Here It Is. Here Is The End

This isn't going to be another sad tale of the apocalypse, where everything's dead and there's no hope. There's no meaning behind it, no moral or underlying truth of life. It's a story about what happens when the world ends. Just a story.

I entered Manehattan roughly five years after the first attack. I knew everything would change once I stepped into those walls of protection. No more digging up old potatoes from abandoned farms, or piecing a meal from the scraps of stores. I could go back to my old life, finish an education in ancient magic and become a resident scholar. I could pursue my career in restoration, bringing back spells once lost to time and nature, earn fame and fortune as the stallion who brought the past to life, and settle down for a good life.

I hated the thought. Every pony thought I was crazy, they told me I could finally live my life in the last remaining city in Equestria. I told them they hadn't seen how raw life could be. No, I didn't want to go back and risk everything for the sake of thrill, but neither could I sit around and stare at books and scrolls anymore. I had to work, I had to act.

I decided to drop it all and step outside again, but this time with a different purpose. Two E.U.P. soldiers at my back, a photographer at my front, a pen and notepad in my saddlebag, and I was ready. I'd capture the daunting reality of the wasteland for every pony to see, and maybe then they'd understand why I was always restless when I sat.

The two soldiers were a funny sort. An old fellow and a young fellow these two were, and they worked with great efficiency together. They'd set up our camps and make sure the area was safe from Changelings. They never lit fires except to heat our rations, since Changelings hated the cold nights and were drawn to anything remotely warm, and instead carried extra layers of blankets and jackets.

Despite their similar preparedness and cooperation in work, the two soldiers seemed to care little for each other. They rarely spoke to each other outside of their duties, and almost actively avoided spending time together once the camp had been set up. If you could see them like I did, you didn't half to talk to them to know the difference.

The young soldier, free from constraints of Manehattan's strict policies, never kept his ketamine shots off his uniform. If he needed to leave his bag at our camp for any reason, he'd always pack a few shots of the stuff to keep himself steady. He didn't use them openly, though. He took care to wait to step away from the group for a moment if the urge got to strong, but usually the young soldier just had to make sure we were distracted with other things.

Still, I noticed what he did whenever he got sloppy, which is more than I can say for what I saw about the old soldier. There didn't seem anything about him, except for the photo of his family. His watch was different too, gold, but wasn't necessarily a special watch. Sometimes I wondered if he was on something too, like his younger counterpart, and if he was just better at hiding it.

The old fellow was recluse, and that made it difficult working with him. Short and strait to the point he always was. "Get firewood," or "Berry bush south," or "old ammo cache in there," he never sat down for a conversation with me. All I knew was that he had kids, almost working adults, and wanted to live to see them fulfill their dreams.

"Don't run into trouble," he told me when I asked if we could take a look at a collapsed building. I wanted to get close and see how the trees had taken over the abandoned train station. "I'm not going in after you if you do." I could handle myself well enough, but I still took it to heart, and whenever there was a risk I always considered the chance that the old soldier could just turn and trot away.

Other times were better. The young soldier never told me his real name, because he said he preferred the nickname he earned when he was based in what was left of Appleloosa. Tunneler, his friends called him, after sixteen outstanding runs into underground Changeling tunnel systems. One day, he even showed me a scar to prove it.

"Caught me on my way out," he said. The mark ran from his right hind leg up to the middle of his back. He told me how a Changeling had hid in a nook and waited for him to pass by. He even laughed, describing how its magic blast flung him out of the tunnel and into the air.

I liked Tunneler's stories, they always painted some part of the world I hadn't seen before. One night, I asked him, "Got any stories you'd want in a book?" He looked at me for moment, and then smiled. We stayed up all night, talking and chatting. He wasn't a clever writer or literary lover, and I had to ask a lot of questions to get the right details from him, but by the dawn of the next day we had a good story. His true story, he said.

All the while the photographer captured the scenery. Panoram loved the nature around us as we traveled. She saw the deserts as a canvas, she told me when we neared Dodge Junction at one point. She admired the Everfree Forest, she claimed, when we sought out an alleged camp of ponies. Aside from her cameras, she carried books to identify plants and birds, and even took up pressing flowers when we stumbled across a half-finished flower pressing book at what used to be Rainbow Falls.

She frustrated me routinely, arguing that I shouldn't always see the losses of our civilization. She tried to tell me what to write in my book to match her photos, which were mostly of green trees and fields of grass and flowers. Occasionally, she captured scenes of the decimated cities, like Canterlot and Vanhoover, but even those pictures had growing moss or roses sprouting from concrete at its center.

She didn't understand what I wanted from my book. It wasn't supposed to be depressing or nostalgic. I didn't want to make ponies yearn for the way things were before.

I concluded once we got back to Manehattan that I didn't like the photos, and that I didn't like her. So I sat down at my desk, pushed aside the dusty history books, and pressed the pen to the paper.

I began a story. It began like this: I am Stylo Pen. Here it is. Here is the end. This isn't going to be another sad tale of the apocalypse, where everything's dead and there's no hope. Me and my friends thought we could wait it out in the hills outside of town...