"Ink Blot's journal. Date unknown. Place unknown. Have left Manehattan. Don't know how. Maybe captured. But wasn't tied up. Hrm. Woke up in middle of crowd. Weird crowd. Town is crazy.
"There's a supervillain. Some heroes fighting her. Not getting involved. Need info."
The ink stains on Pinkie's mask shifted around as she put a battered old journal back in her coat pocket. She pulled a grappling hook out of another pocket, using it to climb to the roof of a nearby house.
Almost as soon as her hooves touched down, the roof was set ablaze by wide misses from two foals in jumpsuits running around with incredibly dangerous weapons. Pinkie jumped clear of the burning roof.
"HEY! You gotta watch where you aim those things!" a flying filly squeaked. Her horn glowed and a thick sheet of ice formed on the burning roof, quelling the flames.
"Hrm. Screw this," Pinkie muttered, darting into an alleyway. "Need beans."
* * * * *
Sweetie Belle was not having the best night.
It was never a good night when some crazed ghost hunters started shooting at her without bothering to ask questions.
It'd been like this ever since that tragic accident that made her half-ghost, of course. As soon as she developed her ghost powers and started using them to fight other, nasty ghosts, she'd been sacked with a bad reputation and had every would-be ghost hunter in Equestria trying to take an ectoplasmic chunk out of her.
The two hunters chasing her at the moment were especially troublesome, because the weapons they carried were doing a lot of collateral damage. It was all she could do to try to lead them out of the crowds.
And speaking of the crowds...she had a feeling she'd somehow wandered into a comic convention gone horribly wrong. There didn't seem to be a single normal pony anywhere in sight.
A mummy stumbled out of a doorway below, moaning and waving its bandaged hooves around. The two ghost hunters chasing her collided with the mummy and tripped, rolling head-over-hoof across the ground.
With a relieved sigh, she ducked around a corner. "Whew," she said, wiping her brow with a hoof. "Maybe now I can figure out where I am..."
She turned and came face-to-face with a lemon yellow mule. The mule grinned at her and opened his mouth wide...
*CHOMP*
Everything went black. Then, she heard an obnoxiously loud belch, and suddenly she was floating around in town again.
Well, her eyeballs were anyway.
"Okay what just happened."
Her voice was strange, disembodied. She was pretty sure she was still...well, "alive"...but she couldn't feel her body, and she was pretty sure if she tried to revert to normal, it would not end well for her.
With a sigh, her eyeballs floated away, looking for a place to hopefully stop being just a pair of floating eyeballs.
* * * * *
"Umm...excuse me...Princess Celestia? Oh, um, I mean...Mane-iac? Would you mind...oh. Oh, you're busy...umm...being evil...sorry..."
Fluttershy barely avoided a tendril of Celestia's out-of-control mane. Luna, dressed as Mare-Do-Well, charged past her, horn glowing as she took a shot at the villainess.
"Oh! Excuse me...Mare-Do-Well? That's...your sister you're shooting at...so if you would please, just maybe...not shoot at her..."
She jumped in fright as she heard the roar of a chainsaw off to her left. She turned to see Twilight leaping onto the stage, a severed pony head swinging from the belt of her skirt. "Oh. Um. Twilight? A moment of your time, please?"
"Holy shit, is that an alicorn?" the head hanging from Twilight's belt asked.
Twilight did a double-take, then landed on her hooves, powering down her chainsaw. "I've never seen an alicorn up close and personal before," she said, bowing. "What can I do for you, Your Majesty?"
Fluttershy blinked. "Oh. Um. Right. Well..." She gave the severed head a confused, frightened look. "Is...is that poor pony's head...alive?"
"Yeah, more or less," the head said. "Flash Sentry, Your Highness. Or what's left of me, anyway."
"Oh my..." Fluttershy shook herself. "Nevermind. Look..." She stared Twilight in the eyes. "Do...do you know who you are?"
"Of course I do!" Twilight said brightly.
"Oh, thank goodness..."
"I'm Twilight Starling! I'm a cheerleader at San Palomino High. Or I was until the zombies came. Now I'm pretty much a full-time zombie hunter. Oh, and I had to cut off my boyfriend's head and use dark magic to keep him alive, so there's that."
"Oh. I...see."
"Excuse me, Your Highness?" Flash asked. "Shouldn't you be doing something about that...weird creepy mare with the really bad hair day?"
Fluttershy fluffed her wings. "Oh. Well. I'm trying to. But, the thing is...I might need a little help. That's why...Twilight, I need you to help me...deal with all this...preferably without hurting anypony."
Twilight frowned. "Uhh...I don't know how to break it to you? But...hurting stuff is pretty much all I'm good for." She hefted her chainsaw for emphasis.
"W-well...I was just hoping maybe...you have alicorn magic, I have...I guess alicorn magic..."
"Wait wait. What? Alicorn magic? Me?" Twilight laughed. "I'm just an ordinary unicorn."
"Umm. No. You're not, actually." Fluttershy pointed with a hoof at Twilight's folded wings.
Twilight looked back at her sides and let out a squeak. "What the hay?"
Flash looked up. "Oh. Hey. You've got wings. That's new."
"How could you not have noticed I have wings, you dipstick?" Twilight demanded. "I mean you're hanging right under them!"
"Hey, can I help it if I'm more interested in your thighs than your wings?"
"UGH! You are such a CREEP!" Twilight let out a frustrated growl. "Anyway...look...Your Highness...I'd love to help you out, really I would, but..." Twilight looked around. "I mean...I'm just a zombie hunter. I don't have a clue what the heck's going on here."
"Oh. Well. Okay. Sorry to bother you. Umm...if you would please, just...don't kill anypony, okay?"
"I'll try!"
"Thank you. Oh, and, um...I know that crazy psychotic pony with the hair that's trying to strangle everypony looks evil and nasty and all, but...she's actually somepony very important who isn't in her right mind, so...could you maybe...not attack her with your chainsaw?"
Twilight sighed. "Fine," she said. "Come on, Flash. I think I saw some candy apples over there..."
* * * * *
For reasons she couldn't explain, Sweetie Belle was instinctively drawn to a round, gaudy building. As she phased through the outside wall, she found herself in a dress shop full of only the most over-the-top, bizarre, and frilly nonsense any equine had ever set hoof and needle to.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her ecto-body began to regenerate.
"Okay so...I'm in a weird place, it looks like a funny farm exploded, there's ghost hunters after me, and for some reason there's a mule out there who was able to eat me and spit out my eyeballs. Noooo problem. Get it together, Filly. You've dealt with worse."
Once her regeneration completed, she passed through the door and out into the street. She dropped to the ground, solidified...and smacked right into a red-maned brown colt who wore some sort of studded leather armor. "Whoops, sorry."
The colt staggered, rubbing his head. He looked up at her. She studied him. There was a chain whip hanging at his side, and she could just see an assortment of other weapons in his saddlebag. She sighed. "Don't tell me you're a ghost hunter too," she groaned.
"Huh? No, I'm not hunting ghosts. I'm hunting the Pony of Shadows." The colt turned to look in the direction of a creepy forest on the outskirts of town. "There's an old castle out there that's home to an unholy demon of legend, and it's my curse to find and destroy that demon."
"Really?"
"Yep." The colt ran a hoof through his mane. "I'm Button Belmash, and it's the curse of the Belmash family to clash again and again with the Pony of Shadows."
"So...you don't hunt ghosts."
"Not unless the Pony of Shadows sends them after me."
"Oh. Well...I've never heard of this Pony of Shadows, but there's a lot of ghost hunters in town who are kind of after me..."
"Why would ghost hunters be after you?" Button asked, confused.
Sweetie floated into the air and became partially intangible.
"Oh." Button stared blankly. "I...have no response to that."
A ninja and a pirate ran past, locked in a deadly battle to the death.
"This place is too weird," Sweetie said.
"I agree," Button said. "Well...I cannot delay longer in my quest. Perhaps we shall meet again, ghostly maiden." With that, he trotted off in the direction of the dark, spooky forest.
Sweetie sighed. "That guy was kind of cool..."
*CHOMP*
Once more, Sweetie found herself reduced to a pair of eyeballs. As she was belched out, she glared at the yellow mule who had just eaten her. "Really?"
The mule trotted off into town. For some reason, he was saying "waka-waka-waka" over and over again.
Sweetie sighed, floated back into the round building, and waited for her body to regenerate...again.
As she entered the gaudy showroom, she heard clattering from deep inside. She floated in the direction of the sound to investigate.
She found a trenchcoat-clad, masked pony hunched down in the kitchen, eating beans straight out of a can.
The pony paused, looking up, a spoon halfway to her mouth. The ink splotches on her mask shifted around. "Hrm. Eyeballs. Beans must be bad."