//------------------------------//
// Well ain't that a Witch? 
// Story: Dashie and Flutters get Left 4 Dead 
// by Erised the ink-moth 
//------------------------------//

Everyone looked in horror as Fluttershy sat ensnared by the Witch, bony talons digging into her fur as the sobbing infected held onto her like a giant plush toy.

“We need to get it off of her! Hurry!” Rainbow yelled, ready to spring into action.

“Whoa there, hold on. Them Witches will slice you into lunch meat if you’re not careful. We gotta be smart about this.” Coach reined her in. “Hold on a sec. I’ll try and handle this quick.”

Coach took a deep breath and slowly approached with his shotgun ready to Cr0wn the Witch. He carefully raised the barrel to the Witch’s head, but the Witch instantly met his gaze with her glowing red eyes and put Fluttershy between herself and the survivor like a shield. Coach tried to move around her for a clear shot, but the Witch turned to keep her Flutter-shield in the way of a shotgun blast before scooting into a corner, growling slightly as she did so. 

“Aww, dammit now.” Coach muttered as he was forced to retreat, or risk aggroing the Witch.

“Okay, okay. Let’s not try to panic… maybe there’s still a way we can help.” Rochelle looked at Fluttershy, who was silently praying for something to save her, then to the others in the hopes of a helpful suggestion. “Oh who am I kidding, there’s no way in hell we’re getting her out of this in one piece.”

“Man I hate to say it, but ah don’t see how we can help. Guys… ah, think this is it for her.” Ellis took off his hat and held it over his chest in a solemn salute, his eyes tearing up. “Ah’m real sorry Flutters. Really.”

“Will you guys stop talking about her like she’s already dead!?” Rainbow steamed before looking back over at her friend “Fluttershy, try to wiggle out or something.”

Fluttershy slowly nodded her head and cautiously attempted to dislodge herself for the Witch’s grasp. She’d managed to get her front hooves free and start crawling away when the Witch growled and dragged her back, leaving four little cuts on each of Fluttershy’s sides and holding onto her tighter than ever.

“Oh, okay then. I guess I won’t try to escape then.” Fluttershy said submissively as she bled from the newly-made wounds and her eyes teared up from the pain.

“Oh that’s it!” Rainbow yelled before flying up to the Witch, dragging her away from the wall and slapping her, hard “Let her go!”
Rainbow immediately regretted this decision as the Witch’s eyes became beams of red light. She backed up a few steps as the infected stood up and snarled at her, still keeping a tight grip on Fluttershy. Rainbow gulped and pointed her weapon at the Witch as the other survivors did the same. Fluttershy was still in the line of fire, but now that the situation had escalated, there was little choice between fighting and endangering one of their own, or dying outright.

But then the Witch did something none of them expected; she disregarded them completely, and made a run for it with Fluttershy as her captive.  As though they were mere piles of meat in her way, she charged straight through the survivors and through a hail of gunfire as they frantically fired in her general direction. Amazingly, none of the bullets so much as grazed her or the terrified yellow pegasus in her arms.

“After her!” Rainbow yelled before flying off down the tunnel, the other survivors struggling to keep pace.

As skinny as the Witch was, she was incredibly fast, but Rainbow was slowly gaining on her as they weaved through fallen chunks of ceiling and wandering infected that littered the tunnel-o-love. Behind her, Rainbow heard gunfire and shouts to wait, but she paid them no heed as she continued in her pursuit.

The Witch made a hard left in front of her and ducked into another room. Rainbow made it inside just quick enough to see the Witch reach out and slice open a pair of pipes with her claws and recoil as a thick vapor sprayed out into the small room. 

“Oh no.” Rainbow mouthed as she realized what the infected had just done. Gas pipes weren’t too common in Equestria, but the flame-symboled warning label told her all she needed to know about the fumes flooding the room.
The Witch ran out through another door, dragging her claws against the metal doorframe as she left. The resulting sparks ignited the gas in the room, leaving Rainbow only a split second to dive out the door in a fashion that would look awesome in a slo-mo shot.
She dove into the murky water, extinguishing the flames that clung to her before quickly looking around for the fleeing Witch.
“Over there!” Nick yelled as the rest of them caught up.

“Into the swan maintenance room of love!” Ellis specified in a hilarious manner.
Once they bolted into the large, conveyer-belt filled room, they spotted the Witch clear on the other side, already scaling the final catwalk to the exit. Rainbow wasted no time in charging forward through the air; this turned out to be a very bad idea.

A pair of *KACK-SPTHS!* sounded out, signaling that the other survivors had been stuck at the entrance, cut off from the chase by a pair of Spitters and their acid. Then from one of the catwalks, a madly cackling infected dove onto her and began steering her into walls and bits of machinery. 

“Low bridge, ya stinkin hitchhiker!” Rainbow yelled defiantly as she regained control just long enough to graze under the final catwalk, knocking the Jockey off as it screamed its final “Wheew!”

“Finally!” Rainbow huffed as she got within grabbing distance of Fluttershy as the Witch ran through the final doorway.
The two pegasi reached out to each other, desperately trying to link their hooves when there was a loud coughing sound and something reduced Rainbow’s reach, stopping her just short of Fluttershy’s hoof.  “What the?” she said in surprise as she turned around. Wrapped around her waist was the familiar slimy tongue of a Smoker.

“No!” Rainbow yelled as she turned back to face the Witch that was just standing there, mockingly dangling Fluttershy mere inches out of reach as the Smoker pulled her away. “Let go, darn it!” Rainbow yelled as two more Smokers lashed their tongues out to detain her.

Rainbow then remembered that she had her assault rifle and hastily pulled it out, aiming at the nearest Smoker.

*click*
*click**click*

“Huh?” Rainbow looked in confusion and panic at her malfunctioning gun as the three Smokers began a tug-o-war over which one would get to strangle the blue pegasus, crushing the air out of her in the process.

With a combination of cursing, grumbling, and hitting the rifle with her free hoof, Rainbow finally got it to work (the safety was on) and began spraying lead in every direction.

“Ow!” came a yell below her “You. Are. Shooting. Me!” Nick explained in annoyance as he and the rest made it past the Spitters and the maze conveyer belts and caught up with their speedy friend, swiftly dealing with the Smokers on arrival.

Now that she was free, Rainbow Dash zoomed up to the doorway where the Witch had patiently waited for her… so she could slam the metal door in her face.

With her face stuck to the glass window in the cartoonish manner like it was, Rainbow got a perfect view when the Witch held up her hand and bent back all her talons except for the middle one. Rainbow didn’t know what the gesture meant, but it made her angry all the same. The Witch seemed to enjoy upsetting her, and took the time to blow a raspberry before continuing to flee.

“You dirty cheater! Ooh, when I get my hooves on that- I’m gonna- And then- And pow! Right in the kisser!” Rainbow screamed incoherently as she banged on the solid steel door like a common infected. “Let… me… in!”

Rochelle quickly pushed Rainbow out of the way so she could get at the door. “Here, let me- Oh crap. There’s no handle on this side.”

“Shoot the window!” Ellis yelled and fired a burst at the glass only for the rounds to get lodged in the inch-thick slab. “Who the hell built this place? You can’t get out!”

Just then then light above the door turned from red to green and it swung open. Thomas stood a few feet away at a control panel with only two buttons, giving them all an unamused yet somehow smug grin.




Outside the tunnel, the Witch had slowed her pace a bit. Light had begun to creep up over the horizon, allowing the surrounding areas to be seen without the use of a flashlight.

As the two of them walked on, Fluttershy began to notice how the Witch walked in a deliberate direction unlike the other infected that merely stood around aimlessly or rushed toward sources of noise like wild animals. With her curiosity momentarily overcoming her terror, she decided to ask about this.

“Umm, excuse me, but where are we going?” Fluttershy asked the Witch; not a very smart thing to do, nor an idea that made much sense considering she’d never heard an infected talk before. But the Witch didn’t seem upset by this, she simply nuzzled the back of Fluttershy’s head and continued on.

Within a few minutes they reached a broken in door leading to a warehouse. It was rather small inside, and the Witch made a bee-line for an office in the corner. The inside of the office was absolutely filled, wall to wall, with plush toys; there were elephants, and tigers, and lots of bears with little hearts on them. Upon closer inspection, each of the toys had holes ripped in them, likely from the Witch’s claws.

“Oh my, have you been collecting these?” Fluttershy asked as she looked at them all.

The Witch absently nodded as she placed Fluttershy on the floor and wandered around, as if she was looking for something. Soon her search become more frantic and she picked up the stuffed animals and even lifted a few desks as if something would be hiding underneath them. Finding nothing, the Witch began to growl, not an angry growl mind you, but more of a worried one. After a few more minutes of upending furniture, the Witch simply collapsed on the floor and began loudly sobbing once again.

Fluttershy sat a fair distance away observing this odd behavior. This wasn’t the normal crying that she’d heard when she first encountered the Witch, this time it sounded like cries of genuine sorrow. Unable to just sit there and do nothing as the creature before her continued to wail, Fluttershy cautiously walked over and placed a comforting hoof on the Witch’s back.

The Witch spun around and looked at her with her glowing eyes, both of them gasping and recoiling a bit in fright. The Witch immediately recognized her though, and Fluttershy found herself wrapped in another death-grip/ snuggle hug.

“Umm, there there?” Fluttershy said unsurely “It’ll be okay, I’ll help you.”

Seemingly having recovered with the mighty healing power of cuddling a Fluttershy, the Witch released her, stood up began making a series of awkward gestures at her.

“Oh, umm… you found something? Something big? No, something… nice! You liked to hug it?” Fluttershy tried to interpret what the infected was trying to tell her, luckily she’d had plenty of practice at charades with Angel.
The Witch then grabbed onto her and let her go. Then she did it again and pointed at her.

“You’re letting me go? You let it go?”

The Witch shook her head.

“It… got away?”

The Witch nodded, and then pointed at the doorway, then at the room they were in and made a ‘walk and carry’ motion.

“But you caught it again and brought it here!” Fluttershy put the pieces together “And… now it’s missing? Do you think it left?”
The Witch seemed to perk up as a realization hit her and she bolted outside.





“That was the longest tunnel of love I’ve ever been in!” Nick complained as the survivors finally breached into the early morning air.

Rainbow wasted no time in getting a bird’s-eye view, and zipped around in the air as she scanned the park for any sign of her friend or the infected that took her.

But her searching was interrupted by a strong gust of wind knocking her out of the sky as the news helicopter flew by, it’s searchlight washing over the park below. Luckily she managed to recover before she face-planted into the ground, and was joined by the others as they waved their arms and shouted at the helicopter, trying to get the pilot’s attention.

Just as the chopper was about to leave, having not heard their calls for rescue over the noise of its own engine, a bright red flare was fired from the highest rails of the Screaming Oaks roller-coaster.

“Holy shit, is that-“ Coach began as he stared at the quickly fading flares.

“It is!” Nick yelled as he looked through the scope of his rifle “Darian freaking made it!” Then a thought struck him “Damn! That guy’s making us look bad!”

“I SEE YOUR FLARES BUT CAN’T LAND HERE! MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE STADIUM AND SIGNAL ME SO I CAN PICK YOU UP! CHOPPER SEVENTEEN OUT.” The pilot blared through the copters’ megaphone, and Darian’s silhouette limped its way down the coaster’s tracks.

“There should be an entrance to the stadium past the coaster and through the bumper cars, right next to the farm exhibits.” Rochelle told them as she looked at a conveniently placed sign with a map of the park.

“Alright everyone, we need to get inside that stadium.” Nick urged them forward.

“No. We need to find Fluttershy!” Rainbow harshly reminded them “I don’t care if that heli-whatever is waiting for us, I won’t leave her behind.”

“You’re kidding right? She could be in like a million places by now!”

“So then we’d better start lookin’” Coach said, siding with Rainbow “C’mon y’all, it’s not like that crazy Witch is just gonna show up with her.”

And then that exact thing happened. The Witch rounded a corner, quickly looking around with Fluttershy following close behind trying to calm her down.

Before any of them could react, the Witch froze in place for a second, her glowing gaze firmly locked onto a single shifting shadow moving about at the end of the Screaming Oaks.




Meanwhile at the end of the coaster, Darian would’ve complained about the day he’d been having. He would have complained about how it hurt to breathe, or how he was covered in blood, not all of which was his own. He could have scolded himself for leaving without the others, or even felt a bit of pride at the fact that he had single-handedly signaled the chopper to be their rescue.
But Darian did none of these things. In fact the only thing he felt right now was pure terror with a side of disbelief as he turned around to see those red beams of light cutting into his soul like a laser. Then, like a call straight from hell, the Witch let out a screech that was likely heard across the entire park.

“Oh… you have gotta be kidding me, not this bitch again!” Darian yelled with a mixture of anger and fear as he painfully picked up his pace to escape the Witch that had resolved to chase him to the ends of the earth, and all because of a plastic Gnome.