Shift
Apple Bloom was lying down on her stomach in a room of sorts. Ordinarily, this would not have concerned her in the least; she was well acquainted with the way that housing and social structures worked, despite some other ponies believing that she was merely a clueless country pony who slept on hay bales under the stars and was unable to grasp concepts more complex than corn shucking (which was a strange thing to assume; her family grew apples in abundance on their farm, not corn). However, this situation was very confusing for her due to the events of the past hour.
She had just given up and attempted to drown herself in the middle of a flood that had overtaken Ponyville due to a storm of supernatural proportions, an event that had occurred only a few moments before. She could actually sense the water still in her lungs, yet they didn’t feel uncomfortable. She had failed to die yet again, despite the fact that ponies are supposedly only able to breathe air and the gases contained therein, such as oxygen.
She went through her memories of the past hour or so, attempting to recall the reason for finding herself indoors in an area that did not seem to be struggling from the effects of an unseasonably deadly deluge. She had jumped through Sweetie’s window (now where was that filly?), been caught in a fierce storm, spotted Applejack and Fluttershy (which answered the question of where they’d been for the past few days), got bowled over by the front end of a flood, had gotten smashed into and through a few buildings, had finally run out of energy and sunk to the bottom, before breathing in as much water as possible.
None of that explained why she was by herself in a room that seemed to function as an attic for someone out there, filled to the brim with spools of string, strips of cloth and random furniture that looked like it belonged to a pony used to being considered high-class and high maintenance. Might as well go and look around; nothing new was being learnt by staying in one place.
She picked herself up from the floor and slowly walked over to the door, taking in more of her surroundings. It was strange; she felt like she knew this room, yet she was unable to determine the reason. The colour was unfamiliar, yet the size and shape were so… so there, in the periphery of her memory. It looked completely different from any room that she had ever stayed in, yet was identical to one that she knew she knew. She would probably remember upon exiting and seeing an area that she recognized.
She reached for the doorknob. Locked. Of course it was. Why would it ever be simple; nothing else had been in the past few hours.
She trotted back over to the other side of the room, hoping to find a window or hole that could double as an exit. There had been a bit of light coming in earlier - all that she needed to do was find the source.
She spotted the small bit-sized circle of light against the dull wood of the store room floor. She positioned her hoof under it then began to slowly lift it up, keeping it directly in line with the illuminating beam the whole way. Her hoof stopped at a gap between the wall and a wardrobe shoved up against it. There must’ve been a window or hole behind that thing.
She pressed up against it and began to roughly push it out of the way. In that moment, she was very thankful for her enhanced strength as an earth pony. It was one of the perks that clearly came along with her subspecies, as all earth ponies naturally possessed speed and strength in abundance, as well as being in sync with nature, being able to feel what it needed, what it was trying to tell them, and the capacity to directly influence its workings. The abilities that she had yet to figure out were the cutie mark related ones and her apparent inability to die by drowning; neither one made any sense, even if she were a unicorn. Magic was defined by rules, Twilight had explained it to her. Their magic was versatile, yes, but not endless, never infinite. It had applications, but it was unable to extend beyond already established ones without proper planning and formulation, and even then there were absolute rules that could never be broken no matter how hard one tried; one of those rules was that in order for something magical to be done, something had to be performed first, such as a spell. She, on the other hoof, had no spells applied to herself, yet she could survive without air underwater for minutes at a time and could track anypony by their cutie marks, as well as other cutie mark related problems that she could ascertain without prior knowledge. So far, unexplainable.
The wardrobe was cleared away in seconds, allowing her a view of the opening. It was a window. She struggled with the clasp for a bit, as it had obviously been left to rust for quite a while. Eventually, she was able to get the jammed mechanism loose. She opened the entrance, attempted to take a deep breath, realized that her lungs were already full to the brim with water, shrugged, compressed her legs in order to build up more force, and jumped.
Big mistake. The window had been on the second storey of a rather tall building. She fell through the air for a few seconds before roughly slamming into the ground, getting most of the water knocked out of her lungs. She stood up shakily and began to take deep breaths, suddenly realizing how good oxygen felt to her when it was coming into her body as air.
She turned around slowly, hoping to get a good look at the building that she had just exited.
Carousel Boutique. Of course. That was the building that they had left when jumping through Sweetie’s window, so it would only make sense that if she were to be dumped somewhere unexpectedly, it would be there. But, in that case, why had Sweetie Belle not been with her in the room when she had travelled there? Where was she? Apple Bloom was trying to get a fix on Sweetie’s position using her cutie mark sense, but for some reason it was extremely fuzzy. All that she knew was that she could find her friend somewhere in Ponyville; beyond that, she was flying blind. The window, or portal, or whatever it was, must have messed with her mysterious skill. She would probably recover it later, but for now she needed to use her natural senses if she were hoping to find her friend.
Thinking of where she and Sweetie Belle had been throughout the day, she decided to head in the direction of the Castle of Friendship. Sweetie had visited that location earlier in the day while Apple Bloom was tracking her below the ground, presumably to talk to her sister. Apple Bloom wished that she could find Applejack; she was probably somewhere in Ponyville, having unexpectedly appeared there just like the two Crusaders.
That thought just raised more questions: how in Equestria had Applejack and Fluttershy ever ended up going to that strange version of Ponyville, anyway? Were they alternate forms of themselves who were native to the area? Were they the Applejack and Fluttershy from Apple Bloom’s version of Equestria? Were there even multiple versions of Equestria?
Applejack had once come back home telling Apple Bloom of Twilight’s adventure to stop Starlight Glimmer from erasing the first Sonic Rainboom from existence. Unlike Twilight’s first foray into time travel, which became nothing more than a causal loop of paranoia, that adventure had spawned multiple versions of the same Equestria from different iterations of the same decision. Here, no time travel had occurred, yet the result seemed to be very much the same: jump through a window, end up in a stormy, ravaged version of your hometown. Why? What had happened to that window? Was it magical? If so, that was some alien magic that Twilight had never explained.
Best not to think about it. Apple Bloom would find Sweetie Belle, make sure that she was okay, and then everything would be fine.
Apple Bloom had entered the Castle of Friendship. The large, blue, crystalline walls marked the hallways that would lead her to the entrance of the throne room, containing the Cutie Map and assorted large chairs for those deemed good enough friends of Twilight, the Princess of Friendship, to warrant a seat in her presence.
What kind of friendship system is this? Self-importance and arrogance is what it is. The Elements of… Hypocrisy! That’s what they should be called! I mean, it seems rather odd that there would be an established princess over all friendship, doesn’t it? I would understand a princess of the sun, and another to cover the night shift. If you live in a geocentric system while every other planet in your universe orbits a star, then you would want to make sure that someone is monitoring the status of the star’s orbit around your planet, ensuring that the roles don’t spontaneously reverse. That could be rather messy, and the absolute best scenario would probably be being slingshot into deep space, doomed to a fate of slow death by freezing.
But come on! Princess of Friendship? What? Where I’m from, time was always the thing that needed to be controlled, while friendship was pretty much a given. No one needed to tell us how to cuddle, or instruct us on proper sleepover etiquette - we just knew. Here, the ponies seem to be so backwards, requiring governance over each and every facet of their beings.
Let’s see: Princess of the Day? Check. Princess of the Night? Yep. Princess of Love? Uh-huh. Princess of Friendship? Got that. Discord, the anthropomorphic avatar of chaos? Certainly. The Elements of Harmony, weird crystals representing the virtues of friendship of all things? Seen it. What’s next? Princess of Advice? Princess of Irritation? Boredom, the draconequus of tedium? The Elements of Life? The Compounds of Substance? The Molecules of Matter? The Atoms of Existence? What do you have to instruct us on how to do next, o impotent realizations of abstract concepts?
Sorry, sorry. I’ll stay out of it.
Anyway - Apple Bloom trotted slowly through the castle, glancing occasionally to the left or right when she passed a room containing something slightly interesting. Her lungs still contained some water - she could feel the stuff sloshing about to the rhythm of her swaying body. It was oddly calming. She exaggerated her movements while walking in order to see whether the fluid would become more active within her body.
She continued to do so when entering the throne room, before noticing all eyes turn to her. She realized that she must have looked like she was dancing horribly to some inaudible beat, shaking about like an epileptic fly with six left feet and cardiac arrhythmia. She stopped, feeling a blush beginning to shade her face as she lowered her head with shame. No, she was not just jiving like a drunken Hooviet soldier that had been told to do the Cancan the way the mares do it; she was feeling the water shake about in her lungs after having had most of it expelled due to a short two-storey drop from a window.
Somehow, that seemed like it would just attract more intense stares.
She slowly raised her head and looked in turn at the mares before her, hoping that staring back would make the scene awkward enough for them to avert their gazes. Her eyes roamed over to Twilight first, then to Pinkie. She looked at Rainbow Dash, glanced at Rarity, spotted her sister staring back at her, and finally stopped at Derpy Hooves.
What? Hang on. Go back.
Derpy? Muffins? Ditzy? That grey mare with the blonde mane and strange eyes? She had her own throne? In the Castle of Friendship of all places? Where was Fluttershy; why was she sitting in Fluttershy’s place? And why was the design embedded in the throne one depicting a group of soap bubbles clumped together, instead of three pink butterflies?
“What’s goin’ on here?” It was the only question Apple Bloom could voice that would accurately capture her confusion at the mixed-up appearance of affairs.
“Whaddya mean, little filly?” asked Applejack, obviously equally confused at Apple Bloom’s reaction to what she saw.
“I mean, why is Derpy sittin’ in Fluttershy’s place?” An innocent enough question, yet one that certainly seemed to get a rather disproportionately intense reaction from Rainbow Dash. Before Applejack could respond, Rainbow flew off her hinges and took the whole proverbial doorframe with her.
“That’s not funny!” she shouted, furious at something in Apple Bloom’s question. In an instant she had zoomed across the room and was inches from the filly’s face, her whole body tensed as if to punt her through the doorway. Apple Bloom was suddenly very nervous. She briefly looked past the steaming pegasus to regard the others. For some reason, Rarity’s eyes seemed to be tearing over slightly.
“Fluttershy is not something we joke about around here, so you had better just crawl back into whatever pit of Tartarus you came from, because I will hurt you if you don’t!” Rainbow spat at the filly. Her rage seemed to intensify the longer she looked at her, yet Apple Bloom needed to know what had prompted the reaction. Why was Fluttershy such a sensitive topic for her?
“Why’re ya so angry with me?” Apple Bloom asked Rainbow. The pegasus seemed to become stunned momentarily, as if this were the most ridiculous question that she had heard all day, perhaps even all year - random and incoherent enough to floor her temporarily - before her wrath returned four-fold.
“Real funny. Don’t tell me you don’t know,” she said, almost whispering.
Apple Bloom tilted her head to the side and asked, “‘Bout what?”
Rainbow’s eyes became wide. Her head tilted to the side in much the same way as Apple Bloom’s, before slowly beginning to laugh.
“Heh... Ha ha... Ha ha ha ha!” Rainbow Dash threw her head back and descended into a stream of intimidating cackling for nearly a full minute while her friends nervously looked on, apprehension clear in their body language. She slowly lowered her head and looked down to regard Apple Bloom from her elevated position.
“You really don’t know?”
Apple Bloom hesitantly shook her head.
“Well, that’s no good. Rarity, why don’t you educate our young visitor here on Fluttershy’s final destination,” Rainbow Dash requested, the final two words of her sentence drawn out, all the while sounding like the noise rough sandpaper makes when being rubbed vigorously against polished silver.
Rarity just turned away, her runny makeup streaming down her face as she quickly took deep, ragged breaths in between small, strangled crying sounds.
Rainbow seemed nonchalant.
“No? Then how about you, Twilight?”
Twilight stayed silent.
“Okay. Derpy?”
Her eyes rolled inwards to focus on the back of her skull.
“Pinkie?”
Her mane deflated and her fur became slightly desaturated.
“Applejack?”
She pulled her hat over the top of her face, not a tear in her eyes.
“Fine then. I’ll tell it,” Rainbow said, smiling the entire time. “Get ready for a story, kiddo.”
Rainbow Dash settled into a reclined position in midair, her wings positioned beneath her body while her forelegs went to the back of her head. She looked as if she were sitting calmly upon a fold-up chair on the beach.
“Once upon a time,” she began grandly, “there was a yellow pegasus. She was one of the kindest pegasi anyone had ever known, even though she was too shy to be around anyone. She lived in a cottage with the rest of her animal friends, happy with her life there.”
Fluttershy was in her backyard, looking over each of her animals one more time as she mentally prepared herself to descend into the dark expanse of the Everfree Forest. Her apprehension was at its maximum yet again: for the second time that week, Angel Bunny had not appreciated her gentle reprimands directed at him whenever he tried to take the food that belonged to the other animals. It was inconsiderate to steal carrots from the bowls of visiting rabbits, not to mention rude and impolite. He needed to know that it was wrong, yet every time she tried to tell him that he just looked toward her angrily, as if she were betraying his trust.
It was all rather frustrating for her. She had even considered using her Stare on him on a few occasions, but had decided against it every time the thought had entered her mind. He needed to get better on his own terms; she shouldn’t have to force the rabbit into behaving well while running the risk of damaging him psychologically by using a technique that caused for all creatures to fear her, no matter how large or powerful. That was a bit overkill, given the simplicity of the situation.
Unfortunately, it seemed to be the only technique that at least temporarily stopped him from being mean to the other animals. He was determined to disobey her, obviously angry about something; Fluttershy could guess why, and she was sorry for her mistake. But that did not excuse his cruelty towards everything that moved. She had once tried to placate him by giving him a soothing tummy rub, only for him to turn around and attempt to bite her hoof off. Well, if that was how he was going to behave then she needed to teach him that she could be assertive as well.
As soon as she was done crying with joy upon locating him in that forbidding area.
Fully psyched up, Fluttershy took the first step in the direction of the Everfree, determined to return by dinnertime. Mr Beaverton had a slight flu, so he needed regular mealtimes and extended sleeping periods, as well as his medication that she had gotten from the local veterinarian (besides her, of course. She would never tell anypony, but the reason that she was often invited to so many animal conventions and trips was that she was fully certified; animals were her passion, why not pursue it all the way?). She was there to monitor his behaviour, ensuring that he would actually do what was required of him in order to recover. She didn’t want for his condition to become more serious.
Rainbow continued with her side of the tale.
“One day, somepony went to her cottage to ask for some help with a sick pet.”
“Who was it?” asked Aple Bloom.
“It’s not important,” replied Rainbow Dash. Apple Bloom couldn’t help but notice a tear slide down Applejack’s cheek.
“Anyway, they went to her cottage. When they got there, she wasn’t home. They left, thinking that she would be back the next day. They came back then, finding her gone again. Left again. Came back again. Left. Came back. Left. Came back.”
Rainbow illustrated her point by moving her left forehoof first to one side, then to the other, showing the pony’s back-and-forth movement to and from Fluttershy’s cottage over time.
“It went like that for a week. Finally, this pony couldn’t wait anymore. Their dog was getting really sick, and didn’t look like it was gonna make it. So, they got an awesome friend to accompany them and made their way into the Everfree, ‘cause she hadn’t been seen in the town for a while.
Fluttershy reached the periphery of the forest and looked in, preparing to alert her friends to any danger that she may have spotted from the outside. The forest floor, as usual, was covered in a dense fog that obscured a pony’s view of whatever may have been lurking at hoof level, waiting to take a snap at anyone unfortunate enough to draw close to an invisible hazard.
She entered the forest, stepping over the boundary separating the rest of Ponyville from this mysterious location. After some searching, she was able to make out the pathway that she had worn into the forest floor for herself over many treks and trips into the thick of things. She began to trot along, merrily hoping to distract herself from her spooky surroundings.
After some time, she passed by Zecora’s hut. She’d never known the zebra personally, but she knew her now. They regularly discussed mundane things such as herbs that were safe to be used for curing ailments, sleeping potions, their time spent in the small town and other topics that Fluttershy enjoyed, all over two lovely cups of tea carefully prepared by Zecora herself. Fluttershy always loved tea: it felt so nice and warm to her, a reminder of years past and time spent with her animal friends, chattering impatiently about some or other new problem that she needed to resolve for them.
She ventured deeper into the Everfree, calling out for Angel as she passed the small hut.
“Angel! Angel! I’m sorry for having made you upset, but you should know that being so mean to the other animals in the cottage is impolite.”
She stopped and waited for a bit, hoping to hear a small squeak slightly deeper into the forest, or the sight of her little Angel poking his head out from behind a rock to check where her calls were coming from.
After waiting for a few minutes within which absolutely nothing of note took place, Fluttershy continued onwards deeper into the forest.
“As they were walking along, they saw some leaves shredded in the canopy overhead,” Rainbow Dash said. “They carried on, ignoring that sight. Then, they noticed that some bark was ripped off of the trees near the pathway. Again, it was ignored. Then, more signs of something gone wrong began to appear all over the place: upturned boulders, trees damaged, some even knocked over, large clearings that had been made using brute force, trampled animals, blood spatters. Eventually, they even found a few fragments of bone on the pathway. They went on a little further, finding little things like bits of yellow fur, strips of flesh, some teeth and more blood. Then, they found who they were looking for.”
Rainbow’s expression slowly began to change. She started to frown, concentrating on keeping her mood neutral throughout the entirety of her little story, hoping that her emotions would not betray her.
Fluttershy was getting closer to that spot, and she didn’t want to have to go there. It was always hard for her to be so near to the land-based hydras, more so now than ever. She ceased her calls and slowly trotted along the pathway, looking straight ahead to avoid the sight that she wished she didn’t have to approach.
Eventually, she decided that ignoring it was no use: she was going to falter and look there anyway, so why not just get it over with. She slowly picked her gaze up from the path ahead, her eyes searching for the thing that she despised seeing in the forest. It always served as a reminder of that day, the day that she had changed irrevocably. True, while the alteration to herself wasn’t too drastic, the memories associated with it were rather traumatic. Not as traumatic as flight camp, but they still served as a reminder that some things just can’t be controlled. Fate was one of those things. Eventually, her eyes came to rest on an object tangled up in the vines hanging down from the tops of the trees.
“The yellow pegasus was tangled up in some vines, her stomach… shre… shr…” At this point, Rainbow Dash began to tear up as her speech faltered. “Sorry, it’s a little hard for me to say this.”
She wiped her eyes with her hooves, clearing out the tears as she concentrated on her breathing, hoping to stabilize it somewhat.
“They found her stomach… gone, along with a lot of…” She took a deep, shaky breath, then continued speaking. “Along with a lot of other pieces.”
There, suspended in midair, were the vines that had entrapped her body. At least somepony had taken it away, though she didn’t know who that could have been.
The hydra that had tried to make a meal of her had found the position that she was in to be very awkward as far as eating was concerned; as a result, the process of her consumption had been rather slow and torturous.
The pain had been more intense than anything she had ever felt before. Had she been in any condition to do so, Fluttershy wagered that she would have been screaming her lungs out due to the sensations that she had felt in that moment. Of course, screaming wouldn’t have done her any good; at the time, Zecora hadn’t even arrived in Ponyville yet, and she was the only one that lived in the forest due to the abundance of natural herbs that she could use in her strange concoctions.
After the mauling, Fluttershy had been unable to do anything other than hang suspended and watch as the beast retreated back into the forest, having left enough of her there to stay alive for a few minutes more.
Rainbow Dash stopped entirely for a few minutes right then, her face scrunched up into an expression of pained restraint. She just stayed that way for a while until she was ready to tell the story again while Apple Bloom looked on, confused at seeing the normally boastful, self-absorbed pegasus so volatile, perhaps even unstable.
Eventually, she seemed to calm down a bit, recomposing herself until she could speak without pausing excessively in order to control her emotions.
“Her animals still… they still play at her cottage, acting like she never left, happily prancing about in her yard while everypony around them who… ever… knew her… falls apart.”
Fluttershy couldn’t help but reflect on the incident.
Due to the severity of the attack, she had lost the ability to feel pain, or much of anything. She had hung limp, swaying in the occasional unnatural breeze that made its way through the eldritch forest. Finally, her body had given up and she was able to make her descent to the ground below. She would have moved on to the place that all long-gone ponies she had met afterwards had told her about, had it not been for the fact that her animals and family needed her in order to function. For that reason, she had made her way back to the cottage, finally safe from the dangers that lurked around every corner in their world. Truly, dying was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She’d never had any true friends who were waiting for her. Other than her parents, nopony would’ve missed her anyway.
Rainbow Dash’s eyes took on a faraway stare and her left forehoof reached out before her as the tears came, almost as if she was dreaming about something or someone she could almost touch, her memories of them being so clear and absolute.
“It’s weird - she was just hanging there, so carefree. So peaceful. It was almost like… like you could forget the fact that she was dead, and just see the kindness left in her body, like even when whatever it had been was ripping her apart, she was kind to it, knowing that it was just doing what it does to survive. Nopony had been there for her when she needed them most, but she was probably thinking about how much they were going to miss her when she was gone.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes suddenly became hard once more.
“She cared, and nopony ever smiled. She wept, and nopony ever cried. She died, and… and no one even blinked.”
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7560236 The system for death will be long-winded and pretty difficult for the narrator to explain, so I'm incredibly glad that I'm not them. But, yes; essentially, death holds absolutely no weight for anyone that they've encountered. Except for when it does. Which will be explained, though probably not immediately after this - at the moment, it's actually more of an inconvenience than anything.
7569116 It looks fine from my side, but the quotes are just straight now.
7569064 Interesting. looking forward to it.
That reference though.
7596256 Reference? Did I reference something without knowing it? As far as I can remember, I wasn't actually trying to put in any references at all when doing that chapter. Care to explain?
7596256
Final Destination, although I could be completely wrong
7596753 Oh. No, that was literally the only euphemism I had that I knew I would find hard to repeat ad nauseum, as is my modus operandi. It's a symptom of my severe case of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, I'm afraid. Terrible condition, but it can't be helped right now.