The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-One: Experimental Pinkamena City of Tomorrow

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Forty-One – Experimental Pinkamena City of Tomorrow

Special thanks to Vimbert, theworstwriter, and Warden for editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

“Ohhhhhhh crudcrudcrudcrudcrudcrudcrud!” Harmony hissed as she dove down towards the falling pink target with her front hooves outstretched. The wind whistled past the last pony's twitching ears. She squinted her tearing eyes into the maddening mists of Dredgemane while fighting to outrace gravity before Pinkie would become a splattered Pie all over her hometown. Just as Pinkie's cutie mark reflected off the glinting lids of metal chimneys—“Gotcha!”

Harmony caught the mare, spun upside down, and took the brunt of the rooftop with her Entropan spine. The pegasus' wings grinded over the top of the building, sending rusted shingles flying every which way as the ponies' combined momentum sent them skimming the structure like a stone over pondwater. Tilting her head up, Harmony saw the upside-down image of the Royal Grand Biv standing perfectly still, waiting for their approach with a razor-sharp fan of knives.

The pegasus caught her breath, angled her shoulders into the grinding rooftop, and backflipped with Pinkie Pie. After a mid-air somersault, she landed beside a metal chimney and bucked the black thing in half with a heavy hoof. The time traveler bravely gripped the lid of the metal cylinder in Entropan teeth and flung it over her shoulder at the Biv.

The Biv swung her blades and snapped the airborne chimney down the center, but in doing so it covered itself—and its entire section of the chimney—in an opaque cloud of black smoke.

“Stay here!” Harmony dropped Pinkie Pie and galloped towards the far end of the building. “And try not to get in the way this time!”

“Whew...” Pinkie Pie shook the cobwebs out of her head. She briefly smiled. “Say, that wasn't so bad—” Her eyes bulged in mid-speech, as did her cheeks. With a pale-green expression wafting through her flesh, Pinkie bent directly over the edge of the roof and wretched into the yawning streets of Dredgemane. “Bleachkkkk!” This, of course, was punctuated by half-a-dozen voices of guards groaning in disgust below.

In the meantime, Harmony was charging through the cloud of black soot. She squinted left. She squinted right. The colorful miscreant was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, a pitter-patter of hoofsteps echoed from behind. Harmony spun a glance over her left shoulder. Through the sea of smoke, she caught a length of rainbow cloak.

“You're mine!” Harmony flung a hoof straight into the bright shape. There was a snapping sound. Blinking, she pulled her hoof back into view... only to see a noose of tight rainbow rope having ensnared the end of her limb. “Awwwww buck me.” In a breathless jolt, she was pulled forward through the smoke and directly into an uppercutting horseshoe. Harmony's body flew back, barrel-rolled across the roof, and landed outside of the smoke cloud with her back up against another chimney. Wincing, she glanced up and blinked... blinked...

The soot cleared. The Royal Grand Biv stood, its many billowing folds glinting sharply in the midday overcast. It coiled away its lasso and—with a metallic clack—outstretched its razor sharp fans into a dramatic stance.

Harmony frowned. Something fluttered down from the high altitude above and fatefully plopped onto her black mane. Blinking, she raised a hoof and found that the green beret had reunited with its owner. For some reason, that was enough to summon a smirk from her copper features.

“So then...” She stood up on four hooves, popped the joints in her neck, and glared the Biv's way. She uttered, “Round Two?” A paper airplane flew by in the cloud-speckled rays of the sun. With a glint of teeth, Harmony surged forward across the rooftop on pounding hooves.

The Royal Grand Biv was ready. It spun and spiraled away from the attacking pegasus, all the while flinging razor-sharp coattails down at the time traveler's advancing limbs. The last pony swiftly jumped and side-stepped the attacks. She twirled around and bucked the Biv straight in the chest.

With a muffled grunt, the masked equine flew back. It flung a hoof out in the nick of time to catch a chimney. Swinging around the black length of the cylinder, the Biv came about and dove low towards Harmony's hoves.

Harmony leapt over it—

The Biv rolled onto its back, produced a tiny boomstick from beneath its robe, and fired straight up at Harmony's airborne belly. The air above the rooftop thundered as an explosive kaleidoscope of multicolored confetti burst against Harmony's torso.

“Unngh!” the last pony winced, blinking. When her amber eyes reopened, she realized that the streets of Dredgemane were spinning madly before her vision. Hissing through clenched teeth, Harmony effortlessly sprung her wings out, caught air, and angled back up before she could so much as plow into the ducking helmets of the sea of guards. The air whipped as she soared back skyward, came about, and spun into the Biv just as the figure was standing up. “Aaaagh!” Harmony gave a battle cry and hovered steadily into the Biv, bucking and kicking and thrashing with all four of her angry hooves.

The Biv backed up, blocking and absorbing every vicious limb with a clattering shield of retracted blades. Harmony's relentless onslaught forced the rainbow-colored vandal to back up into a sickly pink figure.

“Ughhh... Whew! It's a good thing that Inkie's soup goes up as quickly as it goes down. What'd I miss?”

Without so much as a breath, the Biv reverse-somersaulted over Pinkie, hoisted her up like a firelog, and tossed her straight at Harmony.

“Eeeep!”

Harmony gasped, caught the weight of Pinkie Pie, and hobbled back on two rear legs sliding precariously close towards the rooftop's edge. She had to jolt and duck and swing both Pinkie and herself as the next volley of the Biv's attack stabbed towards the two of them. Finally, Harmony flung both of her wings viciously forward, knocking the Biv off-balance. The pegasus took that opportunity to drop Pinkie, vault over her pink body, and dive into the Biv with a vicious tackle. “Rrgggh!”

“Ugggh... I thought the war was over...” A dizzied Pinkie meanwhile hiccuped, lurched, and retched once more over the rooftop's edge, eliciting a second chorus from the groaning guards down below.

“Haaugh!” Harmony victoriously slammed her weight down onto the Royal Grand Biv's chest, pressing the masked pony's body to the rattling shingles of the roof. “Enough! This fight's over! You don't have any tricks left up your—”

The Biv snuck loose an automatic crossbow from beneath its robe, armed with prismatic sparklers.

“—oh Celestia dang it!” Harmony kicked against the roof and took off for the air.

The Biv sat up and fired a stream of air-crackling sparklers towards the copper pegasus above.

Harmony spun about the columns of chimney smoke, dodging the rainbow-lit explosives, twirling to avoid their burning streamers. “That's it!” With a snarl, she hissed and sailed her entire body down with a drop-kicking hoof. “From Princess Entropa with love, ya sorry sack of suck!”

The Biv tried scampering away, but spasmed like a breathless ragdoll as Harmony's impaling limb slammed the two of them through the roof...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

...and down through the second story of the building, so that they landed in the middle of a Dredgemane drug store on the first floor. Debris rained down all across a collapsed isle of tonic jars. Several frightened citizens shrieked and ran to the far side of the room as Harmony dizzily stood, brushing the dust and crumbs off her flank with a green beret. She slapped the article back onto her head, sighed, and marched through the raining ash towards the mound of debris that signified where the Biv had collapsed.

“Can't say that I enjoyed that... even though I did. But enough is enough. Maybe Haymane will go easy on you on account of how badly hurt you are—”

A wave of pill bottles were bucked directly into Harmony's face. The pegasus reeled back and uncrossed her rattled eyes.

“Oh, come on!”

The Biv lurched up to its hooves in a puddle of spilled alcohol bottles.

“The heck are you made out of?!” Harmony sneered. “I hope they put something into the record books once they dissect you, because I'm this close to—” She paused in mid speech, blinking with sudden dismay towards the liquid gathered around the Biv's hooves.

The Biv saw it too. The many shattered bottles around the figure were labeled with “XXX.” With a glinting of ruby goggles, the masked vandal once more extended fans of razor sharp rainbow daggers.

“Oh no—” Harmony pointed an angry hoof. “Don't you dare!”

The Biv ran straight towards the pegasus, all the while scraping its blades against the concrete floor. Sparks flew, lit up the puddles of alcohol, and burned into the rest of the littered stockpile.

A bright wall of flame surged forward, knocking Harmony off her balance as the smoke-trailing figure of the Biv leapt over her and bulleted out through the front door of the drugstore. The clamoring of guards could be heard outside.

Cursing under her breath, Harmony lurched to her hooves, kicked loose a wave of sparks, and shoved her way through breathless onlookers before...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

....bursting out onto the cobblestone street beyond. Panting, she witnessed the mad figure of color plowing through several rattling guards, deflecting their weapons out of their hooves as they came near to it.

“Back off!” Harmony shouted and ran into a full gallop towards the scene. “The Biv can hurt you! Just let me handle that moron—”

“No! Wait!” Several guards along the flank gasped and reached out to stop her. “Don't gallop through the street there! That's where—”

“Whoahhh!” Harmony suddenly slipped on something wet. She slid across the street and plowed stupidly into half-a-dozen guards attempting to tackle the Royal Grand Biv. The time traveler and the yelping Dredgemaners flew muzzles-first into a fruit stand. Meanwhile, the Biv—suddenly undaunted—took off in a fast gallop, disappearing beyond the street corner.

“—That's where Quarrington's daughter threw up.” The guards winced at the scene, hanging their black helmets in embarrassment and shame as a somber dust fell over Geode Street.

Less than forty meters above, a brightly-maned figure peered down once again. “I'm all better now! So! Did we get her?”

---

“You didn't get him.” Mayor Haymane sighed in exasperation.

Harmony and Pinkie Pie stood across the desk from the blond elder stallion. The last pony was still in the process of straightening out her mane hair from the clumsy collision with the militia guards of Geode Street.

“Oh, we got the Biv, alright.” The copper pegasus sighed, then planted the beret back on her frazzled crown. “But then it got us back.”

“Do forgive me if I feel a tiny sense of elation that you have encountered such a grand struggle in apprehending this creature.” The Mayor of Dredgemane said as he shifted back on his wheeled tripod. His voice echoed solemnly across the dusty lengths of his lofty office. “If an agent from Canterlot has failed twice to apprehend the Royal Grand Biv, it almost legitimizes the lengths to which my entire militia has purposelessly extended its resources these last few months.”

“Well, good,” Harmony said with a nervous smirk. “Because for a moment there, I thought you'd be deathly ashamed of me and my total catastrophe of a job.”

“Oh, I am ashamed, alright.”

Harmony winced.

Haymane calmly breathed. “But that is hardly a new feeling, where this particular mayor is concerned. The truth is, you have gotten closer to the Biv than any of my loyal servants before have ever managed.”

“Yeah, about your loyal servants...” Harmony bit her lip and paused to tactfully formulate her next few words. In the meantime, an abysmally bored Pinkie Pie glanced over towards a series of staplers on a work table and trotted out of sight. “They're loyal and all,” the last pony said, “But I'd suspect that their hearts could be a tad bit more invested in the job that they have ahead of them.”

“Do explain,” Haymane said, squinting curiously across the dim room towards her.

Harmony gestured with a hoof while speaking, “No offense, Mayor, but the millitia you have hired here are a bunch of basket cases, not to mention young as sin. Seriously, shouldn't the age limit for guard duty be raised a tad bit higher? I swear, I saw acne underneath one or two of those black helmets.”

“The younger a soul learns discipline, the better a contribution he will eventually lend to the community of Dredgemane. Quarrington Pie, the Council, and I won't be around forever to provide this town a healthy future.”

“Right, I'll buy that. But still...” Harmony leaned forward, gazing at the elder in earnest. “A bunch of those guards are very young, not to mention impressionable. They canter around the cobblestone streets of Dredgemane with utmost pride and confidence, but as soon as the Royal Grand Biv shows its masked face, they start to tremble and freak out like a bunch of foals. If I didn't know better, I'd say that they could use a tad bit more inspiration. They won't be anywhere near competent to tackle this vandal until they're made to believe that they have what it takes to do just that. Perhaps then, with my help, we'd actually get somewhere in this ponyhunt.”

“What sort of inspiration do you feel they're lacking?”

“Well—heck—it wouldn't hurt if they'd be told to believe in themselves for once! Those guards have a pretty boring job, and yet so much is required from them at such random and infinitesimally short spurts of time. It's rather alarming how quick a soldier can lose his nerve in a pinch, y'know?”

“This city is the Refuge of Gultophine. Surely the guards have the inspiration that they need.”

Harmony was about to respond to that when a pink shadow bumped into a wooden globe off to the side of the office. She glared over at Pinkie. “Miss Pie, must you...?”

Harmony's anchor was teetering back and forth, balancing a stapler on her nose. “It's all I can do to keep it from falling!” She hissed through clenched teeth and struggled to keep the office tool upright.

“Leave that stuff alone, seriously.” Harmony sighed and smiled back the Mayor's way. “Far be it from me to question the spirit of Gultophine, Haymane, sir. But when the Royal Grand Biv is breathing down their necks—with dozens of frightening and scary tricks up its sleeve—the exiled Goddess of Life is likely the last thing on the guards' minds. It'd be helpful for them to rely on their own wits for a change, don't you think?”

“I would hope that Breathstar's sermons serve as the adequate crucible through which they can temper their uncertainties.”

“Er... Yeah... I've been to one of the Bishop's services. His words are good for... conviction. But inspiration? Maybe if he toned down the furnace in his lungs, he'd give ponies a reason to sigh a bit less.”

“Now, Miss Harmony...” Haymane rolled out from behind the table. His front legs pulled him with shuffling grace towards her as he looked up with a gentle smile. “I will sincerely confess my ignorance when it comes to Canterlotlian philosophy, but you have to realize that the ethics of Dredgemane have not only been consistent over the past three decades, but they have come to be the spiritual masonry upon which our town's prosperity and moral fiber are built. Bishop Breathstar's platitudes are very much the cornerstone of this versatile establishment, and I have long grown to trust in the potency of his words, no matter how harsh they may appear to an outsider.”

“But Mayor, with all due respect—”

“If you respect me—in wisdom as much as in authority—then be still and meditate on this: we are all Gultophine's siblings. Each and every one of us share the flesh that was granted us by Epona's celestial power. However, it was Gultophine who breathed a spirit of animation into us all. Each Dredgemaner—each Equestrian, for that matter—is inherently born with love and respect for life, something that can help us overcome any and all adversities. Because this is a natural thing, it does us no good to over-saturate an already blessed essence. Bishop Breathstar realized this, and he taught me this: that a true believer in Gultophine can weather any hazard, and not only that—but a true believer should, because only in labor and commitment is the resilience of Gultophine's spirit put to the test, no matter the degree to which that exercise may exhaust us. It is all for the best.”

Harmony exhaled and was about to reply to that, when she heard a tumbling noise to her right. She turned about and frowned tiredly at a wildly hobbling Pinkie. “I told you, Miss Pie! I told you about those staplers, girl!”

“It keeps happening!” The mare whimpered, suddenly balancing four staplers across a nose, a forehead, and two front hooves. “Whoahhh—Whoahhh—WhoahWhoahWhoah!” She veered left, right, and eventually tumbled into a corner of the dusty office. “Ooomf!”

Harmony sighed.

“Do you understand, my little pony?”

The time traveler turned and smiled politely the Mayor's way. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

Haymane gently reached a hoof up and patted her shoulder. “Keep your efforts concentrated on capturing the Royal Grand Biv. In the meantime, leave the spiritual health of the town to Breathstar, and the moral health to myself.” He wheeled back towards his side of the desk. “Most of all, do not regret the subsequent setbacks in the Biv's arrest. You are new to this town, regardless of your talent. I am aware of this, and I am far more understanding and forgiving a stallion than the likes of others.”

“Like Overseer Sladeburn?”

“Hmph... To say the least.”

Harmony raised an eyebrow. “I have to ask, Mayor Haymane. Do you attend his duties with the same vigor that you attend Bishop Breathstar's sermons?”

“Why? Should I?”

“I would hope that you do.” Harmony gestured a hoof blindly towards the west edge of town beyond the gray-hued windows. “I just paid the mines a visit today. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's working the citizens of your city to the bone. The ponies in those mines are practically dead on their hooves!”

“Working the quarry has hardly been a glamorous job.”

“Uncomfortableness is fine,” Harmony said. “It's expected, even. Still, I'd venture to say that Sladeburn could afford slightly better organization, or at least he should draft a schedule in which there aren't so many ponies crammed in one place for so long. Dredgemaners are many things, but I suspect they're not machines... or at least they shouldn't be.”

“Am I to interpret this as the first sign of an official report being sent to Princess Celestia and the Labor Commission of Canterlot?”

“Uhm... No...”

“Because Dredgemane's Quarry has been reviewed constantly over the past thirty years, at regular intervals, and nothing was discovered to be wicked or awry.”

“I didn't say it was wicked—”

“Dredgemaners are hardened earth ponies. For generations, we have taught our children and our children's children secrets that make us far more capable of managing that which outsiders would instantly assume is physical duress.”

“But I can't see why such a stressful working environment needs to be the way it is! Every pony in those tunnels is miserable. Wouldn't it be more profitable to slow down the process, to not flood the bowels of that place, to be more careful of the hazards, pressures, and innumerable pockets of infernite—?”

“Child, if there's anypony in this room who understands the hazards of the earth, it is I.” The Mayor spoke with sudden, fiery passion alighting his otherwise calm eyes. It would likely have paralyzed any natural pony standing before him. “My entire family was consumed by the whim of the land. Can you say the same?”

The time traveler held her tongue. She always held her tongue.

Haymane went on. “We may be Gultophine's Refuge, but this is still the Grave of Consus.” He took a deep breath. “Death surrounds us. That cannot be avoided. We cannot pretend that our lives here are anything but short and bleak things in the grand legacy of Epona's creation. Dredgemaners work hard and suffer because we know that life is veritably defined by labor and suffering. What makes us stand apart from the rest of Celestia's kingdom is that we embrace that which limits us, and we fashion it into something useful, something that outshines the industry of all other provinces between here and Stalliongrad. Perhaps now you can see why I've been so desperate for a pony such as yourself to bring an end to the banal splinter that is the Royal Grand Biv. Distractions are an insult unto life. We are here on this world to accomplish something, and we have such little time to do it. To spend all of those precious moments debating the very will that pushes us forward would be a waste, don't you think?”

“I...” Harmony shifted nervously where she stood, but eventually let forth a shuddering breath. “Yes, I do suppose it is a waste.” She gulped. “Like laughing at a joke that isn't funny.”

Haymane raised a deadpan eyebrow at that.

She produced an awkward smile. “Do forgive me, Haymane, sir. This town's been turning the wheels in my head like crazy.”

“You are most easily forgiven, child.”

---

That night, Harmony squatted once again atop the roof of the Pie Family residence. Her map of the constellation had stretched beyond ten sheets now, but she was hardly engrossed. Instead, she gazed up at the stars with a different measure of interest. The last pony squinted her amber eyes, looking beyond the Onyx Eclipse, looking beyond the future, looking to find a band of mane-flurrying sparkles that stretched clear across the galactic sphere of her lonely contemplation.

“What did you fly away for, Goddess Epona?”

A cold wind blew over the stony wasteland. The future was merely a shuddering hiccup of all the desolate inhales of the past.

“Did you know that Consus was only the start of something?”

The shadows of the air danced. Black and amber mane hair belonging to the Matron Alicorn's daughter flickered briefly in the stardust.

“Should I fly away from Dredgemane as well?” Scootaloo's breath found its way back through twenty-five wilting years. “Should I just fly away from Equestria...?”

There was a shuffling sound. Blinking, Harmony craned her neck to look towards the rock fields west of her.

A lone and lanky figure was pushing a rickety wooden cart across the gray plateau between the fences. With ritualistic movements, Quarrington Pie picked one of many dozens of stones up and dropped them into the wagon. Shuffling tiredly, the elder Council Member proceeded with the redundant task of moving the harvest of rocks from the west field to the south field... in the dead thick of night.

At some point during this age-old task, the Dredgemaner paused, his body leaning limply against the wooden surface of the cart. His shoulders slumped and his lungs hung with sudden, immeasurable weight. He adjusted the brim of his dark hat and stared numbly towards the second-story window of the farmhouse beneath Harmony... where a coughing voice lingered in absolute pitch-blackness inside.

Harmony took a deep breath, wrenching her eyes away from the suddenly painful sight. Once more aimed at the stars, she felt a pounding in her heart and bravely dove off the edge of it.

“No, Spike,” she murmured. “I can't fly away. I stopped running when you found me, didn't I?”

---

“So there's a storm, you see. There's this horrible flash flood!” Pinkie Pie uttered with a grin.

The next morning, she was dressed in a bulky orange sweaterjacket with brown slacks. Along with Inkessa and Harmony, she trotted down the sloping entrance that bled the stony plateau into the trenches of Dredgemane along with so many other cantering citizens.

“And while everypony's evacuating the town, there's this one stallion standing in the middle of his front lawn. The floodwaters have risen up to his knees. A boat full of ponies come to rescue him, but he says 'Oh no, don't bother! Goddess Gultophine will take care of me!' Well, hours later, the flood has risen even higher. The stallion is standing on top of his porch. The water is up to his flank. Another boat of rescuers comes. But he waves them off, saying 'Oh no! Goddess Gultophine will take care of me!' Well, even more hours pass by. The flash flood has almost completely buried his house. He's standing on top of his roof and the waters are up to his neck! A hot air balloon flies down to toss him a rope. Once more, the stallion shouts, 'Don't worry! Goddess Gultophine will take care of me!' Well, the stallion dies. When his spirit ascends to the cosmos, he meets up with Goddess Gultophine in exile, and he asks her 'What happened? Why didn't you take care of me?' And Goddess Gultophine—heeheehee—she says 'Well, I don't know what happened! I sent two boats and a hot air balloon for you!' Snkkkt—Hahahahaha!”

Harmony was deadpan.

“Classic. Makes me smile every time.” Inkessa smirked, trotting in full nurse's gear. “That's a good joke for Gultophine's Summons, come to think of it. It's innocent enough, but I seriously doubt Bishop Breathstar's going to bother quoting it before a sermon.”

“Heeheehee! Yeah! He probably wouldn't understand what the stallion did wrong!”

“I don't get it,” Harmony muttered.

“Awwww,” Inkie cooed.

“You don't get it, or you don't want to get it, Har-Har?”

“Do I have to pick?”

“There's gotta be a joke somewhere in my brain noodle that will make you at least titter!”

“Give it up, Pinkamena,” Inkie said with a helpless chuckle. “Someponies reserve the right to waive the need to laugh, even if it would be their best medicine.”

“Oh no, not you too.” Harmony gave the gray mare an exasperated look.

“Well, I am a nurse, after all. I only want what's healthy for other ponies.”

“I fail to see what makes breaking out into random bits of laughter so necessary, given the situation.”

“What situation is that, Miss Harmony?”

“I've got a Royal Grand Biv to find. You go to a daily shift looking after dying children. The town is filled to the brim with frowns, sighs, and cold sweat.” Harmony groaned. “Must I go on?”

“Let me cut you off at the head!” Pinkie Pie bounced backwards in front of Harmony briefly, grinning ear-to-ear. “This one's a doozy.”

“Ugh...”

“This, I gotta hear,” Inkie said, smiling.

“Ahem.” Pinkie Pie trotted and uttered, “So there's this pony visiting from out of town, and he's checked into this hotel. Now, 'cuz of a really nasty storm, there's a blackout. He walks into the hotel and he can't see a single thing. His room is on the first floor, so it shouldn't be that hard for him to find his way there to get a good night's sleep, right? However, along the way to his door, he stumbles blindly across this passed-out drunk beside the stairwell. The drunk pony tells him 'Yeah, I'm checked in somewhere on the third floor, but I'm so tipsy that I don't think I can make it on my own.' So, being a good neighborly pony, the out-of-towner picks the drunk up, carries him up three flights of stairs, opens a door, throws the pony in, and walks back down to the first floor. Once he's down there, he stumbles into a second drunk in the dark. This drunk is even more wasted than the first pony! When he asks the drunk what's wrong, and the drunk says the same thing as the first: 'I'm supposed to be on the third floor somewhere, but I don't think I can make it.' So the pony picks the second drunk up, carries him up three flights of stairs, opens a door, throws him in, and walks back down to the first floor. He runs into yet another drunk! Sure enough, this pony says the same thing as the first two. But just as the out-of-towner is lifting the drunkard up over his shoulders, the tipsy stallion shouts, 'Help! Help! Police!' A local police officer trots up and asks, 'What's the matter?' The drunkard cackles, 'What's the matter? What's the matter? I'll tell you what's the matter! This stranger keeps hauling me up three flights of stairs and throwing me down the elevator shaft!' Heeheeheehee!”

Inkie stifled a girlish chortle. The air shook under the siblings' combined giggles.

“I don't get it,” Harmony droned.

“Awwwww, come on, Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie grinned. “Now you're just being stubborn! Cuz I know you're not stupid!”

“It's the joke that was stupid. Not me.”

“I'd like to hear you come up with something better,” Inkie said.

“Ooooh! Yes! You tell us a joke, Har-Har!” Pinkie Pie beamed in mid-bounce. “Maybe that will help you crack your shell!”

“I... I don't think that's possible.” Harmony made an uncomfortable face. “If I can't so much as enjoy your jokes, what makes you think I have one to dish out?”

“Surely sometime in your life you were exposed to a doozy of a joke that you could have at least respected for its setup!” Pinkie Pie grinned.

Inkessa added: “I find that the funniest things we have to tell other ponies come from personal experiences.”

“Personal... experiences...” Harmony slurred in mid-trot.

“Mmmmmhmmmmm.”

Harmony's copper brow furrowed. As the three of them lurched into the claustrophobic hovels of Dredgemane, she straightened her green beret and muttered: “Okay... Uhm... I-I think I have one...”

“See?” Inkie grinned.

“Lay it on us, girl!”

Harmony took a deep breath, and eventually orated: “So, there was once this ugly talking baboon named 'Pitt,' who had a bunch of monkey brothers who he treated like crap. One day he got the bright idea to build a rest stop at the top of really tall mountain. So he and twelve brothers constructed a giant wooden shack on the top of this friggin' thing. But they built it too close to the edge, you see. Next thing Pitt knew, he and his brothers' building was starting to fall one meter at a time over the mountain's cliff. So they built all of these vertical support beams nailed into the mountain's side to keep the thing from plunging into the abyss beneath the clouds. But it was still a horrible location. Every zeppelin pilot or griffon who flew by the 'Thirteen Monkeys' Den' drank themselves silly and fell to their deaths in a drunken stupor. Pitt was losing customers faster than he could earn them. Well, it turned out that it was all the fault of Pitt's oldest brother. The orangutan was color-blind, you see, and he thought that in Pitt's sketch of the 'Thirteen Monkeys' Den' the baboon wanted the thing built on the edge of a lake. So, all that time, he had designed the rest stop to have a pier on its side, hence why it was built too close to the edge of the mountain. Well, in the end, Pitt gutted his younger brother, ripped the scalp off his cranium, and kicked him off the mountain. He then renamed the place the 'Monkey O'Dozen Den,' which was a bit more marketable and increased the living patrons over the dying ones just enough for the establishment to stay in business.”

Silence.

The naked and undisturbed mists of the air announced that Harmony had suddenly finished with the anecdote. She glanced curiously aside at her two companions, but found Inkessa and even Pinkie to be deathly silent. The last pony bit her lip and glanced down at the passing cobblestones.

“That... Uhm...” Inkessa readjusted her nurse's cap in mid-gait. “That was... Most certainly colorful...”

“It had monkeys in it!” Pinkie grinned in a pale shade of pink, her blue eyes sparkling nevertheless. “M-monkeys are funny!”

“But... It's missing something...” Inkessa gulped. “Almost like the pit of my heart just now.”

Harmony cleared her throat and put on a brave smile. “Did I mention that the gutted and scalped corpse of Pitt's brother landed in an ogre cesspool at the bottom of the mountain?” Harmony wagged her eyebrows hopefully.

Pinkie bit her tongue. Inkessa looked about ready to lose her breakfast.

Harmony lost a sweatdrop. “The... The st-stench of the rotting skeleton warded off bands of harpies for a year...?”

Before that conversation could crash and burn any hotter, a rising commotion ahead of the three stole their attention. The three mares craned their necks to see a solid crescent of tightly gathered Dredgemane citizens nervously eyeing a strange figure in the middle of Town Square. Mares murmured and gossiped with each other. Stallions stared with thick-browed suspicion. Youngsters clustered in chatty droves, their twitching eyes brightly contrasting their dull garb as they gawked at what turned out to be a cloaked shape shuffling beside the fountain.

“What is it?” Harmony suddenly jolted. “The Biv? Is the Biv out in the open?”

“Hardly.” Inkessa squinted her violet eyes, tilting up to see better. “It doesn't look a thing like the Biv. If I didn't know better, I'd say it looked like—”

“Zecchy!” Pinkie Pie brightly gasped. Her orange hoodie flailing, she bounced like a rolling pink bomb straight through the crowd and all but tackled the cloaked figure. “You're here! You're here! You're here! Heeheehee!” She hugged the stranger in a suffocating pair of forelimbs. “Welcome to Dredgemane, girl!”

“'Zecchy?'” Harmony made a face.

Inkessa was sporting a knowing grin. “Ah, but of course. After all this time of sending letters, we've gotten a response. Stonehaven's help has arrived. I really can't thank Pinkamena enough.”

“Thank her enough for what?”

“Not for what, but for whom,” a deep voice emanated from within the cloak. A pair of striped limbs rose up and tossed the hood back, revealing a stiff mohawk of a monochromatic mane. “Inkessa Ruth Pie, I do presume.” A meditatively smiling zebra bowed her head Inkie's way.

“Pleased to meet you for once, Zecora,” Inkie said with a pleasant smile and a curtsey. “Sis has told me a lot about you.”

“I trust she's done so accurately, and with very little hyperbole.”

“Who, Pinkamena?” Inkie rolled her eyes. “You can take the Pie out of the Pinkie, but not the Pinkie out of the Pie.”

“I've only said really nice things!” Pinkie said, practically hanging off of Zecora's neck with a melodramatic hug. “Like how you're super crazy smart when it comes to herbal remedies and stuff!” Pinkie Pie made a puppy dog face with glistening eyes. “Also, I'm oh so sorry to have ever written a nasty song full of nasty nastiness that suggested you were anything but nice and anti-nasty!”

Zecora chuckled breathily. “Dear Miss Pie, please do not fret. I have long forgiven you of that which you regret.” However, the ear-pierced zebra glanced forlornly over her shoulder towards the many thick lines of Dredgemane onlookers who were just then starting to dissipate. “My zebra sense suggests to me, though, that the openness of your neighbors has a long way to go.”

“Don't pay them any mind,” Inkessa said. “Dredgemaners simply aren't used to any equines beside earth ponies or the occasional unicorn passing through their town.” She motioned with her head towards the copper pegasus beside her. “It's taken them days to get used to her majestic wings, much less another stranger's beautiful stripes.”

Zecora smiled and trotted up to Harmony with a hoof outstretched. “And with whom may I have the pleasure of sharing this most ambitious endeavor?”

“Uhh...” The time traveler gently shook the zebra's hoof. “My name is Harmony.” She squinted at her, attempting to dredge forth from her memory the reason for why this one particular zebra filly was so hauntingly familiar to her weathered mind. “And, uhm, what 'ambitious endeavor' might we be sharing?”

“You mean that you are not here for the foals?” Zecora blinked and glanced back at the two siblings. “I was most certain that we all knew our roles!”

“She's something of an observer—” Inkessa began.

Pinkie Pie jumped in. “She's a stargazer, Princess Celestia reporter, Royal Grand Biv Hunter, and joker ruiner all rolled into one!”

“Why don't you add Pie-eater to the list,” Harmony grumbled.

“Heeheehee!”

“An entrepreneurial spirit! Quite delightful!” Zecora smiled while adjusting the lengths of her cloak. “Perhaps you too could make yourself useful.”

“I don't get it.” The last pony blinked quizzically. “What's going on? What am I missing?”

“You silly filly! Dredgemane has been waiting for Zecchy for months!” Pinkie Pie bounced and giggled. “She's been a long time coming!”

“How come you didn't tell me?”

“You didn't ask!”

Harmony face-hoofed. She stared the zebra's way with tired eyes. “Got a miraculously impromptu rhyme that might explain this poetically, Miss Zecora?”

“It is quite simple, my winged maiden. I've been asked to assist with Stonehaven.”

“You mean the kids that Inkie looks over?”

“Such poor young souls suffer without end.” Zecora motioned towards a large, bulging net of potions and Zebraharan remedies hanging off her cloaked flank. “A proper remedy I will attempt to blend. With careful examination of their ills and ache, I'll seek a cure to Immolatia's wake.”

“That's... That's certainly a nifty prospect,” Harmony foalishly murmured.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Inkessa fashioned a smile that was remarkably bright, even for her. “Let's get going! My shift's about to start and I can't wait!”

“Hold up! Not so fast!” Pinkie Pie leaned into Zecora's ear. “While there're still so many Dredgemaners around, think you could chant forth a slogan to get ponies to hunger for Marble Cake's new batch of licorice strudel?”

“Pinkamena!”

“What?! I'm sorry, sis! But if anypony can make a rhyme with 'licorice', Zecora can!”

“Let's go!”

“What is so important about licorice? Certainly there are many things more delicious!”

“Ha! See?! Isn't she the bees knees?—Wait, that won't sell any strudle at all...”

Since first stumbling into that town, Harmony managed something that almost resembled a legitimate smile. She galloped swiftly after her excited anchor and the two companions as they navigated the ghostly trenches towards Stonehaven.

---

Zecora: I remember her now, though I was briefly at a loss to summon a memory of her at the time. Apple Bloom was a close companion to her; the zebra was almost like a mentor to the young filly. I also recall Twilight Sparkle being relatively fond of the lone and mysterious occupant of the Everfree Forest.

It's interesting how my random leaps into the past have reunited me with so many estranged phantoms of yesteryear. Miss Hooves was a soul I did not even remotely expect to see at Fluttershy's cottage. I had expected to talk to nopony else but Applejack when I visited Sweet Apple Acres, and yet Granny Smith was a startlingly warm confidant in this time traveler's time of need. It boggles my mind that—hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers away from Ponyville, deep inside the grave of Consus—I would meet yet another shadow of my foalhood, and it would be a wise and cryptic zebra of all individuals. I almost wonder if a bizarre fate beyond the emerald hues of Spike's flames has been working to reunite me with such disparate spirits.

I knew that Zecora was there for reasons that exceeded whatever frivolous excuse I had to make up. After all, she was centered. She had a goal. What did I have to say for myself? Even Pinkie Pie was capable of seeing past my “Canterlotlian” facade, though what she saw beneath that copper coat still evades me. It probably even evaded her.

Rather selfishly, I was glad for Zecora's presence—not so much in what she would do for the children, but what she would have to show me. We were both strange souls having arrived in an alien world of stone and blight, seeking to do the impossible. I wanted to resurrect a dead sun and moon. She wished to put an end to a horrible disease that was as incurable as it was deadly.

Infernite poisoning had crushed more than hopes and dreams, it had ended my parents' lives, and thusly it had ruined any chance of me properly enjoying a normal life of my own. If Zecora could find something bright in the middle of that city of darkness, I was more than willing to be the “observer” that Princess Entropa's projected shell had afforded me.

But a part of me knew better than to expect anything golden to illuminate that situation. This time traveler was aware of Zecora's fate, just as you were. No matter what she would do for the children, no matter what remedy she might concoct, no matter how successful or unsuccessful her endeavors, she would still end up a battered skeleton lying in a ditch beside a wooden wagon underneath a mountain of moonrock.

Was this what one was to expect of Dredgemane: that the city would devour the livelihood of all who entered it? Quarrington, Haymane, Vimbert, and even Brevis—they were all victims of a great abyss that sucked the life or sanity out of them. Would Zecora and myself become victims too? Did Zecora ever have a shred of hope that she might come out of Dredgemane alive?

And for that matter, did I even come out of Dredgemane alive?

---

Inside a tiny, dusty wooden hut built alongside the flank of the bricklaid Stonehaven building, Zecora had set up shop. There was a table upon which she was presently pouring several different mixtures, utilizing a plethora of herbs brought all the way from the Everfree Forest.

“I do hope you forgive my garments for being so crude,” the cloaked mare said in the middle of preparing a medicinal brew. “I'm not used to being in a town where it's a crime to be nude.”

Harmony smirked from across the hut. “You and me both, Zelda.”

“Zecora,” Pinkie corrected.

“Whatever. If you think Ponyville is full of fraidy-cat, stiff-necked, oversensitive equine, then boy is Dredgemane gonna give you a run for the money.”

“Such stoic tradition! It has my thoughts engaged! I imagined ponydom was a great deal happier in this Fourth Age.”

“Well, not every town is like Pinkie's home,” Harmony said with a shrug. “It's ironic, I know. The ponies of this hovel seem a lot more invested in banging rocks than baking cakes. You have Mayor Haymane and a few of his bosom buddies to thank for that.”

“My perception of this town is still quite bleak. Tell me, what cabal is this of which you speak?”

“Namely Bishop Breathstar of the local Church of Gultophine and Overseer Sladeburn of the quarry operations,” the last pony muttered. “It's as if Dredgemane isn't a miserable enough place. They had to march in on Haymane's domain and turn this city into a giant frown factory.”

“Surely, copper friend, you must be joking, or else this is a bizarre way of sulking!”

“First thing you gotta learn about me, Zecora, is that I don't joke around much. At all.”

“Besides! She's totally, totally right on the dot-a-rooni!” Pinkie Pie danced her way through the conversation. Zecora had to hold out an obstinate hoof to keep the bright mare from prat-falling through her table of brewmaking. “It's totally like how Har-Har describes it!” Pinkie continued. “One day, Breathstar and Sladeburn were pulling their wagons full of depressing stuff across an intersection, when suddenly they collided!”

Pinkie Pie smirked at Zecora.

“And Breathstar said 'Hey, heretic, you got some dark on my grim!'”

Pinkie Pie smiled at Harmony.

“And Sladeburn said 'Hey, numbskull, you got some grim on my dark!' But then Mayor Haymane rolled up on his wheels and said...”

Pinkie Pie grinned toward us.

“'Boys! Boys! They're both so good!'”

Harmony blinked. She glanced in the last direction Pinkie Pie had, but saw nothing but a solid wall of wood. She shrugged and faced Zecora again. “Long story short, this town could use a miracle. I heard you're good at brewing miracles.”

“My brews are hardly quaffs of mystique. A cure to physical ills is all that I seek.” Zecora reached into her bag of items, produced a vial of bright green liquid, and poured a drop of it into one of her jars. A vaporous puff of illuminated emerald smoke belched ceiling-ward. “It is merely science of a different feather. It can't turn wood to gold or predict the weather.”

“Well, at least you're trying to help those kids out in some fashion. Mayor Haymane is the one personally responsible for funding the sanitarium, and somehow I think you can tell that he still influences it. Nothing about the place changes: not in presentation and most certainly not in methodology. Those foals in the Immolatia ward are there to stay, at least until the day when they can no longer summon the breath to stay anywhere.”

“You would think a village of such industrial progress would prevent its youth from experiencing great duress.”

“If only they made half the effort in exploring themselves as they did in exploring the aranium mines, then sure, that could have been a possibility.”

“Still they dig into the mines with all their might?!” Zecora balked incredulously. “Do they not know that is where they will run into more Infernite?!”

“The Grave of Consus has room for a lot more, it would seem.” Harmony sighed. “It looks crazy to the likes of you or me, Zecora, but for everypony who lives here, making a change for the better appears to be a criminal offense.”

“Pffft! Isn't it the world over?” Pinkie suddenly interjected. She had produced a soda bottle out of some mystical ether and was currently in the process of prying the cap off of it. “From here to Ponyville, Equestria is full of dumb-dumbs who are too afraid to stop in their boring tracks and try to live life to its fullest! Even if that life is surrounded by the dusty bookstops made out of scary sermons and Immolatia victims.” She took a swig of the bottle, gulped, and belched. “Whew! Not everypony has it in them to become a superequine. But maybe that's just my personal philosophy! Heeheehee!” In a deep, ghostlike voice she cradled the soda bottle to her skull and made a face. “Thus spoke Sarsaparilla. Hahahaha!”

There was a knock on the wooden door. Harmony glanced toward it. “With our luck, that's Goddess Gultophine herself asking for her dignity back.” She waltzed over to it and opened the entrance to the hut. “What are you selling, good sir? We have no need for new livers around here.”

“Love you to, ya fruity wench,” Vimbert grunted. In blue fatigues, he hoisted a large canvas satchel through the door and laid it beside the zebra's table with a thud. “Here you go, Ms. Zecora, ma'am. Enjoy your laundry list of questionably potent tonics ordered months in advance from the Dredgemane Pharmaceutical Warehouse. I hate to sound like an equinist blowhard, but having a zebra and so many random chemicals crammed together under one hut might raise the eyebrows of a few local guards.”

“I applaud you for your concern, handsome unicorn. I know many Dredgemaners are wary about where I was born.”

“Heh, well if this isn't righteously fantastical!” The stallion with a hollow horn slyly smirked. “From the way you're talking, I gather you're a wandering Zebraharan shaman.”

“I take it that the mohawk and the various vats of green liquid weren't good enough clues,” Harmony remarked.

“Go suck on the wrong end of a pineapple, simpleton.”

Zecora cleared her throat. She glanced back from her work with a brief smirk. “Alas, I truly benefit from such forced rhyme. It is what allows my work to come out so sublime. For there is no greater zebra concentration than that which is achieved through lyrical meditation.”

“In other words, she's gotta break it down to break things down!” Pinkie Pie added with a giggle. “And now she's using her genius to help my sister and the kids!”

“Yeah, for what it's worth,” the unicorn muttered.

“Vimbert...” Harmony squinted warily his way.

“I've got something for her to meditate on. Hello, Ms. Zecora, complete this sentence for me if you will!” The orange unicorn cleared his throat, then uttered, “'There once was a brash copper pegasus, who lifted her skirt and flashed her—'”

“Ahem.” Harmony grinned nervously the zebra's way while shoving a statuesque Vimbert along with her out the door to the hut. “Excuse us, if you will.”

“My, what colorful ponies populate this place,” Zecora said. She glanced back briefly at Pinkie. “Is this really the site of Gultophine's Grace?”

“You're asking me, silly? I'm the only character who isn't original anymore!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Outside the hut, in the gray-on-gray shadow of the four-story Stonehaven building, Harmony came to a stop alongside Vimbert. “Look, being cynical and abrasive is all fine and dandy in the saloon over a bottle of vodka or when you're assuming vindictive control over a pony who owes you bits, but would you mind toning it down a notch around Ms. Zsa Zsa while she's in town?”

“Don't you mean Zecora, Einstallion?”

“Whatever. Look—it's just that she's trying to do something awfully nice for those poor kids who are dying upstairs in that place where you occasionally mop and pretend to be more than just a wine cooler with hooves.”

“Wow, look at the pair that grew on you overnight!” Vimbert smirked. He pulled out his silver flask, took a sip, and exhaled sharply before uttering, “And by 'pair,' I mean the twin tumors that must be populating your frontal lobes, because only a mentally afflicted equine would ever try her hoof at incurring my wrath.”

“May I ask you a civil question?”

“You can try.”

“Just what was it that crawled into your heart one day and defecated the world's worth of apathetic delusions into the core of your being?”

“Ah, and immediately you have failed.”

“Are you going to answer my question, or are we going to stand here and play rhetoric racquetball for an eternity? I'm quite literally going to be around until the end of time.”

“You want to know what I really think about Pinkamena Pie's gorgeous zebra friend and her witch's brew of impossible cure-alls?” Vimbert juggled the flask in one hoof and muttered with a deadpan expression, “She is going to have the same success as every other good samaritrotter who's ever wandered into town with a bag full of voodoo, vainly chasing the goal of curing Infernite Poisoning but with the same outcome of brutal failure and disappointment. I've been mopping the halls of Stonehaven a lot longer than I'd like to count, kiddo. There's a reason why so many of those sick foals are around while their parents are not. Immolatia works its way down the ladder, and that entire ward of youngsters is just Mother Nature's way of cleaning shop until fresh new families get the cosmic joke placed on them, and soon the whole bloody holocaust will repeat itself, all the while with Pinkamena Pie having to concoct a list of broken promises to a whole new slew of friendly young corpses-to-be.”

Harmony's amber eyes narrowed on him. “How can a pony like you, who sees no hope for this place, have stuck around for so long?”

“It's quite simple, really.” He took another swig from the flask, exhaled, and pocketed the bottle away in his fatigues. “I'm nuts, just like every other pony in this town, just like you and Ms. Zecora will be if you stay here any longer.” He brushed past her and proceeded to hook his flank up to a wagon full of medical supplies. “If you want my advice, take up drinking sooner than later. Being drunk is a lot better than being locked away in Stonehaven. I may have lost a lot of things in my life, but the least of them is the righteous authority of being the warden of my own personal prison.”

Harmony's wings drooped as she sadly murmured, “There has to be a cure for this town. There's no logical sense in so many ponies depressingly sulking about when there's so much good that could be made of their lives.”

“Wrong again, sunshine.”

“Huh?”

“'Depressedly' isn't a proper adverb.”

“Grrr—I'll make your mother an adverb!”

“Sure, why not? She made a comma splice out of me.” The unicorn waved his broken horn and trotted off with the wagon in tow. “Good luck with the Immolatia butt-kicking. A part of me that still feels goosebumps sincerely means it.”

As he left, the last pony glanced in his direction, or more appropriately towards an effluent gray cloud beyond him. “Yeah, for what it's worth,” she muttered, then shuffled back towards the hut.

Comments

[ShimmeryLuna]

"Pinkie Pie grinned toward us."
This makes it sound like first person. Should sound something like this:
"Pinkie Pie grinned toward both equines."

[Ninjuto]

2404677 You didn't get it, she was breaking the fourth wall.

[vader10001]

Wait, wait, wait, a SBaHJ reference in End of Ponies? I can honestly say I wasn't expecting that.

[Aatxe360]

2863986

SBaHJ?

Also, I had suspicions, but this confirms the zebra skeleton. Now, for the other pony skeleton...I'm thinking either one of Pinkie's sisters or Marble Cake's daughter. I forget her name...

[arachnidsGrip]

3910399 Sweet 8ro and Hella Jeff, although I didn't catch the refrance.

~Vriska Serket

[Warrior Kitten]

dat ending doe