Dead on Arrival

I walked down the wooden pier to my canoe, the dock making the distinct clunking squeaky sound when I tread upon it. It was a warm summer day in Banff National Park. The beams of the sun's life-giving illumination shone onto my face, warming it in the most pleasant fashion. Lake Moraine was everything I hoped it'd be. Beautiful, pristine wilderness.

I came up to my canoe. Cherry red with two paddles stacked messily inside like scissors in the middle. The craft itself bobbed lazily in the lake's low mid-day tide. I swung off my backpack and tossed it in, making a satisfying thumping noise as it smacked into the bow, sending the boat rocking bow to stern subtly. Now it's my turn.

I placed both of my hands on each side of the canoe before I stepped inside, being very careful to walk in the centre line as to not capsize the boat. The canoe wobbled a little as I tiptoed, but my hands slid to keep up with me, keeping me in line. I carefully stepped over the wooden seat and sat on it. I reached forward to the twin paddles in front of me and grabbed the topmost one, bringing it up to my lap and resting it on both sides of the boat. I tilted my neck back for a moment, taking in the beautiful atmosphere of nature in the summertime and a deep breath of fresh air, just glad to escape the drama for a while.

When I posted that video I never knew just how far it'd go. I always just assumed that it'd just be a strange curiosity with most people, or just simply admired as a work of super-genius level special effects to everyone who didn't believe my cries of truth. But nope, it blew up. The first million within a single week was crazy, the hundredth the next was just plain madness. Our video was featured on almost every brony news site multiple times, and even some actual news sites from the sheer popularity of it.

The universal reception was that most people watched it as a dare. It was spread around like that Two Girls one Cup video a few years back. Everyone was recording their reactions to it and putting it up. They were just so infatuated and disturbed at the same time at the incredible realism that it took effort not to gag or click away. Every crease, nook, cranny, and cut was clearly visible in high-def. Everyone felt the action scene after the autopsy was tense and exciting as well, a stark contrast to the alien curiosity and repulsiveness of the autopsy. I have to give Danny some credit, he has some real talent with the camera. But because it was so good and professional-looking, it just made it look even more staged. Overall the video looked so professionally done that even a few special effects companies approached us and asked if we wanted to work with them, we had to decline. We did get invited to be interviewed at a few pony cons, we agreed to those.

I said in the description, the interviewers, and to everyone that approached me, true as blue, that everything was real, that nothing was staged. Nobody took me seriously until a few weeks after when I made an explanation video detailing the evidence featuring the feather, broken tooth, and jar of bile. That's when it blew up a second time. It was almost as popular as the original video. So many people actually believed me that it even got people in high places, in universities specifically, to email me and ask to analyse these samples. I gladly handed them over, but all they discovered was an ordinary chipped human tooth they linked to some chick who was actually named the Ukrainian equivalent of Fluttershy living in one of those weird outskirts towns about a mile outside Chernobyl. You know those people who refused to leave and just set up camp like a few miles away? Apparently she has some kind of horrific chronic kidney disease now related to that. And with the composition of the vomit: bile and all the enzymes and proteins that come with it, partially digested hay, various vegetables, and turkey semen. As with the feather, they concluded that I just dyed an obscenely large turkey feather yellow, which would also explain the presence of semen in the stomach as a kind of gross joke.

After those results from actual qualified scientists came back, all hope of people believing in my claim of truth was shattered. Everyone continued to, or started to believe that we were just a few special effects prodigies looking for some YouTube fame.

If only I still had the body. Hard, undeniable proof. They couldn't dismiss that, they can't. But I don't have the body. All I have are my words, a feather, some girl in Ukraine's tooth, and a jar of bird cum. All of which confirmed fake by professionals. I spoke to Danny, Andy, and Mark when this whole thing started and they all had my back, but since they all helped with the procedure, ergo the video, their words of validity carry just as much weight as mine.

It was truly a surprise to me that this became a whole phenomenon, a meme if you will. All of us thought it was insane when it got so much traction, but what was more insane was when I discovered the details of YouTube's monetization system.

Even with just my share of the YouTube booty I could afford to go on a road trip. Thank God for that. Nobody else but myselfs on a canoeing getaway. A whole week to just relax and ... what the hell?

My skybound gaze caught a peculiar purple dot, just skittering over the treetops on the other side of the sparkling lake. I cocked my eyebrows and squinted my eyes to make it out. Whatever it was, it had wings and a horn.

" ... Twilight?" No. It couldn't be her, she doesn't even have that hazmat suit on, but what else could it be? I tracked the strange purple dart as it bobbed in and out of the treeline. It wasn't very subtle.

"This calls for an investigation!" I proclaimed my excitement, pointing my index finger up to the sky in sheer determination. I took the paddle resting on my lap, plunged it into the water, and took off.

Within seconds I was out on the pale blue lake, paddling with volition fuelled by my curiosity with each alternating stroke. After a while, I came to a rocky beach on the other side, pretty close to where I think I saw the UFO.

I found a nice clear path near a good place to dock, so I took it. I paddled hard. One stroke on my left, another on my right as I propelled the canoe to the shore. It eased to a stop as it found its place in the mud, but it was still pretty far away from solid land.

Again holding both sides of the canoe and walking in a straight line down the boat, I made my way to the shore. It wasn't very deep mud or a very heavy canoe, so I had very little trouble pulling it away from the water and onto the rocky beach into the trees. My choice of runners wasn't the best, as they still got soaked in the mud, despite the shallow depth of it.

After the vessel was securely docked and runners annoyingly squishy, I grabbed my backpack from the bow of the boat and swung it over my shoulder and onto my back, digging my other arm into the second strap for maximum stability. I made my way down the trail into the woods.

As I trotted up the trail, trying to follow the ones that lead to what is most likely Twilight Sparkle, I remembered something. Something I was looking forward to using. I took off my backpack and opened it up. In it was snacks, a water bottle, basic first aid stuff, all the essentials. But among them was a strange oddity. A little scratched up whistle, the end of which had a brown plastic rendition of a bear's head looking rather surprised at the end. It was a strange little thing I found in a puddle while at a road stop in Canmore.

As I was still walking up the trail, I dug it out from the mounds of trail mix and water bottles. I zipped up the pack and swung it back over my shoulder and inspected the artifact.

It was definitely a strange thing, but I can make a pretty good guess as to what sound it makes. It had a steel tube about 3 inches in length which had a black rectangular piece jutting out the back that had a curved wedged end, about one inch in length. At the other end was a plastic model of a grisly bear's head. Its lips formed an 'O' shape where one of the holes were. There was a plastic ring or bulge just under the head where its neck would be with another hole; a triangular one which started at the base of the bear's head and peaked about halfway on the bulge of plastic. Overall the whistle had 4 holes: one where you placed your lips, a circular one right where the steel tube starts, the triangular one on its 'neck', and the one where the bear's mouth was. I held the whistle in the palm of my hand; it fit rather nicely. I flicked my wrist a little to jump it into my fingers, held the wedged end up to my lips like a pencil, and blew.

ROOOAAR!

"Woah, that's realistic!" I exclaimed at the surprisingly loud roar of the tiny whistle. It really was almost like a real bear's roar. I slid the tiny whistle in my pocket as I walked along.

About 5 seconds later on my hunt for what was totally Twilight Sparkle, the air greeted me with a fresh breeze of summer air. As I took it in, I started to notice a strange, foul stench on it. It was very faint, but I dismissed it as run of the mill animal droppings.

Soon enough I came to a fork in the road. Just after the two trails split, there were two signs between them in front of some thick shrubbery and what looked like a map under the sign. I took notice and read them.

The first one was the most noticeable. It had a 'fork in the road' symbol, but the map just below it was in a wooden display case with a glass laminate, the top tilted a few degrees towards the reader to make it easier to read. It pretty much just told people that even though the trails split they'd reconnect again in a few kilometres, leaving quite a bit of foliage between them. Staked just beside the wooden box and the sign, there was a wolf spotting warning.

The wolf sign made me a little bit nervous, but I concluded that it must've been forgotten there or they would've shut down the trail and told me on one of those signs. Maybe they did on the part of the trail you're supposed to start on, but I wouldn't have any way of knowing. I just decided to make my time here brief and leave it at that. I took a few moments to think about which direction I should take, but in the end it didn't really matter, they'd just reconnect in a few miles anyway, so I started on the right.

As I started my trek, that horrible stench grew in strength in a matter of seconds. It seemed to be coming from the shrubbery behind the signs and map, and it was much stronger now than when I first noticed it. What was more disturbing was that the smell wasn't just the telltale smell of feces, but some other smells were burning my nostrils, too.

The scent of blood, and not ordinary blood. It had the irony aroma of blood, like putting your nose up to warm nickles, which was previously overpowered by the sickeningly sweet smell of pony-death, but there was something more to it this time. The scent of ... sweetness? Honey? But most of all, the one that really stood out to me was the most faint, you'd almost have to look for it to notice.

It was the all too familiar smell of vanilla.

My eyes shot open at the realization that this new aroma meant, and my curiosity snapped from a mild interest to a burning desire at the thing behind the shrubs.

"Is that?"

I stared at the bush, totally forgetting about Twilight. It was about 6 feet high, about as tall as I was. It was a dark green hue and full of tiny leaves to absorb the ambient sunlight. A hope grew in my stomach, the strange feeling in my heart tickled my aorta once more.

"Could it really?"

I knew she had to be dead or else she wouldn't be emitting the telltale vanilla, but I ignored that fact. I stepped past the signs and display case towards the shrubbery, stopping just before the wall of green. I stared at the bush with wide eyes, my heart pounding and stomach filled with excited fluttering butterflies. I had to know if I could trust what my senses told me was true. I gradually dug my hands into the green and turned my hands clockwise to the best position to uncover whatever was behind the shrubbery.

Slowly, I spread open the bushes, pushing a portal in the wall of branch and leaves, my heart racing to keep up with my excitement. Once I saw her butter yellow flank, mysteriously lined with red, my excitement got the best of me.

"Fluttershy?!" I tore open the bush, uncovering everything, and gagged.

My expression morphed from one of excitement to one of terror as I processed what I saw.

Fluttershy was in her natural resting position, the one I know. Her forelegs flopped to their sides, mangled, chewed, and looking like stringy, bloody strands of roast beef which held onto the bone loosely. Her hooves' keratin was scratched and chipped by what looked like fangs. Her hind legs were spread as if she were trying to impress a stallion, yet there was nothing there. One of the two small lumps of teat I discovered was still present, but it was mangled, ripped, and chewed behind its fuzzy veneer. The other was totally ripped off her body, nowhere to be found by her person. It left a crimson red patch of exposed muscle and nerve endings where it used to be. Trails of dark red blood soaked in her coat, paving a thick maroon road further down her groin to her shit-splattered tail. Rogue drips paved their way down her sides, painting her flank and butterflies in streaks of her own shimmering blood as they made their way to a putrid pool of urine.

Her hind leg, specifically where her calf would be, didn't go without a beating. It wasn't as bad as the front legs, but still had distinct fang marks and streaks of blood running down to her pony-thigh. Her right wing looked fine, but her left was broken, shattered and mangled. Her yellow feathers were ruffled and misaligned in all directions, tainted red by the ruined wing's blood. Her underbelly was totally ripped apart. The flabby pale skin and fur that covered it was all but ripped to pieces; bloody ribbons of it littered the ground below her in thin shreds. Her abdominal muscles were ripped out in stringy strands of muscle fibre, allowing her small intestinal tubes to spill out onto the forest floor in a bloody heap of thick pink noodles.

But despite it all what disturbed me most was her face. It wasn't the nip marks on her forehead, or her neck, which was completely mauled beyond recognition, leaving jagged cartilage of her trachea jutting out and soaking the dirt and grass beneath her in a mud of blood. No. It was her eyes. One was shut peacefully, as if she passed in her sleep, dreaming of her cute animal friends as her last memory before she drifted away, while the other was utterly destroyed almost beyond recognition.

Her eyelid was totally ripped off, leaving her large, melon-like eye utterly exposed. There wasn't much of it left. The middle of her eye, the cornea, iris, pupil, they were all torn out, leaving her with a rigid bite mark of where they used to be. Vitreous humour and blood mixed together in a vile cocktail, shimmering on her cheeks and gelling in a puddle beneath her head, soaking her tangled, messy mane in the mixture. The bite created a jet black cavern in her skull, peering into her huge oculus like a lake of gel in a mountain, pouring its fluid down her face as if it were a lazy river.

I gagged at the sight, my stomach twisted, my mouth dropped and salivated with the expectation of vomit.

"I ... I ..." I stuttered out in shock and disgust. I covered my mouth when the horror show reminded me of the wolves. I looked at the ground, some of it was muddy with Fluttershy's own blood and waste, and sure enough there were paw-prints in the mud around her mangled carcass. "Holy shit," I exhaled to myself. I had to get out of here. Fast.

I jogged to her mangled body, I just can't pass her up. I need people to finally believe me. I don't know or care how she got here or why, but I still need her.

I jogged through mud puddles of her own blood, shit, and piss to what was left of her body. I crouched down and dug my hands under her head and croup and lifted her up, gagging at her detestably mangled face and my uncomfortable proximity to it. I flung her over my shoulder, this proved not to be wise, as her shit-caked buttock and tail were right next to my face, causing me to retch with its horrible familiar stench. The feeling of her intestines squishing against my shoulder didn't feel comfortable, either.

I sucked it up and trotted out of the bushes, leaving ripped shreds of her skin and flesh behind for the buzzards. I heard a strange mechanical groaning noise as I ran down the trail carefully, as not to trip over the roots jutting out of the ground. I didn't care about the ominous noise, as I was running like hell from it anyway.

I jogged out of the treeline, careful not to let Fluttershy fall off my shoulder, and made my way to my canoe. I swung Fluttershy off of me and held her face first in front of me and tossed her back-first into the bow of the canoe. She flew through the air, her legs drifting towards me as she sailed, as if she were falling from a cliff, yet her face was locked in a state of sleep as if she fainted when she fell.

THWACK!

Fluttershy landed hard on the canoe floor, her head snapped back with an awful crack against the bow and out of the canoe, sending her obscenely long mane to sink into the water. Her hind legs flopped to occupy the space between her body and the hull, shit-caked tail flowing between them both. Her front legs dangled aimlessly out the boat and into the pale, shimmering blue water. They tainted it red with what little blood she had left in them.

I threw my backpack in the centre of the canoe just on top of the paddles, causing a clattering noise of wood from them as they jumbled to a halt.

I took hold of the stern of the canoe and pushed it back into the lake, the hull grinding against the stones and pebbles of the rocky, muddy beach.

Once we were far enough from the shore, I stepped in the boat. I walked down the centre to the seat, swung my legs over it, and sat down. I grabbed a paddle from underneath my backpack and plunged it into the water, using it to push off.

I paddled as quick as I could to the dock on the other side.

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The TARDIS whirred in and out of existence as it screeched and groaned periodically. Soon enough, the blue box stopped its whirring and materialized 50 feet away from its target.

"Let's go!" Twilight exclaimed with determination. She flung the TARDIS doors open and jumped out, dripping with anxiety.

"Would it hurt to be a little more careful with my property?" The Doctor asked sarcastically as he casually followed Twilight out his door.

"No time!" Twilight answered. She pounced on the ground and scanned the area in a concentrative state, until a gentle breeze wafted through, causing some shrubbery roughly 5 feet away to rustle as it flowed through it.

"Ugh! Do you smell that?" Twilight asked, putting her hoof up to her nose to block the smell of urine and feces.

"Unfortunately I do," The Doctor answered. Twilight remembered why Fluttershy left in the first place, which at least answered the existence of the smell. Figuring that a mare as shy as Fluttershy would want a private place to relieve herself, she deduced that she must've chosen the space behind the bushes as a makeshift toilet.

"Wait, she might still be over there, behind those bushes!" She darted to the foliage, the Doctor followed suit at a trotting pace.

Twilight bounded through the thick bushes, landing in the middle of a strange, red streak in the dirt. "Fluttershy?!" She shouted into the clearing, yet to her dismay, nopony was there. She scanned the clearing only for Fluttershy and traces of Fluttershy's whereabouts, skimming past the streaks of red and ribbons of shredded flesh littering the clearing of grass and dirt for evidence of her presence as flukes or something. "Where are you?!" She yelled to the bushes and trees with her tone heavy with worry. The Doctor squeamishly squirmed his way past the bushes and acknowledged the shredded bits of yellow flesh and the pools of blood and other body fluids Twilight purposefully ignored. His eyes widened in surprise, gagging in response and putting his hoof up to his nose as he quickly pieced together what happened.

"Urm, Twilight?" He asked for Twilight's attention.

"Not now, Doc! We have to find Fluttershy!"

"I think we just did."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look," he gestured to the shreds of red and yellow flesh. Twilight picked one up with her magic, bringing it closer, and dropped her mouth in surprise and dread when the truth unveiled itself.

"Y-You mean?" Twilight choked out, dropping the shred of flesh on the ground with a splat.

"Yep, see these paw-prints? Wolves must've gotten to her," he gestured to the wolf tracks on the ground," the Doctor became less disgusted and evolved into a more inquisitive state, yet still pretty grossed out. This wasn't his first time seeing such gruesomeness. "The body isn't anywhere to be seen, so they must've dragged her back to their den, so it mustn't be too far. I doubt you'll be able to convince them to give her back to you, though."

"It can't be wolves! Fluttershy's great with animals, it's her special talent for crying out loud! She's in less danger with animals than she is with an- an- uh, an ice cream cone!" Fluttershy was lactose intolerant, so at least one half of her argument was fully known to be true.

"Just look at the proof. I hear you're a mare of science, correct? Then look at all this evidence. Shredded bits of yellowish skin and flesh, puddles of blood, urine, and feces just everywhere, paw prints and," He looked closer, "There's even an imprint of a pony-ish figure in the mud! With yellow feathers right next to it! What do you make of that?"

Twilight couldn't accept what to make of it. She had to be missing something, like wolves dragging a body would leave a trail, not an imprint, for instance. Not only has one of her best friends probably just died, she died twice. And this time the weight bore directly on her shoulders.

"I-I don't know! I just, I just," Twilight sighed and sat down on the forest floor, tearing up quickly. She buried her face in her hooves and sobbed. "Oh, it's all my fault!" She said in between gasps. "I forced her to come here! If it wasn't for me she'd still be alive!" She continued her woes. "I literally dragged her here kicking and screaming! And for what? For her to die again? To be mauled to death?!"

The Doctor looked at her with empathy in his eyes from a distance. He didn't want to talk to her, he felt he'd done enough already, but he had to get them out of here. It wasn't safe with the estimated proximity of the body, ergo wolves. Then again, the dogs would probably be satisfied for a while on a whole pony, but then there might be other hungry packs out there, tummies growling for fresh cut Flutter. The Doctor knew from experience that bad things usually don't come in singles. He has to try to get Twilight out of her funk before the cries of bloody murder Fluttershy probably made when she was horribly mauled to death attracts other predators.

"Twilight? You hear that?" The Doctor didn't hear anything.

"What?" The depressed Sparkly Twilight pondered.

The Doctor gasped to accentuate his act for the sake of drama, "I think I heard a bear!"

"A bear?!" Twilight got up to her hooves in nervousness, effectively temporarily knocking her out of her funk.

"Yes! We must leave immediately!" The Doctor started to jog out of the bushes to the TARDIS, expecting her to follow suit.

Twilight sighed, "Can it just wait a few moments?" Twilight figured out pretty quick that there wasn't a bear, he was a bad liar. The Doctor contemplated this for a moment, under the circumstances of just losing a friend less than a minute ago, he nodded. He trotted back into the TARDIS to set the Temporal Shifter to take them home while he let Twilight come to terms with her loss.

Twilight walked out of the bushes, the constant reminder of her deceased friend sickened her with guilt and sadness in the trees themselves. She walked slowly through the forest, taking deep breaths in an attempt of gaining fresh air, yet only getting more reminders of Fluttershy. The wolf-bait used to love all of nature's bounties. The trees, animals, bugs, birds, she loved it all with a passion. Twilight turned her head, trying to find something to focus on other than reminders of her overwhelming failure. Eventually she saw a splitting of population in the dense trees, a portal to an almost perfect view of the lake.

She turned to it, taking in as much of it as she can. It took her mind off of Fluttershy for a moment, and that's what she needed. She sat in the forest towards the view, taking it all in, totally forgetting the 'bear' the Doctor warned her about. After a few moments of peace, Fluttershy emerged again from her subconscious, along with the incredible guilt that name carried now.

"Fluttershy would've loved this," she began her improvised eulogy. She stared out into the beauty, her conscience plagued with the yellow pegasus.

"I'm so sorry," she continued, a tear welling in her eye and voice starting to crack. She stared down onto the lake and saw a cherry red canoe paddling away from her. It was pretty far away, but she could make out two figures. One was a man who was paddling the boat, and the other must have been woman with long hair, sleeping peacefully on the canoe, letting the lake rock her as she slept. The man's body blocked most of the woman, and it was incredibly far away, but Twilight could tell she was very deep in slumber. Twilight smiled at the sweetness of romance, yet continued thinking about the one she lost twice among the trees.

Was this just meant to be? Was she meant to die here the first time and this is just the universe collecting what's due? Or was this just the nature of life itself: all that lives must eventually die. But was this the result of the nature and balance of things? Or was this just Lady Luck, frowning upon an innocent, well, kind of innocent sweet pegasus at random? With the body gone the way of the holiday turkey there was no hope of reviving her again, but even if they did would she just find some other way to kill herself once more?

Twilight had to come to terms with the truth, however bitter it may be.

"We'll miss you, Fluttershy," she finished in a creaky voice, making peace with Fluttershy's death while staring peacefully at the canoe on the lake, paddling to the other side.

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