Something Sweet to Bite Too

Something Sweet to Bite, is the first story in Something Sweet to Bite saga, written by Knackerman. It was published on October 2nd, 2012. On October 3rd, 2014.

## Plot

It begins with a first person perspective of Rainbow Dash, where she states ever since her friends disappeared, she's been having nightmares and then proceeds to explain said nightmares, which inolves her finding Ponyville burning and finding horrific, mutaliated versions of her friends who end up attacking her.

Rainbow Dash then suddenly wakes up from her nightmare, completely exhausted. It's revealed that it's been one year after Ponyville burnt down and Rainbow Dash still lives over it despite there being nothing left, this is due to the guilt she feels about not being able to be there to stop it due to partying in Cloudsdale. It's also revealed that she got a letter from Princess Celestia to meet her in Canterlot, someone she also hasn't seen in over a year.

When Rainbow Dash gets to Canterlot, it's revealed that after the attack on it last Nightmare Night, the entire city lives in paranoia, with the streets usually being abandon and royal guards always on patrol. Rainbow Dash then arrives at the palace where she's greeted by several royal guards, including Shining Armor, who leads her in to meet Princess Celestia.

Celestia then explains along side the entire population of Ponyville, several other ponies from Canterlot and her sister Luna also went missing last Nightmare Night, and over the year more ponies have been going missing. She then explains that with no evidence being found during investigations on the disappearences, she theorizes that they may be dealing with a supernatural force. Rainbow Dash doesn't believe her, stating that ghosts aren't real, which triggers the introduction of Trixie Lulamoon, who is revealed to have been assigned by Celestia to help with investigation. Trixie explains that through her studies, an ancient ritual was performed to cast a spell over Ponyville that might be what's responsible for the disappearances. Celestia then states she needs Rainbow's help to escort Trixie to the remains of Ponyville to see if they can find rements of the spell and undo it.

They agree to go down there in the early morning, after Rainbow turns down idea to leave tonight. After everyone leaves Celestia then asks Raibow why she didn't want to do it at night. Rainbow then tells Celestia about the nightmares she's been having, to which Celestia then explains that she's been getting the same nightmares as well, she then explains that she thinks the nightmares are being done by Luna as way to try and contact them and that she believes she, as well as the other missing ponies, might still be alive.

During the night, in a field near the Everfree forest, the Flim Flam brothers were sat around a fireplace, when both were attacked by what appeared to be a pegasus. The Pegasus is suddenly attacked and held down by Big Macintosh, who is then approached by Zecora who feeds the creature a potion. This cause the creature to writhe and spit out bloody chunks, as well as transform her back into a regular pegasus, revealing her to be Fluttershy.

The Flim Flam brothers then introduces who they are and say they're looking for Ponyville. Zecora explains that Ponyville is gone and that they should leave as well. she then proceeds to lift the bloody chunks revealing them to be pieces of candy and throw them into the fire, where they explode into blue flames. Big Mac and Zecora then take Fluttershy, who begins to wake up, before telling the brothers again they should leave, stating there are monsters lurking around out here.

After the three leave, the brothers stay behind and start discussing what they should do, as a silver mist starts emmitting from the forest. They both then hear laughter emmiting from the mist, as something appears russling in the grass. The brothers then decide to leave only to run into several candy ghouls, that chase them both into an abandon barn. The candy ghouls then follow the brothers into barn, only to be ambushed, by the brother's machine the "Super Speedy Cider Squeezey 6000", which starts sucking up and killing the various monsters and dispensing them in barrels. While the brothers were distracted, a candy ghoul came up from behind and stabbed it's hook shaped hooves into Flim's back. Flam tries to pull it off of his brother with the machine, but it just sucks up both Flim and the candy ghoul, killing both of them. Flam then goes and pries of the lid of the barrel containing Flim and starts crying over the sudden death of his brother. While he was busy lamenting about what to do, the Candy Mare suddenly appears and wraps one of her tendrils around Flam's neck and drowns him in the opened barrel, killing him.

In the morning, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, Shining Amor and several guards headed down to the burnt remains of Ponyville. Trixie states that she will look for traces of ancient magic, while the rest look for areas of desolations. But after ten hours of searching they found nothing and it was starting to get dark, which only made things more difficult. Rainbow Dash then flew over to Trixie and stated that the entire area is desolated, to which gives Trixie an idea. She then hand Rainbow Dash and orb and tells her to fly up look down at Ponyville through the orb. Rainbow did that and saw what appeared to be a pattern of an evil grinning face spread across Ponyville, along with some kind of writing and several symbols. Rainbow explained everything she saw to the group once they got together. Trixie explains that a spell has been put under Ponyville, but it is far too large for her to be able to remove it with the tools she has now.

Rainbow then stated they should head back to Canterlot, but before they can a storm starts to form over Ponyville. Shining Armor then suggests, that they take shelter in the mostly intact Library, but suggests Rainbow should just fly back home, stating they don't need her for further investigations. Rainbow was about to protest this, but suddenly from out of the fog they started hearing voices, whispering the Nightmare Night chant. Suddenly a horde of candy ghouls appear and surround the group.

Several of the guards were immediatly killed, as Shining quickly threw up shields to protect him, Rainbow Dash, Trixie and the remaining guards. Trixie then explains that the monsters are the residents of Ponyville under the curse put under the town. She then points out one of the killed guards transforming into one of the monsters. Trixie also states that the monsters are just distracting them so they're master can finish her mission, Trixie then pulls out the Alicorn Amulet, stating it's magic will power her enough to hold them off, long enough for Rainbow Dash to escape. Rainbow, at first goes against wanting to leave them beind but Shining Armor then tells her she needs to fly to Canterlot to tell Celestia about what they found out.

Rainbow finally agrees to it, only for a licorice tendrill to appear from underneath Shining Armor and slice him open, killing him and causing they're shields to drop. Rainbow Dash then flies off leaving Trixie and the guards to fight off the horde. She flies into the storm clouds, only to be attacked by several monster pegasus, who chased after her. Rainbow Dash managed to outfly them and they soon stop chasing once Rainbow Dash flies out of the clouds and into the sunlight. As Rainbow Dash was just about to fly towards Canterlot, she was struck in her wing from one of the surviving tendrils, causing her to pummel towards the Everfre forest.

Meanwhile, in Zecora's hut, Fluttershy is shackled, inside a storage room, Rainbow Dash ends up landing outside and the two are reunited, when she enters the hut seeking shelter. Rainbow Dash then lets Fluttershy out of her cage, only for her to go feral after giving into her cravings upon seeing Rainbow's exposed wounds and smelling the blood on her body. Fluttershy gets loose from her shackles and attacks Rainbow Dash, biting her on the leg in the process. Just when Fluttershy was about to finish off Rainbow Dash, Zecora and Big Macintosh appear, the latter able to take down and subdue Fluttershy.

After getting her locked back up and tending to Rainbow's injuries, Zecora was able explain that monsters outside are actually ponies who have been infected with something that caused them to turn in candy ponies and that she actually found a way to stop the infection from spreading into a new pony, but not a way to cure an already transformed pony. She also explains the that while the the candy ghouls are deceptible to both sunlight and water, they can only be killed permanently by fire, although Fluttershy is strangely immune to the first two mentioned weaknesses.

Big Macintosh then tells Rainbow Dash about the Candy Mare and that the infected ponies are really just undead husks that are controlled by her like puppets. He then also tells his story of how he had actually wittnessed first hand what happened in Ponyville last Nightmare Night and how he barely managed to make it out alive. He also tells explains how he ran into Fluttershy in the Everfree forest who was apparently attacked by the same monsters both he and Rainbow saw in Ponyville. He explains that Fluttershy first transformed into her monster form, not long after Big Mac found her and she actually chased after him. Fortunately the two were found by Zecora, who managed to patch up Big Mac of his injuries and was also able to develop an antidote for Fluttershy's condition.

Zecora then went on to explain to Rainbow Dash how the candy curse works and how Fluttershy was specially infected, by injesting candy flesh. Rainbow then tells Zecora and Big Mac her story of how she was away from Ponyville last Nightmare Night and the nightmares she's been having about it since, as well as how she was brought down to investigate the burnt ruins and they strange supernatural stuff she discovered, before being attacked by the monsters.

Zecora then reccomends to Rainbow that she should stay the night and that they'll head to canterlot in the morning, Rainbow agrees unaware that Zecora and Big Mac secretly know something else is happening tomorrow.

Before going to bed, Zecora offers Rainbow Dash a potion made from the same fruit the candy curse cure is made from, that will possibly clear all the darkness in Rainbow's dream and she'll finally be able to see if there's more too them. Rainbow Dash reluctantly took and went to sleep, not knowing that both Zecora and Big Mac are aware of what's actually happening tomorrow.

That night Rainbow once again dreamed the same nightmare of Ponyville burning, only this time is was remade like to like a cheap diarama, with the ponies as mannequins, fire being paper and buildings looking like dollhouses. When arriving to the library, she was greeted by Twilight and Pinkie, who then explain that the dream that Rainbow's been getting has in fact been a message from Princess Luna and that the two of them have been trying to communicate with Rainbow all this time. They also tell her about the Candy Mare's plan and explain that the jack-o-lanterns are the trapped souls of her victims and are the source of her power. They explain she's keeping them somewhere in the Everfree Forest, probably the Castle of the Pony Sisters, the same place where Luna is being held captive. They tell her she has to go there, destroy the jack-o-lanterns and free Luna so she can seal Candy Mare away again. Rainbow agrees to this and manages to wake up, before being eaten alive as her dream suddenly morphs back to how it was before.

## Characters

* Rainbow Dash
* Fluttershy
* Zecora
* Big Macintosh
* Trixie Lulamoon
* Princess Celestia
* Shining Armor

## Trivia

* In the fourth chapter, the candy ghoul who latches onto Flim, is mentioned to have purple glasses, curly red hair and is a filly. This candy ghoul is confirmed to be Twist, a female earth pony filly from the show.
* In the eigth chapter, there's a filly unicorn candy ghoul with a blonde mane that was said to be holding the head of her mother, who was decribed to also have a blonde mane and eyes starring opposite directions. These two ponies have been confirmed to be Dinky Doo and Derpy Hooves, two background characters from the show, who are headcannon by many to be daughter and mother.