A true, true friend helps a friend in need.
Chapter 15: Times are Changeling
Blam!
Bang!
Slam!
Boom!
Smack!
“Fuck you, changelings!” John shouted, shooting as best he could in the dark. “Can’t even see down here!”
“Oh yeah!” I shouted. “Your pipbuck has a light!”
“Seriously!” John shouted, frustrated. “Would’ve been great to know that a long time ago!”
Why didn’t I think of that earlier? Why wasn’t I doing that from the start instead of using my spell? Changeling blood was something really bad…
Blam!
However, It was clear that we were beating the changelings. It was slow going, but we were winning. However, when we rounded the corner, I saw a ghoul pony sitting high up in a small sniper’s nest: gun aimed right at us.
“Alright!” he hissed. “Come and get it you ugly… wait… You’re no changelings. Wait… is that you…”
Bang!
I turned and saw mom levitating my rifle back into my saddlebags.
“Mom? Why did you…”
“Nopony threatens my baby and gets away with it,” she said, fussing over me and healing any injury she found.
I have to say I much preferred John’s method of healthcare. Honestly, I couldn’t even recall what injury I’d just taken, other than the obvious blow to my head… Wait… that’d been the changeling blood. Mother had told me that. I shook myself, growing very irritated at my stupid brain. It didn’t usually let me down like this.
John flew up to the remains of the ghoul pony and returned, loaded up with what the pony had been carrying. It wasn’t quite up to what John and I had, but he’d been carrying several weapons that I could use to upgrade ours or sell. Luckily, this wasn’t affected by my dull brain. Muscle memory seemed unaffected.
“Come on Sherclop,” said John. “We gotta finish the lower level. Hopefully there’s not more of these changelings down there.”
“What’s EFS say?” I asked slowly.
John paused for a moment before swearing.
“Shit… well at least it’s only the one last one. You ready?”
I nodded, levitating the shotgun again.
We crept slowly into the lower levels of the building, glancing back and forth between the hallways and EFS. Nothing greeted us until were in what I assumed the changelings had made into some type of containment center.
“Looks like a prison down here,” John muttered.
Why hadn’t I thought of that word. That was the word I wanted, but I hadn’t come up with it… I knew the word prison. I’d been to one before… I couldn’t really think of why at the moment…
No matter. There were more important things to handle right now. We crept up behind the huge creature and John blew its brains out with Flitter and Cloudchaser. I felt like celebrating. Why was I happy? I’d just won something… was I playing a game? I didn’t play games… Plus, one only plays games at parties… and I don’t see a party.
“That should be it,” said John. “Let’s search to be sure and head back up to Jason, you think?”
I looked at him for several long seconds, then realized he was talking to me and expecting an answer.
“Sorry teacher,” I said disjointedly. “I forget the question, can I go to the nurse?”
Mother lay me down.
“He really needs rest,” she said. “Why don’t you finish the sweep and I’ll help Sherclop rest?”
“Keep a close eye on him,” John said, eyeing mother wearily.
I felt like he didn’t like mom much. How stupid… stupid John. He should know better. Mother loved me. Mother protected me. She was the only pony who did… Even as I thought it, she healed me in a soft glow of green magic. It was comforting… and relaxing. I liked the magic.
I would have to ask her how to do that spell sometime… Maybe she could teach me more about spells. After all, we’d be together now. There was no reason for her to leave me, not now. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and I was sure she wasn’t going to hurt me. She couldn’t… not her.
As if from far away, I heard John swear and swoop back up to our little perch, guns at the ready. What was he aiming at? It was as if he was aiming at… me? Why would my only friend in the wasteland be aiming at me? That didn’t fit.
“John?” I asked. “You’re gonna shoot me?”
“Get away from her!” John shouted, his voice in full solider vibrato. “She’s evil!”
Evil? Where? I leapt up, holding out my revolver with magic, but I couldn’t see anypony. There wasn’t any sort of threat here at all…
“John, don’t. You’re being stupid!”
My protests sound mumbled, even though I was trying shout.
“What are you on about?” asked mother, stepping forward.
John didn’t waste any more time with words for her. He took aim at the enemy only he could see. It was the true aim of a military captain that had been honed for years, and… something was wrong.
The world shimmered in front of me, and I couldn’t see the basement. I couldn’t see John or Mother at all. My head slowly grew clearer and clearer, no longer made dull by changeling blood. I wanted to ponder this, but there was a high amount of new sensations flooding through me and even my brain could only process information so quickly.
It was as if I were flying very, very fast upwards. I couldn’t breath and suddenly…
I sat up in a daze, feeling the bed beneath me bounce slightly. I quickly glanced around the room I was in… It was in an old Victorian style. I could tell based on the wallpaper and furnishings in the room, though no paintings or pictures adorned the walls. There was a washbowl and small makeup table in the corner. At the end of the bed was a wardrobe full of my disguises.
My disguises? This was… my room?
How did I know that? I hadn’t been here before and yet I knew every inch of this room… Wait… I’d been here a lot. In fact, this was my room… in my house. What happened to the wasteland?
“Pones!” called Trotson, knocking on my great door softly.
He always does that, trying not to wake me. It would anyway, I’m such a light sleeper. This information came to my brain of its own accord. How could I know what manor John would knock on a door when the wasteland had no doors to speak of? I was remembering things in this place that I couldn’t be remembering.
However, I did remember these things. It was like I’d just woken up from a very, very long dream.
“Yes Trotson,” I said, groaning softly. “I’ve just woken, my friend. I apologize. Have I slept very long?”
For that, of course, was what I’d been doing. That must be where all this feeling of the wasteland must’ve come from. How perfectly absurd. It’d just felt so very real. However, medical science was suggesting that dreams could feel like they are real at the time. Something to do with the way the brain receives information meant that you could have days worth of dreams in an hour.
This would explain my dreams of this wasteland… and why I’d never remembered my dreams when I’d slept there. After all, I’d been desiring a life of action ever since I was a mere colt. This was merely my brain delivering a desired emotion to me in the form of a dream. I shook myself slightly.
“My dear fellow,” said Trotson, opening the door. “I was unsure you should ever awake. Your experiments really have gone much too far this time. I must insist you cease with your prodding in those chemicals.”
He has never approved of my use of drugs. He doesn’t understand how much my mind rebels in lack of work. However, I may have gone slightly overboard last night. I had used a considerable amount of Dash… Cocaine, I mean. It was cocaine, after all. I rolled out of my bed, washing my face in the bowl.
I recalled Lestride talking to me yesterday about a peculiar case… Wow… I’d dreamt that Lestride was a mare… Trotson would surely get a laugh out of that. I turned to him and saw my very best friend in all the world before me. He bore an expression of grave concern. No doubt he was worried about my health. It was a sweet sentiment.
Trotson has always been that way, more concerned for others than himself.
“Trotson, my friend,” I said, slipping on my old coat and deerstalker hat. “I have had the most peculiar of dreams.”
“I daresay I’m not surprised,” he said. “You were murmuring all night. I had more than a thought to wake you.”
“And I would not have blamed you,” I said. “I was experiencing a post-apocalyptic world. It was the height of savage, my friend.”
I paused, slipping my revolver into my holster and searching for my pipbuck… Wait… the pipbuck was just part of my dream… but how familiar the weight felt… Is it possible that the wasteland had been real? That I really had traversed it? I posed my theory to Trotson and he insisted I sit and explain.
Once I had finished explaining in detail, Trotson laughed jovially.
“My dear Pones,” he said, smiling at me. “Even in your dreams you are the height of intellect and ability.”
I did not join in the laughter.
“It just… It seemed so real upon its happening… I am unable to help but feel I am missing out upon something important… I can’t help but feel that this world may be a dream too…”
“Come now. You hold up deductive reasoning above all else, don’t you? Let us apply your methods to this dream world you’ve been in for the past several hours. You think that you are in fact, not Sherclop Pones, lone consulting detective of the police force?”
“I’m not saying what I am or am not. In my dream, I was not a consulting detective, no… Not like I am here.”
“But you were in fact, named after yourself, and even meeting me?”
“Yes.”
“But I existed here first, didn’t I?”
“You did… I believe.”
“Well there you have it, my boy. Now, that’s enough of this talk of dreams. Lestride wishes to see us at the station to help solve his latest mystery.”
I nodded, but was unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. Of course, Trotson was right, logically it made far more sense that my dream had simply been a dream and that this world was the real one. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I really had lived in the wasteland… However, I was just as assuredly here…
I decided for now that I would treat whichever reality I was in as the real one at the time. Should I return to the wasteland in my dreams, then I would treat it as the one true reality, but while in this world it would be true. It was the only solution that fit for me.
We trotted through Marerogate, and I took in several facts without even pausing for a breath.
Divorced Baker…
Infection in his hind left leg…
Partial Deafness…
I was apparently far more adept at analyzing in this world. This would be helpful to me with the mysteries, as it had been several times before. We stood in front of the grandiose police station and Trotson pushed in the door, waving at me to follow him in.
“Pones,” he called when I didn’t follow. “If you are still unwell, I’m sure Lestride…”
“I am fine,” I interrupted, shaking off the feeling of wrongness that had overwhelmed me. “Let us go, my friend.”
We entered the large building and I could see Lestride, trotting up to join us.
“Pones! Trotson!”
I could never understand why the stallion insisted on greet ponies as if it was the first time he was meeting them.
“Lestride,” I said, smiling softly. “I can see your reputable skill for remembering the names of your frequent visitors is, as ever, uninhibited.”
“As is your lack of respect for any living pony,” said Lestride, sighing.
“Let us see this supposed mystery which has put Marerogate’s very best and finest on their overpaid haunches.”
“She’s over in holding cell four.”
“Is she a prisoner?” asked Trotson, concern showing on his face.
“Not at all, but her father is beyond furious that she’s here.”
“Of course,” I said, trotting to the cell in question.
I already knew what was going on here.