Pinkamena was having a bad day. Of course, Pinkamena being Pinkamena, that was scarcely anything unusual.... if she had a great day, she really wasn't herself. And in this case the circumstances around her being herself had kept her on the trot back and forth across Ponyville. She'd yet to even give Canterlot the once over; thank all things bright and canonical that most outbreaks like this seemed to just hang around Ponyville--- like a pedophile "just hung around" a kindergarten playground.

After all, she was just one pony. Technically.

The pink pony trotted up to the door of Carousel boutique and knocked. A moment later she heard the latch being undone. "In a minute," the proprietor trilled through the closed door as she undid the locks; a good half dozen of them from the sound of it. Pinkamena reflected. Yesterday she'd only had a single latch....

An eye peeked out through the curtains. "Oh... it's you." The door opened, the chime carefully silenced with an alabaster hoof. Rarity stood there in her favorite silk robe, her fluttering lashes heavy with kohl. Once she was certain Pinkamena was alone on the street, she gave a sultry smile and let her robe slip off her shoulders. It slid to the floor and puddled at her hooves, revealing her to Pinkie's eyes. She wore black silk stockings on her legs, and a studded choker around her throat. Angry red welts and barely-healed cuts, precise and methodical in their placement, marked the unicorn's skin. A scar, still dark and healing, was cut in the shape of a heart over her chest. "Oh, darling," Rarity purred, edging closer. "Is it time for our little games together again--"

Smiling happily, Pinkie raised one hoof, drew back, and socked the unicorn right in the eye.

It was no love tap; Rarity went sailing. She flew backwards through her own front door and landed on her back on the floor, face rapidly swelling purple. "What-- what---" She sat up, gasping in shock, nursing her blackened eye, mascara beginning to run. Give her credit, she tried to step back into role.  Her lip trembled as she quavered in her best seductive voice. "What did I do?!?... have I been--- a naughty pony, PinkieEEEYAIAYAIYAIYIYAYIAYAIII!"

Her surely award-winning S+M performance had been cut off quite anticlimactically when Pinkie produced a pitcher of ice water from behind her back and poured it, ice and all, straight on the fashionista's crotch. Rarity sat on the floor clutching herself, mane standing straight out, eyes bulging and teeth chattering, as Lady Lust in her leather and lace hiked up her skirts and bolted for warmer climes. "Not in the mood tonight, Snoogiepoops," Pinkamena deadpanned. the pitcher went sailing with a smash. She looked around for further signs--- and noticed that Rarity's precious pristine robe was stained at the hem with dirt. "Okay, where's the basement this time?"

Sniffing, Rarity pointed further into the boutique. There against a normally blank wall stood a door. It was slightly ajar, and there were clods of dirt marring the floor around it. "Okie dokie lokie," Pinkamena muttered, bracing herself. She marched to the door, and flung it open. Dimly lit stairs led down below.

There was a shift... but only partially. Someone was still busy at work. Rarity got to her hooves and stumbled frantically over to where Pinkie stood framed in the basement doorway. "No wait, I can explain..."

Pinkamena spun on her heel, pointed to the mud-spattered floor, and sucked in a gasp that would have done a jet engine proud. "Look! Rarity! DIRT!!" Rarity looked down and saw where the flecks of mud were slowly grinding their way into her pristine floors. "NYAAAAGH!!" she screamed. Forgetting all else, she dashed off and reappeared with a scrub brush and a bucket of steaming soapy water. She fell to her knees and began scouring her precious floors as if for her very life.

Seeing Rarity was successfully preoccupied, Pinkamena nodded and clopped down to the basement.

It was a crude, unfinished chamber. The walls were spartan brick, crudely mortared; half the floor was still bare earth. Bricklaying and cement-mixing tools lay scattered about. From the look of it Rarity was actually trying to do all the work herself, single hoofed. There were no bodies yet; none of the tools were spattered with grue. Pinkamena knew better than to be prematurely relieved, though.

On the far side of the room from the staircase was a stone doorway in the process of being bricked up. Pinkamena could see pipes and the top of what had to be a water heater above the unfinished brick. The mortar still gleamed wet; Rarity had been hard at work when Pinkamena had interrupted her.

Rarity. Laying mortar. Sometimes the enemy made it all too easy.

Pinkamena took a step closer when a little curly-topped head peeked over the top row of bricks. "Hi Pinkie," Sweetie Belle said. "Me 'n Rarity are playing a game." Pinkie stopped in mid stride, then moved forward again, carefully.

The white, pastel maned little filly watched her with blank, unintelligent eyes. She smiled thoughtlessly as Pinkamena looked inside the half-bricked-off chamber. Pinkamena calmed slightly; there was no whiff of malevolence or sinister intent around the little unicorn. But there was no sparkle of intelligence in her eyes. The normally bright and clever filly seemed about as attentive as a plank of wood. "A game?" she asked, looking down into the little room.

It was the water heater closet, all right. Sweetie Belle was sitting in the tiny cramped space, hooves folded, smiling blankly. there was nothing else in the room but a bottle of bleach, some rags, and a bucket that--- that Pinkie could guess the use of by the aroma. "Like my room?" Sweetie Belle said brightly. "Rarity's fixing it up for me. She says once she finishes I'll have a whole new wall." She patted her hoof against the fresh brick. "I asked where the door would be but she says not to worry about that..." The filly took one of the rags, poured some bleach on it and began absently rubbing it over her coat.

Pinkamena watched; with growing horror she realized the filly was absolutely covered with bleach burns, the red, angry skin swelling under her white coat. "Sweetie, what's the bleach for?" she asked carefully.

Sweetie Belle looked down, inexplicably ashamed. "I have to wash with it," She said. "Or my coat starts turning grey. Rarity says it's a bad bad secret that nobody should ever see....they might think I'm not Mommy and Daddy's girl. They're white unicorns, Rarity's a white unicorn.... one of Rarity's stallion friends is grey though---" she trailed off.

Pinkamena got it. Even old school Pinkie Pie, whose head was full of Pepsi and pop rocks at the best of times, would have figured that one out. "Come here, Sweetie," she said, reaching over the brick wall. "I think you need to come out of there now." Sweetie happily climbed into Pinkamena's forelegs. Pinkamena lifted the filly out and, unable to resist the impulse, cuddled her briefly--- careful to not let the filly see the tears clouding her eyes.... or the expression of icy rage that crossed her face. "You go on upstairs, silly filly," she said. "I gotta fix some things."

"Okay..." Sweetie said. She hopped down and galloped up the stairs--- rushing past Rarity, who was traipsing her way down.

There was a shift, almost a ripple in the air... Rarity staggered her way down the rest of the stairs, blinking in confusion, her spotless silk robe trailing behind her. "Pinkie Pie! Where.... where did all this... come from?" She waved one white hoof at the basement. Through the robe Pinkamena could see that the welts and scars were already gone.

       "Don'tcha remember?" she asked in her best Pinky voice. "You made it!"

Rarity stopped in the middle of the floor, started, then laughed. "Oh don't be silly, Pinkie dear. This sort of thing is work for construction ponies... big BURLY construction ponies... with lots of muscles.... rippling under their swarthy coats--- where was I? Forget that, dear, would you? Back to the point, what is all this doing under my Boutique??" She patted one flawless cheek in confusion.

Pinkamena regarded her narrowly. "You really don't remember?" she asked carefully. Rarity shook her head. "Rarity... where's Sweetie Belle's room?"

"Why it's right upstai--" Rarity blinked. A dawning horror spread across her face as her gaze fell on the half-sealed little crypt. "N-no.... she said, pointing at it with one hoof. "It's-- it's right there. But that doesn't make any sense, why in the world would my little sister be living and sleeping in there when she has a room up... stairs...." The ripple in the air grew, pushed. "And she was in there now, and I was bricking... bricking her.... oh sweet Celestia, I was bricking her into the wall, what was I doing, why would I be bricking my little baby sister alive into a basement wall oh no oh gods oh what am I doing what's happening---" the unicorn's voice spiraled higher and higher till she finally reared up on her back hooves and fell over in a dead, and for once quite real, faint. She landed in the muddy half of the floor with an ignominious splat.

There was a clattering at the top of the stairs. Sweetie Belle reappeared, looking around in confusion. "Rarity? Are you down here? What is all this, I didn't know Carousel Boutique had a basement--- Oh hey Pinkie. I heard Rarity screaming, is everything okay? Whoa," she said in the next breath as she spotted her sister sprawled in the mud. "I guess not. Gosh, should I get the Doctor?"

"Nah," Pinkamena said cheerily. "Rarity just had a faintsy-waintsy. She needs a little trip to the Spa." She levered the fashionista out of the mud with her nose and flipped her onto her back. "Gee, I guess I do too," she giggled, looking down at her mud-spattered self. She shifted Rarity's weight up on her shoulders and started up the stairs. "I'll just take her there myself. Why don't you go find the other Cutie Mark Crusaders today? I think Rarity needs a little "alone" time."

"O-okay," the filly said uncertainly. "If you're sure..."

"Sure I'm sure! Here," Pinkamena tossed the filly three bits. "Get yourselves something at Sugarcube Corner, my treat!"

"Thanks!" Beaming, Sweetie Belle took her loot and bolted. Pinkamena carried Rarity up into the Boutique. She paused only long enough to kick the basement door shut and latch it. Firmly. And moved one of Rarity's family portraits-- of her, her sister, and her parents (a white mustachioed pony in a straw hat and a pink, blue maned unicorn) over the door. By the time she had left the front door of the Boutique and begun trotting her way to the Aloe and Lotus spa, the ominous door had already faded away as if it had never been.

***

Twilight staggered in through the library door, weary and bedraggled. The... insanity outbreaks... had been getting worse. She'd had to calm down three different ponies who were weeping in hysterics over dead foals they'd never actually had, had to convince Rainbow Dash three different times that Scootaloo was not an orphan and had not died alone in the snow last night ( it was JUNE) and had to make a ultra-emergency super-boosted long range teleport to her brother's place when she'd received a panicked letter from him claiming that Cadence had turned out to be Queen Chrysalis in disguise again and was trying to suck out his soul.  (One blow with a hastily-flung flower pot and "Chrysalis" had turned back into Cadence, who was now nursing a lump on her head while her husband nursed hurt feelings on the couch.)

She'd returned home in time to find half Cheerilee's students clustered on the roof of the school yelling in panic while Cheerilee ran about below with sharpened gardening tools and ranted about "expanding the garden," while the other half led by Pipsqueak were cornered in the candy shoppe by a chainsaw-wielding Twist, who "jutht wanted to help Pinkie make thome cupcaketh." Violent electric shocks (Twilight was in no mood) had subdued the two of them.

When that had failed to drive Twilight Sparkle out of her mind, she had promptly run into AppleBloom. A very hugely pregnant AppleBloom, who had insisted that Spike was the father.... before Twilight's twitching brain could begin to compose a rant on just how physically, medically and biologically impossible this alleged situation was, she had turned around and AppleBloom and her pregnancy were both gone. She had seen her later halfway down Main Street, playing with the other Cutie Mark Crusaders and most explicitly not pregnant.

And she didn't know what had happened between Big MacIntosh and Caramel, but they had seen each other in the street, screamed like fillies on helium, and run in opposite directions as fast as they could go.

She needed a nap. She needed a drink. She needed her Mommy and a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. She switched on the light.

She needed to start locking the door when she left the house.

Standing at the top of the stairs leading to her bedroom was what appeared to be a tall, muscular, half-shaved, half naked  monkey. It was six foot tall, with bald, tannish-pink skin and a yellow thatch of a mane. It was clothed, thank Celestia-- at least partially; it was wearing pants, and was bare from the waist up. It's chiseled abdomen and chest rippled as it flexed its way into a "casual" pose at the top of the stairs. Sparks of energy crackled from its fingers as it ran them through it's mane. "Oh, hey there, Twilight Sparkle," it said, flashing her a pearly white grin. ". My name's Kyle. I think you left one of your spells running and accidentally summoned me to Equestria. Oh, and I seem to have gained phenomenal magic powers by being brought here. I think I'll turn into a dragon later and save the world, but right now I'd like to befriend all the Elements of Harmony and have sex with some of them. Say, you're looking pretty sexy for a quadruped--- whaddya say?"

Had Kyle been a little sharper, he might have noticed the expression on Twilight's face. Had he been Spike, he would have already been running. As it was, the Phenomenally Gifted Magical Shapeshifting Human from Another Dimension, Intended Pinkie Pie Porker, and Future Savior of Equestria was a little... slow.

Keep note. The ponies of Equestria are not a violent or bloodthirsty race. Killing and bloodshed are alien concepts to them, for the most part. Twilight, at least, was a meek, mild-mannered scholar who under even abnormal circumstances would scarcely raise a hoof to another pony, much less use lethal force. She'd never even so much as wilfully killed a bug in her life.

Out in Ponyville, ponies were going about their daily business... or at least trying to, with the intermittent reality-warping mayhem going on. There was a loud "whoompf" from down the street. The windows of the local library flashed with a brilliant actinic purple, and from the upper window shot a smoking severed Human head. It flew in a graceful arc a hundred yards down the street, bounced three times and rolled to a halt at the center of the market square, face up. Smoke curled up from the blackened hair; ponies could see the look of surprise frozen on its face.

Mayhem ensued.

Twilight walked back out of the library and started walking, heedless of the stampeding ponies all around her. Her eyes twitched--- check that, pretty much everything was twitching. She marched down the street to where the remains of "Kyle" had rolled to a halt. The head, naturally, was already gone. She kept walking, looking neither left nor right. It was time for a little visit to the spa. She wondered idly if Aloe and Lotus still kept that bottle of "tonic water" under the counter....