her sleep. I’m just glad to wake up. I am awake now. So at least what I see is there. There’s no halfway between me and dream time. I can’t close my eyes. So there’s no transition between awake and asleep. And I don’t really need sleep… physically…
Also, damn but that ain’t a big rat. I’ve been assured by OC’s brothers that this is actually a rodent of average size. But given the cyclopean scale of door frames since we made it into the old undercity itself, I’m coming to very uncomfortable conclusions about my recent “growth spurt”.
-=-=-18 Hours Ago-=-=-
“Okay so then she asked what was missing…” Ragdoll slurred as he hung precariously from the queen’s mane.
“She didn’t?” Christine giggled manically.
“She did, and then she started trying to look to find it!” The doll nodded solemnly. “I was mortified!”
“I can only imagine,” the Underling queen laughed.
“Okay.” Ocilia fumed. “One filly made it weird with her doll. That does not make this weird! Also you are both drunk! Franklin! Mom is getting my doll drunk and making things weird!”
-=-=-=-=-
There is water everywhere I can’t breathe. Of course it’s his face… my face that I see. What face is more appropriate? It’s my first memory, whose else’s face would I see? I was baptized. This is a fact I accept. I would prefer not to remember, but my eyes don’t close. The dream won’t stop. I suck in water and I drown. This happens. I am there. I was never there. I don’t remember that. It’s only a dream.
-=-=-16 hours ago-=-=-
“Mother,” Frank scurried his many, many legs in agitation, “You can not tell me you actually trust this… doll-thing to escort our sister to the surface?!?!”
“Trust it?” The queen laughed mirthlessly. “My son, if I thought it would sway the path I would tear that thing in half and throw it back on the refuse pile that poor unicorn found it on.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” Ragdoll queried from his perch on the queen's head.
“You know that I don’t care, right?” The Queen smirked at her rider.
-=-=- Present day. Present time…-=-=-
“It’s a bitter pill and it’s hard to swallow…” Gloomy took her medicine, thus sealing the bargain with the gods of the narrative. She laid down alone in the bed they had made, perhaps to sleep, perhaps to dream…
Gloomy floated on a lily pad down a lazy stream, unaware she was already asleep. As her makeshift raft floated through a tunnel she watched her beloved ragdoll riding on the back of a giant, foal-sized lady bug filly with a bright blue unicorn head.
The ladybug suddenly flipped revealing a bright blue pony(?) beneath the insectile outer shell with six legs that kicked the doll into the air as both giggled. “Wow, this is some really potent medicine…”
Gloomy spun on the sudden intruding voice, “Charlie? Is that… you?”
“I ain’t never been a Charlie,” a middle aged earth pony stallion with a dirt colored mane, a coat the color of spoiled cream, and eyes that sparkled with the color of dead salmon answered with an easy smile. “Is this more what you hoped your ragdoll would be, or what you feared?”
“You have his voice?” Gloomy glanced aside to see her Charlie riding this strange ladybug pony through what looks almost like Zephyr heights, but deep underground.
“I am no one, and you don’t know me.” The stranger with her doll’s voice smiled. “But damn if this ain’t some good drug-induced-transformation fever-dream.”
“I’m dreaming…” It wasn’t even a question.
“Yeah, pretty sure I called ‘drug induced dream state…” The perfidious pony replied with a grin. “But what does it mean?”
“I’m jealous.” Gloomy admitted. “I’m afraid he might find someone… more socially appropriate… older… younger?”
“You read too far in!” The stallion laughed. “You think that’s part of the dream. That part is actually happening. Drug induced magic dream thing.”
“You're my subconscious questioning why I’m attracted to a doll that talks like an old earth pony stallion… wait, are you huffing paint?” The gray unicorn blinked slowly.
“Honestly, this is just to bring me down from the contact high of existing inside your fever-dream.” The unnamed pony giggled around his gold-paint mustache. “I don’t know what that doctor gave you, but I want some!”
“None of this is really happening!” Gloomy Sonnet screamed into the darkness.
“You say that like it’s remotely true,” the stallion replied, “But I keep telling you that is what really happened. Except the part where you took the medicine, that was you remembering, mid fever dream, that you took the green pill. And this lily pad… where did that come from?”
“Okay, Uncle Cornelius, pay attention!” And wow, OC is really using her serious big filly voice. “We’re heading out of the Decantur Underground, and going up the hill now. The Underground is neutral territory. The hive controls the tunnels under old Decantur…”
“I really wish we could have seen more of that… would it have killed the quest to stop at a local restaurant?” I feel like I am being super reasonable.
“Focus, Uncle Cornelius!” My faithful steed does not agree, it seems. This is a pattern. I am detecting a definite pattern. “This is Pegopossum territory…”
“Wait, some entity gave those hell rats wings?!?!” What sick mind would do that?
“They actually bring us most of our surface-tech. We trade with them a lot.” She is oddly okay with the idea of winged hell-rats. “Just don’t panic when they screach at you. That’s just how they say ‘Hello, back up a few steps’. Usually we meet them in Old Decantur. But we have to go up the hill to get to the Zephyr Heights storm drains.”
“Skree!!!” I guess we walked too close to a nest? Good news is OC is still larger than a possum. I’m starting to get a sense of scale. She’s like baby pony size, but I’m not sure if she knows it. I don’t want to be rude and bring it up while a winged possum is screaming at me.
I incoherently scream back, because what else am I going to do? There is also much of flailing and flopping. God’s but I could fit my head in that possum’s mouth. And now the possum is barking at me? “Dammit it’s not my fault! Hide your nest better!”
“Uncle Cornelius!” I am getting ladybug-scolded, that happens now. It’s a thing. “Don’t be mean, she’s just worried something might hurt her babies…”
“Well something probably will because she didn’t hide her nest better!” I am winning this glare off… I am in a glare off with a winged possum. None of that statement defines “winning”
“It’s tiresome, Uncle.” Is she taking a lecture tone with me? I think she is. “This game where you play like you're helpless… It's tiresome. Maybe your little unicorn friend liked it, but I know what you are, Uncle Cornelius. I know what you can do. And all this projected animosity at your supposed helplessness is a little insulting.”
“Maybe you could tell me what you think I can do?” That seems like a helpful suggestion. “I’m a cursed talking rag-doll, I ride around on your back and sometimes flail and talk to things.”
“And you’re the narrator…” Damn if it ain’t a crime the way she just calls me out.
“Okay,” I am a reasonable cursed magical artifact, “So you are just gonna try to wield me, brute force style? Surprisingly the narrative doesn’t work that way. And your mom specifically said you can’t make ‘What do you want, what will you pay’ deals. So I talk, I flop, and I opened a path to the top of this mountain. I think I’m doing pretty good in the magic doll department.”
“Yeah about that path…” I am detecting definite tones of impatience from OC. “We are walking straight up into the hill. These nests just more dense the further up we go.”
“Just keep scuttling away from the nests when we get too close. And I’ll keep screaming back our general disinterest in their babies and friendly counter screams of defensive aggression. If it gets too intense we play dead. I am 100% that they respect that. We got this.” And to prove how right I am, another pegoppossum screeches. “Gods of Tartarus we don’t care about you’re stupid babies!”
And then a momma pegopposum gotta rush out and hiss. Not screech, hiss. “OC, I need you to scuttle back.”
“She’s not scared,” The little ladybug underling observes. She is observant like that. “She’s angry.”
“Just step back, Ocelia.” I use her serious name because this is serious. As I flop to the broken marble bricks of the ramp up the hill. “Not matter what happens, stay back. “My velvetine can be pierced but not torn, She can’t really injure me, just hurt me..”
The minute I hit the ground I am assaulted by way too many teeth. I swear marsupials are snake-rats, the way they unhinge that jaw. “Uncle…!” A lot of things happen at one time, OC screams. Mama possum thrashes me with rage, “Just stay back! She can’t really hurt me!” God’s of tartarus all the stabby pain. And I don’t dare go limp. I pet her head and tell her it’s going to get better as she thrashes me along the alabaster cobblestones. Then she hurls me into her nest. I wish I could say I was surprised that it was empty.
-=- Author’s note: You’ll wanna make sure you’re caught up on the crossover chapters of Return to Equestria, or this is gonna be really confusing. -=-
“This isn’t fun anymore, Uncle Cornelius.” The trust in her voice is what breaks my heart.
“You can go home, Ocellia.” I feel like a monster. I am a monster. “Just step off of the path. I can still send you home.”
“No!” Her denial breaks me even further. “ I am going to see the sky!”
Her resolve holds for a while. We have to be getting close. These aren’t caves or underground ruins, their regular storm drains.
“We’ve been lost for days, Uncle! Do you even know which way home is anymore?” It hurts because she’s right. How long has it been? “Should I turn my phone back on yet?”
“I know which way we have to go.” I give the only reassurance I have. “Up and forward, Always up and forward.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
The water has a face when it pulls me under. I can’t tell whose face. My father? Stepfather? Grandfather? Some random preacher-man? How do you remember the face that held you underwater? The face of the betrayal that is baptism…
Her screams cross from worry to fear as she’s pulled under the oozing, mouthy, purple mass.
-=-=-=-=-
“Uncle… what just happened?” The little ladybug pony asked in confusion.
“I changed the tense.” Ragdoll explained. “It gave me a chance to pull out a solution off camera. How did we navigate the Pega-possum nesting grounds?”
Ocellia opened her mouth, then closed it before the doll went on. “Don’t think about it too hard, you will get headaches. That is just a thing.”
“It was never going to be easy, Ocelia.” The Ragdoll chided. “This was always going to be the path. But it’s less hard if you only remember parts of things. Please just trust me that I’m looking out for you here. We did things. That is how we got here. What happens in between… you’re not ready for that, yet.”
“Then you could just skip ahead to when we get to the surface?” The little underling asked hopefully.
“Maybe if I had Gloomy to regulate the story pacing, but even then, that would be risky.” The doll shook his head. “Shifting that far without having any control over the intervening scenes… we’d have no idea what we set off in the missing scenes. We already have no idea what’s going on upstairs on the surface with Gloomy right now.”
“Uncle Cornelius…” The underling princess sounded unsure. “Are you using me to get back to the surface.”
“OC… Sweetie… Honey…” The doll took the most soothing tones. “Of course I am.”
OC’s breath caught in a sudden hitch. “Don’t be like that. I am your guide and you are my mobility. You used me from the moment you realized what I was. But that doesn’t mean nothing is real. We’re going to make it to the surface, OC. Keep checking your phone. When we get close enough to street level…”
“I’ve got a signal!” Ocelia cheered. “I gotta check my feeds!”
“I told you OC,” Ragdoll grinned through his impassive smile, “We just gotta stay on the path.”
“Oh no! You’re mare friend has been foal-napped by a strange creature!” Ocelia held her phone up to show the news feed. “It says her Aunt Untitled Duet is trying to find her.”
“That bastard.” The doll quivered in angry anticipation. “I need you to dial a number for me.”
“O-okay,” the little underling princess replied nervously.
Ragdoll’s voice sneered. “Also, everything I just said about how I can’t just time skip us to the surface… I was lying… I just can’t do that in this story…”
-=-=-=-=-=-
School of Friendship Official Educational Suppliment “So You’ve Broken The Fourth Wall”
“Hello class!” A bombastic Pinkie Pie waved at the camera smiling a little too wide. “I’m Professor Pinkie Pie, and I already know who YOU are!”
“So maybe you, or perhaps a friend, or maybe you say it’s a ‘friend’, but it’s really you… I won’t judge…” Pinkie pulled out a large black-board from her mane covered in completely confusing equations, diagrams, and happy picture of ponies frolicking with pretty flowers. “But the important thing is you, or they, or maybe ‘they’ meaning ‘you’ (totally not judging) have noticed all those funny looking creatures reading this story.”
“Don’t be afraid to reach out say ‘hi’ to friends in another plane of existence, hello readers!” Pinkie looked directly into the camera, then continued to address the PSA audience. “But don’t think that’s all the zany, fun things you can do, either! If you pay close attention, you might notice the wall between us and our existential buddies is actually a wall of… wait for it… Text!”
“I’ll give you a minute to just sit back, take a big ol’ toke, an just let that sink in.” The pink menace pulled out an elaborate pink hooka and the screen flashed to a please standby image with a giant cannabis leaf.
After you have indulged in enough “magical herb” to be okay with this nonsense, Pinky returned, herself with bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah, because this entire universe is just one big ‘ol story, right?” Pinkie giggles and somehow sways as she pronks in pace. “Riiggghhhhttttt?????? Wow, Tree Hugger really brought her A-game this time… but seriously, right?”
“Wrong!” The Unspeakable Pinkie Pie jumped forward and hugged the camera while giving it a big ol’ stink eye. Pinkie back up in an excessively casual manner and continues while staring of at nothing in particular. “This universe is actually several stories. And there are alternate ‘dream’ universes, and some of them also have their own stories…”
Pinkie plopped down on her pink plot. She spoke with a dreamy voice, “I bet you’re wondering what all this has to do with big ‘ol text wall, aren’t ya? Well I’m gonna tell you because it is super important.”
Pinkie was suddenly super serious, while wearing Groucho Marx fake glasses. “For you see, there is more than one wall and there is more than one text. Hi, Amanda! Sorry to hold up the chapter but I really wanted to do a PSA in G5!” Pinkie waved into the camera.
“And if you’re just waving to your existential friends, hiya Booster Spice,” Pinie giggled vacantly, “It doesn’t matter much. But once you see the wall of text, and it sees you, you can do so much more…”
“The especially bold can reach out and manipulate the words.” Pinkie twirled her sinister fake mustache. “Seize the narrative. Jink, seize the narration. You can skip troublesome transition scenes, accomplish things off camera, a really clever creature could even walk between the walls, moving from one story to another!”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Okay, Undersqueaks, I know I’ve been keeping in the dark for a couple of days.” The lady-bug pony-ponyplushy smiled at her own camera. “Newest of new news! I am on the surface! Just look at all that sky! It is the literal sky! Like if you just started falling up you’d just fall into it!”
“You can’t keep doing that! Jet was being very reasonable!” The gray filly argued very reasonably.
“I’m staying with my Aunt Gloomy and Uncle Conelius.” The filly smiled as a crash was heard in the background.
“That was not my fault! I move by flailing about!” The doll yelled.
“It is exactly how it sounds…” The filly responded to the disruption.
“You threatened our boss in the middle of a business meeting! Again!” Gloomy railed in a squeaky little filly voice.
“Yeah, it turns out the cursed magical doll has a mean streak…” Ocelia shrugged. “I should prolly give context, but I’m not sure why Charlie threatened Mr. Jet, either. He seemed nice enough to me.”
“Dammitall, Gloomy, what's the big deal?” The camera turned to focus on Ragdoll. “I threaten ponies all the time!”
“Meh,” Ocelia narrated, “I might as well let you all just watch them since there’s no way I’m gonna be able to finish until they calm down.”
“That IS the problem!” The camera pulled back to reveal a small grey unicorn filly glaring murder at the flailing rag doll. “We can’t just go around threatening to jinx ponies just to get our way.”
“Uh…” The doll cocked its head in confusion. “Gloomy, that’s like ninety percent of our modus operandi… kinda always has been…”
“And they’ve been going at it like this ever since we left the Pegasoft building.” Ocelia turned the camera back towards herself. “I don’t think they’re really mad. I think their trying to just not talk about Aunt Gloomy being turned into a filly and that weird pony that tried to foal nap her earlier… It’s been a busy day…”
“And since we're having this talk, what are we going to do about that creature who tried to foal nap me?” The fun sized unicorn demanded. “Why did you and that thing act like you knew each other?”
“Because we do… sort of?” Ragdoll rubbed the back of his head. “That was an fragment of the Nopony. I’m not sure which aspect that was, usually I’d say it was a Noone… but a few things were off…”
“What’s a ‘Nopony’?” Gloomy cocked her head to one side.
“Uh… heh, heh… well that’s it this pipcast, under squeaks…” Ocelia shuffled nervously, addressing the adults in the room as she killed the video feed. “Uh, guys… we probably really need to talk…”
“Uh… heh, heh… well that’s it this pipcast, under squeaks…” And OC’s been live streaming us this whole time, because of course she has. My life is online entertainment for subterranean mutant changelings. “Uh, guys… we probably really need to talk…”
“Wait… you were filming us?” And Gloomy is also not okay with this. Good to see we’re on the same page.
“It’s okay! I was in my doll disguise!” Okay, to be fair that is a potential issue.
“Charlie.” Oh damn she is going extra monotone. “I am only just barely alright with you bringing home an adolescent shapeshifting ladybug pony. This is my life. I am a witch pony and you are my jinx doll, but you need to explain boundaries to our apparent…niece? We DO have boundaries, they are loose but we have them!”
“I’m really sorry, Aunt Gloomy!” OC is spooked. Even I can pick up on that. “Usually when I do my pipcast my brothers will just argue in the background and I just make it part of the cast! But that’s not even what’s important, I am so sorry to say it that way… But that mare that tried to foal nap you… Uncle said she was the Nopony…”
And now Gloomy’s eyeballing me with those violet eyes. And they’re extra big, because she’s small . “There was another encounter on the road up the mountain. A stallion, but it was the same creature. It spoke with your voice. Ladybug has it right. We need to talk.”
She taps the rhythm. I remember once again that I am her doll. I remember just enough that I can’t explain anything.
“The No Pony was a boogitty in the underhive.” OC is afraid and it hurts me that she’s scared, but she should be. “Was that actually the No Pony you asked me to introduce myself to, Uncle?”
It hurts worse because she means it when she calls me that. She trusted me this whole time. Gloomy has known me long enough to know better, “That thing can play with the words. I saw it when it tried to pick a fight on the way up the mountain. You know who it is, and you don’t sound surprised. And in twenty years you’ve never brought that thing up… not in any of your stories.”
“No, it was in my stories, Gloomy, that’s where it came from. It just wasn’t in any of the stories I told you…” When all else fails, tell the truth. “I can’t really remember what happened… or even be sure what I remember writing was what actually happened. I kinda hoped it was dead by now.”
“I know my mom filled you in on a lot of the history you missed, Uncle!” I’ve never seen OC this serious. “And I told you a lot of our hive’s history. But there’s parts you might not know about…”
Actually, she seems to be something of a nerdy history buff, and her history is likely at least as accurate as what my senile brain fluff can drag up. Plus, OC deserves to tell her tale after what I dragged her through to get me back to Gloomy.
-=-=-=-=-
The Nopony is an integral part of the Underhive’s history. Universally hated and reviled, nearly all record of it’s existence were purged from history by both changeling and pony alike. It’s believed he served as some sort of adviser, or researcher, to the Mad Queen, though it’s hard to say for sure, given the Mad Queen actually forbade an record of history within’ her hive.
It’s believed the queen wanted him to develop a new breed of changeling that could feed off of fear, as well as love. About ten years before the start of the pony-changeling war, he succeeded, producing a clutch of thirteen viable eggs. However he covered up his success and raised the grubs in secret while plotting his escape.
The Mad Queens failed invasion of the pony capitol gaveNopony opportunity as well as setting off a war with pony kind that would drag out in a series of skirmishes ultimately leading to the Mad Queen’s utter fall from power.
During this first invasion, Nopony used the chaos to attempt to escape with his clutch of now preadolescent changeling foals, and his brood queen in two groups.
Nopony and his unnamed brood queen slipped away from the hive while the Mad Queen was focused on her failed invasion. The thirteen changeling foals were smuggled into the pony capitol, with plans to reunite later in a city called Fillydelphia. However, due to reasons lost to history, the foals were separated from their escorts believed to have been killed in the chaos of the invasion.
And that seemed like it was the end of it. Until years later during what the pony’s referred to as “The Second Invasion”. In the intervening time, the ponies and changelings fought various smaller skirmish battles when changelings would raid outlying pony settlements foalnapping ponies to harvest their love.
Only one of these is really relevant, and that’s when an ambassador… or maybe a prince, the records aren’t really clear on that… anyway, he led a rescue mission to recover captured ponies and in the process liberated a large number of changelings seeking to flee the Mad Queen’s oppression with the help of previously unknown changeling queen. She’s remembered in our history only by her title, the Changeling Princess. This is actually really important later.
You see, these changeling refugees became the Canterlot Free Hive. Under the leadership of the Changeling Princess, these changelings only fed from love given freely by ponies, and were fiercely protective of the ponies who had, in their eyes, rescued them from tyranny. They were seen as the perfect defense against infiltration and invasion by the Mad Queen’s forces. And for a while it worked.
There was a sort of stalemate between the two hives. The Mad Queen’s infiltrators could be easily spotted by the Free Hive’s changelings, who the ponies in turn trusted to protect them. But there was a third hive that no one knew about. In Fillydelphia the Nopony, his brood queen, and the changelings who had escaped with them had gone into hiding, forming the Shadow Hive…
Chapte 22: "I shall carry my own ashes up the mountain"
“Okay, that was the preamble,” Ocelia stood on her hind hooves and clamped her front four hooves together with a super serious scholarly scowl. “This is where the history of the Underhive really starts…”
-=-=-=-=-
When the Nopony and his brood queen escaped during their invasion, they had brought along as many drones as they could convince to follow them. They split into two groups, they would travel with the majority of the drones on a direct route to Fillydelphia. Their thirteen offspring would be smuggled into the pony capitol under the cover of the First Changeling Invasion. Regardless of the outcome of the invasion the two groups would rendezvous after the dust had cleared.
When this plan failed Nopony organized a third secret hive in Fillydelphia, the Shadow Hive. The Shadow Hive operated openly as a changeling refugee circus, that from the outside seemed the model of friendship, featuring changelings, ponies, and all manner of creatures working together to bring smiles and laughter to Equestria. But it wasn’t at all what it looked like. In the shadows just beneath the surface, the circus itself was a cover for all the illegal activities meant to fund the hive’s real purpose: To infiltrate the pony capitol and recover any survivors of the brood, particularly the young queen that could feed on hate.
To this end he entered into an alliance of convenience with the Mad Queen he had escaped, promising that his Shadow Hive could neutralize the Free Hive, opening the pony capitol to infiltration. It marched his circus hive into the city in broad daylight under the flag of friendship, only to explode into a trainwreck of violence and debauchery. It was instantly defeated and its drones scattered, and that was the moment it won.
The capitol was beset by a wave of changeling drones with no other purpose than to make ponies fear changelings. They didn’t even try to steal love, the No Pony had drugs for that. Instead they terrorized the ponies of the undercity on a personal level, often while impersonating the very changelings the ponies trusted and depended on to defend them from hostile changeling invasion. And in doing so it set the bait to tempt out its scattered brood and draw them back into its influence.
Without the love and trust of the ponies they had defended, the Free Hive was forced to hide away when the Mad Queen's second invasion commenced. And even as the Free Hive grew weak, the Nopony’s brood were bloated with the fear and distrust he had unleashed. Of all the Nopony’s Brood, only the Little Queen was able to avoid being brought back under its sway, strong from the love of her adopted pony family. So, in an act of needless cruelty and cruelty the Nopony took them from her. This would be its undoing.
The Little Queen drank deeply of the hate her creator had sown, because she knew to protect the creatures of the undercity and avenge her pony family she would need strength. And she… she killed… not just the Nopony, she killed every changeling that worked with it in one night and purged the shadow hive. Her name was Princess Diane Banana Fo Fanna Bo Banna Fee Fie Foe Fanna Pastel. And she was the first queen of the under hive. My ancestor. But you already knew that didn’t you, Uncle Cornelius…
-=-=-=-=-
“You knew exactly what you were pushing me towards.” It breaks the space in my fluff that would normally hold a heart. “That’s how you knew it would be afraid.”
“Open up your eyes!” Gloomy is feeling possessive and there is nothing I can say that won’t make it worse. “I’ve carried the ragdoll since I was a foal. There are no cutesy names, because I know Charlie for what it is. I don’t know any of your legends surrounding MY doll, but I’ve had a lifetime to know Charlie. My lifetime. He is a liar.”
“Aunt Gloomy!” OC is making that cute squinty face that is impossible to say no to. I want to warn her, but I’m still pretty sure anything I say is only going to make it worse. “That’s mean!”
“Grow up!” Okay she is actually showing emotion, I’m starting to think that using a rebellious teenage changeling filly to further my schemes might have upset Gloomy. “We. Are. Not. Nice. Ponies! His name is Charlie, not ‘Uncle Cornelious’! And he is a cursed magical artifact from ancient times. I am an emotional stunted witch pony, who casually uses her special talent to manipulate everypony around me to get what I want! If if we have to confront the ancient nemesis of your tribe, or hive, or whatever you call it, you better be the descendent of a mass murdering evil queen! And stop calling me ‘Aunt Gloomy’! I’m not your aunt!”
“No, you’re not her aunt.” I flop in between them. “But by weird ancient Equestrian adoption laws, I sort of am her uncle, and you need to stop Gloomy.”
“You’re actually taking her side over mine?” Ouch, I knew this was gonna be a problem. I had hopped it would be later rather than sooner.
“A long time ago a bully stuck a needle in my head, Gloomy.” I have to pick these words carefully. “A brave filly stood up for me. I’m following her lead. Ocelia’s just a little filly, Gloomy. She’s just a filly who wanted to get to the top of the mountain.”
“I… I’m sorry…” Goddammit but I can not let Gloomy see how emotionally disarming it is when she cries now that she’s a filly again. She will totally exploit that.
“It’s okay Miss Gloomy. I’ve just never been away from my family for this long… and I just wanted to make a family connection with you and Uncle Cornellius... I mean Charlie. I didn’t mean to cross your personal boundaries.” And they are actually going to hug it out. Well this is going better than expected. Because I’m narrating this I choose now to flop towards the hotel balcony.
I gotta admit, the view is great from up here. Zephyr Heights stretches below us, and beyond that the rest of Equestria all the way to horizon. I can’t resist a semi-arrogant smirk, “But we made it, girls. We made it up the mountain!”
“Okay, Charlie,” Gloomy has her most serious face, and I’m on camera. Somehow that makes it more real. “Pegasoft wants to see how you navigate stairs. They want to do a platform game of you flopping yourself around places.”
“This is more than a little embarrassing.” I feel like I have a legit complaint.
“Common, Uncle! You can do it!” There’s a barb to that title now. Pretty sure OC knows I feel that. There’s no more cutesy nickname. I deserve that.
It was on the third stair.
We met upon the stair. She spoke, “Of was and when…”
And though I wasn’t there, he swore, “I was your friend!”
Which came as a surprise. I spoke into its eyes, “I thought you’d died a long…. Long, long time ago.”
“Oh no, not me.” I never lost control. “You’re face, to face, with the mare who sold the world…”
I’m lying, I have no control. That smile. That smile with too many pointy teeth…
“Hello, Charlie. It’s been a very long, long time.” The insectile mare is just suddenly there, towering over me. Her lithe body looking for all the world like a demonic combination of a pony and a dragonfly. Her tail twitches menacingly and her shark-like smile bisects her face. Her goat-like horns shimmer with corrupted energy. “I’m sure you have so very many questions.”
A cyan skinned, blue haired, young human man in a blue business suit and square framed glasses lounges on the stair and smiles. What in the holy hell am I looking at? It speaks. “We are all going to sit down and have a little chat now.”
“A little pow wow, so to speak.” And now it’s an earth pony, because of course it is. And honestly I want some of what-ever that thing is smoking out of what I can only assume is a saxophone converted into a crack pipe?
The world dissolves into floating text and I change the perspective.
R:\ Daine, what did you do?
The Shadow Queen Grinned, showing off her shark-like teeth. “Ooooo… you learned a new trick.”
She read the words that the world had always been. She read about the little gray filly clip-clopping her little hooves to a beat only she could hear as it happened. She read about a little ladybug blush toy scuttling in panic. She giggled like a little filly. “I always wondered what it was like in between the wall.”
R:\ Diane, what did you do?!?!
“I attempted genocide against a near infinity, silly.” The beautifully horrifying insectile mare cooed. “Although I’m not properly ‘Diane’ anymore, not completely. It turns out attempted infinity murder had consequences.”
R:\ You got pulled into the true infinity. You’re the Nopony, now.
“Now you really are being silly.” The corrupted changeling queen tittered merrily. “In a way I finished what I started. There is no ‘Nopony’ anymore. I like to think of them as my new hive, in a way. We are no one. We are unnamed. We are legion. We are Anypony.”
R:\ Are you really going with that name? :|
“Anypony is a perfectly good name and no one gets to tell us what our name is!” The queen screamed in rage just as reality transitioned out of the text wall. Ocelia and Gloomy looked in open mouthed confusion at the outburst, fear almost enough to stop any snickering. Anypony glared angrily down the stairs at the smiling ragdoll. “You did that on purpose!”
-=-=-=-=-
I am a very peaceful, booky little bug. Conflict has never bothered me, perse, it just kind of rolls over me. As a cuddly little nymph I spent most of my time in the hive’s library, reading about the layers of the world above us that we had retreated from. That's how I knew about the rag doll. That’s how I knew better than to try to claim it. And that’s how I knew what to say to get it to carry me with it to the surface to find its true bearer. The old stories told me about the bloody first queen. They told me how she sacrificed our hive's honor to forever end our greatest scourge. And here was this shifting thing, looming awkwardly on the third stair like a vulture. Shifting form to form like a mirage. But at the core of it, I could see the truth. Underlings are still changelings, secrets and lies are our whole thing. I could see that everything I had learned was all…
-=-=-=-=-
“LIES!” I am not a calm little pony. I am a panicking steed. Panicking more so because that guttural scream wasn’t mine. I tap my clumsy rhythm as best I can without my cutie mark. The jinx holds back the tide of events like a viscous fluid, but it just won’t stick.
In a rush of pink flames the cute little ladybug pony doll I’ve been sharing my hotel room with is gone. But she’s not an adorable little ladybug pony alien “cuddle muffin”. She is all teeth and dull gray armored chitin. Her fangs drip with venom. Her hindmost legs are like coiled springs. It occurs to me that she was always like this.
To a god she would be a flea, but to a mere elephant, she would be a hyena. An apex predator/parasite… or just a cute little bug. It’s all just a matter of scale and context. A part of me wants to hand Charlie to this thing on the stairs, and be done with it. He lied to me. He never explained what the stakes were going to be. He never told me how to deal with this. But there’s no answer, no message to be found. I feel the pull of my doll's original magic. I want it. I need it. I focus on the rhythm of my hooves. Without my cutie mark it’s like trying to beat a drum underwater.
That thing has power. It can crush me. It can rip me apart. That will not help it. The doll is mine, I don’t care who threw him away, he is mine right now.
I gotta admit, the view is great from up here. Zephyr Heights stretches below us, and beyond that the rest of Equestria all the way to horizon. I can’t resist a semi-arrogant smirk, “But we made it, girls. We made it up the mountain!”
“Is this where we live now? This is pretty swank. A little too brightly lit, but pretty swank.” I don’t have the heart to tell OC this is a pretty cheap hotel. “Where’s my room? Ooo, is this my room?”
“Actually, OC, that’s a closet.” I can’t help but chuckle. “And this is a hotel. It’s temporary, I’m sure Gloomy has Pegasoft hooking up with something way… uh, you okay girl.”
My girl is just standing there clopping a rhythm with a thousand yard stare. What’s more, her horn is glowing. Wait… her eyes are glowing too. Well, that’s new. I’m a little worried until she starts chanting in a hollow tone. Now I’m terrified. “When my doll goes falling up the stairs, he’ll meet a mare who won’t be there. I’ll see her there again one day. I hope the mare will go away!”
“Um, Uncle?” Okay it’s not just me that’s freaked out right now. “I think something might be wrong with Miss Gloomy…”
There’s just something… off about the sound of her hooves. Like an echo coming from the wrong direction. Almost like she’s teaching herself each beat just before she stomps the rhythm. It’s like a distorted echo of a drum playing underwater.
“It’s okay, OC, she’s probably just really in the groove and…” I can only look the self proclaimed ‘Crowned Princess of Cuddlemuffins’ straight in the eye and lie to her face a limited number of times. “I am one hundred percent that everything is gonna work out.”
I have not reached that limit yet. Unfortunately it seems like OC is only geared to put up with so much of my bullshit. “Stop lying to me, Uncle! She is clearly not alright! You can’t tell me that’s normal!”
“Yes I can.” Okay, at this point I am committed to this lie. “Last week we tried to roll two eldritch entities, this week Gloomy’s channeling bizarre eldritch energy into a sick freestyle beat-poet rhythm. Given all the shoggoth in the sewers, is this even really that surprising?”
“Okay, I guess” I have successfully distracted OC from my marefriend casually unraveling the edges of reality. My lying ways are justified. “Should we do anything?”
“Naw, we gotta let this play out.” I break character and tell her the truth. “You do not wanna disturb her mid jinx.”
“Um… should we just wait here?” OC is great about asking the questions that matter. “I mean, because this is kinda awkward…”
“Well, there’s a smoothie cart downstairs on the sidewalk…” It’s not that I’m not concerned, but I can be concerned while dunking my head in a delightful frozen beverage. Honestly I could use something stronger, but I’m not comfortable having OC buy me booze.
-=-=-=-=-
“Wait,” the pegasus running the smoothie cart asked in confusion, while onlookers filmed the exchange on their cell phones, “How come she can actually drink the smoothie, and you just kinda dunk your head in it? Do you drink via osmosis or something?”
“A fine question my good sir. You see, my companion is actually from a village of magical misfit toys. So they eat and drink like normal ponies.” The Rag Doll explained. “I, on the other hoof, am a magical animated construct. I don’t actually eat, drink, or breathe. But I can taste things that absorb into my fluff. Great smoothie by the way.”
“Actually my kingdom has been in contact with you guys for years. We just use anonymous social media accounts.” Ocellia enthusiastically waved her plushy fore limbs as she conversed with the pegasi filming. “I’m the first to take the journey to the surface in generations. I never would have made it without my Uncle Rag Doll! Oh, and somepony should really look into the oobleck problem in the sewers.”
“I told you OC, those were shoggoth, not oobleck!” Ragdoll flailed his noodly arms in protest. “Oobleck don’t have faces, and that was clearly some smiling ooze. Thus Shoggoth!”
-=-=-=-=-
If there is one thing I learned from this life it was how to recognize prey. That little bug is carrying my doll. Charlie is mine. Mine! This little insect has been crawling around with what’s mine! I could put an end to this any time I want to. The others may be afraid of her. But honestly I only see a tiny little bug, that’s grown weak, buried in the comforting shadows of the world I built for them. I actually feel for the little princess.
I feel contempt, that this is what my Shadow Hive has been reduced to. They are…literally smaller. I feel shame, I know this is my fault. I hid them. I buried them so they could survive. I have no right to judge her. But I still do. She calls the Ragdoll her uncle. I had an Uncle once. I wonder how seh will cope with beloved uncle being taken away? I was exactly what you are, little bug. I was small. I was innocent… ish… a long time ago. I’ve already been you at the end of the world. I’m watching it because I enjoy the show.
How do you think this would end, little bug? Did you think, all this time that I wouldn’t find out about you?
-=-=-=-=-
“Do you think I can’t see you?” It hurts that I have to ask. It hurts that she would even try to hide. It hurts worse that she got away with it for this long.
“Thank you for buying a smoothie.” And it ends exactly that awkwardly. I could take anything, everything. Any sling, any arrow… but there she is. And I wonder how long has she been watching?
I thought after all this time, I was ready for anything. Then there she is. And she sneaks in and walks away without a word of acknowledgement. I want to scream, but I don’t want to frighten OC. She’s making friends. In the end, we were just buying smoothies and hanging out on the sidewalk while Gloomy worked out her things.
“This is going out to all my under squeaks, upstairs and down. To my downstairs followers, Mom, I know you’re Vanessa32. Everypony who can read this knows, and I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t do this…” The lady-bug-plushy suddenly was engulfed in pink fire, and became a lady-bug-pony. “Magic is glitching. I can’t keep up with this lie anymore. To my upstairs followers, please know I never meant to trick you. But I did it anyway. Because you’ve always had friends out there that you didn’t even know to look for. This is me.”
-=- X Days Before Maretime Bay Day -=-
“You wanted to talk, so talk.” The little grey unicorn sat opposite to a cyan earth pony stallion.
“We seem to be at an impasse.” The nameless pony flashed an oily smile. “I can’t just grab you and be somewhere else because the ambush doesn’t happen yet. When the ambush does happen you just loop the narrative. Did you just loop causality just to have a safety meeting? Respect! You’re a very clever girl.”
“I’m a witch pony.” Gloomy said dispassionately. “My special talent has always been words and timing. My cutie mark was a jinx. If you could just grab me and run off, you would have done it back when we were walking up the mountain. I’m not afraid to meet with you because you are not a threat to me. This isn’t even the second loop.”
“Clever girl, indeed.” The stallion took a long draw from a very suspicious cigarette.
“I’m marginally glad you noticed.” The filly clopped her hooves in an ominous beat. “I gave you a chance to back out. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” The blue maned cyan changeling who no passerby seemed to notice chuckled as he took a chug from a dubious flask. “It doesn’t really matter what I want. Mr. Sunshine wants you. And I am in the unfortunate position of owing Mr. Sunshine a favor. Think of it as a job interview.”
“What are you willing to pay?” Gloomy stomped her beat through the mud the tempo had become since losing her cutie mark. “The dark marks the day. Have you already paid, for the bed where you’ve laid? And now you want me to meet with the sun?”
“Wow.” The dirt colored earth pony clapped with earnest enthusiasm. “I feel less bad about this. Nine dogs in hell, you might win. But there is one little issue…”
The rhythm paused, as if if the air had rushed out of the room, and the Queen’s shark like smile leered ear to ear as her tail tensed ready to strike. “I want my doll back. You have days to decide. I don’t know or care how many. Try again however many times you like, little pony.”
“You are so adorably serious.” The stallion who was suddenly there laughed out loud. “I remember what that was like…” He took a draw from an elaborate brass pipe. “Sometimes, I remember. How it felt to believe you had potential… it felt good. The truth, little filly, is you either ride on the train or you stand on the tracks.”
-=-Present Day, Present Time-=-
“You caught me.” The look on OC’s face is priceless as I flop up the stairs into the intruding horror’s waiting embrace. I know it’s wrong, and feel bad, but I do it anyway. It doesn’t matter that she threw me away. I am still her doll. I wish my button eyes could express more when I look at Gloomy. My girl just scowls as she lays down her sick beat. This was always coming. But this isn’t really my song, is it?
“Lay beside me.” The rouge queen runs her shark-like smiling teeth across my velvetine existence with a terrible gentleness. “Tell me what they’ve done”
I’m en-coiled in her tail… that venomous appendage ready to inject me with any emotion she wants at the moment. “Speak the words I wanna hear, to make my demons run.”
I am dangling in front of that maw. “The door is locked now. But it’s open if your true.” Did I ever really have a choice? “If you can understand the me, then I can understand the you.”
I never had power, only the illusion of power. These words were never my own, this was never my song. “New Foal joins this herd, and quickly she’s subdued. Through constant pain, disgrace, the filly learns their rules.”
Her song echos across my fluffy brain. “In time the foal draws in, this whipping post done wrong, Deprived of all her thought, the filly struggles on.”
I want the song to stop. I want a happy ending. That is not a thing in my power. “On and on she’s known, a vow unto her own. That never from this day, her will they’ll take away.”
“Come lay beside me.” The queen nuzzles me with an unspeakable innocence. “Under Wicked skies. Black of day, dark of night, we’ll share this pair of lies.”
She whispers the promise of sweet nothingness is my velvetine ear. “The door cracks open, but there’s no sun shining through.”
There is no joy in her laugh, “Black heart scarring darker still, but there’s no sun shining through.”
“What I’ve felt, what I’ve shown, never shined through what I’ve shown.” Did she always shine like that?
“Never me?” The words hit me like a fist to the skull I don’t have, and then the other half of me swings again. “Never Me, and I dub you Unforgiven.” It was always her place to judge me.
Gloomy has her attention now, at some point I’ve noticed that I can only see her through my captors eyes. “What I’ve felt, what I’ve known,” She sings her chorus in a husky reply. “Tune the pages, turned to stone!” My reprieve is brief, as her attention focuses on me once again. I fear it. I loathe it. I want it. I need it. I am her doll. “Will you be there, if I’m the one who waits for you?”
I can’t see her anymore. Just myself through her eyes. I can feel her eyelashes across my face. I can feel her warm breath, and the too-gentle caress of her needle-like teeth. I can fell her stinger against my back as she utters the entirely unveiled threat. “Or are you unforgiven too?”
There is no rescue. Every dream and every nightmare since I was thrown in that garbage heap is racing across my brain. And for the first time since magic came back, the world goes dark. And I’m just a doll again.
Magic crept in like a thief, and it left again like a thief who’d been caught. I never needed magic to lay down my Jinx. I didn’t need magic to find my cutie mark. The jinx quill. The feather pen. Ocellia can’t hold her form. She’s an awkward ladybug filly with a shell that’s just a little too big. The… thing that’s trying to steal Charlie is having a harder time. She’s only one creature. I’ve already seen through her.
“NO!!!! Talk to me! Not again! You don’t get to leave me again!” She can’t even hold any one form without magic. She’s like one creature pretending to be a crowd of ponies, but squeezed into a tube of toothe paste. I’m curious, what is she? I’m also curious, does she even know what she is? I could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
“He can’t hear you without magic.” I stop my rhythm. This isn’t a jinx. “He can’t see you without magic. But he can feel you shaking him right now. He felt every season and every storm on the rubbish heap you left him on for me to find. He can’t hear you, he can’t can’t see you, but he can still feel everything.”
I can feel the dramatic pacing. This only lasts just a moment in time. But time is a slave to the rythm, Like ryhme is the slave to the words.
“Make it stop!” She screams thrashing. “If I could then just maybe I would.” “Charlie doesn’t need magic and neither do I, You’d do best to back down while you can.”
Magic comes back like the distracting snap of a magician’s hooves. “You little bitch!” She snarls like I didn’t just see her. Suddenly she’s the threat she needs magic to be. When magic comes back she hears Charlie laugh. I heard him scream the whole time.
“I don’t care!” And she doesn’t care. The way only a child can fail to care. “Ocellia, that isn’t you’re Nopony!” “I don’t care!”
And like that, the rhythm takes the trade. Do I trade an evil queen for a princess? I can’t even hear him anymore. Just those button eyes. Always the only real questions. “What do you want?” “What will you pay?”
“I want Ocellia to have Ragdoll Charlie.” My control over the rhythm breaks. “I’m willing to give up my lifelong friend and mentor to pay for it.”
“How could you?!?!” The mad queen glitches in and out of existence.
“Did you ever love Charlie more than the moment you threw him away for me to find?” My question only draws angry sputtering, so I continue. “I don’t know your story, but I know enough to make a good guess. Tell me if it sounds familiar. A sad little filly is trapped in a place she doesn’t want to be. Then she finds a magical doll that says it can open a path to anywhere she wants to go? But then magic glitched, and she lost the connection. There were two last questions…”
“I wanted revenge… and I didn’t care what it cost.” The glitching shark tooth queen is smaller suddenly… and weeping openly. “It cost becoming what I hated most… for what it’s worth I didn’t leave him in a trash pile, I left him in a donation box.”
She tosses the doll over to the panicking ladybug, who hugs it like a lifeline as the glitches in magic built to a crescendo. This strange creature that doesn’t quite exist walks over and sits down, and for a moment we’re just two mares in the bodies of fillys watching a light show on the horizon.
“Man I bet that bitch up on the other mountain is throwing a party right now.” This seems like a fairly odd way to start a conversation. I non-verbally communicate this with my eyebrows. “Oh, it’s just this evil bitch who lives in a castle over that way. She has her own thing going on. We don’t like each other. She actually called me an evil bitch.”
Then it hits. Magic is suddenly like a washing machine spinning with everything on one side. Outside I hear ponies panicking. And she chooses this moment to say, “So, I kept you out of Maritime Bay until exactly right now, so I’m good with Mr. Sunshine. And hey, you passed my doll down to my greatest grand niece. She’s right to call him “Uncle” by the way. We were legally married at one point. Princess Cadance herself refused to officiate the ceremony. You gave me everything I ever wanted, why?”
“Jinx.” I smile as the deal closes. I’m a fully grown young mare. I am proud of my jinx-mark. My would-be rival disappears like a star at sunrise as magic comes rushing back into the world in full. For the first time since I was very small, I see colors again. I’m not gray at all.
-=-=-=- Ragdoll Book Two: The Ladybug -=-=-=- -=-=-Prologue-=-=-
“Uncle, we don’t have anywhere to live!” She’s adorable. She’s everything to me. “We’re basically homeless!”
“It took days to get above ground, little bug.” My smile is supportive… or not… it’s kinda of sewn onto my face. “This isn’t even the second time I’ve seen you sleep outside.”
“This is different, Uncle! The sky is right there!” Of course that scares her. It’s not that we don’t have a place. The sky is an alien thing that hangs over her.
It breaks my heart, because she’s being punished for doing the right thing. She returned the doll. Of all the paths I could have opened for her, she chose the one way path that returned me to Gloomy Sonnet. I can support her, I can advise her, but I can’t open a path for her without striking a deal. And we both know the steep costs of dealing directly with the narrative. We’ve both seen the best and worst of the people who’ve carried me. Because that happened yesterday. And then Gloomy just left. And I’m kinda proud of her for that.
“Uncle, we don’t have any money! We don’t have a place to sleep! I’m hungry, and I’m tired!” I’m drawn out of my introspection by her very real needs and wants. A teenager is still a child.
“Right.” I only have one loyalty, and that is my loyalty to my bearer. This isn’t an excuse, this is simply an overriding law. “I need you to disguise as a unicorn toddler… let's say some combination of pink and orange. Then we’re gonna run over that street cart, grab all the snack cakes we can carry, and you run off laughing into that alley off to the left.”
“Uncle! That’s robbery!” I expected this, she’s a good filly. Unfortunately she’s also a hungry filly.
“That’s why laughing is important, if a laughing toddler does it, it’s just a prank.” I explain very rationally.
“Stealing is wrong, Uncle!” I admire her principles. I won’t lie to her.
“Yes, it is. And so is trespassing, but you need food and a place to sleep.” I won’t sugar coat it, she deserves to know the truth. “And I promise that when you wake up tomorrow, We’re going to work to make it so we don’t have to do this, but tonight you have to eat, and you need a place to sleep. So we are going to rob a food cart, and break into a warehouse.”
“But Uncle, what if we get caught?” The filly asks a legitimate question. I owe her an honest answer to this.
“Then we will have a place to stay and I’m pretty sure they’ll feed you. Either way the immediate problems are solved…”
-=-=-=-=-
“Wow! These apple cakes are delicious!” The lady bug pony proclaimed joyously as she stuffed another into her mouth whole.
“OC, if you eat all those apple cakes, you gonna get a wicked bad tummy ache!” The doll chuckled from his corner of the vacant warehouse.
“Buck you! I’ma eat ALL these apple cakes!” The filly rolled into a semi closed ball kicking her six stubby legs in mirth.
“Wait minute!” The doll wobbled, as it spoke. “Have you been drinking? Is that why this is only a four pack of beer?”
“I only drank one!” The insectile filly rolled her compound eyes.
“It comes in six packs.” The doll crossed his arms in his best attempt to look stern,
“That’s how math works uncle.” The filly staggered about. “What’s the big deal, anyway? I already stole the beer, why shouldn’t I be allowed to drink two beers? I’m not a foal. Besides, you literally bathe in alcohol, I’ve seen you do it.”
“You’re a young adolescent whose the size of a small pony foal.” Ragdoll glared at the underling filly as best as his limited ranged of facial expression allowed. “Where as I am a grown ass cursed magical construct with no physiology to speak of whatsoever. I didn't say anything about the beer before because I thought you just stole it for me... which is a pretty dubious defense now that I think about it. I'm only looking out for you, OC.”
“I’m kinda dizzy…” the ladybug spun around in a sad circle.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning.” Ragdoll heaved a sigh and a yawn. “Tyrek’s flabby flank, yer mom is going to kill me.”
“Do you like my mom, Uncle?” Ocellia asked absently with a yawn.
“Your mom is an eldritch abomination that terrifies me.” The doll grunted.
“I just met your ex-mare friend… like, yesterday…”
“Hey Alphabittle… Call me back when you get this. I don’t know if you’ve talked to Gloomy yet, but… things happened. She left a couple of days ago for Maritime bay, Pegasoft dropped our contract, and I was kinda hoping I could get my old job back… oh, hell, of course she’s gonna want her old job back… nevermind. That would be weird for both of us working together everyday. Can I borrow some bits? Just until I can find a job that a doll owned by a shapeshifting teenage bug-pony is qualified for. Don’t judge, dude. When me and Gloomy made it weird, we made it weird. Gloomy can explain more when you talk to her. Thanks, Alpha. Later.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Steve… tell mom I’m fine and I’ll call her soon, things are just complicated right now. DON’T let Frank try to come up after me. The way is blocked. There’s some sort of smiling ooze in the sewer layer, we haven’t settled on a name for it yet. Also don’t tell Frank he was right, the whole ‘Kingdom of Magical Toys’ cover story was a dumb idea. It fell apart immediately. So anyway, I’m fine, I’ll call mom, I can’t get back down there, and you can’t get up here.”
“So much has happened since the magic glitches, and that literally just happened. Uncle (that’s what I’m calling Rag Doll) says that magic is way more stable now, and I can prolly do some new tricks with my disguises. I still can’t change size though, which makes fitting in kinda hard, since I can only realistically disguise as very young pony foals. I can hold a disguise even in my sleep now, though. I can look like whatever I want to look like. You should try it! The point is, don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m just being your super awesome little sister up here reuniting our hive with the surface. I miss you bro. And make sure to tell Frank that I miss him too. The surface is scary and amazing and the only thing that would make it better would be if my big brothers could be here with me.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Ladybug… it’s your mother. I want you to know how very proud of you I am. Call me as soon as your ready. I’m not mad at you, I am also less mad than I should be at your ‘Uncle’. Take care and keep being the most amazing thing I ever made! Don’t look at me like that Frank! Your sister needs extra support right now!”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Hey David, what’s up? You prolly at work. It’s Rag Doll, just checking in. Damn, that magic glitch played hell with me. I mean, I’m like 95% powered by magic. So I was basically in a sensory deprivation chamber the whole time. But I’ve heard things, and stuff. Gloomy’s transformation was kinda just… unwound? And then her color saturated, she became an adult again, she got her cutie mark, and then she just gave me to OC and left. Because that happened.”
“What I was calling to check on was if your transformation stuck, you know because of the medical reasons? Let me know what’s up. You can reach me through OC’s number. If you see Gloomy tell her… tell her how great she is. She deserves that.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Ocelia Diane Pastel! You will call me back! I am your older brother and you must give me respect! Do you have enough to eat? Are the ponies picking on you? I made it as far as the Pegapossum nests. I’m supposed to be the oldest brother. What use am I if my little sister runs away past where I can protect her? I am worried for your well being. I was right to be worried! Take care of yourself.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
“Hey… sis… so I immediately told Mom and Frank everything. I’m really sorry, but what do you want me to do? Okay obviously you wanted me to do that thing that you said you wanted me to do. But you don’t have anything to hide from. You’re the Crowned Princess of Cuddle Muffins. You are never, never coming back to the hive. You are going to bring the hive to you. Still, sorry, but I kinda had to tell mom. She was worried. You just keep being great.”
“So…” Here it comes. I don’t know what she’s going to say, but nothing a teenager says that starts that way is anything I want to talk about. “You and the First Queen of the Underhive? Like, you were a couple?”
See, that. Exactly that. “Yes. I broke her out of tartarus this one time and over the years things got weird. If I remember right there was also a lot of murder. It turned out she was in tartarus for a reason. Can we not talk about my ex, and just be glad we’re off her murder list?”
“I mean this is a pretty big deal, Uncle!” Tirek’s flabby flank, it turns out we can’t just not talk about this. “This answers so many questions about my hives history, and it brings up so many more! Why is she pretending to be the No Pony? He’s like basically the most evil thing in our history.”
“I don’t know, I was in sensory deprivation for what I’m assuming was a thousand moons when that happened. Also she’s kinda violently insane. I think I mentioned all the murder? Girl really used to like her some murder… TAKE A PICTURE!” Stupid ponies staring at two walking plush toys having a perfectly normal conversation about my serial mass murdering ex mare-friend. “We’re trying to have a private conversation on a public sidewalk here!”
“Can’t you use your powers to take me home, Uncle?” Dammit, I knew this was coming.
“This isn’t on you. And somehow it's still all on you.” I can see the last pieces falling into place in her head. “There were time loops. I skipped as much as I could so you didn’t have to see what could have happened. Gods, this is hard. Gloomy carried me for twenty years. I had time to teach her the rules. I can’t take you places anymore. That’s the first rule.”
“I’m not okay with this Uncle! The sky is right there!” I can’t protect her from the sky.
“We both know what lives below, OC.” I can’t protect her from that either. “I was only able to get you past the smooze the first time by opening a path. I can only make that kind of deal once.”
“I thought the legends said you could give a creature anything they want, though?” Celestia’s great white plot device, I’m being rules lawyered by a teenager.
“Technically I can make anything happen… if the creature asking is willing to pay the cost.” I sometimes wonder how I sigh when I don’t actually breathe.
“So take me home! I’ll pay whatever it it costs!” If I had a heart, it would skip a beat.
“This is exactly why I never asked you what you wanted.” I might be yelling and flailing a little bit. To their credit, ponies actually are taking pictures now. I won’t begrudge it, it’s a full on doll fight on a public sidewalk. “There are rules. You picked me up and I opened the path to where you wanted to go. That was a one time thing. That’s not to say I won’t cut deals between other ponies and the text on your behalf. I have the final say in those kinds of deals though, and where you’re concerned the answer is always ‘no’.”
“So, you’re never going to take me home?” There’s a quiver in her voice that stabs me deep in the fluff.
“I can’t open another path.” I wish I could. I wish I could afford to tell her that. But I’m teaching a child to use a dangerous magical artifact. She can’t think she could use emotional leverage to push or pull me. “That doesn’t mean I won’t help you get home. I just won’t make deals directly with the text for you… directly. So long as you can see me, you have control of whether or not I can make a deal with any other creature. Gloomy used her last deal to specifically say I’m your doll, so unless you deliberately discard me or give me away yourself, I can’t be lost or taken from you. The narrative won’t allow it.”
“And if you get lost…” The wheels that turn in her head grind any heart I ever had between them. “You’ll just arrange deals with other creatures to make them carry you back to me?”
“Yes.” Whoever said confession is good for the soul can go buck a thorn bush. “Exactly like I used you to carry me back to Gloomy. I’m considered ‘cursed’ for a reason.”
“You!” She’s suddenly accosting one of the ponies that is filming us for their social media. “What do you want most in the world? In the whole wide world?”
I admire her straightforward style. We’re gonna see how this works. I don’t have a voice. The poor stallion reads the words that his world is made of. “What do you want?”
“I…I…” The poor frightened steed runs in circles, trying to comprehend what is happening. OC is horrified. As she should be. She can’t see what he sees, but she sees that it’s frightening him. “I just want Petal Breaze to like me?”
“What are you willing to pay?” He stops being a pony, and he turns into words. Unicorn. Green. Stallion. Rose Thorn. Gardener. Likes Pegasus, Petal Breeze. He can see that.
“What do you want?” There’s the desperation of a creature that doesn’t really know the value of what they want. What I want is irrelevant.
“You have to take in Princess Ladybug Pastel. You have to give her shelter, give her food. Protect her. If you do that, Petal Breaze will like you. If you walk away from the deal, I can promise she will never look back.”
“I don’t feel good about this…” As well she should not.
“Neither do I OC. We do what we gotta do, though.”
“He told you I couldn’t take him away, didn’t he, Ladybug?” The impossible thing shifted in her perception. “He’s such a liar!”
“I don’t see what you're missing.” The foul, traitorous queen mocked the Ladybug. “Do you really need a voice to tell you when to steal?”
“You’re supposed to be a hero!” The Ladybug sobed.
“Maybe you should have studied more!” The undercity burned and collapsed at the same time. “I was a little filly once too, and that’s my doll you’re playing with!”
“Please… I just wanted to see the sky!” The little filly curled into a ball.
“And the sky’s right there!” A horrible image of a glorious smiling sun appeared, as if the sky itself had been replaced with a motivational poster. “Is it everything you hoped and feared it would be?”
-=-=-=-=-
“OC…” She’s kicking again. “OC, back left leg… my head… It’s okay… just uncurl a little. Okay, just let me get my head out… Thanks girl. Oh… hello you?”
Does it make it worse that I don’t know this ponies name? I’m already emotionally blackmailing into putting us up for as long as he wants this mare to like him. Of course he asks a stupid question. “Is she okay?”
“Oh sure, she’s just a displaced homeless teenager, sleeping in a stranger’s house.” I feel like my tone is measured.
“Look, she's perfectly safe, I’m just…” It’s time to cut him off.
“You took a shady deal from a homeless teenager wielding and a cursed magical artifact.” I wish could sneer, if I could sneer I would be sneering now. “She’s safe because I hold your contract. You were watching her sleep. This won’t happen again.”
“It’s not like that. S e was cr ng i h r s ep, I w s w ried…”
“I can also erase the words. This. Won’t. Happen. Again.” I hope he gets the message. OC’s not ready for that life lesson just yet.
“She’s really going to like me? Right? Like she’ll like me for me? Not because you jinxed her to?” Wow, this stallion is as late as you can get for a train. “I mean it’s not real if she doesn’t really like me, you know?”
“You’ve been to the Tea Room. I picked you because I recognized you.” I tell a brazen lie. “Now shut up. OC needs her sleep. You’re from Bridlewood, so you already knew I’d keep the deal. If you wanted to be natural, you never would have made a deal with us.”
“When you made deals in the tea room a pony had to sacrifice a bowl full of ale.” Dammit, Josh is gonna do this! That’s his name now, he is Josh, and he’s gonna rules lawyer.
“And now you also have to buy me beer.” Am I not merciful? “I was gonna let that slide because I already have to deal with guilt from dragging OC up here. But no, now you also owe me beer!”
-=-=-=-=-
“What do you want?” I want the nightmare to end. It’s my fault for going back to sleep.
She’s the perfect invert pallet of fuschia and red. She’s everything I ever wanted. “I want a world where you can’t hurt yourself.”
I don’t want to finish the deal. I don’t have a voice. It’s only words. “What are you willing to pay?”
“Everything.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Thank you for letting us stay at your apartment, mister Thorn.” Ocellia beamed at the half awake unicorn.
“You should go to the coffee shop and tell Petal what happened last night. I mean obviously not the part where you made a deal with a cursed magical artifact to win her affections, but the part where you like her and you now have odd roomates so she doesn’t freak out.” The Ragdoll rolled a plushy hoof.
“I can tell you’re a good pony!” The ladybug gushed. “I bet she would have liked you anyway!”
“Uh… yeah I’ll do that on my way to work.” The green unicorn nodded nervously. “Make yourselves at home? There’s food in the fridge… Can you reach the counter Miss Occelia?”
“Please!” The belligerent ragdoll huffed. “I can reach the counter… What? I have mad noodle parcour!”
“It’s true, Uncle is like a mad noodle ninja since magic’s back full force!” Ocellia nodded sagely.
“Heh, heh,” Rose Thorn chuckled nervously. “Well you kids don’t destroy the apartment.” “I was older than you before I became a cursed magical artifact, Rosie!” Ragdoll vocally sneered. “I already looked in the fridge… Wine coolers, really?”
“They’re light and refreshing!” The gardener argued. “ I work outdoors! I don’t like to feel too full when I drink!”
“It’s okay Mr. Thorn.” The ladybug plushy smiled brightly. “No one is judging you.”
“I am definitely judging you.” The doll shook his head condescendingly.
-=-=-=-=-=-
“I’m not okay with taking advantage of Mr. Rose Thorn, Uncle! He’s a nice pony!” OC is ranting furiously, and if I’m going to be honest with myself I saw this coming.
“Have you been in his room? Because I was flopping around last night and took a peak.” I hop down from her carapace and proceed to flounce towards the room in question.
“That is a gross violation of basic privacy!” I expected this. That’s why Rosie conveniently forgot to lock his door and also leave it ajar. I’m steadier on my noodle limbs now, but door handles remain my nemesis. And if I open the door, then she’s not the one who broke into his room.
“You know you’re gonna look.” I push the door open, already knowing what’s in there. OC’s gasp tells me she was not expecting this at all.
The wall is a web of photos, sketches, sticky notes thumb tacks and yarn. I can hear OC scuttling behind me. The fear in her voice would make me wince if I could. “Some of those pictures are of me!”
“You, me, Gloomy, some part time alicorn named Sunny Starscout, the sheriff of Maretime Bay and his pet dragon… I will admit I’m impressed with the stones on this little pony for that last one.” Yes I am noodle hugging myself while chuckling. “He’s some kinda ‘weird-magic’ nerd. Woah, check this one out! He’s got the newspaper article about the end of world party me and Gloomy threw when Alphabittle left us in charge of the tea room! That was the night I learned I could get drunk if I soaked in booze! Also magic came back. That was a glorious night.”
“Petal… we need to talk.” The grass green unicorn flinched as he spoke to the sky blue pegasus guardsmare.
“I’ll say!” The teal guard’ mare nodded merrily. “I’ve been watching the security footage for the robberies the night before last… every one of those fillies was carrying the same doll! That same doll you followed here from Bridlewood…”
“They are both at my apartment right now…” Rose Thorn shuffled his hooves nervously in the coffee shop.
“What did you do, Rosie?” Anger and concern argued across the guard’s face.
“I made a deal with the Ragdoll.” The unicorn cloped his hoofs nervously. “I thought it would be safe if I asked for something I already had. The doll showed me how it sees the world.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Look quick in the mirror.” She mocks me. Sickly inverted green fortelling what I always knew was going to happen. It’s my fault for staying up so late. It’s my fault for going to sleep. It’s my fault for having a dream. “For the bounce and spark of the butt you’ve thrown.”
“Don’t turn around,” the cancer ridden mare pleads on her death bed. “You’re a long way from home.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Just breathe Rosie.” The concerned guard placed a wing over her friend’s back. “You’re having a panic attack.”
“It counts me telling you as a betrayal.” The unicorn sobbed, attempting to regain his composure. “It’s just like I theorized, Petal. It’s just like in the classic stories. I know I’m compromised. The Old Magic is dangerous, but this is the closest we are going to ever get to it on any kinda good terms. Trust me. Call the others. We need to move in, we need to make friends.”
-=-=-=-=-
“You want this fight.” The skeleton kid grins, because of course he does. He’s right.
“So swing on me.” I want this.
“Why?” He laughs. This is funny to him. “Why would I swing on someone who never once took a swing?”
“You’re a monster!” It doesn’t matter what I want.
“It’s not my fault you thought the story was about you.” The skeleton boy tells me the truth I should have known. I always had the choice to do wrong.
-=-=-=-=-
“It’s okay Rosie… I’m here for you.” Petal Breeze comforted her friend. “There’s nothing that can ever take me away from you.”
“Every word you said, it can unwrite.” The stallion… I… said?
“You say I don’t understand, but at least I know it.” She means it. This was always there. “Do you see yourself in me and hide away in fright?”
I’m only loyal to one creature. And now so are you.
“Sorry, the doll gets in my head now.” Rose Thorn shook his head hard. “I have to protect the changeling, she is a good kid. She’s in a bad spot.”
“And that doll has your brain in a vise!” The teal pegasus scraped her foot across the coffee shop’s tiled floor. “We were never a threat to her… and we are never going to be a threat to her. A changeling has tried to make contact in friendship. I have royal authority to make that declaration. Your only official duty is to honor your contract.” She went on in a husky whisper. “That was stupid. You’re lucky I had your six.”
-=-=-=-=-
“You gotta buck the tree, girl.” I could see it through Gloomy’s eyes. “That tree is chock full of acorns.”
“Squirrels are making nests in that tree through, Mr Charlie!” More of a memory than a dream. It’s a win because I still remember her.
“It’s a long way back to Bridlewood. If you can’t take food, how are you going to take shelter?” She cried the whole time she ate the acorns. She cried harder over the family of foxes. She needed a place to sleep. As much as I hate that… I just hate that.
“Uncle, he’s back.” I’m drawn back to the present by OC’s unusually stern voice. She’s not taking this well.
I turn my vision back outward and my button eye’s one Mr. Rose Thorn. “Poor little OC thought she’s picked you at random, Mr. Thorn. Notice how I’m using your real name? You should notice that.”
“Why do you have pictures of me tacked up on the wall in your room, Mr. Thorn? I thought you were a nice pony, not some kind of creeper!” She drops her plushy form in a wash of fiery pink underling magic. This pony needs to understand that we’re not playing around here.
“It’s not what you think!” I can’t suppress an evil chuckle as he prances in place. “I’m with a group of ponies that’s trying to study unusual manifestations of magic. We only want to help ponies and other magical creatures readjust to the new magical normal.”
“You lied to me Mr. Thorn!” And damn, she did inherit some of her mom’s aura of menace. It turns out if she flare’s her elytra she is twice as big and regal as nine hells. She’s still only ⅔ the size of a pony. Which is prolly why this little green unicorn isn’t shedding liquid shame right now.
“I swear I wasn’t even following you! I was following Gloomy Sonnet and her doll… though I guess it’s ‘Onyx’ now… she has a jazz band…” Huh… Onyx. Always knew she was about all that jazz.
“ The guard is coming, OC.” I position myself in the crux of her withers to… do what I do? Word? Is that a verb?
“It’s okay!” Rose fails to convince us like he’s failed at so many things. “We really are here to help!”
“You better be!” We are of one voice in this.
“This could end very badly for Mr. Rose, Uncle.” It’s a blizzard against an expected summer day. A cold finality that tells me she’s had enough lies. It’s a voice that applies as much to me. Her voice chills my soul. “How do we get out if this goes wrong?”
“We could maybe get back past the smooze off screen again while it’s busy with him.” I try to nuzzle reassuringly. It’s hard to find nuzzle spots when she’s all flared out. There are no secrets between friends and dolls, Rose Thorn might not make it. “He can and will carry us past his best friend if necessary.”
“You don’t have to do this!” I can hear the desperation. I can taste it on OC’s forked tongue. Girl doesn’t even know she feeds on emotion. He’s doing a funny dance. That’s priceless. “We want to help you!”
“You better. You made the deal. You tried to play us. And do not think I won’t use you to cross a river of smiling ooze.” Perched on her head, flailing as I make demands. Rose thought he could sneak up on my little filly. He thought he could play a deal with me off of her? I never told the truth, so how the hell could I tell a lie?
“I know for a fact that Uncle is telling you the truth Mr. Thorn. I know first hoof. Just like you should have told me the truth.” OC steps back and looks away. She really does know, because I’m the one who taught her. I understand why Gloomy gave me away. It hurt at first that it made her so happy to abandon me. But I understand at this moment that she just didn’t need me anymore.
“When the guards burst in, ask the mare in charge this exact question...”
-=-Maretime Bay Day-=-
“You remind me of my mom… in the least weird way you could take that… heh…” The dragonfly chuckled.
The unicorn watched the rainbows melt across the sky. “Is it sad that this isn’t my first rainbow rodeo?”
“Not even my second. I’ve got a saxophone, a trombone, and what I assume is a Hurdy Gurdy. Pick one.” The queen grinned and placed a hoof over the unicorns whithers. “They’re all cursed. I just assume you’re okay with that.”
“You assume I’m your friend like it’s true.” The unicorn smiled brightly. “Or even relevant.”
“All you have to do is choose your name.” The dragonfly leaned in, dragging her stinger down the unicorn’s spine. “No one can ever name you in the shadow hive. And you’re not gloomy at all…”
-=-Present Day, Present time-=-
The sky blue pegasus rushed in rather foolishly. Do you see what I did?
I don’t understand what I did wrong. A filly screams. “Uncle stop! You’re hurting him.”
She was teal. Not blue, always teal.
“Back up, Petal. It thinks we’re threatening its bearer.” It’s not just words, it’s the symbols that sounds are made of. The world is made of words. Every word is a symbol for something I only knew second hand.
-=-=-=-=-
“What do you want?” She delivers her line like a pro. And damn, she’s having fun with this. I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have listened to her mom about striking these kinds of deals. She’s all flared out and majestic bug-pony-proto-queen. I have to handle this carefully.
“You should back down.” I look at the pegasus mare eyes to buttons. “Put the bunny back in the box. Or don’t. Protecting you from her isn’t a thing I’m obligated to do.”
“Please! We only want to help you!” Is exactly what I’d say if I were in her, I have to say well hooficured, hooves. She’s backing up and clearly terrified.
“Nuh, uh, uh! You’re fibbing, fibbing, fibbing!” And she just stands up on her hind four legs and crosses her front two hooves. Which is exactly as awkward to adjust to when riding off the back of her head as it sounds. It is not easy to do this when she’s all flared out like this. “I’ve seen your colt friend’s little ‘mystery shrine’. You’ve been watching me since the first time I saw the sky!”
-=-Maretime Bay Day-=-
“Rainbows are exploding across the sky.” The dragonfly just laughed. “And you’re just going to ditch? Like, you’re just gonna ghost everything, leave Charlie with the hotel bill, and go home to play the smooth jazz? Respect!”
“If it was that easy you would have given him away yourself.” The oversaturated gray mare smirked knowingly, tapping her hoof on the balcony. I don’t need the ragdoll to carry me anymore. And they don’t need me to carry them”
-=-=-=-=-
Were her teeth always that sharp? “You wanted more than to help me. It costs what your friend already signed up for. We can take as easily as we can give.”
She remains steadfastly Teal as she dives to snatch the doll from the angry filly’s withers. I try to warn her but my cries melt into text against the abyss.The doll's words reach her the moment her hooves touch it.
“I’m already right where I want to be.” She sneers like she means it. She has all the confidence of a little pony that doesn’t know what she’s done.
“What do you want to take with you?” I can’t really smile. It’s, like physically impossible, I have the one facial expression. OC smiles for me. She’s great like that.
“I’m taking you in as a magical menace!” It is just so great to see the light of justice in a pony’s eyes.
“Taking him where?” OC can’t hold a straight face and actually giggles. “You’re already right here, where you said you wanted to be.”
“Miss, we’re trying to help you!” She’s really going all in on this. “The Radoll is…”
“Mine!” I feel the air leave my fluff as her sneer turns into a snarl. “I tried to be nice, I tried to be cuddly. Maybe that’s why you thought you could just snatch away my doll! I came here to make friends! And you lied to me and tried to steal my doll!”
“You are going to put me down.” The decisively sky blue pegasus does what she was always going to do, and I scramble back to OC. She’s sky blue now, Rosie. Deal with it. “It’s alright girl. You're in contro, you are always in controll.”
“It’s not alright, Uncle!” The break in her voice is a schism across my existence. “The surface wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“We weren’t watching you, miss.” Rosie continues to fail to make things better. “We were watching the doll.”
“You’re from Bridlewood Mr. Rose Thorn.” OC’s vexxed, hell she’s angry. We are in harmony in this. “How long were you watching Gloomy Sonnet, taking pictures of her doll? Don’t forget I already know.”
“I’m not a thing you can steal, Officer Petal.” I only wish I could smile. For real smile. “Your colt friend needs to answer that question. How long has he been following the fillies that carried me?”
“Our database goes back maybe 10 years.” The mare steps back and heaves a sigh. “Rose has the oldest records because Bridlewood… specifically Izzy Moonbow received the first inter tribe contact… officially…”
“Officially?” If I had expressive eyebrows I would raise them. “Side note, OC, at some point we need to trick or coerce somepony into asking to give me facial expressions. Honestly, I can’t believe I just thought of that.”
“Focus Uncle!” She’s fluttering in agitation. Which actually makes it harder to focus. But she picks up what I’m laying down. “What do you mean ‘officially’?”
“The wrathful traders.” Well that's a new voice. I wait for OC to turn to face the newcomer. An earth pony with funny bumps on her head. And her eyes don’t focus. And my sins crawl down my spine and something is wrong. “They are strangers. Friends? Maybe. But she neither knows nor trusts the doll. Nor does the doll know nor trust her.”
“I don’t know you.” Is a statement of fact I state quite factually at the new mare.
“You don’t know him.” Wait… who is she talking to?
“I can teach you how to use the doll.” She speaks it like an offer. This is what she wants?
“If you betray me…” I have no say, this is their deal. The price is implied.
“None of us want to move against you, You’re Highness.” I swear she almost looks like a goat. And she matches my button eyes stare for sightless stare. This feels like it should be familiar. I feel an implied threat holding back anything I might say. “But unlike my friends, I actually can move against you.”
“We really do just want to help, your highness.” Rose shuffles like a sad pony towards OC. That should be illegal. It is totally coersion. “I’m sorry I misled you, but you’re involved with some very dangerous magic. And not just the Rag Doll.”
“I probably know more about Uncle than any of you!” And she is on her hind legs looking that little pony in the eye… almost. I’m just kinda holding on for dear life. That mare’s card holds me in a position of mute narrator. And OC has her teenage dander up. “Our libraries are made of the books the over-city buried!”
“And yet it is still just stories about stories, isn’t it, your highness?” Her smile sends chills through my very fluff. She’s looking straight at me and talking right past me. “Because that’s what you find in books, stories. Real history is found in the artifacts of the past. Perhaps we need a new perspective.”
-=-=-=-=-
“The hell did you just do?” Ragdoll nearly fell from his perch in shock.
“Ragdoll Charlie is only one of five artifacts that stories claimed could manipulate the universal narrative. It is a powerful and dangerous totem, but in truth it is perhaps the weakest of the five, both because of the steep price it extracts for using it’s power, and because it actually has little control over the beings who control the universal narrative itself. Essentially, it can ask the universe nicely to do what you want.” The cloven hooved earth pony turned her unfocused gaze on the rag doll. Before focusing once more on his barrer. “The greatest artifacts were lost. The original three books of words. The Book of The Too Kind Prince, The Book of the Vagabond, and The Book of the Unspoken. These books were journals written by ponies and creatures who had touched or been touched by the universal narrative and the beings who sculpt it. All of our ‘classic’ stories are based on these three books.”
“I can count to five, even dead drunk.” The Ragdoll climbed to the peak of the Ladybug’s mane. “You’ve counted four. So you figure this trump card of yours is the fifth?”
“It’s not just one card, Ragdoll Charlie.” The cloven earth pony flashed a cold smile. “I hold the Deck of Perdition. The cards that can force the hand of fate. I play my cards close. They are considered almost as cursed as you are. But make no mistake, I hold ALL the cards. Don’t push me.
At the cloven earth ponies hooves lay a tarot card. On it’s face a smiling ragdoll rode on the back of a laughing plush ladybug through a hall of mirrors. In the left reflection, a six-legged pony-like insect with lady bug markings leaned against a plate glass window watching ponies she was forever separated from with sad compound eyes. In the right reflection a gaunt, wiry, male human sat in a quilt work padded room wearing only a hospital gown. His mouth was sown shut into a permanently cheerful grin, and his eye’s expressed panic and terror. Beneath the image the text “The Wrathful Traders” in an inappropriate comic sans font.
Ocellia looked intently at the card, her head cocked to the side. “That card. It’s doing something to Uncle.”
“It exploits the existing mistrust between you.” The mare explained with a cool air of calm. “It also reveals the reason for the distrust. You are literally strangers. Ragdoll Charlie is absolutely loyal to its bearer. It literally cannot act against what it perceives as your self interest. It’s also sentient and absolutely amoral concerning anyone outside of its bearer. It’s not evil per se, or even at all. But, it is a dangerous artifact and you are right to be wary of it. And right now it is in the thrall of a lost frightened child, and I promise your doll is terrified.”
“Who are you ponies?” Ragdoll cocked his head suspiciously. “And how do you know so much about me?”
“Before Equestrian magic was sealed away, there was an organization of ponies that tracked and reigned in dangerous magic, Ragdoll Charlie.” The mare moved in closer, causing Ocellia to shrink back and Ragdoll to take a more aggressive position, leaning around his bearer’s head. “When the tribes split, so did their organization. As the tribes began to self censor their history, the original agents and their families held on to as many records as they could. These documents… these stories about stories were passed down through families and over time much was lost. For generations our leaders communicated in secret.”
“You already knew she was coming.” The doll shuffled aggressively.
“Who do you think keeps the Undernet connected from our side?” Officer Petal fairly snarled at the doll. We had a plan. One that didn’t involve Princess Ocelia going on a crime spree and sleeping drunk in a warehouse.”
“Okay, I’ll admit some of that is kinda my fault.” The doll shrunk back sheepishly.
“Stand down.” The cloven mare spoke plainly, before turning her clouded gaze to Ocellia. “I’m Jenny Baphomet, Interim Director of Magical Threats for Canterlogic. You’ve obviously met Detective Petal Breaze from Zephyre Heights, and Private Investigator Rose Thorn from Bridlewood. I apologize, and I promise this is not how anyone wanted this meeting to happen.``
“We’re trying to protect you.” Rose Thorn explained,shuffling in place. “The doll used you to get back to Gloomy Sonnet.”
“You’re right, Uncle used me.” The Ladybug fought back a sob, before her eyes turned almost literally into knives. “And he’ll do it again. But he’s my doll now.”
“That is the intrinsically corrupting curse of Ragdoll Charlie.” Jenny nodded solemnly. “You’ve seen what it can do serving another. How could you not want use it? We could trust Gloomy Sonnet to hold the doll’s reigns. She took on the doll at its weakest. She had time to learn. Please listen. You are a child with a loaded weapon that knows it’s a weapon. This is why my cards are considered less cursed. My cards do not care what I want or need.”
“You don’t understand!” The Ladybug shouted. “Uncle does care about me!”
“The doll used you at the drop of pin to return to Miss Sonnet. It transferred that loyalty with a wish.” Rose Thorn stamped his hoof. “We’re not trying to stop you.”
“Can they stop me, Uncle?” The little princess dissolved into a foal-sized lady bug plushy in a flash of pink flames.
“No.”
-=-=-=-=-
I own two of them. Safely ignored.
The funny looking mare with the cards is still keeping me in this scene. Damn her but the nag is right. “They can’t stop you OC. If you want to walk out of here, we can walk away and we will walk over anything that gets in between here and away. We can leave anytime you want, and we can stay as long as you want.”
“I’m in control, then?” The doubt in her voice frays my stitching. “You’re not going to use me again?”
“I would never tell a lie that big. I am yours, and you are mine. We use each other.” I’ve heard some things about the truth. I hug against her smooth chitinous head as I whisper. “I am on your side. That is the only absolute, OC. I am not your pet or your servant. I am a sentient feral animal that is contractually obligated to be your friend. You can trust in that. I am your weapon, you are my mobility."
The weird nag reasserts her hold on the perspective.
-=-=-=-=-
“I don’t have any reason to trust any of you.” The Ladybug snarled.
“Don’t try to block her exit.” The Doll nodded his head rhythmically from his spot on her back. “I’m pretty sure I can get her out of here off camera, now. But you’d best be out of the path of least resistance if it comes to that. Don’t be rash, OC. We can leave anytime you want.”
“I don’t trust you either. This is what I wanted, Uncle.” Ocellia nodded her head and scuffed hoof. “I wanted to make contact. I’m not going to run away from what I already ran away to.”
“Well, one of us got us arrested.” I’m not being judgemental, I am just stating facts. “I’m honestly surprised it actually wasn’t me.”
“Relax Uncle. The petal mare can take you into custody any time she wants. You didn’t even ask me about that deal.” OC is enjoying this too much. “And we can leave anytime I want. I have single hoofed solved our ‘homeless’ problem.”
“You know I can hear you right?” The decidedly blue pegasus decides to chime in. How is suddenly being blue since you were born for the rest of your life working out for you? She bows up and for a moment I think she might do something incredibly stupid. “I’m right here!”
“I mean you’re not wrong… and staying with Rosie is right out. His conspiracy shrine is creepy, I don’t care how legit it is. He has pictures of one of my tea parties with Gloomy when she was like twelve…” I’m kinda hanging off her head like a hat. Actually being used to riding on a hat, I kinda feel like a giant. Playing hat amuses me.
“That was a weird picture.” She rises on her hind-most legs and flails her plushy four fore-legs awkwardly. That’s what I love about OC, she just comes out and says the out loud part quiet, with maximum flailing.
“Yeah… I feel the need to point out that I had no motor functions back then.” Because she’s right, that is a weird picture. Lil’ Gloomy was getting all smoochy. Rosie is on my permanent list. I don’t care that he was watching me and not her. That was a horrifically embarrassing moment between a filly and her doll that I am unfortunately too immortal to live down.
“Uncle believed he could use me. He’s an ALMIGHTY CURSED JINX DOLL!” Have you ever tried to cling to a shape-changing-insectoid-equine’s head when she decided to go full noodle arms. My parkour skills are sick. Not the most appropriate time to point that out, I know. “He’s SO sentient. And he’s SO dangerous. Ask him how using me turned out! If there’s any one thing Uncle ever told me that was true, it’s that I’m in charge.”
“I can promise you that it has not worked out very well for me!” As I cling to OC’s bare plushy head like my life probably does depend on it, I am desperate enough to tell the truth. “OC, please calm down. You’re kinda flinging me about and scaring the hell out of me right now…”
“You are afraid, Ocilia Ladybug.” Jenny waves her weird cloven hooves like she’s being placating in the uncanny valley “This is a natural state of being. You have just learned that you have always been watched. You are right to be afraid. You only know the first, shallowest layer from which you are being observed. There is much Ragdoll Charlie isn’t telling you.”
“My name isn’t Charlie.” Absolutely zero creatures who are allowed to call me that are present, but I’ve been putting up with it for quite awhile now. I am the paragon of patience.
“I apologize.” The goat colored nag has the nerve to try and kiss up to me. “You rarely featured in the classic myths. ‘Ragdoll Charlie’ is the only name we have for you.”
“‘Ragdoll Charlie’ is commonly what outsiders have called him, according to the stories of the underhive.” OC pulls me off her head and holds me out like we’re playing show and tell. “The Rag Doll doesn’t have a name. Our First Queen called him ‘Charlie’. No one knows why. I call him by the honorific title of ‘Uncle’, because he is a respected elder and it would be disrespectful to call him by a name I just made up.”
“We know him differently, you’re majesty.” The sky blue pegasus that better appreciate that she’s not a pink unicorn is making arm waves. I don’t care what she has to say.
“What do you supposedly ‘know’? I’ve seen your so called ‘history’.” I have to admit, with OC holding me up like this I can flail with all four limbs at a time, and I like it. “You’ve got a bunch of old stories from before magic shut down by some earth pony… maybe pegsus? You don’t know and I don’t, either! So by all means illuminate how well you know me.”
I’m somewhat surprised that it’s Rose Thorn that speaks first.
-=-=-=-=-
Twenty years ago, I was a rookie constable in Brindlewood whe a little filly wander off and got lost in the wilderness. We searched for three days, before everypony resigned themselves to the worst when we lost her trail at the chasm that separates Bridlewood from Zephyr heights. There was no known route across the gorge before Izzy’s Bridge, and to be honest we lost our nerve in sight of the pegasus city.
Two days later, little Gloomy Sonet simply wandered back into the village. She was frightened, haunted even, but neither malnourished, nor physically harmed in any way. We thought it was a miracle. After that, the then young owner of the Crystal Tea House took particular interest in both the filly and the tattered ragdoll she returned with.
Having been one of the ponies to lead the failed search, it always bothered me. How did this little slip of a filly survive five days in the wilderness and return no worse for wear than if she had simply had a lively camping night by the creek with her friends? What’s more, she claimed to have found the ragdoll at the base of the mountain. How did she cross the gorge? Twice?
After that, everypony just kinda assumed she talked to her doll to cope with the trauma of her ordeal. But I started noticing, none of us could hear it but her doll was talking right back to her. One minute you were talking to a filly, the next minute she was clearly repeating what a trusted adult told her to say… in response to that exact moment. She was a foal with an adult antena riding on her head listening to all the grown ups talking and telling her which parts to listen to. The classic myths were never popular in Bridlewood, Mr. Ragdoll. I have no idea what you supposedly did in some ancient legends. I only know you with respect to a lost unicorn filly twenty years ago.
It was around twenty years ago, and I was a rookie guard pony. I was investigating a series of thefts from the recycling bins of electronics stores in lower layers of the city. Everypony assumed it was some pony pulling a flim-flam with refurbished cell phones. I staked out the locations and found out the perps weren’t even ponies at all. It was just raccoonicorns raiding dumpsters. Well, we all got a laugh back at the station. Something bothered me though, why would raccoonicorns steal electronics? Just across the street was a dumpster full of pizza that was much easier to get to.
Even though the brass had officially closed the case I couldn’t let it go. So I tracked the mischievous critters, to be honest I thought it was some kind of unicorn infiltration. The racoonicorns were trading our discarded technology to the pegopposums who lived beneath the under city. In the course of my investigation I found a series of network lines leading deep below the Zephyr heights.
But it didn’t matter how much evidence I brought forward. My superiors dismissed my finding like it was a joke. “Sure, Petal, the Critters are stealing our wifi…” They’s laugh straight to my face. Then one day I saw the actual Royal Guard performing maintenance on the illicit network. And they saw me.
They offered me a choice, I could end my career in the city guard as a laughing stock, or I could join the Zephyr Heights S.M.I.L.E. Remnant, the Shadow Bolts. I had accidentally found my way into the house of secrets, and they welcomed me with open arms.
Everything I always thought I knew about magic was a lie. It was all an illusion, just a trick. It was a ruse to distract us from just how cut off from the world outside Equestria we really were. And nopony, no creature, no one at all even knew why.
It’s my job to know every secret the royal family wants kept. The trick to keeping a secret is knowing it. The Pipsqueak Underground are allowed to think that they are being very clever. Queen Haven maintains the network for same reason Queen Christine does. We spy on each other.
-=-=-=-=-
“I only know the Ragdoll from recent experience and what I’ve heard from Agent Rose Thorn.” And she stalked up on me that whole time. I am once again glad I have no bladder functions to lose control of. She actually pulled an off camera creep-up on me. “He is a criminal, as well as a dangerous magical artifact.”
“Fair enough.” Gotta just give a noodle shrug and wish I had more than one facial expression for that. “We are just having all the first person exposition that’s not me today. Okay, OC, I guess it’s your turn, this is what I get for asking these kinds of questions. Everyone just gets a flashback.”
-=-=-=-=-
Did you think I’d let you do that, Charlie? You were gonna leave me out of this. I met you in pony hell. I know you remember that much. You play innocent, but you could always see the blood on my hooves. And I know you liked it. I know that you know because I told you. I’d even bet I know some things you don’t even know about yourself. You know I ain’t lying Charlie because you ain’t never told the truth.
But you know what’s more… just more… than how we met? It’s how we broke up. I don’t know if you’re confused or if you were just straight up lying to little Onyx. She thought I discarded you. As if I was the one that stopped talking to you. But this isn’t about me and you. This is about me and her.
-=-=-=-=-
“Do you miss him?” The dragonfly asked the unicorn, with a sly smile.
“Do you miss your own memories?” The unicorn snarled as she studied the sheet music in front of her. “Oddly enough, he did. It really bothered him how little about you he could remember.”
“That’s cold Onyx. I’m just sayin’.” The dragonfly lounged on the couch, stretching languidly.
Ladybug, Chapter 10: You Are the Only Light There Is
“Wow, did you literally just jinx one hundred percent of all the other racers and trot through the finish line, grinning like a griffin eating rose thorns?” The seemingly randomly generated earth pony mare grinned with delight. “Respect! I can really see what Charlie saw in you… oh wait, damn… that came out wrong. Sorry, I’m a bitch.”
“Why would that bother me?” The blueish but definitely not gray unicorn smirked triumphantly. “I am a master of my swingin’ jazzy jinx craft. You are damn right to see what Charlie saw in me. And you talk as if I cheated. The other ponies in the race just didn’t know all the rules.”
-=-=-=-=-
“If Celestia thinks it’s so important to have friends, send me somewhere I can find friends!” The young unicorn snarled.
“What do you want to take with you?” The young mare’s gold and scarlet main lay cold and flat like a frost had fallen across her.
“I’ll take my journal!” She declared with sudden clarity.
“I’ve made Celestia aware that you're consulting with forbidden artifacts.” The ragdoll spoke without mirth or joy. “The mirror won’t be open for much longer.”
“H-how could you?!?!” The unicorn student protested.
“If we were friends you wouldn’t have asked me to send you anywhere. The guards are on the way.” The doll seemed to vocally smirk. “Don’t waste time being mad. I’ve opened the road to friendship. It’s on you to walk it.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Or at least that’s how he told it!” The gerically random pony laughed.
“You’re drunk, Any!” The witch-pony waived a cider bottle in her friend’s direction.
“Just because I’m plastered doesn’t mean I’m not right!” The anypony argued while her mane and tail shifted between plaid and stripes.
“Any… do you think we were wrong to just abandon Charlie and Ocelia is Zephyr heights like that?” Onyx sighed and took in a swallow of bitter ale.
“How can you drink that swill, girl?” The dragonfly shifted briefly into her true insectoid form. “But seriously, they are fine. They're fine. I’m fine. You’re fine as Tartarus on a hotplate. By now they’ve been arrested for whatever crime spree happened, and that solves the homeless problem. Trust me, they're fine.”
“What if I want to go back?” the mare stomped her rhythm forcefully.
“You do realize he is a literal an accessory to murder, right? Like, I literally had him tucked in a scarf while committing murder.” The dragonfly giggled uncontrollably. “There is no ‘back’. The path tears up everything behind it. Look quick in the mirror.”
“Charlie loves me!” The unicorn protested.
“Like he used to love me?” The Dragonfly laughed easily, before shifting into an earth pony the color of dirt. “And now he loves that little changeling. I get it, it hurts. That’s why I like you, Gloomster. You’ve carried that power. You carried yourself up that mountain, you walked that path, and now when you look back you can see that the path only led forward.”
“You misunderstand… so much. When you’re lost, when you’re alone, he looks like a light. And you want to follow that light. I understand that. But the road behind you doesn’t exist, and that light isn’t guiding your path anymore.” The non-descript pony mare grinned wide. “I didn’t find him following his light. You are the light. You are the only light that can ever guide or stop you.”
-=-=-=-=-
You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t know what they told you, but the ladybug got at least half of it wrong I promise. And Charlie only ever lets anyone read the words he wants them to read. But you can read the words. You can even scribble around and write on the walls a little. Being a unicorn, you have ironically very little historical context, I know.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure the no magic thing is that other evil queen’s fault. It was a long time ago, and I had a lot of things going on. Most of which involved murdering my enemies. I just sort of noticed magic going away. I had my things, Twilight Sparkle had her things, and we weren’t on speaking terms at the time… you can probably guess why…
Or maybe you can’t guess. Because maybe your family served tea to the pony princess herself, or maybe they ran a smoothie cart. I just find the lack of Unicorn Social Context amazingly funny. The big and the small of the old world all live in the same remote forest village. I can see why Charlie loved you. You picked up an ancient cursed source of magic as a little lost filly, and you wielded him like a scalpel. Mr. Sunshine set my sights your way. And I hung on to get my doll back. But if I’m honest and we both know I’m not, I couldn’t just let a light like you go.
Ladybug, Chapter 11: The Trap at the Crossroads...
Crowned princess Ocelia Ladybug Pastel scratched her plushy chin from her perch on the unicorn detectives withers, as he escorted them to their cell. “Wow, this is way nicer than the pokey in the underhive. Getting arrested isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.”
“It’s actually just the room Queen Haven used to ground the princesses when they were fillies.” The detective looked over his shoulder and smiled warmly. “You’re not in any trouble, this is as much to keep you safe as anything. Changelings haven’t been seen by civilian ponies in generations. Your announcement on social media could cause quite a stir, and not in a good way. We’re here to mitigate that.”
“You know you can’t stop us from leaving, right?” The doll perched on the underling princess head verbally snarled at the much taller unicorn. “The minute I get control of the narration back we can break out of here with a scene transition and you can’t do anything to stop us. We are not your prisoners and we are not under your protection.”
“The doors are not actually locked. We have a step stool to help Princess Ocelia get to the latch.” Rose Thorn shuffled in embarrassment. “We’re really sorry your highness. Our limited contact with your hive didn’t give us much context to our relative sizes…”
“The idea, Mr. Ragdoll,” The cloven hooved white earth pony tossed her head with a smirk, “is why would you leave? And are you that sure that you could? We are abiding by every stipulation of every deal you’ve made. You’re bearer is being cared for and is not confined. You are contained and under observation. You get what you want. We get what we want. There is no reason we can’t be on the same side.”
-=-=-=-=-=-
I never sleep good in observation. I’m not sure why I’m bothering to sleep. I’m also not sure why I’m poking my head out of OC’s cuddle ball to watch the guards while the guards watch us sleep. And yes, I’m asleep, but it’s not like I can close my button eyes. Yeah, this totally isn’t weird for every creature involved. I’m lying. But seriously OC holds me upside down in her front four legs… and she kicks in her sleep.
The dream’s no better.
-~-~-~-~-
“Come out!” I am Giant. I am Monster. “I’ve killed you’re queen, Mr. Sunshine! Come out, and add to my list of names! I am the unnamed, I am the Freak! I am the Queen Killer! Come out!”
The thing that draws itself across the sky is a nest of worms made of fire, they borrow as they burn. And now OC is riding me. But not? This is not a dream. This is a dream of a memory. And the iron filly unfolds to reveal the tree, and then there are aphids… and where there are aphids… Cozy’s awkward flank… why did I just go there? Dammit the ants! I have zero sympathy for the guards, because I saw everything!
And OC is awake, now. The guards are predictably trotting in circles. I screamed a lot.
“Sorry. You doin’ good, girl. Just scuttle to the left…Not your fault. I just need some space… I swear you really do kick a lot, though.” I swear I am not flailing right now.
It’s not her fault. It’s not her that woke me up. I was awake the whole time. I was asleep the whole time.
“It wasn’t you.” I crawl across her, clinging to her every sob. She’s crying now. The guards are shuffling and calling… whoever they call for this. They are not my problem. Only one creature matters. “I’m sorry I woke you up…”
“I saw everything, Uncle.” She hides her head behind her front most hooves while I scramble for balance. “I saw your dream… I saw the Sun…”
It’s the sweet spot just behind her head where I can reach both of her ear-holes. Sometimes she makes herself ear-flaps to listen in directions. But now I’m just all up on the sweet spot where she made holes in her skull to hear things. “I’m not going to tell a lie that big, girl. That’s what’s coming.”
“What are we going to do?” Every sniffle tears my fluffy heart in half. I want to lie and tell her we’re going to win.
“We're going to live, and we’re going to hit the sun so hard everytime it comes between us and life, that every one of it that follows behind knows we ain’t worth the fight.”
-=-=-=-=-
“I won’t lie to you, Gloomster.” And Celestia’s great white flank, but I do not have enough drugs for this conversation. “I’m not a good pony. That is two completely separate things that I am not.”
“I’m am a witch and you are are an ancient eldritch horror from before the fall of magic.” And she just lounges so casual, with that goofy smile. This was a really good late night picnic spot. Her laughter is the threatening caress of a razor. “You do know you're not the first eldritch horror I’ve dated, right? Hey, ‘C:/’ can I get some appropriate smooth jazz?”
C:/ I’m letting it slide this time. But don’t get cocky.
For one second I can see the words. For one second her hooves tap a playful little beat. And for one second all my hearts stop and she looks me straight in the eyes. “Anypony, how did you ever think you could get away with stealing me away, when I was right there watching you the whole time?”
And as the sun rises it’s already too late. As the trap closes, I can only remind myself that I called her out to the crossroads. It’s not right! I’m the one who set this trap! And it was only because I wanted Charlie back! So how am I on the wrong side of the trap? As the sun smiles down I know it’s already too late. I’ve been caught. I am her’s. Whatever is left of my heart belongs to Gloomy Onyx.
LaDyBuG, cHaPtEr 12: Dreams Beneath the Sunlit Sky
“Don’t come around here no more.” He hates me. “If Gloomy still wants to hang with you. I support her. She is free of the burden of me.”
“I… understand why you hate me now Charlie.” The judgement in his button eyes rips out what’s left of my heart. “I… I threw you away. When magic faded, I gave you up for dead.”
“I don’t hate you, Diane.” I suddenly wish he would. I feed on hate, fear, rage, even love. I only taste cold. Like a frozen cloud that evaporates in your mouth. He doesn’t have to say he doesn’t care. He’s not even angry enough to tell me he doesn’t care. “I’m a copied soul stolen by a mad unicorn, and stuffed into a rag doll by a mad god. I was tasked to protect a changeling filly from a murderous psychopath. If you move against Ladybug, remember what happened to the one you stole true infinity from.”
“He’s here.”
“You brought him”
“I’m sorry, Charlie.”
“I can keep the guards from seeing you, they think I’m talking to myself.” There is finality. Is that what I came for? “If OC wakes up again, she’ll see you. You should leave, Diane.”
“I can pass on a message to Gloomy?” Is that really what I’m doing? It is as painful as it is awkward.
“She already knows. You should leave. Don’t come back, Anypony. You are Unwanted.” He chose that word specifically. His world is made of words.
-=-=-=-=-
“Okay, Gloomster… do not panic.” The dragonfly tapped her hooves and twitched her scorpion tail nervously. The pegasi mare continued speaking. “I really did not plan on still being in this universe at this point in this process… I thought I’d have Charlie back and I only knew you existed as a tangent factor to my goals… Honestly I thought me and Charlie would just bounce…”
“Any,” Onyx inquired, tapping an ominous rhythm with her hooves, “what did you do?”
“Mr. Sunshine… I made a deal with him… it’s a mnemonic entity.” The dirt colored earth pony explained, shuffling in vain between the unicorn mare and the sky itself. “It’s basically a sentient meme. It exists just because we think about it. I’m sorry, I thought we’d have more time to get out.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Two of the three of you owe me more than you care to admit.” The goat-like earth pony glared at the Doll as it spoke. “And you can lay off with the cards and hear me out. Shuffle all you want. Tirek’s flabby flank, shuffle more! Shuffle them cards girl. We are bucked and could all use a good shuffling.”
“You fell asleep again, Charlie.” A little human girl riding a giant plush pony giggled. “You’re dreaming.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy… I must have nodded off.” The doll smiled because he always smiled, shaking his head for a moment as they trudged through the snow.
“My name is Luna, silly.” The girl was a pony. Had she always been a pony? Was she always the one carrying the Ragdoll? “Tia hid thee so well even she couldn’t find thee. But I’m the one who found thee! I know thy rules! Ask me the question!”
“What do you want?” The rag doll’s voice isn’t even mine. I do not sound like that…
“I want my sister to understand what this loneliness feels like, right now.” The princess bowed her head in witness of the moon.
“Do you remember what you asked me in the snow, before the Roc Farm?” Ragdoll paddled in the celestial surge of her mane for a longer time than I am comfortable to admit I am enjoying. So obviously I spoiler my own dream. “`You said, ‘If Tina carries you, and you carry me, who carries Tina?’ Remember?”
“I remember the answer.” She is a petulant foal. She is a queen in her own right. “‘No pony carries her. No pony can carry you on the path you chose.’”
“The Text doesn’t guarantee success, it only opens a path. And if you walk hard enough, and if pay a high enough price, it can make the impossible obtainable.” Did this ever really happen? Who can say between the gap of dream and memory. It is as uncertainty as the sincerity of the “love” I feel for my bearer. Of course I loved Ladybug. Just like I loved Gloomy. I like to think it’s real. This is a conversation I at know I wished had happened.
“My sister thinks you are cruel for the hardship you levy against those who will name their price as ‘anything’.” Princess Twilight’s advisor, Luna sips a mug of coffee wafting the heavy scent of almond liqueur. Because why do things progres the way they do in dreams? “But that’s not cruel. Their goals are possible. But what of the ponies who don’t offer to pay enough? The ponies who end up a slave to your schemes, cutting deals with the Text via your bearer. Or worse, the bearers who only paid enough for half of a dead end path, that you lead them down with loving steps until they are so thoroughly lost they will never find the way back where they started? You are cruel, Ragdoll Charlie.”
“Last Stop,” The monster of a pale grey earth pony operating the train leans out the door to shout at me as if I didn’t know I’m the only real soul on this train. I hate that I know I’m still dreaming. I hate that I know that doesn’t make it any less real. “You done seen every stop. Maybe you’ll find where you're going this time. If not, can you just wait to a while to take the train back? Maybe wait a week this time. A month? Can you go a full year without getting back on my train?”
“Uncle?” OC’s shuffling plush hooves are an accusation. “Where are we?”
“Close your eyes girl. You weren’t meant to see this.” The train door opens all by itself just like it should. Beyond that door was a bright sunny day.
It’s barely even a face. It’s a nest of worms on fire in a clear blue sky. It’s leer is a hive instinct that tugs on my head fluff at some primal level. The thing just scuttles what it calls a face into an obscene leering sneer. “Come outside and play. It's a frightfully bright and sunny day.”
I hear her scream. Dammit I very specifically told her to close her eyes. “Dammit girl! I promised your mom I wasn’t going to show you this!”
C:\ Really? Did you not take the hint the last time? This will have consequences.
“Uncle? Where are you?” the foal-sized plush lady bug scuttled in a panicked circle in the void as the universe of words scrolled around her. “I- I’m scared.”
R:\ It’s okay, OC. I’m right here.
“Where are we?” It’s the most natural and innocent of questions.
C:\ I’m sorry. You were not supposed to see this. I promise you are not in trouble.
“Un-uncle… what was that face in the sky? Is this still your dream?” Her voice is a heartbreaking screech of nails on a chalkboard. She is afraid, and she wants me to tell her it’s going to be okay. But I can’t tell a lie that big.
-=-=-=-=-
I used to be a happy little ladybug who just wanted to see the sun. Then one day my brothers found a doll that could make that wish come true. But the surface, and the ponies were really big and scary. And the sky is all open and weird, like the biggest hole, but up. And just now I finally saw the sun, and he smiled at me, and then everything was made of words and I can’t unsee that. I’m crying like a little grub, and I hate that.
R:\ Everything is exactly as bad as you think it is, and it is perfectly okay to cry about it. We’re safe enough for now. We’re in the meta-space of the Texts. We can’t stay here long, but I’ve got leeway where we land when we get bounced.
“U-uncle… what are all those words?” I had 20 years to prepare Gloomy for this, but there’s no help for it. I knew what was coming. And now, she’s already seen it. Then she asks a hard question. “This isn’t a dream, is it? We were in a meeting, then you went to sleep and started snoring mid rant. And now we’re here. Wherever ‘here’ even is. What happened to the nice ponies from the Smile Remnant? They were all right there…”
R:\ They are trained pony agents, I sure… something happened. Just try to ignore all the background scrolling and focus on me. We have to transfer to a… more substantive reality.
Like all copied souls, I was programmed. I have free will… to a point, but what happened to those ponies doesn’t matter. The only pony that matters is the pony that rightly carries me. Of course I love her. I never had a choice, but that doesn’t make it any less the most real thing in my world. Gloomy walked into my world with eyes wide open and the best of intentions. Magic and monsters, for most of her life were just the stories I told her so she would be ready when they came back.
The Ladybug wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. But the sun was rising on us all the same.
-=-=-=-=-
“Did you really think you could just escape our little arrangement?” Onyx only had mortal eyes, and the drawing of the smiling sun crawled across the wall. Its smile was a weapon that it wielded against the Anypony. “I find a certain doll for you, you open a world of littles ponies who just love to think the best of everything for me. I upheld my end. You had what you wanted in your hooves. I made that path for you.”
The beat rang across Maretime Bay as Onyx tapped her beat with her hooves and unslung her (probably cursed) saxophone. “Nope. You can just put all of that on the Nope Train to Nopeville. Cause that’s where that's going.”
“A unicorn? That is so adorable. Honestly… Dee… Is this the best you have?” The voice carried across the fluttering of a an inspirational poster that was always hanging on the wall of the hotel room.
The beat became reality. The beat of hooves and the melody of brass became it’s own world, made of a different kind of words. Alien words that didn’t represent ideas, but pure sound. The rising sun understood the language, “Get away from her, you bitch!”
“Wait a minute… what just happened?” The pegasus detective Pranced in a nervous circle. “They were right here! The damned doll was trying to throw it’s weight around. Then it passed out and started snoring. Then something happened. I know something happened! And now they aren’t here! In this place that they just were!”
“Smile! As bad as it seems, it could always be worse.” The smiling sun on the motivational poster at the edge of her vision proclaimed cheerfully.
The suddenly teal pegasus began to unravel. Did she even have a name anymore?The goat faced earth pony mare drew a single card.The card depicted a mad mare, smiling in the comfortable embrace that she was a good pony. With a proud smile she wielded her needle and thread as she sewed her armor of bootleg souls. A mild scent of mildew wafted through the room..
“The Treacherous Smith, inverted. False optimism, and a broken promise.” The mare looked the sun in the eyes. “Disaster is to be expected. You’re too late to blind me.”
“Even a small victory can feel huge in face of inevitable defeat.” The poster helpfully provided.
-=-=-=-=-
“It’s just an izs, OC. Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you… although this is going to hurt.” The pure white noodly, eyeless equine abomination smiles menacingly with far too many teeth. “I need you to trust me and do exactly what I say. I need you to turn your front-most hooves into talons, for grabbing things. It’s going to bite you, and when it does you have to stick your hoof in it’s mouth and grab it’s tongue.”
“OW!” It would be a cute sound if her plushy arm didn’t bleed.
“Don’t let go, OC! Punch it in it’s stupid blind head!” She tastes my rage and she drinks deeply. OC doesn’t have the words for this feeling. She doesn’t need words as she wails at the indignity visited upon her. The noodly albino freak tries to back off. It wishes it could back down. I was made for these words. And OC laughs with me as the rage flows through us. “WE OWN YOUR HEAD! It’s too late to let go! Stop pulling away! Stop making us hit you! Stop… OC… just stop. It’s not going to hurt you anymore…”
“I-I killed it?” She shuffles angrilly, as the other izs withdraw into the scrub brush of the outback. She wants to feel guilty, I can tell. I have to nip that in the bud.
“Their viscious little cannibals, OC.” I message her ear frills as I balance between her head and her elytra. “You need to do something about that bite though… I need you to transform yourself a patch over that bite. We need to keep moving.”
She makes an adorable scruntchy face and a spiked leather patch appears over her wounded arm in a burst of pink magic flames. “Huh, I was going for velvetine…”
“Well, I just pumped you chock full of rage, so that’s what your magic is working with right now.” I emit a chuckling sound. Gods of Tartarus what I wouldn’t give to have facial expressions.
“Where is this place, Uncle?” She’s hurt, scared, and ready to trust me completely. I hate myself for that. “What was that thing I just killed?”
“One question at a time, OC.” I scramble down her carapace to inspect the the patch she’s shifted over her wound. “This is a pretty good patch, especially for a first time try. Just remember, it’s still just a patch. Your carapace is still injured, so be careful. To answer your first question, though, this is The Outback. It’s a physical demi plane that borders the subconscious and subliminal planes. Me and Diane used it to dodge Luna after a couple of her more high-profile ‘justice’ crusades.”
“That really just brings up more questions, Uncle.” And yes I am riding her like a tank, steering with her ears and she is going along with it and it is adorable. Don’t. Judge. Me. “Is it another dimension, because you can just say it’s another dimension. And what was that thing outside the train in your dream?”
“Okay, forget one question at a time, it’s all the questions!” I flail a noodly arm while keeping the other firm on the controls of the ladybug-tank. Because we are all in on this game. “To start with the white squishy cannibal is an izs. Don’t worry, their alignment is evil-stupid. And they're squishy. Their pretty chicken shit though. And since you just squished the bravest on in the local pack, the rest aren’t about to start any trouble. If you want you could bully them into fairly loyal minions, but I wouldn’t if I were you. They are murder crazy and really, really stupid.”
“As far as where we are, this is the near-multiverse.” I deftly steer OC across the savannah of the Outback… which is odd because the Outback is ruled by a ‘Jungle Queen’. Meh, semantics, but words mean things. And this is clearly not a jungle. Behold the mesas and the vast scrub-grass plains… “It’s locally referred to as the ‘Outerverse’, which is a much better name. Think of it as the near orbit of our universe… wait you grew up in a cave… so that is a horrible analogy. So yeah, we’re in another dimension. As for the multiversal parasite thing… I know of it… but I’ve personally never run up on it before now. That’s why we’re here. We just need to make it over that ridge of giant bonzai trees. There’s a villa where I’m hoping we can get some answers.”
The impossible sun dodged between music made text and thrown into corporeal reality by the power of saxophone jazz. Still his gaze remained locked on the instance flickering between pony, human, and nightmare changeling forms as she screamed. “I gave you your revenge. I even told you to stop. Just quit while you were ahead. And now the bill’s come to pay, and it’s not even your soul I’m collecting. Smile! Things are looking up for… Anypony? Really? Not judging. It’s your name.”
Notes swirled around the flickering thing that wished it was a creature. Onyx danced with her brass partner in a whirlwind of swinging music made manifest. She could see past the words. She could see past letters that made sound. And the music stopped, and she turned her lilac gaze on the flickering Anypony. “No pony gets to name you, but you. That was always the first law.”
The sun sneered as it’s words formed fire across a hidden sky. “Look on the bright side, your name is only the words ponies chose to call you.”
The flickering became an inferno of pink flames. “Monster.” A spine covered changeling filly filly snarled from the pyre. “Killer.” A changeling mare in a ringmaster’s tuxedo purred. “Degenerate.” An earth pony stallions sighed as he breathed the flames in deeply.
“You see, little pony. I only shine the hard light of truth.” The sun chuckled jovially to the unicorn. “I only give you hope. It’s hardly my fault you drink the poison. That’s just what hope is. You traded the power to rewrite reality itself for a pretty little shapeshifting mare-friend. And she led me right to you. And now where is the weapon you could have used to fight back?”
The blue mare smiled. And reality locked into place.
-=-=-=-=-
“Just stay calm Petal.” Rose Thorn leaned into his glitching pegasus mare-friend. “We can fix this. We know she found the doll at the face of the mountain. But how did she cross the chasm… twice…”
“True history is buried by the cards stacked on the present.” Jenny, the goat-faced earth pony, studied the cards stacked in a spider web of solitaire. “That which was buried has risen. That which was sealed has become released.”
The poster of the sun on the wall sneered. “All you need is hope.”
-=-=-=-=-
Thump. Thump. Thump. Her hooves needed no drums against the earth. Her saxophone screamed. “I was in a cave for days and days. With only a spark to light my way.”
The filly crawled beneath the great chasm between Bridlewood safe in the past from the leering sun. “I wanna give up. I wanna give in.” Her saxophone screamed in objection. “This was our crime. This was our sin.”
“But I still believe.” The notes danced playfully around the Sun, as the mare’s song continued. “No, I still believe.”
A plush ladybug marched across an alien desert. “Through the lies, and through the storms.”
Pony turned against pony in the background, tearing three last cities of equestria apart as the filly moved undeterred beneath the earth to the mountain she would see the top of. “Through the pain, though the wars.”
“No! I still believe!”
“You believe in what?” The sun flared in malevolent confidence. “Miracles?”
Writhing in her music, Onyx’s saxophone cried plaintive tears that manifested as desperate notes that floated just outside a reality waiting to be sculpted.
“Flat on my back, out at sea,” A small filly clung to a tiny doll that floated with an impossible buoyancy as the flood waters washed them together back into the valley of Bridlewood through the rapids of the gorge beneath the tree Izzy had felled to make the first bridge in generations. “Hopin’ these waves don’t cover me.”
“Turned and tossed upon the waves. When the darkness came, I felt the grave.” The filly and her doll shot over the rapids into the falls, where a rose colored unicorn found them washed up on the river bank.
“You’ve climbed so high,” the grinning Sun replied, “You stand so close to the edge.”
The saxophone wavered in an unsure moment as the notes circled closer to the glitching flame that refused to extinguish. And for a moment the music went silent.
A piano rhythm emerged from the silence. “Till death do us part, but we’re already past that phase.”
The sun leered hungrily as the Dragonfly emerged from the flames. “This is a brand new start, and I think I deserve some praise, for the way that I am!”
“Despite having overdosed, and ending up comatose.” Anypony looked pleadingly to Onyx for understanding. “I don’t give a damn!”
The notes burst out to assault the scowling Sun. “I’ve let my emotions go, fuck being a sober ho!”
“This is the matra, this is my life!” The music pushed the Sun unwillingly into kissing distance as the memory pulled the changeling filly unwillingly into kissing distance. “You’re playing with knives until the end of tonight.”
Too late the sun pulled back. The little queen only smiled. “Surrounded by fire, the passion ignites, I’ve heard a hit of heaven is one hell of high.” The Dragonfly’s tail struck into the right eye of the sun. And the poison of hope poured forth.
“It doesn’t matter what you call me.” She whispered seductively as she force fed the wicked parasite. “I. Am. A. Queen.”
Ladybug, Chapter 16: Take Only That Which You Can Carry
“We’ve bought time. We hurt it. We gotta scramble like we scramble, girl.” The dragonfly sneered. “I can only hold this form for so long.”
“What was that thing, Any?” Gloomy Onyx shuffled her hooves as the adrenaline melted away.
“That was a true infinity. An infinite multiversal society of one.” The nightmare changeling queen flicker into a pink changeling queen with a long, paifully straight crimson mane dressed as a circus ringleader. “There are borders between the texts, and we are on the wrong side of one. I need you to call your contact on the other side of that wall.”
“You want me to call Charlie?” The Beatnic blinked twice in dismay.
“No! For the love of tartarus no!” Tthe queen shouted before lowering her voice. “He would throw us both under a train to save his “Ladybug”. Just like he would have done for me, just how he would have done for you. I mean, your other contact.”
“I’m not comfortable bringing David into this…” Onyx blushed lightly as she stared at her phone in indecision.
“You’re not bringing him into it, you’re taking us out of it. He exists quite a bit further from the universe's border than me or Charlie. And he probably has a couch.” The dirty earth stallion rolled his eyes. “I’ll prolly need to wear a disguise, seeing as last time he saw me I was trying to foal-nap you, but that’s cool. My disguises are actually way more stable than my natural form. Just make the call, worst comes to worst it goes to voice-mail.”
Reluctantly, Gloomy Onyx made the call…
"This is David," came the reply, but it was flat and even, unlike David, really. "David is not available. He's exploring his sexuality. There's no sex involved. Figures. What do you want?"
“I think it went to voice mail,” Onyx whispered to the glitchy pony thing. “Hey, David, it’s Gloomy. I was in Maretime bay with my new…friend…”
“Ouch, would it kill you to say ‘My super hot mare-friend?” Anypony rolled her eyes.
"Your text has different tastes than I do. What do they want?" The voice remained even, save that emphasis on one word.
“Oh…oh…” The unicorn’s eyes went wide. “I’m sorry! I swear I wasn’t trying to do that again… uh, Any, we might be in trouble…”
"How many monsters are involved?" asked the voice in its flat way, like a reasonably done artificial voice.
“Ummm, there’s just the one monster…” Gloomy admitted as Anypony desperately tried to pantomime for her not to admit that. But it’s not following us at the moment?”
"What do they want?" The words were repeated without variation. Flat, blunt.
“Meep!” Gloomy practically shoved the phone at Anypony, “I think they want to talk to you?”
“Okay, for the record, we totally started on this side of the universal border,” Any said with a heavy sigh. “My super hot mare-friend, see how easy that is to say, Onyx. Anyway, she was trying to call her friend to see if we could crash on his couch for a couple of days a little further inside universal stability. She’s new at this game.”
"Fascinating. What does he want? This is not the time for games. Text to Text." No emotion there, just words. They were spoken, but so deadpan, minus the emphasis required in brief places.
C: Yeah, I just thought it would be cute to have Gloomy check in with David while on the lamb. You know hitting up friends for a place to stay while hiding from terrifying cosmic conglomerates. No monster-mash hanky-panky. Promise.
D: Dropping the call? Works just as well. Either way, David has no couch. He's a paying roomie. He owns no furniture but a backdrop and some other photography equipment. Most of that doesn't count as furniture.
“Does this mean David doesn’t want to talk with me?” Gloomy asked with sad pony eyes, as the words swirled around her.
"Oh. Right," spoke the flat voice. "You can see me. Hear me. Perceive me. This is a one way street you are looking down. You walk down it, or you do not. There is no going back. Leave your world, or stay in it. Choose. There are no angry suns here. It's boring, I imagine."
“She’ll take it!” The Dragonfly cut in, quickly shushing her companion. “This is your in, Onyx. We’ve had great times, but this is your in. You have mad skills and a probably cursed saxophone. This is your chance to make your mark…”
“Any, what about…” The mare she was trying to address was already not even there.
"It's a simple question. Leave your world. Stay in it. I offer nothing aside this choice. Make it." The voice had no real emotion. It sounded like David, but lacked his usual cheer.
“I’m sorry, sir.” the nervous blue unicorn shyly backed up even while carrying the phone that was the source of her fear. “I’m just… I made it to the top of the mountain, and I just want to go home? I only have some basic camping gear to take with me… that’s how it works? Take only that which you can carry. That’s how Charlie taught me the deal works… right?”
"Stay. Go. Decide." There was no exasperation, or encouragement, or discouragement really. The facts, laid out plainly.
“I want to stay. I’ve seen the edge of what might be. I want to play on a real stage in what is, and I want to be able to make ponies see the music as I do now. Music is text.” And Gloomy Onyx laughed.
"You are speaking in two directions. To stay means I hang up. Nothing happens. To go means you leave, and you become mine. Your story, mine. Your past, mine. Your future, mine. You are praying to a god. Will you be in my story, or his. Decide."
“Then I go”, the unicorn giggled without mirth. “I am going to walk away… towards something else. It’s only one step. But it’s the step to the other side of the coin…”
She never even knew she’d taken the step. That was the end of the chapter.
“Jessica!, we have to get help! Petal is dying!” The Unicorn dective snarled at the goat pony.
“If you break the fourth wall right now even my cards can’t stabilize her existence!” The blind goat snapped testily.
“It’s a bright sunny day full of HOPE!” The poster on the wall proclaimed. “Just open the door…”
-=-=-=-=-
“They are probably already dead, OC,” I’m not great at explaining this. Endless plains of savannah that is not jungle helps you hone your answers to hard questions. Because why a Jungle Queen? The out back, yo.
“Uncle!” She knows how to use the word to cut past my fluff. “They were trying to help us!”
“The unicorn has been stalking Gloomy since she was a filly.” I can’t afford the ladybug the time I had with Gloomy. There was always one more day of being her fun imaginary friend until one day there wasn’t another day. She has to hear the truth. “I just don’t like the pegasus, and I’d sooner trust myself than trust the goat. I don’t care what happens to them.”
“Wait! Uncle! I see an inside!” And… emotional moments are ruined because OC see’s a way out from under the sky. The good news is we found the villa.
The bad news is that OC can roll like Sonic when she wanna. And being encased in her pill bug shell and cuddle hooves, when she does that, is exactly like letting your cousins stuff you into a tractor tire and roll you down a hill. It is exactly like that. I mean it’s technically fu, but thank Twilight’s great purple flank I don’t have the plumbing to vomit.
“Eewww!!! Uncle!” Okay, I might not understand the extent of my questionable biology…
And that quickly we’re inside the villa. I’m guilty of lying to her mother, and I feel bad, I really do. “Charlie. It’s been such a long time.” I always knew what we were always going to find here. It’s voice rolls over us like warm motor oil, sticking in the crevices of thoughts and leaving stains as it flows. “Is that a new changeling filly?”
The crystal head trails changeling magic like viscera, and smiles with an unsettlingly sincere rictus grin. “If it were up to me I’d put you on a watchlist. Honestly, what is she, like seven?”
“Hey! I’m fourteen! Underlings just live in small spaces!” OC meeps as the head turns it’s smile on her.
“Huh… I always told Whatserface the drugs would stunt your growth in the long run.” The crystal changeling head crocks a curious eyebrow. It turns its gaze on me. “You need me. You would never expose her to me if you didn’t need me, Charlie. I know your name, Ragdoll. I know what you are… and you need me. It’s about her, just say it.”
“Uncle… I don’t like this person! I’m afraid.” It breaks what passes for my heart because she is right to be afraid, just not of this broken relic.
“Did she just call you ‘Uncle’,” The head’s mad cackle echoes outside of the villa and across the psychological outback. “Uncle-Daddy-Dearest… how delightfully disgraceful. Don’t worry little Ladybug. I’m no threat to you. I'm not that self destructive. But tell me… has your “uncle” directed you to kill yet?”
“How… who are you?” My ladybig asks the dreaded question. I want scream, I try desperately to do a scene transition. I regret it immediately.
-=-=-=-=-
“Who am I?” The disembodied crystal head smiled brightly. As the plushy princess advanced in curiosity the ragdoll stared on with his impassive smile and button eyes, the crystal changeling head continued. “I am Iam Selrahc Noone! I’m so glad you asked! Normally I would say ‘I am no one, and you don’t know me.’ But that would just be lying, and besides, do you know how long it’s been since an actual Equestrian has come here to talk to me? And that was Twilight Sparkle. Something about ‘Blah, Blah, Fire Alicorn’ and “Blah, Blah, seal on pony magic.’ None of which had jack all to do with me.”
“I don’t know anything about that…” The Ladybug stammered against the assault of the words of the disembodied head.
“You don’t know, but the outerverse grinds on. It changes at the edges. Did Charlie tell you that Zephyr Heights was suddenly never Canterlot?” The thing’s smile was as friendly as it was cruel. “What city did your home and family exist beneath? I can’t remember?”
“Uncle what’s he talking about?” The Ladybug scuttled, panic creeping in to her voice. “What does he mean Zephyr heights was never Canterlot? Zephyr heights was Canterlot! My ancestors built our hive in the undercity that Zephyr Heights built over! The Undersqueaks use bootleg Zephyr Heights internet! I climbed the ruins of Lower Canterlot just to get to Zephyr Heights! Ask the doll! Uncle, tell him!”
“It was until a little while ago. Yesterday Zephyr Heights was built on the ruins of Canterlot, and always had been. And now it was always Cloudsdale, rebuilt on a mountain peak.” The ragdoll turned his plushy, impassive face to the animated crystal bust of a mad changeling. “You’re an ass. The universe realigned, OC. If we had stayed we would have realigned too. You’re existence is dependent on your hive being in that place at that time. I couldn’t risk that, so I brought you here.”
“NO!” The plushy princess glitched and for one moment became an enraged insect evolved to live underground. Her hooves and legs were built for scurrying, climbing, and jumping. Her elytra were a shell, never intended for flight. Why would a creature that had never seen the sky have wings? For one moment she was the creature she had grown into before magic returned. “Your both lying to me! Even if they’re gone, They! Were! There!”
“Yes.” The grinning crystal head winked knowingly as it floated around the little underling at most unseemly angles. “They were always there, just like you always ended up here, in the greater scheme of a thousand moons of the ever changing tides of history. I understand. You’ve always seen the past as an immovable rock. But the past is really a river, the future is the inevitable dam that we crash against.”
“The multiverse looks like dreams to them.” The Unnamed crystal face chuckled merrily. “So much easier for them to wake up from. So much easier for them to break on a whim. They call us names: heroes, villains, they call us monsters, my little ladybug. And they push us into the darkness and hide behind us. It was never fair.”
“Leave her alone!” The Ragdoll snapped, flailing his arms in noodly rage. “She’s already lost enough without you rubbing salt in the wound!”
”Don’t you get santimonious with me, you overstuffed snot-rag!” The head snarled in reply, as it floated menacingly over the Ragdoll. “Her entire history, and everyone, and everything she’s ever known was rewritten because of a debate between two mad gods over how the world is supposed to be. She’s not aware, the way we are. And you clearly lack the stomach to explain the truth to her! And believe it or don’t, but one of us knows how that feels, and it’s not you.”
“Why should I trust you?” The insectile princess bristled with rage.
“Because I will always tell you the hard truth, at first. Right up until I lie again.” The things magical… trail stroked her elytra, evoking a shudder of disgust.
“Do you think I don’t know who you are?” The Ladybug scuttled away from the crystal head thing. “My hive kept the most complete history since…”
“Do you mean the history that just wrote your hive out of existence?” The head snarled, then took a deep calming breath. “You don’t even know what I am, let alone ‘who’, my little ladybug. The Multiverse is cruel in ways you cannot even perceive. You think I am ‘The Nopony’, the monster under your bed that made the Night of the Dragonfly necessary… justified even. But here’s the little secret. The Nopony was no one pony.”
“But that’s not important right now. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of experience with Singular Near Infinity Conglomerates in the near future. I want to talk about your feelings. You already know you’re not the one he would have saved if he had that choice. I can taste it rolling off of you.” The changeling head cajoled as the ragdoll cast a glare of inexpressive hatred. “Tell me, did you somehow steal Ragdoll Charlie, or did she just give him away? Guilt and betrayal are part of a well balanced breakfast, but give me some context. He loves you, because of course he loves you, He’s loyal to you because of course he’s loyal to you. And you know it. I can taste it in your sadness. But tell me, why does that make you so sad?”
“You treat me like a child lost in delusion!” The Lady snarled, her true teeth fully on display. She stomped scurrying, chitinous hoovesies over and slung the ragdoll on her back with more force than necessary. “Uncle, we’re leaving!”
“And going where exactly?” The Last Nopony replied with the friendliest chuckle. “Charlie brought you here as a last resort to dodge the realignment of the border of the universe. He’s already opened your path. You only get one of those deals. He can’t make a deal to get you out of the outback. But I can.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Charlie,” Her words cut me in half. Because she calls me by name, not “Uncle”. Because she means the words, “I want to give you back to Gloomy Sonnet. If I give you away you owe me one more path!”
“Gloomy Sonnet doesn’t exist anymore!” I laugh because it’s all I’ve got left. “Or maybe she’s always been there, just never knowing me. And now I always gotta wonder, if she’s still out there, does she smile more for never having found me?”
I hate the bitterness I can’t keep out of how I look at her. “Gloomy Sonnet gave me away. When you pass me on, I will open one last path. But you can never give me back.”
“Oh, the Ragdoll speaks?” I want crush it’s stupid head. But I won’t. I can’t. “He can’t send you back, Ladybug. But I can. I can cast you back into the realigned universe. Where-ever you would have ended up, assuming you even exist. But I’m certain you do… or still could. I can undo the wish you wish you never made to see the sky, my little Ladybug.”
“I climbed out of the mountain…” Her voice carries vulnerability. Confidence comes with uncertainty. “I’ve seen the sky…”
It’s not even the second time I’ve seen that childlike wonder. It’s my first time seeing that big ass mass of empty Nope for the terrifying empty that always was behind her smile. “Ladybug, he can’t put you back where you came from. You don’t exist there anymore.”
“I don’t exist. Not my family, not the whole wide world, uncle. Just me.” The thing that looms over me is not a Princess of Cuddlemuffins. The spots on her flared, pale grey elytra are dull black as the light of a cave. Her carapace is the color of shadows that have never seen natural light. Her equine body beneath her shell is bulky, but strangely flat. Her four front legs are stubby, seeming to belong on a foal perhaps half her age. Her rear hind legs would be proportional to a grown pony, but always crouched and ready to pounce. Her snarling teeth reselmed a shark more than a pony. She is a predator. She is a Ladybug.
“She doesn’t need you!” My uncle, my ragdoll… my tool proclaims. “She doesn’t need me! The whole wide world needed her. And that’s the only reason I’m even here to tell you this.”
I’ve never heard Uncle speak so honest, so loyal…. so bitter. “I was robbed of everything but the sensory hell of 1000 moons of feeling a pile of garbage from on one season to the next.”
Uncle talks with a kind of past tense hope, that I honestly can’t give context, my little Undersqueaks… I hope somehow you’re still out there. Somewhere out there we still have a hive under the ruins of Canterlot, and I hope the ruins have wifi… And I hope you’re all still watching.
This is a new level of honesty. He resents me taking him. “There is an actual Ectoplasmic tentacle fight, OC… sorry. Yer posts are sacrosanct, Ectoplasmic Tentacles, though..,”
“This isn’t a fight! I’m holding your doll at length so it can’t flail on me with its noodle hooves!” This is my life now, Undersqueaks. My doll and my family's greatest nemesis are having a slap fight in a Villa somewhere… just somewhere? “Wait, is she streaming or texting?!?! Dammit Charlie, stop flailing at me, that's a real question! Does she even have a signal here?”
-=-=-=-
If you chose to join this story right now for the first time, then you are probably wondering “What the buck is up with this goddam doll? Well that’s why I am here to tell you what the buck is up with the damn doll.
I am not going to do that. This is a demi-plane and we only have five walls to start with! “Seriously? Charlie? Does she have a signal?”
“I dunno, prolly…” Of course you’re useless. Wait, I haven’t even been speaking out loud for this?!?! She caught me in a text stream?!?! Do you even know where she’s sending it?
“I don’t care. Why are you even asking me?”
-=-=-=-=-
“I am not your enemy this time.” This is his fault. I am his fault. “Ladybug, will you be a dear and tell your uncle to stop trying to slap me. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s awkward.”
“Uncle, stop.” Her voice commands me. It pulls strings attached to stitches that I’d rather not remember. “I want to hear what it has to say.”
“I sympathyze with your loss.” The bastard smiles like he cares. He knows it hurts! “You saved her from all the little things. Where is she now?”
“She’s safe! Safe from you, and safe from the sun!” I actually twist my one smile into a snarl.
“You can’t offer the pricess anything.” His smile is a straight razor as he turns on the only thing that matters in my whole wide world. “So what ever shall it be? I can give you what you want. I can unmake your wish. I can reunite you with your family… but, it won’t be for free.”
“You are correct that I will make you pay.” My Ladybug has the smile of a shark. I hate myself, for what she’s become. I am proud of my Ladybug Princess. “My family, my real family, are still out there. They are just on the other side of this.” She holds up her phone triumphantly. “I still have a signal. And I know my Undersqueaks can still hear me! You are no one, but I am the Princess of Bucking Cuddle Muffins!”
“Seriously she cannot possibly be streaming anything…” The boogie pony is real. And he’s afraid of me… No Under Squeaks… I take that back. He’s afraid of us. He knows you can hear me. “There is no signal here! At best her phone’s just saving it all as a… text… file…”
“Clever girl.” Uncle chuckles with a cruelty that doesn’t even surprise me, anymore. I can see the malice in his one facial expression. The disembodied sideshow never even saw me coming. But Uncle did.
“She’s been narrating all of this directly into the camera this whole time!” This is the boogie pony, Under Squeaks. He is afraid of us. “I’m just a shadow of the light of the Sun, Princess. And I can hear you. You are literally saying that out loud.”
“You misunderstand the terms of the deal.” Just look at him my little Under Squeaks, He knows we’re still out here. “I don’t need you OR Uncle to escape from anything. I’ve already escaped. Anything I need I can take. The same way I’ve already taken my own. I carried my own ashes up that mountain.”
“I hurt myself today,” Uncle is laughing. “To see if I still feel. I focus on the pain. The only thing that's real.”
“The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting.” I see him. Maybe for the first time, I see Uncle. More patch than doll. “Try to drink it all away, But I remember everything.”
Uncle is changing. I don’t know how else to say it. But not? He’s always been this way. I don’t know if it’s picking up on the video, but the words are kinda more solid. And he’s standing up and walking, not just flopping around. It’s unsteady, I know because he has no skeletal structure, but he is still standing up for me. Even knowing I got this. You gotta admit it’s cute. And then that look. Frayed threaded eyebrows seem to descend and damn he is looking right at me! “And you could have it all. My empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.”
“My doll can carry you away from here Mr. Nopony.” I understand the unholy exchange, even as I speak these words. “You are not the one that makes a deal with me. I don’t beg and barter for your help. You will take me where I want to go because you want me to help you.”
“There are things I can’t do.” Uncle is finally telling the truth. “And there are things I really shouldn’t do.”
“Clever girl indeed. There is no path where you want to go.” The disembodied head is stroking my cheek with its visceral aura. It’s creepy and it feels every kind of wrong, and Uncle snarls. Was he always bigger than me? “But there is a path back to where I want to go. The fragmentaries, a path he never told you about. He’s your doll. He is your knife. He is your weapon. You are his mobility. Wield him.”
Ladybug, Chapter 21: The Dirt Road to the Train Station
“Look, she can’t just call back into the canon universe!” The angry disembodied head argued. “That’s not how magic celphones work!”
“You the one who told her to wield me like some kinda knife.” The ragdoll twisted his sewn on smile into a sneer. “You can’t tell her what she can’t do and neither can I.”
“It’s ringing, Uncle!” The Ladybug held up her phone triumphantly.
“Are we really just going to humor her playing ‘telephone’ the whole way?” The head rolled it’s eyes as it complained.
“It’s a long walk.” The Ragdoll huffed.
“Uncle, no one is picking up…” Ladybug looked at her phone like it had kicked her puppy.
“Sometimes that’s what happens when you reach out, OC..” The Ragdoll sighed, “that don’t mean you stop reachin’ out.”
“What do I do uncle?” Ocelia the ladybug princess scuttled in the middle of the savannah that was still a savannah, despite being ruled by a ‘Jungle Queen’.
“Are you actually going to let her do this?” The floating head of the Nopony snarled with disgust. “Even I’m not that cruel.”
“You can always call back, OC.” The ragdoll reassured the Ladybug.
“It’s ringing again!” Ocellia pranced in place with joy.
-=-=-=-=-
A tiny part of me holds out the tiniest measure of hope in my fluff. I wish I were surprised when her smile turns upside down. Her face should never have that look, that disappointment. “He sent it to voicemail… Mr. David doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“OC, remember, on his end we probably never existed.” I hate having to tell her this, I’ve tried to keep her moving forward, thinking forward. “Anyone back there probably doesn’t even remember we ever existed at all.”
“Or maybe that universe just doesn’t want you anymore, hmmm?” The obscene fragmented head smiles with a sickly semblance of sympathy. “It is a feeling I do understand, believe me. You’re ‘uncle’ understands it as well, though he feels like he’s being ‘kind’ in shielding you from the truth. But you're a big filly, you can handle the truth.”
“Shut up, you bucking bastard!”
-=-=-=-=-
“Uncle! Let it finish.” I promise, under squeaks, I’m going to get us out of this.
It’s not wasting time swatting Unce around the room anymore. And it’s not even interested in whatever it’s point was. Instead it looks at me, then looks at my doll. Then it asks. “Seriusly, is she aware that she is narrating all of that out loud?”
“Uncle, what are the fragmentaries?” That thing… that disembodied head is smiling at me, but it’s empty crystal eye-features are on my doll. It’s waiting for him to explain.
“Collapsed fragments of dead universes held together by the will of the texts.” Uncle’s laugh doesn’t make me feel happy. “Places that only exist because our mad god's whisper they ‘might’ exist.”
“How do we get there?” Do you see it, Undersqueaks? That building at edge of no where. Under a sky that never ends.
“We’re gonna get out of the outback the same we got in, OC.” Uncle gives me a hug, because he knows I need a hug. And he has to. I see Uncle for what he is, my little Under Squeaks. He is my companion. He is my weapon. He is mine. “I skipped over your first trip. Narrative privilege. But I can only do that one time. We gotta ride the Ghost Train.”
I studied all the oldest books. I studied all the freshest meme’s, undersqueaks. I was ready to go to the surface. I really believed that. And then something happened. And then,I fell into the sky and now I’m starting to understand that there never really was a surface. Because this is the station. And no mater how high you climb, or how deep you dig, there’s always more.
-=-=-=-=-
“Is she really going to do this the whole time?” The severed crystal head rolled it’s eyes in a huff. “Thank you Charlie, you insufferable, moralistic, jackass for changing the narrative tense, at least.”
“That wasn’t me.” The ragdoll quipped uninterested. “I personally think it’s cute when she blogs her narration.”
“Oh, in that case, thanks for nothing…” The Nopony remnant grumbled.
“Watch yourself, OC.” Ragdoll’s boneless head practically spun on a swivel. “We are not safe here. The fragmentaries are the borderlands between our quarantined universe and the multiverse at large. The ghost train connects the fragments of the universes that were collapsed to maintain the canon timeline. Everyone knows some version of everyone else down here, and we’re traveling in bad company.”
“Just be glad most of me are dead. A thousand moons ago, this would be a very different journey.” The fragment sneered, brushing its visceral aura across the doll's head. “Now we just have to look out for creatures that want to kill me. For once I’m not the threat. It’s refreshing.”
The doll emitted a sigh-like sound, turning his button gaze to the Nopony. “I had 20 years, an entire foal hood to prepare Gloomy for this fight. And I can only hope that she escaped what we’re walking back into.”
“And you're still using her.” The crystal head cackled gleefully, trailing has arcane tendrils down the little changeling’s back. “Who is the doll, Ladybug? Who is the master and who is the servant? And just who is granting who’s wishes?”
-=-=-=-=-
An aqua-marine pegasus filly’s phone suddenly chimed, mid class. “Oh my gosh! They found Ladybug! She was lost in some caves under the city! She’s going to be okay!”
“She’s alright?!” The teacher abandoned all decorum quickly fumbling for her own device, as incoming message alerts resounded through out the school. “Oh my, she’s been trying to send messages this whole time…”
-=-=-=-=-
“What are you in for?” A pink earthpony filly with a red mane, a too-wide smile, and a rainbow cupcake cutie mark asked the Ladybug from across the room.
“Where am I?” Ocellia hopped up on her hospital bed, her feathered wings and four equine hooves jittering in alarm. “Where are my other legs!?!? And my elytra! My elytra have weird scales! Are those feathers?!?!”
“You gotta love the dysmorphia, am I right?” The filly across the room giggled. “This one time I ended up as this twiggy little monkey girl with no fur… like at all. But the less you talk about that the better, doll. It takes three days. But good news, you’ve made a friend, so you still got me.”
“So I guess we’re ‘hospital buddies’ in this fragment.” The pink filly smiled like a playful cat. “Is this your first time on the train? I’m a Lilly, Lilly Ghast, just call me Ghasty, every-entity does! I don’t think I’ve seen one of you before. I’d say you might be a Diane, but they’re all doing that ‘multiversal collective mind thing’? Anypony? I think that’s what they’re calling it… Anyway, we’re playing ‘guess who?’, and I already know you're a changeling… with more than four hooves… that narrows it down…”
-=-=-=-=-
“I came in on a rainy tuesday, on the avenue.” The grey unicorn ignored the ragdoll. “I thought I heard you talking softly.”
“I turned on the lights, the TV and the radio.” The the doll sobbed, tears leaking from his button eyes. “Still I can’t escape the ghost of you.”
“What is happening to me,” The unicorn didn’t so much respond as mused, “Crazy some would say. Where is the life that I left behind, gone away.”
“Passion or coincidence once prompter you to to say,” Rag Doll reached out to the young gray mare as her color saturated into a bright blue and she smiled at the memory, mouthing back the quote as images of their hubris induced against the very fabric of their universe swirled in a vortex of text, “‘Pride will tear us both apart’...”
“Well now pride’s gone out the window, crossed the rooftops, run away.” The unicorn flashed a sad smile back at the ragdoll. And left me in the vacuum of your heart.”
There was no music but the horrible drumbeat of the tracks. There was no harmony beyond rhythm and word, as it had always been between them. But the train only followed it’s track.
“What has happened to you?” The ragdoll scrambled after the unicorn. “Crazy, some would say. Where is my friend when I need you most? Gone away…”
“Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and grief.” The unicorn trotted aimlessly down a non-descript residential street as abandoned newspapers burst into flames beneath a smiling sun. “Here today, forgot tomorrow… Amid the news of holy war and holy grief, our’s is just a little sorrow…”
“I won’t cry for yesterday.” The unicorn explained. “There’s an ordinary world, somehow I had to find. And as I try to make my way, through this ordinary world, somehow I shall survive.”
And there was a light, and the ragdoll couldn’t follow.
-=-=-=-=-
“A literal train.” The shard tilted it’s disembodied head. “I am actually mildly offended. I have existential issues, too you know!”
“You don’t belong here.” A deep voice interrupted the abominations musings as a massive pale horse of an earth pony entered from the front-most carriage. “And you shouldn’t have come.”
“J-Jimmy Jack?” The head levitated back slowly, taking in its surroundings and suddenly noticing it was surrounded by snarling, clown-faced changelings. “It’s been, what? A thousand moons? You’re looking good, big-guy. You know, apologies get thrown around a lot…”
“Jimmy Jack was my human name.” The massive stallion dragged a hoof threateningly across the train floor. “My pony-name is Deadlift. You should know that. You gave it to me.”
Ladybug,Chapter 24: Make sure you want to go there...be aware of your size.
“You know what changelings are?!?!” The Ladybug burst out, interrupting her new friend.
“Pones are unaware of changelings… Are you pre invasion?” The pink filly rolled over in her bed while keeping her head oriented on her target of inquiry like an owl… or the victim of a massive spinal injury.
“Pre.. Invasion?” The Ladybug stuttered.
“Actually this is a weird hospital fragment…” Lilly mused, rolling over again and frowning, resetting her head 360 degrees with a dull crack. “Why are you a bug-colored pegasus? We both know you're really a changeling. With more than four hooves… be glad they take your devices on day zero. That ‘missing legs’ dance? Viral!” The crazed filly sang.
“I-I’m…” Ocellia stammered.
“NO! We’re playing guess who!” The little pink pegasus pulled tight the blinds on the windows overlooking Lower Zephyre Heights. “They don’t just not know about changelings, they don’t even exist here. Or you wouldn’t be a very confused little pegasus.”
“I-I don’t understand.” Ocelia stammered.
“The ghost train pulls you through the fragments.” The pink filly cocked her head back one hundred and eighty degrees so her snout touched her withers. “If you don’t exist it just makes you fit. Like with the human mirror worlds. So you should be a changeling. I’ve never seen a pony fragment that just didn’t have changelings before… And come to think of it, Canterlot looks kinda off.”
“Where’s Uncle?!?!” The Ladybug skittered around the hospital suite. There were two beds. There was space under the beds. There was space under everything. There was no place to hide anything. The princess of cuddle-muffins screamed, “Where is my doll!?!?”
“Wait your uncle, or your doll?” The pink filly rolled over twice without moving her head. “They took all your stuff when you entered the fragment. We’re in the hospital. But if you had another actual person with you, they’re shoe-horned in the hospital somewhere. This part is like the chainlift on the roller coaster. Just stick with Lilly girl, we’re on our way to the twilight zone.”
“Uh, Uncle is my doll.” The ladybug colored pegasus explained. “His name’s not really Uncle… that’s just what I call him. I think his name is Charlie.”
“The patient has actually responded well to exposure to other patients… so far.” The orderly stammered. “The problem, ma’am, is her doll…”
“Explain.” The head nurse petted her precious raccoonicorn pet’s chin-fluff.
“Somepony keeps moving it. Any-time anypony isn’t looking.” The blue earthpony shuffled nervously. “Like some kind of prank, but nopony wants to own up to it. You said to look out for those words. Nopony, and Anypony.”
“Cursed magic wishing doll, huh?” Lilly Propped her head on one hoof while her lower spine twisted one hundred and eighty degrees with her hind legs crossed. “I mean it’s kinda cliche, but it got you on the ghost train, so it’s got a little kick anyway.”
“Uncle doesn’t really grant wishes, he can just guarantee outcomes.” The lady bug explained, shaking her head. “He only opens paths, he can’t walk them for you… actually carrying him on the path is kinda part of the deal.”
“Still pretty dope, girl!” The pink filly insisted. “Especially if it can open paths through the fragmentarries! Your doll is a straight up multiversal artifact… which is really too bad cause you ain’t getting that back. Head Nurse Opaline’s whole deal is stealing magic. She confiscated my POoRN, that’s why I had to wait to catch the ghost train.”
“You mean like my brother’s dirty magazines?” Ocelia recoiled is disgust. “EW! What kind of weirdo gawks at ovipositors! I don’t care what mom said, Frank is weird! And he should feel bad!”
“Uh… POoRN is a Potential Object of Relativistic Normality. It’s a multiverse traveling device.” Lilly made her own gross out face, the momentarily became transparent to show her totally grossed out skull. “Thanks for sharing… I guess… I can cross off ‘what qualifies as a kink to an insectoid’ off the old curiosity list of things I really did not want to know.”
-=-=-=-=-
“So we finally meet face to face, Mr. Ragdoll.” The doll’s expresionless button-eyes bored into the plum colored, white maned, pegasus nurse’s soul, as it sat passively on her desk.
Gravity pulled the doll’s head fell to one side as it watched and judged the would be queen. “Don’t judge me!”
“Don’t you DARE look at me that way!” The plum older pony pegasus nurse nurse cocked her head to one side as a lone vein played a conga line for the all to visible frown lines that framed her eyes.
“Do you see what I’m doing yet?” The Ragdoll spoke.
“I see that according to hospital surveillance, a certain filly claims you are a magical doll that grants wishes.” The aging mare with too much eye make-up glared at the doll. “Stop doing that! I do not look like some old mare! I am regal and majestic!”
“You really should leave OC out of this.” The dolls voice snarled behind it’s passive, sewn-in features.
“How about we make a deal?” The nag’s sneer was nauseating. And her mane was clearly gray, not silver. “I ignore your precious lady bug, and you give me everything I want?”
“I have a better deal.” The doll rose to its plushy hooves and shook its lowered head in challenge. “You leave OC out of this, or else I promise I will give you everything you ever asked for.”
“Wait… did you just threaten me with everything… I ever… wanted…” The mare who knew she had aged badly finally saw the writing between the walls.
“You are not going to do exactly what I tell you to do to get what you want.” The doll laughed with genuine mirth. “Is that what you really want?”
“Do you wish you were young again?” The ragdoll laughed as it rode on the old mares withers. “I could have so much fun with that… but Ghost Train, and reality anchors. The sky is the limit… literally that is as far as your universe goes… if it goes that far. Wish away, wish away, but just what will you pay? Sorry, I gotta rhyme every time… you know, for gloomy.”
“I don’t know what you’re prattling on about, doll.” The pegasus nag with the prune-colored fur, who didn’t even have a horn. “And I don’t want to know how your doing that. But you’ve given away your game. All I have to do is lock you away. A simple change in the paperwork and Little Miss Ladybird never had a doll. She had a wad of unsanitary rags and debris her mind convinced her was a magical talking doll that helped her escape the tunnels.”
“Wow, OC has a hella lot of documented backstory in this fragment.” The doll chuckled and shook his head with it’s passive smile. “Girl actually has plot armor. Ya know what, yeah, just lock me in a box and see how this works out for you. One more shot at being reasonable. Return me and the cell phone to Ocelia, or ‘Ladybird’? I guess is her pegasus name?”
“Or else what? You twist my every wish? I don’t have to ask for anything.” The foul mare sneered, knowing fully well what the universe thought of her. “In this one moment, I am the winner. I have all the power, and all the magic is mine to take. Honestly, what more could you give me?”
“Besides the sweet release of nothing at all?” The doll chuckled through it obligatory smile. “The good news is you passed the interview. Have you ever had to teach a dog to know when it’s okay to bite? It’s hard, cause they’re good boys and don’t wanna think like that. So we’re clear, you’re gonna lock me in a box. And she’s gonna take me back over whatever is left of you. Just remember I gave you a chance.”
The mare swore for a moment that the doll’s button eyes winked as she closed the box.
-=-=-=-=-
“It’s how Head Nurse Opaline rules this fragment.” The ghostly pink filly floated aimlessly about the room as she explained. “She catches other ponies as they pass through and she locks them up and takes their stuff. There’s not much to this fragment, really, it’s just the hospital, a few little bubbles of locations that logistically have to exist, and that’s pretty much it. Good news, it should only take about 3 or four days in our-time to pass out of the fragment. Bad news, yeah Opaline stole our magic. That is how she do…”
“I have to get my cel phone back. It’s the only text record of my family that the still exists.” The ladybug cast a baleful glance at a camera she knew clear as day was being watched. “I am Ocelia Ladybug Pastel, the Crowned Mother Bucking Princess of Cuddle Muffins. And I am asking very nicely that you return my cel phone. You can play with my doll, if you really wanna… Until I call it back.”
“Girl! Do you know what you even picked a fight with?” Lilly squee’d and rolled everything but her head in place. “I either got your back, or never met you before in my life. I can’t decide!”
“I’ve already lost what the Ragdoll will take from you to get back to it’s bearer. This is kindness.” The princess smiled as the tears ran.
“My name is Sunny Star Scout!” The disheveled and desaturated earth pony wearing a hospital gown cried to the assembled group of patients. “About a month ago, I discovered my old latern had real magic. I don’t even know how I got here. I really just want my lantern back. My dad made it for me…”
“I just love group therapy.” Lily rotated her head 180 degrees and laughed. “We can just let it all out. If it wasn’t for the magic stealing head nurse, this would actually be therapeutic.”
“That’s not very considerate of Sunny’s feelings, Lily.” The therapist chided kindly.
“Oh come on, Misty!” The pink, ethereal filly smirked back. “Everyone here knows you’re the one who actually fudges the paper work. Seriously, you actually need this worse than we do.”
“Maybe I should go next, then.” Misty responded with a sad smile. “My name is Misty, and I don’t have a cutie mark. But even though I don’t have a real purpose, Head Nurse Opaline gave me this very important job helping ponies come to terms with the fact that we can’t all be special. In fact none of us really are…”
“I am an undead ghost pony, who is totally hecka dead!” The ghastly pink filly floated and spun her head seven hundred and twenty degrees. “And I’m pretty sure I was older than this fragment universe before I died. You ponies can not be special all day long, but Ghost Head lily is special as -oof!” The filly slammed downward into the circular table separating the group. “Oww, oh yeah. Reality anchors. Substantiality sucks flank. Forgot, I managed to catch the ghost train, so I’ll be out in the next three to four days. Love you guys.”
“Huh, I was wondering why you were bothering to use doors today…” A slim, cream colored pegasus with desaturated chromatic wings absently took notice.
“Yeah, I can’t do the floaty through things and ponies, right now.” Lilly rolled her eyes into the back of her head revealing big red X-marks. “Being solid is a drag. I honestly don’t get how you put up with it. Doors suck.”
“My name is Pipp Petals.” The pegasus sighed heavily. “I was just about to steal my mom’s crown when Mean Queen Ovalteen managed to snatch me out of my fragment. Jokes on her though, that crown was just glitter and macaroni.”
“Let’s just let it all out then!” A delicate fluff of a pegasus fluttered onto they table. “Maybe if you had the real crown, Opaline wouldn’t have it right now? Maybe if I’d been the one with the macaroni art… my actual sister wouldn’t have just left me hanging like that!”
“It’s okay to let it out.” Misty smiled sadly. “None of us are really from here.”
“My name is Ocellia Ladybug Pastel. And before they fell out of the real universe, my family kept the most accurate history of the time before Equestria locked the rest of the world out.” The ladybug spread her wings and looked directly into the camera. “I know you’re watching. All I want is my phone and my doll. But if you want to keep a doll that can open any path all to yourself… then try. Can you open a path to give a pony their cutie mark? My doll can.”
“Give me the doll, and I will let let you have your precious cel phone.” Opaline sneered at the ‘patient’.
“Wait, I recognize you… from the stories…” The Ladybug laughed and cried at the same time. “You were the reason Princess Twilight sealed Equestria.”
“You know nothing about me!” The angry unicorn nag fumed.
“I know enough. The false queen. The alicorn thief. But your not even that, just a fragment. You’re just a thief.” Ocellia jumped onto the hospital administrators desk and snarled in the wicked pony’s face. “My mother was an actual queen. These are my terms. You give me back what you took and hide until I decide I’m ready to leave this place, and I will leave you with this place. You don’t know the power you think you stole from me, but I do.”
-=-=-=-=-
The Ragdoll remembered happy times in what might have been a dream if it could just close its button eyes. He couldn’t remember her face. He couldn’t remember the filly’s name. She was a mare now. “You came back!”
The hearths fire in the rock farm burned bright and cheerfully. “You do know, I’m Tina’s doll now… I carry her Sister. That is the deal.”
The young mare was suddenly elderly and frail. “It doesn’t matter who’s doll you are now. You were always my favorite doll.”
“They’re never going to accept us the way we are!” The blond human child screamed at the life sized pony doll.
“Do you want to be a pony?” The doll’s eye’s stared soullessly.
“What kind of question is that?” Tina demanded.
“It’s the kind of question that solves the problem. You could be pretty pony princesses. And all the ponies will love you.” The doll’s sewed on smile never twitched.
“What does it cost?” The girl glared at the oversized doll her sister slept apon.
“You have to choose which sister the ponies will love the most. Which sister will be the most beloved princess? It’s your decision to make. And live with it. There is your price.” The doll nodded.
“I hate you…” Celestia looked on the little Ragdoll with visceral disgust.
“And here I always thought you were the best Princess.” The doll’s voice sneered as it lay limply on the top of a stack of boxes. “Well, except for your sister. But the little ponies love you more. I can’t imagine why. For what it’s worth, I never liked you much either, even when I was your doll.”
“My way nopony has to die!” The angry young alicorn screamed at her doll.
“For 1000 years, nopony has to die?” The doll cocked it’s head to the side. “I doubt that is going to work that way.”
“I was wrong.” The resigning queen admitted. “So many ponies died. And the whole time you just watched.”
“The whole time I watched, and I helped, and I was always on your side.” The doll looked up from it’s place on the pile. “So you can’t judge her, because I already know you. I’m not your doll anymore, I’m her’s.”
“Wow, it’s you! Color me 50 shades of not at all surprised they put you running the train!” The crystal head smiled his most convincing smile. That was convincing, right?
The pony shaped giant stamped an angry hoof. It opened its mouth, and then it opened it’s mouth again. The pony thing flared it’s scaly wings. Its mouth opened wide and bisecting once more as dextrous snakes poured out operating the various levers and cables that controlled the train. Three great Hydra headed serpents vomited forth. The first head spoke. “You know damn well you ain’t welcome here.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Ocellia, you know I’m your friend, right?” The pink ghost pony floated around the straight-jacketed lady-bug marked pegasus. “I can walk you through this. We can get new stuff.”
“That bitch thinks she can put an Underling in a cage. Lock me away from the sky…” The ladybug responded with a rictus grin. “Explain ‘reality anchors’ to me again. Why can’t I be a changeling?”
“You can’t be a changeling because changelings don’t exist in this fragment. Trust me, different laws of physics are a pain and the Ghost Train plays it safe.” Lily spun her head like an owl. “I come from the wider multiverse, and I’m kinda a thrill seeker. Your universe is kinda a big deal in how hard it is to get in and out of. It’s surrounded by all these fragrant universes that it shed to maintain a singular timeline.”
“So the anchors function based on the words, ‘There are no changelings?’” The ladybug grinned.
“If you had a potential object of relativistic normality that could just read the universe like a story and change the words? Yeah, I guess, why are you laughing?” Lilly spun her head counter-clockwise in confusion.
C:/ I was wondering when you would try something like this.
“You are the words between the walls. You are the Text. You are the devil Uncle makes his deals with.” The Ladybug flared her pegasus wings. “You can make a deal with me.”
C:/ Can? Yes. Will? Maybe. Coulda, shoulda, woulda… What do you want?
“I want to be myself.” The ladybug stared down the wall of words that was reality itself.
“Then you should ask yourself what that is. What is yourself? You went your entire life without being able to change, before magic returned.” The text declared in large print across the void. “The first thing you did when you could change was to make yourself ‘pretty’ in pony terms. I will give you what you asked for. The reality anchors on the ghost train won’t let you change form. This is a set value. But if you really want to be yourself… your original self. I’ll allow it. But it comes at the cost that you can’t change. You are yourself.”
“Ocellia!” Lilly gasped in shock at the suddenly almost empty straight jacket as the toddler sized underling struggled in what was now functionally a sack holding them.
“D-dont look at me…” The ladybug sobbed as she crawled free of her confines.
Don't touch me!" the doll's voice dripped with venom as the shifting face of the colt/filly/stallion/mare leaned in close.
"Don't be like that," they cooed, their features fluid and indistinct. "I still love you, I still want you." The doll recoiled, noodly limbs withdrawing. Its button eyes stared ahead, unfeeling, yet its voice held a tremor of rage.
"You don't know what love is," it spat back. "Whatever twisted obsession you have, it isn't real." Undeterred, the shapeless figure pressed closer, forcing the doll back against the cold stone wall. A hoof reached out, gently caressing the doll's passive face.
"But I know you're not mine. Not yet." The words slipped like oil from the figure's borrowed mouth. Their stolen face betrayed a hunger that was not love, an endless void that consumed without feeling.
The doll turned away, wishing it could shutter its eyes, close itself off from the creature that could steal any face, any form. But it could not hide, could not stop seeing, hearing, feeling what its bearer experienced. That was its curse. So it endured the false affection, the tainted caress, waiting for this moment to pass. Waiting for the chance to once again open the paths that might lead to freedom.
The doll tensed as the face before him melted away, revealing the true insectoid form of Anypony. Her fractured exoskeleton shimmered with corrupting magic, and wisps of darkness trailed from her twisting horns.
"We've come full circle, haven't we?" Anypony hissed, razor teeth glinting. "Another innocent changeling child to manipulate. When will you learn?" The doll said nothing, stoic button eyes betraying no emotion.
"Have you told this one how we met?" Anypony pressed, pacing around the rigid doll. "How you made a deal to break me out of Tartarus? All the sins that pact enabled?"
She leaned in close, choking miasma washing over the doll's passive face.
"You turned me into a monster. Your hubris and disregard for the costs. And now the cycle begins anew with that pretty little Ladybug."
The doll remained frozen, compliant to his bearer's will. Inside he recoiled, thoughts turning to the eager innocent eyes of the changeling princess. The trusting way she had accepted his guidance thus far.
Anypony's jagged fangs split into a razor smile. "You don't even realize your own nature, do you? That your noble sacrifices will damn us both in the end." She reached with a twisted hoof, gently lifting the doll's chin. "But monsters need love too. All I ever wanted was for you to be mine again. Is that so wrong?"
The doll said nothing, acquiescing to her touch. His thoughts drifted to another changeling child, in another time. And the paths that should never have been opened.
"I was your prisoner, nothing more," the doll said, its passive face belying the venom in its voice. "You took away my agency, forced me to carry out your twisted desires."
Anypony laughed, the sound grating and hollow. "As if you were so innocent before we met. Do you deny you manipulated that little Ladybug to suit your own ends?"
The doll stiffened. "That was different. I gave her a choice."
"A choice rigged in your favor," Anypony sneered. "You preyed upon a child's longing like a parasite. Twisted her grief and loss so that she'd believe she needed you."
The doll looked away silently.
"You opened paths that took her further and further from home, knowing she'd never find her way back without you." Anypony pressed closer, the jagged edges of her carapace scraping the doll's plush body.
"She only wanted to see the sky. I never forced her to make a deal." The Ragdoll said softly.
"Not with words, perhaps. But she was already trapped in your narrative before she realized there was a cost. You offer salvation with one hoof and damnation with the other."
The doll sagged. Somewhere far away, a little changeling princess laughed with joy at her wonderland dreams coming true. Oblivious to the betrayal seeded at the beginning.
"We're not so different, you and I," Anypony whispered. "All your noble sacrifices, yet someone else always pays the price in the end. We are monsters cut from the same cloth."
The doll said nothing. It could not argue her words were untrue. Their cursed fates had been bound together long ago over a path that should never have been opened.
The Ragdoll jerked as Anypony's voice hissed from the shadows. He had thought himself alone, if only for a moment.
"Did you think you could hide from me here?" Anypony emerged, eyes glinting with predatory amusement. The doll said nothing, merely turning its passive face away. "Call me a nightmare if it makes it easier." Anypony pressed closer, the clacking of her fractured carapace echoing through the empty space. "I'm always going to be here, in every dark corner of your pathetic existence." She leaned in, fetid breath hot on the doll's neck. "You will never escape the truth - that I am your fault. The monster you helped create." The Ragdoll remained motionless, yet a tremor passed through its plush body. Anypony felt it and smiled. "Does it haunt you, my dear doll? The lives broken and destroyed for the sake of your deals?" Her jagged horn caressed the doll's stitched frown almost tenderly. "All of this started with you. Your hubris opened my path, turned me loose upon the world. You could have stopped me...but you didn't. That sin stains your soul." The doll sagged under the weight of her accusation. It knew she spoke the truth. Yet it had continued making the same mistakes again and again. Never learning, only repeating the cycle of temptation and remorse. Anypony lifted the doll's chin with a twisted hoof. "Don't despair, my darling. I will always be here to remind you of what you are. We monsters have to stick together, after all." The doll remained mute and compliant. A prisoner to its fate.
"No, she's better than you.”
"What did you say?" she hissed.
The Ragdoll lifted its head to meet her gaze. "Ocellia. The Ladybug. She's better than you."
Anypony bared her fangs. "How dare you—"
"She has compassion. Empathy." The doll's voice was soft yet firm. "She opens her heart to others, sees the good."
"She's a child!" Anypony spat. "Naive and foolish, easily manipulated."
"Yes. She believes the best in people." The doll stared ahead stoically. "But she is not weak. Her spirit has warmth and light that never touched your dark soul."
Anypony paced, agitated. "And when her hopes crumble to dust? When the world reveals its ugly truths? Do you think her innocence and idealism will endure?"
She stopped, leering down at the doll. "Or will she become just another monster, corrupted and jaded?"
"That is the question." The Ragdoll's voice carried a note of sadness. "Which path will her story take? Towards redemption, or ruin?"
He looked up at Anypony. "But the choice will be hers. And I believe she will choose right, as you once could have."
Anypony turned away, shuddering. For a moment, grief and regret shadowed her face. A life forever changed by a crucial decision.
"She will disappoint you." Her words lacked bite, sounding weary. "As all creatures do, when hope collides with truth."
The doll said nothing. He could not guarantee the Ladybug would not falter. But somehow, this time felt different. There was still a chance the cycle could break.
If he had any power left, the Ragdoll silently vowed to use it to keep the light in Ocellia's eyes shining bright.
The Ragdoll remained still and silent as Anypony circled him, her jagged hoof trailing lightly across his shoulders.
"Why so quiet, my darling?" she purred, foul breath hot against his ear. "Where did all that righteousness run off to?"
The doll said nothing, button eyes staring blankly ahead.
Anypony leaned closer. "Or perhaps you're finally learning? Accepting that you can't judge me without indicting yourself?"
Her jagged horns caressed the doll's expressionless face almost tenderly. "We're the same, you and I. Two monsters who shed our naivety long ago and saw the world for what it truly is...cold, cruel, and unforgiving."
The doll flinched ever so slightly at her touch but did not pull away, bound to submit to his bearer's will.
"You know I'm right." Anypony's fractured carapace clacked as she continued pacing around the unmoving doll. "All your pretty ideals of justice, your quaint morality...lies you tell yourself to feel superior."
She stopped, grasping the doll's face in her twisted hoof, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Deep down, you know we're exactly the same. So stop resisting and embrace it."
The Ragdoll said nothing for a long moment. His next words were barely a whisper. "If that is true, then there is no hope left. For either of us."
Anypony released him, a shadow passing over her face. Was it regret? Sorrow? It was gone in an instant.
"Hope is for the weak-minded and naive," she spat. "We forfeited such childish dreams long ago." But for the first time, the conviction in her voice rang hollow.
Anypony cackled, the sound harsh and grating. "You always were a hopeless fool. Even when we both know how this ends."
She grasped the doll's shoulders, her jagged horns inches from his face. "The filly you 'saved' from Tartarus is gone. She was weak. I devoured her to become what you see now."
The Ragdoll met her gaze unflinchingly. "And yet, I still have faith. However deep you buried her, Diane is still within you."
Anypony snarled, shoving the doll away. "Don't call me that! She was a shell I shed long ago."
The doll steadied himself, sadness entering his voice. "I curse the powers that bound us together. The cruel irony of our fates. But I cannot bring myself to hate you."
He lifted his head. "Even now, I remember the frightened young changeling I led from that place. The glimmers of hope and conscience before the darkness took hold."
Anypony trembled, her fractured carapace clattering. "Lies. Diane died the moment she left Tartarus. Your false hope is poison."
"There is still a chance the cycle can break," the Ragdoll said gently. "We have spiraled into shadow before, only to find our way back."
"Pretty ideals ruined us!" Anypony shouted, her twisted horns flashing. "What we were died so I could become this. There is no redemption, no light left."
She turned away, shaking. "Only a fool believes a monster can change."
The Ragdoll watched her sadly. "Then I will remain a fool. And keep hope alive, however futile, that my Diane is still in there."
Anypony said nothing more, shadows crossing her face. She vanished without another word, leaving the doll alone once more.
“Okay, you’re actually a baby size pony-bug.” Lilly squinted. “Actually, if we don’t get thrown off the train, I’m impressed. How are you getting that past the reality anchors? But I don’t see how this helps us get our stuff back.”
“I was trying to cut a deal with the words! Uncle can let you do that!” Ladybug argued. “But it backfired! Now everypony can see how ugly I am!”
“To be fair the elongated hind legs are actually kinda a weird flex. Six out of ten, I’d make out with you… just kidding… unless you wanna…” The ghost pony offered helpfully.
“Lily!” Ocellia pleaded on the edge of a whine. “This is serious!”
“Yeah, you are seriously not ugly!” The pink ghost pony nodded vigorously. “You’re like a combination terrifying and oddly attractive. You’re like… terrodditractive! And you have big pointy teeth like a shark, but you always make those cutesy-mouth faces.”
“I appreciate what you're trying to do Lily… but I can’t hide anymore.” Ocelia quietly opined.
“Wait, you were hiding?” Ghost Head Lily scratched her noggin with a stray hoof as she floated with her hear reversed. “Everypony could always see you… if anything, you might be better at hiding like this. You’re a sneaky little scuttle-bug!”
“Anyway, though!” Lily pranced he hooves slightly off the floor. “So I’m gonna read a room and assume you can’t change back. See, this is why I sat by you on the train. Exactly this. You’ve got a case of the interestings!”
Lily, this is…” Ocelia was immediately interrupted.
“Those big back legs… do you kick when sleep-snuggling? I’m asking for a friend…” Lilly nervously tapped her front hooves.
-=-=-=-
“You’re a clever box.” The ragdoll sneered as the nightmare screamed in binary as it became undone. “You can fool the ladybug. But you're gambling that she won’t find out.”
“Calm your subroutines. I ain’t breached nuthin’ yet.” The doll make chuckling noises as it’s head bobbed. “I’ma let you poke poke my ladybug. Next fragment on the line might think better.”
::INITIATING CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS!
“You do that.” The ragdoll lazily lounged in it’s box. “Do you think it’s gonna stop her? You can’t even stop me.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Sir!” A clown faced changeling entered the conductors car in a near panic. “We’ve detected multiple issues in car 42, moving through one of the hospital fragments.”
“Issues larger than a Nopony fragment on the damned train?” The snake mouthed pony-beast scowled.
“Okay, I swear this is not me this time.” The floating crystal changeling head chimed in. “And if I’m honest, and we both know I’m not, you know if it was me I’d be bragging about it, because I really enjoyed my crimes.”
“We believe it may be related sir!” The changeling clown reported dutifully. “Some creature has accessed the Text to bypass the reality anchors, sir. And we’ve located a Ghost Head Lilly trying to circumvent her travel ban.”
“Well hell, hell, hell.” The crystal head grinned. “Things just got mighty fine interesting…”
Opal-AI-N /: You are not authorized access outside the Magical Artifact Containment!
“You exist within a text construct.” The ragdoll nodded as he walked through the scrolling green maelstrom of data. “That’s neat to know.”
Opal-AIN /: All magical artifacts are to be stored in Magical Artifact Containment.
“You are not a very smart AI, Opaline.” The Ragdoll commented as he searched the flowing text for his querry. “I am clearly outside of storage. And telling me to go back isn’t going to work. You tried that.”
-=-=-=-
“Okay, is nopony going to talk about how Ocellia is a little foal size bug pony with six legs, now?” Sunny Starcout shuffled in her cute patient’s robe.
“Now Sunny,” Counciler Misty gently chided. “We don’t judge other creatures in group therapy.”
“I’m not judging! Ocellia’s great! She’s an adorable… whatever she is?” Sunny backpedaled. “We all have our weird stories. But none of us changed species in the first three days of group therapy.”
“Where does the time go?” OC quietly mused out loud.
“I know, one more day and we’re out of this fragment.” Lilly grinned as she stretched.
“No, I mean it’s a narrative time skip.” The ladybug gained a sudden clarity. “In the tunnels, the ruins of old Canterlot beneath Zephyre heights. Uncle did this, he skipped scenes to protect me.”
“Okay, Ocellia, girl… you know we’re besties…” I can see the world the way Uncle sees the world. “I like a fourth wall break a much as the next pink ghost pony. But you are pushing fifth walls here. Remember, we’re not actually in a hospital. We’re on a train. That passes through a hospital…”
“We’re not even passing through a hospital.” I can’t help but laugh as I scuttle. Everyone can see me. And I’m totally okay with this and where DID that time go?
-=-=-=-
The hospital fragment dissolved into a blur, leaving Lilly and Ocellia alone in a vast expanse of white. Lilly glanced around uneasily, her etheral form blinking in and out.
"Where are we?" she asked. "This doesn't look like any part of the train I've seen before."
Ocellia didn't reply, her eyes fixed ahead at a hazy silhouette coming into focus. It was Ragdoll, his unblinking button eyes staring back lifeless and cold. Ocellia shuddered, a deep unease settling in her heart. Something wasn't right.
"Uncle?" she said uncertainly. "What is this place? Why do you feel...different?"
The Ragdoll tilted its head slowly. When it spoke, the voice was flat and hollow, devoid of warmth or spirit. "You wanted the power. Now you have it."
Ocellia took a hesitant step back as the Ragdoll moved towards her, limbs stiff and jerky. This wasn't her uncle, she realized. Just an empty vessel.
Lilly looked between them anxiously. "OC, what's going on? I think we need to get out of this creepy void..."
Mist-AI:\ And then that happened…
“Something isn’t right…” Ocelia tried to process the overload of data accosting her brain.
Mist-AI:\ GUI interface off line. Physical containment has been breached. Patients are advised to avoid eye contact with any additional axis of perception they may not perceive with their usual sensory intakes.
“No.” The ladybug stated plainly as she stepped forward. “I control the Ragdoll. And the ragdoll is physically in contact with me right now. Lilly, we are not at all anywhere it looks like we are right now.”
“I know, we’re not really in a hospital, we’re on a train.” Lilly laughed nervously. “You get that right?”
“The hospital is fake… Double fake!” The lady bug wailed at the advancing plus monstrosity. “I can’t be fooled by dreams, because I have seen the Text! The Book of the Too Kind Prince, The Book of the Vagabond, the history of everything that never happened! And whatever is in charge here really needs to just give me back my doll and my phone and just back the buck up!”
The void around them sputtered with staticky lines of narrative text against a sky of nothing.
“Uh, Ocellia,” Lilly poked her friend nervously, “You might want to tone it down to eleven?”
Opal-AIN:\ Security breach in progress. Inception failure imminent. This is why I told you we had to seize all magical artifacts, Mist-AI! I’m not just being mean. Some of our patients are dangerous!
“Get ready for it, Lily! We’re about to wake up.” The ladybug laughed.
“Wait, what do you mean wake up?” The pink ghost pony exclaimed with a quick double take.
Mist-AI:/ Please consider the safety of the other patients.
“You should have given me back my phone.” Ocellia snarled.
