• Published 22nd Aug 2015
  • 14,088 Views, 1,970 Comments

A Beautiful New Age - JDPrime22



As it is said, true peace can only be granted through countless innocent lives. In hindsight, the ponies were never that different from humans. Ultron’s plan is not over, and soon his strings will be severed for the last time.

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Chapter 36-Abandon

An unnatural coldness filled Rainbow Dash’s lungs the first breath she took. That coldness swept across the Pegasus in a gust of wind and snow, nearly knocking Dash flat into the ground with its strength. She held firm, squinting through the blizzard to see nothing.

“Hello?!” she called out, the screaming wind being her only answer.

She tried again, louder this time. “Hey! Anypony out there?!”

The sharp snow stuck to her coat, building across her face and mane and nearly freezing half of her face clean off. Raising a foreleg to block the oncoming assault, Rainbow Dash squinted once more, this time finally spotting a light within the pure white blizzard she was somehow trapped in.

A torch hung against a nearby wall, the flames barely alive against the harshness of the storm. Rainbow Dash cautiously approached the torch, watching as its fire danced wickedly in the storm. Without a second thought, the freezing temperatures taking its toll on the mare, Rainbow reached up and snatched the torch from the wall.

“Okay…” she breathed, feeling slight warmth from the torch. She gulped, looking around the building. “How the hay did I end up here? I didn’t see any…houses when we were climbing that stupid…”

At that moment, the storm fizzled and died, but only so much. The snow still fell, the wind still howled, but in that clarity of sight Rainbow Dash was finally able to take notice of her true surroundings. She nearly dropped the torch into the piles of snow building against her hooves.

The blizzard may have created a blank page covering the picture, but she could never forget her home. Ponyville, Sugarcube Corner to be precise. Even in the state it was in—near-toppled, broken and in shambles—she recognized the place she and her friends would enjoy early morning breakfast.

Her friends…

She spun around, flinging the torch’s light in almost every direction she could.

Dash tried to comprehend how she got to Ponyville, but she was still trying to find out what happened before she passed out. Where were her friends? Where was that human jerk that got another lucky shot on her?

Who the buck was that girl?

Why the buck was her name on every single banner in town?

Turning back to Sugarcube Corner, almost obliviously to it at first, Rainbow Dash clearly spotted the banner hanging limply against the remaining foundation of Pinkie Pie’s home. It read, barely visible and torn, “Rainbow Dash! Equestria’s Greatest Hero!” It wasn’t alone.

Rainbow Dash spun once more, spotting a new banner on every single house that was still standing. Her name was on every banner, praising her defeat over Ultron, torn apart in the winds of the deserted Ponyville. On any given day, Rainbow would’ve accepted the praise with a bright, knowing grin. Today, that confidence, that pride in herself seemed to completely fade away…leaving nothing but a husk of what she once was.

Where were the cheering crowds, the fillies and colts wanting her autograph, telling her how much they wanted to be like her when they grow up? Where the buck was everypony?

“Hello?!” she called again. No response. Rainbow Dash shivered. The storm continued.

That unnatural coldness from before returned to her lungs, bringing in a feeling of endless dread and misery that she couldn’t even hope to escape from. Every step she took, the bitter cold laced around her like serpents, the blizzard ready to return and suck her in. The whispers of the wind were already there, calling to her, gently talking to her at an uncomfortable distance.

“Rainbow Dash…”

“Come home to us...”

“Why did you—?”

A pinch of terror flashed across Dash’s facial features. Torch in hoof, Rainbow Dash took to the skies, escaping the voices that chilled her straight to the heart and soul. The snow blinded her, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get away from it all, find somewhere safe. Wherever she could hear her own thoughts again.

She found the nearest hill in a break of the storm and immediately landed on it, skidding several feet due to the snow. Taking a few moments to compose herself, Dash held the torch tightly in her right hoof, watching her breaths freeze in the chilling temperature.

Rainbow spun around and witnessed the ghost town that used to be Ponyville. It remained unmoved, morphed with the snowy wasteland surrounding it. The flames danced in her peripheral vision, but she never did break eye contact so easily. The haunting images of her name written over and over again assaulted her mind, the cries, the chanting, just whispers of what used to be Ponyville’s populace, now nothing but a memory.

“Where the hay am I?”

“Home.”

Turning about, facing whatever voice she heard in her ear, Rainbow Dash came face to face with reality, finally noticing her own home lying in a crushed heap, demolished against the might of gravity and the durability of the earth.

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “No,” she sternly declared, approaching the rubble with a forced frown, daring herself not to quiver. “No, no, this isn’t happening. This can’t be real. How can my home be…?”

The first step into what remained. Dash still held the torch, its fire illuminating the area what the snow hadn’t covered. She rummaged through the wreckage, noticing a broken trophy, her name written and colored in gold. She frowned even worse, pushing through and searching for anything else, still trying to make sense of everything.

It was at that moment did she see the shell.

And a horrible wave of terror washed over her heart.

Completely disregarding the torch, Rainbow Dash flew to the shell, her mind screaming over and over again, crying out for her eyes to deceive, for her mind to be playing cruel tricks on her. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no!” she panicked, landing roughly and gently reaching out to the empty shell fused with the rubble.

The tortoise shell.

Her hooves gently picked up the shell, shaking, but not from the coolness of the snowstorm. Bringing up for closer inspection, her hind legs gave out, her rump slamming into the rubble of was once her own house. Tears built at the ridges of her eyes, her lower lip quivering, teeth biting it to stop the motions.

And then she screamed, screamed for Tank to come out. He never did.

As if all the life was drained from her eyes, Dash let one tear slip down her face, the liquid caressing her cheek before she quickly wiped it clean. Placing the shell back where she found it, the mare suddenly noticed a single, blue object sticking out from the rubble. Seemingly lost, not a destination or task to follow, Dash slowly approached the object.

The closer she got, the more she realized how the object resembled something strikingly familiar, terrifyingly accurate. It was a hoof. A sky blue hoof. Slowly and cautiously, she tossed the rubble aside and nearly fell back in horror.

Pure, unfathomable horror.

She backed away, staring into the face of death. Staring into the face of herself. Dead.

“W-wha…?” she whispered, the only voice in the blizzard.

For several seconds, Rainbow Dash could only breathe and stare, her foggy breath clouding her vision. It was at that moment did Dash realize that nothing around her could have been real. Ponyville wasn’t in shambles, Tank wasn’t…dead, and she certainly wasn’t, either. It had to be some kind of sick, twisted dream. Maybe that red-eyed girl had something to do with it, or maybe not.

Or maybe she was just plain losing her mind.

Or maybe it was a vision or something. Rainbow wasn’t into the whole “vision quest” ideas that Twilight had mentioned on occasion when she still had the Golden Oak Library, back when her friend was just an egghead librarian. She hadn’t paid much attention when Twilight went into full detail on what her books had described, how a pony can visibly see what their future had in store for them in a dream-like scenario. She really wished she had paid more attention back then.

But that only left more questions than answers. Was this it? Was this her destiny? Lying dead, alone, forgotten in the rubble of her home? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She was Rainbow Dash! She wasn’t supposed to die like…this!

Yeah. Definitely losing her mind.

Backing away slowly, Rainbow Dash took notice of the world around her. It changed in that moment of desolate loneliness. The storm died down, revealing a world torn to shreds. Her house joined it all, destruction and desolation as far as her eye could see. Twisted in shadow, the fog of war covered Equestria in a blanket of darkness, of pure, bitter winter. Never to end.

“What happened?” she gasped and slowly backed away, stepping onto something cracking beneath her hoof.

She expected another piece of rubble from what remained of her home, maybe a picture of her and her dad that she kept around the living room, something that held a symbolic meaning to her. When Dash lifted up her back hoof, never did she expect to see the Captain’s shield…

Shattered to a hundred pieces.

That weapon that held the Avengers together, the defense and the attack for the team’s bravest, most noble soldier lied broken. Alone. Forgotten.

Desolate. As the world around it.

Speechless and stunned, Rainbow Dash was too fixated with the torn pieces of Captain America’s shield that she almost completely disregarded the items resting atop piles of her house’s rubble. Turning aside, the mare spotted Thor’s hammer resting at the peak of the rubble, the handle broken off and a large crack going down the base of Mjølnir.

It wasn’t alone. Joining the Captain’s shield and the God of Thunder’s weapon of might, Iron Man’s helmet sat amongst the pile of debris, a large gash going down its right eye socket. Rainbow Dash shut her eyes, forcing the tears to stay in, forcing herself to remain strong, convince herself that nothing was real. She was dreaming. She had to be! She had…

“Rainbow…”

The voice was familiar, as was the weight and tone. Rainbow opened her eyes, slowly looking up to witness Steve Rogers standing in front of her.

His uniform was torn, the star in the center of his chest coated with blood, mirroring his face and eyes. All bloodshot. Empty and alone. Backing away only slightly, Rainbow tilted her head to the side, an eyebrow curiously rising.

“Cap?” she began, then was quickly silenced.

“You weren’t there when he came, Rainbow Dash,” Steve clarified, earning her interests and more noticeably, her confusion. He said, “You weren’t there when Ultron came to lay waste to everypony and everything. You abandoned your friends, your country, everything. All because you were too afraid to fight back.”

Rainbow Dash shook her head, refusing to believe a word of what Steve was telling her. “No,” she muttered. “No, you’re wrong. I would never abandon my friends, just like they would never abandon me!”

“You seemed so quick to get away from them the first chance you got,” Steve shot back, silencing the mare in front of him. As the snow pierced his swollen and bloody skin, the First Avenger narrowed his stare on the pony, causing her to back down slowly but surely.

He said, “Going after Ultron, leaving everything behind you…possibly to die in the process…for what? To just prove a point? To show that you’re strong enough to go against him despite all the warnings? A soldier knows when the fight is unwinnable, and what you did on your own…was an impossible task.”

Dash shook her head more spastically, uncontrolled, feeling every impact of Steve’s words hit her and wear her down with each strike. She looked around, noticing the bloody bodies of the rest of the Avengers surround her, with them were her friends, bloody and beaten. The tears weld up in her eyes after seeing her closest friends stare at her with eyes so dull, so lifeless and gray. Dead.

“You just had to prove something, didn’t you?” Tony Stark mumbled, his Iron Man suit barely clinging to his body. Dash slowly turned to him, and then quickly turned away as another voice assaulted her withering form.

“Where were you, Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked, her voice shivering against the snow painting her blood-soaked coat. Seeing her closest friend in the state she was in, begging and crying out to her almost tipped Dash over the edge, but she held on. Held on to whatever sort of willpower she had remaining.

She turned to the next voice, to the next man. “I know where she was,” Clint Barton said, staring off to Dash’s dead body crumbled in the rubble.

All at once, her friends and the Avengers cried out to her with voices lost in malice and pain. Rainbow Dash covered her ears and shut her eyes as the voices of her dead friends screamed out to her. The crying and the shouting mixed together, creating a horrible combination that assaulted the mare’s mind until it was close to shattering.

“How do you think your parents would feel?” Twilight’s voice rang.

“She never cared fer anypony in her entire life!” Applejack screamed. “All she ever cared about was herself! Not her friends, not the ones that tried so hard ta reach out ta her! She only cared fer herself…an’ her pride!”

“Look who suffers from your decisions. Do you see how important you are now?” Doctor Banner managed to say amongst the cries.

“Your family? Your friends? Did you ever once stop and think about the consequences of your actions?!”

“Stop!” Rainbow Dash cried, eyes still shut tight, ears no longer covered. She planted her hooves into the rubble, not even caring that she was crying openly. “I’m sorry, okay?! Is that what you wanted? An apology?! You got it! You want more?! I’m an idiot! I’m stupid! I made a mistake and I’m sorry! Just please…STOP!”

They stopped.

They actually stopped.

Finally, Rainbow Dash opened her eyes, seeing herself once more alone in the snowstorm. The voices had indeed stopped, yet the mark they left was enough for Dash to realize just how dire her mistake was. Yes, she meant every word. She was an idiot; she made a mistake and was sorry. Now she could wake up and tell her friends just how much she was sorry.

Now she could wake up.

Wake up…

…Come on. Now! Wake up!

“No.”

And a single, recognizable voice from behind was all it took for Rainbow Dash to completely fall apart. She knew that voice anywhere. How could she ever forget it? Rainbow turned around to stare into her own eyes. Herself. What was buried.

What was supposed to be dead.

Rainbow Dash gulped nervously, slowly exhaling as the bloody version of herself studied her with eyes almost lifeless, just as were the rest of her friends. She soon spoke out in a voice so lost that even Rainbow couldn’t believe it was herself speaking for a second.

Despite it all, the bloody Dash said, “Is this how it was supposed to end? Us…lying in fear in our home as the world burned?”

Rainbow quickly stole a glance over to Tank’s empty shell.

“You tell me…” Rainbow Dash turned back, staring intently at the magenta eyes, her own, and how they held absolutely no life in them, “…how we abandoned everything.”

She was right. She was right. Be it her own foolish decisions or her overpowered fear taking hold, ponies suffered either way. Her friends would lose her, and Ultron would attack and destroy everything she knew and loved. No matter what turn she would take, no matter what decision she made, ponies suffered. Ponies suffered because they depended on her.

Rainbow gave up. She fell and cried right on top of the Captain’s broken shield. She didn’t care if it was real or not, the truth behind it was real enough for her to finally see clearly. Fear had made her lose sight of who she was, what she stood for. When the time she was dreading finally came…she abandoned it all.

The pony that stood for loyalty even in the darkest times abandoned herself.

Author's Note:

Her fear.

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