The Last Something Sweet to Bite

by Knackerman

Everyone's Entitled to One Good Scare

As the van continued to hurtle down the streets of Canterlot, the candy ghouls began to thin out. For the first time in what seemed like forever, but had only been an hour at most, the girls had a moment to take stock of their situation. "Thank you ever so much for rescuing us...uh...Twilight," said Rarity, recalling belatedly what Sunset had told them about being knocked out by the double of the Twilight they all knew and loved. Her next words were slightly tentative, perhaps colored by this memory, "But however did you know we were in need of rescue?"

"I didn't," replied the girl in the drivers seat as she swerved around what looked like a group of Trick or Treaters, but in the glow of the passing headlights were illuminated as candy ghouls dressed in costume. It was remarkable just how quickly the plague of candied death had spread. "I was actually on my way to Canterlot High after a new energy spike blew out all of my detection equipment. I figured there must have been a new event, so I was planning to collect specimens from ground zero. That's when I started seeing all of these pedestrians stumbling around in the road."

"Pedestrians?" asked Pinkie Pie.

"She means the candy ghouls," replied Sunset, eyeing the equipment in the van. Along with the various measuring tools and jars, there were also electronic equipment that were flashing distractedly. From the looks of the read outs, this equipment had shorted out not long ago and was in no state to recover. Any data they had recorded earlier had likely been lost.

"Candy ghouls? You mean like zombies? Fascinating!" cried Twilight, "I've never seen an ambulatory corpse before! The scientific possibilities are... well, endless! Part of the problem with vivisection has always been that if you go too far the subject dies. Worse, if they're unconscious for the procedure, its difficult to tell what effect your operation has had until the subject regains consciousness. If they regain consciousness. With a living corpse, both problems would essentially be rendered moot!" the look of joy suffusing Twilight's face was perhaps more unnerving than the steady rattle from the severed hand in its jar. As quickly as it had arisen, however, it faded. "Wait, can they still talk?"

"Not so much," replied Pinkie Pie. "All they really seem to say is 'hungry' and moan a lot. They do sing! Though, not very well."

"I'm afraid we didn't have much opportunity for extensive conversation while we were running for our lives!" cried Rarity, demonstrating a flawless grasp of dramatic understatement.

"You should probably just forget any ideas you might have for... ugh... experimenting on the dead, until after we have a chance to get this situation under control," added Sunset, brushing her hair out of her face. "I take it you believe me now? Or that I'm not an alien at least?"

"Well, there is still the possibility that this was all caused by cosmic radiation of an extraterrestrial origin. Or that this is an extremely hostile though sloppy invasion," responded Twilight, swerving to dodge an oncoming truck who's cab was on fire and flat bed was loaded with screaming children. "But I will say that I'm starting to rethink my position on your supernatural explanation. 'Magic'. in this case. may just be sufficiently advanced and misunderstood science, but I can't see where torching half the town would benefit anyone in the long run. Besides, when the people you run over get up and start limping after you on what look like candy claws and tendrils, the wise move might be to accept that there are some questions you should really ask later. Like after you've gotten several hundred miles away."

"So where are we heading then?" asked Sunset, climbing into the passenger seat in the front after moving a box of what appeared to be other 'specimens'. She didn't want to think about what Twilight must have done to acquire them. "Back to Crystal Prep?"

"Not a good idea," replied Twilight. "As near as I can tell these 'candy ghouls', as you call them, are descending on densely populated areas fast. I hypothesize that this is partially how this plague is spreading so quickly. I'm afraid the dorms at Crystal Prep might be too tempting of a target for these creatures to pass up."

"Oh no! Maud!" cried Pinkie suddenly.

"Oh, do you know Maud?" asked Twilight.

"She's my sister! She's staying in the dorms at Crystal Prep!" the usually indomitably cheerful girl put her head in her hands. "If she gets grabbed by the ghoulies, she's going to be a goner!"

"Don't worry," replied Twilight, adjusting her rear view mirror so she could look Pinkie in the eyes. "Your sister has Spike with her. The two of them are probably waiting for us where we're heading now." Sunset looked out the window on her side of the van. They were steadily climbing a hill, so there was a clear, unobstructed view of the town below. There were a few lights here and there, but those mostly seemed to be burning buildings. The same thick fog that had enveloped Canterlot High seemed to be choking the rest of the town, moving from street to street. Where it passed all electrical lighting faded, replaced by the dull orange glow of jack-o-lanterns and house fires. "We're on our way to my private lab. It's a short distance out of town so that should buy us time to collect supplies so we can get out of state."

"Out of state?" asked Rarity quizzically.

"Well yeah. As enthusiastic as I may be about wanting to study this event, I'm not crazy," replied Twilight as they pulled onto a lonely dirt road. "A scientist needs a certain objective distance from her subject. Like I said earlier, in this case, I think a few hundred miles should just about do it."

"It won't be far enough," replied Sunset grimly. "There's nowhere we can go that will be far enough away from the Candy Mare."

Twilight glanced at her sideways for a moment, "The Candy Mare?" before realizing what she was doing and put her eyes back on the road.

"The Candy Mare..." Sunset hesitated. That name must sound ridiculous to this version of Twilight. She started again. "The entity that's behind all this," she said, gesturing out the passenger side window at the town below, "made it pretty clear that she doesn't have any intentions of stopping with Canterlot High. As fast as this is spreading, a whole town engulfed in chaos in a matter of hours, I don't see any reason to think she won't spread this as far and wide as possible. She plans on making the entire world like this and believe me, no matter what you want to believe, she has more than enough power to do it."

"So what do you suggest?" asked Twilight, her face serious. "Should we just... get out of the van, lay our heads on the road and wait for a passing car to crush our skulls and get it over with?"

Rarity and Pinkie shared a glance of some alarm at the prospect, but Sunset let the comment pass. "No. No! Just because things are about as bleak as they can possibly get, that doesn't mean that we should give up. You said we were on our way to a lab of yours. Is it well stocked?"

Twilight couldn't conceal a blush, "Well, I might have been borrowing a few supplies from school over the years. I swear I planned to give them back it's just... you know. You get involved with one experiment and then the next and the one after that and you just... lose track of what's been borrowed and what hasn't," She cleared her throat, "Yes, yes I'd say that it's fairly well stocked."

"Good," replied Sunset, "Because I think I might have a plan on how we can beat the Candy Mare at her own game. I'll fill you in on what you need to know on the way. Just get us to your lab as fast as you can!"
------------------------

After a few somewhat tense and wordy minutes traveling in nearly complete darkness, it seemed that they had finally reached their destination. As the van pulled through an open wrought iron fence, Pinkie Pie and Rarity leaned forward from the rear of the van to have a better view. "Whoa!" was all Pinkie could say, for the first time in a while at a total loss for words.

"This is your private lab!?" cried Rarity, as stunned as Pinkie by the massive mansion that loomed against the night sky in front of them. Though the windows were darkened, the grounds themselves were well illuminated with flood lightning. They pulled up to an ornamental fountain that could have easily doubled as a swimming pool. The girls could see that they would still need to cross a bridge, over an actual moat, before they could climb the stairs to the mansions entrance. Needless to say, this seemed a little excessive for a private lab.

"Actually this is my parents place. It originally belonged to some doctor or other that used to live and work here. That was sort of why they bought the place, so I'd have a laboratory where I could conduct my studies," said Twilight as she shut off the van's engine and started to climb out. The others followed behind her. "We never did find out what happened to the previous owner. But I found out from dad later that this place was actually a steal. A fixer upper, but a steal. After my brother and I moved out, him to collage and me to Crystal Prep, I think the place was too big for them."

"I think it would be too big for King Kong," whispered Pinkie to Rarity, who had to stifle a giggle.

"They've been traveling around the country since then," continued Twilight, either not hearing or pretending not to have heard Pinkie's quip. "We should have the place to ourselves."

Meanwhile, Pinkie was eyeing the van that they had all been riding in. "Uhh...Twilight," it was an ominous creaking sound had drawn her attention. The vehicle was splattered with all kinds of blood and gore. It could hardly be described as a 'white' van anymore. "When exactly did you get your drivers license? Maud's older than me and she still only has her permit."

"Oh, I don't have a license," replied Twilight walking over the bridge to the front of the mansion. "I did read how to drive in a book once. It seemed simple enough, as did operating the maintenance van from school."

With perfect comedic timing, the ominous creaking turned into a loud crash as all four of the vans wheels fell off of their axles and the vehicles undercarriage slammed onto the ground. The hood bounced open and a cloud of steam hissed from the cracked engine block. "Oh...I see," was all Pinkie could say in reply as one of the tires rolled past her.

"Pinkie, grab our little friend in the jar," said Sunset over her shoulder. "If Twilight has what we need in her lab, I think we're going to need him too."

The party girl made a face but nodded and turned back to the van. Meanwhile, Rarity ran to catch up with Twilight. "Oh, Twilight, dear. I know we're just meeting for the first time and all but... well. Is there any chance I might be able to borrow a change of clothes?"

Twilight turned and looked at Rarity. She gasped, as if for the first time seeing the state the teenager was in. Her clothes had huge holes and tears in them from struggling through thorns in the park and barely outpacing the clawed hands of the candy ghouls. Worse, there were still stains from various bodily fluids, most of them not hers, that had stained the material a deep rusty red. Rarity stood barefoot in the night air, shivering, arms wrapped around herself, the tatters of her clothes barely clinging to her body. "Of course, of course. I'm sure that mother won't mind if you borrow some of her clothes. My parents room is up the stairs and down the hall to the right. Take whatever you like and uh...maybe just...throw away what you have on in the kitchen?" Rarity blushed but nodded. She'd long abandoned any hope of salvaging her outfit.

As Twilight turned a key in the front door, lights suddenly flooded the mansion. It seemed that her parents were wealthy enough that bothering with light switches wasn't really something they needed to do anymore. All of the lights inside the mansion, which was just as impressive inside as out, seemed to be motion activated. As Rarity climbed one side of an opulent double staircase, a gorgeous chandelier flared to life, making her shadow dance across walls that were tastefully hung with family portraits. A steal or not, there was no way that furnishing this place had cost anything less than a fortune. Rarity was duly impressed.

"So, which way to the lab?" asked Sunset. She'd lived part of her life in a palace. The mansion might have been impressive, even compared to that, but there were more important matters to attend to.

"It's down this way," said Twilight, gesturing towards a door under the stairs that seemed to lead down into a basement. "The lower levels may be in just a teensy bit of disrepair. I'm afraid they were flooded a few years back and since I was the only one who ever used them, father took his time in getting things back in order. I promise the lab should still be in good repair though."

As Twilight had said, the stairs leading down were broken and crumbling. The remnants of railing for the stairs intermittently twisted downwards, warped and rusted by water and time. The musky scent of old earth and mold drifted up to Sunset Shimmer's nostrils, turning her stomach afresh. It was odd that such a beautiful facade could hide such obvious decay.

Despite her misgivings, she followed Twilight down into the darkness beneath her home. Bare bulbs swung here and there on long exposed wires. Most of them were broken, but a few were still intact, some even still had there lamp shades though a thick coating of cobwebs blurred the outlines of their shape. The walls were bare brick, broken in a few places where the masonry had been washed away. Sunset could see the flood line like a dirty bathtub ring, just above her head. For a time, this had all been under water. As her eyes adjusted to the Gloom, Sunset noticed that she could see all of this thanks to a fitful illumination at the end of a long corridor that lead to another set of stairs that Twilight was already climbing. Almost as soon as Twilight entered the next room, the flickering light was snuffed out entirely.

With a suddenness that almost made her jump, Sunset found herself plunged into such absolute darkness that it seemed to suck at her eyes. Robbed of her sight, her other senses seemed to kick into overdrive. The grave mold scent and the cold chill of the waterlogged earth around her rose up like a physical presence, like clammy hands trying to suffocate her. Worse, she could hear something scrabbling across the floor behind her. Without warning, something warm and hairy slammed into her legs, making her cry out in surprise as she fell to the hard slimy ground below. She barely had a moment to get her hands in front of her and scream for "Help!" before the creature was on top of her, panting, it's rancid breath hot on her face. She winced as the monster started licking her, expecting sharp fangs to follow any second.

They never came.

The light source at the end of the hallway flickered back on, revealing an extremely excited Spike to be the source of Sunset Shimmer's terror. He barked cheerfully, gave her another sniff to make sure she didn't have any treats, and bounded down the hall into Twilight's waiting arms. "Hey Spike, did you miss me?" Under a barrage of licks and excited tail wagging, Twilight looked at the fallen Sunset and apologized, "Sorry, he gets a little excited around strangers. I hope the light's weren't out for too long."

"No, no, it's fine, really," replied Sunset, dusting off her clothes and wiping dog drool off her face to hide her burning red cheeks. For a moment, she'd really thought it was all over. After everything she'd been through at Canterlot High, no one could blame her for being a little on edge. This is what she told herself, but she was still acutely embarrassed by how loud she had screamed earlier and a certain dampness that she hoped was just from the wet floor. To her surprise, the lights overhead switched slowly on. As they did, she realized she was face to face with a corpse! She jumped back, letting loose another scream, before she realized that the corpse was in fact...

"Maud!" cried Pinkie Pie excitedly as she bounced down the underground passage. Sure enough, it was Pinkie's big sister that had been standing near to the distracted Miss Shimmer in the dark. Maud's expressionless face and grey complexion had perfectly blended in with the surrounding tunnel until the overhead light's had flickered on. It was only her imagination that had made the older girls face out to be that of a dead persons. Sunset hugged herself tightly to stop herself from shaking as she watched Pinkie Pie cheerfully raise the jar she was carrying for her sister to see. "Check it out Maud, it's a candy coated severed hand! Isn't that neat!?"

"It sure is Pinkie," replied Maud in her monotone voice, revealing no excitement whatsoever at being presented such a bizarre object. After giving the appendage a cursory look that would have appeared to be dismissive to anyone but Pinkie, she turned her attention towards Sunset. "Are you okay? You screamed very... loudly."

Blushing afresh, the Sunset cleared her throat, "Well yes, just a... a bad cough. It's very dusty down here."

"That's right, why don't we all get inside the lab and get to work?" suggested Twilight brightly, "I can't wait to see some of this alien technology you were telling me about!"

Comments

[Holmes The Meddler]

"I can't wait to see some of this alien technology you were telling me about!" But Twilight i thought you'd given up on your alien theory.

[TwilightBringer]

7088258
Actually alien means an object place or thing from another place being in a place where it was never introduced to before or something that is not known. Thus the terms illegal alien, alien immigrants, and places being described as alien. So technically, even though its magical technology it still is scientifically considered Alien, aka unknown.

[TwilightBringer]

Spike!!!

[pizzafryer]

This game is rigged, we all know Sunset, Pinkie and Rarity is already infected with candy. It is only matter of time.

[lochbessie]

"So what do you suggest?" asked Twilight, her face serious. "Should we just... get out of the van, lay our heads on the road and wait for a passing car to crush our skulls and get it over with?"

Just let the US government handle it honestly. I mean sure Candy has one victory taking over one city but have you seen just how powerful the full might of the US military is? We could literally win the war with just our Airforce. I mean seriously imagine this:

You are a Candy soldier you just took over your city and rally to the Candy Mare herself. You celebrate your victory over these monkeys expecting an easy victory. "Home by Hearts Warming" is the slogan. The Candy Mare starts out on her March to Washington. Unbeknownst to her the US sends in
Apache helicopters: https://youtu.be/_PrU5XD2Ypo
I feel like Apache helicopters are very underrated as they can shred through hundreds of her zombies in the night and using our superior night vision nothing hides from us. However helicopters are still helicopters and if they are found then they will face high casualties against Candy as her spikes are scawy and shawp. However, as it is night time Candy will have a very hard time finding them. This will also be the first slap to the Candy army that this was a war that they are not used to though. The candy army will continue marching and in the daytime you will be easily seen by satellites in space tracking your movements at all times. If you want to see just how much a marching army can be devastated by the USA Airforce just look at
Highway 80: https://youtu.be/4xiasPejyt4
Imagine walking along as explosions are all around you from enemies that you cannot even see. Then the sounds as well. The German Stuka is one of the most famous planes in WW2 for a reason. If it weren't for the horn no one would care for it. America took this idea and put it into the
A-10: https://youtu.be/BJMdVIyf4Oo
Imagine being the Candy Mare and as you're marching you just hear that and then suddenly dust is everywhere and then you find out you are the only one standing among hundreds of your now dead minions. Even if the march reaches more cities satellites can now tell us exactly where she is going so we can evacuate the most Civilians we can. Now her main goal here is probably to destroy the Government as that would crush the spirit of the American people right? Well too bad for you Candy but Hawaii exists so Honolulu is now our capital TROLLED! you marched across the country for nothing. Oh yeah and good luck getting to Hawaii against the strongest Navy in the entire world.

That last point I think highlights the biggest problem here even if America fell the entire world is now united against one single enemy and when the world unites against one single enemy magical things happen. The largest technological advancements were made when the entire world united during and after WW2 after all.

Lastly when all of her minions are corpses along a road and its just Candy herself we send in flamethrower units from Russia, because Russia is the only major country in the world that still uses Flamethrowers apparently. Once she is a melted goop we capture her and continue to melt her and transport her into Area 51 torturing her for all eternity. Then all of us humans lived happily ever after The End.

[Str8aura]

10897059
What in gods green fuck are you talking about

[FoxyDynamite]

10897059
You didn't read the prequal did you? Or candymare too? FIRE DOES NOT STOP IT. And ALL SHE TOUCHES BECOMES HERS. Inanimate or not.
The only way to "stop her " would be by dumping her in a realm where magic does not naturaly exist, as hypotised by starswirl, but he had no chance of doing so because luna put the beast to sleep...

[Mrnom]

11479658
Now that's a moot point she has enough magic to sustain her on a magicless world cause of the rainbow rainbows? What ever the band is called