//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: These Dreams Go On // Story: Rag Doll // by No one is home //------------------------------// The pink, changeling nymph was clearly too young for the Lower Canterlot nightclub she found herself in.  And far from the quality the clientele expected to keep company with according to their sneers.  How did she even get pastsecurity? “I hold on so nervously, to me and my drink…”  Was that drink even her’s?  She didn’t look nervous. She looked like sauntering rage, crooning along with the vapant dance floor lyric. “I wish it was cooling me.” Perhaps the noble whose face received both drink and glass wished the same? “But so far it has not been good…” Was this a dream?  An edge of a memory curled around my brain like a leech.  At the same time the young changeling sauntered across the dance floor.  I was keenly aware that I wasn’t there.  I had never been there. “In fact it’s been shitty,” the little changeling crooned seductively, “and I feel awkward as I should.” A security guard lunged at the changeling youth, and in a flash of pink flames she was a young mare.  “But I’m still imagining,” The filly sang on.  The guard was seized in her now shark like jaws and quickly slammed into a mess of changeling icor as, “A dark lit place, like your place, or my place…” The victim into the remains of a white carapaced changeling with an Electric Blue Mane. The music screeched to a halt, and the white pony DJ transformed into an identical copy of the young mare’s most recent victim who screamed over the club’s sound system, “Why are you doing this?  We upheld the truce!” “Magic is fading,” The pink mare smiled coyly as her scorpion-like tail twitched, “My Charlie is just a doll now.  There’s going to be a whole new world, and if he doesn’t get to see it, then why should you?  How many doppelgangers can you even maintain at this point?  I hope it’s enough to stand on a pile of the bodies of my enemies, Legion Scratch, because I always wanted to do that.  If he doesn’t get to live to see the new world, why should you?” And that’s when I came to, passed out in a salad bowl filled with hard cider.  That answered none of my questions, and raised so many others… “Why am I waking up?”  The universe better have an answer to that dammit.  “I have not slept or passed out at all ever in at least twentyish years…” -=-=-=-=- “It seems some pony had a big night,”  Alphabittle sneered, “Mr. Ragdoll.” “Okay, almost none of this is my fault,” the soggy doll argued as he climbed up from where he’d slept.  “You never said magic was coming back.  And apparently I’m powered by magic… who knew?” “Let’s start with what you got right,” the giant grey unicorn sneered, “There wasn’t an outright riot…” “Okay,”  Ragdoll gestured drunkenly as hie fell out of the salad bowl and looked around quickly, “I know the place is a mess…” “...So you passed the lowest possible bar I set for you,” the unicorn’s voice took on a quiet edge, “And part of this is undoubtedly my fault for putting a psychic jinx doll in charge of my place of business.  Honestly I meant it as a bit of a joke… I thought it was funny, anyway.” “Oh yeah, boss,” Ragdoll nodded his head with enthusiasm, “I totally got a laugh out of that…” “So imagine my surprise when I come home to find Gloomy’s little jinx doll snoring loudly in a salad bowl filled with booze,” Alphabittles temper began to rise in his voice, “And half my regular customers passed out in literally every seating both in the house.  And why is my pachinko machine upside down?!?!” “Okay, the pachinko machine is part of the ‘not my fault’,” Ragdoll explained as he perhaps unnecessarily stretched his neck, “It turns out unicorns randomly throw things around when their surprised they can suddenly magically throw things around.” “Okay, I’ll give you a pass on that,” the elder unicorn raised a stern eyebrow.  “But why do I have ponies passed out drunk all over the tea house?  We barely even serve booze!” “Okay, that’s more my fault,” the doll gave his most reassuring head tilt, “After everyone started throwing things around with their magic horn powers, that they suddenly had for the first time, I might have, maybe, but a bug in Gloomies ear to suggest that everyone bring all the booze they could get to the tea room for an ‘end of the world party’?  And by ‘suggest’, I might have actually put the idea in her head to use her ‘magical drum-jinx powers’ to take over their minds… while drunk out of my mind from being thrown into a bottle of cider against my will…” “And that's how you ended up in the salad bowl?” Alphabittle queried skeptically. “Oh no, that was totally my fault,” the doll staggered and laughed, “While what should have been black out drunk, I laid down this sweet rhyme while Gloomy was setting down some absolutely sick steel drum solo… check this out…” Rag Doll began a chant while performing a completely unrelated but somewhat suggestive poorly executed series of dance moves, “‘Wing, Feather, Mayonnaise, around the corner Magic’s made…” “Beep! Boop!” The older unicorn echoed by near instinct.” “Yeah,”  Rag Doll nodded enthusiastically,  “And everypony beeped booped back… which of course led to me declaring myself to be the king of lizards, and thus I could do anything…” “Did you really think it was the end of the world?”  the grey giant leaned into the animated foals doll. “Well, no…” Ragdoll admitted, “but they did… also I had the weirdest dream…”