Umbreka

by Armanico Vita

When Isolation Rains on Your Parade

Fluttershy saw a plume of smoke rising up in the distance. It rose up high into the air and drifted off, mixing with the clouds above. She hovered mid-flight staring quizzically at the strange sight. There was only one explanation for the abnormality before her. The way the smoke was contained as it spiraled up into the atmosphere, she knew this wasn't just a natural forest fire. She also knew now that she truly wasn't alone anymore. She had to check things out for herself.

She fluttered her wings as fast as she could over to the sight of the occurrence. The area the thin line of smoke expelled from was devoid of trees and most forms of life. How weird that there could be rocky patch of land in the middle of a forest biome. The only sign of life she saw were the white-speckled red fungi growing through crack in the ground below. No matter how hungry she was, Fluttershy knew she would rather starve than go near any of those vile, poison-laden umbrellas.

She found herself a nice, grassy patch just outside the rocky terrain and decided to begin her descent towards the earth. Her legs were splashed with the refreshing feeling of dew from the grass beneath her feet. The grass's soft touch stifled a giggle in Fluttershy as a smile pierced her lips. It was as soft as clouds, fit for a princess to sleep on: although currently to Fluttershy, anything was better than sleeping on the cold hard rock mesas or the sharp, protruding tree branches again. As she trotted through the small field, she saw a bald spot of soft dirt. It looked as if someone had ripped the grass out from the topsoil of ground. All that was left were the previous inhabitants of ladybugs and beetles crawling their way along the fresh dirt.

Fluttershy pushed her way through the tall layers of grass and her hooves finally met up with the stiff terrain of dirt and cracked rock. It must have been eroding away for the past few centuries. She felt it slip and crumble under her as she shifted her weight to walk. One of her steps fissured open a crack in the rock and caused a small chunk the fall in. Fluttershy gasped, the rock she was standing on wasn't solid as she had thought. Looking down she noticed a thick, black smoke rising up out of the lines traced beneath her. It twirled it's way up in the air and wafted directly for her snout. She trudged backwards in horror. The charred smog followed her backwards creeping up on her. Fluttershy took in a giant breath of fresh air and sealed her lips tightly together. She was petrified of the sight, her legs locked up. Her mind was yelling at her to run, do anything just stay away from the looming peril. She was paralyzed, she could only sit and watch as the dense pollution swam through the air and seeped into her nostrils, all without her inhaling through her snout. Her vision went black. Her head began to spin as a dancing prismatic array of lights flickered in front of her. She watched as they all blurred by, leaving their entrails in the dust. She could hear the laughter of little children echoing in the back of her mind; they were all laughing at her.

Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy can hardly fly...

The blurring lights died down, giving Fluttershy a chance to breath and pull herself together. The black background was sudden replaced with that of Ponyville. She watched in horror as she grabbed a tourist by the neck and launching him off into the distance for making her drop that day's mail. Two other ponies, Rarity and Pinkie, trotted up with horrified looks plastered on their faces. Fluttershy wanted to look away, close her eyes, stop her other self from saying those next few cruel sentences.

Both ponies stepped forward, equally disappointed looks were drawn about their faces.

"Fluttershy! What are you doing?! That's no way to behave." Rarity berated the brute.

It was all so surreal. The scene was playing out exactly as she remembered it down to every last detail and she could recite every last word that came out of her vision's mouth.

"Did you see what he did to new Fluttershy? And he thought new Fluttershy was a pushover!" The current Fluttershy found herself mouthing every word that came out of her counterpart's mouth. This wasn't the first time she's had this nightmare. It had been following her every step of her journey east.

"No sweetie he didn't, we saw the whole thing. We think you have taken your assertiveness training a little too far." Rarity continued to push her luck against the thuggish animal Iron Will transformed her friend into.

"What?! You just want new Fluttershy to be a doormat like old Fluttershy, but old Fluttershy is GONE!" The mean Fluttershy flew up into the air, flapping gusts of wind strong enough to knock her friend off balance. The impatience built up in her heart was finally breaking lose and she was venting it out at two of her closest fiends alive.

"New Fluttershy? Old Fluttershy?" Pinkie couldn't keep up with the things spewing out of her friend's mouth. It had to take a whole new kind of crazy to keep Pinkie Pie from comprehending what the conflict was drifting into.

"What about the nice Fluttershy? We want that Fluttershy back." Rarity pleaded.

"NO! You want WEIRD Fluttershy, you want PUSHOVER Fluttershy, you want DO ANYTHING TO HER AND SHE WON'T COMPLAIN Fluttershy!" She snapped. All of the bullying and the rudeness she endured in her life was now coming out, and she was unleashing a flood at her friends.

"Ahhh! Too many Fluttershy's to keep track of, just make it stop!" Pinkie couldn't keep up with her friend, and was swept away in the flood.

"Things getting too complicated for your simple little brain Pinkie Pie?" Pinkie Pie wasn't the one coming to scorn her for her actions. Why had she burst out at her like she did?

"Now stop right there! Let's not let things descend into petty insults." Rarity stepped between the two. She wasn't the element of loyalty, but she wasn't about to let Fluttershy talk down to them like that, even if they were best friends.

Fluttershy crossed her arms, she was serious about what she was going to say. "Why not? Petty is what you're all about, Rarity, with your petty concerns about fashion." Rarity's eyes began to well up. She had never heard anypony insult her pursuits in such a manner and it made her heart ache to experience it from Fluttershy, of all ponies.

Seeing her friend cry, Pinkie jumped forward. She stood upright, infusing each swing of her hips with attitude. "Hey! Leave her alone. Fashion is her passion!"

"And what are you passionate about? Birthday cake? Party hats? I can't believe the two most frivolous ponies are trying to tell new Fluttershy how to live her life while they are throwing their lives away on pointless pursuits that nopony else gives a flying feather about!"

Fluttershy's eyes shot open, beads of nightmare-induced sweat dripped down her sweltering head. Waking up snout down in a pile of jagged rocks wasn't her definition of a fun time. She spit out a mouthful of dirt and wiped the tears away from her eyes, slowly recovering from just reliving one of the worst moments of her entire life. That was the day she had become a monster and if it wasn't for her friends she would have stayed that way too. Whatever that smoke was, it was gone and she was glad about the lack of its presence.

She looked around, spotting something laying down next to her in the dirt, a circular formation of smoothed out stones. In the center of the ring rested a pile of smoldering ashes, the embers still fresh from being stomped out recently. Around her were two wooden structures. To her right, she saw a massive heap of collapsed timber, all painted with fluorescent lime green mildew. From the size of the foundation, the wooden heap probably used to house a family inside of it. Now, there was nothing left to shelter. To her left was a similar structure, but much smaller in size.

Fluttershy ambled over to the entrance of the shabby structure and took a gander at it. The door to the front entrance laid in pieces, cluttering the way in. She walked by and stood at the archway of the small building, lifted her shaded goggles up to her crown, and stared nakedly upon the worn "interior" of the place. Most of it was left in ruin. It lacked an apparent roof and the excessive amounts of mildew growing on the wood and moisture lying about clued her in that this shack was the victim of countless rainy days.

There was not too much to look at inside of the old lodging. The walls and floor were covered a thick green slime of mildew. The windows had all been busted out of their framing. Due to its size and lack of a bed, this place was obviously not made for residing. Ironic enough how this managed to survive through the cruel effects of the elements longer than its counterpart home. The creaky floor screeched and howled as she sauntered across the soaked floor. Probably the prettiest sight in the whole room was where sunlight breached into the building and struck the floor. It's afternoon glow detailing the scene in a rising, platinum mist.

A few things in there stuck out to her. A thick, slimy residue marked a few spots on the cracked floorboards. There was an ensemble of leaves and grass lying in the corner of the abode. It was all bundled together with tied up vines gathered from the treetops. The fireplace was full of dried logs that, unlike everything else made of wood, was not painted over with green mold and algae. They probably were using the fireplace as storage for the next night. Fluttershy had an idea who had left the pieces of lumber there and discovering all of this made her happy. For a bit she was worried that she was deviating off of the path. Now she knew she was flying the right direction. On top of everything, she knew she was close.

Gaining every bit of knowledge she needed, Fluttershy turned and headed out the doorway.

Fluttershy soared up into the sky, much higher than what she was used to going. She panned around the broad horizon of leafy, green trees. She coasted left, then right. She needed to find her soon. Out on the horizon, Fluttershy spotted a massive, anvil shaped cloud drifting in from the east. It's ashen color menacingly stood out against the otherwise sapphire colored sky. There was a bright flash of pure white light and static emitted from the center of the storm. Fluttershy had heard about these kind of tempests back in flight school. These "super storms" were only produced in places like Las Pegasus where the temperatures got to be higher than most areas.

She heard the calls of animals from all around her, mainly the howler monkeys. They were all signaling to each other of the forthcoming storm. Fluttershy frantically flew around the sky scanning for any signs of movement. The foliage was too thick for her vision to penetrate through. Ultimately, she quickly drew to the ground. There is no way she's going out searching for somepony in a storm like this.

The large sparking anvil was barreling towards her and it was like nothing she had ever seen before. It's size rivaled that of the city of Cloudsdale. She needed to find somewhere safe to hide and quickly. She took off galloping in the opposite direction of the blanket of clouds. As the daunting storm closed in on it's prey, Fluttershy felt the full force of it's wind power. She was swept up off of her feet and thrown, full-force, into a tree and held onto it for dear life. The wind was so powerful her legs were dangling horizontally off of the ground as she held onto the closest branch to her. The first bolt of lightning crashed through the air and struck the ground with a loud crackling sound. The sonic boom emitted when the lighting struck was enough to make Fluttershy flinch and release her iron grip on the tree. She was shot through the air like an arrow from a bow, getting close to the same speeds Rainbow Dash would usually fly at. The wind let up and she was swatted out of the air by gravity. She skid across the leaf ridden floor before coming to a stop before the mouth of a mountainside cave. Without hesitation, Fluttershy picked herself up off the ground and limped her way inside before crashing on the cold, damp stone.

Comments

[Armanico Vita]

Sorry about the premature publishing guys, the actual chapter is up now though. I would like to know how long I had it up there though

[Battoushy]

Nice but you might want to work on the Putting Your Hoof Down flashback. The bright colors are a little hard to read. Still a great chapter though.

[Armanico Vita]

Wooah I fall asleep for a few minutes and this whole site changes dramatically... I like it!
1775089
Yeah, sorry about the colors. I might change Rarity's to a darker shade but other than that the best thing I could suggest to help is change the background page to black.

[Battoushy]

1775167 Just a suggestion but perhaps a shade of purple for Rarity's sentences during the flashback.

[silvadel]

Ouch the yellow... Can it be a bit darker // readable? Ouch it puts that awful default icon now by everything instead of blank — I may actually have to acquire an icon now... bleach.

Eh probably not that important as I am guessing that colored stuff is only going to happen ONCE. Even so it could turn off some people.

[Armanico Vita]

1775567 1775410
Alright I got it fixed, sorry for the inconvenience. I thought that would be less of a cluster if I just used color coding instead of pointing out who said what sentence. Now I need to find out how I'm getting views on unpublished stories

[Regidar]

Dem flames.