//------------------------------//
// Sadie-stic! 
// Story: KoB's 2014 Nightmare Night Spooktacular 
// by King of Beggars 
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Rarity was no stranger to the hubbub and noise of a major retail store – she’d been known to shoulder-check a mare or two into the discount bin during a particularly heated fabric sale – but nothing could’ve prepared her for the horrors of a toy store.

Foals were screaming as they rushed up and down the aisles, fiddling with every gadget and toy they could reach. Even the upper shelves weren’t safe. The air was filled with toys being manipulated by unicorn foals as pegasi children darted hither and thither touching everything they could reach. Some children were being followed by parents clucking their tongues and barking like madponies at their little ones, trying to rein in their wandering hooves.

Rarity did her best to drown out the ruckus and frowned at the display shelf, tilting her head curiously at the empty space advertising Stitchwork Sadie dolls. She adjusted the saddle bags on her back and scanned the area, wondering if maybe the rambunctious little tykes had left some of the dolls lying around the aisle, but her search proved futile.

“Hello, pretty lady!” greeted a stallion from somewhere behind her. “Can I help you locate something?”

Rarity turned to the stallion and immediately recoiled in horror as she came face-to-face with a horrifying donkey-seal-creature in clown makeup and a sailor’s cap. 

“Celestia on a cracker!” she cursed as she backed away, holding a hoof to her chest to keep her heart from breaking through her ribs. “You nearly scared the water out of me!”

“Oh, sorry there, missy,” the stallion in the costume said as he roared with an avuncular belly laugh. She couldn’t see his face through the costume’s mask, but if the pudge around his middle was any indication, the jolly laugh matched him well. “Old Uncle Marbles didn’t mean to spook ya! This here costume is to promote our newest line of Captain Fishbutts the Seafaring Clown action figures. Now, is there something specific I can help ya find?”

Rarity smiled brightly and nodded. “Yes, you see I’m in a bit of a bind. I’m here in Manehattan on business and I’ve just been so preoccupied that I completely forgot to purchase a present for my little sister’s birthday.”

“Well you’re super-dee-duper in luck, pretty gal!” the assumedly older stallion said as he capered merrily in his costume. “Loose Marbles is the best durn toy emporium in all of Equestria! We’ve got everything here! Absolutely everything!”

Rarity’s smile brightened at that and she let out a sigh of relief. “That’s wonderful to hear. I’ve been to every store in town and I was beginning to worry that I’d never find a Stitchwork Sadie doll.”

“Stitchwork Sadie?” Old Uncle Marbles repeated as he ceased his excited prancing. “We have none.”

“But you just said you had everything,” Rarity said.

“Everything except that,” Marbles said apologetically. “I’m afraid we’re all sold out. I can put you on the waiting list for the next shipment, though. Should only be a two or three month wait.”

“But her birthday is tomorrow!” Rarity exclaimed in panic. “I have to catch the train home tonight just to make it back in time!”

“I’m real sorry, missy, but that’s the best I can do. Stitchwork Sadie is the hottest doll of the year and you’re not going to find one anywhere in Equestria this close to Giftsmas Eve.”

“I’m sorry, this close to what?” Rarity asked as she turned an ear forward so she could better hear him over the noise of shrieking foals. “I fear I might have misheard you, it sounded like you said… ‘Giftsmas Eve’.”

“Yupper-doodly-doo,” Marbles sang as he rose to his hind legs and did a little jig, sending the googly-eyes of the costume flinging about wildly. “Gifstmas Eve! It’s the most profitable time of the year!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow in bewilderment. “It’s a holiday… in May… called Giftsmas Eve…”

“That is correct!”

“This is one of those holidays created by corporations to increase profits during a regular period of low-sales, isn’t it?”

“That is also correct,” Marbles said with a nod. The costume was very bulky but somehow it conveyed the motion clearly.

“And you’re also saying that because of this holiday I won’t be able to find a Stitchwork Sadie anywhere in the entire nation.”

“All sold out in every store in continental Equestria!” Marbles said as he happily sped up his jig. “Yeeeehaw! We’re making money by the boatload!”

“You have to have at least one hidden away in the back!” Rarity pleaded. She pouted sadly, giving him her best pitiful look – the look that she knew that no stallion could resist from a mare in distress. “If it’s a matter of cost, money is no object, I assure you! It’s literally the only thing she asked for this year, I must have it!”

The force of her pout stopped Marbles’ dance and brought a sympathetic groan from the stallion. “Awwww, well shucks, pretty gal, I’d sell to you if I could, but I just plain don’t got one. How’s about a copy of Hungry, Hungry Hippogryphs for half price?”

“No thank you,” Rarity said with a sigh.

Rarity left the store with her head hung low. Sweetie Belle had been asking for a Stitchwork Sadie for months, and Rarity had promised her parents she would find one in time for Sweetie’s birthday. She’d had all the time in the world to find one, but it had completely slipped her mind in a haze of rushed work orders and dangerous adventures. But, busy though she may have been, such a lapse in memory and judgment was truly inexcusable.

“I’m a terrible sister,” Rarity muttered dejectedly.

“Psssssssssst~”

Rarity’s head snapped up at the sudden hissing sound. It came again and she pinpointed it as coming from the shadowy alley to her left.

“Yes?” she called out cautiously of the darkness. “Hello?”

“Pssst, come down here,” a stallion’s raspy voice told her.

Rarity narrowed her eyes in suspicion. A memory of her youth came to mind, recalling a time when she was just a filly sitting on her daddy’s knee. “Now, listen up, honey,” he’d said, “if you ever find yourself being called down a darkened alleyway by a mysterious stranger’s voice… follow it! They probably have candy!”

“Oooooo~ candy!” she cooed. She shook her head vigorously. “No, wait, that’s stupid.”

She began trotting away in indifference to the voice, but was stopped by a second mysterious voice.

“Mama!”

Rarity turned in time to see the doll being pulled back into the shadows. Unless her eyes had been playing tricks, it had been the very doll she had been searching for.

“Well, this is ominous,” she sighed as she turned around, cast a weak lighting spell, and stepped into the alley.

The alley was as dark and filthy as one would expect it to be. Discarded boxes and dumpsters filled to overflowing were shoved haphazardly into the alley, making maneuvering difficult, and it may have been a trick of her hornlight but there seemed to be more than a few rats scurrying about.

“Well, well—“

“—would you look at that, brother of mine! It would seem that one of our friends from Ponyville—“

“—has come to pay us a visit at our new Manehattan location!”

Rarity brought her hoof to her face at the appearance of the two familiar brothers as they stepped out from behind a dumpster. They were a little worse for wear, very dirty, and their clothes could use a proper mending, but she would recognize those scam artists anywhere.

“The Flim-Flams?” she asked. “Aren’t you two in prison, yet?”

“Why we’re injured by your crass incarceration accusations!” shouted Flim.

“We’ll have you know that we simply detest these unfounded rumors of our arrest!” agreed Flam.

The pair of brother stood to break into song, only for Rarity to stand and stuff her hooves into their mouths to silence them.

“No,” she demanded firmly. “No singing. I don’t care.”

She levitated a sack of bits out of her saddlebags and plopped it onto the ground between them.

“Thirty bits,” she stated simply. “That’s a fifty-percent markup over retail. You will sell me this doll and our business will be completed.”

Flim and Flam shared a look of surprise. They shrugged and Flim’s horn shimmered with magic as the doll floated out from behind the dumpster.

Rarity took possession of her prize and inspected it with her most critical eye. It was a homely thing, but charmingly so, purposefully designed to look at though it were a patchwork of mismatched old scrap cloth. The stitching was adequate for something from a factory, and – most importantly – it didn’t have any sort of foul odor that might indicate that the toy had been purchased in an alley in lieu of a toy store.

“There are a few things we feel we should tell you before you go,” Flim said uneasily.

“Mhm,” Rarity muttered as continued the inspection.

“Certain supernatural things,” Flam continued.

“That’s nice,” she said as she stuffed the doll into her bags. She gave them a curt nod and turned to leave the alley. “I use the term loosely, but good day to you, gentlestallions.”

The pair conponies watched as the prissy mare left. Flim collected the bag of coins and gave it a shake next to his ear, counting the contents by the sound of clinking bits.

“Well, that was easy,” Flam said happily. “I thought we’d never get rid of that horrible thing.”


* * *


“This is the best birthday ever!” Sweetie Belle shouted as she hopped onto the kitchen table and bounced around the enormous cake Pinkie Pie had provided.

The assembled guests watched with happy smiles and clapping hooves as the little filly pranced joyfully around the cake. The guest list was just a small collection of Rarity and Sweetie’s friends, all crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the small dining room of the Carousel Boutique. Pinkie Pie had tried to invite the entire town, but Sweetie and Rarity both had agreed that an intimate gathering would be more enjoyable.

Sadly, their parents hadn’t made it to the party. They were out making final arrangements for Sweetie Belle’s secret birthday present: a trip to Disneigh World. It was going to be a week of excitement, roller coasters, and fatty amusement park foods. They’d be by later tonight, to pick her up and take a late train out of town.

“Do try and keep your hooves out of the frosting, dear,” Rarity said teasingly. “Some of our friends will be wanting some of that cake, as well.”

Pinkie Pie shoved her way to the front of the crowd and scoffed. “Pish-and-posh, Rarity, she can swim in that cake if she wants to, it’s her birthday, after all! I can always get more cake!”

The silly pink mare pulled a tray of cupcakes from her mane by way of proof of her claims and set it on the table, just outside the path of Sweetie’s giddy little dance.

“Yes, well, even still,” Rarity said with a laugh. “Now that Sweetie’s made her wish, how about we open presents before we start serving cake?”

Sweetie gasped excitedly and pumped her hoof in triumph. “Presents!”

Rarity levitated the cake into the kitchen to make space at the table. The pile of presents sitting in the corner quickly took the cake’s place and Sweetie descended upon the gifts like a hungry wolverine.

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom had gotten her a coloring book and some crayons. From Pinkie Pie she’d received a whole basket of rubber duckies, for some reason. Her gift from Applejack was jump rope. Next she received a small doll house from Fluttershy, a wooden tinker toy set from Rainbow Dash, and a tea set from Spike. Surprisingly, Twilight’s present wasn't a book – unsurprisingly, it was a calendar.

By the time she’d opened the final gift, Sweetie was practically drowning in discarded wrapping and new toys. She graciously thanked everypony politely, smiling the whole while, but there was a look of disappointment in her eyes that nopony missed.

“What’s wrong, Sweetie?” Rarity asked in feigned confusion. “Didn’t you get everything you wanted?”

Sweetie’s smile faltered for just a moment as she said: “Oh, yes! Everything! This was a perfect birthday!”

Rarity chuckled mischievously. “Oh, perfect was it? Then I suppose you won’t be needing this last present.”

A final gift box, tied with an enormous pink bow, floated in from the kitchen at Rarity’s command. She’d hidden it atop the fridge, in the spot where she normally hid the cookies when Sweetie or Pinkie were visiting.

Sweetie Belle leapt off the table, tackling the box to the ground before it even made it halfway to the table. She pulled the ribbon and yanked the wrapping away with her teeth, eager to get at the surprise. Off came the lid, and everypony in the room covered their ears to protect their delicate eardrums from Sweetie’s prepubescent screech of elation.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Sweetie shouted as she held her Stitchwork Sadie in her hooves. “Thank you, Rarity! This is the best birthday ever! Oh my gosh! I love her mane!”

The fillies in the room gathered around her to excitedly gush over the doll. They all took turns pulling the little string on her back, giggling at the various phrases the doll warbled through the tiny speaker-box hidden within.

As she looked around the room at the smiling faces of the guests, she realized that something wasn’t quite right. She sidled up to Twilight, the only pony in the room not smiling, and studied her face.

Twilight’s eyes were narrowed, her forehead creased in that odd thought-thinking way that ponies get when they’re deep in thought.

“Is there something wrong, Twilight?” Rarity asked in a whisper.

“That doll is… weird…”

“Yes, it’s very homely,” Rarity said with a laugh. “I mean, really, patchwork dolls? Hardly the sort of thing you go to a store for. I could’ve made her one ten times better.”

“No, that’s not it…” Twilight hummed. Her head snapped around and she shot Rarity a disapproving glare. “What’s wrong with patchwork dolls!? Smarty Pants was patchwork and she was my favorite toy!”

“Was Smarty Pants store bought?” Rarity asked.

“No, my gram-mammy made her,” Twilight said with a frown.

Rarity snickered behind her hoof at the adorably childish nickname for what she assumed was Twilight’s grandmother. “There you are, then. I’m simply saying that you’d expect something more finished-looking from a retail outlet.”

“All that aside,” Twilight groused. “That doll is weird. Mark my words, something is up with it. It’s probably incredibly evil.”

Spike emerged from the kitchen, wadding through the mass of children and mingling adults to sidle up next to Rarity and Twilight. He was holding a plate in his hands with a half-eaten slice of cake sitting atop it. “Yes, Twilight, the doll is evil,” Spike said through a mouth full of cake.

“I know evil when I see it,” Twilight said with conviction.

Spike sighed and turned to Rarity. “Rarity, where did you buy that doll?”

Rarity laughed nervously. “Erm, uh, hehe, well… it was a… a toy store?” she said with an unsure quirk of her eyebrow.

“Was it an evil toy store?” Spike continued.

“N-no,” Rarity answered with a shake of her head.

He turned back to Twilight and wagged his fork at her, inadvertently flicking cake crumbs into her face. “See? A toy store. Not even an evil one.”

Rarity slipped away from the quickly brewing storm. Spikey and Twilight may have been her dearest of friends, but it never paid to get between siblings in an argument. She was grateful for the distraction, anyway – she wouldn’t want anypony to find out where she really got that doll.

She turned back to the children and watched as Sweetie Belle and her friends took turns hugging the little doll. It may have been her imagination, but something in the face of that doll – whether it was the black buttons of its eyes or the two crooked lengths of yarn forming its smile – was deeply unsettling to her now.


* * *


Rarity turned off the shower and flicked the wet mane away from her face with a toss of her head. She opened the glass shower door and stepped onto the chilly wet tile of her bathroom with a pleasant shiver.

“Well, well,” she said with a wolfish whistle as she sauntered up to her full length mirror and wiped away the fog to admire herself. “Look at you, all damp and sexy. You sexy, dirty little kitten, you.”

She turned and wiggled her rump enticingly at herself. “Don’t you just drive all the boys wild, you filthy girl?”

She quickly spun around to pout at her reflection as she held a hoof to her lips coquettishly. “Oh, no, I’m just a cute, innocent little filly who wouldn’t do anything dirty,” she said, affecting a high-pitched tone that she had dubbed ‘the sexy baby voice’. “I wouldn’t even know how.”

“Innocent as a fox in a henhouse,” she cooed back to herself in a husky, sensual purr. “You’re so damned gorgeous you could get away with murder, couldn’t you?”

She giggled to herself and turned to the towel rack, only to recoil in shock as she found herself looking into the cold black eyes of Stitchwork Sadie.

“Luna on skiis!” she cursed. “Oh, you horrible little thing, what are you doing here? I thought Sweetie Belle took you with her.”

Rarity suddenly remembered that Sweetie had been asking for the doll when she was packing up her belongings. Rarity hadn’t seen it, and she’d been so preoccupied with cleaning up the party mess that she’d simply assumed that the doll had been located by the time their parents had arrived to pick her sister up.

Sadly, it now looked like Sweetie Belle would be enjoying the vacation without the company of the toy she’d coveted for so long.

“What was she doing in my bathroom?” Rarity asked the doll as she levitated it off the towel rack. “She knows she’s expressly forbidden from entering this bathroom after the incident with my fifty bit per ounce moisturizing crème.”

Rarity opened the bathroom door and tossed the doll onto the bed with a flick of her magic. She returned to her evening rituals of plucking, teasing, setting, and moisturizing where appropriate, before putting her hair in curlers.

She went back to the bedroom, got her nightgown out of the closet, and dressed for bed.

“What a trying few days this has been,” she muttered as she carefully wiggled her way under the covers, so as not to disturb the carefully tucked corners.

She promptly fell asleep once her sleeping mask was in place, and tired as she was, she never even noticed that the doll hadn’t been waiting on the bed where she’d left it.


* * *


“Ade. Due. Damballa.”

Rarity blinked tiredly beneath her sleeping mask. Somepony was outside, shouting or something, and it had woken her up. She decided to ignore it and closed her eyes to return to dreamland.

“Ade! Due! Damballa! Give me the power, I beg of you!”

“Really, now!” she shouted as she lifted her head and whipped her mask off. “Who could be making such a racket at this time of night!?”

“Go back to sleep,” Sadie commanded from her perch atop Rarity’s chest. She glared down at the mare with malevolent intent in her coal-black eyes.

“I’m sorry, but what?” Rarity asked quizzically.

“I said go back to sleep!” the doll demanded. It reached up to try and pull the sleep mask back over Rarity’s eyes, hoping that she would conk back out like a canary in a covered bird cage.

Rarity slapped the doll’s little hooves away and frowned. “No, I heard that, I’m asking what, in the largest sense, is going on here?”

Sadie snickered darkly. “You foolish girl. You foolish, beautiful idiot.”

“Hey!” Rarity shouted indignantly. Surprised or not, she wouldn’t stand for being insulted by a foal's toy, of all things.

“You poor, foolish, stupid, dumb, dumb, gorgeous idiot,” the doll said, continuing its diatribe despite Rarity’s seething ire. “I am Stitchwork Sadie, the greatest murderer that has ever lived.”

“You’re making progressively less sense,” Rarity said. She tried to sit up but the doll bounced on her chest and leaned forward in a disarmingly cute attempt to hold her down. The sight of the creepily adorable act was enough to do the trick, and Rarity lay there, blinking owlishly at the doll as it cackled into her face. It was vaguely unsettling to have it speaking without a moving mouth, but as the voice was coming from its butt, Rarity assumed that whatever was controlling the doll was probably speaking through the toy’s voice box.

“You don’t need to make sense of this,” the doll said menacingly. “I am going to take over your body with an evil spell, and then once my dark ritual is complete, I will use that beautiful vessel to go on a killing spree the likes of which Equestria has never seen!”

“You’ll never get away with it,” Rarity said with a grin, her initial shock giving way to amusement at the absurdity of the situation.

“Oh, I will,” Sadie whispered eerily. “You said it yourself. You’re so damned gorgeous that you could get away with murder.”

Rarity chortled with unrestrained giddiness. “Wait, are you talking about what I said when I was in the bathroom? That’s just a turn of phrase!”

Sadie stared in silence for a moment before asking: “A what now?”

Rarity sat up and the doll tumbled away. It rose into a sitting position in the center of the bed, still staring in confusion.

“A turn of phrase," Rarity struggled to elaborate. "It’s idiomatic. It’s… it’s just a saying.”

“So…” Sadie asked softly. “So you’re saying you’re not beautiful enough to get away with murder?”

Rarity shrugged and played with her curlers thoughtfully. “Ehhhhh, maybe? I suppose if I played up the sympathy angle – did a lot of crying and fluttering my eyelashes – I could maybe get away with it. Of course the odds go way up if it’s an all-male jury. Most mares are immune to that sort of doe-eyed manipulation, even from mares they find attractive. Stallions always fall it, though. I don’t know why…”

“Right, so then I should steal your body then,” Sadie surmised.

“I would quite go that far,” Rarity said with a laugh.

“I’m going to do it anyway.”

Rarity groaned tiredly and whipped off her sleeping mask. “Oh, enough is enough.”

Rarity’s magic pulled an empty hat box down from the top of her dresser and plopped it on the bed. She removed the lid and scooped the doll into the container before it could even react. The lid went back on and was secured with a belt from one of her bathrobes.

“Hey, what’re you doing, you crazy bitch!?” it screamed as it beat its tiny cloth hooves against the inside of the hatbox.

“I’m taking you to Twilight,” Rarity explained as she tidied up the impromptu bow atop the box and then went about removing her curlers. “She knew something was wrong and we’re going to get this taken care of straight away.”

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go!” Sadie shouted. The hat box shook angrily as the evil toy thrashed around within. “I am the greatest murderer that has ever lived!”

“Please,” Rarity scoffed. “You’re a doll. You’re made of stuffing and scrap cloth. What did you think was going to happen? You’d chase me all around the house and then put a kitchen knife in my back? The very idea is laughably absurd.”


* * *


“I told you so.”

Rarity leaned against the desk in Twilight’s study and yawned sleepily. “I know you did, that’s why I brought it here. What do you want to hear? You want me to admit that you were right? Is that it?”

Twilight scuffed at the polished crystal floors of her palace’s new study and blushed brightly. “Maybe…” she said timidly.

“Fine,” Rarity said, “you were right, and I was wrong. The doll was evil.”

Twilight smiled brightly and trotted over to  a pile of correspondence that Owloysius was sorting through.

“It’s a good thing that I took the initiative to look into the matter as soon as I got home,” Twilight said smugly.

“I’ll kill you all!” Sadie shouted from within a birdcage in the middle of Twilight’s floor. She’d locked the thing up and drawn a magic circle around it the moment Rarity explained what was in the box she was carrying.

“Of course you will,” Twilight answered dismissively. She activated the magic circle, bringing the silencing charm online and leaving Sadie to rage soundlessly against the bars of her prison.

“Owloysius,” Twilight said as she turned to her owl. “Please go and fetch Spike. He’s probably asleep already. Just tell him that Rarity’s here if he’s being slow about it. I’m sure that’ll wake him up.”

The little owl saluted and obediently flew off towards Spike’s room.

“So what did you find out, darling?” Rarity asked.

“I got a letter from the manufacturer,” Twilight began as she flipped through the paperwork until she found the envelope she was looking for.

“How did you get a response so quickly?”

“Royal messengers,” Twilight said simply. “Ponies tend to respond quickly when a messenger is standing in front of them flashing a royal seal and waiting for the response.”

“Impressive,” Rarity said.

Twilight read through the letter with a slowly deepening scowl. “This is not good…”

“Don’t leave me in suspense, Twilight, darling.”

“Apparently every now and again they get dolls like this,” Twilight explained. “Quality control catches them most of the time, but sometimes they slip through. Apparently the company they outsource their scrap cloth from accidentally included scraps from an old abandoned psychiatric hospital for criminally insane ponies. Some of the old straight-jackets got chopped up and mixed in with the cloth shipment.”

“Oh dear…” Rarity said nervously. She looked at the doll and tried to discern which part of its body must have been the accursed cloth-piece.

“Also, one of the factory workers fell into the machinery and got ground up,” Twilight continued. “They say his malevolent spirit is still haunting the factory.”

Rarity got a little green at the thought of the mess that must have been. “Ew…”

Twilight sat on her haunches and massaged her temples as she read. “Then the owners of the factory ran afoul of a bunch of gypsy ponies – something about bank loans or a carriage accident or something. The manager that responded to me isn’t sure exactly what went on there, but she says that whatever happened, the gypsies put a curse on the factory.”

“How dreadful.”

“The curse didn’t take, though…”

“That’s good news, at least.”

“…because of all the residual energy left over from when the factory grounds were the site of horrific demon worshipping rituals with live virgin sacrifices.”

“Really, now!” Rarity shouted. “Now you’re just being silly!”

“No, really!” Twilight said as she held out the letter for Rarity.

The flustered fashionista took the letter with her magic, her lips moving as she read silently to herself. She frowned and looked up from the letter with a pained groan. “I always knew retail was evil…”

“It’s not a big deal, Rarity,” Twilight assured her friend. “It’s just a doll, it’s harmless. It has no muscles, just stuffing. They said all we have to do is send it back, and when they roll out another batch of dolls, they’ll send us a non-cursed one.”

“That is not an option,” Rarity declared. “Sweetie Belle will be home in a week, and the stallion I spoke to at the toy store said that the next shipment of Stitchwork Sadie dolls wouldn’t arrive for a few months. This doll was all she really wanted for her birthday, and I won’t deny her heart’s desire just because I was negligent and ended up having to buy a toy from the Flim-Flams in a darkened alleyway.”

“Wait, what was that about an alley and Flim-Flams?”

“Nothing,” Rarity quickly answered. “You’re hearing things.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes and hummed suspiciously. “Hmmm… yes… I must be…”

She turned back to the magic circle and frowned. Sadie had taken to sulking against the bars of her cage, her arms crossed over her chest. If she had full range of motion for her mouth, Twilight was sure Sadie would be frowning right back at her.

“I suppose we can uncurse it,” Twilight reasoned. “Problem is that the evil spirit inhabiting the doll has tainted it. That energy would only attract more malevolent beings, so exorcising the spirit would only leave room for another spirit to enter the host-body.”

“What do we do then?” Rarity asked anxiously.

“I suppose we could…” Twilight trailed off, scratching her chin in thought as she formulated a plan. “We could exorcise the evil spirit and then put a benign spirit in its place. But it would have to be a pure spirit, from somepony good and noble, somepony filled with love. If the benign spirit inhabited the doll for… say five or so days, it would cleanse the evil energy.”

“Yes! Let’s do that!” Rarity said eagerly.

“Hold on, there,” Twilight said with a chuckle. “The question is: who is going to volunteer to spend almost a full week living inside of a doll? Nopony’s that stupid.”

There was a clamor in the hallway as something ran into a podium, knocking over a vase and sending it crashing to the floor. A moment later Spike burst in through the door, a wide grin on his face as he beheld his beloved.

“Rarity!” he shouted. If he noticed Twilight or the curious sight of a caged and magically bound toy, he didn’t give any indication of it.

Twilight held a hoof to her face as she realized what was moments away from happening.

Rarity leaned forward and smiled at Spike the way a snake smiles at a mouse.

“My cutesy-iddle-widdle Spikey! Just the gentledrake I needed… how would you like to spend a few days sleeping over at my house?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes in that way that males always seemed to fall for.


* * *