Season in Pink

An earsplitting boom ripped through the air and the ravenous assailant's cranium burst in a mist of pink of carnage as splinters of wood from the wall behind her showered the blue pegasi below. The creature slumped down on top of Rainbow, lifeless and defeated. Spates of gore spurted from where the head was attached moments ago. Most of it, anyways.

"Git yer flanks up here!"

Twilight and Rainbow both turned to face the source of the voice. With an antique rifle adhered to her extended hoof, a familiar yet panicked face greeted them rather crudely. Distinguished cowboy hat on her head and her blonde mane in a bedraggled mess, Applejack lowered her firearm and rested it on the railing of the stairwell.

Rainbow rolled the corpse off of her and rose to her hooves. She spit foreign blood out of her mouth and wiped the bits of grey matter from her face. Looking down at the lifeless carcass beneath her, her expression became harrowed. Below her, splayed out in a mangled heap, was the decapitated form of one of her closest friends. Tail poofed up, reeking of sweets, Pinkie Pie almost looked peaceful. As much as one could without a head, that is. Visibly shaken, Rainbow screwed up her face as several tears rained down upon the pink tuft of fur on the chest of her dead friend. Hoof doused with blood from the pool now surrounding her, Rainbow placed it gently on Pinkie Pie's motionless sternum. Grief ripped through her. "I... I am so sorry... Pinkie... We... We did not know that..." Her voice cracked at the end of her wretched apology.

Twilight, hardly in a more emotionally stable state approached her with empathy, throwing a hoof around Rainbow's neck, "R-Rainbow... We have to go..."

Rainbow's eyes flashed in the direction of Twilight, fuming with ire. The piercing look shocked Twilight. Rainbow Dash spoke slowly, but with dangerously spiteful articulation, "This is your fault, Twilight Sparkle. If you would have just kept your egotistical little mouth shut, Pinkie wouldn't be..."

Twilight gaped at her, crestfallen. She hardly had time to ponder the situation. But Rainbow Dash was right. If she had not told them so bluntly...

"Shame on you, Rainbow Dash!" Applejack spat angrily from the stairway, glowering down at the technicolor pegasus, "Now is not the time to play the blame game! Now git yer sorry behinds up th-"

Applejack was cut off as something sailed in through the nearby window, shattering the glass and tearing down the shades. The three ponies stood frozen as light spilled into the room. Coming to rest, the bloody brick that demolished the atmosphere landed in plain sight between the three. Not only did it change the atmosphere by illuminating it, it warped it entirely. Flooding in like a plague, the eeriest noise to ever burrow into and scuttle around in the crevices of the pony skull spilled into the room from outside. Tearing at their sanity, the chorus of what seemed like thousands of happily blathering pink party ponies from outside hit the three ponies like a ton of bricks.

“T-Twilight…” All of the color drained from Rainbow Dash’s face. Twilight stared, appearing to have seen a ghost,
Applejack’s voice was hushed, harrowed. “Girls… upstairs…” Obviously intimidated and terrorized, the southern pony popped open her break action firearm and dropped a few more slugs into the chamber. With a crack she snapped it shut. “Now.”

The second story bedroom door creaked open an inch. As every room before it, drawn curtains kept it dark and ominous. Cold steel scraped against oak as a long cylindrical barrel slid into the room from the other side of the door. The barrel scanned the room, to and fro, then swung back and trained on a shadow in the corner. Bolt out of the blue, the door flew open and the orange mare leapt into the room, firearm and all. Silently she rose to attention in one fluid motion out of the roll. One eye closed, the other lined up down the sight of her firearm, trained on the blob in the corner of the dark room. Teeth bared, she prepared for it to lash out at her, but she gave a shocked expression, fought the urge to wretch, and dropped her forehooves. “Mother fu…” She turned away at what she found. Without making a noise she signaled for Twilight to enter the room.

With heavy hooves, the purple pony slinked into the room. A rickety ceiling fan whirred from the ceiling. Applejack dropped to all four hooves and stepped aside, muttering beneath her breath. Twilight’s eyes adjusted to the light. In the corner of the room, a rocking chair rested motionless. A hoof hung over the arm of the oaken chair, droplets of blood dripping off of the tip, drizzling down upon a discarded six-shooter. A pungent smell of decay stabbed at the sense of smell. The other hoof cradled a motionless bundle. Etched into the smatter of crimson on the wall were disturbing, sloppy words:

MAY WHOEVER AWAITS US FORGIVE ME

“What do we do, Twilight? What do we do!?” Applejack proclaimed in a hushed anger, disgusted.

Twilight Sparkle stood staring at the grisly scene, petrified. “I-I…”

“Well!?”

Still able to think under pressure, even through all of this, she knew what they had to do. “We find the other girls…” She tore her eyes away from the gore and gave Applejack a look of resolve, “Then we find Pinkie.”

Rainbow Dash hunkered down, flat against the wall, crouched beneath the window sill in the second floor restroom. Two ivory curtains parted an inch refused most of the light entrance. Lithely she turned around to face the sill. Sweat running down her tense pate, she slowly rose to peer out the window. With a panicked disposition, she parted the curtains squinted. Then her eyes widened. The once vibrant magenta of her iris’ immediately drained from her eyes when she saw what was awaiting outside.

Applejack and Twilight crept into the room without a peep. They appeared to be shell-shocked as well. Silently they approached the window as well. Rainbow Dash pressed a shaky hoof against the window pane.
Flooding the streets much like a parade of insanity, hundreds upon hundreds of manically jovial pink, poofy maned horses traipsed through the streets, howling their merry voices of madness.

“… we are fucked.”