Cheerilee made her way through the backstage area, albeit a good distance away from the whole Snails' thing, and headed for the dressing room. After that scene with Sweetie Belle, two soliloquy scenes followed, one with Reginald and then another with the king. Since she took her sweet time, that first one had almost certainly ended already, but as the mare passed a few corridors leading up to the stage itself she thought she could still hear Apple Bloom's voice on stage.
If she hurried she might still be able to assist Snips in finding his costume for the last scene, if he was indeed as dumb as he looked and hadn't been able to find it on his own yet. As she rounded a corner something crashed into her at high speed, causing her to stumble back a few steps as the air got slammed out of her lungs.
She looked down when she got her bearings, and saw Snips sitting there on his plot, shaking his head to dispel the dizziness that set on due to the crash. "Snips! What are you doing here, and not even in costume! You need to get ready for the last scene," she said by way of a reprimand.
The cyan colt with the ochre mane looked hugely relieved to see his teacher, and he immediately scrambled to his feet, tears in the corner of his eyes as he started talking.
"Oh Miss Cherrilee! It's terrible!" he yelled out. "I was looking for my costume and I couldn't find it so I went looking for you and I couldn't find you, but but... I found Snails and... and..."
He took a huge breath at this point, obviously struggling to get the words out. "... and he's dead..."
Cheerilee's world grinded to a halt with those words, cold sweat breaking out across her forehead as she felt the slightest hint of panic rise up from her stomach like bile. She'd strayed from her schedule, and she'd just found out what that would come to cost her.
Her mind worked frantically to figure out a way to minimize the damage caused, to somehow soothe the colt enough so that her plans could go through, but no easy solution presented itself.
Snips, on the other hand, seemed to pull himself together, turning around and taking a few steps. "Come on!" he called back to her. "We can't continue the play now, we've got to tell the others!"
Cheerilee felt a block of ice drop into her stomach as the cyan colt galloped off. No! If he reached anypony else, he would...
With a sudden burst of speed that'd have dazzled even Rainbow Dash she rushed forward, catching up to the younger pony in mere seconds. In one fluid movement she slipped from a full gallop into a full-blown karate kick, focusing all her kinetic energy in a single hoof. Snips got hit good in the side, so good in fact that the kick send him crashing into a nearby wall, at the bottom of which he fell down in a crumpled heap.
Cheerilee silently thanked Rainbow Dash for all the times she'd come to give the kids some karate lessons, some of it had obviously stuck in her head over the years.
Before the colt could do more than roll onto his back, Cheer descended upon him like a hawk, keeping him down with one hoof as she started beating him in the face with the other, in the throes of blind rage.
Here was one who stood between her and reaching her goal, and she could think of nothing but removing him from her path right away, no matter the cost.
Snips feebly tried to defend himself, but he was a lot smaller than the mare, not to mention a unicorn while she had all the physical prowess of an earth pony to fall back on. The beating continued mercilessly, Snips' face swelling up and blood running out of his nose and down from the places where she broke through his skin.
In an act of desperation the subconscious part of his mind reached out to magical reserves he didn't even think he had and his horn started to glow green with power. All of a sudden a wave of arcane energy zipped past Cheerilee's head, leaving a long, thin cut stretching the length of her cheek. The fuchsia coloured mare gasped in surprise as blood started trickling down from the wound, which wasn't all that serious, although it did sting a little.
Her gaze dropped down to the colt's cutie mark, and she realised she should've seen this coming. His speciality obviously involved cutting of some kind, and apparently he wasn't restricted to the use of scissors.
A subtle change in the aura around the horn warned Cheerilee that another spell was about to be flung at her, so with no other options in mind she raised her hoof before ramming it down to dish out another punch. Only this time she didn't aim for Snips face, but for the horn itself. As she hit her target the colt's head jerked back and he groaned as the horn tugged at his skull, the spell discharging into the wall behind him instead of its intended target. The magical light around the horn flickered for a moment before coming back in force, and Cheerilee just knew the next spell was already on its way.
She once again started raining down punches, now aiming all of them at the horn, spells exploding against the walls, ceiling and floor left and right, sending tiny pieces of rubble flying everywhere.
At first the colt took the beating like a stallion, but as the mare hit the same spot time and time again, it became increasingly difficult for him to fight back against the pain that was rising in his skull. All of a sudden little cracks started to appear in the horn, until one final strike from Cheerilee broke it clear off.
When that happened, magic exploded into the room, throwing Cheerilee off the colt and making her slide several meters over the floor, until she came to a halt a few meters away from Snips.
The magical feedback seemed to have been a lot worse for the cyan pony himself, as he lay witlessly on the floor.
Scrambling to her hooves, the fuchsia mare picked up Snips' horn when she passed it on the way to his motionless form, clutching it between her front hooves like a dagger as she kneeled over him. With a moments hesitation, she rammed the horn down straight into his chest. Blood spattered everywhere and welled up underneath Cheer's hooves. The colt's eyes shot open and he stared first at his chest, and then at her. "Why?" he managed to whisper hoarsely as life fled from his body.
Cheerilee didn't bother to answer his question, simply pulling the horn out of his body and ramming it back into his chest a few times for good measure, until he stopped moving altogether.
Cheerilee panted heavily (from actual physical exertion this time) as she rolled off of Snips' corpse, trying to catch her breath as she just lay on the cold floor. Killing him like this had been quite exhilarating in its own right, even if it did all end rather fast.
She licked over her own cheek, sampling her own blood for the first time and finding it not altogether unpleasant, even if it did feel a bit strange.
She was glad she'd been able to try this "struggle for survival" approach at least once though, even if her original plan for Apple Bloom and him had been a thousand times more elegant...
The realisation suddenly hit her with sickening force: her plans for Snips and Apple Bloom! The plan required both of them to maneuver each other into the right places, and even after that the next few steps also required interaction between them. Now that Snips was gone, it couldn't possibly work.
And that was the least of her troubles, the play still had one scene to go, and Snips was supposed to be in it. The mare began thinking up countless new plans on the spot, but she rejected all of them out of hand for being too ridiculous, too short-sighted, too dangerous, too... risky. She began to fear the situation was hopeless, that she had finally maneuvered herself into a corner she could not escape from.
To keep the audience in the dark, the final scene had to go through without a hitch, so someone had to go out there to play against Apple Bloom. With nopony else left from the original cast, she could only count on herself.
She'd have to improvise and it probably would not work, but it was the best shot she had. The only shot she had.
