It had taken a hundred and thirty years to get around to it, but it was finally time for Joy to clean her room. The zebra-ghoul filly looked down at the note on the pip-buck fused to her left foreleg and sighed, she couldn't think of anything else to distract herself from the task at hoof. Yell indoors, done that. Play in the flowers, check. Explore the rest of Canterlot, got that shirt. She didn't like it though, clashed with her stripes. She racked her mind for something to do, anything. After a few moments, Joy gave up, she didn't have any paper or tape anyway.
Oh! She could find those!That would put off the dreaded cleaning for a little longer. Five minutes later, she had found the needed items and were ready to take down any ideas for things to do and tape them over the note about cleaning. . .
Any idea at all. . .
"UHG! This is so boring!" she shouted at no one in particular before shrugging and accepting her fate. "Well, I don't have anything else to do."
First, she servayed the room; one of the walls had collapsed, her bed was in complete disarray, and toys were strewn about the floor. It was dusty, too. Real dusty.
She tried dusting with a rag she had dampened in the pink-tinged water outside, but gave up after a half hour of trying to clean the header. The next thing she did was cleaning up the rubble from the wall. That part was easy, just dump it out the hole. Toys went into the toy box, the bed was made, pictures in the hall straightened. Before she knew it, she had cleaned the entire house.
She looked around in pride at the house, which was as close to sparkling as it would come, and was about to take the note off her pip-buck when she heard voices coming from outside. Curious, she trotted over to a window and peaked out. Four ponies were outside, they weren't ghouls, just ponies. They were all wearing haz-mat suits and heavy-duty saddlebags and were fairly heavily armed. "Hey! It isn't safe here for non-ghoulies!" Joy yelled at them after hopping into the window. The ponies froze, staring at her. "What?" she asked after a seconds pause. No response. She was about to ask what they were doing when she saw a shotgun wrapped in an amber magic glow, "Ooo, a unicorn! Can I see some magic tri-"
BLAM! She fell backwards out of the window, her face mangled from the buckshot. After a few moments, the necromantic magic in her worked its . . . well, magic, and the damage was repaired. "Jerks," she muttered as she sat up, shaking her head. Before all the cobwebs had been cleared from her head, the door opened and the ponies trooped in. "Why'd you shoot me?"
The ponies whipped around at the sound of her voice. One of them turned to the unicorn, "I thought you killed the stripe!" he yelled in a gruff voice.
"So did I!" The unicorn, a mare, backpedaled slightly.
"Well you obviously didn't." Gruff Voice turned back to the filly, "I will." He started firing his battle-saddle mounted machine gun into Joy, emptying the magazine. "That's how you kill a rotter, Mercy," he said before turning away, "Spread out and take different rooms, there might be something valuable here." The ponies split up and started searching the house, leaving Joy's bullet-riddled body lying in the first room. A little while and a slurping sound later, Joy was back on her hooves. After shaking her head, she trotted into the kitchen in search of the ponies. When she entered the room, she saw the unicorn going through the fridge.
"Why can't there ever be any Sparkle-Cola?" Miss Unicorn asked out loud.
"I drank the last of it about fifty years ago." Miss Unicorn jumped and let out a cry of surprise. Joy sat down. "Can I see a magic trick? Please?"
Miss Unicorn stood there, staring at Joy and stammering, "How- What- Your dead!"
"No, I'm not."
"Bu-but I shot you! And Storm shot you! You should be dead! You were dead!"
Joy tilted her head, "You mean waking up like that isn't normal?"
"NO!"
Joy scratched her chin with a cracked hoof, deep in thought. "Huh."
"Hey, Mercy, you ok-" one of the other ponies had come to see what the noise was about, and froze when he saw Joy. "Uh, Mercy, that thing was dead not two minutes ago."
"I know!" The unicorn said, panic edging in on her voice. She leveled her shotgun at Joy, ready to unload on the filly.
"Please don't shoot me, it's very disorientatening."
"Disorienting," the stallion corrected her.
"Yeah, that too." Joy looked at Miss Unicorn, the mare was shaking and struggling to keep a steady grip on the gun, "You ok, Miss Unicorn?"
"Oh, dear," said the stallion. "Would you mind going on? I'm afraid she might be having a nervous breakdown."
"Ok! Bye, Miss Unicorn!" With that, Joy went in search of the other two ponies. She found Gruff Voice in her room, going through her toys.
"Junk, junk and more junk," he muttered as he tossed toy after toy over his shoulder, "Where are your valuables, you striped scum."
"Hey, I just cleaned those up!" Joy yelled, in shock that he was going through her toys, and calling them junk.
Gruff Voice turned around, "I killed you," he said in a voice devoid of any emotion.
"Nope!"
"I shot you, and killed you."
"Yep! Nope!"
Gruff Voice sat there for a moment before getting up and trotting back to the rest of the ponies with Joy in tow, yelling, "Hey, Popper! How much explosives do you have?"
"Enough to take down half the block, why?" came the response.
"I want you to level this place, the striped rotter won't stay dead."
"What about the loot?"
"Forget the loot."
"Ok, will do." The pony the voice belonged to walked past Gruff Voice and Joy and into the filly's room.
When Gruff Voice and Joy entered the living room, he turned and pointed at her, "Sit." She sat. "Now stay there."
"Ok, hey, are you going to pick up the toys? Because I just cleaned the house and I really don't want to pick up my toys again."
"Yeah, sure. We'll pick them up." Gruff Voice said absentmindedly as he trotted into the kitchen. A moment later, he reappeared with Miss Unicorn and the stallion that had tried to comfort her. "You done yet, Popper?" He called as the pony trotted into the room.
"Yeah, and I used one of our bailfire eggs, just to be sure."
"Don't like to wast those, but no matter, let's get out of here." Gruff Voice turned to Joy, "Stay there, ok? We're going to be right back."
"Ok!"
Gruff Voice lead the three others out of the house. Two seconds later, Jo was headed to see the egg the pony left behind. As she entered her room, she saw some sticks of gray clay laying next to a green, egg-shaped rock. "Ooo, play-clay!" She said, then noticed a timer on the block, "Waitaminute, that's not play-clay." Her ears swivelled back as she realized what the blocks of clay were. "Oh, poop. . . RUN!" She scampered as quick as she could to the front door.
Just as she exited the house, the explosives detonated, the shockwave catching her and throwing her across the street.
She lay there for a moment before sitting up and shakes get her head. Looking up, she saw the crater where her house used to be. She glanced between it and the note on her pip-buck several times before gesturing wildly at the crater and exclaiming, "How am I supposed to clean THAT up?"
