Chapter 2: Three out of Seven

“So, let me get this straight.” Cadance started as they were on the other side of the cell that Bandit was in. Bandit was levitating rocks in front of himself and rotating them. “-A griffon that was able to use magic like a pony attacked you too along with a changeling with cybernetic limbs-”

“There was two.” Bandit said.

“Two changelings with cybernetic limbs, nearly destroyed the castle, he saves both of you and you lock him in a cell?” Cadance asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Bet you anything he tries to justify it by bringing up the canterlot fiasco.” Bandit said.

“Quiet you!” Shining Armor told Bandit.

“My name is Bandit.”

“We don’t know a thing about that Changeling.”

“Like I said, my name is Bandit.”

“He could be here to grab the element of Courage for all we know.” Shining Armor said.

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Bandit said.

“See!” Shining Armor pointed out.

“You know, you could just ask me why I’m here to grab the element of Courage right? We’re on the same side after all.” Bandit said.

“Like you’d tell the truth.” Shining Armor dismisses.

“I think we should hear what he has to say.” Twilight said.

“Thank you your majesty.” Bandit said with a bow.

“Did you forget what happened in Canterlot?” Shining Armor asked.

“Called it.” Bandit said.

“I remember vividly, in case you forgot, I almost didn’t get to go when I found out that Cadance was replaced by Queen Chrysalis because you still thought it was her.” Twilight pointed out.

“Dumbass.” Bandit said with coughs to cover it up. The other three looked at him. “So sorry, got a bit of a scratchy throat.”

“How do we know that he won’t cause another invasion? He could’ve called those other two changelings for all we know.” Shining Armor said.

Hoofsteps were heard by Bandit, but not the other three.

“We should at least hear what he has to say.” Cadance said. “Yes, he’s a changeling, and they don’t necessarily have a good reputation with ponykind.”

“Or any kind in my experience.”

“But he saved our lives, and the castle. We owe him for that.” Cadance said. Shining Armor looked at the ground and then back at the cage.

“Okay, fine. What is it that you have to say?” Shining Armor asked.

“Well first off, Hello Celestia.” Bandit said with a bow.

“Hello Bandit.” Celestia was heard saying from behind them. The three turned around and saw Celestia standing there and went wide eyed.

“Celestia, you know this changeling?” Shining Armor asked.

“Know him? I raised him.” Celestia said. Twilight’s jaw dropped upon hearing this.

“You…… raised him?” Cadance asked. The three look at Bandit, who looks back and waves.

“Everypony, meet my adopted son, Bandit.” Celestia said.

Big Macintosh was still looking at the blue gem. He walked around the crater to get better angles of the gem.

“Big Mac? Is everything okay?” Apple Bloom asked. Big Macintosh turned to look at her.

“Apple Bloom, I told you to stay inside.” Big Macintosh said.

“Sorry, but, I got scared something happened to ya. What happened here?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Some kind of gem crashed through the barn. Left a pretty big hole for a tiny object.”

“Really?”

“Eeyup.”

“Want me to call Applejack?”

“Call somepony else, who knows about science. Astronomy, Cosmology or maybe even Geology more specifically.” Big Macintosh said.

“Uhhhh…….”

“Oh, right. Um, call Bill Neigh. He might know what this is about.” Big Macintosh said. Apple Bloom walked over to the house. “His number’s on the fridge.”

“Okay.” Apple Bloom said as she walked inside and picked up the phone.

Big Macintosh watched his sister walked in the house before looking back at the gem. The gem floated upwards and then planted itself onto the front of his yoke. Big Macintosh watched with widened eyes and fear as his yoke was turned golden with engraved carved lines in it.

“Okay, Thank you Mr. Neigh.” Apple Bloom said. The second she hung up, she heard her older brother scream.

“Okay, allow me to re-explain what I just heard. Just so I know that I heard this right.” Shining Armor said. He started to pace back and forth.

“Do recap faster please, I don’t like sitting in a cell.” Bandit said. He makes a portal on the floor and a steaming mug was thrown up to him. He caught it, started drinking, finishes, tosses it back through and closed the portal.

“Bandit, is you’re adopted son that you found floating in a river around 18 years ago, he has been living with you in secret until he was 13 and then he moved in with Octavia with his little brother. He’s been studying three of the most powerful types of magic since the age of 5 and mastered two of them. On top of that, he knows about the Element of Courage.” Shining Armor said. “Did I get everything?”

“You missed a few small details, but yes.” Celestia said.

“When were you gonna tell us this?” Twilight asked.

“I was gonna tell you at Cadance and Shining Armor’s wedding, but….. Well you know what happened.” Celestia said.

“Still something you shouldn’t have held from us for so long. You didn’t think to tell us at the Crystalling?” Shining Armor asked.

“The news of a natural born Alicorn and the destruction of the crystal heart with nearly wiped out the entire kingdom happened on that day and you thought that telling you about me was gonna happen?” Bandit asked.

“Is he always like this?” Shining Armor asked.

“Only when he’s wrongly locked up.” Bandit said.

“Which happens a lot more often than you think.” Celestia said. “You’ll be letting him out now I’m sure, right Shining?”

“Yes of course.” Shining Armor said as he walked over to the cell.

“No need to, I’ll see myself out.” Bandit said. His horn lit up and a portal was made in the bars and Bandit walked through. He was on the other side.

“You could do that this whole time?” Twilight asked astonished.

“Yep. I got sick being thrown in a cell by guards with memory as bad as a rhino’s sight, so this is my counter.” Bandit said.

“Must’ve been annoying.” Twilight said.

“It was. Now, Where’s that Hexahedron?” Bandit asked.

“The what?” Shining Armor asked.

“The element of courage, where is it?” Bandit asked.

“Why do you want to know?” Shining Armor asked.

“Maybe because I’m trying to get it in safe hooves.” Bandit said.

“In safe hooves? I doubt you can place it in safe hooves.” Shining Armor said.

“I know about the Element of Courage as well as the other six Elements that make up the representations of Unity.” Bandit said.

“Wait, there are seven of these Elements?”

“Can we please talk somewhere that isn’t a dungeon please?” Bandit asked.

Fancy Pants was in his home, which was a mansion to the northwest of the Canterlot. He was in a robotics lab with a blowtorch and a welding helmet.

He stops using the blowtorch and put it down. He takes the helmet off of his head and then grabbed a bottle of Merlot and started drinking it.

Once he finished, he went back to work, but his horn started ringing.

“Argh.” Fancy Pants answers. “Hello?”

“Fancy Pants, is that you?” A female voice asked.

“No, this is Mare do Well, who is this, why are you calling, and why should I care?” Fancy Pants asked.

“I’m Spitfire, Captain of the Wonderbolts, I am calling because I’ve gotten word that you’ve been working on some experiments that have nearly interfered with our training exercises from time to time.” Spitfire said. She was on the phone.

“I can neither confirm nor deny any knowledge of the experiments you speak of.” Fancy Pants said as he started drinking his Merlot, using his hoof this time.

“Well, that’s funny, because a couple of the reports that came to me have mentioned something about witnessing the tests of Nanotechnology, A.I Technology and a bunch more technologies I haven’t had the slightest clue even existed.” Spitfire said.

“Your point is?” Fancy Pants asked.

“Be honest with me, what exactly are you testing?”

“Just testing out advanced robotics technology. Nothing you should be too concerned about.” Fancy Pants said. He places a hoof on the counter where he was working. Metal wrapped around his front leg with a glowing circle at the end where his hoof was.

At that moment, an elevator ding was heard and Fancy Pants turned around.

Spitfire was on the other side of said elevator, and alongside her was Soarin, who was holding a file with his wing.

Fancy Pants groaned and turned off his horn.

“Have you never heard of knocking?” Fancy Pants said as the metal hoof deactivated. “And how did you get in my house?”

“Soarin guessed the password to bypass the front door security. Real nice place you’ve got here.” Spitfire said. She looked to her left and saw a trash can filled with empty alcohol bottles.

“Aside from the empty bottles everywhere.” Soarin said.

“Why are you here?” Fancy Pants asked. Spitfire looked at Soarin and nodded.

Soarin walked over and placed the file onto the table. Fancy Pants picked it up and looked inside.

“Your little experiments have peeked our interests, and we have a proposition for you.” Spitfire said.

Back at the Crystal Castle, Celestia, Twilight, Cadance, and Shining Armor were in the castle library watching Bandit look over the books. Shining Armor had a look of impatience on his face.

“Can you hurry up?” Shining Armor asked.

“Have some patience will you?” Bandit said.

“What’s taking so long? If you know so about the Elements of Unity, why don’t you just tell us without the book?”

“Because the book is the evidence about the Elements of Unity. You’ve already doubted me twice, so having the evidence before the explanation will be less of a headache.” Bandit said.

“Well, what’s taking so long?”

“The book isn’t gonna look fancy, okay? It’s made to look like a normal book, making it very hard to-” Bandit pulled out another book, This looked like a normal book, but had a Yin-Yang symbol on the front. “Oh, nevermind, found it.”

Bandit placed it on the table and opened it. All the pages were blank. Shining Armor was about to comment, but Cadance beat him to it.

“All of these pages are blank.” Cadance said. Bandit lit up his horn and the book illuminated and seven gems popped up in holographic form.

The Red Hexahedron was the first one they saw. The others were a blue rhombus gem, an orange sphere, a yellow tetrahedron, a grey ellipsoid, a purple torus, and a black Octahedron.

“Whoa.” Twilight said.

“Mares and…… Gentlestallion, these are the Elements of Unity.” Bandit said. He lights up the holograms as he listed the Elements.

“Humility (Blue). Determination (Orange). Optimism (Yellow). Allegiance (Grey). Wisdom (Purple). Alchemy (Black). And finally, Courage (Red).” Bandit said.

“Long ago, these Elements were created and used to defeat a tyrant named Ligero. This was before I was even born.” Celestia said.

“Ligero?” Cadance asked.

“A manifestation of Light. Not as kind and friendly as that title suggests.” Celestia said.

“Keeping a long story short, these Elements of Unity defeat Ligero, but sure enough, 15,000 years later, he’s reborn and wants revenge, with these Elements.” Bandit said.

“Well how do we find them?” Shining Armor asked.

“That’s the hard part. When they were created, they can only be held by those who embody the elements in order to pick them up, let alone find them.” Bandit said.

“So, we need Ponies-”

“Creatures.” Bandit interrupted.

“Right, we need creatures that embody the Elements of Unity in order to find them. Now how are we gonna do that?” Shining Armor asked.

“For certain elements, they’ll come to you, but for others,” Courage, Alchemy and Determination floated towards everyone. “You’ve gotta make an attempt to pick them up.”

Shining Armor tapped his chin.

Bill Neigh was making an analytical graph from a laptop that was hooked up to the gemstone, that was on the yoke, that Big Macintosh had taken off.

Big Macintosh stood next to him observing the graphs. He had the stunned look on his face as he observed the work.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. This is a gem that sends of a strong current of magic through your yoke.” Bill Neigh said.

“Strong current? Like an electric current?” Big Macintosh said.

“Precisely.”

“Which means it’ll be moving throughout my yoke until it can pass through to another source, right?”

“Again, correct. But I’m afraid that the science behind this is out of my knowledge. I may have a theory as to where this came from, but other than that, I’m completely lost.”

Big Macintosh let out a sigh as he looked at the now golden harness.

“Thanks for the help.” Big Macintosh said. Bill Neigh nodded and disconnected his tech.

“Find a pony who knows a lot about magic, they might be a better help than me.” Bill Neigh said. Big Macintosh takes a seat with a sigh as Bill walked away.

“Maybe I can ask Twilight whenever she gets back.” Big Macintosh said to himself.

“Maybe you don’t have to wait.” A voice came from behind him. Big Macintosh turned around and saw Starlight Glimmer walking to him.

In an underground city, located within the depths of equestria, fires were spread throughout the cities and screams were being heard.

In the middle of the city was a castle that was destroyed from the inside. The guards were all dead, except for one.

This guard was a vampire pony, wearing Lieutenants armor, and she was trying to crawl towards a weapon.

“For years, you kind has remained isolated from the rest of the creatures of Equestria. Feeling as though this would protect you from the clutches of fate.” A male voice said.

Approaching the lieutenant guard was a large unicorn stallion, looking similar to King Sombra.

Despite the similarities, he had three major differences. One: He was much taller and bigger. Two: He was a pegasus rather than a unicorn, and three: He didn’t have front hooves, instead, he had talons similar to that of a griffon.

“A hard lesson you have yet to learn, what’s done in darkness will soon come to the light.” The stallion said.

The vampire pony grabs the weapon, but a magic blast from in front of her. She looks up to see a griffon with a purple cape with aura around his talons. The stallion grabs her by the hand and forced her to look up.

“Where is the Element of Allegiance?” The stallion asked. The mare remained silent. The stallion spawns a sword and aims it at her neck.

“You’ll, never find that Element.” She said as she spat out blood.

“I won’t ask you again.” The stallion said. In one of the doors, a light red vampire mare was peeking through a crack in the door.

“You live pretending to be a god, but you’ll die as a fool Ligero.” She said.

The Vampire Pony in the door watches as the Lieutenant was beheaded. She covers her mouth to prevent making any noise.

“Silver Flare. Find the Element of Allegiance, kill who you have to.” Ligero said.

“Right away.” Silver Flare said. The vampire pony grabbed a box, put on a cloak and flew out of a window.

She flies through a hole in the underground and ended up outside. The cloak she was wearing protected her from the sun. She places the box on the ground and opened the box.

The grey Ellipsoid, AKA the Element of Allegiance, was in the box. She closes the box and looked at her home.

“I will avenge my home.” She said as she flew off.

Author's Note

Chapter 2 done. Longer chapters will be around the corner soon.

Think you can find all the references? List them in the comments.

Voices of OCs

Ligero- Hugo Weaving

Silver Flare- Alec Baldwin

Red Huntress (Vampire Mare with the Element of Allegiance)- Zoe Saldana

Lieutenant Vampire Mare- Scarlett Johansson