As I awoke, my brain felt like a Nightmare Night’s worth of fireworks had been exploding in my skull. My eyes were blurry and unfocused, and this led me to struggle to see what was going on.

“Why can’t I move?” I asked, as I felt about.

“Because you’re strapped down, silly,” a voice replied, distant and faded.

I looked forward, and saw a mare standing in front of me. A purple mare with two-tone pink mane and tail, but her cutie mark was not that of Cheerilee.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “And what have you done with Cheerilee?”

The mare laughed. “Well, I suppose you deserve to know the full truth. My name is Cherry Blossom; I’m Cheerilee’s twin sister.”

I mentally facehoofed. How could I not have foreseen that poosibility. “What do you want with us?” I asked. “What did we ever do to you?”

Cherry seemed to get enraged. “I’ll tell you what you did; you drove my sister to success, and me to depression! Cheerilee was always the favourite, no matter what I did. It was always her! HER!”

OK. That was a lot to take in. Cheerilee not only had a twin sister she had never told us about, but who was also criminally insane and immensely jealous? This was a lot deeper than I had thought possible.

Cherry then continued. “Of course, that couldn’t be allowed. Cheerilee was a rising star, but her star had to fall. And what better way then by murdering her pupils? Ponyville would be scarred forever, Cheerilee would be found guilty and executed, and I would have a rival out of the way. All that mattered was manoeuvring everybody in the right direction.”

She paused, and walked toward me, getting in my face so much her appearance went blurry in my eyes. “But then you stepped in. You interfered and messed up my planning. Well, that won’t be a concern.”

She stepped back, and indicated to a pair of large metal arms above me. One of them terminated in a drill, and the other in a buzz saw. Cherry smiled, as she had clearly worked hard on this.

“You have no idea how much research and measuring you up went into this!” she said, with a psychopathic grin. “This, of course, is a prototype. The real thing is installed in the theatre. But I won’t be needing to use it, as of course you won’t be there.”

She pushed a button on the floor, and a loud whirring started up above me. I looked up to see the machinery start up.

“What?” I cried, fear getting to me. “Don’t do this! Please!”

Cherry laughed. “You got in the way of the town plan, weed,” she answered. “And for that, we must use the pesticide of death.” She walked out of the door, and turned back.

“Game. Over.” The door then slammed shut.

The needle started to roll forward, advancing unstoppably. I frantically looked around. I had seen in the plans some reference to a stop button that would prevent it from moving, and this might save my life.

I felt about with my free hoof to try and find such a button, but no button existed. It was then that Cherry’s words came back to me, and I realised that I was doomed.

“You have no idea how much research and measuring you up went into this!This, of course, is a prototype. The real thing is installed in the theatre. But I won’t be needing to use it, as of course you won’t be there.”

It was an early version, so of course it lacked a stop button. There was no way of shutting this machine off, which meant it would slice me apart.

The needle got closer, suddenly beginning to spin as it approached the centre of my vision. I wanted to scream, but some horse gurgling noise was all that came out of my throat. The saw blade attached to the other arm suddenly began to spin, moving closer and closer to my flesh, the blade turning briefly as it did so, cutting into my fur and removing chunks of hair. Then it hit my flesh.

I screamed in agony as the blades whirred and cut through like butter, but not enough to cut through to the bone, as it suddenly moved again.

The needle was uncomfortably close, now pushing against the lenses of my glasses. The saw blade moved into position in front of my muzzle, about to slice clean through it.

The lense of my glasses suddenly cracked, the last thing stopping the needle from puncturing my eyeball gone. The blade whirred right in front of my nostrils, intent on ripping me to shreds.

In what seemed like the last moment of my life, I screamed to the heavens. “NO!” I cried. “THIS PONY’S NOT FOR THE ABBATOIR!”

The blade moved to within half an inch, as did the needle. I waited for the surge of red to appear in the left-hand field of my vision, for my eyesight to be gone forever.

But just as it was about to impact my skull...it stopped. I looked around in confusion, as the machinery retracted, and returned to the roof. “What?” I asked, confused.

Just then, I saw another filly pull open the restraints. “Honestly, Silver,” she said, “saving you is getting to be a habit. Please stop.”

“Diamond!” I cried. “You came looking for me!”

“I wouldn’t abandon a friend, would I?” she replied. “Besides, I had my suspicions as well, I just couldn’t voice them, you know?”

The last restraint was undone, and I fell to the floor, out of breath from the exertion I had just experienced. “We have to find Cheerilee!” I exclaimed.

“Let’s try the other rooms,” Diamond suggested. So, we headed out into the corridor, and looked in several of the rooms of the basement. Each of them had various different prototypes versions of the machines seen in the script notes, alongside dummies filled with mustard and tomato sauce to simulate blood and organ damage. The level of work that had gone into murder was truly horrifying to see, but we couldn’t stop. We had to find Cheerilee.

We pushed open another door, to find Cheerilee held up against the wall, with a collar around her neck. She looked at us. “Don’t come in!” she yelled.

But no sooner had we crossed the threshold, then blue lines shot out of the collars and burned a hole in the wall. They suddenly began to rotate upwards, running toward Cheerilee’s skull.

“THOSE LASERS WILL CUT RIGHT THROUGH ME!” she screamed in terror. “GET THE COLLAR OFF OF ME, GET IT OFF!”

We galloped over, desperately trying to find something that would turn the blasted collar off. But it had a hard-wired power source which we couldn’t disable, and the locks were too tight for us, even as Earth ponies, to break open with brute force. It was then I noticed some wires running down the wall to a box.

I went over to the box, and pulled it open.

The lasers rotated once more, moving into position right above the roof.

There was a red lever marked ‘power’. I pulled it, to no effect. “Diamond!” I shouted. “Give me a hoof here!”

Diamond ran over, and pulled alongside me. The lever still didn’t budge.

The lasers moved once more, now right over Cheerilee’s mane and on the verge of setting it on fire.

“FUCKING HURRY!” she cried in fright.

I looked at Diamond. “THREE, TWO, ONE, PULL!” We pulled both at once, and the lever dropped down and reached the bottom of the cycling sequence.

The collar deactivated and opened, Cheerilee falling to the floor panting. We galloped over to her.

“Are you OK?” I asked, concerned for her.

Cheerilee looked into my eyes. “We have to stop Cherry,” she said. “She’s insane, and will kill your classmates if we don’t stop her!”

“What are we gonna do?” Diamond asked. “The play will kill them and is set to go!”

Cheerilee nodded grimly. “Then we just have to stop the play,” she said.

Author's Note

Diamond and Silver's lines are based on those spoken by Sir Toppham Hatt and Stepney in Stepney Gets Lost.

The trap Cheerilee is in is based on the ending of Jigsaw.