Autumn Blaze gazed across the expanse of the swamp with narrowed hazel eyes, a pout on her lips, and her brow furrowed.
Across the foul smelling, mossy, waterlogged land were a plethora of frogs from all across the amphibian kingdom. There were small ones, big ones, colourful ones, bulbous ones, fat ones, skinny ones, fried ones, eldritch abominations, sparkly ones, lizards trying to pass themselves off as ones, normal frogs, and even the most scandalous red ones.
Having observed that there were indeed frogs present, she took out a worn paperback book from her saddlebags. It had no discernible features besides a faded green cover.
A quick flip through faded pages brought her to an earmarked page upon which was a series of pictures that showed from left to right a frog, a plus sign, a pair of lips, an equal sign, and an alicorn stallion.
She looked at the frogs, back at the book, then nodded her head.
The book was tucked away back in her saddlebags and a stick of lipstick was procured in its place. She applied it liberally to her lips, smearing them obscenely in a ruby red colour.
An audible pop sound resounded through the swamp as she puckered her lips and, with a wide toothy grin, cried out her intent.
“Pucker up froggers! I’m here to kiss me up a prince!”
As one, the frogs turned to look at her with glassy dull eyes. A few errant amphibians croaked then all leapt away in a panic from the crazed lunatic screaming at them.
Autumn observed the swamp again and, upon finding no frogs to smooch, huffed.
“This might be harder than I thought.”
Autumn leapt forward with her hooves outstretched, reaching for the bright green frog sitting before her.
Her quarry turned to look at her, croaked then jumped into a nearby pond.
She slid across the wet ground, and burrowed her head into the mud from the impact.
Standing up with a slam of her hooves, she whipped her head to and fro as she looked for another potential target. As her search became fruitless, she snarled and punched the ground with a squelch.
“Oh, come on!” She cried out.
Autumn stomped in a random direction as she travelled to another part of the swampy land that would hopefully procure her a slimy, slippery, mucus covered set of lips to smooch.
She had to if she was going to have a worthy date to the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala.
Her dearest friends Fluttershy and Applejack had delivered the invitation to her personally whilst dropping the bombshell information that every creature could “optionally” — Autumn wished she was a minotaur to properly emphasize that — bring a plus one.
An immediate request to simply go stag with her dear friends had gone stale as her awful friends had told her they were going with the incarnate of chaos Discord and big apple cakes loving Princess Celestia respectively.
It would be the height of embarrassment for her to appear at the gala without a date of the same calibre as her friends, or worse going alone, or even worse going with someone of the same species as her!
She could only handle so many ponies asking which family member she was dating this time because they couldn’t tell Kirins apart.
Dumb ponies.
As she trotted forward, the swamp became tinged a yucky vomit coloured yellow by a thick haze that permeated the air. A tentative sniff caused her to wrinkle her nose and fight back the urge to gag.
It was sickeningly sweet. The kind of sweet you get when you dump four times the amount of sugar in a batch of cupcakes and wonder if it would not have been better to just eat the canes the sugar was processed from.
Out of morbid curiosity she followed the scent trail to an open clearing filled with small beehive-like structures.
They were dome shaped with the beehive bumps all along the hive. They were bright pink and pulsated a putrid shade of yellow light. The texture from what she could see was fibrous in nature making it some kind of plant, but what plant it could be was unclear to her.
In addition, all the “hives” as Autumn called them dripped a clear liquid substance onto the ground in ever expanding puddles.
Before she could inspect the strange secretion, a frog jumped into the clearing with a croak announcing its presence.
The frog’s pupils expanded to encompass its eyes and it leapt into the closest pool of clear liquid. The amphibian then planted its face in the puddle and rolled around while croaking in seeming bliss.
Autumn tilted her head to one side as she observed this odd behaviour.
A quick dip of her hoof into a nearby expanse caused it to become coated in the confirmed sticky mass that, when held up to the light, glistened.
Several shuddering gagging motions followed a taste test that did in fact confirm the source of the sickly sweet air that hung about the swamp.
Efforts to remove the substance from her hoof were met with stubborn refusal, and, after a preparatory grimace, several licks managed to finally remove the foul goop.
She started to trot away before two thoughts emerged from her mind.
The liquid was sticky.
The frogs loved it.
Autumn grinned as a plan came together in her mind.
From her hiding shrub, Autumn observed a swarm of frogs merrily hopping about a pond. The perfect spot to enact her plan.
She took a deep breath to brace herself, then launched herself out of the bushes with her forelegs spread wide.
Or at least she tried since the goop she had covered her entire body in was making it difficult to unstick her limbs from her torso.
Regardless, she could still execute the plan.
“Come to me, froggies!” She yelled.
As one, the frogs stopped and turned to face her. There was a moment of silence, a few errant sniffs of inquiry before the frogs’ pupils expanded and the army of amphibians descended upon one Autumn Blaze like a posse of lunatic drug obsessed addicts.
An apt description as the sap itself — as Fluttershy would describe to Autumn on her return from the swamp — was effectively weed for frogs.
The frogs piled onto Autumn who laughed in manic glee as they licked, croaked, and assailed her from every angle.
Cackling with glee, she began to kiss frogs at random hoping to find the one that would transform into her amazing date for the gala.
Frog after frog was smooched on the lips and smeared with a trail of red lipstick across their slimy skin. Several had become stuck to Autumn over the course of the assault and were content to stay there.
Finally, after what felt like a hundred frogs, one of them began to glow.
“Yes. Yes!” Autumn vibrated excitedly in place.
The amphibian in question floated into the air and spun in place as it was enshrouded within brilliant yellow light. A choir inexplicably sang in the background.
Slowly the frog morphed into a tall, well built white stallion with perfectly coiffed blonde mane, brilliant blue eyes, and a cutie mark of a compass on his flanks.
Prince Blueblood struck a gallant pose before Autumn.
“Thank you for releasing me, Kirin.” He gave a confident smirk. “I had thought I would never be free when my dear Auntie Celetia cursed me for implying that Twilight Sparkle had more shapely flanks than her, but here you are! Now as a reward, you may have me.”
Autumn glanced over the stallion. The horn was there, but no wings.
With a weary sigh, she pushed Blueblood with a sticky hoof leaving several globs of goop on his fur. He cried out flailing his forelegs as he fell backwards into the murky swamp water behind him.
All that effort and no alicorn prince. She made a note to herself to call out that book seller for misinformation later.
Several frogs emerged from the water and grabbed onto Blueblood with their slimy legs as they licked at the goop clinging to his fur.
“What are you doing? Unhoof me you horrid beasts! I’ve had more than enough of you barbarians.” Blueblood snorted.
More frogs emerged and began to drag Blueblood into the deeper parts of the swamp while croaking excitedly.
“No!” Blueblood struggled against the swarm. “I will not return to those deeper waters! It was dirty! I ate bugs!”
A frog on the bank threw a ball of mud at Blueblood who shrieked. The frogs, with no further resistance from the sobbing stallion, dragged him further in earnest.
Wholly unaffected by the horrific display, Autumn trotted away to mull over her remaining options.
She could just ask a Kirin from her village.
Or she could summon an Eldritch Abomination that looked like a Kirin that could eat any pony that tried to ask if she was dating her sister.
With a smile on her lips and the frog sacrifices stuck to her fur, Autumn skipped merrily off to a holy ground to discrete in the name of summoning a horrific monster to take to the gala.
