Locked in

by Gassipons

CHAPTER ONE

"Oooh. This frock would go wonderfully with the burgundy skirt I bought last week.." Rarity rambled aloud, encouraging another sigh from Rainbow Dash.
"Could we, like, go? We've been looking at stupid dresses for hours now!"

Rarity scoffed, turning to her pegasus friend.
"Firstly it's a frock, not a dress. Secondly, I stood idly by while you spent two hours looking through.. Eugh... Sporting gear."

"So? That stuff was actually important!"

"..and also waited while you queued up for that stupid veggie dog."

"Hey! I was hungry!"

"Yes, but you could have settled for something with less of a queue."

Rainbow disregarded Rarity and folded her arms, hovering off the ground just slightly.

"We're the only two ponies even still in this stupid store."

Rarity looked up and around, as if broken temporarily from some trance.

"I must say, this absence all of a sudden is slightly weird."

Rainbow peered out of the boutique, noticing that the rest of the mall was completely deserted.

Equestria's first shopping mall had opened just that week not too far from Ponyville, so it was a given that everypony nearby would flock to this alien spectacle.
This fact made the mall's emptiness all that more unnerving.

"Wh-what time is it, Rarity?"

The ivory equine glanced up at the clock.

"Half seven."

"Half seven?! This place closes at six!"

Rainbow began to panic, zooming around the other stores to check theirs wasn't the only one deserted, before flying back to Rarity with worry and annoyance plastered over her face.

"Nice going, Rarity. The whole place is shut down for the night!"

"Oh my; Why weren't we kicked out?"

It was Rainbow's turn to blush.
"Oh. So that's what she meant."

"Who?! What?!"

"A couple of hours ago this pony told me to get out, so I told her to shove it up her-"

"Rainbow Dash! Do you realise what you've gone and done?!"

"What I've gone and done?! You're the one so infatuated with... Fabrics!"

"Oh, nononono! What are we going to do?! We'll die in here! We're goners!"

"No we're not. We just camp it out till morning. I'm pretty sure we can find the resources around that we need. There's a bed store we could sleep in."

"Are you insane? We can't do that! It's.. So horrible in here! And what about my nighty routine?!"

Save a few sporadic camping trips Rarity had not spent much time away from her home and the familiarity of her life. The mere idea of spending a whole night somewhere else unprepared almost launched her into a panic attack.

"It's just one night. Could be kinda fun."

"Fun?! How could it be fun?! Your idea of fun is grossly clouded, Rainbow Dash." Rarity flouted as she trotted away from her friend, considering an attempt to steal some pricey clothes.

"While I do appreciate you pegasi type have little regard for the fundamentals of hygiene and sophistication, you must agree that spending a whole night in some tacky, dirty shopping mall is far from 'fun'."

"I think you need to stop being so prissy." Rainbow sighed, her patience growing thin at Rarity's constant complaining and whining.

With an acceptive sigh Rarity slumped down onto the floor, sighing forlornly.
"This mindless bickering's hardly going to better our situation; I suppose we'll just have to live with it."

Rainbow's stomach interrupted her friend with a deep, muffled groan.
Rarity perked up.
"Wh-what was that?"

"My stomach; I'm hungry."

"O-Oh. I see. Was that monstrosity you devoured earlier not filling enough?"

"That was like three hours ago. I'm gonna go see if I can find something to eat."

With this, Rainbow hovered off to find a food stall with the hope she could still access some food from it.
The warm, cheap lighting in the building made her feel strangely sleepy as she levitated past the closed stores.

After passing a few dozen dark store fronts she came across a veggie dog stand, and with an impatient slap of her lips trotted over to inspect the stall.
It seemed all the prepared veggie dogs had been eaten already, but behind the stall stood a cooler.

Rainbow slowly opened the cooling box, peering inside to see a cardboard box containing about two dozen small and silver sachets.
"..beef?" She read aloud confusedly from the side of the crate.
"Huh. Guess this must be the stuff they make them out of."

Without much more thought into it, she snatched out a pouch and tore it open, guzzling the red raw meat inside it down her throat.

"Hm. That... Tastes pretty good." She said quietly to herself, taking a couple more and eating those too.
Something about that rich, savoury flavour just made her eat another and another, until soon the box had been emptied.

Rainbow burped into her mouth, going so far as to savour it just to let the sublime taste hang on her tongue a moment longer.

She flew her way back towards the clothing store, and after a few detours managed to find it again.

Rarity had a piece of paper laid out over the floor, and she was inspecting it closely when her cyan pegasus friend returned.

"Hey, Rarity, I found this super delicious stuff down by that veggie dog stall. It was c-"

She was promptly cut off by Rarity;
"While you were gone I managed to find this map. It seems that, in fact, there is some kind of emergency exit that we could try. It's two floors down in the main surveillance room.
I suppose it's worth a shot."

"Sure, whatever. I still think crashing here for the night would be cool."

Rarity looked up at Dash for the first time since she'd arrived back.

"Rainbow Dash, how much did you eat? Your midriff is positively swollen!"

Rainbow Dash looked down, noticing a slight bulge as a result of her little glut.

"Heh. It tasted so good, though! I wish I'd saved some for you."

"I think I would have passed, Rainbow." Her eyebrows curled in repulse.

"Let's just get out of this place."

Rarity got up, rolling the map under her armpit as she led Rainbow Dash out of the door.

On their journey down the cold stone flights of stairs and past the empty shops Rainbow began to feel a slowly rising discomfort in her gut.
She wasn't sure what that strange 'beef' had been, but she gradually began to regret eating it.

"R-Rarity. Can we stop a second? My stomach is killing me!"

"Stop complaining. You probably just have bellyache due to your monstrous gourmandising."

"Uugh.. I don't know what it is, but it hurts bad.."

Her belly let out an audible churn, as she felt every muscle in her lower body ache profusely.

"Where is this place, anyways?"

"It seems we're here now." Rarity replied, looking up at the door with the large 'security' embossed onto it.

"...oh."

The two ponies trotted (more drudgingly for Rainbow Dash) into the security room.

Looking around Rarity noticed a large exit door, and squealed with delight.

"There it is! Our way out of here!"

As she went to open it, the two ponies heard a loud metallic clang from behind them and turned to see the door into the security room had slammed tightly shut.

"R-Rainbow Dash! What did you do?!"

"I haven't done anything!"

"You didn't hold the door open?!"

"You didn't tell me to!"

When her anger diminished Rarity realised the door into the room didn't particularly matter, and went to open their exit.
To her dismay, though, it would not open.

Comments

[KiltedKey]

I'm reading this story because the premise sounds amazing. I shouldn't be a fan of fart humor like I am, and I've skipped the future chapters, but you could be a decent writer. You have some problems you need to fix though, and I am here to help you!

Your paragraph breaks are weird. You break paragraphs when you don't need to when the same character is talking. You also do a lot of floating heads talking, with no sort of body movement to back up who is where, what they are doing, how they are reacting. It's the paragraph breaks that throw off the reader. Majorly so. I'm always here to help you grow as an author if you'd like.

[LinkAndEpona]

RD likes meat now lol

[lolzone1234]

A pretty interesting start I must say. The premise of Rainbow dash and Rarity getting stuck in a mall is pretty unique compared to what I've seen myself, and I'm interested to see where the story goes from here. I give this first chapter a 6.5/10. Really good start.