Cronus is King

by fanficlover 1

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Princess Celestia, Crossover, Alternate Universe, Human, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 53192

Among the many stories of displaced you'll find a surprising trend of the protag being turned to stone before coming back years later. Well what if someone decided to not let that happen to begin with, someone, with the power to become king.

In the land of Equestria, long before the mane six were even a concept, there were the princesses, the ponies, and the displaced. Now centuries later, a new displaced has arrived, one who knows nothing about the world but knows everything about who he now is. Read as this brave fellow takes Equestria by storm, one way or another.

Crossover status: not accepting at the moment.

Published 2018-04-03 01:40:06 UTC
Last updated 2020-04-27 02:19:32 UTC

The King Arrives, The Princess Hunts

If you’re reading this, then you probably know how it starts. If you don’t: some guy/girl is dressed up but missing a piece of their costume, they meet a guy dressed like the Merchant, and the get sent to Equestria after buying that one missing piece to their costume.

Slowly, the feeling of consciousness began to return. My head was pounding but that was all that hurt at the moment as far as I could tell until I checked the rest of my body. Carefully opening my eyes, I had to squint them as I was facing straight into the overhead sun. Sitting up, I saw that I was still wearing my Cronus Costume from Kamen Rider Ex-aid along with the Kamen Rider Chronicle Gashat I had just bought, and I was in what looked to be a clearing in a forest.

“...great,” sighing, I slumped back to the ground. “Way to go Seth, you listened to the creepy guy in a hood, now your ‘who knows’ where in the middle of a forest.” laying down for a minute longer, I eventually got to my feet and looked for a tree with low enough branches to climb. Not seeing one that was lower than five feet above my head, I performed the most sacred art of pick which direction to go.

“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe.” With my course determined, I began walking, and walking, and walking, and walking, and walking. Where ever I was, the forests were big. I had made sure to check the position of the sun every now and then but after about the tenth time looking with the sun in the same position, I figured that I had been walking a lot more than just a few minutes.

“What the hell! How has the sun not moved yet, I counted that last time I checked and it was at least 30 minutes before I checked again! This is freaking bull crap, this is a load of (CRACK)...” Not one to be quiet when mad, I had always been told that hitting something that wasn’t another guys face, what I was never told though was what I was supposed to do if my stress relief (specifically one of the many large trees) broke in half or if a glowing clock was created when I roundhouse kick something, both which were very clearly seen now with my leg still hanging in the air.

Slowly putting my foot down, the glowing clock faded away until it was though it had never been there but the clearly broken tree suggested otherwise. Backing away slightly now, I was unsure how to get away from my legs without killing myself in the process. for close to 2 minutes, I just stood there, wondering if my legs would suddenly gain a life of their own and start kicking everything in sight. Not feeling my legs move in any way I wouldn’t want, I began to calm down and think somewhat rationally.

“That looked like something out of Kamen Rider Ex-aid.” Ok it was somewhat rationally, but considering I liked the show enough to remember all the different finishers shown throughout the series I was probably already straining myself as it was. Curious, I wondered if I could kick another tree in half, so after picking another one out of the many around me, I roundhouse kicked it as hard as I could. Like earlier, the clock appeared as fast as my body turned before becoming fully materialized just before my foot made contact and breaking another tree in half.

“Holy crap, I just did a Kamen Rider Finisher. But how is that possible, Riders are just kid show superheroes. Am I a Kamen Rider?” curious, I started to feel around the base of my helmet for the latch was keeping it on but it wasn't there just the smooth metallic surface. Looking to my bugvisor II, I saw that the device still had the Chronicle Gashat in place. Pulling the cartridge out, I pressed the same button Dan Masamune did to transform causing my body to become enveloped in a soft golden light and make my Kamen Rider Armor disappear as well as the only clothes I currently had. Having always loved the show, I couldn’t help but indulge my fantasies a little.

“Kamen Rider Chronicle: Henshin.” The Gashat clicked into the bugvisor II.

“Buggle up! Ten wo Tsukame Rider! (Wow!) Kizame Chronicle! Ima koso Toki wa kiwamareri (wow!)”

Having not liked my nakedness in the woods, I quickly put the Gashat back after activating it which not only made signature clock appear but also the floating screen appear above me before dropping down as the clock quickly counted to twelve.

Like before, my body was engulfed in light before revealing my fully reformed Kamen Rider Armor but something seemed different, it was a slight weight on my right side. Feeling around, I found an almost unnoticeable pocket. Reaching inside, I pulled a large book like object, the same book like object Dan Masamune used to hold his own personal stash of energy items. Before I could so much as open it though, I heard a loud thump come from behind. Turning quickly, I was speechless at what I saw. Standing on all fours were two unicorns with wings that were staring at me contempt. The taller of the two horses was white like eggshells with a flowing mane of what could only be called sunlight for hair while the shorter violet horse had hair like a night sky. Simply staring at each other, I couldn’t find what words to say for what I was seeing, unfortunately for sanity though, the white unicorn did.

“Come along quietly or we will force you to come.” Now being a regular guy I probably would say I said no and fought them off with but a scratch on my new armor but the real truth is that I turned tail and started running. From the sound of flapping wings, the apparently talking unicorns weren’t far behind.

“Stop fiend, so that we may detain you in stone before you create chaos in the land.” knowing another meaning of detain being arrest or trap, I wasn’t keen on following demands thankfully I could live to do that as I was zipping through the woods faster than Usain Bolt while dodging what could only be called magic missiles that were being shot at me by the flying creatures of impossibility.

“Seems like you two can create chaos all on your own just fine.” That received a much larger magic missile from one of the now more irritated horse women (I think they were women because of their voices sounding feminine and I wasn’t keen on looking up at the moment). Left, right, forward, back, any direction I went the seemed to be able to find me even while under the treetops and out of sight which meant they were somehow tracking but I had no idea how Until I got a chance to think about it I was stuck just running as fast as I could.

(Celestia POV)

It happened again, after 3 centuries, another one of those blights on Equestria appeared: a displaced. To think that so many centuries ago they used to appear by the dozens living in harmony with the beings that walked the land. Sure, there was the occasional bad egg in their bunch but they were dealt with quickly enough by turning them to stone and placing them in mine and my sister’s statue garden but after that day, the day he came, and turned all displaced against us, I knew that letting them live in was my worst choice to make. So even when they still came in groups of 2 or 3 they were immediately encased in the magical stone prison of the elements of harmony and placed in the secret underground vault of Canterlot, away from anypony’s prying eyes, even my student Twilight who has no doubt seen the inconsistencies of our lands history and advancements. If I just had some sort of sign I might have spared them but their powers were just too great to risk on a chance. And for 300 hundred years, no more displaced were discovered again, until now that is.

‘Whoever this person is, they are most definitely inexperienced in the use of their powers as they have not even tried to fight back yet or somehow miraculously escape like the ones so long ago tried to do. I almost feel bad letting Luna vent her anger like this since she missed the full imprisonment of their kind after all that they had done before.’ Closing my eyes in though, I could feel the power of my crown continue to feed it power into me to help me see the hiding displaced as it ran under the trees. Without it, we might have lost him much long ago. Kind of ironic really considering one of the displaced made it for me back when everything had been good. The green displaced, seemed to be turning sharply right, so I let my sister know which, as expected, made her launch a large blast of pure magic in the general direction of the person. The person dodged from what I could tell but he seemed to be stumbling now (most likely the blast just barely missed him that time). Seeing it as a chance, I dived down into the trees below and could see that my assumptions had been right. The green displaced was scrambling like a changeling without Chrysalis’ hive mind to give it directions.

Having noticed me now, the green displaced quickly turned and threw himself forward towards something though I couldn’t see what. Not knowing what else to do, I fired a blast of magic from my horn, impacting him in the back and causing him to hunch over in what looked to be pain. No longer running, I landed and called for Luna to do so as well. We had the displaced surrounded now or rather we did as we were unable to say anything.

“Time Out.”

That was the last thing either of us heard as we were soon engulfed in explosions that knocked us backwards so fast that we had no chance to extend our wings and stop our unwanted flight before crashing into multiple nearby trees. In pain from the sudden, and honestly unexpected attack, I slowly got to my hooves to see that the displaced was nowhere to be seen. Using my crown, I found him but his signature was dozens of miles away from me and my sister now. Remembering the words that had been said just before the attack, I let out a very unroyal groan to my still unconscious sister.

“Just perfect, of course he can control time.”

The King Acts

Ch2

I couldn’t believe it, snapping trees and hologram clocks I could explain as being a really well made practical joke, disappearing and reappearing armor, I could blame on the after effects of whatever drug was used to knock me out but flying horse ladies who just tried to kill me not even 10 minutes ago crossed a very thin line of what could be considered a practical joke. Quickly shaking my head, to get rid of the unneeded thoughts for the moment, I focused more on running in a relatively straight line so I didn’t get turned around and head back towards the killer unicorns. Second after second passed by and miles upon miles were covered in that time but no matter how far I went it seemed like the forest just wasn’t getting any less dense, in fact it seemed to somehow be getting denser and darker even though the sun was still high in the sky.

Eventually my running had to change to a light jog and soon a walk as the trees were just too compact for me to simply run through. I couldn’t kick them down to clear a path either as that would simply be a dead give away if the two unicorns had decided to follow me.

“Who were those two anyways? They seemed important with their crowns… don’t tell me I somehow hurt royalty in this stupid world.” I couldn’t help but groan in exasperation because of course, somehow, I ended up in some obviously different world and the members of some royal family just has to hate me without even knowing who I am.

“Just what am I supposed to do now?” having stopped now, I leaned against one of the trees to think. Unfortunately for me though, I couldn’t think of how to answer my question; I obviously couldn’t talk to the princesses, queens, or whatever the two were because they wanted to just capture me and if the royalty wanted me, horse or not, the commoners would probably be told to try and catch me no matter what. Sighing to myself, I slumped to the ground in depression, dead to everything in the world around me (BOOM) well, almost everything.

Having jumped to my feet from the almost deafening explosion, my body was tense, ready to spring in whatever direction I needed to but nothing happened. (BOOM) another explosion though this time I did not get startled, instead I became curious as to what was causing such a loud noise. Unlike in the earlier parts of the forest, this time the tree’s branches were only two feet above my head, so after picking one with what looked to be a strong enough branch, I jumped as hard as I could, breaking said branch with my own head and continuing upwards, well past the top of the tree and high into the sky. Suffice is to say that I did not like the next 15 seconds before landing in the tree that I had been trying to climb.

“Ugh, note to self: learn how the teleport works.” I would probably need more than one note to self considering all the powers Cronus had like weather and time cycle manipulation, and even the reset though the last one could be held off at the moment. Giving myself a quick once over, I climbed to the top of tree, making sure not to snag my cloak on the surprising amount of sharp branches. Having reached the top with barely a sweat, I still lost my breath at what I saw. Standing as tall, if not taller, than a mountain, was a rampaging bear that looked to be made up of light blue stars giving it a form reminiscent of the Ursa Major constellation. I don’t know how long I had stared at the creature but my stupor was broken at the sight of a large concentric set of rainbow circles with a single rainbow trail that impacted directly into the large creature’s head and causing it to flinch in pain but overall unharmed as it continued to thrash around. Having been broken from my trance, I started to notice what looked like small rocks flying up and around it as it moved about, though considering its size the debris was most likely much larger.

Eventually, the large creature began to slow down in its rampage until eventually it stopped completely and walking away with thundering steps. When it was well away from the spot, I started to jump from treetop to treetop with minor amounts of force hopping to get where the creature had once been quickly. The reason for my apparent bravery was due to the fact that a creature that large would have bound to hit anything or anyone that was near it (and considering rainbows don’t act like sonic booms I could guess that at least one person or pony or whatever else was in the was around and probably hurt). Treetop after treetop, I jumped until the sounds of crying, pain, and all around suffering could be heard. Hearing the dreaded noise, I couldn’t help but put more force into my jumps to reach wherever I was headed as quickly as possible (Crazy unicorn women or no crazy unicorn women, one does not simply walk away after seeing such a sight).

I finally reached the edge of the forest and was now only a stone’s throw away from civilization or rather what was left of it it. Houses were simply piles of wood and splinters, the bell of the tower was a crushed like a piece of tin scrap metal, and what looked to be the base of an extremely large tree was all that remained of the now destroyed town, well that and the surprising amount of horse, scratch that, pony survivors (they were too small to be horses). Each and every one of them was identifiable due to their pastel color pallets as each one seemed scared and jittery as they walked around what used to be the center of town, that is all but five of them who were surrounding a light blue one with rainbow colored hair. Suddenly, one of the many ponies who were just meandering around in a daze seemed to perk up for a moment before running up to the five and started talking to the orange colored one. The conversation didn’t last long apparently as they both started to run off. Curious as to what might be wrong, I followed after the two who led me to what look like a farm that was in much better condition than the town itself somehow, with only the barn collapsed and many of the surrounding trees uprooted.

Watching the two enter through their still standing gate, they began running around and yelling. Between the two, the small yellow one with a red mane was easily louder but only by a few decibels.

“Macintosh, Granny, where are you?” over and over the yelled, running from one end of the farm to another but no yell came in reply. Without warning, the Orange began to yell to the yellow one. “Over here Applebloom, they’re trapped under the barn.” the small one, now known as applebloom, quickly ran over and started to help, in trying to lift the barn but the wreckage wouldn’t budge.

“It’s too heavy, they’ll never get if off the two.” my assumption was right as the two ponies backed away. The small yellow one began to cry at this point, while the older sister (I realized that she might be her sibling at this point) tried to console her. Seeing such a sight, it filled me with memories, memories of a past I hated, a past where I was to weak. Unable to control my impulses now, I jumped down from the treetops to the ground below without taking my eyes off the sisters, that is until my sight was filled with the color of neon green.

(Applejack POV)

It was hopeless, both Macintosh and Granny had been trapped under the barn when the Ursa Major had attacked and now the only thing keeping them alive was Macintosh himself pushing up on one of the broken support beams. With all the weight already being held up in such a strange position and no good holds to catch onto with our hooves, we were left with digging them out but there was no time. I don’t know what to do, neither me or Applebloom.

(Twinkle)

“What the…” I quickly looked upwards and saw the strangest sight I ever saw. Some kind of armor wearing diamond dog with a short snout and small arms had appeared in a burst of green light and he landed right next to me and my sister in a crouch before looking over to us with his strangely painted on eyes.

The diamond dog said nothing as he looked from side to side in possible confusion but he quickly stopped before focusing on the barn. Noticing this, I left my sister’s side to stand in front of the weirdly shaped beast before he could do anymore harm. Before I could say as much though, the dog spoke.

“Stand aside, I can get your family out from under there.” I couldn’t believe it, some stranger just appears from nowhere and says he could do something that I, the strongest mare in Equestria, couldn’t do. If I were any other pony, I would have stood my ground and not let him pass after saying such a lie, but I wasn’t any other pony, I am the bearer of the element of honesty and with that title comes the perk of knowing when someone lies or not and right now the diamond dog wasn’t lying. Stepping aside, the dog walked past with long strides before stopping only a few inches from the wreckage.

Not sure as to what he would do, I saw him pull out a strange looking book then open it but instead of pages inside, he removed three strange red coins and crushed them. What happened next was unbelievable as his entire upper body inflated like one of Pinkie’s balloons before returning to normal while he grabbed onto the one piece of wreckage he shouldn’t have. It was part of the support beam that Macintosh was currently hold up from under the pile sticking out from under. In one fell swoop, the dog lifted up but instead of the cries of pain from Macintosh that I expected with the shifting of weight, the beam, and everything on top of it fly high into the sky faster than I could blink. Looking back, the dog seemed tired from the exertion and the only other person more so than him was a passed out Macintosh laying a few yards In front of him.

Applebloom was the first to react by running straight to her big brother and holding on tight to his limp body. I followed after but not before giving the stranger a pat on the back in thanks. As I stood beside my sister, I helped Granny, who had been sitting the entire time next to Macintosh, to her hooves before looking back at the green stranger and seeing him walk away in the direction of town.

“Who was that, Applejack dearie?” I didn’t know how to answer the question as I had never asked his name so I figured that it would be best to answer it as simply as possible.

“A friend, I think.”

(Cronus POV)

“Note to self number 2: just because I hit like a truck does not mean I can lift like one.” Apparently all those feats of strength I had seen by the riders whenever the kicked or punched something was only that while everything else was relatively normal though maybe a little superhuman. Thankfully I had thought to use a few of the regenerating energy items: Muscular when I did, and even more thankfully was that it had been enough to get the job done at the cost of taking a lot out of me.

Stretching my arms, I continued down the dirt road heading to the wrecked town to see if any more ponies needed help, after all, if you help one person in a crisis, you should at least try and help the rest, even if you couldn’t do much.

“Hopefully it isn’t as intense as the last one because I don’t know if I could do that again. Speaking of again, I wonder if I can teleport again.” Focusing as I walked, my vision didn’t fill with neon green meaning something from earlier must have triggered it and not just me, something intense. Putting off teleporting for now, I could see the ruins and picked up the pace to a light jog.

(Celestia POV)

He may have gotten away, but thanks to my crown, both myself and Luna could still track him where ever he went.

“Sister,Where has that despicable displaced run off to now?”

The venom in my sister’s voice was almost palpable which just showed you how how much the Displaced affected her before she was sent to the moon as the demon she had been turned into.

“Last I checked, he was somewhere in the Everfree forest.”

“The same Everfree that is right next to Ponyville.?”

At this, we both realized that we needed to hurry as there was no telling what kind of carnage he could cause, especially with the ability to stop time. If we hit him hard enough with a surprise attack though, it might not be a problem.

The King Runs, The Princess Reveals

Ch3

Kimewaza: Critical Sacrifice

The blade of purple and green energy sliced through the trees like butter before dissipating leaving only me, the unicorn known as Twilight Sparkle and the leftover stumps from my improvised logging technique.

“Amazing, when you said you could cut through all those trees, I didn’t know you meant all at one time.” Twilight astonishment wasn’t surprising but it did feel nice to surprise the book worm.

“Hey, cutting trees is no sweat, besides, It’s the least I could do for not coming to help.”

“Trust me, when you and your friends mess with a sleeping Ursa Major’s baby, don’t think you can get away with it even if it did take a year to happen.”

“I still feel bad.” That was the truth, even though I just showed up in town right after the destruction of the town, not a single one of the Pegasi, unicorns, or “earth” ponies paid me any mind and instead just focused on their work to rebuild. That act of dismissal, while somewhat rude if you ask me, showed just what kind of people- I mean ponies the residents of the town were. Hardy, practical, and not afraid to do what was needed (seeing such a connected community as they worked together only redoubled my resolve to help).

“Don’t be, Ursa Majors, especially female ones, are extremely powerful creatures that only one of the princesses could handle. There was nothing you could do even if you did try to fight it.” I nodded in acceptance while using the blade of the bugvisor II to cut of stray limbs from the downed trees. With nothing left to say, the field next to the forest where we worked was filled with only the sound of the nearby construction. This silence left both me and Twilight to think to ourselves while we worked but for me, all I could think about were the two weird mix of the three different pony types.

“Hey Twilight.”

“Yes Cronus?” It still sounded weird to be called that but I didn’t want to use my real name just yet so I ignored the feeling to press on with my question.

“ Is your village run by two queens or are you some kind of democratic society?”

“That’s a strange question to ask out of the blue but if I had to answer, I would say that we are mostly democratic though we do have royal bloodlines, no queens though.”

“That’s a relief I thought I-”

“We do have princesses though, Luna and Celestia, in fact, Celestia is my personal teacher though she hasn’t taught me anything in awhile.”

“-was in trouble… well that’s just great.” sighing to myself, I stood from my work and surprising Twilight.

“Huh, Cronus, what are you doing, we still have the rest of the logs to cut.” her confusion was plain on her face while she started to use her magic to bring some of the cut down trees closer.

“I know that but I need to tell you something.”

“Really, what is it, is something wrong?” Wrong was one way to put it but how do you explain that your royalty was hunting me down with no real reason, or at least one you know of. Standing still, I continued to think of a way to explain. While I did so, I vaguely noticed that Twilight was looking to the sky now. Finally I had it.

“You see Twilight, i’m-” I was stopped mid sentence by the feeling of a magic missile hitting me dead center in the back and launching myself over head Twilight to land on my back in even more pain.

“Celestia, what are you doing he-”

“Hush Twilight, this creature is a dangerous being who needs to be captured. Go get the elements to contain him and I will explain after.

Slowly getting up, I turned to see a cowering Twilight standing before the two princesses with a look of uncertainty as she switched her sight between me and the larger ponies. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly flipped the bugvisor II to its blaster mode and pressed the button.

Kimewaza: Critical Judgment

I already knew the blast wouldn’t kill them but I didn’t want to hurt Twilight so I aimed to the ground eighth in front of them, making them fly backwards from the shock wave and giving me the distraction I needed to run back to the town in hopes that the following princesses wouldn’t attack while I was among their people.

As expected, they didn’t take long to follow after me as I ran through the working crowds who began ducking in cover. I felt bad about doing it but I couldn’t think of anyway to get away without having time to put on the bugvisor and activating “Time out”.

“If I could just teleport on command, I could probably get away.” Nothing happened which meant I wasn’t getting any dues ex machina to save me this time. “God I wish this were a book or something because that would have just saved me. Looks like I’m going to have to do it the hard way.” just five seconds was all I needed and I could pause time to get away scot free.

The edge of town was beginning to come into view now and I was running out of ponies to protect me meaning it was now or never. Quickly scanning the upcoming road, I saw a pile of discarded beams and other broken pieces of wood. Seeing that had my plan and the only thing I needed was a little bit of hope. Passing the large pile, I jumped to the side which hopefully confused my flying pursuers long enough to put the bugvisor back into to place and pressing A twice.

Kimewaza: Critical Chronicle Punch × 1000

Hearing that, I started punching the wood and was both shocked and grateful to see my arms moving at blurring speeds and punching the wood in the direction of the the flying princesses. The Princesses began dodging as best they could but the sheer volume was just too much causing them to lose altitude and crashing to the ground below under their own piles of heavy wood. Wasting no time now, I pressed the A and B button.

Time Out.

in an instant, everything lost motion, stopping right where they were. The Princesses were in the midst of getting out from under their piles, Twilight could be seen just off in the distance having followed myself and the two princesses, and random bits of my makeshift attack were still in the midst of falling. Turning tail, I began running, running outside the ruined town, into the expansive plains to who knows where, not stopping until I was sure they couldn’t follow. Eventually my running led me to leave the grassy plains and come upon a very mountainous region with steep cliffs that towered above me. These mountains were the same that were only vaguely seen in the distance from Ponyville meaning I was hundreds of miles away now.

“If the can somehow still track me, even this far away, at least I have a head start.” I pressed the A and B again.

Time In.

(Celestia POV)

The displaced was gone again, probably well beyond were we could follow him now if he’s realized we’re following him. Sighing, I began to wipe some of the leftover wood off my coat while Luna did the same.

“Princess Celestia.” Turning in surprise, I saw my faithful student Twilight running towards. When she reached us both, she was left gasping for breath which meant she hadn’t taken my advice to keep up with her exercises when she left, not that she did much to begin with while she read in her library. Smiling lightly, I turned to face her while Luna simply lowered her flank to sit and stew in her anger.

“Twilight, it is good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you to Celestia but what was all that chasing and blasting about.”

She didn’t understand, even knowing she wouldn’t I couldn’t help but frown the tiniest degree before sighing again.

“I’m sorry Twilight but that creature you faced is a danger to our society and I can not simply let him walk our lands.”

“Danger? But he was helping us rebuild after an Ursa attack, an Ursa Major to be exact.”

“I don’t expect you to understand this Twilight but this is not something you can involve yourself in, not yet, if history is to repeat itself.”

“Repeat itself, what are you talking about?”

“She is talking about the displaced, Twilight.” I hadn’t noticed Line move from her position as she was now standing and facing my student.

“Luna, what are you doing?”

“What I have to dear sister. For her to truly understand our motives, she will need to know the truth.”

“But we made a pact to never speak of them to another pony.”

“That may be true but with our hunt going the way it is, we may need to break that pact.”

“What are you two talking about over, what pact, and what’s a displaced?”

The voice came from above from an injured Rainbow dash who was lounging on a cloud. If she had already heard as much as she did then we might as well reveal the truth to all the Elements of Harmony.

“We will answer you questions Rainbow dash but not now, we need somewhere private to speak with both you and Twilight as well as the rest of the Elements of Harmony.”

10 minutes later

I sat before the 6 elements and their confused gazes alone in a loaned shack as Luna had already flown back to the castle to prepare for the next and check that the lower chambers were still closed.

“So, um, princess, why are we here?” Ah Fluttershy, the least vocal and shyest of the group but also the one who will gladly speak first to break any unwanted silence.

“Forgive me, I am simply trying to think of the best way to explain everything to you all.”

“Then jus’ do it the old fashion way and get straight to the details.” Applejack, honest and blunt. Not afraid to get to the point and dance around the details.

“Very well. Many thousands of years ago, when I was but a foal and the land was still divided, there existed the many factions and species you know that are taught in your everyday schooling, that is except one. The displaced are a group of people, humans in most cases as they called themselves, who did not originate from our world. Somehow, through the hands of some being known as the Merchant, they had been delivered to our world in bodies that were not their own but rather of ones with great power, some even rivaling my sister in I. Every year they came and grew in numbers, conquering or helping as they saw fit but nothing truly changed, that is until one day in my youth, I met displaced that went by the name of Natsu. His power was immense but he chose to only use it when he wished to defend what he cared for. Because of that, we became friends, this friendship allowed me to grow into the ruler you see today and unite our lands and welcome the many displaced who came in harmony.”

Their confusion took form in varying degrees but I pressed on.

“This piece would not last though. Less than 200 hundred years later, a new displaced arrived, one filled with only hate and contempt. At first, we believed we could stop his terror but nothing we did worked to stop him and his hate soon spread to others, corrupting the displaced, both old and new, one by one until he had an army that matched my own. For years we fought, watching as those we cared for die or turn against us. All seemed lost, that is until I found the Element of Harmony and with them, I encased the all of them in stone bodies locking them underground. It seemed like all would become peaceful again and I and my sister could welcome the coming generation of displaced but that was not to be. Among the many displaced who had run and hidden from us during the final battle, one had plagued my sister with a curse, the curse that would eventually turn her into the demon she would become, Nightmare Moon and making me seal her away.

That one act was the final straw, if displaced were willing to turn my sister into demon to hate me then I would hate all displaced and trap them in stone with the rest of them. And that was what I did, I searched for the remains of the army, gathered the few who had stayed with me, and confronted the few who continued to arrive and encased them in stone in both fear and anger for who they might be and what they could do.”

None of my little ponies said anything, instead as they simply stared at the floor, at a loss on what to say.

The Princess Discovers

Ch 4

“Sorry for disagreeing with ya princess but I don’ believe that.”

“AppleJack?” I couldn’t believe it, after everything I just told them, the element of honesty didn’t believe me.

“I can tell your telling the truth ma’am but I just don’t think Cronus is that kind of man. When my Granny, and brother Mac were trapped under our barn, ready to be squished, he appeared out of nowhere and helped without even giving a reason why and after that he came and helped out the town.”

“You said it Applejack, Cronus is coolerific with a capital cool. He just walks into town, gets the mayor’s attention and starts helping like it wasn’t a big deal.”

“You to Pinkie Pie?”

“I have to concur, even though his fashion choice leaves much to be desired, he has only helped us since we got here. Why before we even fully trusted him, he pulled my poor Opal down from one of the trees before helping Twilight with the lumber collection.”

“But Rarity-”

“I also think he’s a good person.” I couldn’t believe it, I was being ganged up on by the elements. Surely Twilight could see my point though.

“Twilight, you trust me don’t you?” Twilight looked torn as she was now having to choose between her friends and her me, her teacher.

“Well you bring up a good point Celestia, but that was a long time ago but we have no real way of determining if he is truly good or just playing us like one of Discord’s games.” Middle of the road, while not enough to sway her friends, it should help them ease into the idea that i’m right about this.

“If knowing is such a problem, then why don’t we just test him.” It was Rainbow dash who spoke after being quite for so long. While I couldn’t argue that testing him would be a good way of seeing if I was right or not, we have no way of doing so.

“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash, while your idea has merit, there is no way to test and see if Cronus, as you call him, is evil or not.”

“Sure there is, just have Princess Lune get in his head while he’s sleeping and check his brain.”

“Rainbow, that’s amazing, you came up with that idea all on your own. Checking his mind is just like when Daring Doo was put on trial in the harsh Savanna of Zebafrica by the ancient Zebra tribes in volume 39” Rainbow dash’s coat took a slight tinge of red around her eyes and cheeks at the praise. Her blush was soon ignored though in favor of Twilight looking to me in expectation. Staring into her eyes. I could see hope, hope that all was good and right with the world. Sighing once more for about the seventh time this day, I nodded.

“Very well, I will ask my sister to check his memories when Cronus goes to sleep tonight. After such a long day, I don’t think he could handle staying up much longer than he would have too.”

(Cronus POV)

The climb was perilous as I made my way upwards from one small ledge to the next. Everyone in awhile I would lose my grip before grabbing hold on another ledge but overall I was doing fine for the moment. Looking upwards and then down, I figured I had climbed about a fourth of the way up now but no out crop looked to be in sight. Grabbing onto another ledge, it crumbled in my fingers before letting my hand go free but by utilizing my recently discovered enhanced reflexes, I quickly grabbed onto another.

“Phew, that one was a close one right there, hopefully there aren’t more like it further up.” As I said that, A shadow over passed me before continuing up the mountain. Surprised by the unexpected sight, I looked upwards to barely catch a glimpse of something wingedbefore it disappeared around the side of the mountain. Fearing that it was the princesses again, I unclipped my bugvisor from my belt, ready to fire and anypony who thought they could get me in a compromising position and aimed it to the other side where the unknown flyer would have to come around to. No one did though as instead, the feeling of weightlessness overtook my body as I was snatched right off the side of the mountain and into the air. Before even a curse could leave my lips, both I and my snatcher were already halfway up the mountain now and still climbing before reaching the top in no seconds flat and floating high above the top.

“What the hell?” Instead of a pointed top or even a flat-ish surface to rest on the entire top part of the mountain, and many of the others that made up the small range, were covered in cities that could put New york to shame in their size and grandeur. Each building was like a building block with one on top of the other giving them the appearance of roman columns with small landings circling upwards around it for doors built into the sides that the inhabitants would walk through and go about their lives in before exiting and flying off to the next one. The inhabitants themselves though were the real show stopper in all of it though because every single person, young and old, tall and small, male or female, was griffon, the mythological hybrid of lions and eagles.

Struggling to look behind my myself at my captor, I was shocked to see that it was a griffon as well, a very angry griffon but one nonetheless. As I stared at him (I think it was a him since he looked much bulkier than most of the other griffons around), he paid me no mind as he began weaving his way to and fro through the flying mass of griffons with ease as many stopped and parted before him. From what I could tell, then that meant he was someone of major importance so probably a knight or some equivalent standing for griffons. Eventually, our destination came into view, being a parthenon among pillars helped give it away before we landed, with my body still in the claws of the unknown griffon who was now standing on top of me, to keep me from running away no doubt. Having noticed our landing, close to twenty griffon guards had exited the parthenon as fast as the could, in full body armor no less, before circling us with their spears at the ready.

“Um, hi.” My faceplate was slammed into the dirt, which, while not hurting, peeved me to no end. Keeping my cool though, I breathed in and out like I had been taught as kid before raising my head to look again. Looking up, I noticed multiple spears in the back row begin to raise and part to the sides like someone was coming through. After only a few more seconds, I was proven right as a new griffon, one wearing an expensive looking robe and fine jewelry had finally made his way through with his guards bowing behind him. The griffon on top of me bowed as well but it was only for a short period of time before standing straight again.

“My king.”

“Captain Aires. It looks like you found someone on you daily patrol, mind telling me who and what it is.”

“My name is Cronus sir, and i’m human.” again, my faceplate was shoved into the dirt though I didn’t care as I wasn’t going to be called a thing.

“A human you say? I don’t believe i’ve ever heard of that race before, imps yes, fairies even but not humans. Aires, let the poor creature up so I may talk to him.” Can’t say dreature was better but i’ll take what I could get as the now named captain removed his talons from my back.

“Of course sire.” With that, he bowed again though this time he stayed that way. Having been looking at the captain, I did not notice the king come closer and offer me one of his claws until the king cleared his throat. Noticing it now, I gratefully took it and got up and was now looking the king head on now.

“So tell me, human, why were you climbing the the side of my mountain and not taking the main road through the village Griffon stone? Be warned though, your answer can mean the difference between life and death if you are not truthful.”

“Of course, I have nothing to hide. The truth is that I did not know about a main road as I have only been in this land for less than a day now.”

“A traveller hm?” the king didn’t look convinced. “Why would a random traveler who knows nothing of this land climb the main mountain of the griffon kingdom then instead of simply trying to go around it.”

“Because, sir, I was being chased.”

“Chased, chased by whom exactly?”

“The two princesses of Equestria sir, Luna and Celestia.” The king said nothing as he simply stared at me, then, he started laughing. His laughter appeared to be contagious as many other griffons began laughing as well. When the king finally calmed down, he wiped away a stray tear from his eyes and began to look serious again.

“You expect me to believe that Celestia, the kind hearted Alicorn who rules our neighboring country, would even think about hunting another living being. Luna I could understand given her past but putting the blame on Celestia as well is all the proof I need that you are lying. Guards, take him to a cell so that he may wait while we prepare his coming trial.” Before I could react, two of the guards jumped over top their king and landed atop me before pinning my arms behind me and away from my Bugvisor which I had connected to my belt during the flight.

Unable to break free, I was forced to my feet and into the parthenon but no sooner did we enter the main hallway, my escorts turned right to a nearby set of stairs that led to the aforementioned dungeon. Selecting one of the cells at random, the guards threw me inside and locking the iron behind me.

“Don’t bother using that dagger of yours on your belt, the walls are made of the surrounding mountain themselves.” With his piece said, i watched as the guard left, leaving me alone in a cell with a stone block jutting from the rock acting as my substitute for a bed and a rotten bucket for my toilet.

“Just great, could this get any worse?” with nobody to answer me and nothing to do, I laid myself onto the stone block and tried to find a somewhat comfortable position while I waited. Finding the best I could, the fatigue of the day had finally made itself known causing my eyelids to become heavy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Luna POV)

“You want me to do what?”

“Go into Cronus dreams as he sleeps and when you are there, simply examine his memories to see if he is a threat or not.”

“But sister, he is a displaced, the same type of beings who took me away from you. Why would you ever tell me to do such a thing?” I couldn’t believe it, how could she possibly ever suggest the idea.

“Because my student asked me too.” Hearing her answer, I realized why now. Those six not only saved me after so many years but so many others.

“I guess if Twilight asked me to then I can at least try then.” walking past my sister onto the terrace, I finally lowered the sun so that my moon could follow. Even after all the years I had been away, the feeling of it filled me with at least some joy even if it was somewhat diminished by the fact that the moon was lowering a few hours early (not that the displaced would know that). With the moon now risen, I returned to my bed, and let my powers over the dreamscape unravel from me to touch the minds of every pony and creature that slept.

Opening my eyes, I was now in the dream hub, a central point for all dreams to be accessed by me so that I may watch over it. Slowly, doors were beginning to appear but none suggested that they belonged to the displaced which meant I would have to wait. In time, a new door slowly began to appear; it was taller that myself and in the form of a plain rectangle that was colored a metallic green color.

“It’s now or never then.” grasping the handle of the door with my magic, I pulled but it didn’t open. Surprised by the resistance, I put more magic into it and pulled once more, this time the door began to open but it was slow.

“GET OUT!”

The door suddenly slammed shut, leaving me angry now. Not only had this displaced been keeping me from opening the door but he had the nerve to tell try and tell me to leave. Not having any disrespect, I began to charge my horn with all my magical power. Once filled with all the magic power I could handle, the door blocking me from my goal was turned to splinters from my charge letting me enter. The dream was empty, only a black void with nothing inside of it. Feeling that it would be easy to complete my work, I walked further into it.

“GET OUT!”

Again, the displaced, Cronus’, dream voice screamed for me to leave but instead of another door slamming shut, a light snapped on from the unseen ceiling shining downwards onto the displaced both I and my sister were looking for.

“Do it.”
A new voice spoke this time, much deeper than Cronus’ but what captured my attention then was the distinct sound of a match lighting. Coming closer to the armored human, I saw in his hands was, as I expected, a match that was slowly burning.

“Do it.”

Again the voice spoke but I paid it no mind as I stared at the match that was beginning to shake in his hand.

“Do it.”

The match finally stopped its shaking but it no longer was being held in Cronus’ hand but was instead falling to the floor. With barely a touch, the entire black void became consumed in flames as Cronus disappeared. The sight was horrifying to see but what made it even worse was the screams of pain and sorrow that began to echo like that of banshee and an unknown person, whether it be Cronus or the other, began to laugh with unbridled glee. Closing my eyes and ears, I tried to block out the sound and sight but it stayed; then, without warning, it stopped. Again, Cronus was standing center stage, with a light over top him, but he was not the only one. Laying at his feet was a lump of flesh, burned and scarred, the lump of flesh moved as a hand began to shakily raise itself.

“Big Brother, please, help me.”

No words were said from Cronus as he removed his strange belt buckle and placed in on his hand in the form that blasted energy before pointing it towards the deformed little sister. Realizing what he was about to do, even if it was a dream, I ran as fast as I could to stop him but it was to late and the buckle fired its sickly violet and blue energy making the now dead girl disappear. Seeing Cronus do such an inhumane thing put me sick to my stomach as I began to back away slowly. Suddenly, Cronus turned around and raised his hand to fire again. That was the last thing I saw as I woke in my bed in a cold sweat while my sister was sitting close by with a book in her magical grasp that she quickly dropped.

“Luna, What’s wrong?” I was panting like a mad mare but I still spoke though it was forced and even fearful.

“Get the Elements of Harmony.”

Author's Note

So what do you all think?

leave a message in the comments.

P.S. if you thumbs down the story, I would like to know why.

The King Prepares, The Princess Prepares

Ch6

When morning came, it came with the feeling of being pulled off my rock of a bed and falling back first to the floor. All in all, it was an effective alarm clock, not adding to the fact that a set of three spears was at the ready to skewer me should I try to fight back in response. The holders of said spears, were the same three guards from last night or at least Brutus and two similar guards (you don’t forget a guy, human or not, who’s that big).

‘This creature is a dangerous being who needs to be captured.’ Remembering the white princesses words, I abstained from allowing using a quick ‘Time Out’ to achieve some minor revenge against the three so as to not prove her right at the moment but it did not mean that I would forget it when I became pardoned for my, at the time, unknown crimes. Getting to my feet slowly, I watched as the guards lowered their weapons in response before the leader held out his hand.

“All weapons are to be confiscated when during the process of court so please hand over any all weapons you may have on you or we will be forced to take them from you.” I handed over the bugvisor as I was told but made no move to remove my energy items. Even though I had handed my weapon though, one of the guards patted me down and found the case. Having been curious to what it was, he opened it.

“What are these things?”

“Just some coins i’ve collected over the years in my free time.” It wasn’t a complete lie as I had collected the collectable versions of them in my free time back on earth but I wasn’t going to tell them that. With my bluff working, the guard tossed back the case and beckoned me to follow. Doing so, we went back the way I had came, into the main hall we then turned and went directly for the huge doorway that stood open for griffons, both guards and civilians alike, to come and go as they pleased.

Upon reaching the door, I found that my lawyer from last night was waiting for me while seeming to straighten his tie constantly. When he finally noticed my presence as well as my three escorts, he was quick to hop over through the air and land right in front of me.

“I take it that all of the proper procedures have already been handled, guards?” the leader nodded. “Good, then I will be taking both him and his belongings off your talons then.” Without much of a fuss, the guards handed me over, as well as my bugvisor to the lawyer before flying off, most likely to perform their average everyday duties.

“Well that went smoothly.”

“As long as you behave, and i’m with you then you can be left to your own devices before the trial starts, within reason of course.”

“So how long till my trial begins?”

“Well, some important dignitaries from Equestria arrived late last night, not the princesses mind you so don’t worry, and are currently going through the standard court proceedings before they are allowed full access to the city which should take roughly an hour now.”

“That seems like a pretty long time just to let some people in.”

“Well if you include the locating of a temporary housing to suit their needs as well as assigning guard escorts without inhibiting the ranks, then it is actually much longer.”

“I see. So what do we do till then.”

“As long as we stay within the confines of the parthenon, don’t break anything, and get to court on time, than anything really.”

“Ok then, what should we do?” The Griffon rubbed the underside of his beak in thought.

“Whenever I’m here on my off hours, I usually spend my time in the hall of records going over the past wars of our kingdom.” I snorted a laugh at that.

“So I guess your a history buff then right?”

“In a way.” he smiled at that.

“Alright then, let’s head to the hall of records then. Who knows, I might learn something.”

“If that something is to not take the Trial by Duel then, you just might.”

“Nope, i’m taking that challenge and getting out of here. I don’t feel like losing my head anytime soon.”

“If you just let me work, I can possibly get you 20 years.” The lawyer began frowning after saying such.

“Even if you could get me 5 years, I would still take the duel. I never want to go back to prison again.” The last part was spoken under my breath but I could already tell that my lawyer had heard me. ‘That reminds me, I haven’t learned his name yet.’ It turned out that my lawyers name was Feathers Worth when I asked him, which he explained was a name of great meaning for his job as he always has to prove the worth of those he defends. After that, Feathers Worth began to lead the way to the Hall of Records.

(Applejack POV)

We had arrived by train in Griffonstone late last night before climbing to the top of the mountains. When we had finally reached the top and said we were dignitaries from Equestria to the guards, we had been given temporary beds in the barracks to sleep before being escorted by guards to the parthenon. Once inside, we were taken before the court and explained our reason for being there which lead us to where we were now, watching bureaucrats work.

While the other’s and I watched as the court griffons continued their work of sorting and stamping the necessary papers, I was only thinking of everything that had happened since yesterday. First, some strange feller randomly appears when my family is at its lowest and helps save us, then the princesses appear to tell us that he is actually a dangerous ‘person’, as they call’m, and then when it seems like the whole mix up can finally be cleared, the princesses tells us he was reliving a memory dream so bad that it would put discord to shame. In the end, it just didn’t make sense, especially when Celestia lied.

“Something wrong Applejack.” Pulled from my thoughts, I saw that it was Pinkie who noticed my spacing out.

“Yeah Pinkie, this whole thing just doesn’t sit right with me.” The others noticed what I had said and were no longer paying attention to the old griffon as he worked.

“What do you mean AJ?” It was Twilight who asked the question.

“While the princess is a respectable pony who doesn’t lie, Celestia did so right during her explanation of the whole thing and the displaced.”

“The Princess lied to us? Then why would she tell us about a war that never happened.” Fluttershy was the one who spoke.

“No not the whole thing, for the most part she was telling the truth, but near the end I started getting that feeling that she wasn’t saying something and I don’t know what it was.” The others didn’ say nothing else and left it alone to probably think about it for themselves. With no one talking, the room became very loud with the sound of rustling papers but the sound didn’t stop me from continuing to think about what the princess lied about.

(Celestia POV)

Luna and I had spent the whole night working, with only small breaks for eating and and my duties to raise the sun, but otherwise we were doing everything we can to finish my original work from so long ago. It was a small collar, just large enough to go around a human's neck, and on it were etchings of runes and glyphs to help us control anywho wore it, to a degree that is. Unfortunately, no power source small enough could power the collars indefinitely so I had been forced to do away with some of the actual control formula which would lead to the individual having no control except to do my orders but they would not be the mindless servants I needed them to be which would be detrimental to my plans if any one of them figured out some way to break free. That was what lead us to what both I and my sister were doing now.

Currently the collars were untested which meant we needed a guinea pig of somesort to see if the enchantments held in place. To find the right candidate, we were looking through the hundreds of journals I had created on the displaced I had imprisoned over the years trying to find one strong enough to work but not to be a hassle if it somehow didn’t.

‘No, too large, No, too powerful, No, too erratic.’ When I turned the page as I had done before hundreds of times before, I found myself staring at a sketch of a person I never wanted to see again. His hair was white as snow and his skin blue as ice, and his clothing was flamboyant like the vamponies from myths and legends.

“Celestia, I think I found a good enough one.” I quickly closed my book, keeping it from Luna’s eyes, and looked at her possible candidate. They were short in stature, with long golden hair, but the red overcoat he wore easily fit into my memories of what he could do so I did not need to read the description I had given him.

“Yes he seems like a good choice for now, hopefully the past 300 hundred years in imprisoned in stone shut him up finally.” My sister looked confused at my words, so I simply smiled to her. “Why don’t you go and collect him, I’ll get the collar ready.” Luna nodded before exiting the room to fly out onto the distance to find the person in question and leaving me alone to think.

Opening my book back to his page, I remembered the last words he ever said to me.

‘You think I had any control of what went on in her head, HAH, don’t make me laugh. If I could do that, I would already be out of this stupid world by then instead of being hunted like some damn rat. Still, even if she does come back, begging on her knees no less, you won’t forget the fact that you made this happen.’ Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I quickly used my magic to pull his ages from the book and lit them aflame.

“I may remember it, but she never will, I can’t let her if i’m to be a better sister.”

(CLACK)

The terrace doors opened from behind signaling Luna had arrived. Acting quickly, I stepped atop the burnt ashes and turned to face her and saw she had the displaced we needed.

“Tell me again sister, why can we only use one, wouldn’t more be better when this is all over with and we know if we can control them, to use more?”

“Unfortunately Luna, I do not have enough resources to make these collars as much as I want so we must use them sparingly otherwise the displaced might get away before I can send more if he defeats them.” Luna said nothing but continued to stare at me saying nothing, I was almost thought she was beginning to see through my lie about he resources. We actually had plenty to make well over a hundred but the collars had to be connected to an owner to use them and I was going to let Luna become any more involved than she already was. It was for her own protection.

“Very well then. Let us get to work shall we?”

“Why Luna, I would love nothing more. After all, it beats sitting around listening to the nobles complain.”

Author's Note

Thought I would just let you all know that I went to see Ready Player One Today and my first thought after the movie was over was.

'Man, if there was a My Little Pony world, it would be every displaced fan's wet dream'

Any who, if anybody can figure out the two other displaced described in this chapter, you'll get a free imaginary cookie when they are revealed.

The King Learns

Ch 7

Things had been going okay for the past 20 minutes or so as Feathers Worth told me the stories such as the time during the food shortage rebellion, and the dragon scouts invasion, but after a while the stories began to simply blend together in one way or another leaving to become bored as Feathers continued to read his documents. With nothing to do, I figured that now would be the best time to try and figure out how to finally teleport. Starting simple, I placed a stack of papers on one side of the room I was in on a stool while I stood on the other. 2 minutes later and I still haven’t been able to teleport.

“What are you doing?”

“Yesterday I teleported to help some ponies but I can’t seem to do it now.” Feathers looked interested by this as he turned on his haunches to look at me.

“How have you been trying teleport?”

“Well when I first did it, I wanted to be somewhere as quickly as possible, and it just happened. I’ve been trying to recreate that feeling.”

Feathers worth, gave a long stare, as though contemplating my response before shaking his head.

“You’re doing it all wrong then.”

“What?”

“You’re doing it wrong. You keep trying to recreate the feeling you had then but you aren’t.”

“How so?”

“Answer me this first. What were you doing that lead you to teleport?”

“Saving someponies’ lives.”

“And you obviously felt some strong emotion before it happened then, yes?” I nodded. “That right there is your problem. You keep trying to activate the magic based on your wants instead of your needs. At the time, you felt you needed to get close and you magic reacted in response to teleport you.”

“But It’s not magic.” Feathers looked at me funny.

“Even still, magic or not magic, the feeling of needing to do something always supersedes that of want. Eventually after enough practice, the feeling becomes second nature and you can do it on command.”

Contemplating his words, I focused back on the papers. I imagined them as them as the one thing that could possibly get me out of this mess and all that I needed to do was grab them. In an instant, I was on my hands and knees. Looking around to see what had happened, I saw that I was no longer at the end of the room but rather halfway between the two ends. Feathers Worth began clapping at this.

“Not bad, teleporting is an extremely advanced skill to use and for your second try you did pretty well.” instead of getting of to my feet, I let myself sit on the floor to look at the Griffon.

“I take it you’ve done this before?”

“Teaching? No. I have taught myself in the art of magic though.” At that, he cupped his talons and produced a small ball of flames. “Not many species know this but griffons are actually able to be quite proficient at magic if they took the time to study but with our natural history and biology at work, our physical aspects have always retained the forefront of our concern. Truthfully, I wished to have become an elder mage, but when your father is the owner of a firm, anything but law school goes out the window.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, you seem like you could have been a good one. Still though, if you take so time out of your day to keep practicing, you might still become one.” Feathers extinguished the flame with a sad smile.

“I thought the same way, a long time ago. I would practice everyday after my studies to learn about magic but, in the end, it just didn’t pan out.” After saying that, he turned back to his book. I felt bad now, reminding him of his given up dreams and I wanted to make it up at least somewhat. Thinking for a moment, I finally had the perfect idea.

“Hey Feathers, you got an empty bag or purse on ya.”

“No but I have a mostly empty coin purse in my briefcase. Why do you ask?” I didn’t answer as I quickly opened the case, ignoring my bugvisor in the process. Once I had the object in hand, I quickly emptied what little was in the purse onto the table and retrieved my energy items book.

Looking over the assortment of items, I quickly grabbed a few of each kind and put them into the purse before handing over the now bulging purse.

“Um, what are you doing?”

“Well, I felt bad for reminding you of something bad from your past and I also wanted to repay you for the lesson you gave me.”

“What?”

“I know what It’s like to remember something you would rather forget, and I found the best way to at least ease the burden is to discover something new. Well right now, I’ve given you a bag of small coins that can give you boosts in power based on which one you use.” Feathers took the bag cautiously, before removing one of the energy items. The item in question was an iron-body.

“I don’t know what to say, no one has ever given me anything like this before.”

“Please, your just saying that. To prove how cool this is, just crush the coin in your hand.” Still hesitant, Feathers did so. Within the course of a second, his entire body became silver in color with a polished gleam before it faded away.

“What was that?”

“That, was Iron-body. For the next five minutes, your entire body is as hard as iron so not only does it mean you can take more than just a punch, you’ll be able to hit harder yourself.” Feathers seemed to only be able to express the emotion of being flabbergasted but I continued unperturbed. “Amazing I know. Don’t use them all up though because they don’t grow back like the ones in my binder.”

“Where did you get these?” Not expecting the question, I stumbled in my pride.

“Um, well, I just had them. I didn’t really find them anywhere.”

“I don’t believe you. Items like these, don’t just appear out of thin air. These are easily in the same class as one of the princesses crowns.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, you currently have an unlimited supply of magic items that can change anything with no draw back on the user. All magic items have some kind of drawback, whether it be simply needing a certain amount of magic energy, or even taking part of your soul itself. All magic items have a price to use them, and these didn’t have one at all.” I was stunned to hear that but then I remembered what he had said first.

“Wait, you said that the princess crowns are magic items. Do you mean Luna and Celestia.” He shook his head yes.

“Both princesses hold magical enchantments in their crowns though nobody knows what they all are. Some say that, Luna can teleport anyone anywhere, as long as she knows where she’s going during the time of night while Celestia can find anyone during the daytime, and those are the only two that are actually confirmed after decades of studying the two.” I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Celestia has been able to track me all this time, no wonder should could keep up with me under the trees or how she found me so fast after I time paused to get away from them the first time. If she was tracking me, that meant she was on her way now as we speak.

“Feathers, we need that courtroom right now!” My outburst seemed to startle him out of his starstruck mentality.

“What, why?”

“Because, Princess Celestia is tracking me at this very moment and if I don’t get out of here quick then she’ll find me and encase me in stone.” Feathers, understanding my panic, quickly looked to his watch to check the time only to become relaxed.

“No need to worry, the hearing starts in five minutes so we need to head up anyways.”

“Thank goodness, I can win my duel and get out of here then. Hand me my bugvisor would you?”

“Um, weapons aren’t allowed.” I could only stare at Feathers as we walked side by side down the halls.

“What?”

Author's Note

Short chapter, I know but I have some big things happening in the next and I didn't want to just cram it all in right here. Sorry but the next one will be extra special as it will be all about fighting.

(Audience cheers)

Awesome right? Well just hold on for one more day and it will come out real soon.

Also, not many seem to be trying to guess who the other displaced is. To give you a hint so I can get more guesses going, His power relies on his sweat.

The King Recounts

Ch 9

It was sometime later when I began to regain consciousness. At that point, I noticed three things, 1: I was naked, 2: I was in a cell, and 3: I had company. Said company were the six ponies from Ponyville I had met, Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy, and my lawyer Feathers Worth though he looked like he wasn’t doing so good. Not sure what to do, I simply covered my naked crotch and waited for someone to speak (It’s hard to think of something when you’re naked). The first person to speak was none other than Feathers.

“I told you not to do it.” Considering what had happened, I wasn’t disagreeing this time. “I can’t believe i’m saying this but, Cronus, you are to be executed noon tomorrow by beheading. As you had no will before the preceding, all property that you own has been seized by the crown and is now under care by the royal archives directory. I am also legally obligated to inform you that all ties that we had are now severed and I am no longer your lawyer.” Feathers began coughing but he seemed to be done and simply left the room leaving me with the six ponies.

“I take it that Princess Celestia wanted you six to catch me?”

“Yes she asked us to catch you so you can be dealt with accordingly. Personally though I wanted to know the truth.” I perked up at Twilight’s words. “Applejack says that Celestia lied to us when she was explaining about what happened to her sister Luna, do you have any idea what she may be talking about?”

“Something happened to Luna?” Twilight nodded.

“Yes. Celestia says that a displaced, one of your kind, turned her into Nightmare Moon after the war against displaced.”

“I take it that Nightmare Moon is some kind of demon or such thing?” They all nodded. “Well I have no clue about any of that stuff, I literally appeared in this world only two days ago so there’s no way I could have been apart of that.” Applejack stepped forwarded after that.

“If you don’t know anything about the war back then, then I want you to answer me truthfully.” I nodded in acceptance of her request, it wasn’t like there was anything else I could do. “Why did you help my family?”

“Because they needed help and I could do something.” Applejack simply stared at me for a second before closing her eyes and looking downward as though in defeat.

“You’re tell’n the truth.”

“Of course I would, i’m not the kind of person to just let something bad happen when I can do something to fix it, Not anymore, at least.” Applejack looked back to me with pleading in her eyes this time.

“Then why did you dream of killin’ your own sister in cold blood?” There were tears in hers eyes but she continued. “Why would you create a fire that would hurt innocent people? Why would… why would you be so cruel then.” Some many emotions were on her face but the most prominent one seemed to be desperation, the desperation for me to say something to assuage her feelings of fear, doubt, hurt, and uncertainty.

“How did you know I dreamt those things?”

“Princess Luna looked into your dreams to see if she could find any information about you.

It all made sense then, why my dream had seemed so different yet still the same, because someone was there watching me.

“I see.” I wanted to feel rage about what Luna had done but I wasn’t sure I could, not with some pony crying so close to me about how unsure she seemed to be. “ That dream, is a nightmare, one that has haunted me for the last 5 years.” Not sure what else to say and with death so close on the horizon, I figured it would be best just to explain myself. “5 years ago, when I was just out of highschool, I got in with a bad crowd of people. These people were the worst kind of scum you could associate with but they were the only people I could to help keep my sister safe. They did every crime you could think of ranging form petty theft to full on murder. One day, one of the members of the group decided to quit, don’t know why exactly, and the boss wasn’t happy. So in response, the boss took me and three other guys to the man who quit’s house and began to beat the living hell out of him. When they were finished, the began spreading gas all over the place and gave me the match to light it. I didn’t know what to do and eventually caved in to the pressure. That was when my sister came running in.

Apparently she had seen me leave our apartment and decided to follow after to try and stop whatever I was doing. It was to late though, as the fire had already begun. Unprepared for the surprise, the man who quit quickly got the drop one the ones holding him down causing panic to occur. Fire was being sent left and right and bullets weren’t far behind them. To put a long and horrible story short. I and my sister were the only survivors but she was burnt, burnt well beyond what any human, especially a little girl could live through.” I started to tear up as I began imagining her face and voice during that horrible night.

“She begged me to help her, to help make the pain go away but there was nothing I could do. Nothing except put her out of her pain and suffering. After that, I was tried with assisted arson of another person’s property but not murder as my fingerprints were already gone by that point. With the lack of evidence, I was soon let out of prison and back into a world without my sister, the same sister that I had to kill.” I couldn’t speak anymore and could only sob in grief for what I had done. The sound of an opening door filled the room before it closed but I didn’t care, I just wanted to cry until I couldn’t any longer.

(Applejack POV)

While I had finished crying rather quickly after talking to Cronus, I could still hear his cries even outside the the dungeons, though it was drowned in the hustle and bustle from above.

“I can’t believe he had to do all that.” It was Rainbow Dash who said that, and I had to agree with the sentiment. While at first I felt that my instincts had been wrong and it began to leave me with doubt that people cruel enough to hurt my family without me knowing it could get close enough before I could do anything, Cronus story proved to me that I could still feel the truth of whatever anypony or person said, even if I wished it wasn’t true.

Not speaking after hearing such a horrible and heartbreaking story, we all made are way out of the parthenon at a slow pace ( not even Rainbow Dash would fly like she usually did). Nearing the entrance/exit to the building, I noticed a slight flutter of something but decided to pay it no mind as I had other things on my mind now.

Author's Note

It's a sort of wonky chapter I know but that's what happens when you wait till the end of the day to start typing.

The King Retrieves, The Servant Steals

Ch 10

(3rd POV)

Day soon turned to night in the land of griffins and the local populace had finally begun to turn in for the night leaving only those dedicated with its safeguard burning the midnight oil. Or rather that was how it would be but hidden in the shadows, watching with an almost eerie silence, a cloaked figure was slowly making his way through the parthenon. His advances were slow, stopped only by the continued presence of griffin guards that patrolled the halls and corridors of the large building. Eventually, the hidden individual reached his destination, A single door that lead to the underbelly of the parthenon and down into the dungeons for all criminals.

Slowly creeping down the stone steps, taking great care not to make a sound as he did so, the unknown person had finally reached the bottom where only a small trio of guards could be seen as they were huddled around a table playing a card game of some sort. Figuring it to be an easy problem to deal with, the shadowed man clapped his hands together, gaining the guards attention from the noise, and pressed his palms to the stone walls. Upon contact with the hard bedrock walls, blue sparks could be seen arching across it until reaching the location of the guards. At that point, before the griffins even had a chance to grab their spears, a mouth of rock clamped down around them, trapping them inside with little room to move.

No longer having to be careful about his concealment now, the shadowed individual stepped into the light of the now knocked over lamp that had fallen in the guards rush to capture him. The person in question was Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, or rather he was a displaced copy of said individual. Relaxing once in the light, the Edward displaced began to smile.

“Oh man, I was totally like snake eyes when I did all that. Maybe I should have dressed up as him before the merchant got me; then I would have that cool solid eye that can see in the dark. Oh well, transmutation is cool too.” The displaced began to make his way past cells, only stopping to peer through the grates located in the top while standing on his tiptoes, past the empty cells before stopping. Said cell was considered maximum security as instead of only being made of rock and an iron door, the entirety of its interior was covered in steel that had been inscribed with magic cancelling runes on its undersides and out of reach for the incarcerated individual. As it so happened though, Transmutation was not magic but rather science, meaning the steel door had easily changed from its rigid and solid form into that of and arch after only a clap of the displaced’s hands.

With a door no longer in his way, the Fullmetal displaced entered with his lamp to finally confront the person he had been ordered to catch, only to have to cover his eyes upon seeing said target completely nude while he slept.

“Aw geez budy, put some clothes on, put on some clothes why don’t you.” Being louder than usual due to the man’s nakedness, the man awoke.

“Huh, what, where am I? The man, also known as Cronus the displaced, was stopped from his surprised questioning by a red cloak hitting him in the face and waking his mind the rest of the way.

“No time to explain, I need to get you out of here so I can live a life of not being a pigeon poop target anymore.” The displaced, quickly grabbed Cronus’ hand to pull him to his feet but Cronus did not move.

“Not yet.”

(Cronus POV)

The Edward Elric gave a look of annoyance as I began to resist his continued attempts to pull me from my seat. Not wanting to leave without my stuff though, I continued to resist. After a continued time of pulling, the look alike stopped.

“We need to get out of here now otherwise the guards will notice sooner or later what’s happening.”

“Too bad then, I’m not leaving yet. I still need my energy items and my bugvisor.” The look alike quickly let got at that before backing away in fear.

“Bugs, Where?” Taking this as my chance, I rushed past the apparently squeamish man and through the transfigured doorway into the dungeon hall. Not wasting any time, I turned right to head back down the hallway and too the exit, hopefully. My luck proved true as I eventually came upon the door that lead to main hall of the parthenon and quickly ran through. When I was about halfway through it, a small but heavy body tackled me from behind, pinning me to the floor under him.

“We need to leave now, I don’t have time to play games.” I started to struggle.

“Well I need to get my stuff before someone does something stupid and kills someone by accident.” The feeling of weight on my back lessened.

“You’re serious about this aren’t you?” I quickly nodded yes. “ Fine, we cane probably get you stuff but we don’t have long. I spent over half the night watching the guard rotation and the next one will be coming in less than a few minutes. Where do we need to go?” He finally got off me.

“The Royal Archives Directory.” The smaller man helped me to my feet with a look of thought on his face.

“If it’s a royal archive, it’ll probably be further in the the building, probably somewhere near the throne room or below it.”

“How do you know where it is?”

“A little Transmutation can go a long way to check out a building undetected but it has to be busy or people will hear it. That doesn’t mean I know where it is exactly though” Not arguing with his response, I let him lead the way. Taking a couple of turns after exiting the dungeon, we were soon in a branch of the building I had never seen before and where guards were standing at attention and unmoving in what little moonlight that could be seen.

“Danggit, how are we supposed to get past them?” I whispered but the blonde man didn’t respond. Getting annoyed by calling him by his features, I asked his name.

“Just call me Ed, shouldn’t that be obvious or have you never watched anime before?” I didn’t respond which left Ed to his thoughts.

‘If only I had my bugvisor then maybe I could teleport acr-oss’ In the blink of an eye, neon green took up my vision before dissipating in a light ‘tinkling’ sound and showing that both I and Ed were on the other side of the guards. Looking down, I saw that I had my hand on the shorter man’s back as he had been crouching the whole time trying to hide better.

“What the heck, you didn’t tell me you could teleport. That’ll make this some much easier now.” I didn’t respond though as I was to surprised by what I had done. Teleporting was only an ability that Cronus had but I wasn’t wearing the suit so I shouldn’t have been able to do. I know Dan Masamune had done it before but everyone always agreed that it was because he was more bugster than human and he always had his bugvisor with him when he did it while I on the other hand had nothing except a red coat.

A quick tug regained my attention to see that I had been following Ed while I was still holding him. Embarrassed because of doing something so childish, I quickly pulled my hand away and figured to save my questions for later while I looked to where Ed was pointing now. It was a large set of double doors guarded by a single guard on each side.Unsure what to do, I looked to Ed and saw that he had already clapped his hands and placed them to the floor for his transmutation. Within an instant, the guards were trapped in shells of stone with their screams for help muffled.

“Are they going to be okay?”

“Oh yeah, totally. The walls are only a few inches thick so they should be able to claw their way out in a few minutes so come on.” Ed grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through the doors as he opened them. Upon entering the room, now lamp or torch seemed to be lit,until one by one, sconces on the walls became lit with burning flames to reveal the inner contents of the room. My overall reaction had to be, at that moment, underwhelmed as I had imagined the room to be a great library with objects of great importance lining the walls. Instead though, the room was only about as big as a large bedroom with a single bookshelf that was not even halfway filled with books, a tapestry that depicted some unknown battle, and only a few stand with random bones and weapons with my Bugvisor and energy item folder among them. Retrieving them quickly, I took off the cloak that Ed had lended, causing said person to look away from me, and began the transformation.

Buggle up! Ten wo Tsukame Rider! (Wow!) Kizame Chronicle! Ima koso Toki wa kiwamareri (wow!)

After the light show had finished, I stood fully clothed and armored once again and pocketed the last of my stuff. Making my way back to the door, I could already see the guards beginning to create small holes with their talons that were slowly growing size. Turning back to Ed, I was about to tell him to “come on” on but I saw that he looked transfixed by the tapestry on the wall. Frantic, I tried to pull him away but he wouldn’t budge.

“What are you doing, weren’t you the one who said we needed to leave quickly.” Ed didn’t look away from the hanging cloth.

“Yeah I did but this tapestry has transmutation circles on it.” Unsure as to what he meant, I looked towards it myself. The entire tapestry was spread over three sections, each one depicting different stages of a battle between a formless black cloud and a king griffin. The first part showed the city of griffins seemingly being destroyed by the cloud causing the griffins who lived there to flee in terror, the next section depicted the king of griffins standing up to the cloud but seemingly falling as he was falling from the sky, and the final part showed a very familiar set of armor creating a large circle like structure above the dragon causing it to be encased in crystal. Like Ed had said, the circle structure was most definitely a transmutation circle and the armored person being was in the exact same shape and form as Alphonse.

“Do you know the guy in the Alphonse armor?”

“No, I never got a chance to meet any other displaced before I was imprisoned. This tapestry must be before I even got here.” The sound of breaking rocks crashing to the floor broke both Ed and I’s concentration and bringing us back to the situation at hand as one of the free guards began yelling for reinforcement. Moving quickly, Ed tore the tapestry from the wall before stuffing it into his pocket and grabbing his dropped cloak and grabbing onto my arm.

“Get with the teleporting man. We were here to long and they’ll be on top of us any minute now.” Only nodding, I began to concentrate. Remembering Feathers’ words of advice, I focused on how I needed to leave the archives and focused on the one place that I could at that moment. In a flash of green, we had left the archives and were now in the same room from where Feathers
Had been studying his books, along with a still sick looking Feathers at the desk.

The King Evolves

Ch 11

“Cronus, what are you doing here?” it seemed like even when he looked like a walking pile of crap, the griffin went right to the point.

“Oh hey Feathers, thought I would just pop in before Ed and I left.” Me, not so much.

“Pop in-?” Before Feathers could say more, Ed put himself but him and me.

“Not that catching up with your friends isn’t great and all but we need to leave, like right now.” Ed grabbed my arm once more and began to pull me but just as Ed was about to reach the handle to the door, he was pulled back by Feathers who was holding onto my other arm and pulling with what looked to all his might.

“I’m not letting you get away (cough), until I get some answers.” As soon as Feathers said that, Ed punched the griffin right across the beak with his metal right arm. Like a light, Feathers was out cold.

“What the hell Ed? Why did you do that? He wasn’t going to rat us out.”

“He was getting in my way and he needed to be dealt with.” The way Ed spoke was not the way I had been hearing for the past hour. It was emotionless, like his arm had somehow spread all over his body and turning him into some kind of machine, and I didn’t like. While Ed was still focused on Feathers (most likely to make sure he wouldn’t get back up any time soon). I punched him in the back of the head with my re-enhanced strength, knocking him out cold as well. With That done, I knelt by the griffin to see if he was okay, what I found though, shocked me to my core.

Small orange streaks of of data clouds had begun to spring up all over his body. This was the second sign that his body had been infected by the Bugster Virus. ‘How though, none of the bugsters exists here or at least known that I know of. And I was with him almost all day yesterday. So how could he have gotten the disease.’ It was then that I remembered.

“Please, your just saying that. To prove how cool this is, just crush the coin in your hand.” Still hesitant, Feathers did so. Within the course of a second, his entire body became silver in color with a polished gleam before it faded away.

‘It must have been then. The energy items are made from the same coding as my kamen rider suit and the bugsters. So when he absorbed the data of the Iron-body without the Bugster anti-virus, he became infected by it. Without a level one gashat though, there’s no way I can cure him. Unless.’ Concentrating, the weapon I needed appeared.

Gashacon Key Slasher

The Key Slasher, as the name entails, is the first part of the rewriting of code since it allows the puncturing of the coding itself, like a syringe. I don’t have Emu’s anti-virus though, but if have Cronus’ then it should work well enough especially when I have the literal source of all Bugster data on my waste. Hopefully that line of logic would actually work. Removing my gashat, I inserted it into the dual gashat slot and waited for the usual critical finish to activate but nothing came from the weapon’s hidden speakers. Instead, it seemed as though Feathers’ virus progression had only worsened and was now beginning to grow into the base of the infection phase. Not sure what would happen, I did know that whatever Feathers turned into, it would be too large for the room to hold and just cause unneeded damage. Grabbing onto him, I teleported out of the room and the building itself and onto the mountain's top, at the base of all the buildings.

“What? No, I need to be at the base of the mountain not the top.” My cries fell on deaf ears though as feathers had completed his transformation and was now the base gorilla-like infection for Mighty Action X. Upon laying its single eye on me, I could already tell it was angry and it only proved I was right when one of its arms shrunk, only for the mass to travel to the other arm and cause it to grow in the process before the monster swung it at me. The damage he caused was large as an entire chunk of the rock ground, the size of his hand, had been gouged out of the earth. I had dodged the attack luckily by quickly jumping and was now falling through the air to reach the ground below. That proved to be futile though, as the gorilla of a beast was charging, giving me no time to respond and sending my flying through the air from his impact before stopping in the wall of one of the many pillars.

“Ow.” Slowly pulling myself from the wall like an anime character, I was left dazed and my vision was swimming from the impact. ‘How could he hit so hard? He should only be strong enough for a level 1 not a level 99 character from the games.’ MY thoughts stopped though as the gorilla had stopped staring at me and was staring at the sky instead. Looking up, I saw that the guards, as well as Aires had arrived to fight (not that it would help). One by one, griffins began to dive at the creature to try and skewer it with their spears but they were either swatted away like fly or their spears and swords couldn’t pierce through the data beast’s data composed hide. Seeing this, Aires became angry but upon noticing me his anger turned to fury before he dived towards me instead.

Not wanting to be skewered by an irate griffin, I was quick to dodge the strike and began to continue my doging as Aires had unsheathed his sword and began slashing at me. Still with the Key Slasher in hand, I blocked and redirected as many stikes as I could. Eventually I miss timed my block, much like I had miss timed my strike from the fight, and was now left with both my sword and gashat embedded in the ground few yards away from me and with a sword pointing at my throat. If he wasn’t so close, I would have tried to go for my bugvisor for a time stop but I was pretty sure if I even moved in a way that could be seen as threatening, he would stab me straight through the throat. Considering I had only ever seen characters from Kamen Rider shake off slashes, I was not keen to see a direct stab, especially into one of the weakest parts of a body.

“First you dishonor the traditions of my home, now you have unleashed a horrible monster upon it. Does your shame know no bounds.” The venom was almost visible when Aires spoke.

“I didn’t create this on purpose. I thought the energy items were safe to use for others.”

“Others?”

“What you think this guy came out of nothing? He’s my- or rather -was my lawyer. Trying to be nice I gave him a bag of those ‘magic items’ I couldn’t use and let him use one. I didn’t think that he would turn into this monster.” If possible, the captain looked even more angry.

“Then how do I stop it?”

“You can’t.”

“What?”

“I said you can’t stop it. No one can. He has to have the monster separated from his body by someone like me but weaker before the monster can be destroyed. If that doesn’t happen though, Feathers will disappear and that monster will take his place forever.”

“WELL HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU WEAKER THEN IF YOU”RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO IT?”

“Well I was planning on trying to use my ‘magic’ in a way i’ve never tested before but nothing has happened yet.” For a second, the sword stayed at my throat before finally it was pulled away though Aires didn’t seem happy about it.

“You will work on finding a way. My guards and I will keep the beast distracted until you can get rid of this monster.” Nodding, I watched as the captain flew to join his troops. Running to the Key Slasher, I pulled it from the rock and began to look it over. Nothing about it was wrong from the show, and when ever I pressed one of the buttons, the right sounds came from it but nothing else.

“It has to be me then, My gashat isn’t compatible for it to work. How is that possible though when I can summon it like all the other weapons.” A crash behind me took my attention away for a brief moment to see that a few troops had become grounded and the citizens of the city were out of their homes and beginning to panic though thankfully in the air and out of the way. Among the Griffins though were Twilight and Applejack as well as the rest of the ponies and and a single dragon from Ponyville. Noticing me as well, they raced towards me.

“What in the Tartrus is happening Cronus?”

“Monster, Feathers, trying to cure, need time.”

“Well if you need time then to get whatever you got in your hands to work, then we seven can help with that.”

“Yeah, what AJ said!” I looked at the one I believed was named Rainbow Dash, stunned. The ponies had been told that I was a bad person from royalty from the get go and only knew me for a couple of hours at best and know they were trusting me to save the day. What kind of logic is that. Apparently noticing my stares, even from under my helmet, Twilight Sparkle stepped forward.

“I am not one to question the princess’ judgment about something but from what I know and what I’ve been told, you are not a bad pony- I mean -person Cronus, just someone taken from their home and put in a bad situation. Because of this, we will all help you and clear your name so we can live in harmony and be friends.” At that, the large group raced into the fight doing whatever they could to help ranging from throwing rocks, to distracting it by tying its legs or blowing confetti out of some unknown cannon into its formless face.

Seeing all this, just from only a few hours of knowing me, that they would truly trust me to help as much as I could, I didn’t know what to think. It was idiotic, short sighted, and just plain sappy, but somehow her words stuck, as though she actually meant something by them, that she truly wanted to be my friend. Focusing again I noticed the the gashat slot was empty, something I hadn’t noticed before. Looking to the ground, I saw my gashat lying at my feet and made to pick it up but as soon as my hands touched it, the gashat exploded in light. When the light subsided, I noticed two things. My bugvisor Zwei and my gashat had transformed.

The first obvious change was that the Bugvisor now looked like a game diver only it was wider and flatter like it was permanently open, I now had three gashat slots on top of it and the A and B buttons were one on each side giving my driver a more controller like look and not a handheld game console. I no longer had the blaster or chainsaw but I felt as though that wouldn’t matter at the moment. The other change was my gashat was now a dual gashat. One side held the same tile as from the original but the other was all white in color with similar but with a different name.

“Kamen Rider Harmony?” A cry of pain from behind alerted me to the increased severity of the situation as the bugster was beginning to glow with power. Acting quickly, I twisted the dual turner.

Kamen Rider Harmony

In an instant my body flowed with an energy I had never felt before. It was like my body had suddenly filled itself with a light that was beginning to overtake a darkness I had never known was there. When my body stopped changing, I Found my body to look mostly the same only my green color scheme had been replaced with the color white, my shoulder pads no longer existed as well as my time stop ability no longer being able to work now because of that and I now wore small white shoulder pads that stuck out at small tips.

I felt powerful but weak at the same time, like this power that I had was strong, stronger than anything, but it would only work on those that were truly a threat. Not caring at the moment though, I pulled the dual gashat from its slot and inserted it into the Key Slasher before pressing gun. The weapon filled with white light, ready to be fired.

Kimewaza: Critical Purity Strike

The beam of looked as though it simply cut through the air, landing a direct hit on the monstrous gorilla and causing it to explode into particles of swirling data and Feathers was at the Center of the mass. The guards acted quickly to catch him but the fight was not truly over yet. As expected, the data gathered together to form a much smaller and condensed form. Salty Bugster: level 5. The Bugster I knew looked exactly as he did from the end of the series but I could feel the power he exuded telling me he was in his final level 5 state.

“How dare you ruin my chance to be born in this world. I will crush you and everyone here.” The words were a hollow promise though as I had run fast enough to almost look like I had teleported to get near him and pierced him through his abdomen with ease. With only a look of confusion (or at least as close to confused as you can get with an unmoving face), the Bugster exploded into data before being absorbed into the sword.

Game Clear

A holographic board of all the known games of Kamen Rider Ex-aid appeared around me before darkening on Mighty Action X. With the Game now cleared, a gashat formed out of thin air, The Mighty Action X game. Not caring at the moment, I stowed the gashat away and turned the dial on my dual gashat again.

Kamen RIder Chronicle

Within an instant, the light receded from within me and my armor returned to its original state. Feeling calm, even outside of the Harmony state I now had, I turned to face the army of griffin soldiers and saw that AIres was now beginning to land and with the King himself as well. Neither looked happy.

Author's Note

I figured that since this is a Kamen rider and MLP fic, I should add two elements that are very prominent throughout each series. The power of light, from a single act that can push back the dark, and the over use of new more complicated forms.

Challenge: See if you can guess some of the "complications" of this new form.

The King celebrates

Ch 12

I had been sitting on the cold concrete of my new cell for who knows how long now, next to a bound and gagged Ed, and with griffin guards surrounding us with their weapons drawn. The reason for such ‘improvements’ is due to the fact that my new and improved driver was no longer able to be removed but I could still turn off my transformation (Small tid bit but I now had clothes. They apparently were created when I was fueled with the power of friendship and harmony). Still waiting, I looked over to Ed to check how he was doing but he still looked like a rabid dog ready to bite someone’s head off.

“You do know that looking like that won’t make them take the gag out of your mouth any sooner right?” The look Ed gave me would have burnt its way through steel had the king not suddenly arrived with Aires at his side. Upon seeing him, all the guards stood at attention and waited for orders. None came as the king made his way up straight to me.

“Stand up.” Doing at I was told, the king stared me directly in the eyes. “Do you know what time it is, human?” I shook my head no. “ It is currently 11 a.m.” I simply looked at the griffin, hoping he would explain more. “ As per custom of those who lose a duel by trial, at the stroke of 11 you would be paraded through the skies of our city to commemorate your loss to the people and remind them that the government is who is in charge before arriving at the chopping block at the stroke of noon to receive your punishment. Do you wish to guess why this has not happened yet?” I shook my head in confirmation. “Well the reason for your current lack of being paraded is due to two reasons really. Not only are the citizens hailing you as a hero for saving them from a monster that none of my best guards could defeat, but the Equestrian dignitaries are petitioning for your release and quickly gaining ground. Do you see where i’m going with this.” Another nod. “Good, because when you are out of these cells and my kingdom, I do not wish for you to ever come back. Your actions here have caused enough problems to last me a lifetime as it is and I do not wish for anymore problems.” The king said nothing else as he left the cell, leaving Aires behind with the guards.

“Leave us.” And now it was just Aires as the guards filed out as quickly and efficiently as possible. “You can already tell that the king is not happy with you, I also feel the same but I also owe you a debt of gratitude. I like to consider myself a griffin of honor and because of this I concede that the king spoke true of your involvement in the dealing of the monster. So while I do owe you a debt, do not expect me to pay it any time soon. With that out of the way, you can follow me and I will lead you to the dignitaries.”

“What about Ed.” Aires looked at the still fuming Ed before turning away.

“While he did not climb the mountain like you did, he still entered our city without any form of permit or inspection and is under arrest until the end of the day. After that, he is free to go.” If, Ed’s mouth had been uncovered, I was sure the the erratic and furious mumbling would have been a slew of curses towards the griffin.

Following, we soon left the dungeon and exited out into the surprisingly quiet main hall. Taking a quick right turn, he headed straight for the main door at the end of the hall ( these doors were easily taller than a small house), where I could hear the sound of voices coming from as we came closer and closer. When reaching it, Aires flew upwards towards some kind of hatch that he could look through before beginning to speak, though I couldn’t hear what exactly. When he landed, he took two steps back. Unsure, I copied him and became surprised as the doors moved outwards. Just barely missing us, I saw that two griffin guards panting as they had just exerted themselves opening the large door. Entering quickly, I watched the griffins close the doors behind us as they seemed to be using all the strength they had in their wings.

We were both now in a new set of hallways, ones of which I had not walked through before. Further and further we walked and the voices continued to become louder and louder as we did so until finally we came upon a large open doorway that lead into a large atrium like room. Inside, it looked as though almost everyone in the city had arrived, or at least enough to sound like their were as many as upon seeing me the entire room burst into cheers. The sound was deafening and I was forced to cover my ears lest I go deaf but Aires seemed unaffected and simply made his way forward. Not one to be left behind, I followed after and found myself to be standing in the center of the atrium. Standing there, I finally noticed something that should have been quite obvious but I had missed due to the surprise of everyone there and it was the king sitting on his throne looking down on me with barely concealed dislike.

When the cheers had finished and things began to get quiet (as quiet as a room filled with hundreds of griffins can be), the king’s disposition took a full 180 as he was no looking down on me with pride and admiration. The king slowly stood from his throne and made his way down towards myself and Aires which made said griffin kneel to his king. Following his lead, I did so as well. Step after step the king took, the clacks of his talons seemed to grow louder with each step before finally stopping in front of the two of us.

“Captain Aires, my most loyal and trusted advisor; I thank you for your service to your kingdom in response to your clear headedness and and bravery when fighting the monster.” The king spoke in a loud reverberating voice voice that echoed throughout the room’s large size and silencing any who were left speaking. “Because of your past deeds and actions, there is little else I can award you except my praise. Do you accept it.”

“I do my lord.” That was all Aires said before the king turned his attention on me.

“Cronus, even though you were given the chance to escape the execution that you had earned through your misjudgements of our people, you stood firm beside my people and defended them from harm. Because of this, I hereby give you the honorary title of knight for my court and ask if you would continue to aid us should we require it.”

“Of course sire.”

“I speak on behalf of all my people when I say: thank you. If there is anything you may need, do not hesitate to ask as you are always welcome back here.”

“Thank you sire.” The king stepped back and raised a single talon to the air. Confused on what the action meant, I became surprised to see a griffin soldier land next to the king and hand him a sword.”

“In the name of my father, and his father before him, I knight you sir Cronus.” Just like in the movies, the sword was laid on my soldiers but with the added feeling of the swords blade being extremely close to my neck as it laid on my shoulders, as though it were some kind of warning if I were not to follow words from before. “Now rise, sir Cronus, and stand before your people.”

I did so and the crowd went nuts with applause that was even more freverent than when I arrived. Aires did so next and and stood at attention letting everyone’s praise was over him like it was simply water. What followed next was unbelievable as Pinkie Pie, the crazy pinkett she was, appeared as if out of nowhere right next to me with an oversized cannon.

“Let’s party everyone!” Pulling the cord to the large weapon, no large sphere of metal exited it but instead a large ball of confetti that exploded outwards causing the room to somehow be decorated in the process. Before I could truly question it though, the crazy pony took me by the hand and started slinging me around the room like a ragdoll while she danced to the music that began to play. Thankfully I had not eaten breakfast yet as I was sure I would have hurled it after the second sling, how long that would last before my gruelish dinner decided to appear was up for debate though.

As I flew through the air, I couldn’t help smiling as I saw everyone dancing and smiling (I even saw Feathers who was nodding along to the beat off in one of the corners just staring at my predicament in amusement). Hours seemed to go by before the party started to wind down and it was getting close to late in the evening by then. I had stopped being Pinkie Pie’s doll a while ago but I had been approached by multiple griffin women for a quick dance until I couldn’t any longer and simply sat next to Feathers. We had talked during that time with me apologizing for turning him into the monster but Feathers didn’t seem to care. Instead of simply yelling and screaming for almost dying, he simply laughed and told me he had threw his ‘gift’ into the nearest fireplace he could so it didn’t happen again.

Most every griffin had left now with only guards, the occasional noble still staying to enjoy the last few bits of the party, and the ponies who just stood off to the side talking with each other. GIving a quick goodbye to Feathers and promising to somehow see him again (outside of court that is). I made my way over to the group, ready to leave and try to change the Princesses mind about me.

Author's Note

Don't worry if you think i've forgotten anything because everything is remembered and does have a meaning in this story.

The Servant Tells, The Princess Listens

Ch 13

(Ed POV)

“Danggint, where is he?” I was currently standing in the middle of town, at the base of all the column-like towers, panting as I had been running around at a non-stop pace ever since I had been released. It was nighttime, which both hindered and helped my searching but nowhere I looked could I find Cronus. Slumping, I slowly sat on the polished ground to catch my breath.

“I checked the with the guards but none of them knew anything, I tried that Aires guy but he just flew off in a huff, and I can’t find that stinking Feathers whatever and see if he knows. The Princesses said I had two days before I have to update them on my progress, but IF I tell them that I had the guy but he knocked me out, they’ll never send me home.” I sighed in frustration before reaching into my pocket to remove the old tapestry I had stolen. The only reason I had even been able to keep it after getting captured is thanks to the king apparently being secretive to even his guards and none of them recognised it from the Archives. Looking over it, my eyes lingered on the the transmutation seal.

After being transformed into Edward Elric so many years ago, my mind had been filled with all the knowledge of Alchemy that Edward had used in the series which let me do all the transmutations I could do. Just at a glance, I could easily recognise the majority of the equations and runes used to make it but the rest were unknown to me. After checking over it, I could see a pattern of energy being syphoned from some unspecified source but that was it. Putting the Tapestry back in my pocket, I sighed again before pulling my collar down to show my slave collar.

Whether or not that was the real name, I didn’t know, but what little I had heard when I had been a statue lead to the idea that was all it was. Putting a finger to the obsidian stone at the base of my throat, I felt a small drain on some kind of source in my body causing the stone to heat up. When the stone finally reached its hottest, I removed my hand to let a beam of light fly from my throat and show an image of the one controlling me. She gave a relieved smile but I could easily tell it was for her sake and not mine.

“Ed, I was worried that you weren’t going to contact me like you promised.”

“Yeah well, when you have the threat of never going home looming over you, it kind of makes you keep a promise.” She nodded in agreement.

“That’s good. What is your status on the capture of Cronus?” The part I was dreading.

“Good, and bad.” She became confused at my response.

“Explain.”

“Well I did what you said and went to the griffin capital to find him, and I did, but after meeting a friend of his I blacked out before waking up in a cell next to him. Apparently a monster had attacked the city when I was out and he saved the day and he was let out a few hours before I was by entering the city without a permit. Now I have no idea where he is.” Celestia didn’t shout at me for losing him, instead she put a hoof to her chin in thought.

“What was his friend’s condition?”

“What?” she became somewhat annoyed.

“I asked what was his friend’s condition.”

“Oh, well he seemed pretty sick and Cronus wanted to stay and try to help him. I tried to get him to leave but his friend tried to keep him.”

“I see, that complicates matters.”

“What why?”

“Your collar was designed with the purpose to keep you in line while you carried out your mission. Due to the nature of your being, much of the original formula that made it had to be either erased or rewritten to compensate for the different mana displaced exuded as well as making sure you aren’t just a mindless drone doing what I say. Apparently either Luna or I missed something and a small portion of the mind control was still present. That was what caused your blackout.”

“Wait, you mean I lost my mind? I knew this thing was a slave collar, Why I did even think you would let me have a chance! You’re just a-”

“Silence!” Her yell was deafening through the projection.

“I will not deny that the collar is based on the original design of slave collars used in the past. Nor will I deny the fact that at one point I would have used it exactly as such. But I will not be called a slaver, not after all i’ve done to make my kingdom happy and kind, and especially not by a displaced. That is why you will come right back to Canterlot so that I may rework the formula to make sure that a blackout does not happen again. I can’t have you mindless for a job this important.” I was stunned, After my first meeting with her so long ago saying I was nothing but a scourge that needed to be captured, she was now saying I needed my free will (even if it was being controlled somewhat).

“Okay… Is there anything else?”

“Yes. While you were there, Twilight and her group of friends had apparently found Cronus as well but they did not specify that if they had him or not. On your way back, try and catch up to them and see if they have or not. Their last message to me was vague.” The last part didn’t seem to be directed to me as she looked away thinking.

“Alright I take the next train I can back in the morning. Thankfully the first stop starts here and I should be able to reach they while they’re on their way back” With that, I pressed my finger to the stone again, cutting off the the connection. Due to not hearing any indication the deal was off or changed, I had a slight pep in my step and a smile on my face before looking up at the moon. ‘If I didn’t know any better I would almost think she cares.’

(Celestia POV)

I sighed to myself tiredly before leaning back to sit on my large princess sized bed.

‘Being called a slaver. The last time anyone tried to call me that was during the war against him. So many displaced that stared at me with contempt and I had no reason why. Now though, I know why. That man convinced every single one of them that both Luna and I were the reasons for their displacement to our world but that was further from the truth. Displaced had been arriving years before Luna and I had been born and only the oldest still surviving displaced knew that all the rest were just to young and foolish to believe me when I said so. I even tried to help them but my efforts were fruitless as I could never seem to find their true home for them to return.

Thinking of my efforts reminded me of my deal with the displaced. It was dirty, but his hope of returning to where he came from was all that kept him going to help me. Hopefully he wouldn’t find out the truth that neither I nor Luna could do what he wished for. Letting my weight carry me backwards, I now layed on my bed ready to fall asleep as my sister Luna dealt with the Night Court. Unfortunately sleep came much later than I wished.

Author's Note

Considering how 13 is such an unlucky number, i'll be expecting a lot of down votes after this.

Try not to disappoint now, ya hear.

The King Thinks

Ch 14

It was a calm and beautiful morning in the semi-rebuilt town of Ponyville. The ponies went about their day fixing up what was needed and rebuilding the rest. To think that a half finished town was completely destroyed just two days prior was astonishing to me. After hearing that monster attacks were common place for the small town though, my attitude to the revelation lessened somewhat. I had asked if there was anything I could do for help but most said they were fine or simply walked away, most likely disturbed by my current form. I didn’t care though because after five years of looking like I do now, I had gotten over the stares that others would have towards me.

With nothing to do though, I was left sitting around waiting for the train to come and staring at my new gashats. Even while untransformed, I could feel the power both euded. Kamen Rider Chronicle was dark but also docile with a small hint to its ferocity just barely showing through like a rabid dog that simply stood by who ever fed it the most, This power was manageable but temperamental if mistreated but. Kamen Rider Harmony though, was completely different; It was like an eagle, showing off its power to whoever could sense it but also seemingly uncaring for anything that wasn’t its enemy, this made it strong but unfortunately temperamental as well since I had no way of determining what it considered worthy of fighting. Finally was my newest addition Mighty Action X; it didn’t exude power like the other two did but rather it barely gave any indication at all, like something was missing for its full power to shine through.

“To think I couldn’t feel things like these before yesterday. What exactly happened to cause this?”

“It could be because of the Magic of Friendship.” I jumped where I was sitting, almost dropping the two gashats in the process. Turning quickly, I saw that it was simply Twilight who had walked up on me while I had been so focused on the objects of my power.

“Magic of Friendship?” She smiled before sitting next to me.

“Yep. Friendship is a powerful force, one I didn’t even know could be so powerful before I came here.”

“I take it you didn’t have many friends then?” she shook her head.

“I had a few but I was so concerned for my studies that I have no idea if they even consider us friends any more. I wasn’t the most sociable person to begin with.” I simply nodded in understanding. I had been the same way once before, to shy or to busy to try and I just shut myself away completely when my parents left my sister and I. After that day though, I wish I hadn’t.

“So how exactly did the Magic of Friendship get in my stuff then, especially at such a high dose to change my bugvisor and gashat in such a way?”

“Bugvisor?” I looked at her confused before realizing that she wouldn’t know anything Kamen Rider related.

“Oh right, you don’t know the name for it. The thing I have on my waste is called a bugvisor, a bugvisor zwei to be exact. Actually, now that I think about it, it really isn’t a zwei either, more like a drei after this change. The three slots help with the name to.” The violet pony seemed confused by my explanation and looked to have decided to ignore it.

“To answer your question on friendship causing such a change in your, bugvisor. That could be due to me and my friends being the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. The elements are the cornerstone of ancient magic, with their power only being matched by the princesses and discord if only barely. The magic of harmony is fueled by the friendship both I and my friends share so when you became our friend as well, a bit of Harmony must have seeped in and grew into what you have now.”

“Man, that sounds like something Natsu would say.” I laughed at my own joke but I noticed Twilight looking at me weirdly.

“How do you know Natsu.” It was my turn to become confused now.

“I don’t understand the question.”

“The Princesses said that when they were young, they knew a displaced who went by the name Natsu, and you just got here a few days ago. How do you know him?”

“I don’t.” She looked confused so I pressed on. “Natsu is the name of manga- i mean- book character. One who heavily relied on the friendship of his guild members, or Nakama as he called them, which I think is another word for friend. He would use his friendship to act like a power amplifier and it would boost his magic to crazy and obscene levels that he doesn’t usually have otherwise.”

“I see, the princess did mention that displaced aren’t in their usual bodies when they come to our world. The same must apply to you as well.”

“Nope, this is my body. The only thing I brought over with me was the suit and the weapon after I bought this thing from some weird guy.” Twilight seemed to become shocked before looking away guiltily.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve looked like this long enough that what people think don’t affect me. I just keeping doing what I do and I don’t care what other people think. Or rather, I used to be like that. After the last few days, that attitude has kind of changed.” At that, we both sat in silence, simply staring at the work going on in the small town. Eventually though, I became antsy and began to stare at my gashats again. I couldn’t take it any longer and stood up from my seat, gaining the attention of Twilight.

“Where are you going Cronus?” I kept walking but turned my head just enough to yell back an answer.

“I still don’t know everything about what’s been changed so i’m heading to forest to try and figure it out.” I only got to take a few more steps before the pony suddenly appeared in front of me as though by magic but from the windblown look of her hair it was just from her running.

“You can’t go into the forest.”

“Huh?”

Author's Note

I know Twilight has seen Cronus deal with tough opponents like the princesses and a Bugster already but you don't just ignore something like the Everfree with a "he'll be fine".

The King Collects

Ch 15

“Twilight.”

“Yes Cronus?”

“Could you please let go of my leg?”

“Not until you promise to not go into the Everfree Forest.” I sighed and looked down towards my legs seeing the violet unicorn holding onto them with all her fingerless might. The reason for it is due to the fact that I want to test out my new form in the nearby forest but she thinks its too dangerous without giving any reason why. Reaching down, I tried once again to remove her hooves but to no avail. “I said, not until you promise.”

“Why are you acting like this. It’s just a forest. The only dangerous thing that could be in their is one of those Ursa Majors, and i’m pretty sure i’ll see it coming more than a mile away.”

“There’s not just Ursa though.” I stopped struggling at that, curious now.

“There are things besides Ursa in the forest.”

“No, in the Everfree. A forest is filled with little woodland creatures that Fluttershy would bring back home with her. The Everfree is filled with dangerous monsters and plants that would rend you skin from your bones, turn you to stone, then finally ground you into dust if you aren’t careful.”

“That does sound dangerous. I guess i’ll have to be careful then.” If possible, Twilight’s grip became tighter before staring at me with a look of desperate anger to not let me go. “Oh come on Twilight. The next train to Canterlot doesn’t get here until noon, I have plenty of time of testing a few things out then coming right back. And besides, even if I do run into to something dangerous, i’ll just deal with them like I did the bugster.” Her glare lessened but her grip did not. I was almost tempted to transform and see if a time stop could fix this little problem but a weight crashing into my back stopped me from moving.

“Yeah, pony pile party!”

“Woah! Pinkie Pie? This isn’t a party, Twilight just wont let me go.” The pink mare looked down to the pony holding onto my feet in confusion before looking at me directly in the eyes.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Nothing much. Just heading to the forest. Don’t know what’ll do though, maybe hit some trees.” At that, Pinkie Pie’s eyes started to sparkle.

“You’re gonna hit trees? Rainbow Dash loves to do that, especially when she crashes! Maybe she can give you some pointers. Be right back.” Pinkie the disappeared in a puff of pink smoke in the shape of her body. Swiping it away, I saw that she was already running at a full gallop down the road to get Rainbow Dash like she said she would.

Alone again with Twilight, I then realized that everything that had just happened had been out in the open for everyone to see. Covering my eyes at my lack of obliviousness with one hand, I peeked through to see that ponies of the town were still doing their business for the day but with smiles on their muzzles

‘At least they aren’t pointing and laughing.’

“Ah ha ha ha! Oh man that is to funny!” The pony who had just doing what I didn’t want was none other than rainbow dash only a few feet in the air, pointing and laughing at my current predicament. Pinkie Pie had returned as well before hoping back back onto her earlier position. This act of hers only made Rainbow laugh even harder.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up Mrs.Crash-a-lot.” She stopped at that with tinges of red on her cheeks.

“I don’t crash that much. Only when I get tired.” The last part was a mumble but since I had heard it, I was tempted to make another joke at her expense. I was stopped though by an excited Pinkie Pie rocking on my back like an excited little girl.

“So will you help him hit trees Dashie?” The red was still there but she seemed to huf and held her head high like she wasn’t still embarrassed.

“Sure I’ll help him. But just to show that I don’t crash that’s all!”

“What no! Rainbow Dash, he plans on heading into the Everfree. We have to stop him before he gets himself hurt.”

“Pff, the Everfree? I go in their all the time and I come out right as rain. You just gotta know when to bail or you’ll get stuck in their.”

“I said no Rainbow Das-” Twilight was silenced by Pinkie landing on top of her and wrestling her grip off of my legs finally. When the fighting ceased, Twilight was wrapped up like a hog tied Christmas pressent with a bow holding her legs together and a sender sticker covering her mouth.

“Don’t worry Twilight, you can come with us to make sure nothing bad happens since you’re so smart and all.” Pinkie then picked up the tied unicorn before putting her on her back. All the while, Twilight was struggling to remove her bonds. I even saw her use her horn at one point but the knot seemed to tight around her hooves.

“Well since you all seem dead set on coming, who am I to deny you. Maybe I can ask Rarity and Fluttershy to come along as well.”

“Really?” Pinkie ran off again in excitement.

“Wait Pinkie Pie, I was being sarcastic!” I began running after the fast devil while Rainbow Dash simply followed above.

(20 Minutes later)

I had been able to catch up to the pink pony rather quickly after running after her and was able to explain that I had been joking when I said I wanted to bring the others. She simply laughed it off like it was no big deal and made a quick joke about what we were doing almost being wrapped up which caused Twilight to groan since it was at her expense. After that, and watching her struggle so much, I finally helped her get free but quickly stopped her attempt to latch back onto my legs again.

“No matter what you do Twilight, I’m heading to that forest now to train whether you like it or not. I need to be ready in case another bugster virus shows up again.” I wasn’t planning on giving out any more energy items so it shouldn’t be an issue but it was still a valid point nonetheless as she seemed to relent finally.

“Fine, but i’m coming with you then, just to make sure nothing bad happens when you eventually run into something dangerous, like a hydra or a manticore.”

“Alright then.” She still seemed antsy though and I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. “I could stay near the edge if that helps.” she nodded before leading the way to the Everfree.

Author's Note

Sorry if it feels like I'm blue ball'n you guys and girls on this. But I want the Everfree chapter to be specifically about the Everfree.

The King Changes

Ch 16

“This, is the Everfree forest? The one place that apparently holds almost one of every species of monsters and dangerous plants? This creepy old forest is what all the hullabaloo is about?” Twilight simply nodded while standing behind me and away from the forest.

“This forest has been around as long as there has been a Ponyville. No records state how it was created only that any who dare to tread inside are doomed the moment they step into it.” It was at this point that Rainbow Dash landed right below one of the trees with a grin on her face before acting as though she had just be hit.

“Oh no, the forest has doomed me. I can no longer live my life and am now forever stuck in this dark woody place.” Pinkie Pie tackled Rainbow Dash, almost knocking her over.

“Not on my watch Rainbow Dash, I’ll bring you back, safe and sound so we can have a rescue party!” I wasn’t sure if Pinkie was just joking or if she was actually being serious about rescuing the laughing unicorn. I didn’t find out though as Twilight walked in front with her head held low and not saying anything. Following after her, she soon stopped after only a few minutes of walking on what looked to be an open path for animals,

“Okay Cronus, this is far enough. Transformand try practicing your magic.” Following my agreement of not going to far in, I didn’t complain about the cramped space.

Henshin

Buggle Up! Ten wo Tsukame Rider! (Wow!) Kizame Chronicle! Ima koso Toki wa Kiwamareri (Wow!)

Kamen Rider Chronicle

Taking the Dual gashat from my belt, I turned the dial.

Kamen Rider Harmony

I had tried before, on the train back, to turn directly into my Harmony state but it wouldn’t happen as I was stuck simply going from my normal form to harmony every time I needed it.

“Alright, time for test number 1: What is the third slot for.” Pressing down on the trigger like was needed, my concentration was interrupted by the sound of rustling in the trees. This distraction, plus Twilight’s warnings was cause for me to stop what I was doing and make my way closer to the tree and see what had caused the noise. Once close enough, I looked upwards but saw nothing. ‘Great, now i’m imagining things. Hopefully it stays that way.’ Turning around, I quickly noticed something was wrong.

Pinkie Pie wasn’t hopping up and down in excitement, Twilight wasn’t looking around fearfully that something might try to jump out and harm them, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t lazing in the tree branches. The reason for this was due to the fact all three of them were no longer with me.

“That can’t be good.” While the usual kind of reaction I would give in such a situation, I had to keep in mind that three, extremely loud ponies, had just disappeared in a matter of seconds. This left me simply acting calm as I quickly scaled a nearby tree to see if I couldn’t find Rainbow Dash in the sky, while my mind was filled with thoughts of worry and anxiety of what could have just happened.

Not seeing her in any direction, I quickly got down and walked over to where the three had just been and tried to find some clue as to what had happened when I looked away. I couldn’t find anything save for impressions in the ground of unknown shape that lead towards the trees. This meant that something had either dragged them in or had popped out just in time to grab them before going back into the dense foliage. With no other choice, I followed.

The trek was awful, every step I took seemed to become tangled in some form of vine that I would have pull my leg out of and I had lost the tracks almost three times now though I had found them soon again. No creatures made themselves present though, only the occasional rustle of a tree or bush but nothing else.

‘Maybe the creatures can sense i’m dangerous or something. Twilight did say there were Manticores though and the myths always said they were ferocious monsters. If it isn’t me then, what is it?’ My thoughts stopped when I saw that the tracks were leading to a clearing.

Being careful with my steps now, I tried my hardest to not make more noise than I could while I made my way closer. When I finally reached the edge, I quickly hid behind a nearby tree to see if anything was around before I made my way closer. The were no monsters, just a large intimidating castle that looked to be in ruins. In the distance. With no monsters in sight, I quickly made my way to the castle.

My path became blocked as soon as I had reached the decrepit bridge with loose boards and rotten rope. Not caring, I simply jumped to make my way across safely. This course of action though, was stopped as something large impacted into my side and sent me back to where I had just been. Only with the added bonus of a crater. Looking quickly, I became shocked to see an all black creature that looked to made from the shadows themself in the form of a large serpent that was staring at me with its large dark eyes.

Before I had a chance to act, the serpent rushed forward, looking as though it was about to snap me up in its jaws only for it to instead come coilin around me and starting to crush me. With my enhanced strength and durability, I could handle the pressure so far but as soon as I began trying to push back, the creature laughed with some strange hiss like noise before crushing down on me tighter. Unable to push back now, I had to think quickly.

Gashacon Breaker

(Rahhh)

The shadow serpent quickly dropped me, letting me land to the ground upright and into a fighting stance with the Breaker’s sword form at the ready. As the Serpent withered though, from the unexpected pain, I noticed that part of the shadows from my stab had clung to the sword before beginning to dissipate. Seeing this, It filled me with courage as I charged the base of the beast.

Noticing this though, the unthinkable happened as it blasted flames of shadow from its mouth causing the ground to become scorched when I had dodged its fury. Not wasting time, I continued forward, dodging the flames as I did so before reaching the edge of the chasm the shadow serpent was coming from. With another jump, I was able to stab directly into the creature causing it to roar in pain again with it its chalkboard scraper sounding roar. Pushing away, I landed back on the edge and saw that a blood like substance was beginning to pour before the hole I created sealed itself closed.

‘Damnit, a healing factor just like wolverine’s. The only way I could deal with something like that is either hitting it all at once or destroy the brain. How am I supposed to do either of those when it’s so big?’ Suddenly, my head filled with the picture of the Mighty Action gashat. Unsure why I had thought of it, I pulled it from my pocket, making sure to dodge the creatures attacks and looked down at it in wonder before looking towards the third slot in my Bugvisor Drei. I had no idea it it would actually do anything useful right now but I was running out of options and the others were running out of time no doubt. Gaining some distance away from the creature, I pressed the trigger.

Mighty Action X

I didn’t wait as I put the small device into my driver causing it to light up with purple light.

Load out change: Action X

The press start screen appeared behind me and the a small chibi version of ot the Ex-aid level one flew out of it and around me in what seemed to be excitement. After about the third lap around my head, the chibi Ex-aid flew high into the sky before coming down towards me as though to crash. Before it did so though, the unknown thing turned into purple light and fused with my body. When the light died, my body had changed. On each hand was an armored gauntlet colored pink as well as greaves of the same color, my torso had gained the picture that was usually seen on the gashat with the words “Action X” printed on it, and the final change was the Gashacon breaker no longer being a small mallet-like hammer but instead a large torso sized block of metal and data in the same shape but without the sword part and attached to my left arm.

“What in the-? That was all I got to say though as I had to jump into the air to dodge the shadow serpents next attack. Instead of simply moving straight into the air though, like a normal jump, a feeling of stretching could be felt from my legs and upon looking down at my feet, I saw that springs had extended from around where my ankles should be.

‘The change loadout must mean my abilities are altered based on what gashat I put int. Since Mighty Action X is a platformer, my abilities are more platformer based then.’ Seeing that my arms were covered in the same armor as my legs, I quickly stretched them to see springs as well while my hands, and only weapons rushed away from my. Understanding now, I retracted my limbs back into my self, and used the gashacon breaker Mk: 2 to block my body from another of the shadow serpent’s fire blast. When the heat died away, I pressed the buttons on the Breaker in random order causing the large hammer to light up with neon green and pink energy. Utilizing my new knowledge, I front flipped in midair while extending the Breaker causing it to slam into the serpent's head and flattening it. This left my with time to land and watch the creature wither away completely. No longer needing it, I removed the pink gashat from my belt.

Load out change: Kamen Rider Chronicle

With no creatures in sight, I ran as fast as I could to get to the castle quickly and save my friends. All the while though, I wondered what could have caused such a beast to be guarding this place.

Author's Note

I know it wasn't a Everfree free for all like some people seemed to hope for but I think this is just as good. Tell me what you think though.

The King Meets

Ch 17

The ruins, as the name entitled, ruins. The floors were littered with holes that lead to dark, unknown pits below the castle’s foundation, the banners that still hung were in tatters, and many of the entrances and doors to rooms were sealed closed by fallen debris. That didn’t stop me though as I simply went forward. Considering all that had happened, it was unlikely that whatever had taken the trio, and placed such a beast to guard this place, would feel the need to hide in their own home/base. Checking every room I could, I began my search upstairs but still no captured ponies to be found. I was beginning to become angry and was almost tempted to start breaking down some of the still standing supports and make everything come crashing down. I didn’t though, because I was sure that both Twilight and Rainbow Dash would be crushed under it all (I honestly wasn’t sure about Pinkie Pie and I felt I become even less sure the more I knew her).

‘Ok, so i looked all over down here and all of the upstairs. That either means I missed a room or the rooms are hidden and I was wrong.’ not remembering what I was wearing, I started wiping the front of my helmet to try and alleviate some of the mental stress. Realizing this I quickly put my hand down and started my search once again, though this time to be much more careful as I looked. That became moot though as after only a few steps, the floor was no longer under me, having broken from my weight. The fall was surprisingly uneventful as it only lasted a few minutes before reaching the bottom, just long enough to re-orientate myself before landing. And by landing, I meant falling face first into the stone floor with an oomph.

“Ow. Note to self number two: work on my falling.” Dusting myself off, I found myself in what appeared to be a hallway of some sort with one end looking like it lead upwards with a broken staircase, and the other end with a closed door and lights seeming to come from behind it. For some reason the darkness from above did not seem to reach all the way to the bottom as it was actually quite bright down here from the sun still above.

Not even considering jumping back up an option after finding a new location in the castle, I slowly crept forward, making sure not to make any sound as I slowly opened the door a crack, into the room. Looking through the Crack, I became speechless from what I saw. Not only were Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash somehow captured, but multiple ponies had been captured as well. Three others to be exact, enough to start but not enough to cause panic if anyone noticed their missing. It looked to be a family of a mother and father and one child (I can’t tell the genders apart without hearing their voices, sue me). What was truly horrify and the main cause of my breathlessness was the fact that each of the ponies who had been captured had been encased in dark black cocoons that looked to be made from the same stuff as the serpent monster that had been guarding the place, each with tubes coming out from the top leading to a set of strange looking armor.

“Oh please don’t tell me this is some kind of life syphoning ritual or something.”

“Magic actually.”

“Oh that’s better, wait what- OOF” I was launched back through the door before I could turn to see who had spoken. The force was enough to crack the stone wall and create an imprint for my body to nest in while I groaned in pain.

“Hm, I was expecting a little more from someone who could defeat my Shadow Snake.” By this point, I had gained enough sense to look to who had attacked me. The person- or rather -pony in question was some kind of black mist like creature with vampire like feature and a wispy back half of her body. It was strange to look at but I couldn’t help but stare. Needing to focus became priority though as I quickly remembered her sneak attack.

“I prefer Shadow Serpent to be honest.” She became surprised by my unexpected response, which allowed me to begin pulling myself from the wall with only slight amounts of debris coming of with every tug. Her surprise didn’t seem to last long though, as a chuckle came from her throat.

“I’ll take that under advisement then when I make an army of them. For now though, I would prefer it if you would leave now.”

“What, you aren’t going to attack and try to deal with me now?” I was free by now, but the strange pony spirit, made no move to get closer, instead she simply put one of her hooves on the pods and looked to caress it.

“What would be the point in that. I would still win even with my power weakened as it is, and even if you tried to leave and warn ponies about me, no one would believe you.”

“I take it your some kind of villain then? Just so you know, I only got here a few days ago so little background info would be nice.”

“Oh my, after all this time and a new displaced appears, that is just lovely. Well then, my name is Nightmare Moon, and I am hardly a villain rather I am the sovereign ruler of Equestria simply wishing to reclaim what is rightfully mine.”

“Ruler? So what, are you like the queen before Celestia and Luna?” She shook her head no.

“Not exactly, you could say i’m one side of the same coin.”

“One half? Oh I get it now, your that evil dark half Twilight was telling me about that was created by some jerk before being defeated by the Elements of Harmony.” She seemed to grow angry at that before looking to calm herself.

“I was not defeated. Rather I was separated. And I was not created, I simply existed much like Luna herself.”

“No you were created, that’s what Twilight said, and i’m leaning to believe her more than you.” Nightmare Moon said nothing as she pursed her lips before sighing.

“That is typical of Celestia. Always wanting to sweep everything under the rug and make it all better. Well, to break the news to you, I was not created by some silly displaced trick, rather I was unleashed and finally open to let Luna and I do what we always wanted.” She gained a deadly smile which showed off her pointed teeth. “I really must thank that displaced if I ever find him. In fact, after I get my body back, I’ll see if his statue isn’t around somewhere and make him the first in my personal collection.

“How about no.” I sprung forward, not aiming for the vapor body of Nightmare Moon but rather to what must have been her armor which must acting as the catalyst for her rebirth. The plan was stopped though as a wave of unseen force slammed into my flying body and sent me backwards into the walls of the room once more. I groaned in pain again but was much faster to pull myself free. Having not seen what had hit me, I quickly turned the dial of the dual gashat.

Kamen Rider Chronicle

‘If I can’t get past her by being fast, then I just need to do this my way and end all of this now.’ I pressed the A and B button but no announcement came nor did Nightmare appear to be stopped

“What the?” Nightmare began laughing in a surprisingly melodramatic way before stopping.

“You think by using dark magic in my own domain, you could defeat me? Far from it. The only thing you have done is give me the chance I need to end your pathetic life.” At saying that, my entire body seemed to lift off, as though being held by unseen force now, and some form or force started to surround my body binding my limbs to my side and began to squeeze.

I couldn’t believe it, Kamen Rider Cronus, one of the strongest Kamen Rider in Ex-aid, was being defeated by some Alicorn ghost. I struggled as hard as I could but the pressure didn’t let up. I couldn’t move my hands to change form or use and energy item. All in all, I was screwed unless I did something. Not caring what, I tried to focus on every power I knew that I had which caused all the gashacon weapons to fall to the ground in a clutter and my body finally leaving the unknown grasp. With the little time I had just gained from my half-forgotten ability to teleport, I quickly turned the dial again.

Kamen Rider Harmony

Breathing easier now, I found that I was now in the foyer where I had started my search for the others.

“Don’t think you can get away that easily.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out Mighty Action X and pressed the trigger causing the transformation projection to appear.

Load out Change: Action X

Like before, my body became covered in the pink armor and the Breaker MK: 2 was attached to my wrist ready to smash something. With my a weapon in had now, I felt much more confidant.

“Let’s try that again.”

Author's Note

Does it feel like my chapters are becoming tedious to read? If so, let me know so I can think about this a little more. If not, i'll keep going in the way i'm heading.

The King Destroys

Ch 18

(Sproing)

The spring in my arm released as I threw another punch towards the specter-like pony causing another pillar to crumble as she dodged the attack. Ever since my first attack using it, and her belief that it shouldn’t hurt her becoming disproven, she had been cautious to let me actually land another hit on her body. For the past couple of minutes we had been fighting, with me jumping around the room with my enhanced jumping ability , and her body simply breaking apart to pull itself together somewhere. In all regards, we were at a stalemate.

“Why are you even doing this? Couldn’t you just get some random creature to suck dry and not create this problem in the first place?” She snarled as I ducked under a blast of dark energy that shot from her horn.

“If it were so simple to just grab any random creature and absorb their magic, I would have done so. Unfortunately this ritual requires large magical sources. Sources that could only be gained by draining the magic of either power objects or ponies. I would have simply taken the Elements after the Ursa Major attack like I planned, but they were already gone before I could get to them. I was forced to get the next best thing, a family of unicorns.” She dissipated once again before reforming on the floor below.

“Wait, does that mean you sent the Ursa to attack us them.” She smiled predatorily at the accusation.

“I wouldn’t say sent, more like, informed the mother of her baby’s run in with that amatuer illusionist last year.” I launched towards her planning to use the breaker in a tackle but it missed but only barely this time.

“Why wait a year though. Seems a little too long to just be procrastination on your part.” I swiped my arm in her direction to catch her during a reform, just barely grazing her body but still pushing her back from the force. She seemed winded from it but otherwise fine.

“When you are simply a manifestation such as I, it is quite hard to gather enough power to create a ‘Shadow Serpent’ as well as maintain my physical form.” A quick blast nicked my shoulder but I was overall fine as well.

“I’m pretty sure being a dark blue fart doesn’t count as a physical form.” Her anger returned making her body dissipate before rushing towards my still midair body. It was only by the skin of my teeth that I was able to doge by stretching an hand to one of the still intact pillars to pull me out of harm’s way. Nightmare reformed only a few feet away this time with a cool look on her face.

“Whether or not this form of mine counts as physical or not to you matters not, as I shall be reconstituted in only a matter of hours and retake my place as the true ruler of Equestria.” I waited for her next attack but nothing seemed to happen.

“Don’t you need Luna to do that?”

“No. As it so happens, when I was finally unleashed by that unnamed displaced, my influence had grown farther than even I had thought was possible. Now all that I need is enough magic to finish the ritual and everything will finally be mine. No power will exist to oppose me, no Elements, no Celestia, and no meddling displaced.” At that, she stomped her front hoof and caused the floor to rumble and crack. Spikes of the same dark energy she was made of began to erupt from the ground hitting direct center in to my chestplate as it bypassed the Breaker. The attack caused the same sparks from the show to appear and the force of it caused me to land a few feet away on my back.

I tried to get up and put my guard up again but it was to late as Nightmare was already upon me with a hoof crushing in the same spot the spike hit earlier. It was painful but thankfully not unbearable, yet. Struggling, I tried to swing the Breaker to hit her but she was to close for it to be effective enough to actually hit. With no apparent way for me to fight back no, dark energy began to swirl around her horn.

“I would say our little chat has been fun, but that take more power than I need, power that I would much rather use to finally end you.”

‘Power, that’s it. She said the the magic drain whatever was fueling her body. That means I just have interrupt the connection to finally get the advantage. I just hope my plan to it though works.’ With a mighty heave, I brought the Breaker up as far as I could. This caused Nightmare to laugh as she seemed to think I was trying to hit her in one last desperate attempt. That wasn’t my plan though as once I finally reached the end of my reach, I slammed it as hard as I could into the floor.

The floor stood no chance as it gave was in an instant and dropped us both down into what appeared to be some kind of dungeon complete with cells and rusted chains. In the confusion, Nightmare was no longer pressing down on me but she was still atop me. Acting quickly while she was still dazed, I pushed her off and into a wall (I don’t deny i’m not petty) before getting up and rushing to the door. Due to the size of the Breaker, I was forced to change load out back to my standard harmony form and began running as fast as I could through the hallways to try and find the small room I had first found. Room by room I passed by but none were the one I needed. As I was running through the corridors, the sound of seeping gas could be heard behind me meaning only one thing.

“GET BACK HERE YOU WORTHLESS CREATURE!” Yep, Nightmare was hot on my heels and most likely closing fast. I almost wished I could turn back into Cronus to activate my time stop but I knew that would just backfire on me.

‘Why can’t I fight someone normal for once? Then it wouldn’t be so hard.’ Soon I reached what looked to be a dead end. With nowhere else to go, I was ultimately trapped and at Nightmare’s mercy. Seeing this, even in her mist like form, her body seemed to expand before encompassing me in darkness that felt as though it were choking me. The only form of light to be seen was from a slight glow from my chestplate.

‘No wait, I see something. It’s small but it just might be the place.” The object in question was a small beam of light that was piercing through the hole of the wall to another room. The room with Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and the family. With the little strength I had left, I pressed the A button.

Kimewaza: Critical Chronicle Punch x 1000

No longer in control now, my fists light with neon green energy before moving at lightning speed and breaking the wall down. The shockwave of each punch seemed to be enough to dislodge Nightmare as well. Releasing me to finally end this. Without thought, and my finisher still active, I rushed towards the scattered armor and began crushing it with my energized hands.

“NNNNNOOOOOooooo” The cries of Nightmare dissipated as I kept attacking the armor until nothing but bits and pieces were all that was left of the ornate set. No longer fighting, the pain and tiredness of the prolonged fight finally caught up with me making my eyes heavy with sleep. Unable to stay awake much longer, my eyes closed as I fell into a peaceful slumber.

(3rd POV)

In the underground room of Celestia and Luna’s, The princess of the moon and dreams slowly crept across the stone floor and made her way to the bookshelf containing all the knowledge that Celestia had gained over the many different displaced that appeared during her absence. Those records weren’t what she was looking for, or rather, she wasn’t looking for a random record.

After some searching across the many shelves, the princess of the night gave a quiet ‘ahah’ before pulling one of the many identical books from its place among the rest. Opening the book, Luna began to slowly turn page after page, going across the many different displaced that had appeared but otherwise ignoring the information. For Luna was not looking for what was there, but rather what wasn’t. Finally stopping, Luna lightly touched the small indicators of a ripped page from the book. Using her magic, a small beam of white light flew from her horn, connecting with the empty space. Slowly, the light began to move. Back and forth it went, centimeter by centimeter as it slowly reconstructed the page that was once there. As difficult spell only used by masters of magic or unicorns who’ talents lead them to be focused on the upkeep of books.

“What were you trying to hide dear sister.” Her voice was a whisper, but in the silence of the underground, it echoed across the dotted plains that were connected to the room and off into the distance.

The King Fails, The Princess Fails

Ch 20

(3rd POV)

Luna couldn’t believe what she was reading. Ever since her freedom from the dark half known as Nightmare Moon, Celestia had told her that a displaced turned her into the villainous mare of evil and contempt. What she was reading now though contradicted that. The words were clearly written in Celestia’s handwriting, and the artistic style of the small portrait made demonstrated that it was her sister’s ability. Blue skinned with white hair and a dark velvet coat over a purple shirt were the most defining features of who this displaced was but it was what was written next to his paper and ink that held Luna’s attention.

The Corruptor's sweat glands exude psychoactive drugs which enable him to, by touch, subvert the will of any individual. His touch releases his victim's inhibitions, so that, if not given specific instructions, the victim will revert to uncontrollable behavior.

She remembered that no displaced had touched her the fateful day, when the final battle between her sister and her finally stopped the coming horde of angry displaced. Only blasts of power ever came close to hitting them, power and one displaced who seemed to be throwing small vials towards them. Upon finally capturing the majority in their stone prisons, the one who threw the strange bottles of liquid had continued to throw his dwindling supply until finally one had hit its mark. They both had panicked when it happened but upon seeing nothing happen when the liquid touched her, neither Clestia or Luna worried but instead simply flew back to their castle in the Everfree to relax in their preparation to hunt down the rest.

That hadn’t happened though as when they had finally reached their home the concoction made by the fearful displaced was beginning to take effect. That was the day Luna and Celestia had their fight and the day Nightmare Moon was trapped in the moon.

Luna slammed the book shut in anger. Her sister had lied right to her face when she finally came back, when she was finally no longer under control of the displaced’s- no - The Corruptor’s power. Instead of telling the truth though, about what had truly happened to her, all the darkness she never knew she had, she lied and blamed it all on the displaced they had been fighting. Displaced who simply wanted to go home.

“For the past year I have been blaming Cronus’ kind for mine own crime. No more, this ends now. Now longer will I simply blame others. I will take mine faults as my own and improve upon them.” Putting the now repaired book back into its place on the shelf, Luna confidently made her way to the teleportation rune so that she may confront her sister of the truth.

She knew she was not clean of her wrong doings now and she was going to make sure that Celestia knew this as well before making her recognize her own.

(Applejack POV)

I didn’t think any more displaced existed after Celestia said they had all been captured but apparently they either missed one who somehow was still alive to this day or he just showed like Cronus did. The latter seemed unlikely though because he seemed way to calm around ponies where as Cronus was still a little skeptical of everything from what could tell.

‘Doesn’t matter though. As long as he isn’t dangerous while in town he should be fine by me. I wonder though. Who could of sent this Ed fella.’ He couldn’t have been sent by Luna or Celestia because they hated displaced and none of friends Twilight mentioned before seemed like the kind of folk to know of displaced.

Ignoring my increasing amount of questions, I looked back and saw that Ed seemed to already have an idea of where we were headin as he was staring straight towards Twilight’s tree of a house. He seemed to have a determined look in his eyes, like he was on a mission, but his eyes also seemed to carry a bit of of emptiness as well, like a little bit of himself was missing. Ignoring that as well, I led him up the steps to Twilight’s door and knocked.

I barely hit the door a third time before it was opened. The stood Twilight, she seemed to have a look of irritation as she did so but it immediately went away upon seeing me and “guest”. She was no doubt running through her mind about he must be a displaced as well and what he could be doing here. Eventually Ed seemed to lose patience and stepped in front of me, catching the unicorn’s attention.

“Excuse me miss, but do you happen to be Twilight Sparkle, the famed student of Celestia in Canterlot? The guy, Ed, definately had a way with his words cause Twilight had a the biggest blush I had ever seen and started stuttering.

“W-well I don’t know a-about famous, but I am Celestia’s student.”

“Excellent. I was told that you may have run into a friend of mine. His name is Cronus.” I was just as surprised as Twilight was because Cronus never mentioned any friends that he met or had come with him. Twilight simply nodded, to stunned for words at the revelation. Seeing her nod, Ed walked past her and looked to be searching the room for Cronus before stopping and staring at something I couldn’t see since I was still outside on the porch.

“Wait, you can’t disturb him!” Twilight was the first to recover as she quickly turned about face and stood in front of Ed while she started waving her hooves around and started explaining about something that happened in the Everfree. That didn’t seem to matter to Ed though as he casually walked past Twilight and out of my sight which finally elicited my response to come inside to see everything that was happening.

Cronus seemed to be resting while not wearing his strange armor with a serene smile on his face while he laid on Twilight’s couch. That smile soon vanished though as Ed grabbed the guy by the scruff of his shirt and started hauling him out of the bed and waking Cronus up.

“What the hell?” Cronus made to transform but he was stopped by Ed grabbing his hand with the strange device he used to transform in it.

“Not so fast mister abandons-his-partner.” Cronus had a look of confusion on his face before it quickly turned to realization.

“Ed, what are you doing here?”

“Oh nothing much, just collecting you so I can go home finally. Maybe get a little even for leaving me behind.”

“Hey, in my defence, the captain said he was going to let you out by the end of the day so I thought you would be fine.”

“Did the party help you forget too?” If it was possible, Ed’s tongue seemed to become fork-like and hissed coming out his mouth and literal flames appeared in his eyes. It seemed to be a trick of the light though as Ed looked normal in the next second as he had Cronus pinned to the ground with his arm held behind his back. “Maybe this will remind you not to leave someone stuck in a cell while you go and party!”

The pinning was soon stopped by Twilight using her magic to lift up both o the displaced into the air before placing them on the separate ends of the room. Ed in a chair and Cronus back on the couch. While this all happened, I simply shut the door behind me hoping nobody decided to look inside at the mess that was beginning to happen.

The Princess Confesses

Ch 21

(Celestia POV)

I could tell, as soon as Luna entered the Day Court chambers, that she was angry. It wasn’t the sparks of energy that that seemed to spark from her horn that told me her emotions were currently heightened, it wasn’t the fact that she forced all the nobles and guards to leave the with only a simple levitation spell, and it wasn’t the clear as day face of intense focus that warned me that something was wrong what gave it away was the fact that I had heard her coming, barging past any pony who had stood in her way, whether by accident or on purpose to talk with her.

Now alone, besides myself still sitting on the throne, Luna closed the large double doors with a mighty thud. With no one else present, and her pony of desire found, Luna seemed to calm down on the surface but her crackling horn said otherwise. Afraid that her magic might go off at any second, I tried to begin a calm conversation. Key word being, tried.

“Luna, What is wrong?” Luna took a deep breathe.

“Celestia, do you know what I had the displeasure of reading?” It seemed like my idea for calm was going out the window so the next step was to figure out was wrong and try to fix it before it got worse.

“No Luna, I do not. Would you please tell me?” My calm and motherly (as some ponies liked to say) seemed to only enrage her more making her sparks of magic to become more frequent. Another deep breath.

“I had the displeasure of reading a specific entry in your library of catalogued displaced, and what I found when I did so has left me sincerely miffed as to what its contents entailed.” My eyes went wide, I could already tell what she meant and it was not good. I thought I had hidden my evidence of destroying the page. Did she see me do it and recreate it? No, don’t get ahead of myself, she could simply be mad at some other displaced. If I had fingers, I would be crossing them.

“This specific displaced seemed to hold a very unusual ability. One that allows those that touches its sweat to immediately lose control of themselves by releasing their inner most inhibitions. The displaced in question seemed to go by a very fitting name considering his powers, The Corruptor.” I had been right about it then, not that it makes it any better in fact it only makes the situation worse now.

“I see, I am guessing you wish to discuss the reason for my half truths then?” She shook her head.

“No I will not be discussing any half truths with you dear sister, rather I will be forcing you to explain to me why you lied this whole time since I came back from the moon!” A bolt of violet magic lightning burst from her horn before quickly impacting the walls to her right. I need to calm her down, now before she accidently destroyed the tower in her rage.

“I see, then simply ask and I will tell you the truth. There is no possible benefit of doing otherwise now.” The magic sparks lessened somewhat and Luna seemed slightly more relaxed. Good, that meant I was going in the right direction and if the truth was where I had to go then I guess I had no other choice.

“Why did you lie to me about The Corruptor’s power?” A simple question, thank goodness.

“Because I did not want you to blame yourself when you had finally come back. You, who had been traped so long in a dark and solitary place away from home, away from family, all because of some wretched making darkness I never knew you had inside you come to bear against me. I did not want to lose my sister again.” No change in attitude,

“Why did you blame it on all of the displaced then and not just the one who did it to me?” darn, a not so simple question. If I didn’t say it the right way then Luna could get angrier.

“You must understand Luna, It was a dark time for both of us. Centuries of peace, and all of it was taken away when a single displaced got the bright idea that he could blame everything on us. That every single soul taken from their home could be due to the work of both of us. Gathering forces slowly because of his lies. The best answer I could give you is that I let my emotions get the better of me for too long and by the time I was calm enough to see what I had done, it was too late to turn back.” The sparks came back again in full force. What had I said to upset her?

“Too late to turn back? What of releasing all those that you falsely imprisoned because of you letting your emotions get the better of you? You could have easily made peace with the future generations of displaced and explained the truth to those who would listen.”

“What would I do then when another one him comes around? Only to target me all by myself with only a kingdom of subjects who barely know what war is.” Even after all this time, I couldn’t get over the fear of the displaced who had cost me almost everything. Not even enough to say his name in private to my sister.

“If another one did come around, I know you could him of dealt with him in other ways besides fighting. Now though, you’ve trapped all of them which has simply breed more hate and contempt from the displaced after all this time. All those friends you could of made, to keep you from worrying about what happened to me and you simply locked them away because you were afraid and mad?”

“No Luna.” Luna’s tirade stopped at that. “I was mad at first, yes, livid even but those emotions barely stayed with me after the first week of you being gone, before I had caught even a tenth of the still at large displaced. All that I carried with me when I captured all those innocent displaced was fear.” The sparks disappeared now, and I only looked to my own hooves in shame for admitting my weakness. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, never in all of eternity, but I would rather admit my shame and weakness to the one I cared most rather than fight them.

I didn’t look up at the sound of hooves clopping against the floor, no doubt signaling Luna leaving as she was too embarrassed and disgusted by my own admittance for what I did and why. I became shocked though at the feeling of arms wrapping around me in a hug. Looking up, I saw that Luna now sat next to me giving me a hug while looking at her own hooves with what seemed like a look of remorse. I simply had a look of confusion to her actions. Whether noticing this or not, Luna did not give me any indication as she began speaking.

“When I came in here, I thought myself justified. That you had simply done everything you did for some selfish greed you had somehow gained in my absence. That I was, in all regards, in the right to confront you in such a way. I was wrong though. I can see that you are not lying when you say that you feared for the worst and I suppose I cannot blame you for that. Still though, I can not forgive you for what you did.” Luna’s face gained a piercing look in her eyes, as though staring straight into my soul for what she said but it lessened as she continued. “But I can forgive you for what you can do to make this right. To right the wrong you think is unchangeable.” I looked eagerly into her eyes, waiting for her to continue. “You must forgive those who did no wrong yourself, starting with Ed and Cronus, as the others called.”

I didn’t know what to say so I simply nodded my head before twisting my body just enough to wrap my sister in a hug of my own. For a good long while we simply stayed like that, uncaring of the world around us. A loud series of knocks broke that and I remembered what I had just been doing before Luna came barging in. In embarrassment, we both let go while I opened the doors with my magic to let those who had been forced to leave earlier back inside.

(Cronus POV)

After a good number of apologies, and arms that had been removed from around my neck while I tried to do so. Myself, Ed and the rest of girls had gathered to to purchase tickets for the second train to Canterlot (Spike seemed very excited to stay behind so no one really forced him to come along).

At first I had been mad that I had missed the one train that could take me to Canterlot and finally end this whole mess and now I had to wait another full day to do so but apparently there were more than one trains on the single tracks that went past the Ponyville station. In fact, as everyone else told me, there were actually three trains. One happened to be one we had been riding just a few hours ago which made cross country trips from the pony capital of Canterlot all the way to the border town of Griffonstone before turning around and going back the way it came. Other trains though simply stayed in smaller areas of the kingdoms going back and forth across all the towns and cities that had built a settlement next to the tricks. The train that stopped in Ponyville before heading back to Canterlot was due any minute now so we simply needed to wait long enough with our tickets ready.

‘Seems easy enough. Just have to make sure nothing else bad happen-’ “Woops!” I barely caught myself from face planting on the dirt road. Looking down to see what could of caused it, I became confused to see a pile of black goostuck to the bottom of my foot. Figuring it to simply be a remnant of my battle with Nightmare Moon, I scrapped the offending gunk on a nearby rock large enough to cover the width of my shoe before scrapping the gunk off and following after everyone else who had stopped to make sure I was alright.

Author's Note

Princess Celestia afraid?!?!

Bet you all didn't see me doing that with her character three weeks ago?

The King Bows, The Princess Apologizes

Ch 22

The train ride to Canterlot was uneventful to say the least. The worst thing to happen was a small stop at one of the other stops with leading to one of the occupies to get off and not know they were at the wrong stop before yelling for the train to stop (Luckily they were near the front before it actually got moving). After that, nothing else really happened, just Ed staring at me while everyone else was simply trying not to stare at him themselves.

Exiting the train, I gave a quick stretch to get the kinks out before looking around at the lavishly ornate buildings that dotted the streets and the prim and proper looking ponies that walked the street or rode in pony drawn carriages. It was somewhat overwhelming but I simply ignored it and focused back on my group. The girls had followed my lead and did a couple quick stretches and Ed did the complete opposite by scrunching downwards and breathing deeply.

“Uh, Ed, are you alright?”

“Never, urp, better Cronus. Just a little motion sickness.” I was surprised to hear that the guy had apparently a bad case of motion sickness. From what he said back at Ponyville, he seemed to have been fine. “I just get sick on long rides. Short ones like the the distance from Ponyville to Griffonstone, i’m fine with.” Ed was back standing straight once again but it was somewhat sluggish. Giving the guy time to feel better, I took the lead but made sure to keep the pace slow.

Twilight had said that we were going to to see the princesses, that meant that we were heading straight for the castle that stuck up into the air like a misshapen water tower, something I couldn’t possibly lose sight of and get lost from. I just had to make sure I kept heading straight.

(20 minute later)

“And we’re lost”

“What?” said everyone else in panic.

“Sorry, I thought it would be simple just to head to the palace but I didn’t think the streets would be a literal maze of dead ends and stuff.” Twilight seemed to sigh at this.

“This should be my fault then. I knew that the town was built like this in case of invaders breaching the walls to the city. I should have said something sooner.” I quickly made to dismiss her blame.

“Hey i’m the one who decided to just start walking around without knowing where I was going. I’m the one who should be apologizing not you.” Twilight seemed like she was about to argue but Rainbow dash was quick to intervene.

“Hey no worries guys. Me and Fluttershy can just fly up and get some directions to lead the way.” Everyone agreed that it would be the best plan to go with and watched as the two flew off into the sky and find out where in Canterlot were we exactly. A few minutes later and the duo made to land.

“Nothing to worry about guys. We’re just a few streets off from the main road, just follow me and we’ll be at the castle in no time.” That was good because the part of the city we were in was somewhat shady looking (or as shady as you can get when the entire town is bright white). We were just about to exit the street I had unfortunately lead us to before I was suddenly I was taken over by a strange feeling like I shouldn’t leave just yet. Like something was missing and I needed to find it before I went. Giving a quick look around, I saw no differences from before save for one of the older looking shops having a customer leave.

“Peril Advent’s shop for the strange and curious. Weird name but I guess there could be weirder for a curio shop.” Ignoring the feeling, I followed after the rest who hadn’t noticed my short pause before catching with no one being the wiser.

Eventually, with the help of Fluttershy’s corrections to Rainbow Dash’s bad direction skills (Strange that a flyer would be bad with directions), we finally made it back to the main street which allowed Twilight to lead us the rest of the way to the castle’s front doors. Giving a few quick nocks, and a simple security check by the castle guards, we were on our way to the throne room that was supposed to be holding Celestia at the moment.

Like before, I felt the need to stop but instead of saying I needed to stay it felt more like it was trying to push me in a certain direction but I had no idea what it meant. Not wanting to cause any trouble in the “person who decide if I needed to be turned into stone or not’s” home, I ignored it as well and kept up.

Finally after all the crap of fist fighting a griffon, destroying a living disease monster, and standing toe - to - hoof (at least I would like to think so) against a living embodiment of anger and hate, I was now standing at the final door to the royalty that would stop the shenanigans once and for all. Standing there though, I couldn’t help but hesitate, the sheer thought of all the running and short adventure I had been having ending so soon left me feeling at little hollow, like I had just watched my favorite show all the way through and I had nothing to to now since there would be nothing else like it and I couldn’t simply repeat it as it just wouldn’t be the same as the first time. Once again though, I ignored my feelings and knocked three times on the heavy looking doors.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

After the third knock, the door opened. Slowly but surely, the insides of the room became clear to see. The room, much like everything else in the city, was pristine white save for the splashes of color from the tinted windows and a surprisingly large, black, scorch mark on the side of the room. At the end, in all their royal glory and not their hunter crazed looks that I remembered them by, were the sisters Luna and Celestia. Seeing them, I wouldn’t deny that I felt like bolting then and there but a firm hoof laying on my shoulder from one of the girls (I don’t know because I was to scared to turn my head and look) eased me enough to not let that happen.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

My shoes slapped against the floor, leaving shorts echoes that only seemed to drive home the point just how serious the situation I was in as I walked up to the royal pair. Not sure what to do now that I was standing before them without my armor, I decided to go for the safe route and kneeled. Screw pride or personal preference of government, I was going to kneel and hopefully get enough good points from doing so, so as to not piss off the two all powerful alicorns that could apparently lift celestial bodies with ease just by using their magic.

Hearing the sound of shifting weight from some kind of cushion, I looked up slightly to see that the two princesses were now standing before me and looking down on my form but I couldn’t tell what their faces were saying as I didn’t want to look up and offend them somehow.

“Cronus.” I tensed as my name was spoken by the one known as Celestia. “When you first arrived in our world. You were but a simple human who had just been taken from your home while also given power beyond you must have thought was possible. When you met us, you did not find our comfort and welcoming embrace but rather our rage and refusal to change.” I gained a small sense of hope. Admitting faults like this only meant one thing but I needed to listen just to make sure. “That refusal though, has been brought to light between us after a long meaningful discussion and we feel that it is only right that we apologize for our actions.”

I looked up enough to see their faces now and saw that both Luna and Celestia had their eyes closed and their heads bowed somewhat. Seeing this, I got to my feet as they opened their eyes to look into my own with looks of some form of commitment of some sort.

“We have both wronged you and there is nothing we can say to make you forgive us but we implore for it anyways so that we may start anew. Not as enemies of a time long forgotten but rather as friends.” I didn’t know what to say so I stuck with an old classic.

“Sure, why not?” The princesses seemed to smile but it was stopped as a quick cough from behind reminded me of who else was there. Turning around, I saw that it was Ed who had gained our attention after our little moment. Seeming to have our undivided attention now, he took a step forward.

“This is all well and good, really it is, but can I go home now?” I looked back to the princesses and saw them frowning. Those frowns did not fill me with confidence for what they were about to say next.

The King Misunderstands, The Princess Pays

Ch 23

The room had gone silent in expectation, so much so that all that could be heard was the tapping of Ed’s foot and the background noise coming from outside the castle. Luna and Celestia’s faces never changing as they seemed to be contemplating their next words while Ed looked to be getting more and more impatient. I had no idea which side would break the ice first but until one did, the tension in the room would only get thicker.

“You can’t, can you.” While I would be glad that someone finally spoke, I became shocked to see that the apparently all powerful princesses shake their heads.

“We can not send you to your world. After decades of trying and failing to do so, we were only able to create portals between worlds that, while similar to yours, were not. We are sorry.” Ed said nothing after Celestia’s apology. No crying in sadness, no outbursts of anger, only a look of seething rage that was barel being bottled up inside as the shorter man seemed to be literally shaking now.

“You mean to tell me, that after all the bull crap I had to go through to get this guy.” he pointed to me while I was left flabbergasted in the process of what was happening. “And all the assurances that I would get to go home and finally see my family again. It was nothing more than a lie?” Celestia looked to the floor saddened.

“I am sorry. I truly am but there was no other way I could assuredly gain your help. After all this, the only thing I can do for you is remove the collar and let you live the rest of your days in peace.” I was confused now, what collar were they talking about?

“Don’t bother then, i’ll do it myself.” Ed quickly brought his right arm to his to his shirts collar to pull it down, revealing a dog-like collar of some kind around his neck, before he grasped it firmly.

“WAIT YOU CAN”T DO THAT YET!” Celestia’s panicked voice surprised me, but not as much as the bolts of electricity that was now emitting from Eds body or more specifically the right arm and left leg which were slowly burning away their coverings to show the automail limbs that the person Ed was based on to be known for whilst the man himself was screaming in pain. I looked back to Celestia while Ed was now seemingly paralyzed from the pain and saw Celestia’s horn was glowing with magic.

While I had just gotten my apologies and forgiveness from the princesses about all that had happened, that didn’t mean I was just going to let the guy who helped me out of jail simply suffer. So while everyone else was distracted by the light show, I took my chance and tackled the focused princess and breaking said focus while I did so. In an instant the shocking lessened and without hesitation (most likely from fear of more shocks) Ed pulled with all his mechanical might and ripped the dog collar from his neck before crushing the small stone that decorated it.

Feeling happy that it was all over now, I looked once more to Celestia but instead of anger or disappointment it was instead a look of fear. Unsure why she was doing so, I barely noticed her horn seeming to get brighter until the very last second.

(BOOM)

The explosion was loud and powerful with what looked to be a wave of golden energy that burst from it, much like you could probably expect it you had just stepped on a mine filled with explosives, smoke, and maybe golden paint simultaneously. Coughing, I swiped at the smoke to dispel it from my vision both amazed and confused as to how I had survived. I could hear groans of pain, and what I thought sounded like footsteps but I couldn’t fully tell from the light ringing still in my ear.

“CELESTIA!” hearing the princess of the moon’s scream of fear, I quickly made my way to her voice to see what was wrong and became shocked at what I saw. Lying lifelessly on the floor with her horn now snapped in two was Princess Celestia.

(5 minutes later)

Celestia now laid comatose on a hospital bed with her broken horn’s stump bandaged and her body connected to many machines I never expected to exist in this strange worlds technological advancements. She was being treated regularly with constant supervision with the best doctors around keeping an eye on her while I, Luna, and the girls simply sat behind a glass window worried.

It had been shocking at first to see the princess in such a state that no one knew what to do and we had stayed that way until guards from around the castle started to pout into the room to most likely see what had caused the explosion. Like us the became shocked at what they saw but instead of staying as such they immediately went to work checking how she was while getting a doctor team ready for her and getting her to where she was now.

Staring at her, a single thought crossed my mind just like it had many times before in the past couple of minutes but I quickly pushed it away. No matter how much you may be confused, when something is this bad, you don’t just question what happened, you had to let it come naturally. I would know since I had my fair share of “What happened to you”.

“Princess Luna, What happened?” Apparently Twilight had had enough waiting though as she simply got up from her seat to stand next to the taller alicorn. Luna said nothing though and I don’t expect she will but her deep sigh said otherwise.

“Twilight, do you know what magical backlash is?” Twilight nodded.

“It’s when magic fails to cast correctly or something you’ve enchanted breaks causing all the leftover magic to retract back into your horn against the natural flow. Wait are you saying that something in Ed’s hand caused this?” Twilight looked panicked but Luna did not acknowledge it.

“Not just something Twilight. A slave collar. Weakened of course as well as many variations to the original concept but still the same.” There were gasps from everybody, including me. Luna simply nodded at our sentiment.

“Yes that is what she used to keep Ed’s help in the case he decided to go against us but that was before we both had our changes of heart so please understand that.” I wasn’t sure if I could or not. Human slavery is kind of a big deal after all considerings the human’s use of it all over the world thousands of years ago. Twilight looked to have calmed down somewhat.

“But if it was just a backlash, a weakened one at that. Why did her horn snap?”

“That would be due to her use of enhancing the effects of the collar before she was interrupted.” She gave a quick glare towards me for it but I wasn’t sure how to feel. “There was a chance of this happening anyways though whether she tried to stop it or not though considering all the modifications so I guess not all blame can go to Cronus for this.”

“Will she be alright though?” Fluttershy had come to stand on Luna’s otherside to ask. Luna gave a sad smile.

“In time, thanks to our alicorn blood, her horn should grow back but not for many decades. As for her coma though, I have no idea. The best we can do is wait and see.”

(3rd POV)

(5 minutes ago)

Deep underground, within Celestia’s personal study for all things displaced, the portal to the upper world glowed slightly before a fraction of the wave produced by celestia exited it it and began bouncing around the room creating a mess as it knocked over books and utensils for writing before finally what was left of it found its mark on the terrace doors and exiting the room in the process. No longer confined, the fraction of a wave continued onwards, not stopping and uncaring to where it went. Eventually though, the magic that it was made from began to fade in its intensity. Little by little, it lost its light and slowly lost its speed and height until eventually only riding barely above the heads of the frozen displaced. Finally, the magic gave out just enough for it to bounce off of one of the many displaced before richitcheing onto another and another before finally dissipating on the last. Nothing seemed wrong as the displaced statues simple rocked in place from the sudden force, but if one were to look closer, they would notice small cracks beginning to form and slowly grow in size.

Author's Note

for the next three days, I will take suggestions in the comments on who the displaced that were struck by the magic were. Should no one do so, I'll just pick them myself.

Total I will be taking is 5 possible suggestions.

The King Stays

Ch 24

It had been ten days since Celestia had been made comatose, and things have been frosty to say the least. While Luna had not seemed to hold my interference in low regards considering the circumstances, and she no longer seemed to view me with the contempt from our first meeting in the woods, that didn’t stop her from being somewhat passive aggressive towards me as I now lived in the castle with her. It had been a shock when she offered it to me with the reasoning that it would be better to look for Ed as long as both her and I were in in close range to convey messages with each other as she had guards searching the countryside for him after his disappearance. There was the occasional sighting here and there the first few days but he always managed to get away and the sightings had begun to become few and far between with each passing day.

As well as my stay and the continued search for Ed, Luna now had to pick up the slack of what was both day and night court which seemed to getting to her, even with her alicorn body. Twilight couldn’t help either in the matter as she and the rest of the gang had to head back and take care of Ponyville. This simply left me wondering around a castle most of the time and a few short trips into the town (with an actual guide this time of course) to try and find that strange shop that gave me the weird feeling. So far though, I hadn’t been able to as I didn’t pay attention to the street names. As I kept searching, I had also remembered the weird feeling from the halls as well but the winding maze that was the castle didn’t help in the matter.

Having finished my latest search around the castle, I made my way back to my quarters for a simple rest and maybe read up on the Equestrian history book that I had been given the other day to catch up on the surprisingly long history of the country. Entering my room, I simply ignored the lavish bed and furniture that decorated the room, and would have made most 5 star hotel rooms cry in shame, and made my way over to the desk that was housing my book.

The True History of Equestria

A simple title for a book but apparently it was the only copy in existence that held all the details of the land as well as the stuff that had been censored out in the public version. Specifically anything that pertained to the time displaced were in the land. Suffice to say, it was a boring read except for a few bits here and there and mostly around the wars, specifically, The Displaced War.

Apparently, before displaced were just considered evil by Celestia, all displaced were welcome in the land, but if they stepped out of line then the usual punishment was to be turned into a statue and placed in the garden of castle that had been built within the Everfree before it had gotten out of control. This apparent peace lasted a long time but eventually one displaced had appeared and he simply didn’t like any of it, he just destroyed what he wanted and killed who he pleased while the princesses found that nothing they tried could truly stop him not even the petrification spell before it was absorbed by the Elements of Harmony at the cost of never being able to use it. (seems kind of strange in my opinion but considering it was magic I, I can’t argue with it to much). After a while, the displaced got the idea that his placement in Equestria was due to the sisters themselves as he believed that they were working with the Merchant who brought everyone to this world. Nobody believed him at first, to afraid really after everything he had done, but soon enough, new displaced came and he pounced on their beliefs like a vulture, quickly making them loyal to himself.

On and on, it went like this until finally some of the old displaced started to believe his rhetoric, believing they could finally go home. It wasn’t an overnight process, in fact it took many years before even a dozen up and left but after that, the swarm started to follow with only the oldest displaced standing their ground and staying by the princesses side and leaving them at a major disadvantage that was slowly growing with each passing day.

Eventually, the army of the still unnamed leader (not a single hint to his name could be found, not even a real description besides him being a male displaced), struck at the heart of Equestria and attacked the castle which caused its subsequent destruction and the beginning rampancy of the soon to be grown forest. The princesses survived the attack but it was unfortunately at the sacrifice of a long time friend to the two named Natsu, which allowed them to escape into the underground tunnels. After days of no food and water, and desperate to end the suffering of the people, the tree that the Elements of Harmony were made from was found and granted them the power to do so. This in turn lead them to where everything was today before Celestia lost the Elements after misusing them for so long as she imprisoned all of the displaced.

Evetually, after a while, the words of the book started to blur together which meant I chould stop reading. Doing so, I gave a good stretch before getting up from my desk and checking the watch I had been given on my third day missing dinner time.

“4:30. Too late for lunch and too soon for dinner. Might as well just go get an apple and train for a bit.” It came upon me, after everything had finally settled down, that I had no idea on what I was really doing with my new power and my skills that I did know where basic at best. So I started training my new forms just to see what my possible limitations were. So far, my Chronicle form was best used for all around combat as it had no real weakness excet to those who used dark magic, which in and of itself was quite rare to begin with, My Harmony form is actually the problem as even though I can feel the power inside of my self being much greater than my Chronicle form, it was actually limited based on how much darkness was in the heart of the opponent I faced, which meant if I were to fight a royal guard like I had already done so before, the best I would get would be something a little above normal human standards for power but not much. This is where the third gashat slot comes into to play. For how my Harmony form can only affect an opponent based on his or her evilness, the change loadout from using Mighty Action X actually boosts what I have with a multiplier while also augmenting my weapon and abilities based on which ever gashat I used (If I ever got any of the others) while having the drawback of not being able to use finishers just some pretty light shows as I focused some of my power into the Breaker Mk 2 for more force.

What I wanted to focus on today was the usage of my energy items while in combat as no matter what I did, the would always be useless unless I could somehow get them out of my pocket in time to actually use and not get killed in the process.

(2 hours later)

“Still no improvement.” I had been practicing my energy item usage for close to two hours now but I still couldn’t properly use them now matter what I tried. Not even when I tried to copy Para-DX’s ability to control the energy items on the field. The best I could do was simply have some out of the binder and in my pocket while I hoped for the best as I used them at random.

“Hmm, hmm.” I was snapped out of my musing by a fake cough coming from Luna who was looking over my practicing.

“Oh hey Luna. I’m guessing I missed dinner time then?”

“Supper and, by half an hour, yes.” Half an hour was a long time in the longevity of food and my stomach knew that as it growled in hunger that I didn’t even know I had five minutes ago. Luna didn’t seem to care though, in fact, she didn’t seem to show any emotion at all. It was somewhat worrying to notice this and I asked if everything was alright.

“Why yes, everything is just peachy. Why wouldn’t it be?” The usual passive aggressive tone was replaced by a much more obviously aggressive tone now which meant something had to be up. Looking closer while Luna waited for some reason, I found what was going on. Luna was seriously sleep deprived as she had dark eye bags under her eyes that would have been almost impossible to see were they not darker than her own fur color.

“Um Luna, have you been skipping sleep these last couple of nights?” Luna seemed to tense which I only just realized stopped a slight sway as she was standing before she seemed to relax somewhat and let the sway begin again.

“Not at all, I just have so duties to attend to during the night that take up some time. I always make sure to got to bed before sunrise.” I didn’t buy it but I had no real way of proving it without causing a sleep deprived and newly aggressive princess from lashing out. This meant that I had to get her to sleep at least a little but before something bad happened. But what could I do?

Author's Note

I won't be able to write a chapter on Saturday for you all due to responsibilities I currently. So I'll be sure to make the next two chapters extra special when I write them for you all.

The King In Charge

Ch 25

We had made our way back to the dining hall in complete silence, I was to busy trying to figure out what was wrong with Luna and she seemed to be zoning in and out as she walked. I was afraid she would tip over at any moment but thankfully it didn’t happen as we had reached the room, filled with now cold food, with no accidents happening. As usual, I took my place at one end of the table whilst Luna took the other and we began eating. The only sound that could be heard was the clinking of silverware on dishes.

Normally this would already be awkward but with everything that had happened, it seemed much worse. I had to say something, just to take my mind off it but I had no idea what. With nothing off the top of my head, I went with my usual plan and just spouted off whatever I could.

“You’ve seemed extremely tired recently, is something wrong?”

And of course I ask the one thing I had to be careful about.

“Hm, nothing wrong just lots of late nights for the Night Court.” Huh, I was expecting some kind of backlash, or really angry remark. I could probably roll with this.

“Night Court? I don’t think i’ve ever heard of that.”

“It’s a time when I would do my regular duties and settle disputes or problems with the more Nocturnal ponies of Canterlot. It hasn’t been easy since a lot of ponies have decided to wait for the night court instead because of some weird superstition of going to the princess of night during the day.”

“Sounds rough.” She smiled at that.

“In a way, yes. But I need to stay strong otherwise i’ll be letting my sister down when she had to do the same for so many years.”

“Really, the entire time you were gone, she was doing Night Court as well as Day Court. Considering the state of the city, and country really, I think she might have just slept during that time. Maybe you should just close down one of the courts so you can have a little sleeping time.”

“No! Celestia did this for me, for 300 hundred years, I won’t give up in less than a quarter of that time! I will do my duty and uphold the Courts of Day and Night just like she did!” Her out burt nearly made my eardrums burst as her voice made the entire room shake and the table rattle with all the silverware still on it. I need to calm her down.

“I get it, this is a big task that you have to do and you want to do it right.” She started to calm down now. “Maybe instead of stopping, you could get some help instead, you know so you can get a little sleep and not shirk on your duties.”

“But if I do that, then I still won’t be doing what I need to. Besides, who could I get to help? Celestia is unconscious and Candece already has enough to deal with, with the crystal ponies and their rehabilitation into modern Equestria.” Even while dead tired, she still resisted sleep. Gotta give her props for that but I still needed her to sleep before she hurt herself and possibly others.

“You don’t have to sleep all night, just for a few hours, Just enough till you feel better, As for who could do it, why not one of the nobles.” She laughed outright at that.

“”The Nobles? They can’t do anything except worry about themselves, there’s no way they could deal with the responsibility of the Night Court. I would rather have you do it instead.” She seemed to pause and think for a moment. “Actually, why don’t you do it?”

“What? You can’t be serious!”

“Of course I am, you already look like royalty with that other form of yours, just transform and fill in for me while I take a quick nap.” Before I could say anything, Luna created a strip of paper from magic before using a quill that she had pulled from seemingly nowhere and began writing. Once she had finished, she called forth one of the guards to spread the news to the rest of the city. All of this happened in the span of about a minute while I just sat there with my mouth held open in shock as to what just happened.

“If you’ll excuse me Cronus.” Luna stood from her chair. “ I must go catch up on some sleep now. The nobles should be easy to deal with as most of them are petty squabbles. Very few serious issues actually arise during the night that need my intervention. I’ll be sure to raise the moon first before I do so, so don’t worry about that.”

And with that said, she exited the room and headed to her own quarters. While I still sat at my seat with my mouth open.

“Wha….”

(10 minutes later)

Unable to argue against a now sleeping Luna, I resigned to my fate as a stand in royal and was now sitting on the throne waiting for the first person to come with their problems. While I simply sat and waited, I noticed something strange. Instead of the usual white coated and gold armored guards that I saw during the day. Each and every single guard had a dark blue or gray coat of fur and their armor was silver in color while also seeming to be much more extravagant in comparison to the day guards sparse appearance. What stood out the most though was the strange tufts of fur that were at the tips of their ears and their wings were bat-like instead of bird-like, like a regular pegasus. Curious, I gained the attention of one of the nearby guards.

“Yes your majesty?” Majesty? I know my Kamen Rider form had a crown but I wasn’t royalty.

“Why did you say your majesty?” The strange pegasus looked at me funny before answering.

“Because Princess Luna’s letter stated that we treat you as we would treat her while you are in charge of the Night court.” I didn’t say anything at his answer before deciding to simply let the matter drop.

“Okay. Anyways, what I wanted to ask was why you have bat wings.” The bat pegasus looked to his own wings before looking back.

“I’m a Thestral.” Thestral? Isn’t that the weird horse from Harry Potter in the fifth book? Doesn’t matter I guess, might as well just go with it and not make a big deal about it.

“I see, where i’m from a lot of the ponies’ here species don’t exist back home just myths and legends. I didn’t recognize your species since you looked so different in comparison.”

“Different? How so?” The guard must have realized he had spoken before quickly trying to correct himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask.”

“No, it’s alright. I’m not really royalty so you don’t have to act like i’m a king or anything. To answer your question, your species aren’t put in a very good light as you look like living skeleton creature that have something to do with death. I never really looked it up much just in passing really” I noticed that the guard looked down and I could tell that something I said had caused it. “But that’s all myths and legends where I come from, made hundreds of years ago during the dark ages. I’m sure that your species isn’t as bad as the legends say you are.” it didn’t seem to work as the guard simply nodded before going back to his previous position of standing at attention.

I tried to say something else to fix my mistake but a trumpet going off gained my attention as another thestral guard was now standing at the door with the instrument in question to his lips. When he finished, the horn was put into his arm as he now stood on three legs.

“NOW PRESENTING, THE PRINCESS OF THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE: PRINCESS CADANCE MI AMOR.” I swear, someone was trying to make me deaf as every time someone shouted now, it sounded like an air horn of steroids.

With Mr. yells -a-lot now done with his introduction, a smaller, pink alicorn walked into the room flanked by four guards that looked to be ponies made of crystals. Seeing me, the apparent princess’ eyes narrowed as she stared at me.

‘This isn’t going to end well, I just know it.”

Author's Note

This chapter has been uploaded early in response to my upcoming responsibility this weekend.

The King Works

Ch 26

Turns out that by not explaining something right away leads to being attacked in some form or another. Who knew.

“Quit avoiding my attacks you dog! I want to know what happened to Luna.” Apparently the princess Cadance thought I was a diamond dog, whatever that is.

“I already told you, after the first missile, that she’s asleep right now!”

“Lies, Luna only sleeps during the day. Even if she did sleep at night, she has her responsibility of being in charge of the Night Court!”

“Well Unless you haven’t heard. Princess Luna has been a little over worked so she needed a rest since Celestia is out of commission for the Day Court.”

“No doubt because of you!” I didn’t refute her claim which only seemed to anger her more and made her magic missiles bigger.

‘What is it with ponies and always getting so angry at me. I don’t even try sometimes.’ Dodging once more, I decided that I had finally had enough of this cat and mouse while everyone else just watched as they were either to amused or to dumb founded to do anything.

Time Out

In an instant, time and everything in it, paused. No longer in a hurry due to the princess unable to attack me, I took a breather before calmly walking up to her still form. I was oh so tempted to give her a roundhouse kick to relieve some stress from all the close shaves from the past couple of minutes but I knew that it would not end well for me it I did so. Taking another breath to calm down a bit, I gently picked up the princess’ smaller form and carried her to the throne before forcing her body to sit down. With the princess out of the way now, I made my way over to one of the many magic missiles that were dotting the air and checked to see if they were hot to the touch.

After a few careful prods, I found them to be safe to touch and changed their flight paths to connect with one another and detonate harmlessly (relatively speaking of course) in the air. Before I made time start again, I noticed that Princess Cadance’s guards were still at the door slack jawed. Deciding to have a little fun after everything that had just happened, I picked them up one by one before putting them outside the courtroom and closing the door behind them. With that out of the way, I pressed the two buttons on my bugvisor.

Time In

Just as I had planned, the magic missiles detonated in mid air with no problems, and Cadance was confused. Something That I could use to, maybe, catch her attention and explain things clearly to her.

“Alright. Are we done with the Magic Missiles so we can talk like respectable individuals?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Now as I was saying earlier. Luna has currently been overworking herself with both the Day and Night Court and she has assigned me to, temporarily, take over for the night so that she can catch up on some missed sleep. I didn’t do anything untowards her, and I didn’t tell her to let me be in charge. She is simply out of options to work with right now, or rather she was before you showed up.”

Having said my piece I saw that Cadance seemed much more calm but with a look in her eye that said the reason for her current cooperation was more than just common courtesy.

“I see. If that is truly the case then I must assume that I must work with you for the time being until morning then.” I nodded.

“Yep so tell me what the problem is and I’ll try to help as best I could.” She gave me a good long stare.

“Very well then. 5 days ago, I received word that princess Celestia has become comatose due to the actions of a still unknown individual. I wished to come here, after hearing such, so that I may aid in the finding of the individual who did it.”

‘Oh.’ I need to be very precise in how I responded now, lest I earn her ire once again. I don’t know what to say though, I need more time.

“Surely you didn’t simply leave your kingdom just to help find a individual who is on the run from all guards across Equestria?”

“I did not simply leave. I made sure to leave my husband in my stead so that he may keep an eye on the current progress and direct it as need be. I trust in him to do so, just as I trust in the guards that protect the many cities. I simply wish to lend my power in the locating and capture of the unknown individual.”

“I see, well then. How do I break this to you. There are actually two people behind the cause at the moment. One is a human, much like myself, who caused the accident to happen, and then there’s the one who allowed it to happen due to him not understanding what was going on. That other is me.” I waited for her to go berserk again but it didn’t happen, instead she simply had a frown on her face.

“I see. If this were any other, I would move to carry out capital punishment as dictated by our laws, but considering the circumstances, I guess I will simply have to make due with the other one responsible in all this.” I didn’t get to say more as the doors behind me flew open abruptly with panting and wheezing guards from both Candance’s and the Night guards having worked together in trying to push the door open. Behind all of them were multiple noble looking ponies who were trying to peek out from behind and see what was going on. Candance took that as it was her time to leave for now and walked to her guards, that assembled quickly, eve while tired, and made her way out of the main hall, past all the bowing nobles.

When she was finally gone, it was just me and some confused nobles. Figuring it would be a long night, I quickly made my way to the throne and took a seat before beckoning the first of the nobles inside and explained what was going on.

Author's Note

I told you all I would be back to day didn't I?

Well here I am and with a brand new chapter.

The King Finds, The Servant Hides

Ch 27

Never before, have I been so glad to see the light of day again. Hour after hour, noble after noble, I had to sit through every single petty grievance ranging from wanting more land to build a summer home and show up the others to complaining about one of the other noble’s window glaring sun in their eyes. Not to mention that Cadence seemed fit to drop by every other hour just to see if Luna was up yet, that was always fun to deal with. The only remotely interesting and important appointment I had during the whole thing was a couple of workers asking if the could have money loaned to build a new weather tower (A place where ponies, with meteorology related cutie marks, could live while they kept an eye on the weather pattern placements). I couldn’t give them the money though so I had to send them away as soon as I received them and continued my work on dealing with the nobles.

When the first rays of the sun finally entered the building, I bolted to let Luna deal with the rest of them. Now though, I’m stuck in some random part of the castle and I have no idea where I am. My steps echoed throughout the halls without any form of buffer letting them simply echo without stopping. Suddenly, the feeling from before, close to two weeks ago, finally resurfaced but now it was stronger than ever. Where as before it simply felt like standing far away from a campfire, now it felt like I was considering whether or not to stick my foot in.

Not wasting any time, I immediately chased after, to reach the ending destination. Upon doing so, after following the lead for only a short minute, the lead began to waiver. This lessening of the power could only mean I was passing it by. Stopping, I started to back track, testing how far I could go, both back and forth, until I finally it. The epicenter of the strange feeling was simply a piece of the hall with a fancy looking tapestry.

“Wait a second. Why would somebody just put up something like this in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t make sense, unless….” I grabbed the hanging piece of cloth before yanking it away sharply to reveal a door. “You’re trying to hide a secret door.” Giving myself a mental pat on the back, I opened the door, only to become confused again. The room was empty, not a single piece of equipment of decoration in sight yet the feeling I had lead me to here. Why?

Entering, I didn’t expect much, maybe a loose brick to find, or maybe everything was just invisible. My thoughts soon changed when the floor began to light up, revealing an intricate circle on the floor, one that looked extremely familiar though I couldn’t tell why.

The light soon reached its apex and my belly flipped, as though I had just gone through a loop-de-loop on a rollercoaster. When the light finally subsided, I found myself not to be in some form of random closets in the middle of a hallway, but some form of study with burning torches and a library full of books to read from. Curious, I considered whether or not to read one of the books, but I figured that it could wait till later since I had time.

Noticing a terrace door, I made my way to the construction of glass and wood, only to become confused at what I saw.

Like at night, everything was pitch black and impossible to see but there was no moon or starlight to help see with. Not worrying though, I quickly brought forth one of my many weapons.

Gashacon Sword

My immediate surrounding light up thanks to my greater control of the gashacon weapons and I could vaguely see what looked like a roof of some sort as well as a floor to wherever I was at but that was it. No details, no distinct marks, not even any form of color, just basic shapes for the distance.

‘Well you know what they say. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

With that though in mind, I hopped over the railing and let gravity take over as I allowed myself to fall to the floor many, many, stories below me. Closer and closer the floor became and small dots, that were continuing to become more distinct and larger as I drew closer, began to take shape for me in the limited range of the gashacon sword’s flames. When I was only about a story away from finally reaching the bottom though, the bumps had finally stopped looking like shapeless masses and instead seemed much more defined and non uniform though it was hard to tell due to my flame not being bright enough to cover everything in light for me to see clearly.

Not caring about that for the moment though, I realized that I was about to fall on top of one of the many bumps so I had to quickly reposition myself in mid air (something that is not as easy as tv like to make it out to be) and landed in the spaces between the bumps with relative ease with a crouch to help lessen the impact after falling so far (Didn’t stop it from hurting though).

Waiting for a bit, I let the slight pain from landing so far ebb away before slowly stand back up. When I did so, I went right back down whilst screaming a very manly scream (Yep, definitely manly). The reason for my unexpected terror was due to the fact that all of the shapeless lumps that I had been seeing as I fell so far below, were actually life-like statues of anime characters in depictions of pain or fear. Suffice to say, I would need a new suit if surprises like these were going to keep popping up.

It took me sometime to finally regain my bearing and by that point, the statues no longer freaked me out like before but it was only barely. Everywhere, as far as my eyes could see, and the flames of my sword would allow, there were statues of frozen people, not just any people though, humans who were like me. Displaced.

I saw what looked like few Master Chiefs, Marios, and even a team of power rangers. All of them frozen stiff, unable to change from their horrifying postures and expressions. Trying to not let it get to me, I started to make my way through the crowd of stone people, careful to avoid touching them incase the stone effect was somehow contagious. Statue after statue I passed, none of them the exact same as all of them had different types of expressions of their fear for what was to come. Some standing, some laying, and even some that looked like they should have fallen over due to how precarious they looked in their positions. Eventually though, after a while of walking, I began to become tired, most likely due to the montoneness of the situation at the moment and the lack of sleep from last night. With my eyelids becoming heavy, I decided to simply sit down and rest for a while, but as no sooner had my body touched the ground that I began falling backwards, no longer able to keep myself upright.

When my back finally touched the floor, I felt that my head had landed on something hard, most likely one of the statues, but my body didn’t care and simply considered it hard pillow. Just before I finally drifted off to sleep though and await my time to regain my mental fortitude to press on and either leave or continue exploring, I heard a sharp cracking sound that seemed to pierce the silence but unable to keep me awake.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Ed POV)

After the explosion, that no doubt harmed Celestia in the process, I had quickly made escape of the castle whilst everyone was still distracted and made my way to the back alleys and streets undisturbed. After that, I had to keep a close eye out for guards before finally I simply left the city of Canterlot entirely.

The reason for it was due to me putting the princess in a coma but I didn’t care, I just wanted to get as far away as possible. Due to my actions, I was no longer able to use the trains either, making it almost impossible to travel unless by foot through the plains, and past cities where I couldn’t stay long. It didn’t matter though because I didn’t want to stay anywhere that was related to Celestia anyways. Neither did I want to go to the Griffins either since they were allied with the ponies as well.

It was almost impossible to decide where to go until I remembered the unconscious princess mentioning something in her crash course lessons of Equestria history.

“Dragons are the enemies of ponies.” Well not really considering that neither has out right attacked each other but neither were they allied as well. If I could get to the dragon’s country, I would be safe, so long as the dragons didn’t eat me first, “Not like they could since I have this thing.”

I removed the cloth that I had picked up from the griffin kingdom, that depicted an Alphonse Elric sealing away a dragon somehow with the transmutation circle embroidered on it. A circle that wasn’t actually Transmutation but rather some kind of hybrid of transmutation and some form of runes. The gist that I could get was enough though and I didn’t have to worry. After all, what’s to worry about when your enemy isn’t close enough to attack you?

The King Meets V2

Ch 28

Slowly, my eyes opened, barely able to see due to the crust that had grown in my eyes as well as the little light I had thanks to my still lit Gashacon Sword. Feeling around in my semi-blind state, I became worried to find that it was no longer laying next to me. Panicking, I quickly sat up to find it only to lean back at the sight of a large gun barrel that was pointed directly between my eyes.

“Just stay still, and tell us who you are and what your costume is from.”

Hearing a deep male voice, I looked up and became surprised at what I saw. There were five people total, each of them a displaced. The one who was now staring me down was none other than the default Commander Shepard with N7 armor and all the weapons that came with it, Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers OG with her crescent moon staff and strange clothing, Iron Spider from the recent Infinity war movie, Ganondorf from Legend of Zelda in his normal green skinned, human form, and finally Lion-o From Thundercats 2011 with both the Sword of Omens, his gauntlet, and the three jewels in one hand and my still lit Gashacon Sword in the other.

“Um-” Not sure what to say, I simply answered the question. “I’m Kamen Rider Cronus from Kamen Rider Ex-aid.”

“Kamen Rider Ex-aid? UGH.” The comment came from the Rita Repulsa clone.

“What, you got something to say about it?” I should be somewhat scared considering I had a gun in my face but after everything that happened, I wasn’t in the mood from some snooty Power Ranger’s fan.

“Yeah I do. The show is utter garbage. The characters don’t even look like Kamen RIders and their premise is so stupid.”

“Hey, i’ll have you know that the entire plot of the show was easily around the same level as Gaim and the Suits look amazing as you can plainly see.” I gestured to my body.

“Yeah sure, like having large googly eyes make something look cool. And don’t you dare compare the show to Gaim. Gaim was a masterpiece.”

“Coming from someone who looks like Rita Repulsa, forgive me if I don’t exactly agree with you.”

“What, you got something to say about Super Sentai?”

“WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP!”

The yell came from none other than Lion-o, who looked really pissed at the moment. Taking advantage of the quietness now, Iron Spider stepped forward so as to gain our attention.

“Um, I think we’re good Shepherd. He seems cool.” Without a word, The one known as Shepard backed away but still kept his gun out just in case. No longer under immediate threat, I got to my feet, and gave and unseen glare to Rita Repulsa. She seemed to understand it though and looked ready to fight with both hands on her staff.

“So, Cronus, do you know where we are?” Sounding the most calm and collected, and not hesitant was Ganondorf.

“Not really no. I just found this place and ended up down here.”

“Wait, what do you mean found?”

“Well I found this hidden room in the castle that with a portal in it that took me to some kind of study and after looking around, I came down here before taking a quick nap.” I didn’t want to mention the feeling right now because that was somewhat personal at the moment.

“I see. You mentioned a castle, yes?” I nodded. “Would this castle happen to be the one that houses Princesses Celestia and Luna?” I nodded again. After doing so, I noticed all but Iron Spider seemingly tense up and put tighter grips on their respective weapons. Seeing this, I remembered that most of the displaced from the past had been soldiers of some kind of war before being trapped.

“Will you lead us to the teleporter then Cronus?” Ganondorf came closer until only an arm’s length away. Realizing what he might be planning, I knew I had to stop it before it started.

“No.” The grips got even tighter and Iron Spider only looked around confused.

“Why...not?” The struggle in Ganondorf’s voice was extremely noticeable.

“Because you’ll just try and fight the princesses again when you get back and I can’t let you do that. There’s already enough trouble as it is with Ed running around doing who knows what.” Iron Spider looked alarmed at the mention of fighting so I knew I had someone in the group of people not for the idea of war. I just had to somehow convince the rest.

“Whether or not it will cause trouble matters little to us. We just need to find the princesses and destroy them so we can go home.”

“You mean kill. Beside, whoever told you what obviously doesn’t know what their talking about-” A fist to the gut sent me into the air before falling down a good distance away (luckily not on top of any of the other, still frozen, displaced). As I tried to get up, after having more than just the wind knocked out of me, I could hear Iron Spider asking what they were doing before another sound of something hitting could be heard and a thump somewhere off to the side, a good distance away from me. On my knees now, I could hear the stomping of boots, shoes, and a staff coming from behind. Not wanting to go all out and accidentally kill any of the other frozen displaced, and not wanting to be beaten back by the group of four, I quickly pressed my driver buttons.

Time Out

Just as before, I time stopped and the sounds of walking were no longer heard. Getting up slowly, I looked around for any sign of Iron Spider and quickly walked over to him and picked him up. Without the fear of being attacked while I did so, I also made my way to Lion-o and plucked the Gashacon sword from his hand and got as far away as I could. By the time I felt safe enough, I had reached the same wall I had fallen from. The way I knew this was thanks to the sight of light above. Not wasting any time, I jumped with all my might and reached the top terrance before landing on it. Putting Iron Spider down gently, I started time again.

Time In

With time no longer frozen, Iron Spider slumped to the floor in his apparently unconscious state. Entering the room, I quickly blew out the candles so as to at least hinder the other four somewhat. Going back out to the terrance, I picked up Iron Spider once more and made my way to the teleporter and stepped into the circle. In an instant, The dark room of where ever I was, was gone and replaced by the sight of the unknown room I had found. Exiting the room, I started for the Courtroom, so as to let Luna know what had happened.

Author's Note

I told you all I would be back didn't I. Well as I promised, the next chapter, on a Sunday evening no less.

The King Explains, The Servant Gambles

Ch 29

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, through the halls of the castle, while carrying the Iron Spider over my shoulder. But due to not having memorised the exact way in which I had reached the secret teleporter, I was completely lost with no way of finding out where I was going (none of the usual guards were doing patrols due to the man hunt on Ed so the castle was much emptier than usual). As I ran, turn after turn, I started to feel my current passenger begin to twist and turn as he started to stir awake.

Not wanting to make any more problems for myself while running through the halls of Canterlot’s castle, I slowed to a stop and gently removed the heavy arachnid themed superhero from my shoulder and put him on the floor. In less than a minute, he was already starting to mumble and rub his head in pain. This meant the guy would be able to explain what had just happened a little bit better than me trying to figure out the last ten minutes on my own.

“Oh man, what hit me?” finally, the guy was talking.

“Oh nothing much, just the green goblin’s better looking cousin.” My smart aleck seemed to do the trick, and the unnamed man was quick to his feet trying to understand where he was at as he began to look around in panic. Holding my hands up in a calm manner, I began speaking so as to get the answers I needed and get back on track of finding Luna.

“Easy there Spidey. You took a nasty hit. What is the last thing you remember?”

“Huh? Oh… I was talking asking Gan why he hit you...it think… and then he hit me next and everything went black.”

“Good, you remember that, now can you explain what has just happened before then.” As if truly realising who he was talking to now, the red and blue themed hero jumped in surprise. I kept my hands up thankfully and didn’t make any moves to defend my self least any form of spider sense mistake it for me attacking. This did the trick and Spidey calmed down.

“Uh sure, yeah. Before that, I was minding my own business at comic-con but the next thing I knew, everything became a big flash of light after I bought a new mask to replace my old one. After that, i’m in a forest for who knows how long, a rustle of some branches, a tingle in the back of my neck, and then finally everything went dark. Then I just woke up in that dark place and found the other four guys surrounding you while you slept. We talked for a bit to exchange names and confusion I guess before you started to wake up and started talking about My Little Pony… I think it was My Little Pony. You mentioned Celestia and Luna, and Canterot, I think, then-”

“Wait, wait, wait. What’s My Little Pony.” The Spider themed man looked at me in confusion (I could tell thanks to the movable eyepieces).

“What do you mean. You were the one talking about it like it was real. You almost sounded my little sister for a bit when she started to show the cartoon to me.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Are you telling me that we are in a cartoon for little girls?”

“What?” He didn’t answer, nor did I care.

“For over a week, I’ve spent my time try to simply survive in a child’s cartoon show for little girls. How in the Hell is fistfighting to the death family friendly?” My scream of indignation seemed to surprise the other displaced and it reminded me of what I was doing (I can scream about it later, after the threat of some kind of war blow over).

“Sorry about that. Long story short, from what you’ve just told me, we are both inside what appears to be an alternate dimension based around the same idea of your sister’s cartoon but people have been appearing here for a long time as real-life versions of whatever costume they were wearing. Me being a Kamen Rider, and you the Iron Spider. A long time ago, some bad displaced guy shows up and causes a mess and gets other people involved, which includes those other four, apparently. You and me, are the only good displaced left now, minus Ed since I have no idea where he ism and we need to get to princess Luna and warn her about what might happen if we don’t stop them or at least convince them not to do it.” It seemed like a bit much for the poor guy to process all at once, and he could probably already notice some holes in my explanation but frankly, we just don’t have the time. So by that point, I start running again, to find Luna or at least Cadence.

From the sound of foot fall behind me, Spidey was quick to follow, if only to get better answers to his questions. Questions that could frankly wait a good long while to be answered properly/

(Ed POV)

It had taken days to find a decent map of the country but that time was apparently well spent as I had been moving closer to the dragon territory already. It was only a few days away by foot now, possibly shorter if I could hitch a ride on any passing trains though that was unlikely. MY feet were aching for me to stop and rest but I knew that if I did, it would just give the guards that were after me more time to catch up so I continued on without even questioning to rising pain in my feet. I would wait until nightfall, where I would have a sense of peace to do what I needed to rest and relax before heading back to walking at first light like I had been the last few days.

Bored once more with the lack of scenery as I crossed the barren plain, I decided to check over the tapestry I had stolen once more, like I had been doing for the past few day no matter how little I understood the unknown symbols. I just figured that if I stared at them long enough, a pattern would emerge to explain them better and give me more of a clue as to where the, supposed, teleporter sent whoever used it. I didn’t exactly want to test it just yet incase something decided to come out from the other side which, based on the old cloth, was a very large possibility to occur, with monsterous ramifications if it did. The least of which being the immediate attention of every guard in a thousand mile radius.

Looking over each detail as I had done before, I followed the basic decustruction that started the implementation of the creation before parts of it bagan to become muddled once more from the unknown magic symbols.

“If only I had a book on them to use as a reference.” Sighing, I pulled out the map I had stolen and began to simply look at all the possible locations that I could stop at for supplies before my eyes rested on one in particular. It was Ponyville, the home of one of the most book smart ponies in equestria and also the most dangerous ones as well.

“I just know that she would have some kind out book about these symbols somewhere but if I get caught i’ll be turned for stone for sure. What to do, what to do.” I began to pace in place, trying to figure out which option to pick. As I did so, the sound of a whistle in the distance broke me from my musing and gave me the chance to finally decide.

“If this next train I hop on stops at Ponyville, I’ll try and find the book. If not, I’ll just look somewhere else and hope for the best.”

Waiting for the perfect chance, I could see the caboose of the train begin to come in sight as it passed by. Upon reaching me, I jumped with all my might and snatched the railing with my automail arm. The metal creaked under the force and even dented as well but ultimately held from my weight.

“Ready or not Ponyville, here I come.” No sooner had I said that, the feeling of a slight stomach ache began to set in so I closed my mouth so as to not give my body any ideas before taking a seat on the platform, outside the backend of the train.

The King returns, The Servant travels

The main chamber door flew open as I barged into it. The heavy bang reverberating across the entire room and causing those inside to jump from surprise before turning to see what had caused such a commotion. With all eyes on me, I could see a few flickering between both myself and the slightly slower Iron Spider who trailed behind before entering with a gasp in realization from what he saw. Figuring he finally understood what I meant from our conversation that was only a little while ago, I ignored both him and the silence of the room as my eyes focused solely on the throne and the pony who sat there.

Without saying a word, I drew closer and the many nobles scattered out of my way until I was at the base of the throne steps. So much to say, so little time, it was near impossible to think of a perfect way to explain what had happened. With no other choice, in the end, I went for the most basic of explanations I could think of.

"Displaced are free." The few nobles who'd come during the day scattered in an instant. With what happened to Celestia, many nobles had demanded explanations on the matter and much of Equestria's forgotten past had come to light, along with the horrifying truth of what could've happened without the elements to protect them. So with the day court now empty, a single Luna looked down on me with wide eyes that held back what looked to be inklings of her emotions before standing to descend from her throne.

"How did this happen?" Her voice was hollow, no emotion to be found, but I cared little as I saw her eyes focus solely on the poor guy who stood across the room in clear discomfort. Hoping to take her attention off of him, I followed beside her as she made her way towards the exit.

"I don't know. I only found out because I stumbled upon the portal to the room. I took away as much of a chance for them to find the portal out as I could but at least one of them has magic. The rest are powerful melee fighters and one has many guns. Considering what little I actually know, I do know that it'll take at least an army to properly fight them unless we do it ourselves. From the way they talked though, that's what they'd prefer." Not stopping in her concentrated strides, she had at least taken her eyes off of the iron spider wearing boy and exited the throne room before turning in the direction I had just come.

"Where are you going?" I asked after having stopped at the door's entrance while she continued on. With even turning her head to answer back, her voice boomed with intensity while her words traveled to my ears.

"To seal the displaced inside and hope we have enough time to prepare."

"What should we do then?" Surprised at how the boy who'd followed after me spoke up, I couldn't help jumping somewhat from the unexpected question, in such a serious situation, while Luna answered before getting ready to turn the next corner.

"Warn the guards. Have them evacuate the city as quickly as they can. If these displaced are as dangerous as Cronus believes then the civilians could be in danger as soon as they find a way out." Turning out of sight now, I was about to head and do what I had been told. No sooner did I attempt it though, I smacked body first into an armored guard which had us both backpedaling from the impact while Candace stood beside her escorts.

"What is going on Cronus?" She asked, no doubt hearing word from the previously fled nobles and Luna's own shouting. Not wishing to explain it all over again and waste time, I ignored her question and did what I was told.

"No time to explain, but you need to take your guards and let the others in the castle know that a city-wide evacuation needs to happen. Something big could be coming and we need to keep as many people safe."

(Luna POV)

“More displaced free, and from that man’s army no less? How could this have happened? So many questions and no answers to be found. I only hope that they don’t have to be answered too soon.” Having made my way at a steady pace, so as to not lose myself in the rush and possibly take a wrong turn, I found the magic circle just like I had before but there were clear marks of recent use like Cronus had said after explaining the situation. Not dwelling on that minor fact though. I instead focused on the magic circle intensely and created a large dome to cover over the top of it in its entirety and secured it as such to the best of my ability. For what I had planned, the effort would be needed.

When nothing seemed as though it were out of place, I began step two of such a difficult procedure. Unlike most other magic circles that would normally pose a threat in some way or another, this one was still active to a living being, one that I cared deeply for, and if I made one miss-step in deconstructing it, any number of events could happen but the most prominent would have been an explosion comparable to that of an alicorn blast spell, not something one would want going off inside such an enclosed space.

Realizing my mind was wandering to such a foreboding topic, I quickly stepped away mentally from such thoughts as they would only hurt my chances. With a bit of remembering, the spell I required came to mind and the dome glowed as my magic took a section of its wall as my focal point before a beam sprung forth from it at high speed and aiming directly for a random etching in the floor that made up the circle. Panicking at the sight of this, I used as much strength as necessary to pull back on the beam and watched as it stopped, mid-extension, only a few scant inches from the etching that, now that I had a chance to read it, would have been the power focus amplifier. Giving a sigh of relief at my quick save, I slowly went to work in finding the right parts of the circle and slowly etching through them so as to nullify their power while not accidentally transforming them into new ones with different effects.

With luck and the blessing of an Alicorn’s memory, no explosion occurred and the circle was now defunct from use but the preparations needed having only just begun. With no idea on who was awake on the other side and all the studies, my sister had made over the centuries stuck on the other side, I could only go off what little knowledge Cronus seemed to possess on our opponents and prepare accordingly.

Hearing the sound of a sudden rustling of fabric, my breath hitches whilst I turn around before escaping in a heavy sigh of relief as two guards, both looking quite unsure of what they were now looking at, came into view. That relief turned into slight irritation though as I regarded them before speaking but not in my old royal voice.

“Why are you here, I did not send for guards to come to find me.” Obviously not expecting such a cold welcome, both of the poor ponies went stiff. Realizing it was because I was glaring, I forced my eyes to try and look less unwelcoming so I wouldn’t have the apparent green-horns faint from the pressure. Seeming to do the trick, one stepped forwards with a respectful bow.

“Yes, your majesty, but Sir Cronus instructed us specifically to find you. He says that he hasn’t explained who these adversaries we are expected to face to you and that knowledge could be gravely important.” While I somewhat doubted it was said in such an overtly respectful and oldish manner of speaking, I understood that some of my tendencies from such a long time ago left a bit of lasting impression on my return before I had grown accustomed to the modern slang of the new age.

With that not being important though, I focused back what the guard had explained to me and realized the Cronus must have been realizing the same worries I had just thought of such a short time ago and had these two find me and rectify the problem.

“Very well, lead me to him.” With the second one bowing no, both guards stood at attention and were respectful at keeping a hearty pace considering the circumstances without stumbling and tripping while in my presence. Appreciating this fact, I couldn’t help making a mental note to thank the current guards-pony instructor for creating such fine soldiers, no matter their experience with what was to come.

(Ed POV)

Ashen and barren wasteland as far as the eye could see, or rather as far as my eyes could see while I rode precariously on the back end of such an unsuspecting train-full of passengers. Not exactly knowing how many there were though, I still didn’t wish to push the idea that I could get away scot free and head inside. With no way of knowing if there were guards and with the possibility of overt alchemy causing a crash in my bid to escape, I instead kept to safely hiding from all sight in the one place barely anyone would look whilst out on the open land of Equestria. Speaking of which, I honestly couldn’t believe such a place was actually a part of it.

With how the majority of the map held brightly covered and well-forested regions all across its canvas, there were still large pockets that covered it that were simply black in color, much like a sickness but un-spreading. Even still, this left me happy for what my believed future destination to be. Considering I had been riding for a few hours now, it had been plenty of time for a quick nap before waking up well and active. I only then realized I could only play the guessing game on where my current transport was taking me while using the best guesses for landmarks that I could. So far, the abundance of trees weren’t much of a help but after the scenery took a sudden change for the worse and the current sun position, I had a good idea in the end on where I would end up.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though I wouldn’t be heading for the dragon lands or Ponyville any time soon like I’d thought I would.

“At least it can’t get any worse.”

Author's Note

Hey everyone, how you doing?
Anyways, I'd just like to welcome you all back to my story for all of you who have been waiting for the next chapter and hope you can continue to wait while working on it. unfortunately for you old-timers, though, I won't be doing a new chapter every day but you can at least expect one every Sunday.

So with that out of the way, I'll see you all next time.

The King Plans

“At least it can’t get any worse.” Cringing from the princess of the moon’s statement of, well not exactly relief, but of content resignation after a now detailed explanation of who was currently trapped below, I couldn’t help but hope cartoon logic in a cartoon based world didn’t decide to apply themselves like they always seemed to from the few times I had the chance to even watch cartoons. With no explosions occurring, or the castle collapsing around us, I felt at least some relief that logic had decided to win out in the end after weeks on end of unnecessary shenanigans. That relief didn’t last long though as The Iron Spider beside me had decided now was the time to catch my attention with a few tentative pokes into my side. Giving it too without really saying as such, The shorter boy didn’t even wait to start speaking.

“Are you sure we can handle something like this? At least two of them are powerful end of the world disasters by themselves, and one is a guy who has a magic sword and armor who could beat a super powered planet conquering warlord when they both had the same amount of power stones.” Noticing how he hadn’t mentioned the gun-toting, bottomless clip using Spec-Op soldier as well among the list, I didn’t really hold it against him considering the others he was partnered with. With that thought, I smiled behind the mask while looking at Luna.

“Luna, do you remember when you were battling the army displaced long ago if there were any world ending threats besides the leader among their ranks?” Seeming to think on the matter, Luna became content to shake her head by the end.

“None that I can recall. While many were most definitely stronger than the average guard and soldier sent their way, they always seemed disjointed and unsure on what to do. At the time we assumed their ranks to be divided since the very first battle and it was causing disharmony in the mass of them, but that idea was slowly discovered to be untrue as their fighting got better over the course of the war. Last I remember, the average squad of displaced seemed to take an entire platoon of veteran soldiers to be dealt with.” Hearing her say this, the smile hidden from view only felt like it was growing bigger in relief.

“Then that means they aren’t as strong as we think they are.”

“Huh, what do you mean?” Not caring who it was that decided to ask such, I simply focused on working through the ideas already forming.

“It means that they aren’t fully adjusted to their powers. With three of them having powers that require training to properly use and lacking experience, the worst we can expect is for those three to be able to destroy village or maybe something a bit larger, and at best they’re only strong enough to destroy buildings. The last one, while I won’t hold off on the idea that he has explosives, he’ll be limited to the kind of damage he can do, just like the rest but weaker.” With everyone seeming to take breaths of relief now, I was Luna who spoke first.

“Thank goodness. I was afraid for a moment that things would be impossible. If what you say is true though then doesn’t fully erase their threat; afterall, if they escape, they’ll be warriors returned in their prime from battle against soldiers who haven’t ever experienced the true hardship of something close to this magnitude. They may have held off during a changeling invasion but even that was tenuous just from numbers alone. Our current enemies may not have that in great numbers but they are much more powerful.”

“Shouldn’t we keep fighting them to a minimum then?” Looking to Spidey suddenly, he jumped in surprise from how apparently both Luna and I had reacted. Continuing though, it wasn’t without a stutter. “W-well I mean, if it’s just 4 people, why not keep the guards focused on keeping the civilians away and out of harm? It’s not like they’ll be able to do all that much from what you’ve said so there’s really no point in them sticking around to be cannon fodder.” Noticing a few nearby guards bristle at the comment, none detracted from the statement.

“So you’re saying it should be us three and Candence who fight them, or are you wishing to be among the civilians leaving?” Considering how he seemed focused on getting unimportant people out of the fighting so not to get hurt, I couldn’t help but feel he was projecting a worry or two of his own onto the mess. Sighing at the very visible surprise he gave now that my suspicion was right, I waited for what kind of excuse he would give but none came. Instead, his lenses gave a very easy to see depressed shape as he looked to the floor.

“You aren’t going to argue, or say why it’s a good idea?” Spidey shook his head.

“No, not really. I mean, I’m dressed as spider-man after all so I gotta be like him right? Why try and argue over it?” With no bravado to the statement, I could only feel pity for the guy as I remembered what he’d told me about his own experience during his displacement. Not even an hour to look around at wherever he’d shown up before getting blasted from behind. Not even a chance to know how long he’d been imprisoned since Celestia was still in a coma and unable to talk about her time alone and without a sister or anyone to truly support her. Heavy is the head and all that jazz thanks to being the new monarch. No doubt she probably doesn’t even remember it herself to be honest, just another displaced among the many she collectively blamed on having to lock her sister on the moon.

Even still, if he wasn't sure he should be in the fight, he couldn't be forced to.
"You know, Spidey-"

"That isn't my name." Stunned by his interruption, neither the two of us, nor Luna were sure what to say. So instead, the boy dressed in blue and red simply walked towards the closest guard before speaking. "Could you please show me where the courtyard is. I'm not very used to my abilities." The guard looked to Luna in confirmation that he was allowed to do so and received the nod from her. Not a regal yes, like she was allowing someone lesser to do what was needed, but rather an unsure head nod that showed even she was sure if it was the right call or not. Still taking it as a yes though, the guard led the way and the two were gone, leaving only me and the other guard Luna had arrived with.

The King Decides, The Princess Plans

Ch5

‘It happened again, after months of not seeing it, it shows up here and now. Why, why does it have to plague me? I know what I did was wrong, but it was a mistake, a mistake I could never forget but I finally thought I was moving past it. Why was the Princess there though and why was I a Kamen Rider?’

The sound of the door iron door opening, pulled me from my thoughts as I saw three armed guards enter, one after another, enter. One of the guards, I noticed, was carrying a bowl of something though I couldn’t tell what until he came up to me and shoved it in my hands.

“Final meal for the day, eat up so we can get some sleep.” The bowl was filled with with some kind of meat that had been cooked to long, giving it a charcoal covering. Even though the prison food looked to be unappetizing, my stomach gave a loud growl in reminder that I hadn’t eaten for almost the whole day considering all this crazy stuff happened just after noon.

Nodding in compliance, I made to unhook the side strap of my helmet only to realize that it wasn’t there. Panicking, I began feeling my other side but there was still nothing. With no way of removing my helmet, it meant I would have to turn off my transformation and back into my nude body.

“Could I have a little privacy while I eat please?” The guards looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and truthfully, I could agree with them except that I was the one who would be getting nude.

“No, we watch all prisoner’s meals to make sure that the prisoner eats instead of simply starving himself to death so take off that stupid helmet and eat.”

“Um about that, I can’t.”

“What do you mean can’t, you had to put it on didn’t you and you’ve had to have eaten before?”

“Well yes but the problem is that the only way for me to take it off requires me to take off my entire suit which will leave me with nothing.”

“... Your telling me, that you can’t eat because you don’t want to be naked?” I knew I was red in the cheeks now so I simply nodded.

“How about no then? Just take off your suit and eat so we can get this over with, if you don’t, Brutus will get mad and force feed the stuff to you.” The leader of the group gestured to the larger of his two partners who was wielding a mace.

“Ok, no need for violence. God, this is so embarrassing.” removing Kamen Rider Chronicle, I pressed the de-transformation button and filled the room with light that soon faded away to reveal my now naked form.

“Holy Mother of the king’s eggs.” It was Brutus who spoke, and I knew why he reacted in such a way. My entire body was covered in patchworks burn marks that dotted all over me with the smallest one being around the size of my fist. As well as this, my bald head could also be seen as the pores had been melted close stopping any hair from growing again. All in all, you could consider me Frankenstein's burn victim cousin.

Now naked, I tried to cover my shame as best I could while using the Bugvisor before sitting down and puttin the bowl over my lap and started eating quickly. As I was doing so, each of the guard was staring off in some random direction but they would glance back before looking away so as to not be caught staring. Once done, I quickly replaced the Bugvisor in the bowl’s place before handing back the borrowed utensil. The leader of the trio took it away, but none of them moved to leave. Sighing, I knew what they wanted know.

“This happened because I involved myself with the wrong people when I was too young to understand what I was getting into and it’s only half my scars. The other half are even worse, and I don’t want to talk about them.” Apparently satisfied by my unasked explanation, the trio left, allowing me to transform once again. Now transformed, I sat back onto my temporary bed and stared at the door, not wanting to go back to sleep, no wanting to relive, That, again.

In time, my eyelids began to become heavy again, pulling me back into my unwanted sleep. Just before my eyelids could fully close though, the iron door was opened once more but much faster to reveal another Griffon but instead of armor and weapons, this one had a suit and briefcase.

“Are you the one called Cronus?” I only nodded my head.

“Good because I only want to explain this once. I am your government assigned lawyer who will be speaking on behalf for you as your defender. Unfortunately though, from what I can tell, you’re screwed no matter what I do.”

“What, why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that you were climbing up the king’s mountain without permission and your only excuse was to blame the only kingdom to have ever thought of having a peace treaty with us which saved our species.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” my unnamed Griffon lawyer set his case down and opened it. “Unless by some miracle you can win a trial by duel, you’re going to spend either 20 years in confined custody or the rest of your life without a head.”

My gulp of fear had to have been audible but the Griffon paid it no mind as he opened his briefcase and began to rifle through it. While he did so, something about what he had said, clicked into place.

“Wait, what’s a trial by duel?” I felt my question was justified but he apparently didn’t as he looked towards me as though I had just asked if the sky was blue.

“A Trial by Duel, is just as the name entails. The accused is given the option, at the beginning of the proceedings, to challenge their accuser to a 1 on 1 fight. If the accused wins, they are given a full pardon their actions but if they lose, they are immediately given the highest punishment their crime allows. Which means death in your case.”

“So I just have to fight the king than. Sounds easy enough, I’ll beat him in no time and then get the hell out of here.” It would be a sinch to do so with my bugvisor.

“I won’t be like fighting the average Griffon on the street though. You must reconsider.” i didn’t listen though. Noticing my lack of attention, the lawyer simply sighed before closing his briefcase and leaving as fast as he had came. Now alone, with the thought of leaving by tomorrow, I allowed myself to sleep with a smile on my lips.

(Celestia POV)

The Elements of Harmony had been rushed to the castle as quickly as possible with eager faces for the news they had hoped for. Those faces of hope and smiles broke after I told them what my sister had saw in Cronus’ mind.

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a bad dream Princess Luna? Cronus didn’t act like that at all. What about the deep voice you mentioned, could it have been someone tampering with it.” Luna only looked with a stare of somber pity before shaking her head.

“No. That voice was apart of it as much as his own. As for it being a dream, I will admit that it was what I saw but I know that it was a dream based on a memory. For him to have a memory so malicious, without showing even a hint of remorse, shows that he is not to be trusted.”

“Then wha’ are we supposes to do then ma’am?” It was Applejack who spoke this time as the rest had begun to turn and leave the throne room. Most likely to distraught to fully handle everything that they had been told but with Applejack being the bearer of Honesty, she also had to know everything for the conversation. A true testament to her stout nature.

“Nothing.” I spoke in a soft voice, feeling once more to where location of Cronus was. “Cronus has passed the borders of Equestria and entered the land of the Griffons. If either I or Luna tried to enter without permission, then it could cause to much of a commotion and allow him to escape. So for now, there is nothing we can do. As for you and the rest of your friends, you are not bound by such restraint. You can go in our stead and capture him yourselves before he does any damage.”Applejack simply nodded before trotting off to reach her friends. When the Elements finally left, I stood from my seat.

Seeing me do so, Luna quickly followed after, curious as to where I was going. After walking through the main the majority of the castle, I stopped before a large tapestry depicting myself and my sister within our respective celestial bodies while circling around a small circle, covered in green and blue. Without warning, I ripped it from its hangers to reveal door, chained and padlocked with no keyhole. Using the magic within my body, I seeped it into the inner workings of the hunk of metal to unlock it, causing the chains to fall from their place.

When the door opened, no longer chained closed, it revealed a simple room with a pentagram etched into the floor. Entering the pentagram, I saw my sister had become wary now. Seeing this, it reminded me of the time when both Luna and swam in the lakes of old with Natsu watching over us. Realizing where my thoughts were beginning to stray, I shook my head.

“Come along Luna, I have something to show you.” she came as I had asked but it was hesitant. Once fully inside, I ignited the lines with my magic, causing a walls of golden light to surround us. Within a few seconds, the walls receded to reveal that we were now in a new room. Awed at the sight, Luna began looking around. The room was easily larger than any room in the castle with much of the wall covered in weapons and trophies I had collected from times long past.

“Where are we, Celestia?” I did not answer, instead, I moved to a nearby door and opened it. Following after me, Luna exited the room and gasped at the sight she saw.

“The one place, where we can find the strength to defeat Cronus, should the Elements fail.” We both stood on a Terrace looking over a plain like floor covered in relatively small bumps. Those bumps, were the millions of displaced that had been encased in stone, all those years ago. Perfectly preserved, and ready for us to use their power. All we had to do was finish my original designs on how to see them.

Author's Note

Sorry this chapter is so short, I was having a little trouble with it and had to rewrite the later half of it to work better for the story and not become some cheesy "Displaced becomes king" story.

The King Fights, The Servant Arrives

Ch8

The walk back to the courtrooms, was in complete and utter silence. Feathers was too busy looking at all the different energy items and trying to figure out what they did, while I was trying to figure out how to stay alive. Without my bugvisor I wouldn’t be able to use much of my arsenal nor would I have any range option. My only choice was to somehow keep the Griffin I would be fighting grounded somehow. If I used a stretchy energy item before the fight started and gain some reach, I could possibly play it off as my natural ability but if the fight took over five minutes then I would be screwed or if I fight someone who’s good they could my stretched limbs against me.

That same bit of logic seemed to apply with almost every other item I had as well that could help me which meant I need to learn how to control one of my other natural abilities somehow. If the same logic of need still applied though, I could hopefully cause some harsh enough weather with my weather manipulation.

‘You know, I’ve never really understood that about Cronus. His ability is supposed to be based on the stage select but he doesn’t have the side holster for a gashat with the button on it. So is it really an ability of his or just some trick of the bugvisor?’

Shaking the unneeded thoughts away, I focused on my battle strategy. It’s obvious based on their abilities that they would either fight like cats and try to pin their prey and maul them or going for strafe like attacks to wear me down. Either way, they would have to get close enough to teach and all I would need to do is catch them at just the right moment.

Finally reaching the courtroom doors, I could see inside that it was a mess of paper flying everywhere and older looking Griffins trying to catch them. If I wasn’t slated for death row, it would be extremely comical to me. Asking one of the guards what happened, he explained that a couple of pegasi were in the group of dignitaries and one of them decided to fly out of the room as fast as the could when all the papers had been signed.

That was all I would be able to ask though as a slight cough came from behind. Both I and Feathers turned to see who had done so and became surprised to see a brown earth pony with a slick backed mane.

“Hello Court Order.” The venom in Feathers’ voice was as clear as I was green but the pony didn’t seem to care as instead he kept his face blank and his voice even.

“Good afternoon to you as well Feathers Worth. I take it you are working for the defendant?”

“Yes, that would be correct.” The blank faced pony smiled at that.

“Try not to make it to easy then would you.” And with those as his parting words, the pony walked into the still chaotic mess of a courtroom before taking his seat by himself. Looking back to Feathers Worth, I could see him gritting his teeth in anger. Not one to butt in on something like that, I ignored it and followed after him when he began to make his way to our table. Once seated, Feathers Worth went through the process of unloading every document he had from his case then after organizing it he began returning most of the documents he had unloaded from it. With nothing else on the table, he started going over the papers, with me looking over his shoulders.

Each page seemed, for the most part, almost completely blank save for the sketch of either myself or my bugvisor here and there. Reading and re-reading each page along with him, I soon missed the settling of the courtroom and its occupants until the the sound of a gavel came banging from the front of the room, breaking my concentration.

“We will now begin the initial hearing of Cronus the Human. The accused is here under observation of climbing the kings mountain without a permit as well as baseless slandering political trade partners. How do you plead?” The Random griffin waited for my response but I was unable to stand and answer as Feathers had put his talons on my shoulder to keep me sitting while he stood himself.

“Innocent, within reason your honor.” At that, both I and apparently everyone in the room became confused creating a cacophony of hushed whispers. The whispers were silenced by a loud bang from the judge’s gavel, letting the the same griffin speak.

“Please explain Feathers Worth.”

“Gladly your honor. Your charges, as you stated, are the climbing of the king’s mountain without a permit and the slandering of political trade partners. Both of which are acts that my client committed by the combined testimony of over 30 guards and assorted civilians. But, what this court is seeming to forget, is that all who come here are innocent until proven guilty. This can not be done so as the ponies in question are not here to refute or concur with said slander. Because of this I wish to move with a mistrial.”

“Objection your honor,” It was the pony spoke. “While the defendant is correct, we must not also forget that the king is not here either. The griffin in question who has sentenced Cronus here in the first place. We can not just take away royalty from their positions for every single crime they punish as it would cause unrest among the populace and chaos among the nobility.”

The Judge said nothing as he seemed to be contemplating our both Feathers’ and the pony’s words. While he did so, I whispered to Feathers.

“Way to go, I just might not have to go to prison after all.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. This is just to give me a little more time to convince you not to take the duel.” I rolled my eyes under my mask.

“I keep telling you, I’m going to take a duel and not spend my life in jail.” that was the last I got to say as the judge looked ready to speak.

“Taking into consideration of both arguments, I cannot help but side with the defendant. However, as it stands, we currently have six dignitaries, here by the order of the princesses themselves, residing in a home for us to call upon. As for the king, we simply need one of his advisors to take his steed in this matter. Until both parties can be assembled, we will take a short recess.” The gavel clacked as it hit the wooden podium and the judge left (most likely to collect the needed people). When everyone began to move around and talk, I noticed that the pony had gotten to his hooves and was now making his way over.

“I thought I asked you not to make this to easy. We both know you’re just doing this to stall for time.”

Feathers said nothing, noticing the lack of a reaction, Court Order gave a small huff before walking away. Seeing this, I quickly got to my feet.

“Hey Court Order!” The Pony turned. “How about you back off. If you haven’t noticed, my life happens to be on the line here, so you could at least give a little respect to the guy who is actually trying to save someone’s life.” The pony didn’t look perturbed.

“Oh please, I’m not going to work that hard. In fact, I might help you more than he does.” the pony left this time without looking back while all the while not losing his strange blank look.

“You didn’t have to do that Cronus.”

“Yeah I didn’t but I still did. Besides, that guy really needs to get a life if this is all he seems to find fun.”

“You think he finds this fun?” Feathers’ voice indicated that he was bewildered.

“Of course I do, the strange blank face and then getting all happy when the court is about to start is classic trope of him just loving his job. A little to much if I might add.”

That was the last thing I said as the judge had made it back onto the podium and banged his gavel.

“With the the placeholders for the required royalty now gathered, I may now present Captain Aires acting in our beloved king's steed, and for the place holders of the princesses will be held by the bearers of the elements of Magic and Honesty, Twilight Sparkle and Applejack.” The doors to the courtroom banged open to show the three different individuals I was familiar with. With them seeing, they had a variety of reactions. Aires was completely stoic and uncaring, Twilight was surprised to see me, and Applejack looked torn between glad and worried. None of them said anything as the all took seats next to Court Order on his side of the room. With all of us now gathered, the same griffin from earlier who had read my charges stood from his seat.

“With the initial hearing now over we may now move on to the next section of the trial.” the griffin turned to face me. “Do you, Cronus, wish to continue with this trial by jury, or do you wish to have a trial by duel?” Before Feathers could react, I was at my feet.

“Trail by Duel.” The entire room became filled with noise as griffins began moving in their seat. The judge made no move to silence them though and instead motioned for the nearby guards to move forward and take me by the arms. Not being able to control where I went for now. The guards, and audience, began to file out of the courtroom and deeper into parthenon until we reached a large arena like structure on a raised platform that was over ten feet in the air (Not enough to kill but definitely enough to hurt if I wasn’t careful) with no form of net or ropes to stop the fighters from falling off. With one short lift, I was soon standing by myself in the ring (for a lack of a better name) with Aires on the other side begining to remove parts of his armor and only stopping when he only had a breastplate and helmet.

“I take it you know what this duel entails?”

“Basics yes, details no.”

“Very well then. Before we begin, I shall tell you the most needed details. Both combatants will fight each other until either one is knocked out of the arena or unable to fight. As well as this, both combatants must fight on even footing. This means that I will not fight you in the air since you are unable to fly and you may not use the magic items in your pocket.”

“Magic items? But I don’t- wait do you mean the energy items? They’re not magic though.”

“You may think you can fool me but your trick will not work. I have honed my senses to notice when magic is being used and the items in your pocket are leaking enough to deaden me from everything else. How else do you think I found you so fast on the side of the mountain.” Seeing that he was not going to give up on this, I unwillingly parted with my energy items by throwing them down to Feathers worth below, who was standing right next to Twilight and Applejack.

“The magic items are still deadening my sense even at this distance but at least I know you no longer have them.” With that said, he took what looked to be a boxing stance on his hind legs. Surprised by how serious he was about it being a somewhat fair fight, I put up my fists as well in what could only be called a brawler stance (something you would only get after fighting on the street for a while). In no time, Aires was on the attack as he rushed forward at a decent pace but I was able to dodge pretty well thanks to my enhanced reflexes and natural ability of being born to stand on two legs.

As he kept attacking with his jabs, I had to fall back to stay out of his reach. Thanks to the large arena that was no problem as it was at least double the size of a regular boxing one. Continuing to dodge, I accidently miss timed a jab letting Aires nail me across the helmet with a straight. Backing up once more but much more quickly due to the sudden hit, I failed to notice that my body had been working its way to the edge. Turning back, I closed the distance and began throwing my own punches into the mix while also trying to dodge. It was an intense back in forth with me dodging anything I could but still getting hit time and again while on the other hand, I could only seem to land glancing blows on Aires. With no end in sight, I quickly backpedaled to gain some breathing room and saw that Aires was breathing hard.

‘He must not be used to fighting like this for long periods of time? If that’s the case then that means I can wear him down and finish him off with a roundhouse finisher. No what, the guy said no magic and my finishers are made of the same energy as the energy items. He might call foul on me and I have no idea what’ll happen then.’

With no other choice, I stepped back into the fray but instead of going for the head, I focused on the body. It seemed to be working but I was taking more hits for it, hits that were landing squarely on my face which was beginning to give me a bad headache. Back and forth it went, I would get a hit on his armor and seemingly dent it each time, while Aires kept the one-two combos coming. Eventually the headache got to bad to continue and I tried to back up once again but Aires just followed after. Not expecting this, I was unprepared for his foot to somehow get behind me causing me to lose balance. Scared, I threw my hands up in desperation and instinct to catching anything and stop my fall but nothing came. Nothing except some very familiar weapons.

Gashacon Sword

Gashacon Sparrow

Having landed on the ground now, both I and Aires were shocked but his was much more noticeable even with his helmet.

“You would dare cheat in a trial by duel?”

I quickly dropped the weapons but it was too late and the guards had already pounced on me putting me under a dog pile of at least ten griffins and leaving only my head out to see. Coming around to the side where I could see hi, Aires now had a sword in hand.

“I should kill you where you stand for breaking such honored traditions that were made for beings like you , to give you a sense of fairness when it seemed like there was none. But instead of respecting it, you show nothing but weapons and dishonor. I should kill you where you lay but your executioner will deal with that.” That was the last thing I saw and heard as Aire slammed the pommel of his sword into my facemask and finally knocked me out.

(Applejack POV)

“What’s happenin’ up there Twi, I can’t see a darn thing with all these guards floating around.”

“I don’t know Aj and I can’t hear anything either. We’re just going to have to wait until the commotion is over. Until then, we need to get the others so I can send a letter to Celestia that we’ve found Cronus.”

“Sure, anything to get out of this mess.” We both quickly made our way out of the crowd, with me leading to push any lingering griffins out of the way. Once out, we quickly ran as fast as we could back to the hotel room the griffins gave us.

(3rd POV)

While Cronus was being carried away by heavily armed guards, and Twilight and Applejack made their way back to their friends. A train in the outer village of Griffinstone slowly stopped before allowing those on board to disembark. Among the many myriad of creatures, there was one that stood among them on two legs and covered in a long red coat with a caduceus staff on its back. As well as this, the unknown individual wore two white gloves with one on both hand. When the station finally cleared the red wearing individual had not moved from his spot.

Now alone, he removed his to let his braided blonde hair go behind his back and his golden eyes to be seen. As well as seeing his face, a collar could be seen as well but it was mostly hidden by his black clothing which he adjusted to make sure the collar was fully hidden. When satisfied, he let out a small huff.

“Man am I glad that’s over, I was worried I was gonna puke before I got here. Why do these people even still use trains like these? Don’t they have better ones by now? Geez it’s hot, maybe I shouldn’t have worn my coat.” The blonde boy continued to talk, uncaring of who looked at him, as he started to make his way through the village and to the path needed to reach his target.

Author's Note

Like the chapter, Like the fight?

leave me a comment about what you hated and what you liked.

challenge: In the past seven chapters, how many times did I use the word griffon ( a type of dog) and not griffin ( the magical beast). leave a comment and I'll tell you if you're right or not.

The King Relaxes, The Servant Searches

Ch 19

“...us!”

“...onus!”

“Cronus!”

My body jolted awake, eyes roving around spastically in fear of attack. Only seeing Twilight though, my body calmed and my breathing relaxed. Twilight had a look of worry on her face as she carefully helped me to sit upwards. Looking around, I found myself to be in Twilight’s home, laying on her couch. I made my way to stand up but Twilight’s hoof stopped me from doing so.

“What do you think your doing?” Twilight sounded like a mother who was about to scold her child.

“Getting up?” Her face told me that my answer was not the right choice to say. She quickly added more force, making me lay back.

“When we woke up, you were passed out and surrounded by rubble. We had to carry your body through the forest. I may not know what have happened after I lost consciousness but I do know that you did something dangerous. So until I say so, you are staying there to rest and relax.” Twilight continued to sound like a scolding only it was even more intense now at the mention of danger. I could only nod my head which earned a relieved smile and a relaxed Twilight.

Not having to worry about me now, Twilight walked away for a moment and headed to some unseen corner of her library home. Leaving me to simply question how it had been able to grow back so soon. When we had gotten back to Equestria, I had questioned it but not even Twilight knew how to answer. Her only possible explanation was that after holding onto Elements of Harmony in its shelves, the tree had absorbed some magic which allowed it to grow back to its original state. When Twilight came back, she had a glass of water held with her magic before she handed it to me.

“Drink this.” I complied with the command. Deactivating my transformation, all the fighting from seemed to catch up causing my body to be extremely sore. Ignoring it though, I slowly drank the cold refreshing water before handing the glass. Back. Taking it with her magic, she made the glass float away while she sat next to me. She said nothing as she simply stared and it began to make me uncomfortable.

“So… what now?”

“Now? Now we wait till tomorrow. After everything that happened, we are staying here until i’m sure everything is better.”
“Heh, you sound like Celestia.” Twilight gave me a confused look which made me realize that she had been unconscious and unable to hear my conversation with Nightmare Moon. “Sorry, I forgot you weren’t awake to hear it. While you and the rest had been captured and knocked unconscious, I met someone who kept talking about Celestia and how she keeps trying to make everything perfect.” There’s no need to say it was Nightmare, after what I had heard from the rest about her, there was no need to make them even more worried, or rather make Twilight more worried. Speaking of the others.

“So what happened to the rest of you guys, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and the family.” Twilight perked up at that.

“They’re fine. Tired but fine. The family was really tired so we had to carry them back but otherwise we were fine.” That was good, it meant nothing bad happened after I had fallen unconscious. Feeling somewhat better now, I started to relax letting my sore muscles loosen on the couch.

(Ed POV)

The train slowed to a stop, giving the telltale sounds of clunking of metal and hisses of steam. Getting up from my seat, I exited my train car and made my way to the closest exit. Celestia had said that I needed to catch up with Twilight and her friends but I had no idea where they lived. If I even wanted to find them, I would either have to search randomly around broken town I had seen when I passed by or do the simpler option and ask the local townsfolk. Hopefully one of them wasn’t too busy to give directions.

Exiting the train, I swiped my hand to clear away some of the still lingering steam. When my vision was no longer obscured, I quickly left the station, hoping to find Twilight before train left. Knowing my luck though, it was more likely that I would have to wait for the next one later in the evening.

As I had expected, the ponies of Ponyville were still working but they seemed to be making good time on their reconstruction but it was a little chaotic as everyone seemed focused on their own buildings and not working all together. Sure more work was getting done but it wasn’t as effective as putting more ponies to one job instead of spreading out. Clearing my thoughts away from construction, I looked around to see if any pony was walking towards the station. None moved away from their work though. Sighing, I put my hands in my pockets and started walking around looking for somepony who didn’t look like they were to busy. The search was hard though as everyone seemed to be doing something. My patience paid off though as I found a group of kids pulling buckets from the well to fill cans of different shapes and sizes.

“Hey kids.” They immediately stopped what they were doing to look at who had called to them, gaining wide eyes as they saw me. “Do any of you know where I can Find a pony named Twilight Sparkle?” None of them answered and I was tempted to ask again. I was stopped though when a familiar looking orange pony came up from behind.

“I know where you can find her, but the question is; Why do you want to know.” her accent was very southern, almost like that of the cowboys in movies.

“I was told by a friend that I need to find her. She might have something they want.” The orange southern pony narrowed her eyes.

“Hard as it might be to believe, Twilight doesn’t have that many friends outside of Ponyville. So how about you explain it better but this time be a little more specific.”

‘I don’t think Celestia would appreciate me saying its her that want Twilight. Maybe I can dance around it?’

“Well considering how many friends she has, who do you think?” Her stare never left.

“You’re another one of them displaced aren’t ya?”

“Yes siree. Now about Twilight?”

“Fine but answer me this. Do you plan on doing anything bad to her?”

“Nope.” The orange pony sighed, whether it was in relief or defeat, I couldn’t tell.

“Fine then, follow me and i’ll take you to her.” Doing as she told, A large tree with windows and a door could be seen in the distance and we seemed to be heading straight towards it.

Announcement of Continuation

Hey everyone, it's me Fanficlover. Sorry about suddenly dropping off the face of the earth with this story like I did, and I really do mean that, but I wasn't able to write what I wanted properly at the time when I left off. I'm happy to say though that I'm getting back into the grove with this story. If you wanna know why, like how come I'm just suddenly coming back into it out of nowhere, you can thank all the people who wrote their comments and the honestly amazing rating review that's held strong even to this day; because of you all I never truly lost interest as I have with any of my other stories.

So with this in mind, I just wanted to give a place holder announcement for all the people still interested to see where this story takes them, and let them know I will be attempting to continue this story. So expect a new chapter 3 days while I get the prep work done to fix up the mess I was creating so long ago.

So with all that in mind, see you all then.