"Disappointing." Sombra focused his magic on Twilight Sparkle next. "We have met many times, pretend princess. Now, as my pawn, defeat my—"

"No! Not now, not ever!" Sonata swam through the air and grabbed Twilight, holding her tight against the gem buried in her chest. "I won't let you hurt anyon—" Black crystal shot from the floor and encased Sonata's tail.

Limestone watched in shock as Sonata and Twilight were encased in midnight black crystal. Reaching around to her back, she drew her rifle and brought it up into a firing position with the smooth motion of years of practice.

The first echoing rapport of the rifle startled everyone in the room. It was an order of magnitude louder than her pistol had been, which meant that while everyone else's brains were trying to figure out what was making the noise, Limestone got two more shots off.

Each of the bullets pierced through Sombra's body like it didn't exist, and so far as it getting hit by physical objects was concerned, it might as well be literal smoke. "Ugh. This is the bit where you're meant to die." As she spoke, Limestone squeezed the trigger again and again—walking her shots up Sombra's body. By the time she'd emptied her clip it was apparent that he had no solid parts.

"There's something odd about your mind." Sombra's attention was riveted on Limestone. He leaned into his magic and poured power at her. It should have rendered her no more than a puppet to him, but her hands continued to move—reaching for a second magazine for her gun. "I'd almost be enamored with you if you didn't seem so intent on killing me that you might just succeed."

Shining couldn't recognize Sombra's origins, but Cadance did. "Cinch! What are you doing in my school?!"

Abacus surfaced through Sombra's mind for a moment. She felt all the power and promise of Sombra, and for all she was annoyed he'd literally taken over, her fury at Cadance's words was far more. "This—is—my—school!"

Frozen at the sight of green-black magic hurtling toward her, Cadance could feel the malice in the spell. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead a wave of green-yellow light snapped into being and hurled the spell at the roof.

"You sucked as a dean, Cinch!" Lemon Zest's drumsticks still vibrated from where she'd struck them on the floor. The notes hadn't been perfect, but her magic had taken care of whatever inadequacies the gymnasium had when it came to being a musical instrument.

Vinyl and Octavia nodded to each other, Vinyl lifting her bass up and hefting the strap on her shoulder while Octavia settled her violin at her jaw.

Narrowing her eyes, Abacus started flinging magic at the trio. Ranging from destructive spells to plain mind-control, she was shocked to see each getting deflected and the Shadowcolts sending their own spells back.

With a slight reprieve, Limestone got her gun reloaded and sent three more shots downrange at Sombra/Abacus—just to make sure the smoke thing wasn't a short duration skill. "Damn it. Okay, time to try something else."

Cadance was astonished to see the three musicians fighting as they were. Sure, the gymnasium was getting more or less destroyed, but it was still impressive to watch them work as if they were a single being.

"Cady, we have to get out of here." Shining wasn't an idiot. He knew he lacked magic enough to even attempt to have an effect on the fight.

"No, Shiny, we have to do something and I—I think I feel what it has to be." Turning, Cadance reached a hand out to Shining's shoulder and effortlessly drew him closer to her.

Slinging her gun around to her back again, Limestone dug around in her jacket for a small sheaf of papers she carried. As she sorted through them, she broke into a run across the student-strewn ground between her and her quarry.

For a brief moment in her ongoing duel with Vinyl, Lemon, and Octavia, Abacus spotted Limestone approaching her. Sparing one spell for the woman, Abacus sent another crystal-forming blast her way.

Limestone recognized the spell that even now had completely encased Twilight and Sonata. She had nothing in her small arsenal of wards to stop it, so did the only thing she could. Raising her right arm and opened her hand.

Hunger filled Limestone—filled her with emptiness. "This fucking magic makes no sense." The spell met Limestone's open palm and sank inside. Rushing up her arm, she watched the pattern of burns down her arm glow in greens and purples. Finally, reaching her shoulder, she gulped down the magic and then felt the need to get rid of it again. Aiming, she relaxed the part of her that held that magic inside.

It wasn't lightning this time that shot from Limestone's hand. A black crystal shot from her palm toward Abacus and, unlike her bullets, met flesh.

Thrown around in a circle by the force of the impact, Sombra shoved Abacus aside to deal with a threat she had underestimated. "So"—erecting a shield to deflect all of the three musicians' attacks, Sombra turned his full focus on Limestone—"you think you can actually defeat me?" He readied a bevy of spells to hurl at a moment's notice.

"Me? What do you think, dipshit? Like those three, I'm just a distraction." Walking steadily toward the shield, Limestone reached out and grabbed a corner of it. "You really can't feel them, huh?"

"What do you mean?" Sombra turned to look at the Shadowcolts, but a glint of pink light reached the corner of his eye and his attention focused on Shining Armor and Cadance. "What is going on?"

Shining, his whole world spinning and turning upside down, couldn't look away from Cadance. "W-W-W—?"

"It's time, Shiny, we had a bit of a talk. Don't worry, it will be a simple little chat." Shining was the first man Cadance had ever stood eye to eye with—literally and figuratively. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, but she knew he was a little dense. Lowering to one knee, looking up into Shining's confused expression, Cadance asked, "Will you marry me, Shining Armor?"

"But we—This is—What's all the—Now?" There were more questions in Shining's head, but there was a roaring sound coming at him from all around. Experience made him think of a fighter jet trying to take off, or a ship's engine room—but instead of all those things his brain knew, his heart told him it's destiny. He had questions, sure, but what he needed was an answer.

Cadance trembled. She could feel malevolent magic seeking them out, but she couldn't really, truly fight it without knowing Shining's answer.

"Yes." The word came out too soft by far for Shining's liking, so he cleared his throat and tried to repeat it—only to have soft, pink lips press to his mouth instead.

Trembling against him, Cadance felt something pour through them. From the corner of her eye she saw the dark magic stop its advance and just evaporate under the weight of their magic. It was more than magic, she realized—it was pure love.

The blast of love shattered the crystals binding Twilight and Sonata, rushed outward and smashed aside the last of the shield Limestone was eating with her arm. It poured reviving magic into each student it connected with. Even Fizzlepop woke from being stunned, though Storm showed no sign of having been re-energized. But, when the love met Sombra, it ripped him bodily from Abacus.

Together, Abacus screamed with Sombra as everything that made her him was torn away. His power, his spirit, and even the smoky pony form blew away with the impact of Shining and Cadance's love magic.

Shaking her head, Twilight watched as Sombra was once again destroyed utterly by magic. She felt elated, though she had to wonder if this was the last time.

"We did it?" Sonata looked around and, seeing everyone who she considered on her side was now standing, did a swishing dance mid-air. "We did it!"

Surveying the room, Limestone was startled by the lack of damage. She'd personally put a whole magazine of rifle rounds through the wall behind Sombra, as well as pistol rounds, and there should have been several holes in walls from magical munitions. Even the floor was back to a pristine shine and looked buffed to a mirror finish.

There was cleanup to do, though, and so Limestone marched over to where Abacus Cinch huddled. "You're under arrest…"

Hearing Limestone reading Miranda rights to Abacus, Fizzlepop turned to Storm quickly fit a second pair of cuffs to him. "I'll give you a talking to when you're conscious."

Twirling her drumsticks, Lemon looked over each shoulder at Octavia first, then Vinyl, and said, "I think this was our best show ever." She didn't miss the glowing white horn on Vinyl's forehead, nor the manes that adorned both her bandmates.

It was a struggle for Cadance to look away from Shining, but when she did it was to see a group of students all milling around them. "Okay, listen up please. I need everyone to form an orderly line and please exit the building through the front door."

"R-Right." Shining was still recovering from the proposal and kiss, but the normalcy of Cadance directing students was enough to get him thinking straight. "You heard Dean Cadance, everyone pick a partner and make your way out in pairs. Yes, Ms. Lis, that means you too."

Limestone hated doing paperwork, but she knew from experience it would save her butt so long as she filled it out right. Not that she needed much butt-covering since they had caught the two bad guys with no casualties. There were questions being asked about why she discharged over thirty rounds and hit nothing, but that's all they could manage to ask her about. "General, are we actually going to get some more agents now?"

"Apart from having Sonata Dusk as an external consultant and Wallflower Blush as an intern? Just one." Raven had enough of her own paperwork to fill out. Requisitions was the big one. She didn't have half the budget she needed, but she had learned that if you throw enough forms at an accountant you can bury them in paper. "Fizzlepop Berrytwist. Your commendation cinched it, but she showed great flexibility in handling herself, and you need a partner now Princess Twilight Sparkle is returning to her own world."

Sitting to one side in the office, Twilight was juggling reams of paperwork that she had no obligation to fill out. She should, in fact, have gone back to Equestria. "I'm sure she'll get used to you quickly, Limestone."

Passing another stack of forms to Twilight, Limestone didn't even have to look to know she'd caught the sheaf in her magic and was already examining the questions. "We did work well together. Are you sure you have to go back?"

Twilight let out a sigh. "Don't even joke about it. I left six of my friends in charge of Equestria while I was here. If I thought it would be okay, I would have brought them with me for this."

"I still can't figure out why you'd want to run a country. There's so much… Well, you just don't seem like a politician." Shaking her right hand, Limestone focused her thoughts on working the flow of magic down and then back up her arm to sooth the scar tissue.

"I'm not a politician, that's other ponies' jobs. I just run things." It was the truth, though Twilight wasn't sure how well her human friends would handle it. "Giving me paperwork to fill out, though, is basically like a holiday."

Wallflower opened the door without asking and stepped into the room with a folder that was only half an inch thick. "This is the last lot of—"

"Dibs!" Twilight grabbed the folder with her magic.

Author's Note

Princess Twilight: Have you ever compared the Equestria's Elements with their human world's counterparts? Especially, why the number does not match?

"Well, Sunset tried. She gave me the results of her testing both before and after the catalysts affected them." Twilight used her magic to summon the notes she'd taken on the phenomenon. "While they do seem to have a minor boost to their abilities, the geodes seemed more like a key that unlocked their magic. That's part of the reasoning behind why I wasn't the cause of all this—I might have given them a spark, but the potential for all this magic was already here."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
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