//------------------------------// // Act 3 Chapter 49: I'm Going To Need You To Come In On Sunday // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale // by Chessie //------------------------------// "What did I see? Nothing you'd ever want to imagine. Through that door there were places without skies, where oceans writhed, and monsters who eat wishes live. I only saw it for a moment, and my publisher almost had me declared dead before a fan of my books found me in a mental hospital outside the Islands Of T'chitlan. Ahuizotl wasn't so lucky. He still cries when they open the blinds in the morning. Sometimes I take him little gold statues or things I find on my travels. We sit and I listen to him tell me about all his grand plans to rebuild his old empire, once he's better. Then we eat little bowls of parfait from the asylum commissary and he asks if I've seen any of his friends. He means his cats, of course, minions that used to do his dirty work. They died in the void. At least, I hope they did. For some reason he doesn't remember the answer, no matter how many times I repeat it, so I tell him they're waiting for him in the jungle when he gets back. Then he smiles and pats my hoof like a benevolent old king and goes back to staring at the sky. That's how I know our visit is done. It's been eight years, and he always asks me the same question." - Daring Do / A.K. Yearling in an unpublished interview in the lead up to her book, "Daring Do And The Gate Between Infinities" A heartbeat.  She felt a heart, and it was beating. That was, by itself, a source of many worrying questions: Why am I awake? What is this horrid taste in my muzzle? And perhaps chief amongst them: When did I get a body? She quickly ran her tongue over her teeth; flat, square, and not at all good for ripping flesh.  They were pony teeth. She shifted her back legs, slightly, and felt something there that was most assuredly out of place. Her muzzle was full of male pony teeth, alongside a male pony anatomy. Aside from her heartbeat, there didn’t seem to be much to hear other than a faint sizzle like a release of steam.  Her backside was planted on something relatively soft that felt like a chair but had a subtle pulsating movement that seemed to sync up with her heart from time to time. Everything seemed to be dark, though that wasn’t unusual; the dark was her preferred medium, after all.  What was unusual was that she couldn’t see anything.  Even in darkness, her vision had always been absolutely perfect.  Light seemed to be coming from somewhere, but where? It was diffuse and distant. ‘Your eyelids are closed,’ a voice whispered.  Had it been a voice?  Maybe. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere outside herself.  If she’d had to give it a general source, it sounded a bit like it’d come from her chest.  That was a strange place for a voice. Still, now that she considered it, the voice seemed to be correct.  She tried to remember how the eyelids worked. They’d been a bit fussy the day before and were giving her trouble again.  After a few seconds of experimentation, she found the right combination of muscles and cranked her eyes open. Blinking a few times, she beheld a blurry mass. ‘You need to move, Nightmare.  We are in danger.’ Nightmare.  Nightmare Moon.  Yes, that was her name.  Good to have that cleared up.  How on Equis did those ludicrous meat brains manage to defeat her all those years ago with such slow, limited processing capabilities?  It felt like she was thinking with a pair of lemons powering a pocket calculator. Nightmare glanced down at her coal grey hooves.  They were still blurred, and the corners of her eyes felt gummy as though from protracted sleep.  Hadn’t her hooves been blue before? A lovely blue, so dark it might as well be black. No, her hooves were grey because his hooves were grey. She rubbed her face on the back of his sleeve and took a quick breath as a gentle burning in her lungs reminded her she needed to do that from time to time.  It was irritating to balance all those various bodily functions. She even had to maintain control of the bladder. That was an irritation she could have done without. Vision cleared, she peered around at her surroundings. Hard Boiled’s body had been seated at some kind of desk that appeared to be wood, though it didn’t feel like it; for one thing, it was too warm.  The surface radiated an inner heat that had sweat beading on her forehead and sticky rivulets running down her sides. A thin layer of something like fur grew across the surface and right down the rounded corners, across the legs and to the floor.  The seat under her flank was very close to an ordinary office chair, stiff-backed and too firm to be comfortable, though now that she examined it, the back appeared to be made of some kind of carapace. Sliding out of the chair, she ran a toe along the backrest.  The chair gave a light shiver and suddenly zipped back underneath the desk, pulling itself into place.  Pulling back a few steps, she cautiously slid onto her stomach, cocking her head to one side so she could peer at the chair’s casters.  They seemed ordinary enough, though similarly carapaced. Giving the chair a light shove, she watched as they partially unfurled in a fashion that reminded her of some memory stuck in her host’s mind of something called a ‘rolypoly bug’.  A hundred tiny, flailing legs latched onto the carpet, then yanked the seat back to where it had been sitting before folding themselves neatly away. “So, this is what fear is like,” Nightmare murmured, aloud, making herself jump at the sound of the stallion’s voice coming from her lips.  For some reason the act of speaking seemed to speed her cognitive processes, so she decided to continue. “Let us evaluate our circumstances.” Lifting her nose, she sniffed at the air.  It was thick with a pink fog which carried the scent of cinnamon sticks and rotten cucumbers.  Unfortunately, it was also cutting visibility to not much more than a few pony-lengths away from the end of her face.  Whilst there was a space, seemingly open for her to leave, she was not much inclined to. ‘You must move, Nightmare!  Find Hard Boiled’s friends!’ That voice again. She put a hoof on her chest, feeling the strange texture of the plug underneath the pouch of flesh on her ribcage. “What is the situation?” she asked.  “The last thing I remember was attempting to process additional optimizations for a combat scenario involving the pony they call ‘Broadside’ after passing around a number of itineraries to the stallion’s social group.  Then we were at the secure facility known as ‘The Office’ and...hmmm. There is a gap in my memory.” ‘I don’t know!  I am focusing on keeping you from fainting!  Stop being so scared!’ “That is easy for you to say, ghost!” Nightmare Moon protested, pulling her hooves under herself. “Controlling this meat sack for the purpose of spreading around a few ‘to-do’ lists is entirely different from doing it in a situation where I may feel pain! Why are you not able to control him?” ‘I’m trying to find Hard Boiled’s mind!  It’s stuck in here somewhere. Something frightened him so bad he won’t come out!’ “B-but I do not know how to fight without magic!” she complained, putting her hooves over her eyes.  “My memories are fragmented! I barely remember how this body operates! I was not designed with this type of improvisation in mind!  I am just a personality fragment!” ‘You are what we have!  Get up or I’ll make you taste every nasty thing Hard Boiled ever ate until we both die!  He’s a cop, and he’s eaten a bunch of gas station food!’ Nightmare Moon’s lip quivered as she sat there staring at the beige carpet of the tiny cubicle, her ears pinned flat to her head and the stallion’s broad-brimmed hat down over her eyes.  She finally understood why he insisted on wearing that foolish thing: it covered his face when he was on the verge of tears. More than anything, she wanted to crawl back into the space her true self had carved out in the back of the stallion’s brain, but that would lead to her own destruction. Picking up the bright red stapler on the desk, she angrily hurled it at the soft, carpeted wall.  It bounced and let out a wholly disturbing sound like a fork being violently scraped across a dinner plate, collapsing onto its back on the floor.  Dozens of thin, whiplike appendages spilled from the underside, flailing about in the air as it arched against the carpet like an upended insect until it was able to flip over. Lifting its front, a dozen beady little sapphire-coloured eyes opened along the stapler’s surface, glaring up at the astonished pony who’d entered its domain and had the audacity to pitch it off against a wall.  Spinning about, it grasped the leg of the desk and began shimmying up like a centipede until it reached the top, then scooted across the matted surface until it was back where it’d begun. A sharp prong that reminded her of a scorpion’s stinger unfurled from the creature’s backside, then lashed down into the table, vanishing into a fleshy nodule or sphincter which had gone unnoticed until that moment.  With one last sound that reminded her of an annoyed cat, the stapler’s legs folded themselves away into its belly, and its eyes flicked shut. Nightmare Moon only realized her mouth was open when she felt a trickle of drool run down her chin and quickly wiped it away. “I cannot do this!” she moaned, though she was careful to keep her voice down this time. ‘I don’t want to die here, either, but you’re the only one who can make this work!’ Nightmare slid flat on her stomach, her back legs flopping out behind her.  “What am I supposed to do, ghost? I am in an eldritch realm! A stapler just hissed at me!” ‘I’m twelve!  I’m inside his heart!  Why are you asking me?’ Sweeping a bit of hair out of her face, she let out an irritable sigh and threw herself back to her hooves. “Fine.  I suppose I am meant to find this stupid stallion’s friends.” ‘If whatever was happening in the elevator got to them, then the...what did the nerdy unicorn call it?’ “Memetics,” she replied, contemplatively. ‘That thing.  Maybe that got them.’ Nightmare licked her blunt little teeth again and attempted to levitate the hat off her head for a moment, before remembering once more that she was short one horn.  She settled for prodding at the walls of the cubicle, finding them slightly elastic and far too much like skin for her comfort. “If that is the case, then we must find whatever counter-agent the individuals who activated the Office are using to avoid losing their minds.  Then, I will attempt to fight the urge to stick this stallion’s hoof in an industrial shredder for placing me in this position!” ‘You’ve got control of the legs unless you do something crazy.  I’m going back to trying to find Hard Boiled’s mind.’ Reaching out, she carefully picked up the top sheet of the papers on the ‘desk’ she’d been sitting at.  It was covered in column after column of vertically aligned script. It bore no resemblance to any language she’d ever heard of.  Still, it seemed she’d been, until very recently, transcribing the symbols from one sheet to another; the script was in Hard Boiled’s slightly jagged hoof-writing and an old fountain pen lay on the table.  She reached for it, then thought better; no telling what sort of creature that might be. “I am aware this is likely to be a futile curiosity, but I do wonder how we got to this cubicle and what we were doing before you awakened me,” Nightmare murmured. ‘Why would I know that if you don’t?’ the ghost asked, a little grumpily. “Of course.  Hrm. You do not talk to Hard Boiled this much.” ‘It would upset Hardy if he knew somepony was looking over his shoulder all the time, much less through his eyes.  Besides, I can usually space out and just sift his memories. He’s been around longer than me, so I’ve always got something to watch.’ Nightmare peered into what seemed to be an ordinary rectangular plastic garbage can at the end of the desk, though it was growing out of the floor.  At the bottom, a wide row of sharp, glittering teeth quivered in pink, lustrous gums. Experimentally, she dropped the paper she’d been writing on into the bin.  It let out a sound something like somepony running a chainsaw for a tenth of a second and the sheet was gone quicker than her eyes could follow. The mouth ran a slavering blackened tongue with a fork at the tip around all four corners of the interior of the bin, then pulled it back between the dangerous looking teeth. Backing away from the bin, she found herself shivering like a leaf in a high wind. “The sensation of being terrified is...most unpleasant.  Why did ponies decide they needed a holiday dedicated to this feeling?” she groused, though there was no reply. Examining the rest of the spare little cubicle, she couldn’t find anything she might trust as a weapon.  It was then she remembered she still had Hard Boiled’s revolver attached to her leg. Flicking it open, she found the remaining five Crusader rounds already chambered.  A quick shuffle through the pocket of her trench coat revealed a half empty box of standard bullets, and she quickly switched out the crystal bullets. Hard Boiled’s shotgun was not in its harness; there was no telling where it’d gone. “I suppose this is it, then,” she whispered to herself. Taking a deep breath, she stuck her head out of the cubicle, peering both ways, before yanking it back in.  Cautiously, she peered out again. There was a row of little openings which appeared to lead to cubicles like the one she was in.  Each was identical, with nothing to differentiate one from another. “Where is the light coming from?” she asked nopony in particular, tilting her head back as far as it would go to try to get a look at the ‘sky’.  The illumination seemed entirely within equine norms, if a bit dim, but there was no specific source. It was as though the fog itself was letting off a gentle glow. Picking up the revolver’s trigger bit, she slid her shoulder around the edge of her cubicle, sweeping the barrel of the gun back and forth.  The potential danger was so absurdly out of proportion to what she could meaningfully respond to that it left her almost breathless. This wasn’t helped by the need to coordinate the lungs, which she knew was best left up to autonomic processes.  Unfortunately, some arcane and irritating part of her newly formed psyche kept reminding her that they were there. How did the meat ponies manage with the tongue moving about or their eyelids having to regulate moisture on the eyeballs without thinking about them?  It was all too much. Sneaking to the next cubicle, she peered inside.  It was exactly the same as the last one, right down to the stapler nesting on the desk and the stack of paper heaped in the corner.  The only difference was a slight discoloration on the carpet which looked disturbingly like pink fur, though it seemed to be part of the surface. She moved on, checking each of the little offices one after another.  At points, she encountered intersections or crossroads down which seemed to be further rows of identical cubicles with nothing meaningful to differentiate one direction from another.  Several cubicles had spots of colored fur on the walls or carpet here and there, but nothing like numbers or nameplates. At the fourth crossing a soft sound reached her ears, coming from somewhere nearby; It was a faint moan, almost like an animal in pain. “So, do I investigate what may be somepony being eaten by monsters, or do I do what an intelligent being would do without her magic, horn, armor, or magnificently toned body and run the other direction?” she whispered. After a moment’s consideration, she tried to lift her hooves to flee, but her knees suddenly locked up. ‘You’re in charge of the legs unless you act like a jerk, Nightmare!’ Gale murmured, adding a flavor to her mouth that reminded her of rotten leaves and rancid coffee beans.  She made a few spitting sounds and wiped at her muzzle with her sleeve. “Oh come on!” she hissed, spitting out her trigger.  “We are not a hero and Hard Boiled is an idiot!” ‘You’re Hard Boiled right now.  Don’t do anything he’d regret, or I will take you on a grand tour of all the worst flavors of health food Taxi ever tried to get him to eat.’ Nightmare Moon snarled under her breath, but no matter how she strained, her legs would not take her in any direction other than toward the sounds of distress. “This is not fair,” she muttered. ‘Are you going to argue about fair right now, you big blue doofus?  Move it! Somepony might need our help!’ “Ugh...fine, but if we die, I shall take great pleasure in saying ‘I told you so’.” Her ears swiveled as she quickly recentered and tried to get her bearings.  Distances and sounds were distorted by the fog, or perhaps by some effect of the cubicles, but the moans seemed to be quite close by.  Turning this way, then that, she set off, still maintaining her cautious pace. Shuffling along the thick carpets which thankfully masked her movements, she soon found the source of the disturbing noises.  The closer she got, the more they sounded like speech, though still the words of somepony in considerable pain. “...pl-please...n-no more.  No more...no more...no more t-teeth…C-can’t anymore…” Nightmare stopped mid-stride as she caught the words and her eyes fixed on one of the cubicles.  Despite the poor acoustics, some instinctual part of her knew that was where she was going. She wanted, more than anything, to turn and run back to the sweet little corner of grey matter she’d staked out near Hard Boiled’s brainstem, but it was not to be. Backing her rear end against the wall, she inhaled and snuck forward as quietly as possible.  The moaning was punctuated by labored breathing and the occasional soft grunt of agony, but she couldn’t hear any other movement.  The voice was a mare’s, though ragged with exhaustion and crackling like she’d been shrieking for some time. “...s-stop.  I don’t...don’t...don’t...want to anymore.  I promise...promise...promise…” Nightmare Moon’s breath caught as she leaned into the cubicle. She slapped a hoof over her mouth, barely muffling the scream that was working its way up her throat. Biting her fetlock, she felt tears suddenly spring to her eyes.  The acrid taste of bile filled the back of her mouth, but she was too frightened to swallow. What lay on the carpet was once a mare. What remained was only alive by the ugliest possible happenstance. The pony appeared to have been partially dissolved, though what mechanism might leave flesh so loose that it resembled a puddle without splitting like a ripe fruit was beyond Nightmare’s ken. Her pelt, once a vibrant blue, was faded, and her fur grew in thick, filthy tangles, suggesting she hadn’t been able to bathe in some time.  One of her forelegs lay outstretched toward the desk, while only a thin bump in the surface of the floor indicated where her other might have been. Her cheek rested against the floor, or rather, halfway into it, while most of her upper body stuck up at an awkward angle as though she’d been planted there by some obscene gardener to grow, but then been left to languish.  One nostril had twisted out of shape, leaving a gaping hole that stretched to her muzzle, revealing her upper teeth. Despite all odds, her single, staring eye rotated in its socket to face Nightmare Moon. She weakly lifted her knee toward the door as much as she could, though as it came free there was a soft ripping sound as her pelt tore around her kneecap.  There was no blood, only a burst of beige fuzz that spread out of the wound like a fungal growth. The mare winced, and let her leg fall back. “...please...please...I don’t want to...work...work...live...anymore... Please...no teeth...”  she cried, somehow managing to force words through the ruined remains of her vocal chords and the bifurcated remains of her muzzle. Nightmare backed out of the cubicle and sat down, her back pressed against the far wall. “Ghost, will you do what you do for Hard Boiled and suppress my fear?” she asked, very quietly. ‘I need all the extra energy I can get just to fix whatever is wrong with him.  Unless you think there’s a plug around here somewhere, you have to handle the fear.  Besides, you’re the big scary pony that frightened all of Equestria for a thousand years.  Just be yourself.’ Nightmare’s ears drooped against her hat.  “Then...I...I must interact with that poor creature?” She waited, in silence, listening to the soft sounds of suffering coming from the cubicle as she waited for a reply.  After a moment, she realized the silence was the reply.  Snorting angrily, she heaved herself up and stomped back into the little office. The mare in the carpet had given up struggling with her predicament and was just lying there, panting for breath.  Tears matted her fur from just under her eyes right down to where it merged with the carpet, leaving her eyes red. Bloodstained mucus trickled from her nose into a pool beside her cheek. Keeping her gaze carefully away from the dying pony, Nightmare pressed herself against the interior wall. “P-pony?” Nightmare started, but trailed off into a faint moan as she realized she’d been staring at what was left of the mare’s cutie-mark as it slowly faded into a section of the carpet entirely separated from the rest of the body. The mare’s single eye twitched in her direction.  “M-more work? I don’t...don’t...don’t…teeth…” Not really knowing what else she might say, Nightmare murmured, “There’s no more work, pony.  My...my name is Hard Boiled.” There was a lucid flicker in the dying mare’s eye as she looked up at Nightmare.  “H-Hard Boiled? The...the detective?” “That’s right,” Nightmare replied, softly. “I’m...I’m Dragonfly.  I was supposed to...to kill you, I think.  I’m sorry,” the mare muttered, her single remaining ear flicking back and forth.  “The...the voice that told me to do it isn’t here anymore. It made me sit and work.  I don’t...I don’t...I don’t want to work anymore.” Nightmare’s teeth squeaked, and she forced herself to unclench her jaw. “Why were you working pon-...Dragonfly?” she asked. Dragonfly was silent, the only sound a faint slosh as she shifted within the pool of what remained of her organs. “I don’t know,” she muttered, at last.  “We were going to be the next...next...next step.  That’s what the Colonel said. He said we’d be the next kind of ponies.  I...I don’t remember wanting to be like this. I ate...I ate something he gave me and then everything was strange.  I ch-ch-changed. I was...Omega. Omega.” Her voice slipped lower, until it was barely more than a whisper. “No more work, please?” Nightmare’s curiosity piqued, she stepped over to Dragonfly’s desk and carefully picked up the top sheet of paper of a healthy stack.  It contained more of the carefully transcribed hieroglyphs. They didn’t seem to be letters unless each was an individual word, but having an entire language where every symbol was a different word seemed a bit inefficient. The longer she stared at the symbols, the more it felt like something in them was prodding at something in her mind.  She would have almost sworn she could remember what a few of them said. There was meaning there.  Meaning that was deliciously distant.  Meaning she’d felt in the womb. She could feel the womb calling to her.  She wanted to be back at her comfortable desk, stapler nearby, and mind empty as she worked.  Work was everything she needed. It was safety and comfort. Work was better than being scared.  She could go and work. Best do that now. Nightmare realized she’d stopped breathing only when her vision started to dim around the edges. Gasping, she slapped the paper away and shuddered, feeling the claws in her brain raking at her conscious mind as the sense of safety drained from her only to be replaced with sickness.  It’d almost claimed her, whatever ‘it’ was. She could still feel the intense need to wander back to her cubicle; she even knew exactly where it was in relation to her current one, despite not having kept track as she moved along. Dragonfly was still looking up at her, seemingly waiting for something. “Did...did it get you?” she asked, then the hint of lucidity in her eyes began to fade again.  All at once, Dragonfly stiffened and barked, in a voice too sharp for such a seemingly broken pony, “Omega squad!  Approach the vault! Pro...protect the V.I.P! If he gives you an instruction, follow it! Those are your orders!” Nightmare’s eyes narrowed.  “Are you...remembering something?” Coughing, then gagging on something, the mare tried to yank her foreleg toward her forehead, splitting the skin tear even further.  More carpeting dribbled from the wound, spreading out across her knee as it began to sink further into the floor. “Sir!  Yes, Sir!  Omega squad will approach, search, and respond!” Dragonfly gasped, heaving herself up slightly as she stared, wild-eyed, into Nightmare’s face. “I can f-feel it in my head!  Work. It w-wants me to work. I am not wo-worthy and it wants me to work! N-no! No m-more work!” Nightmare stepped back, finding her muzzle suddenly dry. “What creatures?  Who are you talking to, pony?” she demanded. “Colonel!  Omega squad reporting!  V.I.P. is activating the...w-why would you take my creature?!  Why did you take my creature?! It keeps me safe! Can we retreat, Sir?!  Work! W-work!” Dragonfly’s gaze became unfocused as she seemed to collapse in on herself.  Her labored breathing growing steadily slower. She lay there, her ear flicking wildly back and forth, though that was the only sign of movement for several seconds. A thin tendril of something like string crept out of the side of her mouth.  It seemed to feel around for a moment, before sliding up her cheek to gently prod at the pony’s wide open eyeball.  Finally, it sank into her tear duct. Nightmare watched in horrified fascination as the string tugged a few times, then began to pull, splitting Dragonfly’s cheek like a piece of cheese-wire, revealing a thick ball of carpet and bone wrapped around one another.  A soft sound like somepony trying to suck the last drops out of the bottom of a soda with an inadequately wide straw caught her attention just as the skin around Dragonfly’s neck began to draw in tight. Her foreleg was dragged into the surface, leaving only the soft bump in the expanse of off colored fuzz to show where it’d been. Despite being distantly aware that it was probably a bad idea, Nightmare opened her mouth to scream.  Something that felt like a thick stick was suddenly jammed between her teeth as she was yanked backwards out of the cubicle and pressed tightly against what seemed to be a birdcage wearing a tweed jacket.  Her howl of fear was reduced to a choked gasp. “Whoever you are, I want you out of my grandson’s body,” a familiar voice snapped in her head.  “You’ve got three seconds or I start doing things that’ll make him ache tomorrow, but’ll make you wish you were dead today.  I’ve tortured magical invaders before, so don’t think that whole ‘You won’t hurt somebody you love’ gambit will work on me.” Nightmare Moon slumped with relief, though it was short lived considering the thing in her teeth was most likely a fleshless femur and tasted like the inside of an ashtray. “Oh fank fe fhkies,” she murmured. “Pardon?  I don’t hear you hopping out of that body!”  Bones growled.  She felt the tip of one of his hooves pressing firmly against her spine, and then a tingling burn started to build in her hooftips. “Lemme efplain!” Nightmare yelped as the pressure became a little firmer and the pain began to shoot up to her knees. Bones hesitated, then carefully pulled his leg from between her jaws.  He didn’t relax the pressure on her spine. “You have three words.  Make them count.” “I’m Nightmare Moon!” There was an uncomfortable silence. Internally, Nightmare Moon was beating her own head against as many different kinds of wall as remained in Hard Boiled’s memory.  Thinking with such slow, ponderous meat was difficult enough without adding all the new sensations of discomfort. If she’d been in her own proper psyche, she could have come up with the perfect words to convince Bones that she was, indeed, Hard Boiled, but a healthy dose of fear atop everything else had led to her spitting out the first words that came to mind. Bones released her and her wobbling knees collapsed, sending her sliding onto her stomach.  She let out a soft, grateful sound, though the pain in her legs had only abated slightly. “You are either the dumbest psychic magical invader in the entire history of time and space, or you’re telling me the truth...which might also make you the dumbest psychic magical invader in the entire history of time and space.” “W-what happened to Dragonfly?” she panted, trying to work her legs under herself to get away from the carpet, which seemed suddenly very much like something she didn’t want to be too close to for too long. Bones leaned into the cubicle and glanced over the bright blue splotch on the carpet where the pony had been just a moment before.  Only a small lump and part of a twitching ear remained. Her eye was gone. “Dead, I hope.  Poor thing. Damn.  I thought this place was vile before it was active.  Those ponies must have been from whatever team the Family sent in here to activate that ‘siren call’ magic that snatched Hard Boiled’s friends. That can’t have been on too long, or there would have been more ponies wandering in and getting trapped.” “It...it is like a flytrap, is it not?” Nightmare asked.  “A pony approaches and their mind is snatched from them, then they come inside and...work?” Bones rolled his shoulders.  “Damned if I know, but that’s sure what it looks like.  That’s also probably why they they weren’t guarding it too heavily.  I wonder if they’ve been in here this whole time. Must have felt like years.”  The skeleton straightened his jacket and turned back to where Nightmare knelt.  “Now, for you.  I knew there was something out of the ordinary with Hard Boiled yesterday, but I couldn’t be sure.  Short of clocking him and having Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle turn him inside out with magic scans, there wasn’t a good way to find out.  So, before I get to peeling you off him like an especially screamy cheap suit, where’s my grandson?” Nightmare’s breathing quickened a little as she worked herself to a standing position and peered into the cubicle.  “He’s...he is here, somewhere,” she answered, tapping the side of her head. “It is very complicated, but I suspect I am the only reason he is not in that cubicle back there, doing...whatever it is these ponies do under the compulsion.  I saw you in his memories. It is strange that a pony would take comfort from the presence of the undead.” “Well, you best uncomplicate it quick, Miss Moon.  My grandson’s friends are in here somewhere. I lost track of the lot of you after the portal cracked Mister Limerence’s little silence shield, but if you don’t want to spend the next hour begging Celestia to send your ass back to Equis’s nearest satellite...” Nightmare waved her hooves in front of her face, placatingly. “Your grandson made a deal with me for my freedom and a royal pardon when he wore my helm!” she explained, all in a rush. Bones cocked his skull to one side, then buffed a toe on his jacket. “Nopony would be dumb enough to put on the Helm of Nightmare Moon, much less believe the bogey-mare makes deals or that you’d abide by your end of it even if they did.” Nightmare scoffed. “Have you met Hard Boiled?  Besides, I was not in a position to deceive him at the time.  It was most irritating. I would rather have killed him and worn his corpse.” “You’re not saying things likely to prolong your time in that body,” Bones snapped, taking a threatening step forward.  “Where is he?” Shaking her head, Nightmare backed against the wall of Dragonfly’s cubicle. “Whatever horrors the portal inflicted upon him to drive him to work, it was enough to very nearly ruin his mind!  We...we are trying to recover him, but he is...is comatose with fear!” Bones nodded at the spot of fur on the carpet.  “You don’t get to be my age without learning to read ponies, and you lie worse than my wife.  Since I don’t have time to torture you properly, we’re going to assume you’re telling me the truth, for now.  That means you just volunteered to help me shut this place down. Agree now, or I will start seeing what parts of my schedule I can clear.” “I agree! I agree!  Please, no more pain!  I do not enjoy it!” she whimpered, covering her face with her legs. “Oh mercy, it’s weird seeing a stallion act like that,” the skeleton grumbled, then seemed to think better of it,  “Eh...except that little colt my grandson seems taken with, I suppose.  Get up. We’re moving.” Nightmare nervously rubbed the back of one leg against the other as she got to her hooves.  “I...I am being prevented from leaving this place without finishing Hard Boiled’s objective and making certain his friends are with us.  We must find them.” The lights in Bones’s eyes flickered, then he shook his head.  “Prevented, huh?  If it lines up with my goals, I suppose I can work with that.  I tried to track the yellow psycho with the scars on her rear, but lost her in the fog.  No idea where the nerd might be. He’s not moving as fast, though the blood all over his vest left a pretty good trail.” Nightmare looked over her shoulder at the splotch on the carpet of the nearby cubicle and shuddered.  “D-Dragonfly - the pony who died - mentioned something about creatures that protect them. Someone took hers.  A V.I.P. of some kind. They tried to pull out, but...” She gestured a little helplessly at the spot on the floor that was all that remained of the P.A.C.T. trooper. “Could be some method of keeping this place from eating brains.  We’ll keep an eye out.” “Was...was everything like this when you were here last?” she asked. Bones turned the way he’d come and set off at a brisk trot, not waiting to see if Nightmare followed. “The cubicles are the same, but there weren’t so many critters running around.  You pick up a stapler?” Nightmare nodded.  “Yes. The bin and chair were also...distressingly animated.” “Well, there’s bigger things wandering around out there.  I didn’t get a good look, but something the size of a bus stepped over me while I was tracking the filly.  It didn’t notice me, thank Celestia.” “I would appreciate if you would not mention ‘Celestia’ in my presence,” she hissed, testily, “Anyway, this...this place cannot exist by coincidence, can it?  It must have been created--” “I’m going to stop you right there, Miss Moon,” Bones said, putting a hoof up to forestall any further introspection.  “We had that conversation almost forty years ago, when the portal was first discovered.  The eventual conclusion was that nopony wanted to know who or what created the Office. Seeing it in action, I want to know even less.” Nightmare’s muzzle dipped into a little frown.  “It is my nature to extrapolate answers and process information, even if I must do it with this ridiculous waste of matter between Hard Boiled’s ears.  We do not like leaving questions of that sort hanging overhead.  What if the creators were to return and take full control?” “Then I expect we’ll all die and every living, sentient being in Equestria will eventually wander into the Office and fill out that bizarre paperwork until they’re eaten by the carpet.  You got any other stupid questions, or are you comfortable just making sure that never happens?” ---- Work. Work. Work. The nameless unicorn’s eyes flickered and blinked as he stared at the page.  Every few seconds, a symbol would appear. When he reached the bottom of a sheet, he set it to one side and picked up the next. He’d been in his chair forever.  There was no time before the time he worked.  Time was irrelevant, because there was only the work. If he’d had any thoughts, they were distant and barely registered with his conscious mind. Breathe in the sustenance, for it is life to continue the work. There was no way of knowing how much time had passed.  Clocks didn’t exist for the unicorn. The work was all that there was. Inside his vest, an object flickered with internal light.  The nameless unicorn’s horn flared, and a series of embedded spellworks inside the object came to life.  As they did not immediately impede the work, they were ignored. Check life?  Life returns positive. Check user awareness?  Awareness returns null. Check user possessed?  Possession returns null. Check mind control field?  Control returns positive. Check power of control field?   Returns...power outside testable range. Check integrity of recovery spells? Returns integrity okay.   Check run user intelligence temporarily from back-up?  Solution returns positive. Initiate recovery. Warning! Back-up power supply will last two hours without replenishment!  Primary cognition must be restored within that period of time or solution will return negative! ---- Limerence felt like his brain was swimming through a thick jelly, clawing towards the light. ‘Where am I?’  he asked himself, dozily smacking his lips. His stomach immediately rebelled at the flavor in his mouth; it tasted like a combination of mashed cockroaches and rotten tofu.  Doubling over, he clutched at his belly. He wanted to puke, but there was nothing to come up. Glancing around, he quickly determined that he was alone, though his surroundings were so unfamiliar that he had no good way of verifying ‘alone’ within all but the least precise measures.  His brother’s staff leaned against the wall of the cubicle and a trail of blood led around the corner right up to his seat. Blinking at the brownish-red spots on the floor, he quickly felt his body for wounds.  There didn’t seem to be any, aside from a little muscle soreness in his legs and flanks. ‘Breathe.  Panic is the enemy of the mind.  Be water; an ocean at peace,’ he thought, forcing himself to slowly exhale, then inhale, fighting down the fear before it could rise. ‘First things first.  What’s the last thing you remember?  Ah, yes. The elevator. You, Hard Boiled, his grandfather, and Sweet Shine standing before the vault.  Hard Boiled pushed the vault open...and then what? Swirling, screaming light. Hard Boiled and Sweet Shine walking into the portal.  Unending pressure. Horn stops working. Shield collapses...then?’ Nothing.  There was only a stretch of darkness with the word ‘work’ stamped across it. Pulling himself down from his chair, he carefully slid it underneath the desk he’d been sitting at and started examining his surroundings. Stack of paper, approximately half of which was covered in a strange, arcane script.  Slightly organic carpeting. Stapler that he could have sworn was watching him for a moment. Trashbin with a grinning mouth and razor sharp teeth in the bottom of it. ‘Don’t panic,’ he thought, gulping as the mouth in the rubbish can pursed fat, thick lips and began whistling a merry little tune.  ‘Panic is not helpful.  Panic is going to get you killed.  Start asking questions. First question.  I have obviously been under some form of compulsion.  What brought me out of it?’ There was a soft ‘ding’ from his vest, followed by the sound of a spinning mechanism.  Dragging his pocket watch out, he levitated it in front of his muzzle and flicked the release.  The face was glowing with a gentle light as the hands spun lazily backwards in slow circles. ‘Ah, the fail-safes have been tripped.  Let’s see what, exactly, we are dealing with.’ Flipping his watch over, Limerence applied a tiny bit of pressure to the backing, then added a quarter twist.  The golden panel slid sideways, revealing a series of twenty crystals in a five by four grid. Some glimmered with magical light, though most were dim or sputtering.  As he studied the crystals, his breath caught in his throat. ‘Primary cognitive functions are offline,’ he noted, mulling over the arrangement of diodes.  ‘I am effectively lobotomized.  All higher self-determination and cognition is operating off my watch and it has about an hour and forty minutes left before it is drained entirely.’ Letting out a soft sigh, he slid the panel back in place, then flicked the pocket watch closed and sat studying the inscription on the inside cover. “Well, this is not the first time some artifact has taken over an Archivist’s mind and left them doing the pocket-watch-trot-of-shame back to the Archive to have their brain purged of infestation,” he muttered, then rolled his eyes at his own excuse as he tucked the watch away.  “Of course, I doubt anypony else let another dimension move into their skull, but I’m sure Father would have prepared for such an eventuality.” Sweeping up the staff, he tossed it across his back and cast a quick spell to keep it in place.  His horn twinged at even that tiny expenditure of magic. How long had he been sitting at that desk?  The mox he’d used earlier must have a few more hours left, but it felt as though it were almost running dry. ‘Too many variables.  Start with simple objectives and then move towards the specifics.  First priority, discover if Hard Boiled, Taxi, and Bones still live.  If they do, determine if they can be stricken of the mind controlling effects.  Presuming this place was designed by a species with a hierarchical mindset, determine what separates those affected by the mind control field from those who are not.  Find the control room that Bones mentioned and disable the Scry. Escape.’ At a soft scrabbling from outside his cubicle, Limerence slid his staff’s blade free and slipped into a defensive stance beside the door.  He took a slow breath and waited. Without much aplomb, a dozen eyeballs at the ends of fleshy stalks, each the size of a tennis ball, snaked into his cubicle.  Every pupil was a different color, and some were slitted, while others were definitely the eyes of a goat. Each one focused intently in a different direction, though several were aimed squarely at the terrified unicorn’s face as he lifted his sword a little higher and prepared to defend himself. With a faint noise like a dozen snails being squished underhoof, a slightly larger pink eyeball at the middle of the pack split down the middle.  From within, six thin, black appendages reached out and, with unnatural speed, snatched the stack of papers in the upper corner of the cubicle desk, yanking them out of sight fast as a toad snatching a fly out of mid-air.  Giving him one last, lingering look, the eyestalks withdrew, leaving the stunned stallion sitting there staring after it. “New priority.  Find a place to dry tail...” ---- She couldn’t remember her name.  She couldn’t remember her face. She’d surely seen it in the mirror every morning, but just then, she couldn’t remember what it looked like. The blood dripping from her nose off her upper lip was distantly concerning as it spattered the paper in front of her, but she refused to let the images or shapes form in her mind.  Instead, she sat there, body quivering, eyes shut, and the endless weight of a collapsing sun balanced precariously atop her willpower. It would eventually be too much to resist, but for then, she held up the world. Work. ‘I will not.’ You will work. ‘I will not.’ Work. ‘I will not.’ Her hooves trembled as she clutched the edge of the desk, the paper fluttering under some unfelt breeze.  Her eyes were dripping. Her jaw ached. Work. ‘I will not.’ She couldn’t remember her name, but she could remember his. He was all that mattered, in the end.  He would be coming, and he would take care of her. He’d always taken care of her. That was his job, after all.  That was his work. Work. ‘Hardy, please get here soon…’