Resident Canterlot

Resident Canterlot

A My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction

Co written and edited by DaedaltheusXIV and RazortheAwesome

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is
Magic is the property of Hasbro, and the reinvention of Lauren Faust. Resident Evil is the property of Capcom and Shinji Mikami. No copyright infringement is intended, please support the official release.

Prologue:

“I’m so sorry,” said Fluttershy for what seemed like the thousandth time to
Twilight Sparkle on the train to Canterlot, the car swaying occasionally with the shift of the tracks around the mountainside. It was actually forty-seven times, Twilight counted them and just listened as Fluttershy continued onward with her apology. “It’s just that I needed help with the duck migration and you were the only pony left that hadn’t gone to the party yet, and, and, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s no problem, Fluttershy,” replied Twilight for the forty-seventh time as the train rolled on up the mountainside ever closer to the city of Canterlot that was barely visible above the tree tops. Twilight’s eyes occasionally drifted back and forth across the landscape, watching the same looking trees pass by the window for the past several hours as she and Fluttershy went to join their friends at the palace. Princess Celestia had thrown another Gala event for the kingdom, just like last year. Ever since their first Gala just a few years prior however, each one had gotten bigger and bigger. Apparently, this year, the entire kingdom itself was to be engulfed in festivities with an entire street carnival to fill all the thoroughfares of the city and spilled out to the land just outside the castle. Twilight herself looked forward to seeing the Princess again and spending some more time with her at the Gala, which now took an entire week to celebrate with all the new events, shows, and parades. So what if we’re a few days late, Twilight mused, at least they would be there in time for the Grand Finale, a fireworks show combined with a live performance by the Wonderbolts. Rainbow Dash talked only of that event for months now, and at each time talked about how great it would be to see such a spectacle as that.

“Are you listening, Twi?” Fluttershy asked, nudging the lavender shoulder of her friend a little bit, jarring her from her staring out the window.

“Huh, what?”

“Oh, um, do you think that our friends will be mad at us for being late to the celebration?” Fluttershy asked timidly. “No, I’m sure that they will understand,” she replied, “after all, they know how important it is that the ducks made it to their new home and that you needed help managing them.” Twilight hid her upset from the yellow Pegasus. Why Shy didn’t ask Dash for help was beyond her. After all, the two were usually together around Ponyville, visiting with Pinkie Pie and the Cakes when not working around Shy’s cottage or managing the weather. Shy had helped out more with the weather than before since several of the pegasi had moved away from Ponyville and out of the remaining pegasi left in town, most were managing their own lives. Some were married and dedicated time to raising their new families so help was needed wherever it could be found, even from the weakest flyer. Nevertheless, Twi questioned how in Equestria she could have helped with migrating ducks, even Ditzy and her clumsiness would have been better suited at helping ducks switch homes. Four days late for a celebration she waited for all year long for and still, despite that, she found her anger subsiding with each passing moment. She could barely remember the last time she spent this much time with Fluttershy, well, sans all of their friends together, and found herself able to take what she could get from the situation at hoof. After all, even if she missed the first four days of the Gala this year, there was always next year.

“Well, we should make it just in time to catch the end of the Carnival and still make it in time for the Finale,” Twilight said with some frustrated enthusiasm and watched the yellow Pegasus’s eyes became bright at the notion of the Carnival and then shrink away at the notion of the Finale. Twilight remembered almost immediately how much Fluttershy hated loud noises, particularly those of the fireworks used at the Gala. “Oh…right,” she added.

“Hopefully they won’t be nearly as loud this year,” joked Fluttershy, enticing a slight bit of laughter from the lavender unicorn. Twilight just looked to her friend and smiled before she turned her head back to look out the window of the train again and noticed that the trees were not moving past the window nearly as fast as before. Huh, that’s weird, she thought, it’s almost as if the train is slowing down. Just few mere minutes after she finished that though, the train came to a complete stop with a slight jolt and then remained entirely still. “Are we at the station already?” Shy asked as she looked out the window with Twilight, expecting to see the station or at least some semblance of the city to be there. However, Shy only saw the same trees that Twilight saw and began to hear the rising chatter of some of the other travelers making their way to the city and beyond. Without saying a word, Twilight left her seat and proceeded to move towards the direction of the engine, hoping that the engineer would have some answer to this sudden stop. Confused, Fluttershy followed Twilight as she left the car and trotted towards the engine only to see the engineer already standing there.

“What’s going...?” Twilight began to ask the engineer, who looked a little confused himself and slightly worried.
“We’ve run into a problem and can’t go any further,” replied the engineer rather bluntly and quickly before Twilight could even finish her sentence. However, despite that, Twilight continued to ask questions.

“What do you mean problem?” she said, “We can’t be stopping now that we’re so close and besides, what is this problem that is forcing us to stop anyways?” The engineer didn’t say a word, and instead led both Twilight and Fluttershy around to the front of the engine. Upon seeing it, the yellow Pegasus squeaked an almost inaudible ʻoh my’. The steel beams of the track were torn from the ground and twisted into elongated curves, which reached upwards and sideways. Twilight could only stand in shock-filled awe at the sight of the rails twisted like that and almost immediately began to think to herself about what could have done it. She glanced over at Shy and noticed that she too must have thought of the possibilities and could tell almost immediately that she thought of some horrific monster by the way she shrank in fear. Twilight shook her head at that and walked back into the passenger car with a confused look on her face as she walked past the now roused guests, each one with a more concerned look than the last. Within the span of a few moments Twilight reached her and Fluttershy’s seats, took the saddlebags from underneath them with her telekinesis and carried them back outside where she gave Fluttershy hers.

“We’re not going onward, are we?” Fluttershy asked with a look of concern on her face as she adjusted her bag.

“We can’t let something as simple as…” the second those words left her mouth, she immediately regretted the choice of the word ‘simple’ to describe steel tracks being bent back upwards and twisted. Her mind raced with a better answer before simply letting out a sigh and looking the yellow Pegasus in the eyes. “Look, right now it’s the only way to get there on time unless you want to get back on the train and wait to find another route, forcing us to be even more late than we already are.”

“I guess not,” the yellow pony squeaked before stepping forward to head off into the forest ahead with her head hung low as Twilight followed closely behind. The engineer did not protest decision, after all, who could blame them for wanting to reach the festivities as soon as possible but then again...

“What in the name of the princess could have done that to the tracks?” he asked aloud, his eyes fixed on the twisted metal of the tracks arching upwards to the sky.

***

“If we just follow the tracks, there’s no way that we can get lost,” Twilight Sparkle reassured Fluttershy, who questioned if they were on the right path. “It’s simple logic really. This is the route that the train uses to reach Canterlot, therefore if we follow it…”

“I know that Twi, it’s just ... that it’s so quiet,” Fluttershy said, stepping on the beams while Twilight walked along side of her, her eyes fixated on the path ahead.

“Well, of course it is Fluttershy, it’s a forest, and it’s supposed to be quiet.”

“No, there’s supposed to be the sounds of animals, and don’t you think that if there was something wrong with the tracks, then we should have at least run into somepony that would be coming out from the castle to fix them?” Once those words hit her ears, Twilight suddenly stopped and directed her attention to the nearby trees, her eyes darting around and her ears twitching as she searched for a sound. Fluttershy was right, there was not a single sound coming from within forest that surrounded them.

After a few seconds of intense listening, the only sounds that Twilight could pick up amongst the silence were the subtle rustlings of the leaves and the occasional moaned creak of a tree branch. However, even amongst the silence of the forest, Twi swore that in the far off distance, there was the mild humming of something with a frequency not unlike the sound of an air raid siren. Nevertheless, even that faded out with time as though it simply was not there anymore.

“You’re right, there’s nothing out there, except for...” she stopped mid-thought as a smell that seemingly half lingered in the air suddenly hit her senses at last instantly wrinkling of her nose. “That smell of…of something but I can’t quite put my hoof on what it is,” she said, prompting her companion to begin to sniff the air around her and wrinkle her nose upon finding it as well.

“It kind of smells like something’s burning,” Shy timidly replied and quickly followed up with a look in all directions for the source of the smell but to no avail. With no other ideas of what to do, she flapped her wings and rose up above the treetops for a better look to see if she could spot the source of the smoke and disappeared from Twilight’s view into the thick canopy. That was the one thing Twilight found annoying about the forests surrounding the castle, the overall tallness and thickness of the trees. It made the walk through them all the more unpleasant with the near sunset availability of light and cold temperatures that seemed ever present. She recalled very briefly of a time she went camping in the woods as an excursion during her studies as a filly, recalling a near freezing cold night and rather unpleasant meeting with a wild bear she had been forced to ward off. However, her memories were interrupted with the revelation that more than five minutes passed and still Fluttershy lingered above the trees.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight called out to the trees, hoping that amongst them her friend would appear to her. “Fluttershy!” she called again, this time with much more force and loudness to carry her voice out to what she hoped would allow for her friend to hear it. To no avail, the silence persisted without even the slightest reply from Fluttershy, causing Twilight to begin to panic. “Fluttershy, for the love of Celestia would you please answer!” she screamed and began running further down the railroad tracks, following each bend until she tripped over one of the railroad ties and landed face first on the ground.

She looked up from her place on the ground, rubbed her forehead with a hoof and then picked herself up onto her feet again to look around. Twilight took in a deep breath to scream again for her friend when a very loud, squeaking scream echoed through the forest towards the direction of the tracks that Twilight was originally heading towards. Twilight gathered herself again and took off down the tracks until she found Fluttershy standing where the track turned at the point where the forest broke open for a moment.

“Fluttershy is everything all right?” she asked, finding her friend staring off to the distance, her eyes wide with shock and a sense of fear. Twilight watched Fluttershy slowly raise a hoof in the direction she faced, forcing Twilight to look the same way and caused her jaw to drop at the sight before her eyes. There, just beyond the next few hills and within the great mountain range above Ponyville, the city of Canterlot burned with great plumes and columns of black smoke pouring forth. The smoke, not in unison but fractured throughout the large metropolis, rose upwards and dispersed into an unlikely and unprecedented cloudy sky. Twilight’s eyes darted around the scene before her, looking for any signs of the fire that may or may not be raging throughout the great city of Canterlot, only to see brief patches of what may or may not have been fires. There was a sort of glow from behind the fortress walls of the city, but much like the smoke that rose above the columned towers and facades of money of the old and decadent buildings of the city, it too was fractured.

“What in the name of Celestial could have happened to Canterlot?” she asked aloud to which Shy barely responded with but a slight shake of her head. Suddenly, the bursting and pulsating sound of a siren echoed forth from the city and lasted for several minutes as the two looked on. Within a few more minutes of blank staring into the burning city, the siren cut out. Twilight stepped one hoof forward towards the city, but as she did, Fluttershy immediately jumped in front of her, a rather worried look in her large cyan eyes, her pupils almost dilated as she continued to shake her head back and forth.

“Fluttershy... We have to continue onward into the city, I mean just look at it,” said Twilight, “we have to make sure that the princesses and our friends are all right.”

“That’s just it Twilight! Look at the city!” Fluttershy protested in what vaguely sounded like yelling as she began to shake where she stood. “Who knows what caused that or even if whatever it was is still there...” she gulped, “waiting for us…” she trailed off into a muffled meep and cowered before Twilight.

“We have to continue onward and assess the situation. Our friends might be in danger,” Twilight stated before side steeping around the yellow Pegasus cowering before her and continued further along the railroad tracks. Within seconds, Fluttershy appeared next to her, her head hung low as the two pressed onward to the burning city of Canterlot. The stench of the smoke grew stronger with each step they took towards the city and the two ponies found strange objects scattered about the tracks. Random bits of armor and bizarre cylindrical cartridges that weren’t much larger than bits strewn about the ground proved to be the most things until they turned around the last bend. The pair came to the straight away towards the city and found a derailed locomotive and cars, water spilled out amongst oil and grease. The coal spread out before them in a mound falling shortly down the sloping green hill and the track too look similar to that of the first track they encountered before departing from the previous train. Fluttershy cautiously walked forward to look inside one of the fallen passenger cars while Twilight examined the tracks and the engine, her mind drawing some conclusions but still had one question echoing consistently throughout her mind. It was almost too obvious that the tracks were twisted by magic, given the clean breaks and the lack of physical marks, which would indicate that some kind of animal or pony performed the Heraclean task. More importantly, it was that the performance of the task occurred as the train left and that the rails were uprooted when the train was on top of them. Still, why on Celestia’s green Equestria would something like this be done, especially when Celestia knows how many fillies and foals were present on the passenger cars.

“Twilight!” Fluttershy screamed, catching the attention of the lavender unicorn. Nigh instantaneously, she ran to her friend who simply lay down in front of the exposed rear door of one of the passenger cars. Inside the car lay the bodies of several ponies, each strewn about the car. The most disturbing part of the entire scene however, was that each one was burned, the charred bodies visibly days old. The yellow Pegasus began to cry loudly as her friend held her close to her, the tears making no sound as they rolled onto the grass beneath her. “There were ch….ch…children in there and… and…,” she cried even louder as Twilight tried consoling her, but to no avail. It was all too bizarre for words to even comprehend at the moment, given each of the stranger and stranger occurrences that lead up to this point at the bridge just before the entrance into the city foregrounds and then the Wall. The tracks, the bodies, the bizarre cartridges scattered about and the burning city all meant something terrible took place here, but why in Celestia’s name had she not been notified earlier about it, or maybe she could not have been notified. That thought crossed her mind several times now, as she looked onward towards the wall and the bridge to reach it along the tracks, finding that there existed very little of what one could call the bridge to Canterlot anymore. With a concentrated thought, she instantaneously teleported both her and Fluttershy across the river and along the tracks leading to the Wall.

“C’mon Fluttershy, we have to keep moving,” Twilight said, giving her a nudge and trying to get Fluttershy from her state of timid lockdown on the ground.

“We can’t, Twilight, this is something really terrible that we’re heading into,” Shy continued to cry until at last she began to hiccup and cough from her several minutes of sobbing.

“Fluttershy, we…we…” she could not think of any more words that she could possibly say that would convince the yellow Pegasus to move onward and simply rested her head against her friend’s until she felt Shy begin to calm down. Fluttershy stood up after a few more moments and just stared at the Wall off in the distance before letting out a sigh.

“Promise me that everything will be all right, Twilight,” she said, a rather defiant tone present in her voice that nearly caught Twilight by surprise.

“Fluttershy, I…”

“Promise me that we’ll find Dashie, Applejack, Pinkie and Rarity and everything will be all right, Twilight.” There was a moment’s pause before Twilight spoke again and finally let out her own sigh and placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder.

“I promise, Fluttershy,” she said as the two got back up and walked forward towards the gates leading into the city of Canterlot within the Wall. The Wall, built shortly after the entire changeling-wedding incident as a means of further security to guard the expanded city, stood nearly six stories above the surrounding area and encompassed most of the city. A significant portion of the city remained with its back to the mountains and possessed no real need for a wall to spare it from any intruders. The Wall, white stone and mortar, proved a testament of pony engineering and architectural feat unlike most seen since the time of the construction of the Great Canterlot Library.

Twilight and Fluttershy approached the large metal doors along the track which, usually open to all receiving passenger trains and the like, were shut, something that Twilight expected given the sights and sounds that the pair found emanating from within the city limits. The large crossbeams and bolts were drawn shut and a significantly large chain wrapped around the large brass handles with a padlock nearly the size of a pony’s head attached to it. Twilight moved Fluttershy away, who was presently examining the engravings of the two princesses on the doors and began to work her magical talents upon the door. The chains, surprising enough, came apart easily enough and the bolts were removed far easier than she anticipated, no doubt to her impressive skills, she thought. The crossbeams required a small amount of effort, given their impressive size and with that, she gave a final shove of magic and the doors to the city swung open into the city of Canterlot.

RESIDENT CANTERLOT