“DAD!” Brian bellowed, his voice splintering with his disbelief at seeing his father vanish.
It had been less than a second even, but he’d seen it. He was sure of it. A single, wavering sphere had twisted out, like the air over a fire, from the point where his father had bitten into the cake-pop and then consumed him, leaving an empty chair and a growing headache inside Brian’s skull at whatever supernatural event he’d just witnessed. What else could he call it?
‘Murder!’ Brian thought, leaping to his feet, ignoring the looks of the staff and con-goers around him as his seat rattled down to the linoleum floor behind him.
‘Thief!’ he thought, his mind leaping to the only conclusion he could think of, even as an icy chill pulled inward, deep inside his chest. An empty aching that somehow still writhed like a thing alive, begging to wring that same cold finality onto the world.
Brian grunted, and turned coolly on his heel, ignoring the fallen chair and strode swiftly towards the Dealers Room. He couldn’t run. Well, at 6’3’’ he could, and, if he had wished, he could have charged through the crowd. Battering them aside. Even without a particularly well-muscled body, he was still big. But that might have alerted The Dealer of some trouble coming. Or worse, have some misguided volunteer guard or officer of the law get in his way.
He wasn’t going to take that chance.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad back.’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
His heart crunched, lurching in his chest, as he began weaving through the crowds and to the doors of the dealer’s room, his hand moving down to reassure himself that the pocketknife he always kept in his pants was still where he’d left it. Once inside, he began to angle himself away from a small group of particularly well-dressed cosplayers who’d come as the bearers of the Triforce (Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf). And, grabbing at the hoop in his clown pants, he twisted it up to angle it closer to his body so he could squeeze between them and the dealer’s table selling Pokémon cards beside them.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad bac-’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
The Dealer was in the back center of the air-conditioned, warehouse sized space. He just needed to walk past the foam weapon dealer.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
Left, two rows after the corner dealer selling decades old DC comics (the only kind that were any good anymore).
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
On the row starting with the ugly, uncomfortable, plastic, tat-covered goggles the seller had the gall to call Steam Punk.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
And turn into the make-shift alleyway between the boardgame and dice selling dealers.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Ge-’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
Brian lurched to a stop, his hoop nudging into the table, causing the haphazard pieces of anime and cartoon inspired recreations and memorabilia to shudder, as he stared daggers at the back of that familiar turbaned head and baby-blue men’s gown.
The Dealer spun quickly on their heel. His warm, practiced smile already on their face before he turned, and flashed a dazzling, but not too dazzling lest they be considered little more than a Carnival Barker, smile framed by his well-groomed and oiled, black mustache and goatee.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Kill him if he doesn-.’
Brian’s vision swam. He eyed the little man behind the table. He hated this five foot nothing little bean-pole wretch with every fiber of his being, but … But. He couldn’t remember why.
“Oh ho, what a rare customer you are,” The Dealer crooned, his caramel brow beginning to glisten from a few, small, growing beads of manifested stress a human like Brian was incapable of discerning as anything more than mundane, human sweat. They had felt the folding and pinching of space-time fabric and its subsequent cinching as a small speck of it flew to another location. His product most definitely had been used. It was … possible that sOMEone like themselves might find some peculiar desire to walk as the sapients of this Vibration might. But for sOMEone like himSeLF not to notice such unIQueneSs had very particular probabilities orbiting around it. “Did you not enjoy your trip? Or, perhaps you wish to take another one?”
Brain stared. Face blank. Eyes wide.
‘Get to The Dealer!’
‘Kill him if -!’
He had never, in his whole life, wanted to harm someone the way he wanted to mangle this smiling creep. An atomized mish and mash of sorrow, anger, regret, and confusion twisted, mingled, and fractured into a number of sensations he simply didn’t have the words to describe, let alone enough senses to actually feel them as they began to slowly trickle out to his limbs and his mind.
It was like something was picking away at the very core of his being. He wanted the death of this man, and somewhere, deep down, knew it was the right thing. The just thing. But his mind reeled. He had no reason to be here.
Everything felt … oblique. Like his very thoughts were below him in stagnant, arctic waters, and were now refracted from the journey. Changed and, now, not entirely his own.
His placid face and eyes betrayed none of this. But a small screaming spark within him quaked as The Dealer began to lower his hands below the table to retrieve something.
“wHY!” the strangled word tore out of his mouth as he lunged for The Dealer. His black, gloved hands clamping down on The Dealer’s arms, pinning them to his sides and pulling him across the table, as his merchandise clattered and spun to the floor below them. Brian, took a step back to keep his footing, and, again, his mind reeled.
He was holding a man, five feet though he may be, but he felt as if he was holding little more than a warm bag of air. The heaviest thing about him felt like his clothes. Brain’s thinly-muscled arms should have been quaking as much as his tearing vision. But they remained as firm as though he were holding nothing more than a small comic book, albeit one that was beginning to grow hotter.
“You’re making a scene.” The Dealer whispered in a growl, his face, and the rest of their skin, reddening.
He, who had maintained tHeIr composure in the face of CON-goers who gave off odors so wretched that they invaded and befouled higher realms of consciousness. They, who had waded into this filthy, one-directional trickle of time-stream to curse so many of these lowly, drab, unworthy things to Interesting Times had been touched by something so base that it could not even control its emotions. DisgUsTing! Clearly, he had misjudged this creature’s origins. And if they hadn’t, it would only be a problem if this happened a third time.
“Here, take this,” they sneered, a third, red colored arm expanding swiftly from his left ear, an unwrapped cake-pop in hand, “And Be Quiet.” Punctuating the remark with another arm bulging out from below his third arm’s palm, slamming up, and forcing Brian’s slightly opened mouth to bite down on the proffered sweet.
Brian gulped, a rotten, sour taste exploding across his tongue, and watched, all too briefly, as the world around him shook and silently faded out.
‘Dad!’
Staring out the windowed wall of their quiet, shared office, two pale yellow unicorn ponies sat. One, within a professionally made, perfectly stuffed, plush, brown pleather chair. The other, who had lost the coin toss, in a hastily found, well-cushioned chair that, for all of its comfort, simply wasn’t capable of giving the same sitting experience as the former.
“Well, brother of mine,” said the one in the professional chair, breaking the satisfied silence between them with his slightly nasally and lilting, baritone voice, “today was an almost a perfect day, wouldn’t you say?”
“Almost perfect?” rang a slightly nasally tenor in question. “We repaired our brotherly friendship, became the owners of this casino since Gladmane managed to get himself run out of town, and we didn’t spend so much as a wooden bit to do it. And, all while being overseen by two of the most famous heroes of the modern era, Fluttershy and Applejack, so nopony can even think about starting any rumors that we did this via less than entirely noble means. How could you call this anything but a perfect day?”
“Ah, but don’t you see dear Flim,” his brother replied, voice dripping with desire and want for yet ever more, “that is but two things we’ve managed to accomplish this fine day: repair our familial bond, and gain control of a world class casino-resort. If we had but one more victory to claim, we would have a true Hat Trick on our hooves.”
Flim only chuckled. His brother was right. The only thing better than a large profit was an even larger profit. The smile Flim continued to wear, however, began to lessen as he turned his thoughts inward, thinking. Scheming on what more might be seized from this day. After all, if they couldn’t call what they were currently riding as A Roll, then that phrase had entirely lost all meaning. Not that it mattered. They could buy a new phrase with all of the bits they were currently making even as they continued to sit there in their new office suite and did nothing more than watch all of the ponies down below entertain themselves with the flashing rides, buffets, and all manner of games of varying degrees of skill and chance.
“Say, Flam,” Flim said, turning his head to the right to look his brother in the eye, “didn’t we encourage our valued customers to sit in an empty theatre and imagine what grand sights they could see since the regular performers left once they found out how Gladmane had so cruelly manipulated them?”
“Yes,” Flam hummed, just as aware of his brother that such a feat only counted as a hold over measure at best. No where near a true, victorious stream of bits.
“Well, what if we put out a suggestion box near the exit of the Pony Fantastique Theatre where, beside it, in small, golden letters read a sign saying something to the effect of ‘Share Your Most Wonderous Imaginative Performances For Everypony To Marvel At’.”
“Ah,” Flam replied, gently twirling the edge of his red, Hungarian mustache in hoof, the wheels in his head now turning in time with his brother, “get direct market data from the customer so we can give them a directed experience that will only see them coming back again and again. Why, if we kept such a sign up, we’d be at the veritable cutting edge of market trends my genius brother.”
“Well, genius does tend to run in the family after all, my dear brother,” Flim grinned back, even as the both of them rose from their chairs to find the needed materials.
Fussing over positioning of their sign, the silver letters, for they hadn’t been able to find any gold ones, gleaming brightly on the black backing of the signpost, Flim and Flam nearly jumped out of their blue and white stiped barbershop shirts as a maroon coated mare galloped, full tilt, out of the Pony Fantastique Theatre doors.
“-onster! Monster! Run for your lives!” she screamed in obvious terror.
The open floor of the resort was a loud place, stuffed, strategically, with all manner of ear catching plinks, beeps, and chings, so it was only everypony within a few dozen feet of her that were arrested suddenly from their fun. Looking quickly back where she had fled with various shades of growing fear and concern, they were met only with the quizzical glances of Flim and Flam, still with a hoof each on the recently placed sign.
Both, after a moment’s hesitation, moved from the sign and over towards the still swinging double doors of the theatre. But, no sooner had they reached them when both were flung wide as a small stampede of pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns barreled out of the doors. Getting smacked in the face was already a nasty surprise enough, but, being but a few inches from the door, they were given one more. With the doors flung wide, with each passing body, Flim and Flam were given an uninterrupted view of the crowded, entrance hallway. The noise that should have been booming from it, that should have been magnified, that should have been funneled right into their conical ears, was only popping into their eardrums once each individual pony passed the doors, and not a moment sooner.
Sentences only heard as they passed that invisible barrier.
“-ant!”
“-under and cirrus!”
“-lide! We’re flying out of here now!”
This and more came flooding out of the theatre, and it didn’t take more than a third of it to reach the rest of the customers before their herd mentality went off. Everypony ran. Exiting the room, leaving the building, finding a place to hide in hopes that whatever was the problem would overlook them, or a fretful combination of all three.
It was almost comical how normal things still sounded afterwards. The game machines, the indoor rollercoasters, the water-slides, and all their accompanying lights and sounds were all still working just as normal. There was just nopony there to use them. Nopony, except the two owners of the building and their stinging noses.
Brian wheezed.
Cracking open his eyes, he tried to crane his neck up to look at whoever was sitting on his chest, but winced at the beam of light that flooded into his eyes.
Heeding the protestations of his body, he slowly lowered his head back down to the ground.
Everything ached. His head, his back, arms, legs, and the extra weight on his chest was making it all the more unbearable.
“What do you want?” he managed to wheeze out. Or, at least he thought he did. Cracked though his throat felt, he couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears. What had that Con Dealer done to him, he wondered. And what of his father?
A sneer twisted its way onto his face at the thought, and, while he didn’t have the strength to toss whoever was on his chest, he could at least bear the light, and glare blindly at whatever was on top of him.
So, eyes watering, that’s precisely what he did. And, for seven seconds, he saw nothing but white. But, on the eighth, the white turned to blue. A large spot of sunny sky blue in a wall of black.
“What?” he hissed. Though, again, the ringing muted whatever sound might have reached his ears. Raising his head once more, his breath to seized in his throat. Looking down, there was no one on his chest. It was just his chest. His large, obese chest, and even that was dwarfed by a whale of a stomach that would have been pulling down over his crotch but for how he was twisted down and bent at the middle into the wooden floor beneath him.
A chill began to spread through his veins, dropping a degree with each imagined explanation as to why someone would kidnap him just to fatten them up like this. Whoever that dealer had hired to do this had even resized his costume and reapplied his makeup. And, with that thought adding itself to the pile, even with a body that felt like he’d managed to do a dozen back and belly flops from an Olympic sized diving platform all at once, he gritted his teeth as he stretched his arms out to pull himself up and, for the life of him, find an exit.
Gasping for air, the ringing in his ears was met with the added sound of blood pounding into them. Thoughts of running away faded to worries that he wouldn’t even be able to hobble away as Brian just managed to get himself into a winded seating position.
Movement on his right drew his attention.
Jerking his head towards it, Brian flinched at what he could only assume was an actual wave of rats. That they were flowing down a number of leveled slopes and out a square tunnel, and paled at the thought of what they might have done to him had he not sat up a minute sooner. It was all too dark to see anything besides the general movement in his shaft of light.
Adrenaline torrenting, Brian heaved the bouncing weight vest of his skin and the rest of his body up, nearly falling down at the radically shifting weight, and did his level best to turn on his heel and move in the opposite direction of whatever those vermin had been.
Flim and Flam stared at the empty stage.
Well, more empty. Even from outside in the main lobby, they could see the splintered remains of center stage where that giant onion, wearing a suit straight out of a Nightmare Night story, had clambered out of after having obviously fallen in through the ceiling given the shaft of sunlight pouring through it. That was going to be a costly repair, though, thankfully, without a need to worry about weather given their building’s position above the cloud line. Still, not nearly as costly as the lack of business a rampaging Son of Sasquash through their building would bring once word got out, to say nothing of what it was likely doing to everything in storage.
“Our holdings,” Flim whispered in horror.
“Our investment,” Flam panicked, setting both brothers to gallop, straight into the theatre.