Re:Harmony

by starcross7

59 - Sense

Chapter 59 - Sense

In an unknown gray facility, they saw Posey undergoing an Aether Decontamination procedure.

In the Palace of the Earth, they saw her recovering.

In the Palace's halls, they saw a stallion guard falling in love with her.

In the dinning hall, he eventually proposed to her.

In her hesitation, Posey half-heartedly accepted.

In the Palace's gardens, they saw her marriage. Yet a picturesque scene of wedding dresses, bouquets, and a breeze of flower petals could not overshadow the deep dark guilt behind her forced smile.

But what why was she seeing this? It wasn't as if Apple Bloom wasn't curious about her adoptive mother's past. She knew of her days as a fighter pilot in the Gaean Air Force, and there were indeed gory details that Posey spared her daughter from hearing.

However, Fluttershy was still with her in the Realm of Truth, and all this time her eyes had been glued to the past event's transpiring before her serious eyes. Time sped forward once more. The yellow pegasus bit her lip and trembled with worry as she and Apple Bloom manifested upon a steep mountainside pasture where a stonemason villa complex overlooking the Everfree forest. A train of sedans and SUVs parked alongside the sole dirt road leading up to the summit, and armed guards in black suits and black shades stoically patrolled the perimeter.

A high-pitched scream disturbed the quietness and garnered all of the guards' attentions. None ran to anypony's rescue, for the buzz of a radio command through their earpieces kept them at their posts. A few senior captains did enter the villa's grounds, but that was when the yelling began.

"YOU LIED TO ME! ALL OF YOU!"

"Miss Posey, please. We had to cover up the actual results, because otherwise--"

The crashing of furniture and breaking of glass was loud enough to be heard outdoors. The guards were finally ordered to secure the villa's main entrance, but as Apple Bloom found out, their positioning was misplaced. Fluttershy seemed to know where the next scene was going to take place, and Apple Bloom followed her along the sloping grasslands towards the back corner of the villa. From a stone balcony, Posey, in a one-piece gown, burst out through the wood door carrying a weighted blanketed bundle with her teeth and tumbled over the hill before springing back up to her hooves. The earth mare galloped off, and immediately Fluttershy extended her wings and gave chase towards a cliff side. Even here in the recorded past, Apple Bloom huffed and puffed in her bid to catch up, and she remained well behind her temporal companion. Yet even from her position, she could see the tears streaming from both the pegasus's eyes and Posey's eyes. It was almost uncanny; they even cried the same way.

Posey slid to a stop at the cliff's edge, and her spread-leg positioning appeared as if she was going to jump off. Fluttershy worriedly flew around the earth mare, and she leaned hoping to push back Posey should she take a leap. But Posey didn't, and she fell back on her haunches. A delirious smile spread over her face as she swayed the blanketed bundle back and forth, singing a lullaby that so many mothers and foals knew. "Hush now, quiet now," were words Apple Bloom remembered flittering from her adoptive mother's lips so many times. The song should have calmed the pegasus down, but instead Fluttershy circled around her frantically. Her attempts to lunge after her failed, for she had forgotten that her present self did not exist in this temporal reconstruction. Fluttershy plowed right through the delirious mare and into the ground before turning around.

"You can't," pleaded Fluttershy. "You can't do this. Please, you mustn't."

"Fluttershy, it's just an illusion," said Apple Bloom. "She can't hear you."

Apple Bloom wished it was so, and she wished what was going to happen next be also a lie. The yellow earth mare rose up decisively, and with a snap of her neck she threw out from the blanketed bundle an infant with a yellow coat, pink mane, pink tail, and to Apple Bloom's shock, yellow wings. The baby, smiling and cooing happily, didn't even realize that she was falling to her death.

Fluttershy screamed as she tried to dive after her own infant self if weren't for Apple Bloom holding her back by the tail with all the strength in her jaws. Fluttershy could hurt herself, and even if it wasn't possible in this reconstructed past, Apple Bloom had to contain her companion's hysteria lest her emotions upset the makeup of this magical realm.

Fluttershy's infant self was gone, cast out into the darkness below. The present Fluttershy had collapsed to loudly bawl into her hooves. Apple Bloom's jaw was now sore, but she wanted to say something to calm the pegasus's sadness. There were no words she could say, and with so much of guilt bundling from within the adoptive daughter of Posey, Apple Bloom started crying too. She could not even say she was sorry.

Then she saw butterflies; butterflies that rose from the darkness to fill the sky in a palette of warm colors, arcing over the villa and the mountaintops. The sheer beauty of the swarm soothed Apple Bloom's heart. Despite the tragedy that had occurred, a smile drew across Apple Bloom's tear-stained cheeks. She almost wanted to reach up and touch the butterfly swarm, or become swarmed herself.

The swarm had calmed Fluttershy down as well. She no longer sobbed, but she had stared long at the darkness over the cliff edge she too was infected with a contented smile. She turned back towards Apple Bloom before gasping.

Then that was when she and Apple Bloom noticed Posey. She no longer appeared manic, but her unresponsiveness was unsettling all the same. She watched the swarm above her for minutes until she faced Fluttershy. Posey was looking at the fully-grown pegasus in the eyes. Did she see her? Had the Realm of Truth truly sent them back in time?

Fluttershy opened her lips with a desire to connect to her mother. However, the scene began breaking apart in a bright bang. Each pony and everything in the event began unraveling rapidly in millions upon millions of twisting vectors of light that coalesced into a single point. Apple Bloom and Fluttershy were now floating in a realm of violently clashing light and darkness, and light literally began burning darkness away.

From that point and manifesting itself from the twisting vectors of light was something nigh unfathomable, and yet surely this excruciating phenomenon began take a vague form of a tall and thin pony with six wings and a horn. Its limbs twitched in violent oscillation, and its back constantly cracked as if pain was its lifeblood. Merely looking at the being whose form Apple Bloom could scarcely grasp did not blind her, but she felt the immense fear emanating from this hateful _wraith of light_. One step from this wraith sent electrifying and burning pain throughout Apple Bloom and Fluttershy's body, and yet they were not shocked or singed. They were literally looking at pure energy, pure emotion, and pure terror, as it grew exponentially bigger with each passing second.

"DOES THE TRUTH HURT?" spoke the wraith in a head-splitting shrill. "GOOD. TRUTH IS BUT A SWEET POISON PONIES SEEK TO QUAFF TO NO END. TRUTH IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD THAT CUTS THROUGH ALL KNOWN LIES AND YET STABS ITS OWN WIELDER. TRUTH DOES NOT SET ANYPONY FREE.

"IN THE END, THERE IS BUT ONE TRUTH: EVERYPONY WILL DIE!"

Even though Apple Bloom couldn't see it, she could feel it tear a sneer across its visage. Never before did Apple Bloom feel so much intense pressure to escape. She couldn't gallop, but to her fortune Fluttershy wrapped her hooves around the filly and flew towards, of all points of the Realm of Truth, the remaining darkness. The Realm of Truth's magical properties allowed Fluttershy, it seemed, to fly faster than normal pegasii or even the fastest Gaean strike fighters. With each dizzying roll left and right, she narrowly dodged the wraith's laser-like vector-tendrils, which devoured more and more of the darkness.

Then in the middle of the remaining pond of darkness was a small muted dot of rainbow-colored light; light that was warm and pleasant than that of the burning destruction of the wraith. Fluttershy grunted hard and squeezed Apple Bloom to bosom tighter as she made her final dive towards the rainbow light.

---

"Apple Bloom, you all right?"

The yellow earth filly shook her head as her vision refocused on the worried-to-death look of her orange-coated older sister. No stranger would act that way to a random filly, and Apple Bloom never felt so embarrassed and ashamed for acting the way she did. She didn't deserve Applejack, and a small part of her hoped that this was still part of the Realm of Truth's illusions. Yet the orange mare rushed in and wrapped her forelegs around the yellow filly. Apple Bloom felt her fur. Apple Bloom felt her warmth. She knew she was back in her body and back in the present. She knew she had to embrace her older sister in kind.

"I'm so sorry big sis," said Apple Bloom. "I didn't mean to doubt you."

"It's all right," said Applejack. "As long as you believe that I'm your older sister, then everythin's all right. Agatha, you have many eternal thanks."

"It's the least I can do," bowed the elderly gray crystal mare right after she cracked her front ankles. Whatever she did, Pinkie stood by slack-jawed at her impressive yet unseen technique. On the other hoof, Fluttershy swayed side to side after being hit with something, which could be one of those chi-strikes Apple Bloom heard about from ponies visiting from the Far East. Fluttershy nearly tipped over if not for Pinkie zipping to her side to break her fall.

"You're back!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

"I guess I am," replied Fluttershy.

"Flutters, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"Did you see something that you didn't like?" Apple asked.

"She saw everything," Apple Bloom spoke up before Fluttershy could. "Our mother dying, and the barn burning down."

"For anypony, those are some pretty painful memories to see. Still, you also have my thanks Fluttershy for helpin' my lil' sister get through the, uh, 'truth' I guess."

"It's no problem at all," said Fluttershy. "Um, if you don't all mind, I still feel kind of dizzy. Is there a bed I can rest on?"

"Any of the rooms would do fine," replied Agatha, "but I do recommend the second one the right."

"Thank you."

The filly watched the pegasus waddle tiredly over towards the room in question. She heard her stumble before loudly plopping herself on the straw mattress. Apple Bloom knew she had to follow her inside. She had to make sure if she was all right.

The room was the same as the ones she had just recently stayed in: small, and carved from a mix of crystal and igneous slabs that take on the appearance of wood planks. A glowing enchanted geode served as a dim light source and somewhat of a heat source. Aside from the straw mattress, the other pieces of furniture included a small bookshelf, a desk with a small mirror, and a small chair.

On the mattress Fluttershy had faced the wall sniffling with tears, and Apple Bloom closed the door as Applejack and the rest of the mares did their adult talk, which was something about finding a way to get back into the Crystal Castle. The filly wasn't entirely interested, and while she was glad to have reunited with her older sister, she became drawn to a pegasus she had just met.

"Can I sit here?" Apple Bloom asked, and Fluttershy nodded.

"Look, I'm sorry about Posey," she continued.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"Because I was the filly who replaced you."

"But I don't blame you."

"I feel guilty all the same. Mother, I mean, Posey, just used me as an excuse to have an earth pony child."

"She wasn't herself," said Fluttershy, "and I don't think she hated me."

"She threw you away!"

"She saved me, even if she knew I would be falling to my death. She is a kind mare who lost her way. After all, she did take care of you."

"But after what I saw, I'm not sure if I can trust her anymore."

"Posey is still your mother, no matter what she did in the past. Please don't hate her, at least for my sake."

"I'm not sure what to feel now, but what about you? Now that you know Posey is your real mother, what are you going to do?"

"I want to meet her."

"She doesn't like pegasii, and also... butterflies."

"I still want to meet her," said Fluttershy after glancing at the trinity of butterflies that was her Heaven's Insignia on her flank.

The door slammed open. A whiff of gunpowder and grease flowed into the room, and a stern-faced Ingrid Pie stared upon Apple Bloom. As much as she held it in, the filly could tell that the bounty hunter mare wanted to tearfully leap in and hug her. The slight rattling of her guns, bullets, and grenades on her vest was also a giveaway.

"Ahem," coughed Ingrid, who ceased her mild shaking. "Come with us to the lower levels. We're going to need everypony to listen in for the operation."

---

This was awkward. Apple Bloom followed right behind Ingrid, who led the way down several jagged crystalline and igneous stairwells, while Fluttershy and then Bellamena pulled the rear. The dark-maned mare steps were oddly strained. All too frequently she looked behind her back. It might seem she was checking up on Apple Bloom, but her eyes often darted back at the pegasus behind her. It was just feeling weird.

"Fluttershy, is it?" said Ingrid. "You... look a lot like Posey."

Fluttershy uttered a quiet squeal of fear.

"That Element you have," continued Ingrid. "It's Empathy, right? Very interesting ability you have. Transferring damage? Very interesting."

"For Pete's sake," Bella said. "If you want to make yourself look good, sis, you complement yourself, not your rival."

"That's right!" said an upside-down Pinkie Pie. "You should tell them how much were a badflank bounty hunter when you nabbed Burglar Bray in Manehattan."

"How are you doing that?" asked Ingrid.

"Pinkie Gear Special Ability #2: Van Der Waals Wheels. You can't hear it, but my wheels are spinning in opposite direction at high speeds to create an inverse gravitational electromagnetic attraction to any surface it touches."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Neither is you denying that you're jealous of Apple Bloom, Inkie Pie," pointed Pinkie.

"I'm not that kind of mare. And stop calling me Inkie."

"Inkie," said Bella, "you were kind of shocked when our younger sister told us that Apple Bloom in trouble. We had to leave two good mortar cannons in your mad rush to run back."

"Sister, we had to fall back given the arrival of reinforcements."

"No, you looked pretty worried when you ran back. You hardly ever ran away from an onslaught like the one we just fled from, and let me remind you, we have faced worse in the past."

"It's a tactical retreat! Besides, Apple Bloom and her friends made it to safety right?"

"Don't you mean Applejack?"

"That's what I said. Applebloomjack. Now, can we hurry up? If we're going to rescue that lavender unicorn, we can't dawdle here."

She must be talking about Twilight Sparkle, the unicorn said to share some kind of special "relationship" with Applejack. It wouldn't surprise Apple Bloom if that kind of relationship was similar to that of her adoptive mother and Firefly, but Bella did also mention that Applejack was also close to a stallion named Shine.

The ponies went down deep, and upon reaching a ground level, Apple Bloom looked up to see thick crystal columns were as tall as skyscrapers, if not taller. She couldn't even see the ceiling.

Here, a row of batteries and a few blocks of crystals were wired to a power box, which then powered up several high-powered spotlights. Bon Bon and Lyra were in the background continuing to set up various scientific gear while Applejack emerged from behind a stack of crates filled dynamite, grenades, bazookas, rocket-powered grenade launches, hoofguns, and assault rifles.

Upon seeing one another, the two estrange sisters trotted up to one another across the smooth crystalline floor. Even after being glad to see her, Apple Bloom still wasn't unsure how to proceed in making up years of growing up with her older sister. She wanted to say something, but she didn't have to. Applejack smiled and rubbed a hoof on her mane before topping it off with her Stetson hat.

"Ahem," Ingrid coughed.

"What do you want?" Applejack asked.

"You're welcome."

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have brought my little sister here anyway."

"At least I didn't leave her out in the cold."

"Ponies, over here," bellowed Agatha. The olden mare stood next to a bandaged Aurea Laurea in crutches before a tall and massive wall where lights illuminated a small portion of it and where sensors were wired on its surface. All the eight other ponies gathered to form a semi-circle around the two crystal ponies and the wall.

"The old catacombs is past this wall," said Aurea. "Ordinarily, Castle, Quicksilver, and I would be able to break through it without a problem, but seeing that I am in no shape and that my comrades are captured, it's going to take every pony to do the job."

"Don't we have explosives to take care of this?" asked Applejack.

"Don't be a silly pony, Applejack," said Ingrid. "If this was an ordinary wall of gypsum, we would have already blown this up along with a few well-placed strikes from our RPGs. Even walking a few feet in the Empire and I can tell that this giant wall is almost as strong as layers upon layers of steel."

"Then what about my Sword? Heck, what about Pinkie and Fluttershy's Elements?"

"Even if you were to have all the Elements gathered and used them at its maximum power," said Agatha, "you would only put a mere dent on this wall. The magic barrier that's now surrounding the castle is amplified by the makeup of the Empire's crystals, the only substance designed to be the anti-Elements so to speak. If you can't cut through a simple magic barrier, what good can you do against pure Crystaltech?"

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

"There is a way, and that is to teach all the earth ponies in this cavern the art of Geosense in a single day."

"Without any breaks or rest," added Aurea.

"One day's worth of training between six earth ponies and myself will produce enough power to knock down the wall that will lead us back to the Crystal Castle. Don't think about trying to sub in for the filly, unicorn. I know you're one."

"Ah, darn!" Pinkie cried. "My secret's out."

"She was talking about me," said Lyra as she lifted her mane to display her shaved horn.

"Wait, you're not an earth pony?" asked Applejack. "Pink, did you know about this all along?"

"Of course I did," said Pinkie. "Ever since Lyra and I first met in Rock Prison."

"How come you didn't say anything about it?"

"You never asked. Plus I kept a Pinkie Promise until she decides to show her horn to everypony."

"Then if Lyra's a unicorn, then that means... No... You're not gonna involve Apple Bloom. She ain't a fighter."

"We don't have much of a choice," said Agatha. "The cabal's forces are patrolling the city, and we can't find another crystal pony in time; especially one not tainted by Bliss.

"If it's to rescue your friend Big Sis," said Apple Bloom. "I'll train with y'all."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Applejack.

"I travelled through one underground cavern, Hollow Shades, and endured the Frozen North. I'm prepared to help you save Twilight Sparkle."

"Well, at least go easy on my little sis, Miss Agatha. Still, I can't wait one day. I don't know how long Twi, Spike, and our animal friends can hold up."

"If Twilight is the prophesied Twilight who will change the world," said Aurea, "the cabal will keep her alive until their takeover of Gaea and Pegasopolis is complete. I can't be certain of the others, but if time is of the essence for you, then you will have to begin your training immediately. Agatha, I'll leave them to you."

"Indeed," said the elderly mare. "Make no mistake, my little ponies: I will train all of you harder than I did to Aurea and her friends."

For an injured pony, Aurea hobbled fast and far from the wall and from the group. Like menacing tiger, Agatha glared at Lyra and Fluttershy to do the same. Even Apple Bloom could feel the intense pressure the elderly mare put into her pinpoint glare, and the filly wasn't alone. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Ingrid, Bella, and Bon Bon shuddered at the impressive amount of power welling from within Agatha.

The elderly took a deep breath. Power flowed into her, and all muscles in her four legs bulged upon uttering a sharp grunt. Her advanced age was still apparent, and her endowed limbs remained relatively sleek. Agatha rose up slow before slamming her front hooves down like a massive hammer.

The cavern rocked. Random pebbles fell like rain on everypony's heads before six crystal boulders slammed right in each pony destined to receive their training. It became silent, and cautiously Apple Bloom and the adult mares poked their heads past their personal boulders to see Agatha smiling devilishly.

"Let's begin," she said.

Comments

[eisenstein80060]

And so the official reveal. Poor Fluttershy

[Archlyn]

That was unexpected. I thought they'd be sisters or something, Still this was awesome... can't wait for more :)

[DayDreamer]

Yesss. This story is so amazing. Can't wait for more. Awesome chapter.

[Coco-mix]

Amazing chapter^^

[ForeverLunar]

I had a hunch after finding out that Posey was not Fluttershy, that Posey was her mom but i couldn't figure out how. Now i know. Amazing story btw, ah don't think I've told ya yet but this is probably one of my favorite Fimfics I've read. Besides Fallout: Equestria

[Just Sandy]

who is then fluttershy father?

[TheDeolex]

Earth benders. LMAO.

[ClockworkShield]

6523219 I think there was a part that said she married some noble.