Equestria Girls: Cataclysm

Pain was blue-colored, and it was so bright. It wobbled wildly, and something stretched into view to block it...no, it's gone again, not covering anything. No, it's back, that's a little bette- no it's gone again. Damn it, block the hurt.

Her chest burned so much, centered in the space where lungs would go. Ah, yes: she couldn't breathe.

A sharp gasp split the silence like a hammer.

For a time, all she could do was remain still, breathing as hard and quick as she could to fill her lungs that seemed insatiable, demanding ever more air. The pain revealed itself to be something different: a sky, sitting over her like...well...a sky. That's typically how skies work. Presumably. Was it a sky, though? Where's the thing- thing? What thing? That? The sky? It hurt. Oh it hurt. Confusion wracked her, and she could barely think, barely see, barely feel. Nothing made any sense, the water in her head sloshing wildly in a million directions, and every single direction was just as painful as the last. Everything was pain.

The chest rising and falling did so sporadically now, making way for breathy, gasping sobs. Why was this happening? Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

Time stopped and started several times. Her perspective jumped and skipped as she lapsed in and out of consciousness, eventually finding herself holding herself up off the ground on her knees, gaze resting on the pair of light blue hands beneath her. The arms connected to them shook like leaves, visibly straining with the simple act of holding her up. Red dotted her right hand, painting the skin sporadically from her knuckles to her wrist. She turned that hand over, barely able to see the details from how much it shook, but she could see straight enough to identify red smears against the blue skin.

The ground was gray, and hard, like stone, level as a surface but feeling rough and coarse against her skin. Her knees were scraped when they dragged across it - she hissed, halting her motions until she could be a little more certain of them. Please no more pain.

Time skipped forward again. A few blinks, and the air cleared of fuzz enough that she could make out a pile of...something. Purples and browns. A short skip forward again, and she was leaning over it on hands and knees, grabbing one piece of the different Somethings and pulling it closer to her with a trembling hand...a shirt. Button-up, with a folded collar. Maroon-colored. A heart of slightly lighter maroon was stitched into the space on the right side of the chest, a blue musical note overtop the heart.

She looked at her arm, gauging where the sleeves would come up to her arm...then followed it down, finding her own torso, and her breasts, and all the rest of her, glistening with a film of cold sweat.

Why am I naked?

Questions made her head spin, and she realized that she was as cold as ice. No more thinking.

The fumbling hands that barely felt like her own made the simple task of opening the shirt significantly more complicated, and she eventually pulled it over herself. Expending the energy to do this sent a wave of dizziness that washed over her like a tide, almost knocked her- nope, scratch that, successfully knocked her to the ground. It took two attempts to rise again, and she numbly grasped for the pile of clothes, unable to think of doing much else. Her fingers touched something hard, and her hand closed around it-

A sensation filled her palm, warm and pleasant, growing warmer as seconds passed. It seeped out into the rest of her hand, gradually at first but growing swifter the farther it spread, crawling steadily up her arm and sprinting to her torso, leaping to every other space that remained till it filled her completely. She sucked in a much deeper, so much deeper breath as the energy suddenly returned to her all at once, fatigue dissolving till she felt as light as a feather. Her hand tightened around this hardness she'd found, but the rest of her relaxed, clarity coming back as the boiling fog that had been draped over her thoughts was lifted. She sank slowly to the ground, basking in this feeling as a soft moan escaped her lips. It did not last much longer than a few more seconds, but the time it lasted for was nothing short of ecstasy.

The cozy warmth did eventually fade, and she sighed longingly at its passing. Pushing herself up was incredible easy this time, and she retrieved her hand to inspect this fantastic, marvelous little thing that had rescued her from her misery. She found it to be a small red gem, perhaps an inch long, connected to a golden fitting at the end of a black strap of leather as a necklace. Suffice to say, that went on her neck. Anything that could make her feel that good that quickly was hers.

She was still naked minus this shirt, so she went ahead and continued what she'd started. It took a little fumbling to figure out exactly how this shirt was supposed to be fastened, but she managed it, tugging the cerulean laces into place, then found the pink skirt that...no, wait, ok. Underwear went on first here, right, though she didn't really know why she knew that. Turquoise undies on, followed by the pink skirt. Easy enough to fasten...this was a second shirt, following the same coloring scheme as everything else, but baggier, with long sleeves and a hood, and no way to undo it to slip it on the same way as the first shirt. Over-the-shoulders it was. Hoodie on...cozy. She liked it.

She reached for the tall pink boots, fingers mere centimeters from the first one before it stopped. She blinked at the footwear, then slowly narrowed her eyes at them. This was a complete outfit of clothes. All of them fit her quite well, like they were made for her. She was laying next to them on the ground before this, completely naked. Did she take them off?

Several seconds were spent like that, hand frozen mid-reach, and her expression slowly fell as she realized she did not know. She didn't remember whether she had taken her clothes off, or if someone had taken them off of her. Furthermore, she did not know how she got here. She didn't even know where here was, and she began to look around in an effort to remedy that.

She was surrounded on all sides by a chain-link fence atop a square of concrete, which was at an elevated position at the top of a hill that gave her a clear view of the area below. A dense suburbia sprawled out in all directions other than behind her, buildings packed together tightly and streets stretching onwards deeper into the labyrinth of stone, metal, and glass. She was sitting at the base of a large metal structure with four legs, each made up of interlocking metal beams that continued their pattern upwards. She craned her neck to follow it, but the structure went on so far overhead that she couldn't see the top. A few concave gray discs with pointy needles sticking out of the center studded what little she could see far above, like strange metal flowers.

She blinked owlishly at this sight, turning her gaze back down again to the buildings down the short path that lead to them, which she recognized not one of. She had absolutely no idea where she was, and no matter how much she thought on this, she had no idea how she got here. This knowledge caused the faint thumping in her chest to grow swifter.

The boots went on, a bit more hastily than the rest of her apparel had. The desire to be out of this fenced-in area was strong, as it had begun to feel more and more like a cage that was getting smaller with every second that passed. In a quick motion, the cerulean girl was on her feet and clearing the short distance to what she recognized as a gate in the fence, and when it did not give immediately at her tugging, she simply grabbed onto the chain link fence itself and scaled it, tossing herself over the edge. With a clap of soles on pavement, she kept moving forward, headed down the hill deeper into this place she did not recognize.

It was not just quiet, but utterly still. Each footfall seemed to resonate down the street for miles, the smallest noises reaching back to the girl's ears in delayed stereo. When the wind blew, it did so silently, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something that would not come. Every second that passed made the girl's heart rate climb just a little bit more, and as the buildings rose up to surround her on all sides, she had begun to shiver again. It wasn't cold, yet she found herself trembling all the same. There was nothing here, and something about that only stoked her fear further.

"Hello?" she called out. The city answered her in her voice a dozen times, one after the other, each fainter than the last. The sound of the silence that followed made her eyes prickle, and she called out a little more desperately. "Hello?" The response was the same, and she wasn't brave enough to challenge the quiet a third time. Her arms worked their way closer to her body, hands stuffed into her hoodie pockets.

A storefront had a glass display open into the store beyond, and she quickly moved up to it, only to find the interior completely dark, what few shelves she could see barren. She could see her own reflection staring through her in the same way she stared through it, and for a few moments, she looked at herself.

Two fearful yet curious carmine pink eyes met her own in the glass. Her hair was a rich shade of turquoise, dark blue lines streaked neatly and evenly throughout it, and it was tied back into a ponytail with a scrunchy the same shade as the dark blue stripes. Something dark was all over her chin and lips- she licked them unconsciously and regretted it immediately. It felt sticky and tasted of copper. She fervently took a sleeve to fix this, scrubbing at it and transferring most of the stains to her sleeve just below her shoulder, though the taste in her mouth persisted well after that. Okay maybe don't just taste random things on my face right now. At least it’s a pretty face. Would date that, not gonna lie.

Before she could get too distracted with more of her appearance, movement caught her eye. To the left on the glass's surface, she saw someone in gray making their way unevenly towards her, seeming to be a woman. The girl whipped around, the relief so great and genuine that she didn't even think to look at who was approaching her, just happy to not be alone. "Ohmygod yes, hello! Hi, okay, so like this is like really weird and stuff but like can you tell me where w-"

She never saw the fist coming until it was connected to her face with a crack. The world spun as she slammed against the glass behind her, and as she tried to figure out what had just happened, the woman kept coming. The second fist came in unopposed, and there was nowhere else for the girl's head to go except straight through the window behind it, followed soon by the rest of her body with a deafening crash.

Time skipped forward again. Her back burned, but the girl was upright and scrambling deeper into the darkness of the store, boots crunching on glass and heart beating so hard against her chest that it hurt. Empty display racks crashed to the floor in the darkness behind her, and the shelving of this aisle rocked like a human had slammed their full weight into it. She didn't look back, sprinting to the back of the store as fast as her legs could carry her, which - as it turned out - was pretty fast. There was a door barely visible beneath a dim red sign that said "EXIT," and she bolted through it. She rushed through another short corridor and found another door just like the first, throwing her full weight into it as she blew through it. The alarm that sounded was loud enough to make her cry out, hands going to her ears, but still she ran.

She cleared the parking lot, swerving back to the sidewalk to resume her flight away from her attacker, only to see more shapes shambling out of the shadows, drawn by the store's shrill wailing. She skidded to a stop at the sight of them, and in their gazes she saw nothing, nothing but anger and teeth that glowed too white and bottomless pits where eyes should be.

There was no thought, no consideration in how she turned around and sprinted the other way; she simply did. A chain link fence blocked her path, and she vaulted up as high as she could to scale it, leaping over the edge and into the alleyway beyond, landing hard enough that she nearly fell forward and slammed headlong into a brick wall. A shape emerged at one the end of the alley, and she doubled back to go the other way.

The girl couldn't think, couldn't feel, barely conscious, all brainpower dedicated to escape and nothing else. Shapes appeared from all sides of the forest of buildings that she dove deeper into, looking sort of like people but registering only in the most primal and basic of ways as Danger. She ran, and ran, but everywhere she went, more shapes appeared. On both ends of this street, as well as from the alley behind her, dozens of shapes shambled and stumbled forward, closing in with the intent of predators. What little space existed between her and them was closing in on all sides, and fast.

A vehicle sat in the middle of the road, two massive tracks where wheels should be with a big yellow arm on the end of it as thick as a tree trunk, suspended in mid-reach towards nothing. She barely registered it for what it was, seeing it instead as her only means of escaping the walls of bodies about to slam on her like a pair of jaws.

She ducked past claws that swiped and grasped inches from her, jumping up onto the caterpillar tracks. She fumbled and skidded against the smooth chassis while trying to get footing to scale further, which was just long enough for something to grab her from behind. She barely felt the nails raking against her skin as they ripped the boot right off her foot- she screamed blood-curdling shriek, scrambling madly up the cab of the vehicle like a cat up a tree, to get away, just get away, have to get away, away, away, get away-

But there was no 'away' to get up here. She stood balancing out on the farthest point of the arm of this large yellow vehicle, the bulky gray claw before her ending as soon as it started, leading nowhere. Everywhere below her was bodies - reaching, clamoring, greasy bodies, each topped with an empty face aimed straight at her, all twisted in bestial fury, filling the street and crowding directly beneath her. Claws and hands and teeth snapped at the air, desperate for just one more inch, one more centimeter, kicking and beating against each other in a blind and wild gambit to get just a little bit closer to their prey than they were. They made no noise themselves despite their ferocity, and the street was filled only with the cacophony of scraping shoes, slapping hands, and stamping feet.

The girl's breaths were rapid and short, steadily hyperventilating as she looked about with wild eyes, pupils as small as pinheads. No matter which way she looked, it was all the same. She was an island in a sea of monsters below her, shaped only vaguely like the people she had been so eager to find. The entire vehicle below her gently vibrated as the horde mindlessly kicked at the frame of the vehicle as an afterthought, but still loud enough that it drew in even more shapes that trickled in from out of sight, homing in on the horde that centered itself directly beneath their trapped and terrified prey.

"Help," she whimpered, voice crumbling as tears rolled down her face. Her pink eyes shot up and down the road desperately, seeking any shape that wasn't another one of them.

Another vibration rippled through the vehicle's arm, and she wobbled slightly, throwing out her arms to maintain her balance. Her lungs burned and her head felt light, and the world had begun to spin. The fear of falling prompted her to crouch down rather than stand, squeezing her eyes closed as hard as she could.

This can't be happening, right? This isn't real. This cannot be real. I'm b- right, yeah! Yeah I've gotta be just having a weird fever dream, right? Back at that tower thing, I'm still there, I'm on the ground, I'm tripping out, I'm seeing things, this isn't happening, and I'm going to open my eyes after a couple more seconds and it's going to be the spinning sky and concrete and I'm going to be naked but I'll remember why and people will be there and everything will make sense and I'll be okay and I'll forget all about this and never be the wiser and I can just go back to whatever I did before like nothing ever happened. Like nothing ever happened. It'll be like nothing ever happened, it'll be done, I'll open my eyes, and it'll be gone, and done, and like nothing ever happened.

...she didn't want to open her eyes. She could hear them down their, their endless shuffling and scraping and smacking against each other, the clanks of wild stray strikes banging against the chassis of the vehicle she hid atop. She could feel the vibrations in the vehicle under her, feel the cold, dirty steel underneath her one bare foot, feel the burn of her leg where the boot had been ripped from her by sharp, emaciated nails. She squeezed them shut harder, and more tears streaked down her face.

"Hey!"

The girl's eyes opened almost on their own volition. She looked up in the direction of where she'd heard the young voice, gaze finding the closest building to where she was currently stranded and saw someone standing there on the roof.

It was a young girl, head topped in short, scruffy purple hair of a shade not unlike the shirt the cerulean girl wore, skin a light orange shade. Her gray hoodie was weathered and sported many holes, some discolored with patches where they'd been stitched over, others simply holes, and her hands had several bandages wrapped around them in various places. Her pants were green, tied off just below the knees. There was a backpack at her feet, which drew attention to how instead of a shin on her left leg, there was instead a metal rod that extended out from one of the legs of her pants and into her shoe.

"Are you okay?! I can- do you need help?!"

It took several seconds for the cerulean girl to register that she was being spoken to. She blinked slowly, eyes hot and prickling with tears, and she looked down below at at the churning horde of silent snarls and grasping claws that snapped and slashed up at her by the dozen. Her gaze returned to the girl atop the building, separated by no less than four meters of open air. "Yes," she creaked, speaking in half a blubber. "Please help me."

"Alright! Okay, don't worry, I'll...I'll figure something out here." The building girl dropped to her knees, the metallic one clacking lightly against the roof as she did so, inspecting the scene below her with a furrowed brow. As she did this, she called over, "My name's Scootaloo. What's yours?"

It was a simple question, really. Possibly one of the most simple questions that one could ask someone. And yet, when she opened her mouth up, willing this information to pass her lips, there was only silence. Every second of this silence that passed, the distress grew - her head shook, her fists clenched, her jaw worked, yet the answer did not come. It was blank. "I don't know."

Scootaloo's gaze found the girl again, confusion apparent as her brow furrowed. "You don't know?"

"I don't know!" she shrieked, fists slamming against the gray metal whose only crime was saving her life. "I don't know! I don't know what's going on, I don't know where I am, I don't know what this is, I don't know, I DONT KNOW!"

Scootaloo threw her hands up. "Okay, okay, alright, it's not important! It doesn't matter!"

"YES IT DOES! YES IT DOES! WHAT IS GOING ON?!"

"Don't scream! Quit yelling, they're drawn to noise, look!" Scootaloo pointed further up the road, where half a dozen more shapes came scrambling from various dark corners, one simply walking straight through a storefront window like it wasn't there. The crash, in turn, caused even more things to shuffle over, stumbling past the wrecked cars that otherwise blocked that side of the street, falling over them but nonetheless continuously advancing towards their newfound target. "Look, I'm going to try and get you out of there. We can fool them, but I need you to work with me here! So like- just- just try to calm down, okay?"

The cerulean girl's teeth gritted tightly together, and her carmine eyes with filled with a budding fury. Calm down? Calm down? There had been nothing but confusion, and fear, and pain, and terror, and this fucking brat wanted her to calm down? How could she-

"What can I call you instead?"

She wasn't prepared for that question. She looked down at her trembling fists, clenched so tight her knuckles were white, looking across herself for...she didn't know what. Some sort of identifying mark, or something? A name tag? There were neither of those things, nothing that stood out to her.

Scootaloo did not much find the silence helpful. She looked the girl over, fumbling momentarily - her eyes snapped to the girl's hair, and she blurted the first thing that came to her mind. "Blue. How's Blue work? Can I call you Blue?"

"...s...sure. Sure. Whatever." The newly dubbed Blue's hand went to her necklace, gripping the red gem at her neck tightly. It felt reassuring, even though the mind-numbing euphoria didn't come in to take her woes away. She wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. "Call me anything, just please just help me."

"You got it, Blue! Alright." Scootaloo's gaze once again fell to the teeming mob of undead just below Blue where she sat atop the claw of an excavator, parked squarely in the center of the street. The creatures were not trying to climb the vehicle, which would be the most sensible thing to do if they wanted to reach her, instead crowding directly below her, trying to reach something they just could not like a bunch of brain-dead idiots. Because they were a bunch of brain-dead idiots. "Do you have anything on you that would be useful?"

Blue's hand closed tighter around her necklace's gem. She looked down at herself, her free hand un-clenching from its fist, trying to ignore the sting where her nails had dug into her skin as she patted her pockets. She found a small flat rectangle in there, and she pulled it out, examining it as it and the hand that held it gently trembled. This wasn't useful, she didn't think, but similarly, it was all she had on her. Just the clothes on her back, this thing, and her necklace, and most decidedly not a pair of wings. "No."

Scootaloo frowned a little for a moment, but nodded, hand to her chin. Her eyes shifted to the right as she mulled, pondered, thought...then the eyes widened, and her whole expression lit up. "I've got it! Okay, Blue, stay right there! I need a few minutes, but I'll be back with something that will get you out of there for sure!"

Blue's mouth opened, and while there were dozens of things she felt she wanted to say - innumerable conflicting comments, from pleas to snips to jokes to screaming - the only thing that managed to pass through her lips was a feeble, "Okay. Please hurry."

Scootaloo flashed a smile that was so bright, so hopeful. When she got up on mechanical and flesh leg alike and scurried away from the edge of the building and out of sight, it felt as though night had come early.

Seconds passed, and Blue felt the solitude roll in like a tide. The shuffling, scuffling, and slapping sounds below sounded so much louder, somehow, and she dared to peer down. Dozens of sunken, twisted faces stared back at her with a singular, absolute focus, claws and hands in various states of mangled reaching up at her in vain, streams of blackness and frothing grease dripping from their eyes and fizzing out of their mouths. Not one of them had yet to emit a noise of any kind, and they likewise had yet to make any progress on getting up to her, sliding and bumping off one another as their greasy bodies shoved each other around for a prize they could not claim, despite their dedication.

Her heart still hammered, and her lungs still ached, but Blue's gaze found the horde a little bit easier now. The mechanical arm as wide as a tree trunk beneath her vibrated again as something slammed into the main chassis, and she didn't flinch this time. "So do any of you think she'll come back?"

None of the zombies responded to her question, focusing on trying to close this gap between them and kill her through sheer determination alone. Blue found the silence a little bit funny, for some reason, but she could not bring herself to laugh. She smiled an empty, bleak smile to herself as she gazed into the hundreds of eye-shaped windows into the abyss, wondering what bothered her more: the fact that she might die painfully and alone, or that the possibility didn't seem quite so scary anymore.

“Sugarcube, I’m just sayin’, you don’t gotta just fer me. Besides, I made a deal with Alex before, an’ we talked about-“

“Supply runs,” Fluttershy interrupted. “You talked about supply runs, and this isn’t that. I can handle it.”

Applejack opened her mouth to protest, though she held it in as much as she could. She adjusted her hat needlessly atop her head, failing to hold in her signs of discomfort.

Pink hair bobbed to one side slightly as she gave the farmer a curious, quizzical look. “…do you not want my help?”

“No- I-I mean yes, yes I want yer help sugarcube, I’m just-“

The other girl was very close now, a lot closer than she remembered - Applejack’s stammering hitched in her throat. Their faces hovered very close, soft fingers delicately lacing with hers just at the ends. Fluttershy met Applejack’s gaze, and they held it there together, saying what needed to be said without words.

After a few seconds like that, Applejack took a steadying breath, tension long since departed as she let out, “I just feel bad 'bout someone doin' what I could do myself. I wanna support, not...y'know.”

“I know.” Fluttershy leaned forward till their foreheads touched. The contact was savored for a few moments before she pulled away again, smiling supportively. “I also know a break would be good for you.”

“Eh…” Applejack rolled both shoulders in a slow shrug- her arm twitched the rub the back of her neck, only to remember that her hand was occupied. “I dunno, I think I’m doin’ alright. Could use some more sleep, but…”

“I think Apple Bloom would appreciate more time with you.”

A small guilty smile flashed across Applejack’s lips as her head lowered. “Yeah.”

Fluttershy squeezed Applejack’s hands before she released them. “I’ll take care of this. The animals will be okay without me there for a couple hours, and I want Apple Bloom to see her sister more.”

“Promise ya won’t stick yer head nowhere bad?”

“Promise.”

“No risks?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Just looking. Twilight will be right there beside me if anything happens. We’ll look out for each other.” She glanced towards the driveway, searching briefly for the alicorn, but did not find her. “I trust her completely with that.”

Applejack mulled this over some. Fluttershy had known her long enough to know she had accepted this situation already, but she nonetheless gave her plenty of time to work up to the admission of it, which was the real thing she was working on. She pulled through, like she always did. “Take the revolver, at least.”

“I can do that.” Fluttershy stood by a little more, watching her friend unfasten the leather pouch at her hip and hand it over to Fluttershy, who tried not to show the unease at wielding such a device in her own hands. “But I’m going to need one more thing.”

Applejack’s eyebrow arched. Her head got a bit lighter, and she scowled. “Aw you little punk.”

Fluttershy giggled gleefully, pulling Applejack’s hat onto her head as fast as she could before it was snatched right back again by a swift orange blur. “Darn~”

“I love ya, Flutters, but not that much. Ya either get the gun, er ya get the hat. Gonna have to pick.”

“Ahh, you’ve left me with an impossible choice…”

“Well lemme make it easier for ya, then.” Applejack pointedly put her cowboy hat back on, securing it in place with a huff and a smirk. “Dingbat.”

The pair giggled and laughed quietly together, but eventually separated, murmuring their fond farewells, for now. Applejack turned back to the house, challenging the knowing smile that a loitering Rarity flashed her way, which grew wider at the attention. Meanwhile, Fluttershy made a clumsy attempt to fasten the holster she’d been given to her belt, and when she failed, she shook her head at it and put it atop her purse, carrying it and a few water bottles all together under one arm as she walked over to the red Mustang.

She didn’t make it quite there before one Apple Bloom impacted her from behind, demanding a goodbye hug before she headed off, which Fluttershy graciously provided. A list of demands of careful conduct were presented to her, and Fluttershy nodded right along as she brushed the girl’s strawberry-pink hair, pretending to be unaware of how it was all just an excuse to make the hug last longer. Once Apple Bloom was content she wouldn’t do anything silly out there (read: felt she’d dragged out their time together as long as she could without making it obvious she didn't want her to leave), Fluttershy was then finally allowed to arrive at her destination.

At the sound of the passenger door of the Mustang opening, Twilight finally revealed herself. She stepped out from the other side of the vehicle, smiling brightly. “Hey! Ready to go?”

“I am.” The purse and her rations of water were placed on the tearing leather seat, then the door was shut as she made her way around. She blinked at the purple alicorn as she made her way towards the driver seat. “Were you here the whole time?”

Twilight’s gaze wandered this way and that - anywhere but at the human over her. “Uhh…”

Fluttershy’s lips adopted a small concerned frown. “Do we make you uncomfortable when we, um…”

“Oh- no, nono, it’s not that,” Twilight said quickly. “It’s just, you know, I uh…I’m not suuuuuper privy on how much privacy humans like. I know you guys do things differently from how we do it in Equestria, and I didn’t want to offend, or be…you know…weird about it.”

“Oh, okay.” Fluttershy glanced back at Applejack, who was either giving Rarity a hard time or being given a hard time by Rarity. Whichever way it was going, Rarity seemed to be greatly entertained, much to the farmer’s annoyance. “I don’t know about other people so much, but, um…don’t worry about me and Applejack. You’re a friend, so we don’t mind if you’re…um…if you see, I guess. As long as it’s not like, um…staring, or um…if it gets…um…” Her voice trailed off, twiddling and prodding her fingers together nervously. “You know?”

”Right, right, gotcha. Gotcha.” This topic had begun to quickly grow awkward for Twilight, so she didn’t feel bad about suddenly shifting to the task at hoof. Hand. Buck these terms. “So! How do we do this?”

“Well…um…” Fluttershy pondered this as she opened the driver’s seat and got into it. For as insistent as she was to cover this scouting run, she had not much thought on how to coordinate this with her friend, whose presence was nigh-nonnegotiable. She was by far the most capable one among them, should a threat be encountered, and her magic not only seemed free save for occasional headaches, but vastly more effective than any tools they had at their disposal. “I um…I’m not…super sure…? Um, do you want to fly?”

“Yeah, I can. If you’re going to be driving alongside me, I may as well make use of the car to rest when there’s nothing out there.” She couldn’t hold back her frown. “I still think it’s unnecessary to have you guys go with me out there. I can see farther than you guys can, and I can take care of myself just fine. This feels like a waste of car fuel."

“We know, Twilight, but…accidents can still happen, even to princesses, and you’ve said before that your magic isn’t perfect. It’s for our comfort more than anything. It’s not um…you know, like, we doubt you, or anything, we’re just…scared.”

Twilight sighed - this wasn’t the first time this conversation had been had, but she wasn’t much feeling like arguing about it, especially when it had been put like that. And especially not with Fluttershy. “Alright. If it’ll make you feel better…”

“It does.” Fluttershy smiled brightly. “Thanks Twilight.”

The driver door closed behind Fluttershy, and as the engine roared to life, Twilight drummed her wings against the air, thrusting herself upward. One more wave was given to everyone who'd come to see the two of them off, and as the car backed up and found it’s way back onto the road, Twilight followed it, picking up speed to keep pace as they ventured forth into uncharted territory.

It had been a week since they’d made it to the ranch. In that time, they had boarded up and reinforced all the windows and doors to the farmhouse, thrown together a few ramshackle beds in the barn once intended for two dozen different farm animals, and begun work on foundations for a second building that would eventually become a proper sawmill, though a lot of work needed to be done there. There'd been nonstop toil on this ranch project, and so far they had yet to break any large swath of dirt for the purposes of actual farming, which was what the project was intended for. One person from the refugee center had joined them since they started up, adding an additional set of hands to all the carpentry that needed done, and while there would surely be more eventually, the rate of their coming so far was not promising. Progress had been slow.

Time spent, unfortunately, meant supplies being consumed - supplies that they were not currently producing any amount of. Scavenging remained a crucial need of this budding settlement, and while that was being taken care of for now, there was a secondary objective related to it that had become higher on the list of priorities for the away teams that occasionally departed.

The way it had been explained to Twilight was that there were tons of maps out there in the world, showing just about anywhere that you could imagine there being and having a need to navigate, but only in a form that could be accessed via human electronics, like phones or computers. Those devices tapped into a special network of information databases where all the shared knowledge of modern humanity was pooled, which was called “the Internet.” Twilight had accessed this “Internet” a few times in the past to do research while she was at Canterlot High, and despite only scratching the surface of its depths, she knew it to be a virtually bottomless sea of wisdom, just waiting to be explored. Everyone had been very reliant on it back when times were good. With the collapse of society, the power failed across the country and left this network completely inaccessible to anyone, taking with it - among innumerable other things - most of the maps that people used. As such, no one that survived actually knew where anything was unless they had personally been there in the past, and everyone at the ranch and refugee center had come in from all over looking for safety.

Thus their task now: cartography, of a sort. The only way to know what was out there was to go out and look, and that’s what they did now. To find what they needed out there, the world needed to be rediscovered.

The village of Highsong was known to them, farther to the west. Applejack had made several runs there with Twilight and the others, bringing back much needed food from what remained of the canned and jarred stocks in the homes and businesses there, plus blankets for beds, material for bedding, miscellaneous materials for building that couldn’t just be made directly from a tree, and any other odds and ends that could be salvaged.

The exit for Highsong came, and went. What was known wasn't important now, only what was unknown.

There was a certain romanticized image that came from the idea of intrepid exploration of a familiar world made foreign, but the reality wasn't quite so exciting most of the time. There wasn’t much out there besides large open areas yawning out across the land that the roads lay sprawled across.

Not much that could be seen from the ground, anyway; Twilight’s vantage point worked much better for that, and she vanished up into the sky for a while, returning several minutes later. As she streaked along the road and caught back up with the old red Mustang, she flagged down Fluttershy with a hoof, who let the thunderous Mustang slow down in its endless trek forward. The Princess of Magic opened the rear door with a flash of pink, tucking in her wings and tossing herself forward to plop into the backseat, which closed itself behind her, silencing the roar of the wind.

“There’s a city out that way,” she reported eagerly, pointing with a hoof. “It could be pretty big, I think. I couldn't tell from this distance. Just follow this road for a while and take the road that branches off on the…” Twilight’s voice trailed off as she realized that the car was still slowing down. She glanced at Fluttershy, who was staring out the window, and she leaned forward and followed her gaze. It took a moment to find it, its beige hide nearly invisible in the gold-green sea of wild grasses, but see it she did: a single deer stood out in the open, bearing no antlers on its head. Twilight smiled, opening her mouth-

“It’s dead.”

“What a cute- what?” Twilight snapped a surprised look at Fluttershy, then back at the deer. She could barely make anything out about it at this range, but she could tell for sure that it was very much standing upright.

Fluttershy turned her hollow gaze from the field, foot pressing down on the accelerator to carry them forward. “It’s holding itself wrong, and its legs are bending in directions that should be incredibly painful for it. It's also male, but it has no antlers. It’s dead.”

Ah. Undead. Twilight winced at this. “So even the wildlife..?”

Fluttershy nodded. Her gaze was straight ahead and devoid of any expression.

“I’m sorry, Fluttershy.”

“Why.”

Twilight looked at her, blinking. “Sorry?”

“Why.” The word was stated, not asked. Fluttershy's teal eyes were transfixed on the road ahead and nothing else. It'd be a vacant look if it wasn't so focused. “You know magic, don’t you?” A rhetorical question, and she didn’t wait for an answer. “Why. Why does it affect animals.”

Twilight licked her chapped lips. She cast her gaze over at the deer as the land raced it away from them; how Fluttershy had identified the details she had was lost to the distance that grew evermore between them, but she believed what she'd been told. She'd seen zombified dogs before, so she knew that it would affect animals in some capacity, but she had not stopped to consider that creatures of the wilderness might not be exempt either. She had always associated the zombie outbreak with humans and all things connected to them. It was the only places she'd ever seen them personally, and it was where the undead were most observable. “I don’t know. I haven’t had an opportunity to study it yet."

"It's ours." The steering wheel gently creaked in response to the force the pair of hands gripped it with. "This curse is ours. We did this. Why do the animals have to suffer too?"

Twilight gave Fluttershy and incredulous look. "This wasn't your f-"

"Don't." The tone was sharp, like a knife. Twilight shut up like one had been pointed at her. "You were lucky when you came to us, Twilight. You came into Canterlot, a beautiful city full of beautiful humans in a hideous world. You don't know what my people have done. You don't know what we were doing to this planet and everything on it. You haven't seen the damage we do to one another in the name of stupid, petty, insignificant things. People were talking about how humanity only had maybe a hundred years left on earth because of what reckless industrialization did to the environment, and everyone knew about it. Everyone knew. You think it got us to stop? You think that the threat of environmental collapse, starvation, death, and the flooding of hundreds of cities on earth was enough to get them to stop? You think the terror of nuclear annihilation were enough to get humans to put down their fucking guns and to stop murdering millions at a time? This has to be our fault. We never stop, no matter how badly we should, because that's all humans are good at: raping our world and ruining everything we touch. We can't even die properly without making everything worse for it. How couldn't this have been our fault?"

Silence filled the car interior. Twilight could only stare, daring not to make a sound after this outburst.

The silence lasted for several minutes after this. The muffled noise of the Mustang's grumbling motor dominated uncontested, right up until Fluttershy's eyes sank closed, snuffing out the way they burned like covers sinking over a pair of candles. She was barely audible when she said, "I'm sorry."

There wasn’t a reaction at first. After a few seconds, Twilight leaned forward, putting her hooves on the divider between the front seats and hopping past it, plopping into the empty seat there. She didn’t speak, but was looking at Fluttershy the whole time, surprise lapsing and making way for sympathy. A hoof made its way over to rest on Fluttershy’s shoulder.

Fluttershy breathed slowly. She had to open her eyes, for no other reason than to watch where she was driving. “There’s just…so much to be angry about.”

“It’s okay to be angry,” Twilight said softly.

“Is it?” Fluttershy looked at Twilight, eyes full of ashes where there had once been flame. “Is it okay when everyone around me is falling to pieces and I want to hurt something? That doesn’t feel okay. That doesn’t feel helpful. It especially doesn’t feel kind.”

“Everyone has limits. Sometimes you need to be angry before you can be anything else.” Twilight gave Fluttershy’s shoulder a gentle rub. “I think you should consider taking some time to rest, Fluttershy. I know for sure that you have been working really hard, and I think you could use a little time to yourself.”

“I don’t have time for myself.” Fluttershy’s weary gaze turned back to the road. “Applejack is trying to be the strong one that takes care of us all, but she watched her entire family die, and I know she'll let herself fall apart trying to do everything if I don't step in, because she doesn't have the heart to tell me no. Apple Bloom hasn’t been able to sleep by herself ever since the hospital, and she looks at me like a mother, so I can’t not be there for her. Rarity still screams if you grab or touch her when she's not expecting it, and I know she’s suppressing a lot more than that, and I need to be prepared for that whenever she gets triggered. Sweetie Belle is…”

“Cute.”

Fluttershy’s lips curled upwards. “Yeah.”

Twilight shared the smile, using the silence to find words of her own. “It’s really kind of you to want to be there for everyone, Fluttershy, but if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to help anyone.”

The smile on Fluttershy’s lips faded. As it did, so too did much of the life in her expression. The bags under her eyes became just a little bit more visible. “I know.”

"You're not alone in this."

Fluttershy's nod was small, barely perceptible. "Sometimes it feels like it. I know it's not true, but..."

"We can't help how we feel sometimes." The hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder moved in slow, rhythmic circles. "I can't imagine what you've all been through. Everything that's going on right now is...so far beyond me. I don't know what it's like."

"That's not a bad thing," came the nigh-inaudible murmur.

"Even still, I want to be here for you, Fluttershy." The girl wasn't looking at her right now, but Twilight still smiled, hoping that it could be felt, or that she might see it when she next looked. "If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know. Whatever you need."

Fluttershy did not answer at first. Twilight wasn’t sure if she was going to respond at all, and she had begun to get comfortable in the quiet for what it was, right up until Fluttershy's eyes turned and found the alicorn: “Can I ask you something?”

"Sure thing." Twilight perked back up from where she had been relaxing, flashing a smile again. "What's up?"

"Am I really your friend?"

It was such a sincere question, and it took Twilight completely off-guard. She blinked, mouth working for a second before she managed the appropriate response. “Of course you are, Fluttershy! You're one of the best friends I've ever had, and I'm really happy to know you.”

"Really?"

Twilight nodded. The smile was becoming a little harder to maintain as she saw Fluttershy's expression, which did not bear any warmth, or much of an expression at all - another one of those uncharacteristic blank looks that Twilight barely recognized as something that could belong on the girl's face. Concern was starting to build. "You absolutely are."

“Why?”

This question was just as baffling as the first, if not more so. “B- why?"

Fluttershy simply looked at her.

"Beca- Fluttershy, what do you mean why? I feel like I don't need to explain that."

“Try.” Fluttershy's tone was not quite clipped, but it was something close to it. "Why are we friends?"

Concern was now firmly implanted in Twilight's thoughts as she tried to figure out what this was about. When she could not fathom what could have provoked this line of questioning, she cautiously went to do as requested. "Because you're a really nice and wonderful person," she explained, carefully, "and because...I guess you feel something sort of like that about me too. We appreciate each other, and we have been through a lot together, and that's helped build a bond between us that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world."

Fluttershy’s gaze was straight ahead again. Looking at her from the side, it almost looked like her teal eyes were painted on, like the eyes of a doll. “You're right that I think that you’re a wonderful person, Twilight. I’m grateful every day that you’re here and that you seem to care as much as you do, but I barely know you.”

Twilight almost didn't register that last part. She blinked once, then twice. Her jaw worked repeatedly to try to form words out of the static coming from the speech center of her brain, but Fluttershy did not wait for her to compile a response.

“Despite that, you seem to know everything about me, and you act like we’ve been friends for years. And I guess that’s true, in a way, at least for you, but not for me." The steering wheel turned some, letting the car swing past a wreckage on the road in front of them, then turned back as it was. "One day you just showed up in the halls of Canterlot High and stood up to Sunset Shimmer for me, I showed you around, we hung out and worked together for two days after that, you saved our school and everyone in it from being used as a slave army, and you disappeared. Four months later, you show back up again, here to pitch in and watch over us.” Her gaze forward softened some, as did her tone. “You saved everyone I know back then, and you saved Rarity’s life, and I know you're willing to save mine if the need ever arose, and I will never not be grateful for those things. You’ve shown us all great kindness, but…if someone asked me who you were, and wanted details, I couldn’t share much more than what I said just now. I just don’t know you that well.”

Silence fell as the conversation lapsed. Twilight’s eyes were huge, hoof frozen where it remained on Fluttershy's shoulder before Fluttershy had rocked her world. Her lips moved, occasionally, and her expression slowly shifted around, trying to keep up with the emotions running wildly through Twilight's spinning thoughts. There was shock, certainly, but there was also a look of betrayal. Alongside it, hurt could be seen. Confusion.

Fluttershy sighed quietly - she had not looked at Twilight yet, but she didn't need to in order to feel the cocktail of feelings spiraling beside her. “I still consider you a friend, Twilight. I’m glad you care. I care about you too, more than I care about most people. But sometimes I wonder if it’s really me that you love, or if it’s the Fluttershy from your world that I’m benefiting from your love for. I…” She mouthed the start of something a few times, searching for how to phrase it. “…I just don’t think that I could live with that. I'm more than willing to love you, and it would make me very happy if you loved me back...but only if that love was meant for me. Me me, not...pony me.”

Twilight’s gaze drifted downwards, the gears in her head barely able to move with the suddenness of this, but turn they did, at least some. This was ridiculous- it was, right? Fluttershy was being ridiculous, of course she was. Sure, there was a Fluttershy back home who didn’t know anything about what was going on out here, but of course she knew Fluttershy! It was Fluttershy! She was one of the most important people in Twilight’s life! Of course she knew a lot about her, of course she felt a lot towards her. She loved her!

“I…” She didn’t finish; she barely even started. The need to say something was strong, though, so strong- she just wanted to deny it. This was absurd. Fluttershy was thinking too much into this, they were friends. Of course they were friends. What else could they be? What else was there to be?

Twilight wasn’t sure what it was that made her look up. Maybe she just needed to look at something, watch the world go by, process something that wasn’t this. Maybe it was some unconscious need to look where Fluttershy was looking, in some abstract way of aligning herself with her more, or share something with her.

In the end, it didn’t really matter: Twilight looked up, and for the first time that she’d ever looked at one of these signs on a human freeway, she saw something she recognized.

Exit Left
Crystal City

Blue’s thoughtful expression lingered for a few moments before it burst immediately to excitement. “Ooh, okay, so you guys are going to nail this one: what is- okay, you ready? Ready? Okay! So- are you sure you’re ready? Let’s see a show of hands of who’s ready!”

Below her, every hand on every zombie was extended outwards, grasping and swiping and occasionally whacking one another when they swung too hard. They were nothing if not enthusiastic.

Blue beamed and clapped her hands together. “Okay, good! So: what happens if you take the number ten, and you split it in half? Show me the results, I know you can do it! Okay: Go!”

The zombies did precisely what they had been doing for the last while, ever since Blue sat up here: tried painfully inefficiently to murder her.

Blue looked about eagerly at her audience below, pointing around occasionally. “Okay you’re close, I see only three fingers on that one hand! Yoooou have only four there, that’s REAL close, nice try!” The next minute or so was spent generally laughing at the several undead who lacked a hand completely, her punch line lost in favor of mocking the monsters who were in the middle of the single worst attempted murder that Blue could remember seeing.

Not that that really meant much, seeing as she couldn't remember anything whatsoever. Still true though.

The laughter lessened, and once it did, it ended pretty much immediately. Blue put her chin in her hands, elbows on her knees as her legs dangled off the edge of the crane arm, and she emitted a bored, exasperated, loud sigh. “Alright, so who all voted that she wasn’t going to come back?”

The same amount of hands remained raised as before. Blue growled to herself as she realized that the joke wasn’t funny this time.

It’s weird how something so scary could end up becoming comical just by sitting around and looking at it for a while. Like, sure, she was still in mortal peril right now, and she could not survive where she was, and she had no means of escape, and that was terrifying, but at some point the fear just kind of…stopped? Or maybe it got so scary that it looped back around and became not scary and just needed time to work it’s way up to the original fear factor. Maybe it was some obscure psychological thing that was completely lost on the cerulean girl, the inner machinations of the mind as alien - or perhaps even more so - than the fiends crowding beneath her, craving for flesh and violence. Maybe the true horror was in the mind, where something as all-consuming as primal fear could be warped and made the stuff of children’s games, numbing the soul to the very thing that would protect it in the moment it was needed the most, and making that fact as trivial as the joke that it had twisted her very survival instincts into.

Or, maybe Blue was just tired, bored, lonely, sad, confused, had run out of ways to manage these things, and just didn’t care anymore.

Blue’s shoulders sagged. A lightlessness that she had been trying to stave off found her again, and once more did she wonder just how painful it would be to let the monsters have her, seeing as they couldn't just get her themselves. There was a lot of them…it couldn’t be that bad, right? They’d probably make it quick. If she jumped just right and landed on her head, she might not feel anything at all. Maybe that was the best she could do, in this situation.

One hand found the red crystal at her neck, clasping it tightly. The other hand left her chin, palm resting on the dirty steel of the crane that had supported her all this time. Something cold rippled through her limbs as she considered how easy it would be to just push-

“Hey Blue, catch!”

Her gaze up was quick, but her mind was significantly slower. By the time she registered the brown mass headed straight for her, she barely had time throw up her arms before she took its (mercifully soft) mass straight to the face. ”AGH!

Scootaloo emitted a loud sputter and began to laugh at this. "Nice!"

Blue gave her a furious glare, though she was quickly distracted by the large brown quilt that she had been thrown. It was large enough that even while halfway rolled up, it still stretched down over her legs and dangled down a foot or so past the edge of her pink boot and her woefully uncovered tootsies, which were revealed as she bundled up the blanket to keep it away from the freaks down belo- oh, hey, her nails were painted pink. She never noticed that before. Cute! ...right, blanket. “Uhh, I don’t really feel sleepy right now, thanks?”

“No no no! This is part of the plan, okay?” She stepped away from the edge and ducked down to do something - the building she was on was taller than the crane arm was currently raised, so Blue could not see anything, though she did hear a single form, metallic tink. “So you can tell the zombies are pretty stupid, right?”

Blue looked down to the dozens of particularly determined undead that had been trying to reach her and had so far overwhelmingly demonstrated a failure to grasp not just her, but also the concept of a Y-axis. “I mean, they’re not so bad. It looks like they’ve all been taught how to shake!”

Scootaloo’s head lifted up at that. She gave Blue a confused look, then looked at all the outstretched hands pointed her way. Blue gave her a big grin, which earned a half-lidded gaze. Blue grinned somehow wider still when Scootaloo rolled her eyes and ducked back down again. “Yeah, well-“ tink, “you won’t teach them much else, because they’re really stupid.” Tink. “Like, super stupid.”

“Sooo what, am I tucking them into bed with this?”

“Nope!” Tink. Scootaloo scooted close enough to the edge that Blue could see her crouched down, but what she was doing still wasn’t clear. “You’re going to tuck yourself into bed!”

Blue blinked. She looked down at the quilt in her hands, then back at Scootaloo, who was now completely at the edge of the building. "What?"

The girl raised something in her hand - a hammer, now that she could see it - and brought it down hard on something that looked like a bundle of white cloth with a final tink. She grasped something just out of reach, and gave it a firm tug, seemingly content with the feeling. "So the plan is: throw that blanket over yourself."

Blue stared. Several seconds passed. No follow-up seemed to be getting handed to her, so she pressed. "...aaaaand..?"

Scootaloo smiled brightly. "That's the plan!"

A slow, slow blink. "That's the plan."

"Yes."

"I sat here waiting for half an hour for you to come back."

"I tried to hurry, but yes."

"And this is the plan."

"Yes."

"Throw a quilt over myself."

"Yes."

"And that'll help me."

"A whole bunch!" Scootaloo reached over beside her and tossed something over the edge of the building - as Blue watched, a bundle of fabric unraveled rapidly as it descended, creating a chain of what looked like lengths of cloth tied together into a massive rope that spiraled all the way down to the ground, where a few more feet of cloth plopped on the sidewalk with a barely audible sound. "Once they've lost sight of you, they'll come after me instead, and I'll lead them away. Then you climb this and you'll be safe!"

There was a large, reputable, pretty competent part of Blue's brain that was having difficulty in believing in such a plan. The very idea that you could just throw a blanket over yourself and immediately be relieved of the attention of a zombie horde was...incredibly stupid. There is absolutely no way that something so mind-numbingly simple that sounded so dumb could possibly work in a life-or-death situation like this, declared that logical part of her brain.

But if it did work, argued another, significantly less sensible section adjacent to it, it would be very funny.

Sadly for that logical part of her brain, the much-less-sensible part was also the part responsible for decision-making.

Blue threw the quilt over herself without a second thought, and the world went dark. She laid back carefully onto the arm of the crane, tucking in her limbs as close to herself as she could so that she wouldn't be seen from below. It was hardly a comfortable spot to lay, but she could confirm that this quilt was very cozy, actually. Ooh, this was nice...

"Hey freakazoids! Look at me! Hey, look!" There was a smacking sound of a hand spanking against fabric. "Got some nice juicy brains for you, right here!"

The shuffling and scuffling beneath Blue was changing, and indeed, much to Blue's awe and incredible amusement, the noises of the horde beneath her were in fact moving away from her, closer towards Scootaloo. A grin spread across her face in the darkness.

"Nah-nah~, you're all braindead and stupid~, can't get meee~ Yeah, you like that?! Over here!" Tap-tap-tap went a pair of shoes on the rooftop, growing more distant, followed by the sounds of footsteps slapping against wood briefly, like a plank. The footsteps grew closer again, but shifted several meters to the left from where they were last. "Hey, paying attention?! Over here, stupid!" Away the footsteps retreated, and the sound of wood being tread atop came again, but farther away. The sounds of the shuffling horde continued to pursue the child, deaf to her mockery but nonetheless utterly fixated on her and her alone.

"No way," Blue couldn't help but mutter to herself. She smiled so widely it was almost painful. "No way."

Scootaloo's taunting continued down the road, and at this point she could barely be understood. Hearing nothing beneath her, Blue dared to whip back the quilt, and much to her absolute delight, there was not a single one of the shapes beneath her. The road was scuffed up and smeared with all manner of grays and blacks and bits of god-knows-what from all their scraping and shoving and struggling against one another, but not a single one of the original group was down there. It was completely clear. Casting a gaze up the road, she saw Scootaloo an entire block away, standing atop some storefront or another, smacking her ass tauntingly down at a horde of zombies too stupid to know just how thoroughly they had been duped.

Right then and there, Blue decided she loved that girl.

Now that it had been revealed that the way was clear, Blue almost casually rolled the quilt over her back up again, tucking it underneath her arm as she carefully stood up. She balanced her way back across the arm of the crane, then lowered onto her rear to slide off the lowest part of the cab, working her way down to the tracks, and then stepping down onto the chilly road. While she was down there, she took a few steps around the vehicle till she found what she was looking for: her boot, where it had been so rudely taken from her. She took a few seconds to step into that, gave the road another quick inspection to make sure nothing was going to try to kick the shit out of her again, then stood and strutted up to the cloth rope that had been presented for her.

A few mental gymnastics were necessary to figure out how to climb this while also bringing this quilt with her (because she was absolutely taking this with her, are you kidding? It's so comfy), which she solved by unraveling the quilt and tying it as tightly as she could around her shoulders like an extremely long cape, then grabbing ahold of this linen lifeline and started to pull herself up it.

It wasn't exactly easy to climb up like this. She had plenty of time to figure it out, though admittedly the growing space between herself and the pavement below did not do much in the way of alleviating pressure about this ordeal. She knew better than to look down, which is a lie, because she looked down, and she did not like it, but if she looked up and pretended that she had not done that thing she just did, there is no way that it could possibly continue to affect her. As it continued to affect her, Blue found her grip a lot more fervent than it already was, and her heart beating just a little bit more harder than it was previously.

Once she made it to the top of the cloth rope, she had another issue. There was a lip of the building where the roof ended, which was pressed up tightly against the building, pulled taut by the weight of the girl climbing it. In order to get up, she would have to reach up over that lip, find purchase, and then pull herself up over the edge, all without losing her grip, falling a story, and smashing her face open on the concrete.

The very idea of releasing this cloth rope sent chills rolling up and down her limbs, and as Blue looked back down to see just how far the ground was, she felt her grip becoming iron-tight. "Oh fuck me," she breathed, suddenly intimately aware of the risks involved with this plan and how this didn't seem like such a great idea. Actually this was a terrible idea and she regretted everything, always, and forever.

The sounds of footsteps slapping against planks some distance to her left was like music to her ears. She kept her eyes glued firmly on the air above her, not daring to look down again at certain death, and kept listening to those steps get closer and closer.

"Help," she squeaked, and then a bit louder called up, "Uhh, help? Uhh..." Oh fuck why did she look down again, god damn it. Oh god, oh fuck.

Scootaloo's head peeked over the edge. She was close enough to reach out and touch. "Are you stuck?"

Blue nodded quickly. Her eyes were carmine dinner plates. "Help."

"O...okay, uhh..." Now it was Scootaloo's turn to look uncertain. She took in the sight for a few seconds, looking between the girl and the edge she had to climb up. "Okay, so...it's easy to grab the edge right here, okay? Just reach up and I'll...I can hang onto you I guess?"

Blue had to work a bit to swallow - even her throat was coiled tight, as though that might help hold on. "I don't want to fall."

The uncertainty on Scootaloo's face vanished in a heartbeat, replaced with a determined set of her jaw and hardening of her eyes. "I won't let you fall." Scootaloo extended both her hands. "Come on, I've got you."

It took several long, painful seconds for Blue to work up the nerve to relinquish her grasp of the sheet rope even just a little bit. One hand loosened, and when she did not immediately plummet to her death, she was encouraged enough to lift her shaking fingers away from the linen and, feebly, grasp upwards. Both of Scootaloo's hands found her arm, grabbing onto her wrist and her forearm both as securely as those small hands could. While it was unlikely a girl her size could hold Blue up if she did actually lose her grip, the security of knowing someone was holding on was enough to embolden Blue, and she extended her arm the rest of the way, searching for the edge just out of her sight. She didn't find it at first, reaching further until she found the edge of the lip, and she grabbed on. Scootaloo remained firmly attached to that arm, and feeling like she could hold on there well enough, she painfully released her other half-cramped hand on the sheet rope, then reached up the same way. She found the lip the second time, and Scootaloo grabbed hold of her hoodie and shoulders. There was nothing left to do from there but to heave.

It took a fair bit of pushing, pulling, shoving, and scrambling, but eventually the top half of Blue made it past the edge of the roof, and once she was there, it only took a little bit more pulling on Scootaloo's part to make the top half the top two-thirds, where gravity took over. At that point she ended up just kind of crashing onto the roof, and Scootaloo - fully throwing her weight into the pull to keep her new friend from falling back again - crashed to the ground with her.

Blue rolled onto her back, staring up at the sky overhead. For a time she just lay there like that, huffing from the exertion, heart hammering in her chest.

Scootaloo leaned over her into her view, looking concerned at first, but when she saw the smile, she smiled right back. "So...hey! Told you it'd work."

Blue's smile took over her face completely on its own. She closed her eyes, thoughts going back to what had just happened, and Blue began to laugh. Her laughter became full-on cackling as she doubled over, and before long there were tears rolling down her face. She was alive, she was safe, she wasn't alone, but there was something even more important than all of those things put together.

That unbelievably stupid-sounding plan had worked. And most crucially of all: it was, in fact, very funny.