Nihil Novi Sub Sole

by Wheller

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“There he is!” Luna called out, just quietly enough for Vinyl Scratch to hear.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Vinyl said with a grin. The pony that they had seen was Montana Ulan, whom Princess Luna was better acquainted with than Vinyl Scratch. Vinyl had met him once, nay, twice, though technically speaking, one of those times had not happened. The time that did, Vinyl had woken up in Whitetail Wood after a night of partying in Canterlot, only to stumble upon the travelling earth pony. He’d been walking across Equestria at that point, now he was in South Island, travelling on the same passenger ship that they had. It was not a coincidence.

“Our train’s here too,” Luna explained... “He’s getting on our train!”

Most assuredly not a coincidence.

Luna helped Vinyl Scratch board the train, and they went to take their seats, only to find that Montana Ulan was sitting right across from them. There was something bigger than coincidence going on here. It’s like someone, or something had guided them to this point.

“Hi there!” Vinyl said, grinning at Monty Ulan.

“Huh? Oh, hello,” Monty said. “Hey... I think I know you. You were that mare I bumped into on the ship, very sorry about that again.”

“Oh it’s quite all right,” Luna said giving him a gentle smile.

“Do you by any chance remember me?” Vinyl asked.

Monty looked over the white unicorn mare for a moment before responding. “Now that you mention it, you do look familiar.”

“Vinyl Scratch, we met in Whitetail Wood a few weeks ago,” Vinyl said.

“You know what? I do remember you...” Monty said.

“Radical!” Vinyl said with a grin. “This is my friend Starry Night, by the way, kind of crazy huh? We meet in Whitetail Wood, board the same passenger ship for South Island, get off at the same port, then proceed to get on the same train? It’s almost like I’m following you or something.”

Monty did not reply, instead he gave sort of a nervous chuckle

The train started moving, and the conductor came through to check everyone’s tickets, causing a few minutes interrupting in the conversation, as there seemed to be an issue with Monty’s ticket. The conductor took him up to the next car where they could get the issue worked out.

“What are you doing?” Luna asked, “Montana Ulan suffers from a well documented case of chronic paranoia! You’re going to spook him... also, ‘Starry Night?’”

“Hey! It was that or ‘Moon Beam’ that couldn’t have possibly been any more obvious. And for your information, I’m just being myself,” Vinyl said with a grin.

“Stop doing that, we don’t need you to be like you right now, try to be more like Fluttershy! Fluttershy is what we need right now,” Luna said.

“Do you mean before, or after she started killing people and feeding their organs to a filly version of your sister?” Vinyl said. “You really should be more specific.”

Luna facehoofed, causing Vinyl Scratch to grin brightly at her.

“Besides, what’s Monty going to do? Disconnect the train cars?” Vinyl asked. Luna did not reply.

A few hours into the train ride, Monty had still not returned. They were two hours away from their destination of Arrernte Springs when something caught Luna’s eye. She looked out the window to see Monty Ulan outside on the gang planks between the cars, fiddling with something. Whatever he was trying to do was a success, they felt the whole car shutter, and begin to slow.

“Luna what’s going on?” Vinyl asked.

Luna watched as the car that Monty Ulan was on sped away from them, while the car they were in began to slow down. Luna facehoofed again.

“He disconnected the train cars,” Luna said.

“He’s a clever one!” Vinyl said with a grin.

“Can you please stop doing that? You do realise he just stranded us in the middle of nowhere?” Luna said.

“Could be worse, he could have stranded a bunch of other people with us!” Vinyl said enthusiastically.

They had taken a seat in the back most cars; it was smaller than the others and had been practically empty save for the two of them. The only car behind them was the caboose, which held the train’s breaks, and was also currently empty, as the conductor had taken Monty up to another car.

“You know, now that I think about it? It’s kind of worse for the people in the other cars. They don’t have any way to stop the train now,” Vinyl said, unfortunately, there wasn’t really anything they could do about it.

The train car slid to a halt. The train was long gone at this point, looked as if they wanted to go anywhere, they’d be walking.

“At least we’re not lugging anything important with us,” Vinyl said with a grin.

“Except for the artefact,” Luna said, looking at her bulging saddlebags under her coat.

Vinyl shuddered at the mention of the artefact. It was at this point that Luna realised that Vinyl had been acting even more like herself than usual, trying to cover up how she was truly feeling. The loss of her sight had hit her hard, even though she’d never admit it. Vinyl Scratch was pretending as if nothing was wrong.

She was eerily good at it.

After obtaining all the water that they could find, Princess Luna and Vinyl Scratch started to walk, by best estimates, Arrernte Springs was a week away on hoof.

“Let me know if we pass any cacti,” Vinyl asked. “We can get water from them, I’d really, really hate to be the idiot stranded in the desert not knowing about that!”

...

The sun shone brightly overhead as the day went on, Luna figured it was about noonish, though she couldn’t be sure. That was something Tia would know. Vinyl Scratch had been quiet for most of the two hours that they’d been walking. The landscape was vast and wide open, and incredibly flat, no visible land marks could be seen for maybe a hundred or so kilometres, with the exception of a pile of large rocks on a small plateau.

Luna could tell that Vinyl was lost, without her eye sight, things were much more difficult for her. When she had first lost her eye sight, she relied on other ponies to help her around, though on the month long cruise to South Island, she’d found away to use her magic like a sort of radar to help her navigate. Unfortunately, in the vast open desert, there were very few things to ping off of. It was distressing the unicorn greatly, Luna could tell just by looking at her, though she was too proud to admit it, and Luna didn’t know what to say to comfort her.

Luna felt bad; Vinyl Scratch didn’t deserve the fate that had been handed to her. She was a good pony, regardless of how much she beat herself up over things.

Luna had also noticed that while travelling with Vinyl, she had the tendency to want to pull all the hardship possible away from others and onto her. It was almost if she wanted to have bad things happen to her, for the sole purpose of keeping them from happening to others. The idea was noble, sure, but horribly misguided. Luna had learned that despite the smile she often wore on her face, and her playfulness, Vinyl Scratch was sad on the inside.

It broke Luna’s heart to have figured all this out, she’d only wished she’d learned sooner, but what she wanted more was to know what she could say that would help.

Vinyl stopped dead in her tracks, her ears began to twitch. “You hear that?” she asked.

“No,” Luna said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Vinyl said with a shrug. “Whatever it is, it’s moving really fast and headed right towards us.”

Luna began to hear it too; she turned around and headed straight for them was...

Well Luna didn’t exactly know what it was, it was too far away, then it began to get closer, and she began to recognise it. It was an armoured car.

The only reason that Luna knew that by seeing photographs of Ambassador Hadrian Goyle, the South Island Ambassador to Equestria, when he’d been in their military, most of the pictures of him were in front of such a vehicle.

The armoured car rolled to a stop several dozen metres from where the two ponies were standing; there was a kangaroo with his head poking out of the armoured car’s turret, looking at them intensely.

“Vinyl Scratch? Is that you?”

Comments

[Fallen Knight]

wonder who the kangaroo remembering them is hmmm

and if the others declared him crazy if he said his memories out loud lol

Teebs isnt in the army soo one of the commandos maybe,cant wait for the next chapter

[DreadedCandiru2]

Okay....we've got Monty trying very hard to do something misguided because he thinks he's saving the world and we've got at least one more person who remembers the 'Kindness of Strangers' timeline. We've also got Vinyl the Atoner trying very hard to take the hit for the whole blasted world alone. Thing is that she's not alone, though, is she?

[Wheller]

Important thing to remember. Think back to what Luna said, the only people who remember are people with significant exposure to the artefact. Who do we know with significant exposure?

[oblivion2k]

12483
Oh snap, it came from south island, which means one of our kangaroo friends probably found it and shipped it to twilight.

[Apocalypse Pony]

Ooh, wonder who the kangaroo is

[DreadedCandiru2]

12565
Whoever he is, he's driving that tank.

[Poodicus]

Just curious, what happened to Celestia (Sun)? You never did explain at the end of "And so it ended, and so it began again." Did she come back with her memories? is she ruling again with Luna? did Luna do the whole thing to Celestia with the alternate memories and such like Celestia did to Luna? It's driving me mad. I must know!