Socks and Sandals: The Destroyer of Worlds

by Inspectah Dash

Confound these bucking sandals!

Pinkie's window did not lie to her. It was in fact, a bright and shiny day. Nothing in Equestria could ruin it. Not an ursa minor, not Nightmare Moon, not a swarm of parasprites, not a time-traveling Twilight, not Discord, not a dragon, not a dragon again, not a bunny stampede, not a bitch-ass griffon, not a buffalo tribe, not a clique of teenage dragons, not a train full of cake murderers, and not even a changeling invasion could stop her from enjoying this glorious day.

Pinkie Pie hopped through the streets of Ponyville. Applejack was waiting for her at Sweet Apple Acres, and harvesting apples was just the first activity on her long list of things she had to do today. Fluttershy needed help with some animals, Rarity wanted her to get some stuff from Zecora, and Rainbow Dash had some new pranks they could try out. The parties would have to wait.

Pinkie wasn't sure what Deja Vu really was, but she was convinced this was it. Ponies on the street looked at her with the same look of disbelief that Mr Cake gave her before she left. Some ponies even looked at her with expressions of terror. Pinkie's hair deflated a little, and she couldn't figure out why everyone in town was acting so weird.

"I don't get it. Why is everypony looking at me like that?" Pinkie Pie asked herself. She hopped over to where Lyra and Bonbon were chatting. The local lesbians were always good for information.

"Hi girls." Pinkie said with a sizable grin.

"Oh, hi Pinkie. What's up?" asked Lyra. Bonbon said nothing. Neither of them were paying attention to Pinkie when she was walking down the street, and they didn't notice the pink pony's new style.

Pinkie took a deep breath. "Well, first I woke up, then I stepped on a jack, then I sreamed like this: Ahhh. Then Mrs Cake gave me some socks, and they're the greatest thing ever! Then I put on some sandals and ate a yummy cupcake. I came outside, and I here I am! But ponies keep looking at me funny. Why?"

She waited for a confused looking Lyra to respond. Lyra's brain needed time to process the entirety of what Pinkie said, which only took the hyperactive pony a few seconds to blurt out. Lyra looked at her quizzically before noticing the terrible monstrosities that were attached to her hooves. Lyra drew her head back, and quickly glanced back at Bonbon, a look of worry in her eyes. Bonbon looked down.

"Holy hell, Pinkie!" Bonbon yelled. Her reaction was unexpected. Lyra was in a loss for words.

She must really like my sandals, Pinkie thought.

"Do you like em? I just got these socks today."

Bonbon was silent again. Lyra needed a reason to escape Pinkie and her hoof-worn abominations. "Uh yeah, they're great. We love them. Hey, we have to go do that uh, thing... at that place, where we should be right now. See ya."

The two ponies ran behind a corner and out of sight. Wow, she said they loved my socks and sandals. I can't wait to show Applejack, Pinkie Pie thought as she bounced in the direction of the Apple Family farm. Still, there was no explanation for why ponies kept looking at her like she was crazy. Well, crazier than usual, which is pretty damn crazy.

It only got weirder as she walked further down the street. The strange glances had become more extreme. Some ponies who looked at her winced and looked away. Mothers taking their foals to school covered their childrens' eyes when she walked by. One stallion looked around frantically for a moment and jumped through a nearby window into somepony's store. One pony dragging a carriage behind him stared at Pinkie and got distracted, before crashing his carriage through a wall of the Equestrian National Tinderbox Museum. It's uncanny that his carriage's cargo was a shipment of matches.

Pinkie Pie heard sirens, and the Ponyville fire department arrived on the scene. A few ponies threw a hose into the well and turned on the pump, while a group of fire-ponies ran inside the burning building. As interesting as this was, Pinkie had to be on her way. She headed off to Sweet Apple Acres, singing a jolly little tune, and leaving the huge plume of smoke and the crowd of panicking ponies behind.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Pinkie Pie arrived at the farm a little later than Apple Jack was expecting. The cowpony was mumbling something, pacing back and forth in front of Big Macintosh, who simply stood there and listened. She was clearly losing patience.

"There ya are, girl. Where the hay have you been? Me and Big Mac have been waitin' here fer the past half hour. Big Macintosh was startin' to get antsy." Applejack said. Big Macintosh still stood there silently, watching Applejack rant. "What took ya so long?"

"Sorry, Applejack. I was on my way here, but everypony was looking at me funny. I asked Lyra and Bonbon why, but they had to go somewhere. Then, everypony in town went crazy and started screaming, breaking stuff and setting fires."

The orange Earth pony stood there, dumbfounded. Big Mac raised an eyebrow. Thinking this was another one of Pinkie's pranks, she blew it off.

"Ya know what, nevermind. We gotta lot ta do today, and Ah don't have time fer yer shenanigans. Big Mac couldn't harvest any of the North field yesterday, so now it's up ta the three of us ta make up fer lost time. There are a lotta trees ta buck. Do ya think yer up ta the task, Pinkie?"

"Yes ma'am. You can count on me."

"Yeah, sure." Applejack didn't seem too assured of Pinkie Pie's ability to kick a tree, no matter how easy it was. "You ready, Big Mac?"

"Eeyup."

The trio headed off to the North field to begin bucking the apples. Applejack wondered if Pinkie had ever bucked a tree in her life.

"Hey Pink, have ya ever actually bucked a tree before?"

"Nope. But how hard can it be? They're just trees. I'm gonna buck those trees so hard, they'll be screaming my name and begging for more."

"Uh yeah, right." Applejack looked a little uncomfortable, and the rest of the way to the North field was spent in silence. Big Mac had no problem with that.

When they arrived at the North field, there were already buckets set up under the trees. Pinkie wondered where the Apple Family got all these buckets. There were hundreds of trees, and each tree had three buckets under it. Somewhere out there was a very happy bucket salespony.

"Alright, everypony. Let's get to buckin'." And with that, the three went their seperate ways. Applejack had no trouble bucking the first tree, and the apples fell neatly into the buckets. Big Macintosh worked with the same ease, and moved on to the next tree. Pinkie Pie lined up her back hooves, and with a "Hayaah!", her sandaled hooves made contact with the tree. Looking behind her, the bucket's weren't filled at all. In fact, none of the apples fell out of the tree, except for the one that fell on her head a second later.

"Ow. Oh, it's on now! Prepare to meet your maker, tree."

Pinkie took a few bounces back, prepared herself, and ran a beeline straight for the tree. Jumping a Pinkie-standard height into the air, she kicked the tree with all her strength. Surely enough, the apples landed securely inside their buckets. Pinkie Pie: 1 Trees: 0, the satisfied pony thought. Now which tree is next? Which tree wants a piece of the Pink?

Pinkie moved on to her next victim. She cleared her throat, trying to put on an accent. Pinkie moved closer to the tree and shoved a forehoof onto it. "Tell your apples, Pinkie Pie sends her regards."

Pinkie took a few more bounces back, ran at it, and more apples were obtained as her hooves made impact. This process went on for the next hour, and Pinkie Pie was running out of badass lines to use on the trees. It was getting hot, and she was getting thirsty. Pinkie found where Applejack and Big Mac were still bucking trees.

"Hey AJ, can we take a break for a little teensy weensy bit?"

"Sure thing sugarcube. Ah'll just finish off these last few trees, and we'll get to goin'. Ah got some apple juice ready."

Applejack finished bucking the last tree, and ran to get some applejuice. Big Mac just stood there silently, as always. A minute later, Applejack returned with three bottles of the finest apple juice this side of Canterlot. Pinkie downed the whole thing in a couple gulps, and gained a little energy back. Applejack was getting herself squared to buck her next tree. Pinkie remembered the chaos back in Ponyville, and how AJ shrugged it off as shenanigans.

"Hey AJ, why weren't you more concerned with the riots happening in Ponyville?" Applejack bucked the tree.

"I thought yall were makin' that up." She got ready to buck another tree.

"Silly, why would I make something like that up?"

"So there really is trouble in Ponyville?" She bucked, and more apples fell into their buckets.

"Yeah. I went through town and everypony was acting crazy. I got out of Ponyville just after the big fire."

"Do you think it could be because of Twilight?" the farm pony asked with a look of worry.

Now that she mentioned it, Pinkie noticed there's been an exponential rise in Ponyville disasters since Twilight came into town. But this time she wasn't even in Ponyville.

"No, Twilight's in Canterlot visiting Celestia. I don't know why everypony is acting like this." Pinkie wondered for a moment before she remembered to show Applejack her brand new style. The farm pony was looking kinda sad, but was still occupied bucking the trees. She's a bucking fiend. Pinkie thought.

"But hey, cheer up. Check out these babies." Pinkie said as she stuck out her forehoof in front her friend. Applejack's eyes widened when she looked at the brown sandals on white socks.

"Pinkie, what in tarnation are those?"

"Daaamn." said Big Mac. That was his third word of the day.

"They're super soft, and the sandals make it so I can kick trees without hurting myself. Do you like them? I love love love them!"

Neither Big Mac nor Applejack had much knowledge of fashion, but both of them knew these fowl creations needed to be destroyed. Applejack had little problems telling a small lie to a friend to spare their feelings, but telling Pinkie her hell-spawn hoofwear was nice, was an enormous lie.

Trying to think of a way to ignore the question all together, she lifted her hind legs to buck another tree. She expected her hooves to impact the tree-trunk, but instead, impacted Big Mac's face. The red stallion hit the ground with a thud, and Applejack jumped to his side. It didn't take a doctor to know that he was out cold. There was some blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth, and his face was clearly bruised.

"Darn it. Ah'm sorry, Big Mac. Let's get you back home. We'll have Granny Smith patch ya up." Applejack realized the rest of the apples weren't getting bucked today. The apples still needed to be processed.

"Pinkie, Ah need you to do something. Get as many buckets as you can back to our apple processin' barn. There are two giant barrels in the barn. One is fer good apples, and the other funnels the bad apples into a grinder. Ah need you to put the good apples in one and the bad apples in the other. Can ya do that?"

"Okie dokie lokie."

"Yeah, okay. You go do that." Applejack struggled to get Mig Macintosh onto her back, and walked towards the Apple Family home. Pinkie would have no trouble getting all these buckets to processing. AJ had left a cart to carry multiple buckets, and with the legendary speed of Pinkie Pie, the job would be done in no time. After a quick strech of her legs, she began tossing buckets onto the cart in a very Pinkie-esque fashion.

When all the apples were at the processing barn, there was the job of going through the apples and deciding which ones to keep and which had to go. Pinkie grabbed an apple out of the bunch, although it looked very unappetizing. Pinkie gave it a quick sniff and cringed. It was probably one of the worst in the bunch, and it looked inedible, so Pinkie shoved it in her mouth all at once and chewed. Mmm, not bad. Not bad at all, thought Pinkie.

"If this is one of the worst apples in the bunch, but tastes so good, then they must all be good." Pinkie said as she grabbed each bucket and started pouring the apples into the giant barrel for good apples. After each bucket was empty, Pinkie hopped towards the barn door. Before she left, she noticed a lever on the wall. Out of curiosity and just a touch of stupidity, Pinkie flipped the lever, hoping it would do something exciting. Nothing. All that resulted was a low humming sound. Pinkie hopped out of the barn, a little disappointed. Suddenly, the low humming noise turned to a loud roar of machinery behind her. There was no time to waste. Out there was a Rarity who needed a good helping.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Applejack arrived at the processing barn a few minutes after Pinkie left. Expecting to see a disaster made of her barn, she was pleased to see everything was where it should be. After a quick inspection of the good-apples barrel, Applejack's eyes widened, and a look of 'oh shit, let me guess' was expressed on her face. Looking inside the bad-apples barrel had confirmed her suspicions. "That dumb pony put every apple in the grinder." Applejack looked inside and wondered if it was possible to mass-produce apple sauce in this large a scale.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

The fire was showing signs of calming, but more and more ponies were being pulled out of the burning tinderbox museum. A light blue fire-pony pulled one of the survivors out of the wreckage. One of the pedestrians walking by earlier informed the fire chief that the pony being pulled out was the driver of the carriage that started the fire. He ran over to where the driver lay on the ground, surrounded by medical ponies. The fire chief knelt down to the pony to speak. The driver was badly burned, and it looked like he didn't have much time.

"Chief, it... it wasn't me." the pony spoke up as best he could with burnt lungs.

"What's your name, son? Who did this to you? Who caused all this?" The chief propped up the dying pony's head with a hoof.

"It was... Socks... and Sandals." the pony said before drawing his last breath. The medical pony put a hoof to his neck and shook her head sadly. The fire chief closed the pony's eyes and gave his final rites.

"Sir, what did he mean by socks and sandals?" one of the fire ponies asked.

"I don't know, Blazer." The chief looked back down to the deceased pony. "But we're gonna find out."

Blazer stated the obvious. "I have a feeling this is just the start to a really shitty day."

The fire chief-pony looked up to the sky and agreed. "A shitty day, indeed."

Comments

[Mr Ignorable]

This me gustas me greatly.

[Night Sky]

YOUR FRIEND WEARS SOCKS AND SANDALS?! you must call the police at once

[Inspectah Dash]

1150713 I tried, but the police were too afraid to apprehend him and his demonic shoes.

[Night Sky]

1150812 then you must do it. use silver bullets, holy water, a cross, a stake in the heart, the lord's prayer, and more silver bullets. bring a silver bullet m60 just to be safe

[Inspectah Dash]

1151156 Fuck that. Im goin 50Cal.

[Night Sky]

1151242 demon sandal wearers can stop a single bullet once per 10 sec. so a 50 cal wouldnt work