Ten Little Ponies

Despite their gumption, Trixie and Sunset Shimmer hadn’t made it very far in their investigation. Sunset was still heavily hindered by the injury she had sustained. Trixie had also developed quite the severe headache after slamming her skull into the underside of the bathroom sink. Neither mare let their circumstances deter them from regrouping with the others. Teaming up was not a sentiment Sunset enjoyed, but in her current state, it was her only option.

Every door they had opened in the upstairs corridor led to nothing substantial. The only door that remained belonged to Twilight’s bedroom. Nopony occupied the room, but the stature of the door held an eerie and ominous air about it. The whole vicinity had been unsettling to both mares, to the point where the fur on the back of Sunset’s neck stood on end in apprehension.

“Well, are you going in or not?” Trixie broke Sunset out her haze.

“I’m not so sure, I just don’t have a good feeling about this room. Paranoid or not, I’ll let you handle this one. Just let me know what you find in there.” Sunset’s reluctance struck Trixie as surprising. She seemed to be the most level-headed individual, lacking in fear or restraint. Trixie couldn’t help but speculate the development of her ally’s new demeanor.

“Just think for a moment Sunset,” Trixie tried to rationalize her approach. “If Twilight is behind all of this, then surely there will be something in her room to incriminate her right?”

“Or exonerate her, only leaving us with more questions.” Sunset countered.

“Maybe so, but I can’t see how it isn’t her. She knows this place better than anypony, and she invited all of us here under one roof. Call it a little on the snout, but nopony else would be capable of all this in such a short span of time. Nopony could have been here to set everything up, nopony could plan ‘sequential’ murders without knowing who would show up, it’s just not possible Sunset. Don’t give her the benefit of the doubt. Look, I don’t even know what to believe anymore, and quite frankly I just want to get out of here alive.”

Sunset couldn’t refute anything Trixie was saying, it all seemed to make such perfect sense when chalked up to the basic information, but something still didn’t sit right. All the while Trixie was speaking, Sunset noticed another glaring oddity.

“Hey Trixie, what happened to your stutter, it’s gone completely?”

Trixie was caught off guard by the off-topic question, but now that it had been brought to her attention, she became aware of her restored speech. Trixie had stopped paying attention to her stammering articulations, but now that she was cognizant of her dialogue, she found it strange yet relieving.

“Good observation, maybe banging my head fixed me right up,” Trixie hid her concern behind a half-hearted chuckle as she slowly opened the door to Twilight’s quarters. “Either way, it was getting quite annoying…” Amid her distracted banter, Trixie hadn’t seen the thin wire suspended a few inches above the floor she had stepped on. The door behind them shut instantly before the room began to fill with a sweetly scented gas.

“Oh fuck…” Sunset mumbled as she became light headed before collapsing next to Trixie.

Twilight’s vision cut in and out and she couldn’t make out her surroundings, but she did have the wherewithal to know that she had been hoisted onto the back of somepony. She vaguely remembered being picked up and carried for a bit before slipping out of consciousness again. Her throat ached to speak out to her carrier, but the smoke she inhaled left her croaking for words.

In that moment, she wasn’t sure what to feel. Was this pony the killer, whisking her away to a secret location to end her life, or an innocuous passerby concerned for her safety? She didn’t see where Rainbow Dash had run off to before passing out.

“Dash?” Twilight moaned almost inaudibly.

The pony underneath her didn’t respond to her, perhaps they hadn’t heard her meager and weak voice.

“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” Her carrier stopped in their tracks but did not acknowledge Twilight’s inquiries. She could feel the labored breathing and racing heartbeat of her transport, perhaps they were nervous about being caught, how long had they been carrying Twilight? Her ride continued to make their way down the corridor as they had done before, still anonymous to the lethargic Twilight.

Though not mentally present enough to deduce a positive identity, Twilight was able to muster up enough common sense to make an educated guess. She noticed the pattern in the way this pony walked, steady, albeit labored, but otherwise unimpeded by a limp or injury. She knew the extent of Rainbow Dash’s injury, so she ruled out the Pegasus. She’d also surmised that it couldn’t be Sunset Shimmer according to Trixie’s account that she had been injured. She knew Fluttershy would be much too weak to carry Twilight’s full weight at all, let alone for an extended period of time, even with a surplus of adrenaline. That left only Rarity and Trixie, but why?

Twilight finally regained feeling in her body and was able to make small movements, wriggling slightly until she plopped painfully onto the floor. Though her body was lacking any significant amount of energy, she mustered up the strength purely through instinct alone to crawl her way in the opposite direction, attempting to put as much distance between herself and her abductor. She thought her efforts to be futile knowing surely she would be recaptured in a matter of moments, but when she turned to see if she was being pursued, the pony had gone. Twilight felt a surge of relief ripple through her body as she struggled to her hooves. She knew she needed to go back to the kitchen. Despite everything that had already transpired there, she knew she needed to go back and thoroughly investigate everything for herself.

“Rarity! Rarity please answer me! Where are you?!” Fluttershy beckoned in a panicked flurry. She had lost sight of the unicorn in their search efforts. She mentally reprimanded herself for being so aloof as to not notice her friend’s disappearance. She had investigated every room in her appointed section of the upstairs corridor with no luck.

Her mounting anxiety escalated with each step she took. Despite the echoey nature of Twilight’s castle, all was silent save for her own hoofsteps. Dejected and with no other plan, she turned around and headed back to the bathroom, the last place she had seen anypony, and hoped for somepony to be there.

Rainbow Dash had become uncharacteristically short of breath after having run away from the fire. She cursed herself for selfishly leaving Twilight behind in her fear.

Her leg throbbed with renewed pain once she stopped and had time to think about her situation. Even though she had removed the shard of glass that had been lodged in her hoof, the incision it made had been wide and surprisingly deep. During her sprint, she had agitated the wound once more and it started to bleed profusely; leaving bloody tracks along the floor.

“Fuck, maybe Twi was right,” Dash grumbled to herself. “I need to clean this out.” Rainbow Dash didn’t know where the downstairs bathroom was located but she vaguely remembered everyone talking about the upstairs bathroom at the top of the staircase, so she chose to go there instead.

“I’m getting real tired of this shit.”

Twilight had recovered enough to stand and walk back to the kitchen. The fire and smoke had cleared from the room suspiciously quick and hadn’t appeared to spread outside to any extent. She paid no mind to that and continued her investigation.

The kitchen reeked of burning fur, flesh and blood. She fought the urge to regurgitate and swallowed heavily. She glanced over to the wall where the poem had been hung. It hadn’t been damaged too much by the fire and was still readable. She looked over the poster several times, analyzing it thoroughly.

“Okay,” she began aloud. “So, Gilda went up in smoke, that much is obvious, which means there are only six of us left. Myself, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, and Sunset Shimmer. I haven’t seen anyone in a while so that may have changed, but for now I will assume everypony is still alive. How could the killer possibly know all of this ahead of time? They’ve been correct every time thus far, unless they can somehow see into the future which would mean only someone capable of magic would be the killer, but that also doesn’t make sense considering nopony has been able to use their magic since this ordeal started. So that puts me back at square one. Think Twilight think, okay I’ll leave the killer mystery behind and focus on the next immediate question, who is being targeted next? Perhaps if I stay in here, I can avoid being killed ‘on the run’, or maybe I could ‘give too much’ by revealing any information I find, oh but then maybe I’ll be killed ‘without a sound’ by not sharing any information… oh this is all so perplexing…”

“You think too much.” Twilight was startled by the familiar voice behind her. She spun around to see who had joined her in the kitchen but was met with a sinister smile and a hoof to the side of her head. Another hoof connected with her face, knocking her to the ground in a daze. Her vision blurred over like before as she felt blood drip from her snout and into her mouth. She spit out what she believed to be a tooth before attempting to erect herself. Her assailant stamped her head into the floor with an audible thump, knocking Twilight nearly unconscious. Twilight could hear her attacker open a door in the distance before being dragged by her mane in the same direction. Twilight could feel her head being shoved into something cold and frigid followed by what felt like a door resting firmly on her neck. Twilight concluded that her head had been stuffed into her refrigerator, though it was too late to do anything about it as her attacker reared their hind legs and bucked at the door with maximum force. Twilight felt her esophagus collapse under the immense pressure of the impact, rendering her unable to scream for help. The killer giggled with glee as they repeatedly bucked at the door again and again until they could hear Twilight’s neck snap under the force. Twilight’s body twitched for a final time before going limp.

The killer, not entirely satisfied, gave one last hardy kick to the door. Twilight’s lifeless body slumped out of the refrigerator, her exposed arteries gushing blood. The killer carefully opened the refrigerator door, cautious to avoid any blood and retrieved Twilight’s decapitated head, noting their victim’s final expression was one of agony and fear.

They chucked her head across the floor, it rumbled softly as it rolled to a stop by Lightning Dust’s charred corpse, more blood flinging about. Twilight’s blood had finally stopped flowing and pooled around the dead mare. The smell of copper wafting about the kitchen reached the killer’s snout as they grinned with sick complacency.

“Time to clean up.”

Six little ponies

Still trying to survive

One lost their mind

And then

There were

Five