“Snnnnrk… Hee hee hee!”
“Easy there, Flutters,” said Tree Hugger, steadying her friend as she settled her into the back of the car. Like most of the partygoers she was a little tipsy herself, though she’d forgotten about just how poorly Fluttershy held her liquor. Nobody at the party was particularly fit to drive her home now, though, and nobody really trusted her to find her own way back to her cottage on her own in this state.
The PEGAssyst driver looked warily into his back seat as Tree Hugger helped scoop her legs into the car door, which caused the pink-haired girl to slump over onto her side, giggling into the leather. “Is she going to be alright?” he asked.
“Stay chill, bro. She’ll be fine,” Tree Hugger reassured him, swaying a little herself as she closed Fluttershy’s door
Fluttershy burst out laughing as she sat up and then slumped back over against the glass of the car window. “It’s just- hahaha- so FUNNY!” She squealed, drunkenly slumping back as her face smushed against the glass. “What do you get when you cross a crocodile and an abalone?!” She asked for what was probably the dozenth time since she heard it from Cheese Sandwich earlier at the party. “A crock a’ baloney!” she squealed, belting out a peal of laughter
The hippie-dressed girl shrugged apologetically as she leaned in the front window, addressing the driver. “She’s been repeating that for the last hour or so,” she explained. “She’ll be fine, she just needs to get home,” she said, handing the driver a notecard with Fluttershy’s address scrawled on it and a couple of twenties.
The driver took the card, glancing at it quickly before nodding and climbing into the car. With a rev of the engine, they were off.
← ↖ ↑ ↗ →
Fluttershy fidgeted in her seat, staring across the table at the enigmatic stranger who’d appeared on her front door. An untouched cup of tea was quickly cooling in her hands as she focused all her attention on the strange woman in the maid outfit. The woman, having already drained the cup of its contents, looked back at her expectantly, her yellow and red eyes bright and wide with anticipation and her face stretched into a happy, snaggletoothed grin. Her mismatched wings twitched with excitement and her scaly red tail waggled gently back and forth on the floor.
She couldn’t help scanning her eyes over her guest, perhaps focusing just a little too long on her caramel colored cleavage before awkwardly clearing her throat and playing with a lock of her long pink bangs. “So… u-um…” she began with a hesitant stutter, “what did you say your name was again?”
The woman suddenly stood up with a flourish, striking a grandiose pose. Her absurdly long hair drifted behind her like a cape. Her wide grin somehow stretched even wider and her teeth became sharper. Her eyes began to glow and the room dimmed as she announced herself. Fluttershy shrank back as the stranger’s voice boomed and echoed around her kitchen. “I am the all-powerful spirit of chaos and disharmony; Goddess of madness, confusion, and panic! I am the Duchess of Disarray and Empress of Anarchy! Soy el Presidente de por vida del Estragos! One-time Big Kahuna of Lemuria and Ex-Designated Driver Supreme of Avalon! Grand Poobah of of Pandaemonium and Former Vice Dean of the Domdaniel University of All Things 2Spooky4U! I am the last of the Draconequui! I am she who sits upon the Throne of Games! I am she who wears the fifth edition Crown of Madness! I am Eris!” She shouted as a crackle of lightning quacked behind her. She pointed a gloved finger at Fluttershy, her grin becoming less menacing and more gleeful as the room brightened up again. She giggled, gazing wide eyed at the girl. “And I’m also your new maid, Miss Fluttershy!”
Fluttershy blinked. “O-oh…” she stammered, collecting herself as best she could after the stranger’s manic display. A part of her felt naturally terrified that an apparently apocalyptically powerful being was standing in her breakfast nook, but having faced magical threats with her friends back in high school she wasn’t scared quite as stiff as she otherwise might have been. “That’s… um…” she sputtered, trying to put together a sentence that wouldn’t offend the chaos goddess “That’s a lot of titles…”
“Pretty cool, right?” Eris grinned, a proud, smug smirk forming on her face. It quickly vanished, though, as she clasped her hands together and held them to her cheek, one foot popping up behind her. “But I’ve traded them all away just so I could be with you, Miss Fluttershy!”
“Oh, uh…” Fluttershy blinked, startled by the flash of pink sparkles that seemed to appear around Eris when she’d said that. “Y-you don’t have to do that.”
“But I do!” Eris shouted, slamming her hands down on the table with an astonishing amount of force, causing the wood to creak. Fluttershy squeaked, jolting a little as the impassioned stranger continued to ramble on. “You saved me from my hellish imprisonment and cleansed my very soul with the power of your kindness!”
“...I did?”
“Yes!” Eris shouted cheerfully. “You were pretty drunk so I’m not surprised you don’t remember. Nevertheless, that’s what happened and so now I am indebted to you forever!” Eris’ voice became shrill as she shrieked passionately. “I’ll serve you until the very heat death of the universe collapses reality around us!”
“That’s… really not necessary.” Fluttershy fidgeted nervously.
“But it is!” Eris cried. Fluttershy startled as the stranger suddenly sped around the table to her, falling to her knees and clasping her hands around Fluttershy’s. “You’ve done more for me in the past few hours than anybody has ever done for me before in all the millenia I’ve been alive, Miss Fluttershy, so please let me make it up to you by becoming your maid, just like you asked last night!”
“I… asked that?” Fluttershy blushed hotly, pulling her hand away, her eyes darting to a hidden drawer under her desk in the next room. Fluttershy knew she tended to ‘loosen up’ when she drank but she never thought she’d let slip her secret ‘desires’ like that. Certainly not to a stranger, and an apparently ultra-powerful, magical stranger at that.
‘...I’m never drinking again.’ Fluttershy resolved to herself. Steeling herself, Fluttershy pushed herself away from the table and stood. Eris gasped a little bit as Fluttershy pulled away, but Fluttershy had long since learned that she wasn’t equipped to deal with magical shenanigans like this. That was more Sunset or Twilight’s deal.
“I’m sorry, Eris,” Fluttershy said as calmly as she could, mustering up every last ounce of her will and calling on all the assertiveness training she’d done over the years. “But I really can’t take on a maid right now.”
“W-w-what?” Eris’ eyes began to shimmer with tears.
Fluttershy took a deep breath. “I haven’t got the money to pay you right now.” Fluttershy said, trying to come up with any excuse to make the clearly-insane magical apocalypse-in-human-form leave peacefully. “...and I don’t have enough space for a live in maid.”
“But I don’t need money!” Eris protested desperately. “A-and I don’t take up much space! I can shrink myself down or… or I can warp spacetime so your house is bigger on the inside!”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I’m sorry, Eris. I just can’t. It’s…” She trailed off before sighing. “I’m sorry, but that’s final.”
Fluttershy thought she might have made a fatal mistake for a second as Eris’ head dipped. She clenched her fists, her hands trembling as a scowl washed over her face. The scowl quickly collapsed, though, as the energy seemed to drain from her and she appeared to wilt. Her pointy ears drooped and her wings and tail sagged behind her.
“Are you certain?” Eris whined, “That’s final?”
A pang of guilt stabbed Fluttershy in the gut, but she nodded nevertheless. “I’m afraid so.”
There was a silent beat between the two of them for a moment before Eris finally stood. “I understand,” Eris said weakly, flashing fluttershy a weak smile that was just a little too moist at the corner of her eyes to be convincing. “It was foolish of me to hope that humans and draconequui could coexist like this.” She idly wiped an eye with a gloved hand. Her shoulders slumped as she turned and began to walk towards the door. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll just… be going I guess.”
Fluttershy hesitated, watching as the strange woman turned the corner and trudged down the hallway. She let out a breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding and slumped backward in her chair. ‘That was close…’ Fluttershy thought to herself. ‘I don’t know if I could handle such a powerful, magical creature being anywhere near me… certainly not for that length of time.’
‘Still,’ she pondered guiltily. ‘She seemed so genuine. Like she really wanted to be my maid. Maybe she wasn’t as dangerous as she seemed?’
Fluttershy shook her head. ‘No,’ she resolved ‘Letting some kind of chaos goddess live with me… that’s just asking for trouble. I made the right choice.’
‘...so why do I feel so guilty about it?’
The squeaky sound of a small critter clearing its throat startled her out of her reverie. Fluttershy turned to see Angel sitting on the counter, tapping his little bunny foot and glaring at her. “...what is it Angel?” she asked.
Angel pointed across the room to the ticking kit-cat clock on the wall. Fluttershy gasped. “Oh NO! Class starts in ten minutes!” she shouted. “I’m going to be late!”
Fluttershy stood suddenly, knocking the chair to the ground behind her as she dashed to the door and threw it open. “ERIS!” She cried, startling the strange woman who had just made it down her front steps.
“W-what?” Eris stuttered, shocked as Fluttershy stumbled up to her. The shorter girl slapped her hands down upon the maid’s shoulders.
“...Can you fly?”
Eris was stunned for a moment before a tearful grin started to spread across her face as she squealed lightly.
The tall woman shook it off though, her face quickly morphing into a mask of cocksure confidence.
“Can I fly, she asks!” Eris said boastfully. She raised a gloved hand into the air. “I can do you WAY better than that!”
She snapped her fingers.
➝ ➞ ➟ ➠ ➡
“DO WHAT YOU WANT ‘CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE! YOU! ARE! A PIRATE!”
Fluttershy shrieked, her eyes wide as she clutched, white knuckled to the rim of the massive bathtub that had been painted to look like a pirate ship. Majestic, rainbow colored wings flapped on either side of the tub, and an enormous black sail fluttered above them, attached to a mast that had sprouted out of the drainage pipe. All around her, a dozen rubber ducks that had been dressed up to look like a pirate crew belted out a sea shanty in the most gravelly, death metal voices that their squeaky rubber bills could make. The whole time, Eris stood, balancing perfectly atop the wooden beams of the sail, remaining completely stable despite the wind and momentum, and shredding on an electric guitar.
“We’re up so high!” Fluttershy cried, peeking over the side to see the ground rushing past her several hundred feet below them. Her hair, previously brushed, was blowing and fluttering all around her, quickly twisting into a mess of tangles. “We’re going too fast!”
“What’s that, Miss Fluttershy?!” Eris shouted from above. “I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am!”
“I SAID WE’RE GOING TOO FAST!” Fluttershy shrieked, her fingers tightening around the rim.
There was a pause as Eris continued to wail on her instrument. “...what?”
Fluttershy half groaned-half shouted as she ducked down into the safety of the tub, desperately trying to put the sight of the distant ground rushing below them out of sight and out of mind. She took a few deep, calming breaths before peeking over the edge of the tub, surprised to see the rooftops of her college in the distance rushing up to meet them. Surprised, Fluttershy pulled out her phone to check the time. Still five minutes to go.
...huh.
If they landed on the roof she could take the elevator to her class and still make it in time.
...Eris had really come through for her.
…
...huh.
“...I guess she could stay for a little while.” Fluttershy mumbled to herself.
“REALLY?!” Eris shouted from behind her, eyes sparkling with glee.
“Oh now, you can hear me.” Fluttershy groused, deadpan.
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
The day had practically crawled by. Sure, Fluttershy had made it to class on time but she could hardly take solace in the fact that her grade was secure knowing that an all-powerful chaos goddess was spending the whole day in her cottage. If anything, the fact that the exterior of the house looked positively normal made her even more worried about what kind of mind-shattering mess of non-euclidean geometry the inside would have turned into under Eris’ care. Fluttershy gulped, taking a deep, steadying breath as she approached her front door, pushing it inward and…
...everything was just how she left it.
Fluttershy was almost disappointed at the anticlimax. Better not to look a gift draconequus in the mouth, though.
“Oh you’re going to pay for that, you repugnant rodent! Get back here!” Eris’ voice came from around the corner. Fluttershy heard the sound of an explosion and winced.
There it was.
Fluttershy whirled around the corner and put on her best angry stare. “Just what is going on he-oh…” she trailed off as she was greeted with the sight of Eris and Angel sitting on her couch together in her living room. The two of them held a pair of controllers in their hands - one of them suspiciously shrunken to fit Angel’s tiny paws - attached to her old Wii. Fluttershy wasn’t much of a gamer, but she used the game ‘Wii Fit’ to keep in shape sometimes. It seemed like they were busy playing one of Rainbow’s old games that she’d left over one time. A pair of cartoony characters were driving around the screen in funny-looking go-karts, colorful shells and bombs with little eyes running around everywhere. As soon as the pair of them noticed her, though, the game suddenly paused.
“Miss Fluttershy!” Eris squealed, leaping from the couch and twirling through the air, hovering for a moment before she dropped back to earth with a click of her heels. “You’re back! Did you make it to class on time?”
“I… yes I did.” Fluttershy managed to stammer out. “Thank you, Eris.”
Eris beamed, giggling gleefully.
Fluttershy took a deep breath. “So… I’ve been thinking about it…” she said, steeling herself. “And… I guess… if you really want to… you can stay here. For a while, at least-EEK!” She stiffened as she suddenly felt Eris’ surprisingly strong arms wrapped around her and she was lifted from the floor in a massive bear hug.
“YES YES YES!” Eris shouted beaming ecstatically. “That’s all I want, Miss Fluttershy is to stay here with you and be your maid! You have no idea how happy this makes me!”
“That’s… perfect…” Fluttershy croaked out, struggling to breathe. Eris seemed to get the hint and quickly set her back down, releasing her sheepishly. Fluttershy took a deep breath and continued. “But there’s going to have to be some ground rules.”
“Name them!” Eris said with a sharp salute.
“For one, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to keep the chaos to a minimum. You can do… small things. Things that aren’t too scary or anything. But I don’t want anything that’ll frighten my animals. And I don’t want any government agents or ghost hunters or anything like that showing up on my doorstep demanding to know what’s going on here.”
For a split second Eris seemed to wince slightly, but it was quickly covered up with a grin and a nod. “Sure! Keep it simple, keep it subtle! I can do that!” She frowned a little, mumbling under her breath. “...I think.”
“Second, if you’re going to stay here, you need to pull your weight.” Fluttershy said. “Between my classes, my job, and all the animals I keep here I really do need another set of hands.”
“I can give you more hands!” Eris said, raising a hand to snap a finger. “How many do you want?”
“No no no!” Fluttershy said, making a slicing ‘stop that’ gesture with her hand across her neck. “That right there? That falls under ‘too scary,’” she stated firmly. “Unless I specifically ask you to transform me somehow… don’t. And that goes for the animals too.”
“No transforming! Got it!” Eris slapped a hand into her open palm before considering something. “...can I still transform myself?”
Fluttershy pursed her lips in thought before nodding. “If you can do it without scaring me or the animals, then fine.”
“Hooray!” Eris shouted. Suddenly, three more pairs of arms sprouted from Eris’ shoulders, giving her a total of eight, with her clothes adjusted to match. She wiggled her new hands around, every one of them giving Fluttershy a thumbs up. “See, Miss Fluttershy? With me around you get way more than one extra set of hands!”
Fluttershy covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Well, we’ll see about that.” She smiled bashfully, about to say something else when there was a sound from behind the two of them and frantic, cartoony music began to fill the room again. A character shouted in alarm and an explosion went off on the TV. Eris gasped, glaring over Fluttershy’s shoulder.
“Hey! You dirty, cheating rabbit! No unpausing while I’m away from the controller!” Eris sped back over to the couch, twisting in midair and colliding back into it, her rear making a loud ‘whumph’ as she slammed into the cushions. Catching the controller out of the air, her fingers blurred as she frantically tapped at the buttons.
Fluttershy laughed at the sight of the two of them, good naturedly smack-talking each other as they played their game. “I guess… it’ll be nice to have somebody around again.” She turned towards her window, gazing longingly at the setting sun in the distance. “...I guess we’ll see.”
☀ ☆ ★ ☆ ☾
“Sister.”
“I know. The seal has broken. I felt it too.”
“Then why art thou still sitting here?! We must act!”
“Patience. We have no way of tracking her. Unless she makes a move… something big and loud… we have no way of knowing where she is.”
“Then we should be out scouring the streets! Searching for some sign of her! Before she begins her antics again!”
“I’m keeping an eye on social media and news reports. If she does something I’ll know.”
“Bah! You and your modern technology!”
“You should really learn how to use it. Maybe then you won’t be fooled by a literal cut-and-paste photo doctoring.”
“...Thou art never going to let me live that down, are ye?”
“She literally cut out a polaroid picture of Twilight and pasted it over another polaroid.”
“I get it, sister. Can we get back to the problem at hand?!”
“You assume there is a problem.”
“She’s free! How is that anything other than a problem?!”
“She’s free… and she’s been free for almost 24 hours now. And yet, she hasn’t turned the entire planet into cake yet.”
“Surely she is merely biding her time! Waiting for the opportune moment to strike!”
“Have you ever known Eris to be one for subtlety? Or for any kind of planning at all?”
“...well what dost thou think is happening instead? Surely thou canst not believe she has renounced her evil ways!”
“Stranger things have happened, sister. Some very recently.”
“Bah. You will lead the mortals to doom with thy ‘wait and see’ attitudes, sister.”
“What I’m more worried about is what else might have awakened. When the seal broke it unleashed a massive wave of chaos energy through the leylines of the planet. Who knows what other sealed, ancient evils might have been awakened or alerted by that.”
“Then we shall take them all down together sister! You and I in glorious combat once more against the ancient evils of the world! The Paladin Goddesses... united again!”
“We can only hope it won’t come to that, Lulu.”
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠
A rumbling resounded through the shadowy cavern, cutting through the stillness and silence that had remained for millenia. At the center of the underground cave, cut off from the surface and devoid of light, an illuminating glow began to cut through the blackness. A massive, purple-black quartz crystal gave off an eerie light, casting flickering shadows around the room and revealing the cave’s walls for the first time in eons. Similar, smaller crystals lined the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room, revealing the cavern to be a sort of massive geode.
The single, central crystal spire began to glow brighter and brighter, its purple glare taking on a green tinge as well, before the crystal started to crack down the middle.
Unheard to anyone but itself, a hissing, gutteral voice resounded through the massive, crystalline cavern.
“Erissssssssss…”
▷ ▷ ▷ ▷ ☺
Fluttershy pushed open the door, dressed now in an oversized pink nightshirt and pajama pants with cartoon bunnies printed on them. Behind her stood Eris, who wore a long, black nightgown that she’d conjured up with a snap of her fingers.
“This is your room.” Fluttershy said with a smile. “It’s pretty bare, but I’m sure you’ll figure out something to do with it.”
When she heard a gasp from behind her, she turned around, her smile turning into a concerned frown. She looked up at Eris’ face to see her with tears in her eyes. “Is… Is something wrong?”
Eris wiped at her eyes with her forearm and shook her head, revealing a wide, shaky smile. “It’s just… I’ve never had a room before,” she trailed off. “I mean… I guess I’ve made my own ‘rooms,’ but nobody’s ever… given me a room before.” She looked down at Fluttershy. “Nobody’s ever given me anything before come to think of it. I always made everything for myself.”
“That’s awful…” Fluttershy said sadly, putting a gentle hand on Eris’ arm. “But… if it makes you feel any better, that changes now.” Fluttershy gestured to the room. “It’s yours as long as you stay here. You can decorate it however you like… as long as it doesn’t mess with the rest of the house.”
Eris sniffled and Fluttershy put a comforting arm around the gently weeping, taller woman. “Hey now. It’s gonna be okay,” she said.
Eris smiled, leaning into Fluttershy and craning her neck so that their heads touched. “...I think… maybe you’re right. Everything’s gonna be fine.”
◁ ◄ ◄ ◄ ◄
The pair had been travelling for about twenty minutes now. Fluttershy had been ceaselessly giggling over what certainly must have been the funniest joke ever devised in the history of mankind. Fluttershy’s drunken giggles were muffled as her face remained pressed to the glass of the car window, her wall-eyed, drunken gaze fixed on the passing landscape outside.
She was just feeling herself slip away into blissful, inebriated unconsciousness when a flash of movement caught her intoxicated eye. With a gasp, she sat up straight.
“Stop the car!” She shrieked.
Startled, the PEGAssyst driver slammed on the brakes, the car lurching and sending all the loose items inside flying. The driver whirled on Fluttershy, a flare of anger washing over him. “What?!” he demanded.
Fluttershy looked at him with a deadly serious glare, despite her state. “I need to get out. Right now,” she said, her voice serious as death itself.
Now the driver simply looked confused. “What? Why?” he asked.
Fluttershy pointed out the window. “Bunnies.”
The driver blinked. “Bunnies?”
Fluttershy nodded, repeating herself, just as serious as before. “Bunnies.”
He turned to look. Sure enough, there was a colony of bouncing bunnies hopping along the side of the road. A couple of them had stopped to look at the stopped car, their beady black eyes wary and cautious.
The driver sighed and shook his head. “Miss, I’m not letting you out to play with the bunnies.”
Fluttershy looked like she’d been struck. “B-but… bunnies!”
“Miss, you’re drunk,” the driver insisted. “I’m not just going to let you run out into the woods in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars.” Fluttershy said, her voice firm and serious as stone.
The driver hesitated. “...what?”
Fluttershy fished out her wallet, pulling out two hundred dollar bills from within. “Two hundred dollars if you let me out right now.” She said, her eyes remaining fixed on his, despite drunkenly swaying in her seat.
The driver winced. “I… I can’t. I can’t just let let you run off. That... wouldn’t be right…”
Fluttershy fished out another bill. “Three hundred.”
Now the driver was grimacing, clearly wearing down. “You’re serious?”
Fluttershy nodded. “And I’ll leave you a five star review on the app.”
He winced, fidgeting in his seat. He started murmuring to himself for a little bit. Fluttershy thought she caught the words ‘rent’ and ‘bills’ somewhere in his mumbling but she was too drunkenly focused on the bunnies just outside the window to really care. Finally the driver relented and took the bills, unlocking the door. “Just… don’t get yourself killed.” he muttered.
“YAY!” Fluttershy squealed louder than she ever would have were she sober. She forced the door open and stumbled out of the car. “Come heeeeere baby bunnies!” she cried at the alarmed colony of rabbits. “Mama Fluttershy wants to cuddle yoooouuuu!”
The last the driver saw of the crazy drunken girl, she had stumbled off into the forest.