A Princess' Friends
I found it.
As I flew across Equestria, alone with nothing but my own grim thoughts to keep me company, I just so happened to spot something in the darkness far below. It could've just been any nondescript piece of debris, but something about it pulled at me, and I went down to take a look.
It was the only memento I had left of any of my friends.
It was the stetson I had dropped what feels like forever ago now.
It was her stetson.
I still don't know how it had survived the blast, but I wasn't about to question it, not now -- not when it was the only thing I had left of the life I once knew. I held the hat close to my chest, silent tears streaming down my face as I thought about the hardworking cowpony.
Applejack had been one of the most hospitable ponies I had ever met. Over time I began to admire the mare for her diligence and honest and open nature. Stubbornness aside, It was a refreshing change from some of the more flippant, disingenuous, and sometimes downright untrustworthy ponies in Canterlot.
She didn't deserve this.
None of us did.
With one last quiet sniff I placed the stetson atop my head and took off once more. I remembered I had dropped the hat somewhere near the ruins of Ponyville, and, against my better judgement, I paid the desolate town one last visit.
Using what little was left of the Golden Oaks Library as a waypoint, I landed and began trotting through the darkened streets of Ponyville. Unbidden, memories of the lively, friendly townsfolk came to me, dredged up from the recesses of my mind. Rather than push them back, I let the memories wash over me.
Carrot Top, the quiet and easygoing carrot farmer who was always ready to offer some friendly advice to those who needed it.
Vinyl Scratch, the rambunctious DJ who could make any pony dance their tail off with her crazy beats.
Octavia Melody, the elegant and refined musician who used her cello to captivate the heart and soul of anypony that heard her play.
Derpy Hooves, the klutzy but well meaning mailmare who always managed to brighten everypony's day with her infectiously positive attitude.
Time Turner, the eccentric and somewhat mysterious earth pony who was always tinkering with one gadget or another.
Lyra Heartstrings, Bon-Bon, the Cakes, Mayor Mare, and so many other ponies in this little village died so suddenly and needlessly. The memories continued to tear at me, but I refused to toss them aside.
The least I could do was keep them all with me in memory if nothing else.
Lost in my thoughts, I failed to notice I had reached the broken remains of Sugarcube Corner until I was actually in front of the building. I stopped and looked over the crumbling ruin as I thought about Pinkie Pie and how I had met her.
I had found the pink party pony insufferable when we had first met, and I wanted nothing to do with the party that she had thrown. If I had known Pinkie like I did now, I never would've acted the way I did.
She had only wanted to see me smile, that's all she truly wanted from anypony.
As happy-go-lucky and fun loving as she was, the mare was far more sensitive than she let on, and my rejection of her party probably hurt her more than I realized at the time, but she never outwardly showed it. Thinking back on it, I never did apologize for my thoughtlessness during that party, and now I'd never get the chance.
With a melancholy sigh, I turned away from the crumbling structure and continued wandering the town. The dry winds started to pick up, causing my mane to whip about my face. I tried to ignore the constant howling in my ears and the taste of ash in my mouth as I trotted along the path strewn with random debris.
I continued sifting through the memories of my friends and as I crossed a familiar -- if heavily twisted, charred, and splintered -- bridge, I looked towards the pitch black sky. Even through all the changes the town's destruction had wrought, I recognized this spot.
I trotted a little ways past the bridge and stopped before resting on my hind legs. Searching the dry cracked ground, I spotted a familiar dip in the earth -- a dip that, long ago had been filled with mud, forming a large mud puddle.
A large mud puddle that I had been knocked into by a certain cyan pegasus with a prismatic mane and tail.
Was it odd that I remembered something so mundane and insignificant as a simple mud puddle? Probably, and normally, I probably wouldn't have remembered it had this all not happened.
But being tackled into that mundane and insignificant mud puddle was how I had met Rainbow Dash, one of the most loyal and courageous ponies I knew. She may have been cocky and more than a bit of a braggart, but when push came to shove and a friend needed help, nothing would stop her from rising to the occasion.
Even as a filly she never let setbacks stop her for long no matter how major or minor. She had even gone so far as to lose a race to save her childhood friend from a terrible fall.
Still, everything had worked out for the better, and it was thanks to the Sonic Rainboom she had managed to pull off -- with an injured wing no less -- that the rest of my friends and I came together.
More than any other pony, I owed Rainbow Dash a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid.
We all did in one way or another.
I looked up from the dip in the earth and spotted the wreckage that used to be the Town Hall further ahead. There was no entering the building as it was now, so I moved on to another part of town as I reminisced about the last two of my friends.
Fluttershy and Rarity.
Kindness and Generosity personified.
Rarity was every bit the noble, graceful, and passionate mare she made herself out to be. She had her quirks -- she could be overly dramatic and there were times when her priorities were a bit skewed -- but she had a drive to succeed that matched even Rainbow Dash, and a selfless streak a thousand miles wide.
What Fluttershy lacked in bravado, she more than made up for in sheer compassion. Her talent with animals was unmatched as far as I knew, and had it not been for her intense fear of heights that resulted from her almost fatal fall, she probably never would've chosen to live among the ground bound ponies.
She might never have eventually discovered her true calling working with and taking care of any and every critter she came across.
What many didn't know about the shy pegasus -- what I hadn't known until I had seen it for myself at the Gala we all attended -- was that she had an inner fire. The kind of fire that allowed her to accomplish great things when she put her mind to it.
Come to think of it, the rest of the girls and I had just helped Fluttershy finally get over her fear of heights before all of this started.
As I made my way back to the giant broken stump that had been my home, I thought about my life in Ponyville and how it changed me from who I used to be. I wondered what would've happened had I not been there when Nightmare Moon returned, what that would've been like.
It wasn't helping my mood.
None of these thoughts were helping me in fact.
I had hoped that coming here and basking in the memories of my friends and this town would give me some sort of closure, but all I felt was misery and an intense longing to see them all again.
And now here I was, back at the place I had stayed for so long with my number one assistant at my side. My friends would always be precious to me, and I would give anything to have them back -- see them alive, happy, and healthy again.
More than anything though -- maybe even more than my other friends -- I wanted Spike back.
I wanted my number one assistant back, I wanted my oldest friend back, I wanted my surrogate little brother back, I wanted my son back. I wanted to see him laugh and smile and tell me when I was going overboard with my studies or completely losing it over nothing.
I wanted him to tell me everything would be okay.
But no.
He was gone... they were all gone now. My friends, my family, my home, my old life...
Everything.
Everything I had experienced, everything we had all shared, the good times and the bad, were all gone -- burned away by an all consuming fire. Coming back here had only driven that home for me and I began to wonder why I had even bothered to come here at all.
I took the stetson off and looked at it with a bitter frown.
As I stared at the hat, I could feel the numbness begin to push the sorrow back. With one last sigh I trotted up to the mostly intact entrance of the library and placed the stetson on the ground in front of the doorway.
"I miss you, girls... I miss you, Spike," I sniffed and wiped away a stray tear. Taking a step back, I spread my wings, "...I love you all."
With those final words, I took off, resolving never to come back to these ruins again.
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That Melancholic feeling.
I... I can't feel my feels anymore...
9014838
It does seem like you know more about this sort of thing than me, physics is not my strongest scientific area, so I will concede to you.
Well, it doesn't quite get to Last Tears in Tartarus levels of abject depressing, but it is a nice tragedy all the same.
Wait... if everything has been turned to ash and dust, and Equestrian is now a barren land... then how the heck did the Stetson survive?
9014966
Not quite. Heat can radiate as Infrared, and Radiation can cause things to heat up. But heat is not itself radiation.
8838990
You're thinking of a gamma ray burst, which is an event caused by the formation of a black hole in a particularly violent supernova, or by the collision of two neutron stars. However, the destruction wouldn't be so complete nor so rapid as in the story, as the rays would cause total destruction of the ozone layer on the side of the planet they hit as well as the formation of large volumes of nitrogen dioxide. It'd certainly cause mass extinction, and depending on intensity, possibly partially scorch the side it hits. However, it would cause no significant structural damage, which rules it out as a possibility.
8838990
A blast large enough to wipe life from an entire planet in an instant would realistically also have to destroy the planet itself, by nature of the fact that explosions don't curve around a sphere. It wouldn't be able to directly hit the other side of the planet(which is required to thoroughly remove all living things in such a short time) without going through the middle and turning the whole thing into space debris.
I figure a controlled wave is the only real possibility to cause this kind of damage specifically. Some magic bullshit that's continuously powered and propagates across the surface until it converges on the opposite side of the planet.
9015110
Well, a soccer ball survived the Challenger explosion. Hiroshima still had things in tact after the nuke was dropped on it. I'm not all surprised a Stetson was able to survive.
9015228
"Some magic BS" is right. And I know who caused it. I don't know if you've seen the comments, but I've basically been the conspiracy nut around these parts, and I believe I have the answer as to what the monster is, as well as it's motivations.
9015324
I guess? It just seems unrealistic when it was implied that Applejack was turned to ash, presumably while wearing the Stetson, and yet somehow it’s intact.
Do u mean doctor whooves?
That wasn’t a race that was a competition
9015515
I don’t know. I just don’t question it.
9015515
It is unrealistic, and that wasn't the only thing that remained intact either. Keep in mind that the whole cellar was intact. What you should be asking is how Applejack was turned to ash when the balefire didn't destroy the cellar.
Where’s Discord? He’s just as immortal as an Alicorn, maybe even more so.
Hmm... I wonder if by the end of this Twilight will be able to find closure and be happy once again. It's obvious this being is trying to turn them into the antithesis of who they are and make them into monsters by way of manipulating their emotional state, but something tells me that this will come back to bit this god. Something tells me that Twilight will find acceptance and be able to fight off this thing.
9015325
God damn you so confident Ima laugh if you're wrong.
9016689
Well, I said "conspiracy nut" for a reason. I might be TOTALLY wrong, but i's very fun to investigate the story and create theories.
9016558
Maybe you never know. The writer is also a Twilight fan like me and thinking about what I would do in their position is exactly what they have been doing and what I just predicted, but maybe not. I know I would defiantly put Twilight through hell and back because I know Twilight is one of those characters that if they survive will be way strong than they were before, and not just in terms of power, but personality too. This is how character development works and it works wonders for Twilight because she is smart and resourceful and is almost always guaranteed to come out on top, though not without substantial loss. Again I'm cautiously hopeful for Twilight to have an epic moment of udder badassery by the end of this.
9015758
True, true...
Eh, I don’t mind that much. I usually just suspend disbelief in favor of enjoying the story. Nobody can get every little detail right.
9015822
Perhaps He noped out and left for another universe? I could imagine him sensing the eldritch abomination(?), saying "F### this shit I'm out!" with an actual beeping noise censoring his swearing, ripping open a portal with his eagle claw like he did in season 5 episode 7, and then diving into it like his life depended on it and closing it behind him.
9015758
the only conclusion i can draw up is the balefire was supernatural in nature, turning only the living into ash.
but it's just a theory...
A GAME THEORY!
They're gone...they're all gone...
!
Mhmm so my theory would be that discord has sensed this evil monster and took ,atleast, the Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack , Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Spike into his chaos realm to protect them. And because he had to act fast Applejack had lost here Stetson. But what i don't get is why the cellar was locked from the inside, if i remember right. Because that would mean that either the apple family was warned, Appejack has a second Stetson in the cellar or she had locked herself in the cellar but for what ? because i don't think that applejack would lock the doors everytime she goes down there...
I think your writing is killing the soul of everyone reading it. Neat. Never seen that before.
injured wing? is this the part of the story where things are different from the main timeline?
ohhh so this is how things are different- shes actually loyal in this world