MareDoWell

        That night, when I returned home and went to bed, I had an extremely vivid dream; it took place in a dark vacant street, with dimming faded streetlights. There were at least 2 stallions, 1 colt, and 3 mares, all wearing mask and Kevlar vest. They were loading something into two truck carts with bags filled with a crystalline, white substance. But then, something happened; a noise came from seemingly everywhere, a sound of massive wings, or a cape fluttering in the wind. And with that, the group began to panic.

“Guys, we need to move now!” one of them says with a ragged frustrated whisper.

“Oh man, we’re fucked," the colt screams "we’re so fucked! Did you see what that thing did to Charlie, he didn’t have a chance, and neither do we!”

One of his friends jams a hand over his mouth.

“Shut the hay up! It could be anywhere, remember?” he said, releasing the colt after allowing him to calm down.

He turns his head to the side and calls for somepony.

“Stacy, can you levitate these salt bags onto the truck a little faster please?” No response.

“Stacy…” Yet again, no response.

They began to search the area for her, looking in every area they could’ve looked, until one of them finally says; “She’s fucking gone.”

One of the stallions looks over at him with a frustrated glare.

“You don’t know that!” He nearly yells.

“Come on man, what’s to stop it from taking any one of us, we should just go!”.

“No,” the stallion grunts “I won’t leave her here!” He grabs his friend by the collar of his jacket..

“She’s been part of our crew for a year now .  She deserves better than that! Do you understand?” He shouts.

“She deserves be-.“ A loud, almost deafening bang cuts him off.

Their heads snap around to see a light purple mare with a red mane. She was badly beaten, bruises covering her body, spine seemingly be broken. As for her blood, it was slowly covering the top of the dumpster she landed on.

They just stood there, dead silent, with the most shocked of expressions gracing their faces. The stallion, whom I had now deduced was the leader, rushes towards her at a breakneck pace.

“STACY!!!!” he yells, cut off by his friends at mid run. “What are you doing, we have to hel-!” His friend put a hoof to his mouth, looking in the direction of the now broken Stacy, staring right above her. The lead stallion follows his line of sight, and sees it..

Above Stacy, standing in front of an open vent, stood a large, tall and dark figure with a long flowing cape, its slightly torn edges seemed to coil around the neck and legs of Stacy. It wore a mask and a hat with long edges, the mask giving it soulless white eyes. And the worst part was that through its mask, you could see a grin.

They were frozen, the ability to breath failing them as they gaze upon it. Fearfully, they look back to Stacy, who with one last breath, gasped out one word; “…run…”

With that the caped figure flew up into the vent, taking the mare with her.

There was silence; cold, dead, silence. Then the colt started to cry.

“We’re gonna die…” he sobs “oh my Celestia were gonna FUCKING DIE!!!” he yells, crying profusely as he falls to his side and curls up into a ball.

They all just stood there as he continued to cry, their leader trying to calm him. “Joey…” he spoke quietly, the colt continuing to sob. “P-P-Please, C-Celestia! Luna! I’m sorry for whatever I did; I don’t deserve this, please for the love of you both, SAVE ME!!” The colt sobbed.

The stallion calls out to him again, only to be met with further tears. “PLEA-HE-HE-HEES,” he screams “I…I’ll do anything! I’ll polish your hoof guards! I’ll lick your wings and preen your feathers! Hell, if you can both use magic to grow ‘em, I’LL SUCK YOUR DI-! “

At that, the stallion finally shut him up.

“Joey! Have some fucking dignity!” The colt became silent with only the slightest of whimpers escaping his lips.

The leader opened the back of the truck, rummaging around for something. Everypony seemed to wonder what he was doing... until he pulled out three MP-50's and three tokarev TT-33's.

“You had those the entire time?” one of the remaining mares asks, he simply looks away.

“You had those the entire time, and didn’t think to bring them with us to the meet-up?”She said, her voice rising.

“I…I didn’t think we’d need them.”

The mare was no longer speaking to him, she was shouting.

“You had those in the back while that…THING had STACY!!!” she screamed.

“I panicked alright! I thought if I ran it would come after all of us and if I fired it would just use Stacy as a shield, so get the hay off my back!”

The mare quiets herself, gazing at him angrily as he passes out weapons like Nightmare Night candy. “Okay, when we get in everypony take a window, I want every side covered and I’ll drive. Okay?” Everyone nods.

“Alright then, let’s get the h-“ A loud, almost deafening explosion interrupts him.

They all recoil immediately, nearly hitting the floor at the sound of the impact. When they look to the cart to see what had caused the sound, what they see causes one of the mares to scream louder than the actual explosion itself.

There on the now destroyed car, was a dead mare, with a light-purple coat, and a red mane.

They just stood and stared, not even breathing, until that one urge that nopony wanted to have, came. The urge to look up.

On the rooftop above them, stood that same figure, glaring at them, with that grin showing through its mask. The stallion known as Cutter grabs a pistol and starts shooting straight up at the figure, screaming like an angry hydra. The mysterious figure disappears, running out of sight.

He stops shooting only to make sure that the figure can hear him yelling. “I’ll KILL YOU!!!” he screams through tears.

“When I catch you, I’m gonna rip off that stupid costume off, and gut you! Do you hear me! I’m gonna-.“  Yet another scream erupts from behind him, but when he turns around, what he sees turns his heart to ice. The figure that was formerly on the rooftop was now behind them.

Joey was now screaming louder than a mare, shuffling on his back away from the frightening sight. As soon as he was with the others they drew their weapons and took aim at the thing before them.

“Light it up! LIGHT IT UP!!” Cutter yells.

Smoke fills and soon obscures the area that the being stands in. They never once stopped firing, their fingers seemingly glued to the trigger, but when they needed to reload; there was no interruption, no halt. For good measure, they reloaded and kept firing, expending all of their ammunition for both pistols and SMGs’.

When they had all expended their last clips, Cutter began to laugh.

“Ha ha ha! That was for Stacy you piece a shit! Come guys let’s get out of here before-.” He stopped talking... just halted mid sentence with a look of confusion. After a few moments, his jaw drops, and he points into the smoke.

There in the smoke, lies a mountain of bullets, all of them covering something. With a small flex, the rounds drop to reveal the dark figure wrapped completely in its cape. Its head soon popped out of the top with its grin still intact. And on top of all that, for the first time, the being spoke, and it spoke only four words.

“Are you quite finished?” she asks sarcastically, that malicious grin showing through her mask.

It was a mare’s voice, and a familiar one at that, like I had heard it somewhere before. But it was corrupted, like someone had put it through a computer and digitized it, but you could still tell it was a mare. The dream continued.

They all stared at her, not believing what they were seeing, when suddenly the two remaining mares charged her.

“This is for Stacy you bastard!” they yell, but before Cutter could stop them, it was too late. As they ran the mare levitated the expended ammunition and re-sharpened the dulled rounds. After they had been sharpened, the rounds began to come together in two groups, pointing outwards at different angles.

When the mares realize what's happening, they skid to a halt and try to turn around, but are held in place by a magic grasp, and forced to stand upright. The males all try to rush to their aid, but find a strong force field standing in their way. The girls were mortified, completely at the mercy of this treacherous mare, and no one could save them.

Before the mare did anything else, she took out a small piece of paper in her hand to show it to each of the mares. When they had both seen it, their faces went from extreme terror to anger.

“That’s why!” one of them said. “You’re doing all of this because of some stupid-!”

She was about to finish, then it happened; the bullets exploded, each one going into and through the mares. Their eyes went wide and they began to cough up blood, and with loud thumps, they fell down dead.

The males were terrified, this…THING had just killed those two without even thinking about, and now it was looking at them. They all made a break for it down a nearby alleyway in hopes that they could outrun then mare, but when they looked back, she was gone.

Seeing that she had disappeared only made them run twice as fast. Everything seemed to go well, they were halfway down the alley…then Joey ran down a cross section in the middle.

“Joey no!” He looked back for just an instance to see who was yelling. But when he turned back around, he was stopped dead in his tracks…literally.

It took him a minute, coming back from the initial shock, but he soon realized what was going on; he was now hovering off the ground, with the now blade-like edge of the mare's cape impaling him.

As blood began to trickle from his nose and mouth the mare took out that same piece of paper and showed it to him; and when he looked at it, his eyes went wide.

But before fading into the blackness, he had one more thing to say: “Oh… that’s why.”

And with all that said and done, his eyes rolled back, and the afterlife took him.

The other two had started running right after the paper was shown. They were almost out of the alleyway when Cutters friend yelped in pain. Looking back, Cutter could see him laid out on the floor, clutching his legs and screaming. When he ran over and looked, it was obvious what was causing the pain;

the major tendons supporting his legs had been slashed.

“I…I can’t move my legs!” he shouts. Suddenly, a noise caught their attention, forcing them to look up. There in the distance, was that horrible mare; the tips of her cape not only covered in Joey’s blood, but the blood of Cutters friend. As she walked towards them, she pulled out her hand and summoned a small flame, and begun to sing;

’Here comes a candle to light you to bed.’

After this verse, the light disappeared, and was now replaced by the serrated blades that used to be her cape. She continued to sing.

’Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.’

She began to scrape her blades along the pavement with each step she took as she sang.

chop.

*shink.*

chop.

*shink.*

chop!

*shink!*

CHOP!!

*SHINK!!*

She crossed the blade/cape combination, making a V shape under her face. She looked up and sang the final parts; ’The last stallion's dead.’

The mare was getting closer, they had to get away. Cutter grabbed his friend by the hand and tried to pull him, but his friend wouldn’t budge.

“You go, I’ll only slow you down.” Cutter looks down and, for the first time, speaks his friends name.

“Shifty… no.” he said with tears in his eyes.

“Damn it Cutter; I can’t fucking walk, let alone run! GO!” Cutter recoils from his friend, starting to softly jog, and soon braking into a full on run.

When Shifty turned around, he gasped at the mare that now stood above him. After the shock wore off, he began to chuckle, and while doing so began to speak to her.

“Alright, what?” he asks “What could we have possibly done to warrant this, huh? Go ahead; show me whatever the hay is on that stupid paper!”

The mare was happy to oblige. She pulled out the paper and showed it to him. He thought he would laugh it off and even chastise her for picking such a stupid reason; but then he looked at what was on the paper. His eyes went wide, his jaw went slack, and everything went silent.

After a few minutes of silence, Shifty finally spoke, but only two words came out.

“Fuck you.” He whispered.

The mare smirked as she brought one of her hooves to his neck and pressed down.

“Fuck you.” He says again, his voice rising in tone. The mare continued to ad pressure to his neck; he kept repeating those two words, but even as he tried to yell them, the pressure building up made the words come out in short, aggravated breaths.

“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you! FUCK Y-!” before he could finish the mare twisted her hoof slightly, snapping Shiftys’ neck. Before he died, he saw the mare look forward and begin walking past him, and whispered two last words;

“C-Cutter…run…”

By now I was convinced that this was not a dream, but a horror movie that I saw a long time ago, forgot about, and was now replaying in my head.

Cutter had been running for a good ten minutes, panting with exhaustion, sweat pouring through his coat. He was about to collapse, then he saw it; lights…somepony was still awake. Tears of joy started to run down his face, he was finally free; all he had to do was reach that house.

But then something happened, something awful; on the back of his coat, he felt a hoof touch him. Before he could turn around, the whole world sort of stopped; the air became thin, everything seemed to move slower, the surroundings became blurred, and there was no sound.  It was as if the very world ended around him in a silent explosion.

After three seconds of this, the world seemed to reconfigure; sound came back, as did the air, and the world became visible more and more, returning to normal speed. When he finally turned around, what he saw terrified him.

There, behind him, was that same cart that mare had been destroyed, with Stacy still on top of the crushed roof. Cutter looked around and confirmed his suspicions; he was back at square one.

“ What!? How did I? But I was. What the hay!?” he yells in confusion, not knowing how any of this was possible.

“Teleportation spell.” An all too familiar voice called from behind him. Shaking with fear, he turned around to see the dark mare, staring at him.

“It takes a lot of magic, but once you get the hang of it, it’s child’s play.” He continued to stare at her, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Are you going to just stand there and stare at me while this happens, or will you actually put up a fight?” He falls to the ground, almost oblivious to her, and begins to sob.

After a minute of crying on the ground, he looked back up at the mare and asked the obvious question.

“W-Why!?” he cried. “What did we do to deserve this, huh? Why the hay did you do this to me, TO MY FRIENDS!?”

"Don't you think he thought that?" she asks.

"WHAT?"

"As his body shook, his brain dissolved, his organs shut down, and white hot pain shot through him; don't you think he asked WHY!?"

"What the hay are you talking about!?" He screamed, his confusion being replaced with seething rage.

The mare only chuckled, and took out that same piece of paper, throwing it down in front of him; and when he looked at it, his eyes widened, and his mouth hung agape.

On the paper, was a stallion which looked about the same age as Cutter. The stallion was in what looked to be a family photo, in a group hug. The stallion had a coconut cream colored coat, and hazelnut hair. The mare, using a part of her cape, flipped the paper over.

On the back was the same stallion, but on an autopsy table. He was obviously dead. Underneath the photo it read;

“name: Salty Sweet, COD: salt overdose.”

“I... I don’t know what that is!” he said looking away from her, obviously lying. The mare chuckled again, this time throwing out a tape recorder. Before he could ask what it is, it began to play;

“Alright, so everypony knows the plan?” It was obviously Cutters voice on the recorder.

“Yeah, I get bad salt from our friends at the docks, and pass it onto Stacy and the girls.” Joey replies.

“Me and the girls will call Salty to his favorite salt spot, we’ll ad that if he gets there early, the salt won’t be the only thing he’ll get.” Stacy and the two other mares begin to giggle.

Shifty cut in after their laughter subsided.

“While you mares are seducing him, or flirting, either one, I’ll switch out his salt with the bad stuff.” He and everypony else looked over at Cutter as he explained the final part of the plan.

“And I’ll make it look like he was alone so we don’t get investigated.” They all agreed to the plan and began to laugh. After a little bit of laughter, Cutter gave one final speech before the tape ended:

“Guess the kid didn’t know. If you owe the Cutting Crew; you either pay up, or pay DEARLY!” After that, they broke out into a fit of laughter, the tape ending shortly after.

Cutter sat silent for a moment, then began to chuckle.

“You know what?” he said “I’m not even worried, cause I got so many friends in so many places, there’s no way your flank is gonna be alive for more than a day after this!” he yelled at her, beginning to smile.

She put a finger to her chin and began to ponder. “Hmm... friend, friends, friends... ”

She gasps, reaching into her suit.

“You mean these?” she says with a devilish amount of sarcasm, throwing several pictures in front of him. As he looks at them, his face slowly transcends into an expression of sheer terror.

On the pictures were Cutters friends. All of them had been killed in some gruesome way; whether it be drowning, mutilation, or bludgeoning. This gruesome mare knew how to make a pony scream.

“Yeah... they won’t be avenging you anytime soon.” She says… almost casually in fact. Cutter looked over the pictures and began to tear up, hunching over in the process.

“No... no... you couldn’t have killed them all. You just couldn’t have.” He wept.

“Of course I could. It was fairly easy actually; I just had to monitor them for a week to get their meet-up schedule. Honestly, you gangs think you’re so discrete sometimes.” She said in a very nonchalant manner.

“They’d all done something equally as bad as what you did, so I probably would’ve just went after them eventually.” she says very matter-of-factly.

“But I digress; it’s time to finish this.” Her cape sharpens again, and she began to walk towards Cutter.

“WAIT!” he screamed, and for some reason, she actually stopped and waited.

"Before we do this, just answer me one question.” She gestured with her hoof for him to get on with it.

“W-What… what are you?” he asked, choking it through tears and terror.

“J-Just… what the hay are you?”

She laughs haughtily, bringing a hoof to her mask. As she slowly removes it, she covers her now exposed face with her cape, until her entire head is buried withing. Cutter had little time to wonder just what was happening, the mare teleporting directly in front of him. But when she revealed her face... it didn't just terrify Cutter... it frightened me.

It was… me, Trixie. Silver hair, blue coat and all. But there was one difference; her smile. For where I had normal, healthy teeth; she had rows of sharp, gleaming fangs. And then she spoke… and the three words that escaped her snout…terrified me.

“I. Am. MAREDOWELL!!!”

As her cape covered the scene in darkness, the last ten seconds of the dream was nothing but the sound of Cutter screaming… and me laughing.

And right before it ended, I could have sworn I saw the dark version of me in her MareDoWell costume with her cape spread out. In the dark area in her spread cape, there were two words scribbled;

“EMBRACE ME.”

I woke up in a cold sweat, scared to death of the dream I just experienced. I went into the bathroom to ponder exactly what the dream meant.

Was that what was to become of me if I chose this path, some crazed lunatic in a costume who causes pain to criminals to please herself; I shuddered at the very idea. I took a warm shower to try to fall asleep again. But, as I was finishing up, I looked in the mirror, dropped my towel, and turned around as quickly as I could. For in the mirror, I thought I saw the ‘me’ from the dream, smiling at me.

I decided to sleep it off, and just try to forget about it; write it off as a bad dream. Besides, I needed my sleep; I had bigger problems to worry about. If I was going to choose this path, I needed a costume.

And only one place in Ponyville had the materials to make that kind of costume.