The Pony Dreadfuls Rise Again

by No one is home

Shadow of the Rainbow: Sick of You

“Conscript Dust!” Detective Skrye snarled at the defiant pegasus. “What in the depths of tartarus happened here!”

“Private Dingus couldn’t follow instructions and took his eyes off the wall.” Lightning dust waved contemptuously at the burned unicorn guard, strapped to a gurney and gibbering. “And I had to finish the shift in my own suicide watch. Do you know how fucked up that is?”

“Ya did good, Dust Muffin,” the changeling said with a smirk, “Officer Darwin Award didn’t just take his eyes off the fourth wall, he accidentally broke it. You actually managed to shut the door to the Subliminal Demi Plane fast enough. Hell, no creature died, but I won’t hold it against you.”

“I’m the one in charge here!” The detective scowled.

“Keep believing that,” the thing smiled in response.

“You already know I’m going to win.” The poster on the wall smiled.

“You had to follow me,” The degenerate thing masquerading as a changeling sneered.

“It is not a curse!” The detective screamed.

“A curse is just an ouchie you pretend to ignore.” The poster was reassuring.

“Dolphins tuna netting sturgeon experienced no side effects,” It assured him. He didn’t know why he trusted it. “Your call has been disconnected due to starfish inference.” He knows he should never trust this thing. But the sun in the sky scowled. When he looked at the poster again the wall was clean.

“I don’t need you to fight this!” He argued in vain.

“No, you need me to even really see it.” The monster that pretended to be a changeling purred.

-=-=-=-=-

There is nothing better than being completely in the moment. Alias doesn’t get that. Never has. Okay, I lied… a lot… over a long period of time… to a lot of various creatures… But anyway, there is one thing better than being in the moment, being high in the moment. And the snozz berries taste like snozz berries! And I think she cracked my jaw! And Dusty is violently enraged, and the second biggest monster in this room is disgusted. Six out of Pi, best staff meeting ever. Alias never got the “fun” part of this.

But really I think Alias just wants the hive mind back, just with her in charge. And I get that. I do. It’s easy when someone else is in charge. It’s easier when they’re not making you help them hide behind the name you made to hide behind. It only used her to hide. It only used Legion when it needed to be in two places at one time. When the Nopony needed a face, and when it needed a name, it used me. So yeah, the only thing better than living in the moment is living in the moment while high.

I have been called a monster, both in this world of pretty little ponies, and in my own. And I’ll tell you a little secret: it’s the truth. It’s not something I’m ashamed of. Before “I” was “We”, before “We” were “Nopony”, I was always a monster. My mother, my uncles, they always told me so. They never used that word. There were other words, words like “emotionally unstable”, and “childhood schizophrenia” that doctors would use. Then I wouldn’t see that doctor anymore. I learned to hide what I was because that’s what monsters do. But I wasn’t really a monster, I was a victim, and I hated it.

Then the doctors taught me, by accident almost, that I could manipulate my own brain chemistry manually.

Now some of us will tell you there’s some grander motivation behind it all, that we serve some greater purpose… but I won’t ever lie to you like that. It’s simple. I just wanted to be happy and have fun, but the world hurts. And I don’t like hurting. And before, in the great scheme of things, I didn’t have much say in the matter. Then that changed. And given a choice, why not just make the thing that hurts me go away? Is that really so bad?

Technically I was the one that went away, really. Did you know that you could build a multiverse portal with a disco ball, a strobe light, and loop mixing software? I mean obviously there were also a lot of drugs, and I do mean A LOT of drugs. Oddly specific drugs too. I’m not going to tell you the exact mix because I promise there are easier, and more pleasant, ways to commit suicide.

The hardest part was finding the right discordant mathematical musical sequences to get your brain in just the right spot. Think of it as six dimensional yoga but for your brain. You have to hit your brain with just the right uninterpretable stimuli to make it twist in directions that don’t exist in normal four dimensional space. The drugs were mostly just to kill the pain of your thought process breaking every bone in its imaginary body.

And also funsies, because you don’t get the tolerance to survive that kind of cocktail, without a lot of practice…

I could always see the rainbow. But suddenly I had snuck up on the rainbow from the other side. And the other side of the rainbow was just words that named colors. And I wasn’t alone. That voice in the back of my head. That unnamed monster that always told me “This is wrong”. The Cannibal Head. It was there to meet me at the gate. It was there to keep me out. I was there to keep something else in. We both failed. It was really embarrassing. And then I was a pony.

Sort of… not really. I watch the sunrise crawl across the inspirational poster. “I see you.”

Author's Note:

I’m sorry I let so many of these stories fall behind.  This is likely going to merge into Rag Doll as “Forgotten History”.  There is also an update/maybe-reboot of certain cute series.  If your still reading, sorry for the wait.  To all still reading, in the words of the Great Oderous of the Scumdogs of Gwar, “I will never be sick of you…”

This story says it ain't dead yet!