I woke up in the morning at about 5:30 by a loud thump from upstairs. I realised that Josh had woken up early. I looked around the room before I heard the springs of Josh’s bed creak slightly as he lay back down upon it. I groaned as I sat up slightly from the sofa. I guess the MLP marathon had made me fall asleep on the sofa.

I gripped my head as I felt a headache come on as I recounted the strange dream I had just had. It was like normal dreams; since I could not entirely piece it together afterwards. I guessed that I had read too many fanfictions before going to bed, whatever that dream was; it was one of the weirdest dreams I had ever had. But I simply dismissed it as another dream. I realised that I still had Ponies playing on my TV from last night. I ejected the disk quickly and put it back into my hiding place to prevent Josh or the others from finding out about my hidden love for the show. I packed away my dinner from last night and went to the kitchen to clean up my plates.

Eventually I got bored and started to cook myself a bacon sandwich, and when I put some of the cooked slices into the bread pieces, I was greeted by Josh, still in his dressing gown.

“Please put some clothes on you damn fool, you do know you’re not living on your own,” I barked at him as he took a slice of my sandwich for himself and walked off to turn on the telly for the morning broadcasts.
I took my side of my sandwich and plugged my phone into the charger… It was an iPhone 5, not the most recent in technology, but its feel and software was all I could really afford, plus it gave me a modest sense of nostalgia whenever I used it. It reminded me of the days when I was in Secondary school, and when season 3 of My Little Pony just hit the air. I remember people going nuts about Alicorn Twilight at the end of the series and then the Equestria Girls movie that soon followed. I thought EQG was pretty good when I saw it, despite some hiccups in plot and the overall weirdness of it, followed up by what I thought was a pretty cool finalé. But It was nothing compared to the show I loved.

When I ate my sandwich, I recounted the days when the fandom of Bronies was at its peak. I felt personally sad when the fandom started to decline after something that happened in series 5. When the show discontinued.

I felt moved when the show ended, but I still enjoy the fanart and the music and the ‘fics by the fans that still remain. I know that the really noble Bronies who enjoyed the community were the ones that stayed.

Personally I never watched the Series 5 finale that most of my friends talked about, mostly because I never wanted it to change the way I felt about the show in general.

But I continued to do my own part for the fandom, as I would go to the occasional cons or do some of my own fan-art. Now life seems a little bit bland since the show finished all those years ago. The only thing that really kept me excited for saturdays anymore were the episodes of Doctor Who.

I continued my train of thought as I went upstairs to get changed for another day at school. I went downstairs and grabbed my phone and some keys.

“Hey! Wait up!” Said Cordelia up the stairs, who was still putting on some earrings. “Don’t head out without me Trixie!” I cringed at that name again.
But she turned around to Josh in the sitting room, “See you later Joshi! Have fun at work!” she shouted energetically, to have a mumble in response. I opened the door and signalled to Cordelia.

“We should probably head off, we both need to get there pretty early to the lab. Daniel will be pretty pissed if we get there late again.”

She smirked and rolled her eyes sarcastically while making a brief chuckle before starting to walk out of the door behind me, she abruptly stopped and turned back inside

“Oh! I almost forgot!” she yelled before appearing again with a pair of black sunglasses. Ever since we saw the Matrix, she had mocked me for looking like agent Smith. She in fact got me a pair of sunglasses and always nicknamed me Smith whenever I wore them.

We walked into town together at a fairly quick rate while I snacked on an apple I had bought quickly at the local Co-op, we joked together as we usually would. We both complimented each other from our choice of clothing, yet today felt good. There was no cloud in the sky; yet there was a nice south-westerly breeze keeping us both slightly cool.

A nice ferrari passed by on the street, making me grin to myself and Cordelia to laugh and roll her eyes, she could never understand my other fascination with cars. But it wasn’t long after that, that we came up to the doors of the large school hall.

BANG!

a large sound was heard from inside, shaking the ground around us, before we saw a column of smoke rise up from one of the windows and several surprised gasps and shrieks to be heard from the nearby streets. Cordelia looked at me with some surprise as we avoided a small group of people pouring out of the building, screaming in terror. I couldn’t help but laugh slightly as I remember my great uncle telling me a familiar story about when he was a headmaster, and see something like this.

“What the hell happened?” Cordelia asked to herself, looking at the large column of smoke again.

“Do you want to have a look?” I said in an excited manner, with a half closed eye.

“Fuck yeah!” She announced, pulling a slight grin to her face as we both began to run in.

There were alarms blaring around the school as we continued to walk around, past the several crowds of people fleeing, with the obnoxious sounds of laughing and screaming from the people who went past.

“Should we just leave like the rest of them?” She asked in a moderate way, without looking even ahead of her.

I shook my head as we continued to walk towards where the smoke from the lab became more dense and thick.

“No, you wanted to see what caused this thing. So, we’re going to!” I laughed before we ran into a familiar stern face.

“What are you two doing going back in here?” A stern voice said, with a regal accent I would remember. “Don’t you see the others? You two need to get out of here and avoid getting yourself hurt” The figure stood up straight and adjusted her green tie.

I pointed to the large mass of smoke behind the figure and put on my best considerate voice to fool her.

“But Professor Lutece, that’s our lab in there. And we came here for a days work, so we were wondering if we could find some way to help out with this!” I lied badly, but it did result in Madame Lutece putting her face in her palm and stepping to a side.

“That was so obviously a lie Patrick, but I know that you usually mean well. Nothing can defeat the curiosity of either you or Miss Cross,” she replied with a snarky comment, I turned to Cordelia who grinned slightly to me and made the ever-so-slight squee. I knew that she wanted to know what caused such an explosion ever since when she was little. When a chemistry experiment went wrong at school and it nearly burnt her hair off.

That explosion traumatised her as a child, but it made her fascinated in chemistry and bombs and all forms of explosions. It was probably how we met up after we were apart for all of secondary school. Since she did applied sciences also at university, but during times when we weren’t set on experiments or research… Me, her, Elliott and Daniel would attempt to create the biggest explosion to not be noticed by Professor Robert or Rosalind Lutece, or as we called them; ‘The Lutece Twins’. Whoever created this monster of an explosion definitely won our ‘little’ game.

When we came to the door of the lab, we were greeted by Professor Robert standing by the door, holding a cloth over his face while smoke poured out of the door quickly in large amounts.
“What are you doing here!” He spluttered as he tried to get out a phone from his jacket. “Did my sister let you go through?” He annoyingly announced while staring at us.

“We were wondering if we could help. And get some clarity to what happened?” Cordelia asked only to have Professor Lutece to dial in ‘999’ into his phone and glare at us in confusion and annoyance;

“I can’t help you there Cordelia, it’s too dangerous to go in there before the fire brigade get here! We managed to get Daniel out quickly, but we can’t find Elliott. That smoke is too thick to see and we don’t have enough equipment to go in ourselves! If you go in there for too long; who knows what could happen!”

I flinched back slightly when I heard this. Elliott was also a good friend of mine, although a little nuts. If he didn’t get out quickly, he would die! I hoped the Fire Department got there as soon as humanly fucking possible!

“What can we do?” I pleaded “We can’t just let him stay in there, potentially dyeing!”

The professor didn’t reply; and put his phone up to his face;

“Hello, this is Professor Robert Lutece of Magdalen College. We need a fire squad as soon as possible!” A short pause followed, before he angrily yelled at the voice on the other side of the phone. “Just get here; a student’s life is in danger!” he hung up the phone. He then turned back to us: “I don’t care that my sister allowed you to come in here, you need to get out of here now!”

I thought about my friend in the lab for a moment, and then turned to Professor Lutece with bravery and anger.

“NO!” I yelled, realising the depth of this situation. “I will only leave. When I KNOW my friend is ok! The emergency services will not get here in time!”

“But I kinda still want to know-“ Cordelia started

“I don’t care who made that bloody thing! I just… Just…”

I paused for a second before I felt something snap. I didn’t even think: I just DID.

I burst into motion and ran into the smoke.

“Patrick! STOP!” The Professor yelled, but it was too late. I was already charging into the smoke, desperately searching for my friend.

“ELLIOTT!” I yelled out, whilst beginning to cough from the heavy, white gas surrounding me. I couldn’t see anything, and this was a big lab. So I had very little chance of finding him before either I pass out or I end up finding only a corpse. But I looked around the several conveniently placed lab tables and knocked over chemical vats and flasks, while I would eventually find pieces of shrapnel and burning pieces of rubble.

I was making no progress. And every breath I made started to become heavier and hurt me more. So I decided to search less of the place in feral instincts and decide to think for myself.

I thought what one would do in this kind of situation. I had a hunch that I had only one more burst of energy before either me or him would drop dead because of the gas.

I saw a lack of glass shrapnel and several liquid burns on the desks and even a few on my arms, an explosion like this would have probably been made from a chemical experiment, and not an experiment involving large machinery or appliances. So I moved into the area I knew that experiments like that would take place.

I knew that only a small number of experiments that we would do in this lab would result in a gas leak of this magnitude if performed wrong. Something like this could not be deliberate, and would require a misplacement of heat. So that limited it down to an area with bunsen burners. I walked over to a right-hand corner of the lab as my head began to get heavier from this horrible gas.

I wanted to get out of this place, and keep myself safe, just to prevent another one from ending up in a body bag. But it was then I started to remember a MLP episode I watched this morning. Elliott was a friend, and wherever he was. I couldn’t let a friend in need down! So as I coughed and struggled for breath; while desperately searching for more clues as to where Elliott was, I sang quietly and desperately;

“A true true friend”

I noticed hot ash falling down. The supports on the ceiling were burnt only in one area.

“-Helps… A friend in need”

This must have been caused by an explosive chemical; but only one that created a small surrounding explosion, narrowed it down to a single desk.

“A friend will be there… To help… Them… See…”

I saw a large charred part of the desk; creating a large split down the table, limiting what was going on to one element… Gunpowder.

“A true… True… Friend…”

I was beginning to become breathless as all my limbs started to feel heavy and painful. But I ran around the desk categorising the safety precautions and circumstances of this explosion. And I also remembered the smoke coming out from the windows, the windows were open during the explosion.

“Helps… a friend… In need…”

In a situation like this, with lit Bunsen Burners around, and the magnitude of an explosion.

I noticed burnt ash also on the table, next to the crack. Immediately I pieced together what happened, while images of what could have happened (And my life) flashed before my eyes.

A simple reaction experiment, combining gunpowder and another element. Completely air tight to avoid errors. But errors from surrounding experiments were not considered. As a fellow student forgot to consider his own bunsen burner as he burnt through his own notes, creating flecks of burning ash. And due to the slight south-westerly breeze must have moved the ash, yet not blow it out, into Elliott’s experiment.

“To… see… the… Light…”

I gathered my strength back slightly as I finally cracked it. With small power like Black Powder, and the attempt to stop an explosion like this by preventing a fire from spreading, he would probably not have grabbed a fire extinguisher, but a fire TOWEL.

My eyes snapped open as I ran towards where I knew the fire towels were kept.

“That shines from a true… true friend.” I saw Elliott’s body sprawled out, with one hand reaching towards the towels. But what else I saw made me gasp.

Elliott’s face was blood-soaked and had several square centimetres of flesh stripped off of it. I would vomit; but I needed to check if he was still alive. (Plus, now I knew that he made this explosion.)

I coughed and spluttered as I still heard people screaming from outside and people yelling from inside. I yelled at Elliott; “Elliott! If you’re. Still. Alive. Do something!”

And before I could do anything else, Elliott made a slight movement with his head, he was obviously in pain. So I picked up what strength I had left, as I began to cough, some support began to fall from the ceiling. I reached down; ignoring the blood and… urine… across the ground. I grasped underneath him and hoisted him up into the air.

I made a bolt for the exit as I heard voices yelling louder from the outside. I saw the figure of Robert Lutece and Cordelia jump in surprise as I drew closer.

“Patrick!” Cordelia yelled, with relief in her voice.

I burst out of the room, holding Elliott in my arms still, and placed him down on the ground. And then I looked up to see the stunned and scared Robert Lutece.

“Patrick. That was both careless… And completely stupid at the same time, if you were to do that in front of another teacher at this school they would-.”

His voice began to fade away. I wanted to reply, but my body would not respond to him. My sight began to blacken as my body began to fall to the ground as well.

I had inhaled too much of the smoke.

The last thing I remember seeing was Cordelia start to run towards me while I fell to the floor, all I could hear was a distorted mumble.
And then everything became silent.

“Please state yur’ business,” a dark voice blurted from my hidden vision.

“I come here to judge the wicked, and unify the just,” I said, with a familiar, but odd accent.
A door opened in front of me, on the other side was… Applejack?… At first I couldn’t tell completely, due to the fact that she was wearing a black cloak over her head and a red pendant over her neck. But I seemed to recognise her anyway. And the fact that I recognised this strange pony startled me.

“Welcome back. Y’ majesty,” she replied; bowing down to me before she lead me into a large conference room.

In the room were five other ponies. Three surrounding a central table; And two other ponies were standing off to the side; a brown one and a cream coloured one. They were all wearing the same black cloaks as Applejack was. But unlike her, she had the hood down.

This was exciting for me, because usually in my dreams, details like this wouldn’t usually come up very much. So I attempted to say hello to them, but my mouth would not be controlled; neither would my hooves.

Hooves, damn… I guess it was like the dream I had last night.

All of a sudden, I remembered the dream I had last night in complete detail. And remembered how little control I had over my body I had that time. I guessed that my body would be like that this time. So I might as well have enjoyed the show.

The first to speak was one of the earth ponies.

“You wished to speak with us due to the recent events?” The brown one asked, resulting in me nodding my head slightly. But I smiled and addressed the others in the group.

“My fellow subjects, we may be in the presence of guests…” My mind paused again due to the strangeness of my accent. My mouth continued “But there is no need to hide your identities. We are far from the commoners and slaves.” I then turned to the two earth ponies. “Do not be alarmed, we are not here to hurt you.”

I turned to a magenta pegasus on my left, who burst into green flames. Revealing the Changeling Queen Chrysalis.
This shocked me entirely, but not as much as what I saw next…

The next thing to change was a female grey unicorn, whose eyes lit up with an eerie green light. As shadows engulfed her body; transforming her into King Sombra… I would question this gender swap, but I was too confused at everything else to even think about that.

“And before we get to business. I would like to welcome a new member; who has joined us thankfully at this delicate time,”
I said, before turning to a yellow coated earth-pony, whose eyes in turn lit up with a bright Red. Her body began to fall apart, revealing the cyan coat and white mane of the Great and Powerful Trixie. And around her neck… The Alicorn Amulet. “I see that you have become well attuned to its power.”

I then realised that I was now surrounded by some of the greatest evils Equestria has ever faced, apart from two. Discord and-

Trixie nodded while she looked around the table. “Trixie thought that there was something urgent that needed to be addressed?”

I smirked to myself, before turning to the two ponies at my side. “We thank you both for coming here, as we all know what would happen if Discord were to get his way. But now I wish to welcome you both as honoured guests. From I... The new King of Equestria...”

My body tensed, as a searing pain surged throughout it. I felt my body darken, as a horn pushed further out of the front of my skull. My entire body twisted and turned as it did last night. And yet, I couldn’t see under the shadow. But I opened my eyes once more when I felt it stop. As the voice I had heard last night in the mirror spoke with my lips.

“Welcome… To the League Of Darkness.”

Author's Note

This chapter includes one of many flashes at which Pony he will eventually become. Some things will be explained in later chapters.

Do note that this is taking several days before the First of May, i'm using these chapters as help for character development.