An old newspaper blew across the road in front of the two ponies as they continued walking on. They'd been on the move for at least an hour now and they were both showing signs they needed a break.
"Hey... can we... stop for a minute?" Vinyl asked as she came to a halt, trying to catch her breath.
"We need to keep moving. We could be attacked at any time." Octavia responded, even though her breathing was also heavy and tired sounding.
Vinyl sat down on the road, "Better we be attacked while we're rested than when we're out of breath." Octavia just sighed in response before taking a seat herself. A cool night wind blew by the two, kicking up the loose newspapers left on the ground.
"So Octavia, what did you do before... all this happened?" Vinyl motioned to their surroundings.
"Does it matter? Right now we need to focus on finding our way out of this city... though I don't think the city agrees with the idea, seeing as we've been walking for an hour and still haven't seen anything of note or any kind of exit." Octavia responded dismissively, scratching at the bracelet on her hoof.
Vinyl watched silently, not knowing whether to speak up or if it would just annoy her partner. After a few minutes of Octavia continuously scratching absentmindedly at the bracelet, she decided to ask anyway.
"Does that hurt?" she asked, motioning to the bracelet. A single nod was her only response. "Just like my horn then." she observed, leaning back a bit to look at the sky. The two remained silent for a few more minutes before Octavia got back to her feet.
"That's enough rest. Time to get going again."
Vinyl got up with a groan. "You sure are a taskmaster." she said jokingly. Octavia stopped in her tracks and immediately turned around, a scowl on her face.
"No. What I AM, apparently, is the only one who understands the real gravity of our current situation. We're the only two ponies that we know of that aren't frozen in time with the rest of Equestria!" she walked angrily towards Vinyl as she continued. "And our current situation is being trapped in a fake Manehattan with monsters that want to kill us possibly lurking around literally every corner!" her face was inches from Vinyl's now. "And if we die then the rest of Equestria is probably doomed to stay the way it is. In case you hadn't realized, we're in a situation where we could seriously be dealing with the end of the world! But instead, you're more worried about taking rests and cracking jokes!" she finished, her temper still flaring.
"I-I was just trying to lighten things up a bit..." Vinyl responded quietly, backing up so as to put some space between the two. "I'm sorry."
Octavia sighed, putting her hoof to her temple. "No, I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm just... well, "stressed" isn't exactly the word for it. I've been stressed and managed to keep my emotions in check... this? This is just..." She struggled for words.
"Too much?"
"Yes. I believe that's an accurate summation of my feelings towards everything that's going on." She said, putting her hoof back down and returning to her normally rather stoic self. "Let's continue. We really do need to keep moving." She said, turning around and walking once more. Vinyl just nodded in response and followed alongside her. She made a mental note to be a bit more careful with any jokes from that point on.
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The two ponies walked down an alleyway while keeping their eyes out for any kind of movement in the shadows. They'd not been attacked yet and this was just another of many alleys they'd already had to walk through, but they both still felt that they weren't alone in this city, and not in a good way.
"This one seems longer than the others, huh?" Vinyl spoke absentmindedly, looking from side to side.
"Indeed... the others also had a bit more... space to them." Octavia observed in response. They'd been walking down this way for a number of minutes and while they started side-by-side, at some point they were forced to walk single file, with Octavia in front and Vinyl in back. "I was a musician by the way." Octavia said out of the blue.
"What?"
"You asked what I did before all of this earlier. I was in a band." Octavia informed her, continuing to look straight ahead.
"No way! Me too! What instrument do you play? Guitar? Drums? Bas-" she was cut off.
"Cello... I played the cello."
"Oh..." Vinyl responded somewhat halfheartedly. Octavia looked glanced back at her as if to ask if there was a problem with that. "I mean, that's cool! I guess... I'm not really much of a... "classical" pony myself..."
"So I figured. Let me guess, you were a DJ of some sort?" Octavia questioned.
"How did you know?"
"Well your parents certainly gave you a name suited for the job. Your mane also looks about what I'd expect from such a person." She responded, turning her head to look forward again.
"My mane?" Vinyl touched her hoof to her hair. "Just because my hair is like this doesn't mean I'm DJ or that I'm a hard partier or something... even though I am... but that's beside the point. What about you then? If we're talking about looks now then you look like you do nothing but sip tea all day in some stuffy upper-class room and look down on everypony else."
"Looks can be deceiving..." was the surprisingly calm and somewhat quiet response. "But if you take offense to me making simple observations then I'll be sure to "look down on you" in secret from now on."
Vinyl glared at the gray pony and opened her mouth to respond but she was stopped by the sound of something falling over behind them. Both ponies struggled to turn around quickly in the small space at the same time, but when they did they saw... nothing.
"What was that?" Vinyl asked, squinting to see if she might be able to make out something in the darkness. Octavia didn't respond, instead turning back around to look down the other end of the alley.
She gasped and pushed Vinyl to the ground. "Get down!" she yelled as she did so, a black blast of black energy flying just over their heads.
"What?! What is it?!" Vinyl questioned, frantically trying to figure out what was going on.
"Hold on to me!" Octavia commanded. Vinyl didn't object and grabbed hold of the gray pony's waste as the two quickly levitated into the air, narrowly avoiding another blast. Vinyl's eyes widened as she caught sight of the culprit. Another shadow at the end of the alleyway, this one much smaller than the one she'd seen Octavia fight before.
Before she knew it they had landed in the middle of the street behind the monster. When she felt her hooves touch the ground she let go of Octavia. Looking at the mare though, she noticed something different. Octavia was wearing some kind of dress.
"What the hay are you wearing?! I hardly think this is the time to go to a ball!"
"Be quiet! It happens when I activate the bracelet. I was wearing it back when I saved you but apparently you were too busy passing out to notice back then." Octavia called back to Vinyl behind her. "Never mind that though, focus on the thing trying to murder us!" She shouted, jumping out of the way of another blast while Vinyl gasped and ducked under it instead. "Split up!" Octavia shouted out to her as she galloped down one side of the street.
Vinyl nodded quickly and began galloping down the other side. She didn't get very far before she realized something. "Hey wait a minute! You're leaving me! I can't use magic, remember?!" She shouted back. But Octavia was too far away to hear now. She decided to keep running after noticing that the shadow was now twice the size it was originally and was still growing.
"Great. Time frozen all around me, an earth pony who can use magic even though I can't, fancy dresses appearing out of nowhere, and now we're back to a giant monster trying to kill me." She looked at the sky and shouted "Will somepony tell me what's going on already!" as she kept running. Glancing behind her, she caught sight of the shadow being blasted by a ball of purple light. "Yeah! You show him!" She shouted out to Octavia despite knowing the gray pony couldn't hear her. She wasn't paying attention however and tripped over her own hooves as she ran, falling to the ground.
As she was about to get up, she saw a mass of black shadow about to smash down right on top of her. Her mind flashed with images of the last time such a thing happened, and the unbearable pain it brought. She didn't think she'd be able to handle going through that again. She tried to get out of the way, but the black mass was movie towards her too fast. It covered too much ground in its shadow. Vinyl was sure this was the end of her.
Except this time someone else knew about her presence on the impromptu battlefield. As fast as lightning, a blast of purple energy smacked into the mass of shadow, pushing it away and saving Vinyl. She made a mental note to thank Octavia with another bear hug later and began her swift retreat.
Meanwhile, Octavia was having her own problems. This time around the monster in front of her seemed to be more resilient to her attacks. It was obviously affected by them, but it refused to be staggered or toppled over. While the beasts were essentially ever shifting forms of black shadows, the three she had encountered now all seemed to have at least one part of their mass dedicated to keeping their footing on the ground. She had figured out from her previous two battles that a key to defeating them seemed to be forcing them to lose their footing so that they fell to the ground below. Such a task was proving much harder this time around.
"Either they're getting stronger or they're learning a better way to stand." Octavia observed, her mind racing to figure out a way to defeat the creature as fast as possible. The last two times it had only been her against the beasts. Sure she saved Vinyl after the monster attacked her in their second encounter, but the fight was pretty much over by the time Vinyl came into play. This time she had to ensure her partner's safety and defeat her enemy from the get go. "There has to be an easier way to do this. Some kind of bigger weakness to exploit..." She thought to herself, dodging an attack by jumping to the next rooftop over.
Octavia continued to pepper the monster with blast after blast while dodging it's counterattacks, but it refused to give an inch of ground up. Her frustration growing, she attempted to use her newfound magic to get to a rooftop behind the creature, but no matter where she went it kept it's gaze fixated on her. "Well at least it's forgotten about Vinyl." Octavia observed, trying to find some kind of upside to her situation.
Her words came back to bite her though when she noticed Vinyl being chased by shadowy tendrils left over from the place stricken by the monster earlier. Shouting a curse, she shot off a blast that hit and promptly disintegrated the tendrils. However, this led to her not noticing a ball of black energy coming straight for her.
Vinyl looked on in horror as she saw her newfound companion hit square in the face by the dark blast. Screaming her ally's name at the top of her lungs, she watch as Octavia was flung into the building behind her, breaking through the wall and leaving a cloud of dust and debris in her wake.
"No..." her voice was barely audible. "No... Octavia no..." Tears were streaming down her face. Looking towards the beast with a glare so full of rage that it could rival a fully grown dragon, she ran full speed straight towards it. She had no plan and nothing to fight it with, but she didn't care. Overcome with anger, she was just about to run head first into the place where the shadow touched the ground when suddenly... she was stopped. In the next instant she found herself teleported to another rooftop. Standing beside her was none other than Octavia.
"YOU'RE OKAY!" She shouted, about to launch herself at the mare until she was picked up by the purple light and placed further away.
"Yes I'm fine, but save the celebration for later please. This monster seems to still be standing." Octavia sported a number of smalls cuts and bruises and her outfit was torn here and there, but the most striking sight was a gash along her cheek that looked and was quite painful. She continued to keep her eyes firmly upon the monster though, ignoring the presence of her injuries.
"How aren't you dead?" Vinyl asked, still unable to believe that the other mare was standing strong.
"I shielded myself with magic just before the impact. It didn't block everything, but it did well enoug-MOVE!" She interrupted herself, using her magic to launch herself and Vinyl to another rooftop.
"How many buildings are there in this city!?" Vinyl cried out when the two landed.
"Haven't you noticed yet? Look around. That's why this place felt so wrong even though it looked like Manehattan..." Vinyl took Octavia's advice and looked around, her view strengthened by their vantage point.
What she found was nothing short of awe inducing. Multiple storied buildings as far as the eye could see in every direction. Nothing but building after building in line after line separated by streets and alleys. "Well that explains a couple things..." she said quietly before she suddenly found herself being launched over to another rooftop and placed down gently once there. Looking at her previous location, she saw a massive hoof shaped part of the shadow crushing the building into the ground.
"Time for admiring the view is up." Octavia said, launching another blast at the beast. "This blasted thing just doesn't want to go down. I've hit it with everything I have and it just shrugs it off!" Octavia's frustration was showing itself clearly now. Vinyl looked away and began to think. She was reminded of her head first charge towards the place where the beast anchored itself. Suddenly, she had an idea.
"Hey! Can you get us onto the ground? Right about where I was being chased by those things to be more exact." Vinyl asked as they jumped to another roof.
"Are you insane? We'll be at a massive disadvantage on the ground!" Octavia shouted.
"I have an idea but we need to be down there for it to have a chance of working!" Vinyl shouted back.
"Fine! But if we get crushed then I swear I'm haunting you!" Octavia responded as she used her magic to help them down to the street. Vinyl briefly had the thought to ask how a ghost could haunt another ghost, but she knew there were more important things to deal with.
As they landed on the street, Vinyl quickly explained her plan. "It seems to be anchored to that specific spot. If you can use your magic cut through it then PRESTO, we call timber and the rest of it falls to the ground!"
"How am I supposed to cut it?! All the magic ever does is explode as soon as it touches them!"
"You've only thrown waves and blasts at them. Try making an edge like a blade and throw that instead!" Vinyl explained "But do it quick cause it just found us again!" She exclaimed as the beast's gaze fell upon them again.
Knowing there was no time to debate and there was no reason not to try it, Octavia focused her magic into a straight line. Focusing even harder, the line grew in size and gained a rather sharp looking edge to it. Hoping for the best, Octavia shot the "blade" of purple light towards the beast.
As the magic collided with the monster, Octavia expected an explosion. Instead she was shocked to see the blade cut right through the monster, separating it into two pieces. As the upper half fell into the buildings and tumbled to the ground below, the lower half began to disintegrate into the air.
"Okay! Now launch yourself into the air and blast it with all you got!" Vinyl said quickly, knowing the fight wasn't over yet.
"Excuse me?!"
"Just do it before it gets back up!"
With a groan of disapproval, Octavia charged her magic into her hind legs and released it, throwing her high into the air. Once she was high enough to have the whole monster in view, she channeled all of the magic she could muster and shot it towards the beast. The resulting blast smashed into the monster with a massive amount of force, pushing it deeper into the ground before exploding. As Octavia used what was left of her magic to ensure she didn't smack into the ground far below, she saw the monster disintegrating into the air, it's shadowy mass dissipating as it leaked out until there was nothing left.
With a sigh of relief Octavia's legs gave out on her, her energy near completely gone. Her fall was stopped by Vinyl, who looked at her with a large smile. "Can we rest now?" She asked, still smiling. Octavia sighed again before nodding in defeat. As Vinyl helped her sit down, the two noticed something surprising. Down the street where the monster had been vanquished, somewhere in the distance, the endless row of buildings ceased.
"Looks like we found our exit." Vinyl said happily, her mood now elevated after their victory. Still too tired to give a verbal response, Octavia nodded in response. As she looked towards their new path, she let sleep take her. Vinyl looked at her and stifled a laugh, but then she noticed something peculiar. Not only had Octavia's outfit disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared earlier, her bracelet was no longer shining with it's purple light like before.
Instead of getting answers, Vinyl only had more questions about the current state of affairs. They weren't any closer to finding out why any of this was happening in the first place, but now it seemed like the world was shifting itself around as evidenced by the previously endless rows of Manehattan styled buildings. Where were they? Why were they the only two who were unaffected by the stoppage of time? Would they really be able to find an answer in Canterlot? Would they even be able to find Canterlot at all? All these questions buzzed around in Vinyl's mind, but there was one thing she did know for certain.
They had a long road ahead of them. In more ways than one.