Rising Ace

A pink Unicorn with a lighter-pink mane like the petals of a flower faced down her opponent, a crimson Unicorn with a mane of pale blue and gold swirls. In perfect synch, their horns lit up at the same time as the hundreds of ponies outside their caged arena cheered and waved signs. "Get him, Serene!" and "Go, go, Grace!" signs and shirts battled for dominance across the crowd with "Burn it all, Blaze!", and "If Blaze loses, we riot!", along with a group of seven mares and three stallions holding up one large sign demanding he "Marry us, Blaze!!!" and one grinning green Pegasus whose sign stated one simple fact: "The ponies behind me can't see!"

The pink Unicorn, Serene Grace, stared down her opponent, Blaze Storm. Her Cutie Mark was a pink tornado, and his, an orange fireball. Her cerise eyes met his golden eyes. She looked dainty, thin, elegant, and refined, her muzzle raised slightly atop her swanlike neck like a snake poised to strike. He looked determined, passionate, powerful, and handsome, like a mix between a boyband lead singer that could actually sing and the most masculine of males from perfume and cologne billboard adverts. She summoned her weapon, three folding pink war fans six feet tall emblazoned with white spirals, and he summoned his, one long and powerful crimson lance as thick as a tree log with an orange drill tip styled like a flame serving for a point.

"It's time for the title bout, everypony!" A pink-haired thirty-something brown pony shouted into a black mic, a big and fluffy muffin for her Cutie Mark. "The undefeated champion, Serene Grace, Captain of the Canterlot Cream of the Crop... versus one of the strongest Unicorns to be born in thirty years, and one of the toughest fighters Canterlot has ever seen... Blaze Storm, Captain of the Manehattan Marauders!"

The crowd cheered and screamed, Serene smiling calmly and basking in the adoration as Blaze whooped and cheered, beckoning for more like a face Wrestler. On each side of the arena, the rest of their teams sat on benches. Serene Grace's were fancy-looking and incredibly rich-looking, the kinds of mares and stallions you thought of when you imagined a Magic Duelling team bred for success, with the exception of one orange stallion in a brown jumper wearing black-rimmed blocky glasses, the stereotypical 'uncool' nerd that actually earned their place at the top. On the other hoof, Blaze Storm's team looked like a mix of Manehattan thugs, heroic types that would beat up those thugs in comics, and rejects with gimmicks too weird to make it into wrestling leagues.

On Serene's left, there was a light blue stallion with a combed-back golden mane with a brighter-yellow stripe on the right third of his mane, a pink piglike fat mare with green eyes and a green mane and dress with a golden crown on top, and a purple pony with a bright gold and purple mane and bright golden eyes with blue diamond-shaped pupils and seven swords made from diamond slowly spinning around her. On her right, there was the aforementioned stallion in glasses and a brown sweater, a pink pony with a blue swirling mane with a pearl necklace and blue dress, and finally, a black stallion with golden eyes, eight hooves, and a purple mane, along with a magic necklace to maintain that transformation and serve as a focusing aid.

On Blaze's left, there was a brown stallion with a crimson and orange mane combed back, a big light green stallion with thick darker-green dreads, and a mangy grey pony with his chin-fur grown out into a beard, along with a blackish-grey mane with a white stripe running down the center of that and his foxlike tail. On his right, there was a scrawny yellow stallion with a baseball bat already out and in his magic's glow, a white Unicorn stallion with purple shades and a bunch of blank CDs levitated in the air, and a brick-red pony with a purple mane and an actual folding metal chair in his magic's glow.

"Can her skill and experience defeat his raw power? Will his strength defeat her style? Can he pierce her barriers? Her Whirling Sky Ruler style has never once allowed a hit to be scored on her by another combatant... Can this streak be broken today?" The announcer, Cupcake, shouted as Blaze's fans, mostly male but with a lot of mares, cheered and whooped wildly. "Or will the only thing broken... be Blaze's pride?" Cupcake asked, and Serene's fans, practically a female-only crowd with most male fans on her side cheering for a certain one of her teammates, cheered in a considerably less wild manner.

"You may not know it, but you're already dead." Serene commented casually, as if her opponent was truly beneath her in every way.

"You're nothing but hot air. Didn't you know?" Blaze asked, a confident smirk forming on his visage. "Air's one of the easiest things to burn."

"Round one! ENGAGE!" Cupcake shouted.

Blaze charged up and empowered his body with his signature spell as it lit up with a crimson light, tongues of flame sparking along his body, and he launched a basic fireball from his horn as Serene fired repeated pink shots from her horn, leaping to the left when he shot his fireball at her. The fireball shimmered as each pink shot hit it head-on, before finally bursting and becoming a cloud of smoke, the audience cheering as the match officially began. Blaze made a bigger fireball, one that grew to be twice the size of his head, and he threw it at her, only for a swing of one of her fans to send a stream of pink air laced with gleaming white and pink glitter in front of her, a stream that absorbed the flame's power and negated it.

Blaze began to charge another fireball, making it even bigger, growing until it was as large as he was, and Serene took the opportunity to swing a fan horizontally at him, spinning it by its handle so it became a brutal rotating disc of death double its usual size. Blaze slammed his spear into the ground in front of him to block it, the disc of death grinding against the spear for a few seconds before bouncing away uselessly, Blaze leaping up and running up the side of his spear before leaping off the top and flipping forwards three times before throwing the colossal ball of fiery death at his foe.

Serene Grace smirked and swung her remaining two fans around her as she restored the magic connection between herself and her third fan, a whirlwind of pink forming around her. The fireball struck it and dissipated quickly, and as Blaze fell to the ground, he sent his lance flying straight into the tornado as hard as he could. The heavy weapon's drill tip spun as he struggled to keep the weapon steady, slowly sinking in further and further into the tornado, his nose bleeding as the tornado spun faster and faster. When the drill was just inches away from her head, she got nervous and swung her fans as hard as she could, abandoning the third and pouring all her magic into the first and second.

The tornado grew and shattered outwards, blasting away Blaze and his spear, though he used a fire spell on himself to cause jets of flame to fire out of his hooves, beginning to fly in the air.

The two Unicorns locked eyes.

Blaze began spinning in the air as he launched fireballs with each jab and bigger ones with each kick, and the twin fans of Serene blocked one with a fan, only for the fireball to completely burn the pink wind in an instant, to her surprise. As more fireballs flew at her, she kept bringing up wind shields, and each one burned the shields away completely.

Blaze put his forehooves up, charging flames around him for a powerful attack, ready to crash right into her this time, and her opponent got ready to dodge.

Before anyone had a chance to react, indestructible blast doors slammed down over every way out of the stadium.

A blazing blue bolt twice the size of an average fully-grown stallion blasted into the building, blue lightning and flames crackling and flaring around the single sphere of power, crashing through the ceiling of the arena and the metal cage, the shockwave breaking both their concentration and their control over their weapons, each falling to the floor as Blaze dropped like a stone. He landed and rolled, and looked up at the newcomer.

A face emerged from the blue sphere made of flame and electricity, it seemed to be a white clay theatre mask five feet long and four feet wide, with seven vertical slits for eyes and one very large grin, the grin and each eye-slit leading into absolute blackness. The face stared directly at Serene Grace, and then it moved around the ball of fire and lightning to stare at Blaze Storm.

"We have an unexpected challenger dumb enough to crash the arena!" Cupcake shouted into her mic. "Literally! Looks like both teams are gonna hafta show it a thing or two!"

The crowd cheered, looking forward to the show and not caring that it might be a monster ready to eat them. After all, these were the two strongest Magical Duelling teams in Equestria! If they were safe anywhere, it was here. Serene Grace whipped her tail as Blaze Stormer licked his lips, their teammates gathering around them as Serene's fanboys cheered and Blaze's fangirls screamed and squeed.

"Formation Golden Omega!" Serene shouted, and her ponies moved into position with the grace and precision of clockwork, spreading out just enough to support one another with spells without having to expend magical effort on long-distance spellcasting while still spreading out as much as they could, the back row preparing shielding and enhancing magic while the front row prepared offensive spells and their weapons, Serene getting into place at the formation's center, right where she was the most protected while also being able to use her winds to easily divert attacks and support the whole team.

"BUCK THAT MONSTER UP!" Blaze Storm roared, some of his team rushing out to surround it while others went to prepare or wildly fire long-range attacks, staying flexible and adapting to the situation, no real pre-planned tactics or teamwork present. They had some combination attacks, but an overall strategy would, in their minds, make them too rigid and predictable. This was false, and stupid, but they believed grand strategies were for villains.

"I HAVE WAITED MY WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS MOMENT!" The yellow pony yelled as he swung his baseball bat toward the flaming and sparking ball, the wood getting enhanced by magic and growing until it was double the size of the giant ball. He swung the weapon, and the face slowly sunk back into the ball as the bat swung closer and closer, hitting it.

The ball burned a hole into the bat without even moving, the bat finding its upper section flying off as the rest of the bat was quickly devoured by the all-consuming blue flames. A quick jolt of blue lightning, faster than any of the fighters present could react, sent his suddenly-unconscious and otherwise-unharmed body flying across the room faster than any spell, and the ball's face began to emerge once again.

"It's protecting its face with the rest of its body... The face is the weak point!" The stallion in the brown sweater shouted as the gem-eyed Unicorn directed all of her gem swords into that re-emerging clay face.

The clay mask's grin grew more pointed as the eye-slits widened, and half the gem swords sunk into its eye-holes while others swung themselves against the face, shattering on impact with what she'd initially thought to be clay. However, the gem swords that had entered the eye-holes stayed in, like pins in a pincushion.

"I got it!" The gem-eyed pony said happily.

Those gem swords fell down from the face, most of the blades cleanly removed, everything that had entered the darkness destined to never come out again. The eyeholes narrowed back into their usual slits, and the grin returned to normal.

"You suck." The green stallion said bluntly charged his magic into a green ball of swirling energy that grew larger by the second, and the black-maned pony with a white stripe prepared to cast his favourite spell, horn lighting up with a yellow light to summon a small portal on the ground in front of him.

The white Unicorn stallion with purple shades threw some of his CDs at his opponent like razor-sharp blades, each one burning up just before impact. The rest, he arranged around the foe, reflecting light from each one onto each other and bathing the blue flaming ball in lasers that only ended up getting absorbed, the ball growing slightly lager as each CD was burned away, the lasers disappearing.

"What did you think that would do?" Serene asked angrily.

"I ONLY HAVE TWO MOVES!" The stallion yelled back at her.

"He was stalling... for this!" Blaze said proudly, gazing at the small yellow portal on the ground. From this portal emerged seven small, fluffy Skunks, who quickly turned around and raised their tails, their summoner smiling.

"ARE YOU JUST BUCKING AROUND RIGHT NOW?!" Serene shouted in disgust as the Canterlot ponies backed away like the animal was a dangerous antimagic Cold Iron flechette bomb.

"Morning Breeze never bucks around." Blaze Storm said confidently as the Skunks fired out green clouds from the bases of their tails.

A blue cube of magic formed around each Skunk instantaneously, the spray hitting the inside of the cubes, the animals freaking out from their own horrific miasma as the cubes flew towards the caster, Morning Breeze, and enveloped him like a film, molding into one large cube with him and all of his animals inside it. He screamed and writhed in agony and disgust before finally passing out, and the cubes were teleported away. To where, they did not know. But now, the Canterlot ponies breathed easier, and the Manehattan ponies were furious that their trump card was gone, and more importantly, that their friend had to suffer like that before getting knocked out.

The pony with the chair screamed as he slammed the chair onto the ball, and it was burned up in an instant. In the next, the ground had suddenly risen up to send the idiot flying out of the arena.

The green Unicorn with dreadlocks began to growl as his ball of magical energy grew larger, preparing to fire.

"Oh, please. Let us handle things, you brutes." Serenity stated as the brown-sweatered pony unleashed a focused torrent of ice at his foe, empowered by her magic, their horns glowing in synch as the ice formed into a massive tornado that flew towards the ball of blue fire and lightning, only for the ice to melt and evaporate as soon as it touched the wall of sheer heat the thing was giving off.

"No..." The brown-sweatered pony gasped. "No, that shouldn't be possible!"

The light blue stallion with a combed-back golden mane with a brighter-yellow stripe on the right third of his mane began to cast an absorbtion spell, striking the ball of blue fire and lighting with a yellow lightning bolt of his own.

A flaming orange serpentine dragon emerged from the ball at speeds most spellbolts had trouble reaching, flying into the air like a rising serpent before sharply arcing down at the brown-sweatered stallion, and then the piglike blue-maned pony in the pearls, who had been charging some kind of magic attack that began with a thin stream of water rotating around her at high speed. The dragon effortlessly scooped them both up with its mouth while ignoring her water attack, seeming to swallow them whole as it flew towards the brown crimson-maned pony while easily dodging the messy and unfocused energy beam from his horn, seemingly eating him as well. It sharply turned toward the wall and struck it head-on, exploding and sending the black-charred soot-covered bodies of all three flying away like ragdolls, the magic intentionally doing far worse damage to their souls than their bodies.

The pink piglike mare with the crown looked around, thinking of fleeing... but remembered that if she fled now, nopony would ever take her seriously again. Still, she wasn't about to do anything or attract the monster's attention to her. With luck, she'd just be defeated and discarded as painlessly as possible.

The purple pony with a gold and purple mane and golden eyes with blue diamond-shaped pupils took that moment to use her ultimate technique. Her horn glowed as crystalline fragments formed across her body, the whole thing turning rock-hard as she turned herself into a Crystal Pony. And then her hooves lengthened, each transforming into long broadswords while her tail turned into a lengthening chain, a diamond-spiked ball forming on the end. She let out a yell of fury, gem shards leaping from the ground to attack the blue sphere of flame and lightning, ripping right through it, not that it seemed to have any effect, and the modified Crystal Pony charged. The ball's mask turned to stare right at her, smirking, and she leaped into the air and flipped five times before slamming her tail down on the mask's face.

The mask opened its mouth, catching the flail in its mouth. The Crystal Pony had just enough time to catch the corners of the mask's mouth turning up to realize it had made a mistake, if getting swung face-first into the ground hard enough to crack her gem body didn't make it clear enough. The mask shut its mouth, smiling as the gem flail shattered, shards flying everywhere as the modified Crystal Pony screamed voicelessly, and a blue glow formed around her body to lift her up and recklessly throw her into the audience, the speed of the fans of Serene's team that actually liked the gem pony more serving as the only reason she wasn't shattered completely on impact.

"Enough of this!" The black Unicorn with golden eyes and eight hooves shouted, his horn and necklace glowing brightly with a lavender light. His form shimmered and reformed into a cloud of bats that struck the ball, ignoring its now-smirking mask and attacking it head-on, the claws of each bat leaving behind crimson-glowing scratches on the balls that quickly faded. This continued until the mask stopped smirking, got bored, and turned up the heat, the bats screaming as they rushed back to one spot, turning back into the black Unicorn once again... or rather, that's what they expected. Instead, he turned into an ugly lime Unicorn in black makeup, his transformation trinket cracking from the magic damage. "N-no..." He gasped. "Don't look at me!" He yelled, curling into a ball. A homing green fireball launched from the sphere of blue flame detonated just in front of him sent him flying, tongues of flame sticking to him and burning away at his soul, causing him to faint. The flame vanished the second he passed out, not willing to waste energy causing permanent damage, and his body landed in the bleachers.

"Go back to your cave, you emo!" The green Unicorn shouted, getting ready to throw the ball of magic he'd been charging up all this time, the ball suddenly doubling and tripling in size, making the Unicorn charging it look like an ant in comparison. He threw it towards the ball of fire and lightning, the clay face rotating to watch it fly, its mouth closing to smile at it. The green ball struck the mask head-on, pushing the ball back four feet, the ball leaving behind a burning blue trail on the ground as the mouth opened to grin once again.

A black tornado emerged from the mouth, pushing the massive green ball back several feet and locking it into place as a sparkling green stream of energy was drawn from the ball, getting drained into the absolute blackness of the mask's grinning maw.

"No you don't!" Blaze Stormer said, charging his horn as he prepared the counterspell that would reverse any absorbtion spell and seriously damage the original caster. He was done playing around.

A red-handled blue-bladed throwing axe emerged from the mask's mouth at speeds Pegasi dreamed of reaching, flying right at Blaze Stormer, who cut off his magic with a yelp of shock and dodged just in time, the axe's blade slicing off the hair of his flank.

As the blue ball finished absorbing the powerful magic attack, flaming blue tiger emerged from the side of the blue flare, charging up to the crimson duellist, bringing down its forepaws in front of him hard enough to send a minor earthquake through the entire town of Canterlot, holding back most of its strength. With the derision only a being above his opponent in every way could muster, the Tiger growled and pounced on the duellist, becoming a cubic blue barrier seven feet by seven feet that trapped him inside.

"A barrier?" He asked, his surprise turning to amusement. Breaking barriers was what he did best. That, and burning stuff, and mares, and never giving up.

He screamed out a war cry as he unleashed a barrage of fierce punches and kicks and bucks and headbutts, doing his best to shatter the barrier around him, his hooves seeming to be in sixteen places at once as the barrier glowed ever so slightly as each hit struck true.

A massive thunderbolt was suddenly called down, striking the green Unicorn and making him scream.

Blaze saw this, his yell silenced by the barrier, and for fourty whole seconds, he furiously attacked that barrier with everything he had, getting more and more tired with each hit, eventually realizing that there wasn't any fresh air in that cube, and his spell only burned up even more air. As he fell to the ground, his vision going dark, the cube rose up with speed no shielding spell should have just in time, the lower floor vanishing to leave him on the floor, and he managed a gasping breath of shock before the cube turned over and smashed itself onto him, crushing just enough bones to keep him down and out, and no more, though his incredible willpower kept him awake despite the pain.

And then the barrier formed into a ball of energy that struck him, striking his soul with all the power of the attacks he'd used on it. He passed out.

"No..." Serene whispered, shocked.

The flaming ball's mask wasn't looking at serene, but it slowly moved towards her anyway, as if the mask was just a decoration and it could see everything. She froze. "Why... Why am I so afraid? Why can't I move?" She asked herself quietly.

Its grinning face slowly came into view, and she got more and more afraid as it looked at her. "It's looking at me." She realised, her horn flickering up, unable to keep a steady charge of magic going. "It's looking at me, no, no, no, no, GET IT AWAY! GET IT AWAY!" She screamed, completely going to pieces as she fell to her flanks and scrambled away in fear. "HELP ME! GET IT AWAY!"

The serrated crimson blade of an oversized greataxe designed for fighting Dragons twice the Unicorn's side slowly emerged from the ball, followed by its handle. It rose up into the air, preparing to strike, and the terrified mare could only curl into a ball as her horn frantically spurted out spark after spark, desperately trying to reignite her magic and cast a spell, any spell.

The axe slashed down and was stopped by a single beam of energy from the piglike mare, who refused to let her captain die like this.

Inspired by her friend's bravery, Serenity got back up and slammed her hooves onto the ground, yelling out furiously as she picked up all three of her fans once again and used them to form a massive tornado, enhanced by her final teammate's magic. Serenity and her once-cowardly friend roared with determination as the spell got stronger and stronger, tearing away pieces of the arena and walls around them. With one last yell before Serenity almost passed out and her teammate collapsed weakly, the three fans broke themselves in half sending the strongest possible spiralling tornado attack, aimed tip-first like a drill, right at the mask.

The ball watched the attack fly towards it, and its eyeholes widened in surprise. And then it dropped the axe to the ground and shot up at an unfairly fast speed, and she realized it could have been moving that fast the entire time, it just chose not to. The blue sphere of fire and lightning then shot down, deciding not to dodge, becoming a burning meteor as it flew right into the tornado, taking it head-on as the grin grew wider and wider, the black void of its mouth spreading out like a black hole to cover more than the mouth could open, protecting itself with the absolute nothingness of what Serenity finally realized truly was a magically-altered black hole.

The mask got closer and closer to Serenity, who stared into the void as it got closer and closer, ready for the blackest void to swallow her whole and devour her...

With her last action, she grabbed the broken handle of one of her fans with her magic, throwing it into the wall hard enough to break it, opening up a path outside for the others. Ponies fled, realizing that they wouldn't be saved, and they really were in actual danger.

They could get away.

She...

She couldn't.

The infinite void got closer and closer to Serenity, and it vanished suddenly as the ball rotated to slam its forehead into her muzzle, sending the Unicorn to the ground. Serenity screamed, struck in the muzzle for the first time in her life, and the ball spun gleefully around the arena as a green healing spell brought those still in the arena back to the land of the currently-not-not-awake, but not the land of the not-exhausted or not-in-pain.

"CLASS DISMISSED!" A female voice shouted as the ball went into the arena's center, shimmering brightly. The voice was refined yet cheerful, unmistakably Canterlotian, and most importantly... the voice of an excited foal.

The eyes of everypony awake widened in shock as their pupils became the tiniest of dots.

"No..." Serenity whispered.

The weapon the ball had summoned vanished in a flash of blue.

"No, no, no..." Serenity muttered in horror.

The sphere of raw power shimmered and slowly melted away.

"No, no, NO, NO, NO, NO!" Serenity screamed.

The fire and lightning dispersed and faded away to reveal the radiant-looking form of an unusually lanky and thin young Unicorn foal, her body coloured like a dark blue flame. Her hooves below the crock were coated in long and wonderfully soft fluffy purple hair, much like socks, the hard hooftips hairless. She had deeper purple eyes, and a wild auburn mane covering both sides of her neck, an upwards-curving spike on each side bringing to mind the symbol of the Spades card suit. Thanks to her tail's style, she appeared to have three big, bushy, foxlike auburn tails coming from the same point, tipped with purple rather than the usual white. "Yo!" She greeted brightly, the biggest of cheerfully-gloating plop-eating grins forming on her face, her canines slightly pointed.

"WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS?!" Serene screamed furiously, spit flying from her mouth, only for it to fall back down on her face.

"Because it's fun, silly filly!" The blue filly said happily. "And because you guys are the only ones that can give me a good fight."

"GET OUT!" Serene screamed louder, absolute hatred flaring on her face.

The blue filly's horn glowed, and Serene paled. A quick lightning bolt from said horn gave the rich mare a quick, sharp shock that made her flinch and yelp in pain, her afraid eyes begging the blue pony to not hurt her again.

"I'll leave when I feel like it." The blue filly commented casually as her horn ceased to glow, walking over to the deserted snacks stand. "Ooooh!" She said happily as she saw the food offered, her horn lighting up again. She used her magic to lift and combine a hundred hot dogs into one ball of meat and purify it with another spell, low-quality meat falling from the ball in the form of solid cube-shaped chunks until all that remained was enough meat for two sausages, each two feet long. She placed them in some bread her magic caused to grow, added ketchup until the bread canyon was filled with red, and proceeded to grab sweet toffee-coated popcorn and shove it into her hot dog like meteors, the ketchup overflowing and dripping down the sides of her hot dog- but never falling from it, her magic prevented that. She refused to spill even a single drop of her ketchup, not when her meal looked this good. She grinned and happily opened her mouth wide to the point where non-equines would find it disturbing, and cast a spell to grow the hot dog to the point where it barely fit in her mouth. She put the hot dog in, took a bite, and chewed happily as Serene watched in rage.

"Hey..." Blaze's voice whispered, horn glowing as he cast a healing spell on himself, flames regenerating his body and restoring his energy. "If she keeps doing this to you guys, why were you so surprised?"

"Because it's not always her, sometimes it's just some idiot. You'd be amazed how many idiots get it in their heads to try this. It's practically a tradition! Some powerful moron born into success thinks she's invincible, so she comes to have herself a fight with the big mares and stallions, thinking she'll win against them and her fake-friends and hangers-on and all the private tutors money can buy paid to teach her spells they don't teach in poor-pony schools and call her meager skill expemplary when others are listening will love her even more for it, and she can learn what earning real love feels like. And even if we did figure out it was that fox brat, what would we do? We can't surrender or turn down a challenge in front of our fans! Or the judges, for that matter. Don't you have to deal with these?"

"Yeah, but they're usually older ponies that want to beat SOMETHING, thugs that want to rig a match in the only non-illegal way, or tribalist Earth Ponies that think useless metal or antimagic armour will save them from skilled spellcasters. But if she comes here often... Can't you recognize when things coming to crash your matches are blue and orange like her, and call things off before they get too crazy?"

"No, because it's DIFFERENT EVERY TIME!" Serene shouted in exhaustion. "One match, she's a brown earth golem with magic enchanted into not just its crystal core, but A DIFFERENT SPELL OF A DIFFERENT COLOUR SHOVED INTO EVERY SINGLE STONE BRICK IT'S MADE OF. The next match, it's a giant red squid monster with a seemingly endless number of constantly-regrowing tentacles that excrete poisons that MAKE YOUR VOICE SOUND RIDICULOUS AND ALTER THE PLACEMENT OF YOUR BODY PARTS AND ORGANS AS SOON AS SAID TENTACLES MAKE CONTACT WITH YOUR SKIN. HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR EYE MOVE TO YOUR BUTT WHILE A NEW HOOF STICKS OUT THE SIDE OF YOUR HORN AND STARTS PUNCHING YOU IN THE FACE UNCONTROLLABLY? I HAVE, AND IT'S HORRIBLE! The next match, it's a GIANT STALLION WITH SEVEN HEADS, EACH ONE FIRING LASERS FROM HIS MOUTH, except for that ONE jerk in the MIDDLE, who NEVER STOPS SINGING COUNTRY SONGS! At first, I didn't have much of an opinion on country songs, but now, I HATE COUNTRY SONGS! The next match, it's a cool-looking swordspony with one sword that seems legit, right up until he USES HIS MAGIC TO TURN HIS SWORD INTO A RIDICULOUS WEAPON THAT BECOMES SOMETHING NEW EVERY SEVEN SECONDS AND JUST GETS MORE INSULTING WITH EACH TRANSFORMATION. The next match, IT'S A LITTLE OLD EARTH PONY MARE with LIGHTNING MAGIC IN HER NECKLACE, the kind you'd see picking up some cupcakes for her grandfoals, and SHE'S GOT A METEOR HAMMER, AND SHE'S TOO... BUCKING... FAST! And after that, IT'S WHAT LOOKS LIKE A GIANT ROBOT, MADE OF FIRE, SHOOTING FIRE FROM ALL THE WRONG PLACES!"

"You don't mean-" He asked in surprise.

"IT FARTS OUT FIRE! I HAVE BEEN BURNED BY A GIANT ROBOT THAT FARTS OUT FIRE, AND SHOOTS MISSILES FROM ITS FLANKS, PILOTED BY A SMALL MARE, AND SHE MAKES ME LOOK LIKE A BUMBLING IDIOT EVERY TIME SHE CRASHES MY FIGHTS!" Serene screamed, starting to cry. "I WENT TO CELESTIA'S SCHOOL, FOR THIS! TWENTY YEARS OF TRAINING, FOR THIS! And she doesn't do it with any hate or malice or desire to prove herself to mommy and daddy, she does it because SHE'S BORED! TO HER, I AM AN AMUSEMENT! A TOY! I am a Canterlot Cream of the Crop! I AM A CAPTAIN! I shouldn't be humiliated EVERY SINGLE TIME I ENTER THE ARENA! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MORON FINDING MONSTERS IN THIS MAGICAL FIGHTING ARENA!"

Her mouth full of hot dog, popcorn, and ketchup, the blue Unicorn filly decided to say what was on her mind. "Wow. You have issues." She said bluntly. Sugar-coating things was for losers and lying politicians.

"You don't say!" Serene Grace shouted sarcastically.

"Maybe magical duelling just isn't for you?" The blue filly suggested.

Serene screamed hatefully, and if she wasn't currently so out of energy that everything hurt, she'd start the fight up again, even though it'd be even tougher to win one-on-one, and the blue filly wouldn't have to bother with the ball.

"That's the spirit." The blue filly commented happily, taking another bite of her hot dog as her magic to toss popcorn at the downed fighters still in the arena. Not her popcorn from her hot dog, popcorn from the snacks stands. She swallowed, and grinned. "Also, hey, not-Canterlot Ponies? The ones that are still with us? You just got owned by me, Azure Starburst, SO! HARD, whoever travelled back in time to make slavery illegal is going to have to do it AGAIN to put in a clause related to ME."

She kept eating, ignoring the yells of protest. If she beat someone and the loser got mad, that was just a sign of her winning too hard for them to handle. When she'd finished her hot dog, she got bored and trotted out of the hole in the wall, heading into the Canterlot streets and casting a wide-area spell on herself, turning herself invisible. If anypony was with her, they would have been turned invisible, too, and she burned three times as much magic as she needed to on that spell. Thanks to her high level of magical might and her...

...Sub-par control...

...Okay, her disgustingly bad control...

She found it way easier to cast big high-level spells than small ones. Small ones just fizzled out embarassingly, or did something they weren't supposed to. Still, she could do powerful spells, so it all balanced out. ...In her mind, anyway. Dumb old ponies kept flipping out over how she had trouble with the simplest of spells, and ignored the blatant evidence of her being able to do all kinds of awesome stuff the ponies with whatever ponies said she had this week couldn't. Probably because they were jealous of her power and ability. Or because they were scared she might grow an ego big enough to swallow the sun and proceed to actually do that using her magic if she ever got some positive reinforcement from ANYPONY.

Azure Starburst wandered into the town's one arcade, casting an illusion spell to turn her into an easily-ignored yet adorable red filly with ordinary hooves and a... yellow mane, she decided. One wearing a yellow sun dress and a big floppy hat with a gigantic red ribbon on it. She came out of invisibility once she was inside the arcade, deciding to pay the entry fee once she left, and she went straight for Fillies Of Rage, the greatest fighting game ever. She used a spell to create a coin, putting it into the machine and starting the game, and another to hack the game, enabling Fraud Detection mode and making the game impossibly hard for filthy causals. And then she made it harder, ensuring that getting hit even once would kill her character, whoever she chose, and another spell made it even more unplayably broken than the absolutely awful Immortal Duel, because she wanted a challenge. She chose Kung Kong, the goofy joke character monkey that knew martial arts and hit ponies with a stick, and as soon as the match began, she unleashed twenty-button combo after twenty-button combo, winning each match and quickly getting bored. She felt like wandering off once the boring fight against the bonus boss Skillet began, but she stayed to kick his ass, having to annoyingly stop her combos a few times because his broken teleportation abilities let him get out of hitstun and hit her with a super-broken counter attack that would hit her if she didn't have her own less-broken counter attack. The match got exciting.

"Oh, Skillet... at least I'll always have you." Azure sighed. "Until I beat you, and you die. Then I'll just come back to play with you again. And again. And again. You dream of being the perfect being, but... you're already perfect to me."

"Uh... Are you ok?" Some random soft-pink Unicorn filly with a swirly blue mane asked, and Azure noticed she was next to her, playing some baby game where you use a slingshot to fire water balloons at birds.

Ace quickly beat Skillet and turned to her, faking a big grin, which looked just like her usual taunting in-combat grin. "Yeah, totally." She said happily.

But really... she wasn't.

And she couldn't mess around all day forever. Soon, she had to go home, deal with her parents, and then go see what the new school year held for her.

...After one more round.