BAD END FOR COMIC # 3

FIND THE PANEL WHERE TWILIGHT IS SAYING THE LINE IMMEDIATELY BELOW; THAT'S WHERE THIS FIC STARTS

Also the mane six all die here, and this is your only warning.

 

"Well, it looks like a death-defying fall might keep those guys at bay." said Twilight staring up at their pursuers, now stymied by the height of the cliff they were standing on. "I hope that they don't start to make their way down here."

"Oh no," began Fluttershy, "the vampiric jackalope and chupacabra are natural enemies. They'll fight for dominance over the rights to eat us."

She was calm, confident.

And wrong. They were actually friends who frequently hunted together.

The jackalopes and chupacabra took one look at each other, and nodded, just barely. They were as good as fed and they knew it.

One of the jackalopes leapt into the chupacabra's mouth, only for him to fling the little not-rabbit at Applejack's neck with impressive precision.

He latched on before any of the ponies realized what was happening - and a second one followed.

They gulped for their little furry lives, barely savoring the thick, appley flavor of the mare's blood.

But losing two rabbit-mouthfuls of blood was enough to make Applejack woozy - and once they swallowed and gulped again, that was enough to make her pass out, feisty as she was.

"Oh, wait." said Fluttershy, the magnitude of her mistake dawning on her. "I was thinking of the *jackalopic vampire*, not the vampiric jacka-"

Rarity cut her off with a panicked "Applejack!", and she was already prying the little jackalopes off her friend's neck - so was Twilight. But that couldn't restore the blood she had already lost; time and bedrest would be better for that.

And they didn't have either of those.

What they did have was one angry pegasus.

Rainbow Dash lifted off the ground, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, ready to start planting hooves in carnivorous skulls and not ready to top. "Why those no-good..." she was fuming. She was furious. She had floated her head directly into the petal-garnished maw of one of the pony-eating flowers that were chasing Rarity and Applejack. It had already thought to flank its quarray from directly above while they dealt with the jackalopes.

And the chupacabra had thought to copy the manuever the mares had used to end up here in the first place - grabbing onto the flower's stem and using it to float safely downwards.

As the flower used its leaves like broad, flat hands, trying to cram as much of Rainbow Dash into its bud as possible - the chupacabra had already gotten his paws on the ground.

He didn't know if these were goats or ponies or what - but he wasn't leaving here without at least one of them in his belly.

But Pinkie Pie was prepared. She pulled a small cord and a massive BOOM! followed as her somehow-hidden-away party cannon fired upon the beast, blasting him into the side of the cliff in a wall of confetti and glitter. She giggled. "Meanines like you don't normally get parties, but exceptions are fun too!".

Applejack still wasn't on her feet, despite the best efforts of her unicorn besties, but she was begginning to stir - however groggily. "Hoosa- what? Five minutes." was all she said before her head plopped back down into the dirt. Nopony present knew that she had just inadvertently set all their personal doomsday clocks.

Twilight and Rarity had flung the two jackalopes away, but they were unharmed, and bouncing menacingly back into the clearing.

Fluttershy hurriedly muttered to herself as she watched the scene unfold. "Okay, so I confused jacklopic vampires and vampiric jackalopes. That's an okay mistake and nobody's judging you, Fluttershy, but what works on vampiric jackalopes for real? What makes them-" and she remembered she had something that worked on everything.

She marched right up to the two little quasi-bunnies and pressed her face against them both while making the stariest stare she could manage. "YOU. TWO. NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW." she said, laying it out nice and plain for the simple creatures she had locked in her gaze.

And it might have worked if it weren't for all the jackalopes NOT in her gaze. The rest of the pursuing parasitic pack had managed to descend the cliff by now after all. Some cautiously slid down the shallower parts of it, while others copied the chupacabra and grabbed onto the *other* pony-eating plants who had not yet given up the chase, and were now descending onto the group.

And the jackalopes that Fluttershy wasn't looking at jumped on her all at once - most of them landing fangs-first - and within a second or two, there was barely a spot on her back and legs that wasn't having blood drained out of it by adorable little woodland critters.

"Um, Twilight?" said Rarity, who had noticed their worsening situation a little more quickly than her prone-to-intensely-focusing-on-one-thing friend, who was still doing her best to rouse Applejack.

Twilight looked around - left, right, everywhere but up, and telekinetically threw Rarity in Pinkie's direction. "Help Pinkie fight the chupacabra!" she commanded, as the beast was swiftly pulling free of it's party supply prison.

Twilight herself, judging Applejack unconscious but fine for right now, leapt at the writhing pile of bunnies that had drug Fluttershy to the ground - even the two jackalopes she stared at were getting in on the all-you-can-drink buffet that just moments ago was a living pegasus.

And she charged a spell that surely would have blasted them all to kingdom come, if a pony-eating plant didn't plop it's petals around her horn, slurping up her magic, and her head immediately after.

These plants HAD evolved to eat ponies, you see. And since 1/3rd of ponies were unicorns, that naturally means 1/3rd of the plants were specially adapted to eat spellcasting ponies.

Twilight didn't put that together until her front legs and most of her torso had been pulled into the planet's stem - not that it would have helped.

The planet glowed with Twilight's purple magic, envigorated by the blast she intended to use on the rabbits, and somewhere in the plant's primal mind, it prepared to enjoy the prey it had won.

Rainbow Dash crashed down onto the ground. The plant eating her was meant to eat Earth Ponies, not pegasi, so she might have had a chance, if the impact didn't jam two of the joints in her wing, and bend it in a painful direction.

It wasn't much mind you. She would have been fine if she had the opportunity to walk it off. But she didn't.

There were hungry vampiric jackalopes on the ground after all, and they leapt upon momentary weakness whenever they saw it.

With just a few bunny-bites to her belly, Rainbow Dash's already clumsy panic became even more useless as her strength and awareness left her at the same time. The jackalopes knew this pony was done for, and drained her blood as much as they could before the plant finished slurping her up. The last jackalope jumped off her hind leg just as it vanished into the plant's greedy maw, dripping with some vegetable analogue of saliva.

Technically, their prize had been stolen from them, but the jackalopes who had drank Rainbow Dash's blood were satisfied. They were split between regarding the plant that they had worked with to seal the pony's fate, and their own stomachs, pleasantly rounded with her blood.

Meanwhile, Pinkie and Rarity were staring upwards at the chupacabra's wicked grin. "How about a cupcake instead?" offered Pinkie Pie. Rarity was a bit frazzled - Twilight's throw was hurried and bit a rough, but she was still the mare who had jump-kicked a manticore for threatening her not too long ago. And she summoned up her strength in a panicked flurry of shouts and blows to the cabra's midsection. And she was bruising it, driving it back, and maybe she couldn't save all her friends, but at least she and Pinkie would make it out of this and it turns out all the commotion had lured over a second chupacabra, and chupacabras were still bffs, so the new chupacabra knew there was at least one meal to be had here.

Pinkie Pie saw the new cabra coming, and hopped a few feet into the air, her eyes bugging out in comical fear, and all that really did was separate her from Rarity.

Rarity's onsalught was focused in front of her, not behind, and the second chupa pounced, getting a mouthful of unicorn flank for her troubles, which naturally made her pause her merciless beatdown.

If you had ever had your butt crunched by a fang-mouthed cryptid, you'd know how distracting it can be.

But Pinkie was ready. She was never a pony to only carry ONE party cannon at a time. Reaching up into her mane and pulling out a second party cannon, she prepared to fire. "I'll save you, Rarity!" she wailed.

But the first cabra, now not being pummeled, saw opportunity. This pony was facing away from him, not looking at him, and about to cause harm to this new chupacabra.

Who happened to be a female.

And something between chivalry and opportunism awakened in the beast, and he snatched a pink meal out of the air with his paws, and began chomping.

The other cabra likewise began taking bites of her meal as well.

 

**** ****

 

The two now-full chupacabras purred and nuzzled each other, the male doing his best to ignore the bruises on his bloated belly to impress his new lady friend.

One of the unfed plants cautiously approached the drained-dry corpse of Fluttershy - which the jackalopes were backing away from, with contented smiles on their evil little faces, and paws outstretched towards the exsanguinated pegasus as if to say, "Here! All yours!".

The remaining jackalopes were swarming all over Applejack, bobbing up and down as they drank in celebration of their victory, which was in hindsight made possible by taking this exact pony out of the fight early. Similarly to what had happened with Flutterhy, there was a still-hungry pony-eating plant standing next to the swarm, patiently waiting for the rabbits to be done, knowing they would not mind sharing her remains.

The other two plants - who had eaten Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, were already taking root. The hard part was over. Now all they had to do was digest their quarries over the rest of the day. One of them periodically flashed purple as the pony inside still weakly stirred - seemingly too addled to realize that every time she did so, she made it stronger.

The chupacabra that this amazingly successful hunt had all started with sniffed a very specific scent coming off his female companion. Apparently, she had decided that she might like to be stuffed with something of his as much as she was liking being stuffed with a fancy unicorn dinner.

They knowingly looked into each others eyes just before the male howled in victory - and all around them, the forest shuddered.