Heroes Never Die

by Shimmerist Ari

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Six miles.

Ari had no idea how long it took her to walk six miles. She left her phone in the car just in case. But she left at the crack of dawn and now it was broad daylight in the woods. But still she went on and on, her hands buried deep inside her hoody’s front pouch pocket as they always were.

Her feet had never hurt this badly before. She had mud coming halfway up her pants. She looked like a mess before even starting this trek. It’d been days since she bathed or did any sort of grooming. She didn’t know how she’d find the energy for the return trip.

But it would all be worth it. Yes. Any iota of success would give her the strength to make it back.

Already she felt victorious as at last the woods she’d trudge through ended and she found a road and beyond that a town.

Just as predicted, Ari felt her strength return! Even just this… just getting this close despite all the odds and so much standing in her way felt a victory in itself!

So much had been thrown into her path. The ‘ETS’ pandemic shut everything down. Ari swore half the roads in America were blockaded at this point. They likely would have blocked every road if they had enough people. But they didn’t.

The entire US military, every police officer and anything else they could scrounge up was out there… but it wasn’t enough! They’d been devastated and forced to their knees just like everyone else. So Ari got through.

On the flip side it also meant no work. She had unlimited time to go on this little adventure. Ari spent days slowly circling and tip toeing around the police trying to get close to her target– a town with a serious outbreak of ETS. In New York everything was locked down too tight for you to make contact with the infected. This was her only option.

They did not want you getting this thing, but it was starting to look like Ari might really be able to pull it off anyway.

Ari stepped out into the road, hands deep inside her pockets as she kept her eyes open for one of them… someone showing the unbelievable symptoms of ETS… Equine Transformation Syndrome.

And one of them came!

In her first truly lucky break since ETS began, a fully transformed ‘pony’ appeared just like that, landing in a tree across the road. It was one of those flying types! A yellow pegasus you could see a mile away.

It looked around is if it heard but didn’t see Ari. So Ari came bounding out of the brush and onto the road.

“You, pony!” Ari ran towards it towards it, keeping her hands pouched in her front pocket. “Over here!”

The pony flapped its wings, flustered at her sudden appearance.

“I don’t want any trouble!” The pony pleaded, splaying its wings ready to take flight. “They’re going to end the ETS in a little while! Just don’t come closer and you’ll be fine!”

To be fair, Ari probably looked horrible right now. She hadn’t bathed or changed clothes in days.

“No, no! I want you to infect me!”

The pony froze in place.

“Wait. What?” She asked. Probably the opposite reaction she normally got.

“Please! Just cough in my face a few times.” Ari without using her hands, Ari gestured for it to come down with her chin. “Come on! Do me up! Hurry!”

The pony could only stare, confused.

“You know they’re going to end ETS like… pretty soon, right? There’s that purple alien that came to help.”

“No! Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to escape New York?! What I had to go through to get all the way out here?!” Ari shouted up at the tree. “I’m not giving up now no matter what! I can’t possibly continue my life if I fail to get ETS for even one second before its’ gone! You don’t even have to come down. Just spit on me!”

“We don’t know what will happen to people who are still transforming when they cast the spell to end it,” warned the pony. “There’s talk you might get stuck halfway! Like, what if you just end up with hideously deformed, crippled hands or something horrible like that?”

Ari glared right into the pony’s eyes. Ignorant. Privileged little…

She tried not to take it out on him. She was just so pissed off at how hard everything up until now had been. And all this constant talk about hands on the radio! ‘Oh, my hands! My hands! Oh, hands are the most important thing in life!’ The jokes and comments about it just never ended!

It was enough to push her into doing something she didn’t normally do.

Ari took her hands out of her pockets and held them up in plain view.

“My hands are already hideously crippled!” Ari shouted up at him.

The pony took one look at her hands and gave Ari that all too familiar ‘I’m completely disgusted but I’m trying to be polite and not say that out loud’ look.

Ari had been born that way, a certain condition that effected her joints, mostly her hands.

Her fingers had all been gnarled up and fused together before she was even born, then the muscle tissue around those calcified. The result was something not too dissimilar into a hand turning into a hoof, the main difference being simply that it was more disgusting in appearance.

Both of them were these twisted, knotted up lumps of flesh an nails. Not even the nails jutting out at random parts looked right, even those were misshapen and way too large. None of her fingers were mobile, being calcified and whatnot, save one. Only her left ring finger could move up and down and that was too weak to grip anything for more than a minute or two.

Her feet looked pretty grody too and she had bumps around her shoulder blades. But neither of those impaired her daily life in any way, other than making her a slow runner.

All these people complaining about ‘losing their hands’ didn’t know how good they had it! Heck, Ari barely used her hands as it was. She had a legion of accessibility devices all over her house. She was 100% ready for this! Having her hands turn to hooves would do literally nothing to her.

So it seemed almost like a sick joke that ETS hit the west instead of the east coast.

Why did Sunset Shimmer release the virus in Nowhere, Colorado anyway? Staring it in New York City would have been ten thousand times more effective! It made no sense at all.

The pony continued to just sit there, no idea how to respond.

“Listen! I have 1000 dollars. Cash.” Ari closed her eyes and put her hands firmly in her pockets. “No one will ever find out.”

“Well.” The pony at last relented, bowing her head. “If you really want to take the chance. You don’t have to give me any money.”

Finally!

The pony then proceeded to hack in her face for a solid five minutes. She gave Ari one of her hairs to swallow because apparently that was the most infectious part.

Ari walked away at least feeling like she’d done all she could. At least she wouldn’t have to go her whole life wondering what would have happened.

She felt satisfied for the moment. The return trip was faster and easier than the nerve-wracking journey here. She’d done everything she could. The rest was out of her control.

Whatever happened, she’d fall asleep in the car, though. Truth be told, Ari was considering just taking a nap by a random tree.

She finally got to the car, feet throbbing, legs numb. She drank her entire supply of water and felt as though she might pass out.

But the sight in her rear-view mirror made her forget all the pain, forget everything.

Green!

A stripe of hair just off to the left was turning green right in front of her eyes!

“It’s working!” Ari laughed. “I got ETS!”

The stripe managed to go all the way from scalp to tip, then began to thicken.

“I guess I’ll have green hair?” Ari never smiled this much before. “I wonder what color my fur will be. Hehehe!”

Better yet, a second green stripe joined it on the right side of her face. Her hair would be fully green in under an hour at this rate. She heard the transformation was getting faster and faster but at this rate, she might only need half a day to become a pony!

“It’s going so fast!” Ari cheered. Overcome with joy she flapped her arms about as the second stripe completed itself. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

If she could just hold out a few more hours! That was doable, right?! No one knew when they were going to activate their cure or whatever!

This was all making her unreasonably happy! She might… she might actually get to be a pony!

“Please just take a little longer!” Ari pleaded to anything that might be listening. “Please! Just another half day! Just another–”

The sky erupted into light! A beam of pure white rushed over Ari and the entire world as it exploded outward to cover the globe. And just as suddenly as it came, the light was gone.

In that moment, Ari knew the magic was dead…

She looked at her hair, desperate to become green just moments ago. It wasn’t changing anymore.

She bit her lip, trembled. Tears formed in her eyes.

Her head fell forward, onto the steering wheel. It probably honked the horn for a good long while. Ari couldn’t’ tell.