Wings and Steel

"Well that was a total bust." Sweetie Belle said dejectedly.

"Yeah, Cutie Mark Crusaders: Kracken Hunters wasn't exactly the best idea we've come up with." Applebloom agreed, pushing her wet mane out of her face. "Maybe it would help if we knew where to look..."

"Well I don't know about you two, but I'm not just lay around like a stick in the mud." Said Scootaloo, shaking herself like a dog. "Hey, I got an idea!"

"What's that?" Asked Applebloom hesitantly.

"Well, the problem is, we're going after things that almost nopony could ever achieve, and with our luck, we'll keep going bigger until we're going to hope to find Atlantis or something. So, why don't we try doing something ponies have done before?"

"I don't know about you Scootaloo, but I don't really want to get a cutie mark in gardening." Sweetie Belle said flatly.

"Well of course not, I mean like viking ponies!"

"I don't particularly want a cutie mark in mass murder either." Said Applebloom.

Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

"Well, something exciting ponies have done in the past."

"You really want to have a history lesson on the weekend?" replied Applebloom.

"You got a better idea?"

"..."

"..."

"Fine."

Scootaloo smirked.

"To Twilight, away!"

********

"Well to start, there were the sacking of the former queen, led up to by a terrifying civil war! Eh, but on the the second hand, that might be a bit too violent for fillies... Oh, what about the siege of Canterlot? Or the founding of Eqestria? We had to trade with Minotaurs and Griffins to get off the ground, but look at Equestria these days! Thanks in no small part to Clover, Commander Hurricane and them, oh  but you were there for the play! That covers the basic idea of the events, but there's so much more that you can learn! What about..."

"I take it back, this was a really bad idea." Whispered Scootaloo to her friends. They nodded in stereo.

"Oh just imagine if we actually go back and see these events for ourselves! I mean, I have a few ideas, but they're only in prototype. A machine that can travel all over space and time!"

"If that existed, we could go back ten minutes and warn ourselves that this was a horrible idea." Applebloom said, glaring at Scootaloo. Scootaloo grinned sheepishly.

"Well, she seems distracted, we can make a break for it."

The three then proceeded to tip-hoof out of Twilight's room, where she had taken them to find the more... detailed books, which Twilight had to quickly reorganize, as they were, and I quote: "Not safe for fillies' eyes."

As they snuck down the staircase, they noticed a curtained entryway on the side of the stairs.

"Hey, wonder what's behind here?" Applebloom wondered.

"Most likely a bathroom, what does it matter?" retorted Scootaloo.

But it was too late. Applebloom had disappeared behind the curtain.

"Here we go again." Sighed Sweetie Belle.

And behind the curtain they went.

**********

"What is it?" Asked Sweetie Belle.

There came no answer. In front of the three fillies sat a large machine, which had a large screen, located between a pair of open double doors. The machine showed various pictures of places they had never seen. There was deep in a forest, a place with a black ground and structures of what seemed to be stone lining the sky, overlooking a grand analog clock with a vast city as a background, on a ship.  The fillies' eyes struggled to drink it all in.

The machine itself was constructed with a thin looking-copper colored metal. There was a large light bulb at the top that blinked off and on every few seconds. There was not much else to see but a large lever sticking out from below the screen. Scootaloo wandered over to and tried moving it, but to no avail.

"Hey, you two, get over here and help me."

Sweetie Belle paused.

"Shouldn't we  figure out what it is first? I mean, it could be dangerous."

Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

"Twilight wouldn't make it so easy to get to if it was."

Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment, then joined Applebloom and Scootaloo at the lever. Unable to resist the fury of the three midget furballs, the lever moved. There was a bright flash, a strange whirring noise, and the three fillies were catapulted out of the box. Scootaloo felt a blinding pain in her side, which she attributed to landing on it. That's until she looked. The base of her wings was... melting. Melting and dissolving into midair.

Scootaloo screamed. This wasn't just an effect, she could feel her skin being ripped away, tearing into her muscles and skeleton. The base of her wing disintegrated and the wing fell pathetically to the ground. Panic-struck, she tried rolling around, getting away, but whatever it was, it was eating at her legs. She fell to the ground, staring in horror as the same thing happened to her friends. The one sight she would never forget. Applebloom's shoulder was dissolving too, Scootaloo could see inside her chest, into her organs, only to wince as they melted away too, and Applebloom let out a cry of pain. Then another scream got to her.

Laying there was Sweetie Belle, half of her face melted away, a hole where her horn once was.

She watched as the final bit of skin melted off Sweetie Belle's face, and then there was just a grimacing skull staring at her. The skull opened its mouth, but no scream came out. Her hooves, mostly intact, but still being stripped away at, clawed at her empty eye sockets. On her left, Applebloom was lying there, completely limbless, struggling to move.

Scootaloo couldn't scream anymore. And the last thing she knew, the last thing she remembered, was the panicked screams of her friend turned to pained whimpers, as all went black.