Or that their parents aren’t missing but are helping other parts of the Apple family and trusted the others to deal with it.

The plot thickens.  

Spike Born in 1986 or 1987, so the Cutie Mark Crusaders born in 1988 or 1989.

@juunigatsu no usagi  
i guess

It was never established that the ponies at the school and the CMC are the same ages exactly.

@Scrounge  
:)

@Phantom Rider
 
 
@MLPfan2017
 
Thank you both!

@Phantom Rider
 
yes a good backstory

@Scrounge  
Ooh. Love it!

@Scrounge
 
mabye

@Phantom Rider
 
I’d rather have something unsettling, something mysterious, something stramge. They disappear with no explanation, and a week later their bodies are found in a field, holding hooves, with no signs of harm whatsoever except that they are no longer alive.
 
Ever wonder why Applejack can get so overprotective?

@Alexlayer  
eeeh….

@Phantom Rider  
That’s… wow…

@MLPfan2017  
But that’d mean he left his kids alone. (Well, with Granny, but still. Not cool.)
 
Their deaths should be epic. To give the kids time to get to safety, they held off the Everfree monsters they saw, but quickly found themselves surrounded. What followed was a twelve-hour onslaught as their strength laid waste to beast after beast, barely slowing down even as their wounds began to add up. After relieving the last monster of its head, they didn’t have the strength to return to town, and were found the next day lying peacefully in each other’s embrace while surrounded by mountains of the bludgeoned and crushed beasts.
 
The last they were seen by the living was at the gates of Tartarus after Cerberus escaped. They were assigned to guard the gates of hell in his place, and the prisoners relaxed when they only had to deal with the giant dog again.

@SPB2016  
This is not something I was aware of.

@SPB2016
 
yeah im talking about that he might have committed suicide

@Scrounge  
Well, you can’t directly die from depression. But there are cases where an otherwise healthy person will suddenly have their vital organs shut down. In that case, they have lost the will to live and the body reacts accordingly.

@MLPfan2017  

 
As far as I’m aware of, people don’t generally die from depression unless you count suicide.

@Scrounge
 
hm

@tuypo1  
Point taken.

@Phantom Rider  
That’s a false equivalency.

@tuypo1  
Hey, the return of the last batch of thought-dead characters from the past who turned out to have mysteriously vanished ended up pretty awesome.

@Scrounge
 
 
I might have to agree…died from giving birth….but I think bright mac died from depression from when Buttercup died giving birth

@Scrounge  
In a standalone story that’s fine but for an ongoing series that just leaves too much room for a hack writer to bring them back.

@Scrounge  
Maybe Bright Mac did after Apple Bloom was born, where Pear Butter died from an aortic dissection…