Rainbow Dash blinked when the cold wind blew on her. She opened her eyes to see a bed in front of her. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were lying in it, both of them clad in leather underwear with a few chains added here and there for a good measure. They were looking back at her and Rainbow Dash slowly realised her situation. Namely the fact that she was naked and that her hands and legs were chained to the wall.

“I expected something more from you,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “Like, adorning me with nipple and clit piercings, drawing tally marks on my ass indicating how many dildos fit in there, cumming in my hair… I must say I’m disappointed.”

“Fish people and some fucking ninja that tried to kill us on the way here,” Diamond Tiara replied. “Not enough time. Too bad the ninja ran away when we started shooting, or you’d have company.”

Rainbow Dash smirked. “So, what’s on the schedule? I hope it’s something kinky, but I guess you can’t do better than the last time I had sex.”

Silver Spoon chuckled. “It will be kinky, but you won’t be a part of it. Better hope that you can come without your hands because you’ll only watch as we slowly reach the peaks of pleasure…”

Diamond Tiara laughed and kissed Silver Spoon, embracing her and dropping on the bed with her.

Rainbow Dash watched the duo making out with a blank expression. After a few minutes she yawned, stretching her muscles. She raised her eyebrows for a moment, before yawning again. “Seriously?” she muttered. “Just fingers? I had a whole fist back there… And that was Bulk Biceps, mind you.” She stared at the action in front of her and shrugged as much as it was possible in her restraints. “Ah, not going ass to mouth here. That’s a part of the thrill, you know? At least for me, but you, kids, may know better.”

The moans coming from the bed faltered for a moment, but soon resumed, this time even louder.

“Deeper, you haven’t even reached her G-spot.” Rainbow Dash sighed and shook her head. “When I say deeper, I mean, elbow-deep, moron! Yes, punish her. What? A smack in the butt doesn’t hurt at all! How can you handle your slave if you don’t even bite her clit?”

Diamond Tiara groaned and sat on the bed, facing Rainbow Dash. “Okay,” she muttered. “What do you want?”

Rainbow Dash smirked. “I’m just giving constructive criticism,” she replied.

“Oh really?” Diamond Tiara chuckled. “Let’s see if you can do better…”

“Okay,” Rainbow Dash said. “Untie me and I’ll show you…”

To Rainbow Dash’s surprise, amidst all the ruckus caused by the fish people, the ambulance arrived only five minutes later. Perhaps the way she worded her call played a crucial part in it – the paramedics, bored of fish people-related injuries were probably more than happy to see something new.

Rainbow Dash, wrapped neatly in a towel, watched as the stretcher with Silver Spoon was carried out of the flat. She was conscious, holding a bag of ice on her crotch, sweating and blushing profusely. Diamond Tiara was in even worse state; after a while spent trying various medical procedures, all the paramedics managed to do was to remove a smile off her face.

“Pff, lightweights,” Rainbow Dash muttered to herself. “Now off to fight fish people…”

The roar of the motorbike was something fish people quickly learned to fear. They ran towards the sea, knowing well that once they saw the machine, it was too late.

“Thirty one!” Sunny shouted, standing in the sidecar and jamming the kukri in the leg of the hapless fish person who couldn’t outrun the motorbike. The creature screamed, collapsing on its knees and facing the barrel of the shotgun held by Sunset.

“Goodnight,” Sunset muttered, hitting the fish person with the butt of her weapon. It fell on the concrete, unconscious.

“A big guy on twelve!” Sunny exclaimed, pointing at the large fish person crawling from behind a tank lying on its side. It roared, raising its arms and presenting chest muscles more resembling a green, hairless gorilla rather than anything that swam in the ocean.

Sunset aimed and pulled the trigger, feeling the butt of the shotgun pushing against her clavicle when the shot nearly deafened her. The fish person staggered, several red holes springing on its chest. However, it took a step forward, reaching its arms towards the motorbike.

Sunset yanked the lever forward. The smoking cartridge fell out of the chamber and bounced off the ground a few times. She pushed the brakes of the motorbike and stopped in front of the fish person, standing with the shotgun in her hands.

“It’s coming closer!” Sunny swung the blood-stained kukri in an attempt to intimidate the enemy. Given that the fish person was the size of a small car, it failed miserably.

“That’s what I’m waiting for,” Sunset whispered, aiming the shotgun. She squeezed the trigger. The explosion of gunpowder propelling the shot mixed with the blast of air coming from the cut trachea as the fish person’s head fell apart into unrecognisable grey, red, and pink bits. The body shuddered and slowly collapsed on the ground, kicking and spraying blood around before finally freezing.

“We’d better get out of here,” Sunset said, watching the humongous body and reloading the shotgun. “We have seven shots left.”

“Well, I can use my kukri then,” Sunny replied.

“Against this?” Sunset pointed at the nearby skyscrapers. The fish person who was wandering behind them was taller than them, with a small head almost completely covered with tentacles growing out of the fins. The arms were also more tentacle-like in shape, dragging behind the creature. As far as the Sunsets could tell, it was accompanied by seven smaller creatures, each of them at least fifteen metres tall.

“We’re gonna need something bigger,” Sunny muttered, staring at the shotgun. “Maybe a howitzer?”

Suddenly, a howitzer thrown by one of the fish people flew above them, hitting the wall of the nearby building and falling to the ground in an avalanche of torn metal, shattered glass, and crushed bricks.

“Do you think we can still use it?” Sunny asked.

“It’s a piece of junk now,” Sunset replied. “It seems that the army has trouble.” She drove the motorbike to the collapsed tank and saw an abandoned walkie-talkie. It seemed to still work; when Sunset picked it up, she heard static and, after turning the knob for a while, some muted voices.

Most of the electronics went to hell! They’re jamming our transmission! Send in the fucking planes and change this place into a fucking Saigon!

Suddenly, the walkie-talkie went silent. Sunset sighed and hid it in the sidecar before driving forward.

“Where are we going?” Sunny asked.

“We need more ammo and maybe something heavier,” Sunset replied. “Of course we’re going back to school.”

“And they told me I was insane.” Sunny shrugged. “Why school?”

“After the Moondancer incident in Crystal Prep, Principal Celestia hired a new janitor.” Sunset turned right and shot a lone fish person sitting on the pavement. “Let’s say he’s very good at cleaning.”

The road to school wasn’t long. However, avoiding the bodies of fish people scattered on the ground was rather hard and it took Sunset a while to maneuver around them. Especially since a bullet flew past her head and hit the postument in front of the school as soon as she reached it.

“Mr. Discord!” Sunset exclaimed, raising her head to look at the roof. “We’re not fish people!”

A grey-haired man in a brown suit stood up – apparently, he had been lying on the roof with an old rifle with a scope. He hung it on his back and stood in attention. “I know you’re not fish people, Ms. Shimmer. Otherwise, I wouldn’t miss.” He walked to the edge of the roof, looked at the rain gutter, kicking it a few times before sliding down the downspout. “What brings you and your human counterpart here?”

“How did you–” Sunny went silent when Sunset poked her.

“Oh, that wasn’t hard.” Discord chuckled. “Anyway, I guess you came here because you want help, right?”

“Right as always, Mr. Discord,” Sunset replied, raising her shotgun. “We need some shells for this. And maybe a howitzer.”

“Or at least a machine gun,” Sunny said. “One that can be mounted on the sidecar.”

“I have no such things,” Discord replied. “If I had a howitzer and was twenty years younger, there would be no fish people in this town. I also have no shotgun shells except of this one.” He put his hand in his pocket and produced a shotgun slug in an orange casing. “Use it wisely and better use it last. Your shotgun may require some cleaning after that.”

“What is this?” Sunset took the slug and looked at it. She wasn’t sure what was that, but it was definitely heavier than lead. She opened the shotgun and put it in the magazine. It fit like any other kind of shells.

Discord chuckled. “It’s, well… Let’s say it’s a mostly normal brenneke slug.”

“Mostly?”

“More or less.” Discord shrugged. “As for the support, I believe I know someone who can provide it.” He pointed at the nearby street. Sunset saw a dense cloud of smoke hanging above it. “I believe Ms. Scratch was there.”

“I already like that girl,” Sunny muttered when they rode towards the source of smoke. It turned out to come from a burning corpse of a fish person lying in the middle of the street. Two cars were standing near it – Trixie’s Volkswagen and Vinyl’s white car in its battle form. Sunset couldn’t hear anything coming from the speakers, but the trembling ground around them gave her a clue that for some reason Vinyl decided to reach for the infrasounds. Sunny winced and covered her ears with her hands.

Much to her surprise, Sunset saw Octavia and Sophisticata sitting with Trixie, Twilight, Vinyl, Flash, and Scootaloo. Sophisticata was dancing near the burning corpse, singing Ring of Fire, which, as Sunset thought, either meant that she wasn’t bothered with violence or that she went completely bonkers.

“Hello,” Trixie said. “Where have you been?”

“We were a bit busy,” Sunset replied. “I see you don’t fuck around…”

“Well, at least Vinyl doesn’t.” Trixie pointed at Vinyl, who was sitting on the top of her car, smoking a cigarette. She waved at both Sunsets and smiled, showing her teeth resembling an accident in the cemetery.

“So far, those are only small victories, though,” Twilight said. “We need to kill seven Singers before we can try to kill the Mother of All The Fish People.”

“Those large, green guys?” Sunset asked. “Then what are we waiting for?”

“Trixie’s making adjustments.” Trixie showed them the doll she was making.

“Also, we can’t get too close,” Octavia added. “Vinyl’s wubs may scare the fish people, but the Singers can destroy any electronic equipment.”

Sunny nodded. “Yeah, we saw that before.” She looked into the sidecar. “Hey, that walkie-talkie started talking again. That, or I’m hearing voices.”

Sunset grabbed the walkie-talkie and pushed the knob.

The voice was quiet and almost drowned in static, but they could still recognise it. Blue leader, standing by.

“Is that Spitfire?” Sunset asked. At the same moment, four fighter planes flew over them, causing the nearby windows to tremble.

“Shit!” Scootaloo exclaimed. “They’re totally gonna steal our kill!”

High above the town, the four Super Hornets from the Wonderbolts Squadron turned towards the eight large silhouettes. They were still rather far away from them, but close enough to fire missiles without the risk of getting caught by any of the tentacles. After a quick fly-by, the planes gathered above the cloud layer.

“Okay,” Spitfire said. “We’d better drop some air-to-surface missiles on them before that escalates.”

“Roger,” Fleetfoot replied. “Blaze, Soarin, stay behind.”

Blaze chuckled. “I’m gonna put The Ride of the Valkyries on the radio.”

“Shut up for a moment,” Spitfire muttered. “Soarin, follow me and report damage.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Soarin exclaimed. Two pairs of planes went lower, rolling into a turn. Spitfire chose her weapons, aiming at the Mother of All The Fish People. Her plane shook as she fired two missiles, watching their path on the screens.

For a while, everything was according to the plan. Then, the engine of one of the missiles malfunctioned, causing it to be thrown off course and hit the ground without exploding. The other one exploded above the town. Spitfire started to wonder how many windows it broke, but when the smoke dissipated, she saw that the fish people were still there, apparently unharmed.

“No shit…” she muttered. “Have you seen that, Soarin?”

“Have you heard that the army always chooses the cheapest equipment?” Soarin asked. “Let’s get lower and just shoot these things. Less collateral damage.”

“Better not,” Spitfire replied, but Soarin was already charging towards the fish people. They looked at the plane with what seemed to be curiosity. The Mother of All The Fish People let out a scream and climbed on a skyscraper. Under her weight, it started to tremble dangerously.

Soarin smirked, switching to the gun and grabbing the stick. The fish people were getting closer. He aimed carefully and reached to the trigger.

Suddenly, all the lights in the cockpit went out. He looked around, realising that the engines also weren’t working. Without the automatic stability systems, the plane immediately spun out of control. Soarin tried to eject, only to find out that the seat wasn’t working either. He already prepared to meet the maker, when the plane suddenly got caught by something soft.

Soarin didn’t even have time to smile at the second chance given to him so suddenly. As he looked through the window, he saw what exactly caught him.

It was enough to ruin his mood.

“Sodomise me with a rolling pin!” Scootaloo exclaimed, watching as the Mother of All The Fish People crushed the plane to pieces, grabbing the pilot and holding him in one of her tentacles. “Actually, I’ve seen enough internet–”

“No time for that!” Sunset exclaimed, kickstarting the motorcycle. “Let’s get there and kill it before it ruins the whole town!”

Trixie, Twilight, Flash, Scootaloo, and Sophisticata sat in the Trixie’s Volkswagen while Vinyl grabbed Octavia’s hand and pulled her into her car. Its engine roared and so did the speakers. It darted forward, flashing bright lights around.

“Stealthy, huh?” Sunny muttered, grabbing her kukri and swinging it randomly.

“The word ‘stealth’, just like almost any other word, doesn’t exist in Vinyl’s vocabulary,” Sunset replied, preparing her shotgun. “She prefers to make a big entrance.” She rested the shotgun against the handlebars of the motorbike and took a sharp turn. Then she braked hard and raised her hand, urging both cars to stop.

“What’s going on?” Trixie asked, opening the door of her car.

“The street lights,” Sunset replied, pointing at the nearby lamp. “This is the last one that still works, which means we’re still outside their reach. If you enjoy your mobility, we shouldn’t drive any of the cars or my motorbike in there.”

Twilight walked to Sunset. “Well, now we only have to kill the Singers and let the pilots finish the Mother of All The Fish People off.” She raised the book. “I think I found an incantation that can kill one, but it must be spoken by two people and heard.”

“The speakers?” Flash asked, pointing at Vinyl’s car.

“No electronics,” Twilight replied. “And the incantation must be sung within their range.”

“I’ll go with you,” Sophisticata said. “I have a rather loud voice.”

“Well, Trixie has no such problems…” Trixie grabbed the small doll depicting a Singer. “I couldn’t make any more of them, I’m afraid. That leaves five.”

Vinyl poked Octavia and pointed at Sunset.

“I think she has a plan,” Octavia said. “Apparently it requires Sunset and, as Vinyl puts it, a lot of awesomeness.”

“You understood that from one poke?” Flash asked.

“Yes. And a brief pause between two other pauses.” Octavia smiled. “I’ll go with you.”

“Cool!” Scootaloo exclaimed, smacking Flash’s back. “That leaves the two of us to fight the remaining two, dude.”

“Three,” Flash muttered.

“Even better, dude.” Scootaloo smirked. “There’s no motherfucker like the three of us two of our four.”

“Err… what?” Flash could only raise his eyebrows at Scootaloo’s rather alternative approach to both common sense and grammar.

“Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Sunny got out of the sidecar and stood in front of her friends with the kukri in her hand. Then she turned back and charged at the fish people.

“Is my newly-found sister committing suicide?” Sunset asked.

“Nah, she’s doing the motherfucking Aragorn.” Scootaloo nodded and smiled at Flash. “And we’re those two runts who ran after him.”

Flash looked at the fish people in front of him. “Well, damn…”

Sunny didn’t check if anyone was following her. She just ran to the leg of the nearest fish person and jammed her kukri in it, as high as she could reach.

“What was that thing this kid said? Yoko Ono? YOLO?” she muttered to herself, pulling herself up on the kukri. The fish person’s skin was slippery, but luckily for her, the creature didn’t feel that something small just bit it. Its legs were also slightly crooked, allowing her to climb more easily.

The fish person turned slowly. Sunny gasped and almost slipped down, but managed to jam the kukri between two scales. She hung on it, staring down at the rest of her friends, circling between the other Singers.

She had to admit it was quite a sight.

“Where’s that other Sunset?” Trixie asked, holding the doll in her hands, reaching towards the nearest Singer. It raised its her and stood still, staring back at her.

“She seems to be on the top of things.” Sophisticata pointed at another Singer while pulling Twilight towards the nearby building.

“Good. Trixie wouldn’t want to attack the same one.” Trixie walked slowly towards the her fish person, twisting the doll in her fingers. The Singer twitched, resting itself against the nearby building. It soon had to let go off it when Trixie turned the doll the other way round. It stumbled and fell on its knees, crushing the concrete as well as its own bones. One of its companions noticed that and rushed towards Trixie, trying to step on her.

Instead of running away, Trixie darted forward, towards the attacker. Its leg went above her head and slammed into the concrete right behind her. Trixie fell, rolling on the ground. She froze, waiting for the massive foot to crush her, but it didn’t happen; the fish person was much too big to move that fast.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie hates running!” Trixie exclaimed, getting back on her feet. She grabbed the voodoo doll in her mouth and bit its head off.

The Singer Trixie had attacked first froze in place just before its head exploded in the mass of blood, gore, and bone shards. Its body staggered and slowly collapsed, tearing off half of the nearby house’s wall before finally resting in the cloud of brick dust and debris.

“Good thing everyone ran away,” Scootaloo deadpanned, watching Trixie bent over on the pavement, throwing up. She looked around and saw Flash, whose face was pale green. “Come on, dude, we need to kill our five!” She turned towards the Mother of All The Fish People and flipped her off. “Surrender, cocksuckers! We’ll kick your asses in no time!”

“I’d like to point out that you can’t kill them by running around and shouting at them,” Flash muttered. “You need some magic, or something.”

Twilight leaned against the wall, panting and hacking. The elevator wasn’t working and after several flight of stairs, it was apparent that she could use some more workout and much less sitting at her desk for whole nights, researching something. She couldn’t help but wonder how Sophisticata could not only walk upstairs without breaking sweat, but also spout an endless stream of words.

“So, I suppose a healthy dose of tradition can help in situation like those,” Sophisticata said, jumping up three steps at once. “I’m not saying we should return to burning people at the stake, but modern kids can’t find the way out of their own ass without their smartphone. The electricity’s out, fish people attack and half of the population dies because they think vegan, gluten-free ravioli grows on trees. No one can hunt, skin, cook, and eat their own food.” She looked through the window and crossed herself. “Holy shit!”

“What’s going on?” Twilight asked. She was two flights of stairs behind Sophisticata, trying to catch her breath.

“I sinned against the second commandment,” Sophisticata replied. “That’s my worst, along with the sixth. From other news, one of those things just exploded. We’d better hurry before the rest does the same.”

“You’re saying?” Twilight took a deep breath and rushed up the stairs to catch up with Sophisticata.

“But of course.” Sophisticata shook her head, looking at Twilight. “Just look what lack of physical activity does to you. It doesn’t even have to be sport. I just talk a lot, sing a lot, stage plays… All that requires energy and that’s how you get fit, unlike some certain wimps who only get offended when someone tells them the truth…” She reached the top of the stairs and looked at the ladder leading to the roof. “There you go. Before we get there, let me take a look at this ritual.”

Twilight walked to her and opened the book on the right page. “That’s it. The language is apparently the closest approximant of their language humans can still use.”

“Damn, that’s long,” Sophisticata muttered. “And it can only kill one at a time? Not very effective…”

“Most of rituals work that way,” Twilight replied. “Actually, the book also lists a ritual to banish the Mother of All The Fish People. but it requires a hangman’s semen and a virgin’s period blood.”

“We can always hang Sentry. One has to learn to sacrifice others,” Sophisticata said. “As for the latter… I’m not sure if there are virgins in this town. At least not since Drama Letter–” She cleared her throat. “What is that ritual exactly? I’d rather not accidentally doom my soul to endless suffering, though there was a time I thought Satan was a pretty cool guy.”

“Apparently it’s just a string of bad puns in their language,” Twilight replied. “The author of the book says fish people hate bad puns.”

Sophisticata furrowed her eyebrows. “Pardon my French, but don’t you think the author of that book may be fucking with us?”

“There’s one way to find out…” Twilight walked to the ladder.

“That was a bad idea…” Sunset shot at the leg of the incoming fish person. She could swear some of the pellets bounced off of it without harming the creature. Next to her, Vinyl threw a Molotov’s cocktail at the Singer, also without a result. Octavia quickly turned out to be useless in combat, cowering behind Vinyl.

Sunset hid behind an overturned truck and cocked her lever shotgun. After doing a brief counting, she realised that she had only two shells left and gulped, sweating heavily.

The fish person walked to the truck and leaned over it. Sunset screamed and jumped back, seeing the surprisingly small head so close to her. A few drops of acid fell from the creature’s mouth, missing her by a few inches. Sunset raised the shotgun and fired into the fish person’s face.

She heard the sound of the air being sucked in and saw how her pellets disappeared in the Singer’s mouth. She realised what’d happen and dropped on the ground just as the lead balls flew back at her. Despite that, she screamed when one of them hit her right arm, grazing the muscles.

“You little cocksucker…” Sunset muttered, grabbing her shotgun. She was about to shoot, when Vinyl put her hand on her arm.

“What’s going on?” Sunset asked.

Vinyl smiled and got a plastic bag from her pocket. Sunset saw some blue pills inside and raised her eyebrows, looking at Vinyl. The DJ’s smile grew even wider as she aimed and threw the bag at the Singer.

Normally, she would miss, but the fish pony sucked the pills into its mouth. Sunset backpedalled, in case the pills were to get thrown back at them, but suddenly, the monster went cross-eyed and sat on the street, drooling and staring into space.

“Let’s hope this chap doesn’t start dancing around in female underwear,” Octavia muttered, looking at Sunset’s wound. “This doesn’t look good.”

“It’s only a flesh wound,” Sunset replied, standing up.

“Remember that I come from a country where this line was conceived,” Octavia said, ignoring the fact that Vinyl was tapping at her back. “Also, remember that it was in the bloody fish person’s mouth. You need a tetanus shot and Of Mice and Men treatment when you start to mutate.”

“I’m not going to mutate!” Sunset exclaimed. Suddenly, she realised that, even though it was day, they were in the large shadow. She looked at Vinyl, who was backpedalling and then back at Octavia.

“Well, we have to be prepared for every– What in the bloody hell are you doing?” Octavia asked, seeing that Sunset aimed the shotgun at her.

Instead of a reply, Sunset pulled the trigger. Whatever Discord had used as a propellant exploded, nearly tearing the shotgun apart and throwing Sunset backwards. The slug flew inches above Octavia’s head, catching fire in mid-air and hitting the stomach of another Singer, standing right behind the cellist. The fish person groaned and stumbled backwards, looking at the brand new hole in its body.

Sunset saw that the wound was no bigger than a fist, although the green-sprayed walls of the building behind the giant told her that the exit wound was probably the size of a bus. What was more, she noticed that the greenish skin started to rip, spreading from the wound.

“Run!” Sunset darted forward, down the street. Vinyl pulled Octavia with her, rushing to avoid the stream of gore and intestines, falling from the ripped stomach on the street. They were soon followed by the body of their owner, slamming into the pavement with the sound resembling a trash bag full of jelly; that is, if someone was crazy enough to fill trash bags with jelly and throw them from the roof.

They continued to run, until Octavia tripped and fell. She looked behind and saw Trixie on all fours, retching over something that looked like her lunch.

“Throwing up?” Octavia asked.

“Mhm,” Trixie muttered before grabbing her stomach and heaving for a while.

“Mind if I join you?”

Trixie nodded, so Octavia joined her, trying to be as classy as it was possible in her situation. Trixie could barf or puke; Octavia was always throwing up.

“Dude, my girlfriend is a wimp, sometimes.” Vinyl shrugged and grabbed a cigarette.

“She sure is.” Sunset furrowed her eyebrows and looked at Vinyl. “Wait, did you just–?”

Vinyl chuckled and lit up the cigarette. Sunset groaned, but at the same moment she heard some noises coming from the walkie-talkie she was still carrying with her. She grabbed it and listened to the conversation.

“Three are down, I say three are down!” Spitfire exclaimed. “What’s going on down there? Can someone see Soarin’?”

“There are many more coming from the sea! They’re smaller, though, but I’d rather not check what they can do to us,” Fleetfoot replied.

Sunset pushed the knob on the walkie-talkie. “Can anyone hear me? Spitfire? Sunset Shimmer here.”

“What?” Spitfire asked. “What are civilians doing on this frequency?”

“Killing fish people and shit,” Sunset replied. “Listen, only those big guys can jam electronics. We’ll take care of them, but we have enough trouble without more of them swarming the area. Go to the sea and give them hell. I’ll tell you when there’s only the Mother of All The Fish People left, so you can shoot her.”

It took a while before Spitfire replied. “Okay,” she said. “Blaze, Fleetfoot, we’re gonna do the Omaha Beach, but this time we’re Germans. Got it?”

“Didn’t they eventually lose the war?” Blaze asked.

“Shut up,” Spitfire muttered. The planes accelerated, flying towards the beach.

“There we go.” Sunset hung the walkie-talkie on her belt. “Let’s find the rest and regroup.”

Flash and Scootaloo were rather unlikely to be found. As soon as the bombs and missiles started falling at the fish people swarming the beach, the Mother of All The Fish people realised that taking all the Singers to protect her wasn’t the brightest of her ideas, as far as strategy went. Thus, two of the Singers were now walking towards the seashore. Little did they know that their mortal enemy was following them.

“Hey, cunt!” Scootaloo exclaimed, grabbing a brick and throwing it at the fish person. “Come back here and fight like a man!”

“I’m not sure if sexual dimorphism is a thing among them,” Flash said, desperately trying to figure out a better method of killing a Singer. So far he ditched the idea of poking it with a stick until it died of boredom.

“Who are you calling a dimorphism, you dimorphism?” Scootaloo turned back to the fish person. “Come at me, you dimorphism-fucked cow anus!”

The fish person slowly turned back and looked down at Scootaloo and Flash before trying to stomp on them. Flash rushed away, hiding behind a hot dog stand that somehow was still standing on the pavement. It wasn’t long. Scootaloo stood on the stand and flashed her boobs to the Singer. A moment later, Flash had to run away again, when the stand was crushed to a million little pieces. He sighed and grabbed Scootaloo’s hand just in time to prevent her from mooning the monster.

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” Flash exclaimed. Scootaloo didn’t reply; they had to run away from the Singer’s foot again.

“Don’t worry, we’re close,” Scootaloo muttered, seeing the giant leg raise again. They ran behind the corner and heard the foot crushing the street in the place where they’d been a moment earlier. “Listen, dude… As soon as it realises it can’t stomp on us and tries to use its fin-like hand thingies, we run between its legs. ¿Capisco?

“Si,” Flash replied, although he didn’t capisco at all. However, the fish person was getting closer to them and there was no time for more questions.

“Now!” Scootaloo exclaimed, when the Singer leaned towards them, trying to catch them. They ran; Flash gritted his teeth, feeling that the fin-like fingers were just behind his back. He and Scootaloo ran between the creature’s legs. The Singer was still leaning, putting its hands between its legs to reach it.

This couldn’t last for long. The centre of mass finally ended up in the place where it shouldn’t and the Singer slowly tumbled, like a freight train trying to perform a somersault. Flash heard a loud and sickening crash as the creature’s spine shattered. It flailed its limbs, nearly throwing him at the wall, before finally expiring.

“That’s it?” Flash muttered.

“Well, it’s big so it falls from a great height,” Scootaloo replied, shrugging. “So technically, physics killed the bitch.”

Flash shrugged. “If you say so…”

“Come on, dude, we gotta kill the next one!” Scootaloo exclaimed, running down the street.

“Wait!” Flash pointed at the car standing in the back alley. None of the fish people crushed it and it was quite a nice red Ram pickup. Flash looked around to see if no one was watching, grabbed a brick and smashed the window with it. At least the car didn’t have the alarm. Flash reached his hand inside and opened the door. For a while, he was trying to figure out how to turn the engine on, but then Scootaloo sat in the car, unceremoniously ripped some wires from under the steering wheel and put some of them together. The engine immediately started working.

“I thought your family was rich?” Flash asked.

“You know, poor kids steal cars because they have to, rich kids steal cars because they’re bored and like to fuck around, dude,” Scootaloo replied. “Now, let’s go!”

Flash pushed the accelerator and they drove along the empty street. The Singer was walking slowly towards the pier, where the three planes were ripping the fish people a new one, changing the beach into a proper battlefield. All that was missing were the waving flags and patriotic music while the bombs fell in slow motion.

“Dude, do you have a plan?” Scootaloo asked, looking at the speedometer and fastening her seat belts.

“No, but I have an airbag,” Flash replied, leaning forward and aiming at the legs of the fish person. The engine choked and turned off as soon as they were in the Singer’s range, but they still had enough momentum to ram into the creature’s Achilles tendon.

The airbags bursted out. The force of impact knocked the wind out of Flash; his clavicle snapped when he hung in the seat belts before being thrown back at his seat. The fish person staggered, but instead of falling, it kicked the car, wrecking its back and sending it tumbling at the wall.

“Dude, are you crazy?!” Scootaloo exclaimed when the car stopped, upside-down. “Were you trying to become a fucking bukkake, or what?”

“It’s kamikaze,” Flash whispered, trying to unfasten the seat belts with only one hand. When he did so, he fell out of his seat, groaning and screaming. “Did we kill it?

They felt the ground shaking as the Singer limped towards them. Flash decided not to wait for its appearance. He kicked the mangled door open and got out of the car. Scootaloo followed him, running down the nook just as the fish person stomped on the truck, changing it into a metal pancake.

“Are we running to confuse it again?” Flash asked. “I don’t feel like doing that…”

“Me neither, dude.” Scootaloo rested against the wall, panting. “Not after becoming a crash test dummy.”

“So, what are we doing?” Flash looked at the Singer, who was currently busy stomping on the remains of the car, changing it into unrecognisable bits.

“How about hiding behind this door and hoping we survive when it destroys the building?” Scootaloo pointed at the metal door in the wall next to them. Flash opened it and went inside. Suddenly, he bounced off something that resembled a pair of weather balloons.

“My boobies!” a blue girl exclaimed, watching as Flash landed on his ass. “Why do people always bounce into my boobies?”

“Hey, I know you!” Scootaloo exclaimed. “You’re that fish-smelling, out-of-tune singing seductress from another dimension! Like… Sonata, right? Where are the other two?”

“Closer than you’d think,” Adagio replied, patting Scootaloo’s back. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t make a right impression – Scootaloo just backpedalled and unceremoniously checked out Adagio’s boobs.

“Good thing he didn’t bounce into those, or he’d smash his skull,” Scootaloo said, pointing at Flash. “Do you buy bras in the kids section?”

“Speak for yourself.” Adagio’s voice was so cold it could help fight global warming. “Your boob size is probably two-by-four.”

“But at least I admit it.” Scootaloo smirked. “Come one, let’s become small tits buddies…” She reached her arms towards Adagio and hugged her.

“Excuse me,” Aria Blaze said, coming out of the shadows that were her natural habitat. “Aren’t there some fish people outside?”

Suddenly, they heard a terrible roar and the whole building shook, as if someone was trying to tear it from its foundations.

“Well, about that…” Flash stood up, staggered and rested himself against Sonata. “There’s one outside… A really big one. We were just trying to kill it, but we only broke its foot, I think.”

Adagio smiled in a way that showed more teeth than emotion. Sonata did the same, causing Flash to step back from her. Only Aria remained focused, mainly because her smile could kill puppies and baby seals, and Sonata had asked her not to do that. She grabbed a few bottles standing behind her and handed them to Flash and Scootaloo. “Wanna help?” she asked. “If anyone of us gets wounded or killed, pour this on her.”

“What is this?” Flash looked at the bottle unsurely. The fish person hit the building again; deep cracks appeared in the walls.

“Seawater!” Sonata exclaimed. “We can regenerate because of it and after we’ll get rid of those fish people, we’ll totally take over the whole country!”

“Yeah, good job revealing our plans,” Aria muttered. “Can we go before this sack of meat dumps the whole house on our heads?”

The three sirens rushed out of the building much faster than they should theoretically be able to pull off. They jumped on the Singer, biting into the flesh of its legs.

When Flash was a little kid, his mother often let him watch documentaries about animals, since they were educational. Flash mostly agreed with her, at least until he saw a herd of piranhas devouring a wounded capybara that had a misfortune of stepping into the river. What he just saw was more or less similar; just without water and on a much larger scale.

He wasn’t even sure if he was in shock after the crash, or the three sirens really transformed into something more akin to an amphibious hybrid; not fully a siren, but not a human either. The only thing he was sure of was that after everything ended, there was a skeleton of a fish person standing in the back alley. Three sirens were lying below it, panting. There was no trace of blood or gore anywhere around, and only the fact that Adagio, Aria, and Sonata were unable to move with their swollen bellies was an indication of what happened.

“Water,” Adagio muttered. “It’ll help us digest it faster…”

Flash opened the bottle and took a step towards her, but Scootaloo stopped him. She walked to the skeleton of the fish person and rested herself against the gargantuan calcaneus.

“It’s an amazing pile of bones, huh?” she said. “Perfectly balanced. Even without the muscles and shit, it’s still standing. It’d be a shame if someone did this…” She kicked the fibula and watched as the skeleton slowly toppled. Most of it hit the wall at the end of the street, but the leg bones landed on the motionless sirens, changing them into bloody puddles.

Scootaloo turned to Flash, who was watching the scene in horror. “Let’s go, dude. I’ll need a shovel and three plastic bags.”

“Why did you kill them?” Flash asked when he regained the ability to speak.

“I didn’t kill them,” Scootaloo replied. “Put them in seawater and they’ll regenerate.”

“But why leaving them like that?” Flash looked at the pile of bones. “That’s kinda inhumane.”

“Because I wouldn’t want to deal with the siren attack right after fish people invasion,” Scootaloo said. “You know, I always wanted to steal my father’s yacht and go on a trip around the world. We’ll dump them in Somalia and they’ll become pirates.”

“W-we?”

Scootaloo smiled, resting on Flash’s shoulder. Unfortunately, it was the injured one, so Flash screamed and collapsed on the ground, ruining the mood.

“Oh, come on,” Scootaloo tried to help Flash up. “You know, we should get married. I’m eighteen, so it’s high time.”

“Over my dead body…” Flash muttered. “Actually, I always wanted to become a monk… Or an eunuch. Yeah, an eunuch monk would be nice.”

Scootaloo chuckled. “You’ll have plenty of time during the honeymoon…”

Somewhere in the middle of the massive Singer’s back, Sunset “Sunny” Shimmer stopped to rest on a massive spike growing out of the creature’s spine. She spat the kukri and prodded the skin with it. The blade bounced off. Sunset grabbed it with her teeth and started climbing again.

“I’ll show them there can be only one Sunset Motherfucking Shimmer…” she muttered to herself.

Not far away from Sunset, Twilight produced a piece of chalk from her pocket and drew a pentacle on the roof of the building. She then drew a circle around it and stepped into it.

“I’m not going there,” Sophisticata muttered. “My confessor wouldn’t approve of that.”

“It’s a white pentacle and the chalk was blessed,” Twilight replied, opening the grimoire. “I’m pretty sure your karma won’t suffer.”

“Karma?” Sophisticata’s eyes narrowed.

“Umm…” Twilight smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s not karma in your case. Get into the circle and think of it as a crusade. Fish people are, as far as I know, pagans, so–”

Sophisticata opened her mouth to give Twilight a crash course in religious studies, but then she saw a Singer staring at them, perhaps wondering who they were and what they were doing. She rolled her eyes and stepped into the circle. However, after looking into the book her expression faltered.

“How am I supposed to read that?” she asked.

“Slowly and clearly,” Twilight replied. “Okay, so we’ll start with this line… Repeat after me.”

Sophisticata shrugged and cleared her throat. When Twilight said the first words, she felt chill running up her spine. The spell consisted mostly of guttural and pharyngeal consonant, with occasional lonely vowels. Twilight’s voice kept faltering, but Sophisticata, having numerous acting lessons and countless plays to her name, quickly found the right rhythm. She practically sung the following lines, staring at the fish person, who froze staring at them.

Suddenly, the world around her turned red. She looked at Twilight and saw that her eyes were now solid black orbs. Sophisticata deduced that the same thing happened to her. It wasn’t exactly a new experience for her; when the Sirens nearly took over the school, her eyes were doing a lot of weird things due to constant mind control. She tried to stop chanting the spell, but it turned out to be impossible; as if the spell cast itself.

The light flashed into Sophisticata’s eyes and she suddenly found herself sitting on a small island. Next to her, there was a Singer, sitting in the middle of the beach and looking a bit lost. Or at least Sophisticata thought so – the faces of the largest fish people were more or less as expressive as an armoured personnel carrier.

“What’s going on?” Sophisticata asked.

“It seems that we’re in the neutral place where we can hold talks.”

Sophisticata turned her head to see Twilight resting on a large rock. For some reason she looked like when she snapped and started tearing holes in time and space.

“Why do you look like this?” Sophisticata raised her eyebrows and looked at the fish person, who was listening to them, resting its head on its arms.

“Magic brings out the worst in me, I guess,” Twilight replied. “Or maybe it just looks more threatening to this gentleman.”

“Ah, I get it,” Sophisticata said. “I wonder if I can do something like that too.” Suddenly, something popped and she changed into a shapeless mass of some unrecognisable body parts, with a lot of eyes in absolutely wrong places, towering over the island.

“Show-off,” Twilight muttered, before turning to the Singer. “Listen, my friend. Thanks to the somewhat limited omniscience skill I got when we ended up here, I learned that most of your buddies got disposed of in rather messy circumstances. In a broader perspective, you’re simply not biologically possible in the world where only seventy-one percent of surface of the globe is water and the gravity is twice as strong as on the planet you come from. Even if you do take over this town, the sad guys in black suits will decide that it’d be cool to drop a big load of uranium on you and not even your singing will help you.” She smiled. “So, why don’t you go to your dimension when you have a chance?”

The Singer roared and stood up. For a moment, Sophisticata thought it’d attack them and tried to stand up too. However, she couldn’t quite figure out how her new body worked. Before she could do so, the fish person walked into the ocean and jumped into it, swimming away from the island.

Before Sophisticata could wave a tentacle, the world flashed again and she realised that she was a human again, sitting on the roof. The fish person that was previously standing in front of them was gone. Instead, the Mother of All The Fish People was screeching at them from the nearby skyscraper. She kept holding a pilot in her tentacles.

“We’d better get down before she hops to us,” Sophisticata muttered, backpedalling towards the roof entrance.

“There’s still one left,” Twilight said. “Maybe we’ll manage to perform the ritual once more…” She looked at the Mother of All The Fish People and saw that she was now holding a large antenna she’d torn from the roof. A moment later, the antenna was flying in their direction.

“Jesus fuck, Twilight, watch out!” Sophisticata cried, pulling Twilight towards the door. They rolled down the stairs as a few tons of bent and torn iron slid on the roof right above their heads. The building shook when it fell on the other side with everything it’d swept from the top of the building.

Twilight raised her head and looked around to see unconscious Sophisticata lying next to her. “Sophie?” she asked.

“Second commandment, I know.” Sophisticata groaned, trying to get up.

“No, I meant to ask if you’re okay,” Twilight replied.

“My ass hurts,” Sophisticata replied. “And I think I sprained an ankle. Therefore, I’m kind of like a main character in the action movie who gets wounded by the end of it. Is that goddamn elevator working?”

“I’m afraid not.” Twilight helped Sophisticata up, letting her rest on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We climbed up, we’ll go down…”

“I fucking hate climbing,” Sunset muttered, lying on the Singer’s shoulder. The head was a few metres away from her, but the creature didn’t notice her, too busy singing. Clenching the kukri between her teeth, Sunset crawled up the slippery skin.

Suddenly, she felt the muscles underneath her shake as the creature roared. She darted forward and jumped on the top of the fish person’s bald head. The yellow eyes went up to look at her. After a moment during which the Singer processed the idea that something was sitting on its head, a huge arm moved upwards, gaining momentum. Sunset cursed under her breath and jumped off the head, catching the fin-like ear.

Everything shook as the fish person smacked itself in the head. Sunset gasped, nearly losing the kukri. She held the ear tighter as the giant turned his head, trying to see her. The whole body tumbled. Sunset pulled herself up, sat on the head, and spat out the kukri.

Panting and gritting her teeth, she leaned forward and jammed the blade into the fish person’s eye. The power of the roar nearly threw her off balance, but she pushed the kukri deeper, turning it in the wound before tearing it off. A fountain of blood and slime shot out of the eye socket, accompanied by a high-pitched shriek.

It took a while before the whole body realised that the brain shut down. The last Singer took a step and started collapsing slowly.

“Should’ve seen that coming,” Sunset muttered, seeing the ground getting closer.

“Is everyone okay?” Sunset asked. “Where’s Flash, Scootaloo, and Funny-Sunny?”

Vinyl nodded, prodding Octavia, whose face was pale, but she was otherwise fine. Trixie was sitting on the pavement, rubbing her temples. Twilight rested against the wall, trying to catch her breath after dragging Sophisticata all the way down and a few blocks till they met with the rest of the group.

“I think we should move,” Octavia said, pointing at the collapsing fish person. “This wanker may fall on us.”

Vinyl shook her head and pointed at the road a few metres from them. Seconds later, the fish person fell, its head hitting against concrete exactly in the place Vinyl showed. Octavia backpedalled, seeing the kukri flying at her. It bounced off the pavement and was about to hit her, when someone caught it firmly.

“I slew the motherfucker,” human Sunset said, putting the kukri behind her belt. “How’s the rest?”

Before anyone could reply, they saw a car approaching them. Whoever was driving it wasn’t a very good driver; it kept bouncing into trash cans and whatever was lying on the road. It skid to a halt by them and they saw Scootaloo behind the wheel. Unconscious Flash lay on the seat next to her. When Sunset looked at the back of the car, she saw a blue hand and a purple leg protruding from the trunk, but decided not to question it.

“We got two,” Scootaloo said. “Now excuse me, we’re going to Las Vegas. Me and Flashy must get married!”

“That’s so wrong,” Sophisticata muttered. “One says, ‘Flashy and I’.”

“Nevermind,” Sunset said, grabbing the walkie-talkie. “Hey, flyboys! You’re free to send the Mother of All The Fish People back to hell!” She put the device down.

Vinyl looked at the sky and waved at the planes. Their bombs and missiles were gone. The Mother of All The Fish People turned to them and roared, waving its tentacles at them.

The pilots had none of that. They rushed at her, the miniguns in their fighters spinning. The Mother of All The Fish People didn’t know such a technology—her own planet was rather backwards in that department—but when hundreds of rounds pierced her, tearing the pieces of flesh and breaking her bones, she did the only appropriate thing in such a situation. Which in her case, meant plummeting down to the ground and crushing the remaining Singer, who was busy thinking of finding female underwear big enough for its ass.

The three fighters turned and flew away, speeding up above Sunset and her friends. Soon, the sound of sonic booms echoed across the town, now clean of fish people.

“Okay…” Sunset muttered. “I guess I’ll call the ambulance or something.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Trixie muttered, pointing at the ambulance driving towards them, along with a black limousine without registration plates. It stopped next to Sunset and two men in black suits and sunglasses walked out of it.

“Seems that we’re late,” one of them said and turned to Sunset. “Was it you who did that?”

“Mostly,” Sunset replied.

“Congratulations,” the other man in black said. “I hope you won’t be talking about that much… Alien invasion on such a scale…”

“Well, it’s always this town.” The first man shrugged. “It’ll be hard to hide it from the public. Anyway, is there something we can do for you?”

Sunset looked at her human counterpart. “Well, my twin sister was held in the mental institution for years because of a clerical error. I guess you can take care of that?”

“Consider it done,” the agent said. “Something else?”

“Vacation on a tropical island,” Trixie muttered.

“I always wanted to work for CERN,” Twilight said. Suddenly, she saw the exact copy of herself running down the desolated street.

“I came through the portal as fast as I could!” the other Twilight exclaimed. “Some crazy guy who looked like Discord tried to shoot me with some magical exploding thingy!” She looked around. “What happened in here?”

“May I ask one more thing?” Sunset smiled at the agents. “You haven’t seen that girl and you’ve never heard what she’s saying.”

“Of course,” the first agent said, looking at Twilight, who was now staring at both Sunsets and her human counterpart unsurely. “What girl?”

“I’m a cellist.” Octavia walked to the agents. “And it’d be nice if I could play in–” Suddenly, she realised, they were gone. Instead, they were now surrounded by cars belonging to newspapers, TV stations, and other news outlets.

“That’s our chance!” Sophisticata stood up surprisingly quickly for someone with a sprained ankle. “Hey, people! You probably want to know everything about what happened, right?” She pulled Vinyl towards herself. “That’s probably the only chance you have to speak to millions of viewers on live TV. What will you say?”

Vinyl smiled at the cameras aiming at her. Then she turned back, lowered her trousers and bent over, giving the millions of viewers on live TV an opportunity to look at her butt in high definition.

“Seems that Sophie will take care of the media,” Sunset walked to pony Twilight. Her human counterpart approached Twilight from the other side, holding the human Twilight’s hand.

“Frankly, that’s not something I expected to see,” pony Twilight muttered. Pony Sunset wrapped her arm around her, causing both pairs to look like mirror images of each other.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Human Sunset chuckled. “Sci-Twi told me about you, otherworldly girl. But tell me… Do you believe in magic?”

The two pairs walked towards the setting sun.

Author's Notes:

We have one more to go...