The Everfree Infection AU is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Zombie Apocalypse Alternate Universe Fic by Mrs. Gendered
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The AU tells the story of a fungus known as the Everfree Infection that's spreading like wildfire in Equestria. Once infected, ponies rapidly turn hostile as they deteriorate into pitch-black lanky things with branches growing out of their backs. The ponies of Equestria are trying their best to stay safe and figure out how to stop it... though they may already be in more trouble than they think they are.
Posts for the AU come in two varieties: Profiles give information on the status of various ponies and what they're up to, while Everfree Infection Tails are short videos with more narrative content.
Installments in the AU can be viewed on the creator's Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter pages.
The Everfree Infection AU contains the following tropes:
- Apocalypse How: Sentient mammalian life in the land of Equestria is facing an existential threat in the form of a highly infectious fungus that produces aggression, followed by the growth of more fungus spores from infected remains. While the infection is affecting a wide portion of Equestria, semi-canon material depicts the infection making the jump into alternate universes when ponies contact them in search of a solution.
- Domed Hometown: The entire Crystal Empire is enclosed under a giant shield spell to keep infectious spores out.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: While gathering supplies in the Everfree Forest, Zecora and Fluttershy come across a grove filled with fungus branches growing from dead insects. Fluttershy starts telling Zecora that the grove is where she gathered "nettle branches" to help cure a mouse right before the infection started, but chokes up midsentence as she realizes that Discord enchanting the fungus branches she gathered is what started the infection in the first place.Fluttershy: Oh wow, there's so many nettles here!
Zecora: These are where the infection has spread, these poor little insects are all very dead.
Fluttershy: Bugs? Not nettles? (...) But this is where I - I - I - - First-Episode Twist: The first published installment of Everfree Infection Tails reveals that the source of the Everfree infection is Discord using chaos magic to unknowingly force an insect fungus to affect a mouse that Fluttershy was treating for an injury, as both thought the branches were from nettles. However, nobody in-universe figures out the cause for a while.
- Government Conspiracy: Princess Cadence is hiding the existence of the infection from the Crystal Empire's residents. She publicly justifies the presence of the giant shield spell over the Empire that's keeping the spores out (and the residents in) by claiming it's there to keep them safe from a nasty winter storm.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In "Hold the Door", Cheerilee stands her ground against aggressive infected ponies to buy time for her class to hide in the closet. When help arrives, she's covered in bites but her students are completely unharmed.
- Internal Reveal: In "Nettles", Fluttershy realizes she used branches from infected insects to treat a mouse instead of nettles right before the Everfree infection started. This information was revealed to the audience back in "Little Mouse", the first of the Everfree Infection Tails.
- Know Your Vines: The AU's events are instigated when Fluttershy mistakes branches from an insect-killing fungus for nettles while gathering ingredients for a poultice, with Discord's use of chaos magic to give the "nettles" a boost granting the fungus the ability to parasitize mammals.
- Madness Mantra: Scootaloo's profile, which shows that her infection's progressed enough for branches to be growing out of her back, has a description consisting of "IT HURTS" repeated over and over.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Fluttershy is horrified when she realizes that her misidentifying a fungus as nettles led to the creation of an infection that's threatening all life in Equestria.
- Mystical Plague: The Everfree infection is a cordyceps-like fungus that was accidentally given the ability to affect mammals by chaos magic.
- No Biochemical Barriers: The version of the Everfree infection that's been devastating mammals is shown to infect and produce near-identical symptoms in changelings, which are basically large pony-shaped insects. Making things more confusing, said infection originally only affected bugs and made the jump to non-arthropod life in the first place due to explicitly magical interference.
- Parasite Zombie: The Everfree infection is a cordyceps-like fungus that burrows into mammals and alters their behavior to spread itself more easily and reproduce. Later stages of the infection include victims becoming aggresive, sprouting branches from their backs, and their bones extending to make them taller and give the spores more clearance to spread.
- Patient Zero: Twilight Sparkle is explicitly identified as the first to have been infected, having picked up spores from the fungus-overgrown remains of a mouse.
- Point of Divergence: While the exact point that the AU diverges from Friendship is Magic's events due to a widespread spore-based infection isn't outright confirmed, the most likely time is late in the third season; Discord has made a Heel–Face Turn and is working with Fluttershy, but Twilight hasn't become an alicorn.
- Raising the Steaks: While ponies are the most commonly seen victims of the infection, magical tampering gave it the ability to affect all mammals. Twilight Sparkle is initially infected by a mouse overgrown by branches, while one pony contracts the Everfree infection after being attacked by a sick cat that's implied to be Rarity's pet cat Opalescence.
- Uncertain Doom: Spike's whereabouts and fate are unknown, as he was last seen with Twilight when she was gathering field samples and became Patient Zero. His profile lists him as being immune, but given the existence of asymptomatic infected ponies who share design elements with characters listed as being immune, it's unclear if this is actually true. He's also been unable to be contacted in any way since Twilight disappeared, even through Luna's dream walking.
