Hold Your Horses: A My Little Pony Story

Chorus opened his eyes slowly, unsure of what he was about to see. The idea of Limbo sounded so terrifying when the ponies back at Time Jail described it, Chorus was terrified to see where he’d ended up. He was intrigued, concerned, and oddly comforted to find himself somehow staring at the ceiling of his own bedroom back at his home in Ponyville. He felt the cushy sensation of his comfortable bed beneath him as he sat up to view his surroundings. Everything was exactly how he’d left it. There wasn’t a single item out of place.

Chorus cautiously slipped himself out of bed and warily creeped up to his bedroom door. He pushed gently on the wood, creaking the door slightly open—just open enough to see what was outside. He was more than elated to find a glimpse of a pony he’d been missing for so long. His beloved Sombra was standing in the hallway, facing away from him. Chorus swung the door open.

“Sombra!” he cheered. “I was so scared I’d never see you again! How did you find me? Where are the others? Is everything okay? I’m just so glad you found me, I…”

Chorus trailed off. Sombra wasn’t moving. Something was wrong. Chorus gazed more closely at the unicorn in his hallway. He noticed something sickly about Sombra. Black veinlike lines crawled up from his hooves, blacker than even Sombra’s black fur. Sombra looked unwell. His mane was matted, his fur looked unkempt.

“...Sombra?” Chorus worriedly spoke.

Sombra began to move. It was an irregular movement, twitchy and unnatural. Chorus took a step backwards in caution. Sombra erratically turned around to face Chorus. Chorus’s jaw dropped in horror. Sombra stared straight at him with eyes blacker than night. A revolting black ooze dripped out of Sombra’s open mouth and onto the clean floors of Chorus’s house.

“What happened to you?” Chorus cried.

Sombra took unnerving, menacing steps toward Chorus, his unblinking eyes frightening Chorus nearly to death. Chorus backed away from his advancements, horrified at what he was seeing. Chorus eyed the window in his room, analyzing it as his only means of escape. Sombra began to approach Chorus more quickly, with more conviction. Chorus bounded over his bed and over to the other side of his room, towards his window. He somberly glanced one more time back at his partner, his black eyes making his face a saddening sight.

Chorus swung open the window, climbed up on its ledge, and tumbled outside into the flowers growing outside of his house. Chorus rolled out of the flowers, picked himself up, and dusted himself off. As soon as he had found his bearings, he quickly departed from his house and into the city outside.

It did not take long to realize being outside might have been a worse idea than staying inside and taking his chances with Monster Sombra. Ponies lined the streets of Ponyville, but the sweet and humble attitudes typically possessed by Ponyville residents were nowhere to be found. Whatever monstrous infection that had been plaguing Sombra was clearly contagious.

Ponies twitched and sickeningly vaulted towards Chorus in pursuit of his uninfected body. The ponies depicted all different stages of their infection. Some of them had just begun to present the features of the blackening disease. Some of them barely resembled ponies anymore; their legs and necks had become unnaturally long and gangly, and their features were sharp, torn, and exaggerated. They had become monsters.

Chorus bolted through Ponyville, desperately trying to escape the mob of monstrous ponies that chased him through the streets. A vacant salon caught his eye as he ran towards it. He needed a place to hide, and he couldn’t run forever. As he approached the salon, he decided it had to be his sanctuary. He grabbed the door with one hoof, swung it open, dashed inside, slammed the door behind himself, and locked it. The horde of infected ponies all banged and pushed against the door, but the sturdy door held up.

The mob soon grew tired of trying to break in, and they promptly gave up trying. They returned back to the streets of Ponyville, presumably to hunt down more innocent ponies like Chorus. Chorus sighed in relief and took a seat in one of the salon chairs, thankful to not be in immediate danger. That thankfulness quickly turned into fearfulness as a loud clunk sounded out behind him.

He turned around to see a large bottle of mane spray that had landed on the floor. He looked around for the cause of the fall. Next to the shelf of the mane products, a privacy curtain ruffled. Chorus immediately panicked.

“Please don’t hurt me!” he yelped. “Please! Please!”

The privacy curtain was pulled back by a familiar pale hoof.

“Chorus?” Ginger Blush gasped.

“Ginger!” Chorus exclaimed. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. The ponies out there are-”

“Monsters?” Ginger finished. “Yes, I’m aware.” Ginger looked down solemnly. Savoir… they… they got Savoir…”

Chorus unseated himself and stepped towards his friend. He rested a hoof on Ginger’s shoulder comfortingly.

“They got Sombra too,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He pulled Ginger in for a hug. Within the silence of the warm embrace, a noise could faintly be heard outside. A voice called out from outside.

“Ginger! Chorus! Anypony! Please, if anypony is out there, please help me!”

Ginger pulled away from the hug.

“Prose?” she gasped.

The ponies raced towards the front window of the salon. A dark purple pony with unruly coral mane was sprinting down the street. And behind her, a stampede of monstrous, diseased, infected ponies followed.

Chorus rapidly sped to the salon door and cracked it open.

“PROSE!” he shouted. “OVER HERE!”

Prose turned her head towards the direction of the sound, and spotted her friends hiding safely in the salon. She charted her course for the salon and ran there as fast as her legs could take her. Ginger held the door open for her as she crashed inside, and she closed it behind her. Prose took a moment to catch her breath as the infected ponies once again slammed and pounded on the salon door.

“I’m so happy I found you guys,” she heaved. “After Twilight tried to… turn me, I would’ve given anything to see your faces again.”

Ginger and Chorus surrounded Prose in a warm hug.

“We should be safe in here,” said Ginger, optimistically. “They haven’t been able to break down the door yet.”

The sickening sound of a rotating door knob hauntingly creaked behind the ponies. Ginger’s eyes widened in fearful realization. She had forgotten to lock the door. An infected pony’s hoof successfully rotated the door knob to completion, effectively opening the door. Chorus, Prose, and Ginger Blush darted away from the door as a flood of monsters leaked into the salon. The infected ponies rapidly closed in on the uninfected, leaving them wincing in fear as they hopelessly began to accept their imminent fates.