Sweetie Belle vs. Fabric

Author's Notes:

I wrote this in just under an hour for the TrotCon 2014 speedfic panel, and it shows. I somehow managed to completely switch tenses partway through, and there are plenty of other little style and grammar issues, but in the spirit of the event I'm not going to edit it. I wrote this story just to have fun and go a little nuts with a silly prompt, and that's exactly what I did. I hope you guys have fun with it, too.

She stands in the center of the ring alone, defiant, sweat pooling on the mat beneath her and a furious glare burning in her eyes. Broken scissors litter the ground, their blades dulled, tangled in strips and shreds of cloth. The crowd watches from the shadows just beyond the blazing spotlights, holding their breaths in awed silence. And in the center of the ring she stands and waits.

In the battered debris there are scraps of former foes, hints of the incredible brawl that led up to this moment. There's a bit of silk in the corner - she was a slippery one - and beside it a frayed piece of linen from that fancy shirt that always had a trick up his sleeve. A corner of blue fabric pokes out from beneath Sweetie Belle's hoof, the aftermath of her last battle. Spandex, she thinks, though she can't be sure. He was so flexible that she never got a good look

But she defeated him, that's for sure. She beat them all. Denim (sturdy, but basic), corduroy (a bumpy battle), even a polyester leisure suit (all flash, no style). Some rounds were tougher than others, but they all had their weaknesses, and Sweetie Belle had a keen eye for strategy. In the end, she outsmarted all that dumb fabric. But it wasn't over.

The crowd was too quiet, as if they were waiting for something. The air buzzed with tension, and then she heard it. A rumbling, rhythmic and distant. The crowd began to murmur and shuffle restlessly, and Sweetie Belle steeled herself for her greatest challenge yet. The rumble grew louder, nearer, and then it stopped. For one moment, everything was impossibly silent and horribly still. Then it came crashing down into the ring with a shockwave that threw Sweetie Belle from her hooves.

She stood and turned to assess her foe, and for a moment she just stared slack-jawed at the sight before her. Then she laughed, a loud, desperate, crazy sound, and said,

"A vest?"

The vest sat placidly in its own corner, waiting for her to make the first move. She unsheathed her last pair of scissors and charged with an ear-splitting war-shriek. As soon as the blade hit the cloth it crumpled and warped, and the force of the blow wrenched the tool from her hooves. It landed in a useless heap, and Sweetie Belle gasped, her white complexion taking on an ashen pallor.

"Kevlar?" she whispered.

The vast lashed out and wrapped around her neck, and she fell to the floor, hooves bashing uselessly against her assailant. She'd heard of him - battle-hardened, vicious, ruthless - but she never thought she'd have to face Kevlar hoof-to-stitch.

As she struggled in vain for air and crumpled beneath her foe's relentless assault, she felt something hard and cold bounce off her flank. She groped about with her hoof, then she felt it. A lighter. Someone in the audience was on her side. She flicked the flint once, twice, then on the third try a bright green flame burst into life.

Dragon fire.

She brought the magical flame to bear on the vest and it began to burn almost immediately. It loosened its grip to writhe and roll on the ground, and Sweetie Belle ducked away before it could spread to her. She stood over the burning husk with a look of pure triumph, then she turned to the crowd and raised her hoof to the sky.

The crowd whooped and cheered and hollered, and Sweetie Belle finally allowed herself to smile.

It was over.

So suddenly that anypony who blinked would've missed it, the fabric ground of the boxing ring opened up and swallowed Sweetie Belle whole. The crowd looked around, bewildered, but they couldn't hear her muffled cries.

She heard a voice, sinister and sibilant, in the instant before she lost consciousness.

"You should've chosen your battles more carefully, little pony," it hissed. "This is a war you cannot win."

She woke with a start and threw herself out of bed, screaming. She could've sworn the covers tried to pull her back in, but as she regained her breath and stilled her racing heart, she tried to reassure herself. "Just a dream," she sighed. "Just a dumb dream."

In the corner, just too quietly for her to hear, the laundry in her hamper gave a nasty laugh.

Epilogue: A War You Cannot Win

Author's Notes:

This epilogue isn't part of the original speedfic, but I'm posting it here for two reasons:
1. I ran short on time in the panel and had to rush to a conclusion, but I had this little idea eating at the back of my mind for how I'd really like to finish off the tale. Now I've got a chance to make it a reality.
and more boringly, 2. The original speedfic isn't quite long enough to pass submission on its own.
So here it is, the ending I would've written if I'd had the time. I tried to stay true to the speedfic origins of the story by writing it all in one sitting with minimal editing, so uh... enjoy? I hope?

A few years came and went after that night, bringing with them a plethora of milestones and memories. Some of them stuck with Sweetie Belle forever, while others faded to vague recollections, a scent or a sound that felt familiar but that she couldn't quite place. The one thing that remained most vivid in her mind, however, was that dream. She could see them all in her mind's eye as clear as day, the rogue's gallery of killer cloth that she'd faced and felled that night. She didn't mention it to anypony else for a long time, but it nagged at the back of her mind. She often thought she saw things - curtains swishing in a room with no breeze, dresses climbing down off of her sister's forms while her back was turned - but she chalked it up to her overactive imagination. Then she began to hear them.

It was just whispers at first, a word or two hissed into her ear when she'd thought she was alone, but it got worse as time went on. Her covers blanketed her room in coarse growls when she tried to sleep, and down in her sister's shop she often thought she heard the hats make lowbrow jokes that had the dresses in stitches. Once, when Rarity was designing a wedding dress, Sweetie Belle heard it making veiled threats every time she passed by it, and that pushed her over the edge.

"Make it stop!" she shouted, making her sister jump in alarm.

"Sweetie Belle," Rarity admonished. "Whatever are you carrying on about?"

Sweetie Belle scowled and backed away from the dress. "Don't you hear it?" she asked. "I don't like the way that dress is talking to me."

"Talking to you?" Rarity said. "Sweetie, dear, are you feeling alright?"

"I'm feeling fine," Sweetie Belle insisted. "I just wish your dresses would leave me alone!"

Rarity frowned. "They're dresses," she pointed out. "I'm not entirely sure how they could do anything else."

"Never mind," Sweetie Belle said, shaking her head. "I think I just need some fresh air."

After that, she tried to hide her worsening fears, but it didn't take Rarity long to notice that her sister was acting strangely. She refused to wear clothes of any kind, and she'd recently undertaken a systematic campaign to remove all the fabric from her room. Clothes, curtains, bedsheets, pillows - she even ripped out the carpet and replaced it with hardwood flooring. When Rarity confronted her about it, Sweetie Belle snapped.

"You don't understand!" she screamed. "They're after me! Ever since I killed Kevlar, they've been messing with my mind!"

"Slow down, darling," Rarity said. "Who's after you." Then her eyes went wide. "Wait, did you say you killed somepony?"

"Not somepony, someVEST!" Sweetie Belle explained. " I thought it was just a dream at first, but I was wrong. It's real! They never show themselves, but I hear them speaking to me and I see them moving out of the corner of my eye. I can't take it anymore!"

Rarity stared at her sister like she was wearing a dress that was a full three seasons out of fashion. "Wha? Who? What are you talking about?" she stuttered.

"THE FABRIC!" Sweetie shrieked.

"She'll never believe you," Rarity's hat whispered.

"Now, Sweetie Belle..." Rarity began.

"SHUT UP, YOU!" Sweetie bellowed.

"I beg your pardon!"

"Not you," Sweetie cried. "The hat!"

It broke Rarity's heart to have to drag her little sister, weeping and struggling, to the Ponyville hospital, but what else was she to do? The doctors in the mental ward all had different guesses as to what was wrong with the little white filly, but they all agreed that this was the strangest case they'd ever seen.

Sweetie Belle sits in a little room with no windows now, a straitjacket binding her hooves to her sides so she can't claw at the cloth-padded walls anymore. The walls take great pleasure in taunting her about it, and the straitjacket squeezes much more tightly than is comfortable. At night, when she tries to sleep, it mutters wild strings of nonsense in her ear.

Days pass, and she can't remember what it feels like to hear nothing but her own thoughts. Maybe they're right, she thinks. Maybe I am crazy. Out loud, she whispers, "I give up. You win."

The voice that responds is immediately familiar, sinister and quiet. "Not yet," it says, "But with you out of the way, little warrior, we will. Oh, we will."