Starlight Over Detrot Epilogue Part 1 : Rescue Mission
Mags came awake in the cramped little compartment with a peep of consternation. She lay there in the dark cubby for a few minutes, trying to remember where she was and what’d been going on.
She’d been dreaming. It wasn’t a very nice dream, except the end bit. What was it about?
‘Oh. Yeah. Egg Pony and that one who looks like him are doing something crazy. Egg Pony is probably dead. Again. I wonder what they doing?’ she thought, squirming about in her tiny enclosure. ‘Okay, gotta get out. Gotta go find Egg Pony before he wakes up so I can bite him, but first do what he said when he was all ‘Woo, I’m really Nightmare Moon and bossy and here’s this list, go do it’. Stupid bossy Egg Pony.’
Reaching up, she hooked a talon into the door pull of her small hiding place and gave it a sharp tug. It didn’t move. She gave it another yank, but it stubbornly refused to yield.
‘Hrmph. Stupid hatch. You not defeat me! I am tribe lord!’
Wiggling around until she could put her rear paws against the door, she stomped at it a few times. It creaked and clanged, but wouldn’t open. Annoyed, she gave it one last kick, then slumped down in a heap of disconsolate brown feathers.
She had her little pistol as a last resort, but really didn’t want to fire it in an enclosed space.
The young griffin hadn’t thought to bring more than snacks, and most of those were gone. Picking up the remains of a candy bar, she ran her tongue over the wrapper, then flicked it away. It wasn’t as tasty as meat treats, but stealing from the orange pony with teeth was a good way to get her tail chomped.
‘Next time, I’mma have the Miss Metal Pony’s people show me how to pick locks. Should get one of those red moon stamps from them, but Egg Pony would be mad. Ugh. He’s gonna be mad I snuck in with him, but he can be mad all he likes. I’m the tribe lord!’
She gave the door another frustrated kick.
‘Silly door.’
Just then, she heard something moving outside. It was just for a moment, but her ears perked and she flipped over onto her belly, crawling over so she could press the side of her head against the door. After a few seconds, the sound happened again: hooves on gravel.
‘Well, if it’s a monster, I shoot’em. If it’s a pony, I see if they’re friendly and then shoot’em if they’re mean. And if it’s Egg Pony, I shoot’im then hug’im. But I bet he’s dead. Might shoot him anyway. It’s not like it sticks.’
Bringing her pistol up, she cocked it, making sure there was a round chambered before rapping on the compartment and shouting as loud as her tiny lungs would allow.
“Anything out there! There’s a griffin warrior in here! Lemme out!”
The shuffling hooves paused, then whoever it was clumped in a small circle before a masculine voice called back, “A griffin warrior, huh?”
The voice was vaguely amused, but she couldn’t tell if he was making fun of her or just sounded like that in general.
“Yes!” she yelled. “I got a very important job to do! I have one more candy bar in here, and you can have it if you let me go!”
The hooves approached, their sound changing to hooves on metal, and she heard a door squeaking on its hinges, then felt the compartment shift under her.
“If I open this thing, are you going to shoot me in the face?” the voice asked.
She contemplated this for a moment then replied, “Only if you be mean.”
“Right, well, I have some friends who’re looking over my shoulder who’d be pretty upset if I didn’t do right by a certain stallion and he’d be pretty peeved if I left your fluffy tail in there.”
The front of the box clanked, then fell open. Mags raised her pistol, holding it with both claws as she looked out into the interior of the Dragon Flagon Wagon at the face of a pony she’d never met. He wore a thick bomber jacket and was green as pea soup with a scruffy little beard. A badge dangled from a silver chain around his neck, bobbing against his chest.
There was something about him that wasn’t exactly right, but she couldn’t put a claw on it. He seemed like a perfectly normal pony. Maybe his eyes were a little older than the rest of him.
Slowly, she lowered her gun. “You not mean?”
“I like to think I’m a nice enough pony. Here.” He held out a hoof and she cautiously took it, only to be hauled out of the compartment and carefully set on her paws. “You got a name, Miss Griffin Warrior?”
“I be Mags! Tribe lord of...of the Hard Boiled Clan!” she chirped, having determined the pony didn’t seem like a threat. Flicking her pistol’s safety back on, she stuffed it back in the holster hanging around her body.
“Hard Boiled Clan, huh?” He gave her a light pat on the head. “Well, Mags, I’m Juniper. Juniper Shores. You might say I’m also a member of Hard Boiled’s ‘Clan’.”
She gave him a suspicious look out of one yellow eye, then the other. “How come I never be meeting you?”
Juniper rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled, peering around the inside of the armored vehicle with a certain curiosity. “I’ve been on vacation a long time. Never thought I’d be back in Detrot quite like this, mind you.”
“You pick a bad time for vacation.”
“No kidding. I’m afraid I’m a bit out of date. What’s been going on here?”
Mags opened her beak to respond, then let it click closed. After a few seconds of consideration she said, “Don’t know. Big ponies don’t tell me nothing. Egg Pony—”
“Egg Pony?”
“Hard Boiled! Duh!”
“Right. Sorry. Go on?”
Mags snorted and whipped her tail around herself, bouncing over to the door and leaping out onto the pavement. The strange stallion followed her a moment later, stepping out and slamming the giant vehicle’s rear door shut. Looking up, she took in the ruined street full of scorched facades and the twisted, smoldering bones of strange, oddly-shaped creatures.
Tilting her head back, she caught sight of the glowing barrier at the end of the road. It was an awful lot bigger up close than it had been when she’d seen it at a distance from the rooftop of Fortress Everfree. It looked to be raining high up, but none of it seemed to be making it to the ground.
“I got a special job, but I can’t be doing it with this dumb thing here!” she barked at the shield.
“Something tells me it won’t be there much longer,” Juniper replied, scratching the scruff on his chin. “There were some big magics keeping me out of Detrot. Those went down a few minutes ago.”
“Mmmhmmm! I had a dream. Egg Pony and the pony who looks just like him are doin’ something crazy. They not done yet though, or the big magic thingy would be gone. I felt a—”
“Wait, you dreamed about what’s going on in there?” Juniper asked, a confused expression on his face.
She shot him a scolding look. “Your ears not work?”
“I heard you. For the moment, I’ve got nothing to say you’re lying to me. What is going on in there?”
Mags clicked her tongue, letting herself sink back into the dream for a few seconds. It had been a right scary dream. A dream of splitting into tiny pieces. A dream of being scattered, like dust, on the winds.
The end was the weirdest part. She’d settled down amongst warm little lights that covered all the land, nestling in beside each one like it was her mother’s breast feathers. Funny how nice that bit felt.
Shaking her head, she tugged at her shoulder holster. “They doin’ something with magic. I don’t be liking magic much. Can’t shoot magic, or bite it, or kick it in the soft parts.”
Juniper let out a short burst of laughter, then scruffled her head feathers so they stuck up in the back. “Now that sounds like somebody who spent a while following Hard Boiled around. No matter how much useful magic was in his life, he’d have been happier in a world where he could solve problems with a bullet or a beer.” Trotting over to one of the smoking monster’s corpses, he gave the befanged skull a light kick. It disintegrated into a pile of black ash. “Mind filling me in on what these things are?”
“The uglies? Biters. Black coats. They eat ponies. Mostly dead now, I be thinkin’,” she replied, picking up a rock and tossing it at the barrier. It sizzled as it hit, falling to the ground as a streak of red hot liquid. “Wonder what Egg Pony is doing in there right now. Egg Pony wished!”
Stepping up beside her, Juniper pushed his chin out. “He’s never been the punctual sort, but being as the planet isn’t covered in quickly cooling corpses already, I’m gonna say he’s succeeded.”
Mags rolled her eyes at the funny green stallion. “You think he could lose, you not know him very well. He be too loony in his noggin to lose. That not meaning he live, though. That be why I’m here. He dumb enough to think dying is a good way to win.”
Picking up another rock, Juniper winged it at the barrier, watching as it flared, then vanished upon contact. “Wish we had a unicorn here who could tell us what the local magical fields are doing.”
“What you do if you know about that?” she asked, raising one eye-ridge.
Juniper hesitated, then tugged at his coat self-consciously. “You’re right. Probably worry about him, same as I’m doing right now. I’m starting to get why he decided you were worth keeping around.”
“He not have a choice!” she declared, thumping her chest with her balled talon. “I be his tribelord! He be lost without me!”
“I’m glad he’s in good...er...claws.”
Before she could respond, Mags felt a violent shiver shoot up her back. Something inside her quivered like a guitar string a thousand miles long and she darted behind Juniper, peering out at the shield with her tail tucked around her back legs. She tried to tell herself she was just using him for cover, but there was a certain something about him that made her feel safer just being close by.
A high pitched whine started to build in the air, then was joined by a breeze being pulled towards the barrier. Mags yelped as her paws left the ground, only to be snatched back by Juniper who seemed to have no trouble keeping himself planted as paper bags and garbage bins all along the street were suddenly yanked into the air by a hurricane force wind. Even the D.F.W. skittered sideways on its tires a few inches.
The explosion of vacuum force only lasted a moment before abating, but it was quickly followed by a blast of light so bright Mags was almost blinded right through her tightly shut eyelids. A hoof came down over her face, shielding her from the worst of it; it did leave her wondering exactly what the stallion was using to cover his own eyes. He wasn’t gonna be much help to her if he couldn’t see.
The high pitched whining grew in volume until her ears started to ring, before all at once vanishing, leaving behind only the distant crackles of residual gunfire and the sputtering of flames on adjoining streets.
Grabbing Juniper’s hoof, Mags tugged it away from her face.
The barrier was gone, but the scene of complete ruination beyond immediately overwhelmed her senses. Her beak fell open as she stared out across the destroyed landscape into what remained of Uptown. There was almost nothing remaining of the center of Detrot: just a single skyscraper amidst a vast, black landscape of scoured, smoking gravel.
In the distance, she could make out the line where the once bustling shops had come right up to the magical shield, but in between only collapsed foundations remained. Everything above ground was seemingly disintegrated, with nothing larger than a few portions of red-hot rebar poking out of broken cement here and there. If Mags hadn’t known better, she’d have thought a very thorough dragon burned the entire place right to the ground.
In a few seconds, the rain started to fall, hitting the superheated ground with bursts of steam that quickly fogged the air.
The sole structure reflected brief flashes of lightning beneath the storm and appeared to be sitting exactly in the center of the destruction, leaning to one side at an unhealthy angle as though it might fall at any moment.
Juniper set the young griffin down, still standing over her protectively as he surveyed the damage.
“W-what was all that?” Mags asked, quietly.
The green stallion looked down at her and smirked. “Why do you think I know?”
“I not be needing lip!” she hissed, then pointed towards the slumping structure. “Come on. If I know Egg Pony, he probably there.”
“Yeah, that tracks. Idiot couldn’t have left before he blew up the center of town. We’ll have to get him out of there before it falls. Can you fly?”
Mags jumped into the air and flapped a couple times, quickly circling Juniper’s head. “I be flyin’ good enough. You keep up with hooves? Ground looks hot, still.”
“I’ve got steel shoes, although it’s been a while since I ran anywhere. I think I can manage,” he replied, then tossed his mane out of his eyes and took off at a gallop into the ruins of Uptown.
Letting out an indignant squawk at being left behind, Mags quickly beat her wings until she caught a half decent wind, then soared off after the funny stallion.
The two unconsciously kept to the steaming roads, avoiding the molten puddles of glass and slag remains of the business district of Detrot. They both paused for just a moment beside a giant, glittering puddle of liquid gold that was surely what was left of the municipal bank, then moved on in the direction of the lone pillar amidst the destruction. It wasn’t much of a run, but the rain had started to fall in earnest and the thickening bank of fog that covered everything didn’t help.
“Phew, this place smells like rotten roast chicken,” Mags commented as she flew by an open sewer cover, slinging water off her feathers.
Juniper hesitated over the sewer, peering down inside before taking a couple quick steps backwards.
“Sweet Tartarus...” he muttered, then quickly kicked up his heels to catch up with her. “I feel like I’ve started reading halfway through a book. These people have been very thorough in hiding what they were doing from the powers that be!”
“They know all it take for people not to see is not to want to see!” she chirped. “They smarter than most ponies. Smarter than everyone except my Egg Pony, who is real smart even though he real dumb!”
“Never a better descriptor for Hard Boiled.”
Rounding the last set of streets, they burst out of the fog at the steps of Starlight Tower. Shattered glass surrounded the base of the building leading up to the front doors. Up close, it was an even bigger wreck than at a distance; the internal structure was creaking and swaying, unsure whether or not it wanted to stay up. With each passing moment, it seemed to be making up its mind that a nice lie-down was the right answer.
Juniper caught Mags with one hoof just as she started to fly towards the doors, pulling her down onto his back. She let out a grumpy growl, warningly digging her claws into his sides though he didn’t seem to notice. While she was soaked to the bone, he felt strangely warm and his fur seemed mostly dry. She mentally chalked it up as a ‘pony magic thing’.
“Can’t have you flying in there. If you hit a wall, this becomes an even bigger mess.”
Lifting her head, Mags sniffed at the air. “I smells Egg Pony. He was this way.” She pointed off towards the left side of the sagging building.
“I thought griffins were more about the eyesight than smelling things?” Juniper commented.
“How you not smell him? He always covered in blood, gun oil, and that perfume he little boy-toy wears.”
Raising his nose, Juniper took a deep breath, catching just the faintest hint of the old familiar scent. His eyes widened excitedly as he turned in the direction she’d indicated and took off at a slow trot. “Wait, say that again? Hard Boiled finally found a guy? I thought that pony would never let himself relax enough to let another pony into his life.”
Mags flicked her tongue over the point of her beak and grinned. “Oh, he got two! Mare name is Lily! Colt name is Scarlet! Scarlet is...kinda like a mare. They gonna have a tough time if they try to take him away, though. My tribe, my rules!”
“Ahuh. Too bad I won’t get to meet them. Hardy deserves some good ponies in his life. Sweet Shine knows him too well to do more than love him. That and she’s scarier than a whole pack of cragodiles.”
The tiny griffin poked her head around his shoulder, doing her best not to poke holes in his coat with her claws. “Why not meet them? You goin’ somewhere?”
“Yeah, sad to say, this is my last job,” he replied, sadly, before raising his head. “Let’s focus on getting Hardy out of here before this thing comes down on him. Doubt even he would survive a building dropping on his head. Where did he go?”
Mags pointed toward a ruggedly built door on the side of the building that was leaning open. “He gone over there.”
“You sure?”
She nipped at the stallion’s ear. “You questionin’ my nose? Besides, bloody hoofprint on the door. That be Egg Pony bloody hoofprint.”
Juniper gave her an incredulous look. “How often do you have cause to see his bloody hoofprints, Miss Griffin Warrior?”
“Much,” she replied, sagely, then gave him a light kick in the ribs with her back paws. “Giddyup! Wanna get Egg Pony back! His back be a softer ride than yours!”
“Can I say you’re exactly the kind of kid I always pictured Hard Boiled ending up with?”
“Thanks!”
“Not a compliment.”
Mags replied with another kick in the sides.
----
The door led to a broken stairwell, though most of the steps were still there. Juniper produced a small flashlight and the two ascended the tower, encountering a few places the ceiling had caved in or the floor had fallen out. Most were crossed with a hop and flap of wings, but a few required a bit of creative navigation. The building creaked and groaned, threatening every moment to come crashing down around their ears. By some miracle it held.
The top floor was more or less gone.
“What all happened up here, I wonder?” Juniper asked, absently, as he looked over the destroyed remains of Diamond Wishes’s apartments.
“Dunno. Don’t be mattering, though. Egg Pony was here.” Reaching down, she picked a glittering fragment of blackened crystal out of the rubble. “You see?”
“I’m ashamed to say, much time as I spent around Hard Boiled, he’s a different pony these days and I don’t think I know that pony very well,” Juniper murmured, carefully taking the crystal from her. “This looks like some sort of enchanted shell.”
“He Crusadah! They Crusadah bullets. I listen to Mr. Bones stories. These, they kill dragons.”
“My former partner has dragon killing bullets,” he mused, then flicked the crystal into the rubble. “This is why briefing lower life forms should come with the opportunity to take notes. Not that complaining to management would do me a whole lot of good. Ineffable pricks. Hardy used these?”
“Think so,” she answered, flicking her tail at the enormous, scorched hole in the roof. She picked her way over to the smashed liquor cabinet and poked her nose in, then made a face. “Bleh. Pony drink smells bad and taste like paint. Why nobody keep chicken blood around here?”
Juniper let out a bark of laughter. “You and Sykes sound like you’d make a fun pair. Wish I’d gotten to see that old buzzard here, but he’ll be waiting on me when I get back. What about you? I’m sure one of those griffin tribes would be happy to take you after all is said and done.”
Mags puffed up like an angry sparrow, her hackles rising. “No way! I be stayin’ with Hardy! He my tribe, now! He save me, I save him, we together forever!”
“Mmmph. Hardy give you the gun?”
She flicked her eyes at her holstered pistol and shrugged. “Aroyo gun. They say ‘live armed or die unarmed’. I think that smart.” Giving him a quick once over, she peered at his forelegs as though seeing them for the first time. “You not living armed?”
“I’m afraid that’s a bit of a moot point for me, really, “ he answered, casting about for a few seconds. “I don’t see Hardy up here. Where’s he gotten to?”
“Didn’t see no doors on the stairs up.”
“So...another set of steps somewhere?” Juniper made his way over to a toppled bookcase, peering into the ruined doorway behind it. “Aha! This looks like ‘down’ to me. I hope those only lead one place or we’re going to be here for hours checking each floor. Don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy this building’s chances.”
“Not me I be worried about. I fly.”
“You squish, too, Miss Griffin Warrior.”
“You say you don’t?”
Juniper coughed into the hoof with his flashlight strapped to it. “We’ll say that I’m more worried about your mortal coil than mine. You notice the building is listing a little more than it was a few minutes ago?”
Mags looked around herself, then squatted her rear legs a couple of times, getting a feel for the slant of the floor. “Oooh, that be bad, right?”
“That’s bad. Do you want to stay up here where you can fly off if you need to?”
“Nope! Got a job to do! Building falls down with Egg Pony under it, can’t do job.”
“This job is that important to you?”
“It be!”
“Well, no sense arguing with a determined griffin. Short of breaking your legs, I can’t stop you following me,” he grumbled, dragging his upper teeth through the stubbly beard on his lower lip before adding, “If this place starts to go, you get under me, alright?”
Mags squinted at Juniper for a moment, then peered down at his legs. “What good that gonna do? You made of steel?”
“I’m an earth pony. I’m stronger than I look.”
Giving him a skeptical look, she shrugged and nodded. “If this place fall down and I be not flying away, won’t be any deader under you than not. But if it mean you stop actin’ like a momma bird, I promise.” With that, she flicked a bit of dusty debris out of her tufted tail and started down the secret set of stairs. After a moment, she poked her head back up and called, “I be needing light!”
Juniper stood there for a moment, staring after her before allowing himself a small smile as he followed her down into the gradually settling skyscraper.
----
The descent was more unnerving than the climb, not the least because the entire structure was starting to judder and shake around them, making every step treacherous. Juniper kept close to Mags, much to her irritation, but if she were to admit it to herself she was glad he was along; going back out to the truck to see if she could find a flashlight would have been annoying.
All the while, the rumble of protesting girders gradually grew around them.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes top to bottom, but to Mags it felt like a century.
‘I swears Egg Pony,’ she thought to herself, grabbing the banister on the wall as Starlight Tower quaked in its death throes, ‘You get me a whole ostrich to eat after this! Not sharin’ any with toothy-Swift-pony, either. She get her own big roast thing!’
Coming around the last flight of cracked, crumbling steps, Mags and Juniper found themselves standing before a gaping pair of metal doors with a gemstone set in the wall beside them and blackness beyond. Dust was settling around their shoulders, leaving a thin coat of grey on every surface as the building above began to sway in some of the first breezes that’d touched Uptown in weeks.
“Well, you say you not squish?” Mags chirped, gesturing at the door with one claw.
Juniper fanned his light across the door and the stone floor beyond. The ground inside looked smooth as glass with slight humps a few meters beyond that suggested melted steps. Despite that, the surface appeared to be frosted over, as though every ounce of energy had been sucked right out of it.
Mags poked her head in and shivered, quickly withdrawing. “Brrr! Why cold? Hate cold.”
“Shhh. You hear that?” her companion muttered, holding a toe to his lips.
Tilting her head this way and that, Mags listened as best she could. Her ears were nowhere near as good as a pony’s, but above the clank and clatter of the ever so slowly collapsing tower she could just make out a soft moaning. It was hard to say exactly where it was coming from because of the strange acoustics in the chamber, but if she’d had to guess it was right in the middle.
Snatching the flashlight off Juniper’s foreleg, she bounded past him into the slagged amphitheater, stopping for only a second as every feather on her body poofed up at the powerful chill coming off the smooth floor. Stumbling forward, her tiny wings caught the air and she glided down the smooth steps, scanning back and forth with the light. There were hoofsteps behind her, but she ignored them; she’d never been taught much about prayer, but she was silently asking anything bigger than her that was listening to let it not be something with nasty teeth letting out those soft, plaintive whimpers.
The edge of her illumination caught something on the black ground and she recentered it. There was a lump of strange, dark blue metal and grey fur curled up in a heap, shivering violently though seemingly unconscious. Coasting closer, Mags stared down into the face of her surrogate father, his eyes shut as he quivered on the floor, hugging himself and rocking slightly. His hat lay near his hooves and though he still wore the Armor of Nightmare Moon, it hung loosely around his head and shoulders like it didn’t quite fit properly.
“Egg Pony?” she murmured, giving him a light shake with one claw when he didn’t respond. His only reaction was to curl up a little more tightly. She nudged the helmet lightly and it tipped off his head, clattering onto the floor behind him. “H-Hardy? Y-you be okay?”
“After what he’s been through, I think ‘alive’ was the best we could hope for,” Juniper explained sympathetically from just over her shoulder. “Some things a pony isn’t meant to live through. He’s had more than his share. Fortunately, I am authorized to tell you he’ll be okay. Eventually.”
Worried tears started to leak from the tiny griffin’s eyes as she looked up at the green stallion.
“How you know?” she asked.
“There are...well, they’re not people, but there are things bigger than what Hardy just had to put right and they’re a lot more sympathetic to us than most of the so called ‘gods’ one might run into. I just wish I knew what he’d done, exactly.”
Mags put a claw against her own breast and felt a tiny warmth there, hiding just beneath her heart.
“I be thinkin’ he give us all a tiny piece,” she whispered, then reached out and gently ran a claw through her shaking surrogate father’s messy mane.
“A tiny piece of what exactly?” Juniper inquired.
“Why you think I know?” she huffed, plunking herself down and fishing about inside the front of Hard Boiled’s jacket. His badge fell out into her claws, but she set it aside. “Where be it...aha! Here it be!” Lifting her leg, she held the Emblem of Harmony by its chain draped across two claw-tips, the crystalline branch still suspended inside.
“Huh. I take it this is what you came for?”
“My job! I break this when stupid magic shield gone!”
Juniper started to say something when, from overhead, some distant girder let out an alarming shriek and a fresh cascade of dust started to fall. The floor began to shake like a rung bell as bits of crumbling stone crashed down from the ceiling, shattering into a thousand pieces of vicious shrapnel.
Mags heard Juniper shout, “It’s coming down!”
Her light went out and she was snatched off the floor and shoved into a dark space that smelled strongly of sweaty pony: the front of Mr. Shore’s jacket. She stumbled over something soft and fuzzy, realizing only a moment later it was Hardy’s unconscious body. The air suddenly filled with dust and she felt stones plinking off her face and chest as an intolerable roar grew in all directions. She wanted nothing so much as to slap her claws over her ears, but instead she held tight to the tiny glass bauble.
‘Guess I don’t be getting to have ostrich after all,’ she thought. It was an oddly peaceful thing to have pass through her mind right before death. Still, dying as a griffin warrior wasn’t so bad, if she got her job done.
Gripping the pendant in both foreclaws, she pressed the front of it as hard as she could. She felt it begin to give just as an invisible projectile ricocheted off the side of her head. Something slick coated her front legs, but still she clutched it tighter and tighter, ignoring the pain, ignoring the sound of the falling building until a wave of weakness rolled over her.
She felt herself falling. Her cheek rested on Hard Boiled’s still-armored shoulder and she let the pendant drop, merely clutching him as tightly as she could.
‘Funny,’ Mags contemplated, but she didn’t feel like giggling. ‘Guess when you dead, don’t be needing eyes to see.’
It took her a moment to realize she could see. The light was coming from the wrong place to be the flashlight, though. It was coming from overhead, just a thin pinprick of faint white reaching down into the dark and painting a single spot of grey fur on Hard Boiled’s muzzle. An instant later, the pinprick expanded, blinding in its intensity. A bright lavender energy surged down into the hole, wrapping itself around her little body like a warm blanket.
She was hoisted out of the ground, coughing and spitting up dust and bits of rubble, just in time to see the first rays of the sun as it crested the moon.
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I've never actually read this story, and I don't intend to, but I want to give the author some serious props for it. I remember when this story first popped up in EQD years ago, the fact that it's not only still running but is actually nearing a conclusion is astounding to me. Kudos to you for sticking with this beast, maybe I'll start on it when it's finished.
10720038
Awww, thanks.
-Chessie
Oh my, thats one heck of an ending note on this point, and mags is amazing.
Love juniper too.
They have this real and sarcastic nature that is such a good pairing.
10720038
It'll be a long read. A hella good one, but long.
Well, that was unexpected... not the arrival of the Unknown Purple One, the physical arrival of one we’ve got used to being in only one pony’s mind.
I must say though that the extent Mag’s injury sounds far greater than I preferred to hear... having dealt with injuries to the noggin before, while they bleed profusely, that much blood, that quickly is ominous.
That is why he and Hardy survived as partners for so long... he has the snark to deal with the Egg Pony at his worst.
10720038
It's one of the best reads I ever read, and I ain't even read it all yet
Well, ended up reading this a few times to actually let it click--and to be honest, I can entirely see that son of a gun rocking a bomber jacket quite well!
Yep, exactly Hardy's kid.
Never really figured out who these mysterious individuals are, though this line kind of makes me think he's referring to us as the audience/author/editors/etc, but not sure on that one.
It might be your last job, but darnit I'll take you coming back around one more time.
Overall? It was great to see Mags once again, as well as Juniper, though it looks like everything might be alright--but I'm not able to put all the cards on the table yet.
I don't tend to make any serious predictions outside of shitposting, but I still must say I didn't expect this.
Mags coming into play here was a surprise. Stowing away in the DFW after all that. Or did I just forget?
Juniper even more so. I mean I expected he'd show, though just not in this form. It's interesting, gives some idea of what those other powers are like, given the nature of this 'last job'. The corporeal form is a nice touch, I just hope he gets a nice and meaningful conversation with Hardy when the chance comes.
Doubt he'd be so lucky as to have a long one. Hardy deserves to know he wasn't just some hallucination in his head all those previous times. Still, I'm surprised he was surprised at learning of Scarlet and Lily. Not that I expected him to pry with that higher realm advantage, but it just seemed like a detail he'd have already known about, vaguely.As much as I do not expect them to be on the moon, that is what this line seems to imply as you'd usually say the sun crests the horizon at dawn... I don't know if I am misreading this or if this part of Detrot is where Canterlot was for much of the story... unless it implying that both the sun and moon are now in the sky... question to be answered along with many others in the next part, I guess.
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The sun was covered up by an eclipse this whole time, remember? As in, covered up by the moon?
-Chessie
Ha!
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I assumed the stars
This is better!
I love it!
And now, the end is near, as we draw back, the final curtain..
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The record will show, Hardy took enough blows to pulverize Mount Canterlot..🎶
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Ahhh... no worries. I did remember the eclipse but thought something had changed while the 'event' occurred as usually an end of eclipse would be described as 'emerging from behind the moon' but that was obviously me just trying to over-analyse the situation.
'Twill be interesting to see how the world takes the rediscovery of the Princess of Friendship... that will be quite a thing to rewrite history again. That morbid thought/prophesy that Hardy had where he expected to meet Twilight again, even if it was only for her to transport his dying body to whatever was awaiting it is seeming to come true. Fortunately we know that dying is something he seems to fail to succeed at on a regular basis as much as his mind may wish otherwise at the moment.
Hey, it's the epilogue, part 1...
The epilogue, part 1?
Chessie, you're really teasing us here!!
This was all very interesting. I'm guessing the pendant broke when Mags dropped it and that's why Twilight showed up. It also seems that Celestia wasted no time getting the sun working right again. Strangely though, the most interesting thing I noticed in all this was that Mags finally cried. I've been waiting for that one for ages now.
I'm so excited and sad at the same time. I hate that feeling of dread when you know the story you're reading is coming to a close.
So many well developed characters. Can't say enough about how great this story is.
I was wondering if we’d get a Mags POV chapter, and I am glad it is such a strong one at that.
That was a fun ride with Mag's View. And good to she Juniper will get to talk to Hardy face to face one last time.
We approach the end..
Somehow it’s fitting Mags and Juniper are here. Swift and Shine are going to beat the shit out of him soon, though, followed by his two lovers patching things up.
Damn this story has been a wild ride. and ive loved every min of it
What a great chapter to start to end things on! Been one helluva ride.
Here comes the sun, little darlin'
Did a chapter fall on your birthday or an important day to you and you want it mentioned in my blog about this story??
Drop me a message. Include the date, and what name (not real name please) and photo you want me to use (ill just use your info from your profile here if you don't give me anything)
Chessie, feel free to delete this comment :P i just want to give you readers a chance to show up in my blog
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Feel free to use the info from the profile. It hasn't changed much.
-Chessie
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I meant this for all your wonderful readers. I want to give them a chance to be in the blog if your chapter happens to fall on their birthday or something. :D
Wonderful...
Well Juniper you finally made it back.