With a series of pops we find ourselves in the south western corner of Canterlot, in the lower district. Fluttershy in particular appears inside a small house that’s in ruin, with one corner of the building entirely gone and patches of roof missing from above. The other walls don’t fare much better, there’s one full wall that appears untouched connected to one wall that’s only halfway standing. The other wall is roughly 70% standing, all of the windows around the structure are shattered. Any furniture still inside is scattered and cut open, disassembled.

The pegasus looks around with wide eyes trying to determine what just happened as she slowly shrinks into herself, backing into the closest corner she can find. “Uhm, R-Rainbow Dash? App-applejack? Is…. is anypony there? Please don’t leave me alone.”

As she mutters those words to herself she hears small roars of commotion begin to pop up in varying distances from the residential structure she’s sheltering in. The closest sounds like several ponies fighting each other while defending their decisions from each other. As the argument turns physical and yelps of pain and screams can be heard just outside the house Fluttershy starts to shake and hides behind her own forelegs while whimpering. “P-please stop fighting.”

This continues as all of the different confrontations seem to naturally merge into one large battle. After several minutes of quietly crying in her hidden corner of the lonely house she’s startled as a brown pony comes flying through the open window in the room next to hers. The pony bounces and tumbles all the way through that room and into Fluttershy's room before coming to a stop.

After a few seconds of silence the pegasus slowly peeks out to find the pony laying on the floor, staring at her. She eeps and starts to mutter out a few apologies as she hides behind her forelegs again. It’s only after another few seconds of silence that she decides to peek out again and discovers the eyes that are staring at her hold a gaze that’s completely empty. Empty and lifeless.

In an instant her demeanor flips on its head. She’s on her hooves and running towards the corpse as her eyes truly start to well up. She gets to the corpse and tries to look all over the body for any wounds so she can try and save him, not realizing it’s far too late. It’s only flipping the pony over and finding several gaping stab wounds in his underbelly that she realizes life has left this body.

How many more ponies are out there dying? Are they dying just because of my friends? Because of me?! I can stop all of this if I just go out there right? While still crying her eyes become determined and she climbs up the stairs of the house to the second level. Once there she runs over to the exposed corner that’s facing the confrontation.

“Everypony stop please! All of this is not necessary, please!” No one can really hear the shy pegasus. She realizes she has to actually speak up. “EVERYPONY PLEASE! Please stop throwing your lives away!”

The fighting slowly comes to a stop as everyone quiets down and looks up at the determined pegasus with tears running down her face. All of the monochrome ponies look at each other and then back to the element bearer. Fluttershy is just about to resume her naive speech when the monochrome faction yells over her.

“There she is! Get her!”

Suddenly spears and debris are launched into the air towards the element bearer and her eyes go wide in panic. Turning around she jumps and ducks, falling down to the first level of the house and barely managing to dodge the attacks. She lands with a thud and winces slightly. Turning around she watches as ponies are trying to climb over each other to rush into the house after her.

Realizing she doesn’t have time to sit here in pain, Fluttershy stands up nearly hyperventilating and sprints across the house into an adjacent room. Once there she jumps through a shattered window and onto a mostly empty street on the opposite side of the house from where the battle was. The ground vibrates as if there's a stampede and all at once ponies emerge from both paths around the house, and they spew from the windows on the side of the house she’s on.

Several of them are pushing and trying to hold back the mob and they scream at the element bearer to run. Time slows down for Fluttershy as she has an internal battle with herself to try and stop the needless violence or save her own life for the greater good and run. It’s only when a mare in Day Guard armor slams into the pony is she knocked out of her stupor.

“YOU HAVE TO RUN!” The guard shouts at her and her eyes shrink to pinpricks as she turns and starts to hightail it down the street. Turning into the first alley she can find. The pegasus starts to jump through broken windows and leaps from alley to house to alley to street. Quickly trying to put as many obstacles between herself and her pursuers as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately the pegasus reaches the edge of the floating city and skids to a stop before hitting the barrier guarding the edge. Turning quickly she sloppily runs towards the closest house, but not before a sudden spear grazes her hind leg. Fluttershy yelps in pain and loses her balance, tumbling and hitting the wall of the house she was about to jump into.

Forcing her eyes open she screams as she watches four more spears fly through the air at her. Only to be saved as one pony slides across the ground while holding a door that was found as debris. Holding the door up like a shield it manages to stop all four spears as they poke through about half way before stopping. The element bearer scrambles to her hooves and as she jumps through an open window frame she thanks the pony that just saved her.

“Just make sure to pay me back and save all of u-” There’s a loud squelching sound followed by what sounds like someone gurgling on a liquid of some sort. Blood in this case, but Fluttershy can’t know that for sure since she can no longer see the street she just left. She has a pretty good idea of what just happened though as fresh tears leave her eyes and she begins running in earnest again.

This continues for another minute or so until Fluttershy finds herself in a particularly damaged home. It looks like it should’ve already collapsed by now as she makes a note to get out of this house as quickly as possible. Running through an open door and skidding across the ground as she turns sharply to the right. The element bearer only makes it a few feet before she hears the building she was just inside collapse and crumble, loudly.

She hears several screams as the bricks and stone fall onto the ponies passing through, and this time she cannot ignore her heart. Skidding to a stop she turns around and runs back to the collapsed building. Right as she’s about to arrive at the structure a mass of ponies spew from an alley right in front of her and without hesitation she jumps and leaps over the group.

The ponies in pursuit stop and look on with confusion as the mare jumps into the piled up stack of rubble. The house next door was nearly brought down with the building that collapsed, and one of its tall walls is leaning over the pile of bricks. All the pursuers stop in fear of having that massive wall next door collapse onto them.

They can only watch, their eyes growing slowly wider as they do, as the pegasus begins to lift and throw bricks from the pile of rubble. Even the ponies with projectiles and rocks that had been planning to throw them stop and stare as the element bearer desperately tries to save anyone trapped in the rubble. After a minute or so she uncovers, pony after pony, moving on as soon as the trapped ponies gasp and start to breathe now that there’s nothing stopping them from doing so.

She knows that ponies will still die from being crushed but her priority is to uncover as many heads as possible so anyone trapped can breathe while they wait to be rescued. One of the ponies sputters and coughs up a cloud of dust as her head is uncovered and she looks at the pegasus with wide eyes. The uncovered pony’s eyes start to well up as she sees who saved her.

“Wh…what? Why are you saving us? We,” She violently coughs. “We are the ones trying to kill you!” Actually saying the words out loud seems to make the weight of her actions hit her in full force. She realizes and starts to feel immense guilt for what she was just trying to do to a national hero.

The entire street is dead silent in response to the loud question posed by the nearly crushed pony. Fluttershy looks the pony squarely in the eyes and a bit of rainbow lightning sparks around both of her irises. Fluttershy herself has a flashback to the dragon inside of the cave that Ignis nearly killed, and Celestia did kill. Her thoughts back then are the same as the next words she utters.

“I don’t think anypony deserves to die, no matter how badly they may have acted. You’re all just scared for you and your family's safety. You’re all in the middle of the worst day of your lives, and that’s okay. Everypony still deserves Kindness.”

Over 100 ponies surrounding the crumbled house, and filling the adjacent streets seem to quickly blink and their faces contort into pained looks of guilt. A dull light begins to glow on all of them as their monochrome features are washed away and they all return to normal.

In an instant a group of the ex-pursuers are inside the house next door throwing ropes around the wall that is threatening to fall onto the already collapsed house of rubble. They pull the wall back upright and stabilize it as everyone else joins in the rescue effort to uncover and unbury any one trapped in the collapsed house.

Anyone that has already committed the ultimate crime of murder will of course be arrested and tried for their crimes, but that fact goes unspoken. Fluttershy might not have left it unspoken on purpose but it’s good that she did so. If it had been spoken a few of those ponies may have gone back to the dark side.

After another 15 minutes or so the pile of rubble has been fully sifted through and there’s a small area in the middle of the street with several injured ponies laying down on sheets and blankets found in the surrounding houses. Bandages cover any of their wounds and Fluttershy is seen giving soft commands to anyone with medical expertise, directing their efforts according to her own triage observations.

Once that’s finished the entire group over 80 ponies strong move as a single unit with Fluttershy and start making their way towards the castle.

Time remaining until Canterlot reaches the Ponyville shelter camp: 132 Minutes.

“Ignis where are we going?” Nightmare asks me as I lead her through the woods near my estate.

“There’s just one last person I want you all to meet. Then after that I figured we’d just see where the night takes us.”

We’ve been walking through these woods for nearly half an hour at this point, but it’ll be worth it. I know she’d love to meet these three. All three of the ladies are having small talk amongst themselves while guessing who this last mysterious person could be.

It’s only when we stop at the edge of a certain clearing in the woods that Luna realizes who we’re meeting. She stops mid sentence very suddenly, Nightmare and Force both look back at her in surprise wondering why she stopped walking and talking so suddenly. They see her gaze locked onto something up ahead and they turn to look as well.

Once they look, all the chattering dies in an instant. I look back towards the three of them and tilt my heads towards the center of the clearing. “C’mon let me introduce you all.”

The mood is a bit more somber than I’d hoped, but I guess I understand. Where they’re from this is a much sadder scene, but here it’s not really too sad.

We approach a gravestone with a sword coming out of the ground behind it. Once we finish the short walk I rub my hand along the top of the gravestone clearing any dust. I make sure to wipe away any small spots of dirt, and then I sit down on the ground. Patting my hand on the ground next to me I motion for the three of them to sit down too.

“Hey Mom. I know it’s been a while, I ended up stuck in a different plane of existence for a few centuries. So, that made it kinda hard to stop by. I promise this is the soonest I could’ve come here. Before I introduce the people I brought with me I thought I’d catch you up on everything I’ve been through.”

I said this wasn’t that sad of a meeting, but here I am getting misty eyed. “I ended up being accepted by the Moonblade. I can’t believe you never told me about that ancient old hag that lived in the sword. I hope you don’t hold it against her but she told me all kinds of embarrassing stories from your past. Long before you met Father, even. I got really good at magic. I was even able to cast Wish for a while. Eventually the backlash caught up to me though and I lost access to the spell forever.”

As all of the memories flood through my head I end up rubbing my index finger between my upper lip and my nose. “I’m probably the strongest Bladesinger in any realm now. I always remembered what you told me, that one day I’d inherit the blade and I’d use it to protect those that are weaker than myself. I didn’t always manage to save everyone, but uh. Fuck. I tried ya know?”

Caught completely off guard I’m suddenly choked up and my throat hurts. “Galadra said you’d be proud. I’m not sure how true that is, but I hope it is. There was a lot of times where I missed you. So many times I was sat there wishing you or Father or Tala could see me. See what I’d accomplished. Everything is okay though. Despite some minor setbacks along the way I’ve been happy.”

I go a little more indepth and tell her stories about the changelings, all the villains I fought, and just rambling in general. It must’ve been over an hour of just talking to the gravestone before I finally moved on.

“So anyways I brought some people I know you’d have loved to meet. This is Luna, Nightmare Moon, and Unstoppable Force. Don’t scold me for it but I’m married to all three of them. I promise you we’re all happy, I’m not two timing or three timing anyone. Grandkids have been a bit of a problem due to how different we are genetically, but we’ve been planning a few things out. One of them is going to go under a True Polymorph spell for a year or so and we’ll have an elf child. Then I’ll hit myself with a True Polymorph and become a pony. Probably a unicorn. Don’t worry once they’re born you’ll be one of the first to meet them.”

I scoot over a bit to allow room for the three of them to come closer. “I’ve done enough talking by now. I’ll let these three introduce themselves.”

I’m surprised by how much they also talked to her. I wasn’t sure how something like this compared to their culture. It’s probably another 45 minutes or so of them talking to the gravestone. Once they’re done telling stories about how we met and anything embarrassing they can think of, a dim beam of moonlight shines down and envelopes the gravestone.

Suddenly a very translucent image of Zarra appears, floating in the air as she gently comes down. She looks exactly the way I remembered her on the night of her Final Dance. Once she softly lands on the ground she smiles at me and I immediately pull her in for a hug. Mom leans away from the hug and wipes a tear off my cheek as she smiles at me. This time its a tear of joy though. I’m happy she was allowed a few moments to actually come and visit us again. The way the afterlife works here is the reason why this wasn’t supposed to be a sad meeting. I just ended up getting emotional.

Then she turns towards the beauties I brought with me and gives them a bright smile before embracing all of them. The moonlight starts to dim and fade and with it her translucent image also starts to disappear. I wave to her as she floats up into the air and right before she vanishes completely I call out to her.

“Love you, Mom.”

Author's Note

Ah fuck here I go making myself cry like an idiot again. If you read carefully during the Ignis portion of the chapter you can see the exact moment I fucked myself up emotionally. Oh that was a good scene though. I hope at some point I can write that as something that actually happens instead of being a dream, but who knows. (I really don't know.)

Anyways that's all. You'll notice a slightly different naming scheme for this chapter and that's cause the the main focus is on Fluttershy and she doesn't have the system, she's a normal pony. So there is no quest. I'd expect see chapter names like this one for the next few chapters, also make sure to pay attention to the "Time remaining" piece I'm throwing around. Cause some of these next few chapters are going to be happening at the same time in world and you'll be able to tell what order of events things are chronologically based on that "Time remaining" line. :D

Also oh shit, 300k words! O:

Thanks for reading! <3