//------------------------------// // Manor of Mayhem // Story: The Stallion in the Library // by leonidas701 //------------------------------//         We all stood there, waiting out the endless seconds until, finally, Card came back in.         “Okay, A.J. I’m gonna need you to lift up Rainy off the couch,” He said as he came in carrying a very large plastic sheet and some very thick wide ropes, almost like long belts. “Trixie, Twinkly, Stay-Puft, you need to spread this plastic around the couch and the floor, it’s all one sheet so please be careful.” If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the situation, I would’ve laughed at the fact that Rarity knew who Card was talking about right away. So while we were unrolling the plastic over the couch and letting it pool around the floor, Card took the belts over to Applejack and started doing something I couldn’t see and wasn’t paying much attention to due my full focus being on making unraveling the plastic without tearing it. In fact the only reason I even noticed was because Trixie said something.         “Oh, is now really the time for that Card?” I looked over to Card and saw he was trying to tie Rainbow Dash up.         Rarity stopped levitating her part of the plastic, and ran over to where they were. As she tried to untie the belts around Rainbow Dash and rip them out of Card’s hoofs and mouth, she managed to spit out, “What do you think you’re doing!?”         “I’m trying to restrict her movement.” Card said as he tried to tug his belts back.         “Why?!”         “Because what I’m about to stick into her is going to make her thrash around like a fish on a hook.” Rarity started blushing and let go of the belts. I don’t blame her, my concentration was disrupted as well and I dropped the plastic wrap. In fact, everypony started blushing, except for Trixie who looked like she was trying to hold back a laugh. After a few seconds awkward silence, where the other unicorns and I finished covering the couch and floor and Card got back to trying to tie up rainbow Dash, it was broken by the last pony you would expect.         “Uhh... excuse me,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sorry but...”         “Yes?” Card responded like he was only barely paying attention.         “You’re doing it wrong.”         “Huh?”         “Well... I mean...” With each word Fluttershy got a darker blush on her face. “You’re supposed to tie her up around her wings, then attach her front and back legs.”         “Look, you do it,” Card said as he shoved the belts onto Fluttershy. He continued talking as he walked over to his spinning machine with the vial of liquid, which had now turned white strangely enough. “Tell me when you’re-”         “Done.” Fluttershy’s voice was so quiet I barely could hear her. Applejack had no such problem.         “Dang, you had her trussed up faster’n a shotgun bride!”         Fluttershy was trying to make herself look small as possible to get attention off her. This was aided by Card suddenly bursting into a flurry of activity. He pushed Applejack over to the couch and shoved Rainbow Dash off of her back, placing her underside up on the plastic-clad couch. He grabbed the last remaining needle in his bucket, one with a very long point, and filled it with all of the liquid in his machine, leaving only a lump of gray at the bottom. He jabbed the needle straight into Rainbow Dash’s heart and the effect was almost instantaneous.         Her chest started to rise and fall more noticeably and much faster, and her breathing went from inaudible to heavy pants and gasps. It was still a troubling sight, but it was better than the previous lack of motion that seemed so very wrong coming from the always active Rainbow Dash.         “Ok, one of you make sure she only pukes in that bucket,”  Card said with a gesture as he began to leave again.         “Where are you going?” I couldn’t believe Card was just going to leave like this, I mean what if the antidote didn’t work? What if it wasn’t enough? What if it was too much? How could he just leave me- I mean her like this? Didn’t he care? I tried to voice my concerns and was met by Card going up to me and giving me a few firm shakes.         “Stop blathering!” He said. Once I had calmed down, he answered my first question. “I am going anywhere but here for the next ten minutes. It’s going to get very messy and I don’t want to see it.” I looked over to Rainbow Dash and saw her starting to strain against her bonds, rivulets of black streaming down her sky blue coat. When I turned to ask Card just what he meant, I found that he had already left and, turning back to Rainbow Dash, that she was beginning to struggle against her bindings..         The next five minutes or so were all a blur of all of us trying to keep Rainbow Dash on the couch -a task made much harder due to the fact that she was now covered in that black sweat- making sure she kept all of her throw up in the bucket while trying not to add to the amount in there myself, and hoping that the belts keeping her from moving more than a bare minimum amount held. Not a moment too soon she began to calm down, going into a much more natural looking sleep excepting the patches of black liquid on her coat. We took off her bindings and settled down for a moment to catch our breath, me personally feeling like I had just gone through an all night study session for five different tests at once. In a couple more minutes, Rainbow Dash started to wake up.         “Ugh... what happened?” she asked as she slowly sat up and looked around. “Where am I? Why is my throat so sore?” She gave a few sniffs and scrunched up her nose. “Ugh, what stinks?”         We all rushed up to embrace our friend, knocking her back against the couch. While we were doing that, Trixie was explaining to her what had happened. I only caught the last part though.         “Then Card took us here, gave you the cure, left, and we’ve been spending the last few minutes keeping you from hurting yourself while your body purged itself of the toxins.” Upon the reminder of what kind of state Rainbow Dash’s body was in right now, namely covered in black sweat, we all released her. Rarity even recoiled and leaped to the other side of the room, starting to try to wipe the black sweat off of herself but only succeeding in spreading it around more.         Rainbow Dash didn’t seem to notice though, as she was focusing on one specific part of what Trixie had said. “Card took me here?”         “Well no technically, Applejack carried you.” Trixie said, but Rainbow Dash seemed to ignore her.         “H-he did all that?” She looked very conflicted, “But...” She shook her head, and got up off of the couch. “I- I’m sorry, I need to... bye.” She walked out the room, closing the door behind her, shaking her head the whole way.         “I should go help her.” Fluttershy mumbled out, as she followed after her.         “Well, that should take a while darlings, so I think I’ll try to go find a shower.” Rarity said, “A house this large must have quite a few.”         “What, can’t handle a little sweat mussing up yer coat?” Applejack teased.         “I’m afraid not all of us have the luxury of being always so covered in sweat that anymore just slides off.” Rarity shot back as she left.         We all sat around for a minute, making small talk, until Applejack decided to leave, pleading that she was worried about what was taking Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash so long.         The second after she left, Card came back in. “Okay, she should be fine by now so you can all le-” He stopped talking as he got a good look around the room. “Twinkly?” He asked, his voice suddenly strained. “Where is everybody?”         “Well, they all left-”         “WHAT?!” Card yelled. While I was shocked by this outburst, Trixie stepped in to try to calm him down.         “Call down Card, I’m sure they won’t break anything and they’ll be back soon,” she said.         “No, you don’t understand. Oh this is a nightmare!” Card started to massage his temples.         “What do you mean?” I asked. Card couldn’t be this mad just because of some ponies walking around his home. He didn’t seem like that kind of pony. It turned out I was right, Card was worried about something much worse.         “Look,” he said as he walked to the door he just came out of. He opened it up, standing to the side so we could see into the room clearly.         “Yeah?” Trixie asked, as confused about this as I was, “What about it? It looks like a normal dining ro-”         She was cut off as Card closed the door and opened it again, this time revealing a library. He did it again, and this time it lead to what seemed to be a weight room. As he continued opening and closing the door, revealing a new room every time, he started speaking, pausing every time he closed and opened the door.         “The rooms, in this house, are constantly, moving ar, ound.”         “...What?! Why? How?!” Trixie asked, mirroring my own thoughts quite nicely.         Card stopped opening and closing the door, and began explaining. “This house has around 300,000 rooms. When they first built this place, they got really tired of having to go so far in their own house and so made it that you could get to any room from any door. But you have to know how to do it, and it’s really tricky. Hell, it still takes me a few tries most of the time. If they went through these doors, they could be almost anywhere in this house by now,” he finished.         “Almost anywhere?” Trixie asked.         “Well, a lot of the house is inaccessible to most, but that still leaves about a hundred rooms that they could be in. In all likelihood, if somebody doesn’t find them they will never get out.”         “Well how do we find them?” I asked.         “And even if we do, how do we find our way back.” I hadn’t even thought of that, Trixie had a good point. Fortunately Card had an answer to both our questions.         “Wait here,” he said as he left the room for a few seconds. When he came back, he was carrying two large coils of fairly thin rope in his mouth. “Hwt oo et o u-”         “What?” Trixie and I asked.         He spat out the ropes, and began speaking again. “What you need to do is tie one of these ropes around one of your hooves and the other end around something in this room. When you walk around the house, the rope will leave trail you can follow.”         “What’ll keep the rooms from changing and snapping the rope?” I asked.         “As long as there is something crossing the threshold of the doorway, the rooms will be connected together and move as a group,” He explained. He started gathering up the sweaty plastic on the floor, grabbing the bucket as well. “Now, I have to go throw all of this away. You two know the rules. Good luck, have fun!” And with that he left.         Trixie and I quickly did as he instructed and, with a shared word of goodbye and good luck, started off on our searches.         The next half hour was, for me at least, fairly uneventful. The only noteworthy thing that happened was me coming across a book Card had borrowed from the library and said he had lost. I made a mental note to talk to him about it when I next saw him and continued on.         Eventually I found myself in a room filled with rows and rows of shelves of food, going to the ceiling. As I went along each of the aisles, trying to see if any of my friends were hiding between them, I found Rarity.         Rarity was busy organizing all of the different shelves of food, as they were in quite a state of disarray. There were apples stacked next to a single bread that was teetering dangerously on a pile of bananas and canned peaches. All of this was next to a pile of strange grey chunks wrapped in plastic, and Rarity was going from aisle to aisle taking all the food of one type and trying to put them together. Resisting my urge to join her in dealing with this messiness, I instead called her name.         “Oh, hello there Twilight.” She said as she hurried past me while levitating a stack of boxes. “Would you mind helping me with all this?” She was acting remarkably calm for somepony who had been lost for the better part of an hour.         “Rarity, what are you doing?” I asked.         “Well, I was walking around, trying to find a shower when I stumbled across this mess.” Rarity said, “I couldn’t bare to see such a mess lying around, so I’ve been doing some tidying up.”         “Rarity, it’s been an hour!”         “What?” she stopped moving and all the things she was levitating fell to the ground.         “Yeah.” I gave a quick version of what Card had told me.         She reacted with a surprising amount of calm. “Well then, I suppose we should get moving.”         “You’re taking this all really well.” I pointed out.         “Darling, every time I go to Manehatten I get lost,” she said with a chuckle, “This place can’t possibly be anywhere near as dangerous and confusing as that city.”         Whatever force governed irony was apparently very mad at me today, as the second she said that I heard a loud scream come from somewhere inside the house. We both immediately started running through the other rooms, Rarity staying behind me so as not to get separated again. While we were running I started thinking about Trixie, and if she was okay or not. -----Trixie Talking-----         Well, let me start off by saying that this is a very strange dream. I mean, after all that had happened today, I was expecting a very different kind of night-time fantasy. But, I guess there’s no harm in this. So you want to know about what happened today right? Well, okay.         The day started off with me being very bored. Card had given me the day off because we didn’t have anyone coming in, and so I was left with nothing much to do. I decided to go visit Twilight, hoping that she wouldn’t mind me coming in at so early an hour.         When I got there, I saw some of the strangest things I had seen since I traveled with that circus a while back. There was a white mare that I later recognized as Rarity who looked like she was attacked by an aggressive pack of hair rollers, a fairly good-looking pegasus with more rainbows on her then I had seen anywhere outside a LGBT pride rally pegasus, that I think was one of the ones heckling me at my last show, with her wings on backwards. There was that pink mare patient of Card’s that had her tongue swollen and covered in orange and blue, and a perfectly fine, if adorable, little yellow pegasus with pink hair that looked strangely sad for some reason. Naturally I went straight to her.         When I started talking with her I found out what was wrong with her. She had one of the deepest voices I had ever heard on a mare. Not the deepest mind you, but up there. Anyways, I stood there trying to talk to the shy mare for a few minutes until a little yellow red-headed filly ran up, carrying a very tiny Applejack.         What happened next would take too long to explain, but suffice to say that they ended up running to the Everfree forest and I ended up following them because, well I really had nothing better to do. Eventually we ended up at a zebra’s hut and, after an embarrassing incident for pegasus with the backwards wings who I now knew was named Rainbow Dash, they got cured of all their weird body problems. While I was dispensing the cure, Rainbow Dash got up and left before I could give it to her. One thing led to another and she ended up poisoned.         You know, no matter how many times you see it, you never get used to the look ponies have when somepony they care for deeply is dying. I forced myself to ask the question none of them would, of how long she might have left, and then just left them to their mourning.         Then Card came and, after an argument with the two imaginary friends he has, he calls them Aoc and N from what i’ve been able to tell from all the times he’s talked to them in the office, along with him being amused by... Fluttershy? I think that was her name. Anyways, I don’t blame him for laughing like he did, it was like seeing a mouse try to stare down a lion. He took us to his house where he eventually made the cure with some help from yours truly.         After that is when things got interesting. Long story short, turns out he lives in a house that works like one of those sliding puzzles, where every room can move around on its own. Everypony other then me and Twilight got lost, and so when he came back he threw a fit, scaring the horn off of Twilight, and then told us how to find them. He left and Twilight and me went down separate doorways, me feeling really dumb with a string around my back hoof.         Anyways, after just walking around for twenty minutes and finding squat, I came into a long hallway filled with doors. I shrugged and opened the one closest to me. I opened the door and behind it I found... a wall.         Okay, I thought, that’s pretty strange, but I just turned around and opened the door behind me. Behind that door was... another wall, with more of the same tasteless wallpaper. I started going down the hallway, opening every door, finding nothing but wall behind each one. I kept on going because I told myself that Card wasn’t the type of pony to just put a hallway doors going nowhere in his house right? Right? Finally, after ten minutes of opening and shutting doors,  I came to the final one. Just for the record, by this point I was expecting my nightmares for the next few months to include the constant slamming and opening of doors. Anyways, this last door wasn’t on side wall, it was directly across from the door where I started. Okay, I thought, This is it. This is that door that won’t lead me to a wall. Well, I was technically right. I opened that door, slamming it against the wall. Suddenly,         Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, Never gonna ruuuun around and, desert you.         The scream of frustration I let out was probably heard all the way in Canterlot. I bet Twilight didn’t have to deal with anything like this.         I’m sorry, you smell what? What do you mean, you ‘smell a trans-’ -----Sparkle Speaking-----         So Rarity and I kept on walking through the house, making small talk as we went. Well, she made small talk and I politely pretended to listen. I know it’s rude, but there is only so much gossip about celebrities I don’t know and upcoming trends in fashion that I can stand. As I nodded and made various sounds of agreement, I was paying attention to all the strange rooms we were passing through. There was one that held nothing but buckets and buckets of strange dice, one that had all of it’s furniture on the ceiling, and one that had nothing in it but looked big enough to fit all the ponies in Ponyville. These are just a few, and just the ones I could describe.         Suddenly Rarity said something that made me pay attention to her.         “I can’t imagine how Applejack felt when Applebloom ran off like that. If Sweetie had suddenly just ran off into the Everfree like that, I don’t know what I would do.”         “What?” I asked. “Who’s Sweetie Belle?”         “Oh, she’s my little sister.”         “I didn’t know you had a sister. Why haven’t I seen her?” With all the times I had to go get Spike from the Carousel Boutique, I had just about seen every inch of the place. The idea that there was a little filly running around that I hadn’t noticed boggled my mind.         “She’s been with our parents for the past month or so. She should be coming back in a couple weeks when winter starts,” she responded. “What about you Twilight? Any siblings?”         “I have a big brother,” I said hesitantly. Rarity seemed to sense my discomfort and so dropped the subject, leaving us walking in awkward silence for the next several minutes.         The silence was broken upon me opening a door to reveal a bathroom behind it, with a very large shower.         “Finally!” Rarity shouted. “Twilight, do you suppose Card would mind me using his shower?” she asked, already turning on the water, “I would rather like to be rid of all this.” She gestured at her body, still covered in Rainbow Dash’s black sweat. I had honestly forgotten about the whole reason why she had left, and had stopped noticing the smell as well, until she pointed it out.         “I don’t think he’ll care,” I said as I wrinkled my nose, remembering that my coat was covered in the stuff too. “Just be quick.”         Rarity whooped and jumped in. After a little vigorous scrubbing from her, she started talking again.         “You know Twilight, you have hooked quite a catch,” Rarity said.         “What do you mean?” I asked.         “He’s a doctor, he has a mansion as big as any I’ve ever seen in Canterlot, and he’s not hard on the eyes either,” she explained. “You have found yourself quite the coltfriend.”         “...What?” I said in disbelief.         “Don’t play coy darling. I recognize the signs.”         “Card’s not my coltfriend!”         “Oh please, I’ve seen him taking you out to that little cafe,” Rarity said as she stepped out of the shower and began to dry herself off.         “Yeah, with Trixie!” I said as I went into the shower. Seriously, I couldn’t believe what she was saying! Card’s more like... Hmm? Oh sorry, I just realized something. Card’s been more like a big brother to me over the last couple months then Shiny has been in years...         Sorry, back on topic.         “Well then who is on your mind?” Rarity said.         “W-What are you talking about?”         “I may be wrong about you and Card, but I know a mare with a crush when I see one,” she said confidently. “Who is it?”         My mind immediately went to the stallion I had seen in the mirror at those nights ago, with his dark blue coat, and his vibrant purple eyes piercing even behind his glasses. The pegasus smart enough to solve our problem without even seeing it. I realized that I hadn’t responded to Rarity’s question yet and it had been a full minute.         I felt my cheeks flush and I decided I was clean enough and stepped out of the shower, taking another towel off the rack. Rarity was standing there with a little smirk on her face, and silently prodded me into stammering out an answer.         “I- It’s stupid. I’ll don’t even know anything about him, and I’ll probably never see him again. I can’t even remember his name.”         Rarity just gave me knowing look and chuckled a bit. “All right, all right,” she said. “Come on, we have to keep looking.” She went back out the door, holding it open as I went through. I bet Trixie didn’t have to deal with level of embarrassment on her search. -----Trixie Talking-----         ‘-ition.’ You’re really weird. Then again, you’re in my dream so... Ah, screw it. I’ll think about it tomorrow.         Where was I? Oh yeah, hallway of pain.         So, after spending some time just listening- Don’t look at me like that, it’s a pretty good song! Anyways, when that was done I went back out the way I came, tieing a bit of the string around a doorknob so I wouldn’t stumble across it again, and went through another door. The next few minutes were pretty uneventful, although I did come across another hallway. This one just had six doors, not counting the one I came through. Five of the doors were locked and they all had some weird design on them. One that stands out was a set of scales, you know the kind you use to weigh things, with three dishes instead of two.         Other than that hallway, the next interesting thing that happened was when I came across Rainbow Dash.         I found her walking around, grumbling to herself. When I came up to her, her face briefly brightened but sank when she saw who I was.         “Oh, it’s you.”         “Well hello to you too.” She gave me a look. I asked her what her problem was.         “Well,  I’ve spent most of today humiliating myself, one of my best friends has betrayed me, I was poisoned, and now I’m lost in the house of the most infuriating stallion in Equestria!”         I asked her what she had against Card.         “He is not normal!” she shouted. “He’s hiding something big, and probably dangerous, and I’m the only one who cares!”         I called this out as the bullshit it was, and she continued.         “It’s not just that! How does he always know what to do!? A.J. loses her dog, he has a dog whistle! We get a case of poison joke, he happens to know a super-fast cure! More than that, he always knows where I’m going to crash!”         Now, I’m pretty good at reading body language. After all, being able to tell how your audience is feeling is a necessary part of being a magician. So, I was able to tell that that was only part of what was bothering Rainbow Dash. I pointed this out to her, and she had this to say,         “He- He just makes it all look so easy! We can be working our plots off and he’ll just come in a solve the problem while looking half asleep! You’re his secretary, have you ever seen him put even a slight bit of effort into anything!”         Here I had to pause for a moment. Not because I couldn’t think of anything, but because the only one that came to mind was so strange.         The first day I met Card, I saw him talk an Ursa Major out of attacking the town. The whole time he was talking to it he had a look of complete focus on him, like he was carefully considering each and every syllable he spoke. I felt like that shouldn’t be something I tell anypony though, especially as I don’t think Card even knew I was there. So I just told her that despite what she thought, Card had saved her life so she should give him the benefit of the doubt, I left out the part about him not wanting to, and either way we had to find her friends.         “What do you mean?” she asked, stopping dead in her tirade against Card.         I told her everything that had happened after she left the room, along with the rules Card had laid out for how the house worked.         “Well then what are we doing standing around here! Let’s go!” I was so shocked by her one-eighty in mood that I almost forgot to grab her.         “What is it?!” she asked. I told her that I had to tie a piece of the rope around her so that we wouldn’t get separated. I quickly tied a piece around her back hoof while she tried not to fidget, making sure it was a fair distance away from me, and as soon as I was done she went out the nearest door.         The next few minutes were fairly uneventful, but I was distracted from the tedium by the very nice plot in front of me. You wouldn’t think that a pegasus would have particularly nice leg muscles due to them usually flying everywhere, but Rainbow Dash was a very welcome exception to the rule.         Why are you looking at me like that?         Yes, yes I am indeed a lesbian.         ...That bit of awkwardness out of the way, back to the story. Eventually we came to a very strange room. Fairly large, it was all white and very brightly lit. There was no furniture in it, except for a pedestal against the wall. On it there was a little red metal ball, and above it was a sign saying,         “This is Super Happy Fun Ball.”         Rainbow Dash let out a scoff. “How much fun could this stupid little thing possibly b-”         She was cut off by the ball suddenly opening up and sprouting two layers of metal blades. They started spinning, slow at first but quickly getting faster.         As the ball began to hover, I noticed a piece of the sign that was previously obscured by it. WARNING: DO NOT TAUNT! RESULTS OF TAUNTING INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO: -LASER BURNS -LOSS OF HAIR -LOSS OF TAIL -SUDDEN VASECTOMY -VACATING OF BOWELS -IRRESISTABLE URGE  TO MONTAGE -DOORS NO LONGER OBEYING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS -FEAR OF BARBERS -FEAR OF CUPCAKES -FEAR OF GARDENS -FEAR OF YELLOW MARES -DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER -AND LOSS OF ABILITY TO SING, EAT, THINK, BREATH, AND LIVE         “Rainbow Dash,” I said, distracting her from the ball that had now sprouted antenna that were arcing electricity.         “Yeah?”         “Run.” She didn’t need to be told twice. -----You All Know The Drill-----         After the incident in the shower Rarity and I got back to searching for our friends, but by this point we were both fairly tired. After all, we had been walking around for a good ninety minutes or so by this point. Thankfully, it wasn’t very long before we came across Applejack in a bright green kitchen, that had a very strange smell come to think of it, looking completely lost.         “Hey, Applejack!” I called out to get her attention.         “Howdy!” she said as she rushed up to greet us with a relieved look on her face, “Oh mah stars, y’all have no idea how happy Ah’m to see ya.”         “Yes, yes Applejack. We’re glad to have found you,” Rarity said as she embraced her friend, me along with her.         After a moment Applejack pulled back from Rarity and I, saying, “Please tell me ya know how to get outta here?!”         “Don’t worry, this rope will lead us back,” I said. As I looked at the rope however, I noticed that it was almost completely taut. “Speaking of, we don’t have much more. I think we should start to head back.” I untied the rope from myself and tied it off on the handle of the oven. Rarity and Applejack evidently agreed as they started heading back, following the rope as it hung a couple feet off the ground.         “Phew. This place is so darn confusing!” Applejack said as we walked. “You know I came across no less than five rooms, all that looked exactly alike!”         “Actually, they probably were all the same room,” I said. I started explaining to Applejack about how Card’s house worked, along with all the strange rooms we had seen. Rarity added in her comments about some rooms she had come across before I had found her, and Applejack told us about a few odd things she had seen as well. This story swapping kept us occupied for most of the long, more or less straight, walk back to the room we started from, which was broken up only by us grabbing some food from the large room I found Rarity in and taking it with us. It was a fairly good pace, until Rarity came to a room that I had found fairly early on but didn’t find particularly interesting. Rarity, on the other hoof, was a different matter altogether.         “Oh. My. Celestia.” She stood in awe as she looked around her at all the various accessories. One wall was covered in jewelry of every shape and size and style, another with coats, shirts, dresses, skirts, and other types of clothing I couldn’t even identify. There was one wall covered with nothing but hats, and across from it was a wall that was just one huge mirror. Each wall looked to be fifteen feet high and at least thirty feet long.         “Come on Rarity,” Applejack said as she nudged her enraptured friend, “We need to keep moving. Who knows, the others might still be missing and the sooner we get back the sooner we can look for them.”         “But- But-” Rarity stammered out until she finally regained enough sanity to form a complete sentence. “But, just look!” she said as she spun around gesturing everywhere, looking like a foal in a playground.         “We have to go,” Applejack firmly said.         “Oh please, just five minutes. Please.” Rarity begged me. After a little while I gave in, convincing Applejack to stay as well. After all, I reasoned, our friends could all take care of themselves, and nothing we had seen since we got here was all that dangerous. How much trouble could they possibly be in? -----Trixie Talking-----         So as me and Rainbow Dash were running from the spinning kill-ball of death, screaming ourselves horse, I finally got the bright idea to close a door behind us as we ran through it. This idea should not have taken me thirty minutes to come up with. I plead being scared and tired. I didn’t even know I could run for a solid thirty minutes, let alone at that speed. Seriously, I still feel sore and I’m dreaming!         Anyways, the ball crashed into the door and we heard it hit the ground. I can not put into words, how good it felt to no longer hear that annoying whirring noise! I finally understood what they mean when they say the release from pain is the ultimate pleasure.         By this point, I was out of breath and Rainbow Dash was a bit winded, so we took a little break at the door to relax. As we did, I noticed what room we were in. It was a brightly lit, fairly temperate room, filled with trees. As my breath started to quiet down, I heard a soft whispering.         “Here, try it like this,” it said.         Rainbow Dash heard it as well, but she apparently recognized the voice as she quickly sprang up and rushed towards it, dragging me along by the rope. “Fluttershy!” she yelled.         I heard the voice give out a soft, little, frankly adorable, scream.         “Eeeeeeeee.”         I stood up and walked to where Rainbow Dash was standing, seeing the cute little yellow pegasus from before, you know, the one that tried to intimidate Card, hiding behind a tree with only one large eye sticking out from behind it. In front of that tree was a little grayish blue... thing.         A very fluffy, little grayish blue thing. Seriously, the thing looked like it was 98% hair and 2% glowing eyes. The little thing was standing in front of the tree, looking like he was trying to guard it, but shaking nervously. The second I stepped into view, it jumped up into the air and disappeared.         Rainbow Dash paid it no heed, and just went around to the other side of the tree and gave her friend a hug. “Oh thank Celestia you’re okay! Let’s get out of here!” she said as she tried to pull her friend along.         “It’s nice to see you too. Um... Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked uneasily.         “Yeah?”         “Are- Are you alright?” The little mare asked, only to see her friend looking at her incredulously. “I- I mean,” Fluttershy said hurriedly, “You left so angry, and it’s been so long since, and I just wanted to know, but if you’re okay then that’s great and I- I- Sorry.” The mare finished, looking down at her hooves.         You know, I have to admire her. Alone in a confusing house for a couple of hours, getting more lost with every turn she made, and her first thought upon getting rescued is if her friend is still in a bad mood. Speaking of that friend...         “Yeah Fluttershy, I’m fine,” Rainbow Dash said. “Now let’s get out of this crazy place!”         “What do you mean?” Fluttershy asked.         I quickly filled Fluttershy in on what had happened in the house and how it worked.         “Now let’s get out of here before something else tries to kill us!” Rainbow Dash said. I won’t say she was tempting fate, but... The second she said those words, the house started moving. -----Sparkle Speaking-----         “Okay, now what do you think about this one?” Rarity asked Applejack and I as she put on another dress and set of earrings. I had long since given up on actually forming an opinion about what she was trying on and was now just counting the seconds until the time was up in between regretting my decision and wondering why Card had so many clothes in his house when all he seemed to wear was that brown greatcoat.         “Ah don’ care, Rarity can we please just get going?” Applejack begged, but her pleas fell on deaf ears as Rarity went back to the wall and started picking out another outfit while she put her last one back on. I began to wish for something interesting to happen, or for time to speed up. Well, I got one of those wishes.         Now, for some reason, the room started to move. Not shake like an earthquake, it was raising up on one side, then down, then up on the other side, then down, violently and jerkily. It felt like it was being picked up and flung around, and we began sliding around with it. I don’t remember the events very well but it seemed to go on for at least fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of sliding and crashing and bumping into each other, it was a miracle none of us got hurt! But it did end eventually, and when it did we rushed outside of the room as fast as we could. And then we had to go back to pick up Applejack’s hat that she had dropped. It took us ten minutes of searching to get find that hat among all the clothes on the floor in the room, but when we did we continued on our journey back to the room we all started from, this time making it. -----Meh-----         While the room was shaking up like a boat in a tsunami, I was the only one suffering! The other two were just hovering in the air. I swear I must have hit every single tree in that room. At least Fluttershy had the decency to cringe whenever I got hurt, Rainbow Dash was just laughing at me. But she wasn’t laughing for long, as eventually the string connecting us got so tangled up at the bottom of the trees, that a good shake ended up pulling her down and slamming her straight into the ground where she joined me in my pain.         After a good few minutes of this torture, the house finally calmed down. I was covered in bruises, Rainbow Dash was covered in bruises, Fluttershy was fine but from the way she was cringing you would have thought she was the one we kept slamming into. Eventually Rainbow Dash got over her pain enough to stand back up.         “You see?!” she said. “This is why we have to leave!”         “B- But what about the others?” Fluttershy timidly asked.         I told her that I was sure Twilight had found them by now and they were probably already back. I didn’t mean a word of it, but by this point I just wanted to be done with this all. Then I remembered how long it took me to get here. Even discounting the time I wasted in the hallway of bullshit, the journey back was enough to make my bruised, aching muscles groan.         Luckily we didn’t have to make it all the way back. Fluttershy’s little friend came back, armed with a saucepan. After Fluttershy convinced him we weren’t going to hurt her, and explained our situation his eye’s lit up. He motioned for us to follow him.         We went after him, and eventually he led us to the other side of the room to another door. He jumped up, twisted the handle, and opened the door to reveal Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, and...         “FOOD!!!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she sprinted over to where they were eating. Me and Fluttershy joined her, and we all tucked in. After a few minutes of nothing but the sounds of eating. Rainbow Dash and Applejack got into a fight, but I didn’t care enough to pay attention to it. -----I’m not being paid enough for this-----         Trixie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash all burst into the room just as we had finished setting up the food. The whole time we were eating, I noticed Rainbow Dash glaring at Applejack, and then turning away when she looked at her. Eventually, Applejack had to bring it up.         “Rainbow, why are yah giving me the stinkeye?” she asked.         “Oh, no reason,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice drenched in sarcasm. “You just sided against me, one of your best friends, for the sake of a stallion who you’ve barely known for two months!” Rainbow’s voice rose to a yell.         “Oh, is that what this is about?”         “Yes! How could you do that to me!”         “Do what? Disagree about you calling mah friend evil when he hadn’t even dun nuthing to yah?” Applejack was yelling now too.         “He’s not right! He lives in Everfree, he has a house out of a nightmare, none of us know anything about him, he never takes anything seriously, and have you seen the way Pinkie acts around him? She’s terrified of him, she can barely look at him!”         “She was also the one walking closest to him when we came here,” Applejack pointed out.         “Pinkie what do you-” Rainbow Dash looked around the room. “Where’s Pinkie?” Come think of it, I can’t even remember when she left. Fortunately, she choose then to re-appear.         “Here I am!” she said in her usual exuberant manner. Her hair flat, but from sweat, and she seemed very tired: I mean she was actually pausing in between her words for once and she her face was flushed, but somehow she was wearing the biggest smile I had ever seen on her.         “Pinkie, where were you darling?” Rarity asked.         “Ooh! I was-”         “Where’s Card?” Rainbow Dash asked with fire in her eyes.         “Oh, he’s putting away the mattress.”         “...What?” Applejack asked.         “Well he said he needed to put it in the cleaning room. I don’t blame him; we did get it really dirty,” Pinkie explained, still with her massive smile on.         “Uhh... What?” Rarity asked.         “Hey everybody,” Card said as he walked into the room carrying a mug on his head.         “Oh, there you are!” Pinkie bounded over to him. “Did you put the mattress away, ooh what that?” Pinkie said as she tried to climb on top of him to peek inside the mug         “Yeah, I might just end up throwing it away though, we really did a number on it!” Card answered, “And as for this,” He rolled his eyes up to the top of his head to point at the mug, “This is just water. You really left me dehydrated.”         “I know! It was soooooo much fun!” Pinkie said,  “Can I come over and do it again some time?! Please? Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please,”         “Sure, if you can find this place again. Just give it a while first, I can tell I’m going to be sore tomorrow. I didn’t realize I had gotten so out of shape.”         “But you kept it up for such a long time! I had to stop moving before you did.”         By this point, a layer of awkward had set up around all of us. None of us did anything and the only ones not blushing were Trixie and Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash eventually spoke up.         “Now listen here!” She said as she stomped up to Card. “What was the deal with your damn deathball!”         “Oh, so you’re feeling better.” Card said. “Glad the antidote worked.”         “Answer the question! What was with your deathball!”         “Deathball... Death ball...” Card said as he thought. “I’m pretty sure it’s in the shop right now. At least, Tron hasn’t sent it back to me yet.”         “What!? Then what did we run across?!” She said, motioning to herself and Trixie.         “I don’t know, what did you run across?”         “That damn... Super Happy Fun Deathmachine!”         “I don’t have a super happy fun deathmachine. I have a Mega Happy Fun Deathmachine lying around here somewhere, if you want it.”         Rainbow Dash was fuming, and so Trixie was the next one who spoke.         “She’s talking about the Super Happy Fun Ball.”         Rainbow Dash nodded her head in agreement. “The damn thing nearly killed us! Stop laughing!”         Card was quietly chuckling. He opened the door to the outside and stepped out, keeping the door open. The instant he stepped outside, I noticed Pinkie flinch a little, but not much. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small red ball. The instant that ball was visible, Rainbow Dash and Trixie both ran to the farthest wall and pressed themselves against it.         Card lifted the ball to his face. “Booooooo.” He said. Tiny little blades came out of the ball and it started hovering.         “What have you done!” Trixie screamed.         Card ignored her and plucked a blade of grass from the ground and held it to the ball. The moment the blades touch the blade of grass, they ran back into the ball, and it fell to the ground.         “It’s a prank toy,” Card explained as he lifted it up off the ground and threw it back into his jacket. “Oh shit!” he suddenly said. Before I could ask him what he meant by that, a tiny symbol appeared on the wall above Rainbow Dash and the ball fell onto her head. This was apparently the last straw for her.         “That is it!” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m leaving!”         “What, no thank you for saving your life?”         “Thank... You...” She said through gritted teeth.         “Wait up, I’m going with yah,” Applejack said. “Thank y’all for yer hospitality,” she said to Card.         “Yes, thank you,” Rarity said.         Me and Fluttershy thanked him as well as we left, Trixie hanging back for a slight moment before she joined us.         We waited until we were out of sight of the house to realize that none of us knew where we were going. Fortunately Pinkie seemed to have some idea and we eventually made it out alright.  I came home, dictated my letter to the princess to Spike, went to sleep and now we’re here.         That is all, yes. Oh, wait. The Princess did send me a letter telling me that she was going to be here in a few days time. Oh, what am I going to do! there is so much I need to prepare, we need food, and I’m going to have to show her my progress! Oh, so much studying to do! There is no time to sleep, what am I doing he- -----Finally, the Last One of the Day-----         So Card and the pink mare who was one of his clients came back, they apparently had sex or something, I don’t know, I was about ready to collapse at this point. I did find it funny at how many of the fully grown mares, all of whom were at least my age, were blushing at an innuendo.         Then Card freaked me out by pulling out the murderball, but it turned out to have been a prank thing and now I have a fear of marbles. When we all left, I had to ask him one question.         “That just now, was that on purpose?”         The bastard just gave me one of his little smirks and winked at me. “See you at work tomorrow.”         Then I came to my apartment and collapsed into my bed. Then you showed up, all white and coatless, with your desk and strange machine and started interviewing me. All in all, this was a weird dream. Hey what’s that you have? Amnesia wha-