Buggy and the Beast
Water
Awaking to the the faint click of the unlocked front door was the only warning that Beet Salad got before Nectarine was screaming in one ear and dragging him by the tail across the floor. Damp newspaper from his mid-floor nap was stuck to Beets’ face, still reeking of urine and feces as his former friend fairly flung Beets into the kitchenette and began digging around in his APHID jacket with a clank of insecticide containers.
“I don’t know what it did to you, buddy, but I’ll spray it down! Gimmie a sec to find the right can!”
What Beet Salad intended on saying was a firm yet polite inquiry to his bat-winged friend as to just exactly why he let himself into the apartment with his spare key, dragged him across the floor, and was wanting to kill the crippled bug despite the agreement they had come to last night. What actually came out was more of a spluttering cough from the sodden newspapers stuck to his face, which when combined with a dry throat and early morning befuddlement left Beets no choice but to sweep one hind leg under his annoying friend and knock him on his handsome rump.
“Beets! What are—”
One well-aimed rear hoof strike later, Beet Salad struggled upright and glared at Nectarine, who was considerably more calm with a bloody nose and sprawled out cold in Beets’ tiny kitchen. “What the buck do you think you were doing, Nek? I just fell asleep on the floor! You could have…”
Beets took a second long look at his friend before going over to the kitchen sink. He ran a glass of water first, drinking it all the way down to the bottom. Then he ran a second glass for his friend and upended it over the unconscious stallion, who awoke sputtering.
“Beets!” Nectarine paused at the unamused expression on Beets’ face, as well as the kitchen fire extinguisher he was holding in his magic.
“Break anything?” asked Beets, still holding the fire extinguisher more like a club than a fire-fighting tool.
“Nooooo,” ventured Nectarine cautiously with a hoof to his jaw.
“Do you want anything broken?” asked Beets with a slight swing of the heavy steel cylinder as if he were warming up in the batter’s circle. “Because I’ll give you your choice of bones if you ever do that to me again.”
The flattened pegasus shook his head. “Sorry, Beets. I thought the bug had given you a brain whammy.”
Beets sat the fire extinguisher back on the kitchen counter before peeling some of the damp newspaper off his face. “I must have fallen asleep out there. Oh, feathers. I feel like Hades warmed over.”
“Actually you don't look much worse than usual,” said Nectarine, heaving himself into a sitting position while still rubbing his jaw. “A little uglier, maybe, but you can’t go much farther that way.”
Beets was not listening. He had taken the opportunity to peek around the corner and observe the injured creature he had been tending to most of the night. Trying his best not to make any noise, he remained perfectly still and watched until Nectarine slipped up to his side in the annoying silent fashion the Nocturne were known for, even though he broke the silence with a whisper immediately afterwards.
“Hey. It’s drinking out of the bowl.”
“Shhh!”
True to the nocturne’s observation, the battered changeling had turned her head almost sideways and was slurping small sips out of the shallow bowl of tepid water. It was probably just his imagination, but under the purple hoof shellac, the insect seemed slightly less injured than before, and her sides were moving in a regular pattern. The criss-cross pattern of green beneath the shellac had faded to a lighter shade, as if the creature were healing under the species-specific and rather odd medical treatment.
“You really do look and smell like Hades,” said Nectarine, pulling away from him and wrinkling up his nose. “You’ve got a little… lot of something on your face there.” He retrieved a paper towel from the kitchen and wiped off the smelly gunk, or at least smeared it around some more. “Do you want to take a shower before work? I’ll watch your buggy buddy, and I promise I won’t hose it down.”
* * *
It was several hours later as Beets sat at ‘lunch’ before he had another chance to talk to Nectarine. The insect had been sleeping when both stallions had hustled out the door to work, and despite having several hours to think about his situation, Beets still could not come to a decision on just what to do with the bug.
“Hey, Beets.” With an almost silent flutter of membranous wings, Nectarine dropped into the other seat in the outdoor picnic area and plunked a couple of bananas onto the table. “Had some leftovers at work, and thought I’d share.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Beets dug his spoon around the bottom of the can of beans before dropping the empty tin into the trash. “Fruit’s supposed to be good for you.”
“It’ll help replace some of the blood the tick was sucking out of you yesterday,” said Nectarine as he sat a paper sack on the table and rooted around inside. “Want some alfalfa sprouts? My grandmother packed 'em for me. Says I'm not getting enough greens.”
“Naa.” Beets eyed his friend, then tried to look at his own ear. “Was it really sucking on my ear?”
His friend eyed him back. “What, you’ve never had a mare suck on anything of yours before?” Nectarine buried his nose in the paper sack full of sprouts and the sound of chewing was his only response for a while. Finally, he lifted his head up and licked his lips. “I’m not sure. I thought so, but I was a little rattled. You don’t look like you’ve got a pierced ear.”
“Didn’t feel like it either.” Beets rubbed his ear anyway and ran a hoof down his tangled pink mane. “I stayed up with her most of the day before falling asleep. Something weird was going on, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah.” Nectarine finished off his sack lunch and tossed the bag away. “Pass me a banana, would ya?”
“Sure.” Hefting the bananas in his magic, Beets paused as he worked through a quick spell. “Hey, Nek. You said you found these on one of your inspections?”
“Yeah. Lucky me. They were just sitting on a shelf in the cargo hold. One of the crew must have had a banana break and couldn’t finish ‘em all. Why?”
Beets used his magic to break one of the bananas in half and inspect the center with a quick sniff. “Strychnine. I think the crew on your ship was laying out changeling bait.”
“Ye gads.” Nectarine stared at the broken banana in horror. “I could have been killed.”
Beet Salad nodded. “You better go run that back to your superiors. I think the changeling invasion in Canterlot is making ponies do some really stupid things out of fear.”
* * *
The poisoned bananas turned out to be the tip of the metaphorical iceberg lettuce. Several more poisoned fruit and vegetable traps were found on the docks, and were eventually tracked down to a rather nervous cargo handler on the night shift who was then taken away by the Royal Guard for some intense questioning. Nectarine dropped by Beet Salad's patrol route twice more during his shift to report on other members of the night shift who had attempted to steal or buy cans of insecticide to use against suspected changelings, and one supervisor who had ordered him to fog an entire airship before the crew had disembarked.
"I don't know what got into Shifty," said Nectarine in a soft whisper with a few extra glances in both directions to make sure they were not being spied on. "It probably wouldn't have killed anybody on the crew, but they would have been sick as dogs. Paraoxon is a little less lethal to ponies than most organophosphates, but it's still nothing to sneeze about. We talked him out of it, but he still wants me to pull a half-shift this morning to help with quarantine measures."
"Do it," said Beets with a yawn. "You need the overtime."
"Yeah, the foal support payments are adding up," said Nectarine with a wince. "The family's helping, but I think they're holding back a little just to pressure me into getting hitched for good." He eyed Beets critically. "The thing on your living room floor is female, right?"
Beets eyed his friend back. "No. You went all sparse over me trying to save its life, and now you want to — I don't even want to think it."
"The perfect wife," said Nectarine, in such a solemn tone Beets could almost take him seriously. "Can change into any pony you want, and lives entirely on love. With no foals to tie up a stallion on the go."
After a long pause to shake his head and sigh, Beets said, "Half of the city has gone all bonkers over changelings invading, and you want to boff the first one you've seen."
"Yeah, I know," said Nectarine with a long, drawn-out dramatic sigh of his own. "You saw her first."
* * *
The trip back to his small apartment seemed longer without Nectarine at his side. Beets bought a new newspaper with his groceries to check on any articles or stories about his battered visitor, skirted Missus Spitonoikokýris, who was lurking at the mailbox like a vulture waiting on a body, and slipped into his apartment without incident. He felt an irrational urge to call out, "Honey, I'm home!" but suppressed it when he saw the tangled newspapers in the middle of his living room and the four severed cords last seen holding up the battered changeling's legs. A trail of crumpled paper and dampness led into his tiny kitchenette and a small ball of collapsed changeling beneath his silverware drawer. Plastic knives, forks and spoons were scattered around from where the drawer had been yanked out of the cabinet, and a small smear of green was visible on the creature's neck where his best paring knife was jabbing rather ineffectually. The green glow of changeling magic flickered out as he came into the room, and the knife fell onto the linoleum floor with a clatter.
“Oh, no,” breathed Beets, almost dropping his bags of groceries on the floor in his haste to pick up the knife. "Don't kill yourself. Please."
“You won’t,” gasped the changeling, although she collapsed on the floor like a puppet with her strings cut after speaking.
Ignoring the groceries, Beets picked up the changeling in his magic and carried her back into the living room. It strained his abilities to lower the pull-down Murphy bed while holding her suspended, but he managed to get every spare towel he owned spread out on its lumpy surface before lowering the shellac-covered creature down as if she were made out of eggshells. “I won’t kill you,” he whispered. “Stop saying that.”
“I’m useless,” gasped the creature. “Hurts. Hurts so much.” The changeling shuddered, flailing its thin limbs ineffectively against Beets' magic until he lowered a foreleg to hold her down to the bed. She wrapped herself around the proffered limb with unanticipated strength, holding on as if she were drowning and Beets was her only chance at survival. “Huuurts,” she keened almost inaudibly.
“Can you take pony medicines?” asked Beets. “I’ve got some pain pills in the medicine cabinet from when I got beat up last time.” The changeling did not say anything, but did seem to nod her head slightly and relaxed her crushing hold on his leg. It only took a few minutes for him to vanish into the bathroom and return with a few colorful pills and a glass of water. It seemed odd that the changeling's tongue was a light shade of blue, but she stuck the pale appendage out whenever he floated a pill to her, and followed with a gulp of water afterwards to wash it down.
“Hurts,” she whined afterwards, somehow managing to get an unbreakable grip on his foreleg again.
Beets regarded his unputaway groceries around the corner in the kitchenette and determined they would wait until the pills kicked in and the changeling would go to sleep. There was no way to get comfortable while waiting, but he managed to wedge one knee on the floor and one leg up on the edge of the bed as he listened to her breathing slow and stabilize. It seemed more soothing than it should have been. He never really had been in a situation over the past few years where he could hear anypony else sleep, except the rare occasions when he went over to Nectarine's family house to play cards or listen to the game on the radio. With just over thirty adult nocturnal ponies in the clan's house, there always was somepony taking a nap, and the whistling snore of the sleeping changeling reminded him far too much of his little ‘nieces’ as they dropped off for a day's worth of rest while ‘Unkle Beast’ watched over them.
Most of Beets’ apartment could be seen from his imprisonment spot, so he took the time to use his magic to do a little cleaning, wadding up the soiled newspapers and stuffing them into the trash, as well as unscrewing the eyebolts from the ceiling. Somehow, Missus Spitonoikokýris probably already knew about the damage and had written the repairs into his next rent payment, but he went through the motions of sticking a little dab of toothpaste into each hole with a plastic knife anyway. The place was a dump, but it was his dump, and cheap enough that he actually had managed to save some bits for the future, as opposed to Nectarine who had been flat broke as a little colt in school and would be flat broke when he died of old age, surrounded by all of his many illegitimate children. Money was power, and just having some bits instead of being broke gave Beet Salad the chance to…
To…
The changeling took that moment to finally relax and released its tight grip on his numb leg, allowing Beets to stumble into the kitchen and open up a can of beans for his delayed dinner. It kept him from thinking, well, from thinking too much about his situation. Somewhere, there were other changelings who would take the wounded changeling out of his life. It would be a success. He would be free… to find and try to save another dog who had been run over by a cart or a cat who had been turned into clawed bloody bits by accident or intent. Then again, the changeling could still die of its wounds and he would be stuck trying to explain to the cops just what in Hades he had been doing.
One day at a time. One life at a time. One action at a time. One breath at a time.
After putting away all of the groceries except for one tepid beer, he stood in the kitchen with the silence of his apartment all around, pressing against him like a grave. It felt like another dammed funeral again, with the labored breathing of the changeling sounding so much like his mother in the hospice as she passed from loving parent to cold corpse. He pulled a chair into the darkest corner of the kitchen and just sat for a while, trying to keep the tears away, before reaching up above him and picking his guitar off the top of the icebox. The warm beer soothed his dry throat as he fiddled with the tuning, one string at a time, one note at a time, until everything was right again in his little corner of the universe and the guitar once again felt as an extension of his own scarred and battered body.
It was not exactly a new guitar, as it had been salvaged from a second-hoof store after his last one had been busted over somepony’s head during a bar fight. The frets were a little loose from age, and the tuning pegs took a good solid tap to keep them from unwinding during his playing, but a quiet song or two always helped him find his center in disturbing times, and there was much to be disturbed about now. The music flowed out far easier here than in some sleazy bar during talent nights, and more to his liking too. No drunks of either gender really wanted to hear a love ballad sung by an ugly stallion, and the survival rate of a guitar in those situations was about one night, or possibly two, before it became a convenient and tuneful weapon.
He played until his hooves and his magic grew tired, and then he played a little more. Songs about young mares galloping through meadows and old warhorses trudging to the next battle, of youth and age, of sorrow and joy. He sang until his voice became hoarser than normal, and the beer was nothing but a dry husk of its previous self.
Somehow the clock had treacherously snuck forward several hours while he was singing, and after hanging the guitar back up and taking a brief bathroom break, he returned to the living room and his shabby pull-down bed.
His occupied bed.
The glimmer of teal eyes could be seen under the thin sheet as Beets pulled a threadbare blanket out of his chest of drawers and spread it out on the floor. He wound the alarm clock, snitched a cushion from the lumpy chair, and settled down on the stained carpet with a yawn. Beets would have been asleep in moments, if not for the faint rustle from his bed and the eventual appearance of those glowing teal eyes at the edge of the covers, looking down at his little nest on the floor.
It was impossible to determine what alien emotion was behind the long stare Beets received, even after dark eyelids drooped, and then dropped over her eyes.
Then a faint but somehow ladylike snore began to come from the bed again, quickly joined by his own as Beets finally succumbed to his fatigue.