The curtains whooshed shut. The lights dimmed low. The 'open' sign on the front of Carousel Boutique flipped over. The deadbolt clicked shut and silence dominated the atmosphere long enough for Rarity to be certain she was alone.
With one final glance to each side, she absconded to her room. Again, the door closed with the click of a lock. Biting her lip, she looked over to the small, unassuming wooden box next to her bed. Her hooves trembled.
It's difficult, maybe impossible to explain our compulsions. The simplest acts posses the capacity to bring about an inexplicable yet overwhelming sense of satisfaction, even when others never understand it.
She levitated a well-worn metal key to the box's lock. It clicked open.
There it laid: her treasure, safely stored after arriving in an unremarkable box delivered by her unpredictably skilled mailmare just earlier today.
The bubble wrap sparkled with a light surpassing the finest gems. The very sight nearly destroyed Rarity's self control, as though she was under possession of a foreign, albeit familiar entity.
She delicately lifted the bubble mat up out of the box and onto the floor with her magic ever so carefully, so as not to defile the contents before the fun began.
She knelt down, took a deep breath, and slowly thrust her horn toward the first bubble, displacing the pocket of air as it prepared to be loudly punctured.
Pop.
* * *
Derpy's jaw dropped.
No! She couldn't breathe. Her heart pounded. Those poor, innocent bubbles!
Bubbles were her talent. Bubbles were her passion. Bubbles needed her help!
She dove down toward the skylight, rushing to the rescue. Derpy had a very backward idea of diving, though. She tucked in her wings, clenched her mouth, tongue out, threw her forelegs up high, and plummeted, demolition-rump first through the skylight of Carousel Boutique like a bowling ball from Pegasopolis.
* * *
Thunk.
Rarity looked up. Something round and grey pressed against her skylight, pressing six little bubbles against the glass.
The glass creaked. It cracked.
With a shower of glimmering shards, Derpy Hooves fell through her ceiling.
* * *
Derpy glared at the unicorn. With one eye, at least – the other eye glared more or less in the direction of the bed.
As soon as the last bits of glass clinked against the floor, a cold silence crept through the room. Rarity froze, bubble wrap still impaled on her horn. Neither pony moved. Neither of them so much as breathed. Slowly, like the falling of a giant tree in the distance, the bubble wrap slipped away from her horn and settled down to the floor.
Derpy glanced down at the bubbles, then back up at Rarity.
Rarity glanced down, and her eyes stayed locked on the translucent sheet.
“Step away from the bubbles.”
Rarity looked back up. She pursed her lips. “Ah, well, I wasn't trying to–”
“Step away from the bubbles.”
Rarity's quivering smile and soft, apologetic eyes fell away in an instant. Her face was an impervious slab of marble. Silence returned, broken only by a monolithic “No.”
Derpy's mouth turned ever so slightly downward. Her eyes narrowed.
A faint breeze from the broken skylight rustled through both ponies' manes.
Derpy took one long breath in, and let it out. She hated this moment. She hated the unbearable stillness and silence. She hated the tension rushing through her veins.
Rarity grit her teeth and crouched, lowering her horn once more. The bubbles on Derpy's flank could be popped as easily as the clear plastic ones on her floor. They had to be. She wasn't going to give up her pleasure, not now, not after all she'd done to earn it. It was hers, and hers alone.
Derpy knew this could only end one way, but it had to be tried. “Rarity, give me the bubbles.”
The corners of Rarity's mouth turned down, and her lips trembled. She blinked away the blur in her eyes and shook her mane out of her eyes. “They're mine.”
“They don't belong to anypony. You can't own bubbles!”
The dry sound of Rarity's hoof scraping across her floor was the only sound in the room. She brushed the sheet of bubbles underneath her bed.
“Rarity, please!”
“Make me.”
* * *
Thwack.
Twilight looked up from her reading to see a small, triangular hole in her library's wall. She glanced behind her. Another, identical, hole opened through a dense book, showing a glimmer of daylight all the way through the wall.
Thwack thwack thwack.
She took cover underneath her chair as three more holes opened up, randomly placed along her wall. Two more blasted through her bedroom above, each one buffeting her ears with the displaced air as they shot through. What were they?
Thwack.
That time, she spotted it. A little purple gemstone cutting through her walls, her furniture, and her books at unbelievable speed. She conjured a powerful shield spell around herself, thanking the Invisible Pink Goddess that Spike wasn't home.
There was a moment of silence. Twilight dared to look up.
Light filtered in through the holes, and dust kicked up by their passing slowly settled.
Twilight finally allowed herself to breathe. Now, what had caused those gems to–?
A crash resounded through the tree. The entire north wall bowed in and cracked. With another crash, Rarity flew through the wall in a cloud of sawdust and torn, fluttering pages.
Rarity slammed into the floor and laid still.
“Rarity? Rarity!” Twilight stared at her friend, stunned. “What... was there a–”
With a whoosh, Derpy Hooves shot into the library on her wings. She dove for Rarity's spot on the floor.
Rarity kicked upward, slamming her hoof into Derpy's jaw and sending the pegasus careening back up toward the far wall.
Derpy smashed through the other wall rump-first, creating another huge cloud of dust outside.
Before Twilight could even form another coherent thought, a shining row of gemstones shot through her library, following a gentle curve in one hole and out the other. They flew with incredible speed, enveloped in Rarity's light blue magical glow.
“Um...” Twilight's mouth hung open. “Rarity?”
* * *
Princess Celestia sighed, looking out over her kingdom and the little hamlet of Ponyville far down below her castle. She couldn't help but remember the days before she was royal, before she wore a crown and slept in a palace... days when she lived in a little thatched-roof town much like that one.
Luna stepped up beside her. Of course. She did every evening, and it would soon be time to lower the sun.
Still in her reminiscent mood, she leaned in close, side by side, and nuzzled her sister just a little.
Luna, though, just tensed up. Her neck twitched.
Celestia looked up at her sister, only to see her staring off in the distance, eyes squinting. Looking back down toward Ponyville herself, she wondered for a moment what Luna had sensed. Her sister was too tense to be just daydreaming about cottages and parents herself. What was it that she saw down there in the evening light's–
A huge flash glared out of Ponyville.
Celestia's jaw dropped as she watched the beginnings of a mushroom cloud build.
Both royal sisters watched, horrified, as the explosion spread, enveloping the whole town and dominating the sunset sky. Minutes passed as they watched.
With a rain of tiny little clicks, fragments of gemstones rained down across the courtyard, across all of Canterlot. Mere moments later, a rain of blueberry muffins followed.
Celestia winced. Not again.
The End
(Of Ponyville)