That's news to me, sister!
“Where am I?”
Fluttershy stared up at the dark figures surrounded her. All she could recall was lurching from a fleeting dream involving the moon emerging from the clouds and a burning, ambient light that stung her eyes.
A chorus of relieved laughter and a victorious whoop from Pinkie Pie shocked her from her reverie, and she managed a half-smile as her friends trotted towards her.
Applejack slung a foreleg around Fluttershy, pulling her close. “Thank goodness you're OK!”
Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed a lone figure on the field. Rainbow Dash stood behind the group, her mane hanging over her face. Applejack, following Fluttershy's gaze, parted from their embrace.
“What's that matter, Dash? Jealous?” she said, striding over and punching Dash playfully in the shoulder.
Rainbow Dash flinched, tossing her mane back to reveal a glare. “Thank Goodness you're OK? Seriously? Drop the act, Applepunk!”
In a flash, she drew back her hoof and punched Applejack in the nose. Fluttershy shrieked as Applejack reeled from the blow, stumbling backwards to find her balance.
Catching herself against a nearby trunk, Applejack pushed herself upright, only to find Rainbow Dash's nose pressed up against hers. Fangs glinted in the pegasus' mouth as she snarled. With a whoosh, bat wings flared from her back, the leathery appendages poised and trembling with rage.
“That was smart, manipulating Twilight into doing that spell. What's your beef with ponies like me and Fluttershy, AJ? Batponies killed your parents? Or is it something a bit more...carnal?”
“I feel that Rainbow Dash is levelling some unfair accusations here,” Rarity cut in. “Also, punching Applejack in the nose seemed uncalled for.”
“Another batpony! She's going to eat AJ for her apple-like qualities! Everybody pretend to be a banana!” Pinkie screamed, collapsing onto the grass in a shape that vaguely resembled the letter 'c'.
Twilight snarled, leaping forward to interpose herself between Rainbow Dash and Applejack. “No, no, no! This was going perfectly! For the love of Celestia, will everypony just calm down and act like my plan was a huge success before I do something stupid in an attempt to regain control of the situation?”
“So, cast a spell,” Rarity said.
“Shut up. And yes,” Twilight snapped, before returning her attention to the two ponies she was now holding apart telekinetically. “Rainbow Dash, you are going to explain to me in twenty words what the hay is going on.”
“Applejack's trying to destroy all vamponies and steal their chicks 'cause she's an apple wolf and she has no game!”
Pinkie gasped, sitting up from her emergency banana pose. “An apple wolf! That explains why she won't stop talking about apples! Life makes more sense now!”
Twilight glared at her. “Life makes absolutely no more sense than it did ten seconds ago. Although I appreciate you meeting the word count, Rainbow Dash.”
“Well, whatever is going on, I think it's fair to assume that this is Twilight's fault,” Rarity said, with a flippant wave in the other pony's direction.
“Rarity, I am currently anxious, bewildered, angry, and in possession of an unfathomable amount of magic,” Twilight hissed. “Tell me it's my fault later.”
“I don't get it...” Fluttershy mumbled. “Am I a batpony? Did I just dream about being a batpony? Am I still in the dream?”
“It's a dream within a dream!” Pinkie cried jubilantly, suddenly clothed in a pony-sized banana costume. “This fruit is merely figment of your imagination!”
Twilight's eye twitched. “Pinkie, stop it!”
“Can I come down now?” Applejack said. “My nose hurts and I'd like to get a tissue or somethin'.”
“Don't let her go!” Rainbow Dash cried. “She's just trying to trick you again so you'll get rid of my powers like you did to Fluttershy, so she can bring her wolf pack along when we're sleeping, steal Fluttershy from my strong and yet tender embrace, kill me, prove to everyone she's got game, turn Equestria into Applequestria, and hoard all the apples in the world to use in her own nefarious plans as ruler of the newly established Apple kingdom!”
“I am?” Applejack exclaimed. “That's news to me, sister!”
“My brain,” Twilight whimpered, clutching her head as the aura surrounded her horn began to fizzle and hiss.
“We're losing her!” Rarity cried. “Celestia save us all!”
“Forget her- look!” Pinkie cried, pointing at the sky. As Twilight's horn fizzled violently, the night clouds started to tear like cotton candy, a violet aura seeping from the voids like juice from a particularly juicy sliced apple. “The dream is collapsing!”
Her words were swallowed up in a thickening haze of white light, which blanketed the entire orchard and dazzled the ponies present there. As it faded, Twilight found herself suffocating under the weight of four ponies. Blinking the dots of light from her eyes, she winced at the room in view.
A circular atrium. Evening light shining in through a pair of navy and golden stained glass windows, the intersecting beams falling upon a wooden pedestal in the centre, under which Spike and Rainbow Dash where sitting on beanbags, both fixated on the last page of the comic book spread open before them.
Rainbow Dash glanced over her shoulder, grinning awkwardly at them. “You're back, then.”
As the ponies scrambled, rolled, or kicked their way off the pile and the weight on Twilight's back lessened, she struggled to her hooves, holding up a hoof to stay the inevitable tidal wave of questions from her friends.
“Spike,” she said softly. “Were we all in that comic book?”
“It's more of a graphic novel, really. I'm surprised you don't remember getting sucked in. You guys must have come back from cleaning the castle to find me and Rainbow Dash, but we weren't there 'cause we went to search for Twilight's cookies. We came back to see you guys getting sucked in to the book we'd left on the pedestal!”
Twilight's eyes went distant, before snapping back into focus. “The spell I cast to affect Flutterbat's memory must have rebounded from the magic of the enchanted comic itself. Because our actions were causing narrative dissonance, they prompted a reaction from the story itself, causing us to forget we'd entered the comic book in an attempt to preserve narrative continuity!”
“So the spell went wrong,” Applejack muttered.
“No, it just...well, didn't go to plan, which isn't surprising, given that we were just in some idiot's story the entire time!” Twilight cried, marching forward to yank the book from his grasp. “What even is it?”
“I dunno, but it definitely isn't my fan fiction,” Rainbow Dash said, chuckling.
There was a silence. Twilight turned her head slowly to level an imperious look at Rainbow Dash.
“Like, really,” the pegasus continued to ramble, “as if I'd get my work published in graphic novel form. I don't even know any famous authors who would pull those sorts of strings for me, get my story put in the 'House of Enchanted Comics' or, like, wherever Spike got that from.”
“You wrote a vampire romance about us?” Fluttershy cried.
“You made me an apple wolf?” Applejack cried. “What even is that?”
“A wolf...type thing? I dunno! I needed a villain that sucked in comparison to my original character. Sheesh AJ, don't take it personally!” Rainbow Dash cried.
“I used not to know what fan fiction was. Then I did, and it was extremely upsetting,” Twilight said. “Never again.”
“I'm just glad it's over, and that I'm not a batpony,” Fluttershy sighed, running her tongue over what seemed to be a particularly sharp tooth.
“Do I need to write some sort of moral lesson in the journal?” Spike said, running after Twilight as she walked briskly towards the door.
“Just a memo to never let you buy anything without supervision again,” Twilight sighed, tossing the book over her shoulder. “For now, I'm going to bed in the hope that I've somehow forgotten this in the morning.”
Rainbow Dash bolted through the air, grabbing the book moment before it hit the ground. “But Twi, you don't know what you're missing out on! There was gonna be a cameo from Daring Do! Don't you wanna read about kittens getting punched in the face?”
As the rest of the group marched resolutely past her towards the the exit, Rainbow Dash looked sadly down at the book her in hooves, only to see it vanish before her very eyes.
~oOo~
Deep within the bowels of the castle, upon a shadowy throne, the Pony of Shadows cackled, before opening a bag of cheetos and flicking open the new instalment of Rainbow Professionalism Dash's epic romance saga.
