Don't Worry, It's Just the Apocalypse

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?