Hey, this is Rainbow Dash! I’m a total gamer, but I never played a hacked or glitchy game before. And once I did, that made me never want to touch one again…
It was, at first, like any other day. I woke up early in the morning to perfect my Super Smash Bros. Melee skills, but I soon realized that I didn't finish my homework, so I quickly killed 100 wireframe men in Cruel Melee and got to work. Thankfully, I finished before my parents woke up, so I left and I did a bunch of kickass stuff at school, but that isn’t what this story is about.
The school day ended and I rode the bus home. Some guy bumped into me when I got off, launching my Game Boy Advance out of my hand, but he picked it up for me. He was much larger than me and wore a shirt with the words "Xbox God". He looked at the screen and said, "Whoa, this is pretty cool. What is it?"
"It's Mega Man Battle Network 3," I said. "Cool, huh?"
"Mega Man? That kiddy crap! If you want to play a REAL shooting game, get Halo for the Xbox, but since you're immature enough to play 'Mega Kiddy', you'll probably want to get that stupid Legend of Celda: The Wind Breaker game instead!"
"Actually, 'Celda' has a deeper plot than Halo."
"Riiiiiiiiiiiight, you just keep telling yourself that." He seemed to be an Xbox fanboy. To be fair, there is a large difference between Xbox owners and fanboys.
As I continued listing Halo's flaws, keeping it clear that I thought it was a good, but overrated game, the Halo fanboy got angry and chased after the nonbeliever with great prejudice. The pursuit lasted a few minutes and the chaser got tired, and then I kicked his ass and everyone around me clapped.
All that was to say that, yeah, I’m pretty cool, and I never lose. Which made what happened next all the more horrifying.
After winning like I always do all the time, I walked home and I noticed a strange package on my front step. That’s weird, I thought. I hadn’t ordered anything.
When I got closer, I saw that it was from Gilda! How weird is that, I haven’t talked to her in years, and last I heard, it’s been weeks since anyone saw her. I unwrapped it on the spot and found a clear plastic case with a Switch game cartridge on it. I was initially excited about getting a mysterious new game, but the writing on the case confused me: SUNNY.EXE.
Weird, that wasn’t Gilda’s handwriting. Did she get it from someone else?
Just then, I noticed a note that was inside the package too. Now that was Gilda’s handwriting.
It said, in hastily written ink, “Dash, whatever you do, do not play this game! I need you to destroy it! I would but it’s too fast. It knows whenever I try something! DO NOT PLAY THIS”
I scoffed. Pff, yeah right, Gilda. She should’ve known that’d just make me want to play it more.
I headed inside and went straight to my room. I ripped my copy of Skyrim out of my Switch, put the new cartridge in, and started it up.
The icon on the home screen was immediately familiar: it was My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure! As you know, I’m a huge My Little Pony fan, so I got really excited about this. The cartridge was unlabeled, so maybe this was a prototype of some kind.
However, there was something weird about the icon. I was in the middle of clicking, but in a split second, I saw it turn red and the heart in the logo turned into a skull! But I didn’t think anything of it, since prototypes are always glitchy like that.
If you don’t know, My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure is a 3D collectathon game where you play as Sunny Starscout, interacting with the other ponies and doing things for them. It’s based on generation 5 of the My Little Pony series, with the original run being G1, a set of toys that weren’t sold in the United States making up G2, and a 2000’s reboot being G3. There was a second reboot that people called either G3.5 or G4, but when G5 came out, everyone went with G4. There was a big gap between G4 and G5, but it became the best part of My Little Pony!
The game’s title screen shows Sunny in her room inside the Crystal Brighthouse, the orange earth pony wearing her satchel, excited about the new day as ever.
Wanting to get to the game as soon as possible, I selected Play. However, as soon as I did that, things got really freaky! For just half a second, I swore that Sunny’s eyes turned black with red irises. She was still smiling, but it was much wider, more than her lips should have allowed, and you could see her teeth. It may have just been my imagination, but they looked sharp!
Sunny wasn’t the only thing that was different. Her room is usually so bright and organized, but it looked like it was night now, with shadows everywhere, and all of her things were knocked over. The floor was red and shiny, like it was covered in blood. And not cartoony blood like you might expect from a game like this! It looked hyperrealistic!
Plus, there was the copyright information on the bottom of the screen. It usually says ©️2022 Hasbro, but instead it said ©️666 Hasdeath!
In a split second, I noticed something else on the ground. A blue mane, a bit of a purple horn… was that Izzy?! What was she doing on the ground? Was she sleeping over? But looking at Sunny’s expression, I started to have my doubts. And actually, there was a bit of purple between Sunny’s sharp teeth. Was that Izzy’s fur? What was going on here?!
But I forgot about all that as the next screen loaded. Usually narration starts, explaining the Crystal Brighthouse, but instead, it brought me to… a character selection screen?! I thought I must have made a mistake and selected Minigames, but no, there’s usually a screen where you select what minigame to play before you select characters, and in the section that says what minigame you’re playing, it instead said, “TRY TO ESCAPE”.
That was weird. But even weirder was the characters you could select! Sunny was nowhere to be seen, and while the usual Hitch, Pipp, Izzy, Zipp, and Sprout were there, they looked different. Hitch’s face was turned down with his brows furrowed, like he was trying hard to think of something. You couldn’t even see Sprout’s face as he cowered out of frame, his forehooves covering the top of his head.
But that was nothing compared to how the mares looked! All of them had the same expression, facing the player directly but with their faces cast down and in shadow. Their portraits were grayed out, with no color other than bits of red on different parts of their faces, and Izzy’s horn was broken, with red streaming down it. Yes, streaming! Unlike the usual static pictures, these were animated! It was creepy, but I thought maybe they were trying to be artistic. I couldn’t tell you what it meant, though.
I tried to select them, but the selection just went right past them. I grunted with frustration. I didn’t want to play as Hitch or freaking Sprout! But that’s when I noticed something even more surprising!
To the right of Sprout was… Misty! The new character that joined the now-Mane-Six at the end of season 4 of Make Your Mark! She was a great character, and definitely better than that dumb dragon Sparky!
I was shocked. This must be a sequel or DLC or something! How awesome was this! I got to play as Misty before everyone else! Her portrait showed the same level of concern as Hitch, with a worried frown and pleading eyes, but that was normal for Misty, so I didn’t think anything of it when I selected her. Or at least I didn’t until, in a split second, I could have sworn her portrait changed to her screaming!
Instead of the opening cutscene where a narrator who isn’t in the show explains the Crystal Brighthouse and Sunny talks about looking for her bag, it started with Misty already under player control in a grassy field that I recognized as the tutorial area. However, it was different, mainly because it was dark, with the sky red like it was sunset. The water in the background was red too, but it wasn’t like it was reflecting the sky. No, it looked like it was red all on its own. Probably a glitch to be ironed out later.
I took a look at the UI. Like when you play as Sunny, a portrait in a 2D art style is at the top left corner. Like the character selection portrait, she looked pretty worried, but there was a hint that now that she was selected, she was resolved to get through this. I felt like telling her that there was nothing to be scared of, but I didn’t.
I walked forward, collecting stars like usual. No bunnies showed up, but Misty didn’t have a backpack for them to take, so that made sense.
I knew Misty could handle the sections where Sunny uses unicorn magic, but I wondered how they’d handle earth pony magic or the flying minigame. It’d be really lame if they ignored her being a unicorn and had those parts be the same.
Sure enough, when I came across a flower that you needed to make bloom, I pressed the action button and she made it bloom with unicorn magic. Ugh, what were these developers thinking!
As I continued forward, something was itching at the back of my mind, and suddenly I realized: there was no music! Usually there’s a calm tune playing, but instead it was eerily silent, every grunt that Misty made echoing into the distance. The fact that there was no sign of life anywhere sent shivers down my spine.
In fact, shouldn’t I have gotten to the Maretime Bay city center by now? Instead the field just kept going and going.
I focused on Misty’s portrait, which seemed like it was looking around warily. I didn’t know why, but that put me on edge too, as I kept an eye out for any life.
At last, something had changed, and I was so startled I almost fell out of my seat. Boy did I feel silly when I saw who it was! It was the ever-friendly Izzy, the perfect pony to find in this situation. I must have just imagined what happened to her on the title screen. The purple unicorn stood still with her face turned away from the screen.
Misty seemed happy to see her too. “Izzy, there you are!” she said, the relief obvious in her voice. “Are you OK? I saw what happened with…”
Happened with what? I listened intently for Misty to continue, which left me completely off guard for what happened next. Instead of Izzy responding with her sweet voice, there was a loud screech and I had to cover my ears. What the heck was that? It sounded like the screams the bosses in Sonic Spinball make when you hit them, but even spookier!
Misty was surprised too and she covered her ears in game. I was ready to think that noise was a glitch, but it couldn’t be if Misty was reacting like that. Did that noise really come from Izzy?
Before I could think about this further, Izzy started walking away. The camera panned, showing a strange symbol on the ground. What was it? I didn’t recognize anything like that in the game. It almost looked like something out of a cult. But what was even more surprising was that when Izzy touched it, she disappeared in a flash of light!
At this point, the camera panned back to Misty and I had control of her again. Deciding to follow the obvious cue, I had Misty walk to the symbol, but the controls became really sluggish for some reason. It was like Misty was fighting back! Her portrait showed her fear, with any bravado she had at the start completely gone. This made me think twice about continuing, but I was so curious about what was going on with Izzy. Finally, I got Misty onto the symbol and the screen turned black.
The first thing to load was the music. I immediately recognized it as the My Little Pony theme, but it wasn’t like I had ever heard! It was creepy and distorted, and I think it was even backwards! This sent shivers down my spine, which got even worse when the rest of the area loaded! Misty was in a new location, a dark forest with twisted and sharp trees, with branches reaching out like fingers! Shadows were everywhere, and the bits of the sky I could see were blood red!
But what really startled me was what was in front of Misty! It was Izzy, like I was hoping, but not in the way I wanted! She was on the ground, the orthogonal perspective showing every bit of her body covered in blood, with her guts sliced open and her legs and horn torn off and thrown around her randomly. I knew video games could sometimes glitch with limbs falling off, but you could see her internal organs spilling out! Whoever coded this did it deliberately! And not just that, but ritualistically! I felt sick to my stomach seeing this, and I remembered the title screen. Was that showing how this happened? But Sunny was smiling when she saw Izzy on the ground like that. What did that mean?
While I felt sick, Misty was really sick. She held her nose like it smelled really bad, then she gagged and even threw up! Whoever programmed all this was messed up!
I had Misty move left, away from the body, but there was an invisible barrier. Misty’s portrait showed sheer terror, but even with all her effort, she couldn’t go anywhere. I kept doing this for five minutes, but eventually I realized I needed to walk past Izzy.
The controls became even more sluggish now. I wondered if this was a glitch, but maybe Misty really was trying to fight back! Still, I needed to do this to get anywhere; otherwise I’d be stuck in that place forever. Slowly, I managed to inch Misty toward the body and then past it, and then the glitch ended and I could move Misty normally again. If anything, she was running even faster!
However, then I noticed something strange and I had to stop to get a look. Did Izzy’s body just twitch?
Misty turned to look too and I could see the surprise and then horror on her face as Izzy rose above the ground. Adding onto this, the music got really scary. It sounded like what plays in Sonic Spinball in the first level when the sea serpent tries to grab you!
The music kept playing in a loop as Izzy’s bloody body floated in the air and she had a wide smile. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was her normal self, but none of this was normal. “Hey there Mist-a-rooni!” she said in her voice from the shows and game, but all creepy and distorted. “We’re going to have so much fun!”
I didn’t know what kind of fun she wanted, and I didn’t want to find out. I had Misty run to the edge of the screen and a loading screen popped up. It was the same colorful loading screen as ever, which made me hope things would return to normal. In the brief moment of safety I got, I thought about what I just saw.
That couldn’t have really been Izzy, right? The way she talked, the way she acted, it was more like an opposite version. As such, I decided to call her Yzzi.
Yzzi had a sinister gleam in her eyes and sharp teeth. Those teeth reminded me of what I saw on the title screen with Sunny, but Sunny’s eyes were even more sinister than Yzzi’s. Did Sunny do this to her? But why?
All hopes that things would return to normal were dashed when the game finished loading and I found myself on a dark path through the forest. The scary music was gone, but it was replaced by eerie silence. Was Yzzi going to come after me? I had Misty run ahead and hide behind a tree that jutted out, but even after waiting for ten minutes, no one else ran—or floated—from the way she came.
I thought it was safe to move Misty again, but I was wrong. As soon as I did, a demonic voice said, “FOUND YOU!”
Before I could even process that, a really loud version of the drowning music from the Sonic games started playing and a timer counting down from 10 appeared at the top of the screen. I panicked and didn’t move for a few seconds, and Misty shook and shuddered as her head darted around. Eventually, as the music grew more intense, I knew I had to get her to move, or else who knows what would happen! Misty ran along the path, faster than ever, but I knew staying on it would just make whatever was coming find her. I kept an eye out, and finally saw a break in the trees. Misty jumped into it just as the timer hit zero and the screen flashed.
In a split second, I saw a hyper-realistic of the scariest thing I had ever seen in my life! It looked right at me with row after row of red eyes jutting out of pure blackness, and below that were an impossible amount of sharp teeth in an open mouth that seemed to lead into a void and had no bottom. In that void was lashing tentacles—were those supposed to be tongues? What was I even looking at? This didn’t look like a CG render. It looked like it could reach right out of my screen!
It was only after the image disappeared that I started to really process another thing. The skin around that horrible mouth was orange and furry, and above the eyes was purple hair. That made me think about Sunny, but that couldn’t be right!
Even as the next screen loaded, I kept thinking about it. Yzzi, that demonic voice, that monster that resembled Sunny, what was this game trying to tell me? Part of me thought it was time to shut off the game forever, but another part of me was just too curious. Would I be able to find answers if I kept going?
Curiosity killed the cat, didn’t it? Though in this case, curiosity would end up killing everyone.
Misty was now in a thickly forested area coated in fog. The music sounded like when you go up the mountain in Chrono Trigger, but using an emulator that messes up the music so there are weird screeches.
The unicorn walked slowly, even with my analog stick at full tilt. This wasn’t the same as the mushy feeling the controls had before when she was refusing to move, but was more like in other video games where you can’t move quickly in a town area. Having no sense of where to go other than not back, I had her just keep going up.
After ten minutes of walking, I could still see nothing but those same eerie trees. And I wasn’t going in circles, because the trees were in slightly different arrangements each time. Well, at least I was probably safe from whatever that was.
I was just about to give up when I noticed something on the ground—and when Misty came close to it, she could interact with it! I picked it up and it was a piece of paper with handwriting on it. Before I could get a closer look, to my surprise, the screen flashed and it went into a cutscene.
It showed the streets of Maretime Bay, just like in the game, but everything was in black and white, and the music had completely stopped. A little filly walked on screen, and I recognized her as Sunny. Was this the past?
She was walking down the street, looking around warily. Before I could speculate as to why, I saw the answer: three larger ponies barreled toward her on skateboards, stopping right in front of her and then skating around her.
“Where are you going, Sunny D?” yelled one of the fillies.
“More like Sunny Dick!” the one colt with them added.
The first filly, who seemed to be the leader, snarled at him. “That’s what it means, shitbrain!”
The colt frowned and looked down. “Sorry, Mandy.”
Sunny shook and stammered. “I-I’m going to school.”
The bullies all laughed, and the last mare said, “Oh school, that’s good. We want you to go to school. But we own this road and you have to pay to pass.”
Sunny’s eyes widened. “But I don’t have any money.”
The lead bully, Mandy, cackled. “Oh right, your daddy stopped giving you money because it keeps getting stolen. Guess he’s spending it all on unicorn whores!”
The colt gasped. “Oh shit! What if Sunny D’s mom is a unicorn whore!”
The bullies’ faces all twisted with glee, having found a new avenue to torment their target. “You’re right! No wonder she’s Sunny D! Probably going to get a unicorn dick on her head any day now,” said Mandy.
Sunny started and stopped, clearly unsure what to object to first, or if she should even object at all.
Mandy stopped behind her and patted her back, making her flinch. “Tell you what, we’ll give you two options. Either go back and steal your dad’s whore money, or…” She reached into her bag, pulled a knife, and dropped it on the ground. “You can use this to stab Mrs. Golden Lily in first period!”
Sunny gasped. “N-no! I can’t!”
The bullies laughed. “Well, your choice, dickhead!”
“More like Sunny Dickhead!” said the colt.
“Oh my fucking god shut up!” yelled Mandy. Turning back to their victim, she smiled and said. “See you at recess. Either have the money, or a bloody knife.”
The three of them skated away, leaving Sunny staring at the knife on the ground.
With a flash, suddenly the game had returned to the woods, the music still silent.
I stared at the screen aghast. What was all that about? I knew things were bad before friendship between pony races returned, but it was like that? That felt real in a way I had never seen in My Little Pony before!
I sat there deep in thought for a few minutes before I noticed four icons next to Misty’s face (which had returned to a wary but calm expression). Three were grayed out, but one was a white piece of paper with writing on it, just like what I picked up a moment ago. Was that paper from Sunny’s diary? I guess this meant I had to collect all of them to progress.
I directed Misty to continue going up, since that worked out before, but after a minute of walking, something weird started happening. At first there was a light buzzing noise, which was scary enough with there being no music, but then the screen itself started becoming staticy and Misty’s icon in the corner became terrified. Was she seeing something I wasn’t? The camera was in a fixed position and I couldn’t move it.
Whatever it was, it was up ahead. The static increased and the buzzing became louder and louder, and then the static started turning blood red. Finally, I had Misty run to the side to get out of there.
Thankfully, the static faded and eventually went away, though I had to run for who knows how long. Misty was still scared, but looked a bit less worried now.
There was something in these dark woods chasing after her. Was it that thing I saw before?
Before I could think too much about it, I realized I found the next diary page laying on the ground. Misty picked it up, and sure enough, I was in another black and white cutscene.
Unlike before, this showed Filly Sunny in a brand new area: a school playground, the place where she’d meet her bullies. From Sunny’s expression, she didn’t steal money from her father, and she certainly didn’t stab a teacher. But she held the knife the bullies gave her in her hooves, and she was thinking pretty hard about what to do with it.
The playground had a slide, and the three bullies from before were all sitting at the bottom of it, blocking any other foals from using it. They were caught up in their own little world, happily chatting and laughing, and Sunny seemed to hope that meant they were in a good mood. That clearly didn’t make much of a difference, because as soon as they saw Sunny, they shot up and rushed toward her with gleeful cruelty written all over their faces.
The leader, Mandy, immediately shoved her. “Hey dickhead, where’s our money?”
“Too pussy to stab a teacher, too pussy to steal!” said the second filly.
Before Sunny could respond, the colt knocked her to the ground. “Sunny D won’t learn unless we teach her a lesson.”
Mandy laughed. “Yeah, let’s show her that if she won’t stab Mrs. Golden Lily, we’ll stab her dad!”
Sunny gasped. “No, don’t!”
Mandy mockingly gasped. “Oh no, you don’t want us to stab your dad? Well too bad, we’re doing it right now! Give me back my knife!”
The lead bully hit Sunny with her hooves while reaching for the knife the younger filly held. Still, Sunny kept it out of reach even as blows started coming from the other foals. She looked around desperately, but the other kids looked away out of fear, and the teachers that were supposed to be looking over them were instead caught up in a conversation and didn’t see what was happening.
In desperation, Sunny grunted and flailed her hooves around. No one was going to help her, so she needed to fight for her life to protect her dad.
Finally, she struck true. Whether she meant to or not, the knife she was holding went straight into the shoulder of Mandy.
“Holy shit!” screaming the colt as the lead bully fell to the ground, groaning in pain.
The second filly dropped all bravado and ran away, yelling, “Teacher! Teacher!”
Sunny sat up, panting, as blood flowed from the bully and soaked into the wood chips below. She brought them a bloody knife after all.
And that’s where the flashback ended, leaving me to ponder its events. Sunny stabbed someone? The mare who would define friendship in the pony world? It was so hard to believe, but everything I had just seen struck so true. And there was still more to this story. What horrible secrets would I end up learning?
I had Misty continue going in random directions. Sometimes I would get the static again, which would make me immediately go in the opposite direction, but soon I ran into another diary page.
This time, the flashback showed Sunny in her old home, with her still-alive father standing in front of her. He was normally so kind, but this time his eyes were narrow and he had a deep frown.
“But Dad!” Sunny pleaded. “They started it! They said they wanted to stab you!”
Her father, Argyle, shook his head. “Sunny, I’m sorry, but your teachers are saying you stabbed them because they were blocking the slide. There’s never a good reason to hurt someone the way you did, least of all because of something like that.”
Tears flowed down Sunny’s face. “But Dad, they didn’t see what happened! The bullies talked to them first and the teachers believe them more than me! And now you’re taking their side too!”
Argyle huffed. “I wish you’d stop making up these lies! You need to learn to get along with others, Sunny, and to that end, I have a little surprise for you.”
Before Sunny could ask what he meant, the doorbell rang.
Looking over his shoulder, the stallion said, “Ah, good timing.”
He went to the door, and I gasped even harder than Sunny. Standing there were the three bullies. Mandy had bandages around her shoulder, but otherwise didn’t look any worse for wear.
“Hey Sunny,” said Mandy in a sickeningly sweet voice. “I hope we can make up!”
“I hope so too,” said Argyle with a smile, which promptly disappeared when he looked back at Sunny. “In fact, I’m going to lock the four of you in my study until you work all this out.”
Sunny shook. “No, Dad! You can’t!” Tears streamed down her face. “You don’t understand!”
“Now now, enough of that,” said Argyle, picking her up by the scruff of her neck even as she struggled. He led the other three ponies through the house and into a room. He placed Sunny down and promptly shut the door behind him.
The bullies wasted no time revealing their true colors, as they laughed and started pulling knives out of their pockets.
“Alright dickhead,” said Mandy, “let’s have some fun.”
The screen flashed and I once again saw Misty in the woods.
I always thought of Argyle as a wise father. How could he be so blind? In fact, trusting these bullies instead of his own daughter wasn’t just blindness, it was straight up monstrous! How did this possibly make sense with how he acted in the movie?
Maybe the final diary entry would explain this.
I continued moving Misty around, sure that the next page would follow the same pattern as before, so I was shocked when I went up and found torch lights. I didn’t know what this meant, but finally it was a way out of these woods! Or so I hoped. Misty didn’t seem so sure.
Regardless, I pushed the unicorn ahead. Torches were on either side of a clearing through the forest, and in the flickering lights, I could see symbols on the ground. It had been a while, but I was pretty sure they were the same symbol I saw before that brought Misty and me to this strange place. They weren’t glowing, though, and walking Misty over them didn’t do anything.
After walking for a minute, the path opened up to a large clearing, and the camera panned up on its own. The screen started going static like before, but this time, I wasn’t given the chance to move away. I held onto my seat fearing what it would end up being.
Behind the static, I could make out a weird monument made out of wood and what looked like bones. It took a few seconds to realize, but this was the same symbol again! What did it mean?
I was so engrossed in the symbol that I didn’t notice what was below it until the horrors were well in progress. I’m not quite sure if the static was clearing up or if I was getting used to it, but I saw Princess Pipp! At first I was happy to see one of Misty’s friends, and she didn’t look creepy like Yzzi did before, but she wasn’t in a good state. Her face was cast down and bloody just like on the character select screen, and she was tied up to wooden boards and crucified! She even had nails through her hooves!
And if Pipp looked bad, then her sister, Zipp, looked far worse. Just like Yzzi, the pegasus mare’s body looked like it had been torn to shreds, with her white fur soaked in blood to the point it could hardly be called white, and she had a creepy smile with sharp teeth and gleaming eyes. I realized she was no longer Zipp: she was now Ppiz.
Misty wasn’t on screen, but her icon was, and she was terrified. I couldn’t tell if I had any control over her, but I tried to move her out of Ppiz’s line of sight anyway. If it didn’t work, Ppiz at least didn’t show any sign of noticing Misty.
I studied Ppiz’s movements carefully. She floated around her crucified sister, seeming to make sure everything was in the right position. Then suddenly, she pulled out a knife and started slashing Pipp’s skin!
The screen turned a staticy blood red and a demonic voice said, “IF YOU WERE FASTER YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER.”
My face twisted at this. “I’m fast! This is just bullshit!” I yelled at the screen.
As if in response, the demonic voice said with an audible grin, “TRY HARDER NEXT TIME.”
The static faded and the screen turned to black. I let my body relax thinking that was the end of the game, but I nearly fell out of my chair when a hyper-realistic image of Pipp appeared on the screen, staring right at me. No, with her torn up skin and freaky smile, this wasn’t Pipp anymore.
It was Ppip.
She opened her mouth and there was a Sonic Spinball scream and she seemed to lunge right out of the screen toward me. I pulled my knees up and covered my face with my arms in reaction, but after waiting three minutes, nothing had happened.
I lowered my arms and saw that Misty was on screen again. She was standing in front of the weird shrine, but no one else was there. Where Pipp, or rather Ppip, had been, there was now an empty but bloodsoaked cross and a red stain on the ground. The camera wouldn’t zoom in enough for me to be sure, but I think one of her hooves was still nailed to the cross.
There was something else too. Sitting right in front of the cross was a piece of paper: the last diary entry! Could it really be this simple?
I tried moving Misty toward it, but to my surprise, her portrait shook its head no!
I could understand her hesitation, but collecting these seemed like the only way to make the story progress. And it’s not like those creepy ponies were still there, nor was there any red static. As such, I kept the control stick tilted toward the paper, and despite Misty’s resistance, I eventually got her to touch it, and the final flashback started.
Coming in right where the last left off, Sunny cowered from her bullies that her father locked into a room with her!
“You know, your dad was telling us about how you got your cutie mark. Something about making lemonade,” said Mandy as she twirled a knife on her hoof. “I never got a good look at it before, so how about you hold still for a bit?”
Mandy’s two accomplices lunged at Sunny and grabbed her legs, lifting her up as she squirmed and sobbed. The bully limped over to her, clearly still injured, and she stroked Sunny’s cutie mark with her blade.
“Yeah, I think this’ll do,” she said. “I’ll skin off your cutie mark and then we’ll call it even for stabbing my shoulder, alright?”
Sunny begged and pleaded for her not to do it, but she didn’t waste any time. Within seconds, she stabbed her knife into Sunny’s flank and deep, with nothing but the handle sticking out—she wasn’t just skinning her, she was opening a hole in her body!
I couldn’t stand to look and turned away as the other bullies cheered on Mandy, but then I heard the bullies yelp and turned to see that Sunny had broken free! They were in her father’s study and I guess he had an ancient obsidian knife he was researching out in the open, because that’s exactly what the filly was holding in her mouth. She stood there panting with a wild look in her eyes, seeming to ignore the wound on her flank.
“Hey, hold on! It was just a joke,” said one of the flunkies, the filly that wasn’t Mandy. Sunny didn’t like the sound of that, and with a shockingly fast motion, she stabbed the filly right in the heart with her obsidian knife!
“Holy shit!” Mandy yelled while the colt with them blubbered. The stabbed bully fell to the ground, the light leaving her eyes, and without a moment’s remorse, Sunny pulled the blade out and threatened the other bullies with it.
I was aghast. Sunny just killed a filly! The same Sunny that would make friends with Izzy and the others later! How was this possible? And more than that, it didn’t look like one death would be the end of it.
Sunny slowly walked toward the bullies, limping on her injured leg. The bullies backed to the door, only to realize too late that they were locked in too. And not with a filly they could overpower, but one fighting with every ounce of her life and with no regard for theirs.
All their previous bravado failing them, the bullies looked around for a way out. As their executioner got closer, Mandy grabbed her colt companion and held him in front of her as a pony shield.
“Oh come on!” the colt exclaimed. It would have been comical if not for what came next: Sunny silently and effortlessly bringing her knife to his throat and slitting it. The colt fell over, choking on his own blood, and quickly stopped moving.
“Shit! Shit!” exclaimed Mandy, pressing herself closer and closer against the door. Right as Sunny got within range, stepping over the colt’s corpse, Mandy unexpectedly fell back with the door opening.
“What the hell is going on here?!” exclaimed Argyle. The stallion’s rage quickly shifted to shock as he saw the dead foals and pooling blood, and then saw the knife his beloved child was holding. “Sunny,” he said not with rage or even disappointment, but rather disbelief and even a hint of fear. “What did you do?”
Sunny paused for a second, but then kept walking forward. Mandy stumbled behind the stallion, quivering as he lifted a front leg to protect her.
“Sunny, you can’t do this!” Argyle exclaimed. “You can’t keep hurting ponies!”
Sunny’s eye twitched. Every time, every single time, her father would come to the defense of her bullies instead of her. No more.
With a lunge, she pressed the knife into his heart. He stood there for a second, then slowly slumped down. “M-Monster…” was his last words as he fell over.
I sat there agape. All this time, we wondered what happened to Argyle. Did he get into an accident? Did he fall sick? No, he was murdered… by his own daughter!
Seeing the dead stallion, Mandy screamed and galloped away. I thought there was no way Sunny could get over her father in time to get her, but then I saw Sunny’s teeth start to gleam, and they seemed to be super sharp. In a flash, she tackled Mandy, and I could swear her eyes turned red and there were more of them!
The visuals cut out at this point, and rather than the sound of a knife cutting flesh, I heard what sounded like a wild animal devouring its prey. What in the world was happening?!
After that, text appeared on the screen.
“It took a lot of effort, but Sunny was able to clean up after herself and hide the bodies. The bullies’ parents kept looking for them, unaware that they had visited Sunny’s home. However, as the weeks went by, Sunny knew she couldn’t keep the bodies hidden forever.
“And that’s when Sunny opened her smoothie shop.”
The game faded to black, leaving me to consider the implications of that. That’s what Sunny put in her smoothies? This shed a new light on why she was so interested in having ponies drink them: it was to hide the bodies! The fact that she was doing this from such a young age was crazy!
This was the pony chosen by alicorn magic? But wait, Opaline showed that alicorns weren’t all good. The movie and shows were biased sources, so of course they wouldn’t show all the terrible things Sunny was up to.
What of wanting to unify the pony races? Was that really so she could get more flavors for her smoothies?
I thought back to the title screen at this point, and that monster I saw earlier. Given the way Sunny looked when she killed that bully, it was hard to deny they were one and the same.
It suddenly came to me. Of course! While Sunny was gifted the magic of harmony, there was no way she could ignore the way she was treated as a filly and her scars, both figurative and mental. In response to her anger, the alicorn magic was corrupting her, and she relished in it. Killing Izzy was the tipping point, granting her a horrific and powerful new form which she used to enslave everyone and turn them into her playthings! Some harmony!
It sickened me to think all of this was happening in the shadows of a fun series for kids, but this was reality. This was the real truth.
I wasn’t given time to think about what to do with this information, however, as the screen faded back in… and showed Misty tied up to the same bloody cross that Pipp was on, flanked by Ppiz, Ppip, and even Yzzi!
I was a fool for not taking Misty’s fears seriously! While I was watching that flashback, she was a sitting duck!
No matter how much I waggled the joystick, Misty couldn’t break loose. I even started mashing buttons, but no dice. Her portrait showed real fear, with her eyes darting back and forth. The icons showing I needed to collect diary entries were gone, but at what cost?
I looked around frantically for a way out, and that’s when I finally took a good look at the cult symbol. With everything I learned from those flashbacks, I smacked my forehead when I finally realized what it was. All this time, I was looking at Sunny’s cutie mark, except it was drawn in a demonic way!
The monsters that used to be her friends approached slowly. “Get away from her!” I yelled at the screen. To my surprise, they stopped and looked right at me with sinister grins. The resolution was higher than you’d even get from a PS5. I could see the saliva glistening on their teeth, and I could even almost feel the steam from their breaths.
I was scared, but I sucked it up. I raised my voice and said, “Yeah, you heard me! I swear, if any of you fuckers touch her!”
There was a demonic chuckle, like what you’d hear in the Japanese soundtrack for Sonic CD during boss fights, but all distorted. The screen turned into a red static, to the point that I couldn’t see Misty anymore. Instead, if I looked closely, I saw that same horrific monster I saw before. Endless teeth, skin flowing in unnatural ways, row after row of blood-red eyes. The monster that resembled Sunny, and the one that I saw her filly self start to look like.
I remembered the name written on the case: Sunny.exe. If there was any doubt left as to the identity of the monster.
I don’t know if I was being brave or if I was so afraid that I wasn’t thinking, but I simply scoffed. “So you show yourself at last, Sunny.” I shook my head. “No, you’re not Sunny. You aren’t even Ynnus. You’re Bitchny (Bitch Sunny)!”
“YOU THINK I CAN’T REACH YOU,” it said, the tone implying it thought otherwise.
I don’t know if it was using a voice recognition system built into the Switch or what, but it was responding to me. Unheeding, I said, “I’d like to see you try! I’ll kick your ass!”
The monster turned its head slightly, and it looked just like I was playing on a 3DS with its 3D screen and not a Switch on TV. I wondered if this was an optical illusion from the static. It made that Sonic CD chuckle again. “YOU’RE AS MUCH FUN AS GILDA WAS.”
Now that got my attention. After all that happened, I had forgotten about Gilda and her message. She warned me not to play this game. That “it” was too fast. Could that have been this Sunny monster? Part of me knew that was impossible, but no one heard from Gilda in weeks, and, well, this game had to know about her somehow.
I gritted my teeth. “What did you do to her, Bitchny?!”
I didn’t know how it was possible, but the monster’s grin widened and she showed even more teeth! “RAINBOW DASH, YOU WISH TO SAVE MISTY. LET’S PLAY ONE MORE GAME.”
The monster wouldn’t answer about Gilda, but more to the point, it knew my name! I didn’t put my real name anywhere on the Switch, and I definitely didn’t say it out loud while the game was on.
As much as I was freaking out, I knew the monster made one big mistake. You do not challenge Rainbow Dash to a game. “It’s on, and you’re about to get owned!”
The monster’s grin grew even wider. It was then I realized I should have heard what the game was first.
The screen glitched and, to my shock, the directions for Sprout’s Roller-Blading Chase popped up, complete with Sprout’s taunting voice-over and footage from the normal game. This is the minigame that marks the end of the main game’s story, where you play as Sunny to chase after Sprout, avoiding the traps he sets off. I smiled. This minigame is super easy, and I knew I had it in the bag.
That was, until I pressed the accept button and I saw who I was playing as now.
In Sprout’s place, far ahead on a path through the forest and galloping as fast as she could, was Misty. And in Sunny’s place… was the monster. It shambled forward on strange sharp legs, moving less like a pony and more like a hungry wolf. I pressed the action button and my worst fears were confirmed when the monster jumped instead of Misty.
“You piece of shit!” I yelled. “Let me control Misty!”
The monster didn’t respond at all. There was only a distorted and reversed version of the minigame’s music playing eerily.
I examined the situation. The obstacles in this version of the game were outreaching tree roots and branches instead of the unicorn traps of the original. There were also more dangerous traps like bones sharpened into spears poking out of the ground. To my relief, Misty was successfully avoiding them, and that very fact gave me the way to win.
If there was a root, I ran the monster into it. If there was a branch, I had it jump into it. And if there was a spear, then I let the monster fall onto it. I used every skill I had as a gamer to slow it down. In truth, if there was any change to the monster’s speed, it was hard to tell, but I was hopeful.
But then Ppiz and Ppip interfered, just like Pipp and Zipp did in the original, appearing in a cutscene with a blood-red background. Instead of saying anything, they stared right at me with bare teeth and flesh hanging off of their bones. To say it was unnerving would be an understatement. I don’t know what they actually did, but the obstacles started coming harder and faster now, and Misty was clearly struggling to keep up. Meanwhile, the monster continued barreling through them like they weren’t there, no matter my efforts.
“You fucker! This isn’t fair! I yelled, nearly slamming the controller down in frustration. All I got in response was another Sonic CD chuckle.
I tried everything I could, but no matter what, the monster kept closing in on Misty. Then at last, Misty found an obstacle she couldn’t avoid—and it was one of the bone spears. Even with the camera angle behind her, I could see the spear pierce right through her leg, and she released a horrific noise that was half scream half gasping for air.
A cutscene played of the Sunny monster closing in, with the sea monster music from Sonic Spinball playing. I knew that, like in the main story, Izzy, or rather Yzzi, would show up to stop the one Sunny was chasing after. I only had a split second, and with no other options, I pressed the Home button on the Switch.
Nothing happened.
I lunged for the Switch and held down the power button. Still nothing happened. Finally, I grasped at the TV and pressed the power button.
Still nothing!
I couldn’t do anything other than watch in horror as Yzzi held Misty in place and the monster approached. It stopped, looked right at me with its many eyes, then opened its mouth wide. I turned away, fearing what I’d see, and I heard Misty scream. It was like what you hear in Tom and Jerry when Tom gets a window slammed on his paws, but way more visceral, and it was combined with wet chewing sounds and exploding guts.
And at last the TV turned off, the Switch alongside it.
I sat there sweating and panting for a full minute. That monster had done so many horrible things. Izzy, Zipp, Pipp, Gilda, who knows how many others, and now Misty. After knowing the torment the characters were going through, I could never look at Generation 5 the same way. To think that so many people were celebrating a monstrous dictator like Sunny, including me not so long ago.
I had enough of this. I reached over to pull the cartridge, and my heart stopped for a half second as I struggled to pull it out before remembering you had to push it down first. It popped out like it should and I held the cursed cartridge in my hand. Gilda told me to destroy it, and it cost two lives, but at last I knew that was the right thing to do.
Before I could get up, I heard a Sonic CD chuckle behind me.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, RAINBOW? THE FUN ISN’T OVER.”
I turned around to see where the voice came from, and what I saw made me scream…
Sitting on my bed… staring right at me…
… was a Sunny plushie, smiling with bloodstains under its eyes.
Twilight blinked with her arms crossed. She wore a jacket over her Nightmare Night costume, of the lead character of a Disney movie from a few years ago that everyone said resembled her. The long skirt helped keep her warm during this long story, but she was quickly losing her patience standing outside for so long. “You’re saying Rainbow won’t make it to the party because a plushie killed her?”
Pinkie tilted her head from inside her giant strawberry mascot suit. “Oh Twilight, now you’re really being silly! Plushies are tons of fun for the whole family! That’s why Sunny.exe said the fun isn’t over!” She nudged Twilight with her elbow. “Besides, I told you that Rainbow told me this story. How could that happen if she was dead?”
Twilight pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing up her glasses. “So. Pinkie. Let me remind you. We were supposed to meet up with Rainbow Dash before going to Applejack’s party. I walked to your house and you came out to tell me that Rainbow Dash won’t make it. Then you started telling me this amalgam of different creepypastas and Slender for some reason. And don’t think I forgot that weird fight over 20-year-old video games at the start. Was all that meant to explain Rainbow’s absence, or did you tell me this just because?”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. “Oh!” She stuck her tongue out. “Just because.”
Twilight groaned. “Pinkie, why are you like this?”
The strawberry girl giggled and bopped herself on the head.
“Well at this point, we’ll probably be the last ones at the party, but there are probably some snacks left. Come on, let’s go.”
As Twilight turned around, Pinkie’s arm suddenly shot out and grabbed her shoulder. “Twilight, wait! There’s actually a really good reason Rainbow isn’t going to the party! I should have told you earlier, but something terrible happened! It’s—”
The street lights around them flickered then went out, casting them in darkness. The air grew cold, making Twilight pull her jacket tight around her.
Down the street, in the direction of Applejack’s house, a figure shambled toward them. The street lights briefly flickered on, only to immediately go off, but this allowed Twilight to see hints of the figure. The first she noticed was its eyes, wide and exposed to the point she could swear there were no eyelids. Then she noticed its bleached white face and wide grin. And finally she noticed its knife, dripping with blood.
Her heart sank. She knew who this was.
It was………..
APPLEJEFFTHEKILLER!!!
Author's Note
Inspired by Sonic.exe, of course, with Jeff the Killer being the main inspiration for Sunny's backstory. The page collecting comes from Slender. Other major inspirations come from more obscure creepypastas that were read on the Retsupurae channel back in the day. This one is the source of the reversed names and "badass" talking back to the monster; other videos just worked to solidify the tone of this story. Applejeffthekiller was taken from this Tumblr post.
If you've been following me since before my FimFic days, you may recognize how this story opens. Yes, it's largely my own prose from close to 20 years ago! It's only proper to make fun of my own bad writing.
And yes, this is secretly part of the Pinkie Pie's Terrifying Tales series.
