A RIFTS ODYSSEY
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story.
Notes: This chapter and at least the following two are going to hard reading and writing as Apocalypses are never neat things.
Chapter 2: Two steps from Hell.
Day one: Sunrise, December 22, 2098
Silver Dawn felt numb. It had been more than 6 hours since she had decided to take a stance and help anypony she could.
She couldn't say it was a disaster with the End of the World crisis everypony was experiencing. The rising sun didn't bring any hope, on the contrary, the daylight seemed only to contrast with the darkness of the situation.
The problem number one of Silver Dawn was her appearance: She wasn't human in shape. She could talk and reason, she even had the advantage of the Amphib Scandal, a decade ago, when a ruthless South American corporation, ShaperCorp, had been caught engaging in illegal human experiments with thousands of innocent people who had been "volunteered" to undergo massive genetic alterations designed to allow humans to survive underwater. So she could rightfully present herself as an illegal experimentation in human genetic.
However, in the current hysteria, people tended to scream monster first and opened fire right behind. It had been then that she discovered her seemingly invulnerability to conventional weapons. Hand-held improvised weapons, punches, kicks and personal small weapons simply couldn't pierce her flesh even without her protective psionic force-field.
Still, she continued her one-pony rescue mission.
At least, she tried to do right when people didn't react to her as if she was an abomination. It was curious as she had the impression that some of them acted that way because of encountering something threatening and abnormal before.
The woman looked at the Alicorn with terror and tried to crawl away despite her grievous wounds. "Go away you monster!"
And unfortunately, there was no shortage of people in need. Her psionic powers proved invaluable as she focused her will and remade the demented reality immediately around her safer, at least relatively and for a little time.
The man reached for the hovering flying Alicorn, desperate for some help as his home burned. "Please, help me!"
The late Brony geneticist had been a madman, but he did manage to give her Earth Pony levels of strength. Despite being 4 feet at the shoulder, she could literally lift tons and her small size allowed her to crawl in all sort of little places.
With a broken voice, the old woman could only point at the pile of debris that had been her home a mere minutes ago. "My husband is under there!"
Most of the people she helped were at first wary, then incredulous as not only she assisted them, but was also pulling little miracles with her psionic gifts. Some were even taking videos of her on their cells to have a proof of her existence.
The teenager could only stare at Silver Dawn as she landed near him before focusing her telekinesis on trapped people. "Are you real?!"
Too many times, she had to raise her force-field, either to protect herself, but generally also to protect her charges as hysteria and panic made armed people hair-triggering and completely undiscriminating.
The hysterical man pointed his trusty shotgun on the monster and opened fire, unmindful of the people behind the Alicorn. "Die you bio-freak!" The force-field snapping into existence and protecting the group and Silver Dawn seemed to only amplified his furious madness.
The worst was about the children. Too many were alone, either lost in the panic, abandoned or just having seen their parents die. She could only gather them, check their health, help them as much as she could, reassure them and finally and tragically push them into the arms of adults or older children willing to take them.
Silver Dawn gently lift the young child in her telekinetic embrace and searched for someone who could or would take her. "Mommy! Where are you mommy!?" She winced in dismay as she suddenly saw a burning corpse that bear some resemblance to the crying child.
And even with her vast gifts, she was limited. She could feel that the use of her powers consumed little by little her willpower and some things simply couldn't be healed or mended no matter how much she pushed herself into it.
Silver Dawn focused her willpower on the man on the ground. Pain flowed away, flesh mended and broken bones realigned and fused together back. But, even her power had its limitations and the man looked in dismay at his unresponsive lower limbs. "I can't feel my legs..."
There was also a limit to what she could do for their spirits. The veil of Doom was so thick and it seemed to thicken hour after hour. People pushed into despair lashed at everything and everypony around them. Even at a gentle Alicorn helping them to the best of her capacities.
The hysterical mother pointed an accusing finger at the Alicorn as she clutched her no longer living child to her breast. "You are the one! You are responsible of all this!"
Still, her appearance managed to reach the younger folks. After all, she was a walking myth in the flesh even if the cartoon that spawned her existence was no longer aired. "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" was still a part of the world culture and thus echoed in the heart of somepony.
The little blonde girl was still in her pajamas as she looked at the Alicorn helping her family out of their crumbling house. "Wow... A real winged unicorn..."
In fact, it seemed she had a soothing presence for the young children. Many a child crying and lost looked at her with wonderment and reached to her, drawn in by the mantle of her borrowed legend.
He was a six year old boy with a dirty nose and a little blanket that looked at her with widened and starry eyes. His hand reached for her silver mane. "Can I touch you..?"
Her heart reached for those hurt, lost and broken and her psionic powers soothe pain and healed harmed flesh, burnt skin and broken bones. With the rarity of medical personal in the area and the destruction of too many hospitals, anypony able to heal or more simply to administer first aid was invaluable.
The teenager girl sobbed. The crowd had trampled her and only the timely telekinetic grasp of the Alicorn saved her. "It hurts... It hurts!"
Death however was still not something she could wave away. Too many times she hauled corpses from piles of debris and crumbled homes. Too many times, her power was insufficient to treat mortally wounded people. Too many times did she help to lay down row after row of hastily enveloped bodies in various states.
Silver Dawn closed her wet emerald eyes. It was too late. She gently closed the eyes of the dead woman and lift her corpse towards other bodies that some people were covering with canvas. A man rushed out of the crowd around and clutched the levitating dead woman. "No...No! Not my wife!"
The worse for Silver Dawn was that she was only one Alicorn. Despite her might, her speed and the sheer scale of her powers, she couldn't be at two places at the same time. She wasn't powerful enough to affect this crisis except in her very immediate area and even then she found herself powerless many times.
A mother caught her wing as she was preparing to take her flight. "Please, I can't find my son."
An old man dropped on his knees to beg her before a still burning ruin that had been a residential building. "Please, you must help me!"
A little boy... "Please..." A man... "Oh my god..." A woman..."Help us..." And others... So many others...
She found herself in a small play-park still relatively intact. Atlanta was still burning and crumbling, the earth was still trembling from time to time, gigantic lightning bolts erupted from the ley line and struck irregularly, people still ran in panic or pillaged or gathered to share presence, warmth and whatever help they had. Physical fatigue seemed to not touch her, but her spirit needed a breather. Her creme coat, silver mane and tail were dirtied by ferro-concrete dust, soot, blood, oil and too many things that she didn't want to think about. Curiously, her crown was still correctly situated on her head.
She looked at a patch of tall grass and shrugged before digging in. The taste wasn't so bad for her altered palate and it was food for her modified digestive system although she knew she could still eat like a normal human. She then focused her telekinesis or more exactly psychokinesis as she seemed to be able to manipulate more than simple matter. Water vapor gathered and condensed into a bubble of pure water. She then closed her eyes and stretched the bubble into a film all over her body willing it to collect the dirt, twigs and grit. She then refocused on the filthy bubble of water and completely re-purify it before drinking it. Waste not, want not.
Laying down to recover more of her strength, she considered what she accomplished so far. It was both working and not. She did make a small difference, but her efforts were wasted overall. Being alone looked like she was trying to prevent a dam from rupturing by putting her hooves and wing-tips wherever a leak appeared and of course more and more leaks occurred.
Her emerald eyes shone with tears as she realized she couldn't save many people in a crisis of this magnitude. Her visions of the Great Cataclysm when she was in the bio-tube were real, that was a fact. So many people had already died and so much more deaths were to happen in the near-future. It was horrible, disgusting and not fair at all but she'll have to make choices and let people to their death in order to save others.
She frowned. The best way to help people was to gather those in need around her or someplace relatively safe and organize them. She needed helpers, healers and a whole lot more. She needed clothes, blankets and tents as the buildings seemed less and less safe. She needed to salvage or found clean water and non-spoiled food. She needed... THEY needed so many things.
She looked again at ruined Atlanta. She wasn't even sure it was her birth city. But who was sure of anything during the Apocalypse. Still, she was supposed to be a Princess of Equestria, a leader of ponies and a rock in the tempest. It was perhaps time to use those imprinted skills and this Dramatis Persona for something more concrete than giving lessons in friendship at the end of a cartoon.
She spread her wings and began to preen. Her genetic make-up seemed to include some various and bizarre instincts. She understood without knowing how to realign her feathers properly for a smooth and controlled flight. Very strange since most of her flight capacity relied on her psionics as her wingspan was too small for her size.
Still, the ability to fly and hover was too good a thing in such a situation to not maintain it properly.
The screams pierced through the hellish brouhaha made by the whole of Atlanta: The voices of children confronted by sheer terror beyond their understanding. A siren call to the stressed Alicorn. She charged ahead, unmindful of her current state.
It was a group of a dozen of families, with women, children and a few armed men trying to find a safe place in the pandemonium. They were trying to flee from...
Her emerald eyes widened as she saw the threat: They were a dozen of foul, gluttonous vermin the size of a large house cat or a small dog. They really looked like vicious giant rats of two to three feet with an over-developed lower jaw, coarse dark fur and a long, white, wiggling tail. One of them jumped suddenly ten feet in the air and fall on a fleeing person, crushing his head between its jaws like an overripe fruit.
The attacked people were panicking, sporadic fire did nothing to the beasts..? No... Hang-jaw demon rats. Always in groups. Low intellect and cunning. Burrower and fair leaper. Vulnerable to silver and garlic, resistant to fire and cold and preferring the cover of darkness and night. Carrion eater, but do not hesitate to attack vulnerable preys.
She blinked and her pupils shrunk, but it wasn't the time to question those sudden bursts of occult knowledge even about demons that shouldn't exist... Like ley lines and apocalypses... Yes, she was terrified, but courage isn't the absence of fear: Its acknowledging this fear and going beyond. As Frank Herbert wrote "Fear is the mind-killer". She jumped into the air and instinctively used her "Royal Canterlot Voice".
"Do not panic!" The whole of the group turned to her and could only be flabbergasted. "All children, regroup under the cement playground! Women and non-fighters around them! Fighters with weapons on the perimeter!" They were hesitating. "Quick, people!"
The demon rats were still devouring the poor man they killed and it let Silver Dawn time to guide the beleaguered people in a more defensive position. She focused anew her psychokinesis and generated a three layers defense of force-fields around them. Should the worse happen, the force-fields would fail, enabling the people to flee.
She put herself in front of the people while still hovering out of melee range and took a deep breath. Until now she had only use her power in a defensive way. It would be the first time she used the offensive powers the geneticist gave her. Her horn shone more intensively as her whole body generated energy.
A particle beam erupted from her horn and struck directly one of the demon rats, bringing their attention to her. The beam pierced its whole body and deeply in the ground under it. Silver Dawn frowned. Her beam should rated only at a man-scale heavy weapon level and she was obviously emitting beam in the Mega-Damage range. All her shots must hit either the targets, the sky or the ground or she risked to vaporize bystanders in the vicinity. Unless... Her eagle-like vision locked on something just outside the park.
She abandoned her previous tactic of ranged warfare and flew right at the pack, killing another one as she made a low pass near them. They jumped at her, jaws clacking and she screamed in pain as one scored a hit. A shallow wound bled on her lower barrel but her trick worked as the vermin pursued her, ignoring the entrenched people.
She reached with her telekinesis for some items in the ruined wedding store nearby the park and flung them in the screeching charging mob. The silver made cutlery bit deeply and lethally into the demonic flesh, killing many and wounding severely the rest. A point-blank shot with her particle beam dealt with the survivors.
She checked her throbbing barrel. The wound achieved to stop bleeding due to the quick-clotting agent in her blood. She could already feel her flesh knitting back as her healing factor kicked in. Still, it was the first time she had been wounded, period. She wasn't invulnerable and she already knew that a sufficient firepower could penetrate her force-fields. This first wound of many to come proved she was as mortal as the rest of Humanity in the Great Cataclysm despite her gifts.
She looked in dismay at her hoof as it was trembling not only because of adrenalin but also with her terror. She fell back on the lessons in breathing that Cadence gave to Twilight Sparkle and looked again at her hoof. Good, just a little shaking.
She trotted back to the people she protected, noting their relief and wariness to her appearance, powered down her force-fields and smiled to them. She had perhaps found the first survivors she would stay with and help to reach some safety.
Notes: I really have some difficulties to write this story.
Silver Dawn uses super-powers and psionics to emulate the magical capacities of an Alicorn. For now, the only magic she have is the crown on her head. The coming of the Rifts has amplified existing psionic powers to a level equal to Mega-damage weaponry and defenses.
Magic is going to appear among humanity, but not for a few weeks.