"Please don’t let it have happened! Please!” Twilight huffed as she sprinted through the apartment building’s halls in a tidal wave of panic. The numbers on the doors went by in a blur, 567, 568, “569! Finally!” She pounded a hoof on the door. “Octavia? Fluttershy? Are you okay?”

A bout of rough coughing answered, followed by a raspy voice in Octavia’s accent. “Just fine! Fluttershy, get the door will you?”

It sounded like a tumbling pile of metal in there, then heavy stomping before the iron mare greeted Twilight with a dizzy, but calm smile while a fog of smoke was blowing passed her.

“Hey, Twilight... ” she wheezed. “Come on in.”

She did and pelted Fluttershy with questions, trying to speak through the stifling haze. “Are you really alright? Did anything happen when you woke up?”

Fluttershy didn’t even seem to hear her as she sat back where Octavia was, in a pile of broken and melted speakers and metal trinkets. Octavia handed back a strange receptacle and with her own receptacle held and lit a candle under the base. A solution of green powder and water quickly boiled and she deeply inhaled the smoke. Her eyes fluttered in a trancelike buzz before letting out the white, wispy breath. When Fluttershy did the same, her smoke came out black.

“Everything was fine when we met,” she finally spoke. “I think I just scared her a little with how I look.”

“But we got passed it,” continued Octavia. “She really liked some of my music, and we had some good conversation.”

Twilight sighed in relief. “Fluttershy, are you smoking?”

She nodded and with a smoky breath said, “Wyrdstone...”

“When its boiled vapor is inhaled, it promotes the utmost serenity and ease,” said Octavia, half asleep. Her pipe was tipped a little too far and spilled its contents on the floor. “Oh, blast... Now I have to clean this... up...” She struggled to get up, but with most of her energy stolen away, barely rolled around in her seat. “Can you get me a cloth, Twilight? Vinyl should have a couple in her room. Third door on the left.”

Even just at the corner, Twilight shot one last look to make her worries finally satisfied, and went for a cloth.

“Third on the left,” she muttered and entered the respective room. It was a nightmare of a mess. Records, glaives shaped like records, and music equipment lay helter skelter with no rhyme or reason. Even more so, were two dozen empty vials and test tubes of differently colored chemicals. Twilight breathed through her mouth to avert the stench and got to searching. Finding nothing in one corner, she turned around and was met by a pink face that was frighteningly close.

“Ah! Pinkie!” she jumped. The soundproof room door was suddenly open when it hadn’t been before. “Pinkie, were you waiting in there to spook me?” The pink mare gave no answer and only stared blankly, her head hanging down with half-closed eyes and slowly drooling on the floor. Twilight waved a hoof in her face. “Pinkie? Yoo-hoo.”

Pinkie finally reacted, coughing up several vials like those scattered about the room and slumped over into Twilight’s hooves.

“Pinkie! What happened to you?”

A syringe was deeply embedded in her shoulder, the interior of the capsule was stained in many colors. Twilight yanked it out and Pinkie lurched upward, stretching her mouth impossibly wide and glomping down over Twilight’s body, moving down to her abdomen in a split second and forcing herself further with lightning efficiency. To the unicorn, it was a terrible blur and she suddenly found herself enveloped by squishy, undulating walls in pitch blackness and being lifted upside down off the ground.

Pinkie swallowed and the unfortunate, thrashing pony quickly had her haunches and hind legs engulfed in the black maw. Twilight felt something open just below her head. and soon meet another surface that ominously grumbled as she was deposited inside, stretching and expanding it to take her whole body. The saturated atmosphere was barely breathable. New air only being brought by the aperture periodically opening slightly.

“Pinkie!” Twilight snapped as the flesh surrounding her started moving and gurgling louder. She fought against the slippery surfaces to orient upright and lit her horn to see where she was. A tight black sack, churning and secreting purple slime from its walls that slowly pooled around her. Twilight heard Pinkie Pie breathing just above her, her lungs pressing down on her head with each sharp, short gasp.

’No...’ Twilight whimpered unbelievingly. “There’s no way she just... no reason she’d-”

BUUURRAAAAPP

Twilight froze in terror as it sank in. By that point she’d been pushed into panic, beating against the walls of Pinkie’s roiling stomach and shouting at the top of her lungs which only came out as muffled to near silence by the thick enclosure. Pinkie actually seemed to be enjoying her squirming as she moaned and kneaded her belly in Twilight’s face.

She pushed back and thought, ’Teleportation! I can still get out!’ Twilight tried to muster the necessary magic through her horn, but the stifling acidic air made focusing almost impossible. Compounding it, was that as her horn glowed, the magic was being drawn back out and absorbed into the stomach walls. It made a low, drawn out groan and Pinkie squealed in delight. Still, Twilight thought she could make it work and put all she had into putting the spell together even as she was overcome with lightheadedness and quickly lost air as Pinkie’s esophagus had closed. She soon lost feeling in her horn, then her limbs. Limply laying with her face against the labouring gut, she took her last conscious breaths before blacking out.

Fluttershy heard a thunk down the hall. and scratched her chin. “Didn’t Pinkie Pie come back in a while ago?”

“She might have.” Said Octavia. “Hmm...”

Twenty minutes earlier

Pinkie Pie stared into an iron wall with legs. Looking up, it also had a head and a sheepish grin.

“Hi, Pinkie Pie.”

“Holy cannoli! What happened to you, Fluttershy?!”

“I’m... not sure.”

“Not sure?” Octavia said from behind her. “I just told you that you came lumbering down the hallway, absorbing every bit of metal you touched!”

Pinkie giggled, “Just like a sponge.”

Fluttershy stepped aside to let her in. “Octavia said I was really scary and she has an idea for a treatment to get me back to normal. Wyrdstone, I think. What did you come back for?”

“Oh, Vinyl left her headset and a couple of special colored wires for her soundset here.”

“Good luck finding them.”

“Thanks!”

Pinkie trotted into the mess of Vinyl’s room and went rummaging for the desired items.

“Headset, check!” she said, throwing them around her neck. “Blue wire, copper wire, red leather, yellow leather— Ow!”

A sharp pain jolted through her shoulder and she found a medical syringe buried in her shoulder. She looked up and saw a rat passing by on one of the upper shelves, across a display of other injection needles and vials of several different substances. A powerful burning sensation grew where the needle punched in that advanced through her bloodstream and suddenly, Pinkie felt very, very happy as the world melted around her.

She extended her tongues up and dragged down the entire array of chems and needles, plugging one into a vial, filling it and stabbing it into her leg. This brought a different jolt, of a ticklish delight that brought out the most hysterical laughter.

Again and again, she experienced all the different substances, letting each wash over her senses in a completely new rush each time, but it wasn’t enough. The craving in her mind demanded more, so much more. She inverted the display over her mouth, ravenously gulping down the contents, even the glass vials themselves. Her stomach groaned and wrought a debilitating pain.

She stumbled around, clutching her rioting gut and collapsed in the soundproofed room. She tried to use her tongue to hold the door for balance, but only managed to shut it as her insides burned.

“Twilight,” Fluttershy called lightly, poking her head into Vinyl’s room. “Are you in he— AAAAHHHHH!”

She shrieked at the snoring pink blob balled up in the corner. Its huge, churning belly was distended as large as she was. The contour it was stretched around clearly looked like an entire pony.

Fluttershy put her back against the outside wall with a hoof over her mouth. She felt sick from the sight of the bloated animal, her mind racing a million miles a minute even through a wyrdstone haze.

”She... P-pinkie at-te...” She heard the door of the other apartment open. and a familiar voice.

“I suppose this will last us until—”

“DOCTOR!” Fluttershy screamed. The Doctor immediately ran for the source of the cry and found Fluttershy quivering against the wall in horror. “Pinkie P-p-p”

“Fluttershy, breathe!”

She gasped and said in sharp, forced breaths, “Pinkie... Pie... ate... Twilight!”

The Doctor’s ears flattened at the sound of a messy belch from in the room.

“Good god!” he snapped as he approached the glutted mare.

“How do we get her out?”

He looked at the stitches that still crisscrossed Pinkie’s torso, but thought against his first idea for another. “Try holding her upside down.”

Fluttershy took Pinkie’s hind legs and raised her high so she dangled freely like the carcass of a slain game animal. The contents of her stomach sloshed down and started sliding back up her throat. The Doctor opened Pinkie’s mouth and saw a horn come into view at the back of her mouth. He tilted her head back so the esophagus was lined up and soon Twilight’s head slipped from her lips. Fluttershy couldn’t bear to look, for even the wet sounds induced a feeling of nausea.

Despite the stinking muck, Whooves helped keep Twilight from hitting the floor to hard and guided her body out until gravity brought the last of her out of Pinkie. He put a hoof on Twilight’s chest and sighed in relief when he felt a heartbeat and her breathing.

“Fluttershy, let’s get Twilight out of here and see what we can do,” Said Whooves. He looked around at the spilled chem containers everywhere, and the design of the room and assumed, “This must be Vinyl’s room. She’ll probably have an idea of what happened to her.”.

Fluttershy reluctantly toted Twilight from the room and The Doctor followed. "Hopefully Vinyl will know what to do when she gets back."

Before Whooves completely shut the door, his eyes went wide as a black claw, much like a crab’s, shot out and blocked the door between the wall. Pinkie Pie put her face to the gap, wordless but frothing with a wickedly wide smile and her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Opening her claw, she forced the door open wider against Whooves’ effort. Fluttershy rushed over and tried to help shut the door but, unaware of her weight and momentum, forced it to slam shut, squeezing the claw back to the other side. Pinkie giggled and chattered incoherently for a while, before her mirth finally gave way to a long scratching noise.

"Dooooc... Dooooc..." she moaned longingly.

Whooves quickly began moving several heavy objects to block the door and sent Fluttershy to the other room to take care of Twilight. Pinkie was still pushing against the door, but it was made to be pulled. Even so, the makeshift barricade made Whooves feel just a bit safer.

Fluttershy tried to focus through her wyrdstone-clouded mind as she dried Twilight with a blanket. Where Rarity was situated, her sheets were very low, as if she weren’t even there, and a small flow of dust blew out from underneath and out the tiniest cracks in the closed window. Twilight seemed well intact despite being entombed for some time. Her breath was weak, she was very pale and Fluttershy saw drops of blood trailing from the corner of her mouth.

The first thing Fluttershy's foggy conscience thought to do was wring out her bleeding mane for her to drink as had to be done the night before. She did so over Twilight’s mouth and helped her get it down, recalling the nostalgia of aiding wounded animals at her cottage in Ponyville. Twilight coughed and unconsciously covered herself with the wet blanket, shivering.

With her taken care of for the time being, Fluttershy turned to the other bedsheets to check on Rarity. She gently lifted the covers up and found only a shrinking pile of dust underneath that was slowly blowing out the window.

“Rarity!” Fluttershy put her hoof on the dust which only scattered it more and it too went for the window. “No! Stop! Come back!”