Chapter 1 - Everything I had
But you have friends.
You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
What do you offer?
Rain beat down hard outside Sugarcube Corner. As the black clouds drowned the sun and slowly engulfed the old bakery in their dark tendrils, the blanket of rain smothered the sounds of black metal that rumbled from within the confines of the top floor bedroom – the only indication that there was life in an otherwise empty building.
Pinkie Pie slumped across her floor, dragging her hooves along the floorboards with each step. She dropped the empty bottle of whiskey on her way into the bathroom and fell forwards, gripping the sink to support her weight. Nausea swept over her and she coughed hard, feeling her stomach churning from the booze. Less than an hour ago, she had forced a smile at the shop assistant as she forked over the last penny she had for three bottles of the cheapest, nastiest scotch that the sweet old woman had sold in her dreary little shop on the corner. Rummaging through her purse for the shrapnel had taken her longer than it had to drink all three bottles when she finally arrived home: by the time she had even thought about writing a note, she was too drunk to hold the pen straight.
She spat a few times until the nausea passed and then she raised her head so that she was looking at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were like empty, grey pools in her head. Her curly piny mane was tatty, unkempt and stained with grease. She could scarcely remember the last time she had brushed her teeth, let alone manicure her hooves or shampoo her mane. She pulled at her skin with her hooves, stretching it until she grew bored of seeing her own miserable, disgusting face in the mirror and drove her hoof hard against the glass.
Pinkie Pie scooped out bloody shards from the sink and scattered them on the floor. She reached for the six bottles of lofepramine she had been stockpiling for months. Along with the eight packets of Temazepam, two bottles of Zopiclone and of course, the Melleril, she was like a kid in a candy shop. She hugged the various bottles and packets of pills against her chest, retrieved the largest of the mirror shards from the floor and carried the lot back into her bedroom, where she proceeded to systematically empty the contents of every bottle and packet out onto the bed.
She was crying again, great, racking sobs that shook her entire body.
Pinkie Pie, crying? It wasn’t news. The past week she had been crying almost permanently, spending days in bed, unable to move. Today was the first day she’d left the house in over a week.
It was the last day she would ever leave the house.
With a final, brave smile at the photograph of her friends that she had tried so hard not disappoint, she scooped pills up by the handful and started to shovel them into her mouth.
*
Lightning crackled overhead.
A massive blob of waterlogged cloud descended from the sky. The sheer weight of the thing dragged it down, and it settled comfortably over Ponyville, emptying its rain all over the buildings below. Ponies scurried off the streets as quickly as they could, dipping and diving out of the way of the torrential rain. As more gargantuan, black clouds moved in to devour Ponyville, a brilliant burst of rainbow-coloured light shot straight through the cloud, tearing out a huge chunk of it.
Rainbow Dash emerged out the other side and flew out in an arc, flying hard against the driving rain to get a better look at the immense cloud.
“Woah.”
The thing was like some sort of demented creature; a ravenous beast that consumed all life around it. It quickly recovered from Rainbow’s flight through it, the wound closing up dismissively. It seemed to expand at that moment, until Ponyville had all but disappeared underneath the thick, blanket of cloud cover. The tremendous cloud was black as coal, save for the occasional white flashes that surged through it.
Rainbow narrowed her eyes. This cloud didn’t want to play nice. Well, today, neither did she.
She kicked hard against the air beneath her and shot upwards, flying as fast as her wings could take her. When she eventually cleared the rainclouds, she found herself in clear skies. Up above the clouds, more than a mile above ground level, it was blissfully quiet, serene almost. Down below, a black, almost horizontal platform of cloud cover blocked out the ground, and the blue pegasus knew that further down still, the surging cloud-beast still remained, slowly drowning Ponyville.
Rainbow checked her wings and found them to be as strong as ever, sleek and tipped like razor blades. She smiled slightly and angled her body downwards. She sucked in a deep breath and kicked against the air.
As she dropped through the cloud cover, Rainbow started to feel the GeForce tugging against her flesh. The force of the air rushing against her sleek body made her eyes water as she cut through air, sky and cloud effortlessly, leaving a dazzling trail of rainbow light in her wake. She was approaching the ground fast, less than a few seconds till impact. For Rainbow Dash, her field of vision had reduced to the rapidly approaching black cloud over Ponyville. Everything else was like white noise. She felt the air suddenly ensnaring her, pulling harder as her own speed continued to increase. She knew that she was flying against the sound barrier, and she could feel it stretching as she approached her maximum speed. When she was sure that she was on target, she shut her eyes and released her last burst of power, breaking through the sound barrier with a tremendous burst of Rainbow Light.
As the Sonic Rainboom exploded behind her, Rainbow Dash burst through the cloud cover, breaking it into pieces. Intense light of all colours blazed, vaporising the rainwater and the blue pegasus shot through the air, faster the speed of sound, skimming the rooftops. Ponies looked on, feeling the sky pony pass overhead, seeing the spectacular rainbow trail blazing through the sky and looking on with awe as the Sonic Rainboom sliced through the oppressive black clouds above, breaking them up with its own atomic energy.
Rainbow zipped through the smaller clouds, destroying them easily. Slowly, rain stopped falling over Ponyville. By the time the Sonic Rainboom had reached the limit of its blast radius and had started to dissipate, Ponyville was welcomed by the warm red evening sun.
Rainbow looked out from her vantage point in the clouds and saw the gorgeous sight. Puddles were drying on the ground, the sky was awash with colour and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Rainbow smiled to herself.
“That was awesome!”
*
Pinkie Pie dragged the shard of glass over her left leg, the razor sharp edge cutting deep into her pink flesh. She whined in pain, tears flowing down her cheeks as the shard reached the end of her leg. She spat the shard out and let out a moan. As the blood began to rush to the surface, Pinkie fell backwards onto the floor, surrounded by empty pill bottles. Her stomach lurched, the combination of pills and booze tearing at her organs.
She groaned again. Every cell in her body was ablaze with pain. She bucked against the ground, trying to fight it but it was useless: the pink pony was already too far gone. The best she could hope for was to hold out against the pain long enough for unconsciousness to set in.
*
“And then I was like BAM! WOOSH! Sonic Rainboom! Sky cleared in ten seconds flat.”
Twilight Sparkle nodded her head politely in agreement and Applejack rolled her eyes. “We saw, Dashie, we saw.”
“It was pretty damn cool though, right AJ?” Rainbow asked, almost desperately.
“It was a decent lightshow,” Applejack conceded with a smile as she stirred the milky coffee. The coffee shop across the road from Sugarcube Corner wasn’t Applejack’s first choice of venue for a drink: the sheer closeness to the old bakery made it feel like they were betraying Pinkie and the Cakes just by being in there, but since the Cakes had moved away and Pinkie Pie was… well… there wasn’t anywhere else in town to get a decent cup of coffee.
Rainbow sat down and took a sip from Twilight’s latte while the unicorn turned the next page in her book about Jockey Lacan’s psychoanalytical theories and pretended not to see. Twilight didn’t mind: more than anyone else, Rainbow had refused to set foot in the café since it had opened. It just hadn’t sat right with her. Of course, she’d claimed it was down to the café’s lack of decent herbal tea (which Rainbow didn’t even drink) and the fact that they “didn’t even do plain scones” (a criticism the owner had taken very seriously and subsequently worked hard to correct), but Twilight knew the real reason: loyalty. They’d all felt it to some degree, but Rainbow had taken it hardest after Sugarcube corner shut down.
“Well, I’m beat,” Rainbow yawned. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Enjoy your…”
“Mirror stage?” Twilight said.
“Yeah,” replied Rainbow, “whatever that is.”
“When a foal sees themselves in the mirror and realises that they’re separate from their mother,” Twilight summarised the entire chapter she had just read, “it’s like the first moment you realise you are actually an individual.”
“Rainbow don’t need a mirror to tell her that,” Applejack said idly, “Pinkie Pie neither.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened slightly at the mention of the pink pony’s name. Applejack glanced at the pegasus and then down at her coffee, wishing she’d kept her trap shut.
“Yeah,” Rainbow said, turning around so that the others couldn’t see her face. “I’m heading home. Goodnight.” She walked out the coffee shop, the concerned eyes of her friends following her on the way out.
*
Pinkie Pie crawled across the floor.
The pain was intolerable, as if it was tearing at her soul, pulling her to pieces from the inside. Blood streamed from her leg and her frantic movements trailed it over the room. She wanted her body to stop fighting the pain. Maybe if she was just to lie still and let it wash over her body, she would slip out of the world peacefully, but the pain stabbed at every pore, curling and warping her body as it pulsated through her. In one of her frantic movements, she slammed her head against her bedside cabinet and sent the lamp flying. She dropped down, unconsciousness setting in quickly. She didn’t know whether it was the drugs or the blood loss or even the impact to her head, but the last thing she saw before her entire world plunged into darkness was a room filled with beautifully decorated cupcakes.
One hundred Lofepramine, forty five Zopiclone, twenty five temazepam and twenty Melleril
Everything I had.