Not Our Usual Bedtime Story
One dark, foggy day in Equestria, not too much unlike any other for the past sixty years, three fillies sat at the hooves of a old stallion, watching him with wide, liquid eyes, a roaring fire in the hearth behind them.
"Grandpa, can you tell the story again? You know, the one about the war?" the largest one said, a cream and yellow filly of around eleven.
The grandpa leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly in his armchair, and rolled his eyes wearily, a small smile curving on his muzzle around a wooden pipe.
"Haven't you heard this story enough? Sometimes, I really do swear, you fillies will be the death of me. But I'll tell it anyway..some things need to be told. This time, however... You girls deserve the truth, what really happened those years." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Not all things have a happy ending. And if you really want to live, not just be another well-cared-for slave to the Shadow People, then you need to know the truth."
His expression darkened momentarily, and then it was wiped from his face as if it had never been there. The grandpa leaned back in his chair slightly, the wood creaking, and began the story.
"One day much like any other, I was simply living in Ponyville. I had recently finished my scholarship, and I came back to the place where I grew up so that I could settle down a bit. It wasn't something I was too inclined to; the big city lights still called me, and I was tempted to visit Manehattan, where I could possibly get a job at their museum. But family is everything, and I hadn't seen my parents in six years. I wanted to see them one more time before my father died; my mother had written to tell me he was sick, some sort of magical backfire."
The grandfather touched a hoof to his horn unconsciously, put it down so that he could take a sip from the tea next to him, and continued the story.
"I came home, and I spent a few weeks at my parents' house. On my second week there, a Monday, I was trotting down to Sugarcube Corner for a cupcake from Pinkie Pie; she always made the best. The stuff today can't compare to hers. Ah, to be struck down so young...but I digress.
When I was there, she was packing my order, her usual bouncy self, when she suddenly froze, her entire body twitching in ways that didn't seem physically possible. I had lived there long enough to know a doozy when I saw it, and I reached out a hoof to help her, though I admittedly didn't know if I could. When I touched her, she turned around, and I could see her mane and tail had gone straight and she had lost much of her color. I drew back slightly, surprised, and I saw tears welling up in those blue eyes, a occurrence slightly less probable then the world exploding.
I asked her what was wrong, and In a voice completely unlike Pinkie, she said something I'll remember for a long time. She said that I should leave, go far, far away, because whatever was going to happen, she wouldn't want anyone to be in the middle of. She rushed out, leaving the door swinging and a vaguely Pinkie-shaped hole in the air left behind her, and I wordlessly took my cupcakes. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the most hyper pony in town, and I will admit I stood there for a moment, bag in hoof, shocked.
Then, I heard something...well, fillies, you wouldn't know what it is, but there used to be a thing called a Sonic Rainboom. There was only one mare who could do it, and she fell with the rest in those first days, leading the 201st in the attack on the Citadel. That was the last time anyone heard from her again, and her body was never found."
The grandfather stared a little at his tea, the expression on his face showing he would rather it was something quite a bit stronger. He sighed and continued.
"It was louder than even that, and it cracked all the windows for miles. Several ponies were deafened by the sound, and many others hid, waiting for whatever was about to happen to happen. Nothing did, for several minutes, and everyone came out of hiding to see what happened. In the sky, far above our heads, was a massive fleet of..well, the things, the lurkers, that lived on them called them starships. We couldn't see how they had any resemblance to stars.
The largest one blotted out the very sun, and the others were smaller, but had similar features and shapes. They were shaped like arrows, with a strange grace about them, but an air of danger and menace, seemingly specially built to look intimidating while being elegant. We didn't listen to the obvious message of danger, similar to that crafted by a brightly-colored and deadly toad. No one did. We were all so surprised to see these ships in space, and we all crowded outside Twilight's library, anxious for answers. Inside, Twilight was going insane; she was frantic about these things, and there was many letters going between her and Celestia, sometimes one every few minutes. With every one, her face grew more and more scared and angry, and once, she threw something at a wall. We didn't know what was happening or why we didn't get any of the obviously arriving news from Canterlot, but then, somepony pointed at the sky with a whimper.
We followed the mare's pointing hoof to see the ships spreading out in a sort of loose formation, teal fire bursting from their engines and spreading across the sky like paint in water. They arranged themselves in a web pattern, and one of them started floating down towards us, the silvered metal mass growing more and more distinct until we could see fine details of the ship, such as the line of portholes running along its side, the fighter bays on the bottom, and the very, very long end of the ship, tapering to something reminiscent of a massive gun barrel at the bow. On the sides, turrets swiveled to gain a targeting solution on us, beads of metal with strangely-lit barrels, the ends of which seemed to glow with a faint blue glimmer.
Most of us, including me, stared upwards at the craft in paralyzed befuddlement, but the wise ones ran for cover, inside buildings, underground....one brown stallion in a bowtie ran into a police box, which disappeared promptly. However, we had bigger things to worry about than the mysterious disappearance of a blue box- the letters had stopped.
Inside the library, Twilight began to weep, and Spike apologized to all of us for the lack of news, pushed us all out, and shut every window and door in the place, drawing the curtains. Meanwhile, our vision was captured by the horizon. The largest ship was over Canterlot; we could see the spires and battlements of our capital in the distance. The ship tilted slightly to the left and looked as if it was straining against something invisible that was trying to throw it or crush it; if you looked very hard, you could see the combined auras of Celestia and Luna around the craft.
However, the ship refused to be thrown, and as it was struggling its last, about to lose to the immense power of the Princesses, the gun barrel on the front lit in a flare of teal light, and it fired. All we saw from the town square in Ponyville was a massive burst of white light, streaked with black-complete absence of light at noon-, that split the horizon into shards and drowned the landscape's very color with its ferocity. It dissipated, and then we could see the pillars of flame and smoke that rose over what was left of the capital; the terrain burning, the fields razed, the walled city itself leveled. The ship was gone, and we could see its debris raining from the sky. With bated breath, we waited for Celestia and Luna to rise triumphant...and they did not. We waited for minutes which turned into hours; Ponyville's invading ship hanging over us and casting the town into shadow as if mocking our loss.
After six minutes, the first pony began to sob, and soon, the rest followed. That was when we first knew the Princesses were dead, deep inside. Twilight confirmed it when we asked, her eyes still red-rimmed from crying, and her friends standing awkwardly by, Pinkie sad and subdued, Fluttershy with a expression between indescribable anger and a level of fright never seen before, Applejack with a determined set to her face, a expression that practically screamed that she wanted to go buck the ships out of the sky back to wherever they came from. Rainbow Dash was utterly serious, with an air similar to Applejack's, and she kept muttering something under her breath. Rarity was nervously pretending to read a random book, which she was holding upside-down, and she kept sneaking glances at all of us, a unspoken question on her face that no one could answer.
Then, the sky fell down on Equestria, in the sudden outrush of all light, air, and the sound of a thousand demons unleashed from Tartarus, screaming in triumph."
