Discord Meets Ruby Rose

by Maxes Altho - NavyBrony

Rating: teen
Tags: Other, Adventure, Discord, Princess Celestia, Crossover, Dark, Human, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Comedy
Length: 31374

Discord goes to Remnant. You haven't ever seen chaos like this. MLP/RWBY Crossover.

Discord was just messing around. How was he supposed to know that device under a tarp hidden in the back of Twilight's basement surrounded by "Do Not Touch" signs was dangerous? Now he's in a whole new world, without the supervision of the Princesses.
Discord thinks its time to have some fun.

Set about six months after RD Meets RR. Discord is reformed, but Twilicorn hasn't happened.

I would like to thank user soulknight13 for putting this idea in my head.

Edited 12/29/14, to space out paragraphs better.

Published 2014-12-23 16:10:04 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-06 01:36:30 UTC

C1 - Discord Unleashed

“Hey, Twilight, are you home?”  Fluttershy sang as she entered the library, me floating lazily along behind.  Gosh, I haven’t had a day off with Fluttershy in a while!  This is going to be fun! …And we start the day by going to the library.  Fun.

Oh, I guess I haven’t introduced myself, something about this being a sequel of another story told from first-person, and it would be confusing if I didn’t.  I am Discord, Lord of Chaos, Destroyer of Worlds, Kicker of Puppies (on rare occasion), and most recently, reformed citizen of Equestria and friend to the Elements of Harmony.  I had started getting unruly again, as Celestia put it.  I mean really, what’s the harm in reversing gravity every once in a while?  At least I did it indoors this time!  But no, dear Princess Celly got all fussy and sent me to have another lesson in friendship with Fluttershy.

“Oh, hi Fluttershy!  Twilight’s out right now, what can I help…you…with…” the little purple dragon, Spike I think, comes down the stairs and into the library proper.  He stops when he sees me; I’m guessing he still remembers the last time I turned him into a puppy for fun.  Hey, when a guy gets the urge to kick…

“Well, Discord’s in town for the day, and I was wondering if the eight of us could get together for a picnic.”

“Gee, Fluttershy, I’d love to go on a picnic, but Twilight wanted me to do her weekly experiment re-inventory, make sure none of them escaped.”

Experiments, you say?  That sounds like fun.  I put on my best ‘nice guy’ voice, along with matching top hat and coat.  “Oh, dear Spike, could we assist you in your endeavor?  Maybe you could tell us about some of these experiments.”  To seal the deal, I summon up a ruby in the shape of Rarity’s head to dangle in front of him.  Anyone with eyes can see he has a thing for her.

As he begins to salivate, I know he’s hooked.  He leads us down to the basement.  It’s dank, dusty, and a lot of the stuff down there is covered in tarps.  Spike produces a candle, a list and quill, and starts wandering, checking tags, then checking off the appropriate item on the list.

“Let’s see… Pinkie Brain Analyzer… Memory Relocator… D-Hopper Mk. 1… Diamond Dog Seismograph… Shark-Repellent Bat Spray, no idea what she would do with that…”

My ears perk up.  “D-Hopper?  What’s that?”

Spike gives me a worried look, then turns to a device tucked far into a corner of the basement.  “That.  According to Twilight, it allows her to go to different dimensions.”

“Oh, you mean when we went to that other world with Ruby Rose?  I loved that place!”  Fluttershy peeps up.  Other world, huh?  I pluck one eye and one claw off, and send them a searchin’.  My body keeps following Fluttershy (no need to get them suspicious), while my mind, eye, and claw get a gander at the machine.

It’s a simple enough thing, a box of dials and sensors with two fairly large pylons to either side, and a small circular platform in the middle.  I look at the tag.  Six months ago!  Twilight found a way to breach the fabric between dimensions, and Celly had her scrap it?  A memory comes unbidden to my mind.  One of me, ruling over thousands, sowing chaos against my enemies.  Then, two figures, one as bright as day, the other a blackest night, rising up from my people to overthrow me.  Me then having to run, fleeing across different worlds, having a bit of chaotic fun every now and again, but those two keep finding me, forcing me to the next world.  It ends with… nothing?  I shake my head.  It isn’t often I remember a time before Equestria, but that memory seems like a warning.  Where there’s a warning, there’s usually consequence.  Where there’s consequence, there’s potential for chaos.  I power up the machine, pulling my body to it.

I ignore the cries of alarm sounding across the basement and focus on the machine.  Since, due to cosmic drift, it’ll be nigh impossible for me to find any of my old stomping grounds, I settle for the last inputted coordinates. A portal opens in the center of the platform.

“Ooh, pretty!” I say to myself.  Well, as a good friend of mine is fond of saying, Allons-y!  I grab my bag, screwdriver, and fez, and step into the rip.

“Isn’t this fascinating, Discord?”  Fluttershy asks of the Incarnation of Chaos.  When he doesn’t answer, she looks up.   He’s floating along as usual, but seems distracted.  Suddenly, he vanishes.

“Discord?!  Spike, did you see where Discord went?”

“No, is he gone?”  Spike asks, not looking up from the parchment.

A hum resonates through the basement.  Fluttershy sees a purple glow in the far corner.  "Um, Spike? What’s in that direction?”

That gets Spike’s attention.  “Let’s see, that’s close to where we started, nothing too dangerous over there, but the purple shimmer means,” he turns to Fluttershy, and she makes the connection at the same time.

“The D-Hopper!”

Fluttershy launches forward and gallops for the far side.  She skids to a stop just in time to see the portal open.

“Discord! What are you doing?”  He doesn’t seem to have heard.  Fluttershy can only watch in dismay as he steps into the portal, and it closes behind him.

“D-Discord?  What have you done?”

I end up in a forest.  It wasn’t a very nice landing, but it must have been troublesome enough to find another dimension, much less make sure you arrive safely.  A for Effort, Twilight.

Now, where am I?  I pull out my map of the cosmos (updated every century or so, to account for drift, mentioned above), and study it.

“Let’s see, the Equis Realities are over there, and I seem to be somewhere over here… Hmm.  Doesn’t seem to be a livable plane nearby.  Oh, silly me!  This darn thing’s upside down!  I’m in the Realities of Remnant.  Ooh, have I ever been here?  Let me just check my little black book.”

I summon my little black book, appropriately titled Little Book of Forms for Major Chaos Gods, and begin to leaf through it.  I remember taking different forms on each world I visited, so as to evade those two forces.  Can’t very well go around a place looking like a draconequus if the people of this world haven’t ever heard of one!

“Hmm… no… no… close, but no… ooh!  Haven’t had anybody call me ‘Shaitan’ in a while… no… nope… not even close… hmm, haven’t been back to Asgard in, what, fifteen hundred years?  I better check in on how Loki’s doing with the whole ‘rule the realms’ thing… come on, where is it?”

My mood begins to sour.  I feel sure I’ve been here before, but for the life of me, I can’t remember when or how!

The bushes nearby begin rustling.  I shoot them a look, and a small beast comes lumbering out.  It’s about ten feet tall on its hind legs, covered in black fur, with a white head with red streaks running across it, and bony spikes running down its arms. It growls at me, but then it catches my scent and it… bows?  I reach my mind towards it.  Yes, I can do that!  How do you think I was able to trick the Element Bearers before?  Dumb luck?  No, I read their minds, and pulled out what would turn them against each other.

As my mind brushes it, I don’t get true thoughts, more like emotions and remnants.  Remnants like Master…Creator…Betrayed… and the feeling of pure chaos power.  I get hints of its ancestor’s ancestors, and me governing them.

That’s different.  I vaguely remember that, while I did have some agents of chaos, carefully selected from the population, I most certainly never stooped to creating my own.  Then, I look at the book, and facepalm.  “Oh!  Fool me twice!  I was looking under ‘Realities’, when Remnant is under ‘Realms’!  Okay, let’s see, Realms of R…E…M…N… here we go!  Ooh, I have to put my foot where?  Well, I’ve always wanted bigger wings, so let’s try it out!”

My new friend scampers away as I begin to grow.  My arms and legs lengthen, my wings biggify, everything gets larger.  Armor of some kind sprouts all over my body, covering everything except my head.  I summon a mirror, and see my head has taken on the motif of the creatures, white on top with large red streaks over the eyes, but red is definitely the in-color for the season.

As my transformation completes, I look over the tree line and see a city in the distance.  My mind has changed a bit, becoming a bit more feral, ancient, untamed.  I try to rein it in, but it’s a struggle, a real Sméagol-Gollum thing.  Ooh! Another thing for my list!  I need to check in on the dark lord on this one world, see how he’s doing with that ring I gave him.  Even though this second mind is oppressive, I’m able to glean some information from it, while still remaining in control.

Grimmfather, they called us.  We were the most feared in the realm the pitiful mortals called Remnant.  We ruled with iron fist and breath of flame.  Then, *they** came. They gave the mortals the power to destroy our sons and daughters.  They. Will. Pay.*

My more rational mind tries to fight.  “Oh come now, can we stop the whole ‘doom and gloom’ thing?  This is my first time out of my current dimension in about one thousand two hundred and nineteen years.  So, let’s try not to destroy this dimension before I have some fun, ‘kay?”

NO!  We must destroy the children of *them.***

“And we will.  But first, how about we try to turn them against each other, have some entertainment?  That way, their strife brings Them back, and the two of us together can defeat Them.”

Hmm.  This pleases the Grimmfather.  I accept your proposal.  I sense we were once one and the same.  By what name do you go now?

“Why, dear sir, I am Discord, at your service.” I bow to myself.  “Now, let’s go cause some chaos.”

C2 - Rise of the Grimmfather

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

I snap awake and hit the alarm.  I sit up, and the rest of Team RWBY is already up and about, preparing for today’s classes.

As I yawn and stretch, Yang goes over to the curtains to welcome in the morning.  She has them about half open when she stops, a worried look on her face.

“Uh, guys? Did the weather call for chocolate rain and walruses dancing in the streets?”

“Whuh?”  Either what she just said makes no sense, or I’m still asleep.  I ask Weiss to slap me, which she does gladly.  “Come again, Yang?”  I ask, stifling another yawn.

“Well, Ruby, the weather currently looks like cotton candy clouds, chocolate rain, all the street signs have been turned into candy canes, and there are Grimm running through the streets along with dancing walruses.”

Okay, what?  I get up, and sure enough, it’s chaos in the streets.  Strange, candy-filled chaos.  Citizens everywhere running from the Grimm, no law enforcement in sight.

No question now I’m fully awake.  I start putting on my gear, and see Blake and Weiss have already traded their school uniforms for battle outfits and weapons.

We set out from our room, after telling Jaune to ready his team, and head for Ozpin’s office.  If anyone had any idea what was going on, it would be him.

It’s not easy.  Giant Nevermore keep flying Grimm into Beacon.  We fight our way through, sometimes glimpsing other teams trying to keep the Grimm out of strategic locations, the dorms, the teacher’s offices, and library.  Unfortunately, it looks like a losing battle.

We’re about halfway to the spire containing Ozpin’s office, when an enormous, gut-wrenching roar is heard.  We turn, and a fifty-foot tall Grimm is making its way into the city.  It is a grotesque amalgamation of different Grimm parts, wings of a Nevermore, tusks of a Boarbatusk, skin like a Taijitu, fangs like a Beowulf, claws of an Ursa, tail of a Death Stalker, and several other creatures. We can only stare.  Finally, Yang speaks.  “Okay, what the actual fuck is that thing?”  I’m too shocked to reprimand her for her language. Team RWBY is supposed to remain clean.

“The Grimmfather,” a voice sounds behind us.  We look, and there stands Ozpin, with an enraged Goodwitch beside him, and several teachers behind.  All of them are worried, but Ozpin keeps his calm face on.

“A beast of legend, one that hasn’t been seen in over three thousand years.  He is the creator of the Grimm.  He vanished when we found Dust, and were able to form it into tools to beat back his children.”

Blake steps forward.  “So how do we stop it?”

At that moment, it roars again.  I look back, and it’s now flying over the city, straight at Beacon.  It lands on top of the spire, and lets out a bone-chilling laugh.  Yeah, it’s laughing.

“FEAR ME MORTALS!  WE ARE THE GRIMMFATHER, RETURNED TO END YOUR MISERABLE LIVES! WE WILL… What?”

“No, no killing of the people.”  I’m confused.  It’s arguing with itself, in two different voices.

“WHY?  THEY ARE TREMBLING IN OUR GRASP!  ONE SWIFT MOVE, AND WE SHALL CLAIM VICTORY!”

“Now I can see why this was just a phase.  See, I’ve moved beyond victory in the what, three thousand or so years since I’ve been here?  It’s much more fun to force them to submit.  Why do you think I stayed in Equestria so long?”

“What?”  This comes from me, RWBY, Ozpin, and Goodwitch.  How could an ancient Grimm with a multiple-personality disorder possibly know about the world Rainbow and her friends came from?

“NO, DISCORD!  WE ARE NOT WEAK!  WE WILL CRUSH THOSE WHO OPPOSE US, AND THEN THEY WILL COME, AND WE WILL EAT THEM WHOLE!”

It glances down at us.  “Would you please excuse me for a moment?  I’m afraid I have to give myself a stern talking to.”  It then disappears inside the spire.

What it said gets our attention.  Rainbow told us about Discord, how he forced her and the other Elements to betray their own Element.  If he had been freed, then—

“I am afraid we may not be able to defeat it, Ms. Belladonna.  Even when our ancestors had the tools, they could not touch the Grimmfather.  It took two angels from the heavens to force him out.  Now, I know you are all probably on the same thought train as me:  these angels ousted him, and he moved on to Equestria.  He has probably gained even more power since then; it would be suicide to try and oppose him.”

“Good thing we’ve dealt with suicide situations before,” Yang says.  She’s loading her gauntlets with the highest-yield explosives allowed by the government of Vale.  The others are arming themselves in a similar fashion.  Professor Goodwitch steps forward.

“Girls, this is madness!  You can’t hope to take on the creator of the Grimm!”

“Professor, if we don’t try, then who would?”  I find myself saying.  “If we can catch him before he has a chance to dig his hole, we may be able to do some damage.  Then, everyone needs to work together to force him out of the city.  Professor Ozpin, you need to contact the other Kingdoms, especially Atlas.  Get them to send anything and everything they have.  Or, in case we fail, tell them to ban anything to do with Vale until we can stop it.”

Ozpin looks troubled.  “I have never doubted the minds of my students.  It would be foolish to stop that trend now.  I place my faith in you, Ruby.  Good luck.”

I nod my thanks, and we head off to the spire.  We have a God to face.

Two minutes later, I’m hiding behind a pillar, too scared to move, and praying to anything that might listen that the rest of RWBY doesn’t find me.

What happened?  Where did our plan go wrong?  We made it up the spire alright, and found Discord/the Grimmfather took up residence in Ozpin’s office.  I smiled at the irony of it all.  He had turned Ozpin’s office into a grand throne room, with a massive throne at one end in which he sat, still arguing with himself.

As we entered, Discord appeared to have won, and taken control of the beast.  He perks up when we enter.

“Ah, so which one of you is Ruby Rose?”

I step forward, to the head of my Team.  “That would be me.  You’re Discord, right?  I thought you were supposed to be encased in stone.”

He scoffs, something very strange to see a Grimm do.  “Time off for good behavior.  I had a message for you from one of your friends, now what was it?”

Yang interrupts him by flying straight towards his face.  He grins, and suddenly she’s trapped in a bubble of energy.

“Ah ah ah.  Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s inappropriate to aim for the face?  I guess you’ll have to be punished for that.”  With that, he breathes black fire into the bubble.  There’s no way Yang survived.

Against all odds, she is unhurt.  However, she is changed.  I don’t get a good look because Discord turns a stream of fire at the three of us.  I feel a glyph form under my feet, and it launches me backwards.

“Blake!  Weiss!”

“Just go!  Get out of—” the flame engulfs them.  I scramble behind a pillar as Discord speaks to what used to be my friends.

“Now girls, don’t you want to go find your friend and tell her why it’s a good thing to be my friend?”

“Yes, Father.”  I hear Weiss and Blake say simultaneously.  That does it.  Now I’m running, taking cover behind what I can, trying to get to the door.  I’m at the last pillar before the door when my blood runs cold.  A voice speaks over my shoulder.

“Ah, now I remember.”  A massive claw slams down, trapping me between Discord’s fingers.

“Fluttershy wishes to say she misses you.”  With that, the fire overtakes me, and I fall into a never-ending darkness.

C3 - Return, Part 1

“For the last time, Rainbow Dash, keep me out of your stupid pranks!”

I’m flying lazily along, tailing Twilight, taking a break from cloud-pushing, and trying to plan my next great prank against the Pink Menace.  Unfortunately, I seem to have hit a snag.

“Oh, come on, Twi!  Just one candy cloud!  I put it over Pinkie, make it rain candy, and just as the first piece is about to hit her mouth, you change it to a storm cloud and I zap her with lightning!  It’ll be great!”

“No, Rainbow.  I will not help you bring harm to one of our friends.  I don’t care if Pinkie is part lightning rod, it’s not happening.”

Any further discussion is cut off as a familiar purple dragon comes streaking through the village, one word tearing from his lips over and over.

“TWIIIIIIILIIIIGHT!”  The mare in question concentrates, and in a flash of purple magic, Spike is in front of her.  However, he didn’t realize it, so I had to stuff a laugh back into my throat as he bowled her over.  What he says while recovering, though, wipes any smile from my face.

“Twi…light…Discord…Flutter…ex…periment…purple…try…find…”

“Spike! Take a breath.  Now, what happened?”

“Hoo.  Hah.  Thanks.  Fluttershy and Discord came over, and wanted to go on a picnic with us.  I said no, because you said to inventory the mothballed experiments.  They tagged along, and we lost Discord somewhere.  A purple flash hit the basement, and Fluttershy bolted.  I found her in front of one of the experiments, curled up, not moving.”

“Which experiment, Spike?”

He drags his feet on the ground.

“Spike, what experiment did Discord mess with?”

“1008-D” he says quietly.  Twilight gasps, backing up a step.  I’m feeling kinda pissed at being left out.

“Twilight, what’s 1008-D?  Twilight?”

“Rainbow, go get the others, as fast as you can.  Spike, get ready to teleport.  We’ve gotta get back to the library.  I’ll explain once we all get there.”

Woah, what happened to Twilight?  She’s looking more serious than Spitfire.  “Twi, what-“

“I said I’ll explain when everypony’s there.  Now go!”

Less than five minutes later, I’ve rounded everypony up, and we’re sitting in the library.  Twilight and Rarity are trying to comfort Fluttershy, but she won’t stop mumbling nonsense.  Finally, Twilight gets up.

“It’s as I feared, guys.  Discord has used the D-Hopper, and went to Remnant.”

In an instant, I’ve gone nose-to-nose with her.  “You said you got rid of it!  How is it still here?”

“I never said I got rid of it, Rainbow.  I mothballed it, and it’s been sitting in storage ever since.”

Pinkie starts waving her hoof in the air.  “Yes, Pinkie?”

“Um, what’s a D-Hoopy thingy?”

Twilight resists facehoofing.  “I told you and Rarity about this!  The D-Hopper Mk. 1 is a device capable of breaching the space between dimensions to allow for a pony to go through the portal… and I just realized I’m talking to Pinkie about advanced quantum mathematics.”

“Oh, no worries!  I understand perfectly!  Did you make sure to account for the possibility of finding an alternate universe instead of dimension, so you don’t end up going someplace like that High School you went to to stop that meanie person?”

“Uh, yeah, I…”  Twilight goes slack jawed, as do the rest of us.  “How…?”

“Oh, I read it in a book somewhere.”

Twilight shakes it off.  “Anyways, I never destroy an experiment if I can help it.  Not only is it dangerous, as some of the technomagical components are extremely delicate, but if I dismantle it, there is a high probability it will never work again!”

“But that still doesn’t explain how he was able to power it!”  Then it hits me.  “You were trying to find another world, weren’t you?  You went behind the Princesses’ backs!”

Her ears drop and she scuffs a hoof along the floor.  “Yeah.  Is it any consolation that I was never able to do so?  I only ran it when I was at home; I couldn’t risk a portal opening while I was out.  But maybe my calculations are wrong.  I can’t seem to find another dimension.  Please don’t hate me.”

“Twi, I don’t hate you, but you gotta stop being so eggheaded.”  I motion to our gathered friends.  “We can’t risk losing you, girl!  What if you found another world, went through, and ended up falling into a volcano or something?  Then, the next time a bad guy like Chrysalis shows up, we can’t do anything because we lost one of our best friends!”

She sniffles.  “Thanks, Rainbow.  You always know how to get me to think straight.”

“Hey, it’s what I do.  Now, you’ve gotta send a letter to Celestia.”

“What? Why?”

“Twi, we’re going after Discord in a world with far greater technology than we can ever hope to have.  We need the Princesses’ help on this one.”

“…Okay.  But if we’re going, we need a way back.”

Twenty minutes later, the letter is on the way to Celestia via Spikebreath, and we’re waiting near the D-Hopper in the basement as Twilight begins to power it up.  We all have the Elements on, along with a new device, also strung like a necklace.  Twilight calls them the D-Relay Mk. 2.  She’s removed the need for a focal point to use it, and as such, removed a lot of the sensors and displays.  Now it’s just a big red button with a recharge timer.  Pinkie doesn’t like wearing hers, keeps calling it a “Deus-Ex-Machina”, whatever the buck that means.

Twilight is about to begin the countdown to open the portal, when a great wind blows through the building.  Then, a voice that would raise the demons from Tartarus.

“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!  DON’T YOU DARE OPEN THAT PORTAL!”  We’re picked up in fields of golden magic, and are lifted through the ceiling to face an enraged Celestia and Luna.  She sets Twilight down, but keeps us floating.

“What are thou thinking, Twilight Sparkle?”  Luna implores.  “We doth told you to destroy thine project!  Now we hear that Discord hath used it?”

“You two don’t understand!”  Twilight is on the verge of tears.  “Think of all that we could learn from other dimensions!”

“I don’t have to imagine,” Celestia mutters, then freezes when we all look at her in shock.  What did she just say?  She sighs, then sets us down.  “My little ponies, you must not hold a grudge against what we are about to say, no matter how much it hurts.  Luna and I are not of this world.  We are, for lack of a better term, trans-dimensional beings.”

Twilight is broken.  “What…you…not…how…why…”

Celestia smirks.  “Now Twilight, all shall be explained.  Luna, would you go make tea?  I’m afraid this will take some time.  Time which, thankfully, we have.”

“Why do ya say tha’, Princess?”  Applejack asks.

“Because we know Discord isn’t going anywhere else.  He’ll be content with stewing in his current plane until something happens.”

“And what’s that?”

“Luna and I arrive to destroy him, of course.  Just like we did the first time, and many times afterwards.”

C4 - Origin

“We come from a world we called ‘Origin’.”   I smirk as I notice my student, though her jaw still touching the floor, has summoned up a quill and parchment, hanging on my every word.

“It was a world of great power and magic.  We had cities that stretched to the horizon, and buildings taller than the clouds.  It was as close to paradise as one could get.”

“Wh-what happened to it?”  The quiet one, Fluttershy, asks.

“Chaos came.”

“Chaos?  Don’t you mean Discord?”  Rainbow Dash speaks up.  She never could think more than one step ahead.

“No, my little Pegasus.  Discord is just the name he took when he came to Equis.  From what our parents told us, Chaos came not with a roaring army or force of arms, but wormed his way to the top of our government.  As soon as he did, he turned our fair land into one of dictatorship, turning people against each other, causing wars out of petty arguments.

“It was about one hundred years into his rule that Luna and I came into the world, as average as all children on Origin.”

My student has finally recovered enough to ask a question.  “Wait, if Discord takes a different name when he goes to another world, does that mean you two do it too?  What were you called back on Origin?”

“What he did by changing names and forms was to hide amongst the populace, sow mistrust and deceit, and eventually take control of the world.  My sister and I were born Celestia and Luna, and so those are the names we stuck with.”

“But Discord doesn’t look like anything else on Equis! And…you said you two were average?  Does that mean everything there was a trans-dimensional being?”

“To answer your first question, there were sometimes… exceptions.  By the time we reached Equis, Chaos was desperate.  He took a form that he found the denizens would fear, and tried the blunt-force tactic instead of coercion.  As you all know, he almost succeeded.  Also, he was a lot sloppier fifteen hundred years ago.

“To answer the others, Twilight, we must go back, more than ten thousand years, to the day Luna and I discovered our destinies…”

“Come on, Cel!  Try to keep up!”  Luna laughed as she jumped to the roof of the next building.

We are running across the rooftops of the city, doing ‘parkour’ as some other kids have taken to calling it, as wayward fifteen- and twelve-year-olds are wont to do in a dystopian world.  It’s an exhilarating feeling, but there is the constant pit of worry in my stomach.

“Lu, wait!  We shouldn’t be out this late!  What if the Agents find us?”  The Agents being Lord Chaos’ Agents of Chaos.  They look just like any other person on the street, but if one suspects you of anything, he will stop at nothing to apprehend you.  They go by other names, The Hunters, Dark Magicians, The Touched.  Any way you name them, there is no denying Chaos formed them to be the perfect tools.  No one has been able to compile a full report on what exactly they can do, because every time someone thinks they have it, the Agents show up with new powers.

I’m chasing after my sister, trying to stop her before she gets herself into trouble again.  Thankfully, she hasn’t ever managed to draw the attention of the Agents.  Yet.  And what kind of sister would I be if I didn’t try everything in my power to make sure that never happened?

“Luna!  Stop!  We need to get back home!”

“And who’s gonna stop me?  You?  Our parents?  Up here, I’m free!  Not even Lord Chaos’ Agents could-” she slips on a wet spot and comes crashing down.

Thank the Creator for small miracles.  I launch myself across the last alley and skid to a stop next to her.  I smirk.  Time for a bit of fun.

“Halt, miscreant!” I put on my deepest, scariest voice.  “I, Agent of Chaos Celestia, place you under arrest for disregard of the law and reckless endangerment!”

Luna puts on her best scared victim face.  “Oh no!  Woe is me!  Whatever is to be my punishment, officer?”

“I think I will start with this,” I say as I begin the deadliest of tortures: the tickle attack.  Within moments, I have Luna squirming on the rooftop, begging for mercy.  I let up for just a second, and that is enough time for her to wrestle me, reverse our positions, and turn the torture on me.  A minute later, we’re both laughing uncontrollably, lying next to each other on the roof, out of breath.  Luna is the first to recover.

"Ha ha ha, oh.  A good run, sister.”

I grin. “Very good.  Now, we really should get home.  Mom and Dad will be worried sick.”

I stand up, pick her up, and begin looking for a way off the roof.  However, we are stopped by a commotion in the street below.  We sidle up to the edge, and look down on the scene.

Three hooded figures are making their way out of a side alley on the other side of the street, heading towards a store.  The smash down the display window, and begin hauling everything they touch into bags.  Luna looks enraged.

“We have to stop them!  They’re destroying a store!”

“I don’t think we’ll have to do anything; look.”

A dark and imposing figure stands at the other end of the street.  By the power literally coming off of him in waves, I know it’s an Agent.  He speaks with mechanical precision.

“Halt!  Cease your actions, and prepare to face punishment for your crimes!”

One of the hooded figures cackles.  “Oh, yeah?  What are you gonna do about it?”  He pulls out a knife.

In an instant, he is knocked back by a blast of pure darkness.  The other two recoil in shock as a fist of solid black returns to the coat of its master.  One of the looters summons twin balls of fire in his fingertips.

“Look, Cel!  A pyromancer!”  This is news.  Magic users are usually kept under close watch by Chaos’ forces.  Not only are they unpredictable, but they could, with the right training, stand against the Agents.

This one… obviously doesn’t have the training.  The Agent suddenly appears right in front of him, and his flames sputter out.  The Agent attacks with another shadow, and the pyromancer falls.

The third looter, by this time, is scrambling for the alley they appeared out of.  He doesn’t make it far before a wall shoots up, blocking him off.  He whips around, and we can see the fear in his eyes from here.

“Y-you won’t hold your power forever!”  He declares as the Agent stalks up to him.  “The Children of Order will throw down your false lord and bring peace to our – Grk!”  The Agent has him by the throat, and he slumps into unconsciousness.  The Agent picks all three up in his shadows, and stalks away.

We remain silent for a solid minute.  Finally, Luna works up the courage to speak.  “S-sis?  I think I want to go home now.”

I return her look.  “Me too, Lulu.  Me too.”

“So, what happened then?”

By this time, Luna has returned from Twilight’s kitchen, bearing nine cups of steaming tea.  She is the one to speak.

“We returned home.  Neither of us spoke to our parents about what transpired; we believed that if we told, we would be severely punished.  I was deeply shaken.”

“She would not come out of her room for days.  I was worried.  One day, I worked up the courage to enter her room…”

“Lulu, please, come out and eat.  Mom made your favorite meal.  Lulu?” I open her door, and am met with a cold blast.  Her bed is made, the room is in its usual state of disarray, the window is open, and there is no Luna.  There’s nowhere she could hide. I fall to the ground.  “Why, Luna?  Why would you run?  There’s no reason…” my eye catches on a piece of paper on her bed.  I pick it up.

Sis,

Don’t be mad, I didn’t tell you because I know you wouldn’t let me go.  I went to go find the Children of Order.

I realized a day ago that something isn’t right, Cel.  This has become a world molded from chaos, without the balancing force.  Chaos must be balanced with Order.

What that guy said the night we saw that attack, it hit me hard.  I’ve always wanted to make a positive difference in the world, and I know you do to, but you’ve gotten lost along the way.  With the Children, I can make a difference.

Please, Cel, don’t come looking for me.  I’ve left my old life behind.  We may meet again, but if we do, I won’t be the same Lulu you remember.  However, I will always see you as my sister.

Luna

P.S. I ate the last of the cake in the pantry, you fatty.

“Wait, wait, wait.  Whoa.  You’re telling me you went and actually joined this terrorist group?”  This is Rainbow Dash speaking to Luna.

“Unfortunately, yes.  I didn’t realize until later that they were just as corrupt as Chaos.  They were Order without order, so to speak.  They so badly wanted to topple Chaos, they left all their moral boundaries behind. I was young, and very impressionable.”

Now Twilight speaks up.  “I’m surprised Dis-I mean, Chaos, left a resistance force standing.  Wouldn’t he have tried his hardest to stop the Children?”

“He did, but some groups are like a hydra.  You cut off one head, and another takes its place somewhere else.  And you forget your history, my student.  I have had forces arrayed against Luna and me since the first day we imprisoned Discord.”

“What?!”

“When Discord fell, his Agents were still at work, tormenting the outlying cities.  When we fought Sombra, groups like the Crystal Coalition rose, threatening full-out civil war because of something we had no control over.  Finally, when I was forced to banish my sister to the moon, several groups came up, such as the Children of the Night, wanting my head and Luna replacing me as the ruler.  Every time, I was able to talk them down, but for some, hate runs as deep as the bonds of friendship.  Now, the ones who want my head are the nobles, who bicker and squawk over every decision I rule, wanting to turn it for their own gain.”

Now it is Rarity’s turn to say something.  “So, what did you do, Princess Celestia?  When Luna ran off to join this group?”

I give a sad smile.  “I went after her, of course.  Nobody eats the last of my cake and gets away with it.”

Okay, Celly.  If I were my sister, and I ran off to find a dangerous terrorist organization, where would I look?

I’m standing outside my house; I can’t bear to be in there right now.  Against my conscience, I showed my parents the letter, and had to tell them what we had seen half a week earlier.  Mom broke down, Dad yelled at me, but when I took his anger, he softened.  As he went to console Mom, he looked me dead in the eyes and said six words.

“Find your sister, keep her safe.”

Great advice, Dad.  If only she had left a hint as to where she was going.  She wouldn’t be looking someplace too public, or maybe hiding in plain sight is part of their M.O.?  I know she wouldn’t dare crossing the bridges to another part of town.  But what if that’s where she would find the closest base?  Argh, too many unknowns!

I decide to start in the district market.  Maybe some of the shop owners have seen Luna.

Five minutes later, I’m standing on the thoroughfare, trying to decide which owner I could trust today.  They were always a little sleazy, and never fair in their prices, but they were kind enough, given the right day.  I could rule out any of the specialty shops; we never went in those.  My best bet would be to try the toymakers and the candy shop, and maybe the machinist.  All the owners of those stores knew us, and liked us.  It was worth a shot.

Useless.  Every one of them, useless!  They acted nice enough, but when I asked after Luna, they either hadn’t seen her in a few days, wanted an exorbitant amount of money for the information, or just plain ignored me.  I’m stomping around, trying to think of another place to look, when I hear a greasy voice from an alleyway.

“Hey, I hear yer looking for ya sister.”

I turn, and a guy is leaning against a wall, hat pulled over his head and wearing a trench coat.  Now, usually I would be running away from these kind of people as fast as my legs could carry me, but something in his voice betrays his disinterest.

“Yeah.  What do you know about it?”  I put on my best ‘Ms. Meanie Give-me-what-I-want-NOW’ face.

“Sheesh, lighten up girl!  Name’s Squirm.  I’m what youds call a… infomation dealer, see?”

“Okay, what’s your price on the location of a twelve-year-old girl with hair as black as night?”

“Oh, I dunno… how’s about anything yous got on a hit went down a few days back.  Heard three of those Childrens of Order got whacked.  Know anythin’ about that?”

Surprisingly, I do.  I recall what I and Luna had seen, and Squirm laughs.  “Yous sure yous weren’t seen by that Agent?  I’ve heard they can be particularly… thorough when cleaning up a scene.”

“I’m sure.  Okay, Squirm, that’s my part of the deal.  Where have you seen my sister?”

“One of my boys saw her in the central park not three hours ago.  Coulds be, she’s still there.”

I’m off like a bullet.  Luna, please don’t do anything stupid.

Within an hour, I’m rushing through the park.  I’m calling out for Luna, but only receiving silence.  This park used to be frequented by all sorts of people, but then the Agents came and ousted some protestors against Lord Chaos.  Things got violent, and people died.  Ever since, the park has been equivalent to a ghost town, known to many, but ignored by all.

“Luna!  Luna!  Where are you?!  Come on, its big sister Celly!”  Nothing.

I’m passing by a copse of trees when I hear something.

“Stupid trees!  Stupid rocks!  Stupid guy with his stupid ‘infomation’ crap.  Never should have trusted him, stupid!”

“Luna!”  I burst through the trees.  She’s wandering around a small clearing, obviously looking lost.

“Cel?  You-you’re not supposed to be here!  Didn’t you read my letter?”

I pull her into the biggest hug ever.  “Yeah,” I slap the back of her head.  “That’s for finishing the cake.  Mom and Dad are worried sick.  Did you think about them at all when you ran off?”

“N-no,” she admits, tears coming down her face.  “I wasn’t thinking at all!  I don’t know what I was doing, I listened to one of those guys you always say to stay away from, I don’t know how to get back home, and I’m scared!”

“It’s alright, Lulu, sister’s here,” I say as I pull her even closer.  Then, what she said hits me.  I pull her away and lock eyes.  “You said you took advice from one of the shady people?  Who?  Did he speak with a slur?”

“Y-yeah.  He told me where I could meet some people from the Children of Order, and I told him about how the shop keeps are nice, if you catch them on the right day.  I should never have trusted him!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” came a voice from the bushes.  We whip our heads around, and a hooded figure steps from the shadows.  “I’d say he was right on the money.”

“Cel?  I’ve changed my mind.  I just wanna go home!”

The figure laughs.  “Home?  I’m afraid that isn’t a possibility anymore.”  He motions, and more figures step out of the tree line.  We’re surrounded.

“You know where we meet.  Who knows what else the rat told you?  There is no going home for you two.”

“No!  Stay away!”  No matter what, I won’t let them hurt Luna.  As they approach, I feel a strange, unfamiliar feeling growing in my chest.

As the leader gets within reaching distance, I thrust my hands out at him.  “I said, STAY AWAY!”

Suddenly, the entire clearing is bathed in a shimmering golden light.  Light shouldn’t have mass, but it seems to be doing a good job of knocking the people back.

As the light fades, I find myself on the ground, unable to move.  I want to move, to protect Luna at all costs, but my body has given up.

They pick themselves back up, and come closer, this time more cautiously.  As my vision fades, I have time for one last sentence.

“No…body…hurts…sister…”

“We had found the Children of Order, and found I had great magical potential.”

Twilight looks skeptical, so I clarify.  “My family didn’t have any magical power, or if we did, my parents kept it a secret.  Remember, if anyone had potential, they were kept under wraps by Lord Chaos’ forces.”

“So, what happened next?”

Luna speaks up.  “Nothing important really.  We were taken in by the Children, and trained in combat, magic, and infiltration.  They saw us as even more valuable because, who would suspect actual children?  We could be playing not five feet from a ‘secret’ meeting, and the parties would never realize we were listening closely.  We also found I had as much potential as Celestia for magical power.

“This went on for a few months.  The Children were the very definition of an underground movement; they lived in the sewer and subway tunnels underneath the city.”

“We were exploring some tunnels near the main base when we found something utterly amazing…”

“Luna!  Wait up!  We aren’t supposed to be here!”

It’s about five months after we were accepted into the Children of Order.  We’ve been trained, infiltrated places too disgusting to mention, and provided information to the higher-ups that allowed them to plan out the operations of the actual warriors.

We had no current missions, and most of the adults were off on their own.  So, of course, Luna took this as an opportunity to sneak off.  She got past the guards just fine; they all knew who we are, and get along with us.  There was the one guard who always gets suspicious of any and all movements, and he told me about my sister’s escape act.  Which brings us to now, me chasing Luna through abandoned sewer tunnels underneath the city.

“Come on, sis!  We haven’t been outside the compound except to go to the surface!  I wanna know what’s down here!”  She keeps running, right towards a giant gaping hole.

“LUNA!  LOOK OUT!”  She registers too late, and plunges downwards.  I stop, and focus.  A faint golden glow emanates from the hole, and a moment later, Luna appears, encased in an orb of shimmering light.  I set her down on safe ground.

“Thanks, Cel.  I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s the problem with you, Lulu: You weren’t.  Please, never change.”

“’Kay,” she responds, giving me that lopsided grin I love so much.  “So… how do we get back?”

We wander the tunnels for what seems like hours.  I’m sure we’re just getting more lost with every turn we take.  Eventually we reach a dead end in the form of a chasm.  There’s large pipe entrances along the walls, but way too far to jump to them.

“Great, now what?”

“Cel, look.”  Luna points down into the darkness.  I look, and there is a strange, unearthly glow somewhere down there.  “I wanna get a closer look.”

“Lulu, no.  It’s much too far, and we really need to get back.”

“It’s not far.  I’ve been practicing my magic; watch.”  She summons twin balls of night.  Her magic, at first, looks like the chaos energy the Agents use, but upon closer look, it’s more of a dark blue, with tiny pinpricks of light, like the night sky.  She lobs one at the closest wall, and drops the other into the hole.

This is a trick Luna picked up recently with a bit of experimentation.  A shimmering portal appears on the wall, showing what’s down there via a connection to the other portal.  “Looks clear; let’s go!”  And she jumps in.  I sigh, face palming for all I’m worth, thinking why do I let her drag me into these things?, and follow her through.

“Whoa, you can make portals?  That’s more advanced magic than I can even begin to believe!” Twilight remarks.  "Why haven’t you used it here?”

“Because over the years, I have refined that art.  I could never get teleportation down as smoothly as my sister, so I adapted.”  She walks into the darkened kitchen.  “I created what I call the ‘shadow walk’.”  Suddenly, she is walking out of a closet near the front door.  The bearers can do nothing but stare.  “I found it helps in walking our subject’s dreams as well.”

I smirk.  “Yes, and the last time you tried it, you filled the room we were in with raw sewage.”

She shoots me a look.  "You said you would never speak of that again!"

“So, what did you find down there?  Ooh, details details details!”  Rarity fawns.

“Hold on, my fashion-minded citizen, I was getting to that part.”

Dark.

That’s the only word to describe it.  Dark as far as I could see, which was about nothing.

I summoned a ball of golden light to reveal a canal of sorts, completely dry.  The strange light is coming from an offshoot drain, one which Luna is already making her way down.  I scramble after her.

We eventually come upon a large pool.  The light is coming from something deep in the center; I don’t dare going in to find out.  I also notice something coming off of the water, something that seems alive.

“Luna, I’m getting a very bad feeling about this.  We really should head back.”

“How?  You know my portals don’t last very long, and this place is sooooo pretty!”  Oh yeah, I forgot.  Making portals takes a lot out of her, and they usually only last long enough for her to enter, then they collapse.  It must have been extra hard for her to keep it open long enough for me to go through.  We’re trapped down here.

Of course, unthinking that she is, Luna dives right into the pool.  She comes up for air, then goes still.  “Luna?  Luna, what’s wrong?”  She doesn’t answer; it’s like she’s gone into a trance.  Suddenly, Luna pitches forward and lands face-first in the water.

“Luna!”  I jump in to save her.

Are you pure?

What?  I try to move, but my feet have turned to lead.  I whimper; I’m frightened out of my mind, and I have to save Luna!

Are you pure of heart?

What is that?  “I guess so.”  I hear myself saying.

We shall see.  Suddenly, my legs give out of their own accord.  I am plunged into the water.

I can’t breathe, still can’t move, I can only float through the water.  My eyes dart around, trying to find Luna, but I can only see the green light.  I find myself being pulled through the water towards the center.

Why are you here?

I was trying to get my sister to come back to the base, I think. Obviously, this thing is telepathic, so if I think it, it should hear.

And your sister is the other, correct?  Also, yes, I am telepathic.

Crap, better not think about any ‘urges’ I have sometimes.

The processes of your body are of no importance to me.

Double crap.

Tell me, what is it you desire most?

What do I desire?  My sister safe, my family away from harm.

And you would do anything to make this so, correct?

Yes.  I feel a rumble emanate through the water.  Whatever this is, it’s sighing.

I have not walked the world above in generations, ever since Chaos ruled.  At the name of the Dark Lord, the water turns red.  He forced me down, broke me, reduced me to this!

Really?  What were you before?

I am the collective remains of those who ruled before.  Ones who embodied the aspects of what was right and what was wrong in equal amounts.  Order, Anger, Cunning, Deceit, Tact, Balance.  We ruled until the being Chaos sought to take all for himself.  When he rose, our power dwindled.  We fought back, but he had sowed his namesake amongst the people heavily, causing our powers to fall.

What does this have to do with me?

You and your sister claim to be pure of heart.  Are you?

We are human.  We have made our share of mistakes in the past.

And have you allowed those mistakes to rule you?

No!  Never!  Well, maybe…

Why are you so unsure?

And so, at the prodding of this being, I tell him of how exactly we came here, the night we saw the looters, me searching for Luna, finding the Children of Order, which the being scoffed at, to how we found this cave.

I just wanted to keep her safe.  I joined this group not because I wanted to take down Chaos, but to keep my promise to Dad.  I made the mistake of not telling our parents what we saw the moment we saw it, and that led to Luna running off!

You are sure you were the sole reason she ran?

Yes, and I would do anything to take it back.

We have been speaking with her as well.  She is saying she was scared for you.

What?

She ran from what she loves most in order to save what she loves most.  She joined an organization doomed to fail in order to give you a chance at peace.  So tell me, how are you to blame for the actions of another?

I…uh… I don’t know.

And that is why we consider you pure.  You take care of those you love, do not let evil into your hearts, and are willing to sacrifice everything to save them.  You are worthy.

Worthy of what?

Worthy of taking our power and using it to destroy our brother who we once loved.

What?  Kill Lord Chaos?

Yes, my child.  We were siblings in everything but blood.  When he struck us down, he also severed his bonds with us.  In our diminished state, we are powerless.  You, however, are a well of potential.  A potential to use our power for good, to counteract Chaos’ evil.

And Luna?  How would she fit into this?

How would you wish for her to be?

Safe, above all else.  But, if she is here, does that mean you are giving her the same offer?

Yes.  She seems drawn to the promise of power, when wielded to protect those she deems worthy.  However, her power would make her unstable.  She needs a yang to her yin.  Balance must be maintained.

Then give me the power.  I won’t ever risk harm to Luna.

Ah, but if you do, you would eventually wipe all life from existence.

What?  Why would I do that?

Because you see the good in people, and despise the bad.  Everyone has bad inside them; given the power and no control, you would destroy everything.  Your sister must be the yin to your yang.

So, because we can support each other, and balance the other’s urges, we are the perfect vessels?

It would appear so.

Then I will accept the responsibility of destroying Chaos and keeping my sister in check.  I try to project my thoughts outwards.  Luna?  Can you hear me?

Yes, Cel, I can hear you.

You know what he is asking, correct?

Yes.  I swear to the destruction of Chaos, and to make sure my sister does not go crazy.

Alright, what do we do to receive this power?

Simply take the gems in front of you, and let their power flow.

I look and, sure enough, we’ve come to the center of the pool.  Luna floats on the other side of two large gems shaped like part of a circle.  One is bright as the clearest day, the other dark as the blackest night, but each has one spot of the opposite color near one end.  I take the light, Luna takes the dark.

Combine the gems, and open the pathways of your magic.

We do so, and they are put together to make a perfect circle.  Instantly, we are hit with a wave of energy.

Keep them together! The voice then speaks in a voice full of hope, as me and Luna struggle to keep the gems together.  It’s like they want to stay separate.

One is the light.  It represents peace, mercy, decisiveness, and compassion.  The other is the dark.  It stands for anger, passion, drive, violence.  Both must be maintained for our power to succeed.  On its own, neither can stand.  But together… together they become the greatest driving force in the cosmos: Balance.  Only together can Balance and Order defeat Chaos and Disarray.  We, those who came before, place our power within you, Celestia and Luna, the Sisters of Balance!

We are being hit by wave upon wave of energy.  It is passing over us, passing through us, changing us down to our core.  I’m trembling, but I lock eyes with Luna.  She looks determined; she can see this through, so can I.

Suddenly, it stops.  The voice comes again, but is very faint. It is done… take our power…destroy Chaos… and he is gone.  As he goes, I realize I still can’t breathe underwater.  Creator knows how we did it this whole time.

We break the surface, and swim for shore.  As we lay there, gasping, on our backs, I look to Luna.

“Did…did that really just happen?”

“Y-you mean a spirit spoke to us, found us worthy, and infused us with its power?  Uhh, yeah.”

She sits up, and I gasp again.  “Luna!  Your back!”

“What?  Is there something on my back?  Get it off!”  She jumps up and starts running around.  She stops when she sees her reflection in the pool.  I work up the strength to stand up, and stand beside her.  Sure enough, I have the same thing.

Wings.  Beautiful, gorgeous wings.  Mine are large and soft, like a dove’s.  Luna’s are smaller, and black as night, like a raven.  And that isn’t the only change.

Our hair has changed.  Luna’s hair, instead of black, is now a midnight blue, shimmering with a star field and the mysteries of the night sky.  Mine has changed from its soft blonde to stripes of pastel blue, green, and pink.  Both are flowing of their own accord, without wind.

“Wow.  Do you think these things work?”  Luna’s face scrunches in concentration, and the wings flap.

“Hang on, wasn’t there something about power, too?”  I summon a ball of light, and gasp.  Instead of my simple orb of shimmering golden light, it is now a ball of fire as large as my head.  I toss it against a wall, and it explodes into a five-pointed star of pure heat that keeps burning.  I concentrate, and the flames die down.

“Cool.  Come on, Lulu.  Let’s get out of here.”  I flap my wings experimentally, then flap really hard, and take off up the offshoot, Luna, for once, following me.

I pause my tale to look at my student and her friends.  They are looking at me like zombies, jaws slack, eyes half-closed, ears drooped.  Luna comes up to me.

“I think you broke them, dear sister.”  Well, I at least know how to snap my student back into action.

“Twilight!  Friendship report, now!”

Twilight jerks up, belting out, “DearPrincessCelestiatodayIlearnedthat… Oh, Princess Celestia, when did you get here?”  Then, the tale I spun catches up to her.  “OHMIYOU!  You and… then you… spirit and… wings… hair… Luna…wha…wha…”

“What happened next was disappointing, to say the least.  We returned to the Children; actually met with the leader, whom we told the story to.  I could see that he wanted to believe the whole thing a lie, but it was kind of hard to argue when the two who told it left the compound with flat hair, and came back with wings and flowing scalps.  We then went into hiding.  Partially by our insistence, of course.  We couldn’t walk around outside; the wings would have given us away immediately.  We continued our training, sparring with the highest-level magicians the Children had squirreled away.

“Eventually, Luna and I knew it was time to go after Chaos.  The leader tried to stop us every step of the way, and it was then that we learned they were just as corrupt as Chaos.”

“How so?”

“They tried to lock us up, make us into tools not only to remove Chaos, but to be used against every enemy that they come against.  In response, we tried to run, but would always be caught and brought back.  We didn’t try to hurt any of them; the majority of the Children wanted nothing more than to remove Chaos to bring a return of peace.  It was after one such attempt we finally took Fate into our own hands…”

Luna is pacing the cell.  They seem to think that simple bars could keep us contained, and we are content to let them think that.  Truthfully, I can list at least thirty ways out of this cell, only ten of which cause harm to the guards outside.

“Leader thinks he wants to turn us into tools.  We’re stronger than him, right Cel?  He doesn’t stand a chance against us.”  I’ve come to recognize this.  Luna is starting to lose stability, the dark beginning to overtake her.  If it happens, it will take everything I can do to subdue her.

“Lulu…” I reach out and take her arm.  I reach out with my energy, and take some of her dark, replacing it with a bit of my light.  This technique is the best way to balance out the energies inside us, without overloading the other.

She takes a deep breath, then exhales and looks at me.  “Thanks, Cel.  Now, what do we do?”

“I’m tired of waiting for Leader to think we’re ready.  I know we are ready now!  We can’t learn anything more from his mages; it is time to take the fight to Lord Chaos.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“I’m thinking, Plan 19.”

She grins.  “I like Plan 19.”

“Guard!  Guard!”

“Ugh.  Shut up, Celestia.  You aren’t allowed out until Leader comes to speak with you.”

“Luna’s gone!”

“Wh-what?”  The guard scrambles over, and sure enough, no Luna in the cell.  “Where did she go?  How did she get out?”

A finger reaches over and caresses his shoulder.  “I’m right here.”  Before he can react, a fist shoots out and knocks him unconscious.  Luna steps over his body, retrieving the keys.  “As to the how, I just used my portal magic to escape.”

“Good job, sis.  Phase Two.”  Which basically involves us running through the compound, stopping to grab a few things, and getting out.

The first two parts go as planned, but we’re stopped at the entrance by none other than the Leader and his mages.

“And were, may I ask, do you two think you are going?”

“We’re going to do what you haven’t had the balls to do!  We’re going after Chaos, and you can’t stop us!”

Thankfully, we were ready for this possibility.  This is what Plan 19 is for.  I launch a fireball at him.  One of his mages knocks it away.  Then, before any of them can react, the Leader is on the ground, out cold.  I smile.

See, in the instant he knocked my fireball away, Luna opened two portals; one above the Leader, and the other where my fireball was going.  As it entered the portal, I focused, and dropped the fire’s temperature to absolute zero, turning it into a ball of ice.  Instant KO to the Leader’s thick skull, just as planned.  What wasn’t as planned was the mages immediately opening fire on us.  We duck behind a pillar.

“What now, sis?  This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“I don’t know.  Improvise!”

She smiles.  “Improvise, I can do.” She lobs a portal… somewhere, and another at her feet.  She jumps through, and I hear a yelp somewhere behind me.  I try and see where she is, but am forced back behind the pillar as a flurry of fire, ice, and electricity flashes past.

Thankfully, I’ve also learned some tricks.  Specifically, tricks with light.

“Lights out!”  I shout as a warning to Luna, then focus and plunge the tunnel into darkness.

I hear several muffled thumps.  “All good!”  I bring the light back, and Luna is standing, surrounded by the unconscious forms of the mages and guards.

“Aww, didn’t leave any for your big sis?”  I mock.

“Bite me, Celly.  You’ve never taken hand-to-hand seriously.”

“True, true.  Now let’s get going.  Your punches have never kept someone down long.”  As if to prove my point, an alarm tears thought the base.

“Alert!  Alert!  Angels 1 and 2 have escaped!  Alert!  Alert!  Angels 1 and 2 have escaped!”

Oh yeah, the Leader had taken to calling us his little Angels, due to our wings and mystical-level powers.  Figures he’d turn it into our codenames for stuff.

We make a beeline for the surface.

Meanwhile, two people are playing cards near a seemingly innocuous sewer hole.

“Hey man.”

“What?”

“You ever wonder why we’re here?”

“As a matter of fact, no.  Now put up or shut up.”

Suddenly, the sewer cover starts rumbling.  Then, two beings, one looking like an angel from the heavens, the other a demon from the darkest reaches of hell, burst out of the hole and streak into the sky.  After a moment’s collaboration, they turn and head towards Lord Chaos’ Citadel.  The two men are shocked.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“I think I just figured out why we’re here.”

“And what’s that?”

“To bring the news about the end times, because brother, they sure as hell are here.”

Oh man, flying through the air without restriction feels soooooooo good!  Now I know why birds do it all the time!  However, certain events bring me out of my elation.

Sis?  We’re getting close to the Citadel.”

“How close?”  I ask, laying on my back and letting my wings do the work.  I bolt to attention, though, when a pillar of shadow rushes between us.

“That close.”

“Wowza.  Okay, Plan 24.”

“Ooh, can we do Plan 42 instead?”

“What in the world is Plan 42?”

“It’s exactly the same as Plan 24, but with the promise of a deeper meaning that we may never know.”

“Okay, okay, whatever, just do it!”  More shadow bolts are coming at us.  I concentrate, and several plates of light appear around us.  Luna concentrates harder, and as the bolts contact the plates, portals appear, taking the bolts and launching them right back at the Agents on the Citadel walls.  They scatter as the walls are blown apart.

We make for the lower main hall, near the top of the castle.  See, The Citadel of Chaos is upside-down.  People enter through the tallest spire, and make their way down to the audience chambers.  We go for what is supposed to be the main gate at what is supposed to be the foot of the castle.

“Hey Cel, how thick do you think that door is?”

“I don’t know, two, two and a half feet?  What are you planning?”

“Just follow me and don’t stop!”  She makes a beeline for the doors, picking up speed.  I follow, as always trusting in my kid sister.

As we fly, I see her summoning her power.  Just as she is about to impact the door, a shimmering portal opens up, and we fly through into the Citadel.  We soar up into the rafters, where I take a moment and catch my breath.

“What the hell, Lulu?”

“Sorry, Cel, didn’t want to say unless it worked.  I made a portal through the door, without knowing what’s on the other side.”  She flashes that lopsided smile.  “I told you I’ve gotten good at the whole portal business.”

I look at her, eyes wide.  “Well, I sure as hell hope you hadn’t been here before!  What if you had been an inch short?  We would’ve gone into the door!”

She grins wider.  “But we didn’t.  We actually passed through with about half a foot to spare.”

I stop.  “Wait.  You made a portal… on nothing?”  I swoop over and sweep her into a hug.  “That’s amazing, Lulu!”

“Hey, it’s what I’m good at.”  She pulls herself from my embrace.  “So, where could Chaos be in this dump?”

“Right behind you,” A deep voice sounds, and a dark figure steps from the shadows.  The strange part is not that he is utterly handsome, nor that his clothes seem to be made from shadows themselves, but that he is walking on the side of the rafter, parallel to the floor below.  We ready ourselves; our advantage of surprise is, obviously, blown.

“Oh, come now girls.  Can I interest you in a friendly conversation?  It’s the least I could do for you blowing up my Agents and infiltrating my palace.”  He gives us a disarming smile, and with a snap of his fingers, we’re in a sitting room, teacups in hand, with Chaos walking on the ceiling, bustling about a small kitchen.

“One lump or two in your tea, girls?”  Two sugar cubes drop on our heads, hard as stone, and bounce into our cups.

“Firstly, may I trouble you two for your names?”

We look at each other uneasily, but he’s playing nice for now.  “I am Celestia, and my sister, Luna.”

“So, why would two street urchins have any business coming into my palace?  Oh, hang on, coming up.”  A ladder shoots into the table, and Chaos climbs/descends it, teapot in hand.  He jumps off about halfway down/up, and lands on the table.  He fills our cups, then turns and drops the pot up into the sink.  As his back is turned, I make a don’t drink motion at Luna; one that, thankfully, she gets.  We set our cups down; by unspoken agreement, I speak.

“Well, Chaos, to be completely honest, we’ve come intending to destroy you.”

He laughs; it’s a happy laugh, and one that screams ‘and what makes you think that has the slightest chance in hell of working?’

“And who sent you?  The Children of Order?  I knew they had recruited a couple of children, but I had no idea they trained young ones in such a level of sabotage.”  He smiles a wolfish smile.  “But, then again, you aren’t truly children, are you?  Don’t lie; I can sense energy as well as you can.”

I look to Luna, and we both flash our wings at him.

“Ah, you have been Touched.”

“Touched, sir?  I thought that was a street name for your Agents.”

“Yes, and I’ve always hated that name.  My Agents have not been touched by my power, they have been molded by it.”  He gets up, and starts pacing a wall.  “Technically, everyone in the world has been touched by my power, but only those I deem worthy are allowed to unlock their true potential.  A few months ago, two of my subjects suddenly rejected my touch, and instead accepted another’s.  Whose power did you take?”  He motions and suddenly, we’re held against the far wall, held by tendrils of dark energy.

Luna works up the power to say, “All of theirs.”

A flash of worry passes Chaos’ face.  “Who?”

Now Luna is smiling.  “We were given the powers of all the beings who maintained the Balance.  They said something about you once being a brother to them, but then you schemed and plotted, and killed all your siblings, stripping their individual powers away until almost nothing was left.”

Now he does look worried.  “What?  That’s impossible!”  His legs keep moving, stalking back and forth, but his torso, head, and arms still hold that pose of thoughtfulness.  “I utterly destroyed them, consigned their souls to the Void.  How—” a sense of realization comes over him.

“It was the Seal, wasn’t it?  They bound their souls to the Gem Seal.”

I sense it is my time to speak.  “Yes, and we have come to right your wrongs.”

“No.”

“We are the retribution of those who came before.”

“No!”

“We are their vengeance.”

“NO!”  He thrusts his hands out, and we are flung through the wall back into the main hall.  We barely recover, staying in the air, as Chaos destroys the remains of the wall in a blast of magic.  His façade has faded; he is no longer clean-shaven, and parts of his body are actually pure shadow.  He looks at us with red, rage-filled eyes.

“You want balance?  Well, I can provide some balance for you!”  He launches a wall of darkness at us, and we are too slow to react.  We are engulfed, but it passes by us unharmed.  When we can see again, Chaos is reclining on his throne, flanked by two new beings.  These new foes are us, but different; the wings are pure shadow, our eyes are as red as the setting sun, and looking at us (the real us) with malice. Chaos eyes the four of us appreciatively.  “I’ve heard that the greatest problem facing my people is how to overcome themselves.  This is different, though.  These two have all the meager powers you have, but infused with my own.  This will be less about you overcoming yourselves, and more yourselves grinding you two into dust.  Oh my Moon and Stars, please make these two disappear.”

With a grin, the doppelgangers launch themselves at us.  I don’t have time to assist Luna; I’m too busy avoiding a flurry of shadow and fire directed my way by the Doppel-Celestia.  I duck behind a pillar, and summon fire of my own.  Before I can launch, however, a portal opens above me, and Luna crashes down.

“Damn it!  Cel, she’s screwing with my portals and throwing everything I have back with twice the strength!  What do we do?”

I peek out, and launch my fire at the other Celestia.  Sure enough, she catches it, infuses it with shadow, and throws it back.

“Damn.  Okay, Chaos said something about overcoming ourselves, right?  What if we try to change up the playing field?  What if we don’t face ourselves?”  A light comes on in Luna’s head.

Ten seconds later, we walk out on opposite sides of the pillar, orbs in each hand.  Chaos chuckles.  “You really think the powers of the Balance can defeat me?  They were weak, while I thrive on the chaos of the world.  Girls, I don’t like asking twice, but please make the other girls go away.”

They charge with arms changed to shadow blades.  As they approach, Luna springs into action.  She summons two large portals under our feet, and we swap places.  I come up to meet D-Luna’s blades, while Luna blocks D-Cel’s.  The look on D-Luna’s, and Chaos’ faces, is priceless.  Confusion, mixed with eyes that scream ‘Oh, crap’.  I answer the look with twin fireballs in the face.  She shrieks, and flies into the rafters.

“No, you fools!  Attack your own twin!”  Yeah, right.  We aren’t going to let them get the chance.  I fly after D-Luna, only to hear a portal zap behind me, and feet get planted into my back.  I focus, and teleport about three feet back, and take D-Luna in a chokehold.  We slam into the floor, fake Luna first.  I fly up, and focus my energy into a beam.  I turn the beam on the faker, and my light burns away its very essence.  Nothing remains except the crater. I look to Luna, and the fake me is on the ground, crushed windpipe, broken arms, and one leg pointing the wrong way.  I grimace.

“Pretty gruesome, sis.”

“You’re calling me gruesome, Cel?  You burned me down to nothing!”

“Point taken.”  We turn our attention to Chaos.  If he’s worried, he’s showing all of it.

“How?  How could you, children of all people, possibly defeat my shadows?  They’re the perfect weapons!”

“Of chaos, maybe, but Balance isn’t about overcoming by force.  It’s about knowing how to balance the forces of both good and evil.  Since we couldn’t overcome our own flaws, we fought against the others.”

“Children should not have that level of knowledge!  Children need to be punished for their impudence!”

“Children also usually do not sport wings and the rage of a hundred other beings, with the power to boot.  Face it, Chaos, you are lost.”

“NO!”  He attacks us with a huge surge of chaos energy.  We stand side by side, and answer with our own energy.  “YOU WILL NOT TAKE MY RULE FROM ME!”  His energy output increases; we are slowly being pushed back.

At this moment, I come to the realization: we are still working separately.  We need to work as one.  “Combine the power!”

“What?”

“Balance!  The only way to defeat Chaos is to use both halves of the Balance as one!  We must combine the power!”

“That’s crazy!” she quickly shoots me a look; sure enough, she has that same lopsided smile.  “I love it when you’re crazy.”

We focus, and our beams become intertwined.  With the combined might of both the Light and the Dark, we push back.  We push back, all the way to Chaos.  We separate, but keep the power together.  We stand to either side of the throne, and force Chaos to his knees.  The chaos beam weakens, then sputters out completely.  When he speaks, he speaks with the age of a hundred lifetimes.

“…how?  How can two children possibly defeat me?”

Then, a voice comes.  It is coming from both Luna and I, and speaks in the voice we heard in the pool.

“Chaos, our brother.  You have decimated the Balance.”

“No, that’s not true!  I tried to save the Balance!”

“Liar!  You stand guilty of slaying your brethren, and plunging our world into darkness.  Your punishment is death.”  Then power, raw, unimaginable power, shoots from both of us, consuming Chaos in a blazing inferno.  When the light fades, nothing remains of Lord Chaos, or his throne.

“Is…is it over?”  Luna pants.

I nod.  “I think so, sis.”

A few weeks later, and the world is still in a state of upheaval.  The Agents are still trying to keep order, but failing badly.  The Children of Order, as well as other resistance movements, have taken to the streets.  Chaos might be gone, but his effects will last several lifetimes.

We’ve tried to keep the Balance, but it is a losing battle.  The truth is, we don’t know what else we can do.  There are riots, looting, entire buildings being reduced to ash.

Our first task upon killing Chaos was to demolish his Citadel, which we did with extreme prejudice.  Not a single stone remains.  The next was making sure the populace stayed calm.  That was a big fat failure.  Another task is making sure no single force takes the leadership for malicious intent.  That is proving our hardest trial.

We stand on the roof of the tallest standing building in the city, looking down at the chaos.

“What are we doing, Cel?”  Luna looks awful.  We’ve seen the absolute worst of humanity, and its hit her hard.  Her hair is a mess, she has bags under her eyes, which are red and puffy, and her strength is giving out.  I haven’t seen a mirror lately, but I’m sure I’m not much better.

“We’re trying to return the Balance.”

“Why?  It’s obvious the Balance doesn’t want to come back.”

That is not true, my child.  We both stand a bit straighter.

“What?  How?  You were gone!”

Due to your actions, we have regained some of our strength.  Not enough to return to this world, but enough to cast our gaze to the cosmos.  Chaos still lives.

“No, you’re mistaken.  We destroyed him.”

You destroyed the physical incarnation of Chaos.  His spirit endured, and has fled.

“Fled where?”

We have a direction, but you may not like what we have found.  Chaos has fled this dimension.

“How?  That shouldn’t be possible!”

We know.  However, you must follow.  Origin is lost to us; Chaos’ reign has left deep scars that may never heal.  Although, this new world he goes to may yet be saved, if we move quickly enough.

“How could we follow him?  He is equivalent to a god if he can travel dimensions.”

You forget, you possess the power of many gods.  Combine our knowledge with your teleportation and portal powers, and you can go anywhere.

Luna focuses, and a portal appears in front of us, looking into the cosmos.  I concentrate, and, along with the ancient’s knowledge, pinpoint the dimension Chaos has gone to.

It should be fair to mention, Chaos will not hesitate to take any form needed to feed upon the chaos of the world.  You may search for years until he is has enough power for you to take notice.

“Okay.  But, if he has no rules, we don’t need all of yours.  We will help those who need it, wherever we go.  We will not accept your help, unless Chaos does appear.  I’m sure we’ll think of some others along the way.  Do you accept our terms?”

We are conflicted, but accept.  We feel part of our downfall was caused by too many rules and restrictions on our power.  If we had not restricted ourselves so, maybe Chaos would never have risen.

“Sounds good.  Shall we, sister?”  Luna bows grandly, gesturing at the portal.

“Indeed we shall, sister.”  And so, the two angels embark on their crusade to stop Chaos, and return the Balance to the multiverse.

C5 - Return, Part 2

I can’t think.  I can’t even move.  How can I compare to the two Princesses, who aren’t really our princesses, who are badass enough to travel the dimensions, stopping Chaos everywhere?

…Ow.  My brain hurts.

“And so, for the next nine thousand years, we travelled through the dimensions, helping the beings found there, and eventually locating Chaos, destroying him again and again, only to have him flee to another dimension.  You could fill entire libraries with the wonders found on one world.”

Twilight seems to be the only one coherent enough to speak.  “That still leaves a few questions.  What changed when you came to Equis?  He definitely doesn’t look like he would blend in.”

Celestia nods.  “When we finally came to the dimension housing Equis, Chaos had become manic.  He created a form all who see would fear, and named it Discord, in order to cause as much chaos at one time as he could and absorb all the energy.  Every time we killed him, we severely depleted his own energy, further reduced by travelling between dimensions.  He would lay low to avoid us, and sow small chaos until he regained enough power to rise.

“When he became this desperate, we knew something had to change.  We harnessed the most powerful relics of Equis, and used them to seal him away in stone, so that he would never again flee.  As long as he stayed on Equis, so would we, keeping watch for all of eternity to see him never rise again.  We took a form that would be accepting to the ponies, but still allowed us to maintain our power.”

“But, the Chaos you described sounds truly evil.  Why does Discord act so much like a child?”

“I’m afraid that one thousand years in a low-power state, ignored by the populace of this world except as a garden attraction, did little for his sanity.  When he was released again, he was bordering on psychotic.

“However, there was one other world where he became desperate enough to try to rise immediately.”

Twilight voices the thought on all our minds.  “Remnant.  The other world was Remnant, right?”

Celestia sighs.  “Yes.  Remnant was also the world he unleashed his greatest weapon.  Instead of harnessing the most corrupt from the populace, he created his own tools.”

“The Grimm!”

“Yes.  He made beings wroth from shadows, and equipped them with weapons of fear.  We were in danger of losing Remnant before we even arrived.  We bent the ancient’s rules; we gave the people the means to defend themselves.”

Now I can speak.  “You.  You gave the people Dust.”

“Indeed.  However, once they had used the Dust to beat back Chaos’ forces, although then, he was known as the Grimmfather, they turned the weapons on themselves.  Wars erupted, over land, Dust, even something as silly as the way one looked!

“We simply cannot allow you and your friends, Twilight, to go back to Remnant to retrieve Discord.  He was at his most powerful then; even reformed and weakened with the Elements, he will still retain his power in this new world.”

“But Princess!  If you go instead, you won’t survive either!  You two lost a lot of strength when you gave up the Elements, and then you banished Luna to the moon-“

“Because my dark energy overwhelmed the light, and not even Celestia could balance it out!”

“-So, Celestia was left with an overabundance of light, and not enough dark, and couldn’t bear it, so she locked the six things able to fix you away.  This proves my point!  You can’t face him; you’ll be slaughtered where you-“

“That is why, my student, we will not be going to Remnant either.”

“What?”

Luna disappears then reappears, bringing the D-Hopper through the floor in her dark blue magic.  “Nopony will go and try this suicide mission.  We are confiscating your device, and any notes regarding it.  As long as Chaos is content to sit in Remnant, the rest of the multiverse will be safe.”

“You’re forcing billions of people to their deaths!”

“All so that untold quintillions upon quintillions will live!  This is the best course of action!  Now, we forbid you from ever speaking of this again!”  And with a flash, the Princesses, the D-Hopper, all of Twilight’s notes, and any hope of saving Remnant are gone.

We all look amongst ourselves.  Ears are flat, heads drooped, eyes listless.  Even Pinkie’s hair is flat.  The only one not depressed is… Twilight?  She’s beaming from ear to ear, and almost bouncing in place.

“Twi, what did you do?  Did Princess Celestia break you?”

She turns to me.  “Of course not, Rainbow.  Do you really think I hadn’t planned for this?”

What?

She storms off towards the basement, urging the rest of us along, talking the whole way.  “See, when Rainbow originally went through, I started freaking out.  Even if we did get her back, there was no way that Celestia would let me continue my research.  I also thought that she would wish to personally observe the destruction of the D-Hopper, and insist on the destruction of the notes too.  So, I built this,” she turns with a flourish, pulling a tarp away as she does so.  My jaw goes slack, again.  Sitting in front of us is another D-Hopper, with a few differences.  This one is smaller, sleeker, with much less to focus on.

Applejack recovers.  “Twi, is tha’ what I think it is?”

“Yup.  Girls, meet the D-Hopper Mk. 2!”

“Hiya!”  Pinkie waves at the machine.  I can only stare.

“Twi, you… you…”

“Now Dash, I know what you’re thinking.  This is a simplified version.  It doesn’t seek out new dimensions, it only creates portals to preknown worlds.  And thankfully,” she points to her head, “I still have the dimensional coordinates of Remnant.”

I sweep her off her feet in a Super-Duper Dashie Hug (Patent Pending).  “Twi, you’re a genius!  We can save Ruby!”

Applejack chimes in, “And the rest of RWBY!”

“And Zwei!”  Fluttershy shouts.  She becomes sheepish as we all look at her.  “What?  He’s an adorable ball of fluffiness…” and hides behind her mane.

“Alright girls,” Twilight announces as the portal opens, “Let’s go save Remnant.”

I come to about a mile in the air, as opposed to the fifty feet the last time.

“Celestia-damn it, Twilight!”

“Oh buck, I forgot to count for elevation!”  She’s falling right beside me.  I glance around, and all six of us are in the air, falling fast.  Me, Twi, and Applejack are the only ones conscious.  In an instant, a plan comes to my head.

“Twilight! Make an ice slide, catch Rarity, then help Applejack as best you can!  Applejack, I know you can probably withstand the impact if she can’t help.  Get Pinkie!  I’m going to catch Fluttershy.”  We dive.

I hear Twilight’s magic going off, probably teleporting her closer to Rarity.  I hear a thud and a grunt, most likely AJ colliding with Pinkie.  I push all that from my mind.  Fluttershy is the closest to the ground, and the one I’m after.

I summon my wings, thankful I remember how, and turn them into aerodynamic fins to give me more speed.  I catch her about fifty feet from the ground, and flap hard.  We still end up tumbling upon contact with the ground.

I hear a scraping, and look up in time to see a slope of ice form and strike into the ground.  Twilight skates off, while Rarity rolls, still unconscious.  I look up, and AJ is still falling.

“Twi, make some wind!”  She waves her wand, and the wind starts moving like a tornado.  I use it to launch myself up and nab AJ, who has Pinkie.  With Twilight’s and my efforts combined, we bring them to a non-bone breaking landing.

Now that that heart-wrenching moment of terror is over, what do we have?  There’s me, back in my kick-ass outfit of awesomeness, Rain and Boom secured under my arms.  Twilight is in her schoolgirl outfit, cute glasses, and cape that now reminds me suspiciously of Trixie.  AJ is going cowgirl, reacquainting herself with her combat shotgun.  Fluttershy has her hoodie, and is swinging her morning star experimentally and checking her rocket ammo.

Rarity looks a lot like Coco, the leader from Team CFVY (Coffee); a.k.a. a complete diva.  Sunglasses, designer clothes, heels, and a handbag.  There’s nothing else, so I am assuming that’s her weapon Fate decided to give her.

Pinkie Pie looks like a normal person, surprisingly.  Shirt with her party balloons mark, pants, tennis shoes, nothing special really, except for some bands tying her crazy hair back, a weird eyepiece, and a strange backpack.  It’s almost like a beetle, and, as we find out, actually attached to her, and made of some strange pinkish metal.  We all have our respective Elements strung about our necks, except for Twi’s crown, and I feel the D-Relay sitting comfortably in my pocket.

“Hey, Rainbow, notice anything weird?”

“Yeah, Twi.  I can’t figure out what Pinkie’s pack could possibly be for.”

“Not with any of us, Dumbo.  Look around.  By this point the first time, we were attacked.  I can’t hear anything.”

I remove my focus from my unconscious friends, and sure enough, nothing.  No birds, no rustling in the bushes.  “Do you think Discord’s rallied the Grimm to wherever he went?”

“Whoa, you know about that thing that’s taken over Vale?” I whip my head around, and find Sun Wukong hanging from a branch by his tail, eating an apple like an asshole.  How do I know?  Well, you try eating an apple sometime while looking in a mirror, try to find a way to not look like an asshole while eating it!

However, those thoughts are in the back of my mind as I’m just relieved to see a friendly face.  “Sun!  You’re okay… wait, aren’t you supposed to be back in Vacuo?  The tournament was months ago.”

“Yeah, I stuck around to help Team RWBY with the whole White Fang thing.  Who are your new friends?”  I look, and Pinkie and Rarity are starting to regain consciousness, and are being assisted by the other three.

“Oh yeah.  The one with the curly purple hair is Rarity, and the crazy pink one is Pinkie Pie.  Don’t worry, I’m sure you two will get along just fine.”  Just then, he gets knocked back into the bushes by a pink beam.  I turn, and Pinkie Pie is sitting on the ground, a cannon mounted where her arm used to be, with a wild look in her eyes.  Her right eye is darting around, looking at something on that eyepiece, while the left is dead set on Sun.

“Whoa Pinkie!  What in Tartarus are you thinking?  Sun’s a friend!”

Pinkie Pie just shakes her head.  “N-no!  Not a f-friend!  Not even r-real!”  I see her hair’s gone flat.  Well, I’ll trust one of my Equestrian friends before anyone I know from Remnant, especially after Discord’s been through here.  As he climbs out of the bushes, looking no worse for wear, I stand at the ready, uneasy, but relaxed.

“Sorry about that, Sun, but it appears Pinkie isn’t in a trusting mood right now.  First time out of our dimension, and all.  However, if she doesn’t trust you, I have my doubts, so we’re gonna play a little Q&A game, to see if you are the real Sun Wukong.  Okay, first question: How many years have I won the Best Young Flier Competition?”

“Every year you entered.  The first was when Princess Celestia herself declared you the winner when—” he shuts up when I jam Boom under his chin.

I make a buzzer sound.  “Wrong answer.  The real Sun would say something like ‘What’s the Best Young Fliers Competition?’ because I never told him about me being a pony.  So, Discord, do you wanna see what the inside of your brain looks like?  ‘Cause I’m about to blow it all over this clearing.”

Sun laughs, then speaks in a voice we know all too well.  “Oh, that would’ve been my second guess.”  He backs up, then twists into the head of our foe.  “Sorry girls, can’t stay long.  Ol’ Grimmy gets pissed when I’m not there to stop him from destroying the city.  So, yes, it’s me, no, you can’t hope to stop me (not that you won’t try everything in your power to do so), and yes, we are currently situated at what used to be the Beacon Academy, where we have some of your friends enjoying our company.  Ooh, I see you brought the Elements with you.  Not that they’ll help, but whatever strokes your egos.  And finally, no, I did not come alone, I sent a large pack of Grimm this way not two minutes ago.  They should be here right about… now.”  Right on cue, a mixture of Beowulf and Ursa burst into the clearing.

“Now, I’d love to stay and see the slaughter, but right now I have to scoot back.  I’ll see you girls at ‘school’!”  He laughs as his head goes up in smoke.

We snap into action.  “Fluttershy, Twi, get Rarity and Pinkie on their feet.  AJ, you and me hold them off until-” a pink blur shoots forward, and every Grimm in that direction is blown back.  Pinkie stands there, her entire upper body, and some of her legs, encased in armor, that cannon still on her arm, her remaining fist embedded in what used to be the skull of an Ursa.  In another section of the clearing, an explosion rips through, sending even more Grimm flying; obviously, Fluttershy has decided to join the fun.  By this time, Twi has Rarity on her feet, so me and Twi switch out as I need to talk to the newest member of the team.

“How’re you doing, Rarity?”

“Oh, Rainbow Dash.  It feels a little strange, but mostly, kind of good.  So,” we duck as a small Nevermore screams by overhead, “this is the world you told us about?  Not what I expected.”

I blast a few Beowulfs off of Applejack’s back.  “Really?  What did you expect?  Oh, do you feel any sort of connection with any certain part of what you have?”

“Well, I expected a city filled with the best fashions this world has to offer!  As to your other question, no, but I do feel great in these clothes!  I could never make something this lavish, yet practical in Equestria!”

So, she has no weapons.  Great.  Five kick-ass warriors, and one useless fashionista.  At that moment, a Beowulf makes a blind charge, somehow gets past the others, and rakes its claws across Rarity’s back.  I see a glimpse of armoring underneath, so she’s unharmed.  However, her jacket could use some stitching.  I blast the Beowulf into gooey bits then look back to Rarity.  “Hey, Rars, you doin--”

Holy shit, her face! Her mouth is pulled into a most unladylike snarl, and her eyes have gone blood red, not unlike Yang’s.  She’s breathing heavily as she walks up to the nearest Grimm, looks it straight in the eye (which surprisingly, has it quivering in fear), and what she says chills me to the bone.  Not what she says, but how she says it.  Such malice from a ‘lady’.

“It isn’t proper to damage a lady’s outfit.  Stupid little creatures must be punished!”  And with that, she swings her handbag around, not unlike how Blake wields Gambol Shroud, and I hear the crunch as the Beowulf’s face caves in as the bag impacts.  “STUPID CREATURES MUST DIE!”  She shouts, then throws herself into the fray.  Note to self: do NOT piss off Rarity here, or insult her fashion sense.  As she runs to the Grimm, she reaches into the bag and pulls out three very sharp-looking objects.  She throws, and scores three hits on two of the nearest Ursai.  One then explodes, another freezes the Ursa’s arm, and the third sets the other on fire.

I can’t focus on her anymore, as a Nevermore almost takes my head off.  I shake off the blow, and back up my team.  We quickly decimate the Grimm party, most notably Pinkie firing beams from that cannon of hers over and over, and delivering crippling strikes to any Grimm who get close.

As Applejack and Fluttershy dispatch the last of the Grimm, I approach Pinkie Pie.  Whatever happened to her when she saw Sun/Discord, it probably wasn’t healthy.  I go to lay a hand on her shoulder.  “Hey, Pinks, are you—”

She whips around, her eyes wild as she shoots a beam in my general direction.  It misses, and strikes a tree, boring a neat hole straight through it, and the next tree, and the next tree…damn.

“Pinkie!  Calm down!”  I tackle her to the ground, but she keeps struggling, her right eye always darting around behind that eyepiece.  Wait, the eyepiece…

I wrench it off of her face, and she finally begins to calm down.  I call Twilight over, and toss her the object.  “What do ya make of it, Twi?  Whatever it is, it caused her to go a bit more crazy than usual.”

Twilight, being the absolute genius she is, immediately puts the piece to her face.  She gasps.  “I can see energy!”

“What?”

“You know, the whole Aura thing?  The innate power everything on this planet has?  With this, I can actually see the different Auras of us!”  She summons a small ball of fire with her wand, and holds it in the air as she examines it.  “I can see the breakdown of this spell!  This is amazing!  Imagine what this could do back in Equestria!”  There’s a single Beowulf lurking in the shadows near the clearing; Twi turns her gaze to it.

“Oh my Goddesses…”

“What now?”

“The Grimm don’t have Auras… I think you were right before, Rainbow, back in the ruin?  These things don’t have souls… they just show up as darkness.  Darkness that I must… destroy…”  I quickly put a bullet in the thing’s brain, and that seems to snap Twi out of it.

“Anything else that thing can do?  Like turn that off?”

“I think it’s also got some kind of ammo readout, probably connected to Pinkie’s toy.  I don’t think I can turn the Aura Reader (That’s what I’m calling it) off, but I may be able to… aha!”  The display on the eyepiece dims a bit.  “I just lessened the amount of Aura shown.  Now, instead of seeing everything, I can just see a faint glow around you guys.  I can’t see any darkness beyond the clearing, so we’re definitely alone.  *gasp* That must be what Pinkie saw!  When she saw Sun, or Discord, she didn’t see him as a person or being, but a literal wall of darkness!”

“Who?”  Pinkie’s regained enough of her senses to join the conversation.  I take the Reader from Twilight and approach Pinkie again.

“Pinkie, Twi has some ideas, but can you tell us how you knew that guy was Discord?”

“I dunno, but that thingy on my eye went crazy, and all I saw was scary dark stuff that I just wanted to get rid of so I thought really hard about wanting to get rid of it and then this thing,” she motions to the cannon, “comes up my arm and I think about stopping that scary dark stuff and the thing shoots at the dark stuff and suddenly it’s Discord and then we get surrounded by other dark things and I really really wanted to get rid of the dark things and then I-I…” she looks at me fearfully.  “D-did I really kill something?  Like, a lot of somethings?”

“Unfortunately, yes Pinkie, you did.  But you could see it, even though we couldn’t.  Those things you killed don’t have souls; they would have stopped at nothing to kill us.”

“S-so it’s okay that I blasted a lot of things until they were dead?”

“Yeah, it is.  Just try not to blast any of us, okay?”  I hold up the Reader.  “I’m going to put this back on; Twilight’s made it so it hopefully won’t be as scary, okay?”

Pinkie sniffles.  “’Kay.”  I put it back over her eye.  “Wow.  Everything looks pink now!  *gasp* Rainbow, you look like an angel!  You have this weird glowy thing around you!”

“It’s called an Aura, Pinkie.  Anything with a soul has an Aura.  Do you feel like you need to shoot us?”

“Nope!  I guess because you have a thingy, you must be good, not like that *shudder* other stuff.”

“Boo!  Poor show!”  We’re showered with bits of… popcorn?  We look up, and Discord is sitting in the air in a theater seat, 3-D glasses, and an oversized tub of popcorn.  Thankfully, Pinkie isn’t levelling her cannon at him yet, but she is looking increasingly uneasy.

“You were supposed to be all disoriented and sloppy, so you’d get mauled by my pets!  Well, I guess that’s the Elements for ya!  Never know when to stay dead.”

Fluttershy looks up at him nervously.  “D-Discord?  That doesn’t sound like something you’d say.  I thought you would be content sowing chaos.  What happened?”

Discord turns dark.  No, literally turns dark; his skin becomes as dark as the fur on the Grimm.  “Why, whatever do you mean, fresh meat?  I guess Ol’ Grimmy must be letting me into some of his power.  Oh, yes, I’m also remembering some of what happened before I was put in stone by those two angels.”  At that, he turns, spits, and catches part of the forest on fire.

“Do you know how many worlds I’ve been to?  So far, I’m remembering at least a hundred!  One hundred worlds before Equis, where Celestia and Luna,” two more spits, two more blazes, “destroyed me each and every bucking time!  But, something changed on Equis.  I was tired, they were tired, and we all knew that this was going to be the end.  They found those gems you now wear, and put me in stone!  However, that wasn’t the only thing.  I lost a part of myself that day; then, one thousand and whatever years later, I am released, but something is gone.  That certain spark I had on all those other worlds.  The spark that led me to create something as vulgar as the Grimm.  Something,” he looks down at us, eyes and teeth gleaming with malice, “That the Grimmfather returned to me.”  He begins growing.

“So come.  Come after us.  We will be waiting for you.  And when you do come, we will be waiting to Eat Your SOULS!”  He is giant now, and a gruesome mix of a ton of Grimm parts.  “YOU WILL BE GROUND INTO NOTHING, AS WILL THE ANGELS!  WE WILL DESTROY YOU, AND DEVOUR YOUR PUNY GEMS!  THEN WE WILL HAVE THE POWER TO CRUSH THE ANGELS ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!”  He turns and flies in the direction of Vale.  When he’s gone, none of us can move.

“Well, shee-it.  How’re we supposed to take ‘im down now?”

I find myself able to speak.  “Not sure AJ.  I’m not sure.”

C6 - Into the City

We made our way to Vale.  I don’t care if Discord thought the Elements wouldn’t work; he thought the same about Twilight breaking his spell on us before, and look where that got him.

On the way to Vale, we ran into more scattered groups of Grimm, easily slaughtering them.  We also found out what those pointy things are that Rarity has: Dust-powered kunai (As in, ninja throwing knives).  She has what seems like an infinite supply, but I know there’s probably a reserve of Dust in that bag, creating the knives.  She’ll need to stock up on raw Dust when we get to the city.  We’ll need all the ammo we can get to stop them.

Pinkie had smuggled her Party Cannon through the portal (don’t ask), and it seems to have become her arm-mounted cannon, as evidenced when she shot confetti all over us and half the forest.  She seems to have calmed down a lot, but of course, it’s still Pinkie.  I’m sure she’s busy planning Discord’s “Sorry We Have to Beat You, but You’re a Big Meanie” party as we walk.

We break the tree line, and are within the city limits before long.  Twilight takes this moment to speak up.  “Girls, we need a plan.”

“Whaddaya mean, plan?  We’ve got a plan!  Find Discord, beat the ever-hating Grimm out of him, and bring him back to Equestria, in stone if possible.”  I shoot back.

“That’s not what I mean, Rainbow.  We’re going up against a being with the insanity of Discord, and the rage, malice, and power of the creator of the Grimm.  We need a plan that gets us to Beacon in one piece.”

“What are you thinking, then?”

“It’s obvious Discord will play some kind of trick, probably separating us like he did before, then go after us one by one.  I’m thinking, this time, instead of trying to find each other, we stay as far away from each other as possible.  However, if he doesn’t split us up, stay together as much as possible.”

“Why?”

“That way, he can’t try and use imitations of us to try and subdue any of us.  As soon as we are in the city, make for Beacon as fast as you can.  We’ll meet at the foot of the plateau, where the ferry ships wait; wait one hour, and if nopony else comes, or some of us don’t show, consider us lost and continue to Beacon.”

Fluttershy steps forward.  “But if even one of us is missing, doesn’t that make the Elements useless?  We know what happened when you tried to use a substitute, and how that turned out.  It’ll be even worse if we don’t have one of the Elements!”

“That’s why the Elements are the last resort.”

We all go “Huh?”

Twilight taps her head with her wand.  “My original plan.  I won’t tell you now, since Discord might be able to read your minds, but trust me, it’s going to be epic if it works.”

AJ now speaks.  “Um, Twi?  If ya has tha’ plan in yer head, wouldn’t Discord be more likely ta read yer mind?  He knows yer the planner o’ tha bunch.”

“Oh, right!”  She concentrates, weaving a complex piece of magic, then casting it on herself.  She stumbles, and I catch her.

“Okay, I know I have a plan, but I’ve forgotten what it is.  The only time I’ll remember is when it comes to pass.”

Pinkie frowns, goes to the nearest city wall, punches a hole in it, and shouts into said hole,  “Come on!  That’s just cheating!  I mean, first, there was that thing with the Relay stuff, but now this?”

I would think Pinkie’s gone insane, but then again, that’s just what she does.  I turn back to Twilight.  “So, there aren’t going to be any worse effects, right?  You aren’t going to forget who we are or anything, right?”

“I shouldn’t.  It’s just a light memory blocking spell, reinforced so no outside force can manipulate it.  Any questions on the plan?”

“Yeah, any ideas for when we face Discord?”

“We find Discord, beat the ever-hating Grimm out of him, and bring him back to Equestria, in stone if possible, of course.”  She smirks, and I smirk back.

“Okay, Team Harmony.  Let’s do this.”

Of course, Discord sprung a trap.  As soon as we were all within the city walls, six funnels of shadow swooped down and abducted all of us.  As I regain my vision, I find myself in the industrial district, ironically close to where the White Fang took us when they abducted us.  I dust myself off, and as I stand, the voice of Discord booms over the city.  This isn’t quite his voice, though.  It’s deeper, without any hint of humor in it.

“Welcome, ladies, to Vale.  Now, I imagine you had some grandiose plan to confront me, so I thought to myself, stop the plotters by giving them no one to plot with!  Feel free to try to get to the Academy, but be warned: these streets are no longer friendly.  Have any of you seen that movie back home, The Running Mare?  Well, you’re all Schwarzneighger, I’m the show host, and the Grimm are the Hunters.  Expect the unexpected girls!” And with a joyless cackle, he is gone.  Several howls, caws, screeches, and other animal sounds rise from the streets.

Okay, RD, stick to the plan: avoid the girls, kill any Grimm in my way, and get to the Academy.  Simple enough… if Discord hadn’t messed with the city layout.  Crap.  Now, I didn’t want to fly unless I really had no choice.  Don’t want to show Discord my personal ace until I was ready to, you know?

Ugh.  This is gonna suck.

I put down the last Beowulf of the most recent pack with extreme violence.  I would say I was about halfway between where I started and Beacon, but I don’t really know.  I was right; Discord screwed with the city, making dead ends and traps everywhere.  So far, my score is:  27 Beowulf, 5 Ursa, a flock of small Nevermore, one pit of Taijitu, and 1 Deathstalker.  That last one was a real bitch to take down.  Now I see why it took JNPR the whole team to kill one.  I even killed it in a similar fashion:  using Rainboom to sever the tail, then impacting where the stinger struck the head.

I’ve seen a few of the girls, and according to plan, if we saw each other, we headed in different directions, usually ducking down side alleys and continuing parallel to the main road until we had passed each other.  Once, I saw Twilight running down the street, trying to get my attention, but I hid.  In case that was the real one, I didn’t want to kill her.

I saw Rarity get pulled into a partially demolished store by a blue-haired guy, going along willingly.  I hope he’s friendly, or he’ll be in for a world of hurt.  I caught a glimpse of AJ fighting off a large flock (swarm? murder?) of Nevermore.  I saw Fluttershy walking confidently down an alley, a small Beowulf at her side, jumping around her playfully.  That’s the Flutters I know; always good around animals, even ones without souls.

I swear I once saw Pinkie blasting holes in a wall and shouting into them.  When she got no answer, she would blast more holes into the same wall, and use the holes as grips to climb, then swing herself onto the rooftops and start running.  I actually doubt Discord would go after her; he knows she can see right through any trick he pulls.

Surprisingly, I make it to the ferry plaza with little trouble.  I swear Discord would’ve pulled something by now.  I also got to update my numbers: 40 Beowulf, a baker’s dozen Ursa, more Nevermore than I can count, a pit of Taijitu, one (two, if you count the heads) King Taijitu, 6 Boarbatusks, and 2 Deathstalkers.  I defy anyone to beat that score!

I pull out my datapad, which somehow was still on me after going to Equestria and back, and set the built-in timer for one hour.  I find a fairly secluded spot where I could be safe and still see the entire plaza, and sit down for a short power nap.

I’m dreaming about being in the Wonderbolts, as usual.  The difference this time?  I’m a human.  As I soar over the crowds, Spitfire to one side, Soarin on the other, I look down and wave.  Surprisingly, four ponies I’m sure I’ve never seen before wave back.  One has short black hair, red on the ends, another has wild golden locks, one with a white ponytail almost reaching the ground, and another also with black hair, but a bow placed on top of her head.  I almost fall out of formation.  Ruby?  Yang?  Weiss and Blake too?  How?

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Luna buck me with the moon… the voice came from the pony-Ruby, and the four of them smile and mold themselves into Discord.  He’s even worse than before; his skin is entirely black with scattered splotches of white, and instead of the limbs and such from creatures in Equestria, he’s got Grimm parts.  Nevermore wings, Deathstalker tail, Boarbatusk tusk sticking out of his head, stuff like that.  He isn’t huge, which is a plus.

Everypony has faded away, leaving just me, Discord, and the field I’m hovering over.  I dive at him, but he just poofs away to another part of the stands.  “Now now, Rainbow.  I’m just here to talk.  Can you at least allow me that pleasure, before I see the end to your little expedition?”

I reach for Rain and Boom, but my hands have turned to hooves.  I will myself to stay human, and it seems to work.  I fold my arms.  “Alright, bub. You’ve got two minutes, then get out of my head.  What do you want?”

“I would so very wish to know why you came here.”  He tries to give me big puppy-dog eyes, but when you look like a demon from the lowest depths of Tartarus, it comes off as disgusting rather than disarming.  “It’s obvious Celly told you about how we came to be, and how much power Ol’ Grimmy has, so why try to come on this fool’s errand?”

“Because we were here before.  We made friends, and helped those friends take down a cell of terrorists.  I thought you would’ve learned by now, Discord.  We never turn our backs on our friends!”

“Yes, yes.  Ruby has been very helpful in telling us what you were up to here.”  I dart forwards, only for him to disappear again.  “I assure you I haven’t harmed her; just, helped her see how this world is meant to be.  Also, that doesn’t truly answer my question: why would you come after me?  I don’t think you plan on encasing me and Grimmy in stone; after all, we’re too powerful together.”

“I told you, we don’t forget our friends.  That includes you.”

A little black leeches itself from his body.  “What?”

“Why do you think we reformed you?  Not because Celestia said so, not because it would stop you from causing so much chaos everywhere you go, something you still need to work on, but because we saw the potential for you to be a friend.  And, on a personal note, I was eventually hoping to get some tips from you.”

More black is removed.  I can almost see his head.  “Tips on what?”

I smile the most sincere smile I can.  “Well, you’re the greatest trickster to ever live.  I was hoping you’d show me some pointers on pranking.  I consider myself the best prankster in Ponyville, but my pranks could become two hundred percent more awesome if I had you helping.”

I can see a tear running down his face.  “Well, if you put it like that—”

“ENOUGH!”  The unmistakable roar of the Grimmfather sounds through my dream, and Discord is drenched in a literal bucket of darkness.  When the torrent stops, he is back to full black, and smiling evilly at me.

“OBVIOUSLY, IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TRY TO STOP YOU THROUGH WORDS, SO WE MUST ACT BY FORCE!”

“What?”

Suddenly, I’m jerked awake.  Applejack is standing over me, shaking my shoulders.  “Sugarcube, wake up!  We’re all here, but tha Grimm are closin’ fast!”  I respond by knocking her through the closest wall.

“I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to!  It’s not me!”  I want to shout, but my mouth doesn’t respond.  I get up, and see most of the other girls looking my way, slowly backing off.  I am screaming at my body to stop, but it keeps moving.  I think the Grimmfather has taken control of my body; I’m a prisoner in my own mind.  I can only watch in horror as I pull out Rain, and level it at Twilight’s head, who’s looking everywhere but behind her, scanning for Grimm.

I am crying, begging me, the Grimmfather, Discord, and anything that can listen to stop me as I feel my finger tighten around the trigger.

*BLAM*

C6.1 - Into the City with Rarity and Fluttershy

-----Rarity-----

Ugh.  This is soooo not what I was expecting of the capitol of a kingdom!  There’s debris everywhere, I’m getting dust on my clothes (No, not the good kind of Dust), and I think I have some wolf brains stuck to my handbag.

As a lady, I feel no remorse bringing an end to these foul creatures.  They had the nerve to almost ruin my new clothes, not to mention the whole white on black thing was so last year.  It almost seems merciful to put them out of their fashionless misery.

I’ve ended up in, of all places, the shopping district of the city, Vale, I think Twilight called it.  I know I’m supposed to be going to that big castle-looking thing overlooking the city, but I’m sure the girls will understand if I take a look around first.

Unfortunately, it’s all bad.  There isn’t anything in the stores; they’ve all been looted or destroyed.  I gingerly step into one, making sure not to scuff my heels, and examine the remains of what must have been a beautiful red dress at some point.  If they allow me, after we stop that dreadful Discord, I would love to strike up a conversation with some of these store owners, find out how they made what is probably such horte couture!

“Hey!  Are you crazy?  Get out of the street!”  I look over to the voice, and my jaw drops in a most unladylike manner.  In the case of all best possible things, this is the.  Best.  POSSIBLE.  THING!  Standing in the doorway of a mostly intact store stands a complete dreamboat of a man.  Sea blue hair, red designer jacket, tan skin that’ll melt in your mouth, goggles framing that gorgeous face… ooh! I must have him!

I rush over to him, making note of the store as he helps me enter (From Dust ‘til Dawn, obviously not clothes).  What greets me is row upon row of tubes stretching to the ceiling, every one filled with some kind of material, in all colors of the rainbow.  Some part of the back of my mind, the part that will always agree with what Twilight says because, face it, she’s always right, fills in that this is a store for Dust, that stuff that powers all of our weapons.  However, I only have eyes for Mr. Dreamboat in the middle of the store.

“So, who’re you?  I wouldn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to walk the city with all those Grimm out there, Huntsman or no.”  Oh, by Celestia, his voice is as smooth as Neighgyptian cotton!  I struggle to form words.

“I-I’m Rarity… wh-who-who are you, Mr. H-Handsome?”

He flashes a smile with teeth as white as Celestia’s flank.  “I’m Neptune.  Pleased to meet you, Ms. Rarity.  Now, what are you doing in Vale?  The city was supposed to be evacuated; I stayed behind to look for a friend.”

I seem to have recomposed myself so as to not look like a gibbering idiot.  “I’m here with my friends, Twilight, Rainbow, Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Applejack.  We are currently trying to get to the Academy up on that hill to stop the dark thing that’s taken over.”  I realize I must get him talking again, to hear that voice, so I blurt out, “Who are you looking for?”

He pauses.  “Wait, you’re here with Rainbow?  As in, Rainbow Dash?”

Now it’s my turn to pause.  “You’ve heard of her?”

“Yeah!  She and her team took on the winners of the first-year bracket of the tournament!  Sun told me all about her.”

I stop.  What did he just say?  “I’m sorry, who?”

“My friend, Sun Wukong.  He met Rainbow personally, had some high praise for her skill.”

Something isn’t adding up.  We met someone in the forest when we landed, someone Rainbow addressed as Sun… then Pinkie blasted him with who-knows-what, and he turned into… Discord!  I turn away from him, and examine the store.  “So, he’s lost in the city, and you are looking for him?  That’s very… noble.”

“Yeah, but I think I found an even better prize.” I hear a sching, like a weapon being pulled from its holster.  Without thinking, I whip my bag back, and it catches around the barrel of the gun Neptune’s just pulled on me!

“What are you thinking, pulling such a vulgar tool on a lady like myself?”  I flash him my most disarming smile, complete with eyelash flutter.  Surprisingly, he is unaffected.

“Because Father said to be on the lookout for six girls making their way through the city, and you match the description.  Now, if you’d just come with me,” he wrenches the gun out of my grasp and spins it into a deadly-looking trident, “I won’t have to cut off that pretty hair of yours.”

I feel my eye twitch.  There is no way in Tartarus I would let him touch a single millimeter of my hair!  Now, I hate to want to smash up such a beautiful face, but it’s obvious he won’t see reason, especially as he charges at me, trident held high.  I block with my bag strap (huh, must be some kind of extremely flexible metal under the cloth), and we battle around the store.  We end up shattering some of the tubes, spilling Dust and glass everywhere.  I’m being extremely careful not to let him cut my clothes, while he’s being careful not to strike any of the accumulated piles of Dust.

Our dance ends, unfortunately with me on my back on the floor, Neptune holding his trident against my neck.  Now, and I say this in the most ladylike way possible, I’m scared shitless.

“Now, are you going to be a good little girl and come with me to Father, or am I going to start cutting that hair?”

I feel an unbridled rage flow through me.  He can beat me, take me to the floor (in a non-sexual way, obviously), he can even ruin my clothes.  But nopony ever, EVER, makes a threat to my luscious mane!  My hand connects with the floor, and I feel a surge of power emanate from the contact.  Suddenly, all the Dust on the ground is floating through the air.  Neptune looks worried.

“What are you doing?”

I look him dead in the eye, and smile.  A sweet innocent smile, perfect for a lady to give somepony she knows she’s beat.  “Why, I’m doing what I should have done all along, darling!”

With that, I control the Dust, and five seconds later, he is stuck to the ceiling by a large pillar of ice I created by forming the Dust, entrapping him, and then activating it.  I frown, and cut some of the ice away.  What is left is me, as a pony, holding him against the ceiling, the pointy point of my horn sticking dangerously close to his belly.

“Now, be a good boy and don’t struggle too much.  I don’t want you cutting yourself on that sharp ice!”

He’s thrashing around, trying to get at his blade, which is stuck in Ice Rarity’s grip.  “I’ll kill you!  I swear by the Father, I will kill you!”

I wave him off dismissively.  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard all that before.  Now, I’m going to put you on the honor system.  You stay here until I can come back with the proper authorities, and we might be able to consider a second date.  Is that alright, darling?”  He continues to thrash, shouting obscenities at me.

“I’ll take that as a yes.  Ciao, Neptune!”  I use my newfound power, fill my bag to full with Dust, and make for the Academy.  As I leave, I experiment, and float a Dust kunai out of my bag with my power.  I smile.  This is going to be fun.

I arrive at the plaza last, even though I believe I was the closest to it.  We’re all here, making sure we are who we say we are, and Rainbow Dash is asleep underneath a tree.  Applejack goes to wake her up, and Rainbow throws her through a wall.  I’m shocked.  Rainbow stands, but there’s something wrong.  Her eyes are pure black, with red instead of magenta irises. A strange smoke is coming from them as she moves towards Twilight, gun in hand.

I levitate an ice kunai out of my bag, but even with my newfound power, it won’t make it to the gun in time.  I throw anyways.

*BLAM*

-----Fluttershy-----

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh.  I’m scared, curled up in a ball near some trees, and I need the girls for support!  I’m so scared!

Wait, I don’t need to be scared.  I have Angel/Bunny with me!  I reach, and sure enough, my fingers close around my trusty morning star.  I named this mode Bunny, because of how fast I can move while swinging it around and the other Angel, because it saved my friends more times than I can count.  It helps that the rocket launcher mode has a picture of my real Angel Bunny imprinted on it.  With my other friend in hand, I stand and survey my surroundings.  I appear to be in a park of some sort, but still within the city.  I can see the Academy over the treetops.

“Oh, I hope the girls are all right.  Ruby and the others too,” I find myself saying.  I mean it too.

I can’t believe Discord would break his promise to me, but he’s now fused with that other him, the really mean one, and it’s changed him.  I never stop loving a friend, I’m not going to stop now!  We WILL help Discord, even if it means hurting him a bit.

Speaking of which, Twilight said we should make for Beacon, and avoid each other until we get there.  I, for one, completely agree.  I don’t remember all of what happened the last time Discord was released, but I do know he turned me into a meanie bitch.  I hurt my friends, and I liked it, and I never want to feel that way again.

Suddenly, the voice of Discord shouts out across the city.  Something about how this is a really dangerous place now and the Grimm are going to be hunting us, but I’m not paying attention.  All I can focus on is how heartless he sounds.  There is nothing of my good-natured friend left in that monstrosity.  Now I am more determined than ever to separate this Grimmfather from what used to be my friend.

I hear a howl, and its close by.  These creatures I meet here can’t be tamed.  I can’t make friends with them, or take care of them like I do my animal friends back home.  In my honest opinion, it is a kindness to kill something off that isn’t really living in the first place.

They come out of the trees, and I am ready for them.  I brain one, smash the legs of another, flip away to blast a few more.  This continues for a minute before the last of them are gone.  I am about to head towards Beacon when a whimper makes me pause.

Secluded away by some bushes is a small Beowulf, limping away from me on one paw.  I raise Bunny to end its pitiful life, but something makes me pause. It’s so young.  How could I kill something so defenseless?

I lower my star, and it stops and turns to me.  The Beowulf tries to stand its ground and bare its teeth at me, but falls when it puts weight on its injured paw, whimpering softly.

“Oh, you poor thing.  Here, let me help you.”  As I scoop it up in my arms, a strange, yet familiar feeling passes from me to it.  It is the feeling I get whenever I help an injured animal; one of peace and unforgiving kindness. As the feeling fades, the Beowulf reaches up, and licks my cheek.  I giggle.

I set it on the ground and whatever I did seems to have healed its paw.  Instead of attacking me, it hovers near me, a happy look in its eyes.  Wait, the eyes…

Its eyes are no longer black and red, but white, with soft green irises. Did… did I just give a Beowulf a soul? My theory is that the eyes are literally, not figuratively, the window to the soul, and the eyes are reflective of the pony’s soul.  These Grimm’s eyes are dark, lifeless.  This means that they either have no soul, or the soul is locked away behind a fog of cruelty, malice, and unemotion.

Do I have the ability to unlock a Grimm’s soul?  It’s a thought I don’t want to put much thought into.  Just one is enough to confirm it.  Maybe, this one was too young to commit such atrocities as its older siblings.  The fog around the soul was weak, and I was able to overcome it.

Any way you put it, I now have a friendly Grimm to keep me company.  “Well, you want to stay with me?”  A happy bark.  “Okay, but I have to give you a name.  How about Fluffy?” It barks, then chases its nonexistent tail in a circle.  I giggle again.

“Okay, Fluffy, let’s go find my friends.”

Fluffy turns out to be a fearsome fighter as well.  He can smell other Grimm coming, and can defend himself admirably.  One of our favorite tricks is to load him in Angel, and launch him into an unsuspecting group of Grimm, where he takes them down before they realize they have a traitor in their midst.

We found a specialty Dust shop on the edge of the park, which I used to reload both lethal and nonlethal rockets.  Can’t help to be too prepared, and I would rather hit Discord with a goop rocket than an explosive one if I can help it.  We also found a pet shop, which I pillaged to get a collar for Fluffy, to discern him from other Grimm, and a selection of dog treats.

With Fluffy’s help, we make it to the plaza in one piece.  Rainbow’s there, sleeping as usual, and Applejack is near her.  She backs up when she sees me with Fluffy, but calms down when I tell her what happened.  I have to repeat the conversation three more times as the others show up, to stop them from killing Fluffy on sight.

When everyone is okay with Fluffy, Applejack goes to wake up Rainbow Dash.  I freeze as Rainbow’s fist connects with Applejack, and hits her through a wall.  Fluffy growls; I look at Rainbow’s eyes.  Her eyes are the same as a Grimm’s!  She moves towards Twilight, bringing her gun to rest near Twilight’s head.

“Don’t kill,” I tell Fluffy, and he hops into Angel.  I fire; whatever is happening to Rainbow, I can’t allow her to hurt our friends, but I don’t want Fluffy killing her either!

*BLAM*

C6.2 - Into the City with Applejack and Pinkie Pie

-----Applejack-----

Consarn it, Discord!  I hate it when Twi’s right all the time!  Why, when I see that liver-lickin’ snake again…

I stand, and brush myself off.  Little McIntosh is nearby, and I retrieve him.  I named my gun so because of the mean kick he gives, just like my brother.  Now, what am I doing here, and where am I?

Let’s see, I’m in the residential section of Vale, separated from the girls, and Twi’s plan has us trying to get to that Academy we spent time at as fast as possible.  Discord’s gonna pull something, I just know it.  I set off; no need to keep my gracious host waiting, right?

I bring myself to a screeching halt, trying to catch my breath.  Double-damn it!  It’s like all those traps Discord meant for all of us keep finding their way to me!  I’ve escaped several collapsing buildings, jumped several snake pits (why’d it have to be snakes?), outran or outright killed any Grimm I’ve come across, and generally scared myself stupid.

“Sis?”  My heart stops.  “Where’d ya go, sis?”

“Apple Bloom?  Where are ya?”  I see a familiar reddish bow disappear behind a building.  Some rational part of my brain is telling me this isn’t possible, AB can’t be here, but my sisterly side crushes any other thought.  All that matters is finding Apple Bloom, and getting her out of here.  I dash around the corner…

And I’m back in Sweet Apple Acres.  I’m at the gate, but all I see is devastation.  The trees are rotted, the fields are barren, and the barn my parents built dangerously close to collapsing.  Big Mac and Apple Bloom are standing there, thin as rails.

“Where’d ya go, sis?  We can’t keep the farm going without ya!”

“E’Yup.” Big Mac groans.

“What in Sam-hell are ya talkin’ about?  Ah never left permanently!”  Then, I realize one of the family’s missing.  “Where’s Granny Smith?” I ask shakily.

Apple Bloom turns, and points up the hill.  “She never took losing our parents very well, and then when ya never came back, her heart broke, sis.”  I look, and see three graves, where I know there used to be only two.  I run up the hill, and fall to my knees.  Sure enough, the new grave says “Here lies Granny Smith Apple.  She never gave up hope.”

“No.”  I’m crying, and I can’t stop.

“Ya abandoned us.”  Big Mac says, somewhere behind me.

“No, Ah would never!”

“Ya left with yer friends an’ never came back.”  Apple bloom sounds.

“No!  Ah’m comin’ back, Ah swear!”

“Ya cut us out of yer life.  We might as well do the same.”  I hear a sound, like a knife being pulled from a sheath.  I whip around, and Big Mac and Apple Bloom are advancing up the hill, sharp, gleaming knives in their mouths.

Something in me snaps.  We may not always get along, but Apples have never sought to harm another Apple!  None of this could be real!  Subconsciously, I bring Little McIntosh around, and fire at the not-Apple Bloom.  The buckshot passes through her body, and it dissolves into shadows.

“Celestia-damn it, Discord!  Ya thought to kill me by imitatin’ my kin?  Ah WILL return home, an’ Ah WILL see the farm safe an’ sound!”

Big Mac chuckles, but it ain’t his voice.  “Aw, I thought you’d be so down in the dirt, I could quietly off one of the Bearers without anyone else noticing.  Well, you Apples have always been a hardy bunch, haven’t you?”  And with a grin, Big Mac is wrapped in shadow.  When the shadows leave, he is taller than me.  He looks like he probably would if he came to this world, tall, strong, checkered shirt and overalls, and a big honking sword slung over his shoulder.  His eyes are black, and dead-set on me.  His grin grows wider, and he swings the blade at me.

I flip backwards, and the blade slices cleanly through the three graves.  I watch in horror as the tops of the graves cleanly fall to the ground, not a pebble missing from the incision.

Now, there’s certain things you don’t do to the Apples.  You don’t try to take away the farm, you don’t hurt kin and get away with it, you revere honesty above all else, besides family, and you don’t desecrate the graves of those who came before.  Discord just broke all of those rules; all bets are off.  I scream, and launch myself at Shadow Mac.

We battle up and down the illusion of the farm.  I’m managing to score some hits, both with the axe and buck, but Shadow Mac’s reach with that sword makes it difficult to get in too close.  As we fight, my mind is taken back to when I was here before.

Team RWBY had been telling us of some of the things they did before going to Beacon, and some during their stay.  Weiss told us about when she got that nasty-looking scar on her eye.  She fought a giant knight, who was able to wield a sword as tall as him with only one hand.  She was able to beat him by being faster, and smarter; she also used her Semblance thing, the glyphs she uses to power her abilities.

As Mac’s sword crosses my leg, opening a new wound, I curse myself for losing focus.  Faster than Shadow Mac I may be, but definitely not smarter, if he’s being controlled by Discord. That leaves the Semblance.  Only one problem: as far as I know, Rainbow was the only one to unlock hers.

Damn it!  Lost focus again, and now I’m on the ground, Shadow Mac’s boot planted into my back, keeping me down.  As Shadow Mac raises his giant sword, I hear the voice of Discord.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Applejack.  I truly am.”  What a liar.  However, what he said sparked something in me.  A power, dangerous if left untamed, but deadly if controlled.  I control it, and direct it to get this imposter the buck off of me.  The pressure on my back is instantly gone.  I get up, and Shadow Mac has been launched into the barn, collapsing it.  I advance towards the remains.

A wall thrusts itself up in front of me, but I focus again, and kick the wall.  It shatters into a thousand pieces, each of which sparkle as they turn to shadow.  I hear Shadow Mac struggling to get out of the barn.  I keep coming after him.

“Ya know, Discord,” I say as I give chase, “Ah was gonna make ya an honorary Apple, if ya proved yerself.  Now, however,” Mac is close enough for me to kick him in the backside.  He goes sprawling.  “Now, Ah don’t wanna see yer yella-bellied hide near Sweet Apple Acres ever.”  He gulps, and as I focus all of my rage at Discord into one final kick, the farm fades away.

I find myself curled into a ball, hidden behind some garbage cans in a side alley.  Stupid Discord, probably made me late to the ships with that trick of his.  I punch a wall in frustration, and I’m surprised when I punch a two foot wide hole into it.  I examine my hand; no damage whatsoever.

I grin.  “Ah think Ah’m gonna like this.”

Yes!  Finally made it to the plaza.  I glance around, seems like I’m the first… Consarn it!  Rainbow beat me here, and she’s sleeping off her victory.  I go to wake her, but stop when Fluttershy enters the plaza, a Grimm following her.  I move to intercept, but she’s able to explain what she did, with changing the Beowulf’s soul.  Soon enough, the others arrive, Twilight noticeably out of breath.

“Girls… Grimm… coming after me… Rainbow…”

That’s all the advice I need.  I walk over and shake her.

“Hey!  Sugarcube, wake up!  We’re all here, but tha Grimm are closin’ fast!”

Imagine my surprise when Rainbow took my arms and threw me into a wall, hard enough to enter some unfortunate person’s living room.  I get up, and stumble out.  I’m at the hole when I see Rainbow levelling her gun at the back of Twilight’s head.  I shout, but I don’t think—

*BLAM*

-----Pinkie-----

Oh.  My.  Gosh!  This is so fun!  I’m in a new place and my friends are nearby and it’s like a game of hide and seek but in reverse where if we see each other we don’t catch each other and we need to get to the castle on the hill to save the princess but a little guy shows up and says “Sorry, Pinkie, but the princess is in another castle” and then we go to a lot more castles, and at the end, we fight Discord and save the real princess and get CAKE!

…I think.  I kinda lost interest when Twilight started talking about secret plans and stuff.  Speaking of which…

I find the closest wall, and hit it with my Pinkie Pie Patented Wall Punch!  Guaranteed to work ninety-five percent of the time.  Instead of seeing a house behind the hole, I only see black.  It worked!

“Hey!  Hey you!  What are you doing, making Twilight forget her super-secret plan?  That’s soooo not cool!  You coulda just had her Pinkie Promise to never tell Discord, and that woulda been that!  I’ma climb this wall now; gotta get going.  But, you already know that, don’t you?”  I shoot a specialty Confetti Cannon Shot into the hole, then switch back to my new lazor.  I blast holes in the wall all the way up, then think about putting my Party Cannon away.  It slides off my arm, and back into my special backpack.  I climb the holes like a pro, and start running across the roof.  I want to get to the castle first and raise the pointy flag!

I’m running when I hear a boom.  I stop, and use my new eye thingy to scan around.  Something’s coming my way, fast!  It impacts the roof in front of me, and I see it’s another person!  She’s got short orange hair, some cool-looking armor, and a big hammer with a heart on the end.  My eye thingy shows me her glowy part, and it comes up pink.  However, there’s also some kind of dark at the very edge of the pink.  I’m gonna have to be careful.

She stands up, sees me, and waves.  “Helloooooo!  I’m Nora!”

Nora, Nora… now where have I heard that name before-a?  Then, it hits me.  Rainbow talked about a girl here named Nora, a crazy one just like me!

“Hi!  I’m Pinkie Pie!  I’ve heard you’re a bit crazy.  I’m a bit crazy too!”

She gapes.  “Really?  That’s so cool!  What do you usually do?”

“I plan parties!  I don’t care what Rainbow’s thinking, I’m currently planning Discord’s ‘Sorry we Had to Beat you, But you Were Being Super-Duper Evil’ party!”

Uh oh.  As soon as I said Rainbow, the dark part of her glowy thingy kinda overtook the pink thingy.  It’s the same dark that Discord, and all those other animals have.  My cannon arm twitches.

“Really?  You’re friends with Rainbow?”

I gulp.  “Y-yeah.  Why, is that bad?”

“No, not really.  I just have orders from Father to capture anyone who says they’re friends of Rainbow Dash.  So, if you don’t mind,” she swings her hammer, and it turns into a big gun, with an even bigger grin on her face, “I’ma break your legs.”

Double Gulp.

Oh, man, that was an awesome fight!  I just wish someone had been around to see it!  She was like… and I was like… and… I guess you had to be there to believe it.  I leave her bound in confetti in a dumpster, and make for the ships that’ll take us to the school.  As I leave, I find myself humming a random tune, and absentmindedly put words to it.

I’m queen of the castle, I’m queen of the castle…

I get to the ships after Fluttershy.  I almost blast her puppy, but stop when my eye thingy shows me a green glowy around it, instead of black.  It jumps up and licks my face.  Fluttershy’s saying something, but I’m not listening.  I’m having too much fun with our new friend!

Applejack goes to get Rainbow Dash, who’s been sleeping on the job, as always.  I look their way, and my blood goes cold.  I didn’t see it before, because she was in the shade of a tree, but her blue glowy is almost completely covered by black!  I try to warn AJ, but she gets hit into a wall.  Rainbow goes to Twilight, and points her gun at Twi’s head.  I fire a special shot at Twilight; I found I can change my lazor beam around, make it push more than hurt.  I crank it all the way to push, but I don’t think it’ll get her out—

*BLAM*

C6.3 - Into the City with Twilight; The Betrayal of the Princesses

-----Princess Celestia-----

“Sister, do you not think you were a little harsh on your student?” Luna asks me.* We are relaxing in one of our private rooms, one of my favorites because of the hot tub.  I quickly dunk my head, then resurface.

“Lulu, you know what horrors we found on some of those worlds.  Some horrors would make the deepest depths of Tartarus here look like a kitten’s playground!  Such discoveries are ones I hope our ponies never find.”

“Maybe… maybe they should be allowed to find out.”

I spit out the cake shake I was drinking (An exclusive of the Royal Canterlot Kitchens: my favorite cake, ice cream, and a blend of sweet spices).  Such a waste.

“What are you saying, Luna?  That we should allow our subjects to dabble in the fabric of the multiverse?”

“Not without restraint, dear sister.  It does you no good to dwell on only the bad; many of the worlds we found had many good elements.  There is one world I seem to recall where you—”

I quickly put my head underwater, to block out Luna’s voice and hide my rapidly reddening cheeks.  However, even trans-dimensional beings had to come up for air eventually.

“—and the way he was swinging you around, dear sister—”

Dunk.

Breath.

“—and then, when he had you at the peak—”

“Luna!  Enough!”  I splash water on her.  “I promised not to speak of the sewage, and you promised not to speak of my little, he he, moment of weakness.  However, I concede your point.  There are beneficial worlds out there, as well as harmful ones.  We must guide Twilight Sparkle to the good, and avoid the bad.”

Luna nods, hiding that smile. “Very well.  Shall we return to your student with provisions?  Say, if she finds a world, we are the first to explore, so we may tell her if it is a world she can explore freely?”

“Yes, that sounds good.  That way we avoid incidents like that one time, when Chaos took on that one form, what was it called?”

“Ooh, I think I know the one!  ‘The Lustmaster’, right?”

We burst out laughing at that.  As the mirth dies down, I have to get in the last word.  “’Thirty nights of fun, guaranteed!’”  Another round of laughter.

We are still grinning from ear to ear as I teleport us back to the Ponyville Library.  However, the smile falters when I see no trace of my student, only Spike busily cleaning up a stack of books.  He turns on the ladder and bows to us.  “Princesses!  I didn’t expect to see you back so soon!  Twilight and her friends went out for a while.  Is there anything I can help you with?”

I give an almost imperceptible nod to Luna, and she catches it.  I feel her magic begin to flow through the area, probing for a certain signal.  “Yes, dear Spike, you can help us.  Where did she go, if I may ask?”

Spike opens his mouth to speak, but is cut off by Luna’s gasp.  “They did it, sister!  I’m not sure how, but they went back to that world!”

I turn my fiery gaze upon Spike, with pupils like a hundred burning suns.  “How?  How.  Did. They.  Get.  There.  Spike?”

He panics, and the words come in a torrent.  “Twilight thought you would make her destroy the machine so she built another one in secret that wouldn’t find worlds only go to ones she already knew and then she told me to try and keep it a secret from you and then took all the girls through the portal along with the Elements and please don’t send me to the moon!”

I smile at him compassionately.  “I will not send you to the moon, dear Spike.  I’ve learned the hard way that solves nothing.  Now, do you know the coordinates they went to?”

He sniffles.  “Y-yeah.  Twilight keeps a copy of everything in her journal upstairs under her bed.”  He scrambles to go get it as my mind blanks.

My student keeps a diary?  I do not have time to reconcile that thought as Spike descends the stairs, searching for the right page.

“Aha!  Okay, here it is, follow me, Princesses!  Oh, but watch your horns, it’s a bit small.”  And he leads us to the basement, where a small machine sits.  It is almost identical to the one Luna locked in the vault, but smaller, and shinier.  Spike immediately starts entering the coordinates.  “I’m going to activate the portal, so you guys don’t use all your energy trying to find the world, see?  I can be smart when I want to.”

“And we thank you for that.”  As the portal opens, Spike imparts one last piece of advice.  “If you want to get home and, again, don’t want to use all your energy, each of the girls has a Relay on them that will open a new portal right back here.”

“Very good, Spike.  At least my student thought ahead.”  And we enter the portal to save Twilight.

As the portal closes, Spike rubs his claws together gleefully.  “All according to plan, Twilight.  Now for my reward!”  He ascends the stairs and enters the kitchen, to make himself a batch of double-gem victory cupcakes!  Yum!

We exit the portal in midair, held a lot by our wings.  We are still in alicorn form, so by unconscious agreement, we slowly change back to our ‘Angel’ form, our original forms from all those millennia ago.

“Oh, Cel.  I forgot how good this feels,” Luna remarks as she stretches out some kinks, with me doing the same.

“I know, Lulu, but remember, we aren’t here to sightsee.  Now, where’s Chaos?”

“Um, how about in that direction?”  I look where she is pointing, and see a massive outpouring of chaos energy emanating from the nearest city.  We glance to each other, and shove off towards the source.

We are flying over the city, towards the fortress overlooking it, when Luna stops me.

“I see six figures in the square down there.  One with soft pink hair, another blonde, two purples, wild pink, and one with a multitude.  I think it’s them, sis!  I… wait, what is Rainbow Dash doing?”

I look down, just in time to see Rainbow Dash put a gun to my student’s head.  From this distance, the report comes faintly.

*BLAM*

-----Twilight-----

Celestia-damn it, I love it when I’m right!  I come to near a factory.  Discord’s voice comes across the city, but I tune it out.  Its basic villain stuff, you can’t hope to defeat me, come and get me if you dare, stuff like that.  Goddesses, Ahuizotl sounds more impressive with his speeches than Discord.  I try to make for the Academy, but am stopped by none other than the Lord of Chaos himself.  He lazily circles around me.

“And where are you off to in such a hurry, Ms. Sparkle?”

“I’m going to meet up with the others and kill you, of course.”

“Oh, but you don’t really mean that.  After all,” he tries to give me cute eyes, but I ignore him, “You do consider us friends, right?”

I stop, and look him in the eye.  “Actually, Discord, Chaos, Grimmfather, whatever you call yourself, I don’t know what I have in store for you, and I’m just fine with that.”

“Oh really?  We’ll see about that.”  He rests his claw on my head, and makes an unscrewing motion.  I feel my scalp lift off my head (totally gross, by the way), and he plays my brain like a piano.  My eyes turn into movie screens.  The movie is of when I talked to Spike alone, before coming here.  I can feel all the sounds coming out of my mouth.

Okay, Spike.  Here’s the whole plan.  All you’ve got to do is---------

Static fills the rest of the film.  Discord drops my scalp back onto my head in disgust.  “A memory blocker, of course.  Well, I can see I won’t have any fun here.  Now, should I go after Applejack or dear Rainbow next?”

What?  “What are you going to do to them?”

“Oh, hopefully nothing.”  He flies close, eye-to-eye.  “Or maybe everything.  All I can say is, watch your back, Twilight.”  With a laugh, he flies away, but not before spawning a score of Grimm all around me.  Crap.

I’m trying to get to the square.  I still have half the Grim after me.  I can only hope whoever’s there can help me hold them off.  I did see Rainbow Dash, tied to warn her against Discord, but my plan sunk in a little too well; she ducked down an alley and was gone by the time I reached it.

I reach the plaza second-to-last, due to me trying to avoid the Grimm, unsuccessfully.  Applejack comes up to me, and I can see it in her eyes, Discord already tried her, and failed.  I struggle to breathe as I turn to watch for Grimm.

“Girls… Grimm… coming after me… Rainbow…”

Applejack nods, then goes over to Rainbow, who’s, of course, sleeping under a tree.  I don’t hear the commotion behind me, too busy looking for the pack of Grimm.  I do, however, hear the click as Rainbow’s gun chambers a round. I raise my wand; maybe I can cast a deflect—

*BLAM*

C7 - The Return of Chaos

*BLAM*

Everything goes into slow motion, then stops.  I can see the bullet about halfway to Twilight’s head, and I can see its path through the air, cutting the very fabric of the wind.  I glance around, only able to move my eyes.  A beam is shooting from Pinkie’s Party cannon, a kunai is coming right at Rain from Rarity, Twilight is in the middle of raising her wand, and a black ball of something is spinning its way out of Fluttershy’s launcher.  Applejack is halfway out of the hole I knocked her through, trapped mid-shout.  None of them will make it in time to stop the bullet already out of Rain.

“Oh, nonono.  This isn’t right.”  Discord appears to my left, the real Discord, multicolored misshapen body parts and all.  He walks around Twilight.  “You aren’t supposed to actually kill anyone, other than my creations.”

“No, this is the way it must be.  We must make an example of these weaklings.”  A second Discord appears to my right, but it’s the Grimm Discord, all black, mismatched Grimm parts.

“But how can we feed off of the chaos if there isn’t a person to feed off of?”

“It matters not.  As the Grimmfather, I did not feed off of such paltry forces as chaos.  I fed off of the fear of the people as my Grimm swarmed over their weak walls and slaughtered their kin!”

The real Discord shrinks a little.  He looks to me pleadingly.  I can only look, mouth frozen mid-sneer.  “Now I know why I left Remnant.”

“What?  We never left willingly.  The Angels forced us out!”

“No, I didn’t.  I left when they gave the people the weapons to fight off our creations.  I saw what happened, the destruction of the cities, the killings, and it hurt me.  This was not how I was as Chaos.  I cared for my people, even though they never thought so.  I kept them safe from the harms of the world, and only exposed them to a small part in order to remain fed.”

“No!  The Angels forced us out when we overthrew their people!  They gave them the weapons to destroy us again!  We stood strong as Chaos!  We never backed down!”

A third being appears, this one unknown to me.  He is tall, mysterious, and handsome.  He is clean-shaven, and his clothes look like they’re made of smoke.  My eyes waver.  I may not have seen him before, but the Princesses described him well enough.  I am looking at the original form: Lord Chaos.  He speaks in a deep, hypnotic voice.

“You both lie.  Neither of you are anything like me.  Discord, my final incarnation.  You are weak, and thrive off of the forces of chaos but you expend more energy than you take.  You will never be strong.

“The Grimmfather, arguably my most powerful form, other than myself.  Pure rage, you feed off of the pain and anguish of others, and will do anything to attain your sustenance.  However, your single-mindedness makes you weak to anything other than your plan.  The Angels, Celestia and Luna, forced you out of Remnant because you would not take into account the potency of the weapons they gave their children.”

Both Discord and the Grimmfather start arguing, trying to appease their original, but he cuts them off.

“Enough!  I suppose I should thank you two; your inner turmoil, and both aspects of myself in one body, has given me enough power to wake.  Now, I will be taking the rest of my power back.”

A rushing force stirs up, and both Discord and the Grimmfather shrink to almost nothingness.  Chaos picks them up, and places them within his shadows.  Then he turns to me.

“And now for you.  Rainbow Dash, is it?  Personally selected by the Angels themselves.”  He looks up.  “Ah, there they are.  Don’t believe me?  See for yourself.” He motions, and my head moves upwards.  Sure enough, Celestia and Luna, in human form, can only watch helplessly as I end Twilight’s life.  He forces my head to follow him.

“You know, I was within Discord through all those centuries, locked away, with the Angels holding the keys.  I could only watch as his sanity left him, reducing him to the cretin you knew.  Then, when he was released, I thought this could be my chance to escape!  But, he had lost his other half.  The half the Grimmfather returned to him.  He had lost the rage, the malice of being beaten hundreds of times.  Then, you ‘reformed’ him.  Pah!  As if you could reform the base aspect of chaos.  Oh, let’s get rid of that, now.”  He takes the bullet out of the air and eats it.

“On the other foot, Grimmfather was the rage of my failures brought forth, without the want to cause mayhem.  He could only destroy.  I am still unsure how I was able to subdue him when I left Remnant, but it worked too well, as I explained.

“I am going to let your friend live for now, because I want to see the looks on all your faces when I utterly destroy the Angels, rip off their wings, and feed off of the last of their energy.  Then, I will turn you six into my ultimate Agents, powered not only by my own strength, but by these Elements of Harmony.”  He fondles my Element, then drops it.  He then picks me up, and sets me down about a foot behind where I was.  “There.  That should stop any permanent harm.  Oh, that laser isn’t pointing at you, is it?” a mirror appears in front of Pinkie’s cannon, tilted to redirect the laser into the air harmlessly.

He looks me in the eyes.  “I wish for you to deliver a message to the Angels.  Tell them I have returned, and if they value their lives and the lives of their subjects, they will cease this fruitless endeavor.  If they do not face me upon the steps of this Academy, I will spare Equis my wrath.  I will return to Origin, and reclaim my position over the people there.  If they still wish to face me, just tell them what I will do to you six.  As one of Discord’s friends likes to say, Allons-y!” he dissipates in a flash of smoke, and time returns to normal.

Several things happen at once.  Pinkie’s beam shoots into the air, shattering the mirror.  The kunai impacts the ground, turning the small area into an ice block.  The ball of black lands on the ice, and skids off, falling on its furry rump.  It is just out of range as a pillar of pure white strikes where I stood.  I collapse to the ground, unable to feel my legs.

Everyone is shouting at one time; the Princesses swoop down, and Twilight almost faints when she sees Celestia.  Pinkie is shouting something about “She doesn’t have any black stuff anymore!”  Fluttershy is running for the small animal she launched at me.  Rarity is trying to dissuade the Princesses from reducing me to a smoldering pile of ash.  I just have the mother of all headaches.

Eventually, the shouting stops.  I feel a hand on my shoulder; I look up, and Twilight is looking down at me, not with concern, but compassion.

“Did you mean it?”

I blink.  “W-what?”

“Did you mean to shoot me?”

“No, no of course not.  I would never try to hurt any of my friends.  The Grimmfather took control of me.”  At his name, all that Chaos said comes rushing back to me.  I sit up; the others are arrayed around me.  I look the Princesses dead in the eyes.

“We have to leave.”

Cries of outrage rise from the others, but I quiet them down.  “Chaos has returned.”

Luna looks at me in shock.  “How?  We sealed him away, deep within Discord’s mind!”

“He was released when Discord and the Grimmfather came to a disagreement on the Father controlling me to kill Twi.  Something about the inner turmoil, I think.  He’s released, and he absorbed Discord and the Grimmfather.  He also said to give you a message.”

Celestia looks concerned.  “And what was the message?”

“Leave, and he spares Equis.  He will return to Origin, and start over.  If you fight him…” I break into tears.  “If you fight him, he’ll turn us into his Agents and take over the entire multiverse!”  The others start arguing; it seems like Applejack and Rarity are all for fighting anyways, while Fluttershy and Pinkie want to go home immediately.  Twilight can only look between me and the Princesses in shock.  Eventually, she speaks.

“What do we do?”

“I… I am not sure, Twilight,” Celestia says softly, “I am not sure.”

C8 - Daddy Discord

“What do we do?”

“I… I am not sure, Twilight,” Celestia says softly, “I am not sure.”

I’m crying, rocking back and forth on the ground.  We need to stop him, but I don’t want the Princesses to die, and I don’t want to become Chaos’ pet!  If they fight him, he’ll slaughter them!

Wait…

I stand and make my way towards the ships.  Twilight grabs my arm to stop me.

“Rainbow!  You can’t seriously be thinking of going up there!  You told us what he said!”

I look to her, sheer determination on my face.  “Yeah, he said he’d do all of that if the Princesses fight him.  The Princesses aren’t going to face him.”

Realization dawns on Twilight.  She lets go of my arm, then falls in beside me.  Celestia thumps down in front of us.

“What are you two doing?  I forbid you from facing Chaos!  You will be slaughtered!  At the very least, if you wish to pursue this endeavor, Luna and I will lend our strength.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No.  You two are not coming.  Chaos expects us to run home, tails between our legs.  However, purposefully or not, he left a loophole in his ultimatum: he didn’t forbid us from fighting.  He won’t try to kill us; he wants to turn us into his Agents, and force you to watch, crushing that last bit of hope you have.”  I pull my Relay out of my pocket.  “Here, go back to Equestria.  Please, Princess, don’t follow us.  I don’t want to be turned into an Agent as much as you don’t want to see that happen, but I know he won’t do that unless he can force you to watch. He may have been locked away when you used the Elements before, but we are stronger than you ever were when using them.  You trusted us to help Luna when she returned as Nightmare Moon, trust us now.”

Celestia deflates.  “Fine.  However, promise me that if you get overwhelmed, you will use the other Relays to come back to Equestria.  If you do not return, we will be forever plagued by the grief of losing such close friends.”

I nod.  “Yeah, we can do that.”  By this time, the other girls are behind me.  We board the nearest ship, and ascend.  As we rise, I look over the edge of the ship.  I see a portal open, and two figures step through, back to Equestria.

The trip up is uneventful, but it allows us to see the extent of destruction to once-beautiful Vale.  Grimm flooding the streets, collapsed, burning, and broken buildings everywhere.  No people, which is either a good or bad sign.  Either they all fled, or were turned.

Eventually, we reach the top.  We fan out, covering each other’s backs.  “Okay, if I was the reborn true God of Chaos, where would I set up shop?”

Everyone glances around.  Twilight gasps, then points upwards.  “Uh, Rainbow…”

I look up.  Oh, duh.

The top of the tower has been transformed into a full-blown castle, complete with walls (just hanging there in midair), turrets, a floating lava moat, and two Giant Nevermore circling it.

I turn to the others.  “Well, we shouldn’t keep our host waiting, should we?”  We all smile grimly, except Pinkie, who smiles her normal crazy smile.

We get to the top of the tower easily enough, and I select Twilight to go with me to scout out the room ahead.  No one else complains.

We creep up the stairs, assisted by a ‘soft-shoe’ spell, and Twilight ducks behind the closest pillar while I fly to the rafters.  What I see is concerning.

From Celestia’s description, this is exactly the same as the throne room Chaos had back on Origin.  Tall dark pillars, gloomy atmosphere, and a grand throne at the end, on a tall dais.  Chaos sits upon his throne, in his Lord Chaos form, along with another person sitting on his lap.  I can’t quite make out who it is.  Then, he speaks.

“So, Ms. Rose, isn’t this the most perfectly chaotic kingdom a God of Chaos could ask for?”

“It sure is, Daddy Discord!”  The person says sweetly.

“Ruby?!”  Suddenly, my pillar is blown apart, and I fall to the floor.  As I get up, I lock eyes with the people on the throne.  Chaos is there, looking not at all surprised to see me.  Ruby is holding Crescent Rose, barrel smoking.  That’s not the surprising part.

The surprising part is what Ruby looks like.  She’s been turned into a doll.  White face paint with rosy red cheeks, flowery black and red dress, a small tiara on her head, overall it just looks wrong for Ruby, but she’s smiling like a lunatic. Crescent Rose is huge, pulsing with lines of shadow.  This isn’t Ruby Rose, Huntress-in-Training.  This is Ruby the Agent.

“Ah, Ms. Dash, isn’t this the cutest?  She insists on calling me ‘Daddy Discord’, probably because that was the form I took when I ah, convinced her I am the better friend.  Isn’t that right, Ruby?”

“Sure is, Daddy!”

I think I’m going to be sick.

“Oh, but you didn’t come here on your own, did you?”  He snaps his fingers, and the rest of Team Harmony appears beside me.  A look of concern passes his face.  “Wait, that’s not right.” He snaps again, but this time it is followed by a fizzle, then a cough.

Snap-Fizz*cough*

Snap-Fizz*cough*

He looks mad.  “Where are the Angels?”

I smile sweetly.  “Who are you talking about?  We don’t know any Angels.”

He storms off the dais towards us.  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, girl!  Two beings, wings, enough power to level a city with a wave of their hand?”

“Oh, you mean the Princesses!  Sorry, they’re not here right now.  Care to leave a message?”

“You dare to defy me?  I guess it will be fun forcing you into submission and burning away your souls to become my Agents and destroy Equis.  You know, for funsies.”

“Actually, no.  You won’t, because we haven’t actually broken your deal.  You said that would happen if the Princesses fought you, not us.  They are currently back in Equestria, safe and sound.”

Chaos is about to retort, but stops.  “Huh, that’s a loophole I wasn’t expecting.  You still have no hope of destroying me, though.  Although, why should I exercise my power and crush you easily, when I have my girls to do it for me.  Oh, Ruby?”

“Yes, Daddy?”  She is rocking the puppy-dog-eyes.

“Summon your friends.”

“Sure thing, Daddy!”  She turns around, and speaks in a singsong voice, “Oh girls!  We have some new playmates!”

Three new beings arrive.  Yang launches herself from the ceiling, where she must’ve been hiding the whole time, and creates a crater as she lands.  Blake steps out of the shadows, Gambol Shroud in hand.  A dark glyph appears on the floor, and Weiss rises from it.  All three have been turned into demonic dolls, their weapons twisted with shadow energy.  Chaos addresses them.

“Now girls, I don’t want you getting hurt too badly, but consider this a test of your skills.  I want you to show these six why being my friend is the best thing ever, okay?  Then, when they are my friends, we can go have some real fun.”

They cheer at that as Chaos resumes his place on the throne.  We ready our weapons.  Team RWBY charges.

This is gonna hurt.

C9 - Battle for the Multiverse

“Now girls, I don’t want you getting hurt too badly, but consider this a test of your skills.  I want you to show these six why being my friend is the best thing ever, okay?  Then, when they are my friends, we can go have some real fun.”

They cheer at that as Chaos resumes his place on the throne.  We ready our weapons.  Team RWBY charges.

This is gonna hurt.

As the tide rushes toward us, we subconsciously split into pairs.  I’m with Twilight against Ruby and Weiss, Rarity and Applejack face down Blake, and Pinkie and Fluttershy take on Yang.  Twi forces chunks out of the pillars and floor to fling.  I bring up Rainboom to block Ruby’s first strike…

And am immediately pushed to the floor. I look up, and Rainboom is standing straight up, taking the brunt of Crescent Rose’s weight.  I was pushed down by the shockwave of our weapons colliding.

I hear explosions, magic, and general chaos happening all around me, but I can only focus on my opponent.  To falter for one second spells death for my entire Team.  Ruby grins, and spins away.  As she does, Crescent Rose grows a second scythe, made of shadow, on the opposite side of the original blade.  It doesn’t matter how pointy her scythe gets, I have to beat her.

Shit shit shit balls damn it buck me shit!

I’m behind a pillar, trying to avoid Ruby’s sniper shots.  My leg is on fire where a shot connected before, and I can’t get enough breath into my lungs.  I can’t tell if RWBY is actually trying to kill us, but they’re sure making us regret this plan!

I glance around, and nopony else is faring better.  Rarity is also limping, blood streaming down her leg.  Applejack, like in the tournament so long ago, isn’t able to keep up with Blake’s speed.  Twilight’s been backed into a corner, raising wall after wall to block Weiss’ Dust powers.  Fluttershy is unconscious near the stairs.  Pinkie is running around the room like a madpony, trying to stay ahead of an extremely pissed Yang.  We need to remove one of them from the equation, but we can’t match any of them!  Weiss’ magic, Ruby and Blake’s speed, Yang’s rage…

Wait, we could match rage.

I grab Pinkie as she runs by my pillar.  Before she can question, I rip the Reader off of her, find the setting, and crank the Aura Reader setting to the max.  I then slam it back on her face, point her at Yang, and duck.

The effect is instantaneous.  She goes rigid, her eyes move independent of each other, and her cannon arm starts shaking.  With a cry of fury, she launches herself at Yang.  Pink laser shots light up the room.  One threat taken care of, for now.

Now, how could I get Ruby?  I’m thinking, if I can get her to lower her guard, I could switch with Twilight and she can hit Ruby with that chaos reversal spell she used before when Discord was released on Equestria.  Then, we join forces against Weiss, rinse and repeat.

This is such a stupid plan.Maybe, but my mind is blanking on anything else.  We could try and beat them into submission, but that seems unlikely with one of us already out, and we need all of us functional for fighting Chaos. I take a breath, and step out from behind the pillar.

Kill.

“No.”

Kill them all.

“Please.  Don’t make me do that.”

Destroy them!  Make Father proud!

“I can’t!  I won’t!”

You have no choice…

I’m trapped in my own mind.  I’m naked, curled in a ball in the one corner of my sanctum I have left, as the darkness that is the Grimmfather tries to overtake me.

When Discord changed me into one of his playthings, I was able to block off a part of my mind from his influence.  I tried to keep myself together, but it was a quickly lost battle.  First to go was control over my body, trapping me.  I couldn’t do anything but watch as he used me, used me and the others to capture many other people, and either change them all or banish them… somewhere.

He made us do it just to break us, and it worked.  I lost another part of my inner sanctuary, along with my memories.  The only memories I have are of Discord and the Grimmfather, and the dark magic they used to carve my mind away from me.

The only part of my mind that is still my own is my identity, which I keep repeating to myself so I don’t lose it like everything else.  Even most of that has gone with my memories.

“M-my name is Ruby Rose.  I am the daughter of S-Summer Rose and Taiyang Xiao Long.  I have a sister, Y… Y… I know I have a sister.  I am the leader of… a group… who… fights bad things.  The others out there, the ones with the yellow, black, and white hair, are part of this group, but Discord made them like me.  My name is Ruby Rose…”

Over and over.  It is the only shred of myself I have left, so I cling to it like… something very clingy.

Discord went somewhere, and when he came back, he was different, and stopped trying to take my mind.  He left me like this, shattered, weak, and helpless.

Then, six new people showed up.  I know because this new Discord allowed me to see out of my eyes.  He had said something about how it would break me to the core; I couldn’t react to that.  These six people wanted to take him down.  I screamed at my body to help them, but it didn’t listen.  I felt… elation when he said to make them ‘his friends’.  I don’t recognize these people, but I know they can help somehow.

We fight, the four of us against the six of them, and we are soundly thrashing them.  I am fighting the one with three-colored hair, and she is behind a pillar, trying to stop me from shooting at her.  Suddenly, she steps out.  I aim at her heart, trying in vain to make it stop.  Then, she speaks.

“Ruby, don’t do this.  It’s me, Rainbow Dash.  Remember?”

A memory flashes in the dark clouds surrounding me.  Yes, Rainbow Dash.  My group found her… in a forest… she eventually brought friends… she is a friend.

I try to grab the memory, but it slips away.  Who is this girl again?

“Ruby, please.  You don’t need to do this!  I know you don’t want to do this.  We can help!”

“Help?”  I hear myself saying.  “I don’t need your fucking help!  Daddy Discord is all the help I need!”  I feel myself pulling the trigger.

“NO!”  I scream, and force myself out into the void of my mind.  I force the barrel of… it, to fire upwards into the ceiling.

She smiles.  “There’s my girl.  I know you’re in there, Ruby.  Fight him!”

I intend to.  I reach out, and grasp the first thought cloud I can.  In an instant, it comes back to me.  I wield the magnificent sniper-scythe, Crescent Rose.  The memory is of when I made her; one of my happiest memories.  Me, very young, with another figure watching lovingly as I put the finishing touches on the mechanisms.

A surge of power hits me.  I grab another cloud; another happy time.  The four of us had just gone through initiation, and are on a stage.  A man in a green suit with a cane is speaking.

“…And finally; Blake Belladonna, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, and Yang Xiao-Long.  The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces.  From this day forward, you will work together as Team RWBY, led by… Ruby Rose!”  The crowd goes nuts, and Weiss looks like she just lost Miss Universe or something.

The memory fades.  A growl sounds in the void.  I whip around, and beady red eyes staring at me.  I want to run, but I know defeating this demon is the best way to free myself from Discord’s grip.  I still hold the two thought clouds; I concentrate, and mold them into Crescent Rose.  I brandish it at the eyes.  “You think you can control me?  You can’t have me!”

“Ohhhh, I don’t think so,” a voice speaks.  “How can you hope to beat me, when I am you?”  It steps forwards, and another Ruby made of pure shadow magic appears.  She is huge, made of all the parts of me it stole.  The thing charges.

I try to block it, but I don’t know how.  She bowls me over easily.

“Ha!  You cannot hope to hurt me, you little bitch! I hold all, and I mean all, of you.  Your likes, dislikes, secrets… fighting moves.”

I answer by swinging wildly, and I actually manage to sever the thing’s arm.  It isn’t fazed at all, it just regrows the arm, and shrinks by a teensy bit.

“Pah!  Lucky shot!  Let’s see how you fare against this.”  It tries to do some kind of fancy flip, combined with a shot and decapitation of me, but falls flat on its face.

I have a moment of realization.  I dart over, pick up the severed limb, and reclaim part of my lost self.  Fighting moves, memories, friends, purpose.  I swing Crescent Rose around easily.

“No, I don’t think you’re me.  I wouldn’t let down my guard like that, especially against a weaker opponent.  Now, let’s see how you deal with the real thing.”  I launch a flurry of attacks at the shadow me.  It seems to still have some of my moves, but I remedy that by slicing every limb it tries to grow off.  It eventually gets smaller than me, but is still trying to fight.

As it comes at me for another round, I step on it, pinning it with my foot.  Suddenly, a bright light flares above.  I look, and a face I haven’t seen in half a year shows up.

“Ruby!  Hang on, I’m casting a spell that’ll break Discord’s influence!”

“Take your time, Twilight.  I’ve got it handled.”  Not sure if she can hear me, but it’s comforting to know that my friends have arrived.

“Come at me!  I am invincible!  Hey, what’re you doing?  Put me down, I’ll bite your legs off!”  I pick the mini-me up, then casually impale it on Crescent Rose.

“Whenever you’re ready, Twilight.”  As if she heard me, a blinding pillar beams down, incinerating the last of the influence.  I am thrust out of the confines of my mind, and back into my own body.  I look around.

We’re inside a castle of some sort.  Twilight is in front of me, wand placed to my head.  Applejack and another girl are fighting a twisted Weiss, Rainbow is losing ground against Blake, and Fluttershy is unconscious, a small Grimm at her side.  Another girl I don’t know is giving Yang a serious run for her money as she flips around, putting lasers everywhere Yang is.

Oh, yes, the floor is nice too.  I know, because the moment Twilight took her wand away, my face met it.  Hard.  I steal a glance at Twilight.  She grimaces.

“Sorry.”

“Ruby, don’t do this.  It’s me, Rainbow Dash.  Remember?”

She stops, the grin dropping a bit.  However it only lasts a moment before the grin is back, saying you can’t beat me.  Her gun is still pointed right at me, so I don’t move.

“Ruby, please.  You don’t need to do this!  I know you don’t want to do this.  We can help!”

“Help?”  She says.  “I don’t need your fucking help!  Daddy Discord is all the help I need!” she pulls the trigger. I close my eyes.  At least I tried…

“NO!”  The shot misses me, and impacts the ceiling.  I breathe a sigh of relief as I see a bewildered look on Not-Ruby’s face.  I smile.

“There’s my girl.  I know you’re in there, Ruby.  Fight him!”

She goes stock still, gun pointed in the air.  Now’s my chance.

I bolt over to Twilight.  “Ruby’s fighting it!  Use the spell!”  I shout as I parry Weiss’ blade.

“Which spell?  There’s so many!”  She looks almost on the edge of her rope.  I can only pray to Celestia she still has enough for this to work.

“The spell you used on us?  You know, when Discord did that stuff to us?”  She nods in realization, then uses a slab to launch herself backwards.  Now, just gotta deal with Ms. Ice Queen until her partner is taken care of.

“Oh, come on!”  I shout as a glyph bounces me into the air, out of control.  Obviously, Twi really is the only one of us who can face Weiss, as she’s just having a heyday with me.  Every time I get near her, she lands a glyph right under me, teleporting me somewhere or bouncing me in the air or collapsing the floor around me.  I try to gain some distance to shoot her, but she just summons, what else, another glyph that stops all of my shots in midair, Maretrix style.  Unlike The Maretrix, though, Weiss can launch my bullets back with ease, forcing me behind cover.  And by ‘cover’, I mean a destroyed or intact pillar that has more glyphs behind it.

It is during one of my bouncy moments that I glance back at Twi and Ruby.  I can feel the magic coming off of Twi in waves, concentrating hard as she tries to force Discord out of Ruby’s head.  I also see Rarity joining Applejack to fend off Blake, as Blake moves behind Twilight, blade in hand.

What?

Oh shit!  Those two are fighting her Shadow!  She showed me this power, how she can leave a short-lasting shadow behind her, but infuse with Chaos’ energy, the Shadows possess a real threat.

Time for the ace.  I spread my wings, and soar down at Blake, catching her off guard.  She flips back, missing me by an inch.  Her Shadow across the room dissipates, ad AJ and Rarity waste no time in seeing me, then going after Weiss.  Blake looks at me in wonder, then… hunger?

“Ooh, a pretty birdie!  I wanna eat it!” she bares fangs.  Oh, did I forget to mention Blake is a Faunus?  Specifically, a cat Faunus; she hides her kitty ears under her bow.  As Blake the Agent, she is more like half-cat, one-quarter human.  Long black tail, tall pointed ears, and yes, long glistening fangs.  She curls into a hunched figure, then launches ten feet in the air right at me.

Shit shit shit shit shit! I poke her out of the air with the butt end of Rainboom.  Think; she’s a cat.  What do cats love more than birds?  It comes to me.

“Pinkie!  Confetti Ball Shot, right here!”  A BOOM answers, and a tangled ball of party paper thunks down.  I swing Rainboom like a bat, sending the ball flying.  Blake immediately gives chase.  “Sufferin’ succotash that actually worked.”

I look over to the clueless duo to see Ruby do an epic face plant.  Twilight drags her over behind a group of destroyed pillars, as far away from the fighting as she can.  I fly over.

“What’s the story?”

Twilight is panting.  “Fairly good.  The influence is gone, but Ruby’s gonna be out of it for a while.”

“N-no, I can fi-fight, really… I can…” Ruby tries to get up, but slumps back down.

“No you aren’t.  You’ve still got a lot of chaos energy in your body.  It’ll take some time to purge it all.”  She looks up.  “Time we probably don’t have.  Look.”

I look, and Lord Chaos stares right back.  I can see shadows moving across the floor back to him, and I see the slightest hint of disbelief on his face.  “Shit, he’s onto us.  We need their help, Twi!”

“Maybe I can be of assistance,” a familiar voice sounds.  Twilight and I whip around to see Luna stepping out of the shadow of a pillar.  She keeps her head down, not letting Chaos see her, and comes to Ruby’s side.

“What?  Luna?  How?”  Twilight and I are gibbering at the same time, but she quiets us.

“In truth, I never left.  I knew you would need our help, Twilight Sparkle, and so we stayed, hidden in the shadows.”  She looks at Ruby.  “Ah, Chaos’ magic still rides within her.  I can remove it, but it will take time, thankfully, less time than the natural purge.  Twilight, you need to begin the restoration process on the other three.  Unfortunately, the more you stop, the more influence Chaos will put on the remaining Agents.”  She catches our looks, and adds, “Personal experience.  Now go!  Rainbow, you must stay.”

Twilight dashes off, and I face Luna.  “Why?  They’ll need my help taking the other girls!”

“Nay, you need to stall Chaos so he doesn’t become suspicious and find us.  Oh, hello Cel.”

I whip around again (really starting to hurt my neck with that) and behold Celestia behind another pillar, a pout on her lips.

“Oh, man!  I thought, for once, I could get an upper hand on you, Sis!”

Luna smirks.  “Not a chance.  Now, give Rainbow Dash some of your power.”

“What?  Why?”

Celestia answers, “In case you haven’t noticed, my little Pegasus, Chaos in his true form holds greater power than any of you, and almost as much as Luna or I.  We cannot reveal ourselves, or he will join the fight, and we will lose all of you.  If I give you my power, you may be able to stall him enough for Twilight to finish the other three, and Luna and I to purge the influence from them.”

“Uh, Princess, I’m not sure I can handle—”

“Nonsense.  Of course you can!”  Then she takes my hands, and I light up like a light bulb.  No, seriously.  I look at my arms, and they are quite literally glowing.  My wings have become giant, lighting up in all the colors of the rainbow.  I feel Rain and Boom grow heavy I their holsters.  I pull them out, and with the physical contact, they morph into full-auto machine guns, but are somehow still just as light as my revolvers.  I place them together, and Rainboom forms into a large staff, topped at each end by two feet of steel.  This is a different feeling than when I felt the connection that first day.  This is more of a respect, as if Rainboom is a sentient being, who has chosen me as being the one to wield it.  I spin it perfectly.

“Now, our boost is temporary, but should stall Chaos long enough for us to finish, then help.  Do not dawdle.”  I nod, and step out from behind the wrecked pillars.

Chaos bolts to his feet as I approach.  I can feel the worry coming off of him.

“What?  Who are- Ms. Dash?  How are you…?”

“Oh, you didn’t get the memo, Chaos?” I twirl Rainboom a bit, showing off more than anything.  “Since Celestia and Luna couldn’t be bothered to fight you, they gave me their power.  Well, Celestia did, at least.  Hear that?  The Angels, the ones who have beat you thousands of times, didn’t want to come and kill you one last time.  How does that make you feel?”

With a roar, he launches himself at me, a shadowy bastard sword forming in his grip as he flies.  I meet his blade with Rainboom, stopping him in his tracks.  Now he’s furious.

“How can you block me?”

I wave my fingers in front of my face and say, “Magic.”  I shove the sword down, and swing at him.

He backs up, as do I.  I use the room to go full-auto on his shadowy ass.  I open up with Rain and Boom, and the entire back wall of the room is blown apart.  Now he is moving like that stallion in The Maretrix, flipping around and somehow avoiding every single shot I launch at him.  I take a moment and spare a glance at the others.  Weiss is conked out, being dragged to Fort Kickflank by Rarity, Blake is against a wall, fighting Fluttershy and her Grimm, and Pinkie and Applejack are still chasing Yang around the room.

I turn back in time to catch a fist full of face.  Wait, no, a face full of fist.  Either way, I’m launched into the nearest pillar.  I look up, dazed, to see him looming over me.  He’s about to bring his sword down, when he freezes.

“No!  Not my Ice Princess!”  He regards me with unadulterated hatred.  “What are you doing to my Agents?”

I tsk at him.  “Shoulda paid more attention on Equis, Chaos.  How did we beat you before?”  Before he can answer, I blast him backwards with Boom.  Rain complains, something about his brother getting more action, so I let him loose too.  We fill Chaos with holes, which rapidly close up in time for another bullet to enter the same spot.  I’m having fun.

Click.

Son of a fillyfooler! I scramble for more ammo, but Chaos doesn’t let me have the chance.  I switch back to the double halberd, and the fight resumes in earnest.

We clash for several minutes.  The only reason I’m not dead from exhaustion is the near-infinite energy reserves the Princess gave me.  As I parry him again, his face contorts in agony.  Not even going to question which one my fiends got this time, but soon enough, a fluffy ball of Grimm takes out Chaos’ legs.  As I backflip away, he gets covered in a goop rocket.  I turn and yell at Fluttershy, “There’s nothing left of Discord in there!  Blast him with everything!”

She looks at me.  “Everything?”

“EVERYHING!!!!!!”

She nods, loads a high-yield (as evidenced by the black and yellow striped tape on the side), and blasts Chaos’ goop puddle with it.  However, he’s not there.  He’s back on his throne, looking royally pissed off, pissed on, and pissed around.

I sense someone to my right and left, and the other girls are beside me.  We approach the throne.

Chaos gets desperate, throwing anything he can at us.  We either deftly avoid, or cut down whatever he launches, until we are at the foot of the dais.  I step forward.

“Give up Chaos.  There’s nowhere left to run.  Just step down so we can force you back into whatever depth Tartarus has planned for you.”

He growls, then launches an attack with all his power.  We barely have enough time to activate the Elements and answer with our own beam of Rainbow Friendship Magic.  The beam dance back and forth, trying to gain an edge over the other.  Even with the Elements, we can’t hope to match him.  I wince as we start sliding backwards as the dark magic begins to overwhelm the power of Friendship.

“Now, Sister!”  The Princesses swoop down on either side of us.  Chaos sees, and laughs maliciously.

“Ha!  You’ve broken your promise!  Now watch as your precious student perishes!”

“Nay, Chaos,” Luna retorts, “We are not here to fight you.  We are here to finish what we should have done millennia ago!”  And with that, the Princesses add their power to the Friendship Cannon.  With the added power, the beam quickly overtakes the shadow and rushes at Chaos.  As it impacts, I have time for the last word, as always.

“Taste the Rainbow, motherbucker.”

C10 - The Afterparty

Of course, they threw us a feast.

When the power of Day, Night, and Friendship connected with Chaos, I was thrust into a white void.  Nothing existed except me and Chaos, and he was out of it.  I walked (more like ‘floated’, that’s all you can do in a void), I worked at finding Discord, and forcibly ripping him from the clutches of Chaos.  I know that’s probably not how it worked, but that’s what I saw.  Saw, and participated in.  He was a fighter; never gave up, even when he only had a finger hold on Discord’s horn.

As I was holding a wriggling, screaming mass of shadow, Luna and Celestia alighted into the void, and relieved me of my duties.  They took Chaos, and put him I don’t know (or rightly care) where.  I was pulled out of the void, and as the blinding light faded, I behold the castle not being here anymore.  It’s turned back into Ozpin’s office, with Discord unconscious in the Headmaster’s seat.

When Team RWBY got back in order, the twelve of us purged the city of the last of Chaos’ influence and the Grimm.  After that, we were going to go home, and take whatever punishment the Princesses had in store for us going against their word, but Ruby and Pinkie, not to mention the entirety of Vale, would have none of it.  So, we ended up in a massive “Hooray-We-Saved-the-World” party at Beacon.

It was an absolute blast, after the apologies were handed out.  Us apologizing to RWBY for the fight, Rarity apologizing to the blue-haired guy, Neptune, Pinkie apologizing to Nora, which was funny as there were still streamers stuck in Nora’s breastplate.  We feasted, we laughed, Nora challenged Pinkie to the infamous Pancake Challenge, and we had a great time.

I was going to get some more food, when I bumped into a guy, kinda hard.  I got knocked on my butt, and was offered a hand by the guy.  I take it, and he pulls me up.  He’s tall, handsome, with silvery hair and a Prench-style moustache, like a waiter would usually have at a fancy-shmancy restaurant.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, miss!  I’m afraid I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Nah, it’s cool.  So,” I say lamely, “you enjoying the party?”

“Very much so.  Ah, I see my compatriots over there.  Pleasure meeting you!”  He wanders off.

I shake it off, and make my way back to the tables.  I go to Ruby, and motion to the guy.  “Hey, do you know who that is?”

She looks, then frowns.  “Nope, can’t say I do.  He seems to be friends with Emerald and Mercury though, so I’m betting he’s alright.  Oh yeah, Twilight wants to see your datapad.”  I hand it over to an eager Twi.  She does some kind of magic, then hands it back.

“Okay, what did you do this time?”

“Well, with the Princess’ permission, this device will now remain intact when we go back to Equestria, and be able to breach the dimensional fold to answer calls from any of Team RWBY, and vice versa.”

“OH COME ON!”  Pinkie shouts from across the table.  “That’s totally a Deus-Ex-Machina!  Author guy, are you even trying anymore?”

Ignoring Pinkie’s nonsensical cry, we enjoy the rest of the party.

Meanwhile, the mustachioed gentleman sits down at a table with his ‘friends’.

“Ugh, can I drop this disguise yet?  I know I’m a Chameleon Faunus, but this is just crazy!”

Mercury puts his boots on the table.  “Come on, Oberon.  You know this is the only time we could pull this off.  Remember the power you promised the White Fang?”

“Yeah, I only hope the probe I slipped into that… thing’s pocket will do the job.”

“OH COME ON!”  All three jump at the pink one’s shout.

“Well, this is interesting,” Emerald remarks.

“What?”

“I think the purple-haired one, the mage?  She just did something to the target’s datapad.  I’m thinking…”

Mercury finishes her sentence, for once right on track.  “… She made it so it can go back to their world.  Oberon, could the probe work off of her datapad’s energy source?”

“It could.  The Fang scientists are a bright bunch.  However, there’s nothing to be done about it now; they’re opening the portal.”

Celestia shares a look with Luna; I slump.  It’s time.

We all stand, and make for the center of the room, which has been cleared for this exact purpose.  Ozpin stands, and gives a short speech on how this will always be remembered as the day that eight strangers to their world rose up and defeated the Grimmfather.  Really moving.

Ruby and the others step up, and we share hugs, one last time.  Ruby holds onto me extra-long.

“Please don’t let this be the last time.”

“I don’t think it will be, Ruby.  Remember the datapad?  I think the Princesses want Twi to keep finding worlds.  We just gotta make sure nothing uses it without their permission.”

She sniffs, nods, and let’s go.  Twilight activates her D-Relay, and we all return to Equestria.

Several hours’ later, undisclosed location

“Did you get the data?”

“Yes, sir, and it is astounding.  And before you ask, yes, the probe is hijacking the datapad’s signal to get us this information.”

“Very good.  Ms. Dash, you may have eluded us before, but we’ve got your home address now.  Prepare for my wrath.”

Epilogue

Bzzzzt.  Bzzzzt.  Bzzzzt.

Come on, it’s too early, Mr. Alarm Clock.

Bzzzzt.  Bzzzzt.  Bzzzzt.

Wait, my alarm doesn’t go ‘bzzzt bzzzt’. It goes ‘ring ring’.  Wha…?

I wake up, bits of cloud bed stuck to me, and look around my room.  Everything is in shadow, except for a light coming from one cloud-shelf.  Oh, crap!  That’s the Remnant datapad!

I swoop over, pick it up (kinda difficult with hooves), and answer it.  “Ruby?”

“Oh my God, Rainbow?  Is it really you?”  Several crashes sound behind her.  “We need help!  I think something from your world came through again!”

I sigh.  “And how do you know?”

“Well, this lady’s tall, mean, dark, holes in her arms and legs, and is shouting something about…”

“I am Queen Chrysalis!  You will feel my wrath!  And then you will help me destroy Equestria!  Muahahahaa!”

Son of a… “Okay Ruby.  Just stay calm.  We’ve dealt with her before.  Stay hidden, and don’t get caught.”

“Uh…”

*sigh* “You already got caught, didn’t you?”

“Currently in some kind of gooey green thing, about to be digested alive, yes.”

I facehoof.  “Okay, I have some good news and bad news.  The good news is, you aren’t gonna die.”

“Goodie.  What’s the bad news?”

“Prepare to have every positive emotion sucked out of your body.  We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks.  Let’s hope we can repay these favors someday… crap! She’s coming!  Hurry Rai—”

Static.  I sigh again, and make my way towards Twilight’s.  Being the savior of two worlds isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.