Twilight and Luna are stuck in a place far away from home, confronting an ancient and insane evil. Meanwhile everything in Equestria was about to go horribly wrong.
Twilight and Luna are stuck in a strange place after their failed attemp to rescue Trixie. Now both are trying to head home while confronting insane beings and their insane, chaotic and vengefull plan in a place where logic does not exist. Meanwhile Celestia has to handle an escalating situation on her own with the remaining mane six.
"My head hurts." Twilight said aloud. Luna agreed, because the lack of sun combined with the haphazard neon signs, bright clashing paints and impossible geometry made for an extremely unpleasant sight. The unnatural silence did not help.
Twilight was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Luna's story was hard to swallow and made her worry about what might happen. However she had to focus on getting back home. And finding Trixie, but she had lost much hope in that happening.
"This map makes no sense, the cardinal directions are in the wrong order and the map keeps changing." Twilight was holding the map given to them by Anarchy with her magic. "The only thing that doesn't change is this." She then pointed on a rough drawing of what looked like a stadium on the map. Luna took a look at the map. "Then that's where we need to go." She concluded.
"But how do we get there?" The purple princess asked, still staring at the map trying to understand it. "Just pick a direction, that's how it worked when I first encountered Anarchy. Trying to use logic will just make things worse." Luna answered with a frown on her face.
They then both noticed a normal bottle laying there on the ground. The fact that it looked normal made it suspicious. It then fell over due to a sudden gust of wind and spinned a bit on the ground. Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Spin the bottle?" She hesitantly said aloud. "It's one of those games done by teenage ponies, isn't it?" Luna asked. "I still don't understand many of these modern games, but it might work."
She then proceeded to grab the bottle in her magic and spinned it on the ground. For the next minute the bottle went and spinned faster and faster, before flying into a random direction and smashing through a wall. "We now know which direction to go to." Luna said, while Twilight was busy staring through the bottle shaped hole in the wall.
After wasting half-a-minute opening the door to the building, which opened in a diagonal fashion, they entered the building. All the furniture was nailed and duct taped to the ceiling and the walls were covered in backwards paintings of clowns. If she didn't know better Twilight might have mistaken this for Discord's antics. The both of them moved to another room trying to navigate in the backwards architecture. The next room looked like a kitchen, due to the hundreds of yellow pans littered over the room.
After pushing some of the pans on the side, and finding that this wasn't a kitchen, they found an open window to the outside. They climbed through it and landed in an open courtyard. They were overwhelmed by a sickly sweet smell and the ground felt sticky. It was made out of gummi candy. "Maybe we should fly?" Twilight asked while staring at her candy covered hooves.
Luna shuddered. "No, we would end up flying backwards. In every sense of the word." She emphasized that last part. The other princess decided not to insist on flying after seeing her companions' reaction. After taking way too long to traverse the sticky courtyard they reached the building on the other side. The bottle shaped hole also present in that building made it clear that they still were in the right direction.
This time the door was easier to open as it was made out of paper. The inside was filled with dark, rainbow colored bubble wrap. The bubblewrap popped as the princesses stepped onto it. It was very satisfying. They both felt mild distress at the fact that the popping could even feel so unsatisfying.
This one had no exit door on the ground floor so they went up the stairs. After climbing up sixteen set of stairs they reached the first floor. It looked exactly the same as the ground floor but it had windows leading to the outside, that did not lead back to the candy courtyard. Having no choice they carefully flew out the window. It went pretty smoothly, except for when gravity got inverted for two point seven seconds.
"I think I found our destination." Twilight groggily said. Luna turned around and saw a massive stadium not too far away, maybe half-an-hour of trotting. In normal circumstances.
The stadium itself was half backwards. Like if it had been cut in two and one half was then turned on its head. There was also a railway directly into the walls, as if it were duct taped. Multiple trains and trams could be seen moving on said railways and ramming against each other.
The fact that the straight upward road led directly to it was not reassuring. "Were not going straight to it?" Twilight asked with surprising confidence. "A giant boulder would likely come rolling down the street if we did." Luna answered. So they headed towards the closest building. The night princess then got a cake straight into her face as she opened the door.
They then spent the next two hours moving through all the illogical and frankly, quite nightmarish buildings. Going from rooms filled to the brim with boobytraps, backwards stairs, cold fire, underground tunnels, unfriendly mannequins and a whole bunch of other miscanscellous chaos. Also paint, lots of paint.
They endly exited the row of buildings and reached the stadium. Well, there were still some forty meters between them and the stadium. They slowly and carefully etched their way forward. Nothing happened. "They did that on purpose, didn't they." Twilight deadpanned. An annoyed Luna simply nodded in agreement.
Now that they were in front of the building they decided to rest for a few minutes and have a better look. The stadium was covered in worrying graffities. It looked like the kind of disturbing drawing that children would sometimes draw. Especially when they are haunted by unpleasant spirits and ghosts. Twilight knew this from her courses in ghostology and child psychology. She had a master for both.
After taking a breather they tried entering. The door was locked by a code. A typewriter was nailed beside the door, above it lay four strange squares and beside it there was something written. 'Who is the stupidest pony with an awful color scheme' Luna sighed. "Sometimes they're so childish." She said dejectedly before typing her name. Each letter appeared in a square. A bell was heard when she finished typing her name and the door opened.
"How childish." Luna muttered. The other princess stared through the doorway. The inside looked pretty normal except that everything on the left half was upside down. She could spot multiple radios and megaphones. Both ponies then entered the stadium. The second they were both inside the door closed behind them.
The radio's and megaphones then came on and a shrill voice started speaking. "Ladies, gentlemen, abominations and whatever else is present please head towards your seats because the guests of honor are now present. Guests of honor please follow the arrows towards the center." The voice then seassed and half-a-dozen songs started playing creating an unpleasant cacophony. There were dozens of arrows painted on the walls pointing towards one disheveled double door.
"Maybe we should have talked about this earlier..." Twilight started speaking. "...but maybe we should have spoken about Anarchy's powers and what to expect." Luna shook her head. "If we tried to prepare or plan then they would simply intervene and make things worse. And as for what to expect, same as Discord but much, much worse." Obviously the thoughts of something worse than Discord was worrying to Twilight. “No plan survives enemy contact.” She muttered under her breath.
The music then stopped and the voice started speaking again. "Could you please hurry to the center or do I have to call the bouncers?!" It sounded very impatient. The arrows started glowing in a bright, yet somehow also dark and unpleasant light.
Both princesses, having no choice, walked through the door. After an unnerving and long walk through the hallway, they reached the center of the stadium. It was... cluttered. Platforms and makeshift wooden towers littered around the field and all painted in dozens of different colors. There were also wooden suspension bridges and slides.
The seating area was filled to the brim with plushies, cardboard cutouts, mannequins and pillows with faces painted on them. They were even cutouts of Twilight and Luna in the crowd, all wearing silly oversized hats or with mustaches painted on them.
"It seems our guests are ready for the show to start." A then very generic sounding clapping could be heard. "Thank you, thank you." A massive figure then appeared on the other side of the field. The figure then slowly coiled around a wooden tower. Its lower body was a massive snake tail which was covered in scars, stitches and dozens of differently colored scales and patches of fur. Its upper body had two arms and was pretty slim and had two arms. It wore at least three different suits stitched to each other.
It was missing its left hand and instead had a sickle quite literally duck taped to the stump and it was wearing some mismatching jewelry. Its head was smooth with dull edges. No mouth could be seen. No details could be seen actually. Its face was pitch black with two red eyes. The back of the head had four different horns, not pairs, just completely different and asymmetrical horns.
It stared at the two princesses, malice obvious on its featureless face. "Please give a round of applause to our esteemed guests." The being waved a hand towards the two ponies. Applause could be heard from all over the stadium even though none of the "spectators" could be seen moving.
"Now let me explain the rules." The strange presentatore shouted in a shrill yet somehow also bombastic voice. "First no flying..." Both Twilights and Luna's wings were suddenly tied by ropes that had appeared out of nowhere. "...and that was the only rule. So the only thing our two guests need to do is get the The teddy bear of doom under their control and they win."
A loud roar could be heard coming from the side opposite of the two ponies. Then very loud thumping, before something big and furry bursted through a gate. At first sight it looked like a bear, but it clearly wasn't. Its two heads didn't even belong two the same species and both had blue glowing eyes. Also one of its rear legs ended in a hoof. The eight point three different colors were just the cherry on top of the cake.
The two big cylinders on its back were however the oddest piece on the creature.
"And here he is, the star of the show, our great and illustrious Doom Beartm." The presentator then took a deep breath. "And he is named Teddy just so you know." Luna and Twilight both whimpered. "I would wish you luck but we all know that would be a lie." A loud and somehow very generic laughter erupted out of the "lively" crowd.
The bear then chaoticly charged at the princesses.
"... and then they disappeared in the swirly, sparkly portal." Applejack had made the mistake of saying the word what aloud. Pinkie had then started giving a strange explanation which then devolved into a completely unrelated rant, before going back to the topic at hand and completely omitting the middle part.
"Like Pinkie put it Twilight and Luna are currently in a... how do I put it..." Celestia tried to explain. "In another dimension or universe, whatever suits you best." Starlight bluntly finished, which caused her to get a glare from the sun princess. "Oh dear." Fluttershy whispered. "This is quite the dilemma we're in, so what do we do?"
The main six, minus Twilight, had taken Celestia's explanation surprisingly well. "Well Starlight and I will figure out how to get her back..." Starlight scoffed slightly at that. "The problem is that that will take a lot of time, because we need to make sure that the whole being is swallowed by a portal to another universe." All the ponies in the room noded.
"But in the meantime there'll be no one to really rule Equestria, so we need you to distract everypony so we don't have a panic. Just until we can get Twilight and Luna back."
"Alright, princess. we'll take care of that. I just hope they're both alright." Applejack said confidently. "They can both handle themselves." Celestia answered confidently.
Celestia was currently reading an old tome of ancient teleportation magic in the hopes thatit would give her any ideas on getting the other princesses back. She and Starlight had been doing the research for the last five hours. Starlight was already annoyed after having been buried under books three times already. The Canterlot had millenia's worth of books and documentation. And the older they were, the less there were but also the harder to read and understand that they were. And often outdated and untrue.
But there were still times when you found gold. Like the old tome of Sortileges and curses written some twenty six centuries ago still had some very accurate and effective spells that were still true until this day.
Unfortunately they had not found any that day. She couldn't help but hope that her sister and old student were alright.
"AAAAAHHHHH...." Twilight screamed as she flew through the air after the bear had landed on a long wooden plank, after it had jumped towards the ponies, said plank then launching her violently in the sky. With her wings tied she couldn't stop herself from smashing into a tower. Fortunately the specific part of the tower that she smashed in was made out of a very soft plastic. It still hurt but better than smashing into wood.
Luna fired bolts of magic into the beast which seared the fur but did no damage. It did cause the bear's attention to fall onto Her. Having more battle experience, and experience overall, managed to fare better against the beast than her purple counterpart.
Twilight was busy thinking about which spells to use. Levitation would simply slip off the beast, lighting and bolts of magic bounced off it and all animal taming spells failed unceremoniously. So she kept trying whatever came to mind. She threw a transmutation at the beast, but again it just bounced off.
Luna managed to dodge most attacks from the two headed beast, however not only was it enormous but it was extremely fast. She failed to dodge one of its attacks but fortunately she put up a shield spell before being hit. She was sent flying into a wooden tower, but the shield protected her from the damage. The shock did leave her wobbly and confused.
Twilight, desperately thinking about what to do, spotted one tower that was held up by chains. It was illogical, but the chains looked very sturdy this gave her an idea. She shouted towards Luna. "I've got idea..." She pointed a hoof towards the tower. She also started pulling on the chains with her magic, which were sturdily bolted into the tower and ground. "...but I need some time." The night alicorn nodded and fired multiple bolts of magic into the beast, mildly angering it and more importantly getting its attention.
Twilight was busy pulling and prodding the chains from every angle possible, pulling duct tape and nails of it. She twisted some big metal bolts off and some tinier support chains. It wasn't a hard thing to do normally, but the unnatural geometry made it so much harder. Hearing Luna swear and the sounds of fighting also did not help. They were actually nerve wracking.
And then she managed to get one of the big chains off. For a second a look of relief and joy appeared as she held the big chain up. Said look then disappeared as all of the other chains snapped and the tower fell over. Directly on the bear, burying it. "You truly are a genius!" Luna congratulated. "I have to say I did not expect something this violent from you." She added with a smile of relief on her face.
Twilight wanted to explain how that was not her plain, as she held the chain in her magic, but was suddenly interrupted by a loud roar as the bear smashed out from under the rubble. Luna's smile disappeared. The bear only had a few tiny scars on its body. "We can still use my original plan." Twilight said hesitantly as she held the chain up for Luna to see.
She then moves the chain around its legs using her magic. The bear tried to dodge, but Luna managed to stop it from escaping with multiple well timed blasts. The purple alicorn then quickly attached the chains around its four legs. With help from Luna they tightened the chains almost causing the beast to fall over.
It managed to stay up, haphazardly balancing over the ground with its tied up limbs. "Well what do we do now?" Twilight asked aloud to nopony in particular. Both ponies stared at the presenter who was coiled around a tower in the far left of the field.
"You just need to beat teddy and you'll be allowed to leave." The presentator answered with an unnaturally joyful tone. "Which we just did." Luna answered with an annoyed tone. The presentator somehow smiled with its featureless smile. "You did..." The sound of chains snapping was heard, the two alicorns could feel their hearts drop. "...not."
The bear roared in rage before leaping at the two ponies. They quickly jumped out of the way before it could smash into the ground. Luna, slightly enraged, started throwing every spell she had at the beast once again. Twilight, not as angry and much more panicked, started searching for another plan. She couldn't help but wish that Fluttershy was here. She would simply use the stare to tame this bear.
While thinking about her friend, she noticed something. The ground where the bear had smashed in looked odd. She approached it to have a better view, while the night princess kept the beast at bay. There were multiple gaps into the broken floor. She looked through one and, using some lighting spell, saw that there was a very deep hole underneath. She could spot what were multiple very broken support pillars and a few seemingly intact ones.
A new plan came to mind, to break the remaining ones and then lure the bear over the weakened area. Before doing anything she went to inform Luna. Running over some rubble she quickly reached her. Twilight fired a few spells at the bear to hopefully slow it down. She explained her plan to the other alicorn as quickly as possible, which wasn't easy as the both of them were running around and dodging attacks.
"No, don't do that, instead of breaking and repairing them." Luna said after hearing that. "Because repairing would be the logical and non-chaotic thing to do." She added. The both of them then split up again. Twilight was confused by what the night alicorn had said, but decided to do as Luna had said. Logic did not seem to work in this place, so breaking or repairing the support pillar may have the opposite effect. But then again this place might also decide to use reverse psychology.
She headed back to the broken ground and shoving her head through a gap, she started repairing the broken ones using levitation and mending spells. This was done very quickly thanks to her master in architecture. You could earn a lot of degrees in Celestia's school for gifted ponies.
Once she was done she waved Luna over to her. Luna then rushed over to her, losing part of her tail as the bear swiped its claws at her. And once the bear stepped onto the "weakened" area it... collapsed onto itself dragging the bear and multiple towers into a dark abyss. Both ponies almost got dragged along.
Before they celebrated anything they both looked at the presentator. They had an extremely smug smile on their featureless smile. Any other time Twilight would have love to analyze it, to see how that was even possible.
Both ponies moved away from the hole keeping their eyes on it. A loud roaring came from it. Not the animal kind of roar, but much more... mechanical kind of roar. And then a big dark mass flew out of the hole leaving a trail of smoke behind. The mass then landed behind the two ponies. It was the two headed bear. A thick dark smoke emanating from the two cylinders on its back.
"A rocket propelled backpack." Twilight mumbled aloud. "What Luna?" Asked both confused and scared as she kept her eyes on the bear. Fortunately it seemed dazed from having flown and the smoke hindered its sight. "A jetpack, straight out of SPike's comics." Twilight answered. Loud laughter could be heard coming from the seats.
It was obviously pre recorded, as all of the plushies and cardboard cutouts could not actually laugh. All except for one. The presentator, with a frankly sadistic laugh, had slithered closer and now stood above them, coiled around a pink and metal tower.
Their laughter suddenly as a bolt of dark blue ethereal magic hit them. They instantly blew up into pieces which fell onto the ground. Twilight looked horrified for a second until she noticed that they were still alive. "Fuck." The now detached head sweared. Its arms crawled around and the tail, now into dozens of pieces, simply flailed like a fish out of water. Luna turned her attention back onto the bear which was getting back to its senses, while Twilight noticed something among the flailing body parts.
A tiny flask with a green liquid inside of it. There was something written on it. 'Throw at a problem.' So she threw it at the bear. The bear then instantly shrunk down. In the matter of seconds it had taken the size and proportions of a slightly larger than normal teddy bear.
Both ponies looked in confusion at the bear, as the binding fell off freeing their wings. The bear, who still had two heads and a jetpack, got closer and cuddled onto Twilight's leg. It purred slightly. It actually looked adorable.
"And we have a winner." The presentator, who was once again in one piece but with most of its limbs put on backwards, said before slithering away. Then a big door leading out of the stadium opened. "It see..." Luna was then interrupted by very cruel laughter coming from the now open door. A whole bunch of footsteps could be heard and eyes could be seen peering out from the darkness.
Under the city of manehattan Clean slate and Blue bleach were busy repairing some pipes. Sewer maintenance is a full time job. Both had years of experience, so the smell didn't bother them and they knew where to step. Blue also knew a few spells that made the smell more bearable. The new suits introduced by the Twilight administration helped even more. Comfortable, resilient, light and more importantly waterproof.
They had both worked in the sewers for well over a decade, so very few things ever surprised or concerned them nowadays. They still remembered the crocodile infestation six years ago. So for something to induce concern, it had to be very bad.
Like having well over a hundred meters of pipes being horribly damaged with half of them simply missing. Fortunately it was in the older part of the sewers. Most had been filled with concrete and pillars that supported the new levels. So pretty much all of the damaged pipes were useless. All except for one which the to workers were currently repairing.
"Those are clearly bite marks." Blue stated aloud as he replaced a badly damaged pipe. He looked at the piece in his hoofs. It was covered in strange scratches that he recognised as bites from rats. Except that they were too big to be from actual rats. "Obviously not, have you seen the size of these...", Slate pointed at some claw marks on a wall. "No rat would ever be able to do this."
"Probably some big animal got into the sewers again. Crocodiles or maybe alligators this time." He then added. "We both know that there are no alligators on this side of the country." Blue answered with a snarky tone. "Yeah, yeah lets just finish this." They continued working in silence.
Blue lifted his ears, before looking around. "What are you doing?" Slate asked. "I heard something..." Something then skittered behind them. They both turned around. More skittering could be heard. "Definitely rats." Blue mumbled. "Stupid rats." His companion said in an annoyed tone.
"I never thought of them as stupid." Blue said aloud, to the confusion of his older unicorn companion. "What?" "Remember what happened Red Cloth?" Both ponies shivered. "Yeah, only something intelligent and petty could do something like that." He added. "Bucking rats." Slate sweared aloud. "Language." His coworker reprimanded playfully.
Both worked for the next hour with the occasional joyfull banther. Neither noticed as hundreds of beady, little eyes watched silently, hidden by the darkness.
Slate opened his eyes. He then looked around searching for the source of the sound. He then found a broken vase on the ground. He knew that this would happen, he had told his wife to put it somewhere safer. She was still sleeping soundly beside him. Looking at their alarm clock, he saw that it was a bit over two in the morning. He reluctantly stood up and went downstairs to the kitchen to go fetch some cleaning supplies.
After drinking some water he got something to collect the broken shards. As he turned around he saw his wife hurriedly step down the stairs. "Something bit me!" She half-shouted. Slate looked at his wife, she had a pretty nasty wound on her left front leg. "Wha..." Slate started to ask.
Skittering.
The unmistakable sound of rats running around, behind the furniture and in between the walls. Both ponies panicked and ran to their sons room. On the way their they noticed that most of the furniture had disappeared and that there were holes everywhere. They palled as they saw that the door had been chewed through. They quickly ran through, but it was already to late. A massive hole had been chewed into the floor and their son was nowhere to be seen.
The only thing visible were red marks on the ground. Slate's wife started crying at the sight and he felt weak. The skittering increased and it almost sounded like laughter.
The floor then crumbled and both ponies fell down. They landed on a pile of broken wooden furniture. Besides it was a pile of metal appliances and objects.
Slate held his wife in his arms. He started screaming for help, hoping that any of the neighbors had heard this. He didn't know that a simple silencing spell had been cast on their homes.
The screaming quickly stopped as the two ponies were buried under a tidal wave of vermin.
Blue moved deeper and deeper into the sewers. He felt mildly worried that Slate hadn't showed up to work. Slate had always been a diligent worker, always showing up to work. In Blue's mind something bad had to have happened to Slate for him not to show up. The fact that another dozen onduty workers also hadn't shown up didn't help.
Bang
Blue turned around. One of the many lights in the hallway had broken. It happened quite commonly in the older parts of the sewers. So he continued walking.
Bang
Another light broke, this time in front of him.
Bang
Bang
Bang
Bang
All light broke one by one until only the only one that remained was the one directly above him.
Bang
Blue was now surrounded by complete darkness. He couldn't even see his own hooves. But he could hear. The unmistakable sound of rats scurrying around.
Braeburn was busy helping with the storing of apples. Usually it would be a simple and pleasant task, but today there was a feeling of unease in the air. Sheriff Silverstar had found strange tracks in the desert a few days ago. Nothing to worry about if it weren't for the fact that they were getting closer by the day and that some had what looked like blood on them.
Animal tracks and even dead ones were to be expected this far away from the rest of civilization and the desert. But these tracks looked nothing like normal animal tracks. They were asymmetrical, both too big and too tiny, contained paw- and hoofprints and strange claw marks.
ponies being ponies reacted with fear and by spreading rumors. Braeburn wondered where they had gotten some of those. The Wendigo, mothpony, slenderpony and even more ridiculous names. One pony had literally pulled a dust covered book out of a dust covered box and started listing old legends out.
Braeburn yawned. It was getting late. Looking at the clock inside the warehouse. A birthday party was being held today and most ponies would attend it. Including him, so he departed for the town hall where it would be held.
Apple picker was trotting quickly towards her house. She was swearing under her breath for having forgotten the present back home. And she lived on the very opposite side of town. While she was in a hurry, she was still paying attention to her surroundings. So she managed to notice something move through an alleyway.
Curious, she moved into the alleyway. It was extremely hard to see due to the lack of modern street lamps. One of the consequences of living in such a backwater and undeveloped town. But she wasn't thinking about that. She was just staring at the... thing in front of her.
It was busy gnawing on a dead lizard. The vaguely pony shaped thing in front of her was covered in wounds and stitches. Exposed bones, missing skin and fur, entirely exposed skull with hollowed out eyes, extremely sharp and looked like they belonged to over a dozen different animals, it was covered in blood. It then coughed, blood spilling out of its mouth, before turning towards her.
She then turned and ran away. She only got less than a meter away before pumping into something. She fell onto her rump. Dazed, she saw what stood in front of her. Another one of those things stood in front of her. It stood on two legs, one of which was clearly bending backwards. It opened its mouth, which was held together by nails, before lunging.
Picker was too terrified to scream.
Deputy Rightful Tree was not happy. He wanted to go to the party, like everypony else, but he had heard a strange sound so he went to check it out. He wouldn't rest until he found it, because that was how he was. The sound he had heard sounded similar to chewing with an empty mouth where your teeth hit each other, there probably was a word to better describe it which he did not know. But he recognised the sound due to his mother's habit to do that all the time.
And he knew with utter certainty that his mother was present at the party, so something else was making that sound. He then found it. It was ugly, bloody and dragging itself along the ground as its rear half of its body was missing. Thinking quickly he ran towards it and bucked it with his hooves.
The skinless and furless head snapped off with ease. The head covered in sharp nails and debris left multiple cuts in Rightfulls legs. The headless thing then proceeded to grab his leg with its horrible mangled front legs, seemingly unaffected by the loss of its head.
Panicking he kicked the bloody mass until it let loose. It hit broken bones and tore through flesh with ease, however the brittle thing had an unnaturally strong grip. He only got free when one of the arms snapped out of its socket. Staring with horror at the abomination in front of him and the broken leg still holding onto his legs, he heard something shuffling behind him.
He turned and was shocked to see another one of those things. This one had five limbs and seemed bipedal, like a minotaur, except that it had three legs. The third leg was obviously attached in a spot where something else was supposed to be, even with Rightfulls non-existent knowledge of non-ponies.
The mess of flesh and bones limped towards the pony, dragging two of its legs through the sand and leaving a bloody trail. It then lunged at him. He managed to dodge the much slower and unbalanced creature and ran towards the town hall. The broken limb that was holding onto his leg fell off as he ran. He started screaming to get everyone's attention. The few few ponies that hadn't gone to the party pocked their heads through the windows, before quickly rushing back inside out of terror.
As he ran he could see more and more of those things move through the streets and come out of the side alleys. He then tripped and fell over. Quickly standing up he saw what he tripped over. An arm coming out of the ground. Said arm proceed to pull and tug on the ground until a head popped out. Then a chest and another arm, as the creature was digging itself from underneath the ground.
Rightful could spot the same thing happening all around him.
And then banging, crashing and screaming started. Those abominations were broken through doors and climbing up walls, using their broken limbs as unnaturally effective tools. Their teeth, often simply nails and wood debris that had been shoved into their skulls, could bite through the sturdy wooden doors with ease. One fell over some stairs and landed with all of its limbs scattered around. Yet that did not stop it as all its limbs slowly crawled towards the main body before reforming itself.
The only good thing is that they were all very slow, Rightful rightfully thought. That is until something slammed into him throwing him into the ground. He could feel that multiple of his ribs and one of his legs were without a doubt broken. He stared at what had slammed into him. The thing in front of him had clearly been a pony at one point, but now there were like five or six different animals nailed and sewed onto it.
The thing then jumped at him tearing through his flesh with ease.
"What's happening?!" A pony asked in fear. Everypony in the town hall had started to panic. All of the foals were crying, huddled with their parents. Braeburn was trying to understand what was happening. Screams could be heard from the outside. "Braeburn, stay here and try to keep everypony calm." Sheriff Silverstar told him. He left before Braeburn could answer.
Someponies followed him outside trying to head home, but they they would soon join all the other screams of terror and pain. After the third one, the ponies on the inside wised up and stopped trying to leave. They stayed inside listening to the screams which slowly decreased and then stopped. The only sound left was the crying from inside the town hall.
And then something burst through the door. Its limbs were twisted around, two heads nailed to each other, belly gone and stomach out of it. It tried to rush the nearest pony, but somepony else had thrown a cup at it. It hit it in one of its heads, snapping off and causing it to fall through the door, back outside.
A barrel was quickly moved in front of the door to block it.
One of the braver ponies tried to have a peak outside through a window. A bloody, twisted hoof bursted through it and pulled the pony out. The screams did not last long. The things outside tried to get in climbing through windows and trying to break the barrel blocking the door.
All the ponies rushed upstairs, blocking the stairs with whatever furniture was available. It only bought them some time as the abominations tore through the makeshift barricade with ease.
Some of the ponies tried to fight back while they managed to buck some into pieces, those things would simply reassemble themselves in the matter of seconds. Braeburn saw the futility of their actions after beheading one of the things by throwing a vase at it.
Those things crawled through the windows, surrounding the ponies. The foals cried but the abominations, many of them actually deaf, ignored it.
None made it out.
Outside, roaming through the now bloodied streets, a hyena-like creature was busy cutting and carefully sewing body parts together creating a strange bloody mass. The creature made a few gestures with its hand and the mass of flesh and blood coughed blood before standing up and limping away.
Another one the abominations approached the hyena with its hand smashed into a crate of books. The hyena took one of the books out of the crate before shoving a pony skull into the abomination's chest and then proceeded to slam multiple nails into it.
The book they had taken was titled 'Equestrian history'. They opened it and after looking through some pages they found something that piqued their interest. A picture of a white horned pony with ethereal glowing mane. The hyena couldn't help but imagine that the ponies skull was attached to one of its many creations.
The hyena took their tools and some food, purely for the sake of pleasure, and departed. All the abominations that were mindlessly roaming through the streets started following the hyena.
Twilight and Luna were anxiously waiting for whatever was making the laughter to arrive through the stadium door. The laughter was loud and insane, coming from something that was clearly bloodthirsty and seeking violence.
Which was interrupted by the puring and cute roaring from the previously terrifying bear-beast. It was adorable and out of place. It was now cuddling on Luna's leg. Both princesses couldn't help but aww at the sight, as hard as they tried not to. They noticed that the laughter had stopped.
"This place has a tendency of subverting ex..." Luna started to say before being interrupted by something whizzed by leaving a trail of smoke behind and some flames on the ponies manes. Siad object then exploded as it hit a pile of debris. After quickly putting the fire out of their manes they stared back at the door where it had come from.
"A rocket propulsed explosive." Twilight muttered quietly under her breath. This got her a deadpan look from Luna. "What I'm a scientist, alchemist and engineer. I recognize modern and experimental weaponry when I see it." She responded. Luna simply rolled her eyes before focusing again on the approaching individuals.
A few dozen creatures were approaching carrying multiple dangerous contraptions. And each creature looked as if a dozen different animals and beings had been cut into pieces before randomly being sewn, nailed and duct taped together. One actually looked like if you had cut the head of two different animals in half and then sewn two different halves together.
The same could be said for their clothes, equipment and weaponry. They let their loud laughter out and fired upon the two ponies, and tiny bear, with great accuracy before charging in with whatever rusted knives they had on them.
The one in front blew into pieces as Luna fired a magic powered bolt into it. This proved ineffective as it simply put itself back together with help from the other ones present. Both alicorns took cover behind some rubble as the stitched creatures fired at them, which proved more effective than whatever spells the ponies casted.
A rocket landed a few meters away from Twilight. She couldn't help but think about how ponies and more likely the more industrialized griffins might soon poses such weaponry. Luna, while casting a shield spell around herself, flew in the air before smashing in the middle of all the creatures, sending them flying into pieces.
The creatures started putting themselves together, but with how far away the pieces had been sent from each other it would take longer. This was rendered moot as a dozen- or two more appeared out of nowhere and fired upon Luna. The bullets bounced off her shield hitting some of them back. Though all wounds quickly healed.
Twilight joined the fight, however her method of fighting was much less violent and more thought out. She would grab the weapons and dismantle them before throwing the pieces far away, she would also do the same for the leg and limbs of any of the mismatched creatures that tried to use their claws.
The sight of the weaponry made her feel physical pain. She tried her best to ignore that mechanical and scientific butchery for now.
The tiny bear jumped onto one of the taller creatures that carried a multi barreled rocket launcher, using its jetpack and then started biting at the chimera's face.
The three of them fought their way out of the stadium using said methods. It wasn't hard but it was tedious. Once they exited all the offending creatures disappeared.
The ponies sighed in relief. Obviously their relief was instantly ruined as a metal wagon, with half-a-dozen mismatched wheels, covered in scrap and with a dozen big metal cylinders. The wagon, which looked like it was about to fall apart at any moment, fired from all of its barrels, sending a very inaccurate barrage of scrap all around.
It then fell apart into a pile of metal, duct tape and some chewing gum. Twilight stood there holding a few centimeters of duct tape in her magic. "I did not expect this to be this easy." She said sheepishly.
The second she finished that sentence more wagons and chimeras appeared attacking both ponies.
After an hour of tedious fighting, it suddenly stopped as they reached a crossroad. They stood there for a few minutes waiting to see if more would appear. When none appeared both ponies relaxed and the tiny bear who had been following through all that fighting started playing with some random rubble.
Luna noticed that Twilight looked... sad? "Are you alright were thee hurt in any way?" Luna worriedly asked some of her older speech patterns reappearing. Twilight answered. "Their weapons and vehicles are utterly abominable. They shouldn't work. External combustion engines held together by glue." She started crying.
"Self loading ballistic weaponry, a technology that nopony has ever managed to create, made out of plastic and paper which should not be scientifically possible." The scientist inside of her died a little every time she saw one of those ramshackle multi barreled, duct taped guns and the rusty blunt knives that somehow cut through thick wood with ease.
After lamenting at the technological butchery, Twilight was ready to continue again. Trying to find their way they noticed a billboard. 'Temple of misery.' '173 kilometers that way.' There were a dozen arrows pointing into different positions. Luna took a bottle spinned it and then pointed at the direction in which it had stopped. A massive structure had suddenly become visible. "Ho..." "Randomness is the only constant here." Luna answered before Twilight could finish her question.
As they started traveling towards the temple a chimera jumped out of a corner. It was instantly sent flying into the air after being slammed into by two blasts of magic.
Both ponies knew this was going to be a very long trek. The bear moved along ignorant of everything.
'Thank you ponies but your misery is in another temple.' After an agonizing trek filled with obstacles, gravity defying roads, more chimera and duct taped 173 millimeter weaponry (Twilight counted) only to be greeted by a sign with that sentence written on it. Also the temple they had seen was just a massive cardboard cutout.
And now another one could be seen further away. So they flipped a coin which, just happened to be there, landed on heads telling them to head towards the temple. So they decided to do the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite and add a random of opposites to get the result. Which was to head towards the temple.
"Perish tou fiendish fiend." Luna shouted as she bucked the armored covered chimera who had grabbed her. Her kicks did nothing against its thick helmet and just as thick skull. Twilight was too busy Trying to defuse a bomb attached to a cat made out of plasma.
The tiny bear was eating some cooked steak that had been laying there.
"Why do these sharks have magic?!" Luna screamed as a dozen sharks were bitten through a door. "They're lazers, nothing magical about the..." Twilight was interrupted by a barrage of shots by one of the sharks, all of which were swimming through the air, which had a laser minigun attached to its back.
The tiny bear was taking a nap.
"I understand your distress at this sight but thee are definitely overreacting." Luna told Twilight who was busy having a seizure or stroke, maybe both, after having seen a block of ice that was on fire. And the fire was being melted by the ice. And the fact that it was floating in the air was just an insult to injury.
The bear was enthralled at Twilight strange movements.
'Temple of misery. Affiliate of misery and co.' They had reached it, after 164 kilometers of travel through backwards everything and non-euclidian anything. Twilight, who had somehow become orange, and Luna, who had lost around 43 percent of her mane, both collapsed out of exhaustion.
Twilight tried to get rid of her orange fur color with a few counterspells, which caused her to become every color in the book except for purple. The tiny bear laid beside the exhausted Luna, who was busy trying to salvage as much of her ravaged mane as possible.
After managing as much damage control as possible, they opened the door. Obviously the door had to open in a backwards and complicated manner. The inside looked abnormal and colorful like everything else. The most notable thing was that the stairs were attached to the ceiling.
Twilight poked her head inside and was instantly pulled inside and thrown onto the ceiling. She stood up and walked onto it like she was onto the floor. "Gravity is reversed." She told Luna. Luna then followed inside before being thrown onto the ceiling herself. The bear landed on her.
Getting their bearings back from the sudden reversed gravity. They look... "Hello, I adore company. Are you company?" Both the ponies and the bear turned around and looked at the figure now standing behind them. It was a bipedal red scaled lizard gecko with a longtail and feathers around its neck and lower limbs. It was wearing a black robe with a hood on and there were two chains with censers hanging on the sides of the hoody.
"Let me guess, thee is misery." Luna said with a semi-sarcastic tone. "No you idiot, I'm Torment you. Misery loves company and I clearly said that I adored company. The difference is obvious." They answered with the most nonchalant and joyful tone possible. This left Luna slightly speechless.
"Okay, we were told to head here, but we weren't told what to do." Twilight interjected. "Yes you were. You were told to come here and now that you're here you can head towards your next objectif and also the door you entered through has disappeared and bad luck getting out." Torment said before leaving through a door too tiny for them to physically fit though.
They then pocked their head back through the door. "Also there's one other guest that came here before you and they're lots of fun, bye." And then they left again.
Both ponies sighed out of frustration. "Let's just try to find to exit to this henious building as quickly a possible." So she opened the nearest door. The first thing she noticed, besides how unnaturally big this room was, was that Twilight was tied to rail tracks. "How did thee get there?" She asked. "I don't know, I blinked and then I appeared here." Twilight answered nervously. On a board the words 'The trolley problem' were written on them with a lever beside it.
Two arrows were painted on the ground one pointed towards Twilight and the other towards... a bunch of plushies which suddenly started crying in terror and pleading for help all of which were tied on other tracks. It was obviously a recording coming from the granophon that lay besides the plushies. "Wha..." Was the only thing they could both say before a trolley fell onto the plushies and blew into a medium sized fireball.
After untying Twilight they quickly left. Luna was the one to open the door again. She saw an unnaturally big room and Twilight tied to the tracks again. Before she could turn her head to see where they had come from, she was fully thrown through the door which then proceeded to disappear with a ridiculous sound effect. A board with 'The double trolley problem' written on it lay in between the tracks.
This time only one plushie was tied to the other tracks. This one actually moved slightly and the word help was repeated over and over again from the radio that was duct taped to its head. "That's an animatronic." Twilight pointed out, which got her a curious glare from her companion. "Its a new thing in the Griffonian republic, the Grifonnian empire, the republic of France and the kingdom of Gryffon Sale." She added.
Two trolleys then fell onto the animatronic.
Twilight got untied and then they left through the nearest door again. This time twilight opened the door only to find herself tied to rail tracks again. "How!?" They both shouted. 'The trolley conundrum' was written on the board this time.
Both ponies shoute in frustration as they came to the dreadful and also very obvious conclusion that this place was going to be extremely frustrating.
"Luna, waarom heb je me verraden?!" The crushed and burning cardboard cutout of Celestia shouted through its multiple megaphones. Even if it had been a carbon copy of celestia, instead of a cardboard cutout, Luna wouldn't have fallen for that ruse. Mainly due to the fact that had a very deep voice of a stallion with a very deep accent that Celestia never had. And also while the imitation spoke a language that Luna had mastered, she knew that Celestia didn't even know a word of that language.
Twilight got herself untied again. "83." "What?" Luna asked. "This is the eighty third time that we've done this."
"And it's getting boring." A veyr androgynous voice said. An ethereal figure then appeared besides Twilight. "You're entertaining and your friend speaks funny." It then added. Luna was busy looking at its hide which looked like a strange, yet beautiful night sky. Twilight was trying to come up with a scientific explanation for the mildly glowing multi limbed creature in front of her, as she knew that she had seen or read something about such a creature.
"This is going to be fun." It added non-chanantly as its featureless face started smiling."
"Kill, maim, murder, kill and destroy. Did I mention kill?"
Ruff Saw, an earth pony, was busy doing his job, which was cutting trees. Normally he would have been doing this with a smile on his face however today he was worried. The Hippogryph that had been staying at the hotel in their little village had been gone for a whole day and left most of his stuff in his room. He'd made it quite clear that he would only be gone for a few hours. On its own this was nothing to worry about. However the other thing was that the woods were a bit too silent.
Usually this was one of the hardest places in Equestria to live in, with bears and wolves attacking the town almost every week and there always was some animal hiding just outside the town waiting for a lone pony to leave. But none of that had happened. Just one very silent and calm day, which was hard to imagine for most ponies in town. They had to build walls around their town.
It had made working unnerving. The little town of hard creak was not one of the best places to live due to how dangerous the woods around it were. It was nowhere as dangerous as the Everfree forest, but in this case the town was completely surrounded by the tall trees. Especially since two ponies that had decided to go search for the Hippogryph on their own, hadn't come back or heard from after six hours.
But this hadn't stopped them from working, so Ruff Saw and everypony else were doing what they always did. Ruff took his ax in his teeth and swung it and slowly cut a tree down before hacking it into pieces on the eastern edge of the town. The earth pony put the logs into the special woodsled that he always dragged with him.
While putting logs into the sled, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something tiny and red had just run by, using the many of the carts and other logs that had been left there as cover, directly into the woods. Ruff's instinct told him that whatever that was might be related to why the woods had been this silent.
Quickly looking around he saw that nopony else was around. They were all either in town or working on the other edges of the town. So against his better judgment Ruff went after the red thing on his own. He found some strange tracks, on one side the mark was just a single dot and on the other side it looked like the paw marks of a Four toed lizard. Which was strange as there were no four toed lizards around here.
Following the tracks he reached a tiny clearing not too far from town. Inside it was a camp, with ramshackle tents and dimly lit fires. And he saw the red thing he had followed. And it was ugly. Its skull was elongated with white badly trimmed hair, the horns on the back of it were broken and partially broken , a big scar in its forehead, its left eye was swollen shut and its right one was blood red. Its left leg was a pegleg and its right one had four clawed toes, thus explaining the strange tracks. Its right hand fingers ended in sharp claws while its right was missing, replaced with a rusty hook nailed and sewn into its place. Its tail was short and chubby.
And it was not alone. A dozen other creatures like it were laying around one of the campfires. They all had similar wounds and appearances, though some had patches of black fur or scales. They all wore very torn clothes. On the fire there was a big rusty pan. Ruff Saw saw a blue hoof poking out of the pan, which he recognised as belonging to one of the two ponies that had gone after the Hippogryph.
This left him horrified. The red creatures grabbed broken and rusted swords before limping towards him. The creatures let out weak gargling laughs. Ruff turned to run away, but he saw that another half-a-dozen of those creatures had snuck behind him.
One suddenly lunged at him awkwardly swinging its rusty ax.
Ruff easily dodged the attack and then bucked it. The creature was sent flying into one of the tents. They were weak and their bones were brittle and clearly had no idea how, or at least lacked the strength, to properly use their weapons. So Ruff swung his ax around and bucked wildly, easily taking all the creatures that got too close.
The ones he wounded did not stay down for long, as weak as they were, and more seemed to come from everywhere. Ruff was surrounded by well over half-a-hundred of them. Though they were too scared to get close.
Then more of the creatures appeared. They looked exactly the same as the others, but were slightly taller, had all of their limbs, wore pieces of chainmail and broken pieces of metal and carried rusted spears and broken shields. One lunged its spear at Ruff. He swung his ax around parrying the strike which caused the spears to pretty disintegrate.
While the creatures' pathetic attempts at fighting and the atrocious condition of their weapons reassured him that the town could defend themselves from these vile creatures.
And then even more creatures appeared.
Except this ones instead of being weak and brittle were tall and muscular with long sharp horns and three blood red eyes staring hatefully at the pony. They carried massive swords, hammers, maces and axes which had become red from blood. They were covered in ramshackle armor, animal skulls and more horns protruding out of their arms.
Even more appeared covered head to toe, and they were very big, in so much armor that every step made the ground.
Fortunately all of the bigger creatures were coming from a single direction, meaning that he could still escape by pushing through the weak and brittle ones. Which he did.
One of the fully armored ones let out a hate filled, bloodthirsty scream. All the creatures then ran after the pony. Fortunately they were much slower than Ruff. Mainly due to the fact that the big ones kept tripping and stepping onto the tiny ones.
Ruff reached the town and shouted as loud as he could to warn everypony. At first everypony was confused until they could hear the loud screams coming from the woods. Everypony then quickly entered the town and closed the town gates. The ponies quickly armed themselves with axes and whatever other tools they had before heading to face whatever threat was coming their way.
Some ponies tried to ask Ruff Saw what he had seen outside, but was interrupted when something started banging against the door. He entered one of the taller buildings to have a better view of the area. Reaching the top floor and looked out a window.
The creatures were pouring out of the woods, not only from where he had come but from every other side. The entire town was surrounded as a red wave of creatures were pouring out of the woods. The tiny ones were putting ladder ups to climb over the walls and the big ones were quite literally punching through the town gates.
Ruff was utterly horrified by the sight. He was panicking so much that he didn't notice that one of the demons, wearing nicer but still torn robes, lifted its hands which started to glow. The demon then swung its hands around, throwing a fireball at the building where Ruff was inside. The entire top floor and every pony inside were quickly turned to ash.
The ponies put up a good fight, but the demon's superior numbers and greater experience won the fight. They took a lot of pleasure burning everything down.
Some of the ponies, mainly the foals, managed to escape through an old tunnel that had been dug under the town. Their only intention was to get as far away and warn the rest of Equestria from the bloodthirsty horde.
Said horde would soon head towards Canterlot as its leader had unfinished business with Celestia.
Twilight stared at the strange being in front of her. It stood on two legs with six arms. Its body was lithe with six and wearing Purple cloth around its waist and shoulders alongside some golden jewelry. Its head had around a dozen horns on its back alongside some more cloth. Its eyes were pitchblack except for the iris which was a burning yellow.
And it was busy chewing on a bush made out of chocolate. "Who areth thee?" Luna asked while taking a defensive stance. "I'm Nebula... No wait, that's my cousin's name. I go by... uuuhhh... Cosmo." The ethereal creature spoke. "And while watching you fail over and over again is entertaining, with each attempt more convoluted than the previous, after the 83 attempts it does get boring."
"Excuse thee, this is a serious matter not for your entertainment." Luna scolded Cosmo. "Doesn't change the fact that it is." He retorted. This got him a glare from Luna, though that did not bother him. Twilight keeps analyzings his body. She could see what looked like unrecognizable constellations on his body. The strange glow he emminated and his eyes that looked strange celestial bodies were fascinating to her.
Which he noticed. "Like what you see?" He asked teasingly while putting on a riske pose. This caused Twilight to blush a bit, but she still couldn't keep her eyes of him due to his strange and fascinating appearance. The strange amalgamation of horns were dark but somehow still glowed, which were but one of the many reasons that he was so fascinating to her.
"So what dot thee, insult to thee night sky, desire? We arth busy with a strange and complicated task." Luna made her disdain for him and his night-sky like appearance. "Just pull the lever." Cosmo answered like if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We already did thee idiot! If thee had been paying attention then thee would know!" Cosmo then pointed a finger towards the ceiling of this unnaturally big room.
A lever was nailed to the ceiling. "How did we not notice this?" Luna asked aloud. "All the exploding trolleys and carts were quite distracting." Twilight pointed out. "And quite beautiful." Cosmo added unhelpfully. "Lets just flip it now." Twilight said before being interrupted by Cosmo. "You first need to restart by going through the door.
So the alicorns left through the door, with Cosmo staying behind. Twilight was once again tied to tracks. And Cosmo was there once again lying on some strangely comfortable looking rocks. Luna quickly pulled the lever with her magic. Instantly a trolly wagon fell directly onto Twilight. "NO!" Both ponies shouted aloud before the trolley fell. Luna quickly rushed to help her friend.
She lifted the trolley up effortlessly and it crumbled in the grip of her magic. It was made out of confetti. Somehow. Twilight spat some out of her mouth. "I hate this place." She grumbled, her face covered in trolley colored confetti. Luna cut her out of her bindings while some chuckling could be heard from somewhere. Cosmo was just watching and clearly taking a lot of pleasure out of the ponies misfortune.
This got him a glare from both ponies. That did not bother him, especially Twilight's, as she was still too fascinated by his strange appearance and physiology.
Focusing on the important thing, the alicorn of the night dragged the purple alicorn out of the room. This time the door did not lead to the same room and Twilight wasn't tied to some tracks.
This time the room contained a massive jigsaw puzzle, like alicorn sized jigsaw pieces. On a wall stood a picture and the number 1395. Twilight looked at a pile of puzzle pieces analyzing them. "It seems that that's a picture on the puzzle and the amount of pieces." She pointed out while pointing at the picture and number on the wall.
This caused Luna to sigh in frustration. Twilight tried not to sound too excited at the prospect of working on such a massive puzzle.
Except for the puzzle itself and two doors,the room was bare.
"No, it has to be somewhere. We need to find it." Twilight shouted desperately searching every nook and cranny of the bare room. Cosmo had left after the twentieth piece, to Luna's not so silent relief. Both ponies had assembled the 1395 pieces together way too quickly. Twilight had worked extremely fast and efficiently to assemble the 1395 pieces basically on her own, leaving Luna on the sideline. Also it was actually a 1396 piece puzzle.
So Twilight was desperately searching the missing piece to fill the hole directly in the center of the puzzle. "Please calm do..." The night alicorn started saying calmy, but was interrupted by the purple blur that was her companion. "We need to find that piece to finish this puzzle, because if we don't we will be stuck in this room." Twilight blurted half mindedly.
A door then opened. It was the door out of this room. Cosmo walked in non-chanantly holding a big cup of blue juice and a plate of cooked meat. Cosmo then leaned onto a wall and started eating and drinking without a care in the world. He gave the bear some meat which it happily chewed on.
"How?" Luna asked in disbelief. "It was never closed." He answered before taking a bite out of some roasted meat. This only caused Luna more frustration and mild disgust. She grabbed her by the neck and dragged her through the door. Twilight tried to protest and remain to find the final piece, but they all fell on deaf ears.
The door led to a courtyard which contained multiple foodstands. There however was nopony manning them. There also were multiple statues and even more doors of different sizes leading in and out of the courtyard. Cosmo went and just sat against a statue with the bear laying close to him. Twilight tried to drown her frustration at the unfinished puzzle by analyzing and getting a better understanding of what Cosmo was. The statue looked like it had been made out of a dozen different statues. Torment then appeared again in the middle of the courtyard. "Hello m..." Luna pounced on the strange chimera. Their fragile bodies fell into pieces.
"What ar..." Luna slapped the bodiless head. "How do we get out of here?!" Luna asked. "That's n..." Luna slapped them again. "How do we get out?!!" She half-screamed through clenched teeth.
The bodiless chimera cowered mildly. "Just ask politely." Luna looked baffled at the answer. She was tempted to slap them again. But decided not to. So instead she decided to actually asked aloud.
The second she did, the biggest door in the courtyard opened up. It looked like it actually led to the outside. So she grabbed the bear and Twilight in her magic before trying to leave.
"Not so fast!" A loud voice shouted behind her as they were half-way out of the door. Luna turned around. "What is i..." Luna saw that a massive figure had appeared behind them. Torment had put herself back together and had a wide smile on their face. The other creature was an abominable amalgamation of bodies and limbs. Luna felt a mild sensation of wanting to puke. Twilight was stuttering. "Tha-t-th-at sho-ouldn-n't be po-possible. Illogic-cal...." Cosmo was still sitting near the strange statue and chewing on meat. Actually the statue and the new abominable creature looked the same.
Luna tried to quickly rush through the door, but it had simply disappeared.
The abominable abomination opened one of its many mouths to speak. "Leaving already without saying hi. Also I love company just so you know."
"Pain is temporary. Temporary does not equal short."
Twilight and Luna ran while misery followed them. While the creature was slow and moved with a heavy limp its size allowed it to keep pace with the ponies. It also was an amorphous mish-mash of dozens of bodies. The main head was pony like, except for the two dozen eyes, the wolf jaw and the second mouth that was situated on its left cheek. There were three other heads situated on other parts of the body. Two of them had asymmetrical horns on their back.
Its body was covered in a dozen arms and half-as-many legs. It also possessed five thick long tails which it used for stability. The body itself was surprisingly lithe and very long. It was covered in patches of differently colored fur and scales. There were also spikes on multiple parts of the body.
The ponies tried to fly out of the courtyard, but halfway in the air they were turned upside down and crashed down on the ground. The courtyard had changed while they were in the air. It had become bigger and multiple backwards and illogical buildings had appeared.
The alicorns, knowing that they couldn't fly away, started using magic. Luna just fired magic bolts and even fireballs at the creature, each one that hit it led to an abnormally big smoke cloud and a few limbs flying away. Misery would just grab and reattach the missing limbs in seconds, so that did very little.
Twilight tried a subtle approach. She created a shield around misery, but it simply smashed through it with ease. So she ripped its limbs off and threw them far away. Twilight tried not to look much, because the ripping of limbs caused lots of blood to spill, even though the other chimeras did not bleed at all. This also did not work as the limbs simply reappeared back onto the body.
The shrinking spell bounced off, instead hitting a random vending machine. The freeze spell only froze a very tiny part of the body, not even slowing it down. She quickly abandoned any fire spell, due to the horrible smell of burnt flesh that instantly appeared. Misery proved too strong to be bound by quick spells and it moved too erratically for her to use the stronger spells, as they require longer casting times.
This repeated itself for all her other spell attempts. So this just ended in a cat and mouse chase. The ponies used their superior number to attack from different directions and confuse it. This instantly resulted in Twilight getting hit by one of the many tails and sent flying in the air. She managed to regain her balance, but was then turned upside down again which caused her to crash.
Just beside Cosmo. "Having fun?" He asked with a surprisingly serious tone. This got him a glare from the purple pony. "I will find out what you are!" She said through clenched teeth. "But first I have to defeat this abnormal and unscientific creature." She was about to fly back into the fray. "I'll answer whatever question you ask now." Cosmo said offhandedly.
Twilight's eyes grew twice their size. "What are you?!?!." She asked with extremely audible excitement.
Luna was too busy fighting to notice that her companion was no there anymore. "You fiend shalt not prevail!" She shouted as she blasted Misery in the face. This dislodged it jaws, before one of its many arms put it back in place. It counterattacked by swinging its longest arm at Luna. She easily dodged the clumsy strike. And this repeated itself for a while. All of Luna's spell did very little or superficial damage to the quite horrific creature. Misery's attack were slow enough for Luna to dodge. But there were a lot, as the giant chimera frantically swung its many limbs around.
And one struck true. Luna was thrown into a building made out of cards. One second later Luna leapt back out holding a heavy longsword in her front hooves. She swung it at the creature, cutting limbs off and covering herself in blood. She swung wildly, cutting more and more limbs. One of the swings hit it in the waist, cutting it in half. Luna took a breather, mildly tired. She looked at the longsword and felt a mild attachment towards it.
She then felt a heavy slap against her face, as misery had put her body back together. Luna spat a tooth out, screamed in rage. "Thou will regret thas!" Before leaping at the creature with the longsword.
The fighting continued for a while, Luna Powered by adrenalina and the alicorn's high tolerance for pain. Meanwhile Misery simply healed from every single wound dealt to it.
"Why won't thee stay down!"
"So what are you? You look like an ursa major? Or are you..." Twilight went on a tirade, asking more and more questions. She was so enthralled by her thoughts that she wasn't even bothered by the fact that Cosmo was chewing on some smelly, juicy meat. He was mildly amused by the pony's behavior, which is why he hadn't interrupted her. He hadn't even been able to answer one question.
A slushy machine was smashed onto Misery's face. The creature simply licked her face clean. "mmmh, Tasty." It taunted. A barbecue was instantly smashed into its face. The fact that every building in the courtyard was a food stand, meant that there were a lot of food related objects to use as projectiles.
The night pony used a dozen kitchen knives to pin one of the big chimeras arms to a wall. A wall made out of tomatoes, so it didn't pin it down for long, but gave her enough time to swing her longsword once again. Cutting three arms off, which again were put back together after mere seconds.
"...from space? Or are you an interdimensional being warped by decades of travel through the fickle barriers of this universe?" Twilight kept on rambling, making up dozens of different scenarios, each more ludicrous than the previous one. This kept Cosmo entertained enough that he did not interrupt her.
Luna uppercutted the creature sending its tinier head flying away. The creature reciprocated with her own uppercut, using four arms at the same time. This threw her backwards and broke all the fingers on Misery's four arms. While it tried to put its fingers back into place, Luna reappeared and smashed a chair in its bigger face.
Luna then hit it with a dozen chairs that she had been holding in her magic. The fact that half of those chairs were made out of paper, hairband, actual hair and gum.
They then both got into a fist and hoof fight. It was very one sided.
"... if that were the case your blood would then constantly boil at a temperature of 253 degrees celsius. But this would contradict..." Twilight had not stopped speaking, she was actually getting purpler due to lack of air intake. Cosmo just kept listening. Honestly he would have liked for some of the ponies theories to be true. But he knew that reality was sometimes weirder than fiction.
"Why won't thee stop!" Luna shouted as she tried to strangle the creature using candy rope. This obviously proved very successful as Misery possessed multiple heads and, by definition, multiple throats. So it simply threw the pony on its back. Luna landed in a random pile of piles. This might have softened her landing, were it not for the fact that they were filled with stone feathers.
She threw one of the pillows at its main head, resulting in it losing many of its teeth. And also jaw. Misery quickly grabbed its fallen pieces of the ground to put them back on. Luna uses this distraction to hit its chins with a bottle of wine.
"But maybe you'r..." "Do you want me to answer or not?" Cosmo suddenly interrupted her, having gotten bored of her rambling. "Ah, yes-yes answer, questions... I'm listening." Twilight answered flustered. "So you want to know what I am?" She nodded excitedly. "The best description of what I am would be... Well, I'm basically a sentient blackhole." The purple ponies went wide open. She stared in shock at him.
This was mildly amusing.
Luna was thrown into one of the walls of the courtyard. Lucky for her said wall was made out paper. Regaining her bearings she saw both misery crawling towards her and noticed a strange blue tent beside her. Squinting she could so the shadow of something inside the tent. She lifts the drap up and sees a mysterious creature pulling multiple levers which were attached to a green glowing crystal. The creature stopped moving the lever to stare back at Luna. At the same time Misery stopped moving.
Luna, instantly understanding what had happened, started fuming. She fired a bolt of magic at the machine. The crystal blew up. The monstrous misery disappeared, replaced by a strange machine made out of many long, rusted hydraulics arms. All of which were roughly attached to a misshapen mechanical body.
Said mechanical abomination then fell limp. Luna turned her gaze back to the chimera operating the machine. The chimera had a green snake-like head with a red pony jaw. Short white fur all over the top and back of its head and four eyes. Its left leg belonged to a three toed lizard and the right one belonged to a bird. The left arm ended in a hoof and the right clearly belonged to a kangaroo. It had no tail.
"Hello, I sure do love company." It said meekly. Luna lunged onto the creature to give it the whooping of a lifetime.
The creature let a shrill scream out.
"But that not possible, what about the size? Or gravity? Or-or" twilight stuttered. "This isn't actually my real body, this is actually a puppet controlled by my real body." The purple ponies' eyes grew even wider. "But the amount of magic this would take..." "It's not magic, it's sheer power and billions of years of experience."
"Bi-bi-bi-bilio-bi-bi..." Twilight stuttered. And then fell unconscious.
Augustin Grypher sat depressed on his chair, trying to drink his sorrows away. His creation, his masterpiece was gone. He'd worked so hard on it, years of experimenting, multiple bad and still unpaid loans but he had succeeded. A fully working animatronic. It could move on it's own, albeit sluggishly, and could speak even if rudimentary. He was about to install a miniature radio so it could play music.
His creation could have made him a fortune and a place amongst the hall of fame of entertainment. He'd have created something that would have allowed for a new age of entertainment. Something that could rival the popularity of puppet shows and actors.
And it was gone. He still had the blueprints to make more, He'd made sure to make plenty of copies, but he had neither the money nor time to make another. He was actually supposed to meet with a few investors next week to show off his creation. They were supposed to be interested in his creation and invest, allowing him to pay his debts and make more and better animatronics.
But that was now impossible. His only option was now to call the investors and cancel the showing.
He tried to find out who'd taken it, but it proved fruitless. Obviously it was ponies, the traces left behind pointed to that. Augustin had contacted the police, but they didn't really understand what had been stolen. And also they had no experience whatsoever. "We didn't have any theft in at least a decade." They said. "Just ask more time to pay your debts." They added.
Pony loans were much kinder than griffin loans. That's why Augustin had taken pony loans, which in case of problems he wouldn't pay back. He had every intention to pay them back if he could sell his animatronics, but if he couldn't make enough money then he would leave back to Northern Griffonia. Which he was currently preparing to do.
His dad would obviously reprimand him. "You should have been a painter like your sister." He would say. Not in a mean way Augustin was pretty talented when it came to painting, which is why his father wanted him to make a living out of painting. Which might be his only option now.
Alcohol opened one's mind. He served himself another glass. He almost dropped his glass as something knocked on his door.He quickly headed to open the door almost tripping over some spare parts. Augustin opened the door and was shocked by what he saw.
His animatronic stood there. Battered, with multiple miscanscelous objects and a radio stuck in it's throat. All of that was overshadowed by the fact that the animatronic stood there working and alone. It limped inside. Augustin could smell that there was blood on it, but he didn't care. His creation had come back. He quickly rushed to repair as much as possible of his creation. He had instantly sobered up.
"H-he-he-l-l-l-l-l-o..." The machine spoke up with a voice filled with static. Augustin ignored it, thinking it was just a broken voice box. "C-c-rea-at-o-o-or..." It continued speaking. This time Augustin did stop at hearing that. This wasn't part of the prerecorded voice lines. Maybe it came from the radio? Opening a panel on the back of the throat, as the animatronic kept speaking. He spotted that a few wires from the radio were rubbing against the wires from the voice box.
So Augustin took the wires and connected them together. This took a bit of work but after a while, the animatronic could form complete sentences with less stuttering. "Yo-ou are my-y creato-orrr." It said with a static filled voice. Augustin at first thought it was just the radio spitting random nonsense. A coincidence that those were the sentences created.
But after a while it became obvious that the animatronic was actively trying to communicate with its creator. And the sentences simply could not be a coincidence. "I-i-i cam-e back." "Am I w-w-working?" "I Am Sti-ill usef-ull." It said. Augustin against his common sense, probably due to the alcohol, decided to answer the machine.
"I am indeed your... creator. And I am very happy to see that you're back." That last part was said with extra honesty. AUgustin had a feeling that his creation actually smiled at that, which should be impossible. He actually hugged his machine with how happy he was for its return. And mildly excited by it's newly acquired sentience. Augustin proceeded to ask what had happened.
The machine had explained how it had awakened in a big metal garbage can and then killed the two ponies obviously responsible for that. It then went on about how it had traveled through the street for the next eight hours searching for Augustin's home. It also told about how it had killed another pony on its way and chosen the name phobia for itself.
While mildly worried about the murder, Augustin didn't feel that bad for the two ponies who had tried to dispose of his creation, he knewn the ponypolice would likely be to incompetent to find out what had happened. The name phobia however proved more worrying to him. His creation seemed sentient, would it object to being mass-produced and sold for entertainment?
He only needed it to act properly in front of the investors and he would get the fund to produce more. He could then keep his original as an assistant.
"Wi-ll you-u mak-ke more of me-e." It suddenly asked of him. This took Augustin by surprise. "Well, that was what I intended." He answered sheepishly. The machine tilted its head lightly. "Wh-en will you sta-rt-rt-rt?" "Once I get more money." He answered bluntly and sheepishly at the same time.
The animatronic stood up and then headed towards the door. "P-p-phobia will get mor-e funds." The still limping animatronic said before leaving. Augustin looked at its leaving creation confusedly.
Augustin was busy biting on his claws, which had caused mild bleeding. His creation had been gone for two hours. This had caused him so much stress. Then something knocked on the door. He rushed to open it. He saw his creation standing there holding bags of money.
Augustin felt relief at it being back, but dreadful curiosity at where it had gotten the money. It then dropped the bags on the table. "Phob-ia needs-s more like m-e. Phobbbb-bb-... I nee-d assistance for 'Plans'." That last word was said aloud with a certain anger.
Augustin gulped. For some reason he did not want to do what Phobia asked. But he felt that refusing would have horrible consequences.
