Rag Doll

by No one is home

Chapter 8: Work Things

“So how do you do that?” Alphabittle scrunched his face at his employee’s doll, that was also his employee. “It’s been some time since the magic’s come back, and I’m still wondering… how do you walk around like that? I mean you don’t have bones or muscles, you're just stuffed with… fluff? Is it like cotton? I honestly have no idea…”

“The truth is, I am stuffed with… Cotton Balls!” Ragdoll fell on his back flailing like a doll held by a laughing foal. “Why don’t rabbits make noise when they bing bong boop? Cause they have cotton balls.”

“Seriously, how do you do that?” Alphabittle leaned in, “You move exactly the way Gloomy puppeted you around?”

“I dunno, I just sort of fling myself around,” the rag doll replied with a shrug, “The same way you unicorns fling me around, I guess.”

“Fair enough.” The giant unicorn nodded, as he went through his mail. “Huh, we got an offer for some new games… from Zephyr heights…”

“Huh… real video games…huh?” The doll mused. “Wait… that’s a human girl…”

“Yeah, it’s something called ‘Evermarsh’, or something,” Alphabittle rolled his eyes, “Really catching on with the ponies over in Maretime Bay.”

“They got the boobs in the right place, anyway…” Ragdoll ran a plushy hoof across the ad.

“I don’t see any blue footed birds?” Alphabittle grumbled.

“Naw, I mean the teats are up top, not down low,” Ragdoll explained, flailing his noodly arms to the appropriate anatomical regions.

“Is that what those are? Huh?” The unicorn shrugged.

“Real ass video games?” The doll mused. “So it takes two days to for Gloomy to walk to the Heights, right?”

“No.” The giant responded instantly.

“And it takes two days to walk back…” The doll continued.

“I said, ‘no’!” The unicorn repeated. “I see what you’re doing! With my eyes!”

“And honestly, if I’m being honest, a couple of days to just take things in.” The doll nodded jointlessly. “What do you think, Gloomy?”

Alphabittle huffed and scraped his hoof. “Put that on the Nope Train to Nopeville, cause that’s where it’s going.”

“Retrieving these game machines will take between five day and a week.” Gloomy Sonnet looked up from her drum set.

“We are a traditional unicorn game house!” The massive unicorn fairly growled.

“Come on, big guy,” Ragdoll pleaded, “You know we’re losing business to that earthpony town, they’re only a day away, and they're running Pagasoft games.”

“Okay, fine,” the giant grumbled, “But don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You keep any of your rants about ancient history, and especially your ‘human conspiracy theories’, to yourself. In fact, once you get to Pegasoft, just let Gloomy do the talking. You want to crawl around libraries, taverns, or wherever you wanna talk your crazy cursed ancient doll talk, fine. After the deal is sealed. And Gloomy does the talking for the deal.”

“Mr. Alphabittle,” a cyan unicorn filly yelled across the Tea Room, “The Fortune Telling machine isn’t working! Tell Ragdoll to get back to work, I need his jinx powers!”

“I’m standing right here, Blue Skies!” Ragdoll shouted back, “I’ll be there in a minute!”

“Ragdoll doesn’t have eerie jinx powers,” Alphabittle chided the filly.

“Yes he does!” The filly argued impetuously.

“She’s right, I totally have eerie powers, boss.” The doll nodded his head.

-=-=-=-=-

Less than a week ago I was having a normal day at work. I had managed to talk the boss horse into essentially giving me and gloomy a paid vacation. Go and lease some arcade machines from Zephyr Heights. Easy peasy, cider squeezy. As a bonus, the pegasi had the internet, social media, so they had to have some records from Ancient times. It’s weird how I am always obsessed over my friends and family in ancient Equestria. I almost never thought about my original human life, to the point it was practically forgotten. In the scale of things both were equally far in the past, but in some way I felt closer to those long dead Equestrians.

Maybe it’s that they were somehow still possibly reachable in some way. Somewhere there had to be some record of them. Life had gone on for them after I made the deal with the Text that had led me on the long strange road that sent me to the here and now. I was the only thing from my human life in Equestria. There was nothing here from that life to even reach for. Then I ran into an old friend in the lobby of a hotel. An old human friend.

I was already a little freaked out, because Zephyr Heights is definitely Caterlot. And the more I saw, the more everything arround me screamed “Human Technology”. And I was walking into a game corporation that made games featuring humans. Then, who should me and Gloomy run into, not just any human, but a human who knew me from back when I was a human. I would honestly have been less surprised to run into a human who knew me as a giant mutant pony 1000ish years ago. And by a lovely coinky dink, the same game company had called David in for an interview.

And that’s why I’m in the fortune telling machine while Gloomy pumps magic into me and I scream at words nopony else can see. Honestly it’s not the weirdest thing me and Gloomy have ever done in the privacy of a crowded public venue…

Author's Note:

If you want the details of what happened on their trip then check out David Silver's wonderful story Return to Equestria. It's a Silververse Crossover event. We're doing those again