//------------------------------//
// Home Alone Extended Universe 
// Story: My Little Pony, My Little Pony, and Me 317: Hello, Humans! 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

“Talking about the Yahooves Answers, are you boys ready to start in on the actual questions?” Scraps asked.
“I mean, no?” Ditto replied, stifling his laughter.
“Okay," Juice said, picking up a piece of paper. "First question. 


Howdy, McColtroy Brothers.
I absolutely love baking, and my very best recipe is my homemade apple pies. They’ve taken first prize in competitions locally, and even throughout my extended family, which let me tell you, ain’t no mean feat. However, my best friend has gotten into the habit of sneaking pies off the windowsill while they’re cooling, which I honestly did think was only a thing in old kids’ books. Worse still, she’s influenced my pie-crazy coltfriend to do the same thing. Brothers, I love them both and always gladly give them both heaping servings of my pastries, but goldarnint, I want my slice too!
	Best wishes,
		-Braeburn (he/him).”


Scraps leaned forward in his seat. “Well now, the first thing that I would do would be to set up a bunch of Home Alone traps.”
“Well obviously.”
“Yes, clearly. I can’t believe you even thought that needed saying, Scraps.”
“Just the typical stuff, you know?” Scraps continued. “Electrified door knob.”
“Swinging paint cans,” Ditto said, nodding. “Tacks all over.”
“All over the floor?” Scraps asked.
“Yeah, there. On the walls. In the pie. Generally all over.”
“In the pie?” Scraps’ eyebrows shot up. “Ditto, you’re going to want to eat that pie later, you don’t want tacks in it. You want berries, or apples, or pumpkin filling.”
“I think I’d rather have tacks in my pie than pumpkin filling, Scraps.”
“Well -- okay, but my point still stands. Now, if you put out a decoy pie, that one you could fill with tacks.”
“Now, boys,” Juice said, spreading his hooves. “These are all great ideas. Absolute classics, every last one of them.”
“Thank you.”
“But Braeburn -- he doesn’t have time to set up all those traps! You know how long it takes to make a real good pie? That’s a full day right there! By the time he’s made the pie, all the traps have already been sprung or dismantled or what have you, and it’s an absolute sitting duck.”
“Hm…” Ditto nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean…”
“So here’s my proposal, and it’s just a little kind of a tweak on Scraps’ proposal. We don’t make this Home Alone.”
“Not Home Alone?” Scraps asked.
“No. We make it Spy vs. Spy.”
“Now, Juice. You realize of course that that is not a movie,” Ditto said, holding up a hoof.
“No, no, that's very true, it isn’t. But think about it. You got the best friend. You got the coltfriend. Both of them are after the same goal, that scrumptious, fresh, hot, yummy-in-your-tummy pie.”
“Okay. With you so far,” Scraps said.
“So then maybe you whisper a few words in the coltfriend’s ear about how your best friend goes around saying how she was swiping pies well before he got into the game. And you mutter to your best friend that your coltfriend loves pie so much, he’s got plans to steal every last one you make.”
“Okay,” Ditto said.
“And then you got what? Two pie thieves --”
“Pie vs. Pie.”
“--Yes, thank you, Scraps. Two pie thieves pitted against each other. And maybe you leave out the cattle prod and paint tins and rope and tacks where both parties can get at them.”
“And then they Home Alone one another…” Ditto said, nodding along.
“Leaving your pie untouched, exactly!” Juice concluded.
“Uh, one problem,” Scraps put in.
“One problem?” Juice repeated, a little hurt.
“Is it that now your best friend and your coltfriend are going to hate each other forever now?” Ditto asked. “‘Cause I think that might be a little problem.”
“No. Well, maybe that too,” Scraps allowed. “But what if one of them is just better than the other at traps? Making them, escaping them… what if one of them actually gets the pie?”
“Well, then they’ve won your twisted little game of pitting pony against pony and the prize is theirs, Scrappy,” Juice said.
“Yeah, they’ve lived up to your Marecchiavellian expectations and earned the pie! It’s simple, Scraps.”
“Well, okay. Or he could also just let the pie cool on the counter.”
Both Juice and Ditto frowned. Scraps held up a hoof. “Wait! Wait. Let me finish. He lets it cool on a counter in the middle of a Saw maze.”
“Oooh,” both of his brothers chorused.
Ditto put on a low, gruff voice. “I’m Jigsaw the piemaker. You want a slice of this nice hot apple pie? First you’ll have to make and eat a pie made out of your own butt meat.”
Juice was practically vibrating with laughter. “Okay. Okay.”
“Now, in order to open the oven door, you’ll have to walk on the giant rolling pin. But be careful you don’t fall off into the pit of hot, bubbling apple filling.”
Scraps put a hoof to his chin. “Do you ever wonder if Jigsaw is just the grown-up version of the colt from Home Alone?”
Juice finally broke into peals of laughter. “He-- he’s so small,” he wheezed. “Maybe he’s not even grown up!”
“Yeah, Saw could just be Home Alone 5, honestly,” Ditto said.
“Home Alone 3, Ditto,” Scraps corrected. “Anything without Marecullay Coltkin in it doesn’t count canonically.”
“Sure, sure.”
Juice cut in. “Happy Hearth’s Warming, Sticky Wet Smelly Bandits. I’ve made some improvements this year. Wanna bet what you’ll be known as by New Year? My money’s on the Buttless Bandits.”
“This is why you don’t mess with young, innocent, impressionable foals on Hearth’s Warming,” Ditto added. “It warps them.”
“Have some holiday pie for your troubles, boys. Oh no, I forgot to mention, it’s full of tacks. You’ll have to eat it all to open the portcullis.”
“And then when they go through the portcullis, they both get hit in the head with cans of paint, yes?” Scraps asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” Juice said.
“Y’know,” Ditto said thoughtfully. “I don’t think Saw can be Home Alone 5.”
“Three,” Scraps said forcefully.
“Sure. You can’t go from a rich little foal -- let’s be real here, a shitty little foal who did, starting in the second film, start to actively lure his victims into his traps --”
“Oh, absolutely,” Juice agreed. “He led them what, halfway across Manehattan into his dark twisted paint-can fantasy.”
“Right. Be that as it may, I don’t think you can go straight from that into Saw, exactly. I think that the next step for the Marecullay Coltkin character in this saga is in fact Spy vs. Spy.”
“Now, Ditto, is he the spy in white or the spy in black?” Scraps asked.
“Oh, spy in white. He likes to play at the ‘good guy’, but really he’s just as twisted, if not more so, than his negative counterpart,” Ditto said. “I see him working as an undercover op for the government first, secretly reveling in his dark and gory fight with the other spy, each time getting a little more sharp, a little more honed.”
“Now, just to be clear,” Scraps said. “You’re making a Home Alone Cinematic Universe, yes?”
“No,” Ditto said. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Scraps.”
“Oh.”
“It’s multimedia, clearly this is the Home Alone Extended Universe.”
“I see. I see. My bad.”
“So what, one day he just goes rogue?” Juice asks.
“Yeah. He finally kills his enemy. For the first time, his tricks and traps have claimed a life, and it feels good,” Ditto said, tilting his head back. “He gets a medal and a new assignment, and he’s more vicious than he’s ever been before. He keeps moving up. Ponies are terrified of him, and one day he goes too far and is stripped of his rank and kicked out.”
“And that takes us into Saw?” Scraps asked.
“Mmm. No, not yet, I think there needs to be some kind of intermediary stage. With Saw, he’s too well set-up, too established. There’s gotta be a prequel.”
"Uh... Jackass?" Juice suggested.
Ditto scrunched up his face. "Maybe? Maybe. Or one of those other pranks shows."
"Or Wipeout," Scraps said. "You gotta do the big painful obstacle course for money."
"I think Wipeout is already part of the Double-Dare Cinematic Universe," Juice said.
"Fuck. You're right," Scraps said.
"We'll use Jackass as a placeholder for now," Ditto said.
"Actually, no," Scraps said. "I think the escalation goes Home Alone, Jackass, Spy Vs. Spy, Saw."
"...Yeah, okay," Ditto conceded.
“And then we close off with him finally getting taken down…” Juice said.
“...by the daughters of the Wet Sticky Skunk-Stinking Goopy Buttless Bandits,” Scraps concluded.
“How do they do it?” Ditto asked, fascinated.
“I think maybe they get help from the creepy old pony who lives next door to him,” Juice said. “You gotta bookend this kind of cinematic experience.”
“You ever notice that the creepy old person got weirder as the movies went on?” Scraps asked. “The first guy was just a grumpy guy with a shovel. Then there was Brenda Flicker with her bird army… by the end of this series, it’s just gonna be a taxidermist with a knife collection!”
“You think it’s gonna be the knives that take Jigsaw Marecullay Coltkin out,” Juice said solemnly. “But no. The taxidermist throws a bunch of stuffing into the air at him and a swarm of taxidermy animals descends.”
“And then he goes to jail under the name ‘The Fluffy Serial Killer,” Ditto said.
“Beautiful! Beautiful, absolute poetic cinema,” Scraps said.