//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: Putt Putt Becomes a Pony // by Rainbow Sparkle //------------------------------// This morning’s breakfast was… quiet. Fluttershy sat next to Putt Putt today instead of across from him as she had been doing, a wing draped over him for some additional comfort. He was trying to put on a brave face… perhaps too brave as she could see his smile straining to stay as wide as it was. The rest of the night he had slept like a newborn foal- having someone to sleep with, more than one if she were to guess, had kept any additional nightmares away. Maybe, Fluttershy thought to herself. Princess Luna had managed to reach his dreams and keep any additional nightmares away. Twilight did mention that Luna has taken up more of her old duties, which includes being the keeper of the Dreamscape. She tried to give him comforting smiles, but she almost found herself wanting to cringe each time she saw his muzzle-wide smile. They way one of his eyes seemed to twitch a bit did nothing to help, reminding her of how Twilight had looked as she became increasingly worried about being “Tardy” for her friendship reports. “Are you ready?” She asked as soon as Putt Putt finished washing his bowl and spoon. “Almost!” He said as he dried his hooves off and then moved to pick up the saddlebags he had gotten from Rarity. Pep happily leapt into one, letting out some happy barks as he popped his head back out to give Putt Putt some friendly licks. “Hehe, all right, I’m ready to go see Twilight!” Fluttershy smiled and nodded, then turned to Angel Bunny and said “We shouldn’t be gone for too long, but if we are please make sure the other critters get their lunch okay?” Angel Bunny rolled his eyes and shooed them both towards the door, gesticulating a bit and even telling her it was about time she took him off to get his head checked. “ANGEL! That’s no way to speak about a friend!” She chided, only to have the door slammed in her face once they were both outside. She sighed, shook her head, and gave Putt Putt a hug. “Come on, let’s get going. Twilight is expecting us after all, and we don’t want to keep her waiting.” Putt Putt bobbed his head in agreement, and together the two of them set off into town. It was still early morning which meant most ponies were still inside their homes, either preparing breakfast or catching a bit more sleep. As it would turn out, the latter was what at least one of the residents of Golden Oaks was up to, as Twilight was the one to open the door when the three arrived. She looked a little tired herself but from the cup floating next to her Fluttershy suspected it wouldn’t take long for Twilight to be alert and ready for her spell casting. “Morning Fluttershy, Putt Putt, Pep. Just have a seat, I was finishing up breakfast. I still need to double check the spells I’ll be using anyways.” The two nod, taking a seat near the table in the center as Twilight returned to the kitchen. Putt Putt gave her a curious look and asked “What exactly is Twilight going to do?” “She’s going to use some magic spells she found to try to see what’s causing the nightmares.” Fluttershy explained as she again draped a wing over his back. She gave him a soft nuzzle as soon as she saw him shiver at the mention of those bad dreams of his. “Oh, okay then… I hope she can help make them go away.” Putt Putt said, his smile stretching again. “It’ll make waiting for a way back home a lot more fun if I didn’t have those anymore!” “Nightmares are part of a normal ponies sleep actually.” Twilight said as she strode back in, a book floating in front of her face as she scanned its pages. “Everypony has a scary dream every so often, but frequent and intense nightmares are usually a sign of something deeper.” Putt Putt blinked at that, giving her a confused look as he said “But I don’t think I’ve really had any nightmares before coming here.” He reached up and tapped a hoof to his chin and added, smile fading for a moment “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve had many dreams before coming here either…” That earned raised eyebrows from both mares. Twilight sighed and closed her book, setting it aside as she said “Well, in any case, first I’ll be reviewing the dreams themselves to see what I can learn. I have a book over here that contains a bunch of thoughts and research on dream symbolism.” “Alright!” Putt Putt exclaimed… a bit more excitedly than Twilight would have thought appropriate given the circumstances. “Do I need to do anything?” “Just relax, and close your eyes… and try to think about the dreams. It will make it easier for me to see them.” Twilight said, watching as his smile started to falter before going even wider. It almost made her think of Pinkie Pie, but not in a good way. “Hot Ziggity, I can do that! Anything to help a friend!” Twilight smiled at that, then began focusing. She went through the spell one last time in her head before casting it and placing her horn upon Putt Putt’s forehead. The world around Twilight dissolved, and she found herself in what she assumed was Cartown. She could see Putt Putt leaving his garage home and going about the town… she followed along, having to gallop a bit every so often as Putt Putt in car form seemed to go by a bit faster than she could trot. She watched as the dream quickly became a nightmare, making note of every detail she could. Twilight found herself wishing this spell didn’t require so much of her focus- she could be writing it all down on a scroll instead of having to play the the dream out several times, and doing the same for each of the other nightmares Putt Putt had experienced since he came out of the Everfree. More surprising however was when she tried to see dreams from before that… there seemed to be… well… nothing… at least, at first glance. She could sense… something… but it was so distant, so faint, it might as well have not been there… and it almost felt like they didn’t belong… Twilight reviewed the dreams and nightmares she could get to one last time, noting that they all seemed to only be from while he was here in Ponyville. She then finished the spell, taking a step back for a moment as she worked to re-orient herself as her magic got to work noting everything down. Twilight also glanced at Putt Putt, who looked a bit uncomfortable. His smile was still there, if diminished, and his eyes looked just a bit damp. “I-I did my best to think about and recall them. Did that help?” Twilight nodded, giving him a smile of appreciation as she said “Yes, it did… though I think I need to use the other spell to try and learn more…” Especially about that… well, I suppose anomaly is a good word for that strange feeling in there. She didn’t share it with Putt Putt though as she said “First though we’ll take a ten-minute break… mind spells aren’t something that should be cast right after the other.” And as an afterthought “I need to talk with Fluttershy for a moment, so feel free to read any of the books while you wait.” Putt Putt nods, smiling as he goes over to look at the books again, while Twilight leads Fluttershy into the kitchen. She closes the door partway, and sighs as she rubs at her head. “Is it worse than I think it is?” Fluttershy asks, and Twilight frowns, pondering the question. “Well, I definitely sense the theme of loneliness, and hopelessness is another part. Darkness being everywhere is very big, as almost all of them ended up having things being swallowed by it in some form or another. I’m not sure I can figure anything out about the ‘cars’ in his dreams, but I also saw the cars and others important to him in the dreams turn into toys… with Pep becoming a plushie. And at times there are strings leading up into the sky… almost as if everything in the dream is just puppets on a stage.” She sighed, shaking her head. “So the answer right now is that I don’t know… I certainly think something is eating at him… and whatever it is, it’s because he’s here. I can’t find any dreams he had before his first night here.” Fluttershy gulped at that, shaking her head as her gaze was cast to the door. “Oh dear… that doesn’t sound good.” “It’s certainly not a sign that he’s as fine as he likes to think.” Twilight said, peering out the door with Fluttershy as Putt Putt looked at a kid’s book on magic while Pep cuddled up against his barrel, licking at his chin. “And I’m not sure now how the Mind Delve spell is going to work. The book says that it lets the caster and the subject both see the memories… I’m not entirely sure what I’ll find in his memories, or if something did indeed happen in his past how he’ll react to it.” She turned her head to Fluttershy as she asked “I’d like you to stay next to Putt Putt to give him some moral support, and to help keep him still in case he reacts badly to any of the memories I see, and that he experiences.” “Of course Twilight… I can do that.” Fluttershy said, standing a bit taller as she pushed some of her mane out of her eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can to help to Putt Putt.” Then she lowered her head back down and admitted as she dug at the floor with a hoof, “I just hope I won’t have to try to hold him down or anything… do you really think his memories could make him lash out?” “Honestly, no. He doesn’t come across as the sort.” Twilight said as she sat down, pouring herself another cup of coffee and bringing it over to her. “But the spell in the book for the Mind Delve does recommend it. It is normally used for ponies visiting a therapist or going to a mental institution.” Fluttershy nodded at that. She didn’t know much about magic and only understood some things about psychology… and that was mostly animal psychology. But a spell meant to dive into the mind and memories… She could see how, for someone or somepony who’d been… she shuddered to even think of the idea of a pony being abused, such a spell could bring up things that they wouldn’t want to see again. The next few minutes passed by in relative silence, being broken up only by Twilight offering Fluttershy some tea and by Spike’s coming in to get himself a bowl of gems for breakfast. Once Twilight had finished her pot of coffee, and done some extra looking reading on the details and effects of the Mind Delve spell, she closed the book and nodded to Fluttershy. Together, they came back out, Fluttershy calling to Putt Putt, who happily put the book back where he’d found it before walking back over to the two of them. “This next spell is going to be a bit more. It’s going to be looking over your memories, so I can see if I can find what’s causing the nightmare’s in question. You may or may not see some of the memories as well. If any of the memories you see while I’m looking through them bother you any, tap your hoof on the floor three times.” Putt Putt nodded in understanding after he tapped the floor three times and asked “Like this?” and receiving a nod from Twilight. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, and then relaxed as Twilight prepared the spell. This time, there was a sensation of sinking that came with the spell. She let it wash over her, the book mentioning that resisting it could cause the spell to cancel out or even miscast and cause temporary memory loss. Once she felt her hooves on solid ground again and saw herself looking up at herself through Putt Putt’s eyes, she knew the spell had worked. Alright… the nightmares started after Putt Putt arrived here… he says he hasn’t had any nightmares before… so I should probably look at his memories before he woke up in the Everfree. With a bit of focus, she watched the world around her blur, as if his memories were rewinding backwards before her at rapid speed. There wasn’t much need to pay attention to anything until she felt the form she was in… shifting… and saw black before spirals of color… The feeling of being a car was… odd… to say the least. But what was stranger was that the surrounding details weren’t as… sharp as they had been in his nightmares, or as clear as she would have expected a recent memory to be. She could see the ‘dimensional portal’ that Putt Putt had mentioned, finding it weird that a rocket attached to an oven and a dishwasher was able to do something like… well, open a portal to another world. It almost sounded like the sort of thing a foal would dream up for a story, like how some foals would make armor from cardboard or use a pot as a helmet. With some effort, she slowly extracted herself from the form of Putt Putt, sticking close to him as she took in as many details as possible. Which, to her immense frustration, soon began to be… well, hard! Harder than it should have been in fact! Anytime she tried to focus on something besides whatever Putt Putt was paying attention to, whatever she was gazing it seemed to become fuzzy, almost out of focus like she was looking through a smudged up lens. This trend continued through the memories of each of his adventures… but what drew her attention more was how… disjointed those memories were. His memory of his adventure through time seemed to be missing… well, his actual driving to his school he supposedly went to, and well… anything after that. And his parade adventure (which made no sense at all seeing as there was no one WATCHING it) just seemed to end with him leading the rest of the cars off into the sunset… for Celestia’s sake, his memory of going to the circus seemed to end when the clown threw a pie in his face! Then, there was that… anomaly again. The instant she tried to go further back into his memories after he woke up on the day of the parade… there seemed to be… nothing. As if he simply didn’t have any memories before that! Yet the magic of the spell seemed to be telling her that there was… something beyond that. She decided to go through the memories a few more times… maybe she was missing something… because nothing about the memories she saw seemed to indicate anything that would be causing Putt Putt nightmares with the fear of being left alone as a central theme to them. As it would turn out, going through the memories a few more times had in fact given her a potential insight. Each time she went through the memories, she started to notice that there was something… off about the voices from the other cars and beings she saw in the memories. And after her fourth run, she could swear she heard someone describing some of the surrounding environment. It took some additional magic, but she was able to isolate what she was hearing as she went through the memories for round six, and to her surprise, found that what she heard was two separate voices pretending to be other voices… including to her own confusion, Putt Putt’s voice! One sounded like that of an older stallion, while the other was that of a mare, and they seemed to exude an aura of… love and kindness that made her think of her own parents when they would read bedtime stories to her and Shiney… And then, something in her head seemed to click. She went through the memories of his time in ‘Cartown’ one more time, and as she did so, she realized that what she was seeing was not an actual memory… but a construct. The reason so much of the world around her seemed so blurry, distant, and… detached when Putt Putt wasn’t focusing on something was because he didn’t have anything to work from! When she heard a tree being described, and how it would suddenly have its leaves transform into the shape of say a rubber ducky, it was clear and vivid- but as soon as the voices were ‘speaking’ or describing something else it’d go out of focus, losing its importance to Putt Putt and the adventure he was on that day. This time, when she reached the garage on his ‘first’ memory, she frowned and gazed at the wall behind the table where the tube of wax for his teeth and his bowl of Tire-O’s sat. She could feel now, much more clearly, that there was something behind here… She wasn’t sure what it was, but she was determined to find out now. Her horn glowing brighter, she poured more magic into the spell, focusing on the wall before her as she began to step towards it. I’m getting through here… I’m going to find out what’s going on, and what’s plaguing this colt’s mind! This time, she was able to step through… and she found herself in what seemed to be a big dark void of… nothingness. She blinked, checking the spell and discovering this was, in fact, a memory, and that there was more ahead of her. Slowly, Twilight walked forward, unnerved by the silence surrounding her. On what she figured was her thirtieth step, she heard a voice… the voice of the mare. She had trouble making out what she was saying, as if the words were garbled, or talking from a far distance making it almost sound like a murmur. But she did catch a glimmer of a toy car that looked like Putt Putt, and a plush animal, moving about as the voice continued. Twilight sat down, watching and listening. With some effort, she was able to make out a word or two… Walking again resulted in several similar instances, sometimes with only the mare speaking, other times the stallion was alone, and then there were times they were together. Each time, the outlines of toy Putt Putt, the plush Pep, and sometimes other toy cars that looked like the citizens of Cartown, would accompany them and play out what she was starting to guess were scenes, almost like a puppet show. And with each one she saw, it took fewer steps to reach the next little ‘act’. Suddenly, after an act that didn’t seem to have Pep involved until the end, she saw a light form up ahead. A very bright light. She heard a loud clop against wood, but continued forward anyways. The light brightened, and suddenly, she felt herself no longer in her own form… what form she WAS in she couldn’t be sure as everything felt… numb. She could feel limbs… feel that they were there… but they couldn’t move, and in this memory, she found that only her head seemed to move any, and not by much. She was barely able to register that she seemed to be on a bed… one that was moving, and that sounded like it was one wheels. Actually, it kind of sounded like a stretcher. And that thought let her hear mumbling and murmuring of someone completely different, someone with an authoritative voice barking out orders as they followed along besides her. She heard another clop, this one louder, but ignored it as the bright light seemed to dim above her for a moment, letting her see a shadowy form leaning closer to her. It briefly faded from sight again as the light shone and tried to practically drill into her eyes, but what mattered was what the form said next, the sound of barely held back tears easy for her to pick up. “It’s okay baby… you’re not alone… come on baby… please just hang on and smile… smile sweetie. Remember what I told you? Always keep a smile on your face… it’s always important to keep a smile on your face, as long as you’re smiling, everything will be okay, right sweetie? Right?” She could feel the memory moving forward now, the darkness moving to swallow her up again, and as soon as she was back in the empty void, she heard the sharp crack of a hoof stomp on wood. Without a moment’s hesitation, she cancelled the spell.