Four Would Be Pretty Good, Too, I Guess

Big Macintosh woke up.

“Oh no and also not again.”

Applejack flies through the air with all the grace one would expect from an Earth Pony, which is pretty much no grace at all. Finally, her body makes an uncomfortable compromise with momentum and the wall behind her.

Two ribs snap with an all too familiar feeling. Well that's bad. Bad like a joke that starts with “How many Zebras ...” Bad like a conversation that starts with, “Shut the door, please ...” Bad like you know what the punchline is going to be, but can do nothing to stop it.

Twitching ears pick up a creaking sound, and her last thought before everything goes black is, “Falling lumber, mah one weakness.”

Big Macintosh was on his hooves and out the door in a rush. Not even pausing to hear Granny Smith's admonishment. Eeyup, somepony could get hurt someday, but not today. Too much had been sacrificed.

First, locate the rotten tree, mark it off to be disposed of later. Second, rope off the barn, with its lethal beetle infestation. Third, the rickety wooden bridge, he just gave it a quick buck causing it to collapse. There would be time to rebuild later, after his sister was safe.

As he finished reinforcing the weak strut on the windmill, the sun was just starting to crest the hills, dying the skies blood red. Cursing Celestia under his breath, the powerful stallion toppled the woodpile, moving out of the way as several Black Widow spiders vacated their nest. That just left clearing the easternmost edge of the orchard before the snakes could show up. Ponies always said farming was one of the most dangerous careers in Equestria, but it wasn't something you really contemplated until you started having the sort of screwed up day that this was going to have become.

By the time Applejack's stetson loomed into view, the stallion was dead tired, but everyone was alive. Together, they continued the day's applebucking without incident.

Everything was perfect. Finally.

That's when half of Sweet Apple Acres erupted into fire.

Damn. The barrels of Frighteningly Flammable Fluids sitting next to the Crates of Highly Combustible Matches. He knew he'd forgotten something.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Time Travelers, yay!” Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were filled with enthusiasm, despite the grimness of their task. Applebloom's face, however, was fixed with determination. Twilight Sparkle was the smartest unicorn in Equestria, with her help she couldn't fail. Her elder siblings would survive. She knew it. She had to save them.

Big Macintosh's fetlocks were still burning when he banged on the door to Ponyville's Library. His mind was still burning with the sight of Applejack's formerly internal organs, spilling out both ends like a bug.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

In a distressingly gloomy room, Death glared in consternation as the Bishop he was about to take with his Knight vanished and reappeared one space to left. That was not right at all. Five Bishops on black squares? Five Bishops at all?

His hollow eyes turned toward his opponent, and his bone jaw creaked open. The grim rictus did not move as it released a dry whisper. The whisper slid across the table like a legion of serpents on the water. It was the foretold the end of all things, it was the spur that drove tyrants and lured adrenaline junkies, it promised torment, agony and could kill a party with ease. “Pinkie ...” it said.

“I would never cheat!” The bright pink blot on an otherwise perfect landscape of grays and blacks blurted out, “Besides, I wanted to play Bingo.”

“You can't play Bingo with life and death, it would be in bad taste.” Just then the entire board turned upside down, spilling the pieces across the table. Several of the pieces turned into butterflies and took flight, settling on the edged underside of Death's sharply curving horn. “But this is very frustrating.”

Twilight took the full brunt of a charging red shoulder on the nose and sending her back to the floor for a third time. Before she could get off another spell, a massive hoof stamped down on her left foreleg, shattering it.

“Ha, heh, ha. What was that I was saying about being done?” Twilight smiled in panic, “I meant I would be only too happy to continue helping your family rape the laws of time and space.”

Despite Rarity's protests, she finds the symbols and words easy to draw. As if she has done this before. Many, many times before.

“You got it?” Violet eyes stare desperately into blue, “I can't live in a world where I killed my closest friend.”

“I thought I was-”

“SHUT UP AND CAST THE SPELL!”

The wagon's brakes creaked one last time before giving out and hurtling, like a guided missile, toward the Apple siblings.

Without giving her the chance to argue, Big Macintosh threw himself against his sister. She felt her ribs crack under the impact, like old friends saying Hello.

She didn't even bother to turn back and see the wreckage before running toward the Ponyville Library.

An eight foot tall wooden structure overburdened with the large print edition of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Martyr Complexes, But Were Too Self-Sacrificing to Ask Volumes 1-30 topples forward and everything goes black.

A violet mane is matted together with blood and sweat, beneath it two violet eyes are wide in panic. The filly's voice cracks as she approaches her friend, hauling the wreckage off of her body. “Applejack? Applejack! Quit fooling around!”

“Get out of the way!” the smaller Earth pony flung all of her weight against her brother, but he remained steady. Immovable in the face of the very slowly descending pallet of wood.

“Eenope!”

In the distance, somepony seemed to be shouting something like, “Get out from under there, you idiots. You're going to be crushed.”

“Macintosh, I'm the one who gets to die!” Applejack flung herself against her brother again, trying to push him the few inches to safety.

He reared up, the top of his head nearly brushing the pallet, which was descending at a very, very slow pace. The sort of pace where a pony could casually walk out from under it. Two ponies even.

“Eenope,” he replied, swinging his right hoof, but he only connected with hat and pony tail as his sister ducked low and spun. Her back hooves smashed with his lower jaw. And again. The third blow dropped him on his back.

“See, I told ya'll.” she cheered. “Get up. No fair being a spoil sport, I won fair and square, so I get to be crushed by this several hundred pound pallet.” No response, “Macintosh? Big Mac?”

She pushed a hoof against his chest, but he didn't move. He was out cold, and speaking of cold where had the sun gone?

Applejack looked up, and banged her face against the wooden pallet. Oh, right, the thing that was going to kill them. Well, maybe she could hold it up until her brother regained consciousness and escaped?

The pressure on her spine and the feeling of her legs snapping like every bucking safety device or structural support she'd encountered during this endlessly repeating day told her that, no, she couldn't slow the immense weight gradually lowering upon her and her brother.

The singed and battered stallion sucks in a deep breath, he'd spent the whole trip preparing his explanation, readying himself for the sprint of articulation.

Twilight held up a single hoof, cutting him off. “Don't even bucking start,” she hisses.

“Start what?”

“Applejack is dead, right? You're here to ask me to cast a spell so you can change the past, and of course I am going to agree because I agreed to help her and I'm going to feel guilty, but it won't work. It won't work until you realize that you have to sacrifice yourself to save her, so you will, but she won't accept that, no, no, no she won't. She's going to come running over here to get me to cast a spell so she can go back and fix your death, which won't work until she realizes that she has to sacrifice herself to save you, which she will. And guess what? The first thing you're going to do is come here for help, because that's what you're here to do, right?” She panted for breath as her usually groomed mane popped out into increasingly intricate twists and curls.

“Eeyup …?”

“Do you know how I know this?” She threw open a cupboard filled with scrolls. “Each time I cast the spell, everything resets, except the scroll used to cast it and a few residual memories. This is just one cupboard, I've got others. Want to guess how many?”

Big Macintosh said nothing.

“287. At an average of six lines per wheel, that is over 1700 times we've been through this. And I am done.”

What could possibly go wrong in the middle of a field? Nothing. The nearest tree, wagon and/or wooden structure was almost a mile away. Safe. Safe, safe, safe, safesafesafesafe.

The sky was even clear. Well, almost clear. There was a yellow blob growing closer. Growing a lot closer. Gaining a lot of speed as it grew a lot closer.

“WING CRAMPS!” Fluttershy screamed, “sorry, whoever I'm about to land on,” she added, apologetic unto death.

The pegasus landed squarely on the stallions neck. It snapped like a twig.

Applejack doesn't even bother knocking, she simply barrels through the door and crowing triumphantly, “Twilight, Ah figured it out!”

The unicorn didn't have time to turn toward the door before a hoof slammed her head into the table and her tea cup. Porcelain shrapnel cuts across violet eyes.

Everything is blood as one of her closest friends rips rope tight across her throat, and a voice whispers in her ear, “The spell says that someone has to die, and Ah'm sorry, Twilight, but family is family.”

“We're hiding in the basement because, um, it's a tornado drill.” The Element of Honesty shifted nervously, here eyes searching the wooden ceiling for a script that might explain her actions better. “Yes, a tornado drill. Y'all just stay right there, and I'll go outside and, um, make tornado sounds.”

Her family stared huge holes through her.

“It's for realism,” she explained.

“You know that you're my favorite big sister in the world,” Applebloom dragged the admonition from within her small frame, “but that is the stupidest thing Ah've ever heard.”

“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh added, not entirely sharing his youngest sister's reservations. Older brothers are like that: jerks.

Applejack ignored their complaints and rushed out of the basement, slamming the door shut behind her.

The force of the door closing sent cracks and splinters through the wood.

“Go fish!” Pinkie's high-pitched squeal grated on ears that were attuned to hear the death rattle of a rabbit from a continent away.

“We're not playing Go Fish.” Death shook a butterfly from the mane that hung limp across his skeletal back, “This is Gin-Rummy.”

“I don't know how to play that.”

“Well, that doesn't really matter, since every card in the deck seems to have turned into a King of Hearts.” Death dropped his cards in disgust.

“Are you sure you don't want to play Bingo?”

“Apple ...” Twilight chokes past the rope, “... Applejack …”

Stars and darkness swam across her vision. Supernovas. Explosions. Each instant growing longer, stretching out into an eternity as galaxies are born and die.

“ENOUGH!” she growls. Her horn flickers and Twilight is outside the rope. Another flicker, this one much stronger than intended, sends Applejack flying through the air with all the grace one would expect from an Earth Pony.

“Nopony should outlive their grandchildren,” the green matron's gentle sorrow was almost as deadly as Applebloom's wide eyes.

White freckles, red spatter and the subtle darkening of tear tracks, tan knees collapsing into mud made from blood and fouler fluids, a throat splits open to release a scream of rage against the heavens. “How does a boat even fall out of the sky like that? Are boats even canon?”

Violet coat covered in blood, Ponyville's newest murderer ran to Rarity's house. This sort of magic was beyond the fashionista, but Twilight could instruct her. She was the Element of Magic, she was Celestia's star pupil, she could fix anything!

Rarity saw Twilight coming and looked at the fireplace where she had only just finished burning the last of nearly 80 pieces of parchment with ornate wagon wheels drawn on them. The first few were amateurish, her inputs constantly corrected, but the last time, which was today, sort of, Twilight had commented on how she was almost a natural.

Rarity laid a towel on the floor just inside the door, no point in ruining the carpet, and fortunately Sweetie Belle was already gone for the day. Great things are the accumulation of small details, the unicorn thought as she telekini- telekinecta- magically lifted a pair of scissors and tucked them into her mane.

As soon as Twilight's rear hooves reached the towel, she felt her head kick back and to the side. She barely had time to register tremendous pain or the sudden absence of 50% of the world before the blades opened and put her overactive brain to rest.

Rarity shook her head sadly over her dying friend, “I'm sorry Twilight, but even generosity has its limits, and someone had to put a stop to this.”

Celestia should have gone to bed hours ago, but she couldn't help teasing her sister.

“Are you sure you've got a handle on that teacup, sister?” Her eyes twinkled, which for a sun goddess meant raking the furniture with fire. There is a reason why merriment and fun used to be forbidden to royalty.

“We don't know what happened, it felt like we were out of practice again, as if it has been years since we've raised the moon.”

Then, for no reason that she could explain, Luna added, “Mortals are silly, aren't they, 'Tia?”

“Yes, I rather feel they are sometimes.” Celestia's naturally flowing mane dipped like a flag that has suddenly lost its wind.

“We wouldn't behave like them, would we 'Tia?” She sought out the eyes of her sister, suddenly desperate she was right and knowing at the same time she was so very wrong.

“No, Luna.” The princess of the sun turned and started walking toward the library, her mouth feeling as if it were filling with ash.

Death rattled his throat in disgust. Though she continued to insist it wasn't her fault, he couldn't help blaming this pink abomination for the gradual spread of color through his once pristinely dim domain. Now, the palace swarmed with butterflies, cats, swans, blooming roses, and maggots. At least the maggots fit the overall theme.

They were all painful reminders of every failed game: Chess, Gin-Rummy, Bacarat, Craps, seven kinds of Poker, Cluedo, I-Spy, Go, Backgammon, even … Bingo. It didn't matter, several coins hovered in the air, or stood on their edge.

This time, though, he had it. One thing so simple it could not go wrong, “This ball is going to be placed under one of these two cups. I will move them around, and you will pick one cup. If the ball is under the cup, then you win. If the ball turns into a centipede or a butterfly or a bump on the table, it doesn't matter. If the cups turn into clams, it doesn't matter. If the ball turns into a centipede and teleports to the other cup, it doesn't matter. You will point at one of two things, and if that thing contains a thing which is not inside the thing you did not point at, you will win. Otherwise, I win. Are there any questions?”

Pinkie raised her hoof and bounced up and down, “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

“You don't have to raise your hoof, I asked you a direct question.”

“What are we playing for?” her blue eyes were completely innocent. Devoid of treachery.

“All of your friends.”

“I have a lot of friends,” the pink abomination replied proudly.

“I do not care anymore.”

Even without the fondness Celestia felt for her former pupil, for the safety of her subjects, she couldn't afford to just lose the use of the Elements for another 1,000 years. Especially over something as ridiculous as this.

“Are you sure about this, Princess?” Shining Armor was flattered that he had been chosen for this duty, whatever it was exactly. Celestia had been cagey, but immortals could be like that, probably. You don't get to be Captain of the Royal Guard by inquiring into the personal ambitions of your godhead.

“Yes, Shining Armor.” After all, she was immortal, so the usual deal of a life for a life couldn't apply to her.

That morning, when he woke, the white unicorn picked up the scroll and tucked into a safe. Cadence thought it was his porno stash, which was good. Who knows what she would say if she saw the two dozen scrolls hidden there. Each with a wagon wheel drawn on it.

Death lifted the cup to reveal … a plain white ball. Finally, it was over.

“Don't you have to lift the other one?” The one downside, Death reflected, on being darkness and void incarnate, is that no one can tell that you're trying to glare at them, because it always looks like you're glaring. In the future, he was going to have to add some kind of eyebrows, maybe with a few of these maggots.

Finally, he lifted the other cup and...

“That wasn't supposed to happen.” Death set the cup back down, and the ball rested simply and plainly to the left of it. The he raised the cup and lowered the one that his nemesis had pointed at, now the ball was sitting, benign and harmless, to the right. Then he lifted both cups again.

Pinkie leaned in close, “What is it?” A blur, white and strange, like two insane eyes glaring out a fog. The ball seemed to occupy both places, and every point in between. It was as if she could reach her hoof into any point along the smear and touch the ball, but some twitching Pinkie Sense in the hollows of her anatomy told her she shouldn't try to touch it. If she did, it would be indescribably bad.

“I'm scared,” Death whispered.

“Would you like to sing a song?”

“That might be nice.”

So it goes ...