Tomorrow: Equestria

by brijbee

Rating: teen
Tags: Other, Adventure, Crossover, Dark, Zecora, Main 6, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike
Length: 1850

Twilight and her friends decide to skip the Summer Sun Celebration, and go camping instead. It's only for a couple of days. Nopony will even realize they're gone.

What they find when they return, however, they find that the whole town is completely deserted.
The apples on the apple trees are rotten.
Twilight's precious library has been burnt to the ground.
Sweet Apple Acres is in a worse state than ever.
The animals in Fluttershy's cottage have starved.
Celestia has disappeared.

What they will discover will completely change their lives forever.

Based on John Marsden's "Tomorrow, When the War Began" series.

Published 2012-03-19 19:54:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-03-19 19:54:02 UTC

Where Do I Begin?

Tomorrow: Equestria

I think it was Fluttershy’s idea to record everything. It’s a brilliant idea. She is very intelligent, (and physically strong at that) but one never realises it due to her lack of social ability. Wait, Fluttershy, I didn’t mean to offend you…
There she goes, into the corner, emerging into her shadow, like she always does. She’s not the one that’s giving me the migraine, though. Everypony’s shouting ideas at me.

Yes, Rainbow Dash, I will include that, but it’s going to take quite some time to…

Could it wait, Luna?

Come on, Rarity, it’s just a bug-

Pinkie, what on Equestria did you just sa- ARG!

Buzz off, guys! Don’t make me get the Thunderstick!

That’s better. This part of Haven is the most peaceful, because only I know about it. It’s by the stream, and you can hear the gentle tinkling of the water flow. There’s a willow by it, and I love how it sways in the wind, its flimsy branches almost floating like tentacles on a jellyfish in the sea…

Okay. No more tardiness. I’ve got to start this...diary? Book? Who knows? Only Pinkie can tell the future on rare occasions, and that’s only the immediate future.
My name is Twilight Sparkle. Some may know me as the Element of Magic. Though some Canterlot ponies while chose to disregard me as an important pony (even though I was CLEARLY immortalized on a stain-glassed window in Princess Celestia’s palace along with my five best friends) I did save Equestria... twice.

We can’t save Equestria this time.

There are too many of Them.

I feel a little guilty that I was voted to write this instead of Zecora. She’s a very good poet, though I guess everypony voted for me to write because Zecora’s constant rhyming would make things a little difficult to understand. Maybe one day somepony will dig it up and read it. I guess it’s our way of telling our story.
I think they chose me to write because I’m the egghead. The pony with all the fancy words. Spike would normally scribe, but…I’ll get to that later.

But it’s strange. When somepony scribes, or when I’m just speaking, I can form such elaborate and formal sentences in my head. But I just can’t get it down on paper. My words seem blunt and poor. But this is to record, not to enjoy later on. I must remember that.

I’ll start now. No more procrastinating.

It all began when…that feels so odd writing that. Where does it all begin? When one was born, or maybe when our parents were born, or when our ancestors united to form Equestria?

How far back does it all begin? Way before Celestia and Luna. It’s a mind-boggling question. If somepony could answer it, then we could understand where They came from, and why They decided to come here.

Maybe. I wouldn’t know.

I’m not the smart one anymore.

For Celestia’s sake. Rarity found me. Can’t you see I just need some peace and quiet to write this? No, I’m not going well, thank you for asking. I haven’t even started yet. There’s nothing interesting to read. (Thank you procrastination.)
Rarity’s entrance is a good reminder to get started.

Here it goes.

It all began when I was at Sugarcube Corner, helping Pinkie make cupcakes for the Summer Sun Celebration Festival, because it was the Cake’s turn to deal with the banquet. (Despite rumours, making cupcakes with Pinkie Pie is not in any way mortally dangerous.)
Pinkie and I were discussing how long it had been since we went anywhere interesting. Life didn’t seem to throw anything at us anymore. Months went by without any excitements or dramas. The only thing that was of any interest was my 1st anniversary of dwelling in Ponyville. And that wasn’t even that thrilling; except for Pinkie, because any excuse to throw a party would be a valid one.
So we reflected on where we could go, to put some enthusiasm back into our lives.

“How about we go to Hoofington? Apparently there’s a fantastic opera in town. It got great reviews in Mare’s Month.”
“Ooh! Hoofington’s got the really really really really nice candy shops!” Pinkie added merrily, mixing the batch with a worryingly weak wooden spoon.
“No, I think that’s Trottingham. And that’s a rather long train ride from here. ” I stated, with my eye on the spoon.
“Aww.”
There was a brief working silence, while Pinkie and I gently spooned the mixture into the silver cupcake pan.

The silence was brief because Pinkie gasped like a banshee, and leaped almost 10 feet in the air. The spoon fell to the floor, the mixture on the spoon splattering a bit as it impacted.

“Well, you know what they say. Three second rule,” I chuckled.
“I know where we could go!” Pinkie exclaimed, ecstatically bouncing up and down.

Before I could get a “where?” in, Pinkie started up again.

“There’s this place a teensy weensy bit behind Froggy Bottom Bog where there’s a bunch of cliffs all leading down to this one rural place where nopony’s been cause it’s pretty close to the Everfree Forest called Haven and it’s SUPER DUPER nice and-“
“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Froggy Bottom Bog?”
“No, silly! It’s near Froggy Bottom Bog.”
“Pinkie, the last time we went to the Bog, we all were running for our lives from a hydra. And I fell almost to certain death.”
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, Twi? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, can we go to this one place? It’d be like an adventure! Pleeeeeeeeeeeee-”
“But what about the Summer Sun Celebration and the banquet? You can’t just let the Cake’s down like that.”
“I thought about that, but then I realised that Bon Bon owes me a favour. And that’s why I was like huuuuuuuuh! Because now I can ask her to help the Cake’s!”
I sighed, knowing that I was fresh out of arguments.
“Fine,” I said flatly.
Pinkie’s squeal of delight could be heard from as far as Cloudsdale.

We put the cupcakes in the oven as fast as we could, turned the knob to 180 degrees and we discussed the details. If we went to this “Haven”, then it would be guaranteed that we would miss the Summer Sun Celebration, which was commencing next week.
The whole of Equestria stops just to gaze at the rising of Princess Celestia’s sun. The festivities that would then begin after were fairly ordinary, nothing so interesting that it would be a shame to miss out.
Since the whole Nightmare Moon ordeal last year, the Summer Sun Celebration’s location would be Ponyville again, but different ponies would be handling all the aspects of the festival, instead of my best friends again.
But honestly, there were limited activities a pony could do every year, and it seemed that missing out on the Celebration would be like a fantastic excuse not to do your chores.
We all agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to miss out for just one year.

Oh, how we were wrong.

Pinkie wanted everyone in Ponyville to go on this expedition to this strange place, but I knew not many other ponies would be willing to miss out on Summer Sun Celebration as we were. For some ponies, it was something that would help them escape the boredom that daily life brought them.
So we chatted and organized, and we wrote down on 7 ponies’ names on a list, plus a zebra and a certain purple and green baby dragon.
The first on our list, besides us, was Applejack. Applejack is your typical country mare. She’s never afraid to get her hooves dirty; in fact, she prefers it that way. She’s tough, gritty and has a heart of gold. If there’s anypony that would be suited to go camping in some strange place that we’ve never been to before, it’s Applejack. I can see Applejack in 20 years time rough-playing with her three foals, eating supper surrounded by her whole family, and bucking apple trees like they owed her money.
Pinkie went to Sweet Apple Acres to give the invitation to Applejack (Pinkie had insisted on invitations, just in case anypony forgot about it at the last minute) and Applejack, though a little disappointed that she would miss out on the fair, happily agreed.
I happily gave a tick next to Applejack’s name on the list.

Next was Rainbow Dash. Recently, Rainbow seemed to be unable to shake the feeling of boredom, so she began to prank ponies more frequently, much to the irritation of the rest of us. Her most recent trick was to sneak to a construction site and wait until the builders had their full attention to their work.
An hour later, you could hear: “Help! Get us down! Some stupid mule’s taken the ladder!”
She’s gotten arrested for exceeding the speed limit in crowded places many times, and caught red handed in the makings of some of her more illegal pranks a few times. Princess Celestia even had to interfere at one point, which caused much embarrassment for me.
You could say Rainbow Dash had become rather rebellious, to say the least. But she was one of my best friends, and I couldn’t just abandon her friendship. And besides, some of her pranks were pretty funny.
She still practiced flying frequently; she was still determined to become a Wonderbolt. Her ambition had elevated because Air Born, a particular famous Wonderbolt, had announced her retirement and auditions were being held for a replacement. She had been practicing all the time, before becoming bored of the rehearsing routine.

But when I went to deliver the invitation, she was neither training, nor pranking the innocent. She was reclining on a puffy white cloud, gazing at the endless blue sky.
“Hi Rainbow.”
She flicked her rainbow fringe out of her eyes.
“Oh hi Twi. Sup?”
I levitated the pink invitation up to the cloud where she was resting. She raised an eyebrow as she read the loopy hoofwriting.

“Pinkie and I organized a camping trip to this rural site called Haven. Interested in joining us?”
Her eyes somewhat widened in awe.
“You’re going down to Haven? That’s so cool!”
“You know it?”
She flew to the ground and positioned herself in front of me.
“Yeah! Nopony’s been down that far into Froggy Bottom Bog in…ever! It’s supposed to be where Nightmare Moon’s soul rests, threatening to be woken when a pony ventures inside the ancient ruins and, err…wakes it up.”
There was a pause… then me and Rainbow burst out laughing.
That was one of my favorite moments. It was the last time I could recall laughing.
When we had caught our breaths, I spoke again.
“We’re going to miss the Summer Sun Celebration though. Still interested?”
She grinned.
“Even better! I’m not going to be able to do anything anyway; some other mare got the weather job. Some pegasus called Derpy Doo or somethin’. So yeah, count me in.”
“Great,” I replied, mentally ticking next to Rainbow Dash’s name.