//------------------------------// // Cry // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// Scores of ponies ran out of Hoofica Castle as it continued to collapse at an even faster pace now. The walls and ceilings were beginning to crumble and fall apart—nowhere was safe anymore. They were all being led and escorted by Red Wing and the rest of the resistance, it no longer mattered which side you were on. In the city, thousands of ponies could now look up and see the castle in the stages of collapsing—it had taken their attention away from the bright and warm sky that once again graced their kingdom. “Come on, come on, faster!” Red Wing yelled as he ushered ponies out the grand front doors of the castle. “Sir, we still haven’t found or heard anything of Rainbow Dash!” Tango said as he ran up to him. “Darn it… we can’t afford to keep looking at this rate, there isn’t long before it all comes crashing down,” Red Wing clenched his jaw. Brass Hoof meanwhile sidled up to him with an uncertain look on her face. “Sir… is it possible that she has something to do with this in the first place?” Red Wing narrowed his eyes as he looked higher and higher up at the castle. “I don’t know. But she’s resourceful, we’ll just have to hope she’s okay on her own. Everypony else here needs to work on getting the last few ponies out of the castle and out of the grounds, get to a safe distance.” “Yes, sir!” Brass Hoof saluted and worked with the others to accomplish the task. Every capable pony continued to ferry others out to safety while chunks of black stone fell around them and cracks split up the facade of the castle. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and Red Wing didn’t understand why this had to happen right after they succeeded in freeing the kingdom, but at least everypony was working together. The one positive. Perhaps after this shared experience, the wounds would heal quicker. He shivered as he looked at the towers. Why was it still so cold? Blame. Guilt. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. Hate. Despair. Rainbow Dash was drowning and fighting to keep her head above the water. Fighting to pull the filly up with her and save her from the bottomless pool they were both stuck in. But it was like an anchor tied around her body—pulling her down, making escape impossible. If she could ditch the anchor… no. Never. She could beat despair, she knew she could. It’s pointless, Rainbow Dash. You know this. At best you delay the inevitable I’ll tell you when I think something’s pointless The moment I became the Avatar, it was already over for me. The moment I brought you here it was over for you No it’s not! Don’t you understand? Even if it could happen, I don’t want to go back to the way things were. I don’t want to go back to being Wish again So you’re saying you honestly want this? This is you being happy? Yes Then why did you say you wanted to be useful to your father and maybe that would make you happy but the very first thing you did when you became this was… was… … Well? It doesn’t matter Yes it does, Wish! Yes it does! You’ve been corrupted by all of this, overwhelmed, and you don’t even know it! This isn’t you, Wish. Please just listen to me! You don’t want any of this! What do you even know? What does your life have to do with mine? Can you even compare them? I saw your eyes… how can a pony as strong as you, with friends you would die for, who puts their life on the line to save ponies they barely know, how can a pony like that know anything about what I’m feeling? How could you understand? I can feel the laughter, the kindness, the generosity, the honesty, the magic of friendship inside of you, Rainbow Dash And I know that all of that is missing from me. You know what I wanted before this. It was to have what you already had But I’ll never have what you have. You can’t know what this is like—somepony like you who has always had that light inside them. That’s why I’m ending this, that’s why… why… Wish? I… I… Rainbow Dash felt something in the pit of despair around her. That alone was already unusual—until now her senses had been completely deafened. But right now she was feeling rumbling, and freezing cold, not just numb nothingness anymore. The sound and feeling of bubbling black despair started to fill her ears as well. Hurts… it hurts… what is this? Why… IT HURTS! IT HUUUUUURTS! R-Rainbow Dash…. I-I… what’s happening… AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH! Wish! It was getting warmer and warmer inside the bottomless swamp, the freezing cold quickly subsiding to warmth that grew worse and worse until it was almost boiling all around her. Rainbow Dash found she could move again, she flailed her legs and wings around but at the moment she was still stuck in utter darkness. Every second though she was getting more sensation back, more strength, more awareness. Wish? Talk to me, what’s going on?! IIIIIIT HUUUUUURTS! WHYYYYY?! Rainbow Dash suddenly felt herself being pushed and pulled around like she was in a fierce whirlpool that had formed in the depths of despair. And up. She was being forced up. She “looked” up and saw a light ahead, a light that existed at the surface of this infinite and unfathomable pool of despair. The voice of the Avatar had disappeared and Rainbow Dash was stuck in such a violent frenzy that she could no longer try speaking to it anymore. The speed she was traveling increased and she felt herself practically being shot to the surface- One moment she was in darkness with an oppressive feeling of despair all around her. The next, she felt herself popping up out of something and tumbling through the air before hitting the cold stone floor and rolling around. Rainbow Dash shook her head, coughing, and sat up on her unsteady hooves. Around her, tendrils and dripping globs of black despair fell off her body and evaporated into nothingness. One instant she was cold, the next hot, one instant she only heard ringing in her ears, the next it was pure silence. Her eyes were dizzy and they only barely came back into focus when she held her hooves to her head and forced herself to get back into gear. “IT HUUUUUURTS!” The scream from The Avatar of Despair rang through the collapsing lab and Rainbow Dash swiftly turned her head over to see what was happening. A pink pony was standing on the edge of the black swamp of despair, sticking her hoof into it while The Avatar of Despair’s large upper body writhed around in pain. Tendrils wavered and broke away, drops of the black liquid fell and evaporated away every second. And Heartless was smiling. “So much life. It’s not fulfilling like the warmth and light from Rainbow Dash, but there’s a lot of it.” She said as she drained the life from the Avatar. “BUUUURNIIIIING! AAAAGAAAAHHHH!” The massive horse body fell over onto its side and moaned in pain, its great mouth open and wailing. The pool of despair itself was bubbling and shrinking the longer Heartless stood in it. Rainbow Dash watched as now the great limbs and head of the Avatar started to melt and stretch like wax. “OOOOOAAAAAUUUUUHHH! HEEEEELP! WHAT’S HAPPPENING?! R-RAINBOW DASH!” Finally Rainbow Dash’s mind came back into focus and she grit her teeth, steadying her hooves and glaring at Heartless. “Heartless, stop!” “Why?” The pink pony responded without even looking in Rainbow’s direction, for once her attention staying elsewhere. “AAAAAAHHHHH!” The Avatar tried to raise one its large legs but it wavered and started to fall and drip apart like flesh melting off a bone. “Wish!” Rainbow Dash yelled. She bit her lip, there wasn’t time to think and there was only one possible thing she could do, just one idea that was floating inside her head. Rainbow Dash flew forward as fast as she could. She shot like a blur across the collapsing lab and grabbed Heartless. Not by her body, which would’ve been a suicidal death sentence thanks to the mare’s strange powers, but by her tail. She pulled the pink monster away from the pool of despair and into the air, spinning around like a powerful tornado with Heartless along for the ride, gripped by the tail in Rainbow Dash’s blue hooves. Once she felt like she had enough momentum and made sure she was timing it right—Rainbow Dash let Heartless go. She hammer threw her right through the other window of the lab that sat high above the interior courtyard of Hoofica Castle. Heartless crashed through the glass and fell downwards like a rock before she even really knew what was going on. Rainbow Dash fell—practically collapsed—back down to the stone floor, panting and exhausted. Somehow though, she still found the strength to move. “W-Wish?” Rainbow Dash panted and looked over at The Avatar of Despair to see what was happening with it. Its cries of horrible pain had stopped the moment she took Heartless away. The once mighty horse form of the Avatar was reduced to little more than a pony-sized pile of black ooze sitting in a pool that was ever so slightly shrinking. No tendrils, or limbs, or any sort of shape or appendage was visible anymore. It was likely too weak and on the verge of total dissipation to do anything like that anymore. The bottomless pit of despair it had formed from was a meager puddle now, the power and threat from it gone. Rainbow Dash stepped into and through the outer edges of black despair to reach the mound in the middle. Each step sent freezing pain and forced a dozen unknown screams of terror and despair into her head, but that was nothing that could stop her from trying to save the filly who needed her. “Wish? A-Answer me… please. Are you in there? Please… you have to be okay.” Her voice came out in ragged breaths through a sore throat and the weak sound of her own speaking concerned her. Didn’t matter though. Couldn’t matter. She had to reach Wish. “Wish!” Rainbow Dash managed to shout louder and grabbed the melting, wax-like, mound with her hooves. “Answer me!” “It’s all coming down… just go… just go before you die here too...” Despite the situation, a smile, though a sad one, graced Rainbow Dash’s face. “Not without you.” “I’m already dying… I can feel it all ending...” “No way is that happening. I’m not letting it,” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Wish can’t return to you… what do you think is even going to happen if you can bring her out of this despair? Any life after this… how could it be worth living?” “I can’t say what might or might not happen in your life… but the point is… the point is to not give up hope. It’s to believe in that opportunity. To believe that you can smile and be happy one day, to find a life that you can enjoy living, live without regrets, and one day look back on fondly. I don’t know how your life is going to be worth living—you’re the one who shows that to me.” Rainbow Dash went down to her knees into the despair and hugged what she could. “And I promised you. I’m not giving up on you or hope until I see that real smile of yours. I bet its beautiful and fills the hearts of everypony around it with warmth.” The remnants of the Avatar continued to shrink away and dissolve, faster now. “I… want...” It all fell away completely in Rainbow Dash’s hooves, dissolving, evaporating into nothingness. At last there wasn’t a single trace of black despair anymore. All that was left was a tiny filly curled up on the cold floor of the lab. Not moving. “Wish!” Rainbow Dash shouted and picked up the filly in her hooves. She was deathly cold, and she wasn’t breathing. “Wish, talk to me!” She tried to gently shake the filly awake but… she might not have been asleep. Either way there was no response of any form. “Wake up, you have to wake up!” As she pleaded and cried out for the filly, the ceiling overhead finally gave away completely and the entire lab gave its last heave as its final collapse began. Rainbow grit her teeth and clutched Wish close to her chest, flying towards the broken window facing south even as the entire wall that held it was breaking apart and falling off the tower. She smashed right through some of the last remaining pieces of glass and into open air before the falling stone crushed and carried her down with it. With the last remaining dregs of strength she could pull up in her body, she wobbled and kept pointed to fly south and down to the open ground outside the capitol as quickly as she could. She needed to get Wish to solid ground and safety… somewhere to breathe without ponies around… she hoped she could make it in time… Heartless stood up in the middle of the castle’s courtyard and dusted herself off. Besides that her body was completely unmarred in any fashion. She was still smiling like usual even though she was a bit miffed, Rainbow Dash’s light was still so close after all and she had just managed to feel a large source of life that was somewhat fulfilling in its own way. It was rather loud around her and now she was stuck down here and didn’t know exactly where to walk to get out but that didn’t really matter. She could fly probably, that would be quicker. A massive cracking and breaking sound came from all around her along with the new sound of something—multiple somethings—gargantuan now falling. Heartless looked up and saw the five towers of Hoofica Castle all falling towards her. Not straight down, not the other direction over and top of the rest of the castle, the towers were all falling inwards towards and into the courtyard. “Well this is going to take even longer to dig my way out of...” She said as the first of hundreds of tons of black stone fell on top of her. Red Wing watched from the edge of the grounds, close to the perimeter wall and the large gatehouse as the entirety of Hoofica Castle fell to pieces, becoming no more than ruins and rubble in an instant. It was a horrible scene to see this become of their castle, their capitol, but at least everypony had been brought to safety. A massive cloud and wave of dust had spread out from it and was now dissipating over the closest buildings to the capitol but that was it. Hundreds of other ponies were with him, watching from safety. It didn’t matter if they were part of his resistance, random servants, or former Inquisitors. All were joined in this. He heard the Queen wail in horror as she watched, still restrained by Brass Hoof. Beside her the King stood—rescued from the royal wing by his subordinates and Red Wing—with a blank expression on his face. The brainwashing spell that left him in such a fugue still hadn’t been removed, nopony had had the time for it. “Sir...” Star Petal said as she stood beside him, the unicorn still looking exhausted. “What about Dreamweaver? What about Rainbow Dash?” Red Wing blinked at the collapsed castle, the rubble still settling into place. “I… think it’s already over. Whatever Dreamweaver was doing, wherever he was, I don’t think it matters anymore. “And Rainbow Dash? We never found her...” “I’m sure she’s alright. And I’m not just saying that,” Red Wing said as he looked up at the blue sky. “It’s a feeling I have.” “I hope you’re right then...” Star Petal said and joined him, looking up at the beautiful sky of Hoofica together. Dotty meanwhile had watched from the sky around where the third tower used to stand as the castle collapsed. Her jaw dropped in shock as she saw it all fall to rubble. But that wasn’t all that she saw. Trying to get away from the shockwave of the collapse and all the dust clouding the sky, she flew out a little bit and circled to the south. That was when she saw them. A blue and rainbow blur in the sky, going south at high speed, and something red and brownish being carried in her hooves. Her breath caught in her throat. “That pegasus… Wish… what happened?” Dotty bit her lip in consternation. As stressful as it was to conclude, she couldn’t just float around in the air here, doing nothing, she had to go get Wish. The former maid, the former Inquisitor, she began flying after Rainbow Dash. But just as she exited the sky above the castle grounds, just as it finished its total collapse, a red flicker from below caught her attention. Dotty looked down and stopped in midair. She wasn’t the only one watching where Rainbow Dash and Wish was going. A crackling burst of red magic erupted over the roof of a tall building just outside the castle grounds to the south and Vox fell like a rock from the air and onto it. She hit the cold stone of the roof with a thump and wheezed in pain, looking up at the sky and just barely being able to see Rainbow Dash flying away with Wish in her hooves. “You… you aren’t… you aren’t getting away from me...” Vox coughed up more blood and spittle and raised her head, putting her right front leg onto the stone and pushing herself up as best she could. Her left front leg was mangled and broken in at least two places and her back legs trailed limply behind her. She couldn’t feel a single thing from them. Her horn sparked uselessly, completely out of magic after that last desperate teleport to save herself. Exhaustion that she didn't understand ravaged her body and mind. The rest of her body was just as bruised and broken and her lungs were having trouble drawing in air. “Kill you… kill you… the both of you… I’ll kill you...” Vox muttered as she dragged herself closer to the edge of the roof, still fruitlessly trying to get after Rainbow Dash and Wish. Blood covered the entirety of her face. She didn’t know what had happened, what made her so tired and weak that she had only barely woken up when the stairs were already collapsing on her. It didn’t matter now though. Nothing mattered except finding and killing those two. She would. Vox promised herself that she would kill them. “Head Inquisitor.” Vox blinked at the familiar voice and looked over her shoulder, a manic grin soon spreading over her broken face as she saw the pegasus land on the roof close behind her. “Dotted Easel! P-Perfect cough perfect timing!” She giggled crazily and looked back to the south, pointing at the disappearing speck of Rainbow Dash. “F-Fly with me… I need you to take… take me to those two! An hour—two at the most—and my magic will be back! I can kill them then! I can kill them! J-Just… help me fly… after them!” She received no answer. Looking back at her former subordinate, she saw that Dotted Easel was staring at her with a blank expression. Not moving to help her. “What are you doing? I gave you an order!” Vox yelled. “Carry me and fly after them!” Dotted Easel continued to stare at her, unmoving. “What are you looking at me like that for? Have you lost your mind?!” Dotted just blinked. “Oh… Oh I see...” Vox narrowed her eyes and coughed up some blood. “Y-You’ve had a change of heart, is that it? Huh? Y-You’re looking down on me right now… you think you can look at me like that?! I was… I was the Head Inquisitor! But you… you were still there too, Dotted! H-Have you forgotten that? You… none of you have the right to look down on me!” Vox waved her hoof around angrily, her eyes glassy with shock but her mind still focused enough to continue her rant. “What right do you have?! You’re just as bad! You went along with it too, Dotted! You’re one of us, don’t you ever forget that! Don’t forget all the terrible things you let happen! Don’t forget every time you stood by and watched! Don’t you dare look at me like that! All those times you could’ve said something… or fought back… or at the very least ran away… but you didn’t!” She coughed and had to catch her breath for a moment. “C-Coward… weakling… you just went along with it… you went along with it… s-so just keep going along with it and listen to my orders! Fly me to Rainbow Dash and Wish! I have to kill them!” For a while it looked like Dotted Easel was going to continue ignoring her and just staring at the miserable, wretched, form of Vox. But then she slowly stepped forward, her face still empty, and reached down to pick up the injured unicorn. Putting Vox’s healthy leg over her shoulder, Dotty walked over to the edge of the building. “Yes, yes! Good work, Dotted! That’s right!” Vox laughed. “We’ll get them… we’ll get them for sure.” But Dotty didn’t fly off from the building. She paused there, at the ledge, holding Vox. “What are you doing, you idiot?! Fly after them already! We can’t lose them!” Vox screamed and glared at her. Dotty blinked, first looking down below and seeing the narrow alley in-between this building and the next. The ground wasn’t level down there, so much of the city was uneven like this, a set of stairs went up from the street and between the two buildings before wrapping around the backside. It was still a forty foot drop straight down to them with nothing to break your fall. She then slowly turned her head to look at Vox. No other ponies were around. No ponies were down there. “What’s that look on your face?” Vox asked, anger rising up as she realized what was going through Dotted Easel’s head. “Don’t you even think about it you pathetic waste!” Dotty blinked at her. Vox practically spat blood in her face as her furious raging continued. “You think you can?! You think you can?! Don’t forget who I am, Dotted! I’ll slit your throat! I’ll find your family and I’ll kill every last one of them!” Without a word, Dotty pulled Vox’s hoof off of her and held the unicorn’s upper body over the narrow chasm. Vox’s broken leg dangled uselessly and for the first time she really looked down below at the stone steps waiting for her. “D-Dotted… you aren’t really… you can’t.” Her breathing sped up, along with her heartbeat, and true fear started to etch its way into her. “You can’t do this to me, Dotted! You can’t kill me! Y-You’re not… you wouldn’t!” She looked back at the pegasus and saw that Dotted Easel wasn’t even really looking at her, her eyes were focused on the steps down below. “Dotted! You’re not like me, you can’t do it! You won’t!” Vox pleaded in fear for her life. She felt a strange sensation coming from her eyes and realized she was crying. “Please, Dotted! Don’t drop me! Please don’t kill me!” Finally, Dotty sadly looked over at her. “You’d be laughing.” Vox didn’t say anything, she locked eyes with Dotty while her lip quivered and tears of fear and despair ran down her bloody face. “You’d be laughing,” Dotty repeated. “If our places were reversed… and I was the one begging for mercy. You’d just be laughing at me.” A wordless whimper came from Vox’s mouth. “You remember it too, don’t you? That Inquisition where we first met Rainbow Dash? What you were doing to that family… you made them beg you to stop. You made them say please. Did you listen? Did you stop? Were you ever going to?” Sad tears came from Dotty’s eyes as well. “Say please again, Head Inquisitor.” The white mare fell through the air. She didn’t cry out, or scream, or struggle. Dotty watched as she hit the steps headfirst with a loud crack and rolled down a few. And didn’t move after that. Dotty wiped the tears from her face and looked into the southern sky. Rainbow Dash and Wish had vanished from sight long ago. Rainbow Dash hit the ground hard at an angle, tearing a trench into it with her shoulder as she crash landed while doing her best to protect Wish, holding the filly close to her body and making sure she didn’t hit the ground the same way. They had landed in some kind of field but Rainbow Dash didn’t care enough to look around and check things out right now. She had to make sure Wish was okay. “W-Wish?” Rainbow Dash said to the bundled up filly in her hooves. She was still so cold, so limp. “Talk to me kid, just talk to me.” She placed the filly on the ground and started checking for vitals, using everything she knew from her Wonderbolts’ emergency medical training. Rainbow placed her ear against the filly’s chest. No heartbeat. No breathing. “No, no, no, no…” Rainbow Dash grit her teeth as a nervous sweat poured across her brow. She was shaking, in disbelief and denial, and her heart was beating out of control in her chest. She lifted up one of Wish’s eyelids and saw the eye lolling about behind it, showing no reaction to the light or anything at all. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? Rainbow Dash panicked. “This can’t be happening… you’re not dead, you’re not dead!” Rainbow opened up the filly’s mouth and quickly breathed in before pumping up and down on her chest with her hooves to try and get her heart beating again. “Come on, Wish, come on!” She had practiced resuscitation many times before with some of the other Wonderbolts but this was the first time she had ever done it for real. “Breathe, breathe, breathe...” Tears fell down from her eyes and started to pour onto the filly’s face the more Rainbow Dash pumped and the less Wish responded. “You’re not going to die, you’re not going to die!” Rainbow Dash screamed. “NOPONY! IS DYING! AGAIN!” She finished the next set of pumping and checked Wish’s vitals again, feeling for a pulse, listening for a heartbeat, checking to see if she was breathing in any air. But she had to squeeze her eyes shut and clench her hooves in anger and despair as there were still no signs of life from the filly. Her entire body heaved before she arched her neck back and screamed up at the sky. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Rainbow Dash bellowed and pounded her hooves on the ground over and over. “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” She cried as hard as she ever had in her life. “Ngh!” She thrashed around and growled, continuously hitting her hooves against the hard ground enough to bruise and redden them. “WHY?! WHYYYYY?!” Finally she lost the energy to do even that, and she only sat there and cried. “Why...” “This isn’t fair, this isn’t right...” Rainbow Dash moaned and wiped her tears away even as fresh new ones kept falling from her eyes. “Why?” She cried. cough Rainbow Dash’s breath hitched in her throat and she tilted her head down. cough Wish coughed once more, her body stirring and her eyes blinking slowly as if she was coming out of a deep sleep. Rainbow Dash looked down at her through teary eyes, her jaw half-open in awe. “Mmmm...” Wish coughed a few more times before her eyes opened completely and she turned her head to see the pony sitting over her. “Rainbow Dash?” She squeaked out. A smile broke out on Rainbow’s face, through her sobs and everything. She swiftly picked up the filly and held her tight against her chest, crying and crying in relief. “You’re alive… you’re alive… you’re alive...” Wish was too tired to do anything else, so she merely rested her head against the older pegasus and allowed the crying to continue.