The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

by McPoodle

Chapter 12: Elimination Round

As they continued their long trot further and further into the eerily silent forest, the ponies began to get more and more nervous. It surely didn’t escape their notice that if Fluttershy truly were mad, then there was no possible way they would get out of here alive.

Vinyl Scratch began to wonder if she hadn’t just made a tremendous mistake in leaving Twilight Sparkle behind in her tree house. After all in the original version of the story, Twilight was the Element of Magic. What if she still was? What if the others somehow succeeded in summoning up their elements, but she failed to summon anything?

On the other hoof, the idea of somehow getting this Twilight Sparkle to make friends with this group of ponies utterly and completely boggled her mind. There was no way she could think of to pull this off.

So was this mission doomed to failure?

Soarin’ took this moment to speak up. “As this group’s self-appointed morale officer, I think this would be the perfect time for some group singing. How many of you know this one?

*KABONG!*

“I’m sorry,” Pinkamena said without a trace of remorse as she removed the guitar from Soarin’s cranium. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“W...where did that guitar come from?” asked Graphite.

Pinkamena casually swung the guitar so that it passed behind her body and out of sight of the other ponies for just a second, and then walked on, revealing the guitar to have completely vanished. “Do you really want to know?” she asked him sadly.

Graphite frantically shook his head.

“Smart pony,” said Pinkamena.

Soarin’, having been rather-lightly bonked, shook his head twice to clear it, gave Pinkamena a very nervous look, and decided to say nothing.

Vinyl quickly got within whispering range of the pink pony. “Are you alright?” she asked. “I notice you seem somewhat...”

“...unstable?” Pinkamena finished the question between gritted teeth. “Well, what do you expect, now that I know how this is going to end?”

“What do you mean?” asked Vinyl. “I thought you knew.”

“I knew what, but I didn’t know how until we visited that tree house. It’s the Mystery Spot, isn’t it? That’s how you’re going to do it. You’re going to push me into Twilight’s Tunnel of Terror, aren’t you?”

“What? I would never do that!”

“Wouldn’t you?” snarled Pinkamena. “It’s the last little nudge that I need, one last push to get rid of the only thing standing between me and your Pinkie Pie: my sanity. Did you see what was in that hole? Abstractions and horrible puns made into concrete reality! The ultimates in cruelty and genius locked into a battle to the death! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!”

“I’m not pushing you down the hole!”

This last sentence may have been said too loud, as everypony turned to look at Vinyl.

“I’m not!” she protested. She lowered her voice to address her companion once more. “And Pinkie Pie is not insane!”

“Isn’t she?” insisted Pinkamena. “Tell me, then, who is she?”

“She’s kind and sweet, and happy all the time. She’s a baker’s apprentice by trade, and organizes the most incredible parties at the drop of a hat. She’s very musical, and very perceptive.”

“You’re describing a stranger to me,” Pinkamena told her. “How she and I can have anything to do with each other is a complete impossibility. Unless she’s been lying to you all these years.”

“What do you mean?” asked Vinyl. “Pinkie Pie’s no liar.”

Pinkamena noted the slight doubt in that statement, and swept in for the kill. “But she is a liar, if she’s the one who told you she was happy all of the time. Nopony is like that. No sane pony, anyway. I’ll bet if you got a look into the depths of her soul, got a really good look, you’ll find me down there. Her true self exposed at last. All the rest, the parties and the pastries, are because she can’t handle the reality of emotional pain and suffering I endure on a constant basis. What do you have to say to that?”

“I...” Vinyl sighed. “I say that maybe you’re right. I know better than most ponies that we all have a darker side to our natures that we do not want others to see. But I am Pinkie Pie’s friend. And I would never pry into such things without her permission. Friendship means not only helping, but also knowing when not to help.”

Pinkamena turned up her nose and walked away. “Then keep your friendship with Pinkie Pie, by leaving me to be Pinkamena Diane Pie. With or without the ‘Dreaded’.”

Nothing more was said until the party was finally led through a dense series of bushes into a large clearing in the center of the forest. Here the canopy was thin enough to let in moonlight and the sight of the stars.

In the center of the clearing, lying asleep on a pile of pine needles, was the pegasus named Fluttershy. Her cutie mark consisted of a stampede of every possible animal.

Vinyl separated herself from the others and walked up to the sleeping pony, her horn gradually brightening as she prepared to cast the spell. “Fluttershy,” she announced, loud enough for all the watching creatures to hear, “I have come with a spell to separate you from the forest. Do you...” She looked down to see Applejack clutching one leg. “Do you mind?” she asked in annoyance.

“Is there any possible chance that we could maybe adjust the timing on this spell-casting business?” Applejack asked her earnestly. She pointed off to one side, where the animals of the forest were in a fierce fight with Nightmare Moon’s monstrous cloud. “You see if you free Fluttershy now, then maybe those critters might not care about defending us from Nightmare Moon anymore, or maybe they do, but they’ll lack the coordination to pull it off. And if they can’t protect us, how are we going to get to that castle of the two sisters? I know this is going to turn into a fight at some point, but I’d prefer it to be as little, and as effective, a fight as possible. At the very least, can we take Fluttershy to the castle, and then cast the spell that will leave us utterly helpless?”

Vinyl looked up at the animals surrounding them. “Is that alright with you?” she asked.

A few minutes later, the ponies had succeeded in creating a bier out of some fallen branches, and securing Fluttershy to it. They then lifted her upon their shoulders, and began walking, the glowing eyes of her subjects following her every step of the way. It was like a scene from some grim fairy tale.

As they continued, the fighting against Nightmare Moon’s cloud became more and more fierce. The ponies that were not carrying Fluttershy attempted to help, but there was no way to do so without hurting the creatures that protected them, so close did they gather together to protect their mistress from harm. Vinyl saw several animals knocked out of the trees by Nightmare Moon’s attacks, and she glimpsed one of them briefly glowing all over from Fluttershy’s magic before getting up to resume the fight.

After topping a hill, they got their first glimpse of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.

Matching the story that Vinyl had been told, the castle was in utter ruins. She looked back and forth between the two most intact parts of the complex. The stone Elements of Harmony had been in the hall on the right, and the final confrontation with Nightmare Moon had been in the hall on the left. As she pondered her course of action, she began charging her horn to cast Fluttershy’s spell. As she did so, she realized that the decision to move this ceremony here meant that she would be considerably weaker than she had expected when the time came to face her nemesis.

Vinyl Scratch had been awake for nearly twenty-four consecutive hours now. That might not seem like much for a studious pony like this world’s version of her, or for a hard-partying pony like she truly was, but she had also been subjected to a powerful psychotropic spell for several hours, and now had the constant challenge of keeping two entirely different lifetimes and accompanying sets of spells straight in her head. Her failure to get any of her former friends to break free of the mental prison that she had successfully escaped was causing her to lose confidence in a leadership ability that she had never really thought she had in the first place. She was cold, tired and scared, but wasn’t allowed to show any of that. Most of all, she was stressed by the responsibility of being Twilight Sparkle, of saving the whole world through a power of friendship that she couldn’t really feel.

Therefore, it might become understandable why she decided to skip to the chase and just lead the group to the entrance to the left-hoof hall.

The ponies put Fluttershy down at the leftmost of two entrances to the remains of the castle.

As the volume of the song being emitted by Vinyl Scratch’s horn began to grow, the other ponies began to feel an overwhelming compulsion to flee.

Rainbow Dash looked wildly around her for a few seconds before making up her mind. “After me!” she declared as she ran for the entrance to the ruins. “We’ll clear the way for Vinyl!”

First the pegasi rallied to her side, and then the others.

Vinyl heard a great clanging of bells in her head, a magical attempt by Nightmare Moon to interrupt the spell. She supposed this was cutting-edge magic a thousand years ago, but it was rather standard today, and she easily countered it with a mental exercise.

As the last note was sung, Fluttershy’s cutie mark faded away. “Wha...what happened?” she asked gently as she attempted to get to her hooves.

“I’m sure it will all come to you soon, Miss,” Vinyl said, herding her insistently towards the door. “We have to bring daylight back to Equestria.”

“Oh my, yes,” said Fluttershy, remembering.

It was a little easier to herd her after that.

The trip up the stairway to the second floor was easy. Too easy.

“Ugh,” groaned Applejack. “I just know this is going to be a trap!”

Vinyl grinned to herself despite the rather grim setting of that familiar phrase.

“Everypony,” Vinyl said as she caught up to them, “this is Fluttershy. Fluttershy, this is Applejack and Graphite and Big Mac and Empress Rainbow Dash and Soarin’ and Rarity and Pinkamena and four guards whose names I never quite caught.”

“Oh,” said Fluttershy, very quietly. “There’s...so many of you. I...I hope none of my animals hurt you in any way when they were trying to help me. They just get a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

Vinyl decided at that point that Fluttershy could be safely moved into the “cured” category in her mind, even though she had so far shown no signs of having recovered her true memories. Rarity, if her moment in Twilight’s cabin was not a fluke, also appeared to be ready to become her Element. That still left Rainbow Dash as “nearly there,” and Applejack and Pinkamena as “works in progress”.

As the lead ponies reached the door at the top of the stairs, Vinyl cleared her throat to get their attention. “Ponies,” she said as quietly as possible, “do you trust me?” The other ponies nodded. “And I trust you, with my very life. Do you trust each other?”

The ponies responded to this question with confusion. They looked at each other like they were meeting for the first time.

“I don’t see how that makes any difference,” said Applejack.

“It does,” she told them. “It means everything! Do you trust each other?”

“Um...sure!” said Applejack.

The others quickly chimed in.

Vinyl desperately tried to convince herself that they meant it.

With a nod to herself, she pushed past the others, and then confidently opened the door.

Before them stretched a long hall, presumably the throne room. The floor was littered with dozens of scrolls, some of them rolled up; others crumpled or even trampled under hoof. All of them looked rather recent compared to the furnishings in the hall. Lounging on the expected throne at the opposite end of the room was Nightmare Moon. She was wearing Rainbow Dash’s crown, and looked quite intimidating—it’s rather amazing what the proper lighting and a wind machine can accomplish.

“Give that back!” cried out Rainbow Dash, as she attempted to zip across the hall to confront her. Having anticipated this, Applejack was able to grab her by the tail with her mouth and force her down. “We’re doing this together, Empress, or not at all,” she said around a mouthful of hair.

“Welcome, challengers!” boomed the voice of Nightmare Moon. “I see more than the requisite six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, but you seem to be missing something. Did you perhaps forget to gather the equipment for this little game?”

A portion of the alicorn’s cloud-mane turned into a magical window, depicting the scene in the other part of the castle. The pedestal that held the stone Elements was visible, but the stones themselves were gathered in a circle. Standing with their hind hooves upon each one were the five biggest earth ponies in Ponyville.

“Now!” Nightmare Moon cried out before any of the ponies watching had a chance to react. Five pairs of hooves were quickly raised and lowered, and the stones crumbled.

All the ponies but one gasped. Vinyl smiled. Perhaps the shock of what she had seen had caused her to snap.

Vinyl smiled, because she knew the stone Elements were a dead end in this story. Except for the jewels that were formed out of them after Twilight Sparkle’s Friendship Speech, the voice of Vinyl’s inner Critic informed her gleefully.

Vinyl Scratch blanched. She had screwed up. She had screwed up big time.

“You little foals!” crowed the alicorn. “Thinking you could defeat me? Now you will never see your princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!”

“You’re wrong!” Vinyl declared...

...trying desperately to project the confidence that she was rapidly losing in herself.

Why did you ever think you’d be one-tenth of the leader that Twilight Sparkle was? The Critic demanded.

“The Elements of Harmony cannot be destroyed so easily!” Vinyl forced herself to say. “In fact, the Elements of Harmony are right here! The challenges you sent us revealed the truth!”

“What challenges?” asked Nightmare Moon, leaning her chin on one hoof.

There were no challenges, you idiot! proclaimed The Critic. Fluttershy’s animals protected you every step of the way! And without the challenges, the Elements would never have realized their true nature.

Vinyl decided to ignore the voice and press on. Put that stubbornness to use, for once, she told herself.

“I mean...the experience of going on this quest together,” Vinyl insisted. She decided to work from most- to least-obvious in her roll call, in hopes of pushing through by steamroller effect. “Rarity, for her willingness to help Twilight Sparkle regardless of her crime, represents the Element of Generosity!” She had to look back to be sure Rarity was even there. It seemed as though she was too absorbed in self-pity to even notice what was going on around her.

“But she didn’t actually give Twilight anything material,” noted Pinkamena. “I don’t think you can be generous without giving anything. Maybe she’s the Element of Kindness instead?”

“Pinkie!” hissed Vinyl.

“Don’t ever call me...!” began Pinkamena.

“Sorry,” Vinyl said. “That was just something that Pinkie would have said.”

“Oh don’t mind me,” interrupted Nightmare Moon sarcastically from the front of the room. “It’s not like this is a life or death situation here. Oh wait...it is. And Rarity’s contribution doesn’t count, not as Generosity or Kindness.”

“Why not?” objected Vinyl.

“You said she offered to help this Twilight Sparkle character. Did Twilight Sparkle accept this help?”

“...no.”

“Rejected! Next!”

Vinyl turned to the yellow pegasus. “Well, you certainly can’t deny that Fluttershy, who only thought of making the forest safe regardless of consequences, represents the Element of Kindness!”

“Actually,” piped up Fluttershy, “that wasn’t my decision at all. The animals felt that I had been coddling them too much, and so decided to dump me on the next pony brave enough to face them.” Rainbow Dash sat down hard at this news, looking at her friend with tears in her eyes.

Vinyl pretended she hadn’t heard that, or the voice of The Critic laughing at her.

“Rarity,” Vinyl insisted with a trembling voice.

“Her again?” Nightmare Moon asked with a wry smile.

“Yes!” said Vinyl, with a bit of a squeak she certainly didn’t want to have in her voice at that moment. “Rarity, who gave up her dreams to save her town, represents the Element of Generosity!”

Nightmare Moon laughed. “More like giving up her dreams to doom her town. But alright, I’ll give you that one.”

Vinyl pressed on. “Rainbow Dash, who forged her breed into a mighty nation, and, uh, embarked into the dangerous woods to save her friend, represents the Element of Loyalty!” She was rather proud of getting two reasons in on that one.

“I wish you’d make up your mind,” said Nightmare Moon nonchalantly. “Is the forest safe to help the case for Kindness, or is it dangerous to help out Loyalty?”

Rainbow Dash meanwhile had run over to Fluttershy, and was now proceeding to bawl her eyes out. “I totally abandoned you for ten years!” she cried out. “I’m the most faithless pony of all time!”

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! cackled The Critic.

“Um...” said Vinyl.

“Are you even going to bother to finish?” asked Nightmare Moon, almost sympathetically.

“Well...yes!” declared Vinyl. “The Element of Laughter is Pinkamena, because...because...a lot of what she does makes us laugh!”

“...at her expense,” muttered Applejack to herself.

“And Applejack!” said Vinyl, her voice breaking. “Applejack is...is the Element...the Element of...”

“You know,” offered Applejack sarcastically, “I’ve got a pill made from pure apple extract that will fix your elocution problems right up, Vinyl Scratch! All you need to do is send Apple, Inc. three easy monthly payments of 59 bits each, and once the third payment is received, the bottle’s yours! You also get a whole 30 day guarantee! That’s thirty days after making the first payment, of course, and no refunds after that.”

“...I CAN’T SAY IT!” Vinyl screamed.

“And...we’re done,” declared Nightmare Moon. “Well...that was awful. I mean really, really awful. It’s like you ponies have been spending the past millennium cross-breeding with monkeys or something.” She got up. “Now as I’m sure you realize, I can’t exactly let you have a second chance—you might get ridiculously lucky and actually come up with something effective. Time for your reward, ponies. Time for your Eternal rew...” At that moment, the alicorn came down with a tremendous coughing fit that ended with her spitting out a scroll and then screaming in frustration. “Enough of this! Army of Darkness, DESTROY THEM!”

From the darkness at the top of the throne room emerged a dozen pegasus ponies, their sharpened hooves aimed for their skulls.

“Tail twitch? Pinchy knee?” Pinkamena asked Vinyl. “What’s that supposed to...” At that moment, she was shoved out of the way by Big Mac, who was brutally knocked to the ground by a pegasus.

A second later, the door behind the ponies opened to admit a stream of earth ponies and unicorns, all of them screaming in fury.

Pinkamena’s left ear flopped, and without looking she immediately turned and bucked in that direction, knocking an attacker to the ground.

“All right!” she cried out. “Now this is a power I can use!”

The next several minutes were impossible to follow. Fights both individual and en masse ensued. Numerous enemy ponies were knocked out, but so were three of Rainbow Dash’s four guards. Big Mac fought on, despite a bloody lip, and easily proved himself the best close-up fighter of the group. Second best was Pinkamena, because she effectively had eyes in the back of her head now, and because she fought dirty. Nevertheless she was surprised by a unicorn using his horn as a weapon instead of as a magic wand. After knocking him out she had to continue the fight with a large gash above her right eye that was bleeding enough to nearly blind her.

At the other end of the hall, Nightmare Moon mentally commanded her forces with a nod, a glance, or by pointing a foreleg. She directed most of their energy towards those that fought back the hardest. As a result of this logic, the quivering Fluttershy and the nearly catatonic Rarity were completely ignored.

The alicorn was interrupted in her coordination work more and more frequently by her coughing up scrolls, scraps of paper, and even small objects. Finally she coughed up an entire book, which caused her crown to fall off her head and strike the ground, breaking into a million pieces. Luckily for Rainbow Dash, she was too busy fighting beside the others to notice.

The queen of the night raised her head high and screamed out her frustration at full volume. The fight stopped instantly. As they all watched, her horn’s magic caught up one of the scrolls and quickly unrolled to the end. Nightmare Moon looked at the “return address” on the scroll for a few seconds and then began blowing a small blue fireball around her upraised forehoof. Once enough fire had accumulated, it condensed down into a living form.

“What’s up, Toots?” it asked her.

“Spike!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch.

The little dragon turned his head. “Oh, hi, Vinyl!” he exclaimed happily, seemingly ignoring all the signs of conflict around him. “You would be amazed at what a little willpower is capable of in this world! Also, Princess Celestia is like the chess-master extraordinaire! I mean, did you know that Black Snooty here is only two base pairs away from Princess Celestia in the Dragon Bloodline Code? Who knew, right?”

“THAT...IS...IT!” screamed Nightmare Moon, her eyes bloodshot and neck veins distended. “DIE!!!”

And with that, she shot Spike at the stone wall of the throne room at supersonic speed.

Everypony turned their heads, but there was no way not to hear the sickening sounds that followed.

“SPIKE!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch, beginning to run down the hall.

“DIE! DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE!!!” screeched the maddened alicorn, firing spell after spell into the motionless lump on the ground.

Pinkamena and Applejack caught up with Vinyl, and started dragging her back.

“I have to do something!!” she yelled, fighting them.

“Live now, mourn later,” Applejack told her. “That’s what you’re going to do.”

“Retreat!” ordered Rainbow Dash. It was their only possible chance to do so, as the army of Nightmare Moon’s slaves waited patiently for her to finish annihilating Spike.

“Come on!” insisted Pinkamena. “He did this deliberately to save us!”

Vinyl froze, and then looked around her. “Get me those scrolls. We must take them with us!” Using her magic, she started gathering them quickly into her saddle bags, backing towards the doorway as she did so.

“We can’t possibly get all of them!” complained Applejack.

“Then focus on the crumpled and stomped ones,” answered Vinyl. “The angrier they got Nightmare Moon, the better!”

She spared one last look back into the hall as her friends dragged her out. “Goodbye, Spike,” she said in a voice choked with tears.