Did I mention that I just love post offices? Especially when I have to make a long call and the mare who’s working there is staring at me and listening to my every word.

Well, at least this time it’s not me who has to make a call. Lyra is still a bit shaken after our visit in Zebrica and she really doesn’t want to go to the post office alone. So here I am, escorting her.

After a while spent arguing over the price of an international call, as well as finding the right number, Lyra finally grabs the receiver, while I stand nearby, listening to her and watching the scratches and dents on the wall. Like, it’s the least interesting post office I’ve ever been to.

“Bonnie?” Lyra asks. “Hello, honey. Yes, I’m in Haygypt. I just called to say that I just remembered about that time when we were together in here…”

What? Did she really drag me here only to talk about good times with Bon Bon?

“Oh, you remember?” Lyra sighs. “That’s weird, because we’ve never been in Haygypt together! But of course you can’t know that, Doomie!”

Wait… What the actual fuck? I know it’s pretty hot in Haygypt now, but did Lyra go insane? And who the hell is Doomie?

“So, where’s Bonnie?” Lyra asks. “Of course… No one realised it’s you? Yeah, right, it took a minute to figure that out… Ponies may start to talk. If Carrot Top invites you over, tell her that you’re sick. We don’t want another wedding, right? Okay. See you later.” She puts the receiver down.

“Could you tell me what was that about?” I ask.

Lyra looks around, but it seems that the mare in the post office doesn’t listen to us. “Doomie is our changeling,” she replies. “He’s pretending to be Bon Bon.”

I sigh. “Lyra, you know that feeling when an explanation not only doesn’t explain shit, but also raises further questions? Because that’s what I’m feeling now.”

“Really?” Lyra raises her eyebrows.

“Yes, really,” I mutter. “For starters, you keep a changeling at home?”

“His name is Doomie,” Lyra says. “Well, we don’t know if he’s actually a guy and he doesn’t really get our concept of gender, but when we presented him the possibilities, he settled on ‘he’.”

“Yeah, I always wanted to explore the perception of gender among changelings.” I roll my eyes. “Why do you have it?”

“He’s pretending to be Bonnie when she’s away,” Lyra whispers. “Just like now. This story about Bonnie’s multiple personalities is only partially true. Some of them are Doomie being a moron who can’t remember his role. That’s why they kicked him out of the hive. Since then he works for a government.”

“What?” I ask, staring blankly at the wall. “Why’d our government hire a changeling to pretend to be Bon Bon?”

“She also works for the government,” Lyra replies. “Just like Flitter and Cloudchaser, she’s a special agent, though her specialty are dangerous magical creatures. When she’s on a mission, Doomie replaces her.” She smirks. “It’s really hard to tell them from each other…”

My mind is suddenly assaulted by very inappropriate images. “Tell me that you didn’t–”

“I did.” Lyra mutters. “Though Doomie doesn’t really get it. He also gets nervous in the crowd and his disguise sometimes fails.”

Suddenly I remember how Ruby told me that there was a changeling on a wedding of… hmm, whose wedding was this? Cranky and Matilda’s? Must be. Of course I didn’t believe her, since such things just don’t happen. Well, except that one wedding when we ended up in a cave. There were definitely changelings there.

“Okay,” I say. “But if that… Doomie is there, then where’s Bon Bon?”

“I believe she’s closer than you think.” The mare behind the desk takes off a wig and glasses, revealing that she’s, in fact, Bon Bon. “The agency isn’t pleased, you know. So far, you turned on an ancient artifact, tried to kill some important politician in the Trottoman Empire, and blew up half of Zebrica. Oh, and one of you apparently secretly married a Trottoman prince. What the hell are you doing?”

“Hello,” I mutter. “Well, it’s not exactly us. And if you examine that pile of toxic crap around the lake in Zebrica, you may find a bunch of blonde guys talking about monsters from beyond our world and total domination. I guess you should worry about that more than about Trixie’s questionable choice of life partners.”

“That’s why you’re still here and not at the nearest medical university as an anonymous corpse donated for students,” Bon Bon replies. “We figured out that you getting that crystal is the best possibility… If you give it to us, of course.”

“We will,” I reply, suddenly imagining Vinyl getting that crystal. Holy shit. “We don’t need it, really. Just promise that the government won’t use it against us.”

“Why would they?” Bon Bon asks. “The princesses are reptilians already, why’d they need more monsters?” She looks at me and chuckles. “Just joking. We’d feel better if this thing was buried somewhere deep in the vaults of the agency, rather than lying somewhere where morons like you, Ahuizotl, or Aryanne can pick it up and accidentally drop a lot of tentacles on our heads.”

“Okay... “ I look at her unsurely. “So, what are you proposing?”

“You do whatever you’re planning,” Bon Bon replies. “I guess after Zebrica Lyra wants to go home, right?”

“Kinda,” Lyra says. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“You’ll go to Doomie and together you’ll gather a recovery team.” Bon Bon stands up. “I guess your friends will need help one day. I’ll contact you soon.” She nods and disappears. Like, literally. At one moment she’s there and then there’s no trace of her. Not even magic or anything.

Lyra doesn’t seem all that surprised. “It’s an old trick,” she says. “One needs a cardboard box and two mirrors.”

“It can’t be done without the box?” I walk to the door of the post office, expecting Bon Bon to pop up again from somewhere. Preferably a mailbox.

“As far as I know, no.”

“I’ll ask Trixie when I meet her,” I say.

We walk down the street to the house Daring Do chose as our headquarters. Dr. Caballeron waves at us from the balcony. We wave back too. After all, one has to be polite to their enemies, unless they’re not polite to us – then we get Zebrica on their asses.

When we walk into the house, Hexie immediately walks to me and throws some dirty plastic frame with some sorry black shreds attached to it on the floor.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Air filter from our left engine,” Hexie replies. “Or rather what’s left of it after we ran away from Zebrica. The one from the right engine also looks like this.”

“But… you can put new ones there, right?” I grab the filter and break it in my hooves.

“Yes, but I’m afraid I’ll also have to change all the gaskets and seals, as well as rinse everything with fresh fuel to get rid of that rainbow shit inside.” She grabs the remains of the filter. “This will take a while.”

“So, what are we gonna do?” Lyra asks. “We can’t go anywhere without the plane.”

“Well, you’re forgetting about Trixie!” Trixie walks downstairs, assisted by two griffons in red uniforms. She’s wearing a dress matching them, as well as a tiara. She turns to her companions saying, “Hey, did you forget about Trixie’s entrance?”

“Move, peasants!” the griffon exclaims. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is coming!”

“That’s better,” Trixie says. “So, you apparently forgot that Trixie now has an airship at her disposal. And that she can generously lend it to you.”

Ruby appears at the top of the stairs. She looks at us, then at Trixie. Then she makes a gesture imitating masturbation. Where did she learn it? She started shagging her sleeping bag only recently, after all. Nevertheless, it’s oddly fitting.

“Well… that may work,” I say, trotting upstairs. “Sorry guys,” I mutter, pushing one of the griffons aside.

Upstairs, I meet Vinyl, Inkie, and Daring Do sitting at the table and enjoying some tea together. I guess Trixie’s overwhelming personality made them do that – Inkie isn’t usually very sociable, Vinyl prefers whisky over tea, and Daring Do doesn’t really enjoy Vinyl’s company.

“Hello,” Vinyl says. “I guess you already met our princess?” She rubs her horn with her hoof in a suggestive gesture. Well, that explains Ruby at least.

“Typical,” I say. “You can get a pony out of Hoofington, but you can’t get Hoofington out of a pony.”

“My dad says I was conceived in Hoofington,” Vinyl mutters, taking a sip of her tea. “More exactly on the backseat of a taxi.”

Inkie spits her tea. “That’s… a bit more than I wanted to know…”

“Two years and you still didn’t get used to that?” Vinyl shrugs. “Anyway, we’re subjected to endless manifestations of Trixie’s ego. You know, Octavia was once behaving like that when she got some award for cellists. Eventually, I took a leak on her bed so she’d stop acting like a Celestia-damn princess of Uranus.”

“I hope you’re not going to do that again?” I ask, giving her a nasty glare.

“No, of course not,” Vinyl replies.

“Anyway.” Daring Do looks at us and rubs her temples. “Why did Lyra want to call home?”

“She’s gonna leave us for a while,” I reply. “Also, Bon Bon is spying for us and she wants us to give her that crystal as soon as we find it. Probably because she works for some weird government organisation. Oh, and Lyra and Bon Bon keep a changeling at home so he can replace Bon Bon when she’s away. They call him Doomie.”

“Err… Could you repeat that a bit slower?” Inkie asks.

“Hmm, so that’s why Bon Bon agreed when I bursted into her house and demanded drunken sex!” Vinyl exclaims. “On the next day when I visited her and asked for another round, she threw me down the stairs.”

“Should I be listening to this?” Ruby asks, walking into the room. “Or fuck it, no one cares anyway.”

“Language,” I mutter without much care.

“I guess we’ll just leave Lyra and Hexie here,” Daring Do says. “We’ll find the place where the crystal is and retrieve it. Then, we’ll see.”

“Excuse me.” Ruby raises her hoof. “The crystal is ‘it’, while the poem says ‘when you find her, better run’. What if instead of the crystal we’ll find another crazy bitch like auntie Trixie?”

“Translation error,” Daring Do replies. “Don’t worry, kid, the crystal must be there.”

I hear hoofsteps on the corridor. I guess Trixie got tired of explaining her awesomeness to Lyra and went to her room.

“AARGH!” Trixie’s yelling can be heard from behind the wall. “VINYL, TRIXIE’S GONNA FUCKING MURDER YOU!”

“What?” Vinyl asks when we stare at her. “It wasn’t me this time…”

It takes a while before Trixie gets out of the shower. At this time, her griffons prepare the airship to take off, carrying our luggage, and checking all the systems. I walk to the place where they landed to check it out.

Frankly, I’ve seen better airships. It’s small and not very aerodynamic, with an oversized gondola. Probably it was designed to be as big and comfortable as possible without making the whole thing big and difficult to land. The engines are the Trottoman rip-offs of those produced by the Griffon Empire; they can be described as ridiculously underpowered.

I walk inside, deciding to take a look at the cockpit. However, there’s a griffon standing there, who blocks the path with a poleaxe as soon as he sees me.

“You’re not allowed inside,” he says.

“Why?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t want you to blow this airship up,” the griffon replies. “She says you have a terrible track record when it comes to flying machines.”

“Ask the Great and Powerful Trixie how’s her gun safety,” I mutter, turning away from him. I don’t even manage to get across the corridor in the middle of the gondola, adorned with richly-ornamented wood, when Ruby runs inside.

“Move, peasants!” she exclaims. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is coming, as soon as we find a dildo big enough to satisfy her big-ass ego!”

“What?” I ask.

“That’s what auntie Vinyl said,” Ruby replies. “What’s a dildo?”

“Not something you should know,” I say. “Are we leaving?”

“More or less.” Ruby shrugs. “I guess auntie Trixie would want to throw a party for us to admire her, but auntie Daring has none of this shit. On a side note, this whole doctor Pajero is here too. He probably wonders where we’ll go.”

“Of course,” I say. “I was wondering if he was gonna tag along. I’d prefer his company much more than Aryanne’s.”

“Yeah, and we could accidentally lock him in some ancient tomb.” Ruby chuckles. “Though auntie Daring probably wouldn’t approve. She’d have nopony to write about. Also, they have framed photos of each other. You know, I actually broke into his house and found it.”

“Wait… You broke into his house?”

“Auntie Daring taught me.” Ruby smirks. “Though she probably didn’t think I’d check out her luggage at night. Do you know that she still has this amulet from ‘Daring Do and The Ponies from Mars’?”

I sigh. “What did I tell you about other ponies’ things?”

“I couldn’t hear it over the story of how you broke into Bacio della Morte’s vault and took his money,” Ruby replies. “Or how your uncle taught you to open safes.”

Shit. I’m not the best role model. But fortunately, her mother isn’t one either.

Finally, Trixie arrives, surrounded by her guards. I’d rather not be close to her when she’s in her Great and Powerful mode, so I walk to one of the rooms. There’s a Trottoman carpet and quite a comfy couch there, so I drop on it, watching the ground as we take off. Soon, the town gets smaller and we turn south.

The engines hum monotonously, props cutting the air as we slowly advance forward. I notice Daring Do flying outside – I guess the atmosphere of The Great and Powerful Trixie’s court makes her sick and she decided to guide the airship herself.

I hear someone’s silent hoofsteps on the carpet. Swiftly, I turn to face Inkie who backpedals, surprised by my sudden motion.

“What’s up?” I ask when she sits on the couch. “Are you prepared for endless hours of digging?”

“More or less,” Inkie replies. “I’m more afraid about what we can find.”

I wave my hoof. “Don’t worry, it’s just a crystal that can summon things from another dimension which will possibly destroy the world and make us suffer in an unimaginable ways. Nothing to worry about.”

“What if it gets in wrong hooves?” Inkie asks.

“You mean Vinyl’s? She’d probably call the succubi or something.”

“I mean Dr. Caballeron. Or Aryanne.”

I shrug. “Well, from what I’ve heard, the demons don’t like to be summoned. So the first tentacled thing to emerge would wipe the floor with Aryanne’s brain, which would be a nice thing to watch.”

“Well, but then it’d move to us,” Inkie mutters, shuddering. “It’d seep into our bodies, burning them from the inside and changing us into mindless puppets suffering for aeons while being conscious and fully aware of our state.”

“Umm… Are you okay?” I ask, staring at her. This girl worries me sometimes.

“Sorry, I was just thinking of that one time when Blinkie joined the cult.”

And I thought Hexie had a fucked up past. “And what happened to her?”

“She got bored and beat the crap out of everypony,” Inkie replies. “At least that’s what she said.”

“But of course.” I smirk. “Your sister would punch every abomination in the place most resembling a face.”

Inkie chuckles. “Most likely. And then she’d win.”

“Probably a bit insane, but not much more than she already is.” I stretch my hooves and look outside, but all I see is the river in the middle of the desert. “How long are we gonna be flying?”

“I guess till Trixie gets bored.”

Daring Do appears behind the window again and knocks on it. “Tell Trixie to land this flying brothel somewhere here,” she says. “We’re close.”

“Okay.” I walk outside of my room and trot to the biggest hall in the gondola, where Trixie’s lying on the couch, eating grapes while two griffons stand behind her with large clawheld fans.

“Speak,” Trixie says. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is listening to you.”

“To quote Daring Do, we need to land this flying brothel as soon as possible,” I reply.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie approves of your proposition,” Trixie replies and gestures one of the griffons to her – a dark feathered one, who looks like he’s enjoying every minute spent with her, but on the other hoof he’d gladly stab her with a knife he hides under a wide belt of his robe. “Lale Agha, tell the pilots that the Great and Powerful Trixie wants to land.”

“Of course,” Lale Agha replies in a bizarrely high-pitched voice and bows before going to the cockpit.

Finally, we land close to the river, our props making a small sandstorm. When we wait for it to clear, I notice that Vinyl is looking at Lale Agha and barely containing laughter.

“What’s up?” I ask, turning to her.

“Not this dude,” Vinyl replies. “I asked him what his name meant and it’s apparently ‘Tulip’.”

“So?”

“Apparently they name eunuchs after flowers.”

I sigh and facehoof. “You didn’t want to pick up this guy, did you?”

“I kinda did,” Vinyl replies. “He muttered something about stabbing me.”

“You got friendzoned, then.” I shrug. The gate opens and for a while we don’t have time to talk.

Lale Agha walks out of the airship first and yells, “Move! The Great and Powerful Trixie is coming!” Not sure to whom. Probably to sand and the river. Or maybe to all those janissaries who leave the airship next and stand in line as Trixie walks down the stairs.

“Now this is getting ridiculous,” Daring Do mutters when we join her.

“Only now?” I ask.

Daring Do rolls her eyes. “Okay, never mind. I don’t know what they’re gonna do now and I hardly care. We have things to do.” She points at the large rock formation about a hundred metres away from the airship. “That’s it.”

“It doesn’t really look like a fork,” Ruby says.

“More like a tuning fork.” Vinyl looks at the structure. “Life isn’t only about food, you know.”

“Exactly.” Daring Do nods, trotting to the rock. “Also, ancient forks usually had two tines.”

We walk towards the weird monument. About halfway through, Trixie catches up with us, running in the most undignified way possible. She got rid of her dress, but her fur is drenched in sweat anyway and she looks like she’s about to collapse. Better yet, Lale Agha is flying behind her, eyeing us curiously.

“Trixie had to dismiss her guards,” Trixie says. “It’s kinda hard.”

“Couldn’t Trixie just tell them to fuck off?” Ruby asks.

“It’s not as easy. And Prince told Lale Agha never to leave Trixie.”

“That must be getting awkward when you have to take a shit.” Vinyl chuckles.

Lale Agha produces a knife and starts sharpening it.

“He doesn’t like you for what you did to Trixie’s bed,” Trixie explains.

“Does he even like anyone?” Inkie asks. “I know that look. He and Blinkie would make great friends.”

I’d rather not think about that. Luckily, we reach the fork. It’s made of almost black stone covered with symbols engraved in it. There are remains of red paint in some of them. Even though most of it peeled off, those symbols still don’t look particularly friendly. Especially a long paragraph that, from the look of it, is about the most common mistakes made while beheading someone. We walk around it, knocking at the rock from time to time and looking for some signs that would tell us what to do now.

“It’s even more of a tuning fork,” Vinyl says, putting her ear to the wall. “It’s buzzing as if there were bees inside. And they even buzz in A.”

“Imagine how big is the guitar,” I mutter.

“Black basalt,” Inkie says quietly before licking the rock. “About fifty-two percent of silica. Are there any volcanoes here?”

“Not that I know of,” Daring Do replies. “I guess someone brought it here, though the nearest volcano is in Haythopia…”

“Even better,” Inkie says. “Such a regular shape couldn’t be achieved naturally and I can’t see any traces of sculpting. It was cast.”

“What?” I ask. “It’s a basalt fork lying in the middle of the desert. Three metres tall, five metres wide, about fifty metres long – twenty five for the handle and twenty five for each tine. Imagine how big the mold would have to be. And since it’s made of basalt, it’d have to be filled with lava.” I make quick calculations. “Eleven hundred twenty five cubic metres of lava.”

“So it weighs up to three thousand six hundred tons,” Inkie says. “Even if it wasn’t cast here, who’d transport that across the desert?”

“Aliens.” Daring Do shrugs. “I know geology is fun and stuff, but I always liked poetry better.” She grabs the piece of paper. “So, we found the fork in the middle of the desert, now we have to go ten steps towards the sun…”

“Which sun?” Trixie asks.

“What?” Daring Do groans. “There’s only one.”

“Yes, but it’s on the right when it rises and on the left when it sets,” Trixie replies, hiding in the shadow of the fork. “Where do we go?”

“Maybe to that big, sun-like thingy,” Ruby replies, pointing behind the fork. About a two hundred metres away from it, there’s a similar basalt structure, this one shaped like the sun. We haven’t noticed it before because it’s partially buried under the sand, but the river recently washed out part of the dune and about half of the sun is underwater now.

“Those who made that may have been insane, but at least they were consistent,” I say. “Ten steps, right?”

“Yes.” Daring Do walks in a rather peculiar fashion. “Ancient steps were an actual unit of length, you know… They’re actually a bit shorter than my actual steps.” She stops and stands in attention. “This should be somewhere around here.”

“Okay,” I say, grabbing a shovel. “Shall I start?”

“Trixie has a better idea.” Trixie turns to Lale Agha, who’s hovering over the fork. “Lale Agha! Tell the janissaries that the Great and Powerful Trixie demands them to dig a hole here.”

Lale Agha nods and flies to the airship.

“I’d ask how deep the hole should be first,” I mutter.

“Galip told him to obey all Trixie’s orders,” Trixie replies. “Of course, Lale is a rotten son of a bitch who’d stab Trixie at a first occasion, but Trixie has respect.”

“You call yelling at everyone and behaving like a gilded piece of shit a respect?” Vinyl asks.

“That’s how it works.” I smile at Vinyl. “They have the mentality of your fans.”

“Then, why are you yelling at us too?” Inkie asks Trixie. “We can always yell at them together…”

I have a very vivid imagination, but I can hardly imagine Inkie yelling at someone while sober. Well, unless they’d say something rude about her family.

“They’d behead you,” Trixie replies. “Trixie is their prince’s lover so they listen to her, but you are considered less than dirt on their claws. You know, they are so full of themselves they can’t realise we’re better than them in every department.”

“Oh really?” I throw the shovel on the ground. “I’ll let them get their claws dirty. Let’s see if that’s true.”

The griffons finally start digging. They dig…

… and dig…

… and dig…

The sun almost sets, and the hole is deep enough for Hot Coco to be hidden there, but we still didn’t find any trace of ancient ruins, powerful energy source that’d fry us all, or even a wise zombie who’d tell us what to do. I’m sorely disappointed.

“Are you sure those were right steps?” I ask Daring Do when it gets dark.

“Must be.” Daring looks at the poem. “Unless Lyra mistranslated something.”

One of the griffons throws the shovel on the ground. “Fuck those ponies,” he says in an oddly-accented but still pretty recognisable Equine. “They’re so full of themselves they can’t see we’re better.”

His companion sighs. “Keep working, or Lale’s gonna–” Well, whatever Lale’s gonna do to him, I don’t understand that. Hexie probably would, but she isn’t here.

“Lale? More lile göt lalesi!”

“Chill out, guys.” Vinyl walks to the griffons and looks into the hole they dug. “No need to offend our ballless friend.” She jumps into the hole. “I’m pretty sure that tomorrow we’ll find some solution to–” She’s suddenly interrupted when the ground collapses under her weight.

“Vinyl, are you okay?” I ask, trotting to the hole she fell into.

“More or less.” It seems that Vinyl’s voice comes from a great depth, older than time itself. “I landed on some rather soft cadaver.”

“A fresh one?” I ask.

“Not really.” Vinyl coughs. “It’s a mummy or some other shit. I got dust everywhere.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “We’ll get you out soon.”

Well, reality changes my plans quickly. That is, as soon as I reach Daring Do.

“Get her out?” she asks. “No way. We’re joining her. It seems that she accidentally found the place we were looking for!” She jumps and makes a somersault.

“Okay then,” I mutter, grabbing a sniper rifle. Behind Daring Do, Ruby does the same with her BB gun.

“Why do you need this?” Inkie asks. “I think everything in there is dead.”

“Better safe than sorry,” I reply, grabbing some additional bullets.

Ruby nods. “Yeah, what if someone gets crushed under a falling rock? We need to have something to put them out of misery…”

“Ruby, shut up.” I sigh. “Also, remember what the poem says. ‘When you find her, better run’. I’d rather shoot her in the knee first so she doesn’t follow me.”

“Yeah, but who’s she?” Inkie asks, hiding the spell launcher in her saddlebags.

“No idea. I guess we’ll know when we meet her.”

“Trixie guesses she won’t be that bad.” Trixie shrugs. “Lale Agha! Stay here with the guards and wait for the return of the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Well, I’m not sure how powerful Trixie is, but she’s greater than I thought. Like, it takes us a while before we manage to push her through the hatch. I guess they built it with a Haygyptian peasant in mind rather than a unicorn with slow metabolism and a rather negative attitude towards physical activity.

I stop laughing when it’s my turn. Jogging, gym, and excessive masturbation can’t really combat the fact that I still like cheap, unhealthy food while having more money for it. As a result, I get through the hole in the ground, but only barely.

The inside of the crypt is cold, dark, and dusty. I light my horn to see Vinyl standing with a sheepish expression next to some crushed mummy. I hope it didn’t manage to curse her.

“So, the party’s complete,” Vinyl mutters, when Daring Do lands next to us. “Where are we going now?”

“To the darkest and deepest tunnel, of course.” Daring Do hands Vinyl her shotgun. “Follow me.”

Easier said than done. Even though we have torches, this place is dark as a yak’s arse, and we keep tripping over debris, some wooden remains, and occasional bones of some hapless schmucks that visited this place before us.

“I wonder what those say,” Inkie mutters, looking at the hieroglyphs covering the walls. “They don’t look nice.”

“Probably something like ‘no smoking’ or ‘trespassers will be stabbed and cooked in boiling oil’,” I reply.

“Why is it always oil?” Ruby asks. “Water would be cheaper and smell better.”

“Because water evaporates faster,” Daring Do says. “Oil is hotter and the burns are more horrifying. Also, smell of burnt oil is the least issue when we also deal with a boiled guy.”

“Cool.” Ruby smirks. “Did they also eat the guy?”

“Not very often.” Daring Do shrugs, looking at the hieroglyphs on the wall. “Given that the oil was usually slightly dirty after the whole procedure…” She pushes one of the hieroglyphs and the wall opens. “There.”

“Eww…” Ruby winces. I’m not sure if that’s a reaction to Daring’s story or some half-rotten corpse which fell from behind the wall. It is still wearing a massive golden chain around its neck.

“Don’t worry, it’s dead.” Daring Do walks past the corpse. Trixie stops next to it and grabs the chain with her magic.

The corpse’s head raises and it looks in Trixie’s eyes. Or rather, it’d look there if it had eyes. Nonetheless, the effect is the same: Trixie freezes in place, the chain hanging in her magic field.

“Trixie, leave the chain,” I mutter. “This guy would probably be really angry if you stole it.”

“Okay.” Trixie releases the chain and runs away from the corpse as fast as possible. Inkie walks around it, trying not to look at it. Probably for the best, because the corpse turns its head away and goes back to being dead.

“Hmm, maybe it’s just some machine?” Vinyl asks. “Like, you pull the chain and it raises its head…” She raises for the golden chain, but the corpse grabs her hoof. “Okay, I get it,” Vinyl mutters, unfazed. “I was just joking, man.”

“I guess not everyone likes cryptic humour,” Ruby says innocently.

I shrug. “I do, of corpse.”

“I don’t really,” Inkie replies, watching the floor before her carefully. “There’s something rotten about it.”

“Don’t be so stiff about it.” Vinyl looks at Trixie. “How do you find our underground sense of humour?”

Trixie almost trips over something. She looks down and levitates some large bone. “Trixie found this humerus.”

Vinyl looks at the bone. “Tibia or not tibia, that’s the question.”

“For Nyarlathotep’s sake, shut up,” Daring Do mutters. “I can’t focus.”

“You need to grow a spine,” I mutter. “Though I guess all this dust here may soon send us into a fit of coffin.”

“Coffin, nice one.” Vinyl chuckles, trotting to a recess in the tunnel. There used to be a coffin in there, but the lid was broken and the mummy from the inside is now lying on the floor. Vinyl looks at it. “Are you my mummy?”

The mummy looks at her and lets out a long hiss, showing us way more teeth than it should have. Vinyl jumps back, levitating her shotgun and firing into the gaping maw in front of her.

A wave of dust and bone chips hits the floor, but the mummy doesn’t seem to be bothered by the hole in the back of the head. It jumps at us, barely missing Vinyl. I’m half-deaf after the shot, but I grab my rifle and fire it point-blank at the mummy.

“Run!” Daring Do yells. The mummy collapses; while the bullet hole isn’t very big, it seems that the exit wound was big enough for the hind leg to fall out of broken pelvis. I don’t have time to take a closer look. I just follow Daring’s order.

Suddenly, Inkie skids to a halt right in front of me. I barely avoid hitting her ass with my head, though our pose after I land on her is still rather amusing. Too bad our only audience is about a hundred of mummies, staring at us with red eyes.

“Oh bother,” Inkie mutters.

“Run for your lives!” I yell, firing at the nearest mummy and running away. We nearly crash into Vinyl, who, somehow, is chased by more mummies. Ruby is sitting on her back, firing at them with her BB gun. I don’t think they even notice.

“Why there’s so many of them?!” I shoot at the nearest mummy who at least has decency to drop dead after the bullet pulverizes its head.

“I believe those are workers who built this place and servants of the pharaoh,” Daring Do replies, flying above mummies.

“Why aren’t they dead?”

Daring Do shrugs in mid-air. “Do I look like I know?”

“They’re getting in Trixie’s mane!” Trixie’s scream is followed by a blinding flash of magic and a rain of charred bones falling on our heads. “This is what you get for touching Trixie’s mane, motherfucker!”

I fire a spell at the nearest mummy. It changes its balls into a cloud of dust, but the mummy doesn’t seem to care. However, it stops for long enough for Vinyl to put a shotgun in its mouth.

“You’re not the brainiest fella, huh?” Vinyl asks and pulls the trigger, causing the mummy’s head to explode in ancient dust and bone chips. “Yeah, you’re not.”

“Vinyl, stop messing around, we’re still surrounded!” Trixie yells, firing a spell at a group of mummies. I aid her with my rifle, trying to make a gap in the crowd. Mummies back off slightly, so we decide to run for it; we dash through them, and get to the nearest door. Before our undead companions realise that we’re gone, Inkie closes it and barricades it with a broken pillar.

Behind them, there’s a corridor with many doors on its sides. I walk to the one next to me, but before I’m able to open it, Daring Do flies to me.

“Don’t do that,” she says. “It happened to me before. We’ll find something scary in there and it’ll chase us across all those doors. I guess all the rooms behind them are connected and we’ll just run into one door to emerge from the other a second later. Or sometimes even before that.”

“How so?” I ask.

“Time paradoxes are the worst.”

“How about this door?” Ruby asks, walking to the fourth door on the left. “They look much older. In fact, it’s not even a door, but a piece of fucking rock.”

“Where?” Inkie asks, looking around curiously.

“Yeah, we all know about your funny-shaped rock,” Vinyl mutters. “And the one your sister didn’t let us touch.”

Something that sounds awfully like an army of pissed mummies bangs at the door we came here through.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie thinks we have to hurry,” Trixie says, looking at it. “We need to choose some door anyway, it may as well be this one.”

“Okay then,” Ruby pushes the door open and looks inside. “Well, shit.”

Inside, there’s a mummy the size of my neighbour Bulk, wrapped in much better bandages than the ones other mummies had. It is wearing a golden crown and a lot of jewellery. Its red eyes look at us curiously, watching us aiming our guns and horns at it.

“Not so fast!” the mummy yells in pretty modern Equine, with a slight hint of Canterlot accent. “Do you, by any chance have a permission to kill mummies in this area, as well as A-567 form with BB/7 attachment? Did you pass the professional undead slayer exam and take classes in bandage-cutting? Not to mention things such as permission to–”

“I think we have a permission to get the fuck out!” Daring Do shouts, turning back and flying into the door on the opposite side of the corridor. She breaks through them. I run after her and dart there…

Well, damn. The room behind the door doesn’t have floor.

I grab Daring Do’s hind legs just before falling into the bottomless pit. Then I levitate Ruby who runs into the room after me. Daring groans when Vinyl runs here and catches my tail to stop herself from falling. When Inkie grabs Vinyl, Daring flaps her wings frantically, yelling curses at us.

“Trixie, no!” I scream, but it’s too late. Trixie doesn’t notice the lack of the floor and rams into us. Daring’s wings bend in an improbable way and we all fall into the pit.

The fall is long. What’s worse, I don’t think it ever ended. We just showed up in some very weird room.

“Okay,” I say, staring at my legs. They’re on the ceiling while the rest of me is floating above the floor. When I move forward, they walk backwards. That’s rather bizarre.

“What’s up?” Vinyl asks. She’s standing on the stairs, upside down. They’re leading upwards, then turn, go around the room, and get back to the place where she’s standing. I’m not sure how that’s possible.

“Trixie guesses you meant ‘where’s up’,” Trixie replies and points left. “Trixie thinks it’s there.”

“From my perspective you’re standing on the wall,” I say. “And your up is my down, though slightly skewed.”

“Where’s the rest?” Vinyl walks up the stairs… or down the stairs. Mostly left.

“Dunno.” I shrug, which is kinda weird since my legs are disconnected from the rest of my body. When I walk to the wall, they’re getting closer, but when I walk away from it, they go right.

“What happened to this place?” Trixie asks.

“See that sand in front of you?”

“Trixie sees no sand in front of her,” Trixie replies. “She sees sand behind her, though.”

“Draw a triangle in it,” I say, tilting my head to see her. Trixie’s hind leg disconnects from her body and draws a triangle. “How is it?” I ask.

“It has three right angles,” Trixie replies. “Trixie thinks that’s impossible.”

“And I drew a digon,” Vinyl mutters. “That’s even more impossible.”

“Don’t worry guys,” I say. “This place just follows spherical geometry… More or less.”

“How reassuring,” Trixie mutters.

“Quite a lot,” I say. “Our planet is also a sphere, but we’re so used to it that we assume it’s flat and that’s why we find non-Euclidean places unna–” I pause, watching a long, pinkish shape crawling to me. It gets even weirder when I realise it’s Ruby. More exactly, Ruby with the rear part of a giant snake.

“Sssssuch a ssssssssmartassssssssss…” Ruby hisses, baring her fangs and showing a pretty long, forked tongue.

“Is it also non-Euclidean?” Vinyl asks.

“No, that’s just regularly fucked-up,” I reply, turning to Ruby. “Would you kindly stop being a snake?”

“Sss… why?”

“Because your mom will kick the crap outta me when she sees you like that.” I’m not sure where to look to stare into her eyes. Everything is slightly skewed to the right.

I try to walk to her, but then I accidentally stumble upon an angle that should be acute. Only when I trip over it, I realise that it was, in fact, obtuse. What’s worse, I fall into the bottomless pit again, though this time it’s on my left rather than below me. It doesn’t make me even remotely happier. I just fall and fall till I get bored. Nothing exciting.

“You’re here at last,” the voice rings in my head, nearly shattering my skull.

“I am?” I ask. “From my perspective, I’m still falling. That’s a shitty feeling, but you can get used to that.”

“I’m sorry. Wait a minute.”

I land softly on the ground in some well-lit room. Next to me, there’s a tall, black alicorn. Like, completely black, mane, eyes, everything. She looks at me curiously and scratches her mane with her hind leg somehow.

“Seriously?” I ask, looking at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “From what I know, you ponies associate such a body shape with authority.”

“Not when you’re black like the inside of Sombra’s arse,” I reply. “Also, hooves are not supposed to bend that way.” I look at my legs, realising that finally they’re where they should be.

“Oh, okay then.” With a flash, the alicorn changes into a coffee-coloured unicorn mare with a cat as her cutie mark. She smiles at me warmly, trying not to show her teeth. “By the way, sorry for your daughter. I simply had to punish her for what she does to cats.”

I notice a cat standing behind her and realise that it’s the same balding son of a bitch Ruby tried to shoot in Maneaus.

“You’d better change her back,” I say. “She makes enough trouble without being a snake. Oh, and by the way, she’s not my daughter, thank Celestia.”

“Are you sure?” the mare asks.

“How can you be sure?” I roll my eyes. “Were you there?”

“I was everywhere,” the mare replies. “I was here before you and all of your kind. I remember times when the tribe that was here before you annihilated themselves. Well, it’s been a while since they stopped worshipping me so I didn’t care, but Elohim were pissed. Those creatures were their finest experiment.”

“Yeah, sure,” I mutter. “I guess you’re very experienced and you know a lot about life, universe, and everything, huh?”

She looks into my eyes, making me shudder at the sight of endless void filled with screams of dread that hides behind them. “Well, if I told you that the whole universe you know is hidden inside of a giant Vinyl Scratch’s asshole, would you believe me?”

“I’d ask where this giant Vinyl Scratch lives,” I reply. “And who is she fucking at the moment.”

“I could never understand why all the creatures base their swears on their reproductive functions,” the mare mutters. “But, after all, you all are kinda similar. You even took the languages of those who were before you and mangled them to fit your underdeveloped articulators.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “And my farts cause thunderstorms on the other side of the Earth. Who are you to know that?”

“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself,” the mare says. “That’s kinda hard with so many names I was given. Bast, Ubasti, Bubastis, Ba en Aset, Sekhmet… A whole bunch. I was always fond of Bastet, myself. If I didn’t sit here for eons, you’d probably call me Bridlestet or something like that.”

“Most likely,” I mutter. “Okay, so you introduced yourself, you apparently live here for ages, yet you know a lot of things about me and the world with general, and you keep talking about experimenting with some guy called Elohim. I get it. May I go now?”

“Elohim is not one guy, it’s a whole lot of guys,” Bastet replies, rolling her eyes in a way that is not biologically possible. Like, her eyeballs do a backflip, as if they weren’t attached to her brain. “You call it a hive mind, don’t you? And a rather eccentric one.”

“I always wanted to know that.” I sigh, looking at the walls of the small cell we’re in. “Anyway, I have things to do. Can I go, or you’ll tell me some more cryptic stuff, like ‘the thing you’re looking for is not here’?”

Bastet looks at me unsurely. “Actually, I was going to say just that,” she replies. “Unfortunately, it was taken away from here a long time ago. Too bad. I hoped you’d use it to destroy yourselves. You know, I’d be next.”

“What?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around it.

“Oh, you don’t know.” Bastet chuckles. “We have that funny game. We take one of the primitive species we found on this planet and give them… hmm…” She scratched her mane with her hind leg again, bending it in an absolutely impossible way. “We turn a switch in their brains and make a few tweaks here and there. Then we look how long it takes before they obliterate everything. First it was a kind of monkey its descendants called Proconsul. Took them less than thirty million years of constant evolution before they decided to blow themselves up. We waited a hundred thousand years before everything cleared and then Epona chose the dumbest of all the animals that survived.”

I have a feeling that it was an insult. “What do you mean?”

“A moron which, despite being fast, lets other species catch it. One who eats every shit they can find, no matter how poisonous it is to them. One who dies because it lies down for too long. I present to you…” Bastet points at the wall and an image appears on it.

What the fuck is this thing? It looks vaguely Saddle Arabian, but… hell, this is just wrong. How is that supposed to see with those small eyes? No, this can’t be. Such a thing would die right after being born.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Your ancestor,” Bastet replies. “Epona redirected its evolution towards smaller size, added magic and some useful things. Like being able to throw up.”

“Bless her,” I mutter. “Bless the fuck out of her.”

Bastet looks at me and shakes her head. “When you all die, I’m gonna choose cats.” She pats the cat sitting next to her. “But getting to the point,” she says. “The thing you’re looking for is not here, but I know where it is. Let’s make a deal.”

“My mom warned me about making deals with strange ponies who sit in ancient dungeons,” I reply. “But if I listened to her, I would now sit in the local job centre instead of being here. What’s the deal?”

“I’ll show you two things,” Bastet replies. “One thing you will remember and one thing you don’t remember but you should. If you watch them without losing your mind, I’ll tell you where it is.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I mutter, once again staring at the creepy creature that’s supposed to be my ancestor. “What if I go insane?”

“Don’t worry.” Bastet smirks, showing a lot of sharp fangs. “I just want to show it to you for entertainment.”

“Says someone who can’t even get the teeth right…”

“Teeth are hard,” Bastet replies. “So, do you agree?”

I shrug. “Well, it’s better than leaving and never knowing. Go on.”

“Okay.” Bastet chuckles. Her laughter echoes in my head as I’m sucked into a multi-coloured vortex of time and space. Or rather, I think it’s the vortex of time and space because I’ve never seen one before. It’s just like, dunno, colourful, blurred images flashing before my eyes. Or some other shit.

Finally, the image sharpens. To my surprise, I realise that I’m in Vinyl’s pub, sitting in a chair by the bar. It doesn’t look as new as I remember it – everything is darker and slightly battered. Empty walls I remember are now covered in flags, sabres, anchors, pictures, and something that looks like Little Cadance’s prop.

The pub is full of ponies. I don’t know any of them, though some of them look familiar, like that old shroom behind the bar that looks kinda like Vinyl’s mother, except with a pair of sunglasses. Most of them are gathered around the armchair in the corner. An old mare sits there, levitating a glass of whisky and saying something.

“And then I was sucked by the vortex of times and space,” the old mare says. “Or rather, I thought it was one, because I’ve never seen one before. Like, dunno, blurred images flashing before my eyes or some other shit.”

I notice one of the mares in the crowd covering her foal’s ears. Another one, a handsome unicorn in her early forties that looks kinda like Ruby looks at her and cracks a rather unpleasant smile.

“And then everything sharpened and I landed in this very moment at this very pub,” the old mare says before pointing right at me. “Exactly there.”

I shudder when everyone looks at me. What the actual fuck? Did I just… Is that mare in the armchair…

“Don’t look at her like that, she currently wonders what the actual fuck is going on,” the old ma– older me says. “Someone give her whisky, she doesn’t know that this is not the worst thing that’s about to happen.”

“Wait, what?” I blurt out. Someone gives me a glass of whisky. I look at them – it’s a young unicorn, though the shape of his pupils tells me that one of his parents is a bat pony. For some reason he’s looking at me curiously.

“What are you looking at?” I ask, downing my whisky. “Your mom was also looking at ponies like that and look in the mirror to see what happened.”

“Forgive me, I was young and dumb,” the old mare says. “Not to mention that she’ll be gone in three seconds.”

Wait, three seconds? What will ha–

Aww, fuck. The vortex of time and space again. I’m starting to hate it.

This time, I land in some small room. The paint is peeling off the poster-covered walls, the bed is covered with clothes and books, empty pizza boxes are everywhere… It smells like something is rotting in here, not to mention that the pony who lives here probably masturbates a lot.

Wait. I realise something that makes me happy that this time I don’t have a corporeal form, but rather I’m kinda a ghost hanging in the air. Namely, it’s my old room, back when I was a student in Canterlot. Which means that–

I hear the clicking of the lock, followed by a few swears. Finally, the door is kicked open and my younger self walks in.

Oh, fuck me with a shovel. Did I really used so much eyeliner back then? And that mane is ridiculous, not to mention piercings. And, on the top of that, I’m wearing a t-shirt saying, “Fuck Hearts, I Prefer My Hooves”. Classy as fuck.

Wait, Hearts and Hooves Day? Oh hell.

As I ponder my fate, my younger self simply levitates half of the things off the bed and dumps them on the floor. “Gnarly,” she says. “You can walk in!”

If I weren’t a ghost, I’d choke. I completely forgot that Berry used to have a buzz cut and a strange fondness for leather clothes. No wonder everyone thought we were a pair of lesbians.

At first I almost don’t notice Derpy. She’s hiding in Berry’s shadow, not to mention that a baggy sweater she’s wearing makes her look like an oversized, cross-eyed sheep.

“So, that’s your place?” Derpy asks. “That’s, like, bombdigity.”

“Damn skippy!” younger me replies. “Nice to see you, Derpy. Like, I haven’t seen you in, like, a dick year.”

“Very,” Berry mutters, dropping on my bed. “‘Sup, M?”

“Tubular.” Younger me shrugs. “We had, like, a lesson about growing dicks.”

“Do you have to, like, water them?” Derpy asks. Berry and younger me look at her and sigh. Well, we always considered her a bit of a space cadet, back then. Especially when we smoked a chonger.

“I mean, like, with magic,” younger me replies. “But it, like, can’t be done. Like, only highest-level unicorns can give you a magical sex change. Twilight and Moondancer nearly totally shat themselves, but none of them grew, like, anything.”

“Radical,” Berry mutters. “So, what are we gonna do? Like, do we stay here, or get out and hit on guys?”

“Fuck guys, I got a pretty mondo jam here.” Younger me turns on a gramophone, filling the room with some old, synths-heavy music. Or rather, it’s old now. Back then, it was all the rage.

“I’d prefer some bitchin’ rap, myself,” Derpy says. I try to imagine her saying that now, twelve years and one kid later, but I simply can’t.

“We don’t care about your taste in music,” Berry mutters. “Or, like, in anything else.”

“Bite me,” Derpy replies. “Got a dobbie?”

“Got something totally better.” Berry produces a bottle of something probably illegal. There’s a picture of a cat on the label and it looks awfully like Bastet’s cutie mark. Some haygyptian moonshine? No wonder I don’t remember anything from that night. All that I know is that Derpy came to us from Vanhoover, then there was the morning when I woke up with my head in the toilet. Oh, and some time later it turned out that both Berry and Derpy got pregnant on that night.

Wait… So we did go out to meet some colts? I wonder if I get to see this wanker who impregnated them both, leaving me high and dry. The guy owes us, like, eleven years worth of child support. Not to mention aggravated damages for having to deal with the monstrosity called Ruby Pinch.

Meanwhile, Berry finally opens the bottle and takes a long swig. “That’s some groovy shit,” she mutters, nearly choking.

“Hey, stop putting your spit in it!” younger me exclaims, levitating the bottle out of her hooves and drinking from it. “Whoa, dude... “ She coughs. “That’s deadly.”

“May I?” Derpy grabs a bottle.

For a while they’re drinking and talking about random shit. Huh, now I know how my older self felt seeing me. They’re sitting here, not knowing how soon their life will reach the whole new level of fucked up. If I were to actually show up there, would I intervene or just fuck with them?

Hmm, maybe that’s why I’m invisible now – Bastet probably thought that I would actually intervene, causing a temporal paradox in which Ruby and Dinky would never be born, Derpy would become a drug addict, Berry would eventually end up in jail for beating someone important and I’d be even more irresponsible than I’m now. For starters, I’d probably agree to go to Neighpon with a completely unknown junkie who was going to play a few gigs there.

Well, I sometimes wonder if Vinyl would still become big in Neighpon if I went with her.

“Aww, hell,” my younger self says, slurring slightly. “Where did you get that, Berry?”

Berry hiccups. “Like, I bought it from, like, some old lady in the street… She was totally crazy, y’know.” She drops on my bed unceremoniously. “Like, she had a lot of cats.”

“Keep digging, Watson!” Derpy exclaims. As I said, she used to be a total airhead when she was younger. Especially with alcohol on board.

Suddenly, my younger self looks directly at the place where I’d be if I was visible to them. “Holy shit, dude... “ she mutters. “I’m butt-ugly…”

Well, fuck you too, you little, spotty piece of worthless trash of the society. If I didn’t know you, I’d never say that you grew up to be me.

“What did you say?” Berry asks.

Younger me stands up, staring at some point on the wall. Damn, I was always a lightweight. “I feel like… like I can do everything.”

Damn. Did I jump out of the window thinking that I could fly? There’s a thick layer of snow outside, so maybe that’s how I survived.

“Like… I can do magic and shit…”

“You don’t fucking say!” I exclaim. She flinches, even though I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear me. Then her horn lights up, engulfing her in bright halo. Berry and Derpy look at her, their jaws dropping. Berry looks at the half-empty bottle unsurely and puts it on my nightstand.

The halo dies down. Younger me looks at herself and smiles widely. “Wooohooo!” she exclaims. “I fucking did it! I’m a fucking top-level unicorn and Twilight can lick my cunt!”

“You mean, suck your dick,” Berry mutters. “Technically that’s what you have now.”

“Yeah and it’s huuuuge…” Derpy chuckles.

“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,” my younger self says, touching her muzzle, and yanking a short goatee. Then she stares between her legs and chuckles. “We’ll find Twilight Sparkle and I’ll ask her to suck my dick. It can also be Moondancer for all I care.”

Damn. And I thought Derpy was dumb when she was young.

“Why waste it on them?” Berry asks. She stands up and wraps her hoof around my younger self’s neck. “There are so many better uses for it we can find together…”

Oh shit. Don’t do that! Really, don’t. Impregnation danger! Don’t you realise that it’s Hearts and Hooves Day, you just drank some magical shit and you’re all in heat? Hello! Equestria to the biggest bunch of losers in Canterlot!

“I think you’ve seen enough,” Bastet whispers into my ear. The image of my younger self making out with Berry blurs slightly.

“You’re not gonna torment me with what I see?” I ask.

“You’re gonna torment yourself with what you didn’t see.” Bastet chuckles. “That’s much funnier. Also, it’ll last only a few seconds.”

“Fuck you.”

“I should try that one day,” Bastet replies. The blur of time and space sucks me in. Her laughter is still echoing in my head…

“She’s here!” Vinyl yells. “She’s kinda unconscious. Do you think I should give her a CPR?”

“Just try and you’ll need dentures,” I mutter, opening my eyes. It seems that I’m lying on the floor in some corridor of the ancient grave we discovered.

“Just great,” Daring Do says, rolling her eyes. “You all are getting lost and we’re still as far from finding out where the crystal is.”

“We wouldn’t get lost if you didn’t drop us,” Trixie mutters. “Trixie could’ve gotten eaten by mummies.”

“They’d get a stroke,” Vinyl deadpans. Trixie gives her a death glare.

“We still didn’t find the crystal.” Daring Do smacks both of them with her wings. “Let’s find it first and then you can even kill and eat each other for all I care.”

“The crystal is not here,” I say. Strange. It’s like suddenly I always knew that. It seems that at least Bastet didn’t alter the deal.

“Then where is it?” Inkie asks.

“In an ancient city among the mountains of the South Pole,” I reply. “Where Elder Things used to roam freely under the pale sun.”

“What?” Daring Do asks. “How do you know that?”

“That “she” from the poem told me,” I reply. “I met her. She’s an old cat lady who occasionally gives other ponies shady alcohol. Then she laughs at crazy shit you did when drunk.” I turn to Ruby. At least she’s not a snake this time, though it still doesn’t make things easier. But, after all, honesty is the best option, right? Let’s do it quickly.

“Ruby, I’m your father,” I say.

Ruby looks at me, raising her eyebrows. For a while, she’s looking at me curiously, as if she saw me for the first time. Well, damn. I’m screwed. I lost that little bit of trust she had in me. Not to mention that when Berry finds out, I’m dead.

Finally, after a painfully long while, Ruby opens her mouth while I try to shrink and hide between the tiles on the floor.“No shit, auntie,” she says with a chuckle.

Vinyl can’t stand it anymore. She explodes in a fit of snorting laughter, rolling on the ground. The rest follows her. Hell, even Inkie smiles a little bit.

“Can we get her out of here, like, quickly?” Ruby asks when they silence a bt. “Before it turns out that my daddy’s brain damage is permanent...”

Author's Notes:

Göt lalesi - "asshole" (literally "ass tulip". Turkish is weird like that.)

Behind the scenes: Bootsy says that Vinyl's method of curbing someone's ego is still better than dressing as a superhero to humiliate them. Guess which episode he wrote a fixfic for.