EVERFREE: A Post-Skaian Story

"Question 123A, section IV: are there any food accommodations that ponies should be aware of for humans? Do you eat anything that ponies do not?"
You've been at this for hours now. Your head is clutched in your hands. You're about to snap. You suddenly look up and stare this mare down and bare your teeth.
"M E A T." You growl. Heartstrings reacts appropriately this time, abject concern and wariness. You feel yourself growing worked up, escalating from agitation to rage. The other lady, Sweetie Drops, is getting ready to fight. You can feel her heart quickening.
"We ate SO much meat. Fish. Cows. Chicken. Pigs. Mixtures of meat! Buffalo! Bear! Deers! Cats! Dogs! If it got bad enough, we ate EACH OTHER! There were entire industries dedicated to meat!! And buddy, I haven't eaten any meat in a long damn time! So if you don't step the fuck off, I'M GOING TO-"

=> C-SIDE: TAKE OVER NOW

You reach out from the back of Delta's mind and yank her back, sending your collective body into the seat as your mind takes over. Disco II flashes, and you're now dressed as you'd usually look.
"Holy fuck sorry I didn't realize how agitated Delta was until I heard her yelling. I'm good. We're good. Sorry about that." You pepper the mare in apologies. She blinks at you. Sunset also blinks at you. Wait, Sunset Shimmer is here? You guess she's here. You're not sure why, Delta isn't in much of a state to fill you in, and your memories tend to be spotty unless you're both at the front of the mind.

"Did- are you- are you somepony else? Your voice is different." Lyra asks you. "Your clothes are different!"
"Uh- oh, god, yeah. Multiple personality disorder. C-Side Disco now, not Delta Carol. As for the clothes - it's a Skaia thing."
She grins, and flips through her paperwork.
"Okay! 'Question number 302a: Do you have any illnesses or disorders that affect your mental health or stability? MPD'..." she jots down that, then looks back up at you. "Anything else?"
"Depression. Anxiety. Probably PTSD?" You answer. "You know, you took my headmates freakout in stride pretty well."

Lyra beams at you. "Don't worry about me, I've dealt with some real pieces of work on this job. Honestly, I expected you to snap way earlier. This questionnaire tests for irritability and hostility in the face of mundanity, along with a lot of other things." She flips through the paperwork, and writes down, "Outburst at question 123A-IV.. swiftly deescalated by alter C-Side Disco.. Okay! You good to pick up where we left off?"
"Actually.. if it's all the same with you, Miss Heartstrings, I haven't gotten much sleep in the past day. We gotta get some shut eye. Can we get this done later?"

She nods, writes down one last note and starts magically packing up her assortments of paper and writing tools. She returns to Bon Bon, who is still warily brandishing a grappling hook and aiming squarely at you. It takes a bit of reassurance to get her to calm down.
Your headmate really isn't helping your reputation, it seems. You curl up into a ball on your seat and get comfy..

=>

You step off the train, and immediately, your stomach drops in fear.
It was snowing.

No, no, this wasn't apocalyptic snow, but you'd been asleep for so long you didn't realize you crossed an entire climate area overnight. Damn, these ponies know how to make the trains run.
Regardless, you know where you are - the Crystal Empire sure does live up to the name.
This shit is more Crystal than that blue lady from Star Fox.

The cold bites at your fingers, and your initial panic returns. You hate the cold. A lot. Not even just because of the fact that it's how your world ended, the snow is just a miserable fucking thing to trudge through.
Your body shivers violently, and you clutch your arms tight to your chest. You summon your cards and shuffle through them, looking for the right card. The rest of the group observes you with a bit of trepidation.
A really, really long song starts to play in your head. And it's the entire thing.
Delta groans. You mutter the lyrics, and pull out your thick winter jacket from your Karaoke Fetch Modus.
"Ain't getting out of here alive / Ice V has arrived.."
Lyra points up at your fetch modus with shock and wonder. "What is that?"
You wave her off. "I'll tell you about it later. We got hotter irons in the fire." You throw the coat on over your chest and zip it up.

=>

The group was about to ask the locals if they had seen any suspicious activity when Sunset pointed at the mountain range.
"Holy Toledo..." Lyra peered over her glasses.
"Looks like we found our target." Sunset answered.
In the distance, one of the higher mountain peaks was covered in a slick, gooey substance, like tar or oil, perhaps both, and maybe more. The stench itself could be picked up on from where the group stood, and CD grimaced.

"Augh, it smells like a junkyard."
"..What kind of horrific junkyards have you been to?" Sunset asked.
"Human ones." C-Side replied, and she began to walk in the direction of the mountain.
"Hay! Hold on!" Sunset shouted as she moved to catch up with the human, getting in the way to stop her. "I'm gonna need some details here. What was usually in those junkyards? And how come they're showing up on that mountain?"
C-Side gave a groan. "Well, if you HAVE to know, a lot of electronic and mechanical waste. Crude oil, rusted metal, chemical waste and runoff.. Real poisonous shit."

"MORE Details! I can't work with just 'chemical waste' and 'crude oils'!! That can mean so many different things, and if we walk in preparing for acids and get mercury, we'd be screwed!!" Sunset stamped a hoof on the ground.
"Dude-" She looked over to Sunset. "I really can't say. It was just fucked. Humans were not good at handling chemical waste. We had catastrophic spills every other year, becaus-"
"Okay, FINE! Fine! Let's go with a physically impossible hodgepodge of sludge. Now WHY are they showing up on the mountain?!"

"That, I can answer. It's the effect of one of the Dark Hearts, which were.. involved in a quest I had before coming here. Each one had some unique weird aura around it that made it dangerous to approach. This one was just.. The Sludge™."
"The.. Sludge, TM?"
"You didn't want it anywhere on you. It ate through skin like salt in water. You couldn't breathe it in, or else you'd pass out from the fumes really quickly. And then die. Obviously."
"Okay, see, now we're going somewhere. We're gonna need hazmats and gas masks."
You huff a sigh. "Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have an HEV suit lying around."
"A what?"
"H.E.V. Hazardous EnVironment suit. It'd be perfect for a situation like this.. I could alchemize one if we had a picture of it.."
CD began to pace back and forth, looking through her inventory. Sunset peered up at the cards, trying to figure what each object was.

Lyra and Bon Bon watched their charges brainstorm from a few meters away. Lyra idly chowed down on a recently purchased bowl of street food, occasionally spilling some on her freshly laundered suit.
"Couldn't we get hazmat equipment from our connections with the Crystal Empire?"
"No." Bon Bon answered.
"Why not?"
"We're not supposed to help them."
"Why not?" Lyra asked again, more pointedly.
"Because we were ordered not to. Specifically."
"Ugh, come on, Bon. Every time we blindly follow orders, somepony gets hurt. Don't you remember Operation Cosmic Crisp?"
Bon Bon grimaced. "Lyra! I thought we agreed to NEVER talk about Operation Cosmic Crisp again!"
"I'm not talking about it, I'm using it as relevant intel! My point being that we should help them, even if that goes against the will of our superiors!"
"Okay, fine. YOU can help them. But don't say I didn't warn you. The higher ups are gonna know we asked for equipment."
"I know." Lyra confidently called in to the magical radio tucked away in her suit jacket. "Agent Heartstrings reporting in and requesting mission critical equipment."

It took a minute, but someone from HQ responded.
"That is a 10-4, Heartstrings.. Viquemare would like to know what equipment is necessary and why?"
"Reconnaissance reports show high quantities of nonspecific toxic substances currently covering a mountain near the Crystal Empire capital. Said mountain is believed to contain Anomaly One, which will be unobtainable without proper hazmat equipment."

There was silence for a bit.
"Anomaly Zero will have to obtain her own equipment, but the Crystal Guard may be able to supply some to you, Agent Drops, and the Assistant in short order. A message informing them of this request shall be sent shortly."
"Ten four, Heartstrings out." She clicked off the radio with a flair.
"Since when did you know comms babble so well?" Bon Bon smiled.
"I learned from the best!" Lyra joked, gently elbowing her partner with a wink.

CD was suddenly behind the two agents. She was keeping quiet, but observing. Bon Bon tensed up when she noticed her presence.
"WOAH!" Lyra yelped. "Hey, maybe talk next time?! Don't sneak up on us like that!"
"You were on the phone. I don't interrupt folks on the phone. It's rude. Anyways, you guys got some hazmat gear?"
"Uhm.. yeah, but not for you. I mean, not for any malevolent reasons, you're just not a pony."
C-Side's eye twitched. "Yeah, that's fine - I just need to borrow one for like a minute."

=>

A massive machine crunched into the ground as CD awkwardly read off the lyrics on the captchalogue card. C-Side at least had the courtesy to explain what a fetch modus was at all, going into a minor lecture about the different kinds of modi that existed, and the intricacies of why almost each modus was a bitch to use.

For starters, she used the words "fetch modus", "captchalogue", and "inventory" interchangeably, and furthermore explained that certain modi can be weaponized in combat by hurling items at enemies from the card.
Lyra dutifully took notes on everything. And then she asked the question that C-Side had been dreading.
"So... what's yours, then?"
"Ugh. Karaoke." CD answered. Sunset giggled.
"But you don't sing. You just mutter the lyrics?" Lyra said, confused.
"Yeah." C-Side answered. "It's a long story."

She captchalogued a hazmat suit, and flipped the card over to show a strange sequence of numbers and letters. She pressed those numbers into a blank card, which punched an array of holes in it. She then dug around through her inventory and pulled out another card with one of her human outfits inside it.
She overlapped the elements of each one, represented by an && symbol on the machine she was working with, and produced a fresh suit that, despite its gaudy appearance, would definitely protect her body from the toxins. The pony head even remained, which made her look like some weird bipedal pony when she had it on.
And just like that, she handed the original suit back to Lyra.

"Sweet Celestia! How did you get your hooves on this technology?" Lyra was extremely fascinated, and Sunset wasn't far behind. "Captchalogue cards, and this.. big machine! What did you call it, an alchemiter?"
"It's a long story." C-Side answered as she captchalogued the outfit.
"You keep saying that!"
"Well, it is!"
"Alright, wiseguy, why don't you explain it on the way to the mountain!" Sunset taunted.

=> Years in the past, by a vaguely small yet unknown amount..

Fetch modi were a new invention. A finicky one, at that. Some Homestuck fan went into the field of quantum coding and came out the other end with the first ever successful instance of what was essentially a pocket dimension. And instead of selling it off to a military junction, she marketed it to civilians first and foremost, especially other fans of Homestuck who still couldn't get that narrative out of their head.
It was like a resurgence of the HTML geocities craze, where people were showing off their custom made modes of captchaloging, comparing notes and trying to figure out what the best method would be for storing bigger or more items, preferably both.

Ours was a relatively simple number. The larger or more numerous items got longer song lyrics, which needed to be sung to retrieve.
Our roommate was Lune Cobalt, and she chose something relatively simple, mimicking the file explorer that came standard with any computer. Yes, I know, your kind doesn't have computers. That's a whole other can of worms that I don't wanna open right now, so just imagine a book made of electricity that had access to a lot of human knowledge.

Right. So that's where captchalogue cards came from. As for the alchemy machine..

The country I lived in, the United States, had befallen a snowstorm like nothing seen before, and it had completely fucked everything up.
I had been stuck at home for weeks. A huge blizzard made it impossible to actually drive with our rickety ass van, which made food delivery equally as hard, and it sure didn't help that we lost our job and funds were dwindling on the daily.
With most people unable to leave their homes, those who could suddenly became true essential workers. A violent economic struggle began to form between union reps and the companies responsible for coordinating the deliveries to people's houses. All you could really do was sit back, play video games, and hope that your money outlasted the blizzard.

We had just downloaded a game called DNGEON onto our computer, a game that our friend Pine was extremely adamant on playing. We hooked up to one of our friends sessions. She was the host, we were the client. And then, something rumbled near our room, shaking the floor. We went out into our apartment to investigate, and Lune was playing the game with us, so she tagged along. We all headed downstairs, and right there - my heart stopped, and I grew sick with dread when we saw that mechanism of doom in our living room.
It was a fucking alchemiter from Homestuck.
I remember just whimpering, in horror, "No. Oh gods, no. Why? Why us?"

I spent as much time as I could saying goodbye to everyone I ever knew, knowing what was coming next for them. Miserable, freezing deaths that couldn't be avoided, wouldn't be avoided. Even people I hadn't been particularly fond of, for one reason or another, like family, all received heartfelt truthful messages. "Goodbye," I ended each ranting departure, "I'll miss you."
Some tried to call, some texted. Some never gave a response. Some proclaimed their love for me. Some spoke the truth about how much they detested me and people like me. Some felt like I was acting irrationally, like it wasn't the end of the world.
I cried, either way, for all of them.

=>

"Hey, wait, you just skipped over how you got the technology!!" Bon Bon protested.
Lyra looked up from her notes. "Huh? No, she got it from the cursed game that she and her friends were playing!"
"How can a game make items appear in the real world like that??"
"Cursed. Game." Lyra responded, adding a bit of dramatic flair to her enunciation.
Bon Bon eyed up CD. "And what was with the sob story at the end there?"
Sunset nodded. "You did kind of vaguely ramble about what happened to you."
CD just shrugged. "That's what got us the alchemiter. Dunno what to tell you. You had to use it to get into the medium and escape.. the apocalypse."
Bon Bon grimaced. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Seriously."

The gang had taken shelter inside a cave, with the mountain not too far away. The noxious fumes had already begun to grow unbearable, and so everyone had taken the chance to put on their protective gear before they pressed onward. They sat in a circle, tending to a fire that didn't need to be burning bright, since the group was already bundled up, with the hazmat suits layered on top.

"What's Homestuck?" Sunset asked.
CD grimaced and flinched. "It's.. a long story."
"Again, you keep saying that!" Lyra said.
"No, we're serious this time. Homestuck is a comic that was like.. literally, a million or so words long. Twilight would get a kick out of it."
"Well, what's it about? Maybe I read some of it." Sunset offered.
"You.. definitely did not read it."
"Try me."
"Four kids play a computer game together, said computer game ends the world, and they have to team up with an alien species to survive freakish enemies and the perils of paradox space in order to create a new universe?"
"...Nnnno. Definitely haven't read it. It would've stuck with me for sure."
CD chuckled. "Yeah, so imagine my horror when that fiction became a reality for me."

Bon Bon jerked to attention for a moment. "WAIT A MINUTE- No. N-nevermind."
CD stared at her with a sort of curious expression, and then looked around, as if looking for something, then back to her. "What? What's up?"
"No, nevermind, it'll sound insane if I say it out loud." She waved a hoof and looked away, deep in thought.
"Compared to everything else I've been saying today?" C-Side countered. Bon Bon didn't reply for a minute.
"You're allowed to say insane roadapples, Disco. I'd prefer to at least stay somewhat sane."
Heartstrings snickered. After a while, the group decided they'd rested for long enough, and continued up the mountain.