After attempting to stop one of the largest rainstorms Ponyville had experienced in years without any assistance, Rainbow Dash was exhausted to the point of imminent fainting. If she had actually made the rain noticeably less intense, this wouldn’t have bothered her very much, but that wasn’t even the case.

“Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy, exactly below her, said. “I wanted to talk—”

Rainbow Dash finally lost consciousness and started falling. Fluttershy barely got out of the way in time.

“Um....” She turned Rainbow’s face out of the mud and wiped it clean. “Well, this was lucky.”

Rainbow woke up with her legs firmly tied to a damp stone wall, with sets of rope tying places near both ends of each of her legs. The room was completely unlit, and as such she couldn’t see much. A torch about a metre away from her was lit, followed by another one further to her right, going anticlockwise around the room until, as the last one was just being lit, she looked to her left and could just make out:

“F... Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy lit a few candles on a table in the centre of the room, making it much brighter. The writer neglected to give any details of the room’s appearance, making the eventual crappy film adaptation more difficult to make, or possibly easier since the filmmakers couldn’t be yelled at for inaccuracies.

“I see you’re finally awake from the coma. I hope you weren’t seriously hurt.”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, you’re just in my basement, you’re safe. I redid it a couple of days ago, do you like how it looks?”

“Why am I tied to a wall?”

“Well, since I had the opportunity, I figured I could do a couple of things with you.”

“Which of these things would require my being tied to a wall?”

“Well, I’ll show you. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, you know.”

She walked up to a confused, terrified Rainbow Dash and calmly started to eat into her delicious, moist, intoxicating cake she had recently retrieved from the table.

“Mmm,” Fluttershy said with exactly three Ms, “I just baked this less than an hour ago. Now, as for the thing I wanted to show you....”

She put the cake back and opened a door which was painted to blend in with the rest of the wall, which it didn’t. She took from behind it a coil of the same kind of rope she was using on Rainbow Dash, went back in front of her, and dropped it.

“Isn’t this rope great? Even you can’t find a way out of it.”

“...Is that all you wanted to show me?”

Fluttershy put a hoof under her chin for a second. “Well, I wanted to rape you too.”

“What?! But why? Why would you want to do something like that?”

“I’ve always been too afraid to ask, and when I saw you were out from a fall and exhaustion, I decided I wouldn’t get a better chance. Besides, it won’t be long. And give it a chance, you might end up liking it.”

“But... Fluttershy... you’re... you’re Fluttershy. You would be the last one to....”

Fluttershy slowly started to lean her head in toward Rainbow’s crotch when she heard the basement door open.

“Oh, did I forget to lock that? Just a second.”

“Rainbow Dash! Magic told me you were in trouble!” Twilight said. She met Fluttershy at the bottom of the stairs. “Fluttershy! Do you know wha—”

Fluttershy jumped at her, took them both to the floor, and got her in a chokehold.

“Wha—are—” Twilight passed out, unable to concentrate enough to magick her way free.

Fluttershy dragged Twilight to the other side of the room, took the length of rope she had shown Rainbow, and hastily tied Twilight to another spot in the wall. The features of the wall which would make this easily possible were also left unmentioned.

“Now, then, we can get back to what we were doing,” she said as she walked back towards Rainbow Dash.

“You don’t have to do this, Fluttershy.”

“But I’ve been waiting for so long, and I finally—” The door was dramatically slammed open. “Let me get that.”

“Applejack,” Fluttershy said. “You made—” an incident of blunt contact involving Applejack’s hoof, Fluttershy’s head, and a wall knocked Fluttershy out. Applejack ran down and tore out the ropes holding Rainbow and Twilight with her teeth, because she’s badass like that, causing Twilight to fall. Having something dramatic to say, she also woke up.

“...Ehh?” Twilight said, rubbing her head and blinking a couple times. “What... Applejack?”

Applejack explained what happened to her as she led them outside.

The rest of the group were gathered just outside Fluttershy’s house, Twilight having teleported the others.

“So,” Applejack said, “What are we gonna do about Fluttershy? By the way, isn’t she still in—”

“Okay, I admit it!” Pinkie Pie said.

“Admit what?” Applejack said.

“I made her do it! I planned the whole thing!”

“No, you didn’t. Co—”

“No, I did! She was never going to do anything bad to any of you—”

“She nearly killed me,” Twilight said.

“—It was a prank!”

“But it seems a bit out of your character to plan something this... this....” Rainbow was having trouble finding a fitting adjective, even though the English language had by far more words than any other.

“It’s not like any of you are acting in character right now.”

“How did you even convince Fluttershy to do it?” I missed who said this, it could’ve been anyone.

“Well... I might’ve had to do a little pushing around....”

“And you better do this or I’ll kill that firefly!” she said, gesturing towards a firefly tied to a tree branch with string.

“I think it seems a bit....”

“The new management said I need to be ‘interesting’ to stay in the show and I’m not losing my job. Not the Sugarcube job, this. You know what I mean.”

“But they won’t understand until—”

“That’s the point of the joke. Now do you want that firefly to firedie or not?”

“No....”

“She nearly killed me,” Twilight said. “And if you did do that, how did you get the weather to work? Or was it just opportunistic?”

“Well, she got lucky finding Rainbow Dash, but I rented a balloon and showed a bunch of ponies the script just in case they tried to be heroes and Rainbow actually did something that satisfied her. Well, not just me, Bob helped to—”

“Bob was in on this?” Rainbow said.

“Yep! You know him?”

“The next time I see him, he’s gonna get lamrodded.”

“Do you even know what ‘lamrodded’ means?” Twilight whispered to Applejack. Applejack whispered the definition back, causing Twilight to stare at her and blink. “I... really wish I hadn’t asked that.”

“It was still pretty fun, right?” Pinkie said.

“No,” said everyone except Rarity.

“I thought she was gonna...” Rainbow said.

“Exactly! I totally got you ponies,” Pinkie said with extreme pride, not to be confused with the time she was proud of the 540° she did. Fluttershy came out of the house and caught everyone’s attention.

“Can I talk to you, Pinkie Pie?” Fluttershy said.

Pinkie went over to her, thinking four metres would bring them completely out of earshot.

“It is true what Pinkie told us? About the prank?” Rainbow said.

“Yes,” Fluttershy said. “I’m... look, I’m really sorry, but she made threats. She took a firefly hostage and said if I didn’t do it she would kill it, so... I hope you can understand....”

“It’s fine,” Applejack said, “We ain’t doin’ anythin’ to you. Now, Pinkie Pah, you know you went way too far with this.”

“But I really don’t want to lose this job because I’m seriously living paycheque to paycheck right now. Sugarcube Corner isn’t going great and—”

“You know what you did,” Applejack said. “What even made you think it’d be fun for anypony ‘sahdes yourself?”

“Well... stuff....”

“Look, everypony,” Fluttershy said. “I deserve to be punished for actually doing the whole thing. I went way too far too.”

“No, you were forced to do it. You’re just hating yourself because you’re Fluttershy.” I missed who said this one too, but it was probably Twilight since she said the next line, which seems like it would follow from that one. “It’s Pinkie Pie we have to tear into three hundred little Pinkie bits.”

“Hey,” Applejack said, “Do any ah you know where Rarity went?”

Rarity had been absent the whole time and no one had noticed. Next Chapter: Chapter 8: Search For Rarity Estimated time remaining: 18 Hours, 14 Minutes