Eventually, Sparky had made it to a Stable room that had been converted into a tech-selling shop with repair services. There was a neon sign outside. Life Bytes was the shop's name, and its mascot was a happy little sheep.

Sitting down at an empty desk labelled HELP, he sat down upon his spinny chair and rotated three times, before he halted himself abruptly and looked ahead.

He looked left, and saw another table with another till, staffed by a dopey white Sheep with purple eyes. Her lime-green company shirt with a cutesy cartoon sheep mascot looked absurd on her, but it looked absurd on everyone.

He looked right, and saw another table with another till, staffed by a bored brown Weasel with red eyes. He was playing games on a handheld device almost as pricey as the average computer. He also wore the company shirt. Sparky wasn't wearing his, because despite working two jobs, he couldn't afford to purchase one from his company that would fit his muscular body.

He didn't greet his coworkers, and they didn't greet him. He didn't like them, but if he did all their work, they'd avoid reporting his rule violations to the boss whenever they currently remembered this deal. They might threaten to report him anyway now and then to keep appearances up, but he knew they relied on him more than they relied on their middle-manager.

Sparky wasn't supposed to be sitting down, or dozing off on the job. If his boss caught him doing either of those things, he could have been fired. But he'd worked here long enough to know how rarely their manager took an interest in managing things, and what he could get away with as long as bitter colleagues who relied on him for everything didn't feel like fucking him over out of spite, or threatening to do so until he gave them an excuse to not do that.

Ten minutes passed, and nobody entered the store.

Thirty minutes passed, and Sparky started to drift off to sleep.

He wasn't looking forwards to any possible nightmares about that lion cub, or her mother, but he needed his sleep.

Damn it, why didn't he try to save them?

Why couldn't he save anyone?

He was powerless.

He was strong, and smart, and kind.

But in this society, none of that mattered.

Nothing mattered to these demons besides your capacity to inflict cruelty upon others, the only language they understood.

Nothing mattered but the red, green, and yellow of this Stable's vertically striped flag...

Your blood, your money, and the Nobles who pissed on you while telling you it's raining.

A lavender Unicorn with amethyst eyes gracefully entered the store, her straight dark-purple mane cut cleanly across over her eyebrows, one stylish pink highlight catching his eye almost as much as her plump asscheeks, with just the tiniest bit of chubbiness around her belly, succulent plump thighs his paws ached to feel, they looked so soft and pliable, he wondered how they'd taste... But not even thighs or ass could distract him from the symbol on her ass... A bright pink star. It was backed by a white star with fewer points, and surrounded by more white stars.

Sparky blinked, and noticed all the pink sections on her mane and body were actually the blue of a cloudless morning sky, and he noticed her right forehoof was engulfed in a bulky greyish limb-mounted computer strapped to her body. It seemed his eyes had been playing tricks on him for a moment, which was unusual. He blamed it on sleep deprivation, but...

For just a second, she'd looked like the spitting image of Twilight Sparkle. And now, she looked like the spitting image of Twilight Sparkle after getting painted and dyed in a few places by a mare with a blue paintbrush, dying her mane blonde, and getting electrocuted until it started to resemble thunderbolts and lightning. (Very very frightening me! Solgaleo! Solgaleo! Solgaleo! Solgaleo! Solgaleo, figuro! Magnifico!)

And one particular zigzagging strand of her wonderous thunderous mane... Why was it blue like Rainbow Dash?

But putting aside her assumed run-in with a blue paint can and choice to have her mane styled by a storm cloud, this was not the Twilight Sparkle he knew from the history books. Not the tired old mare with a frazzled mane and a mind pushed to its breaking point in an attempt to puzzle out some perfect solution that could save everypony, haunted by the loss of her friends and the loss of her innocence.

Instead, it was a younger, healthier Twilight Sparkle, like from the really old pictures of her.

The really, REALLY old pictures of her. From before the fall, before the war got bad, before the war even began.

Before any of this madness became an unfortunate fact of life.

But that... That had to be impossible.

Twilight Sparkle had died long ago...

Who was this mare before him?

Some fangirl dedicated enough to a controversial historical figure to play dress-up, only to get random details wrong?

Or...

Could it be...

The real Twilight Sparkle, in a crafty disguise, here to take him on a whirlwind adventure to save the day and save his people from those insane tyrannical Nobles?

...Nah.

Like that would ever happen!

What a load of horseshit!

This was obviously just a really, really dedicated cosplayer. A colourblind cosplayer. Who had no idea what shapes were. Or more likely, it was a pony who just happened to look a lot like Twilight, complete with starry assmark, and she felt like doing nothing about that.

"Welcome to Life Bytes, home of the worst deals in the Stable!" Sparky announced, hopping off his till and pouncing over it, to her surprise, greeting her with a forced smile. "Bad deals, PipBucks that break down, and warranty policies so out of this world and out of everyone's price range, you'd have to be out of your mind to think they're worth it! How would you like to get ripped off today?"

"Um... Hello. My name is... Dawn Daybreak," The Unicorn told him, hesitating for a moment before she called herself Dawn Daybreak instead of Twilight Sparkle. She even sounded like the real Twilight Sparkle! "Do you sell PipBucks here?"

"Absolutely! Can I interest you in the PipBuck VX, the least terrible model put out since Equestria's downfall?"

"Certainly! Can you take me to them?"

He graciously walked her to a stand full of PipBucks about six feet from her, and patted the top of the stand. "These babies can fit so many weapons in them!"

"Then again, I've heard good things about the..." She glanced around the store, settling on a faraway corner. "PipBuck NX."

"From who, Noxendo fanboys in denial about their Buyer's Remorse?" He chuckled.

"Just take me to them," She huffed and rolled her eyes. Yeah, that was DEFINITELY Twilight Sparkle. Or a really, really dedicated cosplayer with an excellent vocal coach and pink-purple-blue colourblindness.

Just as she asked, he walked her to a far-away corner of the room behind numerous head-height shelves, where he looked down upon the garbage some fools actually paid full price for. "I must say," He murmured to her once the two of them were hidden from view. "You bear a great resemblance to Twilight Sparkle."

"Good," She smiled, "Because that's exactly who I am."

"Really?" He doubted. "How did you survive? The historians said you died."

"I'll explain later, when you meet me here along with any good friends you'd trust with your life." She shoved her tail in his face, her tailhair wrapped around a business card he slowly took, slowly, so that he could peek around her tail and stare at her bare ass, though her tail concealed her puffy horse pussy from view.

He decided to focus on the business card and not on her glorious ass flesh before he ripped his pants off, prompting her to either scream and run for a copdrone or rip all of her own clothes off and pounce upon him.

Her business card looked like a watercolour painting of a friendly sky blue coated in white clouds, pierced down the center by a column of white light outlined in iridescent rainbow hues. Hope never dies... That was written upon it. Flipping it over... The other side was white, with a bold comic sans font in egg-yolk yellow.

Church of Dawn's Hope
We offer assistance in these troubled times.
Want to save your future, present, and past?
We hope to see you soon!

"Thanks," Sparky said as he dropped the card. "But I've never been one for organized... religion?"

She was gone.

He poked his nose into the air and sniffed it.

Magic...

No, that couldn't be possible.

Nopony could do magic down here any more...

Could they?

Not with those anti-magic crystals on the various floors...

Right?

Magic like that could have saved his mother.

And his father.

Magic like hers could have saved everypony trapped down here.

He picked up the card, and looked at it once more.

It lacked an address. It lacked a floor number. It lacked a QR code for his PipBuck's HUD to automagically scan. And yet, when he looked at it, he got the feeling he knew exactly where to go, and when, thanks to an enchanted diamond he noticed hidden in the light's center.

And he would have the perfect time to visit this place today, right after his second job was complete.

Maybe...

Maybe that really was the real Twilight Sparkle?

Or somepony determined to fuck with him.

One way or another...

It looked like today would be an interesting day after all!

He silently stalked back to his till, sitting down and resting for an hour or two.

Yet as his consciousness slipped into oblivion for a brief respite, something darker pounced on his mind, dragging it into the depths of foul memories of crueller souls. He recalled how hard his father had fought to make everyone's life better, and how fate had repaid him. He recalled how hard he had studied to get into the best school the poor were allowed into in this elitist apocalypse survival bunker, only to be reviled for his body and his mind in equal measure, berated and betrayed and held back by his teachers at every possible opportunity. He recalled his time seated solo on a swingset as all of the other prey kids played alone or invented and proceeded to spread the cruellest rumors imaginable about him and his family, just as he recalled the fights he got into whenever one of them or a gang of them attacked him. He recalled the hatred he could smell on every prey animal and the stupidest meat-eaters out there, hatred they felt for him and his kin.

He recalled blood, the destiny within his blood, and how his own blood marked him as an outsider in his own home.

But his nightmares were cut short when noise brought him back into the world of the awakened, and he felt like shit.

Some customer had arrived...

And she didn't look nice.

Author's Note

Luna is inspired by a girl I've known IRL for years, she helped me write her dialogue for her scenes.

What do you think of Sparky's tale so far?