//------------------------------//
// Sarcastic Ending 
// Story: Where's the Beef? 
// by Mare Macabre 
//------------------------------//

	Fluttershy was standing in her living room. There was precious little else to do with her time now that the major conflict of her story arc had been settled and I completely ran out of ideas for the main storyline. Sure eventually she would tell the remaining three ponies that matter to the narrative by means of having been mentioned at some point, but that would likely happen offscreen and be mentioned at a later date in a later, completely unrelated story.

The phone rang suddenly and distracted the vacantly staring pegasus from her nonexistent occupation.

"Hello?" she answered, as one traditionally does when a phone is ringing.

<Hey, Fluttershy, it's Twilight,> a voice on the other end responded.

"Oh hi, Twilight. How is being a princess going?"

<Pretty much not at all. I apparently don't do anything unless there's a national crisis. It would seem Equestria is far from wont for dictatorial rule by omnipotent beings,> the alicorn sighed. <Anyway, I was calling because I just remembered something. Didn't you say your whole predator thing was largely to do with your liking the taste of blood?>

"That sounds like something I might have said at one point, yes," the butter yellow pegasus nodded.

<Well... aren't you like, part vampire or something?> Twilight asked, examining her hoof. <Isn't that a thing that happened?>

Fluttershy stared vacantly at the wall across from her for a few moments before flicking an ear.

"Yes, actually, I think it is."

<So then... well there's the whole answer to your thing you had going on,> Twilight shrugged, shifting the phone to her shoulder as she really got a good look at that hoof.

"Right," Fluttershy nodded, a distant grin frozen on her face. "So... I pretty much struggled with crippling depression and mutilated myself for no reason, didn't I?"

<That seems to be the thing that happened,> Twilight confirmed, levitating over a magnifying glass to get a better idea of the properties of the hoof that she was examining. <Zecora's not a doctor anyway, I don't know why you blindly trusted her medical expertise. It's pretty much not possible to tell things about ponies just from looking at their muscles.> She sent the magnifier back to her desk in favor of something with more power. <I mean, pretty much most things with a quadrupedal stance will have the same or similar basic muscular anatomy.>

Fluttershy nodded throughout her friend's long-winded speech, still smiling and staring at the wall.

"I see."

A moment of silence passed between them before Fluttershy cleared her throat and Twilight finished adjusting her hoof under a microscope.

"Twilight I'm going to have to call you back, I'm having a nervous breakdown," Fluttershy said politely.

<Alright,> the princess nodded. <Glad I could help,>

Fluttershy set the phone back on its receiver without looking at it, her body save for the arm that had held the phone stiff as a board. She then set it across from the other, standing in a neutral pose, then flopped onto her side, the action accompanied by a perfectly appropriate and well-timed sound effect of wood blocks knocking together as her stiff body rattled against the ground.

I then wordlessly meandered into the room and scribbled the words "Non-Canon" over her face in sharpy before carrying the wooden horse into a similarly labeled cardboard box in the corner of the room, then sat down at her typewriter and started on a story about her being a vampire rather than whatever nebulous thing she was in this story.

Thuh Enn