Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Joseph had woken with hangovers and headaches in the past, but nothing could prepare him for this pain screaming throughout his head. He began to regain consciousness, although the jackhammer pounding away at his skull wasn't doing him any favours. He tried moving his limbs, but to no avail. The thing that struck him as odd was his complete lack of ability to move at all, save his head and neck. He pulled and tugged at his muscles, but he couldn't move anything below his neck. It was like he was buried up to his neck in concrete.
"Ughh..." he moaned from his aching everything. "What happened?" He opened his eyes, but there was nothing to be seen. The area was shrouded in a veil of the blackest ink. He rolled his neck to relieve the stress which earned him a couple pops of the vertebrae, like cracking knuckles.
He took a moment to try and assess his situation. 'So I'm god-only-knows-where, in a room more black that a burnt pot of onions, with a leaky pipe that's beginning to piss me off...'
For every drip that fell, his equine ears twitched in annoyance. ’Hey, Nightmare, you up there?'
He waited several seconds, but there was no reply.
'Yoohoo, anyone up there? I could really use your help right about now.'
Still nothing.
'Answer me you living cloud of soot! What are you doing in my head, having an imaginary Siesta?'
He tried waiting several minutes for a reply, or at least something in return, but ultimately nothing came.
With nothing else to do, he could only begrudgingly accept his position for as long as he could before a thought occurred to him. Joseph closed his eyes—which was redundant, yes, but eliminating certain senses heightens others. He tried his best to ignore the headache, which wasn't easy due to a lack of water or food to abate it.
He took a deep, calming breath, letting his ears do the work for him. He figured that since he was a magical creature with magic, and not knowing how long he would be here, thought it a better and more constructive use of his time to try and figure out a way he could use magic, if at all.
He recalled Twilight saying she would teach him magic, but ultimately never got the chance to. And now was just as good a time as any. But... He had no idea how to even begin! He grumbled in frustration at this and just elected to listen.
Apart from the constant dripping, Joseph heard a squelchy noise come from somewhere off to his left. He turned his head in the direction to give it more attention. Several seconds later he heard a more drawn out squelch. His brow furrowed in concentration and his ears pivoted towards the source in full concentration.
Squelch.
Squuueeelllcchhh.
The second instance of the noise sounded like whatever was making the noise, was... moving?
'If the first few times were footsteps being planted, then maybe the last was one being lifted?'
Squuueeelllcchhh.
"Who's there?" he commanded. "I can hear you!"
Having been found out, there were several more unabated squelchy steps before the figure hidden by the inky veil, disregarding any sense of stealth or surprise it thought it had, stopped in front of Joseph.
He could feel its terrifying presence in front of him, then in that moment felt an unnervingly cold breath of air exhaled from a nose hit him across his muzzle, causing him to turn his face in repulsion.
He felt something touch his forehead, at the base of his horn, and the jackhammer inside his head went into overdrive.
Thousands of thoughts and countless precious memories; all flooded through his mind like a thousand movie reels playing at once. He screamed in pain, eyes involuntarily opening and widening to reflect his pain where movement failed. He felt his face contort in ways he didn't think possible out of the pain radiating throughout his head.
Then, in the instant the touch against his forehead left, he passed out yet again, head slumped forward.
Joseph wasn't sure how much more time had passed before he woke up this time around. But, unlike last time, his eyes opened to light. Hazy green was all he could see at the moment.
At some point, his head had rolled off to the side while passed out, and he felt a trail of moisture running down his cheek and neck. Joseph tried to pick his head up, but his neck muscles had temporarily become too weak from being in one position for an unknown amount of time to properly support anything, and his head immediately dropped in the opposite direction. This position, however, yielded a hazy black figure silhouetted against more green.
Each being stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. His eyes began to clear momentarily and the figure before him slowly became more apparent.
Its horn, a twisted, crooked root, sprouted from the forehead. Sitting atop its head, poking out of the oily, grey-and-turquoise mane was what could be described as a fin that resembled a crown, with four lit, light-producing nodes that were illuminating the room. Its skin, if it could be called that, was not reminiscent of anything he'd met in his three days on this world.
It bore a striking resemblance of reptilian skin, although more solid and not pliable. There were sections of it that nestled neatly together like puzzle pieces. The neck had the appearance of armoured plating; downward pointing plates overlapping each other. It looked to be an amalgam of tree-like appendages, the basic shape of an equine in Joseph's previous encounters, with hairless skin that seemed to interlock like plate armour or insect shells would.
Its face seemed regal, like that of Luna or Celestia, but gone was the calm visage; instead being replaced by the kindest of threatening stares that would make the most strong-willed of people think twice about crossing. It stared at Joseph some more, and Joseph stared at it until it spoke two words; two words emphasised with genuine confusion and puzzlement about him.
"Who are you?" The voice sounded arguably like someone was speaking through a voice box filtered by a vacuum cleaner. "You taste..." It smacked its lips together as if to sample a morsel of food. "...familiar, somehow."
"Gyuh?" Joseph dumbly muttered, his new head still trying to sort itself out.
Joseph managed to elevate his head slightly to see what this thing was pointing at. The colour which filled his vision was found to be a gel-like, gelatinous substance coating every available surface like honeycomb in a hive. Only instead of hexagonal combs in which honey was stored, pods, or chrysalis' –like that of a monarch butterfly–were pasted to a wall by the same gloop they were made of. In each pod there was a pony, with over a dozen in the little room.
Joseph recognised one of them the second he laid eyes on it.
"Sweetie Belle!" he exclaimed. His eyes shot to the creature. "What did you do to her!?"
"She is fine," it said dismissively. "But you... You have the body of a normal alicorn pony, but yet you have two souls! One is very much dark and powerful, but the other is nothing unlike I’ve seen since I’ve been alive. The body of one of those ponies but with two souls claiming home: one dark and very powerful, and one I've never experienced before. You're the most interesting thing I have ever seen. Or rather, the most delicious I’ve snacked upon."
"Ugh, do I even want to know?"
"We eat memories and emotions mostly," it said apathetically. "They give us our energy, but we also eat regular food to sustain ourselves."
"What are you talking about?" Joseph asked in confusion. "You look like a twisted deformity born of a tree and one of those ridiculous ponies. What's your name? Harold? Do you have a friend whom you call Bob?"
The creature gave a fierce hiss and snarl, striking Joseph across the muzzle with one of its forelimbs, earning him a short gash across the corner of his mouth. "I am not someone you can talk to contemptuously! I am a Queen; you shall address me in such a manner!" The self-proclaimed "Queen" magically grasped Joseph's horn and yanked it back to stare into his eyes from above as she looked down on him. "Now tell me," she seethed, "who exactly are you?"
Wincing from the grasp against his horn and cut on his muzzle, Joseph had no choice but to answer. "Just when I got used to everything it got flipped upside down. So now I'd like to take a minute, so just sit right there. Let me tell you how I became a girl and an evil mare."
"Enough games!" she roared. Joseph's eyes widened with genuine fear.
He wisely decided to play it safe for now.
"I honestly don't know how to answer that!" Joseph pleaded. "One minute I was walking down the street, the next thing I know I'm waking up in the body that belongs to someone these 'ponies' are calling 'Nightmare Moon'!"
The queen released Joe's horn and turned her back to him, sitting down and looking over one of its legs like a manicurist would a hand. "Ah yes. I've heard the legends surrounding her. I'm not as old as I appear, at least not old enough to have been around when Nightmare Moon tried staking a claim to Equestria." She looked over her shoulder and spoke with genuine curiosity. "But that doesn't explain why I sense two entities inside your head."
"I have no idea either," Joe relented. "What happened was I was helping a woman in distress when the man that was attacking her, turned on me after I pulled her away from him. He caught me with his knife, bing bang boom, here I am."
The queen just gave a contemplative "Hmmm". "You share the same mind I'm assuming?" Joseph nodded, then the queen just started laughing cynically at Joseph's expense. "Nightmare used ancient magic..."
"I know it was a spell, but I don't see how old it was making any difference."
"It's simple. Nightmare used a spell to bring you here from your world. She was dying and needed a soul to power the vessel she was possessing. Or at least recharge hers..."
"Yeah, I've already established that with Twilight. What are you getting at?"
"Just... Putting it out in the open." Her expression suddenly become dour as she turned and marched back at Joseph. "You still haven't answered my other question: why are your memories so familiar to me?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know!?" Joseph exclaimed defensively. "Apparently you're the memory expert, so you should know!" he seethed.
"Nga 'eveng..." the queen replied exasperatedly. "You're like a hatched drone making noise; don't know what to do."
Joseph rolled his eyes in response and said, "Well when you get ripped from your world then I think I can do as much complaining as damn well please!" He paused and gave the queen a cheeky grin. "I can't move, my leg is cramping, I'm hung—mmmhpph!" The queen picked up a glob of the green gel in her magic and slathered it over his mouth, letting a sigh of relief wash over her.
"Pardon me for not introducing myself. I am Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings. This room is, how shall I say, a sort of temporary holding cell. Your friend over there has not been harmed, rather she is in an induced coma. You might be wondering about the Sweetie that captured you for me." Chrysalis went over to Sweetie's pod so she could look between it and Joseph.
"Simply put; we can shape-shift. Sometimes physical, sometimes an illusion. What you saw was one of my drones impersonating this filly. Capture a pony, replace them with a drone. Feed off the pony until it's an empty shell then put it into a conversion pod. When all that's done, I pull my operative drone, leaving the pony to disappear. Well, they've been missing for weeks but it's more a case of muddying details to throw the ponies off my trail." Chrysalis demonstrated this shape-shifting ability by enveloping her form in green fire. When it died down, in her place was an exact copy of Sweetie Belle.
Joseph just regarded Chrysalis with an evil glower. They both knew that if Joseph got out, he would repeat everything that Chrysalis was telling him to Celestia, Luna, and Twilight, but she had a contingency plan for that.
"Oh and don't worry about the second entity in your head," she began to say in Sweetie's voice before shifting back to her initial form. "They were being troublesome while I was poking around so I locked them away somewhere in your head. They will be freed when you leave. In other words, when I let you go. Although 'finding' each other might prove difficult."
Chrysalis' horn lit up with an oily aura and the sludge smeared across Joseph's mouth simply dripped away to the floor, the splat not easy to ignore. "And why are you telling me this? You should know that—"
"—every villain's plans fail or get turned against them when they reveal themselves to their rival, loosely speaking in this instance."
"How did you..."
Chrysalis tapped her horn with her hoof, if gnarled branches shaped into hooves could be called that. "Memory and emotions, remember? If you’ve seen it I can find it. From the disproportionate amount of aptly named, 'motion pictures' your brain has recorded, anyone with sufficient magic to traverse memories will find everything."
A sly smirk spread across Joseph's face. "So... What else did you find, hmm?"
The corner of Chrysalis' nose curled in disgust and she turned to leave. "I will be back shortly. My consorts need attending to, and my drones need feeding."
As she turned to leave, the glow of the bioluminescent bulbs adorning the fin-crown dimmed slightly, and when she rounded the corner of the entrance to the so-called prison they switched off completely, leaving the male mare alone in darkness.
I'd like Josh to blab the entire thing to a Dreamwalking Princess.
You must mean HERBERT! LOL. Silly Joseph did the thing.
AND HE DID THE OTHER THING, TOO! XD ...I'm now mentally imagining Joseph voiced by Will Smith, heh.
A interesting chapter and as to drawings sure I say go for it.
using queen chrysalis as a interesting P O V for the story I like it.
I will say I am like chrysalis but then I am helping eragon13666 with his story.to love a queen
good chapter I will be watching for more.
Harts Fire
awesome
stayclassy
Nevermind...
...damn...
I would say as long as you yourself do not have to draw them.
Otherwise keep up the good work
Kill her without a real need to, and I will hunt you down. Too many stories kill her off without full explanation, and then never mention it again. Don't pull an Emerald Gleamer. Just don't.
WHy was the chapter named Mother Dearest?
Yeah, I'd be up for seeing the picture you were inspired by.
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6095421
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i.imgur.com/CfwjbQC.jpg
Include, you say?
6095657
The answer can be found a few chapters back.
6096549 Awww... I just wanna hug it...
6096549 Chrysalis is his mother who had died.
So is Sweetie Belle dead/ just a mindless changeling drone now?
6096770 Not quite. Sweetie is in a coma while the changeling has taken her place.
6095571 Don't worry, you'll get an explanation.
6096549
I would have to say no, the sole reason being the jewelry,
but thats just my opinion do as you like you magnificent bastard.
I take it chrysi's not a big fan of the fresh prince? Fo' shame.
Herbert P Bear, a polar bear who wants to take over Club Pengui-- wait... wrong thing.
Chryssi is f###ing awesome. Also, Luna needs blabbing.
6097665
So you ARE killing her off...
6098692 And for good reason too, but it doesn't come until way later in the story. That's all I'm saying on that matter.
FALLOUT 3 REFFERENCE ALERT!!!!!!!!! SOUND THE AIRRAID ALARM GET DEH PONEHS DO DEH STABLE!!! STANDBYE I REPEAT STANDBYE!!!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
-Message from :Stable Tec.
ARE THI INFERRING YOU ARE THE FRESH EVIL MARE OF PONAIR?
6101450
*defensively* I have!... Sorta... I got to ten penny tower.... And that was that. Or was that fallout 3?... I'm so embarrassed...
Edit: No wait! I remember now! I got my own place in the wastelands and filled it to the brim with useless forks and plates... No wait, that was fallout 3 again
6102336 The reference is from the Old World Blues DLC for Fallout: New Vegas.
Oh great, this ought to be interesting... imprisoned by changelings.
Retroactive edit: the reference to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air got a pretty good laugh out of me, and that goes double as of the time of inserting this edit. In particular, I like that you still managed to pull off a flawless rhyme.
6109548 SO MANY COMMENTS I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BECAUSE I AM EXTREMELY STONED RIGHT NOW
6109825 well, a good start would be going through my comments and correcting (when actually applicable) things I pointed out.
As I said in one of my comments, I'd be happy to try to help editing, although I'm a bit busy right now, so I am not sure how much help I would be right now.
6110135 Well I finally got around to fixing the errors you pointed out
6119791 glad I could help! I hate errors of any sort, but especially of the easily corrected type in stories I really like
6159247
6165143 I wouldn't call wolverine immortal, that's a bit of a stretch.
One of his abilities is accelerated healing, which means his body heals wounds faster than they can damage him, although he still feels the pain from everything, like when the drills were drilling into his skeleton to inject the adamantium. Imagine how that would feel...
At the end of the day if you (somehow) cut off his head he'll probably die. That and cutting out his heart might work but it's speculative at this point.
6166595
...Wolverine heals at soon as he is injured. He's been shot in the head and everything, bone, brain, everything, healed at the same rate as the bullet damaged him. If you cut off his head... that would probably not kill him as he'd likely grow a new body in a fraction of a second or something, but would a new head grow on the old body, too? Hmmmm...
Anyway, if his body was destroyed all at once then yeah, he'd die. Or if his soul were removed or something.
6172730 Sure, he can get shot in the head and survive, but that's still because of the accelerated healing factor. Someone like Deadpool has been shown to be able to regenerate his entire body from a variant of Wolverine's healing. Either way, it's speculative to say that Wolverine will die when you cut off his head so it remains to be seen.
6172744
excuse me good sirs.
http://i.imgur.com/Ak1ZN9t.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ma5d9xf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Oec8Jzd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ImbMGlh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/jKxcaG5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZeVQqQq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TWQ0WiT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cL0WnRY.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/lurO39g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KIxLgId.jpg
Wolfie decapitated with a nuke going off.
Just sayin'
As stated in a retroactive edit on one of my previous comments, the reference to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air got a pretty good laugh out of me. In particular, I like that you still managed to pull off a flawless rhyme. That all goes double as of this moment, as I had to read it again in order to refresh my memory of the chapter. I'll leave it to speculation exactly why I was refreshing my memory.
6218872 that thing about the blowup doll...
6266564
I think it's the same thing just the jumbled around. Like, Compulsive - Disorder - Obsessive.
I can see some of where your going. but in this case I will keep quiet. Illustrations would be nice though.
6172730 wolverine can't die by decapitation, his neck bones are adamantium.... I think he suffocates to death in the comics
I now can no longer think of a changeling without Fallout 1 and 3 because of that little reference you put in.
Well, the end of last chapter and the beginning bit of this had me immediately think...
mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-3211404-1-_mlp__changelings_by_nate_c45tl3-d842zig.jpg
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so ya. fun times
I thought it was named Herbert. ;]
7843864
Actually, no. You've got that pretty well bent out of shape. :D
For one, he's not a supermutant - he's a ghoul. Well, sort of.
For another, he's not just any ol' ghoul, because he wasn't formed by intense radiation and slow exposure to mutated FEV like every other ghoul - he was originally a human from Vault 29 that got exposed to the good stuff (the original FEV strain) while being fairly irradiated already*.
And as for the tree (which he calls 'Bob'), it's been growing out of him just a little bit when you first meet him in Fallout 2 (he's the ghoul running the Poseidon Oil Nuclear Power Plant up north, in Gecko - and a potential companion for the Chosen One). You can actually meet him in the original Fallout game as well, back in the Hub (and I'm told you can also find him in FoT:BoS).
As for his backstory - he used to be a caravan runner. One day they decided that they'd had enough of the supermutants coming from a particular location of the desert, so they took a few good men (among them a crazy scientist named Richard Grey) and went to find the source - what turned out to be Mariposa Military Base. They didn't get too far in, though, as the base's automated security shredded them like wet tissue paper. Richard Grey got carried away deeper into the facility (he was dumped in the vats of FEV stored there, and would later mutate horribly, eventually becoming The Master), while Harold got knocked out.
When he awoke later, he was outside in the desert, already mutating. So, he's technically not a ghoul either, since his formation is more akin to supermutant formation - and yet he's not a supermutant (for one, he's retained full use of his faculties). So, he's a bit of a special case - a straight FEV mutant**, of sorts. To quote Tim Cain, "Harold is special."
Here's a picture w/ Bob. ;]
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/9/98/FO02_NPC_Harold_N.png/revision/latest?cb=20100812023117
* which is suprising, since if I recall correctly, the original FEV almost invariably kills anything that isn't pure-stock human to begin with... but whatever. Actually this isn't exactly right - it's more nuanced than that.
** not all that many of them around, either; one other we know about is Frank Horrigan, though he was made in a controlled lab environment.
Sounds like Chrysalis is needless killing of her food providers, very short sighed.
Would they take appropriate jobs would they most likely have rich harvest grounds to sip from.
Like someone harvesting Sap or a farmer caring for cows and chicken to get a regular product for caring for their food source.