Alimentary Transportation

It was a fine morning in Equestria. The grass was growing, the birds were flying, the sun was shining, and brother; Twilight Sparkle was reading. Curled up in her new bedroom in the Castle of Friendship, she had her muzzle buried in just one of a whole stack of books by her bed. The sun streamed in through her open window, casting its warm rays over her. The only thing that could have made this even better was some delicious chocolate cake, but she hadn't had time to buy any, what with having to rescue what was left of her belongings from her poor tree-house.

Just as the lavender alicorn was getting lost in a particularly engaging chapter on the magical theory of tree reconstitution, she felt a tingle. It started in her horn, but quickly ran down her spine and caused a shudder to run the length of her whole body, her dark blue mane shifting with the motion.

“What-” she started, but was suddenly silenced by a loud “pop”. Something hard, but yielding, hit the back of her head. Jumping off the bed with a yelp, Twilight spun around to face her attacker, wings flared and ready to do battle. What she saw caused her to stop and stare in puzzlement.

It was a loaf of bread.

It was quite a nice looking loaf of bread, actually; white, with a slight browning on top. Recently made, by the looks of it. It looked quite delicious, except for the odd smell coming from it. It smelled like a loaf of bread, but something was off about it. Wrong, if you will.

Before Twilight could contemplate further, there was another loud “pop”. This time, a loaf of bread hit her square in the face.

Rubbing her nose, Twilight looked down at the floor, where another loaf, identical to the first one, was lying on its side. It too had a strange odour. Another pop.

With reactions that would have impressed her pegasus friend, Rainbow Dash, Twilight ducked low, nearly cracking her chin on the floor. Her actions proved fruitless, however, as this loaf smacked her in the rump.

Barely had Twilight registered the impact, than another “pop” sounded. Then another, and another, each accompanied by its own loaf of bread. The frequency of the pops began to increase, and soon, the crystal of Twilight's bedroom floor was hidden under a carpet of the wheat based comestible.

She tried her best to avoid them as they flew through the air, with some success, desperately trying to figure out where they could be coming from. Had Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie found some new form of prank? Unlikely. This was magic based and neither pegasi nor earth ponies were known for their arcane abilities. Had something gone wrong with Princess Celestia's communication spell? No, that was green fire. This was some weird sort of red light. Perhaps Discord? Again, no. His magic was a flash of white light, not red.

As Twilight ran through a mental checklist of possible sources, she noticed that as more loaves appeared, some of them bore strange, gooey-looking green lumps. These loaves in particular smelled very abhorrent, an almost solid wall of “wrong” permeating the air around them.

Just as the amount of wheat-based missiles flying through air reached fever pitch, they stopped.

Standing up, Twilight gaped. Before her stood the biggest mountain of bread she had ever seen. Scratch that. It was the biggest mountain of bread that any pony in the history of pony-kind had seen! Even if some of it looked like it had been smeared in that weird goop stuff she'd seen some of the local foals playing with. What was it? Kak? Plak? Smak? Something like that.

Stepping up to the bottom of the pile, the princess gingerly sniffed at the nearest loaf. She pulled away sharply, gagging, nose wrinkled in disgust. Whatever that stuff was, it sure wasn't pleasant!

But where had it come from? Why had it appeared in the first place? More importantly, why had it appeared here, with such force and aimed at her? And what was that horrible gunk?

Twilight didn't know the answers to these questions, but she did know one thing.

Cake or not, there was about to be some serious science done in this castle.

- - - - - - - -

Several hours, and many dissected loaves later, Twilight groaned in frustration. She'd tried nearly everything she could think of, but was still no closer to unravelling the mysteries of the bread. That was, when she hadn't been busy gulping down fresh air from an open window, due to the stench from the disgusting things. Even a face-mask hadn't helped much.

Picking up one of the un-dissected loaves in her magic, she prodded it sharply with another spell. One of the green pustules burst open, dribbling goo down the bread onto her hoof. With a disgusted noise, she dropped the bread and wiped her hoof clean on another, less disgusting loaf.

Just as she was about to try yet another of the mysterious bread products, something caught her eye. The lump she'd just prodded hadn't lost shape, though it was continuing to leak goo onto her floor. Floating it closer to her, she examined it carefully, though she made sure not to let any more of the gunk get on her fur. Sure enough, the lump had remained perfectly semi-spherical.

“What the…?” Twilight vocalised, astonished.

With the bread still in her magic, she trotted over to the stack of books by her bed. One of them was a medical book she'd been planning to read, as even a princess couldn't be too careful when it came to ailments and injuries. She knew from a previous, if cursory, glance at the contents that there was a general diagnostic spell listed in it.

Flipping through the book, Twilight quickly found what she was looking for and cast the spell, watching as it swept over the loaf before returning to her horn. As the information fed into her mind, she nearly dropped the loaf altogether in her surprise.

“Tumours?!” she cried out, wings standing up. Was this bread… alive?! How was that even scientifically possible? This was not scientifically possible!

As the report finished in her head, Twilight's confusion deepened. No, not tumours… Beauty marks? What?! These were… beauty marks?! Self-aware beauty marks?! And she'd cut into one of them!

“Oh no, I am so sorry!” She didn't know if the growths could hear her, but she felt better for the apology. Her horn glowed as she prepared a healing spell, transferring the energy to the loaf.

Just as the magic touched it, however, the bread let out a terrifying screech. Twilight dropped the loaf as if it had stung her, responding with her own squeal of surprise and shock, recoiling from the suddenly vocal breakfast food and darting behind her bed.

Peeking out around the foot of the bed, Twilight watched with ears alert as the loaf started squirming, making strange squeaks and grunts. The loaf struggled onto its bottom, whereupon it appeared to look around, though it didn't seem to have any eyes.

“H-hello? Are you ok?” The loaf turned around at the sound of her voice, rising up on its “belly”. Twilight swore she heard a sniffing sound.

“I'm sorry I dropped you,” she continued, walking back around her bed. “I was just startled. I hope I didn't hurt you.” The growth-infested bread seemed to cock its “head” at her, proceeding to make a strange mewling noise.

As Twilight approached the loaf, she held out a hoof, attempting to show she was friendly. The bread inched closer, definitely sniffing now, inspecting her hoof.

“It's ok, see? I don't bite,” She said, smiling. “Now, why don't you let me loo-YAGH!” The princess snatched her hoof back just in time as, with a sudden snarl, the small loaf snapped at her hoof, a mouth with very, very sharp looking teeth suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

“What in the… hey!” Twilight cried, as the bread-turned-loaf-monster snapped again at her retreating hoof. It growled at her, bearing its new teeth and lunged… towards the massive pile of bread in the middle of the room. “Hey! Get back here! I still haven't finished fixing that cut!”

Twilight tried to grab it in her magic, but the telekinetic grasp missed. The loaf plopped onto the bottom of the pile, where it continually growled at her in a menacing fashion. She approached it slowly, readying a healing spell in her horn. Trying the grab again and missing might startle it, unpredictable as it was, but she could at least try and fix it up anyway.

“Ok, ok,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and re-assuring. Even she wasn't convinced. “I'm not here to hurt you, I just want to help you.”

As she drew closer, the loaf snapped one last time and made a dive for a gap in amongst its inert brethren.

“Oh no you don't!” Twilight yelled, throwing the healing spell after it. It missed and impacted on the bread around the gap the angry loaf had disappeared into. She watched as the spell dissipated throughout the massive pile.

“Drat!” she spat, stomping a hoof. Now she was going to have to dig through the pile of stinky loaves to find it, probably getting bitten in the process. The pile of stinky loaves that had just been hit by her magic. The pile of stinky loaves that had just been hit by her magic and which contained a lot of loaves with green lumps on them. Just the like the one that had come alive. Twilight gulped.

“Oh boy…” she said, her voice weak.

The whole pile began to take on a life of its own as each of the loaves began to move, writhing and squirming around on its neighbours. Some of them turned to face her and growled, baring teeth that looked just as sharp as the set the first one had. They lunged.

With a frightened yelp, Twilight leapt into the air and clung to the chandelier in the ceiling. Looking down, she saw the loaves circling and somehow managing to jump up at her. By the second, more and more were joining them, the original pile appearing to move across the room to below her precarious hanging position, getting steadily higher. Soon they would be able to reach her, and then… She had to do something.

Summoning up as much power as she dared, she fired a blast of energy from her horn at the floor. When the smoke cleared, there was a clear patch on the floor, littered with a few charred bits of toast. Quickly, she dropped from the chandelier into the clear space, wings flapping to slow her fall.

Lighting her horn once again, Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on the room and everything in it. Around the regular fixtures, she felt the presence of hundreds of angry, vicious, wheat comestibles and focussed on them all. Straining with the effort, she encased them in a magic bubble and forced them to one side of the room, sensing rather than seeing them flow past her.

Opening her eyes again, she was greeted with a writhing mass of teeth and bread, snarls and whimpers mixed together and all straining to escape the magic surrounding them. The strength of the pushing surprised Twilight, and she applied more magical pressure to keep them contained. She was met with a few more mewls from the massive block of bread pressed up against her wall.

Satisfied they weren't going to escape for the time being, the alicorn turned around, looking at the few books she had left and trying to come up with a solution to the problem. How was she going to deal with all this carnivorous bread? Pff, now there was a question she'd never imagined having to ask herself, princess or no. Why was it always her that seemed to get into these messes? Ugh, concentrate Twilight, you're supposed to be-

POP!

Twilight spun around, expecting to see a new loaf somewhere in the room. Instead, there was nothing. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She knew she'd heard someth-

POP!

Again, another pop, though this one seemed to have a squelching under-tone to it. What was-

POP!

POP-POP-POP!

In sync with the disgusting sounds, movement caught her eye. The bread… the bread was… bursting? As Twilight watched, the growths on the loaves burst, one by one, leaking green goo out all over them. It spread fast under the pressure exerted by both her magic and the bread itself. More of them popped, the frequency increasing and soon, there was nothing in her magic except a writhing green mass.

It began to change shape, becoming more regular; taller and longer. By the time it stopped moving, there was only a large, green oblong in her magic. What had happened? Were the loaves… dead?

Cautiously, Twilight let her magic fade from around the green object. She dropped low to the ground and tried to approach the foul-smelling mass as stealthily as possible, wings at the ready to push her back in case of trouble. Getting as close as she dared, the princess reached out a hoof to gently prod the gooey block.

Her hoof touched it and then the world was suddenly spinning. Twilight crashed into the opposite wall, a deafening roar forcing its way into her ears. Shaking her head clear of the stars she was now seeing, the princess looked back at where she'd been. Sitting there now, instead of a thousand angry loaves of bread or a giant green lump of goo, was a single, massive, goo-covered loaf of bread that was all teeth, green pustules and tentacles. And it looked hungry. Or, at least as hungry as a loaf of bread could.

Twilight briefly considered herself lucky she was not the subject of one of those weird adult books she knew Rainbow Dash read from time to time, given the number of appendages this thing had, before the creature let out another roar, splashing goo everywhere with its tentacles.

It moved ponderously, yet with a surprising quickness, towards her. Getting to her hooves, Twilight charged the same energy spell she'd used on the smaller versions of this monster. Letting fly, it hit the beast square in what she hoped was its face. To her dismay, it did nothing more than elicit an another angry bellow. The creature's tentacles surged towards her, leaving her barely enough time to take to the air to avoid the attack. She didn't have any time to reflect on her poor choice of tactic, however, as the slimy appendages immediately came after her again.

'How is this thing seeing me?!' thought the princess. 'It's got no eyes!'

With no time to think, Twilight merely acted, throwing every offensive spell she could think of at it. Nothing worked, and she was quickly getting tired, not used to so much acrobatic flying in so short amount of time. Tired enough, that one whipping tentacle caught her in the ribs and sent her cartwheeling out of the window. Unable to steady herself, the alicorn tumbled gracelessly to the ground, screaming the whole way down. Fortunately, the fall wasn't too far, and her fall was partially arrested by a tree that had, by pure chance, decided to take up residence in that particular spot.

Spitting out leaves and shaking the twigs from her mane, Twilight looked back at the castle, where the roars of the bread-creature could be heard emanating from her bedroom window. Tentacles streamed out of the open window and latched onto the side of the castle tower, cracks rapidly appearing around it. After a moment of this, Twilight's jaw dropped as the side of the tower surrounding her bedroom caved inward and the creature came sliding out, riding down the side of the crystal tree on a trail of green slime. It hit the ground with a heavy thump, the ground shaking with the impact. It quickly righted itself, searching its surroundings with deep sniffs.

Twilight began to panic. Her best attack spells had failed to stop this thing, telekinesis would only hold it in place and would eventually tire her out and she wasn't sure that fire would be effective on a creature this size, not to mention that-

Her terror-laden train of thought was interrupted by the sounds of another roar and the creature lumbering towards her.

She scrambled away just in time for a flailing tentacle to smash into the tree she'd fallen through. Jumping to her hooves, she galloped off, randomly firing shots of energy behind her as she went, hoping one of them might hit a weak-spot she'd overlooked. She spared one terrified glance behind her and immediately wished she hadn't. The creature was right there, tentacles whipping at her tail. With a scream, she dug deep and forced herself to go even faster.

Sprinting into Ponyville, Twilight garnered worried glances from everypony she passed, shortly before those worried frowns turned into terrified screams and their owners scattered to the four winds. She tore down main streets, careened down alleys and sprinted across squares, and while she managed to put some extra distance between her and the monster, it still kept chasing her, smashing through whatever was in its way; stalls, carts, even buildings. Would nothing stop this thing?! Why couldn't she just send it back where it came from?!

Wait. That was it! Twilight stopped dead in her tracks. That was the one thing she hadn't tried! She turned around, facing the creature, which was rapidly bearing down on her. She just needed it to get a little closer…

Flaring her wings, Twilight charged her horn once more, holding the spell ready for when she needed it. She briefly stared the monster down as it approached, its teeth gnashing and tentacles flailing. She suddenly burst into a sprint straight towards it and, confused by its prey's apparent sudden lack of fear, the creature stopped, growling loudly.

Twilight grinned as she got within range, leaping into the air and gliding through the air on her momentum alone. With four screamed words, she sent the spell shooting towards the creature.

“RETURN TO FREAKIN' SENDER!”

The spell hit the creature dead centre as Twilight swooped over it. A red light spread out over it, a loud hum vibrating the ground for some distance around, loose debris and stones rattling in place. The light quickly collapsed into a brilliant set of red electric bolts and shot into the ground, taking the form of the creature with them. A spill of bright red and orange sparks fell from where the bread monster had sat, hitting the ground and quickly fading.

Twilight swooped back around and landed where she had been stood before, grinning at her success.

“Ha! Return to sender spell,” she said to nopony in particular, pride dripping from her voice. “Don't know why I didn't think of it before!”

A shocked, but altogether familiar voice suddenly came from behind her.

“Twilight Sparkle! What in Equestria is going on here?!”

Twilight whipped her head around, and there stood Princess Celestia, co-ruler of Equestria and sovereign of the sun. The large, pale alicorn's face wore an expression of disbelief, only partially masked by her billowing, multi-coloured mane. The smaller of the two ponies quickly turned and bowed, a habit she had yet to break.

“P-Princess Celestia! It's er, it's not what it looks like!” Twilight somehow managed to stammer out, straightening up. The elder princess' voice became stern, as did her face.

“Then what, pray tell, does it look like?”

Twilight looked behind herself at the trail of destruction left behind by the creature. Slime dripped from every surface it had touched, pools of it lying everywhere. A few of the braver ponies were peeking out from their doors, or the wreckage of their houses. She gulped and turned back to Celestia.

“Erm, giant, goo-covered bread monster?” Twilight ventured. She chuckled nervously. Celestia merely arched an eyebrow, the stern school-teacher expression still in place.

Oh boy. The rest of today was going be fun…