There is one thing worse than waking up with a changeling princess’s butt in your face, as it turns out; and that is waking up wrapped in spider webs. Doesn’t matter how tough you think you are, that shit’s enough to awaken the arachnophobe in all of us.
Yes, my immediate reaction has been to scream like a girl, do you even have to ask?
“Naaaaaaaahhhhh!” I cry effeminately, immediately bucking to the side. The webs tear around me, my arms struggling to free themselves from the tight bindings holding them crossed over my chest.
“I-Impossible!” Something small, hissy, and sounding like a bag full of nails being dropped down a fire escape shouts. I turn, spying the four-legged spider-thing gaping at me with wide eyes, looking for all intents and purposes like a kindergartner’s attempt at a Halloween decoration. Its mouth drips venom as it snarls at my writhing form. “Nopony can escape my dream realm!”
Usually, this would be where I’d pull a smart little one-liner out of my ass, but considering said ass is currently blanketed in spider webs, I’m having a bit of trouble pulling anything out, so all I can do is keep writhing and screaming.
“Impossible! Simply impossible!” The thing hisses at me again, skittering towards me with every ounce of ‘nope’ in its tiny form. Which was quite a lot, given that it skittered.
“RAAAAHHHHHHH!” I reply intelligently, tearing an arm free and swatting at its hissing form. It returns by baring its fangs, skittering just out of reach. I rear back for a killing blow, just as a few strands of web dangle down into the corners of my mouth.
“NNNAAAAAAHHHHHH!” I cry in revulsion, spitting and hacking as a cocoon of web lands at my side.
Cypher’s big, blue eyes gaze up at me from inside the web, then his ears tear free, followed by the rest of his head, his fanged muzzle emerging like a facehugger from Alien. And of course, he decides to join in on the conversation with his own intellectual input: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”
“NNNNYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…” I put in.
The spider-thing clamps a couple legs into a pair of holes on the sides of its body, which I’m guessing are its ears. “Would you two quit all that racket!?”
“RAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I refuse.
“WWWAAAGGGGHHHHHH!” Cypher gags.
“AH! AH! AH!” I add, making a few more futile sweeps at the skittering abomination.
“Ugh, this day can’t get any…” the spider-thing starts, but before it can even complete the cliché its body is engulfed in flames. Hissing, it retreats into the webbing, racing away.
Chittery lands between us, zapping the thing again and again, but accomplishing nothing but more magical tears at the webbing. The skittering in the maze of webs fade away, leaving us there with nothing but a whole lot of nasty in an old, abandoned closet. Seeing this, Chittery turns to us, a bit of webbing still caught in her ear and her wings buzzing rapidly. Her jaw drops and she lets out her own high-pitched investment into the conversation: “YYYYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
“AAAHHHHHHH!” I reply, holding up a bit of webbing between my fingers.
“NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Cypher puts in, pointing at said webbing.
The conversation rises and escalates at the sheer horror of the webbing around us, finally reaching a fever pitch as we fully process the fact that we’re locked in a closet filled with a fuckton of spider webs, clawing our way free, ripping away at the stuff until finally, piling out the door. This, of course, is a point of further discussion among us:
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”
“Okay, so we’re all in agreement? That was one of the nastiest things we’ve ever had to endure and we should never talk about it again.” I ask, shivering in my boxers. I Slav-squat over a smoldering fire, tending to the ashes that were once my clothes. Like hell I was wearing that shit again.
“A-a-agreed.” Cypher mutters, his trademarked stammer in high form since waking up.
“Fuck yes,” Chittery enthuses, pulling another pot of boiling water from off the stove and dumping it over her body. “At least we know what the Nightmare sent to fuck with this place and anyone in it.”
“Exactly,” I stand, dusting off my bare knees. “Now it’s just a matter of finding Nut Diddle, and avoiding another nap.” I grimace, shaking my head. I’ve been a bit fuzzy since waking up, for some reason feeling a bit more…masculine? Was that the word for what I felt? Maybe. Either way, I pulled on my trench coat, grateful that I’d taken it off the night before and so spared it being draped in nastiness.
“I say we go after that Nightmare thing next,” Chittery growls. “Nobody ties me up like that. Not without my consent, at least.”
“It’s a little nightmare critter the size of a rat in a house this big, we could spend weeks looking for it. If it’s still in the house,” I reply thrusting my chest out and hammering a fist it. “Besides, there’s still an innocent that needs to be saved!”
She giggles at that. “An innocent to be saved? Fucking…seriously?”
I pause, then grimace. “Yeah, I don’t even know where that came from.”
All at once, we hear a scream from the other corner of the house. Cypher’s scream. Gasping, I scoop up Shelly and lope into the next room, Chittery right beside me. Loading a few extra shells, I bound towards the living room, shotgun levelled, ready to take a Nightmare turrurrist’s head off. “Cypher!” I bellow, my finger wrapping around the trigger. “What’s wrong, brother!?”
We find the Nightling wrapped up in a blanket, thrashing around, until his head pokes out the top. He looks around, sees us, then flashes a sheepish grin. “S-sorry,” he stammers. “I-I was just straightening out the blankets from last night, a-and I think my horn got caught in them, and I panicked a little because i-it reminded me of the spider webs, a-and…” he trails off.
I lower my shotgun. “Fucking seriously?” I ask.
“S-sorry,” he lowers his head, ears folding down, and I let out a long sigh.
“S’alright, Cypher,” I reply, emptying Shelly’s chamber. “Just try and keep that shit under wraps next time, okay?”
“I-I will, sorry…”
“Don’t be…uh, Chittery?”
“Hmmm?” She asks, looking out the window with hardly a speck of interest on her face.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s…” she starts, but then pauses as she looks down to find her hoof wrapped tightly around my free hand, quickly guiding the fingers up between her hind legs and towards her happy hole. She blinks once.
“Umm…fucking…” She replies.
“…seriously!?” I shout, leaping back as hard and as fast as I can, shoving her hoof away. “Dammit girl, put a lid on it already!”
“I-I’m sorry!” She gasps, gazing down at the offending, hole-filled hoof as if it were a stranger’s. “I don’t know what I was doing! Although if…”
“No,” I reply quickly.
“…right, of course,” she sighs and shakes her head. “Sorry.”
I work my fingers into my temple. “Look guys, obviously what just happened is messing with all our heads.”
“Could be…” Chittery frowns. “Maybe we should keep an eye on each other.”
“Yeah, I think that’d be good,” I grimace, heading over to our knapsack, still in the corner of the room. I pull out a spare T-shirt and pair of jeans, along with a package of oatmeal. “Let’s just get some breakfast in us and go from there, maybe a little food will help get our heads on straight again.”
“Y-yeah,” Cypher nods quickly and scampers to my side, pressing a little close for comfort.
“Uhhh…Cyphy?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow down at him. “I did tell you I wasn’t gay, right?”
“Er…right,” he says quickly. “I-I just didn’t feel comfortable being off by myself.”
“What, on the other side of the room?” I smirk. “Cypher, why don’t you just man up like me and grow a pair already?”
At that, he turns to me, his extended jaw nearly hitting the floor.
“Kildeez!” Chittery gasps, striding towards me with a hateful glare in her eye. “How the hell could you say something like that?”
Her asking hits me like a cold slap, smacking the cocky smirk off my face. “Oh shit…Cypher! Jesus Christ man,” I reach towards him, momentarily forgetting the knapsack as I try to hold his hoof. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what made me say something so damn awful…”
“Th-the web…the-the-the webs,” he starts, unable to complete the thought. He shrinks away from my hand as if it was covered in blood from an Ebola victim, combined with spit straight from Kim Kardashian’s mouth. “L-like you said, it’s what happened that’s messing with us. L-let’s just eat and h-hope we can pull ourselves t-together.”
“Right man, right,” I mutter quickly pulling the knapsack towards myself and rummaging through for our breakfast supplies. After a while, he trots over to sit by me, and for the damnedest reason, I find it hard to keep from slapping him away. Of course, we both find it hard to ignore Chittery as she scoops up a couch cushion and starts using it like a two-bit whore, but we manage that as well.
The spider thing hissed to itself as it limped along. Fire! The changeling bitch set him on fire! Oh, she would pay for that, how she would pay. When this was done, he was going to feed on her for weeks. She would be little more than a dried-up husk, oh yes, then he’d feed her to the Gorgers…or maybe the Guardians would like to have some fun with her, he knew one of them that was particularly skilled with the blade, yes, he’d teach her for assaulting a soldier of the Collective!
Bah, whatever, the damage was done. It’d take a little longer for the effects to totally consume them, but the Nightmare was nothing if not patient. The plan attested to that: years spent waiting in the abyss to strike out against Equestria, then when the Champion arrived, months spent planning, gathering forces, finding new allies, and waiting for the lack of action to take its toll. Finally, they were closer than ever before, the Nightmare could wait just a little while longer to fully break the back of these stupid little ponies.
Finally, the creature twisted around and skittered through the front hallway, right out the mail slot, ducking onto the front lawn as the trio argued and debated in the front room. Yes, this was good, good! The venom was taking effect. It quieted itself despite the urge to cackle evilly, zipping along the front sidewalk in utter silence before it was stopped by something new: a pair of ratty sneakers.
“Sir!” The creature gasped, bowing before the newcomer and splaying its legs.
“Quiet, you fool!” The newcomer scowled. “Unless you think the two of us can take on the Champion’s friend, his posse, and this entire town!”
“O-of course sir, my infinite apologies,” the spider-thing did not lift its head, so the newcomer did not see the fanged scowl it now wore. “I was just…excited from having completed my task.”
At that, the newcomer’s grin flashed in the darkness of the early-morning, visible even from where the spider-thing knelt. “Good, good,” he said, his voice oozing with pride. “You’ve done well. When can we expect to see some of the effects?”
“Right now, if you wish,” the spider replied, a grin of pride replacing the scowl.
“Good, good, and how long until it finishes them off?”
The spider shifted uncomfortably on the walk. “It shouldn’t take more than a week, Lord.”
“A week?” The ratty sneakers ground into the pavement, and the spider could almost hear the other creature’s scowl in his voice. “A bit different from the three to five days you promised us.”
“Yes, well, I thought I would have longer to feed.”
A long silence filled the air, interrupted only by the occasional tweet from a bird and hiss from a far off, distorted creature in the wilderness. “Oh, just as well,” the newcomer waved a hand dismissively. “Any longer and we would have risked exposing ourselves to the town, and I’m not quite ready for that.”
“Y-yes sir,” the spider-thing said with a minor sigh of relief.
“Though I am disappointed that my plans must change with new circumstances, rather than the other way around,” that disappointed tone reappeared, oozing venom all over again. “You don’t want to disappoint me again, do you?”
In its short life, the spider had heard tales of the newcomer: the man before it. Of Nightmares cast into the Abyss between worlds for all time, where the first Nightmare corruption had been spawned, and where creatures like the Nightmare were no longer the top of the food chain, but the bottom. He had heard stories of these creatures sent to die a thousand deaths, each more agonizing than the last, with a level of creativity behind them that Satan himself would have been jealous of, all because they had disappointed the same creature now standing before it. No, no it did not want to disappoint this creature. “No sir, of course not.”
“Good,” a gloved hand landed at the spider’s side. It was quick to skitter into the palm, ignoring the pain in its side from the burn to reach the hand as quickly as possible. It knew what hesitation could cost: it still missed its fifth leg. “So, if all is still well, we should be expecting them as guests soon, hmm? I mean, it’s only fair, they’ve spent so long playing host to us, it’s we simply must reciprocate.”
“Yes sir,” the spider said, allowing another chuckle to pass through its fangs.
“Well then,” the newcomer’s grin returned, flashing white in the darkness. “Let’s go make preparations for them, hmm?”