The train stopped, its whistle sounding off at the same time the conductor had announced our arrival. And in a mere day's travel, I had reminded myself just how important this place was to me, no matter how painful it might've been. Fiona had already made it off of the train. I was the one delaying.
I stood up strong, breathing in that cold morning air as I planted my hooves onto the station's stone floor, the train leaving for its next stop. Fiona was looking at me, waiting to be directed to the cemetery. Which was literally the last place I wanted to be at this moment.
"This will be good for the both of us," she told me. Correct, as far as I was concerned.
Before we had arrived, Fiona made it pretty clear to me that we needed to make amends with Vinyl, whether or not she would hear us from beyond the grave. Saying that this was more for our benefit than for Vinyl's. I personally don't think that talking to a grave was going to make me feel any better about her death, but at least I'd be able to get some things off my chest.
It was a little late in the day, but not many ponies were out and about to watch us trot to the graveyard. But when we got there, the gate was locked from the inside. Which wasn't a problem for a Pegasus, but for me, a magic-less Unicorn? I wasn't getting in anytime soon.
"Wait here," Fiona said, flying over the fence. She searched and found a fairly sharp rock. And with it, Fiona broke the lock on the gate in on itself, all that she had left to do was rip it apart with very little strength.
"How do you know Vinyl again?" I asked her, stepping through the gate.
"I was part of a team with her once," Fiona began, "we, Vinyl, Octavia and I, all became fighters around the same time. We also knew each other back when we were kids. But when high school started, I got separated from them because of our difference in talent."
"Instruments?"
"More or less," Fiona answered. "I always wanted to be a musician like them, but I never had a nack for that field." The way she talked reminded me of Vinyl so much. The way she held herself, the way she walked even reminded me of her. I'm sure that if I ever met the other one, Octavia, I'd find something similar in them all. "But while I tried so hard to become like them, Vinyl didn't want that. She always told me to be different than them, to follow my talent, even if I didn't want it."
"You didn't want your talent?"
"I know it sounds wrong, but, when your only friends are in the sky and you're left alone on the ground, you start to long for something to connect you again," I had nothing to say to that. I never knew a pony who didn't want their own talent. I chose to not have friends, and that's what always made me appreciate my talent more than anything. But now, I couldn't even use my talent. So what does that say about me?
"But you did finally find that connection, didn't you?"
"Yes, we did," Fiona said as we stopped in front of a small tombstone. "But, it was also the thing that tore us apart again."
"Fighting," I said, looking down at the grave. It had her full name, Vinyl Tiberius Scratch, her time of birth to her death. She was twenty-eight when her life ended. And it even had a quote just below that. "Victory tastes best with a little bit of music..." I read out loud. Tears started to fall from my eyes as I laughed a little bit. She was always saying things to lighten the mood, and even after death, she still tried.
"I'm sorry, Vinyl," I started, trying to hold back the emotion in my voice, "I wish I stopped you from accepting that fight. I wish I had done more to help you, and kept my promise, but in the end; I had to let you go." Fiona was being patient with me, allowing me some time to stand and be here, glad to be sad that a friend of mine had passed on. I bumped Vinyl's grave with the bare end of my hoof. Just one last show of respect for the pony who once doubted me, but ended up believing in me. "I'm going to go find the other's," I told Fiona, "and make amends with them too."
"Sounds like the right thing to do," she agreed.
"Do you want to come with?"
"Not yet, I have a few things I need to tell Tiberius first, I'll catch up," she said. I tapped her with a light punch and smiled before trotting off to knuckle brick corner. I glanced back to Fiona, who now sat in front of the grave with a drooping head. Tears fell from her face as she stuttered quietly in the empty graveyard.
They, were real friends.
There was a bit of me that felt hollow with Vinyl gone, like a hole that could never be filled again. Maybe one day I'd find a way to fill that void. But for now, I wanted to repair whatever was left of my other friends.
Ha, that's if I still have the right to call them that anymore.
I knew Ponyville so well, it surprised me how quickly I made it to the bar. And as I approached, the open sign was shut off, but the lights on the inside were still lit. Soarin was in there most likely. But I guess if I was going to start somewhere, it would be with him. I cracked the door open and saw him cleaning up what looked like a junkyard. As if the building had been flipped over by an earthquake. Tables and chairs broken into pieces, glass shattered everywhere. About the only thing untouched was the cider behind the counter. No pony liked their drink ruined, not even angry drunks. But even this mess looked like a lot more than just a little bar fight. I stepped in, slowly, and the door's bell rang overhead.
"We're closed," Soarin shouted without looking at me, "can't you read?"
"Well," I started, a smile growing across my face as I went further in, "I kinda lost that ability after a chunk of my horn got knocked off."
"How ironic, sounds like somepony that I used to know," he said, continuing on with his sweeping.
"Say," I snickered, "do you have any job openings?"
"Maybe, why?" he asked as he finally looked at me.
"Because I'm short on money and I need to pay for a few glasses that I broke," Soarin went wide eyed as he saw me, not even taking a moment to stop before he sprinted and caught hold of me with a hug. I was taken off guard, that had never crossed my mind that Soarin was this heavy. Yet, I hugged back as he tightened his hooves around me.
Wow, he's strong, I felt my face burn red as he pulled away.
"It's so good to see you again!" Soarin said, hugging me one more time before picking up the pace on his cleaning. "How have you been?"
"Fine," I said as I started to notice his injured wing in a cast and a black right eye. "What happened to you?" Soarin raised an eyebrow before looking at himself in the mirror, snorting as he remembered.
"Oh yeah, you should've been here, I kicked everybody out."
"You what?" I questioned.
"Yeah, after; you know what, I started to see you and the others less and less before it was just me here. And because you guys couldn't enter the tournament, the Knightmares won and everypony in here was celebrating that they now had a fighting chance with Vinyl gone. And I kept bottling up my emotions until, boom! I did this to the place."
That explains the mess. Finding a little bit of blood here and there, teeth scattered in the corners of the room.
"Luckily, Nightmare Moon wasn't around, so I only had to put two of her Knight mare's in the hospital last night. And because I kicked everyone's flanks and sent them out crying, I'm starting over fresh. New rules, new policies." I looked at the plaque of rules that use to be on the wall, it was broken in two and replaced with a brand new one that hadn't been written on yet. "I also wiped the board clean with the roster, as far as I'm concerned, no one's the champion anymore."
"Not even AJ?"
"Do you really think she'll have much trouble getting it back?" he asked me.
"No, probably not," I laughed. It was as if Vinyl had changed everything with her death. It actually helped me view it as more of a good thing instead of as a bad one. Life was still moving forward even with Vinyl gone. And I was glad for that. The door's bell rang again. It must be Fiona. But instead, it was four ponies stopping one right after another as they locked eyes with me.
"Twilight?" Abigail spoke slowly, Rare's jaw had dropped, and Pinkie was tearing up with me as Dash alone forced a frown. Dash stayed back as the other three galloped to me with questions to ask and hugs to give me. Eventually, Dash came up to me with a raised hoof, turning her head away from me.
"Good to have you back, I guess," Dash mumbled, bumping her hoof with mine.
"Stop acting cool, Dash, while the rest of us were bad mouthing Twi, you were the only one that was saying she'd be back!" Soarin called Dash out, and she turned away completely to hide her embarrassment. We all laughed at the different moods that were being created from sad to happy to hysterical to awkward. It was great to be back. And after we were all done with the reuniting, we helped Soarin clean up the rest of the bar, before sitting down to a few cool ciders. Everyone had questions for me just as much as I did for them.
Turns out that after I left the bar the day Vinyl died, they started another fight to which they were all formally kicked out of the Team Fighters Tournament. But by the time that they had reached the train station to stop me, I was already on my way to Canterlot. They told me that the funeral for Vinyl was short with hardly anypony there beside them, Soarin and Dr. Sombra to attend. They also told me that the killer was never found. And with only a letter and a knife at the crime scene, the guards ruled it out as just a hit and run and closed the case. The others, of course, investigated with what little they could do, turning up nothing as well.
"It's not like we could've done anything else for her, girls," I told them, taking the last swig of my drink. "We all thought it was going to be just another fight, not a 'winner takes all' match'," they all nodded solemnly to that.
"Still, I can't believe that she's gone," Rare voiced. I couldn't agree more.
"And it just doesn't feel like we're the Elements anymore," Pinkie said with her head resting on the table. She had stopped keeping her hair zany and goofy since I left. It had now straightened out and hung long almost down to her elbows. It was a sad look for her, and one that didn't fit her. But what she just said didn't fit either. We all went silent for while. None of us really knew what to say next. All we could do was make pointless conversation.
"Did you ever get that horn of your's fixed?" Abby asked, sitting backward on her chair.
"No, not really..." I began, explaining to them that I crashed with my brother and his family for about a month before I got into another fight again. Taking on about a dozen royal guards at once, getting my horn more messed up as a result. They all looked at me as if I was crazy. And they were probably right.
"I just wanted to fight," I said, "and that's really all I want to do now. I don't think Vinyl would want us to stop either."
"No kidding, Sherlock," Dash quipped.
"What I mean is that she would want us to remain as the Elements of Harmony,"
"Don't tell me you got indoctrinated into that peaceable bullshit," Dash squinted at me.
"Hardly," I corrected her, "I mean, this was probably the reason why she started this group in the first place,"
"Meaning?" Dash inquired.
"Meaning, each of us represents the Elements in some way. AJ, have you ever told a lie?"
"Only once, when I was little," Abby admitted.
"And Pinkie, haven't you always gone to the extreme to make somepony laugh or at least grin?"
"I would've never known if they could unless I tried," Pinkie answered with a smile.
"Alex, you've always put others happiness before your own, even if it meant giving up something that you yourself, loved. You're generous."
"I can name once or twice that I've thrown a fight or stopped sewing to see one of my sister's plays, but I'd hardly call it that, darling," Rare flipped her joyfully, trying to be modest about the compliment.
"And Dash, you've always been there for other ponies, even if you should've given up on them,"
"That's because I'm a decent friend, unlike you," Dash exaggerated her laugh, "I'm just kidding, Twi."
"But you're right, I guess that's why I'm lumped together with Magic and why Vinyl was Kindness. We all served a purpose in this team, ironic, huh? But regardless if that's how she intended it to be, I don't want to sit back and watch what Vinyl built crumble and die. I want to see how far we can take this, and become what Vinyl envisioned us to one day be, the best!" I had everypony excited or after that little speech. We were united under Vinyl still, even beyond her death.
But like always, just when I think I can rest easy, we all heard the door to the bar open with a bang. The bell above it came loose and rolled right to our table halfway into the bar. Nightmare Moon was here, marching an army of angry ponies right toward us. I think they were after Soarin. But after spotting me, Nightmare changed her course, stomping toward me and stood, demanding respect. She was towering over me for a slightly taller Unicorn, and glared, enmity surrounded her being like a never ending darkness of distaste and pride.
So, I stared into that abyss and glared back.
"What are you doing here, little pony?"