When Fluttershy finally awoke, it was with blurred eyes. It was with a muddled sight that spun the world around; it was with a heavy head that refused to focus.
When she awoke, a piercing, shining light broke through the fog, pressing past her confusion and jolting her to consciousness. It was a glaring brightness that came from all around, a halation that crept into her sight, leaving dark blotches of ink that eventually formed themselves into shapes, populating her empty world with objects.
When she awoke, she sucked heavy air into her lungs. A gasp, two gasps, stumbling over each other in a race to her lungs. She tried to rub her eyes, tried to wash away the haze, but found that the action was denied to her.
But as her sight returned, all she could see were the sleek, white walls. Large square tiles cluttered the floor and ceiling. The room felt pristine, if only pristinity could be set apart from cleanliness.
There were brown stains, the viscosity of mud and the texture of soil, that ran up and down the walls in streaks. Some here. Some there. Some quite close to her.
Stainless steel tables pushed themselves against the corner. Counters lined the edges of the room and carried a variety of tools upon their backs. A sink caught water from an incessantly leaking faucet.
Each drop resounded in her head as they echoed through the empty kitchen of Sugarcube Corner.
The only other sound she could hear, if she strained above the thundering of the drops, was that of the chains and shackles that kept her suspended from the ceiling by her forelegs.
She dangled listlessly as her breathing continued, taking pace, counting the seconds. She closed her eyes as air passed over her lips, and she swayed gently, serenely, just a puppet, only a puppet, waiting for her owner to take her out of her box and put on a show.
Turning her eyes downward, she saw a small brass pot that sat between her dangling hind legs. It was placed on the floor, a mere few centimeters below from where she hung. Her attention moved to a broken clock on the wall that read 3:55 in perpetuity. But it didn’t matter. Even if it had worked, clocks only told what time it was at the moment.
She closed her eyes again, slowing her breathing, emptying her head.
The drops became louder. More rounded. More full. She focused on them, images of them invading her head. She imagined each silvery ball of liquid falling from a faucet ill-closed and landing on a smooth, flat surface.
Drip.
Drip.
They pattered even more now, turning into soft beats upon a harder surface.
Tap.
Tap.
Fluttershy forced her eyes back open.
“Pinkie!” she croaked, voice breaking through a tunnel filled with dust.
The pony stood in front of her, smiling a familiar smile. A soft, welcoming smile. Her hair had fallen, like the branches of a willow in a storm, more brown streaks running through them that continued across her face and body. Her eyes were also recognizable, if only just a little more round, a little more bulbous, and caressed by the dark bags of sleepless nights.
Pinkie tapped her hoof nervously on the ground to the beat of the dripping water.
“Pinkie,” Fluttershy repeated, coughing. She jerked forward, a slight flutter of the wing to help her swing in a fruitless attempt to emulate movement. “You… you’re here!”
“No!” Pinkie burst out suddenly with a bemused inflection. “You’re here.”
Her voice was strangely non-comforting. Fluttershy hadn’t heard Pinkie’s voice for many days now, but her essence sounded like it had been forced through a sieve so fine that it could never be put back together in quite the same way. It, too, echoed over the room like the shrieking of a harpy trilling in a storm.
It was a strange sight. It felt, to Fluttershy, like looking at her friend in a warped mirror. There were things that were definitely Pinkie, but there were things that were somewhat askew. It was those little things, like the twitch of her mouth or the seemingly unfocused gaze, that threw everything off.
“So, I got my wish!” Pinkie let her smile fall, a stark contrast to the oddly energetic bounce in her voice. “I can’t believe it worked! I mean, I didn’t know what to expect, but you’re actually here! I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Well…” Fluttershy rasped. “Of course I am. It’s been a month, Pinkie. Everypony was starting to get worried, and… and all you left us was that note saying you needed to be by yourself for awhile and–”
“A month?” Pinkie tilted her head.
“Y-yes… so when I got your letter, I came right over, and…”
“A month!”
“And then I must have… Something must have...” Fluttershy muttered, looking around the room once more.
“A month, Fluttershy. I’m so super glad that you’re here!”
“Yes. I… I am too,” Fluttershy responded, looking back to her friend. “Um… so… are you alright? I mean, what’s happened all this time? Why am I… in this thing? How did I get here?”
“You’re here because I wanted you to be! I made a wish, and it came true, and here you are!” Pinkie bubbled, stepping closer and digging her hoof into one of Fluttershy’s ribs.
Fluttershy squeaked in response.
“Um… I see. Could you please… if it wouldn’t be any trouble?” Fluttershy smiled a little as well, a little flash of hope, through a wince brought on by an overzealous pink hoof. She turned her head up, indicating her bindings.
Pinkie didn’t respond.
She pushed against Fluttershy’s chest slightly, her expression frozen to her face, as if somepony had run tacks into the corners of her mouth, and that was the only thing keeping it in place.
Fluttershy swung back and forth on her tethers, twisting and rocking through the air, as an odd silence otherwise permeated the room.
“P-Pinkie?”
“I just…” Pinkie sighed wistfully, as if recalling a long-forgotten memory. “You know when you wanna say something but you can’t?”
“Anything, Pinkie. Whatever it is, you can say it!” Fluttershy said earnestly.
“Well, I kinda need your help,” Pinkie said, eyes darting left and right. “I… guess. I shouldn’t ask, but…”
“Of course you should!”
“I really shouldn’t.” Pinkie breathed.
“Does it have something to do with why you shut yourself away? Mr. Cake told us that you haven’t left your room ever since then. But… but you’re here in the kitchen now. Does Mr. Cake know?”
“No. No, I don’t… know.”
“Well… anyway, why not let us help? We’d love to help. That’s what friends… what friends are for, right? So please, Pinkie. Tell me what’s wrong, and… and we’ll sort this all out.”
“Do you really mean that?” Pinkie asked.
“Yes! Of course! I insist.” Fluttershy beamed, giving Pinkie her best reassuring smile.
Pinkie sighed, looking down, looking away. She blinked a few times, running her hooves through her mane, and took a gulp of air loud enough for Fluttershy to hear.
“D-did I say something wrong?” Fluttershy murmured.
Pinkie’s eyes snapped back, life stealthily returning to her grin, as she locked on to Fluttershy’s face. “No! No. Thank you, Fluttershy! I wouldn’t have been able to make a decision without you, no sirree! So…”
“So…?”
“Now we can get started.” Pinkie smiled.
“Oh, okay.” Fluttershy said, watching as Pinkie retreated backward to the far side of the room. “Maybe… it’s a bit difficult to help you, hanging here like this. Not… not that it isn’t wonderful, or anything, but... maybe you could help me down?”
“Ah, no. Sorry!” Pinkie paused mid step before continuing. “It’s kinda part of the thing.”
“Part of the thing?”
“Yeah! I know you’re probably not going to enjoy this, but I kinda have to do it, you know what I mean? So it’s better if you couldn’t run around, just so that we can make sure it works.”
“I… don’t understand, Pinkie.”
Pinkie walked to the counters in silence, yanking open a drawer. The sound of clashing metal reverbed through the chamber as Pinkie rummaged around inside.
“Pinkie? I’m beginning to get a bit frightened.” Fluttershy said. “Please, could you let me down?”
The mare at the counters paused her action once more, resuming her search a moment after.
“Pinkie?”
“Sorry! Be there in a squidge! There’s just so many to choose from, and I kinda don’t really want to hurt you, you know what I mean?”
“Hurt? What… what’s going to hurt?” Fluttershy squeaked. “Pinkie, what’s happening? Is something going to hurt?”
“I’ll do my bestest not to!” Pinkie produced a dessert fork from the depths of the drawer. She nodded, satisfied with her final decision.
“Pinkie! Get me out of this!” Fluttershy pleaded, a stronger emotion welling up from the pit of her chest. She tried to pull her foreleg down, accomplishing nothing but a vain attempt at the echoes of movement.
“I can’t let you go.” Pinkie turned slightly, staring at the corner of the room.
“Why not? What are you doing?”
“Do you know what’s necessary for a good joke? Well, one of the many things, anyway.” Pinkie stepped slowly towards Fluttershy again, fork now in mouth.
“Pinkie, please, what are you doing?”
“I mean, before the joke is told, even! You kinda have to make sure everypony’s on board, you know? Everypony has to be part of the joke, or else the joke isn’t going to be funny. Not for the ones getting it, and not for the ones telling it. So I want to make sure that you understand. I want to make sure that you’re taking this seriously.”
Fluttershy’s pulse returned to a hasty timbre. She struggled, a bit more this time. But like before, all she could manage was to rock back and forth before she was exhausted, and for Fluttershy, that did not take long at all.
Her eyes shifted wildly around her immediate area, as beads of sweat gathered on her brow like dew on morning flowers. But whatever clue she was trying to find to explain her predicament was not there, and she had no choice but to refocus her sight on the only thing in the room that could give her answers.
Fluttershy winced, jerking her head back in a reaction normally reserved for revulsion, when a sudden coldness hit her cheek.
“Are you taking this seriously?” Pinkie gently stroked the fork along Fluttershy’s face.
“Y-yes! I am! I am!” Fluttershy blurted “So whatever it is, please don’t hurt me! Please! We can talk about it! Just–”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Pinkie shook her head. “Maybe it’s better if you just didn’t worry about it.”
The pony let loose a single chuckle, more forced than natural, as if she was trying to dislodge a piece of stuck food from her throat with a cough.
“It’s working already!” Pinkie smiled. “It’s working!”
“What is?” Fluttershy squeaked.
“Okay! Okay! Yay! It’s all going to be better! We’ll just… keep going, and… things will be better!”
“T-this is a joke… or a dream… oh, it must be! It must be! This isn’t real… It can’t be happening!”
Pinkie’s smile dropped.
“Oh no, why’d you have to go and say that?” Pinkie asked, sighing, her joyful lilting overrun by a bitter tinge. “I thought you were going to take this seriously.”
“I-I am! I do!”
“Now we’re going to have to take it all the way! All the way.”
“W-w-what is… what is ‘all the’...”
“I’m not faffing around, Fluttershy. This is real, alright? As real as real can be. I need you to help me. And you can’t help me unless you believe.”
“B-but we’re friends, Pinkie! I can’t possibly believe that you would hur–”
Fluttershy’s words were cut away.
It was hard to comprehend the sensation fully. It was as if she fell upon a sharp rock, sending jagged edges into her skin and tearing through flesh. It was like when a wild animal would nip at her, only on a scale unfathomable. Riveting shocks ran up and down her leg, causing every muscle to seize up in response. It later gave way to a dull throb, and finally, once she unclenched her teeth and she stopped breathing too heavily to think, she started to feel a warm liquid trickling down the side of her leg.
Fluttershy squirmed, squealing, wrenching herself upward, like a doll trying to collapse upon itself.
“P-Pinkie… w-why…?” Fluttershy forced out.
Pinkie nudged the pot beneath Fluttershy a little to the left.
A new drip added itself to the one already in the room, creating a strange tribal tattoo of uneven beats and rhythm.
“Please, just help me,” Pinkie said. “You gotta help me. I know this is hard, but you gotta help me. Okay? Please? We gotta move on, or else I don’t think I’m ever going to get it back again, and I… I need to. I have to. You don’t know what it feels like, Fluttershy. You don’t understand.”
Fluttershy’s assailant reached up and wiped at her face, rubbing away the tears that had formed. Through the blurry smears she could see Pinkie’s eyes. She could see the strange colours and foreign shapes that formed within – the glint of something awful but sincere.
Even Pinkie’s voice carried the cadence of something far fouler, but it wasn’t something easily identified. None of this was. Pinkie still sounded like Pinkie. But the words she used and the way she used them struck Fluttershy of an impostor, as if there were a shadow standing in Pinkie’s skin. As if something quintessentially Pinkie was missing.
Fluttershy’s shaking eyes tilted downward, and she saw a white, shining handle slowly twitching, sticking out sideways from her leg. She immediately turned away.
Fluttershy believed.
Again, another breath escaped Pinkie’s lips, the wisps of a laugh floating behind. A faint trickle, but it was there.
“I knew you’d come around!” Pinkie exclaimed. “I knew it!”
“Pinkie…” Fluttershy whimpered. “Why…”
“We have to move on. We have to try something new!” Pinkie said, her voice growing fainter.
Fluttershy’s shuddering died down as the throbbing subsided, rivulets of blood still falling into the small brass pot. She watched it in a daze, her mind emptying, as each drop created a ripple in the crimson pond.
“Games,” Pinkie said suddenly, throwing open a cupboard.
“G-games?” Fluttershy echoed.
“Yep! Games are awful fun, aren’t they? Everypony loves a game! I love games, and contests, and challenges. Like a showdown between friends, or a simple match of battleclouds, or even the Pegalympics.”
“G-games are fun... “ Fluttershy echoed again.
“Games make ponies laugh and have a good time! It’s a thing. We… we revel in the fight. We enjoy watching the struggle. And we feel good when somepony wins. And then we laugh. We laugh because… we’ve triumphed. Because we’ve gotten past a difficult experience! Right?”
“T-triumphed.”
“Yes. Everypony has a good time when everypony wins. So. I want you, Fluttershy. I want you to triumph.”
“Tri...umph?”
“Hey! Hey there!”
Fluttershy blinked once, twice, looking straight, returning to the world. Pinkie had stepped out of the fog, carrying a small cylinder back with her, a metal can with a strange nozzle on top. It looked like a sports bottle, or something of the sort, with a long, thin tube rather than a spout.
“I’ve thought up a game.” Pinkie said. “A game for one.”
She waved the canister in front of Fluttershy’s face.
“You know, sometimes… chefs like to get creative with their food. I’ve been reading a lot of books and all sorts of weird things, and there’s a lot of really creative ways to cook that they do up in Canterlot or in far away places like Neighpon. I mean, some of it’s kinda silly, you know? There’s really only one way to boil a potato, but there are some things which are kinda cool and I always wanted to try out. Like this, for example.”
“Pinkie… Pinkie…”
“Yes, Fluttershy?”
She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. “B-before...… before you do anything, please… listen… listen to me, alright?”
“Sure, Fluttershy. What’s up?”
“S-something’s happened to you. This past m-month. But it’s… but it’s fine. We can still f-figure out what happened, and… we can get out of here, and we can help you. We can help you. So please. Whatever you want to do… please…”
“I… I wanted to leave, Fluttershy. I did. But something stopped me. I can’t leave.”
“But why… why did you shut yourself… yourself away?”
Pinkie let her legs drop as she stood down, putting the can on the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Y-you don’t know?”
“I thought I shut myself away because I was sad. Or maybe I was sad after I shut myself away. I… I can’t remember.”
“Y-you’re just upset, Pinkie! Maybe… maybe that’s it? Like that one time a year ago. You r-remember, right?”
“No. It’s… it’s not that.. I’m just… It feels like something is gone. I haven’t laughed for a month, Fluttershy. And it feels…” Pinkie licked her lips, her mind churning, “...it feels strange.”
Her lower eyelid jumped upward for a fraction of a second.
“But…”
“But?”
“This… this is working.”
Pinkie picked the canister up again.
“N-no! Please! Let’s keep… keep talking!” Fluttershy winced as she twisted away.
“You gotta help me, Fluttershy. You’re one of my best friends. So… you have to help me. That’s what friends do, right? And you offered, so… I… I gotta do this.” Pinkie smiled.
“We can find another way, Pinkie! I don’t understand yet! Help me understand!”
“This is what I use to make really super creamy smooth pudding,” Pinkie rattled off, staring blankly at the canister in her hooves. “Or ice cream. Or whatever. It’s like this gas that’s super cold, right? And it freezes stuff, and when I have to freeze something really fast, I use this.”
“Pinkie! No! Please!”
“So… so I thought of a game! A fun game. Something I want you to win, Fluttershy. I want you to win.”
Fluttershy stopped pleading, her begging now turned to heavy rasps as she looked up, down, left, right, anywhere but at the little baker, looking for a way out, looking for a way to escape this cage. Her shackles started to itch as they bit into her ankles, scratching against her skin. Struggling against them only made them grip tighter.
Pinkie disappeared behind Fluttershy.
“W-what are you doing?” Fluttershy cried out. “Don’t! Pinkie! Please!”
The puppet felt a pressure at the joint where her left wing met her back. Before she had the time to protest even more, before she had time to utter a single letter of objection, she heard a great hiss, like a giant serpent winding its way around her wing, squeezing it, crushing it, pushing out all blood and all life.
A great numbness spread around the area, accompanied by a sharp pain that itched and pricked and burned like a hot iron was being held to her.
Fluttershy squirmed. She thrashed. She huffed and wheezed and bit her lip to stop the scream.
The hissing continued as her entire wing disappeared. All feeling slowly fell away, replaced only by the intense cold that permeated that one singular spot in her back.
Pinkie reappeared.
“N-no… what have you…” Fluttershy blubbered.
“Now let me explain…” Pinkie said, “the rules.”
“I’m begging you, stop! Please! Don’t do this!” Fluttershy burst out, sobbing, coughing, drawing breath upon laboured breath.
“That’s up to you, Fluttershy,”
“I can’t… I can’t feel my wing. I can’t feel my wing. I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it!”
“Okay, Fluttershy! Now, you can do it! Listen. You have about… about four minutes, maybe three, before your wing dies completely. I froze your joint, right? So no blood’s gonna be getting in there for a while. But it’s just for a short while. That blood. You gotta get your blood pumping. And if you manage to break through in time, maybe… just maybe, you can save your wing.”
“Y-you’re insane!” Fluttershy spat out. It was, perhaps, the most violent thing she had ever said about her friends with that much earnest. But everything was spiralling. Everything was spinning. Everything was crashing into everything else as the severity of it all came together.
“I suppose on the bright side, you never really did use your wings much anyway, right?”
Fluttershy let everything else fade away. She squeezed her eyes shut, letting the random scrapes and pings in the background entertain themselves. She let Pinkie entertain herself.
Minutes. She had minutes.
She clenched her teeth and braced so hard that her leg started to hurt again, throbbing. But that was good. That proved that the blood still ran freely. All she needed to do was move. Move. Bring life. Bring feeling.
Pinkie’s voice pierced the darkness. Again, from far away, back in the corner of the room where all her toys were.
“You can do it,” Pinkie said.
What made it infuriating was her tone. It wasn’t a mocking tone. She wasn’t putting Fluttershy down. She had meant it. She wanted Fluttershy to win this game. She wanted to revel in her success.
Anger.
Anger helped. Fluttershy didn’t get angry if she could help it. But now was a good time to get angry. And that voice helped string her along, to push her further.
Her chest quivered.
She heard the scraping of metal, the crack of things breaking.
“You know, I’m kinda sick of cupcakes.”
There was a tickle. A slight tickle, like a giant sheepskin was being drawn over her wing. It was fuzzy and prickly, and ran every direction at the same time.
Fluttershy braced her back even more.
“I used to like cupcakes. I mean, who doesn’t, right?”
Fluttershy heard the sound of clinking. The sound of metal hitting metal. The sound of pouring and thumping.
Her feathers twitched. It started to hurt. Everything started to hurt. But it was a phantom pain, because all she could feel was the pain and nothing else. She couldn’t yet feel what was hurting.
“But you know how you can eat something over and over again so much that you get sick of it? That’s what happened to me. Cupcakes. And other things. Now cupcakes have no flavour. They’re not sweet, not salty, not anything. They don’t make me happy anymore.”
Pins. Thousands of pins ravaged Fluttershy’s back. Thousands of tiny nails dragged over her skin and clawed at her flesh.
The pony let out a soft whimper. Her wing buzzed with electricity.
“But I keep eating them. I still crave them the next day. You know what I mean, right? Same thing happens to everypony, after all. With different things. Different cravings. It’s so annoying, isn’t it?”
It was a few more seconds before the lightning went away and replaced itself with more pain. A numbing, senseless pain, a pain that took the shape of a wing and attached itself to Fluttershy’s back. It felt like she had been beaten severely, as if her entire wing had been bruised to no end, as if it had been broken apart.
“Hey.”
Fluttershy breathed.
“Hey. You did it! I think.”
Fluttershy’s body felt tired. Tired and sick. Like she were wrought with a fever higher than she had ever had before.
“Ow!” She snapped her eyes open.
Pinkie retracted her hoof from Fluttershy’s wing.
“Hey, you win,” She laughed a bit, tittering to herself for a scant few seconds before she trailed back into solemnity.. “I think it’ll be alright. And it wasn’t even two minutes. How about that?”
As Fluttershy’s body calmed down, so did her sensibilities. She felt the burn wisp away, and all she was left with was an overbearing sense of gravity. Even the anger she once had fizzled like a candle snuffed out. Anger was no longer an emotion she could afford to keep.
“See? I knew you could do it,” Pinkie continued. “And here. While you were enjoying your game, I made a little prize for you. A little treat. Because I knew you’d win and I wanted to make sure you were rewarded, because every winner deserves a reward.”
Pinkie held a bowl under Fluttershy’s nose. It was full of a globular substance; a chunky, sandy mountain of red and browns. It smelled oddly sweet, the kind of sweetness you get from the carcass of a dead rat before it starts to decompose.
“There’s no time to bake it, but everyone loves eating cookie dough, right? But… well, this is cupcake batter. It’s pretty much the same, except that it has a bit more liquid to it. A bit less weight. And it’s red velvet! Your favourite!”
Pinkie spooned up a thick, viscous glob, hefting it in front of Fluttershy’s face.
Fluttershy wrenched away, the smell shooting acid through her senses.
“Not hungry? But I made it just for you. At the very least, you could have a taste,” Pinkie encouraged.
“Pinkie… there’s still…” Fluttershy gasped. “There’s still time. We can still… get help. There’s something… something wrong… and we… we can... “
Her eye flicked down.
The blood that dripped off the edge of her hoof was landing in a small puddle on the floor, spreading out in a flower-burst pattern of red.
The floor.
She looked back to the spoon. A great lump rose in Fluttershy’s throat as she held her breath and turned violently to the side.
“Oh no, Fluttershy!” Pinkie yelled, throwing the bowl to the side. It landed on the floor, contents spilling and squelching in tiny little heaps. “You did it again!”
“I… I can’t eat that,” Fluttershy muttered.
“Why did you have to ruin the joke? Why do you keep trying to fight?” Pinkie exclaimed, throwing her hooves through her mane. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”
“I don’t understand, Pinkie!” Fluttershy cried back. “I don’t understand! What am I doing?”
Pinkie slumped to her knees, her mane dangling down across her face. “It would have… all you had to do was eat! But you had to realise, and now it’s not funny anymore!”
“What’s not funny?”
“The joke!” Pinkie yelled, smashing her hoof to the floor. “The joke! The joke! The joke… it would have worked. I felt it returning. I felt the fun coming back! I felt the laughter again. But you! You just can’t play along, and... “
“Pinkie…”
“You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to do this, Fluttershy! I don’t… I mean… I do, but... “
Pinkie scratched her head. Hard. The brown streaks in her mane were joined by a few fresh streaks of red, pulled out like strands of confetti. A rivulet crept down her forehead. “If… if you could never… ever be nice to anypony again… what would you do?”
“If I could… never?”
“Never. If you went through life seeing ponies in need, ponies who just wanted a bit of help, and you could only stand by and watch, how would you feel?”
“I…”
Both ponies kept still, only breathing.
“I would not feel… good.” Fluttershy said.
“I don’t feel… good. I don’t feel right. Fluttershy, something’s wrong… I haven’t laughed since I got here. But I must. I must! I need to. You have to help me!”
“But how does this help?” Fluttershy yelled back. “How… is any of this going to make you laugh? How does this help? I want to help, Pinkie! No matter what you’ve done so far, I want to help! But not like this! Can’t you see that what you’re doing won’t work?”
“But… but it is!” Pinkie bolted upright, blots of saliva hanging off her lip. “It is working! I have laughed. I felt things. It’s coming back! But it’s not enough! I have to do more! I have to make it funnier!”
“But what you’re doing,” Fluttershy lowered her voice, “is hurting. Not funny.”
Pinkie turned away, murmuring to herself.
“When… when a young colt trips and falls… we find it humorous. We find it… curious. Right? We chuckle and… and giggle. But… but…” She started to pace, tottering back and forth and careening her neck in different directions. “But let’s say it was something more. Let’s say Rainbow Dash flies head-first into a barn. It’s happened before. That’s funny. We laugh. We laugh for a long while, and then… and then when we bring it up later, we laugh at it again. Because it’s that funny.
“You see… you see… we laugh at pain. We laugh at… the expense of others. Laughter is pain! Laughter is suffering! Laughter is nothing more than… finding joy at others being in terrible situations. All jokes. Every joke… is made because someone has to pay for it.”
Fluttershy opened her mouth, but nothing could be said.
“We laugh at Twilight because she’s… so dorky. So… so dorky. Does things unnecessarily. Applejack is… slow, sometimes, and we laugh at her for that. You laugh at me because I… I act differently… and I’m crazy, right? That’s what it is. And…”
“This… this is wrong, Pinkie. This is… this can’t be why…”
“It has to be! Right? It must be! Something… something is telling me so. It makes sense! It makes perfect sense! The more… others get hurt, the funnier it is. So if you’d only just played along, it would have been funny, and I wouldn’t have to do anything really bad. If you’d only just eaten the batter, it’d have been hilarious, and I think I might have… I might have got it back… I could feel it… I could feel it coming... “
“Okay! I’ll eat it! I’ll eat it! Just… just promise me, if I do so, you’ll stop all this and we’ll go to Twilight and we’ll find a way to make you better, alright?” Fluttershy pleaded. “I don’t even care about…”
“You can’t! You already know the irony! You already know the reveal! There’s no… no. You ruined it, Fluttershy! Do you see? I don’t know what else to do!”
Pinkie threw her hooves across her face. She stood still while a tinny lull blanketed the room. Finally, she pulled away her legs and raised her head toward the ceiling. “I have no choice. I have no choice. I’ve said too much. Nothing else will be as funny after that. Not while you know. You just had to press it… over and over… and I… wish you hadn’t. Jokes aren’t funny once you explain them. I have... no more choice.”
Pinkie leapt upon the figure of Fluttershy, who recoiled in pain as every nerve in her back and leg reminded her of her injuries.
With a click, two clicks, Fluttershy felt her bonds loosen, and she fell to the ground, yelping as the fork brushed the floor ever so slightly. She curled over, holding her legs, bringing movement back to her aching body, and she felt herself being moved. Dragged. Yanked.
“O-ow! Ow! Stop!” She screamed, holding her mane.
Pinkie pulled.
She hauled Fluttershy with surprising force across the room. Through filth and muck and dried encrustations of brown, she pulled her quarry along.
The yellow pegasus with the one battered wing twisted, turned, dizzily, dazedly, the world spinning around and around, cold tiles on her back changing to cooler metals, every fiber of her body trying to resist.
The world came to rest upon a flat sheet of metal that laid on a rack in a small box.
Through a pane of glass she could see the rest of the kitchen on the outside.
She pushed against the oven door.
It wouldn’t move. Be it that she was too tired, or too weak, or be there the presence of a lock, the door would not open.
From the other side, a muffled voice came through as Pinkie thrust her face close to the box.
“There. That’s… that’s what I’m going to do.” Pinkie said, bereft of any soul, lacking in any form of emotion.
“A-ah… Pinkie… this…”
“I…” Pinkie said, rubbing her forehead again. “I… this is funny. Right? This is a joke. You… you are what you eat, they say. So… so… I guess. I guess I’m going to… eat you? I think! I don’t…”
She pulled her hooves away from her face, staring at them while she continued to mutter.
“Yeah! This… this’ll work. This is just the ticket. And then… and then it’ll be fine, and… but…”
A thumping jolted Pinkie back from her daze this time, as she swung with bulging eyes to the oven.
“Pinkie. Listen. Please.” Fluttershy said, her voice awash with a strange togetherness. “You don’t want to do this. I can see it.”
“No… no. But I have to. I have to laugh again.”
“Yes, I know. I know. But there are other ways. I know I keep saying this, but there are. Why is this the only way? I don’t blame you, alright? I won’t blame you for all this. But you can choose how we go on.”
“H… how long… how long do you think I’ll need to set the timer?” Pinkie asked with a tranced monotony, punching a few buttons on the side of the oven. “I…”
Fluttershy closed her eyes, pushing past the feeling in her stomach. “Pinkie. I don’t know what happened. But you can… you can tell me. We can get through it together. Remember. A joke isn’t as funny if you don’t share it with a friend. Laughter is never as good if it’s alone.”
Pinkie turned away, staring at a spot on the floor. It didn’t matter which spot it was.
“I know. But… this feels right. Doesn’t it?”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t?”
Pinkie pulled her hoof away from the panel.
Fluttershy took a breath.
“Tell me. What happened to you? What happened while you were in here?”
“I… I don’t know. I felt… nothing. Nothing. No joy. No fun. It was… I didn’t know if I was alive. It’s such a strange thing to be confused about. But I… I get confused.”
“So let’s figure it out together, Pinkie. Let’s leave and go find our friends.”
“We… we can’t. I told you.”
“No, we can. Together. Let’s leave together.”
“No, we can’t, Fluttershy! I told you!”
“You can if you try!”
“I did try. But the door won’t open.”
“W-what?” Fluttershy felt a chill.
“I can’t leave. Something’s… keeping me here.”
“But you invited me. You said you invited me.”
“I… I didn’t. I wished for you. I wished that a friend would come. A friend who could help me find my laughter again. I wished for you and you came. I couldn’t… believe it.”
“Pinkie? What are you saying? Who sent me the letter, then?”
“I… it wasn’t me.”
Fluttershy held a hoof to her mouth.
“Then why did you lock me up?”
“I didn’t, either. I found the keys on the counter. Just here. But it… it was better that you were locked up anyway. It helped… with what I wanted to do… what I wanted to do…”
The pink hoof neared the buttons again.
“Pinkie! Wait!”
Pinkie stopped, but she stared. Stared at the button. The button that seemed to mesmerize her. The button that seemed to call out to her with words that echoed at the back of her mind.
“It feels… like something’s been cut out, Fluttershy.” Pinkie said, lowly, whispering, barely audible through the door of glass.
“Let… let me out. Something is going on here. Something. We need to find out. We need to figure this out. Pinkie. What you’re doing… is not what you want to do. Let’s fix this together.” Fluttershy begged.
“Fluttershy?” Pinkie asked.
“Pinkie! Yes.”
“Help me,” Pinkie whispered.
Her hoof floated even closer to the panel, positioning itself in a very specific place.
And there it stopped.
A hair’s breadth away.
It hovered in place, caught in a web of a thousand thoughts.
“Pinkie?” Fluttershy asked.
Her friend did not reply.
“Pinkie?”
The faucet continued to drip, echoing its lonely beat throughout the room.
“Where are we?”
————
A hulking construct, covered with throbbing veins and glistening with fungus, sat in the middle of a cave, illuminated only by the iridescent glow that pulsed from the walls.
Creatures flowed throughout the cavity. Few. Many. Some within the shadows, some without.
Nary but a low hum permeated the chamber, punctuated by clicks, buzzes, and other odd, guttural noises.
A few were gathered in a corner, staring through a shimmering film that ebbed with magic.
They took in the scene, twitching, flicking their heads from side to side.
They waited.
A creature let out a soft hiss, turning its dark eyes and sunken face to a recess in the wall.
A dirty sconce lay within, attached to wires, tubes, and other monstrous appendages.
It crackled with energy, shedding tears of light-blue magic from the fragmented crystal clasped in its setting.
The creature’s chitinous appendage reached out, toward the device.
It was pulled back.
The creature turned.
With a buzz of translucent wings, a second creature shook its head.
With a delayed nod of reply, the first figure turned back to the scene, observing the pink form that stood with her leg raised to the panel of the oven.
And with rapacious curiosity, the creatures watched.
Waiting.
Wondering which way her hoof would move.
End
Author's Note
This story was written for the more most dangerous game competition.
I'd like to thank two people. Crack Javelin, as always, (who also drew this amazing poster) and Dinoguy1000 who once again stepped in at the last minute to help me proofread and edit it at last minute's notice. So thank you so much to you both, and we'll definitely work again in the future.
I'd also like to extend thanks to Esle Ynopemos, and Antsan especially for giving some great feedback. Creative feedback is always, always welcome, and in this case, it really helped me zero in on a better ending overall. So thank you for bothering to speak up.
And thank you, the audience, for reading.
