//------------------------------//
// Ramen 
// Story: A World of Ramen 
// by TheMajorTechie 
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	"It all started on that fateful day... the skies were dark, foals were crying, and ramen streamed down the windows of civilians."

"...ramen?"

"Yes, ramen. I am telling you of the day when the world was ramen, am I not?"

The filly stared back at her mother with a blank face. She sometimes had to remind herself that her mother was a relative of a mare named Derpy.

"As I was saying..."





It came at first in strands, slowly growing larger and larger under our own unnoticing eyes. It wasn't until when the clouds began pouring down soup along with the ramen, when we finally noticed. We thought that world hunger had finally been defeated, with all the ramen that had fallen. But it was far from that.

The following days after the downpour, we slowly began to notice that various things around us seemed to be... ramenizing.

It started with small things that we cared little for, such as gravel. The tiny pebbles had become shriveled balls of dried ramen overnight, and the worn gravel-paved streets suddenly were found to be filled with crackling noises as carts crunched over the brittle ramen.

Next were the larger stones. The cobblestone roads in Canterlot were suddenly so filled with soaking ramen from the earlier storms that one would've thought that the roads were soup troughs.

Now, we didn't pay much mind to these, considering how many ponies quickly became accustomed to simply eating a nibble of the road as they trotted towards work. Unfortunately, it didn't stop at measly roads or heaps of gravel...

What came next was the aging brick buildings. Immediately, the urban infrastructure of many cities literally crumbled into dust in less than a minute. Ponies finally began to come to the reality that had dawned on their ignorant minds. The world was becoming ramen.

Manehattan had crumbled almost overnight. It's vast swaths of buildings reduced almost entirely to dusty heaps of dried noodles. But it didn't stop there. Canterlot fell afterwards, with the few remaining buildings, the castle included, standing mostly due to them being made of wood, metal, or some other material that hadn't been converted next.

The clouds fell from the sky the very next day, with Cloudsdale and similar sky-cities simply dropping like stones. Within minutes, what had once been vast sprawling cities of the air had been reduced to sickly heaps of pale yellow dust. Most of the pegasi were able to escape safely, Derpy included. The few who had been trapped within their cages of ramen simply ate their way out.





"What happened next?"

"I'm afraid that you may not be able to sleep tonight if I tell."

"Tell me! I wanna know!"

The mare shrugged, and continued the story.





What came next was no article of material, but it caused havoc nonetheless.

Pinkie--the Element of Laughter, went next. Well, not the mare specifically, but her sanity. Though many would likely say that she had lost said sanity years ago, they'd look back on this event and say that she had finally lost the final strings that held her in place.

The mare had simply snapped; her mind was lost to the oncoming swamp of ramen during the early morning. Pinkie never stood a chance... and neither did ponykind. Combined with her personality and abilities, the seemingly contagious ramen virus spread like wildfire, spreading through ponies until noninfecteds were outnumbered ten-to-one. The infected, under the rule of Pinkie's ramen-infested mind, waged war on the surviving areas of Equestria, swiftly cutting through the remaining wooden buildings with scythe-like appendages of ramen that sprouted from their backs. Noninfecteds were snatched up during the "ramen raids", and quickly turned over to the ramen side. For a while, New Canterlot stayed safe in it's secluded location atop the Canterlot Mountains, perpetually shielded with the power of all surviving unicorns, as well as the remaining Alicorns. An army of golems was erected under the order of Celestia herself, built primarily of a though steel alloy and coated with a thick layer of ceramic; the golems were sent out through the shield in attempt to contain the ramen.

Pinkie, sensing the danger that now lurked through the derelict alleys of the world of ramen, retaliated with viscous beasts of ropelike ramen, some standing up to three times the height of Celestia herself.

And let's not forget about the other races either. The changeling hives were quietly flushed out during the first ramen raids, leaving absolutely no survivors. The infecteds didn't want to risk the ramen being feasted upon by insects, after all. On the other hoof, the griffons fared far better. Their then-fledgling space program that had been shared by the Royal Sisters immediately went into turbo.

In just a little over a month, a large majority of the pony and griffon nations found themselves watching the carnage from the safety of the moon. Luna volunteered to leave with them, to supposedly ensure that "none would ever tremble in the face of the Nightmare".

Celestia stayed behind though, as the remaining griffon and pony population had banded together in New Canterlot. Dragons were hired at a very hefty price to patrol the area. Their tough scales proved to withstand many attacks, and many dragons appeared to be resistant to the ramen disease that circulated below the shields.

Very rarely, an infected or two would breach the shield, and said shield would immediately be swarmed by patrol golems, which were similar to the ones deployed earlier on, but were weaker. In turn, patrol golems gained hefty speed enhancements, as well as the ability to shapeshift, thanks to the few changelings who had been disguised since the wedding of Cadence and Shining Armor.

With a strong supply of virus samples, our brightest geneticists were able to create a vaccine for the noninfecteds. Being a virus, however, meant that infecteds were out of luck for any possibility of a cure.

As soon as every pony and griffon were properly vaccinated, Equestria went to war. Building upon the structure of the "noodle scythes" of the infecteds, Equestria retaliated against the infecteds with their own forces.

Just when it seemed that the tables had turned for the better, Pinkie once again retaliated against Equestrian forces.