//------------------------------// // Chapter three: The Spider's Web // Story: Nightmare Night Town // by Foal Star //------------------------------// Twilight lead her odd trope of horror creatures through the dark and desolate streets of Ponyville. They eventually came upon Fluttershy’s place which used to be a quaint cottage sitting on a hill where before cute bunnies romped and played in fields of flowers. Now there was a smelly, steaming swamp filled with dead trees and weeping willows with a rundown cottage half buried under the swamp water. The troupe came upon a dock built with rotting wood with rats scurrying around the planks. Spike’s cat-like instincts were kicking in as he got into a pouncing position watching the rats with intense scrutiny. Twilight turned and growled, ”hold it Whiskers, we may need these rats to help us locate Fluttershy." She looked over and saw Derpy Whooves who was among the rats she was huge and fat with thick buck teeth with two pointy ears dark red eyes and a long worm-like tail coming out of her back end. She was chittering at the other rats as if they were in some deep discussion. Twilight came over, and in a surprised tone she asked, “Derpy is that you?” The big rat looked around ears perked up as she stammered, “Twilight is that you!? Why are you a witch!?” Twilight was going to explain, but Spike suddenly jumped on top of Derpy making her throw him off and stepping back hissing at her assailant. But Spike stood up with his fur spiked, was hissing right back. Before Spike could jump again, Twilight sent a magic bubble encasing the cat inside. As he scratched and hissed, Twilight was irritable as she continued, “as I was trying to say. Luna accidentally unleashed a curse causing this insanity were here trying to stop it. Now Applejack said that she saw Luna come over here did you see her?” Derpy tapped a paw to her face and exclaimed, ”yeah I think she went into the creature hut.” Twilight rubbed her wart and asked, “what's that?” Derpy pointed to the cottage “the “creature hut” is a club for the many ponies transformed into animals. I was there for a little bit, but I was more interested in talking to my fellow rats who were kicked out." Twilight snickered and turned to the cottage “well it was nice talking to ya, but we should get going.” She then continued on her way with Spike crawling and meowing scratching at the magic bubble. They all came onto the leaky canoe as twilight lit her horn and used it to move the small wooden boat through the swamp water. As they entered the flooded cottage, their mouths dropped seeing a huge party with flashing orange and green lights flashing down over the dance floor. There was mostly werewolves, and vampire bat ponies dancing, most were jumping up and down to the beat not really caring about the newcomers. The odd trope continued on the floating boat until it hit the dry wood and they all stumbled off and looked up to see Vinyl Scratch above the crowd playing the turntables. She was now a slimy green scaled swamp creature with floppy gills on either side of her face, she also had huge disgusting green fish eyes looking at either direction. All the while she was using her webbed hooves to play the scratch table. Applejack bent down and whispered to the group, “I’m betting that Fluttershy or Luna has to be here somewhere.” Twilight nodded in aggrement and whispered, “let’s look around if you see her inform everypony okay?” They all nodded in agreement, and they went about the swamp party going through the many bat ponies and werewolves trying to see if anyone of them resembled the yellow pegasus. Applejack came over to a group of werewolves and shouted, “listen up!” Every werewolf looked around at the Jack o lantern on top of the scarecrow body. “I need to ask to do any of you know if Princess Luna was here!?” One of the big ugly werewolves was curious and picked the Jack o lantern off from the body of hay. Applejack shouted "hey stop that bad dog!" The werewolf just howled as he started to throw the pumpkin around between some of his other werewolf friends. As her head was being thrown about Applejack shouted and protested, ”hey stop that! I’m not a bucking ball!” They just howled and continued throwing her around even more. Twilight, however, saw something in the back of the rundown hut. It was a table made of spider web woth two weird creatures sitting by it. There was a huge yellow spider with eight beady blue eyes, and eight freaky stilt like legs. But what gave her away as Fluttershy was instead of three pink butterflies for a cutie mark there were three pink spiders printed on her abdomen. She was sitting on a stool made of her own web having a weird mist covered drink. The other odd creature was a pegasus wearing a black cloak that covered her entire body, she also had two black feathery wings that sprouted from her back. The cloaked mare was sitting on a stool made of web as well drinking a mug with some weird mist pouring out of it. Twilight hobbled over and croaked, “Hello, are you Fluttershy?” The yellow spider looked up and was a little frieghtened by the witch and stammered, “y..yes..what do you want?” Twilight abit annoyed shouted, "Im Twilight! Can't you tell!?" Fluttershy squealed and hugged Twilight with her long stilt like legs. "Oh, Twilight Im so happy to see your okay!" The mare shivered seeing Fluttershy's huge pincers up close dripping with venom and pushed back as she stammered, "y...yeah its good to see you to." Then out of nowhere a giant disgusting looking fly landed on the spider's back making weird sucking noises as it rubbed its proboscis all over Fluttershy's back. Twilight stepped backwards with a look of disgust and shouted, "what the buck is that!?" Fluttershy just waved a leg and cooed, “oh don’t worry, that’s Angel he’s a fly now.” Twilight rubbed her eyes in disbelief and asked, “but you're a spider don’t you eat flies?” Fluttershy shook her head and stammered, “no, why would I eat bugs?" She then took her fly into two of her legs and cuddled it. Twilight rubbed her head with confusion. The hooded skeleton rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Yeah I know it’s weird. I’ve been trying to tell her that spiders eat flies for hours.” Twilight eyed the mysterious pegasus and scoffed, “who are you exactlly?” The pegasus just threw her hood off revealing a skull of a pony with red glowing lights in her eye sockets. She gave Twilight a menancing glare and shouted, “I’m Rainbow Dash you egghead!” Twilight blushed and asked, ”oh I’m sorry it’s just well your new look.” Rainbow Dash flapped her big black wings and grumbled, “Yeah I know it’s weird. I think I’m the angel of death or something.” A giant black crow plopped on top of her back with its dark red eyes staring right at Spike. The cat was getting ready to pounce on the bird, but Twilight quickly plopped him back into a magic bubble. He hissed and scratched but Twilight just turned her head towards Rainbow Dash and asked. ”Who’s the crow?” The crow cawed out. “Scoot! Scoot!” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and growled, “Yeah, it’s Scootaloo she won’t stop cawing like that.” Apple Bloom came over and asked in her creepy monotone voice. “How about if we give her some corn? I’m sure she would love that.” She produced a cob as Scootlaoo flew down snatched it and flew off to eat it somewhere in the rafters. Rainbow Dash scoffed, ”thanks Apple Bloom she was starting to get on my nerves.” Apple Bloom bowed down and whispered, “I am not the one you should thank, it’s the great almighty power of the corn.” Rainbow shook her head and gulped down her brew. “I thought Scootaloo was acting weird.” Twilight was getting irritated as she shouted, ”okay enough! Just one you tell me where Luna is!” Fluttershy scuttled back a little scared by Twilight's tone and ansewered. “I don’t know? I mean she was here for a few minutes asking about a vampire pony as you see there’s like a hundred of them here.” Twilight shook her head and stomped a hoof on the ground in agitation. “Did you see Luna anywhere!? I need to find her so I can get this all turned back to normal!” Rainbow Dash looked over and explained, “I think I saw her she was dancing with one of the bat ponies for a little bit..she...she looked a lot like Rarity. But, I was still trying to figure out what was going on so wasn't able to get a good look.” Fluttershy nodded and continued, “yeah I’m sorry too, I was busy trying to figure out what a happened to my cottage. Then all these ponies and werewolves burst in with Vinyl Scratch demanding to have a party here.” The witch turned to see Vinyl as some swamp monster gurgling and flopping her gills around making Twilight's face turned green. “That’s disgusting.” She then turned to see the werewolves bouncing Applejack’s head around like a ball with her shouting, “hey stop it! I’m gonna rip you apart when I’m back on my body!” Twilight came over with a fury she shouted, “hey! The next werewolf who throws my friend’s head is going to be turned into a wart-covered frog!” The werewolves turned around one taking Applejack’s head and scoffed, “oh yeah? There’s a dozen of us and one of you.” Rainbow Dash flew over with a cloud of dark shadows forming around her. She slowly walked towards them with her eyes glowing red as she slowly removed a scythe from her back and growled in a threatening tone, “The next fool who threatens my friend is going to feel the wrath of my scythe!” The Werewolves whined and whimpered like puppies and stepped back as the one with Applejack's head through it to Twilight and stammered, ”yeah..yeah we’ll get going.” Rainbow's dark eyes glowed red as the werewolves all yelped and scampered off. Twilight sighed in relief and turned to the reaper and whispered, ”thanks Rainbow Dash, I was out of potions.” Rainbow pulled the hood of her cloak down and grumbled, “yeah, yeah we should head over to Carousel Boutique and see if we can find Luna.” Fluttershy scuttled over and asked, “but first can we please get the rest of these monsters out of my cottage? Even as a Spider I do like my privacy.” They all turned towards Vinyl the swamp monster still jamming away. Twilight pondered for a second rubbing her wart she then turned to Rainbow and asked. "Why don’t you just scare everyone as you did with the werewolves?” Rainbow Dash looked down at the jack o lantern and smirked as she scoffed, ”I could, but there’s a lot of monsters I’ll need some help from all of you…” Vinyl was entranced by her turntables the music roared with shrills and shrikes with the powerful them of her EDM. It was an impressive blend of horror and modern music, and with her new sense of perception, it seemed to have improved her hearing allowing the mare to improve the sound qaulity. As she played her spintable Vinyl scanned the room with her fish eyes and noticed Fluttershy the spider was crawling around the rafters spinning a substantial thick web covering the entire roof of the cottage like a cloth of silky white strands. She then turned to see that the witch that came in earlier was brewing something in a giant black pit near the back of the room adding a dead frog, a rat’s tail, and a gallon of swamp water. The concoction was boiling with a mist coming down covering the dance floor, Vinyl was concerned as she got up and shouted, “hey what do you think!?” Before she could say anything else the pot exploded and the room was shrouded in a black fog blocking all light. The music stopped, and every creature there looked around terrified and out of nowhere a creepy filly’s voice whispered, ”she’s coming...she’s coming…” Then a dark red light glowed in the center of the room. Two giant shadows of wings spread outward and covered across the red glow with a crow in the back cawing and cat hissed and meowed. A glowing pumpkin head attached to a winged horse body reared upward wielding a scythe in her mouth as she shouted, “Leave now! Or I will claim your soul!” The pumpkin’s face roared with fire as every monster in the cottage began pouring out and running for their lives. Vinyl, however, was growling seeing the entire ruse and jumped downward and roared coming straight at the skeleton figure. But she squeaked as her body was starting to be covered in thick globs of web, soon she was completely wrapped up in the silky mesh of spider web. The fish monster was then jolted upwards into the ceiling as Fluttershy spun down to face Vinyl. She gaped in fear seeing Fluttershy’s beady blue eyes staring right back as she apologized. “Hey, I’m sorry for ruining the party. But this is my cottage, and I really would appreciate it if you would take it somewhere else.” Vinyl was horrified looking at those eight creepy eyes and pincers dripping with venom. She just nodded and whimpered, “yeah sure whatever just don’t hurt me.” Fluttershy then led the trembling Vinyl down with her webbing as she continued to apologize, “I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.” Before she could say any more, Vinyl jumped into the water and swam off. Then the dark shadows began to dissipate, and the place was now quiet for a few moments, But then out of nowhere Derpy poked her head in and asked, “can we come back in now?” Fluttershy gave a nod and cooed, “yes the monsters are gone you can all come in now.” Derpy turned and gave a few chitters then a low rumble could be heard as a swarm of rats stormed through the cottage like a plaque. Everypony felt sick watching the plague of rats running around their hooves like a river made of grey fur and worm tails. Twilight shook her head and grumbled, “This is just getting weirder and weirder, but Fluttershy you're going to be okay staying here by yourself?” Fluttershy was just letting the rats scurry around her as she answered. ”Well I technically won’t be here by myself, but if you need anything, I’ll be here to help.” Twilight and her friends all began to walk onto the canoe with Spike still in a magic bubble, Rainbow Dash carrying Applejack's head and Apple Bloom leading the body made of hay with a rope. Then as they began to float on the swamp with Twilight guided the canoe with her magic heading a course back to Ponyville. Rainbow Dash thought about Fluttershy and shivered then whispered in a terrifed tone. “Dear Celestia, if Fluttershy knew how terrifying she was and actually tried to scare ponies. She would definitely be more freightening than me.” Applejack who was growing frusrated bounced around and shouted, ”yeah we get it Fluttershy is creepy as buck! But please can you put my head back on my body!?” Rainbow blushed and helped fix the jack o lantern to the body of hay and apologized, “sorry Jackie Lantern.” Applejack pondered tapping a hoof to her chin. Why did Rainbow Dash call me Jackie Lantern?