”HONEY?” a voice called out. Specifically, the voice of Blue Tea, Spades Duck’s wife. She was a big blue unicorn, and eleven months pregnant, which you would already know if you read the description. If course, she wasn’t normally that big, but within the next month she would be giving birth to quintuplets.
“Yes, dear?” answered Spades Duck, who was sitting right next to his preganté wife in the living room. Spades Duck was a light-green earth pony with a black mane, which was currently in a state of bed-head. There was a loud knock on the door, but Spades Duck ignored it for reasons which I shall reveal shortly.
”HONEY, I NEED PICKLED CANDY CORN AND MILK DUDS!”.
“Are you sure, dear? Yesterday you wanted- quote “the flesh of the unborn” unquote- which was actually eggs and ketchup,” replied Spades, ignoring the repeated banging coming from both the front and back doors now.
”PLEASE, HONEY! IF I DON’T GET PICKLED CANDY CORN AND MILK DUDS I THINK I MIGHT DIE!”
Spades sighed. “Are you sure it can’t wait?”
”PLEEEEEEASE?” screamed Blue Tea. Her pregnancy was affecting her hearing, much to Spades’s’s’sss'sssssss dismay.
“Alright, dear,” said Spades defeatedly, getting up from his chair. “Don’t let anyone in while I’m gone.”
”LOVE YOU.” roared Blue Tea, leaning down to give Spades a kiss and a bone-crushing hug.
Waving goodbye to his wife, Spades grabbed his saddlebags from by the front door and went to a window. The banging on the doors continued. Before going out, Spades took his skeleton costume out of his saddlebags and put it on. It was Nightmare Night after all. Spades opened the window, and hopped out, making sure to close it behind him so no wayward trick-or-treaters would find their way in. He turned from the window to look out upon the neighborhood, which was currently overrun by fillies, colts and various adults, all in costume. Now that he was outside, Spades could easily hear the shouting coming from the front door.
”WE WANT CAN-DY! WE WANT CAN-DY! WE WANT CAN-DY!”
He needed to hurry. If he didn’t get Blue Tea her pickled candy corn and milk duds in time, she would open the door. And then the trick-or-treaters would overrun his house. And then they would find- well they would find the thing that Spades wanted nopony to find.
T’would be shameful.
Spades scanned the street for anypony who might recognize him. While he did not see anypony of that sort, he did see a filly dressed as a can of beans, as well as two costumed ponies kissing like their life depended on it, which it didn’t. One was a very realistic orange werepony, and the other was a decent-yet-purple Starswirl the Bearded. Spades didn’t recall reading that Starswirl had been an alicorn, but whoever made the costume must of thought it was accurate.
Of course you and I both know that it’s Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry. I mean, who else could it be? Kissylips? No, she’s trying to buy egg nog.
Where was I?
Ah. Here we are. Spades exited his yard and began to trot briskly down the street. It was a nice night out, albeit a bit louder than a normal night what with all the kidsickles running around and screaming their heads off from overdosing on sugar, but that’s not that annoying as long as you’ve got decent earplugs, which Spades did have. And was wearing. The earplugs, I mean. Not sure if that was clear.
Spades in his spooky skeleton suit blended perfectly with the crazed crowds of costumed candy craving children. Okay, not perfectly, as he was a bit taller than most of the colts and fillies that were out and about, but nopony would of looked twice when they saw him.
Yep, just another skeleton off to fight in the skeleton war.
Spades was about halfway to the 8/12 when a very large, smoke-spewing dragon landed about ten feet in front of him. Spades didn’t notice it at first, but when he did, he screamed. Twice. Like this.
The dragon bent down, and snorted smoke at Spades. He coughed.
Thinking quickly, Spades drew his- wait, oh shoot! He never put on his saddlebags! Oh no! Whatever shall he do? Oh dearie oh my! Celestia have mercy!
The dragon opened its mouth and revealed Pinkie Pie, sitting on a pink chair with a large, complicated mechanical control board in front of her.
“Hi Spadsey!” said Pinkie.
“H-how did you know it was me?” asked Spades, still recovering from having a dragon not eat him. Costumed ponies stopped to marvel at the highly realistic dragon costume.
“Oh, it’s easy! You’re the main character, so you have this kind of... smell, I guess!”
“...Main character?”
“Uh huh! Don’t worry about all that, though.”
“...Okay?”
“Oh!” said Pinkie as the dragon costume blew another cloud of smoke. “Keep your eye out for changelings! Nightmare Night is like a suuuuper good time for them to infiltrate us! Ok! Seeya!”
And with that the dragon took off, flying away towards the princesses’s castle.
“I want one.” said Spades to nopony in particular.
•••
The rest of the trip to the 8/12 was relatively uneventful. I say relatively because the Canterlot Fire Brigade 12 shooting candy from a hose up into the air would be considered eventful for most, but not for Spades, mostly because he got hit on the head with a few falling jawbreakers. Why are they called jawbreakers? Has anyone ever actually broken their jaw on one? Hold on while I look this up.
Ok, so, supposedly jawbreakers are too hard to bite on without “risking tooth damage.” I mean, I coulda guessed that. And also there are jawbreakers that are too big for anybody’s mouth. Spades did not get hit on the head with a bowling-ball jawbreaker because those wouldn’t fit in a fire hose. Not even a magic hose.
Ok, maybe a magic hose. but those jawbreakers are like, $13 each. Or more.
Why am I talking about jawbreakers?
Spades entered the 8/12, which was mostly empty, aside from Queen Kissylips in the back by the frozen goods section and a cashier wearing a very old bee costume, but Spades couldn't see Kissy because she was hidden behind some shelves and stuff. Spades knew exactly which aisle to go to: the holiday aisle, which would contain candy. How much candy?
So many.
It just so happened that the frozen goods section was at the other end of the holiday aisle, and thus Queen Kissickles was 100% visible at the end. When Spades saw her, he did what any sane pony would do and ignored her because it's Nightmare Night and he figured that it was a top-of-the-line Nightmare Night costume and not the real thing.
Kissylips, after she had turned around because she smelled love, immediately recognized spades from a recurring dream she had been having lately where her and Chrysalis invade Canterlot and she gets pwned by Spades, so she's immediately on her guard.
Meanwhile, we have the Spadesmeister over here loading up a cart he grabbed with those milk-cartony things of milk duds and bags upon bags of candy corn. Kissylips watched in horror as the cart was filled to the top in like five seconds.
It was then that Spades saw Kissylips looking, and he turned to her, and Kissylips froze. She froze from the sheer fear she felt from looking into Spades's eyes. Spades, wanting to be polite and sociable, waved and told her "Happy Nightmare Night!" before turning and pushing his heavy cart out to the checkout counters, only to find that the cashier had gone on break.
Now, here's a little something about the cashiers at 8/12. One of the requirements is that they have to be extradimensional entities, because prolonged exposure to the wibbly-wobbly spacetime continuum inside the 8/12 causes intense cravings for soda in non-extradimensional beings. What I mean by this is that all the ponies who used to work at the 8/12 drank all of the soda in the soda aisle in like an hour and had to get their stomachs pumped and it wasn't fun. Anyway, the extradimensional entity who was the cashier-on-break was named Ralph. Ralph was a Humam (not a human), which meant that he looked like a human but could freely walk between dimensions at will, and also he had a lower tolerance for spicy foods than the average human. Now, Spades knew Ralph pretty well, because Spades was always picking things up for Blue at the 8/12, and if you see someone enough you eventually have to talk to them and then either hate them or like them and befriend them. Lucky for Ralph, Spades became his friend. (In this alternate universe, at least. Some of the other Spadeses did not like Ralph, and Ralph quickly learned that having Spades as an enemy was a Bad Idea.)
So, being Ralph's friend, Spades knew where the break room was, and so he left his cart by the checkout counters and walked back to the holiday aisle, where Kissylips was talking with one of her changeling scouts, who was disguised as a bag of Cheetos.
"...What do you mean nopony has picked you up yet? Everypony loves candy-corn flavored Cheetos!"
Spades paid her no mind, and headed up the aisle. Kissylips, however, froze up again until Spades was out of sight, i.e. he had stepped inside an empty freezer section through the door.
"My queen," asked the Cheetos Changeling, "Who was that which has bothered you so?"
"Nopony. Now, you stay there until somepony brings you home."
Inside the freezer section, it was pretty darn cold. Spades shivered, and searched for the employee breakroom door, and found the doorknob behind a pile of old frozen bread slices. I'm talking a HUGE pile of bread. Spades ignored the bread and went into the break room, and took a seat at a dimly lit table across from Ralph the humam in his old bee costume. Ralph didn't recognize spades in his skeleton costume, and thus told him "Get lost. I'm on break."
"Ralph." said Spades.
Ralph looked up. "Spades? What are you doing out on Nightmare Night? Shouldn't you be protecting your-"
"Shh!" Spades shushed, stopping Ralph. "Don't talk about them here! somepony might find out!"
"Dude, nopony cares that you have a collection of-"
"Shhhhhh!!!!!"
"Fine." Ralph huffed. "What brings you to the glorious 8/12 at this time of day? Or is it night?"
"Evening. I had to pick up some stuff for Blue. She's got foals on the way."
"I remember having kids once." said Ralph, taking a sip from a gallon of chocolate milk.
"Was it nice?" asked Spades.
"Mmm."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Want some choko milk, my dude?" asked Ralph, avoiding the question by holding out the Half-empty gallon of chocolate milk.
Spades took it and took a long pull from the jug. "That's good stuff. Was it nice having kids, Ralph?"
Ralph could no longer avid the question as he had no more chocolate milk to drink. "Yeah, it was nice. Till the wife divorced me and took custody."
"Harsh." Spades took another swig and burped.
"I get to see them sometimes though. My Ex is mean, but not that mean." Ralph took the milk jug back from Spades and finished it off before opening a portal and tossing the jug through. "alright, back to work. You had a bunch of stuff to check out?" asked Ralph, standing and stretching.
"Yep."
"Just a moment, my friend."
•••
It had taken Ralph a good ten minutes and it had taken Spades about a hundred and fourteen bits, but Spades had all fourteen bags full of candy corn and milk duds hung across his back and was on his way home. The streets were still packed with costumed ponies, getting candy from trick-or-treating or TP-ing houses. Spades's walk back to his house was uneventful.
When Spades got to his house, he found the front door open.
It wasn't gone, though. Just... open. For a second, Spades thought he saw a can of butt-whoopin floating in the doorway, but he didn't actually see it because it ș̼̖̼̘͟h̝̬͇̳͓̹̘o̥̳̞̺u̯̤̙ld̤̠̩͇̦̭͝n͙͔̦̻̤̩'̵͉t̼ b͉͚̜̙̘e͏̯͙̰̼͚̫ ̣̫̫͚̟t̼̲͇͍̰ͅh̵̭̞e̳̱̳̝̬͚͈r͖e̱̹͎͎̼̞. On and on. Pardon.
What he did see was the absence of candy-hungry fillies and colts at his front door, which could only mean one thing: They were inside. Spades's eyes went wide, and his eyebrows widened, too. Spades ran into the house, hoping that the children had not gone into the basement. First, he checked the kitchen, which had all the cupboards open. He walked into the living room, and saw Blue sitting in her chair. the basement door was open.
"OH, HONEY. YOU'RE BACK! WHERE IS MY FOOD?" asked Blue.
"Just a moment, sweetiebundles. Did a bunch of kids come in here?"
"YES. THEY WENT IN THE BASEMENT."
Then Spades said a word I can't print here without changing the rating. He quickly deposited one of the bags of candy corn and milk duds by Blue, who promptly ate the whole thing, an then hurried down the stairs to see his horrors realized.
The children were playing with his Pretty Pretty Princesses figureines.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO(you get the point, right?)" yelled Spades, and all of the kids stopped and stared at him. Well, not at him, but at the bags and bags of candy on his back.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-" continued Spades until he noticed that the kids had stopped playing. One of the kids, a colt dressed as Santa Hooves, looked at Spades and asked "Is that candy?"
To which Spades replied with a cautious "Yes?"
"Can we have some?"
"Uh, if you put the figurines back?"
The kids began to put everything back where it was supposed to be in the elaborate Pretty Pretty Princess display case where Spades kept them. Once It was all clean, and Spades had stopped hyperventilating, he gave each of the kids a hoof-full of milk duds and candy corn and sent them on their way. After escorting them out of the house, Spades gave the rest of the milk duds and candy corn to Blue, took off his costume, ignored the fl͘oati͟ng ̷ca͢n of͢ ̛Bu̡tt͜ ̷Wh͟o̶op̕in, On and on and on, pardon me, and went to bed.
The End.
For now.
