The Final 9

The sound of metal on metal clinking echoed through Twilight's ears. While unconscious, the noise echoed through her mind as she struggled to wake herself up. When she did however, her vision was nothing but hazy to begin with, but it began to clear momentarily as she blinked, looking up at the source of the irritating noise.

Various implements ranging from screwdrivers, knives, and surgical tongs hung listlessly above Twilight.

Her gaze was averted when a pair of scissors invaded her field of view. On instinct alone, she brought her left hoof around and knocked the scissors away from the presumed attacker. 'Hang on...' Twilight thought. 'My leg was broken before!'

"I'm sorry!" Came a frightened squeak. "I just fixed your leg, please don't hurt me!"

Twilight rolled her leg in its place, and noticed the pink stitching holding the tear together, then her gaze turned to the scissors sticking out of the floor. "What... Happened?" She glanced around the rest of the room, noticing she lay upon a roller skate—turned bed with a bundled up rag at the rear of the skate that acted as a makeshift pillow. The rest of the room was relatively bare, with the implements hanging above her head, the room lit by three glowing Christmas lights that hung idly from the bundle of remaining broken ones, and more tools hung on walls by nails or hooks. She also saw spools of thread and packets of sewing needles, and half-moon suture needles.

"I, uhm, found you out in The Emptiness..."

"Ugh..." Twilight groaned. "Who are you, and where am I?"

"I'm Fluttershy, and I brought you to our hideout." Fluttershy brought the scissors back up and pointed them back in Twilight's Direction. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you." Twilight recoiled back as Fluttershy opened the sharp implement and used it to snip off the stray thread hanging from her shoulder. "There you go, all better now," she said with a proud grin. Fluttershy turned and hung the over-sized scissors on a nail jutting out from the wall. "If Rarity were here, she'd've done a better job. She likes fixing things like that."

"Rarity?" Quizzed Twilight.

Fluttershy only gave a brief "Mmhmm."

"She was with me!"

Fluttershy's gaze shot to Twilight, and she said incredulously; "Where!? Out in The Emptiness?" Fluttershy got abruptly cut off by a voice coming out of thin air.

"Art thou keeping secrets from us!?" The dirty curtain across the room parted and an azure blue mare came walking through, her head held high as she looked down her nose at Twilight and Fluttershy.

"I, uhm, pardon me; Princess, I was coming to tell you..."

The blue mare strode past Fluttershy, lightly bumping her. "What is this?" She questioned, pulling Twilight to her knees to get a look at the mark upon her back.

"She was in The emptiness, Princess..."

"WHAT!?" The Princess roared. "You foal, you will lead the beast straight to us!"

"The beast!" Proclaimed Twilight. "That's what took Rarity! If we hurry we can save her—"

"NO!" Asserted the Blue One, firmly stomping her hoof and glaring at Twilight.. "We have rules for a reason!"

Several large thumps could be heard growing eerily louder; until they stopped just outside the cloth hanging down over the entrance of the little room. The Blue One turned to smirk at Fluttershy and Twilight as the tip of a large butchers knife poked through the centre, moving up the curtain and pushing it aside as a hulking, orange, patchwork behemoth proudly strode into the room. It dug the tip of the knife-turned-sword into the wood of the floor, leaning on it nonchalantly. "Problems?" It asked?

"Quite the opposite, Applejack. I was just telling our new guests how things work around here."

"But Rarity!" Protested Twilight, Fluttershy's remaining eye looking to the ground with a depressive sadness. Twilight stole a quick glance at the mare's face before turning away. 'How did that happen...? "We can't just leave her out there!"

"Rarity say wut now?" Boomed the patchwork behemoth. Rather than carefully being stitched from several pieces of fabric like Rarity's white leather—or burlap like Fluttershy and Twilight; Applejack looked as though she had been made out of leftover cut-outs ans scrap pieces from a foals crafts table from school.

The Princess, however, didn't look as though she had any stitches anywhere. Rather, she looked as though her form had been crafted out of a seamless piece of blue-dyed leather; complete with signature tiara and necklace; which doubled as a clip for a cape of sorts that hung over her back. "The White One ran off into The Emptiness," muttered Luna, almost in passing, as if she didn't care.

"SHE SAVED ME!" Roared Twilight, earning stunned glances from present company. "We owe her a rescue!"

The Blue Princess did nothing but gave Twilight a flat, deadpanned expression, almost as if she's contemplating on how to appropriately deal with  a subordinate that committed a crime against royalty in the time long since past. "Our new guest seems... Confused." She began with an underlying authoritative, almost sinister tone. "We need to instill clarity in them." She turned to leave, her cape falling over her left side revealing her wings underneath. "Shall we?" The Princess turned and left out through the draped cloth.

Applejack pulled the knife-turned-sword from the wood, and slung it onto her back where, with a resonant clank, stuck onto a magnet strapped to her back, of which also had one half of a pair of scissors.

Fluttershy hurried past Applejack, darting through the cloth as Twilight and Applejack locked glances. The hulking orange mare suddenly jerked forward, intentionally making Twilight stagger back. Applejack only smirked and followed after Twilight.

On exiting the room, Twilight's gaze turned upward as she craned her head high trying to take in all of the cavernous space of her surroundings. She heard a metallic grinding and periodic sparking noise, and her vision turned towards the source; a craft of some kind had crashed through the ceiling and roof. She noticed something attached to the end of the craft; it looked like a miniature desk fan that kept idly rotating with several cables protruding from the internal mechanism. Twilight gathered that everyone here had somehow tapped into the craft to run their lights and other things off of it.

"Move!" Barked Applejack, shoving the Purple One forward. "You're slowing us down."

Twilight didn't realize her stupor had slowed her down, so she hurried forward with everyone else and into the metal basket everyone was already in. The Orange One pulled the front closed,  and began to turn a handle at the back of the bucket that began to raise them up.

Now she could get a proper, panoramic view of the building. Unlike the rest of the buildings in the Emptiness, This one seemed relatively intact save for the gaping hole in the roof which loosely held the strange craft. As they rose, she saw more of the building's interior. Various supporting beans had fallen from their intended positions as structural support and now lay against others barely doing their job.

The bucket came to an abrupt stop and the Blue One Unceremoniously kicked open the half-door, walking through it and towards another burlap cloth that hung over a door. The Princess moved it aside and went in, followed by Fluttershy, Twilight, then Applejack. The room had a beam of sunlight shining through the window that housed a dead clock, which cast a shadow of the face of the clock on the floor, complete with its dead hands. The rest of the room had a myriad of junk laying pushed up against the walls of the room—or what would seem like junk upon Twilight's initial gaze. She wrote off the clutter as just general untidiness.

The Princess stopped at the end of the shadow-negative of the clock, and put a reassuring hoof on Twilight's shoulder, opening her mouth to speak.

"When we woke in this world, it was chaos. Ponies and Changelings attacked each other with magic, balefire, and metal monsters. The Changelings built metal machines that doubled as doppelgangers; only these were as big as the Ponyville Town hall, and just as long. Those machines burned the land, destroyed our houses and homes. Not to mention they managed to destroy Canterlot too.

"I'm not sure which of us was the first to wake, but I found The Pink One and The Yellow One after I woke. Shortly after, we found a Polychromatic individual, as well as the White One and two twins of reverse colour schemes. In the midst of the war raging outside, we managed to stay together and make our way here; to the building we now call home."

"How did the land get like this? If it was just a war, then where is everyone?" Those last four words rolled out of Twilight's mouth with a sad emphasis.

"I do not know myself," Replied The Blue One. "But on a related note, the Polychromatic One and myself had a clash of views and left, taking the reverse-colour twins with her. I've not seen the three of them since, and I am unsure of their whereabouts. All that aside, we do what we can to get by; Largely keeping ourselves hidden from The Beast."

"Where are the rest of you?"

"Pinkamena is behind the curtain behind us doing whatever it is she does, Applejack is, well... you know, Fluttershy is with us, and the rest—"

"Are missing," Twilight said, matter-of-factly. "Where did The Beast come from, and what does it want with us?"

The Princess just snorted at Twilight's comment. "I do not know. We waited for the war to end, and now we wait for The Beast to stop hunting us too." She walks over to a torn calender with the top most section ripped out, leaving the numbers 1 through 14 on it. He horn lit up, and the '2' square dissolved in fire, leaving 1, 5, 6, 8, and 9.

"How can you write them off that easily because they're missing?

"Tis hard, Twilight Sparkle. We yearn for their return, but we cannot risk The Beast finding us, or our sanctuary."

"Then why was Rarity out there, then? Tell me that, Princess."

"We sent her out to bring back supplies. Looks like we got more than we bargained for. She's lost to us, now."

"But she isn't lost!" Pleaded Twilight. "We can rescue her and the others if only yo—"

"NO!" Roared The Princess, huffing rapidly from the fury in her tone. "I've told you that we cannot afford to lose any more!" Her gaze shot past Twilight, to Fluttershy. "Take the new guest to the watchtower—and out of my sight. Keep an eye out for The Beast, and alert me if you see it."

Not saying a word, Fluttershy galloped passed a stunned Twilight and pulled her along and back out to the bucket elevator. She nudged Twilight inside, closed the door, and started turning the lever. The bucket began to ascend the tower, and Twilight just waited to see what is at the top.