Uniting a Nation

Manehattan was on fire.

Not the whole city, obviously, but a lot of it. Enough that it was impossible to pick out individual fires – just a smoldering orange glow encompassing the entire island.

“Well, this is disappointing,” said Filthy Rich, staring at the column of smoke rising from the battered high-rise buildings, from their vantage point on a large hill overlooking the bay. With the sun hovering lower over Canterlot to the west, the shadow stretched across the water until it vanished into the mist-like nothingness that had replaced the ocean. Staring into the void made his head hurt, so he stared at the smoke, instead.

“What’s going on? You promised me a shopping trip in Manehattan, daddy,” Diamond Tiara said, stomping a hoof. “How am I supposed to shop if all the stores are on fire?”

Filthy Rich shook his head. “I knew that organizing a city as large as Manehattan would be a problem, but I thought my associates could hold the fort until we joined up with them.”

“We could have been here yesterday if somepony hadn’t stolen our train,” Diamond Tiara said, muzzle scrunching in distaste. “Why is everypony so stupid?”

“I know, right?” Silver Spoon said. “This could all be so much easier if ponies would just cooperate.”

“Now now, let’s not generalize this to all of ponykind,” Filthy Rich said, patting Diamond Tiara on the head, which made her scowl, not that he was able to see her expression. “It’s probably a small minority ruining things for everypony. It usually is, when order breaks down like this.”

“So what do we do now?” Silver Spoon asked. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to help these ponies eat each other if they’d rather just burn to death.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Filthy Rich said, unhooking himself from their wagon. “Why don’t you girls wait here while I see if things are really as bad as they look? I’ll get in touch with my associates and send for you. You’ve both eaten today, so you should be safe if night falls before we can make arrangements.”

===

There was a refugee camp, down by the shore. Only a few of the ponies even had tents, but there was nothing else that the huddled mass of misery could be. Three large sailboats were beached nearby – it looked like whoever’d been piloting them had just run them aground, rather than look for a dock.

Nopony was paying any attention to the boats. They were just huddled in groups of two to ten, ignoring everypony else around them. Nopony was even eating each other.

“Hello?” Filthy Rich said, loudly, as he approached the camp. “What’s going on here?”

Nopony answered. The only reaction was for a few of them to scrunch down farther, or at least make the attempt.

“What happened to the city?” he asked. There was still no response. It was quite annoying.

Filthy Rich walked to the center of the camp, and looked around. Nopony would meet his eyes. “Well, let me take a stab at it, then. Some idiots didn’t take the princesses’ orders seriously, and were driven insane on the first night. They wandered out into the streets and starting breaking things at random. Somewhere in there, things got lit on fire. You all decided that instead of doing anything about it, you’d run away and leave the city to burn. Nevermind that if you all worked together you could have easily gotten the city under control.”

“What do you know!” snapped a stallion, huddled next to a mare that was probably his special somepony. Maybe his wife, although they looked a bit young for that.

“Oh? Did I get it wrong?” Filthy Rich asked. “Enlighten me.”

The stallion scowled. “It’s not random crazy ponies. They’re organized. A gang. They set the fires to drive us out into the streets, then they rounded everypony up and dragged them off to their camps to do Celestia only knows what.”

“What’s the point of that?” Filthy Rich asked. “You can’t force somepony to be your meal. It won’t work. You won’t be able to eat them.”

“Well, tell that to the gang.”

The mare spoke up. “None of us know what they do with the ponies once they get them, but… the screams! We heard the screams before they even got to our building, and we knew we had to run.”

Filthy Rich looked around. “This isn’t very many ponies. There were hundreds of thousands in Manehattan – is this everypony who escaped? Or have you been eating each other?”

“There weren’t very many boats left,” the mare said, ears flattening. “I don’t think anypony’s been eaten…”

“Well, why not?” Filthy Rich asked. “Do you want to go crazy? The day’s been dragging on, but I know I have no idea how long that sun the unicorns put up is going to last. Do you?”

“Hey!” the stallion said, standing up and stepping between them. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

“Do you love her?” Filthy Rich asked, stepping closer, into the pony’s personal space.

The stallion took a step back. “She’s my gal. Of course I do.”

“Then eat her,” Filthy Rich said. “Eat her now. The world is ending, and night could fall any second.”

“Where do you get off –“

“Everypony!” Filthy Rich said, raising his voice and turning his back on the couple. “Stop wasting time! You got away from the gang. You’re safe. Now it’s time to stay safe, and that means getting eaten. Find somepony to eat you.” A few of the ponies looked around, but no one really moved. “Now!”

Suddenly, he was shoved from behind. It was the stallion, angry at being ignored. “Who do you think you are? Coming in here --”

Filthy Rich was no apple farmer, but he’d watched the Apples work their orchard enough to know how things were done. Weight shifted forwards, legs go back, and crack.

The stallion screamed, falling to the ground with a thump, his muzzle shattered. He tried to say something, but could only moan incoherently. His mare screamed, too, rushing over to try to comfort him, waving her hooves around directionless since she had no idea what to do. One hoof dabbed at his muzzle, making him scream louder as she yanked it back, bloodied.

“If you want to save him, you know what to do,” Filthy Rich said, glancing back over his shoulder. Then he walked out of the camp, heading for the boats.

“And these are the sane ponies,” he said to himself, chuckling softly. “Not a good sign.”

===

Star Latte had, after several attempts, found a position where she could comfort Shuffle without hurting him further. One hoof stroked his back, while she rested her muzzle on his side, tears streaming down her face as he moaned under her.

“Ee ‘oke ‘igh ‘ace!” Shuffle Button whined, then gave a strangled squeak as even that much movement was too much for his broken muzzle. “’I’ll ’ill ‘im!”

“What are we going to do, Shuffle?” Star asked. “We need to get you to the hospital, but the hospital is in the city, and the city is full of crazy ponies and the hospital wasn’t treating anypony anyway, they were just eating everypony no matter what they came in for! And even if I knew how to do first aid, I’d have to set your muzzle and then bandage it or something? And you’d be drinking through a straw for weeks!”

Shuffle whimpered.

“How are you going to eat?” she asked. “Shuffle, how are you going to eat a pony? He’s right about the sun going out at any time and neither of us ate anypony and if we don’t eat anypony we’ll get torn apart by the darkness and I don’t want to be alone in the dark. Please, tell me what to do? How are you going to eat?” She shook him a bit, leaning forwards to look him in the eye.

Shuffle closed his eyes, and put a hoof on her lips.

She was silent for a few moments, then smiled. “You’re right, I’m babbl-mmmph!”

Almost as soon as she’d opened her mouth, Shuffle’s hoof pressed inside, and she bit down lightly to stop its progress, shaking her head. In response, he lifted his other hoof, and shoved it inside her mouth as well. She felt herself stretching around them, in a familiar way… she knew what this meant. He wanted her to eat him.

Star shook her head again. No! Not her Shuffle! But he’d always been stronger than her, and her resistance was weak, and his forelegs slid into her mouth, the hooves slipping down her throat, making her swallow, reflexively.

“O’ly ‘ay,” Shuffle mumbled, just before his poor broken muzzle reached her lips. “’’oo ‘id.”

She stretched her mouth open as far as it would go, but it wasn’t enough – the stretchy-effect from Discord’s spell only did what was required, and that wasn’t enough to keep her teeth from bumping against his nose. He jerked, and hissed, but she pressed forwards. He was right. This was the only way.

Pressing his muzzle into her throat was worse, so much worse. He writhed and squirmed with each swallow, and she knew that he must be in terrible pain, but all she could do was press him down her throat as quickly as possible, sliding her lips down his barrel an inch at a time. He really, really should have had her eat him tail-end first.

Finally, after an eternity, her lips slid down over his rear end, hiding his spinning-button cutie mark forever, and only his tail and legs were left sticking out into the air, still twitching occasionally, although he’d calmed down at some point, probably when his muzzle had finally reached her stomach, taking it out of the line of fire. With the widest part of him inside her, the rest went quickly, and in less than a minute he was gone, curled up inside her, waiting to be digested.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, one of her hooves wandering over her belly to try to caress her lover through her own flesh. There was a strangled scream from inside her, and she felt him shift violently. She pulled her hoof away. “Sorry!”

All around her, the rest of the camp was engulfed in an orgy of swallowing, ponies devouring ponies and being devoured in turn. Sometimes, all it takes to get a crowd to move in the right direction is for one pony to lead the way.

===

Filthy Rich strained against the smallest sailboat, trying to push it back into the water. None of the boats had seemed badly damaged by being beached, although he was hardly an expert sailor, and he figured he’d notice soon enough if it started taking on water. Soon enough to get to one shore or the other, at any rate. It really wasn’t a very long trip.

First, he had to get the boat into the water, though. Back in the day, he’d been strong and fit – there was a lot of manual labor involved in stocking the shelves and sorting the deliveries in the back room. Nowadays, though, he’d had ponies for that, and he wasn’t really getting any younger. At least the end of the world was coming, so he wouldn’t have to worry about growing as old as Granny Smith! He’d never said it to her face, but he’d always been terrified of ending up like her.

She’d picked up on it anyway, and teased him about it while he was eating her. Crazy old coot.

There was a splash, as the weight of the boat shifted, finally supporting itself by its buoyancy instead of scraping against the ground.

“Yes!” he said, pumping his hoof in victory. Then he noticed that the boat hadn’t stopped moving, just because he’d stopped pushing. “Wait – no! Come back!” He tried wading out after it, but the waves he made as he forced himself through the water seemed to push it away from him quicker than he could move. When the water came up to his neck, he had to stop. “Come back!” he cried. “I don’t know how to swim!”

“Waaah – woah! I gotcha!” came a voice from the boat, and then a small orange and white life preserver flew over the side, landing nearby. “Grab on!”

It was a bit out of his reach, but he managed to push off from the mucky bottom, and that gave him enough momentum to get hold of it. He latched on for dear life as the boat-stallion dragged him out into deeper water, then helped him onto the boat.

The beige and white pegasus yawned. “Sorry,” he said, still seeming half-asleep. “You woke me up, there, fella. How’d you fall over the edge anyway?”

“That’s not exactly what happened,” Filthy Rich said, wringing out his tie a few times before giving up and tossing the crumpled mess of ruined silk into the corner. He held out a hoof to his rescuer, of sorts. “Filthy Rich, although you can just call me Rich.”

“Hey there, Filthy,” said the pegasus, clopping his hoof into place and shaking. “Name’s Morning Breeze, and this fine lady here’s the Morning Breeze.” He patted the railing a few times.

“You named your boat after yourself?”

Morning laughed. “Nah, my ma named me after the boat. This old beauty’s been in the family for a while now.”

“Interesting,” Filthy Rich said, looking for signs of wear, but while it wasn’t new by any means, the boat seemed to be in good repair. “I didn’t realize that boats lasted that long. Their depreciation schedule is fairly rapid. Compared to a pony’s lifespan, I mean.”

“Heh, anything’ll last forever if you’re willin’ to replace all the parts, am I right?” Morning Breeze said, laughing at his own joke. “I expect she’ll outlive me.”

“Given the circumstances, it’s almost certain,” Filthy Rich said. “Nopony needs to eat boats to survive.”

“Yeah, well,” Morning Breeze said, yawning a bit. “I’m done with that. I ate one pony yesterday, and it was terrible, it was. I’m out.”

“You can’t be ‘out’,” Filthy Rich said. “That’s not an option.”

“I figure I’ll just sleep it off,” the pegasus said, sinking to the floor and curling up to do just that. “Yeah, maybe I’ll die in my sleep or something ‘cause I didn’t eat anypony, but then at least I won’t have strangers waking me up anymore.”

It occurred to Filthy Rich that he hadn’t eaten anypony that day either, and with the city in chaos, he wasn’t sure when he was going to get another shot. His backup plan had always been to eat Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon if the trip took too long, but in the shock of seeing the city on fire, he’d let that slip his mind and left them behind for their safety.

And here was a lazy pegasus layabout, about to waste himself and his energy to the void, just because he’d rather sleep than make any sort of effort.

“You know,” Filthy Rich said. “If you want to make sure that nopony disturbs your rest, I know a place where you could sleep for as long as you want.”

“Heh,” said the pegasus. “Lemme guess. Inside your stomach?”

“Think about it,” Filthy Rich said. “Eating ponies is awful, but being eaten is pleasant. Warm. Restful. I think they did that on purpose, to give ponies a reason to let themselves be the ones to go.”

“If it’s so wonderful, then why haven’t you been eaten yet?” Morning Breeze asked.

“I made a promise to some associates of mine,” Filthy Rich said. “We were going to save this city. Prevent –” he waved a hoof at the fire and smoke “–this. It might be too late for me to do anything, but I have to at least give it a try. But after that? Sure. I was never planning on trying to be the last pony standing. Although I do think I would make a pretty good organizer for the New World they’re supposed to build, if I do say so myself. But that’s neither here nor there.” He turned to the pegasus. “Let me eat you, and I promise you won’t regret it.”

Morning Breeze ruffled his feathers.

Filthy Rich took a step towards the pegasus, letting his shadow wash over him. “If you don’t let me eat you, you will regret it. Do you really think you can just sleep through the night?”

“Worth a shot,” Morning Breeze said.

“No, it’s not,” Filthy Rich said. “Let’s use some basic logic here. Your stated goals are peace, calm, and oblivion. You’re taking a huge risk by betting on your ability to ignore the night. Yeah, you might get what you want, or you might suffer untold agony until you go mad. Whereas if you let me eat you, you get exactly what you want. Peace, calm, and you’ll painlessly fade away. There’s nothing to gain by turning me down, and everything to lose.”

“You say that, but I know your type,” Morning Breeze said, scowling but keeping his eyes squeezed shut, as if he could sleep through the conversation. “Peace and calm? Ha! Ponies like you are never calm. You’ll be moving around… talking… you won’t give me a moment’s rest!”

Filthy Rich smiled. Gotcha. “Then that can be my half of the deal. If you let me eat you, and help me set this boat to head for the island, I’ll spend the next – let’s say two hours? – I’ll spend the next two hours resting quietly, so that you can have your peace and quiet.”

Morning Breeze frowned. “I don’t know, you seem…”

“Too good to be true?” Filthy Rich prompted, before the pegasus could fill in the pause with something less flattering. “Come on, you know what I’m getting out of this. I don’t want to face the night alone either.”

“Ugh, fine,” Morning Breeze said, opening his eyes and getting to his hooves. “Not much choice with you here chattering away.”

“You could always push me over the side,” Filthy Rich offered. “I don’t know how to swim, so I’d probably drown, but that’s still better than facing sundown without eating anypony.”

“Ha,” Morning Breeze said. “Like I could push an earth pony. Open wide, ya slimy huckster.” With that, he pressed his muzzle straight at Filthy, as if going for a kiss.

Filthy Rich rolled his eyes, but opened his mouth, and then the conversation was over, since neither of them could really talk. He tried to be gentle, though – he wasn’t a huckster! None of his family were. They gave good value and a fair deal, where everypony won. That was the very foundation of a long-term business.

Not that the long term mattered much at this point, he mused, stroking Morning Breeze’s neck as he worked his lips over the stallion’s ears, trying not to sneeze as the frizzy mane tickled his snout. He could ignore everything he’d promised, and it wasn’t like the pegasus could back out once he was eaten. Hay, it was a verbal contract where he’d be the only living witness! Let’s see somepony try to enforce that in court. Assuming they found somepony to run a court, what with the princesses gone.

He reached down to gather up Morning Breeze’s hooves, pressing them into his muzzle – a tight squeeze, but the barrel and wings were going to be tighter, and there was no sense putting the legs off until then and making it worse. Sure, the spell would make it work, but everything went more smoothly when you did your best to… well, to do your best.

Which answered that question nicely. He wasn’t going to cheat Mr. Breeze out of his peace and quiet, even if he had nothing to lose. That wasn’t the kind of pony he was. And besides, he was kind of tired from hauling a wagon all day, then shoving this damn boat back into the water and struggling on board, even with help. A nap could do him good. He wouldn’t make very good time waddling around the city with a pony in his belly anyway.

His throat latched onto the hooves, as they slipped past Morning’s muzzle, inside his mouth, and he gave a firm swallow, drawing the pegasus’ head into his throat. The feathery wings unfolded in front of his face, and started waving around, but he grabbed on with a hoof and pressed one, and then the other, back down into place, stroking them gently along the grain, letting the fluff of his fetlocks comb through the feathers.

Another couple of swallows, and the wings stopped being a problem as the pony’s barrel slipped between his lips, and the wings with them. He could feel his neck, and now his chest, bulging out as the huge meal slipped further down his throat, and he swallowed greedily, wanting to feel the mass of pony in his stomach, instead. He really hadn’t eaten anything all day, had he? Well, that was another problem solved.

He latched on to Morning Breeze’s rear end as it came in reach, and used his forelegs to drag him in faster, moaning around the pegasus as he finally felt something press into his empty stomach. The pegasus tasted like salty sea air and musty wood, but he was hungry enough that that didn’t matter – it was a massive meal going down his throat and filling him up, after more than a day’s impromptu fast. It tasted wonderful.

His tongue squirmed against Morning Breeze’s belly, soaking up as much of the taste as it could before the whole body was in his throat, sliding further down now without his help. He got a few more licks in on the stallion’s thighs and hind hooves as the last little bits vanished inside him, but then it was over.

“Guess that wasn’t so bad,” came a voice from inside him. He could feel his meal shifting around, getting comfortable.

“So…” Filthy Rich said. “About the sails.”

“Eh, forget the sails,” Morning Breeze said, faintly. “It’s got a magic motor. Meant for emergencies, but it’ll get you across the bay a few times, easy as pie.”

Filthy Rich stood up, and walked across the deck, verifying that the motor existed, and that the control panel really was as simple as Morning Breeze promised. “Very well,” he said, settling down on the captain’s bench, and resting his head on his hooves. “I’m going to take a little nap, now. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Can’t say as I share the sentiment,” Morning Breeze said, shifting a little, then going still. “Can’t say as I trust you. So I guess… I hope you get what you deserve?”

“Fair enough,” Filthy Rich said, not bothered by the veiled insult. When had he ever wanted more than he deserved?