//------------------------------// // Train through Terror // Story: The Arising Cartoon Pony // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Derpy really wanted to go home; to bad for her that getting out of the video game dimensions requires an expert dimensional jumper and someone who’s been to Equestria already. So this means unless we could find Kazooie or at least her file two, Derpy wasn’t going anywhere and was stuck with us. Hey at least we knew someone who knew where her home dimension was. Unfortunately we were also stuck with a walking pile of liquid chaos energy that kept poking the pegasus and was asking me about her chaos energy since he was very hard to talk to and I was the only one that could translate gibberish about as well as Kazooie could. “Well gee Ms. Hooves, Chaos here says that you have a bit of chaotic energy in you… you wouldn’t happen to be born from it would you? It kind of made him sleep chase you all the way here.” What can I say, I was curious. I knew very well that Screwball was born of a large amount of chaos energy and hashed together random earth pony genetics. It’s probably why Screwball had the spiral pupils instead of normal pony eyes, well not that Derpy’s eyes were normal either they were kind of walled. “Oh that must be from my grandmothers curse, you see my grandma is named Rusty Hooves and she had a curse placed on her by her grandmother. She has the ability to rust any metal she touches; it’s kind of funny because she’s a metallurgist by trade and I wish Rainbow would stop telling scary campfire stories about her. The curse she gave me the ‘Living in interesting times’ curse, it makes a lot of strange things happen to me and also made my eyes kind of wonky.” Ms. Hooves was a friendly sort; however she wouldn’t stop glancing at Goombella who tended to shy away from her and towards Screwball. The answer begged another question which Chaos directed to Banjo. “Chaos here says he can remove the curse.” Banjo waited for a response from the grey coated mare, after a moment of what might have passed for a thoughtful look she reached behind her back with a hoof and pulled out a muffin with a cheesy grin and bit into it. After waiting a few more moments for her to finish her muffin they all leaned forward waiting for her response. “Are you seriously kidding me? I’m not giving up my curse, it’s awesome! Also it’s a Hooves family tradition to do strange things, like my cousin Hugh Jelly Hooves who lives in a giant jar of jam. Just don’t ever use his homes bathroom or even ask to, it’s really quite horrifying.” She threw her hooves in the air and flared out her wings to illustrate how awesome her ‘interesting times’ curse really was, before moving on to more simpler topic of her cousin with a sense of dread hanging about her. After a moment she paused raising a hoof to her chin before addressing Banjo. “How often do I get to meet a talking honey bear? Fluttershy is never going to believe me the next time I see her. I think I’m her only other friend then those usual five she hangs out with.” Everyone had fallen on their butts at Derpy’s declaration of being cursed by her grandmother to be awesome, afterwards they just got back to their feet and continued to listen to the out of depths stranger. Banjo coughed gaining everyone’s attention when she was finished jabbering on. “Well if we’re all quite done playing around in Twinkle Park… I guess it’s time for Screwball and Ms. Hooves to come along I’ve got to get Screwball to cartoon training that Kazooie set up.” I was already late picking up Screwball and getting out of this quill filled realm. Traveling arrangements between game worlds isn’t exactly easy. I was about to walk off with Screwball and Ms. Hooves when I was halted by a slow sloshing noise and a slight grumbling from the brown Goombella. Speaking of which, wasn’t she supposed to be pink? Must have had changed her colors for some reason, not really hard to do that these days just like tattoo’s which aren’t at all permanent on a video game character unlike it is on everything else. “Well I was only supposed to pick up my sisters adopted pony. I wasn’t exactly expecting extra company, so this is a pony only pick up. So sorry Goombella, but you can’t come along.” I kind of felt bad for putting a sad frown on that goomba’s face; she was a partner character and tended to get lonely without someone to pal around with. I should know Kazooie gets intensely lonely without me to bounce her jerk behavior off of. “Say what university are you working at right now?” After a few moments I managed to get Goombella to cheer up, at least we’ll be in contact when she gets around to talking to my other sister Tooty. Goombella was in this world studying the Chao and how each of the power cores and animals from the enemies here react to them. Goombella smiled and ran up to Screwball; she pulled out a bag then somehow managed to hand over a badge by placing it into her hoof with a note before running off. Screwball unfolded the note and silently read it, while Banjo stood waiting with the winged pony. “Goombella has left your party, unwillingly I might add as I really haven’t talked to many cartoon characters before and you probably just weren’t going my way anyway. It was nice meeting you and you have quite the hammer throw going for you even if it was a baseball bat. Use this badge in good health; you probably won’t need to worry about badge points since you’re a cartoon character and it reminded me of your eyes. Here’s what it basically does. See you later, your friend Goombella.” A quick once over, Screwball looked at the eight pointed star badge that was red with a white spiral. Video game items and vehicles worked differently from abilities, they don’t backfire and always work the way they’re expected to. Whether or not this means an item is very useful must come up quite often, like that health restoring mushroom Screwball still had under her hat. She swiftly attached the badge to the inside of her flying propeller hat and then will probably just as quickly forget it. That was not likely since she had made a friend who gave it to her to remember them by. Screwball turned to Banjo and said that she was finally ready to go, stuffing the note into her hat space. “Well okay guys let’s go.” The three of us started walking towards the entrance of Twinkle Park and suddenly we heard a slow methodical sloshing sound following us. We turned around and saw Chaos still following us, humorously enough he shaped himself into a pony. He said something to me since I could obviously understand the gibberish coming from what amounted to Chaos’s nonexistent vocal chords. Screwball could only understand him when they were touching; well there was the fact that his eyes were very expressive. He really looked like he wanted to come with us. Chaos’s head was still the same if with the additional length to give him a pony style muzzle and his tail was actually one of his three clawed arms, plus he was still all blue and his eyes were still solid green. Every now and then you could see parts of his nervous system and brain appearing in his head. He was still the same creepy sad background villain creature that had a horrendous amount of power for his limited health capacity in set combat conditions. “Well I guess I did say I was picking up ponies… ” I turned around and sighed slightly, who knows what kind of mischief Chaos could get up to following me around. In any case we exited Twinkle Park and made way for dimensional travel point in Station Square. It was the local train station and we were setting off for The Lot, a common gathering place for cartoon related video game characters. After we boarded the train I pulled out my personal plot device and wrote a text message to Kazooie telling her I was on my way to The Lot to meet her contacts that would show up there. “Next game stops will be at Half Life Two City Thirteen, the general Resident Evil realms, Metro 2033 and The Lot.” The announcer for railway destinations said. Those places were nice this time of year, especially if you had an infinite ammo code on hand and a love of shotgun negotiations. “You might want to get some sleep Screwy, we’ve got some time before we arrive there.” I saw Screwball yawn and complain that she wasn’t tired; well she had to be after expending her energy helping me fight Chaos. I kind of wish I had the backpack so I could get her a blanket or at least let her use it as a knapsack. Instead I just gave her my thigh and she snuggled up to me, gosh she was so darn cute. Was it any wonder she won the child loving heart of my dreaded sister? Well Kazooie wasn’t exactly the most dreaded character in the video game realms. She was the most dreaded partner character for her incredible battle versatility and cunning, not to mention her impossibly quick matchmaking skills but that was a thing common with breeding seagulls. I still wondered if Kazooie would ever find someone like me that could get her to settle down a bit. She’s way to afraid of turning into her Nuts and Bolts version to even consider quitting the adventure business. That reminded me, wasn’t her birthday coming up soon? She was born in Banjo-Kazooie and that brought back memories. I miss the guys from Diddy Kong Racing… even Wizpig. I still talk to Taj the elephant every once in a while. To think Timber has moved on and become Trophy Thomas… I miss the old days; heard Tip Tup Turtle is having problems finding work. Still though, what do you get for a character that’s always out exploring and getting stuff on adventures? “Um… Mr. Banjo, Where are we?” It was about this time that I noticed that I had an audience of two still awake pony beings… well at least one was a pony, the other was doing a good mimicry of transformational magic that I usually end up under. I guess Chaos was just as intrigued as he looked out the window, I guess he never traveled far from his home realm. I just sat there gently petting Screwball’s fluffy curly mane while trying to think of what to tell Ms. Hooves. “Well Ms. Hooves we’re on a dimensional train bound for Half Life Two and then several others game realms before we get to our destination. We’re in the space between realms and we can travel between our worlds in multiple ways, this one is both convenient and inconvenient at times.” After a few moments of Derpy digesting what I said, she smiled. I think she may have traveled through time and space before so she must be used to this kind of thing. Within a few moments the entire train car became cold and a freaky tall pale man in a business suit opened the door to the train car and walked in. I looked at him and recognized who he was. “Excuse me… but… is Mr. Freeman in here?” He had a cold sounding business style voice and those who see him tended to get freaked out for varying reasons. Anyone who came near him felt weird around the G-Man, except for a being of equal or greater power. I, Kazooie and quite a lot of video game characters knew what the G stood for and we didn’t talk about it. “Nope, try the next train car.” I really didn’t want to deal with G-Man right now; he had this annoying habit of butting into other people’s business randomly. Plus he was giving Screwball nightmares by the way she was shuddering up against me for warmth. “Thank you… I will.” With a flicker he was gone and the door was shut like he had never been there in the first place. “Um… what was… no… I think I’ve seen the Doctor deal with enough of those types to know what he was. It’s one of those don’t ask about it guys isn’t it?” Well color me surprised that Derpy figured it out so fast, it was usually a game of twenty questions until you figured it was better to never ask in the first place. Chaos however just didn’t seem fazed at all by the G-Man’s appearance or sudden lack of being there; he likely already knew what G-Man was and would likely make sure G-Man didn’t bother us. “Yeah, it was one of those guys. Say Chaos, can you please wake me up when we get to our destination? I’m going to get some sleep as well. Just remember that our stop is The Lot.” The only answer I received was a nod, good enough for me. Now to tilt my head back and snoring mode activate, sleeping came easily to me like always. I was soon dully dreaming of my comfy chair back home… and a giant female humanoid bee cuddling me. This left the other cartoon pony and a being of chaos liquid to converse. “So, do you like muffins? I think I still have some from my special air pocket, I wouldn’t mind giving one to you.” Derpy was always one to make friends with new strange amorphous liquid chaos energy beings that could take on pony shapes. She had always had this strange air pocket behind her back where she kept her muffins and they stayed fresh from when they are placed there, she almost always had a fresh warm muffin on hoof. In truth it was a classic cartoon ability of having a spatial pocket behind her back. After a moment Chaos said something to the affect that even if he did answer, she wouldn’t be able to understand him anyway. It was just a bunch of sloshing, squishing noises and random gibberish vocalizations from the mare’s perspective. “That’s why I asked you a yes or no question silly, of course I can’t understand anything your saying so I’m assuming you said something to the effect that I wouldn’t be able to understand you.” Derpy giggled as she saw the surprise on Chaos’s face, he was a silly and friendly super powerful being of destruction. After a moment of thought, Chaos just decided to look confused and give a shrug to Derpy. To be honest he’d never had a muffin before and he knew Derpy Hooves name so she wasn’t a stranger offering food and she didn’t have the spirit of hatred or anger like the fat man. When he was young and not an immortal chaos being that can disrupt the balance of things easily, almost all he ever had to eat was fruit not for his mother’s lack of trying to get him to eat anything else other then the obvious Chao chow fruit. “You’ve never had a muffin!” Derpy shrieked both her eyes were focused on looking at him in protest that he had to be joking. No one could go through life without eating at least one and if they were allergic to certain things then a hypoallergenic muffin at least. It was sad to never see a happy smile on someone’s face after a good muffin was taken in. Chaos could swear he hadn’t said anything to that effect to Derpy, but he cringed nonetheless at her shriek of disbelief. Banjo only groaned slightly before continuing to cuddle Screwball who had snuggled her way into his lap like a kitten upon the not so quiet scream. Derpy pulled a muffin from behind her back and told Chaos to take a small bite to start off and to actually enjoy the muffin. She wasn’t giving him another one any time soon as she already had so few left for herself. As part of her ‘interesting times’ curse, if she wasn’t kept relatively happy and full of muffins things tended to get set on fire quite fast. A few slow bites into the muffin, the bits just floated into his body and dissolved slowly. After a moment he shoved the entire muffin into what passes for his mouth and his eyes smiled and soon drops of liquid chaos started to fall from his eyes, they eventually rolled right back into him anyway. Derpy just got him hooked on her favorite form of drug. The stop at Half Life Two went relatively well, except for the head crab that tried to take off Derpy’s head. The train security; a man named Marco Rossi, handled that well enough with a perfectly placed pistol shot and then a knife slash after getting close up to it to make sure it stayed dead. One man in a jumpsuit wearing glasses got off the train complaining about the lack of crowbars and then the train continued on its way. On the way to the next stop Derpy would regale Chaos with tales of Equestria, ones she was pretty sure Screwball lived as well. The stories seemed to enthrall Chaos almost as much as the muffin did, he gurgled happily at Derpy keeping him company. Eventually they both fell asleep too. With a sudden jerk of the train stopping again an hour later, Chaos was instantly awake when he noticed the sound effect of Marco’s pistol going off and looked towards the door to see him firing rapidly and wildly. Sloshing over he looked out and saw a hoard of zombies surrounding three people backing their way towards the train. “Jill, Barry, get on that train now!” Leon Kennedy was not having a good day as he quickly stabbed a knife through the skull of a zombie, quickly pulling his knife from its skull he turn around and ran for the train with Marco giving him covering fire. “Where you folks heading? Hopefully not to Metro 2033, it’s been iffy this time of year and the train pilot really doesn’t even want to stop there.” Marco idly asked. “Please, anywhere is better than our apocalyptic world, even Dead Rising would be better than this. At least that world is fun when you can get a mega buster. Besides we’re almost out of ammo and I really need a typewriter right about now.” Jill really disliked her crap sack world; at least she didn’t have to live there. After watching the scene calmly Chaos just shrugged and went back to sleep, he laid his head on Derpy’s back as the doors closed. At the next stop things just got weird, everyone woke up when the entire train shuddered including me and as a bear I wasn’t happy to have my nap cut short as I caught the short end of an anouncement. “Metro 2033… excuse the enemies trying to board us, our train security should handle it. If not prepare your combat abilities for mutants if you’re used to fighting them.” The three passenger humans in our train car groaned, they pulled out their pistols and inserted fully loaded clips into them. “We apologize for any inconvenience.” “I swear these cheap trains shouldn’t really pass through so many dangerous dimensions.” I readied my paws to start swinging, Chaos started growing spikes all over his body in a way that was reminiscent of Alex Mercer or another backlight virus hero, the resident humans were all aiming the guns at the doors and soon they slid open to reveal a man in a very strange suit and a lot of dead mutants behind him. He silently boarded the train without question as we all stared at him. “That’s more badass then a Jill sandwich.” Barry said before he was knocked out by a solid blow across the face by the so named Jill Valentine. After a few moments he got up and apologized to Jill. “Next stop The Lot.” The train announcer paused and after a moment he said something that suddenly caused just about everybody still on the train to freak out. “Oh and there’s a Licker tearing ass to your car of the train that has gone unnoticed until now Marco, could someone please go take care of that? Tarma is kind of having problems with it.” Screwball looked to me and asked me the question, what in the world was a Licker and why in the world did she get this sense of dread when it was mentioned? Well I would have answered… but the Licker broke down the door to our train car sending Marco’s partner Tarma Roving flying past us. It really shouldn’t have been surprised to find itself suddenly under a heavy barrage of bullets, the Resident Evil guys eventually had to stop firing to reload and so did the man named Artyom. Marco was a game character that could fire endlessly; he even threw a grenade to knock the Licker back. Both the ponies had taken comfort in each other and were shuddering as far away from that thing trying to claw its way back into the train car as they could. Banjo was standing in front of them protectively with his paws crossed over his chest. “That’s scarier than some of the things even I’ve seen, but I’ve seen worse.” Screwball scrutinized Derpy after that comment. Way scarier than a changeling to be sure, but where has Derpy been to think she’s seen scarier than that monstrosity with a visible brain? Screwball asked as much while I just sat there watching the creature suffer under a large amount of gun fire from two army killing experts from Peregrine Falcon squad, the Resident Evil guys and a Russian accented man. “Well this isn’t the first time I got stuck outside of Equestria, but it is certainly the first time I’ve been to the world of video games. So is this your first time outside Equestria?” Derpy blankly watched the creature give off its death cry and soon it had the humans run up to it to stomp on and kick it to make sure it staid dead. Lickers certainly could take a beating, far more then the Cybermen or the Daleks ever could. Well yeah it was Screwball’s first time; at least she didn’t have to go through all this alone and had another pony to confide in. “Well then let me tell you about these things called weeping angels… you blink and you’ll miss them possibly killing you or sending you into the past to be your own grandmother…. long story, but let me tell you about it.” The human type game characters sat down to listen to a good horror tale, even that guy that just introduced himself as Artyom to his gun wielding survival horror compatriots. By the time we arrived Marco had already figured out how to dispose of the dead Licker's body. We, that would be me, Screwball, Derpy and Chaos, simply got off without much fanfare bidding goodbye to the other characters and walked up to The Lot and saw plenty of colorful characters running around. Screwball turned to me as me asking if this is where she would learn about being a cartoon character. “Welcome to…” I started, but then I was interrupted by three characters who were the heroes of this realm. Apparently they were more present in their own realm then other video game heroes usually are. Animaniac’s main video game realms innate ability: Cartoon dash attack capability. Platforming physics applied. “Hold it, that’s our cue to butt in on your business, welcome to The Lot visitors. Hello there, I’m Yakko and this is Wakko and…” As he said this Yakko was joined by his brother Wakko in declaring who they were together. “We’re the Warner brothers!” They proclaimed proudly before Yakko pointed to the third strange character in their group. “And the Warner sister Dot… technically my full name is Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca the Third Warner. I prefer Dot, call me Dotty and you’ll lose a life so fast you’ll be asking the reaper how you died in the first place and he’s a good friend of ours. Also I’m so adorably cute aren’t I?” She struck pose with the back of her gloved hands underneath her chin then did the puppy dog eye thing cartoon characters were known for. I was already thinking it; please tell me Kazooie didn’t assign these three to help Screwball to learn of her cartoon heritage. A bear can only handle so much stress.