Dead on Arrival

"It's a good thing Fluttershy wasn't here to witness what we did to those turkeys," Rarity commented, looking down on the crystal floor. Dead turkeys were strewn about in the throne room, their rumps stuffed with pool balls.

        "Yeah, I don't know why we thought that would work," Twilight responded shamefully.

        "Well what do we do now? Can we still save Fluttershy?" Spike asked Twilight, his tone anxious.

        "I don't know, Spike. We need Fluttershy for the portal spell to work again. Without her, I don't know if we can do anything at all, especially now that we're all out of turkeys," Twilight answered, quickly losing her confident composure. "Oh, it's all my fault! I wish I never got that spell in the first place! Fluttershy would still be here, not in some Celestia forsaken parallel universe," Twilight continued in tears, plopping on her haunches and burying her hooves in her face. "She must be shivering in fear right now, we all know how she gets!" She hunched over, her head nearly touching the ground and finished, "I'm a terrible friend," Applejack can't stand to see one of her friends in such a funk. As the emotional anchor of the team, she tried to comfort her.

        "It's okay, Twi. None of us knew this would happen, includin' you. Just promise to remember that it just ain't yer fault," Applejack trotted to twilight's sobbing side, eager to give some support. "Nopony expected Fluttershy to just charge through us like an angry manticore, an' you even tried to stop her! Just promise me you won't go beatin' yourself up over this, Okay?" Applejack laid a comforting hoof over the tops of her shoulders. These words of comfort bounced right off Twilight's mind, not making much of an impact.

        "And hey! We'll find a way to bring her back! Gettin' all sad won't get us any closer to rescuing her, so let's get on to finding another solution! Should I run over to Fluttershy's and grab her chickens?" Pinkie Pie offered, trying to lift everypony's spirits. Twilight got up from the ground with a weak smile, appreciating the support of her dearest friends, even if they didn't help much.

        "Uhh, I don't think that'd work, Pinkie," Rainbow chimed in, killing off another bad idea before it begins. "Hey Twilight, how about I fly to Canterlot and find some more books? I can get there and back faster than you can say 'Zap Apple Jam'!" Rainbow offered with determination, shooting in the air. "Just tell me what to pick up!"

        "Wait, maybe we don't have to go to Canterlot at all!" Twilight said in excitement, her eyes and ears lighting up. She remembered the spell. "Maybe the same spell I used to open this thing could tell us another way to summon it again!" Twilight darted to the Starswirl's scroll on the floor.

        "Marvellous thinking, dear!" Rarity added.

        Twilight picked up Starswirl's spell and scanned it. She saw some strange numbers or numerals on the bottom, ones she's never seen before, but other than that there was nothing helpful. "Mmph. Nothing. It says we need all elements for it to work. Looks like we will have to go to Canterlot after all."

THWACK!

        "Was that a bird?" Starlight asked.

        "It's just the mail," Spike answered.

        "I'll get it!" Twilight responded, anxious to get moving. She bolted to the large crystal doors and flung them open to see the local mailmare, Ditzy Doo. She was lying on the entrance to the castle in a heap of mail.

        "Oh, hi Princess Twilight!"

        "Hi, Ditzy! It's just Twilight by the way. Any mail today or did you just crash into the castle again? I'm kind of in a really big hurry here so if we could speed this up that'd be great!"

        "Oh, sorry," Ditzy said in a sheepish tone, climbing out of the pile of packages. "It's just so big it's sometimes hard to avoid," she explained herself, catching herself trailing off. "Oh, right! The mail. No, you don't have any, I'm afraid. I was just at Fluttershy's delivering her mail when I saw she wasn't home. I came over here to see if you can look after it until she comes back." Ditzy explained. "You never know about those shifty animals. One time I caught a turkey rummaging through her mailbox! It looked like he was looking for something specific. I don't know what a turkey'd want with some magazines; they can't even read!" She began her tangent, much to Twilight's anxious dismay. "You know I once found a whole stack of Playcolt buried in her backyard once!" She started getting even more off topic, like she always does. "Boy that mare sure loves her Playcolt, I swear it's all she reads. She must REALLY like the articles." She continued.

        "It really is nice chatting with you Ditzy, but I really have to go!" Twilight explained hurriedly, levitating the letters and packages in very discreet looking packaging in Fluttershy's name out of Ditzy's pile.

        "Oh, what's the problem? Maybe I could help!" Ditzy said enthusiastically while pushing her pile of mail back in her saddlebags with her hooves.

        "Oh, there's not much you can help with, but I appreciate the off-"

        "Us and Twilight opened a portal to another dimension to find more friendship problems and have more welcome parties, but Fluttershy and Angel jumped through it before we knew it was safe and the portal collapsed on her and now she's stuck in a totally different dimension with nopony to go to for help so us and Twilight are going to Canterlot to find another way to open the portal to get her back!" Pinkie said, interrupting Twilight, finding her head poking out the right side of the door.

        "Er- yes. That it is why it is  imperative that we get moving immediately!"

Twilight said, aching to get going already.

        "Oh, I don't know much about that kind of stuff, but I know somepony who does!" Ditzy said, eager to help.

THWACK!

       "That's the last of 'em!" Spike said as he chucked the last dead turkey in the dumpster. He glanced at the castle entrance to find a guest. "Oh, hey Ditzy!"

----------

THWACK!

        Fluttershy flopped hard into my bathtub. I have to be more careful, She's the only one we have. I shouldn't think like that. She's a sentient being who deserves respect, especially in death.

        I turned on the shower, sending ice cold water raining down on Fluttershy's tummy. Her forelegs were resting parallel to each other on her chest, unable to flop as they did before because of the fibreglass hull clutching her sides. Her hind legs followed, doing a sort of spread towards the tap. It's a good thing she has no genitalia, or this would be awkward.

        Her expressionless wink is unchangeable now. I'll try making her look more restful later, but rigor mortis is setting in fast. I need to clean her up quick before she gets stiff as a board.

       I flipped her on her tummy, the crusty feces became moist. I sprayed her flanks and tail with water, sending flakes of shit to fly off and down the drain, washing them clean. I ran my fingers like a comb through her incredibly long tail while spraying it with water to ensure that all the waste is washed away down the drain where it belongs. Her butterflies are sopping wet, but free of any mess. I need to make her presentable for her big night.

        That's morbid, this is serious. She's the only pony on Earth so I can't fuck this up. Some of the guys at the viewing party would probably love to help once they got their socks back on, maybe one of them can sneak her into an MRI when nobody's watching. As far as I know this is a sudden death case. The MRI could give us a general overview of her anatomy and maybe even the cause of death. I hope there are a few temps there who know how to work it.

        Where am I going to take her after we get the results come back? The dissecting room, of course. I'm sure they have a few empty spots. I've dissected more than a few cadavers in there. U of A prides itself on its 24 hour dissection lab. They have scalpels and dissection tables, but I'll have to go hunting around the morgue to find the jars and embalming fluid. After determining the cause of death on the MRI, we take out her organs for specialists at MIT or somewhere to analyze. But how am I going to even get her there, and where will I keep her until then? It's not like I can just waltz in there with a dead pony on my back. One bridge at a time, Matt.

        Maybe I should just bury her. Maybe she just deserves a peaceful rest.

        No. As much as she probably would've wanted, I simply cannot let possibly one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history rot in the ground. Not only is she the first alien on earth, that we know of, she is also a purely fictional character existing in the real world. It's not like we can ask her where she comes from or how she got here, the most we can do is learn how she ticks.

        She probably has regular horse anatomy, I should probably read up on how to dissect them, too.

        ...

        Maybe I should just make it public.

        My trance of thought was interrupted by knees shivering in a shower of cold water. The bathtub was overflowing. I snapped out of my head and onto what's causing the blockage. Flutter Butter's inconveniently long tail was plugging up the drain.

        "Oh, no," I sighed. I bent down and grabbed her tail with both hands and pulled. Her putrid tail rose out of the drain as I lifted, encrusted in her own shit once more, but allowing the water to drain. The water was tainted a mild shade of yellow from the urine previously dried on her tummy. It drained away. It, and the flakes of feces floating in the Fluttershy soup.

        I concluded that her body at least was clean enough, so I plunged my arms into the icy water and dug them under her corpse. Scrunching and wiggling my fingers under her furry body to get a better grip. I lifted her up and out of the tub and placed her body on the floor, her legs moved slowly to their natural positions. Rigor mortis was continuing its conquest over the winking Fluttershy. I kept her tail in the tub to wash it again.

        "Where's my Mane and Tail?" I joked. Letting my frustration flow down with the broth.