//------------------------------// // This Costume Bites... // Story: Twilight's New Nightmare Night Costume // by theRedBrony //------------------------------// After last year's Nightmare Night fiasco, no not with Luna, Twilight's unrecognizable Starswirl costume… the studious unicorn worked tirelessly for months ahead of time to achieve the perfect costume. All those experiments and sleepless nights of study were finally about to pay off. Spike was anxiously pacing around the library's main room. "Are you ready yet, Twi?" He called up the stairs. "Coming!" Twilight responded, a moment later, she gleefully trotted down the stairs, wearing… nothing but her birthday suit. She merely smiled at Spike while he stuck a claw under the hood of his dragon costume to scratch his head in confusion. Celestia knows why a dragon would wear a dragon costume… No, literally, she does. Go ask her. "Uh… you're going as… yourself?" He asked. "No Spike, this isn't my costume!" She giggled. "Uh, where is it then?" "Right here!" Twilight scrunched up her face in concentration as a bright purple light shot from her horn. A flash of purple flame engulfed her body, when the light faded, Spike got a good look at her. "Whoa!" Spike exclaimed. "So… What do you think?" Twilight said with a disturbingly huge smug grin, made even more disturbing by her 'costume.' Spinning around slowly, she showed off the work she was so proud of. And what a piece of work she was… or it was… she looked very much undead. Her purple coat was grayed out, various blood splotches on it, her mane and tail were grayed out as well, and frizzled about as bad as when she woke up from sleeping in on a Sunday. A large chunk of flesh was missing from her face, exposing most of her left side teeth. Gashes in her sides, and even a small hole in her belly where a bit of intestines hung out. Her right foreleg was missing all flesh and muscle from right above the hoof to about halfway up, showing nothing but bare bones with bite marks on them. Her left hind hoof was unnaturally bent sideways and she was walking on it like that. Her horn even had a chip in it. Spike eyeballed her a bit before saying, "I think you're going to scare the living hay out of the whole town!" "I am? Cool!" "No Twilight, I mean it! You're gonna start a riot or something…" He looked away and muttered, "…again." "Don't be silly Spike, ponies love being scared on Nightmare Night!" Sighing in defeat, because he knew he wouldn't get through to her, Spike then asked, "So is this what you've been working on in the basement for the past couple months?" "Yea! Sorry I wouldn't let you in to see what I was doing… I uh… I really wanted it to be a surprise! Yea that's why! I totally wasn't experimenting on changelings or anything!" Twilight laughed nervously. Spike just sighed again. Twilight briskly trotted over to where Applejack was, at the apple bobbing tub. She was wearing her usual scarecrow costume, and helping the foals with the various games there were to play. Twilight avoided being seen until she was almost right next to the farmer, after which, she slowed her walk to an accurately recreated zombie shamble as she approached her friend. She didn't get too close before Applejack turned around and noticed her. Twilight let out a deep zombie moan to match her blank face. "Whoa nelly! A zombeh!" Applejack cried. Twilight barely got a chance to say 'fooled you!' before she got two shod orange hooves right in her face. "OOOWWWWW! MY NOSE!" Twilight cried, now on the ground, holding her nose with a hoof. Spike had caught up with his unicorn friend and was now snickering at what happened. "Uh… Twilight?" The scarecrow pony turned around slowly and looked at her zombified friend on the ground. "Yea…" she responded, her voice quite nasally, "it's me, Applejack." "Ahm mighty sorry Twi! Ya just scared the livin' hay outta me!" The scarecrow helped the zombie get back on her hooves. "It's OK, I should've seen that coming…" She admitted with her head tilted up, holding a hoof to her nose. "Well, Twi, if it's any consolation, that's a right fine, er… costume ya got there!" "You like it?" "Of course I do! I thought ya was the real deal!" "Well, if you want, I could make you look like this too, all I have to do is…" Meanwhile, a certain multicolored pegasus was pushing a small storm cloud across the sky. Seeing Applejack, Rainbow Dash decided to sneak up on her and buck a thunderbolt from her cloud to scare the scarecrow. But, when Rainbow got closer, she saw… "APPLEJACK! LOOK OUT! I'LL SAVE YOU!" Dash bucked the cloud and it sent a well-aimed lightning bolt crashing down right at zombie Twilight. "Rainbow! What are ya doing?!" Applejack scolded her. "Saving your flank from that zombie! It was about to bite you!" Dash protested. "That ain't no zombie! That's Twilight!" She pointed to the twitching purple zombie on the ground. Twilight moaned and shook her head to straighten her eyes that were rolling around in her skull. Spike helped her up, and she wobbly stood and tried to brush her mane down, it was standing straight up. She grumbled at Dash. "Uh, heh heh… Sorry Twi…" Dash apologized bashfully. "Anyway," Twilight started, "I was about to give Applejack here my costume…" Rainbow just cocked an eyebrow at that. "Go ahead Twi, I'm ready." Applejack smiled. Twilight walked up to her, as if about to nuzzle her, but instead bit her shoulder. A gentle nibble that didn't hurt of course. A few seconds later, and a purple flame engulfed the orange mare, then dissipated to reveal a zombie scarecrow. "It worked!" AJ exclaimed. "OOH! Do me next!" Dash's wings popped up in excitement. "I wanna be a zombie Shadow Bolt!" "Go ahead, AJ!" Twilight said. "Really? I can do it too?" Twilight nodded. "That's the best part of the spell! That, and it wears off by itself in four hours!" She proclaimed proudly. "Oh great," Spike piped up, "Now the whole town's gonna be zombies…" Later… A chariot pulled by dark gray, bat-winged pegasi descended from the sky. As it landed, the dark, hooded figure riding in the chariot smiled. "This shall be a most wonderful night!" Her entrance was noticed by the whole town of Ponyville, as everypony stared in her direction. A few small costumed foals ran up to the Princess of the Night. The leader of the group of foals was a tiny little colt in a (zombie) pirate costume. Princess Luna's cheery expression fell to a despairing frown. She looked over the foals then briefly observed the other townsponies. "Not again…" she muttered in a shaky voice. "Hi Princess! Are you going to scare us again?!" Pipsqueak asked excitedly. Luna's eyes widened. "Thy master hast even enchanted thou to speak…" she muttered. The foals sat there looking confused. "GUARD! Give us thy spear!" Luna commanded. One of the two night guards unstrapped himself from the harness and quickly hoofed over a spear to the Princess of the Night. The spear floated up high in her magical blue aura. "Fear not my children… I shall end your pain!" A tear rolled down her cheek as she stepped off the chariot and ran after the little foals who were fleeing in terror. Author's Notes: Hi guys! Thanks for reading, please comment, let me know what you think! I thought I should write something for Nightmare Night, so I came up with this. If you haven't already, please check out my other fics, and if you liked this, don't forget to 'Follow' me! I've got some cool fics in the works and I won't spam you with blog posts! Hope y'all liked this, took me about a day to write. Hopefully worthy of a little oneshot.