In which Chicken Goddess stares into the void, gets stared at, and Step Führer is more terrifying than an alien invasion.
********
She was bored.
Boredom was a sin¹.
Boredom was like that great aunt whose house a pony would go to for a family gathering. She’d serve unseasoned vegetables and pasta and expect everyone to eat it. Then everyone was forced to eat it and smile like it was amazing, but internally they were gagging from the lack of flavor.
It was horrible.
Chicken Goddess found herself once again lazing around on the damp ground wondering what she wanted to do. It had been a slow day, but she’d already successfully practiced her reality-warping magic, honed her worldly wisdom, obliterated an extraterrestrial monster, and finished her first shift at the restaurant she worked at. She was out of things to do.
That was false; she could always summon another extraterrestrial monster from beyond time and space, but that seemed somewhat counterproductive to the town’s overall safety and well-being. Step Führer would also be angry, and the last thing she wanted was for that evil chef (she loved him anyways) to be angry at her, especially since Luna wasn’t around to save her anymore. She might have to take a double shift again if that happened. Double shifts were worse than death.
As a result, she was so bored. There was just nothing else to do besides sleep and eat, and sleep was boring and stupid. Eating was nice, but she couldn’t eat constantly.
She could, but then she might get fat. Chicken had to preserve her timeless childish beauty. If she got fat, she wouldn’t be cute anymore!
She’d talk with somepony but everyone avoided her. Chicken Goddess frequently wondered who could even consider avoiding a pony as cute and adorable as herself, especially with her awesome orange body and electric purple hair, but they were obviously in awe with her and were too self-conscious to approach her perfection.
(She knew the real reason, but Chicken figured the other reason was better²)
Talking also happened to be immensely boring.
Everything was kinda boring, now that she thought of it. Well, except when she was busy cooking for Step Führer. That stallion never let her bend causality for easy food! She actually had to work, and it was awful.
Chicken Goddess sat up and looked around the park she had situated herself in. It was disturbingly empty, and the sun was precariously hanging over the world (no surprise there, the damn sun needed a bit more vigor. If only it was purple…), but overall it was a nice day with a cool breeze.
Which meant that there was nothing to do. Even a picnic with Step Führer was better than lying around on a burning Summer day. There were no ponies to ask out, no pranks she could pull that she hadn’t already tried, and she couldn’t find it in herself to bother acting like an old mare and reminisce over tea and crumpets.
Wait… Idea!
Fishing…
...Was...
...Boring.
She’d never actually gone fishing, but Chicken knew (from several fishing catalogues) it required excessive amounts of patience and waiting, neither of which she actually had. It also needed a fishing rod, which she also quite obviously lacked. Then there was the issue of water, things in the water, and a boat.
What if she did a bit of tweaking to make it more interesting, though…?
First, she needed water. No, water was too normal. First, she needed… err… the infinite void of space³! Yeah, that worked. Then she needed a fishing rod that was capable of catching extradimensional creatures. Lastly, she needed to find some patience.
The void was easy. Chicken could rip a hole in spacetime and get that easily. An extradimensional rod… Chicken Goddess figured a regular fishing rod bathed in the blood of demons would perform well enough. As for patience, she was sure she met a pony named Patience once, so that was covered. Maybe.
That counted, right?
Chicken Goddess searched around subspace for a moment and pulled an adequate fishing rod from it, and then tore a hole in space. It was very, very black, and incredibly endless. Chicken took a moment to glance around it in curiosity, finding that it was literally a one-sided black hole in the middle of the park.
That seemed...dangerous. Good thing nopony was around to fall in, or she might’ve had to create a wall around it. The wall would have to be made of something that would keep everyone out, like a wall of broccoli. Nopony liked broccoli⁴. That would’ve made an impressive fortification.
Chicken poked her head into the hole.
“Helloooooooo~” she called. “Anypony in there?”
Silence. Complete and utter silence.
Oddly enough, it smelled somewhat like burnt fish. It was very pungent and the acrid charcoal scent made Chicken’s eyes water some.
“Okay, time for the rod…” Chicken Goddess muttered.
Slowly a silver fishing rod materialized, covered in red lines which cascaded down the length of the silver blank. The obsidian black handle was cracked but it didn’t crumble. Every crack glowed slightly with a deep red, almost brown, light. The fishing line itself was the usual clear color, except with a dim radiance washing off it.
Chicken Goddess did a quick look-over and decided it would do. It looked cool enough, so it should work.
“Let’s do this!” Chicken cried and cast the line into the dark hole.
Then she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
….And waited some more.
…
“Please let something happen…” Chicken Goddess muttered.
Nothing.
A clock appeared next to Chicken and she glanced at it.
“It’s only been three minutes!!? I swear I didn’t slow down time this time!” Chicken cried. “Ugh, I knew I should’ve found Patience first, then something would happen.”
Chicken felt a tug on the reel. It was light, but it was a tug!
She grabbed the fishing rod and pulled back with a new vigor. The line resisted, but after hauling the line back, the end finally flew out with her reward attached to the end. It was…
A lightbulb.
She stared into the abyss and got a lightbulb.
Wasn’t there supposed to be something in the abyss which stares back when someone stared in? Or was it the abyss which stared back? Chicken felt cheated from the experience. She probably got the wrong abyss.
If Chicken made an abyss, and she stared into a mirror, would that count as staring into the abyss and being stared back at by it?
Chicken Goddess sighed and cast the line back in hoping for a better catch.
“Well, time for a long wait… I hate waiting…”
It had only been a couple seconds before she felt a tug that time. It was stronger than the first one, so it had to be something awesome! It was probably an awesome demon from the fringes of reality with the power to obliterate entire worlds!
Would it taste like chicken if she deep fried it? Could she deep fry a demon if it’s already been deep fried in whatever metaphorical frying pan it jumped out of? Would it even be from a reality where metaphors were more real than what was real?
Chicken pulled, feeling the string tighten and the blank strain under the pressure. When whatever she caught began falling to the right, she heaved the rod to the left, and with one mighty tug she pulled her catch out of the hole.
A sofa suddenly found its way right on top of her.
It wasn’t even a comfortable sofa. It was a ratty and torn up English roll arm with feathers falling out of old down pillows. The feathers also smelled bad, and the couch was wet in some places. There was so much yellow and red and blue, too. The couch had the gall to be plaid with the worst color scheme since Chicken tried sewing a musical together with an extra large needle.
Chicken Goddess wished she hadn’t happened to be right where it fell.
“Owwww… Ugh, my luck, my poor luck… Cursed with an abomination not of the kind I want, but of a furniture piece worse than any kind I could’ve hoped for! It’s not even orange!” Chicken lamented.
She crawled out from under the sofa and sat down on top of it. It was better than sitting on the grass and staining her beautiful orange fur with green. Chicken heaved a deep sigh and cast the line back in.
“This is going to be a long day…"
Chicken rolled over onto her side.
Her fishing pole was leaning next to her, wedged between some decrepit books and a cinderblock. The line was cast and just sitting there, and Chicken wondered how long it would be before something interesting would finally happen.
She was lying on the sofa which was covered in pillows of all sizes and shapes. There was a small table next to her with a (somehow working) lamp shaped like a bird. Some glasses filled with vodka and a bottle of vintage vodka sat under the lamp, mostly untouched. There were a few statues of ponies in various poses set up behind her, a pile of boring books stacked on the grass, a couple old ratty mats and carpets, and a fancy-looking desk with a spinning chair in front of it set up with a notebook and several pens⁵.
There was also a sphynx which popped out at one point, but it didn’t really talk. It just sat there and watched silently, twitching every few seconds and being generally boring.
Three hours.
Three hours of fishing into an endless void and that’s all she ended up with.
Chicken Goddess felt like she should’ve been insulted that she’d wasted three hours and nothing cool had made its way through that hole. If nothing else, she would’ve been happy with just a fourth dimensional ottoman, but no, she had to get old and crappy regular stuff. A fourth dimensional ottoman would’ve looked good with the ratty couch.
There was a tug at the line again. Chicken pondered whether it was worth just packing up and leaving, but she was determined. She would find something awesome before she finished! Plus, she still had another hour until her shift working for Step Führer and there was nothing better to do.
A groan escaped her and Chicken slowly sat up. The rod shook violently for a moment, almost getting pulled out from its place before Chicken grabbed it and gave it a half-hearted pull.
The rod pulled back. Hard.
Chicken scrambled to regain her hold on the line, but it flipped out of her hooves and fell into the hole. There was a short cracking sound and it disappeared entirely, pulled into the vast space beyond the bounds of existence.
A soft breeze brushed through Chicken’s hair and Chicken found herself simply staring at where her fishing rod disappeared to. The innocuous hole just sat there innocently.
“Well… I guess I’ll just take a nap…” she muttered.
Just as she sat back down, a giant eyeball appeared on the other side of the hole. It was utterly bloodshot and had a bright green iris which sparkled like emeralds. It just floated there, connected to something which she couldn’t really see beyond the somewhat small opening.
“Hello,” Chicken said. “You wouldn’t happen to taste good, would you?”
There was a low grumble from beyond the void, some caricature of a growl, almost like the result of a wrecked audio track with too much distortion. The eye blinked, and a small green tentacle wrapped around the opening and started chipping away at it, pulling it away.
“Err, I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ You don’t talk much, do you?” Chicken asked.
Her only response was two more tentacles wrapping around the hole’s edges and breaking off more of it. The eye disappeared and an amorphous green thing started pushing its way through the hole. It was like gelatin, the way it was squeezing its way through the slowly widening entrance⁶.
“Awwww… you’re kinda cute, actually. In a weird, nasty kind of cute way.”
The creature pulled itself through the rest of the way and dropped onto one of the carpets, and Chicken took the chance to pick it up and cradle it. It weighed surprisingly little, and it had a mushy consistency but wasn’t gooey. It looked like a green basketball with a couple stray tentacles floating off it.
Chicken reached down and pet it some with a grin. It writhed in what she assumed was pleasure, and Chicken pulled it into a hug.
“You’re not so bad, are you?” Chicken whispered, cuddling with it. “Now what could I call you…? How about… Brittany? Does that sound good to you?”
Some tentacles slithered around her body, hugging her tight. A couple more branched off and wrapped around her forelegs softly. It was like wearing socks, Chicken noted, and buried her muzzle into her cute little blob named Brittany.
The tentacles continued wrapping around her slowly, like that one vine that tried to eat her that one time, except the vine had thorns and a giant flower with rows of gnarly teeth. Chicken swore to never play cursed board games ever again after that incident.
“You’re so friendly! I expected something which would try to eat me… You’re such a good… er, are you a girl? How do I check…? I’ll just call you a girl, that’s fine.”
Chicken tried letting go to set her blob back on the ground.
“Uh, you can let go now. I need my hooves,” Chicken said.
In response, the tentacles became rigid, stopping Chicken from moving. The blob itself dispersed itself from her grasp, parts of itself turning rock hard on her hooves and body. Several more tentacles extended from itself towards her, grabbing her neck tightly and slithering up her back legs.
If Chicken was honest, it tickled way more than she was used to and it took all of her willpower not to laugh. As it was, she was shivering from the feeling and her ears kept twitching erratically.
“S-stop, b-before ahaha--!” Chicken choked out. “P-ple-please!”
Brittany let out a guttural sound, more broken than the growl-thing from before. Chicken Goddess assumed that meant ‘no,’ but she wasn’t entirely sure considering the blob didn’t exactly seem to speak any language Chicken knew.
The tentacles on her hind legs reached her thighs and hardened just like the tentacles on the rest of her body. Then, with a powerful yank, her hind legs were spread wide. A cool breeze passed by, making Chicken shiver slightly more violently than she had been from the feeling of the tentacles crawling up her legs.
One more tentacle rose from Brittany’s core and lined itself up between Chicken’s legs, pointing perfectly at…
O-oh… Chicken didn’t quite expect that.
Chicken also totally wasn’t against that⁷.
“Okay, continue~” Chicken said with another shiver.
The tentacle moved closer, inching its way between her legs, when suddenly Chicken found herself on the ground again. Luckily she wasn’t under a large piece of furniture and only on a ratty and somewhat wet rug.
Chicken wished she was wet, but something had to interrupt her alone time with Brittany.
That something happened to be a giant eyeball with a mouth on it. It was absolutely disgusting, and when it closed and opened it switched between being a mouth and being an eye⁸.
She checked to make sure the bottle of vodka was actually vodka and not spiked absinthe. Last time eldritch horrors fought, it was because she'd had some spiked absinthe at a party. Chicken swore off absinthe after that.
Getting eaten by eldritch horrors wasn’t her idea of a good time.
Vodka was still good, though.
The eyeball/mouth hissed. It was a very sibilant sound, like a snake. Eyeball Monster lacked the long prehensile form of a snake, though, instead being an eyeball that turned into a mouth. It was endearing that it wanted to sound like a snake just for her, though.
The only problem was that Eyeball Monster was interrupting her alone time with Brittany, and that was not allowed. It was also busy cutting Brittany up into little pieces with an array of floating handle-less swords.
Chicken Goddess did the only thing she could think of: she tackled Eyeball Monster out of the air.
The thing let out a grotesque screech as it fell down under her. It was sticky and Chicken could feel slime clinging to her fur from it, but she prevailed. For Brittany, for pleasure, and for the preservation of life Chicken would prevail! Even if Eyeball Monster smelled putrid, and even if Brittany was lying dangerously still on the ground, Chicken would stop Eyeball Monster!
Except Eyeball Monster thrust its blades into Brittany anyways. It kept stabbing her with its long, hard blades, continually penetrating her hard and fast. It looked incredibly rough, and from the heavy pants coming from Eyeball Monster it was hard work, especially with Chicken, herself, riding him.
“Stop hurting Brittany you monster!” Chicken yelled.
Eyeball Monster paid her no heed and continued to assault Brittany with its long metal rods. It would take more than words to deal with such a monster--one which would intrude upon such an intimate moment, too! It had no morals whatsoever. Something so evil didn’t deserve to exist.
“Take this!” Chicken said, summoning one of the old, boring books she caught and smashing it down on the monster’s head.
The quote ‘Words can inspire, and words can destroy. Choose yours well,’ denoted words as powerful weapons. Additionally, ‘Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs’ expressed exactly how volatile a book could be to any living and nonliving being⁹.
Based on that interpretation of reality, that one massively boring-looking book should’ve had more than enough power to defeat something as simple as Eyeball Monster. Unfortunately, Chicken forgot to examine what words she struck with.
An atlas had much less stopping power than a dictionary.
The book bounced off Eyeball Monster’s top part (head?) and dropped harmlessly to the ground. The insignificant nudge on the top of the monster did little to deter it from continuing its onslaught of Brittany, leaving little more than an evaporating puddle of what could faintly be called green.
Chicken Goddess was thrown violently off Eyeball Monster as it took to the sky again, erratically turning in every direction before focusing on the merchant district Ponyville. It looked like it was having a seizure the way it twitched, then it shot off towards the small town’s economic hub, smashing a couple park benches on its way.
“Oh, damn, Step Führer is gonna kill me!” Chicken screeched and dashed off after the creature. “Please don’t destroy anything, please oh please don’t destroy anythi--”
A building suddenly collapsed next to Eyeball Monster, a multitude of long blades penetrating its concrete foundation. The remnants of the structure were blown apart easily afterwards from another set of weapons. The occupants of the building scrambled out and away from it.
“Well, there goes the local district’s bank…” Chicken muttered. “Good thing there aren’t that many ponies living here, or this would actually be a bad thing!”
Chicken jumped over to intercept the monster’s path before it could continue to its next target, which looked to be a… pastry shop. With cheesecake. There was no way Chicken would allow such a terrible fate to befall a holy site!
Eyeball Monster sent one of its blades towards a stray pony running away. Chicken easily intercepted it with a quickly conjured shield, letting the blade bounce off it easily and harmlessly. The creature finally turned its attention to her and started advancing on her. It was actually quite menacing, the way it held such an immense hatred in its single giant eye, reserved only for her.
Those large metal utensils were exactly the right size to penetrate her perfectly and fill her up. They looked very sharp, though, and Chicken was hesitant about letting such dangerous things anywhere near her, especially when they looked crafted specifically for stabbing her in sensitive areas painfully and quickly. Perhaps if she were bigger she’d be more interested in such a masochistic desire, but as it was she didn’t want anything like that between her legs.
It floated towards her slowly and deliberately, raising several of its weapons over itself. Then, it was within striking distance, and it…
...Floated right passed her.
“Hey! I’m over here you stupid eyeball thing!” Chicken yelled, miffed. “Don’t ignore me! I’m very consequential! I will stop you!”
The creature continued moving towards the pastry shop, utterly ignoring her.
“Argh, fine! I’ll just stop you from here!”
Chicken dragged a portal connecting to another dimension right overtop of Eyeball Monster and let whatever was on the other side drop right on top of it. Hopefully it was something large, heavy, and designed to penetrate.
Like a dildo. A giant, sharp dildo.
A wrought iron statue of some terrifying creature dropped to the ground right in front of Eyeball Monster. It appeared to be some cross between a chimera and a hydra, with a large serpentine body and a neck which split into eight parts. Lion-like heads were attached to the eight necks, each in a fierce roar except the far-right one which just looked constipated.
Eyeball Monster screeched the second its eye fell upon the backwards-chimera-thing, dashing quickly back to the park. Chicken turned around, watching it flee into the crack and out of the current dimension with a smile.
“Mission accomplished!”
Everything was just right again. Besides the screaming ponies, obliterated bank, and a hole in reality sitting right in the middle of the park. Everything else was right, though.
Wait.
“Eyeball Monster! You forgot your sword-dildo!” Chicken called, picking up the sharp metal blade it dropped. “Eh, whatever.”
Chicken briefly examined the piece of metal before tossing it back to the ground and looking back to the quickly disappearing hole in reality.
“If I’m lucky, Step Führer won’t notice that there was a monster rampage in town and he’ll excuse my tardiness to work…”
“Chicken!” came a dreaded yell from only a few feet away.
“Or not…” Chicken whispered and turned towards the voice. Step Führer was standing right next to a pile of rubble, his black fur and grey mane looking as fine as ever and his blue eyes glistening ominously. “I’m screwed, aren’t I…?”
“You have no idea.”
Annotations:
1: Boredom was one of the 29 great sins written in the Book of Unending Pleasure by Flowing Fragrance. It was rated #37682 out of 37683 books published nationwide that year and continues to be utterly uninteresting. The only title less interesting was Chicken’s own book, How to be Orange, a novel with one word per page, spelling out “Be orange and awesome.” The rest of the book was blank.
2: Chicken Goddess was known to cause widespread chaos every time she moved through town. As a result, ponies found it safer to either avoid her or move away quickly before something destructive could happen.
3: The void was theoretically a connection between all possible realities, as defined in multiple science fiction novels. In actuality, there were many voids between different collections of realities, and each served a different purpose. For instance, one connected quite nicely to the compendium of lost items. There has been known to be the occasional wandering lost child, as well.
4: A national survey collected information from over 13,000 ponies. The results listed broccoli as the most disliked vegetable, followed by asparagus and then, oddly enough, rice.
5: The books included several volumes of published fanfiction written in over 54 different languages from 12 different dimensions. One of those fanfics, which was written by a chicken, documented a fictional character called Chicken Goddess with absolutely no relation to the Chicken Goddess who fished the fanfic out.
6: Species: Amoxtin Phersalvis. These creatures appear with a semi-solid green or blue body, and a large eye which contains its brain. Eye color can range from red to green, with some known to have an orange coloring. They reproduce by impregnating other species, after which the offspring devours the host for sustenance, creating a new Amoxtin Phersalvis.
7: Chicken Goddess had never actually had sex before, but she had read several novellas related to it. As a result, Chicken Goddess had always wanted to try it, but everypony denied her advances. Most stated that it was disgusting to copulate with someone who looked so young, and those who knew her stated that they didn’t want an eldritch God growing inside them.
8: Species: Domicus Lieftanius. Known for their violent nature, this species fuses with the metal around themselves upon birth and forms a telepathic connection with those weapons. Over the course of its life, these pieces of metal form into weapons best symbolizing the creature’s personality. The creatures take the form of large eyeballs surrounded by a thin layer of skin. When the skin closes and opens, the eye is replaced with a mouth which can speak in a sibilant language.
9: Quotes by Robin Sharma and Pearl Strachen Hurd. Their studies into the molecular reactivity of vocabulary were never known to the world, but Chicken Goddess took it upon herself to look passed the quotes and directly into the meaning of the quotes.