Episode 212: A Tale of Two Chrysalises

There was almost no time to think before the living paintings attacked. Each image of Laverna move with flowing, liquid grace, their forms running and slightly distorting as the magical paint that made up their bodies smeared with their motions. Yet there could be no doubting the lethality of the gleaming, curved daggers that appeared in each of their hooves, exact replicas of the weapon Laverna was depicted as carrying in the imagery on the pillars.

Still in the form of Vespid, Chrysalis darted back from the wickedly swift lashing from three different daggers. The limbs of the living paintings extended and twisted with the smearing of their forms, making each dagger difficult to predict, and even as her wings buzzed and she twisted in the air, Chrysalis felt the sharp bite of one of those blades graze her flank and knew without a doubt that, paint or not, these weapons were as deadly as the real thing!

“V-Vespid!” shouted Ocellus, eyes glittering with fright as she flew back as well, “Above you!”

There were so many paintings! Two more swooped in directly above Chrysalis, diving with their curved daggers coming right for her neck! There wasn’t even a moment to realistically dodge. She had no choice but to change! In a burst of radiant green flames she reduced in size, becoming a swift and tiny beetle that glided past the two daggers and buzzed upwards past the two paintings. With an angry light in her eyes, Chrysalis changed instantly again, the wash of emerald fire turning her from a miniscule beetle into a sudden, towering behemoth of a wooly mammoth, coated in black fur.

Smashing with her whole body onto the ground, she splattered the two paintings that had gone for her neck, but going large had its downsides, as a dozen more that had been swirling around like colorful ghosts all chuckled at her as they rushed by in swift streaks, each time cutting painful red lines over Chrysalis’ flesh. She gave off a pained cry and shifted forms again, now becoming a big, fierce chimera, its snake tail black as onyx and shaped more like a cobra than the more common adders of regular chimera. Even the fur of the goat and lion heads were black. Unlike a normal chimera that had a different mind for each part, all minds were Chrysalis as she bit out with the snake head and slashed with lion claws. She managed to splatter another two of the living paintings, but it soon become obvious how pointless that endeavor was as she saw the paint start to slickly move back together, even the two she’d crushed as a mammoth just a moment ago!

As one, the dozens of paintings, many still just floating in the background and watching with amusement, laughed and spoke in a chiding voice, “You shift form with skill and alacrity, but do you plan on doing this forever? You might want to think more about what it means to be tested, what it is that’s being measured.”

“If it’s my power or cunning you’re testing you’ll find I have both to spare, and I’m not going to be daunted by a bunch of colorful decorations with toothpicks!” Chrysalis shot back, grimacing a bit as her real voice was coming out in her chimera form, rather than the younger and more easily disguised voice she had as ‘Vespid’. Perhaps Ocellus wouldn’t notice? The young Changeling had... not run away? Chrysalis had expected the soft hearted child to be either hiding somewhere or making a line straight for the exit, but instead Ocellus stuck close to Chrysalis’ side, shifting form herself into a burly bear with pale blue fur and pink stripes.

“Umm, can’t we, uh, talk about this, maybe? Violence isn’t a good solution for our problems, you know?”

“We’re not solving a problem, little one,” said the paintings in their unified voice, echoing in silver chimes over the dark, desolate tomb, “We’re proposing one. What do you do when you know you’re going to be reborn, perhaps thousands of years in the future, and have to give your future self all of your immense power? Could you trust that future self to use that power for the same reasons you would? How do you test the quality of your own soul, but born into a new body, with possibly new, worse lessons and experiences than the ones you learned before?”

Ocellus’ bear form tilted her head with a growling bear noise of confusion, “I... don’t understand. How does stabbing your future self test anything?”

“Watch and learn then, child. My old friend Eos may have been wrong about a lot of things, but the idea that life and death situations bring out our true character was one I ended up agreeing with.”

The paintings moved in a swarm, and Chrysalis tensed as she saw a pair of them fly right into each other, their paints mixing and swirling together as they reshaped not unlike a Changeling’s morphing! Only instead of a creature, the mixed paintings took the form of a huge, extended blade, like the dagger writ large as a massive cleaver that slashed down with incredible speed and might! Chrysalis and Ocellus rolled apart, going in opposite directions as the paint blade cleaved a gouge in the stone ground where they’d been standing. On impact, the weapon of arcane paint morphed again, rippling into a twisting line of paint with a blade tip still sharp on its end as it chased Chrysalis.

On instinct, Chrysalis turned to block the attack with her right forearm, where her Bakkoto had remained, hidden under her morphing. The potent gauntlet absorbed the blow of the blade tip, which continued to extend and push Chrysalis backwards, and right towards a line of other living paintings that had gathered behind her with daggers bared! With a feral growl, Chrysalis concentrated and transformed the snake tail of her chimera form, turning the flexible appendage into a hard sheath of dark adamantine. With a whipping motion she struck with the metallic snake limb, bowling over several of the paintings she was being pushed into and splattering them against the wall or pillars. Others were fast enough to twist around the blow and come at Chrysalis’ side, stabbing with their daggers.

However, with a loud roar, Ocellus in bear form jumped on top of those paintings, slashing with thick claws, and spilling paint about in a colorful display of... well, not gore, but more like modern art. A reluctant part of Chrysalis was somewhat impressed. The child wasn’t weak, or a coward. All the more annoying, then, that she’d ‘reformed’ like all the rest. Thorax was wasting the potential of her hive by relying on diplomacy with the ponies, when it was clear the Changelings had the power to secure their future without opening themselves to such vulnerabilities.

Further thought along those lines was rudely interrupted by a sticky sensation across her chimera form’s paws, and Chrysalis found herself grounded to a halt. Looking down with her tiger and goat heads, she saw that the splattered paint from the constructs she’d smashed had congealed around her feet and hardened, turning into a growth of goop that held her fast. A sharp whistle of air was her only warning before she saw a whole cavalcade of living paintings then array themselves above and around her, flinging their daggers at hypersonic speed.

Stuck in position, she switched forms, the blaze of sickly green flames engulfing her as the daggers snapped in with deadly force. The sound of metallic clanking filled the air as most of the daggers bounced off of her new shape, that of a huge, gravely shelled tortoise, the shell itself further hardened with traces of adamantine. Unfortunately she’d no sooner deflected the daggers in such a manner that a quartet of paintings fused together in a kaleidoscope swirl of colors to reform into a giant hammer that smashed down on top of her tortoise form with horrendous force.

Chrysalis felt the air blasted from her lungs and pain wrack her body as the ground beneath her cracked in a wide spiderweb, her body driven down several feet into hard stone. Only the raw durability of her present form kept her from suffering worse injury, but she felt the sting of a cracked rib quite distinctly.

“Chrysalis!” Ocellus shouted.

Wait, what did she just-!? Chrysalis realized through a haze of pain, only to blink blearily at herself. She was back in her original form, the hammer blow having stunned her enough to cause her to drop her tortoise shape. Ocellus, still in bear form, paused in slashing apart another of the living paintings to look at her, not in shock, but dire confirmation. The expression of someone who’d already guessed who Chrysalis was, and was simply having it confirmed.

“Hmph, so the gig is up, hmm? Well, whatever, that merely means I’ve no more reason to hold back,” Chrysalis spat, feeling liberated, despite the pain still boiling in her chest. With a malicious scowl she let magic surge through her and changed form, the snap of green flames burning away the last of the paint holding her in place as she took the form of a strange, long tailed raven with green-tipped feathers. No normal bird, this tropical Storm Crow was faster and more agile than most terrestrial birds, and Chrysalis moved at lightning speed to zip away from the second blow from the giant hammer that came at her.

Other living paintings followed her course, chasing her in streaks of color, daggers forming and flying like a storm of pastel shrapnel. Chrysalis bobbed about, ducking and weaving through the shower of sharp weaponry, daggers embedding in the tomb walls and pillars as she flew towards the sarcophagus at the end of the room. If she could just retrieve the Relic, then she wouldn’t need to pass any stupid ‘tests’ her previous self had conjured up! ‘

“Ah ah ah, no cheating by grabbing the prize before you prove yourself worthy,” chided the paintings, streams of them forming together around the sarcophagus before Chrysalis could get to it. The paint bubbled and frothed like a fountain, forming into one giant copy of Laverna’s head that guarded the Relic’s resting place. It opened its mouth and out from that mouth shot a series of extending spikes, forcing Chrysalis to twist and turn to dodge out of the way in time.

Still in mid-air, Chrysalis reverted to her true form, wings buzzing to stay airborne as she pulled back her right hoof. Her Bakkoto glowed and shivered with the anticipation of use, and Chrysalis felt the spiritual weapon greedily suck in her magic to empower itself as the writhing set of nine segmented chain whips were wreathed in emerald fire.

“You won’t stop me from claiming what I deserve!” she growled at the paintings, “After everything I’ve lost and suffered, I’ll finally get it all back! My kingdom, my followers, my respect!”

With a whip of her arm, the chain blades of her Bakkoto flew out at high speed, transforming with her Changeling magic as they went. Sharp, insectile limbs spread from the lengths of chain blades, dripping venom, each one taking on the living form of a deadly form of rare giant centipede whose very carapace was coated in lethal toxin. These centipede blades lashed into the painting that had taken the shape of Laverna’s head, but the paint, while splashed and sliced by the sharp striking tendrils, did little more than slightly smoke at the touch of the venom. Laverna’s visage looked at Chrysalis with a mixture of disappointment and sad amusement.

“Is that all that matters to you? What use is a kingdom, followers, or even respect to someone with no sense of self-worth?”

A ragged growl of frustration sputtered from Chrysalis as she dodged a set of living paintings that came at her now with arms moved into long, curving sickles. For a few seconds she spun and slashed among them, the centipedes of her morphed Bakkoto blades dancing around her in a blurring flash of strikes. She felt the sting of several cuts as the living paintings just kept multiplying in number, even as she cut several in half and decapitated another by wrapping a centipede blade around it’s neck.

Fire seemed like the only thing that worked, and so changing tactics she flew down to the ground and then rapidly flew backwards while maintaining her facing with the sarcophagus and the giant head surrounding it. This put most of the living paintings in front of her as well, and she pulled the chain blades of her Bakkoto back, morphing them first into their base blade form and swirling them about in a cyclone of slashes to bunch the paintings into one narrow cone-shaped area.

Then, with the chain blades hovering in front of her like snakes dancing to her tune, she morphed them into the huge, noble visages of red scaled dragons. As one the nine dragon heads belched forth thick blasts of bright orange flame. In response the paintings all gathered together to form one large, whirlpool mass in front of the sarcophagus and the head of Laverna. Flames of draconic and Changeling magic clashed with the seething shield of enchanted paint, filling the chamber with a deafening hiss.

Some of the paint was vaporizing, causing a multi-hued mist to form, and hidden in this mist, unseen by Chrysalis who was completely focused on burning away the paint, a set of flying paint-born blades flew out. They crisscrossed around the edges of the flame and came right at Chrysalis from several sides, and she only noticed them when it was too late to defend herself.

But big blue octopus tentacles wrapped around her and yanked her out of harm’s way. Chrysalis lost concentration on her dragon heads, her Bakkoto morphing back to chain blades as she found herself set down by a floppy blue octopus that soon morphed back into the shape of Ocellus.

Breathing heavily, and looking between Ocellus and the floating paint blades that had nearly skewered her, Chrysalis pressed her lips tight into a flat glower, “Why haven’t you run away, yet? You know who I am. You knew before I even revealed myself.”

Ocellus looked away, biting her lip and her wings fluttering in nervous tension, “I don’t know. I should. I should warn King Thorax that you’re here. But if... if I leave you here, these crazy paintings might kill you.”

“Augh! Child, were you born slow witted!?” Chrysalis snarled, “When you have the chance to leave your enemy behind to die, you do it! You don’t save them, then stand about awkwardly when they ask you why you’re being stupid! So run away, already. Go tell that pea-brained fool, Thorax, that I’m coming for my throne. Go on! Shoo!”

She shoved Ocellus back towards the area where the exit in the ceiling was. She wasn’t sure why. If anything it would be more beneficial for her if Ocellus stuck around. Not only was the child proving useful in a fight, but it’d be to Chrysalis’ advantage regardless of whether Ocellus survived or not. If she did, then Chrysalis had an easy hostage to use against Thorax to secure her and Platinum’s escape. And... if Ocellus died down here, then there’d be no one to tell the truth of who Chrysalis was. She could re-assume the form of Vespid and escape.

Despite this, Chrysalis was just... annoyed. Ocellus’ very presence was making it hard to think clearly.

By now she noticed the paintings had not resumed their attacks, and Chrysalis narrowed her eyes in suspicion as she saw the whirlpool of paint then separate back into a swarm of Laverna paintings, with the huge head of the ancient alicorn looming over them and looking at both Chrysalis and Ocellus with curiosity.

“I see...” said the head painting, chuckling with an echoing chorus that was mimicked by the other paintings, “My reincarnation truly is a thick skulled idiot, it seems. Can’t even see what’s plain under her nose.”

“If you’re going to keep trying to kill me, do it, and stop with the puerile commentary!” Chrysalis shouted, “I’ve had just about enough disrespect and insults to last several lifetimes by now!”

“Oh, but I’m finally starting to see something interesting. I think I just need to give you the right kind of... push,” the head of Laverna said, with a rather uncharacteristic aura of menace as her eyes suddenly focused on Ocellus.

Then, for the first time since the fight had started, one of the living paintings flung its dagger not at Chrysalis, but straight at Ocellus.

Sand was ripped up in great gouges as the enormous metal claw bearing a skeletal face in its palm moved with sound cracking speed to try and rip Chrysalis asunder. The Bount Chrysalis kept pace with her Doll, running alongside it as she seemed to direct it with gestures of her left hand that bore the golden claw-sheath over her finger. With deft motions using Sonido, the real Chrysalis looked as if she was sliding along the sand in shutter frame snippets, always a step ahead of the Doll’s strikes.

She wasn’t planning to let the Bount’s little helper pin her down again and start draining her reiatsu.

“Zecora’s knock-off must be desperate to dredge up a Bount and human versions of me to try and even the so-called ‘odds’,” Chrysalis taunted with a smile that dripped with patronizing amusement, “But bravo on continuing to prove why I’m already living my best life. It’s good to feel such vindication, looking at all these other pathetic ways I could have turned out.”

“You call that taunting, you basic-bitch narcissist?” said the Fullbringer Chrysalis, leaping overhead on flickers of Bringer Light as she flung her arms wide and directed a boiling swarm of jade scarabs that flew down in several distinct masses. Where the scarabs went, reiatsu infused mandibles and scything legs tore, and Chrysalis couldn’t fully slip past them even with the superior speed of her Sonido. It wasn’t a question of speed, but simple area and mass, which the scarabs filled to such an extent that she had to tear through them physically to get through the swarm.

Which wasn’t a problem for her, given every smooth cut or ragged tear healed up almost as fast as the injuries were made.

She flickered up to get right in the Fullbringer’s face, grinning all the while as she cut vertically with her Zanpaktou. Scarabs, acting on seemingly unconscious defense, swarmed together and locked limbs and plated backs into one solid shield that surprisingly held up against Chrysalis’ blow, at least for a second. A second which was all the Fullbringer needed to leap out of the way as the twin dragons of black ink that the Witch Chrysalis had summoned to come flying in from either side and bite down on Chrysalis’ body, slamming her into the ground.

On impact they kept going, tearing and dragging her across hundreds of feet of sand, and right towards a huge crest of bright purple ink that the Witch had just finished spraying out with her twin paint guns. Adjusting her glasses, the Witch Chrysalis gave a small, thin smirk as she intoned, “Inks Spellcode Fifty One: Bed of Razors.”

From the ground where the crest of ink was set, purple blades of razor thin energy arose like a series of upwards flying guillotines, just as the two ink dragons pushed Chrysalis into the field. She was struck multiple times, but a combination of her Hierro and insane regenerative powers left her laughing instead of screaming as she coiled her legs and sprang upwards, spinning with her sword and letting her raw spiritual pressure flow forth along with her blood. Shockwaves knocked the dragons to the side, smashing through mirrors, and the Witch retreated into one of the mirrors, scowling.

Letting blood seep from her own slit wrist and licking her wound with a gleeful laugh, Chrysalis flung more of her blood around, drenching the ground, “No, no, no, try harder! Or is Zecora’s reiatsu just not enough to sustain the four of you at a level that can make this fun for me?”

“She’s really kind of shallow, isn’t she?” commented the Bount Chrysalis with a tone drier than the desert they stood in, cocking back her arm. Her Doll mimicked the motion, floating back as the clawed hand placed its fingers together into a singular, thrusting blade. With a punch, the Bount launched her Doll like a rocket, blasting forward with such speed that it sent out a shockwave strong enough to scatter sand like it was a parting sea.

Chrysalis thrust out her own Zanpaktou and took the oncoming blow on the tip of her blade, the giant clawed fingers of the Doll now spreading a shower of sparks as it pushed against the very tip of the Zanpaktou. Chrysalis dug her heels into the air, keeping herself in place against the continuous, grinding blow. But only for a moment, as she already felt the Doll trying to suck up her spiritual energy. She just used that one moment to pool a Cero sphere into her free hand and shoved it up into the skull face on the Doll’s palm and discharged the brilliant emerald beam.

The Doll wasn’t destroyed but it was sent flying, and Chrysalis licked her lips while spreading more of her reiatsu out, filling the scattered splatters of her blood that she’d distributed seconds ago, “Shallow? Come now, is it shallow to know what you love and to pursue it with passion? You look like you’re so devoid of joy that you hardly love anything, my dried out Bount.”

“You have no idea what I’m about,” said Bount Chrysalis, gesturing with her hand and drawing back her Doll, which was smoking and singed from taking the Cero, “And I don’t care to compare ideologies with a madwoman.”

“Ugh, so deadpan and serious! You might be worse than the Soul Reaper. Now, where is our Quincy double? Don’t think I failed to notice you weren’t joining in the fun! Where did you go, Quincy?”

The Quincy failed to appear, and instead the Witch and Fullbringer both attacked together, each rushing out of a different mirror from among those floating nearby. With slick arm motions, the Fullbringer dripped forth blood from her fingers and generated from that a waterfall of scarabs that rapidly interlocked together to become a large pair of mandible blades that the Fullbringer wore on her arms as she struck with surprising strength and speed. The Witch, similarly, spread thick red ink from her paint guns which extended and transformed into twin bayonet-style blades that the Witch used to launch into a whirlwind spin of swift strikes.

All three women became a wild blur of motion as Chrysalis used her Zanpaktou and free arm to bat aside the rain of blows, going so far as to let the Fullbringer and Witch get in a few nasty hits just so she could enjoy the look of frustration on their faces as her wounds healed and she countered with brutally swift and powerful kicks. The air cracked with each roundhouse kick she counter-attacked with, almost instantly putting the Witch and Fullbringer on the defensive, at least until one kick against the crossed bayonets of the Witch sent her flying into the ground, and another one caught the Fullbringer under the chin and left her cartwheeling up through the air.

“Aw, I love the enthusiasm, but trying to melee someone who doesn’t care if they’re cut is generally a poor tactic,” Chrysalis said, glancing down at the pools of her blood, which were now surging with the bubbling masses of fresh blood drones that rose up and gave off unearthly howls. “Especially when shedding my blood only gives me more loyal children who just oh so love doing what mommy tells them to. Like rip you to shreds.”

The horde of blood drones gave gleeful howls as they split into two groups, one going for the Bount, the other for where the Witch had fallen, but just then a veritable hailstorm of reishi bullets descended from on high. Like grass being torn through by a weed whacker, drones fell in droves as, some fifty feet higher in the air, the Quincy Chrysalis appeared from within a mirror, fresh with two silver gatling guns once more and both blazing with barrels spinning.

“I say it's time to put the children to bed!”

Chrysalis smirked and raised an arm to ready a Cero to blast at the descending Quincy, but found her arm halted as a sticky sensation coated her entire arm. Looking back to where the Witch Chrysalis had fallen, she saw her double rising, with a line of translucent ink extended from both of the bayonet blades attached to her paint guns. The Witch had attached the nearly invisible, clear ink amid the exchange of blows earlier, and now drew a final crest in front of her with more ink that sent lines of power burning purple through the strands.

“Inks Spellcode Sixty Two: Explosive Fuse.”

The energy transferred across the strands of ink almost instantaneously and generated a flaring blast of purple energy that wracked Chrysalis’ body and made her reel back. In the same instant she felt something digging under her skin, and saw the Fullbringer, having recovered from the blow she’d been stuck a moment ago, now standing atop a mirror higher up as she gestured with one of her mandible gauntlets. Green reiatsu flowed from her as something inside Chrysalis responded, scarabs that had been planted there just as the Witch had planted the translucent ink. These scarabs, hidden in the wounds Chrysalis had let heal, now dug their way free in sprays of blood, joining together and morphing to form thick chains of interlinked scarabs that wrapped Chrysalis up thoroughly.

“I think the old hag here really isn’t taking us seriously, eh girls? It’s starting to hurt my feelings,” the Fullbringer said.

“We need focus, not quips,” replied the Bount, rushing forward through the remaining piles of blood drones. With swift sweeps of her arms and legs, she smashed through several, while directing her Doll to make great clawing motions that sent drone limbs flying. She slid into position right under where Chrysalis was being held and gestured upward, and her Doll obeyed, facing its skull palm upwards. The skull’s mouth opened wide, and from its darkness came for a series of thick metal wires, tipped with curving blades much like the claws on the Doll’s fingers. These blades sunk into Chrysalis’ body and immediately began to start draining more spirit energy.

Meanwhile the Quincy flew right down to Chrysalis and pressed the barrels of her gatling cannons up against the Espada’s chest and head, licking her lips and grinning with bright eyes, “What did you say earlier, Chryssy? Try harder? How’s this for harder!?”

Barrels spun, and reishi bullets shot out in a high pitched percussion of thunder. The bullets of spirit particles tore into Chrysalis at point blank range, both gatling cannons outputting fire on par with a pair of Licht Regen barrages and then some. Chrysalis was thrown into the earth by the focused blasts, her body sent spinning about and twisting through the sands as tens of thousands of rounds hammered her. One side effect of this punishing assault was that the scarab chains and the Bount Doll’s wire blades were both destroyed, but that didn’t stop Chrysalis from being rag-dolled across the sands by the laughing Quincy’s unrelenting stream of bullets.

The Ruin infected Chrysalis through the bullets, more and more of the Quincy’s virulent reishi swimming through her spiritual makeup. It meant that her regeneration was slowed considerably as she twitched upon the sands, bleeding out as she forced her ragged body to stand. Her limbs were twisted, legs and arms with exposed bone and muscle through shot-through holes. Her rib cage was exposed, half of her face a red burrow of ruined meat, and countless other holes pockmarking her body like a piece of worn eaten paper.

“Heheh...hahaha...HAHAHA!”

Yet Chrysalis still laughed. She threw back her ruined head and laughed through a hole in her own neck, spewing blood as she laughed uproariously.

The Witch, Bount, Fullbringer, and even Quincy all looked at one another, the Fullbringer shrugging and pointing a finger at her head while making the circular ‘coo-coo’ gesture.

“I think you splattered too much of her brain, Quincy. She’s getting even more crazy, which is seriously saying something considering where we started,” said the Fullbringer.

“Don’t drop your guard, ladies,” said the Witch, readying her paint guns as her summoned twin dragons started to approach Chrysalis from behind, “Her regeneration is slowed, but she’s far from dead.”

“Then let’s finish her off, now,” said the Bount, and with a sweep of her hand her Doll opened its mouth and a set of regrown wire blades extended, flying right at Chrysalis. At the same moment, the dragons of black ink rushed forward like swift striking asps, opening fanged, abyssal jaws to try and savage the still laughing Chrysalis.

Who then stopped laughing just long enough to whip around at such supersonic speed that her form of blood stained, ragged limbs looked like it split into a dozen different copies. The ink dragons heads were cleaved from their bodies, and the wire blades severed through their cables, and shockwaves of air so sharp they cut like razors ripped past the Bount and Witch, cutting the former’s left arm off at the shoulder and cutting a thin gouge in the hip of the later, drawing sprays of blood.

“Hah...oh, pardon me for laughing, I was just... so happy,” Chrysalis said, the hole in her neck slowly closing, leaking blood down her chest, “You all really are trying your hardest, and it fills my heart with such ecstatic joy! I’m cherishing every moment of this. Zecora, dear, dear Zecora! You deserve the name more than the original! She never gave me this kind of pleasure! Killing a worthless Soul Reaper with my face, being pressed by so many others who look and sound like me. I have never had such a wonderful fight...”

She looked at the four mirror doubles with a look of almost genuine sorrow, which only made the accompanying smile all the more unsettling, “I’m sorry for holding back so much. I just didn’t want this to end so soon... but, well, I have a schedule to keep. My children need their exercise. My counterpart of this realm needs killing, oh so much killing. I regret we couldn’t do this for longer, but-”

She vanished, so swiftly and utterly that none of the mirrors fully realized where she was until the Bount was lifted off the ground with Chrysalis Zanpaktou stabbed through her back, exploding out of her front in a gout of crimson.

“-all good things must come to an end.”

Ocellus stood stock still, trembling with cold fear as she felt the dagger tip press against her neck. However, that’s all the living painting’s dagger did. Rather than tear through her throat, it merely hovered there a moment, before pulling back and dissolving.

Next to Ocellus, Chrysalis glanced at the young Changeling, then back at the assembly of living paintings and the facsimile of Laverna’s head, watching them both with a measuring eye. Chrysalis’ lips curled in a disdainful smirk, “Did you really think that would work? That I would step in the way of that blade, or push her out of the way?”

“Hmm, I wonder,” said the paintings, “You got this far with that child at your side. I may not know your history, but I can tell a lot from simply that fact alone. Now, why do you think it is that you didn’t try to protect her?”

“Don’t ask asinine questions!” Chrysalis scoffed, “What is she to me? A liability at worst, a useful servant at best. I’m no fool, Laverna, I know the game you’re playing at! You’re a sentimental, so-called ‘kind’ idiot, and the whole point of this childish test is to see if I have any trace of that inside me. Let me save you the trouble; I don’t! I have no need for such weakness! Neither do my hive, once I teach them their place once more, under their rightful Queen!”

Ocellus gulped, glancing between Chrysalis and the paintings. Her fear had caused her to revert to her natural form. As a child, it was hard on her to maintain bigger forms for a long time, and the fight had drained her considerably. She wasn’t sure she could shift again, without some time to rest. For now she felt rooted in place, unsure whether to be more afraid of the paintings, or the terrible Queen who had dominated the hive for so long. Yet even so, she didn’t regret saving Chrysalis. Something about that act had felt... right, even if it meant so little to the one being saved.

Laverna continued to watch them both, the head raising and eyebrow as the smaller living paintings kept where they were. It was as if they were in a standoff, where the fight could resume at any second, yet the tension held as Laverna spoke in the echoing chorus of voices, “That is a very large load of manure, Chrysalis. I know, because I spent much of my own life cherishing and caring for the very dregs of alicorn society, and I ran into plenty of those who were just like you. So utterly convinced of how ‘strong’ they were, telling themselves all the things they had to do to get what they wanted, convincing themselves of how worthless things like kindness, loyalty, or love were... and you know what I discovered?”

Another blade of paint formed near the head, much larger than the dagger, “All of them were lying to themselves, and needed a good slap across the face to show them the truth.”

The blade flew, faster than Chrysalis could see, but it struck neither her nor Ocellus. I struck the ceiling above Ocellus. It struck so hard that a huge chunk of stone fell straight down, big enough to crush the poor Changeling girl into paste.

The stone hit, cracking into pieces, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

And on the other side of it, Ocellus coughed some of that dust out of her lungs as she lay on her back, breath knocked out of her from the impact of Chrysalis having tackled her halfway across the room. Chrysalis grunted, rising up above Ocellus with a surprised and somewhat self disgusted look on her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. Ocellus honestly couldn’t, either.

Laverna chuckled, “Ah, there it is.”

“What... what did you do to me!?” roared Chrysalis, ignoring Ocellus and glaring at the paintings of Laverna, “Why did I do that!? Is this some kind of mind control?”

“Pfffthahah! Mind control!? You save a child’s life, and you honestly think you were mind controlled into it? Oh wow, I really did reincarnate into a serious basket case, didn’t I? No, Chrysalis, that wasn’t mind control. That was just you, acting without thinking.”

“Hogwash! Perhaps I did it because she’ll be useful to me as a hostage later... yes, that’s probably it,” Chrysalis played it off with a wave of her hoof, “I was scheming ahead to my inevitable confrontation with that lazy traitor, Thorax. My mind is so brilliant I just acted in my own self interest without needing to actually think about it. Hah! Take that, Laverna!”

“And apparently I reincarnated with no small amount of childishness and self-denial. Why do I feel like I’m talking to Eos?” the head sighed, then nodded at Ocellus.

“If you’re so sure, why did you not react that way to the dagger, but risked your life a second later with the ceiling chunk? You could have died just then, you know? Is a ‘hostage’ really worth that risk?”

A visible tremor, perhaps of rage or perhaps of stubborn denial, shook Chrysalis’ body and she cast a frightfully intense glare at Ocellus, her pupils dilated. Chrysalis’ voice was no less steady, nearly frothing as she stepped towards the living paintings with the blades of her Bakkoto writhing and twitching like agitated cobras, “Listen, and listen well, former me. Whatever it is you think you know about me? You. Don’t. I was born to consume love from others. I exist to take, not to give. Changelings must never give in to weakness, be it pathetic sentiment or fragile trust. We exploit, we cheat, we consume, and through this we thrive. That is the way it should be. That is the way it should have ALWAYS BEEN!”

“...No it isn’t.”

Chrysalis paused in her twitching advance upon the paintings and turned to look over her shoulder with a shaking eye at Ocellus. “What was that?”

Ocellus, terrified, but stalwart as she steadied her trembling legs, looked Chrysalis in the eyes and repeated herself, in a stronger voice above her previous whisper, “No it isn’t. It shouldn’t be that way. Not at all. And I think you know that.”

“Don’t tell me what I know, child! Insolent, insufferable, immature larvae!” Chrysalis seethed, shaking in place as if she couldn’t decide which way to direct her wrath, at the living paintings of a former life that was everything she could have been but had chosen not to, or the child who was a living reflection of the fact that every single one of those choices she’d made had been the wrong ones. Inside Chrysalis’ mind, a tearing was occurring, the storm of utter contradiction when one is slapped repeated with the reality of how clearly wrong one is, but is simply unable or unwilling to admit it to themselves. The Bakkoto blades shook and staggered, wriggling like wounded animals looking to protect their master. Some struck out at the paintings, and one or two at Ocellus, but none of them came close to hitting either, instead tearing into the remaining depictions of Laverna and her life upon the pillars.

“All of this is a LIE! A noble thief, living a selfless life aiding the dregs of society!? Hah! You probably just used them to bask in the personal praise of those lesser than yourself, Laverna! And you, child, telling me I’m wrong!? That that buffoon King of yours is making the lives of Changelings better!? He’s ruining all of you! He’ll get all of you killed! Mark my words, all of this peace, sunshine, and rainbows nonsense will just leave all of you vulnerable for when somebody decides to take advantage of your weakness! I would never let that happen! Under me, the Changelings would rule forever!”

“We would be hated, forever,” Ocellus said, looking downcast, voice still strong, but heavy with sadness, “We’d be alone. Starving for scraps of love we’d have to steal. We learned better, that day Thorax showed us. We learned we didn’t have to be afraid of the world. We could learn to love it, and maybe in turn, our neighbors would love us in turn. We’re full, Chrysalis... every day, we get all the love we could have dreamed of, and all we had to do was stop believing in your lies.”

She gulped, still clearly afraid, but standing firm despite that fear, not looking away from Chrysalis. “Maybe you should stop believing them, too.”

While it was only the span of a few seconds, time passed with the eternal breath of a glacier, barely moving. Chrysalis looked at Ocellus, as if the small Changeling girl had more power than any spell or weapon the ponies had ever wielded against her. Chrysalis turned her back on Ocellus, no longer twitching, body as still as cold stone.

She then exploded into motion, letting out a noise that was one part roar of denial, one part anguished cry of understanding, and all coated in a thick, pitch black layer of desperation and borderline madness. She went right for the line of living paintings, the Bakkoto blades snapping into blinding, high-speed motion. There was no finesse to Chrysalis’ technique, just savage, desperate brutality and force as she slammed into the paintings, who were just a shade too slow in responding to the assault.

Chrysalis knew full well she couldn’t destroy the paintings, but all she had to do was get them out of the way for a few moments. Like an oiled shadow she struck, each of the nine chain blades flashing around her in a focused cone of severing devastation. Paintings of Laverna were torn into quarters, limbs spewing prismatic blood, heads flying in rainbow splattered patterns. Chrysalis didn’t stop or slow, she went barreling right through the mass, carving a path to the head.

With no time to do much else, the head coalesced itself around the sarcophagus, mouth opening to extend a wash of paint that lit up with blinding light as it channeled its magic into a singular, focused spear point of magically reinforced energy, “Until you learn how right the girl is, you can’t have this Relic.”

Chrysalis just gave another wild, desperate glare, breaking through the cluster of living paintings and rushing the head. The spear of churning, prismatic light shot forth, and Chrysalis brought the nine chain blades of her Bakkoto together, transmuting them in a flash of green flame into a single adamantine spike of jagged metal. She rammed the spike into the spear of energy, splashing its colorful potency across the room, which shook the chamber, caused two of the nearby pillars to crumble, and cracked the stone steps leading up to the sarcophagus.

“I...I... can’t... be wrong...” Chrysalis grunted as she strained against the full magical output of the paintings, the constructs flowing into the head construct and adding their power to the outpouring of force in the spear that grinded against the Bakkoto. “I can’t accept it... I can’t!”

“Then. Why. Did. You. Save. The. Girl!?” Laverna’s voice echoed, both from the painting, and from something buried deep inside Chrysalis.

“Because...! Because...”

Chrysalis couldn’t do it. Even if the answer was wriggling itself up her throat, she was choking on the truth of things. So much better, it seemed, to just bury herself in denial. In the haphazard belief... the delusion that she could get back everything she lost if she just got ahold of enough power. It was too sweet a lie to let go of. The truth, too painful to face. What even was she if she wasn’t Chrysalis, ruthless Queen of the Changelings, destined to bring her people to glory as they ruled over all other lands? Every single choice she had ever made had been for that, and she’d never once considered letting go of it.

Not when the lovesick Princess and her Prince had blasted her and her army away from Canterlot in a shockwave of pure love magic.

Not when her own people had betrayed her and destroyed her throne and home in a blinding moment of choosing to give love rather than take it, a thing she’d never imagined even being possible.

Not when she’d been starving and alone, huddling in Equestria’s forests, mad with rage and grief, plotting vengeance upon the ponies.

Not when she’d encountered a seeming unstoppable, immortal, infinitely more cruel version of herself from another world that terrified her to her core.

None of that had managed to make Chrysalis truly doubt herself or her chosen course. Ever.

Just a child. One, stubborn, intelligent, brave child, speaking a truth Chrysalis didn’t want to hear.

And even then, she didn’t have the strength to stop. Only press forward with desperation and the knowledge, deep down, that just like every other time... she was going to fail.

Everything went cold, such a dramatic and immense dip in temperature that Chrysalis almost thought that not all of the paintings had entered the head, that one of them must have snuck up behind her to stab her in the back. But this wasn’t the chill of death, just good, old fashioned freezing air, swift and merciless as a blizzard.

“Plumet; Fuyukogo.”

Snow and ice rushed past Chrysalis, coating the stone steps and turning them to pure frost while not touching her. The painting of Laverna’s head, towering, still expunging the spear of rainbow energies, widened its eyes as this wave of sub-zero frost washed over it. Ice grew up around its edges, and the spear of power slacked, weakening rapidly.

“Who... are you...?” Laverna asked, even as more ice layered itself over the head.

Platinum, striding forward past Ocellus, with her Zanpaktou held aloft before her in a sheath of unicorn magic and freshly transformed into its Shikai form of a chilling, blue bladed tulwar, eyed the scene critically. Then she redoubled the power of cold and ice spewing from the tip of her Zanpaktou, “Platinum. Soul Reaper. And your reincarnation’s friend.”

“Hah... so I was right...”

That was the last thing the painting said before it froze over entirely, so much of its magic having been expended upon Chrysalis that it had nothing left to resist the spiritual power of Platinum’s Shikai. And the moment it became fully encased in ice, and the spear of magical energy vanished, Chrysalis’ momentum carried her forward until the adamantine spike she’d formed her Bakkoto blades into smashed through the ice sculpture. The entire frozen head collapsed into a sparkling display of frost chunks, and the sarcophagus, while still partially frozen, was left clear.

Chrysalis, exhausted, collapsed against the harsh, cold stone edge of the sarcophagus... and just... started yelling, indistinctly, her cries echoing off of the walls with such a colorful spectrum of pained emotions it was like listening to the defeated, not the victor of a battle.

Platinum, cocking her head to the side at this, turned a glance towards Ocellus.

“I... suspect I missed something important.”

Chrysalis savored the feeling of her Zanpaktou pierced through the warm meat of the Bount’s back. For mere mirrors, they certainly bled like anything else. Their meat crunched and tore with the same satisfaction of real people. She twisted her wrist to fling the body off her blade, only to find the Bount didn’t come off. Instead, the Bount Chrysalis stubbornly grabbed the foot or so of the Zanpaktou poking out of its chest, and turned her head to give Chrysalis a bleeding grin with her otherwise dull eyes suddenly lighting up red.

Blood spat from the Bount’s lips as she said, “Getting this close to a Bount isn’t smart for someone made out of spirit energy! You’re not the only one who hungers.”

Shockingly sharp teeth dug into the joint where Chrysalis’ neck met her shoulder, the Bount biting deeply, then drinking even deeper of Chrysalis’ reiatsu. Chrysalis smiled at the audacity, even as she simultaneously snarled and twisted the handle of her Zanpaktou, ripping at the Bount’s guts.

The Witch and Quincy both moved in, the Quincy the faster of the two as her form winked out in a cacophonous explosion of speed. She used both her gatling cannons in a sidelong, battering blow from Chrysalis’ right side. Chrysalis raised her right arm to block, but wasn’t able to ground herself well enough to keep her, along with the Bount, from being knocked across the ground like a living soccer ball.

“Keep her in one spot, Bount!” shouted the Quincy, aiming her gatling cannons. Both barrels began to spin up, but rather than fire bullets, both began to form growing azure rings of charging reishi particles around themselves. Chrysalis recognized it as a twin version of the same technique the Quincy had tried to charge up before.

The Bount, in response, not only bit down harder on Chrysalis’ neck as their bodies ground to a halt, but she brought down her Doll. The bus-sized, clawed hand of metal slammed down, spearing Chrysalis’ legs and arms with its long, curved finger blades with an impact that generated a sinking crater around her and the Bount. Chrysalis, still using her wrist to twist her sword in the Bount’s insides, saw the Bount growing paler by the second. It was fairly plain the Bount could sustain herself by consuming Chrysalis’ reiryuku, but nowhere near fast enough to make up for having a sword actively shredding her insides. It was remarkable the Bount was even maintaining consciousness while withstanding so much pain.

Chrysalis was in pain, too, but that only fueled her as she ripped her limbs free of the Doll’s finger blades. Her own flesh knitted together faster than the eye could account for, and she bunched her legs under the Bount and kicked out with explosive force. This tore the Bount free from Chrysalis’ neck, and catapulted her straight up into the face of her own Doll, the momentum carrying both upwards like a rocket. Chrysalis lithely swung her legs around like a pole dancer, rising to her feet with a smile as her neck wound also closed.

Much to her chagrin, the two ink dragons she thought she’d dispatched now broke up out of the ground around her, streams of ink flowing from the Witch’s paint guns not only having reformed them, but juiced up the bodies of the summoned creatures. Their eyes burned red and their pitch dark bodies crackled with purple flickers of energy as both ejected thick beams of violet flame that instantly turned sand to glass as the twin jets of ashen heat converged on Chrysalis from both her left and right.

While she might have been able to tank the attacks, relying on her regeneration, the Bount had consumed a surprising amount of reiatsu, and while Chrysalis’ reserves of energy were indeed bountiful she was running low on time. Every minute increased the odds of the Equestrians responding to her children’s playtime, and discovering this location. As much fun as she was having right now, there were other matters on her docket tonight.

With a raw burst of speed, she used Sonido to slip right between the oncoming jets of annihilating flames and went for the Witch. She knew the Quincy was still charging up her attacks, but wasn’t concerned. The Quincy had let slip the fact that she needed the others to keep her pinned in one place for this technique to be effective, so all Chrysalis had to do was stay mobile and slaughter the others first to render her Quincy doppleganer’s plan defunct.

Her Witch counterpart had apparently accounted for this, because the moment Chrysalis came at her, Zanpaktou streaking a lethal line towards the woman in librarian clothing, the blade’s edge was halted by the sudden appearance of a goop laden barrier of dripping ink that surrounded the Witch like a bubble. Chrysalis’ pure strength was nothing to discount, however. She might not have been Tirek, but she was the Segunda Espada for more than just her regeneration. The barrier of spell ink was torn asunder almost instantly, but that still bought the Witch a fraction of a second to leap back with a prodigious jump that took her in a soaring arc away from Chrysalis.

“Oh no, she jumped. Whatever shall I do to catch her now- Gran Rey Cero!”

Being covered in her own blood already, it wasn’t hard to mix a little into a Cero firing from her mouth to generate a blinding, wide beam of space-warping blue energy that was still tinted with her natural aura of jade green. The Gran Rey Cero quickly caught up to the Witch, who raised her paint guns in a guard position, upon which her two ink dragons converged, covering her with the wrapping of their two serpentine bodies as the overwhelmingly powerful beam exploded over them.

More mirrors melted away under the blast and another fresh, burning crater joined the growing multitude upon the battlefield. The tremors from the blast were such that a fissure opened up in the sands, the land itself growing unstable from all of the conflicting energies, especially the Gran Rey Cero having destabilized the space of the area.

The Witch fell from the smoke of the blast, burned and bleeding, to crash into the ground. Not far away from her, coincidentally, the wounded Bount stumbled forward, clutching her torn gut that still dripped with thick rivers of blood. Half of her face charred away, the Witch still managed to adjust her glasses as she struggled to one knee, glancing at the Bount. Next to the Bount, her Doll floated, the skull face moaning and twitching.

“I won’t be able to keep my Doll under control like this,” the Bount said with a wince, “Not for much longer, at any rate.”

“I think both of us are sadly at our limit,” agreed the Witch, hiding an agonized grunt with a forced laugh, “I suspect working well with others isn’t the strong suit of any of us. Well... except one of us...”

“Enjoying a last bit of chit-chat before death, ladies?” asked Chrysalis as she appeared above them, aiming a palm downward in preparation to unleash a Cero that would wipe out the wounded pair together.

Before she could discharge the Cero, swarms of thousands of jade scarabs rushed forth in thick clouds around her. Coming out of dozens of the remaining mirrors, more and more scarabs swarmed together until they formed a tightening sphere around Chrysalis. The Fullbringer, stepping out of a mirror some distance away, right next to the Quincy, put a hand on the Quincy’s shoulder, “Bount, now!”

“Hmph, about time,” grunted the Bount, and with a focused growl she pointed a bloody hand at her Doll, “Do it, Raubtier! Transfer it all to her!”

It cost the Bount all of her remaining, conscious energy, but she forced her Doll through shear willpower to obey, despite her injuries. The Doll howled as it extended the wire blades from its mouth, but rather than target where the real Chrysalis was, the blades flew out and wrapped around the Quincy’s gatling cannons. Streams of gathered up reishi, all of the spirit energy that had been drained out of Chrysalis, now was shunted into the Quincy’s weapons just as they finished charging up the twin reishi circles that had been gathering power around the barrels of the cannons.

Chrysalis, unable to see past the scarab swarm, simply unleashed her Cero straight down. The intense green beam scythed through the scarabs, burning them away to motes of nothingness. It continued to slam down right on top of where the Witch and Bount stood, and both vanished in a massive blaze of emerald light. This powerful Cero nearly struck as hard as the Gran Rey Cero, incinerating a deep and wide hole of melted glass and sand that then tore across the desert in a destructive line for at least several kilometers.

With the scarabs scattered and two more of her mirror doubles destroyed, Chrysalis turned to look at the remaining pair, only to see blinding light as the Quincy fired off her technique.

“Zerstorung!” (Ruination)

A concussive noise ripped across the desert as the two rings of blue light fired forward at tremendous speed, moving and twisting about like homing discs following an erratic path. One flew above Chrysalis, while the other went below her, and both circles extended thick fields of intense blue light that connected together to trap her in a cylinder of reishi.

“Hah, normally just one ring is all I can charge up, but thanks to our dearly departed Bount, I’ve got enough of a boost to amp up two,” the Quincy chuckled, lowering her gatling cannons, “How’s it feel, Chryssy?”

“Hmm? Is this supposed to be doing something to me?” Chrysalis asked, looking at her encasement with mild interest. To this, the Quincy Chrysalis smiled wide.

“Give it a sec. You oughta start to feel it.”

Chrysalis did indeed start to feel it. A burning itch on her skin that soon rose to a fiery pain. She saw her skin start to flake off, blood dripping from welts and wounds rippling over her onyx flesh. Her regeneration began to fight this, but she also felt the intensity of the Quincy’s reishi infecting her with that Schrift, the Ruin. “Ah, I see what this is. These little rings are like a nice, big, reishi bath of your Quincy Schrift.”

“That’s right, and just one ring is usually enough to bring my opponent to their knees. Not often I can pull off hitting someone with two of them, but I guess that’s the benefit of working with a team,” the Quincy said, winking at the Fullbringer, who in turn gave a youthful shrug.

“Don’t you Quincy usually work in a big army or whatever?”

“Oh, I’m usually a lone operative among my kin, although Her Majesty does try to encourage me to work with the other Sternritter more closely,” the Quincy replied, to which the Fullbringer looked even more curiously at her.

“Wait, Her Majesty? Not His?”

“Hah, of course not! What, are the Quincy ruled by a King in your timeline? That’s weird.”

“Hold up! So who is it? Who’s Queen in your world? Because if it's just a female Sombra... well that’s kinda hot.”

“Ahem!”

Both the Quincy and Fullbringer turned their attention to the real Chrysalis, who was tapping her foot while her body was trying to dissolve under the focused Schrift power being generated by the twin Zerstorung. Yet for all that her skin was peeling and melting, regenerating yet still rotting away, Chrysalis’ own reiatsu was only growing, like the echo of thunder in a boiling stormfront.

“I appreciate the effort,” Chrysalis said, tapping her knuckles against the glowing blue edge of the reishi cylinder, which did cause one of the fingers to partially dissolve, “Personal kudos on pushing me this hard. This whole affair has proven far more than I expected out of a puppet recreation of whom I, clearly wrongly, assumed to be among the weaker Captains.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it, but can you just please die already?” asked the Quincy, but Chrysalis made a ‘tut-tut’ sound and waggled a hand partially dissolved to bone and muscle.

“Wasn’t speaking to you, actually. I’m talking to Zecora. I know you can hear me. This Bankai of yours is quite marvelous. Used properly, you might have managed to kill me. But your plan was flawed. You thought that by creating numerous versions of me you’d keep me off balance so the Quincy could get in a fatal blow with her Schrift. All that did was spread your own finite reiatsu out, ensuring each version of me couldn’t fight at their fullest...”

She smiled, even as part of her face melted to expose the teeth and gums of her jawline. Chrysalis pointed her Zanpaktou at a very specific point, at a jagged mirror about seven feet across that floated some forty feet away, “All the while exposing exactly where you were hiding yourself.”

“Shit!” the Fullbringer leaped forward, trying to get to the mirror in time, but Chrysalis was simply stronger and faster. With an explosive expulsion of power she ignored the Ruin wracking her body and tore through the barrier of the reishi cylinder. It did terrible damage to her, leaving her left arm a bony nub to the elbow, her head more skull and bone than flesh, but that didn’t so much as slow the Espada as she destroyed the sound barrier fifty times over and cut across the lone mirror in a flash of green light.

Chrysalis landed cleanly on the ground behind the mirror, rising up and stretching her arms like someone sunning themselves on the beach. Her body was slowly regenerating, but the power of the Ruin itself was weakening, as both Quincy and Fullbringer had fallen to the ground as the power supporting them had been abruptly severed.

The mirror cracked vertically down the middle where Chrysalis had struck it through. It broke in a series of dust motes, revealing in its place a bleeding Zecora, a similar vertical line cut from her shoulder to her hip. The Reigai fell into two pieces to the ground, the top half still alive as she coughed up blood, the empty handle of her Zanpaktou clattering from her hand.

“How did you... work out my position?”

“Absence of reiatsu, my magnificent, willful puppet,” said Chrysalis as she turned and knelt over the Reigai, placing the tip of her Zanpaktou over Zecora’s heart, “Perhaps if you’d concentrated all of your Bankai’s power on one version of me, I wouldn’t have noticed, or been too busy fighting against someone closer to my level. But by spreading it out to multiple mirrors, you gradually made it quite obvious where there was a dearth of reiatsu on this battlefield. Granted, it took time. These doppelgangers had to push themselves to their limit, before the drain on your Bankai was enough for me to see... but I figured it out soon enough.”

The Fullbringer, grunting in frustration, was crawling forward, with no power left to support her, and Chrysalis looked over at her and the Quincy. Less emotional than the Fullbringer, the Quincy was laying on her back, chuckling lightly.

“Damn... and here I thought I had your ass cooked.”

“You may well have, had Zecora given you her full power, just you, from the start,” said Chrysalis with a yawn, “Oh my, this was quite the exhausting fight. Truly it’s a shame you’re exiting the stage, Zecora. You’d have made a good friend for my needs.”

“You keep calling me Zecora... but you know I’m a Reigai. A puppet,” Zecora said, too weak to do more than whisper as the form of her body began to flicker away, the seeming flesh and blood of ‘Zecora’ slowly turning into a lifeless, ceramic puppet. Her purple eyes flickered ever more dull as her artificial left fled her.

“You’ve earned the name,” Chrysalis replied simply, pushing her sword into the woman to finish the job faster, “Killing a puppet would never have been this much fun.”

As the Reigai died, the Bankai, her Zanpaktou, and the remaining mirror doppelgangers died with her. The Quincy and Fullbringer broke into glass shards, the former still chuckling dryly and the latter still doggedly crawling as they both vanished. The mirrors that remained floating all broke, one after another, raining shards that glittered under the moonlight.

Chrysalis stood, enjoying the view for a moment, and contemplating the now empty, dead puppet body at her feet.

With the Reigai and their Bankai gone, the power of the Quincy’s Schrift was gone as well. Her body regenerated from all the horrendous damage it had taken in a series of wet, creeping sounds of regrowing flesh. It was only a matter of a handful of seconds for all of the damage of the draining battle to be gone, leaving a near naked, blood soaked Chrysalis to breathe deeply of the desert night air.

With a satisfied sigh, she licked some of her own blood off of her chin and tapped her Zanpaktou against her hip, “Well, that was bracing. Who to kill next?”

Her eyes lit up with decision and she gave an affirming snap of her fingers as she smiled with glee, “Right then, my trashy Equestrian counterpart!

Author's Note

I'm still not 100% sure on the plural of Chrysalises, but Google assures me that's what it is. Chrysalises... Chrysali... Chrasalie... well, either way, our pair of queen bugs have had a busy day.

As always, hope you folks enjoyed the chapter and my thanks for reading. Any and all questions, comments, or critiques are highly appreciated. 'Till next time!