//------------------------------// // chapter 36. WTF // Story: Becoming Fluttershy // by Hope //------------------------------// As we make our way out of the mall after checking the computer store, Pinkie seems determined to keep up conversation despite my recent bout of depression, or possibly because of it. “So I’m thinking of writing a song about this whole thing, but I can’t decide whether to call it Pony Earth or Becoming Ponies. What do you think?” She asks the group. “I like becoming ponies.” I say with a small smile. I am not paying attention, so I honestly have no idea what is happening as I am suddenly airborne, sucked through a tube of some sort, then deposited onto some sort of large metal platform in a box along with the rest of the ponies. Needless to say I am hyperventilating and very near to passing out. A strange and scrawny man with a spiky poof of brown hair leans in towards Julien and Linda, holding two rings. “Wait wait wait, I have the perfect thing!” He said in the most terrifyingly off pitch voice I had ever heard. He put the rings over their horns, negating a spell Julien had been in the middle of casting. “See? See? I even made them wedding rings!” The gangly man crowed. Julien seems much more level headed than me, somehow managing to continue the previous conversation. “Yeah, Becoming Ponies sounds better.” He says with a blank face before starting to struggle against the box he was now stuck in. “Wow, you’re stronger than I thought.” The man mutters as I get the familiar feeling of being pushed upwards, meaning we are flying or floating somehow. He then presses some kind of obnoxiously red button. Giant metal arms pop out of the metal floor we have landed on, grabbing a thrashing Julien and dumping him into a large hamster ball, which worries me as we are now floating in the sky, apparently. Though, still in the box, he can’t exactly roll it around much. “I’m sorry about the poor quality of the trap but the shops in this dimension are just not suited for proper evil. I mean I had to go to these RIDICULOUSLY expensive places just to get half the electronics I needed to build this hover platform. You have no idea--” The man starts rambling, before Linda has the perceptivity to speak up so I don’t have to keep thinking of him as “The scrawny creepy guy.” “Who are you?” She asks with a worried look towards Julien. “Oh right! Introductions, sorry. I am DOCTOR HEINZ DOOFENSHMIRTZ, soon to be RULER of the ENTIRE TRISTATE AREA!” Doof says triumphantly. “Um... excuse me.” I finally speak up, having relearned how to breathe, talk, and generally function. “Oh my gosh you’re so adorable!” He says before rubbing my chin with a finger. I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel amazing. “What do you want sweetie?” I really don’t want to die, so I decide to convince him to take this little... thing, elsewhere. “You are operating a flying vehicle in the landing path of an airport, per new regulations since 9/11, you may be expecting inbound fighter planes soon. Can we continue this on the ground so we don’t all get blown up?” I ask as politely as I can. Having a father who is an air traffic controller does wonders for your aeronautical knowledge. I seriously doubt Doof filed a flight schedule. “Wait, really? I thought they nixed that law!” He squawks while rubbing his oddly pointy chin. “Well, I guess that could work.... Oh look, an abandoned warehouse!” “For unidentified objects and commercial airplanes, the law no longer applies, but your... floaty thing is pretty conspicuous.” I explain, sad that I was no longer getting chin rubbings. “Right, I’m landing this thing on the roof then.” He says definitively, before moving the platform and bringing it to a rest on what I can only assume is a warehouse. “Thanks for that! Anywho, where was I....” “You were going to be untying us so we could have a civil discussion?” I ask hopefully. Hey, it worked once. “One, we’re not in knots. Two, we can have a civil conversation while trapped, this is Doofenshmirtz after all.” Pinkie says, as though that explained everything. “Oh, you’ve heard about me!” The villain says gleefully. Though at this point I have to wonder firstly if he didn’t just introduce himself, and secondly how he missed the insult implied. Pinkie continues unabated. “Yeah, so... what are you doing here anyway? And what’s that big cannony thing over there?” She tilts her head towards a previously unnoticed big cannony thingie. Doof laughs maniacally. Actually it’s more of a weak chuckle but I am sure that is what he is going for. “I’m glad you asked. BEHOLD, THE PONYTHROWINATOR!” Dramatic music starts to play from nearby speakers set into the metal floor. The purpose of the thing being entirely too obvious, I feel I have to point out how much I don’t like it. “This sounds like the worst of the ideas.” I say with a frown. Julien’s only reply is to struggle even harder, managing to fall over in his plastic sphere, still struggling against the confines of the box. His snarls of frustrations are muffled by his prison. Linda smiles. “I dunno, a pony launcher sounds kinda cute.” Doof claps his hands together excitedly. “EXACTLY! You see, back in my home town of Gimmelshtump there was a time where I was forced to wear dresses.” At this point he seems to get a little embarrassed, rubbing the back of his neck before continuing his story. “See, my mother had been expecting a daughter and we got Roger instead and cloth was hard to come by--anyway, the point was that all the boys in town laughed and pointed at me,” he says plaintively. As he is talking, I notice I have quite a bit of wiggle room, as I twist and turn inside the box. Combined with my sudden urge to give the sad man a hug, I manage to squeeze out of the top, before hopping over to wrap my forelegs around him, pinning his arms to his side. “I’m sorry.” “Aw, thanks!” he says genuinely, hugging me back. “I’m sure my daughter would like you... well I think she would anyway, I guess. Um, would you mind getting back in your trap so I can complete the backstory though?” “You can complete your backstory, but as long as I am hugging you, you can’t launch anypony. By the way, Pinkie, he apparently designed these traps with an earth pony as the base model, you were right about the ribs.” I say with a smile, knowing that she won’t stop talking about it anyway, I might as well add some credence to the idea. “WOOO!” “...well alright, but it is a major breach of tradition.” He releases his hug while I keep holding onto him. “See, normally it’s backstory, then Perry the Platypus escapes and foils my evil scheme, but since you’re not Perry I guess it’s alright. Now... where was I?” Linda helpfully reminds him; “Wearing dresses.” “Right! So anyway, the boys pointing and laughing was bad enough, but then they started throwing stereotypically feminine articles at me! Makeup! Cleavers! And combs too!” From inside of hamster ball, Julien shouts in order to be heard through the thick plastic; “One of these things, is not like the others!” “Hey, combs are feminine! But the worst of all were these little plastic ponies that some of the kids stole from their little sisters. I got one in my eye once, not fun. I mean I could do something with makeup and combs and cleavers but the ponies were just humiliating! Um... no offense.” Doof complains, apologizing to me and looking down since I am roughly level with his shoulders. “None taken,” I said with a small smile. “Hey Pinkie, do you have a cell phone I could borrow?” I ask, in hopes that she would suddenly pop out of the box to fetch one or something. With evasive eyes she made her face scrunch up reminiscent of Liarjack. “No, nope, I don’t keep a cell phone in my breast pocket, no--oh, wait, you were trying to use that line to exploit my cartoon abilities, weren’t you.” She said with a frown. I nodded sadly. “Hey, are you even paying attention? I haven’t explained my Ponythrowinator yet! I put a lot of work into--” Doof starts. Sadly Julien’s patience is running thin with the cartoon antics. “IT THROWS PONIES! END OF STORY!” He shouts. “...SOME people don’t appreciate true evil.” Doof said grumpily as I shifted to hold onto him. “Yeah that was the idea.” I say to Pinkie. “What if you try to summon the party cannon?” Pinkie chuckles. “Trust me, Doof is harmless.” Doof doesn’t take this well, turning to face her with a grimace. “EXCUSE ME?” “Dude, you were defeated by a potted plant. Not even a mobile Little Shop Of Horrors plant. A little plant, with three leaves, that did nothing but obey the laws of physics.” Pinkie points out, raising an eyebrow. “Hey, that was only one time! And it was wearing a hat!” Doof complains. Pinkie then completely misses the idea of this whole thing by conceding to him. “....point.” I sigh and look up to him. “If I keep hugging you, will you let my friends go?” “Um... see, I can’t use the Ponythrowinator without actual ponies. I mean I could just make plastic ponies but the bigger they are the less feminine they are, and plushies just don’t leave enough of an impact.” “I think I am dying from all the stupid over here. Someone put me out of my misery.” Julien growls from his hamster ball. Linda looks dazed. “I wanna know who drugged my coffee this morning. Seriously.” “Okay, change of tactics. If you let my friends go, I’ll stop hugging you.” I say as I start to squeeze him tighter. “OW! Hey what are you--Oh. Ooooooh, so you’re threatening me? Ha! Like I care, I’m evil.” Doof says snootily. I smile innocently. “Even evil people pass out when enough blood is cut off from circulation.” “Oh, right, that thing. Well you forget one thing.” He somehow manages to slip out of my forelegs and hop over to the cannon thing, I can honestly say I don’t know what went wrong. “YOU ARE NOT WEARING A HAT!” “The one time ever that wearing a hat would have saved the world, Erica, and you miss it. Bravo.” Julien says with a smirk as he rocks back and forth in his bubble. Pinkie swoons dramatically from inside her box (still not sure how that works) “Oh if only somebody thought to bring a spare fedora!” Adam Savage is helpful enough to hold out a fedora towards me. “Here you go.” Lucky for me, Pinkie decides to ask the obvious question before I could. “...where the hay did YOU come from?” Adam gestures to a beret wearing pony with far too many muscles and tiny wings. “Jamie and I were headed for New York when we caught sight of you flying overhead.” At this point I can hear the dull thuds of Julien banging his head against the hamster ball repeatedly. “Where did I go wrong? What did I do to deserve this?” He groans. “Well, your clear lack of appreciation for insanity is probably part of the problem.” Pinkie says with a grin. Adam gently put the Fedora on my head. Though I have to lay my ears back it makes me feel.... empowered. With a leap I attach myself to Doof, pinning his arms to his sides. Doof flails wildly in an attempt to throw me off. “AAAAAA! I AM BEING DEFEATED IN A STRANGELY ADORABLE MANNER!” Linda looks over to Julien. “No seriously. Who drugged my coffee? Cause I’m seeing a mad scientist, Adam Savage, and Fluttershy.” I start scooting up Doof, using my wings for balance until I can wrap my forelegs around his neck in a chokehold. The cartoon scientist seems fairly experienced in close quarters combat, as he manages to pull my foreleg away from his throat far enough as not to be deprived of oxygen. To counter this, I start flapping my wings as hard as I can, putting my weight against my legs as I lift him slightly off the metal deck. “ERK!” Doof gags before tapping his ever present remote. Those giant robotic arms spring from the platform to try and grab at me, forcing me to fly higher. I really don’t want to hurt Doof, regardless of what he has done. “Call off the robot arms or I drop you!” I shout, though I am sure he can barely hear me over my wings, the robot arms, and the fact that my voice is barely louder than a whisper. “I’ve fallen from higher heights!” He says, raspily through the choke hold. “Um, guys...?” Pinkie says. Doof cackles. “Not even a pony in a fedora can stop my evil scheme!” “You may want to--” Pinkie tries to interject. Doof taps another remote and the boxes grow mechanical legs to start walking towards the ponythrowinator. “WAIT!” I land and step away from the villain. “I’ve been going about this all wrong. Pinks, how is Doof normally beaten?” Pinkie looks over towards the cannon. “Either with a self destruct button or just disassembling his latest Inator, which by the way the mythbusters are already doing.” Doof takes one look at Adam Savage, elbow deep in the machine. “Wait what? Hey, get away from there!” I manage to shoot out a leg to trip Doof before he can get far, and then I do the only thing I can think of to keep him there, which is sit on him. “You should calm down. We could all go to Dennys or something.” I propose, hoping idly that Doof will just relax and we can all sit down to talk it over. “You know, aside from me being in a box. Hey look, I’m a blind bag!” Pinkie giggles. For a moment I wonder if she is referring to the common theme of remolded, color swapped ponies and how it reflects on our imitative nature of ourselves, but I am pretty sure she just found it amusing to be boxed up. “You know what, screw it. Julien, you want to go on a date?” Linda asks the hamster-ball pony as he struggles against his bindings, causing the ball to rock back and forth gently on the metal surface. “Yes, but not the time, seeing as how I am trapped in a giant hamster ball.” he finally replies. Pinkie grins. “You two are totally going to get married again.” At this point, Doof remembers he is a villain again and has those danged metal arms grab me so he can get up. He stands up and I can practically see him stomping his feet in frustration. “Well no matter! I still have the ponies! I could, I don’t know, just drop them on people!” “Yeah!” I chime in. “Drop me on the hamster ball!” “Wait, is this the part where you try to use reverse psychology on me to get me to do what you want? I never really liked that part, it just seems so... ugh.” He groans, looking to me with disappointment. “Well.... yes.” I admit sadly. “That is this part. But if you don’t play along, I could always use the Glare. I really would prefer not to.” “Wait. You’re challenging ME to an evil glare-off?” He says with a happy grin. I shrug despite the metal arms holding me tight. “Mine isn’t evil. But sure.” “KILL THIS WHOLE SITUATION WITH FIRE!” Julien screams through the plastic bubble. “Calm down, it’s just two saturday cartoons and the mythbusters having a crossover.” Pinkie says, as though this is all a normal day for her. Then again... Maybe it is now. "Okay, so any rules to our glare-off? Because I out-glared a cockatrice, I wouldn't want to hurt you." I say nervously. Doof just turns to face me, pointing out his eyebrows as the metal arms let me go, so I can hover in place at his eye level. "Well, usually it's whoever looks away first. And you may have bigger eyes but I have these humongous eyebrows, so--" Pinkie interrupts with a question I really should have thought of earlier, what with my non aggressive problem solving approach. I suppose I am just having an off day. "Hey, out of curiosity how did you even get to this dimension?" "Some... strange snakey thing brought me here and told me to take care of some ponies." He replies. "...Discord does not take us seriously, does he." Pinkie says with a disappointed expression. "You are Pinkie pie. I doubt he takes anything you do seriously. So.... Go." I say as I turn to start glaring at Doof, a small bird behind him passing out and landing gently on the platform with a poof of dust and a squeak. I start hearing ominous chanting in the background as he stares back. I can tell the others are talking, saying something. I have trouble convincing myself to pay attention as my eyes and his lock onto each other and the air between us seems to be filled with a haze. I hear a popping sound followed by my vision turning a nice pink color as the chanting fills my ears and the world around seems to grow less and less important, the Glare becoming all of my focus as he raises his eyebrow in a smirk.. I hear Julien say something and a moment later the eyes in front of me tint slightly red over the pink, Pinkie’s voice replying to something offscreen. Is this not how we see all of our lives, as pictures on a screen that we cannot see past? The actors off the pane never to be discovered, a DVD without director’s commentary. Maybe that is why I was not so surprised by being analogous to a cartoon character of sorts, all of life is a show put on for the actors themselves, with roles too well practiced to break away from. After all, is Erica not a character as well? A construct of auditions to parents and scenes played out to friends on the dead of night, character cues given by regret and reward? A high pitched explosion shakes me out of my reverie, as an even higher whine fills the air. I keep my glare locked onto his eyes up until he is yanked away by the sudden vacuum being created by his machine. For a brief moment I see relief in his expression. A moment of clarity comes to me, Doofenshmirtz wouldn’t know what to do if he ever won. He may curse his fate and grumble about his past, but if he wasn’t defeated? If he was given everything he wanted? He wouldn’t know what to do anymore. Then he is gone, and his voice in the air cries out a curse to me, but it almost seems jubilant to me. "Curse you, Fluttershy the Pooooooony!" he shouts as he fades into a speck in the distance. "....I think you won." Pinkie says with a chuckle. "Oh....” I almost want to apologize for a moment, this was the hollowest sort of victory, in which the villain was taught nothing, and the cycle would forever continue, but he seemed happy in his life, for all his gripes. “Yay!" I finally say, smiling with a squeak that I think is called a squee. "This is all just... Just so wrong." Julien mumbles. Pinkie rolls her eyes. "What, were you expecting some epic boss battle or something?" As if responding to Pinkie’s command, the metal platform shifts, rolling us all onto the roof of the building before morphing into a giant robot man who is oddly dressed as an office worker. The robot then looks around, confused, before asking us; "Excuse me, but have any of you seen my father?" "Um...." Pinkie starts, wide eyed. Linda just says "Wut." Julien, however, seems to be quite upset over this latest development, and put his new unicorn powers to use. "NO! None of that! Shame on you!" He growls, casting a spell that causes the robot to vanish in a rose colored flash of light. "No more of that stuff. Big spells are coming out." "Poor robot man..." I mumble sadly. "....he ran on squirrel power, you know." Pinkie says, glaring at Julien. "Sorry, what?" Linda asked, confused. "There was a squirrel in his chest that ran in a little hamster wheel and--" Pinkie explained. Julien cut him off with the wave of a hoof. "He's fine, I sent him to Nevada. Noone cares about Nevada." He started to break apart the box holding Linda. As they take care of that, I scoot up to Adam Savage, taking advantage of the moment of confusion. "So... So do you have plans for the evening?" Adam Savage takes it well, giving me a friendly smile. "Well my wife and kids wanted me to take them to the local amusement park." "I personally just want to spend time relaxing in the hotel with my own wife.” Jamie, a.k.a. Roid Rage, says. "Erishy, weren't you just complaining about wanting to get out of the public eye?" Linda reminds me helpfully. "I think we should all postpone whatever until we talk with the police. I'm still a blind bag, by the way.” Pinkie says with that same old ‘auntie pinkie knows best’ tone. Honestly I think she just keeps me in check so I don’t go off the deep end someday and vice-versa. "but... But Adam Savage!" I argue concisely and reasonably. As sirens sound in the distance, Julien begins ripping Pinkie out of her packaging. "I have to ask, why no party cannon?" Pinkie stretches for a moment, after having been stuck in the box for a while. "I... hold on. I..." After debating it mentally, she finally says “You know what I'll let Pinkie explain it." Which catches me off guard again because I've been thinking of him AS Pinkie this whole time, which is terrible. I realize he has always been careful to use the right name for everypony else, making me feel like an even worse friend. Does he even think of me as a friend? I mean, I know that Pinkie and I are friends, without a doubt, but Reid could hate me for all I know! But he wouldn't, he couldn't. Not if he is the human version of Pinkie, he would tell me if I had done something wrong... “....way that way these ways and those ways bust not this way, plus in order to get my party cannon completely correct I'd have to sync to the sympathetic party matrix located in the main barrel but because Reid such a scardey pants I don't have full walkaround in my wronkers and... Right, so basically dimensional limitations based on psionic potential... Hey! Don't interrupt me with my own mouth!” Pinkie had devolved into yelling at herself... or Reid was yelling at Pinkie. I understood the gist of it though, a pegasus can’t fly with it’s wings strapped down, despite their innate magic, so it makes sense her own capabilities would be limited when tied up in a box with pants on. "Look, you were confusing Erishy, I summed up... But that only explains some of the reasons! What about the... Do you really think they need to know about that? The only reason I know is because you were think... Well SOMEBODY might need to use the cannon sometime and...” Linda finally cut them off. "Will you two please stop bickering?! This is confusing enough as is!" I smile a little. At least Reid won’t know I have been thinking of him as Pinkie, I will be so upset if he does, he would probably hate me. "I found that a lot funnier than I should have. It's okay though, I understand.." I say. "cops are here.” Julien says, looking over the edge of the roof. “This is what, our third police encounter in our adventure?" "yeah." I confirm, nodding. Luckily they had all been good encounters, at least the parts with the police. "Second for us." Lida says Adam Savage raises a hand. "Fifth for us." "....Fifth? Really?" Pinkie, I mean Reid asks incredulously. “You really don't want to know." Jamie says with a glum look. Linda kicks around some small rocks and takes a few deep breaths. "I'm sorry, just to clarify: Fluttershy defeated a mad scientist by staring at him so hard his inventions rebelled against him?" "Invention, singular." Pinkie points out, shaking her head. Linda sighs. "I'm only going to ask this one last time: Who in the name of God drugged my coffee?" “Wasn’t me, but I understand the feeling.” I say with a sad smile, shrugging.