Fallout Equestria: The Blue Lightning

— Time, my friends. The time has come.

FoE: Time Turner, chapter 8

The hardest thing was to open her eyes.

Cosmic was floating in the middle of a vast void where there was no light, no sound, no thought. This nothingness enveloped her from all sides, hobbling her mind and not allowing her to come to her senses.

But gradually, somewhere on the edge of the sensations, a small light seemed to appear, and with each passing moment, it flared up. It grew larger and larger – and soon filled everything, pushing away the gaping emptiness.

And then Cosmic realized that this flame was herself.

And she awoke.

Gulping air with her mouth wide open – like a fish thrown onto the shore. It was like a nightmare – of which she remembered nothing.

Her eyes made out gray concrete walls and a low ceiling with dim halogen lamps. Her legs ached from her recent (but was it recent?) run. With a twitch of her hoof, Cosmic found herself chained to the wall by all four limbs – and an attempt to shake her head revealed that a steel hoop had been placed around her neck as well.

Her breath caught as the events of the last day before she’d been knocked out flashed before her mental eye. But… how much time had passed?

Cosmic tried to look at the PipBuck – the leg with it was just off to the side above her head. But unfortunately, its display was turned towards the wall, and it was impossible to look at the time on the device.

Lyra… came the restlessly rushing thought. She shot me with a tranquilizer needle! Then she must have packed me up and stuck me in here…

Suddenly a fright pierced her soul.

And my team?! What did she do with them?!

A chill ran down her skin.

What the hay… I won’t forgive myself if anything happens to Sonic or Sky Bloom or anyone else! They’re really in trouble because of me this time!

A small part of her mind began to convince her that it was all an accident and Lyra couldn’t have known they would go to that settlement… but Cosmic didn’t really believe it.

She planned the whole thing. She knew we’d be going there! There must have been no other towns along the way…

But… where’s everyone?!

Somehow Cosmic turned her head and exhaled in relief. The others were here – also chained to the wall and unconscious. Even little Cheese had been shoved into a hoop.

All of them… except Tails.

I guess they didn’t find him… An uneasiness mixed with hope stirred in her heart. At least he’ll be safe. I wish he hadn’t come here to rescue us.

The earth pony listened to her senses. She was no longer wearing her armor, and her saddlebags and all her weapons were gone. It was understandable on one hoof, but still unpleasant and… uncomfortable to feel defenseless.

Opposite her, under the ceiling, was a screen – like a terminal, only better. Cosmic immediately remembered the huge screen Twilight Sparkle had seen her brother through in the memory orb. This one was smaller but looked even more futuristic. It was off now – but it could light up at any moment.

What’s this thing doing here? Does the cyberghoul unicorn want to taunt us before finishing off…?

Cosmic curled her lips. As far as she had time to understand the spirit of the stories from Earth, such a move by Lyra was very likely.

I’m the protagonist, the earth pony reminded herself. And she’s just a villain, and a villain so low-grade it makes me want to spit. If our story is being written, then it shouldn’t end with the worthless deaths of my unfortunate team.

The door was the farthest away. She had to squirm to see it out of the corner of her eye. In the side wall, iron – and obviously thick. It would take a lot of effort to open it… let alone get to it first.

A cough and the clanking of chains came from the side. It was Sonic, the first of the others to regain consciousness.

“Uh-oh… kh… where are we…?” he hissed through a dry throat.

“Where we were going,” Cosmic grinned. “In the RC-13.”

Little by little, the others came to their senses.

Knuckles roared with rage, trying to break free of his shackles. Cream was crying. Cheese was sobbing too; the little Chao was the most pitiful of them all.

“From one mess to another,” Sky Bloom sighed. “Yeah, that’s not what I’d hoped for, to be honest.”

“You know, neither had I,” Cosmic hummed. “But we have nowhere to go. There’s no easy way out of this shit.” She shook her hooves, chained above her head. “We have to wait until Lyra herself or someone else deigns to honor us with their attention.”

“Oh, you won’t. I’m already here.”

That familiar hissing voice. But this time electronically smeared.

Lyra.

The screen lit up, revealing a pale green unicorn with a cybernetic eye.

She stood in a large room with metal-clad walls, surrounded by terminals and consoles. At the edge, part of the steel casing of a large machine could be seen, the purpose of which remained to be guessed.

This time, Cosmic was able to get a closer look at Lyra. Without her cloak, she looked like an ordinary ghoul… forgetting the implants embedded in her body, probably after death. Cosmic was amazed to see that the unicorn’s legs above the knees were made of steel. Is she really impersonating Blackjack? the earth pony hummed to himself, remembering Shadow’s stories.

“You’ll pay for everything!” she yelled, shaking her bound hooves. “You won’t get off that easy!”

“Oh, and how are you gonna make me?” Lyra grinned. “All you can do now is hang in chains spewing curses. That’s not so much, is it?”

She gave a feigned sigh.

“And all I can do is play something for you.” The unicorn smiled again. “As a requiem.”

She pressed a button with her telekinesis, and a synthesizer keyboard slid out of the side panel. Lyra walked over and stood behind it on her hind legs – and out of her front hooves came… fingers.

The unicorn squeezed the steel tips for a moment, as if preparing, and ran them over the keys, which emitted a melodic minor arpeggio.

“What should I choose? Maybe something by Mozart? Or Beethoven? Yes, I suppose the Fifth Symphony would be good…”

She played a short, sharp motif that gave Cosmic goosebumps. As if fate is knocking at the door, thought the earth pony.

“…Oh, I forgot: in this world, all names must be twisted to suit its specifics,” said Lyra as she continued to play. “Manehattan, Dr. Whooves... even the word ‘facehoof’ is just a cheap calque…”

“What are you on about…?” Cosmic muttered and shook the chains again. “What are you gonna do to us? Why us? Why did you need the rings?! Why the blueprints?! Why all this?!”

“So many questions…” Lyra shook her head. The melody under her fingers grew stronger, taking on a powerful, truly epic sound. “And you really think I’m gonna answer them so easily? Reveal all my plans to you as a third-rate villain in a final monologue that will be so long that you, as ‘positive’ heroes,” the unicorn’s voice was filled with undisguised sarcasm, “will be able to find a way to defeat me at the last moment? No, thank you. I didn’t spend two hundred years hatching my plan so that some mercenary from the Wasteland and a bunch of cartoon characters would dare interfere with it.”

“What? We’re not–” Sonic opened his mouth, but Shadow interrupted him as he turned to Lyra.

“You’re losing nothing but a few minutes. We just want to know the background of this whole story.”

The cyberghoul unicorn pondered for a while. Then she abruptly cut the music with a jarring, dissonant chord and slid the synthesizer back into the panel with a swipe of her fingered hoof.

“Okay. I’ll satisfy your curiosity.” She grinned, either gleefully or victoriously. “After all, you’re going to die anyway. And so you won’t be able to influence anything.”

“What’s the RC-13?” Sky Bloom asked. “And what blueprints did you get from Manehattan?”

“Oh, you found out about that too…?” Lyra chuckled. “You’re quite persistent. Consider it my gift… an act of mercy, if you will.” She smiled again. “A reward for your curiosity, which has touched me.”

“Well, don’t drag it out!” Cosmic sneered. “Tell us!”

“You know, I can change my mind,” the unicorn reminded her. “All right. I hope you’ve heard of… the O.I.A.?”

“The Office of Interministry Affairs?” Shadow clarified. “The invisible organization that actually ran Equestria behind the Ministries’ backs, and where a pony named Goldenblood carried out his secret projects?”

“You’ve read Horizons, right? All the better. The O.I.A. had secret research centers all over the country, and each one served a different purpose. I only knew about this one when I was ordered to go to Manehattan two hundred years ago, pick up a package from the local office and bring it here…”

“You worked at the O.I.A.?!” The black hedgehog’s eyes bulged. “Really?!”

“You didn’t know?” Lyra raised her missing eyebrows. “Well, turns out the pony fiction writers managed to cover my trail in the wartime Equestria. Bon Bon helped them out perfectly…”

“You were in Canterlot? Did you see that skeleton on the bench with your own eyes?!”

“Sixty years ago, and I can’t say I was too happy about it. But since I’m here, it can’t have been me, can it?” grinned the unicorn.

“Wow…” Shadow shook his head. “Just the brain churns with such revelations.”

“That’s only the beginning, you fool!” Lyra laughed, and Cosmic was skewered by that vile, ear-splitting, rustling laughter. “There were many other projects in the O.I.A., but the one being developed here could eclipse them all in its prospects – including Horizons now being revived.”

The cyberghoul stepped closer and leaned toward the camera.

“Here they were building a time machine.”

“Wait…” Sonic frowned. “But there was already Star Swirl’s time travel spell in the pony world! Twilight had used it, and Starlight had modified it…”

“Pfft, a spell…” Lyra snorted. “Try that with technology! Besides, only unicorns have magic, and for the purposes of the war, it was necessary to make the equipment available to all races. At Goldenblood’s request, Starlight Glimmer created a matrix of the necessary spell from memory. All that remained was to embody it in metal… and give it enough power. A whole! Fucking! Lot! Of power!”

Lyra turned the camera to a huge steel casing jutting out of the wall.

“The RC-13 is essentially an underground bunker, its entrance hidden in the middle of the desert near Hoof. It was here that Equestria’s first reactor was created, powered by star metal and moonstone. When the two combine, they release unimaginable amounts of energy, and it was here that they first found a way to control it. The problem was,” she grinned wryly, “it still wasn’t enough. To move through time, it required a single momentary impulse, an order of magnitude greater than the power of the reactor. And there weren’t enough crystals to absorb all that energy and release it all at once on a million planets like Equus.

“That’s why the Center’s scientists needed those blueprints. On them was an elaborate scheme of crystals that would create a F.A.D.E. shield where energy could accumulate. And at a certain moment, a narrow channel would appear in it, from which the energy would flow into the matrix. Of course, it would evaporate from the charge, but that’s minor.

“And then from here,” she turned the camera to a perfectly round large platform, “the pony or any other cargo would be transported back in time – to the desired point in time and space, set by the terminal.”

“And how do they get back?” Amy asked. “Would those who went to another time stay there forever?”

“That would be the default, but fortunately they had developed special wristbands that would communicate with the machine even through time and return the wearer to the starting point at the push of a button.

“However,” Lyra tried to breathe, apparently forgetting that she had long since become a ghoul, and only a terrible wheeze escaped her throat, “the spell was never tested. The very day I arrived in Manehattan, the bombs fell. And the blueprints remained in the O.I.A. office in Tenpony Tower. Meanwhile, I was crushed by the debris and the radiation turned me into a ghoul.”

“But… how did you find this center?” Sonic asked. “And why did you wait so long before sending someone to get the blueprints?”

“If you were all unicorns, I could have given you memory orbs in which I recorded my memories from that time… and while you watched them, let a gas into the room from which you wouldn’t wake up.” A smirk returned to the unicorn’s face. “Let’s say I wandered the Wasteland as a ghoul for fifteen years before I came to this place. It was just an accident. And I remembered the blueprints recently when I needed them to finish what I’d started.”

“You mentioned the scientists who were here,” Shadow said. “Tell us, were they the ones you turned into your army of cyberghouls?”

“Bravo, you came up with that too!” Lyra stood on her hind legs and applauded with her steel hooves. “But they’ve always helped me here, the ones who agreed to accept the implants and obey. For the outside expeditions, I have other ghouls I recruited from the Wasteland, giving them new superpowers in exchange for loyal service. And those of the scientists who’ve struggled… I guess you can see for yourself what happened to them.

“Oh no,” the unicorn laughed indulgently again, “you’re not like that, how could you think of such a thing… Most of them are still in my service, but now as the Robobrains guarding the Center.”

She stepped back and typed some commands into one of the terminals.

“Watch this.”

An image appeared in a separate window in the corner of the screen. A robot, remotely shaped like a pony, rolled down the corridor on small tracks. On its “chest” was some kind of weapon – as Cosmic remembered from the fourth chapter of FoE, a discharger that shot lightning. And yes – instead of the robot’s head, there was a container with a brain floating in it.

Of course, Cosmic recognized this monster as one of those that had attacked Littlepip during her raid on the Ironshod Firearms factory near Ponyville.

“You… turned… other ponies… into this?!” the blue pony gasped in disgust. “You’re crazy!”

“Not all of them.” Lyra seemed to ignore her emotions. “I left one of them for last. So the others can see what disobedience can lead to.”

She moved to another terminal.

The air shimmered around the camera, spun by telekinesis. Now the wall to the left was in sight, where, obeying the commands entered, the doors of a niche opened and a cylindrical tank slid out, a pony’s body rippling in the murky sludge.

Though to call it a body was a stretch. Mainly there was a head of uncertain color with electrodes at the temples and no eyes; remnants of a faded mane dangled in all directions, and a mask with tubes running to mouth and nose covered the face. Below the neck there was almost nothing, except for a piece of spinal cord with wires attached. A cable ran from the mask to a speaker mounted on a smooth glass surface outside.

And from it came hoarse, ragged breathing.

Amy and Cream screamed. Sky Bloom, Sonic and Shadow all visibly twitched at the sight. Even Cosmic could barely keep from flinching.

“Please meet,” Lyra waved her hoof toward the tank. “The former director of this place, Professor Sample Dample.”

“What… did you do to him…?” the earth pony squeezed out, looking stunned at the body floating in the tank.

“The pony-in-a-jar meme has reached a new level,” Shadow muttered. “Professor Zodiac would approve.”

Lyra laughed out loud, as if at a good joke.

“Oh yeah, at least someone here understands the postmodernity of the situation… Impressive, huh? I drained him of everything he knew, every last bit of information. And then,” she grinned bloodthirstily, “I took away all the extra stuff. And every day since, I’ve been reminding him of his mistake.”

The unicorn walked over to the panel on the far left and pressed a large red button.

An electric crackle sounded, and the professor’s body writhed, convulsing. The liquid in the jar rippled with the movement of the submerged stump.

A hoarse, snarling shriek came from the speaker, and there was no emotion in it – just relentless, absolute, unbearable pain.

“I kno-ow, Sample, you can he-ear us,” Lyra continued, holding the button down. “And you reme-ember why you’re in this glass. How’s the voltage today? You like it? How about a little more?”

She pushed the lever sharply up as far as it would go.

The shriek rose a few more octaves, then stopped and turned into an inarticulate mechanical wheeze. Only the unnatural, ugly twitching of muscles showed the life that still lingered in this body.

“Shit, he’s out,” Lyra shook her head and released the button. Then, with a command from the terminal, she sent the tank back into the wall. “He was fast today. Usually, he’d last at least five minutes…”

“You… all this time… every day… electrocuted him?!”

Cosmic couldn’t wrap her head around the scale of this insanity.

“One hundred and eighty-five to be exact, but that doesn’t matter,” the cyberghoul shrugged. “In the past, when I was particularly bored, I used to leave him under the power for an hour…”

“But you can’t do that! He’s a pony, just like you!” Sky Bloom exclaimed. “How can you do that?!”

“Tell me that everypony’s lives matter,” Lyra snorted and walked across the room. The camera, captured by the telekinesis field, spun to follow her. “I haven’t decided what to do with him yet. I think I’ll leave him like this… until I get bored. Maybe when I’ve been here for two hundred years, I’ll kill him. Although…” she grinned again, “if my plan works out, I won’t give a damn about this piece of bio-waste.”

“Your plan? What plan? Time travel? But why?!” Cosmic asked. “Do you want to prevent a war? Or bombs falling? To save Equestria from the horrors of the end of the world…?”

“Yes. But first…” The red cybernetic eye flickered for a moment. “I’ll. Destroy. Earth.”

“What? But… how do you know about it?!” Sonic gawked. “Cuz… you’re just a–”

“…character – is that what you mean?” Lyra narrowed her eyes. “And a well-liked one in the fandom.” She shook her head. “Fuck, how sick I am about this.”

“Hmm, if the original FoE and Project Horizons are true…” Shadow muttered. Suddenly, he lifted his head and stared at the unicorn. “…then maybe Anthropology[1] is real too!”

“Bravo, Sherlock!” Lyra gave the hedgehog the thumb of her steel leg. “And you know what that means, don’t you?”

Shadow’s eyes rounded. “You… you…”

“Just explain to us what you two are talking about!” Cosmic shouted, jangling her chains.

Lyra squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ah, naive MLP-fags who have no idea about all the variety of fan art that has turned out to be material in reality… I’m a human being, get it?! I’m a human, I was born on Earth and came to Equestria as a baby and Celestia turned me into a pony so no one would ask any questions! And I thought I was a pony, but somehow, I knew about humans, that they existed, even if not here, not in this world! Nobody understood me, but I knew the truth!”

“No… body?” Cosmic repeated and looked back at Sonic and his friends.

The aliens also preferred to say “nobody” instead of “nopony.”

“I was teased about it, even by Bon Bon,” Lyra continued, not paying attention. “But I kept on doing anthropology, and when the truth came out, I became the de facto link between the two worlds. I – and another human, Bellerophon Michaelidis, who came to Equestria as an adult and settled in Ponyville like me…”

“Fucking hell, and Xenophilia[2] too…!” Shadow whispered dazedly, throwing his head back.

“Everything was fine for a couple of years, and then the war started. I was invited to work for the O.I.A., while Bon-Bon became a counterintelligence agent, and we barely saw each other after that. Ahead of the inevitable question: no, she and I did not have a relationship, it was all a dirty lie spread by my detractors in the Office to discredit my anthropological research. Yeah, yeah, not everypony was cool with what I was doing. And I too,” a grimace of disgust appeared on the unicorn’s face, “don’t want to remember it anymore. After all, I’m the one who basically ruined Equestria.”

“You?!” Sonic frowned. “But how…?”

“Atomic bombs, hedgehog! What was created in the human world inevitably came to Equus when war broke out, and at some point, ideas of ‘doomsday weapons’ that would ensure complete and final victory by the mere threat of their use began to emerge. And I –” the cyberghoul tipped her chin “– became the local Einstein and came up with the idea that set the whole world on fire.”

“Well, at least you weren’t Oppenheimer,” Shadow snorted.

“I’d rather be Oppenheimer!” Lyra yelled and started pacing the room again. Her steel legs thudded on the floor. “Because then I’d have a good reason to die, to at least pretend to atone for a guilt that cannot be atoned for! And so it would be as if I had done nothing, and no one could even blame me – but I, I remember everything!”

She stopped. Her disheveled white-green strands covered her face, and only the light of her red cyber-eye shone through her mane.

“It’s all my fault, when you think about it, for the megaspells on Equus. Not Goldenblood’s – he’d only passed my idea on to the Ministry of Peace; not Fluttershy’s – she’d just developed them and given them to the Zebras; not Luna’s, under whose nose it had all been done with half-blind approval. But mine.

“Fluttershy was a foolish and naive mare; she thought she could change the course of the war with her kindness. But she was wrong. Kindness can’t save the world. It can only lead it to destruction.

“And so,” Lyra grinned wickedly, “I began to search for the original source of that ‘kindness.’ Someone I could blame. And repay with my own kindness.”

“But… how did you get to Earth?” Sky Bloom asked. “It’s not like you had portal rings like they did…”

“A spell. Initially, Celestia moved me, but then when I came into regular contact with the human world, the princess left me a matrix – a sample, so to speak – that I could use repeatedly.

“And that’s what I noticed one day…” She raised her head and looked into the camera, as if directly into the eyes of Cosmic and the others chained on the other side. “It was as if time had begun to slow down on Earth. Whereas here it was going faster and faster.

“I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, and later I couldn’t understand why it was happening either. And my research, as I realize now, nobody was really interested in it at that time. But any problem that is not clear whether it can be solved at all, is usually preferred to be pushed away. So, I was left to deal with it alone.

“And then,” Lyra’s eyes flashed again, “the bombs fell. And time got off the leash.”

“What do you mean?” Knuckles asked.

It was the first thing the echidna had said in the whole conversation.

“Literally. It sped up immediately (I tried to calculate how much, and it came out dozens of times faster), and it’s still accelerating. But that’s not the weirdest thing. Sometimes, when I traveled to Earth, I found myself at an earlier point in time than the last time I traveled!”

“How’s that?” Knuckles frowned.

“Yes, really, how is that possible?” Sky Bloom asked.

“I couldn’t figure out how either,” Lyra said. “But then I realized one small but important thing. Equestria does not exist.”

Cosmic had a strong sense of déjà vu. Just as she had learned similar revelations about her universe from Sonic and Tails. Shocking only the first time. Now, nothing inside the earth pony trembled. It was like hearing a joke she’d heard before.

“…doesn’t exist on the level where humans live,” Lyra continued. “On worlds like ours, the lower, subordinate levels, time is malleable to those above. That’s why centuries passed in an instant here when they needed to. We had time to catch the fever of war, to die by being blown up – burned alive…! – and to experience two hundred years of hideous postmortem.”

“They?” asked Knuckles.

“Humans. They’re addicted to this kind of fiction.”

The unicorn began pacing the room again.

“All of Equestria, all of our world, is one big fiction. And so are you,” she turned to the camera, apparently addressing Knuckles, “and all of them, each and every one! What’s more, you think the ponies are fictional, while you don’t even realize that you’re all characters too! And no less famous than we are…!”

Lyra laughed. Her laughter echoed eerily through the room – and, distorted by the microphone, into the ears of aliens and ponies.

After she’d had enough, the cyberghoul continued.

“More than anyone else in the universe, I am grateful to one person… a woman… named Lauren Faust. It was she who made it possible for our world to exist as it was two hundred years ago, before the war began.” Suddenly Lyra gritted her teeth. “And most of all, I hate the other one… hiding under an ugly nickname… for what she did to Equestria. She ruined our land, destroyed our hopes, killed most of us, and condemned the rest to suffer – now a dozen generations of ponies and all other species. And many on Earth have supported her and taken up her work as well. Killing us in their twisted fantasies, over and over again, in ever more horrific ways.”

“Are you talking about Kkat?” Shadow asked. “So it’s all about her?”

“Not only.” Lyra’s voice dropped to a whisper. “My parents… my human parents… they… they…”

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth tighter. If she were alive, she would probably be crying.

“They were killed… during the riots in 2020… Their house was attacked, and they were just shot! Scum, how I hate those who did that… I found out about it when it was fifteen fucking years after the bombs fell here. And since then, I’ve been hatching my plan. The human world doesn’t deserve to exist on a par with ours.”

“And for that you want to destroy their world? Make the big bada-boom happen to them too?” Sonic asked.

“Judging by the latest news about what’s going on there, they can handle it themselves. I want their world to cease to exist, neither in the present, past, nor future. As if their universe had never been created.”

“And how are you gonna do that with just an ‘ordinary’ time machine?” Knuckles asked with a chuckle.

“Correction,” the unicorn raised her index finger, “it was ordinary. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing here all these years. I just…” Lyra started to laugh hysterically, “replaced… the matrix!”

She laughed at the overwhelming triumph.

“I’ve had a lo-o-ot of time for research here… I think I’ve even become more skilled in magic than Twilight Sparkle…! I’ve created… a new spell… that should just… erase the existence of this planet from the information field of the universe!

“But…” the cyberghoul added, calming down a bit, “that would require so much more energy than a time travel of even a million years, that I don’t even know such numbers! That’s why” – she grinned again – “I’ve been searching all this time for a truly absolute power source. Over the years, I’ve built up a network of ghoul merchants who work for me, and I’ve given them cyber upgrades with control mechanisms. Anything strange that appeared for sale in the Wasteland came to me. But none of it could help me. It was just garbage with only historical value. In other words, nothing.

“However,” she raised her finger again, “that all changed when my agent in New Appleloosa reported that some earth stallion was trying to sell him… rings. What’s more, the guy claimed the rings had incredible power! And I kept trying to figure out why that description sounded familiar. And then,” Lyra smiled, “I remembered. The Sonic X cartoons and movies with 3D characters that came to life. How simple.”

“You mean we’re also… not real?” Sonic asked, his voice dropping.

“Exactly, hedgehog!” Lyra laughed. “And you especially! I guess you just haven’t been shown any content with ‘you’ in it…”

“I’m sorry, Sonic,” Shadow lowered his eyes. “I didn’t want to tell you…”

“…And so I got the rings,” the unicorn continued, pacing around the room. “But the question remained – how to extract the power from them? Simply destroy them by magic? Not an option. What if the energy could not be focused? And if it could be released at all…?

“But” – another grin – “I knew who might come for them. So, I just waited. Sooner or later, you would have found me. I planned to get rid of you, Cosmic Valor, and take only one of your group alive. And luckily, I succeeded.”

Lyra was looking at the camera, but somehow everyone noticed that the unicorn was staring directly at Sonic and glanced at the blue hedgehog as well. He looked so miserable now that Cosmic thought, I never should have brought them into my adventure.

“Now I don’t even need your useless rings. Here, take them!” She used her telekinesis to pull out a pouch, loosened the ties, and tossed a handful of rings into the lens. With a soft clatter, they scattered to the floor. “Oh… you can’t do that! What a pity… Instead, I have something better. This.”

Lyra’s horn glowed. Slowly, very slowly, something floated into the camera’s view from below that Cosmic couldn't even recognize at first. And when she realized what it was, she went cold.

In Lyra’s magical field was floating Sonic’s blue needle.

“No…” muttered Sonic. “No, no, no, no, no…!”

“You’ve lost, hedgehog!” laughed the unicorn. “And even before you knew it. Now nothing will stop me from doing what I’ve been waiting for all these years. But you –” she looked at her captives with feigned pity “– will not be able to see it.”

She walked to the console, which was somewhere to the side of the lens, and magically turned the camera to herself.

Cosmic swallowed. Something told her that from there, the cyberghoul would be perfectly capable of killing them. And would probably even tell her how.

“When I press this button, the room you’re in will be filled with gas. You’ll just fall asleep and never wake up.”

“But if there’s no Earth and everything else, won’t that mean that we’ll disappear too?!” shouted Cosmic. “All of us, including you, Lyra?”

The unicorn paused for a moment before answering.

“On the one hoof, it would be better for everyone. But if not, then I’m going to undo everything that’s happened in the last two hundred years. To restore Equestria to its ‘default settings.’”

“I don’t get it…” Shadow shook his head. “Is the world we exist in as characters and the one we came from the same reality? Or different ones? And which one is Equestria ‘subordinate’ to?”

Lyra thought for a moment. Her eyes stared into the void.

Finally, the unicorn spoke.

“A thought forms the universe. But thoughts can be different and even contradict each other. But they’re all materialized, no matter what they are. And this materialization, which can be observed here and now, is only determined by the ratio of quantum probabilities. And a thought is all the more real the more context is pumped into it from the world of a higher level. This is the point: for example, lies in the media don’t change the world itself, but only its emotional perception, while it takes something from above to control the fundamentals of reality.

“At the same time, there’s only one thing that’s real, and a lot of parallel, alternate timelines as well.” She grinned unhappily. “Maybe in one version of pre-war Equestria, an alien from Earth is banging Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, and my doppelganger is watching them with quiet interest. Maybe I was once trapped in Ponyville by the curse of loneliness, forgotten by everyone I cared about. But I just don’t remember it because it was with me – and at the same time, with me it wasn’t.

“Moreover, for each observer from a high-level world, a different moment of our timeline is real. All moments and variants of our history exist for them simultaneously. So I’m talking to you now, and at the same time, somewhere (or rather, sometime – or even in some of the possible ‘sometimes’), Celestia is defeating Nightmare Moon, Twilight is becoming an alicorn, bombs are falling on Equestria, Daybreaker is breaking free, and in the distant future, unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies are building a new, peaceful society.

“After all, the fourth wall doesn’t really exist. It’s no more real than the horizon that divides the earth from the sky.

“But neither the past nor the future can be changed, because they cover the full range of possibilities. You can only change the probability of being in any one of the presents. And so I want –” she gritted her teeth again “– to be in the one where the war didn’t start. Where the G4 Equestria has passed peacefully into G5 or even G6. Where the humans hadn’t put their twisted hands on it so much.

“Oh, hu-umans… Pe-eople…” she stretched out contemptuously. “I used to admire them. And now I hate them so much that I wish with all my soul that they never existed! And while I could accept their existence before, simply because they created our world and let it live according to the plot logic, after the apocalypse I lost faith in my ideals. The last straw was when my human parents died. And I finally realized that this ugly race, their whole fucking world…! – didn’t deserve to exist.”

Now the unicorn spoke through her clenched teeth. And each of her words in Cosmic’s mind became another nail in the coffin lid. Not only for the prisoners – but for the whole of reality.

“Neighthoven, Marezart… how many of their greats have they brought here, twisted into ponies? Our world is a distorted one of theirs, into which they shove what they’d like to see in their own… or wouldn’t! Instead of experiencing the horrors of the post-apocalypse, humans… play them! Forcing to suffer and overcome not each other, but fictional characters! And one day, their wicked hands had reached Equestria.” Lyra squeezed her eyes shut. “But the characters can also feel pain.”

She lowered her head. The skin on her face cracked, and pale ichor oozed from the wound.

Instead of the tears she wanted to cry but couldn’t.

“I don’t want to be human anymore. All I have left is to be a two-hundred-year-old undead pony with fingers sticking out of hooves. And I guess it’s my destiny to bear and carry out the sentence of their world. For what they have done to ours.”

Her hoof rested on the console. The cyberghoul’s voice trembled.

“But first I’ll take care of you. You already know too much of my plans. What I told you now was simply my need to get it out before anyone. And a gesture of goodwill to the doomed. It won’t change anything.”

“No…” Cosmic whispered. Only now did she realize that death was only a hoof’s distance away. “Please, no…!”

Lyra looked at her for a long time – and then said a single word, “Farewell.”

Is it really going to end like this?! Cosmic thought, closing her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks. Were all the deaths along the way for nothing?! Spark, Stream, Snow, Nightlight… heck, even you, Metal Dawn…! A cyberghoul in New Appleloosa… Those ponies we killed in the forest… The Republic! The whole Republic! Was it all for nothing?!!

Bitterness and pain from realizing her powerlessness corroded the soul harder than any acid. But at the same time, Cosmic knew there was nothing she could do.

I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, ponies… I screwed up. I failed to change Equestria for the better. If I die, then there’s no other choice. Then whoever’s writing my story is a total creep and a weirdo. Then let him die, too. Like everyone else. Like me.

Go ahead, Lyra. It’s better to let it be nothing at all. At least then no one will be offended.

Because there will be no one else. Ever.

All these thoughts ran through the mare’s mind in the brief moment when she braced herself for death. She took a deep breath – one last gulp of breathable, clear air – and tucked her chin. So that at least she could face the promised execution with her head held high.

And then came a sound she hadn’t expected to hear.

A low, alarming wail of a siren reached her ears.

Cosmic opened her eyes in surprise.

Red emergency lights were flashing on the screen with Lyra in the background.

The cyberghoul herself, as if oblivious to her captives, was apparently giving orders to her subordinates through her implants.

“…Illegal entry? Locate and capture the target, you sons of mules…! Randy to the cameras, Flock and Richards to me.”

Suddenly she saw Cosmic staring at the screen in astonishment, and the unicorn’s face twisted in disgust. “Oh, and you…” she hissed and tapped the button.

It was as if two ponies and the bunch of aliens had instantly gone from being target number one to a small, irritating nuisance.

Cosmic opened her mouth wide in shock and sucked in air, her eyes searching for the vent on the ceiling. And yet the gas can go silent! realized the earth pony. And yet be without color and smell!

She glanced at the door, begging it to unlock and let her out. In those seconds, Cosmic even forgot that she was chained.

And the door… opened.

Just moved aside. And the mini-terminal embedded in the wall next to it displayed the message, “Depressurization. Gas supply system deactivated.”

Cosmic froze, unable to believe what had happened. She stared blankly into the void between them and the exit.

And then the void pulled down the hood of the cloak. In the light of the lamps, the grinning face of Tails appeared. “At last, I’ve found you. Don’t worry, I’ll help you out.”

“Tails…!”

Cosmic finally burst into tears from the emotions that overwhelmed her. But this time – from relief and absolute, unquenchable happiness.

Meanwhile, Lyra was furiously hitting the button with her hoof. The unicorn’s face turned into an ugly grimace of rage, covered in scars oozing pus.

“FUCK!!!”

She smashed her forelegs against the panel with all her might. A red glowing eye stared directly into the camera lens.

“Damn you all…! You had me in a monologue and you were just waiting to be rescued! Oh, what a cliché…” And again as if through a built-in headset, “All available soldiers and robots to Box 217! Don’t let them escape!”

Tails had already taken out a bunch of keys and started unlocking the chains.

The fox hesitated about who to release first, but then he chose Sonic.

“Glad to see you, buddy,” the hedgehog winked at him, waiting until all four locks were open, and then jumped to the floor, stretching his stiff muscles with glee.

Next, Tails freed Cosmic. Then it was Cream and Cheese, Amy, Knuckles, and finally Sky Bloom’s turn.

All the while, the screen on the small terminal kept flashing red, “Remote control system. Access denied.”

“What does that mean?” Cosmic asked, pointing at the terminal with her hoof.

“She’s trying to close the door with a command from the central console, but I hacked the node and switched it to local control,” Tails explained, releasing Sky Bloom’s hind legs. “I had to break it manually and at random, so the alarm went off. Sorry.”

“We don’t mind,” Sonic replied. “You really came at the right time, mate.”

“You know where our armors and weapons are?” Sky Bloom asked.

“In a closet two corners down the corridor. But there’s a turret there, so I gotta carry them one at a time in my cloak.”

“Anyway. We need to get out of here faster,” Cosmic said, coming to the door.

“Someone said ‘faster’?” Sonic’s mocking voice sounded.

The mare barely had time to recoil when a blurry blue silhouette flew past her. And as if several times: out, in, out again…

She blinked, and the blue shadow turned back into the hedgehog, who stood with his hands on his knees, bent over, grinning as he caught his breath.

There was only one difference between the two moments. On the floor near the group was now a pile of items and weapons.

“Great. Then let’s go!” said Cosmic.

With the help of Sky Bloom, who’d already put on his own bulletproof vest, she put on her armored suit, tied on her bags, and slung the strap of her trusty Argument around her neck.

The others also sorted out their weapons and supplies in a matter of moments.

Now they had to decide what to do next.

Freedom is freedom, but I haven’t reached my goal yet, Cosmic thought, looking out into the corridor as the unicorn tightened the PipBuck on her leg. And now I want it even more.

“Any idea where that green bitch is hiding?” she asked Tails.

Under the cloak, Amy and Cream and their Chao were able to huddle together with the fox.

“I’ll show you,” Tails replied. His face was the only thing visible from the cloak. “Are you sure you have to go there?”

“Sure,” Cosmic nodded and pulled the bolt of the carbine with her teeth. “I’ll grind Lyra into meat myself. Let her finally die for real.”

The fox didn’t answer, just pulled the hood of the invisibility cloak.

Cosmic glanced at the PipBuck’s locator and zoomed out to the minimum.

“Somepony’s approaching.”

“Must be robots,” Tails said. “I saw a few on the way here. Robobrains mostly, but there’s been some more dangerous ones…”

“Well, better than cyberghouls," the earth pony snorted, and when the two red marks came a little closer, she poked her head cautiously into the corridor.

And stepped back immediately.

They were indeed robots – the same ones Lyra had shown them. Cosmic didn’t want to know if they’d originally belonged to the security system or been made of Sample Dample’s followers, but it didn’t matter. She was disgusted at the very thought that someone’s brain could have been taken during the war just to be stuffed into an emotionless machine.

I can see why you want to replay the whole thing, Lyra, she thought. Sweat broke out on her forehead from the tension. But you’re making a big mistake with your methods. You are no better than those you want to fight. And you must pay for your crimes.

“On the count of three,” Cosmic said hoarsely. “I pop out and rip them to shreds, and we run straight to the control room. We must stop Lyra before she casts her spell.”

“She has my needle,” Sonic reminded her. “If she finds a way to plug it in, she can start at any time.”

“Just hurry up. Maybe she’ll put all her resources into stopping us now. Okay, one… two… three!”

Cosmic grabbed her carbine with her teeth and looked out into the corridor.

The robots were very close, no more than a few meters from the entrance of the room. Luckily, they were moving slowly enough.

The first shot blew one Robobrain’s head off, and it froze into a useless mass of metal. The second managed to shoot lightning, but the discharge hit the doorjamb – Cosmic was no longer there.

Because she was in the corridor itself.

While the remaining robot was recharging its weapon, the mare had time to leap at him and roll across the floor to the Robobrain’s back.

A precise blow with the buttstock and another tank with somepony’s gray matter was shattered.

“C’mon!” she hissed through the carbine’s mouthgrip between her teeth. “Tailf, leaf uf!”

The fox nodded. He threw off the hood of his cloak so that Cosmic and the others (except Amy and Cream, who were under the cloak) could see him, and ran down the corridor.

The rest of the group followed in his wake.

The corridors with identical metal-clad walls, lit by the dim flicker of red emergency lights, looked a little eerie. Cosmic thought that this was roughly what a Stable might look like from the inside. Anyway, this bunker did not give the impression of scientific grandeur that would be typical for a research center. Instead, it made her want to run as far away from here as possible.

But Cosmic could not leave her mission unfinished. Now she felt some excitement, trying to imagine herself as the hunter and Lyra as the prey.

However, the earth pony was still worked up. The way through the dark underground corridors was not an easy one, as the team had just been able to see for themselves.

Every few steps she glanced at the E.F.S. The red dots were wandering somewhere in the distance, at the edge of the small device’s field of view. But she realized that here, because of the interference from those identical, pressing walls, the enemies might not even be visible around the next corner.

Tails was running pretty fast. He appeared to have a good idea where the control room of this place was. But given the fox’s experience and ingenuity, he could basically get control of all the systems from anywhere.

However, the Center’s guards and its crazy mistress would hardly be happy about that.

The invisibility cloak hid those underneath it perfectly from sensors, so the turrets that hung from the ceiling in some places turned first to Cosmic and the others. And the mare almost always managed to destroy the mounted guns with a precise burst from her carbine before they opened fire. And even if they did, she successfully dodged, and Sky Bloom’s assault rifle finished the job.

Ahead was a fork in the road. The corridor went straight – and at the same time took an angle to the left. Cosmic hadn’t seen any ghouls yet, and there didn’t seem to be any robots in sight either, which made her a little uneasy.

Well, things just could not go that smoothly. Especially now, when their fate was about to be decided.

When the branch was literally a few steps away, Cosmic looked at the E.F.S. again. And went cold.

Just around the corner appeared a cluster of approaching red dots.

“Stop, Tails!” she said in a loud whisper, slowing down.

But it was too late.

Tails stopped abruptly, causing his hood fall off.

Right in front of what the PipBuck thought were enemies.

A barrage of gunfire threw the fox’s body back against the wall. Squealing, Cream and Amy scrambled out from under the cloak and hid behind their friends’ backs.

A pool of blood spread rapidly beneath Tails, who was barely covered by his torn cloak.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” Cosmic heard someone yelling right above his ear.

And turned around.

She wanted to scream in disbelief and fire a whole magazine back at the shooters. Tails had been with them almost from the beginning – and without him, they certainly wouldn’t have gotten this far! What’s more, they would have all died a few minutes ago! It couldn’t end like that for the fox! It was just unfair…!

But the blue earth pony was overtaken.

A familiar hand snatched Dan out of her holster and a couple of extra magazines from her pouches – and with a furious roar, Sonic, two submachine guns in his hands, sprinted to the fork in the road and headed towards the enemies.

“Stop, you idiot!” Cosmic yelled, running after him.

And was stunned when she saw the scene of another battle from the corner of the corridor.

Four cybergouls in armored vests were dropping magazine after magazine from their automatic rifles at Sonic. The bullets buzzed through the air like a swarm of angry bees, ready to sink their steel stingers into the alien’s flesh.

But the blue hedgehog didn’t seem to care. Snarling with desperation and rage, he marched straight for the ghouls, firing his submachine guns at them with both hands. Sonic’s needles glowed with bluish electric flashes, making the hedgehog look eerie in the corridor’s darkness.

His figure flickered repeatedly, appearing here and there like a hologram: using his natural ability to speed up his personal time, Sonic dodged the bullets in one fluid motion.

While continuing to fire at the targets himself.

The ghouls’ heads exploded with shards of flesh and the viscous liquid replacing their blood. The bodies fell to the floor with a thud, completing the design of the corridor.

Time flashed one last time with bright blue lightning, and then it went on again.

On the floor, among the nearly decapitated pony corpses, now dead forever, with unloaded submachine guns in his hands, Sonic crouched, sobbing quietly.

Then the hedgehog lifted his head and wailed again, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Soft sobs were heard again. “Tails… how’s that… you–”

“He’s alive,” Shadow’s voice came from behind him.

Sonic turned sharply, his eyes wide open in disbelief.

The black hedgehog sat over the fox, who was lying in a pool of blood and whom Sky Bloom hastily bandaged with his telekinesis. The bandages, found in the ruins of The Republic, were quickly getting wet and soaked red.

In a flash, Sonic was at their side, clutching Tails’ palm in his hands.

“He’s breathing,” Shadow continued. “But he’s already lost a lot of blood – and unless we do something miraculous now, he probably won’t survive.”

“There are… medical… capsules…” the fox whispered suddenly and coughed.

A spray of blood from his mouth splattered the white fur on his chest.

“Shhh! You can’t talk!” Amy shouted.

Cream, clutching Cheese to her chest, was just sitting next to them crying.

“Where?” asked Knuckles in a low voice.

“There… ahead and to the right… the third… door…”

“Where do we go? Where is Lyra?” Cosmic asked.

Please, not now…

But the fox didn’t have the strength to speak anymore. Another clot of blood escaped from his mouth, and the thin hand in the red-stained white glove rose for a moment, pointing to the side corridor at the fork…

And then it fell, never to move again.

“No! Tails…!” Sonic cried, resting his forehead on his friend’s chest.

Cosmic watched them – and the gears in her head were turning as usual. The mare realized once again that she was the leader of the group – and responsible for everyone who stayed with her.

There was no time to hesitate. Every second could cost the fox his last chance of survival.

“Sky Bloom!” Cosmic called, turning to the unicorn.

He understood her right away. He simply nodded, picked up Tails’ light body with his magic and galloped down the corridor in the direction given.

The rest of the group stayed where they were, waiting for Sky Bloom to return.

There was an oppressive silence at the fork. Everyone was standing or sitting on the floor with their heads down. Sonic covered his face with his hands and was trembling.

Soon, the unicorn returned, and all eyes were on him.

“I put him in the capsule,” Sky Bloom said quietly. “He’s floating in the biogel now. I don’t know how much it will help. We can only hope.”

Cosmic nodded and turned to Sonic. “Are you okay? Can you keep going?”

“Y… yes,” the hedgehog said and rose to his feet. His eyes blazed with the green fire of revenge. “We can’t leave it like this. She must answer for everything!”

“Now you understand why I was so eager to come here,” Cosmic said and stepped into the side corridor where Tails had pointed. She turned her head to the others. “Let’s go. We don’t need to be attacked again.”

…They broke through.

Ten ghouls with assault rifles and plasma guns. Four Robobrains with electro-emitters and even a Protectron, a pony-like robot on four legs with a laser weapon.

All were swept away, crushed, destroyed by the barrage of fire from Cosmic and her team. In return, a laser-burned furrow appeared on the mare's armor, and Sky Bloom was rubbing the plasma burn on his neck.

The blue earth pony was especially pleased that they had managed to get some ammunition, so they would definitely have some left over for the battle with Lyra. Amy and Cream had to take the “vacated” guns that fired green plasma clots; these strange-looking, angular weapons were powered by ordinary spark batteries.

And now the girls poured scalding plasma onto the heavy steel door of the RC-13 control room. Cosmic and the others stood nearby with their weapons drawn.

So that when they were done, they could storm in and put an end to the atrocities of the ancient cyberghoul. And to save the whole world from destruction, which, after all, according to Lyra’s story, was the one that gave life to Equestria.

How ironic. Cosmic grinned as she watched Cream and Amy work. To win, we break a wall. The fourth wall. Which, as Lyra said, doesn’t exist. Well, it’s time to break it for real and burst onto the stage from the auditorium for once.

“What if we’re too late?” Sky Bloom asked suddenly. Cosmic turned to him with an annoyed look. “No, seriously. While we were on our way here, she could have done whatever she wanted a thousand times over.”

“I don’t think so,” Sonic shook his head. “She’d have to control everything now here to catch us again. And besides, Lyra, like Eggman, still has to connect my needle to her machine. Judging by her showing off for us, she–”

“…might’ve had everything ready for us when we woke up,” Sky Bloom finished. “Do you have any idea who you’re up against? I don’t, to be honest, not completely. You can expect anything from her, every possible trap.”

“No matter,” Cosmic said. “Now we have only one way. Inside. And whatever comes. At least we’ll do what we have to.”

…or die, Sky Bloom’s gaze read.

But the unicorn remained silent, and Cosmic was grateful. There was no point in sowing uncertainty with so much at stake.

Finally, a hole with melted green edges became visible in the door, and Amy and Cream immediately began widening it with more shots. The girls stood on the sides of the doorway so they wouldn’t get shot accidentally.

Cosmic stood low, clenching the trigger guard of her carbine with her teeth.

Just a little more and she would be able to pay Lyra back for all the crimes the unicorn had committed.

Pew… pew… pew… pew…

When the hole was big enough for a pony, Cosmic took off and rushed in. The others followed.

The room they found themselves in was even larger than it appeared on the video feed. The walls of the huge, high-ceilinged room were lined with various terminals, consoles, and control panels. There were also doors to the left and right, currently closed. On the right side was a platform that served as the starting point for the time machine.

Opposite the entrance was the very metal casing behind which the experimental reactor was obviously running. To the side, Cosmic noticed a section of bare wall with shackles attached – just like where they had escaped from. The concrete, uncovered by steel plates at that spot, was speckled with time-blackened, ominous splatters. This was most likely where Lyra had once killed those who dared to oppose her.

The unicorn herself stood near the casing, using her telekinesis to carefully fix Sonic’s needle between the two contacts in the glass flask.

“Surrender, Lyra!” Cosmic shouted through the weapon clenched between her teeth. “You’ve lost!”

Her squad, also aiming their barrels at the cyberghoul, stood in a semicircle, cutting off Lyra’s chance of escape.

“Really?” the unicorn replied, backing away from the hull to face Cosmic.

The blue pony’s fur rose at the sight of the triumphant smile on the ghoul’s face.

The needle slid into place. It glowed blue-white and a dancing lightning bolt flickered between the contacts. A humming sound filled the hall, followed by the crackle of electricity.

Lyra laughed out loud.

“As if to say! I’ve won, you morons!” Her horn glowed again, and she magically pressed a few buttons. “You better turn around or you’ll become a sieve.”

Doors clanged open at the sides, and Cosmic’s blood froze in her veins. Slowly, as if her neck had gone wooden in an instant, the earth pony turned her head. And her eyes widened in disbelief and horror.

The ghouls were entering the hall. There were clearly more of them than those the squad had slaughtered on the way here. And every one of them had a weapon pointed at Cosmic, Sky Bloom, or the aliens.

The earth pony’s eyes widened at the sight of such an army; by the third dozen, she had lost count. The enemies were too numerous. And even if she went on a desperate attack now, her friends would definitely be killed.

Clang! The plasma rifle that Cream had dropped clattered to the floor.

Lyra’s grin grew even wider.

“See? You underestimated me, and badly. Did you really think I would let you just come in here? Hook them up,” she added to the ghouls.

In the crosshairs of dozens of guns, Cosmic and the others were pinned to the wall with shackles and, despite their resistance, placed in rusty steel hoofcuffs. Before that, their weapons were taken from them.

The earth pony even kicked some ghouls in the face – but the butt of the gun nearly knocked out her eye, and deprived of her trusty Argument, she focused on how not to go mad from the sharp, throbbing pain.

Opening her other eye, she looked sideways at her entire squad chained to the wall on her right.

Sonic, Knuckles… Amy… Cream and Cheese… Shadow…

Some, like herself, seemed to disbelieve what was about to happen and stared blankly in front of them, including Sonic and Cream; some, on the contrary, were still trying to fight back, like Knuckles, who was shaking his hands in his bracelets with an angry growl; others seemed to have already accepted their unenviable fate, simply hanging in chains with their heads down. Like Sky Bloom, who had fallen silent to her left with a lost look.

A tear slid down Cosmic’s cheek. Tickling her chin, it fell to the floor with a soft drip.

I failed them after all, came a distant thought. All of them. No one deserved what Lyra had in store for us. But I tried… I at least tried to protect them. And so…

The earth pony raised her head.

…I forgive myself. And I know who is really to blame.

The ghouls lined up before them in two staggered rows. Two for each prisoner. The rest of them guarded the exits and Lyra – who came closer with her dainty needlegun and stood directly in front of Cosmic.

“Did you think you could outplay me?” the unicorn spat, leaning closer; like the other ghouls, she smelled like a corpse… which she had actually been for two centuries. “I am the one who outplayed you! And now…” she drew back, grinning again, “I’ll destroy you.”

Then Lyra lowered her gaze and touched Cosmic’s armor with her hoof.

“What do we have here…? Ah…” The unicorn shook her head. “Seriously?”

Her cybernetic eye flashed – and the red laser beam that came out of it went through the seams of the reinforced clothing. Cosmic froze, afraid to move. She smelled the stifling smell of burnt fur. Her own fur.

Soon the laser went out and Lyra’s horn glowed yellow. A slight flick of her telekinesis was enough for the armor, almost cut in two, to fall from the blue mare’s body.

The unicorn then did the same to Sky Bloom’s armor.

Accompanied by four cyberghouls, she stepped out of the line of fire – and caught Cosmic’s hateful glare.

“No one will save you this time,” she hissed, then turned to her soldiers, who were standing with their weapons at the ready, and ordered, “Fire!”

Now Cosmic’s whole life really flashed before her eyes. The moment stretched out like a rubber band. Amazing how much can be packed into such a small amount of time.

There was no escape. She knew that.

They all knew that.

But they didn’t want to believe it until the very end.

The cyberghoul before her grinned wickedly. An orange-brown earth pony with shabby skin, disfigured by Lyra’s augmentations all over his body.

Then he touched with his teeth the cables of his battle saddle with two assault rifles on it.

And the shots rang out.

But… not quite from the expected direction.

Cosmic watched with an absent gaze as the heads of the ghouls opposite her and Sky Bloom exploded in a spray of pale and viscous goo – and the bodies fell to the floor under the inertia of the bullets.

Somewhere thousands of miles away, Amy’s scream and Knuckles’ gasp broke off.

Plasma flashed several times, and the three of the “firing squad” standing closest to Sonic were instantly reduced to puddles of green slime.

Mouth agape and eyes bulging in amazement, Cosmic turned her head – and saw herself and Sonic on that very round platform where no one had been before!

The other Cosmic was wearing her own armor, but as if Lyra hadn’t cut it with her laser! In the hands of the second Sonic was a plasma rifle, firing scalding greenish clots.

Disbelieving her eyes, the earth pony jerked her head to look at the “original” Sonic. But the chained blue hedgehog, who, like Sky Bloom and Cosmic, had been untouched by the gunfire, stared at his exact – but, unlike him, free – copy with the same stunned expression.

The ghouls’ attention immediately shifted to the newcomers. Those of the undead ponies farther away managed to fire a few bullets at the defenseless prisoners, and the floor was covered in blood.

The second Cosmic was shooting furiously. Constantly dodging bullets and rolling across the floor, she occasionally had time to press the button to activate the E.F.S. – but even without it, she remained deadly accurate. The earth pony’s head twitched time and time again as the weapon clenched between her teeth fired. The ghouls fell one by one – even though some of them definitely had a sight installed in their brains. They didn’t stand a chance against such fierce fire.

Meanwhile, several plasma clots flew toward Lyra. The unicorn created a shield in front of her and tried to aim her needlegun at the second Sonic. But the blue hedgehog threw his rifle away – and then lunged at Lyra in a blurry silhouette!

The small pistol that had fallen from her magical grip flew away. There was a deafening thud as Sonic slammed Lyra into the metal-clad wall at full speed.

Now the hedgehog was standing over the seemingly unconscious unicorn, her crumpled body sticking out of a deep dent, and breathing heavily. Suddenly he thrust his face up to the ceiling and cried out as if in unbearable pain. Seeing his friends’ bleeding bodies, Cosmic realized he had reason to despair.

And then something happened.

The rings, which had been lying scattered on the ground, all of a sudden began to glow. The glow grew stronger and stronger, and then they flashed with a bright white light! From each ring, a thin thread of light darted to Sonic…

And the hedgehog was transformed.

His needles were no longer blue, but glittering gold. And his huge eyes – even bigger than Cosmic’s and the other ponies’ – looked out at the world with pupils that had not green, but red irises.

Super Sonic. That’s the form he used to defeat Eggman last time. Tails told me…

The now golden Sonic’s howl of despair had imperceptibly changed to a furious growl. The hedgehog slowly brandished a fist in a blood-stained white glove, clearly intending to drive Lyra into the wall once and for all.

Cosmic held her breath. Could this be the time when it would finally be over…?

But her hopes were premature.

Super Sonic’s fist smashed into the wall with a force many times greater than a sledgehammer. Concrete chips and metal shards flew in all directions.

But Lyra was no longer there.

At the last moment, the unicorn dodged the blow and jumped out of the dent made by her own body. The golden hedgehog, snarling, immediately turned to face her. And jumped.

What started next, Cosmic could not call it anything but a dance. With dizzying speed, the hedgehog and the undead pony came together in a melee. Lyra let her fingers out of her steel hooves again, and now she was fighting hand-to-hand with Super Sonic.

Each blow was so powerful that it would have ended the fight immediately, so instead of a bloody brawl, the eyes of the original Cosmic saw a spectacle of unimaginable maneuvers, grabs, and dodges. The figures of both became blurred shadows; the blows came so fast that Lyra didn’t even seem to have time to cast a shield. It was up to the endurance – or cunning – of the combatants to decide the outcome.

Meanwhile, the second Cosmic continued with the ghouls. When she ran out of ammo for her carbine, she didn’t hesitate to pull her weapon belt off her neck and pick up the plasma rifle dropped by the second Sonic. Hiding behind one of the consoles, the mare fired at the ghouls, keeping them away from her. The crackling of the bursts was deafening; the terminals shattered one by one under the assault of stray bullets.

And the prisoners, still in chains, watched all this from the front row.

“You’re a good fighter,” Super Sonic said, landing after a backflip to dodge Lyra’s telekinetic bullets and lunging at the unicorn again.

“The Still Way[3],” she breathed out, and responded with a series of blows. “Lets you… focus on your goal and… go for it… no matter what!”

And she swung her steel hoof at the hedgehog’s waist in a spinning leap.

But he avoided the blow and managed to grab the unicorn’s leg. With a growl of exertion, he tried to lift her into the air with one hand and slam her to the ground, but Lyra obviously had other plans.

She turned her laser back on. The red beam streaked across the room above the floor, causing Super Sonic to jump up and lose his concentration for a moment.

But it was enough for the ancient cyberghoul.

She wrenched her leg out of the hedgehog’s grasp and kicked him in the head with her hind hooves, sending him flying far across the hall.

“Noooo!” yelled the “original” Cosmic and Sonic simultaneously as they watched Super Sonic’s body fly away and bounce off the floor.

Soon he came to a stop. The golden glow that had enveloped the hedgehog’s body was gone, and the rings no longer glowed. Super Sonic was back to normal Sonic, lying motionless on the ground.

Right in front of the second Cosmic.

Not a single ghoul was left around her. The plasma rifle was aimed at Lyra.

Puff! – a green, scalding blob burst from its muzzle…

And spread across the magical shield put up by the unicorn.

The second Cosmic did not fire again. Both mares stood, breathing heavily, and looked at each other.

Lyra snorted. The corner of her mouth curled up in a sneer.

“And you think… you’ve traveled through time… and that’s why you can defeat me?!”

Suddenly, she lunged forward, pushing off the ground with her steel hooves. Cosmic fired a few shots, but the unicorn’s magic simply swept the plasma away. The rifle flew sideways from the force of the impact, finally slamming its barrel into the belly of one of the slain ghouls.

The two ponies collided and rolled to the ground.

“No! Cosmic…!” Sky Bloom shouted.

But shackled, he could do nothing to help his companion’s doppelganger.

Lyra raised her heavy hoof and struck the second Cosmic in the face. Then again, and again.

Blood spurted with a muffled slurping sound. But the blue pony didn’t fight back.

And that was the worst of it.

The steel leg rose again – and stopped in mid-air.

“Brace for death, Cosmic Valor!” Lyra hissed and punched Cosmic in the face one last time.

Then she stood up, towering over the earth pony. The unicorn’s cyber eye flashed red again.

Cosmic – the “original” one – froze with her mouth open, unable to breathe.

Except her gaze wasn’t on Lyra. She was looking somewhere slightly behind her.

The gunshots crackled dryly. The unicorn straightened up, her mouth open as if in terrible pain.

And then she collapsed sideways.

For behind her, with a bloodied forehead, was Sonic on a knee, clutching Argument. An exact duplicate of Cosmic’s carbine – but from another time. The magazine sticking out of the weapon was clearly taken from one of the ghouls.

The “original” Cosmic’s eyes widened as she realized it.

Last Argument totally justified its name.

Suddenly, there was a soft chuckle that soon turned into an uncontrollable laugh.

It was the second Cosmic.

She clumsily rose to her hooves, smiling broadly with her bloody face. Then she walked over to “her” Sonic, and he put the weapon belt back around her neck.

“Yes, Lyra,” the mare whispered, spitting up blood. By the sound of it, along with another tooth. “I traveled, so I knew you’d lose.”

Slowly, unhurriedly, like a judge pronouncing sentence and an executioner responsible for its fulfillment, the second Cosmic approached the still twitching unicorn, who stared upward with a mad, glazed look. Then she stood over Lyra, aiming her carbine at the cyberghoul.

“I must give you credit – you’ve made some impressive progress in magic. To have waited for so many years for the right time to finish what you’ve started is truly remarkable. But…”

The blue earth pony shook her head.

“You’ve miscalculated, Lyra. I don't know what your ‘Still Way’ was, but you’ve clearly forgotten some important principles of your teachings. You let your hatred throw your mind off balance, and now you’re reaping the consequences of your own actions. And I’m sure… you were lonely. You even blabbed your plan to us, your victims, because you had no one to talk to… except your own minions. And Sample Dample. He’s the one who really didn’t deserve his fate.”

Carbine barrel pressed into the cyberghoul’s forehead, just below the horn.

“You’ve done much bad. And it’s time to pay for it.” Cosmic moved her mouth closer to the trigger. “Farewell, Lyra.”

Her tongue habitually went to the trigger.

But then Lyra’s red eye lit up – and the laser beamed upwards again!

The blue earth pony jumped back with a fresh, smoking scorch on her armor. With a face contorted with rage, the unicorn tried to get up…

But Cosmic, apparently having entered the E.F.S., emptied her remaining clip right into her head.

Not even the shield Lyra had created with the remnants of her magic helped. Three bullets bounced off the yellowish transparent field that appeared in the air – but then at least ten went straight into her skull.

Lyra Heartstrings was dead. Completely and utterly.

After standing over the body for a second, the other Cosmic turned and ran toward the prisoners. Her companion was already there – using a key borrowed from someone else to free the unconscious aliens from their bonds.

“Knuckles…” the ‘real’ Sonic sobbed quietly as he looked at his bullet-riddled friends. “Amy… Cream… Shadow…”

“They must be put into medical capsules immediately!” his double replied, grunting as he laid the black hedgehog on the ground, pulled from his chains. “We’ve wasted enough time already…!”

The second Sonic began to free himself.

Cosmic, meanwhile, stared at her own copy standing in front of her.

“Remember, I’m you, but twenty minutes later. Once we get your… our friends to the infirmary, Sky Bloom will replace the spell matrix in the machine, and you’ll be transported back in time. You won’t have to work very hard to do it exactly the same way: I did what I thought was right, and so will you. After all,” the second Cosmic smiled, and her ‘original’ shuddered at the sight of herself with blood dripping from her chin, “we certainly think alike.”

The ‘first’ Cosmic nodded tensely, then frowned. “And the armor…?”

“Sky Bloom will fix it,” the doppelganger said, but after a moment’s thought she turned to the white unicorn. “Remember Life Bloom. Remember what he taught you. Got it?”

“Yes,” he nodded and looked at the other Sonic, who, having finished with the ‘initial’ himself and Cosmic, began to free him. “I never thought I’d need this.”

“Everything comes in useful in life,” the second Cosmic remarked. “The main thing is to wait for the right moment.”

“Ugh…” Sky Bloom fell out of the shackles on the floor and stretched his hooves. He looked at the emotionless aliens and sighed, “Each of you take one of them and follow me.”

His horn lit up, and Shadow’s body, enveloped in the pale glow of telekinesis, rose above the ground.

Finally, already on her way to the exit with Knuckles slung over her croup, Cosmic looked back at Lyra. The unicorn lay on her side, her muzzle torn by the bullets. Only her upturned horn and huge yellow eye, frozen wide open in disbelief, made it possible to recognize her as the same light green pony. And it seemed as if she might wake up at any moment, eager to finish what she had started.

Cosmic stopped, then ran up to her. Raising a hoof, the blue earth pony gently lowered Lyra’s bloodied eyelid.

The cyberghoul would certainly not awaken now.

Cosmic stood still for a second, pondering what had prompted her to grant Lyra this last courtesy. Why hadn’t she done the same for Metal Dawn? Was it really about feeling sorry for her enemy? And if so, why now…?

Shaking her head, Cosmic walked back to the door where the others were waiting for her. Her doppelganger from the future was carrying Cream, Sky Bloom – Shadow and both Sonics – Amy.

Doesn’t matter. If someone is writing this story, they just picked the right clichés.

After all, Metal Dawn was just scum.

And Lyra was scum with a backstory.

Minutes later, after placing the wounded in medical capsules, two Cosmics, two Sonics, and Sky Bloom returned to the control room.

The blue hedgehog and his doppelganger from the future looked particularly depressed. Not without reason – their entire team had almost been killed in less than half an hour! But Sky Bloom reassured them that with enough biogel, they could be back on their feet in a week or two. Besides, the capsule autosurgeons had already removed the bullets, so all they had to do was wait for the wounds to heal and the blood loss to be replenished.

Cosmic also appreciated the capabilities of the medical unit. The robotic surgeon injected her doppelganger’s gums with anesthetic, quickly inserted dentures to replace knocked-out teeth, and also flooded everything with biogel. The healing potions in the fridge had long since turned from healing purple ambrosia to smelly brown stuff, so the earth pony from the future just washed the blood off her face and put an enchanted bandage on her broken nose.

Naturally, Lyra needed no medical supplies for her cyberghouls. They didn’t use combat drugs, and any injuries could be healed by biogel, which was available in abundance here, or by radiation. Especially for this purpose, barrels of radioactive waste were stacked in one of the back rooms, visible through a window in the thick leaded door, and the PipBuck strongly advised Cosmic not to go inside.

Entering through the hole back into the spacious room, the earth pony looked around in amazement at the carnage. The floor was littered with corpses and covered in blood; broken terminals sparked here and there, and splinters crunched underhoof.

“We’ll clean it up later,” the second Cosmic said, noticing the change in her “original’s” expression. “First we must send you back in time to do what we did.”

“That’s some kind of time loop,” Sky Bloom shook his head and walked over to the reactor casing, where Sonic’s needle was still sparking in the flask. “A paradox that shouldn’t exist…”

“But it does. Which means it’s something to be reckoned with.”

“Yes, but… what about the spell matrix?” asked the “original” Cosmic. “Lyra had to replace it to carry out her plan–”

“But she had to leave the old one somewhere,” her doppelganger objected. “And the most logical place was here, in this room.”

“Wait, don’t you know where?” frowned the “original” Sonic.

The pony from the future grinned.

“Apparently, this part of the paradox is what I avoided.” She waved her hoof, circling the hall. “Spread out here and search. Must be one somewhere.”

“What does this… matrix even look like?” Sonic asked. “Like some microchip?”

“Yeah, like that,” replied the second Cosmic, probably considering his technical illiteracy. “Like a very, very elaborate microchip.”

The group dispersed across the hall.

A few minutes later, as she pulled the drawers out of the consoles’ bases and dumped their contents on the floor, the “original” Cosmic heard the voice of the doppelganger behind her back, “Aha, there it is!”

And she did it on purpose! the mare suddenly realized. So that I from the past couldn’t see where she had found it and couldn’t know what I would find out in the future!

She turned around. The second Cosmic was sitting on the ground, carefully holding something in her hooves that looked like a square circuit board about half a meter across. Only instead of chips and transistors, the metal plate had magic crystals and other smaller matrices soldered to it, connected by tracks and wires.

An impressive device. One that could really send you through time.

“And the place to plug it in is probably… here!”

The pony from the future pointed to a shaded, almost invisible window at the bottom of the casing. Behind the thick glass was a similar circuit of the same size.

“Sky Bloom?”

The unicorn nodded, his horn glowing. After a while, the door slid aside.

But something interfered with the removal of the “altered” matrix and the insertion of the “normal” one. A reddish force field, blazing in a half-dome around the circuit.

“So… what now?” asked the “original” Sonic. “How do we turn this thing off, does anyone know?”

“Of us – no,” smiled the second Cosmic, looking at “her” blue hedgehog. “But we seem to know someone who does.”

“Uh… what do you mean?”

The pony from the future didn’t answer. Instead, she walked towards one of the terminals.

The “original” Cosmic’s eyes widened as she realized what her copy was about to do.

“Well… look at the logs… aha, here’s the right command…” she muttered as she tapped the keys. “Type it in… A-a-a-a-and… done!”

The tip of the hoof pressed Enter.

The familiar niche in the wall opened again and the tank with the pony’s body slid out of it.

“That nitwit, playing a dictator, even forgot to log out of her account…” muttered the second Cosmic and turned to the pony floating in the jar. “Erm… Professor, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” shrieked the loudspeaker built into the glass tank. “I can hear everything.”

“Good. Then could you tell me how to deactivate the force field around the matrix? We want to replace the one Lyra made with a standard one.”

“Access the system from terminal seven–”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” said the “original” Cosmic, looking at the smashed monitor with the number 7 in the upper right corner. “It’s broken.”

“Then try number three. I’ll tell you how to connect to the right circuit…”

After a few minutes, the protective barrier was removed.

Sky Bloom carefully pulled out Lyra's matrix (which, by the way, looked even more elaborate) with telekinesis and placed the correct circuit board in the holders. The “original” Cosmic closed the window, and her doppelganger – also following Sample Dample’s instructions – turned the force field back on.

“There’s just one thing left to do,” said the pony from the future, “how to start it.”

“Terminal one,” the professor replied at once. “The launch button is also there on the panel.”

Both Cosmics turned their heads and looked at the only reinforced terminal in the room, next to which there was a big red button behind the glass.

“But to unlock it you need a special code – and fortunately I know it. That’s my personal access key – the only part of the system Lyra hadn’t been able to reconfigure for herself.” A bitter chuckle came from the speaker. “That’s why… she made it so I couldn’t physically get to the control panel.”

“Professor,” said the second Cosmic. “Lyra is gone. And her army too. There are only us. Her creation, of course, is brilliant in its own way… but also terrible. Like megaspells. But no… many times worse. Possessing what was essentially a time machine, but without the means to start it, Lyra didn’t bother to remove the only obstacle before her. Instead, she wanted to destroy the other world first – and only then fix her own. But it doesn’t work that way! You can’t come to good by planning the crime first. And so we’ll strive to use the fruits of your labor only for good purposes.”

“Dostoyevsky would’ve appreciated that…” the second Sonic snorted. All eyes turned to him. “What? Sometimes Shadow could say even weirder stuff…”

The blue pony from the future went to adjust the terminal settings. Cosmic from the present went to the other half of the room, where Sky Bloom and “her” Sonic were.

The unicorn was sitting on the floor, leaning over the ruined armor and muttering something. The tip of his horn glowed from time to time.

“No luck?”

“Can’t focus,” he sighed. “Life Bloom was my first… and only mentor in magic… until he left. We were supposed to forget him. Because he’s–”

“Don’t worry, he’s straight. They just didn’t understand him. So he went to a place where he’d be understood. And everypony came to their own conclusions.”

“And I wondered why we always felt like we weren’t being told something,” the unicorn grinned.

“Relax. Just let go of whatever’s in your way and remember what he taught you. I’m sure you can do it.”

“I’ll try,” Sky Bloom said, his horn glowing again.

Leaving his friend to work on the armor, Cosmic approached Sonic, who was standing over three plasma rifles stacked in a row, thinking hard about something.

“…These two were here,” he pointed to the two rifles on the left. “And this one” – now to the right – “I brought from the future. But how do I know which is the right one? What happens if I choose the wrong gun?”

“An interesting question,” came the voice from across the room.

The mare and the hedgehog looked over – and it took Cosmic a lot of effort not to take a dump right there. Sample Dample stared at them from his tank with his pale, empty eye sockets.

“Before this, the whole theory of time travel was largely speculative,” he continued. “Any conclusions could only be drawn from the two documented cases of Princess Twilight traveling back a few days to herself, and then following her future assistant, Starlight Glimmer, to Cloudsdale… But now I have the third, more substantial case of a complete time loop, which seems to be possible within the same universe. No doubt I can greatly enrich my calculations… But back to the point. I think that if you take another rifle from the past, a new time loop will be created. Everything will change according to the new chain of cause and effect. But if you take the weapon from the future…” the professor paused to let everyone, so to speak, feel the situation. “…the consequences may be unpredictable. A locked time loop will be formed – which will probably separate from the main thread into a loop anomaly, and the events here will go on as if they never happened at all…”

“Thanks, we don’t need that,” Cosmic said.

If she doesn’t come to her own aid, there’s a hundred percent chance she’ll be dead. And moving to another version of the present will not be possible.

She turned to Sonic. “Look at the serial number. It’s on the barrels on the left.”

“Oh, indeed,” he replied, sitting down and looking at the rifles. “Well, here is 253438… this one has 259671… and this one too!” The hedgehog beamed at Cosmic. “Looks like we’ll avoid the paradox now!”

“And thanks to Celestia,” said the mare. “Alright, I’ll go get some ammo for my Argument…”

Suddenly, she almost choked at the thought. She was going to kill the ghouls with their own ammunition from the future!

Each magazine had to be checked for ammunition and thoroughly cleaned of flesh. But it was worth it: after a quick reload, Cosmic looked at the eight full clips on the ground in front of her. Enough for a platoon of enemies.

“It works," she suddenly heard Sky Bloom’s voice.

The unicorn was all tensed up, his glowing horn could almost be used to light a cigarette – but he had an incredulous, joyful smile on his face.

Cosmic approached him – and realized what he was looking at. There was a short seam on the blue pony’s laser-mangled armor, as if it had been re-soldered.

“I remembered…” the stallion murmured. “Life Bloom… I’m sorry. I miss you so much…”

“He’s in Tenpony, working at Helpinghoof’s clinic,” Cosmic said. “He’s doing well. And in bed he’s good too.”

Sky Bloom looked up at her in surprise. The glow of his horn faded.

Shit. Just slipped out.

Cosmic put a hoof on his shoulder.

“Someday, I promise, you’ll be able to see him again. Because The Republic is us. As long as we’re alive, we can do anything. Now, come on,” she pointed to the armor. “Do what you have to. And whatever comes.”

Sky Bloom nodded and tensed again, his eyes and teeth clenched in effort. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but within moments, the strip of the armor’s mending seam stretched farther away.

Cosmic watched it in silent awe. Having no magic, the blue earth pony still saw it as a miracle deep inside.

Finally, both armors were back in one piece.

Sky Bloom breathed heavily and wiped the sweat from his face with his hoof. Cosmic even began to feel a little sorry for him. But on the other hand, by staying here in the future, the unicorn wasn’t putting himself in as much danger as she and Sonic were by going to fight Lyra again.

“Thank you. You really helped us out,” she said to the unicorn, putting on her armor. Then she turned to the hedgehog. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he replied, clutching his plasma rifle. There was a grim determination in his face. “I’m gonna take that scum down. You saw how.”

“I saw,” Cosmic nodded. “That’s why I know we can.”

“But only…” Sonic scratched the back of his head. “I still don’t get it: how did the rings turn me into Super Sonic? I mean, Shadow destroyed the Emeralds–”

“Yes, but their power could have gotten out,” the other Sonic said as he approached them. “And since you and I are the only ones here who’ve ever used it, it could have gotten into us, mixed with the energy in the needles. And the rings acted as an activator to awaken it.”

“You sound just like Tails,” the “original” grinned. But then he grew sad, remembering his friend.

“Now she’s for him,” the double waved his hand towards the second Cosmic, who was dealing with the terminal. “And we’re all the others.”

“Right.”

Two identical blue hedgehogs high-fived each other, and one of them – the one with the rifle – followed the “original” Cosmic toward the platform.

Above the metal disk, mounted on an intricately constructed pedestal, hung some sort of funnel – obviously the one that provided the transfer.

Cosmic swallowed. This was the first time she was about to go on an adventure like this.

But hadn’t she already been through an unimaginable chain of trials? Surviving wounded in the Wasteland, attempted suicide, Spike's sprite-bots raining down? The Everfree Forest, then imprisonment – and the devastation of her hometown? The battle with the Steel Rangers… and the deadly hell of Lyra’s dungeons.

Having been in trouble before, she was ready to face another.

If she was the protagonist, she would succeed.

The second Cosmic smiled at her and Sonic from her seat. Then she entered the code and pressed the start button.

The hum of the reactor went from quiet to overwhelming in an instant. The flask with the blue needle shimmered with lightning. Even through the dark glass, an unimaginably powerful charge of energy could be seen gathering over the spell matrix.

The funnel above their heads lit up with a steady blue glow. Immediately, an unbearably bright beam of light struck the matrix from above the reactor chamber!

“Let’s go…” came the voice of the second Sonic to the travelers.

And then the world disappeared in a bright flash.

Note: Level up.

Player: Cosmic Valor. Skills: Energy weapons – 50%, Science – 75%. New perk: Soldier’s Luck (level 1/3) – your critical damage chance is increased by 5%. Bonus perk: Sherlock Hooves (level 3/3) – adds eloquence to your thinking skills, allowing you to solve any mystery.

Player: Sonic. Skills: Survival – 100%, Energy weapons – 25%. New perk: Power of the Rings – now you can store the energy of the Chaos Emeralds and awaken it through the rings.

The quest stage “Survive” has been completed. Added new stage “Go back in time and defeat Lyra.”

[1] The fanfic by JasontheHuman, which reveals the fan story of Lyra Heartstrings.
[2] The fanfic by an anonymous author about the erotic adventures of a man in Equestria.
[3] Reference to the universe of the fanfic Xenophilia.