Equestria: The Afterlife

by Timzocker201

CH54: (Surprise) Visits

Canterlot, the center of equestrian society and the capitol of Equestria. A mass of houses, shops, restaurants and… other establishments, surrounded by thick walls that, with the exception of the southern gate, have lasted more than a thousand years by now. It is home to the Royal Palace, which houses the Royal Sisters. It is here that all important decisions regarding Equestria are made and it is also the third largest City in Equestria by Population, but at the same time, the most densely populated one, which is no wonder given that it is built on a small plateau on the side of a mountain.

Somewhere in this truly magnificent City, there stood a house. It didn’t really stand out from the others. It had no particularly eye-catching colour, at least by equestrian standards, and it wasn’t particularly large in comparison to some of the noble’s mansions. No, what made this place interesting wasn’t the house itself, but rather the two mares standing in front of it.

To an outsider, these seemed to be two completely normal, albeit somewhat nervous-looking mares. To an actual Equestrian, however, those two were instantly recognizable as two of Equestria’s most recent set of heroes -- one of them even having ascended to alicornhood!

However, being a hero doesn’t save you from the plethora of emotions that comes with the prospect of having to make a grand revelation, to your parents at that and the two mares standing in front of this little house were only now realizing, what a plethora it truly was.

Twilight was nervously shifting her hooves, as she and Rainbow stood in front of the door that led into her childhood home and thus into the home of her parents.

She had told them in a letter that she had something grand to reveal to them, just after she had gotten the info herself. In the endorphin-induced high she was experiencing at the time, she wasn’t even thinking about the scale of such a revelation. Sadly, these thoughts had only reached her, when she was already on the way to Canterlot and had thus just barely arrived in time to cause a major panic attack with the already very breakdown-prone, young alicorn.

At least, when she had sent the letter at first, she had the foresight to also write to Cadence and Shining Armor, so that she would only have to go through the same mental breakdown once. That and she now had somepony to back her up, when she would be telling her parents for the first time, that she had a coltfriend...

“Oh, come on, Twilight! You can’t get cold hooves now! We’re almost there! Just knock on the door already!” Rainbow complained, trying to hide her own nervousness behind her normal personality.

“I know you are just as nervous about this as I am, Rainbow. If you’re so impatient, why don’t you just knock?” Twilight said back, still not having calmed in the slightest.

“Because it’s your parents we’re talking about here, not mine!” She quickly retorted, hovering in the air just beside Twilight now, to make herself seem a little taller by instinct.

However, they both were beaten to the punch, when the door was suddenly opened without them having to knock. They both looked forward and saw that the pony who had opened it was indeed Twilight’s mother, who was wearing a slightly impatient smile.

“You don’t need to knock if you’re bickering loud enough for the whole house to hear it, you know? Now, come on in. Night Light and I are practically dying for that revelation you have promised us.” She said, heading back into the house, motioning for Twilight and Rainbow to follow. They, in turn, shared a very nervous glance, before following Velvet into the cozy confines of her home.

Inside, Night Light was reading the Newspaper, while Shining Armor and Cadence were sitting across from him on the sofa, already waiting for the arrival of the mares of the hour.

Twilight and Rainbow sat down on the sofa beside Cadence and Shining Armor and waited for Velvet to sit down beside her husband. And then they waited longer. And then a bit more and even more yet, an uncomfortable silence slowly building in the room.

On one side of the small table in the middle of the living room sat two mares, who were dreading to reveal something that was probably long over-due and on the other side sat two parents who were anxious to hear what possibly catastrophic news their daughter had to share that even Shining Armor and Cadence had to come.

“So… what are the important news you wanted to tell us? Your letter really made us curious, you know?” Cadence broke the silence, hoping to get Twilight to finally spill the beans. She had, of course, a suspicion as to what this meeting was about, being the princess of Love and all that, but even her powers only allowed her an insight, not omniscience.

“Indeed, Twilight. You know you can tell us everything, right? We are your parents after all.” Night light said, taking a cup of coffee from the small table in front of him and holding it with slightly shaky hooves, forgetting that he was a unicorn and could just use magic because he was so nervous.

Looking at Rainbow for support, Twilight took in a deep breath, before beginning to slowly speak.

“Well… As you all know, I wanted to tell you something important… Actually, we, Rainbow and I, wanted to tell you something important…”

Everypony tensed up a bit in anticipation. Night Light tried to calm himself a bit, by taking a few sips of his Coffee.

“The thing is, Rainbow and I we…”

“We’re pregnant!” Rainbow suddenly blurted out, quickly covering her mouth with her hooves, but the words were already spoken.

Night Light immediately sent the Coffee he had in his mouth flying across the room in a brown fountain, while Cadence let out a gleeful squee and his wife just sat there beside him, processing the information she was just given.

‘Way to go, Rainbow…’ Shining Armor thought as he was observing his parent’s reaction. ‘Probably should have built a foundation though, ‘cause I can already see that tower starting to crumble…’

Night Light had gone into a coughing fit after his unintentional jettisoning of good coffee, using every free breath to throw another quick, single-word question into the room.

“What?! How?! Who?! When?!” Was all he brought out, but it got the message across good enough.

Twilight Velvet, meanwhile, had recovered from the initial shock and was, of course, going down the exact wrong path of thoughts.

“What? But I thought you had no Coltfriend? Oh no, have you been raped?! Oh, if I find that… that…!” She seemed about to deep-fry somepony’s head right there, so Twilight quickly intervened.

“No! No… it was all completely consensual!... well, almost…” She said, giving Rainbow a quick glare, although it was hard to take her serious, given that her cheeks were bright red now.

Not having heard that last part, Velvet immediately went into mother-needs-to-know-mode. “Oh? So who is the father? Is he a noble? Or maybe famous? Is he even a pony?”

Twilight shifted in place a little uncomfortably, dreading the reaction she would get once she answered her mother’s questions. “Euh… No. To all three.” She answered courtly, making her mother pause for a moment.

“Wait… he is not a pony and not a noble? What species is he then? And how did you even meet him?” Velvet asked, but before Twilight could answer, Cadence interjected.

“Actually, he should have become a noble when he became an officer, just like Shining did.”

“Oh, so he’s an officer in the guard? But the only non-pony officer in the guard that I know of is… is…” Velvet trailed off when she saw the sudden sad look on her daughters face, confirming her thought.

“Oh, my poor little filly.” She quickly went over to her daughter and gave her a tight hug. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through something like this. I’m sure it was hard for you and I want you to know that we’re always here, should you need somepony to talk to.” She assured her, tightening the hug around her daughter, as if to press all her motherly love directly into her.

Meanwhile, Cadence took the opportunity to lean in towards her husband and whisper into his ear.

“You know… Now that Twilight is pregnant, I think I know what’s been missing in our marriage thus far…” She implied, looking at Shining Armor with a sultry smirk.

His answer to that was a flustered expression and slightly questioning look.

The hug between mother and daughter was slowly broken, as the sadness was finally carried away.

“Thanks, mom. Don’t worry, we’re already over it. It was hard, sure, but I wasn’t alone.” Twilight assured her mother, looking over to Rainbow and then back to her. “Rainbow and I both shared the pain of losing our stallion and together, we made it through it all and you know what? Now, I am actually quite happy, because… because I know how much pain Markus actually went through to achieve what he did. Because I am glad that Rainbow and I get to keep a part of him and… because I hope that, wherever he is now, he is in a more peaceful place than the Equestria that he has left behind…”

---

At the same time in the outskirts of the Gryphon Capitol, a thug suddenly flew through the doors of an abandoned warehouse.

“Knock Knock! It’s the Janitor, I heard here’s some trash that needs to be thrown out?” A young, masculine voice sounded, right before a Pegasus stallion emerged through the dust.

The inhabitants of the warehouse were all stunned silent, gawking at the little Pegasus before them, until a very enraged sounding voice suddenly commanded from behind them.

“Oh, by the King, kill him already!!!”

Knocked out of their stupor, the gang of Gryphons charged at the lone Pegasus. However, the attack immediately came to a halt, when they saw the first few unlucky ones get beheaded the moment they got too close to their target.

The Gryphons, now wary of their foe, looked at him with slightly fear-filled eyes. As such, it was no wonder that some of them flinched when he simply moved his mouth to speak.

“Say, would you be so kind to point me to your leader?” The stallion asked politely.

Immediately, every Gryphon pointed at the one that had shouted earlier, who was sitting in the back on a slightly elevated chair.

“Splendid, thank you very much.” The stallion thanked them, while making his way towards their leader.

“So… what are you gonna do now? Kill me?” The Gryphon taunted, trying to sound brave.

“Oh, as it turns out, I don’t need to. You are scheduled to die off a heart attack in ten seconds anyways.” The stallion responded.

“A heart attack?! HAH! And why should I believe such nons—Hnngh!” The gryphon suddenly grasped his chest with a talon, breathing heavy. His eyes slowly lost their focus and his face was slowly drained of colour, until all life was gone from him and his body fell limply down before the stallion’s hooves.

As the corpse hit the ground, a note slipped out from under his wing. The stallion picked it up and identified it to be a contract. Specifically, a murder contract, with his name on it.

“So… it seems the situation has changed a bit.” The stallion said, as he turned back around to face the many gryphons, staring at their leader’s corpse. “I won’t lie to you, originally, I planned on killing you all. However, now that I know that you were contracted, I am willing to give you a chance… I will now close my eyes and count to ten. Everyone who is still in this room by then, will die. Understood? Okay. One…”

Suddenly the loud flapping of a mass of wings could be heard and, just as quickly as it began, the room was quiet again. The stallion didn’t bother counting any further, as doing so would have been a pointless waste of time, as the room was now completely devoid of any Gryphons.

Chuckling to himself, Markus left the cleared warehouse and stepped out into the warm light of the afternoon sun, where a neatly tied Gryphoness was already waiting for him to return.

“Alright, ya happy now?! I told ya where the hideout was, so now let me go already!” She demanded.

“Oh, that would be highly unwise. For me as much as for you.” He replied, earning him an angry and, at the same time, confused glare from his captive. “Oh, come now. You weren’t really expecting your old comrades to welcome you into their midst again, now that you’ve betrayed them, did you?”

The Gryphoness’s face fell quickly, when the one fear she had was smacked into her face. Of course, she knew that they would never forgive her, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t hope, right?

Markus chuckled darkly as he saw his captive’s expression change, yet again something that he wouldn’t have done before his ascension. “I see you’ve come to the same conclusion, huh? Well then, I shall offer you a deal. I will keep you as my guard, both to keep you safe and to keep an eye on you. In turn, you will give me every bit of information you have on this contract you were given.”

Bloodfeather looked up to her captor with anger, humiliation and, possibly, even a bit of hope. After all: what did she have to lose? She had betrayed her own kin, was now likely on their kill list as well and didn’t know where to go. As much as she would have liked to embrace the pony way of forgiveness right then and there, she knew that her former comrades wouldn’t do the same. As such, there was only the Gryphon way of selfishness left to choose and her selfishness told her that, in order to survive, she had to…

“I accept.”

---

“Alright, you remember the plan?” Rainbow asked, as both, she and Twilight, were standing in front of a cloudhouse in the outskirts of Cloudsdale.

“Knock, drop the bomb, wait for a reaction and then bail, yeah, but why? Are you expecting them to be very angry?” Twilight asked nervously.

“No, the opposite, actually. The thing is that they… kinda overdo it most of the time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Twilight questioned.

“Oh… you will see…”

Before more questions could be asked, Rainbow knocked on the door, which was then immediately yanked open by a light blue Pegasus mare with a rainbow… wig?

“Rainbow! Oh, how is our little champion doing? Come on in, we are always prepared to welcome you home!”

“Maybe later, mom, I actually just came to tell you that I’m pregnant.” Rainbow said as if it was nothing.

Her mom stopped, as if needing to process what had just been said. When she was done, she suddenly let out a delighted wail. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

This got the attention of a slightly darker Pegasus stallion with an actual rainbow mane and tail. “What happened? Is the lawn on fire again?” He asked, before being grabbed and shaken back and forth by his wife.

“Rainbow is pregnaaaant!!!” She screamed at him.

He looked back and forth between his wife and daughter, before he, joined his wife. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”

“Alrightjustwantedtotellyoubye!” Rainbow quickly fled the scene, pulling Twilight with her.

A few hundred kilometers away, she then stopped and looked around. When she didn’t spot her parents Pinkie-ing out of a cloud, she let out a sigh of relief and put Twilight down, who had a hard time not reviewing her own lunch after the impromptu Warp-10 trip through Equestria.

“Phew, I think we should have lost them for now…”

“For now? You almost brought us all the way to the Gryphon Republic. We should definitely-“

Twilight was suddenly cut off, as a somewhat familiar sounding pair of voices could faintly be heard in the distance.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“Oh no, RUN!!!!!”

Comments

[Ryan_606]

I have a question that has been nagging me for the few chapters now is Marcus going back to see his mares?

[Timzocker201]

10541890
yes

[Fireeaters]

lol

[Munro]

lol that ending xD

[DoctorWhoooves]

“For now? You almost brought us all the way to the Gryphon Republic. We should definitely-“

2 pregnant mares... fleeing, most likely towards, a republic... now a Dominion, that doesn't like ponies... This is gonna be interesting I think.

[ChakatRedstripe]

Lmao, it's like I'm sure he's in a better place.... Hahaha!

[Foxtrot315]

This got the attention of a slightly darker Pegasus stallion with an actual rainbow mane and tail. “What happened? Is the lawn on fire again?” He asked, before being grabbed and shaken back and forth by his wife.

Whar do you mean agaun!