//------------------------------// // { 9 } // Story: My Little Cuties // by Amazing Ups //------------------------------// “How are you liking the royal treatment, dear?” I turned my head from the relaxing position I was in, resting in my favorite reclining chair. My own little thrown, ha. “It’s fantastic, Chrystal.” I watched contently as her men in suits scurried around the room. I downed my glass of sweat tea and it was immediately refilled. I gestured my hand for them to change the TV channel. I didn’t really like football anyways. They switched it over to the Walking Dead instead. Awesome. Chrystal giggled. “I’m so glad you're happy.” She walked away into the kitchen, and returned with some black, tar-like substance in a bowl. “Would you like to try some? I made it myself.” I opened my hands and a spoon was immediately placed in them. I took a big bite from the mixture. Kind of like jell-o, right? Not really. It tasted like raw eggs and burnt popcorn. Terrible. But then, I felt a strange wave come over me, and my mind went blank. I smiled. “It’s delicious.” Chrystal smiled right back, and another butler-man took the bowl off my hands. I had barely moved an inch in the past hour. Not like I needed to, of course. “I’ve got another big surprise, honey. But of course, I’ll have to save the best for last, am I right? You just keep watching your show, and I’ll get everything ready. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.” I smiled. A beautiful girl, an awesome pad, butlers? I was livin’ the high life. Anything before now was just a shitfest. But honestly, I couldn’t remember much of anything before now. I was like, a horse tamer or something? But that wasn’t really important anymore. All the sweet tea I could drink, and all the zombies I could watch, “Surprise.” Chrystal walked out of a nearby corridor, with three men behind her carrying…no way. My horses! The white one, the orange one, and even the yellow one, no way! They looked sad though. Their mouths and legs were tied with rope, to keep them quiet and still. They were looking at me with these puppy dog eyes, and it made my heart hurt. She pointed towards the men remaining in the room. “All of you, out. Now. Do not interrupt us for anything.” She turned her eyes toward me as they exited. “Do you remember these ponies, dear?” She stepped towards me and whispered in my ear. “These are your girls.” Oh, god. I remembered now. Those weren’t just any old horses. Those were my girls. Everything came back to me. Kissing boo-boos, bedtime stories, literally everything. “These are the girls that ran away from you.” My mind went blank again. That wave of nothingness crashed into my brain, and then it was flooded with words that I could never get rid of. “I hate you.” My head filled with strange thoughts, as if they weren’t my own; memories of crying for weeks, waiting for them to come home. We had a fight for no reason at all, and the next morning they had disappeared…the pain in my heart multiplied exponentially. I felt like I could die right there in that La-Z-Boy. “We found them last night,” Chrystal said. “They said they forgot all about you.” I shook my head. Why? Why would they do that? After all that time, after all I’d done for them, they just left home, and…and forgot? I clutched my chest. When I tried to start crying, I failed to realize that tears had already been streaming for several moments already. I sobbed even more forcefully after that. I just couldn’t believe it. My girls, my babies, my cuties. God, how did this happen? I just…I just didn’t understand. My emotions could not be transferred into words. So naturally, between the bouts of tears and snot dripping down my face, I transferred them into vomit instead and hurled up Chrystal’s home cooking. She placed her hand on my back. “I know. I know.” She comforted me as best as she could without getting too close to my vomit. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” I sniffed, and tried to speak; I couldn’t. I nodded instead. She patted my head and kneeled down next to me. She brushed her hair out her face, and placed several barely audible words in my ear. “I can make it stop.” I turned towards her. I knew what she was going to do. I wouldn’t let her. I couldn’t. “Do want to become a changeling?” I looked into her eyes, and tried to resist, but my vocal chords failed me. Her eyes glowed in that way they always did, and the same crash of nothingness filled my mind. I opened my mouth again, trying to resist “Daddy, don’t!” Queen Chrysalis’ face was filled with rage. “HOW’D YOU GET OUT OF THOSE BINDS? SHUT UP ALREADY!” As she lost her concentration, I looked over at the girls. She attempted to silence Scootaloo, but it was as if some invisible wall was stopping her. And the ropes tying the girls down…they were…levitating? “I THINK IT WOULD BE FOR THE BEST IF YOU USED YOUR INSIDE VOICE.” Inside voice? There was only one person with an inside voice like that. That was the inside voice of Canterlot Royalty. Princess Luna stepped from the corridor and stood by the girls. Her irises and pupils where whited out by a near-blinding light. “YOUR EVIL ENDS HERE, CHRYSALIS. I HAVE LEARNED EVERYTHING FROM YOUR SERVANT, AND I AM GOING TO SEND YOU TO A PLACE YOU WILL NEVER RETURN FROM.” Her shouts themselves were more intimidating then the words she spoke. Her horn was vibrant with color, swirling like a rainbow. Sparks flew from the tip every so often, emphasizing her points. As Chrysalis began to focus more on her own feelings at that time, my mind began to clear. The girls never ran away. Chrysalis just wanted him to think that. “NO! YOU CAN’T STOP ME NOW!” Chrysalis flickered in and out of her true form, her body looking as if it was decaying rapidly. “AND YOU CAN”T TAKE HIM AWAY FROM ME!” Luna looked fiercely at her. “YOU DO NOT DESERVE HIS LOVE.” She lost it. Breaking from her bodily prison, she sprouted wings, a horn, and all her other changeling anatomical features. Her horn emanated pulses of energy. Curse my weak will. All this time, under her influence, I’d been charging her up, making her more powerful. It was all my fault. Chrysalis threw her head back. Whatever witchcraft she had planned would surely break the barrier protecting Luna and the girls. All my love had strengthened the Queen, but it would strengthen me even more. I tackled her, and put her into what I could best describe as a headlock. Her skin was repulsive. She bucked and bucked, trying to throw me off, I held fast. “Luna!” I shouted. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Her Canterlot voice reached a normal pitch. “No! You have to come with us! Get in the force field, this spell is going to bring down the entire hive!” “Hive?!” I asked manically in between trying to quell Chrysalis’ feverish movements. She tried to speak, but I clamped what seemed to be her muzzle shut, and said, “What are you talking about? This is the theatre!!” Chrysalis attempted to throw me off again. Not so fast. If I could wrestle three ponies into a bathtub at once, I could wrangle a changeling queen, no problem. “There’s no time left. Just do what you have to do, and make sure the girls stay safe.” I tried to wipe the tears coming down my face, but my hands were busy keeping Chrysalis pacified. “Girls…I love you.” It was like a trio of angels responding to him. “We love y – “ BAM. Chrysalis finally threw me off, and caught me right in the face with her back leg. I fell over in pain, feeling the warmness of my own blood gushing from my nose. “Not here,” she said. “Not like this.” Chrysalis gathered herself together, charging up an even more powerful spell than the last. I could feel her suckling off my life force. Luna looked me straight in the eyes. It would take me ten years to explain the emotion I saw in her eyes at that moment, because in that second we stared each other down, it was as if we lived out ten years of pain and sorrow together. It hurt to look too long. I realized at that moment that she must have been reflecting the same feelings my own eyes had in them. So as I turned away, some of that sadness leaked from the bottom of heart and escaped through my tear ducts. I choked on my own voice, and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Do it.” With a flare of light brighter than the full moon, I felt everything around me dissipate. I lost all feeling in my toes. Then my fingers. Then my legs, my arms and my body. And then finally, my brain. ***