Laughter Died

by Leafdoggy

9: Downpour

“Augh!” Rainbow Dash suddenly yelled out. “I’m sick of waiting, I’m going after her.” She turned and stomped towards the door.

“Wait,” I said, “take somepony with you.”

“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash replied without turning back. She pushed the door open. “One of you can come with me if you want, but I’m going.”

I glanced around the room at the worried faces of my friends. I couldn’t ask them to go. Not with Applejack missing. They were safer together.

“I’ll go,” I said, standing up and making my way to the door. Rainbow Dash had already left, and I stepped out quickly after her.

As the door shut behind me, I heard Fluttershy squeak “Be careful.”

“Rainbow Dash!” I trotted quickly down the hall to catch up to her. “I’m coming with you.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She gave me a serious look. She was clearly trying to hide her nerves.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said, unhelpfully. “She’s tough.”

“Yeah. Tough enough to be worried about anything that can keep her away.”

“Mm…” I wasn’t sure what else I could say to that, so I changed the subject. “How are you holding up?”

Rainbow Dash quickened her pace beside me. “How do you think? Twilight’s gone, Starlight’s gone, now Applejack might be gone, too. This sucks.”

“We’ll get them back.”

“How?” She snapped at me. “You couldn’t do anything about it last time.”

“I didn’t know about the book last time,” I told her. “If I can study the book, and if it is the source of this, I should be able to reverse it.”

“The book’s gone.”

“We’ll get it back.”

“Ugh.” Rainbow Dash stopped talking, sped up again. She was going fast enough that I had to focus on keeping up, so I couldn’t talk either.

The castle only had so many tubs, and only one in a bathroom that wasn’t attached to a bedroom, so that’s where we went. Rainbow Dash looked ready to just walk straight in, but I stepped in front of her and knocked first.

We waited.

No response.

Rainbow Dash groaned, pushed past me, and opened the door.

Silence for a moment. Then Rainbow Dash came back out.

“She’s not there.”

I frowned. “We would’ve seen her if she was going back. Where else could she be?”

“If she went in some random room to take a nap I’m gonna kill her,” Rainbow Dash grumbled.

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she replied.

“Should we go back and tell the others? Or—”

“I’m gonna keep looking. You can do what you want.”

I sighed. “We really should stay together.”

“Then c’mon.”

Rainbow Dash started moving through the halls, and I followed her. She was quick, methodical, only stopping long enough to check each room as we passed them by before moving on to the next. Following behind her, I started to feel like I wasn’t doing enough to help, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.

Lightning flashed outside and lit the hallway we were in for a split second. Shadows were plastered against the wall like stains, dripping together and distorting in the flash of light. The raindrops that coated the windows cast shimmering waves across the crystals that glittered with life.

And then it was dark again. Thunder boomed through us as our eyes adjusted to the gloom once more.

We kept moving past the dusty, unused rooms. We kept finding nothing. A bedroom, nothing. A dining room, nothing. A closet, nothing. Then another hallway and the whole process started over.

I could tell Rainbow Dash was getting more and more frustrated with every door, but I had no idea what to do about it.

Eventually, it boiled over. She slammed a door shut and kicked the wall pointlessly. “Where the heck is she?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I said nothing.

“We’re getting nowhere,” she said. “We need a new plan.”

“I don’t know how else we could find Applejack.”

“Applejack can take care of herself. We should be going after the bad guy, that way we can—”

Lightning flashed again, and she froze. Her eyes went wide, and she started to stare straight through me.

“Rainbow Dash?”

Her voice cracked as she spoke up. “Something’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Suddenly, I felt a pit open up in my stomach. “Is it… You know, what I talked about before? Losing part of yourself?”

She looked around for a moment, as if trying to find something, then shook her head.

“What is it, then?”

“I…” She looked out the window, then back to me. “Twilight, why am I here?”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“I could be home in bed right now,” she said. “Why’d I come here?”

“We’re in danger,” I told her, “we all need to—”

“I’m not in danger.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I’m not in danger,” she repeated. “At least, I wasn’t before I came here. Why’d I come here? It was such a dumb idea.”

I stepped closer to her and leaned to the side as if I’d see something wrong or out of place. “You came for us, right? Your friends?”

“I could’ve helped without being here. Heck, I could probably find a way to help a lot more if I just went off on my own.”

“But we’d worry about you,” I told her. “We want you here, Rainbow Dash, with us.”

She looked straight into my eyes for a long, dreadfully quiet moment. Thunder boomed in the distance and echoed off the landscape around us in what seemed like an endless reverberation.

“So what?”

The reply jolted me. It was the last thing I could’ve expected her to say. “W-What?”

“If I’d be more useful somewhere else, why should I care that you want me here?”

“Because…” My words stuck in my throat. “Because we’re your friends, Rainbow Dash.”

“Sure. And I should help my friends.” She nodded. “And I can do that best by not being here. So why am I here?”

“Rainbow Dash, you’re acting strange,” I said. “This isn’t like you.”

“I said something’s wrong.”

“But you’re acting like—”

“Like my element’s gone.” She said it nonchalantly like it was something that happened every day. Like she’d forgotten her lunch. Or tripped over a rock. Like it was some mild, meaningless inconvenience.

I stepped closer and, for some reason, put my hoof on her chest. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know if I expected anything. All I felt was her slow breathing and calm, steady heartbeat.

“This isn’t right,” I said, staring at my hoof pressed into her fur. “This isn’t what happened before.”

“Do you still feel it?” She asked. “Like, in you?”

I nodded. “It… Doesn’t seem to be contagious. Not to me, at least.”

“What’s that mean?”

I dropped my hoof back to the floor, still staring at it. “I don’t know.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, I don’t really wanna keep looking for Applejack. Do you think I should—”

“I don’t know.” I turned away and shut my eyes tight. “Do you really think I’m qualified to make any decisions at this point?”

“You’re more qualified than me, at least,” she said. “You’re still the smartest pony here.”

“Rainbow Dash, I’ve failed at every turn,” I said. “I can’t tell you what to do anymore.”

“Well… Alright,” she said. “I guess I’m gonna go… Look for the bad guy, then. I’ll be around the castle somewhere if you need me.”

I nodded. By the time I opened my eyes back up, she was gone.

Lightning flashed again. The shapes of clouds danced in the sky before being torn apart by the thunder.

I turned around and walked back to the conference room with my head hung low.

I stood outside the room for a while before going in. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Not only had I not found Applejack, but now Rainbow Dash was gone, too. They’d taken my word about Starlight and Twilight, but how many ponies do I have to lose before they start to suspect me? It was hard to make myself believe this wouldn’t be the last straw.

Still, standing there wouldn’t make it go away. I inhaled sharply, braced myself, and pushed the door open.

They were gone.

I let out my breath in disbelief, but not at their absence. My shock was because of the pony who was there.

Sitting at the table, calmly flipping through a book, was Applejack.

She looked up when she heard me enter and waved. “Howdy, Twilight.”

“Um…” I walked in slowly and looked around. “Where is everypony?”

Applejack shrugged. “Room was empty when I got here.”

“When did you get back?”

“Uhh, ten minutes or so ago? I walked in and it was just empty. So, I figured I’d use the time to get a head start on this thing.” She held up the book to me. A single pony adorned both covers, frowning on the front and smiling in the back. It was the book I’d brought back from the castle.

I trotted over to her. “Where did you get that?”

“It was just on the table.”

“Wh—” I shook my head and sat down next to her. “That makes no sense. Why would they just give it to us?”

“Who?”

“Whoever’s doing all this,” I said. “I was sure the book must’ve been how they were doing it. Can I see the book?”

She slid it over to me and I flipped through the pages without reading them. Just doing that, I could feel that the book was magical, but it felt… Empty. Used-up. Could it only be used so many times?

Then I got to the end and found that a huge chunk of the book had been torn out. “They took enough to keep the magic and gave us the scraps,” I thought out loud. “I don’t get it.”

Applejack shrugged. “I ain’t the thinker here.”

I tapped the cover of the book. “Did it say anything useful?”

“Probably. The whole thing’s pretty close to what you talked about. Some kinda sadness plague.”

“Hmm.” I flipped it open and started reading.

As she said, it seemed to be about a young pony who found a way to spread sadness to other ponies. The book was about his attempts to learn how to use the power to his advantage, at least as far as I was able to read.

It was mostly unhelpful, but there was one bit that stuck out. In the book, some ponies were immune to the contagion. They were happy no matter how many sad ponies they talked to. This frustrated the young pony, and through a lot of experimentation he found out that if he targeted those immune ponies, he could make them sad, but then…

That’s where the pages stop. It was clear something was different with them, but what? There was no way to know.

I slid the book back over to Applejack and looked her over. “Do you think they’re just taunting us?”

“Could be. Could be they just want us to understand.”

I looked closely at her. “How did you get back to this room?” I finally asked. “Rainbow Dash and I should have passed by you.”

She looked into my eyes. “I must’ve gone a different way.”

“Mm…” I looked hard at her, tried to discern any irregularities in her movements. In the end, I decided to just ask outright.

“Applejack?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you been lying to me?”

“Yeah.”

Comments

[Cyonix]

Oh, finally, a slim chance for a potentially maybe positive development! That sure took long enough

Uh, I'm talking about the book, not about AJ

[toshibafox]

maybe the villain just likes trolling victims, not the first time I've seen a villain do things that make no sense to anyone but him.

The joker form batman being one famous example of a troll villain.

[Sigmacipher]

Wait...I think I know what changed if twilight from the future said that they were immune to the sudden sadness epidemic and they were overheard by the individual responsible then the villain would target them first. Which means whoever's behind this was at in the area when the announcement was made.

[silvadel]

Take three? Looks like take 2 didn't work. This time go further back and ask Fluttershy about the book.