Interval=00: INTRODUCTION (prologue Pt. II)

***R.E.A.R.

---***

{----- [[[[[-Interval=00: INTRODUCTION (prologue pt. II)-]]]]] -----}

As AppleBloom followed along with Mr. and Mrs. Cake to the park of all places, she wondered endlessly; questioning their insistence on the simple trip to the park, close to her old school.

The couple was silent, though she was told otherwise.

She didn't know what to think anymore, but she just went with her gut feeling and trotted alongside the two adults.

The school AppleBloom attended a year back had been torn down quite recently. Except, it was more like it was burned down: a victim of arson, it was.

She walked on by while examining the fresh rubble, when suddenly, her tail started to vibrate. AppleBloom stopped in her tracks and kneeled down, bending her head downward, and out slid a small electronic device, namely proven as it was the cause of the vibration.

It was still vibrating on the ground, but the Cakes didn't seem to notice. The couple only continued to walk, and that’s when AppleBloom’s childish instincts kicked in. The noticeable filly quickly picked up the device with the cleft of her left hoof and pretended to breathe on her right leg, reaching it across her face as she did. She expected the Cakes to look back at her; seeing that she had fallen behind, but they never noticed the absence of her presence. But even so, she kept her position as a precaution. She then lightly touched the blank, black screen, which then resulted in the display of an image.

SweetieBelle’s image appeared, signifying that AppleBloom had received a phone call from the white Unicorn. The image was portrayed as a sexual tease, with Sweetie was lying down on her back; forelegs behind her head as her corresponding legs were open, revealing her young genitalia. She never looked at it directly--she never had gotten up to changing her picture, though all of the others were just other 'enticing' pictures of her.

She looked forward to seeing what Sweetie had to say (and hopefully, it was important), and she immediately pressed a button on the top of the phone, resulting in a microphone to mechanically protrude from the bottom. Finally, she held the convenient speaker to her ear, clipping the soft elastic grip onto it, which ended up leaving her legs free to advance onward.

“Zzzzt...AppleBloo...” It was Scootaloo's voice instead, and AppleBloom felt a little more comfortable. However, distortion in her voice was imminent, as the receiver had experienced this not too long ago. In fact, her device started to act up only a week ago, but even still, it was a strange, unexplainable flaw in the technology.

“What’s goin- on? I've b--- try---g to zzzzzt-rea---you. ZZZZZZZ...ZZZZp-----me?” The call was dropped.

“Oppph, gosh darn it!”

Even the strong and sudden wind blowing in her ear as she ran forward couldn't match the blatant annoyance that was Scoot’s message. And as such, she removed her phone from her ear and hid it back into her mane with some difficulty.

“Stupid thing,” was muttered.

She finally passed the school’s miserable scene and made way to see Mr. and Mrs. Cake stopped in position. Once she got closer, AppleBloom saw that they were staring at the ground, and she still had a way to go until she met them again.

As she was beginning to look over the hill she was rising over, she saw more and more ponies that seemed to be surrounding some kind of black, half open box in a compact circle. She also noticed one half of a contrast being worn by most ponies. And that half was black.

AppleBloom immediately slowed her pace after she was noticed by many of the members of the ritual. She knew what this was.

This was a funeral...at the park...

Why the park?

“Come,” said Mrs. Cake. “Everyone would appreciate it if you’d pay your due respects.”

“Uh...okay.” AppleBloom had many more questions flowing through her mind by now.

Who was this for? Why wasn't Mr. Cake sobbing out of apparent control anymore? As of the moment AppleBloom walked closer to the couple, he developed a serious look on his face. His previously shed tears seemed to have just disappeared. And Mrs. Cake wasn't much different from the stallion. Instead of staring at the box in the center of the circle with a bland look like him, she urged AppleBloom to approach, even though the action was in the process of being fulfilled.

Flowers were thoroughly scattered across the ground, which gave AppleBloom a path to follow upon it's directory. Eventually, she reached the end of the black casket where the edge of it was opened. She knew how these things went, as she had attended her grandmother’s funeral a few weeks back. Finally, she gathered up the strength to look at the body inside...

It didn't even take her a split second to close her halfway close her eyes and weep.

"No..!" she slurred through a concoction of overwhelming sadness and muffled cries "You can't!!"

The once endlessly jovial mare; an element to the entire world that was Pinkie Pie...was finally laid to rest. Her bright pink coat and slightly varied mane had lost most of their hue and color. In fact, her body seemed to be decomposing at the very scene of which AppleBloom had been slowly but surely witnessing. And even though Pinkie’s fluffy mane was still its namely visual, it seemed to have diminished with the ever-approaching wind of a horrible discovery. It deflated.

AppleBloom felt like puking as Pinkie’s face began to physically deteriorate into a transparent mold of flesh. From this she noticed the sun was setting right behind her

...But that was hours ago.

It was now a perfect dark; no moon was present in the starry sky. AppleBloom was still leaning over Pinkie’s deathbed, stranded. AppleBloom was stuck in the position that she had been in for the past few hours, at least, judging by the time of day. But she couldn't move at all during that time; her mind was drained of all possible coherent thoughts.

Pretty much, she was frozen for an unexplainable reason until nightfall.

“W-whe...re?” AppleBloom opened her eyes, only to see chaos. Red and orange were among the only colors she noticed when she got up on her hooves and looked around in all horizontal directions, frantically. “Huh-hello?” she called out. “Hello?!”

She was growing more panicked by what she was witnessing by the second. There were no longer any other ponies around to even give AppleBloom the feeling, or thought, of comfort. Instead, the circle of the citizens who surrounded the future burial site was replaced by a wall of fire, hence encompassing her.

“AAAHHH!” AppleBloom screamed as she was suddenly able to recognize the temperature. The intense heat came to her as she regained the last of her strangely missing senses. “Aaahow! Aow. AAAHH!”

Abruptly, something from the ground suddenly caught AppleBloom’s eye, somehow taking her mind slightly off of the pain from the flames that were touching her. The dangerously close flames highlighted a trail of blood and gore on the ground, disgustingly mixed together. She vomited, only adding to the dirt on the black floor that was apparently the ground.

This...mess must have been replaced with the beautiful flowers the AppleBloom remembered seeing while-

“While the world was normal...” AppleBloom realized something. She had had a dream similar to this several nights back, after her grandmother passed:

She had dreamed that she was trapped in a seemingly endless maze of mirrors. Luckily, she was able to escape, as a trail of broken glass was the only way out of the organized confusion. Her dream was extremely short, as if depicting it as a premonition... It provided a realization for AppleBloom to unravel, and as quickly as she managed to do so, she took up the action she had been thinking over; whether she should take a leap of faith through the flames.

The trail of blood ended directly at the point where Mr. and Mrs. Cake stood. AppleBloom knew this for a fact because, in the ground base of the fire, she saw bones; remains. However, they were buried in the flames as they grew ever closer.

AppleBloom had no more time to waste.

It was now or never.

As the flaming circle of flames imploded from the ground up, AppleBloom dove into the wall that no longer existed. If she stayed in her previous position any longer, she would have been toast, literally.

“Yer the only chicken ah know, Scootaloo!” She barked confidently while watching the ashes burn up, which inevitably resulted in darkness to shadow over her.

She hated darkness, as it was her biggest, and worst fear. She couldn't stand it; she was afraid to even move a muscle, but she remembered what options she had. She bent her neck down and touched another button on her mobile gadget that she managed to keep during that accursed version of her dream. An extremely bright light emitted from the end of the device that was following her view as she released the button.

The light punctured the black blanket that only seemed to grow darker and darker. Soon enough, she was only able to see about seven feet in any and all directions she turned to face. And in each of those directions, nothing was seen beyond her seven-foot radius of sight.

"I hear voices...” AppleBloom froze in place as her spine chilled down to its core. Something was talking to her, but she insisted that what she was hearing was her extreme fear of darkness messing with her head. ”Who are they?”

“Wh...ooo now?” AppleBloom silently and slowly responded. Fear crept into her mind, as well as her body long ago, but, to follow up to her question, she once again flashed her light left and right. But, she still saw nothing.

"They say they know you...”

“Who...are you..?” She gradually gained a monumental amount of courage, considering numerous failures in other situations like this.

"They say you killed me..."

At that point, AppleBloom was frantic, stuck in the darkness with little sight. She turned around...where the voice was now prolonging its echo. She saw nothing at first, but as she fixated her vision according to the darkness, she managed to see something in the far distance.

She quivered in place.

It just stood there--a pink, quadrupedal figure with it's mane flat and depressed, hanging over one side of its face. It’s one and only visible eye was huge and white, and its pupils were unable to be seen, but not because of the disadvantage of distance. A piercing white shrill of a smile was directly visible after about a minute of staring at it. This sent AppleBloom her own processed message:

Get the hell out of there...

Luckily, the darkness entirely disappeared at that time, allowing AppleBloom to flee the scene that she so desperately hoped was imaginary. She retraced her steps from before and headed toward her treehouse, looking behind her every few seconds.

She was afraid, and she had every natural, and supernatural reason to be.