//------------------------------//
// The Brave New World 
// Story: Heat Death 
// by ScottTrek 
//------------------------------//

Noctune groaned, her eyes screwed shut. Her stomach was  growling in pain. Something moved close to her.

"Noc are you okay?  

She couldn't understand. What was happening?  Her body was shaking. How could she be even thinking? And what was that noise?

"Noc! Please say something! NOC!"

Her eyes shot open. Her brother stood over her. Eyes pleading. Nocturne choked and found her words. "You're Talking?!" 

Umbra blinked. Realisation sinking in. Nocturnes stomach twitched with pain again. And with it came a loud gurgle. With his new voice Umbra spoke. "And... I think you're hungry sis?"

They stared at each other before a long moment. Then with creak of impossibly old metal light flooded their compartment. They blinked as Ember Glow reached inside and gently helped them to their feet. On the ground outside Aurora, at least they thought it was her, sat staring into the light. The figure looked like Aurora but had a single lightly furred body.  The two children followed her gaze and gasped.

Grass. Sunlight. Fresh air.

They had never seen the real thing. 

A rolling hillside stretched down before them. Grassy hillocks eventually giving way to a thick forest of lush trees. they sky was brilliantly blue and in the distance small birds wheeled and danced.

As they stared one of the grassy hillocks trembled and moved.  And from it emerged Forge. Or at least his Mini-body. And with a happy bleep bloop he started walking his way towards them.

Forge had been waiting for them. He had been waiting a long time. They had slept for so long, but now within the ancient wreck hundreds upon hundreds of ponies were waking up. They had slumbered across millennia, a power beyond anything that had ever existed before had allowed them to sleep while a whole new universe was reborn. But now that power had faded. And it was time to wake up.

She had given him a spark of that same power as well. So her could watch over them and when the time came, introduce them to this strange new world. She had changed him as well, different from the machine that had betrayed them. On that day, at the end, Twilight had gambled that something inside him was still worth saving. That in the darkest hour he would stand by no longer, reach out and pluck the people he had come to call friends..no...family from the exploding Valkyrie. 

She had taken that part of him end let it flourish. He would watch, protect, and at at least at first guide them as Twilight had He didn't know how long he had. But as he more and more ponies, shrieking with excitement rolled out into the light he knew it didn't matter.

He could not wait to see where the next adventure would take them.