Migraines

by SwiperTheFox

Chapter Two Part One

Raspberry stirred. He shifted a little in the bed— feeling somewhere between pure sleep and being woken up. He tried to pull the blanket closer, but for whatever reason it wouldn’t budge. He tugged harder, and then his body bumped up against something hard and scratchy. Raspberry let the blanket go. He flipped himself to the other side. His eyes edged open.

“Well, hello there,” said a low, guttural voice. Raspberry stared at a wall of greenish purple scales.

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” he yelled.

“AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” yelled back the scaly thing.

Raspberry leapt out the bed. His two pillows magically floated over his head as he panted, ready to be used as a weapon. The creature delicately pulled the blanket off of itself. It was about one and a half times Raspberry’s size. Its body had this gritty dark purple color all over it except for the large greenish black splotches on its chest, stomach, and chin. It had little purple flaps on its sides that looked like budding wings. A dark green Mohawk with jagged yellow stripes shot out of its head. It had a pointy snout and an enormous set of sparkly white teeth locked in a devious grin.

“Did— did— did— did,” Raspberry stammered, still panting, “Did you have your freaking HAND down my PANTS?”

“I’m afraid my wings don’t flap that way,” the creature replied, using an earthy voice that sounded like it was filtered through a set of bourbon soaked kitchen cabinets, “Sorry to break your heart.” It smiled again, and Raspberry knew that those teeth could chop off a whole hoof effortlessly. Raspberry stared at those big, green slits it had for eyes.

“So… exactly what the…” he began.

“Fever Slash,” it declared, and it sat up on the bed, “The name’s Fever Slash.”

“And you’re... doing… what?” Raspberry asked as he set down the pillows and felt a bit more relaxed. Slash’s facial expression and posture had shifted. Slash almost looked like Raspberry like a drug dealer hanging out on a street corner. Raspberry spotted a small tail jutting out of the end of the bed. He put two and two together— some kind of dragon.

“Knack’s been really busy lately,” Slash said, scratching his hands idly, “And I get the feeling that it’s ‘Holy glomp, I actually need to keep my business from failing’ busy and not ‘What a great excuse to go around with the wife of a close friend’ busy. So, almost all that I’ve been told was that you needed to see me.”

“Uh… yes,” Raspberry responded, and he took a seat besides the dragon, “I heard that you’d be the one to help me out. Or someone like you.”

“You sound like—” Slash began, but then he finished his own thought, “Oh, hey, I suppose you’ve never seen a dragon before, right?” Raspberry shook his head no. “Well then, I suppose you’d expect them to be— say— a lot taller and bigger?”

Raspberry shook his head yes. The dragon chuckled, and he said, “Well, you’ll just have to give me some more years before then…”

“Sure, whatever,” Raspberry replied. So… adolescent dragon? He has that teenager-y attitude down pat. But it’s weird, just weird… He looks more like an anthropomorphic thing, more human than dragon. Geez, I wonder what the females look like at this age? Do they wear bras, panties, and dresses? Dare I say I would find them— hot… He gave his head a soft smack with his right hoof. Come on now, concentrate, you twerp!

“One moment,” Slash said, and he pulled up a large and very beat-up brown backpack, “I suppose that…” He rummaged through it, tossing some papers and a few bobble-head dolls out onto the bed. “I lied a bit when I said Knack didn’t tell me anything.” He seized a set of small, musty books. “He DID tell me you were looking for something important. Knack filled in some tasty particulars as to what that is.”

“The jewel,” Raspberry said.

“The AMULET,” Slash declared, and then he slammed an old, battered book onto the middle of the bed. The front cover read ‘Founding Stories of Equestrian Cities’. Slash thumbed through the pages delicately, and he stopped at the forth chapter— ‘Coltsville’. “I had to call in a favor to get this book, you know. Nominally, this is the property of one ‘Twilight Sparkle’, whoever that is. But she hasn’t picked it up for weeks and weeks since she’s ordered it.” Slash grinned once again. “Same story for the other books.”

“So…” Raspberry began, putting his hooves on the edge of the book. Slash grabbed it and pulled it back towards himself.

“I’m afraid that, first,” Slash said, “I’d like to know— I need to know. What exactly is it you’re planning with this thing, and why do you want it so bad.” His face grew more and more serious.

“It’s… interesting,” Raspberry replied. He took a deep breath, and then he told Slash his story. Raspberry skated around the whole human-related side of things, but he spared no detail about his physical attacks and the various things that he had brought into Equestria. Slash seemed like he had experiences dealing with evil creatures and strange magic before. Raspberry reiterated that he thought, for whatever reason, that he ought to be packing his bags to Everfree Forest.

“Forest…” Slash repeated, and he shut his eyes— deep in thought, “Everfree. Forest. That name is just… just… so blasted familiar. I’ve heard it before. Many times before. But I can’t remember at all.” Slash tapped his head with his hands. “Blast it, this is going to drive me crazy.”

“Sure, but then again, you had something,” Raspberry said, reaching for the book again, “Something important to tell me about legends…”

“Not legends, HISTORY,” Slash retorted, and he smacked his claws on the open chapter, “It bugs me to no blasted end how these pudding-for-brains ponies keep pretending as if what actually happened is just ‘legend’, ‘myth’, ‘old mare’s tales’, whatever….” Slash waved his arms about.

“So you have a lead?” Raspberry asked, trying again to get to the point.

“Oh, my friend, my new friend,” Slash replied, “I have leadsssssssssssss.” He hissed a bit like a snake.

“All right!” Raspberry said, now putting his full attention on what the book said.

Slash began narrating along, “Now then… where should we start? Well, it’s already common knowledge— and also excruciatingly boring, feel-good garbage— that once upon a time the land ponies, pegusi, and unicorns were all separate and didn’t get along. Then, they started fighting more than usual. There was this blizzard or whatever, and then they fled from the badlands to what we know call Equestria. They learned love and tolerance, and then they integrated with each other. Or course, the dragons are totally ignored in this narrative— since it’s typical Canterlot royal office mumbo-jumbo.”

“True mumbo-jumbo, but still mumbo-jumbo,” Slash went on, “And at first there wasn’t really much of a central government. Along came Discord, and things got fun and interesting. But it was also rather painful and rather scary. The Princesses booted out Discord and set up their monarchy. Maybe there’s another step in between then, but whatever. None of this interests us. At ALL. What DOES interest us, however, is where the cities come in.”

“All of the cities have their own founding story or— usually— founding storieS,” he said, emphasizing the ‘s’, “Canterlot’s is, obviously, royal related. Manehatten’s two stories, and all of the spinoffs, are pretty awesome. And then there’s some other stuff, not really interesting or important, and then we come to this chapter. Now, Coltsville’s early history has always been unique. Even before things really settled elsewhere between the tribes, in Coltsville pretty much anything went. Unicorns got with earth ponies. Pegasus ones picked up unicorns. And this has always been a place FOR dragons made by dragons. So you might thing that the dragons would be a bit upset as trader and manufacturing ponies built a nice big town around their little villages.”

“But then,” Slash continued, and he almost seemed to blush a little, “It was exactly the claim to fame of Coltsville that what kept the dragons in line. It’s hard to worry about being swamped by interloping ponies when, well, you’re marrying their daughters. And all of the commercial trade was like the bricks that the widespread, free-wheeling romances globed onto as mortar. I mean, seriously, you had about a fifty-fifty chance of hooking up with a member of your own group as another group in the early days! Very interesting, yeah! But I know you’re wondering, clearly, what has any of this to do with the blasted amulet we’re looking for?”

“Well, as you would guess, the founding stories all have messages of tolerance. Messages of loving the outsider, of opening up your home, of never doubting the kindness of others, of never being too afraid of the unknown and the scary,” he went on, growing bored with his own speech, “Blah blah blah! What caught my eye, and didn’t let it go, was this story here. It’s a minor one, in terms of the rest of the collection. But it still related to one of the oldest and wealthiest merchant families in town.”

Raspberry surveyed the new page. He had trouble understanding pony writing, but this in particular looked like… nothing he had never even dreamed of. It looked like some bastard form of cuneiform mixed in with Greek as well as hieroglyphics.

“Huh, oh, sorry,” Slash said, “It’s the dragon form of the poem. I’ll just say it for you out loud, then.” Slash gulped his throat and tried to steady his voice.

“Thanks,” Raspberry muttered.

“Verily!” he declared in a much more regal voice, pointing his arm to the air as if preaching to hundreds, “For it has been told / All from the life of Manechester the Bold / ‘Twas a simpler time / And a simpler age / Yet Manechester was one with wisdom most sage / Hark, then was the founding / ‘Twas so many moons ago / Back, the time shall flow / A mill, a family place / Manechester, with a life most humble / And then, suddenly, the sky did rumble / Lost, fearing, growing weary / He wandered abound into a sacred ground / He did not know what would be found…”

Raspberry gazed at Slash, totally enchanted.

“’Twas the grave of his mother / Remembering, his heart did flounder / But, suddenly soon came the crack of thunder / He sped down the path / Memory quickly filled the way home / But not too far did he thus roam / For there, he did step / And for a long time he did tumble / His possessions he did fumble / ‘Twas a foul pit, a summoning area / Lying prostrate, flat on the ground / He felt the foul magic all around / His heart grew quick / His horn grew bright / He shouted off into the night…” Slash continued.

“The dark ones crept up / His horn grew stronger / He called out with the soul of his mother / The love, imprinted, flowed through his heart / Determined, that was his eyes / Full escape, that was his prize / Stepping ahead, with true resolve / A foul unicorn stepped into sight / Manechester shouted with all his might…” Slash went on.

“Verily! I say to you now / At that moment, a stunning shock / A smashing noise like a falling rock / Lights flowing everywhere / Glowing atop the nearby spike / THUNDERSTRIKE!” Slash threw himself into the air and jumped atop the bed while flailing his arms. He paused, embarrassed a little, but then he quickly went on. “These great powers focused / But you must understand / It did not all go as planned / For the love in his heart / And the faith in his soul / It came to a head in that forsaken hole / All the power went back on them / The dark ponies went in retreat / Their goals were in total defeat…”

“Verily! And then, he saw it / Lying there, sitting atop the spike / Resting amidst a pool of pinky-white / A mysterious flowing, like enchanted smoke / He paused and did gaze / He reached unafraid through the haze / He took, a hunk now set as his prize / Something of magic never known before / Something of value never seen in a store / And as he made the journey home / Manechester saw, the sky did clear / His mill and family grew ever near…” Slash said, opening his arms out as Raspberry pictured the opened sky.

“He took his heirloom, set it right / He told them all about his story / They saw in the item, reflected glory / ‘Twas something special, imbibed power / They gazed on it, with the lightest red / Now, an amulet hanging over their head / Foolish may say, some other diamond / A whiter ruby, they may claim / But those with wisdom see the fame / For gaze with your eyes, and know / Detail and patterns going on and on / A complex beauty never gone…” Slash continued, and he got back down off of the bed.

“Manechester the bold, such a life / All that he earned, such glory / Such wide travels, all for another story / Yet the story truly began here / Manechester’s success, keeping on / As he protects his heirloom, never gone!” Slash concluded, and then he sat right down beside Raspberry.

“That was— just— beautiful,” Raspberry said, tapping Slash’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” the dragon responded, blushing, “I… I know it pretty well, actually. I performed it back when I was a kid. It was in school when they had to put on a show for the baby dragons. Mom really wanted me to do this one since the moral was that he preserved from the love of— Who else?— his mother. I remember, Spike stood up and clapped, but he was the only one. The rest of them seemed pretty bored. Or they we’re already sleeping.”

“So, uh,” Raspberry said, with what seemed like a hundred questions bouncing about in his head, “It’s a great story. But, there’s not really a… a ‘there’ there. I mean, sure, he got the amulet. And he recognized it as a sui generis sort of thing that came from something not of this world. But he didn’t DO anything with it. He just finds it and then… that’s it? Is it?”

“Oh,” Slash replied, scratching his head, “That’s the trickiest thing about these stories. It’s like reading ONE part of ONE letter sent from a pony to his friend. You don’t know the context.” He flipped through the pages. “The beginning, the end, the other side of the page… All of that’s still a mystery…” He flipped faster, not finding what he was looking for.

“And another thing,” Raspberry commented, “We don’t even know… I mean, come on now, ponies find weird gems all of the time. Some of them have special powers. Just because this ONE pony back hundreds of years ago found this ONE gem doesn’t mean anything.” He collapsed down onto the bed. “Dammit, it’s like looking for a needle in a needle-stack. And I don’t even know what it looks like…”

“It looks like this,” Slash said, and he tapped Raspberry’s lapel on the dresser besides the bed, “That’s something at least…” Slash kept on flipping through. He let out an angry growl and then turned to the front cover. He started going through the whole book again.

“Like that…” Raspberry said blankly.

“Sure,” Slash went on, “I mean, obviously, what you have on your suit right now isn’t all you need to get back home, or you would have done it already. But it’s the same… same kind of material. Before I walked through the door, I thought the Manechester story was a long shot, but it’s looking better and better. Seriously. Like you told Knack and then me, you remember that fluffy cotton candy-ish stuff is the same material the gem is made of. That’s what the magical colt had on him as well.”

Slash quit talking and went back to studying. He scratched his head. He took out another ancient book from his backpack and hurled it onto the bed. “Well… maybe I was…” he muttered.

The lapel… the thing that I’ve had on me… THIS WHOLE TIME? I could have pulled a Dorothy, this whole FREAKING TIME? Raspberry seized the lapel and then clutched it. He stared straight at it. It’s it… it’s that… it’s… it’s… The color and everything is right. I can’t remember— no, wait, I CAN remember. I at least remember. We had the fluid, the gassy material. I’d caught it. And then, before we did experiments on it, we sort of molded it… and it sort of naturally molded itself… into this rock thing. Like a… well, not a gem, more like a rock you’d pick up at a playground but still. STILL! I HAVE IT!

Raspberry closed his eyes and squeezed the small gem on the lapel. He started muttering, “No place like home. No place like home. NO PLACE. LIKE. HOME.”

“You said something?” Slash asked. Raspberry shook his head, and then he cast the lapel off onto the floor like a used napkin.

“Ahhh… crap,” he murmured. Well, that’s not what the cowpony said. That’s not what instinct tells me. (Aren’t those two things the same anyway?) The cowpony, ‘Mr. RF’, told me that I need something else. And I guess that makes sense. In the human world, we had this thing a bit bigger than a baseball— to harness all of its power inside. This little thing here is only about half the size of the golfball. If anything, it feels like this guy was carved out of whatever REAL gem is out there… somewhere.

“A-ha!” Slash called out, and he smacked his claw upon a page. He grabbed Raspberry’s collar and then pressed Raspberry’s face right onto the book. “So, for whatever reason they put this story under ‘Manehatten’. But that’s absurd, right? It happens in COLTSVILLE! But then, the unicorn that the story is told about lived in Manehatten, so they classified it that way. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Stooopid,” Raspberry squeaked through his puckered lips. Slash let Raspberry go, and Raspberry immediately sat back up.

“So, anyways,” Slash said, “I’m not going to reenact this since it’s not in verse. I’ll just tell you. It’s a long-ish story heavy on period details that are completely irrelevant to us. Yadda-yadda-yadda, here’s Morning Sparks. He’s a fine upstanding citizen. Et cetera. Boring details.” Slash fluttered through a few pages. “Okay, then he goes on a business trip to Coltsville. He gets there… then there’s some stuff…” Slash’s voice trailed off. “Oh, come ON. Where’s the…” More flipping occurred. “Okay, HERE we go…”

“What happened?” asked Raspberry.

“So, along comes in the Manechester family,” Slash begin, “There’s a pointless setup about a contest, and there’s an obvious moral about not to be greedy and not to brag too much— all shoved right into the reader’s face. Ho hum. But what interests us is what Manechester does so that he can win. He takes his amulet. And, then…”

“Then, what?” Raspberry asked, hanging on every word.

“Ah…” Slash said, “The text is disappointingly vague. With is sooooooo ironic, since this is the ONE DETAIL in the story that anyone would actually care about. Strong’s commentary notes on the side of the page…” Slash traced his claw on the batch of writing. “Well, right. He says that a chunk of the original manuscript was apparently damaged. When it was all pierced together, all that was left was something like— ‘he used the purest magic of harmony to activate the inner power’. Very vague, yeah.”

“Okay…” Raspberry said, sounding defeated.

“But then there’s what comes next,” Slash said, “So, Manechester feels defeated. He thinks nothing happened. He goes about his day. Late, late that night, someone in town encounters a strange beast. Manechester realizes through a clever little mini-story that the beast was set loose by him. He searches for it but nothing happens. Very, very late that night, the beast breaks into this own house.”

“Please, please go on,” Raspberry said.

“Now, he discovers that the beast is intelligent. He feels a responsibility since it was his entire fault anyway. He takes a fatherly pity on the beast, as well. He decides that he shall welcome the beast in as a member of his family,” Slash went on, “Now, two things. First, there’s lots and lots of pretentious moralizing about learning to love strangers, about the need for compassion, and so on. Ignore all that. What’s important is the description.”

“It’s it… it’s the gem,” Raspberry replied, “That’s it. That has got to be it. It’s what I’m looking for. When it’s exposed to a great power source in some particular way— I don’t know that yet but I’ll find out— it opens up travel between worlds.”

“Now,” Slash said, “They say ‘beast’, but they don’t mean it in the negative sense, just in the descriptive, ancient sense. I thought you’d be interested in the details for the beast’s appearance. It walks upright at almost all times. It’s a very pale color, with some pink and a bit of orange and a bit of brown…”

Raspberry picked up before too long that Slash was describing a human boy in his early teens. Raspberry wanted to say something, but he decided to be a bit evasive. Okay, there’s no shadow of doubt in my mind now. But still… why did he come in, as a human? With a human body? I wonder if something reversed. If somehow he wasn’t quite human, but was mutated in some way just like I was… Maybe he was a pony on the inside but human on the inside, somehow?

“Now, is any of that familiar?” Slash asked.

“Kind of…” Raspberry replied, brushing around his mane, “I can’t really remember that well. Sorry.”

“But, then again, as much as there’s parasprites and manticores and goodness knows what else in Equestria— I’ve yet to find ANY other story,” Slash said, “And I mean— ONE— SINGLE— STORY— that describes such a creature besides this story. It’s got to be from an alternate world.”

“This is wonderful,” Raspberry said, cracking a huge smile, “We know where it was. It shouldn’t be too hard to track down where it ended up going.”

“Ah,” Slash said, “But then there comes ‘thing two’ of my little ‘now, two things’ spiel. The story has…” Slash tossed back and forth pages, growing irritated. “Oh, here we go again. Details. Details. Moralizing. Details. Moralizing. More moralizing. Tear-jerking moralizing. Blah-blah-oh, HERE we go!” He surveyed this new page with his claw. “So, anyways, they kind of keep the beast close by in their mostly close knit part of the city. There’s not much of an issue. But then, if you remember Morning Sparks won the bet at first. But then he turned out to have lost it, as bringing in an otherworldly creature is some really blasted impressive magic.”

“Yep!” Raspberry commented.

“So, Morning Sparks, he got angry and resentful. There’s more obvious lessons here about not being a sore loser, not bragging, etc. Anyways, Morning Sparks steals the amulet. He does his own thing. Days go by, and it seems that nothing happened. Manechester gets the gem back. There’s fighting. There’s some uninteresting details. But what happens in the end, that’s very interesting. Now, the story shifts perspective to Marks, a close dragon friend of Manechester. We don’t get to see what exactly the two unicorns do to the amulet, albeit accidentally. But we do know that in their fight, they use together this foul magic that brings out a horrible Discord— that’s the exact wording, by the way, ‘a horrible Discord’,” Slash went on.

“A reference to… that guy, with the evil and stuff,” Raspberry said.

“Right, right,” Slash said, “So then, there’s a huge explosion. They release this terrifying thing. And it’s…” Slash flipped up a few pages and then back again. “The part there is pretty fragmented. What we know about the thing was that it was house-sized and dark grey and was sort of like a foggy cloud that ate ponies, while shrieking in a way that made ears literally bleed.”

“Oooooooh…” Raspberry muttered. Dear please God, let the next migraine not bring back that guy!

“There’s a nice long part about the monster eating stuff and otherwise causing a ruckus,” Slash said, giggling despite himself, “Nice if you like that sort of thing. Anyways, Morning Sparks and Manechester learn a terribly clichéd lesson about the power of teamwork and friendship. They unite, and using their disparate magic they defeat the monster. Their love for each other somehow reactivates the gem and the monster is set back. Everyone’s happy. It’s pretty much a ‘The End’.”

“Wait, so how does their ‘love for each other’ activate the gem, exactly?” Raspberry inquired. Sheesh, I can remember it a little bit— we had the freaking huge particle accelerator firing like mad before we got any hyperspace cooking… And all we had to do was hug each other, maybe? Probably not, dammit. You lucky pony bastards!

“It’s all through Marks point-of-view,” Slash replied, “So, the details are rather hazy. Couple that with the fact that the text we have here is like Swiss cheese, and here’s basically nothing to go on as to how to operate the blasted thing.”

“WHY is it told from Marks' view anyway?” Raspberry asked, “No offense to dragons, but it’s not really a ‘dragon story’ really.”

“None taken,” Slash said, “And here’s where it gets interesting. Well… MORE interesting let’s say. A coda to that story, which supposedly first appeared several decades afterward… says that activating the gem to banish the monster…” Slash lost his place again, and he hunted for the right page. “A-ha! It let another beast into Coltsville. Only. This. Time.” Slash looked right at Raspberry as he built up each word. “It. Was. A.” He seemed about to explode. “Female.”

“Female,” Raspberry repeated blankly.

“Feeeeeemale,” Slash remarked, sounding like a preteen discovering his first porno mag, “And it wandered into the same small and semi-isolated part of Coltsville that the previous beast was staying in. Now, guess what happens next!”

“The ‘beasts’…” Raspberry said, trying to make air quotes with his hooves, “Got together?”

“No…” Slash replied with a sly look, “Marks got her. And the coda says that he pretty clearly wouldn’t have taken ‘no’ for an answer, even though it’s a moot point she didn’t say that.”

“That’s not really a ‘moot point’,” Raspberry muttered.

“The coda,” Slash went on, “Like everything else, is blasted chuck full of holes. It strongly hints at what happens. But I can tell you myself, from personal knowledge, that Marks got the female beast while Morning Sparks’ daughter got the male monster.”

“Personal knowledge...” Raspberry said, shaking his head in confusion, “And when you say that that dragon and that pony ‘got’ them, you don’t mean…”

“What I mean,” Slash said, smiling like a cat with its paw on a mouse, “Is that said female’s blood is running through my veins right now.”

“And the Sparks, and the Manechester families—” Raspberry began.

“The beasts, they didn’t go anywhere, they weren’t killed, they weren’t banished,” Slash said, “They got bred right out of the equation. Right through those families’ bloodlines especially, although the wide tastes of some of their neighbors also chipped in.”

“Sparks… you couldn’t possibly mean…” Raspberry’s voice started falling to a near whisper.

“Yes, exactly,” Slash said, trying to put finality into the words. “Jewerly store co-owner.”

“But— but— but— he didn’t say a THING about that when I asked him,” Raspberry said, “Face to face!”

“Because he doesn’t know,” Slash said, and he began putting the books back, “None of them know. That’s the whole blasted problem with all of them. Whether unicorn, pony, pegasus… whatever. They all have no history. No sense of perspective. They can’t see past the end of their own noses. All they know about where they came from is what school teaches them, and that’s Celestia’s own narrative to suit her own purposes. Dragons on the other hand, they have long lives and longer memories.”

Raspberry stared back at Slash, who had put all of this stuff away and appeared about ready to leave. Well, maybe… but… still... it’s like everybody I talk to talks down about Celestia. But I keep hearing Rarity’s words ringing in my ear. It’s like the voice of destiny, almost. Still though, a thousand years banished the moon? The cold, frigid moon… Holy crap, my nipples are hardening just thinking of it!

“I was very pleased to meet you, Raspberry Star,” Slash said, and he went as if to tip his non-existent hat.