Author's Note
PLEASE READ THIS FIRST.
Not more than 24 hours after this story was published, this story was put on-haitus. The reason was because of the fact that the story line didn't make sense for shit at damn all.
Sure, I write well and all, but that doesn't make up for a shitty story line.
I'm hoping that this remade version will not turn out to be such a disappointment to you all as the original was.
I'm not even betting on it.
I take criticism seriously, wanting to make sure those who read my stories like them and don't think they were a waste of their time. I want people to be entertained and want to know what happens next. It was like that two years ago. I'm hoping it can still be like that now.
Anyway, ~~enjoy~~ dislike away.
The Start
It was said once...in a story long ago...that war never changes.
It was said that since the power of killing was first discovered when ponykind first began its walk, blood has been spilled endlessly in many names, for many reasons. To feel like a god; to bring justice to the world; or to simple relieve the rage built up inside.
But sometimes, there never was a reason to kill. Sometimes, ponies did it for as a way of fun, taking the lives of the innocent in cold blood for seemingly nothing but for their own entertainment. It was a sick, twisted thing some enjoyed.
But in the land of Equestria, this way of dying was quite rare, for a while, at least. Killings never happened unless it was not at the hooves of ponykind, but time itself.
Age, for example. In my belief, the older someone gets, the weaker they become. But it all depends on how they live their life, whether they work out or stay at home all the time and never do anything.
Exercise can keep the body strong, prolonging life for several years, before the Grim Reaper comes and leads them to the afterlife by the time they become elder and brittle. But being nothing but a poor, lazy slob can shorten the time you have on this planet. Some can be gone by their 40's, but others can die long before that, even when they are young, innocent children, who's parents always take the blame for the death of an obese child.
But that happened mostly in Equestria, dying by time or your own choices, I mean. Now take the Gryphon Kingdom, for example. There are strict rules that when broken, the consequences are sometimes punishable by death. But other times, it's never because of a broken rule. It's just the innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time. A sick, corrupted soul taking the life of an innocent---or other corrupted---soul for many reasons: Power, justice, revenge, or nothing but simple "entertainment."
I don't know why in the world I bother talking about any of this. Nopony's going to want to read it. It's dull and boring. Why would anyone want to read about something no one cares about? No one cares about history anymore, especially in the time I now live in.
Then I remembered once...letting out your thoughts and talking of the past...lets you become more open, not to feel afraid of whatever comes at you, and it allows you to know yourself better.
But you probably don't care about that, do you? You probably want to know why I'm telling you this, right? More importantly, who I am?
I never understood why ponies want to know names. They're just going to forget it soon enough. But like always, we always tell them like I'm going to tell you.
My name is Lightning Flash, and I'll just bluntly point it out here and then. Yeah, the name sounds cliche', but really, just who cares anymore? No name is anymore special than another. They're all just the same exact thing: A name.
But sometimes, ponies don't want to know about the names. They probably wonder about the backgrounds. What they were, who they were, how they lived, how old they are, and what they've done.
I don't have much of a background, but I'll say what I can.
I'm a 27 year old stallion who used to be a musician---though my name differs from my talent. Then again, names never exactly have to fit the talent you have.
Anyway, I made somewhat a living off making music, some for stories, plays, even films and video games. I started playing music when I was only 4 years old, starting on the piano.
Then again, you probably don't really care about that, do you?
I apologize for my rude behavior. I mostly put the blame on the stress that has absorbed itself within me over time. I wasn't always like this. I was nice and kind in the far past. But now, I'm living in the far future, far from the time I used to live in, thanks to cryogenic freezers. You probably don't even want to know why I was even placed inside one in the first place.
Well, maybe a couple of you want to know. Then again, maybe you don't and you're a bunch of damn liars. Then again...
I do say "then again" a lot, don't I?
Well, for those who do---or not---want to know, I'll kindly explain it the best that I can, most likely trailing off and talking about something pointless that you probably don't want to know.
It was because of the war between Equestria and the Zebra Empire that had begun to rage out of control sometime in the year of 1014. Nopony knew why the Zebra Empire wanted to fight with us, nor did we have time to figure out. Princesses Celestia and Luna had no other choice but to interfere, and just like that, Equestria was plunged into a world war for the first time in over 1000 years.
The first few months, it was just the East Coast affected. Then the war continued on to the North, the South, reaching all the way over to the West Coast, just slowly creeping in on the center of Equestria, where the great city of Canterlot stood, with a town called Ponyville residing down below, many miles away, but looking closer than it had really been.
Just a year after Equestria unintentionally became involved within the deadly and catastrophic war, one of the fighting territories began to launch powerful and destructive devices, called nuclear bombs. They were new weapons created in secrecy. No one knew of the weapons until it was too late, when they launched in the air, only to fall back down minutes or hours later, incinerating hundreds, if not thousands of cities across Equestria, the Gryphon Kingdom, and the Middle East. Ponyville was one of the first towns to get the warning, the warning that would spare thousands, if not millions of innocents from a terrible demise. But where could they go, exactly?
The answer: Underground.
Not more than a few months into the war, a group who never gave a name to the public had undergone work on several hundred underground shelters throughout the Equestrian country, capable of sheltering well over a thousand ponies in each.
According to the company, each shelter had 1000 cryogenic freezers for all residents, and only those. The shelters weren't massive like those underground vaults in those post-apocalyptic stories or films or video games. It was just one massive room with freezers on the walls. Ponies would just climb into them, and within minutes, they would be almost spontaneously frozen in time. The freezers would stay frozen for up to as well as 200 or more years in the case of a nuclear attack, due to the surface being uninhabitable, of course. Once 200 years were up, the freezers would open and the ponies would emerge, feeling like they have done nothing more but take a simple nap.
A total of over twenty-thousand were issued to be built, but by the time the bombs dropped, only 930 were completed, with 27 still in construction, and the rest with merely blueprints. But though there were only a little under 1,000 completed, it was still enough to save almost a million ponies.
I may have exaggerated a bit about "millions" being saved.
I could remember the exact day the bombs started falling over Ponyville. April 17th, 1014. Monday.
I was sitting down at home, with my wife and son, who was only an infant at the time, enjoying a calm lunch, the occasional sandwiches and maybe a few potato chips. Sure, my wife was very competitive and didn't want to do or eat anything that would hurt her physical image, but sometimes, she just said, "It doesn't hurt to lay back once in a while."
You probably wouldn't want to know about her anyway, but...I can talk about her...later.
The lunch was peaceful. The windows were open, allowing a cool breeze to flow through. The three of us as a family sat down at the dining room table. A radio was in the center of the table, playing by a stallion who called himself D-Dog on Equestrian News Radio. Out of the many days of the year, this one seemed the most peaceful.
Then we heard the screaming, breaking glass, and distant alarms outside the walls of our house. Then the report on the radio tuned in, explaining of bombs falling from the skies, detonating across major cities and towns.
Then the reporter listed Ponyville as a target.
It was at that point that my wife and I packed as much as we could. A voice on the outside intercom instructed citizens to evacuate to 362, the number of the shelter just by Ponyville. The shelters never had specific names, like vaults or stables. Just numbers.
Why did the shelters need a name anyway? Those who got inside were only going to be in there for literally an hour---in reality, two centuries.
It took not more than a few minutes to get common essentials: Clothing, food, water, the clothing being stored for the future, of course. The common rule was that everyone was to be hydrated and well fed before entering the freezers.
We knew we couldn't take everything, and while it saddened us, surviving was much more important than a few decorations here and there. We grabbed our child and bolted out the door, all running in the same direction, a nearby hill that connected to the mountains leading to Canterlot. The hill was where 362 was built.
Hundreds and hundreds of ponies crowded the entrance, Royal Guard soldiers at the entrance to guide them through inside. Most ponies were calm, but some were panicking, yelling worriedly for them to hurry up. It took one pony looking up in the sky to see a distant faint light getting closer and brighter for everyone else to go bat-shit crazy. Ponies began to topple over each other, stampeding and trampling some to death.
My wife was just as worried as the other folks, but she kept her calm, her cool. I told her not to worry.
Then he came out of nowhere. A stallion holding a knife came up directly behind her and held the knife to her throat, demanding me to hoof him our passes to the shelter. I tried explaining, scared, that there didn't need to be any trouble, and to not do this. He didn't listen and continued demanding, putting the knife closer to her throat. My wife eyed me, scared, worried, afraid that she would die at the hoof of this madman.
I had no choice but to obey to his demands, and I took the passes as quick as I could out of the bag and gave it to him, pleading to let her go. He eyed it, then looked back up. A faint smile lit upon his face, and for a moment, I thought he was co-operating with us.
He wasn't.
And then the knife slashed her throat.
My eyes went wide, and I screamed in horror as I watched him kill my wife. And like I was someone completely different, I grabbed the firearm that hung in the holster around my waist, aiming it at the madman and firing. He died instantly, but it didn't do anything to save her. It never dawned on me that I even had a gun in the first place. Had I realized it sooner, I could have changed that course of history.
But I didn't know. I didn't know, and my wife laid there on the ground, and I sat there, holding her in my forelegs as she bled out. I didn't know what to do. I was scared, screaming in terror as I watched my love die right in front of my eyes. The last look she ever had in her eyes...Fear. Pain.
Death.
Then, slowly, her eyes shut.
And like that, she was gone.
I didn't know how long I sat there, but it had to have been only a minute. I cried and cried. I said to her I was sorry, sorry I wasn't thinking. I kissed her, not caring if it was just a corpse now, because it was still my wife. I kissed her in hopes that like in the movies, she would revive.
But she didn't. She didn't come back.
By now, almost everyone was inside the shelter. I wanted to sit here with my wife...my dead wife, and die. But it was by surprise that I was being dragged on my rear, towards the entrance. I screamed at the ponies dragging me, struggling to let me go, but they refused. Two stallions carried my bags, and one carried my son.
I had forgotten I even had a son at that point. I felt so ashamed of myself.
So I looked back to the outside. I saw the empty town of Ponyville in the distance. Not more than 50 feet away, my wife lay on the dirt path, dead and motionless.
She was the last thing I saw of the outside before a bright light blinded almost everyone in the entrance before the massive steel door of the shelter shut. I listened to the muffled boom outside, and only cringed in tears at the thought of her body flinging around out there like a rag doll.
I could hear the sounds of Royal Guard soldiers asking me if I was okay, if I was hurt, but I didn't listen to them. The only thing I could hear was the outside. The sound of war.
And out of all the voices that rang around me, the three words I spoke out seemed the loudest.
I don't remember quite what I said, but I remembered what happened almost immediately after.
Silence fell.
INTO THE WASTE
BY
I AM THE NIGHT
