You sigh, stumbling on your way home by the edge of the Everfree Forest. It had been the longest period of sobriety before tonight’s drink-fest. Perhaps even longer than a day.

To think you would have lost another drinking contest... You must be losing your touch. Maybe you need more practice to hold in the licker. Either that or your liver is giving up.

Spitting out the remains of the half-digested sludge in your mouth you shake your head to clear your mind and instantly regret your action. You’ve already vomited 3 times on the way, and you feel another one slowly climbing up the throat.

Balancing on the path along the Everfree Forest, you take a big breath as if that could somehow detoxify your ethanol-soaked body. It’s at this point that you notice something in the distance.

You’re no stranger to drunken hallucinations, but this one feels more real than everything else you see. Yet, it looks like a ball of ropes sliding on the ground, which obviously can’t be real. You’ve never seen anything like it. It has two eyes, and they connect with yours. A moment later, it jumps into a bush. Well, the bush, since it’s the only one in the whole clearing.

You freeze in place and pin your ears in that direction, catching barely comprehensible self-dialogue from the bush. The wind blowing in your direction whispers, “The creature! Did it see me? I should have stayed clear of the path. What was I thinking? I’m just asking for it… I'll wait here until it passes. Even if the creature saw me, she can’t see me now because I’m in a bush.”

“Somepony is being bad at sneaking,” you mutter.

The outgrowth suddenly gets wrapped and all the branches of the bush get pulled in, making it denser.

“And bad at hiding…” You can’t see the creature anymore, but it doesn’t matter because you know exactly where it is. The lone bush isn’t much of a hiding spot, after all.

You slowly move over to the bush. “Nopony calls you ‘a creature’!”

A purple rope slides on the ground and pulls itself inside.

"What in Tartarus..?"

You hear a whisper, “Why is the prey cumming closer?”

You try to initiate contact, “Ahem.”

“Maybe... Maybe it's just taking a shortcut away from the road. There's no reason to believe it sees me. The branches are thick, I can't be found. The bush is making me literally invisible!”

You face hoof. “That’s not how bushes work…”

The person in the bush continues talking to herself, “The prey seems to be mentally retarded since it's talking to itself. It’s definitely not talking to me because it can’t see me. It can’t!”

“Reality doesn’t just go away if you deny it.” Slowly, you approach the creature in the bush. You light up the horn to see better. With the remainder of the magic potential, you use telekinesis to slightly nudge the branches to the side. "I know you’re in there."

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” The creature jumps away from you out of the bush. “It sees me!”

The ropes are still wrapped around the branches pulling the creature back midair. She falls to the ground on her back.

You try to offer her a helping hoof, “Are you…”

"Please don't eat me!" she whispers with a high pitch gurgly voice.

“I’m not going to…”

Looking up, the filly focuses on your horn. Her eyes widen.

“AAA! Sharp object!”

You shut off your magic and put a hoof over your horn in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. “That’s just my…”

"I'll hurt you!"

You take a step back as the helpless victim turns into a threat in an instant before your very eyes.

She wraps herself with ropes forming a slick, trembling ball of appendages. Except, they’re not ropes!

“What the fuck?!” Your eyes shoot open as you back away from the creature. "Freaking tentacles?"

One of the appendages unwinds and breaks off a branch from the bush.

“I need to stop drinking,” you swear to yourself for the thousandth time.

The ball oscillates and morphs, giving rise to one eye in the middle, slowly opening. A moment later, it gets hidden behind a torn-off branch with just three leaves on it.

“And I thought you were bad at hiding before…”

The oval shape in front of you morphs yet again, extending in all directions, losing height, dropping almost below the grass line. It whispers, “What do I do?”

You can’t take your eyes or pinned ears off her. “This can’t possibly be real,” you tell yourself while backing away ever faster.

A deadly gaze shoots straight at you from the wiggling party. “I must never let my prey escape.” Her tentacles slap on the ground. The consequent force launches her body in the air. “The rule is: Get it to run, then hunt it down!”

She lends on your path with all four hooves, her mane and tail tentacles wave in the air, instantly balancing her on the ground. Despite still trembling, she leans forward and yells, "Yeah! Err ... I'll hurt you!"

Again, she notices the sharp oval body part on your forehead. "And I'm not even afraid of your clam opener. I'm not!" Her tail tentacles press between her hind legs again.

You keep your gaze on the creature, the realization dawning on you that this encounter is going to end in a fight. Even if the offending filly looks like she’s bluffing.

Running at the tentacle being, you charge up your horn and prepare to counterattack anything the potential aggressor may throw at you.

"Eee!" The filly turns around, pressing harder on the abdomen with her tail tentacles.

From her underside, another set of thinner tentacles launches out over her tail tentacles. They stretch on the flanks, wrapping together on her croup. "No hurt Tenty again!" With her eyes closed, she waves her mane tentacles behind her in your general direction. They flap uselessly in the air.

“Tenty, was it?” You decide to put a stop to the nonsense, tackling the tentacles and leaning down to her face, "Just stop!"

“Aaa!” Her tail tentacles slip between her hind legs as if by instinct to protect her groin area from a potential invasion. “Why must I always be the prey?”

“Prey?” You ask.

Her mane tentacles drop. "No hurt! No hurt!" A few of them hang uselessly over your foreleg.

Tentacle filly lowers her head and the thin tentacles retract to her belly button. "I'll be good Tenty. No hurt..." A tear drifts across her muzzle and falls to the ground.

She faces away from you as her tense tail tentacles slowly retract, one by one, wrapping on her sides and her back. "Please, no hurt..." The small body of the tentacle pony trembles.

Author's Note

Gdoc