"Is that what this was all for Candy Mare!?" asked Sunset Shimmer, practically spitting the words in her anger and despair, "All this death and pain? Was this all so you could play human!?"
The small girl twirling away in the pools of blood that her birth had fostered stopped mid pirouette, and bowed to the stage, "Why of course! It looked like you were having so much fun doing the same thing 'Sunny', I couldn't help wanting to join in!" she replied, cackling mischievously, "And please, just call me Candy! I'm hardly a 'mare' anymore, after all..." she looked down at her grubby, blood stained hands and flexed her tiny fingers. "However did you get used to these writhing little bone sausages? They're so strange," with that, her finger tips grew into long, sharp candy talons, "Ah, much better. I could see where one could get used to this. If she really tried."
"You can't possibly be serious..." moaned Rarity. Her eyes took in not just the garish, trashy cloths, but the creatures mixed up off-color skin as well. It was hard to tell where flesh ended and candy began. Perhaps there was no difference to this monstrosity, this 'Candy' girl.
"Well, yes and no," replied Candy, as she cheerfully stretched before doing a hand stand. "The truth of the matter is that I was having a hard time manifesting in this world. Not enough magic you see. What little magic you humans have is either ancient and worn thin or pitifully weak, more the product of faith or trickery than a real living force. Not something a creature like myself can easily feed off of. Not like in Equestria... but then," she flipped out of the spotlight she was standing in and was lost for a moment. When she reappeared she was mere inches from Sunset Shimmer, floating in mid air. "There was you!" she said poking one chubby digit into the tip of Sunny's nose. She grinned brightly as she said "Everything that has happened here is thanks to you."
Applejack swung her bass guitar at the candy ghoul like it was a battle ax, but the nymph twirled away from the strike and landed back in the spotlight with a splash, facing away from the stage. On her back, twin candy wings made of bone and human skin shrank and folded inside of her cloths. "And just what is that supposed to mean ya abomination!? It looks an awful lot like you're the only one with blood on her hands here!" A sneer curled AJ's lips before she muttered, mostly to herself, "And everything else for that matter."
"Is it story time? Really? How dreadfully dull," Candy pouted, for the moment truly looking like the little girl she was playing at being. But the way her eyes flashed mischievously, it was clear she wanted to tell them, her disdain was nothing but a facade. "Once upon a time there was a filly who wanted to eat everything. Though there were some set backs, eventually she devoured the world and everypony in it. Glutted though she was she still hungered for more, and moved through dreams to find other realms that she could devour. So the story would go, over and over, again and again. Until one day, the filly sensed something truly strange. On one of the dead worlds she had devoured, she sensed a life. A life that couldn't possibly exist. A life that had apparently been whisked away, long ago, to another place and time on the other side of a dusty mirror." Candy turned slowly, and gave them her widest, most cheerful grin. "It was you Sunset! Or, should I say, somepony very much like you?" A look of confusion washed over Sunset Shimmers face. Of course there was a chance there were other versions of her out there, but she didn't expect to hear this. "The scent of this foreign world, this human world was thick on her. It was so irresistible, of course I had to take a peek... and of course I gobbled her up!"
"It was another Sunset, right?" asked Rainbow Dash, dark circles under her eyes. Sunset looked back at her friend. "Just like that other me you were manipulating."
"Exactly! Gold Star for Dashie!" replied Candy, giving a joyful little hop, sending up a splash of slowly congealing blood like a child playing in a puddle after the rain. Despite this, her face grew serious, almost grave as she steepled her fingers in front of her chest, "But it turned out gobbling her up was a mistake. In doing so I gained the knowledge of the world she had recently come from, but I lost my ability to cross over into it. There was no magic there, for this Sunset had never taken the Element of Magic to that realm." Sunset Shimmer's eyes grew wide. "Try as I might, I was powerless to cross through, save as a bad dream or two and a few pitiful pieces of candy that could barely make a person sick," the monster knelt where she stood. She seemed to be looking for something, brushing a few strands of her liquorice hair behind one ear before fishing something out of a pile of gore, "I nearly lost control of my Dashie when I tried to cross through the mirror riding inside her. That would have been a real tragedy," she lifted the object up. A cracked skull. Presumably the one that had belonged to 'her' Dashie. As she brooded over the skull, something began to grow from her forehead. A twisted black and orange striped horn that looked much like a lolly pop one might purchase at an amusement park. Once it was fully formed it gave off a pulse of light in every hue of the rainbow, before settling on an extremely dark red that smoldered like flame. "What magic I'd consumed from countless unicorns meant nothing if I couldn't even bring myself through that stupid mirror."
"Wait, so... So then how did you get here?" asked Pinkie Pie from behind her drum kit.
This brought another grin from Candy, as her horn flared as if responding to her sudden uptick in mood. She tossed the empty skull over her shoulder as she rose and said, "I am so glad you asked Pinkie! You see it turns out, just like there are many Equestrias, there are many human worlds connected to almost all of them! It was just a matter of slipping through your nightmares until I found the perfect world... A world where Sunset Shimmer had brought the Element of Magic. More, a world where I had not yet destroyed it's Equestrian partner, so that self same magic was still pulling on a fresh, untainted source. And even better, I found you six girls, conduits for a magic you don't even understand." Sunset Shimmer fell to her knees. Candy, however, was up again, twirling and dancing to a song that only she seemed to be able to hear. "As soon as you acted as a release valve for all that glorious magic, saturating the atmosphere and the infected students that had eaten my candy, I was able to come fully into this world! It was child's play to trick those 'Dazzling' idiots into helping me plant my little candies in the school cafeteria food. Sure, there were those who had a touch of magic inside them already that gave us a few false starts, but by making Vice Principal Luna our first target, I had a trusted authority figure to spread lies about a possibly infectious disease and a phony quarantine. It made it all the easier to make the students and their families disappear, one by one. They were a nice snack, weren't they Dashie?"
Rainbow Dash doubled over in a fit of dry heaving. Fluttershy tried to comfort her, rubbing her back, but her eyes were blazing with barely controlled anger. "You disgusting creature. You killed them all, didn't you? Even those boys you were hanging out with when you were pretending to be Dashie!"
"And right under your cute little nose, Fluttershy," grinned the Candy Mare, "I admit, it was hungry work, but it was so easy to trick those teenaged boys into following me into nice, private places for a quick bite. It's really quite funny," she paused, growing more serious, "I almost thought Sunny was going to figure things out when she caught one of my little seeds taking root inside Trixie, but I suppose it was already too late by then. I'd been masquerading as Dashie for months at that point. It was only right at the end that you six even began to suspect anything was wrong at all," she laughed wryly, before glancing around at the rest of the gymnasium. "But I think story time has gone on long enough, don't you? I have a world to devour, and now, thanks to all of you wonderful musicians, I have a form that can move into worlds that are bereft of Equestrian magic. Countless multitudes will suffer," she licked her lips with her long candy striped tongue, rubbing her belly in anticipation, "and I'll feed on every last one!"
"So that's it then. You've gotten what you wanted," said Sunset Shimmer through tears. That she could even be partially responsible for this horrid creature coming to this realm and killing so many of her friends was almost more than she could bear. That she had led her friends into feeding her even more power, even that she could become this twisted mirror of humanity was even worse. But though her shoulders shook and tears streamed down her face, she never took her eyes off the Candy Mare. She glared at the unnatural girl, brave in the face of death. She had already brought so much pain and suffering into the lives of her friends, even if she had never intended to do so, she almost welcomed what was about to come next just so she wouldn't have to face them. If she was to die, well... maybe she deserved it. "I suppose you're just going to kill us now, like every one else? Like the Dazzlings who helped you."
"What!? Why ever would I do a thing like that?" asked Candy in mock surprise. The spotlight shut off and for a moment all was darkness save for the glowing jack-o-lanterns that flickered in the sea of slain students. Slowly the red emergency lights came back on. There was a wail of distant sirens. It seemed the fire department were on their way at last. Candy slowly began to walk up the steps that lead onto the stage. As she climbed the stairs her body warped and changed, seeming to stretch and grow. She was no longer a little girl, but a full grown woman. She glared down at the six girls, her hair suddenly alive as though she were underwater and they were floating in a strong currant. "I love you girls! I couldn't have done any of this without you! Even if those 'Dazzlings' hadn't tried to betray me, of course I was going to destroy them. But all of you? Never!" She tilted to her head to one side, her long limbs ending in even longer, spidery talons that interlaced between each other as her lips twisted into a predatory grin. "At least, not without giving you a chance."
"Pfft... A snowballs chance in hell maybe," mutter Rainbow Dash.
If the candy girl heard her, she ignored her, "You see I love to play games. And besides, it's Nightmare Night! Oh what a fright!" she twirled again as if she were a tiny ballerina, though the effect was much more disturbing now, bony limbs arching ungainly through the crimson fog. "It's a night for Tricks as well as Treats! Of course the trick will be staying alive. Not just because of me, but because of your dear friends." As she spoke, a few of the piles of intestines and viscera began to shiver and move. So that was what she had meant when she said that story time had gone on long enough! She had been stalling the whole time!
Slowly, shambling figures rose from the sea of congealed blood. Their bodies gleamed in the scarlet light, eyes empty and jaws slack, but an unmistakable sound from the fresh risen crowd began to swell, along with their numbers, "....Nightmare...Night..." they whispered through jagged teeth and twisted gums. "What a...Fright..." Others chorused back. But the main thing they all seemed to be able to agree on was... "....hungry..." The word echoed from dozens of gore slicked lips, matched only by the insane laughter that spilled from their mouths. The eyes of the dead were locked on the stage.
Candy laughed, spreading her arms wide as the candy ghouls began to shamble towards the Rainbooms. As she did so, her horn glowed brightly and her wings sprouted anew, stretching wide. A circlet made of small, delicately polished bones graced Candy's brow, gleaming in the harsh glow of the emergency lights. For a moment she appeared as a queen before her adoring, hungry subjects. The image quickly faded however. She was no queen, but a grinning hobgoblin of a child. Madness roiled off her like smoke as she smiled so widely it looked as though the top of her head was about to come off. She pointed a single slender claw at the sextuplet of teenagers.
"The game is hide and seek! You hide, they seek. If you escape you live! If they catch you... well..." she giggled evilly, "I think you get the idea~," she almost sang with glee. "Of course I'll be playing too. I'll count as high as I can before I join in, just to give you head start." She covered her eyes with her grimy, bloodstained hands and started to count. "One one thousand... two one thousand." As she did, the candy ghouls began to swarm up the stairs to the stage. The girls were trapped. Every exit seemed to be swarmed with the grinning, laughing dead. Suddenly the ground beneath their feet began to shake. Someone had activated the stages trapdoor! They sank into the pit underneath the stage much more quickly than they had risen. But it was hard to see how this was an improvement.
"What do we do, what do we do!?" squealed Pinkie Pie in a panic. "They're gonna gobble us up!"
"What yer gonna do missy, is follow your old Granny Smith out of here," said the cantankerous lunch lady, a fire ax in one hand, from the gloom under the stage.