Don't Worry, It's Just the Apocalypse

Chapters

Let Me Tell You a Few Last Things
These Means Have No End
Party! Party! Join us! Join us!
Fun N' Games Till Somepony Goes Nuts
Ponies Feel Funny Ways on Sunny Days
A Brave New World
Talk A Bit, A Little Kiss, Then It's Into the Abyss
Everything Where It Belongs

Let Me Tell You a Few Last Things

A/N: This fic is bad. No, not so bad it's good. No, not I'm saying it's bad because I'm self-deprecating. No, not deliberately bad because I'm trolling. Not even, "lolrandomstupid" bad. It is just BAD. I keep it around because (1) I need to keep myself humble, (2) it reminds me not to make the same mistakes, and (3) I refuse to unpublish anything I've written.

This is my old shame (as they say on the vile website). If you read below this warning, it is your own fault, but I warned you.

If you're going to pick one place to tell a group of magical equines that you don't give a fuck about them, it should be a fancy garden party at Canterlot, because you want them to be nicely dressed for the occasion.

As Twilight levitated the microphone, she coughed quietly and the little squeal of feedback sent a shiver of no anticipation through the crowd. Instead of anticipation they were shivering because it was winter and they were all standing around in the cold eating small things. The things didn't look much like food and tasted pretty awful, but somepony had put them on plates, so they were probably food. As much as mud soup and charcoal arugula had been food last week when it was all the rage.

Twilight's horn glowed a little brighter as she sucked in her breath, preparing to unleash a verbal barrage the likes of which had never been seen in ponydom. A barrage that would have been capped off with Rainbow Dash leaving a glittering trail in the sky spelling out the central premise of her argument, “I truly don't give a fuck about you. I never have and I never will.”

This would have been a nice cap to a career that included the completely uncompensated saving of the world than a pony could remember, and more unpunished endangerings of the same world than a pony would like to remember. It would have been the sort of moment that gets revisited time and again after retirement. It would have been perfect.

It would have been perfect, except for earth splicing under her hooves, turning her perfect “Fuck” of disgust at a world with the memory and attention span of a goldfish into an undignified “Fuck” at falling into a suddenly appearing vortex. Rainbow Dash, seeing her friend vanish, wasted no time in diving after her.

She wasted quite a bit of time in coming out. So much time that the assembled guests started to suspect that this wasn't so much a controlled part of the demonstration as it was a complete disaster. As the first row of ponies were sucked howling into the void, the remainder of Canterlot's elite and hangers-on decided this was a good time to panic.

From a distance, the vortex looked kind of pretty. The twisting and, no doubt painfully, warping bodies of the ponies became dull streaks of color: spotted and stretched like streaks of light in an expressionist painting. I would definitely give it a hoof up, if I were a famous art critic. Or paint it, if I were an artist. Or sing about it, or write a news report about it, or … well, anything really.

If I had a special talent that was any good, this was the sort of moment that would trill it, I'm sure.

“You've got to take a look at this,” I turned to Gin and Vodka, the Martini brothers sharing the quiet rooftop with me.

“I don't think I want to,” Vodka Martini replied. Vodka had a light orange coat. He shaved his mane and tail and had “Pink Mane” and “Purple Tail” tattooed in the appropriate places, but I was pretty sure those were lies. Lies just like the naught sign he drew over the mixed drink on his flank.

Vodka was staying away from the edge of the rooftop because he was afraid of flying. This was a normal and healthy feeling for an earth pony, and I only mentioned it so you'll forget it later.

“It looks like a mess,” Gin said. Gin Martini was simply brown on brown. Gin Martini was simply a bartender. Gin Martini was simple and content. I hated Gin Martini, and I was certain he didn't like me either, but he was here to look after his little brother.

He'd been spending a lot of time watching over his brother since Vodka and I met through a support group for ponies who dislike their special talents. Vodka could drink anypony under the table, which would be useful if he weren't rabidly straight edge. He believed alcohol was an irremediable blight on society.

“It looks like change! Or at least an opportunity for it.” I was trying to get Vodka worked up about this. Vodka would have liked to be a social reformer, just as I would like to be anything other than me, but the only way he could get a group of ponies together is by serving alcohol, and then they only wasted the whole evening getting drunk and trying to get one another in the sack.

I needed Vodka excited about this because he was my only friend. We fell in with each other at the support group as we were the only ones who weren't interested in molding ourselves to fit our cutie marks. They said you should embrace who you are, but who is to say that my discontentment isn't more who I was than the tattoo on my butt?

“Not really. Like any other disaster, it will be wrapped up in 30 minutes, an hour at most.” Gin responded cynically to the question no one asked.

“I'm not so sure about this one.”

“Well you can be sure about whatever you choose, but I assure you that the Princesses will get right on this … whatever it is and it will be wrapped up in a matter of minutes. Maybe even seconds.”

The princesses, however, would be of no help, and why they would be of no help was ...

Celestia rapped gently on Luna's door. After a long moment with no response she gently slammer her hoof against the door and howled, “I know you're in there, sister.”

Still nothing.

Sighing, she lowered her horn and gently blasted the door off of its hinges and into the darkness beyond. Pieces of shrapnel, smoldering demurely, came to rest gently through the flank of the Princess of the Night, breaking her feeble grip on slumber.

“Luna,” the Goddess of the Sun and Sometimes Property Destruction chirped.

“Wha?” Luna slowly began uncurling from the ball in the center of her bed, gradually coming to realize that her corporal form had been damaged.

“Luna, my dear sister,” the Voice of Radiance dripped with something not so radiant, “remember when Discord got loose?”

“Yes,” several desperate thoughts started winging their way through Luna's skull.

“You excused yourself from involvement because you were afraid Nightmare would take over in the heat of the moment. You also said the same thing about Changeling attack.”

“A fight, any sort of fight-” she started to respond as she finished picking door fragments from her skin.

“What about the Grand Galloping Gala? Or holding court with me? Basically, what about any fucking thing other than moving the moon, hiding in your room, and peeping into the bedrooms of my subjects with that telescope?”

“But Night-”

“You have used that excuse 389 times since returning, and it hasn't even been a full year yet.” Eyes of fire stabbed through the gloom.

“Well, it seems like the sort of thing that could happen,” Luna replied, shuffling her hooves against her lightly singed bed.

“No, Luna, no, it does not. And I am tired of hearing it. An enormous vortex has just appeared in the Canterlot Gardens. I am not going to put off my scheduled vacation.”

“Wait, you're,” Luna stuttered as her eyes widened in horror at the thought of responsibility. She did not remember any warning about a scheduled vacation nor, for that matter, did she remember an enormous vortex being scheduled, “what are you trying to say?”

“Tag, you're it.” And with that the Sun Goddess was gone. Luna looked at her hooves and thought, not for the first time, that the moon hadn't been such a bad place. A lot of rocks, a lot of loneliness, and the moon people were always trying to watch you undress, but there was definitely something to be said for infinite nap time and not being tagged by your elder sister.

These Means Have No End

“Celestia has abandoned us?” called a voice from the crowd.

“No,” Luna to quash the treasonous, even heretical, ideas, “she has merely left for a scheduled vacation!”

“Nightmare Moon has returned and taken over!” shouted another.

“Not that either,” Luna, Goddess of the Night and Never Handling Public Situations Well, turned her gaze over the ponies before her. They were certainly little, but their expressions showed how little she owned them. “Everything is under control. Remain calm and return to your homes. Or, if your homes have been sucked into a swirling, nightmare vortex, go to another pony's home and remain calm there.”

However, she had already lost them at “Nightmare Vortex,” and soon the word was being scattered throughout Canterlot that Nightmare Moon had returned, thrown Celestia into a Nightmare Vortex, and was intent on devouring all of Equestria.

Minutes later, The Goddess of the Night and Of Late Forming Emergency Committees, was standing before the remaining four Element Bearers, “So how does Celestia normally handle things like this?”

“Well normally, Twilight would know stuff about whatever this was, and we'd follow through on that.”

“Purple, Smart Pony was at ground zero, so that possibility is right out.”

A loud explosion from the opposite direction of the vortex marked the beginning of the Rioting phase of the natural disaster. Next would come the Looting, then the Bargaining for passage somewhere else, Depression as somewhere else turned out to be not far enough away, and finally Acceptance.

“The first thing,” Luna turned her focus to a problem that made slightly more sense than the vortex currently devouring existence, “We need to do is put a stop to the panic and get some sense of order restored.”

“I know,” a pink hoof shot up, “We should hold A Don't Think About the Impending Apocalypse Party!”

“Perfect,” the Goddess of the Night and Sometimes Deception cheered.

“Ah don't mean to be rude, your highness, but there already was a party before this started. It didn't really help.”

“That was a party for the Canterlot elite, this will be a huge, street filling, all classes and all kinds party. The sort of festival that ruins the aristocracy with scandal, bastard children and mixed marriages. Pink, Annoying Pony, We need you to get started right away. This,” She held out a piece of plastic, “is Our sister's debit card. Spare her no expense.”

“Even then, you can't just expect everypony to ignore the apocalypse next door.”

“Not while they're sober, no. But that's where you come in, Dirt Farmer Pony, you and the open bar and buffet.”

“But ah need to get back to Sweet Apple Acres-”

“Dirt Farmer Pony, completely changing the subject. Have you ever thought it was ironic that the Princess of the Sun is famous for banishing people to the Moon? Ever wonder where We would send ponies, had We the same taste in irony?”

“Ah think ah might see your point.”

“Where?” Luna the Goddess of the Night and Often Literal Interpretations looked about in distraction.

“Ah mean that ah should probably remain in Canterlot, ya know, to keep the problem under a barrel here.”

“Very good. This situation calls for overproof cider to keep the guests extra drunk, and maybe put a little something in the food and beverages for the colts and fillies, too.”

“Ah can't drug children!”

“Fine, We guess you've provided enough compliance. We'll just get Pink, Annoying Pony to-”

“Wait, no, wait, you can't let her do it! Ah've got some broken memories of an apple cobbler that Granny Smith used to make.”

“Perfect. This is Our sister's check book, We've taken the liberty of forging her signature already, but We leave the numbers up to you. Now, Pretty Pony,” she turned her head to Rarity, “We need you to decorate the area around the vortex. Something that says, 'Don't panic or worry about what is going on over here,' but also 'Stay far the fuck away from here,' with maybe a little 'Yay! Luna is the best ever and way better than her sister in every respect.'”

“But the vortex keeps expanding and sucking everything near it in!”

“Then you'd better decorate fast. Think of it like one of those browser games you ponies play these days. Tower Defender or whatever.”

“Those games are designed so you always lose.”

“Excellent, that should take the pressure off you. Or would you like Us to take even more pressure off you with a trip to a far away land of sunshine?”

“Well,” Rarity laughed slightly, “there are some designs in neo-retro-crypto-fascism I've been thinking about.”

Another piece of plastic hovered in the air, “This is Our sister's Visa. It is everywhere you are, because you're holding it, and that is how being places works.” After waiting a moment while Rarity examined the card she added, “a good place to be might be somewhere working on your assigned task, Pretty Pony.”

Luna turned to the last Element Bearer remaining and sighed, “Yellow, Wimpy Pony, We're pretty sure most of your birds were already sucked into the vortex, plus We've already got different ideas in mind for the music, so there's no real use for you. You're free to go about as your cowardly heart pulls you.”

Though she had been absolutely terrified, the sudden exclusion still caused the yellow pegasus' face to fall. Normally, this would be a momentary disruption of her emotional stability. However, normally she would not be standing so close to a vortex. As soon as Fluttershy's face started to loosen, there was a sickening tear and something yellow flew away on the winds.

“Oh dear, what happened to me! What just happened!?” Fluttershy's voice spiked upward in panic, and she grabbed onto Luna's hooves.

“Nothing. Your fine.” Luna muttered, awkwardly extricating herself from the grip of the quivering mass.

“Really?” Fluttershy said, sounding slightly relieved, but Luna cocked her head a moment in confusion.

“Yes. Well, no. Wait. Smile for Us,” Fluttershy did so, but something was wrong. She reached up feeling for her adorably puffed out cheeks. Nothing. The cheeks were there, with her mouth and eyes and nose, but it was all just flesh. No expression, no character, no animation. She had completely lost face to the vortex.

She screamed in horror, but her expression remained absolutely blank.

Party! Party! Join us! Join us!

The thrash throbbing bass rattled cobblestones free from the street to be sucked into the vortex. Ducking my head under the hail, I continued forward to the source of the noise that was luring ponies throughout Canterlot. Vodka beside me was in rare form, “Bread and Circuses”-this and “Breakdown of the System”-that. Gin, however, was keeping oddly silent, either at the prospect of what a citywide open bar meant for his father's business or the fear that his brother and his brother's idiot friend might have been right about something.

On the outskirts of the party, a yellow pegasus was operating in the presence of a group of ducks. Periodically, she would mutter, “I have to get the animals to safety,” and surge around the passing ducks, only to lapse back into catatonia after a few moments.

Gin and Vodka passed by as casually as any other, but I stopped. “Are you in trouble?” It was difficult to tell what was going through the brain behind her utterly blank face.

“I'm fine,” the yellow pony replied, “I'm Fluttershy. I'm … I have to get the animals to safety.” her mouth moved slightly as she spoke, but the words never reached her eyes, dying somewhere behind her lips. The ducks vanished around a corner and probably were eaten by a bear, because Celestia knows that it is impossible for an animal to survive without a pony of some sort constantly hovering around and making sure it doesn't set itself on fire.

Wait, Fluttershy. It took me a moment to realize that that barely contained mess before me was one of the Element Barers, and the key to barely containing the mess before the entire city.

Vodka Martini returned, having already made the round trip from street to party to bar to absolutely shit-faced, the speed with which he could accomplish this being one of the many things he resented about his special talent. “Why are you wasting your time on this pegasus?” he slurred, “Hey that rhymes.”

If it were anyone other than Vodka I would have pointed out that the way he was slurring pegasus into a “shhh” sound, as if he were desperately trying to silence some suicide voice inside his skull, prevented the words from rhyming. As it was Vodka, I said nothing and, when he dropped his drink, I stretched out my tail hairs to catch it.

Fluttershy looked like someone who was trying to be surprised, but who's face has been torn off by an apocalyptic storm and so is having difficulty expressing anything.

“My tail is prehensile.” I explain lamely, “some sort of weird magic, it runs in the family. Supposedly it has something to do with either a great great great great grandfather who was a unicorn and sneezed in the middle of spell, or a great great great great great grandfather whose backside experienced something very rude happened involving an alicorn's horn.” Vodka took his drink back and my hairs drummed lightly on the floor.

“But that's ridiculous!” Fluttershy said, “You can't inherit a trait like that. It would be like cutting a bunny's legs off to see if you could create a family of worm bunnies who can't ever run away or abuse you.” she paused, “Not that I'd ever do a thing like that. It would be simply insane … to do a thing like that,” the pegasus looked down and shuffled her hooves, “even if you did live all alone at the edge of the forest and sometimes you just got so desperate and lonely because even your parents and people who should be your friends always abandon you.”

“That's great!” I replied, thinking how wonderful it was that I never payed any attention to anything other ponies said. “We have to get ahold of Princess Luna, have you seen her.”

“Oh, ah, oh, ah, oh, oooh, ah,” Vodka interrupted again, clearly trying to break into song. Fortunately, his drunken state prevented him from composing anything, and so he soon gave up, “She's in the party. The happy party with the free drinks. My drink is empty,” he looked at the lone ice cubes resting in his glass, “How did that happen?”

“We have to talk to her,” I said, resuming my pace toward the party.

“I think it would be better if you didn't,” and Gin was there, not as drunk or enthused as his brother, but still a complete jackass. Hate his brown on brown boringness.

“But, she is talking to everypony,” I replied, and, truly, from the edges of the party one could see the alicorn mingling with her drunken revelers, for once enjoying a taste of popularity that didn't have to do with her threatening to brutally murder ponies. At least, not directly.

“But she is not talking to you, because you are a pain in the flank.”

Ignoring Gin's comment I pushed through the crowd to Luna. “Princess,” I called.

“Please, call me Luna. All Our friends do.” She leered crazily with the word 'friends.'

“Princess,” I repeated not certain what that leer meant about her friends and in no hurry to figure out, “you've got to do something about the vortex. All of Equestria-”

“All of Equestria is perfectly fine,” she dropped the party girl act in an instant, “look at them! The rioting has been stopped and they're all perfectly happy and content.” Past the end of the hoof telling me things are perfect, I saw a good number of ponies passed out already, others being regrettable. Lots of vomiting. Not much perfection, unless perfect delirium is a thing and it is your thing, in which case I guess this would be pretty cool.

“But they must be warned!” I replied and loved it. How many times in your life do you get to say something so portentous and pretentious and ridiculous and other -ouses? Not often enough in this blasted life.

At that moment a particularly strong gust from the vortex ripped away several pony's inhibitions, and a small orgy began on the fringes. Grinding their nether regions to grind out thoughts about the nether regions of the world they would soon be sucked into.

“No! No one has ever liked one of Our parties until now!” Luna stamped her hoof, allowing a little of the crazed Nightmare fire to enter her eyes, “We are finally popular for being Us, not as some horror show monster, and We owe it all to the vortex!” The Princess of the Night and Not Looking Over There, Where the Apocalypse is Happening, Have Another Drink on the House threw here head back and howled, “We LOVE THE VORTEX!”

I could picture the royal marbles swirling down the rent in the ground, like bits in one of those coin race funnels. Rolling around and around until they vanished into the hole. I still don't know if that is literally, exactly, what happened, but I could definitely picture it.

After the Princess of the Night and Now Constant Delirium vanished into the mingle, like her marbles must have vanished somewhere, I was grabbed from behind by a strong pair of tan forelegs.

“Don't panic,” said the legs, “Ah'm not going to kill y'all.”

“I didn't suspect you were going to kill me until you mentioned it,” I replied, “and if you are, I think I might just panic plenty.”

“Well, Ah'm not, and Ah'd prefer you not to panic. We need to talk somewhere quieter,” the tan legs said as they dragged my corporal worthlessness back where they'd come from.

I meant that she dragged me to the edge of the party. I guess you could have interpreted that as being some sort of weirdness related to returning to the womb. Given the current apocalypse, you might not have been too wrong about that, except that what you might have thought would be completely crazy. Almost as crazy as a planet of talking horses being utterly destroyed by a magical vacuum, ok I'll stop now.

“Ya'll have some sort of plan?” the hooves that had dragged me spun me around, presenting freckles and a stetson hat.

“I, well, I, um, I mean.” I stuttered. I hadn't considered the possibility of someone taking the word-noises coming out of my mouth seriously, and this sudden earnest interest found me utterly wordless. “We could try clogging the vortex, like with a giant cupcake.”

“Can y'all make a giant cupcake?”

“No. Wait! I got another one! You know about the eye of the storm right? The center of the storm where it doesn't reach? What if we moved all of ourselves to a giant, flying platform in the center of the vortex?”

“Any pegasus taking to the sky gets sucked into the vortex,” Applejack replied, turning her head to the party. The suction of money and noise could, if not physically, at least beat the vortex in the minds of these ponies.

“Besides,” Gin added, “How would you grow food or get water on this platform.”

In frustration, I snapped, “Well, if you're not going to help why are you even here?”

“Ah thought ya'll had a plan.” Applejack slurs lightly, she'd apparently been dipping into her own bar. “And Ah'm one of the heroes right? A hero, right? Ah'm supposed to save, to save everypony. Because we're the Elements. We save everypony. Because … because I need another drink.”

And with that 1/6th of the only hope for Equestria sauntered back into the party. Another 1/6th was staring at a wall a short distance away, and another 1/3rd was somewhere in the center of a swirling mass of death. The situation was hopeless and full of swirlies, just like high school.

“So what now?” Vodka looked at me.

“I don't know. What is your fucking problem? Why does everyone expect me to have the fucking ideas?”

“Because you're trying to be the fucking leader here. I'm sorry if I assumed you were trying to get us somewhere other than flailing randomly.”

And, just like that, our friendship was gone. Ripped away by the void. Vodka Martini, a strange pony whose name I knew for some reason, looked at me in confusion for a moment and walked off to the party. Gin, with whom I'd never been friends, seemed as if he was about to say something, but he had to run after his brother.

Fun N' Games Till Somepony Goes Nuts

Streamers hung from shattered spires. Rarity darted under a flying park bench and tacked a doily over a tacky corpse lying in the street. There, it looked just like a low and particularly lumpy table. That was oozing slowly oozing blood into the cracks on the street. It would do until the vortex's continual expanse pulled the body off the street and out of everyone's mind forever.

A few ponies paused to appreciate the lace curtains blocking off several streets, up until one of the ponies stepped too close and went flying into the void, the curtains flapping after him like a cape. The others started to panic, however, some judiciously applied posters reading, “We Sure Are Glad That Luna Is In Absolute Control and Nothing Bad Is Happening” reinstated calm, and they were soon on there way discussing how very fine it was that there was nothing bad happening and how very nice it was of Luna to throw such an amazing party.

Rarity screamed in frustration as her enormous, glittering banner reading, “Tacky thing here, please don't look!” tore free and flew away, flapping goodbye with its entire body. She swore that this next one, the 28th she'd have hung up since yesterday, would be the last one.

The vortex was growing too quickly, and picking up speed as it went. Then she heard the crack-crunch-whee! of her cart, laden down with thousands of bits worth of supplies, snapping its brakes. She dodged the destructive décor by an inch, but the sight of so many jewels vanishing in a moment was finally too much.

Her composure flapped a quick goodbye as it flipped through the air like the banner from a few minutes ago. Screaming in terror and despair, Rarity bolted from the vortex, leaving her decorations hanging, and soon all of Canterlot would be exposed to the knowledge of its imminent demise.

If I was going to expose Canterlot to the knowledge of its imminent demise, I was going to have to up my game. Individually they could ignore me, but surely I'd get somewhere by trying to shout a panicked mob? There was only one way to find out, as I thought as I slipped toward one of the crudely erected stages. There had originally been a jazz band scheduled, but for some reason each clear, hard note just disappeared into nothing faster than anypony's ears could receive them. They had instead abandoned their instruments for the orgy at the fringes, and my prehensile tail grabbed an abandoned trumpet, gripping it like a school filly in tentacle hairs.

Surmounting to the stage, I tapped the microphone. Good, it was on. I took a deep breath, for courage, not for the trumpet, and bucked shifting my weight to my forelegs. Rump high in the air, I rested the trumpet between my flanks and …

I'm embarrassed enough already without explaining the rest. Suffice to say, it will be more than the spit guard that needs replacement before anypony reuses that particular trumpet. Even then, they'd have to be pretty desperate for an instrument. Like the sort of desperate poverty that famous musicians always come out of. Or claim to, anyway. In hindsight, I decide to keep the trumpet instead of just discarding it.

As embarrasing as it was, my stunt at least got everypony's attention. Thousands of eyes turned in my direction, some in shock, some in awe. A few hooves struck the ground in applause.

Now I just had to think of something to say. Sometimes, when ponies are using super secret sarcasm against somepony, they'll refer to a “talent for stating the obvious.” This should not be a sarcasm, because it turns out that it is actually really difficult to alert ponies to something obvious, like the presence of the apocalypse, without sounding like either an idiot or an asshole. “Listen, everypony,” I shouted, “there is an enormous-”

That was as far as I got before I was cut off completely by applause and laughter. A lone fool before an audience of clowns. There was some booing, and against my will the performer part of me thought, “Tough crowd, too many bourgeois, not enough nobles. Nobles love a good fart, but the middle class require something more developed. Perhaps some jazz to show off my virtuoso side.”

This would probably have been the end of it, and I would have slink-crept-died out of the party and bailed for a distant corner of Equestria, but, a low, menacing growl crept along the ground. Plantlike and lethal, it slid around everypony's legs and rose up, twiddling their stomachs in fear, and binding their mouths, before arriving in their minds and settling there.

I turned to face the reptilian eyes set in black armor, surrounded by a flowing black mane, which somehow still highlighted a black body … look, what I'm trying to say is black. Black and real bad.

“MORTAL!” the black badness howled, “YOU DARE CHALLENGE OUR PARTY?! OUR RULE?!”

“Holy shit, I guess she really was capable of relapsing into Nightmare Moon,” my brain said uselessly, “That sure is something. Wonder what kind of spell she's casting? I'll bet it's going to hurt like a bitch. Probably, I should just stand here and get obliterated. Yeah, not a lot else I can think of doing right now. At least I'm not going to die with a full bladder now.”

Fortunately, a pink blur flew across the stage and slammed me into cover before a bolt of rage magic undid me and my useless brain. Pinkie Pie pressed her hooves against my chest, “Now you've done it. Look, I have a plan, but I need the other Element Bearers. I can get Applejack, but you need to find Fluttershy and Rarity.”

“Where?” my mouth asked, “Where am I? Who am I? Did this pony make me wet?” my brain added.

“Fluttershy was at the edge of the party and wandered off. Rarity, you should hear before you see her. Now go, I'll take care of the meanie.” She doesn't flinch as a fresh blast obliterates the stereo, sending burning pieces of plastic to shred her pink mane.

I sprinted into the crowd which had already broken free from the voice of their princess and were in the process of scattering like doves. Several pegasi had already bolted upward, striking the immense tarp hanging over the party and causing it to collapse. If the bourgeois aren't amused by flatulence, they're really not amused by the prospect of being horribly murdered by their suddenly psychotic princess.

The pink one wasn't her usual self, and I wondered if she might have lost something to the vortex. It isn't until I was moving away that I realize it was two of her best friends, but at least she has a plan, someone is finally trying to save the day.

Nightmare Moon gripped the wretched pink creature in her magic, “Why don't you fear me, worm?”

“I am not a jumpy, pink worm, and why should I worry about someone who's butt I kicked last time?”

“But your friends aren't here to help you this time.”

Pinkie paused, “Point,” she conceded.

“Where?” The Dark and Very Literal Goddess snarled looking around.

“On top of your head, silly,” Pinkie Pie responded as she smacked the tip of the alicorn's horn. She retched and growled in pain, loosening her grip enough for the earth pony to escape, though whether she was reacting more to the attack or the obnoxious, “Boing-oing-oing,” noise Pinkie made as she struck her horn was a matter forever left in question.

There was one thing in Canterlot that could take care of a meanie like Nightmare, Pinkie thought as she took off around the edge of the crowds. Behind her, The Dark and Easily Distracted Goddess followed, taking to the sky the moment in search of her prey. The air, however, was filled with havoc and she soon crashed into another pony's fear of flying. Her wings locked and she dropped to the ground, where it was safer.

They ran between crumbling buildings and under stones flying like artillery. Rarity had obviously abandoned her post, and Nightmare Moon made a mental note to correct her later.

This close to the vortex, Pinkie could feel the sucking force in her back teeth and the roots of her mane. She crouched as low as she could while still moving forward, hoping that the difference in sail area would save her. Grit clawed at her eyes. Through the blur, she thought she could see Twilight and Rainbow in the mess of colors, waving for her to come and join them. The wind howled into her ears, begging her to come and play. She fought the urge down and went lower to the ground.

Nightmare Moon had no such caution, screaming even louder as the volume of the vortex grew louder. She hurled fresh magic, but the winds sucked the bolts in greedily. No problem, just a little closer and she would devour the pink nuisance whole.

The sight of the charging Nightmare Moon caused a fresh panic among the ponies who'd had the misfortune to run toward the vortex in their initial panic, and a huge stampede was soon yanked into the swirling colors. Behind was left a cluster of very confused, individual ponies stumbling drunkenly by the vortex. Some fell in the rift, others were sucked in, but most simply milled about.

Then the Dark Princess of the Night and Laying the Seeds for Her Own Destruction stumbled over a corpse. She only had an instant to curse whoever had so amazingly camouflaged the corpse with a doily before a black, malevolent force was ripped from Luna's body. The princess stood, dazed for a moment as the realization sank in.

“At last,” she shouted in joy, “at last for the first time we can remember, we are free!” in excitement she leaped into the air, and for the first time she could remember, she was sucked into a swirling vortex.

Ponies Feel Funny Ways on Sunny Days

As the vortex's influence rose into the sky, it began pulling clouds from across Equestria. Thunderheads destined for Manehattan, the artistically arranged smog clouds that the citizens of Las Pegasus seemed to enjoy so much, a rainstorm from Ponyville, all were hauled together into one ominous mass. Like tourists, the clouds had come from hundreds of miles away, and also like tourists had no idea what to do when they got to Canterlot.

Taking a cue from the unrest below, the clouds began to collide. Jostle strikes created lightning, smaller clouds were ground underfoot into a fine mist that became a torrential downpour. Rain and hooves pounded the ground, turning it to mud. At least, I hope it is just water. I made the conscious decision to quit looking down after something I stepped on screamed.

The setting sun was warped by the rain, turning everything a bright yellow at odds with the hour. No pony seems to know where they should be headed, and so they head nowhere. Scattered groups have pulled themselves off the road, ducking for shelter from the rain and trampling crowds. Those who haven't made it out of the river are pushed by it, and I caught a glimpse of Vodka being shoved into the cavernous mouth of the Canterlot Observatory.

There was nothing I could do for him, there was nothing I should do for him. He was just a stranger who, for some reason, I seemed to have known all my life. Just keep moving forward, don't look around. Or at least, that's what I'd have liked to do. Instead, I had to keep my eyes to the edges, looking for a yellow pegasus staring at a wall.

I finally caught sight of Fluttershy, the only calm face in the crowd. She moved slightly to avoid being struck by passing ponies, but otherwise didn't react to the chaos around her. She looked almost serene, sitting in the shadows of the Canterlot Observatory, our lady of temporary refuge.

I was just trying to figure out how I'd push against the crowd to make it toward her when I heard a scream from above, and Vodka's very healthy and normal, for an Earth pony, fear of flying was ripped through the air. Flailing crazily, it disappeared from sight.

A moment later, laughter as Vodka plunged from the top of the observatory. He completed two and a half somersaults before hitting the ground. The impact stopped his flesh, but his skeleton pressed forward, eagerly seeking a single point parallel to the road. Impatient and pushy, his bones crammed organs and blood aside to squish-splosh out, coating several ponies in gore.

All his red secrets burst-scattered out, eager to reveal themselves, “This is the real Vodka Martini!” they laugh-spattered across the ground. So pleased to, at last, be free of their form that they jumped and hugged the ponies gathered beneath the tower.

And this is just the cue the crowd was looking for. Someone screamed, several ponies, now covered in blood, bolted in direct opposition to the current. The quiet trampling phase of the mass panic was over, and civilization, not having paid any attention to Vodka his entire life, slipped in his bloody remains. There was a sickening rip, one that I felt in my teeth, and a woosh that whipped from and through the crowd. Just like that, the foundations of civilization were swept away, like a fog vanishing in the wind, revealing the ugly decayed mass it had hidden.

The ponies, civilization abruptly ripped out of them, began colliding against one another. Like the clouds above them, they started firing lighting bolts, desperate to clear a space from the strangers around them. A mad rush as they hurtled themselves against, over and through one another to get to their homes and businesses and secure their valuables. Then, good Samaritans that they were, they rushed to their homes of their neighbors to secure more valuables. Fortunately, I never really considered myself part of civilization before this, so the change meant nothing to me.

The vortex, having already mastered the creation of weather, has decided that it will recreate the whole of Everfree forest here.

A unicorn stallion in front of me created a forcefield in the shape of a V and plowed through the crowd with it. The path he left, strewn with blood and mangled body parts, allowed me to reach Fluttershy, where she was still sitting. The sole island of calm, and the gore spattered on her fur only added to her appearance of serenity.

I grabbed her hooves and screamed in her ear, because this is how you “get someone motivated,” “Pinkie Pie has a plan! You have to come with me, but first we need Rarity. Have you seen her?”

She didn't get motivated, but she did respond, “I saw her run screaming up the street. She looked in distress, but I didn't ...” her voice just trailed off. Fortunately, she tottered after me when I told her to stand, which was an improvement over catatonia, so I couldn't complain. Actually, that was a lie, I could complain, and I wished I wasn't the only pony worried about the apocalypse.

For the second time that day, I was grabbed from behind. I turn to see Gin Martini's hollow eyes, “My brother … my brother … did you just see? My brother … he hated heights … it was very healthy, for an Earth pony … but he …”

“I don't have time to … I have to go.” I muttered and started back into the street.

“Wait! No! Wait. He … I can't … I'll come.” He followed in tow beside the pegasus robot.

True enough, we heard Rarity before we saw her. A keening wail, “I failed them all! The princess! Canterlot! I can't live in this world anymore!” The voice was emerging from the local Quills and Sofas, and we found her within, throwing herself from one sofa to the next. She paused on each one for a moment of elegant flailing or a small faint.

Fluttershy, realizing that we'd reached our destination, found a wall to stare at. Occasionally, her shoulders and wings twitched in a casual shrug in reaction to Gin's continued rambling.

“This is the end!” Rarity screeches, “Everyone is going to die, and it will all have been my fault! This whole apocalypse-” she paused to blast an uncomfortable sofa to pieces and hurl the flaming wreckage at a group of looters trying to enter through the front window. Fortunately, there weren't many looters here, most of them heading to the more practical Canned Goods and Shotguns down the street.

“No,” I took advantage of the break in her monologue, “this isn't your fault; we've all been screwed since the beginning. Since we were born, really. This thing, whatever it is, is bigger than any one pony, it must have been under the surface for a long time.”

She turned, noticing me for the first time, then switched from self-loathing to panic, “WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! IT'S GAME OVER, MAN, GAME OVER!” before throwing herself on a fresh sofa.

“No, Pinkie has a plan.”

This phrase did nothing to calm her down, “We're really all going to die!”

“Pinkie knew how to deal with the parasprites when we were all panicking.” Fluttershy is still staring at the wall, and I would have assumed that someone else was speaking if there were anyone else in the building.

But there was no reasoning with the unicorn, and I was just starting to look for something I could brain her with, while wondering if I had any real chance of taking on a unicorn by myself, when Gin shouldered me aside. He moved directly in front of the panicking face, then in a sudden motion that had restored reason to drunks countless times at his father's bar, he spun around and smashed two hooves into Rarity's face.

“You are coming with us,” he smacked a hoof over her mouth before she could start speaking again, “even if you are a useless, terrible nothing of a pony. Now quit fucking screaming.”

This does nothing to calm her down, but the assault and verbal abuse shifted her to quiet sobbing, and when Gin barked at her to follow she did so with her head down. It took a little prompting to get Fluttershy back into motion, as she continued her shift through the pony-robot-rock spectrum, but soon the four of us were back outside. My brother's friend who hates me, a pony with no emotions, and a pony with no emotional control. And me, but I didn't count myself. What could go wrong? Well, what else was left?

A Brave New World

With Luna somewhere on the far side of a swirling nothing and Celestia on vacation, the sun remained stuck in its setting place. It griped and complained, illuminating the world in bright yellow, as if it were complaining about being stuck in traffic. Funny thing about that, though, even without the sun setting night still came. It blinked its eyes and complained a lot, but came out regardless. Probably that meant day and night would be sucked into the vortex too.

Having the sun still up during night made the already crazy world that much crazier. A unicorn in coveralls slipped along the edge of the free-for-all dominating the streets, illuminating those streets lamps that remained standing, solemn pillars of order in a temple overrun with chaos.

Chaos that manifested in an earth pony lunging out of an alleyway before our little party. “I am Pope Boniface bon Bonterklausen Bonicaste!” she declared, “And you will kneel before me as my new clergy.”

“Why is everypony acting crazy like this!?” Rarity screamed, throwing herself onto a sofa that she had been thoughtfully levitating behind her.

“The vortex sucked down civilization; all the old bonds and expectations are broken. Now everypony is free to exercise their innermost desires and ambitions.” I said, feeling the urge to be philosophic in the fate of imminent destruction, “Unfortunately, it seems that everypony's innermost desire was to be a psychopathic jerk.”

“It is a sad commentary on our modern society and species as a whole.” Pinkie Pie whispered to no one in particular, though her voice was drowned out by three shrill voices shouting, “YAY! CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS CLIMBING INTO A SACK AND NOT ASKING ANY UNNECESSARY QUESTIONS!”

“You are my new clergy,” the dicolored mane shouted a second time, “KNEEL!” She emphasized her last exclamation by pumping her shotgun. This causes the shell that was already in the chamber to bounce out, unfired and roll away into the gutter.

Facing a gun and the end of the world at the same time, this is the part where your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. Unfortunately, the only friendship I'd ever known was already sucked into the vortex, so the best that my battered mind could come up with was those stupid seminars on accepting your cutie mark.

“There are times when a pony's special talent might not make sense,” the stupid pegasus had said with his forelegs resting before him, “before the second Griffin Wars there was a sudden surge in military and fighting related cutie marks. We were still at peace then, and no pony understood why they Equestria was suddenly inundated with militant ponies, until the griffins launched their surprise attack. They should have obliterated us, but every town was ready. Your cutie mark is a display, not just of yourself, but of the life of our nation. Though you might not believe it, you might not even want to believe it, your destiny will come. When the destiny of the nation calls for your special talent, you will be ready.”

I didn't like where this was going, but there was no one around to ask for alternate directions. I could read Boniface like a book, despite her papal ambitions she was solid middle class, coasters under beer mugs and wouldn't appreciate a face full of mud for the joke it was. Definitely not my target audience, thought the part of my brain that I hate.

But I needed that part of my brain now, and I gave everything I had to it. My prehensile tail ripped the trumpet off my back as my back legs kicked me forward into a somersault, head down, taking aim …

Triumphant moment or not, destiny or not, this is still too embarrassing to describe.

Pope Boniface reeled back, dropping her shotgun and spraying spit. “Oh god, why would you do that? And in my face! Oh, you fucking disgusting, oh god, fucking, what is your problem?” She dropped her weapon to paw at her face and eyes, scraping her hooves across her tongue, leaving her distracted and vulnerable.

I pounced on her, pinning her to the ground and wrapping my medusa tail hairs around her throat. “It's not my problem,” I cracked her skull against the floor, “it's my special talent! My motherfucking destiny, unlike this Pope Boniface crap you're doing. You're acting more like a Borgia anyway.” I rattled her brain around a little more, “Unless you want to see more you'll take your gun and start running that way.”

The new Pope vanished down the street, shooting me dirty glances every few paces.

As we continued down the way, we passed a pony in skin tight leather and another in a flowing cape. “Mare Do Well” and “Batmare” trading blows, biting and smashing against one another over who would stop the city from burning. I was wrong, this wasn't the Everfree Forest. For all its violence, the Everfree still had some semblance of life, of purpose, in its ascending ladders of predator and prey. Here there was no such order, only individual islands of random violence.

This wasn't an urban jungle, it was an urban sewer, and the force of the rain drove all the waste and detritus into the swirling bottom. Maybe this really was inevitable, like the flushing of some obscenely overfilled toilet.

But our little party of four was interrupted at the U-bend; the Canterlot Gardens River, which was once just a petty creek undeserving of the name, has grown to proportions fitting its name since I last crossed it. Filling with blood and water it has overflowed its banks, destroyed the feeble footbridge that spanned over it, and is now rushing madly. Definitely not fordable. Maybe if there were a wagon somewhere around to caulk, but no.

Without pausing, I turned toward a guard tower. A relic of the old world, before the city overflowed its borders in generous peacetime, but now it may be our only hope.

Gin is the only member of our party with sense to question my actions, but I ignore his complaints just like I ignored his objections when I started this idiotic journey yesterday and got Vodka killed and helped drive Canterlot into a panic. Someday, I may learn to listen to his advice and step away from the precipice rather than hurtling headfirst into it. Someday, I might also grow wings and become a pegasus and control the weather and not have to worry about falling to my death.

Eight stories above the ground, I turned to the yellow robot in tow and said, “Fluttershy, I need you to fly us across the water.”

“She'll never make it!” screamed Rarity, recovering from her depression into hysterics, “She gets self-conscious and is a weak flier and we're all going to die and it is all my fault!”

I bet that she can really fly. Her wings looked the same as any other pegasus, and her self-consciousness, like every other part of her personality, had been sucked into the vortex with her face. Fluttershy the pony robot can get us across, and I explained this, “She doesn't have to fly, really, just control our fall. If we catch the winds from the vortex, we should make enough forward progress to cross.”

“Wait,” Gin immediately caught the undercurrents of stupid in my plan, “so you want to use the winds sucking us towards the vortex to avoid getting destroyed by the vortex?”

“Yes. Rarity, I need you to levitate us, as best you can, and Fluttershy will steer, and me and you will provide the ballast to keep us from getting sucked all the way into the vortex and destroyed.”

“That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard, and I was Vodka's brother for his entire life.”

“I can't! I'm useless and we're all going to die.”

I ignored their protests and turned to Fluttershy, “you've got that, right? When I say 'fly,' you'll fly?”

“Yes.”

“You can't be serious!” Gin continued.

“No,” I gave the form, vaudevillian response, “I've never been much for dogs. No one is saying you have to follow us. Controlling three ponies in the air will be easier than controlling four.”

“I …” Gin stuttered a bit, “I haven't got … I'll come. I just want my objection on the record.”

A fresh gust ripped by the tower, pushing up and toward the epicenter of destruction. “Fly!” I screamed, wrapping my forehooves around the yellow pegasus and grasping the trailing unicorn in my prehensile tail. Behind me, Gin Martini grabbed my hooves as we took off. Below the river, a crazed sloshing of bodies and blood and mud and water, tossed about in its banks. Restive and irritable, an infant just now outgrowing its cradle.

For a few moments, it almost seemed like I was going to pull it off. Then the vortex got other ideas. A sudden burst of turbulence dropped us several feet and nearly ripped everypony clear of each other.

“What is happening?”

“I cannot control our descent. We are going to crash,” Fluttershy intoned, her voice dropping our of her throat like stones from a hole in one's saddlebag, “or we'll all be sucked into the vortex.”

“You've got to do it! You CAN do it!” I screamed back, but it was no use encouraging a pony without courage.

“No, I really can't. My wings are being used to optimum efficiency.” We rip-tugged forward, and blurred fore and after-images slipped out around the four of us as we dingle-dangled above roaring liquid death.

There was another surge, and Fluttershy added, “we are going to crash.” Maybe she sounded sad at that moment. Whatever happened, her wings snapped outward like a cheap umbrella, and there was a cracking sound as stone met bone like old lovers, savage and crazed in the frenzy of embrace. So, old lovers who also happened to be bears.

My brain, finally tired of all this crap, dipped out the door and sprinted for the freedom of nothingness.

Talk A Bit, A Little Kiss, Then It's Into the Abyss

And that was the last thing I remember. Now floating in nothing, an infinite void. Is this the far side? If so, it sucks. I know, vacuum is supposed to suck, right? Well, not metaphorically. Literally, yes, I give you the literal, and what is that noise? I can't even sleep here, because somepony is shouting. Don't they know that there is no sound in a vacuum? Don't they respect the dead?

Unless, unless, unless …

Shit, I'm still alive, aren't I?

I come out of blissful coma into the reality of a storm drain. Gin Martini with his boring brown on brown color scheme is gripping my head in his hooves and shaking me and shouting.

“What is your problem?” I ask, because somepony definitely has a problem and it isn't me.

“You're awake. Finally, praise …” He stumbles a moment, unsure of who might be left to praise, “somepony.”

“Yeah, yeah, what's going on?” I ask, wriggle-struggling my mind through a mess of scenes. Farting, failing, falling, fucked.

“We crashed,” he says.

“Wait, I think, wait, I … where are the others?”

“Well,” he settles back on his haunches, “we got tugged by the vortex and the unicorn, Rarity, I think, she got-”

“Rarity! We lost Rarity?”

“Yeah, her and I, we lost our grip in the wind, and your tail … you saved me,” his gaze casts down for a moment whether in embarrassment for his own uselessness or my poor decision-making I don't know, “then the pegasus, the yellow one, she crashed into a wall and stopped the three of us.”

“But Rarity, she went …”

“Yeah,” Gin nods and makes a wooshing noise, “gone.”

“Great, I was given one thing to do-”

“Two things. Two ponies is two things.”

“Two things, and I fuck it up. Half of it up. What about Fluttershy? They yellow one,” I add, to be honest, given her current state 'yellow one,' fits better than a name.

“Well, she's why I woke you. You said, you needed her for something, and if it involved her being alive then we're running out of time. She says she's fine, but she keeps coughing up blood, and I'm pretty sure her spine wasn't doing that sort of curved thing before the crash.”

My body grumbles as I force it back to my hooves. Across the room, Fluttershy is making a valiant effort to stare at the wall, but her back half is no longer cooperating. Sweat, blood and drool dribble from their various sources to pool at her feet.

“I told you that flying across the river wouldn't work.”

“If all your going to do is bitch, why are you still here? Why'd you bother waking me up?”

“Before my brother … I went to check out our … my father's bar. It was … It went into … It's gone,” he struggles with his word-noises, “and I'm not sure what else … I don't know any ponies other than you, and I've got nowhere else to go.”

We shift in our skins. Unpleasant ideas forming in the air.

“We should probably get going,” I say, just for something to break the silence.

“Probably.”

“We'll need to carry the pegasus.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm going to need your help. For Equestria's sake. What's it like out there anyway?”

“It's much calmer, mostly because about everypony is dead. The only real activity is a feud between a gang lead by that Pope-Mare from earlier and some group lead by a unicorn calling themselves the Humanists.”

“What's a Humanist?”

“No idea. Someponies wearing powdered wigs and carrying guns, as opposed to Pope Boniface's group of ponies, who wear robes and carry guns.”

“You'd think they'd get along better, with their mutual love of shooting ponies.”

“If they got along, who would they shoot?”

“Probably us. Maybe it is better that they don't get along.”

The yellow pegasus enters a fresh fit of coughing, throwing bright red patterns across the wall. Very arty, very modern, not healthy.

Together we lift Fluttershy onto our backs, although Gin is definitely bearing most of the weight. He doesn't complain, though, and we trot out into the madness of the surface.

Exactly as Gin said, we are greeted outside by the sound of gunfire. Down a side street I can see a group of robed ponies crouched behind an overturned dumpster, firing madly at a group of ponies in powdered wigs. Most of their bullets are ripped out of the air and toward the vortex before they make it across the street, but this doesn't deter the efforts of the two gangs. Sectarian violence and gang warfare are more about shooting than hitting, waste over result.

Canterlot is now utterly unrecognizable. Buildings slump exhausted into and through each other, white pipes sliding out through shattered walls like worms feasting on rotting carcasses. A window, perhaps the last intact window in Canterlot, declares, “Nopony Beats Big Al's Prices!” and beneath it, “Luna Has Been Judged, Celestia Has Been Judged, Big Al Has Been Judged, Abandon Your False Gods and Kneel Before the Mercy of Pope Boniface.”

With no landmarks, we follow the slurry under our hooves. The vortex, having conquered the weather, the sun and civilization has now made gravity its bitch, pulling currents uphill toward it, and I try not to think about the more gristly lumps rolling past.

We are forced to double back twice, each time when the street is blocked by a pile of corpses that some conscientious soul has ignited in an effort at hygiene. Graffiti in the area declares, first that this is the territory of the “Street Sweeper Social Club: Keep Canterlot Clean,” and then “Mr. Clean Has Been Judged. Abandon Your False Gods.”

Rounding a corner we nearly fall over a crouched pink figure. She brightens when she sees us, and barely resists the urge to bounce in excitement. Just past her, I can see the destination of the slurry. It takes my breath away, all of Canterlot Castle is gone. Just gone.

“Where's Applejack?” I ask, hoping to deflect a question about Rarity. The trick to winning an argument is to be the first with an accusation, as my father always used to say.

“Inside the vortex,” the pink one replies serenely.

“Why'd she go in there?”

“Because she was chasing Applebloom.”

“Why was Applebloom in there?”

“Because I threw her and her friends,” she gives me a big goofy grin and asks the question I've been dreading, “Where's Rarity?”

“We …” I can't finish.

“She was taken, by the vortex.” Gin says for me.

“Well, I guess that works then, I wish you hadn't been so hard on poor Fluttershy,” she says helping the pegasus off our backs and giving her broken body a push towards the vortex, “Fluttershy, please jump into the rift.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy intones, “Okay.” She tries to jump, but only falls painfully. The slurry finishes the job for her, and she vanishes forever.

Pinkie Pie turns to me and Gin, “That's all five of them, right?”

“What?”

“The other bearers, they've all been sucked in, right?”

“You, you, why did you, how could you ...”

“You just killed them!” Gin finishes my thought for me.

“Maybe!” Reaching somewhere immediately out of sight, Pinkie withdraws a sack and salutes us.

“You're going to jump?”

“Of course. The only thing that can fix this is the elements, which requires everyone to be in the same place, since Twilight and Rainbow were already on the far side, the only sensible thing was to get the others in.” I'm now officially certain that I have a different definition from sensible than every other pony.

“You know what this is?”

“Well, no.”

“What if it doesn't go anywhere?”

“Then my best friends are dead, two of them by my own hooves. I've also killed three fillies, and Princess Luna. And Equestria is done, not a whole lot of point in worrying about that possibility.” She paused a moment, “You wanna come with? I don't know how many ponies are left alive here, and those of us on the other side might not be able to come back from … wherever.”

“I,”

“No, are you crazy?” Gin seems to be speaking for me a lot, like he used to speak for his brother.

“Okie dokie lokie!” and Pinkie Pie stretched into a pink blur that swirled around the vortex like radioactive diarrhea being flushed.

The vortex continued unabated.

“Well,” Gin turns to me, “that was a complete and total failure. Exactly like I said, we should never have gotten involved.”

The ground groans, and the building that we've been sheltering behind falls away into nothing. The earth drops into a steep incline, cracking and disintegrating. My tail manages to snag onto a lightpole, but Gin isn't so lucky and finds himself being pulled into nothing with only my hooves holding him back.

“You can let me go,”

“No! I can't be responsible for your death too. I have to save somepony.”

“Have to or not,” Gin shrugs in my grip, slipping a little looser, “it doesn't look like you can”

I don't say anything, focusing on trying to pull our combined weights back with my tail.

“Your tail,” Gin Martini says, and as I turn to look he jerks one hoof free and socks me in the stomach. I lose my grip, and he vanishes in a brown blur, brown on brown, plain brown, I'm pretty sure I hated him and I'm still pretty sure he disliked me.

Not that it matters, the base of the pole is loosening. Ripping, popping, the end. Fuck me, but Gin was right.

Today, I learned that sometimes there is nothing you can do but give up and walk away.

Ah well, it is too late for that. I watch my body blur and distort in the magical winds ripping around me. I wonder how long I can hold out? Or how long the light pole will last?

Everything Where It Belongs

I don't know how long I hang there, tail and time stretching out in a blurred streak. Only at some point, the winds pulling me in contradiction to gravity disappear, and I flop to the ground. “Hello, Ground,” I mutter into the mud, stretching my forelegs out to hug my last friend in the world.

I should have known better than to move so fast. The ground, not ready for that kind of commitment, attempts to let me down easy. Rolling my body across the cracked and shattered down the newly sloped pavement..

Somehow, the desperate grappling of my hooves convinces the ground to at least let me call sometimes, and I come to rest at the edge of-

I have no idea what this is. Where there used to a vortex, and before that used to be street, there is no just darkness. Not a regular darkness, not a hole or chasm. This is something different than I've ever seen before, I lean out over the abyss and stretched my hoof-

“Don't touch that,” a voice like continents sliding into the sea.

Behind me a skeletal alicorn stands, his gray spiderweb mane drooping lifelessly. His whole body is dark browns, blacks and grays. Shades of finality. Except, for some reason, the distracting white of a pair of maggots writhing above his eye sockets. At the moment, they are pulled into an agitated slant, but he reaches up his hoof and pushes them into a softer visage. “The pink one was responsible for this, wasn't she?”

“The pink one ...”

“You know her. The pink one. The hideous, bright, bouncing, balloon-marked, needs to be snuffed for the good of all ponykind pink one.”

“Well, she was involved, but I don't think she really planned it.”

“No, I don't think she really plans anything, but she was involved. She was involved and, somehow I do not understand, she was definitely responsible.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Death. Are the eyebrows throwing you off? I've been experimenting with them. Ponies place a lot of importance on facial expression, and I haven't really got a face.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. I have very limited interests. Well, one interest. If it makes you feel any better, none of the names in my book say, 'sucked into a swirling vortex.' I've got a whole bunch of gunshot wounds, falling, trampling, stabbing, curb stomping, bludgeoning, alcohol poisoning, regular poisoning, and a question mark.” Death looks up as a blue pony covered in burn scars touches the blackness on the opposite shore of the void. He vanishes, his body simply fades into the blackness. A light from Death's horn lassos the pony soul over to our side.

“So that's what the question mark means.” Death pushes his maggot-eyebrows into an angry position before turning to the expired pony and snapping, “Why did you touch that?”

“I wanted to know what it is. What is it?”

“It was something you're not supposed to touch. Can't you tell just from looking at it?”

“No, that's why I touched it and ...” realization slowly sinks in, “Wait, am I dead? Are you Death? Man, just for trying to touch something.”

“Well, I didn't tell you to touch the thing you weren't supposed to touch, did I?”

“No one told me not to,” I'd say that being dead has given the blue pony, perhaps, too much courage, but he was stupid enough to just reach his hoof into an enormous blackness so who knows.

Death however, seems to take the point and turns to my flank, where he sees my terrible cutie mark, a trumpet stuck between two flanks, “Is that a sign cutie mark?”

“What, you mean me?”

“It is kind of sideways, but it looks like a sign sticking out of a hill. Perfect, I am so glad I saved you.”

“Wait, you saved him and not me?” protests the blue pony.

“You are now responsible for erecting signs and fences to keep ponies away from this … thing that they're not supposed to touch.”

“But signs aren't actually my special talent!”

“I'm Death,” he interrupts, “if I wandered around asking everypony what they wanted to do, no one would ever choose dying, I'd be fired, and Equestria would get overcrowded. I don't care what you think your special talent is. You are now my sign maker and protector of the thing that ponies aren't supposed to touch.”

“Will I get paid?”

“You'll get paid in me not killing you on the spot, which is what I'll do the next time some idiot touches the thing that ponies aren't supposed to touch.”

There is a bing sound from Death's day planner and he flips some pages aside, “You'll last longer than I thought.”

“What? How long have I got?”

“It isn't my business to tell ponies when they'll die,” Death replies as he turns, towing the dead soul behind him. His wings, skeletal and strange flip through the air and propel him into the sky where he disappears into the storms, and I am alone again. I don't know if anyone else is left alive in Canterlot right now, and the rain falls like bitter-spatter-spit, although without the vortex's influence the weather is calming down.

“The thing you're not supposed to touch is a pretty unwieldy title,” I decide for no one's benefit, “The abyss sounds better.” I shrug and begin gathering shattered timbers and loose wires from the rubble to make the first set of signs and barriers.

Maybe Celestia will fix this when she gets back, or maybe she and her vacation spot were sucked into the vortex already. Or maybe she just won't bother coming back to a world as broken as this. Who could possibly know? I can't.

And as I move among the rubble, the still setting sun is caught in the dying rainclouds. A rainbow grows out over the wrecked city. From where I'm standing, I can see the whole, half-circle in one view, and the reflected rainbow.

The colors of the rainbow push the jaundice yellow of the sun outside, forming a gray area inside. It looks just like I'm standing inside a giant eyeball, looking out at the world I will never touch. Like one of those squiggly bugs that live in your eye.

Its a pretty gross thing to think about, being all insignificant and invisible like that.

But what else is left?