Count to Four
All you have to do is take a cup of flour, add it to the mix.... The flour was going bad, no doubt about it. Even after she’d sifted it through three times to get rid of any weevils or other flour-dwelling creatures, it looked clumpy and yellowed in the flickering candlelight. It was some of the last flour they had, a detail Pinkie was careful to hide from the others. Even after cutting down rations, they’d be out of food soon, and nopony could risk going outside to look for more.
Now you take a little something sweet, not sour-- a bit of salt, just a pinch... The salt had caked like nopony’s business, but that was to be expected, really. The basement of Sugarcube Corner had always been kinda damp and clammy, and the ten little bodies all breathing and sweating certainly didn’t help. But they couldn’t go outside, not right now. Pinkie had seen enough of what happened out there.
Sweetie Belle had started crying again. It was painful to hear at best, made that much worse by the way she tried to keep it quiet, to let the others sleep. The jagged cut on her right foreleg was badly infected, and her time was spent between restless fever dreams and painful, dizzying wakefulness. Fluttershy would know what to do, Pinkie mused, before it hit her again.
Fluttershy.... well, Rainbow had shouted to all in hearing range that the half-eaten carcass could’ve been any pegasus, that there was no evidence that Fluttershy had been gutted at the edge of the Everfree. But Pinkie knew. She’d found the body, she’d been there first, had cleared away the pale yellow feathers and buried the bloodstained, broken rabbit that lay nearby in the tossed-up grass.
It was bad luck in the end, that Fluttershy was the oldest out of all of them. Whatever was preying on them used age as a determining factor. At night, during the earliest stages, pained screams and ear-shattering shrieks would echo over town. That was back when harmony was still in ponies’ hearts, back when a group of brave citizens would make rounds and try to save who they could and bury what they couldn’t.
But now, in this cramped little room, Pinkie knew she was living in a ghost-town. She vigorously stirred in some baking powder to her mixture, checking the consistency as it dripped off her spoon. It was tempting to taste it, to lick the spoon clean, to lick the bowl clean, especially with the hunger cramps eating at her belly. She couldn’t, though. This batch wasn’t for her.
It was strange, really, how a place as familiar to Pinkie as this basement could become so cold and unwelcoming. How, even with so many beautiful, young ponies with her, she could feel so alone, so alone that it hurt deep in her chest. It was obvious if she stopped to think about it; she missed her friends. They had planned to set out for Canterlot, although whether they planned on asking for or giving help wasn’t clear. Pinkie was pretty sure that not even Twilight knew in the long run. And Pinkie had volunteered herself to stay and watch the foals. She was good with kids, and it was the responsible thing to do. Crying fillies and frightened colts she could handle. What she couldn’t handle, not ever, was watching her friends die hero’s deaths. She already knew what had happened. The sun hadn’t risen in the last week, not even once. The moon had gone dark and shadowy not long after the second day, mysterious and frightening.
And the moon, the creatures outside, her friend’s sacrifices all terrified her. Not the kind of fear you could laugh away, at least not to her. It felt sometimes like the laughter inside of her was drying up for good, like she was running out of joy to share. She never laughed to herself any more. Instead she hoarded every breezy chuckle, every light guffaw, even a few ladylike titters, kept them close to her heart and saved them for the ones who really needed them. The ten little creatures past the screen partition, all huddled up together.
Pinkie poured the perfectly melted baker’s chocolate into the batter and folded it with careful, measured strokes. And finally, with great care and silent reverence, she ground up the cyanide pills Twilight had left her, and tapped the powder in to join the other ingredients. From there it was simple - Pour into a pan, put the pan in a preheated oven, and wait.
For the half an hour she had, Pinkie let all her tears out in a silent stream, forcing them to come when they could, to keep them away from the next part. The hardest part. The timer rang out, and she set the pan onto a cooling rack. She whipped up a quick glaze with some of the apple preserves left over, and drizzled it enticingly over the warm chocolate suicides.
She arranged them reverently onto plate and trotted through with a grin. Or, at least, she was showing her teeth. It was hard to tell right now, with all the terrible emotions fighting in her chest. “Hey, everypony. I thought I’d make you something special since you’ve all been so good and quiet,” she said, looking around the room with energy she didn’t have. She was burning through the very last of the joy and laughter inside her, killing it off with each beat of her heart and each little confection she handed out to a happy little child. “So I thought, why not bake some cupcakes?” She winked at them with a gleeful, river-like laugh, and her soul was damned. “Cupcakes make everything better, right?”
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I have to admit, I was secretly relieved that you killed off Fluttershy. I like her as much as the next guy, but it was still nice to see a story for this prompt that didn't revolve around her.
2196187 I saw the word Kindness and thought I would give them something else to look at. I hadn't entirely planned for her death, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
2146689 I'm not sure I entirely know what went on between them myself. Welcome to my fragmented headcanon, I guess.
And the second half of my comentses!
Story 9: Holy crap, it's Sweetie Belle! Damn, I never would've thought of this combination... Although I'll bet Rarity weeps at the lack of fabulosity to be had in homespun robes. (Or are they all the rage, this season?)
Story 10: Ooh, more Pinkie Pie (So, so few people write her well enough for me to like her.) Good gads, how can you make me mourn Angel? I loathe the bunny. Loathe. Loathe. ....So saaaad!
Story 11: The prodigal marefriend, eh?
Story 12: ...HOLY **** o.o NUUUUUUU! Arghleblargle. Well-written, yes. Crushing my hopes and dreams, also yes!
Story 13: CMC! Yay! And yeah, Scoots has a point. Any sane stallion probably took one look at Ponyville and ran for the hills/clouds/cities.
Story 14: Now here's a Twilycorn story I can get behind. So much yes! Twilight, you and your.. Logic. Solid logic. Gosh. Just ruin the musical number, why don't you? (Take one for the team, you say?
) Dat ending-- This was another one of my absolute favorites. (Have you thought about posting a few of these as one-shots with the summary and art and all that jazz?)
Story 15: Woaaaaaaaah. How dystopian! Yeah, I'd love to see that fleshed out.
Story 16: Ohdamn. There's another one I wouldn't mind seeing more of.
Story 17: And then she made a million bits for inventing razor-scooters. How do you keep making weird-assed ships sound so awesome?
Story 18: That was just.. There are no words. It's like that hospital scene in, uh, what was the movie? World War II, where they try to kill the patients before the soliders get there. Just.. Yieeeee
2202015 ... The three things I seem to love when it comes to speed-writing are:
1) Ruining the norm in the best way I know how, because it helps develop my fragmented headcanon into something that could later be a story...
2) Crackshipping, because it's and, if done right, expands on my NoTP mentality. Plus, it's a nice way to complete charicterization, since you have to flesh out what you know about the characters in a way that they work together, which is a fun challenge in and of itself.
3) Making Pinkie Pie sad, because it doesn't happen enough and I love what it does to her mind...
Thanks for the comments, and I'm glad to hear that I give you some d'aww to go with the extra helping of pony-angst.
Dude, not cool. You are NOT allowed to mess with my emotions like that. I mean, wonderfully written as always...but not cool.
Seriously, I actually think it makes perfect sense that Pinkie Pie would be the one to kill them with kindness. While I know Fluttershy is known to do practically anything if it is for the greater good...Pinkie just always seemed more twisted. She could literally do anything, and I wouldn't think twice about it.
2374538 What can I say? I like putting Pinkie in weird situations and watching what she does. I also like putting strange emotions in things and watching what anyone reading does.
well that sure is a different interpretation of that saying
wonderfully done
seriously, I'm dying to know why this happened, but this story works so well because we don't know. We don't need to know. The story isn't about why, but what Pinkie does now. It takes a good author to know what the reader needs to know and what they don't, so kudos to you