Chapter Fourteen: Five to One

When Rainbow Dash finally regained consciousness, she became aware of a putrid smell and attempted to cover her nose with her hoof. She was briefly puzzled as to why she couldn’t do this, and quickly realised that all four of her hooves had been strongly tied together with duct tape. Her eyes flew open instantly and she saw a grinning pink pony standing over her.

“Pinkie Pie? What’s happening?” the pegasus asked in a strained voice.

“This is our intervention, Dashie! After sulking at home for a while, I realised that Twilight is right. We do need to work our problems out together. So, here you are! Sorry about the whole violently assaulting and binding you thing, by the way. It was really the only way to make sure you’d cooperate. Anyway, the rest should be arriving pretty soon. Then I can show you the big surprise,” here Pinkie waved a hoof at what appeared to be a bundle of blankets, “and we can get this party started!”

“I don’t need any help.”

“Not quite grasping the situation, are ya Dashie?” Pinkie snorted incredulously, “You don’t really have a choice. Here, maybe this will give you a bit of an idea.”

The pink pony walked to the other side of the room. As Rainbow’s eyes followed her, she realised that the room was very dark, small and bare. It had only one door and no windows. The walls appeared to be of red brick and the floor of concrete, but it was difficult to tell in the dark. The only items in the room were the bundle a few feet away from Rainbow, the shovel leaning against the wall next to the door, a small ceiling lamp emitting insufficient light and the wheeled tray with a cloth over it that Pinkie was retrieving.

“Where the hay am I?” demanded the bound pony.

“Oh, that hardly matters,” replied Pinkie as she wheeled the tray to her friend, “Here, take a look at some of these!”

With great showmanship she pulled aside the cloth to reveal an assortment of instruments. Each of them appeared very sinister and dangerous, and they were all immaculately kept and neatly laid out. The pink pony grinned wickedly at the pegasus, waiting for her reaction.

“What the hay, Pinkie?”

“I guess you could say this is more of a practical, forceful intervention. Well more of a sadistic mass murder, really.”

“Alright, you’ve got my attention,” Rainbow chuckled, “now cut the crap and tell me what you want.”

“You don’t think I’m being serious, do you?”

“Pinkie, you’ve never been serious.”

The earth pony sighed and rolled her eyes. No pony ever took her seriously. Before she could begin explaining the situation to her dear friend she was cut off by the sound of a bell. Well, Rainbow would understand everything soon enough. She quickly gagged the pegasus with a rag before picking up the shovel and waiting by the door.

***

Before Twilight’s mind could even process seeing Rainbow Dash gagged and bound in the basement of Sugar Cube Corner, she felt a heavy blow against her head and fell unconscious. The pink pony smiled about how easily she had executed her plan.

“Isn’t it nice the way she keeps coming to the rescue like this?” Pinkie said to herself before bringing down the shovel with all her might again. The blow struck with pinpoint accuracy and a loud crack rang out as the unicorn’s horn was snapped clean off. With a satisfied grin, the sadist repeated the action on both of Twilight’s hind legs, ensuring she would not escape.

“Don’t you just love that sound, Dashie? That super wonderful yea-I’m-strong-enough-to-render-you-totally-immobile crack?” she said turning to face the pegasus, “Looks like we’ve got a bit of time to kill before Applejack shows up, and even then we’ll have to wait for them both to come to. Let me run you through the plan.”

Hurrying excitedly back to the pegasus’s side, the earth pony waved a hoof over her assorted tools. She licked her lips before saying “Ok, so some ponies have been trying to convince me that they know what I went through in those tunnels. I decided to show them that, no, they really didn’t understand, by giving them a bit of an insight into what it was like. Sadly I got a bit, well, overexcited and it didn’t quite go as planned. It was actually Twilight who gave me the idea of collecting all my bestest buddies in the whole town together like this. She said if we share the burden, we can get through this together, right? I figure if you lot can picture exactly what I went through, we can carry the burden together even betterer! It’s a pity none of us will live long enough to really be much use to each other. Now, I’m a generous pony. I’m going to give you a chance to get out of this. You’re free to leave at any time. All you need to do is fly away. Didn’t you wonder why your wings aren’t bound?” Finishing the rant, the earth pony pouted dramatically as if disappointed by the idea of her friend leaving.

As the pegasus flapped her wings, the pout gradually transformed into an evil grin. Each wing beat was weaker than the last, and each wasted more energy. Rainbow Dash managed to lift herself about a foot or two above ground before her wings buckled and she crashed back to earth. She rolled onto her back as she writhed in pain.

“You want to stay? Oh, Dashie, you’re too sweet!” Pinkie jeered.

“Mrmph,” replied the victim through her gag.

Pinkie removed the gag from her victim’s mouth to allow her to talk freely.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Um... duh, I just told you! We go through everything together. I’m going to give you a taste of what the dogs put me through!” she said before picking up a round, long metal pole from the tray and continuing, “Hey, guess where this goes? Honestly, I’m kinda worried about this one; a filly fooler like yourself might actually enjoy it.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened in shock and fear. The reality of the situation was finally sinking in, and the failed escape attempt greatly amplified the pegasus’s dread. Furthermore, how did the freak know about her sexual preference? Fluttershy was the only pony in Ponyville who knew about it. In her frantic, weakened state, she thought the earth pony must be omnipotent. She was too scared to shrink away and too scared to try to escape. She simply stared into those soulless blue eyes pleadingly, trying to appeal to any fragment of morality left in the ruthless monster.

“Oh don’t look at me like that,” continued the sadist, “no pony breaks a Pinkie promise. I became Fluttershy’s little confidant, yaknow. Oh boy, she could go on and on and on and on and on and ON about you!”

Pinkie circled her friend a few times before stopping and forcing herself on top of the pegasus.

“You know, I’m really curious. Fluttershy said it tasted like skittles.” Before she had a chance to proceed, the bell rang again. “No rest for the wicked,” Pinkie remarked as she gagged Rainbow Dash and retook her position by the door.

***

“Hold on you two, I’m-”

The earth pony was interrupted as a hard blow came down on her head.

“You’re what, Applejack?” Pinkie smirked as she broke Applejack’s hind legs and dragged her next to Twilight. “Making this too easy? I agree. Ok, Dashie, let’s get this gag off of you again.” She put her words to action.

“Anyway, where were we... oh right, filly fooling. Boy, it must’ve been a hard life, huh? Trying to hide the fact that you’re a raging dyke from every pony in Cloudsdale can’t be fun. Then you come down here and a few years later BAM,” Pinkie clopped her hooves together, “the love of your life gets cut open by a diamond dog because you were too slow to save her. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

Pinkie was about to retrieve an instrument from her tray when a blinding flash of light caught her attention. Spinning around, she saw Rarity sprawled on the floor. The pink pony grabbed her shovel and bounded to her side. Just as she was about to bring a blow down on the unicorn, she saw that she was dazed, confused and exhausted from performing a complicated long range teleportation spell that even Twilight could barely pull off. Nevertheless, she brought the shovel down heavily on the horn and hind legs; partly for safety, but mostly for pleasure.

The pain snapped the white unicorn straight out of her daze. She shrieked in pain and terror as she felt her bones give way under the blunt force of the shovel. Looking up at the psychopath, she scowled defiantly and attempted to rise before crumbling into a teary mess.

“Hang in there, Rarity! We’re going to be ok!” Twilight said with determination.

“Oh, hey Twi. When did you come to? Don’t answer that, it’s not important. Let’s see if my fellow earth pony over here is with us,” Pinkie said happily as she bounced over to Applejack. “Hello? Is there any pony in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there any pony home?”

The farmer managed to raise her head slightly and murmur before collapsing again.

“You know what? I don’t have time to wait around for her. Let’s get this party started!” Pinkie looked at each pony for a moment before continuing, “You don’t seem too keen. Well, I guess I should say why I’ve summoned you all here-“

“You didn’t summon us here,” interrupted Twilight, “I figured out what you were up to by myself and came here to stop you!”

“Oh, you figured it out all by yourself, did you? Was it somewhere between the maniacal laughing and unexplained disappearance of the Cakes? Geez Twilight, I’m not stupid! I figured you’d put two and two and two together and come marching in here yourself, and that you’d probably let the other elements know. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting Rarity here, but the more the merrier. I’m bringing us all together, just like you wanted!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together.

“You won’t get away with this. Celestia will be here in minutes. Stop now while you still have a chance.”

“I thought you were more politically aware, Twi. Celestia isn’t even in Equestria right now. We’ve got plenty of time before we have to worry about our beloved princess. You were counting on her, weren’t you? A dues ex machina to come down and save you at the last minute?” Pinkie scoffed, “See, here’s your problem, Twi. You keep on rushing in to be the hero without thinking it through. So much for being an intellectual. In the forest, you screwed up. Breaking us all up like that was a bad call, and I paid the price for it. That’s no reason to go full blown emo on us. I’m the one who got fucked up, literally and figuratively. I should be the one wallowing in self pity. To your credit, you tried to help, but it wasn’t motivated by wanting to help your friend. I can see right through that, Twi. You just wanted to make up for your mistake so you could feel better about yourself. That’s why you’ve been so forceful about it. You sent me down the tunnel alone, and you only wanted to help us out of selfishness. This is your fault. Thanks to your desire to act like a hero from a bad book, you’ve wasted your friends’ lives as well as your own.”

Pinkie moved towards Rainbow Dash before continuing her lecture, “Now Dashie here has a lot of blood on her hooves. She failed to save Fluttershy, and wanting revenge she killed an entire community of diamond dogs. I really don’t care about that. What really grinds my gears is that you couldn’t cope with the guilt and decided to throw your life away. If you didn’t realise that in the first place, you must have figured it out when you finally came out of that drug fuelled daze. Don’t kid yourself. You knew those pills were killing you. You WANTED them to kill you. Hay, you should be thanking me for this. Sure, it’ll be way more painful than overdosing, but at least it’ll happen sooner, right?”

The other ponies maintained a shocked silence. The sadist was delighted that she had a captive audience and she approached Rarity before continuing, “Now you’re the root reason for all this, aren’t you? Twilight screwed up, but all you had to do was send word back to us or something, and everything would be just peachy. But like I said, I’m not judging any of you for what happened back then. Now running away from your friends when they need you the most, on the other hoof, is inexcusable. I’ll kill you for leaving us, Rarity.”

Observing that the orange earth pony was slowly becoming more aware of her surroundings, Pinkie bounced to her side as she prepared to wrap up her speech, “Now Applejack, you probably consider yourself to be pretty righteous, yea? Thing is, the way you chose to deal with all this stuff is just plain stupid. You’ve convinced yourself that no pony is to blame for anything, and that in death the virtuous will get a wonderful reward. It’s delusional, and if it weren’t for me you’d devote your whole life to your imaginary friend. This would be as much of a waste as Twi’s quest for redemption or Dashie’s addiction. To snap you out of that little dream of yours, I’ll show you what really happens to a pony once they’ve died.”

Pinkie Pie slowly walked towards the large bundle sitting near Rainbow Dash. Each step seemed powerful and she moved with a sense of purpose. A thin smile grew on her face as she drew nearer.

“Rainbow, look away!” yelled Twilight.

“Rainbow, keep watching!” replied Pinkie as she continued towards her goal. When she stopped by the bundle, she turned back and grinned at her friends. “You’re going to LOVE this,” she said immediately before pulling off the blanket and revealing the decaying corpse of a yellow pegasus mare.