Neon Dreams

by Bigwig6666

Five

“Blue... Play it back again... please?”

The holographic image of a tough, gritty and looking rather worse for wear looking pony, Neon’s father, flickered and played in reverse, where it then paused before starting again. Twilight watched as the message repeated for the fourth or fifth time now. Neon herself had been quiet, ever since they fled from Sal’s, asking only for the droid to play the message again. The princess didn’t begrudge her for it, though, and expected her to be too stubborn or proud to suggest anything else right now.

Twilight had no words of comfort for her young friend. A silent tear rolled down her cheek as she felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow and guilt well up inside her. Whether she felt like it or not, she was still a princess, and she still had a duty of care to the ponies she wore to protect, even if she had gone missing for centuries. The sight of one pony suffering so much for something so senseless ripped her heart apart, and she felt like she couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.

Tentatively and slowly, she stepped closer and sat down beside the unicorn. The rain had long since stopped, thankfully, but the night was growing cold. Twilight wondered what month it was and gently put a wing around the shivering pony.

Neon flinched at first and made to move away. The sadness in her face and sorrow in her heart betrayed her, however, and after a few seconds she gave up the tough pony act to reveal the inner filly inside her who just lost her dad. Again.

The light of the hologram reflected in Twilight’s eyes as she looked up at the night sky. Sensing movement she chanced a look to her side and felt Neon shuffle closer to her, beginning to sniff. She smiled sadly to herself and pulled her in closer, up against her side. She rested her head on the unicorn and began to gently rock side to side as the young mare began to sob.

“Shhh, Neon. Breathe.”

Neon pulled at the feathers around her and gasped for air in between long, mournful cries. She thrust her head further into the princess’s side, and heaved as tears streamed down her face.

Twilight quietly continued rocking and thought about the kindness Neon had shown her and the generosity in taking her to her home at great personal risk. Despite her original disposition, she would indeed consider the unicorn one of her friends, and thought Equestria, even this Ponyopolis they were in, was lucky to have such a soul like her in it.

After a short while of gentle rocking, she began to feel her eyelids droop. Neon’s father’s message had stopped playing, frozen on the last image shown before it ended. Blue stood silent and still as a rock, making the princess quietly aware that it may still be active, or awake. She had no idea what a droid was, and wasn’t about to ask just yet as Neon herself had fallen asleep at some point.

”Poor filly must be exhausted,” thought the princess. She reshuffled herself into a more comfortable position, and gently lowered the unicorn to the ground, while still keeping a wing draped over her to keep her warm. “Goodnight Neon. I hope you dream of nicer things,” she murmured sadly and gave her a small nuzzle as she too lay down and rested herself.

The princess closed her eyes as she felt sleep take its hold of her and her own body gave way to exhaustion. Her dreams came quickly as they usually did, and, thanks to the power Luna gave her, she was able to relieve some of her memories, specifically the ones that brought her to this moment with Neon.

***

Twilight’s eyes snapped open. She blinked, unable to see anything but bight white light. Her stomach churned and she felt the corners of her mouth tingle as if she was about to be sick. Her ears were ringing, and her joints felt stiff, like she had been sleeping at a funny angle. The air around her felt cold and unnatural.

Her head pounded, and she felt more hungover than Rainbow Dash gets around cider season. Her thoughts came as jumbled mess as she blinked and squinted. “Hello?” she croaked. Her voice was no more than a whisper, and felt alien and strange to her own ears. “Is anypony there?” she called, attempting to be louder. The warmth of her breath bouncing back at her startled her.

Despite the ringing in her ears, she became vaguely aware of the sound of machinery. She squinted as the light continued to blind her, and noticed the that she was actually in what appeared to be a container of sorts. She pressed her hooves forwards and felt something preventing her from moving any further forwards. “What is this?” she mumbled. “Glass?”

She banged her hoof on it. The sound rang out through the small chamber thing she was in, and panic began to creep up on her,

“Hello?!” she called out, wincing in the fear in her voice.

A lump formed in her throat. ”Keep it together, Twilight. Just think. What do you remember?” She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. She furiously tried to remember what happened. There had been a lot of shouting, her friends’ voices crying out, a sudden pain, then nothing. The next thing was her waking up to a bright light and the sounds of machinery, and the smell of her own breath as she fogged up whatever window she was in front of.

She began to bang her hooves on the glass again as her fear gave her burst of strength and energy, hoping somepony--anypony--could hear her and help her. The bright light suddenly darkened, and she saw the silhouette of a pony appear. “Oh thank Celestia! Help me! Please!” she yelled as loud as she could. She had no idea how thick the glass was, or if whoever it was could have helped her.

She heard their muffled voice say something. She shook her head and tapped her ear, trying to indicate she couldn’t hear them. The silhouette moved away to the side silently. “Wait, please!” she cried out and watched in despair as they disappeared from view. “Don’t-”

The sound of hissing filled the small chamber she was in. The glass door began to rise up. Twilight inhaled a deep gulp of fresh air and tried to calm herself. She stumbled forwards and fell face first onto the hard warm ground.

“Please...” she whispered. “Where am I?”

The pony she had seen came back into view. She blinked at him and squinted. He was a colt who couldn’t be that old, wearing what appeared to be a strange grey jumpsuit with an insignia she didn’t recognise. He looked at her with wide, awestruck eyes and moved his mouth silently.

The princess struggled to her hooves and stumble again. “What’s happened to me?” she mumbled. He quickly moved to help her stand and addressed her by her full title.

“Easy, Princess Twilight Sparkle. You’re okay, for now. Listen, you have to-”

“How do you-” she murmured back warily. The sound of an almighty crash and metal scraping on metal interrupted her. They both suddenly lurched forwards as the room began to spin and a beeping could be heard. The colt’s eyes grew fearful and scared as he scrambled backwards, out of the princess’s still blurry vision. The spinning stopped moments after he disappeared.

“Wait! Come back!” she cried weakly, fighting to stay on her hooves. Her legs felt like jelly, like she had been asleep for too long. She raised her eyebrows in an attempt to widen her eyes, to try and see better, and noted the strange design of the pod she had fallen out of. It was cylindrical, and sort of resembled the pods changelings used to house their victims, only white, and cold.

She shook her head and looked forwards, towards where the pony had stood. One of the walls next to her suddenly opened and more light flooded the darkened room. She shielded her eyes and yelped as a hoof grabbed her.

“Come on!” the colt yelled. She recognised his voice and assumed it was him at least. “There isn’t much time! You gotta go. Another van is coming, when it shows up, open the side and jump in.”

Twilight blinked her eyes rapidly. Her vision was starting to come back, although a lot still remained blurry. It reminded her of when she went swimming with her friends and opened her eyes underwater. Lights shone from all around her, massively tall buildings covered her in shadows, things flying through the air at breakneck speeds made her flinch and feel amazingly small. She felt herself tremble and heard the fear in her own voice again. “Please, I don’t understand, what’s happening? Where am I?”

“There’s no time, princess. This is a friend coming, I see her van now.” The colt raised a hoof to his eyes and looked ahead. “Quick, hide, when I distract her, go and get in hers.”

The princess reluctantly nodded, seeing no use in arguing or asking anything more and moved around to the side of the large box. ”What in Equestria is a ‘van’?” she wondered. ”And where am I? What is this place? And what’s that-”

The smell of smoke and burning caught her attention. She turned to where the smell was strongest and although the image was blurry, there she saw another one of these ‘vans’, another block of metal with strange looking wheels. This one was different to the other, though, for the front of it was smashed beyond repair, and a thin trail of smoke rose up out of it.

She coughed and tried to focus her eyes, overhearing voices. She spotted her awakener, the nice colt, talking to a similarly dressed pony with bright pink hair. He caught her looking and gave her a subtle nod, turning his head towards the metal box across from them.

Twilight licked her lips and darted over to the thing, scrambling to follow his instructions. It was a strange, large thing that smelled funny, and as she glanced behind her, saw it was the same thing as the one the colt and the mare stood by. She saw the handle the colt had mentioned and gave it a yank. To her surprise the side of the box lifted up and swung open.

”Where am I?” Knots in her stomach as that one thought repeated over and over.

The princess quickly climbed in and closed it behind her, pulling it shut with her magic. She saw, thankfully, that whatever this place was still had blankets, and quickly threw one over herself and pressed herself flat against the ground. She didn’t know where she was, or what was happening, but the nice colt who let her out of whatever she was in said she would be with a friend. She hoped they were as understanding as he was, and waited to see what would happen.

A short while later...

Twilight looked up as she sat in the small apartment, and turned towards the window. Her hooves went limp, the holopad she held fell to the ground and clattered against the hard floor. “What happened?” she whispered to herself as a shiver ran down her spine.

It was hard, to say the least, to read about her own death, about how Equestria mourned for months afterwards and how the world fell into disrepair as greed consumed everything. What she read chilled her to the bone.

“Is this real life?” she asked herself while gazing out at the world going past. “Or is this just...” She trailed off, gazing at the great structures around her, blinded by all the bright lights and dizzying speeds, that would make even the Wonderbolts jealous, of these ‘vans’ as they soared through the skies. Some were similar metal boxes to the ones Neon Dream owned or that nice colt operated. Some were long and slim with a pony sitting at the front, some carried ponies from end to end, and some held one or two adults and a foal maybe--families. She fiddled with the end of her ethereal mane and continued her train of thought. “...A bad dream?”

“I need some air,” Twilight mumbled as she grew anxious. She pushed open the window with a heavy sigh and leant out of it, resting her hooves on the sill. “At least windows are the same, as well as a few other things.” Her own joke brought a smile to her face, despite the circumstances, and she looked outside at the world going by. The streets below reminded her of her view from her room in Canterlot. A billboard across the street flickered to life showing a smiling stallion who looked remarkably similar to Flim or Flam wearing a collard shirt and tie with a large smile plastered over his face.

”Ponyopolis: The City of Tomorrow, Today,” he said. His voice boomed throughout the city from some unseen speakers, ringing out over the city and the ponies below, startling the princess a touch and making her wings shoot out in alarm. She quickly calmed herself and smoothed her coat down, as well as folded her wings to her sides and blushed quietly, thankful the owner of her haven, one Neon Dream, hadn’t seen her. She listened curiously as the pony on the screen spoke about he was a proud citizen of Ponyopolis, and continued with a commercial about how a corporation with a too long of a name was the leading manufacturer of something or another as corporate jargon filled her ears.

Twilight shook her head and glanced down at the holopad by her hooves and picked it up gingerly. On the bottom of the holopad there was a symbol, an overlapping G and C painted a faded yellow which made her brow furrow in curiosity. She thought to make a mental note of it as something about it felt familiar, although she couldn’t place what.

The ‘page’ she had dropped it on remained open too, and despite her anxiety and worry she chose to read on, forming crazy theory after crazy theory of what happened to her to make her end up here. She had to know what happened, there had to be some record of it right?

Such a thing was far easier said that done.

As far as she could see, the world was a desolate wasteland thanks to years of technology running wild, leaving the fantastic woods and forests of Equestria barren. On top of that, nowhere, not in a single holopad that her host was in possession of, detailed why she would have been frozen in time. Every reference to ‘Twilight Sparkle’ simply stated that she had passed away centuries ago after a tragic and unfortunate accident and that the city was built according to her wishes as a symbol of friendship across all of Equestria atop the sight of her greatest victories: Ponyville.

The thing was, despite trying as hard as she could, she couldn’t remember any ‘tragic accident’, or wanting good old quiet Ponyville brought to ruin by this concrete monstrosity of a city. On top of that, frustratingly, there was very little mention of Celestia, Luna, the Crystal Empire, or any of her friends beyond the fact they along with the rest of Equestria mourned the fallen princess.

The more answers she got the more questions she had. She sighed in frustration and placed the holopad down, careful not to disturb the neat pile she had made of them and gazed out the open window again.

Something else about the city now set her teeth on edge. Everything about it felt wrong, unnatural, like the back of that van she had crawled out of. The crowd below looked the same as normal, but there was a darkness, a shadow lying underneath everything that she couldn’t quite place her hoof on.

Her eyes traced over a pony wearing strange white and yellow clothes holding up a sign, picketing something and spouting words nopony seemed to listen to. Thanks to the din of traffic above her and the noise of the city around her, she was just out of earshot to hear what exactly he was saying, but as she squinted she recognised the word on his sign.

“COTS.”

She remembered Neon mentioned these Children of the Sun guys. They sounded like an old religion of Equestria, when Celestia first rose to power. The colour of the pony’s clothes also reminded her of Celestia, and wondered if they were more than Neon had made them out to be. “Maybe I should ask them what happened to me?” she asked herself quietly. There was that colt when she first woke up, he knew her. “There must be ponies out there who know what happened to me...”

Twilight winced. Amongst herself and her own situation there was Neon herself to worry about now. She couldn’t explain it, perhaps she felt some sense of her duty as princess, but she felt compelled to keep the young mare safe, as best she could. Her arrival and hiding in her van had ruined her life, pretty much, she felt. Despite all that, however, the unicorn had shown her an extraordinary kindness in not turning her away and incredible generosity in letting Twilight stay in her apartment.

In a way, Neon Dream reminded Twilight of Luster Dawn, albeit a heck of a lot grumpier and foul mouthed. A tear welled up in the princess’s eye as she thought about her protégée, long since passed on now.

“Oh Luster... I’m so sorry...” she mumbled with a sniff. She felt a deep wrack of guilt build up inside her as the thought she failed her young student, and all of Equestria passed through her. She didn’t know where to begin, or what to do, but she knew she had to find a way, any way, to help. First thing was first, though: Find out why she was in a container, and why she had to suddenly flee for her life from that nice colt’s--Bright Spark she remembered Neon calling him--van.

The door slid open with a familiar hiss, interrupting her thoughts, and there stood the unicorn she was unfortunately burdening. She opened her mouth to say hello, but noticed the wild and afraid look in her eye and jumped to her hooves instead.

“Oh my gosh, Neon, what happened?” she cried out.

“They know. They know...” Neon Dream panted and gasped for air, clearly in a high level of distress.

The next few minutes went by as a blur. Soon the princess and the unicorn stood in an alleyway, the former’s wings smouldering lightly as her breath came ragged and heavy. Her horn pulsed with residue energy. Thankful her affinity for magic was largely untouched, she made a small joke and focused herself.

They needed a plan. They needed somewhere safe. She was a stranger in this city, but Neon Dream wasn’t. Twilight swallowed and resolved to hep this pony before she helped herself, and hoped there was somepony out there who knew the truth.

Somepony who could help them both now.

Comments

[Razzy]

What did you do, Twilight?