Chapter One
THOOM. THOOM.
The earth shook under the impact, the implacable tread of something truly gigantic.
And then, almost from out of nowhere, it appeared.
"GRONK! GRRONNNGK!!"
With a ferocious, ear-piercing roar, the monster - resembling something like an old-fashioned carnivorous dinosaur - descended upon the city, and began to lay waste to it. Monstrous feet with heavy claws kicked and stomped, sending cars flying; brutish hands pushed over buildings as though they were mere cardboard!
The titanic beast lashed its heavy, spiked tail, and roared in devilish glee as it approached the skyscraper at the heart of the city. Fangs bared maliciously, the giant monster moved in to sink its claws into the sides of the building, hell-bent on destroying it, destroying everything around it--
"Pinkie! Hey, Pinkie!!"
...
The monster stopped thrashing the skyscraper, which actually was made of cardboard, and then clumsily shuffled around to face the voice. It raised a claw and waved with enthusiasm.
"Hi Limestone!" A high-pitched and cheerful, and also somewhat muffled, voice called from behind the reptilian muzzle.
Pinkie Pie's second eldest sister rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Phone for you," she huffed, "Get your scaly butt over here and pick up already."
"Ooh!" The claws reached up, and the costume's head came off, and a mass of pink curls spilled forth as Pinkie Pie beamed excitedly, "Okie-dokie-lokie!" She half-ran, half-waddled, across the basement floor to her older sibling, her still-costumed feet scattering toy cars and model buildings every which way. With awkward, still-monster-clawed hands, she took the house phone from Limestone, and carefully held it up to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Hey Pinkie!" A familiar scratchy voice responded.
Pinkie gasped with delight, and beamed, "Rainbow Dash! Hiii! How's it going?"
"Fine, fine," the other girl chuckled, "Just wanted to see if you were still good for bringing cupcakes to the soccer match tonight."
"Oh yes! Of course!" Pinkie nodded rapidly, "Don't worry, Dashie! I won't let you down!"
"Hehe. I know ya won't. See you at the soccer field, Pinkie!"
"See ya, Dashie!" Pinkie tried to hit the "off" button on the cordless, but her monster claw knocked it out of her grip and it clattered noisily to the ground. "Oopsie..." she tried to bend over and pick it up, and only succeeded in further knocking the phone across the basement floor.
"Darn it! Hey Limestone?"
The green-eyed Pie sister stopped at the top of the basement stairs, her hand on the doorknob, and sighed in mingled annoyance and expectation. "Yeah Pinkie?"
"Can you please come get the phone? ...And uh, help me out of this costume too, please?" Pinkie's voice added sheepishly.
Limestone grumbled and muttered to herself a lot, but she helped out her little sister.
Later that evening...
Pinkie Pie had not only brought cupcakes to the soccer match, but she'd also cheered the loudest from the sidelines as Rainbow Dash and her team had played against the team from Griffonstone High. Of course, no one would ever expect less from the party planner, given her role as head of the cheering club at CHS!
The match had been a close one, and after a very narrow win by Canterlot High, Pinkie and Rainbow Dash were in high spirits. The soccer team had celebrated their win with a round of milkshakes at the Sweet Snacks Cafe, and when the festivities finally wound down it was getting pretty late. Pinkie Pie, being who she was, didn't want the fun to stop just yet, and so it was that she invited Rainbow Dash to her house for an impromptu sleepover.
"Really?" Rainbow Dash laughed when Pinkie asked her. "Ahh, sure, why not? Lemme call my parents and I'll meet you there with my stuff."
"Yaaay!" Pinkie cheered, throwing her arms around the soccer captain in a mighty hug.
"Oof! Pinkie, take it easy," Rainbow chided her, though it was easygoing, "Let me get my phone out at least, alright? Then you can break me in half."
"Silly Dashie," Pinkie chortled as she let the other girl go, "I'd never break you or anybody in half! I only break my miniature buildings!"
Rainbow Dash paused in the middle of dialing at those words, but shrugged it off as "Pinkie just being Pinkie," and added, "I don't doubt ya one bit..." as she finished putting in her parents' phone number.
Half an hour later, the two teenagers were seated happily on the floor of Pinkie Pie's bedroom, as Pinkie Pie started up her game system for them to play a few rounds of "Marevel versus CapCorp: Eternal" on. The pink girl ran into an unexpected snag, however, when she tried to put the game disk in and found that it wouldn't go.
"Whoops! I forgot I'd put a movie in earlier," she giggled sheepishly, hitting the eject button on the machine. Carefully taking the DVD disk out of the machine, she handed it over to Dash. "Here, could you put it up please?"
Rainbow Dash noted the title printed on the disk, in bold all-caps green letters. "'Kaijilla vs. Gigatron'?" she asked. "Wow Pinkie, never woulda guessed that you liked old monster movies."
"It's not *that* old!" Pinkie protested mildly, as she slipped the Marevel vs. CapCorp disk into the gaming system, "And besides, it's still a lot of fun!"
"Sure, I guess..." Rainbow Dash shrugged. She liked her mindless action movies as much as the next teenager, but the old-school "Kaijilla" movies had never quite caught her eye like the newer (and darker) ones. Pushing the thought of Japanese giant monsters out of her head, she then picked up her controller and settled in to get a few rounds of fighting in as Zapp or Mane-iac--
There was a knock at the door. "Come iiiiin!" Pinkie sang out.
It was Maud Pie. "Pinkie," she said, in her usual monotone voice, "Did you clean up the basement yet?"
Pinkie, whose eyes had been glued to the menu screen for the game, suddenly blushed and smiled guiltily. "I, uh... I put away my suit," she said with a bashful giggle. (Rainbow Dash looked from one Pie to the other, wondering what the heck was going on.)
"Pinkie, please finish cleaning up," Maud stated. "Then you can play with your friend."
"Aww, okay..." Pinkie sighed, putting down her controller and giving an apologetic smile to Rainbow Dash as she hopped to her feet. "Sorry Dashie, I'll be right back, I super-duper swear it!"
"Hey, that's fine..." Rainbow shrugged. "Just do what you gotta do."
"Will do!" Pinkie chirped as she hurried out the bedroom door (Rainbow could hear her footsteps thudding down the stairs as she went). Then, to Dash's surprise, just a minute later, she heard Pinkie come barreling back upstairs, and the party planner stuck her head through the doorway. "Say, Dash? Could you get the broom out of my closet, please?"
"...Okay," Rainbow said finally as she got to her feet, "Why do you keep a broom in your closet?"
"Silly Dashie!" Pinkie Pie giggle-snorted. "What better place to keep the cleaning stuff than with my clean clothes?"
It's just Pinkie being Pinkie, Rainbow Dash reminded herself, shaking her head affectionately as she went over to the closet. "Sure, can't really argue with that. One broom, coming right uuAAAUGH!!"
The scream of surprise came from when Dash opened the closet door just in time to have a person-sized rubber dinosaur costume come tumbling out, the headpiece nearly landing right on top of her.
"Oops!" Pinkie giggled, zipping over to help her friend, and pick up the fallen suit, "I'm sorry Rainbow Dash! I thought I'd put that away properly!"
Rainbow Dash stared uncertainly at the head of the dinosaur-like monster costume as she hefted it up. "Pinkie Pie... why, exacltly, do you have a Kaijilla suit in your closet?" She stuck her hand into the mouth of the headpiece, feeling the teeth, "And where'd you even GET one anyway?"
"From Rarity," came the cheerful answer, "I asked her if she'd make me one, and she did!"
Rainbow Dash let out a laugh, as she put the costume head back on the shelf in the closet it had fallen from, at the thought of the proper lady Rarity slaving away over making such a suit for anyone, even a friend like Pinkie Pie. "Hah! Never would have guessed Rarity knew how to make such stuff," she remarked, as she then got the broom out and handed it over to Pinkie.
"Me too!" Pinkie giggled, "Buuut I asked her, and she said that she did know, but could I please keep it a secret, and I did!" A moment later, her face suddenly fell. "Uh-oh..."
Rainbow snickered, and patted her on the shoulder. "It's fine. Now c'mon..." she and Pinkie left the bedroom behind, as Pinkie headed for the basement with Dash following after her. "I think I know what this 'mess' is, and I just gotta find out..."
The two girls tramped down the steps to the lower ground floor of the house, and soon enough Rainbow Dash was looking upon the aftermath of Pinkie Pie's earlier "rampage" across a homemade landscape of trashed model buildings (that were once carefully painted old boxes and crates), scattered toy cars and trucks and tanks as far as the eye could see...
"Whoa." Rainbow Dash looked over the scene, as Pinkie began to sweep up the toy vehicles, carefully offloading them into a storage bin. "You set all of this up yourself?" the athlete asked, as she knelt down and picked up a model fire truck, handing it over to the pink girl.
"Yep! It's, uh, just something I like to do for fun," Pinkie giggled softly as she soon finished scooping up and storing away the toy vehicles. Taking the broom, she now began to sweep up some of the model buildings that had been smashed and crushed beyond repair. "I just really, really like those old giant monster movies, and one day I really, really wanted to get up and act out one of my own. So I painted a bunch of fake mini buildings, and Rarity made me the costume, and I guess you know the rest!"
Rainbow Dash smiled softly. "Hey, if you had fun, right?" she said approvingly, "And besides, this setup *is* pretty awesome - though I am surprised that your suit can't breathe fire."
Pinkie giggled. "I really wanted to make it do that!" She blushed a little, "But Limestone says I'm never allowed to even look at fireworks again after what happened last time."
Rainbow Dash blinked, but knew better than to ask what had happened. "So, Pinkie!" she decided to ask instead, "Ever thought about, like, making an actual movie out of this stuff?"
"Hmm?" Pinkie looked back at her questioningly, curls bouncing as she emptied a load of junk into a trash can. "Whattya mean?"
"You know!" Dash answered, "Like, made a fan film or something. You've got a wicked-looking costume already! And we could probably make an actual set for the buildings; I think Fluttershy's dad is into models or stuff like that, he might know some guys... I'm just saying, maybe we could really pull something off here."
"You think so?" Pinkie asked, her smile growing more and more by the second.
"Heck yeah I do!"
"Whoohoo!!" Pinkie let out a shriek of delight, as she leapt into the air for joy at the thought.
When she landed back on the ground though, another thought occurred to her, and she piped up. "But Dashie? We don't have a camera crew. Or a story. Or another monster for me to fight!"
Rainbow Dash gave her a reassuring clap on the back, a familiar smug smile on her face as she answered, "Don't worry Pinkie... I'm sure we can get that all figured out..."