//------------------------------// // Message // Story: Oh Captain, My Captain // by Onomonopia //------------------------------// A somber mood hung over the ponies that resided within Canterlot, and some of the more desperate ones planned to leave the city as soon as they could. Most of the Crusade still kept guard and focused on helping the ponies that had gotten back from the Crystal Empire, though nopony was certain why Sombra had let them go. But there was a single thought in the back of everyponies' mind that none of them could get rid of, a fact that smothered any thoughts of courage or hope within. The Captain had fallen. While someponies believed him to be completely dead, Belle, Scootaloo and Applebloom knew that he wasn't that. At least, not yet. But when they watched his charred and disfigured body being placed into the healing tube within the secret chamber in the Canterlot Castle, they realized that he might as well be. "You can help him, right Nurse Redheart?" Scootaloo asked the mare with the red cross on her flank, who was looking over the Captain's vitals with a look on her face that made her seem chiseled out of stone. "Because Sombra is on his way with whatever the Tartarus that massive thing is, and we can't fight it without him." The look the nurse gave Scootaloo caused her to backpedal to her friends, giving the nurse space to finish her observations. "To fight? Scootaloo, Captain America is essentially dead," she informed them gravely before shaking her head and running a hoof through her mane. "Apparently whatever willpower Celestia had left she used to mix in healing magic with her attack, but the damage is beyond anything I've seen. That bit of mercy is all that's keeping him alive right now, along with whatever is running through his veins--and his sheer willpower. But he's barely alive. It may be possible to heal the damage done...in a few years at least? By the time that thing gets here? You're asking for the impossible." "But we need him!" Applebloom reminded her, getting another sigh from the nurse. "He's the hero of Equestria! If we don't have him fighting with us, then how can we possibly hope to-" "You think I don't know that?" Nurse Redheart said in a quiet voice that packed enough emotion to silence Applebloom. "You think I don't know what Captain America meant to the ponies out there? To the future of our world? He brought us hope, he showed us that the Five weren't invincible...that evil wouldn't win." "But even if he is the greatest hero we have ever seen, recovering from this is going to take time. Actually, from the extent of his injuries and Belle's description of what happened, he should be beyond dead. I'm chalking up his still being alive to the fact that he has a will that will not stop." Redheart sighed once more as she removed her cap and let her mane fall over her shoulders. "Maybe we can help him. This liquid is soothing his injuries and maybe, with some time, we can even heal his skin. But we all know that Sombra won't give us that time. So the only way we can heal the Captain is to defeat Sombra...and we need the Captain for that." "Then...what do we do?" Scootaloo asked her. "I don't know. All I can do is stay here with him and make sure he doesn't completely die on us," Redheart promised as they all glanced into the tube where the Captain floated. "The rest of you...should get some rest. It's late and you need sleep. You're probably going to need it...for when Sombra gets here." With that the nurse went back to checking on the Captain, leaving the three mares to show themselves out silently. Scootaloo and Bloom talked amongst themselves while Belle trailed behind them, the Captain's shield still tightly in her grasp. She hadn't let go of it since the Captain had thrown it to her. 'Why Cap? Why did you bother to save me?' she silently asked, expecting no answer. The magical properties of what had been in the tube had healed most of her wounds, but there was a hole in her heart that even they couldn't' heal. 'You knew more than any of us the weight that was upon your shoulders, that you were the hope of this land, yet you still chose to save me. Was it just because you are a hero and that's what you do? Why?' "Belle?" Bloom asked her, piercing through the clouds of pain and confusion to snap her back into reality. "We were...discussing what our plans should be. Our pegasi recon teams have informed us that the Crystal Titan is tearing a path across Equestria to get to us and will be here in a few days at most. Do we flee? Can we find a way to get all the ponies out of here in time?" "Shouldn't we at least try to fight?" Belle put forward with a half-hearted attempt to show some courage, but all her words did was gain her looks of pity from her two friends. "Belle...how can we fight that thing? How can we hope to beat Sombra without the Captain here? Even Sombra himself admitted that the only threat to his plans was the Captain. And now he's...we're on our own," Scootaloo reminded Belle, who tried in vain to think of something to say in reply. "We should probably evacuate. I'll see if I can start moving the sick or injured to the train station. Maybe we'll get lucky and Sombra will take a little longer to get here." Scootaloo then took to the skies, leaving Belle alone with Bloom in the silence of the empty throne room. Bloom gazed from Sweetie Belle's eyes to the shield that she still clutched tightly in her hooves, the tiniest smile that she had ever made spreading across her face. "He still went down a hero. That's something at least. He promised Sombra that nopony else would die under his watch and they didn't. If ya can...don't beat yerself up over his decision. He did save ya..." Bloom saw that her words had no effect on Belle, who had resumed staring at the floor. When Sweetie Belle looked up again she was alone in the room, with nothing but the sound of rain trying to break in through the glass to keep her company. Her spirits fell with the raindrops as she walked out of the throne room, walking past numerous members of the Crusade that had the same somber look upon their faces as well. 'They all feel the same as us. That it's hopeless now, hopeless without the Captain,' she realized upon reaching the room that she had claimed for herself, a room that her sister had often used whenever she came to Canterlot. Belle threw herself onto the bed and lay the shield down next to her, staring up at the ceiling. She closed her eyes while trying to get some sleep, figuring that Nurse Redheart was right in saying that she needed rest. Yet every time she closed her eyes, her mind was brought back to the battle. She had been barely able to lift her head, gazing towards the Frankenpony that was prepared to wipe her out...and then the shield landing at her hooves. The thumbs up from the Captain. His last words. And then how she had to stand by and watch as the greatest hero she had ever met "died" to save her. Belle rolled over in her bed with a groan, trying to banish those memories from her mind. Yet when she fell asleep again, she was sucked back into the battle once more. The shield, the thumbs up, the last words...it all repeated again. She cracked her eyes open to see the moon beaming down on her, telling her that she had been trapped within the horrifying memories far longer than she had originally believed. With a small sigh of acceptance, she rose out of bed and walked to the window. The moon that shone so bright reflected in her eyes, making her feel as if Luna was watching from above like she had always done. "Sis...I don't know if you can hear me up there, but we really need help," she whispered to the heavens, praying that her sister could hear her. "Sombra is stronger than ever and without Cap...what would you do? What would the Ambassadors do in this situation? I know that you would tell us to fight, but...this is a fight we can't win. Not without a hero to help us. Please...give me something." A yawn escaped her lips and told her that it was time to return to her bed once more, which she did with fear that the nightmares would return. And indeed, upon closing her eyes and drifting off, she found herself standing atop the crystal spire with the shield in her hooves, with Rogers giving her the thumbs up. "As I said. None of you are dying on my watch. So I leave up to you and the Crusade. And remember, I was nothing special. I chose to believe." Belle felt his words stab at her heart like knives, and she had to avert her eyes as the Captain vanished in a flash of light. But when she lifted her head again, she found the Captain standing as he had right before impact and he spoke his last words once again. An eyebrow slowly went up on Belle's face as the scene repeated itself once more, with the Captain repeating his last words before being blasted away by the solar magic. 'Why...does my dream keep going back to his last words?' she asked herself as the scene replayed once more, her eyes narrowing this time when she caught something. 'Wait a moment...that line. I was nothing special. Why would he tell me that? Out of all the things in the world he could have said, why tell me that he was nothing special? Of course he was special, he was a hero! He was strong and brave and inventive and...' Then the scene shifted around her, changing from the last words of the Captain to a time long before that. Belle recognized the scene almost immediately, for it was when she had spoken with Scootaloo after she had just gotten back from the Starfall with the Cap. "So you're telling me that the two of you, by yourselves, with no backup whatsoever, managed to kill Starlight and bring one of the greatest weapons of destruction down?" she remembered asking with pure disbelief. "I know! I can't believe it either!" Scootaloo had exclaimed from her hospital bed, flapping her tiny wings with excitement. "You should have been there! Starlight was in a giant crab, Discord had been trapped in a machine that was stealing his power and the Captain and I had to fight her alone!" "Heh, I can't believe that star-spangled moron managed to defeat Starlight and destroy the Starfall," Belle watched herself reply with a shake of her head, her words offending the orange Pegasus. "Hey, I helped too. In fact, Starlight was about to kill the Captain with her magic before I intervened. And who do you think reflected Starlight's magic into the tube to free Discord? Me." The image faded away the moment Scootaloo had finished speaking, leaving Belle confused as to why her mind would show her that before the next memory appeared before her. "Fer the last time Belle, ah'm fine. Ah don't need to be in a bed, ah need to fix my suit," Applebloom had spoken from her workbench, ignoring the look that Belle had given her while fixing her suit. "If anything, Rogers should be in a bed instead. He took quite the beating at the hooves of Chrysalis." "And yet he managed to beat her. That's three he's already taken down," Belle had said with a shake of her head, not able to believe at the time how the Captain was managing to defeat the Five. "Well, he didn't do it alone. He may have been the one that held her off, but ah'm the one that dropped the cauldron on top of her," Applebloom revealed with a small smile that had made Belle raise an eyebrow. "And ah'm glad ah got to be the one to do it. She was always one of the worst of the worst. But yeah, we both really showed her." The memory faded away, leaving Belle slightly less confused than she had been. She was starting to notice a pattern with all of the memories, and what they were saying, but before she could draw a conclusion one last memory appeared before her. "I've seen plenty of heroes in my time, so you can trust me when I say that's what I see when I look at you. I see the courage, resolve and dedication to good that all heroes should have. While my being here may have quickened the freeing of Equestria, believe me when I say that you would have freed your land even without me. So don't think that everything good that's happened is because of me or that I'm the only hero you've got. Because I'm looking at three." Belle turned around to find the Captain looking down at the three of them with a smile, a smile that showed not only confidence, but belief in the mares he was looking at. The memory then glanced over at the real Belle and smiled at her as well, giving her a thumbs up before tossing his shield over to her. Her eyes snapped open as she shot up on her bed, mind racing as she struggled to shake the sleep from her eyes. Once she had done so, she glanced down at the shield beside her to see it reflecting the moonlight that had come beaming in from the window. She wrapped her hooves around it and lifted it up, looking into her reflection upon the metal that only continued to shine. Then one more voice spoke in her head, a voice that made her blood boil. "Because he is a human with no magic, no wings and only a shield that can't be broken. And yet with barely anything going for him he brought down far more of us than any of those alicorns or supposed 'destined' heroes did." 'But...maybe...that's where the secret lies,' Belle started to figure as she lifted a hoof up and touched her crystal horn. 'Captain America...was nothing special, at least by our standards. He has no magic. He couldn't move the sun or moon. He didn't have any ancient artifacts that made him far stronger than he was. But he still made it farther...than any other of those heroes...with incredible magic or powers we couldn't comprehend. Why?' Then the mare thought back to how the Crusade had been before he showed up, how they had all been hopeless, how they didn't believe that they stood a chance...how they were desperate for a hero to show them what to do. And that had been exactly what the Captain had done. And then she remembered how he had told them about his life, how he had been chosen for the program that had made him the Captain and how he had fought despite the impossible odds. 'He didn't fight because he was a destined to or because he had a magic that would win him the battle. He did it because he had to,' Belle pieced together, remembering the impossible odds that Rogers had faced the entire time he had been here. 'Because if he didn't prevail, then there would be nopony left to fight. But now...things are different. We've shown that we can fight back, that we can save our world. That together we can bring down even Tirek, despite us being nothing--' Belle took in a quick breath as the final piece fell into place, finally understanding what the Captain had been trying to tell her. She then gazed down at the shield and saw her own reflection within, a reflection that only showed her. 'I understand now. I understand what he had been trying to say for so long. And now I know we can win this, that just because we don't have the Captain doesn't mean that we're beaten!...But I still need to convince the others and right now they are beyond hopeless. They already believe themselves to be beaten. How can I show them otherwise?' She wracked her brain for nearly an hour, trying with all of her mental might to think of a way to convince the Crusade to take up their weapons once more. And then, just as the moonlight shone down on her, she had it. She knew exactly what to say. "Idea," she whispered as it all came together, a large smile spreading across her face as she leapt out of bed and ran for the door. She accidentally dropped the shield on her way and out had to race back over to pick it up. Yet when she did so, she glanced at the shield to see her reflection...and the faintest reflection of a white mare with blue eyes standing behind her. Yet when Belle glanced behind her she found that there was nopony else in the room with her. But as she sprinted from her room to wake the other two Crusaders, she had a feeling she was no longer alone.