ONE YEAR AFTER THE DEATH OF RAINBOW DASH

Pinkie lay down a small knife and sighed. Nothing had been going well recently. Many of her friends where dead, dead on the wishes of those who only Pinkie met.

Nopony else saw those strange ponies, to her annoyance. She sometimes wondered if other people just didn't like them and ignored them, as she thought her friends did the night before she started the numbers. These strange ponies were the only ones who knew of her "Method" of making cupcakes, and strangely supported her.

But the numbers were insatisable now. Many people from Ponyville were dead after all this time or moved away from the losses of their family. It was difficult, framing the most recent ponies as having moved away or gone on business. The job was getting harder and harder...

And now the numbers seemed to be trying to spite her. One of the last of her closest friends had been chosen by the numbers, just after another! Rarity had made excellent meat, just as good as Rainbow Dash's. Pinkie sighed again at this thought. Delicious, all of them, but it was sad that she would never see any of them again. But now, there was a job to do and her friend would not do it herself.

She went on her way to the room she kept the ponies in. She didn't need to sneak anymore, now that Mrs Cake had been stuffed and mounted on the wall. Mr Cake had left the deeds for the bakery to her when he left to live in Fillydelphia. He said he couldn't stand to live where Mrs Cake had apparently "Eloped" and left with a stranger.

She locked the door to the room behind her and walked into a short corridor and stopped when saw one of the strange ponies in front of her.

"Pinkie." said the pony in a cultured, strangely accented voice Pinkie had never heard from another pony. The pony had pure white skin and was dressed in some fine blue dress that looked like one of those that Rarity made. Had made. Pinkie mentally shook herself and tried to ready some words.

"Madame." she said politely. She knew this pony quite well, and knew that she disliked being adressed as anything else.
"Your old... friend is waiting inside." said the "Madame" with a small grin. "She will be absolutely deleesious, darling."
"Mmm." was Pinkie's reply. She had a lot on her mind. "She is still my friend." she said suddenly, drawing a strange look from the Madame.
Madame looked worried. "Are you eentirely yourself, my dear?"
"Perfectly." Pinkie said, wearing a small smile that looked like a grimace.
"If you are sure..."
"I am, Madame."
"Well, then you should enjoy zis. Come!" She said imperiously, trotting towards the other end of the corridor. "It is time we attended to zis."
Pinkie followed after the commanding mare into the room.

"Zis is your show here, darling." said Madame. "I wouldn't dream of interfering." she said as she moved to the side slightly.
Pinkie looked at the pony strapped to the rack.
"We had better start now, my dear." said the Madame insistently. "You have done zis before, there shall be no trouble, I promise you."
"I know." said Pinkie.

The eyes of the strapped pony suddenly grew wide with hope. She knew that voice. As Pinkie came closer, she tried to speak through a gag around her mouth. Nothing legible came out. She saw Pinkie take a knife from a small tray on a nearby table, and then suddenly felt a huge pang of fear. She saw that Pinkie looked uncommonly sad, nothing like the bouncing, happy-go-lucky mare she knew.

Pinkie walked up to the trapped mare and pulled off the gag.
"Is zat really wise,my dear?" said Madame. "The screaming does get repetitive after a while." After a small, annoyed look from Pinkie, she said hurriedly "But if you like the screaming, go ahead, my dear." seemingly trying to please.
Pinkie turned away, back to the trapped mare with tears starting to form in her eyes. Why was this happening? She had never felt this way even when her other friends were in just the same position as the trapped mare.

The trapped mare coughed, trying to force out words in the face of all the fear she was feeling.
"P-pinkie..." she muttered, looking at the pink mare. "W-what..."
The pink mare seemed to be crying. Which seemed impossible. Pinkie never cried. She felt something was horribly wrong, even more so than when she awoke in this empty room with the strange, metal things on racks and trays around her.
"Shush." said Pinkie "This is important."
"W-what is? Are you hurt? Is that why you're crying? Do you know why I'm-"
"BE QUIET!" Pinkie thundered at her suddenly, shocking the trapped mare. "Don't disobey me again." she said warningly.
Pinkie, holding the knife she had taken, looked utterly terrifing and the trapped mare was silent.
"This happens to everyone, eventually." said Pinkie "Why would you be different?"
"B-but what?"
Pinkie said nothing in reply, but leaned over the trapped mare and held the knife close to her head.
The trapped mare came to her own assumptions. Pinkie was going to hurt her, and might kill her. She didn't know why. She was terrified and didn't know why a friend would do this.
"Pinkie..." she said and got a quick glare and Pinkie leaned in closer,looking totally demented now.
"Please don't do this..."
She saw a sudden moisture in her captors eyes, the sudden dropping of the insane grimace and the terror in her face.

Then there was a flash of pain, and then nothing.

"Why did you do zat?" said Madame in anger "She could have lasted a long time! The meat would have been exzellent after all that time!"
Pinkie sat holding the mare's head. The knife had slashed through her throat and killed her nearly instantly, something the pink mare often tried to avoid doing.
Pinkie let the mare's head fall back on the rack into the pooling blood. She didn't know why. This was routine, wasn't it? Then why did she feel so horrible?
Pinkie threw the knife away carelessly and took the corpse's legs with the Madame glaring at her.She dragged it to a small freezer she kept in the room and laid the body inside with more care than she had done before with any corpse.

She looked at Fluttershy's still terrified face a final time and shut the freezer door.