//------------------------------// // Insane Asylum // Story: A Survivors Guide to Equestria // by Onomonopia //------------------------------// Bright colorful lights, music that caused Ryan to gag at the sound of it: it was official for him. This was a party from hell. The bright pink lights bothered him as he and the other members of the group walked down a massive red carpet that was decorated with petals towards the giant party tent, where cheering and laughter could be heard coming from. He kept is eyes forward, despite the spotlights constantly shining in his eyes. "And once we're done with her, all we have to do is go to Canterlot and free your sister, and then we'll be ready to fight Discord?" AJ asked Princess Luna, who nodded as she too was on guard against all of the noise. 'Are you certain that you wish to fight Pinkie by yourself?' the silver mare asked from beside Ryan. 'My magic might be able to help you survive the encounter. If the others are telling the truth, and I have no reason to believe that they're not, then Pinkie is the most dangerous out of the group.' "Mare, I got that talk before each of the Elements I fought," Ryan said with a smirk. "I got it when I went to fight Twilight and I got it before Dash. At this point telling me that it's dangerous is like telling a guy with no parachute that he's in trouble after he's jumped out of the plan. Can't turn back, so might as well enjoy the ride until you hit cement." While the silver mare tried to figure out his metaphor, Ryan walked right up to the party tent and tore back the tarp covering the entryway. What he saw was not what he expected. "There are rocks dancing. And potted plants laughing. Yep, I'm fucking nuts." The others ran up beside him to see that he was telling the truth, though none of them were certain of what that meant. Rocks were indeed dancing with one another to the odd music that was playing and plants were talking around a number of tables, occasionally laughing at a joke told. "This land is weird. You're all weird," Ryan grumbled as he walked into the tent, pushing past the gator at the door that was dressed as a bellhop. Some of the rocks and plants turned to look at him and the others as they entered (he tried not to think about how weird that sounded) but none of them did anything to stop him from walking towards the center of the room, where a pink pony hung from a rocking chandelier while humming to herself. "Yo! You're Pinkie Pie, right!?" She yelled something down to him, but the racket that these rocks called music prevented him from hearing her answer. "Turn off that goddamn music, I can't hear the pony talk!" One of the plants gave him a look before walking over to the record player and removing the needle, causing the awful racket to stop. "As I asked before, you are Pinkie Pie, right? I honestly don't know because you don't look as crazy as the others said you would be." The pink pony flung herself off of the chandelier and landed in front of Ryan, slowly lifting her head so that she could look him in the eyes. Ryan narrowed his eyes when he looked into hers, eyes that mirrored his own. "Hiya!" Pinkie said with a smile before a blade flashed as she tried to gut Ryan, Ryan catching the knife between his hands on instinct. He kicked her in the gut to push her away before he backed up to draw his batons, the lightning cackling as the others joined his side. "Oh look at all the new friends. I just want to cut you up and put you in a cake to eat," she whispered with a giggle as she licked her knife. "Who wants to go in first?" "That would be me!" Ryan snarled, tossing a flash egg right into her eyes. The flash of light had barely gone off before Ryan had thrown himself at the pink pony and tackled her back into the middle of the room, where he began to throw lefts and rights to her face. "What's the matter? Don't like the taste of my fists? Maybe you'd like five thousand volts to the face!" He twirled the batons in his hands before striking down, but he blinked and she was gone. He looked around in confusion before the ground beneath him shot up and circled around him, trapping him in what looked like a giant cake bowl. "Fun fun fun!" Pinkie yelled with glee as she popped back into existence, looking out from behind her flat mane at the human who snarled at her. "You're really fun! I know that we'll be the best of friends once I get to know you inside and out...emphasis on insides," she wickedly said with glee as she flashed her knife. The others tried to run to Ryan's aid, only to be stopped by the bellhop, who had gone from harmless alligator to a twenty foot monstrosity that spit blue fire in an instant. "Oh no you don't, this room is for friends only!" "Yeah, all of you go deal with that," Ryan dryly said as he narrowed his eyes at the pink pony, figuring that it would come down to a one v one against her. "I can handle coo-coo for coco puffs over here just fine. Now let me ask you a question Pinkie. If I beat you to the point where you break in half, does candy come out or do your parents suck and it's all healthy food?" "Fun for all!" Pinkie yelled as she appeared right in front of Ryan's face and plowed into him, knocking the human to the ground as his batons rolled away from him. He kicked Pinkie off of him and dove for the batons, but they vanished the moment they were within a fingertip's reach. "Owiee, those things hurt!" Pinkie yelled as she dropped the batons to the ground, holding her hoof in pain while Ryan tried to figure out what had happened. "The hell?" he muttered as the batons rolled back over to him and he bent down to pick them up without ever taking his eyes off of Pinkie. 'Can she teleport or something? It's like she's there one moment and-' Instinct kicked in the moment he saw her flicker and he threw himself to the side, rolling to his feet in time to see the knife that had barely missed his stomach. "Ooh, you are a fun one," Pinkie creepily said as she twirled the knife. "How'd you know that I'd be there?" "I've been getting my ass kicked since the moment I got here," Ryan replied with a wicked smile of his own. "I know when something is trying to kill me. Come on." Pinkie appeared behind Ryan again, but by the time she was there he had already thrown a kick back to catch her right under the jaw. Her head went sailing backwards as her neck stretched like rubber. 'The hell am I fighting?' he thought before the head came snapping back and struck him in the back. "You'll have to do better than that!" Pinkie sang. Ryan turned around to come face to barrel with a massive cannon, one that he didn't remember being there a moment ago. "But I like you, so I'm sending you out with a BANG!" Cake, ice cream and what he was certain were razor blades exploded out of the end pointed at him, tearing into his skin as he rolled across the concrete. The armor protected anything vital, though Ryan could feel fiery agony racing up his arms and legs. "You want better?" Ryan asked as he charged at her, grabbing the top of the cannon barrel and vaulting himself over it as it fired again. The adrenaline pumping through him numbed the pain and gave the kick he delivered to Pinkie's face an extra punch. He rolled off the top of the cannon as the pink pony crashed to the ground and placed himself under the cannon barely, straining against the metal with his might to aim the party right at Pinkie. "Hey Pinkie, now it's my turn to throw you a party!" "I love par-" Ryan felt the vibrations of the cannon firing reverberate through him, but there was a smile on his face as he heard the pink one's voice get cut off by a massive explosion. When he rolled out from under the barrel and looked up, he found to his delight that she too was buried in calories and pain. "And I love crashing parties." Ryan reached into the ice cream tomb to pull Pinkie out before she suffocated, but when his hand grabbed nothing he knew that this fight wasn't over. He found Pinkie when he looked over his shoulder, though she seemed far different from the one he had just been fighting. Her mane was now completely straight and darker. Her face still had the insane smile, but neither of her eyes face the right way now, which was the second scariest thing about her. The first was the buzz saw that she now held in place of a knife. "Fun times, fun times," Pinkie whispered as she let the saw rev while slowly beginning to march towards Ryan. His response was to draw his batons as his focus was completely on Pinkie, waiting for her to make the first move. But the first move came in a way that he never expected. "FUN!" Pain lanced through his back as he barely through himself out of the way of the blade, luck to catch only a glancing blow from the Pinkie that had appeared behind him. As he rolled to his feet, he realized that he was now standing on top of a giant cake, with cotton candy clouds in the sky above him. Then there was the army of Pinkie's, the ones that all had the same lunatic expression on their faces and all with buzz saws in their hooves. "Hiya Mr. Human. Welcome to my mind," the real Pinkie said to him with a giggle as she motioned to all around her. "Here's it's always sunshine and gumdrops, even when I'm not quite feeling like...myself. Heehee." "It's a lot roomier in here than I thought, even for you," Ryan taunted, though he knew he was in no position to do so. "All of us have wanted to play for so long," one of the Pinkie's said as she attacked him, Ryan dodging the blade and kicking her in the face for her efforts. "We all have been locked in here for so long with only ourselves to talk to. But no we have a friend and we all want a piece of you to play with!" "So please hold still or else this might hurt!" another Pinkie yelled as she jumped Ryan from behind. Ryan elbowed her get and threw her off, but three more Pinkie's party bombed him into the frosting and dog piled him. He struggled to push them off of his back, but more and more of them began to jump onto him until he could barely breath, let alone move. The only Pinkie that wasn't crushing the life out of him sauntered up to him, looking at him with a huge smile as she lifted an ax over her head. "Don't worry, we'll make sure everypony gets a piece of you," she assured the human, swinging the axe down. Ryan cracked his shoulder and moved his head out of the way with a half second to spare, gritting his teeth in pain as frosting splashed onto his face. "Oh, that sounded like it hurt. Please don't move or this won't be quick." "I hope you realize that once the others are done turning your guard into shoes that they'll be here to kick your head in ass well," Ryan growled as Pinkie smiled down at him. "Silly human, you're in my mind now. Noponies here but you, me and all of my other personalities," Pinkie said as all of the other hers began to say hi to Ryan. "You can't fight me in my own mind." She brought her ax back again with another wicked smile, a smile that was blasted to ash as she and all of her copies were thrown across her mind by an explosion that dwarfed any that she had seen before. She groaned and sat up with a gasp to see the human getting to his feet, with a cloud in the shape of a mushroom behind him. "You're right you silly pony. There's only you, me and all of the emotional baggage that I brought with me," Ryan cackled while rubbing his hands together with psychotic mirth in his eyes. The Pinkie's had gathered together and prepared to rush the human again, but then a boney human hand shot its way out of the frosting. The Pinkie's looked down at it with shock as the charred remains of a human pulled itself to the surface. Then another hand shot out of the ground, followed by another. This continued until all the Pinkie's could see around them were charred or burning corpses, with the remains of giant buildings surrounding them. "W-what is this?" Pinkie asked Ryan, who drew both of his batons again and let the electricity light up his eyes, eyes that held no resemblance to the human named Ryan. "You told me that all of your personalities were in here, right pony?" Ryan snickered as the Pinkie's realized just how outnumbered they were by the undead. "That's about what, ten of you tops? Around me is my emotional baggage, all seven billion peoples worth of it. All those I believed that I failed and all those who I feel should be alive in my place. They're MY insanity. You wanna try to out crazy me pony? I've already lost my damned mind! Oh boys," Ryan sang as he lifted a hand over his head, before pointing it at the Pinkie's. "Get them." The Pinkie's barely had time to scream before they were buried under the wave of the dead, which proceeded to rip the pink ponies apart. The real Pinkie, the only one that hadn't been attacked by the dead, slowly turned to face Ryan with a look of absolute horror on her face. "What are you?" she asked Ryan as he began to march towards her, his smile being the only part of his face visible under the hood that covered his face. "I'm a survivor Pinkie. There is nothing you can throw at me that can kill me, no amount of pain you can afflict that I have no already felt a thousand fold," Ryan whispered to her as he looked down at her, Pinkie getting smaller and smaller under his gaze "A piece of me died the day my world did, the piece of me that was just a regular guy trying to make a living. The piece that survived though?" he began as he brought both batons back. "That's what made me!" He drove both batons into Pinkie's Element as he said this, Pinkie screaming as the chaos was blasted from her while Ryan cackled to the sky. The ponies shrieked as the chaos dispersed around them, causing all of Pinkie's crazy party ideas to vanish back into her head. Gummy returned to his normal state while the party tent turned out to be nothing more than a small tent in the middle of a field. And in the center of that field the ponies saw two figures: Pinkie, laying in a fetal position, and Ryan, standing over her with a look that would haunt their nightmares. Ryan raised one of his batons to strike Pinkie down, but his hand was caught by a claw of silver. 'What are you doing human?' the silver mare asked as she and the others ran over to him. 'The battle is over, there is no need for you to finish her.' Ryan slowly turned his head to look at her and the mare gasped when she saw his eyes. Eyes that did not belong to the human she thought she knew. "Oh look, more to the slaughter," he chuckled as he turned towards them, his smile getting larger. "I think I'll paint a rainbow with you when I'm finished killing you." The ponies each prepared to defends themselves as Ryan let his batons crackle, advancing towards them slowly. WHACK! "OW! Goddammit zebra!" Ryan yelled as he grabbed the back of his head and looked towards Zecora with angry, but much more familiar eyes. "Why did you do that?!" 'You're back,' the silver mare said with uncertainty. "Of course I'm back, I didn't go any-" Another blow to the gut knocked him out and Zecora caught the human before he hit the ground. She then looked over to the ponies, none of whom had any idea what to think. "Don't worry about the insanity of his that you dread. The cure for it is as simple as a blow to his head," Zecora said to them as she placed Ryan on his back and motioned for the mare to pick up the still terrified Pinkie. "I figured this out not too far in the past, during one of my training sessions with this ass. He keeps the pain at bay as best he can, but when he loses it is a terrifying human." "What did he do to Pinkie in there?" Fluttershy asked as she looked at her friend, who had a thousand yard stare in her eyes. "Probably something none of us want to know. Now that we have her, I think it's time that we go."