"How much longer do you think this is gonna go on?!" Rainbow Dash said as she threw herself against the makeshift bed that had been made up for the group. She was in a state of disapproval and frustration, ever since she and her friends had sprung the trap that Starlight Glimmer had set for them all.
In truth, the Mane Six came to the town expecting to solve a problem. But it turns out, that the problem to solve was now their problem, not that of the town. They'd been baited into a trap, one that had been set by the serene, yet malicious Starlight Glimmer. And now, she'd robbed them of the one thing that made them special: their Cutie Marks. Not only that, but they were now forced into a small jailhouse, with propaganda ringing in their ears, in an attempt to demoralize them and make it seem like this loss was their gain.
"Just how long do you think she's going to keep us in here, Twilight?" Fluttershy asked as she draped her hooves over Twilight's shoulders, hoping that she would have a logical answer for the length of their incarceration.
"I'm not exactly sure, Fluttershy. But I have a hunch that she's going to be checking in every morning to see if we've had our beliefs broken..." Twilight said, giving Fluttershy the only answer that she could think of at that moment in time. "I wish there was some other way, but I think that this is all we've got for the time being..."
The girls all let out sighs of disbelief, slumping themselves against the walls of the jailhouse. With that thought in their minds, they were starting to lose hope much faster. To them, it wouldn't be long before they accepted defeat and sided with Starlight. The girls were silent after that. No-one spoke once, nor uttered any deep breaths. Things were pretty dire in their current state. Now that their Cutie Marks were missing, they were rendered completely powerless against any odds that might have been stacked against them.
Eventually, the silence was broken, but it wasn't due to Starlight's brainwashing. Instead, a loud rumbling noise could be heard from one of the stomachs of the girls...
"Is this how that brute intends to end us?" Rarity asked, shedding a tear as she felt her stomach rumble violently. "Leave us in this dusty old house with nothing to eat or drink?"
"Don't worry, Rarity. We can just eat the-" Pinkie Pie stopped herself when she looked at the house. There was nothing edible in sight, not even for her. She slumped back down as her voice became defeated once again "-Oh, that's right..."
"Just don't think about it, girls," Twilight said, hoping to help them stay strong in their time of desperation. "Maybe, if we just ignore it, then it'll go away..."
"And if it doesn't?" Applejack asked, leaning in on Twilight whilst her stomach growled as well. "Then what, Twilight?"
"Then it's best if we just ask her for some food tomorrow," Twilight said. "I know Starlight's evil, but surely she's not willing to let some new friends as she calls them, die of starvation and thirst..."
As Twilight continued believing that, the propaganda continued to broadcast itself, trying to break Twilight and her friends...
"I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" Pinkie Pie threw her head backwards in frustration as her stomach growled for the umpteenth time. She violently threw one of the books against the wall and pounced on Fluttershy, screaming, "GIVE ME SOMETHING TO EAT, FLUTTERSHY!" in the middle of some deep breaths.
"Pinkie, I-I-I don't really... have anything... to..." Fluttershy began to feel worried. She'd never seen Pinkie Pie this desperate for food in her life.
"Oh, leave the poor dear alone and let us eat your hair, Pinkie Pie!" Rarity said with some fire in her words. "We all know that your hair tastes of cotton... candy...." she then began fantasizing on how it would feel to eat Pinkie's hair. "Such sweet... succulent... pink... cotton candy..."
Rarity's words got the rest of the girls' lips to salivate. They too were starting to envision what Rarity was thinking of. As each of them thought about getting their teeth sunk into Pinkie's hair, they slowly got up to their feet and advanced on the pink pony. They were all ready to devour Pinkie in one fell swoop.
"How I'd love to sink my teeth into that deliciously poofy mane..." Twilight said, in a rather slow, yet partially aroused tone as the girls now cornered Pinkie Pie.
"Each different bite would taste like the cotton candy you'd see at an amusement park..." Rainbow Dash said, getting Pinkie Pie to feel more and more anxious.
"We could stay alive for days if we rationed her delicious hair..." Applejack said, drool dripping from her open mouth as Pinkie eventually leaped up onto the bookcase.
"Stay back, girls!" Pinkie said, chucking book after book at her friends, getting them to break out of their fantasies. "I have books here, and I'm not afraid to use them! Well, I might be able to use them on Twilight, just to see how she'd react to them..."
"PINKIE PIE!" all of the girls leapt up and tackled Pinkie off of the bookcase, knocking her to the floor in a vicious fashion. From there, they all tried to reach out and get their teeth stuck into Pinkie Pie's mane and tail, but their efforts were in vain, due to Pinkie's flailing hooves.
Pinkie leapt up from the ground and put her back against the wall, looking at all of her friends advance in on her once more. This time, they were now bearing smiles, but they weren't any smiles that she was familiar of. They seemed to be smiles full of evil intent. They were almost identical to the ones that the townsponies used, but the girls' pupils were more dilated. They were smiles of cannibalism.
"I'm out of options... There's only thing I can do at a time like this..." Pinkie said to herself, eyeing up the girls that were slowly closing in on her, like zombies moving in on a cornered meal. Pinkie Pie took a deep breath and blew into one of her hooves. In doing so, she inflated her mane and tail and flew up until she had her back against the ceiling. "There's no way they'll get to me up here," her equal mark kicked in again, making her say, "At least, I think not..."
At that moment, Pinkie Pie could only watch and wait as the ponies below tried to get to her from the ground, with little success. She was subjected to Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy trying to pull her back down to the ground, but she was too inflated to stay on the ground for too long, and more often than not, the other girls all crashed into each other as they tried leaping into Pinkie as she leisurely floated upwards once more.
Pinkie thought that she was safe, but her hair finally deflated, causing her to fall onto the floor and bounce for a short period of time before she finally landed on her back. Her fear returned when the girls got entirely up in her face, not giving her any other sight besides their creepy faces.
Pinkie leapt up from the ground, knocking all of the girls back against the walls of the jailhouse with the sheer velocity of her small launch. She got all of the girls' attention once they sat up, then said, "I'm not usually the one for long and jarring speeches, but I think there's clearly been some misconceptions about my hair. Though it might look and taste like cotton candy, my hair's still a part of me. Would you really go so far as to eat another pony?" Then again, I wonder how other ponies would taste like... Maybe they'd taste like candy! she thought before even her thinking sounded defeated. Maybe...
Twilight broke out of her delusions with a quick shake of her head and said, "I hate to admit it, girls, but Pinkie Pie's right. We can't just eat her out of desperation," her words made the other girls seem regretful for their actions, as it made them slowly lower their heads. "If we commit cannibalism, then we'd be no better than Starlight. In fact, we might even be worse than Starlight for trying to eat another of our kind..."
"Aw, shoot. Yer right, Twilight. It just ain't right ta eat another pony," Applejack admitted defeat by taking her hat off and putting it on her chest. "Brainwashing's one thing, but drivin' us ta eat one of our friends, that's even worse..."
"So, now what do we do, girls?" Fluttershy asked as she looked out of the window at the slowly descending sun. Though they were locked in against their will, they were still given beautiful views of the rising and setting of the sun. "If we can't eat Pinkie Pie, and we can't eat anything else in this jailhouse, then what can we eat?"
"Maybe a piece of one of those books," Rainbow Dash flew over and picked on up. "It might look weird, and taste almost inedible, but it's all we've got for the time being..." Not sparing another word, Rainbow Dash opened up one of the books and tore out one of the pages before stuffing into her mouth.
The other girls could only watch as Rainbow Dash chewed and devoured the paper pages of the book. Every time a page went into Rainbow Dash's mouth, most of the group recoiled in surprise, shocked to know that Rainbow Dash could stomach book paper. They wanted to take their eyes off of it, but it seemed surprisingly satisfying to see one of their friends battle starvation with no actual food to eat.
Finally, each of the group ran over to the other books, picked them up, opened up the pages, ripped them out, and proceeded to slowly eat them up. The sound of the propaganda was almost completely silenced with how loud each individual ripping and munching noise was. The girls just didn't care what they ate, as long as they ate.
Eventually, the books were barren and pageless, devoured by the Main Six just after the sun had gone down, turning it from the evening into the night. Though everything in the books had been eaten, the girls were still unsatisfied with their meal of paper and pictures of equal signs.
"How are you feeling, girls?" Rainbow Dash said, her voice very low-toned as she struggled to get onto her hooves after what she'd stomached. It seemed like she wasn't completely full, and that it had only made her situation worse. "I dunno about you," she hiccuped, "but I never want to look at another page again in my life!"
"We're already out of pages to eat?!" Rarity looked at all of the books, all of them completely devoid of the pages they once had. "But I was just starting to enjoy eating paper!" She then fell onto her flank and cried, "Now what are we supposed to do?!"
"Maybe we could start eating our own hair?" Pinkie Pie suggested, taking out a clump of her own hair before putting it into her mouth. "Huh, what do you know? It really does taste like cotton candy!"
"That isn't helping, Pinkie Pie!" Rainbow Dash threw up her hooves in frustration after Pinkie had eaten another clump of her own hair. "You're only making us hungrier!"
"The speakers!" Twilight said, pointing towards the speakers that were still streaming propaganda. "If we can tear them down, then we can slowly but surely smash off pieces for us to chew!"
"Reduced to eating speakers, Twilight?" Rarity said, looking at how insane Twilight had gone with her desperations for food. "What have we come to...?"
"You know, Applejack... Your hat's looking awfully delicious right about now..." Rainbow Dash said, getting closer and closer to Applejack, her gaze mainly fixated on the hat instead of her.
Applejack merely grabbed her by the neck and said, "Don't. You. Even. Think about it, Rainbow Dash..." in a threatening tone of voice. "This hat has been passed down from Apple to Apple ever since our family's first member. Eatin' this hat's gonna bring ya'll a serious case of flank-bucking if'n ya ask me."
"Well, what else are we supposed to eat, Applejack?! We're out of books, we can't get out and find more food, and there's no way in Tartarus that these drapes are edible!" Rainbow Dash said, disgruntled that she couldn't eat Applejack's hat.
"And for that matter, what would a hat even taste like anyway?" Pinkie Pie said as she looked at the hat herself.
"Probably quite bad, if you ask me..." Rarity said, examining the hat for a brief moment before the curse got to her as well. "But then again, nothing you wear would taste good, anyways..."
"Well I did mention that we could eat each other's hair, but somepony said that it wasn't helpful!" Pinkie looked at Dash, furious that her friends were going to starve, and that the closest thing they had to food was the hair on their own head that they couldn't eat.
"Listen, Pinkie Pie. I don't know what drove you to say that we could eat our own hair, but let me tell you, IT WASN'T HELPFUL!" she shouted into Pinkie's ears, making her head shake for a brief period of time.
"Rainbow Dash! That's no way to handle a friend!" Rarity said as she grabbed Rainbow Dash by her neck and pulled her close to her face. "Leave the poor dears alone until the morning! Is that the one thing your little mind fails to grasp?!"
"Alright, THAT'S IT!" Rainbow Dash tackled Rarity and got into a massive fight with her, kicking her flank and trying to gnash at her hair. "If you would only just find us something to eat, I wouldn't be this violent and angsty!"
"WELL EXCUSE ME IF SOMEPONY THINKS THAT EATING HAIR'S NOT A WAY TO STAVE OFF HUNGER WHEN WE'RE CLEARLY FAMISHED!" Rarity began to violently strangle Rainbow Dash whilst trying to use her horn to cut her up.
"Girls, you have to stop!" Twilight tried breaking the fight up, but she was quickly roped the fight when Rarity sweeped her with one of her hooves.
"And you, you stupid, curious, foolish little alicorn!" Rarity was seething with rage. She could no longer see any of her friends as her friends now that her hunger had consumed her and made her angry. "If we'd never come to this stupid village, then we wouldn't be in this mess!"
Applejack couldn't bear to watch the girls scrap and tussle with each other, so she decided to sit on the sidelines and avoid getting into the fight herself. She was shocked to see how so much hunger could have driven her friends to fight and almost commit cannibalism.
Eventually, a loud banging could be heard on the door, getting everyone to stop what they were doing. The door was suddenly unlocked, and it was swinging open to let someone in.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing before-" Starlight Glimmer was caught off-guard when she saw what a state that the Main Six and the jailhouse were in. "What in Equestria's name happened in here?"
"Oh, I'll tell you what happened in here..." Rarity stomped up to Starlight and brought her face within touching distance with her own face. "YOU LOCKED US UP IN THIS MISERABLE SHACK WITH NOTHING TO EAT! DO YOU KNOW HOW INEDIBLE BOOK PAGES ARE?!"
Twilight moved Rarity away from Starlight and addressed her in a calmer tone of voice. "What Rarity's trying to say, is that we were just thrown in here and weren't given any food or drinks. I know you think that equality might be the way to go about it, but the fact is that we're not going to accept any philosophy that comes from somepony who starves prisoners."
"Starve? You? I'd never do such a malicious thing! Not even to new friends!" Starlight came in and wrapped one of her hooves around Twilight's shoulders. "I'm sorry for what's transpired tonight. I guess that I was just so quick to have you a part of this town, that I'd forgotten to think about your own well-being." She then retracted her hoof and walked back to the door. "Tell ya what, I'm going to get you some refreshments right now. Consider it the first of many gifts I have to offer you all..."
When the door shut, Twilight said, "I still can't believe that that actually worked..."
"Worked? What worked?" Fluttershy asked as she walked up to Twilight.
"When I saw Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity disagreeing and fighting, I thought that all of the loud noises would attract Starlight Glimmer before she went to bed," Twilight began explaining. "And I was right. She overheard the chaos, and came to check in on us. Then Rarity acted as planned, and now we've gotten ourselves some food!"
"You... you planned this?" Rarity asked, confused as to what had happened.
"Yes. Waiting until sunrise isn't really the best way of procuring food for the six of us, so I waited until we snapped and began fighting. By doing so, Starlight Glimmer heard our pleas and gave us food. Even in jail, it's survival of the fittest. Or in this case, survival of the smartest!" Twilight said.
Finally, the door opened up again, revealing Starlight Glimmer once more. "Once again, I'm sorry for the mix-up. This should help you make it through the night, girls," She put a tray of muffins down and said, "Have a nice night, everypony!"
When the door slammed shut once again and the Main Six all saw the muffins that had been baked by the town, they screamed in despair.
