"Potion Seller! I am going into battle and require your strongest potions."
"You realize I barely have any potions right? I'm more of a Needful Things than any kind of one-trick salesman."
Mancha ignored the potion seller, travelling through the store with a delicate hand brushing along the shelves, the contents of each entirely different from the last time he had visited. The bored clerk, whose name he could never remember sat at his desk, barely paying attention to his customer and choosing instead to fiddle with his nametag.
The store was filled to the brim with bits and bobs; Books from House of Leaves to The Enchiridion, monuments and statues that diligently stood in place and resisted the urge to scratch their itches, a wall of masks that turned the wearers into vampires and monsters and dudes wearing really cool masks, weapons, a cute rat snoozing on a display table, a Health Department shutdown slip, and what appeared to be a large rabbit fursuit slumped over in the corner.
"Some employees of such a store would be delighted to have anyone step foot in them."
"Come sit on this side of the counter for incomprehensible hours and listen to me berating you."
Mancha sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "Do you have any potions? At all?"
"Oh, sure. Just remember not to expect much from spooky shopkeepers."
The employee reached down behind his desk, fishing around and placing a few useless totems on the table, before pulling out a small glass bottle. Inside sat an idyllic scene one could mistake for a snowglobe, albeit missing half of the name; a green field of flowers, with a tiny yellow equinish creature peacefully snoozing inside, occasionally kicking a leg in their slumber.
"What is it?" Mancha's eyes lit up, taking in the sunny hill lit by something far powerful than the dim torch lights of the shop just out of the globe's sight.
"It's a pony."
"How is that useful?"
"You expect too much from us. I just work here."
"Health? Mana? Literally anything?"
"Pony."
He took the pony.
---*---
Mancha dived behind an overturned branch, catching his breath as a barrage of arrows turned the fallen tree into an elongated hedgehog that also happened to look a lot like a tree. Rifling through his bags, he threw aside broken weapons before finally coming to his saving grace; the last potion, surviving hours of jostling around in his bags, come to save his life and pull him out of the And it's the damn pony again.
Sighing as loudly as he could to.... show the big monsters he was annoyed, he guessed, Mancha slammed the bottle against the log, spilling grass, flowers, glass shards, and a buttercup yellow pony out, all suddenly growing in size.
Shaking his head, the new creature looked up at his summoner, speaking his eloquent first word, "What?"
It was no I Art Thou, that was for sure.
"I don't suppose you spit lasers?" Mancha disdainfully asked.
"No? Should I?"
"You really should."
"Where am I?" A furious feline head poked over the log, snarling through overgrown yellow fangs that seemed more useful for attracting mates than anything teeth should actually do.
The creature's powerful human arms reached for the tiny horse, lifting it high into the air. Thinking quickly, Mancha picked up the unbroken handle of the potion, and drove it as far as he could into the creature's chest. It roared, dropping the walking sunflower and beating its chest like a gorilla, in an intimidatingly stupid show of bravado that immediately pushed the handle deeper. The roaring quickly became a whimper, and it leapt over the log, bounding into the woods.
Mancha stopped for a second, breathing heavily, before glaring back at the dazed pony, lifting another spent bottle.
"Get back in."