Chapter 131 – A Beautiful New Age
131
Unknown Location
Year: 2021
9:17 p.m.
When Sunset Shimmer woke up, the first thing she breathed was smoke.
The only thing she could breathe was smoke, an abundance of coughs escaping her lungs and her lips that left the unicorn practically suffocated under the air. Sitting upwards with a jolt of renewed and rigorous energy, Sunset shielded her muzzle and mouth with a foreleg in order to block the harmful toxins from entering her. A few more cautious and painful coughs later, she maintained her breathing, narrowing her tear-filled eyes and seeing nothing but black.
She was just entrenched in it. That inky darkness that traveled forever. Looking about, Sunset could see nothing but those shadows, forcing her to light up her horn and brighten her surroundings. The soft red from the tip of her horn gave that much-needed light to the room, but not warmth. There was already an overabundance of warmth, of unrelenting heat hanging in the air and filling it with smoke. Sunset could only assume a great fire had been ignited, the images of the world she was surrounded by finally becoming clear.
What was left of it…
Sunset took in a weak gasp, both due to her weakened lungs from her previous coughing and from not wanting to take in anymore smoke than she had already consumed. What she witnessed warranted the gasp, though, the inside of the building resembling more of the aftermath of an explosion. It appeared as if a bomb had been set off in the center of the room she was in, the walls torn apart and revealing even deeper, longer hallways and rooms within the building complex. Wires and ceiling lamps hung from above in tangled, flickering messes of electronics. Torn and burnt furniture lay strewn about, rubble and gravel filling whatever space was left around her.
With a hardened brow filling her features, a pang of unease and fear rippling through her veins, Sunset quickly raised her left hoof and gazed into the face of the Time Travel GPS. It was still attached to her, still functioning as it properly should have. Sunset breathed a sigh of relief because of that. Her worries arose when she saw that the GPS only detected one more Pym Particle vial left with her. Sunset gulped. Only one more chance to make it back home to her time. Tapping away on the GPS, Sunset scanned it for her current location, finding the coordinates and realizing she had made it.
She was in the exact location of the coordinates Friday had sent her. The exact place where Scott Lang and the scepter were last detected before all contact was lost.
“Friday…?” Sunset asked quietly, hoof pressed to the GPS in hopes to reach back to her time. A moment of silence filled the opposite end, forcing Sunset to speak once more, a tad louder than before. “Friday, this is Sunset. Do you read me?”
Nothing but static on the other end. No contact.
Sunset Shimmer sighed at that as she dropped her hoof and let it connect with the gravel-covered floor beneath her. The others were gone. Carol, Matt, Daisy, Frank… For all Sunset knew, she was on her own. They wouldn’t just leave her alone, though. Something must’ve happened when they entered the time vortex. They must’ve been separated upon entry. With little reluctance and a whole lot of guts, Sunset proceeded carefully through the crumbling, growling building complex.
It practically growled, every single hoofstep forward causing Sunset to flinch to the sounds the building would respond with. It was hardly standing as it was, and with the added weight of a mere unicorn—albeit, not much weight—it was still enough to elicit some sort of response from the shattered, ageing building. Her horn’s light guided her unknown path, the soft red filling in the darkness and paving a way for Sunset to follow. The shadows of the room flickered when she entered, the ghostly red light burning from her horn being that torch that led her.
Each room was even more horrifying than the last, the walls pockmarked with holes ranging from any size. They would sometimes lead into other rooms entirely, but most of the time they were practically bullet-sized. Sometimes the size of her hoof to be able to fit through. Sunset didn’t even attempt to measure it, analyzing the building complex and searching every room, every corridor, and every turn for some sort of life signature. Some form of life. Hopefully an exit.
Her gaze fell when she stepped out into what appeared to be a hallway, most likely the remains of one. To the dust-covered floor… or was it ash? Regardless, Sunset bent down and let her horn’s light reveal to her the footprint embedded within the dust, revealing a simple but recognizable boot imprint. It led directly ahead, to the room filled with an abundance of light from the outside world. Only… that light appeared to be orange in a sense. Sometimes even dark red. It fluctuated between the two, perhaps a sunset or something even worse on the horizon. Sunset hardly paid it any heed, knowing that the footprint was recent in the very least. It led her to the room ahead…
Where she saw a hand sticking out within the shadows.
With eyes widening to see if it was real, Sunset proceeded slowly out of the hallway and into the room. Her gaze was locked solely with the hand, seeing it rise out of a pile of shadows that the light of the world to her left could not reveal. Yet there was still the hand that she was gifted to see, that right palm reaching her way. Perhaps reaching for her alone.
“Hello?” Sunset called, entering the room and slowly approaching the hand. That walk slowly increased into a trot, which only quickened as the seconds left and the silence persisted. Sunset’s heart raced, her adrenaline rising to hear nothing. “Scott, is that you?!” she cried out louder, getting no response and earning a full-blown gallop straight to the shadows.
The light fluctuated forward and revealed the hand to her. Nothing hidden in the dark. Everything encased under a haunting, red and orange hue. And Sunset screeched to a halt because of that. Her eyes fell to the hand and she felt her heart freeze, her skin crawl, and her soul shudder. It was only a moment before the light of the world to her left faded and left the room in darkness once more. Except the red light of her horn showed Sunset everything she needed to see. Everything she didn’t want to but saw anyway.
The hand belonged to a skeleton. A human skeleton.
Not just one… but dozens.
Sunset took in that sharp gasp of air and proceeded to cough once again. She backpedaled away from the pile of bones, of skulls, of human remains lying about in piles, like the one she approached. She could still see its face, whatever was once human leaving just an expression trapped in a state of frozen horror, the skull’s jaw broken and remaining open, gazing straight to her with that skeletal palm reaching for the unicorn. Frozen in time, hardened by the ages. Every last one of them. Sunset practically spun around from where she stood, her heart quickening by the second and her chest rising and falling sporadically. Uncontrolled. Just as her eyes darted to every corpse surrounding her.
Each one was trapped in a stance or expression that only expressed one’s final moments. A man covering his head and praying. A woman lying next to her lover. A mother soothing a child and their bones scattered about before Sunset’s hooves. Some reached out with their hands like the one Sunset approached, those ones reaching for the heavens and crying out with their jaws unhinged, dark eyes gazing straight above. Straight ahead… to her very left. Despite being frozen, that was where the majority of them stared, reached for, cried out in their last seconds of life before they were…
Sunset didn’t know if she had the heart or the strength to even face that direction, the world behind her holding that unholy red and orange burning in the skies. That must have been where the smoke originated. That must have been what caused the massacre she was surrounded in. Sooner rather than later, Sunset realized she had no more choice in the matter, the booming voice from the streets echoing from every building and reverberating specifically in the building she was in.
“Energy source detected.”
The voice was deep, raw, robotic in a sense but intellectually-powerful all the same. It sent a pang of unease flushing through Sunset’s veins as she ducked behind the nearest pile of skeletons and cut off her magic, leaving her entrapped within the shadows. Holding her breath as to not breathe in the horrific stench of the rotting bones surrounding her, Sunset listened as carefully as she could, trying to picture the events unfolding just outside the building.
They sounded like rockets powering up, that similar sound of Tony Stark’s repulsors filling the air before softly dying out, replaced only with that steady sound of a jet engine. Of numerous jet engines all sounding off and holding in place all at once. Directly before the building—the room—Sunset was hiding in. She gulped softly, breathed steadily and quietly as she continued to listen in. Maybe whoever was outside would lose interest as time went on. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed her.
Then that same, chilling, robotic voice returned, killing Sunset’s hopes.
“Attention all biological life forms. Exit the premises and surrender immediately. You will have ten seconds to comply, otherwise we will fire upon the building. One world, under him.”
Quite possibly the least-comforting thing Sunset could have heard. Her heart practically dropped when she heard the warning, the dire threat of being fired upon if she didn’t surrender to whoever was outside hanging in the air. Though the idea of surrender was nowhere near in Sunset Shimmer’s vocabulary, she looked for other means of escape. Peeking outwards, Sunset could see more than a dozen golden entities hovering above the street outside the shattered window, all of them gazing to the building she was in and slowly raising their hands. The threat was still given. The time limit she was offered was still there. Sunset quickly shot up her ears and darted her eyes across every corner of the room. A fluctuation of light filled the room, revealing a steel door to the right end of the room, hopefully leading into the alleyway. It was locked, heavy chains dangling from it.
Sunset had reached the number eight in her head and realized she had no more time left to act. What little chance she had left was spent teleporting towards that door, charging up her horn to the fullest, and blowing the door completely off its hinges, flinging it into the remains of a building opposite to her own. A building that had fallen, gracing Sunset without the possibility of impacting a building wall as the world behind her erupted into flame and explosions.
The entities rained down a firestorm of golden repulsor lights that struck the building and completely filled it with various explosions. Each blast did a number on the structure of the building, leveling what remained and creating a shock wave so powerful that it launched the unicorn clear across the alleyway and into the remains of the demolished building directly before her. Sunset struck both concrete and marble flooring, rolling several feet before finally coming to a painful rest amongst the tarnished remains of the tower that once stood. The building behind her collapsed into a wave of dust.
Her vision was blurry, every nerve in her body crying out in pain as the fires had licked her coat and scorched the tips of her mane and tail. A trail of blood rolled down the side of her head, the unicorn gritting her teeth and groaning softly as she forced herself back to her hooves. She was forcefully shoved back down to the earth, a shrill yelp escaping the pony as she felt a hardened, metal palm grip the back of her neck and keep her constrained to the ground. That palm instantly cut off her flow of oxygen, Sunset reaching for it but failing every time. She thrashed and fought, but realized it was fruitless when her attempts didn’t even make the hand flinch from her.
It held her with an iron grip, slowly pulling the unicorn from the ground and lifting her up. As it lifted her, Sunset was turned around to fully face the one who had caught her, who very well held her life in its hand. She was turned and met the face of it, saw the horrific, red eyes and manic-like grin meeting her expression and freezing it into a state of horror.
Sunset Shimmer held an open-mouthed gasp, tear-filled eyes staring right at its face…
The Ultron Sentinel stared right back, the fires reflecting off of its golden armor as it growled, “Energy source detected. Submit or perish.”
Sunset could feel its metal palm tighten slowly around her throat, threatening to snap her neck if given the right opportunity. She never gave it that opportunity. As she witnessed various other golden entities falling from the sky to meet their compatriot—arms held out in a T-formation as they descended—Sunset took what little energy she had left and focused it directly into a teleportation spell. It miraculously worked, the unicorn closing her eyes as her horn shimmered and a burst of white filled the robot’s hand. Every last one of them turned accordingly to the following light source emerging further down the street, to the opposite alleyway where the unicorn then appeared in a flash of white.
Seeing every burning red eye shift in her direction, Sunset tightened her jaw and fired off a resounding spell, one powerful enough to cripple anypony caught on the other end. Strong enough to immobilize any living being. The beam of magic struck the golden chest of the machine that had grabbed her. It merely flinched to the side as the beam of magic bounced harmlessly off, striking the remains of a building wall and destroying it in a resounding burst of magic. The golden entity turned back to her.
After her face fell, Sunset ran. She galloped as fast as her hooves could carry her through the winding, narrow alleys and even through the remains of different buildings, each one more devastated than the last. The entire time she ran she hardly looked back, only catching a second-long glimpse here and there to see if she was being pursued. The army of gold followed her from the sky, their arms jutted to the sides as they hovered ominously above and tracked her movement.
Her hooves tore at the streets as she made daring turns and leaps over steel fences and on top of garbage cans, the unicorn unrelenting in her escape. Yet no matter how fast she ran, how far she went, or how deep in the city she traversed, they would always see. They always had the advantage of those eyes in the sky. Turning back after sliding underneath a flipped truck, Sunset watched as a dozen entities followed directly above her. The one leading the pack, the one gazing right at her, ignited its eyes and sent a hellish beam of raw, golden energy right for her. The blast screamed as it fell, Sunset barely able to teleport away from her location just as the beam struck the street. But she didn’t get far.
She merely teleported a few yards away, the following explosion rippling across the street and sending that shock wave right through the unicorn. Sunset flew backwards, right down the alleyway and into the opposite street where she struck the road, tumbled several more feet, and fell into an open manhole. Sunset screamed in her descent, the flames clutching her foreleg from the prior explosion and instantly doused as she landed harshly into the cold filth of the sewer water. It was surprisingly shallow, the unicorn lying with half of her face hidden in the water, the only eye that was visible slowly flickering open. A weak whimper escaped her, the unicorn jamming open her eyes once she heard that familiar and horrible sound of the entities closing in on her.
Quickly, she backed away from the light descending down the manhole, crawling onto the surface of a cement walkway and leaning as hard as she could against the brick wall of the sewer. The shadows that surrounded her kept the unicorn encased in darkness, her widened, terrified gaze latched with the light escaping the open manhole. All she could do was listen. She couldn’t even breathe. She couldn’t risk it.
The seconds ticked away above, as well as below. Hearing her own heartbeat in her ears, Sunset finally found that reason to breathe again—that time in relief—when the voice above declared, “Alert. Energy source lost. Biological life form status… uncertain. Continue search.”
Their repulsors led them off the street and elsewhere entirely, leaving nothing but that pestering silence echoing off the sewer walls. She still wasn’t certain. Sunset Shimmer waited five minutes longer until she was finally able to move again. She somehow found that strength, that nerve, and that very bravery to approach the light of the manhole. Gazing skywards, Sunset could see nothing but darkness in the clouds, red and orange painting the skylines. With a shiver in her a step but a course of action in her heart, Sunset gripped the railing of the ladder with her hooves and pulled herself out of the water. She didn’t attempt it with her magic, already needing time to heal and rejuvenate herself. So, she climbed. She climbed the ladder upwards and outwards out of the sewer and back onto the street.
Peeking out and scanning her surroundings, Sunset saw nothing in the dead streets around her. Nothing in the skies. For a moment, she was in the clear. Pushing herself out of the darkness and into the light, Sunset Shimmer took in those cautious breaths of air and once more coughed. Once more concealed her mouth as she shot her terrified eyes to the sky once more, looking for those golden men. They were nowhere. She quickly galloped into the nearest shadows of the nearest alleyway, taking that moment to breathe properly.
Out of the smoke and out of the fire.
But not out of the frying pan just yet.
Taking in several breaths of calming air, Sunset Shimmer took a seat and leaned the back of her head against the alley wall. She stared up straight into the burning skies, those breaths of hers only increasing with volume, weight, and worst of all… fear. “This isn’t right…”
Her voice was nothing compared to the sounds of the decimated city, the cries of the golden army flying in the distance and scouring the streets for any signs of life. Sunset leaned out of the alley, her large, petrified eyes staring straight up.
Straight above to the massive flying fortress covering half of New York’s entire skyline.
“Oh, this definitely isn’t right.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.062 seconds
Total duration
1,040 users online
2,083,575 hits today, 2,782,760 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Wow...Alternate history where Ultron and his armies won! This isnt looking good!!!!
I only hope Ultron is in a 'better' mood these days.....
i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel/i/mg/c/d0/51ed8cf71fd82/clean.jpg
Okay, that was truly unexpected. Sunset had arrived alone to the unknown time era Scott's last signal led to, with Carol and the rest of the team unaccounted for. But now it seems clear he wasn't sent to any ordinary event that has happened in the timeline we know, but rather an "Age of Ultron" alternate timeline in a post-apocalyptic New York where Ultron succeeded in wiping out all of life on Earth (and presumably Equestria as well) and now he rules over it with his sentries exterminating any and all survivors they find.
How is this even possible and just what the hell happened that caused this timeline to occur? Whatever the case, Sunset and wherever the others are really in the danger zone now.
Interesting timeline divergent. Was almost expecting Scott or Danvers to find Sunset or save her. Curious on how this might play out later in the story or maybe Ultron will only be present in this timeline.
Look forward to what comes next!
Woah, was not expecting this.
Oh my...
I was not excepting for them to end up in the timeline where Ultron won. Looking forward to see what happens to them in that timeline.
At that moment I knew: we were in an Ago of Ultron scenario
What truly terrifies me about a victorious Ultron timeline is not the fact that he might follow them back to the prime timeline, nor the fact he's likely going to build starships to conquer other planets, if he hasn't already, but it's the fact that he must still have the Mind Stone. His madness and near-limitless power.
That'll be fun yet utterly horrifying to see.
Holy crap!
Sunset and company (who are currently unaccounted for) have ended up in some kind of alternate timeline, where Ultron lives and has conquered the world.
Quite the deviation, I must say.
I see what you did with the chapter’s title.
Nice callback to your first Avengers/MLP story, the one that started this incredible trilogy.
At first I thought it was Days of future past.
I was not expecting Ultron to appear. Great interesting chapter JD.
Two questions.
First; I'm sorry if I'm sounding to needy, but can you inform commenters aand authors about my blogs, most of them have story ideas for them to adapt? I've been exploring and reading this site for over two years but I became a member a few days ago. I would appreciate it very much. Please and thank you.
Second; are you going to do a crossover with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier once that comes out? It'll be awesome and the MLP FIM series can still continue in fanfics. Rainbow dash can be team up the the two guys which'll be cool since she's My Favorite Pony!!!
Shit not only we will be dealing with 2 Thanos's but now Ultron?! They are beyond Fucked
Age of Ultron comics anyone?
...I DON'T LIKE THIS.
Alternate universes. Aw damn...
9823786
So the alternate ultron killed the avengers 😱 the skeletons that sunset found
Great job of bringing back Ultron here. He's certainly going to make things hard for the heroes trapped in his timeline seemingly.
9823163 Better is putting it mildly.
9823172 This is a surprisingly-upbeat song considering the chapter.
9823176 You mess with time, and time tends to mess back.
9823187 It's the Age of Ultron, baby!
9823201 Oh, it's gonna be fun.
9823245 Guess we'll find out how the future turned out for the AI.
9823256 Everything's coming full circle!
9823302 I have no idea what I'll write after. Don't even think I'll write anything after this story. Who knows?
9823459 The best kind.
9823663 It's definitely inspired from those comics.
9823786 Every alternate universe!
Oooh shit....
9823302
Alright than.
9824811
Indeed
Oh well , too late once again ... I have to say tho , the second I saw the title I knew where this was going and even tho I am even more lost on where the story will go from now on , it's bloody good ! Kudos to you !
I don't like where this is going at all right now, where is everyone else, Daisy, Marvel, scott anyone i hope they are okay and are not dead, i feel so bad for Sunset i would be crying and freaking the heck out if i saw dead bodies all around me
If they had gone this route, it would have been a great emphasis on the alternate part of their alternate universe time travel. Cest La Vie.
An so this is Ultron’s bad future. I think we might see this Ultron make a trip back to the main timeline instead of young Thanos in this version.
9828845
Actually that would be pretty cool. Only problem is how would he find out?
This guy really makes great videos and they make you think.
Hey dude what’s up
9836201 Waddup.
Oh my God. A timeline where Ultron won. Like that future from the movie New Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. This could be bad. If Ultron finds out they have an Infinity Stone, well… remember Infinity Ultron? Ultron is persistent enough that he might just find a way to follow them back to their own timeline.