Welcome, reader.
We're here... The story has ended. The infected are known and everything is back to normal. I mean, how normal it can possibly get after all of that.
So now, why am I doing this? The story has ended. There's no reason for me to be doing this. But does it sound like I care? I'm really proud of this story, and with all the attention this story has gotten, I found it fun to explore some of the backstories.
So, let's start off with the first major thing! This was asked multiple times in the comments too.
The origin of the infection!
I don't have one. Really anti-climactic I know but hear me out.
I'm not a good storyteller. I just get the story idea and roll with it. That's part of the reason I struggle with making the first chapter since I have to set up the story.
I never imaged making a whole chapter exploring the origin. I got most excited to write when I thought about the main story once the mane six were locked in the castle.
But I will try my best to think of something good. So here it is, a quick explanation of how the infection started:
It was just an average day in Equestria. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming... All until the sound of sirens were heard. But not just any sirens. The ones from emergency ponies.
They were heard far but came from none other than a little town called Ponyvile. Most ponies turned their heads to see two ponies being taken away.
One looked like they were hurt, with blood and bruises as if they just came from a fight.
The second one was a mare that was kept on straps that were holding the mare back as she tried to break free. Quite aggressively too.
Most ponies near eventually lost sight of them as they both entered the hospital. Most that were there assumed there was an accident or an argument taken too far.
And all was forgotten until the same thing happened not long after. Most looked the same, aggressive pony being held back by staps, but this time there were more hurt ponies to be seen, all looking seriously injured.
This soon became a regular sight for the ponies of Ponyvile. And not just there. The entire population of Equestria had the same problem of random ponies going crazy towards the nearest there.
It became a too big problem to ignore and ponies like Twilight started gaining interest in what was going on.
Across all the ponies that have randomly attacked ponies, one thing was always the same. It was something that didn't include a free choice.
They were all looked at and they found they were all infected by the same thing. What is was, no one knew and many tried to figure it out. But to this day, no one is completely sure.
The best guess someone had been able to make was that the virus has its own intentions, plans, and ideas, and they would use the ponies around them to fulfill the deed. That deed being murder. Mass murder if possible.
But no one has been able to find out why. No one knows why there are so many cases at once now. But most importantly, no one knows how to stop it.
That's it. Sorry if it was bad but it's the best I could think of. Now, I want to start with the fun parts!
Story choices!
Were all decided by spinning a random spin wheel!
Don't believe me? Let's look at what happens in the story, shall we?
Firstly, and most importantly, I had to decide who would be the one infected slowly killing off their friends.
If I were to decide that on my own, I already knew it would be bad. Either I'd end up with an out-of-character Rainbow Dash or get bored writing for someone else.
That's when I got an idea! And a pretty fun challenge for myself!
That being: Write a whole story (that makes sense) using a random spin wheel to make all the major choices!
Of course, I still had to write the things that go in between myself but that was easy enough.
Having made my choice, I put all the mane six in there (and spike) and spun the wheel! It eventually landed on Fluttershy.
Now, I had the one infected, but I also needed to know who would die first. That turned out to be Pinkie Pie so I made it easy for Fluttershy to kill her in the first round by putting them together in a room.
In the next part of the story, along with the meeting, I didn't use the spin wheel and just wrote what was most likely to happen. That was until I spun the wheel to decide if they should skip or not. It ended on skip so I went that route and continued.
My next choice was who would die next and if someone should be ejected for it. The next death ended up being Spike and Rainbow dash was the one who would be ejected.
I really looked forward to that. I had one idea for it that would be perfect. Light sabotage. It would give the mane six a reason to suspect Rainbow Dash without making it unreasonable and it made it easier to write in another death without anyone being there to witness it.
So that's what I did. I made Fluttershy stay behind to sabotage the lights to eventually kill spike and made Rainbow Dash look suspicious by making her absent. I wanted people to think twice about whether it was Rainbow Dash or not.
I had her be ejected and looked forward to writing their realizations in now that they know "they not only killed their friend but an innocent pony." Quoted from Pete100 in one of the comments (I appreciate you)
I spun the wheel two more times to decide the last few choices. Who would be the last one to die? That ended up being Rarity. The second one would be whether she would be caught or another meeting would happen. The wheel picked the meeting option.
I also used the concept of vents now to make it able for Fluttershy to get to Rarity quickly and return to the spot she was. That's how she knew there was a vent in the dump and she used it to do her kill while Apple Jack was away.
Lastly, T\the wheel decided she would confess so that what I ended the story with.
So, yea. It was all decided by a spin wheel. It wasn't easy at times to make it work but I found my ways.
Now, with that all explained, on to the next part!
Scrapped story ideas!
I have a few of those that I thought would be fun to share!
Firstly I had the idea of putting in chapters for the ones that died. They would be ghosts, just like in among us, and would comment on whatever happened in the story.
Pinkie Pie died first so she would watch the rest of the story happen knowing it was Fluttershy. She would probably follow her friend around while she did her deeds. I'm not sure what else she could do except make some jokes but that was the idea.
The next death was Spike. He would probably head back to Twilight and try anyway to tell her it was Fluttershy. It was fun to imagine him screaming at her at the top of his lungs and Twilight not noticing any of it. But like Pinkie, not much else.
The next death was Rainbow Dash but she would be a lot different. She wasn't killed by Fluttershy. She was thrown out of a castle by her best friends into a bunch of blood-hungry ponies.
Because of that, she would probably be more than traumatized if she were to return as a ghost. If anyone has read more of my stories, they would know I love to torture my little Dashie.
I had a lot of fun imagining again, but nothing made their way into the main story.
I honestly don't know what I would do for Rarity. But it doesn't really matter. It never made its way into the story anyway. It were some fun ideas but I'm satisfied with what I have now. I won't change that.
The second one stayed for a while longer. I finished the first chapter when I decided to change it.
My original plan was to make the mane six humans. Not the mirror clones. Just the mane six from Equestria humanized. You can actually still read it in one of my blog posts when I first suggested the idea.
Once I made the first chapter, I decided I'd cancel that idea and rewrote them to be ponies. I found it a lot easier to write.
This one is just a minor one but it's worth mentioning that there used to be a profanity tag on this story. You can even still see some traces of this, mostly with Rainbow Dash is chapters one and two.
Her saying, "I can totally live in a big ass castle for a while!" and, "My god, does she never check these things??" was when the tag was still on.
My plan was to make it the among us experience but with the mane six. So, as some who played may know, meetings can get quite aggressive.
So, when I knew Dash would be ejected in the story, I wanted to make her freak out in the best way possible.
But as I wrote the story, I found that it would be a distraction to put random curse words in there, especially in the middle of the story. I'm not changing the story now so the two lines from Dash will stay in. But it was worth a mention.
The last one is the cover of the story. In the description, it said that it would be changed at some point. That was also written before I changed the plan of them being humans.
The thing is, I can draw humans but ponies are a whole different thing. I've tried it before but it won't be good.
Also, I've kind of learned to love the cover and it won't be changed. I'm too attached to it now. But that's okay!
Castle map! (requested in the comments)
This was asked in the comments and I'm actually making it cause why not?
It's highly inspired by the main Among Us map, the Skeld.
The main rooms are the map room with the cutie map where the meetings take place and the story starts. The storage is nearby and takes just a minute or two to walk to from there. The library is on the right and the garbage dump and balcony are on the other side.
There are also some smaller rooms that don't matter too much or have a name. I didn't really bother too. I got the most important things in there so I hope that's enough.
Now, I know this is the end of the story and if you're here you probably read all of it, but now you have this map!
So, yea, that's all of it.
This will be the last few words of this story so I wanted to use it to thank everyone who took time out of their days to read my story. I can't thank you all enough for all the comments that I enjoyed reading every day.
With that all said, thank you for reading the story and I'll maybe see you in another one.
Have a nice day~!