Why have things been so weird around here lately?
Have you ever had one of these days? You know, when your half-adoptive-sister-half-adoptive-mother unicorn who happens to be the one single most powerful mortal entity you've ever seen let alone lived with almost kills you twice in the same day, once involving some sort of cannibalistic monstrosity brought from ANOTHER DIMENSION? I'd guessed not, but I'm not good at body language. I can't tell how your week has been in the not-being-repeatedly-almost-killed sense just by glancing at your mane. Actually I can, but that'd be sort of creepy.
They say you're always your worst enemy, but that's got to be a lie. It doesn't apply to her, I mean. Twilight Sparkle, killer of boredom and almost killer of baby dragons! There we are, minding our own business around Ponyville as usual. I could tell she'd woken up in a productive mood that day, daily checklist being completed and triple-checked twice exactly forty-two minutes after waking up and everything. That's why I don't wear a watch.
Actually, "business" doesn't make much sense there. For the first time in months, the library wasn't needed for a day. No orders had been placed, the place was pristine since the previous day happened to be "Spike go and clean up everything by yourself" day (again), and Twilight was for once not really interested in reading. She said she was "bored". I should've seen it coming.
I really did feel something then. Pinkie Pie calls it "Spikey sense", but I call it "Twilight being neurotic". Something about the ear twitching, the piercing mismatched gaze, the unkempt mane and the fact that she kept hiding inside bushes while chuckling and killing birds with her horn made me uneasy. And the voice made that stupid ROYAL CANTERLOT thing look, or rather, sound like a bad joke.
As I was saying, we had the whole day available to do whatever we wanted. I'd planned to go, um, hang out with Rarity while Twi stayed home and read books, as always. Apparently, the book she'd ordered and that was scheduled to arrive that morning never appeared, since certain mailmare had somehow managed to start no less than six wildfires hundreds of kilometres apart at the same time, on accident. I'm guessing she had some explanations to give to the royal guard. You know how meticulous Twilight is, right? So of course when the book isn't where it should've been she starts losing it.
Not a good combination in the first place, but then it just had to happen: Trixie. She'd come back, she was angry, and this time no Ursa Minor was going to show up and help us teach her the hay out of a lesson. So she's there, doing the exact same thing as the last time, except that day she too had completely lost it that day. Kept babbling about how she's learnt almighty tricks from the "unholy eternal fleshbound book of forbidden arcane spells of doom and death", and how she now could perform "unimaginably humilliating humilliation techniques such as making anypony fall in love with a pine cone". Which is exactly what she did - to herself! For all I care, she could've gone and shoved that pine cone up her...
Sorry. During her admittedly mildly amusing routine of humilliating other ponies and speaking in third person, of course, she gets distracted by something, probably Twilight's facial expression and miscasts a spell. What do you know, the next thing is that instead of making Lyra sit normally she just opens some kind of magical portal to elsewhere. Everday stuff I guess? Suddenly a GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL appears, starts flying around, knocks Trixie into the portal and returns inside, disappearing forever. Definitely not everyday stuff.
Was about to ask Twilight what the hay was going on and blam, she just grabs me with her magic and takes off towards the library, holding me in front of her as a scaly meat shield to punt other ponies out of her way. And a damn good one I must say, since I think she flung me against literally everypony in town not counting these being interrogated by the royal guard for arson.
That's when it started going downhill. Get this: she sits me at the table and starts stuffing jewels of indeterminate origin into my mouth, to the point of almost making me choke to death, and then just says "hurry up with lunch, Spike, we're doing SCIENCE today" in a whimsical and incredibly eerie tone that would've made me evacuate my pants if I had any. Luckily, my desperate gasping for air and arm flailing got her attention and she took the jewels, put them on a plate and threw the plate out of the window, prompting somepony outside to let out a pained scream after a crash.
"Get ready, number one assistant! I know what will be just GRRREAT to distract ourselves for the remaining eleven hours and seven minutes of the day!" she said. I figuratively evacuated my unexisting pants again. "I'm bringing Trixie back!"
Yet before I could protest, she jumped at my face and told me to fetch her a book called "Universal Teleportation", you know, the one by the great master Disp Henser, who I'm sure everypony is familiar with. And frankly I was already terrified of her while she was in a good mood, annoying her would probably not have been a very wise decision.
I started sorting through the books. "Uiop and Qwerty", "Umaril the Unfeathered"... at last I found "Universal Teleportation" and she impatiently yanked it away from my hands, almost making me fall off the ladder. As she started rapidly flipping through the pages, with that horrifying expression still on her face, I kind of wished certain pegasus came around and started another fire I could use as a reason to run away as far as I could possibly go.
Which only made it even more startling when the door to the library was violently flung open by certain very angry and very pink earth pony.
"Pinkie Pie?"
The Part Where He Eats You
You know what's scarier than Twilight when a minuscule detail wrecks the plan she had been carefully designing for weeks with a single specific day in mind? Here's a hint: it's Pinkie Pie when a not-so-minuscule porcelain plate full of gems flies out of the window and into her face as she's coming over to pay us one of these random visits of hers. It was kinda hard to see, but her whole face was bloodied. And she was missing a tooth.
Almost made it understandable that she immediately pounced Twilight, I'm guessing because she was closer to the door than I was, and started shaking her and demanding answers. What wasn't so understandable was the fact that her mane and tail appeared to be perfectly straight... oh, yeah, and the terrifying otherwordly demonic echo to her voice.
"Did you do this on purpose?", "is it a MESSAGE?", "DO YOU NOT LOVE ME?", stuff like that. And then she just goes sad and begins mumbling about her friends not loving her anymore and something about cupcakes. Worst part is that, throughout all this, Twilight's expression hadn't changed at all. In fact, I realised she hadn't blinked once since that morning.
Then out of nowhere, and I really mean out of nowhere, Pinkie's right up against my face and ordering me to talk. I just told her the truth, that it was all an accident and PLEASE DON'T KILL ME, the usual. She then proceeded to bounce around the library, mane and tail puffy and curly once again, saying that we were forgiven and that she was going to throw a "let's-forgive-Twilight-and-little-Spike-for-ruining-my-face-for-weeks" party. Slightly disturbing, but probably less likely to get me killed.
While the... party maniac calmed down, Twi started flipping through the book again. Have you ever wondered if she's actually reading when she does that? Apparently she is. Don't ask me how. She shrieked and said she'd found it, which made Pinkie Pie noticeably excited, even though I'm pretty sure she had no idea what Twi was talking about. My suspicions were confirmed when she simply asked Twilight what was happening. I... faceclawed?
"We're doing SCIENCE!" she said. And then she stared directly at me. The eye twitching was a nice detail, real nice. Pinkie was very obviously distracted blowing a magical candle that created sparks and colorful figures and that kind of thing that mesmerizes her. I think she didn't hear what Twi said.
Grinning even more widely she started casting a spell, which I guessed was the same one Trixie had somehow messed up earlier that dreadful day. Pinkie didn't notice until a few seconds later, when she saw the unusually bright lighting engulf the room, and jumped Twilight excitedly asking her what she was doing. For the first time since she went neurotic, her grin disappeared. Pinkie had startled her and it was obvious to me that something was about to go wrong... to be honest, everything that had happened that day made it obvious that something was about to go wrong. The entire day WAS wrong.
My wishes for an accidental laws-of-nature-breaking wildfire once again didn't come true. Despite her Pinkie-induced loss of concentration, Twilight still managed to open a portal to that strange place, which made that creepy smile return to her. And then it happened.
Something came out of the portal. It resembled one of Fluttershy's monkeys very, very vaguely, but it sure wasn't one. It initially stood on two legs and had these wiggly appendages where hooves would be on a pony, but it was almost completely dressed in what looked like combat gear. Intelligent, perhaps? Its brown helmet partially obscured its eyes. At the same time it appeared, eerie music began to play, but Twilight wasn't using her magic and Pinkie was too dumbfounded to do anything. I still don't know where that music came from and nobody but me seemed to even be aware of its existence, either.
We stood still in silence looking at the strange creature. With a sudden jerk it crawled into a ball and quickly slid across the floor, making strange cracking noises. It stopped just about a metre away from Twilight and recomposed itself with a particularly painful sound, this time with its head tilted backwards so its helmet no longer obscured its sight. It looked at her straight in the eyes. She looked back.
"Test subject, please confirm or deny your identity as 'The Great and Powerful Trixie' immediately!" she chimed in, with an unusually cheerful tone. Sure, the Great and Powerful Trixie had somehow transformed into The Weird and Not-Trixie-At-All Trixie. The creature didn't seem to mind. Then, it spoke.
"I am Painis Cupcake. I will eat you."
Its face contorted into something ghoulish and undescribably frightening. At the same time, seemingly out of nowhere, the mysterious music of indeterminate origin turned into an extremely menacing tune of indeterminate origin that signalled something bad was about to happen. I guess his threat had something to do with it. That was when I started to understand.
This is the part where he eats you.
Before I even fully realised the implications of this, the thing lunged at Twilight and took a big bite out of her left hind leg. The wound didn't look deep, but it was pretty big and started bleeding profusely. Her face suddenly morphed back into normal, but it was evident she was scared out of her mind, and that made me even more terrified. I started crying and... hey, why that look? Seeing Twi get attacked like that made my heart sink. And I'm not used to seeing blood, you know?
So Twilight had finally come back to her senses only to realise her portal was no longer there and the damned creature was feasting on her flesh. I'm not sure if it was the blood loss or the shock, but she fell unconscious. I stood in awe while the thing nonchalantly chewed and swallowed the bloody meaty mess it had acquired, then made a disgusted expression and moaned. Guess it didn't like the taste of pony flesh... can you imagine if it did?
Just as fast as before, the thing slid towards me and pinned me against the wall. It, again, wore the same expression and told me it was going to eat me, which was quite enlightening. Ignoring my begging for mercy, the demon bit my arm, and immediately flinched. Yeah, the scales were too thick, and that's kind of awesome, actually. Although at that time I was too busy imagining the relationship between my digestive system and the pants I wasn't wearing.
Its face returned to the same expression of disgust it bore a few moments earlier and immediately let me go. It didn't like the taste of dragon scales, either. Cool, I guess. I thought maybe things would stop becoming weirder by the minute for once, maybe even go back to normal before the day ended. But it wasn't over yet. Not at all.
Get this: I caught something moving just out of the corner of my eye. Something vaguely yellow and pink... that something instantly launched towards the creature and landed a hoof right onto its face. Don't ask how, but the impact's force was enough to send the demon flying straight into a wall and make it stay there, nice and quiet and not trying to eat anything else. I turned to the source of the mess that had just unfolded and couldn't believe what I saw. There stood a very pink and very impressed earth pony next to a not so yellow and extremely agitated Pegasus.
"Fluttershy!?"
