Edge of Eternity

by FrostTheWolf

02- It's the beginning

Edge of Eternity- It’s the Beginning

---

The night life of Canterlot was one that you would have to experience in person in order to truly see what the city had to offer. Whether it was comedy clubs, fine dining or a special midnight screening at the local theater, you would have to experience it for yourself in order to fully grasp at the wonder of it. Many people were walking along the sidewalks, waiting in line to get into an exclusive club or just waiting for friends at this hour.

“Hey girls, did you hear? Songbird Serenade is going to come to Canterlot this summer!”

“What?! No way!” One member of a group of four friends acted, shocked and surprised all the same, “When is she coming?”

“It’s happening at the end of July and she’s going to be performing with Coloratura!”

“Woah woah woah! You mean the Coloratura? Countess Coloratura?! I thought she was retired.”

“I think she wants to do one final tour before that,” The one who originally mentioned it to their group of friends spoke up, “Tickets are going to be going on sale tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow? Aw man,” another friend responded, “I got work tomorrow. The tickets would sell out in seconds! Plus, with the crappy internet at the office, I doubt I’ll get a connection.”

“Hey, don’t worry! Once they go live, I’ll get one for you.”

“Seriously? For real? Thanks!” she replied. The group of friends continued to discuss among themselves, but that was when one of them noticed something.

There was a van on the other side of the street that was going much faster than it should be. “Um, girls? Are you seeing this?”

“Seeing what?”

“Over there,” one of them pointed out, “Someone’s running red lights with that van over there.”

“Yeah, I see it,” another pointed out, “Where the heck are the police? They should be out here stopping reckless drivers before anyone gets hurt.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with their van? It doesn’t look like they’re doing it intentionally.”

“Intentional or not, if they don’t stop, someone’s going to get hurt or worse-”

Almost as if on cue, the white van began to spin out of control as two people from the front of the van were forcibly thrown out onto the street. The out of control vehicle then careened into the side of a city bus as it was pulling out of the stop, causing the driver to lose control as the bus abruptly hit the back of a car that was waiting at a light as it barreled forward into oncoming traffic.

Chaos began to immediately unfold in the seconds after, “Oh my god!!”

“Somebody call 911, fast!!”

“Can anyone help me, please!? It’s my daughter! She’s trapped inside!!”

---

As his vision slowly began to come back to him, Naoto’s memory of what had happened was foggy. He remembered getting the package for Rainbow, getting kidnapped as he was in the park, and a woman with a knife interrogating him in the back of a van. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was a voice. One that was gentle and calm that spoke to him when he thought he was done for.

“Don’t be afraid… I’m here to help you.”

The words rang in his memory as he tried to make sense of everything, slowly rising to his feet as he placed his right arm against a wall to support himself. He thought that he would feel pain because of the cuts to his arm, but nothing came. When he looked at his arm and moved back the sleeve of his shirt, his eyes widened at the sight of his injuries. They were almost non-existent and the cuts themselves looked like mere scratches.

“What the hell?” He spoke, startled by the sight. There was no way that injuries like that could heal so quickly, especially after just receiving them a short time ago.

“N-Naoto? Naoto, can you hear me?”

In a state of panic, the teen turned around and looked behind him, only to see an empty alleyway and no other sight. “W-Who said that?” he asked.

“I did,” As he turned around again, Naoto was shocked at who he was staring at. It was the same girl that he remembered seeing at the park and the one that told him to run when those people showed up and kidnapped him. Only this time, she didn’t look as scared as before, “I’m glad to see that you’re okay, Naoto.”

“H-how… do you know my name?” he asked, still trying to process everything that was happening, “Matter of fact… what happened? The last thing I remembered was that lady having a knife at my throat.”

The girl looked away for a brief moment, looking as if she was trying to get her thoughts together. Though, after a couple of seconds, she had an answer for him, “You were in danger and I… chose to save you. My magic has formed a bond with you and now I’m a part of you. It’s why your injuries are beginning to heal and how I was able to read your mind-”

“Woah, slow down a minute,” Naoto interjected, “I’m barely understanding what you’re trying to tell me. I mean, you haven’t even told me your name.”

There was a small bit of silence after he said that. Though, the girl seemed to already have a response for him, even though she seemed to be a bit hesitant at first. “Midnight.”

After hearing that, all the teen could really do was tilt his head in confusion, “What?”

“My name,” she replied back, tilting her head and giving off a faint smile, “It’s Midnight.”

“Okay… that answered one question,” Naoto corrected himself, before turning to face the end of the alleyway he was in, “Though… what exactly happened? I know you said that you ‘saved me’, but how did I get from having a knife to my throat in the back of a van to waking up in the middle of an empty alley? That’s the part I’m having trouble understanding.”

“I already told you. I formed a bond with you with my magic,” Midnight told him again, taking things slower this time around so that Naoto was not confused by what she was saying, “In doing so, I was able to bestow some of my magic… but…”

At that point, Naoto noticed her hesitantly looking out towards the nearby street. He could smell smoke from nearby and hear the sound of emergency sirens. As Naoto walked out of the alley to the street, his eyes widened in shock. There was a multi-car collision out in the middle of the road, with ambulances and police everywhere and paramedics tending to those who were hurt. Several vehicles, including a city bus, were damaged in the wreck, but there was one that stood out to Naoto the most.

The white van. The one that he was being held in. He couldn’t see any of the people from the vehicle, but the damage was beyond repair. The back doors looked to have been torn off the hinges and the front of the vehicle looked totaled as firefighters were putting out a blaze that sparked from the engine.

“Midnight,” he said, looking back to the girl as they were trying to not look at the devastation on the street, “What happened here?”

The girl was silent at first… yet, after a few moments, she tried to speak, “I… did this. When I bonded with you and your abilities awakened, it… caused that vehicle you were in to spiral out of control…” At that point, Naoto noticed tears going down her face as she tried to wipe them away, “T-this is all my fault… I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore and yet…”

The teen though had a completely different thought on his mind as he looked away from the accident. “We need to leave… now.”

“Wha-?”

“If those people that are looking for you are still here, then we need to leave before they notice you’re with me,” he told her as he began to walk across the street and away from the accident, “Come on. I know a place where we can go.”

Despite what Midnight was feeling at that moment, she knew that Naoto was right. They had to get as far away from there as possible. The girl followed Naoto and went back into his body as they walked farther and farther away. He knew where he needed to go and he still had the package that he was asked to pick up, so the choice of where to go was clear.

Though, it was as both of them vanished from the scene of the accident that someone new had just arrived. An officer with rainbow colored hair and light blue skin had made it to the scene of the accident and was shocked by what she was seeing, “Oh my god, what happened here?”

---

When Naoto finally made it back to Sugarcube Corner, he was a bit relieved to see that the graduation party was still going on and that the bakery had not closed up shop. To the teen, it meant that he probably didn’t miss much since he left the party in order to go get the gift that Rainbow had waiting at the post office… as well as everything that had transpired shortly afterwards. Though, going through the front door was not quite a good idea. Not only would the bell chime ring whenever the door was opened, but it would tip off to everybody in the room that he had left.

Instead, he made his way back inside through the back entrance. Not only was everybody’s back faced away from there, but it didn’t make any noise when you opened the door. He could just easily come back in and join the others, without anybody asking him about where he had been recently.

At least, that was in theory. In execution, it ended up being the exact opposite. For moments after Naoto walked through the door, he felt someone grab onto his wrist and pull him away from the crowd. When the teen turned around to see who it was, he found himself face to face with Sunset Shimmer… and she wasn’t exactly happy.

“Where have you been?” she sternly asked, “You’ve been gone for so long that I thought you decided to ditch your own siblings graduation party.”

“Sunset, it’s not like that,” he tried to reassure her.

“Really? Then how else would you explain where you have been for the last half hour?” Sunset asked, folding her arms as she looked back at him and waited for Naoto’s response.

“Well, at first, I stepped out because I needed to clear my head. There were too many things going on that were happening too fast, so I needed a moment to recompose,” he told her, “Yet, as I was about to come in, Rainbow called me out of the blue.”

“Really? Rainbow called you?” she asked, sounding unconvinced by what he was saying.

“I’m being serious. Here, I’ll show you,” Naoto told her as he pulled out his phone and showed Sunset his most recent calls. With Rainbow being at the top of the list, “Now, as to why Rainbow decided to call me, she wanted me to pick up something from the post office before it closed earlier.”

“Couldn’t she have gone there herself?”

“That’s honestly what I thought,” the teen continued, “Though, she told me that she was stuck in traffic and that what I needed to pick up was her graduation gift for Noctis,” At that point, Naoto pulled out the package from inside his jacket and handed it to Sunset. “I was lucky to get this in time.”

Sunset looked at the package and set it down on a nearby table as she let out a small sigh, “That would only explain part of where you have been. It doesn’t take that long to go from here to the post office and takes even less time in order to come back. So where were you during the rest of that time-?”

“Hey Naoto! Get over here, Pinkie got us a cake!” Pumpkin shouted from the opposite side of the room.

Naoto looked over towards where Pumpkin and the others are for a moment, before looking back to Sunset, “Can we… pick up on this conversation after the party? I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t think this is the right time or place for this.”

Sunset herself looked back at Naoto with a small glare in her eyes, before she let out a small breath, “Okay… but don’t forget about it. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” the teen told her, before walking over to the opposite side of the room and getting a piece of cake from Pumpkin.

“What was that about?” The bakers’ daughter asked.

First, Naoto gave her a bit of a shrug, before he chose to speak, “I think Sunset was just a bit worried. I was helping Rainbow with something that came up last minute and it took much longer than expected.”

She gave Naoto a quick once over. “You look stressed. Eat this, you’ll forget all of your troubles!” She handed him a tiny plastic plate with a piece of chocolate cake. “I saved it from Pinkie. You owe me.”

“Thanks Pumpkin,” he told her as he held onto the plate that she handed to him. Though, he personally knew that the troubles that he had couldn’t be forgotten so easily. Even if the piece of chocolate cake that he had was very good and distracted him while he was eating it, his earlier encounters with Midnight were still fresh on his mind.

Naoto was further reminded of this when he finished his cake and went to go throw away his plate. “Rainbow, you’re late.”

“I know, I’m sorry Sunset,” he overheard Rainbow speak as Naoto turned his head. She was still in her police uniform and looked like she didn’t have the time to change as the officer looked back to Sunset, “I was stuck in traffic and then when I was approaching Sugarcube, I had to make a last minute detour. A major accident happened on Starswirl Avenue and the officers there needed all hands on deck.”

When Naoto heard that, the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. She couldn’t have been talking about what he thought she was talking about now… could it?

“An accident?” Sunset asked, “How bad was it?”

“Well, all we know was that a short time ago, witnesses saw a van that was speeding down a street fling its drivers out of the side of the vehicle before striking a city bus and one thing led to another,” Rainbow told him, “EMT’s had to come out because of how many were hurt. Some were even in critical condition.”

Naoto didn’t even want to hear the rest of the conversation at that point. Being at the scene of the accident was already gruesome, but hearing Rainbow’s firsthand account of her being on the front line almost made him feel sick to his stomach. It was difficult to try and get the imagery out of his head as the party continued. Though, it wasn’t long until things started to begin winding down.

As everyone started to leave, Naoto stayed behind so he could help Pinkie and the Cake twins clean up and tear down everything that was set up for the party whether it was taking out the trash or putting any leftover snack into treat bags to give to the guests that were leaving. Earlier, Sunset had left in order to bring both Noctis and Dawn back home and by the time Naoto was done helping Pinkie and the twins, she was waiting for him out front.

When the teen got in the car, he felt nervous. In his mind, he was thinking that Sunset would try to bring back up the conversation that they had put on hold. Though, much to his surprise, she didn’t say anything. The car was quiet the whole ride home, which to him didn’t exactly feel right. If the conversation that they were having was important, then why not bring it up right now?

This silence continued until after they pulled into the driveway and once they walked through the door. Noctis and Dawn seemed to be in their rooms and most of the house was dead quiet. Naoto didn’t want to get too comfortable though, for he had a feeling that Sunset wanted to wait until they were home first before continuing their talk.

Just as he made it to the kitchen to put away some leftover treats that Pinkie wanted for Naoto to take with him, that was when he heard something, “So, where did we leave off in our earlier conversation?”

Slowly, Naoto turned back around to face Sunset as she was standing by the kitchen table, waiting to hear a response from him. “You were asking where I was after I got the package Rainbow asked me to get.”

“Okay,” she replied, “Where were you then?”

Despite the fact that the question was rather simple, the teen found it rather difficult to come up with a simple answer for her and Sunset wasn’t exactly in the mood for waiting on a response. To make matters worse, there wasn’t exactly a way for him to simply summarize everything that he went through. Nevertheless, Naoto had to try something. If he didn’t, Sunset would just get even more suspicious.

“Fair warning… what I’m about to tell you is going to sound a bit crazy.”

Sunset just let out a small sigh as she looked back at him, “Naoto, when I was your age, the girls and I had seen so many things happen that ‘crazy’ was just another tuesday,” she said, before folding her arms, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen my fair share.”

Originally, Naoto thought about telling her everything that happened. Though, it was when he was about to speak that he realized something. If he was straight up honest with her about what happened tonight, would Sunset really believe him? She would probably think that he was crazy. Plus, what if the same people that went after him and Midnight went for them next? It was too risky to tell the truth.

“Well… part of what happened next was kind of my fault,” he let out a sigh, before looking back at Sunset, “I… decided to go through an alley by the park, thinking that it was a shortcut back to Sugarcube Corner, but I ended up getting jumped by some people that were there. I tried to fight them off, but… one of them had a taser and got me really good,” At that point, Naoto opened up his shirt a bit to show the markings that he had gotten when that ‘Sugar’ lady hit him with the taser at the park, “I blacked out a bit afterwards and once I woke back up, I went back to Sugarcube as fast as I could.”

At first, Naoto was unsure whether or not the story was enough in order to get Sunset to believe it. Yet, after a couple of minutes, she just let out a deep sigh. “Look… On any other night, I would be very upset at you for getting yourself caught up in trouble. Though, at least you’re safe now. Just… please don’t do anything stupid like that ever again. Got it?”

“I hear you loud and clear,” the teen responded back.

“Alright, now go get yourself cleaned up,” Sunset told him as she poured herself a glass of water from the fridge, “You’ll need a lot of rest after what you’ve been through tonight.”

As Naoto nodded his head and made his way back to his room, Sunset stayed in the kitchen and took a bit of time to process the conversation that she just had. There was something about their conversation that bothered her, but she couldn’t seem to pinpoint what exactly that was. When Sunset finished her glass, she washed it out and placed it in the top rack of the dishwasher before heading to her room to retire for the night as well

---

Elsewhere…

The second floor of the abandoned school was far less stable than the first, with creaking floorboards and yellowed walls that were chipped from who knew how many years of wear and tear. Nevertheless, Double strutted through the halls focusing solely on a device that looked like that of a speedometer with a radar for a screen. It made a beeping sound the further he walked, and eventually he saw a blip on the screen, and followed that to a door barricaded from the inside.

“Always look for the place with the most resistance.” He said to himself as he looked around the hall. After a bit of searching, he found a broken wooden chair leg. “Guess this’ll have to do.”

He took the leg and placed it in between the metal door handle and leveraged it against the handle with his weight. It didn’t take long before the old wood began to crack and give way against his force. The leg wasn’t faring much better, and quickly snapped in half, sending Double to the floor. Wasting no time, he stood up and yanked the handle out from the door, and pulled out the locking mechanism.

The next step was easy. Double walked down the hall until he was halfway back to the stairs, before doubling back and throwing all of his weight into the door, dislodging the blockade enough for him to squeeze into the room. It hurt, though.

Once inside, Double examined the remnants of the old classroom. He could tell that it was a chemistry class before being left behind, if the counters littered with used gloves, cracked test tubes and goggles was any indicator. The pale man casually walked over towards the teacher’s desk, but stopped when he heard one of the floorboards creak louder than any of the others. He used his broken chair leg to slide into the gaps and pry the board off.

Underneath were seven color coded stones, glowing faintly in the dark. Double let himself smile down at the stones, admiring them for a brief moment.

“Looks like someone’s been holding out on us~!”

---

Author's Note:

"Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning" -Orrin Hatch

---

Alright, now let me start with a few things. For those who remember the original chapters of Edge of Eternity, I know this isn't quite exactly the 'update' that you were wanting to see. However, considering the state of the original story, the original one felt... half baked, so to speak. I enjoyed writing it, but there was still so much that BP and I can do to really make it stand out.

So, with that in mind, we decided to do what I would call a 'Semi-Reboot'. I say Semi because the original prologue chapter still remains, but everything afterwards is going to be brand new. You'll be able to see Naoto, his siblings and the people that they know from a much different perspective as we go forward with this project.

This story takes place a long time after the events of the last EQG special. Over time, we will introduce characters that are much different from their Equestrian counterparts and also new concepts. Though, we are going to be taking this slow and don't plan to rush it anytime soon. I do hope you all look forward to what else BP and I have in store, but until then, thank you for your patience.

See you around
-Frost