Greasy wasn’t feeling well, he couldn’t quite put his hoof on it; there was just something that was really bothering him. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what it could be. Everything had been going perfectly and just the way he wanted it to, and yet, this feeling still remained. He was trying to get the feeling to disappear by showering himself in loads of paperwork that needed to be filled, but it just wasn’t cutting it for him. He had gotten a letter from Tic Tac about his infiltration mission, it had been going very well apparently, this was a good thing. He sighed in relief as he sank into his chair. He was starting to get tired, he had been doing all this paperwork for the last six hours and it wasn’t getting him anywhere since it wasn’t anything really important. If he had wanted to, he could have simply given it to his secretaries, but he needed something to stop worrying himself.
The door opened. Greasy looked up and smiled, he was going to enjoy this. “Nightlight! My good friend, what brings you here?” he said as he stood up from the chair. Nightlight himself seemed really nervous about being there as if he was scared of something. He didn’t even look Greasy in the eyes. “Now, now, no need to be nervous, cheer up! Steadfast! Go fetch us some wine!” he shouted at his loyal lackey who only grunted in affirmation to the request.
Nightlight started to look just a little bit better as he finally started to look Greasy in the eye. “I’m sorry Greasy, but... It’s just that something bad has happened.” Greasy lifted an eyebrow as he made a motion for him to continue. “Yeah, well my daughter and her friend Rainbow Dash stole the ‘hemlig sten’ from the Canterlot hideout. I am so, so sorry.” he said as he shied away from the eyes of Greasy.
Greasy just started to laugh. “Good, very good in fact! Everything is going according to plans. Sorry to have scared you my friend, but you weren’t supposed to be able to resist them. The guards you got were deliberately bad at their jobs, just because I wanted them to succeed. they might think they’re strong, and they are, don’t get me wrong. But, there’s just one thing they haven’t added into the equation just yet.” he said with a giant smirk.
Nightlight looked up with a curious look, “and what, pray tell, is that?” he asked with a rather sly expression.
Greasy just continued to smirk as he replied, “Me.”
As Twilight continued to hug Rainbow, she slowly started to think. This hug had been going on for quite a while and it was making Rainbow Dash terribly confused, so she had to find a way to make it stop without making it incredibly awkward, so that’s what she decided to do. “Twilight?” she said as she lightly poked the lavender unicorn. Twilight looked up at her with a smile. “Uhm, not that this hug isn’t nice but I think we should get going. Unless you want us to be late, and I know you despise being late.”
This created a reaction from Twilight who simply went out of the hug with a simple nod. “Yeah, you’re right, I wouldn’t want us to be late now that you’ve made appointments for us and such.”
Rainbow made a silent sigh of relief that she had been able to do that without it turning too awkward, if she was honest to herself, she didn’t think she would have been able to do that. But she did, and it was awesome. Rainbow wasn’t sure how to do this, this entire day was going to include a lot of improvisation from her side and it made her really nervous, not that she had anything to be nervous about... Right? She was the most awesomest pony of all, right? Yeah, that had to be it, she was simply nervous because what if she wasn’t able to live up to her name? No, wait, that wasn’t possible, failure wasn't in her blood and it would never be. She couldn’t allow herself to simply fail at something as easy as this, it was just a day with one of her favourite friends, right?
Ok, Twilight might have saved her life a couple of times, but did that really change anything in their relationship as friends? Rainbow didn’t think so. Or, at least she thought that she didn’t think so, she wasn’t exactly sure anymore because something was feeling off. There was simply something bothering Rainbow Dash, as if something was poking at her heart, what did that even mean? It was as if it wanted to tell her something, but a heart couldn’t talk. Now Rainbow was simply confusing her own thoughts so she decided to focus on the task ahead instead of worrying about failing.
“Brother!? Come over here and help me! We need to get everything in order before the two of them arrive!” Applejack shouted at her brother as she rushed through her house to get the table and chair ready under the designated tree. It was going to be hard to get everything exactly as she wanted it to be. As oblivious Rainbow Dash seemed to be, she was sure that Rainbow herself would think that the entire setting that Applejack would place them in to be incredibly weird, but Applejack tried to ignore it, since she knew it would help her friends in the end. She could almost see the love emanating from the two of them when they were close to each other and that Twilight had at least admitted it to herself, Rainbow just seemed to shove it away like a child. Or, maybe, she didn’t even know what the hay was going on, that was another possibility. Applejack smiled as she rushed into the kitchen to see if the food was cooking at the necessary rate. It seemed nearly perfect to where she wanted it to be. This was a good thing, a good thing indeed.
She heard her brother reply with a “Eeeyup!” as she ran into one of the side rooms to get another one of the chairs to the tree in time. There was little time to relax. Applejack just had one thing that she could possibly hope for and that was for the night to be as flawless as possible for her friends, she just hoped that she could manage such a feat.
Rainbow suddenly stopped at the order as they noticed something. It was a seemingly random house, but that wasn’t the weird thing about it, it was at the border of the town, but weirdest of all, it hadn’t been there yesterday. It was almost as if it had just been erected in a matter of minutes, but that wasn’t possible for ponies. To build a house would take at least three days to make it livable, yet that wasn’t the case for this house. It was there and it hadn’t been the day before.
Normally, they wouldn’t even have bothered looking at it, except for this time. There was something so incredibly weird about the house that stood out as a sore hoof, it was a sign. Not just any sign, mind you, it was a overly huge sign going up about ten feet into the air as if the creator really wanted somepony to see it. The sign was a big picture with a slogan, on the picture was a incredibly white stallion with quite the handlebar moustache holding his hoof towards the big speech bubble right next to him. The stallion had a very magnificent top hat adorning his head, almost hiding away his bubbly and yellow mane. He was also wearing a incredibly classy costume with a very fitting tie as he happily smiled at his speech bubble which said something among the lines of “Are you bored? Do you want something to do on this magnificent day? Are you a company of two? If you are, then come inside for the ultimate enjoyment for the two of you. Here at Pink Surprise we promise satisfaction to all our customers!”
Twilight tilted her head to the side as she stared at the sign for a moment. “This certainly seems interesting. I can’t quite put my hoof on it, but I recognise that stallion from somewhere. It’s almost as if he’s... No, that’s not possible.” she mused and waggled her legs slightly. “Well alright then! Let’s explore this house, nothing bad could possibly come from doing this.” she said as they shared a laugh.
Rainbow shrugged and walked forward, “Yeah, this couldn’t possibly be anything bad, c’mon, it’s called Pink Surprise, it’s not like it’s a house of horrors or something. Come on then, let’s go inside, my dear Twilight.” she said as she walked up the first step and extended a hoof for Twilight to grab. Twilight grabbed it almost instantaneously and they were on their way inside.
As soon as they entered the small house, there was something very off about it. Twilight couldn’t quite put her hoof on it so she decided to ignore it for the time being. The inside of the house wasn’t anything spectacular, at least, not the hallway they found themselves in. It was surprisingly long and didn’t look like it would fit into the small house that they had just entered. As soon as they took their first steps into the house, the door slammed shut right behind them.
This alerted the girls to an immense level and Rainbow practically charged into the door to get it to open up. It opened itself really easily. But what was behind it wasn’t what they had been expecting, it wasn’t the happy green yard from where they had entered, no, it was a room, like they had entered a completely random door in a randomly selected house. There wasn’t anything particularly odd about the room itself it was just a simple fireplace with a couch and a chair looking at it. Around the room there were some very simple decorations, but that was pretty much it.
Twilight was about to voice her concern about this house when the weirdest thing hit her. She was unable to form words. As she tried to speak, all that came out was air, no sound, no nothing. This was bad, very, very bad. She rushed forwards to Rainbow and poked her with a hoof so that Rainbow would look at her. She pointed with her hoof at her throat and then motioned it forward like she was asking Rainbow to say something.
Rainbow tried to say something, and failed. The same thing happened here, she only managed to push air out of her lungs, no words or anything. They looked each other in the eye and came to a silent agreement, they didn’t need to say anything to get out of here. There were one thing on their minds though, who did this to them and most importantly, why?
The two ponies had just searched the room and hadn’t found anything that could help them get out of this incredibly weird house when they closed the door to the room behind them. Twilight made an apologetic sigh and Rainbow simply replied with a smile and a pat on the back. Rainbow knew that her friend hadn’t meant for this to happen, so there was no need to be mad.
They slowly started to walk down the long corridor that, for some reason, had no doors in it. They reached the T-junction at the end of the corridor and looked down the two new paths. One of the ways lead towards a green corridor filled with lots and lots of doors. The other path lead towards a single door at the end of it.
BOOM BOOM!
Rainbow falls over forwards as she feels a humongous pain appearing in her chest. Her eyes started flashing red as she looked into the red floor of the corridor. Twilight quickly ran to her friends side as she helped Rainbow get to her feet. The unicorn looked into her friends eyes as she leaned on Twilight’s shoulder. Rainbow’s eyes were moving all around the place, looking at the walls, the ceiling and then the floor. They were almost moving too fast for Twilight to see it. Suddenly, Rainbow stopped looking all over the place as she just stared into Twilight’s eyes as she tilted her head slightly to the side. Twilight knew that look, she had seen it a couple of times during her training. It was a look that should never be underestimated in these circumstances. It was the very scary look that comes from… Hunger.
Rainbows mind was a complete cloud of dizziness, she couldn’t think straight. She had no idea what was happening, she didn’t remember anything. She just felt dizzy. She had no idea where she was. But one thing she knew for certain. She was very, very hungry. Lucky for her, there seemed to be a very delicious red apple in front of her. She smiled wickedly as she rose from the ground with a menacing smile. The apple seemed scared of her as it waggled backwards. For some reason unknown to Rainbow, the apple seemed to have legs and could move. This wasn’t something Rainbow could be bothered to think about right now. Right now, she was simply hungry for an hopefully incredibly tasty and juicy apple. In Rainbow’s eyes, she had never seen a more delicious apple in her entire existence. Even if it could move, she wasn’t going to let it slip away from her this easily.
Something purple appeared from the front of the apple, it seemed to shoot towards Rainbow. She simply swatted away the weird beam-like thing as if it was a fly. This made the apple turn as fast as it could towards a red door and ran for it. Rainbow wasn’t going to let this incredibly delicious apple run away from her, not this easily. She jumped into the air as she flew towards the apple as fast as she possibly could. As she neared the delicious little red apple, she heard something in the back of her mind. It sounded vaguely familiar. She had no idea what it was, it did sound like a voice. It almost sounded as if tried to tell Rainbow not to eat this apple. This, of course, was an absurd notion to Rainbow. Why shouldn’t you eat an apple that looked so… Delicious.
Soon enough, the pegasus crashed right into the apple. Somehow, the apple’s form seemed to have changed. Now, it almost looked like… A pony. Rainbow was far too hungry to think about that though. As Rainbow raised her head and opened her mouth so wide that she could get a very good taste of this delicious looking apple, using her now incredibly useful fangs. She quickly lowered her head and pierced the apples outside layer and started to suck out the juices that were contained inside. Rainbow closed her eyes as she continued sucking the liquid out of this incredibly weird looking apple.
The juices filled Rainbow with a new kind of feeling. It was a great feeling! Rainbow had never felt this way before. She felt so invigorated and so aware of everything. Her body shuddered in ecstasy as this new feeling infiltrated her body. This was the tastiest apple she had ever had the pleasure of eating. Good thing it was this big too. A small apple would never have satisfied her appetite. When her hunger was finally satisfied, she felt the apple pony thing fall over backwards and she did the same.
When Rainbow Dash opened her eyes the next time, she was met with a really full stomach. She felt so full that it was hard to move. The red roof above her made her slightly confused. Her head was dizzy. The last thing she remembered was eating a really delicious apple. Before that… She had been with Twilight! What had happened in the middle there? Why was she back where she and Twilight were before? She went against the force in her body that was telling her not to stand up and rose from the ground. What she saw was simply the very red corridor that she was currently standing in. She turned around and her eyes went wide.
It was Twilight. But not the lively purple unicorn that she had come to greatly appreciate the latest weeks. No… It was clearly the unicorn, but she wasn’t standing, Rainbow didn’t even know if she was conscious. She took as step towards the unicorn. The beautifully vibrant purple color had almost disappeared from the unicorn's coat. Now, her coat was an incredibly sick looking shade of gray. Rainbow could feel her eyes welling up in tears as she rushed over to the limp body of her wonderful friend.
She quickly flipped her friend over so that she could see her face. Something had happened to her. Rainbow couldn’t figure it out. Something must have knocked her out and then gone for Twilight. Then she saw something on Twilight’s neck. It was a puncture wound. No wait, there were two… They were incredibly close to each other and blood was slowly seeping out of the small wounds. Rainbow fell over backwards as she realised what it was. She slowly opened her mouth and brought up her hoof to her mouth and felt her fangs. She was shaking as she put her hoof in front of her face and her fears were realised. There was blood on them.
She was now openly weeping as she crept towards the limp body of her incredibly close friend. She looked at the face of her unicorn friend, it was empty, her eyes closed and her mouth curled up in a very small smile that seemed almost happy with itself. She tried talking, but nothing came out but small wheezes. She started mouthing the words “I'm sorry” as her tears splashed the face of her friend. Rainbow felt as if she lost control of her body as she moved her head closer to her friend’s. Very slowly, as the tears were flowing down her face, something inside of her happened. She didn't really understand. It was almost as if a switch had been flicked. Her heart started beating incredibly fast as she leaned in towards the unicorn. She was unable to control herself as she kissed the unicorn.