Author's Note
This is partially born of an annoyance at how Unicorns get a magic school, and the Pegasi and the Earth ponies don't really get anything.
Someone mentioned how Earth ponies can tap the energy of the Earth, which pretty much makes them massive batteries. Unicorns don't, and aren't very athletic anyways, so I assumed that the average unicorn don't have much of a reserve.
Combine them, and then the unicorn gets a lot more flexibility.
Combine one of the strongest Earth Ponies (Applejack) and OP Sparkle....
1) Soul Eater
Note: This is my partly Soul Eater fusion, partly my rant at my annoyance of the unicorns getting all the fun.
Celestia started a school for higher learning, and a school for special tactics. Instead of solely unicorns, it was mixed. Everyone had magic, after all, and every should get a chance to unlock their natural born skills. This was “Celestia’s School for Advanced Magical Training.”
There was also a different school, started by a small group of students in a university researching magic types. They knew what Unicorns could do, there were plenty of books on combat spells and what not. Pegasi were a little more limited, but they could still do aerial bombardment with lightning or tornadoes.
Earth Ponies had earth magic, but it was damned difficult to get their mana to do much of anything besides local phenomenon. Their first attempt involved mana sharing. A breakthrough in magic training was born from this research, detailing how little they knew about Earth Pony magic. Hundreds of papers were written soon after, detailing differences between the different magic systems.
A few years down the line, researchers discovered a spell to link the unicorns much more closely to their Earthly brethrens: The Weapons Transformation Spell.
Soon after this discovery, “Celestia’s School for Advanced Weapon/Meister Tactics” was added to certain sectors of military training. Over the centuries, six mares rose through the ranks to become one of the most powerful Weapon Meister teams ever produced by the school.
The school’s worth would soon be tested by the arrival of a certain imprisoned goddess.
One year after Luna’s return.
The Dark Alicorn glared at the nonchalant orange Earth Pony standing next to the door to her throne, her ancient castle. “Are you testing my patience, child?” she snarled.
“I don’t know,” the orange pony said, casually leaning against the door. “Are you impatient?”
“What is your purpose here! Move or you would be no more than a memory!” Nightmare’s horn glowed.
“Sucks, don’t it? I’m afraid we have a conflict o’ interests.” The hatted pony took a step. “You see, Applejack was tasked with a bit o’ stalling.”
She paused for a beat. “And I’m Applejack.”
The Nightmare’s horn glowed. A blade popped up in between them and diverted her magic, shattering both blades.
The cowpony showed a small grin. “I’m pretty good at what I do.” She bucked her rear legs, sending the flaps of her saddlebags open and shaking out nearly fifty blades into the sky, which all landed impaled at the ground. “Now, I would like to know whether we can -”
AJ stomped a hoof, blocking a bolt with the now disintegrating blade, and sighed. “Guess not.”
The Nightmare shot off another mana blast, but the Earth Pony was long gone. There was a blast of sparks coming off her side. She looked, and snarled at her opponent. Only her reflexes managed to protect her, summoning a short curved blade by her side that blocked the blade the Earth pony held in her jaws.
More sparks flew as the Nightmare shoved Applejack off, leaving her rolling to a stop. Nightmare went for the door, but was stopped by a pair of blades shooting across her vision. Behind her, Applejack lowered her legs. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” The Earth pony sprinted across the gap, picking up blades as she went and alternating between throwing the swords or deflecting the flying blade the Dark Alicorn controlled. They once agains met in a clash, the orange pony blocking the floating blade with a reverse grip on the sword in her hoof.
“You fight well for an Earth Pony,” the Nightmare growled, “but Unicorn magic always beat those of Earth.” A second blade flashed into being, and Applejack barely managed to roll away from it. She stopped in front of the door, gasping slightly for breath. “In fact, why am I wasting time here?”
She shot upwards towards the roof, intending to blast through the ceiling of the fortress, but was completely surprised by a massive weight plowing into her side. She bounced off the floor once, knocking over several swords. When she stood up, she saw a few blades crossed with each other, still vibrating after the Earth Pony had springboarded off it. “Do you really think a lone Earth Pony can stop me?” the Nightmare yelled.
Applejack made a thoughtful expression. “Maybe not.” Her head lowered. When it rose again, it was marked with a fierce grin. “But all I needed to do was stall.”
The Nightmare’s eyes widened, but didn’t have time to do anything before a blast of Rainbow light smashed in between them. The smoke cleared quickly, revealing a straight blade, rolling with energy and glowing with all of the colors of the sun. It had a smooth, metal handle, with red, blue, and green streamers wavering in the air.
A high pitched voice echoed from the large hole in the ceiling. “Woo Hoo!” A pink blur shot down and rolled beside Applejack.
“Took you long enough Pinkie. I almost got tired, here.”
The titular pink pony was crouching on her rear legs, wielding a saber with purple highlights and purple streamers that wrapped around her left hoof and a lavender tinted long sword with two pairs of spikes pointing above and below the horizontal as the hoof guard. On her back was a dull yellow crossbow with a pink scope and drawstring. Saddle bags bounced on her back.
“Sorry Jackie! Had to make sure all our topside friends were okay. Plus, do you know how hard it is to find where you are under several feet of rock?”
Applejack tapped her friend’s shoulder. “Jus’ kiddin’ with ya. You were right on time.” The pony smiled.
In front of them, the glowing blade’s streamers wrapped together and inflated, like a rainbow tail. The energized blade expanded, bulging. When it dissipated, a smirking blue pegasus crouched in front of the Nightmare, the pegasus’s wings still sparking. “Rainbow Dash is in the house!” She snorted at the Alicorn’s surprised expression. “Never seen an Autonomous Weapon before?”
“Don’ think she’s seen Weapons at all. Ever paid attention in Histo- woah nelly!”
“Yikes!” Rainbow squeaked, blocking two of the magic blades with glowing forearms. “Hey, that’s like, totally rude ya know."
Uh, huh, a certain saber muttered.
“I am the Goddess of the Night!” the Goddess of the Night shouted. “No amount of you little ponies would be enough to defeat me!”
“Individually maybe,” Applejack admitted. A glow surrounded Pinkie’s right hoof. A lavender unicorn walked around her and stood besides Pinkie. “But there’s me, Twilight...”
A flash appeared to her left, and Rarity hopped down to the floor. “Nice to know that form doesn’t do much to my appearance...”
A butter yellow pegasus poked up behind Pinkie. “Um. Hi.”
Rainbow Dash flew back and hovered above them. “And the fastest pegasus, ever!”
Applejack nodded to them. “I think we have a decent chance. Let’s go, girls.” Rarity nodded and turned into a saber, wrapping around Pinkie’s hoof. Pinkie reached into her bags and held a wide barreled flare gun. Rainbow Dash grabbed Fluttershy, who “eeped” and turned into a yellow crossbow.
Nightmare roared and flung several conjured spinning blades at the ponies. Twilight quickly stepped forwards and summoned a shield, though sweat started dribbling down her head as her concentration was battered by the intensity by the attack. An orange hoof poked into the corner of her vision. A quick glance revealed Applejack’s fierce grin. “Let’s do this, partner.”
The pair clasped hooves, the shield still being maintained as the unicorn morphed into a longsword. “Hi-YAH!” the cowpony shouted, slamming the sword into the ground. A blast of orange energy reinforced the shield, and also increased in size, slamming into Nightmare’s face.
“Resonace the pair said, energy swirling around them. Purple and orange sparks danced along the edge of Twilight’s sword.
This was the secret to the immense success of the Weapon program. Preliminary research showed that Earth ponies actually had a vast amount of mana they were able to draw from: the Earth itself. Unicorns had to rely on their own stored reserves, and are prone to running out. But when combined with the reserves of an Earth Pony, they become more powerful than their individual sums. This was also the reason Earth ponies had to take unicorn magic classes if they want to be a good Meister.
Pegasi were in between. They were generally extremely agile, and able to strike quickly before their targets can react. Therefore, they are often either paired with another pegasus, or go solo, known as Autonomous.
Applejack exhaled. She opened her eyes, and became a blur. The wall of blades the Nightmare held in front of her spat sparks as she barely blocked the pony’s blow. Another pink blur flew towards her, and was also quickly blocked. A moment later, the Nightmare decided that sidestepping or summoning a shield would’ve been a better idea for dealing with a cupcake. The pink pony who fired it simply grinned, blowing a bit of smoke out of the flare gun, and bounced around to the side.
A white glow flashed from her saber, and the pink pony teleported above her, spinning and slicing away at her shield and levitated blades.
Rainbow Dash simply used her tremendous speed to her advantage, alternating between speeding by with a lightning coated hoof raised or firing Fluttershy’s darts at her from behind.
For the first time in the fight, the Nightmare grew worried. Alone, individually, they would be easy to take out. But, these new techniques were pushing her back. Their strength had been multiplied greatly, and she knew that a war of attrition was one she would be bound to lose.
Applejack blasted a beam of energy into the distracted Alicorn, knocking several of the blades off course, and dashed up to her, ripping chunks of stone out of the floor. Twilight’s blade screeched against the hastily made barrier, shoving the Nightmare back a few feet. “I know this don’t look like it, but we would prefer not to cause undue harm. Can you please stop? It’s getting embarrassing.”
“No!” she shouted. “I will not be beaten like this!” She backed up towards a wall, forcing the six mares to stay roughly in front of her. A crackle of energy built up in her horn as she stood behind a shield. Her eyes opened, glowing with power, and then she sent out a storm of lightning ripping the room apart.
Applejack quickly held Twilight upwards, casting a purple, orange tinted shield in front of her friends. “RRAAGGGHH!” the Nightmare shouted, unrelenting.
Pinkie crouched beside Applejack, frowning, Rarity held in a guard position. “That was terribly disappointing,” Rarity sighed. “I thought a Princess wouldn’t be so uncouth.”
“Yeah, sorry missy. Insanity doesn’t transfer easily ta’ manners,” A trickle of sweat trickled down AJ’s head. “Dang, she’s pretty angry. Twilight, I think we need you, before one of us burns out and dies. I don’ think the Princess would like that.”
A murmur of assent echoed from the sword as the six fighters huddled together under the onslaught of the Alicorn’s wrath.
“...50000 thaums, 3 degrees, 0.05 pulses per second. It appears to be somewhat stable. Get ready, Fluttershy.”
“Ok,” the meek crossbow said as the pegasus carrying her landed on the ground.
“On my mark,” the longsword said. “...tick...tick.........tick ....tick .....tick....FIRE!”
Pinkie twirled once and lashed out with Rarity, sending a whirling shockwave crackling through Applejack’s shield.
Rainbow Dash threw herself over the meek crossbow, and with a flash turned into a glowing multi-colored blade. The crossbow sprouted a pair of legs, catching the handle of Rainbow’s handle with her drawstring and shot her, sending a contrail screaming through the pulsing electrical storm the Nightmare was blindly, wildly tossing out, ripping stone and air alike. There was a pattern, however. In the brief moment between the pulses, a blazing sword shot through the air, sliding right between the arcs of lightning, accelerated through the brief tunnel of calm summoned by Rarity..
Midflight, Rainbow Dash dispelled her sword form, a lightning charged hoof held over her head. She let out a war cry and hooked her elbow over the Nightmare’s neck, the blast of force slamming them towards the wall. “TASTE THE RAINBOW!”
The room exploded in a blast of light.
What if Chrysalis wasn’t an incompetent tactician and tried using brute force when her species’ specialty was stealth?
250 years before Luna’s return
In the dead of night, a shimmer snuck into a nursery, several pod like objects hanging off his side. When there were no movement in sight, the spell was dropped, uncovering a crouching Changeling, its eyes softly lighting up the floor beneath it. It used its fangs to cut the pods open and placed changeling nymphs into the beds beside other sleeping foals. It touched its jagged horn to one of the foal’s head, sending a green bubble through it. The foal’s form copied, it sent the memory to the nymph. A flash later, a twin of the copied foal was in the bed.
The changeling repeated the process until it ran out of nymphs, then placed the foals in new pods generated from glands in its mouth. Once the pods were dry and secured to its back, it recloaked itself and ran from the building.
235 years before Luna’s return
A blue maned, grey coated colt sat at a diner, eating a salad. His term had just ended, and spent his spare time ogling fillies. Tomorrow, his parents would come by to pick him up. His room was a bit of a mess, and he dreaded the amount of cleaning he would have to do. He gave a depressed sigh, and glanced at some of the papers in his bag. At least he didn’t fail catastrophically like the first semester. That month was Tartarus.
He had just finished when a petite young mare, her eyes hidden by her bangs, sheepishly trotted in and sat at an empty table. She had a green and pink striped mane and a pink coat, and she appeared to be engrossed in a book. The colt attention was instantly attracted to her. She was alone. She doesn’t look half bad, either, he thought.
The colt looked around, shifting his bags. A buzz resonated deep within his mind. He gave a sharp toothed smile, and focused his senses at the aura of emotions surrounding him. He slicked his mane to the side and sauntered over.
Elsewhere
“Genetic code analyzed, and sending a Scout,” a Changeling Nurse announced. “Location: Manehatten Institute of Technology. Mission: Observe.”
225 years before Luna’s return
The colt brought his smiling bride over to a bed in a fancy hotel, their honeymoon. He leaned in and gave her a kiss, while his free hoof discreetly pulled at her wedding gown.
“Oh my,” the pink mare said, her cheeks blushing despite her coloring.
The Hive
Far away from the borders of Equestria, a Changeling Nurse wandered the tunnels of a hive hidden away in the badlands. It had buckets hanging from its side, for the dirt that was removed for the expansion of the hive. A buzz like order went through its mind, and the Nurse called over another Changeling to take its buckets to a storage locker.
The Nurse went down a side path towards the lower levels of the hive, its pride and joy.
Rows and rows of green pods lined the walls, inside a thin pony floating within. Tubes on the top of each pod fed nutrients in and filtered waste out. A glance told the Nurse that nutrients made need to be shipped in soon, and made a note to inform the its managers to send in a request to replenish their supplies.
The Nurse paused for a moment to verify the numbers. After a moment, it went to Pod #2-15. It pressed its hoof against the wall and sent its magic into the slumbering pony’s mind. Half a minute later, a tiny cloud of white fluids floated out to the side of the pod, where the changeling collected it into a small ball made from the same materials as the pods, the green gels.
She went to a different room and mixed the fluid within the ball into a labeled jar. The Nurse left the mixture mix for several days before returning. It touched its horn against the jar and sent a magic pulse through it. A flash of light transformed the Changeling into a young male Earth pony foal. He had blue and green striped mane, and a sky blue coat. He nodded and went to the Nursing area and picked up a random chrysalis. It took off its disguise by the time it reached the upper levels, and sent a message through the local mental network.
A few minutes later, two Scouts appeared, ready to take the package.
Midnight. Some hotel after a night of opera.
The sleeping blue colt twitched besides his newly wed, a slight glow underneath his eyelids. He gently hugged his wife close and gave her a kiss, one that let trails of green gel.
About an hour later, the colt was waiting by the door, a cocoon by his side. He opened the door for a few seconds, then closed it. He turned around to see his wife standing next to a Changeling with a pod on its side. They shared an unspoken agreement, the Changeling leaving the package behind and taking the giant chrysalis with it.
Tomorrow morning, none would be any wiser.
Across the country in Whinnychester, a old looking unicorn mare smiled at the orphans under her care. A flash of green shone from her eyes, and she turned to glance at the front door.
“Come on, little ponies,” she called, “It’s time for bed,” and herded them to their rooms, her horn glowing slightly as she unlocked the door.
In a local hospital in Ponyville, a doctor cast a spell on a Changeling Nymph, changing its appearance to one of a sleeping pink pegasus, a tuft of yellow on her head and tail. He nodded to them as he signed the child’s birth certificate as a Changeling cloaked itself, a pony shaped blur inside the small pod it carried on its back.
A colt showed strong dedication for the crown, and competent at combat spells. He smiled at the ceremony at the end of the year. For now, he was just a Private of the Guard. However, he knew a friend who was already in the Royal Guard, and envied his friend’s skill.
I’m right behind ‘ya, buddy.
194 years before Luna’s return
Two best friends laughed at lunch at one of their father’s antics, together so often they might as well be sisters. One of them asked the other over for a sleepover.
A green maned unicorn and his filly friend, a orange colored unicorn went behind into a room under construction for some private snogging.
103 years before Luna’s return
A teacher hoofed out permission slips for a field trip to an archeological site.
90 years before Luna’s return
Ponies stood in line, waiting to go to a private room for vaccinations.
85 years before Luna’s return
Two best buddies stood guard at Her Majesty Princess Celestia’s door as the Princess walked in for the night. They held the door open for a few seconds longer than necessary.
“She in, Orion?”
“Yep, Her Queen is in. Use your eyes for once, won’t ya?”
They smirked at each other and shut the door with a hall shuddering boom.
Luna’s return
The stars flashed, and the marks on the moon disappeared.
A cloud of purple smoke shot down to the planet and reformed, sneering at ...
The dark mare blinked. Eternal night was in full swing.
And everything was dead.
The first globules of tears formed at the corner of her eyes. “No...” she whispered. “This isn’t how I wanted it to happen.” She fell to her haunches. “Not like this...not like this.”
She collapsed bonelessly to the floor, sobbing quietly, smoke burning off of her.
Twelve Months after
Changelings scurried near a geothermal vent, checking up apparatuses that captured the energy emitted, every once in a while doing maintenance work.
A blue form crouched in the shadows created by the machines, unnoticed by the workers. The Princess of the Night, Ruler of a dead country, snuck down the passageways, blending in with the walls in order to avoid detection. She briefly pulled out a map, one drawn by some of the few she had saved due to his skill at locating underground tunnels. After a few wrong turns, she arrived inside the pod room, and looked sadly at every single one of her ponies trapped within.
She shook herself out of her mood, glancing around to make sure nothing spotted her. She crawled behind the rows and hid herself between the hundreds of gently swaying chrysalises. She covered herself with the cloak, further hiding her form, then closed her eyes and touched her horn to the pods.
When Luna opened them again, she saw the modern city of Canterlot, confetti raining from the sky. She looked down and saw unfamiliar ponies milling about in celebration. A wedding, it seemed, had recently occurred.
She flew down to meet her sister, putting up a fake smile. “What did I miss?”
In a different chamber The Goddess of the Sun twitched in her sleep, wiggling the numerous tubes and wires connected to her magic. A weak smile crossed her face. “...Luna...”
Author's Note
There. That’s it. I’m not writing anymore, because I literally have no idea how to continue it. Instead, I’m going to write more one shots like this, of settings of fusions. Do what you will with the concepts. Too open ended? Too bad. You go finish it.