End of Ponies - Petra Arc - HHH Edition pt 1
When the Petra arc (Kaizo edition) first bombed, I was both devastated and ashamed of myself. I decided that I needed "time off" from EoP so that I could collect my mind and attempt re-writing the arc. About a month and a half later, I dove back in, and this is the result of it.
However, "result" is a rather loose term, seeing as I never finished the second draft. In many ways, the arc was going to be similar, only I dropped the bulk of the one arc taking place in Scootaloo's past (where she interacts with Rainbow Dash). What's more, I decided that instead of drawing a parallel between Scootaloo/Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo/Warden, I was going to flesh out Razzar as a sister-figure to Scootaloo. They were both going to be casted as lone survivors of the Cataclysm--the last of their own respectful races.
To that end, everything was going to be a great deal more psychological and less action-centric. I felt this "cerebral" approach was way more in tune to the spirit of End of Ponies, and so I called this Second Draft the "HHH Edition" (because HHH is the "cerebral assassin," eh? ehhhh?).
The plan was to have Warden be a great deal more likable, melancholic, and less of a foil to Scoots. Also, Scootaloo would become an active partaker in a goblin slave-liberating group. This meant that there would be action scenes, but the drama contained therein would be anchored to what was at stake, rather than the sheer spectacle of fights. That way, I got to keep the overall grittiness of the Petra arc, as originally intended, but without having to go full-force in volume.
This meant that I was producing something that could potentially be 30% shorter than the original Petra Edition. Also, the fact that I was reusing previously-written elements made the whole process more like doing emergency surgery than an actual rewrite... at least at first.
But, it was still a rewrite, and at some point I must have lost my focus. The Applejack arc is an amazing example of dredging a terribad story from the ashes and breathing life into it through new scenes. This arc? Notsomuch. In attempting to preserve previous elements, I had to bend the plot and the characters within ass-over-elbow. This resulted in some really ugly, unrealistic, and definitively unsexy mutations to the character progression, which my editors were keen to inform me of during moments that should have been stellar.
It became obvious to me that I was making another blunder. In truth, I could have attempted salvaging the system more. However, I was far too despondent at the time, and I needed to vent my frustrations. I did so in the form of a story called "Background Pony," and I've never looked back since.
Well, except for that one time in February of 2013 where I attempted rewriting the arc for a third time from scratch... but simply didn't have the energy or drive. Where does EoP stand now? I figure that if I'm to tackle the Petra arc again, it'll be with a fourth rewrite, and--as you probably guessed--I simply do not have the enthusiasm or inspiration to cast Phoenix Down on such an insufferable dragon at this moment in time.
And, besides, HHH only made it far because HBK carried him. F'naaaaaaaa.
The End of Ponies – by short skirts and explosions
Chapter Twenty-Five – The Ashes of the Rainbow
A quivering, orange hoof hung a smudged shard of Cloudsdalian glass off a metal hook embedded into the rock wall of a claustrophobic cave. Shakily, the same hoof rose to the glossy surface and stroked several concentric circles, wiping the soot and grime away. The reflection of a nine-year-old foal came into focus. The violet-eyed pegasus looked at herself, trembling, her lips parting as she leaned in to examine her reflection, almost startled to find so many bruises and bloodstains across her young face.
There was a shrieking sound from beyond the dull walls of the place. The filly's reflection gasped, glancing over her twitching wings as several animalistic cries joined the great cacophony beyond the torchlit hollow that sheltered her. The world had become an echoing well of thunder, cataclysmic tremors, and monstrous banshee screams. The pegasus' nicked ears twitched, trying to make sense out of the many chaotic sounds of the apocalypse raging blindly outside.
She gulped hard, her shivers intensifying as the shrill shrieks multiplied, wafting closer to the camouflaged entrance of her improvised chamber. There was an undeniable hunger in the creatures' wayward cries; they thirsted for her. She knew this, and she shuddered at what she had to do next.
With a quivering lip, she glanced once more at her reflection in the scavenged shard. Her eyelids moistening, she leaned in closer to the glass and raised a metal piece of shrapnel that she had pilfered from the ravaged world outside. Tilting her neck to the side, she exposed a long lock of pink mane hair, gave it one last forlorn look, and swiftly sliced the lengths of the pastel follicles away. Alone with her shivers in the dancing torchlight, Scootaloo dutifully scalped herself clean, removing the scent of ponydom from her body.
Dozens of hours later, the shrieking noises outside had died down. A gentle roar of distant thunder permeated the ashen landscape. Somewhere—in one tiny, frost-blighted ditch out of a million more just like it—a patch of white snow shook loose. A panel of metal shingles swung free in the chilly air. A tiny orange pegasus poked her freshly-shaved head out from a dark niche dug out of a mound of ruptured, Equestrian earth. Biting her lip pensively, Scootaloo scanned the nearby landscape. She was quietly pleased to find the area devoid of any suspicious movement. She spent the better part of ten minutes observing her surroundings, until she was finally, finally satisfied that the coast was clear.
She dashed back into the cave with a single breath. Less than a minute later, she re-emerged with a tattered satchel hanging off of each blank flank. With evident trepidation, she trotted one hoof after another until she was completely outside of her hidden habitat. Giving the landscape another look-see, she swung around and slid the metal door shut. After tossing a camouflaging blanket of snow over the secret hiding spot, she spun around and—panting frightfully—broke into a nervous canter across the shattered landscape of the Equestrian Wasteland.
Scootaloo's body was a tiny orange dot in the middle of snow-laden desolation. At a wide glance, the surrounding vista had been pockmarked with black, smoldering craters and several scattered chunks of ivory debris, forming the grand miasma that was the outer ruins of fallen Cloudsdale. Every dozen meters or so, a pillar of sky marble penetrated the earth, followed by a plume of flame that enshrouded an otherworldly shard of fallen stone. A deep fog floated over the landscape, as the many bits of sky marble burst from within, filling the air with dense, compressed steam.
Above the hovering haze of pale mist, the gray sky was blemished with a perpetual orange hue. It had been two weeks since the Cataclysm, and all of Equestria was still burning. Endless flame to the southwest filled the air with a deep black soot, shooting plumes of obsidian above the lengths of the Everfree Forest. Blazes dotted the dark outlines of the distant Canterlotlian mountains to the east, adding to the holocaustal glow of the sundered planet.
All of this was pierced with a deep thunder, as several burning streaks of light surged into being overhead. Moonrocks were falling ceaselessly from the heavens, filling the sky with hot comet-trails that bled into a bloodsoaked crimson, almost drowning out the dreary twilight above. There was no sun to illuminate this nightmare. Hour by hour, the world shook as yet another shard of the exploded moon landed far too close for comfort, sending more tremors through the battered surface of the world.
Through all of this, Scootaloo nervously ran, scampered, stumbled and fled. She hid under every rock outcropping she could find, hyperventilating as her wide, pulsating eyes took in the burning desolation around her. Between the curtains of snow and soot, one or two conspicuously large flakes of ash would find her, landing on her coat. She gasped and brushed the offending slivers off of her, swallowing a lump down her throat, for she knew what it was made out of. She knew what it all was made out of. The only way to keep herself from breaking down was to keep moving.
Watching her flank, taking in the environment with frightful, darting eyes, the little pegasus did just that...
A huge crash of thunder boomed across the dead world. Scootaloo froze on top of a hill of doughy earth to glance over her shoulder. The shaven filly saw a distant cloud of flame and plasma erupting several kilometers away where a giant moonrock had struck the Equestrian Valley far to the south. She gulped and performed a mental calculation, comparing the visual nature of the collision from how long ago she had heard its sound. She judged that the landing was no closer than any of the other recent impacts, despite the dramatic sight.
Gulping, she pushed the apocalyptic image away and turned around to face another one. Before her, at the base of the hill, the ruins of a Cloudsdalian rainbow factory stretched in open view. Many of the sky marble structures were intact, and they glistened in the red glow of the burning sky. Cinching the two satchels on her flanks, she scampered down the snow-pelted hill and eagerly galloped into the thick of the wreckage.
“Hello?! Somepony? Anypony?”
Her voice echoed against the precariously-leaning, ivory pillars of the place. Loud groaning sounds filled the hollowed expanse as the weight of the structure threatened to buckle in on itself at any moment. Undaunted, the shivering filly trotted lonesomely through the center of the crumpled factory, her breaths fogging in the air that was already dancing with soot and ash.
“Please! Just shout if you can hear me!” Scootaloo panted, glancing left and right, gulping hard as her trembling voice reached more and more desperate octaves. “Anypony?! Is anypony there? Hello?!”
She trotted past several golden basins lying on their sides, cracked and fissured in a dozen places. An endless stream of cold, dull-colored liquid trickled from every structure. Long black poles with stirring nets affixed to their ends lay in splintery bits across random spaces of open sky marble.
“Hello?!” Scootaloo's teeth were chattering at this point. She huddled herself next to an overturned rack of shattered glass jars, all of them empty. “If you can hear me, you're not alone! I survived and I found a safe place to stay—!”
There was an explosion of steam. The sky marble composing one of the ivory pillars had lost is structural integrity, and a billowing fountain of mist filled the entirety of the collapsed pegasus construction. Scootaloo shrieked, coughed and sputtered for a solid breath, then ran out of the factory on four stumbling hooves. Once outside, she slumped to her chest—clutching the burned earth with twitching hooves. As the thick of the steam cleared, she regained her breath, wincing. Through tearing eyes, she squinted to see a miraculous throng of charred grass wilting directly in front of her. Instantly, the pony's stomach churned, a violently loud thing. Biting her lip, she hesitantly lowered her mouth to the thin brown blades. She took one bite, and instantly spat out the brittle, burnt material.
Murmuring to herself, she stood up on wobbly legs, gave the steaming factory one last, helpless look, and trotted towards even more wreckage with a lonesome breath.
“Hello?!”
Scootaloo's voice was almost muted from the thunderous roar of burning Equestria and the dozens upon dozens of impacting moonrocks flashing across the crimson horizon beyond. Her tiny body strolled down an eerily preserved city square of Cloudsdale. Upon landing, the once-suspended block of urbanscape had folded in on itself at a thirty-degree angle, so that the courtyard resembled a bent, gray croissant in the middle of the Wasteland.
“H-Hello?!”
Scootaloo glanced left and right, spotting the many shattered storefronts, peering into the numerous hollow buildings with caved-in roofs of sky marble. With each passing minute, her violet eyes glossed over more and more. She bit her lip under a petrifying cloud of panic. Her freshly-shaved pink stubble stood on end as she ducked into a half-crumbled store, her tiny hooves stepping nervously over shards of broken glass and dilapidated plaster.
She shuffled to a stop, her body shivering in the bands of scattered orange light from the burning Wasteland outside. Her next breath was muffled, bleeding defeatedly out her numb lips.
“Is anypony there...?”
After a deep sigh, Scootaloo let her violet eyes drift towards the length of the floor. Amongst the wreckage of the store, she saw... things, tiny, seemingly insignificant, utilitarian things. She saw nick-nacks, corkscrews, pocketknives, bottlecaps, loose springs, metal screws, and more. She saw sudden and inexplicable tools where—beforehand—there was nothing even remotely noteworthy.
In a firm breath, the little survivor knelt down, opened one of her satchels, and began pensively—but dutifully—collecting whatever she could get her hooves on.
Under the broken wings of a Princess Nebula statue, Scootaloo struggled, grunted, and finally overturned a pegasus chariot. Several broken bits of brass had fallen loose from the carriage. Many of these bore sharp, pointed edges that glinted in the orange hue of the apocalyptic deathscape.
Scootaloo ripped the upholstery out from the bottom of the chariot. Carefully, she bundled the sharp brass bits like a cluster of knives, wrapping the fabric around them five complete times before safely depositing them into her satchels. She then proceeded to yank the loosest of the chariot's wheels free from the vehicle. The bolts and fasteners fell free. She collected these along with a few wooden spokes from the structure. Once she had successfully pilfered what she could from the chariot, she adjusted the weight of the bags along her flank, and trotted off for the next cluster of ruins.
Inside a snowflake factory that had landed sideways, Scootaloo climbed marble shelf after shelf, grunting with the effort, twitching her wings as she reached for one intact glass jar after another. These containers, she slid into her bags before hopping down, navigating a pile of smoldering debris, and investigating another rack of random tools.
Once done, she crawled through a tiny hole and slid her way into an upside down shop full of dangling, foalish marionette puppets. Unfazed by the eerie sights, she climbed her way to the back of the collapsed Cloudsdalian toy store and snuck into the stockroom, where she found several measuring tools, three cutting knives, and—to her delight—a working compass.
The magnetic needle on the device guided her north towards where a wide swath in the wreckage had opened before her. Trotting up to the edge of a sudden cliff, she gasped and found out why. Gazing with wide, violet eyes, Scootaloo discovered an enormous crater—several kilometers wide—that had opened up in the middle of the Equestrian landscape. Clutching an ivory pillar, she bravely tilted forward and looked straight down. The world jutted open beneath her like a sudden esophagus, and the walls of the inexplicable pit were filled with chunks of sky marble and a cyclonic assortment of unnatural waterfalls spilling down into the black depths of it.
Scootaloo realized that the bulk of Cloudsdale had fallen into the landscape before her, and the collective weight of the once-hovering city had bored a gigantic hole in the flesh of Equestria. How deep this gigantic chasm was, the orange filly had no clue. From simply gazing at the casastrophic site, she had no doubt that the entirety of the pit was filled to the brim with the densest wreckage of Cloudsdale she had witnessed thus far. All she had explored prior to now was just the outer ruins of the pegasi's city. This crater before her was the inner ruins, and if there was anything—or anypony—to be found, they would undoubtedly be in there.
The orange filly bit her lip. Her tiny, flightless wings twitched fearfully, hesitantly. In a wise breath, she stepped backwards from the sudden, deathly dip in the landscape, turned about-face, and trotted back in the direction from which she came, all the while trusting the compass, her only friend.
Scootaloo's hooves splashed in a shallow current of liquid rippling downhill as she ascended a solid slope of fallen skymarble. She judged that the many chunks of vaporous ruins were still condensing, and the coalescing water from the whole mess was forming a collective stream that fell down into the gigantic pit that she had just discovered.
The pony walked up the slope of the fallen city district and glanced every which way. Random storefronts smoldered from endless flames burning within. Others were bathed in rising white mist as random clusters of sky marble dissipated underneath their crumbling foundation. The air was a mixture of black soot and ghostly white gas from this absurd contrast.
Navigating the outer ruins, the filly paused—gasping—to see a collapsed restaurant resting beyond a shattered water fountain. Her hooves plodded through the thin, wet river. She galloped desperately in through the bowed doorway and nearly collapsed inside the interior. Breathlessly, she glanced around, her eyes twitching in last-second surprise. She had caught sight of the kitchen beyond a charred serving counter. Hopping briskly over the structure, her satchels dangling at her side, she slid on her knees before a collapsed array of containers and feverishly flung them open, one clattering lid at a time.
Scootaloo practically shrieked with joy as she found a jar full of preserved daisies. The flower petals had fallen loose and the stalks were beginning to bend into brown strings, but none of that mattered as soon as she had crammed the vegetation deep into her equine mouth. The bites were soggy and pathetic sensations, but they were heavenly nonetheless. The stuff was edible. The stuff was food. Scootaloo was eating.
She scarfed as much as she could. Leaves were fluttering out of her chomping jaws, but she didn't care. She opened jar after jar, flinging half of the contents into her mouth and the other half into her satchel. How she stored this amazing bounty wasn't nearly as important as how much of it she could acquire. Scrambling on all fours, she slid across the kitchen floor, uncovering cans of soup, a bag of oats, a jar of flour, loaves of bread, a half-decayed pony skull—
“Aaaugh!” Scootaloo wailed and flew back, slamming herself up against a metal cabinet with a bang and covering her mouth with a pair of shivering hooves. A metal pot slowly rattled to a stop beside her. The filly's violet irises shrunk into pinpricks inside their twitching sockets as she sat—petrified and hyperventilating—staring at the deathly grimace glancing back at her.
It was the head of a pegasus stallion—half of its flesh hanging off the skeleton—the other half reduced to powdery dust that was blowing away from the air that the orange filly had suddenly exposed it to. A great black hollow formed in the center of the calcium frame, through which the twitching pegasus could very clearly make out meaty cartilage and spongy brain matter.
The quivering filly slid away from the corpse, her face wilting, until a freshly chewed flower petal spilled from her lips, followed by another, followed by a thick dribble of bile, followed by an ocean of vomit as she keeled over in the corner of the kitchen—shrinking away from the odorous remains—spilling loose the first decent meal she had scavenged in days. Her retching was only punctuated by a random sob or two as she fought an uphill battle against giving the corpse another glance... ultimately losing, until her tears blinded her to the horror.
On wobbling limbs, Scootaloo trotted away from the restaurant, her satchels twice as heavy as her stomach was empty. There was no appetite that could satiate the aching pit in her stomach. She put the thought of it into the darkest recesses of her mind as she put the sight of another crumbling building in the forefront of her vision. Limping forward, she looked for a way to enter the building, when her ears suddenly pricked. She froze in place, for the distant thunder of the burning Wasteland was suddenly... not so distant.
In a frightful breath, she glanced over her shaved mane. She gasped to see a huge plume of burning orange light billowing straight towards her location. A chunk of moonrock was coming in fast. The air heated up. The river of trickling Cloudsdalian water started to form steam. Frantically, Scootaloo galloped straight towards the building ahead and leaped through the nearest windowframe she could find.
The world had become a deafening scream by the time she scurried inside and curled up against a wall. She braced for anything and everything, expecting her body to be crushed to a smoldering pile of meat at any instant. Instead, the sheer weight of the moonrock pulled it far ahead. It wasn't until ten seconds later that the impact transpired, and when it did it was no less thunderous than she had expected. The building rattled over her quivering body. Chunks of debris fell down in a rain of steam and ash. However, the ivory structure had remained intact. To Scootaloo's undeniable luck, it was another part of the outer ruins of Cloudsdale that got reduced to a crater, and not her location.
She glanced up, trembling, and realized that she was inside a lopsided library. Rows upon rows of shelves had collapsed in on each other like wooden sandwiches. Shreds of paper filled the extremities of the dusty place. For the first time in two lonesome weeks, Scootaloo thought of Twilight Sparkle.
Suddenly, something slapped against her shaved head. Scootaloo's impulse to shriek was only slightly overwhelmed by her impulse to curse. Grunting, she rubbed her head and glanced down at the offensive object. She saw a thick brown tome; it had evidently fallen off a shelf and bounced off her skull. On a curious whim, she opened the thing, only to find that every single page was blank. Unenthused, she contemplated tossing the thing away into a corner of the dilapidated place. For some reason, however, she stifled such an impulse, and instead stuck the thick, empty book into one of her satchels.
Getting up, rebalancing herself on numb limbs, the tiny pegasus marched out of the library and into a brave new world of soot and ash from the fresh moon crater. With the compass as her guide, she marched herself through the obscurity and trotted her way home.
Scootaloo sat in the middle of her torchlit cave, laying out her many fresh tools before her, separating things in order of importance and necessity. As the world howled and thundered outside, she rummaged through her newly scavenged things with an invigorated spirit, engrossing herself in stockpiling the many nick-nacks into their appropriated corners.
All the while, the brown tome rested on the edge of a half-shattered arcane vault dredged from the wreckage of the Cloudsdalian airship. Scootaloo glanced at it briefly, but with disinterest, instead occupying herself with finding a spot to store her foodstuffs and setting upon a plan for rationing what little she had to consume for the next foreseeable... month? Year? Decade? Lifetime?
The last filly took a deep breath, briefly losing track of what she was doing... what she was thinking... what she was contemplating, until her hoof grasped ahold of one item she hadn't realized she had dropped into her satchel. It was a jar full of pens, and many of them full of ink.
Blinking, shifting nervously, she glanced back at the torchlit sliver of arcane metal atop which the blank book rested. She glanced once more at the many pens, took a brave breath, and pulled one of the writing tools out.
Squatting on a bed of bundled, patchwork fabric in the corner of the cave, warmed by two glowing torches, the lonely pegasus spread the book in her lap. She bent over and fitted a pen between her teeth. The last time she ever remembered scribbling anything down was one chaotic week when she tried her hoof at songwriting. It was hardly a successful endeavor, and she couldn't pretend to expect anything to come of this.
But the need to produce something, anything, was there. She followed it, like a creature follows the instinct to live, in spite of the inherent absurdity of it all. Slowly, Scootaloo wrote:
Journal Entry #1
Hello.
My name is Scootaloo. I am nine years old. At least I think I am. Something bad has happened. Many ponies have died. Cloudsdale fell and most of Equestria is on fire. I do not know why.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Hello? Anypony?”
Scootaloo stood atop a hill. Moonrocks fell in bright orange streams on all sides of her. The world burned in indifference as she explored the latest wreckage she had discovered, this time armed with more than just a compass. She had bundled several bands of brown canvas around her upper and lower limbs, forming a very flexible armor that also insulated her from the pelting snow and ash. Sheathed into a pocket along her right forelimb was a sharp metal shiv that once belonged to a chariot.
“Is anypony there?! I'm all alone! Can you hear me?”
She panted and traversed crumbled block after block of collapsed Cloudsdalian sky marble, looking for signs of life, finding nothing but flame-dancing bands of her own lonesome shadow.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I am alive. I am alone. I am looking for ponies. I need help. There are scary things outside my hiding place. I think they want to eat me.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo trembled. Scootaloo shivered. She flattened her flightless wings against a tiny alcove of rock and clutched the metal shiv to her chest. She had a canvas mask enshrouding her mouth, muffling her panting breath as her twitching eyes danced across the extremities of her sockets.
Above her, clawing across the top of the earthen outcropping, a body of pale leather sniffed and hissed at the air, detecting a faint scent of equine warmth. The creature's beady eyes darted across the burning, crimson horizon, and soon the monstrosity wasn't alone. Another abomination joined its side, then another, and another. Soon, an entire phalanx of trolls sauntered up to the top of the cliff-face just above where the frightened pegasus was hiding. The drooling creatures growled amongst themselves, until a frustrated series of blows were exchanged—splashing the air briefly with cold sweat and ink-dark blood. The monsters shrieked and whooped at each other like hyenas, before cackling devilishly and marching downhill... away from the lonesome filly.
Scootaloo gulped and clenched her eyes shut. Tears trickled down her cheek as she murmured breathlessly to Goddess Epona and ran a joyous hoof over her life-saving, shaved mane.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I have looked everywhere. Where Cloudsdale crashed into the ground, there are broken buildings and lots of junk, but there are no ponies. At least, there are no ponies who are alive.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo's violet eyes were large, round saucers. Slowly, she pulled the canvas mask down from her mouth. A vaporous breath misted out of her as she sauntered forward—one trembling hoof after another—and entered an upside down temple that had fallen from the clouds.
In the scattered rays of snow-kissed twilight, dozens upon dozens of petrified pegasus bodies dangled, hanging from their wings off of shattered sky marble or skewered by the jagged teeth of broken pillars.
In a sickly halo of gray light, Scootaloo slumped numbly to her haunches, her body bathed in the drifting ashes of the dead equines. She gazed hopelessly up at them, murmuring a slew of unintelligible words as lonesome as her tears. Her only answer was a strobe of orange light as more moonrocks christened the dying world outside.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I saw a huge hole in the ground. It is a huge pit full of wreckage and falling water. Most of Cloudsdale is in that pit. Maybe there are surviving ponies there too. If they haven't flown out by now, that means they must need my help as much as I need theirs.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo stood on a mound of crumpled ivory. A cold, icy mist rose above her hooves as she wore a newly-woven assortment of canvas armor. She stared down a spyglass that she had scavenged from a fallen pegasus guard tower. The giant crater of Cloudsdale's inner ruins loomed far below. The landscape roared from the collective waterfalls cascading inward from all edges of the gaping crater.
She studied a northwestern slope that descended gradually into the abyss. From her lofty perspective, it actually appeared climbable. Lowering the spyglass from her gaze, she took a deep breath, knelt down, and drew a map on a wide cloth sheet, plotting out a course for her to take. As what was once just an idea bled into an illustrated reality, her limbs started to shake from the sudden comprehension of what she was about to attempt.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I have to find other ponies. Something bad has happened to all of Equestria. I think even the whole world is in trouble. I can't survive on my own. I need help. I need to find somepony so we can survive together.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo stood in the middle of her hovel, bundling up a thick coil of rope. She packaged this next to several woven satchels that she had combined to form an elaborate saddle, complete with metal shivs conjoined at just the right angles to resemble climbing gear. In the mdist of gathering her many things for the next day's brave sojourn, she paused, slumping against a spear she had carved out of rainbow factory nets.
She leaned her forehead against the dull weapon, clenching her eyes shut, stifling an urge to whimper that refused to go away. In the flickering dance of a dwindling torchlight, she sniffled, put the last of her things away, and crawled into the far corner for a nightless, moonless attempt at slumber.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Most of all, more than anything, I need to find Rainbow Dash. She will know what to do. She always knows what to do.
I need to find Rainbow Dash and I need to tell her “Thank you.” She saved my life.
If I should die soon, I need to write this so that somepony will know that I am here because of her.
Rainbow Dash, if it is you who finds this and I am dead, I want to thank you. Thank you for everything. I am doing my best to make you proud.
-End of entry
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She tried. Scootaloo tried sleeping, but like so many things in her bitter decade of existence, what she asked for never came. She had to struggle for it.
So, into the thunderous ambiance of the apocalypse, Scootaloo struggled. Scootaloo searched for sleep, and in the midst of it—squeezing tears out of her eyes like so many a lonely night before—the filly fought, and lost. The shame of her defeat wasn't so painful, though, for in the climax of those sobs she squeaked forth a name that brought solace to the whole trembling debacle.
“Dashie...”
She whimpered and caved in on herself, curling up into a fetal position and hugging the last surviving colors of her dreams before they too faded away.
“Dashie... please c-come and find m-me...”
Scootaloo quivered and reached blindly for warmth...
...until the gentle rays of sunlight glistened across her copper coat. Reaching a hoof around a glass of ice water, Harmony raised the beverage to her lips, took a sweet sip, and exhaled blissfully into the salty breeze. Her wings flexed and unflexed as a pleasant smile graced her features. She sat on the rear patio of a hotel overlooking a sun-kissed beach resort. She wasn’t alone; two other ponies listened to her giggle and say, “Heehee... A girl could get used to this. Ahem.” She planted the glass back down onto the tabletop before her. “However, nothing lasts forever. Alas, my duties to the Canterlotlian Court are finished, and I must bid you both adieu.”
“You speak of your royal duties as if that's all you came here to do, Miss Harmony. And yet, you have accomplished so much more.” Bon Bon sat across from the pegasus. The sound of the ocean waves provided a calm background to their chat, “Was it really stargazing that brought you here? Or was it fate?”
“Fate is only predictable to those who bind themselves to it.” Harmony smiled wide, her teeth showing. “I would think that the last few days have taught the two of you that, if nothing else.”
Bon Bon blushed, hiding a shy face behind pink-and-blue bangs. “If the last few days have taught me anything, it's that truth is stranger than fiction.”
“I'd say!” Lyra jutted into view, her turquoise face beaming under a fountain of gray-streaked hair. “We both elope on a cruise of the Eastern Shore, only to have some parasprite-sniffing jerk of a captain strand us on a desert island to fend for ourselves! Why, girl, if you hadn't dropped in to save our tails, I'd have sued that creep for every golden bit stuffed under his poop deck!”
“Yeah, well...” Harmony chuckled nervously, brushing a hoof in lazy circles across the tabletop. “I don't deserve all the thanks for getting the two of you off that island.” Seagulls cawed overhead while random ponies frolicked and jogged gleefully up and down the hot sand dunes behind her. “Most of the gratitude should be aimed Beachcomber's way. If it wasn't for her and her friends, the two of you would be sunburnt husks by now. I wouldn't be that much better off either.”
“Yeesh!” Lyra rolled her orange eyes. “Yeah, so we owe Beachcomber's bosom buddies our thanks and all. But did they have to sing so freakin' much? I've got those dang musical notes stuck in my head!” She hissed and pointed at her golden lyre of a cutie mark for emphasis. “Music... stuck in my head! Do you realize how pitiful that is?”
“I'd say it was worth it.” Bon Bon winked one of her blue eyes. “If nothing else, we were treated to the most fantastic underwater dance number I've ever seen.”
“You mean the only underwater dance number you've ever seen,” Lyra retorted. “It was slightly bearable for the first bubbling hour or so. But by the time that purple sea serpent joined in with his falsetto, I wanted nothing more than to take a baseball hat to my horn.”
Harmony winced. “Yes, well, there are some sights and sounds that few mortals are blessed—or cursed—to witness. I'll reserve the word 'lucky' for this right here.” She smiled and leaned forward against the table. “In spite of all the bizarre ups and downs, I am very... very happy to have spent the last two weeks with the two of you. Joy just shines when you're both around. I still can't believe you helped me with my mapping of the stars. That was so very generous of you.”
“Generous?” Bon Bon blinked. “Miss Harmony, if you hadn't dropped in on our lives, we'd have more than sunstroke and seaponies to contend with. That egostistical ship captain was prepared to spread a bunch of seditious lies about the two of us when you dropped in and threatened to turn his career inside out for what he did to us.”
Harmony shrugged. “Eh... If there's one thing in life I don't appreciate, it's cowardly bullies. You both came here to enjoy a little slice of heaven. I wasn't about to let anypony get in the way of that, no matter how many tiny little 'anchor' pins he's got on his collar.”
“It's...” Bon Bon fidgeted bashfully. “It's not often that we have random strangers come to our rescue, and all from the kindness of their hearts.”
“Well, Ms. Bon Bon, you've been through a lot.” Harmony smiled sweetly. “The way you two were stranded out in the middle of nowhere just sickened me. It was like kicking a good pony when she's down.”
“There've been tough times lately, for sure.” Bon Bon nodded. “Ever since our biggest clients from Dredgemane stopped ordering supplies from the novelty store, I've been having to scrimp just to get by the past month. Still, Lyra and I have been looking forward to this vacation for as long as either of us can afford to remember.”
“Darn tootin'.”
“Shhh! Will you let me speak?”
“Er... Eheheh... By all means.”
Bon Bon stifled a giggle and glanced back Harmony's way. “I knew that, no matter what the future may bring, our time here was going to be special. You can live an entire life of hardship, of ponies misunderstanding you or even treating you like you don't exist, but what matters is that you have one moment, one happy place that defines you—that you can always return to when the stress of existence gets too great...” She turned towards her companion and softly smiled. “...where you know that you'll never be alone.”
“Awwww...” Lyra smirked back. “Love you too, ya little fluff ball.”
“What comes next for you two?” Harmony inquired. “Any plans after your... vacation plans?”
“Well, life won't be the same for us now, no matter how we look at it.” Bon Bon fiddled with a half-empty drink before her on the table, her blue eyes falling briefly. “When we get back to Ponyville, there will be no more hiding. Lyra and I decided on that long ago. We will have to deal bravely with an entire town full of ponies who have one typical, age-old opinion on...” She bit her lip nervously. “...on interracial matrimony.”
“And we all know what that opinion is.” Lyra rolled her eyes. “Yeesh! It's as if unicorns and earth ponies are doomed to explode upon contact.”
“Your courage is inspiring,” Harmony said. “If it wasn't, I wouldn't have been motivated to hang around as long as I have. If I may speak with some Canterlotlian wisdom...”
“You may try,” Lyra said, squinting at Harmony wryly.
Harmony smiled. “Your Ponyvillean friends know you for the souls that you are. They know your gentleness, your kindness, and your generosity.” She lingered in mid-speech, her amber eyes dipping into the well of the past. She once again envisioned Ditzy holding her beloved child, a product of calamity and yet a bundle of joy all the same. “When you return home... when you return together, I have no doubt that they'll embrace you no differently. You'll be the same souls you've always been, only you'll be complete. That completeness is an inspiring thing, a spirit that can bridge so many intimidating abysses. You think that being accepted by your peers is impossible? Ms. Bon Bon, Ms. Lyra, you both have the power to move mountains. Everypony can make the impossible happen. All it takes is true commitment.”
Bon Bon bit her lip as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Oh, how I wish it was you who performed the ceremony and not that disgruntled captain...”
“Yeah, well...” Harmony chuckled and swirled her glass of water. “Her Majesty has invested me with many clerical duties, but none of them grant me the authority to do something so sweet and honorable. Still...” Her copper cheeks turned slightly rosy as she murmured in a girlish breath, “I never thought I would have been the maid-of-honor for anypony, even if it was last-second.” She gave a slightly embarassed giggle. “I'm not going to say that it was some friggin' dream come true...” She gazed at them with tender eyes. “But it was something close to it. I am honored, deeply honored.”
“Gah! Enough sap!” Lyra barked. “How about a toast? I hate to soggy up a beautiful, sunny day with misty eyes!” She reached her limb towards the cocktail in front of her. The unicorn's hoof hovered a bare centimeter before the glass, and yet she grunted and made strained expressions as if something was wrong. “Dang it... Come on... Why isn't this working?”
Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “Lyra, honey, we've talked about this.” She leaned over and pushed her companion's limb so that the crook of Lyra's hoof cradled the glass. “There, like that, darling.”
“Oh! But of course! Eheh...” Lyra let loose a drop of sweat. “Where I would be without you?”
“I shudder to think.”
“Ahem!” Lyra stood up and raised the cocktail drink high in the sunny beach air. “Here's to Harmony, pegasus extraordinaire! Never before was a deus ex machina so resplendently chivalrous and full of spunk!”
“Ugh, Lyra, honestly!” Bon Bon blushed for the umpteenth time before standing up and lifting her own glass. “Here's to a honeymoon that never ends, so long as our hearts are magical.” She smiled with a twinkle in her eye.
It was Harmony's turn. With a devilish smirk, she stood up and raised the glass in her copper grasp. “Here's to making the impossible happen.” She exhaled and gazed off into the salty air, as if looking for a rainbow. “It is ever a labor of love.”
The three mares clinked their glasses together. After a mutual guzzle, they exhaled as one... until Lyra's belch punctuated the scene. A giggle was shared between the three, a pleasant chorus that pierced the roar of the sapphiric blue waves crashing behind them.
Harmony placed her glass down and performed a regal curtsey. “Well, ladies, goodbye, farewell, and amen.”
“And all that jazz,” Lyra droned. She leaned against Bon Bon with a smile aimed Harmony's way. “Try to relax, heroine. This was our vacation you dropped in on. Unless stargazing was your way of loosening up, I think you could stand to kick your horseshoes off and wiggle your toes in the wet surf.”
“'Toes'... Right...” Harmony gave the unicorn a cock-eyed glance. “Got it.” She cleared her throat and smirked at Bon Bon. “Try not to let her get too carried away.”
“Heeheehee...” Bon Bon nuzzled her companion and responded to the time traveler, “You know I'll fail.”
“Heh...” Harmony spread her wings, spun about, and soared skyward. The two ponies waved as the copper pegasus banked over the beach, twirled through the golden rays of the sun, and flew towards the far end of the six story hotel. Once she was out of sight of her anchor and the earth pony's loved one, she accelerated into a faster climb, barreling skyward as fast as her feathers could take her. The world twitched before Harmony in a billowing curtain of emerald. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and calmly let the immutability of time take its course.
The world bled into a gigantic corridor of ghostly echoes as reverse-time pulled the mare back to the future. Her coat quivered from mane to tail as Harmony felt the layers of her soul-self peeling away one copper blanket at a time to expose her true, brown flesh beneath.
Then something happened that broke the meditative tranquility of the moment. At first, it sounded like a low, bass hum. Harmony briefly imagined that she had been bounced back to the shores of Dream Valley, for she was hearing the crashing of waves once more. However, the future scavenger never knew ocean waves for having a constant, thunderous vibration... something that shook her to the very core as if she was riding a wagon down an endless, bumpy slope of pebbles.
She couldn't help it. She fluttered her eyes open halfway between amber and scarlet. What she saw stole the breath from her incorporeal lungs. From beyond the refracting mirrors of numerous green hues, a dark copper shape was staring down at her. With heart-stopping pulses of awe, Harmony realized that this holy silhouette was moving towards her, marchng on gigantic, sinewy limbs that glistened with brass-horseshoes so immaculate that they could have been carved out of pure flame. The immaculate muscles of this being's frame flexed as it knelt down and tilted a dark, obscured face toward her. There was no discerning the shadow's facial features, for Harmony's startled mind suddenly become reacquainted with her infinitesimal mortality.
She almost died the moment the shadowy equine stretched a pair of copper wings out, majestically brimming with cogwheels, springs, and celestial spindles. The hum that filled the corridor morphed into a meticulous ticking sensation, as strong as a titanium heartbeat, perfect and immutable in its rhythmic precision. Its eyes flickered, highlighted by otherworldly, copper irises that spun like immaculate gearheads. The spirit's muzzle lowered, and when its lips parted, Harmony thought she might explode. The orphan of time was drowned in the sound of deafening bells, louder than all the world's clock towers combined, heavenly in grandiose thunder. Then, before Harmony could even bother to comprehend the spaces between the majestic figure's otherworldly heartbeats, the green corridor bled away, and the rhythmic noise between the fading bells softly coalesced into a flimsy fascimile of that radiant time-keeper. Rows upon rows of brass clocks ticked across the lengths of the subterranean laboratory, and a thirty-three year old Scootaloo sat breathlessly in the midst of them like a long-lost prophet to something that had come and gone, and still had yet to transpire.
“Ah, you're back, old friend. Fantastic timing.” Spike strolled nonchalantly past the alchemic circles the pegasus was sitting upon He shuffled a roll of parchment in his claws. “I've been working on my memoirs while waiting for you, and I must embarassingly admit that my literary expertise vastly pales in comparison to my scientific prowess. You're a well-read mare, Scootaloo. Tell me, is 'clamor' spelled with a 'b' or without it?”
“Uhm...” Scootaloo blinked numbly, the mechanically-winged shape still burned into her scarlets. She ran a hoof over her trembling face as a long mane of pink hair settled down from a magical wind, draping over her shoulders. The last pony took a deep breath, then awoke to respond, “It... it depends on how you're using it. Are you describing a sound or a physical action?”
“I'm writing a humorous anecdote depicting this one time that I and my past self played a whelpish game of hide-and-seek with one another. There's a moment where I describe myself as having stumbled up a steep incline of Canterlotlian rocks.”
“Then you use a 'b' followed by 'e' and 'r'. 'Clamber.' But don't overuse the friggin' word, Spike. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and when I say 'fish' I mean 'verbs.'”
“Ah. Much thanks, old friend.”
“Seriously, Spike. You're three hundred years old. Couldn't you have scavenged a thesaurus during one of your many, reverse-time expeditions?”
Her large, draconian companion smiled with iron jaws. “And relinquish myself of the ease of depending on such a gracious editor as yourself?”
“You're writing for a dead world, Spike. You could pick phrases out of a hat and slap them together into a tome that's large enough to fill the vault of Whinniepeg, and still—by sheer existence—it would become a masterpiece.”
“Your nihilism, as always, has a sprinkle of charm to it, dear child. I do not know about you, but I intend to leave more for this world than a restored sun and moon as a testimony to our existence.”
“Yeah...” Scootaloo exhaled and slicked her long, pink hair back with a shaking hoof. “More power to ya.”
Spike glanced narrowly at her sudden shivers. His emerald eyeslits glistened. “Scootaloo, did you have a... traumatizing experience?”
“Oh. H-Hardly, Spike.” She smiled softly at him, her scarlets sparkling. “Those two were undoubtedly the sweetest ponies I've ever had the grace of spending time with. Bon Bon is a complete angel, and Lyra is an absolute hoot... even if she says things from time to time that'd even make Pinkie Pie's head spin.”
“And were you successful in hunting down the constellations?”
“Absolutely!” Scootaloo giggled and pointed towards a wide banner hanging across the far wall of the subterranean laboratory, obscuring the burnt diagram of the Cataclysmic time-line behind it. A gigantic map of the Equestrian night sky had been built in several pieces, consisting of conjoined sheets of journal papers taped together to form a grand mosaic illuminated by purple manalight. A large chunk was still missing along the lower right side of the rough diorama, but the overall design depicted a thick cluster of stars in the center, drowning out the rest of the specks. “It was just like with Braeburn at Appleloosa and Dr. Whooves in Stalliongrad. I touched down inconspicuously—well, more or less—and swiftly got acquainted. I lent a hoof as a good 'Canterlotlian Clerk' and, in return, I was granted a perfect view of the night sky. Appleloosa gave me a northeast glance at the constellations while Stalliongrad filled in the southwest cluster. Now, thanks to Lyra and Bon Bon, I've got another map to go pick up, and it should shed some light on the night sky as seen from the eastern shoreline Dream Valley, twenty-five years ago.”
“Astonishing!” Spike remarked, his green headcrests perking curiously. “Dream Valley! Did you chance upon any—”
“I do not want to talk about seaponies.” Scootaloo grunted. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Very well. My memoirs have enough tangents as it is.”
“Just how much of your writing involves me, Spike?” Scootaloo asked with a curious eyebrow raised.
He smirked at her, coughing up some green fumes. “Rest assured, old friend, there are quite a few chapters dedicated to the nature of your chronological exploits.”
“Considering you're over three centuries old, I don't know if that should make me feel flattered or awkward.”
“Let us venture to say a daring hybrid of both, for posterity's sake.”
“Yeah, sure, why not.” Scootaloo said. A pale sheen swiftly returned to her brown features as she trembled once more, gulped, and murmured, “Uhm... Spike?”
“Hmmm?” He stood in the corner, scribbling along a scroll of parchment.
“What were Princess Entropa's wings made out of?”
“Ohhhh...” His nostrils flared in thought. “That is a question lost to the conjecture of ages, dear child. Not even Starswirl the Bearded lived long enough to write down that glorious bit of information. I suppose the only souls capable of regaling history on such a topic would have been Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and you've had access to their journals, not me.”
“I...” Scootaloo bit her lip. “I think I may have j-just seen her...”
Spike glanced up from his parchment.
“Just now...” the last pony emphasized. “While coming back from my anchorage to Bon Bon. I think she appeared before me.”
“Hmmm...” Spike uttered, “I was wondering when this would happen.”
Scootaloo's jaw dropped. “Spike...” She trotted towards him, gazing up with bright scarlet eyes. “You anticipated that she would show up?”
“Scootaloo, Princess Entropa hasn't 'shown up' to anypony. Unlike her other Alicorn sisters, she is more than a purveyor of her element; she is the essence of it. Time is immutable because Princess Entropa is immutable, for Princess Entropa is the very fabric of time itself.”
“But... I saw her.” Scootaloo gulped and pointed ceilingward as if gesturing towards an invisible cloud of “time-ness” above the two experimenters. “I had never seen her before. I could have sworn that she was looking at me.”
“And perhaps she was looking at you, child.”
“But I thought you just said—?”
“Has it occurred to you that she's always been watching you? Observing you?” Spike relaxed on his haunches and lowered his purple-scaled snout so that it was level with the last pony. “Meanwhile, it's been you who have gotten more and more acclimated with the substance of time and reverse-time.”
“She's seen what I've been doing this whole time?” Scootaloo blinked. “She's observed these last four months that we've been performing this crazy crusade for the Sun and Moon?”
Spike let loose a deep, bass chuckle. Fumes of green smoke filtered up to the ceiling as he coughed, steadied the violet pendant hanging around his neck, and then gently stroked the pony's pink mane. “Dear friend, Princess Entropa sees all. That is how it's always been and how it always will be. You once asked me why it is that the Goddess of Time never interceded on behalf of the Cataclysm. The truth is as simple as it is somber. She knew it would happen the very moment she was foaled into this universe, even before the very Sundering of Consus. She was powerless to do anything about it, for to break the immutability of her essence would eliminate her very power over it. It is something that is hard for mortals like you or I to wrap our fragile minds around, but the easiest way to think of it is that Entropa is the eternal observer of the universe.”
“An observer...” Scootaloo murmured. Her nostrils flared as she stared defeatedly into a far corner of the underground laboratory. “...just like her avatar.”
Spike smiled gently. “Yes. Just like her avatar.” He stood up straight on iron limbs. “And in speaking of her avatar, it can only be natural that she is curious of this blissful moment in a not-so-blissful history, when a mere mortal would happen to be donning her skin—her very coat—to travel back and forth on the streams of her glorious essence.”
“Is she...” Scootaloo fidgeted. “Is she jealous of me, Spike?”
“That depends, child. How can one be jealous if one lacks the ability—or will—to possess an ego?” He chuckled, his nostrils fuming with green smoke. “I would say she's just curious. That's all.”
Scootaloo sighed. “You're right, as always, Spike.”
“I am neither right nor wrong, old friend. I am merely educated. And now you are too.” He leaned his head to the side with an iron smirk. “Does this in any way affect our ever-daunting mission at hand?”
“Heh heh heh... 'hand'...”
“What is so amusing, all of the sudden?”
Scootaloo waved a hoof. “Nothing. Just thinking about Lyra is all...”
“You sound like you've had a rather cheerful time jump for once. Nevertheless, it had to have been a tiresome experience. Perhaps some rest is in order.”
“Maybe there'll be a chance for that later, Spike. Not all of us have the entire fabric of time to sit back and relax.” Scootaloo hopped over to a laboratory table and briskly strapped a leather saddlebag over her body. “But right now, I must be going.”
“And where to, in such a hurry?”
“Dream Valley.” She glanced up and sassily tossed her pink mane behind her brown neck. “I've got the last bit of the sky to pick up.”
A brown hoof ran an invisible circle across a map before circling a tiny splotch of land that bordered the southeastern seaboard of Equestria. Scootaloo raised the pull-down map back to the roof of the Harmony, revealing a grotesque horizon of black sludge beyond the cockpit windows. A veritable ocean of obsidian sediment loomed immensely into view beyond the bow of the aircraft. Scootaloo grasped her hooves around the levers affixed beside her cockpit and steered her zeppelin down towards the last remaining length of gray desolation before the soupy blackness took over.
A cluster of shattered beachfront buildings came into focus as the Harmony lowerd to sea-level. Scootaloo slowed her descent, piloted the vehicle towards a stalk of sundered concrete support pillars, and anchored the craft to them through the use of two steam-powered claws.
Gathering her belongings, the last pony exited the aircraft and plodded her lonesome way towards the largest of the hotel structures... or at least what remained of them. Her target had collapsed in on itself, the upper five stories having caved-in on the bottom floor in a chaotic fashion.
“Whew.” Scootaloo whistled. “Good thing I put the crap in the hotel's foundation.” She smirked to herself, navigated a cluster of dilapidated, overturned carriages, and slid through the sundered front entrance of the crumbling structure.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Nnnngh!”
Scootaloo pried a large metal bar into the floor of the rubble-strewn hotel lobby behind a wooden desk. A gigantic concrete tile panel—one of several dozen more like it—peeled free with a groan. The last pony wheezed with the effort of removing the obstruction, cursing her Entropan double for not anticipating the degree to which her physical body would have to strain in uncovering the capsule left behind for her future self.
“Hnnnkkkt-Agh! There...”
She exhaled and slumped against the wall with relief as the panel finally slid free. She panted, panted, and giggled pathetically to herself. Dropping the metal bar to the lobby floor with a clang, she knelt down on her haunches and reached into the dusty crawlspace beneath the concrete paneling. Scootaloo licked her lips with the effort, blindly hoofing around for a spell. Finally, she felt what she had come there for.
With a victorious grin, she pulled her limb back up, cradling a long, ivory seashell. The natural object was almost cylindrical, and its alabaster surface had been tainted with the mildew and soot of ages. Gnawing on her bottom lip, Scootaloo slid her hoof up along the stalk of the thing until she found a crease. She twisted at this spot, and the makeshift container snapped open. Pulling the “lid” off, Scootaloo turned the entire thing over and gave it a shake, her heartbeat briefly stopping.
Then, in immaculate grace, a rolled-up sheet of parchment effortlessly fell out of the elongated seashell. It had been perfectly perserved throughout the decades. Scootaloo exhaled with joy as she unrolled the scroll and held before her goggles an elaborate sketch of the Equestrian night sky as seen from the southeast continental seaboard.
“Harmony, you adorkable astronomer, you,” Scootaloo murmured to herself. With a soft grin, she rolled the parchment back up, sealed it inside the seashell, and stuck the whole thing inside her saddlebag. “Absolutely friggin' textbook.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo layed the entire seashell on a shelf between two clusters of books. With gentle hooves, she closed the locker doors shut and spoke into the rune, “W'nyhhm.” The container of scavenged literature locked shut as the moonrock glowed in a purple haze.
Sliding her copper goggles up to her pink bangs, Scootaloo turned and walked across the cabin of the Harmony. She approached her workbench, above which many random objects of miscellany had been clustered together over the past several weeks. Humming to herself, she bore a soft smile as she reached into her bag and produced several new items, adding them to the assortment of timeless mementos. She placed a cocktail glass atop a shelf, along with a hotel lobby bell, a pile of miraculously preserved sand dollars, and—last but not least—something she had pilfered from the novelty shop at Ponyville, but only now had a reason for putting up somewhere to be displayed. It was a golden instrument, a lyre with frayed strings, and she hung it daintily above the many tiny objects extracted from the beachfront ruins.
Taking a deep breath, the last pony stood back and stared across the wall of apocalyptic memorabilia. Suntrot's foalish sketch hung on the wall above a green beret and the folded arcanium weave of an entire Royal Grand Biv outfit, complete with ruby goggles and rusted cloak-blades. To the side of this was a cowboy hat, an apple bucket, a railroad track spike, and an elaborate buffalo headdress. Finally, next to this display was an array of military medals, a brick taken from the Great Wall of Stalliongrad, a golden pocketwatch, and a slender object that vaguely resembled a complicated screwdriver.
Scootaloo's smile was a placid yet bittersweet thing. She leaned her head to the side and ran a hoof through the pink lengths of her mane. Her eyes twitched upon a sheen of light in the amber glow of the ship's boiler. She glanced to the side. From a meter away, she saw her reflection staring back at her across a perfectly reflective shard of Cloudsdalian glass hanging above the workbench. The scarlet eyes that looked back at her suddenly seemed less jaded, as if a touch of violet had come back to refill them. She felt a sore pit in her throat, but for some reason she didn't detest this sensation.
Turning about, Scootaloo almost hopped back into her cockpit, when her gaze was once again stolen by the great, inky blackness lingering beyond the anchored vessel's windshield. Her eyes locked onto the spot where the gray desolation met the deathly sea of opaque sludge. The pegasus' wings twitched involuntarily, and her nostrils flared for the few lingering seconds it took to vainly fight her next impulse.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Petrified mounds of sand wafted up like so much ash and soot as the lone pony plodded towards the edge of the shore. Scootaloo walked past the beachfront shells of crumbling hotels, approaching the great, dead ocean. She glanced to her right and saw a collapsed pile of wood, the ruins of a patio replete with wooden tables. She looked to her left and saw the remains of a sea vessel stranded in two sundered halves, its rusted contents spilling out onto barren rock and shoals.
Staring down, Scootaloo found her hooves navigating a sudden minefield of brittle bones. Several mammalian skeletons were lying on either side of her, their equine skulls attached to bulbous ribcages affixed with cartilaginous flippers. Curtains of white dust billowed over their rickety spines and hollow tails. The bones doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in thickness until Scootaloo could walk no further without practically tripping over the impenetrable carpet of corpses. Before her—bordering the edge of the ocean like a powdery layer of residue—was a solid line of calcified death that stretched north and south as far as the seaboard horizon could be seen.
Beyond the line of ash-white refuse, an even filthier sight stretched eastward into infinity. What was once a vast blue ocean of crashing waves had become a frozen soup of jet-black sludge. If there was any water left to the seas of Equestria, one could not tell from a distant glance. Something magically horrid in the Cataclysm had long ago dredged the dead matter of all the world's oceans up to the surface, so that a blanket of molasses-thick, necrotic ooze lingered in perpetual viscosity. The deathly black gunk was randomly dotted here and there with a throng of bones, a bloated corpse, or a jagged fossil, as hundreds upon thousands of sea creatures found their final resting places on the top of the blighted ocean.
The twilight bathed this deathscape in a gray funeral light, christening the lengths of it with white snow. Scootaloo had never said it out loud, nor had she the courage to write it in her journals, but she sometimes found a gentle beauty in the endless desolation that encompassed her life, or graced her vision like this. Just like Spike's memoirs, the Wasteland had little to no audience, so it all might as well have been a masterpiece. Perhaps, though, it was just that the thirty-three year old mare had come to a point when all that was horrible became all that was beautiful, in that it had taken her two and a half decades to realize that they were both the very same thing.
Taking a deep breath, Scootaloo glanced aside and found a rickety wooden beach chair that—for better or for worse—had survived the flames of the Cataclysm. Marching over several brittle skeletons, she lowered herself in the seat, sat in the middle of a sea of corpses, and gazed out onto the dead, black horizon of Dream Valley. A warm twinkle lit her scarlet eyes, and she helplessly hummed a bubbly tune that felt just as fresh as yesterday.
There was a sudden breeze, something that chilled the skeletons—and the last pony—to the bone. She hissed through clenched teeth as her pink mane billowed, reminding her of what she had lost and what she had reclaimed in such a long time... and yet in such a short time. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Then, for a brief moment, she felt as though she heard the crashing of waves.
So she opened her violet orbs, trembling, as a grand white mist of all of sunken Cloudsdale's collective waterfalls wafted up towards her frail, orange figure. Nine year old Scootaloo stood upon the northwest edge of the pit. The inner ruins of the collapsed city looked far more intimidating than the paltry map she had sketched earlier of the great, looming crater. Her stubby, flightless wings writhed nervously as she gawked at the great depths stretching beneath her, bathed with trickling water from so many surrounding clusters of crumbling sky marble structures.
“Okay...” She gulped and panted, her legs wobbling under the weight of her canvas saddlebags full of haphazard tools and scavenging equipment. A jar of half-decayed daisies rattled on either side of her slender, shaved neck. “I can do this. I can do this. Just think, what would Dashie do?”
A roar of thunder filled the crimson air of the wasteland horizon. Scootaloo shuddered, biting her lip and glancing over her shoulder as a distant explosion announced another landing moonrock beyond the mounds of desolation behind her. She suddenly winced and hissed angrily at herself.
“Idiot, Rainbow Dash would fly. I gotta keep it together, gotta do this like I planned.”
The foal craned her neck and looked directly below her. Her violet eyes followed the sloping path into the pit that she had mapped just days before. From far away, the sloping incline appeared navigable. Standing upon the precipice of the deathly slide, however, Scootaloo couldn't comprehend how any pony—no matter what age—would be able to trot down the thing and reach the bottom of the inner ruins in one piece.
“Yeah... Y-Yeah...” Scootaloo gulped and fiddled her hooves towards her rightmost saddlebag. “This totally calls for the rope.”
She wished she hadn't needed to rely on the climbing gear so soon, but the little filly saw no other way to safely descend this immedate bank of steepness. Scootaloo didn't want to imagine how thoughtless and stupid an act it would have been to end herself in a pathetic tumble then and there. For two and a half weeks, she had been her only friend. It was only natural that she looked after herself with no less dedication.
Clamping a metal stake into the stony earth, Scootaloo tested the tightness of the rope tied to it. Satisfied, she fastened the other end of the cord to her petite waist and let loose some slack. Trotting backwards, the little filly nervously—but gradually—crept her way down the steep slope. Flakes of ash and tiny pebbles flew loose from her shuffling hooves, falling toward the gaping chasm below where so many jagged chunks of ivory sky marble lingered like a bed of spikes.
Scootaloo gulped, stifling a whimper as she gave the rope more slack and slid down the craggy path. Her violet eyes twitched to see an even platform of segmented rock lingering at least twenty meters below her clambering hooves, flanked by trickling streams of cascading water. The foal murmured, praying breathlessly that the rope's length would be enough to let her touch down on the brief splotch of even ground. If she could just make it to that outcropping below, Scootaloo figured, the rest of the descent would be smooth sailing, as she would follow the cyclonic ledge down towards the thick of the inner ruins where she could look for more tools and—more importantly—survivors.
Just then, there was an intense rumbling. The Wastelands above shook with a sudden tremor. The rope holding Scootaloo jostled, and she found herself dangling wildly. The foal let loose a shriek and clung onto the cord for dear life, her wings twitching instinctually as her body swung from side to side—dipping in and out of a bone-chilling curtain of water that stole the gasping breath out from her lungs. Finally, Scootaloo shot her hooves out and braced herself against a vertical stretch of sundered rock. Soaked and shivering, she glanced up through the falling blanket of snow to see a bright red hue bleeding through the gray circle of twilight overhead.
“Oh, Celestia, save me...”
A moonrock was sailing towards the edge of the pit. The air burned under a murderous cacophony of searing hot sparks. Tongues of flame erupted all along the edges of the rumbling crater of Cloudsdale above her. Soon, a bright orange blaze caught the rope and snaked down the length of it towards where the vulnerable pegasus dangled.
“Oh crap oh crap oh crap...!”
Scootaloo squeaked in desperation and fumbled with dull hooves to untie the rope from her waist. The rumbling intensified. The waterfalls around her started to boil. The flame crept its way down the rope towards her, filling her nostrils with smoke and ash.
Panting, Scootaloo kicked against the wall, spun like a dizzy spider, and freed her limbs to reach into her saddlebags. She produced a sharp metal shiv and swung it against the rope holding her above. A few threads snapped loose, but she still dangled under the falling curtain of flames. The world flashed in bright plasma, blinding her. She screamed and swung again. The last few filaments stretched thin, then snapped, and she fell like a dead stone towards the graveyard of Cloudsdale at the bottom of the abyss.
“Aaaaaah—Nnngh!” She jolted as her body ragdolled off a ledge of rock and then landed limply over the length of an ivory pillar embedded into the crater wall. Scootaloo winced, attempting to pull herself up as a gigantic wave of dust sailed down at her. She realized without looking that the moonrock had finally slammed into the edge of the crater's mouth. A gigantic shadow fell over her as several chunks of burning earth and lunar sediment cascaded like a deluge of lava towards her figure.
In a breathless lunge, she dove from the pillar, fell, kicked off a wall of rock, pinballed off a water-soaked stretch of stone, and tumbled down a long slope of powdery ivory. Not taking the time to check for broken limbs, the filly squealed and broke into a heart-stopping canter, attempting to outrun the waves of falling, burning moonrock. She scampered towards a dark hovel beneath a platform of collapsed sky marble. Halfway through the sprint, her saddlebags got caught on the spoke of a crumpled chariot. She tugged and tugged and fought back the sobs before ultimately ripping the canvas material in half. Desperately, she abandoned a good chunk of her precious supplies in the effort it took to dive out of the way of the falling debris, sliding fitfully to a stop beneath the flimsy shelter of ivory marble.
Scootaloo almost lost all sense of hearing right then and there. Broken off chunks of lunar material showered the heart of the gaping pit. The world rolled with deep bass thunder, as if the Cataclysm was happening all over again. The filly shrieked into the madness, covering her bleeding ears and fighting for a single breath as a solid wall of smoke and dust encompassed her. She wasn't sure how she did, but she managed to climb out from beneath the claustrophobic space amidst all of the chaos, so that she found herself limping pathetically down a grand, subterranean expanse of gray rubble and slade beneath the vibrating roof of Cloudsdale's inner ruins.
The little pony lost track of time. The last few minutes were just as mysterious as length of fractured stone she dizzily covered. At some point during her shuffling sojourn, she awoke to see her hooves reaching the edge of a vicious gap in the lower ruins. She blinked, glancing around herself, spotting a translucent haze of settling dust as the thunder from the impacting moonrock finally, finally settled. Scootaloo regained her hearing in time to bear witness to a great groaning ambiance as all of Cloudsdale settled and shifted weightedly above her.
The foal's world had become a grand three-dimensional maze of labyrinthine rock croppings and steep, vertical wreckage. The inner ruins of Cloudsdale looked nothing like the relatively pristine buildings she had explored on the surface of the burning world. She was now submerged helplessly inside the heart of a grand intestinal mesh of broken ivory and watersoaked sky marble, and every direction looked just as claustrophobically intimidating as any other.
As the lucidity returned completely to the sweating pegasus, she spun with an impenetrable hyperventilation, her violet eyes widening as she looked all over for a sign of where she had numbly trotted from. Every gaping corridor that wasn't blanketed in flaming dust was just as gray and foreboding as the several dozens of identical passageways flanking it. Regardless, Scootaloo galloped down the closest tunnel she could find, emerging barely ten seconds later to find a giant gaping chamber of wreckage just as desolate as the one she had left. Her breaths reached a fever pitch as she ran down corridor after corridor, finding the inner ruins of Cloudsdale the same twilight-pierced landscape of crumbled nonsense that any other glance could possibly afford her.
“No...” She whimpered, spinning around, her lip quivering as she fought the urge to cry. “No no no... Oh Celestia, please...” Her eyes glistened as she searched in vain for the remains of her saddlebags, for all of the foodstuffs that she had spent a solid week collecting, for all of the many priceless tools that were now lost to her, as was her hope. “Nnnngh... Help me...” She murmured, then spat, then shrieked. “Somepony, help me!”
Scootaloo scrambled up to a nearby wall and clawed at it with her hooves. Dust and ash fell over her face and shaved mane, blanketing her. She shook it off, panting desperately, then bit her lip as she took several steps back and faced a wide stretch of even rock. She squatted her body down and flexed her stubby wings, all the while locking her eyes nonstop on the gray splotch of wreckage-filled “sky” above. After a deep breath, she broke into a running start, galloped, sped, and leaped as high as she could.
“Nnnngh!” She strained and strained, barely summoning the dexterity to flex her tiny appendages a few pitiful centimeters. After a weightless eternity, Scootaloo came back down twice as hard as she had lifted off. “Ooof!” She landed roughly against a stretch of rock. Her eyes welled with tears as she dragged herself back up, flexed her muscles, and jumped up and down repeatedly, beating her useless wings against the snow-laden air. “Come on! Come on!”
The wheels in her head were turning painfully. She knew that it was an impossible climb—gear or no gear—to get back up to the top of the crater. She also knew that when the moonrock landed, it obliterated the one single slope of navigable rock that her legs could ever have hoped to ascend. Now she was nothing more than a lonely, flightless pegasus with no resources at her disposal. She was a lonely, flightless pegasus with no resources at the bottom of an inescapable pit.
“Please! Somepony! Can anypony hear me?!” Scootaloo shrieked and sobbed, limping through puddles of Clousdalian water, rippling her reflection into a hundred quivering bands. “Help me! Please... Please... I need... I-I need...” She fell down to her haunches, surrounded in an abyss devoid of color, bathed in dust and tears. The water in the puddle settled, revealing to herself a sobbing face stained with fresh blood and bruises. The expression behind the layers of pain was helpless, weak, and pitifully stupid.
“Please... I need you, Dashie...” She choked and dug her snout into the cold puddles in a desperate attempt to mask her tears as her whimpering voice echoed across the crumbling, groaning expanse entombing her. “Pl-Please... Dashie... help me... What should I do? Wh-What sh-should I do now?”
Born unto a bitter new helplessness, she hid her heaving face in a pair of water-soaked forelimbs, repeating her mournful words to the nothingness around her.
“I said, can you hear me?!”
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow above her blinking scarlets. She leaned her face towards the port-side spout that broadcasted her booming voice across the Wasteland clouds, all the while staring intently beyond the Harmony's windshield at the familiar sight of a dark-green airship hovering limply under an array of six bulbous balloons. What was odd about it was that the side door to the vessel had been yawning open long before the last pony had even approached it.
“Bruce, are you there? I've been calling you for—like—five minutes!”
There was no response. The airship drifted coldly, limply, like a giant unlit cigar in the frothing gray clouds of forever.
Scootaloo suddenly felt her heart beating at a faster rate. The veteran scavenger inside her let loose a retaliatory grunt.
“Friggin' furball. Like I should give a crap.”
Nevertheless, the next breath that came out of her was a shuddering thing. With a defeated groan, she cut the communicator off. The sparks died in the tesla coils crowning the device as she bounded across the interior of her cabin with a speed that even surprised herself. She hoisted a fresh satchel of scavenged items from the workbench, along with an armored saddlebag, and finally her copper rifle.
With gliding grace, Scootaloo clamped her hooves onto the winding staircase and slid down the railings so that she descended briskly into the hangar bay of her airship below.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Scootaloo's four hooves landed in the doorway of Bruce's gondola. As soon as she touched the bulkhead, there was a rattling noise. Blinking, Scootaloo glanced down and groaned to see that her forward right horseshoe had fallen halfway loose.
“Ughh... Fourth frickin' time this week.” She grumbled to herself, slightly surprised that she could tell the difference in present time and past time anymore. She dashed the thought away as she knelt and fiddled with the horseshoe, tightening it against the edge of her weathered hoof while muttering, “I need some new nails or something. These aren't making the cut. Hey Brucie!” She shouted with a wry smirk as she marched firmly into the smoke-hazed interior of the rodent barterer's vessel. “What are the chances that you have the ingredients for a dang good shoe that only an extinct race of equines could benefit from—?” She froze in her tracks, her pink mane hair settling like a tattered flag around her blinking face.
Bruce was staring back at her, his timid expression trembling under a pair of green goggles. His legs and furry tail dangled, for he was being held a good meter off the floor of the cabin, gripped in the sharp talons of two griffons who were each five times his size. The twin bounty hunters in high altitude flight gear gazed over their shoulders, their vicious interrogation having been cut short by the sudden appearance of the last pony. The avian mercenaries were not amused.
“What are you looking at, glue stick?!”
“This is Golden Gang business. So wipe that stupid look off your face and wait your turn.”
“My... turn...?” Scootaloo murmured, blinking numbly.
“Eheheheh...” The flying squirrel sputtered and coughed under an iron-tight talon encircling his neck. With tiny paws, he attempted to pull himself up so that his vocal cords could properly sound forth, “Do not be concerned over friend pony. She is merely business associate. Ve are both traders of scavenged goods in skies. Birds of feather, da?”
One griffon slammed him hard against a metal bulkhead. “Shut up unless spoken to first!”
“H-Hey!” Scootaloo growled. She made to trot forward, only to be distracted by a loud, sky-splitting roar emanating from beyond the open door to Bruce's cabin behind her.
“I'm gonna ask you one more time, peanut-brain!” The mercenary sneered through her beak into Bruce's face, fogging his goggles up. “Have you or have you not traded merchandise with any reptilian clients over the past five stormfronts?!”
“Snkkkt...” Bruce hissed and put on his bravest smile, sweating profusely in her vice grip. “Nyet! Brucie knows no reptiles! Is inborn squirrel instinct not to trust merchant vith scales! Perhaps griffons confuse Brucie vith furry creature of less intelligence, like raccoon or aardvark!”
“Intelligence?!” The griffon glared at him while her companion chuckled, her helmet rattling. “You fly around in a giant tobacco bong filled with worthless junk from the Equestrian ruins and you call yourself intelligent?!”
“Brucie never said he vas head of St. Petersbrittle Science Academy...”
“How do I know you're not a naga in disguise, trying to fool us?”
The roar outside the airship became deafening. A mute Scootaloo spun about to look. Emerging from the clouds, there rose a large, angular hovercraft of glinting platinum metal and serrated bulkheads. Two pivoting wings fitted with quad VTOL engines spat a deathly heat that evaporated the surrounding mists. Several large missiles and incendiary rockets glistened in the gray twilight as the Golden Gang's aircraft—a flying weapon nearly four times the size of the Harmony—hovered dangerously between Brucie's and Scootaloo's zeppelins.
Suddenly, a flurry of gray feathers occupied the last pony's view, followed by a loud clank of talons against metal. Scootaloo couldn't help it; she stumbled back with a start. In response, she received a hideous glare. With a rattling of fingerbone trophies about her neck, Stowe aimed her scarred left eye in the last pony's direction, snorted with indignance, and hissed.
“Out of my way, blank flank.” Stowe purposefully bumped into Scootaloo's shoulder, shoving her aside. She carried her icy grimace across the cluttered domain of Bruce's aircraft until she was staring down her two inferiors. “What in the tap-dancing crap is taking you two feather dusters so flippin' long?! We've got loads of sky to cover and you're wasting all the boss' time on this flea-bag!”
“I can't understand a single word this moron is saying!” One of the griffons shook a gasping Bruce in her grasp like he was an offensive rag doll. “It's like interrogating a shrunken Dirigible Dog with marbles in its mouth!”
“At least Brucie smells better, da?”
“Sh-Shut up!” The griffon squealed, then glanced pleadingly up at Stowe. “Can we just say that we found contraband, strip the ship, and eat the little rat for breakfast tomorrow?”
“You talk like any of this is up to me.” Stowe grunted. “The two of you should know better. Just find out what the stupid turd has to tell us before we get—”
At that moment, a radio fitted to Stowe's jacketed shoulder squawked forth in a familiar voice: “Scrkkk—Hey, Stowe. Have the girls gotten any info yet?”
“Nnngh!” Stowe rolled her one good eye and grumbled. “When it rains, it pisses.” She flung a talon to the radio on her shoulder and aimed her grimacing beak towards it. “Gilda, it's a friggin' squirrel. This is a godawful waste of our time. I told you that before we even—”
“Scrkk—You know, the time that you spend whining like a little brat, you could instead be earning your keep. Either get your tail feathers in gear or get a bullet to the head, because I'm sick of hearing excuses. You copy?”
Stowe weathered an angry shiver running up her spine. After a deep breath, she finally muttered, “I copy, Gilda. Stowe out.” She flicked the radio off and practically spat at the two lackeys. “Well?! Will you get a frickin' move on?!”
“He still hasn't told us if he's dealt with any naga!” the griffon clutching Bruce timidly remarked.
“Or if he's a naga himself!” the other added.
“You want to find out if he's a shape-shifter or not?!” Stowe shoved one griffon away and marched straight up to the squirrel. “Here! I'll show you how it's done, you brainless egg-huffers!” With that uttered, she flung a talon across Bruce's shoulder. With a slice of glinting claws, she made three shallow cuts across the twitching rodent's coat.
“Gaaah!” Bruce hissed.
Scootaloo winced.
Fuming, Stowe spun about and raised a talon in front of her two companion's gawking faces. Copper-red liquid dribbled down her gnarled wrist. “There! Ya see?! Squirrel blood! Now let's jet!”
The two griffons nodded shakily. They dropped Bruce to the floor like a grunting sack of flour and scurried swiftly past Scootaloo and out of the aircraft. The flying squirrel moaned and clutched his shoulder with a quivering paw while Stowe stepped dispassionately over him.
“I carry this whole friggin' team. I swear, Griffonese grit is all but dead.” Stowe gazed off into a far corner of the cluttered gondola. She absentmindedly raised the talons to her beak and licked each drop of blood one at a time with a black tongue. She paused, one talon in her mouth, as her scarred face tilted the last pony's way. “And you.” An errant gray feather or two fell from her ruffled neck as she leered above the equine figure. “Have you seen any reptiles in the Wasteland lately? Like I should give a crap over what flimsy excuse for 'truth' a glue stick like you has to spit forth...”
“Can't say that I have.” Scootaloo glared back at her. “Though I'm seeing a real snake in the grass right now.”
“Heh. Cute.” Stowe's necklace of fingerbones rattled as she pointed a blood-stained talon in between the last pony's scarlet eyes. “I should gut you for your friggin' lip, ya walking sack of manure. If I had my way, I'd stab every single one of your clopping brothers and sisters, if only the Cataclysm didn't take the fun out of it by doing the job for me. After all, it's because of you frickin' prancing clopjobs that Griffon Mount today is an abandoned tomb full of rock spiders. Whatever crazy magic you destroyed the world with, it's reduced my species to a gaggle of feather-brained morons who can't even squeeze info out of a talking squirrel!”
“Is this the part where I'm supposed to feel intimidated?” Scootaloo droned, her scarlets burning back at the avian bounty hunter. “Because all I feel is pity.”
Stowe's beak ground over her mouth. Her scarred eye quivered as she hissed, “You know what you are? You are Gilda's pet. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm surprised she doesn't just build a nest around you and regurgitate down your throat like the infant you are. When the day comes that some horrible bullet or blade whacks our captain off in the middle of a bounty hunt, I'll be given the reins of the Talon, and our first order of business will be to finish what the Cataclysm started.”
Scootaloo leaned back, her eyes thin. “Well, when that day comes, you'd better bring a bigger ship. Or did you forget that I once took down Gilliam's battlecruiser before breakfast?”
The gray griffon glanced at her sideways like a confused eagle. Her beak clicked on the edge of uttering a garbled sentence, as she mentally digested what was once an unfounded rumor into an impossible truth befitting the endangered specimen standing before her. All the menace had been drained from the griffon's figure, and she snarled in a frustration that mirrored her two inferior companions. Following their paths, she marched towards the entrance of Bruce's craft and spread her wings to take flight.
“Hey, Stowe!” Scootaloo called after her. She twirled around, her pink mane billowing from the Wasteland air wafting inside. “Aren't you forgetting something?”
Stowe spun a glance over her shoulder and grunted. “What?”
Scootaloo stared icily at her. She raised her left hoof, rotated the horseshoe against a nearby metal shelf, and produced a copper blade. Unflinching, she brought the sharp object to her right shoulder and sliced a shallow cut against her exposed brown coat. Blood dripped to the surface, glistening and crimson. She lowered her horseshoe and pivoted so that the bodily juices occupied the forefront of the disgruntled griffon's vision.
“Hmmph.” Stowe merely grunted at Scootaloo's show. “Please, blank flank, how could you possibly be a more despicable creature than you are right now?” With that, she took off and soared like an angry gray comet towards the Talon and its roaring VTOL engines.
Scootaloo exhaled long and hard. Hissing with a belated wince, she ignored the fresh wound in her shoulder and trotted over to Bruce's side. She helped him up with a gentle hoof. “It's okay. I think they're gone now.”
“Brucie vould be much more relieved if Golden Gang never came to begin vith.” The squirrel leaned back against his cockpit, clutching the three claw marks in his shoulder and wincing. “Dey rattle Brucie more and more with each visit. Is only matter of time before Brucie no longer has silver strips to pay dem off or pony friend to scare dem off.”
“Please, believe me, I only wish I could scare them off.” Scootaloo spoke. She glanced every which way, and finally noticed a white canister resting on the edge of Bruce's dashboard. She reached for it and opened the thing up. Sure enough, it was full of first aid tools. “Stowe's right about one thing. Gilda, for all of her annoyances, is a crutch. I'm both blessed and cursed to have ever made friends with her. As soon as she's gone, I'll have a whole bunch of nasty, slighted griffons to contend with.” With veteran precision, she unrolled some gauze and began bandaging up the flying squirrel's shoulder. The petite sky merchant didn't bother to protest. “Dirigible Dogs and Harpy Pirates are all fun and games, but having the Golden Gang chasing your tail?” She weathered a deep sigh. “No matter how many ways I try to shake the truth, time is ultimately not on my side.”
“Vell, dere is some good news.” Bruce winced under her administrations, but nevertheless managed a sheepish, incisor-fitted grin. “Neither Bruce nor friend pony is reptile, da?”
Scootaloo's lips curved. She broke into a grin, and that grin spilled forth a girlish giggle.
Bruce chuckled merrily as well. He next coughed and sputtered, which was evidently just the reminder he needed to reach into his jacket and pull out a fresh cigar. While Scootaloo finished fitting the bandage to his talon-wound, he lit the cancer stick and exhaled a puff of smoke into the perpetually hazy gondola. “Hrmmm... Brucie is no liar, not to pony nor to griffon. Never have I seen dis 'naga'. Perhaps Golden Gang is foolish to pick up bounty over imaginary creature?”
“Nothing imaginary about nagas, Bruce.” Scootaloo stood back from her companion. She straightened her long mane and murmured towards the shadows of the zeppelin. “They're a race of bipedal lizards that hail from the south, beyond the Bay of Nebula—er—what once was the Bay of Nebula, that is. It's since dried up and become a gigantic salt flat. As a result, the race of reptiles who depended on the Bay spread out throughout the Wasteland, doing menial tasks in order to be paid with purified water. It so happens that they can shape-shift and mimic the skin, flesh, and voice of other sentient beings. It works to their advantage, so long as nobody cuts their flesh. The trademark, green blood of a naga is a dead giveaway.”
“Shape-shifting lizards...” Brucie clicked his incisors together. “Vould make good party trick, da?”
“Only you would think that there's anything left in this world worth partying for, Bruce,” Scootaloo said with a soft sigh.
He puffed his cigar, exhaled, and smiled through buck teeth. “Is party whenever pony friend shows up, Brucie thinks.”
Scootaloo smirked, then suddenly brightened. “Oh! On that note.” She pulled a brown satchel loose from her saddlebags. “I've got something for you.”
“Horse brings gifts?” The squirrel raised an eyebrow above his green goggles. “Unless pony has big bucket of diamonds and rubies, it vould be better to trade elsewhere. Brucie has Diamond Dog clients barking up his tail for precious gemstones and market is dry!”
“Just shut up and be grateful.” She stuck a tongue out before opening the satchel and exposing several glistening white orbs before the gaping rodent. “Ta-daaaaaa. You've been searching for these forever, have you not?”
Bruce almost dropped the cigar from his lips. He reached a trembling paw out and grasped one of the immaculate spheres. “Dis... Dis is Oceanic Snow Pearl. But... But Brucie thought dey vere all lost vhen culture of seaponies kicked bucket!”
“Heh... Yeah, well...” Scootaloo rolled a few of the pearls in her grasp. “Let's just say that I've done quite a bit of research, and the result is that I got to know the seaponies... mmmnngh... inside and out. Besides, how I found the pearls is not nearly as important as how frickin’ pristine they are, wouldn’t you say?”
“Details, details, details,” Bruce spat, then eagerly looked up at her. “Enough, already! How much vill dey vound me?”
Scootaloo took a deep breath. “One hundred silver strips each.”
Bruce froze. He gazed up at her, his furry face pale. “Dis is some sort of scam.”
“Me, Bruce?” Scootaloo giggled. “Are you kidding?”
“Is most certainly joke, friend pony,” he slurred in a breath of suspicion. “Pearls like dese vould go for four hundred strips each at M.O.D.D. Vhat does Scootaloo think to accomplish vith such laughable bargaining?”
“Bruce...”
“Could dis squirrel merchant suddenly be charity case?! First you stare down griffons and now you toss pearls before swine—literally!”
“Brucie...” She placed a gentle hoof on his shoulder. A soft smile reflected off his twin lenses. “Several stromfronts ago, you sold me a pearl, and it made all the difference in the world. You may not know how much your contributions have meant to me—to all that I've been struggling to do as of late—but I would like to show you. I would like to give you my thanks.”
“But... But...” He bit his incisor into his bottom lip and gazed forlornly at the wealth of pearls just beyond his reach. “Is not traders' tradition! Is not Vasteland tradition!”
“But what if it's pony tradition?” Scootaloo smiled. She dropped eight pearls gently into his grasp and grinned. “Eight hundred strips. Take it or leave it.”
Bruce gulped something down his throat. Whether or not it was something bitter, all of the grime and dust of misery had nevertheless washed away from his furred features. Reaching into his jacket, he very swiftly dropped the relatively tiny payment into Scootaloo's grasp. The last pony gently pocketed it away into her saddlebag.
“There. Now that wasn't so bad, was it?” She smirked, performed a whimsical curtsey, and began trotting towards the entrance to the gondola. “You've been complaining for months that the ogres of the Southern Heights haven't been selling you any of their wares. Maybe those pearls can finally get you what you want from them, though I doubt it'll be rubies or diamonds. Still, I'm sure it'll be something just as awesome.”
“It is funny...”
Scootaloo paused and glanced back at him. “Hmmm?”
He leaned casually against his tail like a fluffy stool, folding his arms across his chest. “Brucie's day has been one ugly encounter after another. First, angry monkey merchants nearly run Brucie's airship into a mountain. Then, bunch of stingy goblins nearly leave Brucie high and dry. Then there is Golden Gang and angry business over naga. But pony friend?” He tilted his head to the side, the green lenses reflecting her pink-mane from afar. “Pony friend is always ray of sunshine. Brucie barely remembers sunshine, but Scootaloo is most definitely it. Da, she is. Vhat could bring dis to Vasteland so?”
The last pony grinned. “I may fly and scavenge in this world just like you do, Bruce.” She lingered on the next few words, until she defeatedly let them drip from her mouth. “But that doesn't mean that this is my world. I can't expect you to understand, or even appreciate what that means, until the day that... that I make this my world again, as it once was, as it should be.”
He ran a paw across the edges of his fresh bandage and shuddered. “Bruce vould very much like to live in dat world...”
“Someday you will,” she said softly. Turning to the clouds, she took wing, and soared towards the Harmony. “I promise.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Scootaloo landed at the aperture entrance to the Harmony's hangar level, she realized that the loud thunder VTOL engines hadn't drifted away. She glanced up with a frown to see that the platinum body of the Talon was still hovering above her and Bruce's zeppelins, looming like a giant metal dragon preparing to strike at any moment.
“What I wouldn't pay to get them to friggin' leave,” she muttered bitterly as she stepped into her craft.
“What you wouldn't pay indeed,” a chuckling voice said.
Scootaloo gasped. In an instant, she bucked, flung the rifle from her saddlebag, and swiftly clasped it in her teeth. Halfway through extending the copper weapon, she froze, for a feathery figure was already pointing a steam-powered revolver between the pony's eyes.
“Easy, kiddo...” Gilda muttered over the hissing gun. She was aiming the weapon at Scootaloo's skull blindly, not even bothering to look over her shoulder. Instead, her other front talon was examining a half-carved chunk of moonrock in her grasp. “You'd think the last pony on earth would be a lot less skittish. I mean, you know what's comin' to you eventually. Why freak out at every scary thing that happens? You know me—I'm hardly life-threatening. Heheheh...”
Scootaloo sighed, slowly retracting the rifle and sliding it back into her saddlebag. “It's not my life that I'm worried about.”
“Of course it isn't. No soul in her right mind would experiment with a bunch of ancient lunar hocus pocus without expecting it to blow up in her face.” She whistled and raised her silver goggles with the barrel of her revolver, getting a better look at the pale rock in her grasp. “Just what is it that sets these little moon turds off again? Ahem—'Fuss. Roll. Darn!' Nope. Not even a spark.”
“You... Uh...” The last pony gulped in the shadow of her feathery “companion.” “You need a mana battery as a leyline bridge to trigger a runic command.”
“Mana battery?! Like what, a wand or something?” Gilda glanced over with a smirk. She blinked, glancing at Scootaloo's wings, Scootaloo's hooves, and the utter lack of pointed alicornia in between. “Oh,” she grunted in a voice that was half as ironic as it was somber. “Oh, but of course. Heh.” She twirled the revolver and pocketed it away in a leather strap surrounding her left rear limb. “Heeeeeey... Check out the cotton candy flag waving off of your noggin!” She whistled. “Tell me, girl, does the rug match the drapes? Hahahaha—Oh, right, I forgot. You're a pony; you're nothing but rug.”
“Gilda, is there...” Scootaloo shuddered, gritted her teeth, and calmed herself with an inward sigh. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“No doubt you ran into Stowe and her merry band of bumbling beak-nicks.” Gilda sauntered her way across the chemical lab, fumbling over the curious tools and runeforging materials like she owned the hangar bay of the Harmony. She might as well have. “I dunno if she pierced her angry equinist veil in time to tell you or not, but we're on the lookout for a naga chick named 'Razzar.' The Fire Ogres of Lower Mount Ogreton have a bounty on her head so high it'd make my nose bleed. Heheh... Considering I'm a griffon and I don't have a nose, that's pretty dang high.”
“What would the Fire Ogres want with a naga?” Scootaloo made a face. “Aren't they too busy fighting the Mountain Ogres over the ruins of Trottingham to bother giving out bounties?”
“Hahahahaha!” Gilda leaned against a random bulkhead, laughing so hard that her amber eyes teared. She raised a talon to her feathery face and smirked the pegasus' way. “Ohhhh do forgive me. Just... Just the cutesy-wootsy names you ponies gave to the places before the Cataclysm tickle me something fierce. Ahem.”
She clawed her way over to Scootaloo, slowly.
“Yes, I know there's a war going on between the ogres over the Valley of Jewels,” Gilda said. “The reason behind the bounty is really none of my frickin' business, but if I had to guess, then I'd bet that this one naga mercenary has done something to help the Mountain Ogres' efforts. The Fire Ogres have lost tens of thousands of their fat-assed brothers-in-arms in the battle for that land, as well as supremacy over Ogreton, so I'm guessing that they took whatever Razzar did for their enemies as a major slap in the face. Catching that slithering reptile, dead or alive, will mean gonzo strips for the Golden Gang, and a major morale boost for the Fire Ogres' soldiers, yadda yadda yadda. Whatever—The sooner we catch the stupid salamander, the better for us.”
“Aren't you afraid of incurring the Mountain Ogres' wrath?”
“You say that as if me and my girls can't protect ourselves.” Gilda smirked, suddenly leering over the pony in hulking menace. “And in speaking of protection...” Her lion's tail curled tightly through the air as her talons clicked against the bulkhead before Scootaloo's petite hooves. “It's been twenty-five storm fronts, kiddo.” Her amber eyes narrowed like tiny, golden fires. “Twenty... five... storm fronts. It doesn't take an Equestrian historian to know that counts as nearly a quarter of a year in your outdated horse calender, now does it?”
“What... Uhm...” Scootaloo glanced over her shoulder, hearing the lingering thunder of the Talon, imagining the weight of all its incendiary missiles. The fresh pile of silver strips rattled in her saddlebag, telling her that she was trembling. “What are you getting at, Gilda?”
“'What am I getting at'... Hmmm-Heheheh...”
Gilda marched slowly past Scootaloo. For a second there, it almost looked as if she was going to exit the Harmony, but then Scootaloo felt a prehensile tail wrapping about her waist. With a brief cry, she was hoisted into a razor-sharp side hug. Gilda held Scootaloo close to her, casually caressing the bottom of the pony's grimacing chin with a pair of pointed claws.
“Do you know what Stowe's problem is?” Gilda murmured as she “walked” herself and Scootaloo leisurely towards the edge of the hangar bay's entrance. A rush of cold Wasteland air billowed in from beyond as they stood before the aperture. A sea of forlorn clouds surged and churned below them as Gilda stood them upon the precipice of the zeppelin's bulkheads. “She has daddy issues. Her father was a major member of the Military Academy in Griffon Mount. Before the Cataclysm happened, and the core of the earth opened and exposed our kingdom to all of the horrible arachnids living beneath our domain, Stowe's father had ascended to the rank of Grand Commander. He led battles against harpy uprisings along the Southwest Plains. It was thanks to him—and not to your beloved Celestia of old—that those nasty pirates were blocked from ever invading the pony city of Manehattan. Well, we all know what became of that, huh? The Sun and Moon blew up, rock spiders took over Griffon Mount, Stowe's dad got torn to shreds, and the entire Griffon Sovereignty crumbled like a deck of cards. I don't mean to say it was all a one-sided tragedy, of course. Manehattan today belongs to the harpies—the parts of it not under water, that is. And—of course—every other pony but you is dead...”
“Care to tell me something I don't know?” Scootaloo grunted.
Gilda smirked and walked her claws down Scootaloo's side as she held her. “Stowe thinks that all the crap that happened to her dad—and griffons in general—is the ponies' fault. Who knows, she may be right. All that you should be worried about, where Stowe is concerned, is that in spite of all her anger and threats and bloodlust, she doesn't know ponies. She doesn't know them like I do. She doesn't know that they're creatures of honor.” Her claws stopped at the base of Scootaloo's wings and tickled the soft spot beneath the first line of feathers with serrated menace, poking into the mare's flesh emphatically. “She doesn't know that ponies will become extinct as soon as they give up being creatures of honesty, comraderie, and respect.” She reached her tail around and tilted Scootaloo's wincing face up to stare uncomfortably close to her beak. “So tell me, kiddo. Are ponies extinct yet?”
Scootaloo sweated, her wings twitching under Gilda's tight hold. Her scarlet eyes darted away from the griffon's battle-scarred beak, searching the edges of her fitful mind, thinking about Spike, thinking about the green flame, thinking about the warm lands of Equestria and all the stars she had yet to chase down. The last pony didn't understand what was happening until she was in the thick of it; she realized that she had become a weak creature.
What had changed? This was the same miserable world. Was she still the same miserable pony?
She didn't think about the consequences for what happened next, for she realized that there was no preventing it. Swallowing a lump down her throat for courage, she reached into her saddlebag and produced the pile of silver bits. Gilda's tail swiped it out of her grasp in a flash. The pony was dropped—gasping—against the edge of the Harmony's copper aperture. She panted for breath as Gilda paced away, humming to herself and counting the strips with icy precision... until she froze.
Scootaloo gazed forlornly, wincing with each bleeding second that ticked towards the inevitable outburst. It came out of Gilda slowly at first, as a merry chuckle. The griffon spun about, grinning crookedly, waving the silver strips in her talon.
“Eight hundred strips. This here's the equivalent of eight hundred strips, pipsqueak.” Her voice rang with a sharp, metallic edge, suddenly. “I do believe I mentioned that it has been twenty-five stormfronts.” Her amber eyes glinted as she took one talon-step towards Scootaloo, then another. “If I didn't know better, I'd say somepony has been flying around in the clouds too much. She's become an airhead. She's forgotten the value of true protection...”
“I haven't forgotten anything, Gilda,” the last pony firmly said. Nevertheless, she scooted back, back from the approaching avian figure, her mane hair billowing like an offensive banner in the cold wind. She knew that there weren’t even remotely enough bars of silver in the entire zeppelin to appease her “friend.” She had been so engrossed in the experiment that she had barely scavenged enough things to trade her way towards refueling the Harmony itself. “I've just been very, very busy lately...”
“Busy doing what?” Gilda smirked. All the while, her talons scraped threateningly against the bulkheads as she towered above the cowering pegasus. The Golden Gang's thunderous ship hovered high above like a platinum vulture. The gray clouds seemed darker. “Chasing butterflies? Digging up daisies? Wrapping up winter? Wake up, sunshine. This isn't the same colorful world that you used to afford. There are worse things out there than ogres and nagas. There are creatures who want you dead even more than Stowe. Do I need to show you what they have in store for you?”
“Gilda... You don't need to show me anything.”
“So you're a know-it-all suddenly?”
“I know this.” Scootaloo frowned, gulped, and spoke firmly, “I'm working on something, Gilda. It's... it's a project. A major project.”
“I'm listening...”
“I can't tell you what it entails, exactly...”
“Oh ho ho ho ho...” Gilda clinked the silver bars together and rolled her eyes. “Ohhhh that's rich.”
“I'm serious. It's taking a lot of my money, a lot of my resources and a lot of...” She winced slightly, but let loose, “And a lot of my time. But when it's all said and done, I assure you, it will change things—It will change everything. The very world as you know it won't be the same. When that moment comes, you and your Golden Gang won't have to chase shape-shifting lizards to get a bite to eat. You won't have to worry about trolls or harpies or so many other heartless monstrosities. What's more, I'll be able to pay you back a million times more than I could ever be capable of doing right now.”
Gilda stared at her long and hard. She pointed slowly with the silver bars in her hand, slowly and psychotically grinning. “You...” She chuckled and shook her head. “What in the name of all that's holy have you been sniffing, girl? Heheheh... Ahem.” She pocketed the silver, knelt down, and viciously gripped Scootaloo's throat with one talon while reaching back for her revolver with another. “What I think you need...” She hissed. “Is some intervention, courtesy of Doctor Gilda.”
Scootaloo bit her lip.
Gilda's muscles tightened...
Just then, a brilliant gust of wind rocked the Harmony slightly. The ship weaved in the air like it always did on random occasions, only this time something slid loose from beneath one of the hangar bay's runeforging tables. A metal scooter rolled across the bulkheads and slapped to a stop against the aperture's frame. Its slender body glinted in the gray twilight drifting down from above.
Gilda blinked at it, her feathered brow furrowing. Slowly, a smirk bled across her features. “Oh you gotta be frickin' kidding me...” She grinned stupidly at Scootaloo with a breath of disbelief. “You actually held onto that stupid thing?”
Scootaloo said nothing. Her scarlet eyes drifted towards the sea of clouds beneath them both.
Gilda digested the look, and slowly the smirk melted from beneath her beak as she saw a color in those eyes that she had seen before, but had tried her best to forget over the last two and a half decades. Slowly, gulping bitterly, she loosened her trembling grip of the pegasus and stood up like an aching fossil of yesteryear. With a deep sigh, she slid her silver goggles back down before her face could register any true emotion.
“You... You have her spunk, kiddo.” Gilda pivoted about and walked to the edge of the ledge. “Maybe not her spine, but definitely her spunk.”
Scootaloo rubbed her throat with a hoof and hoarsely replied, “Is that a compliment?”
“Call it what you want.” Gilda grunted. “But next time I see you, I expect more strips. Be a clever pony and learn to frickin' deliver.” She slapped a talon over a communicator on her shoulder. “Grif! Rev up the engines! We're taking off!”
“Scrkkk! Aye, Gilda.”
“Get your head back in the game, kid,” Gilda murmured. “The Wasteland takes no prisoners. So stop acting like you're in a friggin' cage and fly like you used to.” She soared up towards the Talon and disappeared through a metal door that closed behind her. With a roar of its engines, the platinum mercenary vessel throttled off, leaving Scootaloo alone with the chilling winds.
The mare sighed, running a hoof through her long pink mane, something she didn't need to grow out... and yet she did, as if she was proudly displaying the whimsical highlight of a dream that was too fanciful to have been true. She glanced aside at a wheeled relic of the past, not one born unto green flames of reverse-time, but sweat and tears and victory in the face of perpetual heartache.
Her reflection glinted off the curved body of the metallic scooter, and in a squinting glance the pony's brown skin almost appeared orange.
The two moonrock gravestones were dull and dead: a pair of monochromatic memorials for a couple of colorful souls. With a lasting grunt, Scootaloo gripped her brown hooves over a hammer and pelted the rightmost obelisk into the earth. Several hours after running into Gilda, Scootaloo stepped back in the center of Ponyville, gazing at the twin graves she had just planted before the collapsed shell of a crumbled novelty shop. The first flakes of snow fell onto both mounds of soft earth, glinting in the twilight like froth off of a warm beach surf that was lost forever to time.
The last pony raised her goggles, exposing a pair of soft, sleepy scarlets to the twin stones before her. In a somber breath, she dropped her tools and then reached into her saddlebag for a canteen. Unscrewing the flask, she raised it lonesomely before the graves.
"Here's to making the impossible happen,” Scootaloo slurred. “A honeymoon that never ends.”
Under a cold breeze, she took a mighty swig from the canteen of reclaimed water. She gulped, exhaled, and gazed softly beyond the ruins of the village around her.
“It is ever a labor of love...”
Her nostrils flared. Her eyes took in the ruined shells of houses like so many stars under a freezing, forested night. Then, with a shuffle of her hooves, she turned around and strolled liquidly towards the bony shape of a charred treehouse library...
“So?”
“So what, Spike?”
He leaned down under a rotating array of brass planetoids and smirked whelpishly at her. “Did you read what I gave you?”
“Oh, jee, Spike...” She hissed through wincing teeth as she stood precariously atop a wooden stool, pasting several large sheets of constellations onto the cavern's wall of stars, one at a time, slowly completing the illustration of the Equestrian night sky. “I barely had any time! What: with piloting the Harmony towards the Southeast Reaches and all. I had to spot from a high altitude the sight of post-Cataclysm Dream Valley before I could even think of finding the ruins of the hotel where Lyra, Bon Bon, and I stayed. Do you know how hard that is, even for a time traveler?”
“But...” His emerald eyeslits blinked quizzically. “You most certainly utilized your vessel's autopilot for a good part of that lengthy venture, did you not? I'm quite familiar with the Southeast Reaches of the Wasteland. Even in the midst of a stormfront, the skies there are rather tranquil, if I may say so myself.”
“Alright—Alright!” Scootaloo groaned. She stifled an exhausted giggle as she slapped up sheet after sheet of illustrated stars. “I read the snippet of your memoirs that you gave me. There, you happy?”
“Most deliciously felicitous!” The fuming dragon grinned wide. “Tell me, did you think my prose was too pretentious in addressing the nature of chronological immutability? Should I leave out the little anecdote about my futile attempt to hide the stash of gemstones from my past doppelganger in the hollow of the Canterlotlian Mountains? I feel that if I keep my writing indicative of neo-classical literary motifs, I could provide a reading experience that is as equally poetic as it is enlightening.”
“You... certainly... are... ermmm—poetic, and stuff.”
He squinted. “'Stuff?'”
“Exactly where in the memoirs did you... uh... write that anecdote again?”
“I do believe it clearly begins at the third paragraph of page one hundred and twenty-one.”
“Nnnnghhh... Yeah...” Scootaloo exhaled.
“Is there something amiss, old friend?” He ran a clawed hand of purple across his green spines, slicking them back in the twinkling manalight of the laboratory. “I thought you said that you read my memoirs.”
“And I did, Spike! I did!”
“And you do not remember the anecdote about the gemstones or—?”
“Okay, so... So I skimmed over a few parts, alright, Spike?” She gulped nervously and gazed over her pink mane at the towering dragon. “But—Can you really blame me? I mean, leaping Luna, do you ever hear yourself talk sometime?”
“What, pray speak, makes listening to my oration such a detrimental experience?”
“Exactly!” Scootaloo pointed a hoof, lost her balanced, and flailed with a girlish yelp. Spike tapped her ribcage with the thick of his tail. She regained her hooves, exhaled with relief, and gave him a thankful nod. “It's just that... well... you're so friggin' dense, Spike.” She bit her lip awkwardly as she slapped more stars across the wall. “Your words, that is. Not your head, of course.”
“So I gathered.”
“Reading so much as a paragraph of your stuff feels like running a gauntlet of harpies. Only, instead of trying to claw my eyes out, the pirates are smacking my skull with dictionaries, and not the marshmallowy kind.”
“Three hundred years of cyclical existence within a domain defined solely by my own introspection has produced a vernacular that is just as complicated as the draconian mind that has come to produce it.”
“And I get that, Spike! I've been known to get rather stuffy in my journal entries as well, but that's because I've only ever written for myself! If I had the ability to leave something for ponykind, I'd have arranged my words a lot differently, so that they were far more digestible. One thing I've learned from the tomes of Equestria is that history's best writers weaved their words with their audience in mind.”
“Hmmm... A very wise sentiment.” Spike nodded, his violet pendant dangling around his neck. “Though, I do regret that reality puts me in a rather pathetic bind. I'm sure you can relate, child.”
“Who knows, Spike?” Scootaloo briefly muttered as she plastered up the last of the white sheets. “Maybe someday, a thousand or a million years from now, a new race of sentient creatures will be blessed with Gultophine's spirit, and they'll have your written memoirs to inform them of what was done here to give them their Sun and Moon. But if you keep writing as thickly as you have, I fear such creatures will only take a brief look at your scrolls before belching 'Too long, didn't read' and resume slamming rocks against each other's heads.”
“I suppose it would only be redundant to proclaim,” the draconian elder said with an iron grin, “that the last dragon and the last pony are the best authors of their time, in that they're the only authors of their time.”
“That's the way to keep your purple chin up, Spike. Worship yourself, and eventually—by osmosis—the world will worship you too.”
“Do you sincerely believe that?”
“Does it matter?” She stepped down from the stool and let loose a sharp breath, smiling proudly at the elaborate constellation that brightly stretched before the two of them across the granite skin of the library basement. “Behold, Spike, I give you Epona's Exodus, in all of its glittering glory.”
“Two-dimensionally speaking, of course,” he murmured with a snort of green fumes.
“Pfft! What's that supposed to mean?” She smirked at him over her shoulder. Settling down on folded hooves, she gazed once more at the elaborate assortment of starry dots and nebulous strings in her own hoofwork. “This, right here, is a frozen snapshot in time, a look at a night sky that is forever lost to us. But you and me, Spike? We pulled it up to the surface from beyond the Cataclysm. We scavenged this beauty, and now it's close to giving us answers to what we seek.”
“About your elusive 'Onyx Eclipse', no doubt.” Spike nodded, then did a double-take. “Wait, what do you mean by 'close to giving us answers?'”
Scootaloo's nostrils flared slightly. She raised a forelimb out from underneath her brown body and pointed up at an off-center gap in the stars. “You see that spot right there? I first started sketching that part of the sky from atop Braeburn's stables—”
“Was that before or after Applejack's cousin summoned the courage to ask you out for dinner?”
“Yeah, shut up. Like I said—I sketched it in Appleloosa, because I couldn't see that part of the sky from Pinkie Pie's house in Dredgemane. However, there was the smoke from the Appleloosan bakeries constantly blocking the way. Those crazy tree buckers could never stop making pies for one measly second, even if Elektra herself was to come back to earth and slap them for their ridiculous obsession. Anyways, I always thought I would eventually get around to illustrating that part of the sky. I even had a chance in Stalliongrad when Dr. Whooves and I were held captive in the State Military Bunker. But—well, y'know—my Stalliongrad experience was nothing but galloping around like an idiot and trying to keep that silly professor alive.”
“Are you eventually getting to a point, old friend? I'm beginning to re-assess your opinion of the density of my memoirs.”
“The point is this, Spike.” She glared at him with a smirk. “I still have a piece of the sky left untouched. It's close enough to the center of the diagram, and that's where I think I'm finding the most evidence of the Onyx Eclipse. See how bunched up the constellations are there? It's so unnatural! The stars appear to be bending around a fixed location, as if something is exhibiting enough gravity to affect the rest of the celestial matter hanging above our planet. However, so long as that one piece of the sky isn't mapped, I can't pretend to know how the stars are operating around that part of the cosmos. There could be a huge slew of clustered specks that I haven't taken into account. If that was the case, then it might upend my entire theory altogether! Who's to know?! I need to find out what's missing there. I need to cover up for my stupid mistakes.”
“What, pray tell, is your plan to go about doing this, child?”
“Well...” Scootaloo shifted on her folded hooves, exhaling softly. “I did the smart thing by picking anchors who were traveling abroad just before the Cataclysm hit. When Pinkie Pie brought me to Dredgemane, I was incredibly miffed at first, but it turned out that dropping in on such a far-off corner of the Equestrian continent was the best thing that could have happened to me. Visiting Braeburn, Dr. Whooves, Lyra, and Bon Bon gave me an opportunity to map out the stars from completely different locations, so I wasn't just observing from one subjective spot. However, as awesome as all of that audacious starcharting has been, I think I should perform one last rudimentary check.”
“Oh?”
“In Ponyville,” Scootaloo said, gazing up at Spike with a soft smile. “I mean—Why not? It's what I wanted to do with Pinkie Pie to begin with, right? Besides, observing the stars from a spot so close to Canterlot seems like an appropriate way to finish this whole thing, then I can have a succinct map to trace the Onyx Eclipse with.”
“Dear friend, if I may interject—”
Scootaloo was too busy with her excitement to register his interruption. “So, I think anchoring myself to a far more homely companion of yours is in order. How about Mrs. Cake or Mr. Cake? You knew them well enough to have a dragon tooth enchanted with their soul selves, right? Or what about that one earth pony farmer who was always working gardens next to the Ponyville Produce Market? What was her name...? 'Brusselsprout?' 'Lil Pit?'”
“'Carrot Top,'” Spike answered. In a deep breath, he flexed his iron-thick muscles and murmured, “Scootaloo, as much as I respect the scientific diligence that honorably paints your current zeal, I do not think that you are making any true progress by retracing your chronological hoofsteps. I can very easily point you to Carrot Top's remains, or to Mrs. Cake's, or to any of several other Ponyvillean mainstays. But even if I could send you to their souls across reverse-time, I'm afraid that such a trip is going to have to wait for another two days... possibly three...”
“Huh?” Scootaloo blinked. With a crooked grin, she regarded her draconian companion incredulously. “For the love of oats, Spike! It's been a good friggin' two weeks in your time since you belched me to Bon Bon and Lyra's beachside honeymoon. I know you; you could have filled a good three runic jars with your fiery breath by now. What's the matter? Cat got your flame?”
“Hardly the case, my jocular little pony.” He suddenly stood up. On thundering limbs, Spike shuffled over to the far side of the lab and gestured towards a series of bubbling chemicals atop a granite table. “As soon as you left for Dream Valley, I started a little experiment I had always dreamt about, but never could have scientifically applied, seeing as I didn't have a flesh and blood pony like you over the centuries to utilize her equine essence.”
“I'm a little lost, but I'm listening.”
“The truth is, old friend, that not all of my baby's dragon teeth were enchanted with the souls of my companions. A few of them I kept as spares, in the possibility that I might be able to use them as ingredients in a different and far more audacious endeavor.” He picked up a large crystalline vial of bubbling liquid and swirled it between clasping claws. “As you can understand, I have very few teeth left to spare, so this is an exercise that I can only do three, maybe four times.”
“Just what is that stuff anyways?” Scootaloo asked, squinting from afar.
“An elixir that I have made,” Spike explained. “It was concocted by grinding up the spare dragon teeth and incorporating the powder into a potion that I swiftly consumed. If my alchemic skills prove to be as expert as I spent the last several centuries training them to be, then the enchanted quaff will have filtered directly to the flame glands in my throat, where I regularly stoke the green plumes of magic that make reverse-time possible. As you can probably imagine, I have been spending the better part of two weeks incubating the next breath, only this time buffered by the experimental quaff that I have thoroughly ingested.”
“To what end?” the last pony murmured with brief trepidation. “What's so different about your next breath of green flame that you've been saving up for?”
“Well, old friend, if my hypothesis is correct, the green flame will bind you far stronger to your anchor than ever before.” He placed the glass vial down and slowly marched towards her, his scaled features calm and collected as he stared at the pegasus. “Instead of having only forty meters of room to distance yourself from your anchor, this time and this time only you will have something along the lines of one hundred and forty.”
“Heh... Yowsers...” The pegasus smirked, her wings flexing at the sound of that. “Boy would that have come in handy around Pinkie Pie, or better yet in Stalliongrad when that infernal parade of tanks separated me and Dr. Whooves for a few frightening minutes.”
“As you can imagine, this next breath—which will be ready in two days' time, I imagine—shall be a concoction you will not want to use frivolously. I do not think your next venture should be wasted, however good-naturedly, on one of our Ponyvillean companions.”
“Well, I have to get this night sky finished completely one way or another!” Scootaloo exclaimed, pointing at the one lonesome splotch of barren white sheet. “How else am I going to get a firm hoof-hold on the Onyx Eclipse to present the matter to Princess Celestia?”
“Hmmm... Yes, about that, old friend...”
“Ah jeez, Spike,” Scootaloo moaned and facehoofed. “Not again with the lecture...”
“Do not be so quick to assume the worst, child. I have long learned to not only accept your theory concerning this cosmic phenomenon; I have learned to embrace it. However, I reiterate the fact that retracing your hooftrots should not be the next endeavor. You've spent four completely different time jumps essentially doing the same thing, and though they were noble in having used varied and distant spots of Equestria for observation, I cannot help but feel that you have only afforded yourself a safe refuge from the inevitable task that hangs over the two of us next.”
“Just what are you getting at, Spike? How can I map the stars any better than I already have been?”
“You've constructed for yourself a lovely starchart, Scootaloo. However, it is most definitely a two-dimensional facade of what we obviously seek to understand. Even with Entropan eyes, you can only map so much from the naked surface of this once-warm world. What you need is a sight that is beyond your own, that is beyond my own, that exceeds all of the devices of observation that have blessed the legacy of Equestria long before it was ever constructed.”
“Erm...” Scootaloo gulped and leaned her head curiously to the side. “What sight is it that you speak of?”
“Tell me, oh learned scavenger: in the many books that you have dredged and read, have you ever educated yourself on the Observatory of Nebula?”
“Well, the name is certainly familiar,” Scootaloo said with a chuckle. “If I'm not mistaken, it was the largest telescope ever built after the death of Starswirl the Bearded. You gotta understand, Spike, I'm an expert on history. Astronomy is still a new thing for me. Aside from that one 'magic camp' fiasco that Sweetie Belle once dragged me to before the Cataclysm, I barely had any chance to learn about the nature of Equestrian star charting. All of this map-making of mine has been a clumsy experiment of errors at best, but I'll do anything to narrow down all of this 'Onyx Eclipse' crap that I first heard from Dinky.”
“Truly, old friend?” Spike leaned his head to the side. “You would do anything?”
“I do believe I just said that, Spike.”
“Because if you were to go back in time and utilize the Observatory of Nebula, you would see far deeper into the starry cosmos of Epona's Exodus than ever you have before. Since you already know where to look, I might even venture to say that you would spot the Onyx Eclipse for your own mortal eyes, assuming there is anything to visualize whatsoever.”
“Yeah, alright.” The last pony nodded with a soft grin. “Sounds like a good idea, actually. A darn good idea! So... like... who would I anchor to in order to do that? Was this big, hunking telescope located in Canterlot or something?”
“No, dear friend,” Spike gravely shook his head, and in a soft breath uttered, “It was in Cloudsdale.”
Scootaloo was silent. Her brown ears wilted like a melting crown, and she let her deadpan gaze fall to the immaculate stone floor of the laboratory.
“It was constructed out of sky marble and positioned atop the highest reaches of the airborne pegasi maretropolis. The only thing that exceeded the observatory's altitude was the tall, windy, and unnavigable cliffs of Griffon Mount. From such a heavenly position as Cloudsdale, the Observatory of Nebula afforded Equestrian astronomers a lofty, pristine look at the cosmos, unblemished by the natural clouds of the troposphere. What they saw, they recorded and sent via winged messengers to the smartest and most gifted scientists in Canterlot, who took it upon themselves to make beautiful, detailed star charts in time for the next census every two decades. Obviously, they couldn't fill out such a chart in time for the coming Cataclysm, but you can, old friend. You know what it is that you are looking for, and if you go to the right time and place, you will have an opportunity to capture it, once and for all. Then and only then will you be able to construct a case to finally present to the appropriate souls of the past, and hopefully find answers to what leeched the magic from this great, glorious world.”
“Just what do you expect me to do?” The last pony mumbled. “Go back to Fluttershy, interrupt her in the middle of caring for that motherless Capricorn, and somehow convince her to take 'Harmony' on a tour through Cloudsdale?”
“My good friend...” Spike smiled gently and knelt down beside her. “You and I both know that we are not talking about Fluttershy.”
Scootaloo said nothing. She gazed down at a pair of brown hooves, the same limbs that once scratched at the black bars of an arcane vault, in a time when her coat was orange and her tears were fresh.
“After all, you could never get Fluttershy to leave her cottage, to part from her precious creatures, to abandon her post as Ponyville's chief animal tamer.” He managed a deep, bass chuckle. “And you most certainly wouldn't need one hundred meters—much less five—to maintain such a gentle-spirited pegasus as your anchor.” He shook his head. “No, my friend. In the grand history of the Third Age, Equestria only ever had one soul, one pony, one brash and agile lightning bolt of a spirit who could be in twenty places at once, who could fly from Manehattan to Dream Valley in a day, who could do so many courageous and dashing things that she never grasped how innately she outshone the very same royal fliers that she ever so faithfully idolized. You know her, Scootaloo, I daresay more than you've been allowed to know yourself. She was a hero and a villain all rolled up into one devilish smirk. She only ever awed me during the days I spent living in Ponyville, and I know that she can and will take you to the heights that you need to go, if not for the Onyx Eclipse, then for yourself.”
“I wish you'd friggin' stop talking about 'myself.'” She grunted sourly. “This whole dang experiment of ours is about Equestria, isn't it? Stop pretending like you know me, Spike, or that what I feel actually matters in the long run...”
“Doesn't it, though?” Spike gently reached a hand out and tilted the mare's face up to meet his gaze. “You are the last pony, Scootaloo. In a world full of monsters and suffering, you are the last living thing equipped to feel pain from it all. When history has run its course, and a new sun and moon hover over the scars of the past, this planet may forget that there ever was a Cataclysm. If that's the case, then we will have accomplished our task most righteously. But what an injustice it will be when you are forgotten, child. Make no mistake. Eternity is a long time, and both you and I will be forgotten. We have it within ourselves to make amends with a legacy that dies with us.”
“I'm only doing all of this to fix what the Cataclysm has done to the landscape, Spike,” Scootaloo said, though it was in a disgruntled murmur.
“What about your own life, Scootaloo?” He gazed deeply into her with warm eyeslits. “Has it not been a cataclysm from the very beginning?”
The mare opened her lips to speak, but hesitated. She clenched her mouth shut and looked away from him, fighting a sudden bout of trembles.
Spike gently let his clawed fingers stroke down her mane before softly embracing her shoulders. “Do you remember what I told you months ago, when we reunited in Sugarcube Corner, dear friend?”
The last pony shuddered. “K-Kinda...” Her voice was struggling to keep its pitch.
“I told you that you needed to stop running. You were a brave spirit to have endured all of those years spent alone in the Wasteland, Scootaloo, but you were also a floundering spirit. You fled from so many horrors and monstrosities because you had to; it was your only strategy for survival. Then, when I presented to you the nature of this experiment, you very boldly agreed to become the avatar of Princess Entropa. Though I'm proud to have provided you a new opportunity to employ your amazing talents, I regret that I have only given you another avenue through which to continue running, only this time you have aimed your flight down tunnels of green flame instead of oceans of gray cloudbanks.”
“What are you g-getting at, Spike?”
“You are such a selfless and sacrificial spirit. So many other ponies I've had the pleasure of knowing wouldn't have been able to confront the old phantoms of the past like you so fearlessly have. In spite of all of your bravery, you need to face the fact that there is something just as important as the Cataclysm that needs to be resolved. There will only be one end of ponies, Scootaloo. It would be a shame for that end to be a bitter one.”
“It is a bitter one, Spike.” The girl breathily shuddered. “Nothing can change that.”
“A life that begins bitterly only naturally believes so. Don't pretend that you can't afford to stay still for once and realize that you need this, Scootaloo. You need this, and you need to see to it now or else Epona help you ensnare the Onyx Eclipse with any fervor whatsoever, for all of the peace in your life will have been snuffed out long before you could ever postulate restoring that same tranquility to a world that has been fractured almost as much as your own, precious existence.”
Spike reached his free hand over to a counter where the scavenger's saddlebag rested. He dipped his claws into it and pulled loose a dragon tooth hanging from a blue string. Gently, he held it directly before the last pony.
“You need to stop running from her, Scootaloo. As your friend, I implore you, for your sake... for the sake of the last decent soul of ponydom, find her. Find her and fill up the final gaps of the cosmos while you fill up the holes in your soul as well.”
Scootaloo's scarlet eyes glistened. She held the stringed bone matter in her grasp. She felt every centimeter of her soul being flung forward in invisible winds of speed and adrenaline, like she was falling into a great and deep pit. The mare nevertheless sat still like a stone mountain and muttered, “I do not need the tooth, Spike.”
The draconian elder tilted his head aside. “No?”
Scootaloo exhaled long and hard. She tilted her face up to stare past him. “I know where Rainbow Dash is.”
“Hello?! Anypony there?!”
A bruised and bleeding filly limped through the labyrinthine inner ruins of sunken Cloudsdale. A fine mist from several distant waterfalls billowed through the already freezing depths of the place, chilling Scootaloo to her starving core as she strolled through crumbled burrows of sky marble and a forest of collapsed ivory pillars. Nothing was alive. Nowhere was a single speck of color. Shattered granite and rock hung above her, breaking the twilight of the moon-burning Wasteland so that glowing bands scattered like harpstrings across the dusty, claustrophobic air.
“If anypony can hear me, I-I need help!” Scootaloo coughed, sputtered, and struggled her way forward through the three dimensional maze of carnage. “I'm stuck down here! I c-can't fly my way back up! Please, somepony! Just say something! I need to see you! I need to f-find you!”
Her echoing voice was drowned out by the roar of falling water and the distant thunder of falling moon rocks. After struggling to climb over a tall mound of black and white rubble, Scootaloo tripped over herself and slid clumsily down a steep incline of pale pebbles. She slumped to a painful stop on a white plateau jutting over a gaping abyss in the center of the inner ruins. A black chasm lingered beyond the white dust and ashes falling from the distant surface of the Wasteland high above. Every pained breath Scootaloo let loose in this place was like a tiny clapping sound at the bottom of a steep sepulcher.
“Mmmmff... Ughh...” The filly winced as she rubbed a fresh bruise on her shoulder. Braving so much pain as she had done before, the lonely orphan took a deep breath and bellowed towards the shattered, monochromatic ceiling above. “Hello?!” For a brief second, it sounded as if a ring of pegasi was immediately replying, but they all carried the desperate pony's unmistakable pitch. “Will somepony please answer me?!” More noise, no solace. “I c-can help you too! We can get through all of th-this together!”
Her panting breaths only grew more and more painful. Every time she closed her eyes, she envisioned her battered saddlebag of belongings, and it only pained her heart to realize that it was forever unobtainable. Grunting, Scootaloo hobbled back up to her tiny hooves. She pivoted to face the black chasm beyond. In desperation, she began scanning the shattered scenery for a possible outcropping that might give her enough room to bravely leap to the other side of the expanse. In the middle of that thought, she froze.
Scootaloo's wings twitched axniously. They were twitching because something had flickered before her eyes. Breathless and wordless, Scootaloo had spotted color.
She had spotted color, and it broke the grayness of the crumpled ruins like a torch in the middle of a blackened sarcophagus. Craning her neck, Scootaloo saw it lying beside the edge of a black chasm, illuminated by a round halo of twilight that was shining down from the sundered world above. She saw it, and her heart skipped at the realization that it was not one color, but many. She counted four shades... five... then six, and all of them in a heavenly sequence that filled her lungs with a furious and felicitous fire.
“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo squealed. The only thing twitching more than her wings were her hooves, scampering her tiny body desperately down an embankment of shattered sky marble, thrusting her forward by the sheer brilliance of a teeth-glinting smile. She slid once, she almost fell on her face. She didn't care. She ran. She fluttered towards the halo of light. “Rainbow! Omigosh omigosh omigosh! It's you! You have no idea how glad I am to see... you...”
The scraping of her hooves was a noisy thing as she came to a cold stop. She fell silent upon the precipice of a heaving breath, blinking hard as her smile reached a boiling point, but suddenly froze at the peak there.
“R-Rainbow Dash?”
It was in a slow, liquid fashion that her smile faded, like the binding to a brightly paged book being closed slowly, confusedly, as she furrowed her brow in a sudden and numbing perplexity.
“Rainbow Dash, why are you lying like...?”
Scootaloo gulped. Scootaloo gazed, her eyes darting left and right. The colors ended as soon as they began. Beyond them, there was too much dust, too much obscurity to make sense.
“D... D... D-Dashie...?” the filly murmured, her lips quivering, her eyes flitting sideways until they could barely stay open. She summoned an auxiliary strength by frowning, creasing her bloodstained brow angrily. “Th-This isn't funny, Dash. It's me, Scootaloo. I need... I-I...”
A chilling gust blew through Scootaloo as she stared ahead. Colors that shouldn't have been torn apart separated, along with a flurry of blue feathers, and all of them taking separate paths into the black chasm below.
Scootaloo saw them, and yet she didn't. The world around her now was shaking, blurring, buckling as she knelt down and whimpered, “Come on, Dashie, g-get up.” She bravely nuzzled the colors, only to have them spread from her touch. She gasped desperately into the powdery mess, barely carrying her words on threadbare strings, “Get up. You're stronger than this. You can't... y-you can't... be...”
She lowered a trembling hoof in front her, and the last of the colors covered her limb, spreading almost as quickly as she was losing the parts of herself, sobbing, falling, clutching the spectrum before her and watching with increasing hyperventilation as she was being blanketed with the residue of the past, the sounds of her voice, and the shine in her eyes, like so much worthless dirt across an abandoned horseshoe.
Scootaloo sobbed into it, sobbed into her, bathed in her, kept afloat by foalish sobs, sobs that morphed fitfully into bellicose wails that baptized the basement of the dead world. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw her soaring through the air. Each time she opened her eyes, she saw her coating her limbs. There were many tears, and yet not enough tears to wash it all away. She never wanted to wash all of her away. She howled names that belonged to her, but now belonged to nothing, as the last remaining colors that covered a brittle and lifeless core flew above the halo of twilight, casting a curtain over the sanctity of the moment, the birth of the last pony unto the ashes of the rainbow.
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Alrighty...Petra HHH Edition. Seems a lot shorter than the last-
Oh. That's why.
I guess the hard part about reading through this was trying to forget most/all of what happened in the previous version of the draft. But on the other hand, that would make reading/reviewing a little different. Still, reading through this, it felt a little “empty”. I'm sure it was just me noticing mass-omissions, though.
Mostly, this chapter was the previous version, but with all the Ponyville flashbacks completely omitted. So there's not much to say that wasn't already said. Also, there were a few scenes here and there that were tweaked or expanded upon- the encounter with Gilda and the omission of the pulp fiction novel to name a couple. And the conversation with Spike at the end was removed. That was a little disappointing. I liked that bit. The conversations between Scoots and Spike are nice, even though Spike tends to “Treebeard” sometimes. The chapter ending point was better, though.
I suspect this might have had something to do with it. Remove other parallels of the same nature so that more of the focus is placed on the other two. Still sad to see it go away, though.
Well, the psychological/philosophical bits are definitely a part of the story's history.
Also, most of my knowledge of the WE is limited to what I remember from myself and my friend smacking the shit out of each other on WWF No Mercy on the N64 ages ago. Sorry.
I maintain that Warden was fine as-is. (as-was?) I'm interested to see this adjusted version, though.
Slave-liberating group? That sounds new and interesting. Hope that happens within the completed chapters. I wonder if ogres will be involved...?
Well...one day, it shall arrive. And I will be there dancing gaily when it does.