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Once upon a time...

The magical land of Equestria and the harmony of the world it sought to protect stood on the precipice of destruction and slavery. The patriarchal King Dáinn and his caribou army swept onto the shores of Equestria and invaded the nation like an uncontrollable blaze of fiend-fire. Their push was relentless, driven by the brutality of caribou soldiers and the brainwashed pony sleeper agents within Equestria's ranks.

Using terror and brainwashing the population was enslaved as Dáinn's armies moved up through the nation. Equestria's forces faltered and fell and eventually Dáinn laid waste to the Order of the Alicorn armies sworn to protect ponykind.

His assault reached the marble city of Canterlot, and infinity was within his grasp.

However Dáinn's undoing was his own overconfidence. He attempted to enslave a young alicorn princess named Celestia, to make her his pet. He underestimated her and paid the ultimate price.

His body broken and his armies shattered, the caribou god-king and his legion limped back to their boats and over the seas to their homeland. Liberated, Equestria began to rebuild under the leadership of the last alicorns.

And ponykind never saw another caribou for aeons...

SniperSpartan-977 proudly presents...

A non-canon My Little Pony fanfiction...

The sequel to "The Aeons of Equestria..."

Written and directed by SniperSpartan-977

Drafting and creative design by PseudoFiction

My Little Pony

The Fall

As he sawed through the plank of treated and stained wood, the human considered the things he didn't much like. And there were plenty.

Firstly, Reno had a thing or two about himself he hated. His name for example. Reno Strife; he sounded like a cheesy action hero. But then with what he went through during the Shadow Legion invasion of Equestria he may as well have been an action hero following his gun from locale to locale all of which subsequently exploded in his wake.

That was another thing he didn't really like. What kind of a name for a nation was "Equestria" anyway? Sure it was fitting enough that it was a place inhabited by anthropomorphic equines of varying classes. There were the winged pegasi, the regular old earth-ponies and the magic-imbued unicorns that made up the general populace. This alone seemed to make it okay to make horse-puns every other sentence.

In Reno's mind it was not okay. In fact it got annoying very quickly.

Another thing was the very feminine motif that gripped Equestria. The nation had a matriarchal society, with them being ruled over by a pair of princesses after all. But at such everything about aesthetic design had to be flowery and girly. Windows were shaped like hearts, trains spat bright pink clouds of steam, fashion was quite frilly - male fashion included. To maintain his sense of masculinity Reno made sure all his clothes were custom made to order, and made from his own designs.

On top of that was the swords and sorcery tech level of Equestria and the surrounding world. Reno missed the days where he could just boot up his computer and a whole wealth of information sat at his beck and call through a series of interconnected computers the globe over.

Also pictures of cats. He missed funny captioned pictures of cats.

The lack of electricity meant everything was manual, from washing clothes and dishes, to building a cabin on the edge of the postcard town of Ponyville. And Reno thanked his aching muscles for months of faithful service as he ran the teeth of a saw through the last beam of wood that had to be cut to size.

His cabin on the border of town where it met the thick treeline of the Everfree Forest was a modest place. One bedroom, a kitchen, living room and bathroom. It had some mod-cons like a septic tank buried in the garden, running water and full plumbing. He had a wood-burning stove for central heating, a coal oven and a cooler for preserving food on hotter days. The place was a mess at the moment, window sills and the porch dusted with sawdust, loose nails and tools sat in bunches all around the garden. Speaking of which, the garden was a little overgrown with patches of dirt where he had yet to plant some trees and flowers to spruce the place up.

Thankfully it followed none of the common Equestria architecture with heart shaped windows and flowers painted across the walls. It was actually quite like a typical enough home of a cartoon lumberjack.

Drawing the saw back once more, he finished the cut, dropped the excess wood to the floor and flexed his shoulder. It still bothered him several years down the line; had never been quite the same since he'd broken practically every bone in his body during the Battle for Canterlot.

Just another thing that bothered Reno on top of his unexpected visitor.

Karskin had arrived that morning, completely out of the blue as he did usually about once a month (twice a month if Reno was having a good streak). The older human was a native to the world, unlike Reno, and he definitely looked it with a chainmail vest over his tunic and a grizzled beard. He looked like an adventurer straight out of a Dungeons & Dragons lore-book. All he was missing was a bow and a sword.

"You're sure you don't want to learn shadow magic, Reno?" Karskin asked for what felt like the fiftieth time in just a few hours.

Reno was so dead set on finishing his home after months of manual labour he'd actually forgotten to count how many times Karskin asked the same question. He was secretly keeping a tally, wondering when - if ever - the ex-Shadow Legion commander would give up and maybe lead a conversation with, "Hi, Reno. It's good to see you again. How are you?"

It hadn't happened yet.

"You're a persistent sum'bitch I'll give you that, Kar," Reno answered as he picked up the length of wood by one end. "Help me move this."

With a sigh, Karskin limped over and helped Reno place the final tread of the steps leading onto his cabin's porch. The front door and the glass windows were in place, the roof felt was tacked down and a group of pegasi handymen had helped Reno put on the slates. The last thing on were the steps, and Reno finally had the third and final tread in place... with a little bit of Karskin's help.

As Reno was slotting the step in place and making sure it was all fitted properly before he hammered the nails home, Karskin was still talking. "Shadow magic is a complex discipline, but it has extremely high reward in combat."

"Mmm-hmmm," Reno hummed only half listening.

"A master of shadow magic would have easily prevented the unpleasantness that crushed you during your battle with General Strife."

As Karskin was bringing up some physically painful memories, Reno sighed with a pause. All the things of Equestria he didn't like and all the shit he complained about wasn't outweighed by the stuff he did enjoy. They were outweighed by the simple fact that he was doing pretty well for someone who was supposed to be dead.

He'd spent the better part of a year in magical medical treatment under supervision of Princesses Celestia and Luna. Even their niece Cadance had visited when the regal sisters couldn't look after him. Then there were the months of rehabilitation. He practically had to re-learn how to walk.

And that had been tricky, with all the stuff that had happened to Equestria in the meantime. With the Changeling invasion hitting Canterlot; the resurfacing of the Crystal Empire and the attack of the dark king, Sombra; Twilight Sparkle's transformation into an alicorn and the near decimation of ponykind at the hands of the warlord Tirek...

With everything that had happened it was no surprise Karskin seemed so insistent that Reno learn how to defend himself. But each and every event that rocked the foundations of Equestria since the Shadow Legion attack all those years prior had been solved by ponies.

Princess Celestia had personally knighted and made Reno an honorary member of the Royal Guard as thanks for his service to Equestria. Thankfully that meant he was only called to arms when the threats to the nation were dire. And thus far, even when Tirek was slugging it out with Princess Twilight Sparkle the situation hadn't been dire enough to call him out to fight.

And Reno was very okay with that.

He pointed to the tools sitting on the nearby workmate. "Hand me that hammer, would you?"

Without moving from where he stood, Karskin held out his hand. Tendrils of darkness slipped out from under his heavy sleeves and formed a blob of shadow that elongated and formed a mallet shape. Within seconds a shadowy hammer of magic had materialised in Karskin's grip, held together only through the man's command over darkness up his sleeve.

The trick should have been impressive if Reno hadn't seen it a thousand times before. "Y'know what? Never mind, I'll get it myself," he said, pushing past his visitor.

"This is the magic of your people, Reno!" Karskin tried, following Reno with the hammer, and the younger man scoffed.

"No, it's the magic of _your_people. I'm not from this dimension, remember?"

Karskin sighed and scratched his beard, letting the shadow hammer vanish as he watched Reno quietly return to his porch.

He'd been ageless before the fall of the Shadow Legion. Mortal, of course, but he didn't age normally like anyone else in Equestria. The curse had long since been lifted with the death of General Strife and the scattering of the Shadow Legion, and the past few years seemed to have weathered Karskin quite a bit.

He had creases in his tanned skin, his beard had frown as long and as wiry as his salt-and-pepper hair. He had the wandering traveller look down to a tee; but then aimlessly wandering the harshest places Equestria had to offer would do that to you.

As Karskin considered his next point of argument for training in the discipline of shadow magic, Reno managed to hammer in the nails that would hold his porch step in place in relative silence until a young boyish voice called out his name.

"Hey, Reno!"

Looking up from the last nail he'd popped into place, Reno saw a squat little purple scaled figure standing on the junction where his garden path met the road leading into Ponyville. It was Spike the baby dragon.

Spike's stature matched that of his title. As a baby dragon, Spike was the size of a human baby, complete with a rounded and pudgy frame... a walking, talking baby, which was of course a little off-putting at first. But as time went on Reno learned to like the guy. He was a good kid and had made a few mistakes in life. But who didn't make mistakes? Reno had made his fair share when he first arrived in Equestria and he wasn't going to fault Spike for the bad calls he'd made.

So despite having nearly killed each other at one stage, Spike and Reno were now friends. They were guys, and in a world run by the ladies the lads had to stick together.

Reno waved to the dragon and grinned. "Hey, man. What's up?"

"Everypony is heading to the town square to..." Spike paused, pointing in the direction of the centre of town as his eyes fell upon Karskin. "What's he doing here?" he suddenly asked.

"He was just leaving," Reno assured him and the baby dragon seemed to relax. "What's going on in town?"

"A foreign diplomatic party is coming to visit. Everypony is heading into the town square to greet them. Are you coming?"

"Yeah, dude." Reno indicated the last nail he had to hammer in. "Give me a second. I'll see you there."

As Spike trundled off down the path leading into town, Reno whacked the last nail into place, dropped the hammer and stood to stretch. He wasn't exactly dressed to meet a foreign dignitary in flecktarn bottoms and a t-shirt, but then when Celestia had knighted him he'd been wearing the same frayed camo pants along with a raggedy pink sweater - a hoodie that had been his favourite until a delinquent pony by the name of Pinkie Pie had dyed it pink. At least after all this time the dye had darkened and faded, and some of the original grey was starting to show through.

Grabbing said sweater from where it hung over the porch balustrade in case the pegasus weather teams had scheduled some rain he didn't know about, Reno wrapped the sleeves around his waist and tied them in a knot to form a makeshift kilt over his jeans. As he was moving the way Spike had gone, Karskin followed and put a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

Reno frowned, wondering if Karskin had blacked out when Spike walked past. "Going to the town square to see what all the fuss is about."

"Are you sure it's safe?" Karskin asked with sudden concern. "Are you carrying?"

"Carrying? As in a gun? Of course not!"

The older man shook his head; Reno's answer obviously wasn't good enough. "Then take one of mine. Here."

With a click a device cleared the holster hidden under Karskin's robes and he held a familiar tool for Reno to take.

Reno recognised the gun immediately. It was one of a faithful pair Karskin always carried. Olive green polymer formed the ergonomic handle with black steel finishing the slide, hammer and the levers and switches. The breech cover was polished gunmetal grey, with the muzzle of the P226R "Tapper" threaded so he could screw on a suppressor. Typically the weapon was fed by fifteen-round magazines, 9mm parabellum bullets if Reno remembered correctly.

He'd seen plenty of the pistols in his time and the sight of it didn't shock him as it would have shocked most others. So most of Reno's surprise didn't stem from; "oh, shit, it's a gun!" Most of it was; "geeze, why the heck does he have a gun on him?"

Reno raised an eyebrow. "Kar, what the fuck man?"

"You know how to use a gun, Reno. I've seen you shoot," Karskin said, looking between the pistol and Reno's face incredulously.

"It's not that. There's just no need to shoot. Save it for the range."

"But what if there's trouble?" Karskin asked as if it was obvious.

Reno gaped with a frown, trying to articulate some kind of argument. Nothing particularly rational came to mind and he swallowed the urge to yell out of frustration.

For a moment Reno reached out to take the weapon, but froze and reconsidered, thinking over his options very carefully...

Story Tutorial

Welcome readers, to the part of the story where you can influence how the story runs. Throughout The Fall - usually at the end of every chapter - there will be multiple paths of action, equipment packages to choose, moral choices to be made, etcetera. It is at this point the reader is able to cast a vote which will affect the choices Reno makes and how the next chapter, and the rest of the story, plays out.

All you have to do is read over the available options and cast your vote in the comments section. If you want to change your vote before the deadline, " Reply" to your own comment and indicate that you are re-voting.

Simple as that! And it only takes a second! Now let's look at the first choice of the story.

Reno's Choice Choose a course of action Reno adopts in this situation.

Whatever is Reno to do with Karskin?

#Alpha - Accept the Pistol ) There's no use arguing with Karskin. And it would be rude to turn down a gift.

#Bravo - Turn down the Pistol ) There is literally no point walking around Equestria packing heat. This is the safest place on the planet, and it's time Karskin realised that.

_Voting closes_26/01/16