Sugar. Spice. Nothing nice.
Sunny arrived at the Sheriff’s office just after noon, with a small box of baked goods on her back. She trot inside to find Phyllis and Hitch discussing the recent disappearance of her son, Sprout, at his desk.
“Still no news?” Phyllis asked.
“No, I’ve deputized a few ponies to help search but nopony has seen him for several days,” Hitch explained.
Sunny came up to the desk and set her pink box down, and opened it up. “I’m so sorry to hear that Sprout is still missing, Phyllis. I made these for you to try and cheer you up.” She lifted out one of the treats. “Unicorn cupcake? Freshly baked.”
Phyllis gave a weak smile, and took the confectionary from Sunny. “Thanks, I appreciate the gesture.” She took a bite of the cupcake, chewing slowly as her eyes rolled up slightly. “Oh, that is so good. I really should get the recipe for these sometime.”
Sunny smiled. “I’m sure I can find a time for you to stop by and help me bake some.”
Hitch took one from the box and took a bite. “You definitely keep getting better, these are as good as Argyle used to make.”
She nodded. “Help yourself, I just thought I’d let you know that I care, and that I’ll keep an eye out for Sprout.”
“Thanks” Phyllis gave Sunny a hug. “I know Sprout used to antagonize you, but you’re exactly the kind of friend he needs right now.”
“If I see him, I’ll be sure to let you know. I know he loves you very much.”
With that, Sunny turned around and left the station to head back to her lighthouse. It was a beautiful day out, and now that her home had finished reconstruction, everything was going perfectly. She had four great friends, and at least enough ingredients for two dozen more cupcakes.
”Can we send some more letters out, letting the pegasi and unicorns know they have friends here?” Sunny asked.
“Of course we can, Sunny bunny. We’ll do our part for Earth Ponies everywhere…”
They gestured to their hearts and said together, “hoof to heart.”
Argyle adjusted his apron and lowered his goggles back over his eyes. He went over to the wooden slab holding an olive pegasus who had responded to one of the floating letters they had recently sent out. The letter promised they would have friends in Maretime bay, but instead this drifter had found out that the rumors she had heard about Earth ponies were not exaggerated.
“Now, you just need to take the scalpel and cut the lateral tendon of the distal muscle here.” Argyle took a small marker and put a black dot on the pegasus’s wing. “It will disable the wing’s ability to flap, and a little further down you can find the joint to remove the wing.” He made another mark.
The mare on the table whimpered and tried to say something through the belt that was gagging her.
“Okay, daddy!” Sunny clambered up onto the table and took the scalpel in between her teeth. She slowly and carefully made the incision where her father had shown her, slowly separating the flesh to a slow trickle of blood. She saw the stringy white tendon, and severed it with minimal force. The tension on it caused it to snap and recede beneath the skin.
“Well done.” Argyle beamed with pride as she began to work on the joint to remove the rest of the wing. “We can clean the bone and add this wing to our collection, there isn’t much meat in the wing itself so there’s not much to cook with. However, that doesn’t mean we’ll be wasteful. The thin bones of the wings make for excellent unicorn horns to put on cupcakes.”
Sunny did her best to ignore the flailing pegasus and not get knocked off the table. After a couple minutes of intense focus, she’d finished severing the wing and spit out the scalpel. “I did it!”
“Yes you did. Now why don’t you head up and shower while I close the wounds? Tomorrow I’m going to teach you about the locations of all the major arteries and veins, then we’ll make some more treats for your friends.”
“Yes daddy!” Sunny jumped off the table and ran over to the ladder that led out of the basement. She had several red splotches on her fur from an artery that had supplied blood to the wing. One of the most important rules of their work was to always clean up, after all Sunny couldn’t spread friendship and joy if she looked like an extra in a Judgement Neigh movie.
Sunny was softly singing a song to herself about today being her day as she opened and closed the front door to her lighthouse. She set down her saddlebag, made sure the curtains were drawn and the front door locked, then headed back towards the trap door.
Beneath a small rug was the entrance to the basement. It hadn’t been damaged by the collapse, and wasn’t on any blueprint of the lighthouse. Argyle had dug it out himself to facilitate his study of ponies and their innate magic. What the eye couldn’t see, Argyle had tried to find more invasively. Perhaps the inability to perform magic was due to a physical change, and he needed only to dig deep enough into a unicorn’s mind to prove it.
Sunny opened the trap door and carefully went down the steps, closing it behind her. She could hear the TV playing, several soft gagged screams being emitted by the tiny speakers built into the old CRT device.
“Spout, I’m home!” Sunny beamed as she trotted over to the Earth pony. “Oh look, the recording of our sessions is at the best part!” She pointed up to the TV. “This was when I gelded you!”
Sprout cried and whimpered, unable to look away from the television. His eyes were bloodshot and watery, the eyelids held open by metal clamps to ensure he had to watch every moment of his torture again and again while Sunny was running errands.
“Oh don’t be pouty, you had this coming after you wrecked my house and nearly killed Izzy.”
She looked down at the stallion, who was now missing both hind legs. The stumps had been sutured shut professionally, after all Sunny had years of experience. She checked the straps on his forelegs were still tight, but not blocking blood flow, then undid his gag.
“Phyllis says hi, she loved the cupcakes you made for her. Who knew pony flesh was just the savory ingredient you needed to balance out the sweetness of cupcakes?” Sunny asked.
Sprout swallowed a couple times before he could speak. “P-please… I w-want… my m-m-m-mommy!” He sobbed, snot running down his face along with tears and drool from where the cruel gag had been fastened against his lips.
“Oh, she’s doing just fine without you, you know.” Sunny sat down next to him to look up and watch the recording with him. “There’s a lot more connective tissue than you’d think supporting the testes. I wonder why they still end up sagging with age? Not that it matters now, your beloved m-m-mommy is digesting yours as we speak.”
He broke out in another bout of ugly crying as he mumbled about his mom.
“At least I used painkillers, it’s more than you deserve you know? Spreading all that hatred and fear, well who is afraid now?” Sunny laughed. “You know what the best part is?”
Sprout sucked up and swallowed the snot and drool in his mouth. “N-no… what?”
“All that time pretending to love pegasi and unicorns as a cover, and it turns out, that’s what ended up restoring our magic!” Sunny cackled. “I mean, we dissected so many ponies to learn the truth. We did what we had to for Earth ponykind. And in the end, my charade about friendship is what saved us!”
She started laughing again and it took her a couple minutes to stop, and Sunny got quiet. “Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. I have friends now, I could stop… but I don’t want to, and I definitely can’t let you go after what you did, and after what I’ve taken from you…”
Sprout started chewing on his lip as he tried not to panic. He’d been in this basement for days and knew better than to antagonize Sunny. She’d shown him some rather creative and painful uses for her tools when he talked back to her.
“Still… It has been lonely since my father passed. I suppose once you’ve been delimbed I could keep you around as a body pillow. It’s either that, or…” Sunny ran a hoof across Sprout’s throat.
He gulped and tried to pull his weight up a bit with his forelegs to get away from her hoof. Sprout wasn’t sure he wanted this torment to continue, but he didn’t want to die either. He could see the sorrow in Sunny’s eyes as she looked across the room at a photo of Argyle, and had an idea. “C-could… I keep my last 2 legs? It’s not like… like I am gonna crawl away, and it’d let me… hug you.”
Sunny looked up at the television and was lost in thought for a moment as Sprout’s left hind leg had a tourniquet fastened to it. As a rule, Argyle and Sunny didn’t harm Earth Ponies. Of course, most Earth ponies weren’t obnoxious idiots bent on world domination.
The video continued to replay the part when she removed his second leg. With the blood flow blocked it had not made too much of a mess as she carefully removed the limb the same way a careful toddler might disassemble a set of building blocks.
She had carefully cleaned and preserved the leg’s skeleton so she could put it on display alongside the other skeletal remains of both unicorn and pegasi. Sprout’s leg had higher bone and muscle density than a unicorn, and was almost twice as thick as a pegasus femur.
“You know what?” Sunny said. “I suppose you’ve suffered enough, at least for now. If you promise not to whine, or run, or basically do anything to piss me off, then I’ll let you keep your last limbs and your life.”
Sprout gulped and nodded his head. He could feel his hoof itching as he watched the video, spasming as the scalpel hit the nerve. The phantom pains got worse the longer he watched himself carved up on repeat. Finally, Sunny clicked a remote control and turned off the horror show. The pain in the missing appendage faded to dull pins and needles, as Sunny began to unstrap the tormented stallion.
The bed upstairs was a welcome comfort after spending a few days on an itchy wooden slab. Sprout hadn’t had much sleep, or much food, during his stay here. The porridge had an odd taste to it, and either Sunny enjoyed eating dry bits of cardboard, or had taken a very “waste not, want not” attitude in her cooking recipes.
For most of the night Sprout was pinned against Sunny, who hugged and cuddled him like she was trying to apply pressure to a bleeding wound. Her clinginess was the least of his problems, because every time he tried to pull himself away, she would subconsciously tighten her grip.
It wasn’t until just as the sun began to rise and shine through the window, that Sprout found himself with a little room to move. Sunny had started to roll over, but hadn’t dragged him to the other side of the bed yet. He was laying almost evenly with her, only one foreleg clutching tightly.
His first instinct was to wiggle out and run again, when he felt his phantom limbs spasm in pain. Sprout wouldn’t be getting far on his own, nor would he be doing it quickly. If he were to drag himself all the way to Maretime bay and rescue, he would need more than a head start.
He would need to kill Sunny.
A few weeks ago Sprout wouldn’t have killed anypony. Sure, he’d have conquered them, but that was different than killing. He was saving the town.
But now, he found himself placing his forelegs around Sunny’s neck without hesitation, using a sleeper hold that he and Hitch had learned when they joined the Sheriff’s department.
And unlike in the officer training, he didn’t release his grip. With one foreleg locking the other down, Sunny’s face began to bulge and he could see the veins of her neck expand with each heartbeat. The blood trapped inside them, the arteries increasing the pressure to her head, and the veins not allowing the blood back out.
She began to thrash as soon as the haze of sleep lifted, and Sprout tightened his grip. He wasn’t sure if it was her airway, or the blood flow, or some combination of the two, but in under twenty seconds it was done.
Sunny had stopped moving, and Sprout released his vice-like grip, and rolled over towards the edge of the bed. He fell off onto the floor and felt a sharp pain in his stomach. Dragging himself to the nearby waste basket, he knocked it over and started to dry-heave into it.
After taking a minute to regain his composure and wipe the tears from his face, he started to drag himself across the room to the stairs. Each step he pulled himself down sent a jolt of pain through his stallionhood and the two stubby legs. The pain renewed in the missing limbs, and it wasn’t until he reached the bottom of the stairs and looked back he saw why.
The sutures had come undone, and he’d left a bright crimson trail of blood leading down the stairway.
Sprout couldn’t stop now, no matter how much it hurt. Even as the carpet burned his underside, he continued to pull himself towards the front door and freedom.
Then came his next challenge. He had to balance himself on his butt and try to reach up to the door lock. It took a couple tries before he was able to unlatch it. Sprout fell backward, the door slowly opening and got his first breath of fresh air.
“Sprout?” A concerned voice shouted. He froze in fear.
A moment later, Hitch pushed his way through the door, looking down at the battered and bloody stallion. “What the fuck? Are you okay? Is Sunny okay? Who did this?”
Sprout shook his head, “No, it was Sunny, she’s insane!”
Hitch tilted his head in confusion, when an orange blur tackled him in the side, knocking him into the wall.
With a harsh sounding zip, a double-layered plastic bag was sealed over his head by a thick zip tie. Hitch was quick to react on instinct, striking out with a hoof at the attacker but not hitting anything. He then focused on tearing the bag off his head.
While in his confused state, he didn’t realize the takedown hold was being used on him until it was too late. There was the sound of zip ties again, and his forelegs were bound behind his back. Hitch began to kick his hind legs wildly, until they too were ziptied.
He lay there squirming and struggling, feeling the plastic bite into his flesh, as he struggled to free his limbs and take the bag off of his head.
“You!” Sunny screamed at Sprout. Her nose was bleeding and her forehead veins still distended
Sprout realized he must have screwed up yet again, and not held the choke hold long enough. He looked between her and his friend Hitch, and started rolling himself back onto his belly to crawl over and get the bag off his head. He knew there’d be no fighting her off, but if he could free Hitch, there might be a chance.
The bag was fogging up now, rapidly expanding and contracting around Hitch’s head. Sprout couldn’t see through all the mist, but he could see the way the entire bag collapsed into his mouth with each panicked breath.
He clawed at the zip tie with his hooves, and was about to try biting the bag, when the world blacked out for a moment. There was a ringing in his ears, and the entire room was spinning around.
“This is all!” There was another loud bang, and Sprout felt his head bounce off the floor. “Your!” Another bang, the room spun faster. “Fault!” A fourth strike.
Sprout couldn’t lift his head. He knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t remember what. He saw the floor was bright red, had Sunny gotten a rug? He could hear an angry voice, but didn’t understand the words.
His world was reduced to pain. Not in his body, but in his head. The pressure and pain continued to build, as blood trickled out of his mouth, nose, and ears. He couldn’t move anything, Sprout could only stare ahead at Hitch.
Hitch, the one pony that never gave up looking for him, had almost rescued him. The bag over his head wasn’t expanding anymore. Instead, it would contract at irregular intervals almost like hiccups. The twitching and breathing weren’t co-ordinated anymore.
Perhaps it was some small mercy then that when the cast iron frying pan came down one final time, Sprout ceased to exist.
There wasn’t a word to describe the amount of discomfort he was in. His mouth was dry as cotton, his limbs ached, his head felt like it wanted to split open several times over and eject its contents. None of his legs seemed to obey his commands to move, his eyes couldn’t quite focus.
Finally after what felt like a long waking dream where he was paralyzed, Hitch finally became aware of the room he was in. It was dark, save for the orange dancing glow of some sort of furnace or fireplace. There were relics, skeletons, maps, and more adorning two walls like some sort of museum. He groggily rolled his head over, looking around for any sign of another pony to explain what was going on.
Sunny was standing there next to him, smiling. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Hitch, but first… Earth pony cupcake? They’re fresh out of the oven.”