Wrong Equestria 2: Moonshine Gravy

by Ponky

Pondering the Fragility of Life

It really was horrible. The resurrected gunk of Generation One lived up to its musical number. I watched, dumbstruck and paralyzed, as the liquid mountain surged across the valley, uprooting hundreds of wild trees and crashing against the hillsides, spraying massive globules that grew with every devoured rock, tree, and blade of grass. If it wasn’t approaching Ponyville, it may have been a strangely beautiful sight. As it was, my life was in danger, along with the lives of each colorful equine cowering under the bright blue sky.

My feet finally remembered their jobs—lazy suckers—and spun the rest of me around, sprinting for a nearby hill. I called over my shoulder for the CMC… er, Snooty Snarky… uh… the Cutie Mark Acquisition Program to follow me. They did, quickly, and with the help of good ol’ adrenaline we made it to high ground before the Smooze hit town.

And when I say before, I mean right before.

We turned around, panting and sweating, just as what was left of the outlying buildings of Ponyville were swallowed by the Smooze. Literally swallowed, because the thing had mouths. With every wave that crested from its primary mass, the endless sea of greyish goop gave birth to a new face, complete with a gaping mouth and two white, round eyes. The wide optics bobbed at the crest of each face and disappeared beneath the swelling head that rose up next behind them. Again and again, a face would emerge and lurch forward, aiming at its next meal with those great, stoic eyes, only to be swallowed by another oozing mouth.

“Talk about eye candy…” I muttered under my breath.

“Praise Lord Smooze!” a histrionic voice called over the thunderous slosh of the substance. “Nothing can stop the Smooze!”

I peeled my eyes for the speaker. As the digestive ocean engulfed the trunk of Twilight Sparkle’s library, I spotted a large, flat rock—like a giant skipping stone—staying afloat and bobbing amidst the Smooze’s cycling faces. Squinting through the glare of the eclipse that scattered off the reflective ooze, I identified the four ponies standing on the stone: Fluttershy, lying peacefully on her belly in the center; Rarity, grinning like mad and posing at the forefront as if she was King of the World; Twilight Sparkle, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at each eyed wave that rose alongside them; and Applejack, cowering at the back of the altar with her giant hat pulled over her face.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Bot shouted, waving her front hooves at her sides.

The unicorn turned to our hill. “Oh, Sister, my Sister! You survived the initial wave!” She pushed down on the rock with one hoof, forcing it to turn in our direction. Within seconds, the flow of the Smooze—which had now covered all of Ponyville and silenced any screams, leaving only the leaves of the library and the skeletal remains of the laser tag arena poking through the surface—carried the mares to our place of safety

The rock bumped against the exposed mound of our hill like a fishing boat at a sandbar. Keeping it still in her magic, Rarity delicately hopped from the rock and trotted to her sister. She gasped at Sweetie’s new appearance.

“Goodness, Sweetie Belle!” she cried. “What happened?”

“I am a robot!” she declared. “And I also have a soul!”

“That’s wonderful news!” Rarity chimed, kissing her sister on her metallic forehead.

I was too flabbergasted to register the cuteness and/or senselessness that plagued that interaction. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?”

Rarity turned to me in alarm. “We have resurrected Lord Smooze!” she breathed, sweeping a dramatic foreleg through the air.

“You’ve doomed Equestria!”

“A necessary sacrifice,” Rarity said, bowing her head.

I gaped at her. “Necessary for what?”

“To usher in the new regime of our Great Lord of the Ooze!”

“I loooooove ooze!” the purple ocean burbled, making the CMAP and me jump.

“Isn’t he magnificent?” Rariy swooned.

“No!” I yelled. “No, he is not magnificent! He’s disgusting and destructive!” I wildly jabbed my hands toward the sludge sloshing around our shrinking island of grass. “Are you not seeing this? Ponyville is gone! Everypony’s been… eaten, or something!”

Rarity’s face hardened. Her horn glowed brighter and something slapped me across the face.

“What the fetch?” I yelped, lifting my hands to my stinging cheek. “Did you just magic-slap me?”

“I will not tolerate such disrespect for Lord Smooze!” Rarity bellowed.

“Reign yourself, Rarity,” a quiet voice commanded from behind her. Rarity bowed her head obediently and stepped to the side. Fluttershy took her place in front of me, pushing out her chest. I gulped as those big adorable eyes bathed me in a turquoise glare that could have paralyzed the tentacle monster.

“Lord Smooze is not happy with your lack of faith,” she growled.

“Faith in what?” I managed to ask. “This is the stupidest religion ever!”

Fluttershy ignored me. She held out one hoof expectantly. Twilight’s magic soon delivered a small jar, the likes of which contained my hair wax back home. She unscrewed the lid (somehow) and scooped a fair amount of green slime from within.

“If you undertake the initiatory ritual and convert to our ways,” she said, “I will spare your life.”

“What happened to the last syllable of your name?”

“If you refuse,” she continued, lowering her brow, “we will be forced to dispose of you.”

I stuck out my jaw. “What, like you just disposed of a few thousand innocent ponies? And who knows how many more over the face of the country?”

“Is that a refusal?” the pegasus asked.

Her fellow cult members assumed offensive positions behind her. I heard the CMAP whimper behind me.

My mind kicked into full gear. I knew they wouldn’t dare hurt the fillies, so I had to focus on saving myself. Our haven of grass was shrinking ever smaller as the Smooze gained more and more messy mass. I didn’t have much time to act, but I refused to stoop to joining Fluttershy’s cult.

Why? I have no idea. Why didn’t I just say “Yeah, okay, I’ll convert” and stay safe with them until I found a way home? Maybe it’s because they were all completely insane and I doubted their ability to keep me safe from the unstoppable Smooze they unleashed. :ponkyshrug:

Anyway, I ended up doing something super selfish that I regretted mere minutes later. But it worked, so… whatever. I looked at Fluttershy and the goop in her hoof; I looked at Rarity and her glowing horn, keeping the floating stone raft at bay; I looked at Twilight and her cocky leer; but most of all, I looked at Applejack and the discomfort plaguing her every expression.

I called the farmpony’s name, drawing her full attention. “This is hard for you, isn’t it? To see all those ponies who loved you and depended on you smothered by the Smooze: it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? You felt a duty to those ponies—you still feel it—and I know that as the Element of [HONESTY], you can’t believe your own betrayal.”

Tears were welling in her emerald eyes. Rarity began to panic. “Don’t listen to him, Applejack!” she whispered harshly.

“But he’s speakin’ the truth,” Applejack said. “I-I never signed on for no mass destruction. I didn’t wanna be part o’ no ponycide!”

“You came to the Conversion Spa,” Rarity reminded her. “You went through all the rituals, you learned of all the prophecies—”

“I didn’t think any o’ that hooey was real!” Applejack said. “I thought Fluttershy made it all up. I just liked spendin’ time with my friends! And makin’ fun o’ Spike!” She turned back to me with a pleading expression. “You gotta believe me, I wasn’t plannin’ on any o’ this. Honest!”

“That’s more Rainbow Dash’s field,” I said, “but still, I believe you. There may be a way to redeem yourself, to save Ponyville and Equestria and all of its inhabitants.”

Applejack’s ears perked up. Rarity scowled. “That’s impossible!” the unicorn said. “Nothing can stop the Smooze!”

“Then why did he have to be resurrected?” I asked.

Nopony answered, so I continued.

“Applejack, you and I can save Equestria,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. “But first we have to get out of here!”

“I’m on it!”

“Oh no you—”

“Yeehaw!”

Applejack bucked Rarity in the ribcage, sending her tumbling into the grass. Her concentration broken, the aura of blue magic surrounding the flat stone vanished. Subject to the flow of Smooze, the platform began to drift around our island.

“Stop them!” Fluttershy screeched. Twilight leapt at me with a goofy growl, but I was already in motion. I beckoned to the three little fillies behind me and leapt onto the moving platform. Applejack, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Bot followed suit. The five of us sped away with the Smoozenami.

I looked back, wincing as Rarity—blinded by obedient rage—threw herself from the island in our direction. “You will rue the day you refused to be Smoozed!” she shrieked right before landing in the purple muck. Immediately, a pair of glossy white eyes appeared beside her, rising up in a facial wave and swallowing the unicorn whole. “Praise Lord Smooooooze!” was her muffled cry as she sank into the digestive depths.

“RARITYYYYYY!” screamed Sweetie Bot. “INITATING WAIL SEQUENCE!”

As Sweetie bawled into Apple Bloom’s comforting shoulder, I buried my face in my hands. I had just witnessed my favorite pony die. Whether she was brainwashed, traumatized, or just downright insane, I would never know… nor did I particularly care. But she had looked just like Rarity, and it was scarring nonetheless.

“How do we stop it?” Applejack asked from behind me.

I shuddered, running my palms down my face.

“How do we stop the Smooze?” she asked again, more frantically.

“I dunno,” I admitted, sitting cross-legged on the rock. “Lyra just… talked to it.”

“Huh?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, okay? I just needed to get us away from them.”

“Well, you didn’t do a very good job,” a soft voice spoke from above. I gulped, imagining Fluttershy’s wings in my mind before looking up and seeing them spread and flapping. She was holding Twilight around the waist. The unicorn was clapping her front hooves with a girlish smile.

“Horseapples,” I muttered.

“Fluttershy!” Applejack growled. “How do we clean up this mess? There’s gotta be a way to get rid of the Smooze.”

With a maniacal glint in her eye, Fluttershy opened her mouth to speak. “OOF!” she said, due to a second pegasus ramming headfirst into her side.

“What the rainbow is going on here?” the newcomer asked.

“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack said. “You’re alive!”

“Of course I’m alive, dumb head! As soon as I saw the horizon start to change color, I dashed into the air, and I’ve been rainbowing around for, like, twenty minutes before this yellow thing got in my way!”

“What?” I asked angrily, even though I was smiling.

Rainbow squinted down at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Ponky!” I said, sticking out my hand. “Great to meet you, Rainbow Dash, fastest and most awesome mare in Equestria!”

Rainbow grinned and bumped my fist with the flat of her hoof. “I like this guy!”

“I don’t!” yelled Fluttershy, swooping in from the side and aiming Twilight at me. I yelped and dodged my head out of the way of her horn, but her dangling hooves smacked into me like those foamy noodle things that kids try to play with in pools. I hate those things.

Anyway, I lost my balance and nearly fell backward into the Smooze, but Sweetie Belle was quick to stretch her head forward and freaking bite my hand. She pulled me back to the center of the rock, and I was grateful for her quick thinking, but seriously… she bit my hand! She chomped her aluminum incisors on my poor, piano-playing fingers! It felt like getting ‘em slammed in a car door or something. She didn’t break anything, but still, it freakin’ hurt!

“Youch! Oh, holy fetch!” I stuck my pulsing hand under my armpit. “Gyaaaaugh! Thank you, Sweetie Belle!” I finished through clenched teeth. She smiled as sheepishly as a skinless robot can smile.

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash snapped at Fluttershy. “Nopony kicks my new friends! I know this is more of Applejack’s field, but I’m totally gonna defend him!” With a swift pump of her wings, she threw herself at Fluttershy, forcing the yellow pegasus to drop her violet cargo. Luckily, they were directly above the floating rock and Twilight landed on all four hooves at my right.

“Isn’t this fun?” she chirped. “I can’t wait to tell the Princess all about it!”

Pulling my eyes from the squabbling pegasi, I gasped in Applejack’s direction. “That’s it! Princess Celestia! I’m sure she’ll have a way to stop the Smooze!”

“If only Spike was here to take a letter,” Twilight said with a frown. “That lazy dragon. He’s never around when I need him.”

I ground my back teeth. “He’s always around when you need him, except when you send him on suicide missions over the plains of Equestria!”

A righteous screech filled the air, and for a moment I thought a sound effect was punctuating my outburst. Instead, a flaming orange bird—literally, it was on fire—swooped down from the hazy sky above and let another piercing call permeate the putrid air (did I mention how bad the Smooze smelled? It smelled really bad. Sort of like that nasty goopy stuff inside those squishy plastic toys that don’t do anything except squish. Or like the really thick mucus that builds up at the back of your throat when you have a cold. Eugh…). In its talons was a limp, disgusting lizard thing with buggy eyes and fading purple scalOHMYGOSHTHAT’SSPIKE!

“What in the world!?” I yelled at the phoenix.

The magnificent bird dropped the barely conscious dragon onto our platform. He landed with a brittle thump at my feet.

“No!” I choked, shaking my bug-eyed head. “No, no, no! There’s not supposed to be anything disgusting in Equestria… even the Hydra was kinda cute!”

Spike groaned, confirming that he was alive, but that was almost more disgusting than if he had been dead. Gone was his rotund little belly, replaced with a quivering cavity surrounded by protruding ribs. Gone were his pinchable cheeks and floppy scales—garish cheekbones, hollow spaces, and crispy triangles had taken their places.

“Spike!” Twilight said. “You lazy cow! Where have you been?”

“Are you fetching kidding me!?” I screamed at her.

“Eeuuuuggh…” Spike moaned, slowly pushing himself to stand on a pair of wobbling, bony legs. He spoke between dry, rattling breaths. “I delivered… your letter… to the Princess…” he said, followed by a cough that tied a knot in my stomach, “and she… had… Philomena… help me… bring… this.”

He pulled a scroll from behind his back, transferring it to Twilight’s magic before collapsing onto his face.

“You poor thing!” I real-Fluttershy’d, scooping the scaly bag of bones into the crook of my arm and trying to look into his flickering eyes. “When was the last time you ate something?”

He didn’t answer, gargling in my grasp. I looked around the group of ponies, none of which were paying any attention to me or Spike. Instead, their faces were locked on the letter in Twilight’s levitation. Tears were welling in the cocky unicorn’s eyes.

“What?” I asked nervously. “What does it say?”

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, clawing and biting at each other several yards above our heads, make it hard to hear Twilight’s whispered answer.

“Gyywbuhe,” she mumbled.

“Huh?” I leaned in closer, careful not to break any of Spike’s bones in the process.

“It says… ‘Goodbye’. That’s all it says.” She turned the scroll around to show me the single, elegantly written word. “What do you think she means?”

Then the Sun went out. It and the Moon were still pretty close to each other in the dome of the sky, and both of them flickered and died like a pair of crappy lightbulbs. Philomena landed on my shoulder and started running her beak through the feathers on her neck while the rest of us stared at the cold, starry sky.

“Well, *buy some apples*,” I said, frowning.

My company didn’t take it quite as calmly.

“What happened!?”

“The Princess!”

“The Sun! Not the glorious Sun!”

“What have we done?”

“You mangy varmint!”

In a fit of rage, Applejack leapt from our rocky platform and joined the fray in the air. Her teeth latched onto one of Fluttershy’s wings and pulled the both of them into the violet molasses below.

“Sis!” Apple Bloom shouted. “Noooo!”

But it was too late. Both the war veteran and the Dovahkiin disappeared beneath the goo with a torrent of eyeballs, sickly bubbles, and an irreverent “Mmmmmm!”

We all stared at where they had landed, our eyes glistening in the pale starlight. With a mighty sob, Apple Bloom collapsed and cried into her foreleg. Her little friends hurried to her side, nuzzling and comforting her as best as they possibly could.

Twilight stood agape, staring directly up at the greyish orb drifting lazily—uselessly—through the sky. “Princess… Celestia…” she breathed.

I bit my lip. “This isn’t funny at all,” I complained under my breath.

“Well, why would it be? Everypony’s dead!” a nasally voice announced into my ear. I yelped and scooted away, flopping the emaciated Spike in my lap back onto his face. Turning to face my audial aggressor, I was suddenly and unexpectedly gazing into the sapphiric eyes of Pinkie Pie.

“Whoa!” I yelled. “How did you get here?”

“I’ve been here the whole time!” she probably lied.

Rainbow Dash snapped out of her trance and landed on our rock. Her blue coat looked paler than usual, but maybe that was just the lighting.

“How is this thing floating?” she asked, poking at the stone.

“We covered it in raccoon blood,” Twilight answered, bowing her head in a heavy mope. “The Smooze hates raccoons.”

“Maybe that’s something we can… use? To stop it, I mean,” Scootaloo suggested with almost zero confidence.

“I don’t think so, kid,” Rainbow Dash said, ruffling the filly’s spiky pink mane.

“But good on you for thinking positive,” I added, forcing a smile in her direction.

The following silence gave me time to soak in our entire situation. My eyes darted from piece to piece of my environment and created a simple analysis: there was an endless ocean of Smooze from which protruded some distant mountaintops; there was a vast starry sky providing very little light; there was a big flat rock covered in crusty roadkill blood; and upon that rock sat me, Spike, Philomena, the CMAP, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.

Everypony else was dead.

“Well, this totally sucks,” I said as a curtain of hopelessness was draped over my heart.

“No, it doesn’t!” Pinkie said. “Our lives were nothing but shadows and lies, anyway. Now we get to die quickly and proceed into the great beyond with the ponies in the sky!”

I reeled at her. “The what?”

“The Ponies in the Sky!” she repeated in such a way that I had to mentally capitalize the potentially proper nouns. “In my village, when I was just a filly, they used to tell us stories of the Ponies in the Sky who controlled everything, even the Princesses! Our whole world was subject to their will and whim.”

“A toymaker’s creation,” I murmured.

Pinkie beamed. “Exactly!”

An upbeat accompaniment began to pulse through the air. It seemed to be coming from the very air around us. I sat up straight. “What’s going on?”

And then, as Pinkie Pie began to sing, floating lines of lyrics appeared before her hooves, glowing in the Sunless, Moonless dusk.

I’m actually not entirely sure if she said “symbol song” or “cymbal song” because I had my face in my hands at that point, weeping into the cracks between my fingers. …what? Music gets to me, okay? I’m an emotional guy.

At least it doesn’t make me want to freaking kill myself, which is exactly what Twilight did! “I’m coming, Princess!” she sobbed, leaping from our stone oasis and drowning in the Smooze.

“Oh, yeah, thanks Twi!” I screamed after her. “That’s great, just great! Thanks a lot, Twilight. It’s not like there are kids RIGHT HERE!!”

My throat immediately felt raw from screaming and I pulled my knees up to my chin, folding my arms in front of my shins and shuddering involuntarily.

How could this world be worse than .MOV? As I pondered on that question, I realized there had always been devastatingly morbid topics and scenes in Friendship is Witchcraft—really heartbreaking moments that sent as many feels through my bloodstream as lulz—but it was brushed off or ignored for humor’s sake. Was four of the Mane Six succumbing to the Smooze supposed to be funny?

I thought back to the saddest moment in the Witchcraft series: Raincloud’s selfless sacrifice. Even in the midst of cruel dissociation, that sentient storm bringer saved four ponies’ lives. It was a shockingly dear and emotional moment for such a ridiculous show—and it left me in stitches from laughing so hard. Why?

Because it was fake, of course… at the time. It was so out there, so over the top, that I couldn’t help but laugh from pure surprise.

Was that it? Was that really it? Now that I was the one suffering, I no longer could laugh?

No… there must have been something else to the Raincloud joke: some element I was missing that switched the scene from depressing to hilarious.

…

Ignorance. That’s what made it so funny: the ponies she saved had absolutely no idea. They were idiots. Two seconds after the airborne explosions, Applejack was on the train and ushered into Ponyville, never once mentioning her sacrificial savior. And it was that sudden switch in tone, that blatant interruption, that made the scene so memorable and fu—

“Pinkie Pie!” Apple Bloom shouted. “A portal! You can make a portal!”

Pinkie turned to her with a bewildered expression. “Huh?”

“A portal through time!” I realized, leaping to my feet with an excited snap of my unbitten fingers. “That’s it! Pinkie, we have to go back in time and stop them from resurrecting the Smooze!”

Pinkie blinked. “But I can’t just make a portal appear anywhere,” she reminded me. “I have to bake one. In a kitchen. With all the right ingredients!”

I groaned and dropped to my knees, accidentally landing on Spike’s tail. He shouted in pain, forcing a plume of green fire to burst from his throat.

My eyes flew from the curling smoke to Pinkie’s startled face to Sweetie Bot. Something in my brain lit up.

“That’s fine!” I told her, snatching up the ragdoll dragon by his shriveled tail and holding him inches from Pinkie’s snout. “We can bring them to you!”