Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Chapter Four – “Nurse, I need 30ccs of friendship, stat!”

I'll admit, my first impression of Spike was a bit biased. Watching the little dragon bathe somewhere close to 3,000 dollars worth of drugs in a wave of emerald fire didn't exactly leave me with the desire to throw a party in his honor and cheer his name. Rather, I was screaming it at the top of my lungs while flailing around fruitlessly in midair, my vengeful rampage held at bay all too easily by Twilight's fucking levitation spell.

I'd learned over the course of the past two weeks to really, really hate that spell.

Not that she was a one trick pony, mind you (pun very much intended).

If anything, Twilight's absurd levels of preparation were even more aggravating. Like some sort of drug-seeking missile, she scoured the building in search of each and every substance that could conceivably be abused. Ranging from legitimate vices like alcohol and prescription meds to a mishmash of dubious stand-ins like bath salts, mouthwash, hoof sanitizer, and just about any and all aerosols; if you could name it, she'd already disposed of it.

Predictably, I'd responded to this complete cleansing of my environment with empty threats against my two hosts and very real threats against myself.

Now, I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea about me or anything. I'd put a Hell of a lot of work and thought into hanging myself back in my room. It's the kind of thing that really needs a lot of forethought, you know? It took me about three months to work up the nerve to decide to go through with it and two additional months of faffing about to decide exactly how I was going to do it. And shit, that's not even mentioning all of the brainstorming I'd spent on planning the right atmosphere for the whole hullabaloo too. If it makes me a music nerd, fuck it, I don't care, but making sure that the right song would be playing while I dangled like a single-stringed marionette was really important to me.

Ugh... shit, I'm rambling again. Look, the point is: for me, suicide took time and planning.

However, that brings up a question. Was I that patient about ending my life while suffering from heroin withdrawal?

No, not so much.

My first attempt as soon as I felt that all pairs of prying eyes were otherwise preoccupied was to break a plate and try to slit my wris~ ankle with it. As it turned out, not only was I weaker than I thought, but Twilight's plates were made of tougher stuff than most other dinnerware I had encountered in the past, some kind of futuristic neo-ceramic that was resistant to manic jackasses or something.

She found me not long after I began banging it against a wall while whistling nonchalantly and took it from me.

I then waited for a day to pass and the storm to blow over before giving it another try, this time with a shard from a mirror I'd broken with a broom handle. Unfortunately, despite arguments that she wasn't much of an athlete, my hostess still managed to tune in on the clatter and gallop up the stairs to the bathroom in time to interrupt before anything could happen.

What followed was profoundly confusing, but I watched with wide eyes as her horn sparked and the various pieces of the mirror all came back together and the mirror itself became whole again.

Showoff.

Anyway, those were my lower-key tries. Small potatoes, really. My third attempt was quite a bit more eventful...

Only after jumping from the observatory on the fourth story balcony in a desperate bid to have the last laugh did I discover just what happens to the things that end up surrounded by Spike's curiously green fire. For a split-second, barely even enough time to register what had happened to me, I felt the most intense pain I had ever experienced in my entire life. Immediately thereafter, however, I found myself falling face-first into the alabaster body of the one responsible for my rather sizable list of current woes (in my mind anyway). Somehow nonplussed over the whole “junkie spontaneously appearing out of thin air” thing, Princess Celestia simply regarded me with a sad expression and a single shake of her head.

In other words, I'd disappointed her.

Oddly, that sort of... disappointed me.

A guard in golden armor then escorted me from Celestia's personal quarters without another word, loaded me onto a flying carriage, and took me back to the library-tree. The length of the flight gave me some time to collect my thoughts, though that ponderance ended up being even more of an emotionally draining mistake. Upon my return, it was clear that Twilight had prepared a speech or lecture of some kind to reprimand me with, but she fell silent when I finally broke down and started crying.

It wasn't my proudest moment... but I can't deny that I needed it.

Heck, it was still daylight outside and even the owl flew over to comfort me. That was when I learned his name, Owlowiscious. I'm assuming Twilight was purposefully aiming for something with too many syllables, because otherwise I'm stumped. Then again, I suppose it does fit pretty well. Just about everyone I'd met thus far had a name that was in some way indicative of either what they were, what they enjoyed, or what they were skilled at.

If anything, my name was the most out of place. Funny, that.

The next couple of days were, while still thoroughly terrible, markedly less terrible. I tossed and turned in bed, saw hallucinations, heard voices, vomited regularly, and generally felt as though my body were being eroded away like a sandy shoreline against a gnawing ocean. Still, I will admit, something had changed because I did somehow manage to keep myself from hurting... well... myself. It took all of my restraint at times, but for some reason, there was a sudden urge in me to hold onto that restraint. I didn't really know or understand why, but I didn't have the energy to ponder it much either.

What was worth pondering was Twilight's subsequent shift in demeanor. Put simply, it was a tad jarring, though in a good way. Given the situation, my instability had been the only thing really keeping me from connecting with my kindhearted caretaker. With that issue resolved (for the moment anyway), I watched as an instantly less combative and much more compassionate pony took the unicorn's place, clearly eager to help me begin the healing process.

Spike followed suit not long after, but not before Twilight dictated a letter declaring their success and had him send it in a jet of jade fire.

The conversations that people think you're not eavesdropping in on while you're hunched over a toilet and dry-heaving until your chest collapses, am I right, fellas? But whatever, all things considered, I was in a better mood than I had been in a long, long time. I rolled my eyes and let them have their victory, then resumed my clandestine ritual by making another offering to the porcelain alter.

Not long after that was when the stories started.

Bedtime stories after I spent the rest of the day moaning and producing puke of various interesting colors. Fantastical, impossible stories about adventures that I'd grown to believe were the stuff of faerie tales and nothing more. Then again, that's coming from a guy who'd been kidnapped via a portal in his closet and became a technicolor equine, so who was I to really argue?

Twilight told me about Princess Luna's fall from grace and her transformation into “the wicked mare of darkness”, Nightmare Moon. After an attempt to usurp the throne, she was banished by her elder sister to the moon for a thousand years, but eventually returned to give the exact same scheme another shot. With her sister trapped in the sun and powerless to stop her, she came close to having her everlasting night served to her on a silver platter, but my purple nurse and the five mares that would later become her closest friends rose to the occasion and struck her down in Princess Celestia's stead. They'd struggled through dangerous obstacles and tests of character, navigated a wild forest full of deadly beasts, and faced a mighty foe with only the incredibly cheesy power of friendship on their side.

And they'd won.

Then there was Discord, a mad god with the power to do pretty much anything he wanted. He presided over chaos and apparently sought to bring that which he presided over to the rest of the world. Though sounding somehow even more far-fetched than the previous tale, I still couldn't take my attention away from my storyteller for a single second. Her and her friends had been corrupted, their greatest strengths gutted and pulled inside-out. Changing from Honesty, Laughter, Generosity, Kindness, Loyalty, and Magic into Mendacity, Anger, Greed, Cruelty, Betrayal, and... whatever the opposite of Magic is, they started fighting amongst themselves and fell apart as a team. Dejected, a monochrome Twilight walked home and prepared to leave for lands unknown when a flood of letters suddenly began returning to their original sender. Each held a lesson on friendship, Twilight's friendship, and helped her regain her sense of self and will to fight... as well as all of her, uh, purple.

What followed was a trek across the wrecked town to each of her friends' houses. With a bit of magical help from her in the form of a memory spell, they too remembered who they were, who their friends were, and why they had to struggle for what had been momentarily stripped from them. Brought back together, this time with Rainbow Dash instead of her stand-in, Spike, they strode up to Discord as he sat on his throne drinking the glass out from under some chocolate milk and they challenged him a second time.

This time, order beat anarchy. One might even say it was a stone cold victory.

No, I won't apologize for that joke.

But whatever, back to the stories.

Next came Queen Chrysalis and her changeling hoard. Strange, cheese-legged, insectoid-ponies capable of hiding in plain sight by mimicking the appearance of your loved ones and nourishing themselves by feeding off of your love for whoever they've replaced.

Hey, don't look at me like that. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin', I swear.

Chrysalis had imprisoned and impersonated Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, the impatient pink pony I'd met along with the others shortly after my arrival. Also known as Cadance, she was not only Twilight's childhood babysitter, but also Twilight's brother's bride-to-be.

Talk about a clusterfuck.

Twilight and her friends, once they finally believed her, put up a good fight, but this time an even cheesier force claimed victory.

The goddamn power of love.

I'd make fun of it more if it weren't so damned beautiful. I've spent my life thinking that things like this were worthless... and to hear that they've saved the day, spared a kingdom from conquest, and brought countless other together... well... it brings a tear or two to my eyes.

I'm jaded, I'm angry, I'm bitter, I'm depressed, and I'm in a state of physical agony that only others suffering from withdrawal could ever hope to empathize with... but do you know what?

For once, I think I'm getting better.

Confound these ponies. Confound this friendship.

Give me a moment. I need another good cry.

To be continued in Chapter Five - Breakfast for Three...