“So you were an artist on earth?”

“Yep! Was pretty decent if I do say so myself!” Ivy beamed, ducking under a branch as they walked further away from the Tree of Harmony. With everything they heard and saw regarding their gems, she was in a rather pleasant mood. “Imagine my surprise when I met someone like Princess Celestia while I was painting in the park. I actually asked if I could paint her portrait!” she giggled.

“So how did you learn to fight given your lack of… aggression?” Rainbow Dash asked, eyeing the recurve bow on her back. It was intricately designed but simple, uncolored pine with a snake winding its way around the curve of it, fine horse hair making up the drawstring. If she was being honest it looked just as awesome as she assumed it was deadly.

“I suppose just like Nick did! Although learning how to use magic sounds a lot tougher than a bow. Maybe that’s why he was able to be so successful!” she continued on, quickly drawing it off her back and nocking an arrow. “Hey Twilight, mind tossing one of my targets on my bag?”

Seeing as it wouldn’t hurt to see the skills the woman had, the alicorn complied, levitating the circular disk in her magic and flinging it in front of Ivy. In seconds, they watched her release her arrow and it landed directly in the center with a deadly sounding thwack, before the arrow continued to sail, impaling it on a nearby branch. Rainbow rushed over to it and her jaw dropped.

“A perfect bullseye!” she took it off the branch, showing her friends. They all looked at it in awe and a bit of intimidation, glad she was on their side.

“Show off,” Matt grumbled, walking alongside Starlight and Rarity.

“And what about you then, Matt?” Starlight overheard him. “What was your past life like?”

“I’ve already told you all, I’m not going to go into my past,” he crossed his arms defensively.

“Oh come on darling,” Rarity teased him. “Surely a rugged… man… like yourself wouldn’t mind quenching a mare’s curiosity.”

“Oh there’d be something I’d like to quench alright,” he snickered before a smack sounded out from Rarity’s hoof meeting his face.

“Had that coming,” he laughed it off. “As for combat stuff, well, I’ll give you this. I specialized in stealth and traps. I’d hit them before they even realized what happened.”

Tempest smiled a bit at the thought, knowing how effective such strategies could be. “From the way you talk, I’d confidently guess you were part of some military,” she added to the discussion, feeling a bit more at ease in the current situation.

His response to her claim was all she needed to know, and she smiled smugly to herself, glad she was still sharp on her observational skills.

“I’d say you both are a welcome addition to Equestria in any case,” Twilight smiled to them both. “And that you’ll be welcome to stay in the castle after all of this is done should you choose.”

“Thank you Twilight!” Ivy smiled back at her, picking her up and hugging her tightly. In some sense, she wasn’t too far off from Pinkie Pie. Seeing the look Tempest was giving her though, she gently placed the frazzled alicorn down. “As Matt likes to say though, let’s just get things taken care of one at a time. And first we need to bring your boyfriend back!”

Twilight nodded, a bit more somber at the mention of Nick. When they did bring him back, would he remember her? If he was in Limbo for so long, would he have seen how much she changed? Would it scare him away? Would he blame her for what happened with Luna?

“It’ll be alright Twilight,” Starlight placed a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m sure Nick will be just the same wolf you knew. If not, you have us to jog his memory,” she pointed to her friends who all laughed at the thought of putting the wolf through the wringer after what he did to her.

She smiled at them, so happy she had their support. “So I suppose after we get the artifact from Thorax, we can go north to the Crystal Empire,” she looked at the map they had brought along.

“Yeah, although how come we didn’t go to Tartarus first?” Applejack tilted her head. “It was closer to Ponyville than these other two are.”

“That’s exactly the point Applejack. Once we get the last artifact, that being Tirek's, we can go directly to the Tree of Harmony and bring Nick back. Also it’ll give us some more time to prepare to fight off any villains that come back with him.”

That fact hung heavily on them all. They knew that it would happen, but how much harder would it be to fight them? They had accomplished it before when Nick was corrupted by them, but would they have grown stronger? What state would Nick be in once he came back? They could only speculate what the answers would be, and prepare for the worst.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow reformed them just like you’ve done with Starlight and Tempest here,” Matt spoke to her bluntly, looking at the two “ex” villains. They both glared at him but he simply shrugged. “The baddies always get the good stuff too. I mean Star here got hold of essentially an infinity loop spell while Shade had those fucking magic cancelling grenades and shit. Why aren’t we bringing those with us???”

“And bring more attention to this than we need to?” Tempest shocked him with a slight spark for the nickname he used. “I thought you were one for stealth, Matt.”

Rubbing his back from where she hit, he flipped her off. “Well still, better tools would never hurt. We could have at least asked those pirates to use their airship. No one had to know our intentions, and you coulda smuggled Ivy and me somehow.”

“We’re already on our way,” Ivy decided to stop the squabble, grabbing Matt and bringing him away from the mares he was offending. “Let’s just get this done and we’ll handle the next step whenever it happens.”

The group continued to talk plans, ideas and just about each other in more detail as they ventured on. In the chance that Celestia or Luna decided to check up on them, Twilight had a spell placed on the castle to let them know what transpired. She reasoned since the Tree did not wait for either princess, they weren’t needed for this mission, and with two new human allies, they’d be prepared for what would happen. What they all weren’t aware of was that a certain spirit of chaos was following closely behind, feeling something was odd with the thing that had opposed his chaos.

The Tree of Harmony sending them on another quest? To bring back Nick? I don’t ever remember agreeing on that. Something stinks, and it’s not all this mushy talk.

Author's Note

Hiya dear reader.

Sorry for the delay in this chapter. Took a bit longer to work on, just the flow along with life stuff happening.

Hope you enjoy as we're now getting into the "meat" of the story. All of your support is appreciated and I hope to continue to impress.