“Gah, you look like a clown,” Ron chuckled as his son angled himself, carefully, down on the seat opposite the small, faux-wooden table he sat at.
“Fair enough,” Brian smiled back. True, he did look quite outrageous in his custom-ordered orange with yellow rectangle, wide-hooped clown trousers, white greasepaint caked liberally across his exposed flesh, and a black coat with similarly colored clawed gloves, but the infamous fictional-pirate Gekko Moria was genuinely white-skinned and obese. Rather, it was the pirate Buggy who was a true clown, and a more Aguste inspired one at that. Though, at that point he’d have to admit that Moria did give off a pretty classical Whiteface Clown vibe … but, he knew his dad simply didn’t have the same level of interest in those fields of entertainment that he did. The two-word reply was all that really needed to be said between them.
It was quite the coincidence that both of them were able to be here together at all too. Brian in town for the anime convention, and Ron in town for another police conference, but they were both glad they were able to spend a little extra time together. In fact, that’s what Ron had come to the bustling convention center for: lunch. The massive complex housed a number of mid- to high-tier restaurants, so he knew he’d be able to buy them both a good meal before he left and was forced to attend more meetings.
“Oh, and hey,” Brian said, fumbling through one of his jacket’s side pockets with his gloved hand, “check out what I found.”
Carefully lifting his hand out, a white stick pinched between his fingers, he revealed a small, bite-sized black sphere with thin golden spirals running across its surface save the bottom half, which was covered with long, green icing-leaves which curled very slightly at their tips, and a small green stem at the very top, and all wrapped up in a clear, plastic wrapper.
“And what’s that?” Ron asked, wincing a little as the phone in his shirt-pocket whirred distinctly, informing him of yet another email he would need to read though, hopefully, not have to reply to.
“Ehhhh, suffice to say it’s a mock-up of the magic fruit that gives this,” Brian said, gesturing to himself, “guy his shadow super-powers. Like moving his own away from him, and even solidifying it. But it’s also a cake-pop. Bought it from a novelty dressed vendor. Kinda looked like the guy from the start of Aladin. The good one,” he grinned. “Thought about eating it myself, but, luckily, I checked the tag. It’s pecan Italian cream cheese, and, well, you know I don’t like nuts in my sweets. So, I thought I’d save it for you. The guy said they were made this morning so it’s fresh.”
Holding it out across the table, Ron smiled, “Thanks son. But,” he paused, reaching for his phone with one hand while the other began to twist away at the wrapper with the other, “let me just check this email right quick and then we can get to lunch. Everyone needs-”
“-the Chief.” They said, finishing the long-standing phrase together.
Ron smiled, raising the treat to his mouth. He normally wouldn’t have indulged, being about to eat to a proper lunch, but it was only a single bite and his favorite flavor of cake to boot (and if it sucked, he could wash it out with a good meal). So, as his teeth bit through the hair-line, hard-sugar exterior, rather than the soft texture of cake he was expecting, he was, instead, met with the disturbing texture of an apple mixed with stale bread. Worse, it had an extremely bitter, unripe taste that was nothing like an apple at all.
Beyond the growing urge to down the nearest dark draft he could get his hands on to wash the offending taste off his tongue, his eyes became suddenly heavy, and he thought he heard his son shouting at him from a great distance as his body went slack and the darkness fell completely over his eyes.
With the stench of sulphur burning his nose and his back aching, Ron winced back into consciousness, the overwhelming and oppressive heat yet another confounding element keeping him from making any sudden movement. Rolling gingerly onto his right side, memories of sleeping on uneven terrain while camping from his childhood parted through his sleep clouded mind. He’d never liked it, even back then. Camping was great, mind you, but sleeping on anything besides an air-mattress out in nature was for fools and Buddhist monks as far as he was concerned.
None of this strangeness was able to keep his police training from kicking in, dusty though some of it was, and immediately began taking stock of his surroundings and himself. He wasn’t chained down, since he had been able to roll over. Slowly rolling onto his back again, he raised his arms and slowly pulled them down his chest, concentrating on his sense of touch as his fingers ran over his shirt collar, phone, still in pocket, the gun strap beneath his tan button-down sailing-shirt, his dark, blue jean pants and the second, personal phone that he kept attached to his belt. It was all there, and the sensation of touch didn’t seem to be delayed or overstimulating. Wiggling his toes, they were still in his black cowboy boots, along with his dress socks.
Sitting up, slowly, using his arms to help prop him up, grunting, he finally began to look down at himself. Nothing seemed to be out of place except for the sweat that had been dampening his good clothes. But the dim, ruddy light could still be hiding some things. Raising his hand in front of his face, he wiggled his fingers. No blur. He snapped his fingers. The sound seemed to come readily enough. His senses all seemed to be working fine.
Standing up carefully, his lower back succinctly reminded him of the sixty-three years they had shared together. He was almost certain he wasn’t drugged, but the cavernous, rocky tunnel he now stood in suggested that that wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities. In front of him he saw light. A dull, red and orange glow, behind him, darkness. With only one sensible option before him, he moved gingerly towards the light, traces of ash and a small cocktail of foul-smelling gasses assaulting him as another heated sigh of wind swept by him.
Eyes already adjusted to the dimness, he started noting the details in the rock around him. They were smooth … ish, and gently sloped downward. Suggesting that he was in a lava-tube, and one large enough you could have stored a small aircraft in. So, the chances of him utterly ruining his boots, or having his back already in shreds from fresh, jagged obsidian, wasn’t one of his current worries. Though, the fresh smells and light ahead of him didn’t leave him feeling any better about keeping himself or his lungs in one piece.
None of this made any sense. Untucking his shirt and undershirt, he patted his back, cliché though it was, to see if his kidneys were still present.
Not so much as a blemish across his back or front, besides his own beer-belly.
“Shit. Fuck,” Ron coughed spinning on his heels, away from the wind and the ash that had just splashed across his eyes. Lifting his hands to his face quickly, he stopped just before they touched and, gritting his teeth at the discomfort but unwilling to risk potential shards of volcanic glass tearing into the flesh of his eyes and blind him, he waited, reaching for the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket and gently pressed it to his eyes, letting the tears flow and push out the offending material.
After the stinging relented, he waited for another two minutes, counting the seconds out, just to be safe. Looking down at the handkerchief as he brought it away, he let out a grateful sigh. Not a single speck of red. Just the off-white of sweat and light grey of smeared ash.
“Ugh, vermin.”
Ron looked up at the deep, sudden voice that rumbled through him like the bass of some punk’s trunk speakers, paling as the growl that followed sounded closer to diesel tractor than anything made of flesh. What little light he’d had to begin with was now blocked by the silhouette of something large, and definitely reptilian, that took up almost half of the tunnel’s mouth.
The great beast opened its maw, the snouted head splitting in two as a pale, yellow light began to grow in the back of its throat and illuminate the tunnel. Ron tensed as he saw the curved, hand-sized fangs reveal themselves, followed by the massive, black claws, each as long as his forearm, at the end of dark red forelimbs that would no doubt turn him coleslaw if he tried to run past the thing.
The Beast.
The Dragon.
‘Am I in hell?’
The thought thundered through him like lightning, only to be crowded out by the storm of all of the things he could have tried if this thing was merely some human thug with two hundred pounds of muscle on him. His pistol was useless. Even if it had the penetrating power to make it past the things scaly hide, it had too much bulk. Even if he could pull off some bullshit, Hollywood shot through its serving tray sized eye eye, because he was under no illusion it would do anything but ricochet if he aimed anywhere else, that didn’t even guarantee the right angle to reach the monster’s brain, let alone a part of it that was immediately lethal.
There was nothing he could do.
Even if he could run back far and fast enough to get out of the blast zone, even if the sudden heat didn’t fry or flatten his lungs from the sudden changes in heated air-pressure, even if their still remained enough oxygen in the tunnel to breathe, he was still at the entrance to the dragon’s lair. Running would accomplish nothing besides leaving him exhausted. The absolute best-case scenario was that the lava-tunnel was somehow connected to a dark, unexplored, greater cave system he could somehow get to that wasn’t connected in any way to any lava pools that would leave him chocking to death on their toxic gases long enough to not die of dehydration. He didn’t even have a lighter on him, having left it in his truck since the hotel had a no smoking policy. So, in truth, best case scenario was to fall blindly to his death in a pit. And even now, he hadn’t stopped sweating. Three days wouldn't be his limit without a drink to rehydrate. It would have been nothing short of a miracle to last that long with nothing else going against him.
He didn’t even raise his arms. Why make the pain of his oncoming death last so much as a millisecond longer?
The light grew further, and Ron pushed aside the queer feeling of his shadow lengthening out behind him as the last spurts of his adrenaline-fueled mind playing one last trick on his senses.
‘Please let this just be a nightmare, God.’ He silently prayed. His jaw too tight in terror to let a single sound passed it.
Closing his eyes, it grew hotter still, and Ron waited for it all to be over.
Sizzle blinked her inner eye-lids, displeased.
The small, bright brown and deep blue creature, clearly a sign it was poisonous, was supposed to be a pile of ash, but she had watched as what looked like the thing’s shadow had peeled off of her cave-floor and wrapped around it like an egg. A few moments later it began to stretch back down, but, rather than fall back to the floor where a shadow belonged, it, instead, stood next to the thing, squashed down into the same height and shape.
Things were supposed to burn when you breathed fire on them. Even rock would burn if you hit it enough times. So, undeterred, she began to inhale again. Apparently, it was going to take a few more blasts before she was going to get the rest she so deserved. It had been a rather busy day of lounging, and she needed her beauty sleep. But, just as the heat began to reach half-way up her gullet, she watched as the shadow-thing began to twist its shape again, thinning out and shooting at her like some long, extended pole. She almost screamed in pain as half of her sight blinked out, but fell onto the floor of her home instead as the lights in her maw and remaining eye winked out.
Ron blinked again.
He’d been doing that a lot in the last few seconds, and not just because of the ash from earlier. Though there was now a steady intake of air into the super-heated tunnel sucked in the cool, relatively, air from outside, and, with a quick glance down, he looked like he had just come out of a pool for how drenched in sweat he now was.
The dragon, for what else could it have been, that had been seconds away from turning him to ash was now dead. And it was all thanks to his shadow, which he really could feel, like a different set of gravity or pull from a magnet, and could shift itself into other shapes far beyond any hand-puppetry, and could even give itself a physical presence that no ordinary shadow could ever possibly have.
“A magic shadow. He can shape it, and even make it … solid.” He mouthed the half-remembered words.
He’d wanted to not die by fire, prepared though he was. And the shadow had responded to him, wrapping around him like an armored bowling ball.
He’d wanted to kill the murderous dragon, and it had extended like a baton, skewing its brain through its eyeball. And that gave him pause.
It had spoken to him. It was at least feasible it might have been reasoned with. Though, if this was really Hell, then the thing was either a fallen angel, and therefore incapable of doing anything but evil no matter what bargain might have been reached, or else, maybe, some other damned soul that had been twisted by its time so far from God’s Grace.
If he wasn’t still so sore from laying there on the stone, he’d have wanted a chair, and while he was making wishes, maybe the chair could fly him up and away from all of this demonic shit.
And with his desire formed, he felt and, turning, watched as his shadow morphed, flattening onto the ground and then stretched out into a square, each side as long as he was tall. It then ballooned up around him in a cube with a small space hollowing out half-way down for him to sit upon.
If he still wasn’t ninety … eighty percent sure he was still in hell, he’d have let more than just a quiet sigh hush passed his lips.
Ok, he had lift, but did he have forward motion?
The black square just sat there, floating.
Ron frowned.
“Forward,” he commanded, and was pleased to see his chair move further down the tunnel and towards the light he’d initially aimed for. It was time to take the lay of the land.
“Slow,” he said in a hushed tone as they came up to the cavemouth, just past the limp, pointed tip of the dragon’s tail. “Stop.”
Still within cover of the cave’s darkness he peered out onto the landscape, and nearly sprung from his seat in shock, his hands clenching down onto their rectangular armrests to keep himself steady. For the second time today, Ron felt his heart drop into his stomach.
A blanket of smoke blotted out the sky entirely with occasional drifts of ash spiraling down. This cover was supplied by a truly massive composite volcano. From its red, glowing side vents he could see the small silhouetted forms of others dragons lounging beside and even in that lava streams that oozed forth from them. And, if he didn’t miss his mark, the volcano was nearly a mile off, so the dragons were, at least some multiple times as large as the one he’d already slain.
The surrounding land was no better. Lava streams gathered and became molten rivers that flowed across a brown, ashy, rocky ground that was almost entirely flat but for the spikes of vicious, obsidian shards that gleamed an evil red in small groves, and stood anywhere from his own size to large enough to shade one of those monsters where they lounged. What room was left was then either filled with craters, small, puckered hills of cooling lava, or what looked like the makings of a shield volcano, but given he saw a dragon crawl out from its opening at the top, that would make it a burrow as well. And while he wasn’t certain if it was just a trick of the light and the shards, he would almost swear he could make out a handful of blackened, leafless trees spotted out across the land as well.
In short, it was a true hellscape.
Ron wiped his brow again, noticing the action only because it left him with more sweat stinging into his eyes than before thanks to his sodden, hairy arm. He wasn’t going to last much longer without some kind of water, that was more self-evident than ever. But was it? Could he really die of dehydration in Hell? He certainly didn’t want to test it. And to top it all off, now he had super powers. Genuine, comic book, Marvel movie super powers. And that changed everything.
“Forward,” he commanded, the chill in his stomach growing.
The shadow, his shadow, leapt, flying through the heated air. Ron’s sweaty back squelched as he was forced back into a full, seated position at the sudden acceleration.
Thinking on it now, with so many other thoughts vying for attention, he focused. There had been no sign. No warning. No announcement of his many sins. He was just here. In a place of literal fire and brimstone. With super powers.
Even if the thought of spending eternity in a place for those of unrepentant evil, which he was ver … at least pretty certain he himself wasn’t, made his skin crawl and his heart clench in a frozen terror so deep it felt like his chest might shatter. He was, at least, sure of one thing: of all of his faults, being a bad cop was not one of them.
So, if no one was going to announce his judgement, then the least he could do was man up and announce it himself.
“Towards the dragon,” he said, and his chaired shadow obeyed.
Bringing itself to a slow, the chair began to arc down towards the ground, and towards the nearest dragon Ron had managed to spy.
“Stop,” he whispered, his chair coming to a halt a few dozen feet above the head of long, green, serpent-bodied dragon below him, one of its chameleon eyes already fixating upon him. Then, gathering his courage, in a louder voice, he said, “Dragon, I’ve come to report the death of one of your kind, and to summarily turn myself in to whatever authorities your laws deem I should.”
“DAD!” Brian bellowed, his voice splintering with his disbelief at seeing his father vanish.
It had been less than a second even, but he’d seen it. He was sure of it. A single, wavering sphere had twisted out, like the air over a fire, from the point where his father had bitten into the cake-pop and then consumed him, leaving an empty chair and a growing headache inside Brian’s skull at whatever supernatural event he’d just witnessed. What else could he call it?
‘Murder!’ Brian thought, leaping to his feet, ignoring the looks of the staff and con-goers around him as his seat rattled down to the linoleum floor behind him.
‘Thief!’ he thought, his mind leaping to the only conclusion he could think of, even as an icy chill pulled inward, deep inside his chest. An empty aching that somehow still writhed like a thing alive, begging to wring that same cold finality onto the world.
Brian grunted, and turned coolly on his heel, ignoring the fallen chair and strode swiftly towards the Dealers Room. He couldn’t run. Well, at 6’3’’ he could, and, if he had wished, he could have charged through the crowd. Battering them aside. Even without a particularly well-muscled body, he was still big. But that might have alerted The Dealer of some trouble coming. Or worse, have some misguided volunteer guard or officer of the law get in his way.
He wasn’t going to take that chance.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad back.’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
His heart crunched, lurching in his chest, as he began weaving through the crowds and to the doors of the dealer’s room, his hand moving down to reassure himself that the pocketknife he always kept in his pants was still where he’d left it. Once inside, he began to angle himself away from a small group of particularly well-dressed cosplayers who’d come as the bearers of the Triforce (Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf). And, grabbing at the hoop in his clown pants, he twisted it up to angle it closer to his body so he could squeeze between them and the dealer’s table selling Pokémon cards beside them.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad bac-’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
The Dealer was in the back center of the air-conditioned, warehouse sized space. He just needed to walk past the foam weapon dealer.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring my Dad -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
Left, two rows after the corner dealer selling decades old DC comics (the only kind that were any good anymore).
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to bring -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
On the row starting with the ugly, uncomfortable, plastic, tat-covered goggles the seller had the gall to call Steam Punk.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Get him to -’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
And turn into the make-shift alleyway between the boardgame and dice selling dealers.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Ge-’
‘Kill him if he doesn’t.’
Brian lurched to a stop, his hoop nudging into the table, causing the haphazard pieces of anime and cartoon inspired recreations and memorabilia to shudder, as he stared daggers at the back of that familiar turbaned head and baby-blue men’s gown.
The Dealer spun quickly on their heel. His warm, practiced smile already on their face before he turned, and flashed a dazzling, but not too dazzling lest they be considered little more than a Carnival Barker, smile framed by his well-groomed and oiled, black mustache and goatee.
‘Get to The Dealer.’
‘Kill him if he doesn-.’
Brian’s vision swam. He eyed the little man behind the table. He hated this five foot nothing little bean-pole wretch with every fiber of his being, but … But. He couldn’t remember why.
“Oh ho, what a rare customer you are,” The Dealer crooned, his caramel brow beginning to glisten from a few, small, growing beads of manifested stress a human like Brian was incapable of discerning as anything more than mundane, human sweat. They had felt the folding and pinching of space-time fabric and its subsequent cinching as a small speck of it flew to another location. His product most definitely had been used. It was … possible that sOMEone like themselves might find some peculiar desire to walk as the sapients of this Vibration might. But for sOMEone like himSeLF not to notice such unIQueneSs had very particular probabilities orbiting around it. “Did you not enjoy your trip? Or, perhaps you wish to take another one?”
Brain stared. Face blank. Eyes wide.
‘Get to The Dealer!’
‘Kill him if -!’
He had never, in his whole life, wanted to harm someone the way he wanted to mangle this smiling creep. An atomized mish and mash of sorrow, anger, regret, and confusion twisted, mingled, and fractured into a number of sensations he simply didn’t have the words to describe, let alone enough senses to actually feel them as they began to slowly trickle out to his limbs and his mind.
It was like something was picking away at the very core of his being. He wanted the death of this man, and somewhere, deep down, knew it was the right thing. The just thing. But his mind reeled. He had no reason to be here.
Everything felt … oblique. Like his very thoughts were below him in stagnant, arctic waters, and were now refracted from the journey. Changed and, now, not entirely his own.
His placid face and eyes betrayed none of this. But a small screaming spark within him quaked as The Dealer began to lower his hands below the table to retrieve something.
“wHY!” the strangled word tore out of his mouth as he lunged for The Dealer. His black, gloved hands clamping down on The Dealer’s arms, pinning them to his sides and pulling him across the table, as his merchandise clattered and spun to the floor below them. Brian, took a step back to keep his footing, and, again, his mind reeled.
He was holding a man, five feet though he may be, but he felt as if he was holding little more than a warm bag of air. The heaviest thing about him felt like his clothes. Brain’s thinly-muscled arms should have been quaking as much as his tearing vision. But they remained as firm as though he were holding nothing more than a small comic book, albeit one that was beginning to grow hotter.
“You’re making a scene.” The Dealer whispered in a growl, his face, and the rest of their skin, reddening.
He, who had maintained tHeIr composure in the face of CON-goers who gave off odors so wretched that they invaded and befouled higher realms of consciousness. They, who had waded into this filthy, one-directional trickle of time-stream to curse so many of these lowly, drab, unworthy things to Interesting Times had been touched by something so base that it could not even control its emotions. DisgUsTing! Clearly, he had misjudged this creature’s origins. And if they hadn’t, it would only be a problem if this happened a third time.
“Here, take this,” they sneered, a third, red colored arm expanding swiftly from his left ear, an unwrapped cake-pop in hand, “And Be Quiet.” Punctuating the remark with another arm bulging out from below his third arm’s palm, slamming up, and forcing Brian’s slightly opened mouth to bite down on the proffered sweet.
Brian gulped, a rotten, sour taste exploding across his tongue, and watched, all too briefly, as the world around him shook and silently faded out.
‘Dad!’
Staring out the windowed wall of their quiet, shared office, two pale yellow unicorn ponies sat. One, within a professionally made, perfectly stuffed, plush, brown pleather chair. The other, who had lost the coin toss, in a hastily found, well-cushioned chair that, for all of its comfort, simply wasn’t capable of giving the same sitting experience as the former.
“Well, brother of mine,” said the one in the professional chair, breaking the satisfied silence between them with his slightly nasally and lilting, baritone voice, “today was an almost a perfect day, wouldn’t you say?”
“Almost perfect?” rang a slightly nasally tenor in question. “We repaired our brotherly friendship, became the owners of this casino since Gladmane managed to get himself run out of town, and we didn’t spend so much as a wooden bit to do it. And, all while being overseen by two of the most famous heroes of the modern era, Fluttershy and Applejack, so nopony can even think about starting any rumors that we did this via less than entirely noble means. How could you call this anything but a perfect day?”
“Ah, but don’t you see dear Flim,” his brother replied, voice dripping with desire and want for yet ever more, “that is but two things we’ve managed to accomplish this fine day: repair our familial bond, and gain control of a world class casino-resort. If we had but one more victory to claim, we would have a true Hat Trick on our hooves.”
Flim only chuckled. His brother was right. The only thing better than a large profit was an even larger profit. The smile Flim continued to wear, however, began to lessen as he turned his thoughts inward, thinking. Scheming on what more might be seized from this day. After all, if they couldn’t call what they were currently riding as A Roll, then that phrase had entirely lost all meaning. Not that it mattered. They could buy a new phrase with all of the bits they were currently making even as they continued to sit there in their new office suite and did nothing more than watch all of the ponies down below entertain themselves with the flashing rides, buffets, and all manner of games of varying degrees of skill and chance.
“Say, Flam,” Flim said, turning his head to the right to look his brother in the eye, “didn’t we encourage our valued customers to sit in an empty theatre and imagine what grand sights they could see since the regular performers left once they found out how Gladmane had so cruelly manipulated them?”
“Yes,” Flam hummed, just as aware of his brother that such a feat only counted as a hold over measure at best. No where near a true, victorious stream of bits.
“Well, what if we put out a suggestion box near the exit of the Pony Fantastique Theatre where, beside it, in small, golden letters read a sign saying something to the effect of ‘Share Your Most Wonderous Imaginative Performances For Everypony To Marvel At’.”
“Ah,” Flam replied, gently twirling the edge of his red, Hungarian mustache in hoof, the wheels in his head now turning in time with his brother, “get direct market data from the customer so we can give them a directed experience that will only see them coming back again and again. Why, if we kept such a sign up, we’d be at the veritable cutting edge of market trends my genius brother.”
“Well, genius does tend to run in the family after all, my dear brother,” Flim grinned back, even as the both of them rose from their chairs to find the needed materials.
Fussing over positioning of their sign, the silver letters, for they hadn’t been able to find any gold ones, gleaming brightly on the black backing of the signpost, Flim and Flam nearly jumped out of their blue and white stiped barbershop shirts as a maroon coated mare galloped, full tilt, out of the Pony Fantastique Theatre doors.
“-onster! Monster! Run for your lives!” she screamed in obvious terror.
The open floor of the resort was a loud place, stuffed, strategically, with all manner of ear catching plinks, beeps, and chings, so it was only everypony within a few dozen feet of her that were arrested suddenly from their fun. Looking quickly back where she had fled with various shades of growing fear and concern, they were met only with the quizzical glances of Flim and Flam, still with a hoof each on the recently placed sign.
Both, after a moment’s hesitation, moved from the sign and over towards the still swinging double doors of the theatre. But, no sooner had they reached them when both were flung wide as a small stampede of pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns barreled out of the doors. Getting smacked in the face was already a nasty surprise enough, but, being but a few inches from the door, they were given one more. With the doors flung wide, with each passing body, Flim and Flam were given an uninterrupted view of the crowded, entrance hallway. The noise that should have been booming from it, that should have been magnified, that should have been funneled right into their conical ears, was only popping into their eardrums once each individual pony passed the doors, and not a moment sooner.
Sentences only heard as they passed that invisible barrier.
“-ant!”
“-under and cirrus!”
“-lide! We’re flying out of here now!”
This and more came flooding out of the theatre, and it didn’t take more than a third of it to reach the rest of the customers before their herd mentality went off. Everypony ran. Exiting the room, leaving the building, finding a place to hide in hopes that whatever was the problem would overlook them, or a fretful combination of all three.
It was almost comical how normal things still sounded afterwards. The game machines, the indoor rollercoasters, the water-slides, and all their accompanying lights and sounds were all still working just as normal. There was just nopony there to use them. Nopony, except the two owners of the building and their stinging noses.
Brian wheezed.
Cracking open his eyes, he tried to crane his neck up to look at whoever was sitting on his chest, but winced at the beam of light that flooded into his eyes.
Heeding the protestations of his body, he slowly lowered his head back down to the ground.
Everything ached. His head, his back, arms, legs, and the extra weight on his chest was making it all the more unbearable.
“What do you want?” he managed to wheeze out. Or, at least he thought he did. Cracked though his throat felt, he couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears. What had that Con Dealer done to him, he wondered. And what of his father?
A sneer twisted its way onto his face at the thought, and, while he didn’t have the strength to toss whoever was on his chest, he could at least bear the light, and glare blindly at whatever was on top of him.
So, eyes watering, that’s precisely what he did. And, for seven seconds, he saw nothing but white. But, on the eighth, the white turned to blue. A large spot of sunny sky blue in a wall of black.
“What?” he hissed. Though, again, the ringing muted whatever sound might have reached his ears. Raising his head once more, his breath to seized in his throat. Looking down, there was no one on his chest. It was just his chest. His large, obese chest, and even that was dwarfed by a whale of a stomach that would have been pulling down over his crotch but for how he was twisted down and bent at the middle into the wooden floor beneath him.
A chill began to spread through his veins, dropping a degree with each imagined explanation as to why someone would kidnap him just to fatten them up like this. Whoever that dealer had hired to do this had even resized his costume and reapplied his makeup. And, with that thought adding itself to the pile, even with a body that felt like he’d managed to do a dozen back and belly flops from an Olympic sized diving platform all at once, he gritted his teeth as he stretched his arms out to pull himself up and, for the life of him, find an exit.
Gasping for air, the ringing in his ears was met with the added sound of blood pounding into them. Thoughts of running away faded to worries that he wouldn’t even be able to hobble away as Brian just managed to get himself into a winded seating position.
Movement on his right drew his attention.
Jerking his head towards it, Brian flinched at what he could only assume was an actual wave of rats. That they were flowing down a number of leveled slopes and out a square tunnel, and paled at the thought of what they might have done to him had he not sat up a minute sooner. It was all too dark to see anything besides the general movement in his shaft of light.
Adrenaline torrenting, Brian heaved the bouncing weight vest of his skin and the rest of his body up, nearly falling down at the radically shifting weight, and did his level best to turn on his heel and move in the opposite direction of whatever those vermin had been.
Flim and Flam stared at the empty stage.
Well, more empty. Even from outside in the main lobby, they could see the splintered remains of center stage where that giant onion, wearing a suit straight out of a Nightmare Night story, had clambered out of after having obviously fallen in through the ceiling given the shaft of sunlight pouring through it. That was going to be a costly repair, though, thankfully, without a need to worry about weather given their building’s position above the cloud line. Still, not nearly as costly as the lack of business a rampaging Son of Sasquash through their building would bring once word got out, to say nothing of what it was likely doing to everything in storage.
“Our holdings,” Flim whispered in horror.
“Our investment,” Flam panicked, setting both brothers to gallop, straight into the theatre.
