Equestria Girls: Cataclysm

The lab had proven so far to be a very strange place. The exterior was a peculiar and elaborate facade, though what purpose it was trying to fulfill was debatable. In trying to look unremarkable, that itself was taken to such an extreme that it became remarkable unto itself. It was certainly secure, though: were magic not involved and the facility itself actually staffed with a security team, breaking into this place would be exceptionally difficult. At least the stone exterior provided some measure of defense. It was a strange take, but in some ways it was effective enough to almost seem practical.

The cold, however, was a more dubious quality that was discovered as the two girls made their way down the dark hall that stretched towards the center of the curious surface structure. It wasn’t much at first, but the further from the entrance one got, the more steeply the temperature fell until it seemed that every step further in represented another degree dropped. As they reached the stairs at the end of the pale tiled hall and peered down, every breath was accompanied by a plume of vapor.

Much like the corridor that lead up to it, there were no lights to shine down the stairwell in spite of the fixtures in place along the ceiling, though unlike the previous corridor, light from outside had no chance to reach this point or any beyond it. Rarity retrieved a flashlight from her person to light the passage beyond, revealing a barren stretch of stairs leading at least two stories down before the decline stopped. The beam from the small device was faintly visible as it traveled through the air, illuminating the trace amounts of specks and dust-fine particles of snow that had been stirred up from a combination of the vibrations from the lab breach and the footfalls of the human and alicorn that now peered past them.

The stairs halfway down were dusted with a thin layer of incredibly fine frost, though it got thicker with every step beyond that point, each step becoming increasingly rounded at the edges from a buildup of snow. The stairs near the bottom were barely visible from the accumulation, and just from where the two girls stood, it seemed as though the hall ended before a sheer white wall. Presumably there was a door there - it wouldn’t make much sense for this to be a dead-end corridor - but it was impossible to tell from here just by looking, and this place had so far proven just architecturally quirky enough that it wasn’t a given.

Rarity did not proceed at first, and neither did Twilight, standing at the top of the stairs and seeing what little there was to see in the passage before them. A minute passed in silence, save only for their muted breaths as they looked on, though at what was increasingly in question as time passed.

In that time, Twilight had meant to start ahead a few times. She cast her gaze to the first step down, and though she knew it was as simple a matter as taking a single step forward to start the process, something about visualizing that first step made her chest start to constrict. It took a while for her to realize that she didn’t want to go down there, though she could not put a hoof on why.

As Twilight wrestled with this, Rarity ended up moving first. She took one step down, slow and deliberate, followed by another a second or two later, flashlight and revolver pointed straight ahead. Unwilling to let Rarity venture ahead alone, Twilight took her first step down a moment later, swallowing down the lump in her throat and willing away the desire to turn back around. The steps that followed were a little bit quicker, but only just.

It was quiet. Each pat of shoe leather and click of hoof against stone was uncomfortably loud, and each breath that was taken came out muted, neither girl daring to openly challenge the oppressive silence any more than what was strictly necessary.

When Rarity eventually spoke up, the vapors barely left her lips from how lightly the word was uttered. “Twilight?”

“Yeah?” came the equally soft reply.

“Does your world have a book called ‘The Divine Comedy?’”

Twilight’s gaze shifted to the side, tracing the featureless concrete wall to her left as she considered this. She didn’t respond for several seconds. “Um…no, I don’t think so. Why?”

“No reason,” was the response, quieter still.

It had been a long time since she’d read it - in fact, she didn’t remember she’d read it up until a few moments ago - but the quote that found Rarity repeated itself to her, echoing with every gentle sound of their descent:

’Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

It took all the way till the final steps before it became apparent that there actually was a door here, though no part of it was visible. The only indication was the faint wrinkle in the ice that had completely covered this entire portion of wall, nearly an inch thick. It wasn’t quite as imposing as the inch and a half of steel that they had just managed to bypass to get to this point, though the cold was steadily starting to present itself as its own unique obstacle - one Twilight did not have a clever workaround for that she could think of.

Fortunately, she did have one for this door. Perhaps not as clever as the first, but hopefully just as effective. “Stand back, Rarity.”

Rarity did as instructed, stepping back up the stairs several steps. She wasn’t quite sure how far to go, but kept the flashlight focused on the barrier of ice from where she stood.

Twilight lowered her head till her horn pointed at the space where the door should be, breathing out a steady breath alongside a small cloud. She noted the dull pain in her head already, taking stock of her condition while making a few best-guesstimates about what she could pull off as she was. Based on the pain level, it seemed as though she had a bit of wiggle room still...her confidence was not quite what it could be on that front, though. She had cast a few spells several minutes ago, and she did not have much in the way of spells memorized that would be useful to bypass the current obstacle.

Under ideal circumstances, Twilight would melt the ice and then do whatever she needed to from there, but without a spell to do that effectively, she would be left with converting aetheric energy directly into heat, which was not an efficient process and would cause a lot of strain to do for the time it would be needed for. It was a pain in the flank under normal circumstances, nevermind now. If she was going to do that, then she may as well use the brute force method and get it over with as fast as possible.

“…maybe a little more, Rarity.”

Rarity’s brow knitted together in growing concern, though she did retreat a few more steps up the way they’d come.

Energy built up in Twilight’s horn, causing pressure to condense on her forehead around its base, and as her wings splayed in preparation, she discharged it. No sooner did the magenta laser fire, she pulsed out a rapid screen of telekinesis that rushed out after it that rippled and shimmered like a film of soap, not enough to last much more than an instant, but the best she could do as quickly as she needed it to be there.

A tiny magical sun briefly sprang to life half a meter in front of Twilight, and the entire corridor shuddered with the force of it. The ice layer shattered, chunks and pieces of every size erupting out from the impact zone, only to be blown back in the other direction by the stark repulsive force that pushed back on them a fraction of a second later. Twilight threw up her wings in time to protect from the much lighter rain of debris she had bludgeoned the incoming force of, one hoof raised both to shield her head further and also in a reflexive response to the iron spike she felt embedding itself behind her eyes.

The glow of the impact faded after less than half a second, the glassy tinkle and patter of debris coming to a complete stop a second and a half after that. It took several seconds for the white cloud of powdered snow to settle enough to see past it, revealing the hole in the center of the percussively defrosted door large enough to be able to stick her head through. From what space had been created through the ice, there was no visible door mechanism, but given the damage, it was not strictly necessary in order to proceed.

Twilight rubbed her throbbing horn, the worst of the pain already passing, but that wouldn’t last much longer - more pressure was gathering, and she winced at the prickles that came from this alone. Carrying on with her current momentum, Twilight made the call to push ahead rather than heed the already significant pain's warnings.

The hole in the metal adopted an identical glow to the one currently wreathing Twilight’s horn, and then it began to crumple. The uneven, ragged edges of the hole smoothed out slightly as pressure enough to bend the metal acted on it from all sides at once, then with a twitch of Twilight’s horn, all that force swung down. Like an invisible fist had closed, the metal under the breach crumpled, the entire door squawking and groaning as it was twisted in place hard enough to cause the entire thing to deform and bend outwards, plumes of frosty dust spitting off where pieces of concede-hard ice that survived the blast shattered like glass. The hole in the metal grew half a meter taller as a flap of whatever this material was - aluminum, perhaps, from how light it felt - was ripped away with a screech of pained metal.

There was a faint pop that was felt as much as heard, and up and down lost all meaning. Stars filled Twilight’s vision, and as she blinked them away, she found herself significantly closer to the door than she remembered being a second ago, and also sideways.

The rapid sounds of Rarity’s footfalls gaining on her proceeded her arrival a second later. ”Twilight! Twilight- oh dear, oh no-“

“I’m okay,” Twilight managed, and regretted it immediately - her entire her pulsated with pain from the sound of her own voice, as though the volume was cranked so high that it caused the flesh beneath her fur to ripple, and she couldn’t help but whimper in response. Her eyes prickled with tears as an invisible vice squeezed her skull so hard she feared her horn would pop off like a cork from a bottle of shaken champagne.

Twilight had been hungover before, but the worst post-drinking experience she had the misfortune of remembering paled in comparison to this. She could barely hear the choked wail she emitted in response.

Fortunately, it was also comparatively brief. They were extremely long seconds, ones she wasn’t sure she could handle, but long seconds are still only seconds, and from then on, the pain began a slow but steady decline. The unbearable pressure began to relent, slowly releasing Twilight’s temporal lobe from the steely grasp it had it in, ripples of pain rolling through her skull like disturbances on the surface of a lake, the overall amount of pain gradually lowering with each successive wave.

When she could see straight, Twilight noted that she had been pulled away from the door by Rarity, who had done her best to pull the alicorn up a few steps away from the cause of her plight, head resting on her legs as opposed to the cold, icy stairs beneath them. Twilight, in turn, tried her best not to vomit all over her friend’s shoes.

“I think I need a break,” Twilight croaked miserably.

“You think so, hm?” The smile on Rarity’s face was a little forced, and it faded just as quickly for the concern dominating her expression to take back over. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” It felt like a lie, but Twilight tried to believe it, attempting to put her hooves beneath her in a way that could theoretically support her weight. Rarity had to help her, though once on her hooves, she was a bit better off. “Way too much magic, way too quickly. I’ll b-“

Were Rarity not bent down and holding on as she was, Twilight likely would have gone down then and there. As it was, she stumbled, and nearly pulled the both of them back down the half dozen steps to the base of the deformed door.

“…I’ll be fine,” she managed, untying her legs and reminding herself of where they were. She felt like a foal figuring out how to walk. “Gimme a…gimme a second.”

Rarity chewed on her lip, but she kept it together, repressing the blooming urge to scoop Twilight up and carry her back to the surface to warmth and light that awaited them outside. She shivered slightly in temperatures appropriate for a freezer, but she remained collected at Twilight’s side, one hand firmly grasping her by the shoulder just in case she lost her balance again. Once Twilight was steady enough, the two of them began the slow, careful trip back up the stairs, so that rest could be had without coming at the expense of anyone's digits.

Neither of them paid much attention to the shapeless black specks that danced in the farthest edges of their vision.

Spring was ending soon. Apple Bloom wasn’t certain what day it was, but she didn’t need to. The signs were everywhere.

The mornings were becoming very early now. Sunrise came every day with enthusiasm that grew as the hour that it arrived at waned. An important benchmark of the year was drawing closer.

The Summer Sun Celebration was how Canterlot welcomed the warmest season of the year, though when and why it started wasn’t especially clear to anyone. Some say it’s to welcome the first day of summer, some say it’s to mark the summer solstice, others say it was for less obvious and self-evident reasons that varied wildly in its depiction; the date of the holiday tended to fluctuate yearly, seemingly to the tune of the quiet debate about what the celebration even meant went in the background.

A lot of Canterlot’s history was a foggy, muddy thing - ironic, considering how starkly the city and the people within it stood out against the nation it resided in. There were whole countries that had a less clear sense of identity than the city of Canterlot did, nevermind the long list of cultural events and traditions that it carried along with it. The rest of America didn’t understand, and in a way neither did the Canterlotans themselves, but that was okay. They did things their way, and they were happy to do it, even if they had to do it alone. To be Canterlotan was to be content with being different and finding their way to the beat of their own drum. To be Canterlotan was to dare to be different, and to rejoice in the simplest thing of all: to be. To live.

Then the world ended. Living got a lot harder. Too hard, for most. Impossible, even.

The heels of Apple Bloom’s weathered, tattered shoes gently bumped against the wood of the ranch’s roof, where they dangled past the edge of the sheet of wood that extended a few centimeters past the edge of the shingles. She sat hunched forward, bronze eyes unfocused and staring distantly off across the horizon that her friends and family had crossed in order to get here, to this little pocket of safety out in the countryside. A whisper in the trees foretold of a coming wind rolling across the land, and as it washed over her seconds later, Apple Bloom let her eyes sink closed, her melancholy momentarily dampened by the feeling of the wind brushing across her hair and flowing through her as she breathed it in.

Perhaps the world had ended, but earth yet lived. As foreign as the familiar had become in these last few months, Apple Bloom still recognized the taste and smell of one of the last winds of spring, come to say its fond farewell and enjoy just a little more time among those who would partake in these moments of warm stillness under a midday sun. So much had changed, but summer was still coming. Time was still passing. Tomorrow was still on its way.

Somehow, despite everything that had happened, it still felt good to partake in these moments. Somehow, someway, through the depression and the fear and the struggle and the uncertainty and the danger, there was still something in being alive left to rejoice in, brought in on the breath of the grasslands and the forests. Their city was dead, along with most everyone who had lived there and most anyone they had ever known, and yet what it meant to be Canterlotan could be felt as clearly as ever. All it took was something as simple as a breeze on a clear sunny day to be reminded of it, and to realize how hard it would be to ever forget.

A faint creak below and behind Apple Bloom announced someone’s intent to join her on the roof. She glanced back, listening to the small sounds of the wooden grips and steps she had nailed in place holding up someone’s weight before she saw the pink and purple hair bob up into view. The hair's owner continually cast a glance down at where her hands and feet were positioned as she ascended the makeshift ladder, keeping a close eye on the things holding her up.

Apple Bloom frowned slightly. Why would she be nervous? It was the same way she installed the ladder to their treehouse back home. Better not be doubting my handiwork... Such thoughts were pushed aside. “Howdy.”

“Hi!” Sweetie flashed a smile, discomfort forgotten as she clamored the rest of the way onto the farmhouse roof. She unsteadily scaled the last of the way up the slope of the roof and quickly pulled herself up onto the wooden platform that had been installed here, marking the foundation of a future lookout post-slash-clubhouse. She crawled forward on her hands and knees the rest of the way over, then plopped down beside her friend, letting her legs hang over the edge in an identical manner as Apple Bloom with a big smile on her face. “I like how the clubhouse is coming along! It looks good so far.”

Apple Bloom couldn’t help but smile, despite the slight tilt of her head she gave Sweetie. “Well…thanks? But it’s just the floor right now. I barely even got started yet.”

“Well I think it looks good!” Sweetie insisted emphatically. “It’s a good floor. I like it.”

Apple Bloom smiled wider. She didn’t know what else to say to that, so she let her head turn forward again, gazing out at the landscape she had been peering past over the last…uh...amount of time. “Uh, y’all got the time?”

“Um…” Sweetie looked at her wrist, at the small diamond-shaped watch there. “Twelve-forty.”

“Damn.” Apple Bloom instinctively glanced about as she heard the cuss leave her lips. A fleck of black in the corner of her eye made her heart skip for a moment, but no, Applejack wasn’t around. Good. “Missed lunch.”

Sweetie shook her head. “Nobody made lunch.”

Apple Bloom’s head snapped back around at that. “Fer real? It’s lunch time!”

Sweetie shrugged helplessly. “I guess they forgot again. I’ve been saving a chocolate bar if you want to share that with me?”

Apple Bloom’s mouth immediately opened to say ‘yes,’ but she clamped her jaw shut before the words could leave her throat and shook her head. “We should save stuff like that for when Scootaloo shows up.”

A complicated expression came over Sweetie’s face. Whatever it was meant to look like came off as a strained grimace.

“She’ll show up,” the younger Apple said firmly, looking away from Sweetie to the landscape ahead of her. “‘Crusaders together, now ‘n forever.’ Don’t much care if it’s a zombie apocalypse er not, she’s a Crusader too. Ain’t never givin’ up on her.”

“I’m not giving up on her!” Sweetie said quickly, voice cracking with her haste. “I’d never! I’m just…”

Apple Bloom didn’t finish for her, just listened.

Sweetie wrestled with the quiet for several seconds, then finally managed, “I’m scared, I guess. I’m scared for her.”

Apple Bloom didn’t say anything to that. Her gaze fell a bit more towards the earth.

“I’m scared for us too.”

Apple Bloom’s gaze fell further, now looking at the ground beneath them between her dangling feet.

“Do you think we’ll ever s-“

“Yes,” Apple Bloom answered quickly, voice hard. She winced at her own tone, then said more softly, “Sorry. Yeah, I think we’ll see ‘er again. Might take a while, but we found each other just fine. Makes sense that it’d be the same fer her.”

“We had our sisters with us,” Sweetie pointed out, nervousness worn a bit more clearly in her voice. “Rarity and me had a hard time sometimes, but we were okay because we were together. You had Applejack and Fluttershy.”

“An’ she’s probly got Rainbow Dash with ‘er. Or her aunts, er somethin’. Even if she’s by herself, I bet ol’ Scootaloo is givin’ them shufflers a good what-for.”

“She is pretty fast on her scooter…”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Real fast. Those shufflers wouldn’t have a chance. Scoots is fine, we just gotta find her ‘s all.”

“That makes sense.” A second or two of pause, followed by a more upbeat-sounding, “Yeah! That makes sense. Scootaloo’s probably fine.”

“Yeah.”

“Probably.”

“Yeah.”

A silence fell over the two of them. Neither knew how to further mask their own anxiety as it spilled into the air, and so they tried their best to pretend it wasn’t there and hope each other forgot about it.

The question from Sweetie was sudden: “Do you want to start crusading again?”

Apple Bloom blinked, then turned her head to look at Sweetie. “Crusadin'?”

“Yeah.” Sweetie fidgeted a little. “It’s been a long time, it feels like? And I want to um…you know, I wanna like…” She gesticulated vaguely with one hand, distracted by something she glanced at briefly - nothing was there, but the exact words she wanted seemed to have disappeared in that time. "Um..."

She didn’t communicate it well, but Apple Bloom understood the gist of it. “Shouldn’t we wait fer Scootaloo?”

Sweetie hesitated. When she did speak, her voice was small: “I don’t know if I can wait.”

“It’s not gonna be the same without Scoots.”

Sweetie nodded sadly. “She'd be mad if she found out we sat around forever waiting for her when we could have been going out there, though. That’s not what she would’ve wanted.”

Apple Bloom did not like how that was phrased. She tried to ignore it, instead thinking about something a little more pragmatic and earthy, as she always preferred: “How’re we supposed to do anything now, though? There’s shufflers and monsters all over the place.”

Sweetie opened her mouth…then closed it, ruminating this point with a troubled look.

Apple Bloom went on, thinking aloud. “I went up the road a couple times before this, an’ even that was enough to get Applejack lookin’ like she wanted to tan my hide. I didn’t even go that far, and that was in a kinda normal spot! I guess.” She tried to sidestep the thought about how her sister had been right back then. Hate it when she’s right. “Nevermind all the nasties we saw drivin’ up here. I preferred the days when I was the one catchin’ frogs, an’ I didn’t need to worry none ‘bout the frogs catchin’ me back. I don’t wanna be lunch. And the shufflers! I dunno how ta fight one 'a them if we do run into em. They're slow and stuff, sure, but...”

Sweetie Belle’s expression grew more troubled as she tried to navigate this problem - the memory of the monster that had nearly taken Rarity from her was still fresh in her mind. Until Twilight came by… Her expression lit up at that. “We could take Twilight! She’s really good at blowing up monsters. And evil robots!”

Apple Bloom considered this. “Y’think she’d go for it?”

“Yeah!” Sweetie beamed confidently, then that confidence folded in on itself as she properly thought about it. “Well…maybe. I don’t really know. She might want us to stay here and be safe.”

“Hate bein’ hid away,” Apple Bloom growled, kicking at the air and letting her foot thump loudly against the house behind her heel. “Hate bein’ treated like I need protecting. I ain’t no baby. We’re the Crusaders, damn it.”

“I don’t know.” Sweetie fidgeted in place, looking down at her fingers and thumbs as she twiddled them about constantly in her lap. “I think I want to be protected some.”

”Some, sure, but I don’t like feelin’ like I’m fragile. I’m an Apple, not some mamby-pamby baby girl who needs adults ta watch over me or I’ll stub my toe.”

“Stubbed toes hurt though,” Sweetie piped, meekly.

Apple Bloom rolled her eyes with a haggard sigh. ”Yeah, but it won’t kill us. I swear the others think we’ll shatter if we get shook too hard. Ya see ‘fragile’ tattooed anywhere on me? Cuz I sure ain’t found it. If I hear ‘stay in the car’ or ‘stay inside’ one more time, I think Imma rip the roof off so the inside an’ the outside ain’t so different no more.”

“Okay, but make sure you leave the roof intact right here?” Sweetie patted the wooden panel they sat on. “I want to have a clubhouse again.”

Once more did Apple Bloom’s bronze eyes roll towards the sky. “If we gotta get another one, we can put it in a tree again. The one out in the middle ‘a th’ field’ll do nice.”

“It’s a really nice climbing tree.”

“It is.” Apple Bloom couldn’t keep from smiling a little. “Can’t wait to show Scoots. It’ll be like old times.”

Sweetie let out a dreamy sigh. “Lounging around in a tree, napping in the branches…”

“You find th’ one with the real nice nook in it? Perfect layin’ spot. Just needs a pillow.”

Sweetie nodded, smiling brightly. “It’ll be kind of tight, fitting all of us there. I think we could only fit two of us at a time, if we huddle up really close.”

“We can take turns.”

“I can’t wait for summer.”

“‘s almost here. Gettin’ real close to perfect tree-nappin’ temperature.”

Sweetie gave a small, wistful sigh, gaze falling to her hands in her lap. “Hurry up, Scootaloo…I miss you.”

Apple Bloom’s smiled waned a bit at that. She was quiet for several seconds before she spoke up: “I think I know exactly where I wanna start crusadin’ again.”

Sweetie looked up from her lap quizzically.

“Twilight and Fluttershy found Crystal City, right?”

Sweetie nodded.

“And Crystal City means we can find Canterlot, right?”

Sweetie nodded again.

“You remember where Scootaloo lived?”

“Of course…” The point being made clicked, and Sweetie cocked her head quizzically. “You want to check?”

Apple Bloom nodded. “They lived kinda out of th’ way of the city, maybe they stuck around? Can’t hurt to look.”

“But how are we going to get out there? We can’t go by ourselves.”

“Twilight’s the princess of friendship, ain’t she? Think she would be up fer bringin’ the best of friends back together?”

Sweetie looked back down at her lap. Her constantly twiddling fingers parted, and she spared a peek down at the small thing between those fingers at the center of all the fidgeting: a small wooden shape no larger than a half-dollar coin, carved in the shape of a six-pointed star and stained an off-magenta color. It had been hard to sneak into the wines without anyone noticing, but it was the closest color that she could find to stain the carved wood just the shade she needed to most closely resemble the mark on their guardian angel’s hindquarters.

A smile worked its way across Sweetie’s lips, and she closed her fingers back around the small token. Confidently, she replied, “Yes.”

Apple Bloom nodded firmly to herself, expression broadcasting finality. “That’s that, then. We’ll ask fer help when she and Rarity get back, and we’ll all go on a crusade together.”

“Crusaders together,” Sweetie recited fondly.

Apple Bloom grinned. “Now ‘n forever.”

...at least, those were the words she intended to have come out of her mouth. She could feel them at the tip of her tongue, hanging there in that instant where they were in the process of being uttered, but it seemed to take an eternity for the sounds to travel from her throat to her lips. The moment felt thick, and soupy.

Apple Bloom blinked. Motion danced in the corner of her eye again, and when she glanced, she saw that Sweetie was not there anymore. Specifically, she was not where she had been previously - she was halted mid-step as she went to traverse down the makeshift ladder nailed into the wall of the ranch house. She intended to be here eventually, sure, but not yet. She hadn't even stood up yet! Apple Bloom looked up to see Sweetie's knees at eye level, then looked further up at her friend standing over her. The two locked eyes for a moment, sharing a pair of confused looks that confirmed it wasn't just her who'd noticed that.

At her current angle looking up, Apple Bloom could not help but see the sky behind her friend, which drew her gaze. A very peculiar formation of clouds had formed, looking almost like a thin, transparent layer of skin stretched out across one particular spot in the sky, slowly expanding. It bulged, like something had slammed against it from behind, and the pattern flushing with reds and the wrong shade of navy blue to belong in a midday sky. The entire landscape for miles flickered like a lightbulb that had begun to fail as the red momentarily overruled the color that daylight was supposed to be, then shifted back.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie shared one more wordless look. As though of one mind, the two of them practically threw themselves down that makeshift ladder, scrambling as fast as they could to get off this roof and find someone - anyone, whether they could help them or not. A roll of thunder covered up the sounds of their retreat, growing less and less distant all the time.

Something was coming.