“Ah don’t know, Twah,” Applejack murmured from where she reclined on the grimy dungeon floor. Her hat was pulled over her eyes, and her lips moved with the the languor of the thoroughly disinterested.
“What don’t you know?” Twilight snapped. She paced restlessly, resentful of the ease with which her friends were taking their situation.
“Nothin'.”
“So you’re omniscient now?” Her voice turned sarcastic as she kaleidoscoped through useless emotions and useless motion. The unicorn needed activity. She needed an escape.
“Sure enough.”
Twilight glared at her friend’s hat, now convinced that the earth pony wasn’t paying any attention, and might not even be awake.
“Applejack, every time you walk, I can hear your pussy lips flap, and the free swinging scraps of flesh that once comprised your marehood sound like someone slapping a pair of dead fish against one another.”
“Sounds right.”
“I got you! You’re not listening to anything I say!” Twilight seized the stetson in a purple glow and ripped it away from her friend's face.
Applejack stared into the crazed eyes of her friend for a moment. “I can hear y’all just fine, sugar cube. Please put the hat back on my face.”
“Then what don’t you know?”
“Nothin'. That’s how Ah know about the loose lips of mah vagina, now would y'all please return my hat. There is some very important information about the interiors of both my eyelids and hat which I wish to investigate first hand.”
“How can you be so calm while we’re trapped here,” Twilight gestured around the cold stone walls of their confinement. Moss crept up and down the walls slowly, providing a vegetable counterpart to the rats and insects which ran the same course.
“We’re not trapped.”
“How can you say we're not trapped when we are plainly in a room with no exit.”
“Bein’ trapped is a continuous status, which implies we ain't ever gettin’ out. Ah know we’ll get out because Ah also know I’ll be at mah sister’s birthday in three weeks. She’s gonna be disappointed at the gift Ah buy for her and we’ll have a huge fight over how Ah don’t understand her. Now, will y’all please put my hat back right-”
Applejack’s voice was cut off by the sound of an explosion from the far side of the room which flung mud across the earth pony’s face. Pinkie Pie smiled sheepishly and waved a hoof from where she stood completely covered in the ruins of a mud pie.
“Ah knew that was gonna happen,” Applejack said, speaking through thick, lumpy fluid covering her face, “that’s why Ah wanted my hat.”
“If you knew it was going to happen, why didn’t you move?”
“It would have been an irresponsible use of my newly discovered precognitive capacity,” Applejack said as she watched her hat soar across the room. Twilight stormed away from her, and the earth pony shrugged her shoulders before closing her eyes. Her hat would be back on her head soon enough without her getting up. In the interim, the mud began drying and sealed her eyelids shut.
“Hello, Twilight, I mean, we’ve been in the same tiny room for the past several hours, but hello right now! Hello and smiles!” Pinkie Pie stretched the edges of her lips out until they reached her ears, which was pretty disturbing, but Twilight had grown use to her friend’s freakish habits over the years.
“What are you doing, Pinkie?”
“Making mud pies,” she sampled a hooffull of earth before she began molding it into the crust of a new pie.
“That is disgusting.”
“Pretty much, but I’m trying to keep in habit. When we get out of here, I don’t want to waste any time before I am back up and running at full Pinkie, helping the Cakes in whatever way I probably assist them to cover the expense of my room and board.”
Ignoring the specifically circuitous statement, Twilight pressed on in her efforts to press-gang her friends. “We’ll never get out of here if we don’t do something!”
“Oh, we’ll get out, see that?” Pinkie gestured at her tail, which was completely still.
Twilight stared for a full moment before saying, “it isn’t doing anything.”
“Exactly,” the pink mare replied as she nodded her head, “and if we were going to die down here, don’t you think I’d be getting some sort of Pinkie sense to indicate that? So we’re fine.”
Twilight wondered if she wouldn’t have been better off talking to Fluttershy, but the yellow pegasus would probably only have told her to settle down based upon the latest predictions provided by her myomancy.
“Why is nopony taking our plight seriously?”
“Because it isn’t the sort of thing worth taking seriously," the pink mare set the body of her latest earthen abomination on to the flames before continuing, "just settle down and relax, it isn’t so bad. Here, I made a song about it, want to hear?”
Twilight started to protest, but she was drowned out by the pink mare’s voice,
“When you’re trapped inside a prison,
Your brain makes nothin’ but friction-”
“STOP IT! STOP! FUCKING STOP IT, NOW!” Twilight howled, unintentionally adding both a hard-soft effect and obscenity to the list of gimmicks Pinkie’s song included. The pink mare only bounced into the air, hovering place as she continued,
“Why should you bother to worry,
When there’s no reason to hurry?
Just take the weekend off, relax-”
“No, no, literally, stop it. This is … no,” the unicorn shook her head.
Pinkie dropped back to the ground, and returned her voice to normal, almost as if two different ponies had been speaking. “Could you please leave the improv to me?”
“If she wants to improvise, you should just roll with it, drawing specific attention to …” Rarity shook her head and sighed as the moment died, “never mind. I guess it’s too late for that.”
The unicorn turned to the other ponies in the room and added, “everyone, take five.”
Pinkie shrugged. “My throat was starting to feel a little sore anyway. I could use some tea.” The mare turned to Applejack who remained motionless with her eyes still closed, “AJ, you wanna come with?”
“Nah thanks. Ah’m quite comfortable here without breaking character.”
Fluttershy tucked the rats she had been tending back into their rusty cage and stretched her wings as she soared over to her fellow feathered friend.
“Um, are you sure those rodents are clean?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got them from a nice dumpster,” replied the blue pegasus as she interrupted her wing push ups. She stretched out her joints before making her way to the concession table tucked just out of sight, her yellow companion in tow.
“You said you bought them in a pet store!”
“Whatever. The rats are fine. They’re not foaming at the mouth or anything.”
“Well, one of them was, and it bit me a little bit,” Fluttershy said as she indicated her green and red seeping wound. Christmas in the flesh, but a month early and leaving physical scars instead of mental ones.
“You’ll get over it,” replied Rainbow Dash as she took a swig of Gatorade and wiped her sweating face on the table cloth, “quit worrying.”
Back in the room that had been a prison just a moment ago, Rarity draped a hoof over Twilight's shoulders. “Alright, what seems to be the problem? You know, we were doing this story for you.”
“This isn’t what I wanted when I said I was sick of being a know-it-all. Even if I’m the only pony who isn’t omniscient, I’m still the solution to everything. I- what are you doing?”
“I’m indicating that you might want to throw some action into your monologue.” The unicorn demonstrated, throwing back her head in an exaggerated gesture of despair. “Like so.”
“Fine,” Twilight said as she shook her head, bouncing her disheveled mane across her smooth shoulders, “I’m not just sick of being a know-it-all, I’m sick of being the solution to everything. Every time there is a crazy problem, I’m the answer. Like here, I might not know that I’m doing it, but I still save the day. I’m tired of always being the Deus Es Machina; I want to be more than just a plot device.”
“Nice title drop,” said Pinkie as she returned to the room with a cup of tea balanced on her nose. Coincidentally, her tea cup dropped to the ground and fell upside down. The bottom of the cheap yellow container broke, leaving a volcanic structure. “Bugger,” Pinkie muttered before returning to the concession table for another cup.
“What does she mean, title drop? The title is Prison Idyl.”
“Of course it is, dear,” Rarity said, brushing aside Twilight’s concerns like so many cookie crumbs tucked under a doily, “What would you rather do?”
“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.
“How would you prefer the story to go?”
“I don’t know, something without ninjas showing up for no reason, or without constant feces everywhere.”
“There was no feces in this plot, though.”
“Applejack got mud thrown on her face, and she’s still just laying there with it all over her," Twilight said as she indicated her tan and now brown companion.
The earth pony, realizing she had just been referenced waved a hoof lazily indicating that she was probably paying attention but couldn't be bothered to respond.
Rarity shrugged. “The world is a limited construct and transitory, and you're asking too much of it. Instead, why not be grateful for the part you have? Do you know how many ponies never got a part at all, let alone one that lets them be an active participant in Equestrian history?”
“But the part I’m playing is stupid!”
“You think I like hanging streamers in a dungeon because I got a fortune cookie that said I would escape? A line I’ll never get to use now, by the way.” As Rarity spoke, the walls around them shifted, distorting wildly. The shadows grew out from their protective corners and reached around the room, consuming their surroundings. In another setting, this transformation would have been dramatic and unnerving, but seeing as they had been in a dimly lit basement, the effect was muted. “We all have to play a role, no matter how prominent or dramatic. Or would you rather lose this job? I certainly have no desire to go back to stripping.”
“I was in grad school.”
“That’s even worse. Have you ever seen the sexual assault statistics for women on campus?”
“It wasn’t an assault! I thought I loved him at the time.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Rarity said, thrusting the problems of her co-stars tangled sexuality to the side for the moment. “Just go take an extra long bath before the next plot, ok? Work off some of that frustration.”
“That is not what I am frustrated with!”
“Sure it isn’t. Sure it isn’t,” Rarity smiled in that knowing way that Twilight found absolutely infuriating.
“Alright,” Rarity and Twilight were reclining in a place that would shortly become the Golden Oaks library. For the moment, it was simply a large room filled with books and built into a tree, “today we’ve got bit parts in a romance. Well, it is labelled Romance, anyway.”
“Oh, let me guess, the wedding is interrupted by zombies and I just happen to know the spell that will return them to their graves?” Twilight was idly levitating several books around her, moving them occasionally and flipping through the pages. There were no legible words printed in any of the tomes, but she performed the action because it was the usual expected background activity in this context.
“No.”
“Somepony is going to disembowel themselves in the middle of the wedding and his intestines will leap out like snakes and strangle the bride and groom, sucking them both into his body,” Twilight spoke with the heavy lidded unenthusiasm of a pony who has been both murderer and murderee on more than one occasion, “then, the bride and groom will slither out of his vagina as a united, horrific beast.”
Rarity’s jaw slid open as the explanation went on.
“He’ll cackle horribly and say that they have been united in him, or through him is the way, or some other reference that makes no sense except a potshot at an already over-parodied religion that doesn’t fit the context of our Universe?”
The fashionista reached up with one hoof and manually closed her jaw before speaking. “That was a very detailed summation of what is not at all going to happen, and why would you think things like that?”
“I have literally shoved feces into my eye. Literally. Feces. In my eye,” Twilight replied as she mimed a gesture with her hoof, “there is no depth or depravity with which I am not familiar.”
“Well, you should relax. It is going to be a simple, tasteful ceremony with no zombies, no monsters, no feces and just a small orgy.”
“An orgy?” Twilight made a face, but shrugged, “well, that’s almost acceptable behavior.”
“Also a pony sacrifice. A little bit of cannibalism. I think …”
Twilight's face grew sour, but she held her piece.
“Yes, also some futanari from you.”
“Not again,” bemoaned the once and future dickgirl.
“Oh, wait, no, it isn’t futanari. You’re just going to turn into a stallion.”
Twilight smacked herself in the face with one of the books she was levitating. Rather than lower her head to the object, she lifted the object to her face, and in the process completely ruined the reference. Satisfied with her botched job she asked, “it will all end in a pun, won’t it?”
“Yes. A German language one.” Even Rarity shuddered at the last insult to the collective dignity of ponykind.
“Who are the lucky couple?”
“Fluttershy and Big Macintosh.”
“But that doesn’t even make any sense. They’re both so quiet.”
“That’s why they’re perfect for each other,” yawned the white pony. She had played matchmaker, apparently, and was pleased to add another accomplishment to her shelf without having done any work to deserve it.
“That’s why they’ll never get together,” explained the hostile loner who, nevertheless, considered herself an expert on sexual relations, “relationships don’t just ‘happen.’ Somepony has to do the legwork, and neither one of them would ever imagine popping the question.”
“Look, it’s what we’ve got. Now, we’re going to go down to the chapel-”
“Ponyville doesn’t have a chapel,” Twilight cut in.
“It does now, please quit interrupting. We go down to the chapel, and present them with the reservations for their honeymoon suite, which they forgot at my Boutique earlier today,” Rarity said as her horn glowed, lifting two slips of paper into the air. Why the slips had been lost in the first place was the sort of question it is better not to think about.
Twilight looked at the reservations, and a mischievous smile spread across her face. “What if we don’t?”
“Don’t what?” Rarity blinked in surprise. She had grown use to Twilight’s ranting against the machine, but this time there wasn’t the usual fire in the unicorn’s eyes. Anarchists never look as happy as the lavender unicorn before her.
“What if we take the tickets for ourselves? Just once, let’s take a break from the narrative and go on a vacation.”
“We can’t!”
“What have we got to lose? What do we have now?”
“I told you, I don’t want to go back to stripping.”
“But you don’t wear any clothes now!”
Rarity looked down at her naked form and considered. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t even be contemplating it, but maybe … It was a very nice hotel suite, with a hot tub and a refrigerator, and all sorts of other things of questionable existence.
“Besides,” Twilight sidled up to her friend, “what are they going to do without us? Eh? We’re Twilight Sparkle and Rarity. They need us." Twilight's voice cracked oddly as she spoke, bouncing across the spectrum. "Isn’t it time we exploit our popularity to steal a little bit of fun?”
“Okay,” Rarity heard herself saying, “but they’re going to be expecting a stallion and a mare at the hotel.”
“Fortunately,” Twilight replied, picking up the only book with any writing in it, “I’ve been given a spell to fix that. Turn any mare into a stallion in one easy step.”
In the chapel, the wedding party was growing restless waiting almost an hour for the unexpected interruption. Then, the resolution of the meaningless misunderstanding. Then, once everything seemed safe and happy, the orgy and bloodshed. They had all worn their best finery which would make the bodily fluids smeared everywhere all the more upsetting.
At least, it should have. If the two unicorns would ever show up.
Fluttershy slouched against a wall in a voluminous, white wedding dress. Pink would have matched her mane, among other things, but white was more traditional. She grumbled from within her veil, “Aren’t they supposed to have come in with the tickets, yet?”
“Eeyup,” replied Big Macintosh from his position against the altar. His tuxedo jacket, once tailored just the tiniest bit too tight, had already lost the buttons on the bottom. The distortion caused his red belly to pop out in exaggerated fashion, which had been somewhat humorous two hours ago.
The other ponies in the chapel had similarly worn out their feeble premises. Buttons had been lost, belts loosened, and Lyra's pants had fallen off on their own. The only not restless and overdressed pony was Applejack who had woken from her nap in the front pew, still covered in mud and muck from the dungeon. She had accepted it with the same laid back feeling she accepted everything in her life, and was once more asleep with her gaping mouth spilling drool across Time Turner's discarded jacket.
Big Macintosh pulled a Basic out of his breast pocket. He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Fluttershy asked.
“What’s it look like?”
“You expect to kiss me after smoking one of those vile things?”
“Nope. No Twilight means no honeymoon suite and no orgy. No plot at all.”
“We could at least perform the pony sacrifice,” Rainbow Dash shrugged, looking at the orange filly who was strapped down to the altar. Scootaloo’s body had already been prepared by the sacred anointing (being spat on) and the sacred blessing (more spit) and the sacred spitting (even more spit). Her purple mane was matted to the marble altar in a thick layer of mucus and saliva.
“Not much point.” Applejack flopped to the ground like a deboned fish and ground her shoulders and hips against the stone floor as if to soften it. “Without the orgy, there’s no necrophilia, without the necrophilia, there’s nothing to spur on the cannibalism, and without the cannibalism, the sacrifice loses its impact.”
"So, can I go then?" Scootaloo asked hopefully.
"Yeah, whatever," Rainbow Dash dropped from the sky where she had been hovering and cut the bonds.
The tiny pegasus squealed happily. For once in her life she wasn't going to be horrifically destroyed for no reason. A good day, no better than a good day. A wonderful day.
She skipped out the front doors of the chapel, feeling the warmth slide across her young form. At the height of each bound, she fluttered her tiny wings to extend her flight. Muscles stretched and hummed, working in merry accord with the world around her. Scootaloo paused, turning her face to the warmth of the sun, it caressed her cheeks gently against the chill wind of the winter world. Through her closed eyelids, she could still see the light and know that today, today, she was young and powerful and all was-
Her eyes closed and her heart full of wonder, she failed to look both ways before crossing the street and was struck by a passing semi.
The steel bumper slammed into her body. Her right wing crumpled instantly in the impact, bones turning to shrapnel that shot through her lungs as her body rag dolled down the road. Vivacious cheeks peeled off against the course ground, revealing the blood that had once flowed beneath them.
Her body skipped twice across the pavement before the hideous machine caught up to her. Each set of enormous wheels rolled over her body, coming up slick with blood and leaving an orange, nondescript smear. Both before and behind her, little piles of squeezed out organ meats lay glistening in the sun. The little warrior was left one with the open road.
Still inside the chapel, Dash yawned and ruffled her mane. “Alright, raise your hooves anyone who was surprised by that."
Author's Note
Everything I have ever promised is a lie, but if we both agree to pretend then maybe the place we end up will trick us into thinking we were trying to get there all along.
