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“P-please let me go. I’ll stop, I p-promise.”
Twilight muttered those words weakly. She couldn’t do anything else. The oppressive force of the peach overlord filled the room, sneaking up her garters and making her feel uncomfortable in her jubblies.
It had locked her in this room days ago, giving her nothing to eat but the dust on the walls and nothing to drink but the dust on the walls as well, but that didn’t really make for a tasty beverage since dust usually comes in a solid form and it’s rather sticky and grimy and all that and is absolutely terrible as a source of hydration, and this just goes to show how incredibly evil the peach overlord was.
The peach overlord smiled. It bared its fangs. It grinned. It drooled its luscious, sparkling nectar. It oozed waves of domination upon her. It cast the overbearing stress of ownership upon the poor little unicorn.
I am your lord and master, it suggested, almost as if it could speak, and you have been a very naughty girl indeed.
“M-me? Naughty? No… never!” Twilight chuckled nervously, trying to wash away the fear with a small burst of laughter.
It didn’t work. It only served to make the peach much more furious.
It lay there. Silent. Fuzzy.
Judging.
Silently Judging.
Twilight ran her front hooves down her face, turning once again in panic to the door. She didn’t move from her spot. She couldn’t.
She looked down to remind herself. One of her legs was taken a while back. It had left her with only three upon which to stand.
But there was no blood. There was no pain. There was no discomfort. There was simply a wrenching in her heart whenever she tried to look at it, and all she could manage was to partake of the space where her leg should have been through a blurred gaze and misty eyes.
The only thing that hurt was her butt. And she didn’t know why.
She turned back towards the door. Exhausted as she was, she had to try. She had to try again, each attempt slowly sapping at her reserves and emptying her magical pony power levels. But still, she had to try.
The glow on her horn was barely enough to light up a little filly’s bedroom at night in order to calm her from the thoughts of monsters hiding under her bed. In fact, that little filly’d be quite annoyed.
“Why is your horn magics so weaks?” she’d ask, with terrible grammar, to which Twilight would reply–
“Because I’ve not eaten in nearly thirty-six hours, my child. Now go to sleep, please, I’m trying to concentrate.”
And concentrate she did. But it was not enough. There was a mighty crack as her useless spell bounced off the metal, ricocheting into the walls and slightly toasting a spider.
Mwahahaha, the peach overlord laughed, with his deep booming peach voice.
“Anti-magic…” Twilight wheezed, as if she had finished running a marathon with difficult up-hill bits. “I knew it. I knew it. You’re crafty. You know that?”
She flung a hoof towards the peach. “You. Crafty.”
A cough. A slight tremble.
Twilight blinked, squinting hard, grimacing at the pain that shot through her mind.
She felt as if her lungs were burning with the righteous force of a thousand forest fires that cleansed the land and purified the soil and made a billion squirrels homeless.
Poor squirrels.
“Poor squirrels,” Twilight muttered, her forehooves once again roaming over her own body. They snuck in cracks and crevices, almost as if she could find the key to the door within her own flesh. Almost as if she could crawl within herself to seek the answers.
Water dripped off the ceiling onto her head.
It trickled down the side of her face.
A cold shock in a cold room. Bare, white tiles.
Another cough. This time with force. This time with power.
Twilight flung her head forward, throwing herself up in a struggle – a sort of convulsion that could have been a dance were it not caused by the desperate cries of a body wanting to be set free.
She eyed the table – the small, rotten, wooden table that the peach overlord sat on – before thrusting herself to the edge and sticking her face at the malignant fruit.
“You,” Twilight gasped. “You. What do you want? Tell me. Tell me. Please. I’ll stop eating peaches. I’ll stop eating your kind. Is that what… what you want?”
Twilight laughed. Cackled, her eyes rolling up into her head as another drop of water splashed onto her horn.
“I’ll… I’ll stop! Yes!” She cried, hitting the stem of the table with her hoof. “I’ll quit this business and leave your people in peace!”
The peach overlord sat still, gazing, watching.
“Please. Don’t… Stop… Whatever it is you’re doing to me. Please… please stop. I… I don’t want to… I mean…”
Twilight felt sick.
She felt like throwing up. She felt like insects were crawling under her skin. Like a thousand needles poking at her. Like a million suns were exploding inside her bowels.
Another drop of water fell, hitting her squarely in the nose.
She looked up.
The ceiling wasn’t leaking.
“This… oh… oh, where did I put… everything?” Twilight mumbled, scratching at the ground. “Is this your idea of revenge? Is… is it because I’ve eaten so many of you… that you’re doing this?”
The overlord peach still found it humourous to stay unvocal through the entire exchange, even though Twilight knew… beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it could talk.
After all, it called to her in her sleep. It taunted her while she tried to rest.
And it brought in the others.
The others.
The overlord peach turned. It swivelled slightly, rocking in place. Facing the door.
With a clatter and a thunk, the door slid open. There was darkness beyond. Nothing but pure liquid dark. It poured in, silhouetting a figure that blurred its way into the room all of a sudden, joined by others until they numbered five.
They’d been here before. They’d been here the first time she lost a leg. They were here every few hours, always watching and observing, sometimes taking, but never giving anything back.
“N-no!” Twilight screamed, leaning back. “No! Not again! Please!”
They were here to take more of her. Take away more of her to feast on. To eat, and enjoy and partake of the flesh dripping with delicious juices, covered by a fuzzy, ripe skin.
It was sweet to them, and they wanted more. They would have more, until Twilight no longer remained.
And they descended upon her. Crawling closer like bats on the roof of a cave, like centipedes and other icky things.
“H..harribluh,” Twilight muttered with finality, as everything closed around her vision, and she slipped off into night.
– – –
“Oh great. You guys again,” the pony in the white coat said, eyeballing the group entering the room. “Yeah, I got the results. You can go see your friend if you want. You got three minutes.”
“Oh, the poor dear!” Rarity cried, rushing to Twilight’s side. “A-are you ok?”
Twilight’s eyes were glazed over in a shade of grey. It didn’t sparkle with its normal luster. Trickles of sweat dripped down her horn, the side of her face, and onto her nose. She raised a hoof weakly.
“H...harribluh?” Twilight muttered.
“N-no, dear,” Rarity responded. “That’s ‘Rarity’. W-with an ‘r’.”
“She can’t hear you,” the doctor continued. “In fact, there’s really no way we can tell what she’s experiencing right now. She’s been talking in her sleep, and sometimes out of her sleep, but nothing very cohesive. A lot of things about squirrels.”
“Squirrels?” Fluttershy asked, stepping forward as well.
“Yes, we analysed the sample you gave us,” the doctor continued, placing a small plastic bag with a peach inside. “She’s having a very small onset of dementia, or as we call it in the scientific world, ‘the crazybrains’. It’s caused by food poisoning. The peach she had been eating was rotten.”
“So the peach was the culprit of her... condition?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Yes, along with cramps, the shakes, the willy-nimbles, the super-runs… a whole bunch of other stuff. Technical terms. You know.” The doctor waved his hoof around.
“But… a peach? That one thing caused all of this?”
“Yes,” the doctor said, dryly. “It’s what we in the medical profession call a very bad peach. Stop questioning it.”
“Well… you’re the doctor, I guess.” Rainbow shrugged.
“Why is she still strapped down?” Fluttershy asked. “Isn’t that bad for her?”
“She’s been experiencing some sort of weird fits, or something.” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “We had to tie her down for her own safety. The most she’ll get is a bad case of pins-and-needles in one of her legs or so, that’s all. She won’t be able to feel it, but there won’t be any permanent damage.”
“Um… could we leave this for her? Maybe?” Applejack interjected, holding up a giant stuffed bear. “And we brought chocolates, too.”
“No. I told you this before. Guests in the emergency ward aren’t allowed to be left gifts. It’s against policy.”
“What policy?”
“My policy! Now, if you ladies wouldn’t mind, your friend needs some rest, and I’m going to have to administer some medicine in a moment. And trust me. You don’t want to know how that goes. Now get out!”
The doctor frowned, watching the group leave and mutter horrible things about him and his questionable bedside manner.
“Hey!” he called, to the departing Applejack.
“What?” the pony called back with vast irritation.
“Leave the chocolates. Now get out!” he said, snatching the box.
“Silly kids,” he muttered, looking down at the fruit. “All this nonsense and noise… all because of a stupid peach.”