Ten minutes passed before the final punch landed on Pinkie Pie’s face. It was a desperate action, and somehow the most regretful of all of them. Applejack had avoided Pinkie’s belly, leaving her friend’s face and torso a battered mess. Teeth were missing, her jawline and one of her ears was looking crooked, and both of her eyes were almost inflamed shut. The wet, blue orbs still stared at Applejack’s quaking form even after all they had been put through.

The farmer sat hunched on the floor of the shack, tears rolling down her face, making her vision blur up again. Her forehooves were both reddening at the edges, and they were both tired from use. Aside from that, Applejack was in perfect health.

She suddenly looked back up at Pinkie Pie, her gritted teeth parting. “Why didn’t you fight back!!?” she screamed. She turned to look at Twilight, her breath sharp and quick with panic and an overwhelming feeling of guilt. “And why did you listen to her!? You could have stopped me!”

Pinkie opened her mouth to explain, but her lower jaw sent a sharp jolt of pain through her entire skull with every movement. “I-... coubn’t had-d… her… interferim wiz…”

“With WHAT?? With my ‘reharmonization!? Look at me, Pinkie; I’m broken! I just beat up my best friend, and I-... I kept on tellin’ myself that it was the right thing to do, but I was wrong!” She sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Just look at you. Look at what I did, while you didn’t lift a single hoof to stop me! And I just kept going… like you were some easy target or somethin’!”

Pinkie coughed a few times and spat out a glob of blood. “Id ok,” was her simple, faint response.

Applejack watched in horror as her imagination took hold. For a split second, Pinkie Pie was replaced by Granny Smith, sitting in her rocking chair, starting to turn blue as her airways closed up inside of her. Applejack doubled over, diving headlong back into her own sorry state as she made the horrible connection in her mind - she was the cause of all of this. And by some cruel twist of logic, however false, she blamed herself for Granny’s condition as well.

Through the hole in the shack’s side, a light-yellow pegasus was watching the scene unfold. She had cried her eyes dry, yet still, her face was contorted in emotional agony the likes of which she could never have imagined.

Twilight looked from Fluttershy back at the farmer. She could tell that she was no longer in any state of doubt - before, Applejack held mistrust and logic in equal measure, if still scattered by her emotions. Now, she was under no illusions of what she had just done, and of Pinkie Pie’s motives. Applejack was truly grief-stricken.

She flinched away as Twilight tried to place a hoof on her shoulder, the fear of the unknown making a sudden return. “Keep away from me, Twilight,” she pleaded. “I’m not ok right now, understand? I shouldn’t have been made the Element of Honesty if I couldn’t even trust myself, should I?”

“That’s nonsense, Applejack. You just followed your gut feeling, and it was wrong this time…”

“My gut feeling is never wrong! Don’t you get that?” Applejack shouted. “I wanted to punish her, to make her pay and suffer for eatin’ our friends, but instead I ended up proving her right in the worst way imaginable! I’m not the Element of Honesty, and maybe I never was! No one else lies to themselves as much as I do-” Twilight made to interject, but Applejack stopped her. “-and you can’t tell me that isn’t true, because I know it is. That’s what my guts tellin’ me right now, and if it’s wrong again, then that just proves my point even more, doesn’t it!?”

“You… juz had t-to truz… me.” The two of them looked to Pinkie Pie as she spoke. The tears were flowing freely now. “At’s all… ever wanb. I did-dn’t… wanna h-hurt your feeli’s, AJ, I juz wan-” Another cough. “-t hep…”

Applejack slowly got back to her hooves. She was starting to calm down. “Yeah, well… you managed it, didn’t you?” She looked Pinkie Pie in the eyes, then Twilight. “Ever since we met, you’ve only thought the best of me, and I’m thankful for that. I’m always the one welcoming and providing for those who need it, maybe because of how I was brought up, or maybe to try and deal with that little empty space that my parents were never able to fill. Hospitality, y’now?”

She placed a hoof on the spot where her Element of Honesty normally rested. “But that’s not all I am.”

Again, Twilight reached a hoof out to try and help her friend. She managed to make contact without being shrugged off this time, but instead she could now feel the light shaking of Applejack’s body.

“Applejack…”

“I’ll do it,” Applejack stated, forcing herself to look at Pinkie’s stomach. “I still hate this, I still hate everything about this, but that just means I deserve to… to be put inside.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Applejack, you don’t have to do this,” she said. She looked to Pinkie Pie, hoping for a sign. Pinkie only offered a weak shrug in response. “Don’t punish yourself anymore.”

Applejack pushed Twilight away and, after taking a long breath, walked back up to Pinkie Pie. “Come on,” she said, motioning for the giant pink pony to turn around. “I don’t… really know how to do this…”

“Das ok,” Pinkie replied. With a few grunts she turned herself around, presenting her behind to Applejack. The hole had almost closed completely, with the looseness at last starting to wear out.

Applejack gritted her teeth and shut her eyes as she reached out for that gap between Pinkie’s butt cheeks. She flinched as she felt the flesh against her hooves. Damn it… this is gonna be the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced, Applejack thought, the taste of bile appearing in her mouth at the disgusting sensation. She wanted to pull away to save herself from her fate, but she knew she would only be running from her punishment. To her, this was what she deserved.

Pinkie felt her friend’s hooves pushing into her rectum, bringing with them the same sensation of pleasure she had felt from Rainbow Dash and Rarity. This time the feeling was marred by their emotions; Pinkie hadn’t wanted it to end in such a sad way. And so, she decided to make things quick. Raising up so that her butt was positioned over Applejack’s head, Pinkie sat down on her like a falling boulder, shoving the farmer all the way inside in one fell slurp. It was mercifully quick, even if Applejack’s cries of terror could be heard as she made her way through.

Twilight watched Pinkie Pie’s belly growing once more as Applejack came to her uncomfortable rest within. The predator groaned and rolled onto her side, her energy finally spent. She rubbed the mound of meat and put a smile on her half-broken mouth, enjoying the moment.

While Pinkie Pie was enjoying her victory, Twilight was slowly realizing how quiet it was now that everyone else was trapped inside of her. The thought made her pause, a little twinge of worry arriving amongst the relative silence. The only sounds were of the muffled chatter coming from inside Pinkie’s stomach, and Pinkie’s quiet moans of delight. This seems like a good opportunity, Twilight thought to herself. “Hey, Pinkie?”

“Mmnf… yerh?”

“Answers! Now that there’s no reason for us to fear one another, I want you to tell me the whole truth about all of this. What are you, and how are you able to do all of this?”

“Hor on…” Pinkie placed her forehooves either side of her mouth and, with a sickening pop, cracked her jawline back into place. She moved it about a bit to make sure all was as it should be. “Ok, ready.”

“Oh. Ew, you were able to do that this whole time…?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yup! It was still kinda painful, but generally speaking I can take a lot more punishment than most ponies I know.”

“Alright…” She doesn’t look in pain anymore… that’s strange. Was she even really hurt in the first place? I can believe it either way, but at any rate I know she isn’t under the influence of any special potions or spells. Natural magic-resistance, however? I don’t have an answer to that. “Now then… how did this all begin? When did you and Princess Celestia plan to do all this?”

“Well, we didn’t plan all of this. I had to improvise a few times, but in the end…” She gave her belly a slosh. “most of it went according to plan. And we decided to do this when she visited town last week. Turns out she’s got a raging imaginary hard-on for this sort of thing, just like me!”

Twilight cringed. “She’s into…” She motioned to Pinkie’s general form. “this?”

“Totally! You didn’t know that? Celestia has a whole library’s worth of fetishes she doesn’t let anypony know about, but I figured you would cus’ you’re her student n’ all…?”

Twilight slowly shook her head. “No,” she answered. “I have never even heard tiny suggestions of that sort of thing about her…”

Pinkie shrugged. “They talk about it a lot around nightclubs in the Rabbles. It isn’t exactly a commonly known or believed thing, anyway.”

“Understandable…” The conversation trailed off. Twilight was willing to believe Pinkie Pie’s words in spite of how crazy they sounded; it made sense that Celestia had planned this alongside her, what with the timing, the barrier, and Pinkie’s recent calorie binging. I’d guess that Celestia was the one who noticed we were starting to break apart, and asked Pinkie to fatten up in preparation for today. She looked back to Fluttershy and gave a sorry wave to the worried pegasus. “So… what about you? Are you going to tell me what, exactly, you are?” Twilight asked as she looked back to Pinkie.

Pinkie grinned; she had been looking forward to this question. “Weeell… I’m all sorts of things if you wanna get technical. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. It all started with my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grea-”

Suddenly, a loud, ominous gurgling sound came from inside of her. The outlines of her friends slowly grew less defined as Pinkie’s stomach filled with liquid. The chatter had stopped.

Twilight watched it for a while, half wondering what was going on inside, and half trying to convince herself that it wasn’t what it looked like. “Pinkie. What are you doing?”

Pulling herself upright, Pinkie Pie abandoned the question and looked down at her bloated middle and smiled. She placed her hooves against it and gave it a shake, causing one of her meals to press against the inside for a moment as the three were swilled around within. Her face turned red and drool began to seep from between both sets of lips.

“Oh m-man, this feels soooo good! Sorry, I thought I had more time before we got to this stage.”

All humour left the little alicorn and before she even knew what she was doing, a thick, vibrant aura of purple magic had begun pouring out of her skull and over her horn. “Please tell me you’re joking,” Twilight pleaded in a neutral tone. “Please tell me you aren’t actually doing what I think you’re doing to our friends?”

Silence. Pinkie now stared Twilight dead in the eyes, with her face as red as a tomato with insatiable lust. The eyes weren’t even fluttering, they simply stared, watching to see what Twilight would do like a mindless predator glaring out of the bushes. Somehow, the sight set her on guard more than anything else thus far; that wasn’t Pinkie Pie.

Slowly, the edges of the pink monster’s smile began to rise, and Twilight finally realized the terrible mistake she had made.

“Y-you’re kidding me! You have to be! You’re not actually digesting them, are you!?” Twilight cried. The magic wavered around her horn; she hadn’t prepared herself for the consequences if it was actually true. “Answer me already! Say something, Pinkie Pie!!”

Pinkie giggled, then laughed. The joyous, bubbly voice behind it was exactly the same, but it now released a hollow laughter, devoid of all measure of “fun”. Twilight could see the teeth in her mouth growing jagged. “It’s really hard to move around like this, y’now?” Pinkie commented as if nothing was wrong. “But all I need to do is get rid of the excess!”

There was a loud, prolonged gurgle from within, and Twilight watched in horror as the giant, bloated stomach rapidly shrunk down to its normal appearance. Her friends were being digested.

“NO!!!”

---

In their drawer where they were kept when the fate of Equestria wasn’t hanging in the balance, the Elements of Harmony glowed with a strange light. The jewels set in the elements of Honesty and Generosity were covered in cracks, the former having just gained new ones, and the latter starting to heal back up. They and the Element of Loyalty shook in their slots. Their bearers were no longer in the world, and they knew it.

The Element of Magic, even with its star gemstone a shattered mess, kept the others in place as the energy within it took on a completely different nature. Its purple surface had begun to glimmer various different colours, and each facet was currently blitzing through a different part of the rainbow as its wielder went through a major emotional shift…