The Ongoing Epic of the Alicornatrice Known Simply as Corncob

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,298]

This is a story (or at least the introductory chapter of a story) starring my intentionally ridiculous OC Corncob: A cockatrice-turned-alicorn who was inexplicably transformed during a particularly rousing game of Checkers.  I talk about him here from time to time, and I've finally written something longer than a forums post.

 

The Ongoing Epic of [the Alicornatrice Known Simply as] Corncob
by Siegfried Danzinger

Chapter One - The Fateful Checkers Game Between a Squirrel and a Not-Chicken

Tony the Squirrel lowered his mechanical paw towards the board with utmost care and unerring precision.  His metallic fingers (more clamps, really) slowly squeezed together with a sound like a toaster doing something inappropriate to another toaster, and the selected Checkers piece was caught in a nigh inescapable grip.  You could see it in his beady little squirrel-eyes: Victory was surely his.  He made his move; hopping one of his opponent's pieces with an unintelligible - but nonetheless arrogant-seeming - little chitter in, no doubt, squirrel-language.

Corncob was sweating under his feathers.  He had to hand it to the guy: Tony had never played so well.  While Checkers and board games in general were considered a waste of time by most cockatrices, Corncob had developed a vast love and deep appreciation for the mechanics of the game.  And by this I mean that he realized he could move the pieces with his beak without them falling over or spilling off the board.  (Chess had been a disaster; he'd managed to swallow a rook.)  If he failed to stop his opponent's aggressive, very nearly competent (I mean c'mon, he's a squirrel) onslaught, Corncob's defeat would be so total and so shameful that he may never have courage enough to play again.

And that was when it happened.

Were you sitting in Tony's position, you'd have seen the following: A heretofore quivering chicken-and-lizard-like creature suddenly went quite still.  The once apparent fear in his eyes gave way to a seeming emptiness.  Which gave way to an appearance of being half-full.  Which ultimately gave way to a look of steely purpose.  Which momentarily faltered and resembled an unexpected release of gas, which quickly returned to the steely purpose thing.

The cockatrice had never before experienced anything remotely like this.  He'd played dozens of Checkers games.  Well, maybe not dozens.  At least four.  Three, and no fewer.  His short term memory was very - fittingly if not fortunately - short.

He'd played at least one game; that much he knew.  But that at-least-one-game had not so much as come close to pushing him towards the far boundaries of his burgeoning Checkers-related skills.  This game did push.  It pushed very hard - a shove, really - and promised to deliver the cockatrice to a place well beyond his limits.

"Limits?  What are those?" said some new voice in his head.  Formerly, that voice would have been a cluck; this one was decidedly in pony-language.  (Note: Pony-language is the language most commonly spoken by ponies.  This is, of course, assuming you are a chicken-like creature that doesn't particularly follow linguistics.)

There were several explosive bursts of alternately orange and purple lights; Corncob's side of the table was all but engulfed by them.  Tony, now contemplating wetting himself, shook violently and clung hard to the table with his metallic appendage.  Something like smoke flowed over him, and the suggestion of a shivering silhouette began to form behind a billowy wall.

Alicorns are a thing in Equestria.  Ponies with both horns and wings that typically end up in ruling positions because they just do.  The way a pony becomes (or "ascends to," if you prefer) an alicorn isn't entirely consistent, but there's one point on which you can usually rely...

...Chicken-lizard things don't go alicorn.  Never have.  Not once.  There was this one dream I had where...  But NO.  Just doesn't actually happen.

This time: It happened.

The smoke slowly cleared.  Tony was still holding fast to the edge of the table; he'd even less cause now to let go.  Towering over the terrified squirrel (when you're a squirrel, it's not especially hard to be towered over), noteworthily positioned exactly where that bizarre example of indigenous poultry had once sat, was an orange-and-purple creature several times its original height and bulk.  It still roughly resembled the cockatrice known as Corncob, but it was essentially a Corncob that would be regularly suspected of steroid abuse.  The fact that he had spontaneously sprouted a spiral horn several feet in length was rather secondary at the time.

But, to the curiously damp squirrel, the real horror lie on the board: Deep, chasm-like scratches clearly marked the path that Corncob's piece had traveled.  The cockacor- alicocka- alicornatrice (it'll do) had taken every one of Tony's remaining pieces in but a single move.  Defeated and thoroughly disturbed, the squirrel stiffened, fell out of his seat like a tumbling statue, and drifted into a lovely state of unconsciousness on the ground.

Corncob, the cockatrice-turned-alicorn, stood up from the table; ideally, as ominous and overly dramatic music played in the background.  He turned his batlike wings over in front of his eyes.  Scanned, intrigued rather than surprised, over his new bulk.  A sudden instinct (sounds better than throbbing headache) told him that his forehead had done something new with itself lately.

"A horn," rumbled the internal voice from earlier.  "And with it, the world."

But then Corncob realized that he wasn't especially evil.

"A horn," rumbled the internal voice from just a moment ago.  "And with it...  Horn...  Related things.  Not necessarily evil things.  But definitely things."

The newly-minted alicornatrice (it will grow on you) tilted his head to the sky, squinted with a secret purpose (or else the sun was in his eyes), and rocketed into the air.

An unconscious squirrel was later discovered, given inexpert and rather half-hearted CPR, and then tossed into a trash can - more out of tidiness than anything else.

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,298]

Chapter Two - Corncob Learns Some Things at the Expense of a Small Planet

Everyone (whether you're a squirrel, a pony, an amorphous blob, or - perhaps especially - a politician) makes mistakes.  Sometimes, they're those kind-of well-meaning mistakes where your heart was in the right place.  But things went catastrophically wrong anyway, and you'll probably be looking for a new apartment.  Sometimes it was a mistake that you thought looked pretty good right up until the point that you realized you were mistaken, and then you were embarrassed and had rocks thrown at you.

Corncob's mistake doesn't necessarily fit into either of those categories.  Corncob, for that matter, no longer fits snugly into any preexisting category.

Space was pretty interesting...  At first.  For, like, roughly four minutes.  The thing about space that's both intriguing and kind of boring is that there IS so much space.  In fact, it's mostly that; the name is rather fitting.  Oh, there's a star; that's quite nice.  And here's a flock (Corncob generally thought in bird terms) of asteroids, just going about their business.

And here's a whole BUNCH of - for lack of a more scientific term - absolutely nothing.

You'd think that transcending to the state of alicornatrice and subsequently blasting off into the cosmos would be the thrill of a lifetime.  But, instead, Corncob found himself just wanting to find a nice, comfortable rock someplace upon which to take a nap.

Fun fact: Space, when it isn't nothing, has a good number of rocks.  We could get into a long and pointless discussion about whether or not any of them make for good pillows, but we won't.  I don't want to.  And Corncob, space-traveling superchicken that he was, didn't seem to mind the bumpy parts.  Or the lack of oxygen.  Or the lack of heat.  Or the abundance of nonsense, apparently.

Corncob dreamed.  He dreamed of the little egg out of which he'd hatched when he was, appropriately, very young.  He dreamed of trying to petrify his first prey with his cockatrice stare, and of how disappointed he was when said prey ended up kicking him in the head.  He dreamed of strange, bipedal creatures that brushed the manes of tiny plastic ponies.  He dreamed an entire season of Cheers.  All of this was relatively harmless.  What wasn't harmless, however, was the snoring.

Odds are you know what snoring is.  They don't really have classes for it, but you inevitably hear it at one point or another.  Usually at an inopportune time; like when you'd like to be the one snoring.  Some might say it's irritating.  Some might go farther and at least entertain the thought of smothering a loud snorer with a pillow (this is generally considered an unlawful act).  But, where a superpowered fowl's snoring is concerned, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Stars quaked.  Whether out of fear or because they, for the first time, suddenly felt kind of chilly, no one can be sure.  Entire planets tried very hard to hide behind their own moons, which - were moons the type to complain or have anything like self-esteem - would have quickly led to a shoving match.  One particularly unfortunate planet that, for the sake of putting the audience at ease, I will call Not-Earth did more than quiver or behave like a coward of astronomical proportions.

It exploded.  Just the once; relax.  Somewhere, doubtless a long ways off in a place that's a pain to get to (especially in traffic), some old man might have mumbled a complaint about voices and them doing unspecified things; this is largely speculation.

A now-grumpy Corncob awoke to the sound of a vaguely hollow boom.  So far as his earholes were convinced, it was nothing more concerning than the sound a lit firecracker might eventually make if you thought to sit on it (the reader is advised not to light firecrackers and then sit on them).  Corncob, though not into the whole villainy thing, began to suspect that he'd done something not-entirely-benevolent when an unusual number of planet-y chunks went drifting past his sleeping-rock.

With great power comes great...  Awkwardness.  When you inevitably realize that you might have just possibly - so far as all visible evidence seemed to suggest - killed a planet.  And not just a part of one; the whole thing.  On the bright side (there's always a bright side): Two major warring civilizations on the planet NEXT to the one Corncob accidentally snored to death thought that maybe someone was trying to tell them something.  They immediately discarded their weapons, embraced their former enemies, and sincerely intended to be better alien octopus-things from that point on.  So it was kind of a lose-win situation, on the whole.

Corncob considered never sleeping again, but that would just leave him cranky.  That, and he reacted badly to caffeinated beverages.  He ran the end of a bat-like wing over his comb, pressing it to his head; it defiantly popped back up with a cartoony sproing.

"Ponies," he thought to himself; though it would have been odd had he thought to someone else.  "Ponies might know."  Tapping into that same instinct that once aided him in finding his way back to his childhood nest, Corncob instinctively "smelled out" the location of the planet from whence he came.

Back on that same planet, in the depths of a trash can and covered in crumpled, sometimes mustard-stained napkins, a small furry creature with an increasingly heavy chip on his shoulder began to stir.