Sweetie Belle's Cutie Mark

by Clavier

Rating: mature
Tags: Dark, Sweetie Belle, Twilight Sparkle, Sad, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Pinkie Pie, Tragedy
Length: 30470

Sweetie Belle finally gets her cutie mark, but her special talent isn't what anypony expected!

Sweetie Belle finally gets her cutie mark, but her special talent isn't what anypony expected! A gory tale with a heart. Which quickly stops beating, in most cases.

Please note that it seems this story will be quite long by the time I'm done with it. Still, I hope you enjoy what I have so far.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say here to take the content rating seriously. This is not for the faint of heart. I've put additional details at the end of chapter 1, so hopefully you'll read it first.

Published 2012-01-23 15:18:46 UTC
Last updated 2012-06-30 19:09:23 UTC

Chapter 1

It was a rare morning for Apple Bloom. Celestia’s light barely peaked over treetops on the horizon, the filly’s window shades were open wide to let in these first inklings of light, and the pony herself was prancing excitedly, preparing herself for the excitement of the day. After all, it’s not every day that she could welcome back a friend.

Over the past two weeks, with Sweetie Belle at summer camp, the misadventures of the Cutie Mark Crusaders had seemed less fulfilling, less complete. The missing member of the group had somehow served to punctuate the repeated failures of the two who remained, souring their usual jubilance. But that was all to end today: Sweetie Belle was coming back!

Having quickly washed her mane and face and put her Cutie Mark Crusaders cape in a saddlebag, Apple Bloom bolted down the stairs, into the kitchen. Only Big Macintosh was awake at this hour; even Applejack hadn’t woken up yet. He sat at the plain table, contemplatively eating a stack of apple pancakes, with apple syrup, and a tall glass of apple juice. Topping off this thematic meal was a single, raw, as-yet-untouched apple. Apple Bloom would never admit it to him or anyone else in the Apple family, but she was starting to really hate apples. That was a thought for another time, however; today she had something more pressing at hoof.

“Good mornin’ little sis.” Big Macintosh’s slow, thoughtful way of speaking seemed like torture to the excited yellow filly this morning. “It’s pretty early for ya to be up, isn’t it?”

“Nope Rarity said the carriage was comin’ first thing in the mornin’ and it’s the first thing in the mornin’ now so I’m gonna go wait for it so can I go now?”

Apple Bloom started at her big brother in anticipation. He was slowly processing the hastily-spoken string of words that had just assaulted him, concerned for a moment that perhaps his little sister had been spending altogether too much time with a certain pink party pony. She could barely contain her excitement, hopping nervously while waiting for him to respond.

“Don’t ya think,” he replied thoughtfully, “ya should have some breakfast first?”

“Nope, I’ve got some apples,” she lied, indicating towards her saddlebag, “and she’ll probably wanna have breakfast with me anyway so can I go now?”

The big red workhorse chuckled for a moment, then looked into the excited eyes of his littlest sister. It was very hard to say no to her, and so he relented. “Eey–”

Apple Bloom hadn’t even allowed him time to finish the word before she was out the door, galloping away as fast as her tiny legs could take her.

Ponyville was surprisingly empty this early in the morning. The sound of her own hoofbeat on the well-packed earth road through town was all that Apple Bloom could hear as she ran past the colorful assortment of buildings. She barely took notice of the quietude, however; the carriage stop was on the far opposite end of town, and she had no interest in slowing down until she got there.

“Good morning, Apple Bloom!”

Hooves locked, the surprised little bolt of yellow came screeching to a rather unceremonious halt, just inches from the lavender coat of the unicorn addressing her. From this angle, under the enormous tree in the center of Ponyville which also served as its library, the slowly-rising sun was perfectly centered with the main road through town, gloriously glinting off every window and tile. Even at her young age, Apple Bloom could immediately see why Twilight was up at this hour; the view was breathtaking and serene. However, the dirt she pushed up from her sudden slide was beginning to tickle her nose, and very soon she was letting loose a sequence of cute, high-pitched sneezes.

Twilight was watching the sky, acting as if she hadn’t noticed the display. When it finally stopped, Apple Bloom looked up with all the rage she could muster. It wasn’t much; after all, this was still a very exciting morning for her.

“Seven!” Pinkie Pie’s ability at the art of the non sequitur was only rivaled by her complementary ability to appear as if from nowhere. Although Apple Bloom’s small degree of anger melted immediately into befuddlement at this strange comment, Twilight had long since become accustomed to pink interruptions, and so just gazed on, awaiting an explanation.

“I’ve never seen anyone sneeze seven times in a row. I always sneeze three times, and I know I’ve seen Rainbow Dash sneeze twice, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rarity sneeze more than once and Fluttershy’s barely even counts as once … haven’t you ever noticed that ponies always sneeze the same number of times?”

“What the hay is she talkin’ about?” Apple Bloom thought to herself, but decided to respond more politely.

“Uh, nope, I guess I haven’t. Anyway, nice to run into y’all, but–”

“Actually,” Twilight interrupted, “I don’t.”

Pinkie slitted her eyes and stared at, or perhaps through, Twilight for a brief instant. She dug a hoof into the ground, and with a dramatic sweep, spread a fine dust into the air, mostly aimed directly at the unicorn.

The reaction was only natural.

“Three!”

Twilight just smiled and shook her head. Trying to understand the antics of her high-spirited friend was a futile exercise she’d long since forgone. Instead, she turned to Apple Bloom, who was still searching for an excuse to escape the conversation. “Isn’t Ponyville beautiful in the morning?”

The delayed filly considered for a moment the possibility that Twilight and Pinkie were intentionally keeping her from her friend as some kind of cruel prank, but dismissed it.

“It sure is, Twilight. And I’m sure I’ll see the whole sunrise sometime, but–”

“I know,” Twilight said, almost listful, “go see your friend.”

Apple Bloom grinned. “See ya later Twilight, see ya later Pinkie, bye!” And with that, she was off again.

The rest of the run to the edge of town was uneventful.

She waited impatiently near the small wooden platform where the carriages to rural areas stopped, leaning against a nearby tree. Although Ponyville was big enough to have a train station, not every town in Equestria was so lucky, and the system of pony-drawn carriages kept everything else connected. Having nothing better to do while waiting, Apple Bloom considered whether this system really made any sense. If the ponies are pulling the carriages, how could they be any faster than ponies just running?

Before she had a time to unravel this question, the carriage she was waiting for arrived, and out of it stepped Sweetie Belle, her exuberance not restricted even by the overloaded saddlebags she was carrying. She didn’t have the opportunity to say a single word before she was entangled in Apple Bloom’s rather clumsy embrace.

“I’ve got so many ideas to get our cutie marks since you were gone! We could–”

Apple Bloom’s excitement was cut off mid-sentence. In lieu of words, Sweetie Belle had simply turned to her side, idly flicking her pink tail out of the way. Highlighted by her bright white coat was the representation of all these friends had been waiting for: her cutie mark. The image was of a sharp, silver axe, with an oblong blade narrowing to a handle of wood stained a deep shade of red.

After a brief moment to study her friend and collect her thoughts, Apple Bloom gasped in surprise and amazement. “Ye got yer cutie mark!” she exclaimed, having thought of nothing more interesting to say.

“Do you wanna know hoooooooooooooooow?” Sweetie Belle gave a mischievous look to her over-eager friend.

Apple Bloom sat at the base of the tree where she had been waiting, grinning ear to ear, shifting her weight back and forth in anticipation. Her newly-branded friend paused, amused by the bobbing red mane before her, then started her story.

“We were all learning to shoot bows n’ arrows. All the other ponies were doing OK, but, well...”

To make her point, Sweetie Belle mocked holding a bow and arrow, stumbling clumsily while giving a look reminiscent of a certain mail carrier of Ponyville. Apple Bloom giggled, watching and listening intently.

“Anyway, the scoutpony said that I might do better with something a bit heavier, so he gave me one o’ these!”

With that, she pulled a throwing axe from her saddlebag. It looked exactly like her cutie mark, but for the light, ash handle. Both fillies studied it intensely for a moment, the still-young light of the day glinting off of its sharpened blade.

“I thought it was kinda weird, but hey! Anything for a cutie mark! So, I tried throwing it at one of the targets set up on a tree.”

Sweetie Belle closed her right eye and, holding the axe between both hands, mocked the action of lining up a shot.

“Turns out, I was really good!”

Thwack.

“A natural!”

The axe had landed several inches over the terrified yellow filly’s head; she had actually felt the wind from it sweep back her mane. The handle rested just in front of her, and she crossed her eyes to see it clearly. Her trust in her friend quickly extinguished her fear, and she was greatly impressed.

“Whoaaaaaaaaaaah.” It wasn’t the most eloquent of expressions, but it was all she could think to say.

“Soon I had a whole crowd of ‘em watching me, and I was hitting a bulls-eye every time!”

As if her point needed further demonstration, Sweetie Belle lined up and threw another one. This time, Apple Bloom wasn’t afraid at all.

Thwack.

This one had landed by the lounging filly’s left side, shaving just a bit of her coat off her left foreleg.

“But my flank was still blank!” Sweetie Belle frowned slightly, trying to show the feeling she’d had at the time, rather than her new excitement. “I couldn’t believe it. I was so angry with myself, later that night I went and found the scoutpony’s axes again. Of course, it was kinda dark by then, but I managed to find ‘em, and keep practicing.”

Pulling a third axe from her saddlebag, she lined up yet another shot. Apple Bloom’s smile had dwindled slightly, confusion overtaking her.

“I thought maybe all I needed was a new target.”

Thwack.

“And I was right! I hit him square in the neck, and poof! There was my cutie mark!”

Being trapped is rarely a good feeling. But there are degrees to its torment, and Apple Bloom was very quickly discovering that the worst she’d known until this point, being grounded in her bedroom, really wasn’t so bad.

She looked down, her young mind trying to comprehend the magnitude of her situation. She saw the handle of the axe, pushing at an odd angle out of the right side of her chest. Blood dripped down it, staining it a familiar, brilliant red.

Axes are not known for leaving clean wounds, and this was no exception. The entire right side of her torso was torn open, bits of tattered muscle, bone and tendon hanging haphazardly. Her coat was stained in spattered blood, and bits of skin hung at strange angles where they had been wrenched from her. The wedge of the blade had shattered the ribs both at the point of entry and where they met the sternum. Jagged bone jutted out of the left side of her chest, serving only to highlight the wound on her right.

Although she couldn’t know at the time, the axe had hit her spinal column, severing it and rendering her lower extremities numb and unusable. The blade had split a vertebra before splitting into the wood behind, and the remaining undamaged spine was sitting precariously atop it.

Apple Bloom was scared, for obvious reasons, but not in pain. The shock had been too great for her to experience pain. She looked back up at her friend, tears welling in her frightened, amber eyes.

No fear looked back at her. Only joy.

“See! I always hit my target!” Sweetie Belle beamed.

But her expression quickly turned sour as she pulled the final axe from her bag, blowing her pink and lavender hair out of her eyes before preparing for another throw. “Oh no, did I hit where I think I hit?”

Thwack.

“I’ll bet you couldn’t even feel that.” she said poutily.

The broken yellow filly looked down to see what her unicorn friend was referring to. She indeed hadn’t felt the blade slice uncleanly through her left hind leg’s hock, shattering both talus and tarsus and tearing the musculature, exposing a splintered tibia. Her blood, at this point pouring down her right torso and hind leg, had left this one spot relatively clean, but now its own outpouring was leaving very little of her tiny body dry. Her pale hair matted to her skin, tinted a sickening red as the blood thickened, coagulating hopelessly.

Her detached hoof came to rest surprisingly near Sweetie Belle, after bouncing several times in the wet grass. Sweetie Belle watched it the entire time, giggling, enraptured by her own feat.

Tears were pouring down Apple Bloom’s cheeks, but she couldn’t form words. Blood was beginning to pool in her mouth, released by violent coughing fits (each seven coughs in length), and breathing was becoming laborious. Her eyes were becoming glassy and her vision was dimming. Terrified, she knew that she was near her end.

“Whoops,” the unicorn said gaily, “out of axes!” With that she trotted over to the broken, dying body of her friend and gripped one in her teeth.

Naturally, she had chosen the axe that was pinning the limp yellow form to the tree. She started twisting at it violently to remove it from its well-entrenched position.

Apple Bloom had been in shock, incapable of feeling the true pain of her situation. But this blade was in a very precarious spot. Although most medical books wouldn’t feel the need to mention it, the nerve bundle of a pony’s spinal column is a rather unhealthy place to have an axe.

As Sweetie Belle twisted and pulled, Apple Bloom felt pain unlike she’d ever experienced before. With each movement, as the metal dragged and scraped against her exposed nerves, a tingling wave of pain went through her body. Her throat tightened, her neck snapped back, her forelegs spasmed wildly. Agony seared through her. At this instant, the demise which had frightened her only seconds ago now seemed like a joyous release. She wished and hoped on Celestia that this could all just be over more quickly.

Finally wrestling the weapon from its position, Sweetie Belle trotted merrily back to her perch atop the carriage stand. Blood from the axe dripped from the corners of her lips under her chin, creating a dotted and trodden-upon trail of red. Looking down at herself, she couldn’t help but giggle; the sanguine pink hue that had arisen from the thin sheen on her bright white coat would have offended her older sister’s sensitivities. “Darling!” she could imagine Rarity exclaiming, “That’s not the same shade as your hair! It simply will not do!”

No longer propped, Apple Bloom slumped into the ground, her body twitching spasmodically. She tried to look up, to catch one final glimpse of her friend, of the world in general, but her eyes were too hazy. Her pain was too great.

The little unicorn suddenly frowned. “Hey! You’re supposed to be happy for me. Why aren’t you smiling?”

Thwack.

Her upper jaw and snout thrust suddenly from her skull, the dying filly’s mandible hung limply, saliva dripping from her lower lip. The exposed teeth formed a grotesque smile, quite sufficient for Sweetie Belle whose mood lightened once more.

The remainder of Apple Bloom fell to the ground, awaiting nothing but sweet release. Blood and apple-scented sputum spilled onto the grass, released violently from her damaged lungs in great globs. She convulsed painfully, one last time. At that moment, something incredible happened: With a brief shimmer over her flank, she too fulfilled that dream the friends had shared for so long.

Who knew that being chopped into pieces could be a pony’s special talent?

Apple Bloom had no time to celebrate this accomplishment, for it would be her last. With a final twitch, the youngest member of the Apple family was no more.

“Whoaaaah!”

Pinkie Pie’s tail contorted itself of its own volition into complicated knots, while her left ear and right hind leg jerked back and forth in perfect unison. In her convulsing, she knocked a, thankfully empty, muffin tray from a nearby table, making quite a racket as it clanged disharmoniously into the tile below. She slid uncontrollably into a wall, knocking a bag of flour off of a high shelf and, predictably, all over herself. At least the sudden shower put a stop to her spasms.

Pumpkin Cake and Pound Cake clapped merrily at the display, giggling and cooing delightedly. Their mother, distracted by the noise, poked her head through the kitchen door and asked, concerned, “Pinkie Pie, is everything OK in there?”

“I think so … but I’ve never had that Pinkie sense combo before!”

Sweetie Belle gingerly plucked her axes from the tree, carelessly trampling the splayed corpse of her former friend while she did so. As she was gently snapping shut her saddlebags, she heard a familiar voice calling out.

“Wait for me! I slept in! I’m not late, am I?”

Along with the voice, she heard an equally familiar buzzing sound.

With a dramatic leap, albeit an unhelpful one done entirely for show, Scootaloo joined her friends, trademark scooter and all, completing the trio. She saw Sweetie Belle first, failing to notice the condition of Apple Bloom.

“I’m so glad you’re back! Apple Bloom has lots of ideas for–”

She gasped in excitement.

“You’ve got your cutie mark! You’re … a lumberco– a lumberfilly?” She couldn’t hide that her excitement was paired with confusion, even as her friend reached slowly into her right saddlebag, prepared to finish what she’d started.

Not receiving an answer, the little pegasus, who was quite literally buzzing with excitement, happened to notice her other friend. The buzzing stopped as her blood ran cold.

She didn’t know how to understand what she was seeing.

She looked at Sweetie Belle.

She looked at Apple Bloom.

She stared for some time, unable to comprehend what had transpired.

A pony’s mind can only handle so much. There are limits to anypony’s fragile psyche. There are certain events which can only be accepted with much preparation, or much time for healing. This was one of those events, and Scootaloo had no such opportunity. That day, that instant, as she stared at the pieces of slowly-rotting meat that were once her friend, Scootaloo’s young mind shattered. Unable to accept the reality she had been thrust into, she substituted one of her own creation.

Scootaloo beamed, smiling happily, and a bright flash appeared by her flank. On this day, all three of the Cutie Mark Crusaders would finally be fulfilled. Her cutie mark was a pale yellow apple with a bright red flower blooming from its stem.

Of course, she didn’t even know it was there. It was not a part of the reality she had chosen.

“Hi Apple Bloom! Didja see that Sweetie Belle got her cutie mark? She’s a lumberfilly, isn’t that exciting?!”

The unicorn in question stopped her reach and returned her hoof to the ground, empty. She was confused, to say the least, by the orange filly talking glibly at empty air.

“I know, I’m jealous too, but we can still get our cutie marks together!”

Finally understanding what was going on, Sweetie Belle was more than happy to play along. She smiled warmly, walked up daintily, and put a hoof around her friend’s neck.

“Y’know what, Scootaloo? I think the three of us still have a lot more fun to have together.”

“A lot more fun.”

Author's notes

OK, I've put some additional description here at the end of chapter 1 instead of in the main description to avoid spoiling anything. In case it's not obvious, my goal here was to be maximally dark and unsettling. My idea to accomplish that goal was to give the actual violence a greater setting, make the reader appreciate the character and also appreciate the situation it brings onto the rest of the characters. I sort of dropped the ball on that last part because this chapter was getting far too long, so some details I had intended to be here will instead be pushed into the next. To be frank I don't think I've succeeded in my goal so far, but if you think I have, then thank you.

To answer some expected questions:

My friend Mouse and I were having a discussion about what the worst special talent would be. Although we thought of a few that were worse than "axe murderer pony", we enjoyed that one in particular. We decided it would be amusing for one of the CMC to have axe murder as her special talent, but I couldn't decide which. My friend settled it quite simply: "Sweetie Belle is clearly the best name for an axe murderer."

I know the intro was long, and many of you were probably expecting more gore and less prose. There actually is a bit of setup there for the next chapter, plus I just wanted you to remember that the character in question has a history and a connection to the story. Watching a mostly-anonymous pony be slaughtered is somewhat less personal than I wanted. If you're expecting the slaughter-to-prose ratio to pick up, then you're reading the wrong story, the whole point is that I'm putting everything into a greater context.

I have full intention to follow through on the implications of every murder. Nopony just vanishes.

Anyway, I really do hope you enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy such a thing), and hugely appreciate constructive criticism in the comments. Thanks for reading,

Clavier

Chapter 2

Author's note: As usual, I was going very long on this chapter, and trying to fit too much in. I ended up opting to split what I had intended to be chapter 2 into chapters 2 and 3, but this has an unfortunate side effect: This chapter is almost entirely gore-free. If you're only here for the gore, then sorry, you'll just have to muddle through it, occasionally I need some plot. I assure you the next chapter will make up for it in spades.

It was a typical morning for Applejack. She woke with the sun, as she did every day, prepared for the hard work of the hours ahead. She tied back her hair and put on her trusty hat, before carefully but quickly remaking her bed, a habit she had unintentionally picked up from Rarity. This being the extent of her usual morning ritual, with but a quick glance in the mirror she was satisfied and ready to toil.

But she remembered that this typical day for her would be an atypical one for her sister, and instead set herself to the usually-difficult task of waking the tired filly up. The upper floor of the Apple family farmhouse was an old, creaky structure with a cacophonous life of its own, and every morning it surprised her that hers and Big Macintosh's morning routines weren't noisy enough to wake up Apple Bloom.

She knocked softly on the filly's bedroom door. Not hearing a response, she opened it and poked in her head, expecting to find Apple Bloom still sleeping. She was surprised to find that her sister wasn't there at all. What was even more surprising, however, was that the pink bow which almost always adorned the younger's head was currently adorning a bedpost, unmade sheets strewn around it. “Apple Bloom must've been pretty excited to forget that,” she said to the empty air, before carefully plucking the adornment from its improper perch.

Concluding that a detour to return the bow would not significantly hinder her work for the day, she trotted down the stairs and nearly escaped the farmhouse altogether, but for a conspicuous “ahem” behind her. Turning, she found that Big Macintosh was at the breakfast table.

The large workhorse was capable of significant communication with his eldest sister without needing to utter a word. His stance and demeanor spoke volumes. “Breakfast first,” it said, “then you can go find Apple Bloom.”

Applejack smiled and relented. Carefully setting the bow on the back of an empty chair, she fetched several of the apple pancakes that her brother had prepared and a small glass of apple juice.

“Thanks, Mac.”

He simply nodded in return, still working his way slowly through his own meal.

They finished their meals and set forth to their tasks.

“Ah'll be back to help y'all once Ah've got Apple Bloom her bow,” Applejack said plainly. Once again carefully plucking the article from its position, she left without awaiting a reply.

“Eey–“

His sisters both gone, Big Macintosh chuckled to himself, then left for the orchards.

Ponyville was quiet, with only the morning birds and a few early-rising ponies interrupting the calm silence. Applejack smiled and nodded in response to the occasional cheerful hello, but didn’t break her gait. She soon was passing the town’s central library, paying little attention to anything but her simple chore.

“Hi Applejack!”

Again, she simply smiled and nodded at the voice.

“I see you’re looking for Apple Bloom.”

This finally stopped her. She looked aside to see Twilight Sparkle, still sitting in front of the library, watching Equestria pass by. Applejack crossed her eyes, trying to indicate the bow carefully clasped between her teeth without needing to speak.

Twilight was amused by her usually-talkative friend’s silence, and imitated it. She tilted her head in the direction Apple Bloom had left, igniting the ground before them in a bright fuchsia glow. The earth pony raised an eyebrow, confused, causing the unicorn to lose her concentration in laughter. The glow sputtered and vanished.

“Twi can be a mite strange sometimes,” Applejack thought, “but Ah suppose she means well.”

She had only began trotting in the indicated direction when she was nearly struck by a buzzing blur of blue and orange and magenta and purple, which itself was nearly struck by a galloping blur of white and pink. Both came to a rather clumsy halt, but all three remained unharmed.

As the dust settled, Sweetie Belle broke the silence with a laugh. “Scootaloo, watch where you’re going!”

The filly in question seemed unconcerned. “Oh, hi Applejack! Wanna see–”

Applejack finally released the bow from her teeth, holding it carefully in a hoof, to scold the little pegasus.

“Y’all oughta be more careful with that scooter, ye could kill somepony!”

Scootaloo frowned and stared at the dirt path. “Sorry, Applejack.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Applejack,” Sweetie Belle echoed.

With the two quivering frowns and sad sets of eyes before her, the farmpony couldn’t help but smile. “OK, y’all’re forgiven. Now where’s mah little sis?”

Both fillies instantly lifted from their funk, and the scooting one looked around.

“She was just here with us … sorry, Idonno where she went!”

“Alright, Ah’ll check the carriage stand then. See y’all later.”

Applejack returned the bow to its previous grip and cantered away.

“Bye!” the fillies cried cheerfully after her.

Applejack scrunched her nose and furrowed her brow, in part because she couldn’t find her little sister, and in part because the smell of this place was foul, an unsettling mix of rust, death and pine. Although farming had its share of unpleasant odors, this one was unique.

Turning her head, she shuddered and forced closed her eyes, then looked away. She’d seen animals butchered by prey, even had her own livestock taken at times, but the unrecognizable pile of dismembered meat and bones before her was different. The savagery of it was unlike anything she had seen.

It was only after daring a second glance that she noticed a shock of exposed red hair, and realized the truth of what was before her. Her world span around her, she dropped the precious bow, nausea began to overtake her. Partially-digested apple pancakes, along with an equal amount of stomach acid and bile, soon graced the otherwise-clean wooden planks of the carriage stand, but their cause was long gone, galloping towards the center of Ponyville.

Tears were building and the path before her seemed to twist cruelly, mocking her faltering legs and churning stomach. But she was compelled to find somepony. She was compelled to find a pony to help.

She had not yet allowed her mind to acknowledge that nopony could.

“Twilight! Twilight!”

Applejack screamed through the tears, her voice wavering and cracking until it degraded into a sob. Twilight Sparkle needed no explanation to see that something terrible had happened.

“Spike, stay here.”

The baby dragon was still asleep, making the demand moot, but it had nonetheless been sufficient to indicate that Applejack should lead the way. Soon they were both galloping, waves of concern keeping the less-athletic unicorn up to pace. The houses, shops and waking residents of Ponyville were a blur as they quickly reached their destination.

Applejack fell to the ground, prone, breathing heavily, green eyes fixated on the artifact of her terror. Tears came slowly but steadily, wetting the fur of her cheeks in a dark path.

It took Twilight a moment to process the scene. When she did, the severity of it gripped her spine, sending sharp waves of tense pain through her. She stood agape, staring, unable to find words and unable to speak them if she could. Her mind blank and her body numb, she was, to all relevant intents and purposes, paralyzed.

The ruckus they caused running through town had attracted some attention, and that attention had transitively attracted more attention. A small crowd was forming; they kept their distance and hushed their voices, but their presence seared through the woebegone earth pony. She didn’t know why they infuriated her so, but she said nothing, could say nothing.

Slowly but surely, much of Ponyville was arriving, and it wasn’t long before they were joined by Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, and each began to grapple with what had occurred.

Fluttershy held her head in her hooves, sobbing openly, until she too fell to the grass, tears mixing with morning dew. Rarity, carefully maintaining a composed disposition, stood by her, trying to comfort the fragile pegasus to no avail. The tailor’s own thoughts were to her sister, and how this catastrophe would affect her family, but for the sake of the others she remained emotionally reserved.

Pinkie Pie just stared. She didn’t cry, she said nothing, she didn’t so much as twitch. Her wide eyes were devoid of joy, a sickening facsimile of their usual lustre. Her typical exuberant smile was replaced by a pained grimace. Her expression did poor service to the turmoil that wrenched her viscera, threatening to expel her unhealthy breakfast of cupcakes and pie.

Rainbow Dash looked over the rest pensively, as if trying to choose the appropriate expression for the scene. Finding no plurality, her demeanor turned to confusion and nervousness, and continued as such uncorrected.

By the time the others had arrived, Twilight Sparkle had rectified her attitude and attempted to join Rarity in being stoic and composed. Her legs failed her, however, trembling uncontrollably under her weight.

This display continued for quite some time, nopony willing to voluntarily end the loathsome wordlessness.

The crowd was growing, their murmurs feeling like a roar over the reticent group. Pegasi hovered above, trying to see what was going on while still maintaining a respectful distance. Rainbow, still not finding the correct expression, was the first of the six to speak.

“Do you think a wild animal could’ve–”

Her inquiry was cut short by the uncharacteristic shout of Fluttershy. The suggestion shook the sensitive pegasus to her core, both insulting and terrifying the animal caregiver of Ponyville.

“No! I … they couldn’t … n–no!”

Her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks now flush with rage as well as moist with tears.

She backed away, pushing herself painfully along the grass and dirt. Her shout diminished into a choked plea.

“No! No!”

The tears were coming once again, her voice interrupted by frequent sobs.

“N–no! No!”

Finally she fled, galloping away as fast as her legs would allow, pushing through the group which silently parted to grant her passage. As was often the case for Fluttershy, she didn’t think to fly.

Rainbow felt the heat emanating from Rarity’s wrathful glare, but it was mercifully short-lived. Rarity was soon off as well, trailing her emotionally fragile friend.

Twilight shook her head. She had a powerful, though unwanted, ability to command the attention of everypony, and that ability was now asserting itself. She glared into the group, her gaze moving from pair to pair of awaiting eyes. Swallowing hard, she prepared herself for a difficult announcement.

She spoke loudly. Firmly. Without quaver or break. “No. This was no unfortunate accident.”

Her eyes swept over the crowd once more as she drew a deep breath and gathered her nerves.

“This was murder.”

She continued to stare into the group for a long moment. The reaction was not as she expected. Ponies cocked their heads and raised their eyebrows, whispered amongst themselves. Twilight soon realized that the term was only familiar to her due to her lessons in history; no murder had been committed in Equestria in hundreds of years. Her phlegmatic disposition vanished in an instant as she tried falteringly to explain the concept.

“She … somepony killed … somepony intentionally ended Apple Bloom’s life.”

It was perhaps the most awkward description of a crime in Equestria’s history, but it elicited the expected response. All eyes widened with shock and terror, gasps rose intermittently as ponies realized the severity of what had occurred. All were still fixated on the unicorn.

Twilight, however, had nothing left to say. She shuffled uncomfortably, trying to dispel and disband the group.

“We … well, we need to figure out who did this. But, uh, right now I think maybe Applejack needs to be left alone.”

The murmurs began again, concern turning to shock, shock turning to fear. But the group nonetheless dispersed, returning towards town in stunned clusters.

Twilight left with them, and Rainbow Dash was glad to leave with her.

“This is bad, Twilight. Really, really bad. Isn’t it?”

Twilight sighed, “This event may have odious consequences for all of Equestria, Rainbow.”

“Um, yeah. That.” Rainbow looked at the plain dirt road and flexed her wings uncomfortably while keeping her slow walking pace alongside Twilight. She felt trapped; her natural instinct in a tense situation was to fly, but she held back that urge. “We’ll find the pony that did this, won’t we?”

The reply was hesitant, unsure. “I hope so.”

Only Applejack and Pinkie Pie remained, the latter still transfixed by her own horror. The former had run out of tears, run out of emotion. She was exhausted, desperately trying to hold back her mind from piecing together the consequences of this day.

“Have ye ever held a wake, Pinkie?”

Rarity stood on her family’s porch, carefully examining each line and knot of the front door of her childhood home. She had maintained her composure all morning, but the looming conversation she was to have with her sister drained her of all fortitude. She couldn’t so much as bring herself to knock.

She didn’t need to, however, as the door swung open by another pony’s volition. In her excitement, Sweetie Belle didn’t even notice her older sister, bumping her head into an ivory shoulder before she stopped.

She stared up at Rarity for a moment, addled, before gathering her wits into a bright grin.

“Hiya sis!”

Seeing the little filly’s cheery demeanor tore at the couturier’s core. She fought back tears and put her mind to remaining sedate for the moments ahead.

“Sweetie Belle, we need to talk. Something terrible has happened.”

They talked in Sweetie Belle’s cluttered bedroom, sitting together on her overly-ornate four poster bed, a gift from the older. Not one to miss details, Rarity of course noticed her sister’s new cutie mark, but determined that there would be a better time to discuss it. Upon hearing the news, the younger screamed, then cried, then just held her sister. They held a sad embrace for a seeming eternity, until Rarity’s coat was soaked with the filly’s tears. Rarity swayed her sister back and forth and hushed her in motherly tones, allowing her time to release. Emotions being exhausting, eventually she fell asleep in her sister’s forelegs, tears still gently streaming down her cheeks.

Sweetie Belle was impressed by her own performance. Rarity was none the wiser.

The wake was scheduled for the following Sunday, four days’ time. Ponyville was quiet but for the chittering of unburdened animals; Ponies went about their daily routine with rarely more than a nod to acknowledge others’ existence. Even the unexpected and hushed, but nonetheless regal, arrival of Princess Celestia did little to raise the town’s shattered spirits.

The princess’ stay, which lasted only a few hours, was held entirely in closed conference with her prized pupil and the mayor. Rainbow Dash’s attempts to draw information out of the steadfast royal guards met with resounding failure, leaving the nature of the meeting a mystery, though of course everypony had their guesses. She left as silently as she had arrived, leaving only puzzlement in her wake.

Nopony dared question Twilight or the mayor on the nature of their royal encounter. And so the days dragged by.

It was a small affair, only the nearby members of the Apple family and their close friends were invited. Held outdoors in one of the well-groomed clearings that dotted Sweet Apple Acres’ many hectares, the blissfully cool day (provided courtesy of Rainbow Dash) helped quell the tumultuous emotions of the present ponies.

Having been informed that wakes are a “joyous affair,” in which one “celebrates life instead of fixating on death,” Pinkie Pie had made a concerted effort to make the event no less mirthful than any party she threw. Balloons and streamers were certainly unusual for this type of gathering, but in a way that only Pinkie could, she made them cohere with the rest of the atmosphere.

Five round tables were arranged in a semicircle, each with an apple-red tablecloth and a bouquet of black balloons rising from the center. Four were surrounded by members of the Apple family. Their moods ranged from somber to sorrowful but none, to Pinkie’s dismay, showed any cheer. The fifth was occupied by the four bearers of the Elements of Harmony who were neither family members nor party planners, and the two Cutie Mark Crusaders who remained in Equestria. Aside from Scootaloo, their dispositions mirrored those of the family.

Some of the elder members of the Apple family grumbled, perturbed by the unintended but obvious segregation of earth ponies from unicorns and pegasi. This perceived insult did little to improve the general mood, and the unfortunate planner couldn’t so much as recognize it, let alone rectify it.

The wake was not going well, and nopony was more aware of this fact than Pinkie Pie, who moved from table to table in a fruitless attempt to lighten the mood. Her own cheery demeanor was a thin facade, albeit one she had much experience maintaining.

The table containing the nearest members of the Apple family was, oddly, the least morose present. They discussed the good times, and had a veritable bounty of good times to discuss. Applejack told anecdotes of her sister’s truncated fillyhood; Big Macintosh nodded along, adding the occasional “eeyup;” Granny Smith just sat, drinking tea and trying to keep everypony in check. The scene was practiced. Familiar. The similarity to the wake of Apple Bloom’s and Applejack’s parents left a bitter taste in their mouths, which they were all countering with stories of sweeter times.

All eyes carefully avoided the centerpiece of this arrangement. Although it was oft the topic of their melancholy conversation, none were willing to actually set their gaze upon it. A small, well-polished black coffin sat on a simple oak table. Inside were the remains of Apple Bloom; although the body was arranged as well as could be expected, its ghastly condition had necessitated a closed-casket proceedings. Still, its very presence eroded at the minds of everypony present, even as they tried desperately to ignore it.

All but one pony, that is. One pony was rendered incapable of so much as acknowledging its existence.

“You throw the best parties, Pinkie! This is so much fun!”

“Do you think she understands what’s going on?” Rarity whispered softly into Twilight’s ear.

“I’m concerned, Rarity,” she whispered just as softly in reply, “I don’t think she’s even realized … about Apple Bloom.”

“Did you see her Cutie Mark?”

“You don’t think she could be …”

“Frankly, I think she’s delusional.”

Rarity’s candid tone surprised Twilight, but she nonetheless nodded in agreement. “Do you think we should do something?”

“I … I don’t really know. What do you think?”

“I’ve heard that breaking somepony’s fantasy can do irreparable damage to their psyche.”

“But surely we must do something!”

Twilight shook her head. “We should find somepony more qualified.”

Rarity reluctantly agreed, and the pair continued to discuss the situation, soon involving their pegasus allies as well. As sad as Scootaloo’s condition was, it was a welcome distraction from the actual purpose of the event.

When the ersatz party was finally ended, only Applejack and Pinkie Pie remained, once again unexpectedly in the sole company of each other. Pinkie cleaned, distressed over what she perceived to be a dismal failure of a party. Applejack had finally allowed her manner to break, crying weakly into a disobliging tablecloth as she sipped slowly at a cup of apple tea.

“I’m sorry, Applejack. I really tried hard, but … well, I’m sorry.”

Applejack responded with a small, sad smile, “No, Pinkie. Ye did fine. Ye did good. Ah shouldn’t a’ put it on ye.”

Applejack continued to drink her tea. Pinkie continued to clean in silence, but noticed something she hadn’t before. Applejack’s usual simple apple-red hairband had been replaced by an uncharacteristically feminine accoutrement.

A pink bow.

Chapter 3

Author's note: Special thanks to Landee for generously editing and providing story suggestions. This is turning into an epic, so I appreciate the help!

In spite of themselves, Ponyville’s residents returned to relative normality in a few days. All except for Twilight, who was making everypony uncomfortable by asking them prying questions, and the Apple family, whose daily toil was devoid of its usual liveliness. Laughter and chatter once again carried through the streets, as time lifted the gloom from heavy hearts.

The peace troubled Sweetie Belle. Her newfound talent had brought with it a lust for torment, and that lust was building unsated in her. But she had no delusion and no intent to be exposed, so she carefully planned. Strategized. And, of course, played with her best friend, Scootaloo.

“Y’know, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom made that awesome cutie mark potion … and then we made a love potion, sort of … you should try to get brewing cutie marks!”

The filly pegasus responded by staring gleefully into the open air. Sweetie Belle had become accustomed to this behavior, and waited patiently.

“Yeah! Let’s do it!” she hollered, but her jocularity was quickly quelled. “… will you still help us, Sweetie Belle?”

“Of course!”

Satisfied, Scootaloo immediately regained her former grin, and the giggling pair set off for the Everfree Forest, and Zecora’s hut. Their behavior still unnerved everypony, the usual bustle of activity freezing in gawking groups as the two fillies ran through the streets of Ponyville. They weren’t deterred in the slightest, however, as they made their way through and out of the winding streets, passing into the forest, along the simple dirt road leading to Zecora’s.

“Welcome, welcome, my youngest pal, what brings you to my remote locale?”

“Hi Zecora,” Apple Bloom replied in a cheery tone, “we were hopin’ we could help y’all brew somethin’, to see if that’s our special talent!”

The zebra looked pensive, but was as friendly as ever. “This favor I will do for you, but only for the good that will come of this brew.”

“Thanks, Zecora!” She grinned ear-to-ear, her oversize pink bow bobbing with her every excited action. “So, what’re we gonna make?”

“Rainbow Dash promised this summer is warm, but animals don’t like much hotter than norm. To help the poor critters from weather so cruel, a brew I shall make to keep small bodies cool!”

“Aww, that’s so nice, Zecora! We’d love ta help you!”

Of course, as neither of the parties to this conversation were actually present, Sweetie Belle was forced to piece together what was happening by the expressions of her friend’s face. Concluding that the fabricated zebra had invited them in, she followed Scootaloo into the hut and glanced around, determining that its occupant was in fact absent.

The hut contained only one large room, and it had a strange, musty atmosphere filled with undefinable smells from past concoctions. Aside from the small cot which was the zebra’s simple sleeping place, the walls were covered in shelves and cupboards, containing neatly-labeled jars and pots of everything imaginable. And on the wall farthest from the door, there was a very tall cabinet with a large padlock on its door; but the door was open, its content having been recently used. This, Sweetie Belle concluded, is where she would find what she really wanted.

The large cauldron in the center of the room was already bubbling over an open fire. Obviously Zecora had been making something, but for some reason was forced to leave it. The brew-master would be back at any time, the little schemer concluded, so they would have to be fast. Sweetie Belle set her plan into motion.

“You and Apple Bloom stir it all together,” she commanded to the only other presence present, “and me and Zecora’ll get all the ingredients.”

“Yes sir!” Scootaloo chirped with a military salute, mimicking her idol.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Potion Makers!” they both shouted, before setting to their tasks in a giggling fit.

This berry-hunt was frustrating, to say the least. Usually Zecora would have asked Applejack, as she knew full well that Sweet Apple Acres had somewhere in its midst berries of every variety imaginable. But she was also aware of how painful the grieving process could be, and so opted to leave the Apple family alone; she still felt like an outsider amongst the pony populous of Ponyville, and didn’t think that her presence would help matters.

So she searched on, in unfamiliar parts of the Everfree Forest, for precisely the berries she needed for her brew. The amount of time she was taking was beginning to worry her, as she’d left her partially-completed blend boiling, one step in its lengthy preparation. Fearing for damage if she left it too long, she rummaged one last time through a bush of the right yellowish coloring, but determined that the berries would not be found. This preparation, it seemed, would unfortunately be a failure. Turning around with a sigh, she began heading back for home.

Immediately in front of her were exactly the fruit she’d been hunting for for hours now. Relieved, she picked all of them she could find. Not being safe for equine consumption in their uncooked form, she was very careful while retrieving them, holding them gingerly between her teeth, before transferring the sweet-smelling selection to a small pewter jar she’d brought with her for this purpose. She carefully examined her hooves to assure that the dangerous juices had not escaped their shells; when satisfied, she closed the jar and placed it carefully in her saddlebag, before setting off once again for her hut.

When she got there, something was amiss. Nothing was obviously wrong, but something in the atmosphere seemed not to be as it ought. All of her prized possessions were in their correct place, her ingredients seemed to be well in order, and the large brew-pot bubbled away same as ever. And yet … she couldn’t quite place her hoof on what was wrong. After a moment of inspection, she decided that she must have simply left the brew to boil for far longer than it should have, and resumed her recipe. She carefully separated the ripe yellow berries from the green ones while removing them from the small jar, crushed them individually between her hooves, and let the seeds and juices fall into the still-churning broth. As the next step was to allow the concoction to reduce over night, she retired to the other side of the hut to read.

The mixture was not, of course, as she believed it to be. Having been altered into one considerably more unpleasant by a pair of precocious fillies, the new addition of these unusual berries was catalyzing a foul reaction. The brew was separating, the acidic components sinking in a thick gelatin to the bottom of the pot, leaving a highly caustic, alkaline fluid in their wake. This continued overnight, the mix becoming increasingly malignant, entirely unbeknown to its master.

“Oh, good evening, Scootaloo. How … how are you today?” Fluttershy’s soft voice carried a strong concern for the unbalanced little filly. Her usual inclination to help anypony in need was tempered by a sincere helplessness in this particular case, and the pain she felt over the poor pegasus’ loss.

“Hi Fluttershy! Me and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and Zecora made a potion for you!”

Sweetie Belle did her best to look awkward and sad, caught in the middle of a precarious situation. She smiled sheepishly and silently at the concerned yellow pegasus, carefully inducing a teary appearance to complete the illusion. Fluttershy nodded knowingly. Or rather, she nodded unknowingly, but thinking she understood.

“That’s very nice, Scootaloo. What kind of potion?”

In her excitement, the little orange filly pushed into the cottage without invitation; creatures of all sizes and descriptions scurried into their dens, scattered throughout the large main chamber. With a quick glance around, she found where the feed was kept, and trotted in that direction. “This summer’s gonna be really hot, so Zecora made something to help the animals keep cool! You just need to splash a bit in their food like this,” she sprinkled some of the blue liquid into a bag of bird feed while she explained, “and they’ll be healthier in the heat!” She continued to prance merrily about the room, splashing the brew into every type of food she could find.

Fluttershy was concerned, but unwilling to confront the filly lest she damage the little one’s already fragile mental state. She glanced nervously to Sweetie Belle, who had remained outside, and found the same small smile the bright young unicorn had before. Deciding that her trust in both Zecora and Sweetie Belle made up for the any unease she had with Scootaloo, she allowed the farce to continue.

When every variety of food had been found and augmented, Scootaloo stopped to stare up at the animal caregiver with a bright grin.

“Thank you so much, Scootaloo, that was very nice of Zecora and you.”

“You’re welcome, Fluttershy, bye!” The sentence wasn’t even finished before the pair of fillies were off in the direction of Ponyville, flinging the door shut discourteously behind them. Fluttershy took a deep, relieved breath, allowing herself a moment to relax. Whatever would be done about Scootaloo was not her problem to solve.

A rhythmic beating at her right hind leg brought her mind back to more immediate concerns. She turned her head to find Angel Bunny tapping his wrist.

“What is it, Angel?”

Exasperated, the white rabbit indicated to its mouth, mocking a chewing action.

“Oh, dinner!”

Applejack kicked a haggard, undeserving tree for a third time, using such force that the trunk splintered and bark flew in all directions. Its crop didn’t budge. Her anger and frustration reaching its limit, she prepared for a final assault, balancing her weight on her forelegs and pushing every ounce of strength left in her body into the task.

It was all so futile.

She stopped short, allowing her hind hooves to fall back to the ground. She looked up at the tree and its fruit; they were Golden Delicious apples. Bright yellow, such a joyous shade. Did they really deserve, she pondered, to be torn from their simple lives?

Would anyone even care if she didn’t?

Her gaze settled from the tree to the grass below. It was moist from a pleasant rain earlier in the day. It had been a nice distraction from the sweltering heat, and the cool grass it left would serve equally well in this waning evening warmth. She lay down on her side, knocking aside one of the large baskets which had been tasked with catching apples and spilling the few it had caught.

Would anyone even notice if she were gone?

In spite of herself, a stray tear fell to the ground, mixing with the rainwater in the grass. She just lay there as the sun slowly set, watching it silhouette her orchards in orange light before it yielded the darkness of a young night. Another tear. She nearly fell asleep like that, but was jolted back to consciousness by something cold and wet pressing into her neck. Winona whined anxiously, empathetic to her master’s state.

At least someone would notice. At least someone would care.

Fluttershy was awoken by a soft thud at the foot of her bed. Frightened, she immediately pulled her bed covers over her head, trembling obviously below them.

“H–H–Hello?”

There was no answer.

“R–Rainbow, is that y–you?”

Silence.

A terrified teal eye appeared from under the tangle of sheets, its gaze darting nervously around the room. Deciding that maybe she’d only imagined it, the eye’s pegasus owner extricated herself from the fabric and lifted herself slowly from her bed to investigate.

“Mrs. Blue! What’s wrong?” She glided over to the small, limp form quivering painfully on the ground.

The little yellow canary was in no condition to respond, but her mate, Mr. Blue, quickly landed beside her. He was in only moderately better condition, however, as he began to cough and heave in pain, his whole body distending then contracting in brief spurts.

“Oh my goodness oh my goodness! What’s happening, Mr. Blue? Mr. Blue? Can I help?”

The answer to that question became abundantly clear as he fell to his back and his abdomen tore open, blood and bile exploding in a quick, violent shower over the bed, ground, and Fluttershy.

Shrieking, the animal’s now grim and terrified caregiver darted from her bedroom and down the stairs to the main chamber of the cottage.

This place, which was normally a safe haven for animals of all kinds, presently seemed more like the antechamber to a slaughterhouse. Cries of animals in pain filled the air, and the smell of blood and stagnation filled Fluttershy’s lungs. Creatures peered out from all corners at their governess, in foolish hope for an easy cure. Even as such, their suffering would have easily gone unnoticed from Fluttershy’s insulated locale had she not been awoken unexpectedly; she routinely had to deal with death, that being part of her role, but she could never become accustomed to suffering. And certainly not on this scale.

“Oh no no no no no oh my goodness oh my goodness,” Fluttershy babbled near-incoherently as she fluttered, true to her name, flitting to each individual nest and cocoon and den. One by one, the animals were dying, suffering a similar fate to the late Mr. Blue, their overwrought master trying in futile desperation to prevent it. Counters were stained unpleasant shades and gave off worse smells, and the ground was littered with bits of mottled fur and vomit. Fluttershy’s coat was becoming matted with blood, but she had no concern for herself.

Animals crawled from all around towards the horrified embodiment of what little hope they had left, but few made it to her before collapsing into convulsing or inanimate heaps. The various fluids of dozens of animals were making the environment noxious, and the helpless pegasus was within a few minutes forced to throw open her door in need of untainted air; at the same moment, the desperate grasp of a pair of claws at her hind hooves startled her into leaping out.

Luna’s somber light illuminated the busy patch of nature surrounding the cottage, casting a blue hue over the scene. The condition here was no better than it had been inside.

Her chickens lay in a red pile, blood from the last still dripping over those that went before. The large tree in her side yard which housed many varieties of squirrels was eerily quiet. The other trees were littered with the lifeless forms of birds of all description; even the hardy ravens and eagles were not immune it seemed. Her thoughts consumed entirely by fear, she unthinkingly ran down the path towards Ponyville. But her escape was short-lived.

She stopped cold. Her heart sank and ice filled her blood, the warm summer night’s air deficient to keep her coat from standing on end and her wings from constricting painfully against her flanks. She stared for a long moment, unable to think or act, before finally she released a soft whimper.

“A–Angel Bunny?”

“Twilight, you’ve got to get some sleep!”

The irony in the baby dragon’s imploration was not lost on the unicorn even as her tired eyes trudged slowly over the dull text of The Criminal Mind: An Historical Study of Antisocial Behavior and Violent Psychoses.

“You should get some sleep,” she droned wearily, her fatigue draining all enthusiasm from her voice, “I need to study.”

“You’re not gonna help anypony like this,” Spike pleaded, tugging gently at his superior’s tail, “that boring book’ll still be here tomorrow.”

Finally lifting her head, the bookkeeper-cum-investigator realized that her watchful assistant was, as usual, correct. It was so late that it was, in fact, early, and the world outside the warm glow of her reading candles was bathed in the soft tones of night.

Sighing, she relented. “You’re probably right. I just …”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Twilight,” the little dragon chimed supportively, “Celestia wouldn’t ask you if she wasn’t sure you could do it.”

Twilight opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the door crashing in, allowing a streak of yellow in its wake. The intruder very carefully released a small white form from her gentle grip onto the wooden floor before simply staring at Twilight Sparkle with an unmitigated horror, panting heavily.

Twilight examined the situation. Fluttershy’s coat was mottled orange, her mane was disheveled in coarse locks. The piercing gaze of her bloodshot eyes carried an expression the unicorn had never seen on this shy pony’s face before. And the rabbit below … “Fluttershy, what–”

“Animals– food– poison–” she could only manage scattered thoughts, and was breathing too heavily to speak clearly anyway.

Twilight looked more carefully at Angel Bunny, breathing deeply to keep her own emotions in check.

“I’m … I’m so sorry, Fluttershy.”

The pegasus’ stare finally broke, as she instead looked down at the small parcel she’d carried so carefully to the center of town. There was no life left in the limp form.

Angel was her strength. Even though in principle she was the master and he was the pet, his stern attitude steadied her nervous disposition, and kept her grounded. Seeing what was left of him lying motionless, stained sanguine and glassy-eyed made her feel as though an important part of her spirit had been wrenched from her body. Unable to cope, she collapsed to the ground, quivering and sobbing, her eyes fixated on her former pet.

“You said the animal’s food was–” Twilight began but interrupted herself mid-sentence, “Spike! Please tell me you haven’t still been stealing the squirrels’ food!”

Spike’s sly smile was enough of an answer, and immediately he was lifted by a warm magenta glow. Hovering in front of the unicorn, he was poked and prodded uncomfortably, examined by an altogether unqualified examiner.

“Twilight! Stop! I’m fine, worry about the pets!”

Realizing that the incredible constitution imbued in all dragons had in fact rendered even this little one immune, Twilight once again took his advice to heart.

Although she tried to be gentle in speaking to the doleful pegasus, her question was too vital for courtesies. “Fluttershy, which pets do you feed?” she demanded.

The collapsed yellow pony remained despondent. She may not have even heard the question.

Unfortunately however, there was simply no time to worry about Fluttershy. “Oh dear … Spike, I don’t suppose you know?”

“Hmm … Owloysius?”

“No, he’s from the Everfree Forest originally, he always … err,” she paused, feeling that now was not the time for a discussion of carnivore diets, “makes his own food.”

“Gummy?”

“If Fluttershy fed him, he’d still have teeth.” Although no one could explain how Pinkie Pie’s dentition remained healthy, her toothless alligator was a testament to how poor a sugar-rich diet can be for one’s teeth.

“Tank?”

“Rainbow Dash checked out a book on care and feeding of reptiles, I’m pretty sure she’s trying to do it herself.”

“Opal?”

“Rarity wouldn’t even look at cat food that’s not imported from Canterlot.”

“Winona?”

“Applejack has dozens of animals, I’m sure she feeds her own–”

But her exposition was cut short by a gasp from an unexpected source. Fluttershy rose to her hooves, the desperation of the moment fueling her and driving her to speak, even though every movement pained her.

“Winona!”

Unsure how to react and unable to read Fluttershy’s twisted expression, Twilight simply watched, waiting for an explanation.

“I raised Winona when she was a puppy,” Fluttershy explained, every word clearly painful as her voice sank both in pitch and volume, “now she only likes my food.”

Before either pony realized what was happening, a magenta glow appeared around both of them, and they were whisked away in an instant to Sweet Apple Acres.

Zecora circled the brew pot, unsure what to do. She had been woken by a burning sensation in her nostrils, the smell of this foul potion invading her lungs painfully. There was definitely something wrong, but exactly what should be done was unclear. An unknown potion is a dangerous thing, and this one seemed more dangerous than most. She kicked dirt into the fire, deciding that at least letting it cool down until it was safe to dispose of was an obvious first step. Her eyes were watering and her nostrils burned, but her concern for the safety of the natural habitat surrounding her hut was greater than her concern for herself, so she steadfastly watched the pot, in case something unexpected would occur.

Big Macintosh was surprisingly unperturbed by the sudden appearance of two ponies in front of him. Since Apple Bloom’s death however, he didn’t seem to be perturbed by anything. He went through life in a near-catatonic state, performing all the necessary actions with no gusto, no life.

“Big Macintosh, we’re so sorry to disturb you, but–”

Twilight was cut off by an uncharacteristic shout from the pegasus at her side. “Winona! Winona!” She yelled it with such frenzy that the charred bits of hair that had collected on her due to the unexpected (and tiredly performed) teleportation flew off of her in a cloud of ash.

“Ah was just lookin’ for ‘er,” the big workhorse explained in a listless monotone, “‘cuz she didn’t come in last …” His voice trailed away, his vision fixed on something over the mares’ shoulders.

Both tracked his gaze, and found what all three had been looking for, open and spilling viscera onto the dirt path below.

“... how?” was all that he could manage.

Fluttershy’s fear, her terror, her emptiness, her cowardice all transmuted in an instant into a violent rage more severe than she had ever experienced. She seethed and trembled with hatred and was consumed with a desire for revenge. Her usual shyness was cast aside, revealing a bold and resolute second self. She spoke softly, but gratingly and with only cold malice in her voice.

“Zecora.”

How was it possible, the herbalist zebra wondered, that this mixture was still boiling after nearly an hour without fire? She stared at it ponderously, though still keeping a safe distance, but was interrupted by a crash and an unrecognized shriek coming from behind her. Before she had any opportunity to react, two hooves were at her neck, pushing her head forcefully into the frothing liquid below.

Yes, this brew was every bit as bad as she feared it might be.

At first her skin tingled oddly, but very quickly that sensation was replaced by several worse ones. She felt her hair dissolve from her face, each pore then blistering painfully as the liquid melted her flesh. Every inch that was submerged cried out in anguish, as if it was being torn from her by searing-hot claws. Her mind was filled with a high-pitched scream she couldn’t escape, as her eardrums were assaulted by the fizzing concoction. The eyelids she had instinctively squeezed shut were over the course of endless seconds dissolved away, allowing her to momentarily see the convulsing action before her. That was of course short lived as the brew trickled into her eye sockets, quickly rendering her blind even as it continued to burn excruciatingly against the back of her eyes. The scream faded into nothingness as all her senses vanished from her. She was in darkness. Alone. And in pain.

She screamed then gasped instinctively, drawing the foul stuff into her throat in the process. Her gums bristled in agony as the foam wended its way into her teeth, burning away each root in explosions of pain. She felt it flow in all directions through the now-exposed passages in her mandible, burning now both from inside and out. The skin of her ears thinned, until ultimately her left one could no longer maintain the weight of the large brass hoop earring in it. Its weight sunk to the bottom of the vat, pulling along with it a strip of burnt and bubbling flesh from the zebra’s cheek. But the pain, along with her consciousness, and ultimately life, were slipping from her; as her brain matter was burned away, she felt the last inklings of Equestria slip slowly from her perception, and drifted into unconsciousness.

When the form below her stopped struggling, Fluttershy released her grasp. Zecora fell to the ground with a wet thud, allowing the attacker to review her handiwork. Her mane, her ears, her eyes and much of her nose were simply gone, and much of the now-bleached bone of her skull was visible. Where skin was still present at all, it was a deep, raw red, wet with released oil and blood, and blistered in still-quivering pustules. Foam and pus ran from her empty eye sockets, dragging with it globs of skin as gravity cruelly pulled them away. The rings Zecora wore around her neck created a noticeable discrepancy between her unaffected body and mutilated skull.

But that discrepancy would vanish, as the liquid she had drawn into her lungs spilled forth in an unexpected burst, breaking through her skin and spreading a puddle of pink gel. Even without life the body continued to quiver as all of its supporting structures melted away inside.

Examining her own hooves, which had been submersed slightly in the liquid as well, Fluttershy could see that they were in no better condition. Where sinew should have been holding together the flesh and bone, instead there was only red muck. The anger had blocked her pain, but it was now starting to subdue.

She sat on her haunches and leaned against the now-cooling wooden brew pot, allowing her wings to finally relax from their constricted position and stretch as she continued to examine the condition of her forelegs’ hooves. Her retribution was fulfilled, but it only made her feel hollow; somehow, Zecora didn’t seem like sufficient recompense for Angel and Winona. It just made her feel even worse. In a minute of deep breathing and carefully-organized thought, all of her rage melted away, leaving in its stead the shy former animal caregiver that would never hurt a fly. Her moment of reflection was, however, cut short.

Thwack.

Fluttershy’s reaction to the sound and sudden pain in her left wing and flank was the same as it would ever have been: She ran. She bound through the door and down the dirt path, trying to ignore the pain in her forelegs as dirt packed ever-deeper into her still-open wound. Her left wing had been severed, unbalancing her, but by a stroke of luck the very potion which had so damaged her hooves had cauterized this new laceration, leaving a red stump instead of a fountain of blood.

The trees whizzed past her in a blur, both because of her speed and because the reality of her situation was chasing swiftly behind her, gaining precious inches every second. She ran through the tears and pain until the flora around her changed its form, now in neat rows with ripe, red fruit. But this was not the haven she sought, so she continued to run as rocks and dust collected in her coat, which was still packed with now-dry pads of blood.

She finally reached her cottage and slammed the door behind her, before sitting on the ground, leaning uncomfortably against a coffee table. The realization had caught up with her. She was weeping silently, surrounded by death and darkness, and trembling with shame and terror. All the life that had defined this place was gone, and she felt as if all the life was gone within her as well.

“Hi Fluttershy,” a happy, high-pitched voice echoed from the darkness, “have a fun time at Zecora’s?”

So shocked was she by the interruption, she could do nothing but respond softly, sobbingly, and in earnest. “... no.”

“Aww, that’s too bad. I was hopin’ we could have lots of fun together, Fluttershy.”

“… who … why …”

The answer came in the form of an axe with a wide, rounded blade and pure white ash handle. It slid with a metallic scraping sound across the wooden planks of the cottage floor, until coming to a stop against a now-unrecognizable carcass near the horrified pegasus.

She recognized it instantly.

“S– Sweetie …”

“Y’know what you’ve gotta do now,” the bright voice gambled from its shadowy realm, “right?”

The axe was surprisingly light. Its edge glinted even in the very soft moonlight, its sharpness obviously carefully maintained. Holding it hurt her damaged hooves, but she still held it firm nonetheless, examining every facet of it carefully.

“I think you know what you’ve gotta do.”

She did.

The corner of the blade was sharp. Blood trickled down her neck as she held it indecisively against her throat.

Zecora hadn’t deserved this.

Her eyes were blurry with tears. Her heart felt empty, devoid of purpose and virtue and not deserving to continue its rhythm.

Zecora hadn’t deserved this. She did.

“I’m … I’m so sorry.”

With her final resolve, she harshly pulled the handle.

Fluttershy’s death was swift. Painful. Excruciating, even. But swift.

Chapter 4

Twilight Sparkle and Applejack sat together, silently, for hours. The latter was too stunned by her compounding losses to speak, and too ashamed that she felt worse at the moment for Winona than for Apple Bloom to know what to say. The former was out of her element, and had no idea how to help a friend who had suffered so, but thoughts raced through her mind. She tried to piece together how this had happened, and how she had missed any signs. They sat wordlessly as the moon drooped in the sky, until the pair were too tired to share each others’ anguish any longer.

“Ah think Ah’d best get back to the house. Mac’ll be worryin’ about me.”

Twilight nodded and watched the other mare walk away. The thought of the long walk back to her own home made her muscles ache expectantly, but she was nonetheless anxious to retire to the embrace of a soft mattress and light sheets. She set off on the simple journey, trudging down the long dirt path that led out of Sweet Apple Acres.

Ponyville, almost entirely bare of its usual animal population, was more silent than she’d ever known it to be. Without even the soft call of crickets to cut through the night air, her surroundings seemed like a poor facsimile of the town she knew and had grown to love. Every step echoed through the air like a drumbeat, and the slight creak of the library’s door as she opened it was like a pained scream. She made a mental note to grease the hinges, then ascended the small staircase that led to her loft and bed.

With the parade of horrors that had defined the past week, sleep should not have come easily her, but it did. She was physically and mentally exhausted. Even the demons dwelling in her subconscious were too tired to scream their misery. The sun peeking over the horizon would not deter her. Nothing could have stopped her from, at long last, getting a well-deserved rest.

“Twilight! Twilight!”

Well, almost nothing.

She groaned and slit open one eye. A pink blob surrounded by an aura of blinding morning light stood before her.

“What is it, Pinkie?” Her attempts to hide the frustration in her voice weren’t particularly successful.

“Remember when you asked me if anything weird had happened … that morning?” Pinkie’s voice was soft, perhaps even frightened. Despite how tired she was, Twilight was unnerved by this Pinkie Pie. “And I said I had a new Pinkie sense combo?”

The blurry pony before her began to shift into focus, but her words still floated above the unicorn’s head, drifting slowly down into her consciousness. Twilight collected these thoughts for a moment, then nodded.

Pinkie Pie spoke even more softly. The small inkling of fear in her voice had turned to naked terror. “It happened again, Twilight. But then my left wing twitched, and usually–”

“Pinkie, you don’t have– oh, never mind.”

“– that means that Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy or one of the other pegasuses … es is in trouble.” Her eyes finally drifted into focus. They were sunken and bloodshot, nothing like the joyous eyes Twilight was accustomed to seeing on this pony. “I’m scared, Twilight.”

Pulling the sheet off of her and sitting up, nascent ideas fell into Twilight’s mind in a flood. She tried to recall the last thing she’d heard Fluttershy say.

“Pinkie, Fluttershy–”

A partial memory bubbled to the surface.

“Zecora!”

Sweetie Belle trotted away from Fluttershy’s cottage, preoccupied with thoughts of her day’s work. Although her twisted spirits were lifted by how successful her careful planning had been, somehow she still wasn’t satisfied.

She was tired, and her back strained from lugging around her heavy saddlebags, but it was plain that sleep would not come until she rid her subconscious of whatever dissatisfaction was plaguing her. Something wasn’t quite right, and she was determined to find out what.

A smile crossed her lips as she entered the town proper. Normally at this time of day, ponies would be awaking to the lovely sounds of morning birds singing their merry tunes. Only a month prior she would probably have been singing along; a bittersweet memory, perhaps, but nothing to sour the joy she garnered from this simple, dead silence. With the air carrying no sounds to compete with her own hoof beats echoing off the houses and shops around her, it was as if the world was clapping for her, congratulation for her accomplishment.

But the sound of others’ hoof beats pulled her from her reverie, and she hid behind a nearby bale of hay to avoid suspicion. Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie galloped into view at an incredible pace; the former was as concerned and preoccupied with her own thoughts as ever, the latter looked entirely unlike herself. She looked sad, terrified, like a pony who may never be compelled to laugh again. This change in character excited Sweetie Belle even more than the activities of her morning so far. She considered how simple it would have been to end their run, Pinkie’s companion slumping unexpectedly into a lifeless heap beside her. Oh, to see the expression she would make then! To watch the tears stream unabated from her eyes, to hear her shriek and cry! But no, Twilight was still useful, it wasn’t yet her time.

The two distracted mares didn’t notice the filly watching them, and the filly herself didn’t pursue. She was quite aware of their target, and wasn’t foolish enough to linger there. But her thoughts of this exciting new Pinkie Pie were bringing tantalizing ideas to her mind. Perhaps, she concluded, her dissatisfaction with the day’s work was because she hadn’t taken a more hoofs-on approach. A situation easily settled.

Rainbow Dash was in one of her particularly preferred napping trees, at the edge of the Everfree Forest and not too far from Sweet Apple Acres, Fluttershy’s cottage or her own home. In spite of being well out of town, it was very central to everypony she cared about, and in such uncertain times she felt the need to be near her friends.

Usually she used the comfort of her own cloud beds for sleeping through the night, but the falling of this night had been so calm and silent, she continued to sleep peacefully in her favorite tree. Morning had already broken when a piercing scream brought an end to that comfort. She jolted to a stand, smacking her head against a tree branch in the process and, consequentially, falling out of the tree in a stunned daze.

“That was Pinkie Pie!”

Leaping from the ground without a second thought, she bolted in the direction of the noise. Zooming nimbly around tree branches and crags, it took her little time to determine that Zecora’s hut was her destination. Terrible possibilities raced through her mind, driving her wings until they stiffened under the strain. Was Pinkie Pie alright? Was Zecora? Could it be that Zecora had – no, Zecora was a friend; Rainbow pushed the worst of these speculations from her thoughts and rocketed onwards.

As she was fond to say, they called her “Dash” for a reason. It took her under a minute to reach the hut, and she landed with a skid at its open door.

“Pinkie! What’s–” The sight before her robbed her of her words. Zecora – or some assortment of putrid matter that was once Zecora – lay motionless but for the occasional burst of blistered flesh. Much of her skeleton was exposed now, bleached a brilliant ivory that shone in stark contrast to the puddles of brown muck that had once been the zebra’s soft tissue. Pinkie Pie had stopped screaming, but now stared numbly, mouth agape. Twilight was present as well, and just as engrossed as her pink companion, but her expression was entirely unreadable. She was staring as much into herself as at the floor.

Realizing that the gazes of her two friends were not in fact locked on Zecora’s remains, Rainbow traced them to another spot on the ground.

“That’s …” she stuttered, voice cracking in defiance as she tried to speak, “… Fluttershy!”

She snatched the wing between her hooves, spun, and took to the sky once more.

A window of Sugarcube Corner, just over the staircase, was open. The smoke from a batch of overcooked muffins wafted past, but that was of no concern to Sweetie Belle. She had her way in, and she knew what to do.

She crept over the windowsill, landing softly on a wooden stair below. With a quick glance to determine that nopony had seen or heard her enter, she began her way up the stairs, carefully testing each step for creaks and cracks. The hallway at the top was dark, having only one small window facing tangentially to the rising sun, but the glint of the light entering from below was enough to illuminate two doors at opposite ends. One was decorated in bright pink streamers, and had clearly been painted pink some years ago, though its bright veneer was now fading and peeling, revealing the plain oak door below. The other door was unadorned, and so Sweetie Belle made her way towards it.

The room faced east, and at the time its large window perfectly framed the sun. An open and disorganized blue dresser spilling tiny clothes was at one end, a neatly packed and locked toy box was at the other. But these objects merely framed the target of the filly’s interest, the cribs.

Reaching as far as her stubby white legs could manage, she flung a hoof wildly at the hook that held aloft one wall of one of the cribs. Standing on one hind leg, she bit her tongue, trying to maintain her balance and silence, and also not to laugh at just how silly her position was. She wobbled gracelessly, but didn’t tumble. With a dainty flick of the wrist, she unhooked the crib wall, causing the wooden bars to slide down with a loud crash. She tensed at this sound, a chill crawling up her spine. The loose joints of the crib tilted and creaked, heightening the already-concerning din.

She stood frozen, the skin of her back tightening uncomfortably in a cruel attempt to faze her. She still balanced carefully on one hoof, hoping that the residents below had not heard the noises. The complications if they had, Sweetie Belle was sure, would not be worth it.

Her nose twitched slightly. Of all the times to have an itch …

“Rainbow Dash! Wait!”

The impossibly-fast pegasus’ trademark rainbow trail vanishing into the distant trees made it quite clear that she had no intention of doing so. Her pursuer had received detailed instructions from the princess on how to handle the situation that another murder occurred: Remain stoic, be detached, examine everything objectively, and most importantly, never, ever remove any evidence from the scene of a crime until the context has been analyzed thoroughly. Removing a severed wing from the scene and flying it halfway across Ponyville was, she was sure, an improper procedure for handling evidence. To make matters worse, she was in no condition to be chasing anypony.

Luckily, Pinkie Pie’s severe mood was not enough to prevent her usual physics-defying antics, and she poised herself in the very tree in which Rainbow Dash had recently been sleeping, ready to catch the mare as she flew by.

“Dashie!”

Rainbow screeched to a midair halt to avoid a colorful kerfuffle, and glared at the pink roadblock. Both were aflame with the bitterest of passions, fear and anxiety and anger flowing freely between them in the daunting silence. The usually cheery blue of Pinkie’s eyes was ensconced within a red sheath, and darkened tracks ran down her cheeks. Rainbow turned her sight to the treasure she held carefully between her hooves, and found it blurring from her vision, while cold tears ran slowly down her forelegs.

“Dash … let’s just wait for Twilight. OK?” Pinkie pooled what strength she had left into sounding calm and convincing. “She’ll know what to do.”

The pegasus nodded, slowly. She didn’t look up.

Four … five … who sneezes six times in a row? Sweetie Belle was sure that her presence would be prematurely known, but continued to hold out hope to the contrary, balancing carefully and listening for movement.

Ten seconds. Fifteen. Thirty seconds. A minute. The silence was so pervasive, she thought she could hear the sun rising. At this point she was no longer sure why she was being so careful; instead, she treated it like a game. Who would make noise first? With the Ponyville champion of the game of Shhhh disqualified (if not vying for an Equestria record), Sweetie Belle was sure she would win. Two minutes. Three.

A gentle coo from a waking unicorn foal sounded like a klaxon and alarm bells against the void, and caused her to swing back instantly to alertness. Who wanted to be the champion of Shhhh anyway? With a quickness fueled by new instinct, she pulled an axe from her saddlebag and tossed it glibly into the air.

The alarming noise ceased with a light spatter.

Sweetie Belle lifted herself into the crib to assess the damage. The blade was longer than Pumpkin Cake’s body, and had cleaved it entirely in twain, her bright blue eyes now staring inanimately in opposite directions. The aggressor’s curiosity at the site of the tiny, partially-developed organs got the better of her, and, tossing the axe aside, she quickly was wrist-deep in entrails. This was a much better learning tool, she was finding, than Ms. Cheerilee’s biology homework. A stomach, half a liver, … something small, green and shaped like a pea that she couldn’t identify. Such intricate systems are so easy to disrupt with the right tools. Small intestines, large intestines, something that might have been a kidney. She was reminded of one of the few school moments she found interesting, and began hunting for the Shimmer’s organ. It was a structure, as she recalled, which only unicorns possessed, widely believed to be somehow associated with their magical abilities.

She poked around in the opened chest cavity, crushing the tiny lungs into a purple mass and snapping the ribcage out of her way effortlessly as she hunted, until she found a small pink orb. In a pony like Twilight Sparkle, the Shimmer’s organ would be the size of an orange or even larger, but in a foal like this, it was like a tiny bead of amethyst. She only noticed it at all by the prismatic effect it had on the light, casting a tiny rainbow into the red muck that served as its nest. It came loose easily from its socket, a bundle of nerves snapping readily as Sweetie Belle pulled it from its vertebral home.

Balancing the treasure carefully in her now-red hooves, she held it to the light. The effect was beautiful, bathing the room in glimmering radiance of all colors. The prismatic effect defied physics, sending rainbows of all sizes shooting in all directions; it was truly a magical gem. She would have allowed herself to be entranced by the dancing hues, but saw that there was another equally interested observer.

“Good morning, Pound Cake,” she whispered, more to herself than to the foal, “your turn.”

She stowed the jewel in a fastening pocket in her saddlebag, retrieved her weapon from its perch, and hopped daintily to the ground. Each step towards the other crib left a sanguine hoof print on the wooden floor; she was still careful to remain silent, but didn’t notice these other small signs she left in her trail. Looking up at the other crib, she considered carefully how she would open it with less noise than her previous attempt.

That consideration became moot very quickly.

“You can fly?!”

Rainbow Dash pounded on the door in desperation, hearing nothing from the other side. The carcasses littering the path to the porch did little to suggest that anything reassuring would be found on the there, and the wing she now held carefully between her teeth provided little comfort either. Twilight spoke forcefully behind her, but she couldn’t hear the unicorn’s words. The tone was stern, but the meaning was lost.

She fell to her haunches, still pummeling the door as its frame cracked and warped under the strain. Again and again she viciously attacked this obstacle, as if its removal would change the nature of the scene it blocked, even as the strain tore her flesh, blood running down her forelegs. Twilight was yelling now. The distraught pegasus still comprehended nothing of her babbling.

With a crash, it finally gave way, revealing blackness behind. All the windows and drapes were closed, and the doorway itself offered little light into the abyss. This didn’t deter Rainbow, who galloped in with no clear destination, almost immediately tripping over something small, fuzzy and damp.

She landed in a cold, sticky puddle, bashing her head painfully into the unforgiving wooden floor. With a wince and small, pained gasp, she realized the essence of the environment she had entered. Death surrounded her; its stench filled her sinuses, its flavor burned her lungs and its silence assaulted her ears. And as she adjusted to the darkness, its image became clear.

Icy, lifeless, teal eyes.

Thwack.

“Wouldja stop flyin’ around like that!” Sweetie Belle was getting frustrated, as Pound Cake amused himself by flitting around the room, nimbly dodging every throw. The walls were riddled with slits where the colorful wallpaper had given way to a blade in lieu of the wily target. The pegasus laughed and cooed, entirely unaware of the danger of his situation. He buzzed to the dresser, embedding himself in a pile of assorted clothing, and became very silent. Although even more frustrated now, Sweetie Belle admitted to herself that she enjoyed a game of hide-and-go-seek as much as any filly.

Thwack.

Cotton and bits of fabric and splintered wood flew threw the air, but no feathers or fur along with them. She wondered how such a tiny foal could be so darned fast. He poked his head out of a lower drawer with a smile and a bright laugh.

Thwack.

The dresser was in shambles, but the foal was unaffected. Now he was buzzing overhead, circling around Sweetie Belle like some odd chimera of a housefly and a vulture, all the while laughing a mocking but gleeful laugh.

Thwack.

The buzzing continued behind her, but quickly dissipated. She twisted, but saw only that the window was now slightly ajar. Pound Cake was nowhere to be seen. She put a hoof to her forehead in consternation, leaving a red streak over her white coat up to her horn. Shaking her head, she trotted around the room, collecting her weapons.

All except for one. The last throw had left an axe embedded in the ceiling. Hop as she may, she couldn’t even get close to it, let alone dislodge it. Dissatisfied with these two proximate failures, she opted to seek a new prey.

Now less concerned with who might hear, she skipped down the stairs and into the main room. The shop’s many shelves were bare, aside from a small bin marked “day olds” on the counter. This was an unusual state to see Sugarcube Corner in, but unsurprising given the hour. Sweetie Belle followed the smell of rising dough into the kitchen, and found Mrs. Cake there, too preoccupied with the content of a mixing bowl to notice her new guest.

“Hiya, Mrs. Cake,” no amount of minor setbacks could dampen Sweetie Belle’s ever-cheery mood, “that smells great!”

The baker jumped, momentarily startled, but recognized the voice, and so allowed her concern to vanish.

“Sweetie Belle, dear, we’re not open yet.”

She turned to show with her wide smile that the unexpected intruder wasn’t an unwanted one, but her expression turned immediately to shock as she saw that much of the filly’s coat was now dyed the same color as her strawberry hair, but by a much fouler means. The little unicorn grinned merrily, now gripping an axe between her hooves. One eye was closed, the other fixated on the cerulean pony’s apron. Cup Cake’s attention followed the red trail of hoof prints back and around the corner, as the tumblers of her mind clicked into place. She bolted for the staircase.

Thwack.

Her shoulder torn open, clavicle shattered, and shoulder blade locked in place by the intruding cold steel, she fell to the ground with a pained scream. She landed on the axe’s handle, pushing the blade further and wrenching bone from bone, leaving her left foreleg attached by little more than dangling sinew. Her blood spilled over the tile below, its deep red a poor complement to the floor’s pale turquoise or her own cyan blue. The pain was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, like her side was being baked along with her pastries; not knowing how else to react, her anguished eyes locked on Sweetie Belle’s.

“Oooh, smells like blueberry muffins, my favorite! Are they ready yet?”

At this time, as the two princesses passed their role from one to the other, they had the rare opportunity to talk openly about the state of their empire. Every morning for days, their topic had been the same; on this morning they sat together on a private balcony, staring down at a small town in the lee of the great mountain upon which Canterlot was built.

“I feel a cold wind this morning, Celestia.” In private counsel with Celestia, Luna was able to restrain her usual vocal tendencies. She spoke with deep purpose, but softly.

“As do I.” The princess of the day spoke vacantly, her thoughts elsewhere.

“Are you confident that Twilight Sparkle was the right choice for this task? I do not doubt her abilities in the art of magic, but in this matter she hath no experience.”

Her sister gazed on, preoccupied. After a moment, she replied with a shake of her head.

Luna breathed heavily, then motioned for a guard to enter. With the skill befitting a royal guard, a pure-alabaster Celestian pegasus glided to her side, and saluted with a stern expression, not daring to speak to the traditionally-minded princess.

She adopted the royal Canterlot voice. “Send thy best cadet to replace–”

“To aid,” Celestia corrected, softly.

“Send thy best cadet to aid Twilight Sparkle in her investigations in Ponyville.”

The guard saluted once more and flew away without a word. The princess of the day sighed, her attention still focused elsewhere.

“I hope that was the right decision, sister.”

Luna considered a response, but instead simply retired to the day’s sleep.

“Rainbow Dash! Rainbow, please listen to me!”

Twilight’s words found inattentive ears. The pegasus was lying nearly as motionless as the other beside her, nestled between the cold, stiff carcasses of a dog and a raccoon. Only her muffled, squeaking and cracking mutters proved that she remained, unlike her surroundings, in the realm of the living.

“… no … no … not Fluttershy …” she babbled repeatedly through teeth still clenched around the yellow wing of her friend.

Pinkie Pie was in no better state, sobbing uncontrollably in a veritable torrent. She pounded her hooves purposelessly into the dirt, poking round holes into the otherwise-smooth path. Giving up on rousing Rainbow, Twilight instead focused on her.

The unicorn, suppressing with great effort her immediate instinct towards grief, begged softly and flatly. “Pinkie Pie, I know this is hard, but we’ll have time for grief later. The princess asked me to investigate these … events, and I need to keep the scene undamaged.”

The flood subdued, the depressed pink earth pony sniffing to pushed back the tears. Trying to adopt her friend’s stoicism, she nodded and backed away, awaiting her friends from the short bridge that connected Fluttershy’s cottage to the rest of Ponyville.

“What’s wrong, dear, I heard a sc–”

Mr. Cake’s words died in his throat, welling into a nauseous lump that sunk deep into his gut. He found himself frozen to the ground, unable to flee or even flinch. His instincts told him to reach his wife, but between him and her stood a filly he’d never found threatening before in his life. Until now.

“Hi, Mr. Cake,” the situation still built up Sweetie Belle’s enthusiasm, which echoed true in her cheerful, almost lyrical voice, “are those blueberry muffins cooking? When’ll they be ready?”

The addressed stallion didn’t hear her, his whole attention was fixated on the state of his dying mate. She used her right foreleg’s hoof to drag herself by excruciating inches, her rose eyes’ inflamed state attesting to each moment’s anguish. But she managed to remain silent, as her attacker’s focus was elsewhere. Her left foreleg dragged weakly to her side, each movement pulling it further, snapping one by one the few remaining tendons by which it was attached. Each split caused a burst of pain to stream through her, and she bit her lip until it bled to avoid shrieking from the experience. Still her husband stared on hopelessly, unsure of how he could possibly help.

“OK, fine, I’ll wait.” The filly was indignant at how one-sided her conversations were turning out to be, but stopped herself short of reciting her teacher’s lessons on politeness. She traced the stunned confectioner’s eyes to the blade. “Oh yeah, my axes! Do you like ‘em?”

“This one,” she indicated to the blade embedded in Mrs. Cake’s irreparable shoulder while tugging it out with little effort, “I let Fluttershy use.” She carefully inspected the spray of stained red across its surface with a small smile, while the weapon’s latest victim, no longer able to pull herself further, groaned in torment. “Well, and Mrs. Cake, too!”

She replaced it with another axe, pulled from her bags, and continued her monologue. “This one is my favorite,” she examined the mottling of Apple Bloom’s blood over the handle, “I just think the pattern is so pretty!”

Realizing that her third was still stuck, she instead moved on to the last of her blades. She held it aloft, showing proudly how it reflected the light, and how its perfectly clean ash handle gleamed. “This is the last clean one I’ve got!”

The oven timer chimed, causing Sweetie Belle’s attention to shift. “Muffins!”

Carrot Cake, acting entirely on instinct, used this moment of distraction to attack. With a powerful lunge, he leapt towards the little white form. She, ever slow on the uptake, did nothing to stop him.

More precisely, she did nothing consciously.

Sweetie Belle held her eyes shut, expecting the worst. Instead she was surprised to be greeted by a pleasant, warm shower of a viscous fluid she immediately recognized even without seeing it. Mr. Cake’s skull was shattered and pulled in two by the formerly-clean axe, which itself was levitated in the air by a bright pink glow. She peered carefully through one eye, then opened both wide, a glowing smile separating her bloodstained lips. She found Mr. Cake’s limp body, swaying slightly as it dangled unstably, hung by a matted lock of orange hair from the telekinetically upheld axe. Bits of brain matter fell to the ground in splattered piles.

“Mrs. Cake! Mrs. Cake! My horn, my magic!” As she turned to see Mrs. Cake’s inappropriately non-adulatory reaction, her concentration was divided, and the floating objects now behind her hit the tile with a thud and clang.

“Rainbow, make sure nobody else goes in, OK?”

The pegasus, whose naturally cyan mane was now mostly colored a dark greyish umber with the drippings of an assortment of dead creatures, was only roused enough to nod understandingly. She didn’t look up from Fluttershy’s body, but at least politely stood outside the door.

Twilight Sparkle’s self control was faltering slightly, and the few tears that she felt drip from her neck felt heavier than the combined burdens of her forced dispassion and extreme exhaustion. Still, she steadfastly refused to fail in following through on the duties assigned to her by the princess.

“Pinkie Pie, I need …” She stopped, noticing something more peculiar in the pink pony than her mood, “Pinkie … your tail.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened in shock, even as her left ear began to wag uncontrollably.

“No, no,” her soft wimper quickly escalated to a cry, “no, no,” she rose to her hooves, wobbling uncomfortably on a twitching hind leg, “nononononono!” She raced away at a high clip.

Twilight recognized the condition, as it had been described to her before, but was incapable of yet another brisk chase. With a glance over her shoulder at Dash, who hadn’t even noticed the exhibition, she began a slow, plodding walk in pursuit.

Sweetie Belle was concentrating intensely, beads of sweat mingling with the mixed blood in her coat. Her horn glowed dully, but very, very slowly gained intensity, eventually becoming a bright pink that matched her mane. Cup Cake could do nothing but watch. She could no longer move herself and was emotionally crushed from the preceding events.

Thwack.

With a final burst of power, another axe had broken through the ceiling, embedding itself into the floor below and spreading fine particulate through the air. Sweetie Belle, properly impressed by her accomplishment, hopped gleefully around the weapon and her victim, laughing gaily and trying to encourage the despondent baker beside to do the same.

“That was pretty good, wasn’t it? I can’t wait to show Rarity!”

She halted her dancing suddenly, lifting her ears towards the front door and listening intently.

“Aww, I hear running, looks like you’ll have company. Gotta go!”

She began to trot away, then thought better of the situation. Pulling the magically summoned axe from the ground, she forced its blade into Mrs. Cake’s mouth, cutting gashes into her cheeks.

“Sorry, but I don’t want you telling anypony my secrets.” Sweetie Belle giggled softly as she twisted the blade, fracturing the blue pony’s mandible and severing her tongue. The battered baker coughed sputum and blood as her aggressor made haste away from Sugarcube Corner.

Momentarily, Pinkie Pie burst through the front door, and what she saw led her to her second ear-shattering screech of the morning. Hearing this, Twilight, who was still slightly out of town, decided to risk a faster approach. She appeared in a magenta flash, and surveyed the scene. In a moment of clarity defying her sleeplessness, she remembered to ask one very important question.

“Mrs. Cake, who did this?” she demanded, voice strained and stumbling.

With her last reserves of energy, unable to speak, Cup Cake swept her usable foreleg across the ground, spreading a trail of her own blood behind it. Then she fell unconscious.

The writing was as clear to Twilight as the morning sun: the letter ‘S’.

Author's notes: Thanks as always to Landee (and special guest editor "some unnamed friend of Landee") for editing. Also, have I mentioned recently how much I love receiving comments? They're so much more important to me than ratings or view count. Type some stuff into that box down there! You know you want to!

Chapter 5

“Pinkie?”

She didn’t reply. The tears had stopped flowing, but their dark creases remained as a vivid reminder. Her eyes were wide with fear and pain, sunken with exhaustion, and dull from a broken spirit.

“Pinkie?”

Her lip quivered. She made a small squeak, perhaps a fumbled attempt at words. It was clear that the weight of so many eyes was crushing her. The pegasus foal strapped carefully into her saddlebag cooed and shifted, still peacefully sleeping in ignorance while her unplanned caretaker quaked.

“Take your time, Pinkie. I know it’s hard.”

“F– F– Fluttershy …”

The mayor stepped aside, allowing the distraught pink mare to speak freely. After another moment collecting her thoughts, she struggled but managed to speak, her composure faltering constantly.

“When Granny Pie was … was dying, sh– she sang me a song so I wouldn’t b– be so sad. Fluttershy,” she turned to the open casket, “would have been able to s– sing it better … but she …”

She fell silent, fighting the tears that would undermine her goal. Although the funeral home had done well arranging the body to be presentable, it was nonetheless in a dire state. The head was barely attached, with a bit of cloth laid over the neck to avoid forcing any unpleasantness; its presence was telling enough, however, and its odd creases revealed that it stuck to the otherwise-exposed sinew and bone. As if that was not reminder enough of the nature of Fluttershy’s demise, there was of course the missing wing as well, at that moment still being carried by a weeping Rainbow Dash in the crowd. Dash had been unwilling to let it go even at the constant begging of the mortician, Foscor, a soft-spoken brown Earth pony whose unassuming manner yielded him unqualified to wrestle Rainbow’s prize from her.

Remembering this tiff, Pinkie’s eyes swept over the assemblage. Much of the crowd served as a reminder of what they’d lost. Rainbow grasped the wing, which remained oddly pristine even as she held it in an impliable and teary embrace. Applejack still kept her mane tied by her sister’s pink bow. In Pinkie’s own company, the foal, having been found floating dangerously near the brink of the Everfree Forest after hours of exhaustive searching, slept in divine unawareness. Foscor himself was present, but tried to remain nearly invisible, clearly a stallion who did not enjoy his profession. Sweetie Belle quietly whispered something to Scootaloo with a dour expression. While Rainbow’s eyes never once lifted from Fluttershy or her wing, all others were focused on Pinkie Pie, and all but two (those of Scootaloo) were pallid and devoid of joy.

That convinced Pinkie to swallow her feelings and sing her song. Somehow, in spite of what and who they’d lost, she was sure that they could pull through. No matter how much it hurt. She had to get everypony smiling again. Or at least try.

Author's note: The background music for Granny Pie's song is here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64227214/GPS.mp3 . A note on its production quality is at the end of this chapter. Mind your volume knob.

“Somewhere, there’s a land beyond the seas,
“It’s a place between reality and fantasy,
“Very soon, its calling bells for me will chime.
“You can join me only in your time.

“Until then, dear child, don’t cry for me,
“Until then, dear child, I’ll be with you in your dreams,
“Until then, carry on,
“Be bold and be strong,
“Share your laughter and your song,
“Dwell not on memories.

“Sometimes, there are mountains we can’t climb.
“There’s an order to the chaos, everypony has her time.
“I’ll be happy, I’ll be at peace, I will be free.
“So please, dear child, be strong and smile, and
“Do not cry for me.

Her intention, naïve as it was, had been to make everypony happy again, but her results were mixed. Rainbow had been the most far gone, and was now for the first time in hours looking elsewhere from her morbid prize, giving Pinkie a weak smile. Quite the opposite, Rarity’s practiced composure, having carried her gracefully through the service for Mr. Cake and much of Fluttershy’s as well, had broken entirely. Her usual inclination towards melodramatic weeping acted in its full force, and her whole body shook with a smoldering inner chaos. The nature of Fluttershy’s death, and the reality of her life without somepony who had become her closest friend, had been pulled violently from the hidden penetralia of her psyche to the surface. In short order she collapsed to the ground, covering her eyes in her hooves, sobbing uncontrollably.

Nopony was looking at Sweetie Belle. Nopony saw her small, satisfied grin.

“What?! Is this some kind of joke?”

“I assure you, I am quite serious.”

“That’s insane! She’s just a filly!”

Pinkie shuffled slowly back into her place between Twilight and Rarity. Her gaze was focused on the latter, disappointment in herself visible in her sunken expression. A tempest raged silently within her, a dwindling sense of self worth chipping away under the onslaught of cruel reality.

Another pony took the stage, some unknown relative of Fluttershy’s from Cloudsdale who probably hadn’t even met the deceased pegasus. Nopony cared particularly to listen to him, and he was obviously very uncomfortable being there, as the token family member of a pony estranged from family.

Pinkie Pie’s mood was very slightly improved; even in these dire circumstances, she always enjoyed singing, and was lifted somewhat by her own words. At the very least, her expression was blank, rather than depressed, as she stared inattentively towards the front.

Twilight whispered softly into Pinkie Pie’s ear, “Do you believe in that place, Pinkie?”

“Hm?”

“The place we go … when we die.” Twilight’s inflection warbled as she tried to ask delicately. “Do you believe in it? Do you believe that Fluttershy and Mr. Cake and Apple Bloom and Granny Pie and the others are all there?”

She took a long moment to think. What small gain in mood she’d made, she lost quickly.

“I wish I did, Twilight,” she almost choked on her words, “I really, really wish I did.”

“I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it!”

“Twilight Sparkle, I realize you don’t have extensive experience in this area, but–”

“I won’t accept it! Your claim is unthinkable, your evidence is weak. We’ll end up traumatizing a child and for what?”

Rainbow Dash finally stood from her position to take her role as a pallbearer. The yellow wing carefully placed at her spot glowed magenta for a moment, floating unnaturally, then drifted to the ground as the glow faded.

Biting a length of rope attached to the casket, Rainbow leaned in for what would be her final farewell. Tears dripped slowly into Fluttershy’s unflinching ear as she declared her simple sentiment.

“Goodbye, Fluttershy. Thanks for … for everything.”

The lid felt heavy and unyielding. Its polished black veneer obstructing her friend had an eerie permanence to it; its blackness and depth began to pervade all her thoughts, its mass and solidity concreting the reality of this day. That is, until it swung open again, tipping dangerously and nearly unloading its precious cargo.

“Careful, Derpy!”

“Whoah! Whoaaah!”

As Fluttershy’s corpse twisted haplessly, the sheet placed over her neck caught on a splinter in the wood and tore violently, revealing an image nopony wished to see. Now blackened and stiffened from death, the torn flesh had constricted, leaving an enormous gash. Her vertebrae were exposed, cracked and warped from the odd angle. The sheet had brought with it a small piece of blistered skin under her chin, revealing the ever-darkening last vestiges of life below. The sudden jolt had removed all the peace from her prepared expression; her eyes were wide but glassy, and her mouth now hung open at a pained angle, as if screaming in shock at her new damage. Even after death, she looked like her usual terrified self.

Foscor put a hoof to his head. Rainbow glared daggers at the vexatious Derpy Hooves, who was trembling, agonizing under the oppressive mare’s restrained wrath.

“Just who the hay let Derpy do this anyway, she can’t– mmmph!”

Twilight’s hoof brought an end to her tirade, but too late. Derpy had backed into a dark corner, whimpering softly and mumbling apologies, terrified of all the vengeful eyes fixated on her.

“I … I’m sorry, I didn’t– I just wanted– Fluttershy was always so nice to me, and … and–” The words dying in her throat, she took to the air, zipping past the rows of chairs and out the ornamental archway in the back of the hall, knocking a small piece of its tiling off in the process. Once again the room fell silent, but for the crackling of freshly-broken tile and light patter of blue dust hitting the ground. Twilight removed her hoof and tried to scowl in disdain, but she immediately softened. Rainbow was on the verge of tears, anger and sorrow mingling dangerously in her, but she held her tongue and stance.

While the guests were distracted, Foscor had made his way to the front, hidden by the cover of his own meek nature, and rearranged things as best he could. The most important step here was of course to close the lid, but he also replaced Fluttershy’s neck covering and quickly but gingerly closed her eyes, assuring that no damage was done in the process. By the time the confrontation was over, he had already made his way back to his far corner, slinking into his intended obscurity once more.

“Unthinkable? Her behavior is erratic, she has no alibis, and a victim indicated her.”

“Mrs. Cake drew an ‘S’, nothing more! We can’t even be sure it was an ‘S’, it–”

“And what explanation do you have for her cutie mark? Is it a coincidence? The timing of its appearance mere happenstance?”

The mayor was almost silent, yet her voice rang clearly through the otherwise-hushed chamber. “We’re going to need another pegasus to complete the ceremony.”

Ponyville had few pegasus citizens, and except for their occasional cooperation in weather-related tasks, they weren’t a tightly knit group. Furthermore, as Fluttershy lived up to her name, she had few friends amongst her own kin; even of the four that were assigned as pallbearers, only one was a close friend. The three pegasi who remained holding ropes, and the one shut away into the the box to which the ropes were attached, accounted for nearly every pegasus present. Only two were in the audience.

Although some focus fell on Scootaloo, to her benefit her lack of lucidity shielded her from realizing her own inadequacy for the role. This task necessitated flying, and that was a skill she had yet to grasp the basics of, let alone master. In her contorted worldview, however, Applejack’s party was going grandly, and certainly did not require the assistance of a filly pallbearer.

“May,” Twilight inquired to a pegasus mare putting great effort into using mildewed drapes as camouflage, “do you think you could do it?”

Merry May, whose pink mane divulged her presence plainly even as her chartreuse pelt blended near-seamlessly with the green cloth, glanced nervously about the room. Every pony was now focused on her, pleading silently, as all wanted to end the ceremony, hoping to end their depression with it. With a sudden cognizance that nopony else qualified was present, she affected her normal light attitude as best she could and fluttered softly to the front, indicating by her stance that she was ready and willing.

In silence, the group grasped their ropes, and lifted the delicate cargo into the air. Pegasus tradition for such ceremonies was strict and by rote: “The deceased shall be granted a final caress of the clouds before being forfeited to her eternal slumber in the earth.” Once sealed, the coffin would be lowered from the clouds to the grave which would serve as its final resting place. For a pegasus family who lived in a cloud city such as Cloudsdale, this tradition was much simpler than for pegasi living amongst their earthbound cousins, but it was nonetheless held to with rigor in either circumstance.

The box, and with it an intense blackness that transcended its tangible color, floated ceremoniously past the rows of gathered ponies, each of whom politely bowed her head as it passed. Even Scootaloo observed this practice, although she wasn’t sure why anypony was doing it. As this was the terminus of the ceremony for all but the pallbearers, the remainder of the guests lifted themselves from their seats, milling drearily about the room and offering forced niceties in lieu of honest but acerbic conversation. Some, such as Rarity, cried solitarily, nopony feeling confident enough in their own emotional stability to build up another’s. Others, including Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, just examined the sea of sullen faces. Regardless of manner, however, the dark emptiness of loss pervaded the assemblage equally.

“Hi Applejack,” Sweetie Belle’s usual cheeriness was subdued, replaced by genuine concern. “How are you?”

Concerned for the genial filly’s well-being, and believing the two of them to feel much the same sense of bereavement, Applejack hid the heavier of her emotions to the best of her abilities and smiled softly. “Oh, Ah’ll be all right, sugarcube, thanks.” Looking about, she gestured at Rarity, who was still splayed ungracefully near the front of the room. “Ah think somepony could use some help from ‘er little sis right now, though,” she whispered.

The little unicorn nodded, suppressing a grimace. Even with Apple Bloom out of the picture, Rarity still managed to ruin her relationship with Applejack. But, she reasoned, this was acceptable. In time, it would all work out. Regardless, they parted ways, and Applejack left with a nod to the assembled group.

“I’ll admit it’s … odd. But not damning.”

“It is the sum of the evidence that is damning, Miss Sparkle. Her guilt is clear.”

Applejack sat on cool grass, glassily staring into the open air. She could find in herself no emotion, no expression, no thought and no spirit. She was worn down to the bone, too weary of existence to even ponder its fragility any longer, though that was all she’d done for days.

At the opposite periphieries of her vision were two small gravestones, etched by an unsteady hoof. One was marked “Apple Bloom.” The other, “Winona.”

Rainbow shambled back into the funeral hall, haggard and solemn. It was unusual for her to walk, as she preferred flying in nearly all circumstances, but now her wings remained furled, twitching slightly from strain. Never before had flying for her been associated with such morose emotions, and never before had flying not lifted her spirits with her body. For the first time in her life, she was quite content to remain grounded, but that only forced the focus of her thoughts to Fluttershy, pushing her deeper and deeper into gloom. She didn’t talk as she shuffled through the crowd, having only one target and one intention. Reaching her original seat, she grasped the detached wing in her teeth, and spun to leave, but was interrupted.

Still trying in vain to lighten everypony’s mood, Pinkie had a surficial grin, a macabre gesture that belied her inner turmoil. “Are you ready for the competition, Dashie?”

Dash was shocked that anypony had remembered the aforementioned competition, and responded by stammering, voice cracking uncontrollably. “What? I can’t, not after … I can’t!”

“But you’ve got to, Dashie,” the party pony was impassioned, “they only have the competition when a Wonderbolt retires, and who knows how long it’ll be ‘til that happens again!” As she spoke, her spirit seemed to drift farther and farther from reality, her demeanor entirely detached from her solemn surroundings.

The remaining ponies had gathered into a small crowd around this conversation. In their desperation for a brighter topic, most were nodding in agreement. She had been planning for this competition for months, but hadn’t even thought about it since Apple Bloom’s death. There was now a great weight of memories holding her to the earth, and her usual desire for fame and glory seemed distant and foreign.

Scootaloo was in the group as well, excitedly shouting, “You’re the greatest flier ever, Rainbow, you’ve gotta do it!”

She crossed her eyes, looking at Fluttershy’s wing. For a moment, she was disgusted, not by the gruesome keepsake, but by herself. Would Fluttershy have wanted her to lose herself in depression? No. Yet she felt trapped both by herself and by her friends.

How could she refuse?

“If you do not act now, she will strike again.”

“No. You don’t know Ponyville. We’re both outsiders here, but you are more so. You don’t know these ponies. And you don’t know her. I won’t condemn a filly I know and love because of some wild speculation.”

“You allow sentimentality to cloud your judgment. If I am wrong, we improperly condemn a child. A tragedy, to be sure. But if I am not, more will die. And their blood will be on your hooves, Miss Sparkle.”

“Don’t quote tired clichés at me.”

Sweetie Belle, not wishing to confront her sister, had quietly left the hall without anypony noticing. The funeral hall was far from the center of Ponyville, and in the opposite direction of the Everfree Forest. Although still technically within the town, the forest here was thick. Trees lined the path both profusely and precisely, carefully maintained by studious earth ponies with a penchant for all things green, providing a perfect balance of shade from the heat and green-tinted light. Their branches rustled in the light summer wind, devoid of the chirping of birds and squirrels which would normally overwhelm the soft sounds of the foliage. It was serene. It was peaceful, and in her own, contorted way, Sweetie Belle was at peace. So she trotted slowly, happy to leave the awkward requirements of sociality behind her, lost in her idle but gruesome thoughts.

Although few had gone to the funeral, the town was, clearly, still reeling from the shock of death. Windows were shuttered and doors were locked, a situation that hadn’t occurred since their inhospitable response to Zecora’s original appearance some years prior. What had originally been simple surprise was now turning to fear and hysteria, as ponies were forced to ponder the possible immediacy of their own mortality. Those that walked the streets did so in groups of closely-knit friends, suspiciously eyeing anypony they weren’t familiar with. On this day even these groups remained cloistered. The wind blowing through the otherwise silent boulevards whistled a cacophonous melody with only Sweetie Belle to interrupt it; she hummed a congruous harmony to its resonant shrieks.

Arriving at her home, she once again put on a mask of sorrow, then dashed up the stairs to her room before her parents had an opportunity to interrupt her. Although her skill at acting this part was improving, she wasn’t in the mood for it; bubbling over with good cheer, she was liable to lose her composure in a giggling fit. Her parents were concerned, but not especially attentive, and decided that she just needed to be alone.

Slamming the door, she pulled her axes from a concealed nook behind her headboard where they were hidden, and examined her handiwork. Although she kept the blades themselves clean and sharp, the handles were beginning to look somewhat worse for wear. The axe which had been the unexpected benefactor of her newfound magical ability had cracked slightly in its fall to the ground, and now had a notch that threatened to splinter the wood, even as Mr. Cake’s blood kept it mostly sealed.

Sweetie Belle’s expertise, however, was not in structural engineering, so she was ambivalent to the potential fracture. What concerned her greatly, on the contrary, was the unseemly appearance of a cracked handle. After a moment’s thought, however, she had an ideal solution.

The Shimmer’s organ fit the new notch with impeccable precision. Holding it up to the light, Sweetie Belle was quite satisfied with the gleam of violet over the deep red and ash white of the handle proper. But something was still missing; such a well-adorned weapon deserved to be more than a nameless object. Remembering a story told to her under the strictest of confidentiality, she giggled softly, careful not to be heard, at her own genius.

“I’ll call you … Tom!”

“Will you do nothing, then?”

“I will continue to search for the real killer.”

“And you will even allow her to leave Ponyville, to see Rainbow Dash compete?”

“Of course! She would be crushed if we didn’t let her go! You forget that to me she’s no suspect, she’s a friend.”

“I see. By the Princess’ decree, this is your jurisdiction, and I have no right to overturn your decision. However, I will be reporting this to her. For your sake, I hope I’m wrong.”

Author's notes:

Thanks as always to my editor, Landee.

Regarding the music: I like to write music sometimes, and if I can find an excuse to stick music in one of my stories, I probably will. I play the piano, and as such usually opt for piano solos, but occasionally will be brash enough to try something with broader orchestration. The main problem with that is that I haven't the time, tools or skills necessary to make such efforts sound their best. I strongly considered rewriting this for solo piano, as it wasn't working out as I wanted it to, but couldn't make that work either, so overall the music came out just a few notches better than MIDI in terms of production quality. Digital production of arco string instruments is dangerous under the best of circumstances. I may come back and revise it if I find time later, but that's unlikely. Do try to use your imagination, and forgive me my rather limited abilities in the area of digital music production; after all, you're here for the prose, are you not?

Oh, and apologies for how long this took. Busy et cetera et cetera.

Chapter 6

Scootaloo was figuratively bouncing off the walls. In fact, in fleeting moments, she was quite literally bouncing off the walls. Her little body was bubbling over with uncontainable excited energy; she actually ached with joy. And why wouldn’t she be? She was going to be friends with a Wonderbolt! A member of the coolest flying team this side of … well, anywhere! After all, Rainbow Dash was a shoo-in for the position; everypony knew that she was the only pegasus to perform a sonic rainboom in recorded history, and she was the fastest flier around besides.

After a particularly buzzy bounce, accomplishing a brief but exhilarating moment of lift, she felt herself dragged back to the ground by a familiar pair of hooves. It was probably for the best, as a third poster of the ever-popular rainbow-maned pegasus drifted to the ground, dislodged by Scootaloo’s frantic winged bombination.

This poster joined the general detritus on the once-clean hardwood floor. The Cutie Mark Crusaders’ clubhouse was, in fact, in a state of overall disrepair. Sweetie Belle had never realized just how many little things Apple Bloom did to keep the place standing, spick and span, and not effusing a strange smell that she couldn’t find the source of and Scootaloo apparently didn’t notice. Whatever mental faculties should have allowed for remorse, however, were entirely detached from these thoughts, inhibiting her from drawing any unpleasant conclusions from this state. Besides, only one of the group still considered them to be the Cutie Mark Crusaders, as the implied goal was superfluous for the others.

“Come on, Sweetie Belle, aren’t you excited? We get to see Rainbow Dash become a Wonderbolt tomorrow!”

Sweetie Belle laughed at her friend’s antics. In spite of everything that had happened, she was still in many ways a normal filly, who just wanted to have fun with her friends, albeit with an unusual notion of fun. It was in this spirit that she had put a stop to Scootaloo’s hyperactivity, and that she asked, “Don’t you think we could do something to make Rainbow’s victory even better?”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened, her wings a blur with excitement. “And maybe get our cutie marks!”

The little psychopath grinned, playing along. “I was thinking, the sonic rainboom is awesome, but it’s also really pretty, and that’s part of why everypony loves it so much.”

Her friend just raised an eyebrow, not following.

“Well, it could be even prettier if we added something. Something special!”

“Like lightning!”

Sweetie Belle winced. It was as if the air was getting thicker around her. Deadpan, she explained, “like, uh, flowers.”

Scootaloo’s grin vanished and her expression soured in an instant. Her tone bordered on disgust. “Flowers? Awesome ponies like Rainbow Dash and me aren’t into that frilly, frou-frou, girly stuff.”

Her gleeful laughter now filling the air, Sweetie Belle poked her pegasus companion’s ribs, ruffling her feathers both metaphorical and literal. She tryied to explain the scheme without upsetting the increasingly coltish filly. “It’s not for Rainbow, silly, it’s for the audience! Imagine all the flower petals exploding out and floating over the crowd! Now that’s how you get into the Wonderbolts!”

Scootaloo pursed her lips and considered. Her nose twitched in thought. As Dash’s would-be protegé, she refused to relent entirely, but could see Sweetie Belle’s point. With a shrug and a harumph, she agreed to help. “But only,” she added, “if you’re sure this can get us our cutie marks!”

The town was furtively abuzz with anticipation of their local soon-to-be celebrity, maintaining a precarious balance between one hoof of lingering fear, and the other of excitement and much-needed distraction. It was a strange tension, and led to some peculiar behavior. Ponies stared suspiciously at each other with eyes narrowed, yet simultaneously wore wide grins that they simply couldn’t rid themselves of. In truth, whatever grief the town had been under had mostly evaporated, as grief is wont to do; it is a Celestial blessing that happiness is a natural state for ponies. And although fear was more difficult to shake from the town’s collective consciousness than grief, it was easier to balance with the pride and joy they felt for Rainbow Dash.

It was through this conflicted community that Applejack drifted, appearing a phantasm of her former self. She had a destination, she had a schedule, but she didn’t particularly care about keeping them. She didn’t care not to, either. Life to her had become a sequence of meaningless, detached activities, which she carried out by sheer force of momentum, and to avoid the blackness that plagued her whenever she didn’t keep busy.

She was one of the very few ponies who could walk through downtown Ponyville on this day without eliciting a single leer, and with bright eyes to greet her at nearly every corner. It was a small benefit in troubled times of being so well known and respected, but one she didn’t appreciate. She slid spectrally through the streets without any acknowledgment even of the very existence of others.

Her destination was the library, where she would find Twilight Sparkle, Rarity and Sweetie Belle awaiting her. She didn’t bother to knock, nor even say “hello” as she entered, simply lifting her head a few degrees more than usual as a deflated salutation.

Even by Twilight Sparkle’s standards, the library was oddly clean and organized, every book in its place and every counter and table spotless. Every pony had their own way to deal with grief.

Twilight was inappropriately cheery, or at least was presenting herself as such, when the group’s conversation met this welcomed interruption. Her usual thoughtful speech was guided by an intentional lyricism, in a hopelessly misguided attempt to keep her struggling friends’ drowning spirits above water. It seemed to be working on Rarity, or perhaps she was simply playing an act as well, for the benefit of her sister. In fact, Sweetie Belle was the only pony present whose attitude, withdrawn and visibly depressed, didn’t disgust Applejack.

“Applejack!” Twilight interrupted her quiet musing. “I’m so glad you came, maybe you’d like wings! I perfected the spell, I’m just sure they–”

Something snapped. Her detachment gone in an instant, Applejack’s neck seized in anger, her now-firey green eyes piercing through her unwitting antagonist. “Maybe y’all should focus your magic on figurin’ out who killed my sister, and not petty trash nopony cares about!”

All three unicorns retreated from Applejack’s inferno, but mercifully, it was short lived. Her head once again drooped, all the anger that had flowed so readily from her once again replaced by isolation.

“I’m sorry.” Twilight paused, unsure of both her convictions and her confidence. “I’m trying. Princess Celestia sent a guard from Canterlot to assist me, and he had some theories,” Applejack didn’t notice her sidelong glance at Sweetie Belle, “but nothing solid enough to work on. We’ll find her. Or him. Please, Applejack, believe me. I just don’t want to see everypony fall apart. Whoever she is, she’s only won if she tears apart our friendships.”

Applejack snorted indignantly. Twilight was actually overjoyed by it, as it was the only emotion she’d expressed since leaving Fluttershy’s funeral that wasn’t strictly anger or desolation. It was a slow struggle to rebalance a group in emotional turmoil, but an achievable one.

“Um, have you seen Pinkie Pie?”

“Hi, Mrs. Cake.”

Unsurprisingly, the limp blue form of the baker uttered no response, lying motionless in a sterile bed, attached to all manner of machinery. It was an odd atmosphere. There was sound all around, from ponies and from their technology, a constant and vibrant reminder of how much everypony relied on and was in the care of each other. And yet, it felt damnably lonely to Pinkie Pie. In a room, in a building, which was the very quintessence of pony compassion, she just felt alone. Then again, all of Ponyville had felt damnably lonely to Pinkie Pie for several weeks.

“I talked to the doctor today. I don’t know if he told you.” She bit her lip. Was it her place to tell this to a pony who had helped her so much through the years? A tear tickled the corner of her eye, threatening to escape, but she held it back. She didn’t want to appear weak, even though nopony could see her.

“He said you might never wake up.”

She paused, as if awaiting a response. Of course, none was forthcoming. Her eyes drifted to the window, where somepony had closed the curtains, casting a rather unpleasant green glow on the entire room. It was a familiar shade of green, one which she remembered Rarity having described as “garish” on two separate occasions.

“But he also said you might be able to hear me. And I thought, it must be really lonely, lying in this hospital room, all alone. I … I hate to be alone.”

Again she paused, but this time to adjust the position of the little tan foal that slept peacefully in her forelegs. His tan coat and brown hair actually looked quite nice in the green glow, at least to Pinkie’s less-than-discerning eye. It reminded her of one of the times Rarity had described the color as garish. The fashionista had said it was garish on her, claiming her pink coat didn’t go well with green. As always with fashion, Rarity had been right, and the whole group had paid the price. It was only by luck that they were able to remedy the situation with a bit of ingenuity by Fluttershy.

Fluttershy…

Pinkie shook her head, trying to keep the pleasant thoughts that resided there by her nature more numerous than the unpleasant ones.

“Twilight came to see you earlier. Oh, I guess if you can hear me, then you could hear her too.” Pinkie pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, pointlessly affecting an expression that nopony could appreciate anyway. “She’s not angry at you,” she recalled the unicorn’s rather violent changes of temper, “just frustrated. It’s not your fault that you can’t tell us…”

Once again the room fell silent. Pinkie hummed a small melody to the rhythm of a fading heart monitor in an adjacent room. If she’d known the nature of the device, she may not have been so blithe, but ignorance, as it is said, is bliss. Making music in these gaps helped her imagine that she wasn’t alone.

Always so alone.

“Rainbow’s going to be a Wonderbolt tomorrow.” Glancing at a clock, she corrected herself. “Today. Well, she’s going to be in the competition, but of course she’ll win. I was gonna go,” she glanced from the foal in her forelegs to the mare in bed, “but I think maybe I’d rather just stay here with you. If you don’t mind.”

Even if Mrs. Cake could hear the unusually sober mare, she hadn’t the faculties to respond.

The foal Pinkie carried twisted and yawned, awaking from its nap with a warm gurgle. For a moment, she was scared that his new environment might startle him, but instead he looked around with wonderment, his wings flapping lazily.

“I brought Pound to see you. Say ‘momma,’ Pound. Say ‘momma!’”

“Mom–ma.”

It felt good to smile again.

“I guess we’ll have to go on without her,” Twilight sighed. She hated to leave Pinkie Pie out of things, but the it had been difficult to predict anypony’s behavior of late. “Is everypony ready?”

The group agreed unenthusiastically. There were fewer than Twilight had expected, or perhaps just fewer than she was accustomed to. This only made her task easier, however. She looked over the group, making sure nopony was missed or unaccounted for. Applejack looked unenthusiastic but prepared, idly playing with the bow in her hair. Rarity stood with exaggerated posture and poise, occasionally glancing at her sister. Sweetie Belle herself looked downright terrified, shivering slightly with her head in her hooves. She was also wearing saddlebags, with the green threading of their lining nearly bursting from whatever was inside. Twilight took note of the bags only because it would slightly affect the effectiveness of her spell; the filly’s attitude she noticed because it brought to mind another pony who had reacted similarly to the exact same spell.

“Ah just know my lot in life, that’s all. Earth ponies are supposed t’ keep their hooves on the earth.” That had been Applejack’s response, after no small deal of pressing the issue, when this spell was first used. The Applejack that stood before her now didn’t react that way to anything. This Applejack was like the discarded feathers from a molting pegasus, the detritus of her former self.

Twilight lamented being too busy, and frankly, not qualified, to better help her friends through this. But, putting this distraction on her mental checklist of problems to deal with later, she returned to the task at hoof. With only a modicum of focus required for this spell on so few ponies, she didn’t even bother to announce that it was beginning. With a quick flash of red-magenta light, the spell was finished almost as soon as it had started. She grinned artificially at her friends, whose appreciation, if present, was hidden.

A few seconds passed as her grin vanished.

“S-s-somepony’s gonna tell me when it’s over, r-right?”

Twilight and Rarity shared a knowing smile. An honest smile was a rare thing, and that fact only intensified the brief shared happiness. Twilight nudged Sweetie Belle with a hoof, causing the poor filly to jump to her hooves.

“It’s over, Sweetie Belle. Sorry to frighten you.”

“Really,” Rarity interjected, “a unicorn afraid of a little magic? We’ll have to work on that, Sweetie Belle.”

Not allowing one of the oldest sibling feuds in Ponyville once again spill over as it so frequently did, Twilight reintroduced the group to reality. “Well, let’s go! The balloon’s waiting out back. Oh, and so is Scootaloo.”

Sweetie Belle perked up at the opportunity to get out of the cramped library and have fun with her friend once more.

As the group shuffled out, they were all slightly startled to hear Applejack speak up once again. “Ah’ll meet y’all there in a minute.” Her ears were back, her lips twisted into a strange pursed grimace. “There’s somethin’ Ah’ve gotta take care of first.”

Rainbow Dash was, appropriately enough, in training. She had convinced herself that napping on a slowly-drifting cloud, staring listlessly into the stratosphere, was a form of training. After all, a pegasus needs to not merely to use the sky, but to know the sky. That’s what she always used to tell Fluttershy when trying to convince the timid creature to fly, anyway.

Her head tilted from the sky and to her side, where a yellow wing sat, appearing more lazy than she recalled it from before. In reality, of course, it was decaying, wilting under its own necrotic weight. Some time the next day, she expected, she would find it once again in perfect condition, like a ripe fruit freshly plucked from its tree. She was fully aware of Twilight’s little spell that kept the artifact unnaturally preserved, and Twilight probably knew that she was. But neither would say anything. It was all she had left.

“I wish you could be there to cheer me on, Fluttershy. I’ll try to make sure it’s awesome anyway. I promise.”

The wing was an unexciting conversationalist, being moderately more reticent even than its former master.

“Dash? Y’all up there?”

She recognized the voice instantly, of course, and tried to be as happy to hear it as she usually was. Happiness wasn’t so forthcoming, but she could act the role.

“Hey AJ!” It came out artificial sounding but not unpleasant, as she plummeted with all the grace of a boulder to the ground, beside her friend. “What’s up?”

Applejack had been so reclusive lately, it seemed as if she was trying to separate herself from her friends and memories, to bury herself in drudgery and avoid dealing with anypony but herself. The two were similar in many ways, and had been dragged through the same series of tragedies, but while Rainbow had by luck and force of friendship found a compelling distraction, Applejack had nothing but her own thoughts to dwell on. The pegasus’ attempts to help lift her friend’s spirits had all been rather dramatically unsuccessful, and as such, she just wasn’t sure what to expect.

She certainly wasn’t expecting the tight, friendly embrace she received.

“Ah just wanna thank ya, Dash.”

She was too stunned by the sudden show of compassion to respond.

“Ah don’t think ya understand how much Ah need this. How much we all need this.”

“Um,” Dash just stammered.

“Do Ponyville proud, Dash. She needs a hero.”

With another squeeze, Applejack pulled away from the embrace, whatever sentimental spirit had inhabited her flitting away as quickly as it had appeared. For a moment she just gazed piercingly into Rainbow’s eyes, as if judging the other’s intentions and merit. Rainbow’s wings twitched and jerked, as if they’d been slept on at an odd angle; this moment of stress was only exacerbating the strain from her less-than-strenuous training regimine. As much as she loved crowds, performing was easier with less judgment.

The glare didn’t last long, as the life drained once again from Applejack’s eyes. She turned and walked slowly away without another word.

Rainbow put a hoof to her head. “No pressure, Rainbow Dash.”

Although she would never admit it, Scootaloo was becoming excited about Sweetie Belle’s little scheme. She imagined the undeniably cool rainbow explosion that was the natural result of the sonic rainboom, and acknowledged privately that adding another explosion, one of bright and colorful flower petals, was at least kind of cool. And besides, nothing could dampen Rainbow Dash’s never-ending coolness.

The basket of the hot air balloon, which Twilight seemed to draw from nowhere whenever non-pegasus flight or an enormous bit of violet scenery were necessary, was not really intended to comfortably occupy all four mares and three fillies that currently resided in it, but it still provided enough room for the Cutie Mark Crusaders to talk in relative private. Scootaloo looked over the side, her eyes darting from cloud to cloud and her stubby wings flapping uncontrollably. Apple Bloom kept begging her sister to let her climb up on the older mare’s back for a better view, but Applejack would have none of it. Twilight and Rarity just laughed at this display, at least until Pinkie Pie, ever frolicsome, tried climbing onto their backs, claiming between giggles that she also wanted a better view. Sweetie Belle was less enamored with the height, preferring to position herself such that she could only see the sky above them, and not below.

Finally convinced that she wouldn’t get the pony ride she was hoping for, Apple Bloom joined her two fillyhood friends again.

“So,” she whispered excitedly, “did ya get the flowers ready?”

“Yeah, did you?”

Sweetie Belle’s head tilted in confusion. “Um, did I what?”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes overdramatically. Sometimes Sweetie Belle just didn’t seem to pay attention.

“Did you get the flowers ready?” she asked with a slight twang of umbrage.

The filly unicorn beamed, an easy task with her bright white coat. She opened her saddlebag and let her companions peek inside. Exactly as Scootaloo expected, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of rose petals. They were in every color of the rainbow and then some, and even seemed to gleam in the sun. Impulsively and before Sweetie Belle could react, she reached into the bag, hoping to examine the beautiful tidbits in closer detail. She received a nasty prick to the side of her leg for her troubles.

Putting the wound to her mouth instinctively, she found the bitter taste of blood. “Ouch!” she hissed, “Didn’t you remember to take out the thorns?!”

Even though the balloon had left Ponyville much earlier than Rainbow Dash, it was arriving at its destination much later. Although Twilight’s magic could keep the otherwise aimless device on course, speed was not its forte.

The cloud coliseum looked strange. It was barren, with its many rows of vaulted clouds almost entirely vacant. The whole construction was such a perfect milky white, the only way in which it usually distinguished itself from the surrounding sky was the presence of ponies, so in this state it looked less like a coliseum than simply an unusually large cloud. Still, Twilight knew the area well, and navigated effortlessly to a suitable disembarkment platform.

“Twilight, dear, are you quite sure this is the right place?” Rarity scanned carefully, trying to catch a glimpse of anything recognizable. Clouds being ever ephemeral by nature, it was unlikely that she would be able to match any details to her foggy recollection, so everything seemed strange and foreign. “Shouldn’t there be a crowd?”

“Rarity,” Twilight chuckled, “this is a private competition. Only judges, competitors, friends and family members are allowed.”

“Actually,” she admitted with a poorly concealed blush, “I had to pull some strings just to get all of you in.”

The group trotted together into the coliseum, its sheer unused size becoming a bit overwhelming. With no guard rails and little in the way of walking paths, it wasn’t especially well suited to flightless ponies, so after entering, Rarity turned to make sure that her sister was keeping pace.

She gasped dramatically. “Sweetie Belle! Sweetie Belle, where are you?! Girls, the fillies–”

“Are you sure you know how to do this, Scootaloo?”

“Sure, I’ve seen Applejack and Apple Bloom do it plenty of times!”

She swung the length of pilfered rope in circles around her head, with one eye closed to concentrate her aim. She looked like she was about to fall over, which did little to instill Sweetie Belle’s confidence.

With a mighty heave, she threw the lasso far into the air, and perfectly snagged a cloud, which had previously been placed by Rainbow Dash. Even she hadn’t expected to do so well, so she looked more shocked than boastful.

“Wow! That was so cool!”

Together, they dragged down the cloud, and put their plan into motion. It was a simple and relatively fast process, and one which Sweetie Belle convinced Scootaloo to allow her to do alone. There was no need, after all, to risk further hurting her friend. Finishing quickly, the pair returned the cloud it to its original location by a very similar feat of filly talent.

Everything had been put away and hidden when the others found the pair.

“Sweetie Belle!” Rarity’s voice carried relief and anger in equal quantities, “Don’t you ever scare us like that again! I thought you’d fallen!”

“Sorry, Rarity.” Even as she bowed her head in simulated shame, she and Scootaloo shared a knowing glance. This was going to be a fun day.

Rarity let the matter drop, and the whole group decided that their current spot, in one of the highest rungs of the coliseum, was a perfect vantage point for Rainbow’s stunt. They settled in to watch the others compete, wordlessly as none were in the mood for conversation.

“An announcement, everypony,” Spitfire hollered through a bullhorn. Nopony had noticed her entry, which is an impressive stunt on its own given that her mane lived up to her name. “Due to, err, unforeseen circumstances–”

Soarin’ pushed her aside, interjecting his own spin. “Due to unforeseen Rainbow Dash!”

Shoving the impetuous lower-ranking Wonderbolt away from the horn, Spitfire continued her original explanation. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be only two competitors, so this will be a very quick selection process, and as you can see, is a very small crowd. Competitor number one, you’re up!”

The group watched lackadaisically as an amber pegasus took to the skies. She was fast, she was daring, and she displayed an extremely impressive talent for sculpting clouds in a whirlwind of energy and precision. The fact that she brought out from one unwitting cumulus a bust of Rainbow Dash spoke volumes about her confidence in winning, or lack thereof, but it was an impressive display nonetheless.

When her little floating sculpture garden was complete, she halted midair, bowed politely to the tiny assemblage, and then flew right into the midst of them.

“Hi, I’m Nimbushapes, but my friends just call me Nimbus.” She spoke with a high, lilting voice that made her bubbly personality almost infectious. “You must be Rainbow Dash’s friends!”

“Oh, yes,” Twilight began, “I’m–”

“Twilight Sparkle! Not too many lavender unicorns who can walk on clouds, you’re bound to make a reputation that way!” She giggled as Twilight’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment and humility.

“Well. That was a very impressive performance, Nimbus. I particularly–”

“Yeah yeah, whatever.” She put a hoof in the air, dismissively. Twilight would have been frustrated by the constant interruption if not for the undiluted mirth that seemed to emanate from the jubilant pegasus. “I only entered because I needed an excuse to see Rainbow Dash compete! I keep hearing about her sonic rainboom, but I’ve never seen one! I’m so excited!”

To emphasize, she ran circles around the group with her forelegs spread wide in imitation of wings. It was a rather silly imitation, considering the fact that she had real wings to work with, but apparently that notion had flown away from her a long time ago, along with the rest of her common sense. After gaining considerable speed, she leapt into the air with a dramatic yell of “boom!” and spread her legs and wings wide to show a simulated explosion. She span as she fell back to the cloud below. By the time she sprung back to her feet, she’d drawn a small monochrome rainbow in the cloud canvas.

Twilight, Rarity and even Applejack were beginning to get a bit dizzy from the Pinkie-Pie-esque behavior dancing over their heads, and so were glad to be pulled away from this display by the announcement they’d been waiting for.

“Rainb– err, competitor number two. You’re up!”

The routine was simple. Heck, it wasn’t even a routine. She was just going to perform a sonic rainboom, do a flyover for emphasis and show, then land dramatically and accept her nomination into the Wonderbolts. What more could be necessary? Even in the light of everything else that had happened, this, she was sure, would be the greatest day in her life.

Although she’d performed this stunt several times, it still required intense concentration. Usually this was an annoyance, but for this competition, at this time, and with her friends cheering just a tiny bit less loudly than they would have been under different circumstances, being able to concentrate and block out the world was a relief.

With a rainbow-trailed burst, she bolted into the sky, flying fast enough that even the mere act of ascent would have dazzled the crowd, had there been any. With powerful thrusts of her wings, she pushed herself until the air was thin and cold, and the coliseum a speck of cloud floating lazily in the distance. And she stopped, hovering in the air.

It was peaceful. But it was lonely.

Now the real show began. With the same force, the same exertion, she pushed herself with gravity, plummeting towards the distant earth. As her destination became closer, she made some final gut judgments of her speed and timing, before the wind robbed her of her sight. She pushed shut her eyes, both to block the sting of the passing air and to avoid any damage when she hit the cloud that served as her rainboom marker. Her timing was perfect, her descent now solely in the hands of gravity, so all that was left for her was to enjoy the incredible rush of wind and sensation of freefall. No matter the circumstance, this moment was perfection. Flight was her only true bliss.

As her nose hit the cloud, she felt a familiar sensation of cold moisture, the feeling of a normally-solid puff giving way to her superior will. But something was amiss. The feeling was more poignant than usual, sharper and more precise. And although time usually slowed its fervent pace for her during these stunts, it was particularly slow during this one. The strange feeling continued, and in fact only went deeper, leaving her nose and soon her sinuses, and adding a new, sharp sensation to the back of her throat. She cracked open an eye for just long enough to catch a glimpse of gleaming silver, before that sight was replaced by a now-familiar feeling in that eye.

For the briefest fraction of a second, there was fear. Just a small inkling of concern, a trepidation over this new experience. It had no opportunity to evolve into the terror it should have been. As the sensation pushed back further, getting lost somewhere behind her eye sockets, she found that that moment of mild fear was gone, and all sensation was replaced with euphoria. Time sped slightly, no longer crawling, as the cold, sharp feelings grew in number. One in a hoof, then in her chest, then at her side, her neck, her shoulder, her hip. The chill in her spine that usually accompanied these feats was amended by this new chill, and it was exciting. It was exhilarating. This was her moment, this was her day, nothing else mattered, she would be successful, she would be a Wonderbolt.

The cone of gust around her snout tightened.

It smelled like rust, but the rust was joy.

Her cheeks felt wet and sticky.

It didn’t matter. This moment was ecstasy.

There was a burst.

The name “Rainbow Dash” would always be known, the only pegasus in history to perform a sonic rainboom.

Pinkie Pie woke from a restless sleep at the yelp of an innocent foal. She’d bumped it slightly with her right hind leg, twitching in her slumber.

“No … no no no …”

Her left ear twitched with it.

“No! No no no no no!”

Pound squealed in delight as Pinkie veritably threw him into his saddlebag foal carrier. He was a pegasus after all, and pegasi usually loved speed. She ignored the sudden strain, and made no goodbyes, jumping to her hooves.

Then her tail twisted of its own accord. She fought to keep it untangled.

“Nononononononono!”

She bolted from the hospital room. A nurse, with the pile of papers he had been carrying, were knocked to the floor, but she ignored him. She could barely run. The twitching was so strong, she was effectively limping on three legs while dragging the fourth.

She knew this combo well, but knew equally well that there was nothing she could do about it.

“Rainbow Dash!”

“Wooooooooooooooooooooow!”

Nimbus was beside herself with jubilance, bumping into the Ponyville ponies as she zipped between them, hollering. Her gaiety was as infectious as her bubbliness, and the whole group was in improved spirits. They listened and watched in awe as the booming explosion of the trick, emphasized by the slight puff of a disappearing cloud, was followed by a ring of rainbow, spreading at the speed of sound.

Then there was a second ring. This one of a single color, a bright red that shone against the sunlight. It spread much more slowly, forming a mist that gradually fell as it expanded, like a colorful rain. It took several seconds to reach the group, bathing them in now-pink Celestial light that danced with the tumultuous flow of the mist above. It crawled through the air towards them, while everypony still just enjoyed the impressive show. None noticed that Dash’s trademark rainbow arc hadn’t followed the initial burst, too distracted by this new and fascinating addition.

Finally, the mist sank to the level of the clouds, lightly coating them in the pigment. Every pony present was dyed a reddish shade of their natural color, creating a pink Rarity and Sweetie Belle and an umber Applejack and Scootaloo. Twilight and Rarity stared at each other, the fact that something was desperately wrong slowly dawning on them. Nimbus and Scootaloo were collectively being too overjoyed to notice the increasingly-worried expressions around them, as the older pegasus spun her excited younger compatriot by the forelegs, shouting “Rainbow Dash!” repeatedly and in unison. Sweetie Belle stood near them, but affected a neutral expression, more of confusion than anything else.

Applejack was the first to realize the truth. She hadn’t worn more than a small smile before, and that faded into an agape glare at her own forehoof, now understanding exactly what it was covered in.

“Rainbow…”

The second to see the truth was Twilight. She unthinkingly glanced to the fillies. One seemed inappropriately happy. This was bad, she thought. Very bad. Very, very bad. And it was her fault. How could she have not seen it? How can she have not believed?

The third to see the truth was a new visitor, who swooped in with bravado. His stern expression as he cast a quick glance over the group was an odd complement to his bright blue coat, pink mane and silver armor, which bore the regal crest of Princess Celestia. After summing up the situation, he glared at Twilight Sparkle.

She knew what he was asking. She knew what he would say. She didn’t want to hear it. All she did was nod.

He nodded in return, then cleared his throat and spoke in a commanding baritone. “By the power vested in me by their Royal Highnesses, Princesses Celestia and Luna, I place you in the custody of the Equestrian Punitive Council. You are hereby under arrest.”

Scootaloo barely reacted as he pulled her away from her new comrade, then dragged her into the air and towards Canterlot. It was obvious that she had no idea what was going on, and even seemed to be enjoying herself.

Everypony else stared at Twilight.

“I– I refused to believe him. I refused to believe him. And because of me, Rainbow Dash…”

The carnage was indescribable. A cyan foreleg swung pendularly from a tree branch, tangled dangling tendons preventing it from falling to the ground. It left a line of blood droplets in the dirt below, which just served to highlight the butchery there. A bit of ribcage stuck out where it had hit the ground at terminal velocity, the once-solid organs behind it spilling through in a purplish goo. Teeth were visible dotting the landscape for yards around. Some bits of cyan and red had a clear source, but no clear description, having been so severely pulverized that all that remained was puddles of pureed meat with the consistency of porridge.

The mostly-intact right half of Rainbow’s face and skull had landed on its side, exposing her final expression to the agast ponies unlucky enough to be its witness. Twilight was sitting over it, having been staring at it inanimately for minutes. It was smiling. Perhaps even smirking. Even in this state, it was undeniably, unquestionably, Rainbow Dash.

The phrase “she died doing what she loved” floated to Twilight’s mind. It did little to comfort her.

Rarity had dragged a seemingly confused and terrified Sweetie Belle some distance away, and was trying to wait out the others as she and her sister shared in each others’ tears.

In the center of all this, surrounded by mutilation, Applejack lay prone. In her mouth was the end of what remained of Rainbow’s tail. She tugged at it languidly, feeling how little resistance there was.

She wanted to cry. She didn’t know how any more.

Author's note: This chapter is subtitled, "In Which Clavier Needs 5,000 Words To Remember That This Was Supposed To Be a Gorefic"

Chapter 7

Author's notes: Sorry this took so long! In spite of claiming I wasn't going to, I wrote another story in the interim. Don't read that other story if you have any respect for me at all.

There is a serenity in death. Nonexistence is without sorrow.

Sweetie Belle lay in her room, crying. Truly, honestly crying, for the first time in months. She couldn’t understand what was different, why this wrenched at her gut when nothing else had, why she’d felt no remorse for what she’d done until her best friend was falsely blamed.

She had killed. She had watched ponies die by her actions. She’d reveled in their torment and found joy in their cessation. The death of a pony can, of course, draw that foulest of emotions, sorrow, from her friends, but is that not poor sympathy? Why mourn for those who can never know, can never reciprocate? Why cry for those who can never cry for you? Why must one endure the worst of life in recognition of those who cannot?

No, losing a friend to death could be no tragedy, for that friend was freed from the tragedy of life.

What sadness she’d simulated in the past to panickingly hide her actions was a trick and a trifle; its theatrics were shallow compared to this heartfelt performance. This was altogether different. The tumultuous world spinning around her refused to abate as she tried to push this pained new feeling out through her tears.

There is no sorrow in death. There can only be sorrow in life. There must be sorrow in life.

It’s not that she hadn’t considered the consequences of her actions. She knew full well what she was doing. She tried to convince herself that she was upset over losing a valuable resource, and not over losing a friend. But that wasn’t the truth.

Sorrow, like life, should be fleeting. For all the suffering she’d caused, none of her former victims were still in pain. All but one were abiding the serenity of death. But her latest, a victim of circumstance, was locked away somewhere, alone, confused and terrified.

Her best friend. And it was her fault.

Alone in her room, Sweetie Belle cried. So dreadfully alone.

“Twilight?”

Weeks of pent up emotions were pouring out of the unicorn, who was finally allowing herself the luxury of dropping her stoic image. It was a heavy burden to be rid of, yet she could still feel it in the room with her. It didn’t protect her anymore. It just frightened her. She sobbed into her pillow, as much begging that force to leave as mourning for her friends.

“Come on, Twilight, at least look at me.”

She contemplated this demon’s control over her. She’d been so cold, so detached, so heartless. And to her friends, to ponies she loved. Why was it so easy to take her friends for granted, to trample on their emotions while she tried, and failed, to do right for them? Had she ever even told Fluttershy how proud she was, or how awed she was every time she was so lucky as to witness the pegasus’ incredible oneness with nature? Had she ever told Rainbow Dash how inspired she was just to see the bravery, loyalty and even bravado in that daredevil– nae, hero’s eyes? Had she ever told Zecora how much she’d learned just by seeing such a new and unique perspective on life? By Tartarus, had she ever even told the Cakes that their carrot cake could always brighten her day?

Of course not.

“Please, Twilight. You need to eat.”

Had she ever told–

“Spike! Oh, Spike, I’m so sorry!” She grabbed his plush form into an unexpected and mostly unwanted hug. She was still crying, but had remorse in her voice. “Spike, have I ever told you that you’re the most helpful friend anypony could ever hope for? That I would never be able to get along without you, that I’m so sorry I could never teach you what it means to be a dragon but I’m so happy you can stay here with us? That you–”

“Whoa, whoa! Slow down!”

She stopped, and just held him, crying into his spines. He stood, dumbly, not knowing how to react to her sudden outburst, and not wanting to upset her further. She continued to mumble odd compliments until she calmed down.

“I’m sorry, Spike. I’m sorry for everything.”

“But–!”

She squeezed him tightly, cutting off his response, before letting him go. With a renewed vigor, she trotted towards the stairs leading out of her loft.

Rainbow’s funeral was to be the next day. The Wonderbolts had insisted on giving her a “proper farewell,” though Twilight had no idea what that was supposed to mean. How can a farewell be at all proper for a pony killed in her prime? Then again, she’d become dreadfully accustomed to these improper funerals.

Arriving unsteadily at the bottom of the stairs, she was surprised to see a familiar, light blue pegasus. His shock of pink hair was disheveled under a black beret which covered one ear, giving him an unbalanced look. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed over, floating above dark circles. For the first time since Twilight had known him, he was not wearing his armor. He looked surprisingly weak, almost frail, without it, though that was perhaps just a psychological trick of the armor itself. His cutie mark was a gavel, which seemed to Twilight appropriate enough.

He had entered the library without invitation, but Twilight wasn’t capable of being angry with him for it. She had tucked away the bit of her psyche that harbored ill will towards him when it had become apparent that he was right all along. For all his bluster and pomp, he just wanted what was best for everypony.

That’s what she wanted, too. But he had succeeded where she had failed.

Worse still, she had held him back. Because of her, Rainbow Dash…

He was hoofing through Twilight’s now dog-eared copy of The Criminal Mind: An Historical Study of Antisocial Behavior and Violent Psychoses, completely unaware that Twilight and Spike had appeared beside him. He had a tired and dour expression, like a pony who had studied all night only to realize that they no longer had any cognizance of what they were studying. The tap of a claw on his shoulder roused him with a start, but he didn’t turn around, only adjusting his chapeau in some motion which may have served as a salutation had he been facing the right direction.

Eschewing all niceties, he spoke in a voice that was oddly as deep as it was weak. “You’ve made a lot of notes here, Twilight Sparkle.”

The crying had stopped, so Rarity gently opened the door to her sister’s bedroom and peeked inside. Her attempts to be consolatory before then had been unhelpful, but this seemed like the appropriate time to broach the very touchy subject of her sister’s friend’s imprisonment.

It was not, in fact, the appropriate opportunity. The crying had stopped because Sweetie Belle wasn’t there.

Having snuck out the window and scampered precariously down a tree, she was now galloping through the back alleys of Ponyville, being drawn somewhere by memories. She was quite good at staying out of sight, even with her heavy saddlebags slowing her down, and could weave through the meandering rows of brightly lit and colorful houses without a second glance from anypony.

The run itself was relaxing. For all her sudden remorse, the deathly silence in the small town was still a testament to her accomplishments, and made her feel good about herself. For an instant she was almost jealous of Scootaloo.

That dissipated quickly, however.

She reached a wooden platform, near the edge of town, where the carriages to rural areas stopped.

She had only stopped crying because she’d run dry, and now she gasped and panted as much from withering sobs as from the exertion of her unplanned run. This scene was so familiar to her, so welcoming. And yet on this day it did little to calm her frayed nerves.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders… something,” she sputtered weakly.

“Yay.”

“You can stop worrying, though.”

This room had never become comfortable to Pinkie Pie, yet she was drawn to it repeatedly. She was quite certain that Mrs. Cake needed her company, and was dedicated to providing that company for as long as she could. Her life now was split between taking care of Pound Cake and crying, so taking Pound to see his mother was the only comfort she had left.

It’s difficult raising a child under any circumstances, but some circumstances are more difficult than others. Pound Cake was precocious, and though his foster mother had almost boundless energy to keep up with him, it was now countered by a deepening depression. He had taken to flying whenever a bottle was presented to him, then crying when he wasn’t fed, and Pinkie had taken to looking constantly frazzled, so weary she was almost sick.

“They caught her. They caught Scootaloo. So you can stop worrying and just get some rest.”

Mrs. Cake was quite restful whether she wished to be or not, so Pinkie’s recommendation was mostly unnecessary. At this point, the increasingly-unbalanced mare had forgotten, or perhaps merely lost track of, the fact that her comatose friend was incapable of response, and regularly had conversations as if they were a true dialog. The thin cord that normally kept her from falling over the precipice of insanity was fraying, and she gnawed at its last loop bound tightly around her hoof. Remaining affixed wasn’t any fun, anyway.

“No, no, no,” she replied to some imagined question, “it was all Twilight and that weird guard. I guess maybe I helped a little.”

She smiled and blushed slightly at the compliment, before going back to tending to the foal. He was constantly trying to fly away, but each time a swift pink hoof brought him back into place. His presence causing her psyche to once again settle back to sanity, she was momentarily aware of her conversational partner’s state.

“I guess everything must seem pretty bad the way I put it. But now we’ve finally got something to smile about. I think… I think I can help get everypony back to normal.”

She nodded with false confidence, once more dragging Pound back from his brief foray with the sky.

There was a loud crash, startling Sweetie Belle back to alertness. After a moment of glaring in the wrong direction to determine where the sound had come from, a muffled “whoops” drifted through the air behind her, and she spun on one hoof.

Derpy Hooves, upside-down and fluttering her wings uselessly, was half buried in the rubble of one corner of the carriage stand. It was miraculous that she could so routinely crash and yet never break anything beyond her already damaged brain, but here she was again, ever bubbling over with incomprehensible enthusiasm. Sweetie Belle walked pensively to her, asking, “uh, are you OK?”

Derpy was not the smartest of ponies, nor was she the most coordinated of ponies, but she had an intuitive nature that others often and easily forgot about. So instead of replying to the question at hoof, she asked, “are you?”

It was a surprising question, and gave Sweetie Belle some pause. She had momentarily stopped crying to stare listlessly at a tree with familiar hack marks in it, but the redness around her eyes bore witness to her true feelings. She wasn’t OK. She wasn’t OK at all. She was reflecting on her past few weeks, lamenting that she could not once more gain the simple euphoria she’d felt before. She had lost her enthusiasm.

“No.”

Derpy nodded with what was probably an attempt at solemnity, but resulted in her losing her hoofing and nearly falling over. Embarrassed by her display, she lowered her head, staring at her hooves with one eye while the other wandered aimlessly in Sweetie Belle’s direction. She was difficult to take seriously, no matter how serious she wanted to be.

“You miss Scootaloo, huh?”

Although it was a miracle when Ponyville’s mailpony managed to actually deliver mail, she nonetheless had a way of understanding ponies that most others lacked. This skill is what kept her functioning in society in spite of all her deficiencies. Nopony could hold a grudge against her without her knowing it, understanding it, and in her own baffling way, rectifying it. And nopony could be sad for long with her ridiculous antics.

Sweetie Belle nodded at the question. Although it wasn’t precisely why she was sad, she did miss Scootaloo.

“Y’know, I don’t think it’s very nice.”

She furrowed her brows, as much to hold in the tears that were once more threatening escape as to display her confusion.

“Killing ponies.”

There it was again. Guilt. Her friend had been blamed for her actions. But there was nothing she could do.

Derpy looked up again, lips pursed and eyes oddly focused. She breathed slowly through her nose, deep in thought and uncharacteristic concentration. Neither spoke while she examined Sweetie Belle curiously.

“When I was a filly,” she uttered with careful enunciation which did little to hide her impediment, “there was a big fire at my house.”

She paused again, tilting her head as if to rattle thoughts out of her mind. “I was really scared, but mommy found me and pulled me out by the tail. When we got to the lawn I was really scared and tired so I just laid down.”

Her head bobbed to the opposite tilt, catching in the process a tear that had threatened to work its way out of her right eye. Her eyes were unfocused again, now crossed slightly and looking nowhere in particular. “Mommy went back though. She went back to find daddy.

“I never saw her again.”

Sweetie Belle did her best to affect her well practiced act of shock and dismay, but didn’t have the heart for it. She looked on, bored, wondering what the point of this conversation was to be.

“At the hospital they told me that breathing the smoke hurt my brain and they told me that mommy and daddy didn’t make it. I didn’t know what they meant then.

“But I don’t think it’s very nice to kill ponies. I really miss mommy and daddy, and everypony misses Apple Bloom and Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash and… um.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “But ponies are always yelling at me and it makes me sad.”

Once again her head bobbed to the opposite angle, but one of her eyes now focused on Sweetie Belle. “So I’m not gonna yell at you.”

Reality descended slowly on Sweetie Belle, as was frequently the case, and there was a moment of bitter silence as she considered the situation. She had always assumed that somepony would figure it out eventually, but of all the ponies, why did it have to be Derpy? Still, this new problem seemed exemplary for an old solution.

“Good morning, um…” Twilight suddenly realized that she had never so much as learned the guard’s name.

He acknowledged the greeting with a small nod, but continued to stare at the pages in front of him, occasionally flipping back and forth. He seemed to keep coming back to a particular page, though, as if it was of some great importance.

Twilight remembered the mission she’d developed before rousing herself minutes earlier, and decided that this enigma deserved her praise perhaps more than most ponies.

“Look, uh, sir, I’m sorry for how I treated you. You were right all along, and I should have trusted you. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you came to help us.”

He responded with a lackadaisical shrug. This noncommittal mannerism hurt Twilight more than she expected, but she pressed forward with her mission nonetheless.

“Thank you.”

This time he didn’t respond at all. He simply furrowed his brow and stared at the same page that he’d come back to dozens of times by now.

Curiosity finally overtook guilt, and Twilight asked, “what are you looking at?”

He pointed a hoof at the page, and she looked over his shoulder. She was familiar with this book, and knew the section instantly, as it was scribbled with various notes in every margin. But he pointed at a single passage.

A victim suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder will frequently exhibit symptoms of denial, sometimes culminating in delusions.

The word “victim” was underlined in Twilight’s handwriting, indicating some long lost stray thought she’d had. Whatever musings had put quill to page were now gone from her addled mind, so she didn’t know what this new reader was now trying to indicate with frustrating wordlessness.

“Yes… what is it?” she inquired with more volume than she’d intended.

He finally spoke again, in the same strained murmur he had before. “Something. I’m not sure. Something seems wrong.”

Thwack.

Derpy shrieked in unexpected pain and instinctively took off, flapping her wings too fast to control her flight with any precision. She almost immediately flipped head-over-hooves, crashing back into the carriage stand with a pained twist, as the axe embedded in her left thigh was wrenched out once again, falling to the ground under a sanguine shower.

Sweetie Belle smiled softly, watching from the grass as her pearly coat was stained a crimson pink. The blade landed by her forehooves, handle conveniently towards her. It beckoned her once more.

It felt freeing. It felt right. She was once again unfettered by guilt and malaise, and free to enjoy the niceties of life.

Reeling from shock, Derpy stared at her attacker in a rare moment of lucidity. Her eyes were perfectly focused, in spite of her inverted and concussed state, and she wore a pensive frown. She didn’t look scared or hurt, angry or even surprised. Her forehooves splayed beside her while one hind leg hung in the air and the other dangled unnaturally by her face, slowly dripping onto her snout. After a few seconds of staring, she sneezed, spreading a light vapor of bloody mucus on the formerly clean wood below her.

As entertaining as this image was, Sweetie Belle was not a patient filly, and was invigorated by this refound passion as well. Rather than eschewing bliss any longer, she lifted the axe once more, somewhat unsteadily as it was slick with familiar fluid, and aimed it again.

Derpy frowned.

Thwack.

The blade embedded in her belly put her precarious balance off kilter, and she began to sway. With each motion, steel slid further into her vital organs, one edge missing her heart by only trifling inches as it dug into her lung while the other pierced her intestines. Finally losing her balance, she fell prone, landing on the handle and in the process pushing the blade entirely through her. The handle found purchase in a knot in the wood while the blade hooked onto the base of her right wing and tugged it with inescapable intent. Her entire weight was suspended by the tendons and bone that kept it attached.

“Ouchie,” she muttered.

This simplistic utterance gave Sweetie Belle such a delight that she laughed openly, rolling on her back and allowing her saddlebags to fall to the ground. Her victim slumped further while she did this, leading her to recognize that there wasn’t much time left for jollity. She grabbed another axe from her bag between her teeth, hopped onto the stand, and trotted merrily around and in front of Derpy and gave a crooked grin through teeth clenched around ash.

One amber eye looked up at her through a stray lock of hair while the other drifted elsewhere. There was no prostration in it, nor surprise or fear. Only curiosity.

Derpy coughed uncontrollably, until blood and phlegm coating her muzzle. She shook slightly to loosen it, but in the process tore at the base of her wing. In pain, she convulsed and tore it further, also dislodging the opening to her stomach wound and causing an outpouring of lumpy red viscera. With another cough, her wing tore free, and she fell to the ground, a splatter of innards below her, an axe still standing proudly over her like a red and silver flag. Atop this flag, in lieu of its truck was a grey and red wing. This action, finally, led to a pained whimper, her first natural display of misery in the entire experience.

Nonetheless, through all of this, she spoke. “Will they let Scootaloo go?”

Sweetie Belle turned her head to the side, considering. A grin split her now blood-stained lips as she realized that this had been the solution all along. Surely they wouldn’t keep Scootaloo incarcerated if they found another body. “Of course!”

Derpy smiled. “I’m glad.”

She was still smiling when the axeblade split her shoulder blades and spine, digging through to her heart and killing her almost instantly.

Mourning is a tiring experience. Pinkie slept so deeply that even her foreboding twitches and paroxysms weren’t enough to wake her.