The Ponyville Express pulled into the station with a hiss of steam. Before she'd even come to a full halt, the Mane 6 piled out of the cars in a panicked heap. They were led by a very grim-looking Pinkie Pie with a mane as sleek and straight as a razor's edge. She leapt to her hooves.  "Alright, we're here," she said. "Wasn't quite counting on that one car being filled with axe-murdering zombie cannibal ponies, but--- we made it!"

"So let the sunshine in, face it with a grin..." Fluttershy and Rarity sang in a duet in high, quavery voices. They were lying on their backs staring into space, their pupils tiny pinpricks. Applejack doused them by knocking over a handy water cooler.

Twilight shook out her mane. "Okay, Pinkamena, what's next?"

"We're in the home stretch, Twilight. All we gotta do is get from here to the lair." Pinkamena pointed a hoof at Canterlot Castle. "And there's only one place it could be. We have to get to the Princess' throne room!"

The others gaped at her. "Why would it be there?" Applejack demanded.

Pinkamena rolled her eyes. "Because they have SERIOUS Mommy Issues," she said. "And who's the biggest Mother Figure in all of Canterlot?"

"Uh, right," Twilight said. "Point made... I think."

"Okay, we're gonna make a straight run for it," Pinkamena said. "Everybody, stay together, and no matter what happens, no matter what you hear or see or even FEEL, don't stop running. Okay, everybody follow me!" She took off at a dead gallop.

And after a few seconds, came galloping back. "I said, follow ME," she repeated. She stamped her hoof in exasperation.

"Uhh, sugarcube, the castle's that way," Applejack pointed to the left.

"It doesn't matter," Pinkamena said. "These guys don't have any sense of size, scale, distance, proportion, or direction. Nothing's going to be where it's supposed to be in relation to anything else anyway, so we might as well just pick a direction and GO, now COME ON!" She turned and galloped off again. The others shrugged to each other and galloped off in pursuit. Soon they were right behind the pink party pony, who was inexplicably galloping through the twists and turns and alleyways of Canterlot City in a perfectly straight line. It took the others a moment to realize what was wrong, but they soon were staring in shock all around them. "How--?" Twilight started to ask.

"When I told you it was a straight run, I wasn't kidding, now come on!"

The girls began galloping at breakneck speed. As they ran, they passed through an ever-changing panorama of horrors. The twisting streets of Canterlot grew dark and filthy around them; they saw shadowy figures with shining knives in their mouths lurking down back alleys. Signs sprang up for nudie shows, topless bars, strip clubs... wait, what? "But how could anyone start a business in Equestria built around that?" a baffled Twilight yelled as they ran. "We don't usually wear clothes anyway! It doesn't make any sense!"

"They're not thinking with their BRAINS when they make up this stuff!" Pinkamena yelled back. "Keep running!"

They passed dozens of homeless ponies, orphans, the sick, the maimed, the dying, the dead. Worse it was faces they knew, appearing over and over again. Rainbow Dash swore she saw dozens of Scootaloos--- Scootaloo slowly starving to death; Scootaloo lying under a tattered blanket, freezing in the snow; Scootaloo with her wings broken, her face beaten black and blue.... she nearly broke rank with the others again and again, the worst ones were when she saw silhouettes of Scootaloo through curtained windows and heard her screaming "no mommy, no daddy, no Rainbow Dash, please don't hurt me again---!!!"

"Don't listen!" Pinkamena shouted. "You can't save her, she's not real, if you stop you'll be trapped with her and the real Scootaloo will be shafted, keep running!"

They galloped on through their enemy's sick imaginings. They ran through a vast chamber filled with translucent Changeling cocoons; they saw their neighbors, their friends, themselves, dangling from the ceiling, slowly being drained of life, all their happy memories were a delusion, what was the point, nothing mattered--- "Keep running!"

They passed ritual killers, cannibals, rapists, depraved cultists, all ponies, they saw ponies making sacrifices to a Shoggoth, they passed through a factory of hideous machines where blank flanked colts and fillies were being ground up into rainbow pigments...

They ran on. They tripped over small, fluffy, pony-like creatures that had been beaten and brutalized and left to starve in the streets who cried out in babylike voices as they slowly succumbed to their injuries or hunger, begging to know why.... Fluttershy's heart nearly shattered... "Keep running or they'll be this way forever! KEEP RUNNING!"

They galloped through a cluster of Rarities and SweetieBelles... Rarity wailed at what she saw. The filthiness, the vileness--- she nearly fell to her knees and gave up when she realized that most of the copies of her little sister-- her sweet little sister!-- were half-smothered in their own dung---- Applejack had to literally bite her on the flank to get her out of her shock and keep her moving---

Twilight gagged as she passed ponies doing every possible depraved thing. She saw the Apple clan killing animals and people and each other and devouring the flesh....  Celestia, or something like her, beheading ponies in a town square... then Luna, the roles reversed, beheading Celestia......she saw a tiny black filly being roasted alive in an oven, another one being torn apart by a griffon, a third dying impaled by a spike and she somehow knew that they were all supposed to be her daughter, Twilight's own daughter she'd never had, being sadistically butchered, just because their enemy disliked her.... This creature doing this hated them all more than anything in the universe, it HAD to in order to even imagine these things...

The dioramas they passed through changed in tone. Now things began to happen to them personally. It was pure fortune that Rainbow Dash had chosen to gallop with the others; in the space of three blocks her wings were retroactively broken, crushed, burnt off, sliced off, plucked, clipped, cursed with spells even Celestia could not break.... she staggered from remembered pain, but ran on. Rarity became orphaned, hideously scarred, a former prostitute, a rape victim, a serial killer--- she swooned at the false memories, but kept her feet. Twilight "relived" the memory of her horn rotting off, growing wings, having them ripped off again, being tortured into insanity; Applejack remembered her parents dying in a dozen different ways, saw her sister become a zombie, became a zombie herself, felt the Thin Man rake his fingers through her mane, burst into flame as Sweet Apple Acres was blasted to ash by a raging dragon--- she screamed, the flames went out, she ran on.... Fluttershy became a murder victim, became an angel of Death, was infected by a Xenomorph, watched all her friends die, went screaming insane, sprouted a dog collar and some other far more shocking accoutrements, turned into a human girl suffering delusions in an insane asylum.....

Whatever transformations or revised pasts Pinkamena suffered, she said nothing. She just put her head down, set her lips in a grim line, and kept running.

They were in the castle proper now. The guards were still present but they were no obstacle, they were far too busy as apparently they had apparently all turned gay. Or were running for their lives and virtue from various incarnations of Celestia, Luna, and the Mane Six. Or were lining up to violate them while they were in stocks, then behead them....

Then all of the mane six became immortal, watched all their loved ones die, committed suicide, lived forever, grew old and died. In that order. Except for Twilight who became an alicorn, couldn't cope with being immortal and killed herself. And then all the ponies in the world died. And Equestria exploded. Twice.

---and they staggered through the huge double doors and slammed them shut. Applejack and Rainbow Dash shoved various bits of furniture up against the doors and ran some halberds off a wall display through the handles while the others lay on the floor, gasping for breath. The throne room was empty... save for an enormous circus cannon sitting in the middle of the floor. It dominated the room, and was strangely enough surrounded by banana peels.

Pinkamena got to her hooves first. "Come on, let's do this," she said. "Before he comes up with any new ideas... as unlikely as that is." She trotted around behind the throne.

The others joined her, bedraggled and leaning on each other for support. Exhaustion and shock had passed and a slow rage was beginning to smolder in all of them. They watched as Pinkamena pulled a long strip of paper from some unseen pocket and began writing on it. "What's that?" Applejack asked.

"A plot coupon," Pinkamena said. She slapped the paper on the marble floor behind the throne. The others read the writing, done in purple crayon:

Princess Celestia's Basement

"Uh, Pinkie--- Pinkamena," Twilight said. "Canterlot castle has a dungeon, and a wine cellar, and some storage tunnels... but it doesn't have a basement."

"It does now," Pinkamena said. She hooked her hoof through a brass ring that Twilight would have sworn wasn't there a moment ago and pulled up. A section of the floor swung up; underneath it were a set of surprisingly mundane-looking stairs, leading down. Twilight pointed with a hoof. "since when has that been there??" she yelped.

Pinkamena looked at her with half-lidded eyes. "Since our new pain-in-the-butt moved in here," she said. "Mommy Issues, remember? Only place they can seem to live is in Mommy's Basement. It just happens by default wherever they go. If there isn't a Mommy's Basement, it just appears with them--- so long as there's a big enough Mommy Figure to live over top of it,."

"Well, everybody, this is it," Pinkamena said. "try not to chuck your waffle when you see it." She started down the steps. Hesitantly, the others followed.