Two days later :

"You tried everything against this creature ?" Celestia interrogated.

"Yes Princess Celestia", Twilight replied.

"And it didn’t stop, even for a second ?" Luna asked.

"I didn’t see a sign of relent", Twilight answered. "Our attacks didn’t scratch it. I can’t think of a way to stop this thing. It’s currently running havoc in the West, past the Smokey Mountains. I don’t know what lies in there".

"And neither do we. But according to the most recent testimonies, the creature is going to the South now. Applewood has been warned. Nopony lives…" Celestia began.

"My family’s rock farm !" Pinkie Pie interrupted. "It’s near the San Palomino Desert ! If that monster come to my family’s…" Her voice shattered as tears formed in her eyes and her mane deflated.

"Don’t worry", Celestia reassured. "We’ll warn them in a few minutes. Your family will be safe. Besides that, this creature is searching for a princess. I don’t think it will attack your family’s rock farm".

Pinkie Pie’s mane returned to its normal appearance, but she stayed distressed.

"Still", Starlight said, "we’ve got nothing against that thing, and I couldn’t find something useful in Sunburst’s books. I don’t know how this monster could withstand any attack aimed at it".

"Maybe…" Fluttershy squeaked. "Maybe… we could ask Discord to help us ? Maybe his chaos magic could stop that beast, if regular magic doesn’t work…"

"That is a great idea my dear !" Rarity beamed.

"Ah hope he’ll help. Sometimes he just ain’t… in the mood", Applejack mumbled.

"I’m going to write him a letter !" Fluttershy decided. "I’m sure he’ll come to help us get rid of that terrifying thing !"

"Discord’s magic is indeed very powerful. I have another idea if this one fails, but it will take time to prepare", Celestia explained. "It’s a very dangerous spell, and I will need Star Swirl's help. I’ll explain it to you in details, but we must wait for Discord’s answer first ; if he doesn’t want to come, I’ll summon him regardless".

Discord’s reply arrived two days later : he was apparently in a good mood or simply wanted to see Fluttershy, since he was coming to help.

Between the two days, the monster had had time to search throughout the South ; it was now coming towards places it had not yet visited in the middle of Equestria : Ponyville and Canterlot. It had spared Appleoosa and was walking towards the ruins of the Castle of the two sisters and the Everfree forest.

Discord, the Mane six, Starlight and Spike intercepted it before it reached the forest.

"What’s that thing ?" Discord asked when he saw the monster slowly approaching. "Wow, you said it’s making a mess of Equestria ? It’s so slow…"

"We don’t know what it is. I don’t think it comes from this world", Twilight explained briefly. "And maybe it’s slow, but it’s huge".

"Oh, and guess what : it’s totally unstoppable", Rainbow Dash added.

Discord teleported right next to the head of the monster, which paid no attention to him.

"Hey you !" The master of Chaos called out to the thing, hovering not far away from its face. "What about stopping, y’know, just for a sec ?"

The monster did not reply and Discord snapped his paw : underneath the creature, the plain changed instantly into a pool of bubble-gum. However, the substance failed to stick to the creature’s feet and it continued its walk unhindered. Discord snapped his claws and the giant turtle immediately sank in the pink substance, now bottomless.

"Problem solved", Discord triumphed.

With no warning and despite having no leverage to do so, the creature jumped out of the pool to a more stable place, shaking the ground. Not a single part of it was covered in gum, not even its hair.

"Persistent…" Discord muttered.

He snapped his claws again and shackles appeared on the creature’s hands and feet. It broke through with no effort, and the restrains immediately dissolved into a dense, heavy black smoke.

"What was that !?" Discord exclaimed in confusion.

For the second time since its arrival, the monster willingly stopped in its tracks and turned its head towards him.

"Stop. You are annoying me. You cannot know, but this kind of amusing magic is used to perform show tricks in my world… You may not have raw power like the others, but you possess a kind of magic with almost countless applications… However, you do have your limits… I can sense them… your chaotic nature binds you... you are just a mere piece of chaos… I wonder if you know it, but reality warping is so predicable… for me I must say… I see through every future action of your power, what your magic will do to space-time before you even know it".

"Hmmm. I also sense a powerful magic, your polar opposite, coming from those six over here… I feel… I sense… harmony, powerful bonds, hope, generosity, kindness, forgiveness, honesty, loyalty, laughter and the magic… the… friendship that ties all of these things together. You all hold great power… I see its vastness. But… it is utterly useless against mine. Nothing can stop me. I do not distort reality, I destroy it. I do not cause chaos, I annihilate it. When I walk, your entire world shake under my feet. When I jump, the foundations of your reality bend under my weight. When I talk, space and time break under my words. For I am Bowser, King of the Koopas !" The creature roared.

The roar repelled Discord a good distance away and violently bent the closest, unfortunate trees.

"My power and the primordial Darkness it contains will destroy anything you will try on me, chaotic being. I cannot be harmed, for I am the hardest thing in existence. I cannot be stopped, for it is the universe that moves under my feet. I cannot die, for I am the only thing that will persist through existence and beyond. Stop your useless tricks".

Undeterred, the draconequus snapped his paws again. This time, a huge, circular dimensional rift opened right under the monster, which fell into it.

"I sent it into a lovely dim…" Discord interrupted himself as the rift reopened without his accord ; however, while the portal had no color before, it was now shrouded with black smoke and flames ; it looked like space-time itself was hurt : it sickened everyone. Bowser, as he called himself, jumped out the rift which closed itself seconds after.

"It was a smart move to try to get rid of me like that ; I praise your ingenuity and your perseverance. But as I said, my Darkness will tear your pathetic magic apart. You are nothing but a pale remnant of my own power. Maybe in this world you have but a few weaknesses. However…"

The monster faced its opponent and suddenly inhaled, its breath inexorably dragging Discord towards him. The force of the suction was such that the draconequus was unable to resist, escape or even snap his claws ; he helplessly flew towards the beast under the screams of his friends ; just before he reached the terrible fangs, Bowser caught him in his giant claws ; he put them right in front of his face and opened his fingers : Discord was still in the scaly palm, crawling helplessly, visibly unable to use his magic, snapping his paws and claws in vain.

-"… I am the one that you should not underestimate. See ? My powers are negating yours, for they are, in a sense, the source of your own, far before the dawn of this universe however. Be aware that if I choose to close my hand, I will crush you, body and soul, regardless of your little tricks or your resistance. Try one more thing, and I will attack. My power will pulverize everything around you, depending on how I will use it, of course. But since you seem so insistent on attacking me… maybe you want a little demonstration of what I can do ?" The King of the Koopas asked, smiling menacingly.

While at the Crystal Empire, some electricity had formed on his shell, this time, giant electric arcs appeared in a thundering sound. The temperature abruptly dropped twenty degrees ; the insides of the terrifying mouth glowed with a threatening orange hue.

Bowser released Discord by throwing him away like a broken toy ; with his powers returned, the draconequus hovered again next to the ponies ; he was visibly shocked to no end.

"All of you, teleport at least… one kilometer and five hundred meters away. Now. Or you are going to have a bad time. Come back in one minute, and you will see what I can do by using just a tiny fraction of my power. I do not think you will be so determined to attack me after this".

The demonic glare, the freezing temperature and the deadly fiery glow inside Bowser’s mouth made everyone obey the threat ; Discord teleported himself and his friends away as the monster retracted its head and limbs in its shell before starting to spin more and more rapidly. From afar, the group watched in horror as everything was pulled towards the creature in a tornado of cataclysmic proportions ; grass, soil, trees, air, clouds, rocks... nothing was able to resist the terrifying vacuum. Waves of unbearable frost reached the ponies as everything under the safety radius literally froze solid and broke into millions of pieces. The cold apocalypse lasted more than half of a minute before everything stopped and the temperature started to rise again ; the monster exited its shell, visibly satisfied.

"Let’s get outta here !" Applejack exclaimed.

"I agree with Applejack. No way I approach that thing again", Spike approved.

Twilight stayed silent but then teleported without any warning.

"Twilight !" Starlight screamed before following her, as she knew where she was going.

The two ponies appeared in front of the monster surrounded by a frozen land ; they had difficulty to breath because of the lack of oxygen, but the beast itself was unfazed.

"Your friends do not want to come ? Your chaotic friend cannot melt this ice, can he ?" Bowser asked sarcastically.

"What… do you… want ?" Twilight panted.

"A princess".

"For what… purpose ?"

"To stop being alone. Hmmm ? This answer does not satisfy you ? I see… you want to know more".

The beast paused.

"The princess in my world gave birth recently, so I cannot disturb her… And with the power I gained, it would be… far too simple to kidnap her, or even take over the kingdom ; but I do not want that, not anymore. We are friends you see… I think you understand that more than anyone else. So I came here. By accident to tell you the truth ; portals keep opening in my world, and one leads here. Be aware that I will not relent and I will not stop… until I get my princess in my castle, in my world".

"There’s no other princess besides me and Cadance in Equestria !" Twilight lied.

"You are lying, young princess… I admire the courage… or the foolishness you have to lie in my face, but unfortunately for you, I sense two traces… Two powerful forms of magic in these ruins… And I sense I am getting closer to the original sources. I smelled traces of them at the castle of your friend, but the magic of love there had smothered them. I sensed this magic again in a region deformed, I presume, by the power of your chaotic friend. I destroyed this land, but I could not sense the traces anymore, so I followed the ocean, some of your cities, a desert, mountains inhabited by one-eyed goat creatures, a jungle… all of that to return to my point of origin. Frustrating but necessary, I suppose. From my starting point, I took another route to the North. And I was right. I sense them. Two powers of very close proximity… Like two close-related parents… But at the same time some sort of opposite. The two who possess this magic… with you, little princess and the other one, they have the highest raw power here, but I sense a minute difference between them".

The monster paused again for a few seconds and then concluded its assumption :

"I see now... They are sisters. Am I right ?"

"Even if this was true… why don’t you… take me with you ?" Twilight asked.

"Twilight, no !" Starlight panicked.

"Regardless of the connection your magic has to this world, you are still a young ruler. You are not what I am searching for, even though I will not deny that the race you belong to is beautiful, and so you are. I do not know how you call yourselves, but I have creatures that look almost like you in my world : they are domesticated, sometimes labor beasts that cannot talk, but they are well-treated, do not worry about that…" Bowser mocked.

All the time he was speaking, he never stopped walking, sparing the ruins but crushing numerous trees.

"We are ponies ! And… rest assured that… we’ll stop you !" Starlight asserted in the face of the monster.

"Starlight… we’re leaving", Twilight ordered in a calm voice before disappearing.

Her friend obeyed, but not before glaring menacingly at the monster ; it ignored her and slowly continued its path.

"Do you understand what it means ?" Celestia asked to the others.

"Yes Princess Celestia", the ponies replied in unison.

"Is he still in the Everfree Forest ?" Luna interrogated.

"Yes, and all the creatures are evacuating it. Fortunately, not in the direction of Ponyville", Starlight added.

"Zecora has evacuated too", Applejack added further.

"I don’t want anyone or anything to be caught in the spell. When not encased, its range is many, many miles long. I can’t do more without destroying half of Equestria and breaking the shield. It’s imperative for you to adjust your timing perfectly", Celestia warned.

Everyone shivered : what their princess was going to do was unheard of in the history of Equestria ; it was far beyond drastic measures.

"What if it doesn’t work ?" Spike asked.

"Then what he said is true : he truly cannot be halted. And we’ll have no other choice to try to reason with him", Luna replied.

"Why not now ?" The tiny voice was coming from Fluttershy.

"Because he said he won’t stop until he gets what he wants ! Because he wants to kidnap a princess for whatever reason ! And don’t forget he’ll take her to his world ! We’ll never see her again !" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, rapidly hovering in circles above her timid friend.

"I’ll fly over there", Celestia declared. "Everypony besides the ones who will erect the shield, stay here. The spell will deplete me of my strength and, if I come back, I want to have the ponies I care for the most inside the walls of this castle".

Discord teleported Celestia, Luna, Twilight and Starlight to the Everfree Forest.

Bowser was slowly crushing the strange trees of the huge forest ; even the Tree of Harmony was shaking under his feet ; he had considered uprooting it to draw the princess to him, but he sensed its magic was literally vital to this world, and he was not intending to destroy everything just for the sake of it. As he was walking towards Ponyville, he suddenly sensed the two magic auras ; the sisters were probably some hundreds meters away. He interrupted his step as a night-blue dome slowly formed around him ; given its thickness, depth, slow speed of formation and huge size, it was apparently not meant to truly encase him, but rather to protect the outside zone. He looked up mechanically and finally saw her : the princess, his princess, was here. Back to the sun, only her winged silhouette was visible ; but even then, her beauty was breathtaking ; it was an angel. Bowser was taken aback and dazzled for a few seconds, enough to make him stop and step back ; he then smiled.

"I finally found you… Such a beautiful princess… I truly cannot think of something that surpasses your beauty".

The white alicorn paid no attention to his words and flew above the sun that was hers. Once she was high enough, the beam came. It was a tiny, shining spot at first ; it became larger and brighter as it was approaching Equestria at the speed of light.

"Another trick ? I admit that it is shiny", the monster said.

The solar beam hit it as the dome quickly closed to contain the resulting apocalyptic explosion that shook the entire land. The ponies who had made the shield struggled to keep it in one piece, and it started to crack here and there. They pushed in their last reserves to maintain the protection for a few minutes, all the while creating tiny holes to allow the intense heat to slowly evacuate. The inferno stopped abruptly however, and they lowered the dome full of smoke after it was clear that they could not stand more. Luna, Twilight and Starlight approached Celestia : all of which had barely the strength left to hover ; they weakly flew towards Ponyville and landed at the entrance of the Everfree Forest, unable to approach the devastated zone.

The footsteps began to shake the ground again at the exact same pace they did before.

"No…" Twilight whispered, unable to believe what she was hearing. "No… that’s impossible…"

"We must return to Canterlot", Luna affirmed as she stood up ; she was the one who had the most strength left.

Twilight managed to do the same, but Starlight and Celestia just could not get up. Discord appeared over them.

"Please, take us to the castle", Celestia implored.

Discord did not reply but complied ; he snapped his paws and everyone disappeared as Bowser approached Ponyville.

"Lemme get this straight. He was hit by a five thousands degree beam and he’s still alive !?" Spike exclaimed in disbelief.

"It seems so. The heat has stopped so suddenly some minutes after the explosion", Twilight – who was slowly recovering – explained. "The shield was here to contain the backlash : we created some holes in it for the heat to evacuate. It was a very delicate task : releasing such a temperature too abruptly would’ve caused unimaginable destruction. But as I said, the heat disappeared, well, almost entirely".

"And I see only one explanation : he cooled it", Starlight whispered weakly.

"You just can’t cool a temperature like that ! It must’ve been an inferno in there ! Surely enough to fry even Discord !" Rainbow Dash objected.

"Do you remember the frost that destroyed everything when he attacked ?" Twilight asked to the pegasus.

"Yeah", her friend replied. "Can’t forget it…" “It’ll give me nightmares for weeks”, she thought.

"For an object to break like this, the temperature must’ve been considerably low, as it was frozen to its very core. As there was still some gaseous air, we’re sure that it didn’t reach near the Absolute Zero. Maybe… maybe it’s not technically frost, not in the common sense, but a suppression of energy on a subatomic level, which appears as frost…" Twilight muttered mostly for herself as the others stared at her with confused looks.

"Ah don’t get it", Applejack grumbled.

"Well, to simplify, inside the atoms, “orbiting” around the core, are electrons. The faster they spin around the core, the more energy, heat in this case, they produce. However, if these particles slow down, the production of energy will decrease. In theory, they can reach total immobility : this is called the Absolute Zero. In practice, except with magic, it’s not possible, because of quantum…"

"Ah get it now ! Ah get it !" Applejack interrupted. "Electrons fast equal heat, electrons slow equal frost".

"Yes, you can say it in that way. So, that monster has some… control over energy ; he at least can steal it, meaning he could reduce us to living statues should he desire", Twilight concluded. "However, I think magic can prevent that from happening. In a world without magic, there’d be nothing we could do. I…"

An earthquake cut her off ; the monster had probably jumped over Ponyville once he had spotted the city of Canterlot.

"On the balcony !" Twilight exclaimed.

Author's Note

Yes, I think Absolute Zero can be reached with magic :D