Equestria Girls: Cataclysm

The sun was setting quickly, Twilight realized. Understandable, given the hour - normally she would have to estimate the time, but that was unnecessary now, courtesy of something she'd discovered back at Longmeadow.

Twilight glanced down at one of her outstretched legs as she flew, around which a small circular device was strapped just above her hoof. The clock had no arms, and was in fact not a clock at all, but nonetheless it somehow knew what the time was, and informed her in text form: 7:38 PM. Judging by where the sun was and the time of year, that sounded spot-on, and she had no reason to doubt its accuracy, given who made it.

Humans are incredible, Twilight couldn't help but think to herself. Not just for the big things they do, but for all these little things as well. I wish I had half as many good ideas as they seem to have about how to improve life in these small ways.

As Twilight admired the little device on her wrist, her gaze caught momentarily on a structure ahead, lined up against a road clogged with car wrecks - a square, two-story building that bore resemblance to a motel of some kind. Dozens of figures shuffled around in the parking lot, and she didn't have to observe them closely to know that they were all dead, waiting for something killable to come into view so they could bolster their teeming ranks.

The sight evoked a pang of remorse from Twilight. She forced herself to look straight ahead, rather than at the building as it passed beneath her. They deserve so much better than this.

Twilight closed her eyes for a moment and felt the pressure in her horn grow, then just as quickly release, after which she set her gaze on the sheet currently slung over her shoulder as a makeshift sling, trailing behind her as she flew. A flash of magenta pulsated out from the bulge in the fabric, and a rounded arrow pointed past her in the direction she was flying. Twilight made a slight adjustment to her heading, but was pleased to know she was still on course.

Her wings had been doing a lot better; turns out a full day of rest was just what they'd needed. They were still a little stiff, but she was pretty confident about maintaining her current altitude, somewhere around 30 meters in the air. She'd been flying for just past an hour, and while fatigue was starting to tickle at the edges of her awareness, she hadn't felt any cramps starting, though it would probably be wise to take a break at some point, lest she tempt fate.

With that thought in mind, Twilight frowned to herself as she considered where was she going to sleep tonight.

With the prospect of finally finding other humans at the forefront of her mind, Twilight doubted she would get very much sleep, which is why she seriously considered the prospect of simply not doing so. As tempting as that was, it was also a bit stupid of her; her wings were better, not perfect, and even if they were at one hundred percent, flying all night was not something she was confident she could do, even under ideal circumstances. Rainbow Dash? Definitely. Her? Not so much.

Not only that, she had absolutely no idea what was out here. She'd seen zombies, giant insects, and weird plant monsters, and who knows what else was out here? She had no idea how magic was able to affect these things in the long term, but there was no denying that there was some stuff that she didn't want to mess with, but a lot of it seemed pretty inclined to mess with her, if she gave it a chance to. Without knowing what exactly was out there and what perils awaited her, the only tactically sound course of action was to play it generally safe so that she wouldn't be caught off guard by something she let herself be vulnerable to. That, and she really didn't want to add a fourth point to her list of tactical blunders she still hadn't forgiven herself for.

So as Twilight flew later and later into the evening, she kept one eye out on the world below her, looking every which way for a suitable shelter for the night. Nothing was perfect, and as she flew farther and farther away from any sort of town or village, the amount of sites that she could lay claim to likewise dropped to essentially zero. It was another hour before Twilight found another building at all, and realizing how little was out here and how quickly night was coming, she decided that this was going to have to work, and she descended.

A pair of log buildings faced one another, perfectly symmetrical, with two tables sitting between them on an area of packed-down dirt. Four cars lay strewn out in random directions on the road beside them, two of which appeared to be physically fused to the extent that it was hard to tell where one car stopped and the other started.

Twilight passed by overhead once, then circled back around as she continued to slow down. There were only 2 hobbling humanoid shapes in the growing gloom, and she fired a beam at each of them. She watched the beams home in on their targets, and was satisfied when both figures vanished behind a pink flash for an instant - a moment later, they were on the ground, several feet back from where they stood previously. A second blast to each would ensure they'd remain where they lay.

Only a meter from the ground now, Twilight began to fall faster than she moved forward, and a sharp thrust of her wings arrested her forward momentum entirely, letting her touch down gently with a clop of her hooves on the dirt. Her face prickled from the constant barrage of evening air rushing past her, and now that she felt heat returning to her face, Twilight realized that a rest sounded pretty good. Fly all night…what was I thinking?

Upon closer inspection, this place turned out to be little more than a roadside stop, with absolutely nothing else here besides a table, and a pair of bathrooms: a stallion's bathroom, and a mare's bathr...no. Man and woman's bathroom. Same difference...

Twilight opened the ma- woman's bathroom with a glow of her horn, and after giving a cautionary sniff and finding it not overly offensive in here, she decided that this would do and closed the door, total darkness descending immediately when she did. It was not going to be comfortable, but it would be secure.

She found herself a little bit at a loss of what exactly to do next. She tried one of the three stalls, but those toilets were not going to work. Instead, she tucked herself into the corner, the sinks between herself and the door, and curled up there. She emptied her makeshift sling and untied the window curtain, folding it up as tall as she could to make the floor where she laid her head as comfortable as possible. It wasn't much of an improvement. Her neck was going to be killing her in the morning, too.

Sighing into the darkness, Twilight closed her eyes, doing her best to not dwell on her restless thoughts as she waited for dreams to find her.

A gentle crackling made space for itself in the air, competing valiantly with the omnipresent droning of crickets in all directions from their kingdom of darkness. A collection of many twigs and branches sat at the heart of the tiny flames, a handful more being tossed in by Sweetie Belle so it would grow.

It felt weird to have a fire out in the open rather than being in a fireplace, or a stove, or even a ring of rocks, but asphalt wasn't exactly known for being flammable, so it was safe. Even still, there was a certain surreality to it that Sweetie was never quite able to fully ignore. Fires didn't work like this, in her world.

Sweetie looked to Rarity where she leaned up against the emergency shelter, bundled up in a metallic silver emergency blanket. She looked sort of like a baked potato wrapped up in tin foil, except the potato was too big and stuck out on one end, and also it had her sister's face. "Hey Rarity?"

One of Rarity's eyelids lifted sluggishly. "Yes?"

"Why did we need a fire?"

Rarity thought on this, for a few seconds. She wiggled in place slightly, shifting beneath the emergency blanket- must have been a shrug. "It felt right, I suppose."

Sweetie's head tilted curiously. "Why?"

"I don't know," Rarity admitted. She paused, and then smiled a little. "I guess all the time we've spent outdoors these last few weeks reminds me a little of those camping trips we went on, a few years back. Do you remember that, darling? You were rather small at the time."

Sweetie scrunched up her face in what she chose to believe was a look of deep pondering and remembrance, green eyes finding the sky for a few seconds, then shook her head.

"Probably for the best...it was a disaster." Despite the words used, there was a fondness in her voice. "It was mom's idea."

"Ah." The context for what 'disaster' meant immediately registered for Sweetie, and she suddenly wasn't so sad about not remembering it.

Silence took over, for a little while, marred only by the song of fire and crickets. Sweetie prodded and poked at the fire with her newly designated poking stick, not accomplishing much more besides spitting tiny showers of sparks, and occupying her attention in favor of sitting idle. Rarity suspected it was mostly for the latter.

After some time passed, Rarity spoke up again. "Have you ever warmed something over a fire before, Sweetie?"

She glanced up at Rarity, then shook her head. She looked back at the flames she'd been continually stirring, which popped at her. She interpreted it as encouragement. "Can I?"

Rarity nodded her head towards where she'd put her purse against the wall beside her. "There's a pair of cans in my bag. Just make sure you open the cans before you start to heat what’s inside them."

"What happens if you don't open them first?"

"They explode."

Sweetie stopped mid-motion and gave her sister a scrutinizing look. When Rarity's expression did not change, she realized that she must be serious. As Sweetie opened the cans of beans with that can opener stashed in the bottom of Rarity's purse, she did so incredibly carefully, like one wrong move could set off a deadly bean blast the likes of which the world had never known.

Once opened, she placed the open cans on the street, and very carefully nudged each of them closer and closer to the fire with her special stick until they were nestled up against the flames themselves.

It would only take a couple of minutes from that point. The labels peeled off and caught ablaze, which Sweetie watched with equal parts fascination and worry, but the contents of the cans were unsullied. A pair of plastic forks were retrieved from one of the shelter’s cabinets that had random assortments of plastic bowls and utensils, and the lackluster dinner was served.

Well...would be served. As Sweetie nudged the cans away from the fire with her trusty fire-poking stick, she frowned, realizing her mistake as she observed the steaming water inside the equally toasty, if not more so, metal containers. "Um, these cans are super hot now."

"I guess neither of us really thought this through," Rarity sighed. She pried herself from her silvery cocoon, shuffling over across the ground as best she could with only one leg able to bend without hurting. "It's fine, just eat out of the can without touching it."

And so they did. It wasn't the best dinner, being just canned green beans, nor the most comfortable, given that it had to be eaten while hunched over in the road, but it was a meal. The contents of the cans were emptied relatively swiftly, and both girls retreated together over to the wall of the evac shelter, huddling beneath their bulky metallic blanket as they watched the flames crackle and spit on the last of the wooden offerings provided to them.

Time became somewhat ethereal under the influence of the fire. Rarity wasn't certain when her arm ended up around Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle, likewise, wasn't sure when her head came to rest against Rarity's shoulder. Neither minded the contact; they couldn't exactly feel the fire's warmth at this distance, so they needed to share what they had to stay comfy. It was also just kind of pleasant.

"Hey Rarity?" Sweetie Belle asked, at some point.

Rarity's frost-blue eyes fluttered open, and she offered a sleepy smile. "Yes?"

"Are we ever going to see mom and dad again?"

The smile vanished. Such a question took Rarity aback, and she found herself taking longer than she intended to reply: "I don't know." She didn't like how it felt to say that, and she had to repeat it, as though to make sure that the answer was meant to sound like that. "I don't know."

It was hard to tell what Sweetie's thoughts were on it, as her expression was...distant. Sad, certainly...Rarity didn't much like that either, but as she thought of what to say to make it better, but found no words that might serve this purpose.

One hand came up and gently found the top of Sweetie's head, fingers gently combing their way through the pink and purple locks, establishing a very slow, soft rhythm. She heard a quiet sniffle, and they pressed up together a little bit tighter.

What a terrible time to grow up in. History would remember these years as the darkest that mankind had ever known, but there was an entire generation - what little of it survived, at this point - that would simply remember this as their childhood. It was hard for Rarity to decide whether or not the years of normalcy that Sweetie had known leading up to this were a blessing or a curse.

"Don't cry, Rarity..."

Rarity heard the quiet sniffle again. It took her a moment to realize that it was coming from her, and she was surprised when she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and it came away damp. "Ah...sorry, I, ah...I don't quite know what came over me."

"It's okay." The squeeze beneath the blanket tightened, for a moment. "I miss them too."

A few more tears spilled at that phrase alone, and Rarity realized that she missed her parents. She missed them dearly.

We're never going to see them again, are we?

The thought disarmed her, and for a couple of minutes, Rarity quietly wept. Sweetie Belle huddled into her side, hugging her tightly as Rarity was undone in a rare moment of vulnerability.

Rarity rarely cried. Not genuinely. It's not that she didn't ever feel real sadness, or frustration, but because she just never seemed to have the time for it. She was always looking after someone else, or taking care of something that warranted her discomfort if it meant getting it done. She was quick to set her own feelings aside for the sake of another. Always so willing to make someone else's life a little bit more worth living, even if that meant paying for it out of pocket, or pushing back her grief for another day...and then another day...and another...

The moment passed, eventually. Rarity wiped her eyes one more time, taking a few steadying breaths. Her makeup was ruined, but that was unavoidable. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry for crying." Sweetie Belle lifted her head to peer up at Rarity, giving a supportive smile through the tiny droplets clinging to her own eyelashes. "I'm a way bigger crybaby than you are, so if you need to apologize for that, I'm in a lot of trouble."

A most unladylike snort escaped Rarity, and she began to quietly laugh. "Oh, I wouldn't call you a crybaby, darling. You're a sensitive, emotional soul, and with emotion comes tears! It's hardly a bad thing to be honest about your feelings."

"I guess so." Sweetie felt like Rarity should take her own advice sometimes, but she didn't know how to articulate that thought, settling instead for wishing it to be so. "I just wish the emotions were nicer. I don't like being sad and scared all the time."

"Me neither, darling," came the soft response. Rarity's gaze found her purse beside her - specifically the road map that was sticking out of it, a fresh new variety of lines and symbols dotted across it with a pen. "But hopefully, from here on, things will get better."

"It'll be nice to see other people again. It's so lonely out here."

Rarity nodded in agreement. "Talk to other people, trade things, share some stories...settle down..."

"Indoor heating..."

"That might be a bit much, but we'll see," Rarity chuckled, casting a gaze to the fire, which was rapidly dying out. "Speaking of heating, I think we should go back inside. It's cold out here."

Sweetie did not stir. Rarity was about to start insisting when she heard the small, squeaky request: "...can you carry me?"

Rarity blinked for a moment, then smiled warmly. "I absolutely would, darling, but my leg."

"...oh yeah..." Sweetie sounded rather embarrassed, though whether it was more from the request or the forgetting about the injury was uncertain. She hid her face in Rarity's shoulder regardless.

Chuckling, Rarity gave Sweetie's hair a gentle patting down, fixing the disturbances from running her fingers through it all this time. "Sorry, I'm afraid you're on your own there. I can hold you once we've settled down, though. Is that a fair compromise?"

"Deal."

What little was out here was packed up, and the dying fire was surrendered to the darkness of the trees around them. The two made it back inside and spent a few minutes erecting a makeshift mattress out of the many jackets and blankets stowed away in the many lockers of the evac shelter.

True to her word, Rarity held Sweetie Belle in her lap and cradled her all night, a secret Sweetie informed her she would keep under penalty of death by bean explosion.

The 'I love you's they shared were not verbal, but that was ok. They didn't have to speak the words to hear them from each other.

It was a very long night for Twilight. She had no idea if she got any sleep, as every minute felt like an hour to her. If she had dreams, they were as miserably monotonous and dull as the rest of her stay in that bathroom.

Twilight blearily emerged to a sunrise, the beauty of which was marred by the fog over her senses and the irritable mood she was in. She sucked down some water from the jug in her possession and all but inhaled several clumps of grass, apparently enough so that she ended up with several roots, and the dirt that came with them. Eugh.

One tongue-scraping and some hasty-but-slightly-less-hasty grazing later, Twilight waited only the few seconds it took to re-tie her sheet containing her books and radio before she returned to the sky. She wasn’t sure if she was going to regret doing this so quickly after she woke up, but activity sounded like a great way to get her blood pumping and…

…oh who was she kidding, she was so incredibly impatient it was driving her insane. She couldn’t stand the thought of waiting a moment longer six restless hours ago, and now that she had any sunlight at all to go by, that was it. With a ping of her magic-jacked radio to guide her on takeoff, Twilight was gone.

For a time, it felt like the world had stood still, stopping as soon as she stepped into that bathroom- it was precisely as light now as when she went in, but now it was running backwards. Except the sun was in front of her now rather than behind, something she quickly grew to rue. As time passed, Twilight increasingly wished for a pair of goggles, specifically ones that were shaded, because she was running essentially blind.

It was an incredibly inconvenient three hour flight. The only thing that kept Twilight in the air after the first 20 minutes of flying directly into the sun was the knowledge that lives could be on the line. Otherwise, she'd be down there somewhere, probably reading as she waited for the sun to be quite literally anywhere else but directly in her corneas.

Not able to see much in front of her for most of the journey southeast, Twilight continually pinged the radio, and found it quite promising that the arrow seemed to be intent on sliding a little to one side more and more. She was initially surprised that it did not point towards the town that expanded out to her left, and instead swiveled further to the right, more or less perfectly down a road heading in the same direction, which was now completely southward.

I guess it makes sense that the evacuation shelter would be outside of any town limits, she reasoned to herself. Then, looking towards where the road banked slightly as though to hide her query from her, she saw it.

It was a square, squat building, walls plain and white. A small antenna sat atop a series of metal boxes she’d seen sticking out of the tops of other buildings like this, which another ping of her magic-jacked radio pointed directly at, indicating the source was in fact before her eyes. A flat blue pane of something glassy sat at a 45 degree, which Twilight did not know anything about and thought little of. The building had 4 entrances, one on each side, all identical: one door, flanked by a window on each side. Each door was closed, and no one was visible from outside, nor did anyone emerge as Twilight circled continually overhead.

This is it. Twilight’s heart pounded in her chest as she lost altitude with every lap she did of the structure’s perimeter. There was a pile of ash in the street, just outside the building, plus what looked like a pair of discarded tin cans.

What do I say? I’m a pony, and humans don’t know anything about ponies! Should I stay hidden and talk from afar? Will they- oh no, what if they think I’m some magical monster like the giant bugs or something? I can’t surprise them, they might get scared and try to run, or think they should protect themselves! Should I have a gift? A speech? Should I- should I just knock?

Twilight realized that she had landed, and was simply staring at the door, unmoving. She shifted her weight back and forth between her legs nervously.

I guess I just knock. Monsters don’t knock at the door and politely ask for entry, right?

…

Unless it’s a vampire.

...

Just knock on the stupid door or you’ll be standing here all day.

Twilight raised a slightly quaking hoof, and lightly knocked it against the wooden door. She cleared her throat, and called out in an uncertain voice: “Hello?”

Several seconds passed by.

Twilight chewed on her lip as she awaited an answer that didn’t seem to be coming. She knocked again, a bit louder, and called out equally louder: “Hello? Is anyone here?”

As before, no response.

Twilight waited another ten seconds. When that arbitrary time period elapsed, Twilight knocked again, though rather than call out immediately, her horn glowed in unison with the doorknob, which turned and gently nudged open the door, through which she poked her head.

The room was dark, save only for what light came in through the door she had just opened. The windows had all their curtains closed, casting the building in thick shadows that made it hard to see across the room. The only source of light here was a dim monitor in the corner, bearing something that Twilight could not see clearly at this distance.

Twilight closed her eyes very briefly, and when she opened them again, the room was aglow and pink-tinted. She could see now the benches in the middle of the room, and the lockers against the far wall, but nothing else. No humans.

“Hello?” Gentle sounds of hooves against wood floor could faintly be heard now, as Twilight creeped inside. “Um- I should warn you that I look a little, uh..." You're a princess. Quit stammering like a schoolfilly! "I'm not what you're used to seeing, I know, but I promise I'm friendly, and I'm here because I want to help. My name is Twilight, and I'm...um...hello? Anyone?"

The top floor seemed completely empty. Twilight found the stairs down, and she followed them to the basement. There were even more rows benches down here, lining every wall that wrapped around the room that ended in a pair of doors, leading to a bathroom on each side. In one corner of the room, a large pile of clothes and blankets was assembled in what Twilight could only guess was an attempt at bedding, given every other surface in this structure seemed remarkably uncomfortable to lay on.

Somebody definitely was here at some point, but they didn't seem to be here now.

Desperation began to rise, and Twilight clopped back upstairs quickly to begin searching again, just in time for darkness to close in unexpectedly. ”Stupid light!” she snarled, leering venomously up at her horn.

It was in that darkness that the bulky computer in the corner once again caught Twilight’s eye, and she homed in on it, choosing to focus on her task than allow her despair and frustration to distract her further. Clearly no one was here, so she should investigate.

The computer on the desk was a bit taller than she was; Twilight had to prop up onto her hind legs, front ones resting against the table the monitor sat atop so that she could view the screen.

>Contact us

REFUGEE CENTER FOUND! IF YOU HAVE ANY FEEDBACK CONCERNING YOUR VISIT PLEASE CONTACT THE DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE.
THE LOCAL OFFICE CAN BE REACHED BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9AM AND 4PM AT 555-0164.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH SOMEONE IN PERSON OR WOULD LIKE TO WRITE US A LETTER PLEASE SEND IT TO...

The address that came next meant little to Twilight, but this piece of information itself sent the gears in her head into full swing. Her eyes flicked downwards - she hadn't noticed the piece of paper stuck to the table in the darkness, but she was propped against the desk, and a subtle movement caused it to make a tiny noise, which got her attention. It, too, bore text, written in ink with an especially fancy text that almost seemed equal parts text and picture:

The blankets and jackets are all downstairs, we slept on them. I suggest doing the same, it's actually quite cozy. There's not much water left. Don't even bother with the protein bars unless you're actually starving, they taste like hate mail from death itself, and the prose isn't even that good. Bowls and things are in the cupboard, anything else is in the endmost locker on the right

In case the screen dies or something, the computer says there's a refugee center to the east, and we're going there. Follow the road, it's a few miles' hike

Twilight's face split into a wide grin. There were no humans here, but the trail had been laid out for her to find them. A refugee center, with notice on how to reach them posted here...and surely in other shelters just like this one. That meant there would be a lot of humans coming in from all over.

Good thing I'm so used to reading fancy script from Rarity, or I might not have been able to read this.

Twilight wasted no more time in this building. She galloped out the door and thrust her wings as hard as she may, circling around till she was flying eastwards, hope shining in her heart nearly as bright as the sun where it found a hole in the clouds to show her the way.

Rarity had known that some amount of chasing Sweetie Belle was going to be necessary, considering the rate of whining during this last hour or so, but if there was somewhere that Rarity wanted to follow her less, it was hard to beat a dump. The girl had charged ahead in spite of all protest, now amidst the piles of metal and debris, calling back excitedly about what treasures were beyond Rarity's vision where she hovered at the entrance, and boy was she not in the mood for it.

"Get out where I can see you right now!"

"But there's so much cool stuff over here! Look, I found a-"

"Sweetie, I am not playing," said Rarity as she teetered precariously on losing her cool. "Get over here, now."

The protests stopped, though a disappointed "aww" could be heard. Sweetie came back into view from around the scrap house, dragging something bulky and rectangular along with her. Upon seeing her sibling's expression, she thought better of showing off the old microwave, and slunk back to her side, looking increasingly like a kicked puppy the closer she got. "Sorry."

Rarity huffed, and bent down to inspect Sweetie for any sign of injury; no doubt that any cut here would get horribly infected. "A dump? Seriously? That is where you decided to go investigating?"

"It's not a dump," she protested, though grew meek again at Rarity's scalding look. "It's not, though...it's a scrap yard, that's different. It doesn't stink as bad."

"That doesn't make it any safer!" Confident she wasn't going to die horribly of blood poisoning or some such other terrible thing, Rarity went to try to rise, but upon seeing her sister's expression, she stayed at Sweetie's level. With a slow breath in, she began, calmly, "Please don't look at me like that, Sweetie Belle. I'm not angry, I'm just...you scared me when you did that. Please stick close to me when we're traveling, alright? If you absolutely must investigate something, at least stay with me so that we can see if there's anything dangerous, or let me check for you. Can you imagine if there had been one of those junkyard dogs in here when you ran ahead? Imagine a zombie junkyard dog."

"I'm sorry," Sweetie whimpered. Her eyes were big and glistening with unshed tears.

"It's alright," Rarity said, now much more softly. "You're safe, and that's all I was worried about. I just want to protect you."

Sweetie didn't say anything. Rarity didn't either, simply crouching beside her sister as she got her composure back together. There was a little sniffling, and a few tears, but a few gentle reminders that she wasn't angry and that she forgave her helped push those tears away. She even let her show off the derelict microwave she had found. Rarity didn't find it particularly enjoyable, what with how filthy it was from whatever pile it'd been fished from, but it helped to get Sweetie's mind off the upset, and that's all she cared about.

A few minutes later (and after a much-needed hand-scrubbing with a rag, eugh), Rarity limped her way out of the scrap yard with her sister beside her, stepping around the thin metal barrier erected around it and back onto the road, where their walk could resume. "I still don't quite know what you were thinking."

"I was thinking, 'Ooh, junk!' And then I ran at it because there's cool stuff in scrap yards sometimes. Scootaloo used to find really shiny bits of copper in places like this, and it was really cool! I was hoping I could find something like that."

"There's some novelty in it, I suppose," Rarity relented slightly, "but you can do a lot better than a scrap yard if you wanted to find something shiny and pretty. If you want some high-grade copper or something, we should look for a jewelry store, or a metalworki-"

A shape emerged around the other side of the wall. It felt like time went into slow motion as Rarity saw it.

It was tall, standing nearly two heads above Rarity, colored a faded pink like fresh scar tissue. Even just 15 meters away, it was hard to tell what shape it even was, as it seemed to be teeming with innumerable moving bits on the ends of other moving bits; many tiny limbs extended from an ill-defined torso, each ending in a straight, sharp claw vaguely reminiscent of a pair of scissors. If you squinted, it was humanoid in the loosest of senses, but that was primarily because of its two largest segmented, crustacean-like limbs easily identifiable as arms, each ending in elongated pincers like the claws of a lobster. From its back emerged a pair of wings, filled with holes and wires of flesh and looking altogether useless for purposes of flying. Its head was triangular, made up of innumerable tendrils that made it look almost like a particularly dense forest of sea anemones.

Rarity had been afraid before, but the sensation that coursed through her at the sight of this nameless thing felt like something completely new, something ancient. A dull pain announced itself in the back of Rarity's skull, and a shrill tickle from somewhere in her brain evoked a pulse of primal terror she didn't think she was capable of feeling. Even in this slow-motion state, Rarity felt her heart begin to beat against the inside of her ribs like a carpenter nailing shut the door to her soul.

It moved. Rarity grabbed Sweetie's arm and sprinted.

There were no thoughts, just running, pain in her leg completely forgotten - it barely felt like her own. Time meant nothing, only motion. Rarity flicked a glance over her shoulder, and she found the thing no farther away than previous, scuttling towards them both with an eerie levelness in its movement, like gravity itself came second to whatever otherworldly grace it carried itself with.

It's not of this world, her mind screamed, louder than her own thoughts, overriding them. It didn't belong, and it was wrong, horribly, inconceivably, simply wrong.

The road stretched ahead, bereft of any wrecks for seemingly miles, and the field yawned around them, promising no cover or breaks in line of sight. There wasn't anywhere to run to, and as the fire began to grow in her lungs while the creature fell no further behind, Rarity realized there would be no escape. It'd be a fight.

Rarity released Sweetie's arm, the other hand finding the shovel. "Keep running."

"But-"

"KEEP! RUNNING!"

Rarity twisted around suddenly, heels scraping loudly against the asphalt, and she lunged, swinging the shovel as hard as she could towards what she could only guess was meant to be its head.

It wasn't like the zombies, which would have simply taken the blow. Instead, it threw up one of its larger arms in anticipation of the strike, catching the shovel head with its "forearm" - it was a scrawny limb, no thicker than a human's, but apparently the chitin was tough enough to take the strike directly, the chnk of metal accompanied with by sound of crackling seashells. As part of the same movement, its other larger arm lanced out and latched onto the shovel, where the wood and steel met. Before she could react, the tool was ripped it from her grasp. It took only an instant for its left wing to retract before the bloodstained shovel was thrown backwards behind it - the wing folded back into place once it passed, like a curtain falling on an act that had concluded.

Rarity took a few stumbling steps back. Wood and metal clattered loudly to the asphalt several meters away, on the other side of the thing. It may as well have been miles.

In that moment, Rarity knew that she was going to die.

The creature advanced, nearly levitating towards her atop its many gangly, impossibly composed talons. Rarity found no recourse available, no good options to pursue, and when it launched an armlike claw at her, she could only try to dodge. It grazed her left arm, its massive claw like a dulled razor, but still managing to slice straight through her blazer and into the skin beneath. Another blow came from the opposite arm, and she failed to dodge this one at all, taking a claw to the head- the world turned and twisted, and Rarity saw stars as she tried to turn and flee.

A branding iron jabbed into the middle of her back, and Rarity let out a bloodcurdling shriek like she'd never emitted before. The force of it spun her around partway, and midway through her stumble, a claw fired like a bullet and caught her right in the throat, clamping it firmly shut. It burned terribly where it cut, and she felt blood rolling down her neck to her collarbone, but it was as though she had been set beneath a guillotine that simply wasn't sharp enough to finish the job.

It wasn't going to make this fast, she realized. And it didn't.

Another branding iron embedded itself in Rarity's side where she couldn't see, and she tried to scream, tried so hard to scream past the claw holding her windpipe shut, but nothing escaped her increasingly reddening lips but silent gagging. The sound of scraping and clicking carapace was almost deafening in her left ear as she was pulled in towards it, and she felt the red-hot pain of her legs and side being stabbed and cut by what could have been dozens of tinier, scalpel-sharp claws and graspers. It was like being lowered into a woodchipper made of dozens of starving crustaceans.

Blood-slick, numb fingers tried desperately to gain purchase on the appendage clamped around her throat, slipping and fumbling on the sleek carapace of the claw, instead gripping its wrist as tight as she possibly could, trying to wrench it free, only proceeding to cut open her hands on its jagged carapace. One limb reached around and yanked her one arm out to its full length by the wrist, slicing it open as it did so. Another limb appeared, grasping just above the elbow; as she watched, a third limb came forward and placed itself neatly in the centermost point of her forearm where the others held it out. In an elegantly simple motion, like breaking a dry twig held taut, it pushed in the center. The radius and ulna beneath her skin, in perfect unison, snapped in twain.

Rarity's vision clouded over. Vomit kicked against the vice on her throat, begging for release, and she tried so hard to scream it felt like her windpipe would blow open from the pressure. Her face burned so much that it might begin to boil, her lungs were a roaring inferno, but it didn't stop. Her belly felt like Hell itself had colonized it, and she couldn't tell what was happening, just that it was pure pain. Everything was pain. She hurt more than she'd ever hurt before, indescribably hurting, and there was no way out. None at all. Just more pain.

So this is how it ends, Rarity thought. She felt far away, somehow, and it while it didn't hurt any less, it was harder to keep track of it. I feel like I didn't deserve this...but I guess it is the end of the world, after all. We can't all pass in our sleep, surrounded by friends and family.

As the tunnel before her grew longer and darker, Rarity found it hard to have too many regrets. So much was out of her control, and she understood that, as much as she wished it wasn't. She had done her best with the hand she'd been dealt, and she had given everything to keep close and safe the one thing that she had left in this world, and she'd done that well, all things considered. If there was anything she regretted, it was not being able to see her friends again, or at least give them a proper memorial in a holy place, even if it meant creating one, just for them. If there were any in this world who deserved it, it was them.

She wondered if she'd be mourned, but the thoughts were too distant now, being stretched down the tunnel so far that she could no longer hear them. It didn't matter anyway.

There was that light she'd always heard about. Magenta light shone down on her, and it was beautiful...

Twilight didn't think when she saw what she did. Her forehead burned with the energy that surged to her horn, and it erupted- and then again, and again, and again.

From nearly a hundred meters away and closing rapidly, pink comets rained down from the sky, blowing plumes of dirt up like mortar shells. The thing, whatever it was, appeared smart enough to know to dodge, though to Twilight's horror, it did not release its victim as it did so, continuing to yank them around by the throat as beams blasted the ground around it and made shrapnel out of asphalt. To her relief, none of them struck, but just because it had a hostage didn't make it safe from her wrath.

The Princess of Friendship streaked in like a lavender missile. The space between them was closing in at a breakneck pace, and she wasn't slowing down, headed straight for it. The thing's full focus was on her now, and it was visibly anticipating her trajectory, bracing itself before - as she thought it might - throwing itself out of the way at the last possible second. That was what Twilight was counting on.

On the final approach, Twilight twisted in the air, midway through a corkscrew, and for a fraction of a moment, she was just centimeters from it. Her head was tucked down, as though in anticipation of an impact, but that was not the case - her horn was aimed in the direction it would be in when she passed it, blazing as it held back another energy burst until what she felt to be just...the right...instant.

Twilight was momentarily blinded with her own light. The shockwave of the beam's impact blew her head back hard enough that it nearly threw her into a flip, and she had to lash out her wings wildly to keep her bold trajectory from becoming a bone-shattering collision in the middle of a shallow crater. She barely managed to hold it together, and as she circled back around in a dangerously tight arc, the g-forces slammed her organs against the underside of her ribs, stabbing her guts with dozens of needles.

For just a second or two, Twilight Sparkle got a chance to fully appreciate what she'd wrought.

She'd nearly been touching the thing with her horn when she fired, and it had almost blown the spindly creature in half. Dozens of tiny, wire-thin limbs lay scattered across the ground like pink splinters, and the arm grasping its victim was completely removed, along with the rest of its shoulder and part of its midsection, which hung from it like strands of semi-congealed mucus caked in broken flesh-colored porcelain. Pale green blood was sprayed out across the asphalt, painfully visible in the morning light.

The thing was scrambling to pick itself off the ground as Twilight came in for a second pass, surprisingly animate for the trauma it had just suffered. It was not nearly animate enough to save its life.

Twilight's horn lit up once more. A magical laser lanced forth, too fast to track at this range, and found the creature's upper torso. Its top half vanished in a tiny magical sun, which vanished as quickly as it appeared, parting to allow a plume of shell shards and sickly lime ichor to rain down. The streaks of gore spread up the road it died on in a nearly 10-meter cone when the last of the chunks came to rest.

The instant Twilight registered the kill, she flared her wings and flapped them forward hard - pain lanced up each limb into her spine, making her eyes water, but she did not care. Her hooves hit the ground hard and barely kept her upright before she was galloping as fast as she may to the place where the human had fallen.

But it wasn't just any human. Twilight knew exactly who this was, and she had never been so afraid to recognize someone so close to her.

"RARITY!"