Author's Note

Hey all, sorry I have been super duper busy lately. Formatting is still broken for me so it still looks like a brick for some reason. I've been re-doing these as best as I can, trying to make it less... Garbage as I like the potential of this story.

Darlin’, Darlin’, Darlin’

Rainbow looked at the floor. She didn’t quite know how to respond.

“That’s just... Depressing...”

“Heh, yeah.” Jared shook his head, turning to the bench.

He slapped his closed fists on the top of it twice before turning back to the pony. “That’s me. I say stupid shit all the time, sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s just how I feel. It’s like an angsty teenager because I want help, but at the same time I don’t want anyone to know so it just ends up.. Confusing and making people uncomfortable and whatnot. I always wanted the storybook romance. I like a girl who likes me, taking her home from the big game, she kisses me on the front porch.. High school sweethearts that grow old together...”

“But I guess in the real world, the guy doesn’t always get the girl.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Yeah.. I get that.. When you lose a good friend or you love somepony and it hurts... But you’ve got people there for you and don’t want to bring them down. You just kinda.. Move on when you’re around them, only for it to all come back when you’re alone... Cuz if you stop moving.. It gets to you.”

“All you want to do is move, keep yourself from having too much time to think.” Jared nodded, slowly putting some of his tools away. “Fastest in Equestria, huh?”

“Heh...” Dash looked to the floor.

“Why don’t you head on home?” Jared offered. “You’ve been here a while, I dont need more help today. This is pointless anyway.”

“Then why are you doing it?” Dash paused, raising an eyebrow.

“Just to keep moving.” He smiled gently, painfully in her direction. “I’m sorry we had such a rough start, you’re alright kid...”

Dash looked away, embarrassed.

“You’re pretty on the level yourself. See you later.” She walked toward the open hangar door, pausing to look back at him. He was walking slowly towards his workbench and his ghetto stereo system.

“Jared?”

“Yeah?” He paused, looking back to face her.

“Don’t do anything stupid, you’ll make it home someday.”

“Thanks Dash.” Jared said softly, watching the pegasus take off. A gentle guitar riff and drum beat filled the hangar. The only Houndmouth song he ever listened to.

He closed his eyes tightly, envisioning himself holding his wonderful woman. Out of all the girls he thought he loved, the only one he lost completely was the one he’d truly loved completely. There’d been others before that didn’t feel the same, didnt pan out. For years he’d deluded himself in thinking they still cared in some form. The only one who was a maybe was Hannah, but she didnt even know he existed anymore. And the one he’d lost to the rapids...

She was the one who haunted him.

He could feel her soft hands in his, slowly swaying to the music. He slowly made the motion to spin her out, reeling her back in tightly against himself, in a large hug.

“Why don’t you sleep at night...?” He sung the lyric, emotion clear on his face. He could hear her soft, quiet voice singing along to the song. Feel her leaning against his chest as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Jared slowly opened his eyes to find himself alone in the hangar. The broken shell of an airplane beside him. The broken shell of a man within him. He took a long, deep breath. The song seemed to stab him in his heart, the tears slowly rolled down his cheeks.

His footsteps hesitently crossed the floor, sitting in the doorframe of the Beaver. He pulled out his wallet. He had one of those old-man photo organizers in it, the same he’d previously shown the princess. He slid Hannah’s picture out of the first compartment, showing the picture of his lost one beneath. It’s always been top, but he’d always tried to forget. He couldn’t do that anymore. If he was going to survive here, he needed to remember. Everything that made him, him. All the mistakes, and the successes. He moved Hannah to the empty slot below.

Jared flipped the whole organizer out of his wallet, looking over the smiling faces.

His father boarding a C130 for Vietnam at Love Field in his Class A uniform, 1969. His mother’s high school family photo.
The picture of them at their wedding.

Of them holding his baby sister.

Of them holding him as an infant.

Them at his graduation.

His friends and himself posed on their various shitbox classic cars.

His friends in high school band.

Half a dozen of him and her, canoeing, camping, problem solving, and living life.

He looked at Clay’s face, as he was splayed across the hood of his tri-Chevy on the left, Jared sitting on the bumper of the 1965 Chevy Caprice sport sedan next to him, sandwiched in the middle. Their mutual friend Josh on the far right, leaning against his 1963 Chevy C10. Tears slowly rolled down Jared’s cheeks, landing on the aluminum floorpan beside him. He slowly lowered his head, holding it to his knees, holding his head to his knees.

—————————

Some time before, as Jared and Twilight stumbled through the everfree, looking for the shed, there was a buzzing in the hive, a halfing changeling advisor addressing his queen.

“My queen, the human is useless if he is constantly in a state of depression. The one he loved is dead, he may never make it worth our while to follow him without her. If we are lucky his love would be that of a normal pony. We need him loving at a higher capacity to make our feast worth the effort to bring him...” The advisor quietly spoke in a hushed whisper. Half changeling, half pony, the mutant had been the product of unpleasant activities by the queen. While loosely attatched to the hive, he was not a droid, only what information he wished would be dispatched to the whole hive. He was sent on recon for the human, in the event he was captured, his interrigators could not connect to the hive through him.

“We have been working on grabbing humans from his bloodline for 60 years, the unfortunate fools had been going missing long before us, how do you propose we narrow the timestream enough to bring her back?” The queen hissed, angrily. Her chitin hooves echoed on the floors. The low ceiling of the hive’s main chamber served to dampen and simultaneously echo the sounds of the room, even the Queen’s frutration.

Especially the Queen’s frustration.

“Perhaps you could barter with the griffon medicine man once more... Surely he would know how to transfer someone from a specific point, rather than at random...” The advisor suggested, gesturing with a navy blue hoof, spiderwebbed with black chitin.

“Perhaps... I’ll go to him myself.” Chrysalis turned from the advisor in a huff. She quickly exited the main chamber, winding through several small tunnels as her drones rushed about, constructing and repairing the hive. It had been damaged during the monsoons several weeks before, they were still tirelessly working at repairs. Recent weather had not helped.

The Queen found herself in daylight shortly, since her banishment from Canterlot, many of her children had been killed, her hive destroyed, this newer hive was much smaller, easier to navigate. Yet far less productive...

She took to the sky, quickly zipping above the treetops. A few minutes away lived an old Griffon, a medicine man. Shaman. He was the reason that they’d acquired Jared in the first place. His tutelage several years ago allowed them to create the portal, when the hive finally gained enough energy, they’d summoned the human.

She slowly walked up the flagstones to his door and rapped roughly with a glossy black hoof.

“Nyeah hold your ponies, I’m coming.” Came the squawk, coupled with the sound of scratching nails. The thick wooden door swung open, revealing a homely interior, and a senior, mean looking griffon. “Chrissy.”

The queen shook off the frustration she held, about to retort.

“Come in.” Shaman lead her into his living room, round in shape with dark wood across the floor and lower walls, a flower wallpaper covering the top halves. “Now, you only come to me when you need something, never to visit or take care of my old bones... What is it.”

“The human.”

“It worked? You got a live one?!” The griffon opened one eye wide at her, to see how serious she was. He cheered breifly. “So what’s the problem?”

“He’s deeply hurt and depressed, anxious. He hides much of it well enough when others are present, but recently he's begun his explaination. I want to bring someone important to him here. Unfortunately... She’s been dead a long time.” The queen hissed the end of each word maliciously.

The griffon stood silently, pondering for a moment. He dashed out of the room, returning with armfulls of scrolls. He dropped them on the floor, spreading each one open to look at momentarily. He found two and splayed them across the floor. He grabbed for an empty slip of parchment, snatching a quill from an ink jar off a table in the front room. He scrawled hastily, glancing between the two documents as he wrote. Queen Chrysalis stood somewhat awkwardly until he finished.

“There! Now... To have any shred of accuracy you’ll have to wait until somepony casts a high amplitude spell. Somepony powerful. Using it in the same manner you used the other human, it should work well. Since we are tampering with the past, this will create a duplicate of the human, allowing the duplicate to die, and the original to live, in our own world. Much like you did with the first human, barring the fact you failed to duplicate him.”

“Brilliant.” The queen reached for the paper.

“Not so fast.” The griffon grinned evilly. “One condition.”

“What might that be?” The queen was infuriated, red in the face at the cretinous griffon.

“You would get far more to feed off him posing as the human yourself. I want to keep her as a servant while you play your little charade.” He chuckled darkly.

The queen thought for a moment, the normal color returning to her cheeks as the frustration subsided.

“I see no problem with this. One of the princesses or their twaddling protégés should attempt to cast something soon enough, and you will have the girl.. Only until we can find some way to feed from her as well.”

“Fine. But I need some kind of help around here, I’m not getting any younger.” The griffon handed over the paper. The Queen grinned madly as she looked over the spell on the parchment.

“This should do just fine..”

She could feel a disturbance in the magic of the land, a strong, powerful draw.

Twilight was fixing his stupid truck, and letting Chrysalis have the power she needed.