Fleshpoundity: Element of Generosity

It was a nice day in Ponyville – for now. As Applejack had made her so keenly aware so many times, there was a ‘doozy of a downpour’ scheduled for this afternoon due to a missed shower the week prior. So here Rarity stood, helping her community in what little ways she could. Still, wholly breaking the loose branches down off the tree seemed so… wasteful. Instead, perhaps she could trim them down a little, make them less likely to fall. Reaching up carefully, Rarity slowly spun the tip of one of her drills, delicately shaving off small bundles of leaves. After several minutes’ work, she stepped back and admired the fruits of her labor.

“Well Rares, that's some mighty fine work ya done there,” Applejack said from below, walking up behind the giant, “but as I recall, the goal here was to get the loose branches off the trees, not to pretty them up. Ya can’t be so concerned with prettyfyin’ things all the time.”

Rarity groaned in dismay and frustration as Applejack produced a rope from seemingly nowhere, lassoing the branch and pulling it down from the tree. The gently shaped leaves fell apart, scattering in the growing wind.

“Looks like the storm’s about to start,” Applejack commented, glancing up at the sky. Rarity followed her friend’s gaze heavenward, the bright, shiny day that had been only moments before completely gone. A blanket of matte gray, roiling clouds covered the sky, a particularly rainy-looking lot.

“Don’t want to get rusty now, do ya? We should probably get inside before-”

With a thunderous crack that left her ears ringing and her body unsteady over her hooves, Applejack tumbled to the ground, vaguely aware that her very tall, very metal friend had just been struck by lightning. Shaking her head to try to clear her vision, she focused on Rarity – who was enraged and swinging her gigantic gauntlets at the sky in blind fury, bellowing against the rain as it began to fall.

“Rarity!” Applejack cried, trying to get her friend’s attention, “Rarity! Calm down! You’re okay!”

Rarity bellowed once more, making one final half-hearted swing, before her colors returned to yellow. She turned to Applejack. “Rust,” Rarity whimpered, or made her closest approximation of a whimper.

“I know, Rares. Come on, you can, uh,” Applejack looked around, “You can take cover under that table over there until I’m done over here, then I can get you home.”

Rarity gestured to the table, which sat only a couple feet off the ground, what remained of her lips and eyebrows twisting into an expression that might have read “Really? You think I can fit under that?”

“Okay, fine, that was a bad idea. Uh…” Applejack trailed off. The only thing tall enough nearby was a tree, but a giant, metal-covered Fleshpound was even less safe than the average pony under a tree in a lightning storm.

“Applejack! Rarity!”

Both ponies turned in the direction of the voice.

“Applejack! Rarity!” Twilight called from the door of her library, hoping to Celestia the blood trickling off Rarity was her own, “Come on, come inside!”

Wasting no time, and not eager to get struck by lightning again, Applejack and Rarity turned and ran towards the tree. Despite Rarity’s strides being nearly four times the length of Applejack’s, the orange earth pony took almost four steps to Rarity’s one, resulting in, surprisingly, ‘Pound and pony keeping remarkably even pace with one another. Rushing to the door, Rarity crouched and waddled in, followed by Applejack. Rarity dutifully checked her own feet for mud, making an annoyed swipe at her friend. Applejack hadn’t even bothered to check her hooves, much less wipe them clean.

“Rude,” Rarity growled, gently (roughly) rushing Applejack back out the door. “Hooves. Clean.”

Applejack grunted in annoyance, but obliged her behemoth of a friend.

“That storm seems pretty fierce,” Twilight said, turning away as an invitation for Rarity to come further inside, “You girls are both welcome to stay the night if you want. Oh! On second thought, please do! It’d be my very first slumber party!”

Rarity tensed up for a moment. Applejack had been getting a little on her nerves and she had been less than placating towards the orange mare, but who was she to deny her friend her first slumber party. Rarity remembered her own first fondly. A ‘Festival of Blood and Carnage’ her friends had called it afterwards. Begrudgingly, she nodded her consent to the idea.

“Oh wonderful!” Twilight exclaimed, turning around again and searching for a book on the shelves. “Slumber one-oh-one,” she read aloud, before levitating the book over for Rarity to inspect, “All I- err, you’ve ever wanted to know about slumber parties but were afraid to ask! It’s the perfect book to use for tonight! Oh Rarity, this is going to be wonderful! Thank you so much for agreeing to this!”

Rarity grunted and raised the remains of an eyebrow, but did not object.

“Alright, step one: Makeovers!”

Applejack returned from outside muttering, but with sparkling clean hooves, just in time to find Rarity gently applying some sort of green goop to Twilight’s face. The process was terrifically delicate, and Twilight Sparkle herself was remarkably relaxed for having large, bladed objects moving around her face, near her eyes.

“Oh, so it’s not okay for me to have mud on my hooves, but y’all can put it on your faces?” Applejack asked, more than one note of anger playing into her voice.

“Mud mask,” Rarity growled, “Rejuvenates skin.”

“Rares, y’all barely have skin.”

Rarity decided the best retort would be to cover Applejack’s own face with a mud mask. Scooping a little onto the tip of one of her blenders, she spun it quickly, flinging the goo across the room with such precision and force it connected perfectly with Applejack’s face and knocked the orange mare off her hooves.

“Okay that was just uncalled for,” Applejack muttered as she stood back up.

Rarity merely shrugged. Twilight stood up and trotted over to the podium, once again to consult the book. The mighty, all-knowing book of scheduled fun. Rarity groaned mentally, but instead took the moment to talk to Applejack.

“First slumber party,” Rarity said, motioning to Twilight, “Don’t ruin.”

“Only if you don’t,” Applejack retorted.

“Agreed.”

“Agreed,” Applejack echoed, spitting on her hoof and holding it out to make it official. Rarity looked at the saliva-covered hoof, then pointedly glanced a few times between Applejack and her hoof. The Fleshpound huffed and turned away.

“Alright, next up is… ghost stories! We’re supposed to tell stories about ghosts or other scary creatures,” Twilight explained, a flash of magic removing the mud masks from the three friends’ faces.

Rarity motioned to herself.

“Oh Rarity, don’t be so self-critical. You’re not scary! Not once I got to know you, at least,” Twilight said with a laugh.

“I’ll go first,” Applejack declared, “I’ve got a terrifyin’ story of a Fleshpound who annoyed everypony with her insistence on bein’ neat and girly all the time!” AJ accentuated her summary with an exaggerated eerie motion of her hooves and a mocking “ooooooOOOOooo.”

Rarity raised her flesh blenders and roared in response.

“Whoa okay there,” Twilight interrupted, “Sensing a little hostility here. I’ll start then,” she continued, magically flicking the lights off. “It was a dark and stormy night, just like this one, and two ponies and a Fleshpound were having a slumber party, just. Like. This one…”

“And just when the Fleshpound thought she was safe…” Twilight continued. Rarity and Applejack were actively quivering with fear now. “There, standing right behind her… just inches away was…”

Rarity tensed up, feeling the very beginnings of an adrenaline kick starting, but willing it back down. Lightning flashed, followed by an almost instantaneous clap of thunder.

“The Spooky Scrake!” Twilight yelled, magically producing a chainsaw from nowhere and revving it. Applejack screamed. Rarity also screamed, pulling the orange mare in front of her, fully prepared to use her dear friend as a meat-shield if necessary. Applejack was momentarily touched that Rarity had been so careful as to not impale her when she grabbed her, then realized she had been grabbed as a pony shield against a chainsaw.

“Excellent!” Twilight chirped, immediately dropping the Scrake guise, and flicking the lights on again. Rarity remained tense, Applejack held forward as a sacrifice to appease the spooky deity.

“Y’all can put me down now,” she hissed.

Rarity dropped her.

“Alright, next is… truth or dare?” Twilight questioned. Behind her, Applejack smirked.

“I dare Rarity to go outside and get struck by lightning again, seeing as she was so eager to put me in harms way for her own sake,” Applejack spit.

“I never,” Rarity growled.

“The rules say you have to, Rarity. Sorry. You can take it though, right?”

Rarity shrugged and walked back towards the door, and stepped outside. A few seconds later, incredibly loud thunder shook the entire treebrary. A positively dejected looking Fleshpound stepped back into the room after a moment, whimpering (or making her best attempt at it), tendrils of smoke curling up from the top of her head. Applejack guffawed.

“Dare you,” Rarity growled, true anger behind her words, not just her typical deep, rolling voice. Her forehead scrunched up as her eyebrows angled inwards. “To dress up. Nice. Frilly, froo-froo.”

Applejack gasped, but bit back her tongue’s sharp reply. She walked from the room, and returned wearing a dress so gaudy it would have made Rarity weep, if she still had tear ducts.

“Alright, Rares, you happy?”

“Yes,” Rarity said, a smug grin adorning her lips, pulling them back and revealing the bloodstained teeth in her mouth. Twilight was used to the sight by now and didn’t wince outwardly, but she still had to question how her friend seemed to be constantly bleeding from nearly every orifice on her body.

“Next is… something called a pillow fight?”

“Crude. Barbaric,” Rarity groaned in protest for a moment, seconds before a pillow impacted her face. Silence reigned in the room, Applejack smiling like a snake, and Twilight staring at Rarity as the gears turned in her head.

“Oh I get it, pillow fi-” the purple unicorn started to say.

Rarity thundered in fury, lights turning red with no warning. She hefted the pillow she’d been pegged with, still screaming, spun in a circle, and absolutely heaved it overhanded at Applejack. Even if she’d thought it necessary, Applejack would not have had time to dodge. The pillow connected with such force it lifted the earth mare off her feet and threw her into the wall. AJ winced as she fell to the floor, but stood with a vindictive smile and a wicked glint in her eye. For about half a second, at least, until Rarity pitched another pillow, once again momentarily pinning the orange pony to the wall. Applejack seemed a little less steady rising to her hooves this time, and Twilight intervened with magic. The pillows stopped in midair, and when Rarity realized they hadn’t connected, she scooped several up around her flesh mallets and made a flying leap at Applejack. She too found herself suspended in midair, flailing uselessly until her rage expired, and her lights faded to yellow.

“Feeling better?” Twilight asked her floating friend.

“Sorry. Got… upset,” Rarity grunted.

“Alright, girls, before this gets out of hoof again,” Twilight laughed nervously, “Why don’t we call it a night and get some sleep?”

“Seems like a fine idea,” Applejack wheezed, holding a hoof to her ribs.

“Agreed.”

“Muddy hooves…” Rarity grumbled, pointedly facing away from Applejack in their shared bed.

“Bloody… drills,” Applejack murmured in reply, taking the blanket in her teeth and pulling it more over her. In her defense, the blanket was too small for having somepony as huge as Rarity in it, and sleeping right next to the numerous jagged metal bits sticking out of Rarity was not AJ’s idea of a good time. Rarity sat up suddenly, stepping out of the bed.

“Messed up. Get out. Need to re-make,” she said, prodding Applejack with the pointy bit of one of her gauntlets. Applejack, rather liking her spine not severed, obliged, and rolled out of the way. Delicately, Rarity grabbed the corners of the sheets between her claw-like mallets and tucking them in neatly. Applejack, for all the years she had known Rarity, would never stop marveling at how the ‘Pound managed to perform such delicate tasks with perhaps the one appendage less precise than a hoof. The sheets suitably re-fitted to the mattress, Rarity gestured proudly.

“Well that’s fine work you done there, Rares. Welp, time to go back to bed-” Applejack made to get back in, but a swipe from Rarity took a few hairs from her mane, and the wind from her sails.

“Do it right,” Rarity said, carefully lifting the top of the sheets and somehow contorting her body underneath it without disturbing the rest of the bed.

“I have no idea how you did that, so I ain’t gonna try,” Applejack said, before cheering, “Geronimo!”

Despite outweighing the orange mare nearly five-to-one, Applejack somehow hit the bed with enough force to launch Rarity clean into the air, the Fleshpound landing heavily on her back. She roared in indignation.

“ENOUGH,” Twilight yelled from her bed, the little purple unicorn’s voice somehow overpowering the Fleshpound’s fury. “This was my first sleepover, and you girls are ruining it!”

“… I’m sorry, Twilight,” Applejack said quietly.

“Sorry,” Rarity grumbled.

“Ugh,” Twilight groaned, “It’s… okay, no, it’s not fine, but there’s not much we can do about it now. Let’s just get some sleep.”

Rarity and Applejack cringed and got back into the bed. Their attempts at sleep were short-lived, however, and soon enough, lightning struck close by. Too close, in fact. Twilight was out of bed in a flash, standing at the window. Applejack followed soon after, Rarity bringing up the rear.

“Well that’s not good,” Twilight tittered, the toasted treetop teetering terrifyingly.

“See this is why we needed to trim the trees down, not just make ‘em fancy,” Applejack admonished the friendly Fleshpound. “I’ll take care of this.”

Again producing a rope from seemingly nowhere, Applejack propped the window open and lassoed the tree, making ready to pull it over to keep it from falling onto the home of an unsuspecting townspony.

“Wait-” Rarity managed as she realized what this implied about where the tree was going to land. Before Applejack came to the same conclusion, however, the top third of a tree suddenly occupied Twilight’s bedroom.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t what the book meant by camping,” Twilight complained.

Applejack rushed over and began attempting to remove the tree from the room, but to no avail. It was simply too big and too heavy for her to move by herself. Which meant…

“Rarity, I need your help!”

“What?”

“I said hustle over here and help me!” Applejack pleaded.

“Hmm…”

“I said I’m sorry! I can’t fix this on my own; I should have listened to you and-”

Rarity turned around, and something that resembled a smile graced her flayed lips. Without another word, the lights on her chest lit up red and the drills on her hands spun up and she plunged them deep into the fallen tree. Twilight cast a magical barrier between herself and Rarity, shielding Applejack and herself from the flying splinters as the tree exploded.

“What works? Teamwork!” Twilight joked, magically clearing up the smaller debris as Rarity calmed down again. Applejack trotted around, grabbing some of the larger chunks of wood with her teeth or rope, carefully tossing them out the window.

“Sorry again, Twilight,” Applejack offered, “I really didn’t mean t’ mess up your night like this.”

“Well, it wasn’t fine earlier, but I’d say we are now. I’m just glad you two could settle your differences, even if it took a small crisis to do it,” Twilight giggled, “I’m gonna get some sleep now, you two should probably do the same.”

“Goodnight,” Rarity groaned, and slipped carefully back into bed. A few moments later, Applejack slid in gently next to her, cuddling up against her large friend.

“G’night, Rares,” Applejack whispered.

Rarity responded with a gentle squeeze, and soon the two fell asleep.