Neo-Equestria Evangelion

Chapter Seven:

'Vintage Misery'

The draconequus's eyes were glued to the airship's window, they stared in mute horror at the devastation below. "Even in my worst nightmares, I could never have imagined..." he said, trailing off as the ship sped along.

"It's the first time you've seen it since it happened, isn't it?" Rarity asked as she turned away from the glass, "We never were sure how we survived, I had always thought it was you but... It wasn't was it?"

Discord shook his head, "With all of that chaos going on, I had never been more powerful, and yet... I did try, to protect you, to stop Twilight from finishing that spell," he started to explain, looking away from the ruins below, "I put up a shield, everything I had left, to try to save the five of you. Whatever it is Twilight did to that monster, it popped the shield like a soap bubble; it left me a shell of my former power. I did try to save you, but I'm not the one who did.

"If I had to guess... It was Celestia. I was still conscious after the blast, if only just. I saw the princess just... standing over Twilight's tiara, the Element of Magic, and then they both disappeared. I had just enough left to get the five of you that were left out of there before everything collapsed in..." he finished, rubbing his face, "and look at me, getting all sentimental, oh how the mighty have fallen!"

"You never told us that before," Rarity said, the shock written across her face, "in all these years, you never mentioned a thing..."

"Hope," He answered simply.

"I don't understand."

"Hope," he said again, "You still had hope, hope that Twilight was still alive somewhere, hope that Celestia hadn't abandoned you..." He laughed bitterly, "But how foolish I was back then to believe any differently from you! Celestia was never without a plan; for every bit I was chaos she was deliberate and methodical, so maybe she wasn't running at all, and maybe she had a plan. That's what I choose to believe right now," he finished with a smile, a fragment of his old personality shined through.

"What makes you say that?" The white mare pressed, leaning closer.

"I've seen not hide nor hair of that wonderful mare in two decades," he said, his smile growing as he laughed an honest joyous laugh.

"Well, go on!" Rarity pressed, growing disturbed by this change in the previously depressed draconequus.

"I haven't seen her in twenty years... and right now you are absolutely covered in her magic."

~~

The thunder of massive steps echoed through the deserted city. Tremors reverberated through the ground and traveled up the thick armored legs of Evangelion Unit-01, Whisper's mount.

The adolescent's expression was soft, passive, if not content than simply not troubled. "I don't see it," she said softly as her eyes scanned the horizon.

"Whisper, it's right on top of you, stay alert!" Dash yelled over the radio link.

It was that that moment that the young pegasus had decided to look up in time to watch a shadow block out the sun. Thousands of years of evolution and instinct kicked in and she spun the war machine around and let fly with both hind legs.

The unit's hooves struck the armored shell of the monster with a sharp crack; Whisper could feel the impact in her bones. Her face twisted into a snarl as she continued her spin and lined up her sights on the stunned abomination, her hoof pressed into the firing stud, and her rotary cannon roared to life.

Dozens of large caliber cannon rounds poured downrange and into Whisper's target, kicking up dust and smoke. As her ammo counter clicked lower and lower, her snarl grew wider, she was only vaguely aware of the voices on the radio.

And then her cannon stopped, empty, and she once again heard.

"Whisper move now!" Dash ordered.

She pushed her controls and willed her mount to dive out of the way, explosive bolts fired and separated the cannon from her back as glowing tendrils slashed through the space she'd just been occupying. She heard the alarms blaring in the entry plug as external power was disconnected.

A second attack lashed out and she had no time to react, she took the whip across the face and was knocked through one of the buildings that hadn't retracted, she went slack in the control seat; dazed from the feedback of the blow.

"You're off main power, retreat and we'll give it another shot later!" The voice was Vinyl this time, her voice urgent, panicked.

Whisper shook her head, tasted the blood in her mouth, and opened her eyes. She'd crashed head first into the top level of a shelter, there were ponies recoiling in fear, trying to escape into deeper rooms of the facility.

'If I run away... no!' Her mind was set, she grit her teeth against the pain and pulled her controls back, pulling herself out of the rubble and back onto her hooves, she turned to face her foe. She felt a sense of comfort washing over her, a sense of... power.

She lowered her head and charged, off like a shot as chunks of the roadway yielded to her powerful launch. She felt the wind on her face, felt as if she was becoming the machine. She watched as the distance closed, it would be over soon.

She felt the burn as she was run through, the beast was not content to simply be slain, and lashed out again, this time driving its tendrils through the Eva's body. Whisper screamed and her snarl returned, she jumped the final stretch and stabbed the unit's horn through the red core in the center of the monster's chest.

The abomination gave a mighty quake as the life was ripped from it, convulsing before falling silent and slumping over the back of its killer, its energy tendrils faded away.

As the chaos finally died down, as the power in the Evangelion failed, and the fluid pumps slowed, and stopped, silence fell and Whisper wept.

~~

"So what did you think?" Rarity asked as the airship circled the city on it's final approach, having been cleared after the battle ended. Smoke still rose into the afternoon sky as fires burned, the damage crews not yet having gotten to those parts of the city.

Discord frowned, unable to articulate his disappointment. It wasn't that he could fault Whisper's performance, more that he was faulting the descent of ponykind that allowed it to take place at all. "It's worse than anything I could have imagined," he said, "even if we win it will never be like it once was."

Rarity nodded slowly, after all she'd seen and done, she could hardly disagree with his assessment. She turned her head back to the window, "Did you feel her again?"

He nodded, his lips curled into a wistful smile, "She feels near and far, all at once. She always did play her cards close to her chest; I can't help but wonder if she's hiding from me or if it's something else entirely. But..."

"But?" she probed as she looked into his eyes, "something else?"

"I can't help but think she had some part in what we just saw. There was too much pain and anger in that fighting, that was the gambit of a pony with nothing left to lose and nothing to live for. I think she had to have had a hand in motivating that," he explained, then frowned. "If that's not the case..."

"Then what?"

"Then everything any of us has ever stood for, in the best of times, in our most noble hours, meant nothing at all. If we've pinned our hopes on a child that this world has ruined so, than I don't have the hope that we'll ever recover, we may not die in this war, she and the other two could very well win this for us, but..." He hesitated, his anger was surfacing, hate for himself and the situation he couldn't prevent, the ponies he couldn't save. In his worst of times he was never a killer, he'd done bad but nothing like this.

"But we'll have died twenty years ago, our bodies having continued on, oblivious to that fact." Rarity finished, guessing at what Discord really meant.

She paused, then smiled and put her hoof on the draconequus's shoulder, "I disagree. Twilight so loved this world, so loved her friends, had so much faith in us... I take strength from that, strength from what she did back then. As long as we're still alive, we can make it better, we can fix the wrongs, and rebuild our lives. It's what Twilight believed, and she was always able to make that happen.

"And so, we will make that happen, for her. That's what friends do for each other."

Author's Note

This happened again.