Apple Bloom bit on her lip nervously as she ate lunch with her friends Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle at Canterlot High. She'd received a singed half-crumpled letter in her locker that morning that insisted it was of vital importance she meet someone out on the front balcony in the central wing on the second floor during lunch break. The sender said they were a new student and that they had had their eye on her and her talents.
Apple Bloom's head tilted to the side and she lost focus at the thought of meeting them. The thought that someone else thought she was cool and probably wanted her help or even to be her friend! This was gonna be great!
Even if Scootaloo was obliviously talking away with Sweetie Belle, they eventually noticed Apple Bloom's head wasn't anywhere on Earth when they tried to talk to her. "He-llooooo." Sweetie Belle said, waving a hand right in front of Apple Bloom's face.
Apple Bloom's head snapped back and her hand nicked her chocolate milk carton as it jerked up, threatening to topple it over for a split second. "What?!" she yelped back.
"…We're talking about whose house we're going to sleep over next," Sweetie Belle informed Apple Bloom as she sat back down. "I know my house was supposed to be next, but Rarity has a big project she's working on so she says we can't have company."
Apple Bloom grimaced "Right. Well, I'm gonna have'ta check with Applejack an' Granny Smith, but I don't think we got any big family plans that'll get in the way." She then turned her head to try and find a clock. She had to get to that balcony before lunch was over to meet her big fan!
"Are you okay, Apple Bloom? You seem kind of…distracted." Sweetie Belle put lightly, eying Apple Bloom with a slightly furrowed brow as she stuck a spoon into her vanilla pudding pack.
"Yeah, it's like your head's been in space this whole time." commented Scootaloo.
Apple Bloom thumbed at her lunch tray as she considered telling her friends, quickly deciding on yes as she finally figured out where a clock was and saw that she had less than twenty minutes to go meet her mystery pen pal. "Well, I got this here letter in my locker this morning that said somebody wanted t'meet me!"
"A love letter?" Sweetie Belle asked, her voice teeming with interest and excitement.
"No, notta love letter!" Apple Bloom yelled in embarrassment, her cheeks heating up. An uncertain look flashed over her features. "Well, at least I dun think it is. They said they'd 'been watchin' me an' that I was talented."
A different kind of excitement exploded out of Sweetie Belle as she stood up from the lunch table. "Do you think it was a talent scout?!" she cried, bouncing a little where she stood.
"A talent scout?" Scootaloo asked skeptically, taking a big slurp from her Gatorade bottle. "What would they have scouted her for? Apple Bloom doesn't play any sports, and she's not into theatre like you, Sweetie Belle."
"Oh, that's true..." Sweetie Belle muttered. There was that time she helped with the sets, but talent scouts didn't scout set builders, she supposed.
Apple Bloom took one last bite of her mystery lunch and chugged her milk carton, slamming it down on her tray and picking it up. "Look I don't have time for this, I've gotta meet them before lunch ends. I'll figure out what they want an' tell you girls later, all right?"
"All right, see you later Apple Bloom." Scootaloo said, mildly more interested in the gogurt her sister had packed in her lunch.
"Don't forget to tell us all about it!" Sweetie Belle called after Apple Bloom as she rushed to ditch her tray and get out of the lunch room.
Apple Bloom snuck down the hallway and sprang up the stairs to the second floor, brimming is anticipation to meet her mystery admirer. She stealthily(in her mind) slipped down another hallway, slowly approaching the balcony that overlooked the front of the school. There, she saw a taller student out on the balcony. He had dark brown/black hair that was slicked in the front and spiked up in the back. His skin was a grey so pale it bordered on being called white, and he wore a tight leather jacket that wrapped around his ripped top-heavy torso. A white T-shirt peeked through the very top of the jacket that was slightly unzipped, and 12 inches from every zipper on it was yet another zipper. His similarly colored black leather pants were quite shiny and bunched up just a little around his hips and knees as he stood there with his hips cocked forward. His aviator sunglasses reflected a small amount of light on their surface.
"The new transfer student…" Apple Bloom murmured to herself in awe. She'd heard Apple Jack talking about him and how he was from….something something Edge Town. Jean Sword Edge Town? Something strange like that. He looked so cool, that she could barely believe he wanted to talk to her about how cool she was! She couldn't for the life of her remember the guy's name though. So she steeled herself and pushed through the glass doors to the balcony, her step slowing and awkwardness rising as she approached him. "U-uh. Hey there-I got your letter. It was your letter in m'locker, right?" she asked nervously.
"Holy Fxxk! I didn't think you would actually come up here." The mystery man says in utter amazement "Yeah, that was my letter. It took me like 50 tries to get it into your locker because you keep so much shit in there."
Apple Bloom stared at him dumbfounded for a moment. Did he just curse? In school? She instantly wasn't sure if this was the kind of person she should be hanging out with, but she was determined to at least figure out what he wanted. "Uuuhhh so er-" Oh no she didn't remember his name! "…I'm sorry, what's your name again?"
The other student blinked "…I didn't sign my letter?"
"No, ya didn't." Apple Bloom responded blankly.
"Holy shit!" he responded, facing Apple Bloom suddenly in an oddly dramatic display. "Fxxk, I'm sorry I never intended to leave my penmanship unsigned! You must have thought some fxxking weirdo wanted to meet you up here or something! Or maybe some creepy stalker following you around!" he paused "Hmm, I guess I didn't word my message very well.."
"Mister-"
"No, don't call me 'mister!'"
Suddenly from down in the front of the school, a feminine voice barked up. "Inferno Cop!" it bellowed, and the pair's attention was immediately drawn to the sound.
Down there on the front pavement stood a figure in a hooded blue patchwork cloak with a dark magic book of spells and a cameraman following her. She seemed to either not care or be oblivious to the cameraman's presence. Her quivering and awkward high-pitched voice rang out again as she pointed accusingly up at the pair. "Inferno Cop I have found you at last!"
The transfer student shoved Apple Bloom away before abruptly exploding. Before Apple Bloom could cry at the trauma of watching another person explode though, the smoke and fire cleared to reveal the same student, only his head was a skull which seemed to be on fire or constantly producing fire. "How the fxxk did you find me?!" Inferno Cop yelled back.
Apple Bloom didn't know what was going on. Was this weird guy magic like her older sister and her friends? That seemed like the logical conclusion, but she just couldn't grasp it because her schoolmate just exploded into a flaming skull.
The hooded figure shifted her dark book of secrets into her other hand as she laughed. "Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho…I have dark magic. Which I will….which I will now use to summon my small army of zombified coherent choir boys, who in turn…have their own…? Ah! Have their own magic."
"You can't actually do that! I won't believe in magic!" Inferno Cop roared. "Zombies come from a spreadable virus, infection, or parasite!"
"You will pay for doubting my abilities! I will now summon the…coherent magic zombie choir." The figure said with a notable pause between each of the last five words. She then opened her book, flipping through the pages. "Excuse me one minute, I can't seem to find the spell."
"Oh no, take your time." Inferno Cop responded quickly and politely.
Apple Bloom seemed to have finally collected herself and was standing behind Inferno Cop, still staring at the back of his bright flaming head. "So….so your name's Inferno Cop?"
"Huh?" Inferno Cop turned back to Apple Bloom completely lost until he remembered he had called her here and pushed her out of the way before exploding to reveal his true form. "Oh. Yeah, it is." He struck a pose with his fist against his chest. "Burning Justice-Bringer to the lost souls of Jack Knife Edge Town…..and wherever the fxxk else I go." He dropped the pose and shrugged. "I tend to travel a fxxking lot."
The weird mage person being filmed by that steady cameraman started chanting some strange words, but it went completely ignored by Inferno Cop. Apple Bloom pressed him with more questions, as if the answers would ground her back in her sanity. "An'….An' that's your real head? Fire an' all?"
"Fxxk yes it's my real head."
"An' ya went through th'trouble of sending me a letter to tell me how talented I am." Her upward inflection started fading as she started accepting these startling facts to actually be true.
Inferno Cop gasped loudly "Of course! I sent that letter to you because I needed your help building a sweet fxxking motorcycle that could travel through other dimensions." He stared off into the glass doors behind Apple Bloom as he began to tell the story of how he came to be here. "You see these fxxking bastards called the Southern Cross sent me here somehow and I don't know how to fxxking get home. But then I crossed the gods of your world and they sent me to a hell dimension where I met this soul broker who in exchange for someone else's soul told me you had phenomenal abilities when it came to building shit! So I caught the ferry back up with a spirit trapped between planes of existence. He told me of a fortune teller that could divine where you were, and then I met with the fortune teller, she told me you were here, and I easily disguised myself and faked the paperwork to enroll in this fxxking place until I could find you."
Apple Bloom's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "…Can people really go through that much?" she asked. She could comprehend folks coming from other worlds, but there was no way all that other crazy stuff happened. Weird stuff happened sometimes, but it tended to revolve around Canterlot High and involve her sister.
More high-pitched laughter was heard as tendrils of dark blue-violet smoke and briefly appearing towers of white light erupted from the ground below. Ascending from the purple depths were-
"HOLY FxxK!" exclaimed Inferno Cop as he whipped back around. "She really can summon zombie choir boys!" he screamed in disbelief as he pointed the holy undead flying out of the dark powers below. "They're very clearly undead and fxxking flying around EVERYWHERE!"
Apple Bloom screamed in unbridled terror as Inferno Cop took out his gun and started shooting the choir down. It didn't seem very effective though, the boys and their hauntingly melodic voices kept returning. They gently swooshed towards Inferno Cop and Apple Bloom every time they recovered from being shot, moaning out in perfect harmony.
"It's no fxxking use! They just keep coming!" Inferno Cop turned to Apple Bloom whom was cowering behind him and holding his leg. "We have to make a run for it and build a superweapon to wipe them out somewhere in the school!"
Apple Bloom could barely get out a "what" before Inferno Cop pried her off his leg and slung her over his shoulder, sliding offscreen as quickly as possible.
The summoner stomped her foot on the pavement. "We'll find you Inferno Cop, there is no escaping our undead holy wrath!" she said as her zombies collected around her and lifted her into the air to pursue them.
"Fxxk you!" Inferno Cop yelled back in defiance, speeding ahead as though his body didn't cause friction when it touched the floor. He stopped when he reached the Shop classroom, locking the door and throwing some shit against it to kind of barricade them in as he caught his breath. He set Apple Bloom down, who was whimpering and shaking.
"Wh-Whaddo we do? What about the rest of the school? If-If you know them, an' ya deal with this stuff all the time, can't you stop them?" she asked shakily, tearing up. She heard screams from down the hall along with a musical moan and couldn't help but to latch onto this stranger-this person she had thought was someone else(someone she might even befriend)-not too long ago.
Inferno Cop wasn't known for being the best at talking to kids. Or anyone, really-but he gave Apple Bloom's back a hearty pat and a rub to comfort her. "What do you mean what the fxxk do we do? We give them fxxking hell is what we do." He said with a certainty that made Apple Bloom sniffle, at least to try and stop crying.
He squeezed her little shoulder. "I came here because a bunch of people told me you can fxxking do anything. If that many people said it, it has to be true! Look, I even brought us to the Shop class. The class with all the cool shit that helps kids build shit! Just fxxking put something together and see if it works so we can blast those fxxkers."
Inferno Cop's speech didn't make any sense, but Apple Bloom felt something in her change. She felt….overwhelmed with upliftance and inspiration. She wiped her tears away and looked around, wracking her brain for anything she could use to put together some sorta zombie blaster. Then something else clicked and she started looking at things differently. Suddenly she knew what parts she could use and what tools she needed. She could see everything as it was now and as it was going to be.
Within the hour, the zombie choir boys and their summoner found their hiding spot and started bashing the door in with their winged undead bodies. "You can't hold out in there forever! We will get you and have our revenge!"
When the door finally broke down and the shitty stools and debris were cleared away though, Inferno Cop and Apple Bloom were waiting on a supped-up tandem bicycle, each holding large machine guns. The barrels and magazines both glowed a bright green-blue light and they open-fired on the zombies. "TAKE THIS YOU HOLY FXXCKERS!" Screams and screeches were heard throughout the school as the magazines were emptied, and they even used the sawblade-firing function as one after another fell to the floor and cawed their last refrain.
"We did it! We did it!" Apple Bloom cried, leaning over to hug Inferno Cop in sheer joy that that had even worked. Inferno Cop was about to tell her to get the fxxk off of him when his gun bumped into the Dimension Drive on his bike's control panel, and they were suddenly sent hurling through time and space. They held on to the tandem bicycle Apple Bloom had built for Inferno Cop to return to his world. They pedaled for dear life through dimensional barriers because they didn't know how the bike even worked or where it would stop .
They came out of the rainbow dimensional strip to a world where everything looked far too stylistically different for either of their comfort, but at least they were both safe and sound on...whatever beach this was.