Rider on the Storm

by HK-FortySeven

Rating: teen
Tags: Profanity, My Little Pony: The Movie, Grubber, Alternate Universe, Human, Storm King, Anon, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Second Person, Comedy, Tempest Shadow
Length: 111338

Anon causes mayhem all across the world as one of the Storm King's commanders. And has a great time doing it.

Anonymous, asshole extraordinaire and a rotten egg by all accounts, has fallen on good times after being made a commander of the Storm King's vast armies. With the King's forces and equipment at his fingers, he's found great success conquering nations, sowing chaos, and kicking the asses of all walks of life. All while having a rip-roaring great time doing it.
But the day of the Storm King's biggest conquest to date - the nation of Equestria - looms just around the corner. All that's left now is the final few preparations for the invasion: loose ends to tie up, new weapons to seize, and even some co-commanders to annoy to no end. And once those are complete, Anon will be the first in line to take Equestria as his next conquest.
God help us all.

This isn't the first horse story I've written, but it is the first one that is prose instead of greentext. And I'm still a bit rusty on top of all that. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

Published 2022-05-22 16:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-06-10 19:37:22 UTC

Just Like Old Times

“Y’know, after all of the mercy I’ve shown you cats, I figured you would be a bit more grateful.”

You think your captive audience was trying to respond to you, but it was kinda hard to make out on account of the gags stuffed into their craws. Still, the gaggle of tied-up, shaken, and very naked parrot “people” continued struggling against their bonds until one of them managed to dislodge their gag with mouth-work alone.

Or is that beak-work?

Eh, a distinction without a difference.

“You’re a monster!” the ungagged bird-pirate shrieked.

“No, I’m an asshole!” you cheer right back.

You signal to your crewmates to untie the ropes keeping the hot-air balloon dinghy they were tied up in docked to your airship, putting an armoured boot to the railing of the smaller vessel as they worked.

“Learn the difference, it could save your life!”

And with a mighty shove of your mighty foot, the airboat was kicked away, beginning it’s slow descent down towards the shithole that was Klugetown. If your boys had done their job right - which they always did - you’d say they’ve got about 7 minutes before they touch down in the heart of the city. By which point the slavers will have no doubt taken possession of them.

“Boss,” your lovable second-in-command calls out, “Food’s here!”

You turn with a big smile to see Grubber, your squat little hedgehog companion, leading the march across the gangplank from the fast food airship docked with yours. He and his following congregation of storm beasts carried huge movie theatre style bags of popcorn and thick brown paper bags stuffed to nearly bursting with tacos and other Mexican food, the bags already beginning to be stained from the inside-out by the greasy goodness.

“Perfect timing, boys,” you cheer, clapping a few times for dramatic effect. “We’re just about ready for the main event.”

“Yes!”

Grubber’s fist-pumping approval was matched by the grunt-cheers of the other storm beasts. They hurry to deposit their edible bounty onto the tables set up on the deck ahead of time, and only take the popcorn bags with them as they hurry towards the railings of your ship to get a better view of the feature presentation.

Speaking of features, the captain of the hour was still struggling in her binds next to you. Captain Celaeno, stripped of her tacky pirate get-up in lieu of the painfully boring Storm King uniform she should’ve stuck with in the first place, was doing her best to avoid looking at you, held in place as she was by two of your boys.

Though the gag she had on wasn’t a standard part of the uniform. Even if you wished it was.

“So,” you start, speaking slowly and directly in front of her face, “Are we gonna need to have this conversation again, baby girl?”

Now, you knew full well what she was trying to say through the gag, looking away and screwing her eyes shut with the beginnings of tears pricking the corners of her eyes. But you had an art to practice, an image to preserve, some principles to uphold, and of course, some jollies to get off. Pressing two fingers underneath her chin, you turn her head towards yours, gingerly removing the gag with other before turning your ear towards her.

“A little louder, lambchop,” you whisper.

“No!” she shrieks. “This won’t happen ever again, I swear! I swear!”

“I know it won’t, Celie,” you speak softly with an evil smile. “Because the next time you try this shit again, I’m shipping your ass down to the salt mines.”

You come closer, whispering into her ear.

“The Abyssinian salt mines.”

That drilled the fear of God, Allah, and Yahweh through their powers combined into her, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks while a terrified whimper escaped her throat.

With your fingers still under her chin, your free hand slowly, sensually, and deliberately uncomfortably undoes her rope bindings. She freezes under your ministrations, trembling like a twig and afraid to even blink wrong as you went about your work. Before long, she was free in body only, and you throw an arm around her shoulders, gently leading her towards your destination like a cheap date.

“Now, you’ve gone and got me all conflicted, baby girl. On one hand, duty compels me to spank both you and your boys for going back on the King’s deal like that. On the other, though? I’ve got a soft spot for the little guy. And you entertain the hell outta me, too! So I’m gonna make you a deal.”

The two of you cross the other gangplank, extended onto what used to be her airship. Hours before, this used to be a floating shipwreck courtesy of you and your troops, gussied up in tacky pirate shit and horrible rainbow feather paraphernalia. Now though, it was back to being a stock standard freighter, ready to move whatever stupid shit your boss wanted to be moved.

“You know that work pass I’m gonna give you?” you continue, holding said pass up in your free hand.

When she nods quietly, you fan the pass out into more than two dozen duplicates.

“I’ve got enough for your entire crew. That’s right, I’m gonna let you keep ‘em.”

She stiffens in your hold. Whatever hope was on her face in that instant was smothered in dread, realizing that the catch was her playing one of your sick games. And she wasn’t going to have a say in the matter.

“Provided, of course, that you can catch them first. I gave your boys 7 minutes before they touch down. And 7 minutes is all you should need to catch them.”

You come to a stop before the ship’s wheel. Immediately, she realizes the big snag in what appeared to be your generous gesture.

Namely, that you hadn’t started the freighter up for her.

And that she had nobody on board to help start it up.

“Please,” she whimpers, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know!” you cheer, throwing both arms up in the air “That’s the best part! I can just sit back and watch while you put on a show for us!”

“Bastard...”

“In the flesh, kicking tires, and lighting fires, babycakes,” you chirp, flashing the passes in front of her again. “You’re down to six minutes, by-the-by. You game or not?”

Celaeno was already off in a flash. Snatching the passes from your hand, she tears off down below deck to try and start the airship’s engines by herself.

“So she can be taught,” you chuckle, stepping off of her ship at a leisurely pace.

The gangplank retracts behind you, your boys untying the ropes binding the two ships together all the while. Grubber had two huge bags of popcorn at the ready, one of them on offer for you. Thanking the little champion, you scoop up the bag and turn back around to witness the show, popping some of the salted, buttery snack into your mouth as the rest of your troops crowd around the railing, jeering at the scrambling captain all the while.

“Y’know,” you remark to your companion, “Have I ever mentioned before how much I love my job?”

Hours before...

“Aha,” you hum, “I see what you’re talking about, buddy.”

“See?” Grubber cheers, “I knew I saw something out here!”

“About damn time, too.”

“Tell me about it! I think I’ll go crazy if I have to spend another day out here!” he complains, shuffling in place. “Oh, please be the pirates we’re looking for!”

“Yeah, here here.”

Both of you continue to stare down your spyglasses at the developing cumulonimbus cloud way off in the distance, doing your best to make out the markings on the ship that was trying to hide in the cloud cover.

Key word being “try”.

Both of you were really, really hoping that it wasn’t just another freighter you’d have to harass for their manifest. If you have to deal with another one of those, you might actually quit your job and become a travelling serial killer.

And then, you see it. A big plume of rainbow feathers, sticking out of the ass-end of the hot air balloon. With a Jolly Roger flapping in the breeze just underneath it.

And instantly, you knew this day would turn out to be a great one.

“Oh baby,” you say, collapsing your spyglass and returning it to your belt. “We’ve got ourselves a marlin here.”

“Sky pirates! Oh, yeah!”

You ruffle the little guy’s hair before he can start happy-dancing too much.

“Save it for when we tag n’ bag ‘em. Now get your ass on the wheel.”

“You got it, boss!”

Grubber tears off towards the steering wheel, while you follow suit at a more leisurely pace, allowing you some time with your thoughts.

Six days. Six whole days of idling out here in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, high in the sky above the burning desert, trying to track down the band of assholes who were raiding these stupid fucking Storm King merch shipments. You and your boys should be busy in the barracks, training for the big invasion coming up. You should be lifting weights and suplexing bitches, preparing to crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of the mares.

By all accounts, this job should have fallen to someone else lower on the totem pole of command. Hell, Grubber could probably take this op himself with Biggs and Wedge backing him up. But no. The boss had to have his gay merch safeguarded at all costs. That cost being putting you, one of his top commanders, on the job, with a full complement of troops. Like it was a fucking invasion. And none of said troops were too happy about the situation, either. Even with you inventing drills and exercises on the fly, trying to make up for lost equipment and time.

Everyone wanted these slippery bastard pirates dealt with, and you weren’t about to deny them for a fraction of a femtosecond. And knowing now not only where they were, but who they were? Oh baby, it was gonna make the conquest all the sweeter.

Finally, you take up position next to Grubber, who was preoccupied with ramping the throttle up. The ship lurched forward with an arpeggio of loud starboard BANGS as the mighty pollution-spewing engines roared to life, propelling the vessel towards your mark while their vibrations thrummed underfoot.

There was gonna be no holding back today. You were pulling out all the stops for these losers, for wasting so much of your goddamn time out here.

Right on cue, Grubber passes you the old-timey looking conical speakerphone for the announcement system.

“Ladies and dickworms, this is your commander speaking,” you announce in your best airline captain impression. “Please be advised that we have a code 286 in progress. Repeat, we have a code 286 in progress. This is not a drill. Get your asses in gear and assemble on deck, pronto. Thank you for flying Anon Airlines.”

Slamming the receiver back into it’s pedestal, you fish a key from out of the depths of your armour, turning it in a slot on the steering console. Grubber’s eyes bulge for a moment in surprise as he sees you do this.

“You’re really going for that, boss?”

“Fuckin’ rights, I am. Those feathery bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my schedule.”

The key was raising a ‘big red button’ pedestal from out of the floor near the wheel, but you pay it no mind for the moment and instead stand ready to issue orders to your troops. Luckily, you’re not kept waiting for long. From every side passage of the ship, your army of highly trained and fun loving storm beasts poured out and assembled before you. Each and every one of them was excited, hopeful for some action. And after all, you’ve never steered them wrong before.

“My fellow Americans,” you begin, earning some light snickering, “Let’s just cut to the chase. Every one of us has been fed up with this op. I’ve had enough, you’ve had enough, and we all want this shit done and over with.”

If your crew had one quality they lacked, it was reservation. Very few of them were holding back their agreement, all in the form of wild gesticulating and their weird grunting language. Fucked if you knew what a single word of it meant. But tone, inflection, and sign language by people who don’t know a single motion of real sign language? That, you do understand. Thus do you gain the understanding of their words.

“We all know that none of us were needed to handle this job, and believe you-me, I’m gonna give the King a piece of my goddamn mind when we get back. But even if we are overkill for this job, overkill is what the ABCs do best,” you holler, thrusting a fist into the air. “And you better believe that we’re gonna finish this job with some good old fashioned, humongous, explosive overkill, baby!”

Every fist belonging to Anon’s Badass Corps shot up in the air, a loud chorus of guttural “hoorahs” sounding off as they give the ground a couple of synchronized stomps for good measure.

The airship finally passes into the cloud, both visibility and temperature dropping in equal measure as it’s constituent mists of precipitate whip against everyone and everything on deck.

“Alright, so here’s the game plan. We’re boarding these fuckers and trashing their ship. Gunner crews, you’re getting the front hookshot primed and ready to ruin their day on my mark. Boarders, I want commitment, so put on your best suits. Everyone else, get your arms a’workin’, ‘cause they’re going down, down, down. Is that clear?”

Of course it was clear, but it’s nice to hear their confirmation.

“Good. Oh, and one other thing. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that it’s Friday, fuckers. Once we’re done teaching them a lesson, we’re going out for tacos.”

That promise earns you cheers and whooping from all in attendance, especially from your driver. You’ve never been one to fuck your underlings, and you’re not about to start. They deserve a good reward for putting up with this bullshit.

“Now let’s make some rare shit. Dismissed!”

The storm beasts sprint off into their positions. The majority return below deck, but the few that remain put themselves on lookout duty for the moment, standing by to help with whatever comes up above deck.

Returning to Grubber’s side, your hand hovers above the big red button with the Storm King’s logo on it, sparks of blue electricity licking off it’s surface and along your armoured appendage.

“You got this from here, lil’ G?”

“I got it, boss.”

“Sweet.”

And with that, your hand slams down on the button.

Immediately, a ring of lightning shoots down the pedestal into the bowels of the ship, and the all-metal bowsprit begins to glow blue. The glow quickly intensifies into a blinding light as electricity begins to violently arc off of it’s surface, until it finally looses a massive forked bolt of lightning into the cloud’s depths with a deafening CRACK, leaving the smell of ozone and the tingle of both static and magic in it’s wake.

Right away, the storm generator was having it’s intended effect. The cumulonimbus cloud cover, previously a pale light colour, began to twist and darken into it’s final thunderhead form. The air pressure dropped by a noticeable degree, and the tiny droplets of the cloud were beginning to precipitate out into full-blown rain. After only half a minute, your visibility was nearly zero, your surroundings pitch black save for the numerous lights on the airship and the occasional flash of lightning in the bowels of the cloud. Wind roared as it blasted across the deck, and rain came in a chilling torrential downpour that not even the massive overhead balloon could completely protect against, battering against the storm beasts above deck. Being made for this kind of weather though, they barely even move in response to the onslaught.

With the weather just the way you liked it, you pull a very different kind of spyglass free from your belt: dark bronze and peppered with ominous blue magic sigils with rough, opaque jade lenses where glass should be. Peering through it showed nothing but darkness, right up until lightning flashed in the distance. The bolt was crystal-clear in the distance and glowed green like an old CRT screen, sending a wave of the same green glow radiating out in all directions. The wave struck against your ship, the glow outlining the shape of the vessel as the wave stuck to it and wrapped around the disturbance like waves of water colliding with a rock.

It also struck against the pirate ship off in the distance, giving away their location in the storm.

“There,” you call out, pointing straight at the enemy.

Grubber uses your cue to course-correct, and you keep your finger trained on them for as long as the phosphoric glow remains. As the flashes of lightning become more frequent, you’re able to remain pointed at their location more often. Before long, you close the distance enough for your liking, and you hand the spyglass off to Grubber, who takes things from there.

You make your way down to the ship’s bow, hands clasped around the metal railing as you wait for your eyes to pick up your quarry’s lights in the distance. No way they wouldn’t be using their high beams in this weather, something you had no need for on account of your trusty Storm Lens.

Once you make out the beginnings of their lights in front of you, you throw your hand back to signal Grubber to slow down. You pick up the nearby speakerphone, positioned at the front of the ship for exactly this kind of manoeuvre.

“Put us in stealth mode, boys.”

Lights all across the ship are turned off and doused, cloaking the ship from any prying eyes. The only visible light that you couldn’t turn off was the obnoxious glowing Storm King insignia on top of the balloon. But of course, by the time they could see that thing, it would be way too late for them.

Pfft. Like they weren’t already done for.

“Hookshot team, page me when you have these clowns downrange. Get ready to fire on my mark. Boarding teams, transform and roll out.”

You hang the receiver up, returning your hands to the railing. Shutting your eyes, you tilt your head back and take a deep, long breath through your nose, drinking in the sensations all around you. The chill of the rain, beating against your face and armour. The whipping of the wind. The smell of moisture and ozone. The feel of the water rolling down your head, into your armour, and down off of the watertight full-body suit you wore underneath it all. You drank it all in, loving every second of it. This, second only to causing mayhem, was what you loved so much about this job. You exhale through your mouth, slow and controlled, and reopen your eyes.

You could feel the assembling boarding team behind you more than you could hear them, their heavy footsteps reverberating through the floor. The distant lights of the enemy ship came closer and closer, brightening in intensity.

You smile. It’s almost time to boogie.

30.

The troops finish assembling behind you. They didn’t need another speech by this point. They only needed the order to attack.

20.

The speakerphone rings once. The grappling hook team has locked on. All they need now is the signal. You pick up the receiver.

“Stand by.”

10.

Silence reigns across the deck, save for the weather. You could see the enemy ship in decent detail now. Especially the massive plume of rainbow feathers on the ship’s balloon. That kind of fruity aesthetic belonged to Captain Celaeno, and her motley crew of other parrot looking... things. Being walking, talking reminders of a certain... subculture back on Earth was license aplenty for you to slap them around like piñatas. But Celie-chan here? Oh, you remember her in particular. Especially how you kicked her ass the first time around. ‘Course, back then, you weren’t a commander yet.

5.

Back then, you were making a name for yourself, busting out of Abyssinian jail and wreaking freelance havoc on those other, more feline variations of hideous, anthropomorphic things. But in one, singular bit of fairness to them, you might have actually given them a chance if it weren’t for them jailing you after that unfortunate interdimensional teleportation thing that dropped you into this world. As if that was your fault somehow!

4.

Then the Storm King rolled up to kick their asses and steal all their treasures too, and he liked your style so much that he hired you on the spot. God, you still remember nearly soloing the throne room. Easiest captain promotion of your life. And the most fun!

3.

Then there was that whole adventure with that Misfortune Malachite. And Celie here, oh boy, you remember her dickery after that Strife guy decided to stab the King in the back. Can’t really say you blame him, but it was still a stupid move on his part. Especially after he wouldn’t cut you in! It’s like he thought you wouldn’t rat him out after that! Oh well, you made commander for it all the same.

2.

A shame, really. You’d figure after blitzkrieging her ship with your boys the last time, she’d have been happy to have a job with a sub-minimum wage paycheck. It was pretty generous, all things considered! But hell, you’re happy either way. Whooping anthropomorphic ass is always a sublime pleasure for you.

And you were more than happy to teach her another lesson.

1.

“Fire.”

BOOM

The delicious blasting of cannon fire tears through the silence as the aft-mounted grappling hook sails through the air with the grace and the impact velocity of a meteorite, aimed squarely at the ass end of Celaeno’s barge. It crashes through the rear observation deck with the kind of meaty CRUNCH that only splintering wood could give you, digging deep into the ship’s colon for what you’d guesstimate was a good ten or fifteen feet. As the hook deploys and tugs back, it catches something inside that makes the ship’s engines grind and groan in protest until, after one final tug, they give out with a loud BANG, a small mushroom cloud of smoke billowing out of the hole for the effort.

“We got a bite, fellas. Reel ‘em in.”

The winches underfoot go to work, humming away as they dragged the incapacitated ship towards you. The enemy crew was scrambling all across the deck in a panic, stopped only by the call of their captain. You couldn’t see her yet, but you would pretty soon, one way or another. Hanging up the receiver again, you stand there and watch as your prey is drawn in, bit by bit.

Eventually, the ship’s thoroughly ruined booty bumps and grinds up against the aft of your own ship. But you hold off on dropping the forward gangplanks for the moment, instead hopping over the railing and walking up along the bowsprit. You reach the tip of the reinforced metal mast and look down at the top deck of their ship, where all of the pirates continue to scramble around like rats. One clap of your hand is all it takes to seize their attention. As they look up at you like a deer in headlights, you cast your arms wide with a big smile and begin your proclamation.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Now, we all know why I’m here, so I’ll get straight to the point. You can give me your complete and total surrender now, or me and my boys can beat it out of you. Which would you prefer?”

Now, that was a very generous offer if you do say so yourself. But apparently they don’t share your feelings on the matter, because a few of them start unsheathing their cutlasses and hollering back up at you, with the others following suit after their much ballsier peers.

You let out a big, exaggerated sigh.

“Fine. They’re your bones.”

With a snap of your finger, the two smaller gangplanks flanking the bowsprit shoot out of the hull and slam down onto the deck, the sharp metal points digging into the wood. Some of the more skittish birds are already beginning to regret not turning tail and running. Y’know, as if that would’ve mattered.

“Just remember, this is the future you chose. Sic ‘em, boys!”

Said boys let loose their battle cries, pouring across the gangplanks like a river of muscular whoop-ass. The few birds that don’t shit their britches and take off screaming soon discover that their tiny pissant cutlasses were hitting their armour plates with all the effectiveness of a wet noodle. Before long, the pirates are beaten down into submission above deck, and the rest of your boys vacate your ship and flood down into the depths to drag out the stragglers while the topside boys start tying their captives up against the masts.

Amazing work as always. Their Mexican feast today is gonna be well earned. And yet, something’s not right.

Where’s Celaeno in all of this?

You know her well enough to know that she’d be above deck with the rest of her own boys, fighting to the last against the invaders. Unless...

Oh.

O-ho-ho.

Unless she’s trying to be clever. And you know what, you think you know just what she’s trying to play at.

Turning 360 degrees, you walk back towards Grubber.

“Hey buddy,” you start, “Do me a solid and open up the cargo bay.”

Grubber’s been working with you long enough to know that he should never ask questions about your weird requests, even if he doesn’t understand them. Thus, with a confused nod, he pulls a lever nearby, the big double-doors you’d walked over to get to him lurching downwards into the floor before sliding open.

And then you leap down into the pit, landing at the bottom in a picture perfect superhero landing, complete with the dramatic head rise coming first before you stand up tall and proud.

Appearances are everything, kids.

“Celie-chan~,” you yodel into the darkness around you, “C’mon sugartits, I know you’re down here. Why don’tcha come on out and say hi?”

Utter silence greets you in response, but they can’t fool you. They snuck on board while your boys were boarding, and you’ve got a good idea of just how they did it, too.

Oh, there they are. They haven’t actually come out yet, but they were skulking around in the shadows. Needed a sec for your eyes to adjust, is all.

D’aww, look at them, circling around you with their swords out, looking for an angle to jump you. It’s so cute, you just wanna reach out and pinch their little cheeks! And break their cute button noses! Still, can’t quite see Celie in this mix just yet, but you know she’s gotta be here somewhere.

Ah, there she is!

She’s the only one to walk out of the shadows right in front of you, glaring at you with those raspberry eyes of hers. She still had the same pirate get-up from the last time you’d “talked” with her. Even the same sword!

“D’aww, there ‘ya are, baby!” you coo, arms extended. “Did’ja miss me?”

“Captain Anonymous,” she clicked, disdain and plenty of buried anger laced throughout her tone. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

“’Cause the A-Non’s like herpes, babycakes. You can get rid’a me all ‘ya want, but I just keep on comin’ back for more.”

“Classy. Well, you’ve got the disease part right, at least.”

“Damn skippy. Have to say though, real smart play, sneaking in through the chain of the hookshot. A for effort!”

She chooses to respond by unsheathing her sword instead of using her big girl words.

“Now,” you continue regardless, “What’s a nice place like you doing in a girl like this?”

“Oh, I’m about to teach a very sad little captain a long overdue lesson.”

The birds in the background get ready for a simul-pounce, but you were kinda expecting a move like that anyways.

“Not gonna solo me this time, babe?”

“No.”

“Wow, another smart move! That’s two-for-two so far! Ooh, are there gonna be whips and oil involved?”

“You know you’re not funny, right?” she growls, your annoying tone bearing fruit.

“And you don’t actually have tits. But you don’t hear me being rude about it, now do ya?”

Her composure cracks. She brings her sword up and gives it what you think is supposed to be a menacing swing. You mean, it just kinda looks like what a weeaboo thinks is a menacing display for the haters.

“Kick his tail, boys!”

And there it is.

A loud chorus of battle-squawks sound out as a large chunk of the bird-men jump right towards you, swords poised to strike.

Things slowed down for you long enough to get a crisp neck crack in before the massacre begins. By all rights, your boys needed to whoop ass more than you did. But like, if they were just gonna throw themselves at you and not expect to be taken to the cleaners, you weren’t exactly gonna say no to that, now were you?

Aww, Celie looks so confident. Like she really thinks that you’re in serious trouble and are about to get your face mashed into the dirt.

You’re looking forward to seeing her face afterwards.

The first move you make is to duck backwards and do a flip, their swords clanging together before your foot boots them up from underneath. Most of them had lost their grip from that move alone, their swords clattering to the ground as they struggle to regain their balance.

One bird-man tries to grab you from behind, but a well placed elbow to the beak stops that move dead in it’s tracks. Two more come at you from the sides, only to be given the same treatment by both fists. A particularly burly one swipes at you with his sword, but you just weave out of the way, smiling as he keeps swinging. Once. Then twice. Then the third time, your forearm comes up, and the sword ricochets off the armour plating, staggering the dumb fucker and allowing you to roundhouse kick him halfway across the room with a delicious, satisfying CRACK.

You turn slowly to face the other incoming, much less confident pirates, not even bothering to drop into a fighting stance. You take a few steps forward yourself, cracking your knuckles for good measure with a big, evil smile plastered across your face.

And from there, it devolves into a world-class ass whooping. Birdman after birdman gets laid the fuck out at your feet. Some go down to fists, some to elbow strikes, some to kicks. One even went down to a good old fashioned headbutt, bending like Beckham as he crumpled to the floor. Their basic-ass swords were no match for the plated armour you wore, fully covering all of your important bits and yet light and well-designed enough for you to stick and move like you were in a kung-fu flick.

And then, as the last pirate goes down to an uppercut, you hold the pose on purpose and slowly turn to face a very shocked, pale-faced, and slightly shivering Celaeno, her efforts divided evenly between trying to process what she’d seen and trying to pick her jaw up off the floor.

The only thing that stirs her is when she jumps damn near out of her skin after she hears Grubber and a few of your boys start to cheer from up top.

“Woo-hoo! Yeah! That’s what you get! You don’t mess with the ABCs!”

You smile, paying his comments no mind as you begin the traditional menacing slow-walk towards Celaeno, her focus screaming right back towards you as her pupils shrink to pinpricks.

“Mmm-mmm, Celie, Celie, Celie,” you tut, wagging your finger. “What was that? It’s like you cats didn’t even practice before trying this dumb stunt! In fact, did you even practice at all since the last time we had this lil’ talk?”

She composes herself just enough to stay in motion and keep her distance, and the two of you begin to circle slowly around one another in the light of the cargo bay. More and more cheering storm beasts gather around the ledge overhead, stomping and chanting their best approximation of “Anon”.

Poor Celie wasn’t used to the negative reinforcement. Look at her, distracted by the chants like that! Hey, wonder if that’ll mean she’s more... Amenable to reason now?

“Aight girl, listen.”

She snaps right to attention, trying her best to look tough.

Operative word being “try”.

“Nobody’s gonna judge you if you just lay down your weapon now. It’s not too late for my mercy!”

You give your neck and knuckles another good crack-a-lackin’.

“But I mean, if you wanna go for round 2, I’m down.”

Eyup, she’s gonna try to be a hero in the face of impossible odds. Don’t know if it was the tone you used or what, but either way, she’s charging at you with that sword of hers.

Eh, you guess this has gone on long enough, anyways.

Whoosh
Ting
THWACK

Celaeno sails straight up past the cargo door, above deck, and through the air for a few moments, crumpling onto the floor a few feet away while her sword clatters off to the side. Drinking in your crowd’s cheers, you give a few bows before rubbing your trusty uppercutting hand for a job well done. Then you leap straight up and out of the cargo bay, following the same trajectory she did. Stars and tweety birds danced around her head for a beat before your hand came down and grabbed her by the neck of her coat, lifting her back up to eye level.

“You made three mistakes,” you hum, cheery as ever. “First, you tried this stunt. Second, you came awful light. I mean, only sixteen people for little ol’ me? That’s just fucking insulting. But the worst mistake ‘ya made, by a nautical mile?”

She barely has the energy left to gasp as your face dives in nice and close.

“It’s Commander Anonymous now, sweetpea,” you whisper.

A bleary-eyed groan is all you get in response.

“Ah well,” you shrug, drawing your head back. “Better luck, ah... Never, huh?”

And with that, she goes limp in your grasp, out like a light. Draping her body over your shoulder, you turn back towards your captive audience, still busy cheering their little black hearts out.

“Pack ‘em like kippers, boys. We’ve got some tacos to claim!”

This was one of those rare occasions where everyone clapped.

V Has Come To

“Housepets and houseplants, this is your commander speaking,” you announce into the speakerphone. “We’ll be docking at Tower 3 in five minutes. Please make sure you collect all your belongings and try your best to not hog the bathrooms at mother base for too long. We hope you had a pleasant flight, and thank you for choosing Anon Airlines.”

The airship passes into the ever-present storm cloud hanging above Storm Island, more of that delicious rain falling across the deck as you plunge further into it’s depths, the reddish tint of the sunset light at your backs fading quickly as you do. Grubber continued his flight with your Storm Lens in hand, aiming the vessel straight towards the aforementioned Tower 3.

It should be visible any moment now.

“Man, I’m so happy your guys haven’t stolen my food,” said Grubber.

“Please,” you scoff, “My boys are professionals.”

“Well the last time I was out with Tempest, they took my whole box of muffins!”

“Yeah, ‘cause you were out with Tempest. What did ya think her animals were gonna do? That’s like leaving your door unlocked and being surprised someone broke in!”

Grubber humphs in response. Rolling your eyes, you continue to nibble on one of your fajitas.

And then the cloud cover clears.

Deep within the dark bowels of the eternal storm cloud billowing from the Storm Island caldera was the Storm King’s base. A network of towers, shooting up out of the deep lake of the caldera, made up the vast majority of the complex. Each of the towers were spiky, angular, and made of black metal, as if Sauron’s designer had a hand in making them, and were connected to each other with long, fully enclosed bridges of various widths and lengths like a chaotic spiderweb of dark metal hubs and spokes. Most towers were uniform in size and shape, the most notable exceptions being for the ones in the middle and the ones on the outside. And aside from the various lights coming from the darkened, almost polarized windows dotting the towers, the only light source in the entire area was the frequent flashes of lightning, reflecting off of the water’s surface and bathing the structures in harsh strobes of bright light.

In the core of the tower complex was the Storm King’s tower, the tallest of them all. A huge blue magic crystal was clasped in the middle of it’s spiked crown, spewing stormclouds and sparks of electricity straight up into the air like a volcanic ash cloud. Surrounding that central tower was a hexagon of six smaller towers, each topped with a smaller crystal that continuously arced magical lightning up into the main crystal. Those buttressing towers were the sole connections to the main tower, and were where all of the other wings of the complex had naturally grown from.

And you also happened to know that they created this big exclusion bubble that muffled the thunder and kept the clouds from blocking the view of the place. Though they didn’t do shit for the rain. Not that you’d want them to.

Your destination, however, was the thick and wide docking towers. In this case, Tower 3. These towers were a bit over three times the thickness of the normal towers, and had huge docking bay doors all along their sides that swung wide open for the ships. The docking bays were fully enclosed, and kept all of the King’s warships well protected against the forces of nature when they weren’t in use. They were also one of the few towers to have really big, extra wide cargo bridges leading off to the similarly thick storage towers, supported with cables and hung really close to the water level down below. The caldera had been filled to capacity from the constant rainfall a long time ago, with some waterfalls visible from the outside if you looked really close, so there wasn’t any real risk of those low bridges getting flooded. It just looked cool and felt dangerous to be close to them.

Grubber passes you back your Storm Lens, and loads up the flare gun while you stow the lens away. He fires off a bright green flare towards the still distant tower, waiting for it’s response. A green flare fires off from the tower in response, and the red warning lights of Bay 12’s doors, all the way at the top of the tower, start blinking. Grubber steers the ship towards the receiving doors, which begin to swing open as he approaches, revealing the brightly lit interior full of storm beast troops and technicians waiting to receive you.

It’s not long before the ship touches down into it’s cradle, the docking clamps engage, and the huge door closes behind you with a resounding CLUNK. The bay’s docking bridges come out, looking just like the ones you’d see on an airliner, meeting the port and starboard gangplanks halfway before swallowing them whole, clamping down onto the deck and completing the docking procedure.

Grubber powers down the airship and retrieves the key for it while a good chunk of your boys tear off down the bridges, clutching their asses as they ran while desperately racing to find a bathroom in time. The less gastrointestinally compromised members of your team saunter off down the bridges, chattering and laughing to one another. Like any good captain, you wait for all to disembark before you disembark yourself, Grubber tagging along for the ride with two bags of food in tow to your one.

“I still can’t believe she actually pulled it off!” Grubber remarks.

“Oh I believe it,” you grin. “Never doubted her for a second.”

“Really? How come?”

“Because the heroes always pull through in the end. I know how this game is played.”

“Heroes? Really?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Boss, they’re pirates.”

“And?”

“They’re pirates.”

“Still not hearing the problem.”

“They steal things for a living!”

“Yeah, but like, only from people who deserve it.”

“That’s still stealing!”

“From the system, maaaaan!”

“What kind of sense does that make?”

“You’re arguing with the logic of pirates, my dude.”

“Well, pirates are stupid.”

“That’s why they’re so easy to catch!”

Grubber raises a finger to object, but pulls it back.

“Huh. Good point.”

The pair of you cross a few connecting bridges until you arrive at the Commander’s Tower. You wave to the pair of guards blocking the entrance, who let you in with plenty of enthusiasm. Always loved those doormen. The two of you dip into the elevator, punching in the floor numbers for your respective quarters.

“Just remember,” you remind Grubber, “We’ve still gotta be debriefed by the Storm King before we can take a load off.”

“H-hahah, er...” Grubber fidgets around in place. “C-can I not and say that I did?”

“You’re not still afraid of the big bad King, are you?”

“Afraid? No! I, uh...”

He nervously looks around for a few seconds before swallowing dry.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

You quirk an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe a lot.”

“What the hell for?”

“What do you mean, ‘what for’? Have you seen him?”

“Lots of times.”

“Then you already know!”

“No, can’t say I do.”

Nah, you did know why he was a scary mofo to everyone else. Tall and imposing to them, clearly unhinged, hates being questioned, waves around an unpowered magic staff, the whole shiteree. It’s just that he’s never been scary for you.

“Besides,” he whines, “Tempest is probably gonna be there, too! How am I supposed to deal with both of them, boss?”

“With your chin held up high and a pair of balls anchoring you down, little man. C’mon, you’ll never make commander with that kinda attitude!”

“Good, I don’t wanna. I’m just fine being the sidekick, thank you very much!”

“Oh, well in that case,” you chuckle, leaning against the elevator wall, “I might be amenable to pulling an excuse out of my pocketbook.”

“Yes!” he cheers, fist-pumping.

“But my excuses have a price.”

And just like that, his joy flip-turns upside down into nervousness. And when he sees you eyeing up his bags of food, it turns to conflict. The little guy was like a walking black hole, vacuuming up food constantly with no capacity for being full. Parting with food was a very difficult decision for him, and in any other situation, he’d have refused you on the spot. But he’s also shit scared of Tempest and the Storm King, so...

Grubber is wracked with an internal debate, pacing and fidgeting as he decides between facing his fears and parting with his nutrients. But, eventually, one side wins out. Shoulders slumping, he hands you one of his bags.

“I’ll tell ‘em that Celie gave you a concussion,” you smirk, taking the offered bag. “And that you need plenty of bed rest.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, voice laden with sadness. He’d won, but at what cost?

The elevator dings at long last, and Grubber steps off onto his floor, deflated and exhausted. Poor lil’ goober. But alas, dark dealings such as these are just part and parcel of the job he’s got, and it’s not the first time you’ve cut a deal like this with him.

Such is the life of the dark side.

At the very top of the tower, the elevator opens up to your sick, two-storey penthouse apartment, pimped out from top to bottom with obscenely high-end, expensive, and luxurious furnishings and amenities. All stolen, of course. Not like those Abyssinian fucks were gonna need it anymore, let alone deserve it.

But of course, standing by as always was your ever-fashionable butler, dolled up in the finest suit that would fit a big storm beast like him. He even had a bottle of champagne all ready to go in an ice bucket, held on top of a serving platter with some glasses at the ready beside it.

“Top o’ the evening to ‘ya, Cid!” you say to the big guy, dropping your newly acquired bag of food off on a small table as you went. “Everything good on the homefront?”

Cid nods and gives a very refined grunt as an affirmative. The downside of not understanding what the everloving fuck they’re saying is that you have no idea what their actual names are. Or even if they had names. So you just named them off the top of your head, and they kinda just ran with it. Besides, you’ve never seen the King address them by name before, so you figured your highest performers deserved a little individuality. They sure seemed to like it!

You approach Cid for the traditional early evening champagne, the hulking beast working his free hand with grace and precision to POP the bottle open, pouring its foaming contents out into a glass for you. You happily take the glass, the slip of paper wrapped around it’s stem not escaping your notice.

Well, you’d have been shocked if there weren’t any updates.

“Now, I trust the training’s been going well since me and the boys have been out?”

Of course it hasn’t been, and Cid affirms as such. But you both knew this was just small talk to cover up that you were reading what’s on the tiny slip around the glass.

“That bad, huh? Well, now that I’m back in black, I’ll be making up for lost time, big time. Count on that.”

Returning the now empty glass to Cid’s tray, you fish out your notepad from the depths of your armour, simply titled “Testament of the Great Commandy One”.

A menacing aura radiates from the depths of your plated suit, following the second item you were foolishly liberating from it’s prison deep within. Its dull yellow surface, light dully reflecting from each of it’s longitudinal hexagonal faces, radiates with the pure, unfiltered madness and anguish of it’s mere existence, the tormented screams of the damned audible if one were to listen closely enough. The tips of the long instrument of torment were each custom-tooled for both aspects of its inhumane purpose of being. The first, sharpened to a needle’s point, the long-dead cellulose of its formerly living constituent body giving way to and ultimately ending in the soft, coal-like substance cored within, the foul material better suited to the hellscape of a blast furnace than as part of the Hadean tool. The other end holds the only component that has any semblance of being natural: a crown of natural rubber, mounted like the gemstone of a sceptre to the top and mated to the horrific body of the instrument by the cruel barbs of the shiny, reflective metal ring clamped into place, the sleek exterior of the binding masking the torment it inflicted underneath in order to maintain the abominable connection. And just below the ring, as if the horror of the instrument’s mere existence were not complete, sat the blackened scar of the brand pressed into one of the faces of the implement’s yellow body, the two characters seared into the unliving flesh displaying it’s cold, calculated identifier from now until it’s final, tormented days.

2.

“Man alive, I’ve got a lot to take care of,” you hum, reading down your little checklist of things to do. Changes and additions are made with cruel efficiency, as each character of the list is scarred into the unsuspecting paper’s surface by stroke after merciless stroke of the foulest of daemonic graphite. “Forget just training, the fucking supply chain’s probably gonna need a good fuck-start or twelve.”

The life of a bad motherfucker was never as easy as it might sound. The woes of training, feeding, and equipping an army don’t just vanish overnight because you play for the League of Super Evil, despite what the Chinese cartoons might imply to the contrary. Before long, your list has extended to about three pages.

You were gonna need some serious help from your star duo.

Cid, ever the gentleman, had another champagne glass ready to go for you. Thanking the big guy, you stow away your dread instrument of inscription and your handy Testament before taking the glass and downing it in only a few gulps. No time to enjoy it, unfortunately. Not when there’s work to do.

Cid takes the glass back, quietly collecting the second slip of paper you’d surreptitiously wrapped around it’s stem.

“Thanks for the pick-me-up, pal-i-o. But I’ve still got to go in for the debrief before I can take a load off proper. Make sure everything’s set up and ready to go for me when I get back, aight?”

Cid grunts his affirmation.

“Awesome, I’ll see you in two shakes.”

With a parting wave, you step back onto the elevator and begin your trek to the central tower complex. Even with your plate as full as it was, there was no need to rush things, and you took every opportunity you could to drink in the sights and sounds of each skybridge you crossed. There was nothing quite like the beating of rain on the modestly thick metal plating that covered the bridges. Never compared to feeling it on your face, but it was a damn good sound all the same.

The two elite guards guarding the final bridge to the central tower gave you big, happy hellos upon seeing you back, which you return with a big wink and a pair of finger-guns as you pass on by, much to their delight. One more flight of stairs later, and you finally arrive at your destination.

Or, more accurately, you introduce it’s double-doors to your mighty foot, crashing into the strategy room with precisely √−1 fucks given.

The Storm King jumps like a little girl at the entrance, though just barely manages to avoid screaming like one as well. But he wasn’t the main attraction of your dynamic entry: that honour went to Tempest. She looked to be halfway across the room on the way to the door you booted down, and only a brief flash of surprise is visible in her eyes before she settles on a small frown and an annoyed little snort.

It might’ve been intimidating if her ears hadn’t flopped as she did it.

God, she’s such a cutie.

And then you ignore her for the moment, walking right on past her like you owned the place and towards the still recovering Storm King, arms flung wide open in the traditional ‘well, what is it’ configuration.

“♫ Three to the one from the one to the three, ♫” you bellow, “♫ I beat a bird bitch back out with lil’ G-- ♫”

“Commander Anonymous!” the Storm King hollers back, remembering how to use his words again. “How many times do I have to tell you to knock on the damned door?!”

“How many times do I have to tell you to never interrupt my goddamn musicals?”

“Weapons of mass destruction should not be used in my strategy room!”

“And those same weapons of mass destruction should not be tasked with fighting off fucking pirates, old man.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean, Commander?”

“It means that we’re at least two weeks behind fucking schedule thanks to my entire week being pissed away on Jolly Roger whack-a-mole! An absence that, may I remind you, was completely preventable!”

“Completely preventable?! Absolutely not! Do you have any idea how hard it was to source plushies of that quality?!”

“Well you know what’s not hard to source? My fucking underlings! They could’ve handled this job with both hands tied behind their balls!”

“As if I would leave the defence of my valuable merchandising operation to the rank-and-file!”

“Well you sure left the fucking invasion training to the rank-and-file, now didn’t you?!”

Neither one of you noticed Tempest grinding her teeth and snorting in rapidly building anger as the two of you grab each other by the collars of your respective get-up, getting right into each other’s faces as the two of you get to the expected part of all of your meetings together.
“--Listen up you piece-a-shit faggot muthafucka--”
“--I’ve just about had enough of your insubordinate--”
“--No, it’s not true! Piece-a-shit! And if I had to guess--”
“--antics! From the very start of your time--”
“--it was probably YOU that fuckin’ flagged him! Muthafuckin’ lyin’--”
“--with me here, you’ve done nothing but second guess--”
“--cocksuckin’ faggot! Muthafucka! You wanna holla over me--”
“--my perfectly reasonable orders! The task I gave you--”
“--every fuckin’ second? I can just scream over you too--”
“--was every bit as important as the invasion effort--”
“--you piece-a-shit muthafucka! Keep fuckin’ running your mouth--”
“--and I will NOT have you saying anything to the contrary--”
“--I’ll just keep hollahin’ you muthafuckin’ piece-a-shit! Eat a fuckin’ cock--”
“--much less implying it! Do you understand me? I am the one--”
“--go kill yourself, you fuckin’ piece-a-muthafuckin-shit! I fuckin’ God damn--”
“--in charge here, and you WILL fall in line, or so help me I’m going to--!”
“--Aaaah, we can just holla over each other all fuckin’ day! Waaaaaraaayaaaaagh--!”

KA-CRACK

“ENOUGH!”

Tempest really put her all into that explosive outburst, broken-horned light show and all, causing both you and the King to stop hollering in each other’s faces and instead look over at her in confusion.

“The fuck was that about, Tempie?” you ask, voicing your confusion.

“Yes, what’s the meaning of this?” he adds, voicing his own confusion.

“I’m not going to stand here and listen to you two scream at each other like this,” she snarls, horn fizzling. “Not again!”

“Uh, Tempie?” you retort, raised finger and all, “We haven’t even started screaming at each other yet.”

“Yes,” the King agrees, “This was just the warm-up. Honestly, I was expecting at least another hour worth of screaming!”

“Really?” you chime in, “I was expecting two.”

“Two maximum.”

“Eh,” you shrug, “Fair enough.”

“Anyways,” Tempest growls, trotting her way back towards the strategy room table, “I believe you said you wanted us both here for something, your majesty?”

“Ohh, yes yes yes!” the King cheered, flipping right into being as giddy as a schoolgirl, complete with a few claps of his hands. “Thank you so much for reminding me! Come, gather round, gather round!”

Oh boy, he’s got something else planned, does he? Well, might as well rip that band-aid off now. You take up your own position at the table while the King gallivants off towards his side. Y’know, the side with the controls.

“Yes, anyways, I’m certain you did a great job with those raiders, and I’ll hear your report on it in just a moment, my good Commander. But for the moment, you’ll both need to set aside your plans for the immediate future.”

You already hate the sound of that, but you don’t voice your distaste. The King flips some levers and pushes some buttons, causing the middle of the table to fold out, allowing the cool magic hologram projector thing it was hiding to pop out and begin warming up.

“Concerning the upcoming invasion of Equestria, it’s no secret that we don’t have an answer for those pesky little pony princesses of theirs. It’s not as if we can just ask them nicely to arrange themselves in a circle for my staff to do it’s work, after all! And while both of you are talented beyond measure, it would still be two against four. Thus, I’ve been busy doing a bit of digging. And I’ve found just the thing to shift the tide in our favour.”

The hologram fires up and projects a translucent green orb, with a chaotic, always-changing spiky black mass in the middle, almost like a ferrofluid. The projection shrunk down into something you could carry in the palm of your hand, and a whole bunch more divided out from it like cells, spreading out to and orbiting around the outskirts of the table.

“These, my good Commanders, are the Obsidian Spheres! And they...” he begins to say before reconsidering. “Actually, you know what, I’m just going to demonstrate for you!”

He snaps his fingers, and a side door opens up to reveal a pair of elite guard storm beasts with a chained and muzzled pony captive in tow. They lead the shivering mare into the room like a dog, all but throwing her up on top of the table.

The king then reaches into his own outfit, pulling free a very real version of that green glowing Obsidian Sphere thing that looked even cooler in person. And after a few experimental juggles, he launches the sphere right at the pony. It breaks into a cloud of green haze, and the pony begins to be encased in solid rock, screaming and squirming as much as she could before she was straight-up turned into a statue.

Consider yourself thoroughly interested.

“Duuuuuude,” you gape, “You got fucking cockatrice grenades? That’s sick!”

Tempest gives no commentary, but looks on with well-hidden interest.

“I had only one sphere, my good Commander,” the King clarifies. “And it was procured by the very pony that served as a demonstration. They are produced by the great basilisks that live deep within Black Skull Island.”

“Wait, isn’t that one of those places with the whole ‘many go, none return’ reputation?”

“Yes, it is. But as it so happens, there’s a very exclusive black market hidden deep inside of the island. I tried the nice approach at first, reaching out to see about purchasing some of the Spheres. But they wouldn’t deal with me! Me! Something about ‘drawing too much heat’, or some such nonsense!”

Translation: the King made them a shitty offer and threatened to out them to the world if they didn’t comply. And they told him to go suck a bag of dicks. Which means...

“So we’re going to take the not-so-nice approach,” he glowers, the mirth gone from his tone. “Those Spheres will be mine. And they will surrender them to me, one way or another.”

Yep, there it is. Guy really doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer, but shit, not like you really care much either way. Cockatrice grenades! Hell yes, you want to get your hands on some cockatrice grenades! How have you been steamrolling punks without those so far?

Oh, wait. Sheer fucking talent, that’s how.

Still, any edge against those princess ponies is going to be much appreciated. From what you’ve been told, they’re all three pony races rolled into one adorable package, and have the magical power level equivalent of your average Super Saiyan. Even with Tempest to tag-team them, you’d still have a tough time dealing with their, uh, you don’t know, friendship spirit bombs? Care Bear stares? Or whatever gay shit pony princesses do that isn’t crushing their enemies. Imagine having all that power and not crushing your enemies with it!

It’s like they want to get the Princess Peach treatment!

“And that is where you two will come in. Five days from now, you will both be storming Black Skull Island. You will be taking the largest, most talented invasion forces you can bring. You will secure their stockpiles of Obsidian Spheres. And failure will not be an option.”

Your breath hitches. Tempest’s breath hitches too, but for a very different reason.

“Wait,” Tempest blurts, “You can’t mean that I’ll--!”

“No way, a co-op campaign?!” you all but squeal.

“That’s right,” the King says, “You will be working together on this.”

"YES!" you cry out in delight, jumping for joy.

“Absolutely not,” Tempest hisses, “I am not working with... him!”

“Oh abso-fuckin’-lutely yes!” you cheer, throwing your hands in the air like you just don’t care, “I am so working with her!”

“No, you are not!”

“Oh, are too!”

“You will not!”

“Oh, get down with the sickness, baby!” you cry out, feeling a song coming on. “♫ It takes two to make a thing go right--! ♫”

SLAM

That’s the second time the Storm King’s interrupted your musical number today. You will remember this.

“You are not getting a choice in the matter, my dear Tempest,” he growls to her with a surprising degree of menace. “Unless, of course, you’ve decided to abandon your chance at regaining what you’ve lost.”

Ah well shit, that was a real low blow. Kinda puts a pall on your shitting and giggling, now doesn’t it?

Tempest retains her stoic glare, but any idiot could see the brief flash of pain in her eyes when he brought that up.

“It won’t be a problem,” she says after a brief moment of silence. “The Spheres will be ours.”

“Yes,” he all but snarls, “Yes, they will be.”

“Yeah yeah, that’s all well and good,” you cut in, “Can we hurry this along? I’ve got a triple-fluffed king-sized cloud bed at my place that hasn’t been used for nearly a week!”

Looks like your tactical defusing of the situation worked, since all focus is now back on you.

“Yes, well, fair enough,” the King agrees, glancing back at her. “I only needed Tempest here for this news anyways. You may go now, commander.”

Tempest doesn’t waste any time, trotting out of the strategy room without skipping a beat and allowing you to finally give him the run-down of what happened.

Honestly, the debriefing goes on autopilot for you, the lion’s share of your thoughts preoccupied with the upcoming joint operation. And, of course, how your plans and preparations were going to need to be structured around this event. So much to do in the month or so leading up to the big assault on Equestria. So little time to do it in. But, like life, you’ll find a way.

And as we all know, Evil always finds a way.

Miraculously, you leave the strategy room without getting into the screaming war you were expecting to wage with the King. Almost disappointing, honestly. But hell, at least that was the hard part out of the way. Now all you wanted to do was hit up your penthouse for some well-earned R&R, and burn daylight lifting weights and reading books until your bedtime came around.

But first things first.

Your path takes you in the opposite direction from your tower and over towards a much taller and thinner one, ringed with glass viewing balconies and taking more than it’s fair share of lightning strikes on it’s sharp, spear-like tip. The bridge guards for this one barely acknowledge you as you pass them by and step on board the elevator, riding it to the very top. You plop yourself down on one of the many benches and spend some time gazing off into the far distance, taking in the sound of the rain pounding against the glass and the muffled thunderclaps of the lightning strikes above.

And there you wait for all of six minutes, until a pair of guards on patrol come by. It was pretty normal for them to patrol around the towers, though almost nobody wanted to do the newer, far out of the way towers like this one. Good thing for you that these two weren’t normal guards, then.

“Biggs, Wedge,” you greet, not even looking their way yet. “Miss me?”

A few strangled sniffles escape from one of the guards before he starts bawling. Looking over, you see the dynamic duo in all their uniquely named glory. Wedge, his pair of geeky glasses pulled aside as he weeps into his hands. Biggs, his cool-dude sunglasses still on, pats Wedge’s shoulder and consoles him.

“Yeah, I know,” you groan, “Trust me, no way in hell I could’ve planned for that wrench in the works. And it’s about to get even worse, kiddies.”

Wedge’s crying seizes up with a whimper, while Biggs facepalms with an annoyed groan.

“Five days from now, the boss-man wants me on a joint op with Tempest, out at Black Skull Island.” You adjust your position a bit. “Now, joint ops with best girl, we love. Unscheduled ops, not so fucking much. So we’re still playing it by ear here.”

Wedge perks up at the mention of Black Skull Island, and starts digging around in his armour for his own notepad. Biggs watches with interest as he flicks through it’s pages, eventually arriving at one page that he then shows to you.

Your eyes shoot wide open only halfway down the page, a big smile crossing your face.

“No shit, big guy?”

Wedge nods furiously with many accompanying grunts, while Biggs grunt-chuckles his approval, clapping his hand onto his cohort’s shoulder.

“Well, then. Looks like things are finally gonna go my way this time around!” you laugh, standing up and extending your hands to them both. “Gimmie ten!”

Both of them high-five and low-five your extended hands with some laughs of their own, quietly hiding away the slips of paper you’d slipped to them in the exchange. You dust off your hands and plant them on your hips, sneaking the paper slips you’d received into your high-quality seal leather belt.

“Alright, you guys better make like atoms and split before your overseer catches you. Plenty of time to play catch-up during training tomorrow!”

Biggs throws his hands in the air and cheers at the mere mention of more training. Wedge, on the other hand, not so much.

“Listen big guy,” you say to Wedge, “If it were up to me, you’d be an information officer or something, instead of just a grunt. But I don’t make the rules on that shit. Not even Cid gets out of grunt work, and believe me, he’s tried. You don’t want to get behind on your beating quota again, do you?”

Wedge shakes his head, torn between having to do physical exercise and having to deal with being dressed down by the Storm King again. Biggs, meanwhile, tried his best to cover up his jealousy at the mere mention of your boy Cid, but you knew him better than that.

“Then you’d better give tomorrow’s CQC training 110 percent, my dude. Right?”

Sighing, Wedge finally grunts his agreement.

“That’s more like it. Besides, I think everyone else is hurting for some goddamn instruction from yours truly, isn’t that right?”

Biggs’s hurrah of agreement is cut short by the sound of the elevator dinging. The pair of them scramble to take off their glasses and appear like normal, indistinguishable storm beasts again, an act they’re very accustomed to doing by now.

You, of course, slip into your own act just as easily.

“Good,” you say with no inflection, “It’s about time that work started to get done around here. As you were, gentlemen.”

They salute with monotone grunts, and you push through them on your way to the elevator, passing by their overseer. Of course, being a brown-nosing little shitstain, the overseer’s excuse to holler at your boys is cut real short by your mere presence. Though the glare you shot him probably helped a lot, too. It sure was on the right track to loosen his bladder control, if nothing else.

And with the last of today’s big, important tasks out of the way, you head on back to your tower. No detours or scenic routes this time, either. Just a straight shot to your penthouse apartment, where you immediately jumped into your massive bathroom to strip down to your skivvies and have a well-earned hot shower. Cid, knowing you so well by this point, had a tall beer poured and ready by the time you emerged in your silken bathrobe.

With nothing to do but wait until bedtime, you kick back and relax on the couch, sip on your drink, munch on your leftover Mexican food, and flick through your latest edition of Playcolt, all while idly lifting some 50lb dumbbells.

Stone Temple Pilots

“♫ We’re whalers on the moon,♫”

Your boys espouse the virtues of harpoons in beautiful, grunting harmony,

“♫ But there ain’t no whales, ♫” you sing along with them, “♫ So we tell tall tales, and sing our whaling tune! ♫ Oh, I love this song!”

Everyone up on deck shares a huge, hearty laugh with each other. High-fives, shoulder claps, and arms locking together are shared freely like candy as your troops dance around and bask in their merriment, reflecting the amazing mood everyone was in.

Amazing what being back at base for just five days will do, huh?

“Er, ah, boss?” Grubber calls down from behind. “T-Tempest’s on the line for you.”

Smiling, your boys make way for you to pass by as you stride across your ship’s deck and towards Grubber, steering your ship as usual. This time, however, he was surrounded by two other storm beasts. They were better equipped, a bit bigger than average, and had a big streak of green - matching your own colour - dyed into the front of their hair and reaching from top to bottom. The Storm King always assigned two of his loyal elite guards to his commanders like this, colour matching hair streak and all; Tempest had a pair on her ship as well.

Of course, your real loyal muthafuckin’ D-O-double-G’s - the three named ones, anyways - were blending in with the crowd, staying on the down-low like they were meant to be. These two bouncers were, in actual point of fact, the Storm King’s way of keeping tabs on his top underlings, and everyone knew it. He got mighty paranoid about betrayals after that incident with Strife.

But back on track.

A visibly nervous Grubber passes you the conical microphone for the short-range radio, which you happily scoop up with all the aplomb in the world, knowing who’s on the other end.

“Tempie,” you coo, “How’s my favourite Sith lord?”

“If you don’t tell your troops to be quiet in the next sixty seconds,” she glowers in all of her static-filled, mono, 11,025Hz, 8-bit glory, “I’m going to make you wish you were never born.”

“Honey, I used to wish I was never born back on my world all the time, long before you entered the picture,” you chirp, not taking her threat seriously in the slightest. “If you can actually make me feel worse than the terminally-online, hyper-corporatist, hyper-puritan sociopolitical panopticon I left, I’ll be legitimately impressed! And disturbed beyond words!”

“What is any of that supposed to mean?” she responds after a moment’s pause.

“You really don’t wanna know, girlfriend.”

Well that’s odd. Of all the varied names you’ve thrown on her, that one makes her start?

“Sixty seconds. Now.” she growls with what you think is her horn sparking in the background. “Or you will live to regret it.”

click

“Ayo, DJ!” you holler to your crowd while hanging the receiver up. “Turn it up louder!”

Grubber swallows nervously as you rejoin your boys, feeling the ninth song in a row coming on.

“♫ Oh, I’m a goofy goober, yeah... ♫”

A few hours later...

Man, these pony girls have the finest asses you’ve ever seen in your life.

Wetting your finger, you turn to the next page of your magazine, eyes drinking in the new sortie of socks-wearing mares. Nothing quite like doing some research before getting involved with another race, right? And man alive, of all the races you’d run into on your campaign streak so far, this race was without a doubt both the cutest, and surprisingly enough, the hottest.

Heh, it almost made you feel bad about what you were gonna do to their people.

Almost.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

“Wedge, you don’t need to knock on my door,” you call out without even looking at said door, instead turning the page to a juicy fold-out máreage-à-trois. “Just come in and say your bit.”

The wheel latch to the all-metal submarine door is cranked, and the door hinges open into your room. Biggs and Wedge, both with their glasses on, step inside. And after shutting the door and making sure nobody could overhear, they begin grunt-speaking.

“We’re getting close, huh? Good.”

Closing your copy of this month’s Crotch Juggs, you get up out of your hammock and exchange another pair of high-and-low-fives with your dynamic duo, all involved parties tucking away their paper slips.

“Now, is everything else also coming along just fine?”

The set of affirmative grunts you receive brings a smile to your face.

“About goddamn time. We can’t afford any more delays. And God knows you three are busy enough as it is.”

Wedge grunts as if to say ‘I know, right?’, but Biggs is full of bluster as always, denying how hard it was. But you knew better.

With the discussion over for the moment, you thread past the duo and open the door to leave, heading off above deck. Your cohorts flank you from behind as you make your way over there, making sure to remove their identifying glasses before they follow along. Like this, they just looked like any other normal storm beast you picked out as random guards, just as you intended.

Finally emerging above deck, your two cohorts peel off to gather up their fellow troops as you stride over towards Grubber. He greets you with a wave, which you happily return as you take up position next to him, pulling free your spyglass and gazing out into the horizon of the late-day ocean skyscape before you.

There it was, off in the distance. As black and skully as the island’s name entailed. Still far away, but close enough to begin prepping your boys for showtime.

“Alright, we’re close enough now,” you remark to Grubber, stowing the spyglass for a moment. “Page Tempie for me.”

“S-sure, boss!”

While he hits the call button, you pick up the announcement mic.

“Your attention, please. We now have a 459 in progress. Repeat, a 459 in progress. I need you ladies assembled up on deck, pronto. Over and out.”

Hanging up the phone, you go back to studying the island through your telescope. Won’t lie, your announcement delivery this time wasn’t quite as energetic as you’d like it to be. Now, some of that was your own fault, blowing your celebratory load beforehand with that dance party. The other half, however, was entirely the fault of the island itself. More specifically, it’s God-awful climate.

The island was clearly of the volcanic variety, judging from the plume of smoke spewing out the tip of the skull’s “nose” and it’s glowing red “eyes”. And the downside of volcano lairs that nobody ever talks about is the horrible weather they cause. The horrible smell of the sulphur and the eye-watering haze of the pollution were just a small part of it: the smog they spewed into the upper atmosphere also dropped the surrounding temperatures by an uncomfortable amount. That’s not even counting the acid rain! And being an ocean volcano, it was a constant source of low pressure, made worse by the lower surrounding temperatures they caused, and were therefore a major source of sea breezes and bad rainstorms. Not the nice, chilly, and reinvigorating rainstorms kicked up by Storm Island, either. No, they caused the awful, depressing, sinus-clogging kind of rainstorms.

It was a bad time all around, and you don’t envy anyone having to set up shop in these Godforsaken hellholes. It’s why you pick fortified castle bases like Storm Island! If you’re gonna make an evil lair, then Goddammit, make it loud, proud, impregnable, and environmentally sound!

Besides, you weren’t worried about the op’s success; you were going to wipe the floor with those losers keeping the Spheres under lock and key, and Tempest playing backup was going to turn it into a total slaughter.

No, you were more worried about the unofficial part of the op.

Running your free hand over your head, you plop it down onto the railing as you continue to scan the island for any potential openings. Or hell, any signs of an underground black market. But knowing how this game is played, it was going to be literally underground, almost no doubt about it. Now, you knew that there was a process for getting into the place the right way, but fucked if you knew how that was done here. This wasn’t your first visit to a black market, but they all had different ways of getting access. Some were just straight open bazaars like the ones in Klugetown, some had secret passwords and legit fronts. And then there’s ones like this, where you need to be part of a fucking secret society to get access to it. Probably a griffon one, too.

Pffft, you fucking wish this one was run by griffons. This far out, no chance of that. You were in for more bipedal ‘people’, that was all but assured.

Failing to scope any openings out from here, you stow your spyglass and turn your attention to your drumming hand, your slips of paper surreptitiously poking out from underneath the armour plates of the wrist.

Your smile grows as you read their contents. Everything was going well so far, delays notwithstanding. You should have more than enough time and resources to arrange everything for invasion day at this rate.

God, you love it when a plan comes together.

The radio begins ringing. The wrist of your drumming hand slides across the railing for a beat, hiding the paper slips again as it grabs the radio’s mic and brings it up to your mouth.

“You ready for war, baby girl?” you open with a smile.

“More ready than you are,” she coolly remarks back. “Just follow our lead.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” you shoot back, “Over and out.”

click

With that out of the way, Grubber and you share a nod as he adjusts the ship’s course, steering it to fall into closer formation with Tempest’s. Your eyes turn back towards your gathering army, and you clear your throat to get their attention once they were all assembled.

“Alright, boys and girls, listen up. This time around, Tempest and her boys are playing the vanguard this op. But that doesn’t mean you can take it easy while they take all the glory! This island’s one of those lovely spots where many go and none return, or so I’ve heard, but they’ve never had to deal with us before, now have they?”

They call out their agreement, though it’s noticeably less excited than most other ops. They were lacking a lot in that department for the same reasons you were. The sooner you all finish this job and get the hell off this island, the better.

“Now, I’ll be straight-up with you all. We know there’s a black market on this island somewhere, but we don’t know where they’ve hidden it. Could be out in the open, or it could be behind 7 fucking secret passages. Either way, we’re not leaving until we figure out where they’re hiding. And definitely not before we trash their pad and steal their shit. Dig it?”

More agreement.

“Just remember, our priority target is wherever the hell they’re keeping their Sphere cache hidden. Watch out for the basilisks while you’re down there: we don’t have a lot of potions to un-stone you on hand. And the less statues we have to lug aboard, the better.”

That prompts you to pat your belt pouch, feeling the small vials of ‘soft’ potion inside. They worked, but boy were they slow. It’d be a lot faster if you had someone with magic spells, but c’est la vie.

“Now, get suited up. We’re going for an airdrop first, landing second. Paratroopers, bring your biggest sticks and some even bigger balls. Everyone else, get ready to Zerg whoever’s down there on our say-so. Be prepared for anything.”

They salute, chanting their usual “hurrah” as powerfully as ever. Even if the mirth wasn’t quite there, their willingness to thrown down with the best of them sure was. And right now, that was all you needed.

You really should treat them to some more food once everything’s done. Maybe out to an Indian place? Yeah, that sounds awesome. God, now you’ve got a monster craving for some curry. Okay, yep, Indian food’s on the menu today. You have spoken, and your word is law. Hell, you’ll even invite Tempest and her boys! That oughta lighten ‘em up! Well, at least for the next hour or two.

With your smile and optimism gaining more power at the prospect of gorging on butter chicken and tikka masala, you take up position at the bowsprit railing yet again, watching the island draw closer and closer. Tempest’s ship, an identical model to yours, trucked along at a healthy distance, leading the charge towards the island.

And the mare of the hour walked down from her ship’s bridge and back towards the stern railing, looking back over at you. After a few moments of just looking, she grabs the mic of a nearby radio receiver. You pick up the mic of your own just as it starts ringing, still smiling away.

“Are your forces ready?” she opens matter-of-factly.

“My forces are always ready,” you shoot back, the picture of service with a smile. “Standard paratroop drop, followed by the landing.”

“I’m amazed you even know the manoeuvres.”

“Aww, you’re breakin’ my balls here!”

“Just be ready to attack on my signal,” she says, her tone then shifting to a darker one. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about your... very poor decision from before.”

“Uh-oh,” you recoil in mock horror, hand over heart. “Am I gonna need to be taught a lesson?”

“A long overdue lesson.”

“Man, y’know, that isn’t the first time I’ve heard that coming out of a girl’s mouth,” you snicker. “Should I bring some roses and chocolate?”

Every time, like clockwork. She loses her composure and hangs up, storming off back to her ship’s wheel.

“Hey, come on!” you yell across the way. “I’ll bring the high-end Belgian stuff! Scout’s honour!”

Alas, your promises of Godiva and Côte d’Or fail to bring her back to the phone. Even with the best cards in your hand, you just can’t win ‘em all sometimes. Ah, well. The battle is lost, but the war is yet undecided!

Besides, there’s about to be another battle that you’ll pull an easy victory in.

Both of the airships lower themselves closer to the ground, flying up and along the bridge of the island’s “snout”. Tempest hollers the order to drop, and her paratroopers vault over the ledge, falling for several metres before they hit the ground running.

You look back at your boys, bracing to jump off with them.

“Roughnecks, ho!”

And with mighty battle cries to one-up Tempest’s troops, you and the paraboys drop it like it’s hot. It was a perfect opportunity for a good old fashioned superhero landing, and you land it with absolute perfection, the ground cracking and a plume of rocks and dust exploding outwards with your landing. Your paratroops, being much bigger than you, kick up way more impressive clouds with their own superhero landings. Brings a tear to your eye, seeing them put their training to such good use!

While your boys busy themselves with spreading out and finding any possible hidden enemies, you walk your way through the throng of Tempest’s much grumpier, more down-to-business troops on your way towards the island’s “eyes”. You can hear the airships landing as you reach your destination, all of your focus on playing detective.

Now, if you were an entrance to a high-end black market inside of a secret volcano lair, where would you be?

So there you stand, spending your time humming and hawing, pacing up and down and feeling around on the charred rock surfaces, trying to find some kind of hidden entrance. In fact, you spend so much time doing this that Tempest manages to catch up, walking over towards you at a leisurely pace. True to form, she doesn’t say anything, content to just stand and watch with her usual cool glare.

And the hunting lasts right up until you hear the grunt-hollers of a few storm beasts off in the distance, coming from some rocky outcrops. You jump up from your treasure hunt and hustle your way over towards the sounds, Tempest following behind at that same slow pace of hers. The hollers soon give way to the sounds of a struggle, some decidedly not storm beast hollers heard in the commotion as well. And as you get closer, the hollering becomes more frantic--

krash
fwooooosh

Ruh-roh. You know that sound. That was the sound those Spheres you’re here for made when they hit shit. And from the rising panic and sudden silence of the storm beast grunting, it’s not hard to deduce who was getting stoned today. So, embracing your inner Big Boss, you sprint as close as you can to the rocks before sliding to a stop, taking the stealthy approach towards the tussle instead.

Metal Gearing your way from rock to rock, you manage to arrive just in time to catch the last storm beast getting stoned. The ones doing the stoning were still hanging around, checking for any stragglers. More anthro abominations, the lot of them, all in the varying flavours of Disney rip-off you’ve come to expect. Some of them fish, some of them birds, some of them pigs. And a fair quotient of Abyssinians along with them, who were notable in that they were the ones pocketing the Spheres you were after.

You think it’s long past time you really brought the Phantom Pain to these losers.

And so, putting those completely improvised stealth skills to good use, you make your first stealth takedown on one of those cat fuckers. Once he was choked out, you snagged his pouch of Spheres and continued your attack. A fish-thing went down to a karate chop to the back of the dome. The second Abyssinian went down to another chokehold, his Spheres added to your pile. Satisfied with your Sphere collection so far, you put it to good use, chucking one of them at another Abyssinian out in the open from behind cover, drawing everyone to the sounds of his screaming as he’s quickly turned to stone and allowing you to scale a particularly tall rock outcrop to get a better vantage point.

The lion's share were gathered around their comrade, torn between interrogating one another and fishing out the soft potions. Some of the anthro abominations were still searching around off to the sides, and had just found their unconscious partners. Both parties were starting to sound awful nervous now. Counting about 27 Spheres in your possession, you fish out five of them and throw them at the gathered group like cluster bombs, successfully stoning about two-thirds of their remaining forces. Including the rest of their Abyssinian Sphere-chuckers.

With the major threat removed, you drop back down onto one of the bigger pig-people, KO’ing him loud and proud and drawing all attention to yourself. Smiling, you fish out another Sphere from your pouch and chuck it at a bird-man fleeing in terror, clocking him square in the back of the head and leaving his statue clutching where you’d hit him.

You love these things already.

Sadly, you were out of range of the rest who were fleeing in terror, but a big, burly pig-woman thing decided to try to be a hero, throwing a punch your way. You don’t think she quite expected someone half her size and a third her weight to catch her punch with barely any effort. Her eyes bulge as you quirk an eyebrow, and you flip her overhead by her hand, slamming her onto the ground hard enough to leave a small impact crater.

The stars dancing around her head pop out of existence when your foot comes down on her sternum, her attention - and sheer fucking panic - now lasered back onto you.

“So where’s the entrance at?” you ask with a winning smile.

“Right over there,” she yelps, pointing towards a rock outcrop.

“Cool, thanks!” you cheer.

And then you knock her the fuck out.

With the rabble dispersed, you head on over towards the rock outcrop, giving it a few experimental knocks. One of those knocks hit extremely well disguised metal instead of rock, prompting you to feel the whole thing out until you’d made out the shape of a door.

But you really didn’t feel like fumbling for the handle, so with Allah as your witness, you give it a taste of your shoe.

THWANG

Wow, already starting to crater it? Either you’ve gotten real good, or they really cheaped out on the metal.

THWANG

Pffft, nah. Who’re you kidding? You’ve always been that good.

THWANG
CLUNK
CRASH

There it goes! See, outie opening doors can open as innies if you really want them to! And wouldn’t you know it, on the inside is a decently well lit passageway, the last few of their bipedal animal occupants running off screaming, calling for the doors to be shut. Y’know, like that was gonna stop you.

Your attention is drawn away from the passage by the sound of another “person” screaming as he sails through the air, landing in a heap right next to you. One of the stragglers you’d missed. And seeing how Tempest was finally rolling onto the scene, you’d guess that was her handiwork. Hoofiwork. Whatever.

“I see you’re ready to party,” you smile, unholstering the flare gun on your belt.

“I see you’re finally being useful,” she replies evenly.

“Frosty as ever, I like it! Say, how about we play a little game?”

“No.”

“Pshh, killjoy,” you chuckle, intending on playing the game of keeping score anyways.

You fire a red flare up into the sky, signalling your boys that you’ve found a way in. But just as you’re about to step inside and lay the smack-down on the inhabitants, you’re stopped by the ground shaking underneath you. Which you’d guess was a good indication of them either activating the self-destruct sequence, or calling for reinforcements. Being that there’s Abyssinians on the island, it’s definitely the latter. But the smart play would’ve been the former!

You once again follow the sounds of hollering storm beasts in the distance, only this time it’s kinda hard to miss the giant basilisks crawling out of the island’s “eyes”. These varieties of basilisk were very lizard-like, standing a little over a yard tall and about three-and-a-half yards long from snoot to tail, with lightly iridescent stone scales and six surprisingly quick legs for being stone. They also had green, crystalline eyes that you couldn’t help but notice were awfully similar to the Spheres you were pocketing. Puffs of thick, ash-gray, and similarly iridescent “smoke” billowed out of their nostrils with every snort, which you knew right away was going to be their primary means of stoning people.

So the good news is that they weren’t of the Gary Gygax persuasion. The bad news was that they were of the Hidetaka Miyazaki persuasion instead.

Oh, and they had fucking riders. No shit, there were Abyssinians riding on top of them in nice little bucket seats welded to their metal saddles! And they were steering them around with some pretty cruel looking reins, made up of blue crystalline chains with a healthy amount of spikes jutting out from them.

All right, you were 100% going to ride a basilisk today. Yet another thing that’s way too goddamn cool to let these furry fucks have to themselves!

Grinning, you charge on off towards the mounted lizards, wanting a piece of the action something fierce. This time around, Tempest’s leisurely pace picks up real quick once she notices the basilisks, and she sprints right past you to get in on the action first. Those four legs really do her a lot of favours on the speed department, it has to be said.

The basilisks don’t get much of a chance to stone the storm beasts before Tempest leaps up high above them, horn crackling with malicious intent. She lands on top of one of their backs, booting it’s unfortunate rider forward into the petrifying mist of his mount, seat and all. She fires off a few of her signature blasts of raw, barely controlled magical explosions towards the closest targets, blasting the entire saddle off of the basilisks, nevermind the riders, before leaping to another basilisk to continue the cycle of ass-whooping.

And that was about where you jumped in as well, launching into the air and kneeing a furry fuck right in the face, pulling his sorry ass out of his seat and chucking him over his basilisk's head. He unfortunately takes the reins with him, allowing his mount to reach up and pull them off. You spend another three Spheres stoning the riders of the other nearby basilisks, preparing to jump to another one and continue your own cycle of ass-whooping.

Or at least that was your plan, until the basilisk underfoot decided to charge after the riders and start taking them out itself. That gets your attention pretty quickly, prompting you to hold back on doling out some whoop-ass to observe its actions. It batted them off, gassed them while they were still mounted, and sometimes even applied a good old fashioned tail-whip. But every time it took one out, it always did its best to help their mounts get those reins off, the freed basilisk moving to help out its brethren alongside this one.

Hmmm. Well isn’t that interesting? And it doesn’t seem too bothered by you riding shotgun, either.

Tempest leapt away from the fight once enough of the basilisks were rampaging freely, standing off to the side and watching them clean up the rest of the very frightened riders. Once they had all been turned into modern art exhibits, the basilisks crawled back towards the island’s “eyes”, your current ride very much included.

Now, that would normally be the point where you’d jump off and wave them goodbye. But even if Wedge’s intel hadn’t informed you about the plight of these basilisks beforehand, your gut instinct would still have been to keep riding them, just based on the good feeling you had about these critters. So, decision made, you sit your ass in the bucket seat and strap on, waving a somewhat surprised Tempest and a very upset Grubber calling your name goodbye as you’re taken into the island’s depths.

Much to your surprise, the glowing tunnels aren’t as hot as you imagined they’d be, being around the temperature of a sauna. And here you were expecting it to be the temperature of Mephisto’s colon! Guess you brought those climate control potions for nothing, then! Ah well, better prepared than not.

The basilisks all retreat to what looks like a hangar bay made for them, only you don’t think the Abyssinians on staff were planning on their lizard mounts returning without their riders. Or with the mounts intending on turning them into statues. They immediately start screaming and running for their lives, racing for the doors as quick as they can before they’re next on the stoning menu.

“Yeah, fuck ‘em up!” you shout, encouraging them. “You teach those fuckin’ furries who’s boss!”

Well, they sure seemed to like the encouragement. A good chunk of the cats escape in time and lock the doors down behind them, but the rest aren’t so lucky, and are quickly turned into sculptures.

“Ha-haaah! Good shit, fellas!” you applaud. “Or is that ladies? Can’t really tell from where I’m sittin’.”

The basilisks stop their retreat through the caverns for the moment, choosing this moment to finally acknowledge your existence. Most of them looked pretty confused, not the least of which was your current ride, looking back over it’s shoulder at you.

“What, me? Nah, don’t worry. I’m just here for the ride! Why, you had somethin’ to say?”

A few of them gather around and start gesturing with their front claws, hissing things at you. A perfect time to apply those translation skills learned from your storm beasts.

“Commander Anonymous, esquire, at your service,” you chirp. “You can just call me Anon, though.”

The questions continue, the critters still not sold on you. S’only a matter of time though, let’s be real here.

“Pffffft,” you scoff, “Please. Those carpet pissing kitty fuckers threw me in a cell way back when, too. I know exactly how you all feel.”

More of them gather around, getting more interested in what you had to say. Their peers continue asking questions.

“I know, right? Those fucking “people” think the whole world’s their litterbox, and that their shit don’t stink! God, ya should’ve been there when I was with my boss, storming their capital and stealing all their shit!”

They get real excited when you mention that last part, probing for more details.

“We sure did,” you answer one lizard at a time, happy as a clam. “Did they cry? ‘Course they cried! They cry if their milk’s not at the right temperature! Hah, that’s true! Hm? Oh yeah, you better believe it! Nah, their food’s not even good, either! I’ve had street food better than the slop they serve their ‘royalty’!”

You know, it’s always a wonderful thing when people can settle their differences and make nice over their favourite things, especially if that thing is a shared hatred of someone else. And boy are you ever so glad there’s more critters out there that share your dislike for Abyssinians. Many more minutes pass of you and the basilisks mocking the shit out of them, laughing all the while. Well, they at least make the motions of laughter, anyways. It’s just more wheezy sounding hissing that comes out. Still, the gesture is appreciated all the same.

Sure, there were a few times during the reptilian yuks that some of their stone gas got onto you, but it turns out they can just use those neat, long blue snake-like tongues of theirs to just lick it right off of you. So that’s a cool basilisk fact to know!

And then they ask you what you’re here for.

“What, me? Well, my official job here is to break into the black market here and steal all their shit,” you answer, fishing one of your Obsidian Spheres from your pouch. “Specifically, these guys.”

They don’t like the sound of that at all, getting visibly tense and a lot less willing to lick the stone off of you.

“Now, my unofficial job here? That, my scaly new friends, is making you all a deal,” you state, reclining in your seat. “See, unlike those fucking cats, I’m not really here to put you all under new management. And I’m perfectly willing - and able - to compensate you guys and gals fairly for these things. As well as making some... other arrangements.”

They share uncertain yet interested looks with one another, hissing some things to each other before asking you something else.

“Oh I’m gonna make it worth your while, all right. I’ve never fucked my business partners over, and I ain’t about to start. So, you in or out?”

More hushed hisses are exchanged before they give you their answer.

“Oh! Sure, sure, I can talk it over with your queen. Lead the way!”

Half an hour of reptilian diplomacy later...

Tempest and Grubber gape at you, loafing around on top of your small mountain of Obsidian Spheres smack dab in the middle of the basilisk lair, surrounded by their very happy and relaxed occupants. Turns out that basilisks were real cuddlers once you got on their good side. Who knew?

“About time you ladies got down here,” you remark with a smirk, scritching under the chin of your trusty ride down here. “I was starting to wonder if you’d forgotten what we were here for!”

“Boss!” Grubber wails, “You’re okay!”

“’Course I’m okay. Who do ‘ya think you’re talking to here?”

Poor little guy wants to hug you so bad, but is too scared of the basilisks to try. Though he probably wouldn’t do it with Tempest watching, anyways. Hah, ever the eternal goober. It’s hard to hate the guy, it really is.

Speaking of Tempest, it looks like she’s regained her ability to speak, steadily trading some of her shock for frustration.

“How...?!” she whispers before going into full-blown yelling. “How do you even survive these insane stunts of yours?!”

“Luck favours the daring, soul sister,” you smile, shooting your fist into the air. “Luck favours the daring.”

“There’s nothing lucky about this! You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?!”

“What can I say?” you shrug, “Work smarter, not harder!”

Aaaaand that was the last straw for her. With one last snort and perhaps the most adorable split second scrunch you’ve ever seen in your life, she stomps out of the chamber before she presumably blows a gasket, leaving Grubber behind.

“Tell the boys to start loadin’ the goods up, lil’ G! We’re pickin’ up some dinner on the way back home. My treat!”

With stars in his eyes and a loud grumble of his stomach, Grubber gives a very happy and animated salute before he takes off after Tempest.

“Now,” you say, turning your head to the queen basilisk in the back, “You’ll be ready for me and my associates on both of those dates, yeah?”

The queen, a pretty big girl by basilisk standards and with a cute little gemstone crown to match, nods at you from her shiny new anthro statue throne. Made up of her captors, of course. Though you did have to give ‘em a knuckle sandwich or twelve to get past their armoured anti-stone hazmat suit things first. But you all had fun doing it, and that’s the important part!

“That’s what I like to hear, sister,” you wink. “But just so ‘ya know, there’s a lot of factors with our first meeting date that are outta my control, so don’t be surprised if I can’t make it to that one. But I can promise to be there for the second one, even if it’s gonna be a long ways off from now. You dig?”

She nods again.

“Awesome.”

Always nice to work with a professional.

And it was even nicer to secure yourself some new allies for your upcoming plans, too. Now that’s what you call makin’ lemonade when life hands you the lemons!

Now, if only you had some tequila and salt to go with those lemons, too...

Super Smash Bros

THWACK
KRACK
POW

The attacking quartet of storm beasts were flung away in all four cardinal directions, thrown to the four winds by the power of your arms alone and rolling out as they hit the floor.

“Nice try,” you chuckle darkly, really getting into the act, “But when it comes to CQC, I’ve got the upper hand.”

Not deterred in the slightest, the four jump right back onto their feet and come out swinging at you again.

Brings a smile to your face, seeing them taking their training so seriously.

And train them, you do. You train, and train, and train. You train those four until they physically can’t train anymore, and need to be carried away to the medical team by the next quad of boys in line to train. And then you train the everloving snot out of them, too. And the next four after that. And then the next four. And honestly, you lost count of the lineup of quads after 20.

With every quad, you take note of their improving skills and teamwork. With every quad, you see your efforts bearing fruit. And with every quad, your pride swells more and more, your entirely well deserved ego growing in lockstep with it.

But eventually, as all good things must do, today’s session comes to an exhausting, satisfying conclusion. Time might have flown while you and the troops were having your fun, but the clock doesn’t lie; this was another session that lasted for 12 straight hours. For the fourth consecutive week in a row. Hot damn, does it feels good to be back on schedule! Just you, your boys, and some hardcore parkour training, just as God intended! You couldn't have asked for a better end to the streak.

Your eyes scan across the room full of storm beasts, all of them straight plum tuckered out. Even the storm beasts who had started earlier today and probably could go another round didn’t, knowing they’d overextend themselves by doing so. Some of them learned that the hard way.

As for yourself, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t in the same boat. The bodysuit under the armour really lacked in the breathing department on account of the weatherproofing, leaving you once again as one thoroughly sweaty bitch. But hey, you love training in accurate conditions. And besides, it makes the shower afterwards so much better!

“Alright,” you announce with a clap, “I think that’s a wrap for today, ladies. Hit the showers and start windin’ down, and I’ll catch you all tomorrow again at 0600, sharp!”

Hurrahs and salutes in varying stages of exhaustion ring out, and the boys filter on out of the room. As per tradition, you wait for them all to leave and for the custodial boys to come in before taking off for yourself.

First port of call, once again, is your quarters. And just like the last two weeks, thoughts of the now very near future whirl through your head as you make your way up there.

Only three more days left until the assault begins.

Three more days before all of ponykind gets put under your thumb.

Now, what you’ll do with them once they’re under said thumb is still an open question, but God damn it, they were total cuties. You’ll find a use for them!

Oh, and of course, three more days before the first phase of your plan begins. And only one element was out of place so far. Only a minor, optional element, sure. But still a good insurance policy to have kicking around for Plan B. Or at least he would be, if he actually fucking met up to confirm his status any fucking century now. Motherfucker better come through, you swear to Christ. You really don’t like it when your pieces start getting uppity.

You mean, it’s hardly surprising when they get uppity; that’s just the nature of the evil biz. It’s just disappointing.

Finally making it to your room, you see Cid once again on standby, this time with a nice, fatty folder full of paper. About time that dossier you requested came through. Waving at him in the universal sign of “I’ll get to you in a second”, you hit the bathroom and strip down, jumping into the shower in short order.

You know, a lesser man might have thought that your showerhead was making more hissing sounds than usual this fateful early evening. You, however, actually know what spatial audio awareness is, so it’s easy to deduce the added hissing is in fact coming from off to the side.

And you knew exactly who was doing the hissing. It was pretty easy to tell, given that you’ve worked with him before.

“Well look who’s finally decided to show his metaphorical face,” you say, not bothering to look in the noise’s direction.

“It’sssss hardly my fault that the Ssssstorm King changed his routesssss,” comes the almost comically serpentine reply from the noise’s general direction.

Funny, considering the guy the voice belongs to is only serpentine in the loyalty department.

“And here I thought you’d have been prepared for that.”

“If he wasssss lessssss paranoid, maybe...”

“Eh, I’ll grant you that,” you click, continuing to lather up with the bar of soap. “Now, I sure hope you’ve got some good news for me.”

“Your plan isssss ssssstupid and ridiculousssss, hasssss no chance of sssssuccesssss, and isssss going to end with you turned into a decorative ssssstatue. Ssssso of courssssse I’m ready to do my part.”

“Well golly gee willikers, I sure appreciate your honesty. Y’know, you could just ask me straight-up about how dumb you think my plan is instead of just fishing for answers.”

“Fine. Why isssss your plan ssssso insssssane?”

“Well because if it wasn’t, it would never work!”

“You’re ssssstupid if you think you can top how insssssane he is, commander.”

“Always saw ‘nevers’ as challenges, I’ll be honest. Besides, you say that as if that ever stopped you before.”

“My risssssk wasssss calculated.”

“But man, are you bad at math,” you snigger.

The voice sighs with the weary exhaustion you’ve come to expect from him.

“I hate your ssssstupid jokesssss.”

“Plenty more where they came from!”

“Anywaysssss. I will be ready for the meeting. Ready to sssssee you never ssssshow up on account of your invasssssion plansssss failing.”

“D’aww, you’re starting to sound like my parents!”

“Jussssst don’t doom too many of your forcesssss. I want to have sssssomething to take posssssesssssion of when everything isssss sssssaid and done.”

“No seriously, you’re really starting to sound like my parents! You take up spirit channelling while you were gone or something?”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Aight, smell ‘ya later.”

The hissing sound moves towards the bathroom vent, the fan groaning slightly in protest due to the added resistance. The fan soon returns to normal, heralding your surprise visitor’s departure.

You chuckle to yourself, rinsing the last of the soap off before shutting the water off and stepping out.

You already knew that Strife was going to backstab you, and you were already prepared for that outcome. Plan B didn’t need him there to be his usual backstabbing shitstain self, but it was a very welcome bonus. And it’s definitely still a good thing that he’s just as stupid as the last time he tried this; certainly too stupid to see what his real role in your plan is, that’s for sure.

Still, that takes care of the last piece on your board, so that’s a huge load off all the same!

Once you were towelled off and in your bathrobe, you step back out into your apartment and take the folder offered by Cid. Then you make a trip to the living room, sliding the glass doors to the outside deck open to get the sweet sound of rain and thunder filtering in before finally plopping your ass down on the couch to get your reading on.

One thing you had learned really quick during your time with the Storm King was that it wasn’t his style to learn about the places he wanted to invade before he invaded them. He much preferred the “blitz now, ask questions never” approach. And to be completely fair, it worked out for him most of the time. But you knew that Equestria was gonna be a different animal altogether, especially on account of your co-commander hailing from the place.

So after the King flatly refused to learn more about Equestria for some bafflingly fucking stupid reason or another, you had Wedge tag along with the away teams to troll around the world and pick up any and all information he could about Equestria on the DL. You were hoping for the deets on their defences, but honestly, anything beyond “four princess ponies to succ the magic out of” was gonna be a win.

And the resulting dossier did not disappoint you. The information here was great, much better than you were expecting. Wedge had once again outdone himself like the champion you always knew he was. In fact, the info was so good that it exposed a major potential issue with the plan.

Celestia. Luna. Cadance. Twilight. It was nice to finally be on a first-name and a special talent basis with the ladies you were gonna be screwing over. And most of them had some real impressive resumés, like controlling the fucking sun and moon. And you believed it, too. Having lived on this crazy-ass world for so long, you knew better than to doubt outlandish shit like that.

More importantly, they also had a bit of a track record of getting caught with their metaphysical panties down whenever a big bad rolled in to snap necks and cash checks. So, realistically? You were going to absolutely fucking steamroll them with barely any effort.

What you may not be able to steamroll, at least nowhere near as effectively, were these so-called “Elements of Harmony”. Equestria’s open secret weapon, made up of the purplest princess of the bunch and her five other decidedly not-princess friends. If your report was correct, they were the ones who actually solved a majority of Equestria’s problems, more than the actual military did. Like, for example, spanking all of those aforementioned big bads.

And apparently, they solved it with the literal power of friendship. As in, they had the power to do some kind of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers bullshit fusion dance and blast the everloving shit out of their enemies with what you could only describe as a fucking Care Bear Stare. You admit, you had a harder time believing that tidbit of intel, but Wedge had included a metric fuckton of pictures in the dossier as well, erasing all doubt. He not only had pics of both - both - flavours of their mahou shoujo transformation sequence, but there were also pictures of some beefy, evil-looking red centaur tasting the low-orbit ion rainbow.

That changed your target priorities by a considerable amount. If three out of four princesses were going to be the Worf-tier jobbers that this report was making them out to be, then you could honest-to-God just leave Tempest to solo them. Locking down Twilight and friends was going to need to be your highest priority instead.

And you were going to need to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that they wouldn’t be able to pull some major-league bullshit and find an opening to blast your ass. Granted, you knew how this game was played; despite your vastly superior abilities and tactics, they still had the immutable upper hand in everything. You knew the chances of them not giving you the bullshit express runaround were pretty well slim to none. But even so, you’re really hoping and praying that Murphy will choose to work his XCOM magic on them instead of you.

You didn’t yet have the tools to negate bullshit of that magnitude, and getting those tools was going to take months that you and Cid didn’t have. And you really, really didn’t want to use Plan B. Not if you could avoid it.

But you get the sneaking feeling that you won’t have much choice in the matter.

The next day...

KA-POW
WHAP
BAM

Storm beast after storm beast goes flying off to the sides as Tempest continues her practice, taking on what sure felt like all of them at once. She wasn’t, of course: she was taking on a dozen at a time. Still, this cram-school level of extra training was par for the course for her this last week.

Not you, though. You were taking it nice and easy, recouping some of your valuable energy before the attack kicked off. That was what most of your boys were doing as well, making only the minimum of effort to exercise while freely talking among one another. The same couldn’t be said for Tempest’s boys though, who were off on the opposite side of the training gymnasium and going real hard into their sparring and calisthenics, taking after their commander.

Still, there were a few of your boys that wanted the extra practice in, so you did your best to coach them. Grubber was one of them.

“Mnnnnaaagh,” Grubber strains, just barely clearing his 50th push-up. “Why did I agree to thiiiiiis?”

“’Cause errybody wants to tread the path of the swole!” you say, casually flexing your bicep with a few turns of your wrist. “And you can’t make gains without takin’ pains!”

“I hope they still have some muffins at the cafeteria...” he ponders as he takes his breather.

“If you’re fast enough with the next 50 squats, there might be--!”

THWACK

Whoa, nelly! You’re nearly knocked flat on your ass as one of Tempest’s training victims crashes against your back, sending the pair of you flying. Your S-rank reflexes allow you to land on your feet again without issue. The victim, not so much. You know it’s a bad hit when they’ve got the stars dancing around their heads!

“Ayo, Tempie-chan!” you holler towards the mare in question, half-joking and half-actually-tilted, “Watch where you’re aiming, girl!”

She boots the rest of her sparring partners away in one motion. Two of them come flying right at you, and this time you’re certain she’d done that on purpose. Dodging them is easy enough now that you were paying attention.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she comments, her tone full of sarcasm, “I didn’t realize I was interrupting your leisure time.”

A few of the storm beasts start “ooohing” in response to this.

“Hey,” you shrug, “If you wanna burn out before the big day, be my guest. It won’t be me taking flak from the King for crashing and burning!”

“Whatever excuse helps you sleep at night, princess.”

Now, you’ve been around her long enough to know that she gets very easily frustrated when she’s not being adequately challenged in something. And from her huge, major, big-time attitude copping right about now, you’d wager a guess that her attempt to cram in some combat exercise at the last minute isn’t quite as fulfilling as she had hoped it would be, even with her fighting a dozen people at once.

“Y’know,” you chuckle, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to start shit.”

“Oh, am I?”

“No need to play coy. I mean, I get it! Your boys are good, yeah, but not good enough for you, right? Maybe you should throw down with some of my boys, instead?”

More and more storm beasts from both sides were dropping what they were doing and listening in, waiting with bated breath to see what was gonna happen next.

“Mmm, you’re awfully quick to throw them at me, aren’t you?” she replies, dialing the sass up to 9. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were afraid to get your own hands dirty.”

The crowd starts “ooohing” louder. You only smirk in response to her.

“Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scared to tell me what you really want.”

“Am I, now?”

“C’mon, use your big girl words,” you mock, grinning like an idiot. “Mare up already and just tell me what you want, what you really, really want.”

The “ooohs” pick up at the supa hot fire exchanged, but they really reach a bipartisan crescendo when Tempest shoos away her sparring partners and nods for you to come the fuck over, cracking her neck as she does so.

Your grin upgrades from the lips-only smug variety to the Samuel Rodrigues variety in the span of a second as she issues her wordless challenge. Without another word, you swagger your way over towards the imaginary ring, the storm beasts hooting and hollering their little black hearts out all the while.

“I won’t cripple you too badly,” she cooly remarks, beginning to circle around you. “You still need to be useful.”

“Aww, you’re gonna hold back on me?” you shoot right back, circling her in turn. “C’mon, I want a challenge, not a warm-up!”

She narrows her eyes, glaring as you continue to circle around one another for a few moments, the chorus of the troops barely audible as you slip into The Zone®. Her stance betrays how little she thinks of your abilities. She’s gonna be in for a real rude awakening.

Her horn fizzles a split second before she makes her first move. She launches into a jumping attack at a pretty impressive speed, foreleg stretched out to deliver a punch. Or would that still be a kick? Yeah, you’re going with kick.

You respond to the move by sidestepping, but not before your hand shoots out to shove her hindlegs up from underneath as she passes you by, sending her spinning through the rest of her trajectory and making her crash-landing extra meaty.

She bounces right back up, but looks more shocked than anything, like she actually wasn’t expecting you to retaliate quite that well.

“I said I want a challenge!” you holler, stance fully shifted into fighting mode. “Not baby’s first ballet audition!”

She might not be taking you seriously yet, but she would pretty soon once you were done with her. You were already at 100% for this, stance shifted and ready to react at a moment’s notice. Knowing full well what she was capable of, you’d need nothing less.

Besides, this was shaping up to be real exciting! Who wouldn’t be at their best for this?

Snorting with anger, she runs at full gallop towards you, teeth bared and horn fizzling. But even as she launches into a flurry of blows, it’s easy for you to tell that she’s still not putting 100% into this.

THWAP-THWAP-THWAP

Which makes it a simple matter to block each of her blows, each powerful impact of her armoured horseshoes matched by each powerful parry of your own armoured limbs, giving as good as you got. When it became apparent after the seventh hit that she wasn’t gaining any ground, she ducked off to your sides to get a better angle, to no avail.

You wish you could say that this was fun, but the last person you’d lie to is yourself. The strikes become so predictable, in fact, that you wind up embracing your inner Neo, dedicating only one arm to the parrying game and folding the other behind your back.

“Are you even trying?” you deadpan.

The move clearly aggravates Tempest, who redoubles her efforts with a small snarl. The speed and intensity of her strikes increases, but not enough to require your other arm to account for them.

“Oh, get serious,” you all but groan. “Quit screwing around and hit me!”

And you mean it, too. Seeing her hold back for whatever reason was putting a serious damper on your ability to enjoy this tussle. She tries different tactics: darting to your sides to bypass your blocking arm, trying different kinds of kicks, but nothing she did warranted your other arm’s intervention as you matched her pace and reacted in a timely manner.

“Oh, I get it. You’ve been livin’ on easy street too long, forgot how to give it your all, is that it?”

Your blocking hand grabs her hoof instead of deflecting it, locking it in place.

“Then lemmie remind you real quick.”

She tries to dislodge her caught limb, but even if she had used enough strength to free herself, she’d still have been too late to dodge your follow-up. You take a deliberately big step backwards and pull her along with you, causing her to lose her balance. In that split second that her hooves leave the ground, you spin her around by her grabbed hoof a few times, waiting to build up enough momentum before flinging her off towards the wall.

You don’t stop there, launching after her a moment later with a long, high-speed jump. She recovers from her surprise enough to hit the wall on all fours, launching herself back towards you. She hadn’t accounted for your mid-air pursuit, however, and you clothesline her right under her barrel, knocking the wind right out of her and sending the pair of you flying back against the wall.

You both impact the freshly re-cratered wall at the same time, your arm still around her middle. Just as gravity begins to pull you down and out of the crater, your other hand balls into a fist and strikes the wall right next to her head with a powerful SMASH, your arm buried up to the elbow in freshly atomized cinderblocks and providing a great handhold for you to keep her pinned in place.

Something in Tempest’s eyes snap at that moment, and you barely have time to smile in response, knowing that she was finally going to give it her all.

A deafening CRACK rings out, and you find yourself blown away from the wall by a blast of powerful, unstable magic, your chestplate bearing the brunt of the blast and glowing a dull red to show for it. Righting yourself in the air, you skid to a halt on all fours, each limb scalloping out long, deep trenches in the stone flooring, the exercise mats on top torn to shreds and lit on fire from just the friction. She launches herself from her smoke-covered position straight towards you, horn violently crackling and her anger now vocalized in the form of a loud battle cry.

Finally pleased with this turn of events, you throw your arms out and laugh.

“Show me a good time, Tempie!”

She blasts at you once again with magic before she can land at your position. You weave out of the energy’s way to avoid a direct hit, but the explosion it caused behind you kicked up a huge plume of smoke and dust along with a healthy shower of shrapnel. Nothing your armour couldn’t soak, but it still robbed you of visibility. Your arms come up in a defensive posture, ready to react at a moment’s notice.

Her hooves are heard impacting the ground next to you, and you just barely manage to react in time. Her foreleg comes out for another strike much stronger and quicker than she’d done before, strong enough to bat your arm away despite the successful block. Your other arm was already in motion, going for a palm strike. Unfortunately, that also meant you had nothing to block her other incoming kick. Then again, she couldn’t block your attack, either.

Both blows impact with the force of a sledgehammer, a heavy THWACK ringing out. The pair of you are sent skidding backwards, reeling from the impact. You recover faster than she does, barrelling down on her position. She looses yet another magic blast, but you inadvertently dodge under it on account of dropping into a slide kick, successfully landing a hit on her left foreleg and sending her sliding off to the side.

She instantly kicks the ground with a hindleg hard enough to crater it, creating a pivot point she uses to swing her momentum from flying away from you to flying straight at you, going for a dive kick with both forelegs. Still prone, you only just barely manage to flip around and launch yourself up and off the ground with one arm, but aren’t fast enough to completely clear the strike; her forelegs miss, sure, but her head was still on target. Realizing this, she quickly dumps more magic into her horn for a contact explosion that you have no chance of dodging.

Your side armour plating absorbs the blast, the force of it sending you flying out of the smoke cloud and towards another wall. Spinning through the air, your legs impact the wall, creating a massive crater and a huge web of spiderweb cracks all along the cinderblock structure. Those same legs shoot back out like a spring, launching you right back into the smoke cloud and collapsing the cratered wall behind you under the force of your launch.

Fist outstretched in the traditional Superman pose, you rocket straight through the cloud and out the other side, landing against the other wall much less explosively. Hand buried in the wall and anchoring you in place, you hang from your spot and turn around to survey the battlefield, catching Tempest blasting the shit out of whatever was behind the wall you had launched from. The air blasts from the explosions swept her dust cover away, revealing the very pissed off source of the blasts in all of her furious, still-adorable glory. Smirking, you press your feet back against the wall and prepare to launch yet again, this time towards her.

She hears you take off and spins around to blast yet again. She had opened fire with the expectation that you were shooting directly for her; you, however, were going for a spot a few yards south of her position, where you had impacted the ground before and left those drag marks. Her blast whizzes by overhead, obliterating the wall behind you. You roll out a couple of times as you land, your hands and feet carving out more of the floor as you dragged to a stop. Two messy rectangles were now carved into the floor beside you, just as you'd planned. And so, thrusting both hands into the corners of the shapes, you pull. Both rectangles pull out into huge, heavy slabs of stone, ready to use as you saw fit. And you had plenty of uses.

Tempest, realizing what you were up to, targeted her next magic blast at the slabs in your possession. She succeeds in destroying one of the slabs in your grasp as you lift them into the air, but you quickly retask the freed hand to lifting the other slab, succeeding in launching it straight up into the air. She tries to blast it out of the air, but misjudges its trajectory and misses, allowing the slab to come right back down towards you. And just as it comes down, you give it the mighty foot with a spinning start, launching the chunk of debris straight towards her like a cannonball.

She hadn’t recharged enough to blast it out of the air in time, and the chunk succeeds in hitting her, the mare grunting with pain as it sends her sliding backwards. Before it can topple over on top of her, it’s split in half from underneath with a buck of her hindlegs. She spins back around to try and fire again, but you had since begun running back towards her, grinning like a total psycho. The moment you saw her prepping to fire, you tilt down to your side mid-run, carving another gouge into the floor as you go with a loud SMASH. Your gouging hand pulls forward through the rock and rockets above ground in front of you, flinging large chunks of the floor right towards her like a shotgun blast, the entire motion never once interrupting your run.

Her own armour protects her from most of the impact, but it disorients her enough to keep her from firing off a blast. Plenty of time for you to close the distance and launch into a flying roundhouse kick. She does manage to block successfully, but you were still bigger and heavier than she was, your weight knocking her off her hooves regardless. The two of you hit the ground, sliding along the surface on your respective sides. Shooting back upright, you both charge at one another, launching into a flurry of strikes.

And the rest of your fight...

No, it wasn’t really a fight by that point - more like an all-out fucking brawl.

The rest of your brawl continued in this manner for longer than you thought, but shorter than you would’ve liked, all pretenses of sparring having long since been flung right out the window and into the dumpster. You both traded blow after blow, pushing your armour, muscles, and reflexes to their absolute limits. She blasted away with her magic, and you responded with rock projectiles like the officially licensed and certified beast clergyman you always knew you were deep down inside. No matter what was used to attack, it caused an imperial shit-ton of damage; if not to your bodies and armour, then certainly to the surrounding environment.

By the time the melee had drawn to its close, the training room was completely destroyed, the storm beasts who had previously been cheering like football fans having run for their lives at some point. Craters, cracks, gouges and debris marred everything in sight, every surviving surface left as smooth as a teenager’s face. And that was assuming you could see any of it through the haze of dust that lingered over everything.

And smack dab in the middle of the warzone was yours truly, standing just over a yard away from Tempest. Your armour had been ruined to the point of uselessness, most of the plating discarded and the remainder hanging on by a thread. The black bodysuit underneath was torn to shit and covered in dust, the ripped sections doing a shit job of covering up the cuts and bruises underneath. Her attire was in much the same state, her mohawk having long since been reduced to a scraggly mess, the voluminous hair matted down across her neck.

The two of you were both panting like dogs and sweating buckets, the dust mixing with the perspiration and forming a gross film of dirt, marred with the occasional clear rivulet caused by a fresh drop of sweat rolling down. Neither one of you was capable of doing much more than standing, though even that was a challenge, your muscles burning with exertion and your limbs shaking, fresh off of the adrenaline surges. That pretty much left staring as your only remaining methods of attack.

The only real difference between you two at this point was the smile you wore. It had never once left your face throughout the entire fight.

Y’know, part of you wants to say something to break up the staring contest. But bushed as you were, you just couldn’t think up a good enough thing to say. At least not without it sounding like it came out of a shitty fanfic.

So you don’t.

Instead, you let out a deeply satisfied exhale, and sit your ass down on the ground.

And Tempest, ever surprised by your actions, finally loses the energy to stand and half-collapses to the ground, her front flopping down first. Trying and failing to stand back up, she unlocks her hindlegs and allows them to flop to the ground as well, the fight in her eyes gone but not forgotten.

“How duh--” she wheezed in disbelief, “When could you... S-since when...”

You only smile in response, cradling the back of your head with both hands. You allow your back to flop against the ground, a few loose chuckles leaving your throat.

That was, without a doubt, the best fight you’ve had so far.

And then, cutting through the comfortable silence like a wet fart at a fashion show, was the voice of the Storm King.

“What is going ON in here?!”

Leave it to him to ruin a great moment.

Vulgar Display Of Power

ding

Oh thank the fucking Lord, you’re finally back home.

You make the ever-so-very-sore shuffle out of the elevator and into your penthouse proper, noting that Cid wasn’t present like he usually was. You mean, you’d expected him to be gone for a while - right on through until your first “meeting”, in fact - but boy howdy did you wish he had a cold one on standby for your return! Now you had to get one from the fridge yourself! What kind of bullshit was that?

Ah, well. Cid had some very important work to get done for you, namely getting the next part of the plan underway. And he’s been itchin’ to get it done something fierce, too! Biggs and Wedge were champions in their own right, absolutely, but when it came to the cloak-and-dagger parts of your plan, Cid simply couldn’t be beat. Besides, he’d left the place nice, pristine, well stocked and organized for your return.

You’ll have to apologize to him later for fucking up his immaculate feng shui.

But right now, you needed some relief. From both the aches and pains, and from the ever-present filth that remained from your showdown with Tempest. Fortunately, thanks to that attack on the hippogriffs way back when, you had managed to steal some very special things from them that would ensure you’d be in tip-top shape come tomorrow. And failing that, the day after.

So to the bathroom you go, only this time your destination is not the shower. No, today you’d be getting it on with the bath. More specifically, your fully tricked out and very large freestanding bath, almost the size of a full-blown hot tub, complete with water jets, pull-out showerheads, two high-speed taps for the fastest fill rate in the West, and the multicolour foam soap dispensers on top of all that. And as if that wasn’t high-end enough, the whole thing was patterned with gold in cool spiralling water patterns and studded with the occasional sapphire, both inside and out.

Hot damn, it still looked just as good as it did the day you jacked it from Queen Novo’s palace. Along with the rest of your bathroom’s facilities! The shower alone was a massive upgrade over that pile of shit from Abyssinia’s royal shitter!

However, there was a very good reason that you only used this bath for special occasions like this. Besides time constraints, anyways. Sitting inside a frosted glass container kept inside of a nearby cabinet was the very special “bath bombs”, also courtesy of Queen Novo's formerly private reserve.

Straight-up, these bath bombs had health regen.

No shit, you pop one of those bad boys into the tub and it’ll slowly - very slowly - melt away all of the cuts and bruises of a long day’s session of in-real-life Street Fighter. Fucked if you know how it works, but it seems to have something to do with the sapphires in the tub: they always light up from inside whenever you use one of those special bombs.

You’d totally use this thing every day if you had access to more of these bombs. At first you thought about putting Wedge on the job, but you didn’t want to divide his invasion work up even more for something you could handle yourself with some careful rationing. Besides, there'd be time aplenty for that after everything was said and done.

Though you also needed to keep a stock of different kinds of regular bath bombs too, on account of the magic regen ones being unscented. Probably for the best, to be honest.

Hmm, think you’re feeling white sage today.

So with both orbs of cleanliness in hand, you crank the taps to full blast and wait patiently for them to fill halfway before tossing in the bombs. The sapphires inside the tub begin to twinkle and glow a nice navy blue from within, several flakes inside the regen bomb glowing along with them and floating through the water as the main mass was effervesced away. Before long, the tub was up to full capacity, and you jumped right in without any further delays.

Ahhhhh, yeah.

This was it, right here. This was the good stuff. Already you could feel the magic literally melting the pain right out of your musculature, just like the normal bomb was already melting the dirt off of your skin. Cranking the jets to full blast, you grab the ever-handy loofah, load it up with foam, and start going to town on the funk.

Nothing was gonna keep you from making the most of this.

The Storm King tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. He had been kept waiting for too long, far longer than his elites had any right to. They should have brought the source of these bizarre, infuriating documents before him by now. His patience and temper were rapidly depleting with every second that passed, and that incident with the gymnasium before was not doing them any favours, either.

Their little stunt had not only destroyed most of that tower, but had also somehow managed to compromise its structural integrity as well, forcing the Storm King to task his skilled storm beasts with the job of performing emergency repairs. He had made very certain to give both of his commanders a piece of his mind, too. Tempest had laid the blame on Anonymous’s shoulders. And he had accepted all blame for it, stipulating that the entire event had somehow been ‘worth it’.

‘Worth it’? That was all he had to say on the matter? That it was ‘worth it’? The invasion is only days away, and all hands were needed to ensure things would go smoothly! And somehow, his pointless diversion of time and resources was ‘worth it’?!

The Storm King snorted, trying and failing to shake the thoughts of his commander out of his head. There was no denying that Anonymous was exceptionally talented, and with a true appetite for evil the likes of which he’d never seen outside of himself. But every bit of his talent seemed matched by his infuriating and utterly irreverent devil-may-care attitude, grinding on his every nerve like sandpaper. His complete lack of respect for his authority had led to countless shouting matches, and he never once learned his lesson. If anything, he seemed to take it as a challenge, finding small new ways to further grind away at the King’s nerves! And the Storm King always noticed his new ways.

The worst part of it all was that he still had no idea what it was that Anonymous wanted. Tempest was, at the very least, easy. Foal’s play, even! Dangle the hope of restoration in front of her like a carrot from a stick, and watch her dance to his tune. But the Storm King knew better than most that doing evil for evil’s sake could only take you so far. Sooner or later, you would need a goal, an endgame. It was easy to pass Anonymous off as a lucky buffoon, but his new, sneaky ways of infuriating him at every meeting betrayed a level of cunning that was rare to see.

He was planning something, that much was certain. That he still didn’t know what he was planning caused him great concern. A constant, gnawing unease grew in the pit of his stomach whenever he thought about it, and it incensed him to no end.

The King’s ruminations were broken, at last, by the arrival of his elite guards. The doors to the strategy room opened, and a quartet of said elites marched in, surrounding a single storm beast. The one caught spreading those papers to his elite guard. It was quite hard to miss him, given his queer butler attire and the way he carried himself. Just who did he think he was, prancing around like that?

The beast was led to a chair for interrogation, but continued to carry himself with refinement and grace, seemingly unfazed by the entire scenario playing out. That would be changing soon, the Storm King thought to himself as he approached the seated outlier.

“Ah, good. They finally found you. Let’s just get to the point, minion,” he begins, glowering over his captive. “You were caught spreading these to your fellow beasts.”

He waved a small folder in front of the clothed beast to enunciate his point, the folder containing a smattering of documents that he would never in a million years even think about giving to his underlings. Even just the short list of the contents he had scrawled on the folder’s cover was almost enough to make him retch!

“Employment contracts? With salaries? And medical benefits? Dental benefits, at that? Even worse, a union?” he rattled off down the list, his features screwing up in disgust with each new item he read. “And a hideous new logo, to boot! If this is your idea of a practical joke, I’m afraid it’s gone much too far.”

The beast did not react, regarding him with a cool, unfazed look the entire time. It was enough to light the Storm King’s already short fuse. It didn’t take very long for his teeth to start grinding, nor for him to start seeing red over his prisoner’s utter indifference.

“Your kind aren’t smart enough to come up with this on your own!” he snarled, getting right into the beast’s face. “You wouldn’t even know what half of these... things are! Who drew these documents up?! Answer me!”

A simple grunt was all he got in response. The words froze the King’s thoughts stock still for a brief moment, the gears of his mind stalling out all but audible to those in attendance as his anger was briefly eclipsed by his shock.

“What did you just say?” he finally said after the moment had passed, his voice whisper-quiet yet deadly serious.

The beast repeated himself. The Storm King’s shock did not eclipse his anger for long, and the two quickly reached an equilibrium. Previous uncertainties he had held in his mind began to come into focus, the solutions to those questions now painfully apparent. All with new, one-word answers.

Anonymous.

“He came up with this, did he?” he hummed, scratching his chin in mock thought. “How very... unfortunate. And just how long has this pathetic racket of his been going on for?”

Another simple response was given, only this time the answer sent him into a nearly blinding rage.

“WHAT?!” he explodes, screaming into his captive’s face. “He’s been planning this for HOW long?!”

Once again, the beast repeated himself, the picture of calm and collected. The King spun away from the beast, continuing to rant and rave, putting voice to his thoughts instead of keeping them contained in his head like any sane person would do.

“Months. Months! That was it! That was his plan then, was it? From the very beginning, he was going to overthrow me! He was going to take the title of Storm King for himself! That wretched, good-for-nothing scum! I plucked him off of those feculent streets, gave him a new purpose in life, and this is how he chooses to repay me?! Why, that scheming little recusant rat! Thinks he can pull the wool over my eyes, does he?! I swear, when I get my hands on him, I’ll...!”

His enraged ranting dies down as a thought occurs to him. He slowly turns around, continuing to talk to himself while his expression settles down into a devious smile.

“Well now wait just a minute here. Perhaps this can still work in my favour? Hmm, I suppose he thinks he has me fooled then, does he? That he has me right where he wants me? Blissfully unaware of the dagger he has to my back? Oh, what a silly little creature he is, so silly indeed. He’s going to be in for a very, very rude awakening...”

The beast continues to regard the Storm King with that same look, resisting the urge to drum his fingers out of boredom.

“Yes, yes, I can already see it!” the King continues to ramble, gesturing wildly in the air in tune with his vivid imagination. “Waiting for me to arrive during the invasion, he’ll believe that his so-called victory will be complete! That I’m ripe and helpless for the taking! And then, at the last minute, as he goes to get the drop on me, BANG! He’ll be finished! Done! Struck down by his better! Yes, yes! He’ll rue the day he tried to pull one over on the one and only Storm King!”

It was even harder for the beast to keep from rolling his eyes at the display, especially when he began his maniacal laughter. His master, as always, had been right about him.

“Guards!” the King screams, jabbing a finger at the beast. “Send this insubordinate wretch to the dungeons! Now! Get him out of my sight! All of you, out of my sight! Out, out, out!”

Ahhh, that’s the stuff. An hour of soaking did, in fact, get all the aches out of your system. The cuts and bruises were still there, sure, but much smaller and healthier looking than they were before. Another soak like this tomorrow, and you’ll be in tippity-top shape for the big day.

Just as planned.

The tub finally finishes draining itself out, and you give yourself a once-over rinse with one of the showerheads. From there, it’s a quick matter of towelling off and slipping into your robe.

And at long last, your promised giant fuckoff crowler of beer is clasped in your hands, freed from it’s climate-controlled prison. All that was left now was to kick back and relax--

ding

Oh, hello. Why’s the elevator coming up here? You weren’t expecting any visitors, and Cid definitely wasn’t coming back for a long while, so who’s the mystery guest?

Wait a minute. Those footsteps. There’s only one person on Storm Island who has a gait like that.

Your smile returns with a vengeance the millisecond you connect the dots in your head.

SLAM

Tempest bucked the entrance hall door open hard enough to break both the door and the doorframe, the door hanging off of the wall by its bottom hinge for a beat before the screws pull out of the wall and it collapses to the ground. Your very purple and very pissed off guest stomps her way in, looking like she’d just gotten out of the shower herself. All she had on was her bodysuit, but she was cratering the ground with every stomp even without her horseshoes.

She wasn’t even trying to hide how steaming mad she still was. Gone was the thinly veiled dislike for you, masked by her cool glare. This time, she was glaring at you with undisguised hostility, teeth bared and ears pinned back.

That might have been intimidating for ponies, but it remained the cutest thing in the known universe for lil’ ol’ you.

“Oh hey girl, what’s up?” you chirp. “Can I getcha somethin’ to drink?”

“Shut up,” she hisses. “Just shut up!”

“D’aww, now why would I do that?”

“We aren’t finished,” she growls. “Not even close!”

She continues her march of doom towards you with every intention of trying to kick your ass again. Pretty impressive honestly, seeing so much fight left in her! Your smile adopts a dangerous edge, both of your hands coming out and extending in a welcoming gesture, beer still in hand.

“Ho? Mukattekuru no ka? Nigezu ni kono NONNY ni chikazuitekuru no ka?”

“Don’t bother begging for mercy. You’ll have to attend the invasion in a wheelchair once I’m through with you!”

“Ho hoh! Deha jūbun chikazuku ga yoi!”

That’s one menacing step for man.

One angry snort for marekind.

ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ

The elite guards finally arrive at the prison tower with their captive in tow, crossing over the sole connecting bridge towards it. The tower itself was short and very wide, about the width of one of the docking towers, and the connecting bridge was much longer than the usual bridges, supported with cables along it’s length. They board the elevator and descend towards the first major security measure for the tower: a large, horizontal metal surface resembling a bulkhead wall more than a proper floor and placed just above the water level outside.

They disembark onto a catwalk suspended above its surface and crossed over to a manually operated elevator in the middle, two of the elites peeling off to operate the two cranks controlling the matching pair of sliding metal doors underfoot, clearing the way for the elevator to be lowered into the jail. Once all of the storm beasts were aboard the elevator, the elite guards closed and locked the scissor doors and began operating the large on-board winch, lowering their steel cage little by little towards their destination.

The entire jail was set up as a panopticon; a thin central guard tower that the elevator lowered down into, surrounded by the numerous jail cells built into the walls. The elevator was only one of two ways to access the jail level, the other being a sextet of ladders dotted around the jail’s outer circumference and meant for emergency access only. No matter the access method, the entrances were all securely sealed to prevent any escape attempts. The jail had also been set up to be flooded at a moment’s notice, handled by a trio of sealed iris door floodgates near the top of their bulkhead ceiling and providing yet another deterrent for any would-be escape attempts. Water steadily streamed out of the tiny pinhole opening in each gate, running down into gutters that conveniently provided the drinking water supply for the few inmates housed within.

Once the elevator came to a stop atop the tower, the scissor door was opened and the elite guards escorted their captive inside and down to the base of the tower, entering the main complex and coming to a large interrogation room already full of waiting prison guards, each chuckling menacingly and cracking their knuckles in anticipation of what was to come next.

Once the captive was seated, two of the elites flanked their quarry while the other two sat opposite to him across the table. But as the seated ones began asking questions to which no answer was given, the mood in the room began to turn. Those two, unease growing in the pits of their stomachs, looked around to find the prison guards blocking the exits to the room, regarding them with the menace they had erroneously assumed was meant for their captive. It was then that the two elites flanking their captive began to laugh, pulling a set of well-hidden documents from their respective armours and setting them down on the table in front of their captive.

The same documents the Storm King had caught their captive spreading around.

Humming in thought, the “captive” procured a small wooden case out from within his suit, pulling a gold-plated fountain pen from within its velvet-lined interior. Asking his two “captors” if they had any questions, the two shook their heads and indicated that they indeed had none. Humming his approval, the suited beast signed off on the documents before him, welcoming them to the new order as the two collected their paperwork, receiving hearty cheers and shoulder claps from the prison guards all the while.

The other two elites opposite to their “captive” jumped out of their seats, brandishing their weapons and backing up against one another, on guard for anyone trying to get the jump on them. Their demands to know what was going on were soon answered by their “captive”, introducing himself properly as Cid and inviting them to lower their weapons. Neither did.

One of the prison guards set a teacup and its accompanying saucer down in front of Cid, containing his favourite brand of premium honey-ginseng green tea. Returning his pen to the case and the case to his suit, he gently sipped the beverage and began to make the pitch to the only two storm beasts in attendance that were not in the loop.

The Storm King, he told them, was a fool. A fool that had no intention of sharing the riches and territory he had subjugated with their efforts, and was instead plotting to dispose of them once he finally attained the power he had long sought. But his esteemed master, Commander Anonymous, had no such intentions. Through him, they had finally found a leader who not only understood their plight, but offered a path to a strong new empire: one in which they would not be discarded like trash once their master attained his goals through their efforts. Moreover, for the first time in their history, they would be treated well and compensated accordingly for their efforts, and would always have a place in the new world order he would forge.

Well, perhaps Cid’s master wouldn’t have put it anywhere near that dramatically. His real reasoning for deposing the Storm King varied wildly between reciting “kingdoms good, empires bad,” and accusing the Storm King of being a “chicken-lickin’-finger-fuckin’ piece-a-shit discount Hades lookin’ rat bastard,” whatever that was supposed to mean. But Cid knew better than most that his master well and truly did have his people’s interests and well-being at heart, and had fully accepted them for who they were.

He offered them only two options: to stand against them, lose, and remain in chains here; or to join them and help usurp the current Storm King, ascending their esteemed commander to the position instead. A prison guard set down two copies of the contracts on the table in front of them, quite literally placing Cid’s offer onto the table. Setting down his half-empty teacup, he leaned forward on the table, planting both elbows down on the surface and knitting his fingers together, regarding the two with an expectant look.

Time to choose.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. They refused, proclaiming their loyalty to the Storm King and trying in vain to make their escape. Cid sighed with undisguised disappointment as they were apprehended, disarmed, and dragged kicking and screaming towards the solitary confinement cells. It was always a shame when his offers were rejected, but alas, the closer he got to the Storm King’s closest analogue to an inner circle, the greater the likelihood of rejection was.

Regardless, he had a schedule to keep. Standing up from his seat, he made his way towards a much more open part of the tower, where a large table had already been set aside for tonight’s current task: interviewing any last-minute new additions to his master’s ranks. Fortunately, not many new faces were present, and the process went smoothly as he welcomed nineteen new individuals to the new order.

Cid reclined and waited at the table, flicking through his pocket journal and ensuring all of the little details of importance were accounted for. The elevator could be heard rising back above the water line, and then descending back down once again after a few minutes. Moments after its return, the two accomplices he was waiting for were escorted into the room, their telltale glasses betraying their identities.

Wedge shivered like a twig in the wind until he finally saw Cid, his fear exchanged for elation in the span of a only a second. Biggs continued to put on his tough guy act, even more so after seeing Cid. Ever the competitive type, that one. But the two of them performed their roles admirably: Biggs’s braggadocio and confidence earning the loyalty of his cohorts while also acting as a diversion from prying eyes into their activities, and Wedge’s phenomenal and ever-surreptitious intelligence gathering abilities directly aiding his master and their plans.

They exchanged the final details of the plan openly, no longer requiring those silly little notes between themselves. Their new roles for the invasion plan were assigned, their duties very clear now. Their brief business concluded, they shook hands and parted ways, the pair returning to the elevator and ascending back to the tower complex. With, of course, one final note to deliver to their master, simply to inform him of today’s events, none of which were unexpected. Cid replaced his journal and retired to the former warden’s quarters for the night, its prior resident having been relocated to a solitary cell days before after unwisely deciding against joining his master’s uprising.

Everything was in place now, all the pieces moving precisely how they were supposed to. Only two questions remained in his mind now. How long would it be before they could officially welcome their new Storm King? And would the first plan be sufficient for his ascent to the position?

His master was quite right. The second plan would be less than ideal. Yet it remained a very strong possibility that they would need to put it into play, depending on the invasion’s outcome.

“How could I let this happen?”

“Whatcha mean, girlfriend?”

“How could I lose? To him, of all people?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d qualify this as a loss, per se...”

Tempest didn’t acknowledge your replies, continuing to stare up at the ceiling and talk to herself. Now, that kind of melancholic insanity wasn’t healthy, so you make to fix it right away. Reaching over with a free hand, your fingers make contact with her ear.

Her expression goes through a lot of different phases the moment the itching begins. First came the alarmed look of anger where she snapped out of her despondent stupor, her head shooting up off of the pillow.

Then her ears do a little swivel as the sensation hits, her sudden movement arresting just as suddenly as her look morphs into shock, the tiniest of gasps escaping her as whatever she was about to yell at you died in her throat.

Then her eyes screw shut, her ears pinning back as she trembles slightly in your hold, teeth gritted with a light whimper as she does everything short of pushing you away, caught between wanting nothing to do with you and wanting so much more of what you were dishing out.

That phase lasts for the longest before she finally caves, her head plopping back down onto her pillow with a curt little snort, kicking up a small plume of loose feathers. Once again, she was refusing to look at you while doing a very poor job of hiding just how much she was enjoying the sensation of the ear scritches.

Which absolutely included the adorable little scrunch.

“Y-you haven’t won anything,” she huffs, trying and failing to sound tough. “You’ve just delayed your death.”

Your only response is an affirmative hum, a wordless little “whatever you say”. But anyone with a functioning occipital lobe could tell just how much this absolute cutie pie loved the attention.

While she calms down, you survey the domain of your bedroom. Or to be more precise, what was left of it. About the only thing that remained in serviceable condition was the custom projection clock on your nightstand, continuing to shine the time on the ceiling in binary: about quarter to six in the morning. So you still had fifteen minutes and change before the alarm went off. Plenty of time.

Everything else wasn’t nearly as lucky. All around, your shelves, desks, and stands had their contents rustled up or pulled out onto the floor in a heap. The fixtures mounted onto the walls were either crooked or missing. And the fan overhead barely hung on by the steel cord of its grounding strap, swinging gently in the air and determined to hold out for reinforcement.

The biggest casualty, of course, was the bed. The covers were all torn to shit, with some of the trapped clouds inside the mattress having escaped, pooling across the ceiling like smoke. The feathers inside most of the pillows had been ripped out, strewn all across the floor along with their cotton vessels. It was a testament to its quality that the bed remained as nice to sleep on as ever.

And that’s exactly what you did, crashing for the night with your eternally adorable co-commander. By some act of God, the remains of the duvet still managed to preserve what little decency the two of you had, your respective clothes having long since been ripped to shit and pulled off by the other party, in that order. For her part, she was splayed out on her back on the other side of the bed, still within easy reach of yours truly.

Well, looks like she’s a whole lot calmer now. Calm enough to talk? Only one way to find out!

“By the way,” you open with a smirk, “Good morning.”

“There’s nothing good about this morning,” she mutters back.

“Aww, don’t be like that!” you cheer, redoubling your itching efforts and drawing a light gasp out of your adorable little partner. “Didn’t I tell you that this was a no grumps allowed zone?”

“When I’m finished with Equestria,” she growls, more to convince herself instead of you, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Oh, yeah? Why wait?”

She barely has time to blink before you pull her over towards you, a light yelp leaving her as she’s plopped down on top of your chest, nose-to-nose with you.

“I’m right here, aren’t I?” you hum, the picture of smug certainty. “Naked, defenceless, not even fightin’ back! And it’s not like you need me to take Equestria, anyways! So why wait? Do it.”

The move takes her right off guard. She wasn’t expecting her silly little empty threats to get called out so directly, so soon. She blinks, splutters, stammers, more or less going through the whole tsundere spectrum in the span of a few seconds. Until finally, her entire expression drops to something much more uncertain, much more nervous.

Without another word, your hand brushes its way up along her neck and through her mane on its way back to her ears. The sudden start of the move makes her tense up, but she does wind up relaxing until the point they resumed working away on her ears, her head craning down and coming to rest on top of your chest.

The other hand strokes along her back, a pleased little hum escaping her as she adjusts herself to lay flat at an angle across your chest.

“Mm-hmm,” you hum, still smiling away. “That’s what I thought.”

Whatever she grumbled at you this time wasn’t really audible, so you let it slide while continuing to give Commander Cute here some much needed TLC.

Hm, you should probably get up soon. There’s still a lot to take care of today, and you still need to get the status update from the boys. On the other hand, well...

Five more minutes.

“How did you-- nngh... get away with hiding this from the Storm King?” she half-moans as you continue shampooing her mane.

“What do you mean, ‘hiding’? The big ugly dipshit only has eyes for the ‘gold and plunder’ kinda treasure.”

“Unbelievable. I could have-- aah! Just taken things for myself this whole time?”

“Aw, don’t sweat it. Tell ya what, I’ll give you first dibs on the loot at Canterlot. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds-- mmnh... long overdue.”

“See, now you’re talkin’!”

All she responds with is another pleased hum, trying her best to not get too overwhelmed with all of the sensations bombarding her. The awesome regen bath water, the dragon fruit scented bath bomb being dragon fruit scented, and of course, some of that aforementioned TLC courtesy of yours truly.

Bath time has a way of making folks way less prickly.

Tempest ducks her head under the water after you spent way more time than necessary cleaning that mane of hers, rinsing the shampoo out before coming back up. She lays down on her back across one of the water jet covered spots, cranking it to max and letting it do its thing while you recline in your own spot.

Things settle into a comfortable silence, save for the sounds of water jets. S’for the best, really. You’d gotten damn near forty minutes of cleaning in by now, and well over half of that was neither cleaning, nor PG-13. Man’s gotta have a break, sooner or later!

“So,” you say, breaking the silence, “Any big plans for the big day?”

“My plan is to win.”

“That ain’t really a plan, baby girl. More like a certainty.”

“I suppose you have plans then?”

Hell yes you do, but most of them aren’t for her to hear.

“Sure do,” you hum, “Sample the local goods, become the tickle fight grand champion, find a way to redo the royal throne room to my liking, send my enemies to the most adorable gulags in the land, oh the list goes on! I’m fuckin’ pumped for Equestria!”

“I don’t really care what you do while we’re there. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of my goals.”

With that, she sits up and climbs out of the bath, looking away with her nose turned up while she towels herself off.

“Just so you know,” she continues, “I’m coming back later tonight.”

“Ha! I knew it,” you laugh, cupping the back of your head with both hands, “The A-non remains irresistible!”

“For the bath,” she hisses, glaring daggers at you. “I need to be in top condition.”

“Whatever helps ‘ya sleep at night, babe,” you wink. “Though I can help with that too, if ‘ya like.”

“Are you trying to make me kill you?”

“Are you trying to be this cute, or does it just come natural?”

That earns you a faceful of wet towel from a now very red-faced mare, which you make no attempt to dodge or remove.

“Bastard,” she mutters.

“In the flesh, livin’ it up, not givin’ a fuck,” you chortle. “Although in your case--”

“Shut up!” she barks. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence!”

There was no stopping the long wheezes of laughter coming out of your pie hole, which got no reply other than one final flustered snort before she stomped her way out, the ding of the elevator heard shortly afterwards.

“Ahh,” you sigh to yourself, pulling the towel off your face and the plug out of the drain, “You’re a riot, Tempie.”

A more wistful sigh leaves your lips as you climb out of the tub and begin drying off.

“Shame you’ll be turning on me by the time the invasion’s all over.”

While yesterday and this morning were loads of fun, it also confirmed your suspicions about her. What you had on your hands was the tragic kind of villain, a good soul buried under a whole bunch of bad experiences. Which, unfortunately for you, meant that she could be turned from the dark side with a single new friend. And friendship was precisely what your enemy specialized in.

Oh, you had zero intentions of stopping her. You knew in your bones that she was gonna turn good, and no amount of uphill battles with Sod on your part was gonna stop that. While it was yet another big push towards Plan B being all but required by now, there was no point in trying to mess with things beyond your control. Not when you had plenty of things within your control that demanded attention.

Like, for instance, your new message.

Backup bath robe now on, you head over to the intercom panel next to the elevator and buzz the maintenance guys, grabbing the note hidden inside the loose speaker grille.

“Sorry to bug you boys, but I need me some cleanup crews here. And one of the spare beds.”

Your smile grows three sizes more evil as you read off the note’s contents.

All according to keikaku.

Author's Note

Keikaku means "plan".

Klendathu Drop

A low whistle comes a’whistlin’ outta your pie hole as you peer through the telescope, your magnified cone of vision trained squarely onto Canterlot. Place looked great in the pictures already, and the place looked even better from afar like this. Can’t wait to see it up close and personal! But alas, you’re not manning the telescope for sight-seeing; you’re here to take stock of who’s present and accounted for at the city itself.

And wouldn’t you know it, your attack seems to have come at the perfect time: there’s an imperial shitload of ponies gathered up at the city for some kind of big celebration. In terms of troops, they looked well-decorated and well-armed, but their stances betrayed their lack of real experience. Not surprising, seeing how that more or less lines up with what the dossier had said about the Royal Guards.

But man alive, they were all so cute! Even the boys were cutie patooties!

“So tell me something, Anonymous,” you heard Tempest remark off to your side, no doubt still flicking through your dossier on the princesses. “How is it that you are taking this more seriously than the Storm King is?”

“Because I take pride in my work,” you reply with a smile, still peering through the telescope. “That, and I like takin’ every advantage I can get. Makes the curbstomps feel so much better.”

Well, that and the fact that the Storm King is a raging dipshit, but no need to voice that. That comes later.

“Well I can’t deny that this is very helpful. So thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, babe!” you chirp, flashing a thumbs-up in her general direction. “Oop, hang on, I think I can see ‘em now.”

Oh yeah, those are definitely the princesses. Looks like they just came out of their big flashy palace to see to whatever wack-ass celebration they’re holding. All four, present and accounted for. And it looks like Twilight’s doing a musical number with... Oh, that’s convenient! There’s the other Elements of Harmony!

“Oh yeah,” you croon, smiling nice and big. “Everyone’s attending this party.”

“Let me see.”

You do just that, standing aside so she could use the deck-mounted telescope herself. Which gave you plenty of time to fully appreciate just how fucking awful this situation was. Come the fuck on, everyone you need to neutralize all being in the same place at the same time, just begging to be toppled like a row of dominoes? Nuh-uh, this has Finagle’s dirty rat bastard fingerprints all the fuck over it.

Oh sure, you have zero doubts that you were gonna take the city and neutralize most of the other targets; the same thing happened with the hippogriffs, after all! But the hippogriff royalty sure did escape real easy, didn’t they? Something’s gonna go wrong, that much was certain. Now, going off of precedent, context clues, and gut instinct? All the signs point to your most likely escapee candidates being the Elements.

So yeah, you know who you’re focusing on.

“You’re right,” Tempest pipes up, wearing a smile of her own. “They are all there. That’s very thoughtful of them.”

“Right?” you reply, maintaining your smile.

She pulls away from the telescope to look at you, looking noticeably less pissy than she usually is. “Let’s wrap this up quickly. The sooner I get what I want, the sooner I can enjoy all of the spoils of war.”

“Fine by me. Let’s boogie.”

With that, the pair of you head up from the ship’s bow to the captain’s nest. Tempest mans the intercom and radio, issuing the orders to mobilize, while you go ahead and activate the extra-strength storm generator. This model’s got all the extra trimmings; more specifically, the power to create it’s own fuckhuge storm cloud cover. Which, of course, it does. And pretty effectively, too. If there’s one thing you’ll give the Storm King credit for, it’s that he sure knows his storm magic.

Hell, this whole ship’s got all the trimmings, and then some. The King wasn’t willing to divvy up his only two super-warships between you two, insisting on keeping one and making you two share the other. Last-minute decision, of course. Because he’s a jackass like that. Normally that would have been a cooperative disaster, but Tempest became a lot more agreeable after spending all of that post-showdown quality time with you. Y’know, both in and out of magical regenerating bath time. Turns out that half of her attitude problems were down to not getting laid a whole lot. Real shocker.

Still, that newfound understanding translated efficiently into being a better co-op partner. Both you and your boys were, in a rare twist of fate, getting along swimmingly with both her, and her troops. Good thing too, ‘cause you were gonna need some efficient teamwork to make finer mincemeat out of the pony forces.

Finishing up your respective tasks, the two of you head down below deck where the unloading ramp was and get ready for the big, showy reveal. Grubber was already there, of course, practising his speech. You knew Biggs and Wedge were here somewhere as well, hanging out in the crowd of fully armed and operational storm beasts. A shame Cid couldn’t join the party, but that’s okay. He’ll be here for the after-party.

And, if things go your way, you’ll get to see him during the first meeting.

You and Tempest spend most of your prep time warming up and double-checking your gear. The magic deflection properties of the armour plating in particular were going to be mighty useful against an enemy that primarily relies on magic, especially if your previous throw-down with Tempest was anything to go off of. Really, the only thing you felt needed double-checking was your pouch of Obsidian Spheres. Twelve shots, all accounted for.

Yeah, it’s pre-game paranoia, you know that. But it never hurts to be sure!

A few dull CRASHes reverberate throughout the ship’s hull as it collides with some stone, no doubt caused by some of those fancy pillars getting in the way of the landing. It was also both a great showcase of the ship’s armour quality, and a great indicator that it was almost game time.

“Alright ladies,” you call out, giving your knuckles a good crack-a-lackin’, “You ready for war?”

Half the room erupts into a chorus of cheers. The other half simply nods in acknowledgement.

“That’s what I like to hear!”

“Just keep it together until we give the signal,” Tempest remarks. “Then you can all have your fun.”

That time, all of the room grunts and nods their acknowledgement. All of the boys definitely felt the change in dynamic between you two, but knew better than to ask.

The momentum of the ship lurches to a stop, prompting you to nod to Grubber. He throws the lever controlling the main ramp, the metal groaning and the pneumatics hissing as it deploys into the freshly overcast plaza, the cool air from outside rushing into the bay with a light whoosh and stirring up some of the intentionally generated ominous fog cover. The ramp finishes deploying, hitting the stone of the ground with a resounding metallic CLUNK, and Grubber wastes no time in booting the roll of red carpet down the ramp, grabbing his funny little jack-in-the-box megaphone thing, and strutting on down to give his little speech.

Already, you could see the shapes of guard ponies scrambling into position from your angle. Heh, not that it was gonna help them.

“Ponies of Equestria,” you hear Grubber announce, putting those public speaking lessons of yours to solid use, “We come before you today on behalf of the one, the only, the fearsome and the powerful, Storm King!”

Fearful murmurs from the Equestrian peanut gallery. Good. Love to hear it.

“And now, without further ado, please put your hooves together for the terrifying Commander Tempest, and the mighty Commander Anonymous!”

With a small nod to one another, the pair of you get your game faces on and start strutting your way down the ramp. She put a little fizzle into her horn for good measure, and you made do with cracking your neck. Won’t lie, it was a tough call between either walking down normally or walking down like an anime villain, but in this particular instance, you settled on the normal approach.

Sure enough, the Royal Guard had all formed up in a semicircle around the ramp, spears pointed out and at the ready. At the head of those guards was one Shining Armour, a figure briefly touched on in your dossier. Apparently his schtick was “Twilight’s brother,” “Cadance’s husband,” “captain of the guard,” and... Nope, that was about it.

Far more interesting were said sister and wife, accompanied by the celestial sisters and encircled with guards of their own, all regarding you two with no shortage of shock. The Elements were nearby, too, and you could see the little dragon Spike muttering something to Twilight.

Shit, that’s right. Spike’s a dragon, isn’t he? That’s going to be an annoying trait to deal with come capture time.

Celestia is the first to speak up, taking a few steps forward. “Tempest, was it? And Anonymous? Is there a particular reason you have come here today?”

Holy shit, the dossier didn’t mention her having the voice of a total dommy mommy. How many of her subjects developed a complex from hearing her voice all the time, you wonder?

“Pleased to meet’cha, your majesties!” you reply with gusto and enthusiasm aplenty, complete with a little bow. “We’re here to take over your nation, enslave your people, and steal all of your magic!”

Aha, there’s the panicked and fearful murmuring from the crowd you’ve waited for!

“We’re on something of a tight schedule,” Tempest adds, “So make this easy on yourselves, and offer us your surrender now.”

Hot damn, she’s puttin’ on her bedroom voice for this one. Nicely done!

“Well at least they’re honest,” you overhear Princess Luna murmur to her sister.

“Haha, yeah, hi there!” Twilight pipes up, walking forward a bit. “Noooooot really sure what this is all about, but I’m sure we can talk things out!”

“I just told you what this is all about,” you reply, quirking an eyebrow. “Where’s the ambiguity in ‘take over your nation, enslave your people, and steal all of your magic,’ exactly?”

“Yeah, erm, could you maybe, y’know, not do that? Please?”

“No can do, sorry,” you shrug. “I’m contractually obligated to subjugate you gals. And even if I wasn’t, I’d do it anyways. Just for funsies.”

Something about that last part really set off that Pinkie Pie character, causing her to start shaking like crazy off in the back.

“And besides. We didn’t come here to talk,” said Tempest. “We came here to accomplish.”

Taking the lead, Tempest struts further down the ramp, continuing to speak.

“Listen closely, ladies. Just like the man said, we need your magic. Now, give it up nicely, please. Or we make this difficult.”

“The pair of you certainly have some nerve,” Princess Luna cuts in, taking centre stage. “Have you the faintest notion of who it is that you are threatening right now?”

“Do you?” you chuckle.

Credit where it’s due, that petite cutie of a lunar princess sure could sound intimidating. Too bad intimidation doesn’t really work on you. And judging from her facial expression, she wasn’t really expecting you to have replied that quickly, much less with your level of confidence.

“Lemmie guess,” you continue, striding down the ramp with the exaggerated swagger of a Bond villain. “There’s two of us, and hundreds of you? That about the gist of where you’re going with this?”

She wasn’t looking all that confident anymore.

“Sorry to break it to ‘ya, your highness, but that doesn’t even qualify this as an even match-up.”

You give your knuckles a little crack, prompting the entire fucking line of guards to point their spears in your general direction. Luna was joined by her sister, giving the former a much needed confidence boost.

“You may find this ‘lopsided match-up’ to be much more difficult than you are imagining,” Celestia says, noting the threatening tone she took.

“Oh good,” Tempest hums off to the side, looking your way briefly. “I was hoping they’d choose ‘difficult’.”

Shooting her a little smile, you let an evil chuckle rumble through your throat as you look over the royals. “Y’know, you’re not the first kingdom to say that.”

A snap of your fingers later, and your side’s opening move begins. Seeing your opponents react to the huge wall of airships pouring out of the cloud cover was always one of the best parts of launching invasions, and this time was no exception. The younger princesses in particular looked especially spooked by the sudden numerical swing in your advantage, and the inexperience of their guards couldn’t have been more obvious than at this exact moment, their looks of shock telling you everything you needed to know.

“And you won’t be the last,” you close.

Storm beast boots hit the ground from up above as they airdrop in from the ships, and the side ramps of your super-warship flip open, allowing your elites to swarm on down. With another brief nod to one another, you and Tempest launch into a dead run and a huge overhead jump respectively, barrelling down towards your royal targets with a vengeance.

You bowl through the pitiful guard line before you, knocking the guards dumb enough to block your path flat on their ass as their spears do all of jack and shit against your armour, bouncing off like they were pebbles. The only thing that does stop you is a magical shield, conjured up by that Shining guy and enclosing you in a tight little bubble.

Sadly for him, his brief flash of satisfaction morphed into shock and horror as you whirled towards him and introduced his shield to one of your Obsidian Spheres, touching it to it’s surface and giving him a little taste of their very handy shield-breaking qualities. A few seconds of that was all it took to break it like glass, and you launch the Sphere at him proper before he can recover, taking out one of many annoying obstacles in your path.

With no time to waste, you continue your death run towards the royals, just in time to catch Tempest drop-kicking one of her own Spheres against that Cadance, who had also tried in vain to block it with a shield. As she struggles in vain against her current status of rapid petrification, the other three princesses flap their wings and fan out, taking to the skies. Too far away for a throw, unfortunately. They don’t waste any time either, getting right to work with those magical laser blasts.

Tempest lands next to you, falling into formation as you both dodge and weave around the laser blasts, contemplating your next moves. Their attacks and movements become much more restricted, however, as your troops begin to take possession of the battlefield, lobbing spears and firing crossbows up at them. Only Twilight summons up a shield to block them, the celestial sisters opting to dodge and weave their way around them, just like you two were.

The patterns in their moves were starting to become apparent to you. Celestia’s turning speed and manoeuvrability was the slowest of the royals, but she made up for it by staying super high up in the air, circling around out of harm's way and blasting away like a magical AC-130. Luna was the fastest, and preferred to swoop down and dive-bomb your forces with big magical wave attacks, clearing them out like a snow plow. Twilight was the worst flyer of the three, idling a lot in the air as she turtled behind her shield and tried to focus on supporting her co-rulers and friends.

And with that knowledge, came openings for Sphere chucking.

“Give me a boost,” Tempest calls out. “I can reach Celestia that way!”

“Comin’ right up,” you holler back.

Grabbing her by the barrel, you launch high up into the air with the strongest jump you can muster. Bracing her hindlegs against your chest, she uses you as a platform to jump off of, launching herself towards Celestia like a guided missile and sending you flying back down to the ground. Looking away briefly in order to nail your landing, you look back up just in time to see a rapidly petrifying Celestia dropping back down to Earth, yelling and flailing about as she fell.

Predictably, Luna ceased her current attack in order to save her sister from her hot date with the concrete. But Tempest wasn’t slacking off during her own freefall down to Earth, using the distraction to lob another Sphere down from up on high. She timed it just right, the Sphere impacting against a very surprised lunar princess just as she caught her sister’s statue and gave it a gentle landing.

Your attention, however, was on the purple princess of the bunch. Once you were back on your feet, you sprinted your way towards her, a Sphere queued up in your grasp and ready to chuck. She saw you coming too late, the Sphere having already left your hand and halfway through the air to hit her. Out of desperation, she tries redirecting her shield to block against it, but even with her impressive pool of magic to call on, it only manages to stop it for all of seven seconds.

But then, fast enough that you’d miss it if you so much as blinked, a rainbow blur shot through the sky just as her shield broke, intercepting the princess and pulling her out of the Sphere’s path as it arcs through the open air and collides with some gray, derpy-eyed pegasus off in the distance.

Of course. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? That Rainbow Dash pony was noted as having a habit of last-minute saves, and sure enough, there she was again.

You can see Tempest racing towards you in the distance, but you don’t have time to regroup with her; your efforts are focused on pursuing your two runaway Elements before that rainbow contrail of theirs fades away and their aerial trail goes cold. You commit the trail to memory as you continue to sprint after them, leaping up on top of a building and parkouring across the rooftops at one point during the chase. The trail stops near the side of one of the river banks, revealing the entire Element posse plus one Spike the dragon.

They hear you jumping down to continue your pursuit, and as a group, they take off across a bridge over the river towards the train station, where one of the trains was beginning to move out of the station. They try for that train first, but are stopped by a familiar bolt of unstable lightning firing overhead, detonating against the engine car and derailing the train in a very explosive fashion.

They skid to a halt before the burning wreck just as Tempest finishes catching up to you, leaping down from the rooftops next to you and panting with exertion, much like you were. The Elements plus dragon make to run back across the bridge, but quickly divert their course once they see the two of you charging down that same bridge, taking off down the train tracks.

“You weren’t joking,” Tempest pants. “Those six are the hardest to catch.”

“Man, I hate being right,” you pant back.

Your chase continues down the train bridge, the six ponies and their plus one continuing to do a great job of keeping their distance. Digging through your armour, you pull out your pre-loaded flare gun and fire it skyward, marking your location for rapid airship support with a red flare. Your pursuit along the bridge takes you straight out of Canterlot, but their run came to a dead stop once the stone bridge of the Canterlot approach gave way to the timber trestle bridge of the rest of the mountain railway line, leaving them with no ground to run on save for the widely spaced railroad ties - too wide for them to just hop, skip, and jump across.

Even if they wanted to take their chances hopping across the sleepers, your airship support came in at just the right time to prevent that; one ship landed right on top of the trestle bridge, collapsing part of it and blocking their path. Three more ships hovered their way into position, blocking off the aerial escape routes with plenty of crossbow-wielding storm beasts up on deck, ready to fire.

The two of you slow your roll, dropping to a brisk walk as all seven of them back themselves up against the open bridge, Twilight keeping a shield powered up over them as they face towards you both. A fair few of them - Spike, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie - panic-whisper to one another, no doubt debating about what they should do now.

“Not gonna lie,” you call out to them, idly juggling a Sphere around in your left hand. “That was quite the workout you gave us there! But it’s the end of the line for you gals.”

“Make this easy on yourselves,” Tempest adds, “And come quietly.”

They don’t respond, but it’s easy to see that they’re all nervous as hell, with Twilight in particular sweating bullets. Spike does a big ‘epiphany’ face, and you pay extra attention to him as he points down, straight towards--

The river.

“Fuck,” you hiss, catching your Sphere. “They’re going for the river!”

Tempest responds by bolting forwards towards them, readying her own Sphere. Calling out to the airships to open fire, you jump down off the bridge first, angling your approach towards the mountain face. Summoning your inner Neo, you run down and along it’s steep slope, fishing for an angle to catch the escaping princess with your Sphere.

By the time Tempest boots her Sphere towards Twilight, they’ve already taken the plunge, jumping down off the bridge and towards the raging river underneath as both crossbow bolts and the smoke cloud of her Sphere impact against their previous position.

They realize too late that you were waiting for them, and the Sphere leaves your hand, screwballing straight towards Twilight.

Spike, riding shotgun on her back, cries out with a loud, protracted “no” as he jumps off and towards the sphere, where he fucking takes the hit and saves her, damn it damn it, damn it!

They fall too fast for you to pursue, and the cliff face becomes too steep for you to Neo across without going into a freefall yourself, forcing you to punch into the mountainside to stop yourself. A huge gouge is scalloped out of the rock face as your momentum comes to a stop, and all you can do is hang out from your vantage point as the Elements and a notably not petrifying Spike plummet into the river.

Fuck you, Murphy. Fuck you, fuck your mother, and fuck your Marker. You hope he fucking dies in a high-speed car crash, and failing that, that he falls head-first and gets his neck cracked. And you especially hope that his fuck-buddy Sod has some beautiful children that die from cancer, and that he ends up catching Zika when his wife gets pregnant.

After punching the rock face with your free hand out of anger, you punch it once again out of need as you begin rock-climbing your way back up the mountain. You eventually get high up enough to jump back down onto the bridge, and you land right next to a similarly fuming Tempest. Who was also busy glaring down at the river.

“What are you all standing there for?!” she snaps at the airships. “Follow the river! After them! Now!”

The airships kick into gear as quick as they can, screaming off towards their watery destination. Taking a moment to suck in a deep breath - through the nose and out the mouth - she calms herself enough to at least hold a conversation.

“I didn’t think they would be that hard to catch,” she grumbles. “We need to get down there, now. Before they get away.”

“Don’t bother,” you sigh, voice still dripping with piss and vinegar as you squat next to her, joining her in staring at the river. “This damn river has a ton of forks, and they could be anywhere along one of them. For now, they have gotten away.”

“Then what, exactly, do you propose we do?”

“Secure the rest of the city. Then rest for a bit.”

“What?! Why?”

“You can’t plan when you’re tired and pissed off, babe. Believe me, I’ve tried.” You let out a tired sigh as you continue talking. “We’ll find ‘em. There’s only so many places they can go.”

“Unbelievable,” she snorts, more to herself than to you. “This close, and they still got away...!”

“C’mon,” you say, letting out a tired groan as you stand back upright. “Let’s get out of here.”

She complies after a moment’s pause, falling in next to you as you walk back towards the smoking city, the airships still lumbering above it.

Man. Even though you knew something like this was gonna happen, it still puts an entire bald-faced hornet’s nest in your bonnet.

Hours later...

“Please, no!” the mint-coloured mare squealed in a mix of laughter and horror. “Not like this! Not like this, I’m not ready! Nooohohooooo!”

Her pleas fall on deaf ears as you continue to assault her cute little tum-tum with your bare hands, her hooves kicking around wildly as she twists and squirms in your lap. Funnily enough, despite all of the flailing and protesting, she never makes a serious escape attempt in spite of your poor hold on her and the notable lack of guards.

Your eyes turn to the cages full of other captive ponies, all looking on at your adorable debauchery with varying degrees of shock and horror.

“How about it, ladies?” you ask of the other captives with a big smile on your face. “Still plenty of open positions for the role of personal servant!”

Might be crazy for thinking this, but you think the chorus of angry and horrified shrieks is supposed to be a “no”.

“Eh, suit yourselves,” you shrug, looking back down at your minty servant-to-be with an evil grin. “Just means that there’s more for you.”

“I already gave uuuhuhuuuup!”

“I know you did. You wanna know what else I know?” You lower your head down towards her, whispering directly into her ear. “That you’re secretly enjoying this.”

She gasps loudly, pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks as her body freezes up for a brief moment. Whether that was from your words or from itching a real tender spot on her tummy was a multiple choice question everyone knew the answers to.

Aw shit, you just noticed the time. Damn it.

“Welp,” you announce to your captive audience with a shrug of your shoulders. “As much as I’d like to keep doling out the early bird rewards, I’ve got work to do.”

Your hands clear the path down to her belly button, your head following the approach vector to navel city.

“No, please!” she yelps. “Anything but that!”

phhhhhhhhbbbbttt

All the little pony could do against your horrifying raspberry assault against the capital of tum-tum valley was scream and thrash. Within seconds, she lost the energy to do even that much, squealing and shuddering instead.

By the time you were finished with her, she was nothing more but a limp, shivering mess of mare in your hold. Small rivulets of tears leaked down her glazed eyes along with a small stream of drool from her big, goofy smile, complete with the occasional giggle-hiccup escaping her throat.

Oh, and a large portion of your captives had fainted on the spot. But the morbidly interested looks of some of them hadn’t escaped your notice. Definitely committing them to memory for later.

“Oh yeah,” you chortle. “You’re a keeper.”

Clipping her new collar into place, you lower her back down into her new pet carrier home with a parting pet before turning to leave the improvised prisoner block, slipping your gauntlets back on as you went. Getting handsy with your POW’s was just the pick-me-up your formerly grouchy ass needed, more than enough to keep you in high spirits as you strode your way through the newly conquered plaza to the castle proper, where Tempest was no doubt hanging out.

Nonconsensual tickling and serial petting notwithstanding, seeing all of the big, Mordor-style lines of chained-up ponies being led around by the storm beasts threatened to crack your smile in two for the second time today. You have absolutely no idea why the Storm King had such a raging hate-stiffy for all things cute and adorable, and seeing this ongoing display of teenage edginess done in his name was nothing short of absurd to you. You!

Like seriously, did he get rejected by some cute storm girl when he was in high school or something? Is this some kind of protracted revenge against his teenage traumatizers? Hell, you’d believe it. He sure as shit still acts like a moody teenager, no surprise his goals would be those of one, too. You’d even put fifty bucks down on him fighting to eliminate the horrifying threat of cooties while he’s at it, too.

Just one of many things that’ll be changing once your ass is on that throne of his.

The elite guards protecting the door - a large chunk of them wearing the discreet little lapel pins marking them as turncoats to your side - saluted and opened the huge castle doors as you approached, quickly shutting them behind you as you stride inside and towards the throne room.

Three out of four princess statues greeted you there, already taken from their former resting places and arranged in a little circle around the room’s central dais thing. Still, you can’t help but let your eyes drift on over towards the Twilight Sparkle-sized vacancy in the circle.

A big part of you wants to be angry over Twilight managing to get away, but the A-non doesn’t get mad. He gets even. Sadistic, even. Good thing you already had a provisional plan ready to roll for the occasion! God bless Wedge and his documentation skills, honestly.

But first, you need to find your co-op partner. Who just so happened to be through the curtain doors behind the thrones, leading to the high-up royal balcony overlooking the big plaza you’d made first contact in. There she was, gazing out across the balcony at the sights and sounds of conquest.

“There ‘ya are!” you cheer with a clap of your hands. “Had a feeling you’d be up here.”

“You’re late,” she states without looking back at you.

“For what, the magic Skype call?” you scoff. “The big bad Storm Dipshit is always at least ten minutes late to those. I’m perfectly on schedule, thank you very much.”

She only responds with the traditional snort of annoyance as you close the distance and take up position next to her, peering down the balcony at the sight below.

It was somehow even uglier up here than when you were watching down on the ground.

“What are we supposed to tell him?” she asks, the trace amounts of fear in her voice not escaping your notice.

“We tell him that the city’s ours, of course!” you cheer. “And that we bagged 75% of the princesses! Even by med school standards, that’s a passing grade!”

“That’s not what I mean! What do we say about Twilight?”

“Oh, her?” you chuckle. “Leave that to me.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to lie to him?”

“I always lie to him, babe. Same way he always lies to us!”

Her head turns to face you, unsure of what you meant by that. But you were already backing away from the railing by then, walking back towards the throne room.

“C’mon, let’s get this over with.”

The two of you assemble around the centre of the room where the statues were, with you leaning up against the Celestia statue like the baller you were. The doors to the throne room open a few minutes later, with Grubber and a pair of elite storm beasts - one of them a defector - walking on in. The shortest one of the trio carried the Skype potion.

Man, thirteen minutes late to his own fucking meeting, and on invasion day no less. This guy has zero sense of urgency. Whatever happened to business before pleasure?

“Heya, boss!” Grubber waves.

“’Sup, lil’ G?” you shoot back with a wink and a finger-gun. “How’d the pantry raid go?”

“Oh it was so good!” he all but drools. “Boss, you’ve gotta come by and try the sponge cake they’ve got--”

fzzzzZZZZTT

And there goes Tempest with the horn-borne Sith Lord display, shutting him up and accelerating his walk to the basin of water in the middle of the statue ring. He pours the potion out into it, the blue cloud of Skype magic billowing up as the Storm King’s ugly mug materializes inside of it.

Well, the back of it, anyways. How someone boomers up magic is beyond you.

“Where am I supposed to be looking? I never understood how this spell works. Tempest!”

Tempest made to answer, but you were faster.

“Heeeeeeere, hoggy-hoggy-hoggy!” you mock in the worst Southern accent imaginable, “Suuuuuuuuuuuuu~ey!”

Miraculously, his fumbling came to a swift stop the second you started making fun of him, the disingenuous dipshit instantly turning to face you with a furious glare. Amazing how that works, huh? Oh, and wouldn’t you know it, he looks extra pissy with you today. Couldn’t possibly have been because of Cid leaking some information to him on purpose. Of course not, that’d be silly.

“You’re lucky I still need you, commander,” he hisses. “Otherwise--”

“Oww, ow-ow-ouch!” you recoil in faux pain, rubbing your back. “Sorry, back cramp!”

“Back cramp?”

“Yeah, it’s really hard on my back, having to carry your entire plan like this! God, I hope they’ve got ice packs here!”

“Listen here, you little bastard!” he bellows, all ready and fixin’ to holler.

“In the flesh, on my grind, and working nine-to-five!” you shrug with a smile.

“Enough!” Tempest shouts.

“What?” you faux-complain, unable to keep from grinning. “He started it!”

“I don’t care who started it,” she snarls, “I’ll finish it!”

“What, right here? In front of the boss-man?” you titter, girly hand motions and all. “Ooh guuuurl, I didn’t think you were into that exhibition shit. I like it!”

The embarrassed blush across her face was the only warning you got.

fzzZZZAP

You reach out in an instant and snatch the lightning bolt right out of the air, it’s power coursing and crackling along the metal of your gauntlet. Then, with a quick flick of your wrist, you redirect the bolt through the distant curtain door with pinpoint accuracy. An explosion and what you swear is a Wilhelm scream rings out in the distance a few seconds after. The entire motion doesn’t take more than a few seconds, and leaves Tempest one very surprised mare. After all, she never saw you do that during your big throw-down.

“Careful there, Commander,” you intone with a large degree of seriousness, the smile on your face remaining even as you blow the smoke from your fingertips away. “Wouldn’t want to damage the merchandise, now would we?”

“No,” the Storm King finally pipes up all threatening-like, “You wouldn’t. Not if either of you knows what’s good for you.”

“I know what ‘ya mean, boss-man,” you hum with a shrug, casually rolling your shoulders. “Hard to find good, trustworthy help these days, am I right?”

His eye definitely twitched. How you were able to keep the shit-eating grin off of your face in spite of that reaction is a mystery you don’t care to discover the answer to.

“I certainly hope that the two of you have good news to report.”

“‘Course we do! Who do ‘ya think you’re talking to here? We came, we saw, we conquered. Ain’t that right, Tempie?”

“Yes,” Tempest finally says to the King, looking away from you and stowing her no doubt numerous questions for the moment. “The entire city is ours. Can’t really say it was all that hard, either.”

“And those princesses?”

Tempest hesitated in answering, leaving you the perfect opening to butt in.

“Numero quattro out of four hadn’t shown up to the city yet,” you lie like the smooth criminal you always were. “Turns out they were still in that Ponyville place. We’d be busy chasing their asses down right now if you hadn’t dragged us into this call.”

“Are you blaming me for your lack of progress, commander?” he hisses, clearly not liking the implications of your statement.

“Goddamn right I am,” you continue, allowing some of your frustrations from the pursuit to spice up your sentence. “And if they do give us the slip because of this waste of fucking time, I’m blaming you for that, too. Just so that we’re crystal clear.”

Ahh, the impotent, barely contained rage of a banana dictator. Few things are as sugary sweet in life. Apparently Grubber and Tempest both disagree, seeing how the former is shivering and taking cover behind one of the statues, and the latter is more or less gaping at your brazen back-talking.

“I suggest,” he hisses through his teeth. “That you get on top of this right away.”

“Oh I’d love to, believe me, but there’s this long-ass call I’m on with this loud, obnoxious asshole who just can’t--”

“Give us three days,” Tempest cuts in, recomposing herself for the not-camera while trying to avoid another verbal armageddon between you and the King. “We’ll have everything taken care of by the time you arrive.”

“You had better,” the King all but growls, his anger lasered onto her now. “Don’t you forget, now. Only I have the power to make you whole.”

He brings the Staff of Sacanas into view at last. You had expected him to start waving that thing around a lot more, but you guess your hot bantz were just more appealing than a weather-affecting magic staff of mass destruction missing most of it’s true power.

“Make this twig work, and you’ll get your reward,” he continues. “Fail me, and your horn won’t be the only--”

“Oh sweet mother o’ mercy, Jesus H. Christ,” you groan, pinching the bridge of your nose in legitimately annoyance. “For once in your fucking life, can you find a better incentive for her than her horn?”

Huh, guess that must’ve been the last straw for his temper. Not that you could see him launch into his apoplectic rage fit, given that the call decided to cut out mere seconds into his hollerin’.

“H-heheheh,” Grubber pipes up, nervous as all hell. “G-guess we got bad service out here. Y-you, uh, want me to call him back?”

“Hell no,” you chuckle. “Let him stew. If the dumb fuck wants something done fast, he’d better learn to start doin’ it himself. We, meanwhile, will be doing this right.”

You stop leaning against the Celestia statue, striding on over towards Grubber and kneeling down to his level.

“Do me a couple’a solids. First, prepare our ship. We’ve got some vagabond heroes to hunt down. Second, bring some of that cake. I’m dyin’ to see how it tastes.”

“On it, boss!”

Throwing up a salute, he takes off with the kind of speed only food motivation can bring out of a man, his two accompanying elite guards struggling for a beat to catch up. But sure enough, it’s not long before you and your co-commander are once again left by your lonesomes in the throne room, statuesque company notwithstanding. As for her expression? It couldn’t decide whether it was angry with you, or confused by you.

“Since when could you do that?” she asks, though the question sounds more like a demand to your ears.

“Do what?”

“You know what I’m talking about! How did you deflect my magic like that?”

“Oh, that? I always save some skills for emergencies.” you chortle, waggling your fingers as your grin returns to it’s rightful place on your lovely mug. “And that wasn’t even the coolest one!”

“And you didn’t think it was important to--?!” she starts, before stomping the ground in a huff. “Raagh, forget it!”

“S’for the best, really. What ‘ya don’t know, can’t hurt you!”

And more importantly, what she doesn’t know can’t compromise her performance. Like knowing your real endgame for this invasion, or knowing about the Storm King’s plan to stab both her and you in the back once you’ve both secured the power sources for the Staff of Sacanas. Right now, you needed peak performance Tempest, not melancholy betrayed Tempest.

But no need to dwell on that now. Not when you’ve got an annoyed pony to shoot the breeze with!

“Just... tell me that we know where those ponies are going.”

“No idea,” you shrug.

“Of course,” she grumbles.

“But!” you pipe up, raised finger and all, “I’ve got a good list of all the possible places they could be. All we’ve gotta do is search ‘em in order!”

“And if they’re not in any of those places?”

“Then we hit up Klugetown, of course!”

Tempest tilts her head in confusion. “Klugetown? Why would they go there?”

“There’s only two reasons people end up in that Godforsaken shithole, babe. Either they’re horribly lost, or they’re the scum of the earth. And there’s a damn good chance that they are, in point of fact, horribly lost.”

“How?”

“Ahh, now that’s the question! Are they lost and trying to find somewhere, or lost and trying to find something? Like, for instance, anyone and anything that can help them out of their current predicament?”

“Hm. Fair enough. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s something.”

“You’re always welcome to suggest a better one,” you wink.

She looks away from you, unwilling to answer that question. “How long is it going to take to search every place on that list of yours?”

“If we’re quick? A day and a half, give or take.”

“Then let’s get moving.”

And off she goes, speed-trotting towards the exit. You follow behind at a leisurely pace, chuckling to yourself.

So far, so good. Only thing to do now is see how long this wild goose chase goes on for.

Significant Other

“Well it’s about time you sluggards got here!” the Storm King yells to his underlings as he stepped off of his ship, swiftly changing to muttering: “Idiots, the lot of them!”

Ahh. If Cid’s master were here, he would have no doubt begun relentlessly mocking the Storm King for the incalculable irony of those statements and sentiments. Alas, he is not here, but instead quite occupied with other matters.

Cid followed along behind the King as he stormed down the ramp into the darkened, overcast, and thoroughly conquered city of Canterlot. He did not know that Cid was here with him, of course: he was disguised as one of his elite guards, and was paired with another guard who, sadly, was not loyal to his master. That had the potential to complicate matters, but he was not short on plans to deal with that unfortunate happenstance.

After all, his master was not the only one who laid plans for success.

Most of the scenery passed him by with little notice, as did the Storm King’s unbalanced and bipolar ravings at the sights along his path. He said nothing of substance that he had not already heard from him a thousand times over.

No, it was only once they had arrived at the palace and passed into the throne room, filled with three of the four Equestrian princesses frozen in stone, that the Storm King said anything worth noting.

“Now, I hate repeating myself, so I’m only going to say this once,” he began, turning to fix Cid and the other guard with an annoyed glare. “Once the good commander Anonymous returns to the city, you’re going to find him, apprehend him, and bring him to me. Understand?”

Cid nodded his acknowledgement immediately, though his partner started at the implications of his words before quickly nodding alongside him.

“Good. You’ll be using these.”

He pulls free two pairs of storm beast sized gauntlets, obviously enchanted with storm magic. Cid knew what they were right away, of course, even before he and his unknowing partner took them: jailer’s gauntlets. They electrified anything living that they grasped on the wearer’s command, and could weave chains and manacles of lightning as well, ‘leashed’ to the gauntlets.

That would have been more concerning if Cid didn’t already know about his master’s unique interactions with magic. And, therefore, knew that they would never work against him.

“Keep watch for his ship. Intercept him as he disembarks. If that stupid little Tempest tries to interfere, capture her as well. Is that clear?”

Cid nods once again. The other guard does so as well, but too slowly and with too much visible nervousness for the King’s liking. Which he rewards with a swift, enraged punch to the guard’s stomach, causing him to double over in pain and nearly drop to his knees.

“If you know what’s good for you,” he all but screams into the downed guard’s face, “You’ll get your head in the game and do as I say!”

Another foalish temper tantrum to add to the pile. How typical.

“Now get out, both of you!” he bellows, this time unslinging the Staff of Sacanas from his back and waving it around in the air. “Start keeping an eye out for that traitorous snake, and leave me alone! Honestly, what does a beast have to do to get some privacy?!”

Cid didn’t need to be told twice, simply saluting and leaving. Hot on his heels was the other guard, thoroughly terrified and still recovering from that blow. Indeed, he was so frightened that he didn’t think twice about following Cid into the pre-prepared alleyway deep within the city, whereupon he was jumped and beaten unconscious by more storm beasts. Chief among them was none other than Biggs, freshly returned from his time at the front lines with his master.

After some triumphant laughter and an exchange of high-fives with his fellows, Biggs has them strip the unconscious elite’s armour off for himself. While they do that, he and Cid shake hands, followed by Biggs relaying his report.

Everything was on track so far, and his master had tracked the princess and her friends to Klugetown. Now they were pursuing them to Mt. Aris, and expected to have her captured shortly.

Nodding, Cid informs everybeast in attendance that everything is on schedule, and to continue playing their roles. With agreement all around, they all disembark to do their duty, taking the unconscious elite with them for safekeeping. That left Biggs and Cid to walk out of the alleyway, fully disguised and ready to play their own roles out.

It was then that Biggs began telling Cid about what he suspected his master and Tempest Shadow were doing behind closed doors. The information had almost cracked his ironclad composure.

Almost.

“Look at me,” Tempest quietly chuckles, a tinge of sadness to her voice. “The closest I’ve ever come to feeling like a normal pony, and it’s only because of you.”

“That a complaint?” you smile, raising an eyebrow.

“Mmmmmmm,” she properly hums back, nuzzling deeper into your neck while hugging your side more tightly. “Haven’t decided yet.”

It’s your turn to chuckle in response, squeezing her a little bit as you two continue to snooze away on Princess Skystar’s old bed, way up in the Mt. Aris palace.

Hot off the heels of the Klugetown getaway, the two of you made the executive decision to speed straight for the abandoned hippogriff capital at maximum burn, with the plan being to lay a trap for the Elements and whatever other unlucky saps they’d no doubt friendship their way into helping them. The two of you didn’t clean up or anything, instead staying alert during the whole trip and keeping your eyes peeled for any pesky ponies. Sadly, none wound up showing themselves. Shame, too: you’d have loved to do some good old fashioned boarding manoeuvres!

But she did remember how your furniture and bath stuff came from Queen Novo’s chamber, and asked if Princess Skystar had a similar setup going on. You, of course, answered “yes,” and remarked that you never bothered to loot it on account of looting Novo’s shit instead, meaning her whole-ass bedroom was ripe for the taking.

And man, the look she gave you after saying that made it perfectly clear what kind of un-Christian shit she was cravin’. And it sure as shit wasn’t more villainy.

The ship landed on Mt. Aris without issue, offloading a big chunk of troops before you ordered it to hide behind the mountain and wait for further orders by radio. Once you’d ordered the boys to hunker down in the empty buildings and whatever other hiding spots they could find, you and Tempest took off into the royal palace, with the excuse of getting a better vantage point.

Which was absolutely true, and not an excuse in the slightest. You just didn’t mention the other things you’d be doing before that. And apparently she was needin’ those other things done real bad, if her hurrying you along once nobody was looking was any indicator. She even grabbed your hand in her mouth and damn near dragged you into the bedroom once it was in sight!

Alas, you were still on the job, a fact not lost on her either. So speed was the name of the game this time around. And after the two of you quickly finished things up in Skystar’s very spacious shower, you made the joint executive decision to just throw your jumpsuits back on and pass the time cuddling in bed. Y’know, until those pesky Elements decided to show their faces.

Which, thankfully, hadn’t happened just yet.

“Just so you know,” she remarks, not moving from her optimal cuddling position, “I’m coming back here later to take the bath.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” you smile, before you remember something. “Shit, that’s right...”

“What?”

“My old bed’s still totally trashed, I forgot. I’ll have to get a new one.”

She shifts slightly, obviously feeling kinda guilty about that. Guilt that you don’t allow to persist thanks to a tactical squeeze with your hugging arm.

“Buuuuuut,” you continue, “There’s still the royal bedchambers back at Canterlot to loot. Betcha they’ve got some amazing beds!”

With a low hum that you can feel as much as you can hear, she shifts her body around, lying on top of you and holding your attention with some absolutely S-tier bedroom eyes.

“You know, I seem to remember you promising me ‘dibs’ on the loot there.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

Her head comes in close, her snout pressing itself against your nose.

“I’ll be taking the best bed they have. Only, I think it’ll be very hard to tell which one is the best just by looking at them.”

“So,” you grin, speaking in a low, almost dangerous voice. “What you’re sayin’ is that you’ll need to test each one, that it?”

“Thoroughly test each one,” she breathes. “Think you can keep up?”

“Mmmmmm,” you hum, hands wandering southward along her frame. “For you, Tempie? I think I’ll manage juuuust fine.”

“Good,” she chuckles, deep and sensual.

boom

Eyes widening as the mutual spell is broken, the two of you immediately turn towards the source of the far-off explosion. And wouldn’t you know it, the unmistakable prismatic nova blast of Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom is visible way off in the distance, cutting straight through the cloud cover in the distance.

“Well,” she sighs, annoyance thick in her tone, “They got here faster than I thought.”

You snort with annoyance of your own, complete with an eye roll. “Go figure.”

Reluctantly, the two of you pull yourselves off the incredibly comfortable cloud-stuffed bed and head over to the pile of freshly cleaned armour, suiting back up for battle in short order. Halfway through the re-equip, the portable radio - portable in the sense that an old Kaypro is portable, mind you - starts to ring. Tempest, being closer, picks the receiver up first.

“Boss, boss!” Grubber’s crackly voice calls out through the speaker, “Didya see the explosion?”

“We saw it,” she affirms.

“No, nononono, look closer! Look at what’s in the explosion!”

Curiosity sufficiently raised, you quickly finish re-gearing and take up position next to her as she looks out the window to study the far-away source of the rainboom. She looks more than a little confused by it, and it’s hard to really blame her, what with the ship’s big and prominent rainbow feather sails getting all illuminated by the rainbow contrail circling around it’s--

Rainbow feather sails.

“Oh my fucking God,” you gape, jaw dropping as the realisation hits you. “No way!”

“What? What is it?”

Out comes the spyglass, quick as a whip, to verify the truth of your sighting. And boy was the truth ever verified. Though it was a bit hard to see given the extreme range, you could still make out the unmistakable shapes of a full house of parrot-kin pirates, playfighting with their shitty little cutlasses. And some smaller, more colourful shapes that matched up to the Friendship Squad.

“Oh Celie,” you cackle with a few shakes of your head. “Celie, Celie, Celie, you just had to pick today of all days to be a dumb cunt again, didn’tcha?”

“What are you talking about?” Tempest questions again. “Who’s up there?”

“Okay,” you snort with laughter, collapsing the spyglass. “Remember a few months ago, how I was gone that one week to fight off those sky pirates?”

“Ah,” she notes, eyes flicking back to the enemy. “So those are the same pirates.”

“Eyup.”

“So the princess got them to break contract. Big mistake.”

“No, they broke my contract. Worse mistake.”

“Well, I doubt we’ll need to adjust the plan very much for them. Since I’m assuming they’re not very dangerous.”

“Nope, just slippery. And too clever by half. They’ll fold like wet cardboard in an actual fight, but are pretty much guaranteed to pop up again later, too. So we’ll only need some minor adjustments to cover for that.”

Passing the mic over, she weaves past you to resume gearing up, making sure to drag her tail along your side as she passes by. That little action adds another dimension to your smile as you give Grubber his orders.

“Alright lil’ G, game time. Get the ship into stealth mode. When our old buddies land, circle around and cut them off. I want the boys watching the foot path down the mountain for any escaping birds, got it?”

“Yessir!” he cheerily replies. “What about their ship? Want us to reel it in again?”

You make to affirm that, but Tempest cuts in:

“No,” she says, fully re-equipped and moving up beside you, “I’ll take care of their ship.”

She didn’t need to spark up her horn for you to know what she meant, but it still got a raised eyebrow pointed her way.

“Lookin’ to flex the magic muscles a bit, Tempie?” you smile.

“A bit,” she nods with a small smile of her own. “But I’m more interested in attacking from two sides. Just to make sure they can’t escape.”

“Pincer ‘em, huh? I can get behind that. You got all that, lil’ G?”

“Y-yeah, boss!”

“Good.”

“Stay hidden in the clouds until my attack,” Tempest orders. “I’d prefer to take them by surprise.”

“Y-yes, ma’am!” Grubber replies, still a bit nervous about her.

“Then if there’s nothing else, we’re heading down now. Over and out.”

She replaces the receiver while you flick off the power. You would’ve loaded the radio onto your back again for the return trip down, but Tempest decided to carry it instead, loading it across her back. It’s a heavy bitch, but you two are stronger bitches.

And with that out of the way, the pair of you file out of the bedroom and start making your way down. The trip goes quickly, but is far from quiet:

“So tell me,” she begins, “Do you think they can get away from us again?”

“I figure they’ve got one more getaway still in ‘em. But they definitely won’t get away for a fourth time, I’m sure of that.”

“Oh? What makes you so sure?”

“Rule o’ three, baby!”

She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t object to your logic. “Then I’d like to plan for when they escape again, not if.”

“Now you’re thinkin’ with portals!” you cheer with a snap of the fingers.

She’s clearly not happy about the prospect, but is a lot more mellow about it than usual. That’s always a good sign.

“Let’s start with where they could go,” she continues. “Any ideas?”

“Oh, that’s easy. The hippogriffs.”

“Really? You think they can reach them from here?”

“I’m sure there’s some path or another to get ‘em to those ex-birds. Not like it’ll help ‘em either way. Even after they make their escape and find whatever ocean trench the hippogriffs are camping out in, they’re still not gonna help Twilight.”

“Because Novo’s a coward.”

“Exactly. Not just her, but the whole damn kingdom’s worth. If anything, I can imagine Twilight trying to pull some really stupid shit down there. Y’know, once she figures out they’re not gonna help her.”

“Something really stupid, you say? Like trying to steal their pearl?”

“If she’s desperate? Wouldn’t put it past her.”

She nods, momentarily lost in thought. “I assume the queen will use the pearl’s magic to help them survive down there until that point. But once that courtesy is taken away from them, they’ll need to surface somewhere. Or rather, they’ll need to wash up somewhere. Once they escape, we should start scouring the shores.”

“I agree. Lucky for us that there ain’t much beach to comb. Besides Mt. Aris’s shores, there’s only really the Basalt Beach to the north-west. They’ll stick out like sore thumbs down there.”

“And now that you’re bringing that up,” she continues, very much liking this train of thought, “They’ll be too tired and too angry with one another to put up a proper fight by then, won’t they?”

“Well,” you chortle, “Guess you’ve more or less accepted their escape by now, huh?”

“No, I’m just used to this by now,” she sighs, before perking right back up with a sideways smile. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t wear them down.”

“That’s the spirit. We’ll catch ‘em, babe. Always just been a matter of time.”

“I know. It’s just that we’re so close, I can--”

She stops mid-step, freezing in place as her ears pivot towards a collapsed tunnel in the palace’s big entrance chamber, followed by her gaze.

“What is it?” you say, stopping next to her.

“I hear something down there,” she answers, voice lowered. “It sounds like... singing?”

“Singing, huh? Wanna check it out?”

“Of course. But quickly. We still have a princess to catch.”

Setting the radio down, Tempest falls in just behind you as you two start stealthing through the remains of the tunnel. A surprising amount of the debris is easy to get by with just a little finessing, almost like...

“Like it’s to hide the path through,” you quietly vocalize.

“Hide the path?” she replies just as quietly.

“Well, kinda weird how this rubble’s all sized right for people n’ ponies to slip by, right?”

“Hmm. Then I’m dying to meet whoever’s been slipping by, then.”

“Yeah, you and me both...”

That last word hangs out for a while as the strange familiarity of the singer’s voice finally clicks in your head.

“Skystar,” you whisper, once again grinning nice n’ wide.

“Skystar? The hippogriff? You’re sure?”

“Hard to forget her voice, especially after chasin’ her around. Man, that girl’s got one helluva scream on her, I’ll tell you what.”

You pick up the pace, quickly emerging into none other than the Mt. Aris cathedral. While the place itself definitely looks beautiful, what with it’s cool, dimly lit waterfalls from above emptying out into the big central basin, you mostly remember it for being the place the Pearl was kept. Specifically, how it was kept floating between those two big hippogriff statues flanking the pool. You also distinctly remember Novo and Skystar yoinking the Pearl from here before you could. Not your proudest moment of villainy, has to be said. But damn, it’s nice to appreciate the place now that you’re not in nearly as much of a rush.

And of course, there’s Skystar herself, her shadowy figure seen dancing around inside of some big glowing flower bud in the middle of the pool.

Tempest emerges soon after you, momentarily taken aback by the cathedral’s good looks. After giving her a moment to gawk, she shakes her head and recomposes herself, looking to you for direction. Normally you’d have stealthed your way over there for a takedown, but since she’s got the Sith lightning, well...

fzzzZAP

A quick bolt later, and Skystar barely had time to gasp at the sound before the flower was blown to pieces with a big splash, the distinctly mermaid-like Skystar flying away and landing like a fish out of water at the other side of the pool, dazed for a brief moment. She recovers very quickly, only giving the two of you enough time to approach your side of the pool. She gasps in fear at seeing Tempest. Then she gasps in abject terror at seeing you.

“Yo wassup, gurl?” you wink, complete with finger-pistols. “Long time, no scream!”

Eyup, there’s the scream you’ve missed. High-pitched and slightly warbly, just like mama used to make. But holy shit does she move like there’s a fire under her ass, just barely managing to avoid Tempest’s second lightning blast before diving headfirst into the pool. Not even a second later, the smoking remains of the flower are pulled under the water, and the whole pool starts to empty out, creating a big, powerful vortex that you are not fucking with.

“Damn, she’s quick,” Tempest remarks.

“I know, right? There’s a reason I couldn’t catch her back then!”

“I can see that. What now?”

“Well, my money’s on the Elements escaping through here,” you note, pointing to the now half-empty pool and how it’s already starting to refill. “We should pull some of the boys off of ambush duty and post ‘em by the entrance.”

“Agreed. Let’s head back.”

Which is exactly what the two of you do, backtracking through the collapsed passageway at much faster and non-stealthy speeds until you’re back in the palace. Tempest takes off through the palace’s exit, but not before informing you that she’ll be handling the guard posting by the cathedral door. Which leaves you nice and free to take up position at your own ambush spot: up high from one of the palace balconies, ready to Titanfall some bitches with all due menace at the drop of a hat! Though you did have to haul the radio up with you, so it wasn’t as nice of a walk up the stairs as it could’ve been.

Staying prone at the sixth floor balcony for the time being, you keep both your eye on Celaeno’s incoming ship through your spyglass and the radio powered up and on low volume for any updates, knowing Tempest would have another radio at her end of the city’s ruins. It’s easy enough to see that the Friendship Squad has done a bang-up job at befriending the entirely unworthy furry menace, what with how jovial they are with one another while they were en route. But that joy quickly evaporated once they were able to see the state of Mt. Aris up close and personal, all of that pumped-up braggadocio replaced with shock and fear.

The Elements got off the ship with a decent escort of twelve pirates plus Celaeno herself, all with their eyes darting about and sword hands ready to go wherever applicable. While they were too far away for you to hear what they were saying, it was easy to extrapolate that they were trying to figure out what had happened to this place.

Well, you happened, of course, and you were gonna make sure they knew that.

“I’ll start the attack once they’re closer to you,” Tempest quietly informs you over the radio.

“Copy that,” you quietly reply.

They were close enough now that you no longer needed the spyglass, so you return it to it’s place and slowly rise back up to your feet, planting one on the railing in preparation for your jump as they come in close enough for you to hear. Not like you have anything better to do while you wait for Tempest to start blastin’, so you believe a little eavesdropping is in order!

“--we’ll just have to find somepony else to help us, then!” you hear Rainbow Dash proclaim with a few boastful mid-air kicks.

“There isn’t anypony else that can help us!” Twilight scowls. “This was our only lead!”

Whatever that Fluttershy was saying was way too quiet to be heard, but it didn’t sit well with the increasingly stressed out Twilight.

“They’re halfway across the world from us! And even if we did get back to them, there’s no guarantee they’d be able to help us save Equestria!”

“Now everypony settle down, now,” Applejack interjects. “We don’t even know why the hippogriffs ain’t here anymore.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Celaeno pipes up, kneeling down next to a pile of rubble and digging through it.

She pulls out a ratty old Storm King banner pinned beneath the rocks, presenting it before her new friends.

“Oh no,” Twilight gasps, “They got here first...!”

KA-BLAM

Aha, there goes Tempest! The pirate ship is absolutely shredded by a seriously impressive hailstorm of explosive lightning blasts, their vessel quickly going up in flames like a cheap fantasy Hindenburg. Taking the cue, you jump down off the ledge and land with a resounding THUMP, big cracks in the stone flooring spiderwebbing out from around the respectable crater you’d created.

“Correction,” you chuckle, words loaded with menace, “I got here first.”

“Anonymous!” Twilight cries.

“Anonymous,” Celaeno hisses, sword coming out in a flash and pointing towards you.

“Glad you gals could make it in time!” you cheer, dusting yourself off as you casually walk over towards them. “I thought I’d never get to give you a tour of Mt. Aris! Though the last time I was here, there was a lot more smoke, fire, and terrified hippogriffs.”

BLAM

Their attention gets diverted back towards the airship for a brief moment, the gang witnessing it’s final death throes as the fuel stores detonated from the inside-out thanks to Tempest’s handiwork. Hoofiwork. Whatever.

“You bastard,” Celaeno seethes, slowly turning back around to face you.

“First of all, in the flesh, on the ground, and always ready to smash n’ pound. Secondly, I dunno what you thought was gonna happen, honey. Honestly, I set you up with a shitty dead-end slave job for life, and this is the thanks I get? I’m hurt! Hurt, I say!”

“How did you know we were coming, greenie?!” Dash demands, darting in front of the whole group and jabbing a hoof at you.

“’Cause you told us, genius,” you rebuke, still smiling as she recoils in offence. “That lightshow of yours gave us almost twenty minutes to get this trap ready for ‘ya.”

Her mouth flops open to object, but it closes just as fast, joined by her ears wilting and her tail pinning itself back as a meek, barely audible “oops” escapes her trap. All while Twilight gives her a very angry and entirely deserved glare.

And then Tempest comes along, putting her bedroom voice to good use in a deliciously evil chuckle as she trots up behind the group, horn still steaming from her display of power back there. Once again, the group pivots around to look at her, a good chunk of them quickly snapping back and forth, not sure of who they should be more terrified of.

“Give the filly some credit, Nonny,” Tempest coos, mocking the Elements and friends. “It was very thoughtful of her to help us like that.”

A furious, beet-red blush sweeps across Dash’s face at hearing Tempest’s words. Y’know, you weren’t gonna assume anything, especially when it comes to tomboys, but you guess that this is proof positive that this prismatic tomboy does in fact have a thing for the fairer sex. Or did Tempest make a convert outta her with that stellar vocal performance? Who can say for sure? Not you, that’s who.

Also, she definitely just called you ‘Nonny.’

“Now, if the rest of you were even half as cooperative as your friend here,” she continues, “We could have avoided so much trouble.”

“Well the fun’s over, hermanas,” you chortle, snapping your fingers to signal the boys. “You got two choices. The easy way...”

The troops come out of hiding, surrounding both their targets and their commanders.

“Or the hard way,” Tempest finishes for you, getting a brisk neck crack in and timing a horn fizzle along with it.

The answer, obviously, is going to be the hard way, because that’s always how this goes. Doesn’t stop them from deliberating with one another about it though, all hushed and quiet-like as if you weren’t close enough to hear them anyways.

“If you want them,” Celaeno challenges, slashing her blade through the air for effect, “You’ll have to go through us, first!”

A simple smile graces your lips, followed by some knuckle-cracking and a simple, chipper “Okay,” as a response to that.

SPLOOSH

And then something you didn’t expect to happen takes place right behind you, prompting you to whip around to see what the commotion is. As it turns out, the commotion happens to be the guarded entrance to the cathedral getting all of the debris blown out of it with a big, high pressure blast of water, which also sent the guards flying and managed to give you a decent splashing. Three guesses as to who’s calling out and waving from her spot in the cathedral’s pool.

“Over here!” she cries out. “In the palace! You can’t fight him! Run!”

Since when did Skystar have a functioning spine?

You spin back around to react to the good guys, arms coming up to--

KA-BLAM

Holy shit, Tempest is on fire today! She got another huge detonation off right in the middle of the group, at the exact moment that they were all distracted with both you and Skystar! Seriously, A+!

Every one of the Elements and a good chunk of the bird-’people’ were sent careening off in random directions with a very respectable amount of force. Seizing the initiative even further, she’s also the first to issue the orders to the boys:

“Seize them!” she bellows.

The storm beasts jump into the fray, entangling themselves with the pirates and turning the ghost city into a warzone yet again. The two of you were already in motion, eyes set onto the princess and her friends.

Your first target, naturally, is Twilight herself, who was still a bit disoriented and trying to stand up. Noting the lack of any small purple dragons around, you take full advantage by readying up a Sphere. But as your arm pulls back to launch it like a curveball, you feel a length of rope snap tight against your throwing arm and prevent you from following through. It’s expected source, off to the side, was one Applejack, lassoing like a pro.

A prismatic blur impacts your chest hard with a dull metallic THWACK, and although Dash’s double-legged shove fails to send you flying, it does drag you along the ground, your feet carving out some gnarly gouges in the stone floor. The two of them work together, Dash beating her wings to maintain the momentum of her shove while Applejack uses her continued handle on your arm to direct you further away from the princess, who recovers just in time to avoid a second Sphere kicked towards her from Tempest.

Snorting, you grasp one of Dash’s forelegs with your free hand, locking her in place. In the same motion, you stomp the leg closest to Applejack into the ground and kick a big plume of shrapnel towards her. The rope around your hand slackens, allowing you to make a much worse throw towards an escaping Twilight that unfortunately fails to hit.

With a cartoonishly long “whoa” from Rainbow Dash, you spin her around several times before launching her towards one of the nearby buildings almost as quickly as she came, leaving a Rainbow Dash-shaped hole in it’s walls. Your roped hand pulls taut again with much more force than before, succeeding in throwing you off-balance just in time for Dash to come rocketing back out of the building towards you, landing a second hit on your chest that succeeds in knocking you onto your back.

“This way!” Twilight cries out. “Hurry!”

Welp, 2v1 is fair play. Can’t fault ‘em for that!

You spring back to your feet just in time to see Dash and AJ taking off towards Twilight, who already had the other Elements plus Spike with her and was currently occupied with shielding against Tempest’s magical attacks. Your charge after them, snatching yet another lamp post from the ground as you pursue them through the passageway towards the cathedral. Tempest, once again, falls in next to you.

“That thing you do with magic,” she calls out to you. “Can you use some of mine?”

“How much can you give?” you holler back.

“A lot!”

“That’ll work. Get a little closer!”

She does just that, allowing you to put the palm of your free hand against the nub of her horn. She discharges her magic into your hand with a small grunt of pain as you do your thing, and you grunt in a little pain yourself as you take the fresh orb of magic and dump all of it into your lamp post.

“Quick, over here!” you hear Skystar calling out. “Jump into the water!”

“Okay,” you call out to Tempest, “We don’t wanna be here when this goes off, so get ready to run like hell!”

You don’t get a response, and you wouldn’t have time to answer even if you did. You bring the post up like a huge javelin, preparing to make your spear-chucking ancestors proud. The Elements break into the cathedral proper, with the pair of you hot on their asses.

Then, at the exact moment you also enter the cathedral, you launch the violently arcing, brightly glowing post straight towards the middle of the pool, where the whirlpool had already reformed. Skystar shrieks and jumps out of the water toward the Elements, who skid to a stop in order to catch her right as the lamp post splashes into the water with some particularly violent bubbling and arcing that prompts Twilight to put her deflector shields to maximum.

That’s about all you allow yourself to see, both you and Tempest skidding to a stop before turning tail and booking it out of there. And not even a second later...

KA-BWMPH

The lamp detonates like a depth charge, the explosion reverberating hard through the entire cathedral. You can already tell from the numerous loud sounds of stone cracking that the blast dealt heavy damage to the entire structure just from the reverb alone, and the shockwave sent absolutely everyone stumbling from the blast, succeeding in bringing both of you to a sudden and shaky stop.

The sound of a dam breaking is heard overhead right behind you, and the sound of a roaring waterfall is heard shortly after, spurring the two of you to get balanced again and resume running like hell. You can hear the Elements plus Skystar screaming for a bit, followed by their voices being abruptly cut off by the roar and impact of the water.

The next thing you know, a wall of freezing cold water slams into you from behind, plugging your hearing up and knocking you off of your feet as the aquatic blast sends you tumbling through the passageway at a rapid pace. Mere moments later, you and Tempest find yourselves unceremoniously ejected from the passage, fired like Nerf darts out into the palace proper and sent skidding across the soaking wet ground, covered as it was in a solid inch or three of cold water that continued to pour from the passage behind you.

Stumbling to your feet, you make your way over to a coughing and spluttering Tempest, helping her to get the water out of her system and get her back to her hooves, a gesture she’s much more willing to accept this time around.

“I’m really starting to hate them,” she glowers, voice slightly hoarse.

Heh. Hoarse.

“Likewise,” you concur. “Let’s deal with the pirates first, then we can start combing the beaches.”

It’ll have to be a quick sentencing for those losers, though. Hmm, walking the plank over the ocean? Yeah, that’s a good fit.

Hours later...

“Twilight?” Spike says, trying however he could to console his friend. “I-it’s okay. You’ll figure this out.”

“No,” she sobs, “I can’t. I ruined everything! There’s no chance to save Equestria now. I-it’s all my fault!”

“Yeah,” you agree, “You were kind of a bitch, weren’tcha?”

It takes Twilight a moment to realize that you had just spoken, but when she does, she spins around with a shocked gasp towards you, treated to the sight of you restraining and muffling Spike. She rears back to try and blast you with magic...

KA-CLUNK

Only for the caging crews to absolutely nail their drop, trapping the princess in the magic-grounding black metal cage from up above and effectively ending your manhunt.

Spike cries her name as you spin the little dragon around, flinging him towards a nearby rock face and leaving a respectably sized crater as Twilight cries his name right back. Leaving you free to grab hold of the cage and ride it back up into the airship along with your increasingly panicked prisoner.

“No! No no no no no no! Let me go!” she cries, ineffectually blasting in your direction with magic laser beams.

“Nah, I’m good.”

You make a show out of admiring your nails while she continues her vain struggle, banging her hooves against the unyielding metal while occasionally getting a magic blast in.

“Why are you doing this?!” she demands, tears pricking her eyes.

“Thought I already told you why. Y’know, right at the beginning?”

That was clearly not the answer she was looking for, if her renewed and much more enraged struggles were any indicator. You let her get it out of her system. After all, there’s still a minute or so until you’re reeled back up to the mothership. She finally stops after a little while, her breathing heavy with exertion and strained with stress and sadness.

“If it makes ‘ya feel better,” you tell her with a sideways smirk, “You did a great job escaping for as long as you did! It’s just too bad that you were up against the A-non, baby. Ya’ never really had a chance.”

“Please,” she begs, hooves pressing against the bars as she gives you one of the most pleading looks you think you’ve ever seen, “You don’t have to do this.”

“True, I don’t have to do any of this,” you reply, drumming your fingers against the cage. “But like I said, even if this wasn’t an order from my boss, I’d still do this all again anyways, just for funsies!”

The loud, industrial humming of the airship’s monster engines can be heard droning away up above, and your ascent finally takes you up past the threshold of the bay doors, the heavy metal slabs making them up groaning with strain as they are slowly pulled up into their closing position.

She panics a bit upon seeing them close, and once they finally do shut with that meaty, satisfying CLUNK that you love so much, her withers sag and a good chunk of the fight leaves her. A little more cranking later, and the mechanism finally comes to a stop in the designated “intimidation room.” The ominous glowing orange grates weren’t actually functional at all, it was just for show. Not a terrible design decision, actually. Kinda gives you some Empire Strikes Back vibes, if you’re being honest!

“Alright,” you groan, stretching out before jumping down onto the grated floor, “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

It takes Twilight a moment to realize you were speaking to Tempest, who was walking towards the two of you with a very pleased evil smirk on her face. But once she does realize that, she gets afraid all over again, springing back up like a cat and wary of anything that might happen.

“Thank you,” she nods to you, “I’ll be up in a bit.”

“Have fun!” you wave, slipping by her.

She gets one more cheeky tail drag in as you slide on by, drawing a nice chuckle out of you both. She quickly jiu-jitsu’s her sensual chuckling to malicious chuckling as she approaches the captive princess, though you don’t catch what the two end up talking about as you make your way up through the ship and emerge up on deck, taking up position next to Grubber. Who had been dutifully steering the ship the entire time.

“Fantastic work as always, lil’ buddy,” you cheer, much to his delight. “Get us to Canterlot, fast and furious.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” he cheers right back, slamming the throttle to max. “So what’re we gonna eat?”

“Hm?”

“Y’know, what’re we gonna eat, boss? We always eat big after a mission!”

“Oh we’ll be eatin’ good, don’t you worry,” you chuckle, “But like you said, only after a mission. And we ain’t done yet.”

“Aww, man...”

“Sorry, lil’ buddy, but the cake’s gonna have to wait.”

He pouts, but ultimately doesn’t stop his work, leaving things off in a comfortable silence and allowing you to survey the landscape as it passes by. And boy does it pass by; when this ship is cranked to max speed, it can really motor once it finishes accelerating! The Bone Dry Desert screams by in short order, soon leading to the thoroughly trashed landscape of Equestria, airships seen hovering above many of the smoking towns and cities.

And there, of course, was Canterlot itself. Only, you’ve already noticed the problem with it. The artificial storm cloud covering it is way bigger than it should be. Couple that with the presence of the second super-airship hovering nearby, and it’s not hard to deduce who’s shown their ugly face here.

“Fuck,” you grumble under your breath, more annoyed than anything. “And here I was, thinking I’d have time to test those beds first.”

Avalon

Sweet mother o’ mercy, was Canterlot fucking ugly.

It wasn’t just the brownish-gray, buttfuck ugly storm cloud blotting the sun out, either; there was a big radius of freshly lit fires and ruined buildings extending outwards from where the King’s super-airship had docked. Now, despite appearances, your boys were a well-trained and restrained bunch that wouldn’t sack the city to this degree, not unless you ordered them to. His beasts, on the other hand, were traditionally-minded Viking-style loot-and-pillage types. Maybe if you were running a guerrilla op or a terror cell, that’d be a good thing. But right now? Your needs called for soldiers. And this was one tradition you could certainly live without.

“So he actually showed up on time?” Tempest all but groans, reflecting just how unhappy you were.

“’Fraid so,” you huff. “Because of course he would.”

“Fine,” she huffs as well, “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Let’s.”

The pair of you tear your eyes away from the freshly fuglified scenery and make for the command nest first. Tempest grabs the intercom and orders the loading bay to get Twilight prepped for transport, while you stand beside Grubber and borrow his intercom to get the guard detail for the princess convoy ready. With a few innocuous sounding code phrases thrown in to make sure the bestest of loyal boys were on duty.

“Alright,” you address Grubber after hanging up the intercom. “Feel free to take a load off once we dock, lil’ G.”

“Yessir!” he happily salutes.

“But keep your eyes peeled,” you remind him with a parental tone. “We ain’t seen the last of the princess’s compadres, not by a long shot.”

“Yessir!” he repeats.

With that out of the way, you leave him to execute the docking manoeuvres while you and Tempest head down below deck to get to the loading bay. Funnily enough, she winds up taking the long way down instead of using the elevator. You had a hunch as to why, and that hunch was confirmed midway through the descent, when her tail wrapped around your arm and she pulled you into the first empty room she saw. Next thing you knew, you were shoved against the wall of a broom closet with your tippity-top-tier co-op partner pressing her snout right against your nose, breathing heavily with her lips a hair away from your own, and with a major case of bedroom eyes to match.

Ain’t gonna complain about where this is going, but sheesh. She must really have been looking forward to crash testing those beds if she’s all worked up like this!

“You have no idea,” she half-grumbles, half-moans, “How much I was looking forward to trying out those beds.”

Hah, score one for mind-reading!

“Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea, babe,” you reply, matching her growing smile with one of yours as you lightly pat her barrel. “We’ll have to reschedule.”

“And make up for lost time,” she all but whispers, moving her hooves from your chest to your shoulders while you semi-reflexively hold her close and steady.

“What didja have in mind?” you grin, voice low and with a dangerous edge.

She meets the danger head-on, quite literally, by closing the rest of the distance and kissing you. There was nothing tender about it, either; it was forceful, needy, and spoke of a mare who seriously needed some lovin’ right this moment.

“A whole day,” she breathes, diving back in for another smooch after each sentence. “For each bed. And endless. Options. For renewal.”

“Oh Lawd have mercy,” you chuckle, one hand cradling the back of her head. “I’ve created a monster.”

Her next kiss ends with her tugging on your lip as she pulls away, an almost drunken little giggle escaping her as she presses her nose against yours again. “You’ve always had a talent for bringing out the worst in me.”

“Guilty as charged,” you smile wickedly, tone dripping with sinful intentions as you steel your grasp on her and hold her gaze. “And I plan to take full responsibility for it.”

You deny her the chance at a response by way of mashing your lips together. What ensued was several uninterrupted minutes of the two of you furiously making out in the closet like a pair of horny teenagers. And she was really getting into it, too! But you guess that’s what a long period of virtual exile will do to a gal. That’s still fucking criminal as far as you’re concerned. Seriously, what kind of flaming gaylord turns down some prime hotness like this over a broken horn? Or were stallions just as fruity as their colour schemes made them out to be?

Well, just means there’s more for you, don’t it? Shit, speaking of fruits, you’re gonna need a lot more of those in your diet for the next week or two. Along with meat n’ eggs. Do they even have meat in ponyland? Great, now you’re stuck thinking about logistics. Well done, you.

“Hey,” you interrupt with no shortage of reluctance. “As much as I’d love to keep warmin’ up for our private time, we’re still on a schedule here.”

“You’re right,” she sighs, fighting to keep her smile from wilting. “But just so you know, I’ll be expecting much more of this in the future.”

“Guess I’ll have lots to look forward to then,” you chuckle.

Smile saved. Smooth operator as usual, Anon. Without another word, she gets one last lip-dragging peck in before falling back to all fours and straightening her mane back out, the two of you exiting the closet and resuming your course down below in relative silence as if nothing had ever happened. Well, she was walking next to you a fair bit closer than before, so there’s that.

Which gave you plenty of time to put some more thought into just what you were going to do with your S-tier co-op partner here. And not just about what you were going to do to her once you two got busy doing enough testing to put Aperture Science out of business.

Nope, these thoughts were all of the business variety, sad as it is to say.

At the end of the day, you’re a professional Sith Lord, and with that comes the reality of Dark Side sensibilities. You won’t lie, it’d be super cool to keep her on board with you as part of Team Evil, and not just because of her awakening talents in the sack; she’s got the smarts and the strength - both physical and magical - to make for a seriously valuable teammate going forward. And that’s all on top of the great team playing spirit that’s been cultivated as of late!

But alas, the chances of her staying aboard are low, thanks to that pesky calculus of the Dark Side rearing it’s ugly head once again. Too much would have to go right for her to permanently flip sides, and you’d need a serious amount of luck on your side to push that through: luck that you simply don’t have right now. You hadn’t forgotten that she was a good girl at heart, and was only in this game to get her magic bits reattached. That put you at a major disadvantage.

Now, you could use the Staff of Sacanas to give fixing her up the ol’ college try, but if you’re being honest? Even after reading the old books on it that Wedge and Cid had to really work to dig up, you still have no idea if the thing is even capable of re-horning her. The thing very much struck you as the ‘pure destruction’ kind of evil magical artifact, a theory that solidified further after reading through both the manual and the history behind it. And as fucking stupid as he is, even the King would have to know that too, no doubt playing off of Tempest’s ignorance to string her along. On the other hand, nobody who’s used the Staff before actually tried to use it to do fix’er-upp’in; they were usually more concerned with living out their chaotic evil ‘destroy fucking everything’ fantasies through it.

But if it does work? Shit, that might be the deciding factor between her sticking with you or fighting against you once the real final showdown begins. Because come the fuck on, the King’s not the final boss here; he’s a mid-boss at best, the kind that’ll be pure pleasure to stomp into dust once he unknowingly gives you near-ultimate power. The real fight’s gonna be between the Elements, and you’ve known that since first reading the dossier on them.

Man, you’d love to have Tempest back you up for that battle. But sadly, high-contact bedroom sports and good girls always going for bad guys can only take you so far. No matter how much your entirely deserved ego might protest to the contrary. And a tactical ‘perfect the way you are’ speech won’t cut it either, no matter how much you might mean it.

Which you absolutely do, let the record show.

But nevermind all that right now, you’ve just arrived at the loading bay.

In the middle of the well-guarded bay sat Twilight’s cage, loaded up onto the big flatbed cart for the trip through the city. A trio of captured and muzzled ponies were strapped to the cart, and she looked to be in the middle of trying in vain to talk some sense into your grinning and slightly glassy-eyed personal servant in training, who made up the middle pony of the trio. But that came to a sudden, ear-folding stop once she realized you and Tempest had entered the scene, scared little gasp and all.

“All right then, baby girl!” you announce with a clap of your hands. “Ya ready to file for magical bankruptcy today, or what?”

To her credit, she recovers from the shock of seeing you pretty quickly, sucking in some confidence as she takes a breath of air.

“You’re the only one,” she states plainly.

“Huh? Only one’a what?”

“The only one I don’t understand,” she frowns, her voice taking on a pleading undertone. “Why, mister Anonymous? Why are you doing all of this?”

“You know,” you chortle, “If you were planning on sweet-talking your way outta having us collectivize your magic, you should probably start by asking something I’ve haven’t already answered twice by now.”

“You told me what you were doing. Not why.”

“Nope,” you click. “I told you that, too. Weren’tcha payin’ attention?”

“I was. Enough attention to know that you weren’t being honest.” Her glare takes on a hard edge as a smile creeps onto your face alongside your rising eyebrow. “So let me qualify my question, mister Anonymous. Why are you really doing this?”

We-he-hell. Not gonna lie, you don’t usually have captives that still keep their nerve. This should be fun!

“Say whaaat?” you recoil in mock hurt, hand over heart. “You think that moi was being dishonest?”

“I think you’ve been dishonest since before you even came here. Lying by omission, if you care for specificity.”

“Which I do, since language is very important!” you chirp. “But really though, what would ever give you that idea? Y’know, besides the whole ‘being evil’ thing?”

“Your cypher powers.”

You blink. “My what, now?”

“You’re a cypher, mister Anonymous,” she continues, voice and posture firm. “And a very powerful one at that. You’d have to be, in order to leech even the alicorn magic from my spell. But you never told anypony about your condition. In fact, you’ve been actively hiding it from them, haven’t you?”

“’Cypher’?” Tempest interrupts, her head tilted slightly. “I’ve never heard of that before. Is that what his powers are called?”

“Yes,” she answers promptly, deadly serious yet still internally scrambling to piece the big picture together. “Though it’s a condition more than it is a skill, and it’s a very rare one that only occurs in creatures from outside of Equestria. Cyphers can steal the magic out of spells and enchantments, turning it into power and strength. Very powerful ones,” - her eyes flick to you - “can even redirect it into spells of their own.”

“Mmm-hmm,” you confirm with a nod, grinning anew. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d know about that already, seeing how you’re a big magic nerd and all.”

To be honest, you had no idea what your weird powers were when you first got here, but man alive did it feel good to use ‘em. Still does, in fact! Though you didn’t learn what they were called until the Abyssinians threw you in jail, and you didn’t learn all the ins and outs of what they did until Cid and Wedge dug up the books on it for you. But man, the secret training you did to get your crazy magic vampire powers up to snuff for your plans was something you’d never forget. Hell, you’re smiling even more already just thinking back to it!

Plus, it gave you license to name your elite black ops team XOF once you’re in charge. So that’s a big plus!

“My point being,” Twilight continues, unnerved by how well you’re taking this, “You’ve kept your condition a secret from everypony. You stuck to using your enhanced physical abilities for the entire time you’ve been chasing us, just so that you could keep the charade going. It was only after I attacked you with magic that you decided to reveal your condition. And I remember very clearly how shocked everypony around you looked when you turned my magic against me.”

Man, the dossier said she was a smart cookie, but sheesh. She’s getting really close to figuring out parts of your plan! Not that you really care, since your contingencies cover things getting revealed too early. So, continuing to smile, you motion for her to continue, genuinely interested in where she’s going with this.

“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why hide your condition like that? Especially when it’s strong enough to counter alicorn magic?”

“Ahh, that’s the sixty-four dollar question, isn’t it?,” you intone, smiling darkly at her. “Why did I keep it under wraps?”

Her confidence noticeably droops upon seeing your reaction, the gal clearly not expecting you to be daring her to dig deeper. But alas, as much as you would’ve liked to hear Twilight puzzle things out more and tickle your inner Bond villain under his chin by doing so, Tempest had other ideas.

“Yes, yes, this has all been a very educational distraction,” Tempest cuts in, “But we have a schedule to keep, and some magic to acquire.”

“Tempest, wait!” Twilight exclaims, not happy about things getting back on track. “There’s something wrong here! I don’t know what he’s planning, but Anonymous is--”

“I don’t know why he hid his powers from me,” she interrupts, trotting over towards the button for opening the bay doors. “And to be honest, I couldn’t care less. Whatever his reasons, I’m sure they were good ones.”

That’s quite the understatement. Your flashy powers did have weaknesses, after all. There was a reason the Abyssinians were able to catch you back then. And a reason Twiggles McGee keeps calling it a ‘condition’.

“And you actually believe that? You actually trust him?!”

Her hoof pauses above the button, the mare it was attached to contemplating that question for a second. Her eyes drift over towards your smiling face, and there was this soft, almost vulnerable quality to her gaze as you met it.

“Oddly enough,” she somewhat quietly remarks, “I do.”

A very dumb thing to say in this biz. Heartwarming, adorable, and the exact right kinda cliché to your ears, but still super dumb. But hey, she is a good girl at heart, so it fits. Either way, she hits the switch and gets the door opening up, much to Twilight’s increasing despair. And actually, you know what? You just thought of a way to fuck with her some more!

“Ohhh,” you exclaim, sidling up next to Twilight’s cage with a knowing smirk, much to her confusion. “I get it now! You were playing some 4D mindgames to try and get us to fight one another, weren’tcha?”

“Wh-what?!” she splutters, taken aback. “No, I wasn’t--!”

“Shh, shh-shh-shh, you don’t have to be so modest. It was a great idea, really! Almost had us, too! You deserve at least a little credit for that!”

“Anon, stop antagonizing her,” Tempest chides insincerely from beside you, the smirk audible in her tone.

Okay, yep, that’s definitely her tail wrapping around your leg, just out of everyone’s view.

“Oh fine,” you huff, every bit as insincere as her. “Ruin my fun again, why don’tcha?”

“Come on,” she smiles with a roll of her eyes, “The sooner this is over with, the sooner we can relax.”

Pffft. Relaxing after the fact, maybe. But the before and during were gonna be real exhausting. And every bit as enjoyable.

The big cargo bay door finally opened to it’s full measure, the loading ramp extending down and further cracking the stone tile floor of the already pretty ruined looking city. The ponies needed little prompting to start pulling the cart along, and the bay guards all fell into an escort pattern around your little convoy as it left.

All the while, Twilight continued to rack her brain, desperately trying to figure out just what you were up to. A lot of things was the answer, and the long-term plans were already handled and set to take place way outside of Equestria. Which very much included all of the necessary preparations for Plan B, should things come to it. Which, in all likelihood, they will.

But hey, at least you’ve set the stage for that unfortunate happenstance! And made some killer friends and allies for it, too! The basilisks alone were a wonderful addition to the group, but in retrospect? You’re starting to think that you might’ve blown all of your limited luck on them.

Oh well, nothing for it but to move forward and trust your plans.

After a few minutes of convoying through the city - and passing by some light-coloured singer pony in a cage that seemed more important than she actually was - a pair of elite storm beasts rolled up on you from the front. That would have been concerning, if they weren’t wearing the super secret pins identifying them as your bestest of boys. Still in character, they ask you to come with them for a moment, drawing a quizzical look from Tempest that you placate with a reassuring smile.

“Go on ahead, I’ll catch up in a bit,” you say to her before turning towards your two top boys. “Seems like my work’s never done.”

With that, you peel off from the group, and catch Twilight’s expression morphing into a picture-perfect, terror-stricken ‘penny drop’ moment before you round a corner with your two champs and lose sight of her.

“Alright, I’ll admit it, I missed you two,” you say, drawing a laugh out of Biggs. “I assume you’ve been keeping busy while I’ve been gone?”

Biggs confirms as much, but Cid gives you hard details. Before the Storm King rolled into town, the boys had black-bagged every remaining storm beast that wasn’t singing your tune, just as you’d ordered. And Cid made it a top priority to black-bag the loyalists from his ship once he had the free reign to do so, achieving that goal in a matter of hours. Sadly, he did it stealthy, which meant letting his beasts fuck up the city even more, explaining why the place looked like hot dogshit. Biggs was quick to clarify that he helped a lot with the work, and Cid responds to that with a roll of his eyes. Cid then goes over their standing orders to capture you. That certainly was an interesting approach, but ultimately you think you’ll just settle on walking in like a normal person. Still, always nice to have options!

It’s not very long before the two bring you to a small congregation of other storm beasts, with Wedge waiting there with them. Both him and the others all perk up at seeing you, and some start to cheer and whoop, almost as hyped as you were for the upcoming long living of the king.

“From what I’ve been told,” you open up, wasting no time, “You’ve all done an amazing job back on the homefront. And believe you-me, the reward ceremony’s gonna be fucking grand once we hit that point. But!” - your hand extends out in a ‘stop’ gesture - “That’s just it, fellas. We’ve gotta hit that point first. Now, I assume you ladies are all ready to dance?”

Even Wedge was cheering with them, in spite of his timid nature. And really, how could he not?

“Good, because the music’s about to start,” you grin wickedly. “Here’s the plan.”

At the palace...

“Tempest, please!” Twilight continues to beg, even after being left all alone with her in the throne room. “This is insane! You can’t really think that--!”

“Can you fix me, then?”

“Wh-- huh?”

“You heard me,” she states quite plainly, idly examining her hoof. “Fix my horn right now, and I’ll be more than happy to hear you out. Can you do that?”

“But--! N-no! Nothing can--!”

“Then it’s time for you to share all that magic of yours,” she chuckles, turning away from the desperate princess. “And it’s about time everybody knew what I can really do.”

“Ooh, fascinating!” came the all-too-familiar voice of the Storm King.

Tempest looked over towards the thrones, seeing the Storm King himself step through the curtain doors leading to the outside balcony. The Staff of Sacanas was clutched in his grasp, still rather menacing in appearance despite it’s unpowered state.

Good, the gang’s all here. Time to stop creeping through the door crack and make your entrance proper.

“What can you really do?” he continues, all condescending-like.

“Your bidding, of course,” Tempest answers, trying her damndest to hide her trepidation.

“Bidding’s good,” he replies, completely oblivious to her true feelings as he walks over to the circle of royalty. “I like bidding! In fact--”

His speech gets cut off by the doors to the throne room being shoved open by yours truly, requiring no help at all from the attendant guards outside. But only because you asked nicely to solo them. Right away, you can see the Storm King’s expression morph into surprise and alarm upon seeing you walk in without your ‘captors’. Tempest looked relieved to see you, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. As for Twilight? Well, she looked like she couldn’t decide between being more shit-scared of you, or the King.

The answer is you, obviously. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“There you are,” Tempest greets. “What took you so long?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” you laugh, wearing your smile like a high-end tuxedo. “Funny story, actually. I’ll tell you later, aight?”

“Fine by me,” she shrugs.

“You,” the King hisses, not even bothering to hide his fury. “You’ve got some nerve, showing your face before me!”

“Why wouldn’t I?” you ask, feigning innocence and tilting your head a bit. “Ain’t it my job to see this through to the end?”

“Don’t you dare try to play dumb with me!” he shrieks, summoning a small orb of lightning in his free hand.

“Ohhhhhh,” you exclaim, snapping your fingers in faux realization. “That’s why I was being held up back there! So those boys didn’t go rogue after all then, huh?”

“Wait,” Tempest interjects, thoroughly confused. “What’s going on here?”

“Welp, guess I gotta tell that funny story now, then,” you shrug, cutting the King off from saying his piece. “Remember those guards that called me away on the trip up, Tempie?”

“Yes?”

“They attacked me!” you lie, arms flailing up into the sky to hammer the point home. “Straight-up fuckin’ jumped me in the alleyway!”

“Wait a minute, they what?!” she exclaims.

“Yeah, I know, right? And they had friends, too! Good thing I’m so goddamn good at my job, otherwise I’d be in a heap’a trouble!”

“But, why would they do that?”

“Mmmm, think I figured that out now. See, one’a them told me they were under orders to capture me before they passed out.” You direct a knowing grin towards a very, very angry Storm King. “And since that dirty fucker Strife ain’t hangin’ around no more, I guess that only leaves you as the guy givin’ those orders, don’t it?”

“Tch. Never send a lackey to do a king’s job,” he spits.

His electrified hand shoots up, hitting you square in the logo on your chest with a bluish magical zap. The bolt turns into a bunch of electric energy chains that snake around your torso and snap tight, keeping your limbs pinned down. Or at least, you pretend that they keep them pinned down. It’s a decent enough spell you guess, but you’ve absorbed much stronger magic before. Just ask Twilight!

“Thought you were so clever, didn’t you?” he snarls, making an attempt to be intimidating as he marches up towards you. “You really thought you could get one over on me, the all-mighty Storm King, didn’t you?”

You don’t answer, instead giving him a shit-eating grin. He responds by winding back and socking you in the gut, but it barely even knocks the wind out of you.

“Aww, what’sa matter, pumpkin?” you mock. “Not enough thundah to hurt me? Need to steal someone else’s first?”

You could see Twilight’s jaw drop in shock at your antics, and Tempest wasn’t doing much better. The King, meanwhile, grabs you by the throat and starts to squeeze with a reasonably strong grip, definitely enough to cut off your airway. Not that you really react to it; you had a good three minutes of oxygen by your count, and he’d get bored after thirty seconds, tops.

“The moment I obtain ultimate power,” he says in a quiet tone that you think is meant to be threatening, “The first thing I will do is reduce you to your constituent atoms. Then we’ll see who has the last laugh, insect.”

“Your excellency, stop it!” Tempest exclaims, sounding much more worried than you’d expected. “What has he done?”

“This filthy, recusant little rat,” he bellows at her, still gripping your throat and punctuating his words with wide swings of his staff, “Has been plotting behind my back! Planning to betray me! Planning to take my kingdom!”

“Oh no,” you barely hear Twilight whimper, whatever working theory on you she was afraid of now apparently confirmed. “He isn’t, he’s not...!”

“He was... going to betray you?” Tempest echoes, as if unsure she’d heard right.

“That’s what I just said!” he screams at her in another bipolar fit of rage, the mare taking a step back as he releases his hold on you and strides towards her, jabbing an accusatory finger towards her. “Did he tell you, Tempest? Did he let you in on his little scheme?”

“N-no,” she half-stammers, looking at you the entire time. “No, he never did.”

Her eyes remained fixed on you, even as the Storm King marches back over to you and starts jabbing you in the sternum.

“Well your little scheme has failed!” he continues to holler, punctuating his words every now and again with another jab. “A sorry little fool like you could never hope to outplan and outplay me! What do you have to say to that, cretin? Any little quips you’d like to share now?!”

In reality, of course, your big scheme was all going according to plan. God, you can’t wait for the big reveal moment. He’s gonna look like such an idiot when his staff doesn’t end up destroying you. It’s gonna make his upcoming destruction all the sweeter.

But once again, you don’t answer him, allowing your shit-eating grin to do the talking for you. Which, naturally, sets him off again.

“Bah! Just one annoying problem after another!” he spits, whirling around and heading towards the circle. “You know what my other problem is? This place! It’s just. Too. Cute! I don’t like cute! Never did like cute! Doesn’t really go with my whole ‘big bad powerful magic guy’ thing, does it?!”

“Neither does being gay,” you snort, “But that doesn’t stop you, now does it?”

You gasp in mock surprise just in time for him to slowly crank his head around to stare at you with pure, malding hatred.

“Oh!” you exclaim. “Oh holy shit, you’re in the closet, aren’t you?! That’s why you hate all things cute! Fuck, how did I miss that?”

Pretty sure his anger’s transcended beyond the constraints of the English language, at least if his teeth grinding is anything to go off of. So obviously, that means you need to keep pushing him and see what happens!

“Hey, it’s all right, queen,” you reassure, “I just want you to know that it’s totally cool to swing that way. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a dick sucking, fudge packing faggot--”

“ENOUGH!” he bellows, staff raised overhead. “Your mockery ends here!”

“It’s not mockery, it’s pride! I’m trying to be nice here, you douchelord!”

“This is all just a big joke to you, is that it?!” he snaps back, poised and ready to start stealing some magic.

“How could it not be?” you laugh. “You’re like a walking fountain of material to work with! Totally delusional, up your own ass, and utterly predictable on top of it all? My God in heaven, you make it so easy for me! I love it!”

“Predictable? Predictable?!” he predictably snaps, gripping his staff tightly. “I’ll show you predictable, you wretched, good-for-nothing bastard!”

There was no time to issue him the bastard catchphrase, the big idiot slamming the staff’s ferrule into the middle of the circle too fast for you to react with words. And that’s just not on. Interrupting musical numbers is one thing, but nobody - nobody - interrupts the bastard catchphrase. If you weren’t already planning to murk this loser, you sure as shit would’ve been planning it now.

Won’t lie though, it’s super cool to see the Staff giving it’s crazy Shang Tsung treatment to all of the princesses, especially on the struggling and crying Twilight. Big veins of magic start branching out every which way from all of the princesses as the magic gets vacuumed out of their horns, and you can really feel the magic of the land getting sucked out of the terrain as the staff does it’s thing. It’s pretty swish!

Less fun was seeing the King starting to laugh maniacally at the scene, but that was a problem soon to be solved.

You spare a glance over towards Tempest, who finally tears her wide eyes away from the scene to look at you, too. There was a lot going on in that expression of hers: shock, guilt, confusion, sadness, and an unspoken demand to know just what in the fuck you think you’re doing. Which, of course, you reply to with a confident little wink, elevating the confused part of her look above all the others.

You smile as the King pulls the staff free of the ground with a small shower of sparks. It didn’t look that different from before, the only real difference being the crystal up top glowing and lightly sparking with power, leaving a little trail of energy as it moves around. It was honestly a much more restrained look than the showy Warcraft style you’d been expecting; you kinda dig it! A shame it was being held by a loser like him, but that’s okay. Dirt’s easy to wipe off.

“Oh, wow!” he exclaims, predictably lost in the power of his new toy. “Very nice! Let’s get this storm started! Oh hey, that’s good, I should trademark that.”

Eyup, that one’s going in your cringe compilation. Or, to be more precise, his obituary. See, even poor Twilight over there is cringing from that line! Or is she just collapsing from exhaustion? Hard to tell.

As tired as she is, she does stumble back upright when the King turns towards her, the poor gal having no real time to react as the King points the staff her way. With a roaring FZZAP, it fires a beam of lightning that annihilates the cage and sends her hurtling through the wall leading out onto the balcony, shards of smoking antimagic metal clattering around her along with the usual debris.

“Ohh-ho-ho, yes!” he cheers, twirling the staff around in his grasp. “Not bad at all! Actually, kinda first-rate! Now...”

His gaze becomes much more smouldering - at least, he thinks it does - as he turns his attention to you, the staff giving off a menacing shower of sparks as he gets ready to give you a similar treatment.

“Any last words, traitor?” he snarls, pointing the charged-up staff in your direction.

A derisive laugh comes a’tumblin’ out of you. “I thought you said this was gonna be the first thing you did with ultimate power? I know you’re a dumb fucker, but now you’re telling me that you can’t even count? That’s really sad.”

The taunt landed squarely, and the follow-up lightning bolt landed squarely back.

FZZZZZAP

The bolt caused a lot of things to happen in short order. First, it stung like a motherfucker. Second, it swept away those magic chains like a gale-force wind. Then, it turned your chestplate - made of the same antimagical metal that Twilight’s cage had been made from - into nothing more than smoking, red-hot shards of shrapnel with the accompanying, frag grenade-like BANG. Finally, it blew you through the balcony facing wall as well, but you being you, you expertly roll out onto your feet not all that far from where Twilight had been blasted instead of landing in a heap like she did.

Dusting yourself off, you smile and nod down at your relatively unharmed and lightly steaming jumpsuited torso before you pull you gauntlets off and expose your bare hands to the world, the two platemail articles being the only surviving armour on your upper body. Twilight’s eyes light up with horrified realization upon seeing you further discarding your magical protection, the purple princess all too aware of why you would do such a thing.

That reason being, of course, your magical vampire powers; you needed direct skin contact with magic in order to absorb it properly. Stealing Twilight’s magic back in Klugetown - and borrowing some of Tempest’s for the Mt. Aris pursuit - hurt like a son of a bitch, but not because of the actual power drain; that felt great. No, it hurt because your armour acted like a big fuckoff power resistor shoved into series with it, reducing your stealing efficiency by a hefty amount and heating up a lot as a consequence. In both cases, the amount of power you’d taken heated the plate enough to burn, burn, burn, like a ring o’ fire. It was one of the big reasons you made sure your jumpsuit was of the highly insulating variety, and why you had the same material lining the inside of your gauntlets. Without it, you’d get cooked like a lobster!

Sounds risky and paradoxical, but there were serious advantages to insulating yourself against performing grand theft magicka, not the least of which being counteracting some of the major drawbacks of said thieving talents. Plus, they acted like training weights for your abilities, and damn good ones at that! But right now, you needed the weights off. You’re mighty glad the Storm Dipshit saved you the trouble of taking them off yourself, because now it was time to start barebackin’ his magic. Wouldn’t be the only thing you’ve been barebacking lately!

“This can’t be happening,” Twilight murmurs, “This isn’t happening.”

“Oh, it’s happenin’, all right,” you wink at her, wishing dearly you could summon fire around yourself whenever you dropped lines about things happening.

With an exaggerated swagger in your step, you stride right back through the hole you’d been blasted through, meeting the King’s briefly surprised and then furious glare with a cocksure smirk to match it.

“You call that destroying me?” you openly mock, hands on your hips and all. “I’ve had tickle fights with more punch than that, princess!”

You beat your chest like a gorilla, extending your arms out in the traditional configuration of ‘well, what is it’. The physical taunt was already successful, the guy building up a serious amount of charge in his staff for what you’re certain is going to be a kamehameha blast next. But you still needed a verbal taunt to seal the deal, because tradition demands it.

“C’mon you lil’ pussy bitch,” you continue to taunt, strutting towards him like a pigeon during a game of chess. “Gimmie one with some mustard this time!”

But mostly, it was to keep Twilight from warning him about your powers in time. Not that he’d listen, but better safe than sorry at this critical point in your plan.

“No!” Twilight shrieks, reaching out towards you two as she crawls her way over. “Don’t do it, he’s a cypher! He’s going to--”

Too late, he’s already started blasting.

KA-ZWWWWnnnnnmmm

Your hands clap together and your fingers knit together with them, save for the extended quartet of both pointer and middle fingers. They’re the first point of contact against the violent stream of lightning that slams into you, the impact along with the near hurricane force of the air sending you skidding back along the ground for several feet across several seconds. Had you been wearing your armour for this, the metal would absolutely have started melting off of you after only a few seconds of this kind of exposure. And as badass as that would’ve looked, it also would’ve burned something fierce, and you’d just rather not deal with that additional headache.

At first, the lightning scatters around every which way in random, chaotic arcs that lick across the stone surfaces and mar them with some deep, gnarly gouges all over. But then you flex your abilities proper. And the first thing that hits you is the sensation of the drain. Without armour or clothing to block it’s path, the power felt--

Oooh-hoo-hoo-hoo baybee, yes, here it comes! Here comes the night train!

The beam stops arcing every which way from it’s point of contact, instead coalescing into fine points at your fingertips as it appears to all onlookers to get outright vacuumed into your fingers. You stand to your full measure slowly and deliberately as a toothy smile breaks out across your face, your gaze turning back up towards a now very stupefied looking Storm King. Unable to help yourself, a laugh starts to break out from between your lips as you allow yourself to get lost in the sheer, indescribable influx of arcane might.

“What is this?” the King exclaims, completely taken aback. “What’s going on here?!”

“He’s been planning this from the beginning!” Twilight shouts, on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. “He wanted you to try and destroy him, because he knew the staff wouldn’t work against him! No, worse than that, that it would make him even stronger! That’s why he kept his cypher condition a secret!”

“Wait a second, he’s a cypher?!” he replies, his voice cracking at the last word.

Realizing the gravity of the situation and the horrible mistake he’s just made, he cuts off power to the spell. To his increasing horror, you flex the true extent of your arcane vampire skills and fight to keep the magic connection open for longer, forcing the spell to continue casting and managing to both maintain it and continue draining magic for a whole ten seconds before you lose your ‘grasp’ on it and the staff finally stops channelling. His half-panicked flailing of the staff does nothing to help or harm the process, but it was very amusing to witness all the same.

Your laughter, previously elated and upbeat, becomes a full-on evil cackle the moment the drain ends. Almost unconsciously, you adopt a menacing pose as your mind plays catch-up and takes full stock of just how much raw power you’ve taken into your system.

Every muscle fibre in your body felt limber and full of strength. Every nerve ending tingled with energy. Every pore radiated might. Every follicle held a charge. Every sign pointed to you being at your absolute peak, the pinnacle of strength. Your bodysuit stretched, contorted, and tore in different places around your freshly expanded, almost Herculean musculature. If you had hair, you’re fairly certain it would be in the Super Saiyan configuration right now. And the sensation of the drain itself, oh sweet merciful Jesus. If you weren’t already getting laid over the last week or so, you’d be liable to classify the sensation as sexual, that’s how good it felt!

There were precisely zero parts of your physical form right now that were anything less than godlike, and calling it delightful was an entirely inadequate descriptor for how it felt.

All of the secret training to get your cyphering powers into peak condition. All of the intensive physical conditioning to complement it. All of the planning you had done for this exact moment. You don’t even care if you end up losing the power at the end of this all. It was so, so worth it.

And the best part is? This isn’t even close to all of the magic trapped in that staff.

Coming down from your magic-induced and laughter-catalyzed high, you give your neck and other joints some very satisfying, much-deserved cracks, small sparks of unstable green magic sputtering out every time they went pop. Then, with one final sigh of utter delight, your eyes settle back onto the King’s frame.

“So predictable,” you cackle, punctuating every next word with the first few steps of your slow and incredibly menacing anime villain walk towards him. “Quod. Et. Demonstrandum.”

Funnily enough, his anger has trouble coming out thanks to the pants-shitting fear he’s currently experiencing.

Mean Green Mother From Outer Space

“So how’re ya’ holdin’ up there, champ?” you ask the slightly shivering King with a derisive grin. “’Cause from where I’m standin’, it’s looking like you might need a fresh pair’a britches.”

Fresh anger ignites in his eyes and expression at your words, but it only hides the symptoms of panic he’s experiencing. And not very well, at that.

“Aww, what’s wrong? You really got nothin’ to say?” you jeer. “Boy, that would be a welcome first!”

“How?” he whispers at first, soon turning into his familiar shouting. “How in the world did you hide being a powerful cypher from me?!”

“What, from you?” you snort. “You make it sound like hiding this from you was some kinda challenge.”

Reflexively, he points the staff your way with malicious intent and pours some charge into it, only to stop as he remembers that blasting you would be worse than useless. Still, he keeps it at the ready with grit teeth, as if it could possibly pose a threat to you at this point.

“Put it away, junior,” you snicker, flicking your eyes down on purpose. “Nobody’s impressed.”

He does no such thing, which was surprisingly smart of him to do. Instead, he starts backing up and away from you to maintain some distance, glaring at you all the while and regaining at least some of his composure.

“I’ll admit, you’ve caught me by surprise, in spite of my advance knowledge of your betrayal,” he says, putting on his intimidating voice as if it ever even worked on you. “But it is of no consequence to me. I know that your powers are every bit an ailment as well, and I know exactly how to exploit them!”

“Can’t wait to see this,” you laugh, not taking the idiot seriously in any capacity.

With a quick flourish, he tasks the staff with summoning forth some more streams of lightning, carving out a large platform of stone around his feet and levitating it up into the air, enabling him to fly away to what he mistakenly believes is a safe distance from you. With a few more swipes of the overpowered instrument of doom, the ground rumbles beneath your feet for a beat before a haphazard series of metal bars, pipes, and other random metal objects burst out of the ground all around you, each piece connected to another in a long series of conductive material that would inevitably lead to the ground.

“Of course!” Twilight gasps as the metal objects begin jabbing against you from every angle, hope laced throughout her voice. “Cyphers necessarily break the rules of magic in order to steal it from others! But if you use Clover The Clever’s Magical Equilibrium spell--!”

“--Clover The Clever’s Magical Equilibrium spell,” you interrupt with a knowing smirk and a dark intonation, “Combined with a direct connection to the ground through either bare earth or metal, you can forcibly bleed a cypher of their stolen magical charge, depriving them of their power and leaving them weakened and vulnerable.”

When you slowly turn your head towards Twilight, you’re met with the most perfect deer-in-headlights look spread across her face, her jaw flapping a few times as she’s caught between admiring your textbook repetition of advanced magical theory, and being absolutely terrified of your textbook repetition of advanced magical theory.

“Don’tcha just love that bit of irony?” you hum, “Needing to use magic to strike at one of the biggest weaknesses a guy like me has? I’ve had some know-it-all unicorns use the spell against me before y’know, and lemmie tell you, it hurts! Like a nasty static shock on your everything!”

“Less talking, more dying!” the Storm King very rudely bellows, letting loose that aforementioned spell.

You don’t turn around to dignify his exceeding fucking rudeness with a response, so you only hear him splutter and gasp in shock as the magic he successfully bleeds out of you doesn’t seem to faze you in the slightest, in spite of the big, healthy arcs of green power it’s forcing out of your body. That, and you preferred Twilight’s look of abject shock instead. Ponies were just better to look at in general.

“Of course,” you titter, “You do run into a slight problem with the spell once you hit a certain limit.”

“What is this?!” the King half-hollers and half-begs, “What have you done this time?!”

“Your magical pathways...” Twilight murmurs, her little academic hamster wheel sent a’spinnin’. “That’s impossible. There’s no way you have so few of them...!”

“C’mon princess,” you coo, jabbing a thumb back at the Storm King, who was busy recasting the spell multiple times and expecting a different result. “Explain it for the dumb ones in the back.”

“M-Magical Equilibrium wasn’t made to counter cyphers,” she stammers, responding reflexively and almost on autopilot. “I-it was made to heal ponies from problems caused by foreign magic. A-and because it’s a healing spell, i-it...”

“Yes?”

“It only returns magic to the environment as quickly as the target’s magical pathways will safely allow,” she finishes.

“That’s a textbook answer, your highness!” you clap. “Top marks!”

“But you barely have any pathways to return the magic through!” she shouts, more exasperated than afraid at this point. “Where in the hay are you from?! Even a creature from the most magically desolate places on Equus would still have more pathways than this!”

“Wow, bold of you to assume I’m even from Equus in the first place,” you scoff, feigning offence. “Anthropocentric bag of dicks...”

Of course, cypher powers bypass the whole pathway system to begin with, so even a shrimpy magicless wimp born as one could theoretically challenge an alicorn given enough stolen magic. Still, your magically challenged body hardly meant that the spell was useless against you; it just took a minute or two to suck out all of your juice in normal circumstances, and it fucking hurt. But under these circumstances? It’d probably take them days to bleed out your power, and you barely feel a thing!

With a mighty yawn and a good stretching of your limbs, you daintily pluck one of the metal bars from it’s strong magical welding point as easily as you’d pluck the petals from a flower. And after briefly admiring what was in fact a copper water pipe, you turn back towards the Storm King and casually toss it towards his floating platform, the piece shooting out like a shot from an anti-tank rifle and destroying a big chunk of it with pure kinetic force alone, drawing a startled, incredibly masculine shriek from him as dust and debris rained down above and around him.

“I hope for your sake that this ain’t all you got, chief,” you laugh up at him, casually brushing yourself off and breaking contact with all of the annoying metal. “I came here for mustard, so I expect mustard!”

“Fine!” he bellows, apparently driven to the peak of anger. “Let’s see how you like this!”

The staff lasers huge chunks of the ceiling and some nearby pillars into huge pieces, grasping them in it’s telekinetic grip and making them orbit the King’s platform. Then, with a thrust of the staff in your direction, the pieces all converge with the speed and force of a diesel train.

Pretty sure you heard Tempest calling your name out just before they hit.

SMASH

Too bad that wasn’t nearly enough to hurt you in any significant way. When the dust cleared, all parties gasped in shock when they saw you not only still standing, but casually dusting yourself off as if nothing had even happened. Your skin, normally toughened up by stolen magic anyways, was currently at “dragon scales” level of toughness on account of the ludicrous amount of power you still had coursing through your body.

“Ahh, physical violence,” you sigh, totally unbothered and tone carefree. “Not exactly a weakness, per se, but rather the universal fallback solution for all problems. After all, there’s only one way to absorb an ass-kicking, isn’t there?”

You fold your arms as you look back up towards the King. “That’s two weaknesses you’ve tried and failed to exploit so far, champ.”

Two jets of green, unstable magic - somewhere between fire and raw, electrified-looking magic in appearance - began firing out from the bottom of your feet, melting the ground you were standing on as they lazily jet-propelled you up to eye level with the King.

“So is there anything new and exciting on your usual agenda of failure, or do I have to give you a demonstration on what a real ass-beating looks like?”

You give your knuckles a good crack-a-lackin’ as a fresh grin splits across your face. Poor guy looks really indecisive right now. You’d better decide for him then, otherwise this’ll take way too long!

A contented little sigh is all the warning he gets before you make your move.

WHOOSH

You lunge towards him and seize him by the throat, hoisting him up into the air in classical evil villain style. Panicking, and without any air to talk shit with, he thrashes and punches against you, his hands doing no better than his flying debris did.

“Welp, your free trial of easy mode’s over, champ,” you chuckle, waiting for the debris platform to fall to the ground with a loud SMASH before continuing, a feral grin spreading across your face. “Hope you’re ready for hard-mode.”

WHOOSH
CLANG

You launch him towards the throne room’s double-doors like an air-to-air missile, hitting the seam dead-centre. The impact craters the doors and pulls them out of the wall by their hinges, kicking up a huge plume of dust and debris as they fall and sandwiching the dumb son of a bitch right between them. Fortunately, being the kind and helpful soul that you are, you zoom right on over Iron Man style to lend a hand, flinging one of the doors pinning him down off to the side with enough force to bury it halfway into the side wall.

“D’aww, I’m sorry, did’ja fall over, old man?” you coo, pulling him up by his arm. “Here, lemmie help you up!”

WHOOSH
CRASH

You send the big ugly idiot sailing right back into the throne room, this time hitting the wall at the opposite end that connects to the balcony. The impact creates a huge spiderweb crack in it’s surface, somehow falling just short of completely caving in the wall even as the King falls out of his little crater with a dazed, painful groan. You catch him before he can hit the ground, holding him in the bridal position with a dark, toothy grin that works to snap him back to reality.

“You know, I’ve waited a long time for this moment.”

SMASH

The wall collapses proper once you use the King’s dazed body as a bludgeon to finish it off, Twilight squeaking and taking cover on account of how close she still was. He dangles limply in your grasp, held up by his leg and barely aware of his surroundings anymore.

“And I’ve gotta say,” you laugh, “The wait was so worth it!”

WHOOSH

And with that, you send him flying far away into the cityscape somewhere, staff and all, with the exact location he went unknown on account of the still-lingering dust cloud. He didn’t even have the wherewithal to scream as he went flying off into the cityscape, that’s how bad you fucked his day up! With just a few solid hits!

Job done for the moment, you descend back onto solid ground atop the balcony and give your hands a good dusting, cackling a bit with an ear-to-ear grin as you waited for the dust to clear and the cityscape to come into view. No idea where he flew off to, but you know he’ll be back. And knowing him, he’ll play right into your hands with his next move. As predictable as a house tour, and as easy as taking candy from a baby.

The sound of hooves clopping on stone draws your attention away from surveying your new domain, and you turn around to get a load of the two mares of the hour. Princess Purple, still looking shell-shocked from everything that just went down. And Tempest, well...

SLAP

Apparently getting juiced up like a certain Democratic senator was no deterrent to her.

“You unbelievable bastard!” she shouts, voice strained and eyes wet.

“In the flesh, crackin’ eggs, and smackin’ heads.”

SLAP

Don’t even care. Tradition reigns supreme.

Well, that two-for-two slapfest seems to have calmed her, but only somewhat. Her voice still had that tremble to it, the kind you get when you’re about to start crying for real.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were planning this?!” she yells.

“’Cause you’d have tried to stop me?” you deadpan, raised eyebrow and all.

She splutters for a bit, trying to find a comeback to that. She doesn’t find one, of course. So, forgoing words in favour of action, she rears up and goes for smack number three, only to freeze mid-motion, eyes screwing shut and her teeth gritting together. And then, just as the tears were starting to prick the corners of her eyes, she planted her slapping hoof onto your shoulder, hoisting herself up and giving you a monster hug, face buried into your chest and everything.

“Aww, Tempie! Were you worried about me?” you ask with plenty of bemusement, grinning for a very different reason.

She answers with a slight sniffle and a sock to the gut, skin solidity be damned.

“Yeah, you were worried about me,” you laugh, patting her neck.

“It’s not funny,” she half-mumbles, not quite ready to look up at you yet. “I thought you were going to die.”

“Babe, there was never a point where he came close to being a threat to me,” you quip back.

She says nothing, continuing to squeeze you with precisely zero concern for who saw it. Sadly, that only meant Twilight. And apparently adorable displays like this work like smelling salts or something to ponykind, because the purple royal was rapidly kicking her shocked little stupor to the curb the longer she looked at the scene. Especially when a free hand started idly itching at one of Tempest’s ears.

Thankfully, she didn’t get a chance to speak before Tempest did.

“So she was right, wasn’t she?” she sighs after a few moments, raising her head and meeting your gaze. “You really did plan this all out.”

“You bet your ass I did,” you wink. “And it’s all panning out to a perfect, serifed T.”

“I mean, it’s not like I didn’t suspect anything,” she continues, flicking her eyes away for a moment. “You did hint at some funny business going on before we hit Klugetown. I just wasn’t expecting this!”

“What can I say?” you shrug. “I’ve always been a ‘go big or go home’ kinda cat.”

She snorts, but doesn’t say anything in response, content to just keep holding onto you.

KA-CRACK

Oop, hold that thought, King’s back.

Tempest quickly lets go and backs away from you, allowing you to turn around and face him. Sure enough, there he was, up on top of a nearby building and loosing some lightning from the staff in a skyward direction in a very similar fashion to how Storm Island’s main tower did, the already-dark clouds overhead roiling and thickening as they become even darker. The wind was already starting to whip up something fierce, loose papers and dust stirred up all around and occasionally swirling around in little vortices. Keeping the rain at bay in favour of just the strong winds, he finishes his storm-stirring and leaps down to the plaza.

“Soldiers!” he bellows with a wave of his staff. “To me!”

Okay, nevermind. He’s not doing the obvious stupid thing. He’s doing the less obvious stupid thing. From all around, your troops form up behind him in an orderly platoon, crossbows at the ready. Two of three best boys, still in their elite guard cosplay, form up next to the King, still wearing those gauntlets that the King gave ‘em. And from the way Cid was surreptitiously gesturing at you from up on high, it was pretty clear what use he wanted to put them to. Grinning down at the King, one of your hands stealthily gesture back to your boy down there: ‘on my mark’. Cid nods his acknowledgement, nods to Biggs and another beast behind him in turn, and the two ‘elites’ form up closer to the King in preparation.

Ah, well. You’d have liked to go all Dragonball on him, but you guess there’ll be plenty of that later once the Elements show up. Besides, the boys need some glory, too! What better way than with a good old fashioned coup d'état?

“Pawning off responsibility again, huh?” you laugh down at him, idly letting some green lightning Jacob’s Ladder it’s way up along your fingers. “Even with ultimate power? Wish I could say I was surprised!”

For once, he doesn’t actually answer. Instead, he jabs the staff into the air for a moment, lightning leaping from it’s tip into the weapons of your troops, supercharging them. So he has read at least some of the staff’s manual! That’s surprisingly forward-thinking of him.

“Crossbows at the ready!” he commands, smiling up at you when he hears them comply. “Aim!”

He’s so focused on watching your reaction that he doesn’t notice the crossbows all pointed towards him instead of you, not to mention your two elites firing up the gauntlets. You signal Cid with the usual staggered blink, smiling even wider.

“Fire!”

Not a single beast follows that order, but Cid and Biggs take that cue to do their thing. The King yells in surprise before screaming in pain as the gauntlets kick in and start tazing him something fierce, the electric chains and restraints already forming from the lightning and locking into place. From behind, the storm beast Cid nodded to before leapt out with a slightly nervous countenance that could only belong to Wedge, and he swiftly grabbed hold of the staff and managed to wrest it from the King’s grasp, the big idiot too overloaded with pain to even realize he’d let go of it.

The troops stow their weapons and gather around, and they can’t help but cheer for Wedge as he holds the staff aloft for all to see, happy-dancing in place as he does so. The King tried at one point to use some storm magic to escape, but a quick karate-chop to the back of the dome from Cid killed that attempt before it could get any kind of steam. Noticing that, Wedge blows a raspberry right into the King’s face with his finger and thumb in the shape of an L on his forehead, something that draws a hearty laugh out of both Biggs and most other beasts in attendance.

“Di molto! Bravissimo! Très magnifique!“ you applaud, clapping loudly and proudly. “Christ, I am so fucking proud of you guys, you know that?”

Beyond cheering loudly, some of them start squealing like fangirls at the praise. Biggs very much included.

“All right, all right,” you wave down to them, “Give the lads some space so they can bring our ‘glorious leader’ up for a chat, aight?”

“Traitors!” the King screams, flailing and thrashing against his captors. “You’re all dead! Do you hear me?! Dead!”

“Actually,” you grin, hand held up in the universal ‘hold up’ position. “On second thoughts, soften him up a bit first.”

The troops have never been happier to follow an order before in their lives. Right away, they form lines and start taking turns punching, smacking, slapping, or otherwise abusing the King, all while drowning the sounds of his pain out in their whoops, cheers, and laughter. And while that’s a fantastic sight to behold, the much better sight remains Tempest, who you crane your head around to look at. She’d gotten up to the railing at some point to observe the attempt at carnage, her mane whipping about in the stiff wind as her jaw hung open in utter shock at what she’d just witnessed.

“You turned all of the storm beasts to your side,” she murmurs, still gaping at the ongoing hazing ritual down below.

“Naturally,” you reply with a smile. “They’re a real smart bunch, you know! Couldn’t have done all this without ‘em!”

“Anon?” she asks somewhat nervously, finally turning away to look at you with a newfound fear and respect of you in those big eyes of hers. “Just how long were you planning this?”

You give a little shrug before answering. “Thinking about it? Since I first got hired on. Planning it? A couple’a weeks after. Executing it? A few months ago. Completing it? Well,” You chuckle, eyes flicking to the scene below. “Just a few things left to wrap up now.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “You know, you scare me sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” you gasp, hand over heart. “Y’know, that hurts my feelings!”

You hear Twilight give a little gasp of her own from behind, prompting you to look over and see her also looking down the railing, her own locks tossing and turning in the wind as she observes the hostile takeover with a look of horror.

“That’s horrible,” she murmurs more to herself than you.

“Well what did you think was gonna happen to the big idiot?” you deadpan, getting her to pay full attention to you. “All slaves turn on their masters eventually, honey. Even I know that.”

A specific pattern of flares fire up from within the crowd - green, red, green, yellow, green - no doubt the work of Cid. You knew what it meant, of course: it was the signal that you’d successfully wrested control of the kingdom. And like the Beacons of Gondor, the same flare pattern was repeated by your other loyal forces all across the land, spreading from the tall towers and docked airships to the far-flung airships terrorizing the townships across Equestria.

You love it when a plan comes together. Even if it’s only partway!

You pull away from the balcony, giving your juiced-up limbs yet another stretching. “Anyways, now that that annoyance is done and dusted, it’s high time I get down to business. And get outta this damn wind. You comin’, babe?”

Said babe starts for a second, but quickly recovers and starts following behind. Approaching behind one of the big thrones, you fire a small laser beam from your fingertip that scythes through it’s base, allowing you to pick the whole thing up with one hand and carry it with you towards the middle of the room with the other statuesque princesses. You’d have preferred to make your own throne with your magic, but alas, that’s another cypher drawback to add to the pile: the power you can sling around is destructive, and only destructive. Using magic in more creative ways was gonna require the staff.

Well, in any case, time to get the awkward part outta the way. Plopping your fancy seat down with a loud CRASH, you summarily use it for it’s intended purpose, locking eyes with a surprisingly calm Tempest.

“So,” she opens.

“So,” you echo.

“Since you’ve totally betrayed him, where does that leave us?”

“Guess that depends on whether you’re leanin’ towards ‘join me’ or ‘stop me’, don’t it?”

“I guess so,” she nods.

She doesn’t say anything for a bit, continuing to hold your gaze as she thought about what to say. But the conflicted look in her eye told you all you needed to know about her train of thought. And, sure enough, she goes on to vocalize it:

“L-listen, Nonny,” she begins, eyes darting away all guilty-like. “I really don’t want to fight you. And not just because of your new powers.”

Just because you don’t interrupt her, doesn’t mean you can’t smile at her trying to get the words out.

“Damn it,” she sighs, half-flustered and half-guilty, “I like you. Way more than him. And I really wouldn’t mind just joining you. But you know the reason why I’m here. The only reason.”

“The horn,” you state.

“The horn,” she echoes with a sigh after a beat, shutting her eyes and nodding. “I’m not giving up on it. I can’t. Not even for you.”

“Then I’ll be honest with ‘ya, Tempie.” you reply evenly, somewhat serious for a change. “Part’a my planning for this was reading all the material about the staff. Both the history and the instruction manuals. And believe you-me, it’s been used by a bunch of crazy mofos, and it’s got some real fancy features to show for it.”

She continues to avoid your eyes, chewing her lip and visibly nervous about where you’re going with this.

“On top of stealin’ the talents of whoever it sucks the magic out of, it’s got lots of nicely documented spells of it’s own. And a big ol’ list of things it absolutely can’t do.”

Her ears wilt and her eyes screw shut.

“In relation to what you’re asking for,” you continue, speaking slowly and carefully, “The staff--”

“It can’t,” she whimpers, erroneously finishing your sentence.

Without another word, you stand up and start walking towards her, the poor gal already starting to tremble as tears start leaking down her face.

“I should’ve known,” she quietly cries to herself, “It was stupid of me to think this was going to work. I--”

Her eyes shoot open with a small gasp when she feels you press a finger under her chin, but she doesn’t resist as you gently turn her towards your smiling face.

“You didn’t let me finish my sentence,” you say to her with a mirthful tone. “There’s no spell to fix you, that’s true. But there’s also no rule about it being impossible, either.”

Aha, there’s the glimmer of hope you were waiting for!

“And all that means,” you continue, “Is that nobody’s ever tried before. Nobody, that is, until now.”

“Y-you mean that you’ll...?!” she gasps.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m gonna do, babe,” you smile, leaning in close until your noses touch, holding her gaze the entire time. “First, I’m gonna take the staff and put it through it’s paces, get a feel for how the girl operates.” Another finger comes up, tracing around the base of her horn. “And once I get a good feel for her, first thing I’m gonna do,” - your finger taps it’s jagged tip - “Is give growin’ this back the ole college try.”

To say that she’s happy to hear those words would be the understatement of the year.

“You promise that you’ll fix it?” she sniffles.

“I promise that I’ll try.”

Reiterating that key point seems to have sobered her up a bit, prompting her to take a breath to calm herself down. Doesn’t wipe the big, watery smile off her face, though.

“That’s good enough for me,” she all but whispers.

And then she once again seizes upon you with another big ol’ bear hug, one that would probably be bone-crushing if you weren’t juiced out of your mind right now. It goes on for a while, and the only thing that interrupts it for you is seeing Twilight inching over from the side, determined to get some kind of word in edgewise. Which you instantly stop by channelling your inner Yoshikage Kira, giving her a simple, smile-laden glare that draws a muffled ‘eep’ out of her, the uppity lass taking a step away as her ears fold back.

The only thing that properly interrupts the hugging experience is you hearing the King’s familiar yet oh-so-delightful shouts and curses getting closer as he’s brought into the building, though with noticeably less energy and much more huffing and puffing this time around. Tempest hears it first, naturally, prompting her to briefly tighten up her hold on you until you heard it yourself, at which point she finally lets go and allows you to return to your seat, where you assume the Jarl pose in anticipation of the King’s arrival. Tempest leaning against one side of your throne with a foreleg up on the empty armrest doesn’t escape your notice, and you can’t help but grin wider at that.

Wait, why do pony thrones have armrests?

Oh right, you don’t give a shit.

Leading the pack was Cid and Biggs, quite literally dragging a very rough looking and bruised-up Storm King into the throne room. Just behind them was Wedge, staff pointed at the King’s back like a loaded carbine. If there’s anyone who knew how to operate that thing, even a little bit, it’d definitely be him. As for the King himself, it’s honestly impressive how angry he still was, even if his energy levels were a lot lower than before. Though that immediately changed upon seeing you, as he magically found the energy to begin struggling again.

He also got noticeably more angry at seeing Tempest chilling out next to you.

“Tempest,” he half-hisses, half-wheezes. “You surprise me. I thought you valued your little horn more than this, nevermind your life.”

“Funny,” she replies evenly, with no indication at all that she’d been an emotional mess only a minute or so before, “I thought you valued that more, too. But here we are.”

“What are you--” he tries, breaking into a small coughing fit. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me,” she continues, punctuating her angry tone with a fresh horn fizzle. “You weren’t going to fix me in the first place, were you? Did you even know how to?”

Man, he should not have recoiled like that. On both questions, no less. Guess getting beaten up by your own minions has a way of making you a shitty liar, huh?

“Tch. You’ll get what’s coming to you soon enough.” The power in her horn recedes as she looks over at you next, her angry tone lessened yet still present. “And you. You always knew he wasn’t going to fix me, didn’t you?”

“Sure did,” you chirp.

“Care to explain why you didn’t tell me?”

“Would you have believed me if I’d told you?”

She opens her mouth to argue, but closes it after a moment, trading some of her anger in for melancholy as she sighs and looks away.

“No,” she admits. “But I’m still mad at you.”

“Yeah, I imagine you are,” you smile. “Would roughing this clown up make it better?”

“No,” she half-smiles back, “But it’s a start.”

After giving her a little waggle of your eyebrows - and noting how Twilight was still in the background, angling for a chance to interject - you turn back to the Storm King, tapping your chin a few times for effect.

“Now then,” you chuckle, “You nice and calm now? No more piss and vinegar in your system?”

“I’ll be calm once you’re dead,” he hisses.

“Awesome!” you cheer, clapping your hands together. “‘Cause you’ll need a clear mind once we start talkin’ terms!”

“Terms?”

“Yeah, terms. Of your surrender.”

“My surrender?!”

You raise an eyebrow. “Well what other terms would I be talking about, sunshine? The terms of service?”

“Don’t you dare think for even a second that you’ve come close to winning this, you damnable traitor!” he snarls, struggling anew. “Mark my words, I will--”

You cut him off with a snap of your fingers. “Kneel.”

The two boys on manhandling duty force his compliance, dropping him to both knees with a pained grunt and a fresh new look of hatred.

“Sorry, I misspoke,” you grin, waving Wedge over. “When I said ‘terms of surrender’, what I meant was ‘terms of humiliation’, seeing how you’re already my little bottom bitch boy now.”

You let loose a derisive little evil cackle, then slowly stand up to your full measure.

“Seriously, do you have any idea what special kinda stupid you’ve gotta be to fuck things up this bad? And after obtaining ultimate power? Like holy shit-a-mole, your propensity for failure is like a fucking talent!”

Wedge goes to kneel and offer you the staff all traditional-like, but you wave him off for now, unwilling to slow your roll right this second.

“I mean really, you could’ve at least kept your biggest asset on your side,” - you point back to Tempest with your thumb - “If you’d only just given her what she’d asked for. Y’know, instead of stabbing her in the back. Then again, you are still a predictable man-bear-whatever-the-shit-you-are, so I’m not really shocked by that.”

Being called predictable again renewed his struggling, the big idiot determined to take some of that hatred out on you. Of course, this ain’t Undertale, so his determination is worth Jack and Shit, and they’re both busy snowbirding away in the Philippines.

“Of course,” you intone with a much darker grin. “This’d be far from the first time you’ve screwed the pooch this bad. After all, your conquests were pretty hit-and-miss before I came into the picture. That was a fun little fact to learn from the troops, truth be told; finding out that you failed a few invasions before now! Want me to go down the list? Actually, don’t answer that, I’m doing it anyways. Fuck you.”

Oh, he’s seething. Soon to be coping, if you’ve got anything to say about it.

“Your own home country? Fucked that up royally. The minotaurs? You weren’t even a challenge for them. And oh, how could I possibly forget about the disaster that was Zebrica? You know, when the Four Princes pushed your fucking shit in?”

“How was I supposed to know that they were all cyphers?!” he protests, his anger masking the weakness.

You reach down and grab him by the collar, bringing him face-to-face with you. “By doing the bare minimum of research? That’d be a good start!” He gets especially agitated once you start knocking on his head. “Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Think, dipshit! A little thought can do wonders, you should try it sometime!”

You drop him back down and walk a couple of paces away, the boys already forcing him back to a kneeling position by the time you turned back to him.

“And you know, I’m still in awe that you were somehow losing the fight against Abyssinia, even after the blitzkrieg went so well! Their king would’ve taken you to the goddamn cleaners if I hadn’t stolen the juice from his gear before you faced him.”

That line causes him to freeze, his breath catching.

“Oh, did I forget to mention that part?” you titter. “How you only won that fight because I went outta my way to gimp him beforehand? It’s a good thing you broke open the jail and recruited me first, otherwise that’d be another fat L for ‘ya to carry.”

You think the enormity of his fuckup is starting to sink in, if the look on his face is anything to go by.

“Hm? Whaddya look so surprised for?”

“Are you saying that...?” he begins, forgetting something by the end and looking over towards Twilight. “Er, who are you supposed to be, again?”

“The princess of friendship,” she answers with a frown.
“The princess of friendship,” you answer with a smile.

“That, yes!” he says, snapping back to you. “You mean this stupid, disgustingly cute little pony was right? You really did plan this out from the beginning?”

Twilight’s snoot wrinkles in offence, but you barely even notice it.

This was it. You’d finally arrived at this moment. The moment you get to reveal your power level to him. With your inner Liquid Snake bubbling up deep down inside, you allow yourself to get an early start on the deep, rumbling evil laugh.

At long last, after ten thousand years, you’re free! It’s time for the evil monologue!

“Well slap my ass and call me a bitch,” you laugh, expression and tone that of penultimate smug. “Jimmy Neutron here actually got something right for a change! You’re right, I did plan all of this. From the very moment you brought me into the fold.”

You shrug. “Well, kinda. Y’see, before I upgraded to world domination, my original plan was only to use you to help me subjugate Abyssinia. Now I’ll man up and admit that part’a that plan was because I wanted revenge; being treated like a second-class citizen by fucking furries is an insult you aren’t remotely equipped to fathom.

“The other part, though?” You flash him a dark grin. “Oh, that’s easy. I’ve always been a dirty, rotten evil bastard in my heart of hearts. Bad to the fuckin’ bone. And it’s my Satan-given duty to smack those furry bastards around, just like the nurse smacked my mama upside the head when I was born!

“I’d planned a lot of it out, you know, learning where the nobility kept their magic weapons and stuff. But I’ll admit, I slipped up. House Dapperpaws caught me red-handed doing my cypher thing to their collection, and they booted my sorry ass into supermax for it. Plus, they had their unicorn court wizard Equilibrium my ass to prevent any escape. So you can imagine that I was starting to get, well, a little worried.

“And then one day, who else breaks in but you?” you laugh, jabbing his forehead with your middle finger. “The dipshit king himself. From the moment I laid eyes on you, I could tell that you were a moron: a moron hittin’ the wall of just how far havin’ more balls than brains can take you in life. And knowing that, it was mighty easy to get you to ‘employ’ me. Though I’m amazed you never even asked why I was there in the first place! You might’ve caught my dirty fuckery earlier if ‘ya had!

“I used the chaos of your attack as the cover I needed to get my plans into motion. Break into the nobles’ mansions again, slurp up all of their magic, and move on to my next target. You sure made things go fast there, I’ll give you that! Man, I was hoppin’ with power by the time we got to the throne room. Damn near solo’d the whole place too, as I’m sure you remember. But, of course, I made sure to leave their king to you. Appearances are everything, after all!

“Now like I said, the original plan was to stick around to get in better shape for a campaign or two, then take some of my new loyal boys, head back to Abyssinia, and live out my Sauron fantasies all over those dirty felid son’sa bitches. But then something funny happened as I travelled the big, wide world. I got introduced to - and trained the everloving shit out of - those lovely hunks of muscle you call storm beasts. I got to see - and experience - the beautiful races n’ places this wide, wacky world’s got on offer. And most of all, I got to see how the anthropomorphic cancer encompassed far more than just my little corner of kittyland.”

You seize his chin and force him to look at you, a slightly manic glint in your eye. “And that’s when it hit me, like a Scud rocket to the gooch! There’s no way I can just stop at Abyssinia! There’s a whole world out there that needs chemotherapy! And by that, I mean total conquest! Sure, I’d always known it was an option, but I'd also always felt it was too much work to really bother with! But at that moment, I realized it was my goddamn manifest destiny to lay claim to the whole world, the kinda destiny you can’t just brush off because you’re lazy! And do ‘ya know who opened my eyes to that path forward? Who lit the fire under my ass and gave me the means and the resources to start raping and vaping all over planet Equus? That’s right. You.

“And just like that, my new plan was born. I’d take your whole kingdom,” - you spit the word out like a rotten egg - “right out from under your nose. And the first phase - turnin’ your troops to the darker side - was an instant success! Tell me, did’ja ever notice how you never failed another invasion after I came on board? That wasn’t a coincidence. You succeeded in takin’ Mt. Aris because you never took it; I took Mt. Aris, using my troops. And this entire incursion into Equestria went so well because me and my troops did all of the work.”

His mouth starts doing it’s best goldfish impression, and the sight makes you so damn happy you could sing!

“What’s the look for?” you laugh. “You didn’t really think you made it this far by yourself, did you? Oh, what am I saying? Of course you did. Just like I knew you would.”

You gingerly cup his chin, rubbing your thumb along his cheek as you fix him an incredibly condescending smirk. “And you played your role perfectly, you know. You fell for all the tricks, all the misdirection, all the diversions, like clockwork. You even ‘caught’ the storm beast trying to recruit some’a the few beasties still loyal to you!”

Your smirk becomes more pronounced upon seeing his surprise. “Did’ja like the contracts he had? Honestly, they were old revisions I needed an excuse to get rid of. The newest ones also cover both optometry benefits and paternity leave!”

“Buh-but...” he splutters, thoroughly floored.

“Why, you ask?” you chuckle, successfully predicting his next word. “To make sure you paid attention to me, and only me. After all, why would I disabuse you of the notion that the troops were stupid, when it kept you in the dark so damn well? That’s probably one of your bigger mistakes, honestly; thinking they were simple and stupid critters. But I’ve always known better. They’re smart, devious, and rotten to the core. Perfect qualities to have in an evil fighting force! All I had to do was treat ‘em with respect, hire ‘em instead of enslave ‘em, and of course, prove I was a badder motherfucker than you. And wouldn’t you know it, they fell head over heels to join me!”

You about-face back towards Wedge and start to slowly walk your way over to him, the big guy dropping back into the offering pose once he realized you were eyeing up the staff.

“Of course, every conqueror of the world needs the power to do the conquerin’ with. You never hid the fact that you were looking for a way to power this little baby up, so I made sure to jiu-jitsu your plans to my ends. Even took the liberty of reading up on it as much as I could! And judging from how basic your technique with it has been, I’d say that I’ve got a much better understanding of it than you do.”

You take a short breath - through the nose and out the mouth - as you come to a stop before Wedge, hand extending out and slowly hovering over the offered Staff of Sacanas. Even without touching it yet, the sheer volume of raw power it radiated was unreal, practically buzzing through your body in a steady cadence, almost like a second heartbeat.

“Of course, there’s really only one way to know for sure, isn’t there?”

Twilight’s hopeful smirk from off behind Tempest did not escape your notice for even a femtosecond, the mare as well-apprised of this particular weakness as you were.

In truth, this was the scariest part of your entire plan, entirely because of one of the biggest, most major weaknesses of being a cypher: your drain powers had no off switch. Once you touched magic, it was getting sucked dry whether you liked it or not, and trying to stop was like trying to stop taking a piss once you’d started. And unlike pissing, you had zero control over how fast or slow you drained magic: your body would continue draining at full tilt until either the source was empty, or you hit your upper limit on magic capacity.

Hitting that limit had extremely explosive and agonizing consequences, and was something you’d prefer to never experience again, thank you very much. Hell, you don’t even want to know how apocalyptic that might be in your current state. But like a muscle, your upper limit could be increased through training. Which is precisely what you did, putting yourself through a monstrous regimen just about every time you left Storm Island for “work”, training like crazy until you could safely handle alicorn-tier magic. And then training even more past that. Helps that you managed to pick up a few extra tricks during those sessions that let you fight even smarter!

One of those tricks was the extra ability to remotely drain magic spells and enchantments from a distance, similar to how a centaur could. And that, you could fully control. That ability meshed super well with your magic-resisting armour: you took full advantage of it’s properties to create your own off switch, making it so that draining magic via touch required you to ‘remotely drain’ it from around three or so yards away. It’s hard to express how useful that was, efficiency penalties be damned.

With all that in mind, you wouldn’t normally ever dare touch something as powerful as the staff, much less allow the King to power it up to it’s current state in the first place. But all the reading you’d done on the staff paid dividends here, revealing certain properties about not only the staff, but about Sacanas herself. And it was those properties that all but assured you that it was safe for even a guy like you to handle.

A shower of small arcs jumps between your hand and the staff, and it leaps into your grasp as if magnetized. The full brunt of it’s barely contained power hits you like an oil tanker in that moment, easily eclipsing the comparatively paltry amount you’d stolen from it. But the sheer volume is prevented from entering you by a razor-thin layer of an all-too-familiar possessive force from deep within the staff, jealously holding the power all to itself.. Said familiar force was also trying to claw it’s ill-gotten magical gains back from it’s even more ill-gotten holder, using the same exact means you did. And getting the same exact result in turn.

You can’t help but throw your head back and laugh: half in relief, half in malicious glee.

“What is going on here? Am I in crazy-town?!” Twilight stress-screams, drawing all attention to her as she squeezes her temples, bits of her mane poking out all crazy-like. “Why isn’t anything happening to you?! You should be draining the staff and hitting critical saturation by now!”

“I get where you’re coming from,” you chuckle, admiring the staff’s construction up close. “This would normally bring me to saturation. Complete saturation of the global variety, you could even say!”

You laugh again as you spin back around with a flourish to apprise the increasingly fearful looking Storm King, swinging the staff around as you go like it was Mohg’s trident.

“But tell me somethin’, princess,” you continue, “How much do you know about my girl Sacanas?”

“S-Sacanas?” she stammers, trying to smooth her mane back together. “Well, I, uh...”

“I thought not,” you sigh, unsurprised by her ignorance. “Kinda sad that she’s not talked about more, honestly. I mean, you’d think people would want to document the shit out of one’a Grogar’s more powerful apprentices!”

“Grogar?!” Twilight squeaks.
“Grogar?!” the King yells.

“Okay, you,” you frown, jabbing a finger in his direction, “Have zero excuse not knowing that. At least Twiggles McGee back there has revisionist history to blame! Those old unicorns really didn’t want to give a cypher like Sacanas any kind of recognition for her work, y’know!”

“Cypher?!” Twilight cries.
“Cypher?!” the King hollers.

“That’s what I said. Cypher. And a damn good one, at that! Thing is, she wanted a way to use magic like any other race out there, especially like her evil sensei! So she went and made this beauty!”

You give the staff a good twirl, letting the magical force keep it magnetized to the palm of your hand as it fidget-spun away. All the while, you take that opportunity to “feel” the strings of control within it. Having never operated a magic item before, you can confirm that it is indeed a very bizarre experience: like trying to play a hurdy-gurdy with one hand being your soul and the other hand being the Force. And even that description is probably wrong on several levels!

Doesn’t help that the thing was feeling you back. Despite your advance knowledge that it was gonna do that, it was still an exceptionally fucking weird sensation: not at all like getting felt up!

“It’s kind of genius how she made it work for her, actually! She made the staff into an artificial cypher!” You turn back towards Twilight, who immediately realized the implications of that statement. “And you know what that means, don’tcha?”

“Cyphers can’t steal each other’s magic!” she gasps.

“Bingo!” you cheer with a snap of your fingers, waiting for her to catch the obvious issue with that line of reasoning.

“Hey, wait a minute!” she frowns. “If that’s true, how could you have taken power from it?”

“Because Sacanas was a very talented malefactor who knew what she was doing?” you deadpan for a moment before sniggering. “I mean c’mon, the clue’s in the name ‘artificial’! Of course it’s not gonna be a one-to-one match to the real thing! It just keeps you from slurping it out on touch, not from slurping it outta it’s casts! How else could she use it herself?”

That wasn’t true in the slightest, but was believable enough that she bought the excuse all the same, ignorant of the intricacies of magical vampires as she was. Like hell you were gonna tell her the real reason that Sacanas’s staff let you take the juice from it’s attacks, especially not when you knew you were gonna have a Dragonball fight with her any moment now. Better to set her up with bad info now and take full advantage later on!

Besides, it’s not your problem that she forgot about your bare-handed deflection of the staff’s laser beam beforehand. Y’know, something that should be impossible for you to do?

“Of course,” you laugh, moving swiftly on before she can put two and two together, “Because it’s artificial, she built all kinds’a cool features into it, like turning it’s magic drain on and off whenever ‘ya want! And she built in some centaur-style drain as well! In fact, that’s how the staff stole all your juice in the first place!”

Despite appearances, centaurs and cyphers were different, though similar enough that the ‘can’t steal each other’s magic’ rule applied to them as well. They had far better control, could use normal magic, had no capacity limits, and could drain whatever and whenever they wanted. Plus, Equilibrium didn’t work on ‘em! But their powers were tied-up very tightly with their physical bodies; they needed to drain like they needed to eat and drink, otherwise they’ll shrivel up and starve to death. Contrast that to cyphers, where despite how limited and uncontrolled their powers were by comparison, it was more or less totally optional to use them.

“The best part? Grogar was so inspired by our girl’s tinker toy of death that after she bit the big one, he went on to make the Bewitching Bell, based off’a her designs! Really wish I could’ve dug up that beauty, but your girl Gusty hid it too well! But that’s fine, I’ll have plenty’a time to hunt for it later. And then nothin’ will stop me!”

The staff, still spinning around, finally snaps to a stop with a shower of sparks, your fingers gripping it nice and tight. You think you’ve got a good handle on the controls now, but there’s only one way to find out.

“Oh, but listen to me,” you titter, spinning back towards a now very fearful-looking Storm King. “I went and got so carried away with the magical minutia, I almost forgot about your denouement! Let’s take care’a that now, shall we?”

The boys, already knowing what to do, start dragging the King over towards the balcony for phase two of the humiliation ritual. He struggles and thrashes once again, but for a very different reason this time around: he was as scared shitless as he should’ve been from the word ‘go’. Leaving the slack-jawed ponies behind for the moment, you join the group up at the balcony, stopping to give the King a well-deserved noogie before approaching the railing and activating the staff.

ksssshhh

Thrusting it skyward, you fire a bolt of storm magic up on high that lingers for a second, and then sweep the staff in a wide arc in front of you. A huge wall of wind flies out from where you’d swept with a deafening WHOOSH, buffeting everything before you and clearing the obnoxious overhead storm cloud like a snow plow, leaving the slightly twilit skyscape clear, windless, and drop-dead beautiful. The move also drew the attention of every storm beast in attendance, every single one of them dropping what they were doing to form up in the plaza and give you their undivided attention. Even the airships idling around shifted position, forming up into a military parade formation.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” you bellow down to your audience, arms outstretched. “How’re my motherfuckin’ Monstars doin’ today?”

There’s your uproar of applause, cheers, and whistles, right on cue!

“I can’t hear you!”

They answer your call for more noise with no hesitation.

“Lovely! Almost as lovely as the weather we’re havin’ today, wouldn’tcha say?”

You’re fairly certain that there’s the occasional squee intermixed with the applause.

“Though if I’m bein’ honest,” you continue, holding a hand up to quiet down the audience. “It is kinda nippy out t’night, ain’t it?”

Some of the beasts in the audience, knowing what’s coming next, start to laugh, ranging the spectrum from impish cackling to deep rumbling. And they get especially loud when you lean forward and rest an arm on the railing, twirling the staff around as you grin like a hyena.

“So whaddy’all say we get ourselves a little fire started to keep the cold at bay?”

The ones in on this part of the plan cheer the loudest, the rest just following along. But once word starts to spread about what’s coming up, the joy spreads through the crowd like a disease. Without any further prompting, the beasts clear a big space in the middle of the plaza and get straight to work building up a bonfire.

The King gave a shrill gasp once he realized what they were building the bonfire with.

“No!” he yelps, struggling anew. “Not my merchandise!”

“Yes,” you smirk, slowly craning your head around to show him said smirk. “Yes, your merchandise.”

And not just his gay merch, either; his posters, his uniforms, even the manifestos - just about anything flammable with his logo on it, in fact - were all unceremoniously tossed into the rapidly growing landfill in the middle of the plaza. Many of the airships were in a big lineup above the pile as well, lowering down and dumping their entire cargo bay worth of worthless tat right on top of it. The select few airships that weren’t dumping their toxic waste had landed nearby, both sets of loading ramps flung open with big line-ups of storm beasts going in one ramp and out the other, emerging with their replacement digs that bore the logo of your new empire.

Replacing the twin electric-blue lightning bolts was a single electric-green question mark, the bottom stroke lacking the dot and reusing one of the bolts the logo was replacing. Honestly, the old logo was kinda neat in it’s own right, but it just had too much of the big dipshit’s baggage strapped onto it for you to just flip the colour palette and call it a day. And the beasties all seemed to agree, too. Already, there were crews on the ground hard at work covering over the old iconography for the objects that couldn’t be burned and replaced, whether it was due to size or flammability.

The pile’s growth effectively finished before long, the sky starting to turn orangey-yellow as the sun began to set. One of the airships flew by to add their final contribution to the pile: an open cask of airship fuel poured out on top of the pile, the sight drawing some cheers from the audience. Once that impromptu addition was done, a ring of storm beasts carrying lit torches emerged from the thick crowd, awaiting your say-so to get this party started.

“Don’t do this,” the King whimpers - actually whimpers - at you. “I spent so much time and money on that stuff, you can’t--!”

“Shhhhh,” you whisper, punctuating the onomatopoeia with a finger pressed to his lips. “Shh-shh-shh, it’s okay. Just let it happen.”

Ignoring his renewed struggle the second you drew away from him, you once again step forward to address the crowd, powering the staff up a hefty amount for your next supervillain party trick.

“Before we get started,” you announce, “I’ve gotta set up the mood lighting.”

Grasping the staff with both hands, you jab it towards the sun, yanking it away from it’s escape attempt towards the horizon and flicking it into it’s midday position. With that done, you twist the staff in the opposite direction with a slow sweep, the tip fizzling and sparking with energy as you begun in earnest. The ground reverberated and an increasingly loud and high-pitched whine emanated from the staff as you worked, slowly angling the tip up towards the horizon. As the tip crested said horizon, the moon followed along with it, unwillingly tracking the staff like a laser pointer and visibly trembling as it moved. And as you move it closer and closer to it’s final destination, the unnatural vibration in the ground intensifies to the point that it begins to crack the remaining glass panes, the whine growing louder and oscillating more wildly in lockstep as small pebbles and dust particles began to float up into the air from all around you.

A wall of darkness sweeps across the land like a curtain being drawn as the moon begins to crest in front of the sun, swiftly blanketing everything in sight from the mountains to the smouldering towns in the distance. Until, at last, the moon obscured the sun in a total lunar eclipse. The land all around was plunged into near-total darkness, the stars already starting to twinkle in the not-night sky as everything on terra firma was cast in an unnatural, barely-visible orange hue courtesy of the corona surrounding the eclipsed sun.

And with that final little motion, the staff’s audiovisual emanations come to an abrupt halt with a small exhale on your part.

“Man, this thing fucking rules,” you laugh, giving said staff a fashionable twirl.

Indeed, it rules almost as much as the control you now had over it. Just moving the sun and moon was easy enough, but going out of your way to upset the natural order like this was much, much harder to pull off. Really, what better way to put this gal through her paces?

And on the first try, no less?

God, it’s hard being so good sometimes.

“All right, whaddya say, boys?” you cackle down to your audience. “How about we try and light this darkness up?”

The beasts, eyes faintly shining like blue chips of ice to reflect their superior night vision, respond to your proclamation by cheering and applauding as the inner circle of torchbearing beasts, in unison, toss their sizable firestarters onto the pile. The flame catches quickly, aided by the addition of the airship fuel, and soon enough you can hear the hearty crackling of the flame along with the scent of cheap fabrics burning as the pyre bathes the area in a harsh, orange glow. Gazing upon it with satisfaction and a nice deep breath or two, you turn back towards the wet-eyed King, who doesn’t even realize you’d moved over towards him until your arm throws itself around his shoulder, breaking his stupor and replacing it with fresh fear.

“You know what your biggest problem was?” you sigh, tone like that of a disappointed parent. “You just weren’t evil enough. You never did all of your pillaging for it’s own sake. Hell, you didn’t even pillage for a good cause, like oppressing those two-legged furry bastards! No, you were in it just to be recognized. All you ever talked about, all you ever cared about, was your brand.”

You gingerly pet his head like you’d pet a dog, feeling the rage building up in his trembling body. “But the world doesn’t need the narc kinda evil, dog. Let alone the Hasbro exec kinda evil. What it needs, more than anything, is the classical kind of evil. The kind only a real, dyed-in-the-wool supervillain can give it. The kind only I can give it.”

“Now,” you continue, pulling away from him and returning to the forefront of the railing, arms extended nice and wide to drink in the warmth of the blaze, “Take in the sight as long as you need to, hombre. ‘Cause the ashes of all this trash is gonna be fantastic fertilizer for my shiny new empire.”

“I will end you for this,” he hisses after a moment’s pause, glaring at you anew. “So long as I draw breath, I will not rest until I see you destroyed. I promise you that, Anonymous.”

Smirking, you jab the staff in his direction, lifting the idiot up with a yelp and startling the boys while you were at it. He dangles helplessly in the magical grasp of the staff, hovering above the pyre down below.

“Now, now,” you chide, waggling a finger. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

His eyes widen when he sees you fish an Obsidian Sphere from your still-attached belt pouch, idly tossing it up and down like a Pokéball as you give him a small, sideways smirk.

“Especially not promises I don’t plan on ever letting you keep,” you close with a dark chuckle.

plink

Blinking, your hand catches nothing but air, the Sphere you were just juggling punted from the zenith of it’s toss by a familiar armoured foreleg and launched towards the King with pinpoint accuracy. He screams and thrashes as it shatters against him, struggling in vain against being stoned as Tempest brushes past your empty juggling hand to glare at the King’s rapidly solidifying form.

“That was for stringing me along,” she glowers.

Cursing you with his last breath, his final statuesque form has him reaching out at you, his face frozen mid-holler. With a few peals of laughter directed to your co-op partner, you release your hold on the King’s statue and let it plummet into the pyre, a big plume of flame shooting up as it impacts and drawing a round of wild applause from the beasts at your very stylish method of garbage disposal. Of course, you only watch that for a little bit before turning back towards a slightly panting Tempest, still glaring down at the flames where he’d met his very unseemly yet entirely deserved end.

“Nicely done!” you applaud. “¡Me gusta mucho!”

“I said he would get what was coming to him,” she states, continuing to look down at the fire.

“That’cha did!” you laugh. “Man, wish I brought some marshmallows for this!”

“If you don’t mind,” she continues, finally looking up at you, “I’d prefer to be restored now rather than later.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” you smile. “Let’s take this inside--”

You freeze, eyes immediately snapping towards the faintly glowing green object that just lit up in your peripheral vision. Whatever it was, it was entering through the city gates, and was just too far away to make out from this distance, even with godmode enabled.

“Boys,” you order, complete with a finger snap. “Scope. Now.”

Without looking back to them, you wait for a spyglass to be placed into your waiting hand, and once it is, you waste no time getting a look at the source of the mystery light.

“What is it this time?!” Tempest fumes.

“Ahh,” you smile, “I was wondering when they’d get here.”

“What?”

Flicking the staff towards the still-angling Twilight, you Force Pull her towards you, a small yelp escaping her as she flies forth. Timing it perfectly, you toss the staff to Tempest for a beat - who quickly catches it with her mouth - and in the same arm motion catch Twilight mid-air, arm wrapped around her barrel.

“I’ve got some great news for you, princess!” you smile, holding the spyglass up to her cute little peeper and getting a shocked gasp a moment later when she realizes what was downrange. “That’s right!”

“They came back for me,” she murmurs.

“What in the fuck do you mean, ‘they came back for you’?” you snort. “Of course your friends came back for you! How is that even surprising, Little Miss Friendship?”

Gotta say, didn’t expect them to use a Trojan cake to get into the city, but they should’ve known better than to use Spike as the fire-breathing ornament up top in this unnatural darkness, even if it does look pretty sick. Though the rest of the ponies not even bothering with a disguise as they pulled the cart it was on was arguably even worse.

“They what?” Tempest exclaims, having shouldered the staff at some point. “How?!”

“Heroic fortitude, babe,” you wink. “That or they hopped that Pinkie Pie up on ten tons of Monster and cocaine and rode her here, either-or.”

“Hey!” Twilight exclaims, downright offended. “Pinkie Pie does not use--”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” you interrupt with a boop to her snootle. “A gal that energetic is definitely on something. But y’know what, that’s neither here nor there.”

Wedging the spyglass into your waistband for the moment, you twist around and quickly pluck the staff from Tempest’s back, pointing it up at the moon and “releasing” it from it’s position with a quick flick. The action causes the satellite to rubber-band across the sky and spin around the world like a roulette wheel as it returns to it’s normal position, strobing the sunlight as it revolved. With that done, you set the staff down onto her back again and turn back to the distant cake, princess still in hand.

“You know what you should do, princess?” you smile, ruffling her mane. “You should go apologize to ‘em. Let ‘em know you’re still besties. Y’know what I mean?”

“I should,” she murmurs, before realizing the implication of your statement. “Wait, does that mean you’re letting me go?

“Yeah, why not?” you shrug. “You’re not really useful to me anymore, so it’s no skin off my back.”

That, and you’d rather not give their party more i-frames during their trek to save her. You know damn well how that game is played. Plus, it’d give you some extra time to get Tempest sorted out.

“In fact,” you chuckle all evil-like, Twilight’s ears wilting at the display, “I don’t want you gals kept apart for any longer, so I’m gonna do you a solid and give you the express route back.”

She gasps with fright and clings to your arm as you hold her up like a volleyball, now very aware of what you were planning to do.

“Wuh-w-wait a minute!” she squeaks, “You don’t have to--!”

And then you pull your arm back to throw, a psychotic grin spread across your face.

“--Muda muda muda muda muda muda--”
“--No please you really don’t have to do that--”
“--muda muda muda muda muda muda--”
“--I can walk down there just fine so you can--”
“--muda muda muda muda muda muda--”
“--just put me down please I don’t wanna go--”
“--muda muda muda muda muda muda--”
“--flying without my pegasus magic to keep me--”
“--mudaaaaaah!”
“--saaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe!”

WHOOSH

Twilight corkscrews through the air as she’s launched with the force of a tomahawk missile, and your spyglass comes up just in time to catch Spike and the others screaming right back at her as she impacts the giant cake dead-centre, causing the oversized confection to detonate and splatter it’s sugary goodness all over the place, the blast radius a good four or five yards by your count.

“Bahahahahaaaah!” you cackle. “Man, I always wanted to do that! Don’t even care if it sounds lame when I say it--”

And then, in an instant, your manic laughter comes to a dead stop once you see more than just Elements of Harmony crawling out of the big chunks of cake detritus: she’d brought along not only Celaeno and her band, but that fucking cat from Klugetown and, of all things, Princess Skystar!

“Ohh, no, oh-ho-ho no!” you hiss, actually mad for a change. “You wanna bring the gutter trash furries to my city, do ‘ya? Oh, you are on death row now, shitboots!”

Railing crumbling underhand as you grasp it, you look down at your incredibly confused audience and give them the order.

“We have a 314 in progress!” you holler, finger jabbed straight at the Elements and their revolting backup. “Assholes and elbows, ladies! I want ‘em spayed and neutered, and I want it done yesterday!”

The response was immediate, the troops almost as pissed as you were for having the celebrations interrupted. The airships in particular scramble right away, closing in on the still-assembling friendship squad while the troops brandish their weapons and charge towards the group, pouring in like the tidal wave of highly trained muscular death they always were.

No, come on Anon, deep breath. Get a grip. You knew the Elements would show up, and you should’ve anticipated them bringing those things with ‘em as backup. Don’t get mad. Get sadistic.

Ahh yeah, see? All the malevolent thoughts of cramming the furry menace into gulags is already starting to calm you down! See kids? Positive thinking really does work!

“I can’t believe this!” Tempest growls down at the heroes, the staff on her back sparking up in sync with her horn.

“Don’t worry about them for now,” you smile, patting her withers. “The boys’ll keep ‘em busy for the next few minutes.”

“What do you mean, the next few--?” She cuts herself off, eyes widening a bit. “Wait. They’re going to...?”

“Power up and go rainbow-Saiyan?” you smirk. “Glad someone was payin’ attention to my dossier!”

“Then we have to get down there and stop them, now!” she yells, a twinge of desperation in her voice. “Before they can stop you from restoring me!”

“Alternatively,” you chuckle, holding a hand out and letting the staff magnetically latch to your hand again. “I could restore you now, before they power up.”

Her mouth hangs open for a bit as she gives a small gasp at your offer. “W-will you have time?”

“I’d rather take my chances now instead of hoping for an opening later,” you reply, knowing full well that no such opening will be present.

“A-all right,” she concedes, knowing better by now than to argue with you about stuff like this.

“Let’s get indoors, quick,” you press, head gesturing towards the half-ruined throne room.

She needs no further prompting, taking off with you not far behind. On your way over, Cid ‘high-fives’ you, your hand grasping tightly around the spiky not-yet-magical object he’d passed to you - an absolutely critical component of Plan B - and stuffing it down into your somehow still intact pants as you pass into the damaged structure. You and Tempest skid to a stop atop the room’s big central dais, where the princess statues still sat.

Taking a small breath as you gather power into the staff, you take that moment to ponder your success rate at repairing her horn. But no matter how you sliced it, and in spite of all that just happened, your original predictions had actually gotten worse since your post-makeout evaluation of the situation. With the staff more or less ‘felt out’ at this point, you could indeed confirm that most of it’s functionality was geared towards destruction, like the faux-cypher it was. It definitely had constructive properties, owing to it’s inbuilt centaur proclivities, but they were very much not the main purpose of the device.

Sure, it’s definitely possible for it to restore the physical shape of the horn, but there was zero guarantee that it’d be able to restore it’s functionality on top of that. At best, it’d be like some kinda high-end magic prosthetic, and at worst, it would be absolutely fucking worthless and purely decorative. And you knew damn well that she wasn’t going to want anything less than full functionality. And honestly, neither do you. You still want her as backup during the upcoming fight, and having her at peak magical performance would be a massive boon.

In the end, it looks like this is another job for Lady Luck to handle. And more often than not, she prefers to fuck you over instead. Long, hard, and using lemon juice as lube.

“Alright, fair warning,” you sigh, tone serious for a change. “I can’t guarantee that this won’t hurt like a motherfucker.”

“I can take it,” she nods solemnly, closing her eyes as she bows her head and presents her broken horn.

Suppressing another sigh, you point the fully-charged staff straight at said horn.

“Here goes nothin’.”

FZZZZZZZZZZZZT

A triple-helix of focused and precise blue lightning fires forth from the staff, each leg of the helix contacting the base of her horn and encircling it as an additional central beam of power shot forth and hit the horn dead-centre, the helical lightning working more to focus the central beam than anything else. Tempest gave a strangled cry of pain at first, more out of surprise than anything else, but she did a fantastic job of gritting and bearing it in relative silence afterwards.

She begins to float a few inches above the ground as the central beam sweeps across the appendage like a 3D printer. At first, it ‘built’ the core of the horn up first, the matter it created looking kinda reddish and making Tempest wince. Then the beam widened up enough to engulf the freshly crafted ‘core’, the reddish matter it had built up before turning bright red as it slowly ‘solidified’ from the tip down to the base. This part also hurt the most for her, tears streaming down her face as she groaned in pain, refusing to cry any more than that.

It was around the time when the beam was two-thirds down that you saw a flash of bright rainbow light out of the corner of your eye, serving as fair warning that you were running out of time. The sounds of absolute chaos in the streets are heard from all the way here by the time the beam finishes working on the horn’s core. It then widens to the whole diameter of the helix, power pooling at the horn’s base in the form of a bright ‘disc’ that slowly dragged itself up towards the tip, with fresh, glowing-hot horn matter following in it’s wake.

The disc clears the horn’s tip and the beam dissipates in a small nova of power just in time for the Elements of Harmony to make their presence known, and Tempest falls to the ground with a small cry, clutching her head.

You allow yourself to sigh. Though you stop just short of hoping that it worked.

Sudden Death

“Whoa,” you hear Rainbow Dash comment from behind, “Not gonna lie, that was actually pretty cool. You know, for a bad guy.”

You pay the heroic mare and her cohorts no mind and instead keep your eyes on Tempest, knowing the rules of superhero engagement kept you nice and safe for the moment. Steam gently wafts up from her freshly refurbished horn as she groans in pain, her teeth clenched together and her eyes shut tight. Keeping your expression neutral to match your restrained expectations, you regard her new appendage with a careful, discerning eye, intent on finding out from a distance if it’s more than just a showpiece.

Sure, the restore process looked sick as hell, and the whole ‘core creation’ part of it gave you at least some hope that it worked. But you also noticed that the staff didn’t open up the existing horn core before it made the new one, which drove a big ol’ staple into that hope. You click your tongue at the same time that you hear Twilight hum with concern, and the convergence of your conclusion and her tone all but assures you of what the outcome is.

Still, can’t rule it out just yet. And you can’t just up and crush the gal’s hopes to dust like that, either. Not when you could still use her help.

“You alright?” you speak up, wearing a tiny, semi-strained smile.

She responds with a groan, cracking one of her eyes open to look at you.

“I take it back,” she groans again, rubbing her forehead. “I can’t take it.”

“Well, I did warn ‘ya.”

“You did,” she nods, opening both eyes and standing up to her full measure, her legs somewhat shaky. “How do I look?”

“You always look good,” you wink, your tone turning serious after that quip. “But I’m more concerned with how it works, not with how it looks.”

As usual, your serious intonation works to sober the gal up, giving her new and fairly long pointy bit - much longer than Twilight’s, let the record show - an experimental poke with her hoof, as if testing to see if it even existed. Then, taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes and experimentally lights up her horn.

Or rather, she tries to.

The base of her old horn glows just fine; hell, it even looks normal, lacking it’s usual unstable fizzle and lighting up with an aura that was a very similar shade of purple to Twilight’s magic. Unfortunately, the glow remained confined to said old horn, with the new material remaining inert. She was also visibly struggling with casting, wincing as she fed it power.

“Come on,” she grunts, forcing an eye open to look up at her still mostly unlit horn, “Work, damn it!”

That same eye shuts again as she strains to funnel more juice into it, sweat beading across her brow and tears stinging the corners of her eyes, through whether they were from pain or desperation was an open question. More alarming, however, was the sudden appearance of cracks across the new horn, glowing the same colour as her magic and with the beginnings of her usual fizzle to them.

“Whoa there,” you pipe up, “Tap the brakes, Tempie. Horn’s starting to--”

“No!” she cries out, straining even harder. “I can do this!”

The big, audible crack across the new horn with her typical Sith lightning leaking out of it spoke to the diametric opposite of her doing it.

“No, seriously,” you warn, staff already alight, “I ain’t fucking around. Stop right now.”

“Tempest, listen to him!” Twilight adds, voice laden with concern. “You have to stop now, before you--”

BANG

In the split-second moment before her horn detonated like a lightning-filled grenade, you enwreathe Tempest’s body in a protective barrier, shielding her from the blast. Twilight, having a similar idea to you, opted instead to grab her in a TK field and prevent her from flying back, setting her down gently once she’d come to a complete stop.

The remaining nub of her horn seemed like it was pretty much unchanged from where it had started, but it’s exact condition was hard to make out through the two-toned glow it was sporting: half red from heat, and half purple from her own magic aura. As for the mare it was attached to, all she could manage was to look up to where her new horn used to be with a heartbroken groan and some fresh tears before slumping to the ground, the exhaustion of the failed restore process taking it’s toll and rendering her unconscious.

“God damn it,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Y’know, I was really hopin’ that was gonna work.”

“Yeah, so was I,” Rainbow Dash pipes up, though you didn’t need to see her to know her girlfriends were all giving her the stink eye for that remark. “What? It’s true! Nopony should lose their horn like that! That’s as bad as losing a wing!”

“It was never going to work,” Twilight says, hints of sadness and pity in her tone. “Once a unicorn’s horn is broken, it can’t be restored.”

“Well that sounds like dumb fucking rule to me,” you interject. “Pretty sure reindeer grow theirs back, and they can do magic with ‘em, too.”

“Hey, that’s a good point,” Rainbow agrees.

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity snaps. “Why are you agreeing with him?!”

“Because he’s right?” she snorts. “Just because he’s evil doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Even if we do need to kick his tail.”

Huh. You may have misjudged Bluefast there.

“They’re also very different from ponies,” Twilight huffs, getting things back on track. “The outside of our horns does grow back. But the core doesn’t. In fact, any kind of damage to the core causes permanent magical damage, nevermind losing the entire horn. It’s a miracle she could even use the magic that she did!”

Ah well shit, that more or less confirms it, doesn’t it? Seems like the staff gave it it’s best effort, but it’s autopilot restore spell didn’t know to open up the old core to mate the new one to it. Still, now that you know that, wonder if you oughta try again? Y’know, open the old core up first, and then try it? Of course, no guarantee that that would work either. Hell, it’d probably make things worse. But--

“You can’t restore her horn, Anonymous,” Twilight intones, picking up on your train of thought. “It doesn’t matter how much power you steal or how hard or often you try. If Starswirl the Bearded couldn’t do it, then neither can you.”

“Ahh,” you retort with a finger-waggle as you slowly turn around to face them at last. “But the important thing is that I did try. Which is more than I can say for--”

Your words die in your throat as you finally take in...

Oh, God.

“Euurgh!” you blurt, recoiling in disgust with your lip curled up to match. “Oh my sweet Christ, what the fuck happened to you girls?!”

“I know! It’s hideous!” Rarity despairs, clutching her new out-of-place hair curls as she lets loose some melodramatic sobs, quickly pivoting to jabbing an angry hoof at you. “This is all your fault, you monster! You forced us into this!”

You have to concur with the fashion horse on the ugly stick front. Sweet merciful Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, they look like something a Tumblr artist would come up with, and not a good one, either! Their hairstyles, the eye-bleeding colour palettes, oh sweet Allah are those fucking stickers tattooed on their fetlocks? By all that’s holy, the pictures did not do this particular mahou shoujo transformation justice, by which you mean that it did not at all adequately prepare you for the sextet of technicolour abominations that once were fairly good-looking mares.

“It’s not that bad,” Fluttershy offers, demurely brushing through her mane.

“Yeah!” Rainbow cheers, complete with boastful hoofsie-kicks. “We look awesome!”

“It doesn’t matter how we look,” Twilight declares, legs and wings spread out in a hostile stance as she glares at you. “We’re going to stop you, Anonymous, and return all of the magic that you stole!”

You spare one last look at Tempest, a frustrated frown creasing your features. It’s bad enough that she’s definitely gonna feel that horn damage in the morning. It’s bad enough that you aren’t on track to feel her in the morning, let alone on a royal bed. It’s certainly bad enough that Plan A’s success rate continues plummeting like the subprime mortgage crisis. But the worst part of it all, by several nautical miles, was the lingering uncertainty. You thought for sure you’d definitively know by this point if she’d flip to the Light Side, or stay on the Dark Side. But no. You have absolutely no idea. And that lingering question was fucking murderous on your gut instinct, the oh-so-venerable sense in a very rare state of conflict.

It’s around about that moment that you really start to grok the hatred for superheroes. And with that newfound understanding, comes newfound commitment to fully seeing your plans through.

Curious, though. Now that the glow on her horn had faded, it actually looked kinda healthy. No cracks or jaggies in sight.

No, can’t get distracted now. The ceasefire’s about to end.

So with that final thought, you push Tempest out of mind for the time being and refocus, literally and figuratively, back onto the six girls, a fresh smile on your face as your fingers drum against the staff’s body, small arcs of power following them back up.

“So wait, that’s it?” you ask, eyebrow raised. “Not even gonna offer me a chance to surrender?”

“Would’ja take it even if we did?” Applejack deadpans, her own eyebrow raised.

“Not at all,” you shrug. “But it is tradition! And it’s the little details that matter the most!”

“Pretty sure it’s also tradition for us to win,” Rainbow remarks with no shortage of smug pride.

“Ah, but you started the break from tradition by not offering me a chance to give up,” you grin, waggling both a finger and your eyebrows in her direction. “That’s gonna cost you the traditional victory!”

Her mouth flops open to retort, and continues flopping as she tries and fails to find a counterpoint. Twilight, thoroughly done with all of this shit, cuts her off before she can respond.

“You want a chance to surrender? Fine,” she snaps at you with a surprising yet entirely pleasing quantity of sass. “Give us the staff, remove your forces, surrender yourself now, and we won’t turn you into a statue. Please.”

“There we go!” you laugh. “But I’ve got a counter-offer. Give up your new magic, surrender yourselves now, and not only will I not turn you all into statues, but I’ll give you all presidential suite jail cells and world-class pets, scritches, and tummy rubs at least three times every week! Pretty please with triple-whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top.”

“Monster!” Pinkie screams, cutting off Twilight’s attempt at interjection. “Don’t you double-dare invoke the triple-whipped cream with a maraschino cherry on top!”

“I just did, and I’ll do it again,” you smirk. “Pretty please with triple-whipped--”

BOOM

With weapon-switching agility that would make even the most elite Call of Duty quickscoping clans jealous, Pinkie whips out her Party Cannon and blasts your ass with an entire bag of sugar before you can so much as blink. Once you did blink, you found yourself fired out of the throne room, through the wall, and sailing high into the air across the cityscape, the airtime allowing you to briefly marvel at how the sugar had perfectly caramelized across your chest from pure friction alone. Which wasn’t long, sadly, as you immediately snap back to the pink pony that gave you that carbohydrate bukkake in the first place, rocketing straight towards you atop an oversize firecracker with a trail of confetti and a look of absolute fury and hatred.

Which, as established, remained absolutely adorable on the faces of ponies.

Taking a moment to put on a show of reclining back while breaking a piece of caramel off and chewing it - which was fucking delicious, by the way - you wait for the further aggravated Pinkie to close the distance with a big, Looney Tunes-looking anvil raised overhead before making your move. A single pinky finger came up to meet the anvil head-on with a dainty plink, causing the entire thing to light up with green fracture marks all throughout before detonating in a massive BANG. The blast caused Pinkie’s momentum to do a complete 180, throwing her straight back from where she came. Your feet light up again with the power of magic bullshit ion propulsion, but Rainbow Dash’s namesake contrail swoops by to snatch Pinkie out of the air before you could properly mount a retaliatory move, taking her back to her flying or otherwise autonomously floating group of friends.

Which left you with plenty of time to rocket over towards a nearby wizard tower, launching into a fancy somersault mid-air before you land with enough force to crush the no doubt very expensive roof tiles to dust underfoot, kicking a bunch more of them up like dominoes in a decent radius around you. And as much as it pains you to see good confectionery go to waste, you brush off the caramel coating while you were at it.

The staff feels you again, the strange sensation evoking images of questions. You raise a curious eyebrow to it as the images continue to flow in, the sensation becoming less alien-feeling as the imagrey that floats through your mind becomes specific questions: questions that chiefly revolve around you and your intentions. It's not hard to deduce that the staff itself is evoking these mental images as some form of communication, and your eyebrow raise is joined by a small smile with that understanding.

But there’s no time to ponder that further, seeing how the Elements have caught up and landed as a group a fair distance away from you on the same tower. The images and the sensation cease as well, as if it knew to shut up and focus on them, too.

Heh. ‘As if’.

“You know, I’m really hoping this won’t be a theme for the entire showdown,” you sigh, rubbing the back of your neck with your free hand. “I mean, comin’ at me one at a time? It’s like you want me to hold back! Nevermind not learning the lesson her royal highness here learned!”

“Why, you foul little--!” Rarity tries to accost with some summoned diamond spikes to match, her tirade and assault held back by Twilight’s outstretched foreleg.

“Last chance to give up, Anonymous,” Twilight frowns.

“Wait, I’m already getting my second chance?” you question with a tilt of your head. “A bit early for that, ain’t it?”

“I know,” she sighs, fixing you with an absolutely incredible look of pure sass and condescension that you can’t help but grin at. “I just thought I’d get it out of the way now, so I won’t feel bad about walking by your statue in the royal gardens once you refuse.”

Everyone but Fluttershy cheers and whoops at her proclamation, and you can’t help but cheer a little yourself.

“Yeow!” you exclaim, complete with a clap of hands. “Hot damn, now we’re gettin’ spicy! That’s what the fuck I’m talkin’ about!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then.”

“Hell yeah, it’s a ‘no’,” you preen, flexing your ill-gotten muscles before giving your bicep a little kiss. “If you want a beautiful piece of classical art, you’re gonna have to earn it the hard way!”

A small snort and a little smirk precedes Twilight and her party floating up into the air and lighting up with a fresh flood of power, a bright yellow sphere of magic enveloping the six as a high-capacity assault rainbow snakes around and orbits the sphere in preparation to strike.

And with a smirk of your own, you thrust the ever-handy staff skywards to rebut their little attempt.

“Trēs!”

A heady mix of both storm magic and stolen alicorn magic rockets into the sky in a marbled green-blue pillar of arcane might, and with a sweep of the staff in their direction, it explodes into two massive novas of power. The first was an extra-dense, neon-green energy wave that tore through the air with a harsh, bass-filled drone, knocking a very surprised Twilight and friends out of their Dragonball power-up phase and sending them careening off without much issue. The second nova radiated all throughout the upper atmosphere, blanketing the skies once again with a thick cover of freshly made and very dark storm clouds, dropping the light levels all across the city and bringing a rapid and unnatural drop in pressure that popped your ears almost immediately. The wind began kicking into high gear mere seconds after the light-obscuring cloud cover settled in, blowing much more violently than the ex-King’s first attempt.

“Oh, come on now!” you jeer down at the Elements, scrambling as they were to regroup. “Don’t tell me you thought I was gonna stand here and wait politely for you to power up! Naw bitch, you’ve gotta earn those power-up rights in this house!”

Slowly propelling yourself up in the sky with the power of jet-foot propulsion, you allow an evil cackle to rumble through your throat as you give the staff a quick flick off to the side. And just as if you were in possession of your very own crucible blade, a huge, crackling green laser death sword springs out from the staff’s tip. Standing at two yards long and a solid foot wide, it leaves behind a glowing trail like an old, badly-ghosting CRT as you give it an experimental swing, the very sight of it causing Twilight’s pupils to shrink and her ears to flop back a bit.

“Now, enough expository banter!” you laugh like an asylum patient. “Now we fight like men! And ladies!”

WHOOSH
ZW-KRACK

Without even needing to look, the joint flanking lunge by Applejack and Rainbow Dash was batted away in an instant by the flat end of your laser death sword, the deflecting strike sounding like a lightsaber fed through a crackling, grungy Russian synthesizer as it cut a wide, electrified arc through the air with equal speed to Dash’s own movements. The two cry out as they get flung off into the distance, the apple-flavoured attacker crashing through two wizard towers before being caught by Fluttershy while Dash rebounds quickly from getting the Team Rocket treatment.

“And, of course, ladies who act like men!” you continue unabated, hand initially waving at the two tomboys for emphasis before changing to pointing a finger at the princess. “You shoulda accepted my offer, Purplesmart! Now lemmie give you a demonstration on why I’m a certified twelve-point-oh on the ten-point-oh scale of badness!”

In an instant, you jet towards Twilight at extreme speeds, and she barely has time to erect a powerful shield before your laser death sword hits it like a hammer to an anvil.

Things were not proceeding at the speed that Cid would have preferred.

His master’s specific instructions were to evacuate all personnel and prisoners from the city once the ‘final showdown’ began, specifying that it would not be between himself and the former Storm King, and that he would know it when he saw it. And in advance of this, he had instructed the lieutenants loyal to him to begin the proceedings either upon receiving his signal, or upon using their own better judgment to make that determination.

It was a testament to that judgment that they recognized the signs the second the Element bearers became empowered with prismatic magic seemingly out of nowhere, and took the initiative without needing to see his flare signal.

From his vantage point at the somehow still standing palace balcony, he could already see the airship transports flying in and out with their usual high degree of skill, helping to ameliorate the large line-ups at the ramps of the two massive carrier ships by landing alongside the lines and ferrying troops to the docking bays on said vessels.

Yet the fact remained that the proceedings were too slow for his liking, in spite of his knowledge that there was nothing he could do to further hasten him. And his master’s battle with the empowered Element bearers would not care one wit about their timetable; in spite of his attempts to lead the battle away from his forces, they both knew there was no accounting for the unpredictability of the forces of good.

His specialized command vessel approached from nearby, having detached from it’s hidden docking station upon the former Storm King’s carrier to honour Cid’s call for a pick-up. While the crew busied themselves with docking at the balcony, he turned around and returned to the ruined palace interior, both hands clasped behind his back in a professional manner as he inspected Commander Tempest, carried on a makeshift stretcher by Biggs and Wedge. On one hand, he was quite pleased to see her awake and relatively unharmed after his master’s attempt to repair the damage done to her. On the other, it was clear her fighting spirit had taken it’s leave of her, as evidenced by her curling up in on herself and trying in vain to choke back her sobs.

The two beasts, at a loss as to what they should do, appreciated Cid’s direction to board the vessel immediately, and he followed behind the pair as they carried their broken commander aboard the ship, which wasted no time in detaching and taking to the skies once he had finished boarding. The higher in the stormy skies they could get, the better: it was unlikely that the Element bearers would penetrate the storm cover, and their vessel was more than fit to weather whatever his master would do to enhance the storms. He had seen to that personally.

In any case, his two named cohorts took Tempest Shadow directly to the medical bay of the vessel, while Cid himself went straight to the fully enclosed bridge of the ship, filled with advanced navigational and radio equipment and manned by well-trained and trustworthy members of his inner circle. They all stood to attention as he entered, snapping him a salute, and his first orders to them were for the ensign to both activate the ship's camouflage device and to take them into the sky just below the cloud cover, while the radio operators were ordered to aid in the retreat efforts. The latter order was something Cid himself also aided in, marching towards the front of the vessel to observe the environment while taking a nearby radio transciever for himself.

Cid would only attend to the Equestrian commander once all of his forces were airborne and out of danger, and the process took many minutes to complete. And all the while, his master and the Element bearers fought down below, loosing incredible amounts of magic and using a similarly incredible amount of physical power in the process. Strangely, his master did not seem able to absorb whatever magic they were using against him, but it did not seem to faze him either way. His master loosed both powerful hailstorms and enormous beams of magic from both his hands and the Staff of Sacanas alike, used an enormous energy blade projected from the staff, and at times even tore entire wizard towers in half with his bare hands to use as either a bludgeon or a projectile. The destruction he was causing was immense, and he knew it would only become worse the more he began to enjoy himself.

And he always enjoyed protracted battles.

Once the two carrier vessels were finally airborne, Cid replaced the receiver and allowed his team to finish the work, ordering the ensign to take the vessel above the clouds. Now that his forces were out of immediate danger, he left the bridge and made his way to the medical bay, where Biggs and Wedge were standing guard outside of the doorway to it. The two nodded to him as he entered, and as expected, the Equestrian commander was waiting for him inside.

She seemed much calmer than before, with only a few light sniffles and some heavier than usual breathing to show for her troubles. She slowly turned her head to see who had entered, and upon seeing Cid, simply turned back around and slumped further against the medical bay’s bed. Knowing she did not understand their tongue, he grasped a nearby sheet of paper and a pencil and began to write a note to inform her of their situation. It was halfway through the process of writing that she began to speak, in a strained tone of voice fitting for one under such duress.

“I don’t know why I expected anything different,” she says, her tone appropriately sad yet with a small trace of bemusement, bizarrely enough. “It’s always gone this way for me. Whenever I find anything that could restore me, it only makes things worse.”

His writing stopped as he paid attention to her, watching her closely as she proceeded to ventilate her feelings to what she no doubt assumed was a random beast.

“Figures that the closest I ever got to being fixed for real would hurt me the most, too,” she laughed, the expression devoid of joy. “I really thought I’d had it that time. That everything would finally be all right. I can’t believe how stupid I...”

She trails off, saying nothing for a few moments as she first sat in silence, then righted herself to a lying position with a small smile, the expression appearing genuine.

“But you know, at least he tried to help me,” she hummed. “Even gave it his best shot, like he said he would. But I guess even his bragging has it’s limits.”

She reaches up to touch her broken horn. However, now that he was paying attention to it, he could not help but notice that it appeared to be in a much healthier condition than it was before: there were no cracks or fractures left in or around it, and the jagged edges where it had been broken had been smoothed down by a considerable amount with little compromise made to their original shape, almost as if it had been carefully filed into a better condition.

“At least it feels better,” she notes. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time it felt this nice. So at least some good came from this. Too bad it’s not what I wanted.”

Cid could not help but wonder if she was referring to just it’s physical appearance, or if the staff had indeed repaired some aspects of it’s magical function.

“But you know what the funniest part is?” she continues, this time with a noticeably more pleased tone. “I really don’t think he’d mind. In fact, I... I don’t think he ever minded, truth be told. Everyone I’ve ever met was hung up on it in some way, but he never even cared that something was wrong with me. Hay, he even called me...”

Noting her resurgence of confidence and the brief reddening of her cheeks at her words - and idly hating that Biggs’s crass theories on her and his master’s activities was proving more and more correct - he simply stood still and watched as she began to raise her head and slowly push herself to a standing position.

“Maybe... Maybe I’ve been doing this all wrong from the start.” She stumbled over her words for a moment. “Maybe all I really needed was...”

She cuts herself off with a bittersweet laugh as she finally looks at Cid properly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all of this.” She looks around, aware of her surroundings for the first time, and her brow creases with concern. “Where are we, anyways?”

Crumpling the sheet of paper he’d been working on into a ball, he began writing out a terse breakdown of where she was and what had happened onto a fresh sheet. Once finished, he grasped a nearby clipboard and affixed the sheet to it along with a few extra blank sheets and hand-delivered it to the commander, idly flicking the pencil to and fro and he watched her read it.

Her eyes widen near the end of the text, no doubt due to her reading the section on the ongoing battle between his master and the Element bearers. They soon narrow again, however, once she finishes.

“Those damn ponies,” she hisses. “Of course they’d find a way to get that kind of power out of nowhere.”

She hops down off of the bed, stretching and cracking her neck and limbs, settling into a combat-ready stance once she was finished.

“I need to get down there,” she declares. “There’s no way I’m just letting him do this alone.”

On one hand, Cid was quite surprised to see her so ready to return to battle. He was certain that his master’s failure to restore her would cost him her loyalty, but she was showing no signs of this being the case. Of course, it was also quite possible that she was not loyal to him, as much as she was enamoured with him, the very idea of which annoyed him to no end.

On the other, there was no guarantee she would remain on their side of the battle: he and his master had briefly touched on her motivations during their pre-invasion discussion, and he had noted that it would be incredibly easy for her to be swayed to the cause of the Equestrians, especially if her restoration failed. As it had indeed failed, there was nothing beyond the master himself to keep her on their side, and the forces of good had an aggravating tendency to take full advantage of this type of weakness.

Whatever his thoughts were, it was also true that refusing her request would not be beneficial for his health, or that of his crew. With that said, delaying her request to land is absolutely within his ability to do, and he intended to do just that. There was simply no way he was going to land the overseer airship into an active battle zone, so he would have to convince her that landing safely would be the best option.

Seeing the carnage his master could cause with that staff, and knowing that the worst was yet to come, he believed that simply showing her the carnage first-hand would be all the convincing he would need to do.

And so, with masterful restraint, he motions for her to follow, leading her to the bridge. Biggs and Wedge followed behind her without any further prompting, acting as their escorts. Though he did indeed wish to take his time in landing her safely, he also had a very pressing matter in the form of conducting his command and coordination duties, and he simply would not risk doing so with even a single untrustworthy creature aboard his ship. Striking a fair balance would be critical to ensuring his and the master’s joint plans would be executed to the letter.

Once aboard the bridge, she halted for a brief moment to take in the environment. But before she could so much as bark an order, another great pillar of marbled blue and green magic rocketed into the sky from a fair distance away, the light drawing all attention to it and heralding yet another upgrade to the storm’s intensity. Slamming his fist onto the alarm button, he grunts out an order to brace themselves over the sound of the klaxons. The beasts comply immediately and duck for cover as Tempest opts instead to gape at the beam, only bracing herself when it expands into a full nova of immense storm magic. The wave itself only rattles the ship slightly; the true threat was the exceptionally violent, rapidly rising, and lightning-filled cloud cover that followed in it’s wake, rising up to greet them like the waves of a tsunami.

“Duo!”

The following sweep of your staff, aside from generating another green shockwave that repelled the attacking girls yet again, also juiced the stormclouds up almost as much as you were; already dark clouds turned even darker and almost looked like they were boiling from all of that fresh new power. A torrential downpour began spilling from the clouds in short order, hosing down the entire city around you as the odd flash of lightning punctuates the rainfall, the reflection of the flashes off the water-covered surfaces giving you lovely little flashbacks to Storm Island.

Twilight yelled something at the nearby Rarity and Fluttershy, but with the rain and wind working together, you couldn’t make out what they were saying. You take that as your in to get involved with the discussion, jetting straight towards them with your laser death sword freshly reformed and ready to do some ripping and tearing, a cloud of steam cloaking it as the raindrops vaporized instantly with super-satisfying hisses. The lower light level not only brought the death sword’s menacing glow out even more, but also allowed you to more easily keep track of the also-glowing Elements, which let you take notice of Pinkie and Applejack being fired from one of the former’s cannons straight towards you. Dash began circling around at a long distance as well, clearly trying to keep you guessing about when she’d next strike again, as if you didn’t already figure out it was gonna be a joint strike once Applejack was close enough.

But, subverting expectations, it was actually Pinkie that made the first strike, with one of AJ’s ropes tied around her barrel as she fishes an honest-to-God hot pink zweihander out of her mane, loosing a battle-cry of “freedom” as she launches at you in straight-up Braveheart warpaint. And as you make to raise your own death blade to repel the strike, you see Dash’s contrail dart by to snatch Applejack, the blue pony holding her friend steady as she prepares to do something with the length of rope still tied to Pinkie.

Smiling, you let the staff fall from your hand, the laser death sword fizzling out as it descends.

A chorus of gasps sound out from the three at your subversion of their subversion, allowing you to parry Pinkie’s very real sword into the stratosphere with a swift backhand. You go for the visceral attack as she reels from the counter, hand plunging straight into her mane and fishing around for the eldritch hammerspace she keeps pulling random shit out of. All you get for your efforts is the sensation of mousetraps latching onto your fingers and a huge bear trap crunching against your arm.

“Nyahahahaha!” Pinkie laughs, and with a surprising amount of villainy at that. “Betcha thought I’d leave my Pinkie Space unprotected, didn’t--”

WHACK

Bemused yet disappointed in her failure to follow the ‘never monologue during a fight’ rule, you take full advantage of the opening and knee Pinkie off towards a nearby building, your arm pulling out of her mane as she goes while still covered in her ineffective yet still obnoxious traps. Her rapid velocity was arrested a little bit by the rope around her pulling taut, which worked to both yank Applejack from atop Dash’s back and throw the latter’s trajectory off-course, causing her to crash face-first into the ground instead of catching your staff.

One hand opens up and fires a concentrated beam of green lightning that snakes towards the staff, while the other hand shakes off the traps. And once the beam makes contact, the staff rockets back towards you like Thor’s hammer, surfing up the serpentine lightning stream as it returns to it’s rightful place in your grasp. The death sword returns once your grip does, and you resume course towards Twilight and the others, who sadly seem to have concluded whatever discussion they were having. Fluttershy and Twilight take off somewhere in the distance, leaving Rarity to pivot around and face you, preventing your immediate pursuit of her friends by summoning a hailstorm of magic diamond projectiles, all of which track your flight path perfectly.

Snorting, you reform the laser death sword into a laser death shield to take the blows, each dart creating a ripple against it’s surface like a drop of water in a pond. One of the unknowns you had to work with going into this fight was whether or not you were capable of cyphering their special-sauce Harmony magic, and unfortunately, the answer to that was “no”. As you learned the hard way by trying to face-tank a cheeky laser beam from Twilight and a follow-up shower of diamond shards from Rarity.

That said, you could still deflect and shield against them, and they didn’t do a whole lot of damage to your juiced-up frame either way. But still, it was weird not being able to W+Mouse1 through their magic attacks like you normally could. Weird in a fun, extra challenging kinda way that you took to with aplomb aplenty. And so, learning your lesson from last time, you extend the fingers of your other hand and respond with some magical projectiles of your own.

Extra-chunky shards of green energy fire from your fingertips with similarly green streaks of magic trailing behind as they shoot straight towards the white pony, alternating between fingers like a make-believe Gatling-gun. And with the sounds to back it up! And unlike her small and elegant yet fairly weak high-precision bolts, your bolts came out with the precision and grace of a rusty sledgehammer, and the power and appearance of the Emerald Splash.

The OVA Emerald Splash.

BRRRRRRRRT
FFVWT-FFVWT-FFVWT
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

Rarity’s graceful weaving out of the way of your attacks came to an abrupt end once the bolts started detonating against the building behind her much more violently than she’d been anticipating, forcing her to erect some rear-facing shields and reposition herself as the tower she’d been revolving around gets sawed in half by your power, the buildings behind the tower riddled with craters and sometimes just outright reduced to rubble. She’s forced to fully shift from offence to evasion and shielding as your hand lazily tracks her movements, laying absolute waste to everything in it’s wake.

THWACK

Right up until Dash successfully catches you off-guard, slamming against your back and propelling you face-first into a nearby tower. But rather than fight her momentum, you actually speed up along with it before you crash, dispelling the staff’s shield right before you punch straight through the building and continue your descent towards the ground. She reeled from the joint impact but refused to let go, continuing to kick away while still latched onto your back. And so, you extend your free hand forward in the Superman pose, your fist alight with power and forming a compact, pointed envelope of energy in front of you.

CRASH
VRRRRRRRRT

And that envelope allows you to scythe right through the stone of both cityscape and underlying mountain alike, keeping your momentum going as you carve a perfectly Anon-sized hole right through the terrain. So perfect, in fact, that there was nowhere near enough room for Dash to join you on your little Amigara Fault express line - something your Superman angle saw to - so she wound up faceplanting bad and getting left in the dust within the first second of your manoeuvre. And in the space of a few more seconds, you punch right through the other side of the mountain, your downwards angle bringing you a dozen or so yards above a nearby river. The same river, in fact, that they first escaped from you in. Smiling and shaking your head at the memory, you rocket straight back up towards the city.

Or at least you do, until you pause halfway there on account of noticing the distant glow of Twilight Sparkle, way off at her similarly distant hometown of Ponyville. Though in fairness, the giant, fugly crystal tree castle thing she calls home should probably have drawn your attention before the bright n’ shiny did. Bad ADHD, bad.

With a sudden moment of downtime on your hands, you seize the opportunity to think things over. It really doesn’t surprise you to see that they’d want to return to Ponyville: they must be itching to get their hoofsies on whatever other macguffin they’ve no doubt got kicking around there. Intuition dictates that said macguffin is probably the Elements of Harmony, since their current powered-up state isn’t working quite as well as they’d hoped it would against you, and they knew it as well as you did.

You figure that their plan is to scoop ‘em up, return to the city, dole them out, and proceed to stop you. Assuming, of course, that you let them nab those Elements in the first place. Which you have absolutely zero intention of letting happen. So yeah, you’re definitely making that village your next battleground in a minute or two.

Right after you arrange for a little diversion. You know, to keep the other four from pursuing you on your way to Twilight. And pondering for a beat on how easy it was to scythe straight through that solid rock gave you just the bastardly idea for that.

So, tasking the staff with building up some mucho power, you fly up high and in the open to grab the attention of the other Elements, and make a show of pretending to see Twilight and preparing to dart towards their position. And right on cue, Dash comes bolting out of the city, only this time with a rope around her barrel and dragging along her entire local friend group with similar ropes on them in a big chain of flying ponies. With a smirk, you fly straight towards her, and narrowly pass her by on purpose as you bolt straight back towards the city, an arm flicking out at the perfect moment to toss Rarity up into the air and send the whole pony train into a brief tailspin. Dash recovers with the aid of her levitating hermanas, and gives chase right away.

Dust, debris, tiles, and whole rocks are flung every which way in your wake as you fly as close to the ground as possible, and you even skim the surface of one of the rivers feeding it’s many waterfalls at a few points, adding some extra mist to your wake. Dash plus friends followed very closely the whole time, with Pinkie and Rarity trying their best to shoot at you from range, to no avail. While you’d be the first to admit that you ain’t got shit on Rainbow’s speed, you did have a whole mountain’s worth of shit on her in the batshit insane and malevolent flyer department: your circuit throughout the entire city had you turning at sharp, near-ninety-degree angles on a regular basis, darting and weaving between buildings, towers, and other such fixtures, all while using your own power to either punch right through or shred the shit out of the scenery as you went to create shrapnel, roadblocks, and other obstacles for your pursuers to deal with. Given that both you and Dash were creating your own magic contrails, it no doubt looked like some extreme ghetto light-cycle bullshit from a bird’s eye view, the thought of which amused you to no end.

The point of all this, however, was not to actually engage them. Your plan was two-fold: to buy time for the staff to charge up some more for your diversion, and to keep them from rejoining Twilight and Fluttershy. After all, if you’d sat on your ass, hid away, and waited for the staff charge like a boring person, they’d have assumed you dipped, and they’d wanna link up with their pals again.

And letting these friends link back up was a very poor play, indeed.

Well, that and you had to make sure Cid got everyone outta the danger zone safe n’ sound, Tempest included. Which, of course, he did. Since the dude is a consummate professional at everything he does.

Your final move, once the staff was charged to satisfaction, was to fly back down the trench of one of the rivers feeding the waterfalls, and dart directly down said fall once you passed by it’s lip, flying close alongside the aqueous curtain. Besides the water being very refreshing and cleaning your post-chase mud layer off in ways rain simply couldn’t, it also drew the ire of your pursuers. Especially Rainbow Dash, who looked very pissy about you evading her for as long as you have.

“Just give it up already, ‘ya varmint!” Applejack hollers.

“You can’t run forever, dude!” Dash hollers with her. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna catch you!”

“It ain’t me you’ve gotta catch, sister!” you laugh.

whoooooommmmmm

All sets of eyes go wide when you turn around, displaying your very glowy, fully armed, and operational staff, right at the tail end of charging it’s ultra laser death ray.

“Hard right!” Pinkie screams. “Hard right!”

BWWWWWWWWWTTT

Dash’s speed plus her friends’ autonomous flight kicking in helped them clear the firing arc of the staff before they could be caught in the massive green laser beam, the diameter of the death ray about as wide as you were tall. But when they don’t see you pointing the death ray in their direction, their expressions morph to confusion, followed swiftly by utter shock and horror when they see what your real target has been all this time.

With a swift, seven-second swipe of the death ray, you sliced clean through the mountaintop just below the entire city of Canterlot, with the beam packing enough power to carve clean through the stone and shoot out the other side of the mountain, the beam vaporizing the stormclouds it came into contact with. The mountaintop began to sag and half-crumple onto the cut-out side at the halfway mark, and by the time you’d completed slashing the majestic landmark, the entire tip had begun the thunderous, unimaginably destructive process of sliding straight towards you, aided by gravity on account of the upwards angle you had cut at.

And as you finish marvelling at the crepuscular rays filtering through the hole you’d also carved into the still-violent stormcloud up above, you turn towards the four girls, still frozen and gaping in absolute disbelief. Though they come to their senses real quick once you start talking.

“Y’know, I’ve made a funny lil’ observation over all my time doin’ this,” you open, fighting to keep from laughing. “So often, the work that the heroes do also happens to be the same work that janitors do.”

Their looks turn downright hateful as you gesture towards the slowly approaching mountaintop with the biggest shit-eating grin you could muster.

“So good luck cleanin' this one up, jannies!” you boom.

“Yew unbelievable...” Applejack opens,

“Horrible...” Rarity continues,

“No good...” Dash continues,

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...” Pinkie adds,

And then, in unison, came your favourite part of all:

“BASTARD!”

“In the flesh,” - you take a bow - “Trashing your place, and bidding you sayonara, suckers! Nyahahahahahaaa!”

And after forming your free hand into an L on your forehead as you laugh at them, you once again shunt all power to the foot-engines and blast off towards Ponyville. True to her impulsive nature, Dash briefly gives chase, stopping only when her friends call for her help. Doesn’t stop her from lettin’ out a primal yell of rage.

“You’re gonna get yours, greenie! You hear me?!” she screams at you, shaking a hoof your way for good measure. “You’re gonna get yours!”

“Yeah,” you yell back, complete with extra laughter. “Like I’ve never heard that one before!”

She almost re-enters pursuit right then and there, but her friends calling for her again forced her to head back and help her galpals keep the city from being totally obliterated. Another perfect diversion, executed to the numbers. And with one final look back at them, and observing how the giant storm cloud was following you at a decent pace, you enter cruise speed in short order and begin your minute-or-so-long flight towards Ponyville.

During the flight’s moment of relative calm, the staff resumed feeling you again, the images of questions and slight exasperation coming right back. Only this time, you decide to answer it.

“Yeah yeah, all right,” you smile, holding the staff before you and speaking to it like a total schizoid. “We’ve got a free moment now.”

The staff ‘replies’ with images of relief, as if it were saying ‘oh, finally’.

“First things first, I’ve gotta ask,” you proceed, “Is this whole way of talking a synchronicity thing?”

It ‘tells’ you that it is.

“No shit?” you laugh. “I thought it was only good for tradin’ juice! I had no idea it could do psychic bullshit like this! That’s sick!”

You know, for a method so weird and minimalistic, it sure was expressive, you’ll give it that!

“Well I’ll definitely keep that in mind! Oh, pleased to meet’cha too, by-the-by.”

Boy, this thing sure was polite for an evil, living artifact.

“Thank ‘ya kindly! Honestly, I didn’t know how I was gonna hide how I wasn’t actually stealin’ your power back there, but you seriously came in clutch! And man alive, were you ever tearin’ shit up back there, too!”

It’s around the midpoint of it’s more serious metaphysical reply that it occurs to you that most of your evil-aligned conversation buddies are mostly nonverbal, or speak in ways you can’t understand and have to intuit instead. Funny how that works, huh?

“That obvious, huh?” you sigh. “Yep, hate to say it, but I don’t think we’re gonna be able to spend too much more time together after this. Hell, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to hook back up again, well ever.”

For a staff, it was surprisingly understanding about your highly probable upcoming failure. Even mentioned something about it’s mother - Sacanas, no doubt - going through the same thing.

“Hey, I’m no quitter. If I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna do it pushin’ back! If Sisyphus could do it, so can I!”

And then it tenders some surprise knowledge on something that really threw you for a loop.

“A tree? Really? In the heart of the Everfree somewhere? What about it?”

A wicked grin spreads across your face as it reveals what it knows.

“So the Elements came from it, huh? And you figure that they’ve been returned there?”

The affirmative metaphysical touch is all you need to formulate your new attack plan.

“Well well, then I know what we’re hittin’ up next. Don’t suppose I can count on you for some more indiscriminate mass destruction?”

It was just as into the idea as you were.

“Oh no,” you smile, juicing your hand up with some power, “The pleasure is all mine.”

With a quick jolt, you share some of your power back to it, infusing the lower regions of it’s body that it told you it wanted to power up, but couldn’t by itself thanks to deliberate design. Once it was properly juiced, however, the staff floated from your grasp by it’s own free will, nestling against your back as if you’d holstered it. It tenders it’s thanks by way of a fresh jolt of magic shared right back, boosting your already considerable charge and allowing your flight to pick up even more speed.

And just in the nick of time, too: Twilight was in the middle of levitating all of your occupying forces out of the town, airship and all. Altering course, you jet over to intercept them, and the staff picks up on your intentions and acts on it’s own, overpowering Twilight’s telekinetic field with it’s own. The glow surrounding them changed from purple to a harsh, electric blue, the beasts deposited safely aboard the airship that was itself righted, repaired, and restarted.

You land aboard the vessel, and give the scrambling and confused lieutenant a little smile as he drops everything he’s doing to salute you.

“You boys might wanna run,” you wink.

He needs no further prompting, and is heard grunt-shouting orders to his boys as you once again peel off and head straight for Twilight, who glared at you before taking off towards the Everfree to try and lure you away from the town.

It’s cute that she thinks that’s gonna stop you from trashing the place.

BRRRRRRRRT
FFVWT-FFVWT-FFVWT
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

You carpet-bomb the everloving shit out of the village with a two-handed A-Non Splash® as you fly above it, rendering her efforts to protect it completely pointless. The act itself was completely casual, so much so that you didn’t even bother to look down at the carnage you’d caused. It was probably that utterly carefree performance that hurt Twilight the most, if her subsequent harrowed look from the town back to you was any indication; you didn’t even pause or slow down the entire time, either!

Though the ongoing absence of Fluttershy was starting to worry you.

“Why’d you dip on me back at Canterlot, queen?” you cackle. “We weren’t finished!”

Mentioning the city brings her attention back to it, where she finally takes stock of what you’d done to the place. As a fun coincidence, the storm cloud finishes catching up at the same time her expression becomes even more wounded and angry, blotting out the light in perfect sync that you suspect was the staff’s doing. Said suspicion is more or less confirmed when she sheds some teeth-gritted tears by the time the rain came by to say hello, the staff feeling entirely pleased with itself.

“How can you do something so awful?!” she angrily wails at you.

“With a little swish of my magic staff, of course!” you reply, wearing a winning smile. “I mean really, this is magic 101 here!”

Hah, looks like that quip was one too many. She gives into her anger, yelling as she blasts at you with a big laser beam. The beam bends to track you as you swerve to avoid it, prompting you to stop mid-air and thrust both hands out to match it with a laser beam of your own. The two giant rays collide in a full-bore wizard duel, her perfectly formed and orderly magic creating a big, blindingly bright ball of power right where it clashed against your unstable and chaotic magic. Burning white liquefied mana sprays out from the big contact point ball in all downward directions, causing flashes of spontaneous combustion wherever it happened to land, assuming it didn’t first evaporate as it boiled in the air around it.

You hadn’t gotten to know the real Staff of Sacanas for very long, but it was already pulling it’s weight somethin’ fierce: it gave you a spark-loaded warning that a threat was approaching at high speed. That gets you to turn your head towards the direction of Canterlot, where you see the telltale prismatic nova and the following BOOM of a Sonic Rainboom, it’s originator bearing straight for you.

With no time to waste, the staff coordinates with you to shift all laser power to one hand, while the other hand grasps the staff as it flies into your hand by itself. You thrust it skyward barely a half-second later, but can’t even get the words out in time before the mare hits you with the impact force of a railgun shot.

THWACK
vvrrrrrRIP

And it turned out that, as usual, she wasn’t alone: Applejack was riding shotgun, and quick as a whip, had lashed you up with some extra-special glowing green ropes: a bright grassy green to your neon green. She wasn’t done there, either: she kicks you away with sufficient force to crack the air like a bullwhip and actually hurt - bad enough to knock the wind outta you - and the two work together to spin you around by the rest of said rope, centrifuging your ass for a solid second or two before you go flying off towards the ground.

CRASH

Honestly, AJ’s kick hurt more than hitting the ground, huge debris plume notwithstanding. Wasting no time, Twilight darts into view and looses yet another lavender ion cannon down where you’d landed, blasting you even deeper into the ground.

But as you are wont to do, you turn that into an advantage. The millisecond her beam stops firing - and very conveniently vaporizing those ropes while it was at it - your arms get to work, channelling your inner Diglett as you shovel through the stone and dirt as easily as parting water until you were out of view, taking advantage of the smoke plume from the beam to mask your tunnelling. Once you were sure you were out of sight, you power up your hands and start scything through the ground again, feet alight with low-intensity jet propulsion to dull the light they gave off.

Even though you were blasted four or five yards underground and dug around in total darkness, you were far from blind; the staff had been knocked from your grasp during Dash’s counterattack, and was now in the hooves of said pony. You know this because the staff is actively telling you, snitching on the group through your newfound kinda-sorta-maybe-telepathic link. All you have to do is listen to it’s intel, and do some very rusty silent communication of your own back at it, getting the angle just right to snatch it out of her grasp.

Well, you could just recall it whenever you wanted. But maintaining the illusion of it’s inanimate nature was more important. Plus, there was no way you were letting Bluefast off without a one-liner for her efforts! It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment.

“What did I tell you?!” Dash yells down at the hole, strutting her stuff. “I told you you’d get yours! How’s all that dirt taste, huh greenie?”

Eh, that’ll work.

CRASH

She squeals in shock and terror as you erupt from the ground at full throttle, propelling both of you high into the sky with one hand on her throat and the other on the staff. And as the staff returns to your back, both hands grapple onto Dash: one behind her head, the other around her back. Despite her thrashing and yelping, she can’t fight you off, and is pulled straight towards you until...

smooch

Whatever brain-halting shock she felt when your lips met hers was quickly eclipsed by brain-halting disgust as you swap the mouthful of dirt you took beforehand straight into her craw, like a mother bird feeding her chick. She gags, coughs, and aggressively spits it out once you pull back, desperately pawing at her tongue to get as much off as she could.

“Kinda tastes like that,” you grin.

THWACK
CRASH

Understandably, she was in no position to stop you from swiftly booting her back down to terra firma, complete with her own crater and everything. And with the other mares too slow or distracted to respond, the staff returns to your grasp, thrust skyward to properly complete the spell this time.

“Ūnus!”

For the third time, the pillar of storm magic sweeps the land, the Everfree’s reputed weather-negating powers doing nothing against the staff’s enforced storm cover. The entire storm system begins to slowly spin as the atmospheric pressure drops to a new low with a fresh ear pop to show for it, the wind becoming extremely violent and tousling the forest’s thick foliage in big waves of downdrafts and microbursts as the rain begins turning into hail. The lightning graduated to a steady bolt every two-odd seconds, with a constant and chaotic arpeggio of thunderclaps following suit thanks to their varied and diverse distances. And there was also a new addition to the meteorological carnage in the form of several twisters roping down from the clouds above, each ripping up nice, decently chunky lines in the forest as they made landfall.

That’s not all the staff did: it even went out of it’s way to summon some water for you to rinse your mouth out with! How nice can you get?

You narrowly dodge a purple laser beam fired up at you, the blast turning your impromptu mouthwash to steam a split second after you’d spat it out. And from off to the side, you see Pinkie and Rarity finally catching up, flying as fast as their non-pegasus levitation will allow and opening fire with their respective flavours of projectiles as they enter the forest. As you swoop down to the forest to break line of sight, you spare a glance over at the distant Canterlot to see what they did to save the city.

Turns out they grew a big-ass tree to catch it, and tacked it in place with giant gift ribbons and chunks of glimmering magic diamond. Neat!

Let’s see if they can patch your next round of damage up so easily!

This was a terrible idea, and Cid was certain that she knew it, too.

And yet, despite his attempts to dissuade her from interfering in the battle between his master and the Element bearers, she remained resolute in her desire to find him. Indeed, the only measure of success he found in swaying her decision was convincing her that it would be best if the overseer ship could land only where it was absolutely safe to do so, stressing the vital importance the ship had in directing the air forces. And though she agreed, she was not pleased with it.

Cid was displeased as well, though moreso in himself. He had severely miscalculated in his work to ensure the overseer airship was as weatherproof as possible, and unfortunately, reality had found that work wanting. He simply could not have predicted that the intensity of the storms generated by the Staff of Sacanas would outstrip even the very worst of the tropical hurricanes he had both designed the ship around and had tested it in. Making the vessel take the brunt of that cloud tsunami from earlier had been a mistake, the impact compromising enough of the weatherproofing and stability of the vessel that he had to make the decision to leave the cover of the cloud and take to the stratosphere in order for the beasts aboard to make repairs. It was a testament to the magical colour-camouflage device he had specially commissioned for this vessel that it remained undetected from the Element bearers that saved the city of Canterlot from total destruction, even as said vessel hung nakedly in the open air.

But even stratospheric flight would not provide them with safety from his master’s work on the weather now. As it stood, the cloud he had summoned now towered up to the stratosphere as well, compressing and flattening out against that layer of the atmosphere into a domed shape evocative of an anvil. And even this outermost layer of the slowly rotating supercell system was unnatural; these outer clouds were as dark outside as they no doubt were on the inside, and lightning freely coursed through it and lit it from within as the entire formation boiled with raw power. One would need to have a death wish to fly a ship into that.

And given how Tempest Shadow was openly gaping at the supercell, she too was questioning the wisdom of flying into that system.

“Land as close as you can outside of that... thing,” she finally orders, the nervousness in her voice quite palpable. “I’ll approach on hoof.”

Cid restrained a sigh of relief. With a small nod to the ensign at the wheel, the ship began it’s descent towards the outskirts of the battlefield. The very air became more and more charged with the malevolent energies of the staff as they drew near, which while pleasing to Cid and his cohorts, was utterly disturbing in it’s sheer quantity. Tempest, neither used to said energies, nor their quantity, was having a notably difficult time maintaining her composure as the vessel neared it’s destination.

“Sweet merciful Faust,” she whispers under her breath, “How much is he planning to destroy?”

With the vessel now as close as he was willing to get it, Cid gave the order to begin landing procedures. Tempest was already moving for the loading bay by that point, and within a few short minutes, the ship rose into the skies once again, this time without her aboard. Satisfied, Cid pulled a nearby lever to raise his personal operations desk from it’s hidden location in the floor: a C-shaped workstation complete with his own personal switchboard, the matching microphones and earpieces, two cutting-edge black-and-white cathode ray tube displays, a typewriter, and no shortage of paper and stationery. The nearby switchboard operator wasted no time in setting things up, pulling a disguised bundle of cable from the ceiling and plugging it into the workstation to give it much-needed power and connectivity. The displays emitted their characteristic high-pitched whine as they came to life, and small lamps came to life above each jack on the switchboard that was active.

Cid seated himself in short order, eager to fully commit to his work in earnest without untrustworthy eyes around. In one corner of the switchboard, he plugged in one of his earpieces to the furthermost active jack to tap into the radio surveillance device he had surreptitiously planted on Tempest Shadow during her time at the bridge. Said device achieved it’s tiny size through a complex and deeply integrated hybridization of technology and magic, and he had needed to make a custom order for it at the black market, making his supply of said devices very limited indeed.

Biggs and Wedge crowded around Cid’s station as he donned the other earpiece, set up the microphone, and went about coordinating all of the storm beast forces, executing the protocols he had co-developed with his master to the letter. Though Wedge offered to assist with his work, Cid had flatly declined; another beast aiding him directly would serve to splinter his concentration. He found much more success with aiding the other operators, fortunately enough. Biggs, on the other hand, was content to simply stand back and watch the two displays with awe: a move that suited Cid perfectly fine, as he would not interrupt him that way. One of the displays frequently flipped between the analogue broadcasts of the other airships as he worked. The other was fixed on an aerial view of Tempest Shadow and her escort, the image captured from one of the many video capture devices affixed to all of the manned telescopes and periscopes across the ship; in this particular instance, from the bottom-most scope he had tasked with surveilling her.

Cid paused only to wipe his brow, unwilling to slow his efforts. Not when they were this close. Not when one of his master’s two plans were this close to fruition. Already, he was mentally reciting the two to keep his mind from being lost in the minutia and focused on the larger picture.

The first of the plans was also, conceptually speaking, the most simple: achieving total victory. All his master had to do was win the battle, as he had done numerous times before. And from there, the usual process of conquering the outliers and taking possession of any and all resources and assets would begin. It was the plan he was most familiar with, and indeed, before this moment, was an unspoken certainty that did not require delineation in the first place.

Until, however, the time came to lay plans to conquer Equestria. Further amplified by the reception of Wedge’s detailed dossier of Equestria, and the magnitude of what they were truly facing.

Cid remembered his bafflement at his master laying such long-term, intricate plans for Equestria. In his ignorance, he had assumed the peace-loving land was merely yet another mark for the former Storm King to claim. But somehow, long before Wedge’s dossier had even been commissioned, Anonymous knew of the danger that Equestria posed. He could not explain it when questioned, and professed total ignorance of the land, yet somehow he had a sense that it would prove to be their greatest challenge yet: one that would make or break the entire empire he was keen to forge. In Cid’s shame, he discounted it as a blemish of true madness, though executed his preparation plans all the same out of respect for him. Discounted, that is, until the dossier crossed his desk. It was then that he knew his master’s sense had been correct all along. Indeed, according to that selfsame master, things were much worse than he feared.

The time he spent debating and arguing with his master over the second plan spanned weeks of accumulated conversation, and was laden with his trademark controlled madness and sharp wit. His every rationale, response, and reason, seeming quite mad and outlandish at first, was slowly proven right over time during the planning stages. There was an odd calculus to it all: a strange constant that bore it through to truth, much like the value of pi did to the theories of circles and waves. Cid would never claim to have a firm grasp upon the mathematics of it, but he could certainly grasp the pattern, especially when his master so kindly demonstrated it’s many occurrences.

It did little to ablate the shock of hearing the true requirement of the second plan, but it certainly did help him to come to terms with and understand it’s importance. Indeed, it was precisely because it defied all conventional reason that it had such a high chance of success.

His thoughts were interrupted by the final confirmation from the outlying invasion vessels. All prisoners and significant spoils had been secured and prepared, their ultimate fate hinging on the order he would have to issue. An order that depended on if the first or the second plan succeeded.

Whether or not to proceed with enslaving Equestria, or abandoning it.

He allowed himself to sigh, the lion’s share of the hard work now behind him. Indeed, the reduced workload now allowed him to refocus not only on observing the progress and outcome of his master’s battle, but also on the ongoing observation of Tempest Shadow. He tuned the first display to the image provided by one of the few remaining ground crews left, tasked only with surveilling his master from a safe distance. The fuzzy yet still viewable telescopic image came into view, showing the ongoing battle and the carnage it caused in but a mere fraction of it’s glory.

Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say it was a mere fraction of it’s terror.

Unfortunately, the moment was not to last. A call from the lower observation deck informed him of the appearance of some kind of enormous creature, bearing straight for his master and the Element bearers. Once again, he changed the feed of the first display to get a good look at what this creature was.

He had expected a dragon. But the odd creature that he beheld on the screen, though decidedly not draconic in nature, projected a presence of power and threat all the same. It was an enormous bear, of all the things, but unlike any bear he had ever seen before. In place of flesh and fur was instead a volume of semi-transparent mass, with what he was certain were stars floating within, linked together with small trails evocative of a constellation and moving in accordance with it’s limbs, as if in imitation of a skeletal structure. In the centre of it’s forehead sat an eight-pointed star, and the expression it bore betrayed it’s anger and a clear desire to cause harm. There was also something else riding atop it he could not make out, and upon calling the crew to zoom in on it, he was met with the uncharacteristically hostile expression of the bearer of the Element of Kindness.

Confused, Biggs called his companion Wedge over in order to identify the creature. The bad reaction the latter had to seeing the creature on the screen was far from reassuring, as was his subsequent explanation of what the creature was. This creature was called an Ursa Major, distinct from it’s smaller and more commonly encountered yet still dangerous offspring, the Ursa Minor. When provoked, these enormous magical creatures were capable of an incredible amount of destruction, rivalled only by the destruction caused by large and aggressive dragons. With this new information, Cid ordered the overhearing beasts on the bridge to advise all forces to stay clear of the creature and to not engage if at all possible, silently hoping his master would be able to contend with it.

One of the nearby operators, manning the magical detection equipment, spoke up to inform Cid that he had detected a spike in the Staff of Sacanas’ magic, predicting yet another surge in the already enormous storm cover. Cid immediately ordered the ship to put a large distance between them and the massive thunderhead. And as the ensign began the retreat at maximum burn, the operator further clarified that this surge was much more powerful than previous recorded surges, and advised extreme caution.

ROOOOOAR

And then, as if also sensing the surge in power, the Ursa Major below let loose a massive roar audible even at their current altitude, and began charging straight towards his master’s location, ripping through terrain as it ran while paying the storm no mind. Cid flicked the first display back to the team surveilling his master, witnessing the staff creating an enormous electrical corona around him as he empowered it.

“Nihil!”

The girls all scream as they’re flung away by the huge, expanding column of lightning that explodes from the mother of all skyward-firing staff beams. The cloud itself is no exception: a hole going straight up to the lovely sunny skies is carved open as well, the ‘passage’ so long it must be reaching the stratosphere by now. All while the lightning wave ripples through the cloud, reaching the ends of the system before it rebounds like a radar ping and causes lightning to criss-cross through the skyward opening like it’s the goddamn Death Star reactor. You feel the staff pulling on the monstrous cloud mass, causing the entire thing to spin around the cloud opening in a cyclonic fashion that you instantly recognize as the spin of either a hurricane or a tornado.

thump thump thump

It gives you the signal to proceed.

“Nihil!”

The cloud roars - literally roars like a lion - as a massive tornado pulls down from the opening to surround you. A thin and white lightning-laced cyclone is spun from the tip of the staff, making up the absolute centre of this meteorological leviathan and keeping you nice and safe in the eye of it all as literally everything else around you is a violent, rapidly spinning wall of roaring death clouds. And the staff was telling you all about how this monstrous twister was gonna expand out to the diameter of the entire Everfree with it’s third and final infusion, with the death stick’s pure glee at the idea nothing short of infectious for a rotten sonuvabitch like you.

thump THUMP THUMP

Well, no time like the present! You raise the staff once more time, and--

ROOOOOOOAR

Even after your hearing goes pop and stops working abruptly midway through that roar, you still feel the sheer might of the damn thing through your bones. Clouds were swept away and the tornado was dissipated by the selfsame mighty roar, the weather clearing force extending up and around you in a sizable area.

“Ow,” you think you say, but aren’t quite sure on account of your shot ears.

The staff, bless it’s black little core, threads a quick healing spell through your ears, your hearing returning with a pleasant little pop.

“Thank you,” you smile, said smile fading when the hand touching one of said ears comes back red. “Now who’s the asshole that stopped my screen nuke and made me bleed my own blood?”

“I did,” came the angry voice of the very last gal you expected to say such a thing.

With an inquisitive eyebrow raised, you turn around to look towards Fluttershy, and...

Huh. So that’s what she was doing all this time. She brought an entire goddamn Ursa Major with her to fight you. How about that? Between the sheer physicality, magical might, and the extremely pissed off glare, this thing’s got all the makings of an intimidating mofo!

But sadly for them, intimidation doesn’t work on you. Even if it does work on the staff, weirdly enough, which busies itself with urging you to get the fuck away from it as soon as possible.

“Man,” you whistle up at the big critter, “You are huge!”

You placate the staff with an idea, shared silently over your novel new link. Fluttershy makes herself known mid-exchange, standing atop this monstrous critter’s head with zero traces of her namesake shyness as she glares at you with undisguised hostility and malice.

“You listen to me, mister!” she hollers like an angry mother, “You’ve got to the count of three to put that staff down and give up, before me and Mr. Startuft here make you wish you were never born!”

Wow, that’s a dumb move if you’ve ever seen one. And they were doing so well, too!

“One--”

FZZAP

Fluttershy shrieks as she goes flying backwards from your quick little cypher lightning bolt, bouncing off the big bear’s very comfy looking star fluff and landing in a dazed heap atop it’s head again, all while the bear looks on in shock, followed by incandescent fury.

“All right, I surrender,” you grin, blowing on your two extended fingers like a gun and mockingly raising your hands. “Move a little closer!”

Even the staff is struck dumb at your sheer audacity.

The bear roars again as it charges towards you, and in spite of the staff’s protests, you launch a fresh salvo of the A-Non Splash® at it to halt it. Unfortunately, you learn two things in the process. One, that your magic did a whole lot of nothing against it. And two, that it was both way stronger and way faster than it let on.

THWACK

The Ursa’s swipe felt like getting hit by a mack truck at full speed, catapulting you right across the forest and hurting like a motherfucker. And you thought Applejack’s kicks were painful!

thump THUMP THUMP

Your jet propulsion ignites to escape it’s follow-up attack, but you don’t fly up into the air where it can catch you. No, you fly down, scything through the ground once again and escaping right before it cratered your previous position with a massive CRASH. But just before you can circle around to get the drop on it, plants and thick roots swell and grow all around you, glowing a familiar grassy green and halting you in your tracks before completely boxing you in. A second CRASH erupts all around you as your environmentally friendly cell is dug out by the same bear, who proceeds to sit back and hold onto your enclosure with it’s paws while it opens it’s mouth and creates a huge, star-filled magical sphere that becomes brighter and more twinkly as it dumps more power into it. Until finally, it chomps down on the sphere and spits a very big and blindingly fast laser beam of that same starry energy at you with pinpoint accuracy.

BRIIIIII

Unfortunately for the Ursa, it also learned two things. One, that you were also way stronger and faster than you let on. And two, that you were still a cypher. And unlike his handler, this bear didn’t have cypher-proof Harmony magic.

The bear lurches forward in pain as you effortlessly face-tank his laser beam and steal every bit of it’s power, and it howls and thrashes as you flex your power to siphon more of that arcane goodness from it, a stream of that starry energy forcing it’s way out of it’s mouth and nostrils and into your fingertips. It’s forced to let go of you, and you take immediate advantage by blasting out of your all-natural container and zooming towards the Ursa, where you deliver a magic-infused punch right to the star on it’s forehead that detonates with a loud, neon green BANG. That impact draws a fresh howl of pain from it, forcing it to grab it’s head to protect itself and allowing you to whip around to take stock of the six Elements, all huddled close together and holding onto your staff.

Oh. They’re holding onto your staff. Huh. They must’ve grabbed it while the bear was distracting you.

Good.

FWOOOSH

Through their powers combined, they believe that they use the staff to fire a big beam into the sky of a similar variety to yours, only this time it detonates in a big, iridescent white nova that clears all of the weather above the Everfree forest instead of making it worse. In an instant, the sun shines down upon the still pretty fucked-up looking forest, the wind dies down to a cool breeze, the pressure returns to normal, and the rain, hail, and lightning all get swept away.

You also weren’t paying enough attention to the Ursa, and it took full advantage.

WHACK

Next thing you know, you’re pinned between it’s two front paws. And despite all of your power, it remained both stronger than you, and resistant to all of your magical attempts to repel it. It kneaded your ass around in it’s grasp like a tiny lil’ ball of dough, causing no shortage of hurtin’ that it was absolutely taking pleasure in inflicting. It only stops once your head pops up out of it’s grasp, the rest of your body pinned down under it’s iron grip and remaining immobile despite your struggles.

Kinda inconvenient, you’ll be honest.

“Hey there, greenie,” Rainbow Dash comments, her tone full of smug satisfaction.

The sound of her voice draws your attention back to their little sextet, Twilight holding onto your staff while the other five floated around her in a star pattern, all of them looking down their snouts at you with expressions ranging from pure cathartic schadenfreude to plain ol’ seething anger.

“Wassup, big girl?” you wink back at Dash. “Back for a little more mouth-to-mouth?”

Dash’s bravado cracks at the comment, and splits right down the middle to make way for spluttering anger when you start making kissy faces at her.

“Dude, that was nasty!” she hisses. “What the hay is wrong with you?!”

“What’s right with him?” Applejack mutters. “That’s the shorter answer...”

“D’aww, admit it, Bluefast. You love it when I fight dirty.” You turn to AJ, not bothering to wait for Rainbow’s spluttering to become a reply. “And you. ‘Tain’t nice to talk behind folks’ backs like that. Let’s hear what y’all’ve got to say.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” she states flatly. “Yer a bad apple through n’ through, and yew oughta be right ashamed’a yerself.”

“Ahh, but I’m not, am I?” you smile. “In the words of my personal idol, ‘I regret nothing’.”

All she does is shake her head at you. As does Rarity, who offers no words. As for Fluttershy, however?

SLAP

She’s got some fight to match the words!

“You’re worse than bad!” she yells right into your face. “You’re horrible! You’re despicable!”

“Y-you really think so?” you ask, cheeks turning rosy. “Golly, that’s so nice of you to say!”

SLAP

Tempest slaps harder. Get on her level, Yellowquiet.

“Look at what you’ve done to Equestria!” she continues, gesturing at all of your damage near and far with tears in her eyes. “Do you have any idea how many ponies and animals you’ve hurt? Or how many have lost their homes?”

“I don’t know,” you smirk. “How many loaves of bread have you eaten in your life?”

That comment broke her brain for a moment and drew gasps out of the other ponies in attendance. Before Twilight could make her thoughts known, Fluttershy embraced her anger and went back at you with an impossibly adorable cry of tearful rage.

“You monster! You monster!”

SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP

“Yes, yessss!” you cackle in your best Palpatine impression. “Strike me down now, but it won’t do anything to fix your pwecious widdle animul fwiends! Muhuhahahaha-haaah!”

“Enough!” Twilight calls out, pulling Fluttershy back with her TK and hugging her as she weeps into her shoulder, the royal glaring entire longswords at you. “He’s not worth it.”

“Aww, c’mon! I just totalled your whole country by myself, how is that not worth it?”

Rarity takes possession of Fluttershy, holding onto and comforting her as Twilight spreads her wings out all threatening-like while holding your staff in her forelegs.

“You didn’t destroy all of this,” she fumes, jostling the staff for emphasis. “This did.”

“Oh, so now we’re blaming the stick for the damage the person holdin’ it did?” you scoff. “What is this, California?”

“You can stop deflecting and playing dumb anytime you want, Anonymous,” she deadpans. “I know the staff is both conscious and aware of itself and it’s surroundings.”

Said staff seems panicky and called-out, and you silently tell it to calm it’s metaphysical titties as you raise an eyebrow in response to Twilight.

“Oh? And how did’ja nerd that one out, book horse?”

“Because I just so happen to know a thing or two about dark magic artifacts,” she frowns, evidently not a fan of the nickname, “Enough to know that all of them are sentient. They have--”

“Sentient, or sapient?” you interrupt with a shit-eating grin. “You’ve gotta make that crystal clear if you don’t want lit nerds declaring a jihad--”

“They have to be by design,” she yells over you, snorting in annoyance afterwards. “Because there’s no other way for them to hold the amount of power that they do! Magic requires intelligence, and there’s only so much an inanimate object can do before it needs the ability to think!”

Tsk, tsk, tsk. She still thinks it’s just a normal legendary evil staff. So close, yet so far. Sensing your satisfaction, the staff does indeed calm itself, and you use the opportunity to plan your next move with it while you keep Twilight blabbering.

“Cool exposition, sister,” you chuckle before raising an eyebrow. “I assume it’s got a point besides making you look smart in front of your friends?”

Twilight uses a wing to keep Dash from tackling you right then and there, though she looks about on the verge of tackling you herself.

“My point,” she snorts, grinding her teeth together in frustration, “Is that you’ve been using it as a crutch this whole time! Not just it’s power, but the vast library of spells it has access to. Spells that I know for an absolute fact that you don’t know the first thing about!”

“My my, aren’t we full of assumptions?” you chortle.

“There’s nothing to assume! You’re a cypher; you don’t need to know any magic, because you can’t use any magic! All you know how to do is steal it and throw it around like a cave pony throwing rocks! What, are you really going to tell me you know anything about storm magic? Or that you actually knew the healing spell for your ears? Or--”

“Or how to fix Tempest’s horn?” you butt in with a smug smile and a darker, more self-assured tone of voice.

“You didn’t fix her horn,” she glowers, very unhappy about you bringing that up.

“You’re right, I didn’t,” you continue, letting her slip-up slide for the moment. “I tried to fix her horn.”

“I’m sorry, is there a difference in there somewhere?”

“Yeah, the difference being that it’s more than what you did for her.”

Ooh, she really didn’t like that! Even her friends are ooooh-ing at the two of you!

“Oh-oh,” Dash whispers to Pinkie, “He went there...”

“This is gonna get super ugly,” she whispers back.

“You listen here, mister,” Twilight extra-glowers, getting right into your face. “I already told you, there’s no way to fix broken unicorn horns. We’ve already tried. I’ve already tried.”

“Wrong again, purplesmart,” you grin. “Princess Celestia already tried, and all you did was watch her.”

Her eyes widen slightly as she gives a shallow gasp, soon followed by her teeth grinding together in renewed anger.

“Ahh, so you haven’t forgotten about that little lesson!” you laugh, smile changing to a smug grin as your tone lowers. “So it really is just you being lazy.”

SLAP

Whoo lawdy, she’s definitely one-third earth pony! That one smarts! Rarity and Applejack pull her back away from you as she looks down at her trembling slapping hoof with a mix of fury and surprise, as if even she didn’t know she’d do that. Said hoof continues shaking as she looks back at you, mostly just furious this time around.

“If I remember my report correctly,” you continue unabated, pausing only when you taste the nosebleed she’d given you and smiling wider in response. “I believe the event I’m talking about was at, oh, I’d say your fifth or sixth year of being the sun horse’s protégé?”

“How the hay do you know about that?!”

“If you’re wondering if I was checking your past out, the answer’s no,” you smirk. “I learned about this tidbit from checking Tempie’s past out. Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re nowhere near important enough for me to background check; I had a minion do that for me.”

“Wait a minute,” Rarity interjects before Twilight could blow up at you again, “You ran a background check on your partner? I didn’t think villains were the type.”

“Most villains aren’t the type, sweetheart,” you wink at her. “It’s also no coincidence that most villains are raging dipshits. Exhibit A, the Storm King.”

“I... can’t really argue with that,” she admits. “But that doesn’t explain why you even bothered in the first place.”

“I always do my research, darlin’. Especially when it comes to two things: the places I invade, and the people I work with. Now, I’m not about to spill all the tea I’ve got on her, even though I paid a ton for it at the black market. Just what pertains to our little princess here.”

“You can buy background checks on the black market?” Rarity mutters.

“Sure can! Totally anon, too! Want me to recommend a good dealer?”

“No, you sure can’t!” Applejack interjects, covering Rarity’s muzzle before she could give a spirited affirmative and huffing all lady-like when interrupted. “Now if ya got a darned point, just shut up and make it already!”

“All right, fine,” you snort. “Celestia brought--”

“No,” Twilight interrupts, facing her galpals. “I’ll say what happened.”

Nodding your head her way, you allow her to proceed.

“It was in my sixth year of study,” - she briefly turns around to glare at you, adding “Not my fifth,” - “And the princess wanted to teach me that even magic couldn’t fix everything. She had me take notes with some other researchers while she tried to restore not only unicorns with broken horns, but pegasi with missing wings. But even when she used the spells the researchers developed, nothing worked. All it really did was hurt them.”

“Wow,” Dash comments, hugging her own wings close out of reflex. “That’s rough.”

“Ah’ll say,” AJ agrees.

“What I don’t understand,” Twilight huffs, turning to face you again, “Is why that would--”

Aha, she figured it out!

“Oh, no,” she gasps.

“Oh, yes,” you grin. “You remember one’a those subjects now, don’tcha? Cute little filly around your age? Dark purple coat? Purple mane? Lovely light blue eyes?” Your smile deepens and your tone darkens. “Scar across the eye? Dismembered horn? Sound familiar?”

A fresh round’a gasps ring out from purple’s comadres.

“Buh-b-but her name...!” she splutters. “She was called--!”

“Wow, almost like she’s using an alias to do evil with or something,” you deadpan. “It’s also exceptionally rude to drop her real name too, so I’d appreciate it if, y’know, you didn’t.” You shrug. “Or do. I’m not your dad.”

“So that’s why my Pinkie Sense wasn’t ringing when I heard her name!” El Ponko exclaims. “That pony needs 50ccs of emergency parties, stat!”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate that,” you wink.

“You’re not supposed to agree with me!” Pinkie screams as she goes snoot-to-nose with you.

“You can’t stop me!” you mockingly scream right back.

Twilight magicks Pinkie’s muzzle shut before she can try to out-scream you, pushing her away.

“So what, Anonymous?” she yells. “What’s the point of even bringing all of this up? Are you trying to make me feel bad for acting on what I already knew?”

“No,” you sigh, “I just kinda wish you’d put in some effort.”

“Oh, don’t you even start--!”

“After all,” you grin, cutting her off, “She knew it was impossible too, didn’t she? And yet she still tried all the same. And not just for my girl’s sake, either!”

You continue after Twilight’s jaw flaps in place of a verbal response, and her ears begin folding back as the realization sets in.

“I just figured with you being the Element o’ magic and a pretty purple princess as well, that you’d have a better chance’a pullin’ it off or something. I mean, good guy magic usually defies the rules in that kinda way all the time! But you didn’t even give it a thought? Nothing? A big, steamin’ goose egg?”

You laugh it up a little as she now looks downright ashamed of herself, your mirth growing by leaps and bounds the longer you keep talking.

“I mean, I know the intelligentsia are the laziest sacks of shit around, but god damn, girl! You’re slackin’ off on the fucking Make-A-Wish Foundation kinda shit here! I mean, look at me! I’m the grimiest motherfucker to ever walk this not-Earth! I knew it probably wasn’t gonna work! In fact, I planned everything around it not working! And I still gave it a shot, anyways! Because really, what do I have to lose from tryin’? Fuckin’ jack squat! And you couldn’t even be fucked!”

“That’s not...!”

But she doesn’t have the heart or the fire to get anything in edgewise over your raucous, El Risitas-tier laughter at her expense.

“Oh Lawd help me,” you wheeze, gripped by the throes of the giggles as you were, “That’s brutal even by my standards! And I’m supposed to be the villain in this story?”

“Hey!” Rainbow exclaims, pulling Twilight back all protective-like and staring you down. “You leave her alone, you jerk!”

“Or what, Bluey?” you laugh, slowly coming down off of your giggly high. “You’ll make Purple there feel better by sharing a relatable anecdote on how you’ve also screwed up in the same way before? Golly, I’m literally shaking over here!”

“Oh my gosh, do you ever shut up?!”

“Well I might, if you gals stopped pissing around and trying to gloat!”

“Land’s sake,” Applejack huffs, floating over and making Twilight look her in the eye. “Listen Twilight, Ah think Ah speak for everypony here when Ah say we’ll talk about all this later. After this black hearted varmint gets put out to pasture!”

“Black hearted,” Rarity agrees, “And foul-mouthed.”

“Yeah,” you agree, shooting a wink at Dash. “She’d know.”

“That’s it!” Rainbow explodes, prevented from socking you in the mouth only by Twilight’s magic tugging on her tail. Though it doesn’t stop her from thrashing at you either way. “Lemmie at him! Lemmie go!”

“You’re right, Applejack,” Twilight sighs, giving her friend a big ol’ hug. “I’ll discuss this with you all later, I promise.”

And as expected, the friend group devolves into a big hug pile which actually looks mighty cozy to be in the middle of. Though Dash has to get floated over to join them, her anger melting away in the cuddles with an eye-rolling scrunchy snort and with one eye glaring at you all the while.

“Y’know, that’s real comfy looking and all,” you interrupt after a while, “But can we get this over with? My balls hurt.”

And just like that, the magic is gone, each of them giving you unamused glares.

Works every time.

“First things first,” Twilight declares, brandishing the staff while her friends return to their star positions around her. “I need all of the magic you stole from the princesses back.”

“And how do you plan on gettin’ it, honey?” you smirk. “You already know that cyphers can’t steal each other’s magic, and Equilibrium does all of jack and shit to me. So what’re ‘ya wavin’ the stick around for?”

Of course, you already know what her plan is: she’s gonna try and use the staff to pump you full of magic until you hit saturation, which’ll deplete all of your stolen magic in a very painful and explosive fashion. Honestly, you were expecting them to turn you into a statue with Harmony bullshit first, but you guess they figured they should saturate first before the stoning, or else they’d risk unstoning you. Which, hey, fair enough: you’d assume the same thing, too!

Unfortunately for her, there’s a serious problem with that plan that she hasn’t accounted for: the staff itself.

“I’m very aware of that fact, Anonymous,” Twilight frowns. “And you’re right, your lack of magical pathways makes Magical Equilibrium a non-starter. But there is one other way to make you give it all up.”

You feign nervousness. “And, ah, what exactly would that be?”

She smirks, falling for your act. Pointing the staff straight at you, she has the staff begin to dump power into it’s tip. Or at least, she thinks she’s making it power up.

“Whoa there,” you faux-nervously laugh. “That’s uh, a lotta juice you’re slingin’ there, gurl. Careful where you’re pointin’ it!”

“Erm, darling?” Rarity inquires, somewhat nervous itself. “I thought you said he absorbs magic to become stronger? So why are you, well, giving him more?”

“Simple,” Twilight smiles. “Unlike centaurs like Tirek, cyphers have limits on how much magic they can steal. And once they hit that limit...”

“They explode?!” Dash chirps, clearly excited about the idea in relation to you.

“Their magic explodes,” Twilight clarifies. “It’s like popping a balloon: all of the magic inside has no choice but to come rushing back out. And once it does, I can take it all back!”

Hook, line, sinker, and the whole fucking rod while we’re at it. Suppressing your maniacal laughter at their folly is probably the hardest part of play-acting your panic over your ‘imminent defeat’.

“Oh my,” Fluttershy murmurs, giving the Ursa holding you a worried look. “I hope that won’t hurt Mr. Startuft...”

The bear gives her a grunt you roughly translate to ‘I’ll be fine’, the first thing it ‘says’ the entire time it’s been pinning you.

“Don’t ah, don’t suppose there’s a third chance you’re willin’ to offer me?” you faux-nervously laugh, struggling against the Ursa’s iron grip once again. “You know what they say, right? Third time’s the charm?”

“Too late for that, Anonymous,” Twilight smiles, her and her friends unashamedly pleased with how you’re ‘struggling’. “Now be good and hold still.”

You don’t, of course, continuing to play-act at panic as the staff powers up more and more. Once it hits it’s charge limit, you make one last ‘plea for your life’:

“Noooo no no no no no, c’mon, don’t do this, now! You have any idea how much that’s gonna hurt?”

“It better hurt, greenie!” Dash cackles. “Let’s do this!”

Twilight needs no further prompting.

“Nooooooooooo!” you dramatically exclaim, holding the note.

vbrrrrRRRRIIIIII

A brilliant white beam of pure magic comes pouring out of the staff’s tip, bearing straight for you. It comes right up to your face, and...

“Sike!”

Swerves directly upwards an inch away from said face, rocketing straight into the Ursa’s face instead.

KA-BLAM

The beam detonates once it hits the poor widdle force of nature, the impact of all that magic strong enough to lift him off the ground as if it were hit with an Ursa-sized Shoryuken. The impact also forces it to let go of you, and your foot-jets were already engaged in advance for this moment, allowing you to continue floating in the air right where you were as he hits the ground with a fittingly loud and apocalyptic CRASH, the oversized critter out like a light.

Though it’s hard to stay floating on account of the uproarious laughter that you finally allow to come spilling out of your pie hole.

“Mr. Startuft!” Fluttershy shrieks.

“What?!” Twilight exclaims, along with the other girls. “Buh--?! H-how?!”

“You fuckin’ dizzy bitch!” you wheeze, trying desperately to keep your sides from flying into low Equus orbit. “You actually thought that was gonna work, didn’t you? You were so hyped for it and everything!”

“What did you do, greenie?!” Dash demands.

She has to wait until you stop laughing to get a response, all while Twilight tries in vain to use the staff on you again, finding that it no longer obeyed her commands.

“Haaaah,” you sigh, fixing the girls a suave yet wolfish evil grin. “I’ll give you a hint.”

You snap your fingers, an entirely stylistic gesture, and the staff does it’s thing.

A massive swarm of electric magic chains, identical to the ones that came out of the gauntlets Cid and Biggs were using before, come pouring out of the staff’s tip like a waterfall, seizing the six girls before they could so much as blink, Dash included. They all start screaming as the staff starts tazing, rendered utterly helpless against it’s overwhelming power.

“Ahh, what a grand and intoxicating innocence,” you intone with a deep chuckle. “Thinking that you can use the tools of evil for good. Really, how naïve can you get?”

The staff stops tazing after a while, the magic chains pulling taut and mashing the girls together around the staff. Their characteristic glow was now missing, and with it, their ability to fly, causing them to plummet to the ground. They only avoid getting pasted by the staff generously kicking in some feather-falling at the last second and slowing until they gently levitate above the ground, but with the staff busy as it is binding up your foes, it can’t clear out the forest beneath it. Fortunately, that’s what you’re there for, and you carve a nice opening out with the A-Non Splash®, landing slowly and gently for effect in front of them.

Try as they might, they can’t get out. The chains around their respective wings and horns cause instantaneous tazing to the entire group the second it detects any activity, and the same goes for the extra chains on the earth mares’ legs, and the chains around Pinkie’s mane and tail. Because you do not trust that pony’s hair worth a lick. Other than that though, they’re free to struggle and thrash about as much as they can, all for your entertainment.

“I should have known,” Twilight half-glares, half-pants at you, “The staff isn’t just sentient, it’s alive!”

“And you’re fashionably late at realizing it once again,” you smirk, slow-clapping for added effect.

“So back at the palace, when you said it was an artificial cypher, you lied to me!”

“Of course I lied to you!” you laugh. “Do I look like that Chrysalis cat to you, honey? You really thought I was gonna tell you what the cards in my hand were?”

Truth is, there’s no such thing as an artificial cypher. You’re either a full cypher or you’re not, no in-between. And you’ve gotta be alive to join the magic vampire club, meaning that even before you’d gotten your hands on the staff and it started communicating with you, you figured it would therefore have to be alive, too. And sure enough, it was. And it referring to Sacanas as it's mother only helped to confirm it!

“But I don’t understand,” she cries. “If that’s true, if it’s a real cypher, how did you take the staff’s--?”

“Ah-ah-aaah,” you cut her off, silencing her with a finger over her lips. “What did I just say?”

“But--” she attempts.

“Even if I told you,” you grin, “Would it really be the truth?”

That line gets her to stop talking, struggling in her bindings as she looks all around, desperately trying to think of a solution to this problem.

As for the secret of your sharing? Well, that’s easy. True, cyphers can’t steal each other’s magic. Sharing it, on the other hand? Not only is that possible, but there’s a specific phenomenon through which it happens called synchronicity. And from the very limited info out there on the phenomenon, it basically boiled down to two or more cyphers making contact and getting on each other’s wavelength in the most new-age hippie sense of the word, sans the crystals and the bad smell. But all the written stuff ever talked about was the power sharing part; you had no idea it went beyond that into fucking magic telepathy as well! But boy howdy, was that ever a useful trick!

Heh, wonder how long it’ll take for Twilight to figure out the sharing part? After all, when you first took the staff’s power back at the palace, you indeed couldn’t steal it’s magic, causing it to deflect all over the place despite bare-handing it. But once you two ‘made contact’ and the synchronicity happened, it was easy enough to fake stealing it’s juice and fool all involved parties, a plan it picked up on immediately.

Better keep their guesswork prolonged, then! And accomplish more objectives while you’re at it!

“You know, instead of trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house,” you chuckle, “The smart thing to do would have been to hit up your little Tree of Harmony and bring those Elements to bear, just like you were all planning to do from the beginning.”

The group stiffens and gasps upon hearing you mention the tree.

“Oh yeah,” you continue, pacing around them nice and slow like a wolf circling it’s prey. “I know all about it. All about it, that is, except for where it’s hidden.”

“We’re not telling you where it is!” Dash barks, thrashing in her binds again.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” you sigh, faking disappointment. “Guess that means my only real recourse is to go looking for it, huh?”

“You’ll be lookin’ for a while, partner,” Applejack glares. “Y’all have any idea how big this here forest is? You’ll be pickin’ through trees n’ caves for months!”

“Oh? That’s strange,” you hum, tapping your chin.

“Er, what is?” she replies, now much more nervous about your change of demeanour.

“I don’t remember saying anything about searching the forest the old-fashioned way.”

All sets of expressions droop at the sudden crackle of green magic between your fingers.

“No,” Fluttershy gasps. “Y-you wouldn’t!”

Flashing her a savage grin, you turn around and kneel down, plunging an electrified hand into the ground with a meaty SMASH. Fingers curling into a claw as your arm alights with power, you swipe it up through the ground in front of you.

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

Five curved claw-like pillars of destructive neon-green magic, reaching a good three or so yards into the sky, tear through the ground from where you’d swiped, radiating outwards in a cone as they rocket through the earth and into the tree cover. Foliage ignites and vaporizes and trees are blown into splinters and twigs as the pillars touch them, the ground in their wake pulverized into huge gouges of steaming and smouldering loose dirt and gravel without a single trace of surviving plant life left behind. And all the while, a veritable dragnet of lightning arcs between each claw-pillar, incinerating whatever is caught in their web that the pillars themselves miss and leaving nothing but the glowing, pyrolyzed skeletons of trees behind. The death wave continues for a solid fifty-odd yards until the pillars finally lose their cutting power, but the destruction doesn’t end there; the pillars then detonate in a big expanding pillar of lightning - the same kind as the lightning arcing between them - that incinerates everything around them in a very large area, with each interstitial circle of destruction overlapping like a lovely little Venn diagram and easily adding another thirty-ish yards to their damage range.

The entire attack takes no more than seven seconds, and leaves behind scenes straight out of Fallout in it’s wake.

“Bam!” you exclaim, clapping your hands as you hop back to your feet and face the horrified girls. “Whaddya think, ladies? How’s that for searching? A good week, probably even two, done and dusted just like that! And AJ, you said I only had months of searching in front of me?”

A Cheshire-esque grin splits across your face as you hold your fizzling hand up for a pale-faced Applejack to see, and an evil laugh comes tumbling out of you not long after.

“So anytime you ladies wanna tell me where your macguffins are, I’m always here to listen! But until then...”

Slowly and deliberately, you bury your hand back into the ground as you kneel down, looking the girls dead in the eye the whole time.

“I’ve got a whole alicorn’s worth of magic to blow on searching,” you smile, voice laden with menace.

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

Fluttershy breaks down into tears as the second A-Non Claw® rips through a different arc of your little clearing. Twilight remains tight-lipped and defiant, but her composure is clearly cracking. At this rate, her or another girl in her entourage will spill the macguffin beans in no time!

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

“Twilight!” Fluttershy begs. “Do something!”

Ooh, startin’ to think the first breakdown’s gonna be in the yellow corner!

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

With a nice semicircle of doom ringing your clearing so far, you brush past the struggling girls and get to work scouring all life from the other half, putting both hands to work and speeding things up as you sing a little ditty to yourself, loud enough for them to hear.

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

“♪ Dig through the ditches, and burn-- ♪”

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

“♪ --through the witches, I slam-- ♪”

VBRRRRRRRrrrrr

“♪ --in the back of my, dragulaaa~-- ♪”

“Stooooop!” Fluttershy cries out, just in time to stop your next A-Non Claw® from doing it’s work.

Turning to face her with a simple smile nets you the sight of her tear-streaked face, ears pinned right back as her eyes stay screwed shut on account of all that crying she’s doing. Those who haven’t joined her on the sobbing train instead continued to glare at you with total hatred, though not without tear streaks of their own.

“Well?” you ask of your yellow captive, raised eyebrow and all. “You’ve got five seconds before I start blastin’ again!”

“I’ll tell you!” she begs, her eyes as pleading as her voice. “Just please, leave the forest alone!”

“Flutters, no!” Dash exclaims.

“Don’t tell him anythin’!” AJ implores.

“Yeah, what she said,” you agree, clasping your hand under Fluttershy’s chin and pulling her gaze up to meet your own. “You’re not gonna tell me a thing.”

“Wha--?”

WHOOSH

Jetting skyward with the ladies, you reach a good height to take stock of the very fucked up looking yet somehow still visibly healthy forest, knocked out Ursa very much included. Throwing an arm around the pegasus’s neck, you sidle on up to her and take one of her forelegs in your hand, pointing it forward.

“What you are gonna do,” you smile, “Is show me where it is.”

“Leave her alone!” Dash continues to holler.

With an eyes-closed whimper and a gulp, she shakily opens them back up and slowly points her way over towards a tiny little clearing a fair ways away.

“Now,” you whisper right into her ear, “Is that really where it is, darlin’?”

She shuts her eyes again and gives a whimper-laden nod of her head in response.

“Now!” Twilight exclaims.

It’s cute that they thought the staff wouldn’t hear them planning to lure you in to share an electric shock, but it absolutely did. You let the staff know to turn off the tazer for Fluttershy only, keeping the two of you safe and sound as the other girls vocalize just how regrettable that decision of theirs was.

“There, there,” you coo, cheek-to-cheek with the mere as she weeps. “It’s all right. You can’t win ‘em all.”

Leaving the girl be with a parting hair ruffle, you fly on over towards the clearing with the gang in tow. It turns out to be a decent-sized little canyon-crater-thing, and once there, the massive cave opening with a soft glow coming from it is a pretty immediate giveaway as to the tree’s location. You swoop down to land, not quite able to make out the tree yet on account of the light it’s radiating.

“This isn’t over yet, Anonymous!” Twilight declares, plenty of fire still in her. “One way or another, we’ll stop you!”

Unfortunately, you don’t doubt that one bit.

“I’m sure you’ll give it your Sunday best,” you hum, fishing a group of three Spheres from your somehow still surviving pouch. “But right now, I’m afraid your services are no longer required.”

All of the girls cry out or scream once they see the Spheres, and you chuck them at them with pinpoint accuracy. They thrash and struggle all over again as they rapidly solidify, leaving behind a sextet of high art pieces, saddled with the curse of depicting their still-hideous modern art forms.

You allow yourself a little sigh, and the staff retracts it’s chains in favour of good old fashioned TK as it inquires as to what it should do next.

“This ain’t good any way you cut it,” you frown, looking over at the distant light of the tree. “They’ve got both the home field advantage and the bullshit hero advantage. I doubt either one of us could do very much to that tree.”

The staff agrees wholeheartedly, about as displeased as you were.

“Don’t suppose your mama had any bright ideas involving this thing, did she?”

Of course not.

“Fuck,” you curse. “Well, nothing for it but to learn more about my enemy before Plan B kicks in.”

It inquires about said Plan B, and this time you experiment with your silent link to give it the full picture, it’s very handy tips and tricks on how to communicate silently and express everything fully steadily falling off as it began openly exclaiming how utterly insane your plan was.

“Ahh, but that’s why it’s gonna work,” you chuckle, tapping your nose all Edgeworth-style. “Because it’s so bugfuck insane.”

It doesn’t believe you for a second, but your silent query for any better ideas goes unanswered, prompting you to smile at it. With the closest thing it can get to a huff delivered over the link, it changes the subject and demands to know what your immediate next step will be.

“I think I’m gonna do a little inspection,” you hum, looking back towards the Tree. “See what I’m dealing with. I’ll keep you posted. You think of anything that can hurt this thing, let me know on the double. Until then, stay out here and high up. And keep those girls with you. I don’t want that tree gettin’ to them that easy.”

In full agreement, the staff complies, floating a good distance up above the canyon with it’s Elemental booty in tow, it’s tip remaining charged and ready for anything. Once satisfied with it’s distance, you make your way over towards the Tree proper, guard kept right up and prepared for anything.

You had to admit: the big, crystalline tree was a real looker, and was almost certainly alive in some capacity, given that you could feel a kind of pressure in the air, as if it were regarding you with, well, maybe not quite full-on hate, but definitely a few inches away from it.

“All right, I know you’re alive,” you call out, “So bring up some kinda avatar or something so we can talk like normal people, why don’tcha?”

The tree complies, and a cloud of magic sparkles phases through the trunk section where the Element of Magic was obviously entombed, swirling around until it reached the ground and coalescing into what you swear to God is the Force Ghost of Twilight. Sure, okay, that works you guess.

“Uh, hi?” you wave at it’s creepy, ever-present neutral smile at you.

“So the third has arrived with the child of the first,” it echoes, not even opening it’s mouth. “Would that this had not come to pass...”

Oh fucking Christ on a magic stick, it really is a goddamn Force Ghost, opening right up with cryptic Eldar-tier bullshit.

“Yeah no,” you wave, hands forming into the universal gesture of ‘time out’. “We’re not doin’ this. You either talk in plain English like a normal person, or I’ll just destroy your ass, straight-up. That’s strike one.”

“And he comes with malice and an appetite for destruction even the first of his ilk did not possess,” it continues, clearly not listening to you. “Would that the second were still here to end this madness.”

“Strike two,” you warn, cracking your knuckles.

“You cannot prevail here, O third child of the stars,” it continues. “For you have come unprepared, lacking that which could grant you victory.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere! Well, Mrs. Exdeath, I’d say my nuclear armageddon magic death powers beats your creepy Force Ghost tree schtick any day of the week. Feel like puttin’ it to the test?”

“Your powers will not avail you here,” it proceeds. “They cannot.”

FZZAP

Putting the tree’s little boast to the test, you fire a little jolt of power from your fingers right between the ghost’s eyes. Right away, your fingers sting like a motherfucker, the magic frozen in mid-air right before the ghost’s head and looking as iridescent as gasoline spilled out onto the floor as it steadily evaporates into the air.

“Yeouch, okay,” you hum, rubbing your zapping fingers. “Glad I tried a tiny bit first.”

The staff asks if you’re all right, and you share the events with it. After describing to it how the sting felt, it said that what you felt was the same thing magical beings feel when your kind sucks their magic out, and extrapolates from there that the Tree is somehow unbreaking the laws of magic that your cypher powers break in order to work.

Well, that’s obnoxious.

“Alright, I’ll admit, that’s a neat trick,” you chuckle at the tree’s still-silent avatar as you walk over towards one of the cave walls, “But if you think magic’s the only thing I’ve got to throw at you, I’m afraid you’ll find you’re sadly mistaken.”

SMASH

Pulverizing the wall is a simple matter, and it turned out that the walls were jam-packed full of big, twinkly gemstones as well. It gives the boulder you pick up from the debris a certain pizzazz that most of your usual caveman projectiles lacked. The Force Ghost doesn’t react when you launch it towards the tree, and it had every reason not to react, seeing how the whole boulder just collided with a pretty meaty invisible shield around it, crumbling to gravel that sank into the solid stone ground like quicksand.

“There is no need for further violence,” the tree ghost intones. “Please, do not make this difficult for yourself.”

“Oh, please,” you scoff. “What’s life without a few tiny challenges?”

The staff, after getting the play-by-play, begins theorycrafting with you on how to best tackle this. Evidently, attacking it with your own repertoire isn’t working out, so the question soon becomes about what will penetrate it’s defences. Right away, your mind goes to hostages, but the staff advises against that, making the very good point that showing it one of the girls’ statues will just make it unpetrify them and Element them up, drawing attention to the distinctly Element-shaped spots on the Tree.

Off to your side, the wall you’d pulverized to get that boulder begins reforming itself, the pieces of broken rock and scattered gemstones sinking into the ground again and travelling underneath the stone surface like raised bumps swimming underneath skin towards the impact point. Each individual shard of the wall’s original rock formation is pushed out from behind the crater’s exposed stone, the hole rapidly reassembling back to normal like a big 3D puzzle.

Guess the Tree really likes to keep it’s home in order, which you guess isn’t all that surprising. Still doesn’t get you any closer to figuring out how to hurt it. Frustrated, the staff idly wishes it’s mother was still here, convinced it would know what to do.

Your reply was cut off by the sudden ding of inspiration.

Order. Good. Mother. Caring. Tree. Offspring. Protection. The dossier. Twilight. Her home.

Her Tree of Harmony styled home.

You let loose a sinister cackle as you share your idea with the staff. It, too, realizes the gravity of your discovery, and emphatically tells you to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, good guy bullshit strikes right then and there, the Tree evidently doing more behind the scenes than just staring at you with it’s Force Ghost.

The staff breaks the metaphorical silence by sounding the alarm bells, which gets you to turn your head around to see the source of it’s complaint. A root of the tree shot up from the ground under where it was floating, blossoming into a crystalline flower in fast-forward and building up a beam of rainbow power within. You tell the staff to get out of there, but it’s not fast enough to escape.

An aurora-style rainbow laser fires up from the flower, enveloping the staff and the girls in it’s power. The staff cries out to you through it’s link, telling you that it could neither move nor cast spells. And the development worsened when it relayed that the girls were rapidly becoming unstoned. Knowing it’s time was running out, it urges you to take all the power you can get from it so you could give your idea a try, something you’re all too keen on doing.

With no time to waste, you rocket out of the cave and straight towards Ponyville, but not before the two of you reach out through your link as you pass by to let the staff give you a huge jolt of magic to help you pull this stunt off. The huge blue-green bolt rips right through the Harmony rainbow bullshit laser to get to you, the jolt putting you damn close to full magic capacity in an instant. You have to suppress a groan as the rarely felt feeling of fullness takes hold, the pleasure of all that power muted somewhat by the uncomfortable stretching sensation in your spiritual extremities, leaving your entire body tingling and sparking with might. Once the refuel was done, you put the pedal to the metal, rocketing towards your destination with all-new speed.

Not the Hail Mary you’d expected to do near the end. But then again, the most fun and effective plans are often the unexpected ones! And while you were at it, you double-check that the spiked little macguffin Cid gave you was still there and ready to roll.

It was.

Cid’s eyes narrowed as he observed the path that Tempest Shadow was taking.

The pony had held back and waited not only until the weather had ceased, but until the colossal Ursa Major had been neutralized before moving again. Tempest’s composure had cracked by a noticeable degree upon first seeing the bear, complete with lots of whispered assurances to herself. This was hardly a surprise, however: his master’s background check noted that an Ursa Minor had caused her horn injury, so a trauma response was to be expected once the creature entered the battlefield.

As his master continued his battle with the Element bearers in the clear skies, verbal or otherwise, Tempest elected to take the path that led her through Ponyville. And it was this path - more specifically, her reaction to this path - that caused the analytical beast no shortage of consternation. Something about the ruined village was bringing out remorse in the pony, her drive to proceed and find his master steadily weakening the more she took in the sights around her.

Once again, his master had been right: she was incredibly susceptible to their rhetoric. She was evil by circumstance rather than nature, and this good nature was finally beginning to show itself, with defection sure to follow. Once within the centre of the village, she stopped for several moments to regard the Castle of Friendship with a sense of longing.

Biggs and Wedge, all the while, continued to hover just behind Cid, eyes glued to the displays.

Shaking her head, Tempest huffed and turned to make for the Everfree again, muttering assurances to herself that only finding his master mattered. At the same time, Wedge began exclaiming at the other monitor, which indeed warranted immediate attention. The Staff of Sacanas had been seized by a stream of rainbow light, and his master was forced to retreat from his location without the staff. Ordering the current camera to stay focused onto the staff, he changed the display to the feed of another overhead camera that had already begun following his master’s retreat.

But it turned out to be an unnecessary action, as his destination, oddly enough, was Ponyville. He landed before the castle with a considerable amount of force, drawing the attention of Tempest. She quietly exclaimed his master’s name before taking off towards him at a full gallop, but was unable to make it to him in time before he began to...

Even Cid was taken aback at what he was doing to the Castle of Friendship, and the room settled into a shocked silence as they could do nothing but watch him work.

Twilight allowed herself to sigh in relief once the staff had been encased in the crystal flower’s petals.

The Tree of Harmony had really come through for them again, freeing them from stone and saving them from that horrible artifact. But their work was far from done: the staff’s wielder, that somehow even more horrible Anonymous, was nowhere to be found, and her and the other girls were all busy trying to figure out where he had gone.

“Ah figure that yellow-bellied coward jest tucked tail’n ran!” AJ exclaimed with a clop of her hoof.

“Yeah!” Dash agreed. “He knew he couldn’t beat us!”

“I rather disagree,” Rarity fretted, a heavyset frown on her face. “I think he must be planning something else. Or rather, making something up as he goes along.”

“Come on, Rares!” Dash scoffed. “I doubt he could come up with something to take us on now!”

“Unfortunately, I think he could,” Rarity disagreed. “That stallion is pure evil, yes, but his frightening intelligence makes things so much worse.”

“Intelligence?” Applejack frowned, doubtful of that claim. “He only ever struck me as clever.”

“He’s all of that,” Twilight confirmed, slowly walking towards the Tree of Harmony while she spoke. “Powerful, intelligent, clever, and pure evil, all in one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen somepony put us on the back hoof so many times in a single fight before!”

“Tell me about it!” Pinkie huffs, hopping alongside her and matching her pace. “We got super duper close to winning so many times, but he just kept flip-turning the odds upside-doodley like an Evel Knievel Ace Attorney!”

“Darling, I hate to ask,” Rarity chimed in, her and the other girls trotting over and matching Twilight’s pace, “But how much did you learn about him from your captivity?”

“Rarity, he’s even worse than what you all saw today,” Twilight replied with a slight tremor to her voice. “He’d been planning a coup against that Storm King for months, and used this entire invasion as an excuse to pull it off.”

A round of gasps were heard in response to that.

“He stabbed his own boss in the back?” Applejack exclaimed. “Why would he do somethin’ like that?”

“In his own words? He wasn’t evil enough.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dash also exclaimed, crossing and uncrossing her forelegs in rapid succession. “Time out. He took out his own boss because he wasn’t evil enough? The guy that actually took over Equestria with a giant airship army, and put everypony into cages, wasn’t evil enough for him?”

“He took over Equestria,” Fluttershy murmured, still mad at the very thought of Anonymous. “But didn’t destroy it. But that meanie, he...”

Pinkie delivers a tactical hug to her yellow companion before she could start crying again, the gesture working to calm her down.

“That’s not all,” Twilight continued. “He planned for every little detail. He went out of his way to turn the Storm King’s troops to his side, well in advance of this all happening. He even had a new logo prepared for them and everything!”

“The long con, huh?” Applejack frowned. “That takes a special piece'a work.”

“And the worst part is that I still don’t know why he’s doing it all!” Twilight huffed. “He keeps lying or deflecting about his real reasons for it! It’s not for territory, it’s not for resources, it’s not for... Gaaah! You all heard him at the beginning: he said he was doing this because he had to! But then he kept on doing it when he could have--”

Pinkie’s mane deflates, the balloon-like sound cutting Twilight off.

“Oh-oh,” she squeaks. “No, Twilight. He did tell you the truth, right from the start.”

“What?” she recoils.

“The part after he said he was doing it because he had to. About how he’d do this anyways, just because he thought it was fun.”

“And I’m afraid it goes even deeper than that,” Rarity chimes in. “I think that colt is an artist.”

“Say what, now?” Applejack deadpans.

“An artist?” Dash exclaims in pure disbelief. “Rares, he has to be the worst artist I’ve ever seen!”

“Not an artist in the way you’re thinking, darling,” Rarity clarifies. “An artist in the sense of his motivations.”

It was in that moment that the truth of those motivations finally hit Twilight like a brick.

“He’s doing evil for it’s own sake,” Twilight gasped. “Oh, no! I-I thought he was doing it for a specific reason! I kept thinking that--!”

“He was too smart to do otherwise?” Rarity finishes with a knowing tone.

“Yes!” she blurts back.

“I loathe even making the comparison, but unfortunately, him and I are cut from a very similar cloth,” Rarity continues, holding everypony’s attention. “We are both deeply passionate ponies, and that which we are passionate for is not merely a means to an end, or even a career. For us, it is everything; it is the flame that drives us forward, the thing that pushes us to do our very best, to be our very best. But above all else, we hold our passions to be nothing short of art. But where I choose dressmaking and generosity...”

“He chooses mayhem and evil,” Twilight finishes, her own knowing tone much harder than hers.

“And he’s makin’ our home his canvas,” Applejack frowns, the new understanding of their foe bringing with it a mutually shared wave of disdain.

“I’m afraid so,” Rarity confirms with a solemn nod.

“Well his art sucks, and he can’t take the hint!” Dash huffs. “Which means it’s way past time we show that loser the door!”

Nodding her agreement, Twilight reaches out with her magic, imploring the Tree of Harmony for aid. In response, it relinquished the Elements from their spots on the tree, the magical items returning to their rightful places on the ponies who wielded them. For Twilight, she could feel her Element replenishing her natural magic, replacing the power that was stolen from her by the staff.

The fact that it was doing that already gave her an idea as to how they could take on Anonymous.

“Aww, yeah!” Dash whoops. “Let’s go kick some green monkey tail!”

She zooms towards the mouth of the cave, Twilight and the others rushing to catch up with her. It was strange, though: the light outside seemed darker than she’d expected.

“Be careful, darling,” Rarity warns. “We have no idea what he’s planning. For all we know, he’s come up with a way to destroy the Tree.”

“How in tarnation does he plan on doing that?” Applejack inquires. “Ain’t the tree impernious to everythin’ but Discord?”

“Impervious, darling,” she corrects. “And you’re right, it is. But knowing our enemy, he’s already thought of some mad way to try and harm the...”

When Rarity trails off, she draws the attention of everypony else, who follow her slack-jawed gaze skyward.

It doesn’t take them long to join her in losing jaw control at the sight.

“L-like that?” Applejack stammers.

“Oh my gosh,” Twilight squeaks, recovering from the initial shock the quickest. “Girls, come on! We have to stop him now!”

For the second time today, you get to do something else you’ve always wanted to do.

“Yūjō shiro da!”

ガシャンッ

(CRASH)

Demented, superlative laughter spills from the very bottom of your soul as you propel your weapon of choice right towards the Tree of Harmony like a stake to a sleeping vampire. And your weapon was none other than the entire fucking Castle of Friendship itself, pulled out of the ground like a weed with your ridiculous, overflowing power and thrust towards your target with the pointy root bit facing forward.

“Who’s a man and a half?!” you cackle like a true unmedicated basket case. “I’m a man and a half! Castle-packin’ man and a half!”

But the girls, now bearing their Elements on top of rocking their fugly super-forms, had enough time and plenty of power to shore up a defence against your final assault.

First came Applejack, with big grassy-green lasers shooting out of her hooves and into the ground. The ground alighted with big ‘veins’ of that same magic, and moments later, giant glowing green roots came spilling out of the ground to intercept the castle, taking the brunt of your gravitationally assisted improvised weapon. A huge shockwave rippled through the castle upon impact, cracking and splintering it in multiple places with bits and pieces flying off. And she wasn’t done there, either; on top of the roots buttressing against the impact, lots of runners snaked their way around the big crystal root structure and grew into thick, coiled supports to further prevent it’s descent.

Credit where it’s due, it actually does work! But you were far from done.

“Ha-haaaah, there’s nothing wrong with this that I can’t fix! With my feet!”

FWOOOSH

Your foot-jets ignited with blinding might, quite literally multiplying the castle’s downward force and shattering many of AJ’s roots into magical wooden splinters. It hardly stopped her from forming more and more to try and counteract you, but it was clear to everyone that it was a losing battle.

“Oh yeah, I’m cookin’ with gas now, hillbilly girl!” you holler like a complete lunatic.

But as per usual for these gals, they don’t do anything alone.

Dash had put herself to work busing ponies around, starting with taking Fluttershy out to where the Ursa was, then Usain Bolting back to pick up Pinkie and Rarity, putting them into position behind you where they could start opening fire. Pinkie was bringing out five-gallon bottle rockets and firecrackers with green dynamite sticks labelled “NITRO” duct-taped to them, while Rarity’s diamond spikes were more like diamond spears at this point.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
plink-plink-plink

But with your body at it’s absolute maximum charge, their projectiles were doing absolutely nothing against your alpha-plus-hyper-mode skin-tanium armour. Even the explosions weren’t moving you!

“You want a piece of me?!” you laugh, head craned over to them. “Yeah, come on, come at me with it!”

Your thrusters alter quite significantly in response to their aggression. With the addition of more power...

KA-BLAM

“Dynamite!”

The engines erupt like twin neon-green volcanoes, spewing forth pony-sized magic death missiles that travel up and into the air in random directions and velocities, lazily arcing their way back down to the ground with only a few heat-seeking their way to the attacking mares. Rarity’s interception of a few reveals their explosive potential to be on par with a fucking mini-nuke, and the two realize with horror that your target was never them in the first place, but the entire forest.

“Ooh, yeah!” you half-scream, half-cackle, “Dig the prowess, the capacity for violence! I’m the man! I’m superbad!”

The diversion works perfectly, the girls targeting the projectile rain instead of you to prevent the forest from being nuked into the stone age. But your feet continue to belch out missiles well past the initial eruption, giving the impromptu jannies a never-ending tide of work to do.

And breaking into a fresh Sonic Rainboom with barely any effort, Dash once again launches herself at you like a pride-flavoured railgun shot.

SLAM

And still fails to budge you!

“Oh yeah,” you laugh, head craning to show the shocked pony your crazed, power-mad expression. “Do you get it now, Bluey?! Papa’s got a brand new bag!”

You think this might be the first time this pony’s been properly afraid of someone else before.

Abandoning the idea of directly attacking, she instead opts to join Applejack down below, directing her numerous root growths into the prime positions to shore up against the castle and help prevent it’s descent. Which actually does pretty well for itself, buying them several more seconds before the end.

thump thump THUMP THUMP

Aha, there’s the Ursa!

The giant bear, with a similarly giant and very comical bandage wrapped around it’s head, seizes upon the castle with it’s front paws and digs it’s hindlegs in, doing it’s very best to keep the castle from touching down. But even it is straining against the sheer downward force you’re projecting onto the crystalline building, that strain borne out in the cracks spiderwebbing out across where both you and it were holding onto. And it certainly didn’t help that your magic death missiles were hitting it like a swarm of angry bees, further distracting it’s efforts.

And all the while, Fluttershy rode shotgun atop the bear’s head, glaring entire claymores at you.

“Whooooo, baby!” you scream, “I’m burnin’ outta control!”

But even with all of this combined effort, it still wasn’t enough to stop you. For each new measure keeping you from driving your impromptu stake home, all you had to do was give more power to the engines, increasing both your applied amount of force and generating more magic death missiles. To their increasing horror, the pointy end of the Castle of Friendship gets closer and closer to it’s target, eventually staking into the earth above the cave the Tree was in.

“Ooh, here it comes!” you cackle, fist powering up for the final strike. “Here comes the night train!”

Within seconds, your hand was empowered to deliver an apocalyptic haymaker, ready to drive this stake through the beating heart of Harmony itself.

And with one final, primal, and superlative cry of sheer, adrenaline and magic fuelled delight, your fist rockets forward...

KA-POOF

And hits nothing.

You only just register the castle being teleported off to your right side in a big familiar purple flash before the ridiculous forward thrust of your feet transforms you into the meteor strike.

KA-BOOM

Your body remains unharmed as it penetrates right through AJ’s root cover, misses the Tree, and punches deep into the ground, travelling what must be half a goddamn mile through solid dirt and stone and with God only knows how much utter destruction caused topside by the impact. You didn’t even need any magic to penetrate through all of that; only the simple mechanics of Sir Isaac Newton being the deadliest son of a bitch in the known universe was required in this instance.

“Well, that was a load of shit,” you huff to yourself as you wait patiently for your momentum to cease, more joking than serious. “Guess that’s what Twiggles was up to!”

Once the ride had come to a complete stop, you wrap yourself in more digging magic before spinning around and rocketing back towards the surface. You erupt with a meaty BOOM a fair distance from the Friendship Castle, which was currently being held steady by the Ursa while the Elements grouped up around it, with AJ Miracle-Gro’ing some roots to anchor it in place for the moment. The giant crater you’d gouged out with your impact near the tree was already starting to get reassembled with it’s obsessive-compulsive orderly magic, though notably slower than you were expecting, no doubt thanks to the lack of Elements in the tree.

Speaking of Elements, the girls get alerted to your presence right away, and you see Twilight piggybacking onto Dash to get the speed advantage. You were already bolting towards them by then, hands extended to loose the ultimate twenty-metre radius A-Non Splash®, the volleys of magic death missiles kept at bay only by the continued intervention of Rarity and Pinkie plus the Ursa body-blocking the rest of the hits. Dash zooms by you without even trying to hit you, immediately sending your Spider-Senses a’tinglin’ and making you cease fire and pull up high into the sky to get a good look at what she and her purple plus one were plotting. You could see Twilight’s horn alight with power, and a moment later, she fires a laser beam aimed straight for you. The beam is trivially easy to avoid, and you rocket towards the two to intercept, your maximized power allowing you to actually keep pace with Dash for once.

You charge up a ‘little’ Dragonball laser beam in your hands as you pursue them, intent on sniping them right out of the sky. Twilight’s laser manages to graze you mid-chase, the glancing hit sucked right into your body without breaking your stri--

You absorbed her magic.

Oh, shit!

Realizing what her game was, you slow your pursuit to put some distance between you two, but Dash was clearly in on the game as well, and matched your speed to allow Twilight to continue firing. It was only then that you realized that she was only wearing her Element; her magical-girl super form was gone, robbing her magic of it’s Harmony properties and making it fair game for cyphering on purpose. And to make matters even worse, that edge hit from her beam was evidently part of some bullshit lock-on spell, because now the beam was curving towards you to maintain contact, striking true all the time.

Shit, shit, shit, this is bad! Her magic is still potent; she only needs ten or twenty seconds to push you over, and you just wasted precious few trying to dodge! But what if...?

Aha, of course! Fuckin’ lasers! Two can play at that game, bitch!

BWWIIIIIIIM

The laser you had been charging comes rocketing out of your hands, taking advantage of Dash’s speed-matching to improve your accuracy. She dodges, because of course she does, but she almost gets clipped when the beam splits into two halves to curve quicker towards her. She maintains that vigilance as the laser splits more and more until it looks like a laser light-show of death, a whole buckshot spread’s worth of lasers firing in a decent cone towards her and dancing about in random, unpredictable patterns.

More importantly, you tuned the attack to drain as much power as you were getting filled with, bringing your charge rate to a net zero.

That was one hell of a trick she pulled there, you have to admit! And it’s a serious testament to that girl’s focus that she’s still casting despite the pain of the drain! But unfortunately for her, you can completely sidestep the danger as long as you keep casting right back!

Dash darts and weaves all about but never slows her roll down, continuing to try and fly fast enough to shake you, something she should have done before you hit max level and became able to match her speed. Her circuit takes her right back towards her friends and the Ursa, the latter of which just bit down onto a starry sphere of magic held in it’s mouth, no doubt to--

Laser you in the face.

No chance to dodge thanks to the approach angle. No time to strike back. No time to think of a better solution.

Welp, that’s Plan A officially flushed down the shitter.

You groan. “Oh, this is gonna hurt--”

KA-BWIIIIM

The pinpoint accurate giant laser blast was more than sufficient to push you over the edge.

All of your magical output, be it attacking or flying, came to an abrupt and painful stop once the threshold of saturation was reached, and you fell from the sky like a rock while clutching your chest, hitting the ground with force that you’re in no state to quantify at this moment. The uncomfortable stretching pressure from before had ‘ruptured’ the moment the overload happened, and your insides burned with pain that steadily became worse and worse as the symptoms manifested, feeling as if a muscle was being pulled every single second, one after the other.

“There it is,” you groan. “The superhero bullshiiiiiiiit--!”

The droning sound of tinnitus builds in your ears as the pain increases, your groans of pain quickly morphing into protracted yelling. From the middle of your chest, green magic lit up along every major vein and artery, steadily filling the vessels out and building in intensity. Their vascular tributaries soon joined them, the smaller veins and arteries filling out after a certain point until even the smaller blood vessels were alight with stolen power, clamouring to break free from it’s prison.

You barely register Dash picking you up and flying directly up into the sky as even the blood vessels in your eyes begin to glow, tendrils of neon green snaking into your vision as the glow on your skin expands from the blood vessels to just covering the entire surface with green, your vision following suit. A swelling sensation deep within your gut builds rapidly, spreading up through your chest and into your throat and leaving behind an agony that even after so many overloads, remains indescribable.

The feeling builds to it’s final crescendo.

A brief snap is heard conducting through your bones.

And everything goes white.

Cid and the rest of the crew shield their eyes against the blinding light of his master reaching his magical saturation point, with Biggs helpfully offering some sunglasses to him and Wedge to help them observe the sight more closely. He was no stranger to seeing his master reach saturation - he had reached it no less than two times during endurance training, and Cid was responsible for providing the necessary after-care - but each of those events paled in comparison to the sheer magnitude of power being released from his unwilling body at this moment.

With said body glowing brightly like a miniature green star, a veritable eruption of enormous green orbs of raw magic came flooding out of his body in far-flung, randomized arcs, exiting his facial cavities in a wide cone aimed into the sky with each orb bearing a long trail of magical fire and lightning. The magic, unlike his normal stolen magic, did not remain green for very long after being ejected: the spheres broke apart into shards of magic that each glowed in the unique colours of each alicorn’s individual magical aura before being drawn towards a central point within the Everfree Forest he could not as of yet make out, but suspected was either the Staff of Sacanas or Twilight Sparkle herself.

The power erupted from his body for an entire minute and a half, well in excess of the twenty second maximum Cid had observed from him before. In that time, he was able to pull himself away from the sight and flick through the displays before him, seeing Tempest Shadow regarding the explosive display with horror before redoubling her efforts to sprint through the forest to reach him. Another camera view revealed the glowing body of Twilight Sparkle, sinking all of the ejected magic into herself, and he noted right away that her movements suggested familiarity with this type of magical absorption.

As the glow terminated, and the body of his master fell from the skies, Cid shook his head and hailed the ships awaiting his orders. Once again, his master had been right; they did need to enact the second plan, despite all of their efforts.

A groggy, zombie-like groan was the first thing to leave your pie hole after returning to the living.

“Fuuhuuhuuuuck,” you moan, unable to fully control your arm and failing to brush your face with it’s attached hand, “Fucking shit Christ, that never gets easier...”

Every symptom of post-saturation exhaustion was all present and accounted for; the dull pain everywhere, both outside and in; the leaden, almost fully asleep limbs with the absolute worst pins and needles around; the splitting headache; the blurry as shit double vision; the laboured breathing; it was all there, and at it’s absolute worst point.

Vision and movement were the first two things to start their slow return, though you could certainly do without the prickling sensation left behind as your moving parts came back on-line. Though your body lacked it’s usual muscle-boosting stolen magic, even in a nominal sense, your good, all-natural physique still allowed you to pull yourself up to a sitting position after a few attempts.

Which nets you with the sight of the Element Bearers, all assembled before you and lacking their super-forms, just like Twilight. Only Dash looked pleased with the outcome: the rest were all stone-faced and angry.

“That looked like it hurt,” Dash snorts, quite happy with your misery.

“You know that awful pain you get when you stub your toe on the wall?” you mumble, fumbling to get to a kneeling position. “It’s like that, but... Oh wait, no toes. Right. Duh. Can’t brain right now.”

You lose your balance and fall back down, the pain of the fall still paling in comparison to the ongoing cypher-ache. Nothing for it but to try and stand up again. Dash laughs, of course, but she’s the only one.

It takes a few tries, but you manage to stand eventually, the leg shakes making it tricky to stay upright. You meet Twilight’s tired and disappointed frown with an exhausted smile, causing her frown to morph into an angry scowl.

“How can you still be smiling at a time like this?!”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” you attempt to chuckle, breaking out into a coughing fit instead. “That was the greatest fight of my life, bar none!”

Twilight stops herself before she can start yelling at you, snorting angrily instead.

“Forget it,” she huffs. “I am so done with you.”

The Elements start glowing and the girls start levitating, heralding what’s about to come next.

“Aww, yeah!” Dash whoops. “Time to finally get yours, greenie!”

Your reaction throws her for a loop: you strike a magnificent pose, hiding the spiky metal object from Cid in one of your closed hands.

“What the hay are you doing?” she asks, visibly confused.

“Making sure you get my good side,” you wink.

Her jaw drops, she splutters, and just when she thinks she’s past getting angry, she gets angry.

“Unbelievable!” she hollers, forelegs thrown up in the air. “We finally get to finish him off, and he’s still gonna get the last laugh?! Where does it end with this guy?!”

Her words are more true than she realizes, and you can’t help but grin in spite of your pain. True, Plan A was an expected failure, but everything was in place for Plan B. The rest was all up to both Cid and Lady Luck now, and you had absolute confidence in the former. But wouldn’t mind if the latter called you every now and then.

Her ravings are cut short by the magic rainbow arcing between the Elements, and moments later, the low-orbit ion rainbow comes streaming right towards you, the Harmonious magic prickling your skin yet still failing to match your monstrous cypher hangover on the pain scale.

The spikes of the specially crafted Arcane Collector burrow into your palm in reaction to the magic.

For the second time today, everything goes white.

“Does the big feller really have to leave so soon?” Applejack asks Fluttershy.

“I’m afraid so,” she nods, looking down at the Ursa Major with concern. “Concussions are no joke, and Mr. Startuft needs plenty of bed rest after this!”

The bear groaned as if to imply that it was fine, but the small wince it gave told a different story.

“No buts, mister!” she sternly told the much bigger creature. “Once you’re done moving the castle, I want you to head right home, okay?”

It reluctantly groaned an affirmative, the Castle of Friendship still draped across it’s back with the rest of the girls riding atop it’s head along with Fluttershy. Fortunately, it didn’t have much further to go, arriving at the badly damaged town of Ponyville in no time at all and stopping in front of the hole where Anonymous had somehow managed to pull the castle from. But once the Ursa had ‘replanted’ the castle, a pulse of prismatic power welled up from the bottom of the hole and rippled through the structure that not only repaired the damage that had been done to it, but filled the hole back in and rooted it firmly into the ground once more, as if it had never been removed at all.

The bear took it’s leave once the mares all disembarked, the two parties waving goodbye to one another as it returned to it’s abode far in the distance.

“Now that that’s done with,” Twilight frowned, “We need a way to keep watch over this.”

PLONK

Twilight had been holding the statue of Anonymous in her magic this whole time, and had finally allowed herself to put it down for a moment. She hated the way it looked, with his form locked into that simultaneously menacing and majestic pose, evoking images of pillars for whatever reason. She had half a mind to knock him over before the Elements had done their work, but restraint had prevailed. She was starting to think that was a mistake.

She also had the crystal-encased Staff of Sacanas draped across her back, safely neutralized and ready to have it’s stolen magic returned.

“Well we can’t just leave him here,” Dash pouts, jostling her Element of Harmony. “We all need to be together to do our thing, and there’s no telling if his freaky soldiers are still creeping around!”

“And it ain’t like there’s anypony left in town, neither,” Applejack ponders, rubbing her chin in thought.

“And we’re certainly not taking this brute with us,” Rarity frowns.

“And this is way too much for Gummy to handle on his own,” Pinkie wonders aloud for a moment before gasping loudly. “Ooh, ooh ooh ooh, Fluttershy! Can your animals keep an eye on him?”

“Ohh, I don’t know,” Fluttershy frets, “I want them to stay out of this...”

“Oh, they just have to watch a statue! They’ll be fine!” Pinkie presses. “Besides, with Harry-bo standing around, nopony’s gonna be crazy enough to pick a fight!”

“We can keep them inside the castle,” Twilight offers. “And have them lock the door. That way they’d be kept safe.”

With the weight of every expectant friend’s looks, it doesn’t take long for Fluttershy to cave.

“Oh, o-okay,” she sighs. “I’ll be right back.”

With that, she flutters off towards her cottage, the building far enough away to avoid Anonymous’s path of destruction through the rest of the town. The mere thought of that drew Twilight’s gaze back towards the township, her discerning eye able to pick out what damage was caused by him, and what was caused by his occupying invaders before then.

“Don’t you worry none, sugarcube,” Applejack hums, patting Twilight’s withers. “This ain’t the first time Ponyville’s been worse for wear. We’ll get it right as rain in no time!”

“Right after we get Canterlot back on the mountain,” Dash proclaims, once again jingling her Element.

“It’s odd, though,” Rarity notes aloud, eyes flowing across the skyscape. “Where are all of the airships?”

Blinking, Twilight spun around to confirm her observation, finding that yes indeed, there wasn’t a single airship in sight.

“You’re right,” she quietly notes. “Where did all of his soldiers go?”

“Okay, that’s like, all kinds of wrong,” Dash agrees. “I’m gonna look around real quick, be right back!”

She was off before anypony could protest, leaving the girls both annoyed and bemused at her usual impulsive antics. However, the mood fell when all eyes gravitated towards the statue of Anonymous.

“This whole thing ain’t been sittin’ right with me,” Applejack says with a frown. “How does a colt like him just lie down n’ take it like that?”

“He wouldn’t,” Rarity agrees, giving the statue a suspicious glare, “Unless he was planning for that.”

“He definitely strikes me as the type to plan around losing,” Twilight huffs, joining Rarity in glaring at the statue. “But the question is, what did he plan? His eventual freedom?”

“Possibly,” Rarity speculates. “But I don’t think this is the last we’ve seen of this colt, nor his detestable forces.”

All remaining ponies hummed their agreement.

“How do ‘ya reckon a feller like him could break outta that, anyhow?” Applejack wonders. “Ah mean, Discord managed with just chaos ‘round him, so what’s his secret?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say getting some magic in him would work,” Twilight replied with a frown.

“But how? Yer magic didn’t get sucked out the whole time y’all were liftin’ him, and ‘ya said he can’t control what he takes.”

“I’m wondering about that myself. But I think it’s for the same reason he was able to take magic from the Staff without any trouble.”

“Hmm, what if those two vamperoonies didn’t steal each other’s magic?” Pinkie hummed, having retrieved a thinking cap and a bubble pipe at some point. “What if they shared it instead?”

Twilight gasped a little at Pinkie’s insight. “That’s it! He must have shared it with the staff!”

“He didn’t strike me as the sharin’ type,” Applejack frowns.

“I don’t think it was sharing among friends, as much as it was sharing as a kind of business transaction,” Rarity hummed. “If that horrid staff is really alive like you say it is, Twilight, then it’s possible it was just as happy to destroy everything around it as he was.”

“That does make a lot of sense,” Twilight admits. “I’ll have to do a lot of research on this later, but I think we can safely say that we should keep other cyphers as far away from him as we can.”

Whatever Rarity had to say was interrupted by Rainbow Dash’s sudden return, the mare looking very agitated.

“They’re gone!” she exclaims, continuing after everypony’s surprised exclamations. “The ships, they all just left!”

“A full retreat?” Twilight gaped. “Why?”

“I dunno, but it gets even weirder!” Rainbow continues. “You know all of those ponies they captured? They left them all behind, too!”

“They what?” Rarity exclaims.

“And all of their loot! They just dumped it all off with everypony and ran for it!”

“Sounds like they were mighty afraid’a us chasin’ ‘em down,” Applejack smirked.

“It does,” Twilight frowned, eyes once again flicking to the statue of Anonymous. “In fact, that’s probably exactly what he wanted to prevent.”

“T’ain’t gonna work, though,” she continued. “No way the Royal Guard’ll just let this all slide.”

“It wasn’t the guard he wanted to keep away from his fleet,” Rarity says with another glare to Anonymous’s statue. “It was us.”

“Of course it was,” Twilight huffed, rolling her eyes. “He dropped all the prisoners off so we’d have no choice but to take care of them instead.”

“Augh, just like when he cut Canterlot off of the mountain!” Dash exclaimed, giving the statue a quick kick to the head. “Why does this guy have to be so good at being bad?!”

Fortunately, the mood doesn’t stay sour for much longer, thanks to Fluttershy returning with her sizable group of animals. Nodding to them with a small smile, Twilight grabs the statue in her magic and leads the group and their caretaker indoors, placing the statue on top of the Friendship Map table. The animals all took up position around it, some even looking after the doors and patrolling the hallways. Though she did have to pull Fluttershy away after she took just a little too long trying to reassure her animals. Once they were out of the building, the animals locked the door behind them, and they could be seen shutting and covering the windows from the inside out shortly after.

With the matter settled, the girls were finally ready to fix the most egregious damage done to the land. With her magic amplified considerably through holding onto the magic of her fellow princesses, it was simple enough for Twilight to levitate all of her friends while she rode atop Rainbow Dash. It wasn’t long at all before they arrived in the shorn-off city of Canterlot, the palace somehow still intact despite the horrific damage inflicted to the rest of the city. And within it were the statues of the other princesses, still in their places.

All Twilight had to do now was remove that throne from the middle of the circle and place the encased staff down in the middle. Once again, the Elements of Harmony overflowed with power, and the rainbow of magic shot forth from them, washed over the staff, and flooded into the ground.

The rest of the stolen magic was extracted from the staff, flowing back into the princesses it had been stolen from. Twilight offered the magic she had reclaimed from Anonymous back to their respective monarchs as well, and the princesses in question were also freed from their stony prisons as a result, returning among the living with a few shocked gasps.

And the Elements did not stop there, the rainbow flowing out from the palace and scooping up the carved-out city, gently floating it back atop the mountain and affixing it back into place. That was, however, the extent of what it could do: the rainbow lost it’s power and receded back into the Elements once it had finished repairing the mountain, leaving the ruined city for them to deal with themselves.

“Twilight,” Celestia began, gaping with the other princesses at the damage done to the palace, “What in Equestria happened here?”

Twilight groaned. She was not looking forward to explaining all this.

Hours later...

The sun was beginning to set by the time Twilight and the others began their return to Ponyville, with their first stop being the Tree of Harmony. With all of the princesses helping, they made it a priority to find everypony that had been abducted and bring them back to Canterlot, including the ponies that had been taken from the outlying towns. It was fairly easy to find everypony, since the invaders had all unloaded them in one big spot, and with the princesses and some powerful unicorns working together in a big chain of teleportation, it was simple enough to return them to the city, however taxing it may have been. What followed upon their return to the city was perhaps the biggest, most organized reconstruction effort that had ever been seen in Equestria, with even the young colts and fillies chipping in to help fix everything that had been destroyed or damaged in the city. Though there was only so much they could do in a single day, there were already talks of plans for everypony to spread out and help fix the outlying towns as well once Canterlot had been finished.

Despite everything, the spirit of Harmony was as strong as ever, and it had brought Twilight to tears. On several occasions. As did her reunion with Spike, who was among those captured. The other creatures who had helped - Celaeno and her pirates, Capper, and Princess Skystar - had all stayed to help as well, and Skystar expressed her desire to return to Seaquestria and get the help of the hippogriffs in fixing everything, something Celestia and Luna had agreed to help out with tomorrow.

But right now, all Twilight and her friends wanted to do was get some much needed rest, after they finished returning the Elements to the Tree. And so, with the winged girls carrying their non-winged friends, they glided across the Everfree and towards the Tree’s location, with Spike in particular nestled against Rarity as the two rode on Twilight’s back. As they flew, the group took notice of how the forest was already beginning to heal itself of all the damage that had been done to it, and the sight brightened Fluttershy’s spirits the most of anypony.

Before long, they arrived at their destination, quickly offering their Elements back to the tree so they could get back to Twilight’s castle and take full advantage of it’s wonderful suites.

But then, right as the last Element gets returned to the Tree and it lights up with the magic of Harmony again, the cutie marks of the six girls begin flashing.

“Aww, come on!” Rainbow complains to her own flank. “I just wanna go to bed already!”

Twilight frowned in confusion, wondering what friendship problem the map could be calling them for. And then, in an instant, her stomach sank.

“Anonymous!” she gasped, the name alarming all of her friends. “Is the map warning us about him?!”

“It better not be!” Dash scowls, punching her hooves together. “Come on girls, let’s go!”

The tiredness of everypony was banished in that instant as they flew as fast as they could back towards Twilight’s castle, the Everfree forest showing them mercy and not getting in their way during their flight. Once they were clear of the Everfree and were well on their way to the castle, they could already see the front doors to the castle wide open. Not just open, but blackened with scorch marks.

“Oh, no!” Twilight cried.

“Oh, hay no!” Rainbow fumed. “Not on my watch, you don’t!”

Landing quickly, the Elements plus Spike rush in through the doors, ready for the worst. The path to the map room was left wide open and littered with similar scorch marks, and they fully expected the statue of Anonymous to be gone once they made it there.

But just as confusing as the statue still being there, was the pony who was huddled up next to it.

All of Fluttershy’s animal friends cowered in the corner as Tempest Shadow lay curled up atop the knocked-over statue of Anonymous on the map table, her forelegs wrapped tightly around it’s neck as she pressed as much of her body as possible against it’s chest. Scorch marks from her magic peppered both the statue itself and the entire tabletop around it, a clearing in the soot layer marking when the statue had once sat upright. It looked as if she was trying her absolute hardest to break him out of his stony prison, but had failed.

Knowing what she did about Tempest after her capture, Twilight couldn’t help but feel bad seeing her as she was now. She has passed out, clearly suffering the symptoms of magical exhaustion, with small bags under her eyes and her mane left a scraggly, matted mess. Old, half-dried tears were streaked down her face, and her ears remained pinned back as she whimpered every now and then in her fitful sleep.

“Uhh, girls?” Dash piped up, visibly confused. “What am I looking at?”

“Oh, the poor dear,” Rarity sighs, sounding genuinely sad. “She ran herself ragged trying to set him free.”

After seeing it was safe, Fluttershy immediately flew over to her animals, who welcomed her with wide open arms and rapidly spoke to her in their animal language, no doubt telling her all about what had happened while they were gone.

Twilight slowly approached the unconscious commander, her mind a mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Chief among them were the words of Anonymous, replaying through her mind over and over again and making her feel progressively worse.

“... it’s more than what you did for her ...”
“... just wish you’d put in some effort ...“
“... all you did was watch her ...”
“... that’s brutal even by my standards ...”
“... you didn’t even give it a thought ...”
“... it really is just you being lazy ...”
“... and I’m supposed to be the villain? ...”

She felt awful, the guilt mounting more and more the closer she got to Tempest’s fitfully sleeping form. Even if he was only saying those awful things to get a rise out of her, he had still been right: she never tried to help Tempest and instead only tried to stop her, even after she told her about her past struggles when she had been captured. It was a painful parallel to how she had treated her friends during the entire attack: she had let her focus on stopping the enemy take priority over listening and communicating with her friends, and it nearly cost her everything.

Her eyes drifted down towards the map table, drawn to her and her friends’ cutie marks orbiting the projection of her castle. She knew right then and there what the map wanted them to do: it wasn’t to stop him from coming back, it was to help put Tempest back onto the right path, and make sure she never felt rejected or abandoned by her fellow ponies ever again.

Gently, she wrapped both her and the statue in her magic, making sure to not disturb her as she levitated them up into the air.

“What are you gonna do with them?” Spike asked from beside Twilight.

“He’s going to the royal gardens tomorrow,” Twilight replied with a frown at the statue, her look softening as she turned her eyes to the pony in her grasp. “She needs a good night’s sleep.”

They all did.

Twilight felt both elated and frightened once she saw Tempest walk into the map room, following Spike’s lead. Though she was quite clearly exhausted and more than a little nervous, she was still together enough to clean herself up and still carried herself with that intimidating poise she was known for, refusing to let her true feelings show in her movements. Her eyes flicked all across the room, taking stock of Twilight and her friends all in their seats, but it was clear by the way she was scanning all around the chamber that she was looking for the statue of Anonymous, which Twilight had managed to pull from her grasp when she put her into one of the guest rooms. When she couldn’t find it, she let out a frustrated sigh and strode past the small dragon and towards the empty seat at the table clearly meant for her.

“Good morning!” Twilight greeted. “Are you hung--”

“Look, just get on with it already,” Tempest interrupted, moving past the chair and planting her forelegs onto the map table, glaring right at the princess. “Spare me the speeches and just get to my damned punishment.”

Twilight managed to restrain her flinch at her aggressive and forward behaviour. Her friends had warned her that she could act like this, and their preparedness was paying off.

“Punishment?” Twilight asked with a small tilt of her head.

“I’m not some innocent victim that needs to be saved, your highness,” she continued, her performance evidently meant to put on a strong front. “I attacked Equestria knowingly and for my own selfish reasons, I caused you and your friends a lot of pain and trouble, and I’m not sorry about it. So just hand down your sentence. Banishment, jail, a statue, I don’t care! Just do it!”

Twilight saw the faint nod of Rarity’s head off to the side, and knew what she had to do next. Putting a strong front on herself, she rose from her seat with her wings spread out, and stepped out onto the table to walk directly towards Tempest with a stern look on her face and a stern posture to match, taking inspiration from how Celestia carried herself when handling mouthy petitioners at day court.

“Fine, then,” Twilight answered, a hard edge to her voice. “Have it your way.”

The small flick of Tempest’s ears was the only indication that she was surprised by her action. But far from backing down, she stepped up onto the table as well to meet her halfway, eyes locked with hers. It was a good front, a great one even, but the cracks were starting to show: there was a small tremble to her lip, and her eyes lacked the hard edge from before, using false anger as a poor substitute for the determination she held prior to the fight with Anonymous.

Twilight’s horn ignited with magic, glowing brighter and brighter as the seconds went on with the sounds of magical energy growing in time with it, the power tousling her mane as it caused her to begin floating slightly off of the ground. There wasn’t any real threat or power to the spell: it was only there to give the appearance of her charging up a powerful spell, and it was working as intended. Tempest shut her eyes and bowed her head slightly, Rarity correct again in her prediction of what she’d do next. Smiling to herself, Twilight quietly floated over towards her, but kept building up the light and sound of the fake spell. Tempest’s ears slowly pinned back and her eyelids squeezed even tighter as the performance went on, clenching her jaw and sweating when she heard the sound get closer.

It gave Twilight the perfect opening to pull the ailing pony into a hug.

She heard Tempest gasp at the contact, going rigid in her hold. The power in the fake spell faded quickly after she started hugging her, and by the time it had faded, she began to tremble in her hold.

“Why...?” she murmured, her voice strained with emotion.

“Because this is what friends do,” Twilight replied.

She said nothing, choosing instead to try and vain to get her shaking under control and steadily losing that battle with her own feelings. Twilight’s heart leapt when she felt her raise one of her forelegs up, expecting her to return the hug with it. She didn’t, choosing instead to press her hoof against Twilight’s withers for support, but it was absolutely a step in the right direction as far as she was concerned.

“I want to see him,” she says after a few long moments.

Twilight was afraid she would ask for that, but Rarity had once again coached her through this possibility.

“Okay,” Twilight agreed, nodding slightly into her neck.

Tempest relaxed slightly at hearing those words, and Rarity took care of the rest, opening a nearby door and levitating the statue into the room, setting it down onto the tabletop nearby. Tempest pulled away from her to face his statue, but Twilight didn’t let her go that easily, turning with her while still leaving a foreleg wrapped around her withers.

“You know,” she began after gazing up at his face for several seconds, “I didn’t just lose my magic when I lost my horn.”

Everypony else left their thrones and joined the two atop the table, keeping a respectable distance away from them while still letting them know they were close at hoof and always ready to help in any way they needed to. Applejack threw a wink to Spike, prompting him to return a salute and take off towards the castle kitchens and get something made for them all this morning.

“I lost the chance to just be normal again,” she continued, paying the small crowd around her no mind as she kept looking up at Anonymous’s face. “Everypony looked at me differently after that. Some took pity. Some were scared. Shocked. Disgusted, even. Didn’t really matter which. At the end of the day, I just... stood out. Stood out as the broken filly nopony wanted to be around anymore. And as the years went on? It hurt even more than the actual loss did. At least losing it was a one and done deal. At least that didn’t get worse the longer things went on.”

Applejack and Pinkie closed in upon hearing that, each resting a comforting hoof on her back.

“I was desperate to fix it. I went between wanting the magic or the normalcy back more. The final straw for me was when Celestia tried to fix it.”

Twilight’s hold tightened a bit upon hearing that.

“You were there too, princess. I remember.”

“What?!” Twilight blurted, retracting her hoof and splaying her wings out in surprise. “Y-y-you did?!”

“It was hard to miss you,” she deadpans, finally looking away from the statue to meet her gaze with a raised eyebrow. “You followed her everywhere with a big stack of notes, and they had to drag you into the observation room before she began.”

That tiny, almost imperceptible smile on her lips was all that kept Twilight from breaking down herself. But as soon as it came, it fell away as she closed her eyes and turned her head away, sighing softly.

“So you already know that she didn’t succeed. Me and all those other ponies. And that was it for me. If Equestria couldn’t help me fix things, I had to find my fix outside of Equestria instead. So I saved up, read about the lands outside, and learned to fight once I finished reading about them. And once I was old enough to leave, I never looked back. Honestly, things were better for me out there than here; with so many races running around, and plenty of them with scars of their own, most of them only noticed that I was a pony. But I was still an outsider. I still wasn’t normal.

“And then,” she scowled, snorting with anger as her eyes open up to glare at the base of the statue. “That damned Storm King showed up. I found a magic gem they had lost, and they tried to attack me over it. And lost. Then he came down himself and offered to restore my horn. Just dangled the offer right in front of me. Sweet Luna, I hated him, even back then. But I couldn’t just refuse, not when I was so desperate to be normal again. So I said yes, and put up with him.”

She snorts again, this time with amusement. Her eyes soften as she looks back up to the statue of Anonymous, a smile breaking out across her face as she looks at his.

“That, and put up with him,” she remarked, chuckling to herself slightly. “You know, at first, I could never decide if I hated him more than I hated the Storm King.”

“He’s a very hard character to like,” Rarity mutters.

“You don’t have to be nice to him for my sake,” Tempest sighs. “He’s always been insane, a tailhole, and a complete and utter bastard. And he not only knows and admits it, but revels in it.”

“And you still worked with him?!” Rainbow exclaimed, visibly mad about the discussion moving to the biped.

“I didn’t exactly have a choice,” she replied evenly. “We were both his commanders. Though we kept to ourselves as often as we could. And as much as I hated admitting it, he was good at what he did. Really good. He loved being evil and causing carnage, like it was his calling in life. Looting, pillaging, terrorizing: you name it, he enjoyed doing it. If he were a pony, I’m sure he’d have a cutie mark in pure evil, or something.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Rainbow huffed.

Twilight would have admonished Rainbow Dash for her outbursts, if it weren’t for Tempest’s mood improving at all of the discussion of the strange alien biped. She and the others had to bite back what they really thought of him, too, lest they ruin her ongoing attempt to pour her heart out to them.

“It’s funny,” she laughed to herself, the expression bittersweet. “I had no idea we could just loot our own furniture before he’d pointed it out to me. I’d always wondered how he could get his quarters as nice as he did before then, but now it seems so obvious in hindsight.”

“What, so you both were gonna steal things for yourselves?”

“That was the idea,” Tempest continued without skipping a beat, clearly amused with Dash’s antics. “In fact, we were going to try out the princesses’ beds, and find out which one was the best. A shame that didn’t work out.”

Everypony realized the implications of her words right away, and ranged the embarrassed expression range between blushing, a few awkward coughs, a few steps back, and even a light ‘eep’. Everypony, that is, except for Rainbow Dash.

“What do you mean, ‘try out’?” Dash demands, jabbing an accusatory hoof her way and remaining oblivious to what she meant. “The palace isn’t some furniture store, you know!”

“Didn’t I just tell you why?” she smirked. “How else were we supposed to find the best one, without conducting a very thorough test of their--”

“Yes yes we get the idea,” Rarity quickly squeaks out, very much flustered and red in the face along with the others. “You needn’t expound further!”

“Horseapples, she doesn’t!” Dash complains back at them before going back to glaring at Tempest. “Did this guy have a freaky evil habit of stealing beds?”

“More like replacing beds,” she hummed, clearly enjoying the situation.

“So this monster just destroys perfectly good beds?” Rainbow recoils, horrified at the very idea. “For fun?!”

“Rainbow, Ah swear...” Applejack cursed under her breath, hiding her face with her stetson while Fluttershy threatened to curl into a singularity of embarrassment beside her.

“Only with me,” Tempest nods, struggling to keep from sniggering.

“Only with you?! Why? What do you sick weirdos have against beds?!”

Twilight was repeatedly facehoofing, and Rarity was barely able to keep from screaming.

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” she replies with a more sensual tone and a raised eyebrow, doing just that when Rainbow Dash continued to show how thick she was. “When an evil commander hates her supervillain partner very, very much, he sweeps her off her hooves and has his way with her.”

The sound of a kettle whistling could be heard as Rainbow’s face filled from the bottom with red, her wings turning stiff as a board with a sudden pomf once her face fully reddened and causing her to fall to the ground unceremoniously as it finally dawned on her what she’d been talking about this entire time. She stared wide-eyed up at Tempest, whatever stammering sentence she tried to get out cut off by her leaning down towards her and continuing to speak.

“Repeatedly,” she half-whispers. “For days. Sometimes until she could barely stand, and--”

“Stooooooop!” Twilight shrieks, yanking Rainbow Dash back towards her with her telekinesis while Tempest just laughs to herself, with Pinkie flopping over atop her back and laughing as well.

“Oh, I needed that,” Tempest giggles.

“Me too!” Pinkie giggles back. “Whoo, that was some joke, Tempie-wempie!”

The two’s giggling eventually comes to a stop, giving the other girls plenty of time to collect themselves. Though Pinkie’s expression does become a bit nervous after she spends a few moments looking at Tempest.

“That, uh, was a joke,” Pinkie nervously laughs. “R-right?”

When Tempest’s simple knowing smile to her drags on for several seconds, Pinkie fishes a towel from her mane to pat herself down with as she slowly slides her way away from her and rejoins her friends, now very much as red-faced as the others had been.

“Wowzers,” she whispers to herself.

“Why is it always the bad ones?” Rarity bitterly mutters under her breath.

“Anyways!” Twilight exclaims with her wings extended, thankful that Spike was absent for all of this. “No more of that, please!”

“Ah don’t even rightly know how you’d go from hatin’ his guts to, well, y’know,” Applejack chimes in, looking away at the end with a light pink tint to her cheeks.

“Funny you should ask,” Tempest grins. “It happened right after I had enough of him, and decided to kick his sorry tail once and for all.”

“Please tell me ‘ya won.”

“No, we tied. But not before we destroyed the entire tower we were in. The metal tower.” She paused to wait for AJ to finish whistling. “And at the end, he still had that damned smile on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever been that mad at somebody in my life. In fact, the first thing I did after getting cleaned up was go straight to his room to try and kick his teeth in.

“Except that time, I lost,” she sighed, almost dreamily. “The good kind of loss, though.”

“’Fer land’s sakes,” AJ muttered, hiding her face with her stetson again. “Can’t a filly win ‘gainst a colt like him fer once?”

“And I learned something else about him after all of that,” Tempest continued, more contemplative than before. “He just... never cared about my horn. And not because he was ignorant: he knew damn well I was... damaged, but he barely seemed to notice, let alone care. To him, I already was normal. Wanted, even.

“So when he betrayed the Storm King and offered to try and restore me instead, I... There was no way I ever could have said no to him, not to the first stallion who actually cared about me in years. And yeah, he was as good as his word.” Her hoof brushes over her broken horn. “Of course, it didn’t work. Just my luck that even the power of four alicorns didn’t work. But the funny thing was, I... just didn’t care as much as I thought I would. It mattered way more to me that he at least tried to help me. No strings, no deals, no judgment, nothing. He just did it.”

Twilight could hardly believe what she was hearing. After that gruelling battle with Anonymous, after seeing him lay waste to everything she knew and loved with nothing short of childlike glee, hearing Tempest describe him as genuinely kind to her was a shock.

“... because really, what do I have to lose by trying? ...”

And just like that, the guilt returned. In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not he was manipulating her, or actually had a soft spot for her. In the end, he still tried. And she didn’t.

“He still had his problems, though,” she sighed, looking back to the statue with sadness in her eyes. “Look, I’m not going to blame any of you for doing what you had to do. I saw your fight, and everything he’d done to the city and the forest. Heck, I knew he had this coming even before we landed to conquer Equestria. I guess I just... didn’t think he’d be gone so soon. I thought we’d have more time to...”

She trails off, opting instead to rest a hoof on the stone of his leg instead.

“I really wasn’t cut out for the whole evil thing,” she continues after a while. “At least, I don’t think I could’ve gone as far as he did. And I think he always knew that, too. He always had a habit of just knowing things he probably shouldn’t. I swear, that man’s intuition was like a superpower all by itself.”

Several more moments of silence passed before she sighed again, let go of the statue, and turned back around to face Twilight and the others.

“Sorry,” she half-mumbles, looking bashful and semi-embarrassed. “I... probably rambled on there too much. I never was very good at the whole ‘feelings’ thing.”

She didn’t recoil nearly as much when Twilight hugged her again, but she was taken aback by how hard she decided to squeeze her.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that,” she nearly cried. “I should have done more.”

“Done more?” Tempest replies, confused. “There wasn’t anything you could do.”

“No, there was,” she continued, feeling the tears building up. “I gave up too quickly. I should have tried harder to help you. I should have at least tried to fix your--”

“Stop.”

Twilight was taken aback by her stern tone, especially when she pushed her away to look her dead in the eye.

“But--”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Tempest interrupted. “You were there when Celestia tried, you already knew it wasn’t possible, and you even tried to tell me that.”

“But things were different, I--!”

“They weren’t, and you know it.” Her hard look gave way to a wince as she briefly looked away. “Listen, I... appreciate the offer. But that ‘fix’ he tried hurt like you wouldn’t believe, and I’m not exactly eager to try again.”

She was about to continue protesting, but the surprise move of Tempest pulling her into a one-foreleg hug silenced it from that point onwards, the alicorn reflexively holding onto her with both forelegs. It was then that she remembered not only how painful Anonymous’s fix looked, recalling what she had said, but also remembered how heartbroken she had been when the inert new horn had been destroyed by her attempts to use it.

Just like that, she was back to chastising herself for being stupid, but for a different reason.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight murmured.

“I thought you were supposed to make me feel better?” Tempest remarked, the humour in her tone causing Twilight to snort and fail to repress the smile on her face.

The others found that moment to be the perfect time to join in the hugging party, making both mares the centre of the pony pile. They all shared a few laughs, and fell into a comfortable stretch of silence that was broken only by noticing the successful flashing of their cutie marks, followed by the sound of the door to the room opening.

“Ahh, if it isn’t Spike,” the little dragon remarked smugly as he pushed in a cart full of food, still wearing his apron. “The master of good timing.”

The girls shared a round of laughter, though Tempest’s was more half-hearted, and they all pulled away to take their places at the table, the statue set down to the side as said table was set.

“So wait a minute,” Tempest remarks. “Am I just... not going to get punished for any of this?”

“If you really want an official punishment,” Twilight snorts, rolling her eyes a bit, “I hereby sentence you to help us rebuild everything.”

“Hmm,” she smiled. “I suppose that will have to do.”

Weeks later...

“Get back here!” Strife hissed at the departing creatures. “I am in charge here, and I sssssay you will ssssstay!”

The basilisk queen and her ensemble of fellow female basilisks did not listen, the queen instead flashing a hidden wink to Cid as she left the meeting chamber. He did not give an outward response to that: she already knew what the long-term plan was, and like himself, had only to wait for the right time to come.

The same could not be said for the other mercenary beasts that his master had managed to summon for this meeting, all with places at the round table. They were there for appearance’s sake, and nothing more: indeed, many of them were paid actors, whose only purpose was to stage a walkout at this first large meeting in order to sow doubt in Strife’s abilities to lead the remains of their forces, prompting the very real mercenary malefactors to walk out on him as well.

Were his master to somehow survive the Equestrian campaign and make it to this meeting, only the actors would be allowed to leave on good terms. The mercenaries, all of which were the same nebulous ‘furry’ creatures his master had an odd yet incandescently bright hatred for, were to be turned to stone and dumped into the ocean at the meeting’s conclusion. After Strife was made into an example, of course.

He was dearly wishing he had made it back, just for that latter aspect alone.

“Very well then,” Strife hissed, floating to the middle of the large round table. “We do not need sssssuch fickle alliesssss in the firssssst place. Only the might of the ssssstorm beasssssts isssss needed!”

Said storm beasts did not look very happy to be working under him, having only recently been shown what better leadership looked like under Anonymous. But alas, though it was easily within the power of Cid and his agents to destroy the annoying cloud creature and take possession of his master’s forces, doing so would paint a target on his back for the foreseeable future. He and his master had discussed this stage of the second plan at length: whoever takes charge after his intentional loss at the hooves of the Equestrians must ride the lines between stupid, predictable and malicious. Stupid, so they would not notice Cid, nor his management of his master’s armies behind the scenes. Predictable, so they were incapable of jeopardizing the plans Cid and his master had laid out with only a few major stupid moves. And malicious, so they would be sufficiently evil enough to ‘order’ their forces to do evil throughout the world, rather than simply sit and stagnate at the island base.

Appearances were everything. And this illusion needed to be carefully maintained, lest his master have no forces left to use upon his return.

Strife dismissed the guard beasts from the room, no doubt to follow in the Storm King’s footsteps and jibber like a madman to himself; he had already started showing the signs during his planned ‘return’ a week prior. Cid immediately made for a tower at the island that had been under construction and remained devoid of lights, hiding the overseer airship docked onto it from the sight of less trustworthy beasts. Once he and a select few had come aboard, including Wedge and the late-running Biggs, the vessel surreptitiously took off with most remaining islanders none the wiser.

Biggs and Wedge stood with obvious trepidation behind Cid as he returned to his workstation on the bridge, ensuring his hidden surveillance devices throughout the island - both audio and visual - were all functioning correctly, and that his agents were all in place. He shared their basic fears, however, even if he worked hard to hide it under his professionalism. The upcoming months without their master, and indeed, with that fool Strife ‘leading’ them, would prove to be very difficult, especially if the predictions of a military reprisal upon the island proved to be true. But it would be a pain they would have to endure until the proper time, assuming nothing came up that placed the plan into jeopardy.

For the first time in quite a while, Cid hoped that luck would bring their master back to them sooner.

“The Four Princes?” Celestia asked Twilight as both them and Luna walked through the royal gardens.

“Yes!” Twilight chirped, the letter from Zebrica still held in her magic. “Anonymous mentioned that the Storm King had tried to attack Zebrica before, and those Four Princes managed to fight them off with their cypher powers!”

“A cypher working for the cause of good?” Luna said with a frown, disbelieving the very notion. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I have heard of them before,” Celestia hummed, “But this is the first I’ve heard of their powers.”

“One of the first letters Prince Zakurai sent me said that nopony outside of their royal family is supposed to know how their powers really work,” Twilight continued. “So I told him a bit about how I found out, and we’ve been exchanging letters by dragonfire ever since!”

To prove the point, she teleported a fair few scrolls worth of their correspondence above her head, but she didn’t wrap them in telekinesis in time, causing them to cascade down across her head and onto the ground. The showing makes Celestia stifle a small giggle and Twilight to give a sheepish smile, while Luna retains her frown.

“These Princes did not exist in my time,” she spoke up. “Back then, a single king clad in the magic armour of his station ruled the nation, complete with a harem of consorts.”

“A what?” Twilight squeaked, almost dropping the letters in her grasp again.

“They were still ruled by a king, until a few hundred years ago,” Celestia informs her sister. “The country fractured due to a problem I am not well apprised of, and as far as I am aware, that was when the Four Princes reunited the land under their rule. It is difficult to know for sure, though: Zebrica and it’s people have always been rather insular.”

“I mean, I could always ask him...” Twilight offered with a wide smile after she finished teleporting the extraneous letters away.

“Maybe later,” she smiled back. “Now, you were saying?”

“Oh, yes!” Twilight cleared her throat before continuing. “He’s been really helpful with fleshing out my understanding of how cyphers work, and he even told me that they have a special bond between them all that not only lets them share magic, but also lets them communicate mentally with one another! They have real, working telepathy!”

Celestia shook her head slightly with a small smile at seeing her squeal in delight, and Luna was intrigued by her words, yet still cautious.

“Then he asked if Anonymous and the staff ever talked to each other,” she continues, her excitement toning down upon mentioning the human and his sentient weapon, “And even though I don’t know for sure if they did, the dots just kind of connected from there.”

“Yes, the Staff of Sacanas,” Luna said with a small shiver. “To think that Grogar of all beings would take an apprentice. She must have been of a particularly vile stock to rouse even his interest.”

“Did you two know Grogar?” Twilight asked.

“No, he was ancient legend even during our youth,” Luna replied, both her and Celestia shaking her head. “Not even Starswirl knew much of him, and certainly not that he had taken an apprentice.”

“What else did the good prince say, Twilight?” Celestia chimed in.

“Well, he--”

“Nooooooo!”

All royal eyes turned to the source of the sudden scream: some of the guards pushing Lyra away from their circle formation around the heavily guarded statue of Anonymous. Bon-Bon was doing her best to pull Lyra away as well, her teeth clamped around her tail.

“Precious!” Lyra cried. “Give back my precious!”

“He’s not worth it, you idiot!” Bon-Bon growls through her mouth hold.

“Yes he is! Yes he is!”

The princesses held their tongues and regarded the scene with varying degrees of pity as the mint-green unicorn was dragged out of the royal gardens.

“Ahem,” Celestia piped up moments after Lyra was out of sight. “You were saying, Twilight?”

Twilight frowned as her eyes went forward towards the pillar-esque statue of Anonymous in the middle of the garden, locked into a pose that was at once intimidating, powerful, and beautiful. The ring of guards saluted and made way as she and the other royals walked up to the sealed human, the mood falling more and more the longer they stayed close to it, an unnatural, impacable, and entirely menacing pressure exuding from the statue.

ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ

“He says he’ll need to talk it over with the other Princes first,” Twilight finally said with a small frown, “But they might have a way to lock him away forever.”

To Be Continued ➪

Author's Note

The A-Non© will return in...

Fury of the Storm

Beast And The Harlot (Bonus)

You suspected something was wrong when Tempest started groaning even louder, and that suspicion was confirmed when her new horn began to spark, a deep glow coming from the spiralling groove on it.

“Something’s wrong,” Tempest hisses through grit teeth, still clutching her head. “My magic, it’s--!”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence before the glow erupted into an explosion of light.

Tempest was involuntarily lifted off the ground by her own horn, screaming in abject agony as a powerful dark purple glow enveloped her entire body, pouring from the new appendage. Lightning coursed all across the amorphous surface of the magical field as the power flooded out from her, but the charge never jumped to any nearby surfaces, and lacked the usual chaotic aspects that her explosive electric magic was known for.

“Tempest!” Twilight cries out, her voice flipping from concerned to furious as she addresses you next. “What did you do to her?!”

“I... fixed her horn...?” you offer, not really paying attention to the pony behind you.

BOOM

All at once, the field compressed to a single point on her horn before detonating out in a big ring of power that looked ready to slice right through everything in it’s path, and would have done just that if it didn’t hit you first and get subjected to your powers, the whole ring siphoning into your body with a mere thought once you had a lock on it. Tempest collapsed to the ground immediately after, totally knocked out cold.

“What... just happened?” Rainbow Dash piped up.

“You know, I have no idea myself,” you respond, keeping your eyes on the downed pony.

A twinge of doubt - doubt of the kind that’s actually positive - begins to worm through your gut as you walk over towards Tempest.

Did... did that actually work?

Did your ridiculous long shot with the XCOM-tier ninety-eight percent failure rate actually land?

No way. No fucking way it actually worked. Come on, you never get that lucky! Not in this business!

“Hey babe,” you say with a few shakes to her withers. “You alright?”

No response. She’s really out of it. So out of it, in fact, that you kneel down to check if she’s breathing and actually has a pulse, which thankfully she does. But fuck, dude, that’s some advanced levels of being out cold: you only ever get that way yourself after getting hit with magic saturation! If that horn power burst was even half as painful as those get, then she’s gonna be out of it for a while, yet!

“She’s not... dead, is she?” Rarity pipes up all horrified-lady-like.

“Nah, she’s fine,” you sigh. “Somehow.”

“I can’t believe you did that to her!” Twilight yells at you. “You didn’t even anaesthetize her first!”

“Well, excuuuuuse me, princess,” you huff, standing up and finally turning around to face them, “But I didn’t exactly go into... it...”

Oh.

Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

“What in the fuck?” you half-mutter, lip curled up in reflexive disgust. “Who beat all six of you with the ugly stick?”

“Hey!” Dash bleats all offended-like, pointing her hoof at you. “I heard that!”

“You were supposed to hear that.”

“And I’m supposed to kick your tail!”

“I want to kick the ass of whatever shitbag designed your Rainbow Saiyan forms, because God damn, he was using a whole cat o’ nine tails worth of ugly sticks on you gals!”

“Enough!” Twilight yells, complete with a big spread of her wings and a foul-lookin’ scowl aimed your way. “No more games, Anonymous! I won’t let you hurt anypony else! Now return the magic you stole, before you force us to take it from you!”

“Though I ain’t gonna be too broke up if we do have to get rough,” Applejack adds.

Yeah, you know what, you’d better slip back into the game of villainy now, before their godawful colour palettes and fuck-ugly hairstyles and stickersssssh why the fuck do they have stickers tattooed on their hoofsies sap your will to live any longer. Good call, Twilight!

“Hmm, mmm, hummm, mmmnh, mmmmaybe...?” you hum out with complete insincerity, the smile on your face and the twirling of the staff completing the whole act. “Mmmmm-nah. Naaah, I don’t think I will. I’m kinda attached to all this magic, I’ll be honest with ‘ya! I’d rather just keep it, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Have it your way,” Twilight scowls.

Her and the others begin glowing brightly, lifting up into the air with a big bright yellow sphere of magic wrapping around them. Disappointed that they’d open with their charge-up attack, the rainbow laser only just begins to orbit the sphere around them before you make your first move.

KA-BLAM

With a quick sweep of the staff, a huge shotgun blast of magic missiles fires from the staff’s tip, each bolt detonating in a respectable little blast upon contact and causing their neighbours to chain their explosions off as well. The girls all let out a cry of surprise and pain as they get blasted back out of the palace, leaving smaller Element-shaped holes in the wall as they went that quickly crumble into just one big gaping hole.

With them safely unable to observe you for the moment, you motion for Cid and the other best boys to keep an eye on Tempest, and with their acknowledgement - and the knowledge that he’d be clearing the city pretty soon for your ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny to happen unimpeded - your jet-feet reignite and you soar out of the palace right after the Elements, flying through the hole they’d created and catching them in the middle of righting themselves mid-air.

“No, no, no, no, no!” you chide, wagging a finger at them like they were misbehaving children. “You’re supposed to use the powered-up final beam after the ass-kicking! This is not Dragonball Z, I am not gonna wait patiently for that shit to pop off!”

“Ya want us to beat ‘ya black n’ blue first?” Applejack challenged with narrowed eyes, cracking her neck a bit. “Why didn’tcha just say so earlier, partner?”

“Yeah!” Dash added, kicking at the air in front of her. “You want a tail-kicking that bad? I’m happy to deliver!”

“Oh, this is just fuckin’ precious!” you laugh. “You gals really think you’ll get close enough to make good on that, don’tcha?”

“Wanna bet, greenie?” Dash challenges, her wings flaring out to match.

You shoulder the staff, putting it’s continued feeling of you aside for the moment and extending both of your now brightly sparking hands with a menacing grin, causing all but the two headstrong lasses to recoil. Dash and Applejack jump to each other, the latter riding piggyback on the former as they bolt straight towards you. But the time they took to saddle up was all the time you needed to start blasting.

BRRRRRRRRT
FFVWT-FFVWT-FFVWT
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

Dash is forced to adjust course as the two-handed full-course meal of the A-Non Splash® pours from your fingertips in all it’s extra-chunky, gatling-style, and green-tracing glory. However, only your thumbs tracked the two charging girls and kept them off-course and safely at bay; the rest of your fingers were all tasked with lazily and imprecisely tracking the other girls, forcing them to dodge around at first before huddling around Twilight as she erects a powerful shield to take the hits with surprisingly little issue. Dash and Applejack’s luck runs out on the dodging front, but they only take one or two of the exploding bolts with a few yells before they’re warped away in a lavender flash behind Twilight’s shield, which was temporarily weakened to facilitate their safe return. Which was where Rarity came in, erecting some smaller diamond-shaped shields in front of hers to tank the hits while Twilight’s returned to full strength.

And Rarity kept that theme going as you pelted their position with full A-Non Splash® throughput, even altering her shields somehow to reflect shots instead of simply tanking them, which she used to bounce shots right back at you with honestly pretty great accuracy. Which would have been effective, if it were another cypher’s power. But since it’s your own, it simply sinks back into your body without a single protest or explosion to show for it. Twilight uses the lull to lower her shield power again, this time to blast you with a laser beam that you puff your chest out with a grin to absorb--

BRRIIIIII
KA-BLAM

“Nani?!”

Okay, that magic was not absorbed in the slightest and just sent you flying back through the palace, through the other side, and left you buried in the middle of a wizard tower that collapsed right on top of you from the impact and buried your ass alive.

“What the fuck was that?” you exclaim, unbothered by your sudden entombment. “Of course. Fucking magic of Harmony bullshit, comin’ out to play. Why wouldn’t they have special snowflake donut steel magic? Literal donut steel magic?”

Snorting, your hands ignite with power and create a shinra tensei repulsor wave of power that brings the beautiful sky and some fresh air back into your life, totalling the bases of a few other nearby wizard towers as it goes. Fortunately, you’re airborne again by the time they start crashing down onto where you were buried before, and you get high up into the air to get a bead on the the girls, noting how the airships and the troops were already scrambling to get the fuck outta dodge as quickly as they could.

During this moment of apparent calm, the staff started insistently feeling you again, bringing with it mental images of exasperation, slight alarm, and questions. It takes you a moment to connect the dots and realize that it’s trying to fucking talk to you all psychic-like, and once you figure it out, you whip it off your back and hold it out in front of you.

“Holy shit, you can actually talk?” you exclaim at it, the mental image of a crazy person talking to objects coming to mind and making you smile a bit. “I thought I was schitzin’ out for real there!”

It does the closest thing to an eyeroll that it can get through this telepathic link, and it just hit you that this is fucking telepathy holy shit!

“Okayokayokayokay, first of all, this is fucking radical!” you laugh. “Second of all, is this some secret synchronicity feature that slipped my notice--?”

“There he is!” comes the distant voice of Rainbow Dash on the wind.

Oop, no time for that now. Though it did answer in the affirmative, so definitely putting a pin in that for later!

Rainbow comes soaring up, once again with her buddy AJ riding horseback, and the two close the distance lickety-split with a glowing grass-green lasso twirling around in their wake. But whatever stunt they were thinking of pulling comes to an end real quick once the staff comes up in your grasp and projects a massive neon-green laser death glaive from it’s tip. Dash works hard to adjust her trajectory before you bring the ghosting death blade down in a wide arc above them, her efforts paying off and letting them get away with only the loss of that lasso, both shades of green fizzling violently like lightning-infused acid as they touch. But far from done with that swipe, you keep the momentum going and spin the glaive around a few extra times for good measure, the swings creating an absolutely lovely and almost electronic sounding drone as it travels through the air that more than makes up for not hitting anything else at all.

Because stylin’ on bitches is arguably as important as spankin’ bitches.

Once your spin comes to an end, you decide to change the atmospheric décor up a little bit, the blade’s energy smoothly transformed into an electric-blue rod of storm magic that gets fired way further skyward, detonating after a few seconds into a wave of fresh cloud cover that blots out the sun all above Canterlot. Though you could tell from the lack of any pressure changes that it wasn’t quite strong enough to do more than just that. But that’s okay, it’s a work-in-progress.

The other girls come flying or floating up in short order, the two horned ponies of the bunch wasting no time and opening up with barrages of magic attacks: Twilight with salvos of magic laser beams, and Rarity with salvos of magic diamond projectiles, similar to her shields from before. Knowing now that absorbing them was off the table, you jet down to meet them head-on, staff alight with a fresh laser death battle axe this time while your free hand forms a huge, unstable spear of raw magic that you raise overhead, ready to strike.

It was weird to actually be hit with magic instead of just siphoning it into yourself, but unfortunately for them, your magnificent body’s toughness was still quite capable of tanking their smaller projectiles. Still, there was a world of difference between the two kinds: Twilight’s pure magic lasers just felt like getting flicked, while Rarity’s Sapphire Splash© seemed to have a more physical component to it that made her attacks hurt like a goddamn bee sting instead. That makes Rarity your first target, and you jet towards her with the battle axe raised overhead. She forms an entire stack of diamond shields in the path of your swing to complement Twilight’s bubble shield, and all except that latter one gets cleaved straight in two by your swing, the diamonds shattering like glass while the bubble sprouts some pretty gnarly spiderweb cracks, yet somehow remains intact.

With Twilight too busy playing defence, however, she has no chance to react to the crackling spear in your other hand, which you launch at her with a quick swipe of your arm. The air CRACKS as the projectile breaks the sound barrier the moment it leaves your hand, and Twilight cries out with pain as it lands right in her centre of mass with a big BANG and sends her careening off through the air.

THWACK

And then you cry out in pain as the orange blur of Applejack collides with your centre mass, flung your way courtesy of her prismatic hermana. Her earth pony power was jacked up to a solid 12 thanks to her super-form, and nowhere was that more evident than in her blows, causing actual harm to your body for once!

The surprise of the initial strike caused you to reflexively release the staff, and Rarity was quick to scoop it up and get airlifted out by Dash before you could so much as chuck a bolt of power at her. But interestingly enough, you could still pick up on it’s feeling remotely. So that’s an interesting developm--

THWACK-THWACK-THWACK

Ow, okay, right, angry apple horse still hitting you!

With both hands free, you respond to her strikes by taking full advantage of the one glaring weakness in her assault: her total lack of training and technique. This gal was bringing barroom brawling tactics to a CQC fight, and your own strikes back didn’t just hit as hard as hers, but were applied more tactically than ‘hit it until it dies’. In less than a dozen strikes, you not only pushed her back, but yanked her right back in with a full nelson hold, and activated your jets to propel you straight down towards the ground with the struggling mare in your grasp, intent on delivering a monster suplex to make even Sabin envious.

CRASH

Well, okay, it was pretty good. But it’s not suplexing a train. So you guess Sabin’s record still stands.

While Applejack lays dazed in the centre of the monster crater you’d created in the middle of a random street near the ledge of the city, you take flight back up towards Rarity and Dash, intent on getting your magic death stick back in your hands. Except it’s only Pinkie and Rarity up there, and they’re both on the offensive again with their respective fireworks and diamond shards, doing their best to keep their distance. Both of your hands come out to return fire, one hand loosing a fresh A-Non Splash® while the second builds up some power for a hitscanning laser beam--

POOF

Okay, that bubble shield definitely wasn’t around you a second ago.

Neither your fire nor your laser charge cease as you crane your head around to see it’s obvious source. Sure enough, there’s Twilight riding shotgun atop Rainbow Dash, the gal dumping monstrous amounts of power into the shield with pretty obvious difficulty. She made the bubble big enough to trap you, but now that you were enclosed, she began shrinking and intensifying the power of the barrier until it gave you only just under a foot of breathing room above and below you. Your attacks still didn’t cease, since your own power can’t really hurt you, but you do smile and point the laser-charged hand at her and fire it off, the chunky beam of energy causing Twilight to cry out as it created a big spiderweb crack in the barrier that she has to work overtime to fix before you can swing your ongoing A-Non Splash® at the weak point. She pulls it off in time, but only because you were moving slowly and weren’t trying at all.

“So,” you laugh, ceasing fire as she and her gal pals form up and float you on down to ground level. “Tryin’ your hand at SCP, are we? What, are your purdy pink powers not quite as effective as you were hopin’?”

Nobody answers, but Twilight’s eyes widen when she sees you dumping power into your hands.

“See, that’s what you get for starting shit with a Keter-class.” you tut, balling your hands into fists. “Now how about we inspect how good that shield’a yours really is?”

KA-THWACK

Twilight cries out again as one hand explosively impacts against your lavender containment cell, creating another big spiderweb crack. But rather than follow up with the hit that’ll grant you freedom, you decide instead to fuck with her and hit the opposite wall instead, delighting in her struggle to keep you inside as if it weren’t already a lost battle.

“He’s just messin’ with us now!” Applejack half-exclaims and half-pants through the workout you’d given her prior.

“What the hay are we supposed to do?!” Rainbow also exclaims, sounding mighty uncertain of the odds.

KA-THWACK
WHACK-WHACK-WHACK
WHACK-WHACK-WHACK
WHACK-WHACK-WHACK
WHACK-WHACK WHACK-WHACK WHACK-WHACK
WHACK-WHACK-WHACK

“♪ They call me Cuban Pete, ♪” you sing, using your fists as make-believe drumsticks against the very cracked shield. “♪ I’m the king of the rumba beat, ♪”

“Fluttershy!” Twilight cried as she shielded against your barrage of death. “Go! Get help!”

“♪ When I play my maracas I go chick-chicky-boom, chick-chicky-boom! ♪”

Ahh, so that’s why she bubble-shielded your ass: to cover for her friends as they called for backup! And if she’s sending her out, then she’ll be coming back with some giant fuckoff animal or another which has the potential to cause some issues. Fluttershy looked reluctant to leave Twilight, but gained the confidence to leave when Rarity came over to reassure her, and the two took off towards the direction of the distant Everfree Forest.

fzzZAP
FZZZZZZZZT

Or at least they were, until a surprise stream of lightning, very much not from the sky above, stopped them dead before they could clear the city’s lip. The others gasped in shock as the two ladies cried out in pain, the magic lightning’s dark purple luminous intensity eclipsing the glow of their own powers and making their manes stick out at crazy angles, and at several points you swear to God that you could see their skeletons like you were watching a goddamn Tom and Jerry episode.

Until, after several seconds of that treatment, the power’s flow terminates, and the two gals drop from the skies and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, left groaning, immobile, and for all intents and purposes, out of the game.

“Oh, man,” you laugh despite yourself. “There’s no fucking way!”

Whatever Twilight was about to demand of you was interrupted by an all-too-familiar round of that oh-so-delectable bedroom voice chuckle, drawing terrified gasps out of the girls and drawing their gazes to the source of the sound.

Stepping out around a corner near to and slow-walking over towards the duo of downed white and yellow beauties was the dark purple beauty everyone knew on an adversarial level, and that you also knew on the Biblical level. Only this time, she was sporting a long and pointy, glowing and crackling, totally restored, fully armed, and operational unicorn horn.

“Going somewhere, you two?” she hummed at said two, their only recourse being to cower in sheer terror.

“Tempest...” Twilight whispers, half horrified and half disbelieving. “How...? But...!”

“Yeow!”

KA-CRACK

With Twilight distracted, your powered-up fists broke the spherical barrier around you like glass. Twilight was at least quick enough on the draw to pelt you with magic laser fire, but you didn’t even care at that point, and allowed the bolts to impact against you as you jetted straight towards Tempest, the hits unable to send you off-course.

Tempest’s eyes lit up upon seeing you, and a genuine smile split across her face. Still, she kept the slow-walk going as she went to meet you halfway, adding a little extra sway to her motions she knew very well that you’d notice and appreciate. Dash enters pursuit after you, but you don’t even need to do anything: Tempest reacted right away by blasting at her with lightning that failed to hit yet succeeded in shooing her away, never once breaking her stride.

You land a few feet in front of her, all smiles at your ridiculous, unbelievable stroke of luck that just pushed Plan A into the highest success rate in the Wild West.

“Hey, babe,” you wink. “You’re up earlier than I--”

She silenced you with her lips, the gal on you in a split second with both fetlocks on your shoulders. Now, this was the kind of guaranteed, recognized-by-good-and-evil ceasefire you could absolutely get behind and take full advantage of, so with a little chuckle, both hands seize upon her and pull her in close, and she expresses her enjoyment at the move with a hum and one of her hooves shifting up to grab you behind the head and mash your face closer in to hers.

“Are you serious?!” Dash hollers from way up on high, the sheer fury in her voice causing the two of you to break out into laughter that prematurely breaks lip contact.

“How’re ‘ya feelin?” you ask your plum-coloured paramour.

“Amazing,” she sighs, touching her snout to your nose. “Though it sure hurt getting to this point.”

“Not much I coulda done about that.”

“I know. Which is why you’re very lucky that it worked.”

“Oh, you’re very mistaken there, babe,” you growl, one of your hands shifting southward and drawing a toothy smile from her. “I’ll be gettin’ very lucky once we get to those beds.”

“Well,” she half-chuckles, half-giggles, “How can I argue with that?”

“Oh for pony’s sake!” Rainbow screams in frustration and rage. “I can’t take anymore of this! You’re both going down!”

“Need a hoof?” Tempest intones with a knowing smile.

“Wouldn’t mind,” you wink.

The two of you time your separation just right, pushing apart before Rainbow could collide with you two and causing her to miss and hit the building over yonder instead. Tempest’s shiny new magic lightning laser beam powers pour from her horn and slice up the ground she was standing on in a circle before she changes to a TK hold and levitates her improvised platform, allowing her to float through the air at least as fast as the wingless Element bearers did. Nodding to one another, your feet ignite once more and put you into the air beside her. Your gaze fixates onto Twilight Sparkle, who still looks confused and terrified, just in greater amounts.

“Now then,” you hum out loud, giving the remaining girls the ‘come hither’ gesture, “I believe you ladies have something of mine.”

You hold the humming note as your gesturing finger changes to a pointer which you use to scan across the remaining girls for your staff. None of them had it on their person, and you noted that the spirited remote feeling of the staff had abruptly stopped a short time after you were bubbled up. And knowing that none of these girls would ever want to let your sharp n’ blasty out of their safe hooves...

“You,” you say with smiling finality, pointing straight towards Pinkie Pie. “Be a dear and fish my stick out from that hairdo of yours?”

“Never!” she bellows back, fishing out a huge bottle rocket with fucking TNT duct-taped around it instead.

“Would it help if we said please?” Tempest coos.

“No!”

“Shame,” she sighs, smiling all the while. “Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

fzzZAP

The lightning shot she aimed at the pink one was deflected by another hastily erected bubble shield from Twilight, and she flew in front of her friend with her forelegs outstretched in an attempt to body block any further assaults.

“Tempest, please!” Twilight begged, “Don’t do this!”

“Already doing it,” she shot back, horn blazing with power.

FZZZZZZZZT

While Tempest fills Twilight’s quickly summoned wall shield with lightning, you jet off towards Pinkie, intent on pulling your stick of ultimate doom from her eldritch hammerspace with your bare hands. Dash intercepts you with Applejack again, and the time it takes you to boot the obnoxious pair away is all the time that Pinkie needs to fish a big firecracker from her mane and send it flying away, the gal riding on top of it like a horse, saddle and all. Grinning, you double-check that Tempest has everything handled before rocketing off after Pinkie, hands alight with power that you channel into fingertip laser beams that dance all around her escape craft and scythe through the scenery below her.

“Run, Forrest! Run!” you cackle. “Muhuhuahahahaaaah!”

It only takes a few more seconds before your very own duo of Master Hand and Crazy Hand hit their mark, a few of the beams cutting the tail end of the firecracker off and causing the whole thing to explode in a big, colourful BANG, complete with the lingering crackles that you love to see in these pyrotechnic marvels. Pinkie screams as she flies down into the city, the slightly singed pony crashing butt-first into an office building. You follow her right on through the Pinkie-shaped hole, and slam into her before she had the chance to pull something else out of her hairdo, your impact sending the two of you right through the other side of the building. Angling yourself downwards, you hit the street with a meaty CRASH, putting her out front to make her take the brunt of the impact. And you don’t stop there, keeping your thrusters at a hefty burn and dragging a big gouge through the stone of the street for a few yards before you were satisfied with how she looked: covered in dust and half-dazed.

Now that she’s right where you want her, your plunge your hand straight into her mane.

And immediately, you can feel mousetraps latch onto your fingers and bear traps clamp around your arm.

“Nice try, you big meanie-pants!” she laughs triumphantly. “But I never leave my Pinkie Space unprotected!”

You smirk down at her, and she only gasps in horror when she feels good ol’ Crazy Hand resuming his laser assault from inside the hammerspace.

“No!” she shrieks, struggling in vain against the one-two pinning combo of your free hand and a knee. “Nooooo no no no no, not the beams! Not the beams! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Hmm? What’s that?” you ask insincerely, craning an ear towards her. “More beams? Sure, I can do that for ‘ya!”

“Nooooo they’re in my flour!” she wails, tears flooding down her face. “My flour! Aaaaaaaagh! Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“That’s all up to you, girlie,” you loudly whisper, nose pressed against her cheek as you look her dead in the eye with malicious glee. “You know what daddy wants.”

“My marzipan is all ruined and the sprinkles are all disorganized and the butter is all melted nooohoohooooooooh!” she bawls breathlessly. “I’llgiveitbackI’llgiveitbackjustpleasestooohooohoooop!”

And just like that, the staff returns to your hand, bringing an end to the laser show inside her slightly smoking mane. But not the end of your interdimensional destruction, as you promptly make the staff create a huge fuckoff nova of power inside of her hair that presents only as a light poof as her mane briefly expands, followed by billowing smoke and the smell of burning sugar and cheap Shenzhen plastics pouring out of the hairdo. Slowly and carefully, you pull the staff from the space, it’s feelings of relief almost as amusing as Pinkie’s uncontrolled ugly crying.

“Thanks, boo,” you coo, giving her a parting kiss on the cheek before pulling back and standing back upright. “Now, about your friends...”

You turned around just in time to see Tempest parkouring across some rooftops towards a rapidly approaching Twilight, only to be slammed mid-air by Dash. Getting airborne again, you meet Twilight halfway with a laser death sword swing that she teleports away from before it could hit, but she did not teleport far enough away behind you to miss the backswing, which you kept going on purpose in the fulfilled hope that it would catch her. Which it did, causing her to cry out in pain as the flat end smacks her right under the chin and sends her flying up. You waste no time, following the strike up with a salvo of magic missiles from your off-hand while the staff reforms the laser death sword into just a death laser, both it and your projectiles hitting her in perfect sync and creating a big BLAM, the gal plummeting to the ground right after the blast.

The death sword comes right back out when you see AJ binding up Tempest with those green ropes of hers, and Dash’s attempt to stop you is blocked by a quick slash of the death sword before it comes down for another slash that undoes the ropes and frees your girl. She pulls the small glowing rope coil around her horn off, and blasts the shit out of Applejack with Sith lightning while the laser death sword reforms into a swarm of fast homing magic death missiles that chase after Rainbow Dash. She could probably have lost them in the buildings if she didn’t see you gut punching AJ, her instincts to protect her friend overriding her tactical sense and causing her attempted dive towards her to end in the missiles converging and blasting the shit out of her, her smoking body falling from the skies and hitting the stone of the street like a sack of potatoes.

A quick second suplexing of her apple-flavoured friend down to street level takes care of her, the lass out like a light. Tempest hops down right next to you as Twilight flies up from wherever she had fallen, charging up a monstrous low-orbit ion laser that she wastes no time in firing your way. The staff comes up to deflect the strike, the beam scattering all around you and destroying everything in it’s wake while Tempest smartly ducks behind you.

Keeping the staff front and centre, your off hand builds a giant laser beam of it’s own up, firing out in short order and locking her laser into a gnarly wizard duel. Though her own laser had more chooch than yours did, you only needed it to shove it back for a couple of seconds: enough time for the staff to add it’s own giant death laser to the mix and start pushing back against her, the two beams converging into a single marbled death ray.

“Keep her busy!” Tempest calls out over the noise. “I’ll circle around behind her!”

“Done and done,” you call back.

Since lasers don’t have recoil, you start flying towards Twilight as your end of the wizard duel gains ground, a big evil smile breaking out across your face.

“♪ Gripping the wheel, his knuckles went white with desire, ♪“

The laser from your hand stops firing and changes tactics, instead pointing up high and loosing continuous swarms of magic missiles that lazily arc towards Twilight at random speeds. While this grinds the wizard duel itself to a standstill, the missile hail forces her to multitask into shielding, ceding some progress to you and distracting her quite well.

“♪ The wheels on his Mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45, ♪”

Seeing her opening, Tempest takes right off, going full Rise of the Triad with floating platforms to dramatically speed up her parkour efforts.

“♪ True death, ♪”

She flies the rest of the way up to her on a floating platform once she reaches the tallest building nearest to Twilight.

“♪ Four hundred horsepower of maximum performance, piercing the night, ♪”

She leaps high into the air for a good old fashioned drop kick, but not before charging her platform with lightning and hurtling it straight towards her in advance of her own strike.

“♪ This is Black Sunshine! ♪”

CRACK

Twilight’s cry of pain is heard from here as Tempest drops her right outta the sky, slamming her down through a building at a 45-degree angle until she hits a nearby street. You’d timed your missile fire and death ray such that they’d stop right as her laser stopped to avoid any friendly fire, and with that taken care of, you saunter on over towards the downed Twilight and the icon of hotness pinning her down.

But your shenanigans senses tingled, and you readied the staff with the electric chain spell that your boys’ gauntlets used against the Storm Dipshit. And those senses proved to be accurate, with Twilight somehow managing to fling Tempest off and taking flight before she could catch her. She didn’t even get two yards into the air before the chain fired from the staff lashed around her barrel.

“Get over here!” you holler in your pitch-perfect Scorpion impression, yanking Twilight straight towards you.

She screams as she comes in hot, and it comes to an abrupt stop when she flies straight into a gut punch, driving out most of her air. Though the chain around her stays, it goes slack to allow her to collapse to the ground and curl in on herself, coughing and gasping in pain.

“You know, if it makes you feel any better,” you chuckle down at her, “I’m just as surprised as you are that things ended this way!”

The staff fires your ‘situation handled’ flare signal sky-high in numerous directions, and a set of five more chains snakes out of the staff, flying high into the sky to gather up the other downed girls. All while the chain around Twilight extends into a set of magic shackles, just like the ones on the late Storm Dipshit and mirroring what would be clampin’ around her hermanas when they also get Scorpion’d over here.

“’Course, I ain’t complainin’, not by a long shot!”

“Tuh-T-Tempest...” she wheezes, reaching out for the approaching mare. “Don’t do this...! Don’t let him win!”

“Oh? Why shouldn’t I?” she asks with a smirk. “After all, he did give me what I wanted.”

“And I got a whole lot more to give after that,” you hum, waggling your eyebrows at her.

That fucking giggle of hers is a national treasure, you swear.

“And as for you, princess?” you hum down at her next, poking her right on the snoot. “I think I’ve got a second denouement to hand out today! And all of your friends are invited!”

“Last time I’ll offer, ladies!” you coo. “You’re missing out!”

None of the securely chained six ponies takes you up on the offer of surrender, choosing to struggle in their bonds and yell at you instead. Well, most of them do; Pinkie just kinda lays there with her hair all flat and with a thousand yard stare, while Fluttershy just weeps quietly.

“Uhm, I-I’ll take it--!” Celaeno tries to chime in.

“The only thing you deserve,” you hiss with the boiling hatred of at least seven Black Templars, “Is to be plucked like a chicken and spit-roasted over an open bonfire. In Hell.”

She snaps her fuck-ugly beak right shut and cowers back into her gaggle of similarly chained bird pirates. All of the participants of Twilight’s failed city attack were present and accounted for in this deluxe sized cage, placed down at the ground level a few yards away from the Canterhorn mountain with your loyal forces all present and accounted for. And Tempest, of course. Though she was more occupied with getting her ears scritched by yours truly than keeping guard, unlike the rest of the boys.

“Going once,” you announce. “Going twice. Aaaaaand gone!”

And here you thought the offer of thrice weekly ear scritches would be enough to win at least one of ‘em over. Oh well.

“Good,” Tempest mumbles as she nuzzles against your side. “More for me.”

Laughing a bit at her words, your free hand extends to snap your fingers twice before opening up to grasp the fully powered Staff of Sacanas, which floats off from your back under it’s own power thanks to you juicing up all of it’s special spots. It was real thankful for the chance to get some autonomy!

“Damn, that’s a cryin’ shame, girls,” you smile, shaking your head. “I’da liked to walk by your smilin’ faces in my lovely gilded cages every day! But if it ain’t in the cards, I guess there’s nothin’ for it but to just take care’a you all now.”

“This isn’t over!” Twilight barks back, still clinging to her inner fire. “We’ll be back to--!”

“No, you won’t,” you smirk.

A few storm beasts land on top of the solid ceiling of the cage and open the hatch, and work along with the crew of the airship up above to lower the statues of the other three princesses down into the cage. When it dawns on her what her impending fate’s going to be, she turns around with a look of horror to see your girl idly jugging one of her Spheres. All while Biggs struts on up with the specially prepared record player on standby.

“Not sure what you thought was going to happen,” Tempest hums. “After all, we both saw how he dealt with the Storm King.”

“And when I say goodbye,” you state plainly with the same smirk still in place. “It’s for good.”

“Wuh-wuh-w-w-wait!” Twilight begs. “Can’t we--?!”

“Ah-ah, nope,” you tut. “It’s too late for that now. You’re done.”

“But I thought you valued tradition!” she tries to argue all desperate-like. “You know, offering your enemies a sporting chance to--?”

She can’t finish on account of you breaking out into uproarious laughter, contagious enough for Tempest to start chuckling alongside you as she offers up her Sphere to you. Taking it in your hand, you impale it onto the staff’s tip, injecting it with power aplenty and causing it to glow brightly.

“You did get a sporting chance!” you laugh. “And ‘ya blew it!”

Pandemonium breaks out within the cages as the others clue in to what’s about to happen, all parties thrashing anew in their bonds and begging you not to do this. You, meanwhile, gently switch the record player on as you continue to laugh, guiding the arm into place and being rewarded with the entirely fitting cheery tune. Well, maybe not so fitting for them, but who cares what they think?

Twilight begs and cries a little more, and by the time the staff was ready to rock and the music was getting to the right spot, your laughter had calmed down. And after a nice, relieving sigh, you regard them all with a simple smile.

The only thing missing from this scene was the Mortal Kombat announcer saying “Finish them”.

“Buh-bye,” you wave.

The lyrics kick in.

Twilight screams a loud, protracted “no”.

And the staff points their way.

VRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMM

A huge cone of green, iridescent magic floods out from the pierced Sphere, drowning out the lamentations of the mares and covering not just the entire cage, but an entire 30-degree cone of fire that was stopped only by it’s impact against the face of the mountain, the stream of power perfectly capable of travelling for miles if you had let it. Almost ten seconds of conical laser fire are sustained before the Sphere loses it’s green colour and shatters, crumbling to dust that gets blown away in the wind before the shards could even get halfway to the ground.

Left in the wake of the power blast was not just the statues of all of your captives, but the statues of every living thing in the area, right down to the blades of grass. Iridescent smoke, just like the breath of the basilisks, wafts up off the petrified surfaces for a bit before it gets blown away in the breeze as well.

And the crowd behind you erupts into thunderous cheering and applause.

“Alright boys,” you cackle, turning around to face them proper. “Get your armour tucked away and the beer kegs rolled out, ‘cause we’re gonna party like it’s 1999!”

The reference may be lost on them, but the invitation to get down certainly isn’t, judging by the uptick in noise.

“Now go on ahead and get things set up without me,” you smile, nodding over to Cid on the side. “I’ve got a few more things to take care of real quick. Don’t have too much fun without me, now!”

You throw an arm around Tempest’s barrel and jet off into the sky, the staff returning to your back mid-flight. Your flight path takes you straight back to the middle of Canterlot, and your destination is the balcony of Celestia’s now-old bedroom. The staff, wanting no part of this, flies off on it’s own to wait outside, while you switch to carrying your giggling girl bridal-style and boot the screen door in, marching right on over towards the bed. Her giggling ceases on account of another bout of lip-locking, something she’s all too happy to lean into as you lay her down and loom over her, never breaking contact all the while.

Now, you still have every intention of changing your official title to emperor. But while you’re still technically king...

“Hail to the king, baby.”

Many months later...

“Speak, minions,” you boom to the small delegation of Zebrican mercs kneeling before you.

“My lord, your will has been done,” the head merc declares. “The southern dragon lands are now ours.”

“Finally,” Tempest mutters, tapping her hoof against your knee. “They certainly took their time.”

You say nothing, gesturing to the mercenary to continue.

“Per your orders, the rest of the continent will soon fall before our might.”

“I do like me some good news,” you chuckle. “Well done. Deliver the rest of your report to my chamberlain. Your payment will be ready for you by then.”

“My thanks, my lord,” he bows once more before he and his group follows after Cid, who was already moving before you’d finished speaking.

Once they’re gone, it’s nothing but you, Tempest, the Staff of Sacanas, and a handful of elite guards in your big and intimidating imperial throne room on Storm Island. A long red carpet stretched from the foot of your throne to the main doors over yonder, lined with braziers that burned with green flame. Green banners with your insignia draped down from the side walls every so often, with an imperial storm beast guard posted between each one, every one of them wielding the most powerful magic equipment in the lands thanks to the staff’s assistance. And the big space behind your throne was filled with the statues of each and every do-gooder and hero who ever tried to stop you, arranged just so that everybody entering knew exactly what your body count was, and what you were liable to do to them should they try to fuck around with you.

As for the staff itself, it rested behind your throne, content to hide itself and it’s true nature while working behind the scenes, which suited Cid and friends perfectly fine. You opted to have your seat of power kept on the floor level instead of being on a raised section to really emphasize the statues, and a ring of the same red carpet circled the throne as a visual indicator of where guests should not cross, unless they wanted to fuck around with the two armoured-up basilisks resting on each side of the ring, each of the gals always happy to stone a bitch on the spot if you order it. The throne itself was also unusual, too: most of it was an ordinary throne, but the right side of it where the armrest would be was instead extended out into a luxurious, fully backed bench, perfectly sized for a pony to lie across.

Which is exactly what Tempest did, her forelegs draped across your right leg as you used her neck and shoulders as your armrest, much to her continued pleasure. And while you sat in your chair with a full set of villainous royal black clothes on, she forewent even her usual bodysuit from before, wearing nothing but the golden ring at the base of her horn. The big chamber was kept fairly chilly to keep guests on edge, but she kept nice and warm with a combination of you, the heated seat, the braziers ringing the throne, and the small blanket covering her slightly swollen midsection.

“Gotta hand it to those zeeb mercs,” you smile, brushing the hand with the matching ring through her long, grown-out mane, “They sure are awful polite n’ punctual.”

“But they’re not very fast,” she counters with a hum. “They should’ve taken those lands a month ago.”

“Probably. But it ain’t a high priority anyways. Besides, this way our boys are all freed up to prep for conquerin’ whatever’s across the ocean.”

“Still.”

“Is this gonna be another episode of ‘Fizzy wishing she could do it herself?’” you chuckle.

She fixes you with some mighty fine bedroom eyes, then brings a hoof up to move your hand from her lovely voluminous mane, across her lovely toned body, until it finally slips under the blanket and rests on her lovely rounded tum-tum.

“And who, exactly, should I blame for that?” she purred, her voice holding no actual annoyance.

“I think we both know there’s only one person capable of such evil,” you grin.

She goes in to boop noses with a throaty giggle, and as per usual, it doesn’t take long for things to graduate into full-on kissing.

“It’s all your fault that I’m stuck here like this,” she breathes, diving right back in once she finished speaking. “You awful,” - smooch - “Horrible,” - smooch - “Despicable man.”

“You keep that up,” you intone with a wicked smile, “And I may just keep you like this for longer.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I’d love that.”

The guards didn’t even try to hide their annoyance at this point, and you continued to not give a single front-flipping fuck. This was far from the first time you started making out with your wife on the job, and it sure as shit wasn’t gonna be the last.

And why should you give a fuck anymore? Things have been fantastic since the conquest of Equestria. Your boys swept across the lands like an evil flood and brought both adversarial states and innocent countries alike to their knees, most with barely any need for you to intervene. Y’know, outside of parting the oceans like Moses for Seaquestria and slapping the shit out of the Four Princes of Zebrica. Everything outside of that was all gravy.

Unsurprisingly, after the extensive testing to determine that Luna’s bed was in fact the best one, Tempest - or rather, Fizzlepop - decided she wanted an upgrade from the position of commander. And after forcing Queen Novo to make things official at multiple different knifepoints before she joined the statue crew, she settled quite nicely into her new role as empress. Of course, she wasn’t the only one who had some terms and conditions to set. One of those conditions needed a few more months in the oven before it was ready.

You were well and truly on top of the world, now. Most of the lands were under your thumb. Your forces were efficient and happy. The subjects kept everyone fed and supplied. The all-furry gulags were churning out slave labour products at record rates. You had a smoking hot wife who had nothing but love for you. You even had a little harbinger of the apocalypse on the way!

And you’re not even close to done yet. There’s still so much more of the world out there to take. So many more possible furries to persecute.

And you weren’t stopping until the whole world was in your grasp.

Who knows? You might even go beyond the world once it’s all yours.

After all, it’s still an open question if whatever brought you here can also bring things back there...

THE END ? ! ?

Author's Note

If the sequel Fury of the Storm never happens, or if it turns out to be shit, you have my permission to consider this the canon ending.

Use Your Fist And Not Your Mouth

“Haaaaaah~!” your new mint-coloured, harp-mark-having slave exclaimed. “More! Please, Master! More!”

Holy shit on a stick, all you’re doing is petting her. Why is she turning into a hentai character over this? Seriously, you’ve only had her in captivity for that whole day and a half of riverside scouting, and already she’s been totally enthralled by your touch, with fucking hearts in her eyes and everything--

Aaaaaaand she’s licking your fingers now. Nope, that’s a paddlin’.

“Ah-ah,” you tell her off sternly, reaching for the spray bottle of water and hosing her in the face with it. “No. Bad pony.”

“Noooooo!” she wails, recoiling and writhing on the ground as her personality flips from hentai character to fucking Sméagol in an instant. “It burns! It burns us!”

“Gonna have to work on that self-control, missy,” you chide, waggling a finger. “Now go on, back in your box.”

With a big, watery-eyed whimper of pure heartbreak, she complies with your command, shuffling her way back to her pet carrier and closing the door behind her, continuing to give you massive puppy-dog eyes the entire time.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

“Come in,” you call out.

The door swing open to reveal Tempest. She wastes no time, striding into the makeshift airship office.

“We’ll be in Klugetown in about half an hour.,” she states, plain and simple.

“Good, good,” you reply, donning a fresh smile for best co-op partner.

Tempest’s eyes flick over towards your new willing slave in training for a split second, her lip curling up in momentary disgust. Said slave glares right back at her with undisguised jealousy and hostility, ears folded back and everything.

“I need to speak to you in my office. In private.”

“In private, eh?” you intone with a smirk. “Of course. I understand--”

“Nooooooo!” your new slave literally hisses at Tempest, banging on her cage. “No touching my precious!”

Sadly, her deranged Gollum act evaporates the second Tempest shot some lightning towards her cage, the mare “eep”-ing before ducking and taking cover.

“Lead the way,” you snicker, entirely amused with the display.

After fixing you with a smouldering glare, Tempest does indeed lead the way to her office in the super-ship, which wasn’t all that far from your own. Indeed, it wasn’t all that different from your own, either; just the most spartan desk and chair set-up imaginable, neither one of you having much of a chance to customize the space, let alone use it. She doesn’t look back at you, even after you closed the door behind you.

“I...” she attempts to begin, failing to find the words at first as uncertainty creeps into her voice. “I need to ask you a question.”

“That’s funny,” you chortle. “I didn’t realize you valued my opinions.”

“I didn’t,” she deadpans, craning her head to fix you with the matching look. “I do now. Especially since you seem to be correct about things more often than not.”

“Yep,” you sigh happily, cradling the back of your head with both hands. “They don’t call me Nostranonymous for nothing.”

She snorts. “Fine. I’ll just come out and say it. Are we going to win?”

“Nope.”

She recoils a bit, shocked at both the speed and certitude of your answer. “What do you mean, ‘nope’?!”

“I mean exactly that, babe,” you wink, utterly unfazed as usual. “The Storm King has a zero-point-zero - repeating the zeroes - percent chance of winning this war. In fact, I’d wager a guess that he’ll end up as a lawn ornament by the time this is all over.”

“I didn’t ask if he was going to win! I asked--”

“Don’t matter how you phrase it, Tempie,” you cut in. “We work for the Storm King. Therefore, we, by extension, have a zero-point-zero - repeating the zeroes - percent chance of winning this war as well. Nothin’ complicated to it, it’s just simple causality!”

And now, as per usual, she becomes angry with you. “Then how, exactly, can you still be so calm and happy about your so-called inevitable loss?!”

You arch an eyebrow. “My inevitable loss? Au contraire, babe! I, in point of fact, have a net positive percent chance of winning this war!”

A low percent chance, to be sure. But it’s better than the King’s odds! And that’s only for Plan A!

“Buh--! But you just said that--!” she splutters, confused but no less angry.

“Yes. Yes, I did,” you hum. “You’re a smart gal, Tempie. I know you can figure it out.”

Tempest works her jaw for a moment, trying to snap back at you with something. While she doesn’t end up saying anything in the end, you could absolutely see the gears starting to turn in her head. She doesn't seem to quite understand what you were implying just yet, which prompts the look she gives you to shift from anger and confusion to anger and unease.

“I’ll be up on deck if you need me,” you sigh, shooting her one last wink as you crank the door to her office back open. “Don’t be late for the party!”

She makes no move to stop you, and it’s not long before you’re off towards your stated destination.

Half an hour later...

“Every time I come to this godforsaken shithole,” you remark aloud, not giving a single front-flipping fuck who hears it, “I have to restrain the urge to just raze it all to the ground and throw all of these furry fucks into a gulag.”

And there were a lot of said furry fucks around to hear it, along with some of their scaly co-conspirators, situated as you were in the middle of one of Klugetown’s biggest market plazas. Tempest, as usual, was walking next to you.

Normally, talking that kind of shit out loud here would net you a swift and brutal ass-beating plus a hearty mugging from the local denizens of this hive of scum and villainy. You, of course, are not normal, and are acquainted with most of those aforementioned hooligans on both a first-name and a five-knuckle basis, with precisely none of them wanting to upgrade to the ten-knuckle VIP club.

Besides, you love seeing them afraid of you. Lets them know who’s wearing the pants around here.

“Where are we going?” Tempest inquires, clearly not enthused with needing to be here either.

“To get us some information,” you reply. “We could spend hours digging through the markets to find where they’ve run off to, or we could just squeeze it outta the local Hutts.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“More than I’d like to, believe you-me.”

“I do believe you,” she finishes, her voice taking on the disdain she had for her current surroundings.

It takes another few minutes of weaving through crowds and strangling random lippy hood rats for directions before you break down the door of the twenty-sixth millionth new office of the local rat bastard. As in, the literal rat bastard. Complete with stupid top hat and fuck-ugly goggle-spectacles. One that, unfortunately, you already knew on a first-name basis.

“Yaaaagh!” Verko shrieks, jumping right out of his chair. “Y-y-y-you!”

“Yes, me,” you sneer, giving him none of your hard-earned mirth as you swoop over and grab him by the throat, lifting him into the air with little effort. “Me, me, me.”

“I-I’ve paid my dues already!” he chokes out, struggling in vain against you. “What more do you want?!”

“What we want,” Tempest says, taking over the conversation for you, “Is information.”

Her horn crackles menacingly, driving even more fear into whatever creature he was supposed to be.

“There are six ponies here, aren’t there? And they’ve got a little dragon with them too,” she continues, leaning forward and looking your captive dead in the eyes. “You’re going to tell us exactly where they are.”

Minutes later...

“My hoooooome!” you hear Verko wail behind you. “Not again!”

“That wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be,” Tempest admits as the pair of you walk out of the burning building.

“Tell me about it,” you say in response. “There’s no fun in kicking street trash to the curb. It’s just a chore. Like taking actual trash to the curb.”

The building collapses behind you, but fails to interrupt the flow of your conversation.

“At least we know where they are now.”

“Yup,” you concur, studying the crudely drawn map you’d beaten out of him. “Not surprised that a fucking Abyssinian is selling them out.”

“You don’t seem to like Abyssinians very much.”

“They did kind of push me into a career as a supervillain.”

“As opposed to a regular villain?”

“Of course!” you cheer, flipping back some imaginary hair. “The only difference between the two is presentation!”

“Of course.”

“So what’s your excuse, babe?” you ask, already knowing the answer. “What brings a smokin’ hot cutie like you into the League of Super Evil?”

She looks away, her cheeks flushing red at your words. “I’m only doing this to get what I need.”

“And now that you’re close to gettin’ what you need?”

She hesitates for several seconds before answering. “I’d rather talk about this in private.”

“Again, eh?” you smile. “Sure.”

“Without that strange pony you brought along.”

Tempest seems to sense that she said the wrong thing, turning her head to glare at you as you adopt the kind of knowing smile one gets when catching somebody in the middle of a Krabby Patty binge.

“Don’t you dare...!”

“Tempie,” you coo, “Are you jealous?”

“I will break your nose if you keep talking,” she hisses. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“I’d rather ‘ya didn’t. I need that for booping.”

You make a show out of sniffing the air, only to catch the very out-of-place scent of cotton candy on the wind. Which actually leads you to a strand of poofy pink hair caught in a plank of wood off to the side.

“And sniffing out our prey, apparently,” you chortle. “Man, that’s awful convenient.”

Tempest’s ears pivot towards the sounds of excited chatter, the kind that is never, ever heard in this awful fucking shanty city. Both of your eyes gravitate towards it’s source, otherwise known as your destination: an abandoned-looking cross-breed between a water wheel and a windmill, the former stacked on top of the latter with the water wheel having a notable lack of, well, water. The “first floor” of the windmill part was also connected to the nearby Nth floor of “civilization” with wooden boards, no doubt leading to the front door. Finally, the top had some kind of clothesline gondola looking thing, hauling pallets with crates on it and looking like it was driven by that windmill.

“Ah,” Tempest remarks. “There they are.”

“Mm-hmm. Alright, game plan time,” you reply, checking your flare gun.

“I assume you have something in mind?”

“Yeah. You walk in through the front door with some troops, and I’ll climb up top and head off their escape routes.”

“Sounds good. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Lay off the Spheres.”

She shoots you a confused look. “Why?”

“Noticed something during the last time we were chasing them down. We were relying on them too much, chuckin’ cockatrice grenades when a good CQC smackdown would’ve been better. Or in our cases, your Sith powers and my Daddy Gurranq cosplay.”

She opens her mouth to object, but upon thinking further on it, doesn’t wind up voicing it and instead nods in agreement. “I... hmm. I actually agree. But we need to capture them somehow.”

“I know. We’ll stone ‘em when they’re nice and cornered, but not while we’re chasing them. This time, we take ‘em down the old fashioned way.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask. I saw you hit that dragon with a Sphere. Why didn’t it work on him?”

“Oh, that? Dragons are immune to basilisk magic. One of the reasons basilisks hate them. Dragons hate ‘em back for making lairs in their volcanoes and cooling the lava down.”

“I see. That’s quite annoying.”

“Very. I didn’t think the little guy would go all Saving Private Ryan for his slave driver, but here we are. Ain’t makin’ that mistake again, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t suppose that means I’ll end up seeing more of your... hidden talents?”

“Only when Twilight decides to shoot some lasers,” you wink.

“I thought it had something to do with magic.” Tempest nods once. “All right. You have a decent plan, but I want to improve our chances.”

“What do ‘ya have in mind?”

“They’re too close to the docks,” she notes, pointing to said airship docks in the distance. “I want to get our soldiers into position to intercept them.”

“Good play. Shouldn’t use the flare though, that might tip ‘em off.”

“Agreed. I’m going there on hoof to give the orders. We’ll meet back here first before we make our move. If you see them trying to escape before then, use the flare. I’ll back you up as soon as possible.”

“Sounds good,” you concur. “Let’s do this.”

After the traditional fist/hoofbump of agreement that she was slightly reluctant to perform, she takes off towards the docks, taking the path that wouldn’t be in view of the windmill tower. After she turns a corner and inadvertently denies you some of that rear-view action, you allow yourself a little chuckle and climb up a nearby building to get a better vantage point, also taking the path of least visibility.

While you pop the spyglass back out and start casing the joint from afar, your thoughts once again drift to your co-commander. Now, you were still absolutely certain that she’d defect to Team Equestria at some point, probably near the end of the campaign. But you do wonder if, in the current term, you should try letting her in on the backstabbing grift?

Not now, of course. You still needed her to stay focused. But what about once you manage to bag that Twilight gal? She’ll be pleased as punch about finally bagging her, so maybe some tactical parade-pissing could work to secure her help? Sure, it won’t change that she’ll ditch you for the literal Princess of Friendship in the end, but having her back you up during the part where you whoop the Storm King’s lily-livered ass would be a very welcome boon.

Could backfire, of course. She could throw you in a cage for even bringing it up. Not that it’d matter, of course; you’ve planned around the possibility of getting caged thanks to all the loyal storm beasts in on your plan. Maybe if that happens, you could let the King do his Spaceballs routine on the princesses, let him betray her, then swoop on in and get her help in fighting him? Maybe even get some Elemental help on account of “enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

Yeah, that could work. Hardly an ideal route for Plan A, especially considering he’d have access to the fully armed and operational Staff of Sacanas. But that’s more of a danger for Tempest and the Elements; you know he’s planning to blast you with that Staff at some point, but he doesn’t realize that it’s not the trump card he thinks it is against you.

Especially when you consider that he never bothered to ask you about the real reason why the Abyssinians threw you in kitty jail in the first place.

Oop, pause those thoughts, you’ve got tone. Visual confirmation on ponies.

They were all pacing about up on the second floor of the windmill. You also got your first look at the Abyssinian that was planning to sell them out. Funny, you don’t recognize his face, but you do recognize his ratty-ass coat and facial structure as belonging to Abyssinian royalty. Too sleazy even for their society? Interesting if true. You’ll have to remember to trust that cat’s word even less than you’d usually trust his kind.

Ooh, wait a tick. Is Princess Purple arguing with cat-man there? Judging from her expression, it looks like she’s wise to his shit. And she’s got something in her TK grasp, a sheet of paper? Let’s try and focus in on that a bit, and...

Oh! Oh-ho-ho! So those are the friends they’re trying to lean on for backup! So sad then, that she’s holding up a map of Mt. Aris. They must have no idea that you bodied the hippogriffs a long time ago. That presents quite the prescient advantage for you, even if they do escape! And seeing how your gut is telling you that their luck is running on only a half tank of gas now, that is a very good advantage to have.

So nice when the planets align like that.

You briefly peer down and to the side to see if Tempest is back, and you manage to catch her trotting on back to the rendezvous point. So with a smile, you collapse and stow your spyglass and make your way back towards the meeting place.

“We good?” you smile.

“Yes, we’re good.”

“Good. Let’s go bag us some heroes.”

Without further ado, Tempest takes off towards the upper floors of the city and towards the front door of the building, once again making sure to avoid being seen from it’s windows as much as possible. You make a similar approach, this time towards the dry waterwheel. You ride the wheel up, but upon seeing the huge number of rusty and bent railway spike-sized nails protruding underneath the deck, you forgo getting up onto it in favour of monkey-barring your way underneath it.

You climb your way over towards the side of the windmill you know has no windows and make your ascent from there, taking advantage of the rickety-ass architecture to avoid making your own handholds and thus compromising your stealth approach. Before long, you manage to make it to the roof, and take stock of Tempest’s approach.

There she was, with half a dozen of her troops in tow, rounding a corner and heading for the front door. You and Tempest briefly lock eyes and nod to one another, with you taking that as your cue to head across the roof to the side of the building with the windmill on it, intending to jump through a window.

That is, until you overhear them talking.

“Let’s go, everypony,” said Twilight.

“Wait!” the kitty gasps, sounding as sleazy as he looked, “You can’t, you can’t make it by y’allselves. You need an airship! And lucky for you, I can get you a ride.”

Shit, that was fast of them. You pick up the pace, climbing your way down the side of the building.

“I think we can get there on our own,” Twilight replies, her scum senses serving her well.

You hear the front door getting magicked open, followed by the summary gasp of shock as they behold Tempest and her gang of troops. She, continuing the very tasteful pattern, puts on her bedroom voice as she chuckles all evil-like at their reaction. You, meanwhile, continue your stealthy descent, passing by the windmill’s shaft.

“Silly little ponies,” Tempest croons ever-so-sexily.

You spy that Rainbow Dash thinking fast and looking out the window you wanted to enter through. She looks up at you, double-takes with a gasp at your smiling presence, and ducks back indoors as you jump the rest of the way down, the sound of your impact drawing the gaze of the frightened Elements away from Tempest.

“♫ I’ve got an F and a C, and I’ve got a K too, ♫” you whisper menacingly, putting one leg through the window sill. “♫ And the only thing that’s missing is you! ♫”

The more feminine members of the group scream and whimper at your very sudden presence, cowering behind the tougher ponies of the bunch as the storm beasts file in and start to surround them. Much to your chagrin, the fucking cat goes ahead and chimes in, no doubt trying to smooth operator his way out of this.

“We-he-hello there, my good, ah, storm friends! To what do I, ah, owe the pleasure?”

“You’re not nearly good enough to talk your way outta keeping those ponies, kitty-cat,” you say with a smile and some well-earned venom. “Especially when you’ve been so helpful for us already.”

“A-haha! Er, helpful how?”

“What, you don’t remember?” You pull a blank sheet of paper out of your armour, pretending to read it’s contents. “Dear Verko, come on over to my place as soon as you can, and remember to bring the cage!”

“No!” he yelps, waving his paws in the traditional ‘please stop’ pose. “No no no no no, you don’t gotta read that out loud, now!”

“...I got six little ponies and a dragon to sell to you,” you finish, savouring his panic like a fine wine. “Won’t lie, not a bad plan to get rid’a all that debt of yours. We’re just here to collect, queen!”

“What?!” Rarity snaps, whipping around to face the fucking cat. “You were... You were going to sell us?!”

“He sure was!” you chirp. “And for way less than your MSRP, too!”

“I knew it,” Twilight glowers, glaring daggers at the now very nervous and fidgety looking cat-man.

“Trusting strangers, are we now?” Tempest chuckles. “Very big mistake.”

“I mean, I don’t know what you expected to happen, trusting an Abyssinian. But ya reap what you sow. Now,” you conclude with a snap of your fingers. “Bag ‘em, boys.”

The beasts all jump the ponies at once, causing quite the scuffle. But being bigger, stronger, and better trained, it doesn’t take long before they’re all bound up in chains, metal muzzles, and horn rings.

“Great job, fellas!” you cheer with a round of applause.

“Very good,” said Tempest, doing a wonderful job of containing her excitement. “Now load them into the cart. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

That was way too easy. No way this is the end of the line for them. Good thing you know about their destination now though, otherwise you’d be more worried about them spending the rest of their luck on escaping your clutches.

As everyone files out of the building, cat-man holds you up again and tries to sleaze it up with you.

“Well, hahah! Good stuff! Now, ahah, about that payment that ole Verko promised me...?”

Huh, wait a tick. His face, you almost remember where you’ve seen it before. It’s right on the tip of your tongue...

Oh!

You snap your fingers. “Dapperpaws!”

“Wh--?” he half-exclaims, shocked you figured out his family name. “How’d you...?”

“Fuck me, that’s where I’d seen your face before! You’re one’a the fuckin’ Dapperpaws,” you laugh. “Dude, small world!”

“Hold on now,” he half-demands, “How do you know about my family, greenie?”

“Funny you should ask! They’re the assholes who reported me to the feds, had me thrown into kitty jail!”

Yeah, they were way too smart for their own good, figured out what you were doing to their magical artifact collection. A pity they weren’t smart enough to not brag about reporting you afterwards; they might’ve escaped without any notable punishment from yours truly if they hadn’t!

“Let’s see,” you hum, happily skipping down the post-invasion Abyssinia memory lane with a few taps of your finger to your chinny-chin-chin, “Last time I saw Mr. and Mrs. Dapperpaws, I was shipping them down to the lowest levels of the salt mines, hot off of looting and demolishing Dapperpaw Manor.”

“Y-you what?!”

“Ahh,” you sigh happily with a hand over your heart, “Good times. Wait, shit, did I...?”

You fish through your armour, pulling free your trusty Testament and flicking through the pouch of photos in the back cover until--

“Yes!” you cheer, pulling free the photo of you posing in front of the ruins of said manor, flashing a peace sign with the biggest smile on your face. “Holy shit man, this takes me back!”

During your hearty laugh, you can see what’s-his-face look at this photograph with absolute despondency. By the time you put both it and your notebook back into your armour, his fists were shaking with rage and he wore a facial expression that was only a few anatomical incongruities removed from a crying wojak.

“Why, you... You... Bastard!”

“In the flesh, with that boom-boom-pow, and bitches jackin’ my style.”

He lands an ineffectual punch to your armoured chest. With a simple smile that wouldn’t be out of place on someone much more yandere than yourself, you tenderly grasp his wrist and squeeze it hard, causing cat-man over there to wheeze in pain and feebly bat at your squeezing hand as he drops to his knees.

“You’ve been very helpful today, sir. Very helpful, indeed. But if I ever see your weasel face around here again, I will personally ship your ashes and pawprint back to Mr. and Mrs. Dapperpaws in a fucking lunchbox. Capiche?”

After wheezing out something that could be construed as agreement, you hurl him by the wrist towards a nearby closet with a smirk, his body caving the doors in as the clothes within spill out over top of him.

With a satisfied little sigh, you finally leave the windwill house and fall into formation with an impatient Tempest, wiping off the spot on your armour he touched with one of your handy alcohol wipes.

“What took you so long, exactly?” she inquires, tapping her hoof and everything.

“Just took a nice trip down memory lane, is all,” you sigh happily. “C’mon, let’s head back. Been a long couple of days.”

And that’s just what your group does, the guards both guarding the rear and pulling the cage cart full of restrained ponies plus dragon as you and Tempest led the convoy through the streets towards your warship, over at the docks.

But you continued to have no illusions here; if ever there was gonna be a place where these gals blew the last of their good fortune, it was going to be right here, trying to bust free. Only question is what form their jailbreak is going to take.

You cradle your chin with a free hand and hum out loud as you think the possibilities over. The Friendship Gang would most likely have done just that; made a bunch of friends around here. Somehow. No, the ‘how’ ain’t important; the ‘who’ is. Who would they have befriended that could help them out of this bind?

Couldn’t be Verko: the only thing that unsubtle Semite analogue was missing was the ear tag with your name on it. And honestly, going down the list of other lowlife names wasn’t turning up any results. And that usually means you’re thinking about this wrong. So, time to Ace Attorney this shit and turn your thinking upside-doodley. Who else were they in contact with...?

Oh. The fucking cat. Right. Duh.

“Hey babe,” you pipe up, “Did you ever catch the name of that cat?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought,” you hum, turning around to face the cage, walking backwards to keep the pace all the while. “Hey, do you gals know what that cat’s name was?”

All they do is glare at you. Spike in particular breathes fire at you through the slits in his mask, leaving it glowing a nice dull orange.

“So rude.”

You turn around to resume walking forward, only to notice the people in the streets. Or, to be more precise, the sudden lack of them.

“Why are you even bothering to ask?” Tempest inquires with a raised eyebrow and a sideways glance.

“Because I think he’s just called in a few favours,” you intone, your voice lower and with a dangerous edge.

Noticing your tone instantly, Tempest looks around and notices the same signs you do.

“Of course it couldn’t be that easy,” she hisses, shifting into a defensive stance with her ears pinned back.

“That’s what I was thinkin’, too. Ladies!” you call out to the guards, freeing the flare gun from your armour. “Pick up the pace and keep those eyes peeled!”

The flare fires skyward, only to be snatched out of the air by a fucking lizard tongue from a nearby window. Said flare-snatcher can be heard crying in pain at his phenomenally stupid choice of cuisine, right as a whole lot of familiar lowlife scum poke their heads out of the alleys and windows, cradling clubs, chains, blackjacks, and more than a few torches and two-by-fours with nails hammered into them.

And every single one of them was eyeing you up.

“Figures you fucking pukes would find your backbones once you’re in a big group,” you sneer at them, cracking your knuckles. “Make a single fucking move, and I’ll beat you to death with them.”

A good chunk of them, not used to such a direct and non-jovial threat, start looking mighty scared. Unfortunately, their fuckbuddies give them either a pep-talk or a shoulder shake, dispelling their momentary fears.

Both you and Tempest have yourselves a synchronized snort. Neither one of you has time for this shit. She revs up her Sith lightning while you rip a nearby lamp post right out of the ground with one hand, ready to turbo bonk at a moment’s notice.

And then, the sound of battle is heard from behind you, and you whip around to find that the majority of street punks were jumping the storm beasts instead of the two of you. You pick out that fucking cat in the crowd, already at work picking the lock on the cage.

That’s when the punks up front make their move; right when you were distracted.

In an instant, Tempest looses some of her high-explosive lightning, but the majority of the rest of the furry menace goes out of their way to dogpile you first, literally piling on by jumping out of the windows. You lose your grip on your improvised weapon and are briefly pushed down by the street rat tide, wailing away with their sad little blunt weapons. Their surprise attack succeeded for all of five seconds before they were thrown off all at once, sent flying in every which direction from a small taste of your real strength.

But you weren’t interested in them; you only cared about your targets. Your eyes settle on the now empty cage and discarded restraints surrounded by occupied storm beasts only just beginning to get a handle on the situation. You spy Tempest’s tail dart off down an alleyway, followed by the light of more lightning blasts beaming down said alleyway. Your instant reaction is to climb up the wall as fast as possible to get the height advantage on the escapees.

Fuck, and here you were thinking the restraints would be enough. That was stupid.

Precious seconds are spent bolting vertically upwards until you finally reach the rooftops, playing extreme ghetto Mirror’s Edge in real life as you quickly parkour your way over towards the explosive flashes coming from the exposed alleyways a fair ways away. The ponies eventually make their way towards the wide-open airship docks, Twilight working quickly to put a big bubble shield over them to protect against attacks. The docks themselves were full of storm beasts, obviously on Tempest’s behest, who had all dropped what they were doing and charged into battle the moment they saw the princess.

Snatching a boulder hanging from a crane, you leap down from the buildings towards them and throw it mid-air, the rock arcing gracefully towards the docked airship they were bolting towards. They skid to a rapid stop as the boulder craters the ship’s rear, totalling it in short order and forcing them to change course. Tempest emerges from the alleyways shortly after the boulder toss, entering the fray with more lightning blasts aimed at more of the docked airships.

It’s only now that you notice that the cat-man isn’t with them. He must’ve dipped sometime back when Tempest was chasing them down.

Speaking of Tempest, you land right next to her, rolling out once before breaking into a sprint and matching her speed. You reload the flare gun and fire a red one in a wide arc over the heads of the Elements, ringing the dinner bell for every storm beast in the vicinity. Your pursuit continues in this fashion for a minute or two, with Tempest blasting at them while you throw heavy objects their way, all while your forces converge on them both on the ground and in the air. But you know the dock’s layout all too well; enough to know about the dead end coming up in front of them.

Which they reach in short order, skidding to a stop on the empty airship dock.

“No pissing around this time,” you huff to your companion, snatching another metal lamp post out of the ground and twirling it around like a quarterstaff while you continued your death run. “Hit ‘em fast, and hit ‘em hard.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she huffs back.

That Rarity pony takes over the shielding duty, putting up a bunch of smaller diamond-shaped magic shields to tactically block arrow fire. Which leaves Twilight free to power up that horn of hers and take aim, loosing a big magic laser beam blast straight at you.

Tempest veers to the side to dodge it, but you do no such thing, instead extending a free palm out in front of you and taking the beam straight-on. At first, the beam scatters all around it’s point of contact, destroying random shit all around you. Then, your hand contracts into a grip, as if you were trying to Force Choke a bitch.

You can hear Twilight gasping with sudden pain as the magic of her attack is vacuumed into a tight ball of compressed lavender-green energy held in your outstretched grip, lightning in both colours coursing along your arm as the black metal of your armour heats up to a very uncomfortable orange glow. She cuts off the beam’s power, and by the time it faded, the energy in your grasp had shifted to your signature green.

Leaping high into the air, you crush the orb of stolen magic in your grasp with a wince and swipe across the air multiple times with that same hand, your palm held open like before. You hiss slightly with pain as an absolute hailstorm of green magic missiles came pouring out of your open hand like the D&D equivalent of a spreadfire minigun, lazily arcing through the air in multiple directions before picking up speed and tracking towards the ponies. The last of the power was used to infuse your trusty lamp post, electrifying it and giving it the menacing green glow of your average CIA agent. And with that expenditure, the very uncomfortable burning pain of pulling out one of your stops ended, your arm cooling back down in turn.

You hit the ground running, able to dart past and keep ahead of your projectile hail as they course-corrected. You barely notice Tempest falling in next to you again, failing to notice her brief expression of abject shock pointed your way. On Twilight’s end, she gaped at the incoming death storm with horror before pouring enough power into her horn to generate a small, electrified whirlwind around her, the mare audibly straining with the effort.

As you and Tempest leap through the air, poised to attack and with your weapon raised overhead, you expected her to do many things with all that power. Conjure up a massive shield, shoot down all the incoming projectiles, fire a massive death laser, match your magic missile fire and try to out-danmaku you, even turn her entire group into pickles that fall through the cracks of the dock’s planks. You even had your hand extended again to take whatever she was going to dish out!

What you weren’t expecting her to do was to mass teleport not just herself and her friends away, but the entire section of dock she was standing on.

The section both you and Tempest were no longer able to land on.

Tempest’s gasp mirrors your own surprise, but you quickly get a handle on the situation as the two of you go into a freefall down the jagged sandstone cliff towards the very rocky ocean down below. Veering to your left, your free arm wraps itself around her barrel, bringing her brief, half-panicked flailing to a swift end. Your hail of projectiles rains down from above as you bank towards the rock face, burying half of your infused lamp post into the cliff with one motion in order to bring your momentum to a stop. An enormous gouge is carved out of the cliff as it’s power scythes through the rock with what most would consider disturbing ease. However, it’s power quickly expends itself, the glow fading along with it’s ability to carve through rock until it eventually returns to being a mundane lamp post. Your velocity finally comes to a stop once that happens, the gouge it carved out above forming a massive, rapidly tapering “V” shape in reflection of it’s dwindling power as the sand and crushed rock of the manoeuvre briefly showers the two of you.

All the while, your magic missiles fell all around you, some blasting solid craters in the rock face a good foot to a foot-and-a-half in diameter with the expected explosive potential. You become aware of Tempest’s rapid breathing and the way she clings to your side as the rest of the bolts finally fall into the ocean, creating huge explosive columns of steam as they impact the freezing water.

Exhaling deeply, you crane your head to look at Tempest and shoot her a tired, semi-forced smile. “You okay?”

She shuts her wide eyes for a brief moment to take a calming breath, nodding once she opened them back up. “Fine. I... I didn’t know you could do that.”

“If it makes you feel better,” you wink, “Nobody else knew, either.”

As if her noticeably more bashful countenance wasn’t a rare enough sight, she then does something you’ve absolutely never heard her do before.

She laughs.

It starts off as a light snickering, almost like something she didn’t even mean to let out in the first place. But as the seconds drag on, the floodgates open more and more, soon bringing her to the hearty laugh of somebody who just rode their favourite roller coaster.

And by the Emperor, if she wasn’t already a top-tier cutie pie, the sound of her genuine laughter just pushed her up into tippity top tier. It was enough to get even you to chuckle along with her!

“I can’t...” she tries to say between laughs before clearing her throat to speak properly, a small grin on her face and pinpricks of tears in the corners of her eyes, “I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun, Anon.”

“What can I say? I know my thrills.”

She fucking giggles. “That was one Tartarus of a thrill! That was...”

And just like that, the metaphorical unicorn sighting that was her mirth melts away as she realizes exactly what just happened, her face becoming downtrodden and sad for a moment as it shifted back to angry.

“They got away from us again!” she shouts.

“Relax, babe. They might've given us the slip, but unlike the last time, I know where they’re going next.”

“Where?” she demands.

You answer by flicking your eyes towards the distant Mt. Aris, your hopelessly adorable partner turning her neck to glare at the mountain as realization flashes through her eyes.

“The hippogriffs?” comes her incredulous question. “But we already destroyed them.”

“They don’t know that yet,” you hum. “They think they’re still up there, ready and raring to offer up help. They’ve got no idea they pussied out 20,000 leagues under the sea.”

“Then we’d better catch them before they get there.”

“Agreed. Lemmie just signal for help real quick here.”

“All right. Where do you need me to jump toooooooooo--!”

She yelps in surprise and clings to you even tighter as you let go of the lamp post, flipping around in mid-air as you align yourself to Naruto run directly down the wall. That allows your free right hand to pull out and reload your flare gun.

“What are you doing?!” she half-yelps, half-yells.

“Calling for help,” you answer quizzically as you finish reloading the flare gun. “Duh?”

Once the yellow flare was fired skyward, you stow it back in place and cease your run, your boots skidding along the vertical surface as your right hand plunges itself into the rock, bringing the two of you to a swift halt once again.

“Wh-what did you do that for?!” she demands, jabbing you in the chest with a hoof.

“Exercising my better judgment, of course!” you laugh, shooting her a sly wink as you give her barrel a squeeze. “You really thought I was gonna let you go that easy, Tempie?”

Her ears fold back as a furious blush envelops her face, followed shortly by her eyes screwing shut with a frustrated groan as she headbutts you in the chest.

“You are such a...!” she grumbles quite loudly, keeping her face planted where it was. “A... A dick!”

“No, I’m an asshole,” you chuckle. “Learn the difference, it could save your life!”

She can’t hide those errant chuckles from you, even if she tries to cover them up with groaning and the odd gut punch. While your airship support is heard descending down to pick the two of you up, your gaze remains fixed across the ocean and towards Mt. Aris, where a natural storm front was already brewing between the two.

The Elements would need to get there by airship, that much was for certain. But there’s no way most of the Klugetown regulars would just give them a ride, not after your show of force in town. Your best bet is probably to go straight for Mt. Aris and wait for them there, rather than waste time stopping and searching every airship that comes by.

Right after the two of you get cleaned up, of course.