//------------------------------// // Things Crashing Down // Story: Complaints Department // by TheDarkStarCzar //------------------------------// You can't fight fate! Unless it's your fate to fight fate, in which case it was probably a fake fate that you were fated to fight, and that means you can't fight that fate, only fake fate, and then maybe you're fated to fight fate forever! -Pinkie Pie, from the introduction to her cookbook, Chimi Cherry Chongas and 101 other Sugar Cube Corner Specialties Derpy quickly agreed and she and Piggy headed back into the past, promising to meet back up with Applejack's strand as home base as soon as they found what they were looking for. Apple Bloom settled into the long task of picking each individual fiber loose with the tip of the unwieldy shears. She found that, indeed, once she got an end up, the rest peeled away and the whole tuft of orange mohair looking fuzz pulled right loose. She wadded it up and stuffed it in her coverall's pocket. It took far less time than she'd expected and she was about to run after Derpy and Piggy, who were still visible as specks in the far distance, but she came to consider her warning to herself. It seemed like a shame to just run right after them now that she had a moment alone, but... Don't go snooping around? Why did she think to warn herself about that, she wondered, trying to dismiss it from her mind, but it gnawed at her, what was it she'd found? When she tried not to think about it she found she could think of nothing but insidious scenarios in which she would snoop for the good of all ponykind. She could amble ahead to the next big disruption and figure out how to save the day before it even happened. In her imagination she was at the Equestria Games and a disaster loomed, Sombra was returning, again. But she was there and as soon as his form crystallized from out of his putrid miasma, her cocked and ready legs bucked his wicked horn right off the top of his head, putting an end to his latest incursion. They'd probably even give her a gold medal and everything for her bravery, and in her mind it seemed like quite a solid plan, until she thought about her family congratulating her. The games were a ways off yet, and though none of the younger apples spoke about it, they all knew Granny Smith wasn't long for this world. What if fate snipped her dwindling thread before then, could she really go on knowing that with nothing she could do to change it? With a hitch in her throat, she decided she couldn't. Then her fantasies shifted to discovering her friend's cutiemarks ahead of time and directing them towards them, but not long into that fantasy the impending dissolution of the Cutie Mark Crusaders became obvious and she vowed to do nothing unnatural to hasten it. Poking around in the future seemed a hazardous endeavor, but she searched contemporary times, briefly, and found Diamond Tiara. The moment she glimpsed found her lashing out against Snips for being overweight and Snails for being stupid, and then Silver Spoon swooped in to finish the job by calling them ugly hollow horned brown muzzlers from the wrong side of the tracks. It was pretty standard fare for those two bullies, and Apple Bloom started walking into the past, skimming her deeds for appropriate blackmail material. Beyond more bullying, a scene unfolded before her that appeared, at first, to be just what she was looking for. Diamond Tiara was in her room, tucked in snugly and feigning sleep. Furtively she slipped out from between the sheets and padded to her dresser and the trifold mirror sitting atop it. With a barely audible squeak she slid it out, turned it around and placed a pair of candles before it which she reverently lit with a long wooden match. Apple Bloom couldn't figure out precisely what she was doing, Diamond's thoughts were muddled and distracted as if this was a set of actions she'd done so often as to require no attention. It looked for all the world like a shrine. She'd seen this sort of thing before, where fillies collect a collage of pictures of the object of their affections and worship them in the false hopes that their intentions will be returned. In point of fact, Scootaloo had just such a shrine dedicated to Rainbow Dash, but her friend had assured her that it wasn't creepy, and she'd had to give her the benefit of the doubt, even though she was pretty sure that it actually was. All signs indicated that as soon as Diamond looked up, Apple Bloom would know her secret crush. She grinned in anticipation of the embarrassment it would cause when she revealed it in front of the whole class, but the filly kept looking down. She plucked a pendant from a nub of a nail that hung it in place on the back of the mirror and pressed her lips against it gently, then she muttered a few words and lay it down before her. Apple Bloom thought she recognized her invocation. It was something old, something she hadn't heard in a very long time, and the pendant, now that she saw it, was an emblem of Princess Celestia's cutiemark. Buck, she's a solar cultist and she's praying, Apple Bloom realized. That was insane, of course. The Princess discouraged such deification and stopped just short of banning such cults altogether, assuming that they would die away in time, along with their practitioners, and yet this young filly had a solar shrine and was folding her hooves together in preparation for prayer. "Princess Celestia, it's me, Diamond Tiara, again. You know the drill by now. You know I don't want to be a dried up, beauty queen shill, and live out my life pimping Bargain Barn in this no horse town, but if that's what you want for me, I'll gladly do it. I'll do anything you ask, just, please, bring my mom back. Just for one night, that's all I'm asking. If you can do that for me I'd give anything. I'll spend every moment bringing glory to you, just for this one little thing. Please, Princess? It's been so long, I can't even remember her face on my own anymore..." Here she finally looked up, and there in the center of her shrine was a picture of a lovely middle aged mare that Apple Bloom remembered having seen around Ponyville until very recently. She hadn't asked Diamond Tiara herself, but she'd overheard her say that her mother was out of town on business. One doesn't set up a shrine and pray before it for somepony who was coming back, she realized and withdrew from the the lost little filly's thoughts. Apple Bloom thought she knew why she'd warned herself away from snooping, because now she couldn't ever be properly angry with Diamond Tiara ever again. More than that, she realized that the same lessons that they'd learned with Babs should have been applied to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, no matter how distasteful the idea seemed, and she was ashamed she hadn't understood that before now. Walking backwards in time, eating up the miles and years between her and her companions gave her time to think. There was little benefit in anything she could learn from the tapestry, but Diamond's plight got her thinking. It shouldn't do any particular harm if she took a peek at her own parents. She was too young to remember them and it would be her only chance to hear their voices and see them move as living, breathing ponies. She mulled it over and didn't see how it could harm anypony, except maybe herself, dredging up old feelings and ripping open old wounds, but that was a risk she was willing to take and she vowed to be strong. A couple years before Applejack's ill fated sojourn to Manehattan, Apple Bloom had been born and it was just after that event she'd found herself standing. The two strong cords that were lovingly twined round her infant self ended just hoofsteps ahead, and her own line was nakedly exposed beyond that. Certainly Granny Smith, Big Mac and Applejack were close by, but it wasn't the same as having her parents there and now she stood at the precipice of their deaths, not daring to step any closer. She did finally get to hear them and to see them, in the flesh and from within their own flesh, and she knew, as she always had, just how much she was loved. A new opportunity presented itself, however. A thick hempen sapsucker connected somepony to her family, and that tether was composed of that defective piece of farm equipment that had taken her parent's lives and scarred Big Mac's fragile psyche for life. He'd been there that day, been the one to shut off the machine, gather up the remains, fashion a pair of coffins, dig the graves and break the news to the rest of the family, in that order. Certainly he was a kindly and reliable stallion, but he'd never recovered entirely and remained withdrawn and taciturn from then on, much in contrast to the happy, loquacious colt he'd been before. Apple Bloom had not known about that, until that very moment when she saw his younger self bobbing between his beloved parents gabbing non-stop. Now, she saw the single strand that laid them low just before her. One chance interaction that had caused so much pain, and though she doubted she could change the past, reasoned that it wasn't a good idea to try, she pulled the work blackened scissors back out, pinched the moment that the salesman had sold her father that infernal device in between the blades and slowly squeezed. The taut material was tough as steel cable and Apple Bloom had to worry it until fatigue let it unravel with a 'Sproing!' A tiny ripple expanded outward at half the speed of sound, traveling beyond sight, and many minutes later, echoed from off of the frame of the loom, it came back and found Apple Bloom still meditating on the events of the past. Reflections returned in quick succession from either side and when they hit each other, right at the damaged spot, the tapestry started to fray. It creaked menacingly, tiny fibers tearing, large strands being overburdened and stretching to their limits. Apple Bloom leapt to her hooves in fright as the destruction began in earnest. A large cable of fiber snapped beside her and flung itself into air. Was that a pony's life that just severed itself so violently? It was so like the ones she'd been viewing, how could it not be? This maelstrom of destruction was all her fault, she'd disobeyed her own advice, snooping and snipping where she was not wanted, and now all around her, lives were raggedly tearing apart and giving way. The ground she ran on was becoming less stable, it was roiled with waves and twice her hoof had gone through the cloth entirely, letting her fall through to her knee. Below the tapestry were not the ruins and forests she'd looked up from before, but a gaping black void into which strands of fate were already uncoiling and falling in snarled tangles. The wrinkles grew to ten yard swells that threw her off her hooves at their passing, slinging her high into the air where loose lines whipped all around her with bowstring twangs, "Help me! Depry! Piggy! Anyone! Help me! I'm sorry I messed with the tapestry, I didn't mean it! Please, save me!" Soon the quivering cords shredded under the abuse, their pent up energy released like an uncoiled mainspring made of confetti and it scattered it's remains in all directions. The entire tapestry of life reduced to an imitation of a firework's flash. Apple Bloom was briefly propelled skyward. At the apex of her ascent she found herself looking at towards the horizon where the featureless sky met the yawning void below her. Carnage thrown out by the energetic destruction created a semblance of fog in the distance, but so far as she could see, total destruction reigned, a steady snow of fibers drifting lazily downward. She wondered, as she fell after them, flailing and screaming in terror, if there was some definite sort of ground below for her to be dashed upon, or if she would just keep falling forever. Her throat grew raw and her lungs grew heavy as she gathered speed. She felt almost as if she were drowning in the very atmosphere being rammed down her throat. She turned her head and closed her eyes against the stinging wind, her desperate cry petering out at last. In her mind she apologized to all the ponies her imminent death would hurt, if she hadn't doomed them directly. Applejack, Big Mac and Granny Smith, first and foremost. Her parents, whom she felt were still with her in a way. Cousin Babs, who needed a loyal friend like her so badly. Sweetie Belle, who was too innocent to have this tragedy foisted upon her and Scootaloo who'd had to play brave for so long, for so many reasons. This would be just one more kick in the ribs for her, and a hard one to recover from. Pinkie Pie, who'd led them here, would undoubtedly take the blame on herself, and that would be the greatest shame. It would break the very element of laughter when she found out, and all because Apple Bloom had to meddle in a past that was already gone and done with. Lastly, Derpy, that good hearted klutz of a mare. She had wings, but there was nothing left to fly to. She would just fly on until her body gave out and plummet into the abyss with her, and all for the questionable crime of trying to be helpful, "I'm so sorry, Derpy! I didn't mean it! Please, if there's somepony out there, just save her. Don't worry about me and my dumb old cutie mark no more, but please, she doesn't deserve this, she's a good mare who ain't never done nothin' worse than bein' in the wrong place at the wrong time!" "Oh, jeez! Did you see that thing go all kerplooie?" A voice called out over the sound of the wind, "I don't think it was my fault this time." Apple Bloom's fall was halted as she was gently scooped up and slung on the back of one cross eyed pegasus. "Derpy!" Apple Bloom exclaimed and hugged her tightly, almost forgetting for a moment that there was nowhere to land. Derpy hovered and looked around, "Piggy? Where did you put that door? My wings are getting tired! Is that him? Oh, shoot, it's still way back where we were. Well, guess I better get to flapping, heh. You just hang on back there and think light thoughts." The elevator door stood out by it's dim light and by the fact that it was the only speck of anything different around them. It took nearly an hour to get to and Derpy was huffing and sweating by the time she touched down. Touched down being a generous term for her graceless landing. The door and car beyond weren't meant to be approached in such a manner and Derpy only caught it with her forehooves which scrabbled over the slick marble for a grip as Apple Bloom deboarded. Piggy grabbed her and pulled her in easily. The doors shut with a ding and the ones opposite slid open. Standing in the doorway behind a hellish scowl was Galatea, "Congratulations. You destroyed the world."