"Hey, Mark!" Jon's voice came. "Can you get up?"
Mark stirred a bit, groaning. "...Please... five more minutes..."
"No, really!" Jon said. "Can you move, like, at all?"
Once Mark got his bearings, his drowsy eyes shot wide open. He realized that he was tied up; his entire torso was covered in rings of rope, his back to a support beam. The same thing was with everyone. Well, everyone except...
"Wait..." Mark said, looking around, "...where's Clara?!"
"Oh..." the filly spoke, walking into the room, "...I wouldn't worry about her! If I had to guess... I'd say she had a pretty severe reaction to that sugar! Let's see here..."
She grabbed the cylinder of powdered sugar, looking it over... and then peeling the label slightly. Her eyes went wide.
"...Oh, dear," she said, "it seems that this isn't powdered sugar at all! Turns out, what is in this container is..."
An evil, wide smile spread over her face as she ripped off the label for powdered sugar, revealing another one that said...
"...SLEEPING ESSENCE!" she read the label, just before laughing maniacally.
"Hey!" Eric shouted. "I'm sorry, but this is—"
"Oh, you're SORRY?!" The filly said, furiously. "Good! You'd better be! You had many chances to leave this world, but no, you just HAD to stay and try to save your precious Prince William! You want to stay? So be it! Because now, for your defiance against the Benevolent Queen... I will imprison you until the day the last of you dies!"
She laughed wickedly again. From there, the filly turned her attention to a sheet draped over what looked like a person.
"Now then... for your darling Clara, I will give the first barrage of punishment!" She proclaimed.
She lifted the sheet... only to reveal a series of pillows arranged in a humanoid shape laying down. The filly's smile vanished, and her eyes went wide with a gasp.
"WHAT?!" She shrieked. "But, where...?!"
"Over here!" Clara's voice came.
The filly looked back to see the girl in question untying the other five. Almost immediately after they were free, the three male humans rushed the filly, grabbing her and holding her in place against the floor. She struggled against them, but they were too strong for her. Clara walked right in front of her, and the filly looked up at the towering female with disgust.
"But that doesn't make any sense!" The filly said. "I saw you eat a crumpet!"
Clara shook her head. "No, I just pretended to eat it. 'Cause, here's the thing..."
She kneeled down, getting close to the filly to deliver her response.
"...I don't eat sugar," Clara said.
With that, Mark grabbed the fire poker, which just so happened to be laying on the floor nearby, and held it at the filly's face.
"Now..." he said, "...you're gonna tell us how to get to the castle, so we can go kick Schaeffer's ass!"
"Hey!" Marlene interjected. "None of that!"
The filly, after a moment... grinned. And then she spoke... but in a voice that sounded far older than her regular one, and her eyes glowed green with slitted pupils. "All you fools disappoint me..."
Suddenly there was a green flash, and the small, female pony child disappeared... or so it appeared. It turned out, she had turned into a bird, which flew away from the group, to the door that led out.
"Sayonara, you blind brutes!" She called back, laughing.
"Uhhh..." Mark uttered, unable to move from surprise, "...what just happened?!"
"I dunno," Jon said, before breaking into a sprint for the entry stairwell, "but we can't let her get away!"
The group made their way out of the underground hideout, and saw the bird swoop down, changing in the process to a black, equine form. It turned out that this "filly" was Queen Cocoon disguised. She glared evilly at the six humans, her horn glowing a malevolent green.
"You cannot stop me!" Cocoon proclaimed. "You are all WEAK!"
"SHUT UP!" Jon shouted, charging at her.
Cocoon simply fired a green bolt of light at him, which launched him backward into the air as it collided.
"And SLOW!" Cocoon said. "Nopony bests me in MY world! I am everything! I am everywhere! And... I am everyONE!"
"What does that mean?" Marlene asked.
Sighing impatiently, Cocoon changed her form yet again, this time to the cop leading the squad that pursued them shortly after they entered the tome's realm.
"First..." she said in the male officer's voice, "...I tried to chase you out!"
Cocoon then turned into the Medieval heroine girl from earlier.
"Then I took you to the most dangerous places to try to scare you out!" She said.
She then took the form of the filly from a few minutes ago.
"And then, I tried to trap you here to stop you from taking Willy from me!" She said.
Cocoon assumed her default form once more, staring vengeful daggers at the group.
"But you just wouldn't take the hint and go away!" She shouted.
Mrs. Milton stepped forward. "Okay, you know what?! You are being SO RUDE right now! You should be ashamed of yourself!"
"Tell us where William is, RIGHT NOW!" Eric shouted.
Grinning a sadistic grin, Cocoon began to flap her wings, her horn flaring brightly, and she ascended, upright, into the air. Her mane and tail flowed majestically around her.
"You will never find him!" She said. "He is mine! Mine! ALL MINE! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...!"
She then tipped her horn to aim directly at the group.
"And now... I shall imprison you all in a forcefield that is indestructible, and inescapable, from the inside!" Cocoon said.
With that, she fired off a blast of magical energy at them before they could try to get away. However, Clara happened to step in, having come up with an idea in a split-second. Using her makeup mirror, she stepped directly into the path of the bolt, positioning the mirror right in front of it.
As she had hoped, the magical beam reflected off the mirror, accompanied by a loud "CLANG!" sound, shooting straight back toward Cocoon. As if in slow-motion, the changeling queen's smile faded and her eyes widened as she caught sight of what just happened, and before she could react, she was struck by the bolt, enveloping her in a field of light, which condensed into a transparent sphere around her.
Cocoon was now imprisoned in a small forcefield by her own spell. The younger ones in the group of humans laughed at her plight.
"Oh yeah?!" She shouted at them. "Think you can pull a trick on me like that?!"
With a flash, she attempted to teleport away, but a split-second later... she rematerialized in the same spot, inside the magic prison sphere. Her pupils went small, and her jaw fell agape.
"What?!" She uttered.
She attempted to teleport out again, only to have the same result once more. Then she tried to fire energy bolts at the field, only to have them dissipate upon contact, leaving the field completely unscathed. Mark and Jon, chuckling, walked up to Cocoon, picking her up as she was trapped inside the field. It was surprisingly light, like a garbage bag full of air.
"No fair!" Cocoon shouted. "Put. Me. Down!"
"So," Mark said, "the reason Schaeffer's been hiding... is because he's getting an alien-donkey shapeshifter to cover his ass?"
He and Jon laughed while the changeling queen glared.
"How dare you insult me!" She hissed. "I demand you open this field immediately! It will do so as easily as paper from the outside! And if you oblige, I may just let you all off without any punishment!"
"Sorry, buttercup!" Clara chimed in. "But after everything you did to us, you deserve this!"
"But you don't know how this world even operates!" Cocoon protested. "I am everything! I am everyone!"
"No, you're not," Marlene said. "You are just one female, in this entire world, it seems, and you can only be in one place, in one form, at one time! Now, tell us how to find William!"
"NEVER!" Cocoon retaliated.
Eric sighed impatiently. "Alright, you brought this on yourself..."
By the time daylight had returned, the group carried Cocoon to a body of water, where there was a buoy some distance off the shore. They took a rowboat, along with a long stretch of buoyant perimeter rope, tied the two ends to the buoy to create a roped-off ring, and from there, put Cocoon's prison forcefield inside of it, where it floated on the water.
Relieved that they finally put her down, and starved for revenge, Cocoon started galloping like a hamster in a ball, to propel herself on the water... but found that she could not get it to roll beyond the floating divider. Realizing she was trapped, she glanced back at the group to see them leaving in their rowboat, back toward the shore.
"WAIT!" She called. "You're just going to leave me here?! You'll never make it across the land find the castle without me! You need me!"
"No we don't!" Eric yelled back.
"Um..." Marlene said, silently, "...actually, yeah we kinda do."
"Trust me, Mrs. Silva-Poole," Eric said, "I know this'll work..."
"No, wait!" Cocoon called helplessly from her internally-impenetrable forcefield. "Wait! WAAAAAIIIIIIIIT!"
Hours passed, with Cocoon still stuck in the prison field. The sun blazed hot overhead, which was worsened inside the forcefield, as it acted like a greenhouse. The changeling queen was really feeling the effects of heat exhaustion at this point as she laid on her side at the base of the sphere.
"...Uuuuuuuunnnnnnnnhhhhhhhh...!" She groaned, soaked in her own sweat.
Cocoon futilely tried to lick some of the condensation from her breath collecting on the inside of the forcefield, as she was dehydrated. Heat was especially not good for changelings; they tended to be more sensitive to extreme temperatures than mammalian beings.
"What am I gonna do...?" She said to herself, before she picked her head up, looking in the direction of the shore. "...They probably already got there by now!"
When she happened to glance under the water's surface... she caught sight of a school of swordfish. Seeing what they had on their featureless faces, she realized what she could do to get loose.
"Good thing I thought of spawning these things in a freshwater lake!" She said to herself.
With a green flash, Cocoon took the form of a swordfish herself, flopping onto her side inside the forcefield.
"Hey, ugly!" She called.
One swordfish at the rear of the pod stopped, turning to face the changeling queen. Due to her current form, she was able to communicate in a way it could understand.
"Wanna fight?!" She challenged. "Or are you a COWARD?!"
The faceless swordfish threshed in a threatening manner, ready to strike.
"You'll never hit me!" Cocoon continued. "You're too slow, and fat!"
The swordfish then darted straight at the forcefield, puncturing it. In less than a heartbeat, Cocoon took the form of a falcon, taking flight as the field dissipated around her.
"YES!" She shouted triumphantly, taking to the sky. "I'm free!"
Cocoon then darted in the direction of her castle, flying at a high speed. It only took a few minutes at such a velocity for her to make it back. From there, she took her default form immediately after descending upon the uppermost balcony of the main tower. She entered the master recreation room, and entered her bedroom.
To her relief, she saw William laying on his back, atop the covers, deeply asleep.
"Oh, good..." Cocoon said to herself, "...he's still right where I left him. Those other fools haven't made it here yet!"
As it just so happened, William was not unconscious of his own accord; Cocoon placed him in an enchanted sleep, as to avoid having him learn of what she was doing to the intruders, and possibly ruining her strategy.
She charged her horn to awaken him, touching it to the middle of his chest, which produced a flash of light. William slowly stirred, lightly groaning and his eyelids flickering. He shifted his gaze to the changeling queen.
"...Coony..." he said, sleepily.
"Have a good night's rest, Willy?" Cocoon said.
"Definitely," William said, sitting up. "Well... guess I should get back into my clothes, and start the day, huh?"
"Of course," Cocoon said. "It's always a good day with you around, my Willy."
"And in the meantime, might as well see if James is up yet," William said.
The group of six uninvited humans made a successful trek across Cocoon's world, realizing that she was the fast-flying bird they saw, as all other birds flew at a moderate or slow rate. All of them followed the direction she flew, and by midday, made it to Cocoon's castle.
In contrast to what Cocoon claimed under her generic filly guise, the castle was not "heavily guarded." There were a few faceless guard ponies, and some cleaners, but they were able to easily slip past these weak defenses.
"Guess she really was trying to use fear tactics more than actual security," Clara said.
Eventually, they ascended the main tower, to the recreation room of Cocoon's quarters. They burst through a doorway where they heard a voice, and they all caught sight of...
"William!" Marlene said upon seeing her son.
"Huh...?" William said, looking up from his facedown laying position, his eyes going wide. "...MOM?!"
William, as well as James, had been receiving a back massage from two faceless, artificial pony beings Cocoon spawned. They immediately stopped what they were doing, stepping back as the six other humans entered the room.
"What are you guys doing here?!" William spoke up, after realizing just who the group consisted of.
"We came to find you!" Clara said.
James folded his arms. "William, who are these people?"
"My mom," William answered, "and some... well, acquaintances."
"We thought some 'Tyrant Queen' kidnapped you!" Marlene said.
"Oh!" William said, surprised, standing and slipping his shirt back on. "You mean... you guys came all this way to save me? You thought I was in trouble?"
"Yeah!" Marlene said.
"We weren't going to let that alien witch-horse do who-knows-what with you," Clara said.
This was quite a lot for him to process. Never did he imagine that people would ever care enough to try to come after him if he was in trouble.
James nodded approvingly. "I must admit... coming into a place like this of your own accord, that's rather bold. But noble, nonetheless."
"Guys..." William began, nonchalant, "...I was never actually in danger. I chose to come to this place. In fact, I've been coming here for quite a while now!"
"A while?" Eric asked.
"As have I," James said. "We both come here to escape from the turmoil of the real world, particularly in William's case. I simply come here as a visitor, with all the stimulating activities available at our disposal here."
"Why didn't you just tell us?" Marlene said. "We just wanted to make sure everything was alright."
"I really do appreciate your concern for me, everyone," William said. "But, to be absolutely transparent with you all... I don't want to go back! I'm totally doing just fine here!"
Everyone stared blankly at him.
"Why not?" Marlene asked.
"Coony's got over three-hundred great TV channels... the latest video games, including the new Sega Genesis that I don't have, plus a MASSIVE arcade in one chamber... an endless supply of pizza and root beer... bowling alley... swimming pool... and I can perform my meditation sessions without being interrupted! I love it here!" William said, happily.
Everyone glanced around at each other for a moment.
"But William, we need you!" Marlene said.
William's smile faded. "I don't follow..."
"You got a bill to pay for getting my car towed, plus the ticket you got me!" Mark said.
"Huh?" William said, narrowing his eyes.
"Let's not forget," Eric said, "you have a lot to answer for regarding your absence from work! I've been without help on your end for too long!"
"Wait..." William uttered, "...what?"
"And how am I supposed to move everything around in my place when I can't pick up anything really heavy?!" Mrs. Milton said. "My yard is also an overgrown mess that needs to be cut!"
This left the individual they were questioning in a state of complete disbelief at what they were telling him. James, able to piece it all together, understood quite well why William preferred to spend time with Cocoon, more so than before.
"Hang on..." William interjected, "...hang the fuck on... you all didn't come to rescue me because you missed me; you just missed all the stuff I used to do for you!"
"That's right!" Eric said. "When you took up that job listing, you agreed to work for me! That ain't changing!"
"And you're gonna start some good servitude for me, too!" Mark said.
"It's because it's good for you!" Mrs. Milton said. "Teaches you stupid kids not to be so spoiled!"
William turned away, his eyes starting to well with tears. "Well, you all can forget it! I'm sick of doing so much for everyone, and not even getting so much as a 'thanks' in return! And I'm sick of everyone disregarding my needs, brushing me off like my feelings don't matter! Well, in this place, I'm the one having my needs met!" He stormed out of the room, tears running down his face. "And that's the way I like it!"
"William!" Marlene spoke up, trying to follow after him.
However... a hand grabbed her shoulder, stopping her. Looking back, she saw it was James. The look in his eyes clearly said to her that it was better to just leave William alone to calm down.
"And in all fairness," James spoke up, turning to the rest of the group as well, "I support his decision, particularly since I believe no one should be subjected to such hardships when they could, and should, have a say in the matter."
"Hey," Eric said, "listen, buddy... you don't go sticking your nose into other people's business! Will's got obligations to all of us! I don't know just who the hell you think you are!"
Angered, the German guest made his way out of the room as well. Looking back at the group, he pursed his lips, shaking his head.
"Schande! I can't believe you people!" James exclaimed in pure disgust. "Asking William to sacrifice his own happiness just for your own? You are all so selfish! You are disgraceful! Acts of kindness are something that should be done willingly, not forced out of someone!"
He slammed the door shut behind him, which deeply offended some of the short-tempered people there.
"Hey!" Mrs. Milton shouted, marching over to the door. "Young man! Get back in here and say you're sorry to all of us for what you just said, and slamming the door!"
There was a response... but not from James. Rather, the room went dark as an ominous, green-glowing mist filled it.
"How dare you...!" Cocoon spoke, fiercely, materializing in a spectral form in midair.
Everyone began coughing as they inhaled the mist, eventually falling to their knees, and collapsing on the brink of unconsciousness yet again.
"Nopony upsets my love and gets away with it!" Cocoon shouted, all six of them barely awake to hear it. "And now... you shall never see my dear Willy ever again!"
All six of the intruders fell into yet another deep, unwavering sleep.
"THAT'S IT!" Jack angrily shouted as he violently hung up his phone receiver, nearly breaking the machine. "I'm DONE with that boy slacking off on his duties!"
He marched firmly toward his front door.
"Time to teach that lazy bastard a lesson about ignoring his responsibilities!" Jack angrily growled at no one in particular.
He got into his pickup truck, driving quite fast en route to William's house. Surely, if he understood what was to come for him upon a particular discovery... he would be willing to give it some thought? However, logic and rationality were definitely not strong points for Jack Poole.