A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic novelette written by Jordan179
in 2015.
In the YOH 1252, 248 years Before Luna's Return, the Cupcake Bakers, a band of immortal pony alchemists, hunt and horribly murder pony criminals to secure the crucial ingredient for the Cupcakes of Life. Leading them are Harmonia Pie, her husband Aventurine Miter, and his sister Honesty Miter.
Available here.
Tropes referenced include:
- Affably Evil: The Cupcake Bakers in general, but especially the good-natured Aventurine Miter and his neice Ambrosia Miter. They bear nopony any ill will — save their Quarry.
- The Ageless: Harmonia's Cupcakes of Life prevent one from ageing: one pony must be tortured to death for every year of life afforded a recipient.
- Alchemy Is Magic: One of the major advantages of the Cupcake Bakers over their bandit foes is that they prepare numerous alchemical weapons and other potions and use them in battle.
- Asshole Victim: The reason why the Cupcake Bakers normally prey on bandits is because they want to confine their horrible murders to Ponies they believe deserve such treatment.
- Battle Couple: Aventurine and Harmonia fight side by side against the bandits.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: This is a story about serial killers who hunt, torture to death and cannibalistically-devour bandits. Who is "black" and who is "gray" is arguable: the Cupcake Bakers don't prey on innocents, but they are far crueller than are most of their victims.
- City Noir: Aventurine's opinion of Stalliongrad. Of course, he and his friends are worse than the corrupt and criminal there.
- Dual Wielding: Honesty Miter prefers to fight close-in, with two knives. She's good enough with them that she is a match for a Master Swordsman who is using two sabers considerably longer than her fighting knives.
- Eternal Love: The relationship between Harmonia Pie and Aventurine Miter.
- Evil Redhead: Harmonia Pie. The more shockingly so because her hair is the exact same color of that of her several-times-great grand-daughter, Pinkie Pie.
- Evil Versus Evil: The Cupcake Bakers versus the bandits, from the viewpoint of most Ponies, if they knew what was going on.
- Exalted Torturer: What Aventurine imagines the Cupcake Bakers to be, because it's the only way for him to stay even marginally sane given the things he does on a regular basis.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Speaker Ponies, to the Slavs.
- Fetish: One of the things that really turn Aventurine and Harmonia on is torturing another Pony to death and then mating in the shambles of the corpse.
- Grenade Hot Potato: At one point in their battle with the bandits, Aventurine is shot in the cannon (lower arm equivalent) while about to throw a petard (low-tech grenade). He drops the petard into the box of the wagon he and Harmonia are fighting from. Fortunately for the Cupcake Bakers, Harmonia manages to kick the grenade over the side in time.
- Happily Married: Aventurine Miter and his wife Harmonia Pie. They've been married almost a century and are still passionately in love with each other.
- Hemo Erotic: Aventurine and Harmonia, in an unusual way (they enjoy mating when bathed in the blood of their victims).
- Human Resources: The Ingredient must be extracted from the bodies of dying Ponies; specifically, Ponies who are dying in slow anguish.
- Idealized Sex: Explicitly (in both senses of the word) the romantic, "this is the way we make love" sex scene described by Aventurine at the start of the tale. Notably, before we know that Aventurine and Harmonia are sadistic serial killers.
- Immortal Immaturity: Honesty Miter shows strong signs of this; though she is well over a hundred years old, she sometimes acts like a teenaged filly engaged in Live Action Role Playing rather than an immortally-wise centenarian alchemist.
- Immortality Immorality: Type 1 (Ethically Dubious Forms of Applied Phlebotinum). The Cupcakes of Life require the killing by slow torture of one Pony for every Pony-year of life the food provides.
- Improvised Weapon: Aventurine fells a bandit archer by throwing a big heavy wrench at him.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: The sex scene that ends the story, in which Aventurine and Harmonia make love after torturing a victim to death, in the remains of the corpse, bathed in his spilled bodily fluids. Aventurine and Harmonia aren't violent towards one another, though.
- Master Swordsman: Brightblades, who is also a Dual Wielder.
- Mooks: How the Cupcake Bakers regard anypony they hire who isn't a member of their secret society of serial-killing alchemists. These are, note, not Ponies they regard as legitimate Quarry, merely as expendable.We use the hirelings as a cushion to take the first shock; they will often break, but it matters not, as while they are breaking the hirelings, we are cutting down their own Leaders, and then our counterattack usually tumbles the Bandits back in Confusion.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: There is not even a hint that Harmonia Pie ever wants to have sex with anypony other than her husband Aventurine. She's a ruthless serial killer and mad alchemist, but she is utterly monogamous, based on the evidence.
- Pair the Smart Ones: Aventurine explicitly loves Harmonia's intellect. We don't know exactly why Harmonia loves Aventurine, but he's highly-intelligent and multi-talented; he claims that Harmonia is smarter than him, but he's obviously no mental slouch either.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The excuse which enables the Cupcake Bakers to see themselves as good despite their own horrible crimes — their victims are bandits.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: One of the few ways in which Harmonia Pie differs in physical appearance from her descendant Pinkie Pie is that Harmonia's eyes are crimson red, instead of blue. And Harmonia is a ruthless serial killer, while Pinkie is a friendly Party Pony.
- Slipping a Mickey: The Cupcake Bakers adminster a Truth Serum to all potential hirelings for their caravans. If they turn out to be bandit plants, they get a long-duration sleeping potion, and wake up being tortured to death by the Cupcake Bakers for Ingredient.
- Smells Sexy: Aventurine's opinion of Harmonia. This is normal for stallions toward any mares they don't positively despise, since mares in estrus emit "marescent", which arouses stallions. It's obvious that Aventurine is particularly aroused by Harmonia's, though, which is not surprising considering that they have been Happily Married for around a century now.
- A Man Is Always Eager: Aventurine certainly seems to be, for Harmonia. Of course, he both loves her passionately — and is a member of a species with scent-based male sexual arousal, which Harmonia knows how to use to turn him on.
- Torture Technician: Most of the Cupcake Bakers are highly skilled at torturing their prey to death over a period of days; this is how they extract the Ingredient. Some are more into it than others.
- Unholy Matrimony: The marriage between Aventurine and Harmonia is especially loving, passionate and stable.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: The basic tactic the Cupcake Bakers use to hunt bandits — they pretend to be a small caravan of harmless and even unusually-naive merchants, then strike with all their magic, skill and technology when the bandits take the bait.
- The World Is Not Ready: Aventurine's excuse for why the Cupcake Bakers don't share their secret of immortality:The Discovery. Such a small word for such a great accomplishment, for something which could so utterly change the World, were we able to make it publick. We cannot, yet, because of the unfortunate shortage of the Ingredients, and the impracticality of obtaining these Ingredients on a sufficiently large scale.
