//------------------------------// // Stranger at the Door and Chilling at the Party // Story: To Serve Bronies // by Fuzzy Necromancer //------------------------------// # Fluttershy ruffled through the hay and blankets. She didn't find Jamal the human this time either. “Where could he be?” she squealed. Her eyes kept straying to the different windows, but why would he want to leave? He was weak, right? He needed to recover. Angel bunny hopped over. Did he look a little guiltier than usual? “Angel?” Fluttershy asked. Angel blinked at her. “Angel, did you scare him off?” She locked eyes with him and held his gaze. Angel shook his head. “Oh, alright then.” Fluttershy resumed her search, checking under her bed and in her time-out cage for cranky ocelots. Her house was warm, cozy, and inviting, but it seemed so big and messy every time she looked for something she'd lost. Angel started to creep away. Fluttershy gently blocked his path with a wing. “Angel, did you see him leave?” Angel looked around, as if she might be addressing Chaz the Gila Monster or Myrtle the fruit bat. “Angel,” she repeated. The impish rabbit nodded. Fluttershy's wings and tail drooped. Her legs buckled. She curled up on the floor and tried not to cry. “Why did he leave me?” she asked Angel. They'd been getting along so well! She'd taken care of his injuries and given him a fresh bed of straw and a nice warm blanket. She'd been so excited to meet a human, and now her newest animal friend had flown the coop. Somebody knocked at the door. Fluttershy's wings and tail shot up. She cautiously raised her head. The knock came again. Maybe her critter friend had just stepped out for some fresh air, and now he'd come back. She trotted up to the door. “Come in?” The door swung open. Fluttershy's excitement vanished and a dull ache filled its place. There was a blue pegasus with multicolored mane and tail, scratching her hooves on Fluttershy's doormat. “H-hey Flutters,” the rainbow-haired pony said. “I just wanted to apologize for what I did. I mean, I didn't want to put you through that. I didn't know you were anywhere near. It's just...” Fluttershy's eyes glazed over. She didn't hear the stream of rationalizations and excuses coming out of the stranger's mouth. Her mind was eleven years into the past, in the playgrounds of Cloudsdale. She was wrapping her hooves and wings around the floating hoop, hanging on like a baby bat or a spider. Sky Duster had smashed a spider into her mane. She wanted to get it out, but she didn't want to see the guts and legs scattered all over the place. She wanted to keep it as much in one piece as she could. “Oh Flutters, I'm sorry,” Rainbow Dash said. She ran up with a box of tissues. She took one of the tissues and carefully pulled the remnants of a living creature from her hair, bundling them up. Fluttershy saw one of the severed legs still twitching. She wanted to cry. Crying helped her feel better. Her eyes stung with salt, but the tears wouldn't come. “I'm sorry I wasn't here Flutters,” Dash said. “I promise I'll protect you next time.” Fluttershy had let go of the hoop and gently flapped her wings, going down to the cloud level with Rainbow Dash. She took the tissue gently in her hoof and grabbed another one with her wing. “I'd never do something like that to you,” Rainbow said, nuzzling her and gently preening her feathers. “So, do you think you can forgive me?” the pegasus with a cloud-and-rainbow-lightning cutie mark said. Fluttershy slammed the door in her face. Angel hopped over and licked away her tears. She ignored the knocking and turned the key in the lock. # A high, lonely voice whistled in Pinkie Pie's ear, hollow as a marrowless bone, dry as the north wind on a cloudless night. “We hunger...” The long, pitiless face loomed down above her. Pinkie Pie screamed and hid under a buffet table. She enjoyed a pleasing terror and shivered pleasantly, although it was still cool as a cucumber out tonight, which was strange because sometimes cucumbers could be lukewarm, like in a buttered-up cucumber sandwich, the kind that Rarity insisted on at all of her fancy parties, because apparently hay fries and oat mix and apple chips weren't fancy enough unless they were “artisinal”, at least according to Trenderhoof, who hadn't come around since that big fiasco, which was funny because you didn't ever hear about small fiascos any more than you heard about somepony being gruntled. A finger poked her in the shoulder and she banged her head against the table. Reiko jerked her hand back and covered her eyes. “Sorry! I'm so sorry. Sorry. Sorry!” “It's okay,” Pinkie said, stroking the human's mane and using the soothing noises that a human would use to calm down a startled horse, because she figured that if it worked for human-raised horses then it might as well make sense the other way around. “Why are you hiding here?” Reiko whispered, once she stopped trembling and unclenched her body. “Because you spooked me with your windigo costume,” Pinkie Pie whispered back. It was even more fun than getting scared by Princess Luna on Nightmare Night, although afterwards Twilight Sparkle had convinced her to apologize because she'd really hurt Luna's feelings, and Pinkie Pie didn't want to hurt anypony's feelings, well, except maybe some of the really mean ones like Discord before he reformed and King Sombra. “I wasn't wearing any windigo costume,” Reiko whispered. Pinkie Pie froze. She turned to look Reiko in the eye. The pleasing terror turned into a chilly-crawly-creepy feeling climbing up her spine and turning over in her stomach like bad eggs and spoiled pickles. Reiko winked at her. “Just kidding. I dashed under the table when you had your eyes closed.” Pinkie Pie laughed. “Well that's a big relief. You really got me there!” Reiko laughed too. “May I give you a hug?” “Of course silly filly!” Pinkie Pie said. She wrapped her front legs around Reiko and squeezed tight. The human girl squeezed her back even tighter and rubbed her face in Pinkie's mane. “It smells like bubble-gum flavored ice cream and cotton candy”, she murmured. “Really? I never knew that,” Pinkie Pie said. She'd always assumed that her mane would smell like cotton-candy flavored ice cream and bubble gum. Rarity had tried to style her mane a lot of times, but it always sprang back into place unless she lost her Pinkie Pie spirit. Twilight Sparkle said that hair was dead tissue, so did that mean that her mane was a zombie? It was too bad Rainbow Dash wasn't coming to this Visitors from Another World party. Pinkie Pie gasped and banged her head on the underside of the buffet table for the second time that night. The punchbowl clinked, but it didn't actually tip over or spill. That was good. Reiko being exposed was bad. Pinkie Pie reached out into the surroundings with her Pinkie Sense, sniffed the air, poked her periscope around, and then hustled her into the mint-scented windigo costume. “Oh no Reiko, what did you think you were doing? I told you not to come out of your costume until I shout out 'unmask, unmask', okay? You're a super-duper special human and I'd really hate to see you get gobbled up in a few bites like Mmmmm just because you got out of your costume to early? I mean, I know there's a lot of things a Pinkie Party can solve but you need to give me more time and I have to make sure everything's ready and if things REALLY go wrong then you still have the emergency Pinkie Pie Escape Plunge button to press, but I still really don't want it to come to that because it would mean a great chance to make lots of new friends would be blown away so please just follow the plan and stay safe, okey-dokey Loki?” Reiko slumped on her stilts and nodded gently, the windigo mask making a faint chiming sound. “Okey-dokey Loki.” Pinkie Pie curled up her tail and sproinged up to kiss Reiko on the mask's cheek. “That's a good little human. Now, Auntie Pinkie will be running around and hopping around and pole-vaulting around to make sure everypony has fun and nopony starts nibbling the guests of honor.” As she bounced off towards the open bar, Pinkie Pie almost thought she saw the mask blushing. It must have been a trick of the light, or maybe at this time of night it was a trick of the dark...