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 fanbased 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.

Chapter One:

Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy walked into the city and almost instantaneously,
Twilight closed the city gates behind them upon seeing the city itself for the first time. At the station, two trains still sat on their respective rails with one locomotive pointed in each direction, facing both into and away from the city. The platforms remained as they found the foregrounds of the Wall, abandoned with the same small, metal cartridges strewn about the rails and platforms. Newspapers and other paper articles lay intermixed about the ground and shifted slightly in the breeze, moving around to reveal tickets and passports for the many different regions and provinces of Equestria. Twilight poked at a pile with a hoof, revealing tickets bound for Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and even Las Pegasus. She examined the details closer on one ticket bound for Ponyville, clearly labeled one way but it looked untouched, as though it were merely printed and taken to the train but never ripped or checked. Fluttershy climbed up to the platform and immediately found luggage of all shapes, sizes and colors scattered haphazardly about the concrete and tile floor. Twilight joined her friend on the platform and looked carefully at some of the items, finding personal effects such as clothing and various little articles one may use to make a journey by train a little bit more bearable. She also found a single newspaper, dated the day before with a rather confusing headline: Terror in Canterlot Continues. The article and paper comprised but three sheaves of paper with the article taking up a single paragraph while the remainder appeared to be nothing but the usual ads one normally found in the Canterlot Courier.

“It just looks like everyone left in a hurry,” Fluttershy murmured into silence of the station as Twilight dedicated partial focus onto the article.

“Yeah, and this article is no help either,” she replied, “It just mentions something about the arena being quartered off and something about the fall of the Canterlot Radio Center.” If nothing else, it was clear that, from whatever happened here that all Tartarus broke loose in the city of Canterlot, and whatever it was prompted the closure of the city to the remainder of Equestria. Eventually, after a few more long moments, the two preceded further into the station under the brick arches into the main atrium, the clouded light shining dimly through the stained glass windows in myriads of greens and blues depicting the time since the building of the grand station. Fluttershy and Twilight walked through the turnstiles, letting out a slight metal ʻplinkʼ with the turns of the metal rods and walked out into the city of Canterlot proper.

The second the two of them stood outside in the daylight of the city, neither of them could nor wanted to believe even for a fraction of a second what they saw. Carriages and small carts were wrecked in shambles in the intersections of the major roads before the station as well as small fires at some corners, but that sight paled in comparison to the bodies strewn about the street before the station, some burned and others with holes in their foreheads. Fluttershy looked on with horror while Twilight stood in bewilderment at the sight of the bodies of nearly three dozen ponies laying the streets.

“Twilight,” Fluttershy said as her friend continued to examine several of the bodies with the holes in their heads. “Do you have any idea what happened here?” she asked as Twilight turned to face the Pegasus with a stern look that practically screamed ʻwhat do you think?’ to which Shy could only turn her head downwards. Twilight, after a few more moments of looking over the bodies, began to walk further into the city of Canterlot, her head held high with confidence that the Princess would have an answer to the situation. Fluttershy followed close beside her friend, a slight smile upon her face brought upon by her friend’s ever-present confidence. Truth be told, however, behind that air of confidence, Twilight Sparkle was, without the slightest doubt, afraid of what they might find inside of the city once they moved towards the castle. This was especially true since she understood that in order to get to the castle, they needed to pass the arena, and given what the paper revealed about it being closed off, her confidence began to wane with each step she took.

As they moved down the road, the two ponies found that most of the carnival fare, the stands and other minor attractions, were abandoned or otherwise strewn about in place with missing planks of wood and other pieces. They found the windows of the nearby buildings boarded up with thick planks of wood on the inside of the shop windows and some where it was clear that something shattered the glass, leaving dark blood on the broken shards on the shops displays. Other shops and buildings burned with brilliant blazing fires, which explained some of the smoke that poured forth into the sky from the city. However, after about twenty or so minutes of walking through the city, the pair come to the crossroads of Trottingham and Vanguard when they saw Canterlot General Hospital for the first time or at least what remained of CGH.

The tall white building off in the distance appeared as though a large portion of its upper floors had been destroyed and a large fire still burned at its base while an ambulance bay, visible at the distance of three blocks, burned brightly. Concrete barriers spread across Vanguard Street with sandbags filling the gaps between the barriers where necessary with a few carts were overturned for what appeared to be added measure. There was clear evidence though, that this defense did not fare so well against whatever it was that assaulted the barrier and had made it through by the presence of strewn about armor and more bodies of guards hunched over the nearby newsstands and tables. This spectacle distracted them for a moment as the pair continued on further until finally turning a corner and found themselves within two blocks of the castle, but also directly in front of the arena.

The arena was built in the shape of a coliseum and was used to host a myriad of earth-pony and unicorn based sporting events. The structure stood nearly twelve stories tall with a steel frame and several glass windows of significant size along its façade at the different levels. The main entrance, though, was boarded up with several planks of wood, with several carriages pressed squarely against those and barriers to help hold them in place. In paint, above the doors, read the words ʻKeep Out! Containment Zone Overrunʼ and next to that read ʻFor all evacuations, please proceed to the railway stationʼ. Fluttershy looked on at the boarded up entrances and exits with some level of intensity, checking various points at each doorway available to her.

Twilight watched her friend with growing intensity until she noticed that she had pressed her head against a small portion of the joined wood planks and her ear twitched. Her ear twitched slightly more with each passing second until finally it pressed itself completely against the wooden planks.

“Fluttershy, what is it?” Twilight asked while her friend continued to press her ear against the wooden planks. After a moment of listening she pulled away quickly to look at her friend.

“There’s ponies in there,” she said, “I can hear them shuffling around in there and pressing against the doors.” Twilight looked at her friend, approached the boarded up arena entrance and placed her ear against it in the hope of hearing whatever it was that her Pegasus friend heard. She waited for a few moments until she too heard the muffled sounds of ponies behind the wooden planks and hoped for some point of space between the boards, but found them to be thoroughly placed over each other in such a manner that prevented no points of view into or out from the entrance. Twilight looked away and witnessed Fluttershy trying to find some manner of prying the boards away from the wall, but there was something clearly wrong with the situation. The rest of the buildings they had passed that were boarded up had the boards on the interior, but this arena’s boarded entrances were done on the exterior, which drew but a single conclusion: something was meant to stay inside.

“Fluttershy, wait!” Twilight yelled, albeit subdued as Fluttershy attempted to pull away a board, “I don’t think that we should pry away the boards.”

“What do you mean, Twi?” Fluttershy replied, her big round eyes in bewilderment, unsure of what she meant, given the situation at hand. “There are ponies in there, clearly trapped ponies that need our help,” she added, drawing forth a sigh from Twilight who shook her head in response.

“Fluttershy,” Twilight started but immediately found herself at a total loss of words. After all, how could she explain it all so delicately. Something clearly was wrong, though given the entire situation, that would be stating the obvious, and Twi knew that. However, the arena just looked wrong, more wrong than the rest of the city. The boarded up buildings became a commonality at this point, but the boards on the arena were on the wrong side. In addition, it was not just this one entrance but several of the other windows high up on the rest of the arena shared this trait. Combined with the words ʻContainment Zone Overrun,ʼ Twilight’s mind was immediately flooded with images of illness, that there was some kind of pestilence that ran rampant through Canterlot and that the ponies behind the arena’s sealed entrance carried it. Her mind continued with further images of Fluttershy and her being overtaken by the sick ponies and thereby catching the disease with the potential to allow it spread outside of the city and infect all of Equestria. While she fully understood her friend’s sympathies for the ponies behind the boards, the possibility of the global pandemic leading to utter extinction of the pony race was something she could not risk in any situation. Then again, was it not her purpose to help those in need? After all, that was what she had done for the past several years, saving home and crown many times over. So was this the right thing to do? Conflicted, she ultimately settled upon the notion that this was the proper procedure to follow given the unknown situation at hoof and chose her words with precision and the utmost calculative care. “Fluttershy, I know you want to help those ponies behind this boarded up entrance,” Twilight stated pedantically while pointing a hoof at the boards.

“Yes, they may be hurt or frightened,” her friend replied, still making an effort at prying the board loose from its position on the entrance door.

“I know but... What if the thing that’s responsible for causing this,” she waved her hoof around towards the surrounding smoldering architecture and city, “is behind those boards.” Suddenly, the bright eyes of Fluttershy darted back and forth between her friend and those boards, torn between the possibility that she was right and her desires to help others. There was of course, that subtle hint of fear at doing something that might endanger the lives of thousands and given her nature, this prospect terrified the yellow Pegasus. “Look, don’t you sometimes lock dogs in cages or other larger and dangerous animals?” Twilight asked her friend, stepping carefully away from the boarded up arena.

“Yes, but very rarely,” Fluttershy responded with a slight squeak, following her friend’s action of moving away from the entrance.

“Well, you do it when the animal is especially dangerous or capable of threatening others, correct?” the unicorn asked, watching her friend start to understand the point that she was making at the present. “The similar principle could be applied in this situation if we treat the arena like the cage and the boards like bars on said cage, correct?” In Twilight’s eyes, she saw that her friend finally understood the point she was making. Poor naïve, Fluttershy, Twilight thought, so concerned with the helping of others that she merely acts upon it without even pressing logic into the situation. Truth be told though, and Twilight knew this fully well, Fluttershy was a rather brilliant Pegasus, but chose to hide it due to her shyness and general habit of when she did show some brilliance, it was rather rude, in a fashion ala Rarity and the Gala dresses.

Fluttershy continued to drift away from her friend until her back was fully turned and appeared to just stare off into the distance towards the Castle.

“I suppose that you’re right, Twilight,” Fluttershy stated solemnly, though of course to Twilight there was no supposing to the matter. “Should we just continue on to the Castle then?”

“Yes, yes we should,” Twilight responded as she took off down the street to the exterior of the Castle, passing more concrete barriers on either side of the street as she went, some looking as though they were pushed aside. The road leading from the arena to the Castle looked the same as the other roads the two ponies had seen until it got within two hundred feet of the castle wherein all other buildings just stopped and gave way to the circular drive around the Castle’s outer walls. The Castle’s Outer Wall rose up nearly thirty feet into the air and was topped with pointed crenellations, which allowed any guards to safely defend the area from behind the blocks of stone. The exterior walls nearest the large pearl-colored gate seemed spattered with what Twilight naturally assumed to be dirt from the circular drive, given that most likely somepony or a larger group tried to attack the Castle and was rather unsuccessful at breaching the nearly ten foot thick walls. As Twilight and Fluttershy drew closer to the large gate however, they soon realized that the brown stains were but that at a distance and were actually the remnants of aged blood splattered across pearl white walls of the Castle. Fluttershy shrank in fear while Twilight pressed onward, having seen a decent amount of blood and bodies. Already the sight of a little blood was nothing that was going to faze her quite so easily.

Unlike the city’s gate, the bas-relief gate of the Castle was left slightly ajar, just enough for a pony to force its way through without any troubles. The Castle grounds possessed a condition worse than most of the city the pair saw thus far on their journey. The once green castle grounds were found to be speckled with craters, some reaching as deep as twenty feet in the grass. Sandbags that were piled as high as four feet spread across the castle bridge over the short moat, though it looked to be about as helpful as the remainder of the embattlements within the city. Smoke rose clearly from the windows on the gilded towers of the castle and from all sides on the lower basement and side windows. The only visible window that seemed to be unbroken in any way was the large stain glass window over the grand entrance doorway leading into the foyer of the palace. Twilight, upon realizing that the door into the palace, an entrance with flanking twin staircases leading to it, was ajar, she immediately rushed forward, jumping over another set of sandbags and concrete barriers before disappearing into the palace. Fluttershy quickly followed suit and jumped over the barriers after Twilight, passing closely behind her friend into the foyer of the palace with a silent ʻswooshʼ sound, just loud enough to muffle the sound of something in the bushes outside.

Twilight rushed into the granite foyer of the palace. The oaken doors and high windows were either cracked or all together missing as though somepony or something rushed through here in a hurry, splintering them to bits and pieces. The foyer, large enough to hold at least three dozen ponies comfortably, was still lit with the fading daylight outside as it streamed through the broken glass and speckled the tiled floor with shattered colors of light. Fluttershy, landing with a delicately graceful tapping sound and walked forward a little bit into the foyer. She past two or three rows of columns before stopping to examine something on the ground.

“Twilight, come quick!” she called to her friend who, still staring off at the damage to the foyer, walked over briskly and quickly took interest in the dark pool of liquid before her eyes. “Is this blood?” the yellow Pegasus asked aloud even though the answer was fairly obvious to both her and Twilight given the color of it. Twilight, just to make sure, withdrew what appeared to be a ruler from her saddlebag and dipped it into the pool of crimson liquid, which upon retrieval dripped down slow and sticky until making a final ʻplinkʼ sound as a drop returned to the collective pool of blood.

“It clearly isn’t anything else,” Twilight responded, examining the ruler more closely. More specifically, she examined the blood on its edge before setting the ruler on the floor next to her.

“I know that, but... It’s just the amount is so,” Fluttershy paused to looked over the red pool that looked to be at least eight feet across at its widest point, “big.” Twilight looked back at the pool of liquid before looking around the immediate area for anything that may have caused the pool to be there at that location, but to no avail. All at once, there came a groaning sound from somewhere further along the row of columns near a fallen grey and lavender member, causing Fluttershy to jump into the air with a shriek and Twilight to raise the ruler in defense.

“Is somepony there!?” Twilight called into the room hoping to probe some sort of response from the owner of the voice, but there was only silence for the few seconds that followed her question.

“Twilight Sparkle... Is that you?” the voice replied, carrying a slight accent in her tone, which caught the ear of Twilight and made her to drop the ruler in recognition from it.

“Princess Luna!” Twilight screamed as she leapt over a small pile of debris to bring aid to the fallen ruler, who at last came into view of Twilight and Fluttershy. There she was, her navy blue body lying next to the fallen column, her left wing crushed underneath the weighty member with several pieces of luggage scattered nearby. Twilight immediately turned towards the fallen column and with a brief glow of her horn, the grey and lavender piece lifted upwards a bit. Then, with a quick jerk of her head, she threw the column with her magic back a few feet, freeing Luna’s wing.

“Princess, were you going somewhere?” Fluttershy asked, poking at a black case with her cutie mark on it and the Royal Seal of Canterlot stamped over it. The weary looking princess looked upward for a second before giving an exhausted nod and collapsed back onto the floor to which Twilight Sparkle tried to use her magic to levitate her up. However, the princess proved to be much heavier than she anticipated and in the end dropped her back onto the floor with another exhausted moan. With no other option, Twilight used herself to help prop the princess up onto her feet and then motioned quickly for Fluttershy to help her carry the princess. Twilight began to think quickly where she could take the princess for help, noting the completely bombed out hospital as a total loss and slowly began to mutter to herself about what to do.

“Princess, what happened here?” Shy asked, standing still and holding up the princess just under her broken wing.

“I had to…to… get out of the city,” Luna muttered, “I tried to…to… to leave the palace but by…by the time I was able to leave,” there was an even longer pause as the princess’s breath seemed to become harsher and raspy before finally she took in a deep breath to finish her thoughts. “By the time I was able to leave,” she struggled with her words and, if the two ponies helping her to walk around found themselves able to look at her eyes, they would have found them darting around as though searching for the proper words, not unlike her sister’s star pupil. “They rushed the palace,” she exhaled before nearly collapsing back onto the ground, prompting and immediate reaction from both the unicorn and the Pegasus that carried the alicorn to shift their weight as to best keep her from falling.

“We have to do something, Twilight,” Fluttershy said, a sharp tone of fright in her voice as she shifted her side a little bit as to make the task of carrying Luna easier.

“I know, Fluttershy, I know,” Twilight replied, thinking as fast as ponily possible, measuring each possible option before she suddenly remembered the most obvious one. “The palace has a small clinic, reserved especially for members of the royal family,” Twilight began, “it would be our best option at this point.” Fluttershy agreed as Twilight led them in the direction of the small clinic that was just down one of the adjoining hallways through another shattered doorway. The three ponies walked through the doorway into a dimly lit hallway with adjourning doors, most of them locked and others simply missing from the frame as they continued onward. They eventually turned right and found a doorway with the red words labeled ‘Clinic’ and ‘Pharmacy’ over it, but found the door locked like several of the others. Twilight immediately used her magic and unlocked the door only to find the room in complete chaos with equipment scattered about the white tiled floor.

Several of the beds in the room were either overturned or missing their mattresses, but that was not what drew the attention of the two conscious ponies. Of the mattresses that remained on their beds, most of them had dark stains in the shapes of bodies, though some just appeared as large dark swathes of something. Upon finding a relatively clean mattress, the one with the fewest stains, Twilight turned on the fluorescent lights to the room, revealing the chaos in full vibrant color. Scalpels, tissues, bandages, and medicines were strewn about the floor, most looking as though they were in mid use when discarded to the floor. Fluttershy immediately began to rummage through the various drawers and cabinets to look for supplies while Twilight tried to help the princess relax.

Luna repeatedly tried to fight through her own fatigue and exhaustion, but to no avail, and only collapsed back onto the bed each time. Twilight frantically searched the cupboards of the room hoping against instinct that perhaps there would be some measure of supplies left even though the room was in utter chaos. With each drawer she opened, there appeared nothing but empty bottles and boxes, fragments of medical equipment and at one point, a medical log. Twilight took out the medical log with her magic and checked through a few of its pages, but only found the names and numbers of various ponies serviced at this particular station, namely the castle court. However, at the date marked two days prior, civilian names began appearing in the register until finally, the pages ran blank except for ink stains and a few smudges. She threw the medical book backwards and nearly missed hitting Fluttershy who ducked at the precise moment to examine an open cabinet in the hope of some supplies. Against all odds, she found some unused bandages and a splint inside the cabinet, much to the jubilation of Twilight Sparkle, but there was still the issue of Luna’s pain.

“Fluttershy,” Twilight said as she magically took the bandages and splint from the yellow Pegasus, albeit rather forcefully and abruptly. “There’s a room down the hall to the right where there should be some medical supplies.” Fluttershy just nodded and within a few seconds, disappeared from the room into the darkened hallway until she was around the corner looking for the door labeled ‘supplies’.

***

“Princess, I know how this is going to sound, but where is Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked, a tinge of fear and confusion in her voice that wasn’t at all present with Fluttershy’s presence. Luna looked at Twilight, her eyes glassy as the tears welled up around the edges and within moments fell forth onto the tile floor. Twilight immediately understood the reaction. Celestia, kind and caring ruler of the land, must have succumbed to the threat that hit the city. “I understand, Princess, I understand,” Twilight responded to the emotions that the lunar princess displayed, her own tears appearing suddenly, only to be followed by short gasping breaths. Even though Twilight did her best to hold back her own emotions, the thought of her mentor and teacher being hurt or even worse, dead, a thought which her mind would not under any circumstances entertain, was too much to bear, even for her. The only thing that kept her from breaking down sobbing like Luna was the fact that she was still in her presence, and even then, it took every ounce of willpower she had to prevent herself from losing control.

“I tried to get her out,” Luna cried, each word falling short between her sobs, “but I couldn’t find her anywhere,” she finished, looking up at Twilight briefly before letting her eyes fall to the tiled floor, resuming her sadness. “The doctors took her away from me and then I didn’t see her anymore,” she said, still staring at the floor. “She cried out for me, telling me to leave the city and not look back, but how could I abandon my dear sister to this city? So, when I ran, I looked back. That’s when the pillar fell on me, after the explosion,” Luna added, wincing in some mild pain as Twilight examined her wing further and continued to listen to her story, assuming that the explosion she referenced was the hospital. However, upon reflecting on the Princess’s words further, that phrase ‘Doctors took her away’ nagged at her mind until she was forced to speak about it.

“Was Celestia, sick,” she began, “and does that illness have something to do with the attack on the city!?” she finished, drawing the attention of Luna who just looked at her, her pupils unbelievably small. She quivered a bit before finding the words to speak and looked her sister’s prized pupil directly in the eyes.

“You haven’t realized what happened to this place yet, have you Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked, all notes of sadness banished from her voice as Twilight almost found herself inclined to cower at the tone her Princess took with her.

***

Fluttershy turned down one more another corner, then another hallway and sidestepped around various puddles of obscured liquids in the darkness of the hallways that lead to the supplies room. Twilight was wrong about its distance from the clinical room, and that worried Shy. After all, whatever horrible fate befell the city may have penetrated into the palace walls and still persisted within the stone. Finally, after what felt like several minutes, she came across the room labeled ʻSuppliesʼ on a small plastic sign that jutted out from the wall over the doorway. She approached the door when she noticed a figure standing at the end of the hallway, watching her. The pony’s face and general form were obscured in the shadows of the hallway, but the outline was nevertheless that of a pony.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said aloud and slowly trotted down the hallway towards the figure, but paused when a second and a third emerged slowly from the doors near the first. They said nothing and just stood there looking at her. After a few short moments, they slowly began to move towards Fluttershy, but all the while said nothing to her. “Are you survivors?” she asked, slowly backing away and listening to the slow and off beat rhythm of their hooves hitting the ground. Something persisted in the rhythm of their steps, something that seemed foul, as though there existed something not pony in those steps, but she continued onward with her questions. “Did you see what happened to the city?” she asked and then added, “Won’t you at least say...” she never got to fully finish her sentence as a fourth pony walked into the hallway from a room with the light still on inside. Its face was missing a large section of flesh and what resembled blood dripped forth from a fleshy mass between the teeth of its skinless jaw. It turned to her, the maggots in its flesh wriggling across its cold, yellowish red, lidless eyes as it opened its mouth and emitted a gargled bloody moan into the air. Fluttershy’s eyes, wide with unprecedented fear, darted about the hallway until she turned completely around to the other end of the hallway and ran with unbelievable speed away from the four figures, her shrieking illuminating the hallway with each hoof fall.

Authors notes:

Because the exact layout of the city of Canterlot has never been fully described in the show, we have taken some rather extreme liberties with the city in order to make the story make as much sense as possible. Also, keep in mind that this takes place sometime after the Royal Wedding and the changeling incident so the city may have changed in that time, hence the presence of the wall. So yeah...