//------------------------------//
// If Fizzy Is Saved, and Chaos Is In The Lead [CANON] 
// Story: Ciderfest 2023 Mane Story Sunday Morning - "Counterpoint" 
// by Nyronus 
//------------------------------//

Barley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!”

Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!”

Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?”

And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running.

Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages.

On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew.

In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points.

And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it.

And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield.

“This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!”

Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plot hole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said.

“I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up.

“I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed.

“No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze.

Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. 

And then it started screaming.

Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them.

“Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!”

“Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. 

“Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?”

“We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined.

“There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” 

“Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!”

“Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed.

Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest.

The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin.

“On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!”





Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies.

“The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped.

“Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. 

Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be.

“Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark.

The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. 

“We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din.

“I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’”

“Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered.

“Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back.

“There!” Caramel pointed.

Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. 

Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm.

In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle.

Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead.

“Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said.

“Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. 

Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes.

“I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched.

“And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. 

“I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.”

And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field.

“You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. 

“That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?”

“They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out.

Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie.

“The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!”

“Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist.

“Really?” Grogar said.

“AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!”

There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. 

“The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!”

The four groups eyed each other.

“Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake.

Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks.

Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters.

Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. 

“Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl.

“We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. 

“There!” Fizzy said, pointing.

Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages.

“I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles.

“Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy.
 
Another arc of demonic fire came at them.

“Throw me!” Fizzy shouted.

With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second.

Which was all Fizzy needed.

“Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!”

And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut.

Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. 

“YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!”

“Gotcha!” Pinkie giggled.

And then, falling through the air, directly over the battlefield, she proceeded to whip an impossibly large Party Battleship Cannon from inside of her mane, and leveled it directly at Grogar’s face.  

The entire battlefield hung silent for one, stunned moment.

And then Pinkie Pie fired an entire national holiday’s worth of fireworks all at once, cackling like a madmare.

“FOOLS!” Grogar roared in rage and pain, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing.

The multicolored, smoking explosions and chaos sent his monstrous minions fleeing in animal panic and scattered the Pillars. Unfortunately, she may have overdone it, just a tad. 

There was a great crack, and the whole floating castle began crumbling apart as it crashed to earth.

“Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies cleared the panicking nightmares and came together. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone.

“Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy stood up precariously at the gate to the crumbling castle. 

And the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, and cracked, and began to fall away. 

Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them…

…and grinned. 

She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more.

“Alright everyone, Operation Grab After Smash is a go!” Pinkie laughed, sailing into the crumbling courtyard on an umbrella. “This party is just getting started, and we need all the pages we can get!” Her Commandos saluted with as many rubber duckies, whoopie cushions, and roman candles as they had, and set to work gathering the scattering pages.

Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel.

“We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. 

The two ran to the plane, hopping just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. 

“What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!”

“‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel and gave a small grin. “‘Trust me.’”

Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into a grin.

Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them.

“Pinkie was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just beginning. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.”

“It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.”

Barley looked back to her and grinned.

“All of us, together.”