Nightmare Night at the Rowdiest Place in Ponyville

by Feech

But Are You Adequately Rowdy?

Ponies came out from shop entryways and stepped down from the sidewalk to watch the procession, and after a few minutes some of them followed the hearse curiously. At first everypony was silent. The dirge began with an undertone of menace, but the ominousness of the music slowly lifted and the same tune sounded more hymn-like than grim. The ponies following behind the hearse or alongside it on the sidewalk began to chat with each other in fairly normal tones, while keeping a wary eye on the carriage-Discords, who were quite a bit larger than the townsponies.

Apparently from behind the hearse, regardless of on which side of the carriage one was walking, came a tall, clattering Discord who would have been willowy had he not been skeletal. He wore a long, richly colorful, flounced dress and a hat trimmed with mare-igolds. The skeleton's bones rattled, at first randomly, but soon a rhythm was picked out of the dry clicks and clacks, and the band Discords changed their tune.

The dirge picked up speed, the tall Discord began to sway, and some of the watching ponies unconsciously mimicked this. The music gradually changed to a lively jazz beat.

The procession grew noisier as it danced and jazzed through town, and as it went it picked up more followers—who might have been wondering who had died, but since Discord was in evidence all over the place, they didn't wonder too much. A few windows and doors were hastily closed once the occupants of houses and shops saw who was responsible for the wild music. However, more frequently, the response was to come down to the street, and ponies who heard the music from a block away came to investigate.

Soon the townsponies were trotting to match the beat, spinning back around so as not to pass the band, and taking little dance steps back and forth toward each other.

Ghostly flying Discords wailed and whooshed up and down the street above the funeral procession. Two draconequus skeletons materialized next to the band, carrying a pole between them from which was suspended a piñata shaped like Nightmare Moon.

Little fillies and colts on the sidewalk, dressed in their Nightmare Night costumes, desperately begged their parents for freedom, lest the procession get away from them. They clamored after the Discord skeletons who carried the Nightmare Moon piñata, heedless of the grinning skulls that would have scared them away on any other day.

One fleshless eagle's foot presented a long stick to a colt at the head of the beseeching bunch of foals. The unicorn colt took it in his youthfully awkward telekinesis. He and the other foals took turns trying to hit the piñata as the Discord skeletons spun and whirled it around while they danced down the street.

At last a Pegasus foal gave the papier-mâché Nightmare Moon a final whack, and it exploded in a cloud of purple confetti and glitter. A flock of miniature Discords fluttered out of the piñata halves, turned into multicolored bats and flew at the foals, whose cheers of victory switched to screams—but they refused to be spooked. Candy had also fallen out, and the foals pounced on it.

A small group of stallions munching apples in front of the greengrocer's watched the parade passing. One of them called out, "Where’re you going?"

"Club Skewbald!"

The pony laughed heartily. "You'll never get in! And with that hearse and this whole herd with you? You're only making it harder. Just go to a Nightmare Night party somewhere else."

"We're going to the one at Club Skewbald," persisted the hearse-drawing Discord, with dignity. "You're welcome to come along."

The stallions on the sidewalk glanced at each other.

"You think that the Club Skewbald bouncers'll let them into the party on account of the rowdiness of the procession?"

"I doubt it. How could they?"

“Worth a try, maybe Discord knows what he's doing.” Two or three of the stallions departed from the skeptical pony and followed the procession. At first they acted aloof and indifferent, but it was impossible to maintain a self-possessed walking gait to the jazz that the Discords were playing.

The skeptical stallion watched his companions dancing away down the street. Eventually he picked out another apple, tossed a couple of bits to the greengrocer, saying, "Keep the change," and marched off behind the hearse.

The grocer did a few dance steps to the departing jazz music herself as she set out bushel baskets full of fresh fruit treats for the trick-or-treating that would begin after dark.

In the meantime the sky was still midafternoon blue, with the sense of vastness and clarity unique to autumn. Draconequi on the rooftops tossed pawfuls of orange and black confetti, and as the pieces glittered their way down through the air they transformed into magenta and gold autumn leaves that collected in huge piles behind the hearse. Colts and fillies in Nightmare Night costumes rushed out into the street, joining those who were busily dividing piñata candy with each other.

Ordinary, non-discordant carts that had been following steadily behind the hearse were forced to pick their way among leaf piles being flung this way and that by joyful foals. Even grown-up ponies, some in costume, cantered back and forth among the crispy, crunching leaves. One big cartpony unhitched himself purely for the fun of stomping leaves, leaving his loaded wagon in the way. One of the hearse-drawing Discords and one or two of those in the band could be heard to let loose darkly gleeful giggles.

Just as Twilight Sparkle was saying, "I think that's enough chaos, Discord. Somepony could get hurt," a shrill blast on a whistle brought the whole cortège to a halt. The procession now faced Ponyville's most imposing force: the mounted police. A small pony stood on a forbiddingly stern-looking, slightly bigger pony. Both of them wore official caps with badges, and both had very official-looking cutie marks which showed that they had been stern since foalhood.

"Hello, officers!" said Discord the drummer and Discord the drum. "How delightful. Everyone knows it isn't a party until the police are called, and I didn't even have to portray them myself."

"Do you have a permit to be blocking this street?"

"Certainly." The Discord who wore a flounced dress and mare-igolds unrolled a long scroll that took form out of the bones of his skeletal hands.

"That doesn't count," said the police mount. "It needs to be stamped by the mayor. The real mayor."

"Oh, you're no fun."

"Permits are not fun."

"My point exactly."

The mounted officer gave another blast on her whistle, and the K-9 unit careened out of an alleyway. The K-9 unit consisted of a huge German Shepherd and a spindly gray Pegasus pony in a blue uniform who bobbed like a kite on the end of the leash.

The dog beheld the Lord of Chaos, flattened its ears, made a play bow, and wiggled the tip of its tail.

"Well, hello, Champ! Look, everypony, it's my good friend Champ."

Twilight asked, "How do you know Ponyville's police dog?"

"I got bored one day and decided to be part of the police department's chaotic training scenarios."

"Champ here can handle anything," declared the dog's handler. "Including you, Discord."

"It's true, in the course of our training I have already thrown everything I could imagine at this dog. He's such a good boy."

"He is a good boy," Fluttershy agreed. Champ thumped his tail on the street.

Discord snapped his claw and Champ turned plaid. Champ's handler frowned in disapproval. Champ wagged his tail. The draconequus snapped Champ back to his proper sable color and turned the handler-pony into a hot-pink duck. The duck flapped awkwardly to a bumpy landing on the street and let out a disgruntled duck sound. Champ looked back over his shoulder and gave a few curious sniffs toward the hot-pink duck, then lay down and yawned.

"We've done much more chaotic scenarios than this," said Discord. "The dog handles all of them like, well, like a champ."

The big mount officer said, "We're going to have to ask you to disperse. Wait, bad choice of—"

Before the pony could finish his sentence, naturally all of the Discords had dispersed themselves. They hung, dispersed, above the street. The hearse and the leaf piles remained.

Champ wagged his tail. His duck handler turned back into a frazzled Pegasus.

The unyielding mount pony said, "I mean that we need you to get out of sight."

"Very well." The hearse and all of the Discords vanished, leaving behind great pyramids of leaves and a bewildered herd of followers.

The police officers asked of each other, "Where'd he go?"

The unseen Discord laughed mightily. "You can't see a trace of me or of the parade! I mean the solemn procession."

The mounted officer sternly sat down on her partner's withers and crossed her forelegs, and the larger pony beneath her said, "Really? Lord of Chaos and that's the best you can do—turn invisible?"

Discord and all the other Discords reappeared. One snapped his claw, frowning, and the police officers and Champ were blindfolded.

"Not better," said the sturdy mount pony. His mounted partner leaned over his neck and removed the blindfold for him. Champ pawed his blindfold off of his face, took it between his teeth, and shook it playfully. His handler stumbled around on the other end of the leash, not yet seemingly aware as to why he couldn't see anything. Finally the pony touched his face, found the blindfold, ripped it off, and tossed it to the ground in disgust.

"Please let us by," said Discord. "Can't you see this is a funeral?"

All three police officers let out matching snort-sighs, while Champ wagged his tail and panted. The mount pony decided, and spoke for all of them. "All right, but clear up those leaf piles. I want to see no sign that this funeral was ever here. And invisibility doesn't count."

"That's fair," said Discord.

He made a careless gesture over his shoulder with his paw, and the leaf piles opened gaping black holes for eyes and wide maws which let forth ghastly, mournful moans. The moaning piles spun scratchily over the street, then lifted into the air, dissolving into individual leaves as brown and shriveled as if they had been drying for days. They whirled away, borne on a wind that had not been there a moment before. Pegasus foals spiraled wistfully upward after the departing leaves.

The street full of carts and wagons was released from its self-imposed suspended animation, and followed along again behind the cortège.

Something odd, if not chaotic, was happening to the hearse and the Discord band. The procession and all of its participants, including the townsponies, got gradually, steadily smaller. The music got smaller too, as if fading away, but in truth it was only becoming tiny along with the instruments themselves.

The parade became extremely itty-bitty as it turned off of Mane Street and into an alley hung with pumpkin lanterns at about knee height to a pony, but far above the heads of the now teensy cortège.

It was cooler and dark in the alleyway, where sundown happened early in the shadows at the bases of the buildings. A glitter and a flicker of miniature lights ahead resolved into a wee sign with two animated skewbald Breezies flanking the words CLUB SKEWBALD. Closer to the ground, a warmer light emanated from inside of hollowed-out acorns with faces carved into them. The band played cheerfully all the way to a hole in the wall underneath the sign, then stopped.

All of the Discords poofed away one by one, except for the handsome pair drawing the hearse. These two Discords each went in opposite directions around the hearse, and when they met up behind it, they kept on walking into and through each other, layering together like translucent sheets of paper. They solidified into a two-dimensional cut-out of the God of Chaos, then became three-dimensional again, and represented the usual one Discord. "Put your shoes on, Pinkie Pie," he called into the back of the hearse. "We're here."

He slit the seam of the cardboard casket with a talon and peeled back the lid, interrupting his vermiform selves who were playing pony-nochle on Pinkie Pie's snout. These creatures were eyeless, but each had a horn and antler, beard and fang. While Pinkie slowly blinked alive, they transformed into spiders and scuttled down her cheeks and out of sight into her costume wigs.

Discord created a short set of stairs out of his tail, allowing the party pony to reach the ground easily. Pinkie was a little wobbly as she joined the crowd outside the mouse-hole-sized door to Club Skewbald. Discord poofed himself to the front of the group. "Hello, Bruiser."

A tattooed Breezie bouncer grunted a greeting to Discord, but looked without comment at the herd of diminutive ponies, crossed his forelegs over his chest, and narrowed his eyes.

"They're with me," Discord said importantly.

The bouncer rubbed his chin consideringly. He spoke with heavily accented but perfectly intelligible Equuish. "Are they rowdy?"

"One of them literally died to get into your club."

"That's devotion, but Death isn't very rowdy. It's just resting in peace."

"Oh, it was a wild time getting here," Discord assured him.

"Totally," said Rainbow.

"I just got revivified," said Pinkie. "Give me a minute to get my boisterousness warmed up."

"Boo," said Twilight.

"Should I still be wearing black if Pinkie isn't dead anymore?" asked Fluttershy.

Discord sent a finger-point of magic at Fluttershy, and her costume became that of a ghostly Mare in White.

The bouncer gave the draconequus a nod. "Go on in, Mr. Discord." Discord slithered in past him. The steely-eyed Breezie kept his post at the door, blocking the hopeful ponies.

"We should've brought along that gold Discord gave you, Pinkie," said Rainbow.

Bruiser said, "I can't be bribed into letting you in if you're not rowdy. I'm an honest Breezie. You all look pretty orderly to me."

"Technically, we're physically impossible," said Twilight Sparkle. "Only Discord's chaos magic made us able to be this small."

"I just gotta get into the party!" Pinkie trotted in place. "I missed my own Dia de los Maretos Neigh Orleans jazz funeral for this! I'm irrepressible, isn't that sort of a synonym for rowdy?"

"Hm. Not sure," said the bouncer.

The group of stallions from back on the sidewalk at the greengrocer's came forward to hear the argument. The skeptical stallion finished nibbling his apple and tossed the core on the alleyway cobbles.

Twilight pointed at the core. "Bruiser, look! This stallion just threw litter in the street with a callous disregard for order. The term 'rowdy' is thought to originally refer to a lawless backwoodspony. At least one of our number is thoroughly out of hoof. I think the etymology clearly supports letting us inside."

Bruiser gave one more narrow look at the herd, then stood aside. "Have fun, ponies." He threw his forelimb out in front of the skeptical stallion, stopping him. "You. Pick that up first."

The skeptical stallion picked up his apple core, dropped it into a minuscule tin waste can, then went inside the club to be rambunctious.

"Woo hoo!" Rainbow did a loop the loop in through the teeny-tiny door. "We got in!"

Club Skewbald had four levels: the ground floor and three balconies. There was weird, rocking organ music coming from somewhere. Dressed-up creatures dancing on all three balcony levels gave the impression of a wall of grooving glitter. On the ground floor a long buffet table towered with microscopic treats topped with dabs of whipped cream and molecules of maraschino cherries. A realistic Breezie skeleton made of glue and string swung from the first balcony.

Breezies in strange Nightmare Night costumes swarmed everywhere. On a closer look the ponies found that some of what looked like bizarre costumes were the real appearances of unfamiliar species who had joined the festivities, creatures the ponies had never met nor imagined, tinier than they would ever notice day to day. The creatures wore minute chips of gems and bits of colorful down, and danced on spindly, brittle Changeling-like legs or wiggled and wriggled inside their skins.

Breezies and other creatures whooped and squealed and hollered. Some dragged miniature chains and made spooky noises. One of the guests tossed another guest off the topmost balcony. Fortunately, the tossed guest was winged and zipped right up again.

Pinkie Pie said, "Wow, this place is rowdy! But I don't think it takes first place after all. That goes to wherever I went when I died. That place was wild!"

"I could send you back there," said Discord, claws poised for a snap.

"No way, I came to party and I aim to party! And I wouldn't have even been able to set one hoof through the door without you, Discord! Thanks, God of Chaos!"

Discord sighed with pleasure. "I am good at Friendship, aren't I."

"I want to actually be part of the cortège next time, not just the corpse," said Pinkie. "Being still as death is just not my thing."

"Well, perhaps I could take a turn dying," said Discord. "But it just seemed so awkward to mourn myself."

"How was my funeral?"

"It was properly somber."

"Were the police called?"

"Naturally."

Pinkie hoof-bumped Discord's eagle foot. "Wish I could've been there. Were there balloons as pallbearers?"

"Not this time," said Discord. "I did that part myself. In fact, I did almost all of the parts myself." He surveyed the tiny, wild party and cracked his knuckles. "What should we do first?"

"I'm a simple mare," said Rainbow. "Show me to the cider. Ah—there's a whole fountain of it over there. Catch you nerds later." Rainbow's costume glittered like a disco ball. Everywhere she went, when her crystal plates reflected the natural pastel lights of Breezies' antennae, the Breezies struck poses or did some disco dancing.

Fluttershy occupied herself with cooing over creepy-crawling party guests so small that no fabric could be cut down to their size. Some creature had painted their disguises on for them with a brush made of a single hair.

Pinkie pointed. "Look! There's bobbing for apples."

An enormous—by Breezie standards—wooden tub contained three floating crabapples. Pinkie opened her mouth wide and dunked her muzzle in. She could hardly miss biting one of the apples, relatively large as they were, but of course her teeth pushed down on it and it began to sink away from her. Then something pushed it back up, and Pinkie's teeth got a grip on the apple.

Whatever it was down in the water kept pushing the crabapple from underneath. Pinkie backed away from the edge of the tub with the crabapple clamped between her teeth, but before she had taken a full step, something from inside the tub reached out and scratched at her chest. Pinkie pie scrambled backward and dropped the apple on the floor. She quaked with fear, but curiosity won out, and she moved forward again to peer down into the water.

Barely visible under the shadow of the other two crabapples lurked a dragonfly nymph almost as big as Pinkie Pie.

The nymph rose up and reached for her with its claws. It broke the surface of the water. Pinkie reared, bucked, and ran around shrieking, spraying apple-bobbing water everywhere from her three layers of curly mane.

The club was so chaotic that Discord didn't have to contribute much in order to be satisfied. He made his tail prehensile and dangled from the balcony banister next to the realistic fake Breezie skeleton, soaking up the antics of the tiny partiers.

The spider-Discords that had been hiding in Pinkie pie's manes appeared and dangled by strands of web that glittered with leftover apple-bobbing droplets, swaying festively and nightmarishly.

"Ooh! Ooky spooky!" said Pinkie. "Let's dance!"

And with Pinkie Pie and all of her funeral procession there and in top partying form, that Nightmare Night, Club Skewbald was the rowdiest place, not just in Ponyville, but in all of Equestria.

~~The End~~

Comments

[Skywriter]

Great to see this here!

[Feech]

11733188

[Starlight Nova]

Note: This story contains death, but it is safe for everyone to read.

How does that work?

[Feech]

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Death is present as a theme/occurrence in the story, but the story is not sad, horrific, nor dark.

[Starswirl the Beardless]

I have mixed feelings about this story. On one hand, I think the premise is funny, and there were definitely some funny moments here and there. On the other hand, it felt much too long for a story that revolves around a single joke, and so much of that time was devoted to Discordisms, to the point where it felt a bit indulgent. I think this could have been much better if it had been trimmed down a bit to remove a lot of the unnecessary elements.

[Feech]

11740733
Thanks for the feedback!