"So... what exactly happened to Twilight? I kinda need to know, since, well, she's my ride home." Dash asked, helping herself to a long drink of water. She wasn't quite sure how long this body was unattended in the hospital, but she was quite thirsty.
"Well that's just it, sugarcube... we don't know." Applejack frowned.
"Then I suggest..." Dash wiped her mouth, and looked out the window to the library. "I suggest we find out."
"You can't be serious, Rainbow!" Rarity chuckled. Dash just glared back at her. "You're... you're serious, aren't you?"
"How crowded is the area around the library?" Dash carried on, ignoring her.
"The whole town's been gettin' quieter for the last coupl'a weeks, so if we keep things on the down low we should be able to get in an' out lickety-split."
"Good. Let's go."
"What, now? Already?" Applejack quirked a brow. "Y'only just got here!"
"Yes, now." Dash growled. "Right now, my Twilight is busting her flank just to stay alive, another one is probably heading for the gallows, and your Rainbow Dash is lying in a ditch somewhere drooling over herself!" She barked. Applejack and Rarity just returned looks that sat uncomfortably between concern and shock.
"Darling, you... should probably calm down a little..."
"Calm down? How can I keep calm at a time like this!" Dash yelled, and slumped over the window. Stupid fat brain-damaged me. If she was in shape I'd be out of here in no time.
"Rainbow, pipe down, you'll get their attention!" Applejack whispered harshly.
"Fine..." Dash grumbled. "But I stand by my point. We need to take a look at that place, or I'm stuck here." She looked turned to the other two and patted her belly. She wasn't particularly overweight; there was only a little more fat there than she remembered. Her biggest problem was a month of muscle wasting. "And like this, I'd probably slow you down." Applejack and Rarity exchanged glances, holding a brief, silent conversation.
"Alright. But give us an hour. We need to find you some gear, and let things simmer down out there." Applejack pointed a hoof to the square below. A couple of sick-looking, blood-stained ponies shuffled around the body of the one Rarity had despatched earlier.
"Hm. An hour is fine, I guess."
"So what's with all this getup?" Dash tilted her head, as Rarity returned to Pinkie's room with a cape, a scarf and a bag full of other odds and ends.
"Protection. If you get snuck up on from behind, they'll bite the cape and not you." Applejack explained, while Rarity went about the business of dressing Rainbow Dash up. "Ya put the scarf over yer mouth when yer outside. As y'might expect, it gets mighty messy out there, and ya don't wanna accidentally swallow some blood."
"How do you guys know all this?" Dash quirked a brow. Applejack sighed and gazed wistfully at the floor for a moment before answering.
"... trail an' error. There used to be four of us."
"Oh..." Dash grimaced, and decided not to press this line of inquiry further.
"Well, I think we're all set, shall we move?" Rarity added, briskly moving the conversation along.
"Wait a sec..." Dash spotted something out of the corner of her eye. Two somewhat familiar shapes at the bottom of the bag, laid out on a table. She upended the bag, and let out a little gasp. Two cuffs bounced out of the bag, and attached to each one, in a protective hempen sheath, was something that looked like a long blade. You're kidding me! "... where did you get these?"
"The hoofblades? We found 'em when we were scavengin' some place for supplies. We didn't know anypony who could use 'em, but we figured we might as well hold on to 'em, just in case. Why, is there somethin' you ain't told us?" Applejack chuckled. She was smiling, but her eyes betrayed the hollowness of the expression.
"You could put it that way..."
Rather than causing a fuss, any 'zombies' they found, as Dash called them (Applejack preferred the term 'walkers', while Rarity just referred to them as 'them' or 'those things'), they skirted around discreetly. Unfit as she may have been, Dash still had a pretty light step, so this wasn't hard. The door to the library was ajar, and inside was a total mess. It looked like nopony had been in here for weeks, or at least nopony living - books lay scattered on the ground, many of them torn or chewed on.
They made sure to check all the exits first thing. While the library would be a very sturdy hideout, they certainly didn't want to get trapped in here. The basement hatch was left open, and a few claw marks were left in the wood around it, where Spike had scrambled out in a hurry. The acrid odour of rotting flesh wafted from the opening. Seeing nothing of value up top, they cautiously and reluctantly made their way downstairs.
Rarity provided a light as they descended. She held a pair of knives in the air, at the ready for anything they might encounter. The longer they stood there, overlooking Twilight's basement laboratory, the less worried they became about a threat, the brighter Rarity could make the light, and the more they could see of the devastated scene below.
The basement was a mess of overturned machines, cabinets of bottles, some intact and containing various coloured liquids, but many of them broken or knocked over, with just sludges and residues remaining. A small pile of scrolls was scattered on one of the few overturned desks, only loosely rolled up - no wax seals, no royal emblems. Something was hanging by a rope from the ceiling, shading out a few things at the back of the room, but they had trouble picking out the finer details. Whatever it was, the smell seemed to be coming from it. Rarity hesitated, and gave the hanging object a telekinetic nudge. Gently, it swung back and forth, rotating through a small angle, but enough to bring some key details into the light, and put all of their jaws on the floor.
Dangling from the bottom were two legs terminating in hooves, and further up the body were two more. A pony. Near the rope were the remains of their face, the nose and mouth rotted away to nothing, leaving just bare bone. The head sat at an unnatural angle, and the body appeared to be hanging by their neck from a rope. A pony that had taken their own life. Further down was a symbol emblazoned on their flank - a six-pointed star in magenta, surrounded by smaller white and lilac ones. A pony they knew.
"I... I knew Twilight was dead, but... not like this!" Rarity gibbered. Dash gulped, and started down the steps to the lower level.
"Keep it together sugarcube..." Applejack grimaced, placing a hoof on Rarity's shoulder, and after a moment they followed.
Carefully, quite wary of potential hazards around the room, Dash picked through the remains of the lab. There were all sorts of junk with some arcane function - their date could be told not by the content of the labels, but the neatness of the writing. Books, mechanical equipment and arcanoelectronics abounds, but little sign of the flight suit. It's gotta be around here somewhere...
Rarity turned her attention to the pile of scrolls. She opened one of them - it looked like the oldest. It appeared to be blank, before an image flickered into life on the page, depicting a very worn out and dishevelled Twilight leaning over something to look out of the page. She shied away in surprise - the image was... moving? Most odd. Probably some experimental thing of Twilight's.
"Is this thing on?" The scroll announced in Twilight's voice. Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked up from their searches, and came over to inspect this curiosity. "Okay, it's on. This is... yeah. September 17th, 1001. I'm starting this diary separate from my letters to the Princess, for some top secret work. There's... there's something really weird going on. I can't really put it any better than that right now, but something visited me in the night, something I've never seen before... and I know it wasn't a dream, because Spike saw it too! Hmm... further study is needed." The picture disappeared, and the scroll rolled itself up. Huh. September. Three guesses.
Rarity took another scroll and opened it, and another talking picture appeared. "November 4th, 1001. This... thing... it... it transcends realities! It crosses universes! Infinite variations of the spacetime manifold and uncertainty permutations..." Twilight's incoherent babble trailed off, and the image appeared to walk around the room, ranting. But pretty quickly, she returned, her face up close to whatever was capturing this image. Her bloodshot eyes had heavy bags under them. "The multiverse is this monster's plaything... whether it's just a series of copies, or part of the multiverse's superstructure, I don't know... further study is needed." The message sent a chill up Dash's spine. What if there just simply wasn't a way to defeat Discord? What if he was just a fact of life, that the Princesses had done their best to shield them all from? Rarity opened another. "February 12th, 1002. I can see... forever! Eehehehah! AAHhahahah!" Dash blinked. The image of Twilight just cackled vacantly for several minutes, before switching off the recording.
"Well, that was... interesting..." Rarity quirked a brow, and took another one.
"January 14th, 1002." Well, so much for being organised. "The beast's name is Discord." Called it. "After months of testing, I'm narrowing it down to a few solutions that might take care of him, but none of them are easy, because something about Discord is bound to interdimensional space, which allows him to jump between universes at will. The first solution is a specially prepared virus that, once it infects him, should seep into his interdimensional components and destroy them. Then we only have to deal with one Discord at a time. I don't know if this will work, because the arcane components of the virus aren't replicating... Celestia knows what kind of damage this thing could do if it infected a normal pony." Good job, Twi. "The second, from what I know about Discord, will definitely work if attempted, but attempting it is the problem. It's been speculated that in order to jump universes, a pony has to reach the speed of light, and issue a particular spell at the right moment. This causes anything of high electrical density to switch with its homologue, or if no homologue exists, actually transfer matter to the next universe. Discord, however, has an entirely separate mechanism, more like a bridge through interdimensional space that he can cross at any time. If my calculations are correct, then if Discord were to perform a conventional jump, it would cause a paradox, erasing his interdimensional bridge, and every trace of his existence from every universe it's connected to. It's a bit crude, but it just might work. The problem is actually getting him to do it... further study is needed."
"Did you get any o' that?" Applejack blinked. Rarity shrugged. Dash, however, was deep in thought. She didn't understand everything that had been thrown at her - but she'd caught a few key words. Discord, conventional jump, erase, every trace of his existence. That ought to do it. She mused over some of the things she'd seen - the atrocities, the brutal divisions between her friends, Scootaloo's mutilation, a pony dying at her hooves... it all had to go. But how...
"One more?" Rarity offered, holding up another scroll.
"Alright... we can look through the rest later." Applejack nodded. Rarity opened it out, and the message began to play. This time, Twilight was much more visibly distraught. "Feb... February 28th, 1002. The virus got out. Cheerilee... Cheerilee was here, helping me move some things around, when it spilled on her. She accidentally swallowed some, and..." She sniffed, and paused for a moment, apparently trying to resist bursting into tears. "She was dead in minutes. But that wasn't the end of it... after a couple of minutes the body started moving by itself... it was clearly the virus reanimating the corpse, but she turned aggressive, and... well, this happened." She held up a hoof, showing off a weeping bite-mark. "I was able to shut her out of the basement just now, but the damage was already done. I'm infected." She sniffed deeply, and wiped her face. "I'm leaving all my logs out so you know what's happened these past few months, and somepony can carry on my work, it's... it's important. There's a flight suit in the blue chest that's charged for one flight." Dash perked up her ears. "If you look through my other logs, you'll know how to use it. It was originally built for Rainbow Dash, but I don't know if she'll ever walk again, let alone fly. As for me, well... when you find me I'll have taken care of myself." Twilight levitated a noose into view. "If I don't, then somepony else will have to." She started to tear up. "Guys... Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie... if any of you ever find this... I just want you know I love you all, and you're the best friends anypony could ever ask for... I'm sending Spike to warn you about what's coming. I don't know if he'll make it past Cheerilee, but Celestia knows he'll go through hell or high water for Rarity, so I'm hopeful." Rarity sniffled, and leaned against Applejack, a tear rolling down her face. "Well... that's it then. Your friend to the end... Twilight Sparkle." The image disappeared, and Rarity buried her face in Applejack's shoulder, sobbing lightly. Applejack and Dash looked at her, and then each other, sharing a concerned frown.
Dash shook her head, and returned to searching the debris.
"Rainbow, what are you doing?" Applejack queried.
"Looking for the... aha! The chest." Dash nosed the lid open, and lo and behold, the suit was folded neatly on top of the other contents, with a couple of extra mechanical doodads sitting on top.
"Well shucks... yer tall tale ain't so tall after all."
Dash spent the rest of the afternoon and evening tirelessly going over Twilight's messages, learning as much as she could about Discord and the flight suit. It seemed that the salient points were covered in the few they had seen earlier - Twilight's often incoherent recordings went into far more detail than she needed. She did, however, work out how to correctly configure the suit, even down to predicting her destination with reasonable certainty. Though through all of her preparations, she knew there was one thing that she was missing. Every so often she'd take a break, and fly over the town to stretch her wings - it wasn't like her to be cooped up and studying. But each trip out reminded her of her problem. Every time she landed back on the roof of Sugarcube corner, panting and sweating, the doubt resurfaced. I can't fly fast enough.
Thumping on the door woke her up. She'd fallen asleep at a desk, the flight suit lying spread out, ready to go.
"Y'alright there sugarcube? You ain't said a thing all evenin'!"
"Wh... whuh?" Dash lifted her head up and looked around. Oh. Just Applejack. "Y... yeah..." She mumbled. The door opened, and the earth pony entered.
"Now come on, ah can tell somethin's buggin' ya." And I can tell something's bugging you... but it wouldn't help to bring that up. Applebloom's gone.
"I... I... gah, this is embarassing. I don't think I can get up to speed for the jump." Her cheeks burned, and she whimpered softly at the admission. Applejack pouted, and leaned against the doorframe.
"Now that is a doozy..."
"Unless..." An idea struck Dash. It's reckless, but it'll probably work... "I think I know a way. But it's definitely a one way trip." Applejack cast a doubtful look down her nose at the pegasus.
"Go on."
"I go to the hospital, and loot anything that'll get me buzzed. Adrenaline, painkillers, steroids, anything to numb the muscle ache and keep me going." Dash held a serious face, while Applejack frowned. "All it has to do is get me flying fast enough to make the jump, which only takes a few minutes. Though when I say a one way trip... it probably means going over the lethal dose for a lot of these things. You'll have your Rainbow Dash back, but she might be dead by the time she hits the ground."
"So... what part of this plan didja think ah was gonna be okay with?" Applejack snarled. "What makes ya think you have the right to take another pony's life just to get home?"
"See... that's not the only thing." Dash continued solemnly. "Your Rainbow is already gone. I saw the reports in the hospital. Nurse Redheart killed herself and left her for dead, saying she was too messed up in the head to know what was going on. Like I said, right now she's probably sitting in a ditch drooling on herself." Applejack just glared.
"An' you ain't even gonna give her a chance?"
"Alright. Let's say I wait a few weeks, and train up the old fashioned way. She'd be dead by the time I make the jump. She can't even walk, so how do you expect her to find food and water? I'd give her two days. And this is assuming she hasn't landed on her head or something." The pair stared at each other in silence for a few tense minutes. Eventually Applejack sighed, and backed down.
"Ah guess you're right..."
"I'm sorry it has to be this way, I really am. But time's running out."
