> Here and Gone
>  by TakaBlueMoon
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> Prologue
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    So this is what it's like after you die. At least, I assumed I was dead at the time. I saw all the telltale signs; the light at the end of the tunnel, the indescribable brightness, and I even thought I saw Him for a second. Then again, these are all things I've heard from other people about what happens when you bite the dust, so I could just be dreaming this whole thing up. Seriously, dying can't be this cliche. After my life, that would be so lame and anti-climactic. Not nearly the right level of "Awesome" for me. Maybe some fireworks and fans yelling my name would liven the whole death thing up a bit. Or would that kind of defeat the purpose?

    Either way, I had never felt so relaxed in my whole life. Ok, so maybe I spent most of my life at daredevil speeds with enough adrenaline in my blood to pull an ursa major out of hibernation. Maybe the most relaxed I ever got was in the brief naps I took between weather detail and practicing my flying. Even so, the lack of tension would have been astounding if I wasn't so at ease. It felt like my body wasn't moving at all, even for things like breathing. Ok, have you ever heard a sound at night and tensed up, then realized it was just you disturbing the sheets when you moved or something stupid like that? This was like the moment right after you calmed down, but more relaxed, and it didn't go away. Like the feeling when you let yourself free fall from hundreds of feet up and let the air blow your mane back before you have to pull up. And of course, that was just the physical part of it.

    All the things that normally grated on my nerves or made me really lose my mind just didn't seem to matter anymore. I should have been confused, or scared, or angry, or at the very least sad, but everything that was going on just seemed so bland and insignificant. It was like I never had any aspirations or dreams, so the fact that I wouldn't live to achieve any of those goals felt like just something that I read in an old history book somewhere and promptly forgot. The Wonderbolts was just a name now, the sonic rainboom reminded me of a cheap firecracker, and the elements of harmony were nothing more to me than a couple of the plastic toys at the bottom of a box of cereal.

    Then suddenly, it all started to slip away. Well, not ALL of it. What I mean is that all that warm, welcoming relaxation slipped away as the whole world seemed to dim. The pure, heavenly, beckoning white was slowly turning grayer and bleaker while I could nothing but stare. If I had a body, it sure wasn't working as I willed my eyes to close, or my body to turn away, or something. I felt all the tension returning to my paralyzed (or inexistant, there was no way to tell) body, and after such a blissful experience, the pressure now made it feel like I was trapped in a thick, infinite volume of water that was crushing me from every direction. I felt hopelessly imprisoned, and the panic and anxiety were beginning to set in, growing by the second until I found myself in sheer terror of...well pretty much every emotion that had escaped me just a short while ago.

    But the strangest thing was that all the detachment I felt from my memories and dreams weren't returning with the stress. I could still "remember" most of the events from my life, but it was as if they were all just images from a movie. I bad movie where you can't relate or sympathize with the main character at all. Everyone looked unfamiliar, like just another citizen on the street, and all the words were still there, but I couldn't understand any of them anymore. They were just strange noises accompanied by mysterious facial expressions and gestures that no longer held any meaning to me. Like what were these things from her memories doing when they shook their legs in front of them? It must have meant something since it was in so many of these images. But most importantly, all the emotions from my memories had scattered into nothingness as well. It was like being read a story in another language that has literally nothing in common with your own.

    Just as all the light disappeared and I thought I would be completely lost to the insanity brought on by such intense anxiety, I started to see light again. It was only a bit, and it hurt my eyes, which caused me to clench them tightly. It took a few seconds to finally realize that I had regained control of my body! I wasn't a prisoner trapped inside myself anymore! I kept my eyes closed, but cautiously tested my limbs. They didn't feel like mine, but when I willed something to move, it did. It was more clumsy and uncoordinated than I wanted, but I finally felt like I might be waking up and becoming myself again...whoever that was.

    All at once I heard strange noises from all around me, quickly approaching and surrounding me. My muscles tensed and I started to feel that panic creep back, though nowhere near as intense. It still hurt, but I knew that I had to open my eyes to see what kind of threat I was dealing with. Slowly and steadily, I forced my eyes open, straining against the brightness that was trying its hardest to make sure I kept them closed. Luckily, the pain slowly ebbed away and my vision started clearing. What I saw, however was enough to make me wish I had given up and hidden behind the censor my eyes afforded me.

    The surrounding was almost entirely white, and I was, in fact, surrounded by six creatures, all of them making those same strange noises. And as my eyes jolted the rest of the way open in fear, the noise quickly became too loud for me to handle. The sights, the smells, the sounds, were all to much for my already confused and terrified brain to take. I felt my mouth open and my own sound ripped through my throat, driven by an instinct telling me to get as far away from this place as I could.
> Innocent Fun
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    I sat and stared out the window as a bird, a small finch this time, flew by for what felt like the hundredth time. Behind me, various machines beeped and flashed letting me and the others know that Rainbow Dash was still alive after the worst accident she'd been involved in to date. It was the only thing besides the sun that indicated any passage of time at all, and I'd started to memorize its steady pace. All six of us seemed to be completely motionless (Rainbow Dash for obvious reasons) as we sat waiting for something to happen. I was in constant fear of hearing that rhythmic beeping suddenly go flat, droning that hideous, soul crushing tone.

    Everyone in our group of friends was distraught by the severity of the situation, but I don't think any of the others could have felt the same as I did. I always had a hard time making friends, and Rainbow had been the first, all the way back in flight school. I still thought of Rainbow as my closest friends after all these years, and seeing her like this was bringing me dangerously close to a breakdown. I managed to keep it together (just barely), convincing myself that she was going to wake up at any second and would need her friends to be collected, not  bawling their eyes out in hysterics.

    A few days ago, she had burst into my home a little after noon panting like crazy and shouting like crazy while wearing a grin that made one of Twilight's episodes seem like just a bit of over excitement. Through her incredibly broken language and in between all the "awesomes" and "sooo cools," I managed to make out a few key phrases; something about an ingenious new idea that would "rocket me into the Wonderbolts for sure!" And at the very last second before she blasted out of my house, followed by a hurricane force wind, she shouted a place and time over her shoulder to me. Luckily, she gave me just enough time to...tidy up all the things she left scattered around the place in her rush to leave..

    When I got to our picnic spot at around two, I could see some of the others were gathered there as well. Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity were already waiting and wearing the same look of confusion that was probably showing on my face, which left only Rainbow and Pinkie nowhere in sight. Then we could start whatever was so exciting. I was silently hoping that maybe Rainbow Dash had found some particularly nice flowers, or a chipmunk in need of a home. We didn't have to wait long before Rainbow Dash came flying across the field towards us with Pinkie hopping behind her, somehow able to keep up with an excited, athletic pegasus.

    Twilight was the first to speak after some pleasantries, which left the day starting out like any other day of adventure for us.

    "Ok, we're all here now. Can you explain why you were in such a hurry that you couldn't help fix the mess you made in my library as you were whipping out of there?" So I guess I wasn't the only one who felt the after effects of Rainbow's sporadic visit.

    "Heh, sorry about that everyone," she said quickly before finally telling us what was happening. "But this is it! I've finally thought of exactly the stunt that will show the Wonderbolts how much they've been missing out without me on the team! It's the single most awesome thing I've thought of, EVER! Pure genius!" She was about to keep going, but Applejack took the opportunity to stuff a hoof in her mouth just long enough to ask her what the trick was. Rainbow pulled Applejack's hoof out of her mouth with a pop, and I noticed Rarity cringe and struggle not to be sick out of the corner of my eye.

    "You're soo not gonna believe it!" she giggled, almost as cheerful as a colorful Pinkie Pie. Almost.

    The whole explanation was kind of hard to understand, but it was easy to imagine that it was going to be quite dangerous. Put simply, if she pulled of a Sonic Rainboom while going upward just as she went through a storm cloud, it would pull a lot of the black mass behind her. Adding a spin the that would cause the clouds the spin around the funnel of air made by the Sonic Rainboom, which would pull more of the cloud into the pillar she'd create and build up electricity in it. The end result would be what looked like a black cloud volcano erupting in a rainbow with lightning streaking off of the sides in all directions. All I could think about was how it sounded like a bit too much storm and lightning were involved, but there was one other thing that confused me.

    "Umm...that sounds really...'exciting' and all, Rainbow Dash, but...um...I can't see any dark clouds...but that's ok, i know how excited you were, so..."

    "I already got it covered Fluttershy! I didn't call you all here at two for no reason. There's a storm scheduled here to let off some of the extra electricity that's building up. Oh, and here they come with the clouds!" And there, heading towards us from the West, I could see dark, ominous clouds being pushed by a few weather patrol pegasi. Just the look of it made me want to find shelter and hide with some warm cocoa until it disappeared. With little more than a nod, Rainbow Dash was off, warming up while the clouds started to move over our heads.

    The rain started suddenly, and luckily there were enough umbrellas to go around. It didn't seem to affect Rainbow at all as she continued building speed to get herself ready for what was coming up. She pulled straight up, staring directly at the storm cloud that was now threatening to block out the sky. I could already see she was getting close to breaking the sound barrier and colors were starting to form ahead of her outstretched hooves. Only a few hundred feet to go before she hit the cloud head on. Now a hundred feet, and quickly closing. Fifty feet. Twenty feet.

    And just as I thought she would be swallowed up by the cloud, a loud boom echoed across the sky and a rainbow shot out, covering the bottoms of the storm clouds before vanishing. A pillar started to form around where she'd enter, swirling upward with just the smallest portion of her hooves visible above the swirling vortex. And in a flash, she reached even higher speeds, hurtling upward and finally escaping the cloud, leaving a prismatic trail reaching up from the raging storm. She seemed to be going a little too high to me, but a few loud, successive booms made me jump and forget all about how high she was. Just as she explained, the built up electricity fired out the sides, creating a brilliant light show with a fierce, intimidating cylinder of dark clouds at its center. And that's when it all went wrong.

    I looked up towards where I'd last seen Rainbow, but she wasn't anywhere to be found. As I scanned the sky, my eyes caught a faint glimmer of color, and my eyes pulled up to meet it. 'Too high,' I thought frantically. 'That is way, way too high.' I was never a great flier, but I was a decent student. I remember distinctly the lessons about high altitude flying and the effects of a shortage of oxygen on a body. And in this lesson, Dash was the case study. At that altitude, the air would have been so thin that you'd have to be supplied with almost all of your oxygen through artificial means. Not to mention how the temperature would have dropped to subzero at that height.

    She was falling. From that high up, it would take quite a while to actually make it back into breathable air. The lesson echoed in my head as I tried to think of what to do. 'Every minute your body is without oxygen, your chances of surviving are cut in half.' At this rate, her chances would be in the single digits. I could hear the panic in everyone's voices as we were helpless to help her out of this situation. She was still too far out of Twilight's range, and even if I was a decent flier, attempting to fly up to her would only end in one of two ways: being struck by lightning, or suffering the same effects from lack of oxygen.

    She was finally within Twilight's range, though a transportation spell wouldn't slow her down, just change her location. A quick look to Twilight made it clear what to do. A quick spel brought her fairly close to the ground, but gave me enough time and room to safely catch her on my back and fly her gently to the ground. It moved pretty quickly after that with Applejack running to get hospital staff to the seen, Rarity giving CPR to try and getting her breathing, and the EMTs finally taking her away at full speed in the direction of the hospital. That left us here, a few days later still hoping for some response from her other than slow, steady breathing. Had any of us gone back home? I wasn't sure. In fact, I couldn't remember whether or not I had left that room, since the nursing staff was usually kind enough to bring us food and blankets. It was all a blur. But back to the window.

    A lone cloud slowly drifted by, and as it finally reached one of the far off mountains, there was a shuffling sound behind me. I turned my head indifferently, expecting the cause to simply be one of the others shifting a bit to get as comfortable as one could get in a state of emotional turmoil. I tensed and my heart jumped when I witnessed the sheets on the hospital bed slowly twist and morph over the body that seemed to be awakening underneath them. For the first time in days, the sound of the beeping machines had been drowned out, and the sound of my own heart beating violently and quickly was the cause.

    "Someone get the nurse! She's waking up!"

    The others must have noticed when I did, as Twilight called out to all of us in her typical leader manner. I saw Rainbow tense at the sudden break in silence, and a nurse was in the room in mere secondsas the machines began to beep progressively faster. Six of us, five friends and one hospital staff member, gathered anxiously around the body that was stirring for the first time since she'd been admitted. Her eyes slowly began to open, adjusting to the light, and I could feel everyone's excitement in the air. The amount of noise from everyone, when compared to the quietness of just a few minutes ago, was deafening, but the reaction from the pony in the bed when she finally saw us was something truly astounding.

    I saw a look of fear in Rainbow's eyes, which alone was enough to change my excitement to confusion. Rainbow Dash was almost never afraid of anything, especially not her own friends. In fact, the Young Fliers Competition was the most scared I'd ever seen her, but this was on another level entirely. This was the look characters in horror movies had in the very last moments before they were killed by whatever was hunting them. My eyes changed from utter happiness to worry at about the same time her mouth was opening, and I only had an instant to consider everything before she let out a loud, ear-piercing scream, sending us all backwards from the bed in shock.

    This couldn't be the Rainbow Dash I remembered. I looked back and forth to the others, all the while observing Rainbow's uncharacteristic and frantic behavior. Her limbs and body flailed around, seemingly without purpose, becoming a danger to herself and all the life saving equipment in her panic. These weren't the coordinated movements of "the best flier in Equestria," and they certainly couldn't be dictated by an athlete of her caliber. In retrospect, they could've been compared to the movements made by an emotionally distraught infant, just more exaggerated and with much more destructive power, give  her much larger, toned muscles from years of training and practice.

    Before I could register everything that was happening, a team of hospital workers were forcing me and the others out of the room with almost no explanation. The last image I saw of Rainbow then was her being restrained by the other staff members and given an injection of some kind. I assumed it was some form of sedative, as I didn't see the effect, but I had done the same to animals in danger of harming themselves and others in panic. Now in the waiting room, we were told that doctors were currently examining Rainbow to diagnose the problem, but until then, we had to stay in the waiting room wondering what was happening to our friend.

    When a doctor finally called us hours later, the five of us rushed to hear what news he had to bring. I could feel my heart beat painfully against my ribs as we waited for him to speak. The others seemed equally nervous about what the doctor befor us was about to say regarding our dear friend. We waited on the tips of our hooves, and when he finally looked up from his clipboard at all of us, his frown became clearly visible. I heard some gasps from the others and braced myself for awful, traumatic news.

    "She's alive and physically healthy, but..." I felt a small touch of relief as he paused, trying to bring himself to tell us. It was small, but we all heard that terrible word that kept us from celebrating. What came after "but" would be the most important and terrifying part of the message, and when he finally composed himself he spoke again.

    "She's suffered some serious brain damage." as much as I had braced myself, I (and I could tell the others too) lost all my breath as soon as this bombshell he delivered finally registered. Brain damage. My mind instantly flashed to an image of Rainbow in a wheelchair, living on support and unable to take care of herself. I had forgotten for a moment that we had just seen her thrashing about without reservation, so she couldn't be paralyzed. Regardless, tears poured from all our eyes, and sobs quietly escaped as we listened to the doctor's explanation of jus what this meant to her, and us.

    "We'll know more clearly after some more thorough tests, but it appears that the high altitude caused a lack of oxygen to her brain. They were able to get her breathing again pretty quickly thanks to your quick thinking and action, but not before the lack of oxygen affected her brain. None of the areas essential to life were permanently damaged, and we're all happy about that, but it's clear she's not herself.

    Twilight was the first to speak up, though very quietly, to ask what all of us wanted to. "What exactly do you mean?"

    "We'll know for certain in a few days, but it appears as though the connections and associations she's made throughout her life don't exist in her brain anymore. Quite quickly we learned that she can't understand speech anymore. She can still hear the sounds and reacts, but they seem to have no meaning for her beyond strange noises. In addition, her hoof-eye coordination seems to have completely lost as well. Any connection between her brain and body parts seems to have been wiped out, and she's learning how to control herself all over again. Finally..." We could hear his hesitation, though with all the terrible news he was spilling onto us, I couldn't imagine what information could be even worse.

    "Finally, it appears that any social connections she had to others has been forgotten as well." I didn't know I could hurt so bad without being physically tortured. "I used some pictures of friends and family out of desperation on my part," he admitted, "to see if she recognized any of you, but..." There's that disgusting word again. "As far as we can tell at this point...she can't recall her connection to any of you."

    I could see all of my friends growing hysterical, and I could understand why. Honestly, what could we do? Our friendship had gotten us through everything. Even saved the world! How could something so innocent and unintentional have taken away all that power when Nightmare Moon, and even Discord, couldn't keep us down? It all seemed like some diabolical scheme the world had hatched up to try to "foil us and take over Equestria." But this time it had worked, and there was no bad guy, no malevolent force that we could blame and fight against to fix it. It was just the world and it made me instantly nauseous.

    How could all of us recover after this? It was the last thing I thought before I couldn't take it anymore. I rushed to the nearest bathroom and lost my lunch in one of the empty stalls. I slumped down next to the cold porcelain, put my head in my hooves and sobbed, completely overwhelmed and defeated.
> A Little Help
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Falling into the darkness was much more welcoming this time around. Whatever I was attacked and restrained by in the few minutes I'd been awake couldn't do anything to me here. Not that I was sure where "here" was, but it wasn't there, and that was the most peace of mind I'd been able to feel since I came out of that paradise of white. My mind kept trying to replay some of my few memories, and I kept pushing those thoughts out, until I came to a pretty obvious and totally uncool realization. This place wasn't reality. I didn't want to, but I had a pretty strong feeling that I'd be forced back into the white room with all the strange creatures at some point, so I forced myself to remember and think about what happened when I came out of the darkness the first time.
    Alright, first was the the light; not as bright as the "I must be dead" light, but it was enough to hurt my eyes and keep me from opening them. After that, I could control myself, if anyone could call that control, really. It was more like I was saying "go," and my body was picking the when and where. Still, there was at least some connection, so I chalked that up as a plus. Those two moments, now that I was remembering, weren't all that bad, and I remembered actually being relieved once I felt parts of me moving and shifting. That was the point when I assumed I probably wasn't dead. Do I have to explain how good that tiny realization felt? Awesome, in case you were still unsure. Ok, so what was next?
    Oh, right...the sounds...
    Even away from it all in this...place (seriously, it's not like I was any surer than when I got there), I could feel some pressure at remembering this part. It was just one big garbled mess of noises I didn't know or understand wreaking havoc on my ears. There were high noises that hurt my ears and low noises that rumbled in m stomach. Some sounds seemed timed while others had no beat or order. Just thinking about it was causing my head to spin again, and I wasn't going to figure out anything from that mish-mash. I decided it was best to move on and try to glean something useful from the next memory.
    Those things standing over me. I can't say for sure what they were doing, but I remembered my instincts forcibly telling me that the situation couldn't be a good one. I tried to think about how I reacted, and I remembered the thrashing movements and the sound that I made. I remembered those creatures taking a quick step back at my reaction. I'm still not sure why I responded to everything that way (there seemed to be a lot of uncertainty for me, and i didn't like it) , but I seemed to cause them to hesitate, so I silently thanked my instinct and decided I should keep listening to it in the future.
    But then even more of them were on me before I could even take a second to relax, and they were all the same color. Or they all wore the same color. These ones were slightly bigger than the ones around when I woke up, and nothing I was doing seemed to scare them off. They just kept pinning my body and yelling things to each other through all the chaos. At least I was able to scare the smaller ones, but these creatures were stronger than me (not much stronger! I managed to knock one out, that was a nice memory), and there were so many more of them. And then, in all the thrashing and yelling, I remembered a sharp pain, which obviously made me squirm and spasm even more.
    Well, for a little bit at least, because pretty soon after that, I started feeling tired. I should have been doing everything I could to get out of there, but I could feel my heart slowing, and all my movements became slow. It actually felt...comforting. I didn't really mind all those things around me anymore, and they seemed to be less forceful with me anyway. It was really strange to feel "safe" in that place surrounded by threats. My eyes started to feel heavy, and I fought a bit at first, but at some point, I must have decided that a little rest would actually be awesome, and I just let go. I figured I could really get into this sleeping thing. It seemed pretty great to me.
    And that brought me back got the void with basically none of the answers I had been looking for. I still had no ideas about the where, why, or how. Great. Totally uncool. I figured that since I had nothing to go off of, I could just stay in this place. At least here, I didn't have to worry about the ear-splitting noise or strange creatures attacking me the second I woke up. I was having a hard time finding any reason at all to go back to all that madness, if there was even a choice.
    I was about to let myself relax and let everything drift away when I suddenly felt a strong pull. But it wasn't physical, so pull isn't really a good word. Attraction? That sounds like it was an emotional force, and...well that wasn't it either. It seemed a little lame. Beckoning might be the best explanation. It's still not exactly the right way to describe it, but I came out of my relaxation to see where this feeling could be coming from...
    And there it was! I couldn't quite place it, but I could tell that I had seen it before. The top looked white and soft, while the bottom was strong and colorful. It was three jagged lines of color joined at one point at the bottom, and the whole thing had that beckoning glow. This was the first thing I saw that seemed familiar to me in the slightest, and I immediately wanted to be close to it. No, not just close. I wanted to be exactly where it was, in the same space. Close wasn't nearly close enough for me. That warmth and familiarity was like nothing I'd ever felt before (as far as I could remember), and something about it just seemed so amazingly...awesome.
    As I got closer to it, I also realized that there were more of these things, all connected together and just pounding with some unbelievable power. There were six, including the one I saw first (which was by far the coolest!), and the closer I got, the more invincible I felt. They were feeding me, and I was drinking in the feeling of power. The distance between me and the objects drawing me in was so small now that I felt like I was basically inside the closest one, the one with the strongest pull (again, pull wasn't really it, but I can't explain it right).
    Then, as I felt I was a accepting it into my body, as a part of me, the others rapidly faded and the pulse disappeared, like I'd never felt it to begin with. But the one I contacted was still there, and I could feel it trying to remind me of something important. No words, no images, just emotion, and one was by far the most powerful and forceful; loyalty. To what I didn't know, but I knew that something needed me, and every bit of emotion I had screamed that I couldn't leave it hanging. Even if it meant facing the chaos and anxiety from earlier. I was determined and nothing could stop me from being there for...well, I decided I'd figure that out later.
    At that point, I let myself slip back towards the world I felt waiting for me just outside of my dreams. The noises were growing to just as loud as before I left, and the sight was no less intimidating than before. I could feel the pounding rhythm of my heart speed up, but something was different as I regained consciousness this time; I had something to protect. And I steeled myself for the task of finding and defending it.