Rainbow Dash was always interested in action and adventure. Twilight and Tress were the most interesting adventurers in the town of Ponyville. Ipso facto, she started following them around like a lost puppy when she wasn’t training for the Wonderbolts or was at work with the weather. Those two things were all she knew how to do and she did them so often she got bored easily. However going off with a unicorn to rescue her friend from a monster sounded like something Rainbow wanted a part of.
Only now that she was staring down the red eyes and what looked like a bloody maw did the thought that she might have been in over her head cross her mind. It was a good thing she got through the Ever Free Forest well enough as a lot of the more dangerous creatures were ground bound, she still had a lot of energy and was about to burn it off. After she finished screaming and the monster got finished roaring in her face.
Off like a streak of lightning, Rainbow shot away in the hopes to get away from the monster that suddenly leapt at her barely missing with its large four fingered claws.
As Rainbow was busy distracting the beast Twilight levitated the ten foot pole and poked at a spot next to Tress’s front right hoof and started jabbing the area hard. Cracks start to form in the general area and Tress started pulling on her hoof. One hard smash with the pole a moment later and the brown stuff holding her hoof shattered as she pulled it free. Tress immediately grasped onto the hovering pole.
“Thanks I can get myself free now. Though I loathe saying this, go rescue Rainbow. I can get down on my own.” Tress was a good fifty feet or so off the floor, but she knew how to get down. Twilight released her hold on the ten foot pole and Tress started smacking the brown stuff around her left hoof. While she was doing this a green stripe started forming along her tail.
Twilight nodded in understanding as to how Tress was getting down, she ran off to see how Rainbow was doing. She still didn’t know what that thing was, but she could see it in the light outside once she exited the castles main gateway.
It was large and dark brown with a few colorful spots along its body; it had a maw that looked to be covered in blood. Its wings were large and the membrane was as red as the stuff on its maw, its wing joints and spine looked to be a bony white color.
To Twilight it looked like Rainbow was able to avoid getting hit by it thus far. It was quite fast for its size but it had poor maneuverability which was a rather instinctive and important part of their annoying friend. Like Tress she was reluctant to save Rainbow, but they would have to face this dragon like being anyway eventually. It might have kept kidnapping ponies and Twilight would have quickly tired of having to rescue ponies from this thing.
Now how to help Rainbow? Twilight needed something heavy to chuck at the creature to temporarily get its attention off of Rainbow. That nearby piece of rubble looked big enough to catch its attention, lighting her horn up she struggled to lift it. After she got it in the air it was much easier to move about, she took aim as the creature followed Rainbow around the tower snapping its jaw sending droplets of red flying off of its mouth.
Twilight suddenly had a better idea and waited for it to open its mouth again.
Tress had managed to get her left hoof free and now she had to free her hind hooves, she was glad that Twilight brought a ten foot pole. Being completely upside down was making the blood rush to her head so she had to do this quickly. She pulled back the pole and swung it tip first to a spot between her hind hooves, being able to move her hooves again felt good. The substance attaching her to the ceiling cracked slightly, two more strikes should do it.
As Tress was about strike again, a pained muffled roar caused her to fumble with the pole and it started to fall. She caught it with her single tentacle and sighed with relief. She twirled her tail around and used the momentum to swing and stab the pole between her legs again with great force and the cracks spread to her rear legs. She could probably just pull herself free now; she pulled the pole out of the ceiling with her hooves. Before she could strike the substance again her hind legs came free and she felt herself falling.
“Ah come on!” Tress screamed as she fell and quickly focused on a nearby pillar and arrested her downward momentum by pulling herself towards it with her tail. Swinging around the pillar once, she planted three hooves on the pillar and started to slowly walk down the side. One hoof was still holding the ten foot pole. “Well that was easier than I thought.”
Only it wasn’t easy when the monster heard had her scream and immediately returned to look at the ceiling. Not seeing Tress there, it shifted its view to look to her as she reached the floor. The portion of her tail turned back to normal and she was in the middle of collapsing the pole when she noticed the monster staring at her.
“Uh, whoops. Spoke to soon.” Turning around Tress made a break for it with the collapsed pole in her mouth as it reached out a claw to grab her and she managed to duck under it. It lunged forward as she was heading towards the entrance to the throne room. A large piece of stone debris slammed into its face and staggered it.
“Come on Tress! It can’t fly in the hallways, we need to lose it.” Motioning with her hoof to hurry up, Twilight put a barrier on the doorway to prevent the creature from putting a claw through it to grab Tress. It could barely even squeeze into the hallway either given it was so large.
Twilight dropped the barrier once Tress was clear and they quickly got lost in the hallways, turning a corner they slammed into Rainbow and tumbled into pile of limbs. Using her magic to separate all of them and set them on their hooves, Twilight huffed tiredly as she was a bit drained.
“I don’t care why you’re here Rainbow. Just help us find a place to hide!” Dislike her though she may, Tress was willing to accept that she was actually trying to help. Despite the fact that she woke up the monster and caused a huge mess in following Twilight here.
“Well don’t places like these have secret passages or something? What is that thing anyway, it looks kind of like a dragon.” Rainbow looked at the walls in the hallway for something to touch.
“Rainbow, if there were secret passages in this castle, I doubt they’d still be working as old as this place is. I mean I can’t just reach up and pull something hanging on the wall and expect it to…” Doing just what she said, Twilight pulled on a lighting fixture for torches and the wall spun taking all three ponies into a small cube like space.
“You were saying?” Quirking an eye in victory, Rainbow was about to boast about how she was right until Tress slapped a hoof over her big mouth.
Tress had noticed the peep hole rather quickly and saw the creature pass by, most likely searching for her. After a moment she removed her hoof from Rainbow’s mouth and had a look of relief on her face as the thundering steps of the monster faded away. She gave Twilight her collapsible ten foot pole back; she had managed to hold onto it while running from the monster.
“Okay Tress while we have the time to figure out a way to escape, what is that thing and what does it want with you exactly?” If Twilight didn’t get to the bottom of why it kept trying to get Tress, she was going to go nuts.
“Would you even believe me? If I spelled out for you exactly what it was and how it might have come to be like it is?” It was a little unbelievable to Tress and she had a working theory of how it came to be what it was. What she didn’t understand is why it was so dead set on gluing her to the ceiling and why it was so interested in her.
“You know what that thing is? Did you even see the blood on its face, that thing is really scary.” If Rainbow weren’t as swift and such a good flyer as she was already, she would have been monster chow.
“Oh that was not blood, it was marinara sauce.” If that wasn’t an eye opener, Tress now had of both their attentions. “It ate a spaghetti monster in front of me because it wiggled its tentacles at me in a threatening manner. It didn’t take me long to figure out what it was after that. I still don’t understand its motives in bringing me here though.”
“Huh and here I always thought spaghetti monsters were only imaginary creatures my mom used as a way to feed me.” Sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth, Rainbow tried to imagine what a spaghetti monster looked like. She imagined it flying around and forming its own religion by magically converting ponies into noodle worshippers and then getting into a fight with Celestia. She had a dreamy look crossing her face as she imagined the epic battle. “Awesome.”
“Charming... Tress I will believe whatever you’ll tell me without a thought even if it’s completely absurd sounding.” Even putting on her serious face here, Twilight was going to listen to whatever it was that Tress said it was.
Inhaling Tress knew what she was about to say was going to sound completely absurd, but it needed to be said and brought up again. She had known that thing was out to get her from the start.
“You know that demonic fruitcake you told me to stop mentioning?” If Tress had to say anything more than that she was going to get angry with Twilight. “Yeah, I would like to bring it up again.”
The unicorn sat there wide eyed with shrinking pupils. The implications were just as staggering as the many things she thought of today.
Rainbow just looked confused and was now thinking of a regular fruitcake leading cookies on a rebellion against the cake menace to blow up the cupcake star. She could even imagine a living sandwich wielding a purple unicorn horn and creating searing beam of light from it like a sword beam thing.
“But… but it was the size of a fruit bat the last time we saw it and that wasn’t too long ago!” Twilight just couldn’t immediately accept what Tress was hinting at. “How can it still be surviving, it would have eroded away eventually and it just can’t be possible.”
“If it’s been surviving on a steady diet of rather reproductive spaghetti monsters it can, it’s even integrated parts of them into itself or did you not see that its spine was made of compacted dried noodles. They probably have the tensile strength of the bones you’d see in something like a large hydra by this point.” Tress said with a bored tone. “I’ve certainly had plenty of time to study it from the ceiling!”
“Are you always going to be on about the ceilings you’ve been stuck to from now on?” Twilight thought it was kind of sad that Tress was still coming back to her now rather realistic fear of messy ceilings.
“You try being stuck to one Twilight and see how you feel afterwards!” Tress shot back angrily. She was finally getting some emotion back into her voice, just the wrong kind. She was happy that her friend came to rescue her and was a bit sad to hear her voice sound like it did, that gravelly tone did not befit her Radiance.
“Girls chill, what we need to focus on is how we are going to take down this thing or deal with it so it can never bother any pony again.” It was a sad day in history when Rainbow Dash was the voice of reason between two smart mares.
“Okay its official, this is the weirdest things have ever gotten. When did Rainbow start being the one that made sense?” If Tress had insulted Rainbow, she didn’t seem to notice or react to it as she was off in her own little world again.
“Yeah I know. I’m horrified at the prospect too.” Twilight shivered, the world just couldn’t be regular around her. “How are we going to take this out of control fruitcake dragon down? Even Barb couldn’t bite through its hide and that’s when it was small!”
"Hey, wait a minute..." Rainbow said as she finally realized she had been insulted.