Double the Smiles [Horror] [Crossover] [Puppysmiles] [Blackjack]
Author's Note
Something Fo:E related I posted on Derpibooru a while back.
Puppysmiles is a ghost, but what kind?
Double the Smiles [Horror] [Crossover] [Puppysmiles] [Blackjack]
Puppysmiles couldn't sleep.
It wasn't just because she was in a new location.
It was more than that.
The undeath. The unbinding ritual. The whole thing with her... "Ghostly Cycle" as Nicole had put it.
She'd only slept for maybe half an hour. After the space jump, the battle had commenced outside, and she had slowly nodded off, under the calming effects of a calming panacea and the placebo of her new suit, a replica of her old. The hourly energy cycle would take some getting used to, they'd said. If she could get used to it...
The banging and clanging of hammers and wrenches throughout the gaps between the walls was probably it.
Or, it was probably this skintight plugsuit she was wearing, and the power armor Plaid Stripes had made to replicate her talking suit because apparently making her think she was still in the kitchen wearing that talking suit that wouldn't stop poking her was supposed to make her calm. How did being reminded of dying make her calm, anyway?
It probably wasn't that. It was probably all the ponies here together, filling the room. Littlepip, Blackjack, Velvet Remedy, Homage, Calamity, Murky, Glimmerlight, Hired Gun, Serenity, Sassy Lost, Perfect Freeze, Bullet Holes, Slug, Murderkill Deathgore, Misery Raven, Morning Glory, Air Raid, Icepick, Atom Smasher, Scotch Tape, Piper, Blossom, Steel Cherry, Blood, Frosty Winds, Greaser, Alloy Shaper, Strawberry Lemonade, Francium, and Littlepip's Mother, whatever her name was supposed to be. She'd probably forgotten. And there was also Wicked Slit, but she was in the brig. Puppy knew all their names. Usually she wasn't good with names. Neither was Dinky, she'd called Puppy "Memofolatsmilec". Dinky was silly, she was supposed to say "Puppysmiles"!
With her and all the other ponies, that made... Something over 29. Puppy could only count to 29. It was also Mommy's age, but she wasn't supposed to tell anypony. Puppy's age was five, nearly six. She was going to be a big filly soon! But they apparently said someone would have to change her borders soon for her to grow up. Did something happen? Was it the "undeath" that made her not grow up anymore?
Regardless, more than 29 ponies in one small room was cramped. Especially since Sassy Lost was soooooo big she'd hit her head on the ceiling. How silly. She was a hyoooooge pony. She even had trouble fitting through the door! How silly! There wasn't even a bed big enough for her, so she had to sleep on two futons on the floor!
Only three other ponies were awake. Icepick was just lying on her back, Blackjack was drinking from a bottle of the nasty stuff Puppy wasn't allowed to drink, and Serenity was prodding her limbs and quietly giggling at the feeling of her implants, those implants that everypony had now, including Puppy. She'd been doing this for like six hours now. Puppy was getting very tired of it.
Puppy tried to distract herself. Well, "Memofolatsmilec" was a stoopid name. Dinky was silly. It was "Puppysmiles", not "Memofolatsmilec"! And Dinky said she was saying it wrong, too. And her last name was "Days", not "Clock", or whatever it was. And her middle names were "Raincatcher" and "Biscuit", not "Skyrim" and... Whatever it was. She couldn't even pronounce it. Mmmmm, then... Something. That sound was weird, she just couldn't make that strange clicking noise Dinky made. If that weird clicking sound was supposed to be in her name she'd never be able to pronounce it.
She decided to try it again. Mmmmm /k/-- No, that was wrong. /k/. /k/. She just couldn't do it.
"This is stoopid." she muttered to herself, "Why can't Dinky just say 'biscuit', anyway?"
She suddenly felt hungry. She craved rice, even though it made her tummy hurt and her face go green. She didn't know why she even wanted it.
Feeling super-duper hungry, she decided to get up and see if she could find a snack.
Opening the door was hard. There was nothing to turn, so she had to use her implants. Blackjack told her what to do. She quickly got the hang of it. Imagine her hooves as the middle fingers of her imaginary "hands", and do... Something with her imaginary "thumb" to get the door to work.
After a while, though, it started to become second nature to her.
As Puppysmiles left the bedroom, she thought she still couldn't get over the fact that all but two of the grownups were fast asleep. Her parents were always awake when she was put to bed, and always awake when she got up. Did grownups need to sleep too?
Outside the room was a small, brightly lit corridor. So brightly lit one couldn't tell if it was day or night. The clocks being different from what she was used to didn't help, though it's not like she could read anything to begin with. Except for her own name, anything with more than four or five letters had to be spelled out for her. Thinking about the time wasn't helping calm her nerves in this new location, though, so she decided to think about something else.
The first thing that came to her mind was walking. Walking had never been difficult for her, despite the fact her legs were... Apparently deformed. According to Reisen, her right cannon bone was longer than her left by a measurable margin, and her front legs were noticeably shorter than her back legs overall. Apparently it wasn't just something wrong with the regeneration, either, since this was noticeable in her ghost form, too. How weird. They did say it was a deformity, most likely something she was born with. But just thinking about it weirded her out majorly. Was she really born broken? Why would anypony want a broken filly? Mommy loved her, but was that why she was being treated so bad lately?
This saddened her, so she quickly shifted her mind to something else. Unfortunately, her heart came up next. It was almost all that had remained of her original body. And she'd always had this tiny machine in it that made it work. She knew that, Mommy did something to help her.
She tried thinking of something happy, but the happiest thing she could think of was when she was licking an ice cream only for it to fall on the ground.
Seeing if a door would be hiding anything fun, she opened the one nearest to her. Just a closet, with a preserved metroid and some pickled netch tentacles. This creeped her out, so she quickly closed it. At least she got some more practice in.
The door next to it was the Mess Hall. Even the name was silly! But it was where the others sat and ate. Puppy remembered she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast the day she first got her suit, except for some medicine to help calm her down earlier, so she was really, really, really hungry.
"Oh, you hungry, little ghost?" Puppy knew that voice. It was Dinky. She had a pretty deep voice. Not stallion deep, but she sounded like a colt twice Puppy's age, similar to that unicorn colt in her room with the bullet cutie mark, Slug. Even Mommy wasn't that deep.
Dinky was shorter than most of the strange biped ponies, but she was heavily built. Her breasts, which were on her chest for some reason, were really big. As big as Puppy's Mommy's breasts! Puppy wanted to be that big when she grew up.
"Here, have this." Dinky handed the filly a strange looking cookie, "It's a ghostly cookie to keep your ghostly energy up. You'll have to slowly adjust to eating again, so it's just something small for now."
Puppy didn't care. She scarfed the cookie down. It tasted like really bland gelatin, but after weeks of starvation anything tasted amazing to her.
"You like?" Dinky asked.
Puppy nodded. "It's alright." she said nonchalantly.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"Well, I want help with that mmmm kuh sound?"
"Mqìbüê?"
"Yes, that's the one!"
"Eh, it's not too hard once you know how to make the sounds. I'll show you how."
Puppysmiles took in the instructions pretty quickly. While making the starting "Mmmm" sound, she set her tongue in just the right position. The next part was tricky, she had to open her mouth, stop breathing for a split second, and snap the front part of her tongue. This was followed by an "ee" sound. The second syllable was much easier, just a simple "Bwuh"-like sound. Mqìbüê.
"Mqibüe."
"You need to mind the tones, too," Dinky stated, "It's Mqìbüê. The 'ee' goes down and the 'uh' or 'eh' is higher pitched."
"Mqìbüê."
"That's a little better. Just work on it. You'll get there eventually. You're young enough that you should pick it up pretty fast."
Feeling satisfied, Puppy trotted back to her room, chanting "Mqìbüê" over and over like a broken record. "Biscuit", it meant.
Opening the door was easy. Everypony except Blackjack was asleep now.
As Puppy turned towards her bed, she got the biggest shock of her undead life.
She was still in there.
But how? Was she dreaming?
Turning to the mirror, she saw a ring hovering above her head. Had she died in that short sleep?
Walking up to her and looking closely, the filly on the bed was audibly breathing. She was definitely alive.
What was going on? Was there another Puppysmiles?
Feeling a sudden cold flush wash over her, she knew the "ghostly cycle" was coming. She knew she had to stay calm, but everything happening around her made that impossible for such a young filly to handle.
She snuck out of the room and ran down the corridor, only stopping when she crashed into Flurry Heart, a young intern member of the ship's crew.
"Ugh, what's your quzybuk, curse voosh?" Flurry didn't speak English too well, she was only learning.
"There's another me in my room!" Puppysmiles screamed in panic, "You have to help me!" She grabbed Flurry's tail and pulled her back through the corridor.
"Okay, then, I guess..." Flurry sighed. The anthro princess-turned-intern reluctantly allowed the filly to drag her across the ship.
Puppysmiles awoke from her nightmare in tears. At first she thought she'd finally be back at home, in the still intact kitchen, or better, in her bed. But as soon as she saw some familiar-looking ponies she knew she was wrong.
She was done. Well and truly done. She just couldn't take it anymore. Rage flowed through her entire body.
She began kicking the wall. No relief washed over her, so she turned around and kicked a nearby bucket.
"Hey, watssh it, kid!"
A familiar voice came from behind her. As she turned around she saw Blackjack glaring at her. Puppy knew she was in big trouble now.
"Shut it!" The mare slurred, "You'ff been acting really fucking entitled, kid. Sho your mom's gone. Deal with it! I haf to. You're not the only one who's shufferling."
"D... Did something happen to your mommy too?"
Blackjack took another swig. "They fucking killed her! Mounted her head on a shtake asz a warning!" The mare burst into tears.
Puppysmiles was suddenly feeling emotions she'd never felt before. How could ponies do such a thing, to intentionally kill another pony like that? It must have been horrible. She'd never seen a grownup cry like this before. It was weird to say the least.
The filly burst into tears again. The world was a horrible place to live, she'd just learned, and she was just along for the ride.
"C'mere, you." Blackjack cooed on her drunken stupor, "I know it hurtsh. But ya haff ta get over it evenshally."
The two ponies hugged each other for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a minute or so.
The door suddenly swung open, and a familiar voice cried out. "There's another me in there! I'm scared and--"
Flurry Heart and another Puppysmiles had entered the room.
Puppy's pink cloud blood ran cold. Both versions of her went pale.
"You're me!" they both cried in unison.
The two began fighting. Thinking quickly, Blackjack levitated the two fillies into her hooves and started to console them. In the meantime, she activated her comms implant. She needed to talk to someone.
[[CALLING... CALLING...]]
"NICOLE!"
The holo-lynx appeared in the top right corner of the comms screen, "What is it, Blackjack? It's 3 AM in Pretoria--"
"YOU SAID IT WAS UNDER CONTROL! NOW LOOK AT HER! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON OR IF THERE'S REALLY TWO!"
"Whoa, calm your tits, Blackjack!"
"MY TITS ARE TOO SMALL TO NEED CALMING! I'M JEALOUS OF PIP'S TITS! THAT SHORTSTACK OWES ME MONEY!"
"Blackjack, just calm down and sober up, you're anxious and drunk and it's making you violent. And forget about the size of your assets, Pip has the bigger bust, horn and, uh, you know what a bean is, right? But you don't need to get so angsty about it all. Size doesn't really matter that much."
Blackjack took a deep breath. "Okay. Just tell me what's wrong with this filly all of a sudden."
"Okay, running half-ghoul-half-ghost diagnostic, and... And..."
"And what?"
"...Nothing seems to be wrong with her per se, other than the fact she's having two panic attacks at once."
"But then who's the real Puppysmiles? The one who never left, or the one with the halo?"
"Both of them are."
Blackjack couldn't be more confused. "How?"
"Remember when I said she was half ghoul, half ghost?"
"Yeah?"
"That. You can see it there."
Blackjack stared at the two fillies in her hooves. It all made sense now. Her spirit had separated from her body.
"But how do we get them back together?"
Nicole's portrait put a hand to her chin, "I assume they just need to touch and figure it out. I'll get Sans and Yuyuko on the line, and those two as well."
Four new portrait slots opened up, two on each side.
The one in the bottom right opened immediately.
"Hey, Sans!" Nicole exclaimed, "Blackjack's got a problem."
"Hoo boy," Sans groaned, "Is it the Dealer again? I already said I can't he--"
"It's Puppysmiles. Somehow she's split into two!"
The two left portraits turned on both containing a Puppysmiles.
"So which one of us is real?" they both asked in unison.
Sans stroked his chin. "Yeah, when you get to the hybrid undead, things get very weird very fast, especially when ghosts are involved." He stated, "Because she was previously a bound ghost and is now an unbound regenerated ghost, or 'Duppy' as they're sometimes called, her soul and body, while technically one and the same, are actually separate entities."
Yuyuko's portrait suddenly turned on. "Did I miss anything?" she asked.
"Do you know what's going on here? What's happening to me?" both fillies said in unison.
"Oh, you're a duppy. How cute. I mean, I knew you were one in the making the moment I first saw you, I even had Sweetie Belle prepare for it, as you can see, but that's not important." Yuyuko donned a serious face, before continuing, "What's happened is that the ghost half woke up early and has separated from the ghoul half. That's all it is."
"But then how do I get back to normal?" the ghost asked.
"We've been touching each other all this time!" the ghoul sobbed.
"It's like mind over matter, kid. Use your head." Yuyuko suggested, "The ghoul exists because of memories from the soul, which were backed up from the original brain long ago."
The ghoul Puppysmiles placed a hoof on her ghost counterpart's nose. Nothing. They tried it the other way around. Still nothing.
"It's not working..." the ghoul Puppy moaned.
"Maybe try using your head a bit more," Nicole suggested.
Thinking a little too literally, the two fillies kissed passionately. The ghost Puppysmiles split into three pink spirit... Things that began hovering around the ghoul. Her head started to hurt, and memories of the ghost's recent activity flooded her mind. It felt like she was two different ponies merging together. The sensation overwhelmed her, and she collapsed on the floor, fast asleep.
Nicole turned the comms system off as Blackjack levitated the filly back into her bed.
"Go away, you stoopid thing!" Puppysmiles cried tearfully, batting at the pink ghostlike thing hovering in front of her face, "I don't want you!"
Yuyuko and Minamitsu just laughed. "You'll get used to them eventually."
"I can teach you to hide them if you want." Sans stated matter-of-factly, "Believe me, I'm an expert in this sort of field."
"I just want them to go away!" Puppy sobbed.
"Noon then, kid?" Sans asked, "Just finish your breakfast, alright?"
Puppy hit the ghost thingy again. It ruptured, releasing a stream of pink cloud into the mess hall.
"Uh oh..."
The Graveyard Shift (Literally!) [Sci-fi] [Anthro] [Crossover] [Horror] [OC]
Author's Note
Crimson Sweeper has to protect the outpost from... ghosts?
The Graveyard Shift (Literally!) [Sci-fi] [Anthro] [Crossover] [Horror] [OC]
Crimson Sweeper didn't like this job one bit. Being reassigned to the Koprulu Sector was bad enough, finding out he'd been assigned to PPYSM-5457469 specifically was even worse. Despite its isolation, it was a common mid-jump point between Jaredia and the Lylat System. This made it home to a variety of rogues. And more recently, the Combine, a totalitarian dictatorship. A while back there had been multiple skirmishes here between the Combine and the N-Team, a group of dimension-hopping freedom fighters and the ragtag bunch of misfits he was now in the care of.
At least they were nice.
He was just a temp, so he didn't get their chips. Not that he wanted to be microchipped. It just sounded wrong somehow.
The things he'd do for a paycheck. At least his adopted sister Velvet Cupcake was with him.
The outpost structure looked derelict. Apple Bloom had quickly whipped it up to serve as a temporary shelter. It didn't do much for the thirty inhabitants, just some basic open space with a commons including a kitchen, a single toilet cubicle and co-ed bunking. Then again, one of the crew here was intersex, so gendering things wouldn't help. And it wasn't like this was a fucking mall or something like that.
The surrounding area was just rock and dust. It looked so desolate. The wind was so wispy, Crimson swore there were ghosts around.
They were one of three bases stationed around a magical weakening. The other two were just over the horizon... Which seemed to upset Mémofòlàtsmílec, the youngest crew member, whenever he said it.
The patrol consisted of himself, Velvet, two girls both apparently named Sapphire... Slug... & Knuckles. All decked out in full suits. Crimson was posted at the entrance, just the way he liked it.
He suddenly shivered. The temperature right now was minus 40 according to his pipbuck.
Crimson slowly turned to his sister. "Hey, Velvet, you cold?"
"I'm cold too," Velvet replied, holding her arms to her chest, "It really does get cold here, doesn't it?"
The wind roared. A thick dust cloud slowly reared itself on the horizon.
"Dust storm!" Knuckles called out from the top of the shack, "And it's a magically-charged one, too! I'm sensing strange energies in there! Everyone get inside and brace yourselves!"
The chilling wind suddenly picked up. All six guards quickly ran inside, Knuckles forcing the door shut behind them.
The pink ghost filly was asleep on the kitchen floor, muttering something about her mother. According to Sweetie Belle, that was normal for her. Weird as it was. The only other crew member awake was Snowdrop, who was "reading", however it worked for her. The rest were fast asleep.
Most of the crew suddenly started stirring. Archer and Snuzzle jumped out of their bunks in panic.
By the time the storm hit the entire crew was awake. There was little panic, except from the three foals and Velvet. Sunny Milk was using her nanocommunicator to call the other bases.
As the storm passed over them, Crimson and Velvet hugged each other, hoping the shack wouldn't be thrown around like a ragdoll. To their surprise, it held, rocking slightly, but otherwise remaining firmly in place.
Crimson and Velvet stepped outside to survey the scene. Other than Chipcutter's SCV being knocked over there wasn't any visible damage.
In the distance was a strange glowing light.
"Permission to investigate that light, Sassy?" Crimson asked the giant pegasus.
"Permission granted. Be careful." Sassy Lost replied.
Crimson and Velvet walked up to the glowing light. A mysterious ghostly noise was coming from within.
"What't that?" Said Crimson.
"A... Ghost...?" Said Velvet.
The voice spoke gibberish at first, but eventually formed coherent words.
"Give up the ghost..."
"The one inside, return her..."
A white form appeared before the two ponex.
"She's one of us!"
Crimson opened fire.
Obviously, there was no effect.
Crimson and Velvet turned around and started to run, but were suddenly surrounded by a thick pink mist.
Their pipbucks advised against approaching the cloud.
"We will take her!"
Several ghostly yellow forms surrounded them.
"She's one of us!"
"She's one of us!"
"She's one of us!"
"She's one of us!"
"She's one of us!"
"She's one of us!"
Everything faded to pink, then yellow, then black.
Crimson Sweeper and Velvet Cupcake looked at the planet PPYSM-5457469 below them.
They barely remembered the event the other day.
Ghosts. Pink clouds.
And who were they after? The ghost filly, whatshername?
After being surrounded, they awoke in the outpost ship's medibay with Reisen and Snuzzle looking over them.
They didn't care. They were just glad to be off that accursed Faust-forsaken rock.
They'd known of the incident that occurred there a few years ago, where a pocket dimension was destroyed and its contents scattered across the planet's surface.
Was that ghostly storm one of them?
That ghost...
Crimson turned around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a yellow ghost float past, staring at him.
This experience totally wasn't worth the thousand credits.
