Pizza Time

“Sunset! Sunset! Heeeeeeelp!”

Waves of heat washed over Sunset, accompanied by a thunderous shockwave that boomed, sending her flying into the base of the CHS horse statue. Debris pelted her even as her head cracked against the marble, filling her vision with stars.

With a great effort she hauled herself up, leaning against the plinth for support, her ears ringing, everything in her vision doubled and blurred. “W-what?” she murmured, tasting copper on her tongue. “What happened?”

A secondary explosion forced her to clap her hands to her ears as she screamed, the pain of the flash of light and sound momentarily overwhelming her. The instant it died down, she let her hands drop and looked up once again.

CHS was gone.

In its place, smoke billowed out from the crater in heavy black clouds of soot. Scattered onlookers, those who weren’t close enough to be bowled over by the explosion, pointed and gasped, many using their phones to record the event. A few, she could tell, were desperately dialing emergency services.

“Sunset!”

Wiping the blood off her mouth, Sunset looked around for the source of the voice, the one who’d been crying for help. “Pinkie?” she shouted. “Where’d you go?”

“Down here!”

Confused, Sunset glanced down, and spotted what she took for a mouse at first, darting around chunks of concrete and dirt, until she realized said ‘mouse’ possessed a shock of pink, curly hair. She reached down for Pinkie and plucked her up, cradling the shrunken girl in her hands. “What -- how did you…?”

Pinkie flailed her arms like a pair of pinwheels. “I don’t know! I was baking in the home ec lab when all of a sudden this huge bottle of something fell off the fridge and broke at my feet. Next thing I know I’m an itsy bitsy teenie weenie running-for-her-life Pinkie!”

Sunset looked up at the wreckage of CHS. Little to no real debris from the school itself remained; the chunks scattered everywhere came from the foundation and the dirt of the school grounds. She could see exposed pipes, cables, and a jet of flames where an open gas line was still burning.

As the screaming wail of a fire truck’s klaxon and the accompanying shriek of an ambulance filled her ears, she looked back down at Pinkie and said, “But, running from what? What happened?”

“Beats me! I was running from Principal Celestia’s cat.”

“Her cat? What the heck was her cat -- nevermind.” She paused for a moment to blink away some of the dust in her eyes. “Was anyone else in the school?”

“I don’t think so,” Pinkie answered. She’d resorted to bouncing in place, the impacts of her little feet tickling Sunset’s palms. “It’s a Sunday. I had the place to myself.”

“Right, but, why were you in there all alone then?”

Pinkie’s tiny eyes blinked rapidly. “I… I don’t know?”

Groaning, Sunset fell back against the plinth of the statue. “Uuugh, this doesn’t make any sense!” She moved Pinkie to one hand and reached into her pocket with the other, pulling out her phone. “You’re not even the person I thought I was going to meet here.” Her fingers moved rapidly to pull up her messenger app. “Twilight texted me, asking me to come pick her up so we could go out for pizza.”

“Uh oh,” Pinkie said, her eyes comically wide. “Oh nonononono, you don’t think Twilight--”

“No! No, there’s no way,” Sunset interrupted her. She looked back up at what was left of the school. “Besides, it doesn’t make sense. What could she have been doing that made the school explode?”

“That’s what I want to know, Sunset Shimmer.”

Sunset jerked, nearly tossing Pinkie from her hands before she closed them to keep her safe. “Vice Principal Luna! You startled me.”

Luna acknowledged that with a simple narrowing of her eyes. She wore an unusual outfit for her, something more like it belonged in Sunset’s closet, what with the leather jacket, the jeans, and the stained, half ripped shirt. “So, it seems magic is afoot once again.” She leaned in to examine the tiny Pinkie Pie. “Miss Pie, are you hurt?”

“Nope! Just really energetic. And hungry. I could so go for some pizza right now.”

“Indeed. As could I,” Luna murmured. She stared at them for a moment longer, then turned on her heel. “Follow me, Sunset.”

“Wait, where are we going?”

“To the pizza parlour. If that was where you were to meet Twilight Sparkle, then perhaps answers lay there.”

Sunset glanced back at the wreckage as the first of several firetrucks pulled up, the firefighters immediately in a flurry dousing the flames with a jet of water from their hose. “But, what about the school?!”

“There’s nothing we can do here. We’ll only get in the way,” Luna said. She pointed to her vehicle, parked nearby, right next to Sunset’s motorcycle. “Come. We must hurry.”

“But… ugh, fine. Hang on, Pinkie.”

“Wheee!”

Sunset slipped Pinkie Pie into the breast pocket of her jacket, and hopped onto her motorcycle. She was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.

Author's Note

This story is an Exquisite Corpse, with each chapter between the start and the finish written by a different author. After each chapter was written, the story was passed to the next author, who was only allowed to read the chapter that came right before their own before writing. This is the unholy result.