"So, she's scared of the gun, then? Maybe we can hold her off with it?" Celestia said. "Well, looks like it" Silver said, shrugging a little. Cadence had left, so the call was now just him, Fluttershy of course, and the sisters. The mare who had woken up the pony in the city had woken up during Polaris' fight with Shadow, and she had told Celestia about what happened. "Do you think she turned all the ponies of the empire into those statues? She mentioned a batpony, did someone get lost and stumble into her...? Or did waking up the one pony wake them all up?" Luna asked, worry written across her face. She was in her office now, as was Celestia.

"I think she must have been woken up seperately, else she would've shown up during the fight with all the transformed ones" Celestia pointed out. Luna nodded a little, saying, "I guess somepony else... oh dear..." Fluttershy sighed quietly, saying, "Sombra also had the power of an enslaved empire at his hooves, and it took the elements to stop him both times". Celestia nodded slowly, a frown on her own face. For now, Polaris was laying in Pearl's lap, eyes closed, trying to relax as she sang a lullaby to him. He wasn't really even shellshocked by the fight itself. He was more terrified at the idea that he and his father were the best dark magic users in Equestria, and yet... he was nothing against the power of that beast. Northern had gotten up, and he walked over to where Silver and Fluttershy were. "I feel like I should be the one who tries to deal with this mare, really" he said softly, looking at the camera. "I've learned a lot from the ponies in DarkRock, and... and while I know Polaris is skilled with using this stuff to fight, I don't think he's going to be able to handle another one".

Celestia nodded, and she said "I want to agree... I'm worried that if this mare has an empire's worth of ponies, she's gong to use them as cannon fodder". Luna's face flashed with anger for a moment, "She had better not, I'll... I'll..." She said, her expression falling as she remember she didn't know what she would do. "What about taking off?" Celestia asked, though she could guess at the answer. Fluttershy shook her head, saying, "We haven't checked any of the ships for takeoff, and that takes time..."

Northern took a deep breath, then he said, "I want to say that our best option is that somepony tries to siphon her magic away, like we did for those cursed ponies. Most likely me, so I would transfer all of that magic into every vessel that we have, and perhaps I could burn off a lot of it doing something excessive like tearing a chunk of the earth away and holding it in the air" he said, waving a hoof. "Is it at all possible for you to simply steal her magic yourself, then once the threat is gone, dispose of it?" Luna asked. Northern shrugged a little, saying, "I... maybe, but it would be like trying to steer an ocean liner with a paddle, with large amounts of this stuff the only control you can assert is using it somehow". "What happens if you begin to steal her magic, then use it against her?" Celestia asked. He smiled a little, saying, "I wish it worked that way! Maybe we could..."

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Entirely unaware that a drone was watching from above, Shadow was prowling back and forth in front of the ponies she had enslaved, scanning the ponies to see how many there were. She was clearly angry, and between angry rantings, she would sometimes stop to punch down part of an old wall, or hurl a boulder into the Lunar City wall. Of course, her enslaved ponies didn't actually respond, her orders were for them to just stand there for her.

From the way she began to laugh, it seemed that Shadow had come up with a plan. She gathered all of her ponies into a large circle, then she slammed her hooves into the ground, sprouting jagged, tall crystals that jutted into the sky, boxing in the ponies. Once the walls were tall enough, she pressed her hooves to the structure, and magic stabbed out into the crowd of ponies. As the drone above watched, the black magic coating all of the batponies began to fade, and they collapsed to the ground as the magic left each one of them. Once Shadow had drawn the magic out of all of the ponies, she looked up, and crystals grew over the top of the structure, trapping the ponies inside. The ponies inside of the structure were effectively saved, since Shadow had drawn away all of their magic for herself.

But they were only saved if Shadow herself was stopped. She would have fun recapturing them all once she destroyed the ponies who were trying to invade HER home. Perhaps she would let them out and then have fun hunting them down one by one. Maybe she would transform one, and watch as he infected the rest! With all of the magic she had at her disposal, the mare was frighteningly large, and she barely fit in the streets as she began to walk back through the streets of the empire. Certainly, with this much power, that stupid weapon they had wouldn't work on her anymore, right? She had felt her magic struggle to stop its strange powers, so maybe if the magic was thick enough, it could stop them.

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When fluttershy disconnected from the drone and told it to come home, Celestia and Luna both blinked, snapping out of the fearful trance they had been in. "This mare's worse than Sombra" Celestia said, and Luna could only nod along with her. "That's a fearsome amount of magic" Northern quietly said.

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Back at the landing site, the ponies of DarkRock had gathered on the grass, halfway between the ships and the city. Every single magic storage crystal they had was laid on the grass, all drained of their power, power that was drained into healing a stallion who had at one point lost a leg. Regrowing limbs out of nothing took a massive amount of power, so it worked as a good method to drain themselves of magic while helping somepony out in the end.

Polaris and Northern were with them, in their darker forms. Polaris had demanded to be let out of the ship, and while they were worried for him, he was one stubborn pony. Instead of hugging him on the bridge, Pearl had taken to hugging Tinker instead, and the dragonpony wasn't going to complain. Of course, the dark magic users were the backup plan. The actual plan was a line of snipers set up on top of the Twilight, sporting every .50 rifle that the armorer could find.

Their hopes were that gunfire would weaken, or possibly even kill the evil mare, and then the dark magic users could take care of her. And it almost worked. As Shadow came around the corner of a building, she glared out of the main gate of the city, red eyes scanning the grass. She locked eyes with the ponies on the ground, and then she heard the loud cracks of gunfire.

Firing as one, the line of snipers took their first shots, and Shadow cried out as the bullets dug holes in her body. However, the pain was only in her magic. Her frown turned into a wide smirk as she realized that her magic was thick and strong enough to stop their strange weapons, and she began to walk forwards despite continued fire from the snipers. Obviously, the guns were not going to work. So instead of reloading, the ponies ran back inside of the ship when their magazines ran dry.

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Two of the ponies holding rifles were stallions by the names Vector and Bitcrush, and the stallions barely spoke as they turned in their rifles to the armorer and ran back to the room they shared. Once the door had closed behind them, Bit was the one to speak first.

"T-That thing's unstoppable!" He said, looking at his friend with wide eyes. He hoped that the usually-calm Vector would have something helpful to say, but Vector looked just as scared as he felt, and the dark gray stallion nervously smiled as he said "I... They can handle it, right? You think they can stop it?"

"I thought we were supposed to stop it!" Bit said. "I... There's no way that thing is actually going to turn everypony into those black things, right?" He asked. "I dunno man, that magic's... you saw what it did to those batponies" Vector said, sitting on his bed. Coming closer, Bit sat down on the floor, saying, "I can't believe we might all... I mean... I never got to..."

Those words sent a flutter through Vector's heart. It was unlikely that Bit meant what Vector hoped he did, but he couldn't help but ask. "But what?" He said softly, looking down to him. Bit looked up, and his cheeks were starting to redden as he stood back up, making himself level with Vector. "I... if this is the end, it's not really going to matter if you say no, is it?" He said. Vector felt his own face heating up, and he managed to find the words "Say no to..." "To asking if you love me too" Bit said, finding it surprisingly easy to finally say it. "I... y-you too!?" Vector stammered in return. Bit looked confused at first, but then he connected the dots, saying, "W-Wait, you have a crush on me? But I have a-" he said, before he was cut off.

Vector usually liked to hear Bit ramble on about things, but right now, he was sure that their time was limited. And with the knowledge that Bit liked him in return, that was all Vector needed to snatch the yellow stallion, dragging him into a kiss. If Cadence had been there, she would've made sure to point out how frustrating it was to witness two ponies who obviously liked each other, yet lacked the courage to actually admit it to each other. She saw it all the time!

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Gunfire had failed, and that left the UnderWorlders. And Polaris. And Shadow remembered him.

"YOU!" she yelled, once she was close enough. She reached for Polaris, but all of the ponies shot magic towards her, and she hissed as she stumbled back a little bit. She groaned with pain as they connected her to the hoard of gems, and she could feel her power disappearing into them as she took a step forwards, still determined to reach her target. As her magic was sapped away from her, Shadow tried to pull in return, but it was difficult to focus with so many different ponies drawing magic from her at one. Still, she had enough magical power to simply overwhelm all of the ponies, and she slowly began to reverse the flow of magic in her favor. When the exchange of magic reversed, all of the ponies eventually had to let go with gasps of pain, but not before she drained the crystals dry to get her power back.

She laughed, and as Northern prepared to teleport all of them away, she reached out with her magic, ensnaring Polaris with it. The other ponies were forgotten as her magic chokingly wrapped around him, and Northern grit his teeth as he teleported himself and the others to the bridge of the Twilight. Shadow smashed Polaris against her own chest and she laughed as he disappeared inside of her, entirely unable to do anything to stop her. With kinetic weapons proving to be useless against her magic, both Luna and Celestia took to the skies above her, blasting Shadow with their magic from either end. At first, it seemed to do something, the beast screaming as her magic began to melt away from her. Only the element of surprise had allowed them to hurt her, though. Both Alicorns had to kill the spell as her magic traveled up the beams, absorbing their power instead of being harmed by it.

Thankfully, all of the ponies involved other than Polaris had made it clear, and the two sisters teleported back to relative safety when it became clear that their magic couldn't harm her. On a call, the princesses began to argue with Northern over what to do, but Fluttershy couldn't take her eyes off of the beast, which had stopped moving. "Stygian!" She gasped, her eyes widening. Turning to the screens, Celestia and Luna looked back at her, and she kept going. "T-That's how Twilight saved him! She went inside of the dark magic, because with him, the magic had grown into its own being! B-But I don't think this is the same thing! See, how it stopped moving?"

"So maybe Polaris can fix it from the inside..." Luna murmured. Celestia looked to Silver on the display, and she smiled a weak little smile as she said, "Wouldn't be the first time we all depended on one stallion".

Author's Note

this one had a lot of rewrites and one of them involved multiple tanks

no not the turtle

July 27th 2020 3PM edit: added Vector and Bitcrush to attempt to put a break in the chapter I dunno might also do a thing in the bonus story with those two