Gremlins
Twilight, or ‘Silverstorm’ as they’d be calling her, had her disguise and alias more or less put together at this point. Her lightly grey fur was closer to white than silver and her hair striped between purple and pure white. The cutie mark, norotiously hard to hide for most ponies, would appear as three stars in a triangle. That last detail would be the strongest deflection from her real identity. As for excuses as to why Twilight was completely oblivious about everything, they had plans for that as well.
“Alright, let’s go through this one more time.” Dash trotted through the forest, Twilight in tow.
Twilight nodded.
“Hey! How do you not know what X is?” Dash asked.
“I was neglected as a child,” Twilight responded.
“What’s your opinion on X?”
“My religion forbids me from talking about that.”
“What’s your favorite type of X?”
“I had a traumatic experience with X and would appreciate it if you didn't mention it again,” said Twilight.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” said Twilight.
“Great!” Dash stomped a hoof on the ground in applause. “Just keep cycling between those excuses and I think we’ll be okay.”
“And you’re a hundred percent sure it’s okay to go there without being invisible?” Twilight was getting more nervous the closer they got to town. They were pretty close now. “Everypony in that town is our enemy, Rainbow Dash! We need to be careful.”
“Saying they’re all our enemies is stretching it a bit,” said Dash.
“You said yourself they have a huge reward for me! And if they’re going after me then that means they’re going after you now too!”
“Look, even if they do find out who you are there isn’t one pony in Ponyville crazy enough to stand up to you besides yours truly.” Dash gestured to herself. “Believe me, I spent an entire month knocking on every single door in the town to make sure. They’d just run away in the worst case scenario.”
“Maybe we should turn back.” Twilight looked back towards her house. “We got closer than yesterday so—"
“Twilight, we’re almost there. We already ‘practiced’ going into town yesterday. We gotta at least get close enough to see it before turning back this time.”
“Okay, okay. Just don’t forget I’m the one in charge here.” Twilight tried pulling down on her hat only to realize it wasn’t there. That made her far more nervous. “Are there any hats that aren’t illegal?”
“Sure, but I have no money so good luck getting one,” said Dash. “You’ll see it won’t be so bad at all. See? There it is now! Perfectly safe.”
The town was off in the distance, but they could see it now.
“Are you sure?” Twilight ran ahead a little and squinted at the town. “It looks somewhat not safe over there.”
“Huh?” Dash squinted too.
Something was going down, a battle of some kind. A squad of pegasi in v formation was flying over the town, gunning down at something. Gunshots could be heard all over the place and something was clearly on fire if the smoke plume was any indication.
Of course something would happen today of all days! The only question now was what kind of monster had come to ruin the day.
She didn’t have much time to guess before the answer ran right by her. A lone gremlin came down the path just a little way, then ran off laughing into the woods.
Gremlins were far from the most dangerous thing you could run into, but they ran around in huge gangs and were incredibly annoying anyway. They looked like little chimpanzees, only hairless, green, gooey, and with large claws at the end of their monkey hands.
“Oh, come on!” Dash opened her forelegs wide and yelled at the town itself. “Gremlins would just happen to show up now of all times, wouldn’t they? Now somepony’s gotta go find the gremlin king and blah blah blah.”
“Hold on, which part of this are you reacting to?” Twilight looked over everything with equal suspicion. “Is it the little green things?”
"Yeah," said Dash. "They’re like a space fungus that grows on meteors or something. One must have hit somewhere. This isn’t very common at all, I promise you.”
“Hold on! There are space mushrooms?!” Twilight looked up at the sky.
“Some epic, god-tier battle happened a few thousand years ago.” Dash made an explosion sound and lifted one of her hooves. “It was so epic and intense that huge chunks of rock were thrown into outer space! In space, super radiation is intense, so it turns the mold into gremlins. When one of those rocks finally falls down, we get gremlins. Makes sense?”
There were two major sources of super radiation: toxic waste and meteors. Meteors could bring all sorts of problems. Gremlins were a relatively mild disaster to get hit with from one.
“Almost.” Twilight looked around at the continued destruction. The first pony she saw in Ponyville was one with a gremlin on her back running around in circles yelling as the gremlin pulled her ears. Twilight quickly hid behind Rainbow Dash as she approached, though what she was afraid of Dash couldn’t be sure. “I could instantly destroy all of them with a massive chain lighting spell if you want.”
“We’re trying to lay low,” Dash reminded her, pushing forward through the chaos. “Somepony else will take care of this one. Let’s just ignore them for now.”
“Are you sure?” Twilight ran up to her side.
“Nah, these gremlins are like the lowest tier of monster,” Dash assured her. “They rarely ever actually kill anypony. Just play mean pranks and cause property damage.”
To prove her point, Dash picked up a nearby rock and chucked it at one of them. On contact, the gremlin’s body was reduced to green slime. Another nearby gremlin, who’d been laughing hysterically as it hung from a weathervane, lost its grip and similarly splattered into slime after falling not even two stories.
“But there are a whole lot of them,” said Twilight. “There have to be thousands."
As they got closer, the gremlins outnumbered ponies in the streets. They were running around all over the place, filling the streets and rooftops. But even without help from ponies they were killing themselves off quickly.
“Yeah. They have like a one in a million chance of surviving until adulthood so they gotta have literally a million kids every time to compensate.” Dash shrugged. “Nature is freaking brutal. You know, there’s this one species of ant called the honeypot ant. They like, lock a few of their own up and force feed them 24/7 so they get ridiculously fat. Then during winter? They cannibalize the fatties! How metal is that?”
The two of them pushed on until they were in the town proper. As soon as they were in, Twilight started clinging hard to Dash, hiding behind her like a lost puppy.
“Rainbow Dash, who’s that?” Twilight ducked behind her and pointed to some earth pony.
“I have no idea.”
“What do you mean you have no idea!” Twilight poked her head up just enough to yell at her hiding spot. “You mean you haven’t taken inventory of every single pony living in this town?!”
“Nah, I’m too lazy.”
“But what if he’s plotting to kill us right now?! If you don’t even know his name you can’t rule that out.” Twilight, with a sudden bolt of braveness, stepped out to confront this stranger. “Hey, you! What’s your name?”
“Huh?” He blinked then turned to the two, confused. “My name’s Caramel. Who are—?”
“What are your intentions?!” Twilight yelled at him.
“What?” Caramel looked from side to side. “I don’t think I have any?”
“You expect me to believe you have no motivations whatsoever?” Twilight glared at him. “That you sit around and merely exist for the sake of existing? I can’t believe such a thing! No one could be that pathetic! You’re clearly lying!”
“Twilight.” Dash tried to pull Twilight aside.
“What? No!” Caramel took a step back. “I mean I— I have a job so I’m not a total loser and— ah jeez! My dad was right! My life is meaningless, isn’t it?! I am a pathetic loser!”
Caramel ran off crying.
“That takes care of him. That just leaves—" Twilight briefly stepped out from behind Rainbow Dash to take stock of the remaining ponies. “Hundreds? Or did you say there were thousands?! How do you deal with this many? You can’t possibly keep track of all of them, can you?”
“Like I said, I don’t keep track of them, remember?” Dash asked. “Nearly all of them aren’t plotting evil. You can just deal with the ones that are when they show up.”
“But aren’t you scared one of them might attack us?” Twilight asked. “If you don’t know any of them—"
“Look, if that was common enough to worry about this place would be in total chaos, right?” Dash reasoned.
“This does look a little chaotic.” Twilight looked over at one gremlin who’d just run out of a wine store and was now smashing the bottle it stole against the wall.
“Yeah, yeah! This just had to happen today.” Dash rolled her eyes. “But this isn’t a pony problem. I say the fact that we even have a civilization despite infinite sources of chaos speaks volumes to how good we are.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Twilight admitted but remained hidden behind her.
“Good! Remember, no talking to anypony and try to freak out as little as possible.” Dash started deeper into town with Twilight at her side, the witch immediately rushed after Dash anywhere she went for fear of being left even one step behind.
Twilight reacted in terror to everything she saw, be it normal or gremlin related.
They passed a mail mare opening a mailbox. Some snot-nosed kid passing by on a skateboard. An exterminator sitting on her roof gunning down passing gremlins one by one. A group of gremlins outside a hardware store were quickly killing themselves off with a lawnmower. A group of children skipping rope and another slaughtering gremlins with wooden toy swords.
Every one of these terrified Twilight, but she kept cool and resisted the urge to shout out or ask any questions for now.
As they walked through town, Twilight’s barrel was all but glued onto Dash’s, the witch constantly pressing against her like a scared foal. Dash kind of wanted to put a wing around her, but then everypony would immediately assume they were dating and anyone Dash knew was sure to try and talk to her then. Stupid overzealous shipping culture.
They finally got to the small apartment building Dash lived in. For a brief second, she thought maybe it’d feel good to be home again. There was a pile of stuff outside the building, which Dash very quickly realized was all of her things.
Worse, there was a group of gremlins jumping around on top of it. Two of them were ripping springs out of Dash’s mattress. One of the two pressed too hard against a spring and got sent flying into a wall where it got smushed into goo.
Worse, the other three gremlins had gotten into her drawers, had taken out some of her Summoner Knights cards! They were throwing them at each other, laughing hysterically. As they did, the illusion effects went off summoning all manner of tiny ghosts, undead knights, werewolves, and the like, much to their amusement.
“Hey! Get out of here!” Dash charged at the gremlins, the three of them bolting as soon as she got close. Dash grabbed the cards that had been scattered about the area before looking back at her pile of things. “They took all of my stuff out? Wait, no! They wouldn’t have arranged it so neatly.”
Dash flew over to the door to her apartment to find a padlock on it. She put both hooves on her face and slowly dragged them down, groaning. At least the landlord lived right here so she could confront him right away.
She went straight up to his door and knocked loudly while Twilight approached her pile of things with curiosity. Dash didn’t stop banging on the door until that guy finally opened up.
“What?!” The landlord slammed his peep slit open so Dash could only see his glaring eyes. “Oh, it’s you. Finally decided to stop hiding, have you?”
“What the crow, dude?” Dash kept her eyes locked on him and pointed at her stuff. “Why is all my stuff outside during a gremlin storm?”
“You haven’t paid rent in three months!” The landlord yelled at her. “I evicted you a month ago, but you kept dodging my attempts to contact you!”
“Hey! I got kidnapped, okay?” Dash put a hoof on her chest. “What do you want from me?”
“The rent!”
“Okay, I walked right into that,” Dash admitted. “But isn’t there like, rent protection for ponies who get kidnapped or something? I feel like that should be a thing, but I honestly don’t know.”
“I don’t know either and I don’t care!” The landlord shouted back. “I’ve had enough of your crazy excuses and ideas. You were going to go find Twilight Sparkle or something like that, weren’t you? Why don’t you go ask her for help?”
And he laughed and laughed hysterically before slamming the slit shut. Dash’s eye twitched. How Dash wished she could respond to that.
“I mean,” said Twilight. “I could turn him into a frog or something.”
“Nah, we’d better not,” Dash said reluctantly.
“But why not?” Twilight pointed at the door. “He’s keeping you out of your own home. He’s clearly evil.”
“According to society, I’m the bad one in this situation.” Dash walked over to her stuff. “One way or another you gotta give somepony money each month or you don’t get to live inside. Owning a house is like some kind of utopian dream these days.”
Any plan she could have had about escaping from Twilight just crossed the line into impossible now. Dash needed a place to crash!
Dash opened up the dresser she kept her Summoner Knights cards in. Thankfully, most of them were still there. Though sadly, her collection was no longer complete.
“I don’t think I understand,” said Twilight. “Shelter is the most basic necessity. How can you people be unable to secure that when you’re advanced enough to build robots and moving pictures?”
“Yeah, sure.” Dash rolled her eyes, idly going through her cards to see what was missing. “I could barely describe what stamps are but let me try to explain how years of over-reliance on housing as a form of investment have led to basic shelter being largely unattainable in the most advanced era of civilization.”
Dash tried to decide if any of her stuff was worth keeping. There was her bed with a spring sticking out of it, her broken chair, her blender, and radio were the most promising. In the end, the radio was the only thing she put in her backpack. The gremlins could have the rest.
She went to check her mail one last time before heading out. There were a ton of letters stuffed inside there, mostly junk.
Then she came across a pink envelope that felt heavier than the others. Dash read the address to see it was from Pinkie Pie! She tore it open straight away to find a small card that guaranteed ‘one free meal a day to the pony holding this card plus one for life’ at Curse Burger. It even had Dash’s name and cutie mark printed on it.
“Oh hey!” Dash held the card up in the air. “I forgot all about this! It’s the card for free burgers for life! I honestly thought these were an urban legend. I haven’t had anything good to eat in months!”
“You said you liked those pumpkin seeds!” Twilight puffed her cheek out, annoyed.
“Sure. But real talk, we both suck at cooking.” Dash went back to her mail. “Trust me, even fast food is gonna be like ambrosia to you.”
Though the fact Pinkie could get one of these on-demand made Dash wonder what kind of connection Pinkie had to Curse Tech. Maybe she was just a large shareholder. That mare had to be rich at this point.
She went through the rest of the mail, her most recent bank statement being the only one she deemed necessary to read, and threw the rest of it to the hungry gremlin who quickly suffocated trying to shove them all down its throat.
Dash braced herself to see how much debt she was in now after months of bank fees hitting her left and right.
But the number wasn’t red!
There was a deposit for fifty thousand bits! Her mind reeled seeing a number that high, but before long she remembered Pinkie once again.
“And she put fifty grand in my bank account for keeping quiet too,” said Dash. “I’ve had never this kind of money before! But how’d she get my bank account number? Or my address? She is psychic. It'd be creepy if she can just guess all that, though.
Ah, heck! Dash didn’t even care! She had a positive amount of money for once!
“Are you going to 'pay the rent' now?” Twilight asked.
“Um.” Dash looked back at the apartment building. “Nah! Screw that guy! Let’s go get burgers and irresponsibly blow a bunch of it!”
“What?! I thought we were going back right after this.” Twilight pressed up against Dash’s side for support, clearly unnerved by the idea of staying in town much longer. “I don’t know if now is a good time to try anything else.”
“What?” Dash turned around. “This is the perfect time to go explore the town! Everypony’s distracted by the gremlins. Look at how distracted that guy is.”
A stallion ran by, stumbling as a gremlin clung to his face, drawing on it with a marker. He eventually ran into a bunch of garbage cans. Five more gremlins popped out of them and started throwing garbage at him.
“That is pretty distracted.” Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah! It’ll be fine! Trust me!” Dash led Twilight off towards the burger place.
Explaining the convoluted housing market turned out to be incredibly easy.
“So, you spend half of your resources giving yourselves permission to live in houses that have already been built?” Twilight summed it up. “That’s the most disgustingly wasteful thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you people are completely helpless.”
“Yeah, well we’re not as collectivist as you seem to think,” said Dash. “They don’t just give out free housing and food. Though, I guess I’m an exception now.”
Dash held up her card as she walked into the burger place.
Behind the counter, the staff was fighting a few gremlins off. One pony slammed one down onto the grill, melting its head off. Another threw hot grease on a small group of them, melting them all. A gremlin snuck up from behind on the grease pony, but when it tried to jump him, it fell into a vat of boiling grease and died as well.
A particularly dangerous-looking gremlin got its hands on a knife but promptly cut itself to pieces as it swung the blade around trying to threaten the ponies.
“Sorry for the delay.” A yellow pegasus mare came up to the counter at last and bowed her head. “What can I— oh! It’s you, Rainbow Dash!”
To her chagrin, Raindrops was the one who was running the register right now. Raindrops was one of the other ponies Dash went to school with. Like everyone who she went to school with, Raindrops looked down on her a little despite working in a fast-food place.
Loath as she was to admit it, having a fast-food job did put Raindrops ahead of Dash on the ladder. Unless you counted her job as Twilight’s lackey.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Raindrops. “What did you run off looking for this time? Bigfoot? A mummy? Twilight? Aliens? I take it you didn’t find any of them, huh?”
Raindrops chuckled at her.
“For the record, I did find something.” Dash slammed her card down on the counter. “Ha! I eat here for free now! How do you like those rainbows?!”
“What?” Raindrops looked over the card, she had to get the manager to come verify that the thing was legit but, in the end, they had to accept it. “Where did you get this? I didn’t think these things actually existed and I work here.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” Dash smirked, eyes closed, and turned up one of her hooves.
“Please.” Raindrops rolled her eyes. “You’re so full of it. You probably just won a scratch and sniff contest.”
“And I want two of the most expensive thing on the menu,” said Dash.
“That’s only like 12 bits but okay.”
Raindrops rang up the order, the total coming out to zero. Then she looked at Twilight, maybe just now realizing the two of them were together.
“And who the crow are you and why are you hanging around Rainbow Dash?” Raindrops asked. “Dash is totally cringe, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony but Derpy who was willing to hang around her.”
“My religion forbids me to answer,” said Twilight. “I’m of the dusk coven.”
“Huh?” Raindrops blinked. “I’ve never heard of that. What province are you from?”
“I was neglected as a child,” said Twilight. “I don’t know anything about a province.”
“What?” Raindrops looked skeptical. “What’d they do to you that you don’t even know where you’re from?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” said Twilight.
“What?!” Raindrops reeled. “It was so bad they classified it?! You know, something like that happened to a guy I’m going to college with. You poor thing! Well, no worries, this is a safe space.”
“I had a traumatic incident with safe spaces and would appreciate it if you not mention them again,” said Twilight.
“I’m so sorry!” Raindrops covered her mouth.
“I’m running out of lines," Twilight whispered to Dash.
“I think you’ve said enough, Raindrops.” Dash glared at her, grabbed the food, and walked off.
Somehow that worked out! Sitting down to eat that burger felt like her great moment of triumph.
The burger tasted a million times better.
“Maybe I should have asked this before.” Twilight glared at her burger. “But are these burgers cursed? You keep calling this place Curse Burger.”
“Not exactly. The potatoes and soy beans that mare used to make this stuff are cursed.” Dash bit into it. “Place is owned by Curse Tech. They do some ethically questionable stuff with curses and super radiation. Like these fries aren’t made from normal potatoes, but super potatoes they invented! They’ll try to strangle you with their roots but they also taste amazing if you manage to defeat them.”
Twilight looked skeptical, but slowly took a bit of her burger.
“This is the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten!” Twilight’s eyes watered in amazement.
Twilight had zero self control and devoured her burger and fries in a matter of moments. Still she wanted more.
“I need more of this!” Twilight demanded.
“Guess I got fifty grand so why not?” Dash got up to get another burger.
After a small feast, Dash and Twilight staggered back outside.
“Well that was great.” Dash stretched. “But what do we do next?”
“Maybe we should go back home?” Twilight yawned. “I’m so tired now.”
“I guess have been here a while.” Dash looked up at the sun. It was still in the afternoon, but they’d been in town for hours. She’d gotten what she came here for. “Maybe we can go back.”
Twilight nodded, clearly a bit exhausted by the day already.
There seemed to be more gremlins around town now, even though their numbers should be dropping dramatically. Must have been a big meteor, to the point Dash was surprised she hadn’t heard it back at Twilight’s house even.
But that was somepony else’s problem. Dash had her own ‘mission’ or whatever she was doing. She really did need to come up with an end game for all of this. It certainly felt like she was making progress though and that was good enough for now.
They passed by one of Starlight’s followers, preaching on the street. The guy was immediately recognizable in his black cloak with a green trim around the edges. The higher your rank in the cult, the more elaborate the design around the edge. His were arranged into green, curved triangles remniscent of waves. Dash wasn't sure where that put him. She did know, however, that the truly high ranking ones had a more vine-like design.
Given the track record of interacting with gods, demons, and the like in the past, ponies were wary of any religion these days. Allowing these people to stay in society was controversial but Starlight was the number one ranked slayer and had defeated countless monsters. That was perhaps the main reason her cult was allowed to spread.
“Starlight Glimmer holds the supreme truth of the universe!” the preacher called out to no one in particular. “What I speak is the most important message you will hear in your lifetimes! Passing me by is a grave mistake indeed. The foolish refuse to listen and the foolish will perish!”
“Huh?” Twilight stopped to look at him. “You know the supreme truth of the universe? I never expected some random guy to know that much. What is it?”
“You want to talk to him of all ponies?” Dash rolled her eyes and tried to pull Twilight along. “Come on, don’t waste our time.”
“But he’s saying this is the most important thing ever, right?” Twilight asked. “Shouldn’t we listen to something like that?”
“Silver—"
“Are you saying you’ve never heard of our prophet Starlight Glimmer?” The preacher jumped down from his perch.
“No. Who’s that?” Twilight asked with complete innocence.
Dash could practically see little money symbols flash in his eyes as he realized Twilight was legitimately this naïve.
“Why, Starlight is the wisest, most noble, and powerful pony who ever lived! She has the highest record of any slayer, has saved our world countless times. None can match her strength, intelligence or beauty! Her knowledge surpasses that of a PhD's in each of the 200 fields she's studied. She even bowled a perfect 300 game on her first try then vowed to never bowl again so the rest of us wouldn’t feel bad compared to her. What compassion!”
“I’m not sure what all of that means, but it sounds very impressive,” said Twilight.
“Twilight.” Dash yanked her tail, trying to pull her away.
“Yes! It was the most impressive anypony ever was!” the preacher raised his forelegs to the sky. “But it goes far beyond that! Starlight has traveled beyond reality to bring us the most profound truths of the universe. She alone has conviened with Cosmos, the mightiest god of them all, and seen beyond the veil of what we perceive as reality. She has uncovered dangers beyond your wildest imagination"
“What dangers?” Twilight asked.
“The gods are against us. The universe is consumed in void and slowly crumbling around us. You need only look up at the night sky to know this. Any day now this illusion of safety may crumble and absolute chaos could pour into our world."
“This does sound like a big deal! And you’re saying this is going to happen any day now?” Twilight asked.
“Yes! Any day! It could happen tomorrow or a year from now, but it will happen soon! Ponies are incomplete and broken beings who cannot possibly survive the world to come in our current form. But thankfully, Starlight offers reasonably priced courses that will—"
Getting into an argument about religion was the absolute last thing Dash wanted to do on any given day but was just so naïve on the subject she couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer.
“Twilight, there’s like a hundred other religions and a thousand cults and all of them have definitive proof that their god or demonic hell beast or whatever at least exists.” Dash pointed an accusing hoof up at the preacher. “Starlight’s cult can’t even do that much! You’d be better off just picking another one at random. This guy’s just trying to take advantage of you.”
Two or three ponies stopped to watch, hoping for this to devolve into something entertaining. This was exactly what Dash didn’t want to happen. To his credit, the preacher wasn’t at all rattled by the accusation. He probably got this a lot.
“We’re not a cult, we’re a religion! You can’t just go around calling every religion you don’t like a cult.” He turned his chin up just a little, smiling down at Dash. “And I’m trying to help this poor lost soul. As for evidence, I’m more than happy to debate for Starlight has given us more than we need! She has been bestowed with the divine miracle to create true void, something no mortal could ever do. But not only does being able to create it prove her divinity, but our religion is further supported by the revelation that follows. True void is stable meaning—"
“No, it’s not,” Twilight objected.
The preacher was briefly taken aback by the contradiction.
“What are you objecting to?” he asked.
“True void is the same thing as true chaos,” said Twilight. “It’s the least stable thing imaginable and always decays into something.”
“Yes, yes. Some heretical philosophers and scientists argued about whether or not nothingness would be stable in the past,” said the preacher with a laugh. “But thanks to Starlight’s revelation it’s all been settled! She has done what many have said to be not just physically impossible, but philosophically impossible! We must praise Starlight!”
“Yes, it has been settled and it degrades into something!” Twilight was looking seriously offended now. “This Starlight pony is lying to you.”
“And who are you to question a prophet?” he asked. “Can you make true void? It’s not something any mere pony could do. Only Starlight!”
“I’m pretty sure any pony could make true void if they just—"
“Sorry, we gotta go.” Dash quickly pulled Twilight away.
Twilight struggled just a little, but not enough to keep Dash from bringing her down around the corner.
“Silver, we’re overstepping our first trip here.” As soon as they were out of earshot, Dash whispered to Twilight. “You can’t admit to doing something miraculous as soon as you get here.”
“But that’s not true!” Twilight complained, offended that somepony would contradict her life’s work like that. “I know for a fact that nothingness is unstable and will always collapse into something. If she’s saying it’s stable, then she’s either lying about being able to create true void or about what she observed when she did. Probably the former.”
“Yeah, and honestly just the fact that you can do it kind of undermines her claim to divinity, huh?” Dash nodded and leaned up against the wall. “I kind of just dismissed those guys for not having the same proof the other cults do so this is the first I’m hearing about Starlight’s ‘miracle’. You know, I am almost tempted to just go over there and disprove their entire religion.”
“Yes! How dare she lie about something so important!” Twilight nodded in fast agreement. “I still have no idea what this religion thing is, but they’re clearly wrong! Once everypony knows the truth, they’ll uh— what will they do again?”
Dash had to think about that one. What would they do?
“Now that I think about it, that probably wouldn’t change a lot of their minds,” said Dash. “Cause if you’re in a cult you’ve already invested too much time, money, and emotion to just back out of it, you know? There was this other cult where the leader said a UFO was going to come on a certain date and when it didn’t almost nopony left.”
“But I want to go over and lecture her about this,” Twilight complained.
“Yeah, yeah. You and a million other ponies, but we don’t want to mess with Starlight if we can avoid it,” said Dash. “She’s ranked number one in the organization I’m from. She’s probably going to be president in— oh wait! Or did the election already happen?”
“Election?” Twilight asked. “What’s that?”
“Well, we get to vote on which of the elite four we want to be president of the agency,” said Dash. “Our actual government is laughably weak, so they’re the real ruler. That is, they’re the one who gets the most say on what’s illegal, see?”
“And this Starlight liar would get to decide what’s illegal if she wins?” Twilight asked. “She could just declare anything illegal she wants? What if she declares card games illegal?”
“I mean she wouldn’t have that much power, but—"
“You can’t let her do that! Everypony needs to know she’s lying before then!”
“I’m pretty sure everypony already knows she’s a liar,” said Dash. “She’s a politician, you know. Besides, I think the election might have already happened.”
“You don’t know when this election thing happens?” Twilight asked.
“It depends on who wins the debate.” Dash ran up to the first pony passing by who wasn’t already preoccupied with the gremlins. “Hey, buddy! Do you know if the debate ended yet?”
“Nah, it’s still going! They’re on day ten and if it lasts till midnight it’ll be the longest debate in history. Isn’t that cool?” he asked.
“Somepony’s been debating for ten days?” Twilight asked.
“Hey, hey! We might still be able to catch it.” Dash motioned towards where the movie theater was. “You said you wanted to watch a movie, right? Well the theater’s the place you gotta go to see the news anyway and we got fifty grand to blow. You’re not supposed to talk in the theater so we should be good.”
Twilight frowned up at the sun. It was still only a little after noon.
“I’m tired, but I’m also suddenly curious about all this,” Twilight admitted with a nod. “Fine.”
Dash decided to take Twilight to an R-rated movie so there wouldn’t be any annoying kids around. It was something about a mummy and it’d been out for a while.
Her plan worked as there was literally nopony else in the room. Already the projector was playing the pre-movie cartoons and commercials. The actual movie was only part of the attraction and a newsreel played at least once before and after, along with short documentaries, popular songs, and the like. Some ponies just went to the movies to watch the news.
But right now the news wasn’t playing so Dash left Twilight for a moment to buy a bunch of junk food. She could afford that now!
Of course, a gremlin had somehow gotten into the popcorn machine and was laughing hysterically as the staff tried to get it out. Eventually, they decided to just turn the machine on, bursting the gremlin into goo, then cleaning it out afterward. But there were already a few bags made so Dash just got some of those.
When Dash got back, Twilight was sitting in her seat, looking up at the screen, mesmerized by some cartoon.
There were two kernels of popcorn, each with big cartoon eyes. One of them had a propeller hat and the other had a long, white beard.
“You see, my child,” said the grandpa popcorn. “Only one of two fates awaits us! Those of us who are lucky are bought en masse by the towering gods that exist outside the bag that is our home. But we are not even worthy to be their chattel slaves, no, we are but food to them. They will tear us to shreds with their teeth and we will burn in their stomach acid.”
Several cartoon popcorn kernels were shown smiling, then being broken to pieces in a pony’s mouth before going down to a stomach.
“Does it hurt to get eaten?” the popcorn child asked.
“Yes!” the grandcorn admitted. “But our deaths are not in vain for we shall nourish the gods and become one with them! It’s better than the fate that awaits those who are unworthy. We go to the garbage heap where we slowly rot in agony, becoming disconnected from the souls of our ancestors for all eternity.”
“Gee willikers! I sure hope our gods hurry to the concession stand and buys up all of us before we go to popcorn hell!”
The two popcorn kernels looked straight at the screen.
“This is disturbing,” Twilight said. “I can see why it’d be ‘rated R’.”
“That’s a commercial.” Dash sat down.
“A what?” Twilight gave some of the popcorn Dash brought back with her a suspicious poke.
“Oh, it’s going to the news!” Dash pointed up at the screen as the newsreel started playing.
It wasn’t long before they cut to a live feed of the debate and Twilight got to see two of the elite four. Nailbat and Flash Bang stood behind two podiums on the stage.
Almost as if they were specifically created to be diametrically opposed to one another, you could tell these two wouldn’t get along just by glancing at them.
The way Nailbat normally dressed, you couldn’t make much out about him other than the fact that he was a lanky, unkempt stallion. He wore a trademarked green hoodie and a black face mask with the lower half of a skull covering his jaw. The hoodie was enchanted to cover what little of his face would have been visible when it was up in shadow, so only two glowing blue circles where his eyes were could be seen.
Always at his side with his namesake baseball bat with a single nail sticking out of it. Ten years ago, a single blow from that bat was enough to throw the tarrasque off of Canterlot Mountain and leave it in the coma that it was in until this day.
Flash Bang, his opposite in all ways, was glaring at him as he spoke. Where he was tall and lanky, she was short and stocky, redish orange with a bllue mane. Dash couldn't say what Nailbat's cutie mark was but Flash Bangs was the Equestrian pheonix inside a sheild, barely one step off just being Equestria's flag itself.
Where Nailbat almost always worked alone, Flash Bang had a small army that reported to her directly, only accepting the most impressive ponies as recruits. Flash Bang had a long list of major military victories under her belt. Her entire family had a long legacy in Equestria, with nearly every generation producing at least one president.
Her grandfather, Flash Blade, being the most recent of the most pretigeous of her ancestors. He had lead the invasion of Manehattan and fought off the Bloodstorm Cartel. Frankly, in Dash's eyes, Flash Bang seemed increasingly desperate to live up to her grandfather.
“Where’s the other two?” Twilight asked.
“I dunno. Starlight probably didn’t bother coming at all. She’d win if she did show up,” said Dash.
“The fact that mental disorders are criminalized is the real insanity here,” argued Nailbat. “It’s like we live in some parody of an actual nation! Several of the ‘monsters’ we’re supposed to hunt are merely harmless, oppressed minorities caught in too wide a net. The ones that are potential dangers are often only hostile towards us because we give them no right to exist at all! We would be far safer if we allowed ghosts to be on our side and help protect us from actual threats.”
“My opponent wishes to reduce my motives to nothing but bigotry,” said Flash Bang, “when in fact this is truly a matter of survival. Ghosts are not slightly different ponies, but monsters! They have slaughtered countless ponies and have brought civilization to the brink of collapse! The only reason society still exists at all in the face of the enormous threats that surrounded us is because we have no tolerance for them! We must destroy Crater Cemetery, hunt down every witch, burn down the castles of the mad scientists, destroy the werewolf villages, and eliminate every cult if we are to survive! And yes, that includes Starlight’s cult!”
“See, that last part’s the reason why Flash Bang’s going to lose the election,” Dash commented.
“That mare sounds like she’d be even worse than Starlight,” said Twilight. “If she wants to hunt down all the witches that’d mean she’d come bother us.”
“Huh?” Dash idly sipped her soda for a moment before remembering that she was an honorary witch now. “Oh crap! You’re probably right. I should vote for Nailbat.”
“Mental disorders should not be criminalized!” Nailbat shouted over Flash Bang only to be shouted over himself a moment later.
“Wait. They’re just repeating the same thing over and over?” Twilight looked back and forth between the two of them as they kept repeating those talking points.
“Yeah, pretty much.” Dash nodded. “That’s how these always go down. You can only do so much actual discussion so eventually, you have no choice but to just start shouting the same thing on repeat if you want to last more than a couple of days.”
“So, when you say they’ve been debating for days—"
“Yeah, see you gotta have super-equine strength to be part of the elite four. These guys can argue non-stop for days no problem.”
“That sounds like a complete waste of time,” said Twilight. “You can’t have a productive discussion like that.”
“This isn’t a discussion, heck it’s not even really a ‘debate’ anymore. See, ponies realized that you’re just going to end up assuming whoever you agreed with going in won the debate and no one’s mind is going to be changed, so they decided to make it more objective. The elite four shout over each other non-stop without food, water or rest until they faint. The vote happens the day after it ends, so whoever collapses looks like a total loser right before the vote.”
In the middle of their shouting, both ponies on the stage got hit with a dart they didn’t attempt to block. The contents of the dart were potent, making both of them fall to the ground at once.
“Oh, yeah!” Dash leaned forward to watch with more intent. “Forgot to mention, they get hit with an increasingly powerful tranquilizer dart every twelve hours on top of it all.”
Dash was on the edge of her seat watching the two of them.
“You— your mom is dumb.” Nailbat struggled to his feet.
“No.” Flash Bang panted heavily but managed to get up as well a moment later. “Your mom is the dumb one!”
“See?” Dash marveled at them. “That dart would have paralyzed a normal pony but they’re still at it! Aren’t they so cool? Debates are way more entertaining now!”
“Yeah, well I’m way stronger than either of them!” Twilight huffed. “I could debate for ten weeks if I wanted to.”
Just as they were cutting back to the news, something about corn subsidies, another group of ponies came in. And Dash had been so close to getting the whole theater to herself!
They were a bunch of teenagers too! Who let them in here?!
“Ugh! Why do they always put boring stuff before the movie?” one of the three teens, a pink one, loudly complained as she sat down two rows behind Dash. “If I cared about the news, I’d just kill myself and get it over with.”
“You know, the news doesn’t even aim to inform you anymore,” another teenage girl said. “Its purpose is to make you angry and afraid so you’ll keep watching. Old ponies are just too stupid to realize that and keep watching out of habit thinking any of this stuff is important.”
“I only watch the news for the exploding heads, dude,” the only boy in the group spoke next. “And I don’t see any heads exploding if you know what I mean, dude.”
The news was saying something about Crater Cemetery now, but Dash could hardly hear any of it.
“If the growing crisis that is ghosts continues to escalate—" the news reporter said.
“Dyuh! The growing crisis could escalate until I’m a total loser,” the pink teen said in mockery of the guy’s voice.
And the teens started laughing.
“Can you keep it down?” Dash asked them. “You’re not the only ones in here and we’re trying to watch this.”
“Omigosh, grandma here is actually watching the news,” the silver teenager snickered.
“You’re such a 23 skiddoo!” The pink teenager rolled her eyes and threw a piece of popcorn down at her.
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“I did, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say,” said Dash.
“She doesn’t even know what 23 skiddoo means!” The pinkish teenager elbowed her silver friend and the two of them laughed hysterically.
“I came to an R-rated movie so I wouldn’t have to put up with any kids,” said Dash. “You know you’re not allowed in here without an adult, right? If you snot-nosed brats can’t behave, I’m gonna go snitch on you.”
“Our new best friend got us in.” The teen laughed. “We already talked to the manager before you bring it up. Her fake ID checked out one hundred percent.”
“See the trick is to technically be 68 depending on how you look at it.” A familiar voice came from behind.
Dash’s ears perked up. She turned around to see Pinkie coming through, levitating a truckload of snacks with her. She sat down with the other teens, dropping multiple bags of popcorn, boxes of candy, dozens of burgers and hot dogs, and enough soda to drown a grown stallion. Their seats were now surrounded by a wall of junk food, a fortified snack castle.
“Oh! Rainbow Dash! It’s me! Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie waved excitedly then picked up a large bottle of soda. “I’m drinking an entire liter of soda and nothing bad’s gonna happen tomorrow! Isn’t that incredible?! Isn’t this amazing?!”
“Pinkie?”
“Yeah! For your information I did find a malt shop,” said Pinkie. “But everypony there was either a grandparent or a grandkid, so I guess maybe that’s a tie? It’s so weird but I keep forgetting about you! I’ve never forgotten to invite somepony to one of my parties before. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, I wonder what could have made you forget.” Dash looked at Twilight.
“That’s the psychic that attacked me.” Twilight leaned over Dash’s shoulder to glare at Pinkie, quickly deflecting away from herself.
“Yeah! Remember when I repeatedly assaulted you?” Pinkie laughed to herself. “Oh, that was so awesome! Oh, wait. Why are you in town? Nothing— nothing fishy is it?”
The two glared at one another, locking eyes.
“We’re just watching a movie!” Dash moved between the two of them. “Silverstorm here just wants to look around town!”
“Oh! I don’t know who that is but that’s fine.” Pinkie shoved her face into one of her bags of popcorn.
“But what are you doing here?” Dash asked.
“Watching a movie, duh.” Pinkie rolled her eyes. “What? Do ponies just come here to eat? Haha! Oh, yeah! These are my cool teenager friends! Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Snails.”
Snails? Dash remembered him. He was in sixth grade when she was a senior in high school. He’d been this gangly, buck-toothed, flat-heated, zit-ridden, snot-nosed loser. But now? Now he was like this chiseled Adonis, would have towered over most stallions. He had dusty hair and intense blue eyes and irresistible boyish good looks. His smile shone like the sun.
Puberty must have loved that kid. Dash couldn’t blame any filly who wanted to hang around him.
“Whoa, dude!” Snails looked like his mind was blown the moment he saw Dash. “Your hair is like— like there’s thirty thousand rainbows inside it. It’s tripping my tubulars, dude!”
He was still an idiot though.
“Tch!” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Who is this, Pinkie? Your great, great, great grandma? I don’t want her getting her old pony smell all over me.”
“I’m like six years older than you guys,” Dash pointed out. “We’re the same generation. I was even in school with Snails at the same time.”
“More like six quadrillion years!” Diamond said getting two of the other three to laugh with her. “Anypony over the age of 16 is basically dead.”
“Yeah, man!” Snails kept laughing the longest. “I’d have to eat like six quesadillas to be as old as you!”
Diamond Tiara gave her friend a stern look of disgust.
“You’re lucky you’re the hottest guy in our class, Snails,” Diamond Tiara warned him.
“Why the crow are you hanging out with a bunch of teenagers anyway?” Dash asked Pinkie.
“Well, that’s a funny story! See, I was chasing after all that—" Pinkie looked at the other teens then winked at Dash. “To complete my rare fork collection. I learned that a crystal skull on my list was being given out as a prize for the pinball tournament in town. Just a few months ago I was shaking my hoof at those darn gizmo boxes for corrupting the youth, but suddenly I found myself capable of learning its actual name! Soon I realized that I was even capable of figuring out how to play it! So there I was, in the arcade practicing for the tournament all day and all night.”
“Okay.” Dash didn’t see where this was going yet.
“That’s when the truancy officer showed up and dragged me to high school!” Pinkie went on. “I wasn’t able to convince him or the principal that I already graduated high school and got shipped to detention where I met Snails here.”
“It was on the eight, dude!” Snails laughed. “Turns out I didn’t even have detention that day. I just get it so often I go there out of habit now.”
“But when the teacher unhinged her jaw and tried to devour my brain in hopes of getting my psychic powers, I started to suspect something may be wrong at Ponyville High.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “Anyway! Long story short, together me and Snails solved the mystery of the missing sixth-graders, slew the basilisk, and got into this huge zombie dance battle!”
“We solved that mystery good, dude. See the most important clue,” Snails tapped his head, “is the friends we made along the way. You know, dude?”
“Anyway, killing the last body snatcher made me the most popular teenage girl, which drew the attention of the other most popular teenage girl, that’s DT here, who tried to battle me for dominance briefly before realizing that I could get them into an R-rated movie and now we’re friends!”
“Yeah, Pinkie is so 23 skiddoo,” Diamond Tiara agreed. “It’s cool now.”
“I think you misunderstood that word,” said Pinkie. “See, 23 skiddoo means—"
“My dad is a billionaire,” Diamond interrupted her. “I don’t need to know what words mean!”
“Tch! Yeah.” Silver Spoon agreed with a roll of her eyes. “Shows how gronk you are! It’s cause like, in our current supposedly capitalistic paradigm productivity and merit are almost completely decoupled from wealth and prosperity. You don’t get rich by doing anything of value, you get rich by being rich, owning land, and the means of production. If you’re already invested in the system like us, then you get vastly disproportionately rewarded by the system for doing nothing of value or even actively harming the world. And if I do ever screw up? Well, thanks to lobbying our otherwise laissez-faire economic structure suddenly turns into extreme socialism and I just get bailed out by your tax money no matter how badly I screw up. The resulting inflation from the economic damage I cause only ever benefits me as a property owner by dissolving my debts, so all the negative effects of my mistakes are burdened by poor ponies like you. So whatever gronkenstien!”
“Dyuh! Y-yeah!” Diamond Tiara shifted her eyes right to left. “Loser?”
“Ah, dude! My dad’s a snail farmer.” Snails shook his head. “And ponies don’t even eat snails! Maybe I should like, look up 23 skiddoo in a dictionary or something!”
“No. You don’t need to know things cause you’re sexy,” said Diamond Tiara. “Now shut up and go back to being a fashion accessory.”
“But being an accessory is how my uncle ended up in the big house if you know what I mean, dude.” Snails got a whack on the nose.
“What have you been up to?” Pinkie asked Dash.
“I kinda got kidnapped.” Dash gestured at Twilight. “For like two months.”
“Oh!” Pinkie loudly slurped her milkshake with a straw. “Did you want me to rescue you?”
“Nah, I think the Stockholm syndrome is kicking in.” Dash leaned back. “It’s fine.”
Behind her, Twilight beamed.
“Daw! You know, Stockholm syndrome is how my parents met,” Pinkie cooed.
A gremlin was creeping up on them all, had somehow gotten into the theater. It was crawling on its belly towards the teenagers as though being that close to the ground would somehow camouflage it. The gremlin had its eyes on Diamond Tiara’s popcorn.
“Hey! I see you!” Diamond Tiara pointed her musket at it.
The gremlin stopped for a moment, then continued forward.
“No!”
The gremlin took a tentative step forward.
“No!”
The gremlin took one more step and Diamond Tiara fired her musket, reducing it to green slime.
“Guh! Now I gotta reload.” Diamond Tiara shoved her musket back to Snails to make him do it for her.
“It’s great they let you bring loaded guns into theaters these days,” said Pinkie. “When I was a kid you were just a sitting duck, you know?”
“Is it even safe for a bunch of kids to be out tonight?” Dash asked.
“Ah, what’s the worst that could happen?” Pinkie laughed off the idea. “It’s not like the gremlins are all going to form into an unstoppable ball of fangs and hunger and roll through town instantly devouring everypony they roll over. Said ball isn’t going to come bursting through the movie screen in exactly eleven seconds and roll over Diamond Tiara leaving only her skeleton behind.”
There was a moment of silence as Pinkie smiled all too self-assured and pointed at the screen. Diamond Tiara took the moment to push Snails in front of her.
“See!” Pinkie happily declared. “Didn’t happen!”
“Could you maybe not use me as your hypothetical victim next time?” Diamond Tiara asked. “That is not 23 skiddoo.”
“It technically is not, yes.” Pinkie nodded. “But I’m a psychic so we’ll be fine.”
“Right,” Twilight agreed. “And I’m— I know karate. Like that one Summoner Knights card.”
“Whoa!” Snail’s mind was blown yet again.
“Oh!” Pinkie threw an entire thing of popcorn at Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow Dash, it’s starting!”
The movie began in an ornate tomb covered in hieroglyphics.
A few ponies held back one mare as the head of the expedition, a stallion wearing a lab coat and monocle, looked over a sarcophagus.
“No!” The mare tried to pull out of the other’s grips. “If you touch it, the mummy might be disturbed again. Who knows what it’ll do?”
The stallion just smirked and poked the sarcophagus anyway.
“Well so much for your mummy theory.” He chuckled.
“It was right here!” She pointed to the closed sarcophagus behind the scientist. “A mummy came right out of that tomb and walked around!”
“And if that’s the case then why is the sarcophagus closed now, hm?”
The mare didn’t have an answer to that.
“Exactly what I thought! You mummy theorists can never back up your claims with any real rigor.” He lifted his head. “It’s a good thing they brought me, a scientist, here to refute your ridiculous delusions. You have half the town in a panic over this nonsense already!”
“But I swear it was a mummy! I know what I saw!”
“There’s no such thing as a mummy, you superstitious imbecile!” The scientist slapped the mare. “You must have seen a zombie or werewolf covered in toilet paper.”
“I’ve been farming zombies for years! I know zombies and they don’t look like that!”
“That’s it! Throw her in the psycho center and electrocute her until she’s sane again!” The scientist clapped his hooves, and the other pony was dragged off kicking and screaming, leaving the scientist alone in the tomb. “Pah! A mummy? I’m far too scientific to believe in such nonsense. Why if it were up to me, I’d electrocute this entire town!”
After shaking his head, the scientist turned back to the sarcophagus. It was open now.
“That’s odd.” He stepped back, surprised. “This must be some sort of prank! Who is behind this?!”
He looked around to find somepony slowly walking down one of the dark halls of the tomb.
“Ah! There you are!” He started towards them. “You thought such a simple joke could fool me, a scientist?! Well, I hope you—"
He stopped just as he got close. The camera slowly went over the newcomer, showing they were a mummy!
“What?!” The scientist started backing up. “An actual mummy?! But this is impossible! Science can’t be wrong! No! No!”
He kept backing up as the mummy shambled towards him. Eventually, he backed up so far that he fell into a pit.
“No!” He screamed one last time before falling into a trap pit behind him.
The title came up as he fell screaming off the cliff.
Reign of the Mummy!
“This is completely unrealistic,” Twilight complained. “Mummies aren’t possible. That would break every law of science. Do they expect us to believe this story?”
“If I wanted realism, I’d go ghost hunting or something,” said Dash. “Sometimes you just want to escape from the mundaneness of life, you know?”
“Het!" Diamond Tiara chirped in, suddenly all smug, "you gotta be quiet during the movie."
Dash just rolled her eyes.
“We need to alert the masses!” The reporter declared.
“And what will that do?” The Anti-Mummy Association agent asked.
“Why it will give the ponies of the fine city of Manehattan the chance to evacuate this fine city! We have to do something! A mummy is running through town right now and we’re the only two who know about it!” The reporter declared.
“That’s exactly why I can’t allow you to live!” The AMA agent stabbed the reporter in the chest. “Ponies aren’t ready to know mummies exist! They may be able to handle vampires and werewolves but not mummies! I don’t care how many ponies I need to kill to keep them safe from that knowledge!”
The AMA then turned to his subordinates.
“And we’ll have to kill everypony else in this building as well! Fan out and take them down,” he said.
“Are we sure the mummy is the bad guy?” Twilight asked. “So far, the mummy has killed arguably one pony and the Anti-Mummy Association has killed like twenty. And actually, it was that guy’s fault he fell off the cliff!”
“Guh! Shows how gronk you are.” Silver Spoon rolled her eyes. “It’s a metacommentary on our inability to respond to unusual threats with no clear solution. We engage in security theater, allow for witch hunts and the passing of legislation that restricts our freedoms which all give the illusion of security but actually make everypony’s lives worse.”
“Yeah. This theater is like super secure and stuff.” Snails laughed.
Diamond Tiara sniffed and a look of disgust came over her face.
“Ugh!” Diamond Tiara scrunched her nose. “Snails, did you just do what I think you did?”
“What? Nah!” Snails put his hoof up to his nose. “I’ve been trying to pick my nose without magic for the past twenty minutes, but I just can’t figure out how you earth ponies do it!”
“Okay, then which one of you losers did it?” Diamond Tiara looked over at Dash and Twilight.
“Did—?” Dash suddenly smelt it too and gagged. “Holy crow! What is that?!”
The worst stench Dash had smelled since that time she blew up the septic tank filled the theaters, bad enough to make her eyes water.
Then the projector cut out and Dash heard the laugh of a gremlin coming from the projection box. The culprit, along with twenty of its friends, began crawling out of the projector’s hole.
A huge group of gremlins rushed into the theater from every exit. They were all carrying as many snacks as they could. The gremlins quickly surrounded the ponies and started throwing food at the lot of them.
“Ugh! How’d they get into the theater in the first place?” Diamond Tiara asked. “It shouldn’t be that hard to keep them out!”
“There shouldn’t even be this many left by now,” said Dash.
Meanwhile, the stench kept getting worse. All the ponies were coughing and gagging now, save Twilight who cast a spell to protect herself. After looking at Dash gagging for a moment she decided to be merciful and cast the spell on her as well.
The stench abated immediately.
“It’s that one!” Pinkie pointed to one of the gremlins in particular.
There was one gremlin, slightly larger than the others, that was covered in boils. These boils would occasionally shoot out into globs of goo that made a hissing noise and
“We gotta stop it or—" Diamond Tiara started.
Pinkie simply destroyed it instantly with her psychic powers.
“Nevermind.”
“I’ve seen this once before,” said Pinkie. “Sometimes you start getting special gremlins with special powers! That one must have had stench powers.”
“Ugh! Stench powers?!” Diamond Tiara covered her nose and cringed. “That’s gotta be the worst power you can have!”
“Oh, there’s way lamer powers than that. Like that one!” Pinkie pointed to a gremlin. This one was writhing on the floor in pain, surrounded by electricity. “It can electrocute itself! And that one can turn invisible but only to itself. At least that’s my best guess.”
That gremlin in question was right up next to Rainbow Dash, laughing hysterically and waving its claw in her face, thinking it was invisible.
“So they all have crap superpowers now?” Dash asked. “I never heard of that happening. Should we be worried? I honestly don’t know if this makes them more or less dangerous.”
As if to prove her point, a gremlin seemingly with the power to melt jumped into the room next. It pointed at its arm, laughing as it melted away, then the rest of its body melted, and it was dead. Another gremlin with spider legs for eyes ran by next, slamming into a wall and passing out.
“I don’t know.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “Oh! No, we should be afraid! Cause if you do enough crappy mutant powers one of them is bound to have some random exploit that makes it actually incredibly overpowered! And that is precisely what will happen in 3, 2—"
Diamond Tiara jumped behind Snails once again.
The ground began to shake. Pinkie created a psychic barrier around the group and Twilight created a magical barrier, but Dash still had no idea how safe she was.
The ground just in front of the screen began to bulge up! Dash half expected a gigantic gremlin arm to come out from underground, but instead up burst a massive pile of them.
Twilight and Pinkie both hit the wave of gremlins with their telekinetic powers, but quickly stopped when they realized none of them were moving. There was an entire pile of gremlins blocking them from the hole behind where the screen once was.
And the pile was slowly getting bigger. It soon covered all the other doors and forced the ponies to back up.
“They’re all dead.” Diamond Tiara gave one a poke, then jumped back.
“And they’re all perfectly identical,” Twilight noted. “That’s odd given how much variety there normally is between them.”
“There!” Pinkie found the one responsible immediately and pointed it out. “I think it can create endless dead copies of itself!”
One gremlin in the pile was still alive. It was rolling around on a pile of dead copies of itself, shooting out globs of green slime just like the stench gremlin. But unlike that one, this one’s balls turned into a copy of itself right after landing. They were coming out rapid-fire, too, bursting out all over the place.
“Ugh! That’s still lame.” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Snails! You’re a good shot. Take it out.”
“No worries. I can shoot the barn side of a broad if you know what I’m saying, dude!” Snails grabbed the musket and aimed.
“Hold on!” Pinkie called out to them, but it was too late.
The single shot hit dead on and instantly reduced the gremlin to slime. Problem was that the copies were exact copies of the corpse gremlin and mirrored its transformation into slime.
Simultaneously, every single one of them burst, covering everything nearby in a supernova of slime.
Dash was thrown to the back of the theater by the wave of slime. Worse yet, the ground collapsed beneath her and she began to fall. She was very nearly blind but saw the building collapsing up above as the slime continued to drag her down.
Stats
Page generated in 0.039 seconds
Total duration
701 users online
786,247 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Okay, who else was either listening to or having the Gremlins theme going through their head as they read the chapter?
Cosmos eh? That a comic reference?
Another great chapter. Perfect balance between exciting and hilarious.
I'm not sure how, but this story about supernatural occurrences in a world of magical talking ponies consistently provides top-notch observational comedy.
Oh wait, I know how. It's because you're doing a really good job
Merry Christmas!
I...don't know how to respond to this chapter. The non-threat of the gremlins was great, and the random exclusion of mummies is so bizarre I couldn't help but laugh. I just...this AU is so delightfully weird.
10597336
Yes. Though how connected to reality Starlight's religion is remains to be seen.
10598148
Neat.
Not cool Twi
It is, isn't it
Oh hey, Starlight's got an actual cult in this world
Wonder where Snips is
Really Pinkie
This is the funniest story ever.
Also dang social commentary, huh?
10599228
It's not going to get too political, I swear!
Though it will be a little inevitable. I wanted to make sure the elite 4 had opposing ideals so they're each loosely based on the four corners of the political compass.
10598185
Snips isn't hot enough to hang out with DT.
This entire fic is on crack and it’s amazing.
Also, haha Critters reference in a chapter with gremlins
coma
Snails
Very good job.
10610810
I dont think Dash did anything she can be held liable for.
And the other frogs were just frogs.
Y'know? Now would have been a good time for the murder spell.
10632345
Don't worry. There is a gratuitous amount of murder in the next chapter.
10632359
I'm guessing Twilight doesn't take to kind to anyone putting their familiar to harm or Dash is gonna so some crow shenanigans either way I'm extatic
I love you.
This was a hilarious reference but I still feel kinda bad for immediately getting it.
Also, holy crap the commentary in this chapter is so topical!
It’s official! Rainbow knows about Shippers! Burn the evidence & run!!
Based socialist twilight
Silverspoon is spitting facts bro damnn
“I had a traumatic experience with X and would appreciate it if you not mention it again,” said Twilight.
Should be “if you didn’t mention it”.
A squad of pegasi in v formation was flying over the town
This one’s a bit tricky, since “squad” is singular, but “pegasi” is plural, so I’m not sure if it should be “was” or “were”.
“But there are a whole lot of them,” said Twilight. “There have to be thousands if it’s like this over the whole time!”
Like… what? I don’t understand what this sentence is trying to tell me.
As they got closer, the gremlins out numberd ponies in the streets.
Should be “outnumbered”.
“Like I said, I don’t keep track of them, remember?” Dash asked. “Nearly all of them aren’t plotting evil.
You used “evil” as if it’s a noun. Was that intentional?
A group of gremlins outside a hardware store quickly killed themselves off with a lawnmower.
With how the rest of this paragraph was using words that ended in “-ing”, you would think this sentence would go like “quickly killing themselves off”.
Another threw hot grease on a small group of them, melting them all as well. A gremlin snuck up from behind on the grease pony, but when it tried to jump him, it fell into a vat of boiling grease and died as well.
You ended two sentences back-to-back with the words “as well”.
The burger tasted a million times better
Missing punctuation.
“No. Who’s that?” Twilight asked, completely innocent
Missing punctuation.
Her knowledge surpasses that of a Ph.D. in over 200 fields she studied.
What… is this sentence trying to tell me?
“I’m not sure what all of that means, but that sounds very impressive,” said Twilight.
Probably should be “but it sounds”.
Starlight brings us tiding of something to come!
Should be “tidings”.
Twilight struggle just a little,
Should be “struggled”.
“I’m pretty sure everypony already knows she’s a liar,” said Dash. “She’s a politician, you know. I think the election might have already happened, besides.”
Should be “Besides, I think the election might have already happened.”
Well the theater’s the place you gotta go to see the news anyway and we got fifty grand to blow. You’re not supposed to talk in the theater anyway so we should be good.”
You used the word “anyway” twice in the same sentence and in the same way.
These guys can argue non-stop for days for over a week no problem.”
Days or a week, which one?
“Daw! You know, Stockholm syndrome is how my parents met.”
Please tell me who said that.
I know grease pony is supposed to refer to the one who slung the grease, but I can't help but imagine a pony made of grease, or capable of producing grease, in a world this crazy. Maybe that's why he works there, free cooking oil for the restaurant.
I have to applaud you for making a world so absurd, yet internally consistent, that it feels real.
Well, you could also NOT live in the most friggin' expensive areas of the country just because they're 'trendy'. Seriously, do the math. You want this one specific job, but it won't pay you enough to live. WELL DUH!! GO FIND A CHEAPER PLACE WHERE A JOB THAT PAYS LESS WILL SUSTAIN YOU!!! Except if it's in Camden, NJ... seriously, do not live there under any circumstances. You will surely die.
It's what I did. I have a house, no debts of any kind, and enough savings to sustain me for 4 entire years, all because I planned 30 years ahead, based solely upon pessimism (Optimists usually go broke unless they're also crooks who know they'll have a lot because they plan to steal and scam it all)! MY GENIUS PREVAILED!!
This whole 'Intarnets' thing makes searching for an affordable location so friggin' easy these days, but the 'most technically advanced' seem incapable of using it very well!
"BUT ALONDRO!" you may whine. "WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN THOSE PLACES?!" Well, that's YOUR CHOICE, now ain't it? Put up or shut up.
Logic is in short supply, as Dash demonstrates conclusively!
11006156
But Dash doesn't live in the trendiest area. Yet. That happens later.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/480844/9/a-witch-in-broad-daylight/gremlins
I'm enjoying how topical the humorous social commentary is in this chapter. Or maybe I'm enjoying how humorous the topical...etc.?
I love this story, its great.
she already forgot about the free meal card
They already were over this in previous chapter:
Also, isn't she too young for Manehattan?
11269305
Yes, you're right. It should be her grandfather Flash Blade who did it. I suppose there's a few things I need to update since the timeline wasn't really hammered out completely until maybe around the Trixie fight TBH.
Okay gents I have a head Cannon about this story the reason why summoner nights bombed is because how badshit crazy the show was
11296693
It worked out fine for Yugioh, but it may very well have had an effect.
Shouldn't there be a "never" in there? Wealthy Rainbow doesn't seem right
Well, yeah. The walls don’t build and maintain themselves, the monies got to come from somewhere. Even if you’re in the housing biz yourself, you still need to “pay yourself” one way or another or you won’t get to live inside for long.
/landlord life
The ACCURACY----- yup. That perfectly explains how stupid it is, Society is just very retarded in general. Love the dialogue, the writing is very in character and on point.
I live in America and our WHOLE Government and Economy is very corrupt.
Of course Starlight Glimmer is the LEADER of a cult in this, well she was in the main canon universe as well.
How intriguing.
I'm honestly surprised at how smart Silver Spoon is. Spot on.
Facts
Came here for the TwiDash comedy
Stayed for the scathing political, economic, and societal satire and commentary
Is part about eyes intentional? It was mentioned at least 3 times here and at least once in "A Ghost of a Chance" that his eyes were red.
It's probably a pretty bad idea to call her Twilight in front of that cultist.
Well, isn't zombie wrapped in toilet paper precisely what mummy is?
And are zombies farmed for that mysterious "zombie powder"?
Admittedly, in-universe witch hunt is a very serious business.
Just be glad that those space mushrooms were mostly harmless gremlins and you don't have a full on ork WWWWAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHH! happening.
Props to them for beating zombies in a dance battle. Disco is undead.
great chapter!!