PONY OR DIE 1

by MLPG

Entry 16 and 17

Entry 16, by LK

Entry 17, by Wf+6

“BOXING!” she shouted enthusiastically.
“Ah’m sorry, what now?”
The rainbow-colored mare gave a look of pure condescension. “It’s a new sport, straight from Canterlot. Do you not follow the latest in professional athleticism at all?”
Giving at least an equal look of consternation, Applejack replied, “No, I don’t. Some of us WORK fer a living. I don’t have time fer that!”
With a dismissive wave of her hand, Raindow Dash commented, “That’s fine. I wanted Big Macintosh, anyway. He’s in a heavier weight class. More of a challenge!”
The fire in her eyes was undeniable. With a sigh, Applejack took the cyan pony back to the house to find Big Mac. She didn’t expect him to accept, of course, but if it would get the girl out of her hair, she’d acquiesce to just about anything at this point.
The Apple family house was looking somewhat more stately than usual as they made their way inside, so it elicited a groan from Applejack when a careless Rainbow Dash zoomed through the hallways, knocking down pictures, ornaments, and antiques, all carefully placed around the estate in a silent vigil for the ancient Apple clan’s now-passed members. Pinkie Pie, who had accompanied Dash to be the referee, bounced along obliviously in the rear, not bothering to apologize for their common friend’s behavior. When the red stallion was found scraping the mud off his hooves for the day, Applejack was confident that he’d be too beat to help Rainbow Dash with her frivolous affairs. Much to her surprise, however, it turned out that she was wrong. With some animated theatrics and only a minimal amount of pleading, Big Mac was roused into following Rainbow Dash out into the yard to “box” her.
Equestrian boxing consisted of rearing up onto one’s hind legs and going at the other pony, blow for blow, until one pony had fallen to the ground. In a regulation ring, this could take some time, because the elastic bars would give fighters something to fall back on. Similarly, the gloves utilized by professionals would soften blows, so that they would knock down other ponies, but not cripple them with force. Needless to say, lacking any proper equipment whatsoever, the match went fast.
No sooner than an enthusiastic Pinkie Pie had rung the dinner bell, signaling the start of the match, did Rainbow release a volley of blows. Unfortunately, she didn’t account for the difference in weight class at all. Her blows didn’t make Big Mac falter even slightly, and with the seeming slightest tap of the stallion’s hoof, her sleek, thin racing frame was sent teetering, ultimately to collapse into the mud.
Of course, ever the frustrated loser, Rainbow Dash immediately challenged him to a rematch. Then another. And another. And yet another. Before long, it was obvious that she stood no chance, and quickly defended her losses by appealing to a lack of fairness. “We just need the right equipment,” she quipped, and led the group back into town, “If we find Twilight, I bet she can even things out for us!”
Their search didn’t take long. Twilight Sparkle was in her library tree in the middle of town, as was to be expected. When Pinkie and Dash barged in, she was unsurprised, because this was practically a ritual for the duo, but she was caught off-guard by the appearance of Big Mac. While Mac and Pinkie were generally clean, Dash had to be quarantined right away to keep the mud from being slung all over the room. That didn’t stop her protests, though: “TWILIGHT! We need you to use your magic to make our boxing fair!”
Twilight, unaccustomed to the sport, needed an explanation, which she shortly received. With doubt, she told the cyan mare that she did not expect this small library to have any spells relevant to such a new sport, given its age, and she began to apologize and send them on their way when Spike popped out of the adjacent room, exclaiming that he had found the spell book in question. The cover, bearing a number of symbols and the words, “Miscellaneous Magic”, seemed old and dusty, but Spike assured her that it contained a spell about boxing. To the purple unicorn’s surprise, upon flipping to the proper page, she did find a spell relevant to boxing, and it was exactly the one they needed. She read off the page, “Boxing preparation spell: use this spell before boxing to get all things evened out. Make available to all parties for best results.”
This was, of course, all Dash needed to hear. “See that? It’ll probably set us up with equipment, get Pinkie Pie a referee uniform, and based on that description, it might even bring our weight classes a little closer together!”
Stifling a laugh, and admitting mentally that she would be more than a little amused to see a beefy Rainbow Dash or a girly little Big Macintosh, she agreed to perform the spell and brought all of the ponies outside, just in case the spell summoned a massive fighting ring in the middle of wherever it was cast. A short incantation later and there was a flash. The effects were immediate. Where Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Big Macintosh were previously standing, there was now a stack of three colored boxes with large cutie marks on each side. Panicking, Twilight tore back inside and consulted the book. At first, nothing was obvious, but then she realized two pages were stuck together. In her haste, she tore the pages apart, not caring about damage to the obviously ancient paper. In the intervening pages, diagrams and lengthy descriptions illustrated the use of this spell: packaging. Any object could be reduced to a simple 2’ x 2’ x 2’ cube for easy mass transportation and “boxing”. Worse yet, there was an “unboxing” spell at the end of the page, but it had been damaged beyond legibility in either the process of getting stuck or getting torn apart. Remembering that Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Big Macintosh were still outside suddenly, Twilight bolted back outside to make sure no one had stolen her boxes – er, friends. She then noticed something she hadn’t before: on the side of the Rainbow Dash box, there were cartoonish eyes giving her an annoyed glare. The box vibrated slightly and a sound appeared to emanate roughly from its position, “Hey egghead, this doesn’t look like much of a boxing spell. Want to get me back to normal?” From somewhere else, she could hear a, “Eeeeyup”, and a “I dunno, Rainbow Dash! This seems kind of fun! I’ve never been a box before! What if someone gives me as a present?! I’d love to see the grin I’d give someone if I was a present!”
Twilight sighed in relief. Clearly, though her friends had been transformed, they were still their normal selves, at least on the inside. After a quick categorization of her books to determine if she had any cures to the obscure spell, she realized she didn’t, and turned to her usual fallback in the case of magical mishaps, the apparent witch-doctor Zecora. Loading up her friends into a cart, she had Spike harness it to her and she set off toward the woods, telling Spike to watch the library while she was gone.
Twilight made her way into the woods, taking a long, careful route (not wanting to lose any of her cargo), but fortuitously, she didn’t have to make it all the way through the swamp to find the zebra. Once she reached a grassy knoll in the forest, a raised hill that had a good view of the forest, around half the way to Zecora’s shack, she ran into her target, picking flowers, probably as some alchemical component. There was a brief, if awkward conversation describing the situation, detailing just how three ponies had ended up in compact form. At first, the black-and-white mare gave a disbelieving look at the boxes, until the cyan one piped up, “Hey, so are you gonna help us, or what?”
Then, with a laugh, she beckoned them to return to her hut, where she would cook up a brew to cure transformative effects. In less than an hour, all of the ponies were back to normal. Well, mostly normal, anyway. Rainbow Dash just gave a look of disgust and said, “I think from now on, I’m sticking to racing.”
The rest of the ponies just laughed.

Comments

[Doctor Geagle]

(Cohesive Story Attempt: Part 9)
...which inspired Rainbow to take up real boxing; a colossal failure that led to Dash asking Twilight for a spell to assist her and everyone being turned into boxes, again...