Pony Royale

Chapters

Chapter 0 (Prologue)
Chapter 1 (Part 1)
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 (Part 2)
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 (Part 3)
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 0 (Prologue)

List of tributes, Ponyville, 153rd annual Pony Royale

Stallions:
Big Macintosh
Carrot Cake
Filthy Rich
Flim
Snips
Flam
Snails
Caramel

Mares:
Fluttershy
Rarity
Twilight Sparkle
Rainbow Dash
Applejack
Pinkie Pie
Cheerilee
Trixie

Chapter 0

There was a series of gasps as the train rushed out of the tunnel, and into a large expansive valley. On the left-hand side of the train, one could see rolling green hills stretching out into infinity. On the right-hand side the ground quickly sloped upward into a massive, white, mountain range that towered over the valley floor. It was these sights that were the cause of the ponies’ exclamation. Such grand vistas were rarely seen from such a short distance away.

“Whatcha lookin’ at Twilight?” said Pinkie Pie (mare #6), snapping Twilight Sparkle (mare #3) out of the trance induced by the looming mountains overhead. Pinkie Pie was an energetic pony, never to be in one place for very long. Though she worked down at the Ponyville bakery with Mrs. and Mr. Cake (stallion #2), Pinkie was best known for her parties. There wasn’t a single pony in all of Ponyville that couldn’t call her a friend.

“Oh, the mountains I guess. I’ve never seen them up close before,” said Twilight.

“Booooring,” said Pinkie, “Anyways, where do you suppose we are?”

“Somewhere in between Ponyville and Canterlot,” said Twilight.

They were on their way to the Grand Galloping Gala, an event held in Canterlot once a year. Usually, only VIPs and bigwigs could get in, but Twilight happened to be a personal friend of Princess Celestia. In fact, she was one of her best (if not the best) students. Twilight had taken up residence in Ponyville to begin the next level of her studies in the magic of friendship and the Elements of Harmony.

Just then, Caramel (stallion #6) trotted over to Twilight and Pinkie’s seat. “What time do you think we’ll get there?” he asked, smiling shyly. Caramel was a relatively new resident of Ponyville, arriving only shortly after Twilight. He mostly kept to himself, taking up jobs here and there. Twilight had tried engaging him in conversation, but resulted in failure. Pinkie Pie seemed to be the only one he could talk to. Most ponies had assumed it was just Pinkie’s friendliness, but Twilight saw something else in the way he looked at her.

“I haven’t the slightest idea. This is a different route from what Princess Celestia normally has us take,” said Twilight, realizing all too late that Caramel just wanted an excuse to talk to Pinkie Pie, and had little interest in their estimated arrival time.

While Caramel engaged Pinkie Pie in a stuttered conversation, Twilight slipped back a daze, this time losing herself in the affairs of the ponies within the train. Up at the very front, Fluttershy (mare #1) sat on the right-hand window seat, next to Rainbow Dash (mare #4), who seemed to be engaged in a heated argument with Applejack (mare #5) across the aisle, most likely sports related. Fluttershy had little interest in the argument. Nature being her passion, she seemed content with gazing up at the snowy mountains. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were very close friends, mainly because they were both pegasi. Rainbow Dash was very competitive and athletic, although quite lazy as well. Rainbow Dash did her best to help Fluttershy be more assertive, while Fluttershy tried to improve Rainbow Dash’s work ethic.

Rainbow Dash would have been considered the most athletic pony in Ponyville if it wasn't for Applejack. Applejack lived on the apple orchard Sweet Apple Acres with her older brother Big Macintosh (stallion #1), her little sister Applebloom, and their grandmother Granny Smith. The orchard provided the Apple family with almost constant work. Applejack was honest and hardworking, but incredibly stubborn. It was this that led to the constant conflict between her and Rainbow Dash. Unfortunately, Applejack was an earth pony and Rainbow Dash was a pegasus so there wasn’t any fair way of settling the rivalry.

A couple rows back, Flim (stallion #4) and Flam (stallion #6) were preforming one of their spectacular sales pitches to Snips (stallion #5) and Snails (stallion #7), who were mindlessly chanting “Cider! Cider! Cider!” even though they had already witnessed the exact same pitch many times before. The Flim-Flam brothers were not the most respected ponies in Ponyville. A few months before, they had attempted to monopolize the cider business in Ponyville by trying to get rid of the Apple family’s modest cider stand. The scheme ended in failure when the residents of Ponyville refused to buy their cider.

Behind them, Trixie (mare #8) sat distraught and infuriated at the complete lack in constant praise coming from her ever-shrinking fan base. She was pretending to be completely oblivious to Snip and Snail’s lack of interest, and carried on with her magical illusions without an audience. Trixie was another less favored pony among the community. Her ego was far too big for her own good, and she often ended up undertaking the impossible for the sake of revenge.

Behind Trixie, Big Macintosh (stallion #1) and Cheerilee (mare #7) were sitting side by side, without a care in the world. Big Macintosh was not very talkative, and spent most of his time working at Sweet Apple Acres. Cheerilee was a teacher at the local school. She was loved by her students, one of whom happened to be Big Macintosh’s younger sister, Applebloom. They had become recently known as the town’s newest couple, and one of the latest accomplishments of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Twilight then shifted her gaze to the seats behind her.

Carrot Cake (stallion #2) and Filthy Rich (stallion #3) were sitting directly behind Twilight. Filthy Rich was consolidating Carrot Cake. Cup Cake (Carrot Cake’s wife) couldn't make it on this year’s trip to the gala due to the recent arrival of Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake. Pound Cake was a pegasus, and Pumpkin Cake was a unicorn, which made them quite the handful, especially for the two earth ponies. Despite the massive work load the newborn ponies brought with them, Cup Cake insisted that Carrot Cake go to the gala so he could tell her about it when he came back. As one may guess, Carrot Cake wasn’t the happiest about leaving his wife and children behind for several days.

“I’m sure their fine,” said Filthy Rich, “You’re going to worry yourself sick.”

“But what if something goes wrong?” cried Carrot Cake, “What if she needs me to fix the sink again?”

“You checked it before you left, didn't you?” said Filthy Rich, “If you’re so worried she couldn't handle the task, then why didn't you just hire a sitter, and then you could both come? I would gladly pay for it if you couldn't afford such a thing.”

“And put our babies in the custody of somepony we barely even know?” said Carrot Cake, “I know we let Pinkie Pie baby sit them that one time, but that was for not even one day, and Pinkie is a good friend of ours. But a complete stranger? Cup Cake would have none of it.”

“Then come now,” said Filthy Rich, “what’s done is done. Try to forget about it and have a good time at the gala.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Carrot Cake, dropping the subject, though it was clear he wasn’t any less anxious about the events that were transpiring back home.

Rarity (mare #2) was also in great distress, taking up two whole seats just to swoon. Surrounding her seat were her many bags, all opened up, with various articles of clothing and other “necessities” that almost any other pony would have thought unnecessary. “This is horrible!” she moaned, “One simply doesn’t just forget her eyelash curler!”

Rarity was a very well-known fashion designer in Ponyville, and made outfits for all of Equestria’s up and coming celebrities and pop-stars.

Taking pity on Rarity’s situation, Twilight Sparkle turned around to address her problem. “If it makes you feel any better, we’ll probably be in Canterlot in just a few more hours now, though I can’t know for sure,” said Twilight, “I’m sure you can buy one when we get there.”

“But I need one now!” Rarity complained.

“I don’t know what to tell you then. I would suggest borrowing somepony else’s, but everypony else has their luggage in the luggage car,” sighed Twilight, easily agitated by Rarity’s discomfort. This train ride had better end soon, thought Twilight, The gala will do us all good. I just hope it will turn out better than last year.

Turning her gaze away from the two worriers in the back of the train, Twilight once again stared out the window. They were nearing the other side of the valley, were they would enter another tunnel, to be once again shrouded in darkness for whoever knows how long.

They were in the tunnel. The train was almost completely dark, except for the small light coming from the conductor’s booth, at the very front of the train. Everypony was quiet. As Twilight shifted her gaze around the train, she saw that ponies who were moments before socializing were now completely asleep. They’d been travelling for a long time, but not long enough for anypony to be going to sleep, let alone the entire passenger population of the train. Her eyes shifted back up to the conductor’s booth. The conductor seemed to be wearing some sort of mask.

Is it, gas that is making us so sleepy? She thought. She was having trouble thinking. Her eyelids became very heavy. She looked over at Pinkie Pie. She was completely zonked out. Twilight had never seen Pinkie so peaceful. Looking past Pinkie, on the other side of the aisle, she saw Caramel, still conscious.

He was trying to get the window open, but to no avail. It was clear that he was becoming weaker by the second. I’ve got to help him, Twilight thought, but she could barely move. “Damn,” She heard Caramel mutter, as he finally gave in and drifted to sleep. Twilight struggled to keep her eyes open, but the temptation to let sleep take her was just too powerful. Her eyes drifted shut and remained closed.

The last thing she heard before she slipped into oblivion was a phone call the conductor was making. “Yes, we’ve got them all out cold. We should be arriving at the rendezvous point on time, so you can inform the Princess we’ll be starting soon.”

16 ponies remaining.

Author's Note

If you're reading this, then I hope that means you like my writing, which means you should keep on reading. I promise to finish this story, which is easy because it's already finished. There are three parts, each of which I will be publishing within a few weeks of each other. As you can see, part one is up already. So... yeah.

Chapter 1 (Part 1)

Part One

Start Game

“It is best to be both feared and loved; however, if one cannot be both it is better to be feared than loved.”

-Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Chapter 1

Twilight awoke to the sensation of a cold, smooth, surface against her face. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was darkness. It came to her attention that she happened to be in a seated position. A desk? Perhaps she fell asleep at her studies again? She sat up and realized that she wasn't in her room at all. As she looked around the room she recognized the familiar features of a classroom. There was a small light coming from the bottom the doorway leading into the hall. With what she could make out from the small light she saw a blackboard at the front of the room, as well as the metal glint of desks lining up and down the classroom in rows. To her surprise, Twilight noticed that there were figures sitting in all of the desks. As she became more and more confused by the situation, her breath became quicker, and her pulse became faster. She was becoming rather nervous about her situation.

Suddenly, her throat became aware of a cold metal object wrapped around her neck. She realized that it was quite small. As she struggled to free herself from the metal imprisonment, she began to panic. Twilight violently squirmed about in her desk, waking the ponies around her. She was going to suffocate! By now she was breathing heavily, fighting with every fiber of her being for each gasp of air. Was this the moment Twilight met her demise? No.

At last she came to her senses and realized that there was no immediate cause for danger, and that she was in no way suffocating. As Twilight’s breathing began to return to normal, she looked around the room again.

Other ponies were just awakening from their slumber, doing their best to get their wits about them. Among the ones nearest Twilight, she saw Filthy Rich sitting to her right, and Flim sitting to her left. Where had she seen them recently? The train! Then it all hit her harder than a bass drop, the train ride, the tunnel, the gas, and the conductor. Why were they here? What was happening? Why were they in a classroom? Where was this classroom?

Just then, the classroom lights flickered on, and the door opened. Everypony in the room groaned and covered their eyes. When Twilight’s eyes adjusted back to normal light, she saw a stallion standing at the front of the room, a unicorn like her, accompanied by four imperial guards, two on each side of him. He was a white stallion; one could say he was almost pale. His mane was the purest of black, and it hung limply from his head and neck. His eyes were a deep red, the kind of red that one can only be derived from that of pure blood. He wore a sinister smile that displayed an array of snow white teeth. His cutie mark was a red hoof print, still dripping with a red liquid, as though it had not been given enough time to dry before being propped upright. It was almost as if somepony had dipped their hoof in red paint, and brohoofed him right in the flank just before he walked in. The saying “looks can be deceiving” in no way did this stallion any justice in describing the utter atrocities that could barely be seen hidden beneath his plain face.

The guards at his side carried assault rifles, a sight rarely seen in equestria. The use of guns was banned even before the three tribes of ponies united to form Equestria, and had been long since forgotten, save for a few old books that gave nothing more than a slight reference to the use of such a weapon. Twilight had stumbled upon a very small quantity of these books in her never ending studies, but had one such book in her personal library. The topic had fascinated her. The idea that you could kill somepony, end a life, with nothing more than a small piece of metal was unbelievable. A tool used for destruction, the gun was quite simply a symbol of death. What’s more was that guns did not require any sort of magical activation, and were completely functional with the use of ancient sciences that exploited the laws of the universe in unexpected ways.

Upon the sight of these guns, the ponies stared in pure amazement at the weapons that were so foreign to them. This isn’t right. None of this is the way it should be, thought Twilight. She was perhaps the only pony in the room that even had a remote understanding of what the imperial guards were carrying.

“Good morning!” said the stallion at the front, “I am quite pleased to inform you that you sixteen ponies are the lucky residents of Ponyville who have been selected for participation in Equestria’s 153rd annual Pony Royale.”

Upon Equestria’s liberation over one thousand years ago, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna began their reign, together inducing a long awaited era of peace and stability. This allowed for Equestria to thrive, and it was this peace that was sustained up until Princess Luna’s banishment to the moon.

Following Luna’s exile, the citizens of Equestria became restless with the powers at be. They began to question the divinity of Princess Celestia, and some even sympathized with the banished Princess Luna. As conflict continued to escalate, it became clear to Princess Celestia that war was on the horizon, and Discord would once again rein anarchy and chaos throughout Equestria. The need for decisive action imminent, Celestia had to find a way to demonstrate her power over the ponies of Equestria. She needed to be sure of her subjects’ allegiance to the empire.

After bringing the subject to her most trusted advisors, Celestia drafted the PR (Pony Royale) act, in which every year one city within the grasp of Celestia’s power would provide a tribune of sixteen ponies, eight mares and eight stallions, as a symbol of loyalty to her divine rule. The villages, knowing nothing of their tribune’s fate, saw this as an opportunity to prove their loyalty to their princess, and jumped at the chance to be acknowledged by her. The point was simple: if the villages thought they could prove their loyalty through such a sacrifice, then it was a given for them to receive special treatment, meaning it was in their best interests to comply. Through this act, Celestia hoped to spread love for her reign, but more importantly, fear of her empire.

“Pony Royale?” asked Pinkie Pie (mare #6), her voice showing anticipation for something fun. But despite Pinkie’s optimism, Twilight felt that whatever this was, it would not be considered fun. In fact, she could almost feel a ticking clock in the back of her mind. Counting down to the moment when blood will be spilt and all will be lost.

“That’s right,” the mysterious pony said. “Over the next few days, you are going to kill each other until there is just one of you left.”

Twilight’s heart sank. She’d heard stories of the mysterious “Pony Royale” tournament. When Twilight was a filly in Canterlot, the topic was the subject of rumors for many cliques in her school. Things like “You’d better not act naughty in front of the teachers, or else you’ll get picked for the pony royale!” and “Oh her? I bet she was picked for the pony royale,” were often tossed amongst groups of taunting colts and fillies in the hallways. For a long time, Twilight had even believed the stories herself, but as she grew closer to Celestia, she dismissed them as fiction. After all, how could the Princess allow such a thing? She was reminded of something. What was it? She’d heard the conductor say it on the train. “Yes, we’ve got them all out cold. We should be arriving at the rendezvous point on time, so you can inform the Princess we’ll be starting soon.” The Princess. Did she know about this?

“We’re on an island in the middle of the ocean, approximately ten miles in diameter,” the pony at the front of the classroom continued, “There is a small abandoned village on the south end of the island but make no illusions; everypony you see in this room, plus about twenty more imperial guards, is the entire current population of the island.”

“This doesn’t sound fun at all!” Pinkie burst out.

“Shut up!” screamed the mysterious pony, rather blatantly. Twilight felt the clock in the back of her mind get faster, as though it was rather urgently trying to reach zero. “I will have no more interruptions for the remainder of the lecture. Now, as I was saying, we are the only ones on the island. It was evacuated several months ago, and has since then been searched heavily. Also, those collars around your necks are what we use to monitor your position, and to kill you if we chose to do so.” Everypony’s attention was once again diverted to the collars around their necks. “One spell from me, and three blades locked up inside the collar all lash out at once, cutting your neck in three separate places,” he chuckled to himself, “On more than one occasion I’ve seen the head come completely off. Take this as a warning: if you make any attempt at escape or disabling those collars, I’ll kill you.

“On a more serious note, upon the game’s beginning, I will begin reading off names every two minutes, alternating between stallions and mares.” He pointed to a pile of black daypacks in the front corner of the room, next to the door. “Upon hearing your name, you will come to the front of the room, grab a daypack, and promptly exit the building. Once you make it outside, I expect your primary focus to be to kill as many ponies as you can.”

“Now wait just a second mister!” Pinkie Pie once again burst out.

“I said quiet!” shrieked the pony, while at the same time retrieving a knife from the reaches of his subconscious, and hurling it at a supersonic speed towards Pinkie Pie. The knife landed right between her eyes with a force strong enough to throw her head back at and unnatural angle, leaving a trail of spattered blood arcing across the ceiling. Almost a second later, her lifeless body slid sideways out of the desk and lay crumpled on the floor. Twilight now understood the meaning of the mysterious pony’s cutie mark.

“Each daypack has water, food, a flashlight, and a map of the island,” he continued as if nothing had happened, “Each pack also has one weapon, ranging from switch blades to assault rifles.”

Twilight couldn’t believe she was still listening to this stallion’s monologue. Pinkie was lying dead with a knife embedded in her skull, and yet all she could do was continue paying attention to this “teacher”.

Twilight snapped out of another trance and scanned the seats in front of her. In the front left corner, Big Macintosh (stallion #1) hung his head in sorrow, looking straight at the desk beneath his massive nose. Fluttershy (mare #1) was strangely calm, though she wore an expression of nervousness, as though she was being judged. Carrot Cake (stallion #2) looked stunned. He stared straight forward, eyes wide, pupils shrunk. Sweat dripped down his face, and was beginning to accumulate on the surface of his desk. Rarity (mare #2) was face-down on the desk, her face buried in her hooves. Sobbing and sniveling could be heard coming from between her folded forelegs. Filthy Rich (stallion #3) was sitting just to the left of Twilight. His expression was similar to Carrot Cake’s, though he looked slightly more composed, as though he might be trying to prepare himself for the events that lay ahead.

Twilight stole a glance backward and saw Flim (stallion #4) mouthing a distressful conversation back one row to his brother, Flam (stallion #6). The nearby Snips (stallion #5) and Snails (stallion #7) duo was in much worse condition. Snips was paralyzed my fear, curled into a ball on his desk, shaking like a candle in a hurricane. Snails was looking to Flim and Flam for guidance but not receiving any. Rainbow Dash (mare #4) was utterly shocked. She stared straight forward, hooves quivering. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Her friend had died. Nothing else mattered. Applejack (mare #5) stared down at her desk, mimicking her older brother, as though it were a family trait. Cheerilee (mare #7) sat weeping at her desk. Twilight could not describe with words the cries of sheer sorrow that came at just a whimper from Cheerilee’s desk at the back of the room. Caramel (stallion #8) and Trixie (mare #8) sat next to each other. Caramel sat slouched back, with a neutral expression on his face. It was as if he’d seen all this before. Trixie was even more disturbing. She sat upright, completely straight face, paying full attention, with but the faintest trace of a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Are you still with us Twilight?”

Twilight’s immediately untwisted her neck and came to a rest facing back towards the front of the room.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s that when the brightest in the class loses her focus, it is best to pause and regain the attention of the entire classroom.”

Twilight froze. He knew her name?

“As I was saying, you’ve probably never seen anything like these before, so allow me to demonstrate,” upon saying this, the mysterious pony turned to the guard on the right, and snatched the assault rifle out of his hooves. “This is what happens when you’re caught whispering in my class,” he said, and pointed the gun at Flim, who was sitting just next to Twilight. Flim turned away from his conversation with Flam, all too late realizing his mistake.

Suddenly, there was a series of deafening bangs, as flames leapt from the tip of the gun. At the same time, Flim’s body convulsed violently. Blood burst from opening wounds on his body, spattering across Twilight’s face and every other nearby surface. When the onslaught subsided, Flim fell forward. His face slammed against the surface of his desk, splashing blood about. Twilight’s ears were ringing. She was watching her friends be slaughtered one by one. This was hell.

“It’s simple, really. You point it at somepony, and you keep pulling the trigger until they’re dead,” continued the pony at the front of the classroom, “With some guns you can even just hold down the trigger and they will keep firing. Others are designed for long-range attacks. But don’t worry. If you receive a gun, it will come with an instruction manual with everything you need to know about the gun, including assembly instructions.

“And finally, a few more rules. First one: one hour after the last pony leaves the building, nopony is allowed within one hundred meters of this building. If we find you within this radius, I will activate your collar. Second rule: at least one pony must die every twenty-four hours. If one full day passes without any deaths, I activate all the collars.”

A puddle of blood was forming around Flim’s desk. The room was beginning to smell like iron.
“And finally, without further delay, I would like to begin attendance. Stallion number one: Big Macintosh.”

Big Mac looked up, and his eyes scanned the room. He made eye contact with Cheerilee, and stayed there for about three seconds. The tension built until he finally looked away, and walked to the front of the room. Upon his arrival at the door, the mysterious pony hovered one pack over to Big Macintosh. He took it, slung it over his back, and walked out the door. The game had begun.

Ten minutes had passed since the game began. The whole room smelled like blood, and Twilight was becoming nauseous. Twilight couldn’t even bear to look at what was left of Flim, who sat bleeding and almost certainly dead, just to the right of Twilight. All the seats in front of her were empty. Two minutes ago, Filthy Rich had dragged his feet out the door, following a staggering Carrot Cake.

“Mare number three: Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight’s heart jumped from the pit of her stomach to the top of her throat. This was it. It was time to die. She stood up from her desk and walked to the front of the room. She took her pack and took one last look at the now dwindling group of sorry eyes. They all looked back at her. All but Caramel’s. She turned and stepped through the door, and into the hallway.

The hallway was just like many other school hallways in Equestria. As she walked down it, she saw lockers lining the walls. Some were open, with things strewn about on the floor around them. The occupants of those lockers had to have been in quite a hurry to do such a thing. The ponies must have been evacuated during a school day.

When she walked by the front office she saw what must have been a portrait of the principal. He was an old, brown, tired-looking pony, with faded green hair and grey eyes. He looked sad. Twilight wondered for a moment what kind of life this pony must’ve lived. Was he unhappy with his job? How would he feel if he knew his school was being violated like this? Was he sadder that Twilight?

Twilight had never been this sad. One would think such an ordeal would make a pony the most afraid pony in the world. But all Twilight felt was sadness. She was the saddest pony in the world. It was just hours ago, it seemed, when Twilight and all her friends were on a train to the Grand Galloping Gala. Now she was walking through an abandoned school on an abandoned island on her way to meet oblivion. She was going into the unknown, and she was going to find death.

At last, Twilight reached the front door. She took a deep breath, only to realize that the clock in the back of her mind had long since expired. There was no way she could prepare herself for the events that lay ahead. She opened the door, and stepped outside.

14 ponies remaining.

Author's Note

Oh damn. The shit just hit the fan, didn't it? I'll tell you, this chapter was good fun to write, mainly because it's so different from all the rest.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Twigs and branches cut across Filthy Rich’s (stallion #3) face as he galloped through the dense forest. The lack of sunlight and the thickness of the trees make it difficult to see where he was going. In fact, he was having a hard time seeing anything at all. It must have been late at night, or in the wee hours of the morning. He wasn't running from anypony, but he mind as well have been, because all hopes of survival lay on his swiftness. There wasn't a moment to lose. Upon his entry into the fray, there had been only four other ponies who had been released out into the unknown of the island. Filthy’s sense of time was warped at best, but it had been at least two minutes since his release, meaning Twilight Sparkle was now also somewhere on the island.

Sadly, Filthy Rich had little hopes for her survival, being more book-oriented. Her selection for this game was nothing but a waste of pure potential.

Filthy lost his footing as the ground beneath his hooves disappeared, only to reappear one foot below where it was before. He stumbled, and before he knew it, he was pole-vaulting on his face. He proceeded to flip-flopp head over heels until he came to a rest on his back, looking through a dense layer of branches and leaves, and up at the stars. After wreathing and wriggling on the forest floor for about a minute, he managed to get back up on his hooves. He picked some rocks and thorns out of his face, and resumed his frantic gallop.

Filthy wasn't going to die in this horrible place. But he also wasn't going to kill anypony. That only left one option: escape. Despite the death of two ponies already (both due to misbehavior), he had yet to see the collars in action. Even so, he needed to find a way to disable them. The simplest way to do that would be to find some way to block the blades. But how? He had no idea how powerful they really were. He had only a vague idea as to the possible mechanisms within the collar that would allow such a pernicious device.

His pace slowed to a trot as he approached an edge to the forest. And there it was! Right where the map said it would be. A small abandoned town lay before him. It wasn't any bigger than Ponyville; in fact it may have been a bit smaller. At the bottom of a small hill lay a market area, the streets lined with empty shops. As Filthy approached the town, he saw the expected: a shoe store, a boutique, a flower shop, and a bakery. He decided on searching the shoe store first. "The Cobbler's Shoes" read the sign above the front door. Filthy didn't know much about shoes, but he knew that the tools used to make the shoes would be useful. After slamming his way through the window, he surveyed his surroundings.

The walls of the shoe store were lined with well, shoes. It didn't take long for Filthy to figure out that this was a mare’s shoe store. In the center of the store, he saw glass display containers that contained expensive high-heels, and princess-style glass slippers. This was the kind of stuff Filthy Rich was in the business to buy, but didn't. At the back of the shop there was a door labeled “Cobbler’s Office”. Between the name of the store and the sign on the main office, it became evident to Filthy that the pony who owned this establishment wasn't in the least bit creative. Filthy quickly crossed the store and opened the door to the office. The room was completely dark. He flicked the light switch and got nothing. Then, he realized something. Apart from the map he found at the very top, he had not yet taken inventory of the contents of his pack. He slung the pack down from his back and unzipped it.

Inside he found two loafs of stale bread, a flash light, and two bottles of water. At the very bottom he found a heavy metal object. It was strangely shaped, but on one end it was shaped like a hoof, and was clearly made for holding. Beside the gun lay an instruction manual. Its title read “Desert Eagle .50”. Filthy withdrew the flash light and flicked it on.
As he scanned the room, he saw various hammers and pegs, along with several piles of leather and different fabrics. He was not off to a good start. When the beam of his flashlight reached the first corner of the small workshop, he saw somepony dart out of sight. Filthy quickly tracked the beam in the direction the figure had gone, and instantly came face to face with Carrot Cake (stallion #2). Of all the ponies Filthy knew, Mr. Cake had to be the most emotionally unstable one he'd ever met. Filthy couldn't imagine that he's taken the recent turn in events very well.

“Please don’t kill me,” Carrot Cake whimpered, as he backed up against the wall. In doing so he knocked down several unfinished shoes from the shelf behind him. They made loud cracking noises when the hit the floor, making Filthy cringe.

“It’s okay, I won’t hurt you,” said Filthy, carefully selecting his words. He couldn't afford to cause any more commotion. “It’s me, Filthy Rich.”

“D-don’t step any closer!” Carrot Cake screamed, pulling a large gun from his pack, and pointing it at Filthy. It was similar to the assault rifles the imperial guards were carrying, but it had wood along the end of it.

“Listen to me Carrot Cake,” said Filthy. He liked to think negotiation was one of his strong suits, a product of doing business long enough in his line of work. “I promise I don’t want to kill you. In fact I was thinking of a way to escape.”

“Escape?” Carrot Cake stammered.

“Yes,” said Filthy, “and I promise to take you with me. All I need is for you to help me search for some supplies.”

Big Macintosh (stallion #1) had been walking for only ten minutes, yet it seemed as though several hours had passed. His hooves were already sore, and his back ached from the burden that lay strapped to his back. In all of those countless years of work, Big Mac had never felt so tired. The length of his journey may have seemed extensive enough to take years, and the pack on his shoulders may have been as heavy as lead, but the events in the classroom had lasted at least an eternity, and the burden of impending death could be felt pulling him down into the depths of insanity.

When he left the building, Big Mac chose to go around to the back of the building. He had seen on the map a small path leading to a clifftop vista from the back of the school. The vista was marked "Lover's Delight". Even in light of recent events, the name seemed perfect. Before he left the classroom, he had tried to communicate in some way to Cheerilee to meet him there. Whether or not she knew to do so, Big Mac intended to wait for her there for the rest of his life if he had to. Cheerilee was the light at the end of his tunnel. He would rather die than go more that a day than without her.

But Cheerilee was more than just his extra-special-somepony. She was the most graceful, kind, and caring pony he'd ever met. She treated everypony she met with respect. She gave without asking for anything in return, and loved without waiting for affection. Big Mac was the luckiest stallion in the world to be this close to her. And now he could loose her forever. No. He couldn't let that happen. He had to at least say goodbye one last time. He had to see her face one last time to wash away the still fresh images of the bodies that lay back in the classroom. He had to live once more before he could die.

At last, after a long final climb to the top, Big mac laid his eyes on a small park bench on the edge of a cliff. There was a sign next the bench that said "Lover's delight". As he approached the bench, he saw that the cliff must be at least two thousand feet tall. When he looked over the edge, he saw the ocean's waves crashing against the razor-sharp rocks at the bottom.

Big Mac didn't care much for the ocean. When he was younger, his family took trips out to a small coastal village, where some distant relatives lived. Most of his memories from before is parents died were a blur, but this one stuck out. He remembered playing with Applejack in the waves. He remembered what it felt like to be pulled under as the waves crashed. He remembered feeling an imaginary hand around his throat as he struggled for air. He remembered watching his mother, sitting in a lawn chair next to his aunt. His aunt had a curly mane. It was dark blue, a color that stood out among the rest of the Apple family. She was a green pony, and her cutie mark was a small sailboat.

"You don't need to be a afraid," she used to say, "The ocean just likes to play with you. Sometimes it can be a little rough, but it will always let you go."

He couldn't remember what his mother looked like.

Fluttershy (mare #1) was lost.

When she left the school, she went into the forest. Using her wings, she hovered effortlessly through the dense thicket. She wanted nothing more than to be with nature. She wanted to be alone with the forest creatures. And alone was where she was. But there were no creatures.

They must have been cleared out when the island was being evacuated. Fluttershy could only hope it was an accident, because the thought of imperial guards ripping the small forest creatures out of their homes made her very sad. Perhaps even sadder than what this game made her feel.

She had no idea what to do. Where would she go? Should she try to survive? She felt useless, and out of place. The thought of dying alone on an island frightened her, but the thought of killing her friends frightened her even more.

So there she was. Hovering through the forest. The moonlight cast a soft speckled guiding light through the leaves, and onto the forest floor.

"Why the long face, Fluttershy?"

She spun around, and did a full survey of the forest around her. One full 360 degrees. Tree, bush, more trees. There was nopony there. She was a good two full minutes ahead of the pony behind her, and nopony could glide through the forest as quickly and as gracefully as she did. She resumed her trek through the woods.

"Where are you going, Fluttershy?"

This time she jumped. There was definitely somepony there. She did another survey. Tree, bush, more trees - wait. One tree wasn't like the others. It was no more than six feet tall, and it swerved and wound its way up, ending with only two branches. As she continued to watch the abnormal tree, it began to move. it's two branches stretched upwards, like arms, and the trunk made a loud cracking sound. The whole thing then stepped forward, into the moonlight.

Fluttershy then saw a figure with a goat's face, a deer antler and a goat horn. One arm had a bear's paw while the other had an eagle's talons.

"Discord?" Fluttershy gasped.

"Why, yes. That's me," he said. Fluttershy had known Discord for long enough to know of his trickery. But she'd also known him long enough to consider him a friend.

"H-how did you get here?" Fluttershy asked.

"Oh please, Fluttershy. I'm the god of chaos, it's not like I have to walk everywhere I go." He then vanished out of thin air, and reappeared seconds later looking over Fluttershy's shoulder. "You see? Now, what have you gotten yourself into?"

"Oh, well, um.. you see, we were on the way to the Grand Galloping Gala, when we all fell asleep and woke up in a classroom, where an angry-looking pony told us we have to kill each other," stammered Fluttershy.

Discord burst out laughing. "Quite the wrong time to take a nap if you ask me," he said in between fits of laughter,"even being the creator of catastrophe itself, I don't think I've ever seen things go so awry during my naps."

"It's not funny!" Fluttershy shouted, "we're all going to die now."

"Now now, my dear Fluttershy," Discord cooed, "I don't believe the battle is so lost and won quite yet." He snatched the pack from Fluttershy's back and began examining the insides until he found what he was looking for. "Ahah!" he squealed, holding a Sniper rifle above his head. "I remember these," he said with a nostalgic look on his face, "back when ponies would kill each other without my help. Back before the torturous rule of Celestia and her back-stabbing sister. How long has it been? A thousand years? Anyways, you're going to have to use this," he said, extending the rifle out to Fluttershy.

"Oh, no. I don't think that's necessary. I think I'll just sit tight right here-" Discord's left eyeball magnified and stared Fluttershy down, inquisitively.

"You want to live, don't you?" he said.

"Well, yes," said Fluttershy. She looked the gun.

"Then take the gun," Discord said, a look of anticipation written across his face.

"Oh, alright then. If you think it'll help," said Fluttershy, giving in.

"Now, it just so happens that we're at the top of a hill. And look! Down there is a road!" Discord said, with growing excitement. He positioned himself next to Fluttershy, showing her where to put her hooves, and how to look down the scope. "That's it! You're a natural. You'll have this game won in no time."

Just as he said that, a white mare with a purple mane came trotting around the bend. She looked rather dazed and shocked, still reeling from the events in the classroom.

"It's Rarity!" exclaimed Fluttershy.

"Shoot her," said Discord.

"Oh, no," said Fluttershy, remembering the gun demonstration back in the classroom, "I would never do something like that to my friend."

"Is she still your friend?" asked Discord. He was speaking very quietly, almost whispering into Fluttershy's ear. "Come now. It's kill or be killed in this game. You want to live don't you?"

Twilight was confronted by a wall of darkness as she stepped outside. Behind her was the front of a small school. Some windows to her right, near the edge of the building, were lit up. That must have been the room with all the remaining ponies. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a starry night above her. In front of her was a small road leading into a thick forest. There were bushwhacking marks on the edge of the path, leading into the forest. How many ponies had chosen to flee into the forest? Was anypony going to actually try to play this game?

If I were to be going somewhere, I would take the road, Twilight thought, but so might everypony else, which would make it a good idea to loose one's self in the woods. But what they didn't realize is that anypony in pursuit of them could easily see where they’d gone. Twilight took the road.

After walking no more than one hundred feet, the road began to switchback down a steep hill. Twilight was already glad about taking the road. Well, about as glad as anypony could be in such a situation. What Twilight really felt was something she had never felt before. It was all hopeless. No matter what she did, no matter where she went, she would meet a bloody end. All she could really hope for was to try and die the best death possible. What was the best death possible? Twilight didn't know. She had spent countless hours of her life contemplating aspects of the world that would never affect her, yet the final decision of her entire life was going to be a guess.

The road curved around and opened up along the top of another small hill. Down below, Twilight could see a small village under the moonlight. Beyond that, she could see the ocean. Twilight had never seen the ocean. No matter how many trips she had been on around Equestria, no matter how many assignments she faced that made her venture into the unknown; she had never managed to see the ocean. And now she was seeing it from a condemned island, on what might be that last night of her life.

It was beautiful. It stretched out forever, and stared back up at the moon with equal brilliance. A blue mirror, shattered by its own breathing. It moved her eons, and stopped the world. It rose and fell to the beat of her heart, and at the same time rose and fell to the beat of a thousand others.

Who else is looking at the same ocean? Certainly I alone do not deserve such a sight. A thousand poets in a thousand years could not encapsulate such a beauty with words. Twilight thought of Rarity. She was already somewhere on the island. If anypony where to ever deserve to look at something so beautiful, it would be her.

And then, at the end of all things, Twilight found a reason to go on. She wanted, if only once, to see the sunrise over the ocean. If she could only see the dawn in such a setting, there would be nothing left in Equestria for her to see.

I have fallen from this pedestal on which I thought I stood, and I shall pave this road with my own blood. But dare I live out Luna's night, to look once more upon Celestia's light, I shall cry for that beauteous sight.

Twilight surprised herself with her eloquence. She almost smiled.

14 ponies remaining.

Author's Note

Well, looks like nopony died in this chapter. Sorry to disappoint.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Thirty minutes had passed since Rarity (mare #2) left the school, and things weren't looking good for her. Her hooves were dirty, her mane was a disaster, and the pack that was given to her had destroyed her perfect coat. She could also die.

When her name was called, Rarity had pulled herself together, and departed without a word. It was the best she could do to save what little face she had left. She was not proud of her loss in composure back in that classroom. She had to be careful. It was situations like these that made ladies like Rarity slip through the cracks of hysteria. The events that unfolded after she left the school was absolutely the worst possible scenario anypony would ever have to go through.

Initially, she had taken the road, but as she came down the path she'd heard an unbelievably loud bang, and a tree branch no more than three feet away from her had shattered into a million pieces. Before her mind could react, her body was already galloping through the woods, trying disparately to loose her assailant. To her knowledge, she had been successful in doing so, but the frantic escape left her body in a much worse state than before.

She was currently holed up in a small cottage in the middle of the woods. The interior looked as though it had been long since abandoned. Everything had a thick layer of dust on it, and Rarity could smell wood rotting. What was once a modest kitchen was now a feeding ground for raccoons, mice, and other savage creatures of the like. The living room had a small coffee table in the center. Its contemporary design, combined with several years of neglect, had left it in shambles. On either side of the broken table were two metal frames that presumably once held two voluptuous couches. Rarity could see tufts of foam and fabric on the frame that were too stubborn to rot away with the rest of the cushions. In all, Rarity thought it was far too rustic for her tastes. And that was assuming it was in top condition. But alas, despite the disgusting kitchen, the rotten living room, and the overall rotten smell, it still beat the dark, dank forest. To be honest, Rarity didn't know what she would have done if she hadn't found a haven such as this.

Upon entering the sad little cottage, Rarity immediately went to work in repairing the damage done by the arduous trek through the woods. It wasn't easy; all of her belongings, and thus all of her appearance-maintaining tools, had been left back on the train. Luckily, there was a mirror in the front hall of the cottage. It was quite a disturbing sight for Rarity to see herself if such a dreadful state, but after the initial shock she saw that there was work to be done. It was going to be hard, but she could make it work. She'd looked through the contents in her pack, and had been disappointed by the lack of beauty products.

In the mean time, she'd had a lot of time to think about her predicament. In a worst case scenario she'd be forced to kill all her friends, only to be killed by the victor. In a best case scenario, she'd sit back while everypony killed each other, and would only have to kill the runner-up to win. In reality, neither of those were even remotely likely, but Rarity could dream couldn't she?

Her fellow victims on the island only made it worse. She was with all her friends, which was both good and bad (provided she even found them). But she was also stuck with that bitch, Trixie (mare #8). Of all the ponies on the island, Trixie was the only one Rarity could imagine actually participating in the game, and the only one she would be willing to kill. The only hope that kept the game from being taken over by supreme mediocrity was Twilight Sparkle. If she could stop Trixie before too much of her ego polluted the nearby Snips and Snails, then she will have saved the rest of them from the complete and utter stupidity that dominated her pathetic fan-base.

In truth, Rarity couldn't see Twilight pulling off anything of the sort. Why, she would be quite astonished if Twilight lived out the night. Speaking of night, what time was it anyway? It could be close to dawn. It could be no later than eight. It could be night forever. Nighttime forever. Now that's an astonishing thought, isn't it? If Princess Celestia was behind all this, then couldn't she keep the sun from rising? It would be awfully fitting for a game like this.

Rarity cursed at herself. She couldn't believe she was thinking such thoughts. This was it. The hysteria. The civilized lady was loosing it. Her hours were numbered. She could feel it. Every second was but one more second stolen away from her dwindling existence. She was on a precipice. The edge of oblivion. Dangling on the edge of a cliff, with Discord himself chipping away at her very last hoof-hold.

Rarity screamed, and cursed once more. It was impossible to fix her mane without a brush. Especially in this rotting shit-hole of a cottage.

Fluttershy missed. By only a few feet, and from a distance of over a thousand feet away, but she still missed none the less. Smoke rose from the tip of the gun, a signature of the round that had just pierced though space-time itself.

It was a rather uncomfortable jolting feeling that Fluttershy had experienced. Like an unwilling forest creature was trying to escape her embrace. Not to mention the sound, which was deafening.

"Well look at that," said Discord disapprovingly, "I guess you're not as much of a natural as I thought."

"I'm sorry, Discord," Fluttershy apologized, "It's just that I'm new at this and all, and well, um, I just got really nervous."

"Well I apologize for taking you out of your comfort zone," Discord said, turning his back and crossing his arms like a disgruntled teacher,"if you want to do this your way, you can. But, if you want to show me you mean business then you know what to do." He then clicked his heals together and vanished in a theatrical poof of smoke. He had left Fluttershy where she was, the nearby woods still reeking with irony.

Fluttershy was once again alone in the woods. And she was quite beside herself. Had she just shot at Rarity? Fluttershy was certainly a not fan of this "survival" business. Her friends were the best things to ever happen to her, and she was shocked to think that she would even consider killing them.

But alas, Discord was her friend. The other ponies didn't like him but Fluttershy saw something they didn't. She knew that if she didn't trust Discord, nopony would.

One hour had passed since Twilight left the school. After walking down the road for a while she began to approach the small town on the northern end of the island. She was going to look around but she heard voices coming from the market. From her vantage point behind some bushes, it sounded as though there was a heated discussion coming from one of the shops. She'd recognized Filthy Rich's voice, but had fled before she could hear the other pony speak.

Twilight was currently sitting against a tree, no more than one thousand feet from the town, wondering what to do next. She knew not when the sun would rise but it couldn't be forever. Could it?

"...you can inform the Princess we’ll be starting soon.”

The thought made her shudder. Princess Celestia was the only one with enough power to enforce such a game. And enough power to move the sun itself. She could lay all of Equestria's crops to waste in eternal darkness, and keep the sun shining for weeks in Canterlot. Luna could do what she wanted, but there was no way to end the night when she couldn't raise the sun. Just another rumor coined up by the commoners of Equestria. Just like the Pony Royale.

Twilight was close to tears. She thought she knew Celestia more than anypony, but it was becoming clear that this wasn't the case.

Then it occurred to her that she should check her pack. She unzipped it, and began removing its contents one by one. A map, a flashlight, a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, and a gun. It was a short one, and could fit in just one hoof. The manual beneath it was entitled "Glock 19". Twilight picked it up. It was heavier than she'd expected. Like it was trying to pull itself into the ground. Like it didn't want to be here on the island with her.

She put the items back into her pack, and once again found herself with nothing to do. She was waiting for a sunrise. Or hoping for one.

Suddenly, Twilight heard somepony approaching from behind. She scrambled around the tree, and fired the gun twice into the bushes. BANG! BANG! It was astonishingly loud. She stopped and listened. Her ears were ringing, but she could hear more rustling, this time in retreat.

She rotated in a full circle. The reality of the situation had once again hit her. She was exhausted. She lowered her gun, and put it on the ground next to her. Nopony would come back after that narrow of an escape.

Twilight sat back down, panting. She couldn't keep doing this. The conductor on the train, the stallion in the classroom, the guns, Caramel's strange behavior. It was all too much for her to handle. But she had to come up with a plan if she wanted to survive. She had to use that well-oiled machine in her head, and find a solution to all this. There had to be a way. There was always a way.

But this wasn't like before. This time there were no Elements of Harmony to fall back to. No Harmony at all. No friends, and none of its magic. It was like missing a leg. Twilight felt incomplete without her friends at her side.

There it was again! She wasn't ready this time, and she spun around to see Snips (stallion #5), wielding a long, menacing knife. He lunged at her, wearing a dazed look that only Snips or Snails (stallion #7) would have. Twilight caught his hoof mid-flight, and he slammed into her. They both fell to the ground, and began a brutal fight over the knife in Snips' hoof. They rolled once, and Snips was on top of her, pressing all of his body-weight into his right hoof, and forcing the knife ever closer to Twilight's neck.

The gun. Too late. The Glock was at least five feet away from the two of them. If only Twilight could get to it somehow.

Twilight grunted as she gave one last heave, pushing Snips off her with all her might. She rolled, and dove madly for the Glock. And fell short. This fatal error gave Snips enough time to react, and to get those faulty neurons firing. He was on his hooves in less than half a second, and in even less time had dropped the knife, and reached the gun. He turned and pointed the gun at her.

Twilight froze. Or rather, time froze and Twilight didn't. There she was, five feet away from a mentally unstable Snips with a gun leveled at her face. And there was the knife, only two feet away from Twilight. But Snips was milliseconds away from discharging a metal dart into her face. Twilight thought hard. Her neurons fired faster than Snips'.

It was the one thing Twilight could do faster than the pull of a trigger. Magic. She scooped up the knife in an imaginary slingshot, and unleashed it at Snips with all the force she could muster. The move was reminiscent of the stunt the unicorn back in the classroom had pulled on Pinkie Pie.

Snips fell back instantly, his eyes wide with shock. He discharged several rounds into the air, refusing to give up. Twilight had hit him in the chest, penetrating his heart. He coughed, blood sprouting from his mouth up into the air, only to land back in his face. Twilight had won, but only a small battle.

She staggered, and finally collapsed on the ground. She was shaking. What had she just done? It can't have been much more than an hour since she started, but in that time the amount of deaths she needed to mourn had gone from none to three. This was somehow Discord's work. She was sure of it.

Fluttershy had been so convinced of Discord's reform, but Twilight never grew any less suspicious of him. And she never was going to. Discord had single-handedly picked apart Twilight's friends, and turned them on each other. That bastard. Reform was certainly not an option when it came to the god of chaos.

She heard moving in the trees again. Why won't he just die already?

But it wasn't Snips who was making the noise. He lay there, dead as a doorknob, with the knife protruding from his chest and her gun at rest in his right hoof.

But there was still somepony there. Twilight looked up barely in time to see a grief-stricken Flam aiming a gun at her. His was similar to Twilight's, but it had a second grip along the barrel, and what appeared to be the ammunition clip protruded out the bottom of the first.

She immediately rolled, but Flam was already firing. It let out three consecutive bangs before it stopped, none of which came close to Twilight. It appeared to her that Flam was just as surprised about the gun's capabilities as she was.

Twilight scrambled behind a tree and Flam fired again. This time it was more accurate, and she could hear two of the bullets eat their way into the tree's bark. She then recalled something she had said when she first came to Ponyville. What was it? "All the ponies in this town are crazy!" She'd never felt so right in her life.

Twilight was running out of options. She was once more unarmed, and now Flam was unloading bullets at her like a madpony. She was cornered. She had wasted her hour upon the stage, and now the curtains were closing. She was going to die.

BAM!

The noise was riveting. It had the force of a small explosion. It was a small explosion. Twilight stole a glance around the tree and immediately wished she hadn't. Flam was on his side, lying in a small but rapidly growing puddle of blood, the source of which came from his right foreleg, which looked as though it had been mauled by a tiger. He snatched his gun from his useless right foreleg up into his left foreleg.

"Put the gun down," said a figure from a dense outcropping of trees.

Flam made no effort to do so, and wildly squirmed to point the gun at the pony in the shadows.

BAM!

This time it was his face that was torn apart in a shower of blood. He made no effort to get back up again.

And out from the shadows stepped Caramel (stallion #8). He wasted no time as he retrieved the guns from Snips' and Flam's bodies. After that he quickly emptied the contents of their packs into his. He turned to leave, then stopped.

"Hey Twilight," he said. Twilight froze. She'd hoped that she could remain behind the tree undetected, "come with me if you want to live."

Surprisingly enough, there wasn't much to do around an old rotting cottage, so after she got tired of trying to repair her physical appearance, Rarity decided to investigate the nearby forest. It was not surprising that there was not much to do out there either. But she needed something to keep from loosing it.

She knew it was a foolish idea to go wandering about in the forest under such circumstances, but at least she had the sense to bring along her pack. If she found trouble, she could just use the box-like gun she found in there. She had glanced at the manual. It said the gun was called "P90 Sub-machine gun" or something. It was much to heavy to hold, so she had to keep it in the pack.

Taking time to view the scenery, Rarity was able to fully appreciate the filthiness of the forest. The trees were so old, they had a green foamy substance stuck to their trunks. The ground was littered with damp leaves and brown pine-needles that crunched when you stepped on them. The terrain was rocky and unstable underneath the pine-needles, making Rarity trip and fall far too much.

BANG! BANG!

She jumped at the sound. No need to worry, right? They were far enough away, right? Rarity calmed herself. This place was a war-zone. Anypony unlucky enough to meet another pony would have a battle on their hands.

She waited a few more seconds. That seemed to be the end of it. Rarity told herself that she mustn't go back to the cottage. It was far too much a risk.

BAM!

Rarity froze. This time it was louder. A different gun maybe.

BAM!

Whatever it was, it ended the fight right there. No more gunshots sounded.

Then, when it seemed as though the forest couldn't get any worst, a crack of thunder rang out across the island, signalling the onset of a massive downpour.

The rain didn't take the time to even build up, it just fell from the sky and slapped down onto the forest below. Rarity cried out in anguish as her mane was once again subjected to the assault of the elements. It slowly unfurled itself, and came to rest drooping down at her hooves. Ruined two times over.

That's it. Enough. Time to go back to that pathetic turd of a cottage and make due there. She turned on her heals, and trudged back towards the clearing. It wasn't that hard to find, she'd only wandered a few hundred feet from the cottage.

But then, somepony came out of the cottage, her cottage. And not just anypony. Trixie. Rarity froze. She shouldn't have gone back to the cottage. She should have toughed it out in the woods like everypony else.

But to her surprise, Trixie broke down in tears and rushed towards her.

"Thank Celestia!" she screamed, "I'm so glad I found somepony."

"Well, um," Rarity was dumbfounded, "me too."

They galloped towards each other, meeting in the center of the now muddy clearing.

"I got so scared when I heard those gunshots, do you think somepony died?"

"I hope not," Rarity lied. She knew what this bitch was up to.

"We can find a way out of this together," said Trixie, going in for a hug. And Rarity went in too, watching Trixie's right hoof go behind her back. Gotcha.

When Trixie lashed out her weapon, Rarity was ready. She kicked Trixies hoof as hard as she could sending a long scythe flying across the clearing and landing at the foot of the trees.

Rarity screamed and tackled Trixie, landing in the mud. Trixie rolled on top of Rarity, and planted her hooves in Rarity's face, shoving it into the mud. Rarity choked and spat mud back into Trixie's face. She then heaved Trixie off her chest, and dashed for the scythe.

She didn't make it far when Trixie leaped upon her hind leg and she collapsed, face first, back into the sludge. She rolled back around, and began kicking Trixie in the face. She shoved and pried and, after thoroughly bloodying Trixie's complexion, she finally gave in. Rarity was once again on course to the scythe, with little ground in her way.

Then, suddenly she felt another opposing force, this time around her waist. She couldn't overcome it, and was once again dragged backward through the mud. Trixie was using magic to keep her from reaching the scythe. Rarity slid back up along side Trixie, and was kneed in the stomach.

The pain was shocking, and Rarity vomited into the mud. She shrieked, and kicked Trixie back in the face again, making her spit up blood once more. Rarity, having stunned Trixie more than she had stunned her, leaped back upon Trixie and resumed pummeling her face with her front hooves.

Rarity was winning, and had almost won. If she thought her condition was bad before, she was wrong. She'd gladly live out her life her life in that state, if only it were guaranteed that she would never feel the way she did now. But it wasn't over yet.

Trixie squirmed and squirmed, and when her squirming was finished, she had pried both of Rarity's front hooves away from her face. Trixie needed to be decisive and quick if she was going to get out of this jam. As a last resort, Trixie arched her head forward, and forced her horn into Rarity's stomach. She pushed so hard it came out the other side. Her face was up against Rarity's midsection, and blood dripped into her mouth and nose.

After about a minute, Rarity stopped struggling and finally collapsed on top of Trixie, covered in mud and blood.

Twilight and Caramel both collapsed against a tree, panting.

"That should do it," said Caramel, gazing over at Twilight.

"What were we running from?" asked Twilight, looking up at the falling rain.

"Nopony in particular. Gunshots attract others."

"Oh," Twilight said, rather matter-of-factly, as if it were obvious. As if she ran from gunshots every day.

"Get some sleep," Caramel said, "but first, wash your face with the rain. You're still covered in Flim's blood."

11 ponies remaining.

Author's Note

Well, there you have it. Part one. I should have Part Two up soon-ish (two weeks time, maybe). But be warned, Part Two is when the shit really hits the fan, and it doesn't stop spattering til the very end.

Chapter 4 (Part 2)

Part Two

Mid Game

"Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands."

-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kompf

Chapter 4

"What is love?"

Fluttershy and Discord were helping the squirrels build new homes in the trees.

"Love is a substance of upmost deviance."

It was a rather simple job, but Fluttershy enjoyed learning where all the squirrels would live for the upcoming season. It had almost become a tradition for her to help them settle in.

"What's that, Discord?" Fluttershy said. This was her first time bringing Discord along with her.

"Love. Have you ever felt it?" he asked, inspecting a small burrow in the side of a tree.

"Well, I don't know what you mean," Fluttershy said.

"You know. That thing between Princess Cadence and Shining Armor."

"Yes?"

"You know how they can't let each other out of their sight, how they finish each other's sentences all the time, how they never stop looking at each other?"

"Oh, Discord. I don't think I've ever felt like that before."

"Of course you haven't," Discord said, proving his point. "It's one of my creations. Celestia hated it when I showed it to her. Said it was 'too dangerous and unpredictable'. But I managed to disperse it throughout Equestria before she freezed-dried me for a thousand years. It wouldn't surprise me if Celestia's taking credit for it now, if only to cover her tracks."

"What's so special about it?" Fluttershy knew she shouldn't be asking this, but she had to know. What was wrong with the feeling Cadence and Shining Armor had towards each other?

"Well, the main concept of it is the fact that is captivates you. Cadence will never leave Shining Armor's thoughts, and Shining Armor will never leave Cadence's thoughts. It's a complete and utter obsession. It has the ability to drive one mad, but the potential to bring unprecedented joy.

"It also brings with it a great and powerful energy, a magic if you will. The more love you have for that pony, the stronger it gets, and the more clouded one's judgement gets. It can escalate to the point where ponies will kill and die for the ones they love."

"Kill and die?" Fluttershy gasped, "They would really kill other ponies for the ones they were in love with?"

"Or kill themselves," said Discord.

Fluttershy awoke with a start. What a strange dream. It was but a memory for her, why had she dreamed it?

She quickly analyzed her surroundings. She was in an unfamiliar forest, vacant of the sounds of any birds. Ah, yes. This place.

Though it was not yet midday, the sun had thankfully risen, illuminating the forest floor. Fluttershy had taken the shelter of a large willow tree, big enough to block the blunt of the rather unusual rain that came the night before. She sat up against it, and once again opened her pack. She removed the bread and water, and ate a small breakfast.

Then she removed the sniper rifle. It was only damp from the night before. The instructions in the manual weren't too complicated, and she was able to disassemble it, and dry each component off against her flank. After reassembling the gun, she set off back down the hill towards the town.

The continued onward through the forest until she came to another clearing. From this one she could see the whole town. It was tiny. It was also void of any inhabitants that had once lived there not too long ago. The important thing was that somepony would choose to go there, and she now had a clean shot at them.

She was going to follow Discord's instructions.

Twilight stirred as she felt the warmth of the sun on her face. She opened her eyes, and was once again found herself in the forest. She was slumped against a tree, and could hear the sounds of a wet forest around her. Caramel was sitting up against the tree across from Twilight, watching her intently. It made her smile, almost.

"Look who's awake," Caramel said, straitening his posture, just a little.

"And it looks like morning finally came?" said Twilight. Dammit! I missed the sunrise.

"It did. But not until several hours had passed. It was a long night. I think the princess enjoys messing with us." Caramel sat with his head tilted upward now, as if in acknowledgement of the god-like figure somewhere in the clouds above.

What a strange pony, thought Twilight. He sat there with a look of distance, waves of unrest rising and falling behind his eyes. What was once a theory was now proven to Twilight: this pony was different.

"Can I ask you something?" Twilight inquired, sitting up against her tree.

"Yeah. What is it?"

"Why did you save me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Caramel sighed, "you looked nice, I guess."

"I looked nice?"

"Yeah," Caramel said, as if confirming his statement, "I-I think. Look - truth is, I kind of like you."

"Oh," Twilight said, a little more than shocked.

"I'm sorry I said that," Caramel said, looking down.

"It's fine," said Twilight, "It's just, you were always talking to Pinkie Pie." She got a lump in her throat just thinking about the pink little pony.

"She was the only one that would talk to me when I first came to Ponyville. She was my only friend. She made me feel like a real pony again. But she never gave me the courage to talk to you." A tear rolled down his cheek, perhaps without him realizing it.

It took a moment for Twilight to realize that she herself was crying. She cautiously stood, and walked over to sit beside him. She opened her mouth to say something, perhaps a band-aid phrase to make them feel better.

"Twilight," muttered Caramel, silencing Twilight. "Sometimes, words are worth more when less are said."

So together they sat and cried together, against a tree, in the middle of the woods.

The sun had finally risen, but Big Macintosh had not budged from his spot at the clifftop vista. Many distant gunshots had sounded throughout the abnormal night, though through it all he still remained here.

The ocean had grown bright from the sun's reflections, but it still crashed against the rocks below. The forest still glared at him from behind, and a constant breeze still pestered his face. And the seat beside him was still empty.

Big Mac was beginning to doubt his message was clear enough. What was he going to do if Cheerilee never came? Would he have to play the game? Spend the remainder of his life in despair?

Suddenly, he heard rustling from behind, and turned around to see Cheerilee, in all her perfection.

Big Mac sighed with relief, "I thought you'd never come," he said.

"Neither did I," she replied. Her face was still wet from tears.

Together they looked at each other, perhaps for almost a minute.

"What should we do?" Cheerilee asked. Big Mac could tell that she was shaken beyond repair. Being the last one to leave did something to her.

"I'm not sure," he said. He was never one for words, and he almost always got by using just two.

"Should we end it?" she asked. An unspoken conversation. A verdict reached in half an instant.

"Eeyup," said Big Mac, and together they plummeted off the cliff and onto the rocks below.

Well, not much had happened. After the little run-in with Mr. Cake, him and Filthy Rich had spent the whole night looting the market place. They found clothing, they found jewelry, they even found a bakery filled with stale cakes (Carrot Cake claimed his stale cakes were far better), but nothing they found was a all what Filthy had hoped to find. The closest thing they found that fit the description "useful" was a set of large knives found in the back of the bakery, presumably for cutting cakes. Two of them, now exhausted, had made it through to the other side of town and were now sitting against a boulder on the beach, looking out at the ocean.

"This is hopeless," said Filthy, "the ponies in this town never did any hard work. I can't even imagine how they built it without any tools."

"Aww, cheer up Filthy. We're not dead yet. Were was that optimism you had back on the train?" assured Mr. Cake.

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but these are quite different circumstances. I highly doubt that all the power tools are somehow eluding our discovery," said Filthy, rather annoyed.

"Well, what should we try next? I'm sure there are other ways of getting these things off," motioning towards his collar.

"But that's just the thing Carrot," said Filthy with upmost sincerity, "we don't know how they work. And we can't experiment without getting ourselves killed."

Then, in the distance, an accented voice rang out from the town center. It was amplified, as if by a megaphone of some sort.

"Listen up, y'all. We don't want to fight. Please, everypony just calm down, and we can talk this over." It must have been Applejack.

"Speaking of getting yourself killed," said Filthy, springing to his hooves, "there are many ways of avoiding death in this game, but yelling about peace is not one of them."

"Please," Applejack's voice continued, "we don't want to hurt anypony. If we can just meet up and figure things out, I'm sure we can come up with a plan."

"We need to get out of here," said Filthy. Though he was rather fond of the Apple family, he still had to look out for number one.

Caramel and Twilight rushed to the top of a hill to investigate what was going on. Once they had arrived at the top, they could see a majority of the town. And there, right at the center, the town hall itself, were Applejack and Rainbow Dash standing on the roof.

"We don't have to kill each other," continued Applejack, "Please, I know we can work this out."

Without even thinking twice, Caramel pointed his shotgun upwards, and unloaded two rounds into the sky. BAM! BAM!

"What are you doing?" Twilight shouted.

"We need to scare them off!" said Caramel, "they're going to get themselves killed up there."

"Now, c'mon y'all!" Applejack kept going, "Just put down your guns. Nopony has to die anymore." Applejack was loosing it. Rainbow Dash looked about ready to bolt, but didn't.

Loyalty can be a real bitch sometimes.

Fluttershy gazed down at the scene unfolding on the rooftop below her. Positioning herself behind her rifle, she moved her eye up to the scope and lined the cross-hairs up with Applejack's forehead. And hesitated. Perhaps this wasn't a good idea. Perhaps this was the worst idea possible.

"Why am I doing this?" she said to herself, "these are my friends."

Are they really your friends?

"Yes they are!" she screamed at herself. She was crying.

My dear Fluttershy. When will you ever learn? You have no friends here.

BAM! BAM! Two consecutive gunshots rang out. The situation on the roof was growing unstable.

You see? It's kill or be killed here. Not that it's any different from the real world. Don't you remember what I taught you? Don't you see this is it? I'm your friend, Fluttershy why won't you listen to me?

"B-because you're wrong," Fluttershy said "my friends care about me, and I care about them."

Why don't you understand? Why do you refuse to see what's right in front of you? You can't stop this Fluttershy. There are no Elements of Harmony. The princess has put you here, and your friends have abandoned you. You're alone.

"But it's not true!" Fluttershy was absolutely sobbing, "this can't be happening."

But it is, isn't it?

"It is." Fluttershy slumped down, absolutely broken.

Now tell me what you're going to do about it.

Fluttershy pulled herself together, and gazed back down the scope, "I'm going to do what's needed to be done."

Applejack was still yelling into the megaphone. What a strange weapon.

Fluttershy took a deep breath. Her heart rate slowed. She aimed at Applejack's head again. She could feel the tension in the gun, the bullet resting in the chamber, ready to spring foreword. As she concentrated on the image of Applejack in the scope, she experienced something she hadn't before. She was feeling something similar to what a personified electron must feel as it approaches the speed of light. Her vision expanded, and she was able to see the entire island, and out into the ocean. Applejack's face shrunk into a pinpoint at the center of her cross-hairs. She felt herself rushing foreword, strait towards the rooftop. The oncoming rooftop shifted colors to a deep red. And then, she fired.

Applejack's face instantaneously imploded as the bullet entered through the front of her forehead, and her head was jerked back as it exited through the back of her skull. Blood was sprayed across the rooftop, fanning out backwards from its source. Her hind legs collapsed, and she almost sat down for a moment before she toppled sideways onto the rooftop. Applejack's entire head had been ripped to shreds. Blood quickly flooded the rooftop, and was soon overflowing into the gutter, which was draining it onto the streets below.

Rainbow Dash still stood alongside Applejack's now inanimate body, shocked by what had just happened. She took a dazed step backwards, then tripped and fell, seemingly unaware of the blood that was quickly covering the roof. Finally, she came to her senses and in one swift leap, she flew for the sky, leaving a trail of Applejack's blood flying up behind her. Another gunshot sounded, and a bullet dove into the blood where Rainbow Dash just was, once more throwing a misty red column into the air.

She continued soar into the air until she was far above the island. She surveyed her surroundings and saw nothing but ocean in every direction. She then descended until she was a closer distance away, and navigated her way to a beach on the northern side of the island.

The first thing she did when she touched down was a full-on gallop into the water to wash Applejack's blood from her hooves and flank. The next thing she did was a miserable trudge out of the water, as she collapsed into the sand in a weeping mess. She had just seen yet another friend perish at the hands of this game. And how did she know that was it? The bodies of Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rarity could already be strewn across the island. The more Rainbow Dash thought about it, the more possible it sounded; all five of her best friends, each dispatched in their own disturbing way. Decapitation. Strangulation. Asphyxiation. Laceration. Head blown apart. It was something worth buying a nightlight over. Scary, death was.

She finally rolled herself over, and looked up at the sky. Her flank was now coated with sand, but at least it wasn't blood. She sat up, and tried to think of something to do. It then occurred to her that she had yet to even see what lay inside her pack. She sat it up, and unzipped it.

Stale bread, water, map, but where was her weapon? She dug her hooves down into the bottom of the pack until she came across a handle. It was leathery and easy to grip. As she pulled it out, she saw that it was longer than just a handle. The leathery material grew elastic and bendy, and got skinnier until it was just one knotted strand at the very end. As she laid it out on the sand, it snaked around, as if it had a life of its own.

She turned back to her pack, and removed the manual from the very bottom. The title read "Chainmail Bullwhip".

Twilight and Caramel were still watching the roof. Applejack was dead, and Rainbow Dash had just made a daring escape. Blood was now flowing out of the drainpipes at the bottom of the building, and was flooding the streets.

Why do they bleed so much? Twilight thought to herself, Why do they always bleed so much?

Looking back at Caramel, Twilight now saw a deep regret in his eyes. It was as if he had been reliving this event over and over again, and had finally failed when he had the chance to set things right. She wondered where he came from. Where did he live before he came to Ponyville? Why did he have so much more trouble fitting in than she did?

Then she thought about herself. What's happening to me? she thought. Why do I feel the way I do? And what do these feelings mean?

"We need to leave right now," said Caramel, "whoever just nailed Applejack through the skull won't be far away. They'll have heard my shotgun."

Not to worry, Twilight thought. The feelings were gone again as quickly as they had appeared.

8 ponies remaining.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"What is wrong with Equestria?"

"What?"

"I said, what's wrong with Equestria?" Discord was slumped back lavishly upon one of Fluttershy's couches. Since the whole reform incident, he had taken to eating tufts of fabric as a replacement for his usual paper-with-reform-spells dish. Fluttershy had once asked Discord about these strange eating habits and had gotten the response: "My dear Fluttershy, I am a god! You can't possibly expect me to eat normal things. Look at Celestia and Luna for chaos's sake. I don't believe I've ever seen them eat more than a few mouthfuls of normal food!"

"Why Discord, that is such a strange question to ask," said Fluttershy.

"How so? There must be something wrong with it. Nothing is perfect, you know." He continued to shovel wads of fabric into his mouth by the end of a magnificent fork.

"I've never thought about it that way before," Fluttershy said, a little confused, "I don't know what is wrong with it."

"But there must be something wrong," said Discord, leading Fluttershy though his train of thought, "how else would those unsightly blemishes of evil like Queen Chrysalis, and King Sombra, and perhaps even myself, blossom in a place like this?"

"Well, um," Fluttershy thought long and hard, "it all must come from the Equestrians themselves. Instead of being happy with what they've been given, they do things to try and change their path in life. To try and change their destiny."

"Exactly!" said Discord, now sitting up from his relaxed position, "these Equestrians, they feel they want more than their share of life, and they will do more than just good deeds to get there."

"Well who are they?" Fluttershy asked, "is it Cadence and Shining Armor? Are they being controlled by love's spell?"

"Fluttershy," Discord was fully upright and looking her straight in the eye, "Cadence and Shining Armor are not at all offenders of these accusations. They are perhaps the most innocent of us all. It's the love that makes them content with life. But it's those other urges in each of us that makes sinners of us all."

"All of us sinners?" Fluttershy was aghast, "what about me and my friends? We're perfectly happy. If anything, my friends are the source of good in this world."

"Oh really?" Discord said, leaning forward and finally standing up, "what about Rarity? Look at her little boutique. Look at how she slaves away every day, with a deep longing to be like the Canterlot elite. This envy that she possesses is so deep that she will put it before her very friends until she becomes the noblest of nobles."

"But Discord--"

"Oh but it's true isn't it? And what about your dearest friend Rainbow Dash? Has she ever done anything without thinking of herself? She sleeps for hours on end, gets up to clear the weather, and goes back to sleep again. She barely accomplishes much more than the bare minimum of survival before she tufts up her cloud again. She just sits there on her high pedestal, thinking little about nothing in particular, wallowing in her sloth.

"Oh, and who could forget Pinkie Pie? She might go somewhere in life, if she wasn't always stuffing her face with cupcakes. Dear Celestia, she could be throwing parties for a living, but I guess Mr. and Mrs. Cake's is just too tempting, and gluttony got the better of her. I swear, I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't put some gruesome secret ingredient in them so they taste better.

"How about Appplejack? What kind of job does she have? The most boring job in the world if you ask me. She turned down a life in the city to work on a farm! But she is too much like the rest of her family, and is too caught up with taking pride in--in my opinion--selling the world's most boring fruit. Really? Apples?

"What about Twilight Sparkle? To start, Twilight's always checking out the stallions of Ponyville. Just because she's the new pony, she thinks everypony will love her. She's always sneaking out at night, and in the morning I can see it in her eyes. But let me tell you Fluttershy, there is a big difference between love and lust.

"And that little dragon of hers, Spike, isn't any less guilty. Does he really do work all day? Can you imagine writing letters, checking checklists, and sleeping all day, and then being rewarded with mounds of jewels? His greed is now the master of him, whether he knows it or not."

"Alright fine," said Fluttershy. She was deeply offended by Discord's criticism of her friends. "What sin am I guilty of, Discord? Huh? Or do you not want to hurt my feelings?"

"Fluttershy," Discord said, sitting back down again, "you are extremely well-composed, kind, and respectful to everypony I've ever seen you talk to. Except on occasion, when you burst. You have a kind of, snap, and you end up chasing animals around Canterlot Gardens or bullying your friends. You, my dear, are guilty of wrath."

Fluttershy snapped back to her senses. She was still on the hilltop, and the rooftop below still had Applejack's mutilated body strewn across it, though Rainbow Dash's was missing.

That was another memory. That time it had snuck up on her in the middle of the day. What did they mean? So far they were of her and Discord.

"You, my dear, are guilty of wrath."

Did that mean something more now? Could it be true? Of course not! It couldn't be. The kind and compassionate Fluttershy was never cruel to anypony, and certainly never got angry. Right?

Less than a minute had passed since she'd discharged the second round at Rainbow Dash. She now recalled hearing two gunshots right before she had fired upon Applejack. They sounded close too.

Well, Trixie was now traipsing around the wilderness in complete bewilderment. Rarity had given her quite the ass-beating right up until her dying breath, which certainly wasn't the classiest thing to do. And of course, The Great and Powerful Trixie had to come out on top. She wasn't going to be killed by somepony as worthless as Rarity.

Being dead, Rarity had been quite the mess to clean up (or at least that's what Trixie called it). Angered by the whole fight, Trixie had taken her scythe and hacked the hair off Rarity's head. Call it messed up, but it was the most satisfying experience of her life. How do you like your hair now, Rarity? Huh? Purple definitely goes with the color of your vomit. Fucking bitch. And if that wasn't fantastic enough, Trixie then looked through Rarity's backpack, and found the mother of all machine guns waiting for her right on the surface. That alone almost made the fight worth it. Almost.

Also, in the events leading up to where she was now, there had been quite the kerfuffle with Ponyville's best and brightest, involving a megaphone and the stupider half of one's brain. Speaking of brains, it sounded as though this pointless plea for peace had ended with Applejack's cascading across the town hall rooftop. Well, good. Applejack was one less pony to worry about sneaking up stabbing Trixie while she slept. Not that she was planning on doing that much sleeping.

After seeing the moronic demonstration taking place on the roof of the town hall, Trixie made sure to put the largest distance possible between herself and the town. After about a minute of Applejack's worthless monologuing, her speech was cut short by a definite gunshot. It was quickly followed by one more, and Trixie saw Rainbow Dash shooting up towards the sky, trailed by an arc of blood-mist. Trixie then bore witness as Rainbow dash descended towards the north side of the island.

Having been shocked by Applejack's early departure and stunned by her own brush with death, Rainbow Dash would be easy pickings. Later on in the game, a player like her could stand a chance at winning. If Trixie wanted to secure her survival, she had to nip this in the bud. And so she began a quest to kill Rainbow Dash as soon as possible.

One thing was certain: Rainbow Dash was clearly the fastest flyer on the island, if not in ponyville, so if she wanted to find her, she had to anticipate her movements. Where would a pony like her go in a situation like this? Actually it didn't matter. It was clear that she was an idiot about flying too high, so Trixie just had to wait for her to land within range of her walking distance. Another thing, she had to make sure to get the drop on Rainbow Dash. Trixie couldn't imagine anything worse than another hoof-to-hoof fight, especially with Rainbow Dash.

Unfortunately the map she'd been given was a total joke, as it had nothing that resembled contour lines. How in Equestria was she supposed to navigate this Celestia-forsaken(literally) island without any knowledge of the terrain? The beaches being to only open land, the entire rest of the island seemed to be covered in this thick, dank, forest. If she was going to find Rainbow Dash in a timely manner, Trixie was going to have to find a road. And fast.

Filthy Rich and Carrot Cake were in the woods once more. They were currently on a hike back up the hill from whence they came. The point being nopony was going to want to be anywhere near the school.

Filthy came to a stop in a clearing and sat down on a rock. Mr. Cake arrived along side him, breathing heavily.

"Maybe I should have eaten," he panted, "less of the cakes I baked. What are," he panted again, "we going to do now?"

"Well, the town is the only place I know of that could be of use to us, and there is no way we're going back there now," said Filthy, "I suppose the best plan of action is to wait it out. When there are less ponies left, we'll have to return to the town to resume our search. We'll be more thorough, and we just might find something of use to us."

"What do you think happened to Applejack and Rainbow Dash?" asked Mr. Cake.

"Don't tell me you didn't hear those shots. I can assure you they're both dead by now."

"I wouldn't be so sure," said Mr. Cake, "the second shot could have been fired by Applejack or Rainbow Dash."

"But the fact that there were only two gunshots, and two ponies on the roof doesn't seem overwhelmingly convincing to you?"

"I suppose. But consider this: Applejack is for sure dead - she stopped talking right after the first shot - but Rainbow Dash could still be alive. She could have flown off, and the second gunshot could have been a miss."

"Good point," said Filthy, "though I hope it's not true."

Mr. Cake was suddenly taken aback. "Why is that?" he asked.

"Well, Rainbow Dash is very... loyal, you see. In fact her loyalty is the only thing that counteracts her constant laziness. But after having seen one of her best friends Applejack killed right in front of her, I can't imagine her being in the most stable emotional state."

"So you're saying that she should be dead because she would be otherwise crazy?"

"Um, yes. That and her natural athletic ability make her a loose cannon in this game when left alive."

"All the more reason to retreat into the woods to wait it out, I suppose," Mr. Cake said, looking down.

Caramel and Twilight finally came to a stop next to a creek at the bottom of a small canyon. The creek cut straight up the mountainside as far as Twilight could see. The water looked fresh, and Caramel used it to top off his water bottle.

"I've been wanting to ask you something," said Twilight hesitantly. Does he really think I...?

"What's up?" asked Caramel, looking up from the creek.

Does he really think I look nice? "How are you so good at this game? I mean, how do you know Celestia makes the nights long? And how do you already know how to use that gun?"

"It's because I've been in this game before," said Caramel.

Twilight gasped. "And you... won?"

"Yeah," said Caramel, "you see, I used to live in Las Pegasus. I was living a good life. I had my own group of friends, you know? I had found what I wanted to do with my talent, and I was normal. Everything was normal.

"Then one day we get a letter from the princess. It came with train tickets to Manehatan for the Equestria games. Me and my friends were ecstatic. We had never received special treatment from Princess Celestia before. None of us ever expected a trap.

"Next thing we knew, we all woke up in a classroom with that sadistic 'teacher'. My friends were quieter, and nopony died before we started. That may seem like a good thing, but that only meant all fifteen of them had to die at a friend's hand. And we really were all friends too. There weren't any egomaniacs or outcasts like Trixie or Flim and Flam. The worst part was that we had to see who was broken first. Who would be the first among us to loose it, and kill their own friends.

"The first one to break was a stallion named Fire Dust. The second night I was taking shelter in an old condemned boutique, and he snuck up from behind me. He tried to slit my throat, but I caught his knife just before it reached my neck. I wrestled it out of his hooves, and it was flung across the room. I ended up strangling him to death."

Twilight was shocked. How long has he kept this bottled up inside him? "How do you know he was the first?" she asked out loud.

"They tell you when you win the game," Caramel said, "somehow they see everything we do. So when you win the game, they tell you how and when each and every pony died."

"It must have been horrible," said Twilight.

"It was. Fire Dust was my best friend. After that, killing another eight ponies wasn't as hard."

"Eight?" Twilight said aghast, "you killed eight of your friends?"

"The others found out quickly after I killed the first one." His voice was shaking. Twilight could tell it was easier for him to refer to his friends as "the others". "They thought I was the one who started it. Our island was smaller, you see. Small enough to the point where you could pass messages by yelling. And so they swore revenge. They came at me one by one, and I killed them all. I did it without even leaving the building. By the end there were nine bodies distributed around my shelter. They were in the halls, where I slept, splayed across the stairs, everywhere. I couldn't go outside because a mare named Phoenix Flight had me pinned down with a sniper rifle. The game ended when she threw herself from atop the building she had used to get a shot at me."

Twilight had no idea he'd been through so much. She had no idea what she was going to go through. Who wrote this story of fall and rise? For far too soon will I meet with my demise, and fall upon my heart's reprise? More eloquent thinking for an emotional situation. Feeling a little impulsive, I guess.

Caramel continued, "After I won the game, they gave me a royal pension, and told me never to speak of the game again. They said I could go anywhere in Equestria, but Las Pegasus was off limits. So that's when I came to Ponyville. I came here hoping to get a fresh start. Hoping to find somepony who would forgive me for what I've done." He was crying again, whether he knew it or not.

Twilight leaned over and kissed Caramel, and without hesitation, he kissed her back. His lips were still wet from the creek. After almost ten seconds they finally stopped. Twilight leaned back and looked deep into his eyes.

"I forgive you," she said. She leaned forward to straddle him, and put her tongue in his mouth once more. These feelings...

After careful consideration, Rainbow Dash made the decision to head inland. It didn't take long, she was Rainbow Dash after all. She soared above the trees once more, and gazed down at the terrain below her. She saw the town at the south end of the island. Farther inland was the school, near the summit of a small mountain. She flew to an area in the forest that was several hundred meters below the school. When she landed, she once more found herself in the concealment of the trees.

Rainbow Dash collapsed against a tree. She was exhausted. She realized that she hadn't slept since that non-consensual slumber that started on the train and ended in the school. Her back slid down the bark of the tree and she began to drift to sleep.

Somepony somewhere made a yawning sound. "How long has it been since we last slept?"

"Couldn't tell ya," mumbled Rainbow Dash.

"Can't be that long," a voice answered back, "the sun just rose a little over an our ago."

Filthy Rich and Mr. Cake were nearly on top of her by the time Rainbow Dash came to her senses. She jolted awake, retreated behind a rock, and began to uncoil the bullwhip.

"Can we take another break?" whined Mr. Cake.

"Well of course not," answered Filthy Rich, "in order for us to take a break, the effects of the previous break have to have completely worn off. Otherwise you're just wasting time."

Rainbow Dash silently cursed herself. It looked as though somepony else had the same idea. If they were going to get this close to the school, then they weren't in the mood to get some killing done. She decided to take a risk. She came out from behind her cover, and approached the two other ponies.

When she came into view, they stopped in their tracks.

"There she is!" screamed Mr. Cake, as he lifted his AK-47 and unloaded and entire magazine in Rainbow Dash's direction.

"Wait stop!" yelled Filthy, but the damage had already been done. , but Rainbow Dash was nowhere in sight. "You idiot!" he said, exasperated, "if there was ever a pony in Equestria who could dodge a bullet, it would be Rainbow Dash. And now look at what you've done!"

The two earthponies went flank to flank, slowly rotating in circles and scanning forest.

Then suddenly Rainbow Dash thundered to the ground in front of Mr. Cake, her whip in her mouth, fully unwound in all it's twisted glory. It hovered out behind her in midair, glistening in the sun, and before Mr. Cake could react, Rainbow Dash thrashed her head down, sending the stock of the whip rushing forward. As it neared its destination, a shockwave was sent down it, getting bigger and bigger until the very tip finally came around in an earsplitting crack, while at the same time cutting through Mr, Cake's throat and upper chest. The whip then snaked back around Rainbow Dash's body and lined up behind her, as if ready to strike again.

Mr. Cake collapsed to the ground, a tidal wave of blood erupting from his neck. He looked back up at Rainbow Dash, shocked to see how such a strange weapon had gotten the better of him. When the blood loss finally became too much, his eyes drifted away from Rainbow Dash, and into space. Blood continued to fountain from his neck and chest and began to form a small stream, flowing down the mountainside. Rainbow Dash staggered back, once again shocked by what was happening. Had she just killed Mr. Cake? She turned around, and clumsily took off.

At the same time Filthy, who was still reeling from what had just happened, turned and withdrew his Desert Eagle. He aimed at the fleeing Rainbow Dash and fired. The kick was immense and unexpected, and the gun flew out of Filthy's hoof, preventing him from taking another shot.

Rainbow Dash was several hundred feet from the ground when began to feel rather weak. She looked down, and realized that she actually had been shot. Blood was running down her right hind leg and dripping down into the forest below. Not a moment too soon had she realized this, for as she began to look back up, she nearly lost consciousness. She began an uncontrolled descent back down to Earth, and she tried to extent her remaining hooves to soften her landing. As she was forced to fall through the treetops, her left wing snagged on a branch, stopping any remaining flight ability in its tracks. She hung from the branch for a moment, and then it broke. Falling a full fifteen feet, she landed back-first on the forest floor with a thud, followed by her bullwhip, which landed on her stomach.

The wind having been knocked out of her, Rainbow Dash coughed and sputtered for a full minute. She sat up, and inspected her leg. The bullet went in just bellow her cutie mark. She winced in agony. The pain was just now beginning to sink in. She looked inside her pack for something that could stop the bleeding, and ended up removing her bullwhip manual. Without thinking twice, she pressed the manual firmly against her leg, and tied it down with the end of her whip. Then finally she collapsed back onto the ground, exhausted.

7 ponies remaining.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"What are you afraid of?"

"What?"

Fluttershy and Discord were out searching Everfree Forest for Angel Bunny. He was most likely out on one of his heroic escapades, which made Fluttershy all the more worried.

"What makes you afraid, Fluttershy? What do you fear?" asked Discord. She could tell this was going to be another deep conversation.

"You should know by now, Discord. I'm afraid of just about anything."

"Yes, yes, I know." He was growing agitated. "but what are you afraid of," he said as though it were a different question.

Fluttershy sighed. "Well, I'm afraid of dragons, and monsters, and... " she trailed off, having realized something shocking, something she hadn't seen before. "... my friends," she finally finished.

Discord gasped, sucking in a disproportionate quantity of air before he spoke. "Afraid of your friends? You shock me Fluttershy!"

But by now Fluttershy knew his game. He wasn't really surprised. In fact, it was his words alone that brought her to that conclusion. She collapsed onto the ground, sobbing. "You win, Discord. I get it now."

All of his talk about their imperfections had finally rubbed off on her. The Elements of Harmony? What a joke. They all lived out their lives as if they wore a mask. All of their deeds, their entire friendship was fueled by a putrid desire. And the worst part was that Fluttershy knew she wasn't any different. She couldn't distance herself from what she and her friends did any more than Princess Luna could distance herself from the night.

"Oh, now Fluttershy my dear," said Discord, his tongue slithering like a snake to form words, "you mustn't be scared. You must conquer your fears. Do you know why?"

"Why, Discord?"

"Because wherever fear goes, stupidity dwells in its shadow."

Fluttershy squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to cry. That was a bad, bad, memory. She wished she'd stop having these, whatever they were. But she also knew that these were memories that made her who she was today.

But who was she anyway? She tried to imagine a dictionary definition. Flut*ter*shy - 1 n. Resident of Ponyville, caregiver of woodland creatures, and representative of the Element of Kindness. 2 n. Student of Discord, and last survivor of the Elements of Harmony. Fluttershy had never taken the time, when she still had it, to look at herself, and see what she had become. But now that Fluttershy was the monster she always denied, did she regret changing? Did she regret spending all those countless hours with Discord, listening to what he had to say? No. She was grateful for it.

She was perched in another tall willow tree while she watched the oblivious Snails saunter about below her.

Do you remember now? Do you remember what I said to you?

She knew she was closing in on whoever fired the gun earlier, so she couldn't afford to give herself away with a gunshot. If she was going to kill Snails, she had to do it by hand.

You can do it, Fluttershy. Don't be afraid. Don't be stupid.

She swooped down from her tree, landing on Snails. He didn't have time to struggle. Fluttershy pinned him to the ground, pressing her two front hooves into his neck. He struggled, and thrashed about, but Fluttershy held fast.

You're almost done, Fluttershy. You can do it.

Snails stopped struggling. His eyes drifted upwards as saliva began to drip from his mouth. Fluttershy turned her attention back to the forest around her. Killing Snails had taken longer than expected. She was going to have to move fast if she wanted to catch up with her target.

Trixie had no intentions of traveling out of her way to vanquish Rainbow Dash, but she was going to do it. And she was going to enjoy it.

Rainbow Dash had already made one stellar pass over her head, this time touching down thankfully closer to her position than before. Trixie had her ears peeled. What she needed was something to scare Rainbow Dash in her direction. Not that Trixie thought Rainbow Dash was all that easy to scare, but those gunshots were enough to make anypony shit themselves.

WHA-CRACK!

A gunshot! Although it seemed to sound different from the other gunshots Trixie had heard in the last few hours. Nonetheless, she kept her eyes in the sky. Her back was aching. She wanted to get this over with. Maim her, humiliate her, and slit her fucking cyan throat already. She'd had enough of this mindless bird-watching game.

BOOM!

Now that was a gunshot, one of the loudest she'd heard all day in fact. And it seemed to do the trick, as Rainbow Dash flew from the trees once more, only to descend back into the forest moments later. But in those few moments, Rainbow Dash had chosen to fly in Trixie's direction. She couldn't be more than a few hundred feet from Rainbow Dash's landing point. Trixie raced through the forest in excitement. She had to be wounded to make such a pathetic flight, which gave Trixie a huge advantage.

Trixie was so close now that she could practically smell each shade of her stupid rainbow mane. She heard a thrashing noise. A scuffle with the branches? A hard thumping noise. It sounded like Rainbow Dash's landing wasn't her most successful one. Trixie was throbbing in anticipation. Once Rainbow Dash was dead, she was home free. Who was going to stop her? Fluttershy? Caramel? Talk about prudent. Twilight Sparkle?

Twilight. The name sent a shiver down Trixie's spine. Twilight was the one pony she dreaded going up against. Nopony else had ever stolen her pride so elegantly, and so many times in a row(it was only two, but still). It must be by twisted fate that Trixie was now here on this island with her. She was ready to gain vengeance.

But alas, it was not Twilight Sparkle but Rainbow Dash that now stood as her next objective. An objective that grew closer and closer to being complete with every second that went by, with every tantalizing step she took, she could feel Rainbow Dash's blood running over her hooves. Her heartbeat slowing with every hoofful of flesh Trixie ripped from her prostrate body. Oh yes, Rainbow Dash's was going to be quite the death.

Twilight Sparkle gasped for air as beads of sweat drew moist lines down her coat. She was still on top of Caramel, and he was inside her now.

These thoughts of mine, and the feelings that go with them...

He pushed forward as she arched back, and together they rose and fell in waves of pulsating energy. Twilight collapsed onto Caramel, exhausted.

Are they.... different? "That was amazing," Twilight whispered into Caramel's ear, "You're amazing."

Caramel remained silent, but began to kiss Twilight, and lick the sweat from her body.

Rainbow Dash lay helplessly, barely conscious, as Trixie crept up on her. Trixie walked up and over to Rainbow Dash and positioned her neck between Trixie's forelegs.

"Resting again?" asked Trixie with a smirk on her face.

Rainbow Dash's eyes grew wide and her pupils shrunk as she was just now gaining knowledge of Trixie's presence. She squirmed furiously, while at the same time she tried to flip herself over to escape her compromising position. Trixie easily put her hoof down on Rainbow Dash's lower back, and began to walk her hooves up to her neck, and then her head, pressing her face into the ground.

"You shouldn't lie around so much, you know," taunted Trixie, "somepony might think you're lazy or something."

Rainbow Dash didn't say a word, but she struggled as hard as she could, thrashing about and kicking at Trixie. But with every jerking motion, blood began to flow a little faster from the makeshift bandage, and she became weaker with every drop of blood she lost.

"What have we here?" said Trixie, inspecting the blood-soaked manual tied to Rainbow Dash's leg by the chainmail bullwhip. "Did you get caught up in an accident? Well, I suppose whoever did it wouldn't consider it an accident."

Trixie began to untie the whip from around Rainbow Dash's leg. Rainbow Dash seized the moment and scampered away through the woods, leaving her bandage behind.

WHA-CRACK! Rainbow Dash suddenly lost the ability to move her non-wounded hind leg. A moment later she fell face first into the dirt, and the sharpest pain she'd ever felt shot through her leg. Her eyes were wide again as she lay on the ground in a state of panic, breathing unbelievably hard.

"Oh, I get it now," said Trixie, staring at the bullwhip, having just learned something new. "That was you a moment ago. You were whipping somepony." She would have asked who, but she really didn't care. What surprised her was the fact that she was even whipping somepony the first place. She cracked the whip again. This time it dug a gash strait through Rainbow Dash's side, making her shriek with pain. She wasn't struggling any more. She was just curled into a ball, shaking from shock and fear.

Trixie turned to her pack, and withdrew her scythe. She approached Rainbow Dash, and slammed her hoof down on her back again. She then grabbed Rainbow Dash by the mane, and pulled her head back, lifting her face off the ground.

"You know what I like about you, Rainbow Dash?" whispered Trixie into Rainbow Dash's ear. Her mouth was so close she was almost licking Rainbow Dash's earlobe. "You always act on impulse. You never think things through. For example, take your little rooftop incident. What did Applejack say that convinced you that there was even a remote chance of survival? 'Hey RD, I was feeling a little stupider than usual, and though you might like to join me while I get myself killed by dancing around on a roof with a megaphone,' she must have said. And you just followed along like a gullible little lemming. 'Well gee, AJ. Because you made me feel cool by abbreviating my name with an R and a D, I guess I'll have to take you up on that little offer of yours.' But don't get me wrong, Rainbow Dash. I absolutely loved how you stood by Applejack. Right up until her head was blown to bits."

Rainbow Dash still said nothing. Trixie began to slide the tip of her scythe up Rainbow Dash's face, drawing a thin line of blood across her cheek. Rainbow Dash's jaw clenched, and tears began to stream down her face. "But you see Rainbow Dash, I'm not like you. For example, right now I'm not going to kill you right away because I know that I can only kill you once. I know that when I'm finished, I'm going to kill each and every one of your friends. I'm going to watch as Fluttershy bleeds to death after I saw her stomach open. I'm going to take Twilight Sparkle's neck, and grind it against a rock until her bone is like flour. I've already killed Rarity. I stabbed her through the stomach with my horn. After that I gave her a new haircut. I'm going to keep going until every last pony on this island has been chopped to pieces. After all, we only live once, right?"

And with that Trixie sunk the blade of her scythe into Rainbow Dash's cheek, chipping one of her molars. She then twisted the blade, causing spurts of blood to drain down the side of Rainbow Dash's neck, as well as down her throat. She refused to swallow her own blood. It began to accumulate atop her epiglottis while her lungs screamed for air, until finally her diaphragm took over, and sucked it down her trachea. Trixie finally removed the blade from Rainbow Dash's cheek, and she began to cough gobs of blood back onto Trixie's face.

Trixie finally sat up, wiping the blood from her face. Her back was aching from being bent over at an angle for so long. She then flipped Rainbow Dash over, and mounted her stomach. Trixie probed her upper body with her eyes for some sort of inspiration. Rainbow Dash was still coughing and sputtering. She began to moan, either from terror or pain.

Trixie suddenly forced the tip of her scythe into Rainbow Dash's upper stomach, and the moaning stopped. Then she thrust her blade sideways, leaving a deep gash across Rainbow Dash's upper midsection. Rainbow Dash's eyes grew wide with terror in anticipation of what Trixie was about to do. Trixie then forced her right forehoof into the incision, arching it upward, and below Rainbow Dash's rib cage. She continued for force her hoof upward through Rainbow Dash's anatomy. She broke through layer after layer of fat membrane until she reached her goal: a throbbing mass of muscle, just right of center, pumping blood throughout her body. As Trixie put her hoof on Rainbow Dash's second most vital organ, she looked back up at her face. She wore an expression of shock and terror, and rightfully so. After all, she was currently the only living pony in Equestria who knew how it felt to be touched in the heart.

Trixie paused for a moment, and closed her eyes. She felt Rainbow Dash's heart beating right in her hoof, felt
Rainbow Dash's blood flowing down her own stomach and pooling at her lower stomach, where Trixie was straddling her. To Hell with cutting off Rarity's hair, this was satisfying.

Trixie finally leaned forward, and cupped her hoof around Rainbow Dash's heart. Just before she began to pull, Rainbow Dash let out a blood-curdling scream that ripped its way through the forest. Trixie was shocked that Rainbow Dash had the strength to scream in her state, but was otherwise unaffected. She then finally put force into her hoof, pulling with all her might as she defeated each and every vein and artery that linked her heart to the motherland. When the last tendon broke, Trixie's hoof lurched back, producing forth a pony heart. It was still beating, and squirts of dark red flew out the ends with each throb. She looked down at Rainbow Dash herself to see that she was now finally dead.

Trixie fell backwards, resting her head on the ground no more than two meters downhill of Rainbow Dash's. The Great and Powerful Trixie did it again. She felt Rainbow Dash's blood trickling down the curvature of her back, and up her neck. She began to giggle as it flowed through her mane.

Filthy once again slumped down against his rock, uncomfortably distraught with his current situation. Shooting Rainbow Dash was great fun, but Mr. Cake's death left a hole in him. They were alright friends before the game started, but what Filthy really wanted was to escape the game with somepony else. He didn't know whether to make an attempt at an alliance with somepony else, or to make his escape alone. Contacting other ponies was going to be hard and dangerous, but being the only one to escape was almost as bad as being the winner. As Filthy mulled over his decision next to the fresh corpse of Mr. Cake, he began to notice something wrong with the sky.

It was turning orange, as in end of day orange. The sun had risen only a few hours ago, hadn't it? And now it had already gone behind the mountains on the island, and was clearly nearing the horizon on the other side.

As Filthy watched the sky darken with every waking second, he heard two more cracks, one after the other. Rainbow Dash must have been busy. Filthy continued to watch as the orange turned to a stunning dark red. A scream rang out in the same direction as the whip cracks. It was Rainbow Dash again. He smiled, knowing that Mr. Cake's killer was getting what she deserved. A few seconds passed, and the sky had faded completely into nighttime.

Rainbow Dash's scream ended abruptly, making the corners of Filthy's mouth tug its way into a smile. This truly was a game, he realized, a game that was almost over.

5 ponies remaining.

Chapter 7 (Part 3)

Part 3

Finale

"In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But in the darkness the one man holding a candle is a target."

-Michel Grant, Fear

Chapter 7

Twilight awoke to the feeling of a scaly hand shaking her shoulder. She groaned, rolled over, and sank back into her sheets. They felt softer than they had when she went to bed the night before. Come to think of it, she hadn't gone to sleep in her bed at all.

Twilight instantly sat up, looking over at Spike who had awakened her moments ago. "Geez, Twilight. What's up with you? Your usually the one waking me up," he said with a great deal of suspicion.

Twilight ignored Spike and left her bedroom. She descended her stairs, though she did not remember ascending them the night before. She continued to pass through her personal library, and opened her front door. Ponyville was most certainly in one piece, and was going about its daily routine like any other day. But for some reason, this wasn't just any other day. Foals played in the streets, and venders haggled in the marketplace. Even the mayor seemed at ease. Had it been a dream? Had what been a dream?

"I guess I'm going to have to make breakfast too," Spike grumbled as he shuffled into the kitchen. He seemed unaware of Twilight's bewilderment. "Oh, or I guess we'll be going to that picnic right away then?"

"Picnic?" Twilight was having trouble making sense of what was going on.

"Yeah. Nearly half of Ponyville is going. I almost forgot about it, and it sounds like you have too. We should get going, actually. You slept in really late." Twilight knew she never slept in. Not ever. She didn't know anything about this picnic, and she had never attended anything of the sort in the past.

As they leisurely strolled down the main street of Ponyville, Twilight noticed that nothing was wrong. But that wasn't true, was it? There was something very wrong, and something horrible was happening. What was it? Twilight knew it, she knew she knew it, but she couldn't remember.

They passed the end of the long row of shops that made up Ponyville's downtown area, and began to ascend a small hill on the other side of which Twilight often hosted picnics for her friends. The only thing Twilight didn't understand was the occasion. She and her friends often had picnics, but not with half of Ponyville. Why this many? Why now?

Twilight suddenly felt a surge of anxiety. Something was happening on the other side of that hill. It was the thing that was wrong. She took the rest of the hill at a full gallop, leaving Spike behind in the dust. She reached the top, and saw fifteen of her friends strewn across the hillside. Blankets, picnic baskets, and little stacks of sandwiches were all arranged appropriately, even appropriate amounts of condiments were distributed amongst the crowd. But it was the ponies themselves that painted a gruesome picture across the landscape of Twilight's mind. They were all dead.

Pinkie Pie was the closest. A knife protruded from the center of her forehead, and her eyes stared blankly up at the clouds. Applejack didn't even have a head, or an intact one at least. Blood and bits of liquefied brain trickled from the remaining attached part, which ended just below her nose. Filthy Rich lay next to her, an opening nearly three inches long cut across his throat, and was clearly the source of a now dried up stream of blood running down the hillside.

Twilight felt her knees buckle, and she fell to the ground. "What happened?" she asked, finally forcing herself to look away from the carnage.

"You should know, Twilight." Spike had finally caught up with her. "You did this."

"But I... " Twilight was shocked. She staggered through the field of dead ponies. Suddenly, one of the bodies reached out and caught Twilight's hind hoof. She screamed and fell to the ground, trying not to kick the still living pony to death. It was Caramel. He was bleeding from what seemed to be several wide puncture wounds in his stomach. They reminded her of something. What was it?

He coughed. His lips were moving. Twilight leaned in, trying to make out what he was saying. "Why... Why didn't you...?"

"Why did you do it, Twilight? Why did you kill them?" It was Spike again.

Twilight woke with a start. She hadn't moved an inch from where she'd fallen asleep. The dry creek-side pebbles were still rubbing against her back. The sun was once more down below the horizon, and the stars were already shining brightly up above.

It was all just a dream, she thought to herself. It had, hadn't it? All the other ponies could still be alive. They could have escaped somehow, leaving her behind on the island.

And what about Caramel? Twilight felt the pain of anguish as she finally noticed the now vacant spot at her side. She sat fully upright, searching the woods around her. Nothing. How could he be gone? Where would he go?

She thought back to the dream. What was Caramel trying to say? Never mind that. After all, it was only a dream. What mattered now was Caramel's absence in the real world. Twilight fell back onto the cold earth. She could feel tears trying to burst from her eyes. What scared her most was the idea that Caramel wasn't even real to begin with.

Oh dear. That wasn't expected. That wasn't expected at all. Fluttershy was so loving and caring, the only one nice enough to put up with all those awful wild animals. Fluttershy was the kind of pony that would never hurt a fly, literally in her case. She was the kind of pony that would most certainly perish instantly in this game. Yet here she was, calmly inspecting the barrel of a disassembled sniper rifle. She turned it over and over in her hooves, holding it up to her eye and looking though it every now and then.

Filthy Rich watched this from afar, and above. He was sitting near the summit of a steep incline in the hillside, deep in the middle of a large thicket of bushes. His cover was aided by the night, but he wasn't about to leave anything to chance. He was crouched in a most uncomfortable position, his hooves digging into the dirt and roots below to keep from sliding down the hill.

Fluttershy was sitting in a small clearing, outlined by three trees. There were bits and pieces of her gun laid on the surrounding pine needles, resembling the outline of an expanded rifle. She was humming to herself. And smiling. It was evident to Filthy that she was inspecting each component for hard to find errors and imperfections. The only question was, what would she do if she found one? What was she going to do, replace it? Fix it?

It was this that worried Filthy. Actually, worried would be an understatement. This scared him shitless. He had made the very brash assumption that perhaps everypony would tend to take a more peaceful path down the road of impending death. But if Fluttershy was sensually stroking the pieces of a gun as if it were a baby squirrel, then the remaining ponies on the island had very low prospects for non-violent tendencies. At least that's how Filthy saw it.

"What am I doing?" Fluttershy muttered to herself. She actually spoke! To herself. "Shouldn't I be tracking down the pony with the shotgun right now?" she continued. Well now. Filthy was beginning to see a glimmer of hope. If Fluttershy's possibly self-induced insanity was the only thing that made her act so strangely, then the rest of the group may very well be spared from this maniacal behavior, which greatly concerned Filthy. He continued to watch as Fluttershy had an entire conversation with somepony who wasn't there. And as it turned out, the things they discussed were rather grim.

"Yes, I do suppose gun safety is more important than a quicker kill. Strangling Snails and Shooting Applejack is already good enough for one day." Dear Celestia! Fluttershy was clearly not as insane as Filthy had hoped, and was quite busy too. The number of possible remaining survivors on the island was shrinking very quickly for Filthy. Finding a partner for escape was a no-go.

"Well, I guess you're right, Discord," Fluttershy kept talking, "I'll finish with my gun here and make sure I'm ready for a firefight." Discord. The name sent icy shivers down Filthy's back. Of course Discord was behind all this, it was the perfect explanation for Fluttershy's demonic behavior. He had to be laughing at them right now, trapped on a hellish island, killing each other for a few more hours of survival. You couldn't get more chaotic without becoming the god himself.

Fluttershy had stopped talking. She wasn't looking at her gun parts either. She was looking up the hill. Up at Filthy. He froze. A small rock, no wider that Filthy's hoof, had come loose from the nest of roots had his hooves, and was now rolling down the hillside, lazily making it's way to Fluttershy's encampment. He froze. There were ice cubes melting against the back of his neck, and the bones in his legs were replaced with stiff wooden boards.

Fluttershy seemed to be thinking about something. It was as though she was considering a list of options set out in front of her, and was having trouble deciding which action to take. She slowly began to reassemble her rifle. As each piece of the gun slid into place, it became clear to Filthy that somepony had shown her how to do this. Once she'd finished that, she then placed it upright in her pack, and slung it over her shoulder. She paused. She was looking to the north. There was something there that she wanted, but something was holding her back. Something that wasn't right. It was tugging her mind back to the bushes on the hill. The bushes where Filthy was hiding. She turned around.

The ice cubes on his neck boiled away and the boards in his legs shattered to pieces as Filthy sprung into action. He couldn't die now, not like this. But the hill was steep and the ground uneven, and Filthy quickly found himself tumbling down the hillside. When he came to a stop he found himself barely ten feet away from Fluttershy, who was withdrawing a pistol from her pack. But where did she get that? Didn't matter.

Filthy scrambled to his feet and bolted in the opposite direction through the forest, which wasn't easy considering the density of the trees. Filthy's eardrums reverberated and rang as Fluttershy unloaded her first shot. The round struck the ground only a few inches beside Filthy, throwing up a column of pine needles. He was nearing a dip, where the terrain once more sloped downward. If he could make it that far, he would be under cover from gunfire, at least for a few seconds. Fluttershy rattled off a second shot, this time striking a tree branch next to Filthy's head and sending it spiraling to the ground in a cloud of shrapnel. He was only fifteen feet away now. Once he got behind the dip in the hill, he would have time to draw his own gun, and it would be a fair fight. Five feet later his hoof rolled on an unusual rock, sending his face into the ground once more. He coughed and sputtered with his face in the dirt, but less than half a second later he was up again. In that time Fluttershy had fired another shot. Filthy tried to run, but where there was once a stable leg there was now a bleeding liability. The bullet had entered just above his ankle, and his hoof was already drenched in blood. Running now on only three and a half legs, Filthy's pace had slowed quite considerably. Eight more feet. The pain was setting in fast, and Filthy wasn't prepared. He collapsed again, gasping in shock as his entire right hind leg immersed itself in throbbing pain. He was quickly back up again, this time at the speed of a delirious march. Five more feet. Filthy made a dive, and Fluttershy took one last shot. Filthy stopped running. His neck was bleeding.

Fluttershy, still panting, approached Filthy Rich's dead body in a manner more careless than complete caution, and more cautious than complete carelessness. The bullet had gone straight into the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord. She opened his pack, removing the Desert Eagle, and placing it in her pack next to the sniper rifle and the pistol she'd grabbed off Snails.

Nicely done, Fluttershy. Though you wasted two bullets.

"This gun is different from the rifle," replied Fluttershy, "it doesn't seem to be as accurate."

I see.

"Plus, you never taught me how to use it like you did with the sniper rifle."

Taught you? I thought you already knew that.

"What?" Fluttershy was confused, "you showed me how to hold it and how to fire it."

I did? I hate to say it Fluttershy, but by the time I got here, you already knew how to use it.

"What are you talking about? Discord, you showed up that first night. You showed me everything. You saved me."

Discord. You keep calling me that. Who is this Discord, and why do you think I'm him?

"You're not making any sense!" shouted Fluttershy.

Since when have I not made sense? You're the one who's shouting like a blithering lunatic.

"Well I'm talking to you!" Fluttershy was beginning to get frightened. "Please, Discord. Stop your foolish games."

You're talking to me? Who even am I? Do you know? Because I don't.

"Please stop it." Fluttershy was beginning to cry. "I trusted you."

With what? All I know is that I suddenly appeared, and now I'm talking to you.

"Where are you?" Fluttershy shouted into the woods, her words eaten up by the dark. "Show yourself!"

That's it, I'm leaving. This is just too weird.

"Wait!" Fluttershy screamed, "don't go. Please don't go." But her cries were left unanswered.

Fluttershy looked around again. The night seemed a bit darker now, like it had that first night. She sniffled, picking up her pack. She was afraid, and she was alone again.

After a short rest stop, Caramel resumed his trek back to the south side of the island. He'd been hiking for nearly thirty minutes now, and he was confident that he was still being pursued. It wasn't something he knew for sure, but something he had to guess at. A sort of intuition. It saved him the first time, and it was still the only way he knew how to stay alive.

Just when he thought the night was actually going to be a peaceful one, Caramel heard the sound of not too distant pistol shots. They were coming from the direction he was headed. This meant that this rival of his had at least a two gun arsenal, if not more. Either that or they were dead by now, and Caramel had to merely pick off the lucky bastard who killed them.

He wondered how many were left. There couldn't have been more than seven or so by now. This game had been so chaotic, it was like everypony just had the urge to get it over with. The last one he won took much longer. He cringed, recalling how he actually had to ration his stale bread to keep from starving. How he had to pull the packs from the lifeless bodies of his comrades that littered the hallways. Sometimes, Caramel thought, it seems possible that Phoenix Flight killed herself not because she couldn't bear the killing, but because she'd had enough of the food.

He often thought about Phoenix Flight. He wondered what it must have been like to watch from afar as her friends slowly withered away until only the monster that killed them remained. Did she ever kill anypony? Caramel liked to think she did, at least that way he wasn't the sole cause of her grim death.

It wasn't long after the gunshots when Caramel began to hear screaming. It was a mare's voice, one he might have recognized had he known Ponyville's inhabitants a little bit better. From the sound of it, she was totally losing her shit. Honestly, he felt her pain. This was all too stressful.

Caramel sat down once more, letting his head thud against a tree. He'd had just about enough of the opposite sex by now. Not that his little skirmish with Twilight Sparkle hadn't been any fun, but he hadn't planned it, and regrettably it had been his first time. He was glad she had fallen asleep though, so he could get the hell out of there when he had the chance. He'd almost fallen asleep himself. He was sure they would both be dead by now if he had.

The sun was down again, and Trixie was beside herself. After killing Rainbow Dash, she's dozed off for a bit, though she hoped it wasn't for too long. Rainbow Dash's blood had dried, and was making loose twigs and dirt stick to Trixies flank. After pooling up at Trixie's back, the blood had formed a delta at Trixie's mane, and continued down the mountainside for quite a ways. Trixie sat up, and made an attempt at brushing the twigs and dried blood from her backside. The dried blood on her mane made it stand up on one side, drooping lazily.

Trixie looked at the carnage that was until recently known as Rainbow Dash. It looked like a dissection experiment gone wrong. There was a massive slit in her upper stomach, and a gaping tunnel leading though her diaphragm and into her chest. The heart itself, brown and shriveled now, lay somewhere near the bottom of Blood River. Looking back on it, Trixie thought it was slightly gross, though still quite enjoyable.

Trixie then finally took an assessment of her surroundings other than the dead body beside her. She was relieved to find that her pack was a good twenty feet uphill from the expired bloodbath. Other than that, the nearby forest was rather bleak. Not that she could see very far in the darkness anyway. She was stiff, but she managed to get her hooves on the ground long enough to retrieve her pack. She arched her back, listening as each joint popped, releasing some tension in her spine. Breathing in the cool night air, Trixie finally summoned her next objective from the recesses of her mind.

Ahh yes, Trixie knew. Twilight Sparkle had been her nemesis for so long, but in this game Trixie and Twilight were brought to an even playing field. No magic stones. No friends coming to the rescue. Just a bag full of guns and the magic in her horn. So perhaps not the most even of playing fields. Nevertheless, Trixie was going to find Twilight, and make her bleed. And finding her was going to be the hard part.

4 ponies remaining.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Caramel froze when he heard the sounds of an approaching pony up ahead. He or she must have been no more than a hundred meters uphill from where Caramel stood now. Mistake number one: Caramel hadn't planned on letting his opponent have the uphill advantage, but then again he'd never let that beat him before. Caramel could feel the temperature dropping as he sunk down to the ground, pressing his chest into the dirt. He tried to make out where his opponent was descending the hill, but this pony was a master of stealth. He heard a rustling sound, and the slightest flapping of wings, but neither leaf nor branch ever budged an inch under the pale moonlight.

Caramel began to inch his way up the hill. He knew it was important to close the distance between himself and his opponent. Another stale mate at the end of a sniper rifle was not what we had in mind. He took care to be as equally invisible as his opponent, making sure to stay in the shadows and out of the moonlight as he continued up the hill.

Why did you do it, Caramel? Why didn't you save them?

Perhaps it was just what happened whenever Caramel lost focus. Or perhaps he did it to punish himself. Or perhaps he was just psychotic. Point was, the voice inside his head was nothing new. It-she-had been there since the day Caramel won the game. Caramel liked to think she was the love of his life, the perfect pony he was going to spend the rest of his life with, though perhaps also not. Either way, to go with the voice he often envisioned a perfectly goddess-like female pony, looking down on him from above in a condescending manner. She'd scrutinize him, torture him with prodding questions about his past. Mainly they had to do with the game, but not always.

So perhaps Caramel had chosen this moment to punish himself, or maybe he'd just lost focus. But for whatever reason, she was back. It startled Caramel, as it was the first visit he'd gotten from her in several days. He gasped. It wasn't a very loud gasp at all-he was never one for dramatic movements- but it was the exhale that presented a problem. What he didn't notice at the time, or more likely didn't ever notice, was the immediate proximity of his head to the edge of the shadow he was currently crouched inside. As Caramel released the air from his lungs, it condensed into a small cloud of mist in the cool night air, floating out from under the shadows and into the unforgiving moonlight.

And she-the voice- was gone again, just as quickly as she had appeared. No matter, Caramel had already blown his cover. Caramel's hearing went away for a moment as his ears were filled with a mind-numbingly loud bang, while at the same time a large projectile buried itself in the ground just inches from his nose. The bullet threw up a massive column of dirt and pine needles, all of it landing in Caramel's face. He rolled, trying desperately to find some better cover. The sniper fired again, and this time they didn't miss.

Caramel's sight shrank to tunnel vision as he gasped once more, this time in shock. The bullet had buried itself into the right side of his lower back. As painful as it may be, it was still only a flesh wound. He finally made it behind a rock where he had time to catch his breath. The sniper continued to fire, and two more bullets chipped away at his rock.

Caramel closed his eyes, and tried to focus. He had to win. There was no other option for him. He knew he'd blown it so far, but there must be another way out of this. What weapons did he have? A knife, a pistol, and a shotgun, is that right? The pain from his bullet wound was making it hard to think. The sniper rifle banged again and another bullet shattered upon his rock. Caramel's only hope was to somehow get closer to his assailant. He peered around the side of his rock, and to his dismay he saw nothing but grass and underbrush all the way up the hillside.

But before he could make his move, another bullet ate it's way into the side of his stomach. No more than two inches of his abdomen had been exposed, and for no more than a fraction of a second, yet he still managed to get himself hit.

Caramel slumped against the rock. He was finding it harder to breathe. He began to feel blood pooling up in his mouth, and the idea of getting up again was suddenly extremely unappetizing. He was choking now, and his eyelids were growing heavy. He knew what this was. He was going to die here on this rock, and there was nothing he could do about it. The sniper gunfire had finally subsided, and Caramel was finding it easier to rest as he let himself bleed out.

Twilight had to do something, though she was not yet sure what exactly. She wanted more than anything to find Caramel. She wanted him to tell her why he left, and how everything was going to be okay.

But that's the thing, isn't it? she thought to herself. Everything wasn't going to be okay. Only one of them could survive, and it would be and extreme stroke of luck if either her or Caramel won. The idea that Caramel would have to die for Twilight to win scared her deeply, almost more than its inverse. There's no way out, is there?

Twilight finally stood up for the first time in over an hour. Her joints were stiff and creaky. It was something in the stress of this game that made her sleep so deeply. And it was the deep sleep that had resulted in her abandonment. It was the way one thing led to another in this game that unnerved Twilight the most. Like a trail of unrelenting dominoes, the rules of action and reaction governed this place more than anywhere else she'd ever been. Lose your guard and you get attacked, try to talk peace and you get killed, fall asleep and you get abandoned.

She continued up the side of the creek, taking care not to lose her balance in the moonlight. It was eerie at night on the island. There were no chirping crickets or owls hooting into the darkness, just the ominous barely half-lit forest and its lifeless silence. It was something Twilight hadn't noticed the first night. The longer she sat there and listened-really listened-for something, anything at all, the more she realized that there was nothing left on this island but death.

BANG! Another firefight cut its through the silence, just like it had so many times before. But this time it was different. Caramel could be in there. Twilight collapsed to the ground and covered her ears. Every gunshot could mean Caramel's last breath. She couldn't stand hearing every single one of them.

"Caramel, please," she said to herself in nothing more than a murmur. Her words were distorted by snot and tears. "Come back."

But why did she care so much about Caramel? No doubt, most of her friends were dead by now, but she'd managed to maintain her composure through it all. She hated herself for caring more about a pony she barely knew than her friends, whom were her dearest companions for the last several months. She couldn't stand it, the way she put her own lust over kindness, generosity, honesty, loyalty, optimism, and everything else her friends stood for.

"Now now, Twilight. There's no reason to weep for a death that isn't yours." Twilight jumped, and turned around. There, standing behind her, was Trixie, holding a massive gun and grinning wildly.

Gun and grin aside, Trixie looked like total shit. Her face was mangled and bruised, and had feint hoof-marks printed all across it. Her mane was bloody and matted. Her coat had taken on a shade of dark purple, the resulting mixture of blood and her coat's natural blue color.

"You'll soon be dead yourself, Twilight. Though I wouldn't count on your departure being too brisk, so I'd cancel any appointments if your planning on being somewhere in the next few hours." Trixie raised her gun.

Fluttershy blinked her aiming eye a few times as she brought it back into focus with the rest of the forest. She'd done it! She'd stood on her own, and killed somepony without his assistance(she'd taken to calling the mysterious character in her head "him"). For the millionth time she repacked her rifle, and began to descend the hill to collect whatever weapons Caramel may have had.

As she carefully picked her way down the hillside - didn't want to screw up here, now did she? - Fluttershy thought of the remaining ponies. She could tell that there weren't many left, if only by the eerie cold that was descending upon the island. Well, that and the fact that she had been quite busy herself. She naturally assumed most other ponies would be just as busy as her. The idea of finally winning the game made her giddy.

Fluttershy finally made it down to the blood-drenched boulder, where a blood-drenched Caramel lay lifeless at its side. His pack sat next to his body, only moderately covered in blood. She calmly approached it, her mind set on whatever weapons lay waiting for her inside.

Fluttershy's ears were ringing. Something had happened to her that she didn't yet understand. She looked down. Her stomach was red with the blood that protruded from a thousand pebble-sized holes in her skin. Beyond that she saw the mussel of a shotgun, only inches away from the wound. Holding the gun was a very much alive Caramel.

She should have noticed that Caramel's hoof was resting inside his pack. She should have noticed the tiny rising and falling motions that could be seen ever so slightly in Caramel's chest. She should have noticed the fact that a major artery of Caramel's hadn't in fact been hit, meaning he was probably still alive. There were a thousand things Fluttershy could have noticed, but now it was too late.

Caramel pumped his gun and fired again, this time into Fluttershy's lower chest. She fell back, into the dirt. Looking up, she could see the stars, though blurred by blood and tears.

What's wrong with you, Fluttershy? When did you become so angry? When did you become wrath?

Fluttershy can remember sitting next to Discord in the forest. They didn't talk much in the early days. Back then, they just sat there and picked flowers. Fluttershy truly believed Discord had been reformed. She truly believed in an Equestria with peace and harmony. She even believed in her friends.

Fluttershy can remember meeting Discord. The other ponies, they hated him, but Fluttershy couldn't stop giving him second chances. She can't remember why now, but she knew right away that she wanted to befriend Discord.

Even farther back, Fluttershy can remember the first time she ever lay eyes on him. His tall, scaly back with his long, mismatched arms, he was such a frightening creature. Back then he was a tyrant, reeking anarchy all across Equestria, yet at the same time a small figure in a stained glass picture. She could swear that when he looked right at her, she could feel his eyes draining her soul away.

When did Fluttershy become who she was? It may have always been a part of her, since the day she was born. Lurking in the back of her mind, in her dreams.

Funny things, dreams are. Fluttershy could only hope she was in one now.

Caramel pumped his shotgun with great effort, and leaned forward. He positioned the mussel inside Fluttershy's mouth, and fired one last time.

He dropped his gun, and fell back onto the ground. He didn't even bother to look at the body one last time. "I'm not dead yet, you stupid bitch," he said, perhaps more for himself than the late Fluttershy.

Caramel coughed, blood seeping out of his mouth and dripping down his cheek. So easy now to just let go. He could finally be at peace. He could finally pay for what he did.

He was about to slip into oblivion when the sound of more gunfire came to his attention. This was a different gun though. One that had yet to be used in this game, for sure. It fired... faster. Come to think of it, it fired almost exactly like the gun the mysterious pony in the classroom had. It wasn't too far away, too. Caramel had hoped and prayed that there was only one sociopath in this game. Now he felt fear once more. He feared for Twilight, perhaps the only sane pony left.

Water in the creek had, over time, swept any soil and sediment into the ocean, leaving nothing but pebbles and boulders behind. At the current moment, the creek was at a relatively low water stage, rendering many of it's unearthed boulders high and dry.

It was these boulders that provided the cover Twilight needed for survival from the onslaught of Trixie's machine gun. The constant bombardment of bullets took quite the toll on the once smooth surface of the boulders, but held fast and kept Twilight safe from being torn into bloody little pieces. Had Twilight not dove for the boulders the exact moment she did, she would be either dead or seriously maimed, though probably the latter considering Trixie's previous threat.

Twilight knew she wouldn't be safe where she was for very long. She crouched down with her head next to her hooves, and began to crawl through the maze of boulders in an attempt to escape the gunfire. Trixie began to slowly approach Twilight, trying to get a better angle to shoot at her from.

What do I do? Twilight thought, there's no way I can fight back with that gun. But she knew she had to. She withdrew the pistol from her pack. She has to run out of bullets sometime.

At last, Trixie stopped firing her gun, and Twilight was ready. She sprung up from behind her rock, and unloaded ten rounds in Trixie's direction. She would have fired more, but it just clicked after that.

Trixie grunted in agony. A bullet had just pierced her right foreleg just above the ankle. Even more impressively, she'd managed to reload her gun in that time. She pointed it back at Twilight, and began firing again, limping ever closer to her position.

Twilight needed desperately to move, but there was a gap in the rocks up ahead. A sliver of moonlight was shining though, maybe only a foot wide. She decided to take her chances. She sprinted straight across the gap, literally running as fast as she could go.

When she got to the other side, a wave of pain pulsed through her left shoulder. She felt warm blood descending her left forearm. She fought hard not to scream in pain. This can't be happening, she thought, I can't die here. She had to think. What was it that helped her the first time? The thoughts in her mind were being reset with ever throb of her shoulder. Magic, that's right.

Twilight focused on the boulder she'd just run out from behind, carefully dislodging it from it's position in the ground. It rose, and flew sort of in the direction of Trixie's position. Trixie stopped firing for a moment, as if realizing a change in the game. Twilight heard the machine gun thud to the ground.

"I see how it is," Trixie yelled. Her voice was rough and shaky, weakened by hatred and excitement. "You think you're still better that me at magic. I think you're wrong." Suddenly, every boulder in a ten-foot stretch of the creek receded to the banks, leaving behind nothing but Trixie, Twilight, and a new smoother path for the creek. "Let's find out."

A boulder from the receding piles suddenly flew at Twilight, but she was ready. It shattered inches from her face, and the pieces, one by one, shot towards Trixie. Trixie grimaced in concentration, just barely deflecting them all. Twilight then began to hear Celestia's voice in her head, recollections from past lessons. Don't ever, under any circumstances, use magic to directly harm other ponies.

They began to limp towards each other, stumbling on the loose gravel. They finally met, face to face, no more than six feet apart, along side the running water of the creek.

Trixie, not wasting any time, shot a blast of fire from the tip of her horn. Twilight quickly snatched water from from the creek to use as a shield, and just barely escaped being engulfed in fire. Don't ever try to manipulate fickle materials like fire and water, Twilight. Things that are constantly changing are extremely dangerous when being handled with magic. Doing so will almost always result in the injury of the ponies around you. Twilight, are you listening to me? To counter, Twilight concentrated directly on Trixie, pushing backwards, with intent on smashing her against the rocks piled against the banks. Trixie stopped less than halfway there, and began to push back with her own magic. Twilight felt her hooves begin to slide as she felt Trixie's opposing force. Don't ever apply direct magical force against that of another unicorn's. In year's past, many have tried it, and it always ended in the severe injury of at least one participant. Twilight, please pay attention! Twilight concentrated with every fiber of her being to push Trixie back. But Trixie suddenly received a surge of energy, and pulsed her force back much harder. Twilight flew off the ground and across the cleared area, thudding against a large boulder that was still in place. Twilight tried to get up, but her head was spinning. Suddenly, Trixie was on top of her, grinning maniacally. Twilight saw two of Trixie, though one was fading in and out of focus.

"I'd like to give you something, Twilight," Trixie said, her fore hoof down the upper part of Twilight's right hind leg, "it might remind you of something you've felt before, but let me assure you, it's quite different indeed. In fact, you probably won't enjoy it, but I will."

One last thing, Twilight. Do not ever, under any circumstance -and I mean none at all- allow another unicorn to penetrate you with their horn. Such an act is mind-altering and is forbidden everywhere in Equestria. Twilight! Have you been paying attention at all this whole time? Trixie's head disappeared out of the bottom part of her vision.

"Please, Trixie. Can't you just kill me?" Twilight begged.

"Now, Twilight. Please just be pacient," said Trixie.

After that she stopped talking. Her hoof disappeared from Twilight's leg, and for a moment it was as if Trixie had completely vanished. But then, Twilight felt it. A deep, intruding feeling. Trixie's horn was thrust deep inside Twilight's marehood. Twilight gasped in disbelief. She squirmed, tried desperately to escape the intrusion, but Trixie's hooves tightly grasped Twilight's waist, refusing to let her budge. Trixie pulled back a moment, then pushed deeper. Twilight finally screamed, tears streaming down her face. Trixie finally pulled out, and came back into Twilight's field of view. Trixie's horn was wet.

She had a rather matter-of-fact look on her face. "No, I guess you didn't like it, did you?"

"Kill me," Twilight begged. Her body was quivering, and with every breath she emitted a faint whimper.

"Wait one sec," said Trixie, and she disappeared from view again. Trixie thrust inward once more, but this time in a different spot. Twilight shrieked as pain shot through her rectum. Trixie thrust again, this time twisting. With each thrust, Twilight felt her very soul drain away.

Don't go like this, she said to herself. But what choice did she have? She could still use magic, couldn't she?

Just before Trixie went in for another push, the boulder above Twilight lifted off the ground and floated over Trixie without her noticing it. One second later, the boulder landed onto Trixie's lower half. Trixie's horn jerked in disbelief, and Twilight screamed and squirmed to escape. Trixie's hooves still held fast, but Twilight noticed a hoof-sized rock positioned just above her head. Twilight picked it up in her hoof, leaned forward, and struck Trixie on the head with it. She still wouldn't let go. Twilight shrieked and hit her again, but she still wouldn't let go. Twilight took the rock, and began repeatedly bashing Trixie's skull with the rock.

"LET-GO-OF-ME-YOU-MOTHER-FUCKING-BITCH!" she screamed. Trxie finally went limp. Twilight hurriedly squirmed her way off of Trixie's horn. Once off, she lay back on the ground, panting and whimpering.

2 ponies remaining.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Twilight lay there, wrecked and abandoned next to the smashed dead body of Trixie. She felt as though the life had been drained out of her. Everything she'd ever known had just been obliterated. And would she go to? Her friends were dead. Princess Celestia was the once who sent her here. Even Caramel had left her for dead.

The thought suddenly occurred to Twilight that she'd just won the game. It certainly wasn't impossible that everypony else had just finished killing each other. A fascinating idea, no? That Twilight would finally be done with this horror show. That the worst of the pain was over, and the only thing left to deal with was the memories of what happened. That sounded like a cake walk now. No, of course not. Of course she wasn't the winner. If she was, they would have come and gotten her, right?

Twilight sat up and was once again confronted by the horrific reminder of what had just transpired. Trixie's lower torso and hind legs had been completely crushed by the boulder. Her face had already been mangled, but now the side of her head had a massive bleeding crater in it. At the center, Twilight could see bits of Trixie's brain. Trixie's horn was still dripping wet. Twilight scrambled and squirmed her way away from the body for a second time.

When she finally stood, Twilight noticed that she was bleeding badly, and not from just her shoulder. She did her best to limp over to the creek. She had trouble moving both her hind legs as well as having zero mobility in her left shoulder. The water was very shallow and reddened quickly as she stepped in. Stretching out, she completely submerged herself. She watched a the stars and the moon turned into a rippling canvas as the water rushed over her. But this water could not clean the stain left by what Trixie had done to her.

What if I died right here? Twilight thought, I could just let myself drown. Then it would be over. But unfortunately her broken body and her broken mind had taken its toll, and there was no more courage left for such an act.

She wanted to stay there forever, letting the cool mountain water dissolve her away. But instead she crawled out. For one thing, she just wanted to go somewhere. She wanted to forget about every thing, and set her mind to a simple task. Also, she just wanted to be farther away from the Trixie monstrosity. So Twilight left the creek, and slowly made her way up the opposite side of the ravine.

Twilight saw the light beginning fade from Caramel’s eyes as she rushed over to him. He was bleeding. She'd found him next to a bloodied rock and the grotesque remains of Fluttershy. She chose not to ask about Fluttershy.

“Twilight,” Caramel gasped, spitting up blood, “You’re still alive.” He was suffering from at least one critical bullet wound.

“I’m here,” Twilight said, “I’m here to save you.” Her tears were falling on his face, washing away a layer of blood.

“You’ve already saved me,” he said, coughing.

”No I haven’t!” She screamed, “We need to stop the bleeding.”

“Listen to me, Twilight.”

“Please don’t die. You’re all I have left. If you knew what I've been through you would ask me to leave you like this.” Twilight was sobbing. She couldn't control herself. She threw herself onto Caramel, and wept. She could feel the beating of his heart.

“The time I spent with you,” Caramel coughed, “was the best time of my life. From the moment I first saw you, I’ve never wanted to take my eyes off you. Right now, there’s no place I’d rather be than here with you. There’s nopony else in the world I’d rather die for. This is the best moment of my life, because my battle is won, and you look beautiful.”

Twilight was shaking. How could this be happening? “I can’t do this anymore,” she moaned through the tears, “I can’t let one more pony die that I love.”

There was a thunder clap overhead. Rain began to pour down onto their backs. Water spattered over Caramel’s face, washing away all the blood and dirt. And for the first time since the game began, Twilight saw him smile.

“One last thing,” Twilight leaned in closer, “don’t forget me, and please forgive me. Just remember me from the time we spent together. I can’t just fade to nothing. I want somepony to remember me for what I did, and who I was.”

"Of course," Twilight said. She was terrified of looking into his eyes. They bore holes into her already broken heart. But she stayed with him until his eyes stared unblinking up at Twilight. She stayed even longer, until the rain came to a stop.

And then, after what must have been hours but felt like minutes, Twilight saw a glint of bright light on the horizon over the ocean. As the glint grew bigger, it drew lines of yellow and orange across the rippling waves of the ocean. Less than a minute later, the sun was fully up in all its brilliance. Twilight had finally seen the sunrise over the ocean. After going though what was most certainly hell, she'd finally lived to see it. Only now she didn't want to. She no longer mindlessly worshiped the idol behind its power. Celestia had betrayed her in the worst way possible, and Twilight would not rest until she answered for the crimes she committed.

Suddenly, Twilight heard a voice from behind. "Hold still, sweetheart," a stallion voice said. She felt a pricking sensation in her neck, and soon after lost consciousness.

1 pony remaining.
Winner: mare #3, Twilight Sparkle

Author's Note

I'll be uploading an epilogue in a bit.