> Next Tuesday Morning > by Flutterdude > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prologue > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEXT TUESDAY MORNING The purple dragon escorted the white unicorn through the field of gumdrops and lollipops. The round hills rolled like the unicorn's curvaceous purple mane, their lightly-billowing grass as green as the dragon's dorsal spikes. Not one object in the landscape was definitively solid, outlines serving as not much more than a difference in color, everything seeming to blend into everything else in a way that defined real words. The observer in this strange land barely noticed a dull, inconspicuous vignette in his field of vision. In fact, the whole world itself seemed under the same euphoric spell, the very air covering everything in the pastel land appearing to be filled with a vague pinkness, as if the whole world was willingly blasted with blush. For all Spike the dragon was aware, the blush could've been supplied by his unicorn companion, Rarity. Nothing seemed to be clearly defined in this place. They came upon a house. No, it wasn't a ginger bread house, silly. It was an ice cream house. The neon, scene-colored abode had the same atmosphere as the surroundings it blended into without true reason. "I made it for you, Rarity. Why yes, it is an ice cream house. Chocolate fudge shingles... rocky road garage..." The whole world lurched broadly, the dragon's very sense of sight seeming to be having a nervous breakdown. The dairy house he had spent so much time on swirled in his eyes until it was nothing but abstract strokes of color against the self-same background. He felt like he was falling, falling into a void of color and nothing much else. He didn't question this; it all made sense to him. Somehow. His precious Rarity blended messily with the rest of the breaking-down world. Everything went black. ------------- The purple-scaled, green-spiked dragon woke up in his mat on the floor where he slept. The world sloshed like water in front of him until everything came into focus. Outlines in this world were clearly defined, depth was unfalteringly noticable, and the library he was in corresponded nicely to the laws of physics. Yep. This was the real world. Which kinda sucked. He was this close to getting to third base with Rarity. He heard hoof steps in front of him and noticed his sister/mother figure/master and overlord, Twilight Sparkle. She was a purple unicorn with a straight-cut, Beatles-esque black mane, streaked with purple and pink. (Well, Beatles-esque as in before they became pot-smoking hippies. Twilight Sparkle was not a pot-smoking hippie [though that would be kinda funny, considering pot-smoking hippies didn’t exist in the peaceful, TV-Y-rated land of Equestria].) "Huh... Twilight...?" "Oh, hi Spike," Twilight spat quickly on her way to a random stack of papers after shuffling through another random stack of papers. "It's the middle of the night! Why are you pacing like this?" "Frankly, I don't know how you can sleep at a time like this!" she quipped a little more slowly this time as she ran to another random stack of papers. "Three AM?" "It's awful, it's horrible, it's tragic!" she ejaculated, channeling Rarity channeling William Shatner channeling Christopher Walken. "Eh... I don't understand. What's wrong?" Twilight held up a calendar to Spike's face and spurted, "Here. Now do you see what's wrong?" It had all the trappings of an ordinary calendar and nothing could really be discerned to be the matter by looking at it. How horribly ignorant Spike was. "We forgot to celebrate Arbor Day?" Spike tried, remembering that they did, in fact, celebrate Arbor Day. He also remembered, with a reserved snicker, joking about sticking their tree-hugging friend Fluttershy into the ground and seeing what happened. (Fluttershy was not a pot-smoking hippie either. She was just a tree-hugging pacifist and lived in a cottage in the woods and made herbal treats for all her little animal friends and some for herself and didn't share them with her friends. Except for this one time, but that was with Pinkie Pie, so nobody noticed anything wrong. Pinkie Pie was not a pot-smoking hippie either. Let's just settle on "hyper" and get on with the story.) "No, the problem is I just finished planning my schedule for the month, but I forgot to leave time to plan for next month! Don't you see? There's no time in my schedule to put together another schedule! I could move my meeting with the Ponyville Hay Board to the following Tuesday, but then I have to reschedule my lunch with Pinkie Pie, and you know what a nightmare she is with scheduling." Read: scheduling. "This is an absolute disaster. My whole year could be thrown off!" "And I woke up from an ice cream dream for this..." Spike deadpanned as he shuffled back to his bed/mat, oddly putting emphasis on "cream" instead of "ice". --------------- Twilight said to nopony in particular with a sigh, "Oh my gosh, I think I did it! If I can find a way to read The Art of Invisibility Spells, and Thornhoof's Brief History of Canterlot at the same time, that could leave me a half-hour scheduling window!" A sudden blast of light filled the room. Twilight held a hoof to her eyes as she backstepped away from the gradually brightening void of brightness. She echoed the words in her head, which presently consisted of "Huh?" She backed up, holding a hoof to her eyes as she became a little bit more literate. "What's going on...?" The light dissipated, leaving an obligatory smoke cover in its wake. A figure stood on the wooden floor, at the epicenter of where the lightning-like blast had left a small patch of it lightly charred. She looked completely disheveled, wearing a moderately-torn black jumpsuit, a white bandanna on her forehead, a black eyepatch, and a scar on her cheek. Her black mane, interspersed with one pink and one purple stripe, was unkempt and spiky. It reminded present Twilight of the main character in Metal Gear Sparkle, a table-top game she had been playing a lot of lately. (Sparkle Snake was not a pot-smoking hippie. He just had funky hair.) She was a unicorn. She was purple. She was Twilight. The Beatle cut Twilight was dumbfounded. The metal-head cut Twilight ran up to her past self and said with wide-eyed haste, "Twilight, you've got to listen to me!" Twilight was flabbergasted. Becoming a tad more eloquent, she interrogated Sparkle Snake Twilight, bombarding her(self) with the first questions that crossed her train of thought. "Who are you? I mean, you're me, but I'm me too. How can there be two 'me's? It's not scientifically possible. You are not scientifically possible!" she exclaimed, pointing out the inherent impossibility of what was happening right in front of her. "There's no time!" Future Twilight shouted shrilly, her pupils contracting as she frantically blurted out her words like a chicken with its head cut off that could somehow still speak. "I have a very important message for you from the future!" "You're from the future?!" Punk rocker Twilight nodded briskly. "Yes, that's right, now listen--" "What happened to you? The future must be awful!" Super commando Sparkle Snake Twilight from the future interrupted Beatle cut Twilight from the present/past's train of thought as she desperately yelled "Please! I don't have much time!" "Is there some sort of epic pony war in the distant future or something?" Metal-head future Twilight clarified "Actually, I'm from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING" - emphasis added here for written posterity - "but that's not important right now!" "I can't believe time travel is really possible! How did you - I mean, I - figure it out?" "The time spells are in the Canterlot Archives. But that's not--" "Really? Where? I've never seen them." How horribly ignorant Twilight was. "They're in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing. Now, you have to listen to--" "Is time travel fun, or does it hurt? I have so many questions--" It was future commando Sparkle Snake metal-head Twilight from the future's turn to increase the hyphen count, as she shut up present Twilight with a hoof to her muzzle. Her foreleg began to crackle with lightning-like magical energy, the arcs of pseudo-electricity becoming more frequent and more bright with each passing moment. The entirety of future Twilight began to get a metallic glow to her as she speed-shouted "I have something extremely important to tell you about the future, and I only have a few seconds so you've got to listen! Whatever you do, don't--" She was engulfed in a sudden, rudely inconvenient flash of blinding light. Twilight was left standing in another blanket of obligatory smoke as she looked about her, nothing to be seen except books. Lots and lots of books. And the walls of the library, too. But mostly books. "Future Twilight? Oh no! What was she trying to warn me about? Her clothes, her mane, that scar... oh, what a mess she is! ...I mean, I am... or I... will be..." She gasped. "She must want me to prevent whatever horrible thing happens in the future!" she concluded with a rising tone in her voice. She had to prevent the horrible fate that would befall her by NEXT TUESDAY MORNING (emphasis added here, again, for written posterity as opposed to actual spoken inflections). -------------- The giddy pink pony floated just off the ground, balloons strapped to her back, as she treaded air and floated slowly down the street. Her poofy pink mane bobbed up and down on her head. "C'mon, Fluttershy! The party can't start until the party supplies get there!" The yellow, tree-hugging pacifist pegasus grunted as she carried a small mountain of random party supplies on her back. Her long pink mane kept getting in her eyes and trailed on the ground. Winces and grunts interrupted her speech as she tried her best to say coherently, "Happy to... help... but... can I carry... the balloons next time?" Suddenly, the yellow one was rammed into by a speeding purple blur. As Fluttershy struggled to regain her hoofing, Twilight jumped onto a nearby bridge and used a conveniently-packed horn to signal everypony within approximately two counties. She was also sporting a Groucho Marx disguise that had serendipidously ended up on her face in the fracas. In all her Marxist glory, she shouted "Listen, everypony! I've got something really important to say!" The crowd just laughed. Confused at first, but then noticing that she was, in fact, wearing a Groucho Marx disguise, she threw it off and reiterated, "This is no laughing matter! We have a crisis on our hooves!" This time the crowd waited with silence and bated breath for further details. "I've just been visited by myself from the future!" The crowd just laughed. "This isn't a joke! My future self tried to warn me about a horrible disaster that's going to occur sometime before NEXT TUESDAY MORNING!" The crowd offered a collective raised eye brow, deciding to see just what the hay their local librarian was talking about. Twilight's country-fried, wheat-maned orange earth pony compadre, Applejack, was interested. She leveled her trademark felt cowpony hat above her green eyes. "What kind of disaster?" she asked with a noticable Appleoosan accent. "I don't know! I got sucked back into the future before I could explain!" Pinkie Pie frantically pedaled her hooves and screamed, "Run for your life!" She pedaled as fast as she could, fleeing the scene at speeds in excess of two kilometers per hour. The Rarity of Spike's dream(s) chimed in "What ever should we do, Twilight? How do we stop the disaster if we don't know what it is?" "We'll just have to work together to make sure we're safe. Rainbow Dash," said she, pointing to her pegasus friend, "you and the other pegasi spread out over Equestria, and look for any kind of problem that could lead to a disaster, and I mean anything." "Got it!" said the rainbow-maned tomcolt with a distinctive vocal fry. She flew off to go do disaster-prevention-type stuff, her blue coat leaving a cyan blur in her wake. Twilight looked at the crowd, now interested in a bit of a more serious way, and said "Everypony else--" "AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" squeeled Pinkie Pie. She was quick to shut her trap so she could ask of the general populace, "Anypony else wanna panic with me? ... No? AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" and proceeded to float away surprisingly fast on her balloon-infused saddle. Twilight regained her composure and said theatrically, "... Everypony else, time to disaster-proof Equestria!" Cue music montage. ---------------- "Done, done, and done. Applejack, what about the Everfree Forest?" "The perimeter's clear." "Great." Rainbow Dash added on to the report from her spot hovering in the air. "And my team gave the all-clear from Fillydelphia to Las Pegasus." "Excellent. Well, we've done everything on the list, but still... future Twilight looked like she'd been through a horrible ordeal. I just have this nagging feeling we should be looking for something bigger than loose bolts and leaky pipes." A deafening roar resounded through Ponyville and signaled everypony in approximately two counties. It sounded kinda like this: GROOOOWAAAOOORROOOOAAAAAHRRRRWWWRRRR. Pinkie Pie, no longer attached to the balloons, happened to be passing by and addressed everypony around her, "Okay everypony, follow my lead: AAAAAAAAAAAH!" The bystanders followed suit and coupled it with the old "run in random directions" strategy. With a strange giddy gasp of joy, Twilight said, "That's Cerberus! He's supposed to be guarding the gates of Tartarus, but if he's here, then all of the evil creatures that have been imprisoned there could escape and destroy Equestria!" "Destroy Equestria!?" Spike parroted in shock and disbelief. "Yeah, isn't it great?" Twilight said with joyous delight. The street was filled with random running and screaming ponies. Twilight faced Cerberus, the ghastly black, three-headed pit bull. Or maybe he was a boxer. Actually, come to think of it, he may have been a bull dog. Or possibly a great Dane. Though the general physique suggested a mixed breed, looking to be between a Rottweiler and a bull dog, maybe with a little Doberman thrown in there. But let's just settle on "hell-sent demon spawn" and get on with the story. "Hey, Cerberus!" Twilight shouted recklessly. "Looks like you could use some obedience training! Magic obedience training!" The yellow animal lover with the smooth, curving pink mane attempted to intervene, saying "Umm, Twilight, before you do that, could you be so kind as to possibly consider allowing me to try my own--" "Stand back, Fluttershy! Some serious schnitzel is about to hit the fan and get serious!" Twilight exclaimed arrogantly. "But, but please Twilight, I think there's a better way to handle this--" Twilight shot a massive beam of vaguely pink magical energy at the monstrous beast in a plan to incapacitate him, and dug her hooves into the dirt to steel herself for a more powerful volley. Cerberus took the blow and lurched back from being hit square in the shoulder. Obligatory wafting smoke rose from the area and he started running forward, because that's what really big evil creatures do. Twilight prepared for the strike, putting all she had into her horn, rendering it covered by two consecutive layers of magical energy. As the vaguely Rottweiler-esque demon was about to ram straight into the unicorn, she fired. Cerberus was shot back again, this time leaving the ground and landing on his back twenty meters down the street. Twilight prepared to do it again. She had to prevent the disaster future Twilight had foreshadowed. The sort-of-bull-dog-ish-but-not-quite eldritch abomination opened his eyes. They were entirely purple, the same color as Twilight's coat. They were glowing. He rolled over and leveled himself, then, the fire in his eyes growing stronger and more sinister with each step, charged at full speed toward her antagonist. By this time, Twilight had four layers of potential fire power enveloping her horn. She struggled to keep it all contained much longer, sweat rolling down her forehead, clenching her teeth. She took the effort to open her eyes and saw Cerberus towering over her and gaining speed at that. Frightened, she suddenly released all of the energy she had gathered in one, block-busting explosion. Twilight was thrown back, through a window and into the library that housed her house on the top floor. Cerberus was torn to shreds. A massive discharge of glowing yet dark energy (because of course that sort of thing exists) burst out of Cerberus's body as he exploded in a shroud of the dark fog, like smoke strewn into the air by a grenade. It consumed all of Ponyville within minutes. It covered the whole town and the ponies in it with eerie shadow. The town was obscured from outside view in short order, and it didn't stop there. It began slowly branching outward, dangerously close to the mountainside capitol of Equestria, Canterlot. Twilight's whole world was black. Then it went black again. > Chapter One > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight slowly came to. Consciousness came in bits and pieces, at one point being able to see, but not move much more than her eyes. (And her eye lids. Can't forget the eye lids.) Stuck in place by her own immobility, she observed the library around her. The explosion had not been kind to it, littering the pale pink floor with all sorts of books, the lightly-charred spot where future Twilight had been some hours before now indiscernible from the rest of the lightly-charred wooden floor. Actually, nevermind "some hours". The Sun got into Twilight's eyes if she leaned enough to her right from her position laying on the south stairwell. It was supposed to be behind her. She had been unconscious all night. Maybe even more than twenty-four hours. But Twilight decided to assume she had only spent one night unconscious. She squinted, and leaned back to a position where the Sun wasn't in her eyes. She looked out the window she had crashed through. Her eyes felt heavy as she observed that the street was battered, in generally horrid shape, and empty. News papers blew across the dirt road to definitively signify that the street was, in fact, empty. The air had a perverse, weird quality to it as well. She noticed the vaporous caliginosity of the air around her and everything else. It seemed... dark. As if all of Ponyville was under a very scarce shroud of sorts. It was then that she noticed the entire sky had a pink tint to it. The only sounds she heard were the wind blowing the faint streams of shadowy mist through the dank air, and the general sounds of nature: birds; squirrels; more birds. She noticed a funny sparkling surrounding her. At first she thought she was seeing stars, but these were pink, glittering specks of magical energy that flickered on and off like willow-the-wisps, the result of using an overloaded combat spell. Inside the vaguely-defined boundaries of the shimmering glitter, there were no contrails of the strange shadowy vapor. After a few hours, the sparkles were almost gone, as were the unsettling wafts of shadow. She summoned the strength to stand up on all four hooves. Most of the strain was due to being unconscious for at least twelve hours rather than real weakness. As she got her legs back in order, she trotted into the doorway of the library. A bizarre sense of emptiness seemed to impregnate the atmosphere around all that was visible. More news papers feebly tumbled about on the ground. With a sigh, she went back into the library. The sparkling glitter was now nothing more than the occasional flicker in Twilight's eye. It was very scarce and would be gone in a matter of minutes. She walked up the north stairwell, noting the cracks in the wooden steps. Lightly-charred wooden steps. The cracks in the walls. Cracks in the ceiling. The second floor at the top of the stairs. The windows looking out to a town devoid of visible ponies. The mirror. She looked into the mirror and was left staring at a mess of a pony. Her mane was unkempt and spiky, rather reminiscent of the main character of Metal Gear Sparkle, Sparkle Snake. Rather reminiscent of future Twilight. She realized with a stilted, panicked sigh that Cerberus was no doubt the horrible thing future commando metal-head Sparkle Snake punk rocker Twilight from the future had tried to warn her about. She reassured herself that she was still missing the eye patch. And the jumpsuit. "No eye patch," she said to nopony in particular. "No jumpsuit. No..." She turned her head to the side and noticed the scar on her cheek. I must’ve gotten it from the window, no doubt. "Okay, I have the scar. But still no bandanna." A dull head ache began to take shots at her brain. She clutched her forehead with her hoof, even though that never really works. She looked back at the mirror to find that her mane was in her eyes. She blew at it, but that only helped for about one second. Without thinking of the implements of what she was doing, she grabbed some cloth from a nearby first aid kit and wrapped it around her forehead to keep her mane up. It helped a bit with the head ache, too. She realized what had just happened, closed her eyes and corrected her previous statement. "Okay, I have the bandanna. But no jumpsuit and no eye patch." She thought about how long she had until the prophecy was proven, before it finally did become NEXT TUESDAY MORNING, and remembered that she wasn't certain just how long she had been out. She sighed and trotted down the stairs. As she looked about the empty lobby, she thought to herself that she also hadn't seen Spike anywhere. A green-spiked purple baby dragon with horrible glowing shadowy eyes (wherein light was replaced with shadowy ultraviolet-type stuff... or something) lunged at her from the railing of the top storey. --------------- Twilight was on the side of the street opposite the library when she stopped her galloping to turn around. Standing in the doorway of the library was Spike. He was lurched over in a predatory pose, arms raised to his chest, tongue flicking in between razor-sharp teeth, darkly glowing eyes staring back in her general direction. Twilight's eyes began to relax. Her heart pumped madly in her chest. She had a hard time believing the thing that had just attacked her in an unprovoked animalistic fury was Spike. Or, at least, it was Spike's body being possessed by Cerberus's dark energy stuff. That was a bit more believable. She remembered the one time where she was with her five friends in the Everfree Forest, where strange shadowy vapor animated a hammock of trees to give them scary faces. She assumed this was the same basic principle on steroids. Her five friends. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity. She wondered how much that number had decreased as she ran down the street toward the Carousel Boutique, Rarity's version of Twilight's library, taking heavy breaths from both fatigue and frightened shock. --------------- The gallop to the Carousel Boutique was uneventful as far as actual events went. Nothing at all had happened. News papers had blown in the wind like they always do whenever stuff like this happens, but nopony was out taking a walk, or looking for food, or anything. Rather, Twilight had spent it wondering what was happening around her. Her brother/adopted son/slave and servant had been possessed by a strange ethereal power and turned into something like a zombie. She remembered a movie she had seen once with her friends in an open-air cinema. She forgot what it was called, but that wasn't important. She burst into the Carousel Boutique hoping that Rarity was still alive, still Rarity, like Twilight was herself still. She thought about that while idly walking to the middle of the main room. She was a survivor. She walked up the stairs and noted that this time, there were no cracks. No cracks in the steps. The walls. The ceiling. The door to Rarity's room. Everything was in tip-top shape. It was just that there was nopony anywhere to be seen. Nowhere. And judging from Spike's condition, the whole town, maybe even the whole world, had possibly become nothing but a bunch of zombie-like cretins. She had only avoided the same fate because she had been surrounded by the after-effects of her own magic. Unless somepony else had released a massive discharge of energy when the black stuff came over their area, she could very well have been the only pony worthy of being called a "survivor". She hoped that wasn't the case as she opened the door to Rarity's room. A light blue-green-colored unicorn with a short, Rainbow Dash-like mane of sky blue streaked with white was standing in the corner of the room, her tail to Twilight. Her head was slouched over something, bobbing up and down. Twilight tried a simple "Excuse me?" The unicorn looked back at Twilight with darkly glowing eyes. Twilight screamed as the possessed pony galloped surprisingly fast toward her. The purple one grabbed a balsa hat rack with her levitation magic and put all her effort into making sure wood met head. It did. The hat rack wasn't exactly a crowbar, and shattered into pieces upon striking the uppugnant seafoam pony. Twilight was planning what to do next as the zombie-like pony rose to its hooves and regained its feral, crouching composure. As it opened its mouth and dashed toward her, Twilight desperately grabbed the unicorn by the neck and held it back. She did the first thing to come to her mind and heaved it through a window. As it careened through the glass and down two storeys to the ground, Twilight got a glimpse of its cutie mark: A golden lyre. She knew this pony. Not terribly well, but her name was Lyra Heartstrings. She came into the library quite a few times. She would always get nonfiction bipedal anatomy books. Her girlfriend Bon-Bon was a bit more diverse in her catalog. And Twilight had just thrown her through a window. Twilight tried to bury that thought, correcting herself by repeating the thought in her head that the monster she had just thrown out of a window was not Lyra. She knew this was true, but this development with the possessed and the zombie apocalypse and what-not was all so sudden, it had thrown her off guard. She stood in a panicked stupor in the middle of Rarity’s private quarters, looking around her, trying to get her thoughts together. In the corner where she had found the possessed Lyra, there was a badly-damaged corpse. Rarity's corpse. Twilight screamed a bit louder this time, as if trying to find out if windows could break twice. They can't. She averted her eyes from her friend's body and walked up to the broken window. She tried to think as coherently as possible. She figured that since Rarity's body was bleeding and all her internal organs were in the right places (Twilight had read too many anatomy books to not be able to judge that), she had not been turned into a possessed freak of nature. She had instead been killed by one. Twilight looked down the window out of bile curiosity and saw possessed Lyra's lifeless body two storeys down. It was bleeding profusely. Twilight had expected some sort of coagulated ichor. She also had half-expected the zombie to get back up and simply shrug off fall damage. But no. The body of Lyra Heartstrings looked like any other dead body. Twilight quickly dug her head into the desk she was craning her neck over, beginning to tear up, her emotions and tortured surprise at everything Ponyville had become since she went unconscious finally sinking in and getting the better of her. She rose her head and looked blankly into space with pupils the size of a pin head. Again, she attempted to collect her thoughts, biting her lip as she thought about how incredibly normal the bloody corpse of Lyra Heartstrings was. Apparently these "possessed" weren't necessarily undead. Just taken over. Which meant that they functioned just like a normal pony. Except they were brain-dead zombified shells of their former selves that seemed to do nothing but be a nuisance all the time and served no purpose but to scare the living crap out of everypony. Twilight noticed a note on the desk she was slouching over. She moved the giant picture of a clef note out of the way to find a blue diary, opened to a final entry just over halfway through the pages. The horn writing was clearly Rarity's. Neat, very tidy, with little hearts over the Is. If it were printed in typeset, it would be in italics. Dear Diary and whoever else may be reading this, I have no clue what just happened. My dear friend Twilight Sparkle had tried to subdue the monstrous beast Cerberus, but to no avail. She ended up blowing up the whole block and possibly killing herself. I never did get a good look at it, as I galloped as fast as I could to my house, where this note should be lying. A bizarre black fog began consuming the whole town, and it was impending upon my street. So I locked up all of the entrances as fast and best as I could and hoped that whatever horrible thing the black fog was sure to cast upon us would not affect me. I stayed all night last night holed up in my room, nothing but blackness outside my window. Now that it is morning, the blackness has receded somewhat, but there are many questions not yet answered. I doubt they ever will be answered, judging by the utter dankness of the whole world in front of me. I see sunken-eyed shells of what used to be ponies I knew, and I wonder if I'll ever be able to trot outside my house again safely. I see the sky tinted in pink, and I wonder if this fate has befallen the whole world. I see newspapers blowing across the streets, and I wonder why they always do that when stuff like this happens. I wonder if my little sister Sweetie Belle is alright. I wonder if my friends are dead. If the world is doomed. If I am going to be killed by one of these possessed abominations I see outside my window, roaming the streets, seeming to have no purpose in nature but to scare the living crap out of me. If there is hope for civilisation yet. Now I just sit here, mulling over what to do, wondering if it's safe to go outside, or if it ever will be, and silently hoping that this can all be reversed somehow, however often the laws of time and space cruelly remind me that this isn't possible. And I really want to go to the spa. If you are able to make things right again, please do so. Please make things right again. Twilight put the log down slowly, trying to look at the world through her friend's eyes. She wondered the same things her friend had. If the world ever would be right again, if there somehow was hope in this seemingly hopeless land. Her thoughts were a bit clearer now. She floated up the very pencil her late friend had used to write her last entry, erased the word "civilisation", replaced it with "civilization", and left. She came back into the room and erased "civilization", wrote it again with little hearts over the Is, and left. -------------- As she stood in the main room of the Carousel Boutique and savored the calm stability of the empty lobby, Twilight thought over what could be done, remembering the words of future Twilight, who had clearly wanted to tell her(self) how to prevent this whole thing from ever happening. She cursed herself as the fact sunk in that if it wasn't for her endless questions and interruptions, none of this would have ever happened. Rarity would still be alive. Spike and Lyra would still be normal. Those annoying news papers would stop crawling across the unpaven streets. Her mane would still be nice and clean-cut. Future Twilight had mentioned a "Star Swirl the Bearded wing" in the Canterlot Archives. She had said that the time travel spell she had been using was located there. Present Twilight decided then and there that she would drop everything she was doing, go to the Canterlot Archives at whatever cost lesser than death, and be sure to make her past self shut her trap long enough for her to tell her past self to not... To not what? What could she do or not do that would prevent this from happening? What exactly was it that her future self was trying to specifically warn her about? She thought about this, and suddenly, rather mundanely remembered that Fluttershy had wanted to do something before Twilight had gone into gung-ho hero mode and allowed Ponyville to become a zombified hell hole in the process. She couldn't think of any better of a plan, so she decided to go with that. It was stupid, but then, the entire past day or so had been stupid. That is, if it was just a day. She noticed a solar calendar apparatus near a window to her left. Twilight had read extensively about these, and with some thinking discerned the date to be Saturday, March 10th. NEXT TUESDAY MORNING was in about three or four days, counting that day, which was now in its noon hours. The future Twilight who had tried to prevent all of this from happening was from just a few days in the future. If the fictional laws of time were anything to trust, she would be in Canterlot by then, somehow. She would probably have to get moving right then in order to get to Canterlot on foot. She puffed her chest and and took conscious, deep breaths, trying to forget all of the emotional torment she had gone through that day, and trying to not think about all of the emotional torment she could very well go through on the way to Canterlot. As she looked out of the doorway and into the street, empty except for a stray tumbling news paper, her thoughts now concise, she remembered that night past, sitting with her five closest friends in the outdoor cinema, eating popcorn, resting her forehoof on a cowering Fluttershy and softly reciting familiar reassurances with a reserved chuckle, and the name of the movie they had been watching. 28 Cycles Later. > Chapter Two > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Well, if I received a message from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING being sent from the Canterlot Archives," Twilight said to nopony in particular, "then I'm pretty much guaranteed to be there by then. If the fictional laws of time are anything to go by, at least." Whether she understood why or not, she had time to find her surviving friends. She would probably need help on this journey, after all. She tried to cast the recurring image of Rarity's bloody corpse out of her mind as she evaluated the locations of her friends' houses. The closest one to the Carousel Boutique was Pinkie Pie's. She stared at the bleak ghost town in front of her. She took a deep breath and began trotting off to Sugar Cube Corner, a sweet shop that served as Pinkie Pie's version of the Carousel Boutique. Her mind strayed to a past topic. "Time travel is confusing." The magenta-eyed pegasus with the short rainbow mane, coat as blue as the sky above her, flew toward Ponyville. She had been doing disaster-prevention-type stuff in Baltimare when the Daily Equestrian reported that a sizable explosion had occurred in front of the Ponyville library and emergency calls were flooding in by the dozens. The trusted news publication also reported that a strange black mist was covering Ponyville and spreading outward, Canterlot was being evacuated, and hazmat officers were organizing a magical shield to isolate and quarantine the Canterlot/Ponyville area. Then they had blamed it on the zebras. She had dropped everything she was doing and was presently flying toward an impending pink dome encasing the capitol of Equestria, the agrestic village of Ponyville, and her five best friends. She didn't know what kind of sight she was to be greeted with. Damaged bodies in the streets, a town full of innocents dying of some awful disease. As she saw the dome isolating Ponyville and Canterlot from the rest of Equestria, she started worrying it was the latter. She flew up to a modular gateway area set up near the edge of the magical force field on a road that led into the closed-off zone, where hazmat ponies wearing yellow quarantine suits were gathered. They were playing rock-paper-scissors to see which three out of the six of them would go into the closed-off zone first. Rainbow Dash landed next to them. "Yo, guys! I have some stuff on the other side of this barrier that I need and friends I need to take outside, so, uh, yeah, if you could just let me in I'll only be a minute, I swear." "Miss, we have strict orders to not allow anypony but ourselves and those authorized like us to come in or out of the infected zone. We're gonna have to ask you to leave, it's far too dangerous for anypony without proper protection to be anywhere near here." Using her razor-sharp wit, she decided to convince them to let her in. "What if I was authorized?" "If you were an authorized member of the Equestrian Hazmat Force and had proper protective wear like us, then you would be one of the ponies that our higher-ups could allow in and out of the infected zone. But you aren't authorized, so you really must leave." "My friends are in there!" "Lots of ponies' friends are in there," the hazmat said grimly. "Including mine." He began walking toward her and urging her to leave as politely as he could while still being a deep-voiced G-man in a scary-looking quarantine suit. Rainbow Dash then got a brilliant idea. She struck a pose and emulated her femme friend Rarity as best as she could. She had seen Rarity use this strategy several times before, so she hoped the stallions would fall for her "bad girl" image. "Oh, but if you let me in," she said as she walked up to the stallion hidden under a yellow rubber suit, "that would simply be... awesome." She ignored the fact that she couldn't come up with anything better than "awesome" as she nestled her head against the hazmat's. "I don't know how I could ever repay you. I would do anything." She made sure to let the last word roll off of her tongue in a hoarse whisper. "Nice try." "Wh-what?" "It's going to take a lot more than seduction to get any of us to let you in there. Perhaps you don't realize just how dangerous it is! Trust me, I'm not letting you into the infected zone, and it's for your own good." Rainbow Dash instantly gave up trying to play seductive temptress. It worked for Daring-Do that one time! she thought to herself, remembering the escapades of her favorite fictional treasure hunter. She looked through the pink barrier and saw a perfectly intact village, completely devoid of residents. The only moving thing she could see was a news paper tumbling across an empty street. She lowered her head and stared at the grass below. "Okay, if I have to leave, I just want to give you guys some advice." The yellow-clad G-man stallion asked, "What's that?" "One of my friends said that she'd gotten a message from the future. She said something bad was gonna happen. And I guess it did." The stallion was unmoved as he escorted Rainbow Dash away from the quarantined zone. "We're trying to find a way to fix it. That's why we're here." "I know, but... if you come across a purple unicorn by the name of Twilight Sparkle... and she's still alive... get her to safety and... and I think she might have some useful information that I don't. That you don't." "We'll see what we can do." Rainbow Dash flew away slowly without another word. She began thinking of other possible routes into the "infected zone". She also thought that Twilight and Rarity, and all the rest of her friends were probably dead. Or past the point of no rescue. Twilight had seen a couple of the possessed on her way to Sugar Cube Corner, but fortunately had avoided fights with any of them. She thought she had seen some ponies she knew, but she couldn't be certain. She saw an arrow-shaped sign with crudely scrawled words that said "GO THIS WAY" written in a red liquid. Twilight worriedly put her hoof to the text, then let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. It was only paint. The wooden fixture pointed in the direction she was going. She smiled for the first time since Ponyville had become a zombified waste. The smile quickly faded as the thought that maybe Pinkie Pie had turned into a possessed one and could still write legibly entered her head. She hoped that wasn't the case as she continued down the road, pausing only to allow stray news papers to blow by dramatically. The road to Sugar Cube Corner was only interrupted by crawling news papers. As the sweet shop itself came into view, Twilight saw another arrow sign saying "GO THIS WAY" and pointing to her destination. As she walked to Pinkie Pie's - hopefully not former - house, she passed another sign that pointed down a street off to the side, saying "DON'T GO THIS WAY". Twilight looked to where the sign indicated and noticed the Ponyville Police Station at the far side of the dead-end street. She trotted nonchalantly up to another sign, pointing at the the door to Sugar Cube Corner and reading "GO IN THIS BUILDING". She was just about to when the door opened by itself and three of the possessed shuffled out of the shop. The black-eyed ponies began running up to Twilight as she madly looked about for something to smack them with. She remembered reading in a book that zombies could only be killed by wounding the head. Then she remembered that that book was fictional, and that these weren't zombies anyway. They just had sunken eyes and possessed minimal mental capacity and fed off of the flesh of non-possessed ponies and weren't the most coordinated creatures in the world and occasionally made freaky growling noises. But they weren't zombies, nosiree. Twilight dove behind a wooden crate, though she probably could've just galloped there. She found a crowbar wedged in between two planks that made up the box and began to try to pull it out as the not-zombies grew nearer. Twilight desperately tried to dig the crowbar out of its position as the not-zombies slowly ambled toward her. The not-zombies seemed to be moving awfully slow for creatures who had already demonstrated that they could be surprisingly fast. In fact, if Twilight hadn't known any better, she would've thought they were moving slower and slower as they grew nearer and nearer, almost as if they were intentionally trying to build suspense. Fortunately, this gave Twilight enough time to pry the crowbar out of its predicament and swing ferociously at the nearest Zeno's Not-Zombie. Its disgustingly normal blood lightly streaked drops of red onto the ground, the crowbar, and Twilight as it fell to the ground in a heap. The purple unicorn with the train wreck of a mane looked at her hoofwork and winced. On the outside, these horrid creatures didn't look like flesh-eating demon spawn at all. In fact, with their eyes closed (or from behind), they looked just like ordinary ponies. Survivors. A drop of blood fell from her crowbar. One of the possessed rose its head to bite at Twilight's throat, but she would have none of it. She violently thrusted the crowbar upside its jaw and injured it. She was about to aim for the eye, the horrible, nightmarish eye, of the last one when a popping sound cracked through the air and Twilight was lightly sprayed with blood. A thimble-sized wound showed where something had perforated the possessed one's head. Another flying pellet whizzed by her head and implanted itself into the chest of the one she had smacked in the jaw. Twilight looked up at the roof of Sugar Cube Corner and saw nothing. Inspecting the windows of the shop proved fruitless as well. "Hi, Twilight!" said Pinkie Pie enthusiastically. Twilight quickly twisted around with a yelp, leaping back and dropping the crowbar. Her poofy-maned friend, coat as pink as the sky above her, had snuck up behind her by defying the laws of physics. She did that sometimes. Pinkie was wearing a black jumpsuit with a hood, not being worn at that moment. Through the tail hole at the back of the jumpsuit was Pinkie's poofy pink tail, her hair a darker shade of pink than her coat. It bobbed lightly in a wind that Twilight didn't notice, let alone feel. "Pinkie! You're alive!" "How many points do I receive!?" Twilight bear hugged her ditzy, blue-eyed friend like there was no tomorrow, giggling as she did so. Pinkie joined in on the giggling fit for no reason other than to giggle. It was the first time either had done so since Ponyville had become the plagued ghost town it now was. Twilight released her grip and said, "Pinkie, listen. There's a time travel spell in the Canterlot Archives. We have to go there so I can tell my past self to not be all gung-ho when Cerberus arrives and let Fluttershy do what she was going to do." "What was she going to do?" "I... I don't know. But we should at least try it and see what happens." Twilight paused, remembering her unicorn friend's dying wish. "We have to make things right again." "Okey-dokey-lokey, let's get a move on, then!" The two of them began trotting toward Canterlot, the Sun beginning to set at their sides. They still had a couple more hours until Ponyville was overcome by a kind of darkness they welcomed. "Say, Pinkie, how did you survive the black fog... stuff, anyway?" "I have bunkers stashed all over Ponyville," said the pink one cheerfully. "In case of apocalypse emergency." "That's... quite lucky of us," Twilight said with a touch of skepticism in her voice. "But, I guess it doesn't really matter how you're still alive. You're alive and I'm not complaining about it." The not-zombie that Twilight had first hit with the crowbar, not quite dead yet, groggily got back on its hooves and began hobbling toward the two non-possessed ponies from behind. Suddenly, Pinkie felt an inkling in the back of her head. "Wait! My Pinkie Sense is tingling!" She turned around to find the weak, seriously injured possessed one shuffling ungracefully toward them. Pinkie grabbed a pistol out of a notch in a nearby tree and threw it to Twilight. "Here, catch!" Twilight just barely managed to grab it with her magic mid-air. Without thinking, she pointed the weapon at the possessed one and fired, finally killing it for good. She lowered the gun and was left holding it in front of her, seeming to check if it was, in fact, a gun. It was. "Pinkie, I have one question regarding what just happened." "Yes, Twilight?" said Pinkie, trotting to her side. "How the hay did you just grab a pistol out of nowhere?!" "Oh, I have guns stashed all over Ponyville. In case of zombie emergency." The purple pony was positively perplexed. She didn't know how a civilian could possibly acquire a gun in Equestria. They were always restricted to special military units. She had never even seen a gun up until just then, though she'd read plenty of books about them. "Well, that's... convenient." "That's why I stashed them!" she said with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. "I mean, it's almost like we're in a really bad fan fiction or something. Heh." "Hey! I'm the only one who's supposed to break the fourth wall around here!" ... "What?" "C'mon, Twilight, twilight's almost here!" She began hopping toward the image of Canterlot on the distant mountainside well away from Ponyville borders. Twilight looked at the pistol floating in the air in front of her and said to nopony in particular, "I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining," and began to catch up to her new companion to begin their trek to Canterlot, to the place where everything could be fixed. > Chapter Three > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rainbow Dash wanted desperately to get into the "infected zone" somehow, to see what had become of her friends. She didn't want to just vainly hope that they were alright, or, years after this disaster was over, hopefully assume that they had died dignified deaths. She wanted to know what actually happened. She didn't care what (though them still being alive and her bringing them to safety would be nice), she just wanted to know the truth. No matter how much it hurt, it wouldn't hurt as much as never finding out what happened. She flew into the Everfree Forest, hoping that maybe the areas around it were less heavily guarded than the rest of the perimeter. As Rainbow walked through the thick, stout trees which blocked out almost all Sun-light, she got a bad feeling that the overall creepiness of this place was nothing compared to whatever was going on in Ponyville. Ponyville could have real horrors, true monsters. And those would be far worse than ordinary fear, or the queer aversion Rainbow Dash felt as she watched a snake slither in front of her. She noticed a faint pink glow from in front of her, obscured by the thick brush. She was getting close to the barrier. As she walked up to the barrier, she heard a scream. She didn't know if it had come from inside the barrier or just around a bush, or what. She became worried and her ears swiveled to find the source. She heard another frantic yell, distinctively male, coming from about twenty meters to her five o'clock. She trotted more curiously than cautiously in that direction. She was about halfway there and had seen some rustling in the bushes in front of her when she came across a white rabbit, tail to her. It had a caricature-like, round head, had the general physique of a buck, and he had a subtle but noticable swag, or maybe it was better described as a 'tude. This looked to be Fluttershy's bunny, Angel. "Angel?" Rainbow Dash tried. The bunny ran away and jumped fiercely into the bush. Out burst a stallion in a quarantine suit, screaming and trying to pry the bunny off of his mask. "Get it off, get it off, get it off!" He looked like he was fighting for his life. This confused Dash. After all, it was only a bunny. The bunny looked straight at her. It had sunken eyes that glowed with a strange shadowy light. Being able to see his eyes would have made it easier to identify the rabbit as Angel. But as it were, Rainbow Dash still assumed as much. This only made her jump back more. The possessed rabbit launched itself from the hazmat's face and flew through air toward Rainbow Dash with axe-like teeth and claws like nails. Rainbow Dash did the very first thing that came to mind when problems like this arose; she frantically swung her front hoof at nothing in particular in the general direction of forward. Her hoof connected with the bunny and it was flung to the left. It got up again quickly and ran in between Dash's legs almost as fast as she had flown to the scene. The possessed rabbit then bit her back right leg before she had a chance to respond. A sharp, cringing pain shot through her leg as she blindly kicked it about in the air in a desperate effort to buck off the creature. Putting a bit more thought into her maneuverings even through her singing pain, she rolled sideways and dug the offending leg into the dirt, rabbit and all. The thing finally let go of her leg and she spun around, barely thinking and more doing whatever thought crossed her stream of consciousness next, and pommeled the bunny's head with her front hoof. The rabbit just wasn't dying. It got back up and Rainbow Dash steeled herself for another sharp bout of searing pain. But the rabbit didn't do much more than hobble toward her in a disoriented daze for its next attack, and Rainbow Dash seized the opportunity. She bucked it into the dirt with her good hind leg and finished it permanently. Blood drained from the body's nose and escaped the corners of its mouth. The hazmat, still in full protective uniform, trotted up alongside Rainbow Dash and observed her hoofwork. "Doombunny." There was an uncomfortable silence as the pegasus mare began walking off with a slight limp away from the magical barrier. "I guess I'll be leaving now... I guess." "Aren't you that chick that wanted to get into the infected zone through base camp? You said you had a friend named, uh... Twilight Sprinkle, I think it was?" "Twilight Sparkle." "Right, right. They've told me about you. They said you really wanted to get inside. Said you were kinda loco in the coco." She shot a glowering leer at him. "Hey, I just want to know what happened to my friends!" "That's what we're trying to figure out." Rainbow Dash feebly lifted up her bitten leg and said "Well, apparently you don't become a freaky zombie thingy when you get bit, so..." She wasn't sure exactly where she was going with that observation. She just felt like pointing it out to some sort of invisible audience. "Well, you've just answered one of the questions we've been trying to figure out. But then again, you weren't bitten by a pony. There might be differences between the two." Rainbow Dash gazed inside of the quarantined area. She saw nothing but abandoned houses, empty streets, and a stray news paper. The G-man then said, "My friends on the force told me you talked about special permissions." "Special permissions that I don't have so I'll be leaving now and bla-bla-bla. I know." "You might have just saved my life. You have special permissions now." She looked at him optimistically. "Really?" "Yep. Unofficial special permissions, that is. Don't tell anypony." "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye," she said, going through the motions of her friend Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Promise". "... Yeah, whatever. Now come here," he said, indicating the dirt near him. Rainbow Dash walked up close to him and the hazmat summoned a mobile dome of pink energy around him. He and Dash walked seamlessly through the barrier isolating Ponyville and Canterlot from the rest of the world. Once they were through, he put down his shield and backstepped, motioning Rainbow Dash to go do as she pleased. "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" "Positive." "Whatever floats your boat, pal. Now don't go dying on me. I'd be bucking myself for years if that happened." "Me? Die? 'Cause of a bunch of stupid zombies? Hay no," she said confidently - or maybe it was arrogantly - as she burst into the air. The hazmat threw up a shield again and walked to the safe side of the barrier. "Why the hay would you do that?!" Twilight shouted as she and Pinkie Pie ran away from a crazed horde of the possessed. The two vagabond survivors turned a corner and tried to get wind in their lungs again. Twilight nudged her spiky mane out of her eye and Pinkie adjusted her black jumpsuit. Pinkie tried to defend herself by saying, "I needed to get a clear shot at them!" Twilight turned to Pinkie from looking around the corner. "So you shouted 'who wants some of this' while shaking your plot?!" "I needed to get their attention so I could get at a good angle!" "Well, you got their attention alright! Thanks a bunch for going into gung-ho mode and getting thirty of those buckers on our tails!" "You're one to talk!" Twilight stared at her companion dourly. "That was cold." A possessed one turned its head around the corner to growl for no reason at Twilight and Pinkie. "Ugh, horseapples," Twilight swore through clenched teeth as she bucked it in the face. Pinkie suddenly got a look of unprovoked surprise on her face as she exclaimed, "Twi, I have an idea! We need to find a small alleyway to hole up in!" "Are you trying to get us killed?!" Twilight said as another of the possessed beasts revealed its head and made a horrid growling noise. "SHUT UP!" she shouted without missing a beat as she throttled it impatiently with her crowbar. "Trust me, I read it in a book once! Come on!" she shouted triumphantly as she galloped off to find a narrow back alley to serve her needs. "Pinkie, what have I told you about splitting up?!" Twilight yelled as she galloped after her hyper pink friend. Twilight found Pinkie Pie in a small alleyway, perfect for her plan. "Get out of there! You'll be trapped!" she shouted to no avail. Pinkie put a reversal on Twilight's words. "Get in here! You'll be eaten!" Twilight grabbed Pinkie by the forehooves with her magic and began to drag her out of the alley when she felt something tug at her tail. The unlucky offender got a muzzle full of Twilight hoof and was launched back. The possessed one had managed to break Twilight's concentration and she let go of Pinkie, who backstepped down the alley as the not-zombies crowded together into a sea of glowing black eyes, refusing Twilight any chance of escape. With a furious screech and a stomp of her hoof, and just a bit of deathly panic, Twilight galloped into the alley with Pinkie. The possessed phalanx began slowly moving down the alley. Twilight said, "If we die here, I'm going to kill you." Now that they were right where she wanted them, Pinkie elaborated. "This alley is narrow, right? That means only a few of them can try to eat our brains at once. We can just go 'no thanks, man' and pick them off one by one, and after a while we'll have killed the whole crowd! It really depends on how fast we can reload. Bet I can get more head shots than you!" Pinkie exclaimed cheerfully as she picked up a rifle in her teeth and aimed at the first possessed one. Twilight had to admit, it was a pretty solid plan. But she would have none of it. "Nuh-uh, we're not stealing stuff from another story!" She lowered her head and her horn began to glow. Pinkie fired the first shot. A massive discharge of bright light blotted out the alleyway and the entire army of the possessed flew back and were strewn about the street. "Did I do that?" "No," Twilight said smugly as obligatory smoke wafted from her horn. She trotted confidently to the street, now littered with incapacitated monsters. A popping sound cracked through the air as a whizzing bullet flew by Twilight's head. She looked at the direction of the bullet's trajectory and saw a squad of police officers. They had sunken eyes. They were possessed. Twilight looked in the other direction and saw an arrow-shaped sign at the end of the street, not too far from Sugar Cube Corner. She couldn't read the words on it, but she remembered what it said. "DON'T GO THIS WAY". Twilight galloped behind a dumpster and checked the ammo in her pistol. Pinkie Pie shot at the possessed police at the end of the tightly packed dirt street from her vantage point around the corner of the alleyway. "How incredibly inconvenient," Twilight said to nopony in particular. The fire fight had lasted sixty action-packed seconds. There were now three demon police left. They were shuffling down the street to get better shots at the purple unicorn and the pink earth pony. Twilight was on the horizon (the time of day, not the protagonist). The protagonist Twilight reloaded her pistol for the fifty-kazillionth time as she intended to put another bullet through the battered form of this one not-zombie that just would not freaking die. She managed to get a shot right between the eyes of one possessed creature and it fell down for the last time. Pinkie had run out of ammo some while ago and had galloped to Twilight's position behind the dumpster. Twilight turned her head to round the corner of the metal barricade and pointed her gun at the nearest possessed one. BLAM BLAM click click The first bullet missed, and the second one dug into the right forehoof of the offending possessed one. It raised its weapon with its unicorn magic, turned a sickly gray by the disaster that had blasted Ponyville into a bleak, empty waste a little over twenty-four hours ago. "More ammo," Twilight ordered of Pinkie for the umpteenth time. "We're all out of ammo," Pinkie reported grimly. Twilight made a peeved tsk. "Well, horseapples." She turned behind the cover of the dumpster and tried plotting their evasive maneuver, which presently consisted of "run". She heard a thumping sound and the fluttering of wings. She turned to look at the scene and was greeted by the lifeless body of one of the not-zombies landing a meter in front of her with a solid whump. Twilight beamed at the site before her. "I can't believe you're alive, too! Oh, this has been such a great day! Well, not counting the fact that I woke up and found out that Ponyville is now a complete sack of schnitzel and at least one of my best friends is dead. But... but you're alive!" "Yep! No way am I gonna let some dumb zombie things stop me from finding my friends!" Rainbow Dash then furrowed her brow and added, "Wait, what was that about somepony dying?" Twilight's smile faded. She fixed her gaze on the grass at her hooves. "Rarity. I found her body in the Boutique." Rainbow couldn't think of anything to add. "Oh." Twilight got back to the questions in her head. "So, how did you survive? Is Cloudsdale unaffected or something?" "Actually, the only places that are like this are Ponyville and Canterlot." "What? You mean everything outside of the Ponyville/Canterlot zone is okay?" Twilight said, relieved. "Yep. Cloudsdale is alright, Appleoosa is alright, Fillydelphia's alright. I was in Baltimare when the news first said that all of this had happened." "If we're the only place that's been possessed, then how come the whole sky is pink?" Rainbow Dash looked up to find that her coat no longer matched the color of the sky. She was confused at first, but then remembered. "Oh, that. The Hazmat Force threw up a giant shield over the infected zone." "You mean they just threw up this great big magical shield and trapped everypony inside?" Twilight said, not happy with the news. "Well, they put it up at first because they wanted to stop the black fog stuff from going anywhere else. Now they're keeping it up to keep everything contained. They're inspecting everything and seeing if it's okay to repopulate the area. They're taking all of the uninfected--" "Unpossessed," Twilight clarified, with that correction realizing that the officials didn't fully understand what had happened. She got the idea of finding some hazmats and telling them that this plague was supernatural and not biological, but she figured that would just be a hindrance in their quest to get to Canterlot and undo the whole thing in the first place. "Unpossessed?" "Long story short, I blew up Cerberus and his magic guts went everywhere." "Oh. Well, anyway, the hazmats are finding all of the unpossessed ponies that they can and bringing them outside of the zone. All of the infec-- all of the possessed ones are kept inside and I guess they're just gonna wait 'til they all starve to death." Now that Twilight was a bit more enlightened on the matter, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. With a heavy sigh, she said, "That's better than just dropping the shield and letting everypony run, I guess. How many ponies have they rescued so far?" "Umm... like, about three." Twilight quickly gasped. "Were any of them our friends?" "No." "Oh..." Twilight looked toward the ground and kept walking. "Everypony in Ponyville is my friend!" Pinkie Pie chimed in. "Three friends of mine saved is better than none!" "Yep," said Rainbow Dash unenthusiastically. "Dash, there's something I should explain to you," said Twilight. She proceeded to explain her ultimate plan to Rainbow Dash. To get to Canterlot. To prevent her past self from going into gung-ho hero mode. To prevent this whole thing from ever happening. To make things right again. Hopefully. The Sun had fallen ten minutes ago and it was getting quite dark. Twilight saw an abandoned house and called her two surviving friends into its main room. They went up a flight of stairs to a bed room with two bunk beds. "Everypony is going to sleep in one room for obvious reasons," Twilight said. "Ooh, it's gonna be like a slumber party!" shouted Pinkie. "Yay, slumber party!" "No, Pinkie, no slumber party. We need rest, not partying. Besides, romping around in our room with the lights on will attract attention." "Who said the lights need to be on?" "Uh..." said the gutter-minded blue pegasus. "Pinkie, I'm sorry, but we need to get a good night's rest without calling attention to ourselves. That means no sniping monsters in the middle of the night." "Aww, man! I was hoping we could see who could shoot the most zombies!" "No. We sleep. We work our way to Canterlot in the day. We repeat as necessary. We can party when this is all over. We'll party like we've never partied before when we're all out of here. But for now, we have to focus on surviving and getting to Canterlot to reverse all of this. Okay?" "Fine..." Pinkie said, deflated. Twilight closed the door and locked it. The three of them shimmied into their own beds. "G'night, guys," said Rainbow Dash. "Good night, everypony," said Twilight. "Don't let the possessed demon spawn bite!" "Pinkie, you seem to have acquired a darker sense of humor in the past twenty-four hours." "No, I just have a funny sense of humor." She reservedly giggled at her own joke. Twilight turned off all the lights and hoped her first proper rest since the fog had consumed Ponyville would be a halfway bearable one. > Chapter Four > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight weighed the pros and the cons of the last night's sleep. On the plus side, she hadn't died. And neither had her two surviving friends. On the minus side, she had this really annoying kink in her neck and now her mane was probably messy and tangled beyond repair. Pinkie Pie woke up and began putting on her jumpsuit again, her mane becoming good as new with a balloon-like poof. Rainbow Dash, however, had not enjoyed the night at all. She was used to sleeping on clouds back in her home, in the cleverly-named floating pegasus city of Cloudsdale. Sleeping on a land pony bed of padding and springs had not done her back justice at all. She awoke and stood up with audible pops in her bones. She twisted her neck and a series of cracks resonated through her body. She massaged the back of it with her hoof. "Uh-oh, I think Rainbow Dash is broken," said Pinkie with a grin. Suddenly, she turned to Twilight and thrust her hoof into the unicorn's neck, making a noise that sounded like breaking bones and flooring her. "I think Twilight's broken, too." Twilight got up and was about to break Pinkie Pie herself when she found that the kink in her neck was gone. "No, I think you fixed me, actually." Rainbow Dash sprinted toward Pinkie and karate-chopped her back. It made a cracking sound and Pinkie took her turn on the floor. She straightened her back and turned to Dash. "My back was fine, thank you very much." "I think Pinkie Pie's broken." Now that they had sufficiently massaged each other (whether they were aware of it or not), Twilight said, "Alright, girls, come on. Another day of dramatically walking toward Canterlot awaits us." "We go!" shouted Pinkie Pie enthusiastically. "I'm tired. And my knee hurts." "Which knee?" "... "My wing hurts. And I have to go to the bath room." "I asked you about that five minutes ago." "Well, I didn't have to go then!" "Rainbow, stop it. Complaining will get us nowhere." "Well, Twi, walking doesn't seem to be doing much better!" "If my plan works, then you'll probably never remember this ever happening. How's that?" "Hurmmph..." "Say, Twi, how much longer 'til we're in Canterlot?" "Umm... I think it's... March 11th now. Sunday. So we should be there in about two more days." "Are we there yet?" "Rainbow, I just said that we'll be there in two days." "UGH. This is so un-rainbow." "Alright, go do your business behind those bushes there. I've a feeling using an indoor rest room would be a bit risky. We'll stay here unless you decide to give up privacy for the sake of safety." Rainbow Dash chose privacy and flew off behind some bushes. Pinkie and Twilight were left standing in the middle of a four-way intersection. The signs saying "ONE WAY" or "STOP" or "YIELD" were all off-kilter, dented, and in generally bad shape. The packed dirt street had deep ruts in it and roadside stands were in shambles. Twilight held the pistol Pinkie had given her by Sugar Cube Corner in her magical grip, and Pinkie had her rifle strapped on a break-away holster to her shoulders. Some news papers tumbled by dramatically. "So, Twilight, how does this whole time travel thing work, anyway?" "Well, I thought time travel was impossible. But apparently there are special fetishes that allow unicorns - uh, and alicorns - to go back in time in some way or another." "You mean only unicorns and alicorns can go back in time?" "I don't know. I really should look into it more." "Why didn't you? You live in a library." "Thanks for reminding me, I'd almost forgotten." She shot a deadpan gaze at Pinkie. "I guess I didn't bother with time travel books because I thought it was all a bunch of hog wash." "So... how exactly did future Twilight show up? What was it like?" "I guess she only had a few minutes to tell me whatever she wanted in the past before she went back to the future." "Wait, if the future hasn't happened yet, doesn't that mean she went to the present?" "But this is the present." "What if this is the past? What if this is the past and future Twilight is actually present Twilight?" "But then that means-- umm..." Pinkie narrowed her eyes in thought. "Theoretically, if you received a message from the future, assuming that the future describes events that have not yet happened, you actually received a message from the present and we're still in the past. But that raises questions of its own. For example, if time keeps progressing at its current rate, then that means we'll never be in the present. We'll always be in the past. We'll only catch up to the events of the present after they happen. Since apparently we're not able to control the present, always being stuck in the past, our entire lives are a series of predetermined events. Even me explaining this could be a predetermined event that I had no control over, even though I thought I did. If that's the case, then--" "That's kind of depressing to think about." There was a pregnant pause as both of them realized that they were getting out-of-character. However, they were making progress in understanding what was happening, so Pinkie continued. "... Well, it might not be the case." "I'm pretty sure it isn't the case." "Then where did future Twilight come from?" "The future!" "Then that means the future has already happened!" Twilight thought for a second. "What if the future doesn't describe events that have not yet happened?" "Then just take my theory about our lives being predetermined events and replace 'past' with 'present' and 'present' with 'future'." "... That's still depressing to think about." Pinkie Pie thought for a second. "Is there a way to change the future? Or convert the past to the present and the present to the future so that we become part of the true present?" "I don't know," Twilight said, feeling her brain working as she spoke. Pinkie steered the conversation back on topic. "So, what happens if your plan works?" "Then the past becomes permanently altered by giving past Twilight prior knowledge of Cerberus's arrival and Fluttershy's attempt to intervene. Then if she has any sense in her, which she does, of course, since she is me, after all, she'll let Fluttershy deal with the problem. Then this whole thing with the possessed and the quarantining and what-not would've never happened and things would be right again." "Would we remember all of this?" "I doubt anypony except maybe myself might remember it." "So... you can alter the past?" "I guess." "Can you alter the present?" "Of course. And the present determines the future, so what you do in the present directly begets what the future turns out to be." "Or you could alter the past and change the present to determine the future?" "... Possibly. I think, maybe." "Can you go to the future?" "You can't go to a place that doesn't exist." "Then where's future Twilight from?" "Bucking hay, Rainbow Dash is taking a long time back there!" Twilight and Pinkie had talked for a little while more even after Rainbow Dash had done her business. In a nut shell, their theory was: Future Twilight was actually better described as present Twilight. She was living in the real present, whereas the protagonists presently walking down a deserted street toward Canterlot were in the past. Their whole, ongoing adventure was a series of events that Twilight and everypony else from the actual present had determined of their own free will. So, in a cosmic sort of way, they did have control over their lives, except everything that they did was already done in the present. As far as they were concerned, past, present, and future were entirely interchangeable terms, depending on where one stood in the timeline, the timeline being a series of points that could be accessed by certain spells. Apparently these spells worked as a sort of disaster-prevention system. For all they knew, they could've been used in the past. This dark age in Ponyville's history certainly called for some serious fixing up. Canterlot was abandoned and within the possessed zone, so they figured they could just go there and would be met with little resistance or annoying paperwork to shuffle. Then they would alter the past so that Cerberus was taken back to Tartarus safely, this whole mess never happened, and Ponyville was safely inhabited and disaster-free, as if nothing had ever happened. Because technically, nothing ever had happened. That alternate continuity would be erased from history and replaced with one wherein everypony was safe and sound and didn't have to worry about being eaten by the possessed every waking moment. The future/present Twilight had come to the present/past from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING, as it was in the continuity wherein Ponyville and Canterlot became zombified crap sacks, the continuity Twilight and her friends were in presently, and trying to erase. Therefore, if this continuity was erased somehow and replaced with one wherein everything was right again, the unkempt, vagabond future Twilight would have never existed, because Cerberus would never have blown up and strewn his dark energy all over the place. She would have never used the time travel spell and created this brain-bending nonsense in the first place. Instead, Twilight and everypony else would truly be in the real present, where they did have control over their lives in every sense. And it would stay that way until somepony used the time travel spell again to undo some other horrible, preventable disaster. Get it? Got it? Good. "I'm hungry." "Shut up, Rainbow Dash." "I'm hungry, too." "Zip it, Pinkie Pie." Twilight's stomach growled. "Hey, guys, let's go get something to eat." Pinkie Pie quietly skipped alongside Twilight with light bags under her eyes. "How long has it been since we ate last?" Twilight thought about the point. Hunger probably had something to do with her recurring head aches and general awful feeling. "I don't think I've eaten anything since Cerberus blew up." "I ate yesterday just before I flew off to find you guys." "I had a couple cup cakes yesterday morning, but that's it," said the sugar-loving pink one. "Alright, let's go find some food." She looked to her right. "Hey, look, a bakery!" "How convenient yet anti-climactic!" "We go!" The three of them ran into the bakery and locked the double doors behind them. Ponyville hadn't been a possessed ghost town for terribly long, so the bread in the display cases was the freshest they would probably find in Ponyville. Twilight trotted behind the counter to pick the locks to the cases. Pinkie Pie lifted the lid off of a small display tray and took a bite out of a piece of bread in it. "Eww, it's all stale and icky!" Without missing a beat, Rainbow Dash deadpanned, "That's because it's plastic." "Oh." "Hey, while you guys were busy being Laurel and Hardy back there, I got the locks to open." Twilight telekinetically floated some pieces of bread to her friends. The bread and other pastries were cold and beginning to fall apart. Crumbs and flakes covered the table they sat at and the linoleum floor beneath it. "It isn't a cup cake, or even a cake-cake, but it'll do," said Pinkie, surprised by the lack of sugar in her pastries. They smiled the whole time. It was among the best meals they'd ever had. A band of three ponies walked through the dank streets of Ponyville. One of them was a unicorn. Another was a pegasus. "That's stray tumbling news paper #119," said the pegasus. Oh, and the third one was a unicorn, too. They were also all wearing hazmat suits. Should've mentioned that earlier. "Yep," said one of them regarding the other's comment on stray tumbling news papers. "C'mon, let's inspect this trash can here." "Why?" said the other unicorn. "I dunno." "Well, I guess there isn't anything better to do." They moved to the trash can and scanned it for contagious biological infections. One of them looked to their left, down another old, battered street and saw the back ends of three equinoid creatures rounding a corner. "Hey, there are some more of them," he said. "Maybe we should get going now." "Yeah, let's," said the pegasus. They located the nearest exit point and prepared to report their grim statistics and add them to the growing list of grim statistics. Further down the street, one of the equinoid creatures, a unicorn, said, "What's the sky like on the outside?" One of them, a pegasus, said, "It's just like it was before Cerberus blew up. The sky would be kinda pretty if we were to see it right now." She looked in the direction of the setting Sun. It wasn't a rainbow, or even rainbow-colored, but she would settle for anything easy on the eyes to watch at this point. The third one, an earth pony, liked this new Sun-set. It was tinted pink. "I wish the sky was pink all the time!" "Blue!" the cyan pegasus contested. "Pink!" "Blue!" "Pink!" "Blue!" "I could do this all night if you wanted, pal." The purple unicorn shouted to the both of them, "Shut up, both of you! This chapter is almost over and you're wasting page space!" The abandoned buildings in this area were smaller, further-spaced, and catering to less urban needs than the abandoned buildings in the center of Ponyville. They also seemed a bit dirtier. The hazmats had been trying to find the cause of this. They figured it was nothing to worry about, just natural accumulation collected as a result of being on the outskirts of town, not too far from the deciduous forest that lightly covered the non-developed regions outside Ponyville. The purple unicorn spoke up again. "Girls, let's find a place to hole up for the night. We'll probably be leaving Ponyville by tomorrow and heading on the road to Canterlot. Maybe we should stock up on stuff like food and medical supplies." The pink one said confidently, "Guess who won the Ponyville Dumpster-Diving Championships three times in a row in high school?" "There's no such thing." "Yuh-huh, we held it at mid-night near the college every year in April! Applejack can attest to that, too!" She ran off to scour the rubbish nearest her, looking for anything of use. The purple one and the blue one began looking for a good place to survive the night in. "Could attest," said the pegasus. > Chapter Five > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if we went by our first two initials?" wondered Pinkie Pie in her usual over-exited-school-girl voice. "All the super-duper-cool kids do it, like JJ Haybrams, or AA Mulene, or MA Larson, or, umm..." "I only have two initials," said Twilight Sparkle. "Me, too," said Rainbow Dash. "I don't! My name is Pinkie Responsibility Pie!" said the pink one, echoing a past episode of their TV show. "But I thought it was Pinkamena Diane Pie?" said Twilight, making another reference to their TV show. "Don't. Ever. Call me that," said Pinkie with a suddenly grave tone, as if the little school girl in her head had just had a period-induced mood swing. "Okay... PR Pie," said Rainbow Dash, noting that PR's new name was totally un-rainbow. PR spoke up about a past comment. "Rainbow, you have a middle name, remember? Rainbow Danger Dash," said she, echoing yet another episode of their TV show with creepy accuracy. "That was a joke!" said Dash. "Then again... RD Dash. I like the sound of that," she said, noting that her new name was very rainbow. "Okay, girls," said Twilight. The three of them were walking on the outskirts of the possessed ghost village they had once called home, toward a yellow road that snaked up an increasingly steep, but still manageable throughout, slope, culminating into the main street of Canterlot. "Pinkie, did you stock up on supplies?" There was no answer. "Umm, Pinkie?" said Twilight. Still no answer. "Oh! Uh, PR?" "Yes, Twilight?" PR said. "Did you get any medical supplies or anything else of use?" "I found a couple first aid kits, several of them so we could put it all together into one big first aid kit!" PR shouted enthusiastically. "And I found this tube sock!" she added, slipping the tube sock onto her head so as to vaguely have the appearance of a ski mask. She began crawling around (a strategy she had learned from playing way too many Metal Gear Sparkle games), taking out her rifle playfully and sneaking out of sight. "Pinkie, get back here!" shouted Twilight. There was no answer. "Pink-- ghugh, PR!" She turned back toward the road she and Rainbow-- er, RD, sorry - were on and was greeted by an eyeful of Pin-- gah, PR, sorry - with a tube sock over her head, rifle trained on Twilight's head. "Stay right where you are, Sparkle Snake!" RD had played her fair share of Metal Gear Sparkle and noted, "Heheh, you know, Twi, you do look a bit like Sparkle Snake." She attempted to reserve a snicker. Twilight was unfazed and snatched the tube sock off of PR's head. "Gimme that. I... I like socks," she said as she levitated it into RD's newly-scavenged saddle bags. With a quick shake of her head, she said monotonously, "Girls," noting that they had made way too many pop culture references for now and were running low on jokes. "We need to get our bearings and head to Canterlot now. Let's go." They began walking silently toward Canterlot. "PR?" "Yes, RD?" "Who the hay is MA Larson?" "Well, you see, he's... uh..." She shook her head and looked in front of her. "You wouldn't understand." PR was the first one into the shack. Twilight came second and waited by the door, closing it and barricading it with her body after RD had flown into the wooden hovel. The door was then suddenly bombarded with frantic, clawing, pounding, blood-thirsty hooves. Twilight struggled to keep the door in place. "Do you know how to use a gun, Rainbow?" "No," said RD, not bothering to correct Twilight. "Oh, it's easy," said PR. She took Twilight's pistol out of RD's saddle bags and aimed through a raggedy, unnatural vertical hole in the wall. "Ya jush poin dish shing an den purr da chrigguh," she said with the pistol in her teeth before firing and getting one of the possessed flush in the eye. "Reig dish?" RD said as she put a rifle round into the wooden siding. Putting the pistol in her shoulder holster and adjusting the neck of her jumpsuit, PR said "Umm, not quite. Try walking up closer to the hole." "I've a better idea," said RD as she flew up the chimney of the cottage and into the confined space of the air above. "What's she doing?" said Twilight, uncertain what RD was doing. "She's thinking inside the chimney," said PR. The entire frantic scene seemed to quiet down for a second and allow Twilight to deliver a flat "What?" "You wouldn't understand." A light black contrail whipped behind RD Dash as she flew out of the chimney and through the air above the shack being put under siege by a horde of the possessed. Keeping her friends hostage. She did a quick barrel roll to shake the soot and ash off of her coat and mane. Now, instead of being a smoking black harbinger of destruction (though that was pretty awesome), she was a heroic blue blur streaked with rainbow. She aimed at the middle of the scintillating crowd of pastel-colored demon-possessed freaks and fired the rifle. One went down as the ones adjacent to it where lightly sprinkled with blood. They didn't seem to notice, or at least care. They just wanted to eat some Twilight Sparkle and get a healthy recommended daily amount of PR Pie. "Jush reig dag," she said with a rifle in her mouth to nopony in particular. She swooped over the horrid phalanx and reloaded the rifle with her left forehoof. She U-turned and aimed at another, this time aiming on a specific one, a rather small yellow one with a pretty, red, bombshell-like mane. With a big pink bow in it. And no cutie mark. This was Applejack's little sister, Apple Bloom. She couldn't bring herself to shoot. She passed the horde again. She turned around to aim her gun at a different one. She saw one, an adult with a purple coat and a pink mane with a style somewhat reminiscent of Apple Bloom's. This was Ponyville's local school house teacher, Cheerilee. RD passed again and steeled herself to fire on the next fly-by, no matter what. Her friends were in that shack. Their rescue didn't need to be put on the brink of failure. On the next pass, she decided to aim at none of them individually and instead train her foresight on the pulsating mass that was the middle of the group. She got one. She didn't look into her kill any further and fired again, seeing if, and finding out that, she could get two on one pass. The next time around, she managed to get three of them. PR was also racking up kills through the hole in the wall. RD thought to herself that she needed to thank Twilight for keeping the door closed after this was all over. The minutes passed as the lifeless bodies on the ground began to outnumber the oblivious possessed still banging at the door. RD had fired indiscriminately, at one point wincing slightly as she hit what used to be Cheerilee in the shoulder, but unconsciously kept her aim away from where she had seen what used to be Apple Bloom. Now she could clearly see the body of Apple Bloom amidst the other surviving possessed. Still animated, still alive, but no longer herself. Now a possessed zombie-like cretin. Those awful glowing black eyes. RD made sure to get the other ones. She began to think about which possessed might have been avoided had she been somepony else. What if it were Fluttershy up here, shooting at these beasts? Did she used to know some of the ponies in this crowd? RD wasn't sure. Then she realized that Fluttershy wouldn't be shooting at anything. That was a bad comparison. But she got what she was trying to think. Or something. Apple Bloom was the last one left. RD landed on the bloodied yellow road. She waited for PR to do what she couldn't bring herself to. Nothing happened for a while. The thing just stood there for a little while and began trudging off, its limited mental capacity figuring that it was not going to get a delicious taste of its former friends. It didn't even bother to look at the pegasus with the rifle strapped to her shoulder a few meters behind it. It just shuffled off to nowhere in particular. The door to the shack opened and Twilight trotted out. The last remaining possessed one turned around and ran toward her. RD wanted to shoot, needed to shoot, but she couldn't, and she didn't know why. She just couldn't. She got a pained expression on her face and was about to slouch her head to the ground when Twilight unflinchingly pumped Zombie Bloom full of pistol rounds. It collapsed to the ground with a pitiful plomp. RD's pained grief was swiped off of her face and replaced with a pained shock. Twilight's expression hadn't changed at all. She knew Twilight had done the best thing to do given the situation, even the right thing to do, but she just couldn't fully comprehend it for the time being. "That thing isn't Apple Bloom," Twilight said just after that thought had crossed RD's mind. She turned her head to indicate that she was talking to somepony in particular this time. "It's a monster. Apple Bloom died three days ago." "I know." "Then what's wrong?" "It's... it's just that... I mean, we... she didn't deserve this! Why did this happen?" Twilight knew the answer to that all too well. "Because I wasn't listening." "To who?" "To Fluttershy. But most of all, to myself. I was so caught up with the fact that my future self was even there in front of me, that... that I didn't listen. I didn't listen, and then this whole thing happened." "Well, no use crying over spilled milk, I guess." "That's what I'm trying to say to you! Apple Bloom's gone. I don't want you thinking she isn't." Remembering the whole motive that was keeping their quest going, RD said, "But we can reverse this?" "Yes. If my plan works--" "Our plan." In reality, it was all Twilight's idea, but she relented to keep her friend calm. "If that's what you want to call it. Our plan. Sorry." "It's okay." There was a pause before Twilight continued. "If our plan works, then this whole thing will have never happened and we'll live happily ever after." "You've said that a kajillion times before," RD said with a more playful tone. Twilight sighed. "Yeah, I know, but as an addendum--" "What the hay is an addendum?" "... To add on to what I've said a kajillion times before..." "Oh, okay." Twilight cleared her throat. "If our plan works, then this whole thing will have never happened and we live happily ever after. So our situation isn't exactly spilled milk. We just have to hit the reset button. But until then, we needn't worry about anything. I'm willing to do just about anything lesser than death if it means I get to use that spell and fix all of this." RD thought for a second. She didn't usually think about quantum physics, but she tried to sound as inquiring as possible. "What if I suddenly changed allegiances and tried to stop you from getting to Canterlot?" "Then I would defeat you," Twilight said, trying to avoid using the word "kill". "What if I tried to kill you?" Twilight mentally face-hoofed. Then she became a bit more somber as she said, "I... then I would kill you." There was a pause. Twilight spoke again. "You understand, right?" "Yeah, I think I do." Dash was surprised that she was able to understand this much quantum physics. She wondered if her old college had awarded quantum physics degrees. Then she wondered if her old room mate was still alive. "Okay. As long as you know what's going on." "Yeah." There was a pause. Twilight looked at Apple Bloom's body and began to get rickety. She looked at Rainbow Dash with foggy eyes and said, "I need to use the little filly's room." "Just go use those bushes over there." Twilight trotted behind a green shrub. She cried for three minutes. PR was still in the shed while Twilight and RD talked. She was rooting through the cupboards and drawers for useful items. She had found some granola bars and things like that. She was trying to get rid of the memory of not bringing herself to shoot the zombified Apple Bloom from her vantage point looking through the hole in the wall. She had the same sense of confusion and inferiority as her friend RD Dash. She found a collection of framed photographs on a shelf at eye level to her, having to look up slightly to see the pictures. They were of a wine-colored earth pony with a curly lime green mane and her orange colt. At the park, at the beach, at school, in Canterlot. On the ground by PR's hooves was a camera, complete with large flash bulb. There was still a photo in the slot at the front. PR pulled it out to find a blurry photo of a dank, desolate road. Some locks of white hair that the photographer's green mane was interspersed with had unfabulously found its way into the view of the camera lens. In the foreground was the colt running toward the camera, away from what appeared to be a large, impending black fog. She knew what it was, but she hoped it was something else as she nudged the camera aside with her hoof. She looked around the house some more and found a telephone. The headpiece was laying just next to the console. PR held it to her ear to be met with a bland tone, the noise it made when somepony hung up. She put the headpiece back onto its perch atop the console and walked off to find some more stuff. She didn't know what she was going to find in the master bed room, but she looked there anyway. It was a small room, just about as private as one could get in a small cottage. PR found some vanity items next to a mirror. She wondered briefly if she could use those, but decided against it. She didn't dare open up the bath room. She knew that if she opened the door to the bath room, some horrible eldritch abomination would jump out at her for no other reason than to scare her and call for a change of jumpsuits. She'd seen way too many horror movies to not know that. She left the bed room and went back to the main room. In the main room, PR stepped on a piece of parchment she hadn't noticed the first time she was in the room. She lifted her hoof and it tumbled in the wind blowing through the open door of the shack. She turned it over and a head line in large black letters read "A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCESS". Dearest denizens of Canterlot and Ponyville, Yesterday, a large black fog of unknown origin suddenly sprouted into being in Ponyville. It caught us by surprise quickly enough that Canterlot had to be evacuated. I am writing this from Cloudsdale's city hall. I have sent this message from as many messengers still in the post offices, or elsewhere, of and in Ponyville and Canterlot. If you are reading this, it means a protective barrier has been put up around you. Do not worry, my friends. The Equestrian Hazmat Force has been deployed and are finding an answer to the questions that the Equestria outside of the pink border you see around you are asking. If you are still in there, make yourself known. Make yourself visible. Draw attention to yourself, so that the hazmats can take you to safety. If you see a team of ponies wearing yellow quarantine suits, gallop up to them and let them bring you outside of the closed-off zone you are currently in, to the nearest emergency shelter. We are not trying to isolate you. We are only trying to save as many ponies as possible. Closing off the area already consumed by this strange fog was the best thing to do, and we only hope that you understand this decision. When we become certain that it is safe, we will deploy special operations soldiers to go into Canterlot and reclaim some items that are of importance to the government. That is all they will be doing, trust me. Just some spells and technologies and such that we as the government would like back in our possession. They'll be more than willing to bring you to safety if you happen to come across them. Please do not be afraid. What has happened here is tragic, yes, but we aren't going to wallow in the past for any longer. For now, we save innocent ponies such as yourself before they fall victim to whatever it is the fog does. We can mourn when this is all over. Sincerely, Princess Celestia PR felt tears welling up in her eyes as she wondered how many ponies had died because they tried to "draw attention to themselves". She also realized she had to tell Twilight about the "special operations soldiers" and wondered if the time travel spells were one of their objectives. She didn't see why. They couldn't pin-point an exact cause to the problem at hoof, as far as she was aware. Twilight and her two friends were the only ponies who knew the reason this all happened and how to prevent it. Because Twilight wouldn't listen. The first voice she had heard in about fifteen minutes called her name. "PR! You okay in there?" PR hung her head low as she trotted out of the cottage and into the street to meet her friend without saying a word. Standing in the yellow street was Rainbow Dash. "Where's Twilight?" "She's using the little filly's room." "Twi?" "Yeah?" "There was a letter in that shack." She only occasionally cast sparing glances at the unicorn she was talking to, most of the time keeping her gaze fixed on the road just in front of her hooves. "It said that the government was gonna try to deploy some special ops, or something. To, uh, to take stuff of interest to them. Or something like that." "So I guess we're in a race to get to the spells now?" "Well, they didn't say what they were gonna bring out of the zone. Or when they were gonna come into Canterlot." "I see." Twilight looked ahead of her, toward the image of Canterlot on the mountains in the distance. She noticed her friend's normally poofy hair seemed a bit straighter and less bouncy. "PR?" There was no answer. "Umm... Pinkie?" "Yeah?" "... Nevermind." > Chapter Six > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight (the time of day, not the protagonist) was nigh and the three friends had no place to stay. In front of them was a yellow road. Behind them was a yellow road. It was getting too dark for their liking. To their right were trees. To their left were trees. They were sitting ducks, practically waiting to be gobbled up by the night terrors. They weren't entirely sure why the night was so bad as far as the possessed were concerned, but Twilight (the protagonist) and her friends Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were certain night time brought bad things. "Sometimes I wonder why we have to be scene-colored ponies with neon manes," said Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie had the hood on her jumpsuit over her head, her pale pink mane tucked into it so that the only things keeping her head's silhouette different from that of a skull were two bumps where her ears were obscured beneath the jet black micro-fiber. A couple stray strands of mane poked out of the hood, scarcely obscuring her left eye. She brushed them out of the way. "Maybe you guys should put on these jumpsuits." She pulled two form-fitting, one-piece garments identical to hers out of their veritable pack mule Rainbow Dash's saddle bags. They were as black as the air around them, as the eyes of the demonic pseudo-zombies that had over-run or at least threatened the existence of everything they held dear. Rainbow Dash was the first to relent, taking off her saddle bags and slipping into the various folds of the jumpsuit. She had put on a jumpsuit before, when she broke into a hospital one time to get a book she had been reading. (Don't ask.) "You should put the hood on," said Pinkie Pie, pointing to the pegasus's rainbow mane. Dash did so and put the saddle bags back on. Twilight needed some help getting into the jumpsuit. She had not put one on before, but got a sudden sense of déjà vu. "Wait... where have I done this before... ?" She suddenly remembered looking into her mirror three days ago. "Future Twilight was wearing a jumpsuit!" Pinkie worked out some creases on Twilight's suit as she prodded further. "Really?" "Yeah! This means I'm that much closer to being just like my future self from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING! The laws of time are putting another inevitable piece together." She said the last sentence with a touch of gloom in her voice. "Well, yeah. You can't prevent what you see from the future. Remember our talk?" There was a pause as Twilight remembered their theory of alternate continuities and their being in the past and not the true present. If their plan worked, then future Twilight would cease to exist, the continuity they were in presently would be erased and would have never happened, and they would truly be in the real present. Until they used the time travel spell again. It all made sense now. Sort of. Rainbow chimed in, "No use crying over spilled milk, remember?" Twilight checked "jumpsuit" off of her list of things she and future Twilight shared. Mane: check. Scar: check. Bandanna: check. Jumpsuit: check. There was only one thing missing. "Well, I still don't have an eye patch." Judging by that sentence's being in a separate paragraph, that was about to change. As the three friends treaded lightly Twilight began thinking. About the date. She woke up from unconsciousness to find Ponyville in the state it was presently three days ago. That same day, the neat little clockwork thing in the Carousel Boutique had read Saturday, March 10th. She did the math and realized that the upcoming day would be Tuesday. It was Monday night as she slowly, cautiously walked up the slope leading to Canterlot. For all she knew, Tuesday could have been in a couple hours. NEXT TUESDAY MORNING was in less than a day. And she still didn't have the eye patch. She was in for some serious pain in the near future. She thought about her friends. Not even a week ago, they had been pleasant, kind, happy-go-lucky bundles of fun and giddy energy. Now they were somber, brooding, and generally out-of-character. She had changed, too. She always was the most sensible of the group, but now she got the feeling that she was just unpleasant. Smacking sense into her friends when they got out of line. Telling them what they were going to do, when, and how. She was the ring-leader in a three-mare band of disheveled sojourners. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she couldn't help but feel like things were seriously wrong. Though that was because things were wrong. Now they were walking toward an evacuated Canterlot, constantly looking about for any signs of possessed shells of what used to be ponies like them. Her gaze wandered to her visibly depressed friend Pinkie Pie. She got a jabbing ache in her chest. The three ponies ambled toward a house in the near distance. They had made it. After an entire night of (almost) nonstop walking, they had made it to the desolate cobbled streets of Canterlot. Now they were tiredly shuffling toward the strange place that would hopefully house them until Tuesday morn finally arrived. They all offered a collective silent sigh and lowering of the shoulders (which is kinda awkward for quadrupedal animals to do) as they neared the door of the house. Twilight was about to open the door when a bullet careened into the wood just next to her hoof. She took it back as the point of entry popped into a brief flurry of splinters. Twilight was left staring at the bullet hole. Upon looking to her left she saw a dark, stallion-like silhouette in the grey light of post-mid-night. The stallion was wearing the standard uniform of an Equestrian Crowd Control Force officer. Bullet-resistant barding, circular plexiglass shield strapped to the left hoof, shoulder-strapped utility belt of supplies including extra magazines of rubber bullets to go with the low-caliber rifle strapped to the opposite shoulder, pepper spray, tear gas canisters, police baton, taser. The sight of a law enforcer, a riot officer, no less, trapped within the quarantined zone made the three wonder just how urgent the evacuation had been. Beneath a plexiglass visor attached to a standard-issue black dome riot helmet, the officer stared at them with darkly glowing eyes as it reloaded its non-lethal firearm. Twilight galloped behind a conveniently-placed dumpster as Pinkie Pie rushed behind a conveniently-placed house. Rainbow Dash took to the air and began getting her rifle ready. Twilight and Pinkie could see each other from where they were positioned behind their respective covers. Twilight could see that Pinkie had a "serious-business" face on her, as opposed to the "frightened-survivor-trying-to-keep-cool" face she had during the fire fight near the Ponyville Police Department. Pinkie returned Twilight's glance and started trying to signal Twilight with hoof gestures. She made signals which consisted of rolling her hooves over each other in a circle, half-pointing upward and then pointing straight at the possessed officer with her whole foreleg, pointing to her closed mouth and then quickly biting and keeping her teeth bared, then pulling her hoof away and rotating her fore-foreleg 180 degrees, and finally making a salute-like gesture and dragging her hoof across her forehead. Twilight responded to Pinkie's orders in actual words. "What?" "Shoot the bastard!" "Oh, okay." Twilight proceeded to shoot at the possessed one with her trusty pistol. The bullets entered its armored barding, but they barely fazed the pseudo-zombie. It clenched a tear gas canister in its teeth and threw it toward Pinkie and Twilight. Yellow smoke filled the air between and around them. Neither of them could be certain if any one cough or gag was coming from them or the other. They ran in the general direction of away. Pinkie was the first one out of the cloud, coughing some more to make room for fresh air to seep in and calm her lungs again. She looked about her but fell to the ground out of dizzying light-headedness. Twilight was getting woozy and groggily jogged out of the yellow cloud. She barely had time to recover before she leaped back at the sight of the former pony two meters in front of her. Twilight suddenly lost all sight in her right eye, feeling liquids spray over her face. She collapsed to the ground as the worst pain she had ever felt overcame her entire body. She barely registered her even falling to the yellow bricks that paved Canterlot over the sharp, all-consuming, agonizing pain. The last thing she saw before passing out was the officer following suit. Twilight's whole world was swimming in her eyes, everything in front of her registered as part of one giant blur. She blinked a couple times to work out her sight a bit more. She felt an odd, unfamiliar sensation as both of her eyes moved their muscles, but she only felt one eye lid passing over one eye. The world also seemed strangely flat, as if her sense of depth perspective was shot. It was only upon meekly lifting her hooves to her eyes to rub the sleep out of them that she realized that was exactly what had happened. Her right eye was obscured by an eye patch. She sensed another presence in the bed with her. She turned her head to the left to see Rainbow Dash laying on her side, watching her. "Wh... what happened?" "You got shot in the eye." She narrowed her eye. "Blunt much?" "Well, you asked what happened, so I told you what happened." "How long was I out?" "A couple hours, I think. The Sun's almost out in any case." She dug her eye into her pillow and clenched it shut. "Well, now I'm just like the Twilight from NEXT TUESDAY MORNING." "Well, I think it is NEXT TUESDAY MORNING, now." "Yeah... I guess." She opened her eye. "We have to get to the Canterlot Archives." "You have to rest. We'll go in a few hours." "Where's Pinkie?" "She asphyxis--... asphyzmix-- uh..." "Asphyxiated?" "Yeah, that. The tear gas asphyxisated her. Then the zombie guy shot you, and then I got him from the air and brought both of you here." "Both of us? Wow." She paused. "You didn't leave one of us in the street and make two trips, did you?" "No. I dragged you both on the ground." Her jumpsuit was resting on top of the blankets by her hind hooves. It was battered and scuffed, thinning in areas. "Not much better." "Well..." "That's okay." Rainbow Dash shifted and was left staring at the ceiling. "She's in bed, in another room." "Is she okay?" "Oh, yeah. She just needs time for the nitrogen to circleate through her nervous system and... do the... the thing--" "You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?" "No." Twilight giggled playfully. "So, why are you checking on me and not Pinkie?" "'Cause Pinkie's gonna be fine. She just needs to rest. You just lost an eye. I figured you might need some moral boosting." "You mean 'morale'?" "Yeah, that." Twilight shifted in bed to have the same position as Rainbow Dash, staring at the ceiling. She finicked with her eye patch. Rainbow Dash shifted to lay on her right, watching Twilight. She scooted closer to her. "Is there something wrong? Anything?" Twilight could feel her friend's comforting warmth. "No, it's fine." Rainbow put her topmost hoof over Twilight's torso under the blankets and started to tighten her embrace, lessening the distance between them. "If you ever need some of that moral boosting, just come to me," she said as she nuzzled Twilight's neck with her muzzle. She began to slowly shift her legs over Twilight's-- "Rainbow?" "Yes?" she asked with half-open eyes and a coy smirk. "You know my barn door doesn't swing that way." "What? I mean, what--" she suddenly got the reference and scooted away from her unicorn friend, blushing. "Sorry." "Does this story have a '[Shipping]' tag?" "No! I'm sorry! Sheesh." "It's okay." She shifted onto her side to look at Rainbow Dash. "I just felt like breaking the fourth wall." She gave her embarrassed friend an understanding hug and a quick peck on the cheek before closing her eye to rest. As the three vagabond heroes trotted triumphantly toward the Canterlot Archives to finish their quest and make things right again, another figure watched them from behind a badly damaged fruit stand. He was an earth pony and was wearing a dark grey combat suit, complete with hood and scary-looking gas mask. Behind him were two acquaintances dressed similarly. The hazmats had informed them that they were fairly certain the air was safe to breath for extended periods of time with no permanent ill effects, but the three of them had insisted on wearing gas masks. They had said it was "just in case", but in reality they just wanted an excuse to wear scary-looking gas masks. The earth pony stared at the three jumpsuit-clad figures in the near distance. "Let's take out those ones, and then we go to the Archives." One of the others, a female pegasus, said, "I'll take to the air and get the pegasus first. That will let us have complete control over the sky. Then you guys can take out the others and I'll help out if I can." The third one, a stallion, and also a pegasus, said, "I'll get the purple one from behind after you take out the pegasus." The earth pony gave a definitive stomp of his hoof. "Good. Get into positions. Do you know where those are?" The mare said, "I think I've a good idea of the path I'll be flying." The pegasus stallion said, "I'll fly out from that alley over there when I hear the first shot." "Alright, then. Three... two... one. Go." > Chapter Seven > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The three friends had a new-found sense of confidence as the Sun rose on that Tuesday morning. Their quest was nearing an end, they were about to make things right again. "If the plan works, at least," said Pinkie Pie in response to Twilight echoing those same sentiments. "Trust me, it'll work," said Twilight. "I didn't come this far and suffer this much just to fail." "What if you do fail?" she asked with a small frown on her face. "Well... then we fail our quest." "And what will we do after that?" "Then I guess we'll just find somepony to get us out of here." "What if this whole plan is pointless and you never could alter what happens and erase this event?" "Well... then I just told you. We'll just have to live with it and get out of here before the possessed can get to us." Pinkie looked somberly in front of her. "I'm starting to think that's what we'll end up doing." "I'm trying not to think of that. I don't want to live with the burden of knowing that this whole thing could've been prevented if I had just listened." Rainbow Dash attempted to give a sense of optimism to the potential bitter-sweet ending of their story. "No use crying over spilled milk." "But I told you, this isn't spilled milk. This can be prevented." Pinkie spoke. "What if you're wrong?" "... Then that kinda sucks." Twilight hoped that wasn't the case as they neared the end of their adventure. Correction: all three of them had a new-found sense of confidence, except Pinkie. In the air above the three protagonists, a pegasus mare in full special ops combat uniform flew overhead. She looked about the street below her and spotted her two companions, waiting for the okay. She trained her sniper sight on the blue pegasus, wearing a black jumpsuit similar to the ones being worn by the other two, the only difference being wing holes to accommodate her two extra limbs. She didn't have darkly glowing eyes. Neither did her traveling companions. They were survivors. She immediately aborted her plan to kill them all. She pulled up and was about to call off her two co-conspirators when the blue mare she had previously been aiming at through a sniper rifle's foresight shouted from below, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird!" The purple one, a unicorn, interjected, "It's a chariot!" The pink one, neither a unicorn nor a pegasus, deadpanned, "You girls have really bad eye-sight. It's a pegasus in combat armor." The blue one put two and two together. "It could be infec-- it could be possessed! It's way too dangerous to leave alive! Let me get a good shot at it!" She took to the air below the soldier. The special ops agent spoke frantically into her wristpiece to her companions, who were no doubt aiming at the three survivors now. "Abort! Abort! Do not shoot! I repeat, do not shoot!" The soldier suddenly sped away from the scene. The misguided survivor gave chase as best as she could. "Nopony out-maneuvers Rainbow Dash and gets away with it! Get back here!" The soldier banked down, into an alley, out of sight of her tail. Sidling up to her stallion partner in the alley, she ordered him to not shoot and to stay hidden for the time being. Rainbow Dash flew over the alley at break-neck speed, anticipating a surprise attack, as the soldier shot up into air and almost connected head-on with her. Rainbow Danger Dash barely avoided the collision, twisting around in the air and redirecting her momentum as she aimed at the dressed-up pegasus. The soldier banked in a new direction, attempting to escape the great RD Dash, as she began thinking of herself as again. RD Dash, raptor of the skies, fox of the air, so cool that she went by her first two initials. A cheesy '70s-style trumpet tune began playing in her head as she locked onto the rapidly-moving grey bogey. The soldier slowed down rapidly and attempted to punch her in mid-air. Dash narrowly avoided and twisted in the air again, this time stopping to hover in the air and smart off to her antagonist, even though the possessed couldn't speak. "You seriously think you can hit me in my own home turf? No way, dude. But if you want to see that proven," she said as she raised her hooves into a boxing stance and a high-pitched background riff was added to the cheesy trumpet tune in her head, "I'm more than willing to do a little hoofticuffs with ya!" The special ops pony lunged at her in the air. She dodged with a graceful twist and trained her sights on the armored antagonist again, only to be greeted by a furious punch. She did an expertly-timed back-flip to avoid that one and coupled it with a double-hoofed buck that sent her impromptu sparring partner onto the roof of a building. A light dust was strewn about the roof as Rainbow dashed toward the enemy, connecting and sliding across the roof on top of her. They both fell off into an alley and began tumbling toward the ground, both of them trying to righten themselves in order to fly off. As the soldier did that first, she threw a stun grenade at Rainbow Dash. The survivor unwittingly flew right into it as she tried to escape upward and was blasted out of the sky in a brilliant flash and a loud crack that resonated through the alley and into the street. She lost all control of her senses and plummeted toward the yellow brick that made up Canterlot’s streets, finally touching ground once again with a solid whump. With a quick flutter of her wings, the special ops agent landed softly on her hooves. She trotted up to the unconscious Rainbow Dash and inspected her for serious injuries. She was then shot in the flank and fell to the ground. Her armor helped her tremendously, but the spot still stung as she got back up and saw Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie trotting toward her. Pinkie was reloading a rifle strapped to her shoulder, the obligatory smoke still seeping from the barrel. The soldier quickly ordered her friends via wristpiece to come out of hiding and surround the subjects. Twilight and Pinkie were greeted by bullets implanting themselves into the ground next to them as the other two special ops agents deliberately misfired. "Don't be afraid," said the armored pegasus mare. "We don't want to hurt you." "So you tried to shoot us with a rifle and blasted her" - Twilight pointed quickly to Rainbow Dash's comatose form - "out of the sky with a grenade?!" "We thought you were infected. We were trying to take you out of the picture so we could get to the Canterlot Archives. As soon as I found out you were survivors, I tried to call off our little assault that we had planned. But then your friend here apparently thought I was infected. She flew up to me and I tried to subdue her. That's why I attempted to tussle with her mid-air and used a stun grenade instead of something else." Twilight enveloped Rainbow Dash in vaguely pink magical energy and began floating her to the two of them still conscious. The soldier spoke up again. "You need to get to safety. Come with us and we'll take you outside the infected zone." "No. We need to get some stuff in order first." She began tensing her muscles in preparation. "You can take care of that after this is all over. Nothing's going anywhere, trust me. Now, come on. We can take you to safety, the nearest emergency shelter. Then we can collect our thoughts and get things in order there." "I understand that you mean well, but..." She paused as she contemplated whether or not to tell them that they were aiming to get some items that they might want also. "This is urgent." "Well, what is it?" "It's... uh... I-I can't tell you that." "Why not?" "It's... umm... it's personal," Twilight bluffed, hoping they wouldn't see through her ruse. "Where is it?" "In... in the Royal Palace." "I'm afraid you're denied access there at the moment," the agent said, trying to not reveal too many details of their operation outside of what the Princess had already told those inside the zone. Twilight put Rainbow Dash's unconscious self on her back, helping lessen the burden as well as keep her firmly in place by cradling her in telekinetic energy. She began backing up and whispered through still lips to Pinkie Pie, "On 'three', I grab a smoke grenade and we bolt for the Archives." She backstepped ever-so-slightly as she counted down. She didn't even bother to be inconspicuous on "three", shouting it to make sure her friend got the signal on time. She frantically whipped her head to the earth pony stallion to her left, grabbing a smoke grenade as fast as she could and slamming it to the ground as they were all shrouded in a non-toxic grey cover. In the resulting tumult, Twilight managed to nab a number of grenades from the stallion as well, frantically stuffing them in Rainbow Dash's saddle bags. She and Pinkie then commenced to make a mad dash toward the Canterlot Archives. The three special ops agents turned on the heat vision feature of their goggles and gave chase. The two conscious friends, the third one out like a light and in tow on Twilight's back, were sneaking through Canterlot's back alleys to avoid the special ops ponies. The two pegasi surveyed the sky while the earth pony tried to stay on their tails by ground. Occasionally the two's cover was blown by gun shots as they took out the possessed along the way in order to simply survive the trip to the Canterlot Archives. Presently they were running down a desolate back street toward the image of the Royal Palace's towering spire poking above the roof tops, trying to not only outrun some possessed that were chasing them, as if their only purpose was to increase tension, but also avoid detection by the expertly-trained stealth specialists currently trying to stop them from interrupting their mission any further or get at any of the confidential items in the interest of the government that they were trying to take out of the infected zone. The street was unpaven, almost a trench. Its grey dirt loosely shuffled as Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and the possessed galloped across it. Lone news papers crawled lightly about the ground and lethargically blew around when the ponies (and non-ponies) galloped by them. Vines snaked up the walls of the buildings that made up the walls of the alleyway. Pale, strewn bricks occasionally poked out of the dirt, increasingly as Twilight and Pinkie, with Rainbow Dash going along for the ride, neared the yellow streets proper of Equestria's once-populated capitol city. Now that the whole place was empty save for the eldritch freaks of nature that had become of it residents, it seemed vaguely creepy. Dank. Bleak. Something else that's synonymous with "crap sack". Pinkie quickly spun around to pump some of the possessed impending upon them full of lead. She could see little pops in their chests as the bullets passed harmfully through. Twilight and Pinkie panted and wheezed, their legs burning as they madly dashed across the street to avoid being seen by their second set of antagonists. To their surprise, one of the pegasi aimed her gun on some of the possessed that were chasing them. Almost as if she was in competition with them to see who could get to the three first. The two of them galloping along the empty streets and broken back alleys of Canterlot were working their bodies overtime to accomplish their mission. Their sweat made spots on their black jumpsuits. They burst into the doors of the Canterlot Archives, closing them as fast as possible. Twilight galloped into the main hallway of the Archives that led to the many various wings of the information reservoir. "Star Swirl the Bearded," she repeated to herself as she deposited Rainbow Dash onto the floor. "Star Swirl the Bearded," she repeated to herself as she scoured the labels on the doors to all the wings of the Archives. "Star Swirl the Bearded," she repeated to herself as she found the door near the very back of the hallway. "C'mon, c'mon!" she shouted as she found that the door was locked, as if doors could talk. She turned to her friend, still in the main room of the building. "Pinkie," she shouted, "how's it holding up over there?" "Not so good!" she shouted back. She brushed some of her nearly-straight hair out of her eyes to get a good view of the scene out of the window she had walked up to. "The door could give soon, and I think those special ops guys are trying to regroup and plan their next move!" "Horseapples, this week just keeps getting better and better," Twilight growled to nopony in particular (or possibly to the door). With a pissy screech, she grabbed her trusty pistol and crowbar and began hacking and firing away at the door. She felt no remorse for damaging property at this point. If her plan worked, there would be no reason to. It would all be irrelevant. Pinkie began racking up kills through the window she had just broken. Twilight worked on her patient until it snapped vertically and she smashed it in two with a buck of her hind legs. One half stayed on its hinges and the other half fell to the ground at the entrance to the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Canterlot Archives. Rainbow Dash slowly shifted about, just beginning to come to. Twilight quickly worked out a crease in her jumpsuit as she trotted hastily up to the various files of spells and enchantments. In the main room, the door finally gave and an influx of possessed rushed through the new opening. Pinkie began frantically shooting at the collective horde in wide-eyed panic as she galloped as fast as she could to the entrance of the hallway. A pegasus in full combat armor and wearing a scary-looking gas mask flew into the room above the growling mass of zombified horrors and opened fire on them. Her two companions joined from outside, one of them slowly working his way into the room from his position in the air above. The possessed gradually ambled their way down the hall as Pinkie Pie backstepped toward the opened door at the end of it. Rainbow Dash slowly opened her eyes to see the scene unfolding in front of her. She put all her energy into an impulsive scream, still half-asleep. Pinkie multi-tasked as she tried to help her friend up while still attempting to lessen the number of enemies preying on her in a feral, inhumane survival impulse. In the main room, the two pegasi threw grenades of all different kinds into the crowd. Even after they had been rendered deaf, blind, seriously injured, or missing limbs, the monsters trudged on, determined to be complete pains in the plot until the very end. Rainbow Dash made herself useful and shouted into the room Twilight was rooting through documents in. "Hey, Twi, do have any serious fire-power on you? Like, explosives or something?" Twilight slid another fruitless tome into its shelf as she remembered taking some explosives from the military stallion when they began the gallop to the building they were in presently. "There are grenades in your saddle bags!" "Convenient!" Rainbow shouted back. She turned to her earth pony friend. "There're some grenades in my saddle bags!" "Great. Go get them out." Rainbow Dash dug out a grenade Twilight had grabbed while she was unconscious, this one of the concussion variety. "Hold on to your flanks!" she shouted as she held the explosive in her wing. "Not yet! Give it here!" Pinkie snatched the grenade from Rainbow Dash and stuffed it quickly into the neck of her jumpsuit. She grabbed her rifle from its shoulder holster and continued firing upon the army of possessed as she stepped closer to the open door of the Star Swirl the Bearded wing. Pinkie clenched her eyes shut and recollected her thoughts. She prepared herself for what she was about to do. She put everything she had into shooting as many possessed as she could. The bodies littered the hallway as the ones yet to be shot down clambered over them and began advancing a bit faster now toward the three survivors. It was hard to manage, but she did the best she could. Eventually, the possessed began invading the Star Swirl the Bearded wing. They split up, becoming a harder lot to kill than they were in the hallway. Pinkie began resisting individual possessed with hoof-to-hoof skirmishes. She pushed them away to get good shots at them. The possessed were roughly split into two groups: one that was shuffling down the hallway and flooding the open wing of the Archives, and one outside the building that was threatening to devour the earth pony soldier. His companions were focusing their attention on this group, making sure the earth stallion didn't become the first casualty of the group. The hallway pulsated with its collection of beasts. Now the fire fight in the Archives was dying down, enemies becoming increasingly scarce, but more elusive as the protagonists let down their guard more and more often. There was still a mass of possessed collected near the entrance, spilling back into the hallway somewhat. Pinkie's gun ran out of ammunition. Twilight had one magazine left. Rainbow Dash had ran out of ammo a while ago and couldn't possibly take on a small phalanx of the possessed with a crowbar. It was now or never for Pinkie, though a part of her hoped it would be never. She glanced at the grenade tucked into her suit, trotted right up to the horde and prepared to inject herself into it. Rainbow Dash shouted at her, trying to snap her out of it. "What the hay are you doing, Pink? Go over to where Twi is!" "No." Tears welled up in her eyes. Her hair was now completely straight. Just a few days ago it had been bouncy and poofy. Now it was pale and spaghetti-like. It was a sign of depression that her friends were familiar with. "If this plan doesn't work, then I don't want to live anymore." "But what if it does work?!" "Then everything will be okay again. I would have never done this and we live happily ever after." Rainbow wanted to counter, but her friend was right. Pinkie didn't wait for an answer. "Let's just hope that's the case." She galloped into the mass of possessed. They bit and tore at her flesh, making her scream in pain. She wasn't sure how much longer she had left, but at the same time she wanted to get as close to the center of the group as possible. After fifteen agonizing seconds of (almost literally) gut-wrenching pain, she gathered the will-power to pull at the pin of the grenade stuffed into her jumpsuit. She tore at the neck of it until she could get a good position to bite it and pull. Tears rushed down her cheeks and her throat clenched almost entirely shut as she did so, against everything her psyche was warning her. A couple seconds later, everything ended. The entire mass of possessed rippled and burst outward, away from the epicenter where Pinkie had once been. Where her bloodied body, strewn among those of her targets, now lay. Rainbow had no time to register what had just happened as she whacked furiously at the few stragglers hanging on to their lives that were left. As she throttled the last demonic waste of oxygen to death in the hallway, she stood lurched over, sniffling and openly tearing up. She fought back her body's demands to collapse into a heap and sob, and went back into the Star Swirl the Bearded wing. There, she saw Twilight, sitting on her haunches, away from the horrid bloody mess that Rainbow clambered over, crying. She slowly ambled up to her, and joined her. It was over. All of the possessed were dead. And so was Pinkie Pie. Twilight glanced at her late friend's corpse and had unpleasant memories of seeing another one of her closest friends become a victim of the demonic plague that had overtaken Ponyville. The plague that had come about because she tried to play hero. Because she didn't listen. Her reaction might have degenerated into outright sobbing if she didn't know how to fix all of it. But mentally repeating as much to herself helped her sniffle and blink the tears out of her eyes one last time. She slowly walked up to the aisle she had been looking in for the time travel spell. She continued looking for the spell that would take all of this away. Erase all of this. Make things right again. She looked at her friend, who was openly crying into the carpet. Twilight abandoned her searching and walked to her, laid down next to her, held her as she cried into her shoulder. "I... I know we can fix all of this, but... maybe we could just wait? Give me time to collect myself?' "If that's what you want to do, I'll be happy to wait a little longer." Rainbow Dash sniffled. "I know it's stupid to prolong this any more, but..." "I understand." Twilight held her dear friend a little more firmly. "Thanks." "It's okay." At that moment, the three special ops agents walked into the room. The earth stallion walked up to the two survivors and took off his gas mask. He had a white coat with a straight, sky blue mane cut to have bangs that reached a little bit below his eye line. "You have to leave. There are things in here that we need. Let us take you to safety. The infected zone is no place to catch our breath." "Just let us be!" Twilight shouted quite angrily. She turned to her lightly-crying blue friend and softly apologized as she let go of her and jogged to the aisle that should have held the time travel spell. "Hey!" shouted the stallion. "Only those with special permission are even allowed in this wing, do you understand?!" "I understand perfectly. I think if Princess Celestia knew what I was going to do here, she would give me special permission!" "That doesn't mean anything! Get over here!" he said as he began trotting up to her. "A-ha! Here it is!" She found the scroll that could fix everything. She galloped to the end of the aisle, away from the stallion keeping to his quota. "Look, I understand what you're doing here, but please just let me do this!" She telekinetically shoved him back. She put the scroll on the ground and read the magic words. She followed the technically-written instructions accompanying it and vanished in a flash of vaguely pink light. Twilight reappeared in another flash of light, gushing the words "... try to be a hero when Cerberus arrives!" as she found herself back in the post-possession Canterlot Archives. She had been interrupted mid-sentence. She had failed. Her conversation with her past self had been a carbon copy of the conversation she'd had when she was on the other side of it a few days ago. This whole thing was spilled milk all along. Their whole quest to come here and make things right again, it was all in vain. The stallion just stood there. "Are you ready to go now?" "Yeah," Twilight said with a tremble in her voice. As she walked down the hall toward Rainbow Dash, everything sunk in. Their whole mission was for nothing. Pinkie Pie died for nothing. Everything they had done in the past few days was for naught. Two of her friends had the same dying wish, and that wish would now never be realized. They had died in vain. All for nothing. All because of her. Because she didn't listen. She couldn't alter what she had already seen. Pinkie Pie had told her that. What she had seen was her future self being interrupted mid-sentence. Their whole journey was for nothing, and on top of that, already decided and etched into the sands of prophecy from the beginning. It was like some sort of sick joke from the Universe itself. Everything had just come full circle. She stopped cold in her tracks and collapsed to the ground. She had only teared up and sniveled before, after Pinkie died, because she thought she could fix it all in the end. Now she realized how wrong that assumption was. It couldn't be fixed, and everything she had done thinking it was possible, could never have amounted to anything in any case. Everything was full circle. She openly sobbed into the carpet. "Are you ready now?" Twilight had been sobbing into the carpet for ten solid minutes. She looked up at the stallion with the combat armor. She looked in front of her. Rainbow Dash and the other two special ops agents were nowhere to be seen. "Yeah." They walked toward the entrance. "I'm really sorry about what happened. Whatever that was. All I know is that it was bad." "Thanks. But..." she sighed, remembering Rainbow Dash's light of optimism in the darkness of cruel reality. "No use crying over spilled milk now." Even if her optimism was desperate, it helped just a little bit. A piece of paper blew by Twilight's hooves in an unnoticed breeze. Twilight hoped it wasn't a news paper as she looked down at it. It wasn't a news paper. It was a spell. From what Twilight could read of it, it seemed like it involved time travel. She flattened it with her hoof and skimmed through it. "Come on," said the stallion. Twilight's expression was a little brighter as she found that this spell at her hooves allowed the user to access any memory they wanted and relive it just as clearly and truly as when the event actually happened. Twilight's left brain began racing to find a way to combine elements from the spell at her hooves and the spell she had used ten minutes ago, to create a spell that could do something along the lines of bringing its user back to the past with prior knowledge of certain events from that time period's relative future. It had a lot of room for error, but she figured it was worth a shot. This was how new spells were created. She went through the mental tribulations of using unicorn magic and tried as best she could to visualize a unique spell. Her horn began glowing. "Hey!" She abandoned her first attempt and used her telekinesis to shove the stallion into a bookshelf. She suddenly went into speed mode, racing to put together the various pieces of the jigsaw that came with attempting a magical concept without clear instructions. She tried to bury the nagging thought that she would simply be injecting herself into the past to relive this whole ordeal all over again. The stallion began running toward her as she double-checked all the details of what she was about to do. She disappeared in a flash of vaguely pink light. Cue wormhole scene. > Epilogue > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight mentally rematerialized in the lobby of the Ponyville library. The building that she lived on the top storey of. It had no cracks in the wooden steps. Non-charred wooden steps. No cracks in the walls. In the ceiling. No cracks anywhere. There was obligatory smoke wafting from the center of the lightly-charred wooden floor. So, Twilight figured, she had just been inserted into her past self after viewing her future self's first attempt to fix what was about to come. Or something. "I'm not complaining, I'm not complaining," she said to nopony in particular as she trotted up the stairs to the section of the building that served as her and Spike's living quarters. There, in his mat, sleeping, was Spike. Not possessed. Just trying to go back to his ice cream dream. She was about to go bear-hug him, but she remembered that he hadn't been asleep for long. She galloped back to the main room, where she had stacked several large piles of random papers. She remembered that she needed to do some scheduling. Cerberus wasn't set to arrive for a few more hours, so she got to work, being sure not to wake Spike again. It was about time. She smugly sipped some tea while looking out her window, feeling a bit self-absorbed as she reassured herself that Cerberus was set to arrive in a few minutes or so. And sure enough, there came the horrid three-headed Rottweiler. Or possibly bull dog. Or maybe bull dog/Rottweiler mix with some Doberman thrown in there. But whatever. He made a deafening roar to signal his presence that sounded kinda like this: GROOOOWAAAOOORROOOAAAAAHRRRRWWWRRRR. Pinkie Pie was passing by and addressed everypony around her. "Okay everypony, follow my lead: AAAAAAAAAAAH!" The bystanders followed suit and ran off in random directions. "What is that thing?!" shouted Spike in disbelief. "That's Cerberus." Twilight smirked. Everything was coming full circle. "He's supposed to be guarding the gates of Tartarus, but if he's here, then all of the evil creatures that have been imprisoned there could escape and destroy Equestria." "Destroy Equestria?!" "Yep." She walked outside to get a better view of the event that would hopefully solve everything. What she saw was unexpected. "Who's the cute widdle three-headed dog?" cooed Twilight's yellow pegasus friend, Fluttershy, as she rubbed the hell-sent demon spawn's tummy. "Wow, I knew you were good with animals, but this is amazing." "Aww, he's just a big furry guy who got out of his yard, that's all. Right, Cerberus? Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?" Cerberus shook his leg in submission to the awesome might of Fluttershy's tummy rub. Pinkie Pie galloped by, screaming in panic. "Pinkie!" She stopped screaming. "Yes, Twilight?" "Do you have a ball I could borrow?" She took a ball out of a notch in a nearby tree. "I have balls stashed all over Ponyville. In case of ball emergency," she said with a giddy smile as she tossed the ball to Twilight. Twilight returned the smile. Twilight shook the ball around in the air. "Hey, Cerberus! Look what I have!" she sing-sung. Cerberus began panting in delight and chased Twilight as she ran in the direction of Tartarus. "I'll be back as soon as I've returned him to the gates of Tartarus!" she shouted to her friends as she ran off to fix the problem at hand. "Once he's back at home, there'll be no disaster!" She liked the sound of those words. 　 　 Spike woke up that morning with a feeling of freshness and renewal. "I wish Twilight would go on epic adventures more often. Best night's sleep I've had in weeks." He did get to third base with Rarity in last night's dream. Twilight trotted triumphantly through the door to the library. She had greeted all of her friends on her way home and given them big hugs. It was great to see them not dead. It was great to see them at all. "Hey, Twilight, how'd it go with Cerberus?" "Great. I got him back before any of the evil creatures could escape." She smiled ear-to-ear as she beamed, "Everything's been made right again." "Cool." She narrowed her eyes with a smirk at Spike's less-than-enthusiasm. Then she thought for a second. Spike wasn't aware of the whole "Ponyville-becomes-a-giant-sack-of-steaming-schnitzel-and-everypony-becomes-a-zombie-type-thing" thing. Nopony but herself was. Because it had never happened. Because she had gone to the past with prior knowledge and now had stepped off of her soap box for a second to allow her friends to solve the problem. This also meant, according to her and Pinkie's theory, she was now in the true present. That was a plus. Everything was fixed, and she was the only one who remembered what had happened. She could never tell her friends how they had died, how the government had dealt with the problem, about the Equestria-wide grieving and mourning for lost ones overcome by possession and all the horrors that it subsequently begat. They would think she was crazy, talking about something that had never happened. But then again, it was probably best that they didn't remember what happened over those few days. She wasn't sure what the memories of somepony who had died would be like, for one. Suddenly, she remembered the schedule she had revised the day before. "Oh! Today's pet play day with the gang!" She trotted outside and whistled. Her pseudo-pet owl landed on her back. He occasionally stopped by Twilight's house like a stray cat, and Twilight would feed him, play with him, take him to the park, and, presently, take him to meet Twilight's friends and their pets. His name was Owloiscious. Or maybe it was Owlowicious. Or possibly Owloisious. Hay, she couldn't remember most of the time, either. "Alright, buddy, let's go meet with our friends." "Who?" "Our friends." "Who?" "Applejack and Rarity and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, remember?" "Who?" "And their pets? Applejack's dog Winona, Rarity's cat Opalescence, Fluttershy's bunny Angel, Pinkie's alligator Gummy, Rainbow Dash's turtle Tank? Remember?" "Who?" "You know what, nevermind." She trotted off into the obligatory Sun-set to go hang out with her friends. There were no news papers in the street. 　 THE END