Octavia awoke from her slumber in the middle of the night. She squinted, glancing around her. Something felt unusual. She couldn't remember when she had even gotten home, let alone gone to sleep in her own bed.
Slowly, she uncovered herself and groggily got to her hooves.
There was a full moon outside, but she was still in pony form. Yet not even her potions would guard her from turning; just from going feral. Another note to add to the list of oddities. Perhaps she simply needed to get her eyes checked; maybe the moon wasn’t as full as it looked?
There was a familiar crackle coming from outside her room, and a soothing cinnamon odor. Perhaps because of the latter, she was actually feeling at ease. Enough for her curiosity to take over. She made her way to the door and opened it, revealing her home's upstairs corridor.
As well as…
"Oh, hello Long Horse," she said, nonchalantly.
She wasn't sure how she knew its name, nor why it wasn't scaring the hell out of her, but Long Horse's skull hovered in front of her nonetheless, the rest of his body twisting down the corridor.
"Fancy seeing you here," Octavia said, smiling.
Long Horse snapped its neck a few times, then cocked its head curiously.
"You're probably wondering why I'm not afraid of you," Octavia said dreamily. "Well, I'm not sure myself. Deep down, I just have this feeling… You're not a monster at all, are you? The exact opposite, in fact."
Long Horse stood motionless.
"You know, I can understand how you feel somewhat," Octavia said. "You see… I normally don't look like this on full moons. But you already know that, don't you? Heh. If other ponies saw what I looked like then, they'd run away from me. Try to lock me up, even. Now I have to take all the effort in the world just to try to get them to see through that. I just want to be able to play my cello again without having to worry about… all of it. Is that so much to ask?"
Long Horse actually nodded.
"You're a good listener, you know that?" Octavia said. "And a better person than me. You don't care what other ponies think of you. You do what you do regardless. I envy you."
She reached out and tepidly patted Long Horse on the head. He cracked some of his bones again. It was rapid, and Octavia got the distinct feeling it was out of happiness.
“Vinyl’s like that, too, deep down, I think,” Octavia noted. “She doesn’t really care about being accepted. She just wants to help ponies. Like you do.”
A moment later, he turned his head back and forth, ‘gesturing’ down the corridor towards the stairs. He seemed to want Octavia to follow him.
"You want to show me something, don't you?" Octavia asked.
Long Horse nodded, then with another sequence of cracks, led her to the staircase. She paused at the top of it, and Long Horse at the bottom. The two stared at each other for a moment, and Octavia was getting the impression he was thinking, 'Well, come on. What are you waiting for?'
"Sorry," Octavia said. "I just have this feeling… what you want to show me; it isn't going to be nice, is it?"
Long Horse slowly nodded.
"But it is important, isn't it?"
Long Horse nodded briskly.
With that, he was on the move. Octavia swallowed hard, but nonetheless, managed to find her courage and follow him. He led her to the largest of her living room windows, currently covered by blinds.
"S-Sould I open them?" Octavia asked.
Long Horse nodded, before bowing his head. It almost looked like he was ashamed.
“You… you don’t want to show me, either, do you?” Octavia said, patting the creature once again. “Don’t worry, whatever it is, I won’t judge you.”
Taking a deep breath, she flung open the shades. And despite having seen the moon only a few minutes ago, the sun shined through her window. Yet that wasn’t the most unusual sight.
That would be that what she was looking at wasn’t Ponyville at all.
Her eyes widened. She… recognized it, but from where, she couldn’t tell. A dream, perhaps? She didn’t know. But it was different this time. Instead of ruins, a great, living city spiralled towards the horizon. One populated by creatures she didn’t recognize. They were bipedal, almost like more slender apes, and all wore a variety of clothing to cover up their multi-colored, furless skins.
She seemed to be in a park of some sort. A variety of these creatures were walking about, happily enjoying their time in the sun. It was peaceful to a degree. Normalcy among the abnormal.
That was for one exception.
On a park bench a small distance from the window sat a distinctively male creature in a pitch-black suit. He seemed to be older; with grey, sagging skin, and held a blank expression on his face. His only movements were to occasionally check his watch. The creatures around him didn’t seem to notice him.
Suddenly, time fast-forwarded. The creatures were now moving in blurs, and the strange vehicles they drove in the background even more-so. In the sky, the sun began to move at a visible pace, soon replaced by night. This process repeated again and again: night, day, night, day.
All the while, the man in the black suit remained motionless. He may have been checking his watch occasionally, but things were moving too quickly to see.
The process continued. A month must have gone by in the blink of an eye. Strangely, foot traffic was starting to diminish, along with vehicle traffic. But the only change in the environment came from the construction of a small tower of sorts - one right near where the man sat. And at the top of it were adorned two sirens.
Time returned to a normal pace a short time after. It was the dead of night, the creatures’ street lamps being the only illumination. Long Horse, or a ‘ghost’ of him, could be seen, crackling into view and approaching the man in the black suit. Just like everything else, save for his watch, the man ignored him. This was even after the ‘mirror’ Long Horse made a series of crackling noises, dancing about the man as if he were desperately trying to get his attention.
Yet despite all his efforts, all he managed to goad out of the man was a small bit of garbled words:
“Rorrim a tuohtiw sienop h’tiw yalp tond uoy.”
He didn’t even look at Long Horse when he said them.
Eventually, the ‘copy’ gave up, moving away from him; his usual brisk, slithering motion slower, almost as if he was depressed.
Time sped up again. Further and further into the future they went. Eventually, there was next to no pedestrian or vehicle traffic at all. To Octavia, it seemed as if the city was slowly dying. And for some reason, it made her sad.
Finally, after almost two months had passed - all within two minutes from Octavia’s perspective - time returned to normal. The city at this point looked practically abandoned. Various junk was scattered about; trash and broken down vehicles. One thing in particular caught Octavia’s eye: a discarded newspaper. The only headline she could see on it was simple:
THE WAR DRAWS ON
Then, suddenly, came the voice. One which delivered a horrible, horrible message. Both the sirens next to the bench as well as those scattered throughout the city were broadcasting it.
“CIVIL CODE SIX, EIGHT ***SHRRRRRRRRK*** NINE, SLASH, ROMEO, ECHO, DELTA, STOP! THIS IS A FEDERATION EMERGENCY ALERT! ***SHRRRRRRK*** AIRCRAFT FROM ***SHRRRRRRRK*** EMPIRE ON APPROACH! ***SHRRRRRK*** ATTACK IMMINENT! ENTER FALLOUT SHELTERS IMMEDIATELY! REPEAT! ENTER FALLOUT SHELTERS IMMEDIATELY!”
It was fractured slightly, and referenced things that were unknown to Octavia, but either way, she understood the point of it.
“No!” she gasped.
It repeated over and over, echoing through the dead city. She could only hope that the creatures, whatever they were, had heeded its message and taken shelter.
With none of them visible, she assumed they had. This was save for the man in the black suit.
It seemed even he couldn’t ignore the blaring broadcasts and their accompanying, wailing sirens. He almost seemed nervous, glancing at his watch more and more frequently. Though for whatever reason, he never bothered to get up.
Then, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a new light came. A titanic flash from the distance, and one as bright as any star. Octavia was, surprisingly, not blinded by it, though she wished she had been, for the coming destruction was beyond comprehension.
A second later, the flash was replaced by a shockwave. One which tossed vehicles, mail boxes, and telephone polls about as if they were children’s toys, and blasted through the various skyscrapers in the distance, shattering their thousands of windows into pieces.
And all the while, near the horizon, a hellish mushroom cloud rose above it all, its evil form casting a hellish, red glow upon the ‘normal’ clouds above.
The man sitting on the bench lay back, seemingly content with his fate. But then… just as it looked like the blast was about to reach him…
Time slowed for the final time.
Long Horse entered the scene. If it were in real time, he would have been moving faster than a bullet. He circled the area, stretching himself to the limit. With his own body, he created a large, protective dome around not only the man, but parts of the surrounding area, including the siren.
As soon as he finished, he began to dematerialize - like a ghost fading into the afterlife.
Unfortunately, he only managed to do so half-way, however, when the blastwave ripped through everything surrounding them.
“NO!” Octavia screamed in horror, her voice barely a whisper in its roar. “NO! NOOOOOOOOOO--
--
“--OOOOOOOO!”
Octavia panted, her eyes bloodshot. The city! Long Horse! The man in the black suit… what… where…?
“Tavi!” Vinyl shouted, snapping her out of it. “Tavi, chill out, yo!”
Wait… wait where was she? She calmed herself slightly, taking a look around. A train cabin… moving cliff walls out the window. Of course. She was aboard the Ponyville express. She must have nodded off on the way back home from Canterlot.
It was all just a horrible dream.
“Hey, you okay?” Vinyl said, sitting across from her and giving her friend a concerned look. “That must have been a hell of a nightmare.”
“I-I’ll say,” Octavia said, shivering. “H-How long was I out?”
“Bout an hour,” Vinyl said. “Knocked out for the whole trip, ya’ sleepy head.”
“Ah,” Octavia said, taking a deep breath. “Well, I hope you took a nap as well,” she continued, finally regaining her usual classy composure. “If we’re going to keep a look out for… for Long Horse, you’re going to want your wits about you.”
“Eh, it’s cool,” Vinyl shrugged. “Haven’t needed as much sleep after turning.”
There was a moment of silence as Octavia gazed at her pensively.
"So…"
"So."
"Let's say we manage to find the Long Horse," Octavia said. "What happens then?"
"We break it until its new name is Not-So-Long Horse," Vinyl joked.
"Seriously?"
"Sort of," Vinyl shrugged. "I dunno, Tavi. All we know about it is from Crypty's story and what we saw. We still can’t say it isn’t dangerous. Not like a hundred percent."
"And what if it really is trying to warn us about something else?" Octavia said.
"Then we go, 'my bad', and go Captain Blasto on the other thing, too."
Octavia blinked. "Captain who?"
"Blasto, the first Seapony Spectre," Vinyl chuckled. "From the Blast Effect comics?"
"Blast Effect?" Octavia chided. "W-Why, why, you little nerd!"
Vinyl smirked. "Coming from the pony who geeks out over what Neighhoven liked to eat for breakfast."
Octavia blushed. "I… well…"
Vinyl gave a playful cackle. "You're cute when you get all flustered, you know that?"
Octavia put on an exaggerated, comic frown. "Oh, I see how it is…"
"Hehe," Vinyl giggled, her smirk slowly forming into a warm smile. "Hey, whatever we do, I'm sure it'll be the right thing. When our heads are together, we always find the right road. Ain’t it true?"
Octavia returned the smile. "We always do, don't we?"
The two shared a comfortable silence for most of the rest of the trip. Though the whole way, Octavia couldn't help but wish they could do more than just put their heads together. Vinyl's lips, with her cute little fangs hanging over them occasionally, were almost too inviting.
'Stupid, sexy vampire,' she chuckled to herself. 'Has me under her spell.'
Though at that thought, she began to think of the other thing that now had her under its spell. That being her strange dreams lately. It was possible they were simply due to stress. After all, they didn’t start happening until after they had seen the Long Horse. But then again, with them being completely different than anything she had ever dreamed before, and Crypty describing him as a dream walker…
‘If that’s true, why did he have to be so cryptic?’ Octavia grumbled to herself. ‘What were you trying to tell me, Long Horse?’
If it did turn out to be a warning about something, she could only hope they’d be able face it.