//------------------------------// // CH. 02 You should see a doctor about that // Story: Werewolves of Knicknik // by Atuhor Name //------------------------------// You should see a doctor about that Twilight was awakened by the smell of coffee wafting into the room. She opened her eyes to see Spike with his special wafting paper fan walking into the room with a steaming cup of coffee. Now Naudia was usually more of an obnoxiously cheery morning person, the kind of changeling who could already be up when you woke up, didn’t need coffee and seemed to suffer no ill effects from losing sleep. Usually, lately she and Twilight had not been sleeping well, Naudia because of the hatred problems and Twilight because the nightmares were coming back. While Twilight looked at the pre-prepared coffee with a kind of tired relief, Naudia looked at it with a mild disgust. Naudia had tried coffee some time ago and they found out several things about it, changelings were immune to the effects of caffeine, they could taste bitter tastes fairly well, and no amount of sweetening could cover up the bitter taste for her, so now the smell of coffee just reminded her of that unpleasant bitter taste. This had led to another discovery that changelings were also entirely immune to alcohol, and the control subject turned out to be a jovial drunk for not all that long before falling asleep. The control subject was also not fond of the taste of alchohol. Twilight still would have taken the hangover she had the next morning over the stress from whatever that thing was… watching her. It promised answers but Twilight could only see that going two ways, bad and worse, either it would cryptically dance around the subject brushing up against the truth and Twilight might as well have gone to a timeshare seminar, or it meant something else. But there was no sense thinking about it now, it was some eldrich entity that popped in and out where it pleased and didn’t so much as leave a hoofprint on the rug at the foot of her bed. THAT kind of thing, in other words annoying, and Twilight wanted to punch it in the face. She didn’t know where that last thought came from. Twilight decided it was time to get up and enjoy the day as best she could, the alluring waft of coffee was too much of a temptation for her to stay in bed anymore. She cracked her eyes open, stretched and prepared to start her day with a cup of coffee, and then her princessly duties checklist. The first thing on the list was, paradoxically, check the list. “All right, that’s the first thing checked off my list for today!” Which always cheered Twilight up a bit in the mornings. There was a faint shimmering over in Twilight’s periphery, faint enough that Twilight was almost certain it was just the crystal walls. She could almost convince herself of that, almost. Until she looked closer at it. There was a hint of something there, in the doorway, if it wasn’t so large then Twilight wouldn’t have been able to even notice it. It was almost invisible or camouflaged, or refracted light around itself to be unseeable. However now that Twilight focused on it she could get a better picture of the outline of what was there and it was large. Apparently it had noticed her noticing it and it shimmered away down the hallway it’s silhouette impossible to catch as it dashed off silently with Twilight dashing off after it spilling Spike’s cup of coffee and accidentally knocking over a sleepy Naudia. “Hey!” “What’s the deal!?” Were the twin cries that followed after her as Twilight started to literally fly down the hall. The thing had a strange gait Twilight could tell but it was slippery to her magic, like she was trying to grab onto her brother’s shields, but it didn’t have the same texture as that. It was also able to keep up and had frankly a better grasp on navigation than she did around her own castle. Twilight was focusing too much on the creature and not enough on the hallway in front of her, beating her wings as fast as she could she didn’t see the end of the T intersection until it was too late to air brake. She tried to get her hooves under her to stop faster, and she did… onto a throw rug. Frankly that could have been an oiled throw rug for all the good it did stopping her. Twilight slammed into the wall with bone cracking speed, one of her wings was unfortunately placed so that it was a lever between her and the wall. She closed her eye as a brass decorative candle holder headed straight for her eye. ---------------- Naudia racing after Twilight found her impaled through the head on a candlestick holder. She could do nothing but hold a hoof up to her mouth and stare. Then to her everlasting horror one of Twilight’s eyes turned to face her. This was it. Naudia crumpled up, hooves on her head. This is what would break her. “Ummm...” She was already hearing voices, she covered her ears and tried to block them out. “Hey!” She heard and squeezed her eyes tighter. “Something is wrong, get me down from here!” Naudia took a shuddering breath and looked back at the horror she knew she had to face. Only to find Twilight flailing around as if she was hung up on something, and to catch her as she pushed off from the wall with a *shlurp*. Things didn’t make sense, skulls didn’t move like that, there wasn’t any blood, and Twilight felt… different in her hooves. The two halves of Twilight’s head wobbled a bit before Twilight pushed them back together and they sealed back up again. As if nothing had even happened. This is clearly the sign of some kind of breakdown, Naudia thought, I’ll be having little tea parties in a padded cell from now on. That was when Spike came into the hallway, huffing and puffing. Naudia tried to turn Twilight away from Spike so he wouldn’t see what happened to her, but Twilight superseded that by getting up out of Naudia’s hooves and staring dumbly at Naudia. “What just happened?” Spike and Twilight said in a chorus. Naudia could only turn to look at Spike who seemed a lot less concerned than Naudia thought he should be. Presumably the walls are covered in blood, Naudia thought, and so am I at this point. Naudia unable to get over her shock pointed at Twilight. “I don’t get it.” Spike said. “Can’t you see what’s happened to Twilight?” Naudia asked. “Well she looks confused, did she hit her head or something?” Before Naudia could reply, Spike gasped and ran over to Twilight. “Oh my gosh! Do you have a concussion?! We have to get you to a Doctor Twilight!” Spike then turned to Naudia, “Don’t worry, modern medicine can solve almost any problem, a concussion should be nothing for them.” Even though Naudia knew Spike was wrong about the… concussion, Spike was the only one of the three talking sense at the moment and it sounded like a good idea. So Naudia lifted Twilight onto her back and dumbly trotted out of the castle following Spike who prattled on what he knew about concussions. ---------------- Twilight was sitting in a waiting room at Ponyville General. Normally this would be a bland experience to say the least, hospitals not being known for excitement. This waiting room was different, it was the “Pie-Belle waiting room” and had been agonizingly designed by Rarity and Pinkie to stand somewhere around “cheery” and “calming.” Twilight’s own contribution had been a book lending shelf, and Naudia’s changelings had made the blue changeling goop table that had a pleasing woodgrain look to it. Across from Twilight was a motivational poster that stood next to a rack of pamphlets. The poster contrasted to the pamphlets on various conditions in a way that fitted in with the typical starkness of a hospital in Twilight’s opinion. Right now Twilight was waiting for her specialist practitioner to have an opening, and she and Naudia both were trying to keep their minds off things. She didn’t know the doctor herself, but she did know two things about him. He used to be Celestia’s personal doctor and he had been moved out from Canterlot to here specifically for her and partially for Naudia. “It says here that ponies in Canterlot have discovered what they’re calling a ‘rat god’ in the walls of their house.” Naudia said from hiding behind the newspaper. “What?” Twilight said trying to even envision what that would even look like. “It was apparently some sort of blob that the rats offered food to and there was a sizable colony of them in the walls at that location.” “Is there a picture of it?” Twilight was very curious about this development, and scanned the paper to see if it was one of those ‘toilet paper rags’ as her father called them. “Here take a look at it.” Naudia flipped the newspaper over to show Twilight. The paper among other things was one of the legitimate ones, and in bold CAPITAL letters had titled the frontpage “SCIENTISTS CALL IT: THE RAT GOD”. Below that title was a black and white picture of two nervous ponies posing with a hole in their wall to reveal a blob that occupied all of the opened up hole and stood at least three feet high in-between two wall studs. Strange bits of food and organic matter stuck out of the blob at random intervals, a wooden spoon here with a cracked handle, a tree branch, what Twilight could identify as a cluster of spaghetti noodles. The caption below it read: “We thought that we had maybe one or two rats in our house, we never suspected that we had a couple of hundred and this.” Below another picture showed a bent up mousetrap with little claw marks embedded into the wood, and the kill bar snapped in half. Below the picture was another caption: “Rats exhibit supernatural strength!” With the article going on about how the couple weren’t too concerned until it appeared the rats were breaking their traps and odd items of food were going missing. Twilight frowned as the article went into warped quotes from a scientist who put out guarded phrases to the tone of “we believe they sacrificed food to it.” “So, Twilight,” Naudia asked. “What do you think of this strange phenomenon?” “I don’t know if I have anything to think about it, I’d certainly like to go see it, wherever they’ve decided to keep it.” “Did you see the part with the quote from the homeowners?” “Yes, it does puzzle me how a couple of hundred rats can be… stealthy?” Twilight remarked trying to make sense of the article and what it could mean. “No, not that one, here gimme.” Naudia scanned the paper before flipping it over to Twilight again and pointing to a quote. “We think it might have saved us some money from a water leak in our house.” Twilight could only laugh at the humdrum attitude to the “rat god”. That was when the nurse came out to Call Twilight in.