Murdering Childhoods: My Little Ponies

Shimmer hung his head wearily, and paused to rest his foot a moment, blood dripping down his snout... he could feel the fresh pain of his wounds with every heaving breath, lancing sharply across his hide. The more deadly pains of torn and tired muscles dragged at his movements.

Around him danced his opponent - young, fierce, bloodthirsty Moonlight. She had waited until after he had defeated two other challengers before tripping up to take her place facing him in the arena. Foolish Petal had died swiftly, a blunted horn through her eye, but Damson had been tougher and worn him down. The sturdy male had succumbed at last to Shimmer's greater stamina and surrendered gasping and broken-horned. He had been led away staggering, to have his eyes gouged out and given to the young warriors to practice on.

And now Moonlight. He should have guessed it would come to this, but when she hadn't been in the initial line-up he had dared hope. Moonlight the killer, Moonlight the careless. He could not let the herd fall into her care - she'd kill for sport once she possessed such power, and maim at whim. Bloodthirst was a prized attribute in the herd, but not to the exclusion of sanity. And how he cursed his lack of foresight, he should have slain her as a yearling - but he hadn't thought she'd be a threat so soon.

A patter of blood fell on his face, as Moonlight flicked her bloody horn, mocking him. Both ponies were bloodsoaked, hooves red and dark, their horns spraying blood with every toss. The mud was churned and red from their battle, and from the great wounds suffered by the first two challengers. Canny old Shimmer had scratched Moonlight a number of times, but she was too quick, too strong, too vicious. His battle-scarred hide was criss-crossed now with new blood. And she mocked him, by splashing in the puddles until she was as bloody as he was.

Moonlight tensed and kicked, and Shimmer flinched and jabbed, then they broke apart again, circling...

He would not survive this battle. Even if he defeated her, some other young buck would take the chance to destroy him - or he would be casually shunned to limp behind the herd, left to the wolves... No. The best he would manage would be to bring Moonlight down with him, let the fight end with their horns buried in each other's hearts - and let the herd descend into anarchy tearing itself apart over who would take power.

Shimmer staggered again, strength flowing away into the dank mud around him, and Moonlight waited, poised, graceful and murderous.

This was inspired by *nai-XaIn's sketching a My Litte Pony at Doujin Overload and *AtomicFireball's [link]

When I was little, me and my siblings collected (from fairs and garage sales) a vast herd of MLPs (well, my brother was only five so he only had about four, out of the fifty or sixty). They were all secondhand, and we didn't even know they had 'real' names, and they often came missing most of their manes. We named them all, and knew their herd relationships intimately, and spent many long hours fighting turf wars between the herds, with the successful ponies committing murder and incest and betrayal with cheerful abandon (except for my brother's ponies - he got upset if we killed his )

The unicorns were by far the most prized - partly because we couldn't ever find many, mostly because they had stabby horns.

Sometimes they would invade the lego fortresses of the toy animals and stomp everyone. Other times we got out the giant crocodile.


Blood is so much fun.

Painted in ArtRage, about an hour and a half.