Fluttershy awoke. Her head was spinning and she was afraid to open her eyes, so blindly, she lifted her head.

Unfortunately, the stellar beginning to this stream of consciousness was marred by the impact of her head on the underside of the table she found herself under. Slowly opening her groggy eyes to see which way to crawl out from under it, Fluttershy dragged herself into the middle of the room, and turned her head to see what she was hoping was just an imagined monstrosity turning out to be very real.

And it was playing with cards.

"What?" said the freakish creature, still emerging from her spine. "I got bored."

Despite the varying rush of mixed emotions upon discovering the terrifying body-invader was real and definitely existed despite Fluttershy's best efforts to deny it, the feeling that rose to the top at the time was one of embarrassment.

"O-oh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have fainted on you like that." was the weak response she could just about muster in it's presence.

By the fires of Hell, this animal just apologized for it's own suffering. I am going to starve. This sickeningly colourful hell is going to be my undoing, and I'm going to be stranded here for all eternity.

Spitting out the cards, The Darkness suppressed his rage at his relatively grim future prospects. For his future to be genuinely grim would be uplifting and encouraging. In the current circumstances however, he was doomed.

"...It's fine" he muttered, careful not to betray his white-hot anger. Either Fluttershy was oblivious to it, or choosing to let it slip. Both of those worried him. Her worried stare and quivering lips also worried him. He hoped against all odds that she was simply working up the courage to speak, instead of being on the brink of tears.

He sagged with relief when it was the latter, as Fluttershy began to speak.

"So, uhm..." she started, her voice still quivering. "If, uhm...if you don't mind me asking...I'd uh, really appreciate you telling me uhm...maybe, who and what you are...and why you're inside my uhm, my back..." she managed, with much effort.

"Ah, yes." This might prove difficult. "I am known as The Darkness."

Sure, he could've lied. The Darkness could have created any name, and any story. He didn't have to tell the truth. But he also figured, with a demeanor like hers, that sticking a name on something with more teeth than the Osmond family didn't seem right. His time in this hellishly pleasant place was already getting to him, perhaps. He wasn't used to being subject to feelings of anything being 'wrong'. He did however hope against all hope that she didn't pani-

"Oh. Alright." she said, now more calm as she rose to her hooves.

Unholy shit, this woman is trusting. This'll be easier than I thought.

She had stopped looking at him, and was shakily moving about her home, rummaging gently through her cupboards. The Darkness could concede that something like food would help her to digest the situation.

"As for why I am here...that is an unfortunate accident. I attempted a method of travel I hadn't tried before, and I seem to be stuck inside a place I did not want to be."

The Element of Kindness snapped to attention at this. Her limitless compassion overrode her fear and apprehension, and her desire to help those in need took the reigns.

On top of that, helping this unfortunate monstrosity would likely benefit her as well, with it's removal from her body. It was a win-win. Fluttershy wasn't stupid afterall.

"Oh goodness you poor dear!" she gasped, feeling a welt of sickness in her stomach at the notion of calling this thing 'dear'. "Is there anything I could to help?"

If it was possible for the lipless abomination of all that is good and holy to smile, he would have. Instead he settled for a quiet deep internal rumble. He was effectively purring.

"Well now..."

Angel Bunny had finally reached the Ponyville Library Treehouse. What he thought would be his big break to salvage the horrifying situation Fluttershy was in, turned out to bring with it a new problem he had only encountered once before, with an irritating little dragon.

He was unable to utilize his array of communication abilities, such as stomping his tufted little rabbit feet and pointing his furry little paws in all manner of directions, to communicate with this supposedly intelligent pony.

"ANGEL!" barked the flustered royal, as she struggled to make sense of this rabbit's desperate flailing and squealing. "I DON'T SPEAK RABBIT! Just give me a few seconds! A FEW SECONDS! I can figure out a way to bridge this language gap if you just calm down and give me a moment to think!"

The rabbit seemingly placated with this promise, Twilight turned to her shelves, scanning for a particular spellbook. The problem with collecting spellbooks both new and old was that while the books themselves were systematically arranged, the spells within were not. And searching for a specific spell took a degree of memory that Twilight had not yet developed. Though her immortality would present the time needed, she had not yet lived through her own mortal life-span, and was therefore woefully under-equipped in the memory department.

In the time it took her to finally locate the spell she'd needed, Angel had scurried off into her kitchen, managed to raid her pantry, and was now snacking on a large turnip that Twilight had been saving for herself. She wanted to throw him out of her window and be done with it. But the rabbit seemed very earnest, and Twilight felt that if this irritating fuzzball had sought her ought and was attempting of his own will to actually communicate with her, then there was obviously something wrong. Against her better judgement, Twilight let his devouring of her turnip slide, and continued to try to help.

"Well, I found a spell, rabbit. According to this, I should be able to communicate fluently with all animal species for the next few hours." she said, while casting said spell. It was lucky enough that it was a spell which required no physical components or ingredients, and was simply a matter of applying the right focus. Immediately after it was cast, Twilight thought she heard some very faint whispers all around her, and figured it was probably the various critters and insects that lived in her tree nattering amongst themselves.

"Oith ta smartass, can ya hear me neow? Super smarty pants pony understand me now?" quipped the rabbit.

"Listen, rodent. Call me a mule again and I will seriously consider investing time into researching the efficacy of lucky charms. Starting with rabbit's feet."

A New Yoker. An angry, irritating little rabbit, is from New Yoke. Ofcourse. I don't know why I expected any different. I don't know WHAT I expected. thought Twilight, chuffing a little.

"Yes Angel, I can underst-" began Twilight, but was interrupted.

"AWESOME. GREAT. LISTEN. Fluttashy's in some kinda daynja. She's got some kind of ah...thingy...on 'er."

"Thingy?"

"Thingy. I dunno what it is okay? It's all black, looks like it's made a' knives an' other sharp things, eeaand it kinda smells like the everfree. Yanno. Death, decay, 'n bubblegum."

This caught the princess off-guard. The bunny had just described something completely ridiculous and attributed it to a genuine danger, but did the everfree forest really smell of bubblegum? Of all the thoughts surging in her mind at the time, it was the only one that held itself with any real importance. Despite Twilight's concern for her friend, she simply had to know.

"Bubblegum?"

"Yeeeah well, the ah, reason fer that is uh...WAIT NO THERE AIN'T TIME FER THAT RIGHT NOW!" yelled the ornery rabbit. "WE GOTTA GO!"

"Right! Don't worry Angel, I'll get us to her place in no time!" said Twilight, and with that, she enveloped the two in her magic, and with a loud POP! they were gone.

The act of teleportation, for those involved, was a longer and far more disturbing process than the outside observer would ever know. What lay in the veil between locations was a closely guarded secret, if only because there was absolutely no reason anypony else had to know about it. It was a place that the princesses had dubbed 'The Warp', and why was evident. The place was warped, by all accounts.

As Twilight and Angel entered the sickly pink place, they were surrounded on all sides by hideous amorphous entities and cold pink fires. Warped and upsetting sounds howled around them, and things that the two couldn't see even if they were to lay eyes on them, slithered around. The two were left untouched and undisturbed, though Angel was having second thoughts.

A small pink creature, hobbling on what would have been all fours if it's fourth limb wasn't on it's back, did approach Twilight, and made some sort of gesture with what had to be it's tongue, considering it came out of what was clearly the creature's mouth.

"Oh hey Slaanesh. Sup?"

"Blurghableh"

"Awesome. Later dude."

Angel was not exhibiting the level of nonchalant acceptance that Twilight was.

All he could say, repeatedly, was "What"

As they walked a little further, a blue steak of fire whizzed past them.

"Watch it Tzeentch!" called Twilight.

"What."

Angel jumped over a sickly looking pool of stinking slime.

"What."

"Hey Twilight" it said in a voice that sounded like endless vomit. "Good to see you again."

"Yo Nurgle. Where's Khorne?"

"Building."

"What."

"We're here." said Twilight, as Angel felt himself being enveloped by magic again.

POP! and the two emerged at Fluttershy's door.

"Nevermore..." quoth the rabbit.

"No! No I couldn't! Couldn't couldn't couldn't! No! No no no!"

The Darkness heaved a heavy sigh.

What he could have done with right at that moment was some ice-cream. Or some hearts. Or both.
Mmm. Ice-Cream hearts.

But right now, he couldn't. He had attempted to explain to Fluttershy that in order to leave, he needed to eat hearts. Specifically the hearts of those condemned to an eternal suffering in hell, Tartarus as was the case here. He'd even tried giving it a sort of anti-hero spin. It didn't seem to have been successful however, as this had left the mare hiding under her table, sobbing. The Darkness wasn't even capable of anger at this point. He had tried thinking about what it would take to push this mare over the edge, and to break her into a thousand pieces so as to rebuild her to be used as a weapon.

He searched the depths of her soul and found nothing. This mare had no vices. She had an anger issue, sure. Unfortunately it was a misplaced misinformed type of anger that was gone as soon as it came. This baffled him. In the Darkness' entire existence, he had met no beings that simply had nothing corruptible about them. As far as he was concerned, this should be impossible. But here he was, somehow being the host of an uncorrupted being. He himself was the only form of corruption found in this creature now, and he couldn't use that.

What he didn't expect was a visitor. He swiveled his gangly appendage of a head toward the door that as now opening, only to lock eyes with yet another sickeningly adorable pony creature. It didn't seem to recognize that they were making eye contact however, which gave The Darkness a slight giggle.

This one appeared to be a winged unicorn.

The Darkness vomited in his mouth a little.

"F-Fluttershy!?"

Author's Note

Hehehehehe. New Yoke. That took 2 people and 15 minutes to come up with.

I'm not kidding.

ALSO HEY, ITS FINALLY POSTED WEEHA