A mix between SAW and my little pony. 14 chapters in all, may edit out a few in the process of polishing them.
The citizens are struck by murderous villain plotting to overthrow their whole way of life, killing pony after pony and leaving no trace for the dismantled guard force to pick up on. They are left with many questions; who is this pony, what does he truley want, why haven't the guards been able to stop him and most common of all, simply, why? (Credit for the cover goes to sketched-up on DeviantArt)
Pinkie awoke, shocked to feel cold steel instead of her usual pink, fluffy bed and a vague yet sharp pain in her tongue. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a cold and damp looking basement area surrounding her.
A curtain about ten feet away covered a section of the room, obscuring her ability to see the room in its entirety. Her eyes adjusted even more when she noticed two chains coming out from her body, she followed the chain, with her eyes, to her body and was terrified to realize that the chains were going into a rusty hook, holding her body in a leaning position from the metal chair she was in.
The hook was digging deep into the middle of her tongue. She felt as if she had been drugged, because she knew that the hook should have had her in intense pain. She started to panic, asking herself frantically, 'Why can't I feel this, why can't I feel this!' in her own mind.
The hook rattled around, clanking against her teeth. Her tongue was throbbing and pumping out blood. She started to choke on her own blood, making it impossible to cry for help. A melancholy voice spoke from a tape recorder on a metal table next to her.
"Hello Pinkie, you may not know me..."
Pinkie started to feel more lucid.
"But I know you."
He paused, and Pinkie tried to cry for help once more. As she opened her mouth to cry out, the full blunt of the pain came down apon her like a hammer. She reeled in response to the morbid pain and horror. As her heart rate increased so did her adrinaline, numbing a small amount of the pain, giving her a slight window of time to catch another glimps at her surrondings. The curtain was now pulled back, but her vision still wasn't clear enough to see the contents of the room.
"If you'll notice that your sisters are in front of you tied back to back, you will soon figure out that this is entirly real and that their lives rest in your hooves."
Her vision cleared up, and she saw her sisters bound to chairs, as the voice said, back to back, with a rag tied around their mouths, keeping them from screaming. However, they were clearly terrified and thrashing around relentlessly.
"When the clock in the corner of the room starts, a saw will activate, and you will have one minute until it makes its way into Blinkie's skull, and inky will soon follow, unless you simply lean back and press the button on the back of your chair."
"This can't be happening!"
Pinkie was shaking, and trying to scream. A terrifying realization jolted through her mind, 'If I lean back, I'll rip my tongue out!' Her heart racing even more in anticipation of the voice's commands.
"Now pinkie, I ask you, are you willing to sacrifice the one thing that has made countless other ponies happy, to save the life of the two that you are obligated to protect?"
The words he spoke made pinkie understand fully that if she doesn't sacrifice a bit of pain, then her sisters will die.
"Live or die miss pie. Make your choice."
Pinkie tried to call out for her sisters. Again, the pain she felt made it unbearable to form tangible words, and it was only getting worse the more she struggled. She looked around quickly for a way to save her sisters. She noticed that the metal table from before had a mirror sitting on it. Through the reflection of the mirror she saw the red button on the back of her chair, just as the voice said. 'Only 15 more seconds!'
She thought to herself. A tear came to her eye as she imagined living a life without her sisters. She looked back at the mirror and saw something written on the wall behind her written in blood "Live or die"
She looked at the hook and gave a little tug causing blood to squirt out of her mouth; she shivered, as she thought of the immense and certain pain of ripping out her own tongue. She looked at her sisters to remind her what she was doing this for. Their eyes remained in a deadlock, them crying and Pinkie too scared to even know what to feel. Pinkie cringed and gave the hook a hard tug. She started to swing her head from side to side, now panicking and frantic.
She stopped, calming herself, nearly out of breath, and started to gasp and wheeze; breathing in blood, and making her cringe even more. Her stomach started to churn from the thought of her sisters dying and the large amount of her own blood she ingested.
Thoughts of the time she had spent with her sisters came rushing to her mind, the time back on the farm when they would try and cheer up their little sister, the time when pinkie was able to return the favor and cheer them up, the time when she left and the whole family was in tears, and finally the times they would spend when inky and blinky came over to ponyville. They would catch up and talk in the park, she never really cared for the lack of partying that would occur when her sisters came to visit, but she was now happy that she was lucky enough to spend time with the two greatest sisters a mare could ask for.
"No!" she thought to herself, awaking from her half slumber. "It's not over!"
She leaned forward and shot herself back. The chains rattled, and with a loud tearing sound accominied by an angished scream, she finally thumped against the back of the chair. In return the saw stop instantly only a few seconds away from entering Blinkies skull. The sound of moist, hot flesh ripping, and blood dripping to the ground was echoing in pinkies mind, forever plastered in her subconscious. She gasped, trying to catch her breath. Her tongue was torn to shreds and blood still pouring down her neck, pooling on the floor. The tongue itself was still attached, hanging on by a small fraction of what it once was. Her tongue sat, ripped to shreds, numbly, in a stew of her own warm blood.
Pinkie slowly looked up to her sisters, blood dripping out of the corners of her mouth. They all had teary eyes and started to laugh together in relief. All the sisters continued to share a laugh as inky looked slowly above pinkies head, her eyes meet a terrifying sight, and she stared, dumbstruck.
"Whaas wrong?" Pinkie tried to ask.
The clock ticked back on, now counting down from ten seconds. A loud buzzing noise came from above Pinkies head. She looked up at an ominous saw making its way slowly down to her head, from a fixed secret compartment in the ceiling that either the sisters nor Pinkie managed to see. It must have been hiding away from the very start of this game.
She screamed, an bloodcurdling, bloody and wet scream which pierced her sister's ears.
She clinched her teeth and braced herself for an inevitable death, figuring that the saw will cut her to death one way or another, either through her body or skull, she broke down.
After what seemed like hours of fear of her mutually assured death, Pinkie looked back at her sisters once more and was able to calm herslef, when she thought of the good times once more. She smiled warmly letting herself relax for the first time in years.
A tear came to her eye, one last time, as her dreams were interrupted by a high pitched ringing noise. Within only a few seconds the bright pink pony, with her coat now cover in stains of her own blood, was going into short convulsions. Inky and Blinky stared at their quivering sister as the clock stopped and a large mass of blood and brain matter slapped the back of the cold cement wall. The pink mare dropped her shoulders and slunk into a fully relaxed corpse, as a tear rolled down the eyes of her beloved sisters.
They tried to yell that she had accomplished her game and should have been allowed to live but the rags kept them from saying anything comprehensible.
Jigsaw stepped away from the peep hole he was using to get a front from seat to his own game, as his custom. He walked away thinking aloud.
"Just as I thought, Pinkamena, you are one clever pony."
He left the brainwashed imposter pony, her two "sisters" and the trap that had been tampered with to work on his next game.
"I shouldn't let my assistance take charge of setting up my traps" He sighed.
Rainbow Dash felt a piercing chill slowly drag her from her dreams. She tried to open her eyes, but some kind of crust kept them shut.
"Huh, whaa," she slurred.
Her wings stayed pinned to her side, despite her attempts to flex them. She shook her head, trying to wake herself up. She muttered something, still dazed. She now noticed that she was sleeping in an upright, standing position, with only a cold, wet, and hard floor under her hooves and some sort of strange, warm feeling in her wings and the side of her legs. "Wait, why can't I feel my eyes….or my legs…" she muttered sluggishly with her mind still frozen from being dragged into consciousness.
"Or my body!" She started to panic, trying to hold back fear.
She tried to step forward, but something attached to her legs kept her from extending them. She tried to push through, but a ripping sound followed, and the same sharp pain kept her from moving. She tried to stretch her wings, but the same ripping noise, followed by the same pressure on her wings kept them pinned. She tried to force her eyes open, but it made them sting even more. She started to feel a numb pinch in the sides of her legs. Her right leg started to throb as something warm slowly trickled down it. Rainbow was severely confused. She tried to muster her usual bravery to push through, but an unfamiliar fear kept her petrified, like a child, frozen in a trance of terror. She started to become more conscious. Something clicked, and the sound of a tape recorder rolling came from beside her, somewhere undetected.
"Hello Rainbow. I want to play a game"
Rainbow gasped in cold, sharp air. "Game?"
She remembered how Pinkie and the other ponies in Ponyville started to disappear, and it was said that somepony was going around and kidnapping the others, setting up "games." But what happened after that? Rainbow didn't know. Nopony really knew. But this only piqued her curiosity, and her fear. Rainbow's mind started to rush "Maybe it's something so horrible that nopony would say."
"By now, you're probably still defrosting, so I'll be your eyes for the moment." "You're in a cryogenic holding cell with hooks buried in the sides of each of each of your legs. All you have to do is rip the hooks out and walk away."
"Or, crawl, in your case. Your only hope is to trust me, Rainbow. This trap is meant so that you can prove your true metal, sure you can fly around and do your little tricks in the sky but are you really as tough as you say you are?"
He chuckled, an ominous, low sound that made the room feel even more chilled than in actually was.
Rainbow's fear started to turn into boiling anger. "But, if you don't trust me, you can always just wait for somepony to come and help. That always happens, right?" The voice said with a melancholy and yet friendly tone, one which broke the monotony of his recording.
Rainbow wiggled her right leg, making the chain rattle. The massive intruder pinched deep in her flesh. It was a strange feeling, being hurt in this fashion, though the thought of how it should be hurting, the mere thought of pain, kept her still. "Maybe I do need to trust him." She tried to give herself some sort of hope. She tugged against the chain, and a jolt went through her leg, traveling up her spine.
With her voice buried in fear and pain, she spoke brokenly. "Celestia help me, if I find you-" She was suddenly cut off.
"Now, on with the trap. Soon a clock will count down from five minutes; every 30 seconds, the room temperature will lower by 10 degrees for four minutes. After that point you'll only have one minute until the room gets..."
The voice paused again, letting the severity of the situation sink in. "...let's just say, 20% cooler." With a click, the tape went silent and the clock started.
Rainbow heard a hissing noise, and icy, needle like water spraying her chest. As the voice said, the room was getting colder. She felt the cold spray, making her shiver, and a rattling noise coming from somewhere in front of her only adding to her curious fright. The shock helped rouse her sleep-addled mind. What she saw seemed to have been ripped from a nightmare. The whole room was frozen over, all but the clock on the right corner of a wall, that was glowing red. Her vision was still blurry and she was barely able to make out what looked like some sort of tube spraying nitrogen into the room. The needle on a thermostat attached to the tube was slowly shaking and making its way to the end of the chart. The realization that her life was truly on the line sunk in quickly as her body temperature dropped. She started convulsing violently. She stood there for a moment, reflecting on her life, frozen in a stupor.
She wondered what she had done with her life. "True, I did my best, and most of the time I was the best. But how does that really help anypony? What have I ever done to really help someone?" The questions came rushing into Rainbow's head, and her legs started to shake even more. Her cyan coat began to lose its luster, and her expression bore a pain that hadn't been felt since a time in her life she still couldn't force herself to remember.
Rainbow's eyes lost their rose red gleam, and her eyelids hung half shut. As if she had just awoken from a 10 year nap, she slowly placed her shaky right hoof in front of the other. As the chain started to tighten, Rainbow gave it a blank glance and shot her leg forward, tearing the skin and spraying blood across the ice coated floor. She repeated the cycle, left front hoof, right back hoof, and finally her left hind hoof. Rainbow now realized that this was the same fate that had befallen Pinkie Pie, and exactly why her sisters said nothing about it. Every time somepony would bring up the question "Where is Pinkie Pie?" for the first few days, they would just run away, sometimes even crying. After a while, they calmed down, but they still shied away from any conversation involving Pinkie.
The question was never answered, not even by the guard. This realization just added to Rainbows dismal mood. Never had she gone through something like this, and even so much as a week ago she would have still been kicking and screaming.
She felt like a new pony, with a strange warm smile, as she walked a few steps and gave way to her seemingly double weight.
She dropped to the ground and started crawling on the piercing cold floor. Within a few seconds, Rainbow was dazedly re-examining her life, all her choices. She knew she was a new pony, and she was happy, even though she wore an expression of complete and total apathy. The room no longer had an effect on her. A pony opened the door in front of her, only a few inches away.
He stood over her, strong and tall, and looked her over approvingly, almost proud. Old Rainbow would have thought he was a creep, but his dull, blood red eyes, his faded grey coat, and his inky black mane, striped in a piercing crimson, made her feel oddly safe, accepted, and understood, even though she had never met the stallion.
In tone and voice, he resembled recording that had given her given the instructions to find a new life. "Congratulations."
Their lackluster eyes met.
"You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore"
"Th-thank you…"
Rainbow kept staring into his eyes, and he gave a welcoming smile.
"Come with me. It's time you saw the world as it was meant to be seen."
Rainbow simply nodded.
He helped her up and they walked away from her old life.
There the white mare lay, in the middle of a small, abandoned hotel room, surrounded by four limp bodies. Next to her was a small tape recorder and a dulled scalpel which foretold a grim future for the helpless nurse. Her eyes slid open as the tape started to play, as though on cue.
"Hello Miss Redheart."
Her eyes grew wide with fear, "No." her voice, but a whisper. "I want to play a game."
She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, trying to take in the full aspect of what was happening. Even when she felt like she was fully awake, she still couldn't believe what she heard.
"It can't be," she whispered as she awaited the bottomless voice to speak again.
Leaving no time for her to fully process her situation, the pony on the tape continued."In the room you are in you will find four bodies."
She could now understand the severity of the situation, causing fear to loom over her heart. She felt like a small animal that had nested inside an old and quite decrepit redwood which was caught in the ferocity of a tyrannical storm, at the whim of a greater power which tore it apart mercilessly.
Her attention was taken from the recorder to the room's surroundings. As he said, there were four bodies laying, spread across the room. Redheart was used to seeing dead bodies, it was her job after all, but for a game... "It's just sick…" She muttered shakily.
"Once this recording reaches an end, there will be an acidic spray that will rain down on the room you are in. The acid will fill your lungs and burn your flesh. You will only have two minutes to find the key submerged somewhere in the dead body of one of the ponies in this room before you have missed your chance at life."
The room felt musty as she broke out into a cold sweat. She looked from wall to wall. She concluded that the room had four sides, one with a door, one with a window, one with a bookshelf covering something painted on the wall and the final one had was bare. She tried to read the writing, in hopes of a hint, but the book case covered most of the writing up. She got up to move the small case; the floor was rotted and splintered under her hooves. She passed one of the bodies, taking her attention off of the dark splintery planks; she lost her hooving and tumbled a bit, causing a loud, ominous creaking noise, as if the room were angry and crying out in pain. Cockroaches and termites scurried across the floor, trying to find new refuge, a few of them hiding under or in the mouths of the bodies.
With a glow of her horn, she moved the book shelf. Behind it read 'Your answer lies inside the heart.' "What's that supposed to mean?" She raised her eyebrow.
"Heart…" She looked at the four ponies in the room.
"One dead, three alive". She glanced back over the other corner of the room where the door was, and saw it was chained up with a lock.
She realized the key must be in the heart of the dead pony, but which one was dead? She stared at the bodies once more. Her heart sank with the thought of her accidentally killing a pony she mistakenly deemed dead.
She glanced hastily over to the other wall of the room and saw a window covered by dusty curtains. She scanned the rest of the room and then quickly her eyes shot back to the window, realizing there may yet be an escape. She ran to it, hoping, yet knowing that it would be too easy to just climb out a window. Nevertheless she kept the hope alive. Frantically she pulled back the curtains and, to her soul crushing disappointment, saw a brick wall. She stumbled back, and took a few deep breaths to keep herself calm. The dust that was on the curtains flew into her mouth, not allowing her one moment of rest.
As time wore away at the room, the room wore away at her sanity.
She grabbed the scalpel and rushed to a body. She opened his eyelids to see if she could judge whether he was dead or alive. The acid misted down from the sprinkler systems, lightly falling, and slowly searing her fur. She began to grind her teeth, bottling even more of her fear and pain.
Realizing that this pony was alive, yet heavily sedated, she ran over to the next, closest body and repeated the cycle. The recorder played once more, and she thought to herself, 'Did it ever even stop?'
"I hope you know how easy the Equestrian life is, Nurse Redheart. Beyond their rose-colored, sunshine and butterfly life, there are other races of this world that are starving, fighting, and dug deep in the trenches of war. Just carry on day to day, acting as if your problems really matter. But you, dear nurse, you're different, aren't you? You have a burning secret hiding your pain."
The nurse's knees began to shake in fear of something that has been haunting her coming back up to bite her. "He can't," She whispered.
"Yes, I know, your life is a true Hell. All because of one slip up. You think that no one saw you. Well, you're wrong, nurse." She closed her eyes, hoping that he didn't know her secret, hoping that he was just lying to get inside her head. "I was there, I saw what you did. I know that your very special somepony had an accident in the Ghastly Gorge. His wing was clipped by a falling rock, and while on his decent to the ground, what must have felt to him as truly his end, he hit a jutting rock, and it broke his ribcage, damaging his heart. I know you were on duty that night, you saw that his heart was giving out, and I know that you took another life to save his."
The scene was coming back to her, the scene that she tried to suppress for so long now, it was all coming back. The nurse sat by her boyfriend's side, despite the other ponies in the hospital that may have needed her care. His heart monitor was beeping alarmingly slowly and his body had become unresponsive. She knew what was about to happen. His heart was going to give out, and there were no donors to save him. She cried while caressing his fur, the memories of the valiant stallion pouring into her head. She sat up in the moonlit room and decided that she wasn't going to sit idly by while the one she loved died.
She thought of donors that would work, ones with the same blood type.
"Yes!" She knew of the perfect donor, one with an O blood type. The one they found by a cabin the Everfree Forest with the blood of another pony covering his grey fur. 'This sicko doesn't even deserve to live,' she thought. She tried to remember what room he was in and quickly rushed to it when she realized that he was sharing a room with the poor royal guard who was diagnosed with cancer. 'This is perfect. Nopony is on duty and nopony will miss this guy.'
Her dream was interrupted by Jigsaw's voice. "Yes, it's all coming back to you, isn't it? In the darkness of the night, you got me and my unlucky roommate mixed. You were in too much of a hurry. Too bad that the cancer had spread to his heart, and your dear lover died only one week later." His voice faded away and the acid began to fall on her as she stood there crying, lamenting her loss, and the life she took in the process.
She wasn't able to ignore the pain anymore; the acid tore at her muscles, making it difficult to so much as move her legs. She couldn't hold it in any longer, and she screamed, a haunting shriek which bounced off the rotted walls and made its way back to her, causing her to shiver. She shrugged off the distress and ran to the next body.
Something snapped. She slowed down and stood there for a moment, letting the acid pour down her cheeks like tear drops. The only sound she could her was her heart beating and radiating through her body. A sharp ringing noise grew louder and louder in her ears. Closer and closer.
She screamed once more to try and drown out the ringing.
Bottling was no longer working for her. Through her life everyone, looked to her to be the calm one, but now it was all pouring out. She clenched her teeth, holding back the last bit of sanity she had left.
However, it was to no avail, and she started to chuckle, the pain turning to a warm burning which made her shiver excitedly.
"I'm already here, why not make the best of it," she thought to herself, lustfully glancing over to the body next to her. She tapped her hoof against the floor nervously, as if somepony was watching her. She stopped glancing and started to stare at him, no longer pondering what was right and what was wrong. She didn't care. Her mouth turned to a sharp, wicked grin, forcing the acid to curve its way around her smile, making it an even more horrifying sight for the pony drifting back to consciousness.
Her eyes were a-glimmer with the anticipation of taking a life.
Her chuckle turned into high pitched, cracked laughing as she cut wildly into the still living pony. His eyes shot open and he stared at the crazed, snow-white nurse, covered in scorching burns, wildly slashing at his chest. She savored ever moment of it. The scalpel almost felt as if it was about to break, but she didn't stop, not for a moment. She continued for what felt like an eternity, in blissful ecstasy.
With a deep lunge into his heart, his eyes rolled back into his skull. She stabbed until the area where his heart lay was just a slimy, ruby red chasm in his chest. She lowered her mouth to his chest, and tore out his heart, now ripped to ribbons, and held it up to the acid rain. She stopped for a moment and took a deep pleasure in hearing the rain mix with the still-pumping organ's juices. She threw the heart against the door and ran to the next body, this time with no hesitation.
She quickly cut his heart out and threw it against the floor stomping it until it was a bloody stain on the wood floor. She finally found the key to her freedom. With a grin, she picked it up and made her way to the door. She unlocked the door and felt like everything was slipping, slowly fading. The acid got into her eyes and blood ran from scorched red eyes. As she stepped outside, she had to cover her eyes, for the sun was beating down on the lone hotel, now covered by trees and other weeds growing on the side of the long-dead relic. Time had left this monument to a city long passed to die, in the cold and unforgiving wilderness of the Everfree Forest.
She heard an approving chuckle from the side of the house. A pony stepped from the shadows where he had been watching in on his own game, a sick passion of his.
He gave her a smile, and she returned it with a blank stare into his red eyes. Not red like hers, but a dark burgundy red pupil which glimmered with hope and, at the same time, pure hate.
"As I expected, very well done, with only seconds to spare. I'll give you one more option. As you know, those ponies are still alive, at least two of them are. Well, the controls are right there." He motioned to the area he was standing, and then gave her a grin "That is, if you want to save them."
She looked to the controls, and back to him. She stayed still.
"I thought so. Isn't it fun to do away with your sanity? I can tell it's been eating away at you for some time. Holding away all those emotions because your job is strictly business. Hell, you've saved enough ungrateful lives, I'd say you deserve to gorge yourself on the anguish of others. Don't worry, they'll suffer. I gave them a drug that would allow them to feel, but not to move."
She now realized that the very same pony in front of her was the one that broke out of the hospital when he was diagnosed with a condition that was not released to her, or anypony she knew.
"Yes, yes, you remember me now don't you" He looked to the sky then sighed "Oh that night was magic. Funny, we're in the same forest where I found the light."
He kept staring at the sky.
"Well… I chose you when I saw what you went through at the hospital, I chose you because I knew you could get through this." Now, he stared back at her "I chose you because I can help you." He paused, and she stared in solemn anticipation. "And you can help me."
"I want to do what you do," she said immediately, now fully in control of her mental state.
"I thought you'd want to. Not many ponies want this, but," he stared at the cabin in another clearing only a few feet away, "it's nice, isn't it?"
