Screwball grinned, then rushed Pinkie.
Not to be outdone, Pinkie ran towards her new sworn enemy.
They clashed together and clenched, hooves meeting hooves, both mares snarling angrily. Both pushed, rear hooves scraping wildly for purchase against the dirt, but even though dirt and dust flew wildly, neither gained any ground. That's not to say nothing happened, though. Invisible magic pulsed through the air, growing stronger by the second. Both mares' manes whipped in a wind only they could feel, and Twilight took a hesitant step back.
Rarity walked up to the grappling combatants. “I really think there is a better way to do this,” she said, trying to talk them down.
Twilight could smell something acrid and vaguely familiar, but couldn't quite place it right away (1). Suddenly, her eyes flew open. It was the smell that always accompanied strong magics. She knew the smell from her first magic exam and when she watched Celestia raise the sun. And if there were chaos magic this strong...
"Rarity?” she said hesitantly. “You should probably listen...”
Too late. Suddenly, it exploded. What exploded? I'm not really sure. It's chaos magic. It's not supposed to be explained. But the next thing anypony knew, the world had gone topsy-turvy.
Cobblestones were replaced with chessboard squares.
Living trees became rubber.
The rainstorm brewing on the borders of Ponyville changed. All the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops and oh what a rain that was.
Clouds became pink.
And, perhaps most shocking of all, Rarity was no longer Rarity.
"Why is everypony staring at m- is that my voice?"
For Rarity was no longer a mare.
Though, (not?) surprisingly, he could still scream like one. Pinkie Pie and Screwball had been blasted back by the release of energy, but both remained upright. Pinkie's mane was more poofy than before, and Screwball's propeller cap was spinning madly, but neither seemed harmed. On the contrary, both wore broad smiles, were breathing hard, and both seemed a bit exhilarated by the release of the magic.
Pinkie Pie took all the chaos in stride and bounced up to the pony who used to be Rarity. "Wow, Rarity! You look good as a stallion. But we can't really call you Rarity now, can we? No, because that's a mare's name. We could call you something that sounds like your name, like Scarcity or something, or Rariness?" She scratched her chin thoughtfully, ignoring the panicked screams of various passersby. "I got it! Elusive!"
Screwball had walked up to Pinkie Pie and also began examining He-Rarity. She considered this. "Meh, needs work." (2) And she turned and gave Pinkie the buck of her life, right into a tree.
This would have caused Pinkie a substantial amount of pain; but, as the tree happened to be rubber, it instead flung Pinkie Pie right back at Screwball. Screwball got blindsided by the new Pinkie missile, and both mares were sent tumbling flank over teakettle until stopped by one of the many carts lining the street.
Pinkie landed on top. She poked Screwball's stomach experimentally. "You're squishy," she announced happily.
Screwball responded by reaching behind her back, grabbing a large mallet in her mouth, and whacking Pinkie Pie with it.
Pinkie flew back, the blow knocking her much further back than it should have. She skidded to a stop, somehow landing on her hooves. She cocked her head confusedly.
“I keep mallets all over Equestria, in case of mallet emergencies,” Screwball explained with a smile.
“Ooh, are we playing croquet?” Pinkie asked excitedly. “I love croquet!” She proved this by quickly digging into the ground, pulling out a set of brackets, and throwing them at Screwball like makeshift throwing stars.
With surprisingly good reflexes, Screwball spun her mallet like a bo staff and deflected every one of Pinkie's projectiles, flicking the last one soaring high up into the air with the butt of the mallet. She paused long enough to smirk disdainfully at Pinkie before it returned to the earth, and she wound up and hit it with enough speed to make any professional baseball player jealous. With a resounding crack (which made no sense, as it was a small metal bracket) it flew towards Pinkie, but Pinkie was faster. With a quick stamp of her rear right hoof, she caught the bracket in her mouth, but to everyone's surprise, it was now a long sour gummy worm. She slurped it up noisily and grinned impishly at Screwball.
Screwball's eyes narrowed to slits. She raised her back right leg slowly, as if trying to drag it out of quicksand, and it seemed like there was a sound of gears creaking (3)
Pinkie's ears flopped before flicking back, pinning themselves against her head. "Oh, no," she whispered, before scampering over to her friends and replying with a quick stamp of her own. A white shield appeared around all six.
Twilight Sparkle had enough time to think, 'Is this shield made of... marshmallow?' before Screwball brought her hoof down and water blew out from everywhere. It came from the well, it came from the water tower, it came from basements of houses, it came from everywhere at once, flooding Ponyville.
Except it wasn't water. It was chocolate.
The flow blasted the group backwards, but the marshmallow shield kept them afloat and together. It soon became saturated and sank, and all started treading water. Or perhaps they were treading chocolate?
Twilight quickly conjured a raft by solidifying the chocolate, and pulled her friends aboard. Rainbow shook her head bitterly, as her wings were all gummed up by the chocolate and she knew she couldn't fly. She whipped her wings experimentally anyway, dousing stallion Rarity in chocolate (much to his disgust).
Twilight counted her friends. "Where's Pinkie Pie?"
The mare in question was currently doing the backstroke through the chocolate river. She took a big drink and popped up next to Screwball, who hovered above the mixture with her propeller spinning. It looked as though her hat were keeping her up. It would have been cute, if she didn't have a look of pure murderous rage on her face.
Pinkie Pie didn't even seem to notice her opponent's anger (which, for Pinkie, is par for her course). "This is sooo much better than that soap from before! It's too bad we're sworn enemies now and I'm going to have to defeat you, because I just know we could be good friends. This is really tasty! You got the mixture of cocoa and sugar just right!"
Screwball actually cracked a smile at the compliment as she landed, standing on the liquid chocolate as though it were solid ground. "Thanks. Daddy taught me."
"Chocolate rain was actually one of the best things that has ever happened!" Pinkie proclaimed.
"You know what's one better?" Screwball asked.
Pinkie shook her head 'no' and bobbed in anticipation.
"Chocolate whirlpool!" And with a quick stomp on the chocolate's surface, a whirlpool opened up, sucking Pinkie in. She screamed as she disappeared under the flow, dragged to the bottom by chocolatey goodness.
"Pinkie!" Twilight yelled. She lit her horn and desperately searched for any sign of Pinkie with her magic, but the magic didn't ping off any living beings.
A wooden box floated by. Pinkie Pie popped out of it, none the worse for the wear. "That wasn't very nice," she said, pulling herself to the surface and also standing on the liquid chocolate.
“Well, you're not very nice!” Screwball retorted. “What did Daddy ever do to you?”
“This!” Pinkie growled, gesturing at her friends on the raft, all of whom were watching in shock. “If chaos is only fun for one pony, it's wrong!”
“You're wrong!” Screwball retorted, and made up for her lame comeback with a swing of her hoof.
Pinkie Pie deflected it and swung back. Screwball flipped backwards, somehow levitating in the air, and lashed out with her rear hooves, catching Pinkie Pie in the face. Pinkie Pie skidded backwards, quickly regaining her balance and standing on the chocolate again.
Twilight Sparkle could only watch in stunned astonishment as her friend fought on top of the chocolate. Hoof to hoof they combatted, with much mane tugging and tail pulling as well as devastating haymakers and uppercuts. Pinkie pulled a rubber chicken from somewhere and began beating Screwball with it, who returned fire by smashing a bowling ball on Pinkie's head. The bowling ball cracked, and an enormous egg yolk splattered onto the street.
Finally, Pinkie managed to gain an advantage, and she rotated her body and flipped Screwball over her hips, slamming Screwball’s face into the chocolate. Except it was no longer chocolate.
She sat up, spitting angrily. “What the… pudding?” she demanded. This is not what she'd stomped.
“Yep!” Pinkie said happily. “Everypony loves pudding.”
“I don't,” Screwball said. She stomped again, stuck her head under the chocolate, and when she surfaced again, she had a chain in her mouth. She pulled it, revealing an abnormally large drain plug, and the chocolate began to vanish down a large storm drain that Twilight was one hundred percent certain was not normally there in the middle of the street.
A smaller slurping sound made her turn, whereupon she saw Rainbow shoveling the pudding into her mouth before it all disappeared. Feeling the judging eyes of six ponies staring at her, she looked up sheepishly. “What?” she defended herself. “I like pudding.”
“See?” Pinkie proclaimed. “Pudding!”
“Enough with the pudding!” Screwball growled as the last of the offending substance flowed down into the drain. “And stop encouraging her!”
To everypony’s surprise, it was Fluttershy who spoke up. “No,” she said firmly. “Friends always encourage friends. Go Pinkie Pie! Woo hoo!”
Applejack brought up a hoof and whistled. Pinkie took a bow as the rest of her friends stomped and cheered because let’s be honest, with everything else going on, that made perfect sense.
“Friends?” Screwball smiled evilly as something new occurred to her. "Friends. Right." And with a quick stomp, she forced iron spikes out of the ground. They hovered menacingly before shooting towards He-Rarity.
Pinkie gasped, but quickly recovered and stomped her own hoof. A white shield--was that frosting?--swirled into existence in front of the missiles. As they passed through it, they were transformed into pies.
All of which hit Rarity in the face.
Rainbow burst into laughter, and even Fluttershy giggled.
"Here, Ah can help clean that off," Applejack offered, before realizing that that sounded weird. She paused, and her ears drooped. (4) "That came out wrong," she said.
“My turn!” Pinkie Pie held up… wait…
"Pinkie, is that a bazooka?" Twilight stammered.
"Yep!" Pinkie smiled brightly. "It's my party bazooka!"
"Where did you get that?"
Pinkie looked at it, and looked back. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said cheerfully.
But knowing where it came from and how it was used are two different things. Pinkie fired, sending a barrage of confetti and various other party supplies at Screwball. A cupcake hit her in the stomach, and as she reared up in surprise a party hat hit her in the nose and stuck there.
“Are you sure you don't want a party?” Pinkie asked hopefully.
Screwball growled and pulled the hat off her face. She reached into the hat and pulled a spear out from it, and she aimed it at Fluttershy.
Without thinking, Pinkie Pie launched herself in the air and took the missile right in the stomach. She landed hard on the ground, blood streaming from the entrance hole.
Her friends rushed around her, Fluttershy sprang into action trying to stop the bleeding, but Pinkie Pie pushed them all away. She stood up shakily and looked over at Screwball with a sad look in her eyes. She pushed herself to her hooves, ears flopping, her knee twitching, and her eyelid fluttering.
“Screwy... we could have been friends...” she whispered, before stomping one more time.
A flare of chocolate covered everyone. Twilight managed to close her eyes in time; He-Rarity's wail let her believe he had not managed to do that.
When she opened her eyes, she realized they had teleported. Twilight felt a mild throbbing in her head. Had she gotten a concussion?
“Where are we?” she asked, looking around. She didn't recognize anything from this angle. Of course, she might have been upside down at the time.
“I'm sorry,” Pinkie said softly.
The floor pattern looked familiar, but Twilight couldn't think because there was still that throbbing in her head. But then, Twilight suddenly realized what that pain was. It wasn't physical pain; it was more of a pressure in the base of the horn. All unicorns get that feeling when around powerful magic.
They were in the safe with the Elements of Harmony.
“You could have been like my sister,” Pinkie Pie sniffled, “and we could've thrown amazing parties and had so much fun together…”
Screwball put her face in her hooves and sighed loudly. “What are you playing at? You sound like it's over already. Which it is—you're the one with a spear in your middle.” She looked up, and suddenly noticed that all but one of the ponies facing her were wearing necklaces, and the one that wasn't wearing a necklace wore a shiny crowny thingie.
“Goodbye,” Pinkie whispered, before the magic was activated and her necklace began to glow. All six began to rise up from the ground.
Screwball's face screwed up in an angry rage. She launched herself at Pinkie.
Unfortunately for her, light travels a lot faster than ponies. She was stone before she had even landed a hoof. Her stone form skidded on the ground, face still contorted in fury.
Pinkie sighed. “I'm sorry,” she whispered again, patting the stone mare on the head. She slipped, and lay on the ground, breathing deeply.
Twilight tried to stop the bleeding, but to her surprise, there was no successful feedback; it must have been the chaos magic blocking hers…
“Girls?” Pinkie began softly. “When I die, please don't be sad. Throw a party at my funeral, ok? And have cake, with hot sauce.”
“Anythin', Pinkie,” Applejack promised.
Fluttershy nodded, tears starting to form in her eyes.
“I'll bring some rainbow down, just for you,” Rainbow Dash promised, her voice cracking mid-sentence.
Rarity might have joined, but she was enjoying the sensation of being a she again, and was admiring her newly restored body.
“And you two,” she said, waving a hoof weakly at both Applejack and Rainbow Dash. “Find a good time to confess your love, ok?”
To say that this revelation took the two mares by surprise would be an understatement.
“But... Ah don't... ya know...”
“Wait. What? You mean she... but I don't…”
That was about as long as Pinkie could last. She burst out laughing at the surprised pair. “Oh, you two looked so funny!” she squealed, hopping up and bouncing around again. “I got you goooood!”
“Pinkie!” Twilight gasped. “You're injured, you shouldn't...”
Her internal logic circuits fizzled again as Pinkie removed the spear and revealed a piece of cherry pie impaled on top.
“Chaos!” she proclaimed happily.
And with that, Twilight's brain simply could not handle any more, and she fainted.