//------------------------------//
// Chapter Six 
// Story: Next Tuesday Morning 
// by Flutterdude 
//------------------------------//

	Twilight (the time of day, not the protagonist) was nigh and the three friends had no place to stay. In front of them was a yellow road. Behind them was a yellow road. It was getting too dark for their liking. To their right were trees. To their left were trees. They were sitting ducks, practically waiting to be gobbled up by the night terrors. They weren't entirely sure why the night was so bad as far as the possessed were concerned, but Twilight (the protagonist) and her friends Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were certain night time brought bad things.
"Sometimes I wonder why we have to be scene-colored ponies with neon manes," said Rainbow Dash.
Pinkie Pie had the hood on her jumpsuit over her head, her pale pink mane tucked into it so that the only things keeping her head's silhouette different from that of a skull were two bumps where her ears were obscured beneath the jet black micro-fiber. A couple stray strands of mane poked out of the hood, scarcely obscuring her left eye. She brushed them out of the way. "Maybe you guys should put on these jumpsuits." She pulled two form-fitting, one-piece garments identical to hers out of their veritable pack mule Rainbow Dash's saddle bags. They were as black as the air around them, as the eyes of the demonic pseudo-zombies that had over-run or at least threatened the existence of everything they held dear.
Rainbow Dash was the first to relent, taking off her saddle bags and slipping into the various folds of the jumpsuit. She had put on a jumpsuit before, when she broke into a hospital one time to get a book she had been reading. (Don't ask.)
"You should put the hood on," said Pinkie Pie, pointing to the pegasus's rainbow mane. Dash did so and put the saddle bags back on.
Twilight needed some help getting into the jumpsuit. She had not put one on before, but got a sudden sense of déjà vu. "Wait... where have I done this before... ?"
She suddenly remembered looking into her mirror three days ago. "Future Twilight was wearing a jumpsuit!"
Pinkie worked out some creases on Twilight's suit as she prodded further. "Really?"
"Yeah! This means I'm that much closer to being just like my future self from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING! The laws of time are putting another inevitable piece together." She said the last sentence with a touch of gloom in her voice.
"Well, yeah. You can't prevent what you see from the future. Remember our talk?" There was a pause as Twilight remembered their theory of alternate continuities and their being in the past and not the true present. If their plan worked, then future Twilight would cease to exist, the continuity they were in presently would be erased and would have never happened, and they would truly be in the real present. Until they used the time travel spell again. It all made sense now. Sort of.
Rainbow chimed in, "No use crying over spilled milk, remember?"
Twilight checked "jumpsuit" off of her list of things she and future Twilight shared. Mane: check. Scar: check. Bandanna: check. Jumpsuit: check. There was only one thing missing.
"Well, I still don't have an eye patch."
Judging by that sentence's being in a separate paragraph, that was about to change.



As the three friends treaded lightly Twilight began thinking. About the date. She woke up from unconsciousness to find Ponyville in the state it was presently three days ago. That same day, the neat little clockwork thing in the Carousel Boutique had read Saturday, March 10th. She did the math and realized that the upcoming day would be Tuesday. It was Monday night as she slowly, cautiously walked up the slope leading to Canterlot. For all she knew, Tuesday could have been in a couple hours. NEXT TUESDAY MORNING was in less than a day. And she still didn't have the eye patch.
She was in for some serious pain in the near future.
She thought about her friends. Not even a week ago, they had been pleasant, kind, happy-go-lucky bundles of fun and giddy energy. Now they were somber, brooding, and generally out-of-character.
She had changed, too. She always was the most sensible of the group, but now she got the feeling that she was just unpleasant. Smacking sense into her friends when they got out of line. Telling them what they were going to do, when, and how. She was the ring-leader in a three-mare band of disheveled sojourners. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she couldn't help but feel like things were seriously wrong. Though that was because things were wrong. Now they were walking toward an evacuated Canterlot, constantly looking about for any signs of possessed shells of what used to be ponies like them.
Her gaze wandered to her visibly depressed friend Pinkie Pie. She got a jabbing ache in her chest.



The three ponies ambled toward a house in the near distance.
They had made it. After an entire night of (almost) nonstop walking, they had made it to the desolate cobbled streets of Canterlot. Now they were tiredly shuffling toward the strange place that would hopefully house them until Tuesday morn finally arrived.
They all offered a collective silent sigh and lowering of the shoulders (which is kinda awkward for quadrupedal animals to do) as they neared the door of the house. Twilight was about to open the door when a bullet careened into the wood just next to her hoof. She took it back as the point of entry popped into a brief flurry of splinters. Twilight was left staring at the bullet hole. Upon looking to her left she saw a dark, stallion-like silhouette in the grey light of post-mid-night.
The stallion was wearing the standard uniform of an Equestrian Crowd Control Force officer. Bullet-resistant barding, circular plexiglass shield strapped to the left hoof, shoulder-strapped utility belt of supplies including extra magazines of rubber bullets to go with the low-caliber rifle strapped to the opposite shoulder, pepper spray, tear gas canisters, police baton, taser. The sight of a law enforcer, a riot officer, no less, trapped within the quarantined zone made the three wonder just how urgent the evacuation had been.
Beneath a plexiglass visor attached to a standard-issue black dome riot helmet, the officer stared at them with darkly glowing eyes as it reloaded its non-lethal firearm.
Twilight galloped behind a conveniently-placed dumpster as Pinkie Pie rushed behind a conveniently-placed house. Rainbow Dash took to the air and began getting her rifle ready.
Twilight and Pinkie could see each other from where they were positioned behind their respective covers. Twilight could see that Pinkie had a "serious-business" face on her, as opposed to the "frightened-survivor-trying-to-keep-cool" face she had during the fire fight near the Ponyville Police Department.
Pinkie returned Twilight's glance and started trying to signal Twilight with hoof gestures. She made signals which consisted of rolling her hooves over each other in a circle, half-pointing upward and then pointing straight at the possessed officer with her whole foreleg, pointing to her closed mouth and then quickly biting and keeping her teeth bared, then pulling her hoof away and rotating her fore-foreleg 180 degrees, and finally making a salute-like gesture and dragging her hoof across her forehead.
Twilight responded to Pinkie's orders in actual words. "What?"
"Shoot the bastard!"
"Oh, okay."
Twilight proceeded to shoot at the possessed one with her trusty pistol. The bullets entered its armored barding, but they barely fazed the pseudo-zombie. It clenched a tear gas canister in its teeth and threw it toward Pinkie and Twilight.
Yellow smoke filled the air between and around them. Neither of them could be certain if any one cough or gag was coming from them or the other. They ran in the general direction of away. Pinkie was the first one out of the cloud, coughing some more to make room for fresh air to seep in and calm her lungs again. She looked about her but fell to the ground out of dizzying light-headedness.
Twilight was getting woozy and groggily jogged out of the yellow cloud. She barely had time to recover before she leaped back at the sight of the former pony two meters in front of her.
Twilight suddenly lost all sight in her right eye, feeling liquids spray over her face. She collapsed to the ground as the worst pain she had ever felt overcame her entire body. She barely registered her even falling to the yellow bricks that paved Canterlot over the sharp, all-consuming, agonizing pain.
The last thing she saw before passing out was the officer following suit.



Twilight's whole world was swimming in her eyes, everything in front of her registered as part of one giant blur.
She blinked a couple times to work out her sight a bit more. She felt an odd, unfamiliar sensation as both of her eyes moved their muscles, but she only felt one eye lid passing over one eye. The world also seemed strangely flat, as if her sense of depth perspective was shot.
It was only upon meekly lifting her hooves to her eyes to rub the sleep out of them that she realized that was exactly what had happened. Her right eye was obscured by an eye patch.
She sensed another presence in the bed with her. She turned her head to the left to see Rainbow Dash laying on her side, watching her.
"Wh... what happened?"
"You got shot in the eye."
She narrowed her eye. "Blunt much?"
"Well, you asked what happened, so I told you what happened."
"How long was I out?"
"A couple hours, I think. The Sun's almost out in any case."
She dug her eye into her pillow and clenched it shut. "Well, now I'm just like the Twilight from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING."
"Well, I think it is NEXT TUESDAY MORNING, now."
"Yeah... I guess." She opened her eye. "We have to get to the Canterlot Archives."
"You have to rest. We'll go in a few hours."
"Where's Pinkie?"
"She asphyxis--... asphyzmix-- uh..."
"Asphyxiated?"
"Yeah, that. The tear gas asphyxisated her. Then the zombie guy shot you, and then I got him from the air and brought both of you here."
"Both of us? Wow." She paused. "You didn't leave one of us in the street and make two trips, did you?"
"No. I dragged you both on the ground."
Her jumpsuit was resting on top of the blankets by her hind hooves. It was battered and scuffed, thinning in areas. "Not much better."
"Well..."
"That's okay."
Rainbow Dash shifted and was left staring at the ceiling. "She's in bed, in another room."
"Is she okay?"
"Oh, yeah. She just needs time for the nitrogen to circleate through her nervous system and... do the... the thing--"
"You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?"
"No."
Twilight giggled playfully. "So, why are you checking on me and not Pinkie?"
"'Cause Pinkie's gonna be fine. She just needs to rest. You just lost an eye. I figured you might need some moral boosting."
"You mean 'morale'?"
"Yeah, that."
Twilight shifted in bed to have the same position as Rainbow Dash, staring at the ceiling. She finicked with her eye patch.
Rainbow Dash shifted to lay on her right, watching Twilight. She scooted closer to her. "Is there something wrong? Anything?"
Twilight could feel her friend's comforting warmth. "No, it's fine."
Rainbow put her topmost hoof over Twilight's torso under the blankets and started to tighten her embrace, lessening the distance between them. "If you ever need some of that moral boosting, just come to me," she said as she nuzzled Twilight's neck with her muzzle. She began to slowly shift her legs over Twilight's--
"Rainbow?"
"Yes?" she asked with half-open eyes and a coy smirk.
"You know my barn door doesn't swing that way."
"What? I mean, what--" she suddenly got the reference and scooted away from her unicorn friend, blushing. "Sorry."
"Does this story have a '[Shipping]' tag?"
"No! I'm sorry! Sheesh."
"It's okay." She shifted onto her side to look at Rainbow Dash. "I just felt like breaking the fourth wall." She gave her embarrassed friend an understanding hug and a quick peck on the cheek before closing her eye to rest.



As the three vagabond heroes trotted triumphantly toward the Canterlot Archives to finish their quest and make things right again, another figure watched them from behind a badly damaged fruit stand. He was an earth pony and was wearing a dark grey combat suit, complete with hood and scary-looking gas mask. Behind him were two acquaintances dressed similarly. The hazmats had informed them that they were fairly certain the air was safe to breath for extended periods of time with no permanent ill effects, but the three of them had insisted on wearing gas masks. They had said it was "just in case", but in reality they just wanted an excuse to wear scary-looking gas masks.
The earth pony stared at the three jumpsuit-clad figures in the near distance. "Let's take out those ones, and then we go to the Archives."
One of the others, a female pegasus, said, "I'll take to the air and get the pegasus first. That will let us have complete control over the sky. Then you guys can take out the others and I'll help out if I can."
The third one, a stallion, and also a pegasus, said, "I'll get the purple one from behind after you take out the pegasus."
The earth pony gave a definitive stomp of his hoof. "Good. Get into positions. Do you know where those are?"
The mare said, "I think I've a good idea of the path I'll be flying."
The pegasus stallion said, "I'll fly out from that alley over there when I hear the first shot."
"Alright, then. Three... two... one. Go."