Fallen

Fight or Flight

They ran. Rainbow Dash flew with Fluttershy in her hooves. Twilight carried a bloody, mangled Spike. Jet had taken Gilda’s gun, but, reentering the riot zone, he realized that taking the gun had been a mistake.

Jet took two steps out of the storage shed and tripped over the body of Louis Bruckman, who was starting to regain consciousness. At the sight of Jet’s gun, however, the mascot boy began to scream his head off.

“Shut up, human!” Jet screamed in return. “Shut up!”

“What are you?! Why do you have a gun?!”

“I think it’s better you didn’t know,” Jet said nonchalantly as the riot continued.

“You son of a…” But he didn’t get a chance to finish. Jet made a mistake. Raising the gun high into the air, he fired a single shot. The crowd panicked even more, trampling over themselves in attempts to get away from the shooter.

“You idiot!” The mascot boy screamed, picking up his mask. “Get rid of that fucking gun!”

“Shut up, human!”

“You…”

“I SAID SHUT UP!”

And Jet fired three more shots, but not into the air.

Fluttershy suddenly bolted from Dash’s arms and tackled Jet. The gun went flying. In front of them, Louis Bruckman collapsed, three holes in his bull suit filling with blood.

“NO!” Fluttershy screamed unnaturally. “NO MORE! I CAN’T TAKE IT!”

“WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!”

“YOU KILLED A HUMAN!”

“SO DID YOU!”

“SHE WAS A GRIFFON! SHE KILLED PINKIE PIE!”

“I…”

“GET HIM!”

Jet acted on impulse, reaching for the gun, but Rainbow Dash suddenly appeared next to Fluttershy and pinned him to the ground. To their left, Rarity and Applejack were tending to Big Macintosh, who had stood up on his hooves but still bore a look of intense pain.

Sirens. The police had arrived. Jet looked at the two pegasi.

“I have to do what’s right or else everything will go wrong.”

“What is he talking about?”

“I don’t…”

Then Jet punched Fluttershy, breaking her snout. Rainbow Dash screamed, and Jet brought his body around on the ground and delivered a hard blow to the cyan pegasus’s head, knocking her out cold. Louis Bruckman lay motionless on the ground. Fluttershy was bleeding. The other ponies were oblivious.

Then, very suddenly, the sky opened up.

* * *

Storm Rider had no time to react to the news of Princess Celestia’s death, because at that moment, a massive explosion knocked them all off their hooves.

“What was that?” Little Bit cried out.

“End…times…” young Syrinx answered.

“I will go investigate. You three shall stay here and wait.”

“I don’t think you should go alone…”

“Trust me, it is better this way. I go alone, and you must stay.”

The zebra disappeared through the flap at the front of the tent. Little Bit suddenly came up to her brother and began to cry.

“The Princess, Stormy…she’s…”

“I know, sis. I…”

“BY THE GODS!”

Zecora’s cry shook them from their tears and led them outside into the dust storm. However, there was no dust storm. For the first time in a long time, the plains were clear and free of dust clouds. But that wasn’t what Zecora was afraid of. She pointed her hoof at the sky, and the siblings looked up.

A spinning black hole, tailed like a hurricane, had opened up in the dark sky, and going through it were dark creatures the likes of which none of them had ever seen before. Little Bit grasped her brother’s side, but he didn’t respond. He was dumbfounded.

“Wait! I’ve seen that before!” Zecora cried, and then her expression became grave. “Oh no…”

“What?”

“In the skies a hole appear, striking hearts and minds with fear. Through it evildoers go, to spread their deadly blanket of woe.”

“What?!”

“Tis a prophecy, you see! A hole appears in the sky, means many peoples will soon die.”

“Soon die?” Little Bit started up. “More ponies?”

“No, not ponies, little girl. Death will come from another world.”

Storm Rider almost punched the zebra for not making sense, but allowed her to continue.

“That’s a portal to another land with ponies mute, where creatures stand.”

“THAT’S IT!” Storm Rider yelled, taking his sister by the hoof. “C’mon, Little Bit, this zebra doesn’t wanna talk sense, we don’t have to…”

A pulse, a wave of purple energy, birthed from the hole in the sky, and everypony collapsed into nightmares.

* * *

“WHAT IS THAT?!”

“It’s a portal! It’s…oh, NO! FUCK NO! DISCORD KNOWS WE’RE HERE!”

“Wait, what happened to…”

“GET JET!”

Fighting. So much fighting. Blood. Fire. Hole in the sky.

Then, without warning, everything stopped.

There he stood. Discord. The draconequus.

“My, my, why did I not come to this planet before manifesting in Ponyville?” he sneered.

No one could answer. It would seem as though time itself had frozen, or that the hole in the sky had ripped the fabric of spacetime in two.

Discord eyed Jet and the ponies. “Well, well, well. A bodily usurper? A diform freak? You’re scarier than me, aren’t you? Oooh, you killed one of my lieutenants! I’m so…”

SNAP.

Everything went back into motion. Discord disappeared, but a fusillade of monsters began to terrorize the stadium.

Jet made a decision. Finding the gun, he dragged the mascot boy all the way to the staff parking lot, just in time to be ambushed by the ponies.

“STOP!”

“WHY SHOULD WE?!”

“WHY ARE WE YELLING?!”

“I…wait…”

“PINKIE??!!”

Sure enough, there was the pink pony, bouncing giddily up and down.

“WHAT?!”

“YOU’RE DEAD?!”

She made a contemptuous noise. “Screw death. I’m Pinkie Pie.”

Smile.

“ALL OF YOU!” Jet suddenly cried. “Get onto that bus! We need to get out of here!”

“But…”

“NO FUCKING BUTS!”

He pointed to a school bus as he shot out its windows, then forcibly removed the door. The ponies had little choice but to follow him, and Fluttershy was wailing, clutching her broken nose. They got everyone aboard: Twilight, Pinkie, Fluttershy, Spike, Rarity, Applejack, Big Macintosh, Jet, Rainbow Dash, and Louis Bruckman. Yelling at the top of his lungs, Jet smashed the front of the dashboard with his fist and tore a few wires out of the bus’s workings.

The bus chugged to life. Amidst the chaos, they rolled out of the parking lot.

But they were not out of danger yet.