Chapter 14: The Post War Dream
Starlight felt something drip on her face. It was a steady flow, each drop landing half a second after the other. She told it to go away, though whether it was out loud or in her sleep, she couldn’t say. The drops, annoyingly, didn’t listen to her.
Her eyes opened, and Starlight almost immediately regretted the decision. She had managed to land on the roof of the spinner—now serving as the floor—but the IS agent her father had talked to hadn’t been so lucky. Somehow, she didn’t think seatbelts were supposed to bend a pony in half like that.
Another few drops splattered on her forehead. Starlight let out a strained cry when she realized why the “water” had felt so warm. She scrambled backwards, trying to push herself against the spinner’s door but only found open air.
She fell backwards into the sand outside the crashed spinner. She shut her eyes and grunted, moving a hoof between her face and the sun. One of her legs was still ensnared by a seat belt inside the spinner. She cried out and shook her leg until it came off, then crawled away.
It wasn’t more than a second before she ran into her father. He stood above her, blocking out the sun from where she was looking. His eyes looked at her blankly, and she wondered if he could really see her. Starlight wasn’t sure what she expected him to do, but it definitely wasn’t fall to his knees in front of her.
Two thick, strong hooves wrapped around her neck, and Starlight found herself pulled into her father’s embrace. He said nothing, only sobbed quietly. She hesitated, then reached up and rubbed Noctilucent back.
“I”m alive, dad,” she said. “I’m okay, I think. I just have a few cuts or scrapes—”
“Shush now, all that matters is you’re still here,” Noctilucent whispered in her ear.
She did, and let him rock her back and forth like she was two years old again. Starlight closed her eyes, and could hardly even feel the burning hot sand. Her mane was matted to her forehead, and she could see long gashes in her forehooves, but she was alive, and so was her father.
A crash from behind them both interrupted the reunion. Starlight turned to see Staten and Midnight walking around the other side of the spinner. Staten’s mouth was turned down and hard at the edges. He scowled at her. “Nice to see somepony decided to join us at last,” he said. “Too bad the pilot didn’t share your fate. He had all the provisions and survival gear with him.”
Staten pointed to the wreckage. Starlight could see where the nose section had completely shorn off from the rest. “Nice to see you, too, Staten,” she said.
The professor tapped her on the shoulder and smiled. “Don’t give me another scare like that, kid. I’m not liable to survive the next one.” Midnight followed behind him but only gave Starlight a curt nod. Her gaze focused on Noctilucent.
“Did you find anything?” questioned Noctilucent, peering around the crash site. “We can’t stay here much longer in this sun. We’ll need to get some sort of shade.”
“Right now the best bet is just sitting in the spinner’s shadow until nightfall. Nothing but sand dunes for a dozen petramin in each direction.”
“Great, just great.”
A sharp wind blew over the group, and Starlight grimaced. The heat bit into her like knives, and she kept shifting from hoof to hoof so she didn’t heat up too much. In cold, rainy Gracia she had dreamed of it being sunny everyday, but she was beginning to honestly rethink her stance.
She frowned. “So what exactly did I miss?” she asked. “What are we trying to do here?”
“We’re trying to get to Sundown.” Staten pointed to a hazy grey mark on the horizon. “See, all this business about your magic and Sunrise’s wings started there. There’s got to be answers, and how we can end all this, too.”
“I guess so,” Starlight said. She flopped down in the sand and looked up at the clear, blue sky. It just kept going up, so far that she could see where it turn dark blue, then black where it bordered the vast nothingness of space.
Sundown. Stranded. All with this horn and my magic. My magic . . .
Her eyes widened, and she sat up. “Wait, I have an idea!” she yelled. “I can get us to Sundown! All I have to do is use my teleportation and we’ll be there in no time.”
“No, absolutely not,” Noctilucent said. “Staten told me about what happened the two times you did, and I won’t let you risk yourself like that.”
“It’s either that or starve out here.”
“We’ll figure out another way.”
Midnight shook her head. “Oh come on, we all know she’s the only chance we have right now. We’re stuck in the middle of the desert between huge mountains and a city out of control. If we want to get through this, I suggest we go with Starlight.”
There was a moment of silence. Starlight could feel her breathing slow, like time was slowing down. Her eyes turned to her father, but he said nothing. Instead, he settled back on his haunches and looked at her. In one glance, he said more than just words.
“Are you sure you can get us there?” Staten asked. “It is an awfully long way . . .”
“Maybe not in one go,” Starlight said, “but I’ll get us there. We’ll just do little jumps, and let me rest in the middle. I’m tired of this whole mystery. I want answers, and I want them now.”
Both Staten and Midnight smiled, and Starlight thought she heard her father give an approving grunt. Without anything else to do, she beckoned the two lab ponies over until the four of them were huddled together.
“Alright, just stay calm and don’t move,” she told them, though most of it was directed at her.
Starlight shut her eyes and hugged herself to them. Inside her mind, she focused on the hazy image of Sundown. I want to go there. She gritted her teeth. I want to go there!
There was a pop, then a flash, and when Starlight opened her eyes the spinner wreckage was gone. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to tell they had moved. The city seemed just as far away as before. She sighed, then closed her eyes again to repeat the process.
Movement, even with teleportation, was slow. She figured each journey only took them a few hundred petras each time. With Sundown a dozen petramin away, it was going to be a long time before they reached the city. Not that she totally minded.
With each jump, Starlight’s heart beat faster in anticipation. What would she do once they got there? The only thing they could guarantee was that the IS was waiting for them, along with whatever made them crash. Unless, by some miracle, Staten’s daughter managed to break out, they wouldn’t have any allies.
Her father was silent all through the jumps. He had only made some kind of activity when they did their first jump away from the wreckage. She had seen him looking back with sadness in his eyes. It made her wonder about the pony snapped in half by the seatbelt, and what he had been to her father. Then Starlight reminded herself that it had been her father’s fault they were even there and had taken off across the sand again.
If Starlight thought she had been tired when waking up from the crash, an hour later it was like somepony had beat her face in with a boot . . . forever. She was exhausted, and after one last jump, pitched forward in the sand. Her breath came in short gasps, and her horn felt like it was burning its way out of her head.
“I . . . I can’t,” she said weakly when Staten stopped to examine her. She shook her head from side to side, or tried to but only barely managed to move it.
The sun blazed down at her, like it was mocking her fruitless attempt to escape it. They were even more in the middle of the desert now, away from the mountains or the city, simply lost and abandoned. Starlight almost wanted to laugh when she saw a buzzard start to circle them.
Only, her laugh started to fade when the winged figured continued to approach them. It circled down toward them, and she saw it was much too big to be a buzzard, or any bird she had ever seen or heard about. For one, it had four legs . . .
Starlight managed to sit up just as the rest spotted whatever it was that was flying toward them. She managed to rub her horn but otherwise couldn’t do anything but wait for the figure to land. If it came to a fight, she knew she was doomed.
Her breath caught in her throat when the figure drifted into full view. It was a pony! A pony with wings just like Sunrise’s, only able to actually use them. Before she could get a good look at exactly who it was, the pony dropped down to the sand, landing hard enough to send up a plume of dust.
When the dust had settled, it revealed somepony Starlight hadn’t seen before. Her teal coat was matted and now covered in sand, and a golden, stringy mane blew in all directions from the wind that harassed her. Starlight was going to ask for a name when she heard Staten making a choked cry.
Stumbling in the sand, he ran straight for the mare and threw his forehooves around her. He hugged her tightly, letting out gasping sobs, while the mare, startled at first, quickly did the same. Starlight only gaped at them both, but then noticed Midnight and Noctilucence staring knowingly at the two.
“What’s going on?” Starlight asked.
“I haven’t seen her in years,” Midnight said, “but that right there is Sunny . . . she’s Staten’s daughter.”
Starlight knew Staten had a daughter, but she had never seen her before, let alone believed they would find her in the middle of the desert. She looked at Sunny’s wings again curiously. They were larger than Sunrise’s had been and seemed like they had gotten more use. Besides that, she looked normal, save for the tear stains covering her face at that moment.
When the two had finished their hug-cry, they turned to the rest of the group, both of them smiling. Sunny was practically beaming. Staten cleared his throat to speak, “I, uh . . . Sunny’s here. She’s made it back to us.”
Sunny nodded to each of them in turn. “Noctilucence, Midnight, I haven’t seen either of you since I was just a teenager . . .” Her gaze fell to Starlight. “And you must be Starlight, Noctilucence’s daughter. My father told me all about you in his letters.”
From the way she said it, Starlight assumed Staten had actually told his daughter good things about her, which made her stop to think for a second. The way things had been at the museum, she was surprised Staten would tell anyone that she was good. Though, she didn’t quite have the time to think about that at the moment.
“W-What exactly are you doing all the way out . . . here?” Starlight asked.
“Now that’s a bit of an adventure,” Sunny said. “The short answer is . . . I got these wings and found out that they can work. So, I decided to escape Sundown. It never fit me anyway. Good thing I ran into all of you, or I would have flown all the way back to Gracia for nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “But dad . . . what are you doing out here?”
Staten cleared his throat and smiled. “We came for you, Sunny. When I got your message, I got Starlight, and we came here to rescue you and find out what’s going on.”
She laughed. “Well, some rescue, I have to say. This place has gone insane, anyway, so I don’t blame. I think the whole country is going to be going insane once everything spreads.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know . . . these.” She flapped her wings a couple times. “At first, I thought I was the only one who had them. But then, when I broke out, it turns out everypony is growing something in Sundown. It’s crazy, like something out of those old picture books from when I was a foal.” Her mouth turned into a frown. “Too bad not everything about magic is all that great.”
It was Staten’s turn to laugh, though whether it was happy or manic, Starlight couldn’t tell. “I always knew you would fly, Sunny, just not . . . literally. We’ve seen firsthoof that magic isn’t all it’s cut out to be, though.” He nodded toward Starlight’s head.
Sunny seemed to really notice her for the first time, and her eyes widened. Starlight was reminded that, young as she was, the mare was a professor as much as her dad. She trotted over to Starlight and peered at the horn on her head, nodding.
“Yep, I’ve seen these on a few other ponies. This one looks like it’s actually been used for more than those little teleports back there,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve . . .”
“Long story,” Starlight said.
“I bet.”
Midnight stepped forward. “I hate to break up all this reunion business,” she said, “but we really need to find someplace that’s not the desert to stay. Sunny, is there a way you can help get us back to Sundown?”
Sunny’s face fell. She looked back toward the city, then bit her lip. “I was actually, ah, going to show Starlight here about that. I saw her teleport you three around, so I can show her where to go.”
They all nodded, though Noctilucent seemed reluctant to agree. Starlight wanted to say something, but she felt like Sunny was leading her on, so she only shut her mouth and trotted after the mare.
Neither of them spoke until they had reached the top of a large sand dune, far out of reach from the three ponies behind them. The wind blew hard atop the dune, and Starlight had to keep blinking to get the sand out of her eyes.
Sunny wrenched Starlight’s head around to get her to look at Sundown. The city seemed surprisingly close now, enough that she could see the skyscrapers glowing in the midday light. “You see that?” Sunny asked.
“Well, yeah,” Starlight said. “That’s where we want to go, isn’t it?”
“Not if you ever want to come back out again.” Sunny pointed into the sky just above the city. “See that? That is what’s causing all this trouble, I think.”
Starlight strained to see, but she could just barely make out some sort of dark shape or object hanging in the sky above the city. It wasn’t very large, but the air seemed to be shimmering around it. “What is it?” she asked.
Sunny shook her head. “I don’t really know. It’s some sort of monument: five big gemstones centered around a larger one, all set in gold. All I do know is that the day I escaped, it rose out of the ground and nothing’s gotten out of Sundown since. When they tried to get out, that thing blasted them down.”
“So we can’t get into the city, then, can we?”
“I don’t know why you would want to,” Sunny said. “Look, I’m here, and we can leave now. Let’s leave this for the government to figure out.”
Sundown looked back at the mountains. They seemed much farther away than before. “We still need somewhere to hole up, at least for a little while.”
Sunny beamed. “I know just the place.”
Agent “Night” Nightcall paced at his desk and watched the flurry of activity around him. The IS building in downtown Sundown had become the center for whatever government was left in Sundown, and he was happy to let other ponies take over the job.
The chaos since the gems rose into the sky had subsided a little, if only just. Most ponies were still freaking out about new appendages, anyway, so few cared if they couldn’t leave the city. Night watched as a couple greenhorns from Lupine Falls tried to comfort a kid who had just grown wings. The little colt started to cry, so Night could figure out how well they were working.
He supposed he could go out on patrol. Director Bilhaus herself had been sending them out since her mad doctor turned into some kind of pony-bug . . . thing. However, most of them turned out to be as amiable as ever, and just the doctor was the one who tried to bite on the agents. Night just didn’t see much of a point to doing anything.
A shadow appeared in front of him; somepony was standing behind him. From the smell of her perfume, Night didn’t even need to turn around. “Director,” he said.
“Senior Agent Nightcall,” Bilhaus said. ”It would seem that in these trying times, a pony like yourself might feel compelled to, I don’t know, lead?”
Night pointed to his forehead, which had a large, pointed horn poking out of it. “I figure growing one of these gets me a few days of leave, at least. Why not use it here and now? It’s not like I could head to the beach if I wanted to.”
“We are all under the same pressures as you, Nightcall.” She shook herself, and he could hear the ruffle of feathers. “I have wings now, like some, while others have horns like you, while the rest seem to have grown vastly stronger and able to make plants grow by being angry. I do not need one of my senior agents sitting down on the job.”
Night stood, carefully and quietly. He smoothed out the dark suit jacket he wore before looking the Director in the eye. “Miss Bilhaus, you can fool all these other ponies to thinking you’re in charge, but not me,” he said. “We both know you’re rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Those gems have us trapped in here for Solaris knows why, and we are not in any sort of control. I can understand not wanting to scare the idiots out there, but don’t insult me with lies.”
If he didn’t feel so dead inside, he might have been afraid of what the Director would say to him. In fact, if it wasn’t for the threat of death hanging over him, he wouldn’t have said anything at all. Still, he was surprised when Bilhaus sniffled and leaned against him.
“I know,” she whispered. “You’re right and I know it, but it’s all I can do. These ponies need some order or the entire city will go crazy. We’re trapped like rats, but I have to make them forget.” She stood once more and wiped her eyes. “Just stay out of trouble, alright?”
Night smiled. “You can count on me.”
Outside, he was met by a very angry-looking Agent Flower. She waited for him at the bottom of the steps leading up to the building. “It took you long enough,” she said. “We were starting to worry you’d never come.”
“Calm down, Rose, I just had to settle some things before we left,” Night said, putting on his best smile. If she was impressed, she didn’t show it. Instead, she led him around the corner, away from the building and into an alleyway out of view of any watching ponies.
Within the alley, three ponies waited for them. They were wrapped in bulky clothes to keep their identities a secret, but Night knew them on sight. Carpenter and Frankincense, their former prisoners, were watching them impatiently. Laying on his mother’s back was their unicorn foal.
“Are we ready?” Frankincense asked. His burly police stallion voice was shining through. “We need to get going, I don’t like being so close to the IS building . . .”
“We’re going, we’re going,” Night said. “I just got everything squared away in case . . . well, you know. You two are going to get through that shield, don’t worry.” He gave them another one of his poor smiles. “If it’s the last thing I do, it’s going to be releasing my prisoners.”
They seemed to accept that and followed him out of the alley and down a sidestreet that ran behind the IS building. He trotted past like he belonged on the street and didn’t deserve any suspicion by the guards outside. If they noticed him, though, they didn’t show it. Probably too busy looking for more bugs, he thought.
Once they were past, it was a straight shot to the edge of the city. The street ran all the way to the desert, where it curved and met the Red Road to head back toward Serenity Valley. Though, if it was so simple, why was he sweating so much?
Night fought the urge to look up at the gems in the sky. He knew the danger, and the risks of trying to escape. He had seen the corpses that now made a ring around the city. But he had seen the ponies who got out. If you were just fast enough, you could make it . . . . He was fast enough, wasn’t he?
“Hey, you look more jumpy than a greenhorn on their first visit to Lupine,” Flower said.
“I don’t like the feel of this mission.”
“Mission?” She laughed, throwing back her head and letting the wind catch her mane. “This isn’t any ‘mission,’ Night. We’re committing elaborate suicide to let these folks through because of our guilty consciences. Or am I wrong?”
He scowled. “You know you’re right.”
“I always am.”
“Still . . .” He looked back up toward the gems in the sky. “Maybe if we make it out . . .”
“Then what?”
“Nothin’. Just an idea.”
She gave him a demure smile. “Tell me later.”
They reached the end of the street and stopped. Across the way lay all the mangled bodies of the poor ponies who had tried to get out. Their bodies outlined the invisible barrier. Night wrinkled his nose from the smell, and he saw Flower do the same. As a police officer, Carpenter took it okay, but his wife vomited in the street, which set the baby crying.
“We’ll go first,” Flower told them. “The two of us should draw its fire. After us . . . get out of here, and never look back. Get someplace safe and hope for the best. It’s all we can do.”
Frankincense, the mother, shook. “But you two will—”
“We know.” She turned to Night. “Ready?”
I’m going to die. “Ready.”
“Then let’s go!”
He took off. Any slower and he knew he would have turned back. Don’t think, just do. Never mind the laser in the sky or the death around you, he thought. There was no point in worrying about it now. He was a dead stallion walking. Well, running.
Flower cursed, and Night looked behind them. The two parents had set off already. Too soon! They kept looking up in the sky. Scared, most like. Night let out a curse of his own and gunned it. If he could just make it there before them, he could draw the fire and . . .
There was a roar in the sky, and Night felt heat on his back. He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer. To which god, he didn’t know. Maybe all of them. He waited and waited and—
Nothing. He opened his eyes. He was still here and the wife was shrieking. He turned to see Carpenter lying on the ground, burnt to a crisp. The smell, oh Adana, the smell . . . he wanted to throw up. Then he saw the jewels turn toward Frankincense and glow once more.
She saw it too. For a second, nopony did anything. Then, in her last act, the mother threw her baby to Flower. It cried as it soared through the air. Night wondered if it knew, if it could her its mothers cry wail up then cut off suddenly. He wanted to vomit.
Flower caught the baby and rolled backward, tumbling and letting out a cry of her own. Night just stood in the open, dumbly, like a deer in the headlights. He stared up at the jewels. They mocked him in their silence.
“C’mon, shoot!” he yelled. “Shoot me, shoot me! You were supposed to shoot me!” Hot tears streamed down his face and snot bubbled out his nose. His eyes felt puffy as he continued to scream and cry, somehow both at once.
He didn’t stop until he felt Flower’s hoof on his shoulder. “Night, look.”
For once, he did as he was told. The ring of bodies was in front of him. He was outside the barrier. He wanted to fall to his knees and weep for them, but . . . he couldn’t. He wasn’t even crying for him. Each tear that ran down his face wasn’t for the dead parents or the orphan they now carried. They were for him.
“We have to go back,” he heard himself say.
Flower stepped in front of him. “We’re no good to them back there, even if we could get back in,” she said. “Out here, though, we can do something.”
“Like what?”
She draped a hoof around him and gave him the widest, fakest smile he had ever seen. Somehow, it worked. “Well for starters, I know a little place that used to have a certain crystal . . .”
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Ouch! talk about a heck of a nasty end, and worse, to survive when others did not.. the guilt.. but I hope that doctor gets a can of raid shortly..
3817639
If it wasn't obvious enough about the "bug ponies":
static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120622225326/mlp/images/5/5b/Changeling_swarm_S2E26.png
3817652 hehe, oh I know, but still, a little bit of fitting irony that you can call him a true parasite, as within, as without. Its just, I love a serving of fitting, karma, or however you wish to call it.
Survivors guilt is a bitch.
What? Why are what I assume are the Elements of Harmony killing ponies? What exactly happened to Celestia, Luna, and Discord? Also, how are Sunrise's wings going to 'activate' so that he can use them?
3818262
It's almost like this is building up to a big reveal.
3818270
Carpenter and Frankincense. I just figured out those names and I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
Also, a 1984 reference?
A 1984 REFERENCE!?
I have no idea why it made me so giddy to see it, either.
Wow. This story really is starting to go somewhere fast. I still think Sunny and Midnight are Tia and Luna, though. Don't know why, I just do.
Welp now they are going to the point of orgin.
I wonder what they will find there?
Oh hell yeah, I figured with that explosion that we would be having transformations galore. It's really hilarious that the mad doctor turned into a changeling. It's definitely concerning that the Elements have gone all magical anti-personnel, though.
3824450 Very strange this business with shooting ponies out of the sky. This story is getting pretty bizarre. All I can assume is that it's either mistargeting or those ponies were or are going to be something that it thinks presents a danger.
Oh wow, ponies are turning into changelings too? I did not expect that!
Don't need the 'on' there.
Good lord, that was a heck of a turn of events!
Odd that the elements are preventing the unnatural ponies from leaving the area of effect. Wait, what?
We think the changelings will be the first to die, not enough sustaining emotions at the moment...
Keep going! ;)
Changelings... great. Wait... WHAT THE FUCK???? YOU KILLED THE PARENTS???
...you evil bastard.
3818262 Why do you think? Those who are trying to get to them most likely want to destroy them. They are waiting for the bearers.
We need two unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth pones. Red and Sunrise are on the war, so it's just a matter of tine now.
1984