//------------------------------// // Nine // Story: Neon Dreams // by Bigwig6666 //------------------------------// “Five minutes, he said. I’m pretty sure that was fifteen minutes ago...” Twilight looked around in a disgruntled manner as she leant against a shop window, waiting for her not-so-anymore little dragon to hurry back to her. He’d said he was going to make sure everypony was ready for her, but was beginning to think he had gotten lost or distracted or something along the way. From across the street she saw a screen similar to those billboards she had seen when Neon had first revealed the world to her, only smaller and showing footage of her rescuer’s burnt out apartment. She looked around carefully before making to move over to it. Nopony around her gave her the time of the day, let alone any sideways glances or even seemed to care she was the fabled alicorn princess brought back to life as she waded through the sea of dull-eyed creatures going about their lives. Her wings shuffled uncomfortably as she approached the screen. From what she gathered it was a news report, similar yet entirely different to ones in her time. Currently footage was showing the ‘violent’ and ‘deranged’ fugitive Neon Dream escaping justice in a stolen vehicle while her equally as dangerous droid battled security before it was subdued and dismantled. The princess winced as she saw the blood flecks on the ground, picked up by the crisp and clean camera footage, and realised how much she owed Neon Dream her life. She surmised that whoever was in charge didn’t want word getting out that she was awake... or alive for that matter. ”That would explain why there isn’t any footage of me there, then,” she thought. She tapped the side of her head and tried to focus her thoughts in an attempt to desperately try to remember anything from before she woke up as the beginnings of rain dropped down around her. Thunder broke in the distance, rumbling over the city, signalling an incoming storm. She raised her wings above her in an attempt to shield herself form the rain as it began to fall heavy and fast. She tried as hard as she could to just think, but for all her might, all her skill that she’d shown in her journey to become a princess, she simply couldn’t remember anything from before she woke up. This caused her no end of discomfort, and forced her to stamp her hoof in irritation. She opened her eyes and hung her head as the images on the screen changed to show the run down outside of Sal’s apartment building. She felt terrible for her young friend, and hoped she was having more luck delivering that case for Lady Razor. “Hmph... Lady, indeed,” she snorted derisively, thinking about the audacity of that unnatural combination of metal and feathers. Rain dripped through her feathers and onto her nose, making her sneeze and sniffle. Who did Razor think she was to call Twilight’s ponies--her friends--worthless? A flash of anger crossed the princess’s expression, twisting her face into a dark sneer for a moment before turning back into her usual self. She let loose a disgruntled sigh and gave her head a small shake then looked around, refusing to give any more of her own time to that wretched and rude creature. She glanced around again, keeping an eye and an ear out in case Spike returned, and thought that regardless of whether she had subconsciously cast a spell of illusion around herself to avoid being seen, or if the Scrapheap was just as unfriendly as Manehattan was on a bad day, she was at least grateful the crowd surrounding her paid no heed to the alicorn standing in their midst. A gentle tapping against her leg made her blink and look down. She saw an ancient looking pony drenched to the bone with blacked out lenses for eyes poke at her leg with a short stick and give a crooked smile to the world, looking below where her head was, no doubt assuming she wasn’t a giant in comparison to him. “Watch where you’re going. Not like I can,” he croaked in laughter. His voice was hoarse and rough, and sounded as old as he looked. Twilight stepped side and said nothing as he shuffled past, his joke cracking the faintest smile cross her face. ”At least some ponies still have a sense of humour,” she thought as she saw the blind old pony shuffle through the crowd, continuously getting jostled and pushed about with no respect. Her smile rapidly faded and she had to hold herself back from interfering, thinking it unwise to draw attention to herself. ”What happened to Equestria? Nopony cares about each other...” It sickened and disheartened her to see what her home had become. Along the sides of the street many ponies were simply sitting in the rain, some with blank stares and emotionless expressions, some looking like they had just lost everything and were stewing in self pity, and some either asleep or--she gulped--worse. She tore her gaze away from the wretchedness of the Scrapheap inhabitants and looked upwards towards where the sky should have been, or tried to at least, as the bleak dreariness of the dull concrete buildings loomed above her, stretching for miles, not to mention the miasma created by exhaust fumes blotted out much of her view. Despite being a mare out of time and unwillingly thrust into this alien and miserable world, she couldn’t help but marvel at such ingenious creations like flying cars once again. Just like the mechanical arms Megacity Security forces had employed to hold their weaponry, these cars and vans as Neon had called them astounded her. In her time, the only means of transportation were pony drawn carriages or by steam train. A dark thought crossed her mind as she mused that Celestia and Luna had perhaps stifled the scientific growth of Equestria to keep the advances of technology from falling into the wrong hooves. This led to her wondering if maybe Equestria had been allowed to progress as much as it had since there were no princesses left in charge, and the possibly of this fact contributing to why the world was the way it was now. The thought dismayed her greatly, and yet she couldn’t help but silently confess that she was bitter she had missed the greatest scientific advancements Equestria had ever seen. They had flying cars now for Celestia’s sake! As well as these screens that held ponies advertising their products, not to mention holographic books--although she still preferred the physical feeling of turning the pages herself. Despite her awe at the technology at her hooves now Twilight still just couldn’t help but feel that magic of the world seemed all but forgotten, replaced by machinery and automation. She still struggled to wrap her head around what happened to trees, and vowed that of she came across a library she would absorb as much information on the history of everything as she could, starting first and foremost with how ponies raised and lowered the sun and the moon- ”The sun and the moon?” Her own words echoed within her skull. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t questioned it earlier, and clapped a hoof to her head, utterly appalled and dumbfounded that she had overlooked such an important thing. She immediately turned her gaze upwards and squinted, peering in between drops of rain and up at the grey bleakness of the massive skyscrapers that jutted up around her. Earlier, when they had been in another part of the city and she could feel its warmth, the sun had felt real enough, although she could feel there was something deeply unsettling about it. She closed her eyes and stretched out with her magic, feeling for the sun’s comforting pull again. Her horn tingled as she felt the familiar warm glow of the sun’s rays dance with her magic in that moment, but again, like before, she felt there was something wrong with it. She gritted her teeth and reached further out, stretching herself like butter over too much bread across the big wide empty of space towards the celestial body that was as much a part of her as her horn was now. There it was! Celestia’s own sun, and there, in the same sky... Luna’s moon? Both of them felt relatively the same, the moon felt lighter than when she felt it seven hundred years ago perhaps, but there was something else. Something wrong. Like a deep rooted sickness had taken hold of them. It was an unnatural, familiar magical feeling, and it frightened her. Twilight’s eyes snapped open. She knew she had to see for herself now as fear gripped her stomach and began to churn out butterflies, and un controllable urge dominated her being to fly upwards. She glanced around to see if Spike was even close to coming back. He wasn’t. Lightning flashed overhead, prompting her to move quickly. “Sorry, Spike,” she mumbled and stretched her wings. “I’ll be quick, I hope you don’t mind...” She paused, and smiled as she thought of a joke. “Call it payback for making me wait...” After making sure she wouldn’t disturb anypony around her--not that they noticed or cared--she crouched as low to the ground as she could and then leapt into the air, creating a strong gale of wind to carry her upwards. She heard some confused voices call out for a moment before the sound of rushing wind filled her ears. Her powerful wings carried her up, closer to where she could feel the sun’s pull. From the corner of her eye she saw billboards and great big screens showing ponies advertising products in the latest whatevers, their bright colours and neon screens poking through the misty rain. She ignored them, forcing herself ever upwards, aiming to get above the line of traffic, and then above the buildings around her, and eventually through the clouds. The rain did provide some cover, she supposed, from any cameras that might have seen her, or anypony paying attention to their surroundings. She twirled and darted through the air like a graceful dancer, despite the fatigue her wings were suddenly feeling. ”All those flying lessons with Rainbow are finally paying off,” she thought with a grin as she twisted upwards and through several lines of cars. After narrowly avoiding crashing into one that skidded to a halt in mid-air, she decided to stop making jokes and focus on flying, looking a tad sheepish amidst the rain and wind. Soon enough she broke the line of traffic and soared above them, galloping through the air like she was running on the wind itself. The downpour of rain cascaded down around her and the wind made her already messy mane worse and slap her continuously in the face. She wished at times like this, which weren’t many but all the same, that she had something she could tie her mane up with. The muscles of her wings began to feel the burn, that sensation that she was growing close to her limit. Still she persisted. The air was getting thin now. The rain continued to thunder down around her, and streaks of lightning cracked the skies, making the buildings around her seem taller somehow. The pull of Celestia’s sun grew stronger and stronger as she carried herself upwards, on and on through the city, through and away from the smog and miasma of misery. After minutes that felt like hours dragged by of what seemed like endless flying, finally she breached the clouds, and then something strange and wholly unexpected happened. Just as she broke into a smile at the relief of reprieve from the storm, she came to an unceremonious halt as she hit something. It was her nose that first collided with the unknown force, then her body followed, crashing into whatever it was, making her eyes water and send pain shooting through her body. Thankfully her alicorn constitution saved her from being seriously injured, although her nose stung and when she looked at her hoof after rubbing it she saw the dark red stain of her own blood against her light purple coat. “Owwww!” she whined and pinched her nose. “What was...” Her hoof fell away and her voice trailed off as she blinked and saw the sky itself shimmering where she had struck. “What in Equestria...” she murmured and drifted closer to the centre of the shimmering, and realised she had made a small dent in... something... from crashing into it. She tentatively and curiously stretched out her hoof and was intrigued, to say the least, to find it was a solid wall, simply rendered invisible. “A magical barrier?” She scanned it quickly with her magic and received nothing in return. “No, it’s...” She tapped it, and the sky around her hoof rippled and shimmered again. Drifting closer to the wall, she noticed a very thin line, thanks in no small part to her keen senses for finding the little details in things--a trait she had picked up from Rarity--that crossed through the sky and formed hexagonal patterns. She thought they resembled the stop signs in Manehattan, in both size and shape. “It’s not magic... it’s technology,” she murmured quietly in realisation of what she was looking at. “An artificial mirage... or something along those lines at least.” She tilted her head at it with her brow still firmly furrowed. “It looks kind of like a... screen...” She flapped herself backwards a few feet and looked upwards, wondering how far it stretched for and if it went around the whole city, and also if there was anypony who knew about it--Neon certainly never mentioned there being an invisible wall anywhere. She drifted close to it again, her wings keeping a steady beat as she hovered in place. With a flash of magic her horn ignited in its familiar magenta glow, and she turned it at the dent she had made, intending to pry it apart and investigate further. She lowered her head and focused herself, and used her magic to grasp at the seam in between the hexagons. After a minute of pulling, she felt it start to come loose, and with a triumphant grimaced, it came free. Inspecting it closely, she turned it over in her magic. “Incredible,” she whispered as the slab of metal shimmered and sparked, and stopped showing the luscious world outside. “It’s like a piece of the sky itself, cleverly disguised to camouflage itself as to what somepony told it to look like. But why-” Twilight’s voice choked in her throat as she looked up, through the hole where she had removed the panel. The bleak and barren world she barely recognised as Equestria greeted her with a harsh wind. *** A terrible sensation of abject terror rose up inside the princess. All the colour and greenery of Equestria was gone, wiped clean and replaced by the dull browns of harsh sands that seemed entirely too unfriendly. From her vantage point Twilight could see what she thought she recognised as the Appleloosan hills and the Macintosh Hills in the distance, which--if her sense of direction was correct--would put her current standing on what should be the edge of the Everfree Forest--albeit very high up. She leant forwards intending to peer outwards, and was promptly struck with feeling like she had walked face first into a spider’s web, and retracted her head quickly. She clicked her tongue in displeasure at the sensation and looked up to see the sun hanging low in the sky. She shrieked as a sudden spike of pain drove itself through her head, giving her an intense headache. The sun, normally glowing a bright and warm yellow, was enshrouded in a dark purple glow, clearly the work of exceptionally powerful dark magic and cast the world in a strange shadow. Its sister, the moon, shocked Twilight to her very core. It looked as though a huge chunk of it had been blown apart, left to scatter outwards into space while a colossal crack ran down wat was left of it. It was a ruin, a sad and dejected ruin that struck fear into the princess’s heart. “What... happened?” she breathed, hopelessly hoping that the two giants in the sky would answer her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as her magic stretched out to them again. Her headache intensified as she tugged at the sun, trying to move it. It didn’t budge, not a single inch. She tried the moon delicately, and promptly faced the same problem. She persisted anyway, reaching out with her magic through the small porthole she had made in the wall. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face as the strain of both keeping herself aloft and her head splitting headache that came from being in direct contact with the celestial bodies began to get to her. “Come on... be a good sun, just...” she grunted and puffed as her horn sparked and fizzed. “I promise I’ll have lots of picnics... ugh... I’ll take long walks in your light if you just... moooove...” She hadn’t had a problem getting either of them up or down since she had first started raising and lowering them. Had centuries locked away from the world really lessened her connection to them? A flash of vain arrogance passed through her for a moment. ”Of course not, you’re Twilight Sparkle! The First and Last Star! Come on!” she told herself, and gritted her teeth. ”It must be that purple glow... yeah...” She redoubled her efforts in an attempt to commune with them like Celestia and Luna had shown her, yet they remained a pair of silent, uncaring rocks in the sky that refused to budge or respond to her magic in any way. Finally she couldn’t hold it any longer and dipped out of view of the sun. Her headache immediately cleared up, disappearing as soon as it had arrived, although the base of her horn itched. With a stark realization she realised she had called herself he First and Last Star and didn’t remember that ever being one of her titles. Twilight snorted a flush of hot air out of her nostrils and opened her eyes. She flapped upwards and squinted at the dark purple glow of the sun’s rays and a thought occurred to her as her head immediately began to pound again. “Wait a minute, I’ve been here for a few days right?” she asked the empty air around her. “How come the days have been progressing if nopony can move the sun?” It ticked over in her mind for a few minutes. Then it hit her. “Was somepony making an artificial day-night system? But that’s...” She paused as a smile graced itself over her lips and the purple glow of the sun reflected in her eyes, making them shimmer. “Quite ingenious really, if I can’t move the sun and the moon... then I guess nopony else can... huh.” She wasn’t quick to admit it, but she was impressed that whoever was in charge, even if they were bad ponies who did bad things, had the idea to make such a thing. She joked quietly to herself that the ‘sun’ she had been seeing was simply just a large bulb that was switched off at night. She giggled and looked at the hexagon of metal still in her magical grasp. Her smile faded as she looked out at the purple glowing sky through the hole she had made. She didn’t notice her headache fade even in the light of the dark sun, and shivered and looked away, suddenly feeling like she was being watched. The sudden rumble of an engine nearby caught her attention and made her smile drop in an instant. She cocked an ear out and quickly made to place the hexagon back to where it had originally been. “Come on Twilight hurry,” she said hurriedly. The hexagon thankfully slotted back on to where it was without issue and seemed steady enough, so the princess slowly turned to see what it as that was approaching her. A long, dark green hovercar came to a stop a few meters away, and between its reflective windows and the lump in her throat, she began to have a very bad feeling something terrible was coming her way. ”Uh oh, authorities, maybe?” she thought with a lick of her lips. Her mind began to race, frantically putting together a story for why she was up there. In the moment it didn’t occur to her that whoever they were might instantly recognise her as the resurrected Princess Twilight Sparkle. She held her breath as the door swung open, and who else of all ponies but Bright Spark leant out and smiled at her. “Hello, princess!” he called out and waved her over. Twilight blinked in confusion but smiled all the same, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Bright Spark? How did you know I was here?” She looked at the car and then back at where she had put the panel back. Strangely, she felt a calling to her from beyond it. “Say, do you know anything about-” she began. The pegasus gave her a hurried wave and interrupted her. “Call it a hunch. Everything will be explained eventually but first we gotta go, everypony’s waiting for you.” “Is Neon with you?” Thoughts of the grumpy but endearing unicorn came to Twilight, and she anxiously wanted to ask her about the wall, and the world beyond it, and what exactly happened to the sun and the moon. It also didn’t occur to her that Neon knew as much as she did, and probably less at this point, about current affairs. Bright Spark nodded eagerly. “Yep, she sure is.” Again, the pegasus waved her over, and added a hint of urgency to his voice as he spoke next. “Come on, everypony’s waiting.” He scooted over to the other side of the car and patted the seat next to him. Twilight quickly flapped over and placed one hoof in the car before glancing back at the space where the hexagon she had moved was. She shivered and thought it best not to mention it just yet. The car being a lot shorter than the van she had grown accustomed to, she had to crouch and hobble in awkwardly and clumsily. As soon as she was fully in it the door slammed shut behind her and encapsulated her in darkness. “Bright Spark?” she said quietly in the darkness. He didn’t answer. Twilight took a step forwards and felt something warm and sticky on the floor grace her hoof, making her look down in alarm. “What the-” As her eyes began to adjust to the sudden darkness she saw that the entire inside of the car was covered in a light green goo that smelled strongly of eggs about to go off. Panic quickly rose in her as she recognised both the smell and the colour of the mucus, and gave Bright Spark a fearful glance. Her fear receded and was eventually replaced by a wash of anger as the pegasus grinned at her with an unnaturally long smile. She recognised her old enemy, even through the disguise she wore. “Chrysalis,” Twilight growled. Her ears plastered downwards in a defensive manner and she took care not to get too close. Her horn ignited in a blaze of magic. “What are you doing here?” Bright Spark clapped his hooves together and cackled manically, while nodding enthusiastically. “Oh it has been too long, Twilight Sparkle,” he hissed. A shimmer of green light surrounded him, and the former Changeling Queen’s true form was revealed. “Far too long indeed.” “What are you doing here, Chrysalis?” Twilight demanded. Chrysalis’s tongue slithered out between her teeth as she pulled her lips back into a wide grin. “Why, I’ve come to ask a favour of you, princess, isn’t that what friends are for?”