"Attention all passengers," A feminine voice echoed throughout the market in Ponyville. "A new round will begin very shortly."
Everyone in the marketplace looked up in confusion as they tried to figure out where the voice came from. However, a few seconds later, they saw humans wearing fancy 1920's clothing leave the homes around the market. One particular mare, known to everyone in the town as Applejack, was immediately startled by their appearance. A man started to walk over to the stand she attended. He had a black tuxedo, and a top hat that made him seem taller than he actually was. He stopped right in front of the stand.
"Anything Ah can get ya?" Applejack nervously asked.
"Yes," The man replied, pulling out several bits and setting them in front of the cowpony. "An apple please."
The civility of the creature Applejack had never seen before made her feel more comfortable around him, yet more nervous. She took the bits and handed a bright red apple to the man, who proceeded to eat it.
"Attention," The femenine voice announced again, "You now have a new quarry."
Applejack suddenly got an image of Derpy Hooves embedded into her mind. She didn't know why, but was too busy trying to find the source of the voice to focus on the man.
BLAM!
The loud boom echoed throughout the entire town. Applejack's ears rang as she turned towards the man in front of her stand, who now had a bloody hole going through his forehead. He stood up for several silent seconds before falling forwards, crashing into the stand face-first. Behind him stood a woman, wearing a farmers outfit, and a pair of glasses, who had a revolver pointed at the body. The barrel was still smoking.
"Dumb son of a bitch." The woman angrily muttered as she bent down and looted the body. Applejack was horrified and had no idea what to think of what she just saw. Her body was stuck still. After a few seconds the woman finally stood up, and looked up at Applejack. Applejack saw the woman give a light smile before strutting off down the road, stared at by several other ponies.
Applejack finally came back to reality and released a wave of bile and stomach acid from her mouth.
"You don't even work here!" Mr. Cake exclaimed, looking up at the bartender who was cleaning out a shot glass while looking at the owner of Sugarcube Corner.
"I assure you sir," The man replied in a french accent, "This is where I work."
Mr. Cake gave up the arguing and asked, "Well I'm not paying you!"
"Very well then."
Mr. Cake stormed off into the kitchen just as Pinkie leaped up to the bartender.
"OH! OH! You work here!?" She excitedly asked, smiling like a lunatic.
"Yes madame, I do." He replied, wiping his nose with his hand. "You one of the people who got stuck with playing the hunt?"
"No, what's that?" Pinkie asked, raising an eyebrow at the strange name. "Is it a game!?"
"It most certainly is. A deadly game. Every passenger gets a quarry that they have to kill without being seen by too many people. At this very moment, someone is hunting you down. You have to be careful, and avoid letting him find you while you try to find your quarry and murder him using what you can find."
Pinkie stared at the bartender in utter shock, her eyes the size of pinpricks and her lower jaw hanging down.
"That doesn't sound like fun at all!" She whined, pointing at the bartender.
"Well maybe the man behind you thinks differently." Was the last thing the bartender said before Pinkie felt a kitchen knife plunge into her skull. The bartender yelped as the man, who wore a red kilt and a bonnet, looked down at his victim. He sighed as looked up at the bartender.
"Did you bribe the guard?" The bartender asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Mm-hm." The African American man replied, crossing his arms and leaving the bakery, passing by the guard he bribed.
As he left, the bartender looked down at the glass he was cleaning and muttered a single sentence.
"What a fucking waste of money."
At the same exact moment, Pinkie Pie had appeared back in her bedroom upstairs, remembering everything that had just happened. She stood there for several seconds as her brain tried to process the information it was given.
A few seconds later, an image of a man wearing a safari suit and a matching hat with a monocole was embedded into her mind. The corners of her mouth slowly curled up until she had an evil grin much like Nightmare Moon's.
"This is going to be fun..." She giggled as she opened her wardrobe, pulling out a bowling ball. She then zoomed over to her closet and pulled out her party cannon and shoved the bowling ball inside it. "Time to be part of the hunt!"
Cheerilee was currently beating a woman wearing a ball dress to death, angered at the fact she murdered one of her students, Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle's corpse laid against the wall, bloody and mangled from the paddling she received. She had ran into the school saying she was getting chased only a minute ago before being beaten to death.
"NOPONY EVER HURTS MY STUDENTS!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, pounding her hooves on her. "NOT EVEN CELESTIA OR LUNA THEMSELVES CAN HURT THEM WITHOUT GETTING THEIR FLANKS THE POUNDING OF THEIR DAMN LIFE! FUCK YOU!"
She was in so much rage, she didn't even notice that she broke her rib cage and killed her. She kept beating the woman up, who was now as mangled as Sweetie Belle was.
"THIS IS FOR SWEETIE BELLE, YOU USELESS EXCUSE OF NATURE!" Cheerilee screamed before using both of her hooves to stomp on her skull. It caused a sickening crunch to resonate throughout the empty classroom. She stepped back, not showing any remorse for what she did.
She promptly ran over to Sweetie Belle's dead body and wrapped her arms around it. She cried as she fell onto the floor, hugging her like she was a teddy bear.
"I'm sorry..." She muttered, rolling on the floor as tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Cheerilee?" muttered Sweetie Belle, who had just reappeared in the middle of the classroom. "What just happened?"
She was immediately embraced by her crying teacher, who ran over to her and put her in a tight hug.
"Oh thank goodness! You're okay!" She cried, not knowing how awkward Sweetie Belle was finding the situation.
Pinkie Pie had finally found her quarry, who was inside Twilight's house reading a book. She prepared to burst into the home and launch the party cannon she had with her. The window she looked through provided a perfect view of the room.
She counted down as she went to the door, and once she reached one, she kicked it open.
"SUPRISE!" She yelled before blasting the cannon. The man in the room barely had any time to react before his head was decapitated by the bowling ball that was used as the cannon ball. The decapitated body slumped over before falling onto the floor, all with a shocked Twilight watching the scene.
"PINKIE!" She yelled, horrified. "What in Celestia has gotten into you!?"
"What? He'll just come back to life like I did!" She smiled, hopping up and down.
"Pinkie, life doesn't work that way!" Twilight angrily yelled.
"Oh come on! I'll show you!" She exclaimed before pointing the cannon at Twilight. Twilight had no time to react before another bowling ball burst from the cannon, killing her and launching her body across the room. Within a second, Twilight reappeared in the middle of the room, alive and unhurt.
"See? Isn't it fun?" Pinkie smiled, hopping up and down.
Twilight stood there, shocked and unresponsive.
"Well, I got a new quarry!" Pinkie told Twilight as an image of Derpy Hooves, the mail pony for the town, appeared in her mind. "I'll see you later!"
Pinkie rolled the party cannon out of the library, leaving Twilight inside shocked and dumbfounded at what had just happened.
Fluttershy was inside a closet in one of Ponyville's homes. She was actively being hunted down by a man wearing fancy clothing much like the rest of the people who had appeared in town that afternoon. The coat that hung from the rack above her muffled her sobs and whines as she heard footsteps from outside the room.
"Where are you, angel?" The man called out, "I know you're in here."
The footsteps started to get closer and closer to the door. Fluttershy tightly shut her eyes as she accepted her inevitable fate. Soon, she would be dead.
"I know you're in there." The man called out, grabbing onto the doorknob.
The door slowly creaked open. Fluttershy looked up and saw the African American businessman with a dark grey crowbar in his hand. She quickly and tightly shut her eyes as she took a deep breath.
THWACK!
Silence filled the entire home. Fluttershy heard the sound of a body hitting the floor and opened her eyes. The man was now dead, and behind him was another man that held a frying pan. He bent down and looted the corpse as Fluttershy got up,
"You didn't have to kill him..." She mumbled as she looked at the man.
After a few seconds, the man looked up and turned towards Fluttershy.
"What do you know," He smiled, "My new quarry is in the room with me."
The man pulled out a blunderbuss and promptly shot Fluttershy, sending her body gracefully flying across the room and out the window, where it landed in the streets below, tumbling along the ground several times before hitting a lamppost.
Pinkie, who had just murdered Bon Bon, had seen all of this.
"Aw, darn!" Pinkie exclaimed, looking at the dead body of her friend. "I was hoping she wouldn't be part of the hunt! She must have been scared!"
"Hey, Pinkie!" Rainbow Dash called out from above.
"Yeah?"
"I just killed my quarry!" She happily exclaimed. "I suppose you did to!"
"Of course Dashie! Nopony can hide from me!" Pinkie called out, making a disturbing smile.
"Well, I got another quarry to deal with. I'll see you later!" Dash replied before flying off, holding onto a katana she had stolen from her previous quarry. Pinkie waved at her as she flew off into the distance.
Later that afternoon, things had stayed much the same. Twilight was trying to figure out what was going on, Applejack was running her stand, Cheerilee was murdering any person that stepped onto school grounds, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were being part of the hunt. Barely anything was different.
Awhile after Fluttershy came back to life, she decided to go to the spa with Rarity. She didn't feel safe alone, so she was happy to be with a friend she trusted. However, she no longer felt safe around the people in town.
"I have to say, you have some astonishing clothing!" Rarity complimented a woman wearing a dark red dress and a small round hat to go with it. She sat with Rarity and Fluttershy in Ponyville's local Spa in the sauna. The warm room soothed the skin of everyone's skin inside.
"Well," The woman replied, "We were told to wear clothing appropriate for the cruise."
"Cruise? What in good heavens are you talking about?" Rarity asked, leaning towards the woman.
"We are on a boat in the middle of the ocean. It's pretty obvious that we are on a cruise right now."
"Um..." Fluttershy meekly whispered, "We aren't on a boat..."
The woman rolled her eyes and looked at her wrist watch.
"I have to get going. It's almost dinnertime, and I need something to eat." The woman announced to the two as she got up and left the sauna room. Rarity waved at her as she left. The woman shut the door to the sauna room and locked it silently. She then turned towards a temperature gauge located on the wall next to the door. She pressed a series of buttons and quickly walked off.
Inside the sauna room, it was starting to get hotter.
"Is it me, or is it getting dreadfully warmer in here?" Rarity asked, waving her hoof at her face.
"I think it is," Fluttershy replied, "Should we leave?"
"Absolutely. I don't want to end up sweating too much."
Rarity and Fluttershy got off the light wooden benches and went over to the door. Rarity attempted to open it, only to find it locked.
"Is something wrong?" Fluttershy worriedly asked.
"The door is locked! Somepony locked us in!" Rarity angrily exclaimed. She attempted to use her magic to manually unlock the door, but was surprised to find that it did nothing but make a little spark appear on the doorknob.
"No, not again!" Fluttershy pleaded, "Hurry!"
"I'm trying!" Rarity yelled as she started to ram the door. The room was starting to get slowly hotter.
Then, all of the sudden, the coals located at the corner of the room caught on fire. A loud, deafening beep resonated throughout the sauna.
Outside the spa building, the woman silently listened to the muffled screams coming from inside. Sizzling and crackling could be heard as the back of the spa started to slowly billow with smoke. She hung her head down in shame when she heard her quarry's screams die down.
"It truly is a shame for me to do this," The woman silently told herself, "I had no other choice."
The woman walked back into the spa, passing by the two ponies who ran the place. She went over to the sauna room and deactivated the temperature gauge. She opened the door as a wave of heat burst out, warming her body.
The entire room was charred black and smelled of ashes and embers. Fluttershy was nothing more than a charred husk now. However, Rarity was still alive. She was severely burned, and her fur and hair was burnt off, leaving her charred skin. She slowly crawled out, heaving with each breath.
"Help... Me..." She gasped as she looked up at the woman.
"I'm afraid I can't do that." The woman replied before stomping on Rarity's head. A sickening crack was heard, but she was still alive as evidenced by the screams she started to make. She continued stomping until the screaming died down.
"Attention all passengers," The voice from earlier that day announced, "The round is over. The winner of the round is Caddy Baker."
"I won!?" The woman exclaimed, smiling. She screamed in happiness as she did a fist-pump and went out of the building.
Suddenly, all the passengers in the town disappeared in a flash of white light. The ponies in town were as confused as they were that afternoon when the people first appeared.
