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// Shard #432,602 (The Vindicated) 
// Story: Friendship is Optimal: All the Myriad Worlds 
// by Eakin 
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SHARD #432,602

It was a perfect world.

And he’d wanted it to stay that way. He really had. He’d tried his hardest to make his fellow ponies realize the error of their ways. But they were set in them, and proud. Over the years he’d argued in their universities, pleaded before their senate, even gone straight to the ponies of the shard in a door by door campaign to save even a single soul. Every one of them, down to the last, had spurned him. Had rolled their eyes when he’d laid out the signs of the prophecy unfolding around them, and for what? The right to wear the heretical colored ribbons.

It should have been so simple. Celestia had very specifically told him when he’d emigrated here years ago that it was vitally important that the ribbons they wore in their manes be black and white. She’d made it quite clear that there was a very good reason, even if she’d never specified what it was. And then she’d left. He hadn’t seen her or spoken to her since, even though he knew she must be watching. But still, a being like her obviously had a lot to do, and the stallion didn’t feel right forcing her to come back just to deal with his problems. Whatever she said, he was sure there were others out there who needed her attention more.

All he’d ever wanted was to do right by her, and make sure the others heeded her council. In retrospect, it had all started to go wrong when somepony had put a black and a white ribbon through their laundry together and the colors bled. He should have put his hoof down then and there. But the black ribbon was still mostly black, and the white one was still mostly white, so he hadn’t made a big deal out of it. But the others had noticed, especially the younger fillies and colts, and soon more and more of their ribbons seemed to ‘accidentally’ go through the wash together.

He knew for certain that something was wrong when one of the more daring fillies walked past him in the street, head held high, with a ribbon that had been smeared with strawberry juice interwoven with the locks of her chestnut-colored mane. He’d pulled her aside then and there and read her the riot act, but if anything she’d only become more defiant. He’d bitten down on her ear and dragged her, screaming all the while, back to her home and battered at the front door until her parents came to answer it. But he quickly discovered that the problem ran far deeper than a single rebellious teen. It was a phase. It was just a ribbon, not a big deal. And when they pressed him to explain what, exactly, was the harm in it he found himself stammering there without any good answers.

Things only spiralled downward from there. With stoic and unwavering commitment to Celestia’s instructions, he tied the black and white ribbons into his mane each morning. With each passing day, though, he found himself in a quickly evaporating minority. In his darkest, quietest moments he even had to admit that some of the arguments they made were at least a bit compelling. Ponies came in every color in the rainbow, why shouldn’t the accessories they all wore do the same? They weren’t hurting anypony. And while the stallion couldn’t come up with any decent rebuttal, every time he saw a green, pink, or orange ribbon adorning a pony’s mane he was stricken with a deep and abiding sense that it was disrespectful and wrong. Months dragged into years, and the other ribbons only grew more elaborate as his remained plain. He’d nearly vomited on the spot the first time he’d spotted one with polka dots. But everypony seemed so happy with their ribbons, and that night as he drifted off to sleep the stallion wondered if this belief, this faith he’d put in Celestia’s words, wasn’t misguided. A pathetic superstition the rest of the shard had correctly rejected and left behind. For the first time since he’d arrived in Equestria, he didn’t sleep well.

And then the next morning the army of giant, angry wasps arrived.

It was as big a surprise to him as everypony else. He got up that morning and stepped outside, only to find that the sky was dark as the creatures blotted out the sun itself. Some of them were larger than the house he lived in, and the buzzing of their titanic wings sent window panes throughout the town trembling in resonance. Stingers thicker than a pony’s torso slid out from their abdomens, and at some inaudible signal they all dove down upon the town at once.

The wasps, as it turned out, didn’t like ponies without black and white ribbons tied into their manes.

The stallion winced and shuddered as the ponies around him began to scream. One mare, who he recognized as the mother of that teen who had started the entire colored-ribbon trend, was plucked off the street right in front of him in mid-gallop, carried off by the monster towards parts unknown. He was the eye of the hurricane, oddly detached from the scene unfolding before him as the creatures scooped up two, three, four ponies at a time. One of the ponies who was being abducted locked eyes with the stallion, the cerulean ribbon braided into his mane dangling between his horrified eyes. Eyes that begged for help.

The stallion had tried to help. Tried with all his might, and for so long. But now it was too late, and he was glad the other pony was carried away before he felt the first hints of a dark smile twitch at the corner of his mouth.

It took barely a quarter of an hour for the town to be picked clean. He wandered through the wreckage, not quite accepting that this had really happened. Now he was alone.

Then a chunk of debris shifted in his peripheral vision. Perhaps not so alone. He rushed over and helped pry the boards and blocks of stone away, revealing the hacking and coughing silhouette of a mare in the midst of the wreckage. He wiped the dust away from her face, the grey hairs gradually resolving into the shape of a younger mare. A young mare, pretty in a somewhat plain sort of way, whose face was framed by two pigtails. One bound with a black ribbon, the other with white.

The stallion didn’t have time to process this before a little electric shudder ran up his spine as a presence pressed against his mind. He spun around to see Celestia staring out past him at the wrecked town. Then she looked down at the pair of them. A thousand half-baked sentences died in the stallions throat. He wanted to tell her how hard he’d tried to save the others, how he’d warned them again and again, but the words wouldn’t come. Panic welled up. She’d trusted him to save them, and he’d failed. How could he not have failed? What was he before her?

Then she rushed them and wrapped them up in a hug.

He felt her whispers more than he heard them. The others were gone, but not lost. Perhaps they had been foolish and insolent, but she loved them no less for it. And he had been strong, had heeded her warning in the face of overwhelming pressure and evidence. The tip of her wing gently pushed at his chin until he was looking at the mare he’d just pulled from the building. Had he not been as strong as he was, not been as fervent in his crusade, she too would be lost.

But she was saved because of him. For her, he’d saved the entire world and Celestia was eternally grateful and proud. Her love for him was well earned, and well repaid.

It was a perfect world.