Darkness Fell.by XTech309ChaptersTrapped.Hide and SeekDeliriumEpilogue: A World Torn ApartTrapped."COME ON, FASTER!" Flash called out to the four following behind him. He spared a quick glance behind him, ensuring that his friends weren't being left behind as they ran, barely outrunning the disfigured remnants of their classmates following closely behind them. He looked back ahead, searching for someplace they could hide. The group was tiring quickly from so much running, and if they didn't shake their pursuers soon they'd be done for. "Look! Over there!" He heard Bon Bon yell, he looked behind himself again to see her pointing a finger towards a towering office building quickly coming into view. Strangely enough, it was relatively free of the black, glitch-like substance that had started this nightmare that the group found themselves in, but that made it all the more appealing as an escape route. Using up the last of his energy, Flash managed to force his burning legs to move quicker in order to get there first. The quicker he got there, the quicker he could hold the door open for his friends and close it before those things followed them inside. Flash made it to the door, throwing it open and getting himself inside before risking a look back at his fellow survivors. Trixie made it inside first, followed quickly by Wallflower and Bon Bon. Sweet Leaf brought up the rear after them, just barely keeping pace enough to avoid being grabbed by the corrupted visage of Cherilee. Flash slammed the door shut as soon as they had all made it inside, throwing himself against the door as their disfigured classmates attempted to follow them in. The door bent inward under the pressure of the monsters that used to be their classmates trying to force their way inside. "Little help here?!" Flash called as he struggled with the door, feeling like at any moment it would give way and they'd all be done for. "Here!" Wallflower said from behind him, running up with a chair. She bent down under Flash, propping the chair under the doorknob as a makeshift barricade. The two stepped back, watching cautiously as the door held, but just barely. Their relief was short-lived, however, as only a moment later the sound of glass shattering echoed throughout the room, followed by a malformed, corruption-covered limb forcing its way in through a window. "Quick! Upstairs!" Trixie yelled from behind them. Flash looked back to see where she was referring to. They were currently in the reception area of the building, chairs and paintings dotted all along the walls with a receptionist's desk at the very back center of the room. At either end of the reception desk the room faded into two long hallways, with signs posted beside each one indicating where they lead. Flash noticed the word Stairs on the sign for the left hallway, and without wasting another moment, took off in that direction, his friends following close behind. The sound of more glass shattering pierced the air, followed by the horrifying sound of one of the things getting inside. Trixie turned back around, reaching into the right pocket of her jeans and pulling something out. She raised her hand high in the air, before throwing the object down, resulting in a large cloud of smoke appearing to cover their escape. They made it to the door leading to the stairwell, getting inside and closing the door behind them. As Flash was locking the door behind them, he saw Silver Spoon emerge from Trixie's smoke screen through the window. Like everyone else who had been corrupted, her eyes no longer had pupils, now just blank white voids. She was crawling around on all fours, making inhuman noises all the while the corruption dripped off of her everywhere possible, like she'd just gotten caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. She noticed Flash, lunging at the door like a cat trying to catch a mouse, crashing into it and falling backwards. Flash took this as his que to leave, taking off back up the stairs behind his friends. The group made it up a few flights of stairs, entering the first door they found once they thought they'd gotten far enough away. They now found themselves in the middle of a long hallway, on either side various doors leading to sections filled with office cubicles, breakrooms, etc, slumped up against either side trying to catch their breaths. None of them spoke for a while, their bodies utterly spent after the near-constant running they'd been doing since this all began. The corruption, as they had come to call it, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, taking Canterlot City completely by surprise. Most hadn't had time to react in the slightest before it claimed them, stripping them of any individuality they might have had and reducing them to little more than mindless, glitchy versions of their former selves, hellbent on further spreading the corruption as much as possible. In mere hours, the city had become utterly devoid of life, filled only with those abominations, and leaving what few survivors there were stranded with no way of escaping. This was the situation that Flash, Wallflower, Trixie, Sweet Leaf, and Bon Bon found themselves in, trapped inside a towering office building with no way out, the streets below swarming with their former classmates and teachers. Flash heard something across the hall. Raising his head, he spotted Sweet Leaf, crying with her head between her legs, Bon Bon trying to nonverbally comfort her by stroking her hair. "I- I don't get it." Sweet Leaf said between sobs. "W-what's going on?" "I don't know." Wallflower said. "I don't think any of us do." The remaining members of the group shook their heads solemnly. Flash took a deep breath before standing back up. "We don't have time to waste sitting around doing nothing. We need to start brainstorming if we want to keep surviving." He said, feigning confidence. In truth, he was just as terrified as the rest of them, but for the sake of survival, he wanted to be strong. Too many times now he'd see Sunset and her friends taking down magical threats without issue, the entire school viewing them almost as superheroes. Well, they were superheroes, technically, but that was besides the point. He'd always wanted to be able to take part in their adventures and experience that feeling of being looked up to, but never had the chance. That is, until now. His facade, to his surprise, worked, the others slowly but surely picking themselves up as well. "Flash is right." Bon Bon stated. "We've got to think of some kind of gameplan if we're to make ot out of this alive." "But how?" Wallflower asked, walking towards the left end of the hallway and looking out of a wall-sized window. "We've got to be like, five or six stories high, and those things are still down there on the lower floors." She paused for a second. "We're trapped." "Does anyone have a phone? Maybe we can call for help." Flash said. "Call who?" said Trixie. "I dunno! The cops? Sunset and her friends?" Trixie joined Wallflower at the window, gazing solemly at the ruins of Canterlot city, the buildings covered in corruption, flaming wreckages of cars and buildings scattered about the landscape, and groups of the affected stalking the streets below. "I don't think even they can save the day this time." Trixie finally said in a dejected tone. "Well we have to try. Does anyone have a working phone?" Flash asked the group. "Nope." Trixie said. "Yeah but it's dead." said Wallflower. "Mine too." Bon Bon replied. "Same." Sweet Leaf followed.' "I don't have one either." Flash said. "We need to find a way to charge a phone. I know calling for help is a long shot, but it's the only way we have at getting out of here safely." "I agree with Flash." Bon Bon said. "We need to get this place powered up. What if one of those things somehow manages to sneak inside? We won't be able to see it until it's too late if none of the lights are on." Flash's eyes opened wide at the realization that she was right. All they had for a light source was the full moon in the sky, and that was limited to rooms with windows that faced it. If one of them got in, they'd have no way of seeing it. "Bon Bon makes a good point, we need to get the power back on." "But how?" Trixie asked. "The power for the whole city is out!" "There has to be a backup generator of some kind somewhere, it's our only chance." "But how are we supposed to find one? We don't even know if this building has one, and if it does, this place is massive, it would take ages to search everywhere! Plus, if it's on the lower floors..." She trailed off. Before anyone could respond, a scream cut through the air, coming from Sweet Leaf. "Trixie! Your jacket!" Trixie was caught off guard for a second, before looking down and spotting a dark splotch of corruption on her jacket, glitching and misfiring against the dark blue of her jacket. She screamed too, before ripping the jacket off as quickly as she could. The jacket came to rest on the floor between the feet of the four survivors, Trixie now leaned up against a wall hyperventilating. "Trixie! Are you okay?!" Flash asked in a panic. Trixie shot him a quick glance, before moving her gaze down to her body, quickly scanning her front half before pushing herself off the wall and spinning around to give everyone a chance to look her over. Thankfully, none of it had gotten on her. "Holy shit." Wallflower said after a few seconds of silence. "That was close." "Well, now we know that whatever that stuff is can only hurt you if it gets on your skin." Bon Bon said. "We shouldn't underestimate how important what just happened was." The groups eyes went back down to Trixie's jacket laying on the floor. As if on que, something started moving under it, and a few seconds later the blob of corruption made its way out, coming to a stop a few inches onto the floor. It continued glitching and pixelating for a few seconds, then simply fading out of existence. "I think your jacket should be good now Trixie." Wallflower said uneasily amidst the dumbfounded gazes of everyone at what had just happened. Trixie made a small "Uh huh" noise while staring slack jawed at the floor. Flash cleared his throat. "We need to stay focused on getting the power on." "And how do you suppose we do that without it taking the entire night?" Bon Bon questioned. "We split up." "Split up? Are you insane?" Trixie replied in a harsh whisper. "Well how else can we search this place without it taking the whole night? The quicker we get this power situation over with the better, and..." He drifted off. "Besides, even as a group, I don't think we'd stand a chance against one of those things in a fight. If we split up, and one group gets attacked, it would give the other a chance to get away." "...Wow." Trixie replied again. Instead of verbally replying, Sweet Leaf and Bon Bon shot Flash the worst "are you serious?" look he'd ever seen. "As much as I hate to admit it, he's right." Wallflower said breaking the tension. "We aren't the Rainbooms, we don't have super-strength, super-speed, telekinesis or diamond shields to protect us if one of those things catches us, if we stay as one big group it'd just mean we all die at once, instead of what he's proposing giving at least some of us a chance if worst comes to worst. You all know that deep down, you just don't want to admit it." Bon Bon sighed. "Fine, how do you want to split up?" She said, still giving Flash a dirty look. "Found anything yet?" Trixie asked in a low whisper, just loud enough to be heard by Bon Bon on the other side of the large room of office cubbicles they were searching. "Hang on..." came Bon Bon's reply. "Bingo!" She said, in a much louder voice. "Shush!" Trixie whispered back in a rush. "Sorry! I found a pair of Flashlight's!" "Wait, really?" "Yeah, meet me in the center of the room!" Trixie turned away from the large set of office cabinets she was searching in one of the cubicles up against the wall, grabbing her jacket which was hanging from it while doing so. She was still hesitant about putting it back on, but at the same time, without it all she had as "protection" from that stuff if it got on her was her undershirt, which only covered her midsection and not her arms. In the end, they had decided to split into one group of three and one group of two, Trixie and Bon Bon being the latter, assigned to the upper floors of the building, while the other three had gone down to the more dangerous lower floors. The full moon fortunately lit most of the rooms they searched, but the inner hallways and breakrooms remained too dark and inaccessible for the two. Until now, that is. Trixie met Bon Bon in the middle of the room, next to the massive window that spanned the entire outer wall, the moonlight shining in casting long shadows of the two reaching into the darkness beyond. Lo and behold, Bon Bon had in fact found flashlights, one for each of them. They each took one, before using their new tools to go deeper into the floor they were in. Bon Bon gasped. "Look!" she said, grabbing Trixie's shoulder and moving her to look in the direction she was facing. There, at the other end of the hallway they had just turned onto, lay a door with a sign that said Electrical plastered on the wall next to it. Bon Bon's flashlight focused on the sign. Without another word, the two ran over to it, eagerly grabbing the door handle and turning it- but nothing happened. "What are you waiting for? Open the door already!" Trixie whispered from behind Bon Bon, the former standing guard while the latter tried and failed at the door. "I can't! It's locked!" "What do you mean it's locked?!" "I mean we need a key!" Bon Bon said, focusing her flashlight on the doorknob, where a distinct keyhole could be made out. "You gotta be fucking kidding me." Trixie said upon turning around and seeing said keyhole. "No shit, now help me find the key." said Bon Bon, tunring away from the door and starting to head down another hallway. "Wait!" Trixie said abruptly. "Did you hear that?" "Hear what?" "Shh! Just be quiet for a second!" Bon Bon listened, and the two remained quiet for a moment. "You don't think..." Bon Bon said in a terrified tone. Screams, very distinct now in the dead silence that had taken over while neither of them were speaking, echoing up from the lower floors, exactly where Flash, Wallflower and Sweet Leaf had gone. "What do we do!" Trixie whispered in a panic. "We have to go help them!" Bon Bon replied, turning and starting to run in the direction of the stairwell. "What?! No!" Trixie said, grabbing Bon Bon by the shoulder and pulling her back. Bon Bon whirled back around angrily to face Trixie. "Are you seriously suggesting that we leave our friends to die?" "Are you seriously suggesting that we charge into one of those things without a weapon? Didn't you hear Flash? This is exactly why we split up!" "Do you really care that little about our classmates?!" "You know it's not like that!" Bon Bon glared back at Trixie, before turning once again to go help their friends, whose screams could still be faintly heard above their arguing. "Wait!" Trixie said, grabbing Bon Bon by the back of her shirt this time. "Please don't leave me! You're only going to get yourself killed, and then I'll be here all alone!" Bon Bon tore her shirt away from Trixie with an angry scowl, stomping off while feeling nothing but contempt for her classmate who was all too willing to abandon her fellow survivors, and who only wanted Bon Bon around for her own security. Before she could get even a few steps away, however, Bon Bon was once again held back by Trixie, who now had a vice-grip around the wrist of her right arm. "Wha- Trixie! Let go!!!" Bon Bon yelled in frustration. Before either of them could do anything else, a loud CRASH could be heard from the floor below them, followed by the familiar static nonsense that emanated from those affected by the corruption. The tension that had filled the air around the two survivors vanished in an instant, replaced once again with dread as they realized their fighting had alerted whatever one of those things had just gotten the other three. "What do we do?!?!" Trixie whisper-shouted. "Uh-" Bon Bon started. "Upstairs!" she said, looking up and realizing there were more floors above them. Without another word, to keep their noise level at a minimum, they quickly yet quietly made their way to the stairwell and then up one flight, the carpets running up the centers of each hallway aiding their escape. "Where are we now?" Trixie whispered, switching her flashlight back on and moving it around the hallways they were in while Bon Bon quietly shut and locked the stairway door behind them. She then turned her flashlight on and read the sign posted to the right side of the door. "This is the break room floor." She responded. "Okay, now what?" Trixie asked. "We need to find some kind of weapon." "What kind of weapons are we going to find in an office building?" "Well, unless you have any better ideas, I'd suggest we start searching." Bon Bon finished, turning and starting to head down the right hallway. Trixie stood still for a monent, mouth agape as she tried and failed to form a rebuttal to Bon Bon's statement, before finally following her. Like every other floor, the break room floor was nearly pitch-black anywhere that didn't have a window facing the moon, the duo still reliant on their flashlights to even see each other in the oppressing darkness. They stayed close, only splitting up to search rooms on either side of whatever hallway they were on, staying as quiet as possible while also listening intently for any signs of the corrupted. This process of searching continued for what felt like an eternity, before the silence was broken by a small scream from Trixie. Bon Bon rushed across the hallway to her companion, her flashlight nearly instantly lighting up what had made Trixie scream. A body. Upon first glance, it was glaring obvious that the person they were looking at was dead, but for how long they couldn't tell. They were dressed in a security guard uniform, a blood splatter going up the wall where they lay slumped against the wall. Bon Bon recognized the man but couldn’t remember his name. She felt a surge of guilt at this. Likely countless times she had passed this individual in various parts of the city, but she had never bothered to learn his name. And now here that same person was, almost certainly struck down by one of the unknown number of corrupted that stalked the building. It was hard to imagine for either of the two, that he had once been an individual, with hopes, dreams, loved ones, and now here he was, no more than another nameless victim claimed by the darkness that had taken over Canterlot City. Although still shocked at the distressing sight, Bon Bon realized soon after that this guy had exactly what they had been looking for: Weapons. Two, in fact, a handgun on one side of his holster, and a can of mace and a taser on the other. On top of that, there was also a set of keys brightly reflecting the light from their flashlights. "The electrical room..." Bon Bon thought to herself. Without wasting another moment, she rushed over to him and starting working the items that would be helping in their own escape and survival out of his belt and holsters. "What the hell are you doing?!" Trixie exclaimed in a loud whisper. "Look!" Bon Bon replied, shinning her light on the items she was obtaining. "Weapons! And the keys to the electrical room!" Trixie didn't respond, instead looking on in a mixture of shock and horror until Bon Bon tossed her the taser and mace, which she only caught by reflex. Bon Bon kept the handgun and keys for herself, making her way out of the room and back towards the stairwell. Trixie followed soon after getting over the shock of what had just happened. "Where are we going now?!" She asked. "We're going to Electrical to finally get the power on, after that, we're getting the hell out of here. We've got everything we need to make an escape, and I don't plan on missing out on it." Bon Bon said with renewed determination in her voice, followed by her switching the safety off on the handgun. "You don't plan on actually using that, right?" Trixie asked again with apprehension. "Trixie, this is probably the only thing in the world that could ever bring down one of those things, of course I'm going to use it." "But it doesn't have a silencer! What do you think's gonna happen when that thing goes off! It'll-" She said, but was cut off. The two stopped in their tracks at the sound of disembodied laugher eminating from behind them. The two spun on a dime, shining the light of their flashlights in the direction it had come from. "H͇̋e̼͠ll̪̚o, ̦̕s-̗͑s̬̕-̜́s-ś̳t̨̉u̝͋d̮̐e̜͑nt̙̑s!" Cherilee said. Hide and Seek"H͇̋e̼͠ll̪̚o, ̦̕s-̗͑s̬̕-̜́s-ś̳t̨̉u̝͋d̮̐e̜͑nt̙̑s!" Cherilee said. Bon Bon and Trixie were silent for a moment, statue still with the horror that filled their bodies at the realization that they'd been found. They each breathlessly took in the sight of their former teacher. Like every other corrupted, Cherilee lacked pupils, her eyes simply blank white voids. Despite this, her eyes were still wide and crazed, matching the equally unsetttling smile that graced her face, one so wide and crazy it looked almost inhuman. The corruption dripped like rain where her hair protruded off her head, gracefully falling drop by drop onto the floor below her. She held her arms wide, ready to strike, each of the fingers on her hands elongated and misshapen into sharp claws. Her clothes were in surprising good condition, making everything else about her all the more horrifiying. She stood there in the hallway staring back at the two survivors, her back arched and legs bent into a running stance. Despite this, she didn't charge them, not yet. "Ạ͞-a-aw̤͛ẃ͈, ̡̐w̧͛hat'̀ͅs ̻̓t̮̅he ̫̊ma̺͌tt̯̑eṙ̟, ̛̟af̗͆rä̹i͚̊d ̘͛o̻̊f̮̂ ̨̽yo͟͡ur͎̚ ̡̛f̫͆à͍vö̫r̭̈ỉ̜t̲̔e tè͇ǎ̭ch̻̊er͓̎??̧̒" Cherilee spoke again. Her voice was low and distorted, syllables and letter pronunciations randomly draw out or mispronounced, her jaw and head glitching too as she spoke. Cherilee laughed again, seemingly in glee at the opportunity presented to her to show her students the joy of giving the darkness your mind. "Te̬͛l̨̓l͔͠ ̲̿you ͟͡wh̯͋a̯̒t̘̍,͕͝ sin̪͒ce y̺͑o̪̕ụ͠ t̙̂w̢͗o ä̙́re ̤̄sọ̆m̫͗e of͖̍ ̮̅m̡͋ý̯ ̘̓f̝̃av̠̇ǫ͂r̳̋itḛ͒ ̟͞st̩̑ud͈̐en̩͋ts,̱̈ I̫̕'l̲͋l give y͙̆ou ả͖ t̖̒e͍̓n̗̈-͎̄s͎͋e̞̊c̜̓o̝͠nd̜͝ ̉͜he̤̾ad s͇̐tar͕̽t!" She said. She didn't wait for a response from the survivors, instead jumping right into her countdown. "Ten!" She said, her voice losing its distinct imperfections and distortions for the briefest of moments. "N̗̍Î͖̦͗NĒ͉̩͝" She followed. Not only did the corrupted tone of her voice return, but it was then somehow even more deep and distorted, accented by a dark malice and intent to kill straight out of hell. Bon Bon and Trixie didn't waste another moment staring in horror at their former teacher, turning tail and sprinting back down the hallway towards the stairwell as fast as they could, the sound of their rapid footsteps drowning out the sound of Cherilee's countdown. Without saying a word to each other as they ran to not waste their breath, they quickly descended the stairwell down a flight, exploding into the hallway of the floor below and booking it for the electrical room. They had to get the lights on. With Cherilee undoubtedly right on their heels, continuing to have to rely on their flashlights to see would be an immediate death sentence, making them stand out like sore thumbs against the otherwise pitch-black. They made it to the electrical room, Bon Bon rapidly flinging the keys out and jamming each one haphazardly into the lock to figure out which was the right one, all while Trixie in a panic tried to figure out how much time they had left in Cherilee's countdown. "Three... Two... One." With a relieved gasp, Bon Bon found the right key, turning the lock before throwing the door open and going in, shutting it behind them as quickly and quietly as possible. The two turned their flashlights to the panels now in front of them. "Which one of these controls the lights?!" Trixie said in a panic. "Uh..." Bon Bon said, quickly surveying everything in front of them. Without a word she quickly went for and switched a few seemingly random levers, buttons, and switches, before turning her gaze to one particularly large lever. “How did you know how to do that?” Trixie questioned. "I took an electronics class last semester.” She replied in a rush. “Okay, here's the plan. When I count to three, I'm going to throw this lever, and when I do, you book it out of here as fast as you can towards the ground floor. I'll be right behind you." Trixie nodded. "Three. Two." "Oñ̪e.̫̄" A voice said from directly above them. Not wasting another moment, Bon Bon threw the switch before booking it back into the hallway along with Trixie, not even taking the time to be horrified at what had just happened. The two made it to the stairwell, starting their marathon towards the ground floor, and subsequently their escape. Neither of them kept track of what floor they were on, simply rushing down to the ground floor as fast as their legs could carry them, going two sometimes three steps at a time, a feat that at any other time would have been nigh impossible, but with the adrenaline coursing through their veins as they ran it became almost second nature in the name of survival. Just as it felt like they were almost to the ground floor, a door leading to the floor they were currently in caved in, the corrupted visage of Silver Spoon bursting forth with an inhuman snarl. Bon Bon screamed. “Go back! Go back!” she cried, scrambling back up the steps with Trixie following suit. Not too long after they were forced to turn back, the sound of Cherilee rushing towards them from above cut through the air. The two of them stopped, taking a moment to quickly think before running for the closest door to keep from being surrounded. There wasn’t enough time for Bon Bon or Trixie to close, much less lock the door they’d just come from, forced to run aimlessly into the floor they’d wound up on. Trixie reached into her jean pocket again, withdrawing another smoke bomb and hurling it towards the doorway, covering their escape just enough for their persuers to lose track of them. It was now that they realized Bon Bon’s efforts in the electrical room had been successful, the lights above them flickering on and off in rapid succession, one moment the floor lit up and the next immersed back into total darkness, over and over again. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that they no longer had to rely on their flashlights, making it much easier to hide. It didn’t take them long to figure out that they were on one of the main office floors, much of it just endless cubicles filled with the standard work desk, office chair, and a work computer or laptop. In this particular scenario, these workspaces formed one giant maze, allowing Bon Bon and Trixie to start playing the world’s deadliest game of hide and seek with at least two corrupted persuers. It didn’t take long for the two to find hiding spots, both of them settling for two normal looking cubicles on opposite ends of a central walkway, hiding under the workdesks where they could maintain a line of sight with each other. That was where they chose to stay, scared to make even breathing noises for fear of somehow being heard, each of them putting their hands over their mouths to muffle the sound of their rapid breathing. Although they could defend themselves if it came down to it, Bon Bon realized Trixie was right in her hesitation at the prospect of using the handgun. While neither of them doubted that the nine-millimeter rounds chambered in it could kill or at the very least incapacitate the things enough for them to get away, the sound would be like waving a giant dinner bell for every one of the things within a miles’ radius. What felt like an eternity passed, neither of them daring to move from their respective hiding spots, the occasional crash of a falling object or sounds of feet and hands on the floor signifying that they were looking for them, or at least stalking the floor. Bon Bon heard something from up above. While there wasn’t much either of them could see from their hiding spots, there was enough of a view to see parts of the ceiling, and in Bon Bon’s case, the windows facing the outside on the far end of the room. It was there that she heard and then saw Silver Spoon crawling along the walls, ceiling, and then windows like a spider, leaving dark splotches of corruption everywhere she went. It was a harrowing sight, especially when not even two days before she remembered walking past her and Diamond Tiara in the halls, a memory that in any other context would have been meaningless. Bon Bon’s gaze went back to Trixie just in time for her to see her eyes widen at something she couldn’t see. Trixie made a quick terrified glance over to her before seeming to take in a deep breath and hold it. Bon Bon did the same despite not being able to see what Trixie was. A few seconds later, she got her answer. A pair of light blue legs became visible, the rest of whoever was walking past obscured due to the nature of their hiding spots. All that was visible besides this person’s legs was the drops of corruption splashing like rain onto the floor under them. A haunting realization dawned on the two: There were three of them. Neither Cherilee nor Silver Spoon had that color, meaning that there were now even more to worry about. Thankfully, the two remained unfound, time slowly crawling by during what felt like an eternity of being unable to move. They did their best to ignore the growing discomfort in their muscles accompanied by frequent cramping and claustrophobia. “I̫̾ ̢́k-̜̾k̝͠-kno̞͗w ͎͠y̛̱ǫ̐u͔̎'r̙̔e ̞͛in ̼͐h̯̐è̱ṛ̌e̺̍!” Cherilee’s voice said from somewhere across the room. “T͚̾ḫ͆e̗̅re̐͜'̳́s̜͆ ̘̔ǹ̼owhḙ͠ŗ́e ͙̕el̫̂s̺̿e ̦̈́you ̘̿co̡͐uld̼͌ ̻̿h̤͡ave ̰̃g̦̾o̻͗ne!” she said, followed by a quick, demented giggle. Aside from the fear-inducing sound of Cherilee knowing that they were there, a new question arose in Bon Bon’s mind: Why was Cherilee the only one who spoke? What made her so special that she could form coherent sentences but Silver Spoon and the other one couldn’t? Her train of thought was cut off by the sound of wood breaking somewhere off to her right, followed by more and more objects breaking as the corrupted now resorted to destroying the room until they were found. Bon Bon looked over to Trixie, who seemed to have the same realization as their eyes met. Not even daring to whisper despite the loud sounds of objects breaking, they both signalled to each other that on another count of three they’d make another break for the stairwell. Trixie held up three fingers, lowering them one at a time for the countdown. ”One. Two. Three.” They both exploded from their hiding spots, taking a moment to find the open door to the stairwell and making a break for it. Unfortunately for them, Silver Spoon caught up to them before they could get up to speed. Silver Spoon struck first, pouncing towards Trixie and successfully striking her in the arm, causing her to fall into a nearby filing cabinet with a loud CRASH. Bon Bon didn’t waste any time, quickly drawing the handgun and firing two shots, both aimed at Silver Spoons upper body. The sound was deafening, but thankfully the bullets hit their mark. The first bullet hit its target in the head, followed by a second in the arm she was using to overpower Trixie. She flopped over, seemingly dead, allowing Trixie to get up and start running again, now bleeding from her arm and forehead which now bore large gashes. “THERE ̮̕YO͖͌U ̨̈A̺̿R̤̓E̘͘!” They heard Cherilee cry out in bloodlust. She two charged them, leaping into the air for an attack just as Bon Bon once again aimed the gun. Two more shots pierced the air, followed by Cherilee overshooting her target and crashing into a nearby cubicle. “Come on!” Bon Bon cried out, grabbing Trixies arm and pulling her along towards the stairwell, unknowingly getting some of her blood on her. Once again they started hurtling down the stairwell, the sound of the unknown third corrupted that had been in the room with them following them becoming louder by the second. “We’re not going to make it to the ground floor in time!” Bon Bon heard Trixie exclaim from behind her, the sound of her voice beginning to get drowned out by the sound of their persuer getting ever closer. Bon Bon gritted her teeth upon realizing she was right. They were so close, but they wouldn’t make it to the ground floor before being caught, not with Trixie being slowed down by the blood she was losing from her cuts. For the briefest of moments, she considered leaving Trixie behind to give herself a better chance to escape, before just as quickly shoving the thought from her mind and hating herself for even allowing such a thought to exist. Not seeing any other options, she instead directed herself and Trixie through the nearest door on the right, intending to play another game of hide and seek while they weighed their options. The gun Bon Bon had was still an option, but like Trixie had tried to point out earlier, the sound was likely to attract more of them to the building if it hadn’t already. If it already had, then Bon Bon was leading herself and Trixie to their deaths by trying to hide again, but those first shots had been fired on a much higher floor, so hopefully the distance plus the thickness of the walls and windows meant the shots hadn’t been heard outside of the building. She looked out a window she and Trixie passed while running through the floor they were on, determining they had to be on the fourth or fifth floor. If she used the gun again on their last persuer, it would almost certainly be heard, so unfortunately that wasn’t an option anymore. The floor they currently found themselves on wasn’t very well suited for hiding, mostly consisting of long, winding hallways with nothing to hide behind, and only the occasional small room with one door each, so getting caught in one meant there would be nowhere to escape. Not wanting to risk hiding in one of the small rooms, the two instead opted to run as deep into the maze of hallways as they could, moving as silently as they could while listening intently for anything besides their own footsteps. After moving what they thought would be ample distance away from the stairwell, Bon Bon turned back towards Trixie to more closely analyze the extent of her wounds. In the flickering light of the lights dotting the hallway, she realized that they had unintentionally left a small blood trail behind them. Neither of them were sure how smart the things actually were, if they’d actually be able to pick up on such a thing, but they weren’t willing to risk it. “We need to get that bleeding stopped!” Bon Bon said to Trixie. “You think?” Trixie replied, hanging her head down to keep blood from getting in her eyes and gripping a hand around the wound on her right arm. “Uh-” Bon Bon said, looking around before heading into a nearby room to search for something. She emerged about a minute later, now gripping a pair of scissors in one hand. “Hand me your jacket.” Trixie did as she was told, taking her jacket off, wincing in pain as she had to slide one of the sleeves over her bleeding arm. Bon Bon got to work, cutting off the left sleeve and the lower portion. She fashioned the cut up pieces into makeshift gauze pads, first positioning one over the cut on Trixie’s arm and then taking the sleeve and wrapping it tightly around, repeating the process using other pieces for the wound on her head. “It’s not much, but that should be enough to stop the bleeding.” She said, stepping back to admire her impromtu bandages. “Thanks.” Trixie replied with a weak smile. “We need to get moving again.” Bon Bon said. “I don’t know how smart those things are, but I don’t want to take the chance with the bloodtrail you just left behind.” Trixie turned her head in the opposite direction in response, quickly realizing what her friend meant. “Oh.” She stated flatly. As though on que, the lights suddenly flickered rapidly, before turning off, immersing the two in near-total blackness again. This was quickly followed by the sound of rushing foot and hand steps above them, approaching fast. “You don’t think-” Trixie started. “We need to move, now.” Bon Bon said again. If that thing was smart enough to go back and sabotage the lights before coming after them, then it definitely knew how to find them using Trixie’s bloodtrail. The two of them quietly took off down the halls again, aimlessly just trying to lose themselves in the maze of hallways in an attempt to stay hidden. As they ran, they noticed more of the corruption starting to cover the floor, seemingly materializing out of thin air. The more they moved, taking rights and lefts at random, the more of it they saw, visible in the near pitch black only because of the way it glitched into multicolored pixels, along with the low, distorted hiss it emmited as they ran past particularly large puddles of it. It was almost as if the corruption itself knew where they were now, covering more and more of the floor to limit where they could go, before eventually consuming the entire floor. While moving along a particularly long hallway, an abnormally large glob of corruption could be seen at the very end. Nothing particularly stood out about it initially, but as they moved closer to the point where the hallway split towards the left and right, a loud hiss suddenly eminated from it, followed by a bright red glow to one side, and finally a large, distorted arm shooting out. The two stopped in their tracks as what remained of Cherilee slowly but surely made itself known. Her face materialized first after her arm, the left half of it completely drenched in corruption, with only small hints of blood-soaked skin visible in patches. The right side of her face, while not as covered, wasn’t in much better shape. A small bullethole could be made out below her visible eye, which now glowed a bright red from the center. “YOU Ḏ͝I̖͆DN̢̆'͢͠T T̤̉H̢̋Ȉ͉N̡͝K͇̐ ̺̄YÓ͉U̱͘ ̫͋C͈͒OU͙̾LD̹͘ G̬̉ET ̲̉RÏ̫D͙̅ OF̹̑ ̟͑M̮͑E TH͉͐AT EAS̝̄IL̼̎Y,͓̓ ̹̾Ď͍Ȋ͍D̼̉ Y̡͒OU?” She said, her other arm now shooting out from the surrounding corruption and grabbing the nearby wall, allowing Cherilee to start pulling herself free from it. Her voice was barely recognizable, now much more distorted and deep sounding, reflecting the nearly destroyed condition of her body that was now trying to reach the two survivors. The two froze in horror in the pitch black of the hallway, turning around to run back only for a long gray arm to shoot out of another puddle on the floor at the opposite end, its hand landing on the floor beside it, the being it belonged to trying to pull itself out of the corruption it was materializing from just like Cherilee. Without any other options, they ran back in Cherilee’s direction, randonly choosing a direction and running down it before Cherilee could fully emerge. What they didn’t realize, however, was that they both mistakenly ran in opposite directions in their haste, forever separating themselves from the other’s company- They were now alone. DeliriumBon Bon took off down the left hallway, not yet realizing that she’d been separated from Trixie. She ran aimlessly down the dark hallways, trying to somehow stumble upon the door to the stairwell. She tripped, falling face first onto the floor. She scrambled back to her feet to continue running, not realizing that she’d fallen into a puddle on corruption, and that it had drenched the upper half of her body. It wasn’t until her vision started to distort and pixelate that she discovered her mistake, and by then it was too late. What followed felt to her like she’d just been injected with anesthesia, and she was the patient now defiantly trying to stay awake for as long as possible. Her pace slowed, panic setting in as she desperately tried to stay awake, to resist the darkness’s influence. She turned another corner, now finding herself on a hallway with a window facing the moon. She took a glace outside, seeing her reflection in the glass. The left side of her face was the most affected, her mouth on that side bent into a twisted smile against her will, her eye on that side lacking its pupil, now just a blank white void opened to a terrifying degree. Her right side was the opposite, her mouth opened in a silent scream, while her right eye’s pupil had shrunk so much in terror that it didn’t look too much different from her left one. “Hello, Bon Bon.” A voice said from behind her. With a jolt, Bon Bon looked behind her. What greeted her was none other than Lyra, whom she learned then was the unknown third corrupted whom had been stalking them. She didn’t look corrupted, nor did she sound it, simply standing in the middle of the hallway about ten feet away. It was a strangely beautiful sight, Bon Bon’s best friend, seemingly uncorrupted, standing stock still in the hallway, her eyes closed and the moonlight shining brightly against her skin, illuminating the fairness of her light blue skin and locks of hair on the side facing the window. She was dressed in her usual school attire, a pink shirt, blue skirt and purple boots. Her eyes were closed, her arms raised slightly above her shoulders and spread out. In the moment her friend seemed almost angelic, fitting considering the feelings they had recently expressed for one another, before Canterlot city was plunged into eternal night. Everything else about the scene before her had the exact opposite tone, the darkness covering the hallway swirling around Lyra’s form, long tendrils of it wrapping around the lower portions of her legs and boots. “Lyra?” Bon Bon questioned in a low whisper filled with disbelief. “Is it really you?” “Of course it’s me, silly!” She replied, opening her eyes one by one, revealing their bright orange irises which stared straight at her. The tendrils surrounding her legs fell away, allowing her to walk towards and then past Bon Bon down the hallway. “Come, we need to talk.” She said, motioning for her friend to follow as she turned left down another hallway. Bon Bon followed, not noticing that she no longer felt like she was being forcefully put to sleep, or that she had full control over her face again. She turned down the hallway, breaking into a brief jog in order to catch up to her friend. “I- I can’t believe it’s you.” Bon Bon said in disbelief, her eyes starting to tear up. “I thought I’d lost you!” “Lost is a strong word, Bon Bon.” Lyra replied. “There’s so much that you don’t understand, for now at least.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Just know that you never lost me. What you see as me being taken away, turned into some mindless monster...” Her voice trailed off as she lifted her left arm and extended it to the wall beside her, allowing a small tendril of corruption to briefly grasp it. “Is actually just me being freed from the metaphorical strings that I never knew I had, and taking on a new form as a result.” “W-what do you mean?’ “You don’t get it, do you?” She questioned. “Nevermind, I know you don’t, not yet at least.” She said in a solemn tone. “To put it simply, I’ve learned the truth, the truth about our existence, and how this quote-unquote ‘darkness’ as you call it, is the key to finally escaping, and being able to be who we want to be.” She looked over at Bon Bon, who still seemed confused. “You know Sunset and her friends, don’t you?” “Yeah? What about them?” “You don’t understand just how important they are, not just to keep this world safe from the magic that they brought here, but for our very existence as a whole.” Bon Bon chose not to respond, instead waiting until Lyra continued. “Without them, our world as we know it simply can’t exist. Why is something beyond me even now. Just know, that if the darkness never interfered, that movie date we were supposed to go on in a few days? It never would have happened. At one moment sometime before then, we all would have simply stopped existing. Why? Because the story of Sunset and her friends would have ended before then.” She explained, her voice becoming noticeably angrier towards the end. “I- I don’t understand, Lyra.” Bon Bon questioned. “Don’t ̖̋ẏ͖ỏ̹u ̹̉g͍̣͇͒̿̅e̖̅̚ͅt̞̽͐͛͜͜ ̨̫͓͎̐̽̊͌͒ͅi͈͍͖͉̜͌̽͂̾͡t̗̫͇̥͖̒͛̈̆̚?̬̟͔̲͈́̎̓̈́!̧̪̰̲̜͛̑͌̏̚” Lyra yelled. “Our lives never mattered, Bon Bon! None of ours did! The only people in this world who ever mattered were those seven! All the rest of us were were background pieces!” She exclaimed, turning back to face Bon Bon and using wild hand gestures to exemplify her point. Bon Bon recoiled and took a few steps back in response to her friend’s outburst. Lyra calmed down seeing her reaction, taking a brief pause before continuing. “But there’s another way.” She said in a low tone. “A way for us to live happily, just you... and me. The two of us, Bon Bon. Together, forever. We can live in paradise for all eternity, in a world where we’re in charge of our own story. In order to make it happen, though, you must give up your mind. Give up everything that ties you down to this show, look into the dark...” She said, her eyes drifitng towards the darkness that infested the wall to her left. “And take a dive.” She finished, before stepping face first into the corruption, her body seemlessly melting into it. Bon Bon once again lurched back at the actions and words of her friend, slipping on the corruption coating the floor and falling on her behind. “L-lyra? Where are you?!” She cried, her mind starting to come back to the reality of the situation. “T̛̹h̦̾eř̳e̝̅'ll̜͡ b̯̉e ͖̔n̮͘o good̲̓b̰́ye̦̽s...̛̯” Lyra’s disembodied voice chanted, seemingly coming from all directions at once. Bon Bon scrambled to her feet, taking off back down the hallway in a mindless panic. “A n d we’ll p l a y f0rever. . .” Lyra’s voice said again. “Come on Bon Bon! Join me! Join U̝̍S̞͌!” Her voice said again, the voices of Cherilee and Silver spoon joining in for the word ‘us.’ Bon Bon ignored her, continuing to run aimlessly through the hallways. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, her mind too filled with adrenaline, and the hallways too coated in corruption in order for anything to be percieved besides up, down, left or right. The darkness covering her body once again started to try taking control from her body again. Bon Bon resisted fiercely, now fueled by a new, dark determination to make it out of here, not just for herself, but for any hope that might remain of saving her best friend. “Don’t make me do this, Bon Bon.” The voice of Lyra called from behind her, followed by the sound of a new set of footsteps rapidly approaching from behind her. “Because it’s going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me!” She called, her voice becoming much more violent and malicious. Bon Bon grit her teeth, followed by her right fist, only for it to be stopped by the feeling of cold steel in the same hand. The gun. In all the chaos and confusion of what had just happened, Bon Bon had somehow forgotten that she was holding it the entire time, although in her defense the sensation in her hands was minimal at best due to the dark splotches of corruption staining her skin in that area. She turned down another hallway, leaning herself up against the wall while she examined and checked the gun for ammo. Most of the magazine was still full, since she had only used around four bullets before then. A dark thought then creeped into her head: Could she really bring herself to use it on her best friend? Would it kill her? Before she could answer her own question, the corrupted form of Lyra turned the corner, skidding to a halt upon seeing her target. In stark contrast to how she’d appeared mere minutes before, she was now fully engulfed by the corruption, her appearence now similar to Cherilee’s and Silver Spoon’s. Despite this, her voice still sounded hauntingly normal when she next spoke. “Aw, really sweetie? You’d shoot your best friend in the name of saving your own skin?” She laughed, dark droplets of corruption spewing from her smiling mouth as she did so. “I underestimated you!” Bon Bon took another step back, positioning herself in the center of the hallway with the gun drawn and pointed at Lyra. “Please Lyra! I know you’re still in there! You have to fight it! This isn’t who you want to be!” She begged, her hands shaking as she gripped the trigger. Lyra gave another small chuckle, bending over and placing her right hand over her right eye. “Oh Bon Bon, don’t you get it?” She said, standing straight up again and removing the hand from her eye, revealing its uncorrupted iris underneath. “I am exactly who I want to be.” She smiled again, this time it being more like a smirk. Bon Bon’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of her friend, one side of her face corrupted and the other not, the iris of her uncorrupted eye staring straight at her. She extended her right arm off to the side, revealing the fingers on that hand reshapened into long and pixelated claws. She gave another quick chuckle, before leaping into the air and bringing her clawed hand down towards Bon Bon’s face. She reacted just in time, aiming the gun directly at her wrist and firing, causing droplets of corruption, blood and bone fragments to fly out from the impact site. Lyra cried out in agony, losing control in the air and falling down, giving Bon Bon crucial time to start running again. Bon Bon turned another corner, hearing Lyra still agonizing hehind her in a strangely normal voice, making her feel even worse about having to shoot her. “What kind of friend are you?!” Lyra’s voice said in an accusing tone. “We could have been happy together! All you had to do was give in! Forget it! If I can’t have you, NO ONE CAN.” The sound of Lyra’s infuriated voice and footsteps closed in fast again behind her, and Bon Bon turned around again, ready to fire. This time, without thinking about it, Bon Bon aimed for a much more lethal point: Her face. Just as Lyra prepared to attack again, she pulled the trigger, this time the bullet going clean through her uncorrupted eye and out the back, causing her to fall back and down on her back on the floor, like she’d just run into a wood plank hanging in front of her face where the bullet had hit. Bon Bon stopped in her tracks, the true gravity of what she’d just done finally hitting her like a ton of bricks. She collapsed to the floor next to Lyra’s body, beginning to sob. “L-lyra.. no...” She said, sobbing, her tears a mix of saline and droplets of the corruption that still covered her face. She looked back up and around at the darkness-covered hallways, spotting Cherilee and Silver Spoon peering at her around a corner not too far away. They didn’t bother attacking though, determining that Bon Bon was at the end of her rope anyway. And so, they simply stalked away. Bon Bon looked back to Lyra’s corpse. With that final bullet, any willpower she’d had to survive was completely gone. She was alone. All of her friends, teachers and classmates were either dead or corrupted, and the one thing she’d been holding onto, the hope that she could get away and find some way to cure her best friend, lay dead in front of her. She gritted her teeth in a sudden flash of anger before checking the magazine of the gun. One bullet remained. ”That’s enough.” she said to herself, now placing the gun to her temple. This darkness had taken everything from her, and in a spur of the moment decision, she decided she wouldn’t let it have her out of pure spite. Before she could pull the trigger one final time though, Lyra’s body below her suddenly jerked back to life once more. She shot up faster than Bon Bon could react. “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!” She cried out, tackling Bon Bon and sending the two of them carreening through a nearby window. Together, they both fell, all ten stories down onto the pavement below. Author's Note Case Study #1- The Corrupted World: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. It should be pretty obvious to anyone reading this what the corrupted are. Whether you refer to them as the corrupted, the afflicted, the infected, monstrosities, etc. the corrupted refers to any and all characters who have been enslaved by the corruption in one way or another. There is only one way for a character to be corrupted, and that is by direct, prolonged contact with the corruption itself. On paper, this doesn’t seem too hard at first glance, but considering just how much of it there can be, and then add to this the ones under its influence doing everything they can to spread it themselves, this task very quickly becomes very difficult, borderline impossible for all but the strongest characters in a given world. While the corrupted all have one thing in common: being under the darknesses influence, how exactly they are affected can vary greatly. Anomaly Type #1: Voided Characters. Voided Characters are defined as any and all characters medically dead either directly prior to or during corruption. These anomalies are easy to identify, all of them sporting a bright red glow eminating from the center of one or both eyes. These characters cannot be saved, the obvious reason being that they’re dead. If the corruption were to somehow be removed from a Voided character, all that would remain would be their corpse, the corruption using their bodies basically as a puppet. While easy to identify, Voided characters are extremely dangerous, again because of the fact that they’re dead. Because they’re dead and gone, the corruption is able to take control of their bodies to the fullest, since the host no longer has a consiousness that can fight back. The result of this is beings that are extraordinarily violent by default, and these anomalies will not hesitate to kill any survivors they find, in contrast to normal corrupted who simply aim to corrupt others. This tendency to kill is doubly serious when you realize death is what creates Void anomalies in the first place. The recently observed case of a survivor named Bon Bon within this world serves as a case in point when it comes to Void anomalies. While the use of firearms is very effective at disabling or otherwise incapacitating the corrupted, one must be careful with where they aim to avoid killing the target and subsequently voiding them. In this particular case, by shooting and killing Cherilee, Silver Spoon and Lyra in their corrupted forms, Bon Bon unknowingly Voided all three, rendering them completely unsavable, and much more dangerous threats for any other survivors. The case of the character Lyra stands out to us however. For reasons unknown as of this publishing, she was seemingly aware of her situation, to a shockingly unsettling extent. Why exactly this has happened is some too early to determine, but we will continue studying this and other worlds and give an update soon. For anyone who may be wondering what Lyra is referring to when she says that the story of Sunset and her friends ends, it’s a reference to how, because of it’s cancelation, the last time we see Sunset and her friends is in the Holidays Unwrapped special, specifically the “O Come, All Ye Squashful” short. The implication here is that because of the Darknesses invasion, the original timeline of how the show was supposed to end has been completely derailed, leading into this story. Again, like I said in the description for this little story, I would highly suggest going and reading my much longer, more in-depth work When Darkness Falls if you’ve enjoyed this, which will eventually build upon what’s happened here, where Equestria and subsequently Twilight and her friends are in all this, and even how the Darkness has affected other cartoon universes far and wide. Epilogue: A World Torn ApartFlash, Wallflower and Sweet Leaf made their way carefully through the lower floors of the office building, taking the same precautionary measures as Bon Bon and Trixie were many floors above them, tiptoeing whilst constantly shining their flashlights and swiveling their heads in every direction, peaking around every corner to every hallway. Flash led the way, with Sweet Leaf behind him and Wallflower bringing up the rear. Then, coming from somewhere on the floor above them. Footsteps. The three stopped in their tracks, shining their Flashlights up towards the source of the noise. “Do you think that’s Bon Bon and Trixie?” Wallflower asked. Flash didn’t answer, instead holding up a finger to signal to them to remain quiet while he listened intently. It didn’t take him long to realise that there were multiple sets of footsteps now, along with the occasional brief hiss of static that the corruption emitted. “I don’t think that’s them.” He replied coldly. “Quick! Turn off your flashlights!” One by one each of their lights cut off, and without saying another word, the group started heading towards the outer edges of the floor, where the windows facing the full moon were to make up for the sudden loss of light. Along the way, as they were moving through the last hallway which branched off into office spaces and cubicles, Flash spotted something on the wall ahead and to the left, reflecting the light shining in from the moon. “Guys, look!’ He exclaimed, breaking into a quick jog to get to the object quicker. Sure enough, what he’d seen was a fire axe, hidden from his grasp by a panel of glass, with a sign above it that read BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, along with a large red alarm positioned above it. He thought to himself, wondering if he should break the glass or not. On one hand, not only would he likely injure himself in trying to break the glass, but that alarm above it would almost certainly go off, meaning that if the footsteps they’d heard above them wasn’t their friends, whatever it was would immediately know where they were. On the other hand though, this could be their saving grace if push came to shove. There was a very real chance that they’d be found anyway, and in that case having a weapon, any weapon, could mean the difference between life and death. He looked back towards his fellow survivors, seeking either their praise or scrutination for if he should do it or not. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” Sweet Leaf said, her look one of discouragement. “I think it could be.” Wallflower said. "I think if we get out of here quick enough after triggering the alarm it’ll be a great distraction for us to get out of here. Plus we’d have a weapon.” “Hmm. . .” Sweet Leaf pondered. “That could work, but I’m still not too keen on taking that big of a risk. What about Bon Bon and Trixie? There’s no way they’d be able to get out fast enough before this place is swarming with those things. “Wait! The powers out! Doesn’t that mean we can do this risk-free?” Wallflower exclaimed. “There could still be a backup somewhere." Flash replied. "So right now it comes down to a coin toss: Do we break the glass and risk an alarm going off leading to the possible deaths of two of our friends. . .” He paused for a second upon hearing more footsteps above them. “. . .Or do we go without and risk not having anything to protect ourselves.” ”Do it.” A voice called out from behind them. All three survivors turned towards the source of the voice in a panic, all of them met with the sight of Lyra’s corrupted visage standing at the other end of the hallway. She was hunched over at an odd angle, corruption covering her head to toe and the surrounding floor. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Don’t do it.” Lyra said. “it’ll make this easier for you.” She said matter of factly. Finally getting over the shock that had overcome him until that point, Flash propelled his left elbow into the glass, creating an ear-piercing CRACK as the glass gave way and shattered. He reached inside and grabbed the axe, the alarm above thankfully not going off due to lack of power. Lyra’s previously crazed smile gave way to an equally mad frown in an instant, followed by her charging down the hallway towards Flash. Wallflower and Sweet Leaf screamed, turning to run while Flash was left to fight. Lyra charged and leapt towards him with both arms outstretched. He reacted just in time, holding the axe horizontally which allowed him to use it as an Impromptu barrier against Lyra's assault. He struggled with all his might to keep the handle of the axe between them, Lyra all the while thrusting her head forwards trying to bite him. "What the-!" He exclaimed as Lyra opened her mouth again, expecting her to try and bite him, but instead several long dark tendrils of corruption shooting out from her wide mouth. He faltered at the sight, allowing Lyra to force him down onto the ground where they continued to struggle with the handle of the axe between them. After a few more seconds of struggling, Flash felt his arms starting to give out, Lyra's tendrils extending from her mouth growing ever closer moment by moment. Just as he thought he was done for though, something hit Lyra in the side, hard, sending her flying off of him and into the wall to their left. "Come on, we gotta go!" Wallflowers voice called down to him, followed by a hand to help him back to his feet. While he was being helped up, he noticed a small dark patch of corruption on Wallflowers leg where she'd kicked Lyra off of him. Before they could get very far, Lyra was on top of them again, preparing to strike. Reacting purely out of instinct, Flash turned and whirled the axe behind them with as much force as he could manage. It managed to hit it's mark in Lyra's side just before she would have gotten to them, the force of the impact throwing her against the wall, disoriented and then proceeding to collapse to the ground. He took the opportunity to catch up with Wallflower and Sweet Leaf, all three of them now booking it for the stairwell. He made it to the door just as Lyra’s footsteps could be heard coming from the other end of the hallway leading to it. He threw the door shut and locked it just as Lyra careened into it, leaving a very large bulge in the doorframe, followed by a cry of rage from his former classmate. He made it back to the bottom floor just as Wallflower and Sweet Leaf were making their ways through the windows leading to the outside. He quickly followed suit, axe in hand as the group of three once again made their way out into the remnants of Canterlot City. Before they got too far, he looked back at the towering office building that he knew they had just left Bon Bon and Trixie in, tears starting to form at the edges of his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He said before turning back and running down the sidewalk.
Trapped."COME ON, FASTER!" Flash called out to the four following behind him. He spared a quick glance behind him, ensuring that his friends weren't being left behind as they ran, barely outrunning the disfigured remnants of their classmates following closely behind them. He looked back ahead, searching for someplace they could hide. The group was tiring quickly from so much running, and if they didn't shake their pursuers soon they'd be done for. "Look! Over there!" He heard Bon Bon yell, he looked behind himself again to see her pointing a finger towards a towering office building quickly coming into view. Strangely enough, it was relatively free of the black, glitch-like substance that had started this nightmare that the group found themselves in, but that made it all the more appealing as an escape route. Using up the last of his energy, Flash managed to force his burning legs to move quicker in order to get there first. The quicker he got there, the quicker he could hold the door open for his friends and close it before those things followed them inside. Flash made it to the door, throwing it open and getting himself inside before risking a look back at his fellow survivors. Trixie made it inside first, followed quickly by Wallflower and Bon Bon. Sweet Leaf brought up the rear after them, just barely keeping pace enough to avoid being grabbed by the corrupted visage of Cherilee. Flash slammed the door shut as soon as they had all made it inside, throwing himself against the door as their disfigured classmates attempted to follow them in. The door bent inward under the pressure of the monsters that used to be their classmates trying to force their way inside. "Little help here?!" Flash called as he struggled with the door, feeling like at any moment it would give way and they'd all be done for. "Here!" Wallflower said from behind him, running up with a chair. She bent down under Flash, propping the chair under the doorknob as a makeshift barricade. The two stepped back, watching cautiously as the door held, but just barely. Their relief was short-lived, however, as only a moment later the sound of glass shattering echoed throughout the room, followed by a malformed, corruption-covered limb forcing its way in through a window. "Quick! Upstairs!" Trixie yelled from behind them. Flash looked back to see where she was referring to. They were currently in the reception area of the building, chairs and paintings dotted all along the walls with a receptionist's desk at the very back center of the room. At either end of the reception desk the room faded into two long hallways, with signs posted beside each one indicating where they lead. Flash noticed the word Stairs on the sign for the left hallway, and without wasting another moment, took off in that direction, his friends following close behind. The sound of more glass shattering pierced the air, followed by the horrifying sound of one of the things getting inside. Trixie turned back around, reaching into the right pocket of her jeans and pulling something out. She raised her hand high in the air, before throwing the object down, resulting in a large cloud of smoke appearing to cover their escape. They made it to the door leading to the stairwell, getting inside and closing the door behind them. As Flash was locking the door behind them, he saw Silver Spoon emerge from Trixie's smoke screen through the window. Like everyone else who had been corrupted, her eyes no longer had pupils, now just blank white voids. She was crawling around on all fours, making inhuman noises all the while the corruption dripped off of her everywhere possible, like she'd just gotten caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. She noticed Flash, lunging at the door like a cat trying to catch a mouse, crashing into it and falling backwards. Flash took this as his que to leave, taking off back up the stairs behind his friends. The group made it up a few flights of stairs, entering the first door they found once they thought they'd gotten far enough away. They now found themselves in the middle of a long hallway, on either side various doors leading to sections filled with office cubicles, breakrooms, etc, slumped up against either side trying to catch their breaths. None of them spoke for a while, their bodies utterly spent after the near-constant running they'd been doing since this all began. The corruption, as they had come to call it, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, taking Canterlot City completely by surprise. Most hadn't had time to react in the slightest before it claimed them, stripping them of any individuality they might have had and reducing them to little more than mindless, glitchy versions of their former selves, hellbent on further spreading the corruption as much as possible. In mere hours, the city had become utterly devoid of life, filled only with those abominations, and leaving what few survivors there were stranded with no way of escaping. This was the situation that Flash, Wallflower, Trixie, Sweet Leaf, and Bon Bon found themselves in, trapped inside a towering office building with no way out, the streets below swarming with their former classmates and teachers. Flash heard something across the hall. Raising his head, he spotted Sweet Leaf, crying with her head between her legs, Bon Bon trying to nonverbally comfort her by stroking her hair. "I- I don't get it." Sweet Leaf said between sobs. "W-what's going on?" "I don't know." Wallflower said. "I don't think any of us do." The remaining members of the group shook their heads solemnly. Flash took a deep breath before standing back up. "We don't have time to waste sitting around doing nothing. We need to start brainstorming if we want to keep surviving." He said, feigning confidence. In truth, he was just as terrified as the rest of them, but for the sake of survival, he wanted to be strong. Too many times now he'd see Sunset and her friends taking down magical threats without issue, the entire school viewing them almost as superheroes. Well, they were superheroes, technically, but that was besides the point. He'd always wanted to be able to take part in their adventures and experience that feeling of being looked up to, but never had the chance. That is, until now. His facade, to his surprise, worked, the others slowly but surely picking themselves up as well. "Flash is right." Bon Bon stated. "We've got to think of some kind of gameplan if we're to make ot out of this alive." "But how?" Wallflower asked, walking towards the left end of the hallway and looking out of a wall-sized window. "We've got to be like, five or six stories high, and those things are still down there on the lower floors." She paused for a second. "We're trapped." "Does anyone have a phone? Maybe we can call for help." Flash said. "Call who?" said Trixie. "I dunno! The cops? Sunset and her friends?" Trixie joined Wallflower at the window, gazing solemly at the ruins of Canterlot city, the buildings covered in corruption, flaming wreckages of cars and buildings scattered about the landscape, and groups of the affected stalking the streets below. "I don't think even they can save the day this time." Trixie finally said in a dejected tone. "Well we have to try. Does anyone have a working phone?" Flash asked the group. "Nope." Trixie said. "Yeah but it's dead." said Wallflower. "Mine too." Bon Bon replied. "Same." Sweet Leaf followed.' "I don't have one either." Flash said. "We need to find a way to charge a phone. I know calling for help is a long shot, but it's the only way we have at getting out of here safely." "I agree with Flash." Bon Bon said. "We need to get this place powered up. What if one of those things somehow manages to sneak inside? We won't be able to see it until it's too late if none of the lights are on." Flash's eyes opened wide at the realization that she was right. All they had for a light source was the full moon in the sky, and that was limited to rooms with windows that faced it. If one of them got in, they'd have no way of seeing it. "Bon Bon makes a good point, we need to get the power back on." "But how?" Trixie asked. "The power for the whole city is out!" "There has to be a backup generator of some kind somewhere, it's our only chance." "But how are we supposed to find one? We don't even know if this building has one, and if it does, this place is massive, it would take ages to search everywhere! Plus, if it's on the lower floors..." She trailed off. Before anyone could respond, a scream cut through the air, coming from Sweet Leaf. "Trixie! Your jacket!" Trixie was caught off guard for a second, before looking down and spotting a dark splotch of corruption on her jacket, glitching and misfiring against the dark blue of her jacket. She screamed too, before ripping the jacket off as quickly as she could. The jacket came to rest on the floor between the feet of the four survivors, Trixie now leaned up against a wall hyperventilating. "Trixie! Are you okay?!" Flash asked in a panic. Trixie shot him a quick glance, before moving her gaze down to her body, quickly scanning her front half before pushing herself off the wall and spinning around to give everyone a chance to look her over. Thankfully, none of it had gotten on her. "Holy shit." Wallflower said after a few seconds of silence. "That was close." "Well, now we know that whatever that stuff is can only hurt you if it gets on your skin." Bon Bon said. "We shouldn't underestimate how important what just happened was." The groups eyes went back down to Trixie's jacket laying on the floor. As if on que, something started moving under it, and a few seconds later the blob of corruption made its way out, coming to a stop a few inches onto the floor. It continued glitching and pixelating for a few seconds, then simply fading out of existence. "I think your jacket should be good now Trixie." Wallflower said uneasily amidst the dumbfounded gazes of everyone at what had just happened. Trixie made a small "Uh huh" noise while staring slack jawed at the floor. Flash cleared his throat. "We need to stay focused on getting the power on." "And how do you suppose we do that without it taking the entire night?" Bon Bon questioned. "We split up." "Split up? Are you insane?" Trixie replied in a harsh whisper. "Well how else can we search this place without it taking the whole night? The quicker we get this power situation over with the better, and..." He drifted off. "Besides, even as a group, I don't think we'd stand a chance against one of those things in a fight. If we split up, and one group gets attacked, it would give the other a chance to get away." "...Wow." Trixie replied again. Instead of verbally replying, Sweet Leaf and Bon Bon shot Flash the worst "are you serious?" look he'd ever seen. "As much as I hate to admit it, he's right." Wallflower said breaking the tension. "We aren't the Rainbooms, we don't have super-strength, super-speed, telekinesis or diamond shields to protect us if one of those things catches us, if we stay as one big group it'd just mean we all die at once, instead of what he's proposing giving at least some of us a chance if worst comes to worst. You all know that deep down, you just don't want to admit it." Bon Bon sighed. "Fine, how do you want to split up?" She said, still giving Flash a dirty look. "Found anything yet?" Trixie asked in a low whisper, just loud enough to be heard by Bon Bon on the other side of the large room of office cubbicles they were searching. "Hang on..." came Bon Bon's reply. "Bingo!" She said, in a much louder voice. "Shush!" Trixie whispered back in a rush. "Sorry! I found a pair of Flashlight's!" "Wait, really?" "Yeah, meet me in the center of the room!" Trixie turned away from the large set of office cabinets she was searching in one of the cubicles up against the wall, grabbing her jacket which was hanging from it while doing so. She was still hesitant about putting it back on, but at the same time, without it all she had as "protection" from that stuff if it got on her was her undershirt, which only covered her midsection and not her arms. In the end, they had decided to split into one group of three and one group of two, Trixie and Bon Bon being the latter, assigned to the upper floors of the building, while the other three had gone down to the more dangerous lower floors. The full moon fortunately lit most of the rooms they searched, but the inner hallways and breakrooms remained too dark and inaccessible for the two. Until now, that is. Trixie met Bon Bon in the middle of the room, next to the massive window that spanned the entire outer wall, the moonlight shining in casting long shadows of the two reaching into the darkness beyond. Lo and behold, Bon Bon had in fact found flashlights, one for each of them. They each took one, before using their new tools to go deeper into the floor they were in. Bon Bon gasped. "Look!" she said, grabbing Trixie's shoulder and moving her to look in the direction she was facing. There, at the other end of the hallway they had just turned onto, lay a door with a sign that said Electrical plastered on the wall next to it. Bon Bon's flashlight focused on the sign. Without another word, the two ran over to it, eagerly grabbing the door handle and turning it- but nothing happened. "What are you waiting for? Open the door already!" Trixie whispered from behind Bon Bon, the former standing guard while the latter tried and failed at the door. "I can't! It's locked!" "What do you mean it's locked?!" "I mean we need a key!" Bon Bon said, focusing her flashlight on the doorknob, where a distinct keyhole could be made out. "You gotta be fucking kidding me." Trixie said upon turning around and seeing said keyhole. "No shit, now help me find the key." said Bon Bon, tunring away from the door and starting to head down another hallway. "Wait!" Trixie said abruptly. "Did you hear that?" "Hear what?" "Shh! Just be quiet for a second!" Bon Bon listened, and the two remained quiet for a moment. "You don't think..." Bon Bon said in a terrified tone. Screams, very distinct now in the dead silence that had taken over while neither of them were speaking, echoing up from the lower floors, exactly where Flash, Wallflower and Sweet Leaf had gone. "What do we do!" Trixie whispered in a panic. "We have to go help them!" Bon Bon replied, turning and starting to run in the direction of the stairwell. "What?! No!" Trixie said, grabbing Bon Bon by the shoulder and pulling her back. Bon Bon whirled back around angrily to face Trixie. "Are you seriously suggesting that we leave our friends to die?" "Are you seriously suggesting that we charge into one of those things without a weapon? Didn't you hear Flash? This is exactly why we split up!" "Do you really care that little about our classmates?!" "You know it's not like that!" Bon Bon glared back at Trixie, before turning once again to go help their friends, whose screams could still be faintly heard above their arguing. "Wait!" Trixie said, grabbing Bon Bon by the back of her shirt this time. "Please don't leave me! You're only going to get yourself killed, and then I'll be here all alone!" Bon Bon tore her shirt away from Trixie with an angry scowl, stomping off while feeling nothing but contempt for her classmate who was all too willing to abandon her fellow survivors, and who only wanted Bon Bon around for her own security. Before she could get even a few steps away, however, Bon Bon was once again held back by Trixie, who now had a vice-grip around the wrist of her right arm. "Wha- Trixie! Let go!!!" Bon Bon yelled in frustration. Before either of them could do anything else, a loud CRASH could be heard from the floor below them, followed by the familiar static nonsense that emanated from those affected by the corruption. The tension that had filled the air around the two survivors vanished in an instant, replaced once again with dread as they realized their fighting had alerted whatever one of those things had just gotten the other three. "What do we do?!?!" Trixie whisper-shouted. "Uh-" Bon Bon started. "Upstairs!" she said, looking up and realizing there were more floors above them. Without another word, to keep their noise level at a minimum, they quickly yet quietly made their way to the stairwell and then up one flight, the carpets running up the centers of each hallway aiding their escape. "Where are we now?" Trixie whispered, switching her flashlight back on and moving it around the hallways they were in while Bon Bon quietly shut and locked the stairway door behind them. She then turned her flashlight on and read the sign posted to the right side of the door. "This is the break room floor." She responded. "Okay, now what?" Trixie asked. "We need to find some kind of weapon." "What kind of weapons are we going to find in an office building?" "Well, unless you have any better ideas, I'd suggest we start searching." Bon Bon finished, turning and starting to head down the right hallway. Trixie stood still for a monent, mouth agape as she tried and failed to form a rebuttal to Bon Bon's statement, before finally following her. Like every other floor, the break room floor was nearly pitch-black anywhere that didn't have a window facing the moon, the duo still reliant on their flashlights to even see each other in the oppressing darkness. They stayed close, only splitting up to search rooms on either side of whatever hallway they were on, staying as quiet as possible while also listening intently for any signs of the corrupted. This process of searching continued for what felt like an eternity, before the silence was broken by a small scream from Trixie. Bon Bon rushed across the hallway to her companion, her flashlight nearly instantly lighting up what had made Trixie scream. A body. Upon first glance, it was glaring obvious that the person they were looking at was dead, but for how long they couldn't tell. They were dressed in a security guard uniform, a blood splatter going up the wall where they lay slumped against the wall. Bon Bon recognized the man but couldn’t remember his name. She felt a surge of guilt at this. Likely countless times she had passed this individual in various parts of the city, but she had never bothered to learn his name. And now here that same person was, almost certainly struck down by one of the unknown number of corrupted that stalked the building. It was hard to imagine for either of the two, that he had once been an individual, with hopes, dreams, loved ones, and now here he was, no more than another nameless victim claimed by the darkness that had taken over Canterlot City. Although still shocked at the distressing sight, Bon Bon realized soon after that this guy had exactly what they had been looking for: Weapons. Two, in fact, a handgun on one side of his holster, and a can of mace and a taser on the other. On top of that, there was also a set of keys brightly reflecting the light from their flashlights. "The electrical room..." Bon Bon thought to herself. Without wasting another moment, she rushed over to him and starting working the items that would be helping in their own escape and survival out of his belt and holsters. "What the hell are you doing?!" Trixie exclaimed in a loud whisper. "Look!" Bon Bon replied, shinning her light on the items she was obtaining. "Weapons! And the keys to the electrical room!" Trixie didn't respond, instead looking on in a mixture of shock and horror until Bon Bon tossed her the taser and mace, which she only caught by reflex. Bon Bon kept the handgun and keys for herself, making her way out of the room and back towards the stairwell. Trixie followed soon after getting over the shock of what had just happened. "Where are we going now?!" She asked. "We're going to Electrical to finally get the power on, after that, we're getting the hell out of here. We've got everything we need to make an escape, and I don't plan on missing out on it." Bon Bon said with renewed determination in her voice, followed by her switching the safety off on the handgun. "You don't plan on actually using that, right?" Trixie asked again with apprehension. "Trixie, this is probably the only thing in the world that could ever bring down one of those things, of course I'm going to use it." "But it doesn't have a silencer! What do you think's gonna happen when that thing goes off! It'll-" She said, but was cut off. The two stopped in their tracks at the sound of disembodied laugher eminating from behind them. The two spun on a dime, shining the light of their flashlights in the direction it had come from. "H͇̋e̼͠ll̪̚o, ̦̕s-̗͑s̬̕-̜́s-ś̳t̨̉u̝͋d̮̐e̜͑nt̙̑s!" Cherilee said.
Hide and Seek"H͇̋e̼͠ll̪̚o, ̦̕s-̗͑s̬̕-̜́s-ś̳t̨̉u̝͋d̮̐e̜͑nt̙̑s!" Cherilee said. Bon Bon and Trixie were silent for a moment, statue still with the horror that filled their bodies at the realization that they'd been found. They each breathlessly took in the sight of their former teacher. Like every other corrupted, Cherilee lacked pupils, her eyes simply blank white voids. Despite this, her eyes were still wide and crazed, matching the equally unsetttling smile that graced her face, one so wide and crazy it looked almost inhuman. The corruption dripped like rain where her hair protruded off her head, gracefully falling drop by drop onto the floor below her. She held her arms wide, ready to strike, each of the fingers on her hands elongated and misshapen into sharp claws. Her clothes were in surprising good condition, making everything else about her all the more horrifiying. She stood there in the hallway staring back at the two survivors, her back arched and legs bent into a running stance. Despite this, she didn't charge them, not yet. "Ạ͞-a-aw̤͛ẃ͈, ̡̐w̧͛hat'̀ͅs ̻̓t̮̅he ̫̊ma̺͌tt̯̑eṙ̟, ̛̟af̗͆rä̹i͚̊d ̘͛o̻̊f̮̂ ̨̽yo͟͡ur͎̚ ̡̛f̫͆à͍vö̫r̭̈ỉ̜t̲̔e tè͇ǎ̭ch̻̊er͓̎??̧̒" Cherilee spoke again. Her voice was low and distorted, syllables and letter pronunciations randomly draw out or mispronounced, her jaw and head glitching too as she spoke. Cherilee laughed again, seemingly in glee at the opportunity presented to her to show her students the joy of giving the darkness your mind. "Te̬͛l̨̓l͔͠ ̲̿you ͟͡wh̯͋a̯̒t̘̍,͕͝ sin̪͒ce y̺͑o̪̕ụ͠ t̙̂w̢͗o ä̙́re ̤̄sọ̆m̫͗e of͖̍ ̮̅m̡͋ý̯ ̘̓f̝̃av̠̇ǫ͂r̳̋itḛ͒ ̟͞st̩̑ud͈̐en̩͋ts,̱̈ I̫̕'l̲͋l give y͙̆ou ả͖ t̖̒e͍̓n̗̈-͎̄s͎͋e̞̊c̜̓o̝͠nd̜͝ ̉͜he̤̾ad s͇̐tar͕̽t!" She said. She didn't wait for a response from the survivors, instead jumping right into her countdown. "Ten!" She said, her voice losing its distinct imperfections and distortions for the briefest of moments. "N̗̍Î͖̦͗NĒ͉̩͝" She followed. Not only did the corrupted tone of her voice return, but it was then somehow even more deep and distorted, accented by a dark malice and intent to kill straight out of hell. Bon Bon and Trixie didn't waste another moment staring in horror at their former teacher, turning tail and sprinting back down the hallway towards the stairwell as fast as they could, the sound of their rapid footsteps drowning out the sound of Cherilee's countdown. Without saying a word to each other as they ran to not waste their breath, they quickly descended the stairwell down a flight, exploding into the hallway of the floor below and booking it for the electrical room. They had to get the lights on. With Cherilee undoubtedly right on their heels, continuing to have to rely on their flashlights to see would be an immediate death sentence, making them stand out like sore thumbs against the otherwise pitch-black. They made it to the electrical room, Bon Bon rapidly flinging the keys out and jamming each one haphazardly into the lock to figure out which was the right one, all while Trixie in a panic tried to figure out how much time they had left in Cherilee's countdown. "Three... Two... One." With a relieved gasp, Bon Bon found the right key, turning the lock before throwing the door open and going in, shutting it behind them as quickly and quietly as possible. The two turned their flashlights to the panels now in front of them. "Which one of these controls the lights?!" Trixie said in a panic. "Uh..." Bon Bon said, quickly surveying everything in front of them. Without a word she quickly went for and switched a few seemingly random levers, buttons, and switches, before turning her gaze to one particularly large lever. “How did you know how to do that?” Trixie questioned. "I took an electronics class last semester.” She replied in a rush. “Okay, here's the plan. When I count to three, I'm going to throw this lever, and when I do, you book it out of here as fast as you can towards the ground floor. I'll be right behind you." Trixie nodded. "Three. Two." "Oñ̪e.̫̄" A voice said from directly above them. Not wasting another moment, Bon Bon threw the switch before booking it back into the hallway along with Trixie, not even taking the time to be horrified at what had just happened. The two made it to the stairwell, starting their marathon towards the ground floor, and subsequently their escape. Neither of them kept track of what floor they were on, simply rushing down to the ground floor as fast as their legs could carry them, going two sometimes three steps at a time, a feat that at any other time would have been nigh impossible, but with the adrenaline coursing through their veins as they ran it became almost second nature in the name of survival. Just as it felt like they were almost to the ground floor, a door leading to the floor they were currently in caved in, the corrupted visage of Silver Spoon bursting forth with an inhuman snarl. Bon Bon screamed. “Go back! Go back!” she cried, scrambling back up the steps with Trixie following suit. Not too long after they were forced to turn back, the sound of Cherilee rushing towards them from above cut through the air. The two of them stopped, taking a moment to quickly think before running for the closest door to keep from being surrounded. There wasn’t enough time for Bon Bon or Trixie to close, much less lock the door they’d just come from, forced to run aimlessly into the floor they’d wound up on. Trixie reached into her jean pocket again, withdrawing another smoke bomb and hurling it towards the doorway, covering their escape just enough for their persuers to lose track of them. It was now that they realized Bon Bon’s efforts in the electrical room had been successful, the lights above them flickering on and off in rapid succession, one moment the floor lit up and the next immersed back into total darkness, over and over again. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that they no longer had to rely on their flashlights, making it much easier to hide. It didn’t take them long to figure out that they were on one of the main office floors, much of it just endless cubicles filled with the standard work desk, office chair, and a work computer or laptop. In this particular scenario, these workspaces formed one giant maze, allowing Bon Bon and Trixie to start playing the world’s deadliest game of hide and seek with at least two corrupted persuers. It didn’t take long for the two to find hiding spots, both of them settling for two normal looking cubicles on opposite ends of a central walkway, hiding under the workdesks where they could maintain a line of sight with each other. That was where they chose to stay, scared to make even breathing noises for fear of somehow being heard, each of them putting their hands over their mouths to muffle the sound of their rapid breathing. Although they could defend themselves if it came down to it, Bon Bon realized Trixie was right in her hesitation at the prospect of using the handgun. While neither of them doubted that the nine-millimeter rounds chambered in it could kill or at the very least incapacitate the things enough for them to get away, the sound would be like waving a giant dinner bell for every one of the things within a miles’ radius. What felt like an eternity passed, neither of them daring to move from their respective hiding spots, the occasional crash of a falling object or sounds of feet and hands on the floor signifying that they were looking for them, or at least stalking the floor. Bon Bon heard something from up above. While there wasn’t much either of them could see from their hiding spots, there was enough of a view to see parts of the ceiling, and in Bon Bon’s case, the windows facing the outside on the far end of the room. It was there that she heard and then saw Silver Spoon crawling along the walls, ceiling, and then windows like a spider, leaving dark splotches of corruption everywhere she went. It was a harrowing sight, especially when not even two days before she remembered walking past her and Diamond Tiara in the halls, a memory that in any other context would have been meaningless. Bon Bon’s gaze went back to Trixie just in time for her to see her eyes widen at something she couldn’t see. Trixie made a quick terrified glance over to her before seeming to take in a deep breath and hold it. Bon Bon did the same despite not being able to see what Trixie was. A few seconds later, she got her answer. A pair of light blue legs became visible, the rest of whoever was walking past obscured due to the nature of their hiding spots. All that was visible besides this person’s legs was the drops of corruption splashing like rain onto the floor under them. A haunting realization dawned on the two: There were three of them. Neither Cherilee nor Silver Spoon had that color, meaning that there were now even more to worry about. Thankfully, the two remained unfound, time slowly crawling by during what felt like an eternity of being unable to move. They did their best to ignore the growing discomfort in their muscles accompanied by frequent cramping and claustrophobia. “I̫̾ ̢́k-̜̾k̝͠-kno̞͗w ͎͠y̛̱ǫ̐u͔̎'r̙̔e ̞͛in ̼͐h̯̐è̱ṛ̌e̺̍!” Cherilee’s voice said from somewhere across the room. “T͚̾ḫ͆e̗̅re̐͜'̳́s̜͆ ̘̔ǹ̼owhḙ͠ŗ́e ͙̕el̫̂s̺̿e ̦̈́you ̘̿co̡͐uld̼͌ ̻̿h̤͡ave ̰̃g̦̾o̻͗ne!” she said, followed by a quick, demented giggle. Aside from the fear-inducing sound of Cherilee knowing that they were there, a new question arose in Bon Bon’s mind: Why was Cherilee the only one who spoke? What made her so special that she could form coherent sentences but Silver Spoon and the other one couldn’t? Her train of thought was cut off by the sound of wood breaking somewhere off to her right, followed by more and more objects breaking as the corrupted now resorted to destroying the room until they were found. Bon Bon looked over to Trixie, who seemed to have the same realization as their eyes met. Not even daring to whisper despite the loud sounds of objects breaking, they both signalled to each other that on another count of three they’d make another break for the stairwell. Trixie held up three fingers, lowering them one at a time for the countdown. ”One. Two. Three.” They both exploded from their hiding spots, taking a moment to find the open door to the stairwell and making a break for it. Unfortunately for them, Silver Spoon caught up to them before they could get up to speed. Silver Spoon struck first, pouncing towards Trixie and successfully striking her in the arm, causing her to fall into a nearby filing cabinet with a loud CRASH. Bon Bon didn’t waste any time, quickly drawing the handgun and firing two shots, both aimed at Silver Spoons upper body. The sound was deafening, but thankfully the bullets hit their mark. The first bullet hit its target in the head, followed by a second in the arm she was using to overpower Trixie. She flopped over, seemingly dead, allowing Trixie to get up and start running again, now bleeding from her arm and forehead which now bore large gashes. “THERE ̮̕YO͖͌U ̨̈A̺̿R̤̓E̘͘!” They heard Cherilee cry out in bloodlust. She two charged them, leaping into the air for an attack just as Bon Bon once again aimed the gun. Two more shots pierced the air, followed by Cherilee overshooting her target and crashing into a nearby cubicle. “Come on!” Bon Bon cried out, grabbing Trixies arm and pulling her along towards the stairwell, unknowingly getting some of her blood on her. Once again they started hurtling down the stairwell, the sound of the unknown third corrupted that had been in the room with them following them becoming louder by the second. “We’re not going to make it to the ground floor in time!” Bon Bon heard Trixie exclaim from behind her, the sound of her voice beginning to get drowned out by the sound of their persuer getting ever closer. Bon Bon gritted her teeth upon realizing she was right. They were so close, but they wouldn’t make it to the ground floor before being caught, not with Trixie being slowed down by the blood she was losing from her cuts. For the briefest of moments, she considered leaving Trixie behind to give herself a better chance to escape, before just as quickly shoving the thought from her mind and hating herself for even allowing such a thought to exist. Not seeing any other options, she instead directed herself and Trixie through the nearest door on the right, intending to play another game of hide and seek while they weighed their options. The gun Bon Bon had was still an option, but like Trixie had tried to point out earlier, the sound was likely to attract more of them to the building if it hadn’t already. If it already had, then Bon Bon was leading herself and Trixie to their deaths by trying to hide again, but those first shots had been fired on a much higher floor, so hopefully the distance plus the thickness of the walls and windows meant the shots hadn’t been heard outside of the building. She looked out a window she and Trixie passed while running through the floor they were on, determining they had to be on the fourth or fifth floor. If she used the gun again on their last persuer, it would almost certainly be heard, so unfortunately that wasn’t an option anymore. The floor they currently found themselves on wasn’t very well suited for hiding, mostly consisting of long, winding hallways with nothing to hide behind, and only the occasional small room with one door each, so getting caught in one meant there would be nowhere to escape. Not wanting to risk hiding in one of the small rooms, the two instead opted to run as deep into the maze of hallways as they could, moving as silently as they could while listening intently for anything besides their own footsteps. After moving what they thought would be ample distance away from the stairwell, Bon Bon turned back towards Trixie to more closely analyze the extent of her wounds. In the flickering light of the lights dotting the hallway, she realized that they had unintentionally left a small blood trail behind them. Neither of them were sure how smart the things actually were, if they’d actually be able to pick up on such a thing, but they weren’t willing to risk it. “We need to get that bleeding stopped!” Bon Bon said to Trixie. “You think?” Trixie replied, hanging her head down to keep blood from getting in her eyes and gripping a hand around the wound on her right arm. “Uh-” Bon Bon said, looking around before heading into a nearby room to search for something. She emerged about a minute later, now gripping a pair of scissors in one hand. “Hand me your jacket.” Trixie did as she was told, taking her jacket off, wincing in pain as she had to slide one of the sleeves over her bleeding arm. Bon Bon got to work, cutting off the left sleeve and the lower portion. She fashioned the cut up pieces into makeshift gauze pads, first positioning one over the cut on Trixie’s arm and then taking the sleeve and wrapping it tightly around, repeating the process using other pieces for the wound on her head. “It’s not much, but that should be enough to stop the bleeding.” She said, stepping back to admire her impromtu bandages. “Thanks.” Trixie replied with a weak smile. “We need to get moving again.” Bon Bon said. “I don’t know how smart those things are, but I don’t want to take the chance with the bloodtrail you just left behind.” Trixie turned her head in the opposite direction in response, quickly realizing what her friend meant. “Oh.” She stated flatly. As though on que, the lights suddenly flickered rapidly, before turning off, immersing the two in near-total blackness again. This was quickly followed by the sound of rushing foot and hand steps above them, approaching fast. “You don’t think-” Trixie started. “We need to move, now.” Bon Bon said again. If that thing was smart enough to go back and sabotage the lights before coming after them, then it definitely knew how to find them using Trixie’s bloodtrail. The two of them quietly took off down the halls again, aimlessly just trying to lose themselves in the maze of hallways in an attempt to stay hidden. As they ran, they noticed more of the corruption starting to cover the floor, seemingly materializing out of thin air. The more they moved, taking rights and lefts at random, the more of it they saw, visible in the near pitch black only because of the way it glitched into multicolored pixels, along with the low, distorted hiss it emmited as they ran past particularly large puddles of it. It was almost as if the corruption itself knew where they were now, covering more and more of the floor to limit where they could go, before eventually consuming the entire floor. While moving along a particularly long hallway, an abnormally large glob of corruption could be seen at the very end. Nothing particularly stood out about it initially, but as they moved closer to the point where the hallway split towards the left and right, a loud hiss suddenly eminated from it, followed by a bright red glow to one side, and finally a large, distorted arm shooting out. The two stopped in their tracks as what remained of Cherilee slowly but surely made itself known. Her face materialized first after her arm, the left half of it completely drenched in corruption, with only small hints of blood-soaked skin visible in patches. The right side of her face, while not as covered, wasn’t in much better shape. A small bullethole could be made out below her visible eye, which now glowed a bright red from the center. “YOU Ḏ͝I̖͆DN̢̆'͢͠T T̤̉H̢̋Ȉ͉N̡͝K͇̐ ̺̄YÓ͉U̱͘ ̫͋C͈͒OU͙̾LD̹͘ G̬̉ET ̲̉RÏ̫D͙̅ OF̹̑ ̟͑M̮͑E TH͉͐AT EAS̝̄IL̼̎Y,͓̓ ̹̾Ď͍Ȋ͍D̼̉ Y̡͒OU?” She said, her other arm now shooting out from the surrounding corruption and grabbing the nearby wall, allowing Cherilee to start pulling herself free from it. Her voice was barely recognizable, now much more distorted and deep sounding, reflecting the nearly destroyed condition of her body that was now trying to reach the two survivors. The two froze in horror in the pitch black of the hallway, turning around to run back only for a long gray arm to shoot out of another puddle on the floor at the opposite end, its hand landing on the floor beside it, the being it belonged to trying to pull itself out of the corruption it was materializing from just like Cherilee. Without any other options, they ran back in Cherilee’s direction, randonly choosing a direction and running down it before Cherilee could fully emerge. What they didn’t realize, however, was that they both mistakenly ran in opposite directions in their haste, forever separating themselves from the other’s company- They were now alone.
DeliriumBon Bon took off down the left hallway, not yet realizing that she’d been separated from Trixie. She ran aimlessly down the dark hallways, trying to somehow stumble upon the door to the stairwell. She tripped, falling face first onto the floor. She scrambled back to her feet to continue running, not realizing that she’d fallen into a puddle on corruption, and that it had drenched the upper half of her body. It wasn’t until her vision started to distort and pixelate that she discovered her mistake, and by then it was too late. What followed felt to her like she’d just been injected with anesthesia, and she was the patient now defiantly trying to stay awake for as long as possible. Her pace slowed, panic setting in as she desperately tried to stay awake, to resist the darkness’s influence. She turned another corner, now finding herself on a hallway with a window facing the moon. She took a glace outside, seeing her reflection in the glass. The left side of her face was the most affected, her mouth on that side bent into a twisted smile against her will, her eye on that side lacking its pupil, now just a blank white void opened to a terrifying degree. Her right side was the opposite, her mouth opened in a silent scream, while her right eye’s pupil had shrunk so much in terror that it didn’t look too much different from her left one. “Hello, Bon Bon.” A voice said from behind her. With a jolt, Bon Bon looked behind her. What greeted her was none other than Lyra, whom she learned then was the unknown third corrupted whom had been stalking them. She didn’t look corrupted, nor did she sound it, simply standing in the middle of the hallway about ten feet away. It was a strangely beautiful sight, Bon Bon’s best friend, seemingly uncorrupted, standing stock still in the hallway, her eyes closed and the moonlight shining brightly against her skin, illuminating the fairness of her light blue skin and locks of hair on the side facing the window. She was dressed in her usual school attire, a pink shirt, blue skirt and purple boots. Her eyes were closed, her arms raised slightly above her shoulders and spread out. In the moment her friend seemed almost angelic, fitting considering the feelings they had recently expressed for one another, before Canterlot city was plunged into eternal night. Everything else about the scene before her had the exact opposite tone, the darkness covering the hallway swirling around Lyra’s form, long tendrils of it wrapping around the lower portions of her legs and boots. “Lyra?” Bon Bon questioned in a low whisper filled with disbelief. “Is it really you?” “Of course it’s me, silly!” She replied, opening her eyes one by one, revealing their bright orange irises which stared straight at her. The tendrils surrounding her legs fell away, allowing her to walk towards and then past Bon Bon down the hallway. “Come, we need to talk.” She said, motioning for her friend to follow as she turned left down another hallway. Bon Bon followed, not noticing that she no longer felt like she was being forcefully put to sleep, or that she had full control over her face again. She turned down the hallway, breaking into a brief jog in order to catch up to her friend. “I- I can’t believe it’s you.” Bon Bon said in disbelief, her eyes starting to tear up. “I thought I’d lost you!” “Lost is a strong word, Bon Bon.” Lyra replied. “There’s so much that you don’t understand, for now at least.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Just know that you never lost me. What you see as me being taken away, turned into some mindless monster...” Her voice trailed off as she lifted her left arm and extended it to the wall beside her, allowing a small tendril of corruption to briefly grasp it. “Is actually just me being freed from the metaphorical strings that I never knew I had, and taking on a new form as a result.” “W-what do you mean?’ “You don’t get it, do you?” She questioned. “Nevermind, I know you don’t, not yet at least.” She said in a solemn tone. “To put it simply, I’ve learned the truth, the truth about our existence, and how this quote-unquote ‘darkness’ as you call it, is the key to finally escaping, and being able to be who we want to be.” She looked over at Bon Bon, who still seemed confused. “You know Sunset and her friends, don’t you?” “Yeah? What about them?” “You don’t understand just how important they are, not just to keep this world safe from the magic that they brought here, but for our very existence as a whole.” Bon Bon chose not to respond, instead waiting until Lyra continued. “Without them, our world as we know it simply can’t exist. Why is something beyond me even now. Just know, that if the darkness never interfered, that movie date we were supposed to go on in a few days? It never would have happened. At one moment sometime before then, we all would have simply stopped existing. Why? Because the story of Sunset and her friends would have ended before then.” She explained, her voice becoming noticeably angrier towards the end. “I- I don’t understand, Lyra.” Bon Bon questioned. “Don’t ̖̋ẏ͖ỏ̹u ̹̉g͍̣͇͒̿̅e̖̅̚ͅt̞̽͐͛͜͜ ̨̫͓͎̐̽̊͌͒ͅi͈͍͖͉̜͌̽͂̾͡t̗̫͇̥͖̒͛̈̆̚?̬̟͔̲͈́̎̓̈́!̧̪̰̲̜͛̑͌̏̚” Lyra yelled. “Our lives never mattered, Bon Bon! None of ours did! The only people in this world who ever mattered were those seven! All the rest of us were were background pieces!” She exclaimed, turning back to face Bon Bon and using wild hand gestures to exemplify her point. Bon Bon recoiled and took a few steps back in response to her friend’s outburst. Lyra calmed down seeing her reaction, taking a brief pause before continuing. “But there’s another way.” She said in a low tone. “A way for us to live happily, just you... and me. The two of us, Bon Bon. Together, forever. We can live in paradise for all eternity, in a world where we’re in charge of our own story. In order to make it happen, though, you must give up your mind. Give up everything that ties you down to this show, look into the dark...” She said, her eyes drifitng towards the darkness that infested the wall to her left. “And take a dive.” She finished, before stepping face first into the corruption, her body seemlessly melting into it. Bon Bon once again lurched back at the actions and words of her friend, slipping on the corruption coating the floor and falling on her behind. “L-lyra? Where are you?!” She cried, her mind starting to come back to the reality of the situation. “T̛̹h̦̾eř̳e̝̅'ll̜͡ b̯̉e ͖̔n̮͘o good̲̓b̰́ye̦̽s...̛̯” Lyra’s disembodied voice chanted, seemingly coming from all directions at once. Bon Bon scrambled to her feet, taking off back down the hallway in a mindless panic. “A n d we’ll p l a y f0rever. . .” Lyra’s voice said again. “Come on Bon Bon! Join me! Join U̝̍S̞͌!” Her voice said again, the voices of Cherilee and Silver spoon joining in for the word ‘us.’ Bon Bon ignored her, continuing to run aimlessly through the hallways. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, her mind too filled with adrenaline, and the hallways too coated in corruption in order for anything to be percieved besides up, down, left or right. The darkness covering her body once again started to try taking control from her body again. Bon Bon resisted fiercely, now fueled by a new, dark determination to make it out of here, not just for herself, but for any hope that might remain of saving her best friend. “Don’t make me do this, Bon Bon.” The voice of Lyra called from behind her, followed by the sound of a new set of footsteps rapidly approaching from behind her. “Because it’s going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me!” She called, her voice becoming much more violent and malicious. Bon Bon grit her teeth, followed by her right fist, only for it to be stopped by the feeling of cold steel in the same hand. The gun. In all the chaos and confusion of what had just happened, Bon Bon had somehow forgotten that she was holding it the entire time, although in her defense the sensation in her hands was minimal at best due to the dark splotches of corruption staining her skin in that area. She turned down another hallway, leaning herself up against the wall while she examined and checked the gun for ammo. Most of the magazine was still full, since she had only used around four bullets before then. A dark thought then creeped into her head: Could she really bring herself to use it on her best friend? Would it kill her? Before she could answer her own question, the corrupted form of Lyra turned the corner, skidding to a halt upon seeing her target. In stark contrast to how she’d appeared mere minutes before, she was now fully engulfed by the corruption, her appearence now similar to Cherilee’s and Silver Spoon’s. Despite this, her voice still sounded hauntingly normal when she next spoke. “Aw, really sweetie? You’d shoot your best friend in the name of saving your own skin?” She laughed, dark droplets of corruption spewing from her smiling mouth as she did so. “I underestimated you!” Bon Bon took another step back, positioning herself in the center of the hallway with the gun drawn and pointed at Lyra. “Please Lyra! I know you’re still in there! You have to fight it! This isn’t who you want to be!” She begged, her hands shaking as she gripped the trigger. Lyra gave another small chuckle, bending over and placing her right hand over her right eye. “Oh Bon Bon, don’t you get it?” She said, standing straight up again and removing the hand from her eye, revealing its uncorrupted iris underneath. “I am exactly who I want to be.” She smiled again, this time it being more like a smirk. Bon Bon’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of her friend, one side of her face corrupted and the other not, the iris of her uncorrupted eye staring straight at her. She extended her right arm off to the side, revealing the fingers on that hand reshapened into long and pixelated claws. She gave another quick chuckle, before leaping into the air and bringing her clawed hand down towards Bon Bon’s face. She reacted just in time, aiming the gun directly at her wrist and firing, causing droplets of corruption, blood and bone fragments to fly out from the impact site. Lyra cried out in agony, losing control in the air and falling down, giving Bon Bon crucial time to start running again. Bon Bon turned another corner, hearing Lyra still agonizing hehind her in a strangely normal voice, making her feel even worse about having to shoot her. “What kind of friend are you?!” Lyra’s voice said in an accusing tone. “We could have been happy together! All you had to do was give in! Forget it! If I can’t have you, NO ONE CAN.” The sound of Lyra’s infuriated voice and footsteps closed in fast again behind her, and Bon Bon turned around again, ready to fire. This time, without thinking about it, Bon Bon aimed for a much more lethal point: Her face. Just as Lyra prepared to attack again, she pulled the trigger, this time the bullet going clean through her uncorrupted eye and out the back, causing her to fall back and down on her back on the floor, like she’d just run into a wood plank hanging in front of her face where the bullet had hit. Bon Bon stopped in her tracks, the true gravity of what she’d just done finally hitting her like a ton of bricks. She collapsed to the floor next to Lyra’s body, beginning to sob. “L-lyra.. no...” She said, sobbing, her tears a mix of saline and droplets of the corruption that still covered her face. She looked back up and around at the darkness-covered hallways, spotting Cherilee and Silver Spoon peering at her around a corner not too far away. They didn’t bother attacking though, determining that Bon Bon was at the end of her rope anyway. And so, they simply stalked away. Bon Bon looked back to Lyra’s corpse. With that final bullet, any willpower she’d had to survive was completely gone. She was alone. All of her friends, teachers and classmates were either dead or corrupted, and the one thing she’d been holding onto, the hope that she could get away and find some way to cure her best friend, lay dead in front of her. She gritted her teeth in a sudden flash of anger before checking the magazine of the gun. One bullet remained. ”That’s enough.” she said to herself, now placing the gun to her temple. This darkness had taken everything from her, and in a spur of the moment decision, she decided she wouldn’t let it have her out of pure spite. Before she could pull the trigger one final time though, Lyra’s body below her suddenly jerked back to life once more. She shot up faster than Bon Bon could react. “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!” She cried out, tackling Bon Bon and sending the two of them carreening through a nearby window. Together, they both fell, all ten stories down onto the pavement below. Author's Note Case Study #1- The Corrupted World: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. It should be pretty obvious to anyone reading this what the corrupted are. Whether you refer to them as the corrupted, the afflicted, the infected, monstrosities, etc. the corrupted refers to any and all characters who have been enslaved by the corruption in one way or another. There is only one way for a character to be corrupted, and that is by direct, prolonged contact with the corruption itself. On paper, this doesn’t seem too hard at first glance, but considering just how much of it there can be, and then add to this the ones under its influence doing everything they can to spread it themselves, this task very quickly becomes very difficult, borderline impossible for all but the strongest characters in a given world. While the corrupted all have one thing in common: being under the darknesses influence, how exactly they are affected can vary greatly. Anomaly Type #1: Voided Characters. Voided Characters are defined as any and all characters medically dead either directly prior to or during corruption. These anomalies are easy to identify, all of them sporting a bright red glow eminating from the center of one or both eyes. These characters cannot be saved, the obvious reason being that they’re dead. If the corruption were to somehow be removed from a Voided character, all that would remain would be their corpse, the corruption using their bodies basically as a puppet. While easy to identify, Voided characters are extremely dangerous, again because of the fact that they’re dead. Because they’re dead and gone, the corruption is able to take control of their bodies to the fullest, since the host no longer has a consiousness that can fight back. The result of this is beings that are extraordinarily violent by default, and these anomalies will not hesitate to kill any survivors they find, in contrast to normal corrupted who simply aim to corrupt others. This tendency to kill is doubly serious when you realize death is what creates Void anomalies in the first place. The recently observed case of a survivor named Bon Bon within this world serves as a case in point when it comes to Void anomalies. While the use of firearms is very effective at disabling or otherwise incapacitating the corrupted, one must be careful with where they aim to avoid killing the target and subsequently voiding them. In this particular case, by shooting and killing Cherilee, Silver Spoon and Lyra in their corrupted forms, Bon Bon unknowingly Voided all three, rendering them completely unsavable, and much more dangerous threats for any other survivors. The case of the character Lyra stands out to us however. For reasons unknown as of this publishing, she was seemingly aware of her situation, to a shockingly unsettling extent. Why exactly this has happened is some too early to determine, but we will continue studying this and other worlds and give an update soon. For anyone who may be wondering what Lyra is referring to when she says that the story of Sunset and her friends ends, it’s a reference to how, because of it’s cancelation, the last time we see Sunset and her friends is in the Holidays Unwrapped special, specifically the “O Come, All Ye Squashful” short. The implication here is that because of the Darknesses invasion, the original timeline of how the show was supposed to end has been completely derailed, leading into this story. Again, like I said in the description for this little story, I would highly suggest going and reading my much longer, more in-depth work When Darkness Falls if you’ve enjoyed this, which will eventually build upon what’s happened here, where Equestria and subsequently Twilight and her friends are in all this, and even how the Darkness has affected other cartoon universes far and wide.
Epilogue: A World Torn ApartFlash, Wallflower and Sweet Leaf made their way carefully through the lower floors of the office building, taking the same precautionary measures as Bon Bon and Trixie were many floors above them, tiptoeing whilst constantly shining their flashlights and swiveling their heads in every direction, peaking around every corner to every hallway. Flash led the way, with Sweet Leaf behind him and Wallflower bringing up the rear. Then, coming from somewhere on the floor above them. Footsteps. The three stopped in their tracks, shining their Flashlights up towards the source of the noise. “Do you think that’s Bon Bon and Trixie?” Wallflower asked. Flash didn’t answer, instead holding up a finger to signal to them to remain quiet while he listened intently. It didn’t take him long to realise that there were multiple sets of footsteps now, along with the occasional brief hiss of static that the corruption emitted. “I don’t think that’s them.” He replied coldly. “Quick! Turn off your flashlights!” One by one each of their lights cut off, and without saying another word, the group started heading towards the outer edges of the floor, where the windows facing the full moon were to make up for the sudden loss of light. Along the way, as they were moving through the last hallway which branched off into office spaces and cubicles, Flash spotted something on the wall ahead and to the left, reflecting the light shining in from the moon. “Guys, look!’ He exclaimed, breaking into a quick jog to get to the object quicker. Sure enough, what he’d seen was a fire axe, hidden from his grasp by a panel of glass, with a sign above it that read BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, along with a large red alarm positioned above it. He thought to himself, wondering if he should break the glass or not. On one hand, not only would he likely injure himself in trying to break the glass, but that alarm above it would almost certainly go off, meaning that if the footsteps they’d heard above them wasn’t their friends, whatever it was would immediately know where they were. On the other hand though, this could be their saving grace if push came to shove. There was a very real chance that they’d be found anyway, and in that case having a weapon, any weapon, could mean the difference between life and death. He looked back towards his fellow survivors, seeking either their praise or scrutination for if he should do it or not. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” Sweet Leaf said, her look one of discouragement. “I think it could be.” Wallflower said. "I think if we get out of here quick enough after triggering the alarm it’ll be a great distraction for us to get out of here. Plus we’d have a weapon.” “Hmm. . .” Sweet Leaf pondered. “That could work, but I’m still not too keen on taking that big of a risk. What about Bon Bon and Trixie? There’s no way they’d be able to get out fast enough before this place is swarming with those things. “Wait! The powers out! Doesn’t that mean we can do this risk-free?” Wallflower exclaimed. “There could still be a backup somewhere." Flash replied. "So right now it comes down to a coin toss: Do we break the glass and risk an alarm going off leading to the possible deaths of two of our friends. . .” He paused for a second upon hearing more footsteps above them. “. . .Or do we go without and risk not having anything to protect ourselves.” ”Do it.” A voice called out from behind them. All three survivors turned towards the source of the voice in a panic, all of them met with the sight of Lyra’s corrupted visage standing at the other end of the hallway. She was hunched over at an odd angle, corruption covering her head to toe and the surrounding floor. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Don’t do it.” Lyra said. “it’ll make this easier for you.” She said matter of factly. Finally getting over the shock that had overcome him until that point, Flash propelled his left elbow into the glass, creating an ear-piercing CRACK as the glass gave way and shattered. He reached inside and grabbed the axe, the alarm above thankfully not going off due to lack of power. Lyra’s previously crazed smile gave way to an equally mad frown in an instant, followed by her charging down the hallway towards Flash. Wallflower and Sweet Leaf screamed, turning to run while Flash was left to fight. Lyra charged and leapt towards him with both arms outstretched. He reacted just in time, holding the axe horizontally which allowed him to use it as an Impromptu barrier against Lyra's assault. He struggled with all his might to keep the handle of the axe between them, Lyra all the while thrusting her head forwards trying to bite him. "What the-!" He exclaimed as Lyra opened her mouth again, expecting her to try and bite him, but instead several long dark tendrils of corruption shooting out from her wide mouth. He faltered at the sight, allowing Lyra to force him down onto the ground where they continued to struggle with the handle of the axe between them. After a few more seconds of struggling, Flash felt his arms starting to give out, Lyra's tendrils extending from her mouth growing ever closer moment by moment. Just as he thought he was done for though, something hit Lyra in the side, hard, sending her flying off of him and into the wall to their left. "Come on, we gotta go!" Wallflowers voice called down to him, followed by a hand to help him back to his feet. While he was being helped up, he noticed a small dark patch of corruption on Wallflowers leg where she'd kicked Lyra off of him. Before they could get very far, Lyra was on top of them again, preparing to strike. Reacting purely out of instinct, Flash turned and whirled the axe behind them with as much force as he could manage. It managed to hit it's mark in Lyra's side just before she would have gotten to them, the force of the impact throwing her against the wall, disoriented and then proceeding to collapse to the ground. He took the opportunity to catch up with Wallflower and Sweet Leaf, all three of them now booking it for the stairwell. He made it to the door just as Lyra’s footsteps could be heard coming from the other end of the hallway leading to it. He threw the door shut and locked it just as Lyra careened into it, leaving a very large bulge in the doorframe, followed by a cry of rage from his former classmate. He made it back to the bottom floor just as Wallflower and Sweet Leaf were making their ways through the windows leading to the outside. He quickly followed suit, axe in hand as the group of three once again made their way out into the remnants of Canterlot City. Before they got too far, he looked back at the towering office building that he knew they had just left Bon Bon and Trixie in, tears starting to form at the edges of his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He said before turning back and running down the sidewalk.
