Tragic Fiendship
My Little Pony: The Magic Fiendship
[Totally and 100% a work of parody. Do not spaz out, please.]
The air whipped against Rainbow Dash's face, making her lips wobble as she pushed, faster and faster still, her mind and heart united in her quest for speed. No longer was she racing, no longer was she defending that poor shy pony; now there was nothing but the speed, straining against the air itself, feeling the pressure build, feeling the burning in her wings as she went faster than she ever had before...
... and her eyes opened in the night, tears running down her cheeks. Always, always she dreamed of that moment, that last instant of happiness, a fresh torment to taunt her in her sleep. Sometimes she dreamed she had done it, that she had broken through, saved the day, been a heroine. Those dreams were the worst, mocking her with false images of what might have been. Respect and friendship, a joy in flight she would never know again... The crippled pegasus laid her head down again, her shattered wing atop her as ever, her crumpled feathers the only comfort she kept. Her chamber amidst the ruins of the cloud-formed city was cold, but she had long since ceased to care. Just like all the others. Rainy closed her eyes and tried to return to sleep, not bothering to still her tears.
***
"GET BACK HERE, YOU STINKING GLUEPOTS!" howled the red-eyed pony, charging madly through the forest, her yellow coat stained red with the blood of the small woodland creatures she had captured that morning to skin. The three small, nimble fillies ahead of her wasted no breath replying, but ducked and weaved through the woods, pulling slowly away from her. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!" she screamed, but the three vanished from sight at last. She kept running in a berserk rage, chasing after those impudent vandals who had shattered her cages and freed a month's worth of hunting.
***
"That was a close one," gasped out one of the three small fillies, a skull-faced apple on her flank.
"We couldn't leave them," responded another, a distinctive plant on her side. "You saw what she was doing to them."
"Yeah," said the third, subdued. "I wouldn't wish that one *her*, let alone some helpless bunnies." She wore an unusual harness with a strange metal tube on either side of her body, underneath her wings, and a picture of one of those tubes as her mark.
Their mentor nodded her striped head somberly. "It is good, when innocents yelp, to muster courage up to help. The evil that one does is vast, for all the sorrow in her past. But you must mind this fact too; do not be hasty, Shootaloo."
"You didn't hear them, Zecora," said the little pegasus quietly. "Belladonna, you tell her."
"It was... worse than usual," admitted the young unicorn.
The zebra shook her head sadly. "What she had done before was bad, but Nightmare Moon's power drove her mad. I fear we can no longer wait; now we must embrace our fate."
Apple Doom's eyes widened. "You mean... it's time?" Fear and anticipation whirled alike and make her legs quiver.
Zecora nodded. "No longer will they let us hide, when Flutterpsycho stands defied. The Tragic Fiends will do their worst... so we must go slay them first."
***
The first they knew how to defeat. Apple Doom's skill with traps and crafting made it easy to prepare a deadfall lined with spikes, in the dense jungle where Flutterpsycho would be forced to walk. They had prepared the pit long since, but knew that using it would mean there was no turning back, victory or death, in a land where death had become easy to find. Merely showing themselves was enough to incite the berzerker pony to scream, froth, and give chase... and soon enough she struggled in the pit, impaled on a dozen sharpened spikes, gnawed ready by a local rabbit, the pit itself dug and maintained by dozens of forest creatures. They swarmed in, biting and clawing until the pony's yellow coat was hidden beneath their small, furry forms.
Ever since the blue pegasus had fallen from the sky and crashed into her, frightening away the butterflies and animals that had begun to gather, Flutterpsycho had sought madly to find ways to keep them all forever. At long last, she would be with all the forest creatures forever more.
A mouthful or two each.
***
Vengeance came swiftly. A mountain of muscle and purple fur charged into Ponyville mere hours later. Wild bursts of chaotic magic erupted from her wicked horn and shattered already-precarious buildings. Ponies fled screaming as fast as their tired hooves could bear them out of town, anywhere but in her path.
All but one.
A single filly stood her ground. "I'm not afraid of you, Starless Midnight!" she declared defiantly with a toss of her head.
The purple bruiser snorted. "You should be." Her hooves thudded heavily on the ground as she advanced on her target. "You don't stand a chance against me." Her eyes glared, narrow and furious at the unicorn before her, at the world that had so disappointed her. "I've improved my body day in and day out for years, ever since that stuck-up school threw me out just because I couldn't pass some stupid test." Her teeth gritted still at the memory, trying so desperately to open the egg, sobbing as her parents brought her home, vowing never to look at another book so long as she lived. "There's no way some little filly is going to get in my way. I'm going to stomp right through you and not even pause, and you'll have about two breaths to regret being so stupid before I crush your skull!"
"Maybe so," said the little unicorn, but stood her ground. Starless Midnight snorted again and broke into a charge. Her foe ducked aside at the last moment, her horn scraping against the Tragic Fiend's side, scratching through her fur.
Starless Midnight turned, hooves slamming on the ground to stop herself. "You think dodging is going to save you?" she snarled, and set herself for another charge. She took her first step... and found herself sinking to the ground, her legs gone weak and distant, her vision going blurry. "Wha... what's happening?" she demanded, feeling her body rapidly shutting down.
The filly tossed her head again, an oily sheen coating her horn in the moonlight. "There's a reason they call me Belladonna, you know."
Starless Midnight died before she could ask what that reason was.
***
Rainy glared up from beneath her black-painted eyelids at the pegasine Crusader, her dark black blood spilling from the hole in her side, the breath coming more and more laboriously to her lungs. "You... haven't won anything," she gasped out. "Nightmare Moon will avenge me, and your suffering will make mine as nothing!" Shootaloo snorted, slowly trotting forward - and sharply slammed a hoof against the blue-black pegasus' broken ribs. "In that case, I better ramp up your suffering first. This is a little trick I like to call... Shootabuse." Rainy's mouth gaped wide in anguish as the Grim Champion forced her hoof into the wound...
***
Apple Doom's flanks heaved, standing atop the fallen form of the gryphon, its lifeblood still dripping from her chin. The room beyond was a vast, empty ballroom, filled with slowly swaying forms of cloth-piles, piles of rocks adorned pathetically with top hats and monocles, and a disturbing collection of stuffed ponies... expertly taxidermied. Behind a long, elegant, but all brown-and-silver table laid out with a sparse repast, a bright pink pony sat. "Do you like my party?" she asked sadly, then, "No one ever likes my parties. No one will ever come to them. That's why I make my own guests, too. Then I can have the most wonderful parties with all my friends. You'll be my friend too, once I've taken your insides out.."
***
In a wild chaos of clashing colors, another sat, her white hide spattered and stained with years of neglect, her purple main tangled and oily. Her army, as she called it, or rabble as any who dared would have described it, milled aimlessly about. The favor of Garishly protected them in the dark world of Nightmare Moon, ensured them the right to take what they wished, eat anything they could find.
They broke and ran and were run down when the buffalo stampeded through their midst. The zebra cried out, running alongside their chief, "Though your revenge is not denied, their leader you recall is mine!" He did not respond, too busy running over the thrashing body of a fallen pony with a pair of scissors on his flank.
Zecora found the tent easily enough, a riot of mismatched colors that stood out even in the gloom. Garishly looked piggishly up from a fat-swollen face at her, horn glowing dangerously. "You don't really think you can WIN, do you?" she snorted. "You haven't even any magic to fight with!"
"You will learn what I can do, but not soon enough for you," responded the zebra, flicking her head - and a small vial flew through the air toward the grossly obese unicorn.
Garishly made a contemptuous snort and blasted the vial with a bolt from her horn. A purple mist erupted... and lanced toward her. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but the mist formed a loop about her neck. Her forehooves lifted, but the garotte sunk into the folds of fat beyond her reach. Slowly her eyes glazed over and she fell.
Zecora watched and waited through it all, then said quietly to no one, "A very final sort of joke, refined down into Poison Choke."
***
The ruins of Canterlot were the domain of the Apple Corps, the legions who obeyed the Dame d'Pomme. The Night Flyers patrolled the skies relentlessly. But Shootaloo and Belladonna, for all their youth, had been forced to learn quickly and well how to hide, how to evade detection. Now they used those skills to slip into the city, to make their way to the Shattered Palace. Zecora stayed behind, having found a book amidst the jumbled heaps of Garishly's treasure that suggested a way, one day, to defeat Nightmare Moon herself.
How to strike at Dame d'Pomme, however, eluded even them. They found an unguarded vantage point they could watch from as she commanded her followers, laying down law and whim with equal force. They saw when the pink pony slowly clopped in, pulling a cart with a thin blanket over it.
"Why, Pinkie Sigh, it is as always a great pleasure to see you," the golden-hued mare in her regal outfit trilled. "You so rarely grace my court with your presence. Might I inquire as to your reason for visiting today?"
The morose pink pony barely lifted her head. "I made something for you. You're going to hate it but I tried. I always try but no one ever likes anything I do." She reached a forehoof back, and tears came to the eyes of Shootaloo and Belladonna.
Apple Doom had been expertly preserved. She was positioned on her back, forelegs raised before her, face frozen forever in a mask of terror. Stitching was visible reconnecting her throat, but a few slices had been left peeling out, as though a series of blades had just instants before cut across her neck.
"Oh, Pinkie Sigh, you are much too hard on yourself," cheerfully declared Dame d'Pomme, regarding the stuffed Crusader genteelly. "You have returned my misguided sister to me, after all, and that is a wonderful gift."
"You're just saying that. You hate me for killing her. You just hate me," mumbled the pink pony, tears in her eyes as she turned.
Two shots rang out as Shootaloo fired both barrels of her harness-gun. The two Tragic Fiends crumpled, a perfect hole in each forehead.
"Run," said Shootaloo.
***
Somehow, they managed to evade the Apple Corps and Nightflyers. In the moment they were too terrified to think; afterward they could not recall how they had done it. They rejoined Zecora in the deep forest, while the leaderless legions and mobs fell to fighting each other, every pony at the throats of every other in a mad rage, battling for dominance. Zecora told them what she had learned.
"For hopes, there are few much dimmer, but there is a single glimmer. Nightmare Moon once was defeated, and it just might be repeated. It takes a most powerful magic, but there the story does turn tragic. The Elements of Harmony once were pure, but that is no longer sure. Nightmare Moon has those perverted, and their natures all inverted. Once they were domains of friends, but now turn to darker ends. To put an end to endless night, we must set the Elements right."
Shootaloo looked at Belladonna. Their eyes were still red-rimmed from tears; neither thought they would ever again be able to close their eyes without seeing poor Apple Doom's body.
"We'll do whatever it takes," the pegasus vowed. "We'll make Nightmare Moon pay for what she's done!"
***
Nightmare Moon laughed, her cackle ringing across the world she had sheathed in her darkness. The six fools who might have been able to stop her had they somehow found those disgusting inner sparks of friendship were dead, at the hands of those who hated her most.
"Now there is nothing left that can stop me," she gloated to the sky, where the darkened sun lurked with its helpless prisoner watching the misery below.