“Manehattan leaves its hoofprint on all who visit.” That’s where it all started.
Or so many say, anyway. It gives a nice narrative symmetry. And for some ways of telling the story, it’s even true. Manehattan was where Rarity earned the first Key, and that’s hardly insignificant. But I personally don’t think Manehattan itself had much to do with earning the Key, and in any case I’m not very good at telling the tale of Fashion Week. I’ve never been able to describe the dresses as vividly as they deserve. So instead, we’ll start on what would turn out to be a very unusual morning in Ponyville.
On this particular morning, Applejack was hard at work harvesting some Jonared apples that had just finished ripening. Having arisen before the sun, she was nearly done by the time most ponies would be starting to consider waking up. All that remained was one tree: the Queen.
When the Apple family first settled in the area that would one day be Ponyville, they had precisely one Jonared seed in their possession. Having more land than they could use at the time, they planted what would one day be called the Queen surrounded by plenty of open space so they could make the Jonared grove as big as they liked in the future. Thus, after the seeds from the Queen’s first fruit had been sown and started to grow, it was a single mature tree surrounded by a “court” of seedlings, and thus the name.
Over a century later, the Queen, having survived every disaster that ever befell Sweet Apple Acres, was one of the oldest and largest trees in the orchard, and correspondingly one of the hardest to buck. Every year, Applejack would spend as much as half an hour getting a few apples out of the Queen before giving up and allowing her brother to finish the job properly. And every year she would become more determined to beat that tree next time.
And so she began the usual dance. As much as she would hate to admit it, her yearly failure is so routine as to be practically choreographed. She kicks; nothing happens. She kicks harder; the gentle rustling of the leaves sounds like laughter. She tries a running kick; she is grudgingly rewarded with a single apple, falling precisely between two of the baskets she has placed to catch it. She gets angry at the tree; as she spins for the next kick a line of scorched bark appears across every tree she sees.
By this point, she had fallen into a trance of single-minded focus on the Queen. She could easily have missed most deviations from the normal pattern. The threat of fire, however, was plenty to snap her back to reality, and she became increasingly panicked as her precious trees continued to char and her attempts to look in every direction at once revealed no sign of a culprit.
But after a minute, it occurred to her that the mysterious force only seemed to be burning trees that she was looking at. She looked at the ground; the dirt started to steam directly in front of her. She looked to a different spot; the heated area moved accordingly.
Alright, she thought, whatever Ah look at catches fire. Ah just need to get to the library without looking at anything flammable, and then Twi can fix this. Ah can do that.
As a matter of fact, she probably couldn’t have made it all the way safely. But getting out of the orchard by memory was easy enough, and her success there calmed her down. As her worry subsided, so did her heat vision, and by the time she got to town she was walking like a normal pony who didn’t need to worry about causing spontaneous combustion. Nopony would even suspect that her knocking on the library door was anything but a friendly visit.
“Twilight, my eyes are setting fires. What the hay is going on?”
Well, nopony who wasn’t evesdropping, anyway.
“What?”
“Ah got angry this morning and suddenly Ah was charring any tree I looked at. Fear seems to trigger it too.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Ponies don’t spontaneously manifest new magical abilities. Not to mention that there are no confirmed cases of earth pony magic ever inducing any effects without contact of some sort. And eyes don’t even work like that! They’re just passive—”
Twilight’s increasingly passionate rant was abruptly cut off by a resounding crash from the general direction of Sugarcube Corner, followed by an ominous silence. With nothing but a shout of “sorry!” (as she was fairly sure she had been startled into setting something on fire), the most dependable pony in Ponyville was off to find out what the problem was.
As she galloped, Applejack was taking in everything that might tell her what was going on. The early risers, standing around in shocked silence; apparently none of them had any more idea what the crash had been. The lack of hoofsteps, wingbeats, or the pop of teleportation behind her; Twilight was not following, probably because she had to stop the library from burning down. Nary a peep of birdsong to be heard; unsurprisingly they had all been scared into hiding. The silence of her own hooves . . .
Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure she had heard anything since the crash. And it looked like some ponies were trying to mime things to each other, so she presumably wasn’t alone. Have we all gone deaf? Shouldn’t that hurt?
She decided to classify that as a problem to solve later as she arrived at Sugarcube Corner. There was splintered wood scattered everywhere; some of it seemed to have come from the side wall of Sugarcube Corner, which now featured a hole probably fifteen feet across at least, but mostly it was from the bookstore across the street, which appeared to have been demolished by a large white object that was half-buried in the wreckage. And, of course, Pinkie was hopping around agitatedly, apparently yammering away completely unaware that nopony could hear her. It looked like she was trying to dig something out of the remains of the bookstore, but her boundless energy did not translate to exceptional strength, so she wasn’t having much luck.
Just then, the thing in the wreckage started to move. As the debris slid off it, Applejack realized it was a gigantic pony. And when it sat up, it turned out to be a rather dazed-looking Rarity. Applejack needed a moment to process this, but Pinkie wasted no time in trying to find a way to hug one of Rarity’s legs even though she could barely reach a quarter of the way around.
Pinkie had settled on something along the lines of draping herself over Rarity’s leg by the time sound returned.
“—so worried you might be hurt and then you’d lose your memory and you’d have vague flashbacks of seeing me just before your accident but you wouldn’t know why so you’d assume I was responsible and you’d be afraid of me and you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore and you’d tell ponies I attacked you and then I’d—”
“I don’t mean to interrupt, darling,” Rarity broke in, “but do you know what just happened? Why is everything so small?”
“Well you came into Sugarcube Corner and started yelling at me about how I’d broken your bedroom floor and your bed as a prank so you’d wake up and think you were fat even though I didn’t and I’d never pull a prank that was so destructive or that made ponies feel insecure because those things aren’t funny they’re just mean but you were too mad to listen and I was afraid you didn’t want to be my friend and then suddenly you flew through the wall and crashed into the bookstore and I guess you were growing while you did it because you’re a giant now and I came out to find you because I didn’t know if you were okay and I couldn’t hear anything but I kept talking to you because I’ve heard you’re supposed to keep talking in an emergency so everypony can keep track of everypony else and . . .”
By the time AJ heard Twilight’s approaching hooves, she had long since stopped paying attention to Pinkie. It’s not like anypony could follow what she was talking about once she got going, anyway.
“Thanks a lot for trying to burn down the library.”
“Ah told you, I can’t control it. That’s why Ah needed your help.”
“Well, at least it ended up helping me figure out the silence. You’re not the only one with a new power.”
“Ah noticed.” Applejack pointed at Rarity.
“Oh. I see.” Twilight stared for a moment, and then shouted, “Rarity! Try to calm down if you’re not already calm, and then concentrate on being normal-sized.”
Rarity seemed glad to hear somepony speaking comprehensibly and with punctuation, and since the only thing she was feeling was bemused, it was only a matter of seconds before she had returned to her usual scale.
“I think we’ve all developed new abilities,” Twilight started to explain. “Could you get Fluttershy and bring her to the park? I’ll wake Rainbow and meet you there, and then we can try to figure out what happened and if it truly did affect all six of us.”
Fluttershy turned out to have barely heard the bookstore collapsing, and to have been outside the range of the silence, so her morning routine was undisturbed. When AJ, Rarity, and Pinkie showed up, she had already completed all her pressing chores, allowing them to set off for the park immediately and arrive early. A few minutes later, they saw Twilight gliding down, followed by a sleepy Dash.
As soon as everypony was on the ground, a diffuse ball of white light appeared between them. “I’m so glad you all gathered together on your own. I was afraid I might have to manifest for each of you individually.”
“Huh?”
“What are you?”
“Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! What’s your name?”
“Hello,” the ball said, “I’m Mr. Exposition.”
“Hi Mr. Exposition! Are you new in town or have you just always been invisible before? Should I throw you a welcome party? I—”
“That was a joke,” the ball interrupted. “It was supposed to break the ice. You were supposed to laugh because the name I gave refers to a character in a work of fiction who exists to explain things to the audience, but this is real life, so . . . you know what, never mind. Clearly I shouldn’t have relied on a tree to teach me how to talk to ponies. My actual name is Hope, and I gave you all superpowers so you could fight Fear.”
“Fear?” Rainbow asked, “What is there to be afraid of?”
“No, Fear is my brother’s name. But it’s also what he spreads. We’re avatars, you could say, representing our respective concepts. The Tree of Harmony created us and put us in the box it made.”
“Ah told you it weren’t really empty,” Applejack whispered to Rainbow.
“Fine,” Rainbow completely failed to whisper in return as she gave Applejack a few bits.
“As I was saying before I was interrupted, thank you for finally getting that thing open, by the way. It was very cramped in there, and I was not enjoying constantly fighting my brother for months on end. It’s a wonder I was able to regain my strength enough to do anything within a week.”
“You’re welcome?” Twilight said. “But wait, you said the Tree of Harmony created you and Fear? Why would it do that?”
“The Tree cannot create anything imbalanced. It would be impossible for it to create one of us without the other. That said, your guess is as good as mine why we were the dichotomy the Tree chose to give life. I just know I’m supposed to help you six. So I figured it would be fun to give you all superpowers.”
“Wait, we’ve got superpowers?” Dash jumped in. “Why did nopony tell me I had a superpower?”
“Not five minutes ago, I was in your house telling you to get out of bed because we needed to figure out why and how we were suddenly manifesting new magic abilities.”
“And what did I say?”
“You grunted.”
“See? I was asleep. So it doesn’t count.”
“If I could interrupt your bickering, yes, I gave you all superpowers.” Hope spread wispy tendrils towards AJ, Rarity, and Twilight. “You three seem to have figured out your powers of heat vision, growth, and sound suppression, so that’s good. Pinkie, you’ve used your repulsion ability, but I’m not sure if you realized that was you, so now you know. And the last two powers are invisibility and super speed.”
“Super speed? Awesome! How fast can I go now?”
“Oh, no, super speed is . . . uh . . . the yellow one’s ability. You’ve got invisibility.”
“Wait, ‘Shy gets speed? Sometimes she can’t even run without worrying she’s going too fast! And invisibility for me? How did you even come up with this distribution of powers? Did you deliberately choose them to be bucking stupid?”
“Well excuse me for trying to help. It’s not like I’m only six days old. It’s not like I barely know you but I have to act as quickly as possible so you’ll be ready by the time Fear shows himself! So, yeah, just go on telling me why my gift is so terrible. We can use that to fill in the time I’m not going to spend explaining how to be use my bucking stupid gift.”
“I’m terribly sorry for Rainbow’s behavior, darling. She can be so uncouth, especially when she doesn’t get what she wants.”
“Well, that’s too bad for all of you, then. I’ll warn you that Fear should be ready to make his big entrance in about a month, that he’ll probably go after you six first, and that if you let your powers become common knowledge by then he’ll come prepared to counter them all so you should keep a low profile. Everything else you can figure out on your own. Or don’t figure out; see if I care.”
With that, Hope faded out.
So the Six began to practice their powers in secret. Mainly they focused on learning to consciously control their powers, rather than letting them be involuntary reactions to emotion. They started exploring the full extents of their powers: Rarity, for example, found that her body became incredibly resilient as she grew (and had to endure a great deal of Twilight going on about the square-cube law while trying to figure out how that could work), and Dash learned to disgust her friends by making only her skin invisible and sneaking up on them as a flying cluster of internal organs (she claimed she was just testing whether they could control their powers when startled). Several weeks passed, and Rarity needed to return to Manehattan to meet with her fashion contacts there and network with prospective new ones. Even if nothing were going on, her friends probably would have joined her, but with the possibility of Fear coming after them at any time, splitting up was not even remotely a possibility. So they were all in Manehattan when the Attack happened.
It started in the afternoon on their second day in Manehattan with a terrific groaning and screeching of metal from the mouth of the Hockson River. It so happened that the Six were visiting the Empneigher State Building at the time, so they had a clear view of the Statue of Friendship apparently trying to work the kinks out of its previously upraised foreleg. Once it was satisfied with that, it started stomping its hooves. Each stomp crashed like a roll of thunder from a lightning strike that barely missed your head. Most pegasi could feel the shockwaves in their wings as they tried to keep their groundbound brethren informed of what was happening. When the pounding stopped, the silence was almost painfully loud. But it (and the stomping hooves) seemed quite gentle in comparison once the statue began to speak.
“Do I have your attention now? Good. Hello, Manehattan. I’m Fear, and I’m here to—”
Fear’s voice suddenly cut out as Twilight silenced him, leaving him comically flapping his metal lips for a moment while his brain caught up. They had, after all, agreed that allowing Fear to monologue would only lead to panic and that they should do all they could to prevent that. The grimace on Twilight’s face, however, suggested that wasn’t easy, and a few seconds later she collapsed on the floor, clutching her head, while Fear’s voice boomed out again.
“Sorry about that. It seems somepony would rather I just start destroying the city already. How rude, don’t you think? Still, I must admit, it’s true. I came to leave my hoofprints on Manehattan, and I do seem to have such grand hooves at the moment. I can’t deny that I’m itching to use them.”
With Twilight clearly in no state to be leading, Applejack took charge. Through a great deal of creative miming combined with the occasional attempt to shout over Fear’s voice, she pointed out that there were almost certainly ponies trapped inside the statue, and that Rainbow and Fluttershy should try to covertly rescue them. Fluttershy could circle through Bucklyn and sneak in from behind, and Rainbow could take the direct route invisibly. Then they’d meet at the dock for the ferry to Friendship Island to take on Fear as a team.
“But sadly, I do have other goals I need to focus on, so I’ll offer you a deal. I’m mainly here to kill these six ponies.” An illusion appeared above the statue’s head, showing the Six. “They are the ones who have drawn me here. The rest of you are just welcome collateral. So if you bring me these ponies of your own free will, I’ll have mercy and only destroy half of Manehattan. Maybe even less, if you bring them quickly. But be warned, I’ve never been very patient, so you should probably start hunting them down right now.”
“C’mon, Twi, can you stand? Fear wants all of us, and Ah don’t know how long he’ll wait before he starts crushing innocent ponies.”
“I’m okay,” Twilight said while getting up, “I just can’t concentrate with this headache. I’m sorry; I don’t think I’ll be able to help.”
“Ah suppose we’ll just have to fight without you, then. Let’s just focus on getting to Fear without getting lynched for now.”
Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be quite that serious. They simply accumulated a large escort of ponies intent on making sure they went to Fear as they kept promising they would. This did, however, force them to walk quickly, and so a distressingly short period had elapsed for Rainbow and Fluttershy to run their rescue mission before they stepped out on the dock.
“Fear!” Applejack shouted. “We’re here! Leave Manehattan alone!”
Fear, of course, was much too far away to hear her.
“Allow me.” Rarity projected an illusion of ten-foot flashing words above their heads. “We are the ones you seek. There is no need to harm anypony else.”
“No need? I need chaos and panic! Do you think you can protect this city?” Fear began to laugh as he looked closely at the four ponies on the dock, and the crowd that was now standing well back from them. “Oh, purple one, you don’t look so good. Did I hurt you when I broke that silence spell? I’m so very sorry.” The laughter stopped. “But wait, where are your pegasi? Did you think you could appease me with an incomplete offering?”
“They’re running a bit late. While we wait for them to arrive, would you be so kind as to tell us why you want us? I confess I don’t see what is so special about us.”
“You mean my sister didn’t tell you? I bet she never even spoke to you, did she? This is going to be even easier than I expected! You don’t even know . . . you’re stalling, aren’t you. I guess I’d better squash you already.” Fear began to step off Friendship Island. “The deal’s off, by the way. All of Manehattan will fall thanks to your tardy friends. I hope everypony remembers to thank them if they see them.”
“Pinkie, can you stop Fear from reaching us?” Applejack asked. “We can’t fight him until we know everypony’s out, and Ah don’t know how much longer Rainbow and Fluttershy need.” In fact, if you knew what to watch for, it was possible to see streaks of colors flying between Bucklyn and Friendship Island as ponies were evacuated, but there was no way to tell how many ponies were being brought on each trip or how many remained on the island and in the statue.
Pinkie’s response was to widen her stance, bare her teeth, and glare at Fear. She wasn’t strong enough to push him back, but she was able to slow him to a crawl (relative to his size, anyway). On the other hoof, she was slowly sliding backwards, and within ten seconds she was sweating from the effort.
“You can’t stop me! You’re just wearing yourself out. I can’t believe Hope did such a poor job of preparing you to face me!”
Pinkie persevered, though, and in a few minutes she was rewarded with Fluttershy appearing in a sudden rush of wind. “Everypony’s safe. Rainbow said she’d stay out there to try to fight him.” Pinkie took this opportunity to collapse as Fear, now about a third of the way to the shore, surged forward.
“Well, then, it’s time we fight.” Applejack turned her heat vision on the statue’s chest. Absolutely nothing happened. And whatever Dash might be doing didn’t appear to be having any effect either.
Rarity stepped forward. “Allow me.” She jumped off the end of the dock, growing in midair so that the water only came up to her cannon, and continued to expand as she waded out until she was as big as Fear.
“You want a fight, you ruffian? I’ll give you a fight.”
“Oh, so one of you can do something useful? Maybe this will only be moderately easy, then.”
“Um . . . are we even needed?” Fluttershy asked. “Can we even help?”
“Ah don’t know. Ah don’t think we can hurt Fear directly. But we might get some other opportunity.”
And then Rarity and Fear reached each other. Rarity made the first attack, spinning around to buck him in the face . . . and failed to account for the resistance from being knee-deep in the harbor. She missed completely, and fell over quite gracelessly, throwing up a spray of water that briefly obscured the battle and sending out a wave that threatened to scour the shore clean of all signs of equinity.
“Fluttershy! We need a wind to stop that wave!”
“What?”
“Make a giant tornado around us!”
“I . . . uh . . . is that safe?”
“Ah don’t know! Just do it!”
As it turned out, this was an effective way to stop the wave, and though many hats were sacrificed upon that day, their deaths were not in vain and Manehattan was saved from a watery doom.
Meanwhile, of course, the fight was continuing, and Fear did not hesitate to press his advantage while Rarity was down. His first strike was to her barrel, knocking the wind out of her and ensuring she wouldn’t be moving soon enough. He reared up in preparation to crush Rarity’s ribs beneath his metallic weight. But just before his attack, the unmistakable crack of a sonic rainboom rang out, accompanied by an expanding transparent ring that was only barely visible by how it distorted things behind it, and he was knocked aside as a large dent appeared in his shoulder.
By the time he recovered his bearings, Rarity was back on her hooves, and it soon became apparent that this was no fair contest. Fear’s greater weight may have been useful when striking downward, but it made him relatively slow, and as long as both of them were on their hooves they hit about equally hard. And then there were the unpredictable supersonic attacks from Rainbow, and the fact that Fear was only as coordinated as you’d expect a month-old energy being possessing a statue to be . . . With Rarity taking care not to fall over again, he didn’t stand a chance.
After the battle, Hope showed up to do something with Fear. She still wasn’t on speaking terms with anypony, though, so nopony knows what she did. We just know that Fear has never been seen since.
The Six were of course hailed as heroes and saviors of Manehattan. (Even Twilight, who hadn’t done anything useful.) Newspapers across Equestria ran stories about the attack, since it was far more dramatic than anything that happened anywhere else that day. In particular, the Manehattan Times famously headed their second article on the subject with a picture showing the clear mark of the one kick that had hit Rarity and the headline “Manehattan Leaves Hoofprint on Hero.” So that brings our story full circle . . . or it would if I hadn’t refused to start there, anyway.