A week had passed. The Duk sat upon his throne in the ruined remains of what was once, Sweet Apple Acres. Bored with his conquest of Ponyville, he leaned his head in a bored fashion upon one wing that rest upon the wooded arm of his makeshift throne. Decoys surrounded him, guarding him diligently, even though with all his power, there was really no need. Amazingly, even after the hundreds of deaths that had occurred over the past week, there was still ponies in the city of Ponyville, hidden away from the ever-watching eyes of both the decoys set to scout for survivors, and the Mary-Sue Duk himself.
The Duk chuckled to himself. There had been whispers of resistance among the survivors that he had tortured, but he didn’t care. Let them try. He feared no one. That being said, however, he thought it still wise to seek out this resistance, and crush the remaining hope from the lives of the still-surviving ponies. He would make them all pay for the carelessness of their actions that led to his many deaths. Rarity would not be the only one to suffer his wrath.
He waved a wing, and before him appeared forty more decoys. With a solitary “quak”, he ordered them to search for any remaining resistance. They all turned feather, and began walking out of the barn doors that still hung, lopsided, from their hinges.
* * * * * * * * *
Meanwhile, in the Everfree Forest, the small encampment remained hidden from the eyes of the Duk that had destroyed their lives. Finish Line walked around the ponies who had endured so much, and felt for them. Many of his friends over the time they had been hidden had arrived since the fateful day that they had since dubbed Duk Day. One of which, was the only other surviving chef of Ponyville so far, Sunnyside. She was highly regarded as the premier meatball champion of Equestria, and ponies from all around would come to her restaurant, Mama Mia® to have even a single bite of her world-famous meatballs.
“Hey, Riboflavin,” she shouted toward Finish Line. She and him had nicknames for each other, being both competitors as well as friends over the years.
Weary and tired, Finish looked back toward Sunnyside and smiled for the first time in what seemed like forever. “What’s up, Danky Kang?”
“Nothin’ its just that –“ her voice was cut off by the sound of a rather large growling. “I don’t know how we are going to survive with this many ponies without any food.
For the past week, the only food that the entire camp had to eat, was the enumerable amount of lemons that Mao had brought with him in his saddlebags. Finish sat down on his haunches and looked toward the small patches of sky, still visible through the leaves and trees that made a canopy above them.
“I don’t know what we can do other than to see if there are any sources of food around the forest…” He seemed lost in thought.
Sunnyside chimed in after a few moments of silence. “Well… I mean there is always one place where we can get food.”
Finish Line looked over, a questioning look on his face. “And where would that be?” He shuffled around to face her.
“Well where else?” She pointed toward Ponyville.
Finish Line knew what she meant. Both, being owners of popular restaurants had stores upon stores of food from before they were attacked. It was risky to go back there though. They weren’t even sure if their buildings were destroyed or not, or even if they would survive the trip.
Something in the back of Finish’s mind kept him from shooting the idea down, however. The pony he had waited days upon days to return had yet to be seen. He needed closure. He needed to know what happened to her… His Crowne Prince…
“It’s a possibility,” he said, “But I refuse to bring anyone else here with us, it has to be us two in case there are any… well…” He trailed off.
“Complications…” Sunnyside finished the sentence for him. She agreed as well. The two of them, who knew their respective buildings best, should be the only two to venture out for food.
Finish knew that this was all for the greater good. It would also give him a chance to possibly find out what had happened to Crowne.
They walked together, silently and cautious not to attract the attention of some of their other friends. They knew that if they got word of what they planned to do, they would refuse to stay behind. Entering the small enclosure where Finish had been sleeping, they picked up a few things they would need and piled them in a saddlebag to take with them in the night while everypony slept. Sunnyside, getting a rather brave idea, thought it advantageous to see if she could trick Mao into letting them borrow his saddlebag for their excursion. He must have had some kind of magic enchanting it, after all, to be able to hold that many lemons.
She left to find him, Finish not knowing what she was doing. Moments later, however, he saw her come back into the small enclave, a saddlebag with a lemon mark upon it in her mouth. Opening it up, they were shocked to still see hundreds of lemons stuffed into the small space. It reminded Sunnyside of a magical object in one of her favorite books, Marey Potter.
Making the best of their time before nightfall, however, they continued to pile necessary accommodations for their dangerous trip to Ponyville ahead of them, leaving ample room for the return trip, if it was indeed by some miracle to happen, by taking out many of the lemons.
Night quickly descended upon them, however. Time seemed to pass quicker with newfound fear in both the hearts of Finish Line and Sunnyside. They waited until the moon was directly above them, and many of the ponies were asleep to head out. Even to the ponies awake still, it was extremely hard to see in the darkness around their encampments.
They had decided to head off to the closer one of the two, being Finish Line’s restaurant and animation studio, Noodlemation. Being toward the outskirts of Ponyville as well also made it the best candidate for food, as it may have not been targeted by the Duk on Duk Day.
The forest got less and less tangled as they traversed through it. Finish didn’t remember having to travel this far in when they initially escaped, but that could have also been his adrenaline at the time speeding up his perception of the situation. The trip took so long, he began getting lost in thought about Crowne, when Sunnyside brought him back to attention.
“Look!”
She pointed toward the now-visible town of Ponyville. Smoke still rose from the smoldering remains of the fire that had raged, or, for all that they knew, had been raging since they had evacuated. Promise was still there, however. A few buildings remained upright and untouched. After a few moments of taking in the horrible scene, however, they began to make their way toward Noodlemation.
They quickly figured out, though, that it was not going to be as easy as they originally thought. As they neared the outskirts of Ponyville, they spotted one of Duk’s decoys, patrolling the area, it seemed, innocently. At first, it scared them to see it, until they realized it wasn’t the Mary-Sue Duk, but they had heard of the horrible things that the decoys had done to innocent ponies who had now been reduced to nothing more than piles of dust in the wake of their master.
Not being unicorns, however, both of them had a bit of a challenge traversing into the city unnoticed. There were a few times where they were very nearly caught, but Sunnyside had saved them both from being noticed by throwing a rock to make a noise in the opposite direction from them as distraction.
It took hours to finally have the iconic logo of Noodlemation finally in view. The sign of the shop was still upright, and it seemed, from first glance, anyways, that the only damage done to the building was a few windows being broken. Carefully looking around, Sunnyside and Finish Line crept up to the building. Finish had store of noodles in the basement of his establishment stored away before everyone fled the city, and he hoped that remaining survivors had not found them before he had, however. He assumed the worst so as not to be disappointed.
The door creaked open, and they sidled inside quickly, noticing a decoy Duk nearing the corner of the road that the empty shop was on. Finish began to lead the way toward the basement, and Sunnyside quickly followed suit, neither making a sound, and both carefully treading as to not step on any of the broken glass.
Each step down the stairs to the basement where Finish kept all his noodles stored made an uncomforting squeak. Not enough to get the attention of the decoy Duks outside, but nonetheless, they both wished that the squeaking would stop.
The basement itself was extremely dark. The candles that had been lit before had long-since been extinguished, and they could really only make out shapes of things through the darkness. Knowing where all his noodles were stored, however, Finish Line made his way directly toward the back of the room, toward a door on the right. Feeling around the darkness on the wall with his wings, he located a handle and pulled it outward.
The smell of preserved, and edible noodles filled the air of the room. Finish Line, unnoticed by Sunnyside, was blushing furiously at the intoxicating smell of them. He quickly unequipped the lemon-saddlebag, and both he and Sunnyside got to work piling in the noodles into one side. They wanted to separate them from the food they hoped to put from their second location to keep it all organized.
Just as they had gotten most of the noodles into the bag, however, the solitary creak of a door hinge was heard from upstairs.
“Quak… Quak…”
Their hearts began to pound. They had not realized how much noise they had been making shuffling around the noodles. Donning the bag once more, Finish and Sunnyside crept silently back toward the staircase, toward a small hiding place it offered underneath to where it exited out onto the floor.
They could hear the decoy Duk creaking his way down, step by step, until he came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. Looking around, the Duk began looking for the disturbance he had heard from outside. Being as dark as it was, however, it was hard for him to make out anything but the smell of noodles in the room. It was lucky for them that the decoy decided not to try and look around the darkened room. He simply stood there, looking around in the silence for all of 5 minutes, before deciding that it was nothing, and began creaking his way back up the staircase and out the door again.
Sunnyside, who had, more or less, been holding her breath most of the time, let out a small sigh of relief and turned to Finish Line. “Alright then, I think we should start on our way to my restaurant now. We’ve aroused enough suspicion here as it is.”
Finish nodded, and, careful to make sure nothing was in the building, creaked their way back up the stairs, avoiding the lights from windows as they reached the top, and triple checking every direction to make sure they were not spotted before opening the door.
Mama Mia® wasn’t all that far away from Noodlemation. It was only about five to six blocks away at most. Sticking his head out of the door, Finish Line carefully stepped outside and began creeping leftward along the building to conceal himself again, Sunnyside following suit. There seemed to be a lot more Duk patrols around than when they had entered. Assuming they were there because of their disturbance earlier, Finish Line never stopped looking around to make sure they were hidden and silent still.
They had gone about three blocks when, while atop of a hill, they saw the sign of Sunnyside’s restaurant. The words “Mama Mia” were still painted in bright red, with every letter “a” mimicking the shape of a glittering meatball. Unlike Finish’s eatery, hers seemed to be more intact. There was perhaps only one or two broken windows at most, and the building wasn’t showing signs of destruction in the painting or structure. Noticing a patrol near the door however, they had to wait a bit for him to leave before entering the establishment.
As they began to open the door, they were both silently delighted to notice that the door wasn’t creaky. Quickly entering and shutting the door, Finish looked to Sunnyside. It was now her turn to take the lead. She walked toward the kitchens behind all of the tables that all of her customers had once taken joy in sitting in, toward the staircase in the back that led to her own storage of supplies.
Luckily, Sunnyside had had unicorns help her construct the building many years ago, so even in the basement, the lighting was enchanted to still work, though still dimly. As she reached the bottom of the dimly lit staircase, Finish noticed four different freezers, all set with a very heavy looking combination lock. What perplexed him, however, was that there was no way to turn them.
Sunnyside turned toward Finish Line. “These are password protected, so I’m going to need you to plug your ears.”
Finish Line crouched down and put his hooves over his ears as she asked. Sunnyside, making sure he really couldn’t hear, turned back around toward the first safe and whispered, “Das a spoicy-a meatbol!”
There was silence for all but a few seconds before a fairly loud “crack” split the silence of the room. The lock had snapped out from the door and slid toward the right of the door, making the whole door begin to swing outward and open. Just as the smell of noodles filled the room, the smell of meatballs began to emanate from the safe.
Finish Line, taking his hooves off his ears, looked up in awe as he looked upon literally hundreds of deliciously smelling and cooked meatballs.
He looked toward Sunnyside. “How are these cooked and ready already?!”
Giggling, she looked back and replied, “Well unlike YOU, I actually make use of a little thing we ponies of Equestria have called magic. You should try and use it sometime. There are a lot of unicorns out there, you know. Now hurry up, we gotta get these-a spoicy meatballs in that bag.”
And so they began. One by one, in an assembly-line fashion, they packed hundreds of meatballs into the other side of the bag. All the noise they had made seemed to have gone unnoticed, seeing as the building itself was still very structurally sound, and muffled a lot of what they were doing. Eventually, once they had finished, Sunnyside closed the safe back up, and began upstairs to make sure they were still safe from the decoy Duks patrolling outside. They had decided to save the other three safes for the next time they needed food. They were, after all, magically preserved.
Crouching down again, and with Finish Line carrying the lemon-bag in tow, they began to sneak back toward the door. With all the time they had spent in that basement, making the amount of noise that they were, it seemed that both of them were not as careful than when they first came in.
This lack of caution was apparent when, upon opening the door without looking first, they noticed a decoy Duk, not but 20 feet in front of them. He wouldn’t have noticed them at all until Sunnyside, who had opened the door, and upon seeing the decoy, had closed it loudly in reaction.
“QUAK!”
The Duk swiftly turned around toward the building, the small decoration on the front swinging lightly left to right. He immediately began to waddle toward the door, quaking every other step or so. Hearing the Duk draw nearer and nearer, Finish Line and Sunnyside began to panic. Looking around for a hiding space, they quickly tried to make it to the kitchen. Maybe the cupboards would offer them some sort of hiding place.
They could hear the scratching of the door behind them as they scurried. The Duk was at the door, jumping for the handle. Sunnyside, trailing slightly behind Finish Line could be heard breathing in panicked tones. “Hurry! He is gonna see us!’
The two of them rounded into the kitchen just as they heard the door handle creak downward. They had no idea how they were going to get out of this one…