The Last Pegasi

Pickle Barrel flew home from school alongside his twin sister, Barley Barrel. They had both been given a permission slip to be signed by their parents for the school's Estrus Education class the following week. It was a pretty standard form, and they didn't think too much about it, aside from their older schoolmates giggling like idiots over it.

What they did not expect was their mother greeting them at the door and breaking down in tears as she held them. The news of a giant asteroid the size of the Crystal Empire was about to hit Equestria in one day's time, and all efforts to avert the catastrophe had failed.

The Barrel twins were, of course, devastated by the news. But Barley was a filly of action.

The Sonic Rainboom. Pulling it off would have guaranteed getting into the Wonderbolts. Barley came close a few times, but she always chickened out at the last moment. Flying any higher to start wasn't possible. It was a struggle to gain any more altitude where the air was so thin. The only other option was to try to fly downward faster. But doing so meant it was harder to pull out of the dive at the last minute.

"I'm gonna pull it off or die trying!" Barley said.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Pickle said.

"I'm gonna do it!" she said with finality. "The Sonic Rainboom, even if it kills me. If we're all dead tomorrow anyway, I want it to be on my terms." She took off into the sky, flying as high as she possibly could and shouted, "Witness me, Equestria!" Pickle flew up after her and grabbed her hoof. "What are you doing?"

"I don't want to live without you, Barley. Not even for one day!"

"You're trying to stop me!?"

"... No."

He held her hoof tighter. She understood.

"Together." They flew downward as fast as they could. The cone of compressed air in front of them grew thicker as they approached the sound barrier. The ground rushed up at them at an alarming rate but they just flew faster, about to break the barrier together. "Until the end."

In an instant, the roar of the wind went silent and they hung motionless in mid air mere feet from the ground. From such a high speed, the sudden stop should have killed them both, yet they were unharmed. Their world went white.

"Did we die?"

Before they even realized what was happening they were floating skyward in a column of light up towards an enormous, mysterious spacecraft. It pulled them inside and the hatch closed behind them, dropping them into a loading bay of some kind with a massive view window. The world below them seemed to fall away as they accelerated up into the sky and moved across the land at incredible speed, yet they felt no movement.

A door leading to the loading bay opened and a couple of tall, bipedal creatures holding batons of some kind approached them. They each wore matching one-piece jump suits and made a series of noises that seemed to be some form of speech, though neither pony could understand them. The tone of the creatures seemed calm, but imperative.

"Um, excuse me," Pickle asked, "Who are you?"

They looked at him, but gave no indication of comprehension beyond having heard him. One of them pointed the baton at him, and then at the doorway, waving it back and forth. Pickle was too nervous to move. It walked over to him and gave him a firm prod with the baton. It zapped his flank with a jolt of electricity. Not enough to injure him, but it hurt plenty enough for him to not want a second helping. He backed away and instinctively took off into the air in the rather large room.

One of the creatures pointed a small device at Pickle, and in the blink of an eye, a pair of barbs shot out from it, sticking Pickle in his side. They were connected to a pair of thin wires that delivered a much stronger jolt, paralyzing his muscles and dropping him out of the air.

"Hey!" Barley shouted as she put herself between her brother and the creatures. She reared up to attack them, and then she learned that the power of the baton jolt could also be increased.

A firm jab to her shoulder and her forelegs went limp. Her entire body felt numb, tingling with the sensation of pins and needles. A few more creatures in matching jumpsuits walked through the doorway with stretchers and gently placed one of them on each with care. They carried them through the doorway down a long hallway with a series of doors. They opened one and carried them inside, setting them both onto a large bed. The other creatures seemed satisfied and walked away, closing the door behind them. With no knob on the inside, it vanished seamlessly, flush with the other wall panels.

"Are you okay?" Barley asked, laying beside Pickle on the bed. He nodded. After a couple minutes, she regained control of her legs and was able to walk around again just fine. Pickle took only a little longer to be able to stand up. They looked around at their surroundings. They were in a large enclosure with a decent variety furniture similar to a hotel room. One corner had a single bed. In the adjacent corner, there was a drinking fountain, similar to the ones at their school. The odd thing sticking out was the standalone toilet in the opposite corner of the room.

"It's like a prison," Pickle said.

"Pickle, I want to go home," Barley said.

"So do I," Pickle said, "obviously."

Pickle's wings still ached from the shock, but Barley flew around the upper perimeter of the room. The high ceiling was as firmly solid as the walls, and the ventilation grate was directly integrated into the structure, with no visible means of removing or breaking. And even if she could, the vent duct itself was far too narrow for either of them to squeeze through. "So much for a Daring Do escape..."

One wall was entirely transparent as a floor-to-ceiling window. Looking through, they could see an enclosure across from them, in what looked to be a long hallway of similar rooms. Pickle tried to look to either side.

It seemed like theirs was the only one with furniture. The one across from them more resembled a meadow with tall trees. From where he could see, most of the other rooms looked similar as a recreation of a particular biome, though he could not see the most of the other residents. The one directly across the hall from them had a pair of Giraffes. Diagonally to their left was a dense jungle filled with stalks of bamboo and a pair of large black bears with faces like racoons. The enclosure on the other side looked different still, but they couldn't see any inhabitants in it yet.

"It looks like there's a zoo across the hall," Pickle said.

A bell on the wall rang, frightening them both. A small door in the wall opened beside the drinking fountain and a tray slid through onto the small counter. Getting closer, they could already tell from the smell that it was hayburgers cooked to perfection, and fries, extra crispy. The stress of the whole situation had suppressed their appetite up until that point. But the smell of the food was too good to resist.

"Who knows when we'll get another chance to eat?" he said, encouraging her to eat as well.

They sat together on the floor and ate, thinking about what to try to do next. The salty meal had them each making liberal use of the water fountain, first Pickle, then his sister. Barley was startled when she looked up from the water stream to see one of the bipedal creatures walk by in the hallway on the other side of the window. It looked at the empty food tray, at her, and at the fountain. It looked to be writing something in what was recognizably a clipboard. Taking a small device from a pocket, the bell on the wall rang again and the tray retracted through the small opening in the wall that closed behind it.

The creature walked away out of their line of sight, leaving them alone once again.

"What was that about?" Pickle asked.

Barley shrugged. "I dunno."

Some time passed. How much time was difficult to say without any outside windows or clocks. But eventually the lights dimmed. In the simulated twilight, they could see the giraffes across the hall settle down to lay in the grass turf. Pickle found himself yawning. It had been a long and tiring day. A short while later the lights turned off completely and they were shrouded in darkness, leaving only a few dim, red lights in the hallway.

"Bed time, I guess," Pickle said, shuffling towards the bed. Barley was already sitting on it.

"I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep," Barley said.

"Scared?"

"I'm not scared!" Barley said defensively. "I'm just... alert."

"Well, I'm glad one of us isn't scared..." Pickle said, sitting down next to her.

She glanced over at him in the dark. She could barely see him, but she could make out the silhouette of his slumped posture. On any other night she would have teased him. But tonight she just draped her wing over his shoulders. "At least you don't have to ask me to climb down from the top bunk after a bad dream," she said, trying to break the mood.

"That is what this feels like," Pickle said. "A bad dream. Could you...?"

"You don't have to ask," she said. "I'll hold you."

He laid down in the bed. She laid down behind him and draped her hoof around his chest. The bed was big enough for the two of them, if only just.

"Pickle?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you hold me too, tonight?"

Pickle didn't answer. He just rolled towards her and they hugged each other until they fell asleep.