I hop around a flesh node and land on a connecting branch. Tanya just flies across the gap. She can still use her wings. Lucky. We’ve been traveling through the flesh web for a bit, trying to find a way out of this Tartarus. So far we’ve been good about not touching the nodes. We just have to jump or fly to cross between branches. Beyond that, all we’re doing is just wandering around. I still don’t know if there’s an exit or not.

“And after that, I just kept talking to myself,” I say. I’ve been sharing something pretty personal with Tanya while we’ve been traveling. Got to pass the time somehow.

Tanya blinks at me. “Wow. You know what, I’ll give you a pass. I would monologue all the time too if I had to go through all of that.”

I give her a thumbs up. “Thank you! Everyone I mentioned it to said it’s weird to monologue in your head, but I told them they would do it too if they went through what I did.”

Tanya shudders. “Yeah, I can see why. Do me a favor and never bring it up again.”

I smile at her. It’s nice for someone to understand me for once. “Enough about that. Tell me how you’re still alive!”

“I’m not sure on the details, but I have a general idea of what happened,” Tanya says. We come up to one of the nodes, but she keeps on talking as we jump branches. “It has something to do with your monster powers and how you eat people when you kill them.”

We land on the next branch and keep moving forward. Of course it has something to do with my monster powers. Everything weird that happens to me has something to do with them. “Figures. What sort of weird crap did my powers do to resurrect you from the dead?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t say resurrected,” Tanya says. “It’s more like I’m haunting your body, like a ghost.”
I stop and look at her. “So you’re telling me my monster claws come with a Ouija board?”
She gives me a deadpan look. “Always the featherbrain. How the heck have you not figured this out yet? It’s pretty obvious.”

“It’s clearly not obvious, since I haven’t figured it out.”

“No, you’re just stupid.” She shakes her head either out of pity or the desire to smack me over the head. Screw you too. “You know how you gain the memories of anybody you eat, right?”

“It’s a regular annoyance, yes. Did I eat your ghost?”

Tanya throws a claw in the air. “Sure, you ate my ghost. Go with that if you want. But there’s more to it than just that.”

“Then tell me.”

“I’ll tell you if you stop interrupting with your stupidity!”

I stop and look at her. “Why did I hire you as my accountant?”

“Be honest with yourself. Hiring me was the smartest decision of your life.” She walks past me, keeping her eyes forward. “When you eat people, you don’t just eat their memories. You eat their entire brain. You pick up their personalities, their desires, wants, interests, all that stuff. You eat an entire person and keep them inside you.” She turns around and pokes her talon in my chest. “And then those people live inside you. All those parts that make a person a person come together and function as if they never really died. That’s how I’m here, standing in front of you, calling you stupid, even though you bashed my head in with those brick fists of yours. You ate my brain, and now my brain lives on inside you.”

I pause for a moment to think. “That actually makes sense.”

“No shit it makes sense. I have no clue why you didn’t put the pieces together when that Sheogorath guy said you have voices inside you. You actually have a bunch of people living inside your body right now!”

I ponder for a bit more. Even though he sounded crazy, that mad prince did say some things that are turning out correct. There are monster voices running around in my head. Do those voices belong to people I ate? Is everyone I ate now inside me, just like Tanya? Geez, with the amount of people I ate, they can start their own economy inside my head and hold elections for mayor and stuff. “You know, insanity loses its mystique when the things the crazy guy says turns out to be right.”

“Crazy doesn’t have mystique. It’s just crazy.”

“There’s some mystery with crazy. You get your mystique from that.” Though crazy is still just crazy. Heck, having voices set up a small nation inside my head is just crazy. “Since you brought up Sheogorath, does that mean you know what’s going on around me?”

“I am a part of you, for better or worse, mostly worse. I’ve seen everything that you’ve done since you ate me.”

“Even when I go to the bathroom?”

“You’re a Blacklight monster. You never go to the bathroom.”

“Well, maybe I go just for fun.”

“Do you ever stop being stupid?”

“Do you ever stop being a prick?”

“Only when you pay me.” We cross between another set of branches. After we land, Tanya takes a moment to look around the web realm. “I think we’re inside your head.”

I turn and give the owl-bird a weird look. “Now you’re the one who’s saying something stupid.

“Am I?” She presses her claw against the skin of the branch. “This web has the same heartbeat as you. If I hit it”- Tanya punches the flesh and I feel a slight ache in my head- “you can feel it. And there are a bunch of voices you ate running around somewhere up there who want to kill you. I say we’re in your head.”

That does sound rather convincing. She better not say I’m stupid for not thinking it.

“You’re stupid for not thinking it,” Tanya says. “I’m still a part of you. I can still hear your thoughts.

“Oh fuck off.” I keep walking for the next node. “We’re in my head, so what? It’s not going to help get us out of here.”

“Can’t you still Nexus jump or did you lose the ability to do that?”

“I didn’t have much control over that to begin with. Besides, where am I going to jump to? I need to get back to Equestria so I can sue Blackwatch for damaging my scone shop, and save Pinkie. Jumping to some alien world with monsters that want to kill me isn’t going to get me any closer to home.”

“What did Sheogorath say?”

“Sheogorath said a lot of stuff. Most of it was crazy.”

“He said the Nexus gives you want you want. If you want to go home, you have to want to go home. Problem is all the voices in your head want you dead, so you keep ending up in places that want to kill you.”

My eye twitches. I swear if she calls me stupid for not remembering that… I point up to the sky. “Then in order for me to get out, we got to convince those voices they \don’t= want me dead.”

“Yeah, I think that’s impossible too.” Tanya looks up at the sky, looking for the distant voices that ought to be up there. “There’s no way you’ll convince any of them to not want to kill you.”

Glad we’re on the same page for at least one thing. It’ll be a high order to convince all the voices I ate that I should live. If a griffon eats you, would you want the griffon to live? You probably won’t want anything, since you’ll be dead, but this is a special case.

A question crosses my mind. I look at Tanya. “What do you want?”

Tanya meets eyes with me. “Hmm?”

“I want to go home. The voices want me dead. What do you want?”

She stares at me for a long moment before saying anything. “I don’t think you need to know.”

“I kind of do need to. If we’re not on the same page, it won’t matter if I convince every voice I ever ate that I’m a golden god who can do no wrong. If you want something different, then the Nexus is still going to be confused and we won’t get anywhere.”

“I don’t think it matters much what I want right now.”

“Tanya!” I bark. My blade wings shift out with the sound of sliding metal. Sudden noise is enough to make Tanya jump. “Do you want me dead, yes or no?”

She runs a claw down her owl face. “If you absolutely have to know, I want to shove your head in a toilet bowl and keep flushing until toilet water bursts out of your ass.”

I blink. “Wow. That’s specific.”

She tilts her head. “You might notice I don’t want you dead. I just really, really want to hurt you.”

“I, uh…” Kind of speechless here. “Where’s that coming from?”

Tanya raises her voice. “You know that memory you saw a bit ago, the one where you told me you bought all those comic books?”

In the memory where her check bounced? “Is that what I bought?”

“YES! You spent forty grand on fucking comic books of all things! That’s what you bought. You somehow managed to clear out three comic book stores with the loan money you got on the same day! Who in Tartarus is stupid enough to do that?!”

I think I’d remember something like that. “I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t! You don’t remember anything! But I remember. I remember I had to drag your drunk ass back to those stores and threaten the clerks to take back thirty three grand worth in comic books!”

“Thirty three grand? I thought you said forty?”

“It was forty, but your dumb ass opened a bunch of them and the clerks wouldn’t take them back for full value. You lost seven thousand bits on comic books! It was going to be more. One of the store clerks was about to kick us out without taking the comics back because you puked on the counter! I had to pull out every sales tactic I know just to keep her from calling the police.”

“That actually sounds impressive.”

Tanya slams her claws on the ground. I wince when the pain shoots through my head. “It is damn well fucking not impressive! That was on of many times I had to bail your ass out of bankruptcy! There was the time you bought a bunch of pigs because you wanted to know what truffles taste like. There was the time you got wrapped up in a pyramid scheme. We’re lucky the Blacklight plague hit, because the cops were close to finding where I hid the body. There was the time you pulled everything you had from the bank in one check and mixed it in a cocktail so you could, and I quote, ‘drink your money away.’ You bought an antelope! Grover knows where the heck that antelope went now that Manehattan has gone to Tartarus.”

“That all still sounds impressive.”

“And I was the one who cleaned up every single one of your messes. Pinkie was even getting on your case on how impulsive you are!” I vaguely remember Pinkie saying something about that. “You know why I kept saving your dumb ass?!”

“Uh… love and charity?”

“My paycheck! You kept giving away my paycheck! Who knows why I didn’t bail on you the first time you threw my check in the fire.”

“But I don’t remember anything that you said. How can you be angry at me for that stuff?”

“You don’t remember your own stupidity? Then let me give you something you do remember. Rainbow Dash? You didn’t think there would be a bug at the end of that, did you?”

“That’s a low blow. I was helping a friend.”

“And you let lose one of Equestria’s most wanted villains. Oh, how about Arctic North. Smart move showing him where the suitcase was.”

“Well, if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you, now would I?”

“And then there was the time you blindly went in to fight the bug queen because you suddenly got a boner for our Empire ancestors.”

“I needed to help the Protoss to get home!”

“Just like you needed to help that unicorn who needed you to sell all those spoons you bought from him?”
I stop to take a breath. There’s really no need for me to get wound up about any of this. I can’t even remember most of the stuff she’s talking about. “Okay, so I get why you’re angry.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to get us anywhere.”

“Your stupidity won’t get us anywhere.”

I see where this is going. Tanya has a thing going and it’s going to take some time for her to come down. It’ll be like talking to an angry brick wall until she does. “You really want to hurt me?”

“For a while now. It was in the back of my mind before you ate me, but since I had time to sit and brood while I watched you make mistake after mistake, it’s come to the forefront.”

“I can see. Would it be okay if you can wait until we get home?”

“See, you’re under the impression that I have any reason to go home. You ate me, remember? Your head is my home now. What am I going to do from inside your head? It’ll just be you going home. I have no choice in the matter.”

I tap my talon against the ground. If I’m having this much trouble with Tanya, just imagine the challenge the other voices will be. I knew it was impossible, but now I’m grasping how impossible this is going to be.

Something changes in the air. My feathers stiffen and my ears perk up. “Do you hear that?”

Tanya looks around, forgetting about her rage boner for me. “I hear what you hear, so yeah. What is that?”

At first the sound is faint. I can’t make it out. But it grows. It grows, and it sounds like its coming closer. “Sounds like… a bunch of people screaming.”

Tanya keeps looking, then her eyes lock on to something above us. “What’s that up there?”

I turn and look at what she’s pointing out. Up there, in the rafters of nodes and branches, there’s an odd blob making its way down the web. Now that I’m looking at it, the sound is clearly coming from that thing.

I squint. My eyes focus on the thing in the distance, but I still can’t see clearly. It’s descending one of the branches. As it comes closer, I can make out a few details. It looks like a bunch of creatures grouped together, along with one giant creature in the middle of the blob.

Something clicks in my mind, and I get a sudden sense of dread. “Uh oh.”

Tanya turns towards me. “What?”

“The voices found us.”

“They found you.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

The herd of pony voices is coming down the branch like a waterfall. I can feel them stampeding through the branch. I can also feel them giving me another headache, but at this point everything is just a headache for me. I hope one of them will have the decency to spare me some ibuprofen before they bash my skull in.

“How did they find us?” I say. “This place is a maze. It should take them ages to get to us!”

“Probably because they’re inside your head, too,” Tanya says. “Piece it together, featherbrain. We’re all trapped in your head. They see and hear everything you say. They probably listened to our entire conversation and figured out where we are from that.”

Oh, right. The voices are inside me, like Sheogorath said. That makes sense. “But they’re in my head, and I’m in my head right now. How does that work? Should we be separated by space or what?”

The owl-lion just shrugs. “I don’t know. This is some acid trip shit going on. This is the first time I’ve had an actual body in over a year, so this is as new to me as it is to you.”

“But you can still see and hear what I’m doing?”

She nods. “Yep. I’m looking through my eyes and yours. It’s pretty trippy. Heck, I can see and hear what the other guys are doing right now. They’re zeroed in on you.”

Ah great. This is some weird horror situation where the serial killer knows my every move.

Tanya points up to the riot coming our way. “Evergreen takes offense to that.”

“Who’s Evergreen?”

“One of the ponies up there. I think she’s one of the first ponies you ate.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m talking with her,” she says as if it should be obvious. “She’s a really nice pony once I taught her the difference between a male and female griffon.”

“How are you talking with her?!”

“Same way I can hear your thoughts when you monologue. We’re in the same brain, Gilda. Our thoughts overlap a lot.”

Sweet mercy, this is hurting my brain. Not in the stampede wrecking the branches kind of way, though that is a bitch in a half, but in a confusing, I don’t know what’s going on kind of way.

Tanya shrugs. “Yeah, it is confusing. But we’ve all been in here so long that it’s become normal for us. We even have game night on Tuesdays.”

“Can you at least… You have game nights?”

“Yep.”

“That’s… How?” I shake my head. “Never mind, questions for later. Can you at least tell them not to come and beat me up?”

“You know how I said I really wanted to hurt you?”

Crap, she’s helping them. “You bitch.” All I get from her is a smug little smile. “Utter dick move. I’d have half a mind to kick the shit out of you.”

She chortles. “I’m a size bigger than you. I think I can take you on.”

Again, crap. She has a point. The owl variants of griffons have always been the bulkier birds of the flock. If I went head on, she could pin me down with sheer power. Going up against her would be—

Wait, what I’m I talking about? I got monster powers! I whip out my arm and the Tyranid blade rolls out in a mass of tentacles. “You’re forgetting something.”

That smug little grin wipes off of Tanya’s face. Her eyes shrink to pinpricks as she catches sight of my giant Zerg blade.
“Oh, shi”—

She doesn’t have time to react. Before she knows it, I’ve dashed right past her. My blade cleaved her in twain. Owl-lions are something to worry about, if I wasn’t a mass of Blacklight virus. “To be fair,” I say, turning towards the owl-lion to gloat, “I forgot about that to.”

Tanya’s body hangs in the air. Instead of two pieces flopping on the floor, her two pieces are right where they were before, pre slice. The only sign I did cut her is the big gap in her waist. Clouds form around the two severed halves of her torso, and her two halves come together. It’s as if I never sliced her!

The owl-lion pats her mid section. She looks as surprised as I am. “Uh, I didn’t think I’d live through that.”

I look at my Tyranid blade. There’s no blood on it. That was the literal definition of a clean cut. “What in Tartarus is with this place?!”

“Allow me to return the favor.” As I’m staring at my blade, Tanya nails me in the beak with a punch. My head whips back, and I clutch my nose. I think she gave me a nose bleed. “Huh, I can hit you.”

I throw my claw up in the air. “That’s not fair!”

Tanya throws another punch. I’m quick enough to raise my blade and take it in the hardened flesh. Her fist harmlessly hits it. Normally, anyone who hits something as hard as steel would cry out in pain from breaking their fist, but Tanya doesn’t seem to have that problem.

“So… I think we should probably talk about our issues instead of beating each other”—

Tanya flies over my blade and grabs my head. She flaps down, and smashes my head into the back of the branch. My vision goes black for a moment, and all I see are stars…

Web… Flesh… A voice…

“Fucking heck, Tanya. That was a good move.”

Running… Ponies around me… A different voice…

“Do you think we can do that, beat him up while he can’t hit us back?”

Down the web… Two griffons… One on the ground… Third voice

“Hold up, is Zero hearing us now?”

“I think Tanya knocked Zero so hard that he’s finally crossing thoughts with us.”

“Hi Zero! We’re going to beat the snot out of you!”

My eyes blink open. The heck was that? Tanya’s standing over me. I throw my blade up just in time to deflect another punch.

“Save some for us, Tanya! We want a piece of him, too!”

Tanya looks up at the approaching heard coming down the web. “Okay, stop that. You’re ruining this for me.”

“Stop what?”

She glares at the herd. “Stop calling this bitch a him. Gilda’s a girl. I will not let you disgrace our griffon pride with your ignorance!”

“Sorry. Old habits.”

“I’m still calling him a him, Because it’s insulting.”

“It’s insulting me!” Tanya yells. “Learn your damn genders or I’ll do more than insult you!”

I slice Tanya through the neck while she’s distracted. It does nothing but leave a gap of air in her neck, but that’s enough to give me a chance to jump away and create some space.

The griffon slices the other… She jumps away…

The griffon yells…

“What’s going on?!” I yell.

Tanya looks at me. She cracks her neck while it’s reforming. “I’m kicking your ass. That’s what’s going on.”

“No, not that. The voices. Why can I hear voices in my head? And why are you talking to them?”

Her eyebrow goes up. “So you can finally hear them.”

“Maybe? I hear you talking to someone, and someone is talking with other someones, and I see us fighting from somewhere!”

She points up at the herd. “You must be crossing thoughts with them. Took you long enough.”

“The heck does that mean?!” she says. Gilda pulls the feathers from her head as she tries to wrap her mind around what’s going on. What an imbecile. She perks up, and pints at me. “That’s not my monologue! Whose monologue was that?”
“Oh, and now your crossing with me.” I fold my arms and watch the featherbrain freak out. I can’t help but smile. It’s nice watching the idiot go through what I’ve been living with for the past year.

“Those are your thoughts!” I say. I say? I said… I say, saw, see, raw raw raw… Oh good, I’m back to my thoughts. “Never mind, I’m back to normal.”

Tanya shrugs. “That won’t last long.”

I glance up at the incoming mob. They’re close now. I’d give them a couple more minutes before arrival. “So I’m picking up those guys’ thoughts, and yours too?”

“And we can hear your thoughts too,” Evergreen says. “Most of us are in agreement. Your thoughts are stupid.”

“Who the heck is Evergreen?!” Gilda yells. She pauses for a moment. “Oh, come on!”

This is the best entertainment I’ve had for a while. “Now you know my life for the past year.” I approach her. “We actually have a saying here. The first thing you lose is your body. The second thing is your privacy. Your mind comes next.”
Gilda throws her arms wide. “I think I’m well into losing my mind in this place! Damn Sheogorath. This is what he wants, isn’t”—

I cut off Gilda with a swift punch to the throat. She chokes and stumbles back. Heck ya, this is satisfying. “Sheogorath didn’t eat us.”

“Stop doing that,” Gilda chokes.

“Okay,” Tanya says. “I’ll let the others get a piece of you.”

I back up as I rub my throat. Do I have my thoughts back? Hi, I’m Gilda. Yes, I have my thoughts back. Screw my throat, my head hurts from this thought crossing thing. “Don’t you think this is messed up?!”

“It’s as messed up as a monster eating us with tentacles and crap,” one of the mob voices says.

“I didn’t ask you!” I yell at the mob. “Tanya, this is insane. None of this makes any sense! I’m getting your thoughts and those guys are getting my thoughts and it’s all a mess and I can’t make any sense of it!”

Tanya crosses her arms. “Welcome to my life for the past year. How do you think we feel?” She looks to see if I have an answer. I don’t. “To give you an idea, none of us have had a private moment to ourselves since the moment you ate us! It’s been constant mind melding and bleeding every waking hour of our lives. One moment I’m thinking about how my pony husband is doing at home, the next I’m thinking about my pony daughter is liking her first day at school.”

I blink. “But you’re not married…”

“Exactly! It’s gotten to the point to where I got to think hard which memories are and are not mine! And that’s assuming my memories still exist. There’s one guy in here who can’t remember his own name! His thoughts will be bleeding into my head but I’ll get this empty void of nothing when he tries to remember what people called him.”

“Hey, I remembered I like strawberries and milk the other day,” one of the mob voices says.

“And we’re proud of you, Holland,” Tanya says. “We call him Holland.”

“And you’re on a first name basis with these guys?”

“Well, yeah. You tend to bond with people when you’re constantly sharing your thoughts.”

“Sharing is caring, they say,” another mob voice says.

“But there are just some cases when they share just a bit too much,” Tanya says.

We’re almost there. Just keep him distracted, Tanya. Just a little longer…

Zero rubs his temples with his claws. “Now I have to deal with this nightmare,” he mutters. The monster perks up. “That’s just great! Now I’m picking up someone else’s thoughts again!”

“That’s an annoying bit,” Tanya says. “You’re in a conversation, but then you jump in someone else’s mind and they’re thinking about prancing through the flowers or some shit and now you’re talking about flowers to the first guy. Happens to all of us.”

Is Tanya singling me out? “Are you singling me out?”

“It was just an example that I came up with off the top of my head. It’s fine if you like flowers, Fruit Punch. No one thinks you’re less of a stallion for doing so.”

“That Fruit Punch chick,” Zero says, “I’m getting her thoughts.” Oh, I’m flattered. “Shut up!”

“Oh, be nice to them,” Tanya says. “They’re guests in your head.”

“They’re coming to kill me!” Zero says.

“Oh, we’re not coming,” I say. “We’re already here.”

My tentacles tense. “What?”

Tanya steps out of the way, and a large, pink pony leaps over her head. My reflexes kick in, and my Tyranid blade swipes up, slicing the incoming pony in half. Right behind her is another pony, this one a crusty stallion who sucker punches me in the jaw. I stumble back, and the pony I just sliced delivers a swift rodeo kick to my behind. I face-plant with my butt up in the air.

Crap, should’ve come up with a plan while Tanya was bitching at me. No time like the present. My Chitinous plating morphs to cover my body, but an aggressive soul kicks me in the stomach while it’s forming. I curl up in pain, and the ponies gang up to stomp me out of my armor plates.

With the plating, the attacks don’t do much, but they’re enough to force me on the ground. I brush watch I can away and try to call out, but there’s too many angry hooves kicking the shit out of me. All the while, the mob is screaming obscenities at me.

“Piece of shit!”

“This is what you get for destroying Manehattan!”

“Let’s see how you like getting your brains smashed in!”

“Jackass! You drained my bank account! My uncles’ inheritance was in there!”

Everybody is crowding around Zero, trying to burst him like a piñata. They’re all pushing and shoving to get through. “Come on, guys. Learn to share.” Usually my voice is loud enough to be heard over crowds like these, but everyone is too busy to care.

“You ever see a nest of angry hornets swarm their prey?” Tanya asks.

I look down at the owl griffon. While she’s one of the bigger people of our little community, yet she still only comes up to my belly. I still tower over her, like the rest of them. But she’s tall enough to look over everyone’s shoulders if they’re all huddled like they are right not. “No. But I assume it looks like this.”

Tanya picks at her talons while we watch the chaos from afar. “It’s pretty close. Although the prey never makes little girl noises.”

Is griffon hearing that good? I can’t hear what Zero is doing over all the yelling.

Tanya nudges my leg. “Are you going to dive in, big guy? You’ve been aching for a round two, have you not?”

A large blade slices through the crowd. It doesn’t stop my friends, just inconveniences them for a moment. “I can’t do anything until everyone clears out. I’m too big.”

“They can’t do anything with that armor Gilda has on. Kicks and scratches don’t do much to alien plate scales. But you could probably crush her like a nut.”

The monster griffon pokes his head out from the top of the crowd. “Get out of my head, whoever you are!” he yells before the others pull him back down. Looks like he’s having a tough time, but not tough enough.

A hoof jabs into my eye, and someone tries to bite through my wing. Ow, ow, ow. Oh hey, I’m back to normal again. Based on context clues, I think I figured out whose thoughts I was just reading. It’s the big guy standing off to the side next to Tanya. Sweet mercy, that guy is as big as a house.

I grab the back of somepony’s neck and push myself up above the raging pony sea. Hey, that sounds like a good band name, Raging Pony Sea. Sounds cooler than those general concept name bands people seem to think are good, like Tool.
So I’m pushing myself above the raging pony sea and the raging ponies are trying to pull me back down. Feels like I’m sliding a mile, six inches at a time. Hardly any progress. Not like it’s doing them any good. Armor plating beats all! But I am breaking a bit of a sweat. If this goes on they’ll exhaust me, and then I’ll really be in trouble!

A pink pony pops in front of my and grapples my neck. “Suplex!” she yells in my ear. Next thing I know I’m flying over the crowd and my back slams on the floor. My headache comes back with a vengeance from that move. The pony has me in a neck lock and won’t let me get up. “Orion, break open his armor!” she says. “Be the nut cracker you were born to be!”
The branch shakes as the giant pony comes barreling for me. Ah, ah, ah, not helping the headache. His shadow looms over me, and I see the impression of a giant hoof coming to burst me open.

Nope! Don’t want to find out what happens! I flip over on to my belly, narrowly avoiding the hoof. It leaves a big crater and a loud boom where it lands and balls and tits that’s not pleasant! My head is on fire!

I at least got enough sense to keep on moving. I keep on rolling, breaking out of the pony’s headlock. Once I’m free, I waste no time getting on my feet and running for the edge of the branch. Once there, I turn around, jump back, and fall off the branch while giving the mob a traditional griffon farewell by giving them the double bird.

The griffon yells as he descends into the depths of the web. “Screw you three ring circus sideshow of freaks!”

Evergreen comes up and looks down at the shrinking dot below us. “What did Zero say?”

I shrug. “Beats me. Did you see that awesome headlock I put him in?”

The mob shrinks above me as I fall deep into the web. Apparently I’m still picking up on their thoughts. I wonder if it changes with distance.

I look down. Welp, there doesn’t seem to be anything below me. That means when I do hit something, I’ll be hitting it at terminal velocity. Yay, another splitting headache coming my way. I’m so excited. At least it’s better than an angry mob tearing me to shreds.

What was the deal with that mob, anyways? They really wanted to tear me to pieces for some reason. They were acting all happy about it, too. I think it’s because I ate them all, but if I were them I’d get over it by now. Not much they can do about their situation. Just get over it and move on. If anything they would want to keep me alive. They are inside me after all. If I die, they die.

Maybe it’s because I drained their bank accounts. Sure, they might be angry about that, but I needed capital for my scone shop and dead people don’t need money to live. I’m sure they’ll turn around when they figure out money has no value in my head.

Here’s a thought. They’re a community of sorts living in my head, rent free. If they’re sharing headspace, they got to pay rent, or else I’ll evict them. My body isn’t a charity. I always wanted to have a bunch of renters underneath me who give me easy money. I can sit back and relax while the voices put their checks in my mailbox. No work from me, easy money!

Oh, even better idea. I can declare my head a sovereign nation! I can file the paperwork in my head, and my government will give me tax exemptions, so I’ll never have to pay taxes on the rent I collect. Even better, I can drive up the taxes on these squatters, so they’ll pay me in both rent and taxes. The crazy rent rates and insane tax policies will force them to emigrate out of my body. I’ll evict the voices and make a nice profit on the side at the same time. Brilliant!

Now I just need to establish a legal tender inside my noggin. It needs to be exchangeable with real world currency. Imaginary coins don’t translate well with Equestrian bits.

A yellow light catches my eye. I look down, and I see a web node wrapped in chains glowing in yellow. Hey, I’ve seen one of those before. I don’t think voices pop out of the chained nodes if I touch it. It’ll be a good place to make base.

I check my trajectory, and I’m heading straight for it. It’s getting close real fast. Huh, I wonder what will happen if I hit those chains at terminal velocit—

A dark room… A pony in a lab coat…. “Thank you, Princess. This will be invaluable to my research.”

A white alicorn… Looking over me… “Yes. Just remember this is top secret. It’s treason if word were to get out.”

A Blackwatch goon… no mask… “So you’re just going to hide her, Princess Celestia?”

I recognize the alicorn… Princess Celestia… “It’s my fault Gilda turned into this. She’s my mistake.”

A nod… “Understood. No one can know about this.”

Another pause… “I’m sorry, Gilda.”

…

What?