Derpy Hooves looked across the battlefield.
She was lost.
Confused.
Lost...fused?
The bodies strewn about the ground were a vile combination of her own friends, as well as those who seeked to do her harm with harsh words and stale muffins.
She pitied them, but also recognized their harshness was what made her stronger.
Stepping over several bodies, she continued on, making sure none of the still forms dared twitch a single hair, for then she’d have to put them out of their misery.
Which really, was more so her own misery. Really now, crushing a fellow pony’s skull with a baseball bat was not something to be remembered.
The pool to the resort had been cleaned and ready for use, up until a day ago, and now was littered with litter and liter and other kinds of L’s.
She suddenly stopped before the Tiki hut, the flames of the tiki torches still glowing bright and hot.
“H-hello?” Derpy asked.
Suddenly a brown earth pony shot up from behind the counter, a bottle of vodka in his hoof.
“Beback, demon spawn, for I shall- wait, you talked?”
Derpy looked around herself, noticing several of the dead bodies had broken glass embedded into their skulls. She then looked back to the stallion, and nodded.
“Eeyup!”
“You spoke!”
“Yeah…” Derpy rubbed a foreleg, “that was a thing my ex coltfriend would say, then I had to kill him because…” she then waved a hoof out at the bodies strewn about.
“Oh. Oh! I’m… sorry, it’s just been so long since I’ve seen anypony normal, other than that little girl falling from the hotel’s highest floor, then magically being pulled up into the loving embrace of her parents or something as such.”
Depry tilted her head, confused.
The stallion shrugged. “I dunno, was probably a promo or something. Anyway! I’m Doctor Whooves, at your service!”
Derpy watched the strange stallion extend his blood covered hoof towards her, yet with no hesitation shook it.
“And I’m Derpy. Derpy Hooves.”
“Huh!” the stallion proclaimed, then vaulted over the bar counter, a fresh bottle still in hoof, “It’s as if we’re meant to be. Whooves and Hooves!”
The grey mare couldn’t help but let out a giggle snort, which she tried to cover with a foreleg, only for the stallion to push it aside.
“Now now, miss Derpy, that’s nothing to hide. We’re on a mission now, you see! And as long as we stay away from zombie ponies and kicking random beach balls, we’re sure to survive this!”
Derpy smiled, then screamed as one of the bodies suddenly shot up and bit the brown stallion on the neck.
To which the stallion started screaming, gurgling, and flailing as he dove into the half full swimming pool.
Derpy held her breath. “Well, maybe he got lucky, and it wasn’t too deep…”
Doctor Whooves surfaced, hacking and fighting to breathe. “Well,” he coughed again, “that was certainly a-”
Then suddenly a ponyshark launched out of the pool’s surface, and grabbed the stallion, pulling him under.
“Doctor!” Derpy shouted, leaning over the edge to watch as the two fought bravely under the chlorine infested waters, and then for only one of them to win and struggle to the surface.
It was Doctor Whooves!
“Doctor!” Derpy cried, waving her arms at the battered, bruised, and bitten stallion.
“Yes…”he groggily stated the fact, encouraging her words, and reinstating the notion that she was, in fact, correct, in that he was Whooves, but the doctor was yet to be seen.
Derpy gave him a hoof as he climbed out of the pool, hacking and wheezing all the while, stale water evacuating his even more stale lungs. Seriously, when was the last time he’d used a ventilator?
“Okay, I think we’re…” another cough, “ready to go.”
Derpy took him around her side, wrapping her foreleg around him, and helped guide him outside of the hotel.
“It’s okay, Doctor, we will find somepony to help us, and we’ll be off this dead island before too long.”
“Yes, or wind up like the rest of them.”
Like it was involuntary, Derpy promptly bucked the stallion away from her.
He landed with a meaty thud against a rock, groaning and crying.
“Doctor!”
“Yes! I am! But not for much longer if you keep this abuse up!”
Derpy rushed to the stallion's side. “No, you don’t understand. This is a dead island.”
Doctor Whooves blinked. “Yes, it is, but we’re yet alive.”
“But why?” the mare asked.
“Well…” he rubbed his bitten neck, then looked to the mare holding him in place. “Quite frankly my dear, we’re outcast. Rejects. And we’re here because… nopony else wanted to deal with us.”
Derpy gasped, dropping the stallion onto the cold, hard, black pavement of the deserted road to nowhere. “By Celestia…”
Doctor Whooves groaned, “pretty sure she's out of the picture by now. Or, you know, just enjoying the scenery.”
“Or maybe she’s been rejected, and is now one of them.”
Whooves followed Derpy’s pointed hoof, to a crowd of dancing zombies.
“No, those are more Luna’s gig. Celestia would be just alone, sad, and feeling... “ the stallion bit his tongue.
Derpy, nudging her face against the stallions, grinned at him as she spoke.
“Reeeeejected?”
Doctor Whooves sighed. “Yes, feeling… rejected.”
“Then quickly, Doctor, we must go!” Derpy said, grabbing the stallion, throwing him into an abandoned carriage, and trotting as fast as she could hooked up to it.
“Where are we going!?”
“Where else? The Jungle Book!”
----------
“Hakuna Matata!” both a pig and muskrat began singing, then were promptly splatted by four grey hooves pulling a wagon.
“Doctor, we’re here!”
Doctor Whooves, or what was left of him, groaned as he sat up in the carriage. “We are… where?”
“The forest!”
“Forest? On an island?”
Derpy nodded, unhitching herself, then hovering in the air. “Eeyup! We are here to fix everything!”
“How?” Doctor Whooves asked.
“Easily,” Derpy then showed him a secret hidden sciency-base thingie.
“Just hit the button, Doctor.”
The brown stallion hovered his hoof over the button, then hesitated.
“What… happens?”
“Derpy smiled,” Derpy said, smiling, “we are reset.”
“Reset?”
“Derpy nodded,” Derpy nodded, saying as such.
“What… what’s happening?”
Derpy looked up to the sky. “We are being rejected, and forced into a new reality.” She then stretched out a hoof towards her companion. “Come, Doctor, if you want to live… or at least not be forced to endure the ending of a horrible video game.”
And so Doctor Whooves placed his hoof in hers, and the two were whisked away to a new beginning.
----------
Slowly, Doctor Whooves’s eyes began go open up.
“Ah, you’re finally awake,” Derpy said.
The stallion then noticed they were in the back of a wagon, bound, and groaned to himself.