Chapters Three faces appear in a dimly lit room somewhere deep underneath Canterlot, Equestria is at war with an unknown ancient evil that has driven the entire population into hiding, all attempts to stop it have ended in disaster. Now is not a time for explanation however, there are things that must be discussed, for only a few moments remain before all is gone.
"We must do it! There is no way we can survive if we don't!"
"It is far too risky, while using that method would take it out for sure, there is an equal chance it could take out every living thing in Equestria!"
"Well does anyone else have any other ideas that might be better? There is simply no other way to stop this evil..."
"We could always try the elements of harmony aga-"
"NO! The elements have already failed once, we're extremely lucky the bearers are still alive!"
There is a silence in the room that is suddenly interrupted by a loud pounding at the barricaded steel door, rattling the hinges.
"We must do it now, there is no other option!"
"Alright, yes, we must hurry though!"
"Agreed."
The pounding at the door increased in volume and a black mist began to seep through from underneath. The three figures form a circle in the center of the room and form a white aura around them. The aura grew to a blinding brightness and erupted into a blast that would mimic that of ten million atomic bombs just as an unspeakable creature made its way into the room. Unfortunately for the creature it was instantly turned to dust as the purging white light expanded outwards at a rapid rate, coating all of Equestria in mere seconds, turning all of the evil that had been plaguing the land into nothing. All was quiet in the following minutes.
At the Whitetail Woods outpost a bird is heard chirping, several ponies lift their heads at hearing this to see a blue sky for the first time in weeks. They smiled and they cheered, knowing that the evil was finally gone as more birds began to sing their songs again.
Most ponies thought the spell that had been performed would have no consequences, and they were right, it wouldn't have any consequences, for them at least. The wave of pure magical energy that had dispelled the evil continued to travel even after it had cleaned Equestria, traveling into the depths of space, causing severe distortions and anomalies wherever it managed to find itself.
2009. NASA headquarters
Things are usual in the offices of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; however an intern walking between the cubicles was carrying quite the unusual set of papers that had just been faxed in from the Australia Telescope National Facility. The papers are set on the desk in conference room c where the higher ranking officials will discuss the information that the Australians reported. Eventually four men arrive in the room, one sitting at the head of the table with the papers in front of him.
"This is quite the predicament we have here; do we have any explanations for it yet?" Said the man at the head of the table as he looked over the papers with a puzzled look on his face.
"Well whatever it is has caused extreme disturbances on the outer edges of the solar system, and it just doesn't make any sense at all."
"Do you have any examples of these anomalies by chance?"
"Yes, the image I am about to show you was sent here about an hour ago by the ANTF." A projector screen lowers from the ceiling showing a picture of a small planet covered with patches of colorful plant life.
"This is Pluto as of five hours ago..."
"That's impossible! Pluto doesn't even have an atmosphere; it couldn't have just randomly gotten one!"
"And it never did, the plant life appeared then vanished ten minutes later."
So the telescope that captured the image must have malfunctioned, that's the only possible explanation!"
"We thought so too at first, but every telescope and satellite we could access showed the same thing."
"So that probably means the public saw it too."
"Yes, but surprisingly enough not that many people have heard about it. The administration is currently doing everything in its power to remove all evidence."
"Good good, have any other anomalies been reported?"
A third man at the meeting sat up and spoke; "we have confirmed reports of rainbows on Jupiter."
"Well after seeing fucking FLOWERS on PLUTO I can believe that!" The man at the head of the table exclaimed before resting his head in his hands.
"We have about four years before it can affect our planet."
"If it's causing flowers and rainbow I don't think we have much to worry about..."
They never really realized just how wrong they were
Good morning Charlotte! It's Wednesday, March seventeenth two thousand twelve and we've just hit the seven a.m. hour; if you look outside your window you'll probably see the massive rainbow that's stretching over the entire Mecklenburg County area- I slam my fist down on the radio as it blares the morning news at me. whose idea is it to talk about a fucking rainbow on the news anyways... I walk slowly out of the bedroom of my apartment and throw some bread in the toaster before going off to get myself ready for work; when I walk back into the kitchen to retrieve my breakfast a few minutes later I find it smoldering on the counter next to the toaster. bloody thing, I need to get it replaced soon, guess it's McDonalds for me again. I groan at the thought of eating at that place again, they served some terrible food but it was pretty much the only thing my wallet could afford.
As I walk out the door the rainbow that was being talked about on the news shines brightly in my face. damn that thing is vivid, no wonder they were talking about it on the news.
"Some sight isn't it?" I turn to my left to see my neighbor in the next apartment over commenting on the streak of colors in the sky.
"Sure is, don't think I've ever seen anything like it in my life." I reply.
"I was checking my Facebook and these rainbows seem to be popping up pretty much all over the globe."
"Is that even possible?"
"It shouldn't be, but until some official comes out and explains it I don't think we'll know."
"And if an official doesn't come out and explain it? What then?"
"Well, I was browsing a conspiracy forum and one of the more popular posts was trying to explain that this whole thing is related to a wave of magical energy that caused rainbows on Jupiter four years ago. The guy's a total nut job if you ask me."
"That's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard; it was good talking to you but I'm provably running a little late for work at this point."
"Oh yeah, sure. See ya around!"
I walk down to the parking lot and unlock the door to my car, as I open the door I notice a scratch running along it. Fucking people and their shitty parking, they don't even have the courtesy to leave a note. I get in my car and start the engine, for the first time in a while it starts without issue maybe this day isn't going to be so bad after all. I try my best to put a smile on my face as I pull out of the parking lot of the apartment complex and head towards the McDonalds down the street for my breakfast.
Yep, I was wrong about today being good. I almost gag on a bite of the egg mcmuffin I bought; sometimes I think it would be better to starve. I toss the remainder of the breakfast sandwich out the driver’s side window as I pull my car onto interstate seventy-seven.
I rapidly approach uptown Charlotte; the tops of the skyscrapers begin to appear from behind the tree tops. More of the skyscrapers show themselves as I drive even closer; the Bank of America building sits in the middle of the city, holding its title of tallest in the city at eight hundred and seventy-one feet high. The rainbow that had been in the sky since before I woke up was still shining as brightly as ever, wait, was it getting brighter ? Just then I saw the sky turn from a traditional Carolina blue to a blinding white, followed by everything around me turning pitch black.
Black, everything is black. I am still self aware but I can't see, hear, or feel anything. At least a million questions are running themselves through my head in a loop at a hundred and ten miles an hour; how did this happen? Did this happen to anyone else? What if this was an attack of some sort? Would my family be okay all the way out in Oregon? Am I dead? I somehow manage to calm myself down and think with at least some logic, but what the hell am I supposed to do when I can't do anything? I think on the topic for several minutes to prevent the whirlwind of questions from entering my mind again when I see the black fade into a shade of deep red, alternating to shades of orange and yellow afterwards. After what feels like several minutes I can make the colors out to be fire, and after several more minutes I can make out the details of my car, upside-down. Great, I can see, but I can't feel a thing so how the hell am I supposed to get out of this damn car?! The fire is now visibly coming from under the hood of my car so I need to think of a plan to get out of here and fast. I decide the best course of action is to frantically pull and tug until the seat belt gives out, luckily it only takes about thirty seconds. Now that I'm down from that death trap of sorts I start to pull myself out of the car and onto the pavement. For some reason this is a very difficult task but with a bit more effort I manage to get myself completely out of the car and onto the pavement where I lie on my stomach.
I start moving around all my body parts to get a feel for what could possibly be broken. After a few seconds of this I find no pain coming from any movements I make, something feels a little off though; no, something feels a lot off. I turn my head around to see dark blue fur, two wings, hooves, and a dark yellow tail. I turn my head back around to see another pair of dark blue hooves greet me. At this moment I realize something critical; I can't hear anything. I can't hear other voices or the sound of other cars or the sound of birds or the sound of airplanes or helicopters flying above. I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING, GOD HELP ME I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR ANYTHING. I scream it out to the world around me until I pass out again.
A warm blast of air rushes over me, causing to jerk upright but immediately fall right on my ass again when I realize that I have hooves now. I turn around to see what could have caused the blast of air only to find that my car had exploded. I then realize something else, I CAN hear. I really wish I couldn't hear, the only sounds are flames and screaming with the occasional explosion ringing out. I manage to block out the sounds and take a look at my surrounds as a whole; I'm still on the interstate right outside of uptown Charlotte, my car is surrounded by hundreds of other cars that had people in them trying to go about their daily lives, half of those people are undoubtedly dead. I myself have somehow turned into a pegasus/pony looking creature with four hooves, a tail, and wings. Now I have to worry about how I'm going to stand up and get off this interstate before another car explodes and kills me. I stand up only to fall back down several times before eventually finding balance, now for walking... Front left forward, front right forward... fall. Front left forward, back right forward... fall. I'm obviously over thinking this; I stand back up and try something that sounds ridiculous to head, but makes sense only because there are so many more ridiculous things that have happened already. I look straight ahead and tell myself that I am walking, thinking where I want to walk, and telling my brain to make me walk in that direction; sure enough I find myself walking. With that out of the way I decide to walk down the outskirts of the interstate in no purposeful direction for the sole reasons of walking, I needed a way to let the events of today sink in a little bit without causing a panic attack that would knock me unconscious.
The panic attack never sets in but as I walk I see some pretty gruesome things. A tractor trailer is flipped over on its side, crushing a small four door sedan completely underneath the trailer that has boxes of electronics falling out of it. Another mile or so down the road I come across the burning skeleton of an oil tanker that exploded, taking out all the cars within a hundred feet of it and practically destroying a massive chunk of the road. I saw others too, other human beings that had turned into these pony looking things. I ignored all of them, interacting would have only caused problems for myself. Some screamed, some cried, some struggled, and others just stood or sat there silently. Under normal circumstances I would have helped them, talked to them, interacted, but these were not normal circumstances. Who knows how many people turned, was it just Charlotte? The state? The country? The world?! I come out of my thoughts as I hear a loud roar in my ears, I look around, it's definitely not coming from ground level. I look to the sky and see it, a Boeing 747 airliner coming down at a rather rapid rate; it looked to be on a course that would send it straight into the center of uptown, which was still about ten miles from my location. The plane drops at an increasing speed until it makes contact at what I guess to be the fiftieth floor of the Bank of America building, causing a massive explosion as the hundreds of gallons of jet fuel in the plane ignite. All I can do is stand here and watch it burn as the structure of the building itself melts from the extreme heat. I see small, colorful bodies hurl themselves from the windows of the upper floors of the building. Several minutes pass and I continue to stand and watch as the tallest building on the Charlotte skyline falls to the ground, leaving a massive cloud of dust in its place.
The situation could be described as a perfect example of shock and awe; I've pretty much lost all hope of returning to a sense of normality after seeing that building fall. I'm suddenly shocked out of my state of despair when a hoof plants itself on my shoulder and a voice reaches my ears.
"Hey, you!"
I spun around in shock and saw an orange unicorn with a brown mane staring at my face.
"I was trying to get your attention from the other side of the highway but I couldn't get a response, wouldn't be the first time though, no one seems to be responding to anything anymore..."
Still in my state of shock I was staring at this pony with a wide eyed and confused look on my face; not saying anything.
"Hello, earth to stranger, anyone there?" He said as he waved a hoof rapidly back and forth in front of my face. I need to work up the strength to say something.
"Oh, err, hello there" I mumble, taking my eyes off him and looking back to where the Bank of America building once stood.
"Finally, a response! I was afraid you would turn out like these other zombies walking around randomly."
"Well a lot has happened over the past several minutes."
"Yes, but still, now is the time to group together and figure out what happened and why, now mope around like it's the end of the world!"
"You could technically consider this the end of the world you know."
"Nope, if it was the end of the world we'd all be dead, and last I checked you and I and all these other ponies you see aren't dead."
I don't respond and just look off towards the burning Charlotte skyline again.
"So stranger, what's your name? I'm Tom McCourt, accountant from Boston." He holds out a hoof like a person expecting a handshake would hold up their hand. I outstretch one of my hooves and touch it to his, commencing a slight shaking motion. There appears to be a slight grip.
"I'm Clayton Riddle, everyday Joe from about fifteen miles up the road."
"Well damn, I finally got someone to tell me their name!" Tom exclaims, getting a slight smile on his face. "So how'd you get roped up in all this pony business? I was just walking down a street in uptown when suddenly I blacked out and hit the concrete, woke up like this."
I hesitate to respond, still a little shy towards this talkative unicorn. "Eh, just driving down the street when whatever the hell turned us into ponies struck and the next thing you know I'm sitting upside down in my car."
"That should probably be a pretty important thing for us to get to the bottom of, figuring out why we all turned into these things."
"Us?" Did this unicorn tend to stick to me after only knowing me for five minutes?
"Well sure, those of us that are acting with some level of sanity should stick together." I pondered this for a moment; I had never really had any people to talk to other than my neighbor and a few people at work that I didn't even like that much. Hell, the last time I talked to my parents was when I made a trip out to their house in Oregon for Christmas.
"You know what Tom, that's not a bad idea, and I think I know where to start too, a neighbor of mine knows quite a bit about the odd and unusual, maybe we can track her down."
"Sounds great, lead the way onward." Tom points his hoof back towards the direction I had come from, I turn around and begin walking towards home with him following behind. As the Charlotte skyline disappears behind us another large explosion rings out.
After passing several exit ramps on the interstate we noticed more and more ponies walking in the same direction as us, with ponies walking in the other direction on the opposite side. Travel was tough though, all lanes of the interstate were pretty much a never ending pile up of smashed cars, trucks, and buses. At one point Tom and I had seen a school bus on its side, the back door and roof hatches hung wide open. I tried not to think about the situations the kids on that bus could be in right now. My new acquaintance and I mostly walked in silence, and while there were dozens of ponies on the interstate with us, no one ever spoke a word.
"Pretty creepy, eh?" Tom whispers to not break the silence around us too much.
"Yea, but as we get further northwards the traffic will hopefully thin out." And I was right, too. Once we had gotten another few miles up the interstate there were hardly any other ponies around us. Tom finally speaks up again
"Man, that was a max exodus from Charlotte back there; I don't blame anyone for not wanting to be waiting ten miles of uptown though."
"Yea, it's provably worse of a hell hole now than it was when we left it, and defiantly worse of a hell hole than it was before all this went down." We both chuckle slightly at my remark.
A little further up the road I spot something off to the side, I would normally disregard this as another car fragment but this was different. I go over to it and simply look down at it stupidly.
"Err, what the hell are you doing?" Tom asks, confused by my action.
"It's a phone, a Samsung Galaxy S III to be exact."
"And why are you staring at it with that stupid look on your face?"
"I want to try and pick it up." I had no idea why, but a part of me wanted to pick up the phone and see if it was still working.
"And how exactly to you intend on doing that?"
"Hear me out; remember when we first shook hooves? Didn't you feel a grip there at all?"
"Well yea I guess, now that you mention it though it is pretty odd."
"So if the same physics apply I should be able to reach out my hoof and grab that phone." Tom looks at me like I've finally lost it.
"That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard."
"I bet the fact that the entire human race turned into multi colored ponies is pretty ridiculous too." He doesn't respond as I stretch my hoof out slowly towards the phone. As soon as it makes contact I act as though I would be gripping something in a normal human hand, and sure enough when I lift my hoof back up the phone rises with it.
"Well I'll be damned." Tom says with a look of stupor on his face.
"Pretty impressive huh?" I boast back with a smile, the first time I had smiled since this morning. Tom's look changes from a stupor to a grin as he realizes something.
"Yea, pretty great. Now what are you going to do with it, call for help?" My smile changes to a look of disappointment as I realize my own stupidity.
"Alright, alright, let’s just keep going north, we're almost there." I mumble in annoyance as we continue walking towards our destination.
I guessed that it was about three in the afternoon when Tom and I reached the off ramp to the area where I lived, we were both pretty worn out from walking, or would it be trotting now? , all the way from uptown so the sight was a relief.
"Dude, thank God we're almost there, I'm beat." Tom said with a hint of exhaustion in his voice
"Yea, walking on these new legs does take a bit of a toll."
"I'm sure we're both a tad hungry as well, are there any decent restaurants around here?"
"I know of a fancy place a few blocks from here, but the place is expensive as fuck and you'd have to make a reservation." I told him jokingly.
He grinned and hit me over the shoulder with a hoof. "You know what I mean, someplace to scrounge at, see what all's been left behind."
Just then Tom spotted those golden arches in the sky, I saw him looking at them with intent and new instantly what he would propose.
"Dude, trust me, you do NOT want to go there, the food is absolute shit."
I tried to talk him out of it but he was insistent on going, I don't have much of a choice but to follow him.
After only a few moments of walking that horrid fast food "establishment" had come into view a saw something that gave me an idea. Not far off from the restaurant there was an abandoned car with its driver side door open and the engine running, with a few quick calculations I determined that it should be able to hit the place without any rubble getting in the way. I looked around for something to hold the gas pedal down with; it only took a quick scan of the area to spot a medium sized rock off to the side of the road. I trotted over to it and picked it up with surprising ease, it shouldn't have come with too much of a shock though considering how the phone thing went earlier. Once I had arrived back at the car I placed the rock carefully on the gas pedal and the car roared forward, picking up speed rather quickly. Tom, who had been staring at me from afar, quickly noticed where the vehicle was headed and dived for cover behind another abandoned car.
The explosion that resulted from the speeding car crashing into a propane tank outside the restaurant was rather brilliant, I think I was enjoying the destruction of one of my most hated places on earth a bit too much though as I had a maniacal grin spread across my face.
"Why the fuck did you do that!?" Exclaimed Tom as he peeked up from behind the car he had used for a shield.
"I told you that the place was a terrible restaurant." I relied with a chuckle.
"You could have told me you were an arsonist back when we met, I probably wouldn't have minded to much." We both laughed at that a bit
"I'm not normally, but now that the consequences for doing shit like that have been eliminated, I might just take it up as a hobby for my free time." Both of continued to laugh as the McDonalds burned in the background.
Now that the bit of personal business had been attended to, it was time to get down to business, finding my neighbor who could hopefully provide a bit more info on why we had all inexplicably turned into small colorful horses.
"So what's this chicks name anyways? I don't think you ever mentioned it to me." Tom brought up the question as we were approaching the entrance to the apartment complex I called home.
"She told me at one point a while back, but we never really used each other's names in conversations, we just kind of knew each other, I think it was Alice though."
As we climbed a flight of stairs to get to her floor the lights cut off, sending the corridor into complete darkness.
"Well fuck, how are we supposed to get up there now?" Tom groaned.
"Just give your eyes a minute, they'll adjust to the lighting eventually."
"Yea, yea, yea, but on another note, how do you even know she's home? For all we know she could be long gone."
"Knowing her, she's here."
Suddenly the lights came back on, though they were flickering quite frequently.
"How did those even come back on?" Questioned Tom.
"Probably just the backup generators kicking in, although I didn't know they even had any in the first place."
After another minute or two we arrived in front on apartment 3D, I reached a hoof out to knock but before it made contact with the wooden surface the door swung open to reveal a lime green unicorn mare with a light pink mane.
"Hi! What brings you two stallions here?" She exclaimed.
"Hey it's me, from apartment 3C." I replied.
"Oh, hey Clayton! Who's your friend?" She was keeping a very cheerful tone, and upon closer examination she had a light purple, translucent, glow around her horn.
"This is Tom McCourt, we grouped up after all this went down earlier, but what's up with that glow on your horn, I've seen a fair few unicorns but you're the only one I've seen with that glow."
"Silly! Didn't you know unicorns can use magic? I'm surprised your friend here hasn't tried anything with his horn yet!" She said as she tapped Tom's horn with a hoof.
"Also, what's up with the change in attitude? No offense but it's kind of creeping me out."
"That's just it; I have no idea why my attitude changed! When this thing that changed us all hit I've just been in a better mood!" I gave her a bit of an odd look at this but pushed past it.
At this point Tom finally spoke up. "So how exactly are you making your horn glow like that, and what's it doing?"
"Well, basically I think of something a want to do, and then it kind of happens! I know it sounds silly when I say it but that's really the only explanation I have for it. Right now I'm using it to keep this part of the holding powered, but I can also use it for basic levitation! Come on inside and I can show you a few things."
Alice used her magic to open the door wider as Tom and I entered her apartment, she motioned for us to sit as she trotted off into the kitchen only to return moments later with three cups of steaming coffee in her magical grip that she then set down on a nearby table.
"So I don't believe you two answered my question earlier, what brings you two here?" Asked Alice.
"Well besides the fact that I live next door my new friend Tom and I are trying to get to the bottom of this whole pony thing, I thought you might know something since you spend most of your time on that conspiracy forum." I replied.
"Unfortunately I only know as much as you two do, the internet signal and my magic don't seem to work well together, possibly the only downside to this. And even then I doubt many people would think to update their Facebook status about what just happened."
"Well, that's an instant dead end." I said somewhat sadly.
"We'll find a lead eventually." Tom cut in.
"True, but where do we even go from here?"
"Well I was going to try and make my way back towards Boston, between here and there is D.C., maybe there are some answers there."
"Dude, D.C. is a six hour drive from here; it would take days to walk there!"
"Do you have any better ideas?"
Alice, who had been sitting quietly listening, finally chimed up again. "It's a pretty good idea in my opinion, you two should go for it!"
"Alright, fine, Tom and I will go to D.C. and see if we can find anything there."
Tom seemed to brighten up a bit at this. "Great! We can leave tomorrow; I'm tired and still hungry since you decided to blow up that McDonalds down the street."
This induced a confused look from Alice, but I managed to brush it off. "Alright, let's head across the hall to my place, we can discuss this further there."
Tom and I thanked Alice for the coffee that we hadn't touched and started to head for the door, we we're almost out when Alice left me with a parting message.
"Clayton, don't forget that you're a pegasus, learn to use those wings!"
I hadn't played much attention to my wings by this point; I stretched them both out a bit as Alice's magic closed the door behind us.
