//------------------------------//
// New Place, Familiar Face 
// Story: Remembrance 
// by LunarEklipse 
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	Ugggh... What... Happened?

Twilight's consciousness slowly began to return to her.

Did... someone save me?

Twilight slowly opened her eyes and confirmed the answer to her question. She was laying on her side on a mostly white mattress, not including the bloodstains that colored the mattress red in various places. In the direction her head rested she could see a table and two chairs with armed stallions sitting on them in front of a red brick wall. The entire room was lit by candlelight, and she could see through a window in the middle of the wall that it was currently night. It also appears that makeshift barricade was crudely in place over the window, as if it were nailed there hastily in an attempt to keep something out... or in. 

Twilight tried to move her foreleg, but it was bound down by straps for some reason. She could not move any part of her body, with the exception of her head, which was severely painful to move in the first place.

The movement also apparently attracted the attention of the guards, as one of them looked at Twilight and prodded the other one to get his attention, and whispered something in his ear before he got up and left the room. The other one stood up and held his spear to a frightened and confused Twilight while they both heard the door open and close again.

"Put that spear away, hun'," Twilight heard a calm yet familiar voice say to the guard, "You're probably scarin' it. I woudn't suggest doin' that." 

Immediately, the guard lowered his spear, apologized to the other pony in the room, and sat down in the chair again. An orange mare wearing a hat came around the corner, and the sight of her immediately gave Twilight a headache. The face was familiar, but Twilight couldn't recall it. She didn't understand why this mare seemed so recognizable to her, but judging by the mare's face, it seemed like she recognized her, but with a lack of trust.

"I'll make it simple for ya hun. I can't be sure if I can trust ya yet," the mare said to her.

"W-why," Twilight stuttered. Her voice was hoarse and definitely injured, making it very painful to speak. 

"Changelin's, hun'," the mare told her, "Do you remember what they are? The huge bugs that can turn into anythin' they want? They tried to take over Equestria at your brother's weddin'?"

The information was completely alien to Twilight.

"Let me tell ya straight what the deal is, sugarcube," the mare said to her, "We've had too many bad things happen cause we just let whoever into our little community. We don't let anypony just come in anymore. Only reason your here is because Big Mac and I found ya bleedin' to death at the hooves of a Timberwolf. Here's the deal. You get us to trust ya, and we'll let ya in. If you break it once, we'll kill ya without hesitation. Got it?"

The death threat threatened Twilight. She slowly nodded her head in agreement.

"Good. We'll keep ya here till you're better, but then you either get goin' or prove to us you really are who you claim to be. I don't want anymore ponies dying at the hands of a changelin' spy. I really hope you are who you look like, though. We've searched age's for ya, Twilight. It's been ten years since the attack. You're the one we're needin' the most right now."

The mare walked out and the second guard came back and sat down in his place, while Twilight thought about what the mare had just said.

Ten years ago? I've been in that cave for that long? I don't know what happened. Who is that mare, however? Why do they seem so familiar to me?

Twilight, unable to answer her own questions this time, laid her head down again, and fell back into the grips of sleep.

It was numerous days before Twilight was healthy enough to get out of her bed. She woke up numerous times, sometimes only for seconds, sometimes for hours. After a week, she was able to move around a bit and cast a little bit of magic, so they provided a small selection of books for her. She remembered her love of reading, and read every single one while under watch by the familiar mare. After she asked for more books, the mare gained a look of approval on her face. Eventually, by the time she was able to walk, she had read half the books that the town had collected. Twilight realized that the mare was beginning to trust her, unbinding her from the bed and allowing her to move around the room. The guards were no longer stationed in the room, but instead outside the door. This is the first chance Twilight got to look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face was bruised badly and a part of her ear was torn off. Thankfully, this would heal. Upon getting a closer look at the rest of her body, she could see how she was covered in bandages, bruises and cuts stitched shut. Her fur had been scrubbed clean, but only around the areas she was not injured. The blood still remained caked on her fur in many patches. She noticed a particularly large bandage wrapping around her chest. she slightly peeled it off to see why, but quickly replace the bandage when she saw the deep bite that had ripped out a large amount of flesh, flushed out with antiseptic and covered in various dressings. She quickly vomited into the toilet due to the disgusting sight, but quickly recovered and returned to her bed to read through the beaten edition of Early Equestrian History. Soon, she had fallen asleep, passed out right on top of the book.

A month later, Twilight was allowed to go anywhere in town as long as she was accompanied by a few guards. As she explored it, she realized how bad the situation for the ponies living there. Most of their houses were shacks built roughly out of spare bits of scrap wood or metal. The fillies had 3 tire tubes to use as swings held up by frayed ropes. There was hardly anything that this town had that was built well, except for the cell Twilight stayed in and a common house in the center of the town. Twilight did not understand why such poverty existed in Equestria. It was a shock to her. If people are living in such bad conditions, these must be desperate times, she thought. When she turned the corner, a guard was breaking up a fight between two mares over a loaf of bread. Tears came to Twilight's eyes and she wiped them off on her foreleg, but it stung due to the salt in her tears getting into the wounds.

Finally, two weeks later, when the wounds were finally healed and the mare was taking off the bandages, she announced that she was going to trust Twilight wholeheartedly but only if she would accompany her on a dangerous task. 

"We're going into the town of Appleoosa to check on the townsfolk there. My cousin Braeburn should be holding it well, but we need to see if we can get some food from their orchards. Our rations are running out."

Twilight agreed to go with her, but was worried about the safety of the townsfolk in their absence. However, the mare assured her that "They would be perfectly fine," due to the fact that they were hidden well from any attackers. Twilight remained concerned. The mares got onto the wagon that would take them to Appleoosa and headed off. They enjoyed a nice conversation on the long trip as well.

"I cannot believe that I forgot to ask you what your name was," Twilight admitted to the mare, "Would you mind telling me?"

"Twilight, you know what my name is," The mare replied, "If you don't know, you're starting to make me a little suspicious."

"I'm sorry. I think I may have hit my head while I was hiding out," Twilight told her, "And I've been having trouble recalling recent events."

"Ah," The mare said in relief, but remaining with concern, "My name's Applejack, but you can call me AJ if you want."

Twilight started to get a major headache. Applejack. Applejack. Why does that name sound so familiar to me?

"But, it doesn't matter," Applejack told her, "I used to work on this farm called Sweet Apple Acres with my family. That was before the Changelin's came back, however. I made it out with my brother Big Mac, but my sister... my grandmother..." 

Twilight could see tears starting to come into her eyes as her voice became quieter and much less cheerful. But hearing about where she worked, about her brother and her sister, it only made her headache worse.

"Me and Big Mac got here in a few hours on foot," Applejack told her, trying to hold back more tears, "We were bein' chased by a large horde of Changelin's. There's a cave in that lil' town we were at. The reason we founded it there was cause that cave saved our lives. We started heading out, to find food and things like that, but one day, we found a mother and her child starving to death under a rock. The child had developed gangrene on his left foreleg. We took the mother and the child, but despite our best efforts, the mother died from tetanus that she had developed from a cut that we found on her face. We had to remove the child's foreleg due to the gangrene with no medical experience a week later. We didn't have any anesthetic either. The child screamed the most horrible sound you could imagine. Did ya see that older filly at the swingset who had the wooden leg?"

Now that Twilight thought of it, she did remember seeing that. Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Over time," Applejack continued, "We found more and more survivors of the attack. Many died within a month, but we saved all the ones we could. We had a very good setup until a few years ago, when we found out that one of the survivors we picked up was a changelin' disguised as a normal pony. We tried to stop it, but it escaped. We've had trouble ever since. Attacks are common now, and we have lost many good lives to them. Sometimes, a spy gets in, and silently kills ponies in their sleep. We have guards patrolling at night now, but we are so understaffed, that we have less and less guards to work with altogether. About a year ago, we found out the changelin's are startin' to breed superweapons. We had a mare and a colt come running at us, screaming about how they had been experimented on. Two Earth Ponies. We thought nothin' of it, until the full moon. One of their superweapons is apparently a werepony, and although we did kill them, one of them bit our chief-in-command. He was turnin' into one of those things the next full moon. That's partly why we quarantined you, Twilight. We've also had attacked by the most gruesome creatures. What about the pony that literally had 4 spider legs burst out of her and then turn into one herself? The venom was deadly too. Killed 5 people in total. We have had lots of problems thanks to those changelin's but the worst was what happened a month ago. We were fine on food, growin' apple trees ourselves, but... they... burned every single one..."

Yet again, tears came to Applejack's eyes. She wiped them off and proceeded with her speech.

"You can't even pass by many fillies without them begging for food now. It's just... horrible..."

Applejack looked outside through the window, wiping the tears off her eyes. "Oh," she told Twilight, "We're here."

The two mares got out of the cart. Twilight's headache returned. Why was she getting this headaches?

Applejack's initial happiness quickly turned to despair and she ran forward, Twilight did not know why until she turned around and saw the town.

Destruction. Ashes. Everywhere. Buildings laid in ruins. The dead bodies of various ponies were littered everywhere. Some apparently looked like they were fighting something. Others appeared to be running. Twilight even found a few grown ponies hugging their children, still holding their pose. She ran away from them, ready to burst into tears any moment. She kept running but stopped right before she slipped off a cliff. She saw trees. Burned everywhere, just black points going straight up to the sky. She saw Applejack running to a destroyed building on the other end as fast as possible. Twilight suddenly remembered the fact that she had wings. She could fly over and not go around! She backed up to take of and got a running start. She jumped and opened her wings about three meters from the cliff face, but a sudden incredible pain shot through her left wing and she fell to the ground. This is when she saw how crooked it was. Her wing was broken. She had to run around. At this point, she saw Applejack pushing away debris around the building, and as soon as she had gotten past the door, she fell down to a sitting position. Twilight ran around as quickly as she could so see the problem with her friend. By the time she had caught up, she could hear Applejack sobbing. By the time she reached the building, She could see why. A golden colored Earth Pony, laid on the ground dead in a pool of blood.