Dragon's rage
(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Hasbro or Lauren Faust, and certainly have nothing to do with My Little Pony™. I am simply an author writing a story for my own entertainment and for readers like you.)
Rainbow Dash sighed softly to herself as she left the boutique, and walked towards Twilight's library...Or what was once her library. Things were changing too fast for her...One moment, retching in the Wonderbolt's shower room, the next, back in Ponyville, where she was getting the stories of how her friends died. Not exactly how Rainbow Dash envisioned life to be like five years later. Sighing again, she picked up her already brisk walk.
Although the ponies that saw her along the way recognized her as a Wonderbolt, they steered clear out of her way; they also knew that she was an Element of Harmony, and why she was here in Ponyville. Along the way, she waved back at Big Mac, who didn't seem to notice her, as his stall had a long line of ponies wanting to buy some apples, it seemed like, although there seemed to be way too many ponies waiting just to buy some apples. Maybe Big Mac was putting on a sale, but she doubted that was the case; either that, or it must have been one heck of a sale to bring in that many ponies for some apples.
She noticed that the ponies weren't giving Big Mac any bits at all for the apples; that was rather strange, but then she realized that it was probably Big Mac using the 'credit bits' way of selling apples, where a pony would 'buy' something for no charge, on the promise that they'll pay it off later. She had to admit, it was a smart business ploy, managing to still sell goods in such high quantities at a time like this. The only problem with it was the sheer amount of ponies lining up for the apples; Big Mac was going to have a hay of a time either trying to remember all the ponies that bought apples from him, or completely trust the fact that the ponies were honest. She walked off, away from his stall; it was going to be his eventual problem, not hers.
Approaching her destination, she noticed that there was a blackened spot a few feet away from the library, which confused her for a moment. It seemed to be naturally made from lightning, but there were signs that unicorn magic had been involved at some point. She decided to just write it off as Twilight practicing one of her spells...After all, weirder things had happened when in the proximity of the unicorn, so a blacked patch of ground near the library wasn't exactly unusual, although the pegasus was a bit curious about it. Why would Twilight be practicing a spell out in the storm, especially in one that was as devastating as this one? She sighed; it was probably what got Twilight killed, the egghead couldn't restrain herself from wanting to learn more about the world. The pegasus moved away from the blackened spot, and the door of the library got closer and closer.
Rainbow Dash was about to take those last few steps and knock on the door of the town's library when she realized that she had left the extremely late Daring Do book she had on the poor excuse of a dining table she made, up in her cloud-home. Some pony she was, checking out a Daring Do book, forgetting all about it for five years, suddenly remembering it, and walking up to a deceased unicorn's library only to find out that she didn't have the book with her. Needless to say, she berated herself quite venomously as she took to the skies, promising to herself that she'd soon be back at the library.
There wasn't much changed about Ponyville, nothing much at all. Shops came and went, a few homes and shops got bigger, nothing major. At least, until the storm had hit, and it had hit hard. Rainbow Dash's eyes were full of shock and awe as they darted throughout the town, taking in the breathtaking and horrifying scenes of destruction that met her. It was much, much worse than she thought. At first, she had originally thought that the storm only destroyed a few buildings located in the market district; apparently, that was not the case, and she wished that her eyes were lying to her.
Roughly, from what she could see and what she guessed she would probably see, there seemed to be about twenty-five percent of the town that was utterly devastated by the storm. Although the other three-fourths of the town should have, in theory, be able to help rebuild the fourth part that was destroyed, the main damage to Ponyville was in the housing district, where the ponies lived in. All around inside the town, she could see ponies walking around aimlessly, carrying what little possessions they were able to bring out of their homes. It was an especially hard sight to see a little unicorn filly sitting just outside the broken remains of what Rainbow Dash assumed to be her home, holding onto a stuffed doll as she cried. The reason why Big Mac had such a long line of ponies at his stall, Rainbow Dash realized, was because he wasn't selling the apples on a 'credit bit' plan, but was most likely giving them away, free, to the disaster victims...It all made too much sense now.
The scenes of destruction were overwhelming, and Rainbow Dash was more than happy to see the sight of her old cloud-home, which she landed on softly. There was something unreal, however, between the perfect, If somewhat messy condition of her cloud-home compared to the mangled remains of what could hardly now be called homes on the surface. Entering her abandoned home, she quickly looked around for an old saddlebag, and, upon finding one under her extremely messy bed, tucked the Daring Do book inside, making sure to position the saddlebag in a way as so that the book would not fall out during her flight back down to Ponyville. Stepping outside her home, she jumped into the cold air, and took to a slow glide towards Twilight's library. The slow gliding allowed her some time to think about what to say to Spike; she never really communicated much with him, unfortunately, so any conversation between the two of them was more than likely going to be awkward, at the very least.
She wanted to mentally shut all this out. She didn't want this. But she wasn't a coward, she wasn't going to back down. Her friends deserved that and so much more from her. The only thing she could do was listen to their stories and remember the memories they had together, but, once that happened, the pegasus knew there would be an empty void whenever she would think about friends, and nopony or any groups of ponies would ever be able to fill that in. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she looked down at the town again, unable to resist the sight of it.
There was so much Rainbow Dash could and could not do for the ponies of Ponyville. She could give the bits to repair the town, help repair it herself, do critical jobs that would've been done by other ponies had they not been impaired in some way in the storm...What she could not do was erase what must have been some of the most terrifying moments that these ponies were forced to endure through. Already, there were ponies attempting to piece together what remained of homes, businesses, and wounds, but while all those would eventually be healed, the scars of the event would forever remain, more evident in the ponies who lost everything, in the ponies that limped along with terrible wounds that would permanently scar over, and especially in the ponies who lost loved ones, such as herself.
All too soon, she landed down in front of the library. She sighed, knowing that she was in for another story that would tell her of the details of how a friend had died. She needed to do this, however, and thankfully, she would only have to listen to one more story after this one. Steeling her resolve, the pegasus prepared several lines of dialogue to use depending on the circumstances, and knocked on the door, waiting for Spike to open the door for her, assuming he was still inside the library, and waited for him to answer the door.
She was gone, never to return.
She was like a mother to him, and she was gone.
She was the one that hatched him into this world, and she was gone.
Being a dragon, Spike knew that he would eventually outlast anypony he knew, barring the princesses, of course, and while he had always tried to ignore that fact, watching Twilight die right in front of him more or less brought him to reality. He was going to live for thousands of years, long past the lives of the ponies that he currently knew. None of this would continue to exist, thousands of years later, and if it did, it would never be same, ever, for him. He didn't want to grow up, didn't want to see tomorrow, the radiant sun warming his scales and signifying the start of a wonderful new day, only to remember that Twilight Sparkle would never be able to share it with him again, and never again would he ever hear her voice.
There was a faint knocking on the door, but he refused to move from his place at the foot of Twilight's bed; he didn't want to deal with whoever was there, he just wanted to be left alone with his thoughts. His mind was full of conflicting emotions; absolute sadness over losing Twilight, bitter, angry rage over not being able to help her, to calm, tranquil acceptance of the event. He was confused on what to do now; the only thing that came to his mind was either going back to Canterlot, or continuing to work in Twilight's...No, his library now.
Looking through the library, memories and flashbacks of Twilight yelling at him to shelf books, to find books, to replace the books here with books over there...He knew that he could never work here without the memories of her coursing through him every time he looked around the library. That might not be a bad thing, though; any memory of Twilight, no matter how painful it was, always seemed to comfort him. Spike sighed as he chewed on a sapphire, the normally crisp, clean taste of the gem suddenly tasting like soap. He frowned at it, and then tossed it into a nearby garbage can. How was he going to live on without Twilight? He considered just moving back to Canterlot when that faint knocking continued to disturb his thoughts. Sighing in defeat, the dragon went downstairs and angrily muttered a few words that Twilight would have been horrified to hear from her assistant. When there was a resounding crack of wood being splintered, that's when Spike started getting worried and indignant, running towards the sound. Who was there, and why would they break down a wooden door that wasn't locked?
Was he in for an unwelcome surprise.
She knocked on the door, waiting for him to answer.
She waited, and knocked some more on the door, slightly harder and faster.
Getting frustrated at the lack of a response and completely forgetting that Spike may not have been there, she bucked at the door, trying to making a louder 'knock' to whoever was still in the library; however, she misjudged her strength, and made quite an entrance, splintering the door in half and nearly toppling into the library uninvited. She regained her balance, and sighed as she looked up at the sky. She smiled sheepishly up at it, and imagined Twilight's unamused face, the kind she had on whenever she crashed into the library, so long ago. "Uh...Sorry Twi?"
A tired sounding voice came from within the library, clearly irritated with her. "Rainbow, you pull open the door, not push it." The pegasus turned around, remembering who that voice belonged to. Sure enough, a slightly taller yet still babyish-looking dragon was frowning at her, holding up a piece of wood that came from the recently bucked-in door. "Hi, Dash." She looked at him in embarrassment. She had forgotten that Twilight's library door needed to be pulled open instead of being pushed open into, like every other building in Ponyville. The mistake she made probably made her impression very, very bad.
"Sorry, Spike. He tossed the piece of wood aside, clearly looking unamused; while not the best of conditions that she had expected from him, she supposed it wasn't the worst one, either.
"Whatever, I suppose I'll have to fix this later...Hello, Rainbow Dash." The pegasus smiled warmly at him; there was just something about him that reminded her of Twilight, although she had yet to figure out what that was.
"Hello, Spike. I suppose you know why I'm here." The dragon nodded, and disappeared inside; the pegasus followed him, careful not to step on the remains of the door she shattered. They sat down in the library's kitchen area, and the two, dragon and pegasus, stared at each other, each waiting for the other to speak first, as if it were some kind of game to see who would last the longest without saying anything...A game that Rainbow Dash knew that Fluttershy was beyond perfect at.
The dragon lost the game, which was a first for the pegasus. Spike was young, and he didn't have the patience for things; of course, that was rather hypocritical, coming from the pegasus. At least, it would have been, five years earlier. Now? The pegasus was tired and rundown, beaten, insecure. She could not find safety and security in herself, only with her friends, and now that her friends were gone...
"...She died trying to save the town." The pegasus sighed. So began another black story of death, only this time, the atmosphere was not as...'Friendly' as it was in Rarity's boutique; it seemed to be filled with an icy tension, but she hoped it was just her frayed nerves acting up due to this event. She waited for the dragon to continue, but she was only to see that he was glaring defiantly at her, as if she were the one that caused the storm.
He didn't say another word; he simply glared at her. The pegasus was uncomfortable from his sudden hostility towards her; she didn't think that he'd be angry at her, for any reason, really. There wasn't a thing that she could think about that would be able to explain why he was glaring at her, but she supposed he was just angry with himself and was just lashing out at her to vent his frustration. At least, that's what she hoped was his problem with her. She spoke softly, trying not to aggravate him any more.
"Uh...Spike, that's making me a bit too uncomfortable, dude. Can you tell me what happened to her, while dropping the glare for me?" Silence was the only thing that Spike was offering her, and the tension was growing heavier with every passing second. The pegasus was growing more and more uncomfortable; she hadn't expected this from the little purple dragon. She expected some anger, yes, and some of it wrongfully placed on her, but she didn't expect this much anger. She noticed that he had a gemstone in his claws; she hadn't noticed it before, but the grinding of the gemstone managed to alert her to it. The pegasus frowned, and then she knew that something bad was about to happen, most likely with regrets on both sides. "Spike, easy, dude, I'm sorry about the door, okay? I can fix it up for you if you want, I just want to know what happened to Twilight..."
At the mention of her name, Spike squeezed the gemstone so hard, it shattered into little bits and pieces, scattering across the floor. The shock that the pegasus went through didn't prepare her for what was coming next. The grieving dragon pointed a claw at the pegasus, and yelled the last thing the pegasus ever thought she'd hear, especially from him, in an voice that was totally unfit for his small size.
"It's your fault she died, that everypony died here, and I'll never forgive you for that, Rainbow Dash!"