//------------------------------// // Miserable misery // Story: Escalation of everything // by Elidjz //------------------------------// "Pain is temporary. Temporary does not equal short." Twilight and Luna ran while  misery followed them. While the creature was slow and moved with a heavy limp its size allowed it to keep pace with the ponies. It also was an amorphous mish-mash of dozens of bodies. The main head was pony like, except for the two dozen eyes, the wolf jaw and the second mouth that was situated on its left cheek. There were three other heads situated on other parts of the body. Two of them had asymmetrical horns on their back. Its body was covered in a dozen arms and half-as-many legs. It also possessed five thick long tails which it used for stability. The body itself was surprisingly lithe and very long. It was covered in patches of differently colored fur and scales. There were also spikes on multiple parts of the body. The ponies tried to fly out of the courtyard, but halfway in the air they were turned upside down and crashed down on the ground. The courtyard had changed while they were in the air. It had become bigger and multiple backwards and illogical buildings had appeared. The alicorns, knowing that they couldn't fly away, started using magic. Luna just fired magic bolts and even fireballs at the creature, each one that hit it led to an abnormally big smoke cloud and a few limbs flying away. Misery would just grab and reattach the missing limbs in seconds, so that did very little. Twilight tried a subtle approach. She created a shield around misery, but it simply smashed through it with ease. So she ripped its limbs off and threw them far away. Twilight tried not to look much, because the ripping of limbs caused lots of blood to spill, even though the other chimeras did not bleed at all. This also did not work as the limbs simply reappeared back onto the body. The shrinking spell bounced off, instead hitting a random vending machine. The freeze spell only froze a very tiny part of the body, not even slowing it down. She quickly abandoned any fire spell, due to the horrible smell of burnt flesh that instantly appeared. Misery proved too strong to be bound by quick spells and it moved too erratically for her to use the stronger spells, as they require longer casting times. This repeated itself for all her other spell attempts. So this just ended in a cat and mouse chase. The ponies used their superior number to attack from different directions and confuse it. This instantly resulted in Twilight getting hit by one of the many tails and sent flying in the air. She managed to regain her balance, but was then turned upside down again which caused her to crash. Just beside Cosmo. "Having fun?" He asked with a surprisingly serious tone. This got him a glare from the purple pony. "I will find out what you are!" She said through clenched teeth. "But first I have to defeat this abnormal and unscientific creature." She was about to fly back into the fray. "I'll answer whatever question you ask now." Cosmo said offhandedly. Twilight's eyes grew  twice their size. "What are you?!?!." She asked with extremely audible excitement. Luna was too busy fighting to notice that her companion was no there anymore. "You fiend shalt not prevail!" She shouted as she blasted Misery in the face. This dislodged it jaws, before one of its many arms put it back in place. It counterattacked by swinging its longest arm at Luna. She easily dodged the clumsy strike. And this repeated itself for a while. All of Luna's spell did very little or superficial damage to the quite horrific creature. Misery's attack were slow enough for Luna to dodge. But there were a lot, as the giant chimera frantically swung its many limbs around. And one struck true. Luna was thrown into a building made out of cards. One second later Luna leapt back out holding a heavy longsword in her front hooves. She swung it at the creature, cutting limbs off and covering herself in blood. She swung wildly, cutting more and more limbs. One of the swings hit it in the waist, cutting it in half. Luna took a breather, mildly tired. She looked at the longsword and felt a mild attachment towards it. She then felt a heavy slap against her face, as misery had put her body back together. Luna spat a tooth out, screamed in rage. "Thou will regret thas!" Before leaping at the creature with the longsword. The fighting continued for a while, Luna Powered by adrenalina and the alicorn's high tolerance for pain. Meanwhile Misery simply healed from every single wound dealt to it. "Why won't thee stay down!" "So what are you? You look like an ursa major? Or are you..." Twilight went on a tirade, asking more and more questions. She was so enthralled by her thoughts that she wasn't even bothered by the fact that Cosmo was chewing on some smelly, juicy meat. He was mildly amused by the pony's behavior, which is why he hadn't interrupted her. He hadn't even been able to answer one question. A slushy machine was smashed onto Misery's face. The creature simply licked her face clean. "mmmh, Tasty." It taunted. A barbecue was instantly smashed into its face. The fact that every building in the courtyard was a food stand, meant that there were a lot of food related objects to use as projectiles. The night pony used a dozen kitchen knives to pin one of the big chimeras arms to a wall. A wall made out of tomatoes, so it didn't pin it down for long, but gave her enough time to swing her longsword once again. Cutting three arms off, which again were put back together after mere seconds. "...from space? Or are you an interdimensional being warped by decades of travel through the fickle barriers of this universe?" Twilight kept on rambling, making up dozens of different scenarios, each more ludicrous than the previous one. This kept Cosmo entertained enough that he did not interrupt her. Luna uppercutted the creature sending its tinier head flying away. The creature reciprocated with her own uppercut, using four arms at the same time. This threw her backwards and broke all the fingers on Misery's four arms. While it tried to put its fingers back into place, Luna reappeared and smashed a chair in its bigger face. Luna then hit it with a dozen chairs that she had been holding in her magic. The fact that half of those chairs were made out of paper, hairband, actual hair and gum. They then both got into a fist and hoof fight. It was very one sided. "... if that were the case your blood would then constantly boil at a  temperature of 253 degrees celsius. But this would contradict..." Twilight had not stopped speaking, she was actually getting purpler due to lack of air intake. Cosmo just kept listening. Honestly he would have liked for some of the ponies theories to be true. But he knew that reality was sometimes weirder than fiction. "Why won't thee stop!" Luna shouted as she tried to strangle the creature using candy rope. This obviously proved very successful as Misery possessed multiple heads and, by definition, multiple throats. So it simply threw the pony on its back. Luna landed in a random pile of piles. This might have softened her landing, were it not for the fact that they were filled with stone feathers. She threw one of the pillows at its main head, resulting in it losing many of its teeth. And also jaw. Misery quickly grabbed its fallen pieces of the ground to put them back on. Luna uses this distraction to hit its chins with a bottle of wine. "But maybe you'r..." "Do you want me to answer or not?" Cosmo suddenly interrupted her, having gotten bored of her rambling. "Ah, yes-yes answer, questions... I'm listening." Twilight answered flustered. "So you want to know what I am?" She nodded excitedly. "The best description of what I am would be... Well, I'm basically a sentient blackhole." The purple ponies went wide open. She stared in shock at him. This was mildly amusing. Luna was thrown into one of the walls of the courtyard. Lucky for her said wall was made out paper. Regaining her bearings she saw both misery crawling towards her and noticed a strange blue tent beside her. Squinting she could so the shadow of something inside the tent. She lifts the drap up and sees a mysterious creature pulling multiple levers which were attached to a green glowing crystal. The creature stopped moving the lever to stare back at Luna. At the same time Misery stopped moving. Luna, instantly understanding what had happened, started fuming. She fired a bolt of magic at the machine. The crystal blew up. The monstrous misery disappeared, replaced by a strange machine made out of many long, rusted hydraulics arms. All of which were roughly attached to a misshapen mechanical body. Said mechanical abomination then fell limp. Luna turned her gaze back to the chimera operating the machine. The chimera had a green snake-like head with a red pony jaw. Short white fur all over the top and back of its head and four eyes. Its left leg belonged to a three toed lizard and the right one belonged to a bird. The left arm ended in a hoof and the right clearly belonged to a kangaroo. It had no tail. "Hello, I sure do love company." It said meekly. Luna lunged onto the creature to give it the whooping of a lifetime. The creature let a shrill scream out. "But that not possible, what about the size? Or gravity? Or-or" twilight stuttered. "This isn't actually my real body, this is actually a puppet controlled by my real body." The purple ponies' eyes grew even wider. "But the amount of magic this would take..." "It's not magic, it's sheer power and billions of years of experience." "Bi-bi-bi-bilio-bi-bi..." Twilight stuttered. And then fell unconscious. Cosmo simply stared in amusement.