Afterworld

Weeks Earlier

The Everfree Forest seemed more grim and dark than it ever had before. The trees shivered in the cold, and the mud breathed out a murky dense fog with every exhale. Nature fought its own soil as crystal infected the dirt and murdered anything growing within. Squirrels tried to rest, and rabbits bundled together on the deathly grayed grass, struggling to maintain any form of warmth.

The weather had no guides. It acting on its own tuition, and disobeyed average laws of old.

Rainbow Dash quietly crawled out of her tent and stretched out her back and wings. A light cracking sound could be heard, and she let out a quiet relaxed moan.

Scanning the forest around her, she needed to look for something to eat. Vegetables were impossible to find, or at least ones that could actually be eaten. The crystalline infection had taken up so much of the country already, there was no telling what was or was not safe anymore. Rainbow Dash trusted nothing except what had a beating heart. She spotted her prey. A squirrel had just scurried out into the open. It dug fruitlessly at the ground in an attempt to gather any form of edible grass or seeds. It didn't see the cyan mare coming.

She lift off and darted at the rodent, crushing its tail beneath one hoof and knocking the creature over the head with her other hoof. The squirrel collapsed. She lifted up the creature with her teeth and carried it back to where her tent was set up. She struck up her fire and started to work on cooking the squirrel. It wasn't too big of a meal, but she couldn't afford going out to find much more, for fear of all the animals leaving the forest and ridding her of any form of sustenance.

She looked over her shoulder towards the tent and called out for her lone companion to join her.

"Heya, Scoots. Come on out for food." She set aside half of the meal and dug into her own. She'd never be entirely used to the flavours of meat. It never sat right in her stomach.

The small orange coated mare opened the flap on the tent and crawled out, rubbing her eyes. She yawned and sat next to Rainbow, picking up her portion and carefully devouring each morsel wordlessly. When she had finished, she gave Rainbow a hug and a smile before dragging herself tiredly back into the tent. Within minutes, she was snoring again.

Rainbow rolled her eyes and chuckled to herself. That little mare had more of a knack for snoozing than herself. Yawning, Rainbow herself noticed how long it had been since she last slept. A couple days at least.

She crawled inside the tent and layed down next to the young orange mare. She clicked a lantern to light and opened up her favorite book, 'Daring Do and the Forbidden City of Clouds'. It had been the only surviving book from her collection before Cloudsdale had fallen. She had probably read this particular issue over a hundred times by now. She chuckled as she started to read through it once again.

As she read, the words seemed to fade into pure memory as the story started playing off in her head, and her eyes closed.

The cyan mare stomped out the flaming torch that threatened to light the whole room ablaze. The large antlered dragon-lord Kirin had enough of Rainbow Dash's resentment to him. His flaming mane spiralled around him, and ruptured through the ground, making their way towards the blue pegasus. She adjusted her hat upon her head and trotted at top speed towards him as the floor exploded into a see of magic liquid flame. She jumped as high as she could with her injured wing. She could almost reach the edge...

Almost.

But Daring Do had her covered. The adventurer burst in through a door on the side of the room, and sent her whip to grasp a fissure in the ceiling. She swung across the fire and caught Rainbow right at the last second. They landed together on the solid ground and stared at each other for a moment.

"Thank you, Daring," Rainbow said gratefully.

"I'd never leave you hanging Rainbow Dash. You're my best companion yet." You could see the glimmer of honesty and trust in Daring's eyes. Rainbow had always loved how the shades in Daring's mane looked against her faded coat. The way her hat sat scantily upon her head, threatening to fall off at any sudden movement, but it never did. The way her- Well... The way she was in general. She was just so cool!

"Aren't you forgetting something, ponies?" The Qilin beast cackled in the background and mocked the ponies in their moment of intimacy. "I still have the amulet, and you will never take it from me!" And with a pivot of his back leg, and the sweeping downpour of his flaming man, Kirin was gone.

"He's escaping with the amulet, Daring! We've gotta find out where he's going!" Rainbow panicked and started running up to where Kirin had been.

Daring Do laughed and stamped her hoof on the ground. "You mean... This!?" She whipped the amulet out of her own pocket and held it up proudly. Rainbow looked shocked. "I exchanged this bad boy for a fake replica back at the old temple in the south. I knew he'd fall for it."

"But then, why'd you bother coming here?"

"I came for you, Rainbow. You're my most loyal companion. I couldn't bring this to the museum without you by my side." Daring gave a playful wink. Rainbow blushed and dug her hoof at the ground. She hadn't expected Daring to be so sweet to her, but she wasn't complaining. The adventurous mare stepped forward, placing one hoof carefully ahead of the last until she was right in front of her companion. She raised her hoof to Rainbow's chin and brought her lips close. Rainbow had dreamed of this for so long.

They inched closer to one another and closed their eyes, ready to lock into an intimate state of pure passion when-

"Rainbow Dash!"

The blue pony jumped up out of her sleep and stumbled back towards the corner of the tent. She stared at Scootaloo with panicked eyes and a fast-beating heart.

Scootaloo blushed and smiled nervously. "I appreciate the kiss but, perhaps not just... out-of-the-blue and without any form of explanation?"

Rainbow's heart started beating even faster. Had she just kissed Scootaloo? "No, no nonono. Um... That was an accident, I'm sorry. I was just dreaming and then I... Sorry."

Scootaloo sat down and brushed her hoof through her mane for a moment. "So, what were you dreaming about? Daring Do again?"

Dash sighed and nodded. "There was a big dragon-lord and fire and... Yeah."

Nodding and giggling to herself, Scootaloo casually sniffed the air. "Speaking of fire... Did you forget to put ours out last night? it smells kinda... Smokey."

Rainbow looked out of the tent towards the small fire pit. It had no coals in it, and the log had even gone missing. Curiously, she went back inside the tent, wondering where the smoke did come from, or where the log had disappeared to.

The crackling of branches and the crunching of leaves gave it away. The trees must have taken it. "Scootaloo, get out of the tent. We have to move. I may have accidentally given the forest a weapon.

"What do you mean?"

"We don't want to find out. We need to pack the tent as fast as we can." She grabbed her book and tossed it into a saddle bag. The saddle bag was pink, and she didn't recognise the cutie mark portrayed on it. Three balloons next to eachother, two blue ones on the outside and a yellow balloon sandwiched in the middle. She'd found this saddle bag about a month ago under a random bush outside of the train station in what used to be Ponyville.

The orange mare grabbed her only blanket and put it in the other side of the saddle bag. She made her way outside the tent to unpick the tent's pegs from the ground. Rainbow got out of the tent very soon after and grabbed the last couple of pegs with Scootaloo. They finished packing up the tent and left their location. The moved further into the forest, and away from the smoking trees.

Scootaloo shivered in her sleep. Her scraped hooves tapped on the floor of Diamond Tiara's hidden room. The young pink mare tossed a blanket over her new friend and hushed her down, gently combing through her mane with a tattered brush. The orange pony's hair flipped up at the end giving a hint of character to her that Diamond couldn't see before. Diamond tried to imagine what Scootaloo must have been before the world had fallen apart. She came to the conclusion she must have been into sports of some sort. Her name just suit the type.

Diamond fished a chunk of meat out of her jar and started to slowly chew away at the disgusting morsel. What had the Queen done to their once wonderful kingdom? She shook her head and quietly scoffed the Queen's name. "Cadence. You doomed our whole race..."