//------------------------------// // Part 1 - Alone // Story: Heroes Never Die // by Shimmerist Ari //------------------------------// Ari had a special modified glove on her right hand, on the back of which her phone could be easily slotted. It even had a little ball bearing that allowed her to turn and lock it 90 degrees. That was where her phone usually was. Easier than fishing it out of her pocket all the time. Hours went by as Ari lay on her back in the backseat of the car, her arm pinned against the back of the driver’s seat so she could watch an endless stream of bad news. Even if silence was preferable at this point, she was too tired and defeated to so much as turn off autoplay. Eventually, night fell and still, people kept talking and talking. She wasn’t always listening most of the time. She wasn’t sure if she fell asleep at any point. But it was late now. She’d be sleeping in the car. Statements were made, and declarations spoken. The one thing she was truly curious about was mentioned early on and served as a bucket of cold ice. Every politician denounced ETS (and basically all transformation magic) as purely evil and vowed to never allow its use in any form ever again. The aliens seemed completely deferential to the human government. Meaning… Ari was likely stuck like this forever. After that, there was only one thing that separated Ari from the dead, only one thing that can breathe a spark of life into her however briefly. It was when that purple one talked… the hero that saved them, another pony from the same world as Sunset Shimmer, the criminal who created the virus in the first place. Every now and then Purple would just say something that pissed Ari off so much. “Becoming a pony won’t solve your problems.” “You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about me!” “No one asked for this.” “I did!” “Magic won’t help you be a better person.” “Then give me yours!” “Ponies aren’t better than humans. I mean, this way you still have your hands, right?” And then Purple laughed… “You fucking–!” That last one was what finally spurred Ari to sit up, and finally get off her back. She heard that line so many goddam times she wanted to puke! And Purple was some kind of princess or something? Here was Purple, a literal immortal god with unlimited powers, too many for Ari to even list. She could fly, make interdimensional portals, cast spells effecting the entire planet, instantly zap whole languages into people’s brains, defeat a criminal with the power to devastate all of Earth, and that was just the stuff Ari picked up indirectly in an hour. Someone like that had the audacity to look down at Ari from her exalted inter-cosmic throne and tell her she just needed to make due with nothing?! She probably just got everything in life handed to her. That was always the story. And here she was, talking like she understood people she didn’t even know existed. She was so incurious and sheltered that she couldn’t even imagine that not every human had working hands?! She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want change? She couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t so easy for everyone as ‘just change your life, bro!’ That privileged, condescending, pretentious fucking–! Ari rubbed her face and took a deep breath. She was probably taking her anger out on the wrong person. Purple was just doing its… job… or whatever. Who knew? Did Purple get paid for this? Getting angry wouldn’t change anything. Nothing would change anything at this point. Nothing would change. Her phone vibrated and Ari blinked a few times to clear her vision. It was morning already? Had she slept? Ari couldn’t even tell if she was tired at this point. It was a text from work letting her know they’d be opening again tomorrow. The adventure was over. The magic was gone. Get back to work! Ari spent a few minutes working up the strength to start the car. She caught herself in the rearview mirror. Ari looked at the green where it had managed to overtake her blonde hair. It didn’t look like that was going away. So she was about 1% pony. At least Purple couldn’t take that away from her… though then again she was talking about ‘rehumanization’ so who knew. A streak on her left and a streak to the right perfectly framed her face between the two strips of green, too. It looked really nice, in her opinion! So the trip hadn’t been an absolute failure. Maybe Ari could just try to focus on that. “So I didn’t get to fly or anything, but green hair is the next best…” Ari couldn’t keep her fake smile on long enough to finish the sentence. She let out a sigh and started the car. It wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it now. Getting back took most of the day. There was an massive surge of traffic as humans fled to the east coast, away from those transformed by ETS. Ari had never seen traffic like this before. It took hours just to cross the dang bridge. And of course that meant more time listening to the news. No mere mortal could resist that siren call in the face of such a cataclysm as this. Everyone was rushing to get their opinions out as soon as possible now that the government was being more open with what had occurred. Ari flipped through mainstream news networks to various political youtubers to hear them react to the defeat of an alien invader, to this pandemic ending suddenly and completely. No matter who she turned to, they all had one thing in common. No one sounded victorious. Their glorious president was perhaps the most optimistic and even his speech implied that the hard part started now. He gave the standard platitude about how they would weather the storm, but had no choice but to acknowledge that the storm wasn’t over… it was coming. It wasn’t that they’d gotten through the disaster, it was that the disaster was only just now about to start. As if times weren’t already hard enough, every last person Ari turned to agreed that everyone was basically fucked. The plane was going down and the standard of living of every American was about to nosedive. Ari even turned to people who were normally warhawk patriot types just to see if they felt at all good about America killing the evil alien invader. But no, they pretty much agreed that only economic doom awaited in the future. The economy had already been perilous. Most people had already been living on the edge. And now? People had been worried about 7% inflation just a year ago… people were forecasting it might be 30-35% this year. The stock market was down 60% and had been closed for days, would remain so indefinitely. There was a long list of banks that failed, though at least the government was talking about prioritizing insuring those who lost their savings. The only thing they disagreed on was who to blame, and it was always somebody they hadn’t liked before ETS. No one wanted to blame Sunset Shimmer. She was dead. Sunset’s motivation for this remained elusive despite all the explanations. It was like an anime. She wanted to amass unlimited power to kill an ancient evil… or something? That just happened now. Her nemesis Purple followed Sunset all the way here to kill Sunset. And yet she still turned around and said ‘Oh yeah, but now I have to amass unlimited power to defeat the monster with your “help”! Hahaha!’ And who knew what the hell she meant by that! She certainly didn’t mean giving magic powers through ponification to anyone who asked instead. Purple was probably just planning on exploiting them in a more subtle way, wasn’t she? They both had the same end goal. That’s how this sort of thing usually went. So in reality it wasn’t even a ‘get back to the factory’. It was a ‘get back to the factory and things will be a lot worse from now on’. It took forever, but Ari got over the bridge, through the city and back to Long Island and finally… home. Thankful she hadn’t collapsed and crashed at some point. The town had deteriorated quickly in the few days she’d been away. The shops along the little strip mall by her house all had their windows broken. She passed a burned down house and the wreckage of several cars. The streets were littered with trash, the curb in front of her house being a particularly bad section. And the city was swarming with military now, too. Armored vehicles were stationed all over the place. They would be living under marshal law for the foreseeable future. One of the army guys stopped Ari to inform her that starting tomorrow, no one would be allowed to drive their car alone. That was, you had to carpool or take the bus. Gas was going to be in too short supply for the next month or two. There were clear signs that rioting and looting were going on, even if not right now. Even with some military presence, Ari would have to be extra careful when going outside from now on. She stopped just in front of her house, looking down at a collection of bottles and plastic trash that had gotten caught up in the dirt just in front. The place was filthy. Her town had never been this bad before. She should probably clean this up. She had tools that would help her clean it up without her hands… But she was way too tired to do anything about it right now. It looked like the government had managed to do something ‘right’ this time. They stopped the spread of ETS east of Manhattan. Even in Manhattan itself there were less than a hundred ponies. In Queens and Brooklyn there were estimated to be less than ten. Nassau and Suffolk County had maybe 4 ponies between them. So Long Island was mostly pony-free. Or at least it would be as the dozen or so ponies inevitably fled the area or got ‘rehumanized’. There was no way you could survive being the only pony in town at a time like this. She could still watch them through the internet, though. Most of the areas out west were kind of blacked out with little to no internet or power. But there were still tons of people posting pictures of ponies on the internet. Whatever time Ari didn’t spend sleeping on that first day, she spent watching such videos, fascinated by their cutie marks and magic. It seemed like getting your cutie mark gave you something of a mini-superpower. Or sometimes an actual superpower. Ponies learning to use their magic. Ponies flying. Ponies working together to build new communities. Ponies levitating things with their minds. Ponies making coffee and sugar cane grow rapidly as far up as Washing State. Ponies suddenly extreme experts in their given skill, with near-psychic perception. But one thing they couldn’t do was type. It was annoying all the ‘oh noooo! How will I ever live without haaaaaands?’ comments. The go-to answer seemed to be the Orbi keyboard, one made for disabled people. That was like the holy grail to the ponies now. Don’t get an Orbi, those suck. You type way too slowly with them. Just strap two unsharpened pencils to yourself and type with the eraser side. If you use this keyboard layout, you can type fast once you get used to it. I can break 60 WPM easily. She sent the keyboard layout she used, with the most common letters clustered to the left and right side and the least common in the middle. The standard keyboard layout was actually designed specifically to slow people with ten fingers down to the maximum extent. It was the slowest possible configuration assuming you had ten digits. Compared to one designed to be as fast as possible for someone with effectively two fingers… well she really could compete with a normal person. And sent! Ari nodded to herself, satisfied for what felt like the first time in her life. Better than nothing. But there were so many more like that.