//------------------------------// // Night Four // Story: Five nights at Sombra's // by Fossil-Dragon-Messiah //------------------------------// Silence reigned supreme within the office. Sweetie Belle glanced awkwardly at the clock on the computer monitor; it was now midnight. The distant chimes of the Ponyville clock tower tolled out into everypony’s ears. Fluttershy’s face was painted bright scarlet from the unicorn’s confession, while Dinky tried burying her face into the mare’s breast again. Apple Bloom broke the silence momentarily with a loud smacking sound as her hoof came up to give her face a great big hug. “No, Scootaloo,” the Earth filly complained. “Not a bicycle. A bisexual. It means that Sweetie Belle sometimes feels attracted to mares as well as stallions.” Scootaloo’s head tilted to one side, a look of incomprehension on her face. Apple Bloom sighed in utter exasperation. “She swings both ways, Scoots!” She declared, rather loudly. Sweetie Belle flinched at her friend’s loud declaration and turned her face away from the group, praying to Celestia to open up the ground beneath her and let it swallow her whole. Scootaloo just stood in place, and it seemed as if she was waiting for Apple Bloom to get to some form of definitive point on this topic. “So?” she finally asked, causing Apple Bloom to falter and face plant into the carpet. Scootaloo looked at Sweetie Belle as if she had just been told that the sky was blue. “Why should that matter? I don’t see you any different than before, Sweetie.” Sweetie Belle’s heart sank at those words. She knew that, if Scoots knew the true gravity of her situation, she would view her in a very different light indeed. “Well, that’s the thing, Scoots,” Apple Bloom chimed, having righted herself from her shocked tumble. Sweetie’s muscles froze as her second big secret was about to be revealed from outside of her control. “She, uh…” Graciously, Apple Bloom glanced Sweetie’s way to silently seek her permission to be the one to break the terrible news to Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle simply nodded, numbly, and the farm filly continued. “She… confessed ta me that she’s, uh… well, she’s had a girl crush on you an’ me for some time now. N-not quite as much as Button Mash, though. But she, um… she finds us both attractive.” Scootaloo’s face contorted into an expression that looked as if she had swallowed a lemon. She looked at Sweetie Belle with an unreadable look in her eyes. Nopony could tell if she was terrified, horrified or mortified. Sweetie Belle hoped that, whatever Scootaloo was feeling right now, her inevitable death at the hooves of one of her closest friends would be relatively painless. The tension in the air was palpable, and nopony dared move for fear of disrupting, what could’ve been, a tranquil silence, if it weren’t for the context that the Cutie Mark Crusaders were now looking like they had just gotten caught in the act doing something unspeakable. That tension only grew as the sound of deep, menacing, laughter echoed down the hallway. Everypony froze in place until Dinky ventured out from under Fluttershy’s wing to climb into the chair and flick through the camera feeds. She flicked from camera to camera, before reeling back from the computer monitor with a scream. Everypony snapped out of their individual reveries to turn their attention towards the screen. There, staring into the camera lens from little more than an inch apart, was Freddy Fazgriffon, gazing into the room as if he was watching them through a one way mirror. Fluttershy passed out with barely a sound, prompting Dinky to rush over to her. “Mummy!” She shouted, fear dripping in her voice. “Mummy, please wake up. Please, you’ve gotta wake up. Please, Mummy, don’t leave me alone. Please!” Dinky tried shaking the Pegasus conscious as she pleaded for her second mother to come back to her. Scootaloo turned to look Sweetie Belle dead in the eye for the first time in the last ten minutes. “You know what?” She strode toward Sweetie Belle with big, confident, strides, her eyes bristling with fear and resolution. “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die having known what it feels like to have had my first kiss.” And with that, she hooked a hoof around the back of Sweetie Belle’s neck and, before the unicorn filly could even notice what was going on, pulled her forward to mash their lips together in a frantic, but passionate, kiss. Sweetie Belle went stiff as a board at the flightless Pegasus’ sudden boldness, her horn sparking on impulse, but she slowly melted into the kiss and wrapped a hoof around Scootaloo’s withers a she pressed her lips back against the orange Pegasus’, a bright pink streak painting itself across her muzzle. After an all-too-long, and yet all-too-short, moment, the two fillies pulled back, each sporting a healthy pink glow on their cheeks. Scootaloo pulled away and scratched the back of head awkwardly. “T-t-tell anypony, and I’ll just, like, totally deny it,” she stuttered, trying to sound as cool as possible, given the circumstances. Sweetie Belle giggled at her friend’s flustered expression. “What’s there to tell?” She queried with false innocence. Scootaloo gave her an incredulous glare. “You know. About us…” She halted in her berating of her friend’s feigned ignorance as she cottoned on to what Sweetie Belle actually meant by her comment. “Oh. Th-thanks Sweetie.” She coughed, awkwardly, before wrapping a tentative hoof around the unicorn’s, who offered her friend a reassuring squeeze in return. The tender moment was brought to a shuddering halt as a knocking sound came from the computer screen. Everypony, including the recently recovered Fluttershy, hesitantly turned to look at the monitor to find Freddy stood in the middle of the party room holding a white modelling balloon in the shape of a pony with two pink balloons fashioned into a mane and tail on its neck and rump. Holding the effigy in one clawed paw and raising the other paw to crook a beckoning claw, Freddy made his silent demands very clear. He wanted them to turn over Sweetie Belle. The group shivered in unison, all meeting eyes as they came to a single answer without hesitation. Dinky climbed into the chair once more and started drumming out their answer with the stage lights in Horse code. Flash-flicker flash-flash-flash. The metal griffon’s claws closed around the balloon, squeezing its flimsy rubber flesh until it burst with a heart stopping bang. With the inanimate replica destroyed, Freddy slinked away from the party room, heading off to Tartarus-if-anypony-knew. Dinky sat back in her seat, clutching her chest where her heart was and trying desperately not to hyperventilate. Fluttershy picked the filly up and sat in the chair as she brought Dinky to her chest, singing the most motherly song she could manage. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, meanwhile, shrouded Sweetie Belle in their fetlocks, nuzzling her from both sides in an attempt to comfort her after Freddy made his demands to them. “He… he wanted me,” she squeaked in a pathetic voice. “He… he couldn’t get Rarity, so he… he wanted me instead.” The alabaster unicorn felt her face turn, with help from an external force, and her vision was filled with soft yellow fur as Apple Bloom buried her face into the crook of her neck, stroking her mane softly. “We won’ let ‘im getcha, Sweetie Belle,” she whispered, comfortingly. “Never,” Scootaloo concurred as she wrapped her hooves around the pair, offering whatever solace she could at this point. Fluttershy’s song came to an end, and she simply snuggled with Dinky in the chair at the computer desk, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Dinky’s chest that notified her that the filly was sleeping. She looked round at the food tubs she used to ration out the food Twilight managed to send into the establishment. She noted that the fillies’ pots, except Dinky’s, were once again nearly empty. This wasn’t the first time the CMC had nearly polished off their rations, while Dinky hardly ate at all. Either Dinky was being the most conservative with her food, or she was simply refusing to eat much at all. That second theory worried Fluttershy, as Dinky was a growing mare, and eating as little as she was could not be good for her health. She made a note to ask Twilight for more food, if they were expecting to spend even more time in this death trap. As she mused to herself, Fluttershy became acutely aware of the voices calling from deep inside her mind. They were faint, but she was aware of their presence. “Save us” they pleaded. “Please save us.” Fluttershy’s pupils shrank and her ears flattened against her skull as she realised why the voices were so familiar. She had been able to identify Red June’s voice from the beginning, the brief, strangled scream the filly had let out just seconds before her death was forever ingrained in her brain. But the other… the male voice… it was Thunderlane. She choked back a sob as the voices grew louder and more desperate in her head. “Save us! Save us! Please Save us!” The yellow Pegasus hung her head as tears dropped from her eyes into the dull carpet beneath her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” There was a bang at the door. Fluttershy’s heart seized in terror as she noticed Freddy was banging away at the door, dragging his terrible talons down the metal door to produce an ear-splitting screech. Fluttershy clutched Dinky to her bosom, attempting to drown out the terrible din that surrounded her so she wouldn’t wake up. The door’s integrity diminished quickly. Ninety percent, eighty five point three, seventy one point eight… Apple Bloom dove for the torch and began flicking the switch desperately, letting the blinding beam flood into the robot’s vision. Freddy didn’t seem to notice, or care, however, and continued his assault. In desperation, Scootaloo jumped up into the chair at the computer desk and fiddled with the buttons and controls in a blind panic. The camera feed flicked to the corridor outside the office door, where she noticed the PA system that threaded its way throughout the restaurant. Perhaps if she were to override the controls for the tannoy system… Scootaloo punched in a sequence of codes, similar to the ones she’d observed Dinky using when she overrode the arcade machines, and the PA system whined into life. The speakers let out a high pitched shriek, something akin to a dog whistle being blown while a griffon scraped their claws down a chalkboard. Freddy recoiled at the din, his head sparking and jerking spastically, like he was having something similar to a seizure, and fled the corridor as quickly as he could. Scootaloo slumped in the chair with relief, until she checked the damage counter for the door and noticed that the door’s integrity now stood at a mere twenty nine point seven percent. Sweetie Belle’s legs buckled from underneath her, and she flopped onto the floor like a rag doll. In seconds, her friends were at her sides, hugging her as she wept uncontrollably into the rough, prickly carpet on the office floor. “When will it end?” She squeaked. “Maybe I should just… turn myself over to Sombra. Maybe, if he kills me in Rarity’s place, he’ll let everypony go.” “Sweetie Belle, that’s stinkin’ thinkin’!” Apple Bloom wailed, hugging her friend tightly. “Yeah, even if you were to just give yourself over to Sombra, I doubt he’d just let the rest of us all walk away from this place.” Scootaloo wrapped her forelegs around her friend and drew her as close as she could. Sweetie Belle sniffled as she was held by her friends. She took whatever comfort she could from the warmth of her friends as they flanked her in a double embrace. Fluttershy tentatively grabbed the mouse on the computer desk and started flicking through the camera feeds, pointedly avoiding the camera that overlooked Thunderlane’s bloodied corpse. To her relief, nopony else had suffered his grizzly fate. Bon Bon and Lyra were still hot and sweaty, and Vinyl had managed to find some actual gauze for her wounded leg. The colts and fillies were now hiding in the prize corner, among the countless stuffed animal prizes. She allowed her shoulders to sag in much needed relief that everypony was still alive and, relatively, well under the circumstances. She jumped in her seat, however, at the sound of banging in the vents overhead. She clicked over to the camera feed in the ventilation tunnels, and found not just Busby, but Philly as well crawling towards the office in the vents. With a terrified squeak, she flew to the light switch, cradling Dinky in her fetlocks as she dove forwards and flicked the lights off. The camera switched to night vision as the tunnel was plunged into darkness. The animatronic duo froze as they attempted to relocate their positions and where the main office could be found. They stayed motionless for many minutes, before slowly retreating together, exiting the vents at the party room. She collapsed to the floor with exhaustion, taking deep, greedy breaths from the night’s excursions. Far away, the clock tower chimed for six AM. Fluttershy shed a few silent tears, her body still, since she didn’t have the energy to sob anymore. They had survived a fourth night of horror in this place. She tensed as a knocking sound resonated from the door. But there was something strange about this knock. It didn’t come from any of the animatronics; the knock was too polite. Fluttershy slowly raised herself to stand, her hooves trembling underneath her weight. Her breath caught in her throat as she peered out through the window and found the single most horrific thing she could have ever encountered. Outside the office, stood in the middle of the hallway and looking up at the murky window, was Red June, complete with the gaping hole in her head from when Fáfnir bit into her brain. Her eyes were cold and fearful, but she seemed to be attempting to wear a mask of bravery and calm as her mouth worked soundlessly to form words. “P-ple-ase…” she croaked, with much effort, “he-elp… me.” Fluttershy fainted, her eyes rolling backward in her skull as she collapsed on her back, Dinky landing snuggly between her fetlocks in her breast. “L-let me in?” Red June requested, unsure whether or not she was heard.