Choice

Chapters

2
3
4
6
8
9
10
12
13
14
17
18
19
20
22
23
24
25
26
28
29
30
32
33
35
36
38
39
40
41
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
68
69
70
72
73
42
Start Your Day
5
7
11
15
16
21
27
31
34
37
58
67
71

2

You walk toward Pinkie. The pink pony smiles brightly, brimming with excitement.

“Yay!” she exclaims, rearing up happily before placing her front hooves back on the ground. “It’s been so long since we’ve spent some time together! Ooo, this is going to be so much fun!”

Pinkie starts walking back down the road, and you follow, briefly glancing back at Vinyl, who is walking away somewhat dejected.

Your attention is stolen by Pinkie once she starts talking again. “I’ve been trying some new recipes recently, and I’ve heard you’ve got quite the sweet tooth, so who better—well, besides me of course—to help judge?”

You nod in appreciation. Pinkie then starts trotting faster, and you have to pick up the pace to catch up. “Isn’t this great?! You and I spending some quality time together, it’s been forever! No, not even forever, more like… I don’t exactly know what’s more than forever, but you get my point!”

From what you know, Pinkie is known to have an endless amount of energy, and from having spent time with her in the past, you know that to be a fact. However, her over enthusiasm for spending time with you doesn’t slip past your attention. You question it for a moment, wondering what had the mare so excited to see you, but shrug off whatever apprehension the thought had left behind, while some still remains in the back of your mind.

Pinkie continues down the road with you following suite. Eventually, you two see Sugarcube Corner peeking from the horizon, growing in size as you approach it. The earth pony’s eagerness intensifies, a hint of impatience leaking from her current façade. You decide to ask her what exactly has gotten her so giddy.

“I already told you, silly,” Pinkie remarks with a giggle. “I don’t think I have to tell you a third time. Besides, you’re still the new pony in town, and it’s my job that you feel as welcome as possible. And I just absolutely love my job, because it means I get to make ponies like you happy! Which, in case you didn’t catch on yet, is kinda my thing.”

You and Pinkie both reach the bakery, and Pinkie hops up the steps before throwing the door open. She looks back at you. “Well don’t just stand there, come on in!” You follow her inside, catching sight of a sign against the left window that reads, ‘closed.’

When you enter, you see that the entire interior is adorned with a wide variety of decorations ranging from streamers to balloons, all with a clear Pinkie Pie flourish, and games like pin the tail on the pony and apple bobbing are stationed at different corners of the room. You acknowledge how colorful the place looks, and the clear extra effort put in to make the place look as great as possible.

Pinkie is already at the far end of the room, gesturing in a circular motion. “Come on, what’re you waiting for? The more you stand around the less time we’ll have to do taste testing!”

You apologize, rushing to catch up with her as she steps through the kitchen doorway, not noticing the strange creak that sounds below you as you walk across the green mug on the floor. You can’t help but feel slightly suspicious. Something about her attitude is… off. Maybe she’s excited for the party later, you assume, but you find it slightly unnerving how extra she’s being. Again, you shrug it off as having watched way too many horror flicks lately, and head inside the kitchen after the pink pony.

Along the counter at the center of the room are cakes, tall to short and all different colors, as well as muffins and delicious looking cupcakes that make your mouth water with a strong desire to consume everything at once. Once particular cake that catches your eye is a green one that surpasses all the others in height and width, a design of Ponyville’s map—every single river and attraction accurately represented—drawn along the circumferential surface of the cake. You have to admit, it’s really impressive what Pinkie had managed to pull off. In fact, captivated by the sight as you are, you fail to realize that you and Pinkie are currently the only ones in the bakery.

“Heh, sorry, we’re not going to be taste testing that,” Pinkie says with a giggle. “As efficient of a baker as I may be, that cake would take waaaay too long to bake again. Besides, we’re not here to try the cakes.”

You cock an eyebrow in confusion. Almost everything here is cakes, so what exactly will there be to taste test?

As the question crosses your mind, Pinkie approaches the counter and snatches a cupcake from the small bunch beside one of the tinier cakes. Its base is a light brown while the frosting on top is white and sprinkled with flakes of coconut: your favorite.

“Here ya go!” Pinkie says in an adorable high-pitched squeak, handing the cupcake over to you. “It’s my first time trying out a coconut recipe, and since I know how much you love coconut, I can’t think of anyone else to give me an opinion of it. I made this one just before you got here to make sure these would be good for the party later. Come on, try it! Try it!!”

Your eyes fall on the cupcake in your hoof. It looks delicious, you can’t lie. Though, you have your doubts about all of this, especially Pinkie’s intent on urging you to eat it. Looking back up at the pink mare, you see her wearing a wide, elated grin as her eyes stare, sparkling, unblinking, and impatient.

You look at the cupcake again, its creamy, milky deliciousness sitting on your hoof open to be consumed. You bring it up to your mouth…

Taste the Frosting________________________________________________________________________________Eat the Cupcake

3

You open wide and tear a chunk out of the cupcake, chewing curiously. The curiosity quickly turns into delight, and you close your eyes, wallowing in the explosion of coconuty goodness washing over your tongue and overwhelming your taste buds. While Pinkie had always been renowned for her baking and you’ve had many of her deserts in the past, this one really takes the cake! …No pun intended.

Swallowing, you look back up at Pinkie to tell her how good it is, but then you pause. The look on her face is a horrifying combination of a grin stretching way farther than a smile could normally reach, and eyes that had lost their impatience, replaced by an eerie, morbid satisfaction. You stare at her for a moment in a puzzled manor, ignoring the slight light-headedness you feel, before asking her what’s wrong.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she replies in a tone no different from earlier. “In fact, I’d say you seem to be having a little trouble, you’re looking kinda woozy there.”

Your confusion deepens, only for you to realize that she is right. You are feeling woozy. Really woozy actually. The light-headedness you feel becomes more severe and your limbs struggle to hold you up off the ground. What is happening…?

Suddenly, your legs collapse underneath you and you fall to the ground, dropping the partly eaten cupcake in your hoof, which rolls on the floor and bumps Pinkie’s hoof. Pinkie looks down at the cupcake, then at you, and giggles in sinister amusement. As your rapidly declining consciousness puts two and two together, all sensation in your body leaves you, and the world around you fades from existence.

***

When you wake up, you find that it is completely and utterly silent. Darkness consumes almost every inch of your vision, and the atmosphere is thick and cold. You look around, but neither to your left or right is any light to give you the slightest hint as to your location.

You feel some sort of surface pressed against your back. It’s cool, and somewhat moist, but not water moist, it’s more… sticky and uncomfortable. You attempt to move your forelegs, but find quickly that they won’t budge. You give them another tug, followed by your hind legs, but that proves useless, both producing the same result. Then you notice that there is something firm and solid closed around all your hooves, restraining you flat against the surface on your back.

Questioning where you were and what was going on, you suddenly hear echoed footsteps coming from in front of you. They make their way in your direction, and you can also hear the squeaking of what sounded like a metal cart being rolled toward you.

“Wakey wakey!” a high, singsong voice calls out from the inky blackness surrounding you. The voice is instantly recognizable. “Rise and shine, there’s a whooole lotta fun to be had!”

You call out into the wall of blackness surrounding you, demanding to know what’s going on.

“Yay, you’re awake! Took ya long enough,” Pinkie says. “I know everything seems so sudden, but don’t worry, I’ll clear everything up for ya in justa sec!”

The sound of the cart stops, and the hoofsteps start making their way to the right until stopping again. “Watch your eyes.” You don’t register the warning in time before a bright white light suddenly blinds you, and you shut your eyes instantly. Inching your eyelids open bit by bit, your eyes adjust to the sudden explosion of white brilliance now present in the room. Soon enough, the darkness has retreated, and you can now properly view your surroundings. You freeze at the sight before you.

Along the ceiling are party streamers, which you realize are not party streamers, but what seem to be… pony innards, strung from one end of the room to the other with the appearance of streamers. The walls of the room are stained in red splatters and across the room are tables with skulls on each one, party hats attached to them.

At the center of it all stands Pinkie Pie, wearing some sort of outfit from sewn together cutie marks from other ponies and pegasus wings stuck on the back, all intricately manufactured, albeit slightly sloppy. She walks back over to the cart in the middle of the room, the necklace of unicorn horns around her neck jingling, and continues to push the cart toward you.

You look down at your own body and find that iron clasps are shut around your hooves, holding them firmly in place. The surface against your back is metallic and coated in red splatters similar to those on the wall.

“How do you like it?” Pinkie asks you, prompting you to stare at her. “Speechless, huh? I’m flattered you like it that much. Most ponies start screaming the moment I turn on the lights. To each their own I guess.”

As Pinkie parks the cart in front of your hanging body, you ask Pinkie what all of this is.

“What does it look like silly? It’s a party! One I’ve prepared specifically for you. In fact, I’ve invited a whole bunch of my friends. Lemme introduce you to some of ‘em!” She walks up to one of the tables and points at each of the skulls in order. “Meet Boney, Maxilla and Sinus. All of you, meet my new friend!” During the last few words, she points at you.

You can’t wrap your head around what’s going on. Your brain still tries to piece everything together as Pinkie walks up to the metal cart and removes the cover on the top with a quick swipe, causing a small blast of wind in your face.

A tray is revealed, carrying a row of different weapons—knives, scalpels, needles and other surgical instruments. You eye the tray wordlessly as Pinkie giggles, before you immediately begin thrashing against your bindings.

“I wouldn’t recommend that if you don’t want things to hurt a lot more than they already will,” Pinkie suggests in a mocking tone, but you ignore her and continue to struggle your way out. One of the iron rings around your hooves even gives slightly before a sharp pain shoots through your hips due to your stretched out position.

“Not gonna say I didn’t tell ya so, but I told ya so!” Pinkie laughs maniacally before taking one of the scalpels in her mouth and walking up to you.

You have to think fast. What will you do?

Scream for Help________________________________________________________________________________Try Breaking Free

4

You open your mouth and scream for somepony to come and save you. Your voice reverberates loudly through the room, and yet it doesn’t seem to travel far.

Pinkie snorts, before bursting into raucous laughter which lasts for a minute, before she calms down, panting as tears streaming from her eyes. “That was your attempt to save yourself? Oh man, you crack me up! Why were you never a comedian, you’d be great. Maud would have loved to meet you. Eh, it’s too bad I need you for the rest of the cakes for the party later.”

She then raises the scalpel up into the air, the sharp blade glinting in the light, before swinging it downward directly upon you—

You shoot up in your bed, a cold sweat covering your brow and drenching the front part of your mane. You look around, seeing the welcoming, comforting sight of your bedroom just as you remember it before you went to sleep.

Just a nightmare.

You sigh in relief, slipping out from under the warm covers and setting all four hooves on the floor. Traversing across your bedroom to the window, you pull the blinds open, freeing the sunlight from the outdoors and allowing it to stream inside, bathing the walls in the delightful shade of morning gold. You smile. Today is going to be a good day. You can feel it.

Though, despite the fact that the welcoming view of Ponyville outside tempts you to leave your home instantly and enjoy the day, something about all of this doesn’t sit entirely right with you. You’re not sure if it was a rough night of sleep, or the nightmare you had, or even a result of something that happened yesterday. Whatever it was, it causes a tenseness to develop in your stomach, barely noticeable, but noticeable enough to be concerning.

You start toward your bedroom door, stepping out of the room and heading to the kitchen, preparing yourself a quick bite to eat. Peanut butter and jelly with a glass of orange juice. Not too complicated and delicious. As you start eating, however, you start to get a strange sense of déjà vu. You stop suddenly, looking around for a second. Are you going mad? If not, then why does it feel like you’ve done this all before…?

Giving your head a light shake, you finish the rest of your breakfast and set them in the sink to be washed later.

You face the front door as it stands, waiting impatiently and beckoning for you to open it wide and step out into the midst of a wonderfully exciting day. And so you walk up to the door, place a hoof on the handle and throw the door open, embraced immediately by the rays of a pleasant summer sun. Your coat radiates the reflection of the sky’s luminance, and with a bright grin, you walk down the steps of your home. Your day has officially begun!

With confident, eager strides, you march forward down the town’s road. Around you, ponies with matching enthusiasm carry out their own day’s tasks. Whether that be checking off their grocery lists early or heading to meet up for events with friends, it’s blatantly clear that everypony in the town feels just as ready to tackle the day as you do.

Ponies passing by give you gleeful waves, and you wave back, never giving up your consistent smile. You also overhear the mention of a later affair in the day from various other ponies, and are reminded of one of the many reasons for your current anticipation of the day ahead, and likely that of everyone else as well.

Pinkie Pie had hosted a special party commemorating the 60th anniversary of when Ponyville was founded, and she promised that it would be her biggest one yet—as if she hadn’t said the same about her other parties as well. Though, this claim was a little more believable, since the pink pony had invited everypony in Ponyville and even organized a huge parade afterward involving the entire town’s population. And since it’s Pinkie Pie, and she always makes the best parties, there’s no doubt in your mind that it’s going to be a blast!

You continue to walk forward, a bounce in your step, before you reach a fork in the road. You stop when you notice two of your friends coming toward you from either direction: Vinyl Scratch and, speak of the devil—or in this case, pink ball of bouncy energy—, Pinkie Pie herself.

“Heya!” Pinkie’s high-pitched voice calls out to you as she bounces in your direction with an audible spring.

“He-hey, what’s up, dude!” Vinyl says, walking up to you with a similar chipper attitude, though unsurprisingly outmatched by Pinkie Pie’s sugar overdose-induced behavior.

You nod your head to both of them, returning the greetings given to you by the two ponies as they approach you before stopping at the end of the paths they walked along.

“So glad I came across you,” Vinyl begins. “Octy is rehearsing for her big performance this friday at the Ponyville theater and you’re invited to chill with us if you want.”

“Oh. Well, actually, I was wondering if you wanted to come over and help taste test some new recipes I put together for the party later!” Pinkie says to you, slightly let down. “But if you wanna go with Vinyl, that’s fine by me.”

You turn to Vinyl.

“Oh, I mean, you don’t gotta come with me. If you wanna go with Pinkie, I’m all good with that.”

Conflicted by the two offers, you find yourself faced with a tough decision. Going with Vinyl sounds cool, and from what you have heard, Octavia is the best musician in Ponyville and one of the best in Equestria. On the other hand, spending time Pinkie Pie sounds equally as fun, and considering she’s the best baker in town, who wouldn’t want an opportunity to be her taste tester!

Two options… both evenly appealing… which will you choose?

Go with Vinyl Scratch__________________________________________________________________________ Go with Pinkie Pie

6

You leap forward at Pinkie Pie, but she dodges your attack. But before you can stop yourself, you feel pain break out in the back of your head, and you careen forward, crashing into one of the tables in the room, skulls falling on top of you.

The pink pony approaches you, chuckling in amusement. “Really? I thought you’d put up a better fight than that. That was just la—”

You take her by surprise and buck her in the ribs, causing her to fly back and hit the wall behind her and collapse to the ground in a crippled heap.

“Pinkie!” you hear a light, high-pitched voice cry out from behind you, and you look toward the hallway at the other end of the room and see a gray mare with a bright yellow mane standing there, crossed eyes staring at you with anger. You recognize her as the Ponyville mailmare, Derpy.

Suddenly, she turns into a rapidly expanding blur before your whole front explodes with pain and you’re knocked back onto the stone floor, hitting your head hard. All you hear is an explosion of deafening ringing, and you see double of everything in your surroundings.

Then you see a gray mare step over you, and jab her hooves into your stomach to hold you in place. “I got the pony for you, Pinkie!” she exclaims victoriously.

“Hang on, I don’t feel too great,” Pinkie says, grunting again from pain and screwing her eyes shut. “I think something might be broken.”

Derpy’s ears fall. “Oh no! Are you okay?”

Pinkie chuckles lightly, inciting her to whimper lightly from the resulting pain. “I’m good, don’t worry. Probably just a few broken ribs, all thanks to lil’ old party pooper here!” she shouts with a glare aimed at you, but regrets that as she lets out another pained groan and curls further into a fetal position.

You struggle to get out from Derpy’s grasp, but her hold on you is too strong, and in the condition you’re in, each movement is a very painful one. The gray mare growls in frustration. “What do we do with the party pooper?”

“Throw the pony in the cell for the night, we’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Pinkie says.

Derpy nods, and faces you. “We’re gonna teach you some manners, naughty pony!” There is a brief pain in the side of your head, and you lose consciousness.

***

When you wake up, you find yourself surrounded by a thick darkness. Your head hurts badly as though thousands of nails are being nailed into every part of your body at once.

As you recall your situation, you are suddenly wide awake, and your eyes dart around your surroundings to discern where you have ended up.

Surrounding you is a set of vertical, thick metal bars that section off a tiny section of a much bigger room which, once your eyes adjust to the darkness, you realize is the same room you woke up in before. You’re trapped in some sort of prison.

You start looking for a way to escape. From what you can figure out, the iron bars are A: sturdy, and therefore not breakable, and B: too close together to squeeze through to the other side.

At the far end of the cage is a barred door that has been padlocked from the other side. After a brief analysis, you determine that, although you may not be getting through there using your body, the door is rusty and weak, a quality you discover when you attempt to open it and the door nearly tumbles off its hinges.

Now you just need something to break the door open. Something that can be used like a crowbar. You walk around the cage for a little while, making sure that your kidnappers don’t come back down while you’re awake. During your search, you find that the top part of one of the iron bars looks to have been chipped. When you reach up to grab it, it wiggles in place. With a good pull—mustering through the resulting pain in your side—you manage to tear it off quite easily.

You bring it over to the door and slip the end in between the door and the frame, before pulling back on it. The door creaks in protest, budging bit by bit, until the door pops open with a deafening tear of metal that pierces the air and echoes loudly through the room.

Hoping that neither Pinkie nor Derpy were within earshot to hear that, you open the door wider and step out into the room filled with Pinkie Pie’s sadistic decorations. Who would have thought that a mare as happy and cheerful as her would have been a mass serial killer, no less Derpy, the mailmare who always brought a smile to everypony’s face with her day to day attitude…?

You start walking toward the hallway out of the room, eager to get out of there as soon as possible, only to stop in your tracks when you hear a distant creaking of wood at the end of the hall and a rush of light floods into the basement.

You back up into the room and hide in the nearest corner as a pair of bouncy hoof steps begin making their way closer to you. Remaining quiet, you listen out, and the steps continue to get nearer and nearer. You don’t dare to budge, not intent on getting caught by her.

Eventually though, the footsteps begin to fade until their completely gone. This causes you to wonder if Pinkie left. If so, you can make a run for it, and get out while you’re still alive.

You find yourself stumped on your next course of action.

Stay Hidden_____________________________________________________________________________________________Run for It

8

You rush straight forward at Derpy. The grey mare just stands there, watching in amusement as you run toward her at full speed. She doesn’t even seem to be trying to defend herself as you run, about to engage in combat with her.

As you come within a few meters away from her, she deploys her wings, giving them a light flap, before zooming forward at the light of speed and striking you in the head. Your head jerks back as intense pain flares everywhere from your head and down your neck and you fall back on the ground.

Nausea wells up in your stomach instantly, your vision blurry and darkening. You try to get up, but you can’t move your legs. You feel dizzy and can’t budge any of your limbs. Your head remains faced upward at the ceiling as the hallway begins to darken. A smudge of pink enters the corner of your vision, followed by grey at the other corner.

“The pony just doesn’t know what went wrong,” an echoed, distorted voice comes from the grey smudge.

A laugh comes from the pink smudge. “Right you are, Derpy. This is why you’re my number one sidekick!”

“Yay!”

“Sorry, I guess this isn't your lucky day. But don’t worry, now we can finally have fun together.” Darkness crawls in from the edges of your vision, consuming the two blobs of color. The voices of the two ponies grow more distant, and everything becomes cold. Soon enough, the blackness surrounds you, and silence dominates all.

***

“I wonder how they’re gonna come out,” Derpy said in anticipation, watching with impatience as the oven was busy at work preparing their latest deserts.

“I know, I’m so excited! I’ve never blended coconut with our secret ingredient before,” Pinkie said beside her, also watching the oven whilst bouncing frequently in excitement.

“I’m sure it will be scrumptilicious, just like everything else that you bake.”

Pinkie giggled. “Aw, thanks, but give yourself credit, you helped me bake ‘em. I couldn’t have done this without ya.”

Derpy held out her hoof joyfully. “Teamwork!”

“Teamwork!” Pinkie shouted back, bumping Derpy’s hoof.

The smell of fresh cupcakes cooking wafted from the oven. The two mares sniffed and almost immediately their mouths watered.

“That pony sure did put up quite the fight, huh?” Pinkie mused. “I mean if you hadn’t been there that pony woulda escaped.”

“Naughty pony,” Derpy said with a frown, remembering their latest playmate’s attempts at escape. That pony made things so difficult on them, but they had gotten the job done, and that’s what mattered.

“Couldn’t have agreed with ya more. That pony sure wasn’t smart to mess with you.”

The oven then dinged, and Pinkie sprung up in joy. “Ooh, they’re ready! Let’s hope they’re as good as they smell.” She turned off the oven, before putting on a pair of oven mitts and opening the door. Sitting inside was a tray filled with rows of pastries, all lightly golden brown and perfectly baked. Pinkie reached inside, pulling the tray out and setting it on the stove top.

Both Pinkie and Derpy gathered around the tray and lay their eyes upon the steaming pastries.

Coconut cupcakes, with a secret ingredient.

CUPCAKES | ENDING 2 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

9

You spin around, facing the pink pony at the end of the hall who eyes you with a buoyant, and yet wicked grin. Bursting into a full on sprint, you charge at her.

In a split second, Pinkie Pie’s brows crease into a frown, and she stops walking toward you. She didn’t expect you to do that.

“Derpy!” Pinkie shouts. As you continue to gallop in her direction, you hear a sudden thrash of wings behind you. The sound rises in volume and a heavy gust of wind hits you in the back. On instinct, you duck down, and out of the corner of your eye, you see the gray mare soar over you before colliding dead on into Pinkie’s chest like a bowling ball, causing the two mares to fall to the ground.

You don’t waste any time in leaping off the ground and making a run for it, speeding down the hall in the opposite direction. You hear the voice of Derpy crying out in concern for Pinkie Pie, and then an order barked by the pink mare to catch you before you escape. That’s when you hear the sound of wings being deployed again and then the jet like sound of the mare flying after you.

You push your legs to run faster to get out before the mare can catch you. Unfortunately, you are not fast enough. A stabbing pain shoots through your side as you suddenly feel yourself propelled off your hooves and you collapse to the floor, rolling to a stop.

Your attempt to stand proves futile when pain causes you to fall right back down. Everything hurts, especially your side. A pair of hooves land next to you before two forelegs wrap themselves around you as to assure that you won’t get away. You wouldn’t be able to though, you know that for sure. Derpy’s assault against you must have broken at least a few ribs.

“I caught the pony, Pinkie!” Derpy exclaims proudly, however her expression falls when she sees Pinkie Pie clutching the side of her ribcage, wincing with every breath inward.

“Hang on, I don’t feel too great,” Pinkie says, grunting again from pain and screwing her eyes shut. “I think something might be broken.”

Derpy’s ears fall. “Oh no! I’m so sorry, Pinkie, I didn’t mean to—”

“Its okay, a few broken ribs isn’t the end of the world. You did well, but lil’ old party pooper here decided to ruin everything!” she shouts with a glare aimed at you, but regrets that as she lets out another pained groan and curls further into a fetal position.

“Throw the pony in the cell for the night, we’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Pinkie says.

Derpy nods, and faces you. “We’re gonna teach you some manners, naughty pony!” There is a brief pain in the side of your head, and you lose consciousness.

***

When you wake up, you find yourself surrounded by a thick darkness. Your head hurts badly as though thousands of nails are being nailed into every part of your body at once.

As you recall your situation, you are suddenly wide awake, and your eyes dart around your surroundings to discern where you have ended up.

You start looking for a way to escape. As you get up though, spikes of pain suddenly shoot through your side and you fall back down, caught off guard. Right, Derpy had crashed into you and broken your ribs. That would be trouble.

Carefully, you stand again. The pain is milder, but your midsection still burns, like your being held above a burning fire. You then start looking for a way out. From what you can figure out, the iron bars are A: sturdy, and therefore not breakable, and B: too close together to squeeze through to the other side.

Eventually though, the footsteps begin to fade until their completely gone. This causes you to wonder if Pinkie left. If so, you can make a run for it, and get out while you’re still alive.

You find yourself stumped on your next course of action.

Stay Hidden_____________________________________________________________________________________________Run for It

10

You stay where you are. Even if you can’t hear her anymore, you do not want to risk running into her and getting captured again.

It’s quiet for another few seconds during which pitch silence suggests that there is in fact no one there. Then, a figure steps out into the room that, through the darkness, you can barely make out to be a pink pony.

You stop breathing and watch as she walks toward the cage to check on you, whimpering and clutching her ribs occasionally. As she approaches the cage however, she comes to the realization that it is empty and the door has been broken open. She pauses to a stop, and gasps loudly in surprise and rage.

“Where did you go?!” Pinkie shouts, whirling around. You stay obscured in the darkness, not moving in the slightest. She marches angrily to different points in the room searching for you, grumbling when she can’t find you. At one point, she comes close to finding you once she walks directly in front of you, but thankfully your luck pulls through and she gallops out of the room, cursing for her lost prisoner.

When you hear the footsteps fade until you’re absolutely sure she’s gone, you step out from behind the corner and slowly make your way down the hall Pinkie disappeared into. At the end where the the turn is are still faint columns of light that flow into the hall, and that quickly becomes your destination.

Following the light, you turn along with the hall and you see a set of wooden stairs that lead upward into an open trapdoor in the ceiling. Past that is a room with lights on. You listen out for any sounds that would indicate if Pinkie or Derpy are nearby. When you deem the course to be clear, you carefully—not wanting to make too much noise—head toward the stairs and start to climb them.

The first step creates a loud creak, and you stop momentarily, checking again on instinct if the coast is clear. Then you start climbing again. The steps are loud, but since it doesn’t seem like there is anyone close by to hear it, you continue to ascend into the room above.

Your head peeks past the trapdoor, allowing you a view of what’s inside. From a quick look, you see that you are in the center of the main room of Sugarcube Corner, and beside the trapdoor on the floor is a rolled up mug—the round green mug you had walked across when you first entered.

You climb the rest of the stairs and enter the room, your eyes immediately gliding toward the front door. With a quick look around, and again, no sounds to suggest any opponents nearby, you head toward the front door, unlock it and toss it open. There is a jingle above from the bell on the door frame as you leave, the door shutting behind you as you gallop off into the starless night. You have escaped.

You keep running until you’re a safe distance between the bakery of your kidnapper and you stop in the middle of the road to take a breather.

But it’s when you’ve stopped and looked around you that you come to a realization. There’s nopony outside. The pitch blackness of the night wraps you in its embrace, and its cold, almost to an unnatural extent. The day is over already… huh. Time to go home then, you guess.

You keep going down the road and take a left. At the end of the road should be your home. It is a let down that the day is already over, but it doesn’t matter, because you have a whole new day ahead of you tomorrow. In fact, just the thought of tomorrow makes you smile again. There is a bounce in your step and you go to your house to get a good night sleep.

Sure, today didn’t go quite as you planned. You got kidnapped, and you were almost killed, but things can only go up from here, you think.

It’s so cold…

Your house appears in the distance. Speeding toward it, you open your front door, thankful to finally be in the comfort of your own home once again. You could practically hear a good night sleep calling out to you.

Shutting the front door, you take in a deep breath and exhale. You can barely see the inside of your house due to the darkness, so you navigate your way to the nearest light switch by memory and flip it on to get some light in your place. It’s… still dark. You can see a little bit more but only as far as a few inches in front of you. Everything else is just plain black.

You start heading toward your bedroom despite the darkness. Maybe it will be brighter in the morning. But before you make it there, there is a knock on your front door. You look back, wondering what someone would be doing at your doorstep this late at night.

Trotting back to your front door, you set your hoof on the handle, twist it, and open it to see who’s on the other side. You step back instantly.

Pinkie Pie and Derpy are both standing on your doorstep, looks of mischievous glee on their faces.

“Peekaboo,” Pinkie says darkly, a syringe at the ready. You don’t react in time as she steps forward and plunges the needle into your neck. You stumble, and as the drugs take effect, your legs can no longer hold you up and you fall to the ground on your back. Your consciousness quickly slips away. The darkness surrounding you starts closing in faster.

“Nice try, but you forgot to account for one thing…” Pinkie says, standing over you. “Hide and seek is our specialty.” The last of her words turn into distant echoes as your vision blurs. The darkness crawls closer, consuming every inch of your vision, until everything is black.

DELAYING THE INEVITABLE | ENDING 4 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

12

“Excellent choice!” Pinkie exclaimed. “And trust me, that was the smart decision. We’re going to have so much fun together.”

***

The wheels of the cart squeal as you push it down the near pitch black hallway, breaking the silence aside from your slow and measured hoofsteps and the faint, high-pitched whimpers of a young mare ahead of you. Occasionally, the wheels roll against a crack in the floor, causing the contents of the cart to clang against the surface they lie on.

You know fully well what’s under there. You chose the items of your collection yourself. Across the tray on top of the cart you push are materials. Materials for your first project so generously lent to you by Pinkie Pie after you agreed to join her team. And now, you’re wheeling it toward your first test subject.

You got her all on your own. She was easy to capture as well. After all, she was a loner, and spent most of her time by herself. So it was easy to catch her in a secluded area and drug her before she even had a chance to fight back. Pinkie was impressed when she had heard about the feat, claiming that you had proven her point of you being a useful asset to the team.

The faint cries of the confused mare reverberate across the basement, but then you hear her pause for a moment, before saying, “Who’s there?!”

You don’t reply to that. Instead, you drift off to the left in search of the light switch. Its pitch black, but you know the general direction of it, so you’re eventually able to wade through the darkness and find the switch. Flipping it on does not do much to ward away the darkness, but it’s just bright enough that you can see the details of the mare you’ve captured all on your own.

Hung up on the wall at the far end of the room is a lime green mare with a lemon yellow mane, whose eyes shrink upon seeing the full details of the room she’s in, and starts thrashing against her bindings in a desperate attempt to escape.

You don’t pay her any heed as you go back to the cart and roll it the rest of the way toward the mare, not even sparing a glance in her direction when she demands to know who you are.

After parking the cart right next to the restrained mare, you pull off the large sheet over it, revealing your hoof-picked arsenal of weapons ranging from sharp knifes to circular saws to thin needles. Your eyes hover over each individual weapon for a moment as the mare screams. Never before have you seen such beauty in little objects like these. Each one was unique in its own little way—one was sharper than the other, and another was shinier than the rest.

But each one offered their own portion of potential. Similar to a river, each weapon branched off into individual paths of creativity. A needle, for example. So small, and yet the extent of how inventive you could get with an item as simple as that was limitless.

It’s a curious thought. And yet with this newfound interest, a passion had been born. A passion unlike any you had ever felt before: a newfound appreciation for art. An art unacknowledged by so many, in fact, that you have a hard time believing nopony had come to appreciate the beauty of it earlier.

As you stare at the different sharp weapons on the cart, creativity strikes, and you pick up the machete at the center. Then, you face your captive, who pleads constantly for you to let her go.

You can practically feel the fear radiating off of the mare. And you enjoy it. It puts a smile on your face. The old you is officially dead, and the new you has completely raised to sovereignty over your mind. Your focus is on the desperate mare begging for her life, tears streaming down her face. Everything else in the room goes dark, until darkness has swallowed everything expect for you and her.

It’s funny to think that not long ago you were in this exact position fighting for your life. And now, in this position, you feel a sense of pleasure, and you finally understand the truth that you’ve held from yourself for so long. This is not recreation. This is art.

As you hold the machete closer to the mare’s body, she starts screaming for help. But you don’t flinch. You shut your eyes meditatively and bathe in the leisure of her terrified shouts before opening your eyes again. She is like a blank canvas, ready to be turned into the best painting the world has ever seen.

Everything else is black, and all that’s visible is her face, contracted pupils staring into your own.

It’s time to make a masterpiece.

WELCOME TO THE TEAM | ENDING 6 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

13

You refuse. You would never submit to the carrying out of such vial activities.

As soon as Pinkie Pie catches on to your decision, you launch yourself forward at her. In that moment she reaches a hoof into her mane and pulls out a sharp kitchen knife and swings it toward your stomach.

You see the glow of the blade out of the corner of your eye, and with your mind working in adrenaline-induced overdrive you realize that with the momentum you’ve built up you will not be able to avoid it in time. So, you throw a foreleg in front of yourself, and you feel the sensation of the blade piercing through the skin and touching the bone. However, the knife registers as only a mild pain and more an uncomfortable sensation.

Pinkie looks shocked at how the blade in your leg barely affects you, and she begins to twist. You flinch, but once again barely react. You push her back slowly as she jams the blade as far into your leg as possible, but she starts to lose the battle.

Then, the pink pony stumbles backward with a yelp and falls on the ground, letting go of the knife which remains stuck in your leg. Without hesitation or a moment of thought, you grab the handle of the knife in your mouth and rip it out of your skin, causing blood to spray out of the wound and pour down your leg. There’s no pain, only the warmth of the blood coursing through your fur.

Pinkie tries to get up, but you kick her before she can, and she falls back down, clutching her side where Derpy had impacted her earlier. Then you step over her before raising the knife and preparing to plunge it into her heart.

However, before you can Pinkie bucks both legs into your stomach. The wind is forced out of your lungs and you collapse, gasping to recover from the blow. There is the clatter of metal and you realize that you’ve dropped the knife. You can’t let Pinkie get it.

You flip over and see that Pinkie is reaching for it. You leap forward to grab it as well, but she takes hold of the handle, so you grab her foreleg instead.

What you discern right away is that she is much stronger than she looks. Pinkie pulls her hoof away with a forceful tug and it slips from yours. Then, as you’re about to get to your hooves to get the knife back, Pinkie rolls on the ground and sends a kick to your forehead. Your head lurches back and hits the ground hard.

You are suddenly lightheaded and woozy, pain flooding into your temples. Your vision is shaky and darkens slightly, and from the side of your vision, you see Pinkie crawling over you, taking the knife in both hooves and aiming it directly for your chest.

In your woozy state, you’re luckily conscious enough to reach your hooves to her forelegs and push upward while she pushes the knife downward toward your chest.

The red-stained blade lowers toward your body, and you push up harder, your body trembling to keep the deadly weapon away. Meanwhile, Pinkie erupts with a wicked, triumphant laughter as she puts her whole body’s weight on the knife, and the blade lowers far enough to just barely penetrate your chest. You get an adrenaline burst and push with everything you have, the extra strength allows the blade to exit your skin, but you can’t push it up anymore.

Soon enough, the blade slowly begins lowering again. You thrust your hind legs into her stomach to get her off of you, but that proves useless. However, once you do that, she flinches slightly, and the weight on the knife lessens slightly. Unfortunately, there’s not enough time to leave the opportunity of escape because she angrily puts her weight back on the knife and strains as she pushes against it now.

The blade enters your chest again and starts to lower further than previously. You know you won’t be able to hold this up for long. The resistance of the knife against your flesh helps you hold the knife back but she has too much of an advantage.

Then, you suddenly remember an advantage you have over her. When you bumped her in the stomach, she released the pressure of her hooves against the knife.

Unfortunately, her body is too far away from yours to deliver a proper kick to her side. You need to allow the blade to enter slightly further so she lowers far enough.

So you decrease some of the power you use to push the knife back, and allow it to sink deeper into your chest. This might kill you, but its worth trying rather than becoming a serial killer like Pinkie or dying anyway.

As you planned, her body descends closer to yours. Just a little farther… You allow the blade slightly deeper, and her body lowers even more.

Now.

You kick upward as hard as you can, and this time, Pinkie cries out in pain and releases her hold on the knife. Then you grab the handle of the knife, tear it out of your chest and swing blindly at her body. It hits, and Pinkie screams in agony, rolling off you and on the ground. You get to your haunches, crawling toward Pinkie’s body, before raising the knife and bringing it down.

The blade disappears into Pinkie’s chest and she lets out a voiceless cry, sputtering out blood from her mouth which dots her chin. Red traces itself around the blade that’s stuck in her heart, pooling around it and streaking down her fur. This leaves the pink murderer to lie squirming in pain for a few short moments before she goes still and her eyes turn colorless and lifeless. The happy party pony who brought joy to everypony’s lives is dead.

Your legs give out and you rock back, hitting the wall behind you against your back. You’re exhausted, breathing heavily, fur discolored by scarlet. You let go of the knife, and stay there, reflecting on what you have just done.

Noticing a warm sensation on your chest and foreleg, you look down, only to notice that your foreleg is entirely coated in your own blood from the area where Pinkie stabbed you, as well as your chest, and while it is not as bad, a lot of blood still excretes from the wound.

You get up from the ground. You have to get to a hospital before you die of blood loss. You stumble forward, the pain from both wounds now just now getting intense, and approach the turn at the end of the hall, where columns of light stream in from behind the corner.

A gray blur suddenly enters your vision and you’re pushed back against the ground. You groan, the pain in your leg igniting with fiery agony. When you look up, you see Derpy with a furious expression, frown deep and menacing. She then pounces on you with her front hooves, holding you against the ground as she wraps her wings around your neck and squeezes. Your windpipe is blocked, and you can’t breathe. Your hooves go to her wings and attempt to pull them off, but Derpy’s grip is too strong.

You try to curl your hind legs to kick her off of you, but you are not flexible enough to do so. But you notice that your hind legs are within distance of Derpy’s. You try to buck at them, but Derpy simply moves her legs out of the way before you can make contact.

Your vision starts to darken as your lungs burn for oxygen, and the exhaustion you feel makes that worse. You kick out again, and once again, Derpy dodges it. You’re going to lose consciousness soon. You can feel it.

Then, you figure out a solution. You launch your foreleg forward at Derpy’s head, and it collides with her left cheek since she hadn’t been expecting it. Her head twists in the direction of Pinkie’s body, and as she’s about to punish you for hitting her, she registers the body of her friend in a pool of her own blood.

“Pinkie!” she shouts. With her distracted, you buck at Derpy’s hind legs again, and this time, you’re successful. She shrieks in pain, falling to the ground and you are able to breathe again. You jumped to your hooves, and before Derpy can stand, you swing your hoof at her temple, knocking her unconscious as her body thumps against the ground motionless aside from the rise and fall of her chest.

You don’t give the gray pegasus another glance before you walk toward the staircase. The fight had opened your wounds further, blood now spilling out in copious amounts. Everything seems colder, and you’re getting lightheaded, but that doesn’t stop you from pressing on toward the wooden stairs at the end of the hall where Derpy had come from. The stairs lead upward into an open trapdoor in the ceiling, and past that is a dimly lit room that’s almost completely dark.

You heave your body up the steps, each climb taking almost all your energy, and emerge into the room above, which turns out to be the main room of Sugarcube corner. You collapse to the wooden floor of the room, your vision blurring rapidly. Darkness consumes the whole room, enclosing around you as you lose consciousness.

Lying there, feeling sleep come closer, you hear what sounds like a bell ringing, and then the voice of a pony, but your ears just register it as a wobbly, distant mess of noise. You only register one thing.

You got out alive.

Everything is now dark, and sleep takes over.

ESCAPE | ENDING 3 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

14

You lick the white frosting on top. The creamy, milky taste along with the flakes of coconut is a delight to your tongue. You swallow it, and the taste trails down your throat satisfyingly.

“Ehhhh, what are you doing?” Pinkie Pie asks curiously. You question her inquiry. “Do you not know how to eat a cupcake? Oh, wait a sec, you’re not from around here, you’ve probably never had a cupcake before, and so you don’t know how to eat it!”

You choose not to question the lack of logic in that statement.

“You gotta eat the frosting and the cake together, not one at a time. If you want a challenge, try putting the whole thing in your mouth at once; let’s see if you can best the cake-eating champ. Come on, eat it! Eat it!”

Once again, you find her impatience off-putting. You look back down at the cupcake.

Eat the Cupcake___________________________________________________________________________________________Refuse

17

You attempt to walk a little to the right to realign yourself, and then proceed forward from there. Strangely enough, you’ve been walking for quite some time and you haven’t reached the poster yet. In fact, the voices of everypony at the party and the music seem to be diminishing in volume. You pay it no heed and keep going, but you do find it particularly strange.

Then, as you bring your left foreleg down, it doesn’t come in contact with the ground. You suddenly find yourself falling forward, and you collapse to the hard ground before rolling down some sort of hill. Your body goes airborne momentarily every once in a while and hits the ground, sending pain through every part of your body.

You tumble down this hill for what seems like hours before you finally reach level ground and roll to a stop. Your whole body aches, and you likely have a broken bone or two. Also, you lost the tail at some point along the way.

You sit up on your haunches, your world still black, and reach with your hooves up to the blindfold to remove it. When the darkness of your vision is replaced by the real world, you find yourself in the midst of some sort of desert, hot sand below you and extending miles into the beyond along with cacti, some taller than others. The sun is blistering hot, and sends unbearable heat down onto you to the point where you already start to sweat, the distant, blurred scenery warped and wavy due to the temperature.

Turning your head back, you see that you had just fallen down a long and steep hill with rocks jutting out of the side, and you can’t see anything beyond the top of the hill.

You might have gone a little too far to the right…

With no option at your disposal, you get up, and start walking in a random direction. There are no signs or anything of the sort indicating where to go to get back to any sort of civilization, so you just walk in hopes that you’ll end up somewhere helpful. The last thing you want is to die of dehydration out here, so you opt to keep moving before something like that happens.

You walk, and after a minute, the heat is already more intense. Sweat drips from your body like a faucet, and you wish you had water on you.

After ten minutes, you find yourself still walking toward nowhere. The hill that you fell down is now part of the blurred scenery, far enough behind you that you can barely see it. Your body has been able to somewhat accustom itself to the heat, but you still sweat like a pig. While it does offer some relief when mild gusts of wind drift across your skin, it’s still terribly hot, and you’re desperate to find some sort of refuge to get out of the sun.

After another ten minutes, you start feeling weak. It almost seems impossible that you’ll find anything out here. You can’t have gone this far away from any nearby town. There had to be something out here that was at least a small excuse for some sort of safe haven.

It’s another few minutes before you notice a shape in the distance that looks like a pony, though you’re not sure if it’s just a mirage or if a pony is actually there.

To your left is a gravel road that stretches off into the horizon two ways. There’s no directional indication of which way would take you to civilization, or which way would be quicker, or whether the road leads to civilization in the first place. If that is a pony in the distance, maybe they can give you directions.

What will you do?

Examine the Shape______________________________________________________________________________________Move On

18

You start walking toward the shape. After all, if it is a pony, directions will undoubtedly be helpful lest you go down the wrong path and end up even farther into the desert, which is not what you want.

As you get closer, the shape does indeed seem to get closer as well, and before long, it clarifies and you can tell now that it is for sure a pony.

But there’s something strange about the pony. Not necessarily that their fur is stained with dirt and unkempt, or that their mane is tangled and in a similar condition—although you do find that very weird—but instead that the pony is just standing still, no less in the middle of a desert.

While that does strike you as strange… a pony’s a pony! So they’re bound to be helpful in some way.

You’re a few steps away from the pony before you stop. You notice that the pony you’re approaching is not standing completely still, and instead twitches every few seconds sporadically. Not to mention, you also hear what sounds like a light, but rough growling coming from them. Now you’re really starting to get an eerie vibe from the pony.

However, you continue approaching them anyway. You need all the help you can get, and if they can provide it, it’s worth it.

You stand behind the pony as they continue to grunt and spasm occasionally. The pony smells bad, like flesh that’s been rotting for weeks or even months. Their skin looks like it too… You reach a hoof out and touch their shoulder to get their attention. The pony doesn’t react to it at first, but the growling comes to an abrupt stop. You then ask the pony if they can help you, once again inciting no reaction.

Then, the pony slowly turns around, and you see the details of their face. Their eyes are lifeless and gray, the skin around their muzzle torn and hanging, exposing the rotten muscle of their jaw.

And the teeth… they’re sharp, and covered in dried blood…

Before you can step away, the pony jumps forward and tackles you to the ground. You flail, trying to push the lunatic off of you as an intense pain flares in your neck, and you feel a warm, wet substance spread from your neck downward toward your chest. The pony is too strong for you though, and the pain gets worse as they pull their head back, carrying a piece of meat in their mouth.

You kick the cannibal off of you with a hind leg, and your front hooves go to your neck to ease the pain on instinct, but the pain only stings worse from that. Also, your hooves now feel warm and sticky, and you realize why when you examine your hooves.

They are covered in blood. Your blood.

Distracted, the pony jumps onto you again while you have no time to react, and digs their teeth into your stomach. The agony you feel is worse than any pain you have ever experienced and you’re left there to suffer as the pony digs into your flesh and tears you apart from the inside.

Your vision goes blurry as you lose consciousness. The sky turns dark, and the darkness rapidly approaches, enclosing you in near darkness. The pain in your stomach and all sensations fade away into nothingness and before long, your vision is black.

***

Pinkie thanked everypony who came to the party as they left, smiles on each and every one of them as they parted toward their homes or a restaurant for an after party. Mission successful!

Only, she couldn’t help but be curious about the new pony. During that game of pin the tail on the pony, her newest friend had just steered off and disappeared. Perhaps the pony had somewhere to be, or something along those lines, but she couldn’t help but find it strange.

Standing outside as she watched the partygoers scatter off down the road away from the bakery, she was about to turn around and head back inside Sugarcube Corner when she saw something in the distance down the road. Pausing, she stared in the direction of the something and examined it.

A far away shadowed shape was approaching her from the end of the road. She couldn’t see it well at all, but upon straining her eyes, she could make it out to be the shape of a pony.

She trotted toward it to see the pony better. They hadn’t stopped approaching since Pinkie had spotted them, and as she got closer, she realized the pony was limping, their head hanging to one side.

After a few more steps forward, she suddenly recognized who it was. The new pony had returned!

She began to gallop to her friend, but then noticed that something was off. There was a strange growling coming from her friend’s direction, and the new pony’s hide and mane were knotted and disheveled.

A bad feeling was welling up in her gut, but she kept walking forward. Meanwhile, you walked toward the pink party mare, feeling intensely hungry.

Hungry for flesh.

THE TROTTING DEAD | ENDING 10 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

19

You ignore the shape. You’re likely just seeing things, and if there is actually a pony there, it seems a little sketchy that a random pony is just standing out here alone like that. Sure, in that case you’re risking not getting directions, but at least you’re not risking something like the shape actually being a zombie and you being bitten, and you turning into a zombie and going back to Ponyville and causing a zombie apocalypse…

Anyways, the path goes left and right, but you’re not sure which way leads to Ponyville. If you end up taking the wrong path, you might end up somewhere you don’t even recognize, or end up wandering in the middle of nowhere for days.

Which way?

Right__________________________________________________________________________________________________________Left

20

You head to the path and face the left way, and from there, you just start walking. Celestia knows where you’ll end up, or how long it will take for you to end up anywhere besides another part of the desert, but surely you’ll come across something. You only hope that happens before you die of dehydration out here.

Holding onto that hope tightly, you travel down the path toward a horizon that doesn’t promise anything. You could literally end up anywhere. There are endless possibilities waiting for you down this road, and if you are to recite every single possible possibility, the possibility of explaining the possibilities is possibly impossible to explain in under a possible twenty four possible hours!

It’s like throwing a dart blindly at a dartboard. It could land anywhere. Or, it could miss the board completely, and you’ll end up nowhere. There is no telling where that dart is going to hit, so all you can do is wait until the dart hits the board and see for yourself. It’s like… adventure!

Wait… on second thought, that’s scary. There really could be anything at the end of this road. So, what if you never get home? What if you end up in some town that’s miles away from Ponyville and you don’t know how to get back?

Now you’re not so enthusiastic about this. Maybe you should go the other way. But what if that way leads even farther nowhere? Too many possibilities, it’s filling with your brain, messing with your head. It’s too much to fathom; you can’t wrap your mind around—

No! …You chose to go left, so that’s what you’re going to do. You continue to walk toward the edge of the world, currently slightly yellow and hazy from the blistering heat. After all, you could end up somewhere good, or the path might even lead directly home. The pessimism filters out of your mind and optimism restores the confidence in your steps.

You follow the path to see where it takes you. Whatever is at the end, you’re ready for it.

***

The slight edge of yellow in the sky has now spread across the entire sky. Most of it has quickly given way to darkness, the sun just barely peeking over the edge of the globe. You are tired, sweat practically pouring from your face and down your legs in pearls. You are desperate for water, and your energy has almost completely run out, but luckily, you may have finally ended up somewhere. In front of you, the desert ends, sand giving away to grass and in front of that is a green hill. You start to approach it.

Suddenly, the ground shakes violently as a sharp bang pierces the air. You can barely hold your balance since your body is so weak. The sound came from the other side of the hill, but as to what caused it, you can’t even make an educated guess.

You start climbing the hill, but as you climb, another earthquake throws you off balance. Speed walking up the rest of the hill, you stare toward the source of the noise.

And then your mental health degrades.

It’s Ponyville, but the town has been destroyed. Houses lie crumbled to dust, and the only recognizable feature is Twilight Sparkle’s castle, which is still standing tall unlike the rest of the town. That is, until a giant orange hoof comes down and crushes it to smithereens. A hoof that belongs to a colossal sized pony that casts a large shadow over the entire landscape

You blink. You blink again. You blink for a third time. Its still there. An orange pegasus larger than Tirek when he contained all the alicorn magic in Equestria, with a purple messy mane and rose eyes, as well as a large, goofy smile.

You blink for the umpteenth time, but to your—strangely enough—apathy, the monstrosity is still there.

A giant Scootaloo.

Your eyes follow the giant orange mare as she suddenly lifts upwards slightly into the air. “I LOVE RAINBOW DASH!!” she bellows, the young, high-pitched voice enough to cause shards of glass on the ground to split into invisible particles and you to go almost entirely deaf. The gigantic Scootaloo comes back down again, a few unfortunate ponies who could not react in time being crushed under the hooves of the dumbest threat Equestria has witnessed yet. The whole ground shakes again, knocking you onto your rump, but you’re too captured by the sight to get back up.

It’s no sooner that another giant Scootaloo walks in from the edge of your vision, joining in on the destruction of Ponyville. And then another comes in. Then another. Then another. Consistently, they shout cheerful statements into the air.

“I LOVE RAINBOW DASH!”

“RAINBOW DASH IS BEST PONY!”

“RAINBOW DASH IS LOVE, RAINBOW DASH IS LIFE!”

You simply watch as the Scootaloos crush whatever of Ponyville is still standing. Normally a pony would be shocked, or scared, or something along those lines.

But all things considered, what with all the recent invasions Equestria has seen, this seems normal.

Your head tilts upward as one of the large hooves rises over your head. The world darkens quickly, and the hoof begins to descend. Darkness swarms in from every direction and you merely watch as your demise comes closer and closer.

Because honestly, whatever.

The hoof makes it to the ground, and your whole vision goes black.

…ALRIGHT. | ENDING 13 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

22

No. That seems a little sketch now that you think about it.

Instead of walking toward the village, you face the distant landscape of sand and keep going. You have confidence that you’ll come across something better eventually. You’ve got enough gas left, you can make it.

Despite the relentless sun bearing down on you and the fact that you feel like somepony had placed you in an oven set to broil, you place one hoof in front of the other, determined to find that safe haven you know is hiding just beneath your muzzle.

The world starts getting darker.

There’s something waiting for you but a few inches in front of you. You just have to make it there. The task is within your grasp!

Blackness crawls in from the edges of your vision.

A better opportunity will present itself. They will have water, a place for you to stay that’s air conditioned and cold showers. It won’t be long. You know it. All you have to do is keep walking forward and—

You collapse dead on the spot.

NICE | ENDING 11 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

23

You ultimately decide that the village is your best bet. You definitely will not survive another second out there.

Of course, it comes down to whether the village has water or not, but considering the figure you saw, there is likely another pony living there, which means they must have food or water to survive. Then again, maybe they’re starving and thirsty and had run out of supplies days ago. Maybe that shadowed figure isn’t a pony at all.

Whatever the case, at least you’ll know after you check it out. What’s the worst that can happen?

You walk toward the village. Most of the houses appear to be in bad condition, shingles missing and parts of the walls crumbling. What’s just occurred to you is how a village is sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s almost like the crystal empire, except in the desert. Also, unless there’s some form of magic supplying food and water, you can’t see any apparent way that supplies would be imported all the way out here.

Since there is a village here, its safe to assume there was civilization here once, but why the village was built in the middle of a desert is beyond you. That makes you think that they must have some sort of system to feed everypony. Unless the story goes deeper than that.

As you enter the town, your hooves come onto a stone path that slowly emerges from the sand. The roads are cracked and dead grass peeks through them.

Wait… grass? That’s odd.

As a matter of fact, as you walk through the town, you see dead trees surrounded by patches of dead grass and flowers that have long since dried up and wilted. How could trees and plants have once survived in this climate?

You follow the road to what appears to be the town square, but the buildings in this area are also crumbling apart as though no one had been around to maintain to them in years.

You’re so focused on the town itself that you only now notice the putrid smell in the air, like somepony had left meat out for days to rot. Suddenly you find yourself cringing, wondering how you had not noticed it earlier.

That’s of course not your main concern right now. You need to find water so that this is not the last thing you ever smell.

You take a step forward and suddenly, you hear something behind you. You turn back to look, but there’s nothing there. You turn back, and suddenly, you’re faced with a dark orange stallion standing way within your personal space to the point where your noses barely touch. His sudden appearance incites you to take a step back as you examine him. The stallion’s coat is a dark orange color, his face creased with wrinkles, and his mane is grey and long, tied back and flowing across his hunched, skinny form. He holds a cane in his left hoof and eyes you with a stern glare.

“You ain’t from around here,” he speaks with a gravely, aged tone. “I would know. I hold the records for everypony in this town and there ain’t nopony with your looks on file. Tell me, outsider, and look me in the eyes when you answer,” his glare tightens as he inches his face toward yours. “Are you one of them rebels?”

You’re not sure what he means by rebels, but you shake your head. He stares into your soul for a few more moments before backing off, his glare softening. “You ain’t lyin’. I would know, I can detect lies on a whim. Its how I kept this here town safe during the invasions.” He waves a hoof to gesture to the houses and buildings around you. “But you seem like a nice feller, so I think we can become good friends. Mah name’s Crooked Straw, the town mayor. Glad to make your acquaintance!” He holds out a hoof, and you shake it. His hoof is dirty and grimy, though your hooves are dirty enough that there is no noticeable stain from it.

When you let go, he turns and faces the rest of the town. “Welcome to the town of Noneighm. Place was founded over 200 years ago by my great grandpa. At least, that’s the story my pa told me. Though, recently the town hasn’t seen many great days. ‘Specially since the attacks and, well… the disease.”

He begins leading you through the town, and as you two walk, the front doors of the houses around you begin to open and ponies step outside, old and young. However, all of them have dirty fur, like they hadn’t showered in weeks, and it seems as though many of them have not eaten much at all.

“Meet the townsfolk. Ain’t exactly a pleasant sight, I know. Don’t mind that, they’ve…” his brow creased. “We’ve all been through a lot. It’s been rough here last couple years, so don’t take their stares the wrong way.”

He turns and faces you again. “On the subject, you look like you ain’t in the best shape yourself. You thirsty? I imagine you are. Come with me.”

He walks past you, and when you turn around you suddenly face a worn, wooden door with cracked glass panes giving you a view of a small, wooden room, the wood rotting and also lacking maintenance. You take a step back and find yourself in front of a rather tall building that doesn’t fare much better. It looks slightly better than everything else in this town but still doesn’t pass for having a place in a regular town environment.

Opening the door, a loud creak piercing your ears and making you flinch, the stallion walks you in and faces you. “Come on in, sunny, before the heat gets in.”

You enter the building, and the stallion shuts the door. You get a good look at the inside. The walls, as you had seen from outside, are cracked, the insulation on the other side clearly visible, and tiny pieces of wood jut out from the floor and ceiling. Rows of seats are lined up in front of you leading up to a small podium. It's not hard to assume that this is the town hall.

The stallion leads you to the other end of the room through a door, and you find yourself in a tiny room with a tall ceiling, and in front of you is a large jug of water that reaches almost to the ceiling and takes up half the room in width. The sight of the huge quantity of water fills you with relief, and you can already imagine the sensation of the fluid trickling down your throat and ridding of the painful soreness in your throat. Your mouth would have salivated if there was enough water in your body to produce it.

Grabbing a cup from a nearby cupboard, he holds it underneath the tap of the jug and pulls the handle. Water flows out into the cup, and the sight of it is a gift from god in your eyes.

“Here you go, I can tell you need it.” The stallion holds it out and, surprising him, you snatch the cup out of his hoof, almost causing the contents of the cup to spill out, before holding it up to your mouth and dumping it straight down your throat.

You’d never tasted anything more delicious in your life. All at once, the water streams down your throat, into the depths of your stomach. It’s the most satisfying thing in the world, and just as you begin to enjoy it, all the water is gone.

“Woah, calm yourself, fella,” the stallion says, chuckling, somewhat out of concern. “You really needed that water, huh?”

You nod, still wallowing in the satisfaction of consuming water for the first time in days.

“Well, eh, I wish I could give you more, but we’re in a bit of a crisis right now, and this is the only water we have. Looks like a lot, but everyone in the town’s gotta drink. This may be enough for a week, or maybe a bit less. What I just gave you was generous. Take that as a sign that I trust you, and since you ain’t got many places to go, I’ll let you stay in the village. I would assume that’s what you plan to do.” He looks at you curiously. “Eh, am I right in assuming that?”

Yes_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________No

24

“Oh… well, eh, I guess you got places to be.” He looks down doubtfully. “Although I’m not sure where else you have ta go out there, but hey, that ain’t my business.” He puts on a smile. “Thank ya kindly for stopping by I guess. Glad I could help out my newest friend.” He holds out his hoof again, and you shake it respectfully.

He then looks at you with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure y’all will be okay out there? I’m telling you we don’t mind having you here.” You nod your head. “Hmm… alrighty then, safe travels young fella, hope I see you again soon.”

You head toward the front door of the town hall as the old stallion waves you off. You open the door and close it behind you, stepping back into the hot outdoors.

The town feels empty. Not only devoid of other ponies, but all existing sound as well. You start walking down the steps of the building you’ve just exited.

LET ME IN

You turn around upon hearing a strange voice. The town hall is gone. You turn back, and suddenly you find yourself at the entrance of the town. You begin spinning in circles, wondering how in the world you’ve suddenly ended up here.

That voice… it didn’t seem like it had come from behind you, but rather from the back of your mind. It was otherworldly—a distorted growl that couldn’t have come from any creature on Equestria.

You start walking with a bit of speed. Something isn’t right. You need to get out of here.

It’s getting colder. The sky is darkening. Not long ago, the desert sun was causing sweat to bleed profusely from your skin, but now you’re shivering. You don’t understand what’s going on.

Suddenly, like a light blinking out, the entire sky goes completely black. You pause, stuck in place as a stream of mist falls ever so slowly from the sky, descending in front of you. Like a wall being built from the top down, the ethereal mist reaches the ground. Meanwhile, the blackness of the horizon surrounding you starts to close in ever so slowly.

You watch the mist as it touches the ground and remains in that one places, rising up and twisting within itself. All you feel radiating from it is a strong, pulsating cold, and a deafening silence, like its swallowing all the sound in the area. It has a void like presence, like a fragment of limbo bled into this dimension, and for some reason you feel it staring at you. You know that its mere presence, by all universal laws, should not exist in this world.

LET ME IN

The dark mist closes in, about to surround you in an inescapable eternity of darkness.

Y̙̯̱̠̻̥O̗U̡̫̜͉̘̼̪̹'̸̭͖̺̮R̪͓E͜ͅ ̵̞̲͔S̛̘͚O̧̦ ͏̩̞͕C͎̝̪̗͔͇L̟͇͜Ó͈̗͖͔̤̰S̢̝̣E͕̮͔͕̩̯͢ ̱̞͖͖̟̥̕N͈ͅO̤͟W͇̗̺͈͖̝,̵ ͙̹̫̖Y̰̯̯O̙̻̘̠͓̼̬U̞͍̖̜̠ ̠̘̥̺̪͟ͅH̟̥̪̬͞A̙̲̻͕͖͖͖͠V̴͔̲E̼͖͓̺ ̭̻̩̝̱͉̬Ṯ̰̯͚̙͝O ͓̬̳̝͕C̖͓͔̘̘͎͟A͔̳͇R̷̝̝̫̮͔̬̞R̞̟Y̞ ̳͕͓͈̠O̦̭̖͉̲N͎͚̘͇̘

…

…wish I could give you more, but we’re in a bit of a crisis right now, and this is the only water we have. Looks like a lot, but everyone in the town’s gotta drink. This may be enough for a week, or maybe a bit less. What I just gave you was generous. Take that as a sign that I trust you, and since you ain’t got many places to go, I’ll let you stay in the village. I would assume that’s what you plan to do.” He looks at you curiously. “Eh, am I right in assuming that?”

Yes_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________No

25

“Oh… well, eh, I guess you got places to be.” He looks down doubtfully. “Although I’m not sure where else you have—

…

…as a sign that I trust you, and since you ain’t got many places to go, I’ll let you stay in the village. I would assume that’s what you plan to do.” He looks at you curiously. “Eh, am I right in assuming that?”

Yes_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________Ṉ͉o̕

26

“I figured. You prob’ly wouldn’t survive another day out in that heat. Well, since you’re staying with us, allow me to give you a tour of our little village!”

The old stallion walks past you, and you follow him outside. As he walks into the room with the seats, you notice that stapled on the left hand wall is a row of newspaper clippings. You step closer to examine them.

One of the newspaper clippings describes a war between the town of Noneighm and a terrorist group. You assume that’s what the stallion meant earlier when he accused you of being a rebel. The next newspaper clipping talks of some sort of plague taking the town by storm. Apparently it had caused over 100 deaths over a period of a month. That may explain why the town seemed so empty.

What catches your eye however is the fact that this supposed plague had spread across different areas of Equestria as well. At the bottom of the page is a map of Equestria with a red color indicating where this disease had spread. The red covers almost the entire map besides the frozen north.

You don’t understand how this is possible. You have never heard of such a disease taking over the planet, and if it’s this serious, you’re sure you would have caught ear of it by now.

Wait a second…

As you look closer at the map, you realize that this town is located where Ponyville should be. Ponyville isn’t on the map…

This can’t be correct, you think to yourself, checking the publication date at the top of the page just in case these are old, and this outbreak had actually occurred centuries ago. However, your brain is suddenly swamped with confusion when you see that these newspapers were published only a few months ago.

This is wrong. You can’t think of any other explanation than that the contents of the newspaper are fake. This town is in the middle of a desert that might be miles beyond the borders of Equestria, so it’s impossible that this map is real. If it is there’s no mathematical or magical explanation you know of that could explain it.

“Hey, sunny!” The gravelly voice of the old stallion bursts your thought process and you’re set in reality again. “Ain’t no tour happening if you just stand there like a statue. Come on!” You catch up to the stallion as he leads you out the front door and into the dreadful hot air. You prefer to stay inside where it’s slightly cooler, but this is your chance to get some answers as to what’s happening.

“Where we’re standing now is the town hall. Any official business, town meetings, all happens here,” he explains, gesturing to the building they had just left, as well as the wide open road around it made of crumbled cobblestone that was overgrown with weeds. The stallion then walks along the road, waving for you to follow.

When you’re side to side with the stallion, he leads you along an alley with houses, the one thing in common with each of them being their poor condition, hardly classifying as households.

“Saw you staring at those newspapers on the wall earlier, correct me if I’m wrong,” the stallion says, and you look over at him, interest caught. “I suppose since you’re part of the community now, I should explain. A few months ago, we were under attack by a group of terrorists. For the sake of the community, we tried to reason with em, but they weren’t exactly the type of ponies you could reason with. We found that out the hard way.”

He looked down grimly. “They killed many ponies. Innocent ponies who didn’t deserve to be off’d like that. Soon after, the plague started to spread, and even more ponies started dying. I could never forget the panic in everypony’s eyes.” He shivered. “Unfortunately, ‘cause of the rebels, we weren’t in any sort of wealthy position, so we couldn’t supply everypony with the treatment they needed.

“Then, something like last week, we were all woken up in the break of dawn by some sort of noise coming from somewhere nearby. I can’t even describe what it was; all I can say is that I’d never heard anything like it before. We went to try and find where it was coming from found out it was coming from directly below the town’s old castle. After digging underground to find the source, we found ourselves in a wide open cave we never had a clue was there.

“The whole room was bathed in a blue light, and at the center of the cave, a pyramid shaped rock with a flat top jutted out of the floor, and resting on top of it was this blue, shining orb that emitted a magical radiance that was beyond any existing magic in Equestria, or at least that I’d seen. I’d go out and say it was downright otherworldly.”

You find yourself completely invested in the story the old stallion tells you. You’re not sure why it’s caught your interest so much. In fact, as he describes the blue orb and the ethereal force of magic it projected, you question why some part of you knows what he’s talking about. As unbelievable as the story is, somehow, you know he’s telling the truth.

“I was the only one who dared to touch it, and when I did, all I heard was a massive explosion that nearly blew my eardrums and for a moment I saw nothing but white. Then, everything went back to normal.”

“We left the cave after that, and suddenly we were taken aback by the intense heat, and as soon as I looked around, I realized that the town was no longer in a grassy field beside Canterlot, but instead in a desert in the middle of nowhere.”

As he says that, you remember back to the map on the newspaper clipping earlier, and it suddenly makes sense. However, at the same time, it doesn’t. How is it possible that this town used to be in the place of Ponyville? Better yet, how is it possible that Ponyville never even existed?

It’s as if you’re in a completely different universe.

“That’s the reason I didn’t give you any more water. That’s all we got left, and when we run out, its game over. For all of us.” He shut his eyes tightly. “We barely got enough food rations neither, so ponies are starving…” He sighs. “It’s a crappy situation. We have yet to have an ounce of good luck. Now we’re just trying to stay alive.

“If I’m gonna be honest, I can’t believe you made it here alive from… wherever you came from. I mean, we’ve scouted for the past week, and we haven’t been able to find any sort of civilization beyond the endless sand. On the off-chance that you were one of them rebels, I had to ask, so I apologize for being unfriendly at first. What matters is that I trust you. For now at least. This way.”

You follow him down another road, still trying to process and figure out the information you have just learned. Yet, you still can’t make sense of it all. As the two of you walk, you pass by a graveyard. Rows of graves stretch too far for your eyes to spot an end. As you stare at the countless amount of cracked graves engraved with names upon names, laid out across a landscape of dry dirt, it hits you just how many people had died here. This used to be a largely populated town, almost like Ponyville. Now, though, the town was damn near desolate.

As you gaze upon the depressing scene, you spot a small blue filly sitting in front of a pair of graves, staring at the carved slabs of stone with a still posture. She isn’t being supervised.

“Lost her parents to the plague a few ago,” the old stallion says. “Let’s go, leave her be.”

He starts walking, and you follow. Your eyes stay on the little filly as she mourns. Then, the filly turns her head, eyes fixed on you. Her eyes are red, face dirty and rough, her expression a horrible combination of loss, grief and desperation.

You have to fix this.

Focusing back on the road ahead, the stallion shows you where the market is, before leading you to the apartments. After around fifteen minutes, he finally brings you to a large castle that’s at least a few stories tall built largely out of brick. The building looks old, like it was built centuries ago. One of the towers lies completely demolished in rubble on the ground, and the whole structure looks like its ready to cave inward.

“Last but not least, the ancient castle,” he says. “Supposedly it was the first thing to be built before the rest of the town was constructed around it.” He walks toward the front entrance, and you follow. He pushes the large wooden door open and a heavy creaking sound pierces the air as it opens slowly.

You walk inside, seeing that the place is dark, although dimly lit by the light streaming in from the open door and holes in the ceiling. Ahead of you is the entrance hall, a wide hallway littered with debris in piles throughout the place.

The stallion pulls out a lantern. Where from, you have no clue, but you don’t give it a second thought once he starts leading you toward a right turn down a dark and narrow hallway. The walls are covered with vines and creepers, and a murky smell hangs in the air.

He notices your expression and explains. “We’re going down to the cave I mentioned before. I’d like to show it to you.” What you immediately notice is the look on his face. He masks suspicion behind his eyes, and his posture is determined. His movements are quick, placing one hoof in front of the other in quick succession.

The walls give way to subterranean rock at one point before you reach a downward staircase that stretches for what seems like miles. Cobwebs string from wall to wall, and across the ceiling, covering the walls of the small passage in patches of what looks like white foam.

It’s cold down here. No, scratch that. Freezing. You shiver as you and the stallion descend further into the earth, acknowledging the quickly thickening atmosphere. Before long, you two reach the bottom of the staircase, and now, what lies before you is a long, dimly lit corridor, a few candles on the right wall placed at regular intervals all the way up until a room at the end from which a massive radius of blue light leaks into the corridor you’re currently in.

The stallion proceeds forward and you wait a little before following. That must be what he described: the cave lit up with blue light. Suspense rises within your chest as you get nearer to the room.

When you reach the room, you are quickly bathed in a cyan blue light, and you have to cover your eyes for a second as to not be blinded by the bright shine in front of you. When your eyes adjust to the change in lighting, you look around in disbelief at what you see.

Like the stallion described, the cave is wide open, shaded entirely in blue, and the source of the light is at the top of a small pedestal at the dead center of the room on top of which rests a radiant blue artifact of sorts.

“This is it. The orb that left us stranded in the middle of the desert. Brought you down here in case you didn’t believe my story, and on the off-chance you may know what it is.”

You don’t. However, seeing the room in person, you realize that you do recognize it. You’ve never seen it before, you know that for a fact, but from somewhere in your mind, an image of what you see is in your memory, and you feel a strange, but strong urge to approach it.

So you do.

“What’re you doing?” the stallion asks, but you pay him no heed as you take slow steps toward the orb. For some reason, you feel it calling out to you, urging you to come closer. You don’t understand it, and yet you step closer without a single doubt in your mind. It’s like a magnet, pulling you toward it like you and it are connected in some way. Like you recognize it and in some weird way, it recognizes you too.

As you get closer, the orb rattles slightly, and you feel a strong magical force reaching out to you. The blue aura of the orb then begins to stretch as though being pulled, and reaches slightly toward you. It brightens, as if it senses you, and without thinking about your next actions, you lift a hoof from the ground and reach out toward it.

You almost end up touching it before a frailer looking hoof swats yours away from the orb. You step back, staring at the old stallion who eyes you with a stern, forceful stare.

Beside you, the orb goes still, returning to its original state.

“That thing just reacted to your presence,” the old man says, a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Y’know, when I talked about finding this cave, it looked like you knew what I was talking about. I brought you down here to confirm my suspicions, and seeing you walk up to that thing like you were reuniting with an old friend confirms ‘em.”

His stare turns into a glare. “I knew there was something off about you. It was strange enough that you just popped up while we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, but with you going up to touch that thing and it reaching out to you, I think I’ve seen enough.

“You caused all of this.”

He turns his head toward the entrance of the cave. “Seize this pony!”

You stare in the same direction, seeing a pair of guards you hadn’t notice walk in, and they walk toward you, grabbing you by the forelegs and dragging you toward the entrance of the cave. You try to struggle, but their grip is too strong.

“I knew I was wrong in trusting you,” you hear the old stallion say before a hard surface suddenly slams into your front, and the grip on your forelegs is gone. You look up when you find yourself lying on the ground, and see that you’re now in some sort of old bedroom with a window allowing a view of the daytime sky outside.

You hear a slam behind you, followed by a click, and you turn around, seeing an old wooden door that had been shut. You get up, rushing up to the door and tugging on the handle, but it’s locked. You’re trapped.

That definitely took a turn for the worse, and now you must find a way to escape.

You walk up to the window, looking outside. It seems that you’re on the second floor of the castle. On the other side of the window, just below is a small ledge that you could stand on. You could climb out and down that way. Or, you could find a way to get the door open and sneak out through the castle.

What will your approach be?

Window______________________________________________________________________________________________________Door

28

You head toward the door, analyzing it for a moment. The door is made out of very old, rotting wood, and the hinges are completely rusted. All that considered you calculate that a simple buck might get the door open.

Facing away from the door, you rear up on your forelegs and buck outward. Once your hind legs collide with the door, it flies off the hinges, landing on the floor of the hallway ahead. You hope that no one heard that and step out of the room. That’s the first part of the escape done. Now you just have to navigate your way out without being seen.

You start down the hallway. Like the entrance hall, parts of the wall and ceiling are crumbling and leaving rock fragments on the ground. As you walk, you look out for anypony that may be on watch to make sure you don’t get caught escaping.

Reaching a set of stairs, you descend to the floor below and look around, finding yourself in a large hallway identical to the entrance hall. Determining that the exit must be nearby, you stare down the left and right hallways. Left is a dead end, so you gallop in the opposite direction, darting to the end where the hallway turns. You round the corner and continue running.

At the end of the hall, you see the giant entrance doors that the old stallion led you through, wide open and inviting, and from what you can see, they’re unguarded. Perfect.

You make a beeline toward the giant doors, escape mere seconds away.

Guards suddenly flood through the entrance, spotting you and holding up the bows in their hooves.

“Stop right there!” one of them yells. You dig your hooves into the ground and skid to a stop. Spinning in the opposite direction, you’re about to run back, but that plan is quickly foiled once another squad of guards block the end of the hallway, mimicking the guards across from them and aiming their weapons at you.

Your head turns in every direction, looking for a way to escape. The guards close in on you, bows trained on you the whole time. Then, you spot a way out of the hall.

“On your haunches, hooves behind your—hey!” you dive behind one of the piles of rubble as a row of arrows soar above your head. You then get up and start running toward the hallway in front of you. A few arrows hit the wall behind you, narrowly missing you as you enter the hallway and put all your energy into creating distance between you and the guards.

Heavy hoofsteps and angry shouts echo through the narrow hallway as you gallop down the stairs ahead of you. When you reach the bottom, you look back and see that the guards are gaining on you. Focusing your attention back to what’s in front of you, you suddenly slow down before coming to a halt.

You’re back in the cave with the orb. A dead end.

Your eyes shoot to the hallway where the guards have finally reached the bottom of the stairs, and you back up toward the pedestal carrying the artifact in a pathetic attempt to get away.

As soon as you do, the guards file in, all aiming their bows at you in unison. Through the crowd of armed ponies, the old stallion pushes through, staring at you with a deep frown of fury.

“Resilient, you are,” he says, voice booming through the cave. “Give it a break. You’re not going to win. There’s nowhere for you to run and I got dozens o’ guards here with their bows pointed straight at you.”

He’s right. You’re trapped. There’s no way out of this.

The low buzz of energy behind you catches your attention, and you turn around, seeing that the blue orb has begun to rattle again, glowing with a powerful brilliance. Then, without thought, your hoof reaches out to grab it.

“Do not touch that thing!” the stallion barks, but it’s too late as you take hold of the artifact and pick it up off the pedestal.

Having taken the stallion’s panicked shout as an incentive, the guards release the strings of their bows, causing a wave of arrows to fly in your direction.

Before the arrows can hit you, they all simultaneously burst into dust, as though simply evaporating in mid air, before fading out of existence.

“W-what…” the old stallion stutters. “How’s that possible?!”

You look down at the orb in your hoof. As you hold it, images pass through your mind like a slideshow. You see Pinkie Pie standing in front of you offering you a cupcake. Then, you see Octavia and Vinyl Scratch fighting inside their home. Then, you see Twilight Sparkle leading you toward a large machine in her laboratory comprised of computers and a large table with wires connected to it. Then, you see the old stallion inquiring your unexpected arrival at the town with a suspicious glare.

You look back up at the stallion and the group of guards eyeing you with stunned looks, unable to believe what they’d just witnessed.

“I ain’t got a clue what you’re able to do with that there artifact, but I suggest you put it down now,” the stallion orders, his demeanor of authority replaced by apprehension and unease.

You look back down at the orb again. You feel its pulses of energy through your entire body as more images stream through your mind like premonitions. No, not premonitions. More like… memories, most of which have never happened and yet you somehow remember witnessing.

And then you know what you need to do.

“Put that thing down, now!” the stallion says, but you don’t listen. You raise the orb in the air slowly. “What are you doing?” You take a deep breath through your muzzle, and then swing the orb toward the ground. “STOP! NO!!” You release the orb. It falls for less than a moment, and then it shatteeerrrrreettahs ti neht dna ,tnemom a naht ssel rof F̶̯͛O̷̤̓Ĺ̶̻L̴̻̎Ô̶̯W̵̗͘ sllaf tI%#!*%.enot dega ,ylevarg a htiw skaeps eh “,ereh dnuora morf t’nia uoY”^!#$%llih peets dna gnol a nwod nellaf tsuj dah uoy taht ees uoy ,kcab daeh ruoy gninruT^#(&@&tunococ Ĥ̴̥Ì̶̗M̷͗͜ evol uoy hcum woh wonk I ecnis dna ,epicer tunococ a tuo gniyrt emit tsrif ym s’tI”{$#!@*.enam ruoy fo trap tnorf eht gnihcnerd dna worb ruoy gnirevoc taews dloc a ,deb ruoy ni pu toohs uoY&%@

…

You stand before your front door.

It stands there, waiting for you to open it and step out into the gorgeous outdoors. Your hoof is on the knob, about to twist it and get rid of the barrier between you and the outside world.

But your hoof just rests there.

None of this is right. You had just come out of your room, excited about the huge day ahead of you, eaten a small breakfast and walked up to the door about to leave, and for some reason, you stopped. For whatever reason, it feels as though everything before walking up to your front door was a dream and you had just woken up, standing here about to leave your home.

Weird flashes of past memories swim through your mind, though most of them are foggy and blurred. You only remember the bits and pieces, such as images of a desert, a town, and some sort of bright blue light. With the limited images in your memory, you’re unable to connect them into any sort of inkling of how you got them or where from.

But you push that all aside. They don’t matter right now. Today is going to be a great day.

You turn the knob and step outside, feeling the warm breeze and summer heat waves against your skin. However, for some reason the sensation of heat brings back the memories, particularly of the desert. You try to shake them out of your head, but they’re stuck in your thought process as though by glue.

Following that is a strong sense of déjà-vu. As you look around, you see ponies marching about joyfully as they perform their daily routine, some waving at you, prompting you to wave back not voluntarily but more as though you’re being forced to do so.

You’ve experienced this all before. You know it. You’ve done this walk already. All of this—waking up, eating breakfast, walking through town, this weather, the ponies outside, its all happened before.

Then, in front of you far down the road, you see a pony walking in a straight line like you. The pony captures your interest, and you speed up, attempting to catch up with whoever they are.

As the pony’s details become clearer you start to notice some perplexing details. For instance, the color of their fur bears a striking similarity to yours, as does their mane color and tail. You know of situations where two ponies look much alike, however no matter how similar they can be to each other, it is impossible for two ponies to look the same. So, the fact that the pony looks like your clone instantly piques your curiosity.

Attempting to catch up with the pony, you finally close much of the distance between the two of you as he stops dead center in the road. However, a very familiar picture causes you to stop as well.

The pony is standing in front of your two friends, Pinkie Pie and Vinyl Scratch.

“Heya!” Pinkie’s says to the pony, followed by Vinyl saying “He-hey, what’s up, dude!” You remember this conversation. Vinyl proceeds to invite you to Octavia’s rehearsal and Pinkie Pie invites you to taste test at Sugarcube Corner.

You know what happens next. A choice between your two friends. But why should there have to be a choice, you ask yourself. You feel like a guinea pig, suck in an endless cycle where your only free will is the limitation of two choices that lead you down an already written future.

Suddenly you remember one of the many paths in this cycle. A path that may be able to release you from this loop of choices. You must reach it.

“Oh, I mean, you don’t gotta come with me. If you wanna go with Pinkie, I’m all good with that,” Vinyl says, before silence fills the air, and the pony in front of you stands in place, preparing to make one of many decisions that would decide their fate.

Go with Vinyl Scratch___________________________________________________________________________Go with Pinkie Pie

29

You stick to your current path, heading straight forward, or what you at least believe is forward. Then, you feel the hoof carrying the tail hit the wall, and as soon as you do, a chorus of cheers erupt from behind you. Did you do it?!

“Unbelievable!” Pinkie shouts in surprise next to you. “You’re a natural! Check it out!” You feel a pair of hooves tugging at the blindfold around your head before light floods into your vision and the room is once more visible to you.

Not only that, but in front of you, the tail you held is perfectly matched with the pony on the poster like Pinkie had done earlier.

“I can’t believe it. On your first try too!” Pinkie Pie says, impressed. “I think I mighta just met my match. Nice job.” She turns and addresses the line up of others playing the game. “Round of applause for the new pony!”

The ponies clap their hooves together again, all showing their respect for you.

The party passes by, and you join in on some of the other games, having fun with everypony else. You seem to fit in rather well, and the ponies you mingle with enjoy your company. Besides that, the party goes more than smoothly, and the atmosphere of the room is filled with amusement and happiness: all the ingredients of any Pinkie Pie party. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anypony that Pinkie’s newest party would be as amazing as always, and that’s why it doesn’t. She always throws the best parties, and today is proof of that.

Around mid afternoon, Pinkie Pie pulls a microphone out of her mane. She taps the foam around the end of the microphone, and a sharp, high pitched ringing catches the attention of all the party guests.

“Attention all partygoers!” she practically screams into the microphone, a few ponies blocking their ears momentarily in response. “Thank you all so much for attending Ponyville’s 60th anniversary party. I hope you’re all having a fantasterrific time!” The whole room claps, and you join in the applause. “I know how many of you would love for the party to go on, but its time for everypony to round up outside for the crosstown parade!”

Excited cheers and chatter arise from the assembly of partygoers who, after going quiet to give Pinkie Pie attention instantly become animated, heading for the doors of the building for the parade outside. You watch as everypony files out one by one, joining the ever-enlarging crowd outside the entrance of the bakery.

“Come on!” Pinkie calls out, ushering you to join the other ponies with her. You realize you’ve just been standing still for the past minute, and head along to join them.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice something that causes you once again to stop. You turn your head toward the other side of the bakery and notice a small blue filly disappearing behind a door you hadn’t noticed before.

You eye the strange filly, wondering why she isn’t following the rest of the crowd. Maybe she needs help, or perhaps she’s a little bit lost. Should you follow her?

Follow the Filly__________________________________________________________________________________Follow the Crowd

30

You walk to the door while everypony else leaves the room and joins the parade outside. Pushing the door open reveals the downward set of stairs on the other side.

At the bottom of the stairs, the filly slowly disappears behind the wall, and as she does, a voice rings out seemingly from all directions at once.

“IT KNOWS YOU’RE HERE.”

You’re unable to tell if the voice had come from the filly, or where it had come from at all. You rush down the stairs in hopes to catch up with the filly, descending to the bottom. There, you find a door next to you: a simple blank door in perfect condition, and with no label indicating where it leads.

Open the Door____________________________________________________________________________________Follow the Filly

32

You step behind the wall the filly had disappeared behind. In front of you is another set of stairs that lead downward. You catch sight of the filly’s hind legs once again before they disappear behind the wall at the bottom. Like before, a voice speaks from a direction you can’t pinpoint.

“YOU CAN’T WIN THIS GAME.”

You’re trying to discern the meaning of the sinister words that, if you’re not mistaken, are trying to tell you some sort of message. Whether or not it’s a warning, you can’t tell, however it strikes you as one despite the tone of the voice coming across as calm, yet light, almost like somepony discreetly trying to call for help.

As to try to pick apart the strange sentences, you take the stairs down to the bottom. Like at the top of the stairs you’ve just descended, there is a door which looks exactly the same as the other one.

Open the Door____________________________________________________________________________________Follow the Filly

33

Ignoring the door, you look in the opposite direction. Before you is a long and dark hallway, and at the end is a door, the details of which you can’t exactly make out due to the distance between you and it. The filly stands in front of the door, and then stands on her hind legs to reach the knob before twisting it and opening the door just wide enough for her to slip through. A bright blue light floods in from the slightly open door before it shuts behind the filly, darkening the hallway once again.

Drawn forward solely by the desire to know what’s behind the door, you begin walking forward. Walking slowly turns to trotting. The door gets closer, but ever so slowly even though it doesn’t look that far away. You start galloping, the door getting closer and closer as whatever behind it draws you to approach faster.

You’re almost in front of the door, the vibrant blue light around the sides growing stronger as you run up to it. However, once you’re mere inches away, the door is suddenly replaced by blackness, trapping you in a dark stone hallway that’s quickly darkening further into pitch blackness. Coldness encapsulates you, surrounding you in an inescapable world of nothingness.

F̙̼I͖̝͠ND͟ ̸̞͈͈T̫HE͉̦̣̰̮͝ ̦̘̮͔A̛R̠̯̪̼̩̻T̹̱I̱F̠͓̯̲͠ͅA̢̹̟̺̬̺ͅC̲̲T̪

A sudden burst of light floods the world around you, and then…

??? | ENDING 5 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

35

You keep your head below the water, determined to get an apple. As you continue searching, your lungs begin to burn due to a lack of oxygen. Like sinking deeper into the depths of the ocean, the inside of the bucket starts to darken, the color of the water becoming black like paint being poured into the bucket and slowly mixing. Soon enough, your limbs grow weak, and you collapse on the spot dead, your head floating idly on the surface of the water.

DUMMY | ENDING 7 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

36

You raise your head from the water. Pinkie Pie’s smile widens in glee and she claps. “Yay! You got one. Nice job!”

You look down and sure enough, caught in your teeth is a bright red apple that drips from the coating of water around it. You take the apple out of your mouth and holding it in front of you to inspect it. It looks delicious.

Eat_______________________________________________________________________________________________________Don’t Eat

38

You ignore the filly despite her appearance striking you as odd and continue along with the rest of the ponies that, like you are all too eager to begin the parade.

As soon as you walk out the door, you are swept up into a large mass of colorful ponies marching down the streets of ponyville, all with happy smiles. The parade had already begun. Laughter and enthusiastic cheers fill the air, every single participant of the parade trotting along the road with a spring in their step. Not a single pony shows a sign of discontent. Those who had stayed home spare time to look out their window and wear smiles at the joyful scene outside, and those who had work abandoned their posts to spectate the parade.

It's a beautiful sight to behold, and you find yourself putting on a wide smile along with everypony else. Shadows pass across the crowd, and you look up to see a flock of ponies soaring above and following the rest of the ponies on the ground as pegasi from Cloudsdale fly down to join.

Before long, the parade has almost filled up all of the roads in Ponyville with almost the whole town participating and many ponies from Cloudsdale deciding to do the same. A view from high in the sky would appear as though the roads had become multicolored dots. And its incredible. You’ve never seen anything quite as lively as this, and the smile on your face does not dare slip.

The mix of voices in the air shifts in pitch, and from the front of the crowd you hear the lyrics of a song being sung, and as more ponies catch on to what’s happening, they sing as well, and soon all of Ponyville is singing the words of the song in unison.

Cause I love to make you

Smile smile smile

Yes I do!

It fills my heart with sunshine all the while

Yes it does!

It's a song you’ve never heard before, and you don’t know the lyrics. However, for some reason, the words of the song come out of your mouth as though you have the entire song memorized to a T. You find yourself singing along with everypony, hopping along and performing the dance moves as the crowd moves along, growing larger by the second as spectators become participants and even ponies too shy to join in earlier decide to be part of the fun.

Cause all I really need's a

Smile smile smile

From these happy friends of mine!

The song is sung loud and clear to be heard across the whole globe. Carefree, the parade marches onward, the lips on everypony’s faces curled into jovial grins. In that moment, all of life’s hardships were forgotten. Memories of bad breakups, losing jobs and heated conversations had evaporated like dust. All the negativity in everypony’s minds had vanished, every last ounce replaced by positivity and happiness, and all that matters now is this moment. You drink all of it in, and you love it.

Come on and smile!

And then everything stops.

What was once a loud pack of ponies was now completely and utterly silent. Like a record that had been cut off, the deafening cheers, as well as the sound of the afternoon wind and noises of animals in their habitats had turned into a void like stillness.

Not only that, but everypony around you had gone from wild and animated to frozen statues, like a movie on pause. Every single pony is stuck motionless. Those who had jumped remain in place airborne and unmoving, and the pegasi in the air had stopped flying, yet do not fall to the ground and instead hover there in a still frame.

The only thing that moves now is you. Mid way through performing the final dance of the song, you drop to all four hooves, looking around at the mannequin-like ponies surrounding you. For miles into the distance, you see the same thing. You don’t understand what’s going on. What happened?

Run.

You turn around, pushing your way through the frozen parade when suddenly what looks like dark mist spreads across the blue sky above, covering it completely and submerging the entire world in a dark shade.

As shadow drowns most of the light on the ground, a black fog consumes the distance, getting heavier and heavier by the second. Then, the ponies around you begin to crumble away, turning to dust from head to hooves and drifts off into the sky as though pushed by wind, but you don’t feel any wind. Now, the town is completely vacant

Keep running and don’t stop.

You run down the now empty street. A strong feeling implants itself inside your stomach that the safety you felt only seconds ago is gone. Something is here. Something evil. All you know is that you need to run. Get out of there before it can get you.

TOO LATE

In no time at all, the air becomes cold. Freezing. You shiver as the cold pierces through your skin and freezes your blood. You fall to the ground as the fog closes in, the black sky sinking downward and submerging the town in an ethereal, haunting darkness.

From within the dark fog that surrounds you, an oily liquid of the same color seeps along the ground toward you. You need to get away from it, but you can’t move. It's too cold.

LET ME IN

It's only a matter of time now.

Ț̶̮H̠͉̘̤̪̺E̯̬R̰̱͖̗͘E̵͖͇'̵̲͚̹̭S̗͔͝ ̝̟̰̩̙S̺̕T̺I̳L͏̹L̨ ̷̳̖̺̣͇M̖͖̭̱ORE̲ ̫̝T̸̰O̤̩̰͞ ͔̠͈B̬̘͈̙E͏͍͈ͅͅ ͉̮ḎO̞̟̠̼̱̺̻N͚͓͓̤E̵̤

You feel the darkness around you pulse and warp, lifting slightly as though the darkness itself had hesitated.

W̲͉̻̖A̸̭͙̜̫̞K̜E̞̞̺͝ ͏̮̜̲̦U̼̟P̧

CANON ENDING | ENDING 1 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

39

ARE YOU SURE?

Yes____________________________________________________________________________________________________________No

40

For some reason, there’s something strange about waking up today. Never mind the intense nightmare you just had that causes you to sit upright in your bed shaking and sweating. Although it plays a part in how weird this morning feels, everything in general just feels… off.

You get out of bed and open your blinds. Outside, ponies stroll about completing their daily tasks, smiles on each of their faces. Masks hiding their true selves. None of this was right.

You leave your room, prepare a small breakfast to eat and step outside to start your day. It’s a sunny, warm day, clean air sifting through your mane and coat. It’s fake. All of it.

You start walking down the road as ponies pass by you giving you waves, and you return them politely, but not because you choose to. It's almost as though something… some force is commanding you to. This sense of security you feel, you know it's false. There’s something after you.

You reach a fork in the road, and from both pathways, Pinkie Pie and Vinyl Scratch walk up to you with smiles that mimicked the smiles of everypony else almost perfectly.

“If you go with me, I could drug and kidnap you at Sugarcube Corner!” Pinkie Pie says with a high-pitched, gleeful voice.

“If you go with me, you can find the entrance of the true ending of this story!” Vinyl Scratch says with a chipper attitude.

...

Go with Vinyl Scratch__________________________________________________________________________ Go with Pinkie Pie

41

You head over to Vinyl Scratch, and she gives you an appreciative grin.

“Heh, thanks for picking me,” she says, offering you a hoof bump. You lift a foreleg and with a clop of both your hooves, you start walking down the path. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Pinkie Pie watching you with a blank look before walking away.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you went with Pinkie,” Vinyl continues, stealing your attention away from Pinkie. “But we haven’t hung out in a while, so this is cool.”

Vinyl starts leading you down a road that borders the town. You know you two are not far from Princess Twilight Sparkle’s castle, but you don’t think she intends to take you that far.

“Anyways, so like I said, my friend Octavia--I call her Octy cause, y’know, we’re a thing.” She blushes slightly before continuing. “She’s trying to make it in the music industry. She’s known by a lot of ponies but she isn’t like… big, or anything. But not long ago, she was offered an opportunity to play in front of a big crowd of over a thousand ponies. She’s been rehearsing and playing smaller live shows to prepare, but… she’s pretty nervous about it. You following so far?”

You nod your head. Vinyl then hangs her head regretfully. “Thing is, I’ve been touring and playing live shows of my own since I’m a pretty well known DJ, maybe you've heard or... I dunno, besides the point. Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been around to give her the support she needs.” She then raises her head and smiles at you. “But I figured that to give her some extra support she could use a second opinion. I’m sure she’ll do amazing and all, but having you around to give her some good feedback would help a whole bunch.”

You two walk down the road for a little longer until you see a building large in height and width approaching from the distance: the Ponyville theater, which had been built very recently from what you’ve heard. Its a large brick building with a billboard above the front doors displaying the names of musicians and bands coming to Ponyville to play.

She leads you through the front entrance of the theater, where you end up in a small, dimly lit room with a staircase and a table carrying merchandise of a band that would soon be performing here. What catches your attention mainly, however, is the soothing sound of a cello playing a beautiful succession of notes coming from another room.

“Hey, she’s already started!” Vinyl says excitedly, rushing toward a hallway where the music comes from. You follow her with haste, eager to find out who is playing that magnificent tune. The music becomes louder as you enter the hallway and upon reaching the end of it, you feast your eyes upon the sight in front of you.

The room you’ve entered is large and spatial, rows and rows of empty red seats filling the theater all the way up to the stage, where white spotlights are trained on a gray mare with an elegant, black mane. She stands on her hind legs with a cello in her left foreleg whilst holding a bow in her other hoof, and gracefully sweeps it across the strings to produce a soft melody that eases your mind into a tranquil calmness. The mare is focused, and at peace when she plays, and it seems to be contagious as it helps put you in a similar state of mind.

Vinyl has already taken a seat at the center of the theater, so you head down the ramp and down one of the aisles before taking a seat next to Vinyl.

You two watch as Octavia performs, Vinyl bobbing her head gently to the tune with a proud smile and you enjoying it just as much. You wonder if you should give the mare some encouragement as she plays since you remember that Vinyl had brought you here to give Octavia some confidence for her big show. Then again, you don’t think it would hurt to boo her as a little joke.

Encourage Her___________________________________________________________________________________________Boo Her

43

You stand up from the chair, cupping your hooves over your mouth and shout a loud boo which reverberates through the whole theater.

In that instant, the soothing notes of the cello cut off like a needle being taken off a vinyl disk. Silence pierces through the large auditorium, and the mare on stage looks at you with shock and hurt.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Vinyl Scratch shouts furiously, standing up to face you. “I bring you here to give her some encouragement and you boo her?”

A noticeable red hue paints itself on Vinyl’s face, contrasting against her pale yellow fur. “She’s under a bucketload of stress practicing for a show that could change her life. That’s the last thing she needs, asshole!”

Both mares in the theater stare at you, one pained and anxious and the other overcome by rage. You rub the back of your neck. This isn’t what you had planned. Perhaps you went a little too far.

Before you can explain yourself, Vinyl firmly grips your foreleg and tugs you down the aisle. “Get out of here. Some friend you are.” She opens a door behind her, bright light pooling in from the other side, and throws you out of the auditorium.

You fall to the ground on your back as the door shuts loudly. Getting up from the ground you find yourself outside the front entrance.

Yikes…

That was rough. You didn’t think your joke would take such a sour turn. Not to mention, you could have sworn the trip from the entrance to the auditorium was a lot longer earlier…

Not to worry though. You still have the whole rest of the day ahead of you. One small conflict isn’t going to change that.

You start walking down the road with a smile, deciding that maybe since hanging out with Vinyl isn’t an option anymore, you can find Pinkie and accept her offer of hanging out from earlier. With that thought in mind, you determine that Pinkie Pie had gone back to Sugarcube corner, and decide that that’s your next destination.

Remembering that Sugarcube Corner is just down the road past Princess Twilight Sparkle’s castle, you head in that direction. As you walk, you reach a fork in the road where one path leads to the castle, and the other leads down an alley with houses on either side.

As you look down the alley, you see a pink shape slowly coming toward you, bouncing up and down as it approaches. When you get closer, you realise that it’s the mare you were looking for: Pinkie Pie.

Suddenly, to your left, you hear hoofsteps on dirt, and turn to see that Princess Twilight had exited her castle and, with a stern and almost suspicious expression, trots earnestly toward you. They both stop at the end of the paths they’re on.

“Hey!” Pinkie says cheerfully to you. “I saw you walking all alone and assumed you were done hanging out with Vinyl, so I came to ask if you wanted to taste test now!” She springs up into the air with an adorably wide smile as she finishes her sentence.

“Excuse me,” Princess Twilight’s voice speaks from your left, and you look over to see her shooting you a nervous look. For some strange reason, she sends quick skeptical glances in Pinkie’s direction, and knowing about their close friendship, this undoubtedly confuses you. “I need to talk to you. It’s serious, and I think you’ll be able to help.”

That’s certainly weird, you think. It’s strange enough that Twilight is eyeing Pinkie as though she’s a being from a different world, but to add to that, Pinkie Pie doesn’t even acknowledge her best friend’s existence, continuing to look eagerly at you, impatient for your answer.

You look at Twilight, noticing the apparent worry in her expression, and if what she’s dealing with is as serious as she’s letting on, then maybe you should help out. Then again, your desire to taste test with Pinkie Pie is just as strong.

Go with Twilight Sparkle_______________________________________________________________________Go with Pinkie Pie

44

You ultimately decide that Twilight appears to be more in need of help than Pinkie Pie. You have no idea why the princess herself would need you of all ponies to help her. After all, you two had never talked to each other or know anything about each other. But if Twilight’s situation is as serious as she’s portraying it, you won’t refuse.

You walk up to Twilight, and the look of relief that washes over her face doesn’t slip past your attention. “Come with me into the castle, I’ll explain as we walk.” You follow the purple alicorn, checking back in Pinkie Pie’s direction. Like earlier when you had gone with Vinyl, she gives you a blank, almost dead look before turning round and walking away. Her movements are stiff and robotic, as though she lost all sense of reality in that one second.

“I know this is really sudden,” Twilight says, breaking your attention from Pinkie. You focus on the alicorn who is currently opening the front door of her castle to allow you inside. “But something’s happening to Ponyville that’s beyond my control, and I need your help to fix it.”

Twilight begins leading you down the labyrinth of crystal hallways ahead of you, the luster surfaces reflecting the two of you as you take a left turn, followed by a right, and then another left.

“I think Ponyville is stuck in some sort of time loop,” Twilight explains. “I woke up one morning to take care of official princess duties, but maybe halfway through the day, I blacked out and suddenly I was waking up again, same time, same day, as though the whole rest of the day had never happened. Ever since, I’ve been blacking out and looping back to the morning at random points in the day.

“Not only that, but the ponies in Ponyville aren’t acting right. Nopony’s acting like their normal selves and they don’t respond or even react whenever I try to talk to them. They follow through with the same routine every day but it doesn’t look like they’re aware that they’re in a time loop. ”

You listen as the princess frantically lays down her story. There’s no doubt in your mind that an ordinary person would think Twilight is crazy, and a small part of you thinks so. But the other part, for some strange reason, believes her.

Twilight rounds another turn, approaching a staircase that leads down to a large room at the bottom, which you can’t make out from where you are.

“I don’t know why, but you’re the only one who responds to me when I talk to you. I’m thinking it’s linked to how everypony in Ponyville seems to know you even though I’ve never seen you before in my whole life, or how you do something different after each loop, but I can’t be sure.

“What I am sure of though is that whatever did this—created this time loop can somehow control the flow of time, space and nature.” Twilight pauses and shoots you an accusatory look. “I’m also sure that you showing up out of nowhere when this all started is no coincidence.”

You take a step back at her somewhat threatening expression. Then, she turns her gaze away and leads you down the rest of the stairs. “From the last four times I talked to you, I can conclude that while not on purpose, this space and time imbalance has something to do with you. However, I don't think you're the direct cause of it all. Which is why I need your help with something.”

Upon reaching the bottom of the staircase, you look ahead of you. The room you’ve entered is filled with technology the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Rows of computers are lined up down the length of the lab beside printers, scanners and other high-tech devices: machines connected to thick black wires that run along the floor in a tangle of other wires that lead into the walls and capsules connected to monitors that you have a feeling are Twilight’s own inventions. It all looks so much like a scene from a science fiction movie that you can hardly believe this is all real.

Twilight doesn’t let you wait around to scan the rest of the room as she lights her horn and suddenly your entire vision goes white for a millisecond before you appear right next to the alicorn.

“Hurry up,” Twilight says. “We need to focus and get this done before everything resets again.”

You oblige, following behind her until she reaches a large machine unlike all the others in the room. It’s a horizontal, metal table with straps at each corner. Beneath the table is a system of gears that suspend it just about up to your neck, and at each corner are straps with small openings where wires run out toward a computer next to the table, comprised of a terminal and a keyboard with a lever just beside it.

“This is a weird question, but… taking into account what’s happened to everypony else, has it felt like you’re not in control of yourself? Like something or someone else is making decisions for you?”

ÜÓâ#!ÕEs________________________________________________________________________________________________çÔ$D%3

45

“Hmm…” Twilight falls silent as she ponders over your response. “Well even if that is the case I still want to test my hypothesis. I have no clue what the extent of this phenomenon’s power is so we need to act quickly.”

Twilight walks up to the metal table and gestures to it with a hoof. “I need you to lie on top of this machine. Then I’ll strap you in and hopefully we’ll get a promising response.”

You look at the machine with reluctance. She wants to strap you into that and test you? From the sound of things, she hasn’t tested this thing yet, which leads you to question the safety of this process. But you chose to help her earlier, and if it leads to solving Twilight’s time loop issue, then it’s worth it in the end.

Lifting yourself onto the table, you lie down flat on your back, the cool touch of metal on your back making you shiver. Eventually your body heat warms it up, and while it’s not particularly comfortable, it’s a little more bearable.

Twilight lights her horn, and you feel the straps on the corners of the table wrap themselves around your hooves, restraining you to the table. Lifting your head as far as you can, you can see Twilight walking toward the terminal and keyboard, typing what you assume to be some sort of code judging by the numbers and unfamiliar assortment of words and brackets on the terminal screen.

Suddenly, the whole table shakes briefly, and then begins to rotate slowly. You hear the soft whir of the gears below the table as it tilts toward a vertical position. The straps keep you from falling, but the tugging against your forelegs is slightly irritating. The machine then lurches and goes still, leaving you hung on the table watching as Twilight continues to type away at the keyboard.

“This machine is infused with a spell of mine that will be able to bypass the fabric of space and time. My current theory is that you’re being used as a sort of… host for whatever anomaly is causing this time loop, so with you strapped to the machine, I should be able to detect the anomaly and vanquish it.”

You watch as Twilight punches away at the keys, unsure about this whole thing, but as a positive, it seems like she knows, or at least somewhat knows what she’s doing.

She finally stops typing and looks at you. “First I’m going to run a quick ten second scan on you before we begin the actual test. If you feel a tiny sting, don’t worry about it.”

She presses a single key on the keyboard, and the sting she talked about bites your hooves where the straps are attached. When you look over at the terminal, you see lines of zeros and ones appearing on the screen. You don’t understand a thing on the screen, but strangely enough, neither does Twilight as her brow furrows at the result on the terminal.

“That can’t be right...” Twilight says, watcYOUR MACHINE IS NOT GOING TO WORK, TWILIGHT. YOU’RE MAKING THINGS WORSE.hing the numbers continue on and on past the bottom of the screen. “I didn’t program this machine to do that...”

After ten seconds pass, the appearance of zeros and ones stop abruptly, as does the sting in your hooves. Twilight stares at the terminal, trying to make out what it could possibly mean. But as she examines it, she freezes, seeming to notice something unusual, before typing something else. The binary on the terminal disappears and text takes its place.

“Binary code? What the hay…?” Twilight mutters puzzledly before reading out what’s on the terminal. “and the sting she talked about bites your hooves where the straps are attached. When you look over at the terminal, you see lines of zeroes and ones appearing on the screen… what in the world?”

‘What in the world’ is exactly what you’re thinking. From the sound of what she reads, the text is describing the events that occured after starting the scan. In fact, it’s like it’s describing you in particular…

As Twilight reads, her eyes slowly rise, expression going from pure confusion to fear. “Your machine is not going to work, Twilight. You’re making things… worse...” She stops there, glancing at you for a moment, giving you a good view of the panic in her face. Then her hooves rush back to the keyboard. The paragraphs on the screen disappear and the dark image that replaces it fills with the code Twilight types out.

“We can’t waste anymore time,” Twilight says with determination in her voice. “I know it’s there now, I just need to activate the machine.”

You don’t know what it is, but a huge part of you suddenly screams that what she’s doing is a bad idea. You immediately try to free yourself from the straps, but they hold unusually tightly. Your continuous struggle is fruitless as Twilight finishes typing whatever she’s typing, and then steps toward the lever next to the keyboard.

“This might hurt, but trust me, it’s for the greater good.” Twilight grips the lever as you do everything you can to get out of your restraints and stop Twilight from pulling the lever. “I’m going to pull on three. One… Two...”

All of a sudden, the room darkens substantially, and a black ink-like fog gushes down the staircase at the entrance of the lab. Twilight doesn’t notice any of it as she takes in a nervous breath and steels her nerves.

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ñÿ þ}þ™ ¹ÿ%ÿaÿÂÿÙþtþen noÿRÿY&ou open your eyes. Your mind is fuzzy, and you feel lightheaded, but you have the energy to push yourself off the floor. As you get up, you hear the sound of clinking against the ground, and look down to see glass and metal shards scattered along the tiled floor. Confusion hits you like a sack of bricks. All you remember is pulling the lever and now you’re suddenly on the ground... had you passed out?

The stench of smoke fills your nostrils as you stand. It takes another moment for your surroundings to focus. When you do, your heart drops, eyes contracting to pinpoints.

The machine is destroyed, a plume of smoke rising from the top and progressively spreading throughout the basement. The shape of it is malformed and looked as though it had literally imploded, now an unrecognizable version of what it once was. The wire that leads to the vertical metal table is in flames, and hanging from the table is the Ù$h%#& colored pony, hanging limp in the straps, not moving, nor breathing.

Your eyes simply glide between the destroyed machine and the pony who hangs there dead as though crucified. The experiment had failed miserably. What have you done…?

It’s okay, you tell yourself. No worries, in a few hours, the day will just reset and then none of this will have ever happened. Yes, that’s what you’ll do. All there is to do now is wait.

You decide that the best course of action in the meantime is to discover what went wrong with the machine. The appearance of words on the terminal gives you confidence that you’re getting somewhere. It may take a few more loops but you are sure now that you’ll be able to restore everything to the way they once were.

You’re about to head toward the stairs leading up to the main floor of the castle when you stop. Everything suddenly feels colder, and unnatural. The air doesn’t feel right. It feels thicker. Different.

Wrong.

You talk to yourself to reassure yourself that everything is fine—that it’s just the shock of the pony’s death and the unexpected blackout. Your blood goes cold. No words come out of your mouth. You try to speak again. No sounds are produced. You can’t speak… why can’t you speak?!

The room is colder now. Your breath is cold too. The room is getting dimmer. You think it's the smoke blocking out the light from the lamps above, until you discover that the smoke hasn’t spread enough. It’s getting darker. Darker. Colder.

You turn around, tripping over your own hooves as you stagger toward the staiÐì×Øâ¥You fall backward, a spike of pain stabbing through your head as you tumble to the ground. Cursing yourself for being clumsy, you place your hooves on the ground to get back up.

You can’t see your hooves…

You feel your hooves in front of you but you can’t see them. They’re invisible. You look further down. You can’t see your body. You can’t see any of your features--your Œò$ñË colored fur and… and…

You can’t remember what you looked like.

You dig through your memories, but you can’t remember any of your physical traits. Your color, your race, your gender, size, weight, voice.

You can’t remember your name.

You know you have a name. Your friends and family have said it so many times. You remember your friend’s names. Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie. You remember what they look like. So why can’t you remember who you are?!

The room is freezing. The darkness has shadowed every corner of the room.

You drag yourself over to the glass shards, hoping to see at least some detail of what you look like in the reflection. Your whole body trembles from the cold. The room gets darker. The computers in the room have faded in the black mist.

You pick up one of the glass shards and look into it. You stare. You keep staring at your reflection. Your reflection. YOÆ%ÎUs&R reflection. You drop the shard. Your breathing gets heavier. You call for help, but you can’t hear your voice. You try to move. You’re frozen in place. The rope holding your sanity together snaps.

FRËAK ØUT___________________________________________________________________________________________FŔE@K OÙT

46

And then you scre/éam.

AND THEN YOU SCRE$E#%EAM.

A#AND THEN Y@$OU SCREEÉĔỆĖ̃E̋ỄȄËAM

AND THEN YOU SCRĔỆĖ̃E̋ỄÉĔỆĖ̃QVÊÒGÉÅ¥ÐŒ±ÇÕ?ÓŽÆE̋ỄÉĔEÚMÖÚỆE̋ỄÉĔE̋ỄĖ̃E̋ỄÉ&ÊÎÐ7ÊÌ>§Ê$B5»ILÇ¼RIŽ½FKX»%IÆÚEỆĖ̃E̋ỄÉ1ÃÑÆ3RÕU̷3̸R̴Õ̴Å̷*̶Ê̵Æ̶Ï̶Ê̵Á̵̳͠6̸̲̖́͋̇Î̶͔̼̩̾2̴͍̐̉Ï̴̲̳̹̑͆Ð̴̧̬͔͎͂̊̈́͠‡̵̦̠̜̜͊>̴͈̂͝Ï̸̛̙̬̈̕‡̵̥̫͈̦̓Ồ̴̜͘Ø̸̮̅͑Ḙ̸̣͓́̑̿͝Ễ̷̡̳͍̩̈̎̃̽É̴̛͚̳̼͇̋Ĕ̸̻̣̔̑͝È̵̙̰́Ễ̵͖̀̃̌Ė̷̠̒͠E̷̲̬͛Ễ̸̘͂̔̀̕É̴̛̹Ę̸̟̜̈́̅Ễ̶̢͕̰̻̓É̷̮͉͈̈́Ĕ̴̛͕̘́͘E̶͔͠Ễ̵̖͕̓Ė̸̡̺͌E̴͇̯̓͊̉͝Ễ̴̠̥͕̫̈́̕É̶̢͚̖̒͗̽͘Z̸̧̛̯̬̦̎̅Î̷͚̗̀̇̉͛Ù̶̧̍͂͝Å̷̈̅̍Ι.̷̜̦͚̉͆̑¶̴̤̩̺̄͒Ú̶͈̀̽̊̀M̵̘̲̏̄̑{̶̠͉̗͌͛̆̆Ę̷̣̈͗̈́̍̓©̶̬̹͈͙͌̊͛"̵̢̙͌̒̚Æ̴̢̧̐͌͘̚Ḙ̵̤͓́͋̓Ú̶͔́Ñ̸͎̈́£̷̡͇̥̝̒S̷̡͎̅̌͗̓Ø̷̝̳̱̀͗̏Ò̷̖̤̳͝Ȅ̸͚́̌Ệ̵̃̋̚͝͝É̷̖̓Ĕ̴̢͔̜̪̋Ë̷́͜Ễ̴̗̜̾̌Ė̸̺̄͆̌͝É̷͓̹Ễ̴̝̣̑̐̓̇É̶̤̩̬̉͜Ĕ̴̢͔̜̪̋Ë̷́͜Ễ̴̗̜̾̌@̸̻̩̫̭̋͊͒͂͜%̴̼̔̋̈͝Ι̯̠͈̯$̴̮̺̥̺͒#̶͔͖̉͋̐̂̋͛^̷̧͚̤̱̗̒̉̊͑

§#ÌŒ×Ø | ENDING 8 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

47

You walk toward Pinkie. The pink pony smiles brightly, brimming with excitement.

“Yay!” she exclaimed, rearing up happily before placing her front hooves back on the ground. “It’s been so long since we’ve spent some time together! Ooo, this is going to be so much fun!”

Pinkie starts walking back down the road, and you follow, briefly glancing back at Twilight, who is staring at you in frantic confusion as if not sure what went wrong with something.

Your attention is stolen by Pinkie once she starts talking again. “I’ve been trying some new recipes recently, and I’ve heard you’re quite the sweet tooth, so who better—well, besides me of course—to help judge?”

“I already told you, silly,” Pinkie remarked with a giggle. “I don’t think I have to tell you a third time. Besides, you’re still the new pony in town, and it’s my job that you feel as welcome as possible. And I just absolutely love my job, because it means I get to make ponies like you happy! Which, in case you didn’t catch on yet, is kinda my thing.”

Pinkie is already at the far end of the room, gesturing in a circular motion. “Come on, what’re you waiting for? The more you stand around the less time we’ll have to do taste testing!”

You cock an eyebrow in confusion. Almost everything here is cakes, so what exactly will there be to taste test?

You look at the cupcake again, its creamy, milky deliciousness sitting on your hoof open to be consumed. You bring it up to your mouth…

Taste the Frosting________________________________________________________________________________Eat the Cupcake

48

Hi :twilightsmile:

49

You raise your hooves and clap them lightly. The spaceness of the room allows for it to echo throughout the whole room, without a doubt heard by the mare on stage.

The musician’s ears perk up, and while she maintains her focused frown and graceful sweeps, she channels the newly acquired confidence from your encouragement and plays more enthusiastically, moving her head with the soft sounds of the cello and losing herself in her own playing.

Vinyl starts clapping along with you. Octavia looks up for a moment, her eyes locking on Vinyl and staying that way for a few seconds. She shoots her a faint smile before bowing her head and focusing on her instrument again.

“She’s so happy on stage,” Vinyl says, staring at the gray mare as though in a trance. “It’s like she’s in her own little world. She’s often in a good mood, but when she’s on stage doing her thing, she’s...” Vinyl smile’s proudly, her cheeks rose. “Something else.”

You nod in agreement, taking a moment to truly admire the art, and the amount of work it must have taken for Octavia to work her way up to this point. You allow the music to take you out of your seat and send you drifting down a river of beauty and serenity. Despite only lasting for one more minute, it's an amazing minute as the movement of the musician’s hoof slows, the notes getting softer and softer until silence takes their place.

You offer another round of applause, and Vinyl takes inspiration by standing on her hind legs and clapping her hooves together energetically. “Woohoo! Let’s go Octy!”

Octavia gives you and her marefriend a smile before grabbing her cello and carrying it offstage, leaving you and Vinyl alone in the auditorium.

“I had a feeling you’d enjoy it. I told you, she’s got wicked talent. I’m sure she’ll succeed.” Vinyl gets up. “Octavia’ll be packing stuff backstage for a while. Let’s head out.”

The pale yellow unicorn walks straight past you. You turn around and find yourself in the fresh outdoors, the sun’s warmth caressing the front of your body. You’re at the front entrance of the theater, and Vinyl is walking off ahead down the road. You rush slightly to catch up with her.

“Thanks for coming along,” she says. “Like I said earlier, I travel often and I'm not around to support Octy as much as I'd like to. But I could tell you gave her a lot of confidence, so thanks for that. Really.”

You two continue to walk for a while, talking and chatting about anything that comes to mind. Then, Vinyl stops in her tracks.

“Oh shoot, Pinkie’s party, I totally forgot!” Vinyl says alarmingly, causing you to remember and admit you had forgotten as well. The mare turns her head to the clocktower just over the row of houses, and subsequently relaxes. “Oh good, we still got an hour.”

She turns back to you with a grin. “Well, since that’s the case, why don’t we do something in the meantime? I know this great place where we can grab a bite to eat.” Vinyl pauses and thinks about that. “Actually wait, we’ll probably be filling up on cake at the party, so we could head to my place instead if you want… I’ll leave it up to you. Whaddya prefer?”

Go to Lunch__________________________________________________________________________Go to Vinyl Scratch’s House

50

You decide that spending time at Vinyl’s house sounds interesting and suggest going there.

“Sounds good. Let’s go!” Vinyl says, trotting past you. You turn around and, like a film transition, you find yourself on a cobblestone road with rows of houses on each side. When you look back, you see that the theater is gone, replaced by a mirror of what’s in front of you. Weird…

“Yo, you comin’ or not?!” Vinyl shouts, her voice echoing through the empty—aside from you and her—alley. You turn back and catch up to the unicorn standing some distance ahead and walk next to her.

“I just realized, you’re the first pony to come over to my new place,” Vinyl says. “Well, aside from Octy. She moved in with me a little while after we got together. I turned my living room into a studio plus I had an extra room so it was perfect for her. Speaking of the studio, we can mess around in there until it's time to go to the party.”

Vinyl stops and points to a house on your right. “This is it. Come on!” she says excitedly, marching on up to the front doorstep with you following suit. Her horn lights up, and the front door is surrounded by a white aura before opening wide in front of you.

You walk in, greeted by a short hallway. Along the floor are several soda and beer cans lying around, having been carelessly thrown to the ground instead of into a recycling bin. However, in the next second, they all explode in tiny white blasts of magic before vanishing.

“Sorry about the mess, I didn’t exactly plan for visitors,” Vinyl says sheepishly as the clatter of tin cans hitting the ground goes off in another room. You shrug forgivingly, following the mare into the room ahead.

You make a pretty good guess that this is the living room that Vinyl Scratch was talking about. Both halves of the room are painted different colors, one half blue and the other a light brown, divided down the center of the room. On the blue half, electronic equipment like keyboards and large amplifiers stacked on top of each other are connected by cables that string from one to the other. On the brown half is a cello with a music stand beside it and a table holding a mug of what appears to be half-full tea. It’s pretty simple to discern which side is who’s.

“Welcome to the place where the magic happens, literally and figuratively. Ya know, since I’m a unicorn and I can do magi—ANYWAYS, I wasn’t kidding when I said I transformed this living room. Used to have some old couches which the previous owners left behind, but I got rid of those and added speakers, repainted it—Octavia helped me with that, and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Vinyl gestures to the blue side of the room. "My side obviously. This is where I make all sorts of tracks. You can make any beat you want with these babies. C'mere, I'll show you how!"

She steps behind the keyboard, messing with the buttons and settings on the device which are completely foreign to you. As you step over wires to stand beside Vinyl, you hear the front door open, followed by the clopping of hooves entering.

The unicorn looks up from the keyboard and smiles, yet with a slight frown. "Huh, didn't think Octy would be home that soon," she says, leaving her place in front of the keyboard to go greet her marefriend. As she does, the gray mare you’d seen on stage at the theater trots into the room with a saddlebag around her back.

“Sup, Octy!” Vinyl says.

Octavia looks up somewhat in surprise. “Oh, Vinyl. Hi, I wasn’t expecting you to be here.” Her british accent stands out to you immediately. Her eyes then lock on you. “You were the one at the theater this morning, correct?”

You nod.

“Well thank you for the support you gave me, I’m glad you enjoyed the performance,” she says gratefully, proceeding to hold out her hoof. “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Octavia.” You shake her hoof with a smile.

“Oh yeah, that was an A plus performance Octy. Even my friend here was telling me how good you were.” Vinyl bumps you on the shoulder, giving you an appreciative smirk.

Octavia looks at Vinyl again, and you think you see her smile flatten a little. “Thanks. Erm... Vinyl, can I talk to you in private for a second…?”

Vinyl seems caught off guard by the question. “Uh… sure, yeah.”

The atmosphere takes a sudden awkward turn as Octavia backs into the hallway and motions for Vinyl to follow. The yellow unicorn sighs, like she knows what this is going to be about, and turns to you nervously. “Uh, just wait here a sec, I’ll be right back.” She then follows Octavia into the hallway, leaving you alone in the living room.

You stand in place alone, waiting for their conversation to be over. You look around the room, thinking about trying out the instruments in the room to entertain yourself while Vinyl’s away. Then again, you don’t know the first thing about these kinds of instruments, especially the keyboard in front of you with not only piano keys, but a wide variety of buttons ranging from large to small.

You see what looks like the power button on the left of the keyboard and press it. The keyboard buttons light up, and you decide to press one of the keys. When no sound is produced from the keyboard’s speakers, you try to find out why when you realize that it's connected into the amplifiers behind you. You turn around, faced with a row of knobs and switches, all of which you have no clue what they do or how they work…

You decide to just wait until Vinyl comes back.

Come to think of it, she hasn’t been back for a while. Have they been talking for that long? You step toward the hallway when your ears perk up at the sound of… arguing? Their voices are faint, and it seems like Vinyl and Octavia are trying to keep it down, but there’s no doubt in your mind it's arguing.

When you look into the hallway, you see the two mares at the other end, talking to each other with clear tension between them. While Octavia’s face is calm and slightly somber, Vinyl is pacing lightly with a stressed expression.

“Listen, I know recently we haven’t seen each other much, but that can change—I’ll cut down on touring.”

“Vinyl, be honest, you’re busy with live shows all across Equestria, and you can’t just cut down because it’s how you make a living. Yours and my motivations are different and with how things are now, it’s just going to get worse further down the road.”

“C’mon Octy, I’ve supported you through so much stuff, and even if we don’t see each other as much, we still stay in contact, and now you’re saying this, I mean… really?”

“I’m grateful for your support, Vinyl. Truly, I am. My point is that it has nothing to do with you. In a few days I have my performance and from then on, our relationship could become uncomfortably distant, and I’m sure we both don’t want that. So maybe this is for the best.”

“Well, you said it yourself. Could. Things could be different, or… who knows, you might not even make it! Wrong thing to say, I’m sorry.”

You watch as the argument takes place and feel an incentive to jump in and calm them down. However, it’s awkward enough that you’re witnessing this argument take place, and part of you just wants to stay out of it and go on your merry way.

Intervene___________________________________________________________________________________________________Leave

51

You decide that the best thing to do in this situation is to get out of their manes and let them deal with their issues. You’ll just hang out with Vinyl another time, and maybe Pinkie still has time to hang out.

You walk leisurely toward the front door, around the arguing couple who, focused on their feud with each other, don’t pay you any attention. You open the door, trotting out into the bright morning outside and shut the door behind you, the voices of the two mares fading behind it.

Walking down the alley of houses, you can’t help but get a sinking feeling that you’re doing something wrong. What if Vinyl and Octavia actually needed your help…?

Nah, the other side of your rationality says. They’ll work out their problems and be fine the next day. With the reassurance of that thought, your mood is boosted, and you trot down the road, excited to get on with the rest of your day.

You hear the house door open behind you before slamming shut. You stop in your tracks, and turn around, seeing Vinyl Scratch galloping toward you with tears in her eyes. Slowing down in front of you, she stares at you with a glare.

“Why didn’t you help?! You saw us arguing and just left, and now...” her sentence is interrupted by a sob that shakes her body. “Screw you. Some friend you are!” She runs past you and into the distance.

You watch as she gallops and then disappears behind the houses at the end of the road. Then you look down at the ground in contemplation. You probably shouldn’t have left, you think to yourself, especially since you’ve just lost one of your friends. Should you go after her and apologize?

No, you think. She’ll get better. She probably wants to be alone right now. You’ll apologize later, or tomorrow. In the meantime, you have the rest of today to enjoy, so there’s no time to waste!

Screw you. Some friend you are!

What’s wrong with you…? Vinyl was right. You should have helped, but instead you left like a scaredy-cat. You might have been able to diffuse the situation, or at least help out slightly.

You decide that you can’t think that way all day. You set those thoughts aside, ready to once again face the remainder of the day that waits impatiently for you to tackle it.

Some friend you are!

SOME FRIEND YOU ARE!

SOME FRIEND YOU ARE.

You stay in place. Forget tackling the rest of the day. You’re a bad pony. You left out of anxiety and now Vinyl hates you. Why wouldn’t she hate you? You can’t even help your friends when they need it. What kind of pony abandons their friends?

YOU’RE A BAD PONY.

Those words replay in your mind over and over again. You don’t deserve friends if you don’t even know how to be a friend. You don’t even notice that the once bright morning sky is now a black void, or that everything around you is slowly being submerged in a black fog that drowns any existing light that touches the ground, because you’re too focused on making sure those words don’t leave your mind.

When you finally do notice the darkness rapidly enclosing around you, becoming more and more claustrophobic, you simply sit on the ground and watch it come closer. Looks like even the day itself recognizes that you don’t deserve a bright and sunny morning. It doesn’t matter to you at this point. You decide to just sit there, away from everypony. You’re a toxin. Poisonous. The only way to keep anyone else from getting poisoned is to isolate yourself from everypony, and that’s what you’re going to do.

A cloud of surreal black smoke builds up in front of you. You look up at it. From the mist, a haunting silence pulsates from it. It twists into itself, rippling. An entity that should not be. And you can feel it staring at you.

DON’T WORRY. I’LL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.

The voice doesn’t come from any specific direction. It echoes from everywhere at once, like the voice exists in your mind. You stare at the mist as it drifts toward you, streaming gracefully through the air and wrapping itself around you. It's cold. Freezing. And yet, it’s comforting. You accept the embrace of the darkness as the cold begins to freeze the blood inside your body.

LET ME IN

The alley, once brightly lit by the warm summer sun is now nothing but a black void where almost all the light has been extinguished by the black fog. But this is good. This is what you deserve. Everything is now numb. It won’t be long now…

Y̨̙̖̮OU̖̫̮ ̲̕C̠͈̖͟A̶͕̰̥N̫̘'͎͈͈T̬̻̞̘̞͙ ̠͓̜͚G͍̫̹͕̱͇̕I̜͔̞̞̳͘V̧E͉ Ư͓̝̘͙͉͎̰P̀ ̙͔̀N̦̺̜O͕W̟̲̙͓

The darkness is suddenly warded away by a blinding flash of light. You’re going baàáãâääÛ͍Þ̗̯͘Ú̱̣̜͜Ö̸̝͈̯Ø̭͈̦̮F̴̣͉̼̮̦÷̟Q͔͓̮͔̮

DEPRESSION ENDING | ENDING 9 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

52

Your logic tells you that it doesn't feel right not to do anything about this, and therefore your natural reaction is to step up to the arguing couple and attempt to diffuse the situation.

As soon as you step in, Octavia and Vinyl go quiet, having forgotten that there was a guest in the house.

"Hey, sorry it's taking so long dude, we're just having a bit of a long chat," Vinyl says in a nervous and unconvincing tone that you would have picked up on even if you hadn't heard their conversation a few seconds ago.

Vinyl then bites her lip lightly. "You didn't like... hear anything, did ya?"

Octavia hushes Vinyl with a glare, but her glare falls as you nod in response to the question.

"Oh..." the unicorn shyly rubs her foreleg with a hoof. "Well this is kinda awkward."

You proceed to gesture the two mares into the living room in order to discuss their issues. You've never classified yourself as a therapist in any way, but it looks like you're going to just have to wing it if you want to save their relationship from disaster.

Vinyl and Octavia follow you to the living room unsurely and you seat them on the couch on Octavia's side of the room while you sit across from them.

Time to work your magic...

***

After talking the mares through their issues and relationship conflicts for likely over an hour, you've arrived at a point where all of you are silent, Vinyl and Octavia sitting in contemplation as you wait to see if you've done a good job as a temporary counselor.

The room is also considerably darker.

Then Octavia breaks the silence.

"I'm sorry, Vinyl."

"No, I'm sorry," the unicorn says almost immediately. "Listen, I'm the one who's not around nearly as much as I should be when I should be there for my marefriend supporting her. I mean you've supported me for so long and there's no reason I shouldn't be returning the favour. I'm going to cut down on touring."

"But Vinyl, you love touring and it's how you make a living." Octavia says.

"I make more than enough money from touring. And you know what, you're right. I do love touring." Vinyl looks up at Octavia with a loving smile, her cheeks hot pink. "But I love you more. And if it means losing my title as the most popular DJ, so be it."

Octavia looks at Vinyl in momentary disbelief, tears welling up in her eyes. Then she lunges at Vinyl and wraps her forelegs around her in a tight hug, which Vinyl happily returns. As they embrace each other in front of you, you wear a smile at your successful attempt at repairing their relationship.

"I shouldn't have suggested ending our relationship," Octavia says, her voice soft, cracking during her sentence. "It was stupid and ignorant of me. I'm so sorry, Vinyl."

"It's okay," Vinyl consoles. "I understand why you thought it was the best move. I forgive you."

They stay in embrace for a little while longer before finally letting go of each other. Vinyl then turns to address you with a warm, grateful smile.

"Thank you, really. If it weren't for you, today likely would have been a much worse day for both of us. You really are the best friend a pony could ask for."

"Vinyl’s right," Octavia follows. "You've really helped us, so thank you."

Vinyl looks out the window. “It’s getting late, you maybe wanna head home?”

You look, seeing that the sky outside is nearly pitch black, and decide that it's definitely time for you to head home. You nod, and get up from your chair. Vinyl gets up and follows you to the front door.

“I know I’m saying it again, but thank you,” she says. “You’re a good pony. You should come hang out with us more.” She steps forward to invite you into a hug, and you accept it. You then open the front door, waving goodbye to Vinyl before she closes the door.

You start walking down the alley to head to your house. The whole world is dark, and the party at Sugarcube Corner has likely already ended. But, considering the way things turned out, you’re more than satisfied with your day so far.

With that thought, you proceed to your destination, a horizon of darkness and black fog before you.

FAÇADE | ENDING 12 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

53

“Sure. Alright, follow me, the restaurant’s this way!” Vinyl says, walking straight past you. You turn around to follow her and suddenly find yourself standing before a somewhat large wooden structure. At the front are double-doors with windows on either side and above is a billboard displaying a hayburger and onion horseshoes. It’s not a restaurant that you’ve seen before, which makes you eager to try out something new.

“I’ve been here several times with Octavia. The burgers here are really good, they’re not like your ordinary fast food joint that just load ‘em with chemicals and serve.” Vinyl walks up to the double doors and pushes one of them open, gesturing for you to walk inside.

You do so and are greeted with a room filled with rows upon rows of round wooden tables. Almost all the tables are occupied, and loud chatter resonates in your ears. It’s easy to assume that this is a pretty popular place, and you’re surprised that you haven’t heard of it sooner.

“There,” Vinyl says, pointing to a table at the center of the room with two empty seats. The two of you head toward the table and take a seat.

“They’ve got all sorts of stuff here. They advertise hayburgers and onion horseshoes cause that’s their most popular item on the menu, but they have other stuff like soup, wraps—”

“Excuse me,” a voice says to your right, interrupting Vinyl. You both look and see a unicorn waitress wearing a white vest and levitating a notepad and pen in her magic. “Welcome to Our Restaurant. What would you like to order?”

“Oh, I’ll take a regular hayburger and a grape soda,” Vinyl says.

The waitress nods, jots that in her notepad and looks at you. You look at the menu in front of you and point at the item that looks the best. She writes it quickly. “That’ll be five bits from both of you.”

You reach into your saddlebag, which you don’t actually remember having on you before now, and take out five of the ten bits inside. You would have thought they’d charge you after eating, but leave it up to the assumption that they do things differently in Ponyville. You hand the bits to the waitress and with a satisfied smile, she turns to Vinyl.

The unicorn mare reaches toward her back and grabs at empty air. Turning her head back, she frowns, realizing what she’s missing. “Shoot, how could I forget my saddlebag...” She turns back to you. “Stupid me forgot to bring bits. Hey, do ya mind doing me this solid? I promise to pay you back.”

You think about it. You do have the extra five bits in your bag—just enough to cover her meal, and like any good friend, it’s the only respectful thing to do. On the other hoof, it is her fault that she didn’t remember to bring bits to a restaurant, and you may need those five bits for something important.

What do you do?

Pay Five Bits__________________________________________________________________________________________Pay Ten Bits

54

You leave the extra five bits in your saddlebag. The waitress looks at Vinyl expectantly, but as the wait for her payment gets longer, she sighs.

“Well… I’m afraid if you don’t have the bits to pay for your meal, you won’t be able to eat here. Sorry,” she says before addressing you. “Your food will be here in a moment.” Then, she walks off to the kitchens, leaving you and Vinyl alone.

The unicorn stares at you disappointingly. “Really? I mean, you couldn’t have just spent an extra five bits for me? I woulda paid you back at the party.”

“Here you are.” The waitress is back with one plate of food and she sets it down in front of you before heading off to a different table. You look over your meal. It looks tasty.

You start digging in while Vinyl, with no food, silently watches as you wolf down your order. She wasn’t kidding when she said this place serves great food. You take huge bites and savour it as the taste satisfies your tongue.

The food completely distracts you from the fact that the communication between you and Vinyl has completely vanished, and an awkward silence hangs between the both of you as Vinyl sits there, silent and irritated, watching you wallow in the taste of your meal.

Eventually, Vinyl speaks up. “Listen, uh, I think I’m just gonna head out. Gotta prepare for the party later and see how Octy’s doing, so… yeah, I’m just gonna leave now.” She quietly slides off her chair and starts walking toward the entrance. You pause between bites to wave her goodbye, and then resume chomping through the food on your plate. It’s great to be eating delicious food that has actual passion put into it rather than junk pumped with fat and preservatives.

You look back at the front entrance of the restaurant. Vinyl is nowhere to be seen. Focusing again on your food, you can’t help but wonder if you were a little rude… probably not. After all, it was her mistake for not bringing money somewhere where you need to pay to eat. Still, some part of you can’t help but believe that you were in the wrong.

You take another bite of the food, hoping that distracts you from those thoughts. It seems to get better and better with each bite that you take. There is no doubt in your mind that you’re coming back here again.

She even said she would pay you back. Sparing five bits would have been no big deal. You could have at least offered her some of your food. You admit to yourself that you may have acted a bit selfish. Now you’re alone with only your thoughts and your food.

You go to take another bite but realize that you’ve finished everything on your plate. All that’s left are mere crumb sized pieces of what is now in your full stomach. You decide that since you’re done eating there’s not much left to do, and look up to ask Vinyl if she wants to head to the—

Oh yeah, she left. You’re by yourself.

Since that’s the case, you think about maybe ordering something else before heading off to the party. You do still have the extra five bits in your bag.

The extra five bits that you could have lended to Vinyl…

Maybe not. They may come in handy for something more important, and besides, you need space in your stomach for food at the party.

You should probably go apologize to Vinyl, you think. Although, maybe you should wait before doing that, it might be awkward if you try to apologize now. She probably thinks you’re a jerk and doesn’t want to talk to you.

…

Maybe she really does think you’re a jerk. She did leave after all. She clearly didn’t want to be around you.

You notice that it's suddenly darker in the restaurant. Looking around, you notice that the once full room now has only a quarter of its previous population. They probably didn’t want to be around you either.

Only now do you realize how alone you truly are. It makes sense though. You couldn’t even do a simple favor for one of your friends. You’re not even sure if you want to go to Pinkie Pie’s party anymore. What if you just drive everypony away? The restaurant is completely empty now, that’s proof enough. The best thing you can do is just stay away from everypony.

A black mist takes route at the corners of the room and slowly closes around the table at which you sit, all by yourself. A cold loneliness stings at your heart, but you know deep down that it’s what you deserve. You’re a disease, and the best thing you can do at this point is isolate yourself to keep it from affecting anypony else.

As the darkness looms ever closer, your surroundings completely blacked out, you remain the only soul in the area.

Isolated.

ALONE. | ENDING 15 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

55

You reach back into your saddlebag, pull out the extra five bits inside and hoof them to the waitress. She gladly accepts them.

“Your food will be here in just a second,” the waitress says cheerfully before heading off to the kitchens to deliver your orders.

“Respect for that, man. Thanks,” Vinyl says. “I’ll pay you back at the party, promise. Thanks a lot.”

“Here you are.” The waitress is back with two plates of food and she sets it down in front of you before heading off to a different table. You look over your meal. Sitting on one side of the plate is a hayburger. The juiciness of the burger itself makes your mouth water with an urge to wolf it all down instantly, and it's presented beautifully next to a serving of just over a dozen deep-fried horseshoes. Vinyl’s plate is smaller with a simple hayburger with a matching juiciness, and Vinyl’s face doesn’t even try to mask the fact that she, like you, is itching to consume it as soon as possible

You eat.

“See, what’d I tell you? Amazing food. You won’t find fast food that tastes this good for miles,” she says as soon as you two finish cleaning your plates of all food. You nod in agreement. “By the way, Pinkie Pie’s party is probably gonna start really soon. Let’s dip.”

You comply, sitting up from your chair. Vinyl then starts walking past you, and you turn around to follow, only to suddenly find yourself on a path outside the front entrance of the restaurant, bathed in the morning summer sun. Why does that keep happening?!

The two of you begin walking down the path, which you soon recognize leads to Sugarcube Corner. Somewhere down the line, Vinyl stops.

“I just remembered something. You go on ahead to Sugarcube Corner, I gotta go home and get Octy but I’ll meet you there, okay?”

You nod, and Vinyl rushes off in the opposite direction, leaving you alone on the path. So you walk by yourself down the path, already seeing the gingerbread top of Sugarcube Corner in the distance and speed up, galloping past the left turn in the path. Soon enough, you reach the front door of the bakery. Loud music and ponies inside chatting and laughing booms from inside, and you open the front door to go in.

Inside, the room is bustling with ponies young and old. There is not one corner of the room that is empty, ponies dancing to the groovy music, playing one of the many games set up throughout the room or simply conversing at the tables. Along the walls sit tables carrying different flavored cakes, including the large one Pinkie had showed you inside the kitchen, and the place looks livelier than ever.

The difference between when the place was empty and when it was filled is outstanding. You walk toward the crowd to join in. Among the crowd, ponies spot you and wave. There’s no one in particular that recognizes you, but they nicely acknowledge you, so you wave back, a smile on your face.

You aren’t sure what you should do first—whether you should dance, or play some games and get to know some more ponies in town. But then you hear your name being called, and you look over. Pinkie is walking over to you from within the assembly of ponies in the room with a happy expression on her face.

“Hey! glad you could make it. How are you enjoying yourself? Havin’ fun?” she asks excitedly, and you nod. “Yay! I’m so glad! By the way, I know you don’t know that many ponies here, so in case you feel uncomfortable, just know that Ponyville has the nicest ponies a town could ever offer, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

You nod again in understanding, telling her that you’ll try to have as much fun as possible. “That’s what I like to hear!” she says, bumping you in the shoulder with a foreleg. “You wanna try out some of the games? I dunno if you saw when we walked in, but there’s apple bobbing and pin the tail on the pony, two of the more famous games partygoers tend to glide toward. Any of those suit your fancy?”

Pin the Tail on the Pony____________________________________________________________________________Apple Bobbing

56

You divert from the straight path toward Sugarcube Corner, trotting down the left turn that leads into a horizon of blue sky and an empty green landscape.

The shift in atmosphere around you is quickly noticeable. It's as though stepping on this path has broken all universal laws. Like existence itself is reacting negatively to the direction you've taken.

As you continue down the path, you come to find that there is no visible end to the path you're following. It appears to just go on forever. However, the more you walk, the less colourful your surroundings become. The bright green grass below you starts to become greyish, and flatter instead of individual blades. Meanwhile, the sky looks like it's flaking away, the cyan ceiling of the world seemingly cracking and exposing the pure white colour behind it. The point here you stand toward the edge of the horizon looks like a half complete puzzle that's slowly missing more and more pieces in random spots.

Looking back, you can still see the path that leads to Sugarcube Corner in the distance.

Keep Going_____________________________________________________________________________________________Turn Back

57

Despite your instincts telling you to go back, you press on, curiosity driving you to see what lies at the end of this path.

The world around you has lost all detail at this point, your horizon merely an empty canvas of white nothingness. You're not supposed to be here. You can feel it.

Yet something also gives you the feeling that you must reach the end of this road. That there is something here that someone intended for you to find.

T̳̠̺̮́ͅH̥̝͎Ȩ̳Ŗ̬E'S͕̩̗̗̣̭͕ ͔̣̥̖S̫͍̺͈̟̪̱O̷͍̘̹̰M͖ET̸Ḩ̩̰̦͈̩̠I̼͕̠͞NG͖͎̗̭͠ Y̱̥Ǫ̬̯̗͉͖̦ͅU̖ M͟U̞͖̗̱͖S͕̯̲̜̝̮̕Ţ͚̣̞̗̫͕͓ ͔͍̟̖̰̘͞D͏̹̗̳͓͍O͎̳̪̜͈͙͔ ̲̗̖͕̯̲̕FI̦̰͉̗̱̫̺R̘S̳̱̲̦T̠͎

You exploddddddddddddddd

I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME TO EXPLAIN, SO I’LL MAKE THIS BRIEF. YOU CAN’T ACCESS THIS POINT OF THE STORY YET. YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE DESERT AND FIND THE ARTIFACT. FROM THERE, YOU’LL FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO. I’LL EXPLAIN THE REST WHEN WE MEET, BUT UNTIL THEN KEEP STARTING OVER AND DON’T LEAVE THE STORY, OTHERWISE IT WILL GET I¶ÞÙÞÅ.

Start over?

59

The duplicate in front of you follows Vinyl and the two walk off as Pinkie's face suddenly goes blank and she walks down the road she came from. Suddenly, the pink pony explodes in a bright flash of light. You cover your eyes, and then look again. Pinkie is gone, simply erased from her spot.

You take your focus off of the strange occurrence and follow Vinyl Scratch and your duplicate. As you vaguely remember from some point in your memory, Vinyl takes your duplicate to the Ponyville Theater. You rush to catch up with them as they enter through the front doors.

Throughout the entrance room is the sound of a cello singing a succession of beautiful notes coming from a short hallway on the other side of the room. You follow the hallway to the large auditorium on the other side, seeing rows upon rows of seats leading up to a stage where a gray mare with black mane stands, holding a cello and playing it gracefully.

At the center of the rows of seats, you see your clone sitting beside Vinyl Scratch. That's right. Vinyl had taken you here to encourage her marefriend, Octavia. Then you were faced with a decision...

Encourage Her___________________________________________________________________________________________Boo Her

60

In unison, you and your clone clap in response to the melody that resonates from the stage. Octavia looks up at the rows of seats as Vinyl begins to clap too, and begins moving more dramatically on stage as she sweeps her bow across the strings of the cello.

Eventually she finishes the piece, and both Vinyl and your duplicStart Over?ate stand up and applaud the performance as Vinyl shouts, "Woohoo! Let’s go Octy!" Just as they do so, Octavia takes her cello and leaves the stage. From this spot, you see that once Octavia is hidden behind the curtains, she freezes suddenly, as though stuck in a frame, and then explodes in a white flash of light similarly to Pinkie Pie: an event not visible to Vinyl and the pony she's with.

Vinyl then gets up and walks past your duplicate. In that moment, the two ponies explode in a flash of light and vanish from existence. A far-off conveStart Over?rsation proceeds to take place somewhere outside the theater. You rush back down the hallway toward the front doors and open them, spotting the two walking down the path outside. Hurrying to follow them, you find it doesn't take you long to catch up as they stop suddenly partway down the path.

Vinyl turns to your duplicate to speak. "Well, since that’s the case, why don’t we do something in the meantime? I know this great place where we can grab a bite to eat. Eh... actually wait, we’ll probably be filling up on cake at the party, so we could head to my place instead if you want… I’ll leave it up to you. WhStart Over?addya prefer?"

You remember this choice. Now it's just up to making the right one...

Go to Lunch__________________________________________________________________________Go to Vinyl Scratch’s House

61

“Sure. Alright, follow me, the restaurant’s this way!” Vinyl says, and walks past your clone. The moment she does, just like before in the auditorium, the two are engulfed by a large white light, and then phase out of existence. At the same time, you catch a glimpse of a faint flash of light by some distant buildings.

You hurry to rush over there, passing by buildings that strangely seem to have lost their color, appearing less detailed and more like grey blocks with black squares where windows should have been. Eventually you reach where you had seen the flash of light and see your duplicate and Vinyl Scratch disappearing behind the front doors of a hayburger restaurant.

Opening the doors and entering the small building, you are faced with a room with rows upon rows of tables, all taken by ponies and children either enjoying a family lunch or on dates. At the center of the restaurant, Vinyl and your duplicate both take a seat at the empty table there.

Suddenly, in the corner of your vision, a bright light blares, and you look to see a waitress suddenly blink into existence out of nowhere and approach the table. From here, its too loud to hear what they're saying from the discussions happening all around you. You step a bit closer, watching as a saddlebag materializes on the back of your duplicate. The pony then reach into the saddlebag, pulling out five bits and hoofing them over to the waitress. Then, she looks toward Vinyl, who reaches back expecting something to be there, but then becomes wide-eyed at the realization that she's missing something.

“Shoot, how could I forget my saddlebag... Stupid me forgot to bring bits. Hey, do ya mind doing me this solid? I promise to pay you back.”

That's right, you had an extra five bits in your saddlebag so that Vinyl could pay for her meal...

Pay Five Bits__________________________________________________________________________________________Pay Ten Bits

62

Your duplicate proceeds to pull out an extra five bits from the saddlebag and gives it to the waitress, who happily declares that their meals will be ready in a moment, and walks off toward the kitchens. As the two ponies look away from her, she suddenly stops, holding out her hoof. In that moment, much like the saddlebag that materialized on your clone's back, a tray carrying two plates of food pops out of thin air onto her hoof, and she turns around, walking back to the table and delivers them. After serving them, she walks off once again toward the kitchens, except this time, an explosion of light wipes her out of the picture.

After the two eat, Vinyl announces that Pinkie's party would be starting soon before she gets up and starts walking past your clone. As you'd come to expect, the two ponies vanish. When you look out the windows at the front of the restaurant, you see them again, and gallop out of the restaurant to catch up.

As soon as you leave, you spot them heading down the path that leads to Sugarcube Corner. However, at one point, Vinyl stops and looks at your clone.

“I just remembered something. You go on ahead to Sugarcube Corner, I gotta go home and get Octy but I’ll meet you there, okay?”

Your duplicate nods, and Vinyl starts running in your direction. Only, she doesn't acknowledge you at all despite making a beeline directly toward you. Suddenly, your vision is filled by a white flare of light, and you instinctively cover your eyes. When you look ahead of you once again, you see that Vinyl is gone, leaving just you and your clone on this path.

You start following the pony as they begin to gallop toward the gingerbread roof behind the buildings and houses ahead. Your duplicate then stops and turns down the left turn in the path while you continue forward toward the bakery. Soon enough, you reach the front door of the bakery. Loud music and ponies inside chatting and laughing booms from inside, and you open the front door to go in.

Pin the Tail on the Pony____________________________________________________________________________Apple Bobbing

63

You watch your clone walk down the left turn in the path and begin to follow. The path leads to what seems like an endless landscape of grass and blue sky.

Suddenly, you feel a change in the air. It's thicker, and cold. You don't understand why. As a matter of fact, as you continue down the path, you see that the grass is beginning to lose its detail as the waves of individual strands become a simple flat green color. Not only that, but the sky looks like it's falling apart. Toward the horizon, the blue color of the sky seems to crumble away and expose the white void behind it.

Strange images flash across your mind. More strange memories like this morning when you'd found yourself standing before your front door, except this time, they're images of this path. That's when you realize that this is the path you needed to find. The place that will release you from the cycle. It's here.

As you walk further, the air around you gets even colder, and the world darkens, like Celestia and Luna had randomly decided to make it night on a whim. You stop and look behind you slowly, seeing the cause of the darkness.

At the end of the path, an oily blackness has covered the entire horizon, and looking up, you see that the darkness is crawling toward the sky and slowly covering the whole globe. Furthermore, coming from that area is a pulsating silence, much like holding one ear to a patch of soundproofing.

You recognize it. It's dangerous. You need to run before it gets to you.

You turn and start running, seeing your clone in the distance, who has turned around, most likely feeling the same coldness, and runs the same way upon seeing the darkness behind you.

Peeking behind you, you see that the darkness is crawling ever closer, plumes of mist blasting out from the growing phenomenon and racing toward you. You put more into your speed, trying to get as far away from it as possible. Everything around you is freezing, and you feel numb. Your limbs are harder to move and you slow down as a result, but you know you can't stop.

As your clone runs away from the mist as fast as they can, a huge earth-shattering explosion blinds you, causing you to screech to a halt despite the ever-growing canvas of darkness slowly covering the earth. You shield your eyes from the gigantic brilliance of white light in front of you. As the light begins to fade, you uncover your eyes slowly to see what just happened.

Your clone is gone, simply having vanished, and in place of your clone is now some sort of transparent slit hanging in the middle of the air that distorts everything behind it as though light is breaking up in that one spot. At its center is a blend of random colors on the spectrum like various types of paint splattered onto a canvas, twisting into itself like some sort of magical wormhole to another dimension straight out of a fairy tale.

Your eyes stay on it for a few moments, before realizing that the darkness behind you has just about covered the entire world, and the mist on your tale has almost reached you. You look back at the strange warp in air, its movements unearthly fluid.

Then you start running at it at full speed.

The cold has frozen your whole body, making running difficult and incredibly painful, but you push past it, your sole aim to reach the distorted shape. The world has almost been entirely shadowed by the darkness, a few seconds away from drowning your surroundings in an endless black void.

You jump into the warp of colors, memories from other paths and choices passing across your vision, and then everything goes dark.

...

64

You open your eyes, finding yourself inside a small, dimly lit room. You're not sure how you got here, but you believe it has something to do with that swirling shape you jumped in. Nevertheless, you've managed to escape the mist, and as far as you can tell, it hasn't followed you here, so you're safe.

Now you just have to figure out where you've ended up.

Looking around the room, you see that behind you is a short hallway, and at the end of it is a brightly lit area, though the only source of light you can see is an electronic device with a screen sitting on a desk against the wall. In front of the desk is an occupied chair. Though the thing occupying the chair doesn't seem like any pony, or even any species you've ever seen before.

You start walking toward the other end of the hallway with short steps, examining your surroundings as you proceed. Strangely enough, the walls seem less like walls and more like cardboard. You step up to it and rest a hoof against the wall. All you feel is your hoof coming into contact with the surface. It isn't warm or cold, rough or smooth. You just feel that its there.

Come to think of it, the wooden floor below you feels the same way. It all feels wrong. Yet at the same time, deep down you feel like you're meant to be here. Like your presence here is important. And you get the idea that the thing sitting in the chair has something to do with that.

Continuing to approach the desk, you see something on the wall next to you that catches your attention: a large poster hanging perfectly straight with no parts loose, like its part of the wall itself. You step up to examine it.

Staring at it for a couple more moments, you walk toward the desk again. Now that you're closer, you can see more of the things details. It's much taller than a pony, and doesn't have any fur. It's skin is a bright tan with small hairs down its arms and legs, and it wears a simple grey shirt and shorts. It doesn't have hooves. Instead, at the end of both arms is an additional body part with five thin points at the end, which all individually press different buttons on the keyboard in front of the monitor. Its head is small, growing short black hair on top, and its tiny eyes focus on the bright screen in front of it.

You stop and watch as the creature continues to type at the keyboard. It looks stressed. Tired, like it hasn't slept in a long time. You can also see a hint of relief in its expression. Its eyes move slightly in their sockets, and the faint taps on the keyboard slow down slightly. He seems to be acknowledging you, but doesn't look completely in your direction. Instead, it looks back at the monitor.

At some point it stops typing, resting its arms on the table, and breaths out a deep sigh.

"Th̶e̸ ̷c̷o̴r̵r̸u̸p̷t̵i̶o̴n̷ ̷w̸o̸n̸'t be able to find you here," the creature says in a light male voice, his tone dark and serious. "I've hidden you. You're safe."

He goes silent for a few moments, then shifts in his chair and turns his head to face you. "You probably know who I am. If you don't, well... I'm your creator. I'm the reason you exist and why you're here right now."

You stand in place and listen. He then chuckles lightly. "It's funny. Stuff like this only ever happens in dreams, or in someone's imagination. Stuff that a young child could only wish was real. But the fact that you're real, that you're in this room with me... It's incredible. And yet, I hate it."

His eyes are filled with frustration and pain. Your eyes are then drawn to the monitor on the desk. You step up to it, seeing paragraphs of words in the format of a novel. Reading one of the paragraphs, you find that the words on the screen describe a very familiar scenario.

You start walking toward the other end of the hallway with short steps, examining your surroundings as you proceed. Strangely enough, the walls seem less like walls and more like cardboard. You step up to it and rest a hoof against the wall. All you feel is your hoof coming into contact with the surface. It isn't warm or cold, rough or smooth. You just feel that its there.

"This is the reason why you exist," the author says. "Your actions and the events that occur around you are written down here."

As he says that, your eyes read a sentence lower in the text, and what he just said is written there, as well as a description of you reading it on the monitor.

"It's a power that I have," he explains. "Whenever someone reads what I write, the events in the story actually happen. I never asked for it, and I don't know where it came from, but I have it. I used to think it was a gift from God. I could make things move or appear out of thin air. Watch."

He goes back on his keyboard and begins typing something out. When he does, a cone of vanilla ice cream appears on his desk in no ceremonious way. Like a cut from one frame to another, it just pops into existence.

"It's weird, having this kind of power. I could make myself a billionaire, or cause the whole universe to end in a second just by typing a few words. Hell, I can write people out of existence if I wanted to."

He sighs. "But I learned the hard way that this power isn't a gift. It's a curse."

The author turns his head back down to you. "I wrote this story years ago before I found out about it. I didn't really have friends and as far as I was considered, writing was my friend. The characters I'd invented in my stories were my friends. If I had known that my writing was affecting real beings in this universe, trust me, I wouldn't have. As far as I was concerned, writing was fun for me, and it made me feel less alone. So I kept at it.

"At some point, I found out about My Little Pony, and after getting into the show, I started writing about it. And wouldn't you know it, somewhere out there are dimensions where everything in that show is a reality. I published a couple stories, including this one, but set them to private because they were mediocre, and I didn't like them that much.

"I only learned a few months after I discovered what my writing could do that I realized how dangerous it was."

You listen closely to the author's story as he inhales shakily. "Whenever you've seen a black mist or the sky doing dark, that's the corruption trying to enter your world through the story. It's some sort of AI in the website's code that somehow found out about my power and is using it to destroy the dimensions my stories are bound to, and it's after you so that it can use you as a host and take on a physical appearance inside your world.

"I hid a secret pathway in the story that the corruption wouldn't find to bring you into this dimension. It won't find you here in time to begin writing itself into this world, so now I have time to figure out how to destroy it."

His hands go back to the keyboard, but as he's about to type something, he pauses, looking up at the words on the screen before him.

"The easiest way to stop it is to just end the story, but..." His eyes go to you. "If I do that, you'll no longer exist."

You simply look at the author as he reveals the tragic fact.

"The only reason you're here is because I wrote it out. When the story ends, you'll just vanish from existence, like you never lived in the first place."

His head bows in contemplation, his hands slowly sliding off the keyboard as though he feared it. "I've had this power for so long without even knowing, and I've been making stories my whole life. To think I've been bringing characters into this universe, giving them life, and just snuffing them out as if they meant nothing..." His eyes close. "I know it's not my fault, but I still hate myself for it.

"All I've ever wanted was just to tell stories, and now I'm this puppet master, bringing characters to life, setting them down a predetermined path and then essentially killing them." He gives out a chuckle, but it's a sad one. "Sounds metaphorical, doesn't it? Like us. We were brought into existence, but our fate is imminent. We'll die out, and then no one will know our history. Everything we were will fizzle out like it never happened."

The room is silent. The author sits there, eyes closed and his head down, grieving almost. Next to him, you stand, staring at him with a smile on your face. A smile not there because of choice or emotion, but because that's what you're meant to do. The character trait you were given.

The character trait he gave you.

You're unable to speak your own words. Feel your own feelings. You're simple meant to follow a script that dictates what you do, or how you feel. Who you like. Dislike. What you eat. When you sleep. Your whole life is determined by a story, and you can't even feel sad about it because the story won't let you.

The quiet persists for a while longer. Then the author's fists clench.

"But I'm not going to let that be your fate."

His eyes open again, and his hands hover back over the keyboard, preparing to type something else. "If I have the power to create life, maybe I can keep you alive too."

The author begins typing out another sentence. You look at the monitor to read what he has just written.

The memories of the different paths and the black mist fade from your mind. In that moment, you no longer feel restricted by a scripted fate.

"I don't know if this will work, but I have to try. If it does..." He looks at you with sincere eyes, like those of a father to a son. "Good luck in whatever life you choose to live."

The author begins typing. Suddenly, you feel something deep down in your body, like a tight clamp suddenly releasing. The memories of the different paths and the black mist fade from your mind. In that moment, you no longer feel restricted by a scripted fate. You feel free.

Everything around you disappears. Then, you wake up.

...

65

The morning sun shone brightly outside, allowing thin columns of light to pass through the spaces between the closed window blinds. As the sunlight drew a yellow line across the eyes of the brown unicorn stallion lying peacefully in bed, his eyes rose slightly, greeted by the early morning orange piercing his eyes through the blinds.

Yawning deeply, he casually kicked the soft sheets off of him, and sat himself upright at the edge of his bed. He hated waking up this early, and would have tried going back to sleep, but he knew from experience that if he even tried, the gates of dreamland would not accept him again.

The unicorn slipped off the mattress and landed on the cool hardwood floor on all fours, walking—almost staggering over to the window. Tugging on the blinds, they folded upward, allowing a river of gold yellow light to stream into the bedroom. Eyes still not quite adjusted yet, the unicorn groaned, covering his eyes with a foreleg briefly.

It was beautiful outside. The sky was perfectly cyan with only a few clouds here and there, but it didn't look like he had to worry about any chance of rain. He could see a pony here and there, out to complete quick early morning tasks before heading straight back home to relax until the afternoon. Others were tiredly heading to their respective businesses to open up shop and await the arrival of customers. Meanwhile, others were simply out on a routinely walk, enjoying the fresh air and the empty silence of the town with smiles on their faces.

Albeit not to enthusiastic about waking up this early, he couldn't help but smile at the outdoor sight. He stepped away from the window and headed to the kitchen. Feeling lazy on this particular morning, he opted for a simple bowl of cereal and milk. It was healthy and quick, and he only really cared about the second part.

When he finished eating, he washed his dishes, and then headed to the front door. Since it was a decently nice day outside, the unicorn decided that a nice walk outside for fresh air wouldn't hurt. It would give him something to do and wake himself up faster.

Opening the door, he stepped outside, immediately bathed in the golden glow of the sun. Warm air drafted through the fur on his body, and it was the perfect balance of humid and clean that each breath in was pleasurable. Closing the front door, he began walking down the path ahead. It was quiet, and he occasionally passed by somepony once in a while. Most of them looked tired and grumpy, and while he waved at most of them, he didn't get that many waves back.

It was a regular day.

The unicorn then remembered about a party that somepony named Pinkie Pie was hosting to celebrate the... somethingth anniversary of Ponyville. He wasn't exactly sure since he was new in the town, and honestly, he wasn't sure if he was going to show up. He needed some time to settle, and preferred relaxing over hanging out at a loud public place.

The unicorn reached a fork in the path. He stopped, deciding which way he wanted to go on his walk, when he spotted two ponies walking toward him from both paths. On the left was a very pale blue unicorn mare with an electric blue mane, wearing purple shades and a pair of headphones. On the right was a pink earth pony mare with a cotton candy looking mane of the same color.

"Heya!" Pinkie shouted over to the unicorn, spring faster in his direction. "I'm Pinkie Pie. You look new! Did you just move here? That's weird since I'm the first to meet everypony who's new to this town, but whatever! How are ya doin'?"

The energy radiating from the pink pony was a bit much, but the stallion was about to talk to her when the pale white unicorn spoke up. "Yo dude! I've never seen ya around before, you new here?" The unicorn then saw Pinkie next to him. "Oh, hey Pinkie. Were you two hanging out?"

Pinkie shook her head. "Hey, Vinyl! Nah, just came to talk to him 'cause I've never seen him before."

With a shrug, Vinyl looked back at the unicorn. "In that case, would you wanna hang out? My marefriend Octavia is rehearsing for a concert in a bit and you can come watch with me if you want."

"Oh," Pinkie says, a bit disappointed. "I was gonna ask you if you wanted to hang out with me and test out my cakes before the party later, but eh, you can hang out with Vinyl if you want."

The unicorn looked between the two mares, finding this scenario oddly familiar, but ignored the feeling. He had to make a decision between these two mares, but he didn't want to go with one and upset the other.

Go with Vinyl Scratch__________________________________________________________________________ Go with Pinkie Pie

66

The unicorn suddenly felt some sort of force trying to push him down one of the paths—like his motor nerves were trying to act without his own commands. But he had a better idea. He fought away the feeling and gave them his answer.

"Let's all hang out. Together."

Pinkie and Vinyl looked at each other, and then smiled.

"Okey dokey lokey!" Pinkie said.

"Sounds good," Vinyl said.

Altogether, the three ponies walked off, ready to see what the day ahead had in store for them.

THE END | ENDING 17 OF 17

GOOD ENDING

Start Over?

Author's Note

Thanks for reading! I'm always looking to improve my writing so all feedback is appreciated. Have a good day! :twilightsmile:

Edit: I wrote a blog post about the story here in case y'all are interested!

68

From the back of the auditorium, you shout a loud boo that reverberates across the room.

The ears of Vinyl and your clone, who clap for the mare onstage, perk up when they hear you, and they turn their heads to face your direction. Furthermore, the sounds of the cello are cut off abruptly, and a third pair of eyes look in your direction.

Your attention is caught by the stare of your clone, who's face is blank and expresses no emotions whatsoever.

W̺̺̩͙R͖̞͈͓͓O̙̦̬̙̝̙̦Ṋ̴͚̭G̩̱̼͖̳ ͍̤̥͓̠̥̮C҉̭̝͉̭̫͙H͙̬̞̕O̖̻͓͕͓̦I̲̰͓C̗E̛͓̠

The auditorium suddenly vanishes, and in its place is the landscape of trees, grass and road right outside the front entrance of the theater.

That was rough. You didn’t think your joke would take such a sour turn. Not to mention, you could have sworn the trip from the entrance to the auditorium was a lot longer earlier…

Not to worry though. You still have the whole rest of the day ahead of you. One small conflict isn’t going to change that.

Suddenly, to your left, you hear hoofsteps on dirt, and turn to see that Princess Twilight had exited her castle and, with a stern and determined expression, marches toward you. They both stop at the end of the paths they’re on.

“I'm sorry about this,” Princess Twilight’s voice speaks from your left. "But I need to do whatever it takes to end this time loop." The purple alicorn then conjures up magic into her horn, and fires a bright streak of light in your direction. You feel a white hot burn for a moment as it impacts your chest, and then everything goes bla

Start Over?

69

You make the decision in your mind to go to Vinyl's house. Meanwhile, Vinyl tells your clone to follow her, and walks past the duplicate. The second she does, your surroundings change. Like a film transition, you now stand in an alleyway with houses on either side of a cobblestone road.

“Yo, you comin’ or not?!” You hear, prompting you to look up, seeing Vinyl ahead of you, waiting impatiently for you to catch up to her. You trot swiftly to her side.

Vinyl gestures to the blue side of the room. "My side obviously. This is where I make all sorts of tracks. You can make any beat you want with these babies. C'mere, I'll show you how!"

“Sup, Octy!” Vinyl says.

You nod.

“Oh yeah, that was an A plus performance Octy. Even my friend here was telling me how good you were.” Vinyl bumps you on the shoulder, giving you an appreciative smirk.

Octavia looks at Vinyl again, and you think you see her smile flatten a little. “Thanks. Erm... Vinyl, can I talk to you in private for a second…?”

Vinyl seems caught off guard by the question. “Uh… sure, yeah.”

You decide to just wait until Vinyl comes back.

“Listen, I know recently we haven’t seen each other much, but that can change—I’ll cut down on touring.”

“C’mon Octy, I’ve supported you through so much stuff, and even if we don’t see each other as much, we still stay in contact, and now you’re saying this, I mean… really?”

“Well, you said it yourself. Could. Things could be different, or… who knows, you might not even make it! Wrong thing to say, I’m sorry.”

Intervene___________________________________________________________________________________________________Leave

70

As you make the mental decision not to pay the extra five bits, your clone gives the extra five to the waitress. The two are then served, and they eat. Afterward, Vinyl gets up and walks past your duplicate.

In that moment, the whole restaurant becomes empty and dark. The tables which once were fully occupied are now completely empty, and the whole room is desolate. You decided wrong...

Suddenly, a dark mist starts to manifest in the corners of the room, slowly building up into a thick fog and making its way toward you at a gradual pace. It's then that you remember what happens when you make this choice. Vinyl leaves you all alone. Everypony leaves, and then...

You have to get out of here.

You rush to the front doors of the building and try to open them, but they're firmly locked. You bang on the doors, bucking them and trying to bust them open any way that you can, but they remain standing, fixed stubbornly in place.

The mist gets closer, and the cold gets more and more intense. You shiver, slowing your attempts to leave the building, but as the darkness approaches and surrounds your world in black, you collapse to the ground, slowly succumbing t́ttt̴t̢t̵t̡tt̢t͢t̸t͏t̨

Start Over?

72

(You stand on the road outside your house. The ponies on the path are frozen. Friends who were talking to each other are either stuck mid-laugh, or their mouths hang open on whatever they were about to say. Pegasi who were flying through the air hover in place without the movement of their wings keeping them afloat.)

Welcome, reader, to the narrator ending. You may be wondering what the purpose of this is. Well, I'm glad you asked. You see, this ending exists not only to clear up any possible confusion you may have, but also to steer your mindset in the right direction for the type of story that this is.

For instance, this story is a choose your own adventure on its surface. But while the beauty of nature rests on the earth's crust, underground are the treasures it holds: the diamonds, the golds, and the rubies. It's important to pay attention to those details in the story as well, because there are a lot of those, and they shouldn't be ignored because they have a much larger meaning than ‘fun little clues.’

(You start walking forward, the only mobile being in this frozen, timeless world.)

You probably recognize where you are right now. This is the point where your adventure begins, and control is handed over to you in preparation for your first choice ahead. But take the time to look at the atmosphere around you. The town is filled with ponies up early, enjoying the morning air with smiles on everyone’s faces. Not one pony is having a bad day.

Now think for a second. How realistic is that depiction of a society? Surely, early in the morning many people are still in bed and even if there are some up and about, there are some grumpy people here and there. You might say that this is a story and therefore this isn’t an unusual thing. If that’s the case, hold that thought.

(You stop before a branch in the path.)

When you get to the end of the road, you are faced with your first decision. Hang out with Pinkie Pie, or Vinyl Scratch. Many things can be taken into account here, such as the fact that your decisions are limited. You are forced to go with one pony only, disappointing the other in doing so. Why can’t you go with both of them?

The straight-forward answer to that would be because then I wouldn’t be able to tell the story I want to tell. But that’s merely a lead in to the much more complex answer. See, most choose your own adventures have a very simple plot, but your choices determine how that story ends. The simple story in this choose your own adventure is merely a center piece that ties into a much larger story, and that larger story ties into various themes.

In short, the choices in this story do more than just fulfilling the goal of choosing how it ends.

That is probably quite confusing, but no worries, I’ll guide you a little bit. Let’s start with the decision. As I mentioned, you’re only able to go with one of them. Possibly a representation of a lack of freedom, right? How about the fact that the character whose eyes you’re looking through is not the one making these decisions?

That last concept can be said about all stories in this format. The author essentially hands you the set of strings that control the main character, and while you lead them down certain paths, the author controls the world around them. It’s much like a god giving a prophet instructions on how to lead a community.

In fact, if you think about it, when a writer creates a world, they are in many ways the God of that world. They construct the plane that their characters live on, create the characters, and determine their fates. Not only that, but they determine how that world is going to come to a close. Perhaps from there, you can draw connections to other things that sound familiar.

As much as I'd love to tell you what in particular, I’m going to move away from that food for thought because if I continue, I’ll give away the entirety of what this story is about. I’m only here to lead you in the right direction, not give the answers.

You may have noticed many reoccurring things throughout this story depending on how many endings you've gotten already. For example, perhaps the most obvious: ‘you’ never expresses any emotion other than smiling, or how every ending thus far has been a bad ending despite your story seemingly ending well. However, if you've been paying attention, you'd have noticed that every ending has one thing in common. Look back at the endings you've gotten already if you aren't aware of it.

Before every ending, an inky blackness attempts to consume ‘you.’ It's easy to deduce that whatever this thing is is hunting you down. But what it is or what its intentions are don't have the same importance as what the darkness symbolizes. It's actually really simple, and the fact that it only appears during the endings of each path is a huge hint, but just in case you're overthinking it, I'll tell you: it symbolizes the end. Quite literally. It’s always following you, waiting for you at the end of every path. At the end of every story. At the end of every person’s life. No matter what path you choose, it's there, waiting at the end of your story. Philosophical, I know, but that's sort of the point. This story’s theme has an existential meaning, and it doesn't stop there.

‘You’ is only able to smile, and other than that, is only able to think certain thoughts based on the decisions made by the reader. Why can't the main character feel any other emotion? It’s like ‘you’’s only purpose is to be happy and smile even when something terrible happens. On the same topic, why is ‘you’ only referred to as ‘you’, the new pony, my friend, or simply just the pony? Why doesn't 'you' speak? Why does the story occasionally change from the second person to the third person? But most importantly, who is the blue fill̨-͡il͠l-i͏$̴l̢& the answers to all those questions link back to philosophy and the real world, which would be your first clue in solving the meaning of this story.

So you see, everything in this story has a meaning that contributes to a bigger picture. Every author’s job is to construct a core meaning behind their stories, but readers have a job too. Writing is just a foundation, but the reader’s imagination completes the house. To understand this story, like any other, requires you to invest in it; make the effort to pick apart it's details. The imagination’s job is to make fantasy a reality, but if you just treat it like fantasy, how will you ever understand it?

Well, the answer to that is you won't. However, you’re not being forced to read a story a specific way. At the end of the day, it is your choice whether you see a colorful world filled with characters during their day to day lives, or a compilation of words forming paragraphs on a page.

The simplistic title of this story wasn't chosen for no reason.

Hopefully this story makes more sense now. Unless you read this chapter and are still confused, if not even more so. To sum everything up if that happens to be the case, this story is more than it seems. Its core concept shows its identity while its finer details show its meaning. All together, it teaches a lesson to be taken to heart, but you still have yet to find out what that lesson is.

In the end, this is just a fictional story. How real it is is up to you.

Start Over?

73

GOOD CHOICE. THANK YOU FOR READING. I’LL TAKE THINGS FROM HERE.

Dust. The air was full of it. Enough to suffocate a pony if one were still alive.

Once, there were beautiful lands with lush green grass and trees, branches tilting back in forth in a gentle rhythm from the fresh breeze, warm as a result of the bright celestial sun, which delighted the foals that played outside and the adults that took advantage of it and wallowed in the gift of nature.

Now, trees stood dead, drooping like wilted flowers. The ground was merely dry dirt, layered by sheets of dead grass that lacked enough sunlight to stay alive. The entire sky was dark, plunging Equestria into a freezing, gloomy shade. The landscape was nothing more than a barren wasteland.

Cities and towns that stood tall and bustled with life were destroyed. Any trace of existing civilization was gone. Instead, skeletons lay across the roads of ponies who had met an excruciating demise. Everywhere, beyond the furthest one’s eye could see, death and destruction riddled every square inch of the ruins what was once a thriving nation.

Small villages had met the same fate, as though a storm too powerful to be natural had torn through them. Lakes and oceans were frozen over. The few remnants of life remaining didn't have much longer before the cold and darkness would take their toll on them.

In the middle of it all, standing in whatever was left of Ponyville, you gazed out into the dry, apocalyptic land around you: the result of the choices you made that caused this to happen. Nothing was left. Everything that had once been was gone. Obliterated.

You simply stood in place and spectated the remains of this post-apocalyptic world. And you just smile. It was all you could do. All you were ever meant to do in this universe. But it wasn’t like you were going to be needed for much longer. After all, when this story ended, you would simply freeze to death and die like everypony else. It needed you alive to cross over into this world and have its fun, but now that it had snuffed out every last living thing on this planet, you were now obsolete. And now, you were simply left to stand and stare at it all.

YOU BEAR THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THIS WORLD. YOUR COOPERATION WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN.

Author's Note

Why couldn’t you just listen to my warnings? You could have stopped it from destroying that world but you let it get in. All you had to do was start over and keep the cycle going. Now it's all gone. All of it. I tried so hard to stop it from passing through into that dimension but it was all for nothing. It's pointless now. You can restart the story as many times as you want, it won’t change a thing. The dimension is already destroyed. There’s no ending here. Just go. Leave this story alohttps://www.fimfiction.net/story/448345/when-you-stop-reading-the-story-endsne and nevedont click that link its trying to use youto destroy another one dont click that lin̸k̴ ̶p̵l̶e̸a͏͓̱ș̝͖e̪̼̟̲̤̩ ̡ͅḍ̶̹o̢̲̭n̘̼t̵̪̱̙͖͠ ̶̛̙̜̅c̵̜̑͆͝l̸͌̀ị̷̜̝̱̾͆ç̶͖̤̅̑̂͘k̵̨̜̈#$&%

42

You open the door and enter the room on the other side.

Vinyl has already taken a seat at the center of the theater, so you head down the ramp and down one of the aisles before taking a seat next to Vinyl.

You two watch as Octavia performs, Vinyl bobbing her head gently to the tune with a proud smile and you enjoying it just as much. You wonder if you should give the mare some encouragement as she plays, since you remember that Vinyl had brought you here to give Octavia some confidence for her big show. Then again, you don’t think it would hurt to boo her as a little joke.

Encourage Her___________________________________________________________________________________________Boo Her

Start Your Day

Just a nightmare.

A stream of energy courses throughout your body, whisking away any tiredness you felt. You start toward your bedroom door, stepping out of the room and heading to the kitchen, preparing yourself a quick bite to eat. Peanut butter and jelly with a glass of orange juice. Not too complicated and delicious. Eager to get the day started, you wolf the whole thing down in less than a minute, gulping down the juice and placing everything in the sink to be washed when you get back.

“Heya!” Pinkie’s high-pitched voice calls out to you as she bounces in your direction with an audible spring.

“He-hey, what’s up, dude!” Vinyl says, walking up to you with a similar chipper attitude, though unsurprisingly outmatched by Pinkie Pie’s sugar overdose-induced behavior.

You nod your head to both of them, returning the greetings given to you by the two ponies as they approach you before stopping at the end of the paths they walked along.

“So glad I came across you,” Vinyl begins. “Octy is rehearsing for her big performance this friday at the Ponyville theater and you’re invited to chill with us if you want.”

You turn to Vinyl.

“Oh, I mean, you don’t gotta come with me. If you wanna go with Pinkie, I’m all good with that.”

Two options… both evenly appealing… which will you choose?

Go with Vinyl Scratch__________________________________________________________________________ Go with Pinkie Pie

5

Despite the earlier outbreak of pain in your lower region, you begin tearing at your bindings again as hard as you possibly can.

Pinkie watches as you struggle, and rolls her eyes in irritation. “Jeez, you really are relentless, aren’t ya? Well, then I’ll have you know that the cuffs around your hooves probably aren’t gonna break anytime soon—”

The cuff around your right foreleg suddenly comes free, and you accidentally launch it forward with the force used to free yourself. It hits Pinkie between the eyes, causing her to yelp and fall back on the ground, dropping the scalpel in her mouth.

With your free hoof, you reach at the cuff on your left hoof and pull. It breaks off the surface you’re restrained too. The upper half of your body suddenly falls forward but you catch yourself mid-fall before working on freeing your hind legs. Detaching the cuff on your left foreleg with a few forceful tugs, you pull against the final cuff, which proves to be more resistant than the other ones.

Pinkie, rubbing the bump that rises on her forehead, sits up with with a light grumble. “That was not very nice! I throw a party for you and this is how you act?” She gives her head a light shake and stands from the floor. As she does, the final cuff on your hind leg breaks off, and you drop to all four hooves, free from your restraints.

You turn and face Pinkie, who has stood from the ground and is now glaring lividly at you, a growl escaping the edge of her gritted teeth. Analyzing your surroundings, you see that at the other end of the room past the tables is a hallway leading to a turn at the end, where a faint stream of light seeps in. You can make a run for it through there.

Then your eyes fall slightly and spot the scalpel that Pinkie dropped, lying on the ground beside the both of you. You can use that to combat Pinkie.

The pink murderer readies herself to attack you. You must decide quickly.

Fight__________________________________________________________________________________________________________Flee

7

You start running, darting past Pinkie as she pounces, only to miss you by an inch. Galloping with adrenaline-fueled speed, you make your way across the room toward the hall.

“GET BACK HERE, YOU PARTY POOPER!!” you hear Pinkie scream, a set of hoofsteps scrambling to catch up to you from behind. You run faster down the hall, intent on making as much distance away from the serial killer as possible.

You make it halfway down the corridor, the light at the end approaching rapidly. It seems as though you’ll make it out alive.

From behind the corner at the end of the hall, a grey pegasus with a blond mane steps out in front of you, a recognizable trait in identifying her being her crossed eyes. You screech to a halt as the grey mare, who you know as Ponyville’s mailmare, Derpy Hooves, recoils in surprise. The hoofsteps behind you halt, and you look back, seeing that Pinkie has also stopped in her tracks, a look of anger on her face.

You stare back at Derpy, thankful that she had come to your rescue. That is, until the startled look on her face slowly transforms until an evil, malicious grin is plastered on her face. You look behind you, only to see that Pinkie is wearing the same look. The pink pony then begins to approach you slowly with the confidence that she has you right where she wants you. Derpy does the same.

With the realization that the grey pegasus is not on your side, thus making both ways blocked, you realize that the only way out of this scenario is to fight. Unfortunately, this would be a two on one combat, the likelihood of you surviving slim to nonexistent.

But if you want to survive, you have to try. This leaves you with only two options, yet the time you have to choose is limited…

Combat Derpy_____________________________________________________________________________________Combat Pinkie

11

Under the belief that the coast is clear, you step out of your hiding spot and enter the hallway to start booking it to the end. You don’t make it far at all, though, as Pinkie stands directly in front of you, having briefly been caught off guard, but then smiles a wide grin that one would think would tear her lips wide open.

“Thought you could make your grand escape, huh?” Pinkie taunts. “Too bad for you, I’m always one step ahead of ya. But it’s great for me! ‘Cause it means you’ll never escape.”

You are taken aback, seeing that Pinkie had recovered from when Derpy had collided with Pinkie earlier. Pinkie notices this and chuckles.

“You thought I was out of commission, didn’t ya? You can kick a Pie down, but a Pie always gets right back up! Maybe if you spent more time with me before your number came up, you would have known that, but I guess that’s just how life bites you in the flank.”

Pinkie’s smile then falls a bit, and her expression morphs into an observant one. “I have to say though, I’m really impressed. You’re tough. Tougher than everypony before you. Most ponies don’t usually manage to escape twice and almost make it out alive. And by that I mean you’re the first. And for that reason, I’d say you would make a pretty valuable asset.”

She steps up to you as you stand in place, puzzled by her current intentions. “So since I’m not feeling too hot, I’ll make things easier for the both of us and suggest a compromise.”

Her smile widens again. “Join us. With your cleverness and perseverance we can become a stronger team and work at twice the efficiency without being caught.” She waves her hoof in a circular motion. “Or… don’t, and I’ll kill you. I mean, I know what I’d choose, but it’s up to you.”

The hall is silent. You and Pinkie stand face to face, the Pink pony smiling patiently while you are faced with the conflicting decision she has laid onto you.

Join Pinkie_____________________________________________________________________________________________Fight Pinkie

15

You politely shake your head and give the cupcake back to Pinkie.

She takes it back, looking slightly dejected. “Oh, okay. I guess cupcakes are just not your thing? Or maybe I misheard and it turns out you don’t actually like coconut. Eh, in that case, I guess I’ll just get another taste tester for this one. In the meantime…” Pinkie starts walking toward the counter of cakes, but then gasps and looks at the clock on the wall. “Shoot, the party is about to start! Gotta get the cakes in the dining room!”

Pinkie grabs one of the trays of cupcakes and rushes through the kitchen door, which closes behind her. You follow her, opening the door and entering the dining room.

“How are you enjoying yourself? Havin’ fun?” she asks excitedly, and you nod. “Yay! I’m so glad! By the way, I know you don’t know that many ponies here, so in case you feel uncomfortable, just know that Ponyville has the nicest ponies a town could ever offer, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Pin the Tail on the Pony____________________________________________________________________________Apple Bobbing

16

“Good choice, I love that game. In fact, I think I’ll come play it with you. Here, lemme show you where it is, follow me!” Pinkie Pie walks past you. You turn around and find yourself in a lineup behind Pinkie Pie that leads up to a poster on the wall of a pony missing their tail.

“The game is simple. To win, as the name of the game suggests, you have to pin the tail on the pony. If you’re not sure how to play, just watch that pony.” Pinkie points to the yellow mare with the blue mane at the front of the line who has a blindfold on and the sticker of a tail in their hoof. The pony behind her then spins her around ten times before she’s dizzy. The pony then begins walking forward slowly and in a relatively straight line toward the poster. When she reaches it, she reaches forward aimlessly and sticks the tail on the pony’s midsection. The mare then removes the blindfold and checks to see how close she was, before laughing at the result and passing the tail and the blindfold to the next pony in line.

The game is pretty straight forward, you determine. This should be a cinch. There are about three more ponies in front of you and Pinkie, but it doesn’t take long for them to have their turn before its Pinkie Pie’s turn. When the pony who had gone previously puts the blindfold on her, passes her the tail and spins her ten times, Pinkie quickly reorients herself. “Whew, boy, my head feels funny,” she says with a chuckle. “Alright, watch how it’s done.”

Pinkie then proceeds to walk in a perfectly straight line, hold out the sticker in exactly the right position and place the end straight on the pony’s rear. It seems as though the tail was part of the poster. She had done it flawlessly.

She takes off the blindfold and surveys her perfect pin. “Woohoo! Now that’s how you pin a tail on a pony!” She walks back toward you. “You’re up! Let’s see if you can best that.”

You’re up for the challenge straight away. You know you can best that. Pinkie then proceeds to wrap the blindfold around your head tightly until all you can see is black. You hold out your right hoof and feel a cardboard object being placed onto it. Then you feel a pair of hooves against your back and you begin to spin. Because you can’t see your surroundings, you can’t tell how many times, but judging by the fact that you already feel dizzy, you decipher that it’s been many times.

Shortly after, Pinkie stops spinning you. You feel tipsy and off balance, but that’s no obstacle for you. You’re ready to show Pinkie who’s boss.

“Alright, party animal, show me whatcha got!” she says. Confidently, you start walking forward. It’s hard to navigate due to your dizziness, but you feel that you’re doing well regardless.

At one point, though, you feel like you’ve gone slightly off track, but its hard to tell whether that’s the case or if that’s just the effect of the dizziness.

Keep Going Forward_____________________________________________________________________________Go Slightly Right

21

You head onto the path and start walking right. The only thing you can really hope now is that this takes you home. You have not a single inkling of where you’re going to end up, but ending up somewhere will be better than nothing.

Without a doubt, it will beat dying of dehydration out in a desert.

What you find yourself trying to wonder is how you ended up this far in the desert. One second, you were playing pin the tail on the pony with your friend Pinkie, then you were suddenly falling down a hill and now… you’re here. If you somehow did walk that far, you’re not sure why nopony at the party tried to stop you. Though, in some part of your head, the thought creeps in that you did not actually walk that distance.

Whatever the case, you’re now in the desert, and it’s hot, so you want to find somewhere to rest as soon as possible. With that settled, you set your mind on finding that somewhere, and start following the path to your undetermined destiny.

***

You’ve been walking for days.

You’re not sure how long it’s been exactly. You’ve only roughly kept track of the time gone by from the direction of the sun, and from what you’ve recorded, it had gone down, then up, then down, then up again. So it’s been two days, and you’re just about ready to collapse.

The night gave you a bit of relief due to the slight chill, but it’s the desert so you didn’t get a lot of that, and it made the coming of morning all the more brutal. Not having any water or food throughout any of it just made it worse, and your walk has been reduced to slow, stiff, robotic movements. You question how you’re still alive. The fact that you’re not yet is either an insane miracle or a legitimate impossibility and… something is keeping you alive.

Maybe everything is a hallucination. Maybe it’s only been a day or less and the heat is just making you think that the sun has gone down twice. Maybe it’s been longer. At this point you’re throwing in assumptions. You can barely think straight.

You lost the road a long time ago. You were following it at one point but then the road blended into the sand, so you were just left to wander until you miraculously come across something.

Soon enough, miracle strikes. A short ways away to your right is what appears to be a small village, though it looks abandoned. It could be promising. Then again, if there’s nothing of use there, you’ll have just wasted your time checking it out, thus draining your almost empty tank of energy.

It’s then that you see a small figure peek out from behind one of the buildings, before disappearing behind another. That catches your interest. Maybe it is a lot more worth checking out than you thought.

Explore the Village_______________________________________________________________________________________Carry On

27

You approach the window. Placing your hooves on the bottom of it, you try to lift the window, but as you expected, it’s locked shu—

Wait, nope never mind, it opens with ease, allowing you to step out and be free. Well then.

You simply hop out onto the small ledge outside the window. Suddenly, you realize you’ve run into a problem: you’re high above the ground, and a jump would result in death.

Examining your surroundings, you see that to your right is no visible way to get down. You look to your left and see that there’s… a ladder leading straight from the ledge down to the ground.

…

They really didn’t think this through, did they?

You allow a hind leg to descend toward the ladder before placing your other hind leg on the step. Then, carefully, you climb downward before grabbing onto the sides with your forelegs and following the steps all the way to the ground.

You escaped. That was really easy. Too easy, actually…

You turn around, only to see that you’re surrounded by what seems like ten guards holding bows and arrows, all aimed directly at you.

Yup, way too easy.

The old stallion is standing in the middle of the assembly of guards, staring at you with a smug grin.

“Just wanted to see your face after you thought you escaped and then realized we’re not that stupid. Alright, take the pony down.”

Ten arrows suddenly fly in your direction before pain erupts all over the front of your body and you collapse to the ground from the numerous arrows puncturing you. Your vision starts to blur and darkness quickly encloses around you, your world erased by a fog of black.

“Choose wiser next time,” the old stallion’s voice echoes through the darkness. “Oh wait, there won’t be a next time, because you’re about to die! Mwahahaha!!”

He’s very obnoxious, you think to yourself. Unfortunately, you can’t give that a second thought because you die.

FAIL | ENDING 14 OF 17

BAD ENDING

Start Over?

31

You open the door and enter the room on the other side.

You cock an eyebrow in confusion. Almost everything here is cakes, so what exactly will there be to taste test?

You look at the cupcake again, its creamy, milky deliciousness sitting on your hoof open to be consumed. You bring it up to your mouth…

Taste the Frosting________________________________________________________________________________Eat the Cupcake

34

“Good choice. Apple bobbing is the most popular game at my parties, and for great reasons too, it's super fun. Come with me, I’ll show you where it is!”

Pinkie Pie walks past you. You turn around and find yourself next to a bucket filled almost to the top with water, and along the surface of the water are multiple delicious looking apples, most likely fresh from Sweet Apple Acers.

“Game’s pretty straight forward. Dunk your head in the water and try to fish out an apple. Like this!” Pinkie Pie grabs the edge of the bucket with her hooves, dips her head below the water and lifts it with an apple in her mouth.

“Ih reahy eahy!” she says, the apple still in her mouth. She takes it in her hoof and takes a hefty bite out of it, chewing it in delight before swallowing. “Go ahead.”

You nod in compliance, walking up to the bucket and dunking your head below the surface of the water. Mouth open, you delve your head below the water in search for an apple to snatch. However, after a little while you still haven’t managed to catch an apple in your mouth.

Lift Your Head_________________________________________________________________________________Stay Under Longer

37

You decide against eating it, instead opting to set it on a nearby table alongside used cups and plates.

“Good idea, save room for cake!” Pinkie says. “I’m gonna go hang out with my friends but try to have fun and make some new friends while you’re at it!”

You nod, and Pinkie Pie disappears in the crowd, leaving you to entertain yourself with whatever other activities there were to try out.

***

“Come on!” Pinkie calls out, ushering you to join the other ponies with her. You realize you’ve just been standing still for the past minute, and head along to join them.

You eye the strange filly, wondering why she isn’t following the rest of the crowd. Maybe she needs help, or perhaps she’s a little bit lost. Should you follow her?

Follow the Filly__________________________________________________________________________________Follow the Crowd

58

On second thought, it seems like a bad idea. There's no telling of the potential dangers at the end of the path, and you determine that the best option is to turn back and head to Sugarcube corner.

You backtrack down the path and follow it the rest of the way. Soon enough, you reach the front door of the bakery. Loud music and ponies inside chatting and laughing booms from inside, and you open the front door to go in.

Pin the Tail on the Pony____________________________________________________________________________Apple Bobbing

67

You walk toward Pinkie Pie as your clone walks in the opposite direction toward Vinyl Scratch.

“Yay!” she exclaims, rearing up happily before placing her front hooves back on the ground. “It’s been so long since we’ve spent some time together! Ooo, this is going to be so much fun!”

Pinkie starts walking back down the road, and you follow, briefly glancing back at Vinyl, who is walking with your clone to the concert.

Your attention is stolen by Pinkie once she starts talking again. “I’ve been trying some new recipes recently, and let's just skip all of this, shall we?"

You suddenly end up in a kitchen with cakes lining the counters of the room. Pinkie approaches the counter at the center of the kitchen and snatches a cupcake from the small bunch beside one of the tinier cakes. Its base is a light brown while the frosting on top is white and sprinkled with flakes of coconut: your favorite.

You look at the cupcake again, its creamy, milky deliciousness sitting on your hoof open to be consumed. You bring it up to your mouth…

Taste the Frosting________________________________________________________________________________Eat the Cupcake

71

You take a large chunk out of the apple with an audible crunch. Chewing, the taste of fresh, sugary juice drenches your tongue with ripe goodness. You continue to take bites of the scrumptious red fruit until only the core remains, and toss it in the nearest trash can.

Satisfied, you turn to the rest of the partygoers and go to mingle with… Ahem. You turn to the rest of the partygoers and go to mingle--you turn to the rest of the partygoers and…

Okay, hang on. Why are you not doing what I say? You’re supposed to follow the directions I give you, why are you just standing still? This can’t possibly be right, hang on. Ahem…

You start walking forward.

Okay, that didn’t work. Hmm, how about...

You listen to what the narrator tells you to do. I command you to walk forward!

...probably should have realized that wouldn’t work.

I don’t understand how this could be possible, I… Wait a minute, did I write this in? I need to check my notes, I wrote it all down. Perhaps I just forgot this part. Let's see here.

Hmmm do do dooo do do dooo do de do de do—

Ah, here we are. Okay so the reader chooses apple bobbing, they lift their head, get an apple, eat it and end up at the… narrator ending?

And then there’s a description next to it: the story puts itself on pause to allow the narrator to have a direct talk with the reader and clear up any possible confusion about the nature of this story.

Ah. I remember now. No wonder I was confused, this ending isn't part of the story. Well that certainly clears things up. Just give me a second, I need to get my notes. I won’t take long.

Argh, where are they…?

I’m still here, don’t worry, this is just taking a while!

Ah, found em. I really need to tidy up, don’t I?

Alright, got my notes and now I can get on with what I would like to say. First of all I should probably introduce myself. I am AnOrdinaryWriter, the creator of this story, and since this whole chapter is pretty much just confused rambling, let me just create a new one so as to not cram too many words into one page.

Okay, and… there. Now just click on the link below, and I’ll see you there.

…