Rag Doll

by No one is home

Chapter 23: "Mine!"

“Okay, Charlie,” Gloomy has her most serious face, and I’m on camera. Somehow that makes it more real. “Pegasoft wants to see how you navigate stairs. They want to do a platform game of you flopping yourself around places.”

“This is more than a little embarrassing.” I feel like I have a legit complaint.

“Common, Uncle! You can do it!” There’s a barb to that title now. Pretty sure OC knows I feel that. There’s no more cutesy nickname. I deserve that.

It was on the third stair.

We met upon the stair. She spoke, “Of was and when…”

And though I wasn’t there, he swore, “I was your friend!”

Which came as a surprise. I spoke into its eyes, “I thought you’d died a long…. Long, long time ago.”

“Oh no, not me.” I never lost control. “You’re face, to face, with the mare who sold the world…”

I’m lying, I have no control. That smile. That smile with too many pointy teeth…

“Hello, Charlie. It’s been a very long, long time.” The insectile mare is just suddenly there, towering over me. Her lithe body looking for all the world like a demonic combination of a pony and a dragonfly. Her tail twitches menacingly and her shark-like smile bisects her face. Her goat-like horns shimmer with corrupted energy. “I’m sure you have so very many questions.”

A cyan skinned, blue haired, young human man in a blue business suit and square framed glasses lounges on the stair and smiles. What in the holy hell am I looking at? It speaks. “We are all going to sit down and have a little chat now.”

“A little pow wow, so to speak.” And now it’s an earth pony, because of course it is. And honestly I want some of what-ever that thing is smoking out of what I can only assume is a saxophone converted into a crack pipe?

The world dissolves into floating text and I change the perspective.

R:\ Daine, what did you do?

The Shadow Queen Grinned, showing off her shark-like teeth. “Ooooo… you learned a new trick.”

She read the words that the world had always been. She read about the little gray filly clip-clopping her little hooves to a beat only she could hear as it happened. She read about a little ladybug blush toy scuttling in panic. She giggled like a little filly. “I always wondered what it was like in between the wall.”

R:\ Diane, what did you do?!?!

“I attempted genocide against a near infinity, silly.” The beautifully horrifying insectile mare cooed. “Although I’m not properly ‘Diane’ anymore, not completely. It turns out attempted infinity murder had consequences.”

R:\ You got pulled into the true infinity. You’re the Nopony, now.

“Now you really are being silly.” The corrupted changeling queen tittered merrily. “In a way I finished what I started. There is no ‘Nopony’ anymore. I like to think of them as my new hive, in a way. We are no one. We are unnamed. We are legion. We are Anypony.”

R:\ Are you really going with that name? :|

“Anypony is a perfectly good name and no one gets to tell us what our name is!” The queen screamed in rage just as reality transitioned out of the text wall. Ocelia and Gloomy looked in open mouthed confusion at the outburst, fear almost enough to stop any snickering. Anypony glared angrily down the stairs at the smiling ragdoll. “You did that on purpose!”

-=-=-=-=-

I am a very peaceful, booky little bug. Conflict has never bothered me, perse, it just kind of rolls over me. As a cuddly little nymph I spent most of my time in the hive’s library, reading about the layers of the world above us that we had retreated from. That's how I knew about the rag doll. That’s how I knew better than to try to claim it. And that’s how I knew what to say to get it to carry me with it to the surface to find its true bearer. The old stories told me about the bloody first queen. They told me how she sacrificed our hive's honor to forever end our greatest scourge. And here was this shifting thing, looming awkwardly on the third stair like a vulture. Shifting form to form like a mirage. But at the core of it, I could see the truth. Underlings are still changelings, secrets and lies are our whole thing. I could see that everything I had learned was all…

-=-=-=-=-

“LIES!” I am not a calm little pony. I am a panicking steed. Panicking more so because that guttural scream wasn’t mine. I tap my clumsy rhythm as best I can without my cutie mark. The jinx holds back the tide of events like a viscous fluid, but it just won’t stick.

In a rush of pink flames the cute little ladybug pony doll I’ve been sharing my hotel room with is gone. But she’s not an adorable little ladybug pony alien “cuddle muffin”. She is all teeth and dull gray armored chitin. Her fangs drip with venom. Her hindmost legs are like coiled springs. It occurs to me that she was always like this.

To a god she would be a flea, but to a mere elephant, she would be a hyena. An apex predator/parasite… or just a cute little bug. It’s all just a matter of scale and context. A part of me wants to hand Charlie to this thing on the stairs, and be done with it. He lied to me. He never explained what the stakes were going to be. He never told me how to deal with this. But there’s no answer, no message to be found. I feel the pull of my doll's original magic. I want it. I need it. I focus on the rhythm of my hooves. Without my cutie mark it’s like trying to beat a drum underwater.

That thing has power. It can crush me. It can rip me apart. That will not help it. The doll is mine, I don’t care who threw him away, he is mine right now.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Be careful what you squeeze and where, for the darkest arts of L-versecan do whatever you want.

If you know Exactly what you want and How to get it.

On this scale, the High Fae of the Unseiliegh Courts have an, understanding?

[Amethyst Dragonfly]

R:\ Daine, what did you do?

Should be
Diane