The Guardian's Angel

"Are you sure this is such a good idea?" Rainbow Dash asked as the six ponies made one last stop before approaching the visitor. "I mean..." She rubbed the back of her head. "Maybe he just really wants to be left alone."

"We've let him be alone for far too long already," Twilight replied, her tone both confident and determined. "I need to know why!" She stomped her hoof on the ground as her voice grew louder. "From what I've seen, he could have taken over Equestria without even breaking a sweat! I mean..." She glared at her friend. "Have you forgotten what he did to Tirek!?"

"Don't remind me..." Rainbow Dash whispered, avoiding Twilight's fierce gaze. "Not even I wanted to hurt him that bad."

"Well, don't you at least want to know why he did that?" Twilight leaned towards her conversation partner, forcing her to re-establish eye contact. "He could have done that to any of us! He doesn't even know us! He's never talked to any of us! He's so powerful that even Queen Chrysalis and King Sombra dare not show their faces around here again because of the sheer fear of what he might do to them, and yet, all this time he's been acting as though he's just a mindless slave to the ponies of Equestria!" With every sentence said, she leaned more and more towards the pegasus, up to the point where she was standing on just two legs and the pony in front of her had nearly sunk into the ground.

"Okay, okay!" Rainbow Dash retreated. "I get the picture. Jeez... I never said I wasn't curious myself. It's just..." She paused for a moment, drawing the attention of all her friends towards her. "As hard as it is to admit... after all the things I've seen him do..." She gulped loudly as she struggled to get the words out of her mouth. "Even I'm afraid of him." She hung her head with regret, afterwards quickly lifting it back up and adding in a not-so-convincing tone, "Just a bit."

"I know what you mean, sugarcube." Applejack comforted her friend. "He's been there to help save me and my farm plenty of times, and even just seeing him still always gives me the willies!"

"Well, umm, he's not that sca--"

"I must say, darling, I have to agree," Rarity interjected. "Even I would have gladly kissed my savior's hooves after getting liberated from getting dragged down into an underground tunnel by those filthy diamond muts!" With a furious expression, she clenched her hoof as she recalled her most repugnant acquaintances, but her face lost its anger quickly. "But after I saw him... I... I just..."

"Froze up?" Pinkie asked and continued after seeing Rarity reply with a slow nod. "Eh, I guess I know what you mean." She sat down with an impassive expression on her face and crossed her forelegs.

"Umm, I didn't think he was--"

As if deaf to Fluttershy's voice, Pinkie continued, "I mean, he didn't even let me throw a party for him! Ever!" the pink pony exclaimed as she pushed her forehead against that of her fashionista friend's and bulged her eyes out towards her. "And I tried so many times with so many parties! A welcome party! A welcome back party! A "Thanks for saving me from a giant falling boulder" party! Even a "Totally not a party" party! And he was always gone before I even got chance to sing him a song! What's up with that?" She calmed her voice and crossed her forelegs in frustration. "I really thought he'd fall for that last one."

"Well, maybe he was just--"

"As brutal, scary and unfriendly as he may be, Equestria still owes him a debt we can never repay," Twilight persuaded her friends.

"But... he's not unfr--"

"Lets go, girls," Twilight said and marched forward, rallying her friends up behind herself. "I'm not leaving until I get my answers." As they slowly approached the mysterious creature, Twilight recalled her own experiences with him.

I will never forget how he first arrived to Equestria... It wasn't long after that incident with Nightmare Moon. One day, the heavens themselves just got split in half, and after a massive bolt of lightning had struck the ground near our hooves, we saw him emerge from the light completely unscathed... Twice as tall as our oldest alicorn princesses. His face covered by a hood. His body clad with armor of gold brighter than the sun and silver more majestic than the moon... Not to mention -- the wings on his back that stretched so wide that even fully grown dragons could barely compare ... We had never seen anything like him before, so it was only natural that we assumed the worst as we saw him trudging towards us. Rainbow Dash was the first one to act. Without a second of consideration, she just flew up and kicked him... Poor girl... Can't say I've ever seen anypony stub their hoof so hard. Twilight's face suddenly filled up with sorrow.

As if nothing had happened, he just kept on marching towards us... We weren't about to take any chances. Me, Celestia, Luna and a few other unicorns started shooting at him with our horns... To our utter awe and dismay, he simply caught all of our bolts with his hand... The first round of shots seemed to at least inflict some burns on his skin, but they vanished just as quickly as they appeared... As if that wasn't bad enough. When we tried again, our magic seemed to have no effect whatsoever! A slight feeling of anxiety got seeped into Twilight's mind upon recalling this part of the memory.

"I suffer. I endure. I adapt."

I will never forget those words from him... The way he said them... he sounded so... tormented... I'm still not entirely sure about the purpose of those words, but I'm certain they had something to do with the way his skin just became immune to our magic after the first few bolts... Not knowing what else to do, we all bowed before him and hoped he would show mercy.

"There's nothing that your kind can do to hurt me, I'm afraid."

We began to tremble from hearing his ominous voice. We thought that he would be the beginning of all our worries... but as we lifted our heads up and opened our eyes again, we saw him moving away from us. Unable to control my curiosity, I followed him for a bit. Before long, I saw him approach the Everfree Forest. He didn't go in, however. He simply walked up to a rather large tree, sat down and reclined against it... None of us knew what to make of all that, so we watched him. We watched him for hours on that day, and even after that day, we still checked up on him, from time to time... but no one ever saw him move an inch... Well, at least not until the day that we got attacked by the hydra.

"You have to take the leap of faith!" Pinkie shouted from across the chasm.

I don't know what I was thinking... but I wasn't about to become hydra food... I was so young back then. I could have easily teleported over the chasm if the event would repeat itself now. Twilight shook her head in slight shame. I still remember that moment so clearly. For a moment there, I was sure that I would reach that pillar, but the moment I realized that I won't make it, my heart nearly failed me before I even reached the bottom of the chasm... I closed my eyes and screamed my lungs out in fear of the worst, but I didn't feel any pain after that. I opened my eyes to make sure I was still in this plane... and that was when I saw him...

I stared at him for so long. I just couldn't believe my eyes when I realized that it was the same creature that we had feared so greatly for months, even despite the fact that he never even moved... Why in Equestria would he help me!? I had no clue... He carried me in his arms as gently as a mother holds her child, and he placed me back on the ground near my friends with the same kind of grace... I... I still couldn't stop staring at him with that dumb look on my face after that. When I finally came to my senses, I felt like I should at least thank him, but before I could breathe a word, he was already gone... The speed at which he flew off was beyond any known words. I couldn't even tell if he flew or just teleported!

I remember hearing Fluttershy saying that he saved her from that bully of a griffon that used to be Rainbow's friend, and apparently he also saved Rarity from a bunch dogs that liked to live in underground caves, but for me, that was the last time I got to saw him until the day that chocolate milk started raining from the skies. Twilight closed her eyes and hung her head. Her expression was painful to look at. I can't believe what Discord did to them... I never thought I'd see the day I would loathe my own best friends... Every single part of me wanted to tear Discord apart for what he did. Just as all hope seemed lost and I was about to tell my friends that I never want to see them again, he appeared out of nowhere, just like last time. He didn't hesitate to grab Discord by his throat and carry him half a mile up in the sky... I don't know what he said to him up there, but whatever it was, it scared Discord so bad that he instantly turned everything back to the way it was and even begged us for forgiveness... Funny... One moment I want nothing more than to blast twenty holes in him, but then, just like that, we're suddenly his new best friends.

He did about the same thing with King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis, except they simply tucked their tails and ran instead of sticking around to try and beg for our forgiveness... He saved us from dragon raids, timberwolves, fruit bat invasions. He even made his mind clear on what he thinks about the Flim Flam brothers' wacky contraption. Twilight giggled. That may have been a bit harsh, but boy did Applejack enjoy seeing the look on their faces after that... Oh! And the black plants coming from the Everfree Forest that seemed impervious to anything that we had to throw at them, he simply cut through them like butter! He moved much faster than the plants could spread and cleared all of Ponyville from them in a matter of seconds! That was absolutely astonishing! At that moment, all my doubts about him being even remotely evil vanished without a trace! I was certain that he was the very epitome of all things good and pure and didn't have a single thorn on his heart... but then Tirek decided to invade Equestria.

We had already pinned all of our hopes on him. Everything just seemed so desperate... I traded the combined magic of the alicorns of Equestria for just one last chance to be with my friends, but Tirek didn't seem intent on letting us enjoy the moment... As all seven of us joined together for one last hug -- Discord included -- he walked up to us with only one sinister thought in his mind... He wanted to wipe out the last hope that Equestria still had for survival.

"Pathetic," Tirek said as he looked down on them and lifted his foreleg up to stomp them.

But just moments before he got a chance to turn us into dust, our savior arrived, grabbed him by his horns and carried him way up in the sky. We gazed at the sight with wide-eyed excitement. We were just about ready to start cheering for him, but then, what I witnessed changed my opinion about him forever...

CRACK

"Aaaaaaaaagghhh!"

First, the skies echoed with the sound of Tirek's horns getting torn off, followed by his diabolic screams of pain, and lastly, the sound of impact that rose up from Tirek's collision with the ground after a fall so high it took nearly half a minute to end... We gazed at the fallen centaur for quite some time. It was no surprise that the creature that did that to him was long gone before we gazed back up into skies... Out of the kindness in our hearts, we went closer to Tirek to see if he was still breathing... Miraculously, he had survived, and even though he had just tried to end our lives mere minutes ago, we still couldn't help but feel sorry for him as we saw him lying there and wailing from the pain... When he finally got back up, we realized that he had lost all his powers along with his horns. We felt our own powers return, while he had shrunk back to his initial size.

It would seem that his horns served a purpose similar to that of unicorn horns, thus, he had been rendered powerless for good... Not just that, he also seemed... different. As he got up, we saw his face fill up with utter sorrow and regret. It seemed as though the evil from his heart had been extinguished along with his powers. We felt like sending him back to his prison would just mean rubbing salt in the wound, so we decided to let him walk free. He thanked us and left, saying that he would find his brother and apologize to him, admitting that he was the real betrayer out of the two of them... Strange... Our savior gave all of our enemies a chance to run or redeem themselves without inflicting any serious injuries, but with Tirek... Was that really the only way there was to make sure that Tirek would never try to take over Equestria again? Even if so, that was simply not the way that things are done here in Equestria! We don't just mutilate anypony! Not even our arch enemies!

I don't know who he is or what purpose does he serve, but I do know that he is more powerful than I can even imagine, and that, for some reason, he only ever uses that power to assist ponykind... even if his methods are sometimes a bit... controversial to ours.

I've waited long enough to find out that reason. I'm going to get my answers even if it kills me! With an expression full of unwavering confidence, Twilight stopped when she had come close enough to start a conversation with the creature. After all... if it weren't for him, I would have been dead long ago anyways.