The Magic of Animosity

Twilight’s reflection was staring back at her from the smooth surface of the little black box sitting on the table.  Next to her, Braeburn and PaulaRed were discussing what could be done about Appleloosa’s current predicament.

“Do ya think the Sheriff has seen what’s happened, an’ is out gettin’ some help right now?” Braeburn asked hopefully.

“I dunno, Brother,” Paula replied doubtfully, “I mean—what’s going on outside’a these walls, anyways?  This all started when a big ol’ cloud came above our city.  What happened to th’ cloud?  Why did it—no, how did it do all this?  Ther’s just too many unsolved questions.”

“…Questions like ‘what the heck is in this box’,” Twilight interjected in a tired drone.  “This was supposed to be delivered to Sheriff Silverstar, and he’s not here, and there’s no way he’s coming back anytime soon.  There has to be some kind of key or clue as to opening this box somewhere around this office, now let’s make that our top priority right now!”  Twilight’s curiosity was really getting the better of her—that box was the only thing she could think about anymore.  Even the black walls trapping her and the rest of town were a distant thought compared to the black walls of the small cubic box.

“That should be the least of yer troubles, Twi!” Paula exclaimed, “Have ya noticed how we’re all trapped righ’ now in this town?”

“But what if what’s in this box could help us?” Twilight rebutted, “What if what’s in this box is supposed to help us?”

“Huh?  Whattaya mean?” Braeburn asked.

“Well, this is just a hunch,” Twilight began, “but honestly, I don’t think it’s coincidence that I was sent by Celestia herself to deliver some mysterious package here to Appleloosa, of which ends up being boxed-in and cut off from the rest of Equestria the same day.”

“Wait…” said Paula, “are you sayin’ that Celestia sent’ya here on purpose so that you’d be trapped in here with us?”

“What?  No!” Twilight quickly replied, “What I’m saying is that there’s something that Celestia and even perhaps Sheriff Silverstar knew that the rest of us didn’t, and Celestia made to send this box to Appleloosa so the Sheriff could use it to his advantage!”

“That’s a mighty interesting theory, Twilight,” Braeburn replied, “but until we figure out more about that box ‘r the walls surrounding us, or unless we find the Sheriff and ask ‘im ourselves, we’re still gonna be in the dark, s’far as info goes.”

“…Which leads me to my main point, again.”  Twilight motioned with her head to the box sitting on the table.  “We need to open this box.”

Paula sighed loudly.  “Twi, even if I agreed with ya, there’s no way ta open that darned thing.”

Twilight groaned and dramatically fell backwards onto the floorboards.  “Nothing’s making any seeeense…”

For the next few minutes, nobody said anything, everyone deep in their own thoughts and trying to understand just what is going on in Appleloosa.

Then Twilight’s ears perked up.  Still lying on the floor, she tilted her head down and pressed her ear up to the ground.  “Do you guys hear that?” she asked to the Apple siblings.

“Hear what?” Braeburn asked.  But as soon as he had finished asking, he heard it too, and so did Paula.  They knelt low to the floor and also pressed down an ear to hear it better.

It was a strange sound.  It sounded similar to the sound of rushing water, except not exactly—not water, but it sounded as if there was something ‘rushing’ underneath the ground, perhaps several or a couple dozen yards below.  None of the ponies knew what to make of this weird noise.  As they continued to listen in, they could hear it begin to get louder, and louder, and louder…

And closer.

Twilight, Braeburn and PaulaRed only had a split second to make a run for it before the wooden floor of the Sheriff’s office exploded, splinters flying everywhere as the thing that had been traveling underground surfaced.  Braeburn was knocked into Paula, who had flown into a wall, leaving a distinct pony-shaped depression in the drywall.  Twilight had been propelled into the opposite side of the office, and she happened to go head-first into a window, shattering the glass completely and leaving multiple lacerations on her head and neck.  The poor purple unicorn was knocked unconscious from the blow, and she blacked out.

As Braeburn and Paula began to rise to their hooves, Braeburn winced in pain, and he turned to notice a square of wood the size of a slice of bread half-embedded in his right side.  He collapsed to the ground and groaned in pain as Paula moved closer to get a look at the injury.  It took a couple of seconds for them to take notice of what had come out of the ground.

Braeburn and Paula turned around after hearing a loud, wet, slapping sound.  They didn’t know what to say when they saw the large pile of bubbling black slop, twice as high as they were, moving slowly across the wood-sprinkled floor.  It surveyed the room with large white eyes the size of trashcan lids; it looked at each of the three ponies lying damaged and hurt in the room.  Then it began to move again, this time towards Braeburn and Paula.  The two siblings backed up against the wall, Paula pushing Braeburn behind her, as he was more hurt than she was.

“You wanna fight?” she threatened to the pile.  It didn’t react to her at all, and continued to slowly move towards her.  Scared out of her wits, and determined to protect her brother, she attempted to attack it.  Turning around and reeling her hind legs, she kicked the mass just as it was in range of her back hooves.  The blow punched two holes right through the creature’s body, but the goo quickly reformed to fill in the gaps.  The creature paused, and then began to shape-shift; Paula backed up again, realizing there was nothing she could do, as far as fighting back went.  Braeburn and Paula were backed into a corner, Braeburn still feeling a sharp pain from the large fragment in his side, which was bleeding a fair amount.  The two ponies watched the large mass bubble fiercely as it began separating into four smaller forms, even its two massive white eyes dividing, like a cell, into eight separate eyes—four separate pairs.  The eyes then traveled across the shape’s surface in sets of two, each pair moving towards one of the four new, smaller shapes being formed.  Three of the four began to change form again, and within a few seconds, what had been slimy black mounds were now the silhouettes of Braeburn, PaulaRed, and Twilight Sparkle.  The black ponies surveyed the room again, using their newly-made legs to walk across the floor as they eyed the room carefully, looking for something.

“HEY!” Paula shouted at the one closest to her, which was also the one that looked like her.  She had no clue why a bubbling pile of goop came crashing through the floor and then decided to copy her shape.  Except for the colors, it looked exactly like her, right down to the two long braids of hair coming out from under her hat.  It stopped its search and slowly turned its head to look straight into Paula’s eyes with its own pale-white ones.  Paula’s anger quickly turned into fear, and she cowered closer into the corner under the copy’s gaze.  Looking her over for a moment, it turned and began to walk towards her.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Braeburn yelled as he stood up to confront the creature, but he collapsed back onto the ground after taking the first step forward.  He fell to the hooves of Paula’s copy, which ignored him completely and walked around him, straight towards Paula.

With no other way to go, Paula made to kick the creature straight in the face when she turned around again and belted her hind legs behind her.  Despite still being made of the same black slime as when it was shapeless, the impact this time had a much more sickly cracking sound; the head of the black pony had almost completely severed, hanging only by a few strands on the back of its neck; the colliding force had fused the back of the head with the back of the body.  Unfortunately for Paula, the creature was unfazed—the head sunk into its body, and a second later emerged from the stub of its neck into a completely-healed head.  It began to move towards Paula again, and its body started to spread outwards around her.

But before the black slime could envelope her, Paula noticed from the corner of her eye a blast of lavender light that compacted into a stream and shot straight through the fake-Paula’s head.  This was the first time that those blank white eyes had shown any noticeable expression, and it was an expression of surprise—at least, that’s what it looked like just before the head was splattered against the adjacent wall.  Paula winced from the explosion, some of the goop getting on her face as well.  She turned to look at the source of the light, and she saw Twilight standing there, horn aglow with magic, wearing a bloodied game-face and ready to deliver another attack.

The other two fake-ponies turned to look at Twilight, just before the fourth pile of slime that hadn’t transformed also took a direct hit of lavender light and blew up in a spray of black sludge all over the floor.  Upon seeing this, the remaining two made a sprint for Twilight, attempting to tackle her down.  Twilight lifted a table with her magic and threw it towards the two; the Braeburn copy jumped over it, while the Twilight copy dodged too slowly and was tossed against the floor by the flying furniture.  The Braeburn copy jumped in front of Twilight and swung its back hoof in a circle to roundhouse Twilight.  Twilight caught the leg in her hooves, but she wasn’t strong enough to completely dampen the blow; still grasping onto the leg, she was swung around and kicked into a chair.  The real Braeburn made to get up again, but his injury wasn’t ready to let him fight, and he fell once again to the ground.  Paula, who wasn’t majorly hurt but rather suffering from extreme shock, only stood and watched bug-eyed at the battle between Twilight and these strange beings that had come from the ground below—there was still a gaping hole in the very middle of the room, leading down into shadows.

Paula’s watching of Twilight distracted her from noticing the black gunk sliding across the wall, down to the floor to join up with the heap reforming at the headless body of the Paula-copy.  As the battle between the black ponies and Twilight raged, the Paula-copy began to regain its head, and it slowly rose back to its hooves, the white eyes opening again when the head finished; the eyes were staring blankly as always, but there was a sinister malice about them now.  Braeburn noticed it, and he cried out to Paula to get her attention.  He was too late though; by the time Paula turned her head, she was already half-covered in black, the fake Paula trying again to envelope her.  Braeburn watched in horror as Paula was wrapped in solid sludge.  The fake-Paula, now completely formed around its host, turned to Twilight and ran in to join the battle; Braeburn’s yelling for his sister fell on deaf ears.

No one had the upper hand in the battle between Twilight and the black ponies.  The purple unicorn was certainly holding her own against them, but she was becoming drained as well.  As the fight progressed, the copies began changing tactics from head-first to standing their ground.  Twilight was much more powerful than anything they had experienced.  As the Paula-copy walked up towards Twilight, the unicorn lowered her head and prepared to hit it with another attack, before hearing Braeburn yell to her.

“Don’t attack it!  Paula is inside of that thing!” he yelled through a dry throat.  His wound wasn’t fatal, but it certainly was painful, and it put a large strain on the settler-pony.

Twilight turned back to face her new third adversary, and instead of attacking, leapt to one side to avoid it.  She didn’t want to hurt Paula.

The black ponies took notice of this, and immediately devised a new strategy.  The other two began rushing around the room again, continuing to look for what they had been searching for earlier, and the one possessing Paula went directly for Twilight.  Twilight attempted to go for the other, non-pony-controlling forms, but the Paula-copy cut her off and backed her into a corner.  It didn’t do anything else to her except stand in her way, as the other two ransacked the room in their search.  Finally, the Twilight-copy had apparently found what they were looking for, and held it up to the light to get a closer look at it as it pulled it out from under a shard of timber.  Holding it up to the light, the fake looked at each side and every corner of Twilight’s little black box, examining it closely.

“HEY!” Twilight screamed at her copy.  Twilight had had enough of this; fed up with what these things were doing, she belted the fake Paula in the face and made a run for her own fake to retrieve the box; but the Braeburn-copy tackled her to the ground, and a struggling Twilight watched her fake—and the black box—descend back down into the large hole.  She was pinned on her back, and she couldn’t move at all from her position.

“Ungh…Let me go!” Twilight yelled to the foe restraining her.  The pony paid no mind to her and only watched the black box go down the hole.  Waiting several more seconds—assumingly giving the other a head start, quickly got off Twilight and jumped down the hole with the Paula-copy, which still had the original beneath its black layers.  The strain of battle was beginning to sink in; Twilight could only drag herself across the floor to get towards the hole.  Looking down it, she saw nothing but a bottomless pit.  Her spirits had dropped tenfold after everything that had just happened.

“They have the box…” Twilight struggled to say as she began to feel the small cuts across her face and neck bleeding profusely.

“…And my sister!” Braeburn added, not even attempting to get up anymore.  “We have to go after them!”

“Yeah, sure,” Twilight said sarcastically, “just give me five minutes to catch my breath.”

“We have to do something-”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Twilight said forcefully.  “Not yet, at least…” she gasped for breath and looked up to the front door, hearing footsteps.

The door swung open, and an azure unicorn came rushing in and began speaking, “I just encountered the most peculiar…wha—what in the…?”

“How’s it going?” Twilight managed to utter to an astonished Trixie just as Twilight’s eyelids started to droop and her vision began to blur.  Just before blacking out again, she could hear in the far distance a pony shouting “Help!  We need help in here immediately, some ponies are hurt!”

Everything went blank, and Twilight’s head hit the floor.