Author's Note

[12/28] Happy Birthday Apple Bot!

Appropriate Holiday Background Music

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Alex had been shot before by long-bore rifles. The shock shut the organs down, tore through everything. The pain was almost beyond description, a single white-hot knife in her insides. He aimed a little higher, towards her head. “G-Go… Go to–” Blood choked out as she spoke, right along with the words.

He pulled the trigger.

--

Scribble Shine pushed along his mop bucket and mopped the floor. Before the cataclysm, he had been one of the up and coming astrophysicists at a well known aerospace company, but now... Now he mopped the floor and cleaned up after other ponies. Here, no one appreciated his expansive intellect or true capabilities. Here, no one--

"Shut yer flapping meat, or I'll shut it fer ya."

--

Scribble Shine made his way into the Director's office and surveyed the damage.

Leftover scraps of food on the table, a new layer of dust on the bookshelf, a dead filly in the corner of the room...

A DEAD FILLY.

Scribble Shine shrieked in panic and threw his mop into the air and back peddled into his mop bucket. Unfortunately for him, the mop only remained in the air for a short while before smacking him on the head and obscuring his vision. Now, with a mop on his head and a bucket around his rear hoof, Scribble lost all remaining purchase on the hardwood floor and flopped painfully to the ground next to the very dead, green filly.

"Oww," he said and looked up.

In front of him, the green filly laid unmoving, her tail spread at an awkward angle and showing herself off to the entire world. Crimson soaked her otherwise untouched coat, marred by the exit wounds that only a high-powered rifle could have caused.

Scribble Shine heard himself gulp as he felt a growing heat inside of him. He scrambled to the hallway and looked outside. No one.

He gulped again and unbuckled his metaphorical pants. He need not be a virgin forever...

--

It took a while for Alex to compose herself this time and she remembered Sunset's warning. 'This is the last time,' she told herself. 'At least until next time.'

Alex's wounds sealed, and she slowly regained vision in her bad eye as it sucked itself back into her eye socket. Upon her first breath, the smell of newly decomposing flesh mixed with the musky scent of a stallion almost overpowered her. She looked around and saw that a young cleaning pony shuddering against the far side of the wall, a new puddle forming beneath him.

"Whoops," Alex said and grabbed some wayward brain tissue in the path of the oncoming wave of urine. "Wouldn't want that to get dirty now, would we," she chuckled to herself and put it back where it belong.

"He- Help! Intruder!" The cleaning pony shrieked and two guards rushed into the room and leveled their weapons at the little green pone.

"Uhh, sorry guys I just got told off. I'm already over budget, can we not?" she rubbed her hoof against the back of her head bashfully.

The right side of Alex's head exploded in a shower of gore and pony brains. She slumped to the ground and the two guards approached cautiously.

Scribble Shine took this as his cue to rush out of the room warbling inconsolably, leaving behind a trail of urine.

"Intruder is neutralized. It was that green mare from before, guess she wasn't really dea-."

The "dead" green mare gripped the ballsack of the nearest guard and squeezed. The wet sound of soggy paper bag exploding filled the room, followed by a high-pitched shriek and the sound of a large stallion tipping over to the ground. Alex wiped across her muzzle, smearing the juices in a friendly grin.

"Guys really, I'm already in really deep trouble. Do you know what she might do if I keep dying?" she asked.

"And after that dream, I won't be able to ever go camping again..." she mumbled morosely.

The second guard wasted no time in re-centering his frontsight on her profile and pulled the trigger. The rounds blew a hole where the mare had just been standing a split second ago. He recovered from the recoil and looked around.

"You are already dead," Alex whispered, and the stallion exploded. Chunks of meat rained around and against her, showering her with juice much like how a dead, decomposing whale might, if detonated with dynamite.

She turned around to survey her handiwork-- Pieces of a stallion on one side (more like every side), and a high-pitched very un-stallion whine on the other.

She brushed her shoulders off with her hooves when suddenly she was struck in the face by a flacid--

--

"Scoots, move over!" Applebloom groused. "You can't keep hogging the new chromebook!"

Scootaloo shoved back against the sturdy filly. "No fair! You spent your fifteen minutes reading dirty stories and getting the keyboard wet. It took me nearly all morning cleaning it after you!"

"Girls, can we stop fighting," Sweetie Belle said and try to place herself between her two friends, but received only a hoof on each side of her face for her troubles.

As the young fillies continued to argue, the camera panned up and slowly zoomed in on a section of the sky. A star twinkled, and a petite green mare laid in the background, watching and biding her time.

She was also flanked by Sunset Shimmer and Discord on either side... because, you know. Reasons.