Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy Have Words

The shaking stopped as abruptly as a cliché. And it had begun abruptly; there had been no slow, ominous buildup, no distant, approaching grumble of the underground shockwave. It was as if somebody had gone in and removed a few frames from a movie.

There was a long, awkward silence.

Mayor Mare trotted out of Town Hall for her cameo, which will be very brief.

“What was that?” she said.

“Possibly a cop-out,” said Twilight, rolling her eyes. She concentrated and magicked herself out of Pinkie Pie’s grasp. She glared from pink pony to yellow pony.

“And as for you two, just what--”

Suddenly the earthquake returned. The violence of it grew and grew and grew, but, oddly, it all seemed to be centered directly beneath Mayor Mare. She bounced up and down, flailing and screaming and probably getting very badly hurt. Fortunately, her sufferings did not last long, for shortly after they began, the top of Town Hall broke off, came down, and squished her. She popped like a zit, sending gore and blood flying everywhere. And there was a lot of it. Too much, really. A body only has so much room in it. If there is an afterlife, I hope she’s ashamed with herself for lying to you like that, trying to trick you into thinking there were gallons and gallons of blood flowing through her. Honestly, what a drama queen.

The gross, sticky body chunks did not get much of a chance to settle, though, and nor did the building, for the ground beneath the wreck site cracked, sagged, and then exploded. Earth, building materials, and the mortal remains of Mayor Mare went sailing through the air, delivering owies and expensive property damage to those citizens of Ponyville unfortunate enough to be within range of the blast.

The shockwave of the explosion passed. The earthquake ended.

Projectiles settled. Dust settled. Stuff stopped getting broken.

Twilight got to her hooves and made her way over to the site of the blast. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie wandered over, as well.

They looked down.

Then they looked further down.

There wasn’t a crater, but a hole in the ground, perhaps thirty meters across, that dropped down into the earth. It was too deep to see to the bottom.

Because such things are required when a story has a deep hole in the ground, Pinkie Pie nudged a bit of rubble over the edge and waited to hear the click of it landing. She never did. That never happens. If it did, the gimmick would have no illustrative value.

Then there was a dramatic cutaway. The suspense had to be built up somehow, after all.

Applejack sat down to a quick lunch of apples and grass and apples and hay and alfalfa and apples and flowers and apples. She drank deeply from her mint julep and made bedroom eyes at the reader. Up and down bounced her eyebrows. She really did think the gesture was suggestive, that it invited the reader to contemplate all the sticky things that could be done to her, but really, she just looked like a twerp. She meant well. Don’t think too harshly of her.

She gazed down into the sanctum of madness to which Ponyville had been reduced.

It has to be said that the young whipper-snapper did not really deserve what was about to happen to her. She had her regrets, had made her mistakes, just like everybody else, but, on the whole, she had lead a mostly blameless life. It was not easy, being best pony.

Back at the Ominous Dangerous Perilous Treacherous And Generally Unsafe Hole-in-the-Ground, where Town Hall used to be, Twilight, Pinkie, and Fluttershy were getting annoyed at all the adjectives.

Fluttershy bitch-slapped Pinkie Pie to vent her frustration. Pinkie Pie didn’t like it. It’s no fun getting hit in the first place, unless you think it is, in which case, well, consenting adults, and all that, but it’s really got to hurt if it’s a hoof. I mean, ow. One of Pinkie Pie’s teeth went flying. It had to. There are conventions, after all.

“What the cyan-fuck is going on?” said Cyan Dash, appearing out of nowhere to hover above the hole. She peered into it.

“I wish I knew,” said Twilight. Behind her, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had started fighting again. Twilight and Rainbow Cyan ignored it. There was nothing to see, after all, as they were quickly obscured by a dust-cloud. Its perimeter was oddly specific, and it undulated, random punctuation marks flying out of it, along with the occasional flailing limb.

“I was just practicing my totally awesome cloud-punching until it was about twenty percent cooler,” said Raincyan Dash, “and then I see this--”

That was when the school of flying zombie sharks came pouring, bee-like, out of the hole. There were thousands of them. And then there were thousands more. Out they flew, with a horrible insect-like buzz, and they buzzed, buzzing, champing, chomping, chewing, biting, and other unpleasant verbs, as well. Sharks don’t roar, prehistoric giant or not, regardless of whatever hilarious b-movie you may have seen, but these were doing it anyway. And it was a long, deep growl, deep like an inspiring philosophical text. It went right for the spine and broke it up so that it fell apart like good barbecue.

“What the shit!” cried Applejack, far too startled to be a reasonable character and “said” her dialogue.

Cyancyan screamed and screamed and screamed as the flying zombie sharks boiled around her. She flew down, grabbed Fluttercanary, gave her a great big kiss, just in case, and zipped off to Cloudsdale to warn people and summon reinforcements.

Fluttershy swooned from the smooch. It had been the gross, face-mashing sort that is only hot if it’s you and them, but that was the thing. It had been her and them.

She recovered, sought Pinkie Pie in the chaos, found her, and glared. She raised her lightsaber and prepared to give chase.

Applejack stared in horror as the horrible horror-fishes flew around Ponyville. It was difficult to tell what, specifically, was happening. It was sort of like watching a pile of maggots do their thing, all wriggling and horrible. She abandoned her lunch and bolted into the estate of Sweet Apple Acres for help.

The chapter ended, abruptly.