I decided to wait some more time for Sunset to wake up, in the meantime I looked at the element of kindness in my hand, it was just like in the show albeit without the resemblance to Fluttershy’s cutie mark, it was instead hexagonal and perfectly polished, so much so you could see yourself in it. In the end I just put it inside my torso for safekeeping and resumed my wait.

After some more time passed Sunset started to wake up, she shifted and opened her eyes, “W-where am I?” She asked with a raspy voice. “What happened?”

“You were attacked by a manticore.” I replied to her. “I was fighting it when it plunged its tail and venom into you. You almost died.”

“What…?” She asked uncertain and confused.

“You almost died. Fortunately for you I found an antivenom just in time and saved you.” I replied dully.

“Oh…” She said looking down. “Then thank you.”

“It was no problem, I need you alive after all.” I said, unsure if I should have told her the truth.

“Well, thank you anyway.” She said before continuing. “But what about that light?”

“Light?” I asked.

“Yes, I saw a magnificent light coming from somewhere, I don’t remember a lot about what happened until now but I do remember that light clearly.” She explained.

“Ah, yes. You must be talking of the Kindness.” I said, I reasoned that there wouldn’t be anything bad by telling her what happened. “A spirit made of kindness, appeared to me. She gave me a gem, then disappeared. She said she would help us.” I explained.

“Kindness? Can I see this gem?” She said finally sitting down on her own on the floor.

I took the gem and held it in front of her. “Impossible…” She said with awe. “This is one of the elements of harmony. But how…” She said in awe.

“I don’t know either, the person just told me that it will help us and disappeared.” I explained.

“Can I study it?” Sunset proposed. “I can try to figure out what to do with it, and unknowingly we just hindered one of Celestia’s plans.”

“How so?” I asked curious.

“You see, Celestia started to collect these like a thousands years ago, after her sister went mad with power and dark visions. Celestia used these to weaken her enough and then executed her.” She said.

‘Luna’s dead? Celestia didn’t just put her on the moon she actually killed her. I noticed that there was no mare in the moon but this... ‘

“After that she kept them inside Olympus, her personal fortress and are extremely heavily guarded, but I think that if they really want to go out they can hehe.” she said with a dry laugh at the end.

“I suppose.” I replied, “No matter, we need to go. If what you say is true then Celestia will be throwing a fit right now, and if that light show that happened before held any particular magic then she will detect it.” I said.

“True,” Sunset nodded. “The energy of that, vision, was so intense the effect is still here lingering.” She said with her horn glowing.

“All the more motive to depart.”

I carried her over the wall and continued inside the thick forest. The air was heavy and very humid, Sunset wasn’t faring well, her coat was shining with droplets of sweat rolling down. “Don’t you have any spells for the heat?” I asked her.

“Yes, but I don’t want to waste magic if possible.” She replied with a sigh. “I hate this place already.”

“You never came here?” I asked.

“No hehe, I-I was always inside some lab or in a library doing research, not like I could do anything more than that.” She said with a hint of sadness.

“I dare say you weren’t happy.”

“Not in the slightest, I was so cramped up, I don’t know how I managed to survive this long.” She replied. “I-” I interrupted her by putting a hand on her muzzle.

“Shh.” I ordered. “I feel something, something dangerous. Keep your voice down, move where I move.”

I started to walk crouched, I pushed my senses further out to find whatever my guts was telling me to look out for. I didn’t have to look much further away, I poked my head through a bush and I saw it, the creature was easily as big as a house its fur was cyan with a distinct magical glow to it, the sky itself was embedded in its flesh.

I looked around, there was nothing around the creature, it was looking around searching for something in the middle of a valley surrounded by the vegetation. “What is that.”

“An Ursa… “ Sunset said with both glee and fear.

“Ah yes, tell me everything about it. If we have to fight it I want to be at an advantage.” I replied not removing my gaze from the Ursa.

“The Ursa are big, extremely powerful and are full of Astral Magic. This one is probably a cub, you can see it from the stars that are inside of it, furthermore the colouration indicates that it did not arrive to the adult stage of its life. The Ursa have an almost impenetrable hide, add that to their natural regeneration and you have the most powerful predator of the Everfree. Not even the hydra or the Basilisk dare to face one.” She explained while I made mental notes.

“You suggest we stay well away from it right?” I offered.

“Absolutely, only Celestia managed to kill a celestial being like the Ursa.” She said striking my curiosity.

“There are more?” I asked.

She nodded “Right now there are thirteen: Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and the Ursa. There was one more but it’s the one that died, Draco the celestial dragon. He was the absolute ruler of the dragons but when he claimed the land of Equestria as his own Celestia challenged him to a battle, she won and now he lays dead.”

“Interesting.” I said shelving the information for later. “Come on, let's just go around this Ursa.” I proposed.

We started to make our way through the foliage of the forest being wary of going too near the edge, we managed to arrive right next to the Ursa without being spotted and were starting to go away from it. But then suddenly the Ursa swatted its paw in our direction, I dropped on the ground pulling Sunset with me and narrowly evaded the attack.

“It saw us!” I shouted and threw Sunset away from the danger, she used her magic to slowly fall on a tree branch and hugged the trunk tightly in order to not fall off. Meanwhile the Ursa swatted again at me this time hitting me squarely and throwing me away. I destroyed three trees before stopping, then I regenerated and ran at the beast.

I jumped over another blow and landed on its outstretched paw, I formed my claws and buried them deeply inside its flesh, the Ursa roared in pain and dislodged me. It went on two legs and tried to hammer me down with its front paws, I rolled away from it and used a tendril to try and slash at its eyes, the creature saw it coming and narrowly avoided it by throwing its head up.

Its eye was saved but I managed to latch onto one of its teeth and by using a lot of force I yanked it out making a cascade of blood come from its mouth. The bear howled in pain and anger, now without a tooth it tried to squash me with its immense paw, I narrowly avoided the hit and instead latched against its arm and started to climb up the tooth still in my grasp.

The Ursa tried to make me lose my grasp by suddenly throwing up its arm, what that accomplished was that it threw me into the air, I was expecting something like that though so I left my left hand buried in its skin and stretched my arm up to the maximum height of my flight, once there I just restricted it all at once creating a slingshot effect. The tooth in my right hand ended up buried deeply into the beast’s left eye with a sickening sound of exploding flesh and jelly like substances, the hit was so tremendous the bear lost footing and fell down howling in pure agony clutching its useless eye.

I landed near the Ursa and walked to its face, the beast couldn’t see me approaching from its blind eye, I readied a massive hammerfist using a good chunk of my biomass, I was ready to bash the skull of that thing without a slick of remorse and continue our journey when I heard a voice.

“It’s over…” The voice of Sunset said from the destroyed treeline. “You won, there is no need to kill it, the loss of another celestial beast is a grave one for this world.” She said coming down from a tree with her telekinesis. She approached me dead serious and stared into my eyes, “I won’t allow you to kill it.” She said with incredible firmness.

“Ok.” Was my sudden reply, I removed my hammerfist and just walked to the downed beast. “Today I won Ursa, be this a reminder to not attack me again less you want to end up in a grave.” I told it, it snarled and growled but made no effort to attack.

“That was so stupidly useless to say. Your edge may have cut me.” Sunset deadpanned.

“Oh ha ha.” I drily replied, then morphed my body so that it was filled with blades everywhere. “Like my edge?”

“Idiot.” She said with a huff and proceeded to walk into the forest direction unknown.

“Now that we are safer than before, why don’t you tell me where we are going?” I asked her.

“We are going to Manehattan, there is a unicorn there called Moondancer she was my assistant before Celestia sent her to another research facility. We are going to find her, she was studying the nature of the divine before her research was stopped to deal with a machine capable of harnessing the Elements of Harmony energy.” She explained.

“That’s cool. What will that accomplish?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” She asked honestly confused by my words.

“Well you talk of her research like they will be important for my quest.” I replied.

“How can you even start your quest without knowing your enemy? Celestia is a Goddess you can’t just walk to palace and fight her. No, you must understand how her godly powers work, and how to counter them you idiot.” She explained sternly.

“Godly powers?” I asked. “You sure? Ok then, I guess. At least that will be interesting.” I replied curious on how her powers would work here if she truly has god like abilities. “How long till we arrive?” I asked.

“At our current pace we will probably reach the outskirts of town in two weeks.”

“Too slow.” I said and grabbed her by her midsection, threw her onto my shoulder and started to sprint at max speed in the same direction.

“Oh shit are you insane!?” She asked terrified by the rapidly disappearing scenery around us.

“So how much faster is this?” I asked casually.

“Probably something like a lot faster.”

“That wasn’t very scientific.” I lamented.

“Well sorry if I don’t have a calculator or anything with me to understand how fast we are going.” She said.

“Well we will arrive when we are going to arrive.” I said and continued my run.

After two hours of run Sunset asked. “Don’t you get tired?”

“Nope, can’t get tired, hungry, sleepy, I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to and I can turn my body into whatever I want to.” I said and demonstrated it by creating a second head on my back that started to talk to her. “See?”

“Gross.” She said disgusted. “Make it go away.” She pleaded.

“Oh fine.” I said with a little smirk.

“I really don’t understand how can you do these things.” She wondered.

“Well my body is one giant mass of cells that can be remodeled and recreated via bio engineer manipulation through the strings of RNA my virus contains, only I can do that to every cell at the same time resulting in extremely high speed mutation as well as a complete control over every part of my body at any time.” I explained.

“Fascinating, and can others be turned into what you are? Infected is what I’m meaning.” She asked summoning scroll and quill.

I sighed. “Yes, I can indeed turn other living beings into something like me. The only downside is, I can’t really choose what they will become. Let me explain, when I infect someone with the virus there is an extremely high chance of the subject of dying immediately due to the absurd quantity of mutations in the body happening all at once, even if the subject actually survive this process there are several things that can go wrong. First and foremost the most probable thing is for the subject to become a mindless zombie only capable of consuming everything in their path, no control over the virus at all, the contrary in fact. If someone like me is near enough to one of those it can start a hive mind connection controlling them and all of those who were near it. If you don’t become that then you could become a mindless brute built like a tank, or a gigantic beast. Both of them and everything in between sharing the same mindless thing.”

“There is then the possibility of you becoming an Evolved, you will then retain your mind but have limited control over the virus, you will be able to change form at will and create one type of weapon for yourself, still it is not even close to the power of a true Prototype. I am that Prototype, I’m at the top of the food chain in every conceivable sense, I can eat anything and I’m basically unkillable without using extremely powerful weapons or magic, even with that there is still a possibility that I survive.”

“In conclusion yes I could create others of me, the cost though would be astronomical.”

She remained silent through my whole explanation, she then sighed and threw away her parchment closed her eyes and just rest there. I didn’t say anything more and focused on the run.

CELESTIA

‘What an utter waste of my time.’ I angrily thought. ‘Killing these idiots won’t bring back the element, at least I can increase their security… But why risk it? I’ll call for a transport tomorrow and I’ll bring them all back here in my hands, no more letting them roam around it’s too risky.’ “Guard.” I called the remaining one that was outside the room.

“Yes your majesty?” He asked bowing deeply before me.

“Send a message to Olympus, tell them to come to Canterlot immediately all their further movements will be postponed, stand-by until further orders are given, priority is red get going.” I ordered.

“Yes.” He said quickly and ran out of the room.

‘Damn Hunter, he is still out there, I could send out an order of capture, but who am I kidding? He survived my magic, these pathetic mortals will only slow him down at best and just give him a good meal at worst, no I must think of something to bring him down. But what… ‘ A sudden realization struck me, “Yes… Hahaha…” ‘I might just have what I need… hehehe.’

I went down to my cellar, I passed the still body of my oh so dear sister, encased in stone. “We could have ruled together, but your own blindness to the greatness we are just got you killed, you were the foolish one weren’t you? Look at you, you threw everything for one measly mortal and lo and behold you won’t even share a tomb with him!” I shouted punching her face destroying it in a thousand pieces, I then calmed down, rebuilt the statue and continued my journey.

“She loved you more than she would have ever loved him. You know that right?” A voice said, that lousy little impertinent voice dared to speak to me without my consent.

“Tantabus… if you truly want your essence to not be ripped apart by the Sun itself you better close your mouth right here right now.” I seethed looking at him through his worthless cage of magic and machine. A giant cube that shined with pure power, and inside the lone figure of a somewhat similar Luna, but the colour of the hair were different, much darker. The eyes were completely white and yet they still radiated sadness.

“You have become a monster, what do you really want.” He asked.

“Hehehe…” I chuckled, darkly coating him in my magic. “Perfection.”

Oh how adorable were his screams, like a thousand of innocent dreams and hopes being crushed for my own projects, well, that may be because it is exactly what happened.

“You still cling on that one don’t you?” I asked.

“You, will never get your hands on it…”

“True, then again.” Screams. “I never said I wanted it in the first place but it’s amusing to see you defend it anyway.”

“You’ll die.” He promised.

“Dream, that’s all you can see. And reality is much more worse than your nightmare!”

???

We finally arrived to Ponyville, the only town where we could have some peace. “Hey!” Somepony yelled from behind me. “Hello I’m Daisy!” She said waving at me, she had a pink coat with a light green mane. She was wearing a light coat with a pair of sport leggings. “Do you come out here to train too? Although I never saw you… Who are you?”

“Oh, hi my name is Windy Wind, happy to meet you!” I greeted her waving my hands. “Yes, I’m new here, I just moved from Canterlot and I’m wondering if I can find somewhere to stay until I get a job and then buy my own house.” I said a bit ashamed of having to rely on this stranger already.

“Oh, dear it’s no problem at all, you seem like a nice girl I guess you could stay with me for the future, I have a spare room anyway in my home so you can stay there and pay rent when you find a job.” She offered. “Up until then you will help me in the house keeping it clean, what do you say?”

“Well I accept!” I eagerly said. “Thank you so much!”

“Well then for now do you mind keeping me company until I finish my run? It’s short after all, we just go through the Whitetail wood and come back, no haste or nothing just a leisurely pace will do.” She said still keeping her legs moving.

“Sure.” I accepted.

When we were back dear Daisy was sweating everywhere while I wasn’t even tired at all, I followed her up and talked to her about my life before the facility and about how I wanted a fresh start. I completely avoided talking about that dreadful place I didn’t want her to be worried about me.

“Windy… How can you be this calm after this run?” She asked between gasps.

“Oh, uhm I’m very fit?” I tried to say with a smile.

“Oh, sure I guess, well my home is right around Sugarcube Corner come I’ll show you your room. We walked past a curious building shaped like a gingerbread house, it was a bakery she explained one that served the best sweets around here. It’s also where she works, her house was just behind it across the street it was a fairly simple two stories house. The walls were white with the windows being in a pinkish tint, “Here is my humble abode.” She told me presenting it.

“Come in.” She gestured to me opening the door, I entered and was greeted with a pretty living room, there was a couch on the right and on the left a single marble table with a big chandelier over it, the kitchen was right after the entrance and a set of stairs brought me to the second story, my room was the second from the left, the room was obviously empty except for a bed, a desk and a drawer. “You can do whatever you want here but no painting the walls, I can’t stand the smell. Alright I’ll go take a shower now you go in the kitchen there are several Muffin there for you to snack on if you like.”

I nodded and went downstairs to the kitchen and found a basket of muffins idly standing on the wooden circular table, I took one and was ready to munch over it when my entire hand became something else and instantly devoured the pastry without a second to waste. I was so shocked I actually fell down and started to stare at my hand, it was back to normal.

‘What’s going on?’

PHIL

While I was running to Manehattan I kept an eye open for any kind of danger around the forest, as I predicted we were almost attacked by many creatures all of them though got scared when I started to impale them without slowing down and with no hands so we continued our journey in somewhat peace, that is until we found a strange thing in the forest. I couldn’t see it from distance because of the thick foliage but I smelled smoke, I ignored it at first thinking of a camper or something but then I noticed that the forest actually started to diminish and many trees had signs of fire over them.

“A fire started?” I wondered loudly.

“Seems like it, but look closer the tree is burned only from a single direction.” Sunset pointed out.

“Right…” I continued forward and arrived in a cleared part of forest, ash was falling from the sky and hundreds of trees were either on the ground or almost there, in the center of the embers and ashes there was a man on his knees, he was completely naked and most of his body was alight with flames, his skin was black as coal and his eyes opened looking at me, they only contained a small flame that burned with determination.

“Who are you?” He asked sounding like a fire started when he talked, embers and small flames came out of his mouth as well.

“I could ask the same thing really, but I’m Philip Mercer and this is Sunset Shimmer. But you can call me Hunter.” I replied, upon hearing my name his eyes widened and stood up.

“Hunter?” He said again, “Then you are the one that caused the immense explosion at the facility!” He shouted pointing at me.

“Yes.” I simply replied.

The man actually started to cry, well he cried lava so tears of joy is wrong but you get the idea. “Thank you! Thank you!” He shouted hugging me, he basically teleported bursting into flames and reforming right in front of me.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your… affection. But you are a smouldering boulder right now, you are indeed burning me.” I said calmly.

“Oh sorry, sorry.” He hastily replied backing off. “My name is… was Fire Tempest, I guess I live up to the name at least.” He said with a tinge of sadness.

“Your name is appreciated but what are you?” Sunset asked from behind me.

“I was the first living subject that survived the implantation of a raw fire core inside my soul.” He said.

“The first?” She asked trembling.

He nodded, “Indeed, before me countless tried but died.”

Sunset stopped talking and just stared at the ground. “So Fire Tempest, what were you doing here?” I asked pointing around.

“I just got free and I just wanted to try my powers and magic, unfortunately it is extremely destructive as you saw. But at least now I know what I can do to a degree, eh… get it?” He said pointing his fingers at me.

“Indeed.” I replied with no emotion. “You don’t appear to be a pony anymore though.”

“Yes, they said it was a side effect of becoming a living embodiment of fire itself, I became a strange creature, and unfortunately my new form is very against clothing so I’m sorry about that as well.” He replied scratching the back of his head.

“I see…” I said observing him. “Are there others like you?” I asked.

“Indeed, I was just the first to get out, but there are at least three more, wind, water and you guessed it earth. All three of them having abilities similar to mine I think.” He said shrugging.

“I see… Well I’ll be off now, I need to reach Manehattan and find a pony there.” I said.

“I would gladly follow you and help, but as you can see I’m not exactly easy to conceal nor exactly the best at not burning anything I touch.” He said dropping his head.

“Given enough time I’m sure I could just create a completely fireproof vest.” Sunset said. “But I would need time and resources I lack here.”

“That’s fine Mrs Sunset, freedom is more than enough for now.” He replied easily.

“Well, Fire Tempest, I hope you’ll find what you want to do with that freedom.” I said and started to walk away.

“One of the ideas was to kill that bitch of Celestia, but I know when I’m sorely outmatched. Still I can certainly fire some of them from service. Hehe.” He said laughing at his own pun.

“Sure, you do that. Just don’t do that in Manehattan, I don’t want any trouble while I’m there if I can avoid it.” I said, “I hope to see you again, farewell.”

And thus that’s how we encountered Fire Tempest, we left the smoldering area and continued our journey to the city, while we were running through the forest though I heard something coming and it was absurdly big, I went behind a tree and looked around but I couldn’t find whatever it was making the sound. Then a giant shadow covered us both and I looked up, in the sky there was a humongous structure, it was pentagonal in shape and had five roaring engine in the corners keeping it afloat, the building was covered in guns and all kind of magical defenses, the structure hummed with the sheer energy required to keep it afloat, the fortress was blindingly white with dozens of statue all representing Celestia made out of pure gold, all around the immense vessel there were hundreds of other smaller ones yet even those were incredibly big.

All of them had some kind of giant structure in the back where the engine were located not only that but they were all armed with a multitude of weapons, in the remaining spaces there were hundreds of thousands of smaller vehicles swarming around the fortress following it. “What in the hell is that?” I asked shocked.

“Olympus, and apparently the whole Pantheon is en route too, they are all going to Canterlot.” Sunset said.

“Why.” I asked remaining as hidden as possible.

“The disappearance of an Element of Harmony must have caused a massive panic in the Olympus, probably Celestia recalled them all to keep the Elements near her.” Sunset concluded.

“The Element of Kindness was inside that thing?” I wondered aloud.

“Indeed, and don’t you even think about that, we can’t attack it. Olympus is absolutely impenetrable, there are thousands of guards and the shields will never let us through, maybe the only one capable of destroying it through sheer power would be Celestia.” Sunset explained.

“Wasn’t in my plans to actually assault it, but we may have to do it in order to retrieve the other Elements, that or we have to find out how this one arrived here in the first place.” I said taking the jewel in my hand, it shined with a comforting light.

“Keep it hidden we don’t know if they can sense its presence.” Sunset hurriedly said.

“Right.” I complied and put it back in my body. “Do you have any information on Olympus?” I said after the ships passed leaving only their thunderous sounds behind.

“Olympus is the ultimate fortress, it’s completely self-sufficient and has no need for fuel, the source of energy for this immense structure is a single singularity that Celestia created using the corpse of the Stellar Dragon, it has gardens inside which produce food for the troops inside and a magical system to recycle water. The guards inside are the best of the best in all kinds of combat and strategy. Olympus has five layers of shield, everything alive that comes into contact with it gets reduced into nothingness by the energy in it. Lastly the armor that covers it is absolutely magic resistant and can actually fire the spells back to the casters, even without that the entire structure is heavily reinforced with a military secret alloy of steel, which makes it almost Indestructible, only extremely powerful unicorns can mold that alloy and even they risk severe injury. All in all Olympus is as I said, impenetrable.”

“Sounds grim, no matter. I’ll find a way inside.” I replied.

“Didn’t you hear me? I told you it is impossible.” She said looking at me like I was crazy.

“Possibly, but I made a deal, and I will keep it through to the end.”

“You are absolutely insane.” She said. “For now let’s just arrive to Manehattan and find Moondancer, from there we can concoct some kind of plan to stop Celestia.”

“I agree, then let’s go. I want to reach the city before night falls.”

Author's Note

Oh, hi. I swear any time I say I'm going to not keep you waiting for long I always do, god I'm so bad XD I hope you'll like this new chapter I had a lot of things to do so I'm sorry for the lateness, in any case I truly hope you'll like it. If you do like it then leave a little like for me K?
In any case I hope to see ya again as always stay tuned for next chapter See ya!

Edited by:Classy fox