“Unnngh--Aaaaagh!” Bellesmith shot up in bed, but instantly regretted it. She winced, clutching her shoulders and writhing in waves of pain. As she inhaled, the pain doubled, and she found herself nervously clutching the edges of her muzzle. She instantly winced, feeling fresh welts along her face. It was difficult to see out her left eye, though there wasn’t much to see. Everything was pitch black dark. “Am… am I still sequencing…?” She winced, fidgeting with the soft quilt and bedsheets rolled up to her body. “Imre?”
“You are awake, darling…”
Belle gasped, her body jolting. She pressed herself against a wooden wall. As her hooves felt along the structure, she could sense the creaking bulkheads and jostling motion of an entire airship around her. “The Steel Wing…”
Before her, like a comet being born, a single candle lit. Shell’s tear-stained face appeared, gazing longingly at her from afar. He lit a second candle, a third, and cast a dim glow over the middle of the cabin.
“At last, after all th-these cold, punishing nights, I’ve found you, my beloved.”
Belle breathed… breathed… breathed… and froze, squinting oddly at him.
“I knew that you had not forgotten about m-me,” Shell said, his voice breathy and horrifically vulnerable. He bore a smile, and it chilled Belle more than any expression he had seen on the stallion’s weathered face. “She brought you back. I… I was wrong for doubting that she would. I… I’ve been s-so very wrong, Imre…” His muzzle grimaced, and he collapsed over the edge of the table, causing the candlelight to dance over his suddenly weeping figure. “About everything… all that I could have given you… all th-that I should give you…” He brought two hooves to his face and wept into his forelimbs, his shoulders shaking and quaking.
Belle bit her lip. She tried to stand up, but winced once more from the pain throbbing through her body. “Nnnngh… Sp-Spark…” She looked down at her forelimbs. Two huge bruises stretched across her coat. With a foggy head, she slurred, “Enforcer Shell… I… I-I think that you’re mistaken--”
He was suddenly lurching at the bedside. “Did it h-hurt, Imre?!”
Belle jerked back with a shriek, tilting her head as far back as she could from the stallion. There was no stopping the gentle caress of his once-broken hoof as it ran across her thin forest of chestnut mane hair.
“Did it hurt you coming back to the surface?” Shell’s one good eye glistened as he smiled bitterly. “C-coming back to the light?” He gulped. “To me?”
The mare clenched her teeth. Her eyes swam across the ceiling, then found the faint silhouette of a door beyond. Starlight swam across a slight crack in the entrance to Shell’s cabin. The Steel Wing was moving.
“Where…” Belle gulped, fumbled for words, and murmured, “Where are you t-taking us…?” She nearly vomited. “...f-father?”
“Far… far away…” Shell smiled, sniffled, and smiled softer. His hoof was now caressing her cheek. “Somewhere far away from this…” His venomous returned in a brief, curt hiss. “Away from Ledo! Away from death!” With a wheezing exhalation, he stumbled back onto his haunches and stammered, “A place where we can begin a move. And… and though your mother won’t be there…” He clenched his teeth and shook his head repeatedly. The next words came out in a pitiful squeak. “We can begin again. I know, it Imre.” He ran a hoof across his quietly weeping face. “I know it. I know it I know it I know it I know it…”
Belle stared nervously at him, her lips pursed in awe.
“So much… s-so much that I could have given you, dear Imre…” Shell’s voice droned, muffled against his forelimbs. “Nothing that I-I could have won… in bullets and bloodshed.” He stared up at her, one eye brimming with tears. “But now I know that I had given you enough.” His lips curved. “You remember the days… the warm days we had… you and I… and your mother…” His teeth shone as white as a sailing kite in some far off dream. “We can have that again. I’ll bring the warm days back again.”
“I…” Belle shuffled nervously. “Father, I-I think…”
“What is it, Imre?” Shell knelt at the bedside, grasping the mare’s hooves in his own. “What is it that you desire? Let me provide it for you!”
“Pr-provide it… for me…?”
“It’s alright…” Shell’s smile wavered between fear and sincerity. “We’re alone now. The Doctor’s vanished. The enemies and betrayers of our Confederacy are far away. It’s just you, me, the heavens, and the future…” He leaned forward. “I can take you there! I can take you anywhere! All you need to do is ask, Imre. Just… ask…”
“I don’t think that… that…” Belle winced. Just then, her tail twitched, and she felt the unmistakable weight of the sound stone lodged in her hairs. Gulping, she looked towards Shell and put on the most tender smile she could muster. “Actually… f-father, there is something.” She took a deep breath “Something that would mean the entire world to me.”
Shell leaned forward, eye bright as a moon. “Yes…?”
pffft
I really hope Belle cooks up something good for Shell. See if she can get him to lend his firepower.
So Shell's whole point of sequencing was to essentially erase Belle and replace her with his dead daughter. What a bastard.
At least maybe now he'll have something productive to do with his insanity. Maybe. Hopefully. If he doesn't screw things up again.
3649726
While it appears Belle may be experiencing the same sorts of sequencing problems that brought Rainbow Dash out in her, I do not want to say for sure that that was Shell's plan. He's just too much on the other side of insane, and it was Belle who offered to try and sequence. I think the crazy one is just taking advantage of his inability to discern reality and a certain unicorn's brain trauma.
I am torn. Part of me says the last day or so "Imre" has been speaking through Belle, but the other part says that Imre wouldn't have anything nice to say to Shell. Chances are she's been murmuring things while unconscious and he's still crazier than ever.
Besides, it's a lot stronger message that Imre is well and truly dead while Shell tries hopelessly and endlessly to say it isn't the case. It fights right in with the futility of his beleaguered nature, not to mention the mental gymnastics he's going through.
3649726 "If he doesn't" - you mean "until he does".
~Basso
Not really much to say here. Shell is bonkers, but he might at least provide something useful. As useful as an itchy trigger finger can be, at any rate.
Wow. I think, at this point, that killing Shell would be a kindness. I feel conflicted in hoping that someone gives him that kindness.
Also, now would be a good time for "Imre" to ask Daddy Dearest to take a family trip to Seclorum's camp.
How can anypony - anybody - ever break free from their own sin? I believe that there is a solution for any sin - no matter how far it has gone. While the administration of that solution is quite debatable, the solution itself is not (at least not in any circle I'm apart of).
On a quite similar topic, who can turn around a character in a story except the author himself? After all, how would the character exist without the author? He would not of course. The same author who writes a character is the same author who writes a new nature for that character.
But if the author does it, then how could it possibly happen? And if it happens, then how can the reader possibly know that it happens except by reading how the same character now has a new activity?
But what if the author already believes that the character has already become what he has done and has achieved his identity? What can be done then?
Lightning Bearer and the Dragon God of Chaos are flying towards Seclorum.
Rainbow Dash is flying after them.
Kera and the party are flying after Rainbow.
Noble Jury prepares to take off towards Seclorum.
Then the Steel Wing prepares to change course towards Seclorum.
And then there's Khao. No idea what she'll do.
Yep, there will be lots and LOTS of fireworks coming our way.
MERRY CHRISTMAS! XD
3650202
NO
xmas is on the 25th.
not the 19th.
it's ok. until today I thought it was on the 31st.
Shell v. Seclorum... this will be... interesting.
Dat Shell, still being a crazy motherfucker. But it looks like the tables have turned in Belle's favor now that he thinks she's got Imre's ghost in her or whatever.
3650376
well, the story might have advanced to the grand conflict by Christmas.
The biggest clusterfuck since Blue Nova is indeed coming together. I think I've said it before, but with some luck Nagu'n devours Shell, Khao, Princess Lassi and Seclorum (and Roarke, of course) and then chokes of them, solving all our problems at once. I also know I've posted this before, but to commemorate the actual realistic probability of Floyds meeting Nagu'n, have it once more:
th09.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2011/049/6/b/the_challenge_by_lhuin-d39tlz0.jpg
3649793 I had gotten the rather sure perception back then that Belle understood that Shell was believing her to be replaced with Imre (because she showed him that she knew things from Imre's memory) and found that reassuring him of that was the only way to save her life.
3650781
Woah, neat.
Talk about a fucking epic showdown...
Although, realistically, the most Floyd-boy could probably manage to do in that situation is buy a little time. Still, he'd go out with one hell of a bang. Or chomp. Or a sizzle. Or a stomp. Or all of the above!
BUT HEY, let's not jump to any conclusions
The Shell fractures further. Implosion imminent.
3650781 She'd get a hairball from eating Lasairfion
3650781
The question is not if Shell thinks Belle is Imre, the questions are if:
1) Shell's plan was to recapture Belle — No, I don't think so.
1a) Shell, upon finding Belle, wanted to "replace" her — Probable, but in Shell's mental state he's glossed over how the process works, and what he wants is impossible.
and
2) If Belle has a new case of multiple personality disorder, in which she switches to Imre — not enough evidence to say for sure, but my own feeling is that no, she isn't pulling an Eljunbyro-style mix up here. I think it's pretty clear that Shell is projecting heavily, and true to himself, is so sure of himself that he literally can't accept anything else to be the truth.
The bottom line is that Shell is so mentally unraveled that none of his plans or ideas make any real sense, or are thought through beyond the first step. He sees something he wants, and goes immediately after it without a plan, leading to ending up in situations for which he has no protocol. That is, a bunch of half-baked ideas thrown together haphazardly by a madman. The logic is flawed, short-sighted, obsessive, deranged, narrow minded, and legitimately insane. The dramatically ironic thing is that this is not any different from who he was before, except now it's manic. Maybe it always was.
Shell creates his own truth, and always has.
I'm fairly certain Belle is just playing along to get Shell to inadvertently help her out, but part of me wonders if she really does have a few pieces of Imre trapped inside of her mind... and how the relationship between two minds in one body would play out.
24
3651269
Allow me change some pronouns on this comment:
3651269 Which is what I've been saying. She isn't being Imre, she's playing Imre - and rather horribly, too.
3651453
The difference being that Rainbow Dash doesn't have a complex about it. The difference between spontaneity and insanity in character study.
Like all things Austraeoh, it comes down to loyalty, that is, the impetus for actions, the reason for action. Rainbow Dash found (and sometime finds) it difficult to be selfish, Shell finds it difficult to be altruistic. When Rainbow does something on her own, it is inevitably for someone else. When Shell does things for others, it is inevitably to further himself alone.
3650020
Also, I forgot to put this here last night, but I feel that this is quite relevant. Or it could become relevant.
Ow.
Shell's tortured spirit is literally oozing soul-crushing woe. Reading this was painful. Nobody should have to deal with this.
I do not envy Belle. I know I wouldn't be able to cope in that situation.
I certainly don't look forward to the inevitable instance where it is revealed that Imre has actually passed on, and it was the good doctor all along.
Belle is playing Maxwells Demon with the super critical nuclear core that is Shell.
Hes already detonating, all we can do is watch and wait and see just who and how, anyone can escape the Fallout.
Hmm...
Belle needs to play along, then shoot him in the back of the head with Tweaks mana-pistol when nobody is looking, but after she gets him to change course to a useful place
3651748Yeah, that sounds interesting now that you say it. I wonder how she will develop as a character in that regard.
3650752
Does that mean we get a CHRISTMAS PRESENT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Jeeze, tension! Knowing that any second could be the moment Shell snaps back into savage beating mode...
Here's hoping Belle can keep up the act long enough for... actually, everyone else is pretty busy right now... Yeah, Belle is screwed.
3654990 She can keep it up for a few hundred chapters. In this story, anyone can keep anything up for a few hundred chapters.
Like Shell chasing Dash.
~Basso
Somepony better pick up the phone,because I fucking called it.
I knew Shell would think that he'd brought Imre back in Belle's body.
3656132
Yeah, missed that at first. noticed the "two mouths" thing a few chapters later.
I doubt she has two heads though, haven't seen that anywhere. So that leaves some very.... interesting body configurations.
3657349 I was thinking 4 eyes and 2 nostrils on the head, as it would be shaped like a W converging to one dragon body.
Belle is about to play a very dangerous game. Her life hangs in the balance upon the fulcrum of Shell's dwindling mental faculties, between mournful guilt over his daughter and his rage over absolutely everything else.
"Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love, but what we lose- what is gone is gone." -- Peter S Beagle
Oh no. This is going to feel bad. Using Shell in his mentally broken state, like this.
>inb4 sex
IIIIIt's Dashie's Second Get-Backing Adventure!!
Interesting...but putting a dead pony's conscience into another's body tends to not go well the first time you try it. I really don't know what Belle will ask for, though. Se can't specifically mention the Noble Jurors or he'll know something's up. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. Every day I get a little bit closer to the latest chapter...
Just watch out Belle. Trying to manipulate psychopathic murderers usually doesn't end well.
-Spirit
3771944 delusional characters are interesting. i work around them daily (dementians)
if he truely thinks hes talking to imre, he will listen to her. Belle's only parameter is not to be too fat fetched and realistic in her requests. otherwise, she more or less has Shell in her fetlocks right now. all shell has to do is play along and there wont be any problems.
Shell has lost his mind completely.
im not sure if ive stated one way or the other in Odrsjot here or any other spot in the series, but I don't hate Shell, or if I do, not anymore. I certainly don't like him but....he has some pity. He's literally nothing more than an insane man, driven to such lengths through misplaced devotion and callous oversight. he is, as has been said numerous times before, nothing more than a husk of rage, sorrow, and delusion.
Jeez, Belle's gonna be a regular host of personalities if she keeps up with this game for much longer.
Oh boy. Here's hoping she's maneuvering him to put a bullet in his head. Goodness knows at this point he needs it almost as much as he deserves it, and I don't like her chances of convincing him to do much useful.
Send him to the warfront. Luna knows we could use the firepower.
My God, someone put this guy out of his misery already!
5890976
Agreed.
The Doctor? Doctor who?!