Sunset puffed along. Had this school always been this huge? Was it possible that the Candy Mare was using some kind of magic to make it seem larger? The hallway they were running through seemed more like a poorly lit cavern, darkness thick with this ghastly fog that seemed to thin just enough to display cruelly slaughtered students before thickening to conceal anything else that might be lurking in the deserted classrooms. At last, she thought she saw two figures standing towards the end of the hall where it was especially gloomy. As she was about to call out to them, she felt a hand clamp over her mouth. "Wait just a minute darling," whispered Rarity into her ear. "I do believe that our friends may be having a 'moment'."
As the three girls watched, it did seem as though Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were exchanging words. Sunset didn't like the way that Dash was holding her ax, but she quickly reassured herself that there was no cause for concern. Rainbow Dash would never harm Fluttershy... would she? Without warning, the meek girl who had been running away in tears mere moments ago enveloped her rainbow haired friend in a hug. As her friends watched, the pair seemed to cry together, but that was okay. It felt like a rift that was threatening to open between them, between them all, had been healed in that moment. "Aww... you guys are the best!" cried Pinkie Pie as she hugged Rarity and Sunset. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash broke off their embrace awkwardly, both apparently a little embarrassed to be caught in their moment together.
That was when Candy dropped down from the ceiling with a hiss. Her face was still split in half vertically showing a perfect cross section of a human skull, but also rows and rows of dripping fangs. With a sweep of one spindly arm she sent Rainbow Dash flying, while her other limbs clutched Fluttershy from behind. She worked quickly, gathering up pink webbing hanging in the hall, and wrapping them around and around Fluttershy before she had a chance to so much as scream. In mere moments, the girl was wrapped head to toe in what looked like a pink cocoon. Her muffled screams set her friends teeth on edge.
Sunset and the others ran to her aid, but were stopped when Rainbow Dash screamed, "Stop! Stay back or she'll catch you too! Stay away from the webs!" She hefted her ax one handed, her left arm hung limply by her side, clearly broken. However, that didn't stop her from going back on the attack. Again and again she chopped at the Candy Spider creature, hacking off limbs as the creature squealed and spurted foul black liquid from her wounds. Candy seemed as though she was going to try and escape back into the ceiling, but Dash hauled her back down with a powerful swing of her ax that splinter the beasts arms.
Once grounded, it didn't take long for Rainbow to smash her into nothing but a dark colored smear that lay barely twitching on the hallway floor. Panting from pain and exertion, Rainbow Dash at last let her ax fall. Staggering over to where Fluttershy struggled within her cotton candy cocoon. Rainbow kneeled beside her, and with her one good hand worked feverishly to peel off the sticky substance. She needed to make a hole at least, just a hole so that Fluttershy wouldn't suffocate. Her friends crept forward to aid her but she shouted at them again to, "Stay back!"
As she ripped off the last layer of cotton filth from around Fluttershy's face, she froze. Wordlessly, she howled, giving vent to a primal scream that resonated with so much emotion that at first Sunset and the others couldn't tell if it was caused by anger, sadness, or pain. Perhaps it was all three? As the girls struggled to see through the gloom, Dash rose to her feet, taking up her ax and started to hack over and over again at the fallen candy creature.
Now that her body was no longer blocking the wad of cotton candy, the girls could see what Rainbow had seen. A thick red slurry spilled from the cocoon. Fluttershy's face was ruined, it was only vaguely human with no eyelids to cover the eyes or lips to cover the teeth. It was clear she had been partially liquefied... the insides of the cotton candy sheath must have been incredibly caustic, somehow acidic enough to eat through flesh in a matter of moments. That or maybe it had just been the swarm of tiny squirming gummy worms that crawled over what was left of her teeth and eyes. The cadaver that had been one of their gentlest, most beloved friends let out a shuddering moan. The movement inside the cocoon ceased as the multicolored gummy worms spilled out onto the cold tile floor, along with a thick syrupy slurry of liquid flesh and sugar. In that moment, they knew, there was no saving their friend.
One after the other, Sunset looked to Pinkie and Rarity. She didn't know what to do, and from the looks on their faces it seemed neither did they. Rainbow Dash was beyond reason now, swinging her ax over and over at the same spot on the floor where the Candy Mare had fallen, chopping her up into smaller and smaller pieces. Her blind rage and pain seemed to have rendered her inarticulate, unable to speak. None of her friends dared to approach her.
"It's a shame isn't it?" said Candy, once more in the form of a child, standing beside the three teenagers as if she had been there the entire time. "It seems I played too hard with her," she sighed heavily, "I can't believe she's broken already." Reaching out one pudgy hand, Candy made a tiny fist. By that motion alone, the remaining webbing in the hall became rigid like a net and enclosed around Rainbow Dash. Lost in her rage and sorrow, the rainbow haired girl never even noticed the danger she was in.The webs didn't seem to quite touch her, instead they looked as though they passed harmlessly through her, the only effect was to make the berserk girl halt mid-ax-swing as though she had become suddenly frozen in time.
The effect only lasted for a moment however. The first thing to fall was her ax, clattering to the ground in bits and useless pieces, almost unrecognizable as the tool it had once been. Next was Rainbow Dash herself. She fell, literally, to bits. The soft plop of her body falling apart, and showering down on the tiled floor, echoed through the dead silence of the hall. Pinkie Pie leaned one out stretched hand against a locker and gave huge dry heaves, trying desperately to disgorge the sickness inside her, but all she could manage to bring up was bile. She was empty. Rarity stood close beside her sobbing, covering her face with her hands as if by doing so she could block out the horror. Her fingers were pressed against her eyelids... she was contemplating gouging them out so she wouldn't have to watch any more of her friends die.
Only Sunset kept her eyes trained on the Candy Mare. She watched as the child opened her tiny hand and the webbing retracted, taking pieces of Rainbow Dash with them. An arm here and a foot there, parts of her friend dangled from the webbing twisting and turning in a breeze she couldn't feel. Sunset Shimmer was numb, less from the horror of what was going on around her, and more from the burning feeling that rose up in her guts like a wild fire. Her every instinct was telling her to reach out and squeeze the child's throat shut, until her eyes rolled back into her head, until that horrible candy corn grin was gone forever. But she knew it wouldn't help.
Candy turned towards the trio, a sardonic look on her twisted face, "You do know that the game is hide and seek right? You girls are terrible at hiding." She glanced down at her fingernails as if the three teenagers were no longer worth her regard. "Should we try Tag instead? Or maybe... Blind Mares Bluff?" what little illumination there had been suddenly faded away completely. Childish laughter seemed to come from all around, but that only barely masked the whispers of an approaching horde of candy ghouls. "Hungry..." they hissed through broken teeth, "it hurts... it hurts... it hurts," another was saying monotonously, and of course the ever present chorus of "Nightmare Night...What a Fright...Give Us Something Sweet...to...Bite...". The scent of the recent slaughter must have attracted them. They had no choice, there must have been an army of the dead surging up the hallway behind them.
The girls would have to press forward.
In the darkness, it was impossible to move without their arms outstretched. They bumped into the warm, quivering pieces of flesh that dangled from the ceiling, what was left of their friends. They tried not to think about it, survival being more important than giving into morbid thoughts or despair at the moment, but Pinkie couldn't suppress a sickened squeal when she felt something wet and sticky smear across her face. It felt like a tongue, and she wasn't sure if it was worse for it to belong to Rainbow Dash, Candy, or one of the hungry dead. What was worse, for Rarity at least, was having to walk through the pool of Fluttershy's semi-liquefied remains. Rarity was still missing her shoes from their earlier chase of Aria through the park so each step, no matter how quick, was met with an uncomfortably warm splash and an unpleasantly moist feeling between her toes. She could feel the gummi worms popping under foot, giving tiny high pitched squeals with each pop. She fervently prayed under her breath that the sightless creatures wouldn't burrow through her exposed flesh.
They all did their best not to slip and fall, even as they tried to flee as quickly as possible from the approaching whispers of the dead, but it was impossible not to stumble as bits of teeth and bone slipped beneath their feet. Weeping, slipping, trying to maintain their balance and their sanity, Sunset Shimmer, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie pressed forward into the dark unknown. Each were harboring varying degrees of fear, anger, and despair... But none of them wanted to end up as their friends had.
--------------------------
It was a relief when they finally made it through the hallway and could at last run at full tilt. There was a light ahead and it was to this that they hurried towards. As they drew closer, they could see that the light was the flashing strobes of police, fire, and rescue lights.
The girls were saved! They'd made it to the front of the school! All they had to do was run out those glass doors and into the waiting arms of armed officers sworn to protect them.
Of course, it couldn't be that easy. As Sunset pushed open the glass doors, the scene that greeted them was not one of controlled chaos, but pure pandemonium! The gunfire that should've warned them away had apparently long been silenced, as candy ghoul's knelt by the prone bodies of police and fire fighters, gorging themselves on the rich red innards that they were scooping out of the bodies of the fallen and shoveling into their candied maws.
As the trio stepped out on the school steps, the closest ghouls glanced up from their feverish feeding, giving them a blank stare, slack jaws partially filled with brains and entrails from a particularly large paramedic. The girls themselves were dumbfounded. For all the emergency vehicles that were crowded around, not a single living soul seemed to still be present. Worse still... A sea of dead students, and a few emergency personnel that were now starting to turn as well, stood between them and any real hope of freedom. As Sunset watched, one of the first responders who's face now seemed to be a mass of green gummy candy lightly dusted with granulated sugar, leaned down to the receiver of the portable CB radio that was still clipped to his uniform and croaked, "Send...more...paramedics..."
"Sunset?"
"Yes Pinkie Pie?"
"I don't think I like Nightmare Night," replied Pinkie with a slight tremble in her voice.
"Me neither!" cried Rarity, her face streaked by dark tears from her running mascara, "No offense."
"None taken," replied Sunset, dead pan. "I can't say I like it much anymore myself..."
There was nothing they could do. The Candy Mare had won.
Just as that thought was passing through the three teenagers collective minds, there was a sound of squealing tires and a steady increasing thumping sound. A nondescript white panel van came screeching around a corner on two wheels, headlight's blazing as the front of the vehicle plowed through the candy ghouls that were staggering through the street and out into the nearby neighborhoods. When the van arrived at the school, it didn't stop with the emergency vehicles, but hopped the curb and tore through the manicured front lawn, leaving two muddy lines and a mess of smashed candied corpses in it's wake. The van just barely missed crashing into the statue in the courtyard before it slammed to a stop in front of the three girls. The engine was still running, but even so it was clear that the driver was scrambling around inside the van as it rocked back and forth on its shocks. The side door on the van opened with a rush of light and what looked like smoke billowing inside.
Twilight Sparkle, the researcher not the princess, leaned out of the van in her lab coat and glasses and yelled, "Get in!" before scrambling back into the drivers seat and putting the van back in gear. The girls didn't need to be told twice, although it was clear Pinkie and Rarity were surprised to see Twilight. Sunset was the last to climb in, as a swarm of ghouls surging from inside the school like a tidal wave. With the van already in motion, it took all of her strength and that of her friends, for Sunset to pull the door shut on the grasping hands of the hungry dead. As it was, one of the hands of the candy monstrosities was severed and fell limp into the van with them. "Hold on tight!" screamed Twilight as she apparently plowed through the horde of ghouls, causing the van to rock back and forth as if it were taking speed bumps at a hundred miles an hour.
There was a an uncomfortable moment as the van hopped the curb and each of the girls found themselves floating inside the van. In that moment, the ghoul's severed hand tumbled through the air as well. When they landed with a shudder that must have sent up sparks from the undercarriage, the hand landed squarely in Rarity's lap. Now, clearly, this was not the worst thing that had happened to the fashion conscious teenager that day. Aside from having to watch helplessly as her friends and classmates had died around her, she had lost everything she had bought at the shops yesterday along with some lovely designer shoes. To make matters worse, her cloths were so tattered from the last two night's activities that they were practically falling off, not to mention that they were soaked in mud and other less pleasant fluids. The severed hand landing in her lap was just one more horrible thing heaped on top of a veritable mountain of horrible things. Even so, it sent her into such spasms of hysterical sobbing, trying to get the thing off her, that when she was finally able to grasp it between thumb and forefinger, she sent it sailing across the interior of the van with such force that it smashed onto Pinkie Pie's face with a resounding 'slap'!
Taken aback by the suddenness of the action, of the disembodied hand sliding down her face, Pinkie almost didn't know how to react. When the appendage at last reached her chin, however, the hand itself seemed to react of it's own volition. Long fingers wrapped themselves securely around Pinkie's throat as the gnarled thumb pressed itself into her windpipe. Choking and gasping, her face turning a shade of blue and her vision going red around the edges, the pink haired girl frantically motioned for the others to help her. Sunset grabbed the stump of the wrist with one hand and tried to pry off the fingers with her other. Rarity, still in the grips of hysterics, was of no real use at the moment, but she beat at the hand with a metal ruler that was loose in the back of the van like a stern teacher punishing a particularly rambunctious student. Sunset grabbed the ruler from Rarity and used the cold metal to at last pry the fingers apart.
As the hand came loose, something in the skin shifted, and a tiny mouth opened up in the palm. Jaws slid forward like those in a sharks maw. Sharp, needle-like teeth clipped the air just in front of Pinkie's face, repeatedly closing with sharp clips that grew closer and closer to her tender throat. The fingers themselves started to grow long candy claws and spines all over, so it made it difficult to hold onto the thing without cutting or stabbing ones self.
Sunset looked around, desperately trying to find anything to contain the thing. A lidded glass jar rolled under one of the seats in the van. Acting quickly, she nudged the jar with her foot so it would roll over to Pinkie. "Open it! Open it!" It seemed Pinkie didn't notice the jar, and glanced at the door instead. She reached for the door... it was impossible to tell how fast they were going, but given how violently the van was still rocking from side to side it was doubtful they were free of the ghouls just yet. If Pinkie opened the door now there was a very good chance that they would fall out and splatter across the asphalt before they could get rid of the grasping, mutating hand.
With a steadiness and surety that surprised Sunset and Pinkie both, Rarity unscrewed the lid of the jar and plonked it down over the severed hand. As she slammed the lid home the thing tried to leap out of it's glass prison, but to no avail. It seemed Rarity had recovered from her episode as quickly as it had come over her. She stared at the hand in the jar with a look of disgust. It rattled and mutated further inside it's container, sprouting different growths to try and break free. All of it was useless. At last it fell still, resembling the dead flesh that it was, but none of the girls were fooled. They carefully stashed the jar securely in a crate, all three heaving a sigh of relief.
"Good catch!" cried Twilight from the drivers seat, as candied brains splattered on the windshield. She turned on the wipers as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence rather than a disgusting obstruction to her vision, "That will make an excellent research specimen when we get back to the lab!"