Chapter Four: Creatures of the Overworld
The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions
Chapter Four – Creatures of the Overworld
Special Thanks to Demetrius and Vimbert for Editing
Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art
“Don't fret! I'll be back in—like—half an hour, tops!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed from outside the arcane vault. “I just gotta find Harmony! She'll know how to fix all of this! She has to!”
“Rainbow Dash, don't leave me!” The young filly heard herself sob under the rumbling of Cloudsdale's demise.
“Seriously, kid—Would I let the world be any less cool by disappearing?” And then the pegasus' devilish blue grin was gone.
In its absence, the young pony cried out her name, and then Fluttershy's, and then Applejack's, and eventually: “H-Harmony?!”
The roof of Equestria exploded, reverberating a million times in the gasping pony's throttled head. The royal transport that she was in shuddered as the balloons deflated and the gondola began its spinning descent towards the burning world below. Outside the windows of the arcane vault, thousands of pegasi could be seen, screaming towards oblivion, until a wave of energy singed them to dust and pelted the collapsing airship with the mist of their combined effluence.
Then there was an explosive jolt, a thunderous crash as the gondola hit the boiling skin of the earth. The pony shrieked, her body surging forward as the arcane vault toppled and rolled and skidded to an ugly stop outside the torn iron belly of the collapsed airship. The bitter cold silence that followed was haunting, leading the shocked filly to believe that she was actually dead. Upon opening her twitching eyes, she wished that she had been.
The landscape of Equestria was a barren stretch of burnt trees and copper-brown grass. The riverbeds had dried up, the hilltops had sunken, and the roadways had been entirely evaporated—all in a flash. There was a crack in the arcane vault's door, where streams of purple magic hissed off the bent surfaces exposed to the Cataclysm. With a great deal of effort, the little pony nudged and nudged and finally broke the warped door open. She was immediately pelted with a cold breath of ash and snowy soot.
Trotting out, she found the world slowly blanketed with an endless flurry of white powder, building up and up towards infinity. The wheels in her young head turned faster than they ever had before, and she realized to her utter horror that the snow was none other than the petrified remains of every pegasus that had fallen out of Cloudsdale.
And then... sparks lit the air. Tiny hot pinstreaks of light bulleted down from the heavens. In utter dread, the pony forced herself to look straight up. She saw the twilight for the first time, its milky white grayness coalescing into an eternal miasma of dying stars. In the foreground of it all was a shadowy mass, spreading, thinning, growing into a hot crimson glow as it burned into the atmosphere.
The last pegasus gasped. The moon had exploded, and its smaller parts were falling earthward. The red-hot pinstreaks doubled, quadrupled—and suddenly the dead sky was bathed from east to west with shooting stars. A murderous thunder rolled through the neck of the world as hot frothing meteorites of molten moondust soared into the planet by the hundreds, thousands, millions.
A seething missile of rock soared past the pony, exploding a tree to her right flank. Another slammed into the ground ahead of her, dousing her coat in lifeless gray soil. She turned—shrieking—and flew back towards the collapsed airship as burning rocks leveled the world to shattering craters of glass all around her.
The shaking breast of Equestria knocked her off her hooves, so that she had to crawl—sobbing hysterically—towards a meager iron shell for cover. Once inside, she huddled beneath one of the battered arcane vaults, still laced with the scent of Rainbow Dash, and screamed as a gigantic shadow encased her, and a kilometer-wide husk of moonrock hurled its way towards ground zero.
A ringing noise...
The last pony woke up, gasping in a cold sweat. Octavia's record was looping with the needle bouncing repeatedly off the end of the disc. The lantern light and the boiler of the Harmony's cabin exchanged pulses of gentle flame. Through it all, a ringing noise permeated, rattling the windows to the gray expanse beyond the cockpit. With twitching eyes, the adult pegasus glanced over to see a metal spoke vibrating offensively against the surface of a homemade cowbell. Besides the alarm, a pair of tesla coils sparked incessantly. It was the zeppelin's proximity alarm; she was not alone in the clouds.
Kicking out of the hammock, the mare limped towards the cockpit and checked the gauges. Autopilot was still activated and the airship was set to the same steady hover as it had been when she went to sleep. The young mare then hopped over to the port side, deactivated the signal, and flipped open the nearest porthole. Peering outside into the ashen flurry, she spotted a floating black mass—the unmistakable outline of a sextuple-ballooned dirigible floating perpendicular towards her own.
Frowning, she rushed over to her metal cabinet and diffused the runestone with a grunted word. She grabbed her rifle, holstered it, and dashed over to her port side speaker system. Cranking the valve, she sparked the device to life, pulled the spout closer to the porthole, and cocked the rifle out the window, aiming it at the offensive vessel. In an air of menacing authority, she uttered: “You had best turn around if you know what's good for you! This is my cloud! And if you don't agree, I'll be more than happy to reintroduce you to sea level!”
Her broadcasted voice crackled like thunder across the snowy gray clouds. For a second there, she wondered if perhaps her threat had been diffused amidst the blisteringly loud winds, or perhaps the strange pilot hadn't paid her words any respect. But soon, a pleasantly nuanced thunder returned, and she realized in the haze of her own pitiful grogginess that it was none other than a very familiar voice.
“Ha-HA! I knew I vould find you in dis neck of veather, pony! It is I, Brucie! You should fear nothing of kind friend who vants only to do business, da?”
The brown pegasus rolled her scarlet eyes. “Nnnngh...Bruce.” She retracted the rifle and leaned an apathetic face back into the microphone. “Bruce, this isn't exactly a good time. I just finished a really tough job, and I need to make clear of the Northern Reaches.”
“All better to make exchange of goods, then! You are clever pony! Best not to turn avay opportunity! Vhat is old expression? 'Do not look in mouth of gift horse.' Ha! Get it?”
She took a long breath, her nostrils flaring slowly. She glanced over towards her workbench. The seven colored gems were locked safely away in their drawers. As for the red flamestone, she had left it exposed in its open lead container. All the glimmer of the disenchanted rock was gone. The signal, the ever important beacon, was currently a dead matter.
Grinding her teeth slightly, she leaned her mouth with finality towards the spout. “Alright, Brucie. Bring her around, just like last time.”
“There is good pony! Smart pony! I vill try and not drag mud across your carpet, da? Bringing my port side to your bow!”
Verily, the dark-green silhouette of Bruce's airship pivoted to the right and descended so that a hatch on its port-side was level to the front of the Harmony's storage compartment. With an inward groan, the pegasus strolled back to her cabinet and donned a thin jacket of leather armor. She hoisted a khaki cap over her shaved mane and slid a pair of goggles over her eyes. Just as the Harmony jolted from the flying merchant's ship docking with it, she retracted her gun and slung it over her shoulders, making sure it would be in open sight of her guest. She descended the revolving metal staircase, trotted across the storage compartment, and spoke towards the runes lining the copper aperture entrance: “Y'hnyrr. H'jem.”
Cold white sleet pelted inward as the catseye doorway slid wide, revealing a slick oblong ship of green bulkheads covered with ageless mildew. Six conjoined balloons bobbed and rattled above the awkwardly hammered-together zeppelin, sickly contrasting the degree of professionalism that embodied the Harmony. A metal walkway extended from a square-shaped doorhatch in the merchant's ship and formed a bridge with the Harmony's entrance.
The doorhatch of the opposing vessel slid open with a rusted squeak, and a wave of smoke billowed out, partially shrouding a tiny furball of a figure that climbed out of the hatch upside down before fearlessly backflipping onto the center of the precarious plank. With a bushy tail and gray skin flaps that waved like flags in the high winds, a half-meter-high flying squirrel swaggered his way towards the hangar of the Harmony. Clasped in his mouth was a cigar, which he absent-mindedly flicked before exhaling a wave of putrid fumes that further fogged up his copper-green pilot's goggles.
“Harmony! As Brucie lives and dies—hopefully quicker than you, my friend, for you are more priceless, da? Heheh!”
“Bruce, when am I going to get it through your thick skull?” the pony droned coolly, “'Harmony' is the name of my ship. It has nothing to do with me.”
“Comrade is much like ship!” Bruce chomped on his cigar and patted the clanking bulkheads of the hangar entrance with a smile. “She is unlucky without name! You vould do vell to take advantage of dis! Big reputation you have, dough few opportunities, da? Rumor has it pony's client, Gilliam, had huge cloudship go down in flames! BOOM! Dogs dying in sky! Vhat dogs vere doing in sky, Brucie vill never know! Perhaps pony does?”
She merely glared at him. “No smoking near my ship. Surely you learned that the last time.”
“Vhat? You mean dis cancer stick?” He flicked the cigar again and leaned suavely against the edge of the aperture. “Let Brucie worry about Brucie's own cancer. Are squirrels extinct in Equestria? Nyet, I think not! So vhy should pony fret? Heheh!”
Her goggled eyes narrowed. In one motion, she flung her brown wings forward. The resulting gust of air tore the cigar from Bruce's incisors, sending the nicotine cylinder sailing down into the endless clouds beneath their conjoined vessels.
“Bah...” he waved an apathetic paw. “Plenty more cancer vhere dat comes from! Pffft! Vhy so serious, pony? Live some before you die, maybe?” He nonetheless smiled and motioned with his webbed limbs as he sauntered back towards his ship. “Come! Come! Look at my vares before you toss Brucie down as vell! You obviously know vhat you vant and Brucie knows vhat to give you!”
She followed him, trotting across the metal bridge until she was inside the rodent merchant's foggy vessel. Sickly green lights beamed through the nicotine-filled haze. The pony politely held her breath and gazed closely at several racks of metal knick-knacks, gun stocks, ammo deposits, leather strips, holsters, eating utensils, rusted tools, sharp blades, chemistry sets, an array of expensive seedlings, salvaged artifacts, and handfuls of other assorted junks pilfered from the Equestrian Wastes.
The flying squirrel scampered effortlessly around the cramped cylindrical hollow like it was the inside of a fallen oak tree. “I have recently come across most exceptional scrap from Eastern Shores! Not all of Ocean is dead. You'd be surprised at vhat your seahorse cousins leave behind!” He turned on a record player to give the sudden store a pleasant ambiance—but had to gruntingly kick the thing two or three times before the crumbling speakers half-heartedly played what sounded like a military funeral dirge in a thick, foreign tongue. “My latest pride and joy is seedlings—From fresh patch of trees still thriving in squirrel motherland!” He proudly waved his paws before an electrically illuminated array of vegetation, his bushy tail flapping in emphasis. “Da, the world may be in ashes but City of St Petersbrittle still stands! You still vasting your harvest on bitter mushrooms, pony? Don't lie to friend Brucie! I can smell it on your flanks, and pony is only friend Brucie knows that still bathes! Hah!”
“I've found some beans recently. I think I'm covered on that front.” The pony's goggled gaze skimmed across the smoky interior, looking for the one thing she absolutely needed. In the meantime, she nodded her head towards several brown bands hanging from a rack. “How much for the leather? I've need of some new armor and I don't have much time to go about crafting it.”
“For you, pony, discount of friendship.” He leaned back against the waves of marching music hissing out of the bobbing vessel's speakers and made a figure with his paws. “Twenty-strips per band. Never let fine mare go naked in vilderness; a lesson from Brucie's mother, may goddess rest her fur.”
“Always a charmer, Bruce,” she murmured. She trotted over towards a hammer and chisel dangling off the corner of a metal rack. “I see you have ramcraft. Did you get these tools from the Western Peaks?”
“It depends. Does pony vant them?”
“It's a simple question, Bruce.” She glared his way.“Where'd you scavenge these from?”
“Mmmm...” He wrung his paws and gestured with an innocent smile. “Lonely outpost along northern slopes, below snow line, far from dem ravaging volvervines.Bah! Vas dirty run-down hovel, nothing more, nothing sacred like mountain ram temple, if pony must know.” He pointed knowingly. “Though pony is no stranger to borrowing from goddess' house, da?”
She stared at him, but as the seconds ticked away, she realized she had no response. So, sighing, she nodded and said, “I'll take them too.”
“Undoubtedly for chiseling pony's amazing runestones, da?”
“Nothing amazing about what I do, Bruce. But I'll buy them nonetheless.”
“How many? Brucie has spares in trunk below digging tools. Harmony pony can make lots of vicked stones vith ramcraft like dat.”
“I can't go all out, because there's one thing I need more than ever.”
“Name it!” The squirrel folded his arms and smirked, his green goggles glinting. “Let Brucie be cursed first day he lets down favorite Equestrian customer!”
“Flamestones.” She glanced at him with an arched eyebrow. “Any and all that you may have.”
“Flamestones—I ... erm ...” He suddenly sweated, wringing his paws and chewing on his lower lip with a jagged incisor. Finally, he cleared his throat with a surprise show of strength and changed his expression. “Nyet! Impossible! Pony asks for impossible! Brucie is completely out of flamestones!”
The pony stared lethargically at him. In one movement, she produced a leather pouch full of silver strips from her saddlebag and held it in front of the squirrel.
He blinked and raised a pointed paw. “Brucie is not completely out of flamestones!” Smiling sweatily, Bruce scampered over towards his pilot's chair, lifted the seat, and unraveled a tarp full of bright red rubies that filled the smoky corridor with a glittering kaleidoscope of crimson. “Ta-daaaa! Brucie delivers just in time, da?”
“I'll always be impressed, Bruce,” the pony muttered as she trotted over to get a closer look over the much treasured gems, “so long as your stock of flamestones outlasts your honesty.”
“Pony, you vound me.” He smiled while planting a melodramatic paw over his heart. “Ve all have reasons for silver tongues. Mine is because I bite it so much!”
“Who's putting the pressure on you this time, Bruce?” She raised one of the seven shimmering stones and refocused her lenses to study its enchantment closely. “Harpy pirates? Ogres? The Dirigible Dogs?”
“Bah!” He spat into the floor, frowning. “Golden Gang! Vicked feather bullies badger and threaten Brucie within inch of incisors! Vhat ever happened to friendly skies of death and gloom? Now ve only have regular skies of death and gloom.”
“I know all about the Golden Gang,” she grumbled. Her goggled eyes thinned as the next words came in an otherwordly voice, “Almost too well...”
“They may be bullies, but they give pony protection, da?”
“My brown flank, they do!”She frowned suddenly, but shrugged it off in time to sigh. “These stones all look great, Bruce. How about ... two hundred strips per rock? I'll get them off your paws—Just like last time?”
He shook with a shuddering hesitance. “I vould be glad to—normally—pony, but dis Golden Gang; with flame are they obsessed. Be it flamestone, flamespheres, red flame, yellow flame—Bah! I vould imagine they have enough flame to burn Equestria three times more than the Cataclysm did!” He suddenly blushed and smiled nervously in her presence. “No offense does Brucie intend, of course.”
“None taken,” she murmured. She glanced at him, stared lingeringly at all of his clattering wears, at his pathetically warped record as it tried to spin on the player. The chanting music came in ghostly howls that shook her soul, and soon she surrendered in a sigh. “Fine, Bruce. Gimme just two of them.”
“Deal is most certainly done, pony!” He grinned with sudden euphoria as they exchanged silver bars and flamestones. “Your grace exceeds you! Fitting, perhaps: you are last and yet most polite of hoofed kind!”
“Don't rub it in, roadkill,” she grunted and tucked the stones safely into her saddlebag before marching over towards the leather bands that she had also purchased. “You're my finest source of flamestones. It'd be a shame to have you ripped apart by the Golden Gang before I have a chance to do business with you again.”
“In speaking of flames, pony,” he remarked, pointing an excited paw from across the hazy cabin. “Since you are so... erm... invested in flaming stones, Brucie may have tip for vhere pony can get new contract now dat the Dogs Bollocks are blue! Hah!”
“And lemme guess; this tip costs how much?”
“No, pony.” He shook his head solemnly. “Consider it gift from old merchant's thankful heart. You have made much profit from hunting and collecting magical flame, da?”
“Yes, yes,” she groaned boredly as she picked out the leather bands she desired. “Gold flame. Red flame. Blue flame—We've been through all of this, Bruce. It's how I earn the strips that you keep gobbling out of my hooves. Get to the point—”
“Has Harmony pony in her travels ever stumbled upon green flame?”
The pegasus paused. She glanced back over her shoulder, her goggles curiously reflecting the double image of the grinning squirrel. “Green flame?” Her lips lingered, then creased into a frown. “Green flame is a myth.”
“Is only myth because it existed once!” He scurried over and hung on the ceiling above her, gesturing. “In pony land of Equestria, no less.”
“Equestria is dead—and all that was magic died with it.”She shifted uncomfortably with a frown.“My coat didn't get this dull from lack of grooming.”
“Then vhat has pony harvested all this time? And vhat makes runestones glow with such brilliance?”
“Bruce, are you trying to tell me that you've gotten word of green flame somewhere in the wastelands?” She stared cockeyed at him.
“Brucie hears vhat Brucie hears. And there is truth to rumors in sky, because no survivors are happy enough to bother inventing stories these days! Funny tragedy, da?” He touched down on the rack of leather and perched proudly before her, smirking. “Vord is dat there is not only green flame in vastelands, but it is salvageable! And Brucie knows of spectacular hunter pony who can bottle it!”
“Bottling green flame—if it exists—is nowhere near as easy as ensnaring a phoenix.”She sighed. “And the latter isn't all it's cracked up to be either.”
“Squirrel merchants cannot pretend to know how it vorks, but Brucie can imagine filthy rewards of being successful—!”
“There are creatures throughout the wasteland who would pay the souls of their mothers—Yes, I get it.” She squinted at him. “Where are you leading me with all this, anyways?”
“Brucie cannot show direction, but even pony can suspect who does.” He waggled his eyebrows above his green goggles in emphasis.
The pony blinked, searched the fields of her mind, and all but sank at the prospect. “Pitt.” Her voice came out like a bloody bullet of spittle. “I really, really don't want to go to the M.O.D.D. right now.”
“Vell, good luck to pony's quest for strips!” The squirrel shrugged, grabbed a fresh cigar from an overhead rack. He lit it casually, adding to the steam of the lonesome merchant's dirigible. “But do not say that friend Brucie failed to lend vord of advice!” He puffed a few times, and exhaled with grinning incisors. “Plenty more flames in Equestria for Brucie's cancer stick, da? Heh—Heheheheh!” He laughed merrily, coughing and hacking briefly as he scampered past the last pony's flank.
The mare stared into space for a short span in comprehension. The sickly green haze of the smoky interior coalesced into a precious, impossible fire in her mind. She found herself feeling with resounding disappointment the light weight of the two meager flamestones hanging in her saddlebag. Outside, she knew the gray world floated and flurried endlessly, and there were only so few phenomena in the wastes of Equestria capable of piercing it. Somehow, one way or another—one chunk of the soul sliced off after the previous—it all transformed into the only substance worth anything anymore: silver, and all of it in strips or bars.
The mare sighed. “Thanks, Brucie.” She sauntered back towards the bridge between their ships with her new purchases in tow. “I'll have a talk with Pitt.”
“Best of luck to you, Harmony pony.”
“I'll need it,” she grunted.
The neon sign spelled out “M.O.D.D.” brilliantly, like a bright green beacon, shimmering outward from the northern mountaintop upon which a ramshackle three-story tall building precariously roosted, just at the peak of the clouds. The structure was a bent and splintery wooden thing, sagging towards the east as if it could plunge off the jagged mountainside at any moment. The bowing edges of the structure were supported by several forty-five degree wooden struts that had been haphazardly hammered and re-hammered into place over the crumbling years.
But this easily noticeable structural mishap waiting to happen was hardly a deterrent, as several flocks of airships and hovercraft continuously hovered around the highrise rest stop, mooring and depositing pilots who came from all corners of the cloudy wasteland to eat, barter, trade... and maybe get into a “negotiation” or two.
With a resounding crash, a green goblin was kicked out of the swinging doors of the “M.O.D.D.” labeled bar-in-the-sky. Before he could scamper to his feet, four primates in blue fatigues leaped out after him and clamored all over the squealing figure, pinning him to the slick wet rock with their odorous weight.
“Eat three manticore meat sandwiches and refuse to pay, will you?” one ape howled.
Another whooped, “Since when did goblins bum around without money in their pockets? Heheheheh! What's the blown-up world coming to?”
“Pl-please!” The young goblin stammered and struggled, his cold sweat reflecting the pale twilight above the mountainside. “I was just a p-passenger on board the Diamond Dogs' skytanker, the 'Cloudfang'! They robbed me blind and ditched me! I-I didn't realize my m-money was g-gone until just a few seconds ago—”
“You know what you are?” one of the primates hissed, grinning devilishly. “You are Equestrian filth! And we here at the 'Monkey O'Dozen Den' know just how to treat Equestrian filth! The same way they always used to treat each other! Heheheh!”
Right on cue, a fifth monkey marched out the doors of the Den, wielding a red-hot branding iron in the shape of a horseshoe. “Hot off the grill! Where's the manticore-munching punk, boys?”
“Over here, brother! Eheheheh! Let's teach him a lesson he won't forget, or anyone else he meets, for that matter!”
“No! No!” The goblin paled and struggled to scamper away. The primates held him tighter, their whoops and hollers rising in volume as their brother zeroed in with the steaming hot metal. “Pl-Please! Don't do this to me! I'll never last a night in the wastelands if anyone sees me with—”
“Shut up and take what's coming to ya, cheapscape!” The monkey's eyes flickered red as he swooped low and swung the brand square into the goblin's exposed flank.
Steam and burning skin kissed the air as the lowly creature howled in torment. The primates huddled around him laughed victoriously while several patrons hung out the window of the “M.O.D.D.”, sipping their foamy drinks and pointing amused fingers at the tortured brandee's plight. Once the horseshoe image was permanently fused to the goblin's smoking flesh, the five monkeys flung him like a sack of garbage into a splashing puddle on the far side of the mountain plateau.
“Now go forth and gallop free, Equestrian filth! Hahaha! Soon you'll be dead like the rest of the—” The monkey holding the brand stopped in mid sentence, his mangy eyes twitching upon the sight of who was trotting past the dramatic scene.
With the Harmony quietly moored to a lateral wooden strut of the “M.O.D.D.” behind her, the last pony made her way towards the front steps of the building. She glanced boredly at the whimpering figure of the still-steaming goblin while moving past him. As she coasted by the monkeys, however, she gave her saddlebags a little shake, rattling her brass rifle for good measure. Half of them gulped, the other half of them snickered, until the fifth raised his branding iron, threatening to smack the group into silence. Gradually, the five watched with quiet amusement as the pegasus stepped past the gaze of the flanking patrons, and into the bright lantern light of the “Monkey O'Dozen Den” interior.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Inside, the air had a sour smell to it: like fermented juices laced with buzzing flies, running down the walls and into the splintery corners of the gas-lit hovel. Under lantern-laced chandeliers made from retired and rusted propeller blades, several round tables rattled with the clamoring rum jugs of dozens upon dozens of slobbering, rain-faced pilots at rest. Dirigible dogs, ogres, goblins, slimy reptiles, and other hunch-backed leathernecks of post-apocalyptic quasi-sentience muttered, hissed, sneered, and laughed at one another, filling the careening wooden bar with the sway of drunken bedlam.
Deep beneath the lackadaisical bodies of the many tipsy patrons, a fine cold mist had seeped in from the Equestrian miasma beyond the walls, so that every other lost soul inside the place ever so briefly hung his eyes in a stupor that betrayed the alcoholic reverie of the moment. It was as if someone had arranged an orgy on top of a mountainous grave, and already half of the bacchanalia had succumbed to the endless dirge that would soon call them lurching back towards the merciless twilight outside.
“What happened to the Dog's Bollocks was violent and horrifying,” said a komodo dragon wearing a brown leather pilot's cap.He flicked his long tongue into the foam of his ale and squinted across the table where he sat.“I only wished it happened sooner.”
“Heheheh!”A laughing goblin raised his mug.“Cheers!Friggin' metal head and his mutts had it coming!”
“Hey!” A canine pulled his snout out from a mug, wiped the froth away, and growled.“Gilliam was a—hic—inspirationnnnn to us all!”The dirigible dog pointed with a shaking paw.“He built a metal—hic—warship out of rocks and pony turds!”
“Well, they were obviously flaming turds,” the komodo dragon retorted.He rotated the mug in his claws while leaning back in his chair.“Word is that a large bird of fire tore the ship in half and burned every dog on board.”
“Meh.”The dirigible dog hung his head sadly.“Puppies with no—hic—respecttttt for the air might as well returnnnnn to Gaia.I just wish it wasn'ttttt in flaming piecesssss.”
“I'm glad they burned to bits!” the goblin shrugged and emptied the rest of his ale down his throat.“That spineless ash-breather was suckin' all the steam from the Wasteland!The damaging effects of his monopoly was felt all the way in Petra!”
The lizard glared at the tiny biped.“Petra is a monopoly, you pointy-eared steam stealer.”
“Yeah, well, at least Petra was built to last all sorts of Wasteland freaks.You won't see our empire crumbling from flame birds...”He cast a thin glare across the M.O.D.D. towards a table where three drunken ogres sat.“Or other assorted filth...”
“Did you pilotssssss hear?”The dirigible dog leaned forward, his canine ears twitching.“The wolverines of the north have made a breakkkkkthrough.They've found somethinggggg beneath they ice that's gonna replace steam!”
“Replace steam!Hah!” The goblin turned his mug upside down and shook the last few drops out onto his tongue.“Mmmm... don't make me laugh my way back to Tartarus.”
“No!For reallll!They say what the wolverines found will make every shipppppp one hundred times faster!”
“Like the Golden Gang's Talon?” The reptile smiled.
“Screw the Golden Gang!”
“I'd like to see you try.”
“Grrrrrrr...” the dirigible dog slouched on the table.“Still, if I have to upgraddddddde my zeppelin for the third time in ten stormfrontsssss...”
“It won't happen,” the komodo dragon droned.He adjusted his cap and murmured, “With the Dog's Bollocks gone, there's gonna be a huge vacuum of power across the ashen valley.I think we all know who's gonna win that.”He winked at the goblin.
The tiny creature sighed in response, once more looking at the table of ogres.“Word is, the Mountain faction is losing the defense.Soon, the Fire Ogres will march their way across the Valley of Jewels and overtake Mount Ogreton.”
“Then, my flying featherless friends, we'll know who truly rules the roost over the Wasteland,” the komodo dragon said.“It'll be the largest empire since the great fire wiped out all the—”
“Shhhhh!” the dirigible dog hissed, pointing his hairy paw across the den.“Look what the dead cattttt dragged in...”
The three weathered patrons turned around—as well as most of the creatures nearby—to see the last pony standing at the door to the bar.Silence fell briefly over the drunken scene.With copper goggles, the brown mare coldly reflected the many glaring faces back, then strolled through the hazy thick of the place undaunted.Noise, grunts, and drunken reverie resumed beyond the clopping sound of her hooves.
“Hmmph...” The komodo dragon turned and smirked towards his cohorts.“Well, gentlemen, here there be ghosts...”
“Yeah.”The goblin nodded with a smirk.“Ugly ones too.”
“Hahahahah!”
“Heh heh heh...”
“Woof!”
Flickering lanternlight outlined dozens of heads bent over their meals and drinks.By the time the pony had trotted only halfway into the Monkey O'Dozen Den, three fights had already broken out. One was between two dirigible dogs in the far corner of the room. Another was between two goblins and a diseased creature over a moth-eaten pouch of strips. As for the third—
“Glue Stick!” A hairy paw slammed across the pony's face.
She spat blood, briefly stumbled, then glared straight ahead of her.
“Hrggh!” A mangy raccoon—a bum—shrieked in her face. He was a scrawny scrap of a sentient being, with one metal hind leg and a body covered in sooted rags. He balanced on the edge of a table in front of the pegasus, shuddering, nearly foaming at the mouth. With clattering teeth and eyes wide as bloodshot saucers, he seethed and roared, “You! Nnngh! Filth! Glue stick! Back to Sun Goddess womb! With glue stick! Nnngh! Filth!” He snarled and swung a trembling paw at her again.
She dodged this time, glaring at him as a series of chuckles rose in the air around the scene. Brow creasing, she faked walking away—instead pivoting at the last second to swing her flank roughly into him. The raccoon purposefully took the whole brunt of the blow, bouncing over two rum-filled tables before slamming upside down into an iron stove that singed his fur. The half-sane varmint scrambled on the ground, fighting to put his tail out, before crawling pathetically towards a table full of battle-scarred ogres. They laughed mightily at the scene, gave the pony several thumbs' up, and proceeded to pay up the bum for living up to their dare. As the chuckles subsided, the raccoon-thing drooled at the fresh strips of silver lying in his paws, hyperventilated joyfully, and scrambled on all fours towards the bar counter for a “much needed” pint.
Swishing the collected copper fluids in her mouth, the pony exhaled hard and resumed her beeline towards the far end of the Den. She felt countless bodies eyeing her, murmuring strange and presumably malicious things under their breath as the last pony trotted past them. She had once again graced the filthy interior of that forsaken bar in the sky, and the patrons were hardly pleased.
On a shelf behind the Den's bar, a tight jar rested on a counter, inside which a spherical, pastel-colored insect slept soundly. A gnarled leather hand suddenly lifted the bottle, shaking it and forcing the four-winged creature to open its glistening eyes. Forlornly, the lone parasprite gazed upwards as the lid of the jar unscrewed and the gnarled hand stuck a spoon in, savagely poking its bright exoskeleton.
“Come on. Spit it up, ya little melon fudge,” a voice raspily hissed, forming condensation on the jar.
The parasprite wilted, shuddered, and wretched, vomiting up a large globule of brown matter. Half a breath later, the brown shell of the cocoon shattered with a brand new parasprite joyfully emerging—wings a'flutter. This infant thing reveled as it was raised by the spoon and introduced to a bright toasty world outside the jar.
“There we go, little one,” the hoarse voice briefly chirped.
Just then, there was a crunching noise. The newborn insect's eyes crossed as the petite thing was skewered down the length of its body with a toothpick, which was promptly planted into the top bun of a toasted meat sandwich being slid across the bar counter towards a Diamond Dog.
“There ya go, Fido,” grunted the gnarled bartender, a gray-haired baboon with a ratty tail and spreading bald spot. “Try not to choke on it.”
“Hmmmm—Delish, Delissssssh!” The canine drooled and raised the sandwich for a first bite. He hesitated at the last second, and glared the primate's way with an arched eyebrow. “Hey, justttttt what kind of meat is this anywaysssss?”
“It's nobody you know,” the baboon droned, his red nose flaring. As the diamond dog proceeded to chomp away at the sloppy meal, the owner of the Monkey O'Dozen Den returned to polishing rum mugs and swatting random flies that landed on the shelves of exposed foodstuffs. A petite shadow hoisted itself up to the counter. Without looking, the baboon sniffed the air with his giftedly ugly nose and smirked into the bottom of a mug. “I'm afraid we're fresh out of daisies, Harmony. Though I could fill a trough out back with distilled bat sweat. I've heard a few goblins tell me it tastes almost like Equestrian apple cider did, before the goblins keeled over and died, that is.”
“We've been over this, Pitt,” the pony grumbled. “'Harmony' is the name of—”
“Your ship. I know. By the gods.” The mangy primate rolled his sickly eyes and spat into a mug before wiping it “clean.” “You're a galloping golden goose, and yet you keep your call sign anonymous! I swear, that zeppelin is the only interesting thing about you, which is a crime—don't you think? Harumph... I would have reckoned the last pony on the planet would be a heavy drinker. But, alas, you've surprised me there!” He put the mug up, hung the rag over his shoulder, and leaned against the bar towards her. “Well, 'glue stick,' if it isn't daisy sandwiches that you've come here for, then what?”
At his pointed address, she glanced over her shoulder at the voraciously drinking raccoon several tables behind. She tongued her freshly bruised cheek from the inside. “I never ask for the trouble this Den brings to the table every time I come here. Trouble just comes to me. All I've ever wanted to do is business.”
“Ol' Bruce sent you again, didn't he?” The aptly-named Pitt smiled a row of yellow teeth. “He's a sucker for charity cases, that bushy-tailed numb-tongued fruitcake! Hahah—” He blinked sunkenly at the glare she was giving him. “—Erm, not that you're one to deserve pity. You'd rather be paid in strips, I'm guessing.”
“Running low on them. As well as on luck.” She sighed, leaning sideways against the bar so that her sheathed rifle was furthest from the rest of the interior. She eyed every guzzling patron one at a time, maintaining the instinctual air of caution she had kept since the very moment she strolled in through the swinging doors of the Den. “Bruce sold me a few things I needed, but perhaps the best thing he gave me was a tip. Or at least he suggested you may have a tip.”
“Keep saying the word 'tip' and I am liable to eat my tail in frustration,” Pitt chuckled, grabbing a customer's empty mug and refilling it. “You know, you've never taken me up on the offer to start your own tab.”
“I don't drink,” she grunted.
“Why not? The whole world's miserable!” He winked at a droopy-eyed drunkard as he slid him a tall refill. “Granted, it's always been miserable. Only now it's miserable and in ashes. That's a good combination for getting some joy juice down your gullet, if I ever heard one.”
“Pitt.” She raised her goggles and gazed coldly at him with twin scarlet irises. “A good third of your patrons are so drunk off their butts that they crash into the rocks the first second they undock their dirigibles from your little 'joy juice' stand.”
His red nostrils flared indignantly. “That is an unfounded and seditious lie!”
She gestured blindly with a hoof towards the Den's rattling floorboards. “There's a pile of two dozen burnt-out zeppelins at the base of this mountain alone!”
He shrugged. “So? What better way to attract new customers than to give them something to loot before dropping by?”
“Nnnngh,” she groaned, facehoofing briefly. “This is when I wonder why I'm the one who's endangered.”
“That's the luck of the draw for ya, Harmo—er—'Miss Temperance,'” he smiled, leaning over once more and whispering in a private voice between the two. “Lots of these punks here... they read a little too much into that crud, if you ask me.”
“What crud?”
“Karma crud,” he whispered, then leaned back. “Some of them think that Equestria bought it because your kind bought it. Eheheh.” He chuckled, walking his gnarled monkey fingers across the bar counter and soccer-kicking dead flies one after another. “Now, I'm not the sort of baboon to suggest that ponies were in fact responsible for the mayhem that befell us all. Heck, if it was—I sure ain't complaining! When pegasi, unicorns, and the more boring horses fell off the face of the earth, my kind got the upper arm on the branch! Granted, we've always bred like monkeys—heheh—but this was a new frontier! I don't put much thought into who or what is to blame for... for... for all of this. But if it wasn't for fate, my eleven younger brothers and I wouldn't possess the booming enterprise we have today!”
She glared at him. “I'm glad, Pitt, that the utter extinction of my flesh and blood has paved the way for you to poison deranged pilots to their death from your festering water hole in the sky.”
“See!” He clapped his hairy palms, grinning yellowishly. “Even when you try to be angry, you sound like loose change at the bottom of the well. Heheheh! Why not just crucify yourself to the bow of your ship and make poetry out of your dull-as-nails life already?”
She smiled icily. “I couldn't give you the satisfaction.”
“I kid you, pony. I kid,” Pitt murmured. With a wink, he planted a gnarled hand over his heart. “You should know by now that I'm a good monkey underneath this surly fur.”
Just then, the lights overhead dimmed and flickered. Several of the patrons mumbled and growled their complaints. Cursing, Pitt pounded the bar with his fist.
“Why, that insufferable useless limb!” He turned, took three bold steps towards a door, flung it open, and shouted into the steamy corridor beyond. “Willis! Pssst—Willis! What gives, ya melon fudge?!”
Inside the smoking claustrophobic room, a frighteningly emaciated chimpanzee was pumping his limbs on a rickety bicycle rigged in place to an elaborate gear system that powered several pumps aimed at a triad of boilers. He sweated and strained and stammered through a permanently red face: “I-I'm so sorry, brother! It's the third time today that I've nearly passed out! Can I-I please have some water, now?”
“The only water you should care for is the type you make the moment I beat you within an inch of your life, ya good-for-nothing sissy! Pedal faster or you don't eat tonight!”
“N-no, Pitt! Please, brother, don't leave me alone here another minute—!”
The baboon slammed the door shut, dusted his hands off, and grabbed a glass on the way back towards the bar across from the pony. “I swear, I only keep him alive because 'Monkey O'Eleven Den' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.” Clearing his throat, he polished the glass and smirked the pegasus' way. “So, enough monkey talk. Eheheheh—Business?”
“Green flame,” she murmured.
Pitt dropped the glass, shattering it. He sweated nervously under the brief gaze of a few half-curious patrons, and swiftly leaned over the counter to whisper back at the mare. “Uhm ... Who told you and under what kind of duress?”
“Ol' Brucie,” she said, “and he told me to come see you without asking for anything in return. Sucker for charity, remember?”
“Obviously.”
“So, is it true?”
“Is what true?”
Her brow furrowed. “Is there actually any green flame in the Wastes?” She motioned towards the thickly populated bar behind her. “Every creature that has enough intelligence to speak swaggers through your Den at some time or another. If anyone would have heard word about green flame, it'd be you.”
“Perhaps that's true. But you know as well as I do, pony, that rumors stay rumors until one pilot actually has the coconuts to scrounge up something concrete. Until then, it stays in the bag.”
“Well, I'm here,” she said, staring at him fixedly. “Mix and pour.”
He squinted at her, gradually bearing a liquid smirk. His red nostrils flared momentarily as he throated, “You're really not afraid of anything, are you, pony? I wonder if that makes you desperate or if that makes you stupid.”
“I'm hoping it will make me rich.” She reached back into her saddlebag, produced an empty glass jar, and rotated it until the dull runed cap faced the leaning primate. “You know how I do things, Pitt. I find elements and essences of things. I capture them, then I seal them in something like this. Everything I transport is protected by runestones: unbreakable, save for the sound of a word that only I have mastered uttering. You remember—of course—the time I extracted orange flame from the hydra fossils of Froggy Bottom Bog. That burning energy has served as the backbone for the Iron Goblin Brothers' shipping barge for the last five years and running—”
“You don't need to convince me of your professionalism, sweetheart,” Pitt muttered. “I have full faith that you could put a cork over a floating fart of green flame,” he said, but then hesitated, “if you wanted to.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean if I wanted to?”
He raised a finger, smirking. “Here, I'll show ya.” That uttered, the baboon sashayed back to the far side of the backcounter and rummaged through a wooden trunk full of cloth maps and leather atlases.
The pegasus sighed, slumped against the counter. She was only vaguely aware of a swaggering shadow scraping its obese way towards her side until a breath full of rum finally wheezed into her nostrils, slurring, “Well, if it isn't the last—HIC—manure factory in Equestria! You've got some nerve—HIC—prancin' your frilly flank around these parts!”
Bored, she gazed over at what turned out to be a rotund ogre with a mixture of alcohol, slobber, and dried-up vomit lacing his double chins.
He gazed dizzily at her with a half-practiced sneer before planting a jar onto the counter and snapping his finger at a passing monkey. “Double vodka! Keep it comin'!” Struggling to stay standing in one place, he balanced himself through the act of whipping out a cigar from his moldy pants' pocket and lighting it smokily in her face. He hissed, “Didja hear me, Equestrian filth? Or is there too much magic clogged up between yer ears? Heheh—HICCC!” He wretched and barely contained the energy to take a fresh puff of his cigar.
The pony cooly glanced from the ogre towards his table of stupidly drunk buddies laughing and swaying in the distance. The raccoon bum was lying still and plastered between them as they made lewd gestures her way and goaded on their fat buddy's intoxicated ramblings. She glanced stonily back at the fat creature who was presently belching smoke rings. “Can I help you?”
“Ssssshure ya can!” He leered, teetered, all the while pointing with a flick of his cigar. “Ya can start by telling me how you pony wankers—HIC—got off hogging the Sun and Moon all to yourselves for—URP—thousandsssssh of years, and then taking it all away in a flash like it was rubbish! Heh—Hehhehehehhhh—Snrkkkt!” He spat a nicotined loogey into the floor and waited on her reply with bloodshot eyes.
“Look,” she sighed, “I'm just here to do business with Pitt. If you have a problem with me, take it to him. Cuz I'm sure he'd be as angry as I am that a random oaf who's too wasted to smell his own piss bothered to interrupt a lucrative deal in the making.”
“Angry? HIC—You think you'rrrrrrrrre angry?”
“I didn't say—”
“Before everythinnnnnng—ULP—blew up across the world, I was a resssssssshpected citizen of Mount Ogreton!” The obese cretin slobbered. A marmoset waiter flew by, dropping the requested glass of vodka down onto the bar counter beneath him. He half-pawed it while poking the cigar into the pony's personal space. “And then you magical froo-froo horsiessssh just up and drop the ball! Hrckkkt—Ptooie!”
“Nnngh... I don't have time for this,” she muttered into an exhausted hoof.
“What wassssh th-that? H-Huh?”
In belated timing, Pitt returned with a leather map in his gnarled hands. “Here we go. Let's have a look, shall we... ?”
“Hey Pitt!” the drunk ogre slurred at him, “I was talking to this hoofed tyke!”
“Can't you see we're in the middle of something? Try preaching to your mug, bright eyes!”
The Den owner spread the map out before the pegasus, displaying a broad series of brown hash-marks that not-so-artistically represented the crumbled state of modern Equestria.
He murmured, “Okay, so here's the word. A total of five groups of pilots showed up over the past week, claiming to have seen puffs of green flame.” His gnarled finger drew invisible lines across the center of the leather map. “They were all flying identical routes at low altitudes. Most of my patrons, of course, aren't brave enough to scavenge deep into the heart of the Equestrian Wastes like you, pony, but some of them can't resist a good flyby if they could chance upon something profitable, mostly natural gas reserves and the like.”
“Can you get to the point, Pitt? I think I'm suddenly in a hurry,” she said, shiftily casting a side glance towards the smoking ogre who hovered two spits away.
“Right. All five groups gave me nearly identical coordinates of the green flame sighting. They described the sensation as 'bright plumes of emerald,' large enough to see from half a kilometer. Pretty brilliant stuff, if you ask me. I think they were too frightened to check it out. But then again, none of them are all that proficient in runestones.”
“HIC—What're runesssshhtones?” The ogre half-heartedly gripped his tall glass of vodka. “Morrrrre pony hocussssh pocussssh?”
The pegasus rolled her eyes and leaned forward. “Just tell me the coordinates already.”
Pitt stared steadily at her, closely studying her expression as his blistered tongue dripped forth the numbers: “One Hundred and Five, Thirty-Two, Ten.”
The pony's face paled. She stared anxiously at the leather map as if it had suddenly transformed into a viper ready to leap at her snout. She scooted back from the counter, cleared her throat, and in a shaky voice uttered, “You're right. No deal. I'm not going.”
“But Harmony!” Pitt hissed, suddenly desperate. “Green flame—!”
“I don't care!” she snarled back. “I said I'm not gonna do it and I'm not gonna do it!”
“Oooooh!” the ogre slobbered, grinning mockingly. “Tough fillllly—”
“Yo! Can it, sardine breath!” Pitt briefly frowned at him and spun back the pony's way in a desperate bid to salvage the deal. “Girl, there are clients who would pay out the butt for this stuff! I ... would pay out the butt for green flame! And that's coming from a red butt! That's the exact kind of butt honest deals are made of!”
“Save it—”
“With green flame, my brothers and I could raise this business to new heights! Why, we could magically teleport goods across kilometers! We could banish thugs and harpy pirates with a flick of the wand!” He smiled a yellow smile and rubbed his fingers together. “You're just what we need, pony girl. How does nine hundred strips sound?”
“No.”
“Eleven hundred bars—I'm desperate here!”
“I am never—ever—going to those coordinates,” she seethed, her scarlet eyes burning like hot coals. “Not for green flame, red flame, gold flame, your mother's flame—Or anything else for that matter!”
“Isn't it just like any of your other jobs?”
“No, it's not.”
“Why not?”
“Because some things are still sacred in this dead world!” she shouted suddenly, shaking the air around their half of the bar and causing patrons' heads to turn. “I can't expect a silver grabbing, brother slapping, venom blooded simian like you to understand that! Or any of these soulless vermin you call 'customers' for that matter!”
“Live and learn, sweetflanks!” Pitt chuckled helplessly, shrugging towards the map. “That's the kind of world we live in—”
“Well maybe it shouldn't be!” she roared. At the crest of her echoing voice was a sudden dip in silence, permeated briefly by a random cough or two from the rear of the bar. She exhaled, fuming, glancing shakily at all the glaring eyes that were suddenly plastered on her figure.
“Hmmmm-hmmm-hmmm...” The ogre chuckled breathily. He took a wide puff on his cigar and breathed offensively into her snout. “Ssssshoulda thought really hard about how much you loved your world—HIC—before ya trasssshed it, huh, Equestrian filth?”
“Lay off, bucko,” Pitt defeatedly groaned.
“Why shhhhould I?” The ogre breathed into her again. “She's the reason for all thissssh mess! It's all her kind's fault! HIC!—Why, if ssssshe had any real bloody respect for the world, she'd just hang herself right here and now!”
She thinned her eyes through the waves of the ogre's cigar smoke. An artery pulsed at the edge of her cap and goggles. A hissing voice bubbled up through her lips, “Do you know how much I hate smoking?”
“Hmmmm-Eheheh.” The ogre smirked drunkenly at his distant companions and then sputtered her way, “Mmm-No. Why don'tcha tell me?”
She smiled. “Gladly.” With one hard swat, she slammed her hoof into the ogre's blubbery backside. The fat patron instantly spat the lit cigar straight into his glass of vodka. Flames burst out from the alcoholic beverage, which the pony viciously flung straight into the ogre's girth, dousing his torso with burning quaff. The ogre howled, twirling and tossing his limbs as the flames covered him from head to toe. With a silent sneer, the last pony pivoted her hindquarters, reared her hooves, and bucked him burningly across the bar.
Patrons gasped and dashed out of their seats as the ogre's hulking, flaming body sailed across the Monkey O'Dozen Den and landed hard through a splintering table of wood and mugs. The singed drunkard's companions and a dozen other angry pilots jumped up to their feet with a flurry of various blades and knives kissing the Den's air. In one savage line, they marched forward to converge on the pony.
Eyes aflame, the furious mare flung her rifle free from her sheathe. Against Pitt's panicked protests, she slapped it full of glowing runestones and cocked the copper barrel ceilingward as she snarled at the entire room, “What of it?!”
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So many manly tears were shed.
wooo! go spike! awesome as always
.
(both spike and the massively long chapter)
its interesting how you personify spike as a grown, aged and wise dragon when he is basically the same age as scootaloo... nevertheless a great chapter indeed.
first fic where i have loved spike
ME GUSTA!
Scootaloo? I would never guess.
shortskirtsandexplosions, sir or madam, I implore you to put this in e-book form and sell it on Kindle because I feel guilty reading such a masterpiece for no price at all! I am absolutely ensnared and I am not even mid way through the series. Given the blerb I was about to pass this up because generally I find most non-romance pony fics that have great concepts tend to end up in convoluted walls of text. However your epic has broken that stereotype and I must admit to being a bad reader by judging books by their covers. You deserve this praise and so much more, I am sure that in a month and a halves time I will be able to confidently declare this my choice for the best pony fic of 2011.
Wow, man that was a good chapter. Everything played out perfectly after it was reviled that the dragon was Spike, super bonus points for the "ever-handsome devil" line.
The imagery of the town was good, I had forgotten how big pony ville really is. One little hickup though. While reading the parts where spike was fighting the only imagery of how big spike had gotten was that he crushed 4 tolls with one claw's stomp which was about the size of a tree trunk. This set me into thinking he was about the size of a house comparing him to the size of the dragon in mlp that threatened to cover pony ville in smoke that one ep. It wasn't until the scene with his claw and Scootaloo's hoof that i got a much better size reference.
The scene with the past... excellent though now i am curious as to how that is going to play out.
Over all good read.
how did i know he was spike...?
and she was scootaloo the *cough* innocent little school filly...
The "Last Pony"....is.....The Chicken? :D GLORIOUS! *cue the Joker-like grin!*
THEY'RE EATING HER. AND THEN THEY'RE GOING TO EAT ME.
OH MY CELESTIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
well...... i dont now what to say, the pure brilliants of this is astounding, and i.. i... dont have the words to express the magnitude of its epicness... i dont i truthfly dont.
i couldent be 100% of how our hero was but i inbraced the story and i was utterly impressed that you still made me a bit shocked at the news that it was scootaloo even thow i know that dash would only risk life and lime for one filly with such disregard for her self ( not to say she woudent do the same for eny of here friends but none of them fly and or live in cloudsdale) i would have to agree with [rar1ty] i feel like i should have payed to read this masterpiece.
thank you
i just felt every type of emotion during this chapter.... in fact only this explains it
google.com.au/imgres?q=manly+tears+were+shed&hl=en&sa=X&rlz=1T4ADFA_enAU419AU424&biw=1366&bih=641&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=cVrFmWnMNNPo3M:&imgrefurl=http://ouja.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/manly-tears/&docid=hFXVmahUoVpZwM&imgurl=http://ouja.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/mot1.jpg&w=554&h=480&ei=3ij7TveAGMqhiAfDo4wu&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=624&vpy=142&dur=1726&hovh=209&hovw=241&tx=55&ty=115&sig=112705599107312842087&page=1&tbnh=139&tbnw=159&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0
google.com.au/imgres?q=manly+tears+were+shed&hl=en&sa=X&rlz=1T4ADFA_enAU419AU424&biw=1366&bih=641&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=cVrFmWnMNNPo3M:&imgrefurl=http://ouja.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/manly-tears/&docid=hFXVmahUoVpZwM&imgurl=http://ouja.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/mot1.jpg&w=554&h=480&ei=3ij7TveAGMqhiAfDo4wu&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=624&vpy=142&dur=1726&hovh=209&hovw=241&tx=55&ty=115&sig=112705599107312842087&page=1&tbnh=139&tbnw=159&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0
So many tears
Scootaloo!!!??????
MY CRAP.
I suppose I'm the only one who is utterly confounded by the description of the protagonist matching up with Scootaloo.
You repeatedly mention brown coat, and scarlet eyes, whereas I see Scootaloo as orange coat and purple eyes. Minor thing, but it's gnawing at the back of my mind.
Regardless, this is simply epic.
Oh my just so many tears
Wow. Just, wow.
I... I just... agree with the first commenter... manly tears indeed.
Brilliant! I just felt that something like this would happen! All of this... It makes me yearn for adventure! I MUST READ ONWARD!!!
so is it suppsod to be that scootaloo's coat went brown over the years or is it supposed to be the author is colour blind to her obvious orange-ness.
I wonder if I was the only one who noticed that was the corpse of Ditzy Doo and Dinky Doo she founhd in the town hall....that really got me, as well as when she found herself back in time in much happier days.....
This is a fantastic story, not only because of the world that has been crafted from this authors brilliant mind, but from the way it is written, how it characterizes each of the characters so they do not feel hollow, how the world seems so deep even in such an empty realm. my applause for you, dear author. How long have you been writing, though? this work seems like its the work of a professional writer, or at least someone who has been writing for a long time. Its always so surprising and wonderful the amount of talent this community has....
I knew it was ponyville and spike was there the moment it mentioned green flame. Never the less, amazing. Also, I cried when you mentinoed Derpys and Dinkys Skeletons,.
All of my sad
The corpses of Derpy and Dinky hurt a little bit, but what really pulled the tears was the ending. Went to your profile for Background Pony, stayed for End of Ponies. And I can safely say, I'm glad I did. Kudos you you.
This is rather good.
When I found out it was Scootaloo, I lost it. This story is so sad and yet so beautiful D:
I shed a couple tears reading the description of derpy and dinky dead... And some more with spike revealing himself... This story is absolutely splendid! But looking at these comments, I can say that i already long suspected it was Scootaloo. The beginning prologue describing the pony's last moments before the cataclysm, with rainbow dash saving her, the brownish coat, and especially last chapter with the blank flank remark.
It's so strange. I can't feel completely happy or sad reading this story. It's more in utter shock with what's happened to the landscape, put in such detail that i love reading it. This story has completely messed up my emotions to where i'm just speechless. But all i can do is read on an see how the story plays out... I wonder how much longer i'm going to stay up for this tonight.
Holy. Cosmic. Matriarch.
Scootaloo? Spike?
I just died. I seriously just died, right now.
How, Skirts?? What churns inside the blessed mind of shortskirtsandexplosions that can produce such miserable, poetic, gorgeous prose? How can, in only four (long) chapters, an entire world be built inside my head originating from the depths of yours? Why is it that I feel so many strange, unmixable emotions crawling out and blossoming from dark parts of my heart?
Oh-ho-ho-ho, this is crazy. This is crazy good. I wish I could read faster--but then again, I don't want to reach the end of what's been written before it comes off hiatus so I don't have to wait with all your other pleading fans, whose desperation I'm finally beginning to understand and adopt.
I LOVE THIS, Short Skirts! Thank you, thank you, thank you, you stupid, crazy lemur! Any giant group of words that can siphon this many real emotions from me is worthy of unending praise. And believe me, you'll get it.
So... EPIC.
Dragon...green flame.
As soon as I put 2 and 2 together, I realized it was spike
Also I knew it was scoots from the beginning, although her coat is orange and her eyes magenta. but awesome fic nonetheless.
Well.. It felt pretty obvious the dragon was going to be Spike.
And to be honest, I somehow felt that The Last Pony was Scootaloo all along...
It just seemed to fit so much with the events better than any other character I could
imagine. However the coat and eye color does leave me a little confused, I suspect
that it got tampered with at some point after the fact.
Green flame? Sacred place? whelp I see where this is going..
ahh. .silly last pony, running from the dragon.
It's such a shame I see where this is going and it won't have the same emotional impact as if it was a complete surpr--
*can't stop crying*
I didn't pick up the "green flame" part. I thought the location was going to be where her airship crashed (in the very first introduction scene of chapter 1). When it turned out to Ponyville, I still thought little of the green flame. When the massive dragon started squashing little trolls, I got the idea of it being Spike. But I still hadn't mentally linked the green flame to him. Until he used it on her.
SCOOTALOO? My eyes locked on the name. Several numbing waves of cold proceeded to shoot down my spine, freezing my body over.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
But where'd she get scarlet eyes? I thought they were more violetish. Though I understand her coat fading from orange to brown over the years.
TL;DR? You just blew my brain.
scootaloo WAIT SCOOTALOO?! oh it makes sense now oh god feels...
I did another
If "Brucie" does not have, or get, a moose sidekick at some point in this story, I will be highly put out.
“Equestria is dead—and all that was magic died with it.”She shifted uncomfortably with a frown.“My coat didn't get this dull from lack of grooming.” Heehee plot arc.
Also. I'm finding this story to become a little predictable. Greenflame is spikes breath. And the coordinates are where ponyville is located.
Let's see if I'm correct.
3398001
How do you know those coordinates are ponyville?
4677161
I thought it was Ponyville too when I read the reaction to the coordinates. Here's a few reasons why:
We know this is Scootaloo.
Scootaloo says in response to why she won't go that there are still some things that are sacred.
Scootaloo was young when the world ended. The sum total of her life experiences probably happened primarily in Cloudsdale, Ponyville and Canterlot.
We know Scootlaloo has raided Canterlot Castle and various shrines and temples dedicated to Celestia and presumably Luna as well.
We know Cloudsdale is gone.
Given that the majority of Scootaloo's life experiences probably happened in Ponyville it's a fair guess that it holds a special place in her heart.
The story mentions an 'old friend' that Scootaloo finds that helps her, presumably through magic.
Rainbow is almost assuredly dead. Likewise the rest of the mane six are very likely dead. Cheerilee would be too old to be of much use now factoring in that Scootaloo is somewhere between mid-twenties and early thirties in terms of age that would probably put Cheerilee into her fifties at least. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are very likely dead as well. That eliminates just about anyone that could be considered an 'old friend' except for Spike.
The sightings are of green flame. Spike is the only canon creature to have green flame. Thus chances are high the green flame originates from Spike in Ponyville.
This whole thing is so epic, there's simply too much to comment on all of it. That said, I can't help but bring up one little thing... I can honestly say I never, ever expected to find myself feeling sorry for a parasprite. You, sir or madam, are truly a master.
HO MY GOD I FIGURED IT OUT! SHE'S HARMONY SHE GOES BACK WITH THAT NAME AND TELLS THAT THE MANE SIX THAT A CATACLYSM HAPPENS!!! So coollll
I gotta say, it feels a little weird seeing a flying squirrel of all creatures appear in the story. Part of that is simply a reflection of reading this after seven seasons of the show when we've been introduced to many more species, while in Season 1 I think there were all of three non-equine sapient species that were first introduced, giving a large amount of leeway to imagine what other species there could be just hanging around at the fringes of Equestria. Same for all the creatures that appear in the MODD.
And yeah, more fantastic racism against ponies. Using a horseshoe brand is...uh...something?
Still, Bruce's appearance is very much a breather again. Even if he's a huckster, he's still a pretty congenial fellow, which is far more than the Dirigible Dogs or trolls were. Finding out that trees still grow is something interesting, even if it's off in his homeland.
Scootaloo's character still feels a little bit disjointed, honestly. I understand her desire to light the rainbow up, but it feels a little out of place that she's giving up a lot of hard-earned currency to be able to do so, when she's shown herself to be perfectly willing to be unscrupulous to simply survive many times. She goes through the job of capturing Philomena, delivering the phoenix to the Dirigible Dogs, then giving up a lot of the money she made for a couple of magic gems for her lightshow.
I see more subtle worldbuilding here and there, with mentions of St Petersbrittle, which I'm assuming is a city of flying squirrels, and Petra, which would have played a role in the aborted Petra arc. There's also the idea of magical flames, which harkens back to Philomena in the first chapter too.
Well, I guess that pretty much explains that, and her red eyes as well.
Why the heck would you pull the gun on all of them instead of taking the flaming body as distraction to get out of there while the way is still clear of too much trouble?!