Once everyone had flown off to take over the districts of New Hades, Treehugger and Marble stayed behind because Pinkamena wanted them to help Dane secure the Forge District. Treehugger didn’t mind where she was assigned because she had no preference on where she wanted to go..

While Treehugger was considering what to do next, she noticed Marble huddled in a corner looking terrified.

The voodoo pony walked up to the timid pony with a gentle smile on her face. “What’s the matter?” Treehugger asked.

Marble remained unresponsive.

Treehugger hummed. Her assigned partner wasn’t going to be very useful to her if she continued her behavior. She remembered the time when such a thing happened to Moondancer and Pinkamena got her attention by pouring bourbon down her throat. While she didn’t have anything like that on her, she did have something that might be just as effective.

After Zinyak’s defeat, the Saints and Equestrians took advantage of the Empire’s time traveling technology and fooled around in Earth’s past.

Treehugger’s contribution to the time travelling shenanigans was raiding the various pot farms of the world, gathering every strain of cannabis known to man. While she keeps the bulk of her supply in a series of crates in the ship’s cargo hold, she also kept several plastic bags of ground drugs under her bandana on her head.

The voodoo mare pulled out a tiny bowl and placed some of her prepared dust into it. Using a little of her fire magic, she breathed a small flame onto the dust and lit it. She then placed the bowl under Marble’s muzzle and let her inhale the fumes.

“Are you sure that’ll work and not make her too high to help out?” Dane asked.

“I only need her to inhale enough to relax,” Treehugger responded. “Right now, she’s so tense that she won’t respond to anything so I need to loosen her up.” She sighed, “It must be hard being the sibling that nopony listened to, not even her sisters.”

“If she wanted to be heard then maybe she should learn to speak up more.”

Treehugger glared at Dane, “Don’t speak about things you don’t have experience with,” she warned.

The look in Treehugger’s eyes gave the entrepreneur a sobering reminder of his own death and that the mare in front of him was part of that event. He remained silent while the voodoo mare continued holding the burning dust next to Marble.

After a couple of minutes of nothing else, Marble began showing signs of recovering from her catatonic state. It was a couple more before she could find the nerve to speak again. “I...I...I-I-I...W-What did I just do?”

“Huh? You killed a few demons in the street. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Treehugger assured.

“B-But...That’s not me. I’d never be capable of such violence.”

“What was the last thing you remember before you went on a rampage?”

“W-Well, I...I remember Pinkamena t-telling Pinkie to stay in the office building with me since they were going out there to fight all the demons. Pinkamena was one thing but she was experienced with fighting. But when Maud and Limestone got involved, I felt so useless. Even worse was when Pinkie was volunteering to help kill demons. She was so determined to be useful to everypony that when I saw her like that I snapped and started attacking any demon that was nearby. But why would I…?”

Marble soon found herself wrapped by a pair of green hooves as Treehugger did her best to calm her down. “It’s okay, everything will be alright. It will be tough going for a little bit until we can find the way home from here but we are in the home stretch. Once we deal with Satan, we can find the way to Tartarus and get home through there.

“Besides, you’re only trying to help and that’s not a bad thing. If you don’t want to fight then you don’t have to. I think I can handle this district by myself.”

Marble shook her head. “No, I may not like fighting but I can’t hide away and let my sisters handle all of the work. I’m still a Pie and Pies don’t sit back and let others handle all the work.”

“Are you sure?”

Marble nodded, “Though I wouldn’t mind a little more of that stuff to reduce the tension a little.”

Treehugger smiled before she offered the burning dust to Marble again. A few huffs later and she was ready to go. The voodoo mare huffed some as well before they began their tasks.

“Great, just what I’ve always wanted, a pair of burnouts to help me take the place over,” Dane observed, voice dripping with sarcasm. The ponies glowered at the entrepreneur. “Anyway, the first thing I need you two to do is head to Abu Dis and help one of Legal Lee’s clients take some years off his sentence by directing him into traffic. Remember, the more pain he experiences, the easier it’ll be to get him into Heaven.”

As the two were leaving the office building, Marble asked Treehugger a couple of questions, “Are we sure we’re doing the right thing by making someone suffer pain? And who’s Legal Lee?”

“Well, we are helping someone get into heaven so I think we’re doing a kind deed by helping them get there. As for Legal Lee, Pinkamena met him years ago. He was getting rich off of insurance claims by making companies pay lots of money whenever one of their clients got injured. The illegal part of that was that the clients were throwing themselves into cars on purpose. Back then, Playa racked up large insurance claims by throwing himself into traffic while Pinkamena dealt with other clients by running up to them and beating them within an inch of their lives.”

“What?! But that’s so wrong!”

“Yep, but doing these things helped us survive in a world that would have us end up in laboratories being experimented on.”

Marble’s coat became several shades lighter as she paled at the thought of being a test subject. “What a horrible world you and the others were sent to!”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t all bad. Being with the Saints allowed us to get away with a lot of terrible things we had to do to survive and we were able to get a roof over our heads. The food was strange and we ended up eating meat which wasn’t bad.”

Marble nodded blankly, a little stunned at the things her sister and her friends had to do to survive.

The conversation ended when they saw the lawyer nearby holding a strange orb in his hands. He beckoned the duo over to him so he could greet them. “Greetings ladies, allow me to introduce myself, I’m Legal Lee, attorney of Hell. What I hold in my hand is a control orb that is designed to take control of a husk like the ones you see all over the place. This one is attuned to one particular soul. All one of you have to do is hold the orb and use your thoughts to control the client, direct him into traffic and inflict as much pain on them as you can. This client’s wife is in Heaven and he wants to get up there to be with her. He ended up in Hell because he was overzealous with his drug deals and murdered more than a few wheelmen over the years for skimming off the top.”

Marble continued to question whether they were doing the right thing by helping the client but knew that they weren’t going to get far if they kept being nice about taking the place over.

Treehugger took the orb from Legal Lee and took control of the client who turned out to be Tobias. She remembered when he and his wife, Laura, aided the Saints by providing them with a portion of their earnings from their drug deals. Tobias also assisted by being a helicopter pilot while Laura worked with her to identify the main product of the Sons of Samedi. She learned later that the drug had different names on Earth and Equus.

Using the orb, Treehugger subjected the former drug dealer to all sorts of painful injuries by throwing him in front of cars. The task was easy because the drivers were about as bad at driving as Playa was. Tobias was placed in the middle of plenty of crash scenes and had been set on fire many times. The mares could tell that he had broken many bones many times over only for the tormenting magics of Hell to fix them repeatedly.

By the time the orb’s magic ran out, Tobias had been subjected to over a million years of pain. Legal Lee calculated about a million and two hundred thousand years. The lawyer thanked the duo for their time and walked off to work with his next client.

“Are all lawyers this crooked?” Marble asked.

“I think that’s normal for them,” Treehugger responded.

Back at the office, Dane gave them their next task which involved flying around Forge. He directed the duo to a platform hovering over the industrial sector.

However, their plans took a detour when a few red lights rose into the air and headed for them. Marble panicked and swiped her hoof at one of the projectiles which caused a wave of living molten rock to fly at it and wrap around one of the projectiles which caused the missile to explode. Treehugger dealt with the others by throwing fireballs at them which caused them to explode.

“We need to land,” Treehugger ordered. “Whatever is shooting those things is going to keep shooting at us.” Marble nodded and they quickly landed on the ground. With the missiles no longer being fired at them, the duo took a moment to relax. “We need to deal with those things before we handle the rest of Dane’s requests.”

After their short break, Treehugger and Marble raced through the district searching for the turrets that were firing the missiles at them.

The three Spires that Treehugger found ended up with its defenders seared and dismembered by her spectral machete and said weapon slashed through the sacs that contained the hearts of the Spires. Her weapon either impaled the hearts or sliced them in half.

Marble dealt with the remaining two by stomping to cause vines of molten rock to erupt around her and mentally commanding them to crush the demons. She then launched a Molten Blast at the heart sacs of the Spires which burned through the sac and seared the heart within.

With the Spires dealt with, Marble and Treehugger flew up to the platform that Dane had designated. Once they were ready, they took a deep breath to prepare for the flight. Once they flew off the platform, they flew through a substation and a series of pipes and factory smokestacks as well as a concrete tube that was being held by a large crane. They flew through a series of arches and around a number of factory structures before ultimately flying into a cavern where the route ended.

Once the duo returned to the surface and back to Dane, he next wanted them to commit acts of mindless destruction around Forge while avoiding any Ultor property.

Marble obviously didn’t like doing such things but she was determined to not let her reservations stop her from helping.

Treehugger and Marble were given Ultor brand rocket launchers to demolish the district and blast everything and everyone in sight. Treehugger assured her companion that blasting the husks would take years off their sentence of torment and help them get into heaven faster. The duo threw in their fiery and molten powers to add to the devastation they were bringing upon the district.

In the senseless destruction, neither realized that they blew up a certain husk wearing a purple visor.

After a few minutes of mindless violence, the duo soon ran out of ammo and headed back to Dane feeling pretty sure that they had done enough damage.

Some small part of Treehugger took pleasure in the destruction and had to wonder if that was how Pinkamena felt when she was doing such things.

The next task involved saving airborne souls that were being tormented by Satan. Marble saved the ones plummeting toward the ground while Treehugger used her fire magic to break the shields around the skyward souls before saving them.

Once that was done, Dane had one last task he wanted done before he left the two to their own devices to finish the takeover of Forge. While he wanted the local Marshalling Grounds taken care of, Dane felt that the local Extraction facility needed to be captured before then because he wanted that income.

He informed the two about what needed to be done to capture the facility in Black Door. He told them about the three control nodes inside the facility that needed to be taken in order to drive Satan’s minions out.

Once the duo knew what to do, they headed for Black Door and into the facility where they were met with heavy resistance.

In one room, Marble handled the ground forces by unleashing a Stomp that sent a magma wave in all directions before summoning a number of magma tentacles to grip flying enemies and slam them into Dark Inciters, breaking their shields and leaving them vulnerable to the pistol that she was armed with.

With the resistance cleared, Marble stood on the control node long enough for it to change to a blue color to indicate its capture.

In another room, Treehugger had no problems with her demons as she unleashed a swarm of flame imps to harass the ground forces while she used her spectral machete to butcher the flyers, taking the time to use a Flame Blast to shatter the shields on the Dark Inciters in the room. With air superiority, Treehugger roasted the rest of the demons in the room and took the node.

With two nodes under control, Treehugger instructed Marble to claim the last one in the center of the facility while she kept the skies clear and patrolled the rooms to make sure more demons didn’t show up to reclaim the captured nodes.

It didn’t take long for Marble to clear the central room before she stood on the node and waited for the conversion to finish. Thankfully, Treehugger’s defense was enough to keep the reinforcements away from the nodes and the Extraction Facility was successfully captured and ready to be protected by the demons under Dane’s employ.

Once Marble and Treehugger exited the facility, Kinzie landed in front of them. While the duo was surprised to see the normally introverted Saint in front of them, she had to inform them of her progress in the area. “You two, I wanted to let you know that while I was collecting some interesting things in the area, I found the glyphs belonging to one of Blackbeard’s chests in the area. You should check out the chest which should be near the Ultor building somewhere. I’m going to check out the Altars in the area because Johnny said that they give some pretty nice variations to our powers. Okay, bye!”

With that, Kinzie flew off again to continue satiating her obsession with collectibles.

Treehugger and Marble stared at the Saint for a few moments before the voodoo mare snapped out of her trance and nudged Marble to break her trance.

Since she mentioned the chest, the two decided to head back to the Ultor building to find it. It didn’t take them long to find it and open it to reveal that it was full of sin currency. Marble quickly picked up the chest and took it to Dane.

Neither mare was sure what else needed to be taken over in Forge so they asked Dane for advice. Since Kinzie was going to handle the Altars in Burnt Offerings and The Edge, there were only four more areas to take in the district. He pointed out two places that needed to have the demons driven out directly, Avernus and The Runoff, as well as the location of the Marshalling Grounds in Abyssal Gate. He also mentioned a gathering of frat demons throwing a frat party on one of the islands in The Plutonion.

Marble and Treehugger handled the Survival activities first, having no problem driving out the demons. They then headed for the islands to find the frat party and drive out the frat demons.

When they landed in the middle of the party, the demons took notice. “Well look what we have here, a couple of mares that are just in time for the fun to begin,” one said.

“I’ve never fucked a horse before, first time for everything in Hell, am I right?” another said.

Marble froze while Treehugger took to the air above the frat demons. When she noticed that Marble was in danger, she flew back in to save her only for a spiked paddle to slam into her and made her fly over the edge.

As the demons closed in around her while screaming “BROS! BROS! BROS!” Marble’s panic continued to rise until she finally snapped and bucked one of the demons off the edge. The demon dropped a paddle on the ground which the mare, now in a blind rage, picked up and slapped the nearest demon away.

The demons were stunned by the display for a moment before Marble ran to each demon on the island and used the paddle to send them flying for miles. Some of the demons landed near the western edge of the Downtown district while some landed in the Penitentiary in Shantytown.

They were the lucky ones.

The remainder were sent miles away where there was nothing but magma for them to land in.

The last frat demon on the island was not sent flying but Marble hit him so hard that an explosion of blood and viscera was the result.

Treehugger flew back up just in time to watch her companion deal the finishing blow.

With no more targets in sight, Marble started breathing heavily as the rage began to subside. Treehugger waited a few more minutes for her companion to calm down until her sense of reason reasserted itself. When she felt that she might be safe to land, she did so and calmly walked over to Marble and gently put a hoof over her withers.

Marble reacted to this by turning around to face Treehugger and wrapping both forehooves around her, tears in her eyes. The hug was tight, but Treehugger’s body was tough enough to take it. The voodoo mare returned the hug.

During the embrace, Marble and Treehugger heard the sound of clapping nearby. They broke the hug to see who was clapping.

To their surprise, a human-sized, anthropomorphic pink cat with a massive head and green slitted eyes behind a pair of oversized glasses and wearing a white lab coat and green pants was standing nearby clapping his hands in applause. He spoke in a high-pitched, but not as high as Pinkie, voice, “Well done, that was an amazing display of brutality. I would have given you an invitation to my show for that but since Satan is being a total bastard about not letting me have a show down here, I’ll have to settle with giving you this prize instead.” He snapped his fingers and a large chest fell to the ground.

The chest was ornate and made of gold-plated wood. A pair of metal rods went through the four rings around the chest while a pair of cherubim were on top of it while facing each other and the tips of their wings touching each other.

Genki continued, “This is an ancient treasure that the humans of this world have coveted for centuries. I made a deal with The Creator to give the thing to someone who wouldn’t abuse it, but I’m lazy so I decided to give it to whoever impressed me and you, little pony, have definitely made my day with that display. This chest contains an explosive weapon that takes nearby souls and uses them as explosive ammo to blow up your enemies.”

“Oh, um, thank you, but I don’t need this,” Marble politely rejected.

“Eh. Too bad, I’m lazy and I don’t wanna lug this thing around anymore so do whatever with it. By the way, there’s something in the chest for you as well, Treehugger. Since humanity is toast, the Loa of Violence on Earth, Marinette, decided to leave you with her artifact machete. Should be useful down here.” With that, Genki turned around and started walking away.

“Wait!” Treehugger exclaimed. “Where will you go now?”

Genki shrugged, “Now that humanity has run its course, it’s time to scour the universe for the next thing to catch my interest. I will find them then spread my violent teachings, just like always.” Genki quickly faded away as he walked away.

With the man-cat gone, Marble and Treehugger walked over to the chest and removed the lid to reveal what Genki had promised them, a golden grenade launcher with a cherubim on it next to a black machete with a crimson handle. Treehugger picked up the machete and felt a familiar power coursing through her. It was the same as what she felt when she was fighting the Sons of Samedi.

Marble picked up the Ark of the Covenant weapon. To her, the weapon seemed like a fancy gun, but suspected that it was more powerful than she believed.

Treehugger and Marble took flight and headed for the last area of the district left unconquered, Abyssal Gate. Dane had instructed them on the method needed to convert the Marshalling Grounds there to their control.

On the way, Marble flew low and through the streets, allowing her new weapon to consume the souls of husks and demons in order to fuel the power of her Ark. She was warned of the Archdukes who ruled the grounds so she would be sure to put them to use against them.

The duo flew into the pit that housed the Marshalling Grounds and began burning and crushing the defenders wherever they turned up. A few moments of scouting revealed the control stones in the area so each mare headed to one.

The defenders posed no problem for the duo who placed their hooves on their respective control stones. Once the conversion was successful, the Archduke showed up, summoning his flaming sword and his fiery shield.

The Archduke had no idea what he just got himself into before Marble pulled out her Ark and Treehugger pulled out her machete. The demon’s sword clashed with the voodoo pony’s weapon which absorbed the flames of his weapon with each parry. He tried to slam the pony away with his shield which left him open to an attack from behind when an explosive blast struck him in the back. He turned around to face Marble and prepared to attack but that left him open to being stabbed in the back by Treehugger’s machete. The artifact weapon unleashed the fury of the many souls that the Archduke had tortured and slain which tore him up from the inside out.

In mere seconds, the demon banished his sword and shield and collapsed before exploding into a wave of embers.

With the Archduke dead, Treehugger entered the center of the pit and channeled her magic into subverting the Marshalling Grounds to her control.

Treehugger turned to Marble and smiled. “That takes care of this district. I hope the others are handling their districts as well as we did.”

“Yeah,” Marble yawned. “Can we head back to the Ultor building? After all that happened today, I could use some rest.”

Treehugger nodded, “Sure, maybe we can light some dust to help us relax.”

Marble smiled, “I’d like that.”

Author's Note

In case someone asks, in the case of this fic, the Arc of the Covenant is not the Wrath weapon.