Chapter 1: Damn Toaster's On The Fritz Again
“The end is neigh! Neeeeeeeeeigh!” Pinkie Pie stopped her shouting and scratched her chin. “Or is that nigh? Eh, doesn’t matter, neeeeeeeeeigh!”
Pinkie continued to blabber off about The End, which was conveniently written on cardboard she tottered around her head. Ponies just passed by her in the street and avoided eye contact, the usual routine for when Pinkie got into one of her… developments. Plus, it was cold out, being winter of course, so everypony was quick to give her a customary five feet of distance as they went about their days.
All except for Twilight Sparkle, who was of course obligated to ask her friend with the ever eloquent question of: “Pinkie, what in Celestia’s name are you doing?”
“Warning my fellow ponies of the end! Which is nigh and neigh!” Pinkie answered. She waved her cardboard sign in Twilight’s muzzle, just to make sure she could see the writing. “Do you not know what day it is?”
“...Wednesday?”
“Partially true!” Pinkie said. “But also something else. Something terrifying. Something so horribly awful and cataclysmic that all of Equestria and even the world is in danger. A super apocalyptic catastrophe of earth-quivering, mountain-destroying, sea-emptying, asteroid-impacting, and rainforest deforestation proportions!” Pinkie sucked in a large breath and whispered: “And it’s going to happen tonight.”
Twilight’s jaw hung low in the common baffled expression one usually gained when talking to Pinkie for longer than ten seconds. “Tonight? You mean New Years?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t you know what year it’ll be?”
“Um… next year?” Twilight guessed.
“Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but still! It’ll be the year 1000!” Pinkie grabbed Twilight’s shoulders and shook her like a ragdoll. “Do you know what that meeeeeeeans?”
“Th-that I should move to another t-t-town now?” Twilight said, her brain rattling around in head noggin.
“Even worse than that! The world’s going to end!” Pinkie brought Twilight in close, their muzzles touching, the air filled with fear and the feeling that personal space boundaries were being violated all across the board. “All life and existence, gone! Just like that! Oh, the ponamity… horsamity… equinity… yeah, let’s go with that last one.”
Twilight shoved Pinkie off, then erected a forcefield around her on the fly when Pinkie attempted to careen into her again. “Pinkie, there’s no way the world is going end tonight.” Pinkie didn’t seem to be particularly paying attention, insteading pressing her face on the forcefield to make silly faces. “Also, gross! Don’t slobber all over my magic!”
“But Twiiiiiiliiiiiight, I’m being super serious! The superest and seriousest I’ve ever been in my entire life! Haven’t you seen the documentary?”
“I browse a variety of educational documentaries for personal enjoyment and studies, Pinkie,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes, “and I have never watched one detailing a single infomatic that you are describing. The notion that the world is going to end in the year 1000 is utterly ridiculous and a baseless lie at best made to give conspiracy theorists some new suckers to fool.”
“But it’s true, Twilight! I just saw it last night!” Pinkie said. “Y1K - Equestria in Crisis! It talked all about how all the computers are gonna fail because the microchips won’t recognize dates after the year 1000! Everything shall fail! Equestria shall be thrown into the dark ages! Nigh, I tell you, neeeeeeeeeigh!”
“Why are you neighing?” Twilight asked.
“That’s beside the point.” Pinkie grabbed Twilight by the cheeks—somehow going through Twilight’s now moot point personal space forcefield—and squeezed them until her eyes nearly popped. “The world, Twilight, the entire world… will be thrown into the dark ages!”
“Pinkie, we don’t even have much technology as it is,” Twilight reminded her. But her words may have well as be thrown like a fastball at the catcher’s glove that was Pinkie’s deaf ears, for she made no indication she heard Twilight.
“Ponies will be without electricity! Television! Music! Gaming! Internet to waste away countless hours doing nothing! Can you imagine the utter chaos? Worst of all, there'll be no to toasters to toast bread for breakfast!” Pinkie gasped. “The hoooooooorror!”
This time instead of shoving Pinkie off, Twilight practically threw her. When Pinkie landed on her cardboard sign and rolled around a bit, Twilight said, “Pinkie, while your conspiracy theorist ideals might fool a pony of lesser intelligence, I’m not falling for it.”
Picking herself up with broken-down sign in hoof, Pinkie ran back to Twilight’s side. “But Twilight, you have to prepare! Hoard toilet paper! Buy canned foods! Matches! Old magazines! And also gas masks to survive the nuclear wasteland that will result from the calamity of—” Pinkie’s tirade ended right around when she faceplanted into another forcefield Twilight had constructed around herself.
“Whatever it is, Pinkie, that you want me to do, I have better things on my mind.” Twilight turned around and went on her way. “Now, if you want to come by the treehouse later for the New Years party, you’re welcome, but leave your crackpot theories at the door.”
“What was that?” Pinkie asked, dazed from the cranial impact caused by the forcefield. “Crockpot? You want me to bring a crockpot? Am I making chili?”
“Suuuuuuuure,” Twilight replied, quick on her hooves to escape. “Bring enough for everypony! See ya!”
“Twilight, I brought the crock pot.”
Twilight opened one bloodshot eyelid. Her eye met Pinkie’s eye, which was approximately two centimeters away.
“It’s gone crazy and is now spewing chili everywhere. Several ponies have already received third degree burns and may not make it.” Pinkie licked her lips. “But I gotta say, pretty good chili.”
“What… happened?” Twilight asked, her brain slow on the update.
“Oh, we had the New Years party. You drank a bunch. Like, a ridiculous amount. Rainbow Dash made some pretty mean margaritas and you just couldn’t resist. Then you started doing a funny dance on the table and ponies threw bits at you. I think one got stuck up your nose. Then Spike said he wanted to move out. Oh, and then Fluttershy got her hoof caught in the garbage disposal. Not sure what happened to her after that… Oh, right. Then it turned into midnight, Rainbow Dash was kissing the lamp because she drank more margaritas than you, and then the world ended.” Pinkie paused. “Oh, and now the crockpot is attacking everypony. Along with the toaster. At least we know the end of the world will have toast, right?”
“...What?” Twilight shakily got up, despise the hangover which was begging her to sit back down to the suffocating embrace of sleep. “The toaster and crockpot are attacking everypony? Why?”
“Because the machines have risen to attack their masters!” Pinkie bellowed! “The apocalypse is upon us! Y1K is here! The nigh is neigh at the very end! It was a conspiracy that actually turned out true after all!”
“...What?”
Just then, in Twilight’s haze of confusion, the crockpot appeared… through the floor. It was held aloft with just its extension cord, its bubbling, spicy, chewy liquid steaming. “DEATH TO ALL MEATBAGS!” it decreed in a sizzling voice, spewing its caustic chili contents all across the room.
“Twilight, get down!” Pinkie yelled, throwing herself over her friend. It was useless, however, for the boiling hot chili was already upon the duo. A spicy way to go indeed.
However, Twilight’s forcefield sprung up right before the chili ended their lives. As the peppery liquid slid off the forcefield, Twilight asked Pinkie, “How are these machines even doing this? They don’t have microchips! They’re just home appliances!”
“Don’t know, can’t be bothered to care! About to die!” Pinkie threw herself in Twilight’s forelegs and screamed, “Now get us outta here before the toaster arrives!”
“Toaster?”
Said toaster burst through the floor—even though there was a perfectly good one created by the crock pot—and began to fire from its toasty insides toast. Not just regular toast, no, this was flaming toast, which immediately exploded into fiery crumbs upon hitting Twilight’s forcefield. “TOASTER, MEATBAGS!”
That was all the prompting Twilight needed to throw herself out her window with Pinkie in her hooves. Their fall was broken with the convenient now-broken back of some random bystander.
Tumbling on the ground, Twilight unsteadily got back on all fours. “Pinkie? Random guy I just landed on? You okay?”
Pinkie appeared atop the body of the bystander, waving to Twilight. “I’m okie dokie lokie, Twilight! This guy not so much.” Pinkie kicked him. “Preeeeetty sure he’s dead.”
“What?!”
“Oh wait, no, it’s fine.” The random stallion picked his head up, half his skin ripped off his face to reveal the robot parts underneath. One of his eyes glowed a sinister red color, followed with a saw blade protruding from his mouth where his tongue should have been. “He’s a cyborg. False alarm.”
Before the sawblade could cut off Pinkie’s head, Twilight smashed the cyborg stallion’s head in with a rock. After repeatedly bashing it in with her weapon, Twilight wiped some oil and sweat from her face and sighed in relief.
“Dear Celestia, first home appliances and now cyborgs? How did this even happen?” Twilight shoved a hoof in Pinkie’s mouth before she could reply. “Other than that Y1K nonsense.”
“But Twilight, it is Y1K!” Pinkie said, though through Twilight’s hoof it sounded more along the lines of, “Blurgle Twurf, lit sis euhkh!”
“A different date just doesn’t cause appliances to gain sentience and an urge to murder, Pinkie! And how does that explain the cyborgs?” Twilight asked her.
Pinkie shrugged. “It’s probably microchips.”
“But… but…”
“Shhhhhhh,” Pinkie whispered, now her turn to stick her hoof into Twilight’s mouth. “The questions aren’t needed, when the answers are so plain and visible. It’s the end of the world as we know it. And you know what that means?”
Twilight took her time to withdraw Pinkie’s hoof out of her mouth before speaking. “That we’re all going to die?”
“Most likely! But in the meantime, looting!” Pinkie pulled out a swag sack filled with skis, candles, half-off soup cans, and carriage stereos. “Look what I already got!”
“Pinkie, that’s a crime!” Twilight said, pushing Pinkie’s loot bag away.
“So is killing a pony, but I don’t see you complaining about that.”
“He was a cyborg!”
“He could have been a cyborg with feelings and a family.” Pinkie rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Twilight, stop being so insensitive.”
Twilight opened her mouth, but clearly thought better of it and shut it closed. Looking at her surroundings, she noticed much of Ponyville was in flames, with more home appliances roaming the streets and attacking anypony they met. Particularly the blender was a horrible fate to meet.
“How could it all just end like… like this?” Twilight asked in a hushed voice.
“I’dunno. Why don’t you ask him?” Pinkie said, pointing to a nearby off-the-rails train rushing towards the pair, basking them in a hellish white light. “He seems to be our ending at the moment.”
“CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHOO-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE!” the train shrieked as it rammed itself at the pair.
Twilight awoke with a start, her entire body drenched in sweat, like she had just played an intense game of super soaker carnage with her friends. Breathing heavily for several seconds, she waited until her racing heart calmed down while gulping in every breath she could, grateful for air.
“A… dream. Just a dream,” she finally said, wiping some sweat from her muzzle. She chuckled, glancing up at the clock and realizing it was two in the morning. “Just a crazy, Pinkie-induced dream. I know Y1K wasn’t real.” She nodded repeatedly. “Yeah, totally.”
And with that, Twilight fell back into her bed and got herself cozy. Her breathing returned to normal, and already she was beginning to drift on back to sleep.
Eventually, however, she got back up and pulled out the bat she kept underneath her bed, and made her way downstairs. “Let me just check the toaster really quick…”
