My Little Goth: Darkness is Bitter

by ClickClackTheBrony

Make Some Friends! ... Or Not. You Probably Won't

Our chariot finally descended into the little country town. "Alright, let's get this over with..." I said as I climbed out.

"Our first stop is the Soylent Apple Processing Plant," said Spite, reading off our checklist. "Let's ask him for directions," he said, gesturing to an oncoming buffalo. Due to the Queen's tendency toward conquest, Equestria had a large population of refugees from other races. The only exception was Zebras, who had been preemptively exterminated after the Queen read Fallout: Equestria.

I went to go talk to the buffalo, but the second he laid eyes on me he gasped in shock and galloped away.

"Hey, fuck you too!" I called after him. Stampede-happy tree-hating prick.

*** *** ***

Eventually, we did manage to find the Soylent Apple Processing Plant. It was a huge, black building that clouded the sky above it with smog. As we walked inside, we found a gaunt earth pony mare snacking on a slice of fresh 'apple' pie.

"Hey, I'm looking for whoever's in charge of catering the Summer Moon Festival," I said to her.

"Yeah, that's me. I just got on break. The name's Famine. I guess the Queen sent you?"

"Yeah. Wait... The one making the food is named 'Famine?' That seems like a bad idea..."

She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Not as bad as taking away the main ingredient of photosynthesis and driving real apple trees to damn near extinction."

"What was that?"

"I said my name's not important. What is important is that me and my family's got the food situation all under control."

"Your family?"

"Yeah." She called out "Hey! We got a visitor!"

From around the plant's various machines and assembly lines, Famine's whole family trotted towards us, with Famine listing them off as they arrived.

"This is Pestilence, and this is War, and this is Death, and that's it."

My eyes widened. "Wow... you manage this whole place with just four ponies?" Death was even just a filly and Pestilence was so old that I figured she'd be more use to the place working from inside the machines, if you catch my drift.

"A lot of the place is automated, but yeah, we are kinda thinly stretched. There were more of us, but our family had some bad luck in the decimation when Ponyville was late in the last Winter Wrap-Up. Of course, we might have been on time if we weren't so understaffed on account of that other decimation from the the 'Nightmare Moo' incident."

"Yeah, yeah, boo hoo, your family died. As long as the food's gonna be ready, I don't care. Goodbye."

I turned to leave, but the moment I did I came face to face with the filly, Death. "Aren't you gonna stay for brunch?"

As I looked into her big puppydog eyes, I was filled with this strange, overpowering emotion that I couldn't quite name...

Oh, wait, I could name it. It was disgust.

"Piss off, midget!" I said as I stepped around her.

*** *** ***

Next was the weather. Currently it was cloudy and depressing, so perfect as far as I was concerned. However, for the Summer Moon Celebration the stars had to be visible, so we had to clear it up. It looked like it hadn't even been started though.

I looked up to observe it, and happened to notice some pegasus' tail hanging over the side of a cloud. "Hey, you!" I called, "Who's supposed to be in charge of getting these clouds out of the way?"

The pegasus, a mare with a mane of black, white, and varying shades of grey, peeked over the side. "That's me, I guess. Name's Monochrome Rush."

"I don't care what your name is! Have you even started?"

"Nah. I mean, I was going to, but then I realized I don't care."

"You don't care? If this isn't perfect, the Queen is going to order a tenth of Ponyville killed, and I'm gonna be the one having to spend my valuable time doing it! Isn't my time important to you?"

"Nah, not really. I've survived both of the recent decimations, even the one from when I left the 'N' off that welcoming banner. I figure I'll survive one more. Even then, dying doesn't scare me much."

"Oh my Nightmare! You're almost as lazy as that 'black and white Rainbow Dash' design concept! You get off that cloud and clear the sky right now!"

"Really? This whole story is based off the oldest 'What If' scenario in Brony history, but my name and hair is what strikes you as lazy? Up yours, I'm not doing squat." She rolled back over and started trying to fall asleep.

"Alright. Spite, you know what to do."

"My pleasure!" Spite levitated himself onto the cloud next to Monochrome. She looked up at him, apathetically at first, but then she started caring a whole lot more when he breathed a jet of hellfire on her tail.

Monochrome screamed and flew off the cloud, crashing into the other clouds and destroying them in her panic.

"It'll wear off when all the clouds are gone!" I called up to her. "And don't screw around, you got like an hour before that stuff eats through your immortal soul!"

Spite descended to my side again. "That was fun, but conjuring a physical manifestation of Satan's wrath into the mortal plane is thirsty work. Can we get some coffee or something?"

"Fine," I said. "I need a break from dealing with these morons anyway."

*** *** ***

The closest place where we could get something to drink was some emo poetry club. I personally didn't care for poetry itself, but I did rather like listening to people talk about how sad they were. Schadenfreude makes everything better, doesn't it?

As we sat down to drink, a griffon poet named Rook took the stage. If I hadn't been familiar with griffons and known they were lion-eagle crosses, I would have called him part crow and part panther due to how utterly black he was. Apparently, black was also the topic of his current poem.

"Black, the color of her eyes,

Black, we met under night skies,

Black, the past we flee together,

White, the future so much better.

"White, the snow upon the ground,

White, our faces as it's found,

White, the sheen of axe's blade,

Black, my soul, without her, made."

"HA!" I guffawed as Rook finished. Spite thought it was so funny that coffee nearly shot out of his nose. As we finished up and left, I made a mental note to listen to emo poets more often. That gave me exactly what I needed.

*** *** ***

"Okay, now we need to check on the entertainment..." I reminded myself. According to the Queen's instructions, the orchestra was practicing at a nearby theater while the town hall was being decorated. Once there, we entered to hear the end of the Equestrian national anthem, quite ably performed, actually.

"Alright, this seems to be fine here. Do you think you're ready?" I asked as I approached the conductor, a unicorn mare.

"Oh, you're the Queen's student, right? My name's Slit Wrist. I actually had one thing I needed help with; I need somepony's input on a decision I'm trying to make."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, this is kinda going to be my magnum opus, so I figured tonight would be a good a time as any to end it all."

"End it all?"

"Yeah. When my band plays the final note, I'm going to kill myself for the grand finale!"

"Wow, that's..." I couldn't quite find the words.

"A nice touch?" suggested Spite.

"Yeah, that's it!"

Slit Wrist nodded. "I just need help deciding how to do it. I narrowed it down to either hanging or shooting myself."

"Hm..." I wracked my brain. "Hanging isn't always an insta-kill, so it may be a bit anti climactic. Not to mention a gun would be more showy."

"But messy," interjected Spite, "and loud enough that it might overshadow the actual music."

"And that's why you're my number one slave," I said, petting him.

Slit Wrist smiled. "So hanging it is! I think maybe I can set up a trap door to drop the noose from the ceiling toward the end..."

"Wait, wait, wait," I said. "I just remembered that whenever a pony dies they shit themselves. That's gonna be a deal-breaker."

"Oh, right," said Spite. "I guess brain goo everywhere will be the least concern for messiness."

I nodded. "Slit Wrist, have you eaten at all today?"

"Um, oh, I hadn't thought of that... Yes..."

"Well, in that case I'm nixing the idea. I don't wanna take any chances."

Slit Wrist's face drained of color. "No, no, I need to do this! I can wear pants!"

"No way. You know that the law demands for all peasant-class ponies to be fully nude in the presence of royalty to highlight the fact that you're all animals compared to them. You'll just have to kill yourself some other time."

She beat against her head with her hooves. "No no no! Oh, I'm so frustrated I could just kill myself!" She inhaled a breath and released it in a primal yell as she darted out the doors. I followed her out and was just in time to see her run into the street and dive in front of a speeding horse-drawn carriage. The pony pulling it panicked and swerved away, crashing into a nearby preschool. Naturally, that made both the carriage and building explode, scattering pony bits everywhere.

The severed head of the pony who'd pulled the carriage rolled in front of Slit Wrist's face. "That's what you get for swerving. Learn to drive, jerk," she spat as she stood up and walked away, defeated.

"Alright, everything's fine here, I guess," I said to Spite before we trotted off.

*** *** ***

All that remained was the decorations at the town hall. "I don't see why the Queen was so worried about this place," Spite remarked. "Almost everything is in order now. Even the sky is good since Monochrome got her ass in gear."

"Yeah. Maybe she was the only thing really holding this place back. I think I'll kill her after the Summer Moon Celebration; if she never botches anything again, the Queen will think I really whipped this place into shape. What do you think, disembowelment or head explosion?"

"I was thinking turn her inside out."

"Oh, that'll be tricky, but definitely worth it."

I opened the door to the town hall, expecting perfection...

What I saw instead was the mayor's shaven body impaled up the butt and out the mouth on a pike, all of the decorations on the ground, and several tables and chairs on fire. That one buffalo I met when I first came to Ponyville was in the middle of it all, him and a few of his friends tossing molotov cocktails around. "Fuck the government! Fuck Nightmare Moon! Fuck authority in general! New World Order! Anarchy!"

My paralysis spell waved throughout the room, freezing the buffalo and his cohorts in their tracks. "Who are you and what the fuck is going on in here?" I demanded.

I released my spell on just the buffalo's lips. "My name is White Hooves. Me and my friends are showing Nightmare Moon just what we think of being told what to do! I mean, destroying all of the world's crops, killing her own citizens, she's as bad as my parents!"

"You idiot! The Queen's going to be here in a few hours, and thanks to you I have to make sure this place gets redecorated basically from the ground up!"

"Isn't that just like a student of the Queen. Only caring about yourself!"

"Wow, you really hit the nail on the head." I released White Hooves and the others from my magical grip. Normally I'd have followed up with a blood-boiling spell, but given the situation, I had no choice but to go for a more utilitarian route. "Imperio!" A thin mist came from my horn and enveloped the rebels, putting each one in a trancelike state. "Now, you guys clean this place up and redecorate it perfectly. I want the Queen to be utterly elated when she sees this building!"

And that's how I spent the rest of the day overseeing a bunch of hypnotized rebels restoring the town hall.

Author's Note:

Yup, I recycled Rook from Wild Wasteland. Not only that, I'm also using him for a Dangan Ronpa crossover soon. Rook will be everywhere. The Rookening is beginning. All hail Rook.