Diamond Tiara couldn't quite suppress a heavy sigh as she stared out the window.

She glared at the towering trees whizzing by beyond the tinted windows. If one had to take a road trip, then by limo was certainly the way to do it, and it fit Diamond Tiara's personal style well enough. Even in the luxury automotive with all the latest DVD's, videogames, and her cellphone to distract her, however, spending hours just riding in the back of a car was becoming terribly dull.

It didn't help that daddy was giving the impression that he actually intended to spend the entire trip blathering away on his phone. for the last few hours he'd been busy setting up meetings or dealing with contractors. His daughter half considered trying to make small talk with the driver, in some vain attempt to draw his attention without being obvious. if he wasn't several yards away and behind a thick plate of soundproof glass tinted so dark she couldn't even see him. it might have even been a viable plan.

Not that she'd ever stoop to talking to the help, of course.

Then again, maybe she would, after everything that had happened. Diamond Tiara had to admit, at least to herself, she was intensely lonely. Ever since CHS had burned down, daddy had become a little more overprotective than usual, and had insisted that he would have her home-schooled. Spending the bulk of her last school year stuck at home and having to deal with an endless stream of the "finest tutors" money could buy had just about driven her up the walls.

The spoiled rich girl could have anything she wanted but her freedom, it seemed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone anywhere or done anything with her friends.... Well, friend.

As much as the young teenager liked to pretend she was popular, when she wasn't throwing money around her circle of friends quickly evaporated. In the end, she had only ever really connected with Silver Spoon. Her one and only true friend had been in a coma ever since the incident at CHS. In a weird way, that was fortunate. Most everyone else had died in the fire, and those who hadn't had either succumbed to their wounds shortly after, or slipped into death shortly after. That Silver Spoon still lived, albeit on life support, was in no small part thanks to donations daddy had made to the hospital in Diamond Tiara's name. Even so, the prognosis wasn't good. That reality terrified Diamond Tiara, but she never stopped hoping that Silver Spoon would wake up one day.

The way things were right now, however, she doubted she'd be there to see it. Not if daddy had anything to say about it. He'd kept her under lock and key for so long, now, Diamond Tiara had started to fear she would end up a shut-in for life. She half imagined herself as being like some princess in a fairy-tail kept in a high tower away from the rest of the world...

Locked in a gilded cage.

That was why Diamond Tiara had jumped at the opportunity to go on this road trip with her father. Sure it wasn't a real summer vacation. In fact, you could hardly call it a road trip, as Filthy Rich was making it very clear that this trip was all about business. It was just nice to be out of the mansion and away from all of her stuck-up tutors and dusty books.

She had thought the change of scenery alone would've been enough to cheer her up. Instead the young teenager found herself feeling more alone than she had felt in months.

She even found herself missing those three idiots; Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. Sure, she had relished making their school lives a living hell every chance she could. She didn't exactly hate them though. In fact, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had enjoyed their scatterbrained antics. It didn't just give them something to make fun of, but it also had livened up their own comparatively dull lives. Diamond Tiara may have been mean to them, but she hadn't wished them dead. No one ever found out what really happened to Apple Bloom and her big brother... there wasn't enough left of them to put into their coffins. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle hadn't fared much better. Maybe it had something to do with the CHS Massacre, and maybe it was just more senseless violence that had seemed to bubble forth that terrifying night.

In a way, not knowing was worse...

It wasn't hard to guess that her guilt from how she had treated the trio before they had died was the reason behind all the nightmares she had been having lately. In her dreams they would come for her, flesh melting off of their bones and fusing together with one another into one mushy melted creature. They'd reached towards her with hands twisted into claws, tears streaming from their eyes, and they would groan about how much pain they were in. How they were suffering. How much they wished they were still alive. How they hungered...

Even in the light of day, it sent a chill up Diamond Tiara's spine.

Unsurprisingly, she hadn't told daddy about that. She didn't want another round with the shrinks. One session with that creepy Dr. Lemon Drop had been more than sufficient for her to figure that out.

Still, she wished she could tell daddy about things like that. There were so many things she wanted to talk to her father about, so many things she wished she could ask him. She just didn't know where to start.

At long last, the car turned off of the paved road and onto a dirt and gravel trail.

Diamond Tiara decided that the next time daddy put down his phone, she was going to try talking with him. Really talking with him She was going to tell him exactly how it felt to be one of the few survivors of what had happened at CHS. She was going to bluntly state that she wanted to enroll in highschool again, even if that meant going to a private school like Crystal Prep. She might even tell him about what she had really been doing last Halloween when her life had suddenly changed out from under her.

Well, that might be a little too much for now... But she could still try.

As the limo lurched to a halt, Diamond Tiara was likewise ripped from her reveries. She'd been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn't even realized that they had arrived at their destination. The driver could've been a little gentler in coming to a stop. , she thought bitterly, taking offense at having her train of thought interrupted. However, as Diamond Tiara glanced out the window, looking away with disinterest only to do a double take and stare wide eyed, she could see could appreciate why the stop had been so sudden after all.

"Daddy," she said in an uncharacteristically meek voice, unable to take her gaze off of the scene spread outside the limo. She reached out and tugged on her fathers sleeve when he didn't respond. "Daddy?"

"Not now pumpkin, this is an important call," was Filthy Rich's automatic reply.

"Daddy get off the phone," Diamond Tiara commanded, sounding a little more like her usual self. "I think you're going to want to see this."

Filthy Rich unconsciously copied his daughters exact reaction. With an annoyed look on his face he disdainfully glanced at their surroundings. The dismissal of everything but himself as unimportant followed this as his eyes went back to his daughter. Then he swiftly turned his head back to the outside world, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open. The only real difference was a brief, "I'm going to have to call you back," before he hung up on whoever he was talking to and let his phone drop unceremoniously on the car seat.

Diamond Tiara wasn't privy to all of her father's business dealings. Indeed, she usually found the topic boring. But she knew that their destination was supposed to be Camp Everfree. Her father had plans to buy them out, bulldoze the camp, and build some kind of resort in its place.

It looked like someone had beaten him to the punch.

Whatever they were seeing looked like no campground they had ever seen before. Every building, every surface, the sidewalks, the grass, and even the trees all seemed to be coated in bright and swirling colors. It was as if everything had been dipped in candy! The entire forest for as far as they could see was a riot of bright, impossible colors that shouldn't exist outside of a box of crayons. Even the lake had an oily rainbow sheen to it and it's gentle waves had the fizz and foam that would be more at home in a soda fountain than a natural body of water.

For Filthy Rich's part, he was already estimating what a transformation like this would cost. Taking a run down old campground and turning it into something like this would have to cost millions. It was clear to him there was no way the original owners could have afforded all this. Whoever they had sold to must have had truly deep pockets, but Gloriosa Daisy had seemed dead set on going it alone and not selling. What had changed?

He had to find out.

"Honey, you stay in the car for now," Filthy Rich said absently, eyes still darting about as his brain did the complex internal arithmetic, "Just until I find out what's going on here."

His daughter was about to protest when certain details of the campground seemed to become more apparent to Diamond Tiara. Everything had a run down, abandoned quality to it. As bright as the candy colors were, everything looked like it was half melted, and slowly falling into decay. The trees sagged, limbs bending down unnaturally, thick strings of candy colored dross dangling down from their tortured limbs. The buildings looked crooked and ill looked-after, as though they might tip over at any moment.

More subtly, it had been a bright summers day on their drive up here, with not a cloud in the sky. That was certainly not the case now, as dull grey slabs of cloud loomed ominously overhead. There was a thick white fog that drifted ghost-like in and out of the trees as well. Everything else was deathly still. For being in the middle of a forest, there were no birds in the sky or the nearby trees, nor any kind of birdsong. The whole, taken together, gave Diamond Tiara the same impression as a closed carnival or an abandoned amusement park.

"Alright, but don't be long," she at last replied.

As soon as Filthy Rich opened the car door, she knew she had made the right call. The smell hit her delicate nostrils like a blowtorch. Peppermint and chocolate mixed with a riot of other sugary and fruit flavored scents, but it couldn't quite cover the intense stench of rot and decay. A cloud of flies rose, buzzing, from where they had been industriously doing those activities that flies do that inevitably resulted in the carpet of maggots Filthy Rich found himself treading upon.

He grimaced as his daughter slammed the car door behind him, but continued towards the front of the vehicle. Diamond Tiara could hear him exchanging a few muffled words with the driver. She couldn't tell what was being said, but she could tell by the tone of voice that the driver was just as taken aback by their surroundings as they had been. After giving whatever instructions he deemed necessary, Filthy Rich then set off towards the building that had formerly been the main lodge. For all the money that had clearly been spent on remodeling, it seemed none had gone into upkeep. That was a puzzle in and of itself that bore investigating.

Diamond Tiara watched her father became a part of the dreamlike landscape. She felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach for no accountable reason as he disappear into one of the larger buildings.

Then... nothing.

The flies settled back down. The only sound was the rumble of the car engine and the drone of the air conditioning. She tried to distract herself by playing with her phone, but her heart wasn't in it. Instead she turned on her phones built in camera and started taking pictures of the strange resort. She started to think that maybe the run down look was intentional, artificial even. Maybe this was going to be some kind of weird Hansel and Gretel themed Horror Land? If that were the case, they had really pulled out all the stops with that evil smelling gloop everything was covered with. The flies were a nice touch too, in that regard, though if they were real or somehow artificial too she didn't care to speculate.

As the minutes lengthened, Diamond Tiara's heart grew anxious. It was true she was sometimes selfish, and that she had more of a transactional relationship with her father than a loving paternal bond, but she couldn't help but worry when he didn't come back right away.

Was it possible that this weird place that had formerly been Camp Everfree wasn't as abandoned as it seemed? Had Daddy been caught by some security guards or something? Even now, were they calling the police to have them all arrested for trespassing? Or, even worse, this far out in the woods were they planning to administer some rough country justice by their own hands? Those were the kinds of thoughts that set the rich girls heart racing.

So it was with a sigh of relief that she set her phone down and smiled as her father reappeared. Filthy Rich began to make his way back to the car. She felt so much relief, in fact, that at first Diamond Tiara didn't notice how he seemed to have some difficulty walking. Each step meticulously over cautious, as though he had difficulty maintaining his balance.

No, she didn't suspect anything was amiss at all until her father walked to the front of the limo and tapped the window to get the drivers attention. Again there were some muffled words, but as soon as they started they were suddenly cut off.

Was that a garbled scream she heard just then? The limo rocked slightly. The shocks on the vehicle insured its occupants would have a smooth ride even if it were to drive over the rockiest of terrain, so that was somewhat odd in and of itself. For the car to shake so violently, even briefly, something was very wrong indeed!

As Filthy Rich came back towards the rear of the vehicle and placed his hand upon the door handle, Diamond Tiara quickly locked the car door. She didn't really know why she did this, but she followed her instincts all the same. She half expected Filthy Rich to lose his temper, but on the contrary, his face remained perfectly calm as he tried repeatedly to open the door.

In fact, he tried over and over again, his face expressionless, each attempt the same mechanical motion. He should have long ago figured out the door was locked and he wasn't going to get in that way. So why did he keep trying? Instead of giving up, his attempts to open the door became more violent. It wasn't long before the limo was shaking back and forth with his efforts, sending Diamond Tiara tumbling onto the floorboard.

The young teenager shrieked, terrified as she scrambled away from the door. It wasn't just that the expression on his face didn't change at all during this violent outburst that terrified Diamond Tiara, but it was also the look in his eyes. Gone were the frigid blue irises who's ice melted only for his daughter, replaced by eyes that were a perfect uniform pink from lid to lid. There was no way that thing was her father!

She had to get away! Crawling, she reached to open the door on the opposite side of the car, and was about to bolt for it only to come up short when suddenly she looked up into the face of the driver leering down on her! Or at least, that was who she assumed he must have been. It was hard to tell since the upper half of his body, including his face and chauffeurs cap, were completely drenched in blood. He wore the same blank, expressionless look as her father. Whatever color his eyes had been before, they were now the same translucent pink.

He reached for Diamond Tiara through the open door, but she quickly slammed it shut on his fingers. For all it should have been painful, the driver didn't so much as flinch, instead simply pulling back his smashed fingers and slamming his fist into the tinted glass, sending blood splattering across the window. Diamond Tiara fell back, shocked.

As terrifying as that sight might have been, however that couldn't prepare her for the sight she would see when a sound of sudden frenzied movement came from over her shoulder.

Three thick pink tendrils had extended from Filthy Rich's face, one each from what his daughter realized now were empty eye sockets, while the largest extended from his gaping mouth. The noise that had attracted her attention was the sound of the slimy appendages probing the glass. As she looked back to the driver, Diamond Tiara watched in horror as similar tendrils coiled from his ruined face as well. Suddenly, both men slammed their faces into the re-enforced glass. Both did this over and over, leaving smears of blood and slime as the windows began to crack, despite being bullet proof.

Diamond Tiara didn't know what to do. She was trapped! She curled into a fetal position and scrunched her eyes closed as she screamed and screamed.

Then the noises stopped. The limo stopped rocking violently. Daring to peek, the teenager opened one eye and looked around. If it weren't for the smears of blood and cracked glass, she would have almost thought she had imagined the whole thing.

Where had they gone?

Suddenly, the doors power locks unlocked with a heart stopping thunk! With only this for warning, Filthy Rich opened the door to the limo and climbed into the back seat. As if this was a signal of some sort, the doors locked again and the car sped off into the forest at a wild speed. Even if Diamond Tiara were ti unlock one of the doors now, there was no way she could jump out of the moving vehicle and survive unscathed. As the sickly sweet stinking tendrils in her fathers face wiggled towards her, however, she thought she'd be willing to take that chance!

Before she could steel her nerves to try, however, something strange happened. For the first time since his frightening return, Filthy Rich's expression changed. He looked pained... He clutched his stomach with one hand and his head with the other. Suddenly he hunched forward, and a gurgling sound filled the car as vomit erupted from his throat. Diamond Tiara had to pull her legs up on the seat as a pool of thick pink slime quickly spread on the floor of the limo. When he was finally done, Filthy Rich slumped to his side, blood seeping from his empty eye sockets and his liquefied innards drooling from the toothless crimson chasm that had once been his mouth.

Diamond Tiara's throat was raw from all the screaming she had already done, but she somehow reached down deep for several fresh, ear piercing shrieks. To her shock, she heard two screams for every one she belted out. That was enough to quiet her, at least for the moment. Her eyes grew wide as she realized where the sound had come from.

The pile of ooze on the floor began to rise. Three tendrils spread, two dividing into five smaller tendrils while the largest tentacle in the center swelled and split into many hair thin tentacles. The gelatinous creature shifted its form further, its lower body dividing into two stumpy legs with rough feet. The two smaller tentacles became slender arms with delicate hands, and the central tendril roughly took the shape of a head atop slender shoulders with a crop of long messy hair.

It was a little girl. Or rather, the translucent slime had taken on the shape of a little girl. Slime flowed into the shape of a dress with little frilly bows, but there was no nakedness to hide. Indeed, even the face was smooth and featureless, with no eyes, nose, or mouth. That was, of course, until a hole opened approximately where a mouth should be and let out a scream that sounded exactly like Diamond Tiara's, though amplified by several orders of magnitude. The cars windows cracked further and the teenager was forced to cover her ears or risk going deaf.

After that, the slime in the shape of a girl sat quietly, staring eyelessly at the young debutante.

This was too much for Diamond Tiara to take! Despite this, she wasn't going to let a little something like being completely out of her depth stop her from asserting herself.

"What are you!? What do you want!?" she shouted.

"What aRe You!? What do You waNt!?" The slime shouted almost perfectly in sync, though with some difficulty mastering its volume.

"Stop that! How dare you mock me after harming my father!?" she cried.

"StoP tHat! HoW dAre YoU mocK mE AfTer HarminG my fatHER!?" it responded in the same broken language.

Diamond Tiara was already sick of this. It was bad enough she was scared out of her mind but it seemed like this thing, whatever it was, was more interested in humiliating her than harming her. With that in mind, she moved to unlock the limo door and take her chances jumping out after all. She might not be in any immediate danger, but there was no telling what might happen next. Yes the trees were whizzing by alarmingly fast, but she wasn't about to sit here and take being mocked by a pillar of pink snot.

Faster than she could follow, the slime girl blocked her reaching hand. Her finger tips brushed the cool, gelatinous surface and the teenager jerked her hand away as if she had been scalded. Despite the coolness of the creature, it did indeed feel as though Diamond Tiara had burned herself. When she looked down, her fingertips were smoking slightly, and it looked as if she had lost several layers of skin.

Though tears stung her eyes, she wasn't about to give up. Putting on her bossiest voice she said, "You better let me go! If this is about money you've got another thing coming! We don't negotiate with criminals, or terrorists or... or... whatever the heck you are!"

For once, the jelly girl didn't mock the teenager's words. Instead she tilted her translucent head slightly to one side. Without turning away from the teenager, she reached out one tiny hand to the prone form of Filthy Rich. The tiny hand pressed down gently on the side of his face, but the reaction was immediate. Filthy Rich writhed and screamed wordlessly, blood and broken teeth spraying out of the hole where his mouth once was as the stench of scorching flesh filled the cars interior. Diamond Tiara could see where a ragged wound, the perfect shape of a hand print, had opened in the side of her fathers face.

And the hand was pushing deeper, and deeper... Sinking layer by layer through skin, fat, and muscle.

It was down to bone when she finally squeaked, "Alright, alright! I'll cooperate! Just stop! Stop hurting him! Stop hurting my daddy!" She bawled, fat tears spilling from a face made ugly by sadness, pain, and, worst of all, resignation. The slime girl contorted her face similarly and mimicked the sounds of the weeping teen. Thankfully, in doing this, she had stopped tormenting Filthy Rich. As Diamond Tiara draped herself protectively over her fathers form, she didn't see a new expression cross the monsters face.

It was a wide grin made of seven glowing stones, two forming rudimentary eyes and the others the thin mouth, each a different color of the rainbow...