Human

by DannyJ

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, Original Character, Spike, Comedy, Profanity, Adventure, Violence, Princess Celestia, Sex, Human, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death
Length: 419473

The Human of legend has been released, and the Brotherhood makes its move.

In Equestria's far future, one thousand and five years after the return, a dysfunctional group of argumentative ponies must quest to defeat the most dangerous enemy of Equestria to ever live; the malevolent Lord Second, one of the only known members of the race of elder gods known as the humans, and the ancient cult who worships him, the Brotherhood of Man.

An over-the-top surrealist comedy, with slight serious elements. Expect a steady decline into insanity.

Cancelled, due to reasons of severe cranial trauma

Now with audio reading and prequel story, Shades of Grey, by Draven Eclipse.

Published 2011-12-30 17:37:43 UTC
Last updated 2015-11-15 10:19:20 UTC

Chapter 2: Thirteen Angry Ponies

"Once, long ago, a group of ponies came together, and thought that they realised the truth of their existence in seemingly idyllic Equestria. They saw their princesses, and what they represented in their eyes, and they wanted to put a stop to it. They thought that the key to this was the surviving human, and they made it their mission to release him.

The intentions ranged from justice, to social progress, to a change in societal structures, to simple personal profit. Whatever they wanted from it though, they believed that what would result would be better than what came before. They thought that they were bringing about a change for the better; that their messiah would burst from the stone and bathe them in light and radiance, and promise them a golden age.

Oh, how wrong they were..."

-The Beginning of the End, extract from Life Before the Apocalypse.

***

"RAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

The ponies of the Brotherhood, now surrounding what once was a statue in the clearing in the Everfree all backed away slightly. Their hoods were up and they were gathered in a circle around a large stone platform which the statue now rested on. The upper half had already shattered, freeing the human's shoulders, head and parts of his torso, and revealing his face. He was no longer wincing in pain or discomfort. He was now screaming in blind fury.

"AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" he raged, "FUCKING PONIES! ONE THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS?! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"

The wind began to pick up. Above the forest, clouds began to gather in a spiral around their clearing, with the only clear patch of sky being right above them. A full moon shone down on them through it, bathing the forest in an unearthly glow.

"Hold steady, boys!" said one of the ponies, "We've almost got him out!"

"I'LL KILL YOU! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

The soft glow of moonlight quickly died out, in favour of a flickering orange tint coming from the trees. Some of the ponies could see the source of the light right away, but Ancient Tome and a few others had to turn their heads to see that the forest was ablaze behind them.

"Don't get discouraged now, everypony!" Tome ordered, "He'll never get out if we don't complete the spell! Gold Coin, add the salts!"

"I AM GOING TO RIP OUT YOUR HEARTS AND SHOW THEM TO YOU BEFORE YOU DIE!"

The yellow earth pony on the other side of the circle began to sweat, but nevertheless he bent down to grip a nearby bowl in his mouth. He trotted over to the human in the middle of their circle and poured the salts on the base of the statue. He looked back to Ancient Tome for confirmation. Upon receiving an affirmative nod, he jumped up and rested his forelegs on the statue, and poured the salts over the torso area too.

The rest of the stone around the torso shattered, freeing Second's upper body. This unfortunately included the arms, and Second reached out and grabbed Gold Coin by the throat and lifted him up to eye level. The business pony began to choke under the pressure the human was applying.

Those fingers are stronger than they look...

"YOU'RE GOING TO DIE, PONY! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DID!"

"Please!" he coughed out, "I'm only...trying to help..."

He gagged.

"...Please let me go!"

The human glared angrily at him, teeth gritted and eyes bloodshot.

"RAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHH!"

He threw Gold Coin to the ground at the statue base and began wriggling. As the earth pony scrambled to get away from the middle of the circle, the human began pounding at the lower half of the statue with his fists. Cracks began to appear, and before long the lower part of the statue shattered as well. The human fell from on top of the stone platform and landed on his face less than gracefully.

The wind began to die again and the heat from the forest fire became slightly less intense. The ponies of the brotherhood all breathed a sigh of relief. The human laid face down in the dirt, unmoving. It was dirt now anyway. When the ritual began, that was a pile of mud. The magic of the ritual clearly had a drastic effect on the local environment. It was a good thing they conducted this in the Everfree forest after all.

Tome stepped forward, using a wave of the hoof to tell the others to get back.

"My Lord?" he asked, "Are you okay?"

The human remained silent. Taking a chance, the unicorn stepped forward and prodded his body gently. The ancient being made no attempt to respond. He tried to use magic to pull him onto his feet. The light purple glow of his horn surrounded the human, but no matter how hard he pulled, it did nothing. Then he remembered that magic did not affect Second, and mentally slapped himself for forgetting one of the core elements of the human legend.

"I think he's unconscious," said Ancient Tome, "Or dead. Could be either one."

"He had better not be dead," shouted Frosty from underneath her hood, "I fought a dragon to help bring him back!"

"I thought you said you never directly confronted the dragon?"

"It doesn't matter! It's a dragon! You get credit for surviving in the first place!"

Lowering her hood, Tome's auntie, the elderly purple unicorn, stepped into the middle of the circle and addressed the rest of the Brotherhood.

"Alright everypony, we've resurrected the most dangerous enemy of Equestria to have ever lived. Good work. Now we need to get him someplace safe. That freaky weather just now will have attracted some attention. Unicorn magic doesn't affect him, so I need a pegasus volunteer who can fly Second on their back."

"I'll do it," said Frosty.

"Good. Where are we going, Tomey?"

"I don't know, auntie," the still hooded unicorn replied, "Where can we take him?"

"Why not Sparkle Manor?" Gold Coin suggested.

"For the same reason I didn't host the last meeting there!" Ancient Tome snapped, "I have a son and a butler back home! If thirteen ponies show up carrying a famous historical figure on their back, they're going to notice!"

"We only need to hide Second," Iron Hoof pointed out, "If he's dead then the Brotherhood is going to disband soon anyway, and if he's unconscious we'll be the ruling body of Equestria before the month's out. I don't think it really matters anymore if ponies know that we're in cahoots."

"He's right, Tomey, there isn't much point to hiding our connections anymore," Gold Coin agreed.

Tome sighed loudly.

"Fine," he agreed, "We'll take Second back to Sparkle Manor. Maybe we can hide him in the basement or something until he's ready to do whatever it is he does."

Frosty Morning had already ran over to the human, and two other ponies of the Brotherhood were helping to position him on the pegasus's back. Ancient Tome meanwhile nodded to one of the other ponies, who underneath his hood Tome knew to be the former Wonderbolt known as Sun Rise. Some of the other ponies were surprised when Sun Rise then ran around setting all their tents on fire with logs from the campfire.

"Sun Rise! What gives?" asked an unidentified mare.

"He's destroying evidence," Iron Hoof explained, "Leave him be."

"Quite right," said Tome, "Everypony else, evacuate before the authorities get here. Pegasi take flight, unicorns teleport, and earth ponies run for Ponyville and catch the first portal back to Canterlot. We'll regroup at my mansion later."

***

Celestia stood silently just inside Vault 3G of the royal archives. The door behind her was shattered into tiny pieces, and the ruined chamber was still visible beyond. Normally when she came in here, the princess liked to close the door behind her and get some privacy. Without the door, and with her back exposed to the chamber beyond, she felt uncomfortable.

The elements of harmony laid before her, once again in the shape of five large stone balls. They had been that way for a while now. With their previous avatars long since dead, they were once again useless, and would forever remain useless until some new avatars were chosen.

Such a thing seemed unlikely. The other five were all linked by the element of magic, and that meant a strong magic user was required to be the avatar, and sad to say, after a thousand years of searching, the princess had still yet to find a unicorn able to compare to Twilight Sparkle in her prime. That hadn't been a problem as such until today. The last millennium had gone by surprisingly without incident.

It didn't used to be like that. For a brief while all that time ago, new threats to Equestria appeared every year like clockwork. First it was Nightmare Moon, then it was Discord, the changelings, Sliske, Second and First, Atlantis, the Spider Legion, the Nameless One, Tirac, and that wasn't even all of them, just some of the highlights. It was a bizarre decade, and one where the Twilight and the other Elements of Harmony had been a vital tool in saving Equestria multiple times.

Then, after Tirac, it just stopped. No more invasions or supremely powerful beings appeared anymore. The land enjoyed some peace for once, and it was well received by all. Twilight Sparkle and her friends enjoyed long lives and accomplished great things, and they all left their own legacy. However, the moment the first of them died, their respective element would revert back to a stone ball. The other elements were unchanged, but rendered useless without the sixth one, and over time they too slowly went grey and changed their shape, until all six of them were like that, and the element of magic vanished from the world once again.

At the time, Celestia hadn't panicked about it. Equestria had already coped for a thousand years without the elements before Luna's banishment, and it could weather this loss as well. However, Equestria survived those years without the elements through a lack of any major threat, not because they didn't need them, and that's exactly how they'd survived the last thousand years as well. Now, there were not one, but two major threats to the kingdom roaming around out there, and this time with no elements to combat them.

The princess sighed as she looked at the lifeless elements, her mind once again wandering to a crisis long since passed.

"Don't worry, princess, you can count on us!" Twilight Sparkle said confidently, "Whatever the challenge, we'll get through it together!"

The other five ponies formed a semicircle behind her, each wearing their own element necklaces to complement Twilight's tiara, and each also displaying confidence in their own way. Applejack and Fluttershy just smiled, Rarity had her 'game face' on, Pinkie Pie was bouncing up and down excitedly, and Rainbow Dash had the smug grin to end all smug grins.

Celestia nodded approvingly at the ponies. She wanted to smile with them and tell them that she shared their confidence, but she didn't want to jinx it. It just felt like she should keep a cautious demeanour. It was almost as if she could feel that something was going to go wrong in just a few seconds time.

"Very good," she said, "Now, you'd best be on your way. Second and First-"

"-Are quite upset with you."

Oh great. These guys.

Celestia turned around to face the two. Second was sitting on her throne and was decked out in what appeared to be her spare jewellery. He had her necklace and her tiara, and it was so ill-fitting of him and stupid looking in general that it took everything she had to remain serious and not burst out laughing. It was like seeing Discord cross dressing. First was standing next to him and fanning the other human with a giant palm leaf. Where had it come from? Who knew.

"Yes," Second continued, "Very upset. We're upset, aren't we?"

"Yes, we're upset."

"I know I'm upset. Are you upset?"

"Yeah, I'm upset."

"See? He's upset."

"I'm upset!"

"We're very upset, princess."

Celestia had to tread cautiously here.

"Well, what are you upset about?" she asked icily.

"We can't cook," First answered.

The princess blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"Neither of us know how to cook," Second clarified, "I mean, back home, we never needed to, but now that we're here, and ponies run screaming whenever we enter a restaurant, and we can't cook anything for ourselves, we're both slowly starving to death here. Somebody throw us a bone? Anyone?"

Celestia just stared.

"GUARDS!"

***

A dark figure stalked the streets of Canterlot. The moon was hanging low in the sky overhead. It looked both ways down the street to check for approaching ponies, and then rushed towards a nearby alleyway. The figure walked a short distance and turned a corner, where it soon came to a dumpster and the back entrance to a restaurant.

The creature slinked over to the dumpster and jumped into the air, twisting around and diving head first into the pile of garbage as if it were water. A few seconds passed, and then the creature's head breached the surface of the muck again, half eaten sandwich clutched between its teeth. It threw it into the air and caught the sandwich again, swallowing it in one bite.

"Sssssusssstenencccce..." it said contentedly.

"Hey!"

Sliske looked around for the source of the noise, and finally settled on a royal guard who was standing just outside the dumpster. The ancient being stared at the guard for a second, who tilted his head at the thing that was currently raking through the garbage around the back of a cheap fast food place. Sliske mimicked the guard as he did, and tried to analyse him. This pony was probably the Canterlot night watch.

"What are you doing in there you...whatever you are...?" he asked.

Sliske contemplated killing the guard for a moment, but thought better of it, and decided instead to try and turn the situation around.

"I wassss looking for my housssse key..." he said, "Yessssss...Housssse key..."

The guard stepped back away from the possessed pony.

"Okay..." he replied, "Do you...need any help with that...?"

Sliske gave the guard a wide toothy grin. It was probably not a good idea to show off the fact that he had razor sharp teeth that were completely unnatural to ponies, but from the thirty or forty seconds he had spent with him, the entity determined that this guard was not the brightest, and he liked to think himself a good judge of character.

"Yessssss...Thank you officccccer..."

"No offence, but you are really creepy."

"And you sssssssmell..."

The guard raised an eyebrow.

"Coming from the pony swimming in a dumpster," he pointed out.

The creature grinned again.

"I like you...You ammussssse me..."

"What's your name, pony?"

"Ummmm..."

Sliske became nervous for a second and tapped a hoof against his head. He couldn't tell him his real name, because he was a famous historical villain, and if he gave his host's name, that might give him away as well. Looking through his memories, Sliske had determined that Heart Beat was the kind of pony who would be missed. His name was probably already all over the news. Not that he had bothered to check. He had to think of a clever lie, and fast!

"...Doctor...um....Fluttersssshy. Yessssssss...Flutterssshy...That issss my name."

"Oh, like the element of kindness?" the guard asked, "That's pretty cool. Especially if you're a doctor too. Though, forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't Fluttershy kind of a mare's name?"

The entity narrowed his eyes at the pony.

"Isssssss there something wrong with my name?" he hissed.

"No! Nothing wrong with it at all! I just never heard of a colt being named Fluttershy before."

"Well...What issss your name, guard?"

"Broad Sword, my good doctor, at your service!"

Sliske tilted his head thoughtfully.

"Sssssay...How would you like to asssssissst me in ssssome medical ressssssearch?"

"Oh," Broad Sword replied, "Well...I don't know. I'm kinda busy with patrol duty right now, and I don't think I have the time. Sorry."

Sliske had an idea.

"Yessssss..." he said sadly, "That isssssss what my parentsssssssss usssssssed to sssssssay..."

"...Oh..."

The guard stood there in awkward silence for a moment. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hoof.

"...Umm...Do you...want to talk about it?" he asked.

The entity gave Broad Sword a smile that he hoped looked non-threatening.

"I would like that very much."

"Hey, you almost sound normal when you don't stretch out the 'S' sounds, if still a little raspy."

"'Sssstretch out the Ssss ssssoundssss'? I don't ssssssstretch out my Ssssssss sssssoundssssss."

Broad Sword raised an eyebrow.

"Are you not aware that you're doing that, doctor?" he asked.

"Doing what?" Sliske demanded, "I'm not doing anything! There issssss nothing wrong with my sssssspeech."

"Yes there is. You stretch out all your 'S' sounds. I hear you talking and it sounds like a snake hissing."

Sliske went quiet. How long had he been speaking like that? Why had nopony told him?! It was very rare for him to actually feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, especially around mortals, but he felt like that now. He was not sure he liked it very much.

"In my defenccccccce, I don't really lisssssssten to the ssssssound of my own voiccccce."

Broad Sword smiled at the entity.

"Hey, don't worry about it, doc," he said reassuringly, "Come walk my patrol with me; we can talk as we go."

The serpentine creature leapt almost fifty feet straight into the air and landed down next to Broad Sword in the alleyway. The guard stared for a moment, trying to reconcile what he had just seen with his understanding of physics. After trying for a half a minute, he shook his head and dismissed it as 'a unicorn thing,' and set off with his new friend in tow.

***

Mystic Chant awoke to the sound of a scuffle. There were voices downstairs. He recognised two in particular as father and Soft Spoken, but there were others as well. Some of them were familiar to him, and some were not. The colt decided to investigate, and slipped out of bed and onto the floor.

Sensing he probably shouldn't be up at such an hour, he wisely decided to tiptoe to the other side of the room, and he had to open the door in a very specific way to stop it from creaking. On the other side of the door, the voices became clearer. He could make out a few more now.

Uncle Iron was definitely one of the ponies downstairs, and he thought he could just about make out the sound of Auntie Morning and Auntie Arts as well. He briefly entertained the thought that it was a family get-together with a few relatives he had never met before, but then he remembered that Iron Hoof technically wasn't his uncle and that he just called him that, so that theory went out the window.

"Sir, I must protest, I had no idea we would be having this many visitors this late at night!"

That was Softy.

"That's too bad! Prepare the guest bedrooms now!"

That was definitely father.

"Sir-"

"Just do it, Softy! I'm not in the mood for this!"

Mystic Chant retreated into his bedroom as Soft Spoken ascended the stairs and passed by on his way to the guest rooms. Once he was sure the danger had passed, the unicorn stepped out of his room again, approached the banister at the top of the stairs, and peered down through the bars at the main hall below.

It seemed father had invited more than just family. There were many different kinds of ponies among the group. As well as father, Iron, Frosty and Arts, he also recognised a family friend whom he had met once named Gold Coin, a former racing pegasus named Sun Rise, and one pony who he swore had taught him the year before he entered Chalk Board's class.

And those were just the ones he recognised. The others were even more diverse. There was a yellow unicorn mare, a middle aged earth pony stallion, a zebra of unknown gender, one of those bat-like pegasi that Princess Luna used for her night guard, and two light green earth pony mares who were probably twins.

"Okay," Ancient Tome sighed, "He's gone. Good. You can drop the spell now, Chameleon."

The yellow unicorn's horn sudden became duller. Mystic wasn't even aware she was casting a spell in the first place until her horn had already stopped glowing. As it did, somepony or something suddenly appeared on Frosty Morning's back.

"Hide him in the basement," Iron ordered, "Care, you go down there and keep an eye on him. Do what you can."

One of the green earth pony twins nodded and cantered over to the stairs leading down into the basement, Frosty Morning and her unknown passenger in tow. They soon disappeared from view, and the rest of the group all turned to each other once again.

"Now, you're all going to be here a while, and since many of you haven't stayed in this house before, let me lay down a few ground rules. One, no insulting the butler. I don't even like to shout at him, but sometimes it has to be done. If he frustrates you though, talk to him. He's normally very reasonable.

"Two, nopony breathe a word about you-know-who to either him or my son. This is supposed to be a secret, with emphasis on secret, and telling them defeats the purpose. Three, nopony goes in my study without permission. If I find anypony wandering in there when they shouldn't, I will feed you to a hydra. Four, and most important, if anypony here is allergic to cats, the entire third floor is off limits to you, for reasons you should probably be able to guess."

He paused, and looked to each of them to make sure that they were paying attention and understood.

"Now that that's out of the way, everypony follow me to the sitting room. We'll discuss things further in there."

Ancient Tome led the rest of the ponies out of the main hall through a corridor to the side, probably taking them to the sitting room as he had said. The coast clear, the young colt walked down into the main hall and looked curiously at the small wooden door that led into the basement.

The basement was usually only ever used for storing old furniture that father felt was too valuable to throw out, but too old for his house. Things only stayed in the basement for a little while before he eventually put up everything in that room for auction.

Mystic's mind wandered at the thought of who could possibly be so important that they had to be hidden down there. What were those ponies keeping secret?

Feeling brave, the unicorn trotted over to the door and peered through the keyhole. There was only darkness. He then remembered that the basement was at the bottom of some stairs, and thus that he couldn't have seen anything through that keyhole anyway even if the lights were on.

Stupid...Maybe I'll just go down there and see what it is? The basement's pretty big...I can hide from Auntie Morning and that other pony.

Taking a chance, Mystic Chant's horn glowed softly, and he pulled the door open slightly and inched his way inside.

Magic was difficult for him, as it was for most ponies at his age, but he was still slightly better with it than most. Magic was a talent that ran in his family. All his blood relatives had cutie marks that were based around some kind of magic related talent. Father's talent was learning new magic through theory, Auntie Arts' talent was in discovering and using really old spells, and so on and so forth.

Naturally, he fully expected his own cutie mark when it came would be something magic related, so he always did his best practicing magic. Here, it seemed it was going to pay off.

Mystic tried another spell, and his horn lit up slightly brighter, allowing him to make his way through the darkness. Eventually he reached the bottom of the stairs, where he found a wide wall with a single regular sized door in the centre. Of course he had forgotten the second door.

He heard hoofsteps. The little unicorn froze for a second, but quickly regained his wits and jumped to one side of the door. It opened, and two ponies emerged into the darkened stairway. Mystic Chant killed his light the moment they appeared, but light pouring in from the basement on the other side kept the stairway lit.

"So how long do you think it'll take?" Auntie Morning asked the green earth pony.

"I'm not sure, Frosty," the earth pony replied, "I'm not even familiar with his biology. It could work completely different to anything in Equestria. I've never heard of one of them falling unconscious before, so I have no frame of reference."

By the time the earth pony had finished her sentence, they were at the top of the stairs and Frosty was pulling open the door at the top. They had left the door at the bottom open, and mercifully, neither had noticed the cowering unicorn just behind it.

"Let's just hope it's soon," Frosty replied, "I don't want to have to wait a second longer for this. We've waited long enough."

The two ponies disappeared behind the door at the top of the stairs and closed it behind them. Their voices became muffled, and soon it went completely silent. Mystic breathed a sigh of relief, and walked out from behind the door, entering the basement.

The whole room was just as it was when he last saw it.

In the corner were the old paintings. Next to the door were those oversized plant pots. By the opposing wall were four beds of differing sizes, one of which had a wardrobe and a bedside cabinet stacked on top of it, and one which was built up ten mattresses high.

Over there was the old grate for the fireplace, and opposite from it was that cracked mirror with the ornate frame. In the centre of the room was a fancy oak table with twelve less-than-fancy lawn chairs surrounding it and a barbecue just off to the side, sitting there awkwardly like it was invited to a party but nopony really wanted it there.

What caught his eye though, was that figure from earlier. The one that Frosty had been carrying. It was laying on one of the free beds, stretched across it, chest rising and falling rhythmically. In the light of the basement's torches and closer up, he could see that it was definitely not a pony, but that it was in fact wearing clothes like ponies.

He moved in closer to see what it was. Soon, he stood right next to the bed. He jumped up and placed his hooves on top of it, pulling himself up so that his head was level with the thing on the bed. He got a good look at it, and the colour drained from his face as he recognised what it was.

The human opened its eyes.

Time stood still. The human and the unicorn stared at each other in silence. Second's eyes were bloodshot, while the colt staring at him looked as if he had just seen a manticore rip a pony in half right in front of him. Neither of them moved for a moment.

"Yes?" the human said eventually, "Who are you?"

"M-Mystic- Mystic Chant," he replied nervously.

"Wonderful. Get out of my way kid; I have a job to do."

The little blue unicorn backed away fearfully as the human turned on the bed and placed both feet on the floor. He stood up and stretched his arms out above him, arching his back. There was a sickly cracking sound, and Second groaned loudly. Then, he leaned forward and yawned. A hand reached into the inner parts of his coat, and he felt around in some of his pockets.

"Gone," he said, "Figures...Guess I'll have to get by without it."

Second strode over to the door on the other side of the room. Mystic Chant watched as his fingers slid around the handle to the door and pulled it back. He had never seen a door opened that way.

"Wait!" he called out, "You're Lord Second aren't you?"

The human only nodded at him, before proceeding out the door. Mystic was left alone.

'That was him!' he thought to himself, 'That was Lord Second! What was he doing here?! Did Auntie bring THE HUMAN back to our house?! How did he get out of the statue?! Why was he with them?! Does father know about this?!'

And yes, while Tome obviously did know, the colt was way beyond the point of thinking rationally by now. He had began hyperventilating.

This was not good. This was really not good. Short of Tirac himself emerging from the depths of Tartarus, this was the worst possible thing that could ever happen, and it happened right in his home! He had to tell somepony.

***

Sliske and Broad Sword approached a small cottage in the lower levels of Canterlot together, both in conversation. The sun was rising again, just peaking out from below the lines of houses in the distance. The night watchpony's eyes were slowly dropping more and more as time passed by, but still he smiled and nodded when his new friend made a point.

"And that issssss why I never shopped there again," Sliske finished.

"Sounds like a terrible place," Broad Sword agreed, "I don't know what you were expecting."

"Neither did I! It wassssss ssssso pointlesssssssss!"

Soon, the two stopped in front of the house.

"Anyway, that's the end of my shift," the guard explained, "I'm going to go in now and have something to eat before I go to bed, because this is late at night for me. If you want to stay for dinner, doctor, you're welcome to. My mom makes a nice stew."

"...You ssssssstill live with your mother?"

"Well...Yeah..."

"What are you? Like, thirty three or sssssssomething?"

"Accommodation is expensive!" Broad Sword shouted defensively.

Sliske rolled his eyes.

"Fine. I could go for sssssssome sssssssstew..."

Broad Sword opened the door and proceeded inside. Sliske was left outside for just a moment, alone with his thoughts.

Just a momentary distraction. I can get right back to my plans later...

"Fluttershy! Come on!" Broad Sword called from inside the house, "It's going to get cold!"

Sliske groaned and followed him in.

"Why did I choosssssse that name?"

***

"...So then I told him that I'd eat his children," said the bat pegasus, "And that convinced him to give back the bike pump. It was too late though. By the time I got back to the cave, they were already dead. Bloody pirates."

"Some ponies are idiots," said Sun Rise, "What are you going to do?"

The rest of the Brotherhood all murmured in agreement.

"Tea and coffee, everypony."

Soft Spoken entered the room carrying a tray in his mouth. Thirteen cups, three kettles of varying sizes, four sugar pots and three small jugs of milk all balanced precariously on the tray.

"Thank you, Softy," Ancient Tome said politely.

The old unicorn levitated the various cups, pots, jugs and kettles off the tray and placed them in different locations about the room, on different tables or on the chair arms so that everypony could reach their own beverage. Soft Spoken bowed and walked out with the tray. As he closed the door behind him, Rail Way spoke up.

"How does he carry a tray that heavy in his mouth?" he asked.

"He has a jaw like a bear trap," Iron replied, "That pony could chew through steel if he were so inclined."

"He just can," Ancient Tome explained, "I don't know how. Personally, I think his jaw got that strong because of all the talking he does. When he was younger, Softy used to do all sorts of diplomatic stuff. He was an ambassador, and a negotiator, and several other things"

"Hmm."

"So anyway," Tome continued, "I think it's about time we started making plans. So what are we going to do now that the human is free?"

"What do you mean 'we'?" asked the bat pegasus, "We don't have to do anything. Second should be able to take down the princesses and their army all by himself. He's got the means and the motive for it. Why not just wait and let him do it? Then when he's done, he'll seek us out and reward us accordingly."

"That's assuming an awful lot," argued Frosty, "What if he doesn't want to find and reward us? What if he expects us to do our part in freeing Equestria?"

"Would he want us though?" asked Rail Way, "He never had pony followers before."

"Yes, but he had Lord First before," one of the green earth ponies replied, "He's alone now."

"Do you really think he can't do it alone?" Rail Way replied, "I mean, think about it. Before-"

The doors burst open suddenly. The ponies of the Brotherhood all turned their heads to see Mystic Chant run into the room panting, a look of terror on his face.

"HUMAN!" he shouted, "THERE WAS A HUMAN IN THE BASEMENT! HE JUST RAN OUT THE DOOR! THERE WAS A HUMAN IN OUR BASEMENT!"

The Brotherhood all shared a look for a split second before they all jumped out of their chairs and stampeded for the doors. Mystic barely had time to jump out of the way to avoid being trampled by the crowd. The last one left in the room was his father Ancient Tome, who was also panicking.

Without saying a word to Mystic, he enveloped him in a purple glow and rushed out the door too, dragging his son through the air behind him.

***

Celestia entered the throne room and approached the far end, where one night guard and one day guard stood side by side at the base of the raised platform holding the actual throne, which Princess Luna was just vacating.

"Morning, Luna," Celestia said cheerily.

"Morning, Tia," her sister returned, "Listen, I hate to bring bad news, but last night a weather team over near Ponyville sent us a report about some unusual activity in the Everfree."

Celestia became worried.

"How unusual?" she asked.

Luna's horn glowed, and a brown envelope floated down from the throne. She held it up in front of her sister and pulled out several pages, which she reshuffled in the air and handed over to her.

Celestia paused for a moment, giving Luna an odd look, before looking over them. The photos showed a forest fire, and what appeared to be the beginnings of a somehow naturally occuring hurricane as well. A photo of the sky showed a circle of clouds spiralling above the Everfree, the moon visible through the eye of the storm, and trees burning in the forest below.

"I sent out a team to investigate," the younger princess continued, "but they found only the ashes there. I've no idea what's going on, and they only recently returned, so I haven't had time to go through it all. Maybe you'll have more luck."

"...Thank you, sister."

***

A pony blinked his eyes. He looked ahead of him. He was staring into the face of something that was distinctly not a pony, and they appeared to be in a run down cottage. Everything was old and rotten, the roof had a hole in it, and there was sheet covered furniture everywhere. He was confused.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"You are in Equestria, just outside Canterlot," the other creature replied, "I am Second. Pleased to meet you."

The pony held out a hoof to Second in a gesture of goodwill.

"Pleased to meet you," he returend.

Second grabbed his hoof and shook it. His fingers felt weird.

"Who am I?" the pony asked.

"Why, you're Explodey McGee of course! You are an extremely powerful unicorn, and your special talent is exploding like a Bob-omb, whilst still being able to survive. See?"

He pointed at the pony's flank. Explodey turned his head and saw that his cutie mark depicted an explosion and several pony body parts flying out of it, including a still smiling unicorn's head.

"You were born to your two parents, Master Exploder and Voltorb, and you are currently working as a professional demolition pony, just off from a contract in Trottingham. You are twenty seven years old, and it's your dream to one day explode for the princesses."

Explodey was silent for a moment, trying to remember all this, but then the memories all came flooding back to him.

"You're right!" he cried happily, "I can't believe I forgot that! I must have had a freaky case of sudden amnesia there. Thank you, Mister Second! You have saved my life, and you are also very handsome and charming!"

"Why, yes. Yes I am. But enough about how amazing I am, you have a job to go to, right?"

Explodey gasped.

"Oh Celestia, you're right! I was commissioned to destroy the annex of Canterlot Castle today! I'll be late!"

"Don't worry!" said Second, "If you'll recall, you were taught magic by no less than the ghost of the Great and Powerful Trixie herself, who taught you how to teleport long distances effortlessly!"

"Oh yeah! I remember that now! I'm not going to be late after all! Thanks, Second! You really helped me out today!"

"Don't mention it, Explodey," Second replied cheerfully, "Just have fun with the job, and say hi to the princesses for me. I haven't been to see them in so long..."

"Will do! Thanks again!"

There was a flash of light, and the unicorn vanished. Left alone in the run down house, Second pulled up a chair and sat at the table.

"And now we play the waiting game..."

***

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Ancient Tome rubbed a hoof against the floor innocently.

"We...released the human from his statue, intending to overthrow Celestia with him..."

The rest of the Brotherhood of Man were all gathered behind him silently. Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant stood side by side, and just stared at Tome for a second.

"Alright," Soft Spoken sighed, "I've got to ask...WHY?! WHY IN EQUESTRIA WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT?!"

Ancient Tome winced. You knew it was bad when a pony named Soft Spoken was shouting at you.

"To free the land!" he shouted back, "Equestria has been held in the iron grip of the sun tyrant for centuries! The ponies have been-"

"Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait," Softy stopped him, "'Sun tyrant'. Is that what this is? A revolutionary thing? Are you guys...Did you...All these years and I....Dear Luna, you ponies are idiots!"

"You don't understand, Softy!" Tome continued, "You can't see the web of lies that those princesses have crafted to protect themselves here! Though we have the illusion of freedom, we-"

"No!" the butler interrupted again, "I don't care! I've heard all this tripe before! You damn conspiracy theorists have been spouting this stuff about Celestia being a tyrant for years! This kind of talk was considered stupid back in the dark ages! How there even exist as many as thirteen of you I will never know, because I refuse to believe that there exist that many ponies who are that mind-bogglingly stupid!"

Awkward silence.

"Well, when you put it like that-"

"Shut up, Tome," Soft Spoken snapped, "You have lost all right to speak at all. I am going to send a letter to Canterlot immediately, informing the royal guard of what you did. With any luck, the princesses can stop the human before the apocalypse descends on Equestria, and if you're lucky, you will all spend the rest of your days in a dungeon somewhere instead of on the moon where you belong."

The old stallion turned to leave the grounds.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Softy."

He turned around to face the Brotherhood again, and found that Ancient Tome was levitating a large black lump of metal in front of him.

"Do you know what this is?"

Mystic's eyes widened.

"No, dad!" he shouted, jumping in front of the brown earth pony, "You can't use that on him!"

"Get out of the way son!"

"No!"

"Move, boy!"

"NO!"

Chameleon stepped in at this point to help out. Effortlessly, the yellow mare levitated the young colt away. He began kicking and screaming, but he couldn't fight back, and soon he was stuck floating just above the ground in a small yellow prison right next to his father.

"Now, Softy," Ancient Tome said calmly, "We're both way too old for this now."

"Speak for yourself, sonny," Soft replied, "You're at least half my age, but you act like you're my senior. I'll never understand that. You have way too much self pity that you're completely undeserving of. You think a white mane and a few wrinkles makes you old? You're still in your prime! And look at me! Most ponies my age are in care homes right now and I still have to lug around those massive trays of coffee for you! All things considered, I think I'm doing very well."

Tome snorted.

"Softy, insulting me is going to get you nowhere," he replied, "Now, you've been a loyal servant for many years now. I respect that, and I don't want to cut your life short because we're having a difference of opinion. In a month, maybe in a week, me and the Brotherhood will own this country, and you'll see what a paradise it can be when everypony is truly free."

"You're a nutjob, and this is not a difference of opinion. This is a case of right and wrong, and you are wrong."

Tome frowned.

"You are going to be held in the basement under lock and key," the unicorn explained, "We'll take care of you, and provide for you, and you'll be safe there while the revolution passes you by. Once it's over, you'll be free to go, and you can enjoy a whole new world."

"Yeah. A smouldering crater and a yellow sky..."

"Lock him up."

The two remaining unicorns in the group, one of them a grey stallion with a book cutie mark and the other the lavender mare that Mystic knew as Auntie Arts, both lit up their horns and lifted Softy into the air. Their magical auras mixed together, and formed into a deep purple around his body. They both headed towards the house, and the elderly stallion was pulled along with them.

"Softy!" Mystic cried.

"You're not going to get away with this, Tome!" Soft Spoken shouted, "You're a madpony, and you're doomed to fail!"

"Keeping telling yourself that, old friend."

Soon, the two unicorns and their prisoner disappeared into the house, leaving the remaining members of the Brotherhood outside.

"You're a monster!" Mystic shouted.

Tome looked down at Mystic.

"I'm your father, you little ingrate," he snapped, "I've taken care of you since you were smaller than your head is right now. I don't want to ever see you disobey me again. Is that clear?"

The little blue unicorn glared up at his father.

"...Yes sir."

"Good. Chameleon, take him up to his room and lock him in there, windows as well, and set up an anti-magic field so he can't break out. I'm not taking any chances."

Tome's minion nodded in understanding, and carried off her charge towards the mansion. Ancient Tome was left outside, holding the Reaper's horn and being stared at by the remaining ponies. He looked at the rest of them.

"What?" he asked.

"DAMN, Tomey," said Iron Hoof, "THAT was HARSH."

"Well what did you want me to do?!" Tome said defensively.

"I don't know, but threatening a senior citizen with the god-killer is low. Really low. And I don't like the way you spoke to your kid either."

"Iron, you saw what he was doing!"

"That doesn't matter!" Frosty interrupted, "You just don't do that. I have an elderly father and a filly of my own at home, and I would never even consider treating them like how you just treated Mystic and Softy. Iron's right, that is low."

Frosty turned and spread her wings, taking off towards the house and flying towards the upper window. Tome looked first to Iron Hoof, who just turned and walked away without saying another word, and then to the rest of the Brotherhood.

"Well?" he said, "Is that what you all think too?"

"You disgust me," said Gold Coin.

He turned and trotted away back towards the house, and most of the others followed him, while others left the grounds altogether.

Soon, Tome was all alone.

***

Explodey McGee smiled happily to himself as he entered Celestia's throne room. The princess was reading through a document and discussing something with a mare in a suit and tie at that moment, but both of them went silent as the strange unicorn entered the room and sat down at the base of the steps leading up to the throne, right next to the suited pony.

"Umm...Hello?" said the princess, "Who are you?"

"I'm Explodey McGee, your majesty," he explained, "You hired me to demolish the annex?"

"I never asked for anything of the sort," Celestia replied, "Who sent you?"

Explodey lost his smile immediately.

"You mean you don't want me?" he asked tearfully, "But it's been my dream to explode for you ever since I was a little colt!"

"No! I didn't mean that! I'm just saying that...I...I'm sorry, Jade. Can we do this another time? I've got a situation here..."

The mare in the suit took one look at the blubbering unicorn next to her and shrugged. She picked up her suitcase in her teeth and galloped out of the room without a word, leaving only the princess and the strange visitor.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"F-f-f-fine your m-majesty..." he sobbed.

'Oh boy,' Celestia thought to herself, 'I haven't needed to do this for a while...'

The princess walked over and laid down next to the pitiful wreck of a unicorn and placed a wing over him like he was a foal.

Let it never be said I don't care for my subjects.

"There, there, stop crying," she said gently, "It's all okay. There was just a bit of confusion. I forgot you were coming. Though, if it's alright with you, I need to ask you about this job if you're going to do it?"

She had to be careful here. This was a pony who really didn't take rejection well. Explodey for his part seemed to perk up a bit upon hearing he was going to get to do the job, and he smiled at the alicorn.

"I was sent by Equestrian Demolition," he explained, drying his eyes, "They said they had a call from you asking for a pony to demolish the annex. I was sent out because I'm the best bomb-pony they had. You'll never see anypony explode as well as I do!"

"You mean you're good with explosives?"

"No, I mean I explode better than anypony else," the unicorn clarified.

"...As in, you are the explosive?"

"Yep! That's why they call me Explodey McGee!"

He leapt back to his hooves, and the princess stood up again too.

"Umm...How are you alive...?"

"It's part of my special talent" See?"

Celestia looked at the stallion's cutie mark. It was indeed of an exploding pony.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Explodey," she said cautiously, "I've never heard of anypony who can do that. At all."

"Guess I'm the first then!"

The pony was back to being cheery and happy again now. She walked around so that she was face to face with him.

"Uh...huh...Who was your boss? Who sent you on this contract if I may ask?"

"I don't know! We just call him Brick, because he has a red face and a square head. I never learned his real name. He called me into his office this morning and told me what I'd be doing, and then I was off. I'm not sure what happened after that. I got a bit sidetracked and got a case of temporary amnesia, but fortunately some guy came along and helped me remember everything, and now it's all cool again!"

"'Temporary amnesia'?" the princess echoed, "How? Why? Who helped you?"

"I still don't remember how I got it in the first place, but I remembered everything before that just fine. Some guy called Second was there to remind me what I was meant to do. He told me to tell you he said hi by the way. Do you guys know each other?"

Celestia's eyes widened.

"Explodey," she said darkly, "I'm afraid there's a very serious problem."

***

"Hello, deary," a squeaky voice called from the next room, "How was your shift?"

"Just fine, mommy," Broad Sword replied, "I brought my new friend Fluttershy friend home, if it's all right for him to stay for dinner?"

A green pegasus appeared in the door frame, with white hair and glasses, and smiling serenely. There were a few cooking pots balanced on her back, supported by her wings, and she was clutching a wooden spoon in her mouth.

"Oh, hello there," she said.

Sliske stood still.

Don't say anything stupid. Think of something clever.

"Greetingsssssssssssssss Mrsssss. Ssssssssword. I am Sssssssssslisssss- I mean Flutterssssshy, and I am mossssssssst ccccccertainly not an alien parasssssssssite."

You know what? Fuck you too, brain.

"Oh, well that's nice, deary," the old mare replied, "I hope you like stew. I made stew today. I normally just cook for me and Sword, but there's plenty here for a third pony."

"Sssssssssstew issssssss a mossssssst ssssssssuculent meal. They didn't make ssssssstew back on Planet Za- I mean back in Manehattan."

Shifty eyes.

"Really?" asked Mrs. Sword, "I lived in Manehattan for a while, and there was always a good stew to be found if you knew where to look."

"I guessssssss I wasssssssss unlucky."

How has she not noticed my teeth yet? They're massive and pointy! Is she blind? Should I ask?

"Well anyway, Fluttershy, go take a seat at the table. I'll get you a bowl and some utensils."

"Dr. Fluttershy," Broad Sword corrected.

"Oh, you're a doctor? That's interesting. My late husband was a doctor too! We'll have a lot to talk about when dinner's ready!"

Sliske sighed internally.

From now on, I will think of all my clever lies in advance. Or I could delve into this fellow's memories and see if there's anything in there that might help me out? He is an actual doctor after all...

Sliske closed his eyes and concentrated, descending into the depths of his host's mind.

OH PLEASE SOMEPONY HELP ME! THIS IS UTTER HELL! I CAN'T MOVE! PLEASE SOMEPONY! HEAR ME! I'M STUCK INSIDE MY OWN HEAD AND THERE'S SOMETHING CONTROLLING ME! OH DEAR CELESTIA SOMEPONY HELP!

Sliske pulled out again.

Or not.

"Come on, doc! Sit down already!"

***

Mystic Chant sat in his room awkwardly, laid on the bed and staring at the wall. By the door, that huge zebra from earlier was blocking it, sat on his rump and staying as still as a statue. It was almost uncanny how he did that. Out of boredom, the unicorn tried to make conversation.

"So what's your name?" he asked.

"Ze!zar."

He sat up and stuck a hoof in his ear, checking it for wax.

"What?"

"Ze!zar."

He was making a clicking sound with his tongue between the 'Ze' and the 'Zar'. Mystic had to wonder how that worked. How did anypony ever end up with a name with a clicking sound in the middle of it?

"How do you-?"

"It's spelled with an exclamation mark," Ze!zar replied automatically, as if he got that question all the time.

"Where did-?"

"It's Zebrican."

"Are all-?"

"No. My mother was just very cruel."

"Are you-?"

"No, I was born in Equestria. My family just has a thing about traditional Zebrican names."

"Do you-?"

"Yes, I do have this conversation all the time. I don't mind it. It's just a tad predictable."

"Well what do you want to-?"

"I'd rather not talk at all, actually. Tome told me not to."

"S-"

"Apology accepted."

There was a knocking at the door. Ze!zar moved aside as it opened, and that yellow earth pony that Mystic knew as Gold Coin entered.

"Tomey says I'm to relieve you," he explained.

Ze!zar gave him a cynical look.

"Tomey's orders."

The zebra seemed to accept that and left. Gold Coin looked down the hallway at him as he left and then stepped aside from the door.

"Come on kid, let's move," he said.

Mystic was surprised, but didn't question it. He got off the bed and ran over to Gold Coin's side. The earth pony locked the door behind them as they ran into the corridor, and galloped over to the stairs.

"What's going on?" the young colt asked, "Is father letting me go?"

"Kid, I don't know if you noticed, but your father is kind of a dick," Gold Coin replied, "I'm not putting up with him anymore. You and I are going to free Mr. Spoken, and then we're going to get out of here."

"What about the Reaper's horn?"

"What about it?"

"You can't just let him have it! He could use it against the princesses!"

"Good. I may be abandoning this brotherhood, but I still hope that those nags meet their ends. They're more than deserving of it. If Lord Second plans to kill them, more power to him!"

"But that's wrong!" Mystic argued, "The princesses are the most wonderful ponies ever! They look after the kingdom, and raise the sun and moon for us, and they're always there to protect us, and they care about everypony!"

"Lies. Lies and propaganda," Gold Coin replied, "You think a pony that powerful has any time or any interest in mere mortals like ourselves?"

"But..."

"Kid, when we're out of here, you and I are going to discuss your world views. Your father never told you about the existence of the Brotherhood, because he thought you were too young to comprehend what we stand for. Speaking from experience though, I know to give colts your age more credit than that.

"Once we're all gone, we'll sit down, and have an open and frank discussion about why you are wrong, and why we were totally justified in releasing an eldritch creature to kill a seemingly benevolent princess."

He said this completely without irony. That was worrying.

They came to the basement door, but found it already open. Looking down inside, they saw that the bottom door was open as well. Treading lightly, Gold Coin stepped down the stairs with the blue unicorn following close behind.

Upon entering the basement proper, they saw something they never expected to see; Arcane Arts and Sharp Mind, the two unicorns who had escorted the butler to the basement before, both laid on the bed nearby fast asleep. They didn't even look like they had been knocked out. They were literally asleep. Nailed to a nearby wall, Gold Coin spotted a note.

Dear Sir,

I resign.

-Soft Spoken

***

Screaming filled the air above the southern port town of Pony Harbour. The hydra was laying waste to the docks. The beast roared angrily and brought a huge scaled foot down on one of the piers, which shattered into tiny pieces of wood under the force. A sailor on the pier got away just in time to escape sinking into the ocean.

The hydra didn't like that, and one of its heads pursued the pony along the rest of the pier, while the other two picked up a nearby fishing trawler with to throw at the town, and checked the horizon behind them for signs of any counterattack respectively.

The left head drew back to launch the trawler, and the right head stretched its neck as long as possible in pursuit of its meal. Satisfied that nothing was coming to stop it meanwhile, the hydra's middle head turned back towards the town in front of them. And found its view blocked by the scaled underbelly of a massive purple dragon, that had seemed to appear out of nowhere.

The heads all immediately ceased their actions and drew back so that they were all side by side once again. The left dropped the fishing trawler as it did, which splashed loudly in the harbour.

The three all looked up in unison to see their new opponent. The dragon stood at least double the height of the hydra, with huge green fins on top of his head and fangs that were evidently too big for just his mouth, as at least one hung out and rested on his lip. He glared down angrily at the hydra.

"So, you think you can just walk into this town and start destroying things?"

The dragon wasn't even shouting. His voice was just naturally loud and booming. The hydra shrunk upon hearing it, ducking down as low as possible and cowering like a child that had been caught stealing from the cookie jar.

The dragon didn't wait for any further response or follow up. Instead, he just reached out with a huge clawed hand, grabbed the hydra by all three of its throats at once, and lifted it into the air. He turned around and pointed the hydra at the rest of the town.

"Say you're sorry," he ordered.

The hydra heads looked nervously at each other for a second.

"We're sorry," said the centre head.

"Yeah, we're very sorry. We didn't mean it guys," the left agreed.

"We just had a bad day. Please forgive us?" the right added.

The three heads all turned to look back up at the dragon again and gave him an awkward smile which they hoped looked genuinely remorseful.

"That's better. I hope you know not to try this again. You could have hurt somepony."

The dragon pulled the hydra away from the town and dropped it in the sea just outside the harbour. The impact of the massive beast hitting the water caused huge ripples which crashed against the side of the docks, but it was over quickly and nopony else seemed hurt for now.

"Now, you three get out of here, and don't let me catch you causing trouble again. You don't want to end up like your Uncle Tommy, do you?"

"No!" the hydra's left head protested, "We won't end up like Uncle Tommy! We'll be good! We promise!"

"Good. Now scat."

The hydra took the hint and dove down into the water, swimming away back towards the open ocean. Content that he had successfully averted the crisis, Spike then turned to face the town of Pony Harbour, who cheered loud enough that mainland Equestria could probably have heard it. Spike raised both hands into the air and basked in the praise of the grateful townsponies, but was quickly interrupted by a voice next to his ear.

"Excuse me," the voice said, quiet as a whisper, "I'm looking for Spike the Eternal?"

The massive dragon turned towards the source of the noise. A cream coloured pegasus mare flew out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit by his snout. She was wearing a little blue hat and had a mailbag slung over her neck. She smiled nervously at him.

"You've found him."

***

Meanwhile, far away from all the drama occuring elsewhere, Second walked out the front door of an old run down cottage in the middle of the countryside. He stared up at the imposing sight of the huge mountain before him, atop which he could see Canterlot, and the castle it was built around. He would need to get up there. He would need transport.

"Hmm," he said to himself, "Time for me to work on my masterpiece..."

The human cracked his fingers and reached into a pocket inside his coat. He drew out a pencil. Looking around, he found a nearby tree stump and sat down on it. He held up his hands and formed them into a square window shape, so that he could see the landscape through it. Once he was sure he had a good view, he held up his pencil to air.

"This is for you, Anthony."

END.

Author's notes:

And we continue with our revisions. Once again, no major changes were made.

Despite revisions, the earliest chapters are still of the lowest quality for the simple fact that the story only got better thanks to the criticism of its readers both here and on the Equestria Daily page, of which there was a lot early on. I extend my thanks to those people who helped shape the future of the story. Apart from two particular ones, but I'm not going into that now.

Most especially of all though, thanks go out to my EqD pre-reader, whose advice induced the most drastic changes, Muppetz and Pen Stroke, who wrote Article 2 and Past Sins respectively, which I cite as two of the primary inspirations for Human, (the Brotherhood of Man is loosely based on the Nightmare Moon cult), and you the reader for giving this a chance despite how the story must look going just by the description and tags.

Next chapter: Shit goes down in Canterlot.

Chapter 3: All Points Converge on Canterlot

"Lord Second, he who controls our fate,
From across the stars came to liberate,
He and the First, mighty and proud,
Did battle with the tyrant and tore her down.

The scourge of the Gods, wicked Harmony,
Ceased their crusade and trapped Second eternally,
And First made the ultimate sacrifice,
When his weapon was taken, along with his life.

The Human of Legend saw past the facade,
And saw that ponykind was trapped in their ways.
He spared them all when they made their mistakes,
Because he didn't want an innocent to die in hate.

But when push came to shove he was shown no mercy himself,
Him trapped in stone, and First trapped in Hell.
But the day will arrive, when Celestia dies,
And the Human will be the one, to make the sun rise."

-The Legend of Second, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book The Liberator.

***

Second applied the handbrake and the car shuddered to a halt. There was a red light ahead. To the right, an orange earth pony pulling a cart of fruit stared at him, and on the sidewalk to the left, a group of upper class unicorns had stopped to gawp. Who could blame them? It was not every day one saw a big red Ferrari rolling down the streets of Canterlot, especially not one being driven by someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a mythical creature.

"'Sup," said Second, "I don't suppose any of you fine ladies know the way to the residential area, do you? I'm looking for a friend of mine."

The unicorns all raised a hoof and pointed in the same direction, still staring at him.

"Thank you very much. Your help will not be forgotten."

The light went green again. Second slammed a foot down on the pedal. The wheels began to spin and screech against the ground. He released the brake and the car went flying down the street, faster than the even the speediest pegasus racer, leaving a trail of smoke and black marks on the road in it's wake. The unicorns all looked at each other for a moment.

"Commoners," one of them concluded.

"Mmmhmm."

"Indeed."

"Most certainly!"

***

Explodey McGee sat in an empty room, balanced on top of a small wooden chair and sitting up at a table. A single glass jug of water and a cup rested on it, which Explodey was eyeing curiously. On the other side of a one way window, Princess Celestia and her sister waited patiently.

"I can't believe anypony could actually do it," Luna commented, "Who steals an entire statue? Honestly? How did the guards not notice? This is the sort of thing we should have picked up on immediately."

"And yet we didn't," Celestia replied, "This is the work of the Brotherhood of Man if ever I saw it. They found some way to bring back Second, and now he's trying to send oblivious suicide bombers against us. He never used to outright attack us. Usually he would wait for our move before he completely wrecked everything. He's making a pre-emptive strike this time. That worries me. He's upped his game."

"But who is this pony?" the night princess asked, "He doesn't seem like typical Brotherhood fare. If he's one of them then their standards are slipping."

"More to the point, why is he even bothering?" her sister added, "Nothing can kill us except the Reaper's Horn, which I'm fairly certain was also stolen by the Brotherhood for exactly this purpose. A bomb, even a pony bomb, couldn't even harm us, let alone kill us. If he has something that actually can do some damage, why isn't he using that instead? What is he thinking?"

"This could be another of his mind games," Luna suggested, "Remember how he always used to claim that he could destroy ponykind with words?"

"I'm still not sure whether he was bluffing about that or not," Celestia replied, "I mean, just because he didn't use those powers doesn't necessarily mean he never had them. Considering the powers he did have, why would he need to lie about his capabilities?"

Luna shrugged.

"Put on a show maybe? He always struck me as the theatrical type. I suppose it makes sense though. If he could destroy the world just by talking, I don't think he would. He wasn't evil in the sense that Time Worm or the Crystal Demon was. Second was just vain and stupid, and desired to use his powers to just have fun at the expense of everypony else. He was more of a Discord than a Sliske is what I'm saying."

The door opened behind them. A familiar white earth pony stallion with a short blonde mane entered and bowed to princesses.

"Rise captain," said Luna, "What have you determined?"

"Nothing," Chain Mail replied, "I wrote to the place where he claimed to work, and they don't know him or his boss 'Brick'. I searched for his parents' names, but there have been no ponies named 'Master Exploder' for well over four hundred years, and nopony called Voltorb ever. I found no identification on his person, the house he claimed to live in was occupied by a family who says they've never heard of him, and even what little clothing he's wearing is custom made. It's like this pony didn't exist until just today."

The three of them looked into the room beyond. Explodey turned to look directly at them and waved.

"Can he see us through the window?" Luna asked.

"No ma'am," the guard captain answered, "This thing is one way. On his side it looks like a mirror."

Celestia tilted her head so that she was looking at Explodey sideways. In the room, Explodey mimicked her. Testing her theory, the solar princess then walked to the other side of the giant window/mirror, and observed as Explodey's eyes followed her. She turned to look at the captain.

"'One way', huh?"

***

Gold Coin and Mystic Chant galloped over the hills. In the distance behind them, Sparkle Manor was rapidly shrinking. The mansion was far from any major city, so they had a lot of featureless ground to cover before they could stop anywhere. They had already concluded that Soft Spoken was not in the mansion anymore. They had no choice now but to move on.

"...You know..." Gold Coin panted, "I haven't run like this...in over...twenty years..."

"...Why not?" Mystic Chant gasped, equally breathless.

"It was twenty years ago...that I stopped working...on the farm..."

"You worked on a farm?"

"Yeah...Sweet Apple Acres..." Gold Coin paused momentarily to take a deep breath, "My family...we run the farm...and we also run the company...that sells the apples...Dear First my sides hurt..."

Mystic glanced at the stallion's cutie mark as they ran on. It looked familiar to him. It was a symbol of an apple with a bite taken out of the side, with an Equestrian bit lodged in it at the bite mark. At this point, the two stopped running to catch their breath again. This time, Gold Coin slumped to the ground, unable to carry on.

"...Damn...I'm really out of shape for an earth pony...If my father could see me now he'd be shaking his head in disappointment."

The ground exploded nearby.

"HE WOULDN'T BE THE ONLY ONE GOLDIE!"

The two ponies turned to face their attacker. At the top of another small hill nearby, Ancient Tome glared down at them. The Reaper's Horn floated in front of him, surrounded by a faint purple glow. More than that though, the bearded stallion was actually dressed in battle gear. He had dropped his usual monocle and formal attire in favour of star patterned magician robes and a pointy hat which dropped over at the top, and just inside his cloak was a sheathed sword. The blue unicorn didn't know what to make of it, but the older stallion recognised those robes as the uniform of the Equestrian Royal Guard's elite warlocks.

"Tomey..." he said, "Are you...Those robes...?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I am," Ancient Tome replied, "You don't get to become a knight of the realm without wearing one of these first! I put in six years of service for them, so that when a situation like this would come up, I'd be ready."

Gold Coin gulped.

"Now Tomey, let's not be too hasty here," he said nervously, "You don't want to do anything you'll regret..."

The Reaper's Horn pointed right at him.

"I'm not going to regret a thing. This ends here and now. And you Mystic! You're coming back to the house with me. I knew I shouldn't have brought this whole brotherhood thing home with me, because I knew that something EXACTLY like this would happen. That's called foresight."

"Tomey, it's not-"

"Shut up you! Don't think I forgot that you were the one who suggested bringing Second back to my house! I'm only in this situation with you, Mystic and Softy right now because of what YOU did. You ruined my life! I really, really didn't want this, but you force my hoof."

The Reaper's Horn rose.

"I'm sorry Goldie, but it's over."

"Hush now, quiet now, it's time to lay your sleepy head..."

The voice sounded like it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Tome reacted suddenly to it, spinning around as if he thought it were behind him and then facing his two hostages again. The voice didn't betray it's origin though.

"Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed..."

Ancient Tome's eyes drooped. Mystic and Gold Coin felt their own doing the same.

"Hush now, quiet now, it's time to lay your sleepy head..."

Mystic dropped.

"Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed..."

"No..." Tome mumbled, "I don't wanna!"

He began to stagger.

"Drifting...off to sleep..."

"No!"

"Leave the exciting day behind you..."

Gold Coin fell to the ground too. Ancient Tome was still resisting, but he was on his last legs.

"Drifting...off to sleep..."

"Guh..."

"Leave the exciting day behind you..."

"...Softy?"

"Hush now, quiet now, it's time to lay your sleepy head. Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed..."

That was it. Ancient Tome crumpled to the floor and lost consciousness. With the three ponies all out cold, a chocolate brown earth pony emerged from over a nearby hill and smiled down at the victims of his singing. Wasting no time, he grabbed the Reaper's Horn in his teeth and ran over to Gold Coin and Mystic Chant to wake them up.

"I still got it."

***

"Yo Sliske, you slimy bastard! Get out here!"

The door opened, and a large white earth pony poked his head through to see what was going on outside. Upon seeing a being who appeared to be the human of legend sitting in a red...something...he quietly backed away into the house and gently closed the door again.

"Mom!" Broad Sword called, "Lord Second is outside our house!"

"That's nice dear!" his mother replied from upstairs.

Dr. Fluttershy wandered into the hallway curiously, the remains of their stew still smeared over his face and dripping off his oversized fangs. Somehow, the guard still didn't notice that he even had fangs.

"What isssssssss it Broad Sword?" he asked.

"Take a look outside," the guard answered.

Sliske raised an eyebrow for a second, but nevertheless walked over to the window in the front room and peaked through it. On the other side, an ugly hairless Diamond Dog riding what could only be a parade float waved cheerfully back at him. He slipped back inside.

"I wassssssssss not prepared for thisssssssssss possssssssssibility," said Sliske, "You wait here. I will go sssssspeak with him."

He opened the front door again and stepped outside, leaving the quivering guard behind, while he strolled down the pathway and stopped in front of the red thing.

"Yessssssssssss human?"

"Ah, so you do know who I am," said Second, "I was worried for a second that I might have had to make a full introduction. After all, you were before my time."

"I know all, human," Sliske replied, "Thisssssssssss world isssssssss ignorant and weak. One day I ssssssssshall rule over all of Equesssssssssssstria!"

"Cool story bro. Anyway, I came here to ask if you might want any help with that?"

"With what?"

"Taking over Equestria. I have a bone to pick with Celestia too. I thought we could be partners?"

"Partnerssssssss? I wasssssssss rather hoping to posssssessssssss you inssssssstead of the princcccesssssss...After all...Your power holdsssss ssssssssso much more promisssssssssse..."

"Trust me, you don't want that. I know dark secrets. If you get inside my head, most of it will drive you insane. More so. Have you ever heard of Cthulhu?"

"Yesssssss."

"Yeah, well I'm like...ten of him."

Sliske grinned.

"That jussssssst makesssssss you ssssound more appealing..."

The snake pony thing leaned in towards him. Second backed away slightly and pushed him back with his palm.

"Sorry, but you're really not my type," said Second, "I know I said 'partners' but I didn't mean it like that."

Sliske frowned.

"We'll sssssssssssssee about that human...Give it sssssssome time..."

"...I was joking Sliske..."

The alien parasite leaned in again.

"I wasssssssn't..."

Second pushed him away again.

"Yeah...Anyway, do you want to help me overthrow the princess or not?"

"I would like that..."

"Right...Well get your things if you have any and get in the car. We have a twenty minute drive from here up to the castle, and there will be palace security to get by once we're up there, but if we get going now and beat the traffic, we should be able to overthrow the Equestrian government before lunchtime."

"...I ssssssshall need to sssssay goodbye to my asssssssocccccciatesssssss firsssst..."

"Understandable. I'll be waiting out here. Just give the word when you're ready to go."

***

"Gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second."

In the distance, the shoreline of Equestria came into view.

***

Explodey McGee had rearranged the room. Captain Chain Mail just stared at the scene when he walked in. The table had been flipped upside down and the chairs that used to be tucked under it now balanced on the legs of the table. It looked like one of those modern art projects. The unicorn responsible appeared from behind the sculpture carrying the jug of water from earlier with his magic.

"Hi captain!" he said, "Like what I did with the place?"

Chain Mail looked around the room.

"How did you do it in such a short time?" he asked, "I was looking into this room from beyond that one way mirror just a minute and a half ago."

"I don't know how I do it. It just sorta happens."

Chain Mail tilted his head.

"You are a strange one," he said, "No offence."

"None taken," the unicorn replied, "Hey! Do you like to play games?"

"Uhh..."

"I thought so! I love to play games too! Here, let's play hangman!"

"Hang-what?"

"Hangpony."

Explodey pointed a hoof at the wall behind Chain Mail. Upon turning around, the guard saw that there were now eight underscores scribbled onto the wall.

"Where did you get the pencil to do that?" he asked.

"I found one stuck to the underneath of the table with a piece of gum!"

Chain Mail sighed.

"Fine. A."

The unicorn levitated a pencil out and scribbled two 'A's on the wall.

_A____A_

"Umm...E?"

His partner shook his head and drew a vertical line on the wall next to the underscores, along with a letter 'E'.

"I?"

_A__I_A_

"O?"

A horizontal line joined the vertical at the top, and an 'O' joined the 'E' from earlier.

"U?"

_A_UI_A_

Chain Mail turned to Explodey and gave him an odd look.

"This is a real word, right?" he asked.

"Of course it's a real word!" Explodey replied indignantly, "What do you take me for?"

"...S."

***

"Doc? What's going on? What does he want?"

Sliske ignored Broad Sword's question and looked around the room for a moment.

"Did I bring anything with me?" he asked.

"Uh...Nope. I don't think so."

"Hmm. Sssssssseems I'll be leaving now then."

"Leaving for where? Why is there a human outside my house? Come on Fluttershy, tell me what's going on? I feel left out here."

"I am off to overthrow the princccccccccessssssssss. Lord Ssssssssssecond has offered a partnersssssship."

"Oh," the guard replied, "Umm...That's unexpected. I never took you for the rebel type Dr. Fluttershy."

"I'm not a rebel. And my name issssssssn't Fluttersssssshy."

"Oh?"

"My real name is Ssssssssssslisssssssssske. Sssssssslissssssske the Dessssstroyer. Alsssssso known asssssss Sssssssslissssssske the Ssssscourge and Sssssssssslissssske of Sssssssseven Hundred Sssssssoulsssss."

"...Interesting name. Why didn't you just introduce yourself as that in the first place?"

"Becaussssssse I am a famoussssssss hisssssssstorical figure, and I did not want you to know my identity..."

"Famous historical figure? You?"

"Yesssss! Have you not heard the legend of Sssssssslissssssske of Ssssseven Hundred Sssssoulsssss?"

"Can't say I have doc."

Sliske raised an eyebrow.

"Sssssssserioussssssssssly?"

"Nope. I've never heard of you."

Sliske frowned.

"Firssssssssst thing on my checklissssssssst once I rule Equessssssssstria is to raisssssse educational ssssssssssstandardsssssss."

"Cool. We need some social reform. I mean, twelve years ago, we elected the labour party, right? And they promised us that they would improve education."

"Umm..."

"Thing is, once they were in power, education standards actually dropped."

"Broad Ssssssword..."

"And they say that school rates are improving, but that's only because they keep lowering the standards on exam papers. It looks like more students are passing, but that's just because the papers got easier!"

"Broad Ssssssssword."

"And the thing is they promised they would fix it, but they never did! And I really don't want to have to elect another party for this. Labour may have screwed up, but my grandpa would turn in his grave if I voted conservative."

"Broad Ssssssssword!"

"What is it doc?"

"I don't care about your political opinionsssssssssss. Thissssss isssssss irrelevant. When I am in charge there will be no more electionssssssss period."

"Well that sounds awkward," the guard replied, "I mean, what are you going to do? How is one pony supposed to run the entire Equestrian government? You're going to need a number of elected officials to-"

"If you sssssssstop talking right now I will make you my persssssssssonal advisssssssssor when I'm in charge."

Broad Sword became completely silent. Sliske looked at him for a second, and then trotted back to the front door.

"Ssssssssssee you later. Goodbye Mrssssssssss Sssssssssword."

A voice called down from upstairs in response.

"Bye deary! Good luck with the revolution!"

Sliske closed the door behind him once he was outside, and then frowned.

'Good luck with the revolution'? Did that old mare actually hear and understand everything I said?

He glanced back at the house.

This is a weird family.

"Sliske! Get your ass in the car or I'm leaving you behind!"

Sliske snorted at Second as he jumped into the back seat.

"There isssssss no need for racccial sssssslurssssss."

"What are you talking ab- Oh. Right. Sorry."

***

The remaining ponies of the brotherhood all stood in a circle in the sitting room of Sparkle Manor. On the table in front of them, three unicorns laid unconscious. Two of them were the guards sent to keep watch over Soft Spoken, the old gray stallion Sharp Mind and the even older lavender mare Arcane Arts. The third pony was of course Arts' nephew, and leader of the Brotherhood of Man, Ancient Tome, who was mysteriously lacking the Reaper's Horn.

"What happened?" asked Frosty, "Who did this?"

The question was directed at the only remaining unicorn, Chameleon. She glared at the group.

"We have a traitor among us," she said, "Possibly two. Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant both escaped their confinement, Spoken's guards were found knocked out, and Mystic's room wasn't even guarded at all when we went to check. Tome obviously knew what was going on, because he went out to confront the escapees. He must have been defeated, because I found him like this some distance away from the house, and the Reaper's Horn is missing."

"Who betrayed us?!" shouted Sun Rise, "Where's Gold Coin?! I notice he's not here!"

"Woah, wait a minute," Iron Hoof interrupted, "Gold Coin isn't the only missing member. A lot of ponies walked out after Tome went crazy back there. I notice that Rail Way and Night Shroud are also absent."

"Actually, it's not the missing ponies we should be questioning," said Chameleon, "If I remember correctly, once I locked up Mystic Chant, I put Ze!zar in charge of guarding him!"

She pointed an accusatory hoof at the zebra, who looked offended.

"Gold Coin came to relieve me of my duty," he said in a very deep voice, "He claimed he was acting under Tome's orders."

"So it WAS Gold Coin!" Sun Rise screamed, "I KNEW it was him! I'm going to go slaughter that treacherous snake right now!"

The pegasus tried to take off, but was pulled back by the dim yellow glow of Chameleon's magic.

"You're not going anywhere until we can say for sure who did it," she said, "Until then, you're staying grounded."

"Well how do we find out who did it?" Frosty Morning asked.

"We have three witnesses. Duh," the yellow unicorn replied, "Iron, smack Tome around the face until he wakes up."

"With pleasure!"

THWACK!

"AGGGGGGGGHHHHH!"

***

Mystic Chant rested on Soft Spoken's back for the rest of the journey. The point of running in the first place was to escape the threat of Tome coming after them, but since he already had and they had defeated him, the three were now moving at a more leisurely pace. Gold Coin was exhausted after the last run and it took all his energy just to carry himself the distance, but Soft Spoken was carrying the little unicorn and the Reaper's Horn on his back. Considering his age, it was actually quite impressive to see him effortlessly keep up with the younger stallion.

"So then, Mr. Spoken," said Gold Coin, "What was that back there? How did you knock us all out?"

"It's my special talent," the butler replied, "Using my voice to influence others. The spoken word is a powerful tool in the right hands. With words, one can change opinions, give helpful advice, calm an angry opponent by appealing to his emotions...If you have the gift of language, and you can master your speech, master the art of getting the correct tone, the right volume, there is no end to what you can do. Anypony can be talked into anything. You just need to be able to convince them."

"So what is your cutie mark then?" the business pony pressed, "I'm not sure what that is. Some kind of pink thing?"

"It's a tongue,"

"Oh."

Gold Coin squinted.

"Yeah, I can see that...It's weird looking at a disembodied tongue though...When I first saw it I thought it was...something else..."

Soft Spoken frowned at his fellow earth pony.

"There are children present Mr. Coin."

"Sleeping children."

Soft Spoken stopped and turned to look at the unicorn laying on his back. His eyes were closed and he was breathing gently.

"Hmm. Point taken."

"Say, how long until we reach Canterlot?" Gold Coin asked.

"We should arrive at the city gates by two o'clock at this rate..."

"I'm sorry, I don't have a watch. What time is it now?"

"Can't you tell by the position of the sun?"

"Well I never needed to. I always had a clock in my office."

"Everypony always used to know how to tell the time by the sun! What are they teaching you kids in schools nowadays?!"

"I'm sorry, but I didn't go to scouts, grandpa. And don't give me all that. There is no way they took you outside and taught you how to tell time by the position of the sun in school when you're supposed to be learning useful things like maths and science. That's just ridiculous."

"That's exactly what they did. Second grade, they pulled us outside one summer, showed us all a chart of sun positions, and taught us how to read the time by it. That way, we'd never be clueless about the time of day if we didn't have a watch. You're right though, of course. After all, why would you ever need to know something like - Oh wait."

"Could you please just tell me the time?"

"It's half eleven."

Gold Coin sighed heavily.

"It's gonna be loooooong trip..."

***

"Gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second, gotta stop Second."

The very tip of the tallest tower of Canterlot began to emerge from the horizon. The dragon beat his wings faster and increased his speed.

***

"Uhhh...Z!"

"Lucky guess!"

Chain Mail exhaled. He had just barely stayed in the game. Though, now that he knew this word contained an 'Z', it was just even more confusing.

ZAQUILA_

"...Okay, I give up. There's no way I'm going to get this. What's the word?"

"Zaquilax!" Explodey said cheerfully.

Chain Mail just stared.

"I thought you were being honest with me!" he shouted, "You said it was an actual word!"

"It is an actual word," the unicorn replied, "Zaquilax was the name of the shaman who reunited North Zebrica and South Zebrica during the War of the Thousand Eyes back in '22. He was named as Zaquilax the Wise, and he ruled United Zebrica as king for over forty four years following the end of the war, before being succeeded by Zanaris the Judge."

Chain Mail just stared.

"You never said it was a name!" he protested.

"Well of course not! Otherwise you would have guessed it right away! I mean, it's so obvious if you know you're looking for a name."

...

"NO IT ISN'T!"

The door opened.

"Captain, did you manage to get any more inform-"

Celestia stopped dead in her tracks and looked around the room. Between the rearranged chairs and tables, the writing on the wall, and the fact that her guard was apparently playing hangpony when he was meant to be questioning the prisoner, the solar princess needed a minute to take it all in.

"Captain, can I speak with you a moment?"

"Uhh...Sure thing...your majesty...I'm sorry."

"Save the apologies until we get outside."

***

"Hey, what was wrong with those guards back there?"

"Never seen a human I don't suppose. Can't blame them for getting freaked out. But hey, they wanted a fight. It's not our fault if this world did freaky things to us. Pretty cool though."

"Hell yeah it is! We can superheroes together!"

"Hah! That'll be the day! I know earthly restrictions don't apply anymore, but you reach a certain age and you just don't want to exert yourself anymore."

"You're getting old."

"I've been getting old for years Anthony..."

"Woah!"

A sudden jolt shook Second back into the present.

"What isssssssss the problem?" asked the creature in the back seat.

"Nothing."

The gate into the palace grounds was rapidly approaching. Two clueless guards stood either side of it gawping at them. Neither they nor that pathetic gate would hold back the car. They could ram through it, though not without damage to the vehicle. It was a shame to wreck his masterpiece, but sacrifices had to be made.

"Alright Sliske! Let's cause some anarchy!"

***

Ancient Tome had a face like somepony who had just learned Santa Claus wasn't real. The rest of the brotherhood stood around him. Tome's eyes met Frosty Morning's for a moment, but nopony said anything. Chameleon stood over the grey stallion and looked down at him. Tome had to tilt his head back to see her.

"Sir," she said, "We found you unconscious some distance from the mansion. Mystic and Softy have escaped, and we can't find the Reaper's Horn anywhere. What's going on?"

Tome turned back to staring at the ceiling.

"Tomey?" said Frosty, "This is important. We need to know-"

"Go away."

"What?"

"Everypony go away!"

The brotherhood members exchanged looks of confusion, apprehension, annoyance and several other things, but they all agreed it best to listen. Reluctantly, the group all walked away out the door to go discuss things elsewhere. Frosty and Iron Hoof stayed behind.

"Tomey," said Iron, "Whatever's wrong, you can always talk to us about it. We're your friends. Right?"

"I said GO AWAY!"

The two remaining ponies complied and made for the door. Frosty stopped mid way through and Iron waited on the other side.

"If you want to talk, we'll be upstairs."

They closed the door.

Alone with his thoughts, Ancient Tome climbed off the table and looked around the sitting room. There were still plenty of tea cups and jugs and kettles from earlier when Softy had came in with the drinks, many of which were still half full and now cold. Two other unicorns laid unconscious on his table, auntie and Sharp Mind. He ignored them and walked over to the fireplace. On the mantelpiece were several framed photographs.

He smiled as he looked at some of them. There he was at Frosty and his brother's wedding, taking a picture with the happy couple. Frosty was showing, and his brother had a big stupid grin that wouldn't have been out of place on Iron. There was a solo picture of his brother as well, an older one from before when he met her. He was still grinning, but this one was more subdued, because it was for a class photo.

He looked at another picture. There was his own wedding day. He looked so young without his beard. Sure, his coat was still grey, that was just how he was born, but his mane had colour back then. It was chocolate brown. In his younger years he sort of looked like the inverse Soft Spoken. His new wife smiled out from the photo. She was a pegasus, the same dark blue as Mystic was now. Oh how his parents had disapproved. He chuckled slightly at a memory of his mother squawking madly upon hearing the news.

"You?! Marry a pegasus?!" she had said, "'Tis a disgrace to the family name! We're Sparkles! We're a unicorn family! Have been that way for over a thousand years!"

"Hah!" he had answered, "We haven't actually even been called Sparkle for centuries! Like it even matters!"

"I-! You-! Insolent boy!"

His father laughed.

"Keep it up son, this is the most fun I've had in years!"

He missed them too. He missed everypony. Mother and father, his dear wife Velocity, his brother Mystic Rites for whom his son was named. It was sad to see them all gone now. Looking at the old family photos, he saw that everypony from before his generation was gone now, auntie seeming to be the sole exception, and he was never particularly close with her.

His attention turned back to his generation. Iron Hoof and him could be seen together in a photo taken at their graduation together below, and in another picture he could see the Gold Coin's uncle and his father shaking hands. Squinting at the background, he could just about see himself as a young colt, head just reaching into the shot. He was talking with a much younger version of Chameleon. He remembered that he thought she was a bitch even back then.

Finally, he looked at the one picture he couldn't avoid. Mystic Chant, just hours after he was born. He and his wife were both laying on the bed with the young foal, who was blindly wriggling around in front of them. He remembered the promise he made back then.

"Promise me you'll always be there?"

"Yeah...I'll always protect you both, no matter what."

His mind back in the present, he glanced over his shoulder at the two unconscious unicorns on the table.

"Get out of the way son!"

"I'm not going to regret a thing. This ends here and now."

"Move boy!"

"I'm your father you little ingrate."

"I don't want to ever see you disobey me again."

"Take him to his room and lock him in there, windows as well."

"Damn Tomey, that was harsh."

"You just don't do that!"

"You disgust me."

"You're a monster!"

The old unicorn slumped to the floor and laid in front of the unlit fireplace. He stared off sideways at the legs of the table.

"I'm such a failure..."

***

"...Fortunately though, the griffin ambassador turned out to be a good sport about the whole ordeal. He said he had kids of his own, so he understood. Ponies and their race really aren't so different at heart. They're a good sort, you just need to reach out to them."

"I know what you mean," Gold Coin replied, "I remember when I was little there used to be a griffin merchant that would occasionally pass by Ponyville. Me and my brothers were always excited whenever he came to town, because he always had the most interesting stories to tell. I remember there was this one tale he told me about a trip he took back east, where he discovered this swamp land populated with super intelligent frogs..."

Soft Spoken stopped him.

"Wait, do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"It sounds like the flapping of wings...I hope it's not Sun Ri- AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!"

The old stallion turned around as he spoke, and was suddenly shocked when the source of the flapping noise entered his field of vision. A dragon, a massive beast easily as tall as the mansion the group had just fled from, swooped overhead. It didn't seem to notice them, and that was probably a good thing.

The wind from the motion of it's wings blew across the grassy hills and swept at the two ponies. On Soft Spoken's back, little Mystic Chant slowly opened his eyes. At first he thought it was dark out because it was night time, but then he looked up and saw the scaly underbelly of the creature, and realised that it was dark because the immense size of this being blocked out the sun itself. It was only for a second, and soon the shadows passed, but it's effect was felt.

The group stared as the dragon moved past them towards Canterlot. Seeing it in the sun, they could see that it's scales were purple and it's fins were green, and it also became obvious that it was huge even by dragon standards. Some of them didn't grow to be a third that size!

"What in Second's moustache was that?!" shouted Gold Coin.

"Softy?"

It was at this point the old stallion realised his passenger had awoken. The blue unicorn was now holding tightly onto the back of his neck, as if he was afraid of falling off.

"Softy? What was that?" he asked.

"That was Spike," he answered.

"Spike?"

Gold Coin looked at the old pony as well, equally eager for an explanation. The butler just gulped.

"...He's a living legend. They call him Spike the Eternal, but over the centuries he's also been called Spike the Harbinger, the Crystal Scourge, the Southern Tide, the Demon's Match, the Warmonger's Bane, the Light in the Sky, the Sea Wall, the Ever Present, the Aspect and the Sword and Shield. He's spent most of his long life defending ponykind.

As you can probably tell by some of the names, he's more than a little famous for his heroics in the islands of the Southern Ocean. He was named the Southern Tide for an incident in which he prevented a tsunami from wiping out a small coastal village by freezing the entire thing with his breath and pulling the ice back out to sea, and he got the name Demon's Match from an incident where a volcano spirit threatened to destroy an island because the native ponies refused to sacrifice victims to it, so he challenged it to a duel and fought the spirit non-stop for an entire year until it eventually gave up in exhaustion.

Basically, he's the last resort of ponykind. Since we don't have the Elements of Harmony anymore like we did a thousand years ago, now whenever something big comes up, they call him. That's how he got the name Spike the Harbinger; His appearance heralds a crisis too great for mere mortals to survive on their own. And apparently, such a crisis is occurring in Canterlot."

Gold Coin bowed his head, and Mystic Chant buried his face in the old stallion's mane. Soft Spoken glared at the yellow earth pony.

"Still believe it was worth freeing the human?"

***

Princess Luna wasn't used to daytime rule. At all. Even after all these years, it still felt slightly unnatural to her to be awake during the daylight hours instead of in her own domain. That didn't matter though. Right now, Celestia needed her to do this. Both Sliske and Lord Second were out there somewhere, and she was dedicating all her time to investigating both. This Explodey McGee fellow in particular caught her attention after he had wandered in earlier that day offering to demolish the annex.

The whole thing ate up a lot of her time, and unfortunately it seemed that Celestia was unable to perform her usual daytime duties right now. Hence Luna's presence. It was a rare occasion that she had to interact with this many ponies. Changes in social conventions meant that royal business and legal matters were now handled at night time as well, but the number of ponies who came to see the lunar princess in her night court were still far fewer than what her sister had to deal with. It was almost a relief really.

"...Thank you for listening your majesty."

"Huh? Oh yes, of course. It was a pleasure, my good sir!"

I forgot that pony was even here for a moment.

The speaker, a pegasus in a bow tie, nodded in acknowledgement and hovered back towards the huge double doors at the end of the chamber. As it opened, one of the day guards waited on the other side. The pegasus passed him by, and the guard stepped into the room. Rather than approach the throne like most did however, this one chose to call to her from the end of the room.

"Your highness!" the guard bellowed, "We have a situation out by the main gates! Two creatures are attacking the castle!"

The dark alicorn didn't wait a single second longer. She pushed off from the throne and launched herself through the air, using her wings to land gracefully next to the guard at the far end of the chamber.

"Let us go meet these assailants."

***

"...Captain..." Celestia began, "I don't know how to say this. I've never had to tell anypony this before, but...You don't play games with prisoners when you're meant to be interrogating them. You just don't."

"I'm sorry your highness!" said the guard, "It's just that he wanted to play a game, and he was just so cheery about it. I couldn't help it. His happiness is infectious."

The solar princess smiled.

"Captain, I understand, believe me," she replied, "I knew a pink earth pony some time ago who was exactly the same. There's nothing wrong with befriending a prisoner. I more than anypony know how important true friendship is, and I would never deny you that. Just please exercise some restraint and don't let it affect your work. You have breaks, and his entire stay here is nothing but one long break for him. You can spend time with him then. However, when you're working, please make sure you get your work done."

Chain Mail gulped.

"Yes! Your majesty!" he said nervously, "I will remember that in future!"

"Besides, if he's innocent in all this then we can let him go soon," the princess continued, "Then you'll both be free to play all the hangpony games you want."

The captain chuckled awkwardly.

"Yeah! Of course your highness!"

"SIR!"

A guard burst into the room. He noticed Celestia and quickly bowed.

"Ma'am."

He rose again.

"There's something going on at the front entrance to the palace! We've got two hostiles, one pony and the human."

Chain Mail reached down to a sheath hidden inside his armour and grabbed the handle of a sword in his teeth. He yanked it out, revealing a wicked sharp blade.

"Your highness, you stay here," he said, "I'll deal with them."

Now he was a different pony entirely. Where before there was nervous awkward laughter, now the captain was authorative and confident.

"No!" Celestia interrupted, "You're just a mortal. Second could destroy somepony like you! Let me go. I can take him."

"With all due respect your majesty," Chain Mail replied, "It's you that he's after, and don't forget that Second was famous for being one of the few who could ever harm you."

Celestia raised her wings and looked down at her underbelly. The scars were still visible.

"He might be able to hurt me, but he can do worse to you!" the princess argued, "Second is too powerful for you fight."

"Ma'am, remember who it was that defeated First?"

Celestia paused.

"It was a regular earth pony, just like me."

"Captain..."

"Princess, stay safe. I'll be back."

***

"YAAAAH!" Second shouted, "Come at me you poor fools! Try your luck against an immortal! I dare you!"

A single guard, either extremely brave or extremely foolish, rushed at the human with his spear. His comrades shouted at him to stop as he tried, but he was already too late to slow his momentum. The human reached out and grabbed his spear by the tip, an action that should have harmed him in some way. Instead, Second yanked the spear away from the soldier as he continued to charge and twisted it around in the air, cracking the spear handle on the back of the guard's head and knocking him out cold.

"Come on!" he screamed, "Form an orderly line and I'll take you all one on one!"

The other entity slithered up to his side.

"I thought I wasssssssss going to be a part of thisssssss?"

"Later Sliske! These chumps are mine!"

"YOU'VE PICKED A BAD TIME TO START TROUBLE HUMAN."

Princess Luna appeared from the main entrance to the palace. She stood atop a large length of steps, and glared down at her adversary from above.

"Well, look who it is. Loony Luna! I haven't seen you since our last showdown. I see you're still using the royal Canterlot voice. What's up with that Luna? I thought you learned not to use that anymore well over a thousand years ago. Or did that one just slip your mind? Hmmm? No? Don't remember that one Nightmare Night in Ponyville?"

The alicorn's eyes widened in shock.

"How do you know about that?! That was from way before you ever showed up!"

"Oh please!" Second replied, "I'm practically the God of your entire world! You think I just showed up out of nowhere?! I was watching you all for ages before I arrived! I created some of you! My work is everywhere! Humanity's influence is everywhere! Looks at door handles, guitars, teacups! All designed with fingers in mind! And do you know why that is? ME!"

He spread his arms out either side of him.

"What are you going to do princess? Are you going to stop me? Because you can't! Your world just isn't built to contain me. It's simplified it's very physical laws so it can understand itself. You see the world around you, and you perceive me as a part of that world, but through my eyes I see the flaws that you cannot. We're all puppets in here Luna. Cogs in a machine. Invisible strings guide our movement. Now I can't cut those strings, but I can see them! And I see my place in this world, and I see yours!

"But that's the thing...We've outgrown our roles. The old rules don't apply anymore. A thousand years have passed. All those that played by the rules have also long since passed, and the restrictions that bind us and this world's penchant for cherry picking no longer matter! We're free of the shackles Luna! I'm free! And now that I'm free, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want, because who's going to stop me?"

Then it happened.

"AGGGGGGGGHHH!"

The human looked down at his chest. Something shiny and metal was sticking out of it, stained red at the end. Second looked positively shocked. Sliske, who until now had been focusing on the princess, turned to look at Second as he screamed. Behind him, a day guard in captain's armour held the handle of a sword in his teeth.

"You talk too much," said Chain Mail.

He pulled the sword back out of the human, who put a hand over the wound on his chest.

"No..."

He turned to face the captain.

"You can't be..."

Chain Mail raised an eyebrow.

"YOU CAN'T BE!"

"What isssssssss it Sssssssssssecond?" asked Sliske.

"The invisible strings are back Sliske! THEY'RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE!"

Second stumbled backwards.

"I don't understand!"

The human was openly crying now.

"Nothing makes sense! This world doesn't make sense! HOW THE FUCK DID YOU HIT ME?!"

"Your back was exposed," Chain Mail replied, "Rookie mistake, oh human of legend."

"But it doesn't work like that!" Second shouted, "It doesn't matter if I can't see you coming! I can't be hit by anyone! But there is one way! But you can't be! There's no way you could be what I think you are!"

"And what do you think I am?" Chain Mail asked.

Second glared angrily at him, hand still clutching his chest.

"SLISKE!" he shouted, "TACTICAL RETREAT!"

The human crouched down and sprung up. The ponies present could hardly believe their eyes. A creature that by all rights should have only jumped a short distance off the ground launched up into the air like a missile and landed right on the balcony of the tallest tower. The ponies all stared dumbly at the sight, jaws on the floor, except for Luna who had turned her attention to Sliske.

Sliske was too fast for her though. Before she could react, he ran right over to one of her guards and spat in his open mouth. His previous host Dr. Heart Beat immediately lost all his snake features and collapsed on the ground, while the guard, a pegasus pony with a white coat and blonde mane like all the others, suddenly sprouted fangs and a huge forked tongue.

"Sssssssssssee you later princcccccesssssssss."

Sliske spread his newly acquired wings and took to the sky after Second. The guards were all still rooted to the spot, except for Captain Chain Mail who strode over to Princess Luna and sheathed his sword.

"Orders ma'am?" he asked.

Luna thought for a second, but something caught her attention. A loud swooshing noise like the flapping of wings, distant but loud.

"Stand down," she ordered, "The cavalry has arrived."

The Chain Mail and Luna both walked down the steps to join the other guards, and stared up towards the tower with them. On the balcony, Lord Second and Sliske backed up. Being on the tallest tower, they could see what was coming at them. The guards waited in silent anticipation, until a massive purple dragon landed with a loud CRASH on the palace roof, his head level with the tower where Second and Sliske stood.

"SECOND!" he bellowed, "THIS IS FOR MY FRIENDS!"

A huge claw grabbed the human right off the balcony and launched him straight down. Luna jumped away. The human impacted with the concrete. At the point of impact a hole formed in the ground, and large ominous cracks spread out from it across the grounds in front of the palace. Luna tried to look into the hole to see how deep it went, but was completely dark inside.

She backed away as the human jumped out of it and landed on his feet, hand still on his chest.

"Finally a fair fight!"

END

Author's notes:

Happy new year I guess. Thanks go out once again to all my commenters on both sites this is hosted at. Technically three, but no-one comments on the DA version of this because it's not directly linked to from EQD and you have to go through my author page on Fimfiction to find the link. To be expected I guess. Fimfiction and docs' are easier to use anyway. I don't care.

For changes made this chapter, I tried to focus some more time on the pony characters and make their character more clear. I already started that last chapter, but I do it more here. Most people seem to understand the characters of the OC ponies, but I have had more than just one person say that they felt the ponies were under-developed. While I'm always a little suspicious of commenters who seem to hate this story with a passion when most others seem to at least think it's okay, I'm not about to call troll when they're giving valid criticisms, and being that how well a character's personality comes off to a reader is subjective, that is a valid point, and I will adapt to make sure I don't repeat the mistakes that those commenters pointed out in the first place.

I don't hold any illusions that I will ever fully meet the standards of every single reader, but you've gotta aim high. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to write a story in a genre this infamous.

As for the other characters, I want to make it clear that not every pony in the brotherhood is meant to be important. Some of them really are just background ponies. With the exception of Chain Mail, who I will be expanding on more next chapter, if any particular pony seems to not have any character to speak of, chances are they're just there to be there. And on the human; If he comes off like a douche in his last scene, that was intentional this time. Villain, remember?

Chapter 4: Plans Come Crashing Down

"Second!" Twilight shouted.

The human raised his head and looked at the six mares who stood before him. He gave a bitter chuckle.

"I understand now," he said, "I understand everything."

"An' just what IS it you understand?" asked Applejack.

"I understand what I am. I understand how I came to be in this position. I know this now. It all makes sense. On a base level, I guess I always knew. It should have been obvious. But even as I stood in this land of ponies, I continued to deny what I was. There's no use pretending anymore. I can see it now. The invisible strings make it so."

"Invisible whats now?" said Rainbow Dash.

"They're what guides our destiny! I was meant to perish here. This was always how it was going to end. The moment I fell into this world, cast down from heaven into a land of mortals, my path was set. This is who I am."

"And who are you?" asked Twilight.

"I'm the bad guy. I'm the one you defeat. I'm who you raise your elements against and strike down with righteous fury so that you can save the day. It's nothing less than what I'd expect. Parts of time are cut out. They only see my attacks. They don't hear my words. I'm here now, because I'm the successor to everyone who you defeated before. The status quo must be maintained."

He folded his arms and closed his eyes.

"End it."

***

"Dragon Punch!"

Spike was knocked back by the force. The human somehow had enough strength in his legs to launch himself upwards at Spike's face from a standing position on the ground. Everything about it contradicted what the ponies knew of physics. It shouldn't have been possible, at least not without magic, but there it was.

The dragon quickly recovered from the blow and brought a sweeping claw around at the human as he dropped again, grabbing him out of the air and slamming him into the side of on of the towers, where he embedded into the wall. The human was stuck there for a second, and began wriggling about, but he was forced so far into brickwork that he was having trouble getting out.

He cringed as Spike drew his head back and let loose a powerful breath of ice. Chill winter winds accompanied a cloud of frost that shot through the air and covered the side of the tower that Second had been smashed into. The side of the tower became almost entirely white, and the point where the human had hit it was completely covered in an icy sheet now, showing only the slightest hints of a bump underneath to indicate where the body was.

The dragon paused and waited for a reaction, trying to discern whether he had won or not.

A crack appeared in the ice.

"Oh no," said Luna.

The ponies on the ground in front of the palace watched with widening horror as the ice began to break. Spike shot another stream of ice at the tower wall to suppress it, but it seemed to be doing no good. The guards were panicking, desperate for orders but knowing full well that they couldn't do anything if they tried. Captain Chain Mail was just curious, wanting to see how this fight would go.

A pegasus shot at Spike out of nowhere and hit him in the chin. Luna recognised it as the guard that Sliske had jumped into just before Spike had showed up. He apparently needed wings right now, and had abandoned his unicorn host Dr. Heart Beat, who now laid on the ground nearby completely still.

"Dude!" Spike shouted, "not cool!"

Sliske dive bombed the dragon again. It was quite a sight to see. The single pegasus was like a fly compared to the titan he was fighting. This obviously wouldn't last long. Spike had once taken out the Wonderbolts by himself, when he was a quarter of this size and without his intelligence too. Sliske didn't look like a particularly menacing adversary for the Demon's Match.

"Get away!" he said, "I'm trying to save Canterlot here! This is important! Stop messing around!"

Luna chuckled slightly. Even after all these years, Spike was still the same little dragon he was before.

The ice on the side of the tower exploded. Second was still stuck in the side of the wall, looking confused and disoriented. Spike noticed immediately and was about to shoot another breath of ice, but the human cut him off.

"FUS-RO-DAH!"

Sliske and Spike were both launched backwards by whatever it was the human did. Windows shattered and the guards suddenly screamed and covered their ears. The human propelled himself backwards too, at such a force that he went right through the tower and came out the other side. It's structure compromised, the top half of the tower began to crumble, and the bricks of the ancient castle fell off and scattered across the roof, leaving the formerly tallest tower of Canterlot at half it's original height.

"Oh why?!" said Luna, "That was my room!"

On the left side of the palace, Spike climbed back onto his feet again. Nothing had hit him back that hard for a good few hundred years, and that was a Kraken as big as he was. Second meanwhile had crashed far off to the right of the castle, and had formed a giant crater in what used to be the hedge maze.

"Nice move human," Spike called, "But you should know I'm made of sterner stuff than that."

The dragon flew into the air again and landed on the other side of the palace. He stood above the crater, raised a foot, and smashed it down into it. Luna and the guards could not see what was going on from where they were standing, but it didn't take a genius to figure out he was probably stomping on Second.

The princess turned her attention back to the other side of the palace, where she saw the pegasus Sliske recovering from his ordeal. He was quite a distance away, but that wasn't a problem for her. Confidently, the alicorn reached out to him and enveloped him in a dark blue glow, pulling the creature over to them. The guards all backed away as she brought him in, and contented themselves with watching the battle between the human and the dragon while Princess Luna talked with the obviously much less interesting evil alien snake parasite.

"Sliske of Seven Hundred Souls, it's been a long time," said Luna.

"Likewissssssssssse."

"What are you doing working with the human? How did you escape from your confinement in the archives?"

"I essssssssscaped with hissssssssss help."

Sliske raised a bruised and battered hoof to indicate he was talking about Captain Chain Mail.

"Me?" said the captain.

"Yessssssssss. After you killed the guard dragon, you crassssssshed into my vault. I wasssssssss able to take you over while you were dissssssssssstracted."

Luna stared for a moment.

"Wait, YOU killed the guard dragon?!" she shouted at Chain Mail.

"Please ma'am, let me explain!"

Luna turned her full attention to the captain.

"Okay then, explain!" she shouted, "What did you kill the dragon for?! It was supposed to stop thieves! Or are you with the Brotherhood?!"

"What! No!" the captain protested, "Look, my squad was attacked. We had two intruders enter from the upper levels and they fought their way down through us. I don't think they were trying to, but they killed at least nine of us anyway. Some foal thought it would be a good idea to release the guard dragon, but then everything went wrong."

Sliske, who had until now been listening to the conversation with interest, was surprised when he then realised the magical field around him was gone. He stood still for a second, in case Luna noticed.

"'Went wrong'? How so captain?"

"The dragon turned on us!"

Luna's eyes widened.

"No..." she said, "You don't mean it started killing your squad?"

"That's exactly what I mean! I lost twelve good ponies to that thing not minutes after it was released. Either way, the thieves escaped somehow, and eventually I was left alone in this chamber, on the bottom floor, with the dragon blocking the way to the exit."

Sliske stood there awkwardly. Had they forgotten he was there? In the background, he took a look over to see that Spike was now on his knees and punching at the ground. Interesting.

"So you killed the dragon out of self defence?"

"More out of necessity," Chain Mail explained, "Given a choice between death by dragon fire and getting a scolding for killing Celestia's pet, I was more willing to take my chances with the latter. So I took the other stairway up to the control platform on the top floor, activated all the bridges at full speed and turned the archives into a giant blender. It probably wouldn't have killed the dragon, just knocked him about a bit, but he was something of an idiot and tried to destroy the pillar that the bridges were attached to. They fell down and crushed him."

"And you were somehow launched into Sliske's vault when it fell?"

"Exactly."

"Well that explains how he got free. But Sliske-"

The princess and the captain turned to where Sliske was before, and discovered that he was missing.

"What the-?" said Luna, "Where did he go?!"

"Uh...Your majesty?"

"What?"

"Look over there."

***

Spike had began convulsing. A pegasus fell to the ground in front of him unconscious. His head hurt, but the dragon was able to react quick enough to catch him. Even if he was probably dying, he couldn't let an innocent pony get hurt while he could stop it.

The dragon put down the pegasus and grabbed at his throat. Something was in it. It was crawling down into him. Spike felt his teeth growing at an incredible rate. He could hear an evil presence in his mind.

"You are a strong one Spike the Eternal, but I will break you too!"

"Sliske!" Spike thundered, "You're not taking me over! I won't let you!"

"What can you do to stop me, dragon?"

"I don't have to do anything! You're not strong enough to take me!"

"Care to put that to the test?"

"Try it!"

Sliske changed into his gaseous form and went straight for Spike's brain.

"AAAAAAAAAGHH!"

The dragon clutched his head in pain and began to stumble around the clearing. Inside his head, a war was being waged for control.

"You cannot stop me! I am Sliske the Scourge! I destroyed hundreds to get to where I am now! You will fall like all the others and become my most powerful host to date!"

"The stronger the host, the more they fight back!"

Sliske was getting frustrated.

"Give in!" he mentally screamed at Spike.

"Never!"

"Surrender dragon!"

"NEVER!"

***

The city gates were unguarded. Soft Spoken and Gold Coin arrived to find a city in turmoil. Ponies rampaged through the streets. Stampeding crowds tore up the street ahead of them, leaving overturned carts and trampled civilians all around. Up at the palace, the dragon could still be seen, apparently suffering a traumatic headache.

"So what now?" asked Gold Coin, "Have you got a plan?"

"I sure do sonny," Soft Spoken answered, "I'm going up to the palace and handing this monstrous weapon of yours back to the princesses. Then, I'm going to find a place for me and Mystic to stay and wait until this whole human situation blows over."

"Or," said Gold Coin, "You could not give the tyrant the only possible hope ponykind has for defeating her, stand aside, and let Lord Second do his job."

The butler raised an eyebrow.

"Once we find a place to stay, you and I are going to have a very long discussion about this whole 'tyrant' thing. You need help Mr. Coin. I don't think you're well."

"There is nothing wrong with me!" Gold Coin shouted, "You're just ignorant! You can't see what the government's doing. They're trying to keep the common pony down!"

"'Common pony'? Excuse me? Aren't you a multi-millionaire?"

"That is besides the point! You know what I'm talking about! Explain this to me then. Two thousand years ago, Luna tried to bring about a serious end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it crisis. A millennium later, she tries to do it again. Then, the moment she is defeated, if the historical records are to be believed, she suddenly had a change of heart thanks to the 'Elements of Harmony' and was immediately accepted back by Celestia and given half the control of the country again. What does that sound like to you?"

"The Legend of Nightmare Moon?"

"No. It sounds to me like a tyrant showing favouritism, and a hardened criminal being let off the hook for having connections. Do you honestly believe she was possessed some evil spirit or something? If a murderer claimed that in court for his defence, he would rightly be told just how ridiculous a claim that is. I say that's all lies, made to cover her and endear her to the public again after her position was reinstated. Elements of Harmony! Pff!"

Soft Spoken only looked confused.

"Didn't you say you were from the Apple family?" he asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"Didn't your family actually get famous in the first place because one of it's members a thousand years back was one of bearers of the elements?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So why are you so sceptical about the whole thing? The elements all said that's exactly what happened. Calling, among others, the Element of Honesty a liar is a pretty bold thing to say."

"Great Grandma Applejack was deceived just like the rest of ponykind. She defeated Nightmare Moon with her friends. I don't doubt that for a second. However, I know that Celestia was there the moment that mare was down. She could have easily covered for Luna and just told them she was possessed. The Element of Honesty would never state anything other than what she believed was absolute truth, but if she believed lies told to her, she could repeat lies unintentionally."

"So is that the reason why you're rebelling?" Softy asked, "Because you felt Celestia went too easy on Princess Luna a thousand years ago? Because that's a terrible excuse for letting a being as evil as Second loose on Equestria."

"No, it's not just that. We have plenty of evidence of Celestia's dark side, the holes in the Nightmare Moon story are just one piece."

"You need to drop the tinfoil hat and get out in the sun more," the old stallion replied.

"You need to open your mind and stop being a grouchy old crank!"

"You need to stop going for cheap shots about my age when I point out how much of an idiot you are!"

"You need to live up to your damn name and not shout at me for once!"

"You need-"

Soft Spoken and his companion jumped aside just in time to avoid being trampled by another group of rushing panicking ponies. Mystic Chant almost fell off the old butler's back, and had to struggle to get back onto his position.

"Maybe we should save the arguments until we get someplace safer?" the business pony suggested.

The senior nodded in agreement, and the three of them soon disappeared down a quieter side street.

***

At the bottom of a crater, Second's eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at the sight of a circle of guards glaring angrily at him, while Spike was still mentally battling Sliske in the background. A glance down at his own body revealed he was drenched in blood, and his clothes were stained red. That was never a good sign. He tried to say something, but just coughed up more blood on himself.

"Ugh..." he thought, "I guess it makes sense that Spike is one at least...But that guard...How could he be? What does it mean?"

He looked up the side of the crater, and saw a damaged barrel half way up the side. If he could get to it, he'd be safe.

"Hah!" one of the guards sneered, "So the mighty human isn't so powerful after all! Hell, if the captain can hit you, so can we!"

The guard brought a hoof down at Second. Without even trying, the human flopped like a fish, and the hoof just missed him. It was absolute agony. He wasn't even trying to avoid the blows. The way his body reacted with the world of Equestria just meant that he naturally swerved to avoid attacks. It wasn't intentional, he was just like that, and right now considering his injuries, he really wished he wasn't.

"What the-?"

The guard grabbed a sword in his teeth and tried to stab him. Again, he flopped out of the way, this time landing on what was probably a broken rib.

"Gah...I deserve this for trying to win the fight with a Skyrim reference..." he thought to himself.

If only he could reach that barrel...

"Here, let me try!"

The previous guard stepped aside to make way for a much bulkier one. This one had spiked horseshoes for some reason, and was clutching a mace in his teeth. He grinned evilly at his victim and lashed out at him, trying to trample him, hit him with the mace, and everything else he could muster. Still no luck. Second was getting absolutely filthy from the dirt and thanks to his wounds he was probably infected with something now, but not one of the blows struck him.

"Damn...He's like a carnival attraction!" one of the guards commented, "'The Pony Who Can't Be Hit'. Hey guys! Let's make a game of it! Everypony put in ten bits, whoever can hit him gets the pot."

The guards all murmured in agreement and reached for their wallets. Second could only whimper.

***

The doors to Tome's study burst open as the old grey unicorn trotted into the room, followed by Sharp Mind and his auntie Arcane Arts. Around the room, the other members of the brotherhood who had stuck around after the incident with Mystic and Softy all stood or sat in various places. He glared at them.

"I seem to recall that I said the study was off limits," he said, "What is everypony doing here?"

"Sorry Tomey, you threw us out of the sitting room," Frosty explained, "We had to go somewhere, and this is the only other room with enough chairs for everypony. Aside from the dining room. Which is too cold."

Tome frowned at her.

"Too cold? Coming from a pony called Frosty Morning? Is she mocking me?"

"Well...In any case, I've had enough of moping around here. I'll be honest with you all. I messed up. This is my fault. Gold Coin helped release my son Mystic, and I think Softy escaped on his own. They defeated me, because I was an idiot and I forgot that Soft Spoken has weird mind control powers."

Some of the group members tried to speak up about this sudden revelation, but the grey unicorn raised a hoof to silence them before they could say anything.

"Now the three of them are gone, and they've probably taken the Reaper's Horn with them. That's a problem, but it doesn't change the fact that we still have goals. Lord Second's enemy was always the princesses, so he probably made his way to Canterlot. I suggest we all go to the city and keep an eye out for him."

"Well, when are we leaving sir?" asked Chameleon.

"Immediately," Tome replied, "Everypony prepare yourselves and meet me at the station at Rainbow's Rest. We'll catch the first portal from there to Canterlot and save ourselves a walk up the mountain."

***

Princess Luna ascended to reach eye level with Spike. The dragon was grabbing his own head and his claws were digging into it. He hadn't drawn blood, but it must have hurt. The princess recalled a spell, a very old spell, devised millennia ago to combat Sliske's influence over the minds of ponies. In regular ponies, the spell exorcised him. In Spike, it could only hope to bury him temporarily. Nevertheless, it would have to do.

"Hold on Spike, I can help you!" she called.

"Make it stop Luna!" the dragon moaned, "I can't hold him back!"

"Just hold still..."

The dark alicorn landed on Spike's nose and steadied herself. It wasn't ideal, but it helped for her to be grounded when performing the spell. It was a complicated one, and it took the greatest wizards of several ages to devise it. It normally took a team of unicorns to perform, at least two, but Luna was a goddess.

Her horn was surrounded in a dark blue light which built up and fed into a magical field that surrounded Spike's entire body. The dragon stopped struggling and became calm. He opened his eyes again and withdrew his claws as he felt the spell taking effect. It wasn't over yet though. The princess continued to maintain the spell. As Spike's eyes opened, she closed her own, and felt his mind. Sliske was in there, and he was running.

Luna's own consciousness entered the mental landscape along with Spike's, and she followed after Sliske. She pushed against him, trying to force him out of her dragon friend's mind, but she knew it was futile. The bare bones of the spell was getting her into the dragon's mind, but the energy behind it was all put into her, strengthening her own mind to give her the power to force Sliske out of his host's mind.

Unfortunately, this was Spike. Dragons were so ancient and so powerful that their minds were far more developed than ponies, even if it didn't show in their behaviour. Sliske had plenty of retreats in here. Luna had to have a mental presence everywhere in Spike's brain at once, and she had to exert enough force over all of it to force Sliske all the way out. Unfortunately, even she could not do that. For now, all she could do was harm Sliske and send him into slumber somewhere in the recesses of the dragon's mind.

She did that just that. The lunar princess poured every ounce of strength into her attack. Sliske felt a crushing mental pressure the likes of which he hadn't experienced since the old days. For a moment, he feared he may be forced out after all, but eventually the assault let up. The princess was trying not to stress herself too much too early into the fight. Being a creature born to take over the minds of others, Sliske was endowed with great mental fortitude. He pushed back against her.

Luna responded with an attack of her own. She had magic on her side and a presence in the physical world to back her up. The worst Sliske could do was force her spell to fail and send her back into her own body, but she could do the same to him, and he had no body to return to if he was forced out of Spike. He'd just be atoms in the air if he left his host, and then he'd be even more vulnerable.

"No!" Sliske cried, "It won't end like this!"

Eventually, Luna overcame him. The struggle ended, and Sliske was almost crushed under the much stronger will of the ancient alicorn. He hadn't been kicked out. As expected, he was merely dormant, but he was beaten for now, and he'd stay beaten for a while. Feeling weak, Luna retreated. She felt back for her body in the physical world and cut the spell. In an instant, she was pulled back from the surreal darkness that was Spike's mind, and opened her eyes again.

Spike smiled at her.

"Thank you Luna."

***

Rainbow's Rest was a stopping point, a station situated between the major cities of Canterlot and Ponyville, which served as being the half way point of many portal travellers. The technology behind the portal system was a recent innovation, only just invented nearly a hundred years ago, by one of Ancient Tome's relatives no less, but it was dead useful. The system had almost completely replaced trains by now.

The portal stations all used to be stopping points for trains, but they no longer served that function. Now instead a series of five or six generators would produce portals to pre-determined destinations at certain times, and passengers and cargo could just walk or be carried through them and arrived instantly at the destination. Due to energy requirements, portals could only be open for a few minutes at a time, and most of them only went short distances, but it was instant transport, which was hard to criticise.

Thanks to being short range though, ponies often had to go through multiple portals to reach a far away location. Portals between Canterlot and Cloudsdale for instance required one to go through a few other small settlements first. Similarly, to get from Canterlot to Ponyville, one had to pass through Rainbow's Rest, named as such because the town hosted the final resting place of former Wonderbolt and Element of Loyalty Rainbow Dash, whom in her final years had insisted having a memorial that could be seen from space. Whether it really was or not was a question to be answered when ponies achieved space travel, but it was big enough that a town had sprung up around it during construction, so that was something.

"Come along! We haven't got all day!" Tome shouted.

"Can't we just wait for a second Tomey?" asked Iron Hoof, "Ze!zar is having issues at security. We have to wait for him!"

"By Second's singing, how long is this going to take?!"

"He's got nothing on him, so they have to let him through, right?" asked Frosty.

Ancient Tome sighed and put a hoof over his face.

"I'll deal with it. You two go ahead and find the others."

The old grey unicorn turned away from his friends and walked back to the security checkpoint, grumbling to himself. Upon arriving, he found the zebra being harassed by three ponies in uniform.

"Come on punk, take off the costume," one of them threatened, "You're making all the old folks nervous."

"Officers, please, let me explain," the zebra pleaded, "This is my natural colour! I am a zebra. We all-"

"Yeah right!" said another, "You ain't fooling anyone with that getup kid. Take it off before I arrest you for disturbing the peace."

"Kid?!" Ze!zar replied indignantly, "I am forty three years old! How dare you! Now let me go you ruffians! I have done nothing wrong!"

"Why you-!"

"What is going on here?" asked Tome.

"Tome, please explain to these jobsworths that I am a zebra! They're not listening to me!"

"You're not getting out of this with made up words sunshine!" another of the officers snapped, "Honestly, what the hell is a 'zebra'? You think you can just make up a race of ponies? We're not that stupid!"

"Zebras aren't ponies! They're a different species altogether! And how have you not heard of us before? There are literally millions of us!"

"Never heard of them," the first officer answered.

"Nope," said the other.

"Nu-uh," agreed the third.

Ze!zar just stared at them all.

"How don't you know about us?!" he practically screamed, "There's an entire nation of zebras! United Zebrica?! It's about the size of Equestria and it's just across the ocean?! It's full of sand and deserts, and is divided into several sub territories?! They built the damn pyramids there! Please tell me you've heard of the pyramids?!"

"Can't say I have," said the first officer.

"Me neither."

"I still think you're just making things up."

Ze!zar looked over to Tome again.

"Help?" he silently begged.

"You'll uh...have to forgive my friend here," said Ancient Tome, "He fell into a vat of chemicals a few years ago, and it dyed his coat this colour. He's very sensitive about it, so he just tells ponies that he's this so called 'zebra' so they don't think he's a freak."

Ze!zar spluttered.

"No, no, it's alright Zeddy," Tome interrupted, "You're with friends here."

"Hmm," said the second of the officers, "I guess that makes sense."

"Yep," agreed the third one, "He does sort of smell like industrial solvents."

Ze!zar looked offended.

"I dunno..." said the last officer, "I think that's pretty suspicious. He fell into a vat of chemicals and just happened to come out looking like that?"

The first officer rolled his eyes and put a hoof around the dissenter's neck.

"Jimmy," he said, "Tell me. What's more likely? That this poor pony here fell into a vat of random industrial chemicals and came out with black and white stripes, or that he's from some made-up country full of all black and white striped ponies that we've somehow all never heard of?"

'Jimmy' considered this for a while.

"I guess I can see that," he eventually answered, "All right you, you're free to go."

Before Ze!zar could say anything more, Ancient Tome put a hoof around his neck too and dragged him away from the security checkpoint.

"You're lucky I didn't leave you behind," Tome scolded, "You've been holding us up for seven minutes."

"It's not my fault the police here are dumb as bricks!" Ze!zar snapped, "I shouldn't have to paint myself a single colour to go out in public! I thought zebras were common knowledge now! There are zebra politicians, zebra sports stars, zebra actors, zebra writers, zebra scientists, zebra doctors, zebra teachers...How sheltered must one be to have never even heard of us?! Or Zebrica for that matter?! It's only an ENTIRE CONTINENT that they've somehow never heard of!"

"Z, I know. Please, just forget it and follow me. We're going to miss our portal."

Ze!zar sighed loudly.

"One of these days..."

***

It was later in the day when Celestia descended into the dungeons once again. Since the attack on the palace at lunchtime, she had spent the day talking with everypony involved trying to get a picture of what happened. Spike was resting in what used to be the ball room, but it had been cleared out to give him a place to sleep off the after-effects of Sliske's mind control. Dr. Heart Beat and Private Skysword, his two most recent hosts, had both awoken and been questioned about the incidents too, which unfortunately revealed nothing as they both lost their memories of the previous few days.

Luna had also been quite drained by the incident. Trying a spell like she did had taken a lot out of her, and she had needed time to recuperate as well before she could begin to tell Celestia exactly what happened. Captain Chain Mail was also questioned about the incident. The princess was quite surprised to hear that he had managed to actually strike the human. She had only ever known of four individuals who had ever struck Second, those being Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Spike and Pinkie Pie. Even when the human was laying helpless on the ground earlier today, an entire company of trained soldiers had been apparently unable to hit him, even with money on the line.

"I wonder what it is about certain ponies?" she thought to herself, "Is there some kind of innate ability some ponies, or some dragons I guess, possess that allows them to hurt humans?"

It was certainly odd. She had originally thought it was because of the Elements of Harmony that Twilight's friends had been able to hurt Second and First. Of course, Spike and the captain hitting him disproved that. This would need further research.

And here was where research was being done. In the dungeon, the princess passed by a cell containing the red machine that Second had used to ram the front gates of the palace grounds. It looked damaged now, but it could still be dangerous. They had no idea what it even was, other than the fact it was probably not organic, and they wanted to keep it well away from other ponies until they could study it a bit.

Eventually, the princess came to a door leading into another corridor. This was the newer part of the dungeons. The machine was stored in the old parts right now, but all the prisoners were kept in the much cleaner and smarter looking new dungeons. Walking up to a side door, the princess noted the cell it was connected to and wandered in.

It was just like the observation room she and Luna had been in when they were questioning Explodey McGee. It was completely featureless except for a single window into the room beyond. Normally, the room beyond would be called the interview room, because it was where prisoners would be questioned rather than kept, but for this prisoner they didn't trust him to not find a way out by swimming down the toilet or something, so the interview room had been converted into a cell instead.

Beyond that window, there was an entirely empty room. Aside from the prisoner, one table, one chair and the window, there was nothing in that room. Not even a door. The door had been magically removed, and the walls and the window itself reinforced a thousand times over so that no living thing could escape from it. If Celestia put the sun in that room the walls would hold. Air was periodically teleported into the room so that the prisoner wouldn't suffocate, but aside from that, nothing got in or out. The prisoner was utterly, completely, inescapably trapped.

***

Soft Spoken and Gold Coin walked through the ruined gates of the grounds to Canterlot castle. They were currently unguarded, so the two proceeded straight through. If they came across any guards they'd explain what happened. Mystic Chant was back to walking again now, and followed after the two older stallions silently. The entire journey had been one big adventure for him, and he was looking around at all the sites of the palace. He had been here now a week ago with his class, looking at Lord Second in the statue garden. A lot had changed in a very short time.

"Now, we'll just go in, drop off the Reaper's Horn, and be on our way," said Soft Spoken, "No need for us to get involved."

"You're not going to hand me over to Celestia are you?" asked Gold Coin.

"I don't think I need to honestly. I've been announcing my intention to hand over the Reaper's Horn to the princess since this journey began, and you haven't even tried to stop me."

"Well you're holding it," Gold Coin pointed out, "If I tried to take it you might use it on me."

"You know I wouldn't," the old brown earth pony replied, "Come on Mr. Coin. What's the real reason you haven't tried to stop me?"

"...I guess I just don't want to?"

"But you do still want to overthrow the princess?"

"Of course."

"And yet you don't want to stop me, even though me giving this to the princess could foil all the plans you, the brotherhood and Second have ever made against her?"

"I have more faith in our plans than that. Second can kill the princess even if she does have the Reaper's Horn. He'll find a way. I just don't think it's right to harm you or Mystic to ensure those plans run smoothly. That's why I abandoned the brotherhood. I don't agree with Tomey's methods."

"That's a good one. You still let the human loose, I remind you."

"All for the greater good. He'll only harm those two nags on the throne. Nopony will die needlessly. You'll see."

"I don't share your confidence."

"That's because you lack faith. We of the brotherhood know the true nature of the human. We know it was right to release him, and we know why. Trust me, everything will be fine."

"The fact that you still believe that tripe even though you've left the brotherhood worries me Mr. Coin. I'm on the fence about whether or not to actually turn you in. For now, I'll keep quiet and only give the names of the other twelve, but you had better not betray me."

"You have my word that I will do nothing more than observe. From hereon out, I'm just a spectator in all this. Consider me off the chess board."

Soft Spoken nodded. Behind them, Mystic Chant spoke up for the first time in a while.

"Softy, what's going to happen to us?" he asked, "I'm scared."

"Scared of what?" asked Gold Coin.

"Of the human. Of the dragon. Of what's going to happen to you and father and Auntie Arts and Auntie Morning and Uncle Iron. Is everypony going to be okay?"

Gold Coin looked briefly at the Soft Spoken, who shook his head quickly.

"Of course we are kid," he answered, "Nothing bad will happen. You'll see. Once this is all over, we can all go home, and your family will be back to normal."

Mystic smiled slightly. Soft Spoken knew that he could probably tell it was a lie, but the three of seemed to be much better for it anyway.

"So much for honesty," he thought.

***

The sky was red as the sun set in the distance. In a small alley off the side of the larger streets, the remaining members of the Brotherhood of Man all met. They had gathered in a circle to conduct their meeting, something they had done so often now it was almost a habit, and Ancient Tome was explaining the whole plan to them.

"Now I suggest that we divide and conquer for this next stage. Lord Second is being held somewhere in that palace, and we need to rescue him. Now obviously, not all of us can just march into the palace and act like we own the place...Well...I can, but you guys definitely can't."

"So what's the plan, boss?" asked Ze!zar.

"Right, Iron! You're a royal guard, so you'll be able to walk in anyway. Your job will be to negotiate a way in for Sergeant Justice. Justice, I want you in there for backup. This could easily end in a fight and we'll need all the support we can get."

One of the green earth pony twins and Iron Hoof both nodded simultaneously.

"Auntie!" said Ancient Tome, directing his attention to the lavender unicorn, "You and I know the princess. We can use our status to gain entry. We'll be heading elsewhere from the others though. We'll talk with the princesses personally. If Gold Coin and Soft Spoken have beaten us there and have tried to sell us out, we'll be there as damage control."

"And who's going to be actually breaking out Second?" the old mare asked.

"That will be Iron and Justice's job," Tome replied, "Remember though, that there is an element of infiltration to this. Assuming that this escape plan will work perfectly is ludicrous given our track record. So if we fail to free Second, at least some of us need to still be around, undercover in the palace and ready to enact our plan B."

"What about the rest of us Tomey?" asked Frosty.

"You'll all stay here in the city as our support crew," Tome answered, "We can't sneak the entire brotherhood into the palace. Except you Chameleon. I want you to get in too. Pick an identity and use it to follow Iron and Justice. You're going to be a part of the rescue team as well."

Chameleon saluted with her hoof.

"You heard him soldiers!" Iron Hoof barked, "Move out!"

***

The solar princess looked intently through the glass. On the other side, Lord Second sat back in his chair, the ghost of a smile on his face. His clothes were still bloodied, but he was wearing less of them now. Just a thin shirt and trousers. They had him thoroughly searched when he was brought in. If he was carrying anything on him before, he wasn't now.

Unlike with Explodey's cell, this time the window did appear to be one way, as Second was not looking in her direction, instead merely staring at the table. The princess knew he couldn't actually hurt her without the Reaper's Horn, which he didn't have, but he was still capable of knocking her around if he got angry. As insurance, the princess decided to instead just project her image into the room. It would look and sound like she was there, but she had no physical presence.

Celestia's avatar popped into the room, just on the other side of the table from Second.

"Hello Second," she said, "It's been a thousand years since I last saw you."

Second's weak smile spread into an outright grin as he saw the princess.

"Celestia," he answered, "I haven't seen you in a thousand years either."

"Naturally. Though, being trapped in stone all that time, it must feel like just yesterday to you."

"Oh no. Quite the contrary. I was conscious the entire time."

That statement gave the princess pause for thought. He wasn't supposed to be conscious the entire time. That sounded like quite a horrific experience, but the human kept up his cheerful demeanour nonetheless. She'd have time to contemplate his fate later. For now she needed to continue talking.

"...How...Unfortunate..." she replied, "You have my sympathies for that, but I'm afraid we have things to discuss."

"Get everything out of me you can princess," said Second, "I'll be out of here soon."

"No you won't. I know you better than you think. You can cancel out magic directed at you, but you have no effect on spells on objects or the environment. The enchantments on this cell are strong enough to hold even you."

The human rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

"Whatever you say princess. I can get out of here any time I want. I'm just waiting for my injuries to heal."

"Yes I heard about that. Weren't you bleeding to death just a few hours ago?"

"I was. But I have an insane healing factor, so it's all good."

"Of course you do. How could I forget? What I want to know though is why it is Captain Chain Mail and Spike were able to hit you when not even I can? What makes them special? Why can they do it?"

Second sighed.

"Princess, when I said all those years ago that I couldn't tell you anything, I really meant it. The secrets of humanity mean a lot to Equestria. I could tell you the truth about your world. I could tell you all about my people, about myself, what I am and what you are, and what ponies are and what Chain Mail and Spike are, but it would drive you mad. It might make you cry, or make you scream, or it might just shock you into silence. I don't know. If what I tell you ever leaves your lips though, that's Equestria over and done with."

"Then tell me what you can!" Celestia begged, "I don't need to know everything, just enough. Please, let me understand this!"

The human drummed his fingers on the table as he thought it over.

"...I suppose I could give you a few hints," he said, "Though, for your own sake, don't try to solve the puzzle with them..."

***

Getting past the guards had been a pain. They had a lot of questions. While the grounds were not very well protected, security was tight around the palace itself, but that was reasonable given recent events. It had taken a lot of pressing, but eventually Soft Spoken had talked the guards into letting them see Princess Luna. The night was just beginning now, so they would be first in line to see her for the night court.

Soft Spoken sat with Gold Coin on a bench just outside the doors to the throne room. They were the only ones present for the time, save for Mystic Chant who was wandering around the room looking at things. The little colt was currently inspecting a suit of armour over by the opposing wall.

As the two waited, Gold Coin sighed and pulled himself back so that his spine rested against the back of his chair, and let his legs dangle off the side. He closed his eyes and seemed to almost fall asleep. The elder stallion stared at him as he did, wondering what would possess a pony to sit like that.

"Excuse me?" said Soft Spoken, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Praying," the yellow earth pony replied, as if that was all that needed to be said.

"...What?"

"This sitting position imitates that of the human. The Brotherhood of Man believe that it brings us closer to him in spirit and helps facilitate communication."

Soft Spoken blinked.

"I think I preferred it when all I knew about you guys were that you were crazy conspiracy theorists. I did NOT need to know that you were a cult as well."

Gold Coin flicked an eye open.

"And I do not need you being judgemental."

The doors opened nearby, and one of the night guards stepped out to greet them.

"Princess Luna will see you now," he said, "You may enter."

Gold Coin slid down out of his seat easily and landed on all fours. The butler had a harder time getting down, but nevertheless vacated his seat and trotted over to join his companion. Mystic Chant, as always, walked in just between the two of them silently. The group followed the guard into the throne room.

Princess Luna waited at the far end. The chamber wasn't very well lit, just a few candles here and there, but everything could be seen clearly. Moonlight spilled in through the windows to brighten the room, somehow from all directions at once. Neither of them being unicorns, the two older ponies had no explanation for how that worked. Mystic also had no clue, but for different reasons.

The three eventually stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the throne. The princess of the night gave them a curious look, evidently waiting for them to speak first. Soft Spoken tried to think of something to say, but decided instead that now was one of the times that silence was more appropriate. Instead, he wordlessly reached over his back and grabbed the Reaper's Horn.

The device had been strapped to his back since a little while after they entered Canterlot, as it had a habit of falling off during their journey up the mountain. The string that held it before snapped, and the old butler pulled it out to show the princess. Her eyes went wide as she saw it, and he gently placed it on the ground in front of her.

Luna turned to look at her guard.

"Leave us," she said.

The guard complied and galloped out of the room. The doors slammed shut behind him as he left, and in the dim light of the throne room, Luna levitated the weapon up to her and inspected it.

"...Where did you find it?" she asked.

"I took it from it's previous owner after he tried to kill my friend here with it," the butler answered.

Luna turned the weapon over and looked at the other side.

"I see. Who was the pony you took it from?"

"Sir Ancient Tome, ma'am. I'm the butler in his household, Soft Spoken. He is the leader of the Brotherhood of Man. The little unicorn with me is his son Mystic Chant, and the other pony here is Gold Coin, a friend of his. They both rebelled when they discovered the truth, and we escaped together with the Reaper's Horn."

"Yes, I know Mr. Coin already," Luna replied, "He's been a recurring face at many of my sister's charity fundraisers, and quite a frequent contributor."

Soft Spoken gave a wry smile to the younger stallion.

"You never told me you knew the princess Goldie."

"...Must have slipped my mind."

"I have to say though, I am surprised to hear that Ancient Tome is in on this," Luna continued, "I'd have never really thought it of him. He's from the House of Sparkle if I remember correctly. They were always such great supporters of ours."

She paused to look at Gold Coin.

"And you're from the Apple family, aren't you?"

"Yes ma'am," he answered, "Current head of finance for the Apple Corporation, and next in line for CEO."

"Hmm, curious," Luna commented, "Two out of six...Would either of you happen to know the names of any other members of the brotherhood?"

Gold Coin was about to make some excuses why he didn't know, but Soft Spoken stepped forward to give the names instead.

"Lady Arcane Arts, Private Iron Hoof of Celestia's day guard, a pegasus called Frosty Morning, a former racing celebrity called Sun Rise, and a yellow unicorn mare called Chameleon. Those are just the ones whose names I know. There were twelve of them in total though."

"Oh wait!"

The three older ponies all turned their attention to Mystic Chant, who was now bouncing up and down excitedly.

"I know some of the others!" he cried.

"Well little one? Tell us their names," said Luna.

Mystic stopped for a moment to recall them.

"There was a zebra!" he said, "He said his name was Ze!zar!"

Luna raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry little one, could you repeat that?"

"Ze!zar."

"Ze!zar," the princess repeated, trying out the word, "It's meant to have a clicking sound in the middle?"

"Yep! He said it's Zebrican."

Luna looked at Soft Spoken again, who just shrugged.

"Anypony else?"

"Yeah! One of them was my old school teacher! He's a unicorn, and he's called Sharp Mind!"

"That all?"

"Yep!"

Luna smiled.

"Thank you Mystic. You've been a very big help. As for you two, you have sincerest thanks for bringing this back to me, and for bringing me the names of these brotherhood ponies. They will all be taken into custody soon enough, and I will discover the names of the other four."

Soft Spoken and Gold Coin both bowed in thanks. Mystic stumbled to imitate them.

"Just doing our civil duty your majesty," said Soft Spoken.

"Well. While we're glad for the help you've already given, I think some further questioning will be in order. Tomorrow, of course. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind both staying in the castle tonight? The three of you will be granted a brief stay in the guest bedrooms, and the servants will be at your beck and call. You can consider it your reward."

"It would be our honour your highness," Gold Coin replied.

"Good. You may rise."

The three ponies climbed to their feet again and faced Luna.

"Go tell the guard outside, and he'll show you to your quarters. And thank you once again."

***

"You and First. You're not the only ones, are you?"

"No."

"So there are more humans? How many?"

"Billions. There's a planet full of us."

The construct remained expressionless, but behind the window, the real Princess Celestia nearly had a heart attack. She was glad she actually wasn't in the room. The last thing she wanted was letting her worst enemy see her have such a reaction. She quickly regained her composure and continued her line of questions.

"Are they all as powerful as you and First?"

"No. Back home, humans are about as powerful as most ponies are. Most of my abilities are environmentally based. I'm only like this because I'm in Equestria. I think my immunity to magic is genetic, though I can't be sure. There's no real way to test it."

That calmed down the princess a bit. The news that Second was just a special case brought her some comfort.

"Why does being in Equestria give you such powers?"

"Confidential."

A forbidden question. Okay. Try something else.

"Where is your planet?"

"Confidential."

"How did you come here?"

"Confidential."

The princess sighed.

"Okay. Luna and the captain said that when you were outside, you claimed that you were responsible for creating ponies, and among other things, doorknobs, guitars and teacups. Can you elaborate a bit?"

Second bit his lip and thought for a moment.

"Confidential," he said eventually, "I shouldn't even have told you that much. I just have a big mouth."

Celestia let out an exasperated sigh.

"You have allies this time," she said, "Sliske, the Brotherhood of Man, and that Explodey McGee. What are they to you? How do you know them, and what have you got planned for them all?"

The human leaned back in his chair.

"The Brotherhood? Never heard of them. If you're talking about the ponies who freed me, I don't really give a damn either way. I woke up in what was probably their headquarters some time ago. When I was released I had a bit of a temper tantrum, since I was conscious for all my time inside the statue, and once I was out of it I just needed to sleep it off. After waking up, I really didn't want to stick around. Canterlot was where I wanted to be. I have no interest in the brotherhood or it's goals or motives. I'm not even curious. I just don't care.

Sliske I have a slightly more personal relationship with, which I can't tell you much about because it's also confidential and he doesn't even know, but I ultimately just know him as another enemy of yours. While I was in the country outside of Canterlot, I discovered from some old newspapers from a few days ago that Sliske was released. So I tracked him down and recruited him."

"How did you find him?"

"Confidential. And Explodey...Well...Let's just say he's a special case."

Celestia frowned.

"Can he really self destruct and survive it? Why did you send him here? Where did he come from?"

"You found out that was me then?" asked Second, "Fair enough. Yes, he can survive blowing himself up. It's a natural talent of his. I sent him against you to destroy the annex and throw your palace into disarray before I arrived. I wanted to make a grand impressive entrance while you were still picking up the pieces. That didn't happen though, and that makes me sad. I wanted to come in singing, like in the old days. I was thinking maybe 'I can't decide' by the Scissor Sisters."

"I'm glad you didn't actually," Celestia answered truthfully, "I could never stand your singing."

"What? Princess you wound me," Second replied, putting a hand to his chest, "I have a beautiful voice!"

"But where did he come from though?" she pressed, "Who was Explodey before you brainwashed him or whatever it is you did?"

The human bit his lip.

"I made him."

Celestia tilted her head.

"You?"

"Yes."

"How? Can you just wish up new ponies?"

"Basically. Though I need certain tools to do it," Second explained, "I designed Explodey, named him, gave him a special talent and matching cutie mark, gave him a set of false memories, and let him loose. Really, the plan failed spectacularly. I should have just made an outright minion instead of an oblivious fool, but what can I say? I wanted to go for comedy value."

"Hmm," the princess replied, "So he's not really working for you then? He's just been tricked?"

"Yep. I suppose he didn't just come in and bomb the place? What did he do?"

The princess smiled as she remembered.

"He came up to me and asked to destroy the annex," she recounted, "I tried to tell him that we had never hired him, but he just started crying. I had to go comfort him and try to calm him down."

"...Hmm..." said Second, "In hindsight I guess it makes sense that a pony only a day old wouldn't be very emotionally mature..."

"I came into his cell here earlier and found him playing party games with one of the guards."

Second chuckled quietly.

"Kids grow up so fast..."

The human's moment of laughter was brief. Startlingly quickly, he lost his smile and positive demeanour, instead adopting a grim and serious look. Celestia found the suddenness of the change quite jarring. She played his last statement back in her head, and connected the dots.

"Second? Did you ever have kids?"

He smiled weakly at her.

"Yes I did princess. I had a sixteen year old son."

Oh no...

"He was called Anthony."

END

Author's notes:

I'm a little worried that the POVs might have getting a little much in this chapter. I tried to keep the focus on just a few different characters, but Luna suddenly became important, and for the fight scene at the beginning I didn't want to take a side in the POV and tried to make it from the view of a spectator...I don't know how well that came across, but you've got to experiment.

Now, I read over the comments I got on chapter 3 to see what I had to work on. Some people on EqD gave some really in depth critique, which I did try to work into this. The main complaints I've had so far are about Ancient Tome, and I'm really not sure if I can please either side with him. Some people complained it was out of character for him when he went crazy in chapter 2 and threatened his son and butler, and some people complained that the characterisation was inconsistent when I tried to portray him showing remorse in chapter 3. Really, Tome's character is hard to pin down for me. He is a father, but he's also a crazy cult leader, and he has to be both those things at once. Bear with me guys, I'll get this eventually. Just let me try and intergrate those two sides. This may take a while...

Other complaints I've had concern the OCs. Really, as far as OCs go, I'm trying to leave the unimportant ones out of the spotlight. The Brotherhood aren't all major characters, just Tome and Gold Coin. If that isn't clear to you, tell me how to make it clearer, because if I need to tell you that in the authors notes for you to get it, I'm clearly not doing my job.

And of course, there are the standard complaints about Second. Thankfully, I've found less comments saying that he's annoying, but people still think he's overpowered and some also feel that he's very irresponsible with his power. While he is meant to be both those things, I can at least try to tone those aspects down. This chapter establishes some of his weaknesses and limitations, and these will come into play later. As for his personality flaws? Eh. I'm keeping them. If Second was a really good guy, he wouldn't have become public enemy number one in the first place.

Thanks again for reading, you're all great, and I love every single one of you.

Chapter 5: Father, Father, Father Help Us

"Lords Second and First, two of a kind,
came to Equestria once upon a time.
They confronted corruption and began a crusade,
that ended in tragedy one fateful day.

Now Second was trapped in his prison of stone,
the lonely God, so far from his home,
but ponykind cannot forget Lord First's last fight;
That one last battle that cost him his life.

Now ponies may wonder what waits after death,
The princess answers no questions and denies all requests,
But Lord First now resides in that shadowy place,
Forever waiting there, contemplating his fate.

It's said that he's the gatekeeper, that he judges our sins,
that he will forever be waiting 'til his companion joins him,
because the Human knows the secret, of what's on the other side,
He knows the eventual fate of all ponykind.

And though you may feel you'll never experience such power,
you too will feel it, in your life's final hour.
For the most righteous of ponies, to the worst of the worst,
at the gate between worlds, will all meet Lord First."

-The Legend of First, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book Fall From Grace.

***

Second leaned back in his chair.

"Carol, I got the job! We're going out tonight!"

The room was empty and dark. Some time had passed. Now was the perfect time to make his move.

"Studio's got us working on some new show."

He stood up to the chair and ran over to the wall at the side of the room.

"Well, that's what I said. However, I've heard some big names attached to it. Who knows? Might be fun."

Gingerly, the human wetted his finger as if he was about to test the wind and pressed it against the wall.

"No! You mean it?! I get to write the opening episodes?!"

The wall did not react.

"Mr. Thiessen, you will not be disappointed! I've already got a great idea for the villain!"

He opened the top button of his shirt and felt his chest. He had stopped bleeding. Now was as good a time as any.

"He's an alien, see? He jumps from one pony to another, and uses their bodies to get around. His goal is to try and possess the princess, and the main six work to stop him with the Elements of Harmony. Here's the catch though; the elements don't work when he controls one of them, so they have to outwit him first."

The human looked back at the table. Hopefully Equestrian physics were loose enough for this plan to work.

"I call him Sliske. Sliske the Scourge."

***

Their room included a water bed. Mystic Chant was now jumping up and down on it happily and sliding around. Gold Coin and Soft Spoken were both doing their own thing now. The business pony had immediately retreated to the bathroom upon their arrival in the suite to preen himself like a swan. He was used to the sedate life of high society, and walking all that distance across the fields and hills, and especially that final stretch up the mountain had taken a toll on him.

Soft Spoken, despite being several times his age and not exactly in an active profession himself, had coped much better somehow. He was currently inspecting the book shelf for anything interesting to read. As a butler, he rarely got free time during his usual work, and he was not allowed to abuse the facilities of Sparkle Manor for his own entertainment, so he used all his free time for reading.

"Hmm..." he said to himself, "Read it...Read it...Boring...This is a children's book...Read it...What the hell is this doing here?"

He pulled out a book in his teeth and looked at the cover. Yeah, it was that same trashy romance novel all those book reviewers in the Equestria Daily were currently raging about. It was a recent release and it had earned a lot of hate really fast. He couldn't possibly think why. He didn't know anything about it, but something about the book made some ponies' blood boil.

"...Let's have a read of you then."

Satisfied at his choice, the former butler walked back over to his own bed and jumped up onto it. He dropped the novel onto the quilt and opened it up to the first page.

"Hey Softy!"

The old stallion looked up from the book to find that Gold Coin had finally vacated the bathroom. He was much cleaner looking now, but he had abandoned his suit and tie.

"We hit the jackpot here!" he said, "I'm still not too happy what we had to do to get it, but this place is sweet! My own mansion wasn't this nice! Look at the size of the beds here!"

"This one's full of water!" Mystic Chant added, "It's like standing on top of a giant party balloon!"

"Don't stand on it like that Mystic!" Soft Spoken protested, "They're not meant for that! You'll end up bursting it, and you'll make the princess mad!"

"Oh leave him alone Softy. He's probably not even heavy enough."

"Mr. Coin, those beds are fragile, and-"

Gold Coin leaned down and snatched the older pony's book, which he tossed over onto Mystic's bed.

"Hey kid, you like reading, right? Knock yourself out."

Mystic immediately stopped jumping and wriggled across his bed to reach the book, which he immediately levitated up in front of him and began to read through. The butler meanwhile was giving Gold Coin the evil eyes.

"I was reading that," he said.

"And now the kid's reading it," Gold Coin replied, "We all have to make sacrifices Softy."

"...I'm going to go get something from the kitchens."

***

Captain Chain Mail patrolled the halls of the castle. Unlike Luna's throne room, the rest of Canterlot castle, or palace depending on who you asked, was brightly lit at night times. It was some consolation to the guards who were unused to the darkness. Besides, in case there ever was a break in, it just made sense tactically if your night watchponies could actually see.

Not that he was on night watch though. Chain Mail was just on his way to the front gate to talk to the guards stationed there. A lot of crazy stuff had been going on at the castle lately. Luna and Celestia had both foregone royal duties tonight to interrogate prisoners, including among others the mythical human who was supposed to be impossible to hit except not, and a unicorn who claimed to actually be a living bomb.

And that wasn't even getting started on that red machine, the dragon sleeping in the ball room that may or may not be possessed by an alien parasite, and the fact that Princess Luna had instructed all guards to be on the lookout for a bunch of harmless nobles from the Sparkle family, whom he had it from a reliable source were secretly evil cultists. Apparently their butler walked all the way from Sparkle Manor to Canterlot and handed the princess the most powerful weapon in history and a list of ponies who were part of the most elusive secret order to have ever plagued Equestria.

Life was weird sometimes.

"Soldiers!" he barked as he approached the front gate, "Any news?"

The gate was protected by a group of five guards tonight, who turned to face him as he approached.

"Sir!" said one of them, "No sign of the Sparkles yet sir!"

"And why would you be on the lookout for us?"

Chain Mail turned his head slightly to the side to see at least three of his targets waiting right there. Sir Ancient Tome, Lady Arcane Arts and Private Iron Hoof of his own daytime guard all stood in a line before them, and even better they were accompanied by an unidentified yellow unicorn and green earth pony in police uniform, who he was willing to bet were also with the Brotherhood.

"Wow, how did we not see you?" Chain Mail commented, "I mean...You were right there! That is impressive...Anyway, you're all under arrest."

"WHAT?!" Tome screamed.

"Sir!" Iron protested.

"Under what charges?" asked the green earth pony.

"Well, you're with the Brotherhood of Man, right? So grand theft, murder, and attempted regicide."

Tome raised a hoof and opened his mouth, as if he were about to speak, but stopped. He instead placed the hoof on his chin and stroked his beard for a moment. Chain Mail and his guards waited patiently for a reply of some kind, until the old unicorn gave up and turned to Arcane Arts.

"Auntie, I got nothing," he explained, "Say something for me."

The old lavender unicorn cleared her throat regally and stepped forward to address the guard. At first, Chain Mail expected an elaborate explanation or some kind of threat, something befitting the grandness of her appearance and civility which she conducted herself with. Instead, her horn lit up. Chain Mail looked to the side just in time to see the guard she was targeting.

"AGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!"

In less than three seconds, it was over. The purple energy surrounded him, and the poor pony exploded into a cloud of ash right before the captain's eyes. Chain Mail backed away from murderous unicorn, and his guard followed his lead. Ancient Tome, who until that point had just been staring, now regained his composure and addressed the others.

"Screw it, we're found out anyway," he said, "Everypony attack!"

The other ponies didn't miss their cue. Iron Hoof charged right at Chain Mail and drew his sword, lunging at his captain with it. Chain Mail reacted in turn, whipping out the very same blade that he had used to stab Second and blocking the soldier's strike with it. At least he was getting an even opponent. The others were not so lucky.

Ancient Tome and the yellow unicorn mercifully seemed to lack the instant death spell, and so had grabbed their own opponents telekinetically. Tome was shaking his around in the air to disorient him, and the yellow one was ramming her victim's face into the wall repeatedly. The other two were already dead; One of them had his throat slit by the green police pony and the other had exploded into an ash cloud just like the first one.

"Go without us auntie!" Tome ordered, "Clear the path up ahead!"

The older unicorn nodded and galloped full pelt down the hall Chain Mail had just come from. Lacking an opponent, the earth pony soon followed.

Iron meanwhile was pressing his attack. He jerked around erratically and his sword strikes became unpredictable. Chain Mail was having a hard time keeping him at bay and was losing ground fast. In these times of peace, guards rarely fought anypony outside of sparring, and given how long it was since he had last had to spar with an officer, he was more than a little rusty.

"Hah!"

The yellow unicorn had just finished brutalising the other guard. His face was little more than red mush inside a helmet now, and the smear he had left trailing from his body up to the wall was the most disgusting thing the captain had ever seen. It was soon joined by the body of Ancient Tome's rival, who mercifully seemed to be breathing in spite of his condition.

"I'll go find the snitches sir," said the unicorn mare.

She ran off in the same direction the others had.

"You should go too sir," Iron Hoof grunted between sword swings, "I've got this guy!"

Chain Mail felt a little insulted by that implication, but in fairness Iron was a very credible threat to him. He was out of touch after so many years working in a senior office. He hated sparring matches. They were just like gym classes back in school, a period in his life which he remembered nothing from except the image of a thousand basket balls flying at him. The moment he was high enough in office to allow it, he excused himself from the matches and never went back to them. In hindsight, that now seemed like a very bad idea.

"Catch up with me later Iron," Tome replied, before turning to follow the others.

Iron Hoof focused his attention back on Chain Mail and lunged at him again. The white coated pony failed to dodge or block this time. By pure luck, the blade failed to puncture the armour, but being stabbed was still not a pleasant experience, and the captain still felt the impact of the attack. The soldier began advancing on him.

"You're a fool captain, and you just got lucky last time," he said menacingly, "I should have stuck around to kill you when me and Frosty were robbing the royal archives."

Chain Mail's eyes went wide.

"What?!" he thundered "That was you that killed all those ponies?! You're way out of line private! There was a time when we'd hang ponies for crimes like that, and if I had my way we'd still do it!"

"Why give the tyrant another weapon to use against us?!" Iron Hoof shouted, "Celestia and Luna are poison to this land, and the human is the cure! If you would stand in the way of Equestria's salvation, you too shall die!"

Iron swung his sword again, nearly losing his grip from how much power he put behind the strike. Chain Mail saw his chance and made a counterattack, swinging upwards with his own sword and knocking his opponent's weapon loose. Iron's sword clattered to the ground and the pony was left defenceless.

He wasn't ready to give up yet though, and the demented earth pony ran to pick up the sword again. Chain Mail didn't give him the chance. Before Iron Hoof could bend down to grab the hilt, the captain swung again and sliced Iron's left foreleg off just below the knee guard.

"AGGGGGGGHHH!"

His enemy fell to the ground and began nursing the stump where he once had a hoof. Chain Mail was hardly sympathetic. Sheathing his own weapon, he walked over to where Iron's sword had fallen and kicked it almost to the other end of the hallway. The captain turned away from the writhing pony and trotted down the hallway in the direction the other cultists went. Half way, he stopped to look over his shoulder.

"Dismissed, private."

***

In the dark ball room, Spike's eyes flickered open. Standing right next to the dragon's face was one of the royal guards. He recognised him immediately.

"Broad Sssssssssword, what are you doing here?"

Sliske noticed that despite Spike's physiology giving him a natural booming voice, for some reason when he was in control and speaking it was as quiet as when he just had a pony's voice. Was Spike being intentionally loud this whole time? Because if he wasn't, it didn't make much sense that his voice was quiet when Sliske was speaking through him. Perhaps when possessing his victims, the mutations like the sharper teeth and snake eyes also came with changes to the vocal chords?

Come to think of it, that could also explain why he stretched out his 'S' sounds without knowing he was doing it.

"Oh hey doc," the guard replied cheerily, "I'm here on nightwatch. I was going to do the city again, but they changed my shift because the human is here now, and the castle is under attack from some cultists or something. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention. Point is, I was asked to wake Spike and ask him to come help out. I didn't expect to see you here though doc!"

"It hassssssss been a trying day..."

"Yeah...I'll say. How did that revolution thing go then? Did Second let you down?"

Sliske did something with Spike's face that looked like it was trying to convey sadness.

"Sssssssecond got himssssssself captured, and I wasssssss trapped in Sssssssspike'sssss mind. I'm only sssssssssslightly in control now, and it'ssssss difficult to maintain. Cursssssed Luna usssssed an old sssssspell on me. A painful ssssspell."

"Tsk, tsk," Broad Sword replied, "Those princesses...Always overreacting to everything, am I right?"

"I know! I mean, I jusssst wanted a ssssssssuitable hossssssst body! It'ssssss not like it had to be anything ssssssssspecial. Asssssssss long asssss it could hold me without falling apart, it would have been fine. But no! 'He'ssssssss an alien parassssssssite, sssssssend him to the moon!' We had a word for that back on Planet Zarlow. It was racccccccisssssssm."

The nightwatch pony was quiet for a moment.

"Tragic," he said, "But I still have a job to do, doc. I need to wake up Spike, remember? I know you need the body and all that, but...Well...Orders are orders. Priorities, you know?"

"Sssssssso what do you want me to do?"

"Well...Vacating the body would be a nice start."

"I need a hossssssst to sssssssurvive! If anypony catchessssssss me in my normal form, I would be vulnerable!"

"Hmm...What if you got another temporary host?"

"...That could work."

"I might be able to find a volunteer around here somewhere. I'm sure somepony would be willing."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Could I usssssssse you?"

Broad Sword blushed slightly.

"Well, I don't know doc! I think that might be kinda awkward. See I have a lot of embarrassing memories from childhood, and I know that if you're in my head-"

"I promisssse I won't look."

The guard raised an eyebrow.

"You promise doc? Do you swear you won't?"

"I sssssssswear."

"Pinkie swear?"

Sliske winced.

"Pinkie ssssssswear."

"No, you have to actually do the rhyme!"

"Broad Sssssssword, ssssshut up. I already promissssssed. Don't pretend doing or not doing the Pinkie ssssssswear makes it any more or lessssss valid than my word alone. Thissssss extra formality issssssss trivial and pointlessssssss, and you're upsssssetting me with your lack of trussssssst. Aren't we friendsssssssssss Broad Ssssssword? Don't you trusssssst me?"

Broad Sword looked up into the face of the giant purple dragon, whose snake eyes and oversized teeth betrayed the presence of the evil alien parasite who had killed hundreds and caused misery and death for thousands of years. Without hesitation, he answered;

"Sure we're friends doc! I trust you. I just like doing the rhyme. It makes the promise seem special. I would have thought that being my friend you would have indulged me just this once, I mean considering I'm about to let you crawl inside my brain, I hoped you'd at least give me that much."

"But the rhyme is childisssssh and ssssssstupid!"

"I'm a childish pony, doc."

Sliske sighed heavily.

"Only for you Broad Sssssssword," he said reluctantly.

The possessed dragon cleared his throat.

"Crosssss my heart and hope to fly, sssssssstick a cupcake in my eye," he recited, "There. I did it. Now will you pleassssssse sssssstop humiliating me?"

"Okay doc, I'm convinced. Any time you're ready."

***

Explodey McGee stirred in his cell. There was shouting coming from down the hall. He climbed out of his bunk and inched towards the bars. Whatever was going on, it was happening on the other side of a pair of red double doors at the end of the hallway. Some guards were screaming, and a splatter of red appeared on the tiny windows that they put in the door for some reason.

The doors burst open at the end, giving way to a duo of ponies. An elderly lavender unicorn and a green earth pony in police uniform, both mares, entered the hallways leading past the prison cells. In the corridor beyond, Explodey could see several bodies and piles of ash lying on the floor. Most of the corpses were bleeding from the neck. Upon seeing that the green earth pony was holding a bloody knife in between her teeth, Explodey felt his blood run cold.

The two passed through and almost right by him, but the old unicorn stopped and turned to look at him. Her partner quickly noticed that she had stopped and also turned to face the prisoner. They stared at each other in silence for almost a full minute. Explodey had never been more afraid in his entire life.

"...Seems the princess has been keeping a prisoner," the older mare commented, "That's a real rarity. I didn't think these dungeons were actually still in use."

Though he was afraid, Explodey tried to keep up his chipper attitude. If they didn't know he was afraid they could do nothing to him. He had to laugh in the face of danger. Playing it safe was for wimps. He would engage them directly, and he would be just so gosh-darn cheerful that they would leave him alone. That actually worked in real life, right?

"They're not!" he said happily, "Celestia is just keeping them open for me!"

"And why would that be?" the earth pony asked curiously.

"Because I can explode and survive it," he explained, "My special talent is self detonation! The princess was worried when I told her, and until she has it all figured out, I'm staying here in the palace!"

The two ponies exchanged looks. Arcane Arts suddenly looked furious.

"You mean to tell me that because you have unusual abilities, the princesses are holding you here and experimenting on you?!"

She was very angry. It was making the poor unicorn nervous. He didn't know what he said wrong, but he had to tread lightly here. He didn't want to get on the bad side of these ponies.

"Umm...Yes?"

Explodey cringed upon seeing their reaction.

"Please don't hurt me!" he begged.

"...Excuse me sir," said Sergeant Justice, "let me talk with my associate for a minute."

The two cultists moved aside and waited until they were out of the prisoner's earshot. Explodey McGee had retreated back into his cell to shake uncontrollably, while the two mares huddled together for their private discussion.

"What do we do?" the young earth pony asked.

"I don't know Justice. This poor colt is another victim of those tyrants, and one of the first cases of real solid proof about our claims. A pony being captured and experimented on just because Celestia doesn't understand his abilities? Is she hoping to weaponize him or something? Clearly he's been subject to abuse as well. He screamed 'don't hurt me!' Sounds to me like he's being mistreated by the guards too."

"Should we break him out?"

Arcane Arts smiled.

"Let's do it."

***

Ancient Tome knocked the other guards aside effortlessly and strode through the hallway. The Brotherhood had planned their roles in this carefully. The plan screwed up the moment they arrived at the gate, but damnit, they didn't have any other plan. In lieu of any kind of backup, the ponies instead kept to the original plan. Auntie and Swift Justice would go to the dungeons and try to find Lord Second, Chameleon would go to track down his son, and possibly Gold Coin and Soft Spoken as well, and he was tasked with finding the Reaper's Horn and retrieving it.

His was possibly the most dangerous job of all. The Reaper's Horn would be under heavy security until it was ready to be returned to the royal archives, assuming they decided to still keep it there anyway. He fully expected that the princesses were hanging on to it themselves, and he would actually have to pry the weapon from the grasp of Celestia herself to get it back. He was not looking forward to trying to fight an alicorn. It was like a mouse challenging a hawk.

Continuing his brisk trot towards the throne room, Ancient Tome passed by the door to the ball room, which was hanging open loosely. Somepony had left recently. Curiosity getting the better of him, Ancient Tome walked into the room and stopped in his tracks upon seeing it's single occupant.

The purple dragon snored lightly, smoking billowing from his nostrils with every breath. Ancient Tome knew him from the storybooks. Spike the Eternal. The last of the old dragons. His family were once at least acquaintances of Spike, but contact between the Sparkles and the ancient dragon faded a few generations back.

Spike's eye shot open. Ancient Tome watched in awe as the massive dragon rose up from his slumber and stretched his limbs, scraping the ceiling of the chamber. He yawned loudly, the sound booming through the chamber and echoing off the walls. The ceiling was actually too low for him, so Spike soon crouched down onto all fours again. The unicorn waited for him to speak, wondering what this ancient being had to say to a mortal such as himself.

"Hey there," he said in a remarkably casual tone, "I'm Spike. Nice to meet you."

Damn his voice was loud.

"...I'm...I'm uh...Ancient Tome..."

Spike's eyes widened and he leaned in close to his visitor.

"Ancient Tome?" he repeated, "As in Ancient Tome from the House of Sparkle, the great grandson of Spellbound Star?"

The unicorn nodded. Spike's eyes narrowed.

"As in the same Ancient Tome whom Celestia informs me fell in with the Brotherhood of Man?"

Tome began to sweat. Spike picked up on this immediately. The bearded unicorn turned to run away, but Spike moved first. A huge clawed hand came down on him before he could move. Spike's claws dug into the ground of the chamber in front of Tome and blocked his pathway. He closed his palm, and the dragon grasped Ancient Tome in his hand and brought him up to eye level with him.

"You are a disappointment and a disgrace to a thousand years of noble ponies. I knew your forefathers. I was there at the very beginning, before even the human. They were heroes, generous and kind ponies who wanted nothing more than to help Equestria and bring about an age of peace. You and your brotherhood are an affront to all that they stood for. They would be ashamed of you."

Face to face with an enemy he hadn't a hope in hell of beating in a fight or sucessfully fleeing from, Ancient Tome resorted to the next best thing he could think of. Trying to justify his actions to somepony who he would never convince.

"The Elements of Harmony made a mistake!" he shouted, "Lord Second was a hero too! He came to free this wretched world from that alicorn tyrant you associate with! He wanted to help Equestria too, by giving it back its freedom! All you're doing by siding with the princesses is denying ponies that freedom!"

"I've heard this entire speech before," the dragon replied coldly, "There have always been ponies like you. Every time there's a problem in your life or you disagree with something, you cowards shout 'tyrant' and point your hooves at Celestia and her sister. Let me tell you something now; I've known the princesses for over one thousand years. I'd dare say they're my last real friends. And I can tell you personally, that they are every bit the wonderful, selfless and caring ponies that they're made out to be. They care for all their subjects. I just wish certain subjects, like you, would see that for once."

"Why all the deceptions then?!" Tome demanded, "Celestia has been whitewashing history for thousands of years! The Legend of Nightmare Moon-"

"-Is completely true, and I know, because I was there."

"Okay. What about when the Spider Legion attacked Equestria? They changed the course of the moon to drown the army of spiders under a massive tidal wave, causing hundreds of innocent deaths in freak flooding! Then Celestia claims that it was the legion themselves who did it, to save her own image, but how could they have?! They don't control the moon! You know who does though? They do!"

"Except that it was the Spider Legion who moved the moon, using the derivative Elements of Harmony. They were intending to kill all those ponies. Celestia and Luna were the ones who stopped the moon from moving any further off course. I know because I was there too, captured by the legion at the time."

Ancient Tome raised an eyebrow.

"You were captured?"

"I was smaller then than you are now. I couldn't really put up much of a fight."

The old unicorn frowned.

"Why should I trust your word anyway?" he asked, "You're in with the princesses. How do I know you're not just repeating lies to me?"

"Because what would be the point of trying to convince you of the princesses' innocence when you're not ever leaving this castle again?"

***

Gold Coin hummed a jaunty tune as he kept moving from one interesting item to another. The vastness of the guest room and a diverse collection of ornaments, decorations, books, games and occasional comfy chair kept the earth pony occupied as he tried to look at everything. Mystic Chant, to his credit, had kept quiet and was reading his book.

All things considered, Gold Coin could honestly say that he liked the little colt. He was eager to learn, knew not to speak unless spoken to, and when he did speak it was always relevant to the conversation the adults were having, not just the usual interruption of inane questions or pointless observations that children usually had. To spend so much time around kids and not be annoyed was actually really refreshing.

"Hey? Mr. Coin?"

Speak of the devil. The earth pony turned to face the little blue unicorn, who was levitating Soft Spoken's book just in front of him. He floated it up into his face.

"This book is boring."

Gold Coin looked at the cover and froze. He knew this book. He had caught his sister reading it once, and it had been a very awkward situation. Why didn't he look at the cover before he randomly gave it to Mystic?

"Oh...Is it now?" he said nervously, "Well...Why don't you give it back here and I'll take it away."

Mystic Chant could clearly tell something was wrong, but did not protest. Quickly as he could, Gold Coin grabbed the book in his mouth and trotted over to the book shelf where he found it, placing it back on the top shelf.

"What the hell was Softy doing reading this?!" he thought to himself, "That sly old dog. I will be having words with him later."

He turned around and found Mystic was standing right behind him again.

"Out of curiosity..." he said, "Just how far into this thing did you read?"

"Far enough."

That sounded ominous.

"Far enough for what?"

"You know what I mean."

That sounded even worse.

"I mean, did you reach...that...scene?"

"I did, and have never been more disappointed. The other colts at school always talked about it as if it was the funniest thing ever, but that was just weird and wrong."

Gold Coin just stared at him.

"What the hell are they teaching you kids in schools nowadays?"

The door burst open on the other side of the room, and Soft Spoken ran in panting.

"Goldie, we've got to get out of here!" he shouted, "The palace is under attack! The Brotherhood of Man have come to kill us both!"

The business pony narrowed his eyes at Soft Spoken. There was something off about the older stallion this time. He had an idea what it was, but he wanted to make absolutely sure first.

"Softy, I have a question for you," he said.

"What?! Goldie, this really isn't the time!"

"I just need to know quickly before we go, but did you retrieve the real Reaper's Horn from the kitchen like I asked you to?"

Soft Spoken paused.

"No, I was attacked on my way down."

There it was.

The younger earth pony trotted over to the doorway, looking around the room briefly. Soft Spoken just looked nervous, and was trying to emphasise the need for urgency. He silently begged Gold Coin to hurry up, but instead of gathering his things and heading out with him, the stallion twisted around one hundred and eighty degrees and bucked him in the face.

The old butler went flying back into the corridor beyond and hit the wall hard. As he struck it, he flickered for a split second and then suddenly changed into a yellow unicorn mare, who groaned in pain. Mystic Chant ran over to the doorway, looking shocked, and the earth pony glared down at the impostor.

"Chameleon, master of disguise," he sneered, "You're getting old. The real Soft Spoken was never a panicky wreck like you played him. I thought you always made sure to research your roles before a performance?"

The unicorn jumped back onto her feet and growled. Mystic Chant ran back into the room in fear, but the earth pony stood his ground and scraped a hoof against the carpet in preparation. Chameleon threw a quick spell at her opponent, too fast for her to charge up anything powerful, but just quick enough that he couldn't dodge it or buck her again first.

Gold Coin was launched across the room and hit the back wall too. Unlike Chameleon, he was lucky enough that he didn't hit his head, so he had a much quicker recovery. Mystic Chant was hidden behind the water bed at the far end of the room and peaking out to watch the fight.

She charged at her former brother in arms, attempting to gore him with her horn, but Gold Coin rolled to the side and avoided her. She stopped herself before she hit the wall, but didn't turn around in time to save herself from another bucking. This one wasn't as hard as the last, so she shook it off and bucked him back.

Unicorns were obviously a lot physically weaker than earth ponies, so she held no illusions that she really hurt him, but all she needed was a momentary distraction. She charged a spell in her horn and spinned around to face her momentarily dazed opponent. Her horn exploded, and a shockwave flew across the entire room.

Gold Coin was knocked back across the room and landed in a heap by the far wall, coat singed and out of breath. The rest of the room had received much the same treatment. Fixtures and furniture were all broken and smashed, while the walls and floor were black with scorch marks and the covers on the beds and curtains by the balcony were all shriveled and burnt. Over by the water bed, which was now punctured and leaking all over him, Mystic Chant laid against the wall groaning and nursing a bump on his head.

"Hah!" the unicorn mare gloated, "What did you think was going to happen Goldie? You never were the most physically capable!"

Her horn lit up again, and Gold Coin was lifted into the air.

"I'm going to enjoy this..."

***

"Hey doc, why am I still in control?"

"Because when I'm in charge, you sprout fangs and get snake eyes. I'm trying to hide here. This is a sneaking mission."

The two turned a corner and into another corridor.

"Can I just say that you sound really normal when you're just speaking in my head? No weird emphasis on 'S' sounds or anything."

"Please don't talk to me about that. It's a very sensitive issue for me."

"Sure thing doc."

"And stop talking to me aloud! I can only reply mentally, so talk to me mentally! Ponies will think you're insane if they catch you talking to yourself!"

"I'm trying doc, but ever since you joined me I can't articulate my thoughts. It's easier to just say everything."

They turned another corner and entered into a huge long hallway with red carpets and multiple chandeliers. At the far end of it, he spotted a group of dead royal guards and piles of ash.

"Well what if we have to talk to somepony?"

"Then I'll talk to them and not you. Simple!"

Sliske considered that for a moment.

"You had better not get caught Broad Sword. I know you're not exactly the brightest, but please just try to be subtle."

"Will do doc!"

"And stop calling me doc. I'm not a doctor, just like my name is not Fluttershy."

"Yeah, but doc just suits you so much. So does Fluttershy actually, but I can't think of a nickname for Fluttershy. Do I just call you Flutter? Or Shy? Shy's shorter, but just feels weird to say. So I call you doc. I prefer doc to Sliske at any rate. I mean, what kind of name is Sliske anyway? You sound like an evil wizard or something."

"I am an evil wizard!"

"Okay then. Do some magic."

"I-"

Sliske stopped.

"I can't when I'm not in a unicorn host."

"And you're not in a unicorn host. Ergo you are not an evil wizard."

Sliske was dumbstruck. His host, Broad Sword no less, had actually outsmarted him.

"...Touché my friend. Touché."

Off to the side, another royal guard charged in. Broad Sword looked over to him and gave him a cheerful smile. Hidden away inside his friend's head though, Sliske stopped dead. He recognised this pony. He had possessed him before, and then later watched him stab Second through the back.

"Captain!" Broad Sword said happily, "Nice to see you again! Hey, I heard the castle's under attack from some cultists or something? Commander Hail sent me to wake up Spike, but I had no luck. Do you know what's going on here?"

Captain Chain Mail looked around nervously. He spotted the bodies and ash piles at the end of the corridor.

"Listen soldier, I need your help for this one," the captain said urgently, "You're right. The castle is under attack from a group of five ponies, maybe more. They are extremely dangerous and have already gone through a load of guards. I took out one of them, a traitor from my day guard called Iron Hoof, but I need your help to stop the others."

"Do whatever he says," Sliske ordered, "It'll be suspicious if you do anything other than what you normally would."

"Sure thing cappy!" the guard replied, "Just point me in the right direction."

Captain Chain Mail gave him a disdainful look.

"Private."

"Yes sir?"

"Never call me 'cappy' again."

"Okie dokey sir!"

"Come on. I think they went this way."

***

"Where are you taking me?"

Explodey looked around for a possible escape in case the worst came to the worst, but he was in the Canterlot dungeon right now. The only escape routes lead into the prison cells. The murderous duo kept pace either side of him and watched him closely. The green earth pony was still holding the bloody dagger in her mouth, and the old unicorn had switched from cold blooded killer to her doting grandmother persona. The change was jarring and unnatural. Explodey was certain she had to be possessed by an evil spirit or something.

"Oh, don't worry about a thing deary!" the old mare answered, "We're just going to take you someplace safe and warm. You can have a nice cup of tea and sit by a warm fire! You poor thing...It must be so dreadful living here..."

Explodey recalled an old play he had once seen about a pony with split personality disorder. By day he was mild mannered and innocent, but under the full moon he transformed into a wolf and would stab young mares to death in the shower at his motel. The play was called The Incredible Hulk.

"Can we not go anywhere?" he asked, "I'm rather comfortable here, and you ponies scare me."

"Scare you?" the earth pony repeated, "Why would we scare you? What have you got to be afraid of?"

Explodey looked at the floor as they passed by another dead guard with blood gushing out of his throat.

"Nothing in particular."

Up ahead though, two ponies emerged from a side corridor. Explodey's face lit up as he recognised the first one as his friend Captain Chain Mail.

"Captain!" he shouted, "Help me!"

The two cultists got into fighting pose. Chain Mail and the other guard stopped dead in their tracks. Chain Mail held up one of his hooves in surrender, as did his companion.

"Woah, woah, wait!" he shouted, "We surrender! Don't hurt him!"

Arcane Arts and Sergeant Justice both eased up slightly. Explodey just despaired.

"Now you two don't do anything rash now," the captain said carefully, "Let him go. Nopony else needs to be hurt here. Your enemies are us, he's just a prisoner here. Leave him out of it."

"We shall not!" the old unicorn replied, "This pony is innocent, and we will not allow your tyrant of a princess to experiment on him just for being different!"

"Experi..."

Chain Mail tried to take in what she was saying, but then remembered that both of these ponies were deluded cultists and that trying to reason with them or explain what was really going on would be pointless.

"Look, please just listen to me," he said desperately, "You've killed a lot of ponies here today. Good ponies. Ponies who were only doing their job and have no part in whatever it is you think our princesses get up to. I'm not here to debate with you about Celestia and Luna's actions or your beliefs. I just want to resolve this conflict and put an end to the bloodshed."

Arcane Arts smiled.

"Release the human," she said.

"What?"

"You heard me captain. Release the human, and we'll let this colt here go."

Chain Mail hesitated slightly. Explodey's eyes darted around. Both of them were trying to think of an alternative. Any alternative. Just something that would help them out. Explodey was certain that these monsters would kill him if he tried to use magic, and Chain Mail knew that they would kill him if he made a move either.

Then, Broad Sword stepped forward.

"I'll take you to his cell."

***

Princess Celestia sighed to herself as she sat back in her throne. Out in the middle of the chamber, Luna paced back and forth erratically. The entire room was vacant of guards for the purpose of their private discussion, but so far all either of them had been able to communicate was that the situation was bad and getting worse.

"I mean...All these years..." said Luna, "...How were we supposed to know? How? We never knew anything about either of them. I can't help but feel we've made a terrible mistake here."

"I know, dear sister," Celestia replied, "What can we do though? What could we have done? He always refused to talk! So many times when we encountered him and the First, we asked him what he was and where he came from. He was the one who refused to give us any answers. We can hardly be blamed for being ignorant of their relationship when they never told us anything about themselves."

Luna turned to face her sister.

"Shouldn't we have been able to pick up on that though?" she asked, "I never really noticed it before, but it's so obvious looking at photographs of them both. I'm not familiar with their biology, but they look similar! The Second always looked older, because he had wrinkled skin on the forehead and the hair on his head was grey, just like some older ponies' manes lose colour as they age! And the First always had the appearance of younger pony, with a slimmer figure and bad acne..."

"Sister..."

"I mean, Second even had a moustache!"

"Sister!"

Celestia slid off the throne and trotted down over towards the dark alicorn. Luna was quiet as her sister embraced her with one of her wings.

"It's not your fault, it's mine," she said, "You're right. We should have guessed. But I'm the one who spent the most time dealing with the both of them. You can't be blamed for not picking up on that when you only had four encounters with them."

"Still though...Celestia we killed his son! If he ever needed a reason to take revenge on us, he has it now! What have we done?!"

"Luna...We weren't the ones who killed First. Responsibility rests with us, but we never wanted to kill him. I never wanted to see anypony killed. Sometimes, things happen which we just can't predict, like Steel Hammer's unexpected actions during that battle. And don't forget, that even if we had known who they were to each other, Second and First were still a threat to Equestria as a whole, and we still would have had to fight them. Perhaps it would have ended differently if we'd know the truth, but there still would have been chaos and violence in the meantime."

Luna remained silent, but the quiet was broken by the sound of a knocking on the door. It was a loud knocking too. The sisters broke apart and faced the door as it opened, and on the other side they could see Spike's massive form trying to squeeze into the entrance chamber. The two princesses watched the comical scene for a moment as Spike then tried to get into the throne room.

He had trouble, but by contorting his body and laying at the right angle, eventually the giant purple dragon was able to squeeze his way inside without breaking the door frame. Celestia thought it very amusing at first, until she saw that Spike was carrying a prisoner. He opened his hand a dropped a bearded grey unicorn at their feet, who groaned in pain as he tried to stand up again.

"Ugh..."

"Ancient Tome," said Celestia, "You're on our blacklist. Two ponies came here earlier today, and gave my sister the Reaper's Horn and a list of names. A list of ponies who are a part of the Brotherhood of Man. They named you the leader."

Tome glared up at the princesses. It no longer mattered. He saw no point in bothering to hide his hate anymore.

"I am," he answered.

"Why?" she asked, "Why would you ever get involved in a group like the Brotherhood? You're a Sparkle! You're supposed to be better than that!"

"The Sparkles have always lead the Brotherhood!" Tome snarled, "Ever since Twilight's day, our family has played host to their meetings and directed their forces, gathering the resources and ponies needed to make sure that we have roots everywhere in Equestria and access to everything we need to bring you down and release Equestria's rightful ruler!"

"You ignorant foal."

Tome looked up at Spike, whose face was nothing but pure rage.

"Twilight would never have allowed such a thing within her family. She loved the princess like a mother and detested those that would undermine the peace she tried to create. I don't know what your elders told you, but the Brotherhood's infection of your family was a lot more recent than that."

"Their infection of all the families of the elements," said Luna, "Soft Spoken and Gold Coin provided me with a list of Brotherhood members, and I count among them descendents of all the original Elements of Harmony."

Spike looked up at her suddenly.

"Are you serious, princess?" he asked.

Luna nodded.

"We didn't get confirmation until recently, but we traced several of them back to the elements. As well as Tome and Lady Arcane Arts from the Sparkle family, we were able to link a unicorn called Chameleon to back to Rarity, a soldier of Celestia's day guard called Iron Hoof to Fluttershy, and a racing celebrity called Sun Rise to the lineage of Rainbow Dash."

Spike closed his eyes and sighed. Ancient Tome just simmered angrily, not at all happy that they had gotten so many names out of that traitor Gold Coin, that they had discovered that much about their order's origins, or that when he tried to tell them the rest they simply denied it.

"What about the others?" Spike asked, "Applejack and Pinkie? Do they have descendents among the Brotherhood?"

"We don't have the names of all of them," Celestia replied, "We're still looking for the rest."

Ancient Tome's ears pricked. They didn't have all the names? How though? Goldie knew all their names! Unless he didn't tell them everything...They hadn't mentioned him, and he was in fact descended from Applejack. Did they not know he was in the Brotherhood too? Was he withholding some names? Why? To protect himself? Or was his betrayal all part of a plan?

Tome decided to keep quiet. He wouldn't expose Gold Coin yet. If he did have some ulterior motive, he'd wait to see what it was first.

"As for you," she continued, "You will be held here for questioning. I will have a guard summoned to take you to the dungeon."

***

Gold Coin screamed in pain as he smacked into the wall again. Chameleon was levitating his body and throwing him into objects as she had done with many of the guards before. This time though, she intended to draw it out and make her victim suffer. She didn't hit him hard. Just enough to hurt him and make him bleed, but not enough to kill him right away.

"Agghhhh!" the earth pony moaned, "Stop! Please!"

She didn't let up. The unicorn threw him again and smashed the pony against the wall yet again. As the torture continued, she felt a sting in her flank and heard a loud zapping sound, causing her to suddenly drop her victim. Curious, she turned her head to face the source of the annoyance, and saw Mystic Chant waiting behind her. He looked angry at her, which was just adorable.

"Let him go!" the little colt shouted.

He fired a spell at her. A lightning bolt spell. It hit her in the flank again and caused that same stinging sensation from before. Mystery solved.

"Hmm...Nope."

Chameleon picked him up and threw him to the other side of the room too. This time she did it a lot more gently, enough so that he didn't go flying into anything, but it still hurt him. Satisfied that the colt was dealt with, she shifted her focus back to Gold Coin, but found to her surprise that another pony had appeared before her.

"You hurt either one of them again and you'll regret it."

It was that old butler. Soft Spoken. The one who had caused all of this. He would have to suffer too. She charged another spell.

"I mean it," he interrupted, "Do not make an enemy of me."

Chameleon faltered. The stallion wasn't very physically imposing, and he didn't even sound very threatening, but something about his words was just disarming.

"No!" she protested, "Tomey warned me about you! You're not brainwashing me!"

She shot the spell at him anyway. The old pony flew back into the wall just like Gold Coin had, and a small cut appeared on his forehead. She hit him with less force than she did the other two, but somehow knocked him out cold anyway.

With an evil grin, the unicorn turned her attention back to Gold Coin. She looked over to the balcony, and an idea came to her.

Mystic Chant looked up at her as she trotted past, and Gold Coin floated lazily behind her, bruised all over his face and burned all over his body. He looked desperately at the colt, and disappeared with his soon-to-be-murderer through the curtains and onto the large balcony outside.

In the cold night air, Gold Coin flailed about helplessly and tried to get away. Chameleon obliged him, and dropped the pony onto the balcony floor. He tried to get away, but she then held him down with magic, and then focused her attention upwards.

Directly above her was a huge gargoyle statue decorating the palace, an addition made by Luna about two hundred years ago when she went through a period of obsession with old architectural styles. The gargoyle looked down at them hungrily. Actual gargoyles hadn't been around for a while now, but the one hanging above them now was terrifyingly realistic.

"Yes, that'll do nicely."

Chameleon reached out to the gargoyle with her magic and tried to pull it off it's perch. It was a lot heavier than it looked, and trying to bring it down was a pain. To compensate, she let go of Gold Coin to save herself some magic, knowing he couldn't go far anyway. The statue came loose and she floated it above her. It was difficult to move, but she could do it if she focused.

"Now's the end for you Goldie!"

The yellow unicorn grinned maniacally and lowered the statue. Gold Coin looked terrified. He knew what she was planning. She began to move it over to him, and-

ZAP.

"Agh!"

For a split second, Chameleon was annoyed by a familiar stinging sensation, but then stopped. She had been standing beneath it. She was stupid. It was such a stupid mistake. The statue had fallen on top of her instead of Gold Coin. She had failed to move it over to her victim in time. Instead, the huge lump of stone landed on her instead.

Mystic Chant looked on in horror at what he had caused. A sickening crunch and a cry of pain from the unicorn could be heard as the statue made contact, and the resulting mess was difficult to look at. The young colt just stood there, mouth agape. On the other side of the pile of rubble that buried Chameleon's body, Gold Coin shifted and pulled himself up over the top of it. He smiled weakly at Mystic, and then fell unconscious.

***

Broad Sword walked over to the cultists confidently. Captain Chain Mail just felt betrayed, and said nothing.

"Wise move soldier," said the green earth pony, "You're making the right decision."

The guard smiled at her. Sergeant Justice returned it. Without warning though, Broad Sword then spat directly in her face and ran for it.

"Agh!" she cried out.

The two cultists prepared to attack, but the police sergeant then began screaming. Arcane Arts turned to see what was wrong with her, and saw to her horror that a set of massive jagged teeth were growing in her mouth. Justice was screaming in fear, not pain.

"No! What did you do?!" she shouted at the guards.

Chain Mail looked on, completely bewildered. The earth pony was mutating right before his eyes, and all he could do was stare.

"I am fine Lady Artsssssssssssssssssss..."

Chain Mail recognised that voice.

Oh sweet Celestia no.

"Now ssssssssssssstay sssssssssssstill..."

The pony formerly known as Justice leapt onto the elderly mare and tackled her to the ground. She opened her mouth, revealing a long forked tongue. Arcane Arts didn't scream. She was tougher than that. She began to charge a spell, but then the purpose of the tongue became clear as it wrapped around her horn, and the spell was suddenly negated.

"I didn't know he could do that," Broad Sword mused.

The tongue withdrew from his victim's horn, and then shot down her throat instead. Explodey McGee took this opportunity to run away and over to the two guards. The three stallions watched in awe as Sliske pulled back against the cultist and caused the tongue to snap in half. The serpentine features immediately receded back into the green earth pony's body, and she fell to the ground limply. Lady Arcane Arts meanwhile seemed to have a heart attack, as she started wriggling about erratically.

She stopped.

"Back in control. Jusssssssssst like old timessssssssss..."

The old unicorn climbed back to her feet, and revealed that she had now gained Sliske's signature mutations as well. She grinned darkly at them, and then levitated the other cultist up beside her, which she turned her attention to.

"Rotten to the core thisssssssss one. Callssssssssss herssssssself Jussssssssticccce and pretendssssssss to uphold the law, and yet hassssssss killed sssssso many innoccccccentssssss hersssssself. I am dissssgusssssssted."

The purple glow around the pony intensified for a moment, and less than a second later, Sergeant Justice exploded into a cloud of ash. The ponies present were all coated in grey as her remains billowed everywhere through the prison. Chain Mail was frozen in place, and Explodey's legs were shaking. Broad Sword remained as cheerful and oblivious as ever.

"Nice work doc!" he complimented, "Though I think that last spell was a little harsh."

"Maybe..." Sliske conceded, "Perhapssssssss I sssssshould practiccccccce a bit more resssssstraint in future."

"Um..."

The addition of a new voice caught the attention of everypony remaining. Chain Mail, Broad Sword, Explodey and Sliske all looked over to the entrance to the prison, where a stunned guard stood at the steps, accompanied by an equally stunned Ancient Tome, wearing a magic-restraining bolt around his horn.

"I was...told by the princess...to...bring this new inmate here..." he explained, "Uh...Should I...come back later?"

***

Twenty minutes later, and everypony gathered once more in the royal throne room. Celestia and Luna sat atop the small set of steps and looked down on the colourful collection of individuals waiting around the room.

Spike stood by the back wall, cramped up as much as possible so he didn't take up too much space. Sir Ancient Tome and the possessed Lady Arcane Arts both wore magic restraining bolts and waited by the side of the thrones, flanked either side by a number of angry looking royal guards, eager to avenge their fallen friends.

Broad Sword, the rogue guard, was cuffed at the hooves and being watched closely by Captain Chain Mail, and Explodey McGee, for the first time in a while, wandered around freely and just satisfying his natural curiosity by inspecting wall decorations or talking to other ponies. He was currently conversing with Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant, just recovered from their own ordeal. Soft Spoken was smiling in spite of his injury, while the young colt just looked disturbed. Sadly no sign of Gold Coin. He was still in the infirmary along with Iron Hoof, their other arrest made that evening.

"Okay everypony, quiet! Pipe down!" Celestia ordered.

The ponies all turned their attention to the them. Royal guard, prisoner, misplaced civilian and dragon alike all waited for what their princesses had to say.

"Today has been a trying day," she said wearily, "We lost a lot of good ponies today to a needless cause, but thankfully some good has come out of it. I want to thank everypony here who had a hand in stopping the evil that is the Brotherhood of Man. Captain Chain Mail, Mr. Gold Coin, Spike, and much as it pains me to say it, Sliske, all had a hoof in stopping their rampage today, and they have our gratitude for that."

The guards and civilians all stomped their hooves in applause. At the back of the room, Spike clapped his hands as well. Celestia raised a hoof to silence them, indicating that the speech was not over, and gestured to Luna for her to continue. She did not continue though, for even when the sound of stomping cleared up, somepony was still clapping, and it was not Spike.

The crowd all looked to the back of the room. Between the open doors, Lord Second stood in his full attire once more, having evidently tracked down and retrieved his clothes. He was clapping slowly, but upon noticing that all eyes were on him, he let his hands fall limply to the side, and he strode into the room through the crowd of ponies.

"Wonderful speech Celly, really," he said, "You're all wonderful, I hope you know."

"What do you want Second?" Luna demanded.

"I want to fucking retire, but that ain't happening as long I'm stuck in this fucking country of yours! How am I still expected to even move? I'm one thousand and forty five! Most men my biological age are just praying for the day they can quit their jobs and live off their relatives, and most men my actual age have been dead for centuries! And yet, here I am, slugging through crap like being stabbed and getting imprisoned in stone, and people still expect me to do stuff! I don't want to do stuff! I'm tired! Fuck you guys!"

Celestia raised an eyebrow.

"Okay...So...You want to...leave Equestria? Is that what you're saying?"

"Finally, the bitch gets it!"

"Well, if you want our help in getting home-"

"Oh no! It doesn't work like that!" Second screamed, "I would like it work that way, but it fucking doesn't! And do you know why?! Dramatic convenience, that's why! This is a three act story, and I have to slug through that too, even if I don't want to!"

"What?" asked Celestia, "Second, you're not making any sense."

"I don't have to make sense!" he shouted back, "All you need to know, is that I plan on destroying Equestria in about a week's time. Go get your precious Elements of Harmony and think of a way to stop me, because five days from now, I'm going to come marching back into this city with my undead hordes, and anyone in the way is going to get eaten."

The princesses eyes widened at the threat the human made.

"Now wait Second, please just be reasonable-"

"Too late! I'm the villain! Mighty Hasbro has decided! Next week is zombie apocalypse week. Deal with it!"

He looked over to Luna.

"Oh, and I'll be taking that."

Second held out his hand. Luna tried to pull it back, but the Reaper's Horn shot out from behind her and flew right into his grasp. The human took the weapon and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it closely. He opened it up with a click, and pulled some small red things from a pocket in his coat and placed them inside it.

"It's called a SPAS 12," he said, "Reaper's Horn my fucking ass. Do you ponies have to try and turn everything into an object of mystery and wonder? It's not magic, it's a goddamn gun. Granted, it sure as hell shouldn't be able to kill you, but then again, I shouldn't be able to shoot lasers from my hands and jump over skyscrapers, so this is actually less weird to me."

He raised the weapon and pointed it at Celestia.

"Remember the last time I did this princess?" he asked.

Celestia raised her wing and looked underneath it at the scars.

"Yeah, I won't miss this time."

***

A consciousness became aware of itself. It stirred slightly. The mind reached out, and found language. It was a she. It had a gender identity. Now for the rest of that identity. Memories. It found memories. It looked through them and attached those memories to itself. The mind had an identity now. It was Princess Celestia of Equestria.

The princess probed around some more. The rest of the mind was all here. Good. Now where was that body? She felt around, and located some nerves. Gradually, she gained control of something. It didn't feel like her body. It was lighter. The senses returned. She woke up.

The princess saw nothing but mist. Mist in all directions. She stood up. Looking herself over, she was glad to find that she did in fact have a body. It still felt lighter though. She turned in place to look the scene over, and found only more mist. She couldn't see anything. It was just a white void.

Then there were hoofsteps. No. Not hoofsteps. Those weren't hooves. The sound was different, and there were only two instead of four. That implied bad things. Celestia's memories indicated that the human was still around. That could be Lord Second. She turned to face her enemy.

That wasn't Lord Second. He was too skinny and short. His hair was light brown instead of grey, and he lacked the moustache and wrinkles. It was definitely a human, but it wasn't the human. It was a different human, but it was still a human she knew. Lord Second's partner in crime. His companion. His son. Lord First. Anthony.

He looked blankly at her, and spread his arms either side of him to indicate the mist.

"Welcome to the afterlife princess," he said, "You're dead."

END

Author's notes:

And here we are at the end of chapter five. Some notes about this part for those of you that care.

The criticisms of my last chapter were far fewer than those of previous ones. I can only take that as a sign I'm doing something right, but criticisms are still there, and I still have to work on some aspects. Yours Sincerely on Equestria Daily pointed out a few grammar mistakes I made last time, most prominently that I've apparently been using 'It's' where I should have been using 'Its'. Those mistakes are still in this chapter because I haven't been screening them yet, but I plan to go back and correct all instances of it's/its in a later revision, including this chapter. Not now though, because it's boring and late at night, and I have to take care of my little brother because mum's out.

Side note: It is actually spelled 'mum' here in Britain. I actually think it's weird too. I've been exposed to American TV my whole life, but I still write it that way. I wonder why it is spellings deviate like that? You would have thought that with the advent of the dictionary there would be fixed spellings for all words, and yet some still slip through the cracks. Weird.

I've been told that the difference between Spike in the show and Spike in Human is a bit jarring, and I plan to address that too. I actually wanted to fit in a few flashbacks explaining how Spike became the way he is now, but given everything else happening in the chapter, it just felt out of place and slowed everything down, so it may have to wait. Maybe I'll explore the issue in an interlude chapter, if I get sufficient support for the idea.

The light grimdark tag on EqD is coming into play now, because now we're gonna start killing off some characters. Those of you that thought some of the Brotherhood members were a tad unnecessary now see their purpose: Cannon fodder. I know, I know. Making characters to be cannon fodder is poor practice, but you know what? I need some ponies to die in certain places in this fic, and I really don't have time to to make sure the audience builds an emotional attatchment to each of them. Besides, they were all villains. If I did devote time to trying to give them a character before I killed them off, would anyone have actually been sad when they died? Thought not.

And as a final note, I've been thinking of getting a new image for the story. The current one was thrown together with some clip art and MS paint editing. It served it's purpose, but I look at it and I keep thinking it looks like it should be attached to a Conversion Bureau fic. I had an idea for another image, a big cinematic sort of one that looked like a movie poster, but I have no art skills or artistically inclined friends, so no dice on that one. By the description, I never wanted to read Past Sins, but that image, oh that image, I couldn't resist, and I think that what Human needs is something like that, to get curious people interested. I feel bad for begging, but if anyone reading this feels it would be worth your time and that you're a competent artist, give me a link to your DA profile or anywhere else I can find some examples of your work, and I may get in touch. Though be warned that my idea comes with a need to draw a detailed human face.

Other than that, thanks for reading and thanks for being so great about everything. I'll have to wait until the finale to really call it, but I think this experiment so far has been a sucess.

Interlude 1: "Where Do Ponies Go When They Die?"

"...First, what is going on?"

"I told you. You're dead. This is the afterlife. And I'm God."

The human was deadly serious as he told the now deceased Princess Celestia the grim news. It seemed almost surreal to be told this.

"You are not God!" Celestia replied with an amused laugh.

"Blasphemy. You're lucky I don't cast you out or smite you or something."

The princess backed away from this, no longer laughing. First remained just as serious as ever.

"The bottom line is," he continued, "Your life ended about five minutes ago, under the ministrations of my father the Second."

Celestia frowned, remembering the event clearly. He was right. Second had killed her. She remembered it vividly.

"Yes..." she said sadly, "He...I remember now..."

Now it was First's turn to frown.

"You ruined the sequence," he said simply.

"The what now?"

"You skipped your next line, and ruined it. I wanted to do this Q reference properly. None of the other ponies I've had in here for one thousand years knew me sufficiently to do this scene right, and then you come along, the one pony who could possibly have the good knowledge to question my Godhood and make the comment about the universe not being so badly designed, and you fuck it up."

First turned away from her in a huff.

"Honestly princess, do you WANT to depress me? Because that's what you're doing."

For a moment, there was just awkward silence. Celestia broke it with a question.

"What are you?"

First turned back to her, giving her a half smile.

"The next tier, princess. If you're the God of Equestria, then let's call me the Elder God."

"Elder God?"

"Our origin lies outside your reality, but yours is rooted firmly in our design. Humans made an entire universe, completely by accident. We didn't know we wielded such power. The multiverse is a big place though, princess. Everything we decided, it became so, here. Not just what we wrote or drew though. Even the words of the creators shape your reality."

"Words of the creators? You're talking about writing and drawing. Tell me - What are we exactly? How were we created? Your father never told us. He just dangles the information over our heads with claims that we can never understand. Can you please explain to me what it is he's so determined we never know?"

There was a pause, as First looked off to the side, seemingly staring into the endless mist.

"Princess, do you know that I really do respect you?"

"But..."

"No really. I genuinely do. I know I may not have shown it during our lives, but my heart always went out to you. So often were people caught in cries of 'tyrant' and 'troll', that they would sometimes forget that was their own cynicism and dark sense of humour talking. The creators didn't make you to be either of those things."

"What did they make me as then?"

"A good pony Celestia. I sometimes think we forgot just how good you really were."

Lord First turned to face her properly again, now looking much sadder.

"But you know something? I believe in you. I believe that you're a stronger mare than that. I think I can trust you with the information, and I can trust that you won't go mad from the revelation. What makes me hesitate to tell you, is that even if you don't go mad, this will change you."

He looked sternly at her.

"Celestia. Do you love your subjects?"

The princess was surprised by the question.

"Of course I do! Every single one of them!" she replied.

"Do you care for them?"

"Yes!"

"Would you love and care for them, no matter what they were? If they were all little more than roaches, but were still the same inside, would you treat them any differently than you did before?"

Celestia hesitated for a second, but nonetheless replied with certainty.

"No."

"I ask you princess, because if I tell you everything, I could change the way you look at your little ponies forever. I don't want you to ever stop loving them, because they need you to. Equestria simply couldn't survive you forsaking it."

The princess became angry.

"I would NEVER do such a thing! I will always care for all my subjects, no matter what they are!"

First smiled warmly at her and held out a hand to her.

"Then come with me Celestia," he said, "Let me share the secrets of the Elder Gods."

***

Second lowered the gun. The corpse of Princess Celestia of Equestria fell down unceremoniously, left in a bloody heap just in front of her throne. Everyone in the room stared with wide eyes and open mouths. Luna was just crying silently. Second ignored her and reloaded the gun.

"That was very therapeutic," he said, "I for one feel much better now."

He turned to face the rest of the room.

"Now, if the rest of you don't mind, I will be leaving now. I have an apocalypse to plan. Luna, I'll be back in five days to plaster your brains over the walls as well. See to it that you're prepared when I come. Let's go Sliske."

Second threw the shotgun into his left hand and snapped his fingers with his right. The moment he did, the magic restraining bolt around Lady Arcane Arts' horn popped and flew off, freeing the possessed mare and the alien living in her head. Sliske stepped forward gingerly, nervous of the guards all around him.

He looked about at the accusing glares of the other ponies there, his gaze finally meeting Broad Sword, who was cuffed at the hooves and being watched by Captain Chain Mail.

"Doc? You're not leaving are you?" he said sadly.

"I'm sssssssssssorry, I really am."

"Come on doc! You know I'd never turn my back on you!"

"Broad Sssssssssword, we've only known each other for a day."

"Yeah! But we're still friends right? Friends stick together! Second isn't your friend, and he just killed the princess! Going with him can only lead to trouble."

"You betrayed the princcccccesssssssss jussssssssst by hossssssting me."

"Never! I'm always loyal to the princess!"

"My goal wassssss to posssssessssssss the princccccesssssss. We were working againssssst each other. You could not possssssssibly have remained loyal to the both of usssssssssss. If it came down to it, who would you have chosssssen?"

"I could too have remained loyal to both! I could have just refused to choose."

Sliske paused.

"You are ssssssssomething ssssssspecial Broad Sssssssword. I find your dedication touching."

"Please don't leave doc. You'll end up regretting it."

The crazy snake alien sighed loudly, and turned to face the human.

"Sssssssssecond, can we do thisssssss another time?"

Second raised an eyebrow.

"Found another outlet for your perversions, have you?"

"I don't even like poniessssssss!" Sliske protested.

"And yet you like humans?"

"What do you want? A sssssssigned apology? It'sssssss your fault for walking on two legssssss all the time."

"...What a weird thing to be attracted to."

"I don't have to jusssssstify mysssssself to you!"

"I would argue that you do."

"Well I don't. Sssssssssscrew you."

Second shrugged.

"Alrighty then. Do whatever you want. But be warned that you no longer have my protection, from either the authorities here or the zombies that will be here later. You're not going to enjoy that, trust me. Do you know what happens if your host dies with you still inside?"

"No. That'ssssssssss never happened before."

"Well, I actually do know, and believe me, it's not pleasant."

The human slung his shotgun over his shoulder and walked across the large chamber towards the exit, a casual swagger in his step. Half way between him and the door though, a pony ran out in front of Second to block his exit.

"No!" said Captain Chain Mail, "You're not leaving! You don't get to just waltz in here, kill the beloved ruler of Equestria, and then just walk out! Surrender right now, or I swear I will gut you like a fish!"

To punctuate his threat, the captain reached to his side and pulled out his sword. It wasn't exactly an effective weapon, but for some reason that blade kept bringing him good luck today. Second smirked slightly at the sight of the pony in his way. He held his arms out either side of him confidently.

"Go on. Try it," he dared.

"I can hit you, remember? I'm the one who stabbed you this morning. You seemed pretty freaked out at the time. Do you really want that to happen again?"

"Oh, I am so fucking scared," the human replied, "Yes, I do remember. You can actually hit me. Big deal. This isn't the climax, so you can't do shit to me yet. We're at the low point of the story where all the talky stuff happens, but you need stuff to talk about, like dear old Celly's death. I think I still have enough fight in me to kill a few innocent bystanders to generate conversation though. If you want to fight me, in the middle of this crowd of innocent ponies, who could easily be killed by a stray attack, by all means try it. Lord knows I don't care anymore."

Chain Mail hesitated. The human just rolled his eyes at the pony and walked past him, pushing the captain aside unceremoniously.

"See you later Humanborn. Good luck with your training, and my sympathies for your loss."

Second walked through the doors, turned to the side, and disappeared into the castle beyond, leaving the throne room in silence. Chain Mail dropped his sword, which clattered loudly onto the floor. The other ponies in the room seemed to begin to silently whisper to each other. Over by the throne, Luna laid on the ground next to her sister and covered her face with her hooves.

***

Celestia and First walked through the mists together. The chill air and the cold stone beneath the princess's hooves gave the whole place a feeling of emptiness and solitude. She wanted to ask about it, so very much, but it just seemed inappropriate to break the silence as the human lead her through the white void.

They came to a stop. First raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Celestia almost had to recoil as a sudden wind blew through out of nowhere. Within moments, the wind died down again, and the mists had disappeared with it, leaving behind an entirely new landscape. Celestia's eyes widened with shock as she saw that the two of them now stood atop a large cliff, overlooking a lush green valley.

Below, grassy fields stretched out for miles. Trees and flowers and bushes of many exotic varieties were scattered around, and the fields were dotted with large hills and small wooded areas. A river ran through the valley as well, twisting and turning all over the landscape and forming into a lake or waterfall at points. What caught Celestia's eye the most however, was not the land that laid before her, but its inhabitants. Spread out across the valley, covering it almost end to end, laughing and frolicking, were billions upon billions upon billions of ponies.

The vastness of it all was too much to take in.

"I..." said the princess, "I can't..."

She was breathless. First gave her a wry smile.

"It's my greatest work," he said, "A project I spent all of twelve minutes on. This princess, is the afterlife. Well and truly. My father has a great hand in earthly matters. The majority of his power rests in his influence over world building, over the cosmos, and over certain individuals that you may have clashed with. Me? My power is that over the pony afterlife. This is my domain, and where I am strongest."

First snapped his fingers again, and a pitcher of water and two glasses appeared to his left, floating in the air. He grabbed a glass out of the air and held it up, while the pitcher poured water into it for him.

"Drink, princess?"

Celestia grabbed the other glass with her magic, as the pitcher poured itself for her too. First downed his glass.

"Basically, you could say that I became God in the conventional sense. You're impressive princess, don't get me wrong. You've got the power to back up your title, but you don't really get the full scope of Godhood. I on the other hand deal with all that. The spiritual immortality, the power over creation, the power over the afterlife, and yes, even prayers."

He tapped the side of his head.

"I can hear them all up here," he explained, "Not that they're mine of course. Ponies consider you to be their God. You can't hear their prayers though. You aren't psychic. That means all your mental fan mail gets redirected to me, strangely enough. At first it was like having a thousand angry bees in my head, but after a thousand years, I gradually learned to sort through it. Now it's just a low buzz, and I can concentrate on and answer individual ones. With some help of course."

The princess gulped down her drink in a single swig. First snapped his fingers again to make the glasses vanish.

"If you look down there, you'll see every single pony who ever lived. If you move into the valleys beyond here, you'll meet every griffin, every manticore, every zebra, and every dragon. Well, almost every dragon anyway. Only the pre-Eclipse Crisis ones ended up here, obviously. The rest of them are right where you left them."

First looked sideways at the princess, giving her a dark look. Celestia shuddered as she remembered the event he was referring to.

"Nevertheless," he continued, undaunted, "Everypony who dies ends up here. And from my death onwards, everypony who arrives here meets me in the mists before I escort them in, as a kind of tradition. This place is based on some ideas of another afterlife that some humans believe in. 'I will walk through the valley of shadows', they say. That's a famous quote from a human holy book. Some take that to mean that the path to Heaven means you have to walk through Hell first. Those mists back there? That was Hell."

Celestia just remained silent. She looked over the valley below, and at the happy faces of all the ponies down there. She tried to see if she recognised any of them.

"Would Twilight Sparkle be down there?" she asked.

"No."

Celestia looked at First with surprise.

"She didn't stay," he explained, "Her and the rest of the elements took up residence elsewhere. You won't find them in my afterlife. They became part of a different one."

"What do you mean by that?"

First shrugged.

"I don't know."

"First..."

"I mean it. I really don't know. This isn't like what my father did, where he knows the answers and just chooses not to tell you. I genuinely have no idea where their spirits reside. I can see everything that happens in the mortal world, and I can feel everything that happens here, but they're in the space between both. I can find no trace of them."

Celestia paused.

"Lord First, this is all very interesting, but it doesn't answer my question. What is our true nature? What was it that you and Lord Second were so desperate to hide from us?"

First looked at her briefly, and walked over to the very edge of the cliff. Suddenly, he called out across the valley, in a loud and booming voice that dwarfed even Spike's and Luna's Royal Canterlot Voice combined.

"CALLING COLGATE."

There was a flash of light nearby, and a blue unicorn with a mane evenly split into white and blue sides stood next to them. Celestia noticed that she had an hourglass cutie mark.

"You called my Lord?" she asked.

First turned back to Celestia.

"This is Colgate. She was a citizen of Ponyville over one thousand years ago, and personally knew your student Twilight Sparkle in those days of her studies on friendship."

Celestia blinked, not entirely sure what the purpose of showing her this pony was. Before she could say anything though, First turned back to the cliff top.

"CALLING BLUE MANE."

There was another flash of light, and suddenly a second unicorn appeared next to them. Princess Celestia had to do a double take. This one was EXACTLY like Colgate, right down to the cutie mark, but she lacked the white parts of her mane. Other than that though, they could have been twins.

"Blue Mane, do you and Colgate have any relation at all?" First asked.

"No my Lord," they both replied in unison.

Damn that was creepy. Lord First looked over his shoulder back at the cliff edge.

"CALLING BRIGHT SMILES."

A third unicorn joined them. This one looked just like Colgate, but she had a different cutie mark, this time one of a wagon wheel.

"CALLING WHITE MANE."

A fourth unicorn. This one was Blue Mane again with white instead of blue.

"CALLING ROMANA."

A fifth unicorn. There wasn't even any difference this time. This one was just Colgate again.

"CALLING WINTER BLUE, ICEY BLUE, AND DESPERADO."

Three more ponies joined them, and this time they weren't all unicorns. One was an earth pony and one was a pegasus. Other than that, they were still identical to Colgate. The third one was still a unicorn, but this one was wearing a hat, and in fact had that same hat as her cutie mark. Celestia was just staring in silent shock at the large collection of nearly identical ponies.

First stepped in again.

"Just to clarify, none of you have ANY relation at all?" he asked.

The answer was a universal 'no'.

"Dismissed."

The ponies turned to all leave again, most of them teleporting or flying away, except the one earth pony who stumbled around for a bit, before remembering that she arrived by walking up a large set of stone steps and leaving to find those steps again. Once they were alone once more, Celestia looked to the human again.

"What was that?" she asked.

"That was me demonstrating a terrible truth," First replied, "And that terrible truth is that not everypony is special. Colgate was the original, and was designed by human hands. All the others are her knockoffs, her clones and her recolours. The truth is, that your universe exists only in its capacity to entertain humans, and the humans that made it put no effort into making them."

Celestia was horrified.

"Tha...That's terrible!" she said.

The First nodded sadly.

"And it's only going to get worse from here," he replied, "If you'll come with me Celestia, I'll explain to you the concept of the fourth wall."

END

Author's notes:

I'm sorry. Well and truly sorry. I've been writing at such a pace for the first few chapters that I've probably gotten more than a few of you used to the concept of a story that updates weekly with over ten thousand words per chapter. Sadly, this week I couldn't deliver, and I feel like a dick. Fortunately though, it works out, because with how I planned out next chapter, these scenes here were vital, but just stuck out and clashed horribly with the rest of it, so I can take them and recycle them into an Interlude to tide you over, while also removing the problem of pacing that these created in the real chapter 6.

I read over the criticisms of my last chapter. Other than the usual grammar fixes I had to make, the most consistent complaint I heard was that the action scenes lacked an emotional aspect, and it made it hard to connect with them. I had similar though different complaints about the Spike and Second fight in chapter 4. I'm normally much better with action scenes than this, but this is my first time writing ponies, so I'm still new to it. Usually when I right fight scenes it involves guns and leet ninja skillz and robots and mutants shooting electricity at eachother, so I've still got to work on some parts. I focused too greatly on describing action and not enough on characters though, and next time I will ammend that. I can't do anything yet because there are no fight scenes in this interlude, and there won't be any more next chapter either, (probably), but I can promise you the next action sequence will be better.

I also probably won't be submitting this to Equestria Daily just because it's so short. It's hardly even worth it. I don't think I'll bother the staff on my account just yet. I'll send this in with chapter 6 when that's done. I think most of my readers are following this story through Fimfiction anyway. And if they aren't and they need the post on EqD to update to know to go here, well then they'll have a little extra surprise when they go to read chapter 6 next week, won't they?

Other than that, thanks for reading.

Chapter 6: You Must Never Know

"Thanks to the Sun for warming the land,
Thanks to the Moon for bringing the tides to the sand,
Thanks to the mortals, who heeded our call,
And thanks to Lord Second, for creating us all."

-Prayer of Thanks, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book A Darker World.

***

A sombre mood gripped Canterlot Castle once Second left. The death of their beloved princess left everypony speechless, and they all retreated quietly into their own quarters for the night. Princess Luna locked herself away in her study, (her bedroom having been destroyed by Second and Spike's fight earlier that day), and ordered the guard patrols to stay off that entire floor. They had no complaints about that. Nopony really wanted to see their princess in such a state.

The remaining prisoners were all returned to the dungeon. Ancient Tome was placed in one of their high security cells, solitary of course. Sliske and his host Lady Arcane Arts were also placed in high security, and were kept under constant watch. It was lucky really that Sliske was so cooperative with them. He didn't put up a fight when they told him he had to be placed back in the dungeon, which was very uncharacteristic of him.

Broad Sword got a cell too, for high treason, but he got to share a cell with Explodey McGee for now, mostly because Explodey requested somepony to keep him company during his stay. And of course, Iron Hoof was imprisoned as well after Dr. Heart Beat was done mending his bloody stump.

As for the visitors, Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant were both spending the night in the infirmary, staying by the bed side of Gold Coin after he was injured during the attack. The place was pretty full right now, playing host to a lot of injured guards, and much to the chagrin of Dr. Heart Beat, also acting as a storage space for all the bodies.

In the late hours of the night, Captain Chain Mail made his way into the infirmary to see what was happening. The whole place was odd. For some reason, the infirmary was a cross shaped room, with a central area where they had set up a reception desk, (and yet for some reason never hired a receptionist to sit at it), and four 'wings' that split off from it.

The wings between them served three roles. One of them was left bare aside from a few potted plants, and acted just as a corridor into the central area of the infirmary. That was the one that lead out into the rest of the castle, and the one through which the captain entered. On the other side from it was the storage area, where some of those portable walls sometimes used in office cubicles had been set up to divide it into smaller rooms, most of which hosted open crates of medical supplies, though at least one had been turned into a break room for the doctor on duty, complete with water cooler.

And finally, the other two wings to the left and right of the entrance wing were all filled with rows and rows of beds, where the patients and/or corpses stayed. The entire left wing was mostly bodies, and so had not been lit tonight. The bodies were probably all kept there because that was the wing with the broken windows, from where Sliske had possessed Dr. Heart Beat and made his daring escape several days ago.

"Luna damnit!"

Chain Mail stopped abruptly by the front desk in the central area of the room as he heard the doctor cry out in frustration. Dr. Heart Beat was turned away from him and was ranting at two of his guards over by the darkened left wing, both of whom were evidently surprised by the outburst.

"Does this castle just not have a morgue?! I'm supposed to be healing living ponies here! Stop giving me bodies! I know you're really confident in my medical skills, but dead is still a little way beyond my abilities!"

One of the guards looked desperately at Chain Mail, asking him to intervene. Right now though, the captain was hardly in the mood to get into a shouting match with anypony. How Heart Beat could even complain about his own personal problems right now when the princess of Equestria laid dead on one of his beds not feet away was a mystery that the captain was certain would never be solved. So instead, he elected to slink away quietly into the other wing, leaving the guard to his fate.

A chocolate brown earth pony and a little blue unicorn both sat sadly at the side of one of the beds on the far end of the wing, while an unconscious yellow stallion laid next to them. The captain made his way over to them, eventually coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. The two conscious ponies both looked up at him as he approached, and waited for him to introduce himself.

Chain Mail cleared his throat.

"Hello Mr. Spoken," he said, "We don't know each other, but I'm Captain Chain Mail of her majesty's royal guard. I wanted to let you know that we've just finished confining Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof to their cells. Since you and the young colt here personally knew them, I thought you might want to be told."

The little unicorn looked sadly at the captain.

"Is my dad alright?" he asked.

Internally, the guard pony debated what would be best to say in this situation, but he really couldn't come up with anything. There wasn't really any nice way to talk about somepony's father being imprisoned, especially given the magnitude of his crimes. In fact, the captain wouldn't have been surprised if Luna brought back the death penalty just for Ancient Tome's sake.

"He's fine," he said eventually, "He wasn't harmed and he'll be looked after."

The blue unicorn slumped in his chair and just stared at the ground. The awkwardness of the moment was almost stifling. Chain Mail trotted over to Soft Spoken's side and took a seat next to him.

"Is he alright?" he whispered.

"Mystic will be fine," the old stallion answered, "He's having a bit of a hard time right now. As I understand it, he was partially responsible for what happened to that unicorn mare from the Brotherhood of Man. He won't tell me much, but he's a little shook up by it."

"Understandable I suppose. And unfortunate. Miss Chameleon was one of the senior members of the brotherhood. She would have been a very good alternative for information if we were to fail to get anything out of Tome or Private Iron Hoof."

Soft Spoken didn't reply, but instead turned his gaze back to Gold Coin, who lied motionless before them.

"He's one of the brotherhood, isn't he?"

The two ponies turned to look at Chain Mail suddenly, both shocked by his statement. The old butler's face was the picture of horror.

"How did you know?" he asked.

"I didn't," the captain replied, "Until you just told me."

Soft Spoken sighed and closed his eyes.

"What's going to happen to him?"

"That's up to Princess Luna, but I get the feeling that any judgement will be postponed until she decides to face the world again. Personally, I think she will be more lenient with him. Brotherhood or not, he's shared his true nature with you, and even though you're obviously on our side, you've seen fit to protect him from us. You and he delivered the Reaper's Horn and a list of names to us, which has helped immensely, and his injuries are proof that he tried to combat the brotherhood when they attacked rather than helping them. I may not know the full story, but I can take a guess, and to me that sounds like he's one of us."

"Will you help him?" asked Mystic Chant, "Mr. Gold Coin is not a bad pony sir! He helped me when dad went crazy and trapped me in my room! Please don't let the princess banish him!"

That undertone of desperation in Mystic's voice was just adorable. The captain couldn't hold back a hint of a smile as he replied.

"Well little one, I'm afraid it's not really up to me, and it's my duty to report this information to the princess. However, I will put in a good word for him, and you have my personal promise that I will do my utmost to protect Mr. Coin from the worst of it."

Chain Mail rose from his seat and walked back over to the foot of the bed, preparing to leave. He looked back over his shoulder.

"Before I leave kid, your father is allowed to have visitors, in spite of everything. If you want to see him at all, I can make arrangements?"

Mystic was just silent. He looked up at the butler sadly.

"Well Mystic?" the old stallion asked, "Do you want to see your dad? You don't have to if you don't want to."

"I...Well..." he sighed, "Maybe tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow it is," said Chain Mail, "I will make arrangements for you. In the meantime, don't worry too much. Things are bad right now, but it'll get better. My mother always said that the night is darkest just before the dawn. It'll be okay. I promise."

***

Celestia stared with wide eyes at the structure before them. They had once again retreated into the mists of Hell, leaving behind the green and pleasant valley of before. What she expected, she had no idea, but it certainly wasn't this. In front of the princess was a stage, with curtains and a back area too. It was the portable kind, like the old travelling performers used, but it was fancy an elaborate like the stage of an opera house. On the stage were props and backgrounds, made to mimic the interior of a middle class home.

"Now, allow me to explain the concept to you."

Celestia broke out of her stupor. For a moment there she had almost forgotten the presence of the human Lord First, who had been walking behind her this whole time. He passed by her and headed towards the stage. The princess only just now noticed the rows and rows of chairs laid out in front of the stage as well, all cheap folding ones like you would bring out in the summer for a barbecue, which clashed with the more upper class feel of the stage itself, with it's detailed props and smooth red curtains.

First climbed up onto the stage and turned to face her.

"In theatre, it is assumed that the play is a work of fiction and exists within it's own self contained reality. Here on the stage, the actors play the parts of characters and the props represent the world in which those characters reside, here representing a room within a house. Count the walls."

Celestia looked around at the walls on the stage. The one at the back was adorned with framed pictures and potted plants. There was the one on the right was featureless, owing to the fact that it wasn't very visible, and the one on the far left held a door through which the pony actors would presumably enter.

"Three," she answered.

"Physically," First replied, "If however you imagine this fictional room in the context of a story, remember that these are characters and a setting in their own reality. A fictional pony walking into this fictional room would not see the chairs out where you are and would not see an audience, because in the context of the story, this is a real room. From a fictional character's perspective, there exists a fourth, unseen wall between the audience and the room."

"Oh..."

Celestia contemplated that for a moment. It was an interesting insight into fiction and theatre.

"Now, that's where the term fourth wall comes from. In theory, there is always a metaphorical fourth wall between the characters and setting in a work of fiction and an audience reading or viewing that work. A fictional universe is self contained and believes itself to be reality. When you read a book about pirates, the pirates don't know they're characters in a book. They act and behave as real pirates, if the book is accurate to life of course. Now princess, tell me, where do you think I'm going with this?"

It was so obvious now what he was implying. Before, she had just been confused, but in retrospect all of Second's cryptic statements were beginning to make sense.

"...Are you saying that...We...Equestria...Is a work of fiction?"

First jumped down off the stage and walked up to her. He stood so that his face was mere inches from hers.

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Celestia turned away and looked off into the mists, and began breathing heavily.

"That doesn't make sense though!" she protested, "We can't be fictional! We're real! The very definition of fiction is that it doesn't exist! How can I be thinking or moving or breathing if I don't exist?!"

"Because the universe isn't so rigidly defined, princess," First answered seriously, "You're real here, in your universe. In mine however, Equestria is a fantasy world dreamed up by writers. It's not quite a stage play. It's hard to really explain because I'm not entirely certain that ponies have an equivalent to compare it to, or at least not a widely known one, but the best description is that it's basically a moving comic book with voices. It's a drawing, but it also moves and has sound. We call them cartoons."

The princess bowed her head and sighed.

"What is that story then? How did humans come up with us? Why ponies? Why not other humans?"

Lord First furrowed his brow and looked upward as he tried to think of a way to explain.

"It's a children's story," he explained, "In our world, like in yours, our young often enjoy toys of cute animals. I'm sure you're familiar with what we're talking about. Teddy bears and bunny rabbits, that sort of thing?"

"Yes, I know."

"Well in the human world, ponies are unintelligent animals just like rabbits are, and some humans, especially little girls, consider them to be cute as well. So we make toy ponies, created from plastic and fake hair. The most popular toy line of this type, assuming there are any others because I'm not aware of them if that is the case, is a brand called My Little Pony, and your world is born from a cartoon based on those My Little Pony toys, featuring ponies with humanised features. Your hair style, facial structure, intelligence, language, culture, and many other things are all traits borrowed from humans."

So according to Lord First, all of Equestria and possibly their entire universe was a work of fiction based around toys that his species used to entertain their kids, which themselves were based on dumb animals from their world, and the only reason ponykind had any kind of intelligence or significance to speak of was because they were partially based on humans as well. She wasn't quite sure what to feel about that, but she was leaning towards insulted.

"As to the answer of what the story was, it was about some of the more important ponies among the toy line. Equestria is not the first example of a cartoon made about the My Little Pony toys. There were other tries that did things differently. The first was probably the closest to Equestria, but was a lot more simplified and it had human characters too. The second was based more closely on the human world, and so lacked many of the more magical elements of Equestria, since magic is also a fictional creation of humans, and does not exist in our world either. And the third attempt was...Ugh...I don't even want to go into that. It was bad, let's just say."

Wait, humans didn't have magic?

"Is that why magic doesn't affect your kind?" Celestia asked.

"Huh? Is what why?"

"Magic doesn't exist in your world. Is that why it can't affect you?"

"Umm...Basically...It's a little more complicated than that, but that is the general idea. What I was trying to say anyway, was that when they made their fourth attempt at a pony cartoon, (called Friendship is Magic), they got creative with it and made a much more complex world, filling it with fictional creatures from human mythology and adding fantastical elements to the world, such as the idea that the sun and moon or the weather need to be controlled by ponies, as in our world they are self sufficient. The premise of the show was that it focused on your old pupil Twilight Sparkle and her five main friends, the Elements of Harmony. You'll recall that they had quite a few adventures in their time together? That's because every adventure was an episode of the show, an individual story in itself."

Wow. That last part made so much sense in retrospect it was almost scary.

"So...It was all about them?" she asked, "I wasn't a part of it?"

"You were a side character," First explained, "You played a part in the story, but you weren't the focus. Twilight Sparkle was probably the most important one, with the other elements just below her. Most episodes focused on incidents in their lives. Since the show was geared towards young children, as well as entertaining them with action, adventure and comedy, it also had the secondary purpose of teaching them morals and virtues, so these adventures would inevitably lead to somepony learning something about friendship, which they could sum up at the end of the episode. Twilight Sparkle would send you friendship reports and read them aloud before sending them, because that was a good vehicle for the writers to get the moral across."

Celestia turned away from First. She couldn't take this. It was like everything in her life was artificial, just a creation of these creatures. She could raise the sun with her magic because the humans didn't have to raise theirs and they considered it a novelty. Her dear student learned about friendship and sent her letters because the humans thought it was a good way to get a moral message across to their children. Hell, they were only ponies at all because the humans considered ponies to be cute. If human children had a slightly different opinion of ponies, these invisible beings that apparently ruled their entire world could just snap their fingers and Equestria would suddenly be a nation of intelligent bunny rabbits!

"...I think I need a minute."

***

Broad Sword leaned against the bars, peering out into the corridor beyond longingly. Behind him, sitting on the tiny bench at the back of their cell, Explodey McGee watched him curiously.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

The guard looked back at him over his shoulder briefly, before returning to staring through the bars.

"I'm worried," he replied, "Princess Luna must be distraught right now, and I'm worried for the doc too. At least he didn't go with Second though. I'm glad he made the right choice."

Explodey tilted his head thoughtfully.

"You really don't see anything wrong with Sliske, do you?" he asked.

Broad Sword turned around to face the unicorn properly.

"That's because there isn't anything wrong with him," he replied, "Sure, it was a bit harsh of him to execute that mare from the brotherhood, but he doesn't really act like some genocidal maniac. I've spent a lot of time with him now. Sure, everypony tells me that he's killed hundreds and that he's evil and needs to be stopped, and to be fair he did align with Second briefly, but..."

Explodey raised an eyebrow.

"But...?"

"But he's also so much like us. I met him while he was diving in a dumpster for food. He talked to me about his parents, he complained about a shop that gave him bad service once, he had dinner with my mother and talked about his favourite kinds of soup and contemplated Equestrian politics. He made and kept a Pinkie Pie promise. He even blew his cover hiding in my head and condemned us both to be imprisoned here so he could save you from Arcane Arts and Swift Justice. Maybe it's just me, but from what I've seen of him, he's just not like how everypony describes him."

"Sounds nothing like the stories I heard," Explodey replied, "The way I heard it, Sliske was always described as some dark force of nature. They called him Sliske of Seven Hundred Souls because when he made war on the early ponies, they believed that when he possessed a pony he would steal their soul and leave them nothing but an empty husk. I don't know how true the stories were, and the fact that the Elements of Harmony didn't end up like that even though he possessed all of them at least once seems to disprove it, but a legend like that doesn't come from nowhere."

Broad Sword reflected on that.

"I'll ask him," he concluded, "Next time I see the doc I will ask him about his past. Maybe he can give me some answers about it all. I'd love to know why he is like he is."

In the hallway outside, the sound of an old key rattling in a lock caught the two ponies' attention. A moment later, Explodey McGee vacated his seat and ran over to see through the bars as well. It soon turned out that it was Captain Chain Mail entering the prison.

"Hey Chain Mail!" Explodey called out, "Is everything all right up there? How's the princess?"

The captain turned to face the two ponies in their cell, and sighed deeply.

"She's not good," he answered, "Refuses to come out of her room. Celestia's body was moved to the infirmary, along with the remains of Chameleon and the other guards. The visitors Gold Coin, Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant are all okay, fortunately. They're dealing with events in their own way. Spike I haven't heard anything about. Right now, I plan on interrogating Sliske and Tome for information. I won't be able to report anything back to Luna until she comes outside again, but for now I can at least continue my investigation."

"What would the doc know about anything?" Broad Sword asked.

"Huh? Who's the doc?" asked Chain Mail.

"That's his name for Sliske," the unicorn explained.

"Oh."

The captain let that hang in the air for a moment, before asking the obvious question.

"Why?"

"Because he told me he was a doctor," Broad Sword answered.

"...Well he's not. Why are you still calling him doc?"

"I dunno. Seems to suit him."

"HE IS AN ALIEN BODYSNATCHER! IT DOES NOT SUIT HIM IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM!"

The former guard backed away from the bars slightly and didn't say anything more.

"Geeze Chain Mail, anger issues much?" Explodey commented.

Chain Mail's eyes darted between both the prisoners erratically. He sighed.

"I'm a little on edge tonight. I apologise. I should probably get to work with Tome. In the meantime, you two should get some sleep. It's past midnight already."

"Sure thing."

"Will do cappy!"

Chain Mail glared at Broad Sword for a second, internally debating whether it would be worth reminding him that he promised to never call him 'cappy' again. Eventually deciding that he probably didn't have a memory span longer than half an hour, he decided to just drop the issue and get to work.

"Alright then..." he said apprehensively, "I'll be going now."

The captain turned around and trotted off towards the interview room. He called over his shoulder;

"Good night Explodey."

"'Night Chain Mail."

"Good night Broad Sword."

"G'night cappy."

The captain's eyebrow twitched.

"Good night Explodey," he could hear Broad Sword say.

"'Night John boy."

Silence now. For a moment, Captain Chain Mail stood alone in the corridor, having briefly forgotten what he was doing. For some reason those two ponies always threw off his train of thought whenever either of them spoke. He would need to get used to such distractions. He was fairly certain that Explodey at least would remain a big part of his life for a while.

Sighing to himself, the captain pushed aside the double doors ahead of him and continued on towards the interview room.

***

There was a knocking on the door. Luna pulled her head out from underneath her pillow and looked over to the entrance. The guard on the other side, fool that he was, took her silence as an invitation to enter, and the door slowly eased open to allow a bat pegasus night guard into the room, wearing the armour of a lieutenant. He cleared his throat.

"Your majesty, I know you wanted to be left alone, but my job requires that I keep you informed of any updates around the castle."

He kept up a serious tone, but the guard was visibly shaken by recent events too. He looked sympathetically at the princess, and she couldn't bring herself to shout at him. Instead, Luna simply groaned and laid back down on the bed.

"Fine," she replied.

The guard walked over to the bed and sat on his haunches right next to her. He had never seen the princess in such a state before. She wasn't crying right now, but the red around her eyes showed that she had been recently, and her mane laid limp and lifeless, showing not a starry night sky but instead just a solid dark blue. He didn't know what exactly to make of that.

"Well..." he began, "The prisoners are all confined again, the bodies have all been moved, including..."

He couldn't bring himself to say it. Instead he just cleared his throat again.

"...Yes. And we have already sent out a contingency of night guards to the homes of all known members of the Brotherhood of Man. They should all be in custody before the night's out. Captain Chain Mail is going to be personally interrogating Sliske and the Brotherhood prisoners we've already captured. He also requests a private audience with you later to discuss some sensitive matters."

"What sensitive matters?" Luna mumbled half-heartedly.

"He wouldn't tell me. I would assume it's for your ears only."

Luna snorted.

"...Yeah. Anyway, that's all I've got to report right now. If you have any questions or requests your majesty?"

Luna rolled over onto her back and let her head hang down over the side of the bed.

"How's Spike doing?" she asked.

"I'm not entirely sure your highness," the lieutenant answered, "He's locked himself within the ball room and we haven't heard anything from him."

"Then I request somepony be sent to comfort him. He's very sensitive, even if he doesn't seem like it. He'll likely want somepony to be there."

"Pardon me for being so bold your highness, but why not go see him yourself? You are his oldest friend, are you not?"

Luna rolled back onto her stomach and raised her head to glare at the captain.

"That is too bold. And I don't wish to see him because I am not like Spike. I want to be alone when I grieve."

The emphasis made it clear to the pegasus that he was unwelcome.

"If you wish for me to leave your highness, I shall do so immediately."

The night guard stood up again and turned back to the door.

"Wait!"

He turned back around to face the princess again.

"I do have another request," Luna explained, "I don't think I'll be in any fit state to lead the country or make any public appearances for a while, but Equestria needs its ruler right now. If it's not too much trouble, I would like you to find my sister's advisor and ask him to contact Prince Blueblood in Trottingham. I'll need to appoint a temporary regent to keep Equestria going while I try to get back on my feet, and I think he'll be worthy of the job."

The bat pegasus nodded in understanding, and made his way over to the still open door.

"Oh, and uh..." Luna interrupted.

He stopped and looked back at the princess. She struggled for words.

"...Any sign of...the Doctor?"

He shook his head sadly. Luna just slumped on the bed again.

"I didn't think so. Thank you lieutenant. You are dismissed."

***

Celestia hung her head low, breathing heavily. A thousand memories flashed across the forefront of her mind. So many conversations with Second and First back in the ancient past that made so much more sense in context, all the cryptic comments they made about higher reality and their claims of power. She shut her eyes tight and shook her head around to try and make it stop.

"No, no, NO!" she shouted, "This can't be all there is to it! We can't possibly matter that little!"

First stepped up beside her and placed a hand on the princess's shoulder, and knelt down so that his face was level with hers.

"Tia, come on," he said, "Don't break down on me now. There's more to hear, and I need you to be strong. Don't prove my dad right for keeping this from you."

Celestia raised up to her full height again and turned on First.

"YOU!" she shouted, "You kept this from me too! Don't think for a moment I forgot anything you two did! Second wasn't the only one causing chaos a thousand years ago! You are just as guilty as he is!"

First raised his hands either side of him in surrender.

"Fair point," he said, "You're right. I did a lot of wrong too. And I feel you are owed an explanation for my behaviour as well. Truth is though, I really don't have one."

The princess eased up slightly, but remained tense. She waited for him to continue.

"Thing is," First explained, "I was little more than a child when I came to your world. A teenage boy only just turned sixteen. I grew up here in these mists and down in that valley. A thousand years have passed now, and I feel I've become wiser for it, but we were all young once, and I was just a troublemaker in my youth. I wasn't always powerful. Once, a very long time ago, I was as mundane as an earth pony farmer, and not at all powerful. I lived back on Earth, a universe away from here, and I enjoyed a casual life. Then one day, suddenly I'm thrust into Equestria and promoted to the most powerful being in your universe. So, being a teenager who just suddenly gained ultimate power, what else was I going to do with it? I went on joyride."

Celestia raised an eyebrow.

"You fought my entire army to a standstill," she said, "Over three hundred thousand ponies beaten to the point of unconsciousness, and at least five of them actually died from their wounds. You caused property damage in excess of the average dragon attack everywhere you visited. You brutally murdered an Ursa Major right on the doorstep of my palace, you sunk my private yacht, your father SHOT ME, and every single time we ever encountered one another outside of a combat situation you would do nothing but taunt me and the Elements of Harmony or sing annoying songs that I have spent that past millennium trying to forget!"

First smirked.

"Yeah...I'll never forget that one time I made dad sing Bad Touch. That was just amazing."

"And you're seriously telling me that was all just you joking around?!"

First stopped smiling, returning to his serious tone.

"Yes. And I am sorry for it, really. We just wanted to have fun with our powers, but a little while after we first arrived in Ponyville, some overzealous police pony tried to arrest us for disturbing the peace. When dad fought back, that's when we discovered that we were basically invincible and could easily defeat anypony without killing them. Then she called in the royal guards, we beat them too, they went for reinforcements, and it just kept escalating until we were fighting them off by the hundreds. By that point, diplomacy was out of the question. When you're standing on top of a mountain of bodies, you can't really claim over twelve thousand counts of self defence with a straight face. I think there's an unspoken rule in society that if that many people are trying to kill you, you should be dead.

"Now of course, for the crimes we committed against you personally, there really is no excuse. To be fair somewhat, we were willing to just leave you alone outside of our conversations, but when you started trying to fight us too, we really didn't have much of an option. Now, we had no idea at the time that alicorns are invincible, but we found out quick enough. Honestly, I didn't expect that the shotgun of all things would actually harm you. Dad was just trying to slow you down . We figured you'd shrug it off like you did everything else we threw at you."

"How could I shrug it off?!" Celestia demanded, "It's a God-killer! You should know! It's what killed you!"

"Thing is though, it's not meant to be a God-killer. Back in our world, we aren't invincible. Humans are normally as mortal as any pony is, and the SPAS is a weapon for killing mortals. We thought it would just bounce off you like our punches and kicks did. I didn't know it also got an upgrade when we came here."

"Here's a question," said the princess, "You claim you just intended to have some fun with your powers here. So why did you even bring a weapon in the first place?"

"Security," First answered, "We didn't know what would happen when we entered Equestria. We might have remained just like we were in our world, in which case we could have ended up being eaten by a monster from the Everfree or something. Hell, for all we knew we could have just transformed into ponies when we crossed over. That was what I was actually hoping for, and I'm rather disappointed that didn't happen actually. That would have opened up so many options..."

Celestia raised an eyebrow distrustfully. She at least now understood why he did what he did, even if she didn't like the answer. He seemed to be remorseful for what he did, partially at least, and so she decided to let it go for now, but she was nowhere near ready to forgive him for all the damage he caused in the name of 'fun'. That kind of selfishness and carelessness that he and his father displayed was why she took down Discord, and this was exactly the same as that.

Speaking of his father, another question came to the princess's mind.

"So you did all this because you were careless teenager," she said, "Well Second is not. As I understand it, he's at least forty five now. I don't know how fast you humans age, but in Equestrian society, a pony is expected to be a mature and responsible adult by then. What's his excuse for these atrocities?"

First turned his back to her and folded his arms.

"...He just wanted to be a part of my life," he said, "It's all my fault really...I mean, my dad was cool. Most kids in their teens drift away from their parents somewhat. They never completely go away, but they become distant. They spend most of their time in their room playing video games and going on the computer. They stop spending time with them. My dad though was always a part of my life, because he loved me. He'd sit with me in my room and watch me play, pointing out things I had missed, and with some practice he could even learn how to join me in multiplayer stuff. When we came to Equestria, it was the same sort of deal. We both had powers. I wanted to have fun with them, and being the 'cool dad' he always was, he just wanted to join the party."

Celestia blinked. She wasn't expecting such an emotional answer. First couldn't even face her right now for whatever reason. She couldn't see, but she strongly suspected he might have been crying. If he was, his voice wasn't betraying it though.

"Truth is," First continued, "My dad was the one who followed me. He just treated the whole thing like another game, and we both played together, like we always did. We'd laugh and joke, often at your expense as you'll no doubt remember, and had those stupid little bets and singing contests just because we could. He loved to sing, even if he acted like he didn't want to. He told me once he actually always wanted to be a singer, but his own father, my granddad, made him go into other lines of work."

First turned back to face the princess again. She couldn't actually tell if he had been crying or not. There were no signs of tears, but he did look upset. Celestia still thought he had been though. He was omnipotent in this realm. He could easily have used his powers to clean them away and hide it.

"Now though? He's changed now. One thousand years in stone? And killing his only family? I mean damn, could you even imagine what would happen if somepony did that to you princess? He was just a guy having fun before, but now you've killed his son and put him through a thousand years of living hell. You've broken him princess, and this right here is him lashing out.

"It's actually not as bad as it could be. He spent the first hundred and fifty years of his time in stone just screaming in his head, but he stopped eventually, and he made peace with my death a long time ago. That doesn't mean he can't hold a grudge though, and he did. Right now, Equestria could easily be experiencing the full wrath of an angry and vengeful father in mourning. Instead, very fortunately, all they have to deal with is a bitter old man who has gone insane over time. I'd say that's a slight improvement, but it obviously didn't do you any good."

First sighed.

"You know, since dying, I've had a long time to think things over, and I've decided that I don't hold it against you."

That surprised the princess.

"You don't?" she repeated, "But...We killed you! Or we were responsible for your death anyway!"

"True, but I can't hold the actions of your soldiers against you," First replied, "Hell, I can't even hold it against them. They were just doing their jobs, and if anything I have to commend my killer for his bravery. The private who killed me tried something that no pony ever tried before. He ran right up to an enemy that he had no hope of ever hitting, let alone killing, wrenched the weapon of the Gods right out of his hand, and shot him with it. That takes guts. I admire that."

First lifted his shirt. Celestia recoiled in horror upon seeing that First was even now still sporting a bloody wound in his stomach where the Reaper's Horn, or rather the SPAS 12, had been used against him.

"The rules of life and death are strange," he said, "In essence, you are in here as you were in life. An elderly pony who dies of old age could show up here as ancient and decrepit as they were in their final moments of life, or they could once again be the sprightly young pony they were in their fond memories of youth. You come back as you were in the moment of your life which defined you. Me, I was only sixteen when I died. I didn't have a life yet, so my defining moment was my death. It doesn't hurt or anything. It's just there. And it never stops bleeding."

***

In his cell, Ancient Tome stared at the wall. One eye was twitching erratically, while the other was wide open and bloodshot. He was actually in a proper jail cell unlike some other prisoners here, with bars and everything. He couldn't escape though. A metal ring clipped around his horn disabled his magic. Standard procedure when imprisoning unicorn criminals. Still humiliating though.

On the other side of the bars, Captain Chain Mail came into view, accompanied by a random guard who looked on into the cell with mild curiosity. Ancient Tome spoke first.

"Aren't I supposed to be taken to an interview room for this?" he asked.

"Yes, but I decided you don't deserve it," Chain Mail replied, "If I had my way, you'd stay in that same single cell and rot there for the rest of your life, but something tells me that I will eventually have to let you out to escort you to the gallows."

Tome snorted.

"Hah! As if you would! I know Equestria doesn't have capital punishment anymore. You don't scare me."

"I know it doesn't," said Chain Mail, "I suspect it will be brought back temporarily though, just long enough for us to execute you. Remember that it was Princess Celestia who pushed to have the law repealed and Princess Luna who was still for it. Then remember which princess is now dead, and which one is still alive and has more reason than ever before to wipe you and your entire order off the map."

The old grey unicorn kept silent, but a look of worry briefly crossed his face.

"...You know something Tome?"

"What?"

"Your order is over eight hundred years old. The Equestrian government has been trying to track you ever since it discovered your existence. In all those centuries of actively combating your group, we only ever discovered the identities of nine members total, only eight of which we could ever prove. Of those eight, only four were ever captured, and of those four we could only ever prevent one of them from killing himself before we could question him, and he was freed in the biggest prison break in history less than a day afterwards. And now, we know the names of eight of your eleven surviving members including yourself, and half of them are being held alive in this very castle."

Tome raised an eyebrow.

"What's your point?"

"My point is that you have to be the most incompetent, idiotic ponies I've ever seen, and you don't even come close to the threat level that previous generations of the Brotherhood of Man posed to the crown. How it is that your generation of the Brotherhood was able to resurrect Lord Second and steal the Reaper's Horn when the thousands of much smarter cultists that came before you failed is a mystery. I'm genuinely shocked Tomey, I really am."

Tome had gone back to the eye twitching now.

"I guess what I'm saying is, you're all doomed. The other four members of the Brotherhood of Man whose names we know will be in custody as well by morning, because they won't even know we're coming. Between all of them, finding out the identities of the other three shouldn't be hard, and your entire order will likely be either imprisoned or dead shortly. So here's the deal. Give me the other three names now to save me the trouble, and I can personally guarantee you protection from the death sentence."

Ancient Tome smiled.

"Go fuck yourself, captain."

Chain Mail sighed.

"Okay, here's a better deal for you. In addition to a lighter sentence, give me the names, and I'll stop the chef from pissing in your cornflakes tomorrow."

"I'm fine with starving to death, FYI."

"I'll let you see your son tomorrow."

Ancient Tome leaned in closer.

"You have my attention."

***

The guards out the front of the palace sat in silence. They had failed at their job in a way that nopony had ever done before. Princess Celestia was dead, Second had escaped, and they had lost a lot of good ponies in the Brotherhood's attack, many of them friends of the surviving guards on duty. Everypony's sense of loss and responsibility for what happened had left them quiet and reflective.

They didn't expect any further trouble tonight after what had already transpired, but nonetheless they had to have somepony watching the gates. A number of guards from other patrols had been taken off their usual routes to stand at the front gate, as the original gate guards who had stopped Ancient Tome and the Brotherhood here earlier were among the earliest casualties of the first attack, save one who was now in the infirmary.

One of the guards spotted a group of ponies making their way up the pathway leading to the palace entrance. He reached to his side and drew a mace in preparation. The other two guards on duty had not really been paying attention, but upon seeing their friend draw his weapon, they did so themselves and stood to attention to greet the figures.

They soon came into view. They were a group of ten ponies, exactly five mares and five stallions, all pegasi. They varied in colour, but the group all looked very similar somehow, as if they were all distantly related, and they all looked extremely serious. What got the guards worried though was that these ten ponies all wore dark armour, vaguely reminiscent of the kind used by the bat-like night guards.

"Halt!" the guard with the mace shouted, "Identify yourselves!"

One of the pegasus mares in the centre of the line stepped forward confidently.

"We are the Knights of Man, and we are here to reclaim our stolen property!"

The guard with the mace exchanged a look with the two guards behind him. He wasn't sure what to make of the new arrivals, but the 'of Man' part on the end of their name signified bad things.

"What 'stolen property'?" he asked.

"The items you took from our master the Second!" the mare shouted back, "Now stand aside and lead us to the Princess Luna, or you would declare war on our nation!"

"Nation?" one of the other guards repeated, "What nation?"

"On the nation of the United States of America, and the New Human Empire!"

END

Author's notes:

Ugh. Damn. This chapter. I was just feeling really uninspired when writing this. I couldn't come up with anything at first. Later chapters I really have a lot of ideas for, including a whole new story arc that will probably double this entire fic in length that I thought up after having possibly the most amazing dream of my entire life a few days ago. However, it's not in this chapter, because this chapter still has all the aftermath of Celestia's death to deal with and the supreme annoyance of the time scale. I hate the fact that all the chapters since the first have so far taken place over the course of a single day. That really bugs me. I'm very eager to move onto a different time of day.

It's also only eight thousand or so words, meaning that this chapter clocks in as my shortest yet, for which I apologise. I will compensate for this by an additional release.

Anyway, I suppose I have to talk about criticisms and such. Umm...Let's see...Well, actually I've got nothing this time. There are no action scenes in this part, so I can't really say I've addressed the criticisms of that, and I actually didn't hear any complaints at all about the Interlude, which I consider a good thing, but I wonder if that's because people really liked the Interlude more than most the chapters or if my more vocal critics didn't want to bother commenting because it was only an Interlude.

In any case, I would like to put in some special thanks here. In my earlier chapters, I gave thanks to Muppetz and Pen Stroke, because their stories Article 2 and Past Sins were inspirations to me when writing. Well, I want to make an addition to that list. While those two were inspirations to me, my actual biggest inspiration is a user on FF.net by the name of Klutzybear, who wrote an HiE story called My Little Brony: Reality vs Fantasy. I didn't want to mention him in my earlier special thanks because the fact that MLB is all about the concept of Equestria as a cartoon world would have given away early on that that was also the premise of Human. Hell, the First is actually named after the main character of MLB, Anthony.

The stories, though exploring the same theme, are very distinct, as his is closer to the more traditional HiE story but played differently. For what it is, the story is actually really good, but as far as I know it never got onto Equestria Daily, which is a real shame because I consider it a quality work. I don't think you'll like it if you're not already a really big fan of HiE stories, but if you are I definitely recommend it, because it does have some really funny moments.

I also feel I should explain that while writing this, I'm doing so on a different computer than I usually use. My normal one has both wordpad and a lesser form of Microsoft Word on it. I normally write all my stories in wordpad and then use MS Word to spell check it before posting the final version on here. This computer however only has wordpad and and Microsoft Word Viewer, meaning I have no programs with a spellcheck on here. However, the chapter is done and I want to post it, so I've instead put the whole thing into Fimfiction without a spellcheck first and decided to use the weird pseudo-spellcheck that Google Chrome uses. However, I'm copy-pasting a large body of text into the box here and then going through it, and I think the red lines only show up if you actually type the incorrectly spelled word into Chrome. If that is the case, then this will likely be full of spelling and grammar errors.

You may consider me unprofessional for putting out a chapter without a proper spellcheck first, and that's a fair complaint, however I know that not everybody cares about grammar and spelling, and if they want the chapter then I'll give it to them right now and not make them wait for another two days until I can get back to my old computer. When I do get back to my old one, I promise to give this chapter an overhaul and fix all the spelling and grammar mistakes. Please, those of you that consider spelling and grammar important, forgive me just this once. I'll do everything in my power to make sure this never has to happen again.

As a kind of apology for those mistakes and the short length, and also a thanks for those that are still reading now, I am also releasing a bonus chapter compiling deleted scenes as well, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Thanks for everything guys. You're the best.

Chapter 7: The New Human Empire

"...but Second did not waver from His task and instead stood before the mighty alicorn and drew from within His coat the mighty Reaper's Horn, said to be forged in Hellfire and made from metal ripped from within a dying star, and pointed it at His adversary. And though the First protested, Second readied the Reaper's Horn so that He might use it to devastate the sun tyrant with the power of its ancient death spell. As he drew it, the tyrant stopped dead in her tracks, wondering just what it was that gave her enemy such confidence. And Second held his weapon upon high and proclaimed to the monster;

'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. AND YOU WILL KNOW MY NAME IS THE LORD, WHEN I LAY MY VENGEANCE UPON THEE.'

And from then on, He was known as Lord Second, and his followers were known, as the Brothers of Man."

-The Lord's Name, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book The Liberator.

***

"Come on Spike! It should have landed just over the hill here."

The baby dragon kept pace alongside Twilight, but not being the most athletic type was beginning to sweat after the long run from the library to here. For now though, that didn't matter. All that mattered was that thing he had seen. A great big flaming red thing which fell from the sky and landed just outside Ponyville. He was excited for this, his mind filled with day dreams of finding a crater full of exotic outer space gemstones.

"I wonder what we'll find in the meteor?" Spike wondered aloud, "Maybe space gems? Or even an alien being?!"

Twilight smirked.

"Oh Spike, there's no such things as aliens!"

Still running, Spike frowned at the lavender unicorn.

"How do you know?" he asked, "Maybe there are aliens and we just haven't met them yet."

Twilight opened her mouth as if to argue, but stopped when they reached the crest of the hill and saw the crash site below. A huge crater had formed where the meteor had made impact, and in the dead centre the still smoking rock laid still. It was mostly grey and was uneven and rough, as you'd expect a rock to be, but was cracked at the top and leaking boiling hot water.

"Oooh..." said Spike.

The unicorn and her assistant made their way down the hill towards the crater and stood just at the edge of it. They exchanged a look, Spike silently daring her to move in closer. When she proved willing, he followed afterwards a few steps behind, and soon the two stood just a few feet from the smoking lump of rock.

"Wow...I've never seen anything like it before," Twilight commented, "It's just like in my books!"

She reached out and tapped the meteor with her hoof, and suddenly the rock began spewing even more steam.

"Oh!"

Twilight backed away from it nervously, and her eyes went wide as the steam began to tint black.

"Uh..." said Spike, "I think we should run!"

He tried to turn and leave, but Twilight stood still, rooted to the spot and staring in wonder as the steam which looked more like smoke now began to coalesce and form into a solid shape. At first it was just a vague round shape, but soon the dark cloud of gas formed into a face. It wasn't like a real pony's face. It was more like a drawing of a face, with just two huge eyes and mouth. It blinked at them.

"Uh..."

Twilight and the dragon exchanged looks again. Though they were unsure of how exactly to react to this strange thing that they were seeing, it seemed to be alive, and one of the most important lessons Twilight ever learned during her friendship studies was not to judge by appearances. With that in mind, she tried to extend an offer of friendship to the thing. Smiling nervously, she stepped forward and held out a hoof.

"Umm, hello sir," she said, "My name is Twilight Sparkle, and as a representative of our planet, I would like to welcome you to Equestria!"

The thing smiled, revealing a mouth full of sharp jagged teeth. That was not the warm smile of a new friend. That was the evil grin of something that was about to bite her head off. The gas creature began to float through the air towards her. Twilight backed up slightly, still not entirely willing to entirely give up hope that this was just how his species said hello, but could not stop herself shouting words of warning to Spike anyway.

"RUN!" she shouted.

The moment Twilight opened her mouth however, the creature shot forwards and straight at her. The creature shifted form and shape and crawled right down the unicorn mare's throat. Twilight tried to spit him out, but instead began to choke on the alien. The thing seemed to become incorporeal, and floated down into her. She fell over onto her back and looked up at the sky, tears welling up in her eyes from the sudden pain, and her little dragon friend ran over to her side.

"Twilight! Are you okay?!"

She tried to reassure him, but the moment she opened her mouth, she suddenly sprouted fangs. She leapt back onto her feet again and started trotting in place, panicking at the sudden change. Her mouth was now full of massive jagged teeth just like the alien had. Spike tried to say something, but then her eyes suddenly changed to a yellowy green colour and a long forked tongue shot out of her mouth.

Twilight, his Twilight, gave him one last terrified look before she gagged again and her expression suddenly darkened, and in that moment Spike knew that his friend was gone. The alien in her body reared up on its hind legs in triumph.

"SSSSSSSLISSSSSSSKE'S BACK!" it proclaimed to heavens, "WEEP IN TERROR CCCCELESSSSSSSTIA! I'M COMING FOR YOU!"

There was nothing left to do. Spike was helpless against this thing. Twilight by herself would be too much for him to handle, let alone Twilight being controlled by an evil alien invader. So he couldn't save her. He couldn't fight the alien. He couldn't do anything at all. All the little dragon could do was turn away and run as fast as his little legs could carry him while the alien was still cackling and threatening the sky. Run back to Ponyville and tell AJ and Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy and Rarity, ponies who could actually do something about this, and possibly save Twilight.

As he ran back home, Spike cried. He had never felt more useless in his life.

And in the darkness of the old empty ball room, the sleeping dragon puffed out a small cloud of smoke and kicked in his sleep, dreaming of a terror he felt long ago, not of what had happened to Twilight, but of his own inability to save her. Because even after a thousand years of defending ponies from whatever horrors lived out there, the one thing he still feared the most was those he couldn't save.

***

"Okay, so who are these ponies again?" Princess Luna asked as she trotted through the halls.

The lieutenant from earlier kept pace beside her, a grim look on his face.

"Guards said they called themselves the Knights of Man, and they reckon they represent some nation calling itself America, which is apparently a part of something else called the New Human Empire. They claim that Second is their master, and they've come to reclaim stolen property belonging to him. They told the guards that not letting them in would be considered an act of war between Equestria and this America place, and since we don't know anything about America, we decided it best not to start a war with them right now, especially if Second is with them."

Luna groaned.

"I'm in no state for diplomacy right now," she lamented, "I can't deal with this lieutenant! I need Blueblood for this!"

"Well Blueblood won't be here until morning," the lieutenant replied, "If you really don't think you can handle this, just cut off the conversation early and ask them if it would be appropriate to continue tomorrow."

The dark alicorn sighed in resignation and bowed her head as they approached the door.

"Here goes nothing."

***

The door slammed as Captain Chain Mail entered the interview room carrying a clipboard in his mouth. The mutated old unicorn mare who was once Lady Arcane Arts looked up from the desk at him, apparently waking from a day dream. Sliske's green and yellow serpentine eyes looked the captain over and analyzed everything about him. He waited patiently, and Chain Mail soon took a seat across the table from him and placed down the clipboard.

"I must say, this is a rare honour," said Chain Mail, "I never normally get such famous prisoners. My mother told stories about you. For a time in my foalhood, I was scared to go to sleep because you kept appearing in my nightmares."

Sliske gave the captain a big toothy grin.

"You flatter me sssssssso much captain."

Chain Mail cleared his throat.

"Quite. Anyway, since you're here to answer questions, I thought you might be able to help me with something."

"Assssssssssk away."

"You can read the memories of those you possess, correct?"

"Yesssssss."

"Well, you are currently residing in one of the thirteen members of the Brotherhood of Man. I want you to tell me the identities of all the surviving members who we haven't already captured."

Sliske blinked.

"Oh. Isssssss that all?"

Chain Mail nodded. Sliske sat back in his chair.

"There isssssss an away team waiting here in Canterlot. An icccccy blue pegasssssssussssss mare by the name of Frossssssssty Morning is the leader in the absencccccce of others. She workssssssss weather, and hassssss a houssssssse on Ressssssident Row. Sssssshe sssssssshould be hiding out there with four othersssssssss. They will be a grey unicorn teacher named Ssssssssssharp Mind, a famoussssss former raccccing ccccccelebrity named Ssssssun Rissssse, who I'm ssssssure you've heard of, and a zzzzebra who I am not confident in my ability to pronouncccccce the name of with thisssssss tongue. That green earth pony, Ssssswift Jusssssstice, who I desssssstroyed earlier, wasssssss alssso a twin. Her sssssissssssster issss a nurssssse called Intenssssssive Care, and ssssssshe will alsssssssso be with Frossssssty."

The captain nodded and looked at his clipboard. Sliske wasn't really giving him any new information. He had already obtained a complete list of names from Ancient Tome earlier. The purpose of the interview with Sliske was to have a third party confirm the names, and so far everything matched up. They knew most of these names thanks to Gold Coin and Soft Spoken already, but he didn't learn about the one called Intensive Care until his interview with Tome, so that was at least one name confirmed.

"And the others?" he said.

"The other two a pair called Rail Way and Night Ssssshroud. Rail Way isssssss a dark grey earth pony with a train engine assssssss a cutie mark, and he will be at hissss home in Ponyville right now. Night Ssssshroud isssss a bat pegassssssssusssssss and a night guard, though he will not be on duty tonight. I am not sssssssure where he livessssss, but I would imagine the royal guard sssssshould have recordssssssss."

Well, that was the other two names confirmed. They had a complete list of all the known members of the Brotherhood of Man, and even now a team of guards were probably already on their way back from arresting Frosty Morning and the away team. Now they just had to research the background of Rail Way and Night Shroud to find their exact addresses and see if they had any family links to the Elements of Harmony.

"Thank you Mr. Sliske," the captain said politely, "You've been a big help."

Chain Mail stood up from his chair and picked up the clipboard. He walked over to the door.

"Isssssss Broad Sssssssssword alright?"

The question gave the captain pause. Without turning to face the alien body snatcher, he answered;

"He's fine. The colt's sharing a cell with Explodey McGee right now."

Silence.

"Issss he in trouble?"

"High treason is a serious crime. He's looking at life imprisonment or banishment at worst."

"I feel I sssshould confesssssss that I may have messsssed with hisssssssss brain ssssssomewhat. Private Broad Ssssssssword wasssssss never a willing accomplicccccce. I jusssssst rewired hisssssss brain while I wassss in there to make him think he wasssssss sssssso that I could hide in there without controlling him directly."

Chain Mail cracked a smile and turned to face his prisoner again.

"You liar. I can tell you're covering for him. After that little talk in the throne room between you two, when you refused to follow Second? That wasn't a talk between a master and a slave. You consider him a friend, don't you?"

The possessed unicorn shifted uncomfortably.

"You're quite unlike the famous Sliske the Destroyer that I heard about in my stories. They always talked about you as if you were some dark legend. After meeting you though, I think you've been spending too much time with ponies, because you're more like them than you'd think."

Sliske slumped down and laid his head on the table. Or his host's head. Whatever.

"Our life experiencccccessssss, our memoriessssss, are what define usssssss and sssssshape ussss into who we are. Poniesssssss live their livesssssss and become creaturessssss of friendsssship and magic. My raccccce are alssssssssso defined by our memoriessssssss. It isssssss jusssssst that we have to borrow them from othersssssssss, becaussssse we do not have livessssss to live, or experienccccccessssss to have."

***

Luna took a seat at the table at the far end and looked around at the ten pegasi that took most of the other chairs. The lieutenant was right about them all looking similar. She could almost swear that they were all brothers and sisters. She wanted to ask about where they got the armour from, as they all appeared to be wearing derivatives of night guard's armour, but she had more important questions right now.

"So then, who are you?" she asked wearily.

"The Knights of Man!" a red stallion cried out.

"Yes, I know that. Who are you though, and where do you come from?"

This time it was a mare who answered.

"We are the defenders of Emperor Second, hoof picked by him as his personal guard, placing us above even the most prestigious and high ranking members of the United States military."

"You have a military?" Luna asked.

"Indeed we do!" another stallion replied, "A grand army two thousand ponies strong!"

The princess felt uneasy about that revelation.

"...I never knew the Brotherhood of Man was so huge."

"The Brotherhood of Man?!" shouted another pegasus, "I think you mean the High Priests of Man! They who lead the Church of Humanity!"

Luna shook her head to pull herself out of her stupor.

"Look, can you please just tell me what this stolen property you're here about is? I want to get this over with, because now is really not the time for me to be dealing with this."

"I think you already know what it is," said the mare, "A vehicle that Emperor Second used to break through the front gate of the palace. A red machine known as the Ferrari. You have it stored in your dungeon."

"Oh."

Luna thought back to the strange contraption that Second had drove onto the palace grounds. With all the other weirdness that had been going on today she had almost completely forgotten about it.

"Well, I'm sure we can arrange something with regard to that."

"There will be no arrangement. You will surrender the vehicle immediately or else you would declare war on the US of A! In addition, you will also release all your prisoners, including Explodey McGee and Sliske!"

Princess Luna placed a hoof on her forehead and groaned.

"Look, I'm not denying any of your requests, but I am in no fit state to discuss this right now, and certainly not to be negotiating with your organisation. My sister was killed not hours ago. I need some time first before I can commit to anything. Can you please just wait a few hours? I'm calling in another pony to take over my royal duties for a while, and he should be arriving in the morning, and you can take up the matter with him instead."

The Knights of Man all turned to each other and mumbled just under their breath. Luna couldn't quite hear them, but the discussion was brief anyway.

"This is acceptable to us," the mare replied, "On the condition that we be provided quarters to wait until tomorrow for the arrival of your regent, and we are guaranteed safety while under your roof."

Luna nodded.

"Lieutenant, arrange these ponies some accommodation."

"Yes ma'am!"

Luna and the Knights of Man all vacated their seats at once. As the princess made her way over to the door, she stopped and whispered to the lieutenant.

"And for the love of all that is good in this world, do not let them out of your sight."

***

The following morning...

***

Chain Mail sighed to himself as he stepped out into the morning sun. Luna had done fairly well all things considered. Normally she just handled nights. She wasn't usually the one raising the sun too. Not that there weren't exceptions of course, but there had never been any in his life time. In all honesty, he had suspected that there would be a more noticeable difference between Luna's daytime and Celestia's, but so far everything seemed to conform to the usual standards.

He passed by a duo of sad looking guards, who saluted him.

"At ease."

They both returned to their normal stance. The captain looked out across the palace grounds and saw the highly decorated Trottingham carriage making its way up the pathway towards them. Chain Mail walked down the steps to go greet the carriage and its very important passenger.

Prince Blueblood's carriage came to a halt in front of him, and two ponies dressed in red and wearing some weird looking tall black hats ran out to open the doors. For a moment, Chain Mail didn't quite know what to expect. He very rarely dealt with any of the nobility aside from the royal sisters, and wasn't quite sure what the Trottingham prince would really be like. He knew those Trottingham ponies had some odd traditions, so he was expecting the prince to perhaps be somewhat eccentric.

The doors opened, and his guess about him being eccentric was immediately proven right.

The prince was a white unicorn, but not a clean white one. Princess Celestia was the purest white he had ever seen and almost radiant in her splendour, but this unicorn's coat was dulled with dirt and grime. He clearly once had a blond mane, but he had for some reason chosen to dye it brown, and he could tell it was dyed because it was starting to fade, and he wasn't even wearing anything to befit his status as a prince. No jewellery or fashionable clothing or anything. If not for his cutie mark of the Trottingham crown, one would likely write him off as just another common pony.

He stepped out of the carriage and held out his hoof to grab Chain Mail's and shake it vigorously. The captain didn't know what exactly he expected, but it certainly wasn't this.

Then the prince spoke.

"Watcher. I'm Blueblood, from Trottin'am. I'm sure you knew I was coming mate. Glad to finally be out of that carriage. It's been a bloody long trip and these old gits here ain't really good for conversation, know what I mean?"

"Umm..."

Prince Blueblood stopped shaking his hoof and began walking up the steps. The two Trottingham guards began to follow him, but he turned around suddenly and shouted at them.

"No! You stay 'ere and guard the carriage like you're supposed to! I've had enough of you lot! You're boring! I'm gonna talk to some real ponies for once instead of a buncha fuckin' statues!"

If the strangely dressed guards were at all offended, they didn't show it, and instead closed up the doors to the carriage and stood silently either side of them with a discipline and quiet dignity that Chain Mail could only dream of inspiring in his soldiers.

"Come on mate," Blueblood called, "Le's go inside."

Chain Mail ran up the stairs to catch up to the odd prince and walked alongside him.

"Who are those ponies?" he asked.

"Beefeaters mate," Blueblood replied, "Bunch of fucking wankers, if I do say so myself. Stand there outside my 'ouse all day and do fuck all. They're supposed to scare off would be thieves, but no 'alf way decent villain in Trottin'am are gonna be scared off by those bloody stupid 'ats of theirs."

"Beefeaters?!" Chain Mail repeated, "How'd they get a name like that?! Surely they don't really-?!"

"No mate, o'course they don't."

Chain Mail breathed a sigh of relief.

"Not no more anyway."

The captain nearly seized up again. Prince Blueblood smiled.

"Nah, I'm just pullin' your leg mate!"

Chain Mail began to laugh nervously. The royal guards saluted again as he passed, and the two ponies headed inside.

***

Broad Sword sighed lazily and yawned as he woke up. He briefly wondered why his mattress was so much more uncomfortable now, before remembering that he was in a prison cell in the dungeons of Canterlot Castle. He shrugged it off and twisted onto his side so he was facing the wall. He opened his eyes slowly. And was greeted by the sight of Explodey McGee laying in the bed next to him and giving him a big stupid grin. Broad Sword just froze.

"Mornin' Swordy! Are you still feeling sore? Because I know I sure am!"

For a moment, there was just uncomfortable silence. Then...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The guard jumped straight out of bed and ran across the cell to the bars, which he started pounding as loudly as he could.

"SOMEPONY GET ME OUT OF HERE!" he screamed, "RIGHT NOW!"

He stopped hitting the bars however when he realised that Explodey was laughing at him. The unicorn had fallen off the bed and was literally rolling on the floor laughing, hooves on his stomach and trying to catch his breath between fits of giggles. Broad Sword just stared at him, until he stopped and rubbed a tear away.

"Your face!" he giggled, "Oh dear Luna your face! I had to get up pretty early to set it all up, but that was just priceless!"

Broad Sword was now having a hard time stopping himself from smirking as well as he realised that he'd just been pranked.

"Heh...I guess that was pretty funny," he admitted, "You really freaked me out there for a second!"

"I know, right?!"

A guard appeared on the other side of the bars.

"Hey, what's all the commotion?" he asked, "Is there a problem in here?"

"Eheh...Nothing sir," Broad Sword replied, "Just Explodey's usual antics."

The guard raised an eyebrow.

"Hmm. If you're sure."

"Oh hey, will Chain Mail be down here at all today?"

"I'm not sure private," the other guard replied, "He's meant to be greeting some prince from Trottingham today. Luna apparently felt she needed the extra help right now. Can't say I blame her really. If what happened to the princess shook me up that badly, I can't imagine what it must be like for her."

The laughter had long since stopped, and that quiet atmosphere had regained its dominance. Broad Sword bowed his head sadly.

"I know. It was a terrible tragedy. I wish I could have done something, but it just came out of nowhere. And I was still in cuffs at the time."

"Yeah, that's right, you were there when it happened, weren't you?" the guard asked.

"We both were," Explodey added, "I was temporarily removed from my cell at the time because those brotherhood ponies tried to break me out, thinking I was being experimented on."

"Hey, I heard parts of what happened, but I never really saw it," said the guard, "Did the princess...Well...Did she suffer?"

Explodey looked off to the side, and Broad Sword just winced as the image of Celestia's head exploding into a red mess flashed across the forefront of his memory.

"It was brief," he said.

The guard just nodded, and turned to leave.

"Breakfast will be in one hour."

***

Celestia sat on the edge of the cliff that marked the boarder between Heaven and Hell, looking out across the landscape below. The ponies were still frolicking in the valley and enjoying themselves, as they always seemed to. It was like the whole place was constantly busy. Some footsteps on the stone indicated she was not alone, and Lord First soon sat down beside her, legs dangling over the cliff edge.

"They just warm your heart, don't they?" he said.

The solar princess smiled slightly, but said nothing, instead contemplating some of the aspects of this afterlife that the human had crafted. She considered voicing her questions, but didn't really feel like there was much point really. She was still trying to fully accept what First had already told her. She wasn't quite ready to start questioning him again yet.

"You're wondering how it works, aren't you?"

Celestia gave him a curious look. Figures he'd be able to read her like a book while she was in his realm.

"Just some of the mechanics of it all," she replied, "There are so many variables to account for."

First leaned back and snapped his fingers, a wine glass full of some black drink appearing in his right hand. He took a gulp of it.

"And I've thought of all of them," he said, "You're free to ask if you want. You've already heard the worst of my so called 'eldritch knowledge'. I don't think anything I can tell you about Heaven will really upset you that much."

Celestia sighed.

"Don't they get bored?" she asked, "I've lived for thousands of years. I know how much an eternity can drag, but at least I was doing something different every day, even if the variations were only slight sometimes. What about them though? They're just playing in the valley. The same setting and doing the same thing over and over again for the rest of time! Doesn't it bore them after a while?"

First smiled at her.

"Nope!" he said proudly, "I thought of that myself ahead of time. I have complete control over this entire realm, including all its inhabitants. So I cheated and did it the quick way. I made it literally impossible to feel boredom here. Everypony who enters the valley loses the capability to feel it altogether."

"What?! You take away their free will?!"

"No. I take away their ability to feel a certain emotion. And an emotion that can only have negative effects at that. Sure, maybe it was a little unethical, but you know as well as anypony how hard it is to keep yourself entertained for thousands of years at a time. Now factor in that I have to entertain everypony in history, and that I won't just be doing it for thousands of years, but in fact will still be doing it well after the heat death of the universe, and I think you can understand why I went the easy route. They're still the same ponies as before. They just lost their ability to get tired of running in circles."

Celestia went back to staring down at the valley.

"Why are we still breathing?" she asked.

"Familiarity's sake. You don't need to eat, sleep, breathe or use toilets here if you don't want to. We're all just spirits. However, the only real thing I change about the spirits here is taking away their boredom. Ponies can still be afraid, or uncomfortable, or worried for their still living relatives or homesick for the mortal world. To make it easier on those ponies, the air and the ability to breathe is still there if they want it. Same goes for everything else. The only thing you can't do here is procreate, because that's a biological process. Ghost sex does not make ghost babies."

Celestia recoiled at the thought of that.

"You mean that...that...still happens here?"

First frowned.

"For them it does," he said bitterly, "I haven't gotten laid in over a thousand years."

"Why not?"

First tilted his head at her.

"I'm serious. Why haven't you?"

"Have you just forgotten that I'm a human? And the only one here?"

"So? Discord was the only draconequus for a time, and he-"

"STOP."

"But-"

"NO. STOP. We are not discussing whatever Discord got up to in his spare time. I for one do not care, and would be a much happier man if I never found out."

Celestia rolled her eyes.

"You brought it up."

First scowled at her.

"And I'm dropping it too. Now have you-"

He stopped.

"Excuse me for a moment. New soul incoming."

***

Chain Mail and Prince Blueblood entered the throne room side by side, and found Luna laying across her throne lazily and looking bored. She looked in their direction as they entered and sat up again, stretching her legs and yawning. Recalling, that this was like being up late at night for her, the captain decided to be easy on her for this.

"Your majesty, the prince has arrived," he reported.

Luna climbed down off her throne and walked across the huge hall to meet them half way.

"Good. Nice to see you again Blueblood. It's been a while."

"Sure 'as your maj. Last I saw you was that posh do they did here last year. What was that? Grand Galloping Gala. Tha's the one. Cor, stone me that was dull as a block of flats!"

Chain Mail raised an eyebrow at Luna, and she gave him a stern look, warning him not to say anything.

"Yes, I apologise for that," the princess replied, "It's something of a tradition that the gala is always incredibly dull. You have to please the nobles, you understand."

"Those stuffy old ponces? I don't know why you bother mate. I's not like they do anything really. They just stand around and look important. That's the beefeaters' job too. Stand around and jus' look like they're doing something. I hate cunts like that, they just cost money."

Luna quickly caught another look from Chain Mail and silenced him before he could speak again.

"I bother because every once in a while I meet somepony there who I can rely on," she replied, "I consider you to be one of those ponies. As...rustic...as you may be, you're one of my most dependable friends."

"Aww, you're gonna make me blush your maj. I'm real honoured you'd think that way 'bout me. Shows I'm doin' a good job I think. If only my old man would agree. He's also one of those real posh sods, as I'm sure you know. Bloody hate him I do."

"I know. I hate him too."

"So wha's the score then? Whacha need me for?"

Luna looked sadly at him.

"You may want to sit down for this."

***

Captain Chain Mail had eventually left the company of Princess Luna and Prince Blueblood. The Trottingham accent on the prince was so thick and he was using so much slang that he could only somewhat follow what he was trying to say. And the stallion had a gutter mouth like he hadn't seen since that one colt in middle school who kept refusing to go into special ed classes.

Instead, he was now going to see the three ponies waiting the infirmary. As he entered, he noticed that Dr. Heart Beat was once again ranting at two exhausted looking guards.

"And another thing!" shouted the raging unicorn doctor, "Why the FUCK do all royal gaurds look the same?! I mean, I know some are earth ponies and some are pegasi and so on and so forth, but DAMN, why are nearly ALL of you white?! And why do you ALL have weapon or armour themed cutie marks?! What the actual fuck?!"

It was then that Chain Mail noticed that they were the same two guards he was shouting at last time. Had the doctor been shouting at them for almost eleven hours straight? They looked over to the captain again, their expressions begging and pleading for him to come to their rescue. As Heart Beat then began to launch into another frothing rant about Celestia-knows-what, the captain decided that he didn't fancy his chances, and once again left the guards to their fate to go see the patients in the other wing.

Making his way over, he saw that Soft Spoken was the one asleep this time, laying in his chair, while Gold Coin was sat up in his bed and talking with Mystic Chant. What the conversation was he never found out, because it abruptly ended once the captain approached.

"Hello Mr. Coin," said Chain Mail, "I see you're looking much better. I hope you're feeling the same."

The earth pony regarded Captain Chain Mail cautiously.

"Soft Spoken told me you figured it out," he said, "Are you here to take me to the dungeons?"

"No. As a matter of fact, I'm here to take Mystic to the dungeons."

The sudden look of surprise on both ponies' faces got a brief chuckle out of the captain.

"For your visit of course!" he clarified, "You said you wanted to see your father today, right? I arranged everything for you. He's waiting in the meeting room as we speak. So how about it kid? Want to go see dad?"

Mystic looked resigned, and a touch sad that he had to leave. Chain Mail didn't know everything yet, but he had already gleaned that bad things happened between Mystic and his father before they were last separated. He did not expect a happy reunion, and by the look on the colt's face, neither did he. Still though, he had no obligation to do this and could back out at any time.

"Okay," he said.

Chain Mail smiled.

"Well, let's be on our way. As for you Mr. Coin, I wouldn't worry. I haven't even told Luna anything yet, mostly through lack of opportunity, but when I do I'll put in a good word. For now, I'd just get some rest."

***

Lord First and Princess Celestia stood side by side in the misty void of Hell. Just ahead of them, a pony laid on the cold stone floor, teal blue pegasus stallion with a black mane, roughly twenty years old and with a cutie mark of a watering can. Celestia tried to make her way forward, but First brought up an arm in her path to stop her.

With a silent shake of his head, he left the princess behind and walked over to the stallion. He was facing away from them, so First walked around to the other side of the pony so that he would be face to face with the new arrival. He gave Celestia a grim look and crouched down next to him. He lightly tapped the pony's head with a finger.

"Hey. Hey, wake up. Come on buddy, you're needed."

The pegasus stirred and looked up around him. He seemed dazed at first, like anypony did just after waking up from a deep sleep, but his eyes shot open and he suddenly sat up, fully alert once more, upon seeing who it was who woke him, and he began trembling. With the stallion sitting and First crouching, they appeared the same height.

"You!" he said fearfully, "You're...You're..."

The human held out a hand to the pony cheerfully.

"Lord First," he introduced, "Grim Reaper, Guardian of Souls, Heaven's Gatekeeper and patron Elder God of Equestria. It's nice to meet you Gardens. I've admired your work for a long time."

"You know me?" the pony asked, still trembling.

When it became clear he was not going to get a handshake from this pony, First let his arm drop back to his side.

"Of course I know you," he replied, "I know every pony. I've got all the time in the world up here. What else is there to do but get to know every pony out there?"

He didn't seem afraid anymore, but the pegasus now became extremely sad. His head drooped and he began to cry suddenly. First kept smiling, but it became less the cheerful kind and more the understanding, consoling smile.

"I'm sure you remember how you got here, right?" he asked.

The sobbing pony nodded and tried to clear away the tears from his face. First just patted him lightly on the back.

"Nasty way to go," he commented, "I'm sorry you felt like you had to do that to yourself. You aren't the first who's had the idea though. Ever since it happened I've had a flood of ponies just like you coming in."

Just a short distance away, Celestia gave First a questioning look, wondering what exactly he was referring to.

"But the princess! How could anypony do that to her?! She was the most wonderful mare Equestria ever had! I just...What do you do when all that's good in the world is...dead...?"

Oh. Now the realisation dawned. As Gardens as he was apparently called went into another fit of blubbering, Lord First beckoned her over.

"You know, this is the afterlife," he said, "Everypony who dies comes here. Gardens, how would you like to meet a very special mare?"

The pegasus turned to his side to see the princess as she approached. The waterworks immediately stopped, and he was captivated. He stared at her as if in a trance. First and the new pony both stood up at the same time.

"You touch so many lives Celestia," said First, "So it just stands to reason, some ponies took it hard."

***

Prince Blueblood bucked down the door to the dining room where the Knights of Man sat in places around a table. Luna followed him in afterwards, but said nothing. Instead, all focus was on the prince, as he made his way to the forefront of the table. One of the pegasus stallions raised an eyebrow.

"Would you be the new regent we were informed of?" he asked.

"Blueblood. Prince, Blueblood mate. Yeah, I'm the guv'nor around here. Anything you want you take it up with me."

"Well, then we demand you release your prisoners and the Ferrari that you are holding here in this castle!"

"Oy! Don't you be demanding nothing from me! We can talk it out if you want but don't make no mistakes about thinking you can boss me around sunshine! I'll knock you spark out mate!"

That seemed to silence the opposition. For now anyway.

"Now," the prince continued, "Since you're demanding so much of us an' all, I wanna know whatchu got to offer us in return?"

"There is no return offer!" shouted one of the mares, "You will submit to our demands or face devastation from the armies of the Empire!"

"An' wha's to stop 'em coming down here with those armies and messin' us up anyway?"

"Second would rather avoid war, but knows it to be inevitable," one of the knights explained, "By giving you the option to just submit to our demands, he is leaving the gate open for potential peace. However, all other routes lead to war, and he asked that we remind you that war would lead to devastation upon Equestria, and he estimates thousands dead on either side."

Luna and Blueblood exchanged a look.

"Sounds serious," said the prince, "I've got an idea though. Bear with me here mate. What if, instead o' just handing over all the prisoners and such to you and lettin' you go with 'em, we arrange transport instead? You can go ahead without us, and we'll send some of the boys 'round to wherever you're based with the prisoners and this Ferrari thing, and they can negotiate with Second for their release and 'opeful peace with Equestria when they get there?"

The Knights of Man did that low murmur thing that they did again, speaking in such a way somehow that they could all hear and understand each other perfectly but Luna and Blueblood could not, despite them both being right there. The princess was still unsure how they did it. It soon died down again.

"So?" the prince asked, "Do we 'ave a deal?"

***

Spike groaned as he awoke from his sleep. Light poured in through the windows and filled up the ball room. By the looks of things, it was now early morning. Spike's eyes crossed as he looked at his nose, and the pony standing at the end of it, a royal guard in standard armour. The soldier was expressionless, and to his credit did not flinch when Spike rose up to his full height to stretch his arms and yawn.

"So," the dragon said, his booming voice echoing through the room, "What's happened now?"

***

Mystic Chant's legs wobbled slightly as the captain led him into the interview room. A wooden table and two chairs were the only feature of the room, (aside from the mirror that Mystic knew from all those detective stories was not really a mirror), and his father Ancient Tome sat on one of the chairs facing him.

"Go on."

Chain Mail's encouraging tone helped the little unicorn along, and he climbed up into the other seat across from Tome. The captain closed the door and sat just by it, acting as supervision for the young colt and as a guard in case Ancient Tome tried to escape or try anything funny, and there were others on the other side of that mirror watching too.

Painfully aware that their conversation was not private, but no longer caring, Ancient Tome tried to begin conversation.

"So Mystic," he said awkwardly, "How is everything?"

"Good," the colt replied miserably.

"Is Soft Spoken treating you well?"

"...Yeah."

"And what about Gold Coin? Is everything okay with him too?"

"...He's fine..."

Ancient Tome bit his lip.

"So Mystic-"

"Why did you threaten Softy?!"

The younger unicorn's sudden outburst caught his father off-guard. Regaining his composure he tried to answer.

"Look, son-"

"Why did you bring back Second?! He's evil dad! He killed the princess! You saw him kill her! And you brought him back! Why?!"

"Mystic-"

"And why did you kill all those ponies?! Those guards did nothing wrong! They're good ponies! They defend us!"

This time, not trying to interrupt, Ancient Tome just stayed quiet and waited for Mystic's heavy breathing to subside. When he was confident that his son had nothing more to add, he tried to answer.

"Look, Mystic, I don't know if Gold Coin explained this to you or not, but I'm a member of the Brotherhood of Man. We believe certain things, and one of our core beliefs is that Lord Second is here to save our world, not destroy it. We believe in a corrupted tyrant of an alicorn, not a benevolent princess, and we believe that the humans were here to free us from them. We saved Lord Second, because we believed that he could still save us, by defeating Celestia and her sister."

He sighed.

"Now I grant that his promises of a zombie apocalypse don't exactly conform to those beliefs. Fair to say, I'm suffering something of a crisis of faith right now. But I still believe that Second does not seek only death and destruction. At heart, this is a plan to get rid of Luna too and show Equestria their saviour in action. I have faith that Second would not hurt an innocent pony."

"You would though!" Mystic shouted angrily.

Ancient Tome lowered his head in shame.

"The Brotherhood believe Celestia is the villain, but I never said that makes us nice ponies either. We banded together out of a common belief that Second would make Equestria better. Our motivations though were all wildly different. Chameleon for one felt that if she helped Second in rising to power, she would be rewarded with untold riches, and Swift Justice believed that Princess Luna was fully accountable for the actions of Nightmare Moon, and wanted the human released so that she could be brought to proper justice and executed for all the ponies she killed thousands of years ago.

"Your auntie Arts felt much the same as Swift Justice, and that was why she was a part of the Brotherhood. Me? I joined because I felt that the alicorns were keeping the rest of ponykind down for their own purposes, and wanted to see ponies as a species reach their full potential by getting rid of them. Regardless of our reasons though, we all had the same goal. We wanted Lord Second free and fighting the good fight. And we were willing to do anything to make sure he did.

"We researched forbidden black magic to conduct the resurrection ritual. We stole things from ponies to make it work, whether it be spell books, the Reaper's Horn, Second's statue. And yes, we even killed ponies in the name of rescuing Second. We did everything. Because we thought that was what we needed to do. I'm not going to pretend what we did was noble. I'm not saying it was right. I'm not even going to say it was necessary. But we had our reasons for doing what we did, and I stick by them."

Mystic's face twisted in anger.

"You still didn't have to threaten Softy!"

Ancient Tome just sighed. He had no response to that. Mystic and he waited in silence for a few minutes, the little colt clearly expecting a legitimate answer, but the truth was that there was no excuse for that. Not even Tome could pretend that he really needed to do that to the old stallion.

Mystic climbed off his chair wordlessly and walked over to the door.

"Wait!"

The colt stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the bearded old unicorn.

"Mystic, I know I haven't been the best father, but please don't shut me out completely because of this. I know I did wrong, but we're still family! You and me!"

Mystic turned again to face Tome properly, still looking angry.

"Auntie Morning and Uncle Iron are in the brotherhood, aren't they?" he asked.

Tome nodded.

"And Auntie Arts?"

Another nod.

"Was everypony in our family in the brotherhood?"

Tome paused slightly this time, but still gave a single nod anyway.

"...Even mom?"

"...Even mom."

Mystic turned away again.

"Then I don't want to be a part of our family!"

***

Sliske's eyes shot open. At the other end of his high security cell, the massive steel door swung open, and a number of royal guards stood on the other side, armed with a number of sharp pointy things that could make quick work of his physical body. The ancient alien being uncurled from his position of meditation and stood on the floor of the cell again to address them.

"Problem officccccersssssssss?"

"We are to escort you to the throne room immediately," the middle guard reported, "Princess's orders."

Sliske smirked.

"How interessssssssting..."

***

Soft Spoken woke up to see the ceiling moving above him. It took him a little while to even remember where he was, but even after his memories came back to him and he recalled that he had spent the night at Gold Coin's bedside in the Canterlot Castle infirmary, he still did not know why the ceiling was moving above him. He sat up, and found that he had been laying asleep on a stretcher which a number of medical ponies were moving from a large corridor. Gold Coin kept pace beside them, wearing a few bandages in places but evidently feeling much better.

"What on earth is this?" the old butler asked, "Why am I on a stretcher? Where are we going? Where's Mystic?"

"We're going to the throne room to meet Princess Luna," Gold Coin answered, "She requested our presence. Mystic is off seeing his father under the captain's supervision, but I'm told they will both be meeting us there. And you're on a stretcher because while I fully recovered and am okay to walk to the throne room, you fell asleep in your chair last night, and I thought it would be funny if we moved you on a stretcher and woke you when we got to the throne room instead of waking you right away, because then you'd be even more clueless as to what's going on, and I could tell you that you were being tried for war crimes or whatever and get a photograph of your reaction, and then I'd have the funniest picture in the world, which I could then sell to one of those magazines that buy funny pictures and make myself a nice tidy profit. The doctors here agreed to help me for a share of the money."

Soft Spoken blinked.

"Well?" said Gold Coin.

"...My head hurts..."

***

Chain Mail stepped outside the interview room with Mystic, who sighed loudly as they left. The captain gave the little colt a sympathetic look. He considered what best to say at this point, but before anything came to mind, he was interrupted by a guard patrol emerging from around the corner, escorting Sliske, Broad Sword and Explodey McGee.

"Woah, woah, stop there," the captain ordered, "What are you doing soldiers? I wasn't aware there was a prisoner transfer going on here?"

"There's not captain," one of the guards replied, "Princess Luna has ordered that these prisoners be taken up to the throne room."

"...Why?"

"I don't rightly know sir, but she wants to see you there too, and the colt."

Mystic didn't say anything, but still looked up to Chain Mail in surprise, wondering what it was the princess wanted him for. The captain voiced his concerns for him.

"Not sure why they want him, captain," the guard answered, "All I know is, those are our orders."

"Hmm," said Chain Mail, "Well, let's not keep the princess waiting any longer."

***

Ten minutes later, a group which included most of those present at Celestia's execution at the hands of Second gathered before Luna in the royal throne room. The princess sat high above them, flanked either side by some clearly tired night guards who were working out of their usual hours, and a number of day guards were positioned in strategic locations around the room. Lounging across the throne next to hers, Prince Blueblood barely tried to hide his lack of manners or tact, and slumped in it looking half asleep.

The ponies or pony shaped aliens of the group all stood in a line before the princess. Captain Chain Mail, Gold Coin, Soft Spoken, Mystic Chant, Broad Sword, Sliske in Arcane Arts' body, and Explodey McGee all stood to attention before the princess. Behind them, the massively oversized Spike stood somewhat more casually than the others, leaning in somewhat so he could best hear what the princess had to say. So far, he had said nothing to any of the ponies who had come in.

"Greetings subjects," Luna began, "I've called you all here for a very delicate matter. Lord Second is moving again, and we know where he is. As it turns out, the Brotherhood of Man were not in fact his only followers, and a number of them have banded together and created a small outpost somewhere in the Everfree forest. They claim to be building their own nation, which they name as the United States of America, and that will be a part of a much larger New Human Empire. If what they claim is anything to go by, this place may house up to two thousand ponies."

The ponies all began to exchange words. Sliske and Broad Sword commented on the numbers these ponies were claiming, Chain Mail and Explodey seemed to question the threat of such an outpost, while Mystic and Soft Spoken both tried to grill Gold Coin for answers about this entire mass of human worshippers that they had never heard about, which unfortunately it seemed he hadn't either. Spike just kept quiet.

"Now," said the princess, silencing the conversation, "They have sent us a group of ponies already, demanding the return of the red machine in our dungeon called the Ferrari which Second used to breach the gates of the palace grounds, and that we release all the prisoners to them, including all the Brotherhood members, Sliske, and Explodey."

"What?! Why me?!" asked Explodey.

"No clue," Luna replied, "However, refusal to meet their demands will be considered an act of war. Now, I don't think we can keep peace for very long with a group that follows Lord Second, but we are Equestrians, and it's our duty to take the path of peace wherever possible. For that reason, I am sending all of you, along with the Brotherhood of Man prisoners and the Ferrari, out to this Everfree outpost to negotiate peace between Equestria and America."

"Permission to speak freely your majesty?" asked Captain Chain Mail.

"Granted."

"Why are WE being sent to negotiate this? How are we qualified?"

"Ummm..."

The group all turned to look at Soft Spoken.

"...Well...I was a diplomat back in the day," he offered, "I was considered one of the best in fact. I think we're being sent because the princess expects me to come out of retirement."

"Indeed I do," said Luna, "but I must confess I have an ulterior motive."

"Well do tell princess," Gold Coin interrupted, "Because I would like to know why you feel we're all needed for this, especially Mystic. What's Mystic doing here? Come to that, what's Sliske doing here?"

"Mystic and Sliske are here for the same reason the rest of you are. I expect all of you to work together as a team to negotiate with the Americans on this. It is vitally important that all of you are in on it."

"WHY?!"

"Because I believe that between you, you all embody the Elements of Harmony."

You could have heard a pin drop after that. The entire chamber went silent. All the members of the group were well aware of what the Elements of Harmony were. They had all heard the old legends of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and the numerous foes they had defeated with them. Hell, Sliske was one of those foes they had defeated. Of all of them, Mystic had the sketchiest knowledge of what exactly the elements were, but even he knew the basics of the legend.

And still, Spike remained silent. Though he was now making a 'surprised face'.

"Say again ma'am?" said Chain Mail.

"Umm...What?" Sliske agreed.

"I said you may-"

"Okay stop!" Soft Spoken interrupted, "Pardon my French your majesty, but what the fuck?! Have you SEEN who you're speaking to here?! You think Sliske is an Element of Harmony?! SLISKE?!"

"Yes."

"But- But- BUT HE'S EVIL!"

Sliske frowned.

"Well fuck you too Missssssssssster Uppity."

"So?" said Luna, "No rule against the Elements of Harmony being wielded by evil aliens."

Soft Spoken began spluttering.

"Gold Coin!" he shouted, "You know that Gold Coin is a former member of the Brotherhood of Man, don't you?!"

"Hey! Thanks for snitching Softy!" Gold Coin said indignantly.

"Yes, I did know," Luna answered.

"Wait, how did you know?" the captain asked, "I was going to tell you myself, but I never got around to it."

"It's really not that hard to figure out."

"And you still believe he's an Element of Harmony?!" shouted Soft Spoken.

"You know, for a pony called Soft Spoken you sure shout a lot," Gold Coin commented.

"Yes, I do," Luna replied, "I can sense their power in all of you. How that is when there are seven of you and six elements I do not know, but that's the purpose of this journey. Like how Twilight Sparkle and her friends once wandered through the Everfree to discover the elements and strengthened the bonds of friendship between them, so to must you now make that same journey, to discover the elements you all represent and hopefully defeat Lord Second if this negotiation doesn't work out, which I strongly suspect it won't."

The ponies all exchanged looks.

"Thisssssss issssssssss a ssssssssstupid plan," said Sliske, "Are you ssssssseriousssssssly going to trussssssst the Elementsssssss of Harmony to ussssssss when at leasssssssst half of our group issssss evil, or at leassssst created by or followers of evil? And how do you know we will even become friendssssssssss? What if I decccccccide I hate all thesssssssse poniessssssss?"

"Well, you're already friends with Broad Sword, so you've made a good start," the princess pointed out.

That seemed to defeat Sliske's argument.

"Your thoughts captain?" asked Explodey McGee.

"I stopped listening after Elements of Harmony," Chain Mail answered, "This plan makes no sense to me, and I can easily see this ending in tears."

"I agree," said Explodey.

"Me too," said Gold Coin.

Mystic just murmured a passive agreement.

"What about you Broad Sssssssword?"

"I have no opinion at all!" the guard replied cheerfully.

"So we're all in agreement then?" said Soft Spoken, "This is a stupid plan and we shouldn't do it?"

The other six all agreed unanimously. Then, Spike stepped in and voiced his opinion for the first time.

"But you're still going to do it anyway," he said.

"Yeah, but we don't want to!" Gold Coin replied turning to face the dragon, "You can't make us!"

"I can breathe fire."

"He'sssssssss got ussssssss there," said Sliske.

Soft Spoken just sighed loudly.

"Fine. I don't even care anymore. Let's just do it."

***

This was just plain idiotic. Princess Luna's plan to deal with the impending threat of a possible invasion from an unknown number of ponies following an evil Elder God was to send a group of random ponies, including a child, a treacherous guard, a stallion alive way past the point he should have been, and at least three ponies who were likely to turn around join Lord Second instead. And these ponies were supposedly the embodiments of the Elements of Harmony, and the last hope for Equestria.

They were all going to die.

And with this in mind, the seven of them made their way over to the portal station to be transported to the coordinates provided by the Knights of Man, which according to the princess should lead to a clearing somewhere on the edge of the Everfree, not too distant from Ponyville.

The prisoners that weren't among the Elements of Harmony, (Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof), had all been caged up and placed in a giant shipping crate along with the Ferrari. Odd choice of prisoner transport, but that was hardly the strangest thing that had happened lately. The whole world was absurd these days. It was better to just shake your head and move on, and never question it again.

Spike was going ahead of them with the crate. Apparently, he would be needed there to defend them if anything happened, but Spike was way too huge to fit through a portal. Instead, he would be flying to the location instead and carrying the crate with him. The Elements were expected to take a portal ahead and wait for Spike in the Everfree.

"Remind me again why we're doing this?" said Gold Coin.

"Persssssssssonally, becaussssssse I have nothing better to do," Sliske answered, "And that dragon ssssssscaresssssss me."

Soft Spoken was staring at him.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I just can't get over the fact that I'm travelling with a thousand year old alien body snatcher who has tried to take over Equestria no less than three times already, and somehow the princess trusts you to travel with us without a legion of guards to protect the rest of us."

"Hey," Captain Chain Mail interrupted, "Me and Broad Sword are here, aren't we? If Sliske tries anything, that's what we're for."

"Oh yeah, big help," said Gold Coin, "I'm sure Sliske's really scared of you two. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't he possessed the both of you at least once?"

"Would you pleasssssssse ssssssstop talking about me asssssss if I'm not here?"

"Shut up you!" Gold Coin snapped, "You're psychopathic maniac! You have no right to speak!"

"Well you're a deluded cultissssssst, so you're one to talk."

"You're mind controlling a pony right now! What's to say you won't do that to the rest of us?!"

"What'ssssss to ssssssay you won't try to kill the resssssst of ussssss with voodoo?"

The yellow earth pony nearly lunged at Sliske, but Broad Sword and Explodey both caught him before he could. Chain Mail just rolled his eyes and turned to look across the station. It had been cleared out for their use right now, as all the civilian portal destinations had been closed and the power re-routed so that they could make this special journey. In the portal chamber on the other side of the station, their transport arrived.

"There it is folks," he called, "All aboard."

The others forgot their argument, or at least put it to one side for the time being, and the seven ponies began to make their way over to the portal chamber. As they did, the normally quiet Mystic Chant spoke up.

"Softy, where are we going?"

"Nowhere important Mystic," the old butler replied, "We're just going to go check out this place where these crazy human worshippers have set up base. Some place in the Everfree forest. Probably just a little shantytown."

As they approached the portal, the ponies all held their breath.

"Have I mentioned yet how stupid this plan is?" asked Softy, "Yeah? Okay. Just checking."

***

As Gardens finally left for the valley beyond, Celestia and First were left alone in the mists. A single tear trailed down the princess's face. First walked over to stand next to her. The both of them said nothing for several minutes, just standing there in the chill of the mists and staring off into it.

"How many?" Celestia eventually asked, "For how long?"

"Your death was reported in the Equestria Daily the morning after," First answered, "Luna's yet to give a speech and there hasn't been a funeral yet, but just the news itself is enough to get emotions running high. There are those that fear you, of course, but most of Equestria knows the real you, knows the kind and loving mare who raises the sun for them every day. The thought of such a terrible thing happening to you was just too much for some. Gardens there was the ninth suicide victim I've had since the news came out."

Celestia shook her head.

"It feels like I only came here an hour ago," she commented, "Doesn't feel like morning to me."

"Time is running faster here than in the mortal world. For you anyway. My personal timeline is slowed down so I have time to sneak off and greet everypony who dies, but for you I've been accelerating it."

Celestia head snapped to the side to look at him.

"What for?" she asked seriously.

"So you don't have to wait so long."

"Wait for what?"

"For the call. You've still got a job to do, and you're still needed."

Celestia blinked. First just smiled at her and began to walk ahead of her.

"Come on princess," he called, "Come with me, and I'll show you how to kill a human."

***

"Woah. What isssssss thisssssss?"

"Dear sweet Celestia..."

"By the gods..."

"I can hardly believe it."

"It's impossible!"

"This shouldn't exist!"

"Oh...wow..."

This was no shantytown. The portal had taken them into the human worshipper's Everfree base alright, but this was NOT just a ramshackle little village thrown together at the last moment. Before them was a sprawling metropolis easily triple the size of Canterlot. There were skyscrapers and huge brick buildings one end and traditional wooden houses and more natural pony made structures towards the other.

In between there were parks and large outdoors areas, there was a water park with its own artificial beach, there was a huge open concert hall, there was a football stadium, there were multiple fast food chains all around, some familiar and others new, and there were a number of other public buildings dotted around which claimed to be, among other things, libraries, school houses, supermarkets, post offices, churches, and one which claimed to be an embassy.

The dominating feature of the town was a massive stone building that rose up out of the centre of it all, covered all over with ornate stone carvings and looking far older than it could have ever plausibly been. What it was exactly wasn't clear, but it was probably either a cathedral or just a palace. Celestia knew, Lord Second would need a palace that size to house his ego.

How had nopony seen this yet? The tallest buildings in this city easily dwarfed all the trees in the forest that used to be here, and which still surrounded the outsides of the town. Surely it was possible to see this city from Canterlot?

The stunned silence of the seven ponies was interrupted however, as a tan coloured pegasus with a big black cowboy hat landed right in front of them. He was smiling ear to ear, and was bursting with barely contained energy, much like Explodey McGee was in his more excitable moments. He walked up to them and began shaking their hooves one at a time.

"Howdy there!" the pegasus said, "The knights called ahead and said you was coming. I'm here as your tour guide. Mah name's Buckshot, y'all can just call me Buck."

Nopony said anything. They were still speechless.

"Well come on then! Everypony follow me," the pegasus instructed, "I'll show you around right now! Welcome to the city. This is Secopolis, USA."

END

Author's notes:

FUCK. TWELVE THOUSAND WORDS. Considering the last chapter was my shortest yet and this is so far my longest, I strongly suspect that I'm subconsciously overcompensating for everything. This took a while to write, but I made my self imposed deadline anyway. Hooray! Now if only I could write my other stories this quickly. Then again, I don't give myself just a week per chapter with those. I've had a lot of encouraging comments from people saying that they don't care about getting the chapter on time, just so long as they get a quality chapter. And while that's very sweet of all of you, surely you agree that getting out chapters sooner rather than later is still a good thing, no? I'd never dream of putting out an inferior product just so I can get it out on time. I am not Sega. So as long as I stick by that, I don't see anything wrong in trying to get these out speedily.

Now to address a concern that I know some of you are going to have right away; Yes. Prince Blueblood is a racist caricature of the British. However, I am British myself, so I'm allowed to do that. He's actually partially based on my dad. Stereotypes have to come from somewhere after all. They wouldn't exist if at least some people didn't conform to them. My dad is one of those living stereotypes. Blueblood's also partially based on Kent Paul from Grand Theft Auto, just so you know.

*sips tea*

As far as addressing criticisms go...I got nothing. Seriously, it's like all the commenters who were pointing out flaws in the story before just vanished. I don't know what happened honestly. I'm sure the story didn't just randomly take a huge leap in quality. Maybe it's because I haven't done anything really ambitious like a massive fight scene or killing off Celestia since then? Maybe they're still reading, but they consider any flaws still in the story too minor to be worth commenting on. I sure hope that's what it is anyway. I hope they haven't just given up on the story.

And finally, an update on the image, I have actually sought out an artist who does comissions, and have contacted her about a possible replacement for the current image. She has replied a few times, and I sent her the details of what I want, but I don't know if she's already working on it or not. Either way though, we may or may not be getting a new title image soon, so keep an eye out for that.

That's all for now, thanks for reading, you're all wonderful, see you next chapter.

Chapter 9: Sector Sweep

"Carol...I'm sorry I missed it. I came as soon as I heard, but work was....I'm sorry. I'm making excuses again."

"No. No it's okay. Come here and hold your son."

The new father smiled and walked over to the bedside, and picked up the child wrapped in the blanket. He looked down at the sleeping infant, and began to gently rock back and forth.

"So...do we have a name?" he asked.

"I was thinking Anthony, you know, after my cousin?"

"Heh...Anthony...Cute. I doubt many others at school will have a name like that."

"They'll probably end up nicknaming him Tony like they did with my cousin."

"Why not just name him Tony then?"

"It just wouldn't be the same. You know it wouldn't."

"Fair enough."

He looked down at the baby.

"Hey little Anthony. You're gonna have a good life you are. And do you know why? Because I'll always look after you, and I'll always let you do whatever you want to do. You can be whatever you want to be."

He looked off to the side, and sighed.

"You won't ever hear me complain to you about your choices, and you'll always have my support, because you're my son, and I'll always love you. You can even sing if you want to."

He kissed the baby's forehead. His wife smiled sympathetically at him.

"You'll accomplish great things. You just wait and see."

***

The unicorns were exhausted, but they weren't done yet. Diligently, they jumped down off the crate and surrounded it, and began to use their telekinesis to rip it apart at the edges. Nearby, Frosty Morning of the Brotherhood of Man waited patiently for it to open, along with her zebra companion Ze!zar.

One of the sides popped off the crate, and the unicorns collapsed. Inside, the four members of the Knights of Man who had been sent out to deal with the dragon still laid unconscious. At the back, Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof both laid in the back seats of the Ferrari that Second had created. They both smiled upon seeing her.

"Frosty!" said Ancient Tome, "I've never been happier to see you!"

The pegasus walked into the now opened crate as her brother in law climbed out of the strange red vehicle and hugged her. Iron Hoof climbed out shortly afterwards. It didn't take her long to realise that he was missing most of his left foreleg.

"My goodness! Iron, what happened?"

"...Captain Chain Mail," the ex-royal guard answered, "Cut it off in a sword fight."

Frosty gave him a sympathetic smile and held up the bandaged stump to inspect it. Ancient Tome meanwhile had gone to the unicorns who had busted open the crate and was trying to convince one of them to help remove the magic restraining bolt that was still attached to his horn.

"Hmm," Frosty mused, "We may be able to fix this. Secopolis is home to a lot of advanced technology. I bet the Mages' Guild could fix up your leg with some cybernetic enhancements."

Ancient Tome returned, sans restraining bolt.

"Right, now I think we deserve some answers," he said, "Where are we? What's going on? What happened to Lord Second and the dragon?"

"Lord Second founded a city last night. Using his infinite powers of creation, he created a fledgling nation called the United States of America in what used to be the Everfree Forest, starting with a cathedral called the Palace of Kings built on top of the very clearing where we conducted the ritual which freed him, and he filled it with thousands upon thousands of ponies that he created to be his citizens and servants.

"Upon doing so, he sent out his best ponies to track down all the surviving members of the Brotherhood of Man and invite them here, where we now enjoy our comfortable positions as the High Priests in the Church of Humanity. You, Iron and Arcane Arts though were all imprisoned by the Equestrians, so he sent out a group of the Knights of Man to demand your release in exchange for peace with Equestria. Fortunately for us, Princess Luna submitted to all demands."

Tome and Iron looked around in wonder at the city.

"So all this is...?"

"Yes. Second's city. He calls it Secopolis."

"Wow," said Iron.

There was a roar and a sound of banging nearby. Iron Hoof and Ancient Tome exchanged a look and walked around the crate to see where it was coming from, and were shocked to find a giant glowing red metal cube behind them, surrounded on all sides by large piles of rubble.

"What...What is this?"

"Dragon prison," the zebra interrupted, speaking for the first time in that conversation, "Lord Second commissioned the mages' guild to create it. The rubble surrounding it was once the Secopolis Embassy, but it has fallen apart from the effects of the prison's spell. It is meant to contain the dragon who carried you here, who has breath hot enough to superheat steel. To prevent his escape, the prison is enchanted to periodically regenerate its metal walls. The regeneration and flow of liquid metal coming out of it destroyed the embassy minutes ago."

"Hmm," Tome replied, "Well we'd best get out of here then. Where is Lord Second? I'd really like to meet him, properly this time."

"All in good time," said Frosty, "Right now we need to get back to the church. I hear they captured some infiltrators from Equestria. They might know something important."

"Well then. Let's be on our way."

***

The Knights of Man and the teal blue stallion leading them backed away fearfully as Mystic Chant's horn began to glow. Sliske grinned as the magical field began to surround them all. They began to lift into the air. The fact he was lifting ten ponies at once was quite impressive. Then again, this thing had been alive for thousands of years and had possessed over seven hundred ponies, mostly unicorns. His accumulative knowledge of magic probably surpassed that of any single individual unicorn in history.

On the ground, their commander was left alone and out of Sliske's spell, just left to stare. A single layer of overglow enveloped his horn and the freakishly mutated colt turned his attention to the buildings around them. The magic swept over the buildings too. The commander expected them to explode and kill everypony right that minute.

Not so. Instead, the buildings began to break apart. Somehow, he wasn't even sure how, Sliske began to deconstruct the three large buildings around them brick by brick, and was floating each individual brick higher and higher above them.

This was getting beyond ridiculous now.

"Everypony take cover," the blue unicorn ordered in a raspy voice, "Thisssssssssss will be messssssssy."

The bricks began to circle above them as if caught in a tornado, at first not touching the still floating Knights of Man caught in the eye of the storm, but then they began to home in on them. It began lightly, just one or two bricks flying out of the swirling vortex around them to smash into them one at a time to break their bones and make them bleed. Then it began to pick up, and it became a hailstorm. Thousands upon thousands of bricks smashed into the knights from all sides, and seemed to almost rip them apart.

The commander was still left alone, for some reason the sole pony to be spared the alien's wrath, and he stared helplessly as his knights were shredded by the flying debris. Eventually, Sliske let go, and the surviving knights all fell to the ground. They groaned in pain and misery, definitely crippled for life even if they did survive, and they tried to crawl away from the centre of the vortex.

Suddenly, Sliske cut the spell completely. All the bricks stopped floating, and a pile of stone as heavy as three buildings came crashing down on top of the surviving ponies, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble and a stunned teal blue stallion, who stared incredulously at the spot where ten ponies had once stood.

He turned to look at Sliske.

"There'ssssssssssss more where that came from," he warned, "Move along. If I sssssssssee you again, you will die."

The commander ran away almost the moment he stopped talking. Sliske grinned and looked over to his companions for approval, and was saddened to find them as equally shocked as the commander he had just chased off.

"Damn," said Gold Coin, "That was harsh Sliske. I just...I don't know how to feel about that."

"I do," Soft Spoken added, "I feel like that was the most sickening thing I've seen since Second ripped out Lady Arts' throat. What is wrong you? Do you have no concept of the value of pony life? Those knights were helpless!"

"Of courssssssssse I know the value of pony life. I jussssssssst happen to believe that sssssssome livesssssssss are worth more than otherssssssss. Like for example, the livessssssss of the Elementsssssss of Harmony are worth more than thossssssse of sssssssome random creationsssssssss of Ssssssssecond created for the ssssssole purpossssssse of killing usssssss."

"It is not that simple!" Soft Spoken snapped, "For one thing-"

"Guys, I'm angry about this too," Gold Coin interrupted, "but we really don't have time for you two to have a moral debate while Second's minions are probably heading this way as we speak. We need to get moving. Sliske, heal my injuries and then get out of that colt's head."

The alien sighed in resignation.

"Fine."

His horn lit up again, and Gold Coin was overcome with a feeling of calm and warmth. In no time at all, the business pony was on top form once again, and jumped in place with renewed energy. The two adults looked expectantly over to Sliske, waiting for him to vacate the colt's body. His teeth and snake tongue receded back into his mouth and the strangely coloured eyes returned to normal too, but Sliske did not seem to leave Mystic's body at all. The disoriented unicorn stumbled in place for a moment, before regaining his balance.

"Woah," he said, holding a hoof to his head.

"Mystic? Are you alright?" the old butler asked, "Where's Sliske gone?"

"He's still in here, just taking a break," the little unicorn answered, "He can still see and hear everything, but he's not in control."

"Okay, that's cheating," Gold Coin protested, "I told him to get out, not just stop controlling you."

"I really don't mind," Mystic said wistfully, "It's sorta cool really. I mean, did you see the magic I was doing back there?!"

"Mystic..." Soft Spoken began.

"No I know! You're gonna say it wasn't really me, but it felt so much like it was! I know what I was doing with it was pretty bad, but I've never done such good magic in my entire life! It's like Sliske suddenly turned me into a superhero!"

The little colt began bouncing up and down excitedly now and running about the ruined street making whooshing noises like he always did when playing pretend. It was actually really cute all things considered, but they still had to move on. Just as they were about to say so though, there was a brief flash of light, and the two adult ponies noticed a mark depicting a cloud of black smoke with two simple eyes and huge sharp teeth appearing on his flank.

Mystic Chant's cutie mark was Sliske.

***

Broad Sword stared at Explodey McGee as the strange unicorn, who was apparently a professional contortionist, wriggled his way out of the hundred upon hundreds of ropes that wrapped tightly around him and had not seconds ago kept him completely motionless. The earth pony still had not had time to think of why their captors had chosen to tie all these ropes to the walls and support beams and form a giant spider web of ropes to hold them.

Explodey had not explained anything. The moment Broad Sword woke up, his companion got to work on escaping. Apparently he could have escaped from the ropes at any time prior, but he was waiting for him to wake up so he could help. The ropes fell aside limply, and the unicorn was free. He trotted up to the stunned royal guard.

"I didn't know ponies could bend like that," said Broad Sword.

"Yeah, well, as we both know now I'm not exactly a normal pony, am I?"

The two shared a quiet moment as they recalled the events that had lead to them being trapped here in the first place. Explodey's discovery of his true nature, Broad Sword's promise to help him find some reassurance, and their (in hindsight) terrible idea to force the information out of Sun Rise, resulting in their arrest for the assault of one of the most powerful ponies in the city.

Though, if they were arrested it didn't really make much sense that they were now being held inside the Church of Humanity.

"Anyway," said Explodey, "I know some really effective long distance teleportation spells. If I can get off the restraining bolt on my horn, I can teleport us both out of here."

"Okay," Broad Sword replied, "How do you get it off?"

"I don't. You do."

"Oh. How?"

"Use your mouth. Isn't that how earth ponies do everything?"

"What?! I'm not putting your horn in my mouth!"

"Why not?"

"It's weird!"

"Weird how?"

"It's...You know!"

Explodey narrowed his eyes.

"You have a dirty mind."

"My point still stands."

"Oh stop being such a baby! I need you to remove this otherwise we won't be able to escape! Come on! We're all adults here!"

Explodey put his horn right in the guard's face. Broad Sword winced uncomfortably and sighed. Reluctantly, he lowered his mouth over the horn and his teeth grasped the magic restraining bolt at the base. He pulled back and tried to yank it off, but the bolt was persistent and refused to budge. He wiggled it around to try and loosen it.

"So baby, you come here often?" Explodey joked.

Broad Sword withdrew his mouth.

"Okay, if you're you aren't going to treat this seriously-"

"Okay! Okay! I'm sorry! I'll stop now."

Broad Sword eyed him suspiciously and then returned to trying to remove the bolt.

"...Careful not to swallow it when you're done."

The guard pulled away again.

"One more time-!"

"Okay! I'll stop for real this time."

After another minute of trying, Broad Sword was successful, and the restraining bolt came off with a click. He pulled it away and spat it out to the side. Explodey's horn lit up as the ropes around the earth pony began to loosen.

"Finally!" the guard cried out as he came loose, "Now let's get out of here!"

Suddenly, the door at the other end of the room burst open, and four ponies rushed into the room. The duo recognised them as members of the Brotherhood of Man. Or at least two of them anyway. Sun Rise, the pegasus who had brought them here in the first place, appeared to be the ringleader, and one of the other ponies next to him was an apple green earth pony who was obviously Swift Justice's twin sister that they had heard about.

Grimly, Broad Sword wondered for a moment if she was even aware that her twin was dead.

The other two ponies they did not recognise, but they were a middle aged earth pony stallion who had a face full of stubble and a stuffy looking dark grey unicorn. The four figures blocked the only other exit from the room, and all of them looked extremely angry with the two.

"Okay you two," said Sun Rise, "Make another move and you're dead."

Explodey looked back at Broad Sword for a moment, and the guard could swear he had seen just a hint of a smile there.

Without warning, the unicorn's horn lit up, and suddenly Broad Sword vanished. The four ponies made a move towards Explodey, and the grey unicorn immediately set up an anti-teleport barrier to prevent him from escaping too. However, they didn't realise until all too late that he was not trying to teleport out.

Outside, Broad Sword laid face down in the dirt in somepony's front garden, just across the street from the Church of Humanity where he had been held just minutes ago. He pulled his head out of the soil and looked up at the church, just in time to see the whole building explode into a giant fireball.

***

Second pressed a button on the side of his lightsabre, and the blade of red light retracted back into it. On the floor before him, an armoured white pony with no forelegs groaned in pain, nursing his already cauterised stumps. By the side of his throne, Bullseye was only just recovering from his headache and climbing to his feet again. Second walked over to confront him.

"Well, that was pathetic," he said, "Your brother was killed in one hit, and you were beaten by an old man staring at you."

"Old pony sir," Bullseye corrected automatically.

"Fuck you and your insistence of species-specific language!" the human shouted, "I should have just created the lot of you to speak like people do!"

"I apologise sir."

"Still though...That Soft Spoken fellow has the Stare. This is not a good sign. Quite obviously he is the successor of Fluttershy as the Element of Kindness. This situation just became a whole lot more serious. We may be in legitimate danger now."

"Because of a stare sir?" Bullseye questioned.

"Yes because of a stare! You may not know it, but the Stare is the most dangerous weapon the Elements of Harmony have in their arsenal! I've seen that thing take down dragons! That's why we must be cautious. Effective immediately, I am placing this city under full alert. Code Yellow."

Bullseye stood up and saluted.

"Yes sir!"

"Wait," Second stopped him, "Where is the SPAS? I gave it to Buckshot but I don't see it around here anywhere."

"...I don't know sir."

"...Make that a Code Black."

Bullseye saluted again and flew off. Left alone in his throne room again, Second looked around at the mess he had created. Arcane Arts' corpse laid just at the base of his throne, still lightly bleeding from the throat, and Buckshot and his head laid side by side next to the beaten form of Captain Chain Mail. He walked over to him.

"Well, that wasn't smart, was it?" asked Second, "Trying to fight me with a regular sword when I have a lightsabre. And while poisoned from Bullseye's crossbow bolt. Did you really think you even stood a chance?"

Chain Mail grunted and looked up at Second angrily.

"No!" he shouted, "I didn't! But I brought them some time! My job was to protect them! If I die here, I'll die knowing I did my duty!"

Second reached down and grabbed the helpless pony by the mane. Chain Mail winced and held back a scream of pain as Second yanked him up from the floor so that they were face to face.

"Silly little bitch!" Second gloated, "You don't get to die yet! You're a main character! That means you have to live in spite of being crippled for life and slug through the rest of this horseshit like I do! We're in the same boat now my friend."

He dropped the pony on the floor.

"GUARDS! GET IN HERE!"

Chain Mail looked to the end of the throne room, where several members of the Knights of Man emerged from the hallway beyond, mostly earth ponies, but they all wore the same black armour that he had come to associate with their ilk.

"Yes sir?" asked one of the knights.

"Take whatshisname here to Mages' Guild and tell them have fun with him."

He reached into his coat and pulled out the lightsabre that he had used to cut off the captain's legs. He threw it over to the knight, who caught it in his mouth.

"And tell them to give him this afterwards as a present."

***

Soft Spoken and Gold Coin felt awkward as they made their way through the street. Mystic Chant was still prancing about in front of them happily, and he seemed to have not yet noticed his new cutie mark. The two adults were reluctant to point it out. Right now, neither of them had even the slightest inkling of Mystic's emotional state.

He was all over the place. On the one hoof, in the last few days he had found out his entire family were evil cultists, seen the human personally promise to bring about the apocalypse, seen his auntie murdered in cold blood and he had been personally responsible for the death of Chameleon.

Then on the other hoof, he seemed to recover surprisingly quickly from all these traumatic events. He had taken a real liking to the both of them, watched the gladiator match earlier with enthusiasm and ate popcorn, and now he was playing pretend and rushing about, having evidently enjoyed being possessed by Sliske and murdering all those knights to a disturbing degree, and he had just gotten his cutie mark. And it was of Sliske.

"What do we tell him?" Gold Coin whispered, "How do we break the news?"

"I haven't any idea!" Softy replied, "I don't think anything like this has ever happened before! I can't even imagine what Mystic would think!"

"Well...He's got his cutie mark, right? He knows his special talent now. Even if it's a bad talent, that's got to count for something, right? All fillies and colts dream of this day."

"Yeah, but they all have an idea of what they want in a cutie mark before that happens. They have aspirations and dreams of great careers relating to their talents. What is Mystic's talent exactly? Getting possessed? Murdering ponies? Either way, that cutie mark does NOT represent a bright future."

"As if he won't have a bright future anyway. Remember, he's an Element of Harmony just like the rest of us. He'll be a national hero one way or another. Come to think of it, after that display back there, do you think he might be the Element of Magic?"

"Could be. I always thought Sliske was our Element of Magic, just because he knew so many spells."

"Maybe Sliske and Mystic are the Element of Magic together? Perhaps that's what his cutie mark represents; that he works best with Sliske."

"That...makes a scary amount of sense."

"I wonder who the other elements are?"

"Broad Sword has GOT to be loyalty. You weren't there in the throne room when Second killed Celestia, but I was, and when Second was trying to tempt Sliske to leave with him, I saw the true extent of his dedication. That pony wants to be loyal to all his friends, even if they're on opposing sides."

"And obviously I'm the Element of Honesty."

"...What?"

"What do you mean what?"

"You? Element of Honesty? Why?"

"Why not? I'm an Apple, aren't I? As in the descendent of Applejack? Honest Applejack the bearer of the Element of Honesty? It just seems natural that I should be her successor."

"Being a bearer's descendent doesn't make you bearer of that same element, otherwise the Brotherhood of Man would be the new Elements of Harmony. Besides, you lie way too much to be Honesty."

"Lie? Me? When?!"

"How many ponies knew you were in the Brotherhood before I met you?"

"Well..."

"How many ponies were you actually honest with about your allegiances?"

"...Point taken. So if I'm not Honesty then, what am I?"

"How should I know?"

"...I bet the Element of Laughter is-"

"-Explodey."

"-Explodey. Yes."

***

"EXPLODEY!"

Broad Sword screamed out his friend's name as he rushed into the pile of rubble that used to be the Church of Humanity and started digging.

"Come on Explodey! Please don't be dead!"

He shifted a brick and found a charred black skeleton. At first he cried out in horror, thinking it was the unicorn he had once shared a cell with, before noticing that it didn't have a horn. This was an earth pony, probably either the green mare or that middle aged stallion. He sighed in relief, and immediately felt bad for it. As respectfully as possible, he moved the bones out of the pile of rubble, and continued digging through it.

He found a bloody orange hoof in amongst the ruins. Sun Rise.

"Umm..." he said awkwardly, "If you can hear me, wiggle your hoof a bit."

It remained motionless. Gingerly, he reached down and grabbed the hoof in his teeth to try and pull Sun Rise out. The moment he did so, the hoof came loose, revealing that it was severed from the rest of the body. Broad Sword spat it out in shock and jumped back, nearly falling over another pile of bricks. He wanted to wash his mouth out now, but he had to keep searching.

He ran over to a piece of fallen roofing. There was a white hind leg sticking out from underneath it. Rushing over, Broad Sword kicked the remains of the roof off to free the pony underneath, and discovered not Explodey, but just his left hind leg and park of his flank with his cutie mark. The guard just stared in shock at the sight, and he felt the tears welling up.

"No..."

The leg moved. Broad Sword stopped and leaned in close. It started kicking.

"No...way..."

The rubble around him began to shift. The earth pony looked on, completely stunned, as random pony body parts began to crawl out of the wreckage and move across the rubble towards the leg. He looked down as Explodey's head was pulled across the ground by an invisible force. The eye turned to look at him and blinked.

Explodey's remains all came together where Broad Sword had found his leg and began to form together. They didn't just jump around and reconstruct themselves though. Instead, they all seemed to melt into a green liquid and merge together. The mass of green stuff swirled around for a moment, and then grew back into the shape of a pony, before slowly changing colour back to white again, and leaving behind a dizzy looking Explodey McGee.

"Ugh..." he groaned, "I hate it when that happens..."

"Explodey?" said Broad Sword, "Are you an alien too?"

"No. At least I don't think I am."

"Then mind explaining to me how you just did...whatever that was?"

"It's my special talent. I can self destruct and regenerate afterwards."

"...That's it? That's all the explanation I'm going to get?"

"Hey, I was created by Second. All the rules fly out the window when he's involved."

"...Good point. Let's get out of here before the authorities show up."

***

Chain Mail looked up as the walls rushed past him. He was laying on his back in a cart that was being pulled through the corridors of an unfamiliar building by some scientist ponies in white lab coats. He looked to the side at a unicorn trotting next to him. He considered saying something, but they then emerged into a sterile white room, and the scientists began milling about busily.

"Everypony to your stations!" one of them barked, "Lord Second wants this done right! If we can pull this off, we may just be able to create the world's first cyberpony!"

Another scientist leaned in over Chain Mail's face and grinned maniacally at him.

"But first, we need to replace all those pesky organs of yours! Stay still, and try not to scream. We're all out of anaesthetic, so brace yourself!"

He held up a giant drill and turned it on, and it began spinning and whirring loudly. The captain whimpered in fear.

***

Celestia and First were flying out above the valley. The princess looked around at all the ponies playing below, while the human just floated lazily next to her. Being in total control of this realm, he needed neither wings nor magic. He just cancelled out gravity for himself and moved around mentally. The two eventually came to a stop some way out from the cliff where they had spent most of their time together.

"Now the thing about main characters, is that they need to be relevant and important. The Elements of Harmony back in the day were the focus of the show. They were main characters. The humans even called them the main six. However, they weren't the only ones to gain that honour. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Bell and Scootaloo, all gained main character status too because they had so many adventures of their own and got a lot of screen time. And Spike, though not quite as important as the main six, was enough of a constant in the show that he could be considered a main character too.

"To become a main character, you have to do noteworthy things. Not just reference things you've done in the past, otherwise it'll just become background detail. No, you need to act in the present. You need to do something worthy of screen time."

"Like what?" asked Celestia, "What should I do?"

"Anything! You can do anything! You're Princess Celestia! You are worshipped as a God by ponies the world over! You raise the sun in the morning! You're a former Element of Harmony yourself! You took down Discord and Nightmare Moon and Sliske and countless others back in the old days! If the universe doesn't recognise your importance, MAKE it recognise you!"

First pointed up at the sky.

"Look up there. That's my version of the sun, used to heat and light the entire land of the afterlife for all the ponies and griffins and zebras and donkeys and cows and dragons and sea serpents and everything else that has ever lived. Without it, this land would be nothing but darkness and cold for the rest of time. I'm going to destroy it."

Celestia looked at First in shock.

"WHAT?! NO!"

First raised his hand.

"I'm going to do it princess. You're not a main character, so you can't stop me. After I destroy it, you've got thirty seconds to fix the problem, and then it's too late for everyone."

Celestia looked around frantically, for what she was not sure, and tried desperately to think of something, anything she could do to stop the human. First snapped his fingers. Above them, the sun imploded. There was a loud banging sound, and then the light and heat around them began to die. The sun shrunk back, eventually dimming to the point she could actually see it. It was little more that a tiny ball of flickering fire, and soon, even that died. The land was left in total darkness.

She heard a voice just in front of her.

"Thirty..."

She span around in the air in panic. What could she do?!

"Twenty nine..."

There had to be something!

"Twenty eight..."

Anything!

"Twenty seven..."

There had to be a solution...What to do...There was no sun...So...

"Twenty six..."

So she would have to make a new sun.

"Twenty five."

Could she do that? Recreate the sun? Was that even possible? Especially here. The rules of this world and hers were wildly different after all. This was going to be insanely hard.

"Twenty four."

Or...Maybe the old sun wasn't completely gone? First said he had destroyed it, but surely after its destruction there were still remains?

"Twenty three."

Remains she could salvage. After all, working with the sun was what she was best at. She even had a picture of the sun on her flank. If anypony could relight a dead sun, it would have to be her. Even then though, it would take a lot of magic to do it. More magic than even she could expend without it killing her.

"Twenty two."

Wait, killing her? She was already dead! So it wouldn't kill her to use all her magic...Maybe. She didn't really know. What happens if you die in the afterlife?

"Twenty one."

No time to find out. She would have to try it and just hope that she couldn't die twice.

"Twenty."

Her horn lit up, and she reached out with her magic. She searched above her and found it. The sun was just a husk now, an empty shell of what it once was, but its essence was still there. She held onto it and began to channel magic back into it.

"...Nineteen..."

First noticed her spell in the darkness, and his voice betrayed an air of curiosity. Good. She was on the right track.

"...Eighteen."

She poured magic into the sun. A layer of overglow enveloped her horn. She closed her eyes in concentration, but behind her eyelids saw red instead of black. There was light again!

"...Seventeen."

She felt it heat up. There was a fire going again, and a strong one. It wasn't enough though. This sun was about as hot as a really big bonfire right now. She had to push it harder. She put more magic into the tiny star and another layer of overglow wrapped around her horn. She felt the sun expand by a significant amount.

"Sixteen."

She smiled and looked up at the sun. It was big again, but not quite the same size as before. And it was still dim enough to be looked at. It had to be blindingly bright. She added another layer of overglow to her horn as she pushed even more magic into the sun. She was beginning to strain now, and beads of sweat began to form on her brow. The sun pulsed for a moment, and then expanded again.

"Fifteen."

The light became too intense for her to continue staring into it. She averted her eyes, but still kept adding more magic to it. A fourth and fifth layer of overglow appeared, and the princess began to feel her magic draining. The sun was just about restored now.

"Fourteen."

With the last of her strength, she tried to stabilise the burning mass above them, and hold it together properly. The sun shuddered a bit under efforts, but nevertheless settled down. Her version of the sun was probably still not quite as it was before, but she had made an adequate substitute.

"Thirteen."

Celestia smiled and fell backwards towards the ground below.

***

Deciding that their best option at this point was to hide, Gold Coin, Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant made their way into a small coffee house down one of the many side streets of Secopolis. As they entered, Softy noticed two familiar white ponies sitting at one of the tables, a unicorn and an armoured earth pony. He gestured over to them for Gold Coin, and the three made their way towards it.

Broad Sword and Explodey looked up at them as they came over and sat down, neither looking very surprised at their sudden appearance. Instead, Broad Sword just silently moved aside to give Mystic a place to sit as well. They sat in awkward silence for half a minute, before Gold Coin broke it.

"Well, this is certainly convenient," he said, "What are you two here for?"

"Oh, you know, just passing through," said Broad Sword, "So what have you guys been doing?"

"Went to the museum," Soft Spoken replied, "Saw a gladiator death match. Sliske possessed Mystic Chant. Arcane Arts and Buckshot are dead. Second got really pissed and last we saw of him he was duelling Chain Mail. What about you?"

"Me and Explodey blew up a church. I'm fairly sure we killed at least four members of the Brotherhood of Man including Sun Rise. Explodey was dead too for a little while, but he regenerated."

Two elderly mares on the table next to them stared at their group.

"Hmm," said Gold Coin, "Have any of you noticed that our lives are becoming progressively weirder?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Explodey replied, "My life was always like this."

"Thissssss issssss hardly the ssssssstrangessssssssst thing I've ever sssssssseen."

Broad Sword almost jumped at the sight of Mystic Chant suddenly growing rows of huge sharp teeth as Sliske took him over again.

"Oh, I see you've decided to join us again," Soft Spoken said dryly.

"Hey doc! Why are you in Mystic now?" asked Broad Sword.

"It isssssssss a long ssssssstory and there will be time for that later."

"Oh hey Sliske, I wanted to ask you something," Gold Coin interrupted, "Umm...You are aware that Mystic now has a cutie mark, right?"

"What? He hassssss a..."

Sliske turned to look at his host's flank and recoiled at the sight of it.

"Oh."

"Care to explain yourself?" asked Soft Spoken.

"Exxxxxplain what? What makessssssssss you think I know anything about thisssssssss? It'sssssss not my cutie mark!"

The old ponies at the next table got up and left now.

"Well we need some answers! Why is his cutie mark of your face?! That is wrong on so many levels! You took away what made that colt special and replaced it with yourself!"

"Thisssssss isssssssss hardly my fault! How wasssssssssssss I sssssupposssssssed to know thissssssss would happen? I've never had a problem like thisssssss before! Besssssssidesssss, what'ssssss to sssssssay I'm not meant to be his ssssssspecial talent? Maybe he wassssssss alwayssssss going to have thissssss cutie mark."

"What does a cutie mark like that even represent?" asked Explodey, "It's...your face. So what does that mean? Is Mystic's special talent being your host?"

"It might be. Come to think of it, I achieved much better resssssssssultssssssss with Myssssssstic than with mossssssst other unicornssssssss. Looking back on hissssss memoriesssssssss, he doessssss come from a family of powerful magic ussssssssersssssss. Maybe me and Myssssssstic jussssssst work much better together?"

"I still think this is sick and wrong," said Gold Coin.

"Well you would do, becaussssssse you never liked me from the outsssssset. Which isssssss pretty bad if we're meant to be the new Elementsssssss of Harmony. Think about that for a moment. You have to ssssssssstart being nicccccccce to me, or the entire world isssssss doomed. You don't want to desssssssstroy the world now, do you Gold Coin?"

"No. But-"

"But nothing. Be niccccccce to me, or you are perssssssssonally ressssssponsssssible for the apocaylpssssssssse."

The teeth and snake eyes receded and gave way to Mystic Chant's natural features again. The colt shook his head in disorientation for a moment and then looked at his flank. Soft Spoken groaned as he realised that Mystic probably heard and saw everything that Sliske did. His face lit up with a huge smile, and he jumped out of his seat and began bouncing in circles around the table.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"

Broad Sword and Explodey watched on with amusement, while Gold Coin and Soft Spoken just buried their faces in their hooves.

***

Second looked over the alicorn that he had spontaneously created to tempt Sliske with. Host, he had called her. She was a majestic looking creature. Pupil-less blank eyes, mane of fire, brilliant white all over. Certainly one of his most impressive creations. He considered for a moment what to do with her now that Sliske had rejected his offer.

For a moment, he considered creating an army of alicorns like her to combat the new Elements of Harmony. They were a major threat after all, and they now had a weapon that could kill alicorns. It would make sense tactically. It wasn't like there was any limit on his power. He could create as many alicorn supersoldiers as he wanted without consequence.

"No," he thought, "I have to abide by the rules. The heroes can't defeat an army of alicorns all as powerful as the princess, God-killer or not. I've got to be threatening, but I can't send anything against them that they can't overcome, otherwise the entire story arc could fall apart. I'm treading on thin ice here..."

He rubbed his moustache as he pondered what to do with Host.

"That said, there's no reason I can't send just a single alicorn against them. Host could be the mid-story boss. Just like that Manticore from episode two that they faced before Nightmare Moon. Yeah. That could work."

Second smirked and pulled out his pencil again. He scribbled some words in the air in front of him.

'Then suddenly, Host's mind reawakened, and she obediently looked up to her Lord and Master, the Second, awaiting orders.'

The words disappeared and floated away, and sure enough, Host began moving again. She looked around at the palace, and then sat on her haunches waiting for orders.

"Host, I have a job for you. You know the Elements of Harmony? Kill them. Painfully."

Host didn't say a word, but instead saluted Second and unfurled her wings. Second stepped back as she took off, and much to his annoyance left by smashing through one his stained glass windows. He almost lost his temper, but he quickly brought it back under control before he started screaming, and just sighed at the sight of the broken window.

"...One crisis at a time Howard."

***

Ancient Tome and Frosty Morning stared dumbstruck at the remains of the Church of Humanity. Not hours ago, there was a huge old building standing there where now there was a huge old pile of smashed bricks, bits of timber and broken glass. Iron Hoof limped up behind them, and noticed the wreckage himself, and he shared his companions' silent shock.

"...What...What happened here?" Tome asked quietly.

"...I don't know," the pegasus answered.

They slowly approached the rubble, humbled by the sight of such a mighty structure reduced to this state. Iron Hoof noticed a skeleton off to the side, an earth pony by the looks of it, obviously removed from the wreckage by some good citizen looking for survivors. He walked over to it and stared down at it. Ancient Tome came over to join him. He lifted it into the air with his horn and span it around to inspect it from several angles.

"It's Rail Way," he concluded, "I can tell by the bulkiness of it. Poor pony looks like he was incinerated. He must have been right in the centre of the blast."

Frosty Morning stepped in.

"There are more body parts strewn around the wreckage in various states," she said, "I found this."

She reached under her wing and pulled out half of a unicorn's horn in her teeth, which she dropped on the floor in front of them. Ancient Tome lifted it up too.

"Sharp Mind."

Frosty began to shift uncomfortably. Tome and Iron both looked at her.

"Frosty," said Tome, "How many ponies were here?"

"...Five, maybe six," she answered, "When I left, Sharp Mind, Rail Way and Intensive Care were all waiting here, but Sun Rise came to me a little while before we busted you out of the crate and informed us that he had taken two prisoners here. They were probably the ones responsible for this."

"Tomey? Do you think Sun Rise is dead too?" asked Iron Hoof.

The old unicorn sighed.

"I don't know. He might be. I'm more concerned about Intensive Care. As our team medic, it's her job to deal with injuries like yours."

The trio returned to searching the wreckage for any signs of survivors or corpses. Over half an hour, they found most of the rest of Sharp Mind, minus some of his torso, bits of Sun Rise though not a lot, and Intensive Care, surprisingly intact, but badly burned and most definitely dead. Her face wore a look of shock and horror, and was disgustingly mutilated by the explosion and debris that had fallen on her.

"Ugh," said Tome as he moved her body out from the pile, "This is just...ugh..."

"Did either of you know her?" asked Frosty.

"No," Iron Hoof replied, "She was just another member of the order to me. Sure, I talked with her once or twice, but I never really knew her well."

"Same here," Tome answered, "I sort of knew her, but we weren't exactly close friends. I got on well enough with Sharp Mind I guess, but I never saw him much either."

"I feel bad," said Frosty, "I just feel like I should have known them all better. I mean, they were in our order for what? Twelve years? And after all that time they're gone, and I only just realised that I know almost nothing about them. I should be sad that they're gone, but I just feel...empty..."

There was a coughing sound. The group all looked to each other in surprise. They heard it again, but none of them were making it. The sound was coming from below. Ancient Tome used his magic and tore up the ground beneath them, throwing the rubble aside and into the empty street beyond, and looked down into the hole to see a little pocket of space below where the rubble had fallen, in which a pony was lucky enough to have been when the church came down. It may have saved his life.

It wasn't just anypony though. The survivor was Sun Rise. Burnt black, missing both his back legs, missing one of his fore hooves, wing ripped clean off and laying next to him, one eye burnt shut and his cutie mark no longer visible after being charred black by the explosion. He was barely clinging to life. He certainly wasn't aware of them.

Tome looked back to Frosty.

"This pony needs medical attention. Fly over to the nearest hospital and get somepony out here. Stat."

A smile crossed the other pegasus's face.

"I know a better place for him than just a hospital."

***

Spike stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He had been breathing fire all over the walls for what felt like days, but so far they had held against him. He didn't understand. He was almost knee deep in liquid metal from all the steel he had melted through already, and yet the walls still held, and the room didn't even seem to be any bigger. The only explanation he could think of was that the ponies were somehow adding more metal to the walls as he melted through them.

So either magic or a really dedicated construction crew was what was foiling him.

Either way, they seemed to have found a way to actually trap him, though for what purpose he was not sure. Were they counting on him to drown himself in all this liquid metal? Were they eventually planning to send a pony in to interrogate him? Neither of those made much sense. If it was the former, he would obviously stop long before it got that bad, and if it was the latter, he'd roast the pony alive.

These ponies either didn't know him very well or were planning to just keep him here indefinitely. He could go a while without food if necessary, so that was a very real possibility. Was Second maybe trying to turn the hostage situation around and use him to gain leverage over Equestria?

Spike had a moment of horrifying realisation. Second would probably do exactly that. And what was worse, was that he knew Princess Luna would submit to any demand to save him. She had just lost her sister. She would probably bend over backwards to make sure nothing happened to Spike.

He couldn't allow that. He would not allow himself to be used to bring about Equestria's downfall. He had put too much time into saving those little ponies to let himself be the cause of their demise. One way or another, he was getting out of this prison.

***

The ponies all exited the coffee house together, idly wondering where to go next. Their mission to barter peace with America had failed, and they were technically terrorists now after Explodey and Broad Sword's adventure at the Church of Humanity. Really, it the whole thing could not have gone worse.

"So what now?" asked Gold Coin.

"I think we should rescue Chain Mail," Explodey suggested, "Assuming he's still alive, being held prisoner by Second can't be pleasant. We should find where they're keeping him and bust him out."

"Can we even do that?" asked Soft Spoken, "I don't know about you two, but I am neither a soldier nor an action star. I don't think I'm up for a prison break."

"You seemed to deal with what happened in Second's throne room well enough," Gold Coin countered, "Like that Bullseye fellow, who you crippled without touching somehow. If you're not going to help us out, at least teach me how to do that?"

"Damn, we missed a lot," Broad Sword sighed.

"So you're all for this then?" asked Soft Spoken.

"Hell yeah I'm for it! I spent my whole life thinking the human was here to save us, and now it turns out the whole thing was a lie? No way I'm leaving this city without doing some damage first! That two legged motherfucker is going down!"

Soft Spoken turned to Broad Sword.

"And you?"

"I just follow the crowd," the guard replied.

The ponies all turned to face Mystic Chant.

"Well?" asked Gold Coin, "What do you think?"

The little colt looked around nervously, not liking being put on the spot.

"Umm...Well...Mr. Chain Mail seemed really nice...I don't think we should leave him."

"You know, that's nice kid, but we were asking Sliske," Explodey clarified.

"No wait a moment," Soft Spoken interrupted, "Why shouldn't we factor in Mystic's opinion? After all, he's a part of this group too. He's also an Element. Probably the Element of Magic, and that technically makes him the most important pony here."

"Speaking of important ponies," said Gold Coin, "Shouldn't we have some kind of group leader? You know, somepony to make all the big decisions like this? The original elements had Twilight for this, but even if Mystic is the Element of Magic, I would not feel comfortable taking orders from a child. Or an evil snake alien either."

Mystic sprouted fangs.

"I nominate Chain Mail for the possssssssition."

"Chain Mail is not here right now," Explodey pointed out.

"Well, when we rescue him then."

"We need a decision maker now though," Gold Coin argued, "Who's our second-in-command?"

"I nominate Sssssssoft Ssssssspoken."

"Why me?"

"Processsss of elimination. Exxxxxplodey issssss too hyperactive, Broad Sssssssword isssssss an idiot, and Gold Coin isssssss an arrogant douche."

"Hey!"

The teeth and snake eyes disappeared again.

"Hey! Sliske!" Gold Coin shouted, "I know you're in there! You can't just insult me and run away and hide! I know where you live! I'll still be out here when you next take him over! Just see if I'm not!"

Mystic blinked at him.

"Goldie, stop shouting at a child," said Soft Spoken.

"But-"

"Shhh!"

Explodey cut them off and raised a hoof to silence them. They all listened in. There was music in the background.

***

Chain Mail groaned in pain. He was doing that a lot today. After his incredibly painful surgery, the doctors and scientists had thrown him into a jail cell in another part of the building. He held up his new hooves to look at them. For reasons he didn't quite understand, they had seen fit to repair him after his battle with Second. He was now what they referred to as a 'cyberpony'.

His mechanical hooves were linked to his biological functions. He could control them just like he could his hooves before. He could even feel through them somehow. He wasn't sure how. It felt like having real hooves again, just that they were not. He wasn't sure how to feel about that. By all rights, it was a violation, because he never asked for them, though he couldn't very well say he wanted to go without his hooves for the rest of his life. He was conflicted.

Now the removal and replacement of all his vital organs, that he had quite a bit to say about. He had grown quite attached to his stomach and kidneys, and their loss left him feeling empty. Literally. They hadn't even replaced those two. They had just given him a weird battery thing. He no longer needed to eat or drink, because he now ran on electricity. For that matter, he couldn't eat or drink anymore. Without a stomach, it was literally impossible. That pissed him off.

The cell door opened, and a teal blue stallion walked in. He smiled darkly at the helpless captain.

"Captain Chain Mail of Celestia's royal guard, it's so good to finally meet you. My name is Commander Throatfuck."

Chain Mail tilted his head.

"Beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. I've been sent here to oversee the next stage of your conversion, though that's not going to be for a little while yet. You need time to recover from the surgery before we begin the brainwashing."

"Brainwashing?"

"Oh, you'll love this next part. I'll explain more about it later. I just wanted to come and make sure you were all okay and still alive. And that your mechanical parts were still working. They are working, aren't they?"

Chain Mail held up a shiny steel hoof and wiggled it about slightly.

"Yeah..."

"Good."

He turned around to talk to somepony the other side of the door who the captain could not see.

"Lock the door."

It slammed shut. The stallion turned to look at Chain Mail and broke into an evil grin.

"Now, do you know where I got my name from?"

Chain Mail winced.

"I suppose it's hoping too much to assume you got it from swearing a lot?"

The commander laughed.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

He calmed down.

"Actually you're right. That's exactly where my name comes from."

Chain Mail blinked.

"Seriously?"

"Yep. I just love screwing with prisoners by doing that whole 'lock the door' bit. Your face. You should have seen it. In fact, I got it on camera thanks to the cell surveillance. I will be adding it to my collection of funny faces. I'll show it to you some time. You will laugh..."

The door opened again and the commander trotted out. It slammed shut behind him, and Captain Chain Mail was just left confused.

***

The group soon found themselves on a hilltop overlooking a huge grassy field. At the other end of it was an open air concert stage full of ponies that they didn't recognise. There was one sitting just behind a set of drums, there were ponies with guitars, there were a number of dancing mares in skimpy outfits all dressed in red, white and blue for some reason, and in front of the stage was a huge crowd of ponies all screaming and hollering and stomping their hooves in excitement.

The crowds were all keeping busy. Some were cheering, some were stomping, others were drinking, there were ponies dancing, ponies waving glow sticks, and some of the pegasi were flying around above the crowd doing amateur stunts. The crowd consisted of all types too. There were families out with their foals, teenagers out with friends, college students partying way too hard, all sorts.

"What are they cheering for?" asked Soft Spoken, "This music isn't even very good."

"It's just an opening," Broad Sword explained, "I've been to these sorts of concerts before. This is the stuff they play while the ponies make their way in. The main act hasn't begun yet."

"What's the main act?" asked Explodey.

"Wait, Buckshot mentioned this when we were in the museum," Gold Coin recalled, "He said that Second was holding a concert to celebrate the twelve hour anniversary of the town's founding. And he said that he would be personally performing!"

"Wait, we're going to hear Lord Second singing?" asked Broad Sword, "Oh dear sweet Celestia, I have to see this!"

"We don't have time to wait around guys," Soft Spoken reminded them, "Second is going to take a while to get onstage, and we could be using that time to-"

Fireworks exploded out of stage below and the crowd screamed even louder as the whole event was clouded by smoke. As it cleared away, a silhouette became visible, and Lord Second stepped to the front of the stage, holding his arms above him triumphantly. He had taken the time to change since they last saw him. Instead of his regular long coat, he was now wearing a smart looking black tuxedo, only fitted for human use.

He held out his hand and a microphone flew into it.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE SHOW!"

The fireworks burst out of the stage again.

"I WANT TO THANK YOU ALL FOR COMING OUT HERE! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVENT EVER HELD! WE'VE GOT ALL SORTS LINED UP FOR YOU OUT HERE TODAY, BUT TO START US OFF, WE HAVE PONIFIED VERSIONS OF FAMOUS DEAD MUSICIANS FROM THE HUMAN WORLD! WE GOT IT ALL HERE TONIGHT FOLKS! MICHAEL JACKSON, THE BEATLES, ELVIS, BARRY WHITE, HENDRIX, FREDDIE MERCURY FROM QUEEN, HELL, WE EVEN GOT BOB MARLEY HERE!"

The crowd erupted into more cheering and applause. The ponies on the hill could only look at each other in confusion, having never heard any of those names before.

"First though," Second continued, toning down his voice, "Before all that, I'd like to ask that you all join me in a respectful rendition of the American national anthem, to show a bit of pride and patriotism in these troubled times of our founding, and to help us brave the challenges that this fledgling nation still faces."

Everypony was quiet now. Second turned to face the musicians on the stage behind him.

"Boys? If you will."

One of the ponies with a guitar played a few notes, and the crowd began to sing together.

"America...America..."

Suddenly, without warning, the drummer started playing, and the guitar picked up in intensity. Second held up the microphone again and began shouting into it along with the crowd, who also became notably more enthusiastic.

"AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! COMING AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKING DAY YEAH! AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!"

A number of the ponies on stage behind joined in much softer voices.

"Freedom is the only way, yeah!"

"TERRORISTS YOUR GAME IS THROUGH! 'CAUSE NOW YOU HAVE TO ANSWER TO, AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! SO LICK MY BUTT, AND SUCK ON MY BALLS! AMERICA!"

"FUCK YEAH!" screamed the crowd.

"WHATCHU GONNA DO WHEN WE COME FOR YOU, YEAH?!"

The other ponies began to sing another verse again, but Soft Spoken had long since stopped listening.

"I've had enough of this," he said, "Come on. Let's go find out where they're keeping Chain Mail and do this damn rescue mission that you all wanted to do so much."

"One minute," said Gold Coin.

***

Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof, and Frosty Morning walked through the clean white corridors of the medical section of the Mages' Guild together. The burnt remains of Sun Rise rested on the pegasus's back, coughing periodically, while Iron Hoof limped along as fast as he could. A scientist pony in a lab coat led them through the area towards their medical bay.

"And you say you can fix him?" asked Tome.

"Oh yes," the scientist replied cheerfully, "Why, just hours ago we tested our experiments in cybernetics on a volunteer, and they seemed to work like a charm. A pony who just like Iron here had lost his fore hooves, and now has them again thanks to our technology. In fact, he should be just in here."

The ponies entered the lab, where a number of doctors were already prepping the operating tables for their next two patients and the scientists were fiddling with some mechanical devices that resembled organs.

"Imagine!" one of them commented to another, "We get to create three cyberponies in a single day! I have never felt joy like this before!"

"Me neither old friend, we're making history here!"

Ancient Tome looked off to the side, and was shocked to see Captain Chain Mail there. The pony was chained by all four of his hooves to what looked like another operating table, only this one was turned on it's side so he was facing them, and it looked like he was standing on two legs like a human. He was covered up to his neck in black armour and had a control panel of some kind on his chest. He was looking around nervously at first, but then his eyes went wide when he recognised Iron Hoof, who unfortunately also recognised him.

"YOU!" the former guard screamed, "YOU'RE THE REASON I'M IN HERE!"

Chain Mail just looked disturbed.

"...Hello Private Iron Hoof," he replied, "I didn't expect to see you here of all places."

"Well I had to come here to get a cybernetic replacement for the hoof you cut off! You bastard! I ought to kill you right now!"

A stern looking tan pegasus stepped in his path.

"You do, and they'll need to replace more than just a hoof."

"Who the fuck are you?!"

"Bullseye. I'm Lord Second's bodyguard and head of security. I'm here to oversee the experiments being performed on Test Subject Chain Mail, in conjunction with Commander Throatfuck."

"Commander who?!"

"You heard me."

One of the doctors stepped in to interrupt the conversation.

"Now Mr. Hoof, if you would be so kind as to get on the operating table, we can get to work on fixing you."

The former royal guard sighed in resignation and jumped up onto the table.

***

"So...What do you think? Can I go?"

The old man just laughed.

"Hahaha! No way! I ain't gonna let no son of mine go do girly crap like singing and dancing! And you ain't gonna get anywhere by singing anyway. You know how many go out there trying to get into show business 'cause they think they can make it big, and they just end up having their hopes crushed when they don't get anywhere? That'll be you! No. You're going to learn a trade and get a proper career. I want you to do well. Besides, dancing is for fags anyway."

"But...But dad..."

"No buts Howie. I've decided. You aren't going to this performance arts thing or whatever the fuck this is, and that's my final say."

"But mom always said-"

"Mom's dead. I make the decisions around here now, and you aren't going to sway me. Now go find your brother for me. He borrowed the pickup last night, and I wanna know why."

"...Yes dad."

"Good boy Howie."

Second opened his eyes and looked across the crowds of applauding ponies. He smiled slightly. Not quite what he had envisioned all those years ago, but if anything proved him right, this was it. He looked up into the distance at the rest of his city. On a distant hilltop, he spotted a familiar looking group of ponies. Knowing what was next, he tried to remember his lines.

"Thank you everyone!" he said through the microphone, "It's truly an honour to perform for you all! And it is good to see such loyalty and patriotism in you all, in these most troubled times. Why, not hours ago there were terrorist attacks at my very palace!"

The crowd gasped.

"Not to worry friends!" he assured them, "My attacker was defeated, I assure you. A Captain Chain Mail of Equestria if I recall correctly."

The crowds booed the name.

"We also had a dragon attack, if you could believe! Nothing myself and the Knights of Man couldn't handle though!"

There was another round of cheering.

"In fact, even now Chain Mail is being held inside the Mages' Guild, awaiting trial for his crimes, and the dedicated unicorns of that same guild are maintaining a spell even as we speak to contain the dragon in a custom made prison that we hid inside the Secopolis Embassy. If you could, a round of applause for our dedicated members of the Mages' Guild."

As the ponies before him began to cheer and stomp their hooves again, Second looked up at the hill out of the corner of his eye. The ponies briefly conversed with one another and then walked back over the hill, disappearing from sight.

"Perfect," he thought, "It's all going according to plan."

***

Bullseye cantered towards the commander, who waited besides the door leading into brainwashing room. The much taller commander looked down at the pegasus.

"Did Lord Second give the order?" he asked.

"Yes," Bullseye replied, "The alicorn arrived moments ago. Second sent a message through her. We're to expect the Elements of Harmony to mount an attack on this building any minute now. He said that there is a good chance we won't survive. We are to lose the battle, but he said to try and win it regardless, because we will probably fail by natural means anyway."

The commander sighed.

"It's been an honour serving with you Bullseye."

He saluted. The pegasus responded in turn.

"You too sir."

***

The five ponies stood in a line just outside the Mages' Guild. The sun was setting now, and it was getting dark. They had waited a long time before finally mounting up the courage to show up here. They were expecting a fight. Lots of security. A veritable gauntlet of traps and security systems to make their way through in their quest to rescue their captured friend and the dragon.

Gold Coin gulped.

"Guys?" he asked, "I know I was all for this before, but...I'm scared."

Soft Spoken smiled sympathetically at the business pony.

"I'm scared too," he confessed, "But we can't just leave him in there. He fought one on one against a God to protect us."

"I know. I just...My nerves are a wreck. I don't know if we can do this."

Broad Sword patted him on the back.

"Hey, don't forget I'm a trained soldier too," he said, "You aren't going in alone. We're here to help."

"And me and Sliske have got your back too!" said the little blue colt next to him.

"I can explode and regenerate. That counts for something too, right?"

The yellow earth pony smiled.

"Thanks guys. Let's do it then. Let's go rescue the captain!"

***

In a dark chamber in the depths of the Mages' Guild, a mad scientist grinned evilly as the final touches were finished. The helmet lowered from the ceiling and attached to the rest of the armour on the test subject. There was a slight hissing and a whistle as it attached, and then the automatic breathing started. The operating table slowly rose, and the test subject stared across the room from behind his helmet.

"Lord Chain Mail, can you hear me?"

There was a pause, in which the only sound in the room was the automatic breathing.

"Yes, master," he answered in a deep voice.

The black armoured cyborg turned his head to look at the scientist.

"How do I look?" he asked, "Am I still handsome? Did I keep my good looks?"

The scientist answered apologetically.

"It seems...that because of the helmet and armour...we cannot see your face at all."

"No...No that can't be! I need to show off my cybernetic enhancements! I NEED TO!"

The operating table rattled and shook, and the pony broke through his shackles. Chain Mail ripped himself off the table and staggered forward past the scientist, who smiled darkly at his creation. The brainwashed captain looked upwards towards the ceiling and screamed.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

END

Author's notes:

Yeah, Chain Mail just became a Sith lord. What of it?

Woah, deja vu.

Anyway, here's your new chapter. A lot of people last time kept saying how much they thought I had improved since this story began, and to those people, you have my most sincerest thanks. It's always good to know I've been moving in the right direction, though I think some may feel I moved away from that with the song at the end there. Thing is though, it is actually a part of Second's character that he loves singing.

This chapter, I tried to give some minor insight into that, as a bit of explanation for it. In fact, this chapter focused on Second a lot more than I intended. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I think is too soon to call. I think I've begun to reach a point in this story where the people who support or are against Second are balancing out against each other, which really interests me honestly. I like seeing the wide range of opinions people seem to have about the character. I like that he sparks debate.

Now aside from Second, this chapter's big point is that's going to start tying together the subplots. The new EOH are going to start interacting more, and you'll see soon enough where we're going with Spike and Celestia's stories. This also brought the last few members of the Brotherhood of Man and the other minor villains back into the limelight. Yeah. Remember them? Don't worry, we're going to try and make them a bit more interesting this time. Now that most of their order is wiped out, I'm going to try and build some character for the survivors and give them something to do.

Also, on a partially related note, this story's word count just passed 100K. Hooray! Of course that's including the Deleted Scenes chapter and the HUGE authors notes section at the end of every chapter, but it still sort of counts. It's some kind of accomplishment, right?

At the rate we're going, this story is going to end up huge. I counted ahead. By story's end, we will have at LEAST thirty two chapters and three interludes, plus alternate endings if I'm in the mood. At eleven thousand words on average every full chapter and three thousand for interludes, I think we're looking at roughly 400K+ words. Be afraid people. Be very afraid.

That other project I mentioned last time is still ongoing. I'll talk more about it when I have more news and the other author gives me the go-ahead. Until then, keep watching these notes.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all later.

Chapter 10: Magic Most Foul

"And when the dust settled and the sun and moon began to move once again, the Eternal reached out across the land, searching for any traces of his once great race, hoping desperately that they were not all destroyed.

'Where are they all?' he asked desperately, 'Am I the last one?'

However, the great destroyer had not succeeded in his goal. There was hope yet, for even though the last of the old dragons were all dead and gone, a new generation still survived. In a secluded cave high in the mountains, hidden away from the demon king's sight, nineteen unhatched eggs had survived the attempted genocide of the mighty dragons. They lay there, helpless, undefended, their mother just one of the many whose soul now laid dormant in the body of the immortal one.

The voices of the elders came to the Eternal, and told him;

'Our blood must continue to live on. Do not let our kind die this way. Care for the young as their mother did. Be the father of all dragons.'

And so he did so. The Eternal cared for and raised the nineteen dragons he found in that cave, making them into the true successors of those who came before them. Sadly, all the dragons were male, so there was no hope for a continuation of the once great race, but as long as the nineteen never died, there would always be dragons."

-The Nineteen, extract from The Light in the Sky volume 3.

***

A scaly red dragon dove from the sky and landed with a crash by the side of a large lake. Nearby, he spotted a group of ponies sitting in a small rowing boat and setting up some fishing rods. They stared over to the shore where the dragon stood, in awe at the sight of him. Nonvulvahlok gave them a simple nod of acknowledgement, and bent down to drink from the lake.

He felt a tremor as he did. The dragon's head shot up, and he looked behind him in alarm. In the direction of the Everfree, he felt a wail and scream of frustration. It was the sound of somepony in great need and distress.

However, upon listening to it closely and thinking about it for a second, the dragon realised that he couldn't possibly be hearing a pony. Ponies weren't that loud, even when they tried to be. What's more, Nonvulvahlok could feel this creature's emotions. He did not just hear its voice. He felt its rage, its fear, its desperation. Most of all though, he felt its sadness.

His eyes widened with shock.

"Bormahsedov!"

Those screams came from the Eternal. The father of all dragonkind. What monstrosity was so great that the Demon's Match himself was driven to such an emotional state? Nevertheless, he could not leave his elder in such a position. With one last look at the ponies in the small rowboat, Nonvulvahlok unfurled his wings and took to the sky again, flying in the direction of the Everfree.

***

"Not the most elegant of entrances," Soft Spoken said dryly, "I did say, didn't I? You should have let me talk to her. My special talent is talking ponies into things. There was no need to knock her out, and there was definitely no need to put her in that position, amusing as it may have been."

"Oh shut up Softy," Gold Coin replied.

"Listen to those two," Explodey commented, "Bitching and moaning at each other like an old married couple again."

"Hah!" Soft Spoken laughed, "I wish! He's ten times worse than my wife was."

"I didn't know you were married," said Gold Coin.

"I was. That hag is dead now, thank Luna. She was nice enough when I first married her, but little more than a month later she seemed to suddenly change into this brilliant creature that could jump onto a broomstick and fly off into the night. That mare is the reason why I'm still working. Didn't you wonder about the fact that I used to be an ambassador and a diplomat and a negotiator and several other things, and yet when we met I was a butler for Ancient Tome? That's because some time after I retired she took everything I had and ran off with it. And lost it all in casinos I might add."

"Damn, sorry to hear," the earth pony replied, "I did think it was a little odd for you to be working at your age. I mean, you're what now? Seventy? Eighty?"

"Hundred and thirty."

"Oh, hundred and- WAIT WHAT?!"

The group all stopped to stare at the old butler.

"What?" he said defensively.

"How the hell are you still alive?" asked Broad Sword, "The only pony I know who's that old has been dead since long before I was even born."

"Smooth, Broad Sword," said Gold Coin, "Real smooth."

Soft Spoken just frowned.

"Aren't you a royal guard?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So you work in Canterlot Castle? You know, with the thousand year old alicorn princesses?"

Broad Sword rolled his eyes.

"I meant, I don't personally know anypony else that old."

A sharp toothed Mystic Chant waved a hoof at him.

"Excussssse me? I'm sssstill here."

"And what do you mean you don't personally know anypony else that old?" asked Explodey, "So you do personally know the pony who's apparently been dead since before you were born? What does that imply Broad Sword? Do you have ghost problems in your house?"

The guard sighed.

"Forget I said anything."

For the moment, the subject of Soft Spoken's unusually long life was forgotten and buried at the back of the ponies' minds, along with all the other equally weird things that had happened to them in the past two or three days. Instead, they focused on the task ahead, and approached a wall with a number of colour coded signs.

The signs all pointed to different areas of the building, directing them to, among other places, administration, the biology labs, the canteen, the security station, physics research, magic research, cybernetics, the finance department, the test labs, the library, and something called the reality department.

"I'm not seeing any sign for prisons on here," Gold Coin commented, "Where do you think they're keeping him?"

"Security stations seems like the obvious place to start," Soft Spoken suggested.

"I agree."

"Security station it is."

***

Sun Rise climbed off the operating table slowly. His hoof clanked when it hit the floor. A cheery lab coat wearing scientist nearby held up a mirror to let the pegasus see himself. To say he was surprised was a massive understatement. He had more machinery on him than flesh.

Both of his back legs, his right fore hoof, and parts of his torso were all shiny chrome now instead of his natural orange, including part of his flank on his right side where his cutie mark used to be. Now, instead of a pair of flaming wings, his flank was adorned with the symbol of the Brotherhood of Man; a human fist.

His left wing was also gone, replaced with a skeletal metal construct covered with some strange leathery material that he couldn't quite place. It made him look like one of those bat pegasi. This must be what Night Shroud always felt like. And finally, his attention was drawn to his right eye, no longer a natural eye, but a ring of metal surrounding a glowing red light.

"Well?" said the scientist, "What do you think Mr. Sun Rise?"

The pegasus was speechless.

"I thought you'd say that. You're something quite special you know. You're the third cyberpony created today. Third one to exist ever for that matter, and the only one we've managed to replace so much of your biological functions for. You should be quite honoured! We're making history now my friend."

The scientist left him to stare at himself in the mirror and went over to see Iron Hoof.

"And what about you? How are you feeling?"

"Much better doc," the former royal guard answered, holding up his metallic hoof, "I think I better live up to my name now."

"Excellent! But I'm not a doctor. I'm a professor."

"Whatever."

Sun Rise continued to stare at his reflection. He brought up a metallic hoof to his cheek and touched it. His hoof felt cold against his face. Out of his natural eye, he began to cry slightly. He looked off to the side as two double doors opened nearby, and Bullseye strode into the lab.

"Okay everypony, pack up and evacuate. The Elements of Harmony have breached the building, and we can expect them to rain fiery death on us if we stick around here too long."

"The Elements of Harmony?" Ancient Tome repeated, "What's going on? What do you mean Elements of Harmony?"

Sun Rise was equally interested. He'd heard the legends of course, and was in fact a descendent of the original bearer of loyalty, Rainbow Dash, but the talk of the Elements coming to storm the building just left him confused. Hadn't the bearers been dead for a thousand years?

"I mean the new Elements," Bullseye clarified, "The successors of the original bearers, come to stop Emperor Second once again. They are wielded by Soft Spoken, Gold Coin, Explodey McGee, Broad Sword, Mystic Chant and Sliske."

Ancient Tome did a double take.

"WHAT?! DID YOU JUST SAY MYSTIC CHANT?!"

"Umm, yes. Why?"

"WHERE ARE THEY?! TELL ME WHERE!"

"Umm...They went to the security station. But-"

It was too late. The unicorn had already bolted out the room, leaving the remaining ponies alone. While everypony else began to rush about and pack up the lab equipment into containers, Sun Rise just turned back to the mirror, and continued to stare.

***

Commander Ulysses Throatfuck III waited in the security station for his targets to round the corner. At his side, four of the Knights of Man waited patiently, swords drawn. The commander himself preferred the much more personal touch of bludgeoning ponies with a mace instead, and so had taken the biggest, spikiest one he could find in the armoury for the job.

He felt a chill in the air, and that indicated that the alicorn was nearby. He turned around to see the pure white pony waiting behind him. It was stunning how she managed to have a mane of fire and yet still suck all the heat out of a room when she walked into it. She spoke in the voice of Lord Second.

"Commander, I want you to withdraw from this area. You will die soon, but the timing is incorrect. Your final fate is not until much later."

The commander winced at the news that he was expected to die soon, but knew better than to hold up the conversation with his own worries. He was a minor villain after all. It was his job to die mid-way through the story. There was no choice in the matter, and no sense getting hung up on it.

"What about when they arrive then?" he asked, "Will you fight them?"

"I shall," the alicorn answered, "And by I, I mean Host. I am still holding a very important concert right now, and I shall need to get on stage and perform again once MJ's finished, but rest assured I will be here later to face the Elements of Harmony in person and completely wreck their shit. Not that it'll do you any good, because you'll be dead by then, but maybe some of your knights will survive, so that's some small comfort for them I suppose."

The commander gulped.

"Yes sir. Everypony withdraw!"

***

"Okay, this is NOT the security station," said Explodey.

The group found themselves in a large room with very high ceilings. The whole place was a maze of desks and tables, upon which laid various different contraptions and chemicals and other assorted weirdness. Books were also a common sight, but most of them were restricted to the many bookshelves by the far wall.

"How the fuck did we get lost this time?" asked Gold Coin, "Weren't there were arrows pointing towards the place every five steps not seconds ago?"

"Knowing you lot, we probably followed the wrong arrows and didn't realise it," Soft Spoken reasoned.

"Ussssss lot? How are you exempt from the blame here?"

"Because I was following the rest of you."

"Yessssss, but you are the team leader, sssso you're ssssupposssed to be guiding usssss, not the other way around."

"Well where are we?" asked Explodey.

"Sign says this is the magic research lab," Broad Sword pointed out.

"Magic resssssearch? I'm intrigued."

The possessed colt wandered off into the lab and disappeared in amongst the desks and tables. With a mental shrug, Explodey and Broad Sword followed after him. Neither of the other two earth ponies wanted to go randomly exploring a lab full of potentially dangerous unicorn experiments, but also not wanting to be alone, they soon followed after their comrades.

"Hey! Come have a look at this!" called Explodey.

Soft Spoken and Gold Coin soon made their way over, and Explodey levitated a small ring up to show them.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked.

"Can't say I do, sonny," the old stallion answered.

"It's a magic enhancer!" the unicorn helpfully explained, "You clip this on your horn and it uses ambient magic in the air to power up all your spells! Ponies have been developing technology like this for years, but I've never seen one this effective before!"

"It looks a lot like that magic restraining bolt," Broad Sword commented.

"Oh, you mean like the one they used to hold Ancient Tome?" asked Soft Spoken.

"No, Broad Sword's talking about the one I was wearing, from that one time he sucked my horn."

"Wait, what?" asked Gold Coin.

The guard's face went red. He turned to the other two earth ponies.

"It's not like that!" he protested, "What Explodey means is, it's like that time I had to remove a magic restraining bolt that he had on, and we needed his magic because I was tied up at the time, and-"

"Wait," Soft Spoken interrupted, "So you were tied up and sucking another stallion's horn..."

"Stop taking my words out of context!"

"I'm sorry, just what exactly did you two get up to while the rest of us were battling Lord Second?"

"Oh," said Explodey, "We had quite the adventure, I assure you."

"Stop intentionally phrasing it like that!" Broad Sword shouted.

"I don't know what you mean Swordy."

He looked at the other two ponies again.

"I'm not gay. I swear I'm not."

"Suuuuuuuuuuure you aren't Broad Sword," Gold Coin replied.

Broad Sword just huffed angrily and stomped off. Once he was a fair distance away, the three remaining ponies burst into fits of laughter. Little did they realise at the time that Sliske had wandered off into the next room.

***

There was a booming sound as Nonvulvahlok landed atop a large office building overlooking Secopolis. His eyes swept the city in search of the Eternal. Idly, he wondered exactly how old this city was. Granted, it had been a good few centuries since he had last flown over the Everfree, but he couldn't help but think he would have known by now if the ponies had torn down half the forest to build a new city here.

If anything, projects like that usually required a dragon to come in first and deal with whatever threats there were to the construction. With such a large portion of the forest being destroyed, he expected that the city had endured no shortage of attacks by angry wildlife in its early days. Maybe even an Ursa Major or two.

Eh. Most likely, one of his fellow dragons had helped out in his place, and just never considered it worth mentioning. It had happened before. He still had not bothered to tell any of his brothers about the minotaur incident.

"Are you out there Elder?" he thought.

Closing his eyes, Nonvulvahlok sensed the presence of elder dragon souls. Thousands upon thousands of voices screamed in unison. That was most definitely the sound of the Aspect. He opened his eyes and looked in the direction of the screams. A huge silver cuboid off in the distance. He jumped off the building and flew towards it.

***

Ancient Tome rounded the corner and came almost face to face with a huge white alicorn. For a moment he was frozen with fear. The thing tilted its head and looked at him, but then spoke in the voice of the human.

"You are not the Elements of Harmony," it said, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"...L-Lord Second?" the old stallion replied.

"Yes?"

"Wow...You...became a pony..."

"Do not flatter yourself by thinking I would take such a form. This body is merely a construct I have sent after the Elements while I am busy elsewhere. It speaks my mind and I can see and hear through it, but this creature is not an expression of myself. It is just a sentry."

There was something uniquely humbling about the fact that Second used an alicorn as a mere sentry for when he was too busy to show up in person.

"I apologise my Lord," said Ancient Tome, "I...I came here looking for my son. I was told he was among the Elements of Harmony? What is happening?"

The alicorn furrowed its brow.

"Blue unicorn about yea high?"

"That's him."

"Yeah. He's with them."

"Well...Please my Lord! Spare him whatever punishment you had in mind! He's only a child. He's been pressured into this by those alicorn tyrants and those traitors Gold Coin and Soft Spoken. He doesn't really know anything about you! He doesn't know the full truth!"

"Oh, he knows the full truth alright. Do not worry yourself though. I have no intentions of harming the child. I can't say the same for that snake-tongued creature currently inhabiting him, but rest assured I will go out of my way to make sure he comes to no harm."

"Wait, what?" the bearded unicorn replied, "Did you say-"

"I do not have time to converse further with you. Those ponies are heading in this direction and a fight is about to break out. Get out of the Mages' Guild immediately, and don't let me see you here again."

***

Sliske had discovered the reality department by accident. The lab was surprisingly empty compared to the magic research department, but its content was far more interesting. Rather than being littered with experiments, it was mostly information and theories in here.

Moving over to one display, Sliske saw a poster of the Reaper's Horn showing all its components and parts. Additional notes underneath it explained what each one was and how it operated, and other notes speculated on how this weapon was able to harm the goddesses without magical enchantments of any kind being made on it. Many of the notes made reference to other books and projects within the department's research, but it was mostly incomprehensible.

Recalling an old trick he learned from an earth pony he had possessed some two thousand years ago, Sliske set about memorising the poster as best as possible. They weren't exactly step by step instructions, but this poster told him everything he needed to know on how to construct one of these himself. Maybe it wouldn't be a God-killer like Second's one was, but if he had one of these it would be a tremendous help.

"Doc?"

Sliske turned his head to see Broad Sword waiting in the doorway.

"Hello Broad Sssssssword. What'ssss the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter doc. Just thought I'd come to see you," the guard replied, "How are you holding up?"

Sliske turned away from Broad Sword and resumed memorising the poster.

"Fine. Why wouldn't I be? Why would you think I wasssssn't?"

The white earth pony trotted over to his side and sat down next to him.

"Your sudden change of host for one thing. What happened to Arcane Arts? I know she's dead, but nopony's told me anything about what actually killed her."

Sliske gave him a brief sideways glance.

"Ssssssecond. Tore me out of her through the throat."

"He can do that?" asked Broad Sword.

"Yesssss. He wassssss imitating the tacticsssss of the Klkrmizk. The Ghosssst Eaterssssss."

The guard raised an eyebrow.

"What are they?"

"Predatorsssssss from my world. They feed on membersssss of my racccccce."

Broad Sword's surprise was evident.

"No way! Really?! You're telling me that your race are prey?!"

The alien nodded.

"But you said you're a legend here! You're up there with Nightmare Moon and Discord! What are these things that actually eat creatures like you?"

The possessed unicorn sighed.

"Did you honesssssssstly think creaturessss like myssssself could be the dominant raccccce on my home world? Why elssssse would we evolve an ability to posssssssssessssss the bodiessss of physssssical beingsssssss if not to hide from ssssomething worssssse? It isssss a defencccce mechanisssssssm to help protect ussss from the Klkrmizk, who feed on the kind of energy that our bodiesssssss are composssssed of. When we hide in a flessssh body, we are ssssafe. Unlessssss a Klkrmizk pullssss ussssss out with magic like Sssssssecond did. That can happen."

Broad Sword blinked.

"Wow. I'm sorry doc. I had no idea."

"There issssss nothing to be sssssorry about. It'sssssss not like there are any Klkrmizk here. I haven't had to worry about them for nearly two thousssssssand yearssssss now."

"But what Lord Second did must have reminded you. Right?"

Sliske paused.

"I have never been more terrified in my life," he answered honestly.

"...Have you ever encountered any? Back home, I mean?"

Sliske didn't answer. Instead, he finished with the poster, and the teeth and eyes changed back to how they were before, signalling Mystic Chant's return. The little blue colt gave Broad Sword a half smile.

"He says he doesn't want to talk about it."

***

Sun Rise wobbled slightly with each step, not quite able to keep pace with the others. The incredible weight of all his metal parts was alien to him. He was more machine than pony at this point, and he was reminded of that with every loud clank of his armoured hooves. He flexed his artificial wing and looked back at it. He wondered if he could even fly with it, or if it was just there for his comfort.

He looked forward again and continued to follow Iron Hoof and Frosty Morning as they made their way out of the Mages' Guild with Bullseye and the scientists. His mind wandered back to his days in the Wonderbolts, and he wondered what they would be doing right now. He would have to call Lightning again some time. It had been ages since they had last gone out drinking together.

"Come on, the portal's just in this room," said Bullseye.

The cyberpony turned and entered the room, and had to stop for a moment and really think about it before he remembered that a building this size having its own portal system was weird. The energy requirements alone meant that even actual portal stations never had any more portals than was absolutely necessary. This was pissing away money just for the sake of it.

Frosty Morning disappeared into the portal wordlessly, followed by a few of the scientists, but Iron Hoof hung back to speak with Bullseye.

"Will Tomey be okay in here?" he asked.

"None of my business," the tan pegasus replied, "I said we were evacuating, and he decided he'd rather head deeper into the war zone instead. If you're that stupid, you deserve to die. We call that natural selection."

A bearded grey unicorn entered the room behind him halfway through his sentence.

"One, fuck you, and two, fuck you a lot."

"Same to you, grandpa. Now get in the portal."

Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof quickly moved on through to wherever this portal decided to take them. Once they were through, the last of the doctors and scientists followed after, leaving just the two pegasi standing awkwardly in an otherwise empty room.

"Well?" said Bullseye, "You going?"

Sun Rise looked back at his wing again.

"...Yeah. I suppose I am."

He trotted over towards the swirling black sphere. Before he jumped through, he turned to look at Bullseye again.

"Am I ever going to get used to this?" he asked.

Bullseye just shook his head.

***

Celestia's eyes flickered open, and she stared up at a blue sky above her. She felt exhausted and she had the headache to end all headaches. The princess tried to pick herself up, but the pain prevented her from moving too much. A shadow was cast over her, as a human head appeared above and blotted out the sun. Lord First looked down at her.

"Well, that went better than expected," he said, "I know I would give you screen time for that. Wouldn't you?"

The princess growled at him.

"You!" she shouted, "You tried to destroy the sun! Do you have any IDEA how dangerous what you did was?! And only thirty seconds?! What if I couldn't have remade it?! I thought you changed, I thought you were responsible now!"

"I am responsible. There was never any time limit, and I could have remade the sun myself as quickly as I got rid of it. That wasn't the point though. The point was to make you do it. I had to make you give a demonstration of power and competency that would make you interesting in the eyes of our human audience and make you worthy of becoming a central character in the work of fiction that is our lives. And really, I don't think that could have gone any better. Between this, your death, and your upcoming resurrection, I think you're worthy of main character status now."

Celestia frowned.

"How would you know?" she asked.

First leaned down and placed a hand on her forehead. Immediately, the princess felt her headache disappear.

"Try to knock me back with your magic," he instructed, "If you're a main character, Dramatic Convenience should allow you to somehow bypass my natural magical resistance and hurt me."

No longer in immense pain, Celestia now had no trouble getting back on her hooves. She looked around her, and saw that they were standing alone on a grassy hilltop a little way above the rest of the valley. Most of the ponies below barely seemed to notice them, though a few were gathered around the base of the hill watching.

She actually recognised a few faces down there. One of her old advisors was present, smiling at her, and looking a lot younger and more energetic than she remembered him. Another was a previous student she'd had a century or two before Twilight. That colt over there was the Mayor of Fillydelphia about five hundred years ago, and there was an earth pony couple over there who she recognised as old members of the Apple family, whom she had helped found Ponyville with by giving them the land where they would go on to build Sweet Apple Acres.

The princess returned their encouraging smiles and looked back over to First. The human folded his arms and nodded at her.

Celestia's horn began to glow.

***

A lone alicorn stood in the security station, doing absolutely nothing.

"Fuck it," said Second, "This is taking too long."

Next to the beast, a wall exploded, and Host jumped through it and ran down the corridor beyond in search of her targets.

***

Nonvulvahlok landed next to the metal cuboid and walked up to it slowly. On the ground, several ponies scrambled to get out of his way and avoid being crushed underfoot. Not that he would ever do such a thing of course, but evidently they did not know that. He reached the metal wall and listened closely to it.

"BORMAHSEDOV. ARE YOU IN THERE?"

He was shouting loudly even by dragon standards, and dragons could be loud. It was a safe bet that if a pony was standing right in front of him as he spoke at that volume, they would go deaf, but fortunately that did not seem to be a problem right now. Good thing too, because he needed to make sure that he was heard.

A voice replied from the other side of the wall. It was clearly just as loud a shout as he was using, but the sound was muffled by the metal walls.

"I am, Nonvulvahlok. I am being held in here by ponies. They tricked me. They trapped me in here, and when I melt the walls down they grow back faster than I can destroy them."

Nonvulvahlok frowned. He looked around at the ponies who had fled from him, who now cowered by the roadside some distance away from him. The ringleaders appeared to be a zebra and one of those bat pegasi that Luna employed for her night guards.

He sighed. Yes, it was ponies who were responsible for this, but he didn't know it was them specifically. No use terrorising ponies who he didn't know for sure actually did this. It was better that he should focus on rescuing the Eternal first.

"WE SHALL DOUBLE OUR EFFORTS. YOU BURN IT FROM YOUR SIDE, I SHALL FROM MINE. TOGETHER, WE MAY BE ABLE TO MELT IT FASTER THAN IT CAN REGROW."

"We can only try. I shall begin."

Nonvulvahlok drew in his breath.

***

It hadn't taken long for the group to reunite and continue their search for the security station. Rather than find the security station however, they had instead ran into the biology department, where they were now wandering around aimlessly and getting even more distracted by random experiments.

"Hey, what is this thing?" asked Soft Spoken.

Explodey McGee scrutinized the Petri dish full of a strange blue liquid, and consulted some nearby notes in an open book.

"No idea," he answered eventually, "Hmm. Maybe Sliske would know. HEY SLISKE!"

Mystic Chant wandered over.

"Sliske can't come right now," he said, "It's not his turn."

Explodey raised an eyebrow.

"Well we need to talk to him right now," he explained.

Mystic glared at him.

"It's not. His. Turn."

Explodey returned his glare.

"Kid-"

Before they could argue though, an explosion down the hall interrupted them, followed by the sound of Gold Coin screaming like a little filly. Explodey, Mystic and Soft Spoken all turned to look at the door into the biology labs just as the business pony charged in, sweating all over.

"Guys," he said between breaths, "I don't want to worry you or anything, but..."

He didn't get a chance to elaborate further. The huge white alicorn bursting through the wall behind the ponies and turning to stare at them said it all.

"RUN!" Explodey shouted.

The four ponies all bolted out the same way Gold Coin came in and galloped down the corridor together. Mystic Chant to his credit did not cry in fear this time, though he was still obviously terrified, and behind them they could hear the sound of the alicorn smashing through walls and blowing things up.

"Wait! What about Broad Sword?!" asked Soft Spoken as they continued to run.

"Oh shit, I forgot about him," Gold Coin replied.

Mystic Chant's teeth began to grow.

"You two go on ahead, I will ressssscue Broad Sssssword and ssssssee if I can do anything about the alicorn."

"Oh no you fucking aren't!" Gold Coin shouted, "I'm coming with you!"

"Don't be stupid Goldie. You'll just get yourself killed," Soft Spoken argued.

The business pony grinned.

"No I won't."

As they ran, Gold Coin reached over his back and pulled something from an unseen source. It was like he was drawing it out of an invisible pocket. It didn't really make much sense. That could all be forgiven though, because even more nonsensically, Gold Coin had just pulled out the Reaper's Horn, causing the other ponies' eyes to bug out.

"WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT?!" screamed Explodey.

"Picked it up after Chain Mail killed Buckshot," the earth pony answered, "Thought it might come in handy."

The group looked behind them and saw Host smash through another wall and emerge into the same corridor they were in.

"Well don't just grin like an idiot!" Soft Spoken ordered, "Fucking shoot that thing!"

The business pony happily obliged. The group stopped running and skidded to a halt as they reached a bend in the corridor that took them to the left. Gold Coin twisted around to face the charging monstrosity and held up the legendary weapon in his mouth. His tongue worked it's way around the trigger and he pulled against it.

He had not been expecting the recoil, and the gun flew out of his mouth and whacked him over the head, but it still fired, and it seemed to hit its target.

The weapon's title was not undeserved. Even though she was roughly as powerful as Princess Celestia, the alicorn was knocked almost to the other end of the hallway by the force of the blast, and her chest and neck were suddenly covered in blood that poured out of multiple wounds. Sliske was shocked by the gun's effectiveness, distinctly remembering that it had no such effect on the actual princess.

If he built another Reaper's Horn from the specifications he had picked up, it would probably only work at short range and do minimal damage. The Reaper's Horn however had special qualities beyond its physical properties, which is what made it the legendary God-killer. Consequentially, its power level and effectiveness seemed to wildly fluctuate. This weapon was unpredictable.

"...Well fuck," said Gold Coin.

"Issss it dead?" asked Sliske.

At the other end of the corridor, the alicorn climbed back onto her hooves again, and all her wounds magically disappeared, the blood flowing back in and the cuts closing up and vanishing. Now she just looked even angrier.

"Nope."

***

Broad Sword walked into the next room in search of his friends, and found only an ambush waiting for him. A teal blue earth pony stallion grinned at him, backed up by no less than nineteen of the Knights of Man, who crowded not just the room he had walked into, but the corridors and side rooms beyond as well.

"Aha!" the commander gloated, "We have you now Element of Loyalty! It is hopeless to resist! Any attempt to escape will result in pain, misery, and death! And I, Commander Ulysses Throatfuck III shall-"

"I surrender."

"...What?"

"I surrender."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I'm outnumbered, surrounded, you all have better weapons and I'm fighting in your territory. I surrender."

Commander Throatfuck blinked.

"You can't do that!" he shouted, "We're supposed to order your surrender, you refuse, we fight, several of my ponies die, and you will escape injured but alive and with information on our plans! That's what Lord Second said would happen!"

"Yeah. But it's not. Because I surrender."

"That is not how you say 'I would rather die than be your prisoner!'"

"Of course it's not. Because I surren-"

"He's resisting arrest! Everypony attack!"

The Knights of Man all drew their weapons, (mostly swords but a few had maces), and rushed across the room at the defenceless guard. Broad Sword closed his eyes, expecting to be sliced apart or beaten to death by the knights, but was saved at the last moment. There was an explosion above. The ceiling shattered, and several more ponies came tumbling into the scene.

Several of the knights were crushed under the impact of the falling ponies and debris, but not fatally. Those not hit by falling objects backed away from the centre of the room, watching as the new ponies got up and dusted themselves off.

Gold Coin coughed loudly.

"We are never, doing that, again..."

It took Broad Sword a moment to realise that he was covered in blood now. He began to freak out, especially as it then suddenly turned into green sludge and started crawling off him across the floor. He only stopped once it was all off him and had reformed into Explodey McGee again, who shook his head and stomped at the floor to try and get his bearings.

Soft Spoken looked over at the guard.

"Oh. Hello Broad Sword. We were looking for you. How convenient."

"Broad Sssssssword, we have a problem. There issssss a-"

An alicorn dropped into the room behind the alien. It landed with such force that the floor cracked where its hooves made impact. Gold Coin whipped around and drew the Reaper's Horn again.

"DUCK AND COVER!" Commander Throatfuck ordered.

Gold Coin fired, and the alicorn was launched through another wall by the incredible force of the human weapon, with the yellow earth pony this time managing to keep a grip on the gun. Several of the knights were knocked away by Host as she was launched back, and those that weren't quickly made themselves scarce. Only the commander seemed to be okay, and even he was rubbing his head and groaning.

"Oh look," said Sliske, "It'ssss that pony I promisssssed to kill."

"Don't you dare," Soft Spoken warned.

The alien glared up at him.

"Why not?"

"Basic morals! Don't kill the innocent or helpless! You voted for me as acting leader, this is me leading! No more pointless killing!"

"Is killing a major threat, like say an insane, rampaging alicorn okay?" asked Gold Coin.

"Sure. Why not?"

The business pony held the gun up above him in his teeth and reared up on his back legs.

"I AM GOLD COIN! MIGHTY ALICORN HUNTER! RAAAAAAGHH!"

The yellow earth pony charged out of the room and through the broken wall Host had been smashed through. The commander and the remaining injured knights just stared through the hole in disbelief.

"Should we help him?" asked Broad Sword.

There was a sound of angry screaming and more gunfire from the room beyond the broken wall.

"I'd say he has the situation under control," said the old butler, "I suggest we go find that security station now and release Chain Mail and Spike."

"Oh, Chain Mail isn't in the security station."

The remaining members of the group all turned to look at Commander Throatfuck.

"Well, where is he then?"

"Cybernetics Department upstairs."

"Okay. And while you seem to be helping us, how might we go about releasing Spike the Eternal from the dragon prison?"

"There are a group of four unicorns maintaining the regenerative metal that's foiling the dragon's attempts to melt the prison walls. If they stop casting it, Spike will be able to break out by himself. You'll find them in the physics lab down the hall."

"Why are you helping us?" asked Explodey.

"Because Lord Second said that I should give as much exposition as possible and ensure that I keep the story moving in the right direction."

"...Come again?"

The commander sighed.

"Because the world doesn't make any fucking sense, and you'd better get used to it. Also I have to die now."

Soft Spoken raised an eyebrow.

"Why?"

"Lord Second says so. As a minor villain, I am to be killed off at this point, so that I may never be seen or referenced ever again."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Commander Throatfuck drew his sword.

"PRAISE LORD SECOND!"

And then he impaled himself.

***

The four surviving Brotherhood ponies had emerged into a grey stone castle keep. Bullseye followed after them, and the portal closed again. Ancient Tome looked around him, and saw that they were covered on all sides by members of the Knights of Man, who stood at attention and guarded every doorway.

"Where are we?" the unicorn asked.

"Fort First," Bullseye replied, "It's located on the outskirts of Secopolis, and it is the main base of operations for the Knights of Man. Originally, they were meant to be an order of protectors and bodyguards just like me and Buckshot, who would defend the emperor and be more highly ranked than anypony else.

"Over time though, Second thought of more ideas for his immediate underlings, and the knights slowly became obsolete. Eventually, he decided to downgrade them from their position as an exclusive order of elites to merely the foot soldiers of his army. When he made the decision to make them into rank and file soldiers, a base of operations and a purpose was needed, so Second created Fort First and tasked them with defending the borders of Secopolis from the Everfree wildlife."

Ancient Tome looked around at the fort curiously.

"It is also the place where Second arranged accommodation for yourself and the other ponies of the Brotherhood of Man. Frosty Morning and Sun Rise here have already seen their rooms, but yourself and Mr. Hoof have yet to see yours. Allow me to escort you there."

Bullseye trotted past the ponies purposefully and approached one of the nearby doors, which two of the knights opened for him. Frosty gave Tome and Iron a sympathetic smile.

"Go with him," she encouraged, "You won't be disappointed."

"Where will you be?" asked Iron Hoof.

"I'm going back to my own room. My filly needs me right now."

"You mean Star's here?" said Tome, "You brought her with you?"

"I couldn't very well leave her back home while her mother was off in a whole other city with Lord Second, could I? She's a bit confused and doesn't know what's going on yet, bless her, but she's taking it well. I left her in the care of one of the guards. When you've seen your rooms, why not come around and say hello? It's been so long since she saw her uncles."

The old stallion smiled.

"Sure. Of course we will, Frosty."

Bullseye called out across the courtyard.

"Hey! Starswirl! Get the fuck over here! I ain't waiting all day!"

The bearded unicorn gritted his teeth.

"I am going to kill that pony one day."

***

The group had decided to split up again. With Host and Gold Coin battling to the death somewhere else in the building, (where, they weren't exactly sure, because they were smashing through so many walls that the location seemed to change frequently), the remaining four had to fan out to find everything they needed. Broad Sword and Explodey had gone together to go find the cybernetics department and rescue Chain Mail, while Soft Spoken accompanied Sliske in the direction of the physics department to put a stop to the unicorns who were holding Spike in the Embassy.

"This is the most dangerous thing I've done in my entire life," said the old pony as they ran down the hall.

"Not even closssssse for me," Sliske replied.

They reached a corner. Softy held up a hoof to tell the alien to stop, and he peaked around the corner. Two of the Knights of Man were running about frantically down there. The corridors ahead crisscrossed, and one of the knights was staring down one of the side corridors that Softy couldn't see and gesturing to his partner to come watch.

"Guards ahead," the former butler whispered, "We should try to sneak by."

"Couldn't we jussssssst kill them both and be done with it?"

Soft Spoken smacked himself in the face with his hoof. He remembered a time when he never needed to raise his voice to anypony, and he actually lived up to his name. His frothing rant to Ancient Tome several days ago about how he and the Brotherhood were all idiots was the first time he had shouted in years. Nowadays he was shouting so much he was certain he would lose his voice soon. It was all he could do to not rage at Sliske again.

"No," he said quietly, "Like I told you, no more needless violence. From now on, if you can spare a pony, do it. Never kill unless you need to. Is that so hard?"

"Yessss it issss."

"No more murder."

"Ssssspoiled sssssport."

***

A hole began to open in the metal. Nonvulvahlok let up his stream of fire and clawed at it. On the other side, he saw a flash of purple and tried to reach through at it, but the hole began to immediately close again, the metal growing back over it like a scab forming over a wound. He countered with more fire, which seemed to hold it at bay for the time being. The hole was far too small for the Eternal to even fit a hand through, let alone use to escape, but the sound from inside now carried better.

"Progress!" Spike said enthusiastically, "Keep it up. We're getting through. It's slow, but we're doing it."

The scaly red dragon did not have time to reply, instead focusing all his energy into breathing in deep breaths and expelling more fire onto the now red hot metal wall. The point where the dragons on both sides were heating the metal was where the hole had formed, and with continued application of heat, the hole was slowly expanding.

A river of liquid metal flowed past the dragon's feet. It was annoying, but liquid metal was still little more than an inconvenience for a dragon of his size and power. What did worry him was the damage it was going to do. A puddle of the silvery steaming liquid was slowly spreading out from the former site of the Secopolis Embassy and was slowly creeping towards the rest of the city. It had already made its way over the small green area outside the site of the embassy, and soon enough it would reach the roadside.

It was only moving slowly. He doubted anypony would be in any danger of getting caught up in it, but that didn't mean it couldn't destroy property. It somewhat went against his morals to potentially cause damage to their homes and businesses, but this seemed to be the only way he could rescue his elder from the prison that these ponies had themselves created. He really hoped he wouldn't have to consider these ponies his enemies for this indignity they had inflicted on his elder.

Ponies were meant to be friends.

***

Broad Sword and Explodey McGee finally arrived in the cybernetics lab. The whole place was filled with all kinds of fancy gadgets and machinery. There were large clear glass cylinders full of green liquid in one corner, an operating table in the centre of the lab, mechanical limbs and organs on a side counter, what appeared to be a generator of some kind on another, and an open cabinet nearby revealed boxes and tins full of spare parts and wires used for building these things.

The walls were all decorated with blueprints for various designs. The two ponies looked around in wonder at the many creative inventions that these blueprints proposed. One of them was a super advanced jetpack for heavy earthbound creatures, like cows and minotaurs. Another was for a processor that would turn grass into synthetic meat, which perfectly imitated the real thing, right down to nutritional values. There was even a design for a suit of winged power armour for aerial combat.

"Woah..." said Broad Sword.

"Chain Mail's gotta be around here somewhere," Explodey observed, "Maybe there's a prison cell or something in the rooms beyond. Let's go have a look."

Broad Sword was ignoring him however, and had gone over to the table to inspect all gadgets there. He was currently fiddling with a mechanical imitation of a human hand, that he could fit onto his hoof. Already he was flexing his fingers with it.

"This is trippy as hell," the guard commented.

Explodey looked unamused.

"Look, far be it from me to play the serious one, but our friend's here somewhere, and he needs our help. We don't have time to play around with gadgets here, much as we would like."

"Hey, you got that magic enhancer," Broad Sword protested, "I should get to steal some tech as well!"

Explodey looked tempted, and levitated another device off the table with his magic. It appeared to be a small metal cylinder with a single button on it.

"What do you think this does?" he asked.

He pressed down on the button, and both ponies jumped back as a beam of solid blue light shot out of the end and glowed gently, making a humming sound and occasionally flickering.

"Wow...It's a laser sword...."

Broad Sword stepped forward and grabbed the handle in his teeth, losing interest in the imitation hand and tossing it aside. Explodey let go and backed away, and the guard swished his new toy around in the air. He scraped the tip of the blade across the floor, and sparks flew up. Drawing back, he saw that where the blue light had touched was now a glowing orange scar in the flooring.

"Looks like it's hot," said Explodey, "Doesn't it burn you to hold it?"

"It doesn't feel hot," Broad Sword replied.

"...Can you use that thing?"

"Hell yeah I can use it. My special talent is swordplay after all. The name has to come from somewhere, right?"

Explodey smiled, but the two ponies were then interrupted by the sound of unnatural mechanical breathing, and a deep voice coming from the other doorway that lead into the rest of the department.

"Your talent is strong rookie, but you are not a royal guard yet."

The unicorn looked over at the doorway, and Broad Sword turned around to see who the intruder was as well. Standing there, blocking their path, was huge earth pony clad in black armour. The armour covered him all over, with a control panel with several buttons on his chest and a weird combination of a helmet and a strange mask with a triangular mouth covering his head.

Broad Sword turned back to Explodey with a confused look.

"Who the fuck is this guy?"

***

Gold Coin was launched backwards through a wall. He hit a bunch of shelves in the room beyond and fell on his back in a pile of debris. He jumped up again and stared intently through the hole in the wall in front of him, and several other broken walls beyond. Almost the four rooms away, the alicorn returned his stare.

The business pony groaned in pain and rubbed his back gently. All things considered, he was doing very well. After being knocked out cold not days ago by Chameleon throwing him against a wall a few times, the fact that he was now being smashed through several of them and still being conscious, let alone still standing, was a marvellous novelty to him. It was like he had suddenly taken several levels in competency and skill that he didn't have before.

He couldn't explain it. Something was different. He shouldn't be able to hold his own against a Goddess, whether he had the Reaper's Horn or not, but somehow he was. Not only that, he felt a lot differently too. He was scared to even come in here before, but now he felt confident. Brave even. He didn't know what had changed, but he certainly wasn't complaining. He liked being competent Gold Coin. So much better than regular Gold Coin.

Host scraped a hoof against the floor and bowed her head. She charged down the pathway through the destroyed rooms that their fight had created, horn ahead of her so that she could gore her enemy with it. Gold Coin reached down and picked up the gun in his teeth again. He grinned darkly, and charged at her as well.

***

Meanwhile at Second's concert...

***

As the next act marched out on stage, Second sat back in his chair again and held up the bottle of whiskey again. He looked at it closely and squinted at the label. He shrugged, and threw the bottle over his shoulders, causing his nearby assistant to give him an odd look.

"Apparently it's a lot harder for me to get drunk than it was before," he explained, "Not that we can't fix that. HEY BARKEEP!"

An unshaven brown earth pony with a cutie mark of a bottle of gin trotted over obediently and sat down in front of Second's chair.

"Yes my Lord?"

"Barkeep, bring me enough alcohol to kill a thousand rock stars! This is going to be the greatest party of all time, one way or another!"

END

Author's notes:

Yo. Imma keep this short because these author's notes sections can get really longwinded and they pad out the word count for my chapters unnecessarily, so let's just cut to the chase.

Yes, I'm late. Sorry. There were issues to deal with. Big issues. Not like the magazine, but like issues. I'm doing everything here between A-levels, you must understand, and I'm collaborating with a few other bros of mine on other projects, and they've been getting real impatient that I finished off the next chapter of the story I'm working on with them, and I also have been working on another short story project between all this (neither pony related, for those curious).

Anyway, there's a new deleted scenes chapter to compensate for that, so you're getting extra today. You're welcome.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it, don't feed the Klkrmizk and beware of rogue Sith lords. DJ out.

Chapter 11: This Mortal Coil

"A place is spoken of in the legends of old,
with rivers of silver and streets paved with gold,
that is the home of Humankind,
the race of our Gods, descended from on high.

Second and First left paradise behind,
to save a world ruined by those wretched swines,
the sun tyrant, who burns so bright,
and the Nightmare who tried to take away the light.

Though they owed us nothing and were content in their home,
Humanity's perfection was none but their own,
and the rest of the universe drowned in sorrow,
so the Humans resolved to make a better tomorrow.

They started with Ponyville, on to Cloudsdale next,
then Canterlot, Hooftington, Trottingham and the rest,
and never did they falter, not once did they cease,
defeating entire armies of both ponies and beasts.

The quest would have continued if not for the Fall of the First,
but after his death Second could not cope with the hurt,
and he was cornered by the Elements and trapped in stone,
because he knew he would return to Texas alone."

-The Human World, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book Fall From Grace.

***

"Oh for the days when I only needed a few drinks to reach this point..."

Second threw another bottle of whiskey behind him and laughed deliriously. The growing pile of smashed glass behind his chair showed that he had been taking way too much alcohol. The loud boom of the music the ponies on the stage were playing was nothing but a distant thumping to the human, who staggered out of his chair and wandered over to the edge to peer out onto the stage and check on the concert.

The ponies up front were all cheering for the rock band currently performing and were waving lighters and glow sticks everywhere. That was a promising sign. Second couldn't remember the name of the band he had ponified and sent out for this act, but the music was familiar to him. This band used to be one of Anthony's favourites. He smiled stupidly as he recalled singing another song by this band for a karaoke act once. God, what was their name?

His assistant trotted over to join him. Wordlessly, Second snapped his fingers and held out his hand, and his assistant obediently produced another bottle of whiskey for him, which he downed in a minute. Nostalgically, Second remembered back when he didn't have a healing factor that seemed to foil any attempt to get drunk. Those were good times. Or at least, they seemed like the good times in retrospect.

In truth though, the only times he had ever regularly got drunk was in University when he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him and ten years later when he thought Carol was cheating on him, though that had fortunately turned out to be a false alarm. Good thing too, because Anthony was already born right then, and that boy did not need his father drinking himself to death. Second's own father had gone the same way, and he didn't want to follow in his footsteps.

"Howard, you cut your shit out right now and stop this. If you think your wife is up to funny stuff, you go confront her about it. Don't sit around in a fucking bar and try to drink your problems away. That's what I did all my life, and look where that got me. Living in this fucking pigsty with your useless lazy cunt of a brother watching old reruns of M*A*S*H. Don't make my mistakes son. Sort this out, and deal with the problem the intellectual way, not the family way."

Second smirked slightly as he remembered that conversation. Dad always was one for those sophisticated speeches. He picked up another bottle of whiskey and raised it to the sky, or rather the ceiling of the backstage area he was lounging about in.

"Here's to you, pops."

***

Broad Sword gripped the silver handle of his new weapon tightly and stared down the mysterious pony who stood between him and his goal. In the doorway, the black armoured pony continued to just block his path, making no noise but his mechanical breathing. With an encouraging look from Explodey, the earth pony stepped forward to challenge the intruder.

Without saying a word, his opponent pressed a button on his armour, and his helmet (but not his mask) raised slightly to allow a black metal horn to emerge from underneath. It lit up not with any kind of magic, but with electricity. As it did, a silver cylinder flew out of a small pouch at the pony's side and floated in the air for a brief while, before activating and producing a menacing red blade of light to match the blue from Broad Sword's weapon.

"You may have skill with a sword, but how are you with a lightsaber?" the armoured pony challenged.

The guard grinned.

"Same thing."

He charged forward and struck at his enemy with the 'lightsaber', but was blocked for troubles. The pseudo-unicorn cyborg thing levitated his lightsaber in front of his strikes and stopped them dead in their tracks, the two swords making a loud crackling sound when they hit each other. Broad Sword lunged at him again in a stabbing motion, but the red lightsaber came down from above and knocked his stab off-course.

"Impressive, most impressive," the armoured pony said emotionlessly.

Never one to get easily frustrated, the guard continued his stream of attacks, though he seemed unable to get a hit in. The thing about levitating your sword was that it was an advantage both in attack and defence. Unicorns were not limited by body movement, and could manoeuvre their swords nearly anywhere to either attack or block. Sure, there were downsides to this fighting style too, but they were very few. Unicorns just completely destroyed the other two races when it came to melee. Not good for the earth pony Broad Sword then.

He backed up slightly to catch his breath, and his opponent took this opportunity to make a few attacks of his own. He didn't move at all, but his lightsaber suddenly became very aggressive, slashing and stabbing at Broad Sword with speed and intensity, and causing him to lose ground. Since he was levitating his weapon, the cyborg didn't need to move at all, and continued to just block the doorway while his lightsaber followed Broad Sword around the room, making it impossible to get in a counterattack.

"Explodey!" the guard yelled desperately, "Help me out here! Get him!"

Explodey did as ordered and charged across the room to hit the armoured pony while he was defenceless, but he caught their trick before Explodey reached him and summoned his lightsaber back across the room to slash at the air and warn Explodey away before he could reach him. The white unicorn did not give in however and used his own telekinesis to try and wrench the weapon from his grasp, pulling against it with everything he had.

Broad Sword ran over to attack while their enemy was preoccupied, but he blocked him despite having to wrestle with Explodey too. Eventually, the real magic won out against whatever artificial magic the cyborg was using, and now the two friends both had a weapon each, and this thing that they were fighting was unarmed. They both pointed their lightsabers at the pony's throat.

"Ha!" said Broad Sword, "Gotcha!"

The pony stared at them for a second, before hitting another button on the control panel on his chest. He shook his left leg suddenly and a short metal dagger emerged from the end. Neither pony could react in time to prevent him ducking down below both weapons like a ninja and slashing Explodey's throat open, causing him to spray blood everywhere and fall to the ground. The pseudo-unicorn caught his red lightsaber with his own artificial magic before it even hit the floor and spun around to face Broad Sword again, who now looked a lot less confident.

"All too easy."

Explodey continued to make gurgling sounds, and Broad Sword felt some relief when he saw his friend get up again, a swirling mass of green on his neck as his wound closed up again before his eyes. The unicorn breathed heavily and staggered over to a nearby control panel, which he then leaned on as he massaged his throat.

"Son of a bitch that hurt!" he moaned.

The armoured pony was clearly surprised by the impossible survival of the pony whose throat he had just slit, and took a second to stare at him disbelievingly.

He raised the red lightsaber and charged over towards Explodey, intending to decapitate him and hopefully finish the job. Broad Sword tried to step in and stop him, but before either pony could reach him, the unicorn's horn lit up and Explodey detonated for the third time that day, knocking both ponies back as the room was consumed by fire.

***

The unicorns were alone in the room. The four of them all stood in the corners of a large empty white room beyond, eyes closed and horns glowing as they concentrated on their job. Soft Spoken and Sliske were staring into the room through a large glass observation window. These were the ponies who were holding Spike in the dragon prison. If they could cut the spell, they might be able to free the dragon.

"So what do we do?" asked Soft Spoken.

"We could alwayssss go in and sssssnap their neckssss."

"No."

"Gassssss the room?"

"No."

"Explossssssivessss?"

"No!"

"There isssss a trick I learned where if you use magic to manipulate their tongue, you can make them-"

"NO! Sliske, seriously, what did I say not four minutes ago?"

"No more pointlesssss killing."

"Exactly."

"I ressssspectfully dissssssagree."

The old pony groaned and rubbed his head.

"Look," he said through gritted teeth, "You don't NEED to kill them, it won't be of any further benefit to kill them, and your insistence on killing them is just frustrating me more. Can't you just do what I ask this once and save us the trouble?"

Sliske just frowned at him.

"You know what? Fine. If you're gonna be like that, put Mystic back in charge. You're on time out until further notice."

The unicorn rolled his eyes before reverting to his normal state again, leaving behind the Mystic Chant that the old butler was more familiar with.

"Hey Softy," he said.

"Hey Mystic," the older stallion replied, smiling, "Are you alright? Is Sliske treating you well? He's not giving you trouble is he?"

The little colt shook his head.

"Nu-uh. We don't interact a whole lot. Mostly it's just watching whatever Sliske's doing or looking at memories. Sliske has a lot of good ones."

Soft Spoken stopped smiling and raised a single eyebrow.

"You can see Sliske's memories?"

"Yah."

"...Are you supposed to be able to do that?"

"Nah."

"...Well okay then. Say Mystic, what do you think we should do about the unicorns in there?"

The earth pony gestured through the observation window towards the room beyond. Mystic studied the room for a moment.

"...There are spells for knocking ponies out," he said eventually.

"Does Sliske know how to do them?"

"I know how to do them. Just get me in there and I'll take care of it."

"How do you know spells like that? Like I checked you were struggling with telekinesis."

"Yeah...I have an alien in my head...He teaches me things..."

Future asylum inmate in the making.

***

Host reared up on her back legs and smashed her fore hooves into Gold Coin's back, knocking the earth pony to the floor. Gold Coin spat out some blood and picked up the Reaper's Horn again, unloading another round into her chest. She wasn't knocked back with as much force this time, but she did still stagger, giving him opportunity to rush in and buck her in the face.

"Hah!"

The beast roared and grabbed him with her magic. He tried to fight back, but attempting to break out of an alicorn's spell was the height of futility. Fortunately, Host didn't seem to be a very creative soul, and settled for using telekinesis to launch the pony into the ceiling.

There was a cracking sound as she did. Host looked up, and was surprised to see that she had thrown Gold Coin through the ceiling rather than into it. There was a screaming sound above her, and then in the room beyond a flying body punched through the ceiling again and landed in a heap in a ruined laboratory, spilling chemicals everywhere and kicking up a cloud of dust.

"Ugh...fuck..."

Host noticed the Reaper's Horn laying on the ground nearby and picked it up, slowly making her way into the room where Gold Coin had landed. Everything was dusty inside, and at some point their fighting must have cut some wires in the walls or something, because there was no power in this room and everything was dark.

Gold Coin meanwhile had crawled under a desk to hide from the watchful eyes of the fiery alicorn. His coat had been stained red and blue by all the chemicals that had fallen on him, and he was fairly sure he had ingested some of them because his mouth tasted like expired milk and mushy peas.

He peaked out over the desk and saw that the alicorn was facing away from him.

"What would a pony like Sliske do in this situation?" he thought to himself.

He smiled, as he realised exactly what Sliske would do. He snuck out from underneath the desk, tiptoed over to the alicorn, and whacked her in the back of the head while she wasn't looking. Host screamed in surprise and dropped the Reaper's Horn again, giving the earth pony time to run around to her front and grab it.

Host's horn lit up again, but this time her opponent was prepared. Gold Coin reared up so that they were face to face, and fired again with the Reaper's Horn at point blank range. Just like it had done to Celestia, the weapon tore the alicorn's face apart in a shower of blood. The best part of all though was that her horn was also shattered, disabling her magic as she regenerated again.

"Hah! No more magic bitch!"

Unfortunately, the three seconds it took him to boast were all Host needed to regrow her horn and use magic to throw Gold Coin through another wall. He groaned as he rolled back onto his belly and tried to get up again.

"I am not a clever pony..."

He looked through the new entrance that he had created and saw Host glaring at him. Then her mane wrapped around her body, and suddenly she changed from a pony to a tornado made of fire, which began to race towards him.

"Motherf-"

***

Something was different. Spike and the younger red dragon noticed it. The metal had stopped regrowing. What was going on?

"Bormahsedov, it has stopped resisting."

On the other side of the hole in the wall, Spike let loose a single long burst of fire, and the great metal wall was turned to slag in seconds. He stepped out into the world again, and looked at the sky above to see Luna's moon greeting him. He had been in that prison longer than he thought.

"Indeed it has. I think we may have had some help in this matter."

The elder dragon turned his attention to the zebra and his minions waiting on the other side of the road, who were watching the two dragons fearfully. Spike stomped over through the liquid metal that now drowned most of the street and stopped just in front of him. He reached down and picked up the trembling zebra in his right hand, bringing him up to eye level.

"You," he said, "You're Ze!zar. You are from the Brotherhood of Man. You were responsible for trapping me in this undignified state, weren't you?"

The zebra cringed.

"That was not very nice. I will be telling your mother what you did."

Now, Ze!zar stopped cringing and looked up at Spike in confusion. Then, he suddenly became a lot more confident.

"Joke's on you dragon!" he boasted, "Both my parents are dead!"

Spike was not sure how to respond to that. He looked over his shoulder at Nonvulvahlok, who shrugged at him.

"Well, then I shall tell Princess Luna when I take you back to Equestria, and she will have a nice comfy dungeon for you."

Ze!zar's mood swings now took him right back to misery and acceptance.

"Okay..."

Spike tossed the zebra over his shoulder, who screamed as he flew through the air before landing in the open palm of Nonvulvahlok.

"Take him back to Canterlot and tell the princess what to do with him. I still have business here. The Elements of Harmony are in need of my aid."

"The Elements of Harmony? Were new avatars chosen?"

"They were. The re-emergence of Lord Second seems to have brought with it successors to my old friends. I can only hope that they will live up to the standards set by their predecessors."

"Lord Second has returned? That is fortunate. I was worried for a moment that the actions taken against you and the return of the Elements meant that T-"

"Do not speak his name in my presence. There are matters I would much rather forget."

"Forgive me Bormahsedov."

"And call me Spike. You don't need to refer to me by titles."

"Of course."

"I will meet with you later back at the palace. For now, transport your new prisoner."

"As you wish."

***

Soft Spoken smiled at the sight of the four unicorns sleeping peacefully in the corners of the room. One of them snored gently and kicked slightly, likely dreaming of long runs in sunny meadows. Mystic Chant was panting, but seemed okay for the most part. He looked up at the older stallion for approval, and the butler gave it.

"Nice work," he said, "You weren't wrong. Your magic is definitely improving. I'm proud of you."

"Really Softy?!"

He seemed to regain some energy.

"Yes. Definitely. I'm no unicorn, but I've seen a lot of magic working for your father all those years, and I think you did well."

Mystic was obviously very pleased with himself, and beamed happily as he followed the older earth pony out of the room and back into the main lab.

"What now Softy?" he asked inquisitively.

"Now we meet up with the others. Hopefully by now Broad Sword and Explodey would have found-"

They were interrupted as a nearby wall exploded and Gold Coin jumped out of it. The yellow business pony was scarred all over and sporting several new burn marks that he wasn't before. He still clutched the Reaper's Horn in his mouth, his mane was messy as if he had been caught in a storm, and his face wore a look of panic and fear.

"Softy!" he cried, "We have to move!"

"What's going on?!" the old pony demanded, "Is it Host?!"

"In a manner of speaking..."

A swirling vortex of fire burst through the wall next to them, not even attempting to go through the hole that Gold Coin had already somehow created.

"OH DEAR SWEET CELESTIA WHAT IS THAT?!"

Gold Coin fired a shot at the burning tornado of death, but it barely even moved in response. Taking their chances running again, the ponies headed down one of the corridors and bolted as fast as they could, while the thing that was behind them continued to destroy the building around it.

***

Explodey's sight returned as his eyes reformed again, and his ears came back along with sound. He heard a sick trickling sound and felt a flash of pain as his legs were reformed before his eyes. He held up a hoof and waved it around, making sure he was still okay, and looked around the destroyed room.

Broad Sword was on his hooves and coughing, coat blackened by the explosion along with the rest of the room. He dusted down his golden armour, much duller than before, and staggered over to where Explodey was waiting.

"Sorry," the unicorn said first, "I didn't want him to cut me up again."

"It's alright," his friend replied, "Just warn me next time you do that. It hurts like hell and nothing is creepier than seeing you reform from that weird green stuff like that."

Explodey smiled sheepishly.

"Again, sorry."

"Damn, just how much can you survive? Is it even possible to kill you?"

"...Not as far as I'm aware. I haven't actually tested it, but according to my fake memories, I can regenerate from a single cell. I guess total disintegration would kill me, but I'm not entirely certain."

Broad Sword tapped his chin.

"Hmmm. I wonder if it heals aging...?"

Explodey's face lit up.

"Oh cool! I might live forever! I didn't even think of that! Imagine me as like a ten thousand year old ultimate badass grandpa pony! That would be so boss!"

He noticed Broad Sword looking away.

"Swordy?"

"Huh?"

"What's wrong?"

"I was wondering where that psycho pony went. He was here before the explosion, unless that artificial horn allowed him to teleport? Where's he gone?"

It didn't take the two long to give up their search and decide to move on into the rest of the cybernetic department. Their enemy could have either ran out behind them or gone ahead. Either way, that meant he was on the run, and that gave them some more free time to explore. This was very fortunate, as the next room was also full of interesting gadgets.

Broad Sword was drawn over to a set of cyan coloured armour that was meant to cover the entire body except the mane and tail. A set of wings on its back indicated it was designed for pegasus use, and where a pony's cutie mark would be, this armour had a large number six. It's helmet was pretty weird looking too, with just a thin visor and a speaker instead of an exposed mouth.

"Damn I wish I was a pegasus," the guard sighed, "So much of my life would have been easier if I was a pegasus like dad. I bet I wouldn't be afraid of heights if I could fly."

He pouted.

"Stupid useless farming related magic."

While he was distracted bemoaning his lack of wings however, a dark figure jumped down off the ceiling and attacked Broad Sword with a red lightsaber. The guard would have been slaughtered for sure had Explodey not jumped in and taken the blow, which sliced him clean in half.

"AGGGGGHHH!"

The warning he got was enough, and Broad Sword turned around to block a second strike from the cyberpony as his friend reformed again. The black armour was looking worse for wear now and it randomly sparked and jerked at times as the pony used his artificial magic to manipulate his weapon.

They were close quarters this time though, and that gave Broad Sword the opportunity he needed to strike at his foe. He lunged forward and put a burning blue beam of light through the mysterious pony's shoulder. There was a spark and a crack of electricity, and the armoured pony screamed angrily. He tried to swing at Broad Sword again, this time actually hitting him, but his armour somehow saved him from the worst of it and allowed him to swing again, this time cutting off the horn that protruded from underneath the helmet.

Another shower of sparks and the pony jumped back, surprised by the loss of his magic that also cost him his lightsaber again. Explodey quickly capitalised on this and picked it up with his own magic.

Without a word, their enemy hit another button on his chest panel and sprouted wings from his side.

"Now that just isn't fair!" Broad Sword shouted, "I was JUST complaining about not having wings!"

The pony turned and rushed out of the room. Nothing better to do, the two friends chose to pursue.

***

Second walked out onto the stage giggling like an idiot and barely keeping his balance. Halfway through, he decided that he was never going to reach the microphone, and so instead summoned it over to him. He hiccupped, and then waved around the stage.

"A round of appl-applause please..." he slurred, "...for Scatman John."

The ponies in the crowd obediently cheered and stomped their hooves. Second continued smiling absently like the crazy drunk he was until it was over. Then he belched loudly and held up the microphone again.

"AND NOW!" he shouted, "We will all make way for our next performers. Now that the ponified famous dead musicians are out of the way, let's let the ponified famous living musicians have their time, huh?"

More cheering.

"Alright! So can I get some cheers for...Chris Brown!"

The crowd began to stomp, but then stopped, all turning to look at each other in confusion. Many ponies muttering some variant of 'huh?' or 'what?'.

"Just kidding folks!" Second laughed, "No seriously though, Jay-Z next, and following it up with Foo Fighters and AC/DC."

That got them going again.

"BUT FIRST! I would like us to all stop, and join in a song, in honour of me."

The human began to hum a tune into the microphone.

"Oh...Mmm...Yeah...My name is Second! I'm like...Um...nothing rhymes with Second! And I'm...I used to be a lot better at freestyling than this..."

Second looked up at the silent crowd.

"Fuck you! I'm drunk!" he shouted.

They just continued to stare. Not wanting anyone remembering this embarrassing moment, he waved his arm across the arena and erased all the ponies' memories instantly, causing them to start cheering again as they regressed to several seconds ago when he announced the next act.

"Jay-Z. Empire State of Mind. Fuck you guys, I'm off to drink some more."

As he began to march off stage however, he looked up and saw a purple dragon flying over his city. Spike was breathing fire all over his magnificent cathedral and blowing chunks off it. Even despite his distance, he could hear the dragon screaming his name, thinking he was inside and trying to challenge him to a fight.

"...And on that note, I think it's time to go check on the Elements of Harmony."

***

Gold Coin dove into a side room along with his other two friends and just barely missed the raging inferno that passed him by and continued on down the corridor, oblivious to his narrow escape. Gold Coin's mane had been singed again, and he was just barely suppressing a scream from another burn he had endured trying to escape that last attack. He raised the Reaper's Horn again and inspected it.

"I don't get it!" he shouted, "This thing is MADE for killing alicorns! Why the fuck isn't it working?!"

"Host was made to kill us," Soft Spoken pointed out, "Maybe Second just thought ahead and decided to make her completely invincible."

"No! That can't be it! There is ALWAYS a solution! I am not ready to believe that this thing is literally impossible to kill!"

"Gold Coin, you've seen it! Alicorns may be able to be hurt or injured, but nothing can kill them, except the Reaper's Horn. If the Reaper's Horn doesn't work, that means that she can't be stopped."

Gold Coin glared at the brown earth pony.

"So do you want to give up?!" he shouted, "Do you just want to bend over and take it?! No fucking way! Nopony is invincible. NOPONY."

Mystic's teeth grew and his eyes turned yellow as he addressed the scarred earth pony.

"We may not be able to kill her, but alicornsssss are jussst as vulnerable to magic asssss any other pony. I could ussssse a levitation sssssspell to hold her in place and a ssshield to protect ussss from her attackssss. If we can do that, it'll give you sssssome time to think of ssssomething elssssse."

"Do you even have enough magic in that body?" asked Soft Spoken, "Mystic was exhausted from that knockout spell a few minutes ago."

"Mysssssstic can't reach hissss full potential yet, but he hasssss great potential. I'll have enough magic, believe me."

"Okay," said Gold Coin, "Here's the plan. Me and Sliske will go out and face the alicorn. I'll see if I can kill it and Sliske will do his magic thing. Softy, I want you to search around the labs. Find me some weapons. Something, anything. There is not a doubt in my mind that Second wouldn't have created or stored something around here capable of stopping her, because's that's just the kind of idiot he is, and that's just the kind of luck we seem to have."

Soft Spoken nodded.

"Alright! CHARGE!"

Gold Coin and the other two barrelled out into the corridor again, where the fire tornado waited passively at the end, scorching the walls and seeming to wait patiently for the ponies. Once they were in view, it instantly regained its energy and tore down the passage towards them, kicking up dust and eating away at the building.

Behind them, Softy ran for it and headed towards some of the labs in the side rooms, hoping to find somewhere where everything wasn't destroyed. Sliske and Gold Coin stood their ground against the Goddess-pony. Mystic's horn lit up and a faint blue light surrounded the inferno, not that you could see it with the brightness of the fire drowning it out.

At first, both ponies thought Sliske had failed, but even though it took a few seconds before it took effect, the spell worked, and the burning alicorn came to a stop before them. In the fire, Sliske could make out the shape of the pony beneath, and used his magic to push her burning mane away. The fiery shield which surrounded her was parted. She pushed back with her own magic to try and stop Sliske and keep moving, but the alien held out surprisingly well against her and managed to keep her exposed enough for Gold Coin to unload another round into her face.

She screamed as her head exploded again, but it quickly began to regenerate once more.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF SECOND'S WRINKLY BALLSACK WILL IT TAKE TO KILL THIS THING?!"

***

First landed on his back a little way down the hill and coughed. At the top of the hill, Celestia looked down on him, shocked that she had actually managed to harm the human. First looked up at her and gave her a thumbs up. Gingerly, the princess trotted down the hill to meet the human, who smiled at her warmly as she approached. She returned his smile nervously and held out a hoof to help him up.

Once the human was back on his feet again, he started laughing.

"Wow!" he said, "I haven't felt actual pain in a long, long time. That takes me back..."

He dusted himself off and coughed again.

"Well, all in all, I think this has been a tremendous success. The universe has officially recognised you, and you're on your way to a starring role. I think you're ready to take on Second."

Celestia looked at the other ponies surrounding the hill, who were stomping their hooves in applause. She blushed and waved to some of them. Lord First had risen into the air again and was flying up higher and beckoning her to follow. No time to converse with her old friends, she took flight and followed after him as they headed back towards the misty cliff top.

"Thank you," she said, "This has been...an interesting experience. I always wondered what it was like...dying. It's not as bad as I thought."

"Well, you've learned a lot here. Now, I'm afraid I have to send you away back to the mortal world. When you go back, remember what you learned here. Remember everything I said, and use it to make things better. You run a tight ship, and Equestria is beautiful place. A land of peace and prosperity. Far better than my home."

The two landed on the cliff top. Lord First looked at her seriously.

"And I mean it Celestia. Equestria is wonderful. Far more so than you realise. Don't ever take it for granted."

The princess nodded.

"Well...time for you to go. Steel?"

There was a flash of light nearby, and a cheerful looking white earth pony with a cutie mark of two crossed war hammers appeared next to them. He bowed before the princess for a moment before turning to First.

"Hey Anthony. What do you need?"

That was curious. Everypony First had interacted with so far had called him 'My Lord' or some variant thereupon.

"The princess here has an appointment with my father. If you would, could you please escort her back to the world of the living?"

"Certainly. Whenever you're ready your majesty."

"Do I know you?" asked Celestia, "You seem very familiar to me."

"I'm in your museum ma'am," the pony answered.

The alicorn furrowed her brow attempting to remember.

"In the same display case as the Reaper's Horn," First clarified.

Wait...

"This right here is Private Steel Hammer of the sixty fourth regiment. My killer, and also my closest friend."

That was right! He was the hero of the Fall of the First! A new recruit, he was said to have personally wrenched the Reaper's Horn out of First's hand and used it to kill the human, before accidentally destroying himself with it as well! There was a great big statue of him in her museum depicting him wielding the Reaper's Horn during that battle! And here he was, and he was First's...friend?

The former guard pony continued to smile innocently at her. She couldn't help but return it. She had thought it fortunate before that First had not taken his death badly. She had only considered that situation in context of herself, about how he should have been angry at her and how she was so relieved that a being with control over the afterlife who she had wronged had forgiven her and decided to help her. And yet, here was something so much more than that. This was his killer. The one who had taken away his life in the most bloody and violent way possible. And they had met again in the afterlife and were friends...

"Ponies," said First, shrugging, "What can I say? You're just so easy to get along with. I wish I had been less of an idiot a thousand years ago. If I had tried to be friendly to you and Twilight and the inhabitants of Ponyville, maybe we could have avoided a lot of bloodshed."

"Come along your majesty," Steel Hammer added, "The mortal world is this way..."

***

Soft Spoken ran over to another door and bucked it down. This was the twelfth room he had searched, and nothing yet. Now however, he seemed to have finally found something. This room...he wasn't sure what exactly it was, but the most apt description seemed to be 'armoury'.

The room was full of shelves and racks full of weapons, but it was also used to store other general purpose machinery and designs. Blueprints for several inventions covered the walls, bottles of chemicals were up on that shelf, over there was a collection of keys...mostly however, it seemed to be for the weapons.

And what a collection. Swords and maces and axes and hammers and longbows and short bows and crossbows and so many variants of explosives he couldn't even count them all. What caught his attention though was the giant long black thing which seemed to be designed to be mounted on a pony's back. It looked way too heavy for him to carry at his age, but Gold Coin could probably use it, even if not carry it for long due to his own lack of fitness.

Perhaps it would be easier to lure Host closer to the armoury?

***

The chase lead Broad Sword and Explodey into an open room with nothing in it but a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a door on the far side. The armoured pony flew across the room and smashed right through the door. A gust of wind blew in and caught his two pursuers off-guard. The door lead out onto a balcony overlooking the city outside. The moon shone above them, inspiring the ponies and spurring them to keep up the chase.

They emerged onto the balcony, and Explodey and Broad Sword came face to face with the pony in black, who hovered before them just out of reach. Explodey used his magic and grabbed ahold of their enemy and yanked him out of the air. He beat his artificial wings furiously, but Explodey was too strong for him, and he crashed onto the balcony with them.

"Give it up!" Broad Sword shouted.

"NEVER!"

The pony hit another chest button and the wings dropped off. He ducked down and grabbed them both in his mouth, or with his mask rather, and swung them at the ponies. The metal feathers turned out to be razor sharp, and a single swipe from them sliced right through the brickwork on the balcony's edge and made a nice clean cut that caused a triangle of stone to fall out and nearly crush Explodey's hoof.

Terrified at what he could do with such weapons, the ponies turned and ran. The balcony seemed to run all along the outside of the building, giving them plenty of running space. The armoured pony spat out both the wings and clipped them together, forming them into one huge weapon that he held in the middle. Once he did, he picked it up again and charged after them.

He must have activated another of those buttons on his chest which seemed to be able to do everything, as now he was building up electricity around him as he ran. Lightning crackled and jumped around the outside of his armour and conducted through his pseudo sword as well. As if this weren't enough, he had also stuck one side of the weapon into the wall, and as he rushed along he was cutting the wall of the Mage's Guild apart and causing the upper level of the building to fall behind him and destroy the balcony as he ran.

"RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" Broad Sword screamed, "KEEP RUNNING AND DON'T LOOK BACK!"

Contrary to his own advice, he looked back.

"SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP HE'S MADE OF LIGHTNING NOW TOO!"

"Go on ahead!" Explodey ordered, "I'm going to detonate again, and this time it's gonna be big enough to turn this whole building into slag!"

Broad Sword did as he was told and kept moving, while Explodey dug his hooves in and twisted around to face the oncoming storm. He braced himself to be shredded apart and readied his spell. The armoured pony knew what was about to happen and tried to stop and turn back, but it was too late. Explodey blew apart into billions of tiny pieces and let loose a cataclysm that could be seen from Congress.

The fire hit the armoured pony and sent him sprawling. The black metal shielded him, but just barely. The wall of the Mages' Guild did not hold up so well, and flying pieces of brick flew everywhere. An entire corner of the guild was blown apart, exposing several rooms and labs inside to the open night air. The cyborg was lucky enough to fall inside one of these now ruined rooms instead of tumbling to the ground from three floors up and landing on solid concrete.

When the explosion was over, the fires burned softly around the room, and a cool breeze washed over him. He stared through the red tint of his mask's computer and looked up at the starry sky. The automatic breathing had stopped working as normal. It was now laboured, and it sounded like one of his lungs had been punctured. Before his eyes, he saw a diagram of a little crying pony, with a helpful red highlight over the areas where he should have been feeling pain if his suit hadn't automatically pumped him full of so many painkilling drugs that anypony with normal organs would have died in seconds from them.

On the far side of the room, a coughing and spluttering Broad Sword crawled into view, a large scorch mark covering his left side. The cyborg caught sight of him, and the guard forced himself back into a standing position. The cyborg did the same, and they both limped towards each other as quickly as they could. Both were without weapons now, so once they met in the middle of the room Broad Sword and the armoured pony both raised a fore hoof and punched each other in the face.

They both struck home at the same time, and moved into a grapple. The guard wasn't as strong as the cyborg, who seemed to have enhanced his strength through the aid of his suit, but he was more agile and not as heavy, and he was able to knock his opponent onto his back. Broad Sword climbed on top of him and repeatedly beat him. All the black armoured pony could do was try to shield his face/mask.

Eventually, they both got tired, and Broad Sword fell off and landed to the side. Both ponies breathed heavily, (though for the cyborg that was how he normally breathed anyway). On the other side of the room, Explodey McGee walked in, just finishing reforming. He stared at the two exhausted ponies.

"Well...I'm not even going to comment on what this looks like."

The guard rolled over again and stood up.

"I think we got him," he gasped.

"Hell yeah we got him! Brohoof!"

Broad Sword smiled weakly and bumped his hoof against Explodey's. They stood over the mostly mechanical pony and looked down at him.

"Now, let's see who you are."

Explodey grabbed his mask and helmet with magic and ripped it off, and both the ponies gasped when they saw Chain Mail's face underneath. The captain was staring blankly up at the sky, slowly rolling his head side to side.

"Look at all the colours..." he said in a daze.

"Cappy? Is that you?" asked Broad Sword in amazement.

That seemed to snap him out of it.

"I TOLD YOU NEVER TO CALL ME 'CAPPY' AGAIN! I AM DARTH CHAINS! FEAR ME!"

"What the hell happened to you?!"

"REVITALISATION! I AM UPGRADED! THIS IS CHAIN MAIL 2.0! THE MAGES GUILD TOOK ME IN AND MADE ME STRONG! I AM A NEW PONY! ALL WILL FEAR ME AND-"

Broad Sword punched him in the face again.

"Ow!" he whined, grabbing his nose, "What was that for?!"

"Snap out of it cappy! This isn't you!"

"I TOLD YOU NOT TO-"

THWACK!

"AGH!"

"Snap out of it!"

"I AM-"

THWACK!

"SON OF A BITCH!"

THWACK!

"MAKE IT STOP!"

THWACK!

"I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE!"

THWACK!

"Stop it!" Explodey shouted, "You do not undo brainwashing by hitting the victim in the face! That's how you undo memory loss! Or is it cause memory loss? Hmm..."

Broad Sword paused.

"Well what do you suggest then?"

Explodey put a hoof on his chin and contemplated.

"Emotional friendship speech?" he suggested.

The guard pondered that for a moment.

"Could work," he agreed, "Friendship is magic after all."

Explodey pulled Chain Mail back onto his hooves again with magic and looked him right in the eye, forcing him to look back.

"Chains? Listen. It's me, Explodey. You remember me, right?"

The captain's face scrunched up.

"...No."

"We're friends Chain Mail. You and me. Remember how we met? I was being held in the dungeons after I came in thinking I had to blow up the palace for a demolition job, and you came in to interview me? You asked me so many questions, and when you came back later we played a game of hangpony?"

Chain Mail looked confused and lost for a moment, but then had a moment of realisation.

"ZAQUILAX IS NOT A VALID WORD FOR HANGPONY!" he raged.

"Progress," Broad Sword said, deadpan.

"And you and Swordy tried to save me, remember? When the Brotherhood of Man came in and tried to take me with them?"

Chain Mail remained expressionless for the moment, but nevertheless commented.

"The Brotherhood are a bunch of dicks."

"That's right," said Explodey, "They are."

"Mmmhmm," Broad Sword agreed.

"And when we went into the throne room just before Celestia...you know...you let me out of the cuffs to run around a bit, because you said you trusted me to behave. And when Second tried to leave, you wanted to try and stop him."

Chain Mail suddenly looked shocked.

"The princess!" he cried, "She's dead! She's dead, isn't she?!"

He looked to his fellow guard, who just nodded at him. He bowed his head in despair.

"Oh...I failed...I just remembered how hard I failed...She was killed right in front of me...Second..."

He looked up at the two white ponies again, and didn't say a word. He just started crying.

"Chain Mail? Are you back?" the unicorn asked.

"...Yeah...I'm back..."

***

Soft Spoken arrived to the sound of angry screaming.

"WHAT?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! YOU MEAN THIS PIECE OF SHIT CAN ONLY BE FIRED EIGHT TIMES?!"

"I told you!" Sliske hissed, "It sssssssaid ssssso on thossssse blueprintsss I found in the reality department! Sssssecond even sssssaid himsssssself that the gun wasssss not magical."

The old earth pony rounded the corner and saw Host still thrashing about in Sliske's magic field. Mystic was sweating, and his horn was covered in several layers of overglow, meaning he was fast approaching his limit.

"WHAT KIND OF GOD-KILLER ONLY HAS A LIMITED NUMBER OF CHARGES?!"

"It doesssn't need chargesssss, it needsssss ammunition."

"Hey! Goldie!" Soft Spoken called.

The burned and scorched business pony and his alien companion both looked over to him.

"I found something! It looks like you may be able to use it! I think it's based on the same technology the Reaper's Horn is! I don't think Second brought it in from his world like he did the Reaper's Horn, but it might still harm Host!"

Gold Coin looked back to Sliske.

"How much more time have you got?"

"Twelve minutessssss."

"Hold out for six more and then head in our direction," the brown earth pony instructed, "We're back near the room we came through the floor into! There's a side passage down there that leads to an armoury! We'll be waiting."

***

Second jumped into his Ferrari and hit the ignition. The sound of Spike destroying the cathedral could still be heard behind him. This was not a good sign. He really didn't want to have to face Spike again right now. The last time he did that, it did not turn out very well for him. So instead, he would try his luck against the Elements of Harmony. Sure, he'd still lose, but it would hurt less from them.

He questioned the wisdom of trying to drive while drunk, but reasoned that there were no laws against that in Equestria since there were no cars, there were no laws against it in New America because he was the law, and that since he was unlikely to be killed off by drunk driving anyway, he could risk it. As he headed in the direction of the Mages' Guild, a tiny little man dressed in white appeared on his right shoulder.

"Who are you?" asked Second, taking his attention of the road to converse with his hallucination.

"Oh, I'm your conscience," the tiny man replied, "I'm here as comic relief and to dispense advice, and also as an indication of your growing insanity."

There was a puff of smoke, and an equally little man dressed in red appeared on his left shoulder.

"And I'm your ambition. I'm also here as comic relief, but my advice is far superior and nets greater rewards."

Second turned back to the road and focused on driving.

"All right then. What have you got for me?" he asked, long since having accepted such strangeness as the norm for Equestria.

"Okay, check it," said Ambition, "What if...and hear me out here...What if we cheated our way out of the story?"

Second turned to look at Ambition.

"Elaborate."

"You pretend to die, act it up really well, make sure it's in a realistic fashion, and maybe the show will view it as your death proper, cut away, and while off screen you can escape?"

"I like it," agreed Conscience.

Second felt something tugging his hair, and nearly crashed the car when a little green goblin thing hung upside down in front of him from a tuft of his hair.

"And you could make a real big show of it!" he said excitedly, "With massive explosions and EVERYTHING!"

"Who the fuck are you?!" shouted the human.

"I'm your creativity!" the goblin replied cheerfully.

"I am way too drunk right now."

"You're not even close boyo!" Ambition laughed heartily, "I suggest you get some more whiskey before confronting the Elements of Harmony."

"Okay, here's where I step in," said Conscience, "Don't listen to him on this one. More alcohol is not going to help. You need to be coherent for the upcoming battle. You need to be precise to avoid doing anything you'll regret."

"Conscience is a faggot," shouted Ambition, "Get more alcohol! Alcohol gives +1 Strength, and that's ten more carry weight for you, which means you can carry...ten more bottles of alcohol!"

"Ambition is a stupid fucknugget who will get you addicted, and is trying to ply you with references and poor humour."

A tiny naked man crawled out from under Second's belt.

"Hi, I'm your sexuality," he introduced, "Listen, can I just say I really, really support the idea of more drinking?"

Second glared angrily down at the newest arrival.

"Like I'd listen to you!" he shouted, "I'm over a thousand years old and we're stuck in a world full of ponies! You're like the most useless aspect of me right now!"

"You can always create more humans."

"No I fucking can't! Go away! You and I are no longer on speaking terms since that last incident!"

"It happens to everyone Howard-"

"NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T! SHUT UP!"

A tiny demon crawled out from behind his ear.

"YEAH! SHUT UP YOU ANNOYING SHIT EATING PISS FOR BRAINS CUNT FUCKER!"

"Anger, calm down," suggested Conscience.

"YOU CALM DOWN YOU COCK MUNCHING TURD LICKER!"

"I am going to crash this motherfucking car if you morons don't stop randomly appearing on me! Enough is enough! Piss off!"

All the tiny men vanished instantly, and Second was alone in his car again. He sighed deeply and picked up a bottle of whiskey. Without another thought, he tossed it out the window and kept driving.

"Hmmm..." he said to himself, "Cheating the story..."

***

It was Broad Sword who finally broke the silence.

"Come on," he said, "We left Gold Coin fighting Host while we went to rescue you. He's probably in trouble."

Chain Mail gasped.

"Gold Coin's fighting Host?! No! This is bad! Host can't die! She can't even be killed by the Reaper's Horn like the princess could! She's got a healing factor!"

The other two ponies looked grimly at each other.

"We'd best move fast then," Explodey suggested.

"Come on cappy, we need to get you out of that weird armour."

Broad Sword tried to touch the armour plating, but Chain Mail jumped back away from him.

"NO!" he shouted, "You can't! This stuff is bonded to me! You try to get me out of my armour, all you'll do is rip my skin off!"

Explodey looked at him in surprise. Chain Mail winced as he came over and poked at the armour.

"Chains?" he asked, "Just what DID they do you anyway?"

The captain looked awkward, as if reluctant to discuss the matter.

"...Intensive surgery. Three rounds of it," he admitted, "Most of my organs are gone and replaced, I'm permanently attached to this armour everywhere except around my head and parts of my crotch for some reason, and I've got all this weird computer stuff flashing in front of my eyes. Also this suit regularly dispenses painkilling drugs, though when it chooses to do so tends to change at...random...ahhhhhhhhh...there it goes..."

The captain stared off into the distance dreamily. Explodey and Broad Sword exchanged a worried look. Chain Mail seemed to snap back to reality quickly enough though.

"OKAY!" he shouted, "I'm here. Don't worry. Listen, we can talk about what they've done to me once we're safe and sound in Equestria again. For now, let's go save the others."

The three agreed. Explodey took the time to gather up all the damaged technology that they had used in their fight that he could still recover, taking the lightsabers, the damaged helmet and the strange double sided sword made out of the artificial wings that Chain Mail had used while brainwashed. Once they had gathered up all the tech again, they headed through into the rest of the building.

"Oh and guys?" said Chain Mail, "Thanks."

***

Sliske turned and ran for it. Host dropped to the ground, finally free, and looked up as Sliske disappeared around the corner. The alicorn raged and covered herself with her mane again, once more becoming an avatar of pure fire. She didn't bother following the corridors, once again deciding to smash through the walls instead and go in a straight line towards Sliske, whom she could sense wherever he went.

She emerged into a corridor, just missing Sliske who continued to run for the other side of the building and maintain a shield around himself. She shot a few bursts of fire in his direction and kept chasing. He disappeared around another corner, and Host abruptly changed direction and followed.

The pursuit kept up for a further five minutes, until they returned to the room where the ponies had gone through the floor. Several of the Knights of Man laid dead around the room. Host lost track of Sliske. She reached out and tried to sense him, but was thrown off when she sensed the presence of the other ponies.

...What was that sound?

Host turned around and saw Gold Coin walk in through one of the doors, grinning like a maniac and carrying the most oversized weapon she had ever seen; a huge black minigun bigger than him strapped to his back. He had kept his head down so that it went over his neck, and some string ran from the back of the gun to his mouth, seemingly improvised to allow him to fire it.

"All will fear my giant new gun!" Gold Coin proclaimed.

He pulled on the string. A motor started to whir and the end of the gun began to spin. Not being a particularly intelligent creature, Host really didn't have much in the way of final thoughts. Instead, she just screamed in her head.

***

Chain Mail, Broad Sword and Explodey came through the door together just in time to see the insane looking yellow earth pony finishing off their alicorn harasser. Host was leaning against the wall and spasming with each shot, and she was being pumped with so many shots it was unreal. With every bullet she absorbed, more blood was sprayed over the wall, which was almost all red at this point.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Gold Coin cackled, "YEAH! EAT IT! TAKE THIS! AND THAT! AND THIS! AND THIS AND THAT AND THIS!"

Eventually the minigun wound down again, and Host crumpled to the floor. The ponies all waited in anticipation, but she wasn't getting back up, or healing. Nopony ever knew why she didn't. Maybe Gold Coin accidentally hit some really hard to hit body part that controlled her healing. Maybe her healing was just a spell and she ran out of magic. Maybe whatever cosmic forces granted her those powers just gave up on her. Or maybe there was just only so much she could recover from. Whatever the reason was, the universe seemed to decide that after you took that many bullets to the face, you should be dead.

"I did it!" the yellow business pony cried out gleefully, "I finally did it! I killed the alicorn! I did the fucking impossible! I am officially a hero, and you should all bow down and worship me like the glorious golden God I am!"

"Okay Gold Coin," Soft Spoken replied, "Really, we're very grateful. You were right, and we were wrong. Now stop being a dick about it."

The stallion undid the strap on his back and dropped the minigun unceremoniously.

"I was just kidding Softy," he said, "You can let me joke around a little, can't you?"

"Hmm. Sorry. You normally don't show a sense of humour, so I didn't recognise it."

"Now that's not true. I'm hilarious."

"Understand where I'm coming from here. Normally you just shout angrily and bitch about meaningless shit. You're not the most casual of ponies. Maybe you can tell when you're being sarcastic, but to the rest of us when you say things like that, it comes off like genuine egotism."

Gold Coin actually looked a little hurt by that.

"...Is that really what I look like to you Softy?"

"No! I didn't mean that! I mean...I like you as you are. Really. I think I can consider us friends. I just think...maybe you're overdoing it a bit? You need to calm down. Not swear so much. Not argue so much. Just try to be a little more sociable."

For the first time, Chain Mail spoke up and made the other three ponies' presence known.

"Kill an alicorn, and then straight into a heart to heart discussion about attitude and demeanour. I swear, you ponies, I will never understand you. You're talking about Gold Coin's constant arguing while ignoring the fact that he's caked in the blood of a living Goddess. I know what I'd much rather be discussing right now."

Sliske, Gold Coin and Soft Spoken all turned their attention to the other three.

"Woah!" gasped Soft Spoken, "Chain Mail! What happened to you?!"

"...I really don't want to talk about it right now. It's a bit of a sensitive topic for me. I'll gladly explain everything, but I think we should get back to Equestria first. Where's Spike?"

Soft Spoken was about to answer, when everypony's ears twitched and they heard the distant but fast approaching sound of a very loud engine and screeching.

"Wait...What is...?"

The wall smashed down without warning. The ponies dove aside and fell in various places around the room. A monstrous red machine skidded across the floor and came to a stop when it crashed sideways against a much sturdier wall nearby. The ponies all climbed to their hooves shakily, and froze when they saw what had just broken in. Lord Second sat in the front seat of the car, smiling wearily.

"Hello children. Did you miss me?"

***

Princess Luna laid out on the balcony, staring absently at the moonlight. She hadn't really put her all into the sky tonight. It looked awful. Not that she expected she could do any better even if she did try. Ever since Second's last visit she had been tearing herself apart slowly. It was all she could do to crawl out of bed and raise and lower the moon like she was supposed to. She felt so alone.

She considered calling Blueblood again for another long talk. He had proven to be a very good listener, and a surprising source of good advice in these troubled times. He also was one of the few ponies around whom she could drop her tough act and cry. When around the rest of the palace, she had to keep herself composed and keep up appearances, like always. With Blueblood, she could be honest.

And to think his entire existence was just Celestia's idea of a huge joke. The Blueblood family a thousand years ago were such utterly insufferable snobs that her sister had relocated the entire family from Canterlot to Trottingham. She thought it hilarious that Trottingham culture would eventually infect Prince Blueblood's descendents and make them like the brash common folk that he so detested.

When it happened though, Luna didn't find it funny so much as she found it a huge relief. The Blueblood of today was ten times the pony his counterpart from a thousand years ago was. How many generations had it been since then?

She heard a roar. Luna sat up and listened in again. In the distance, she saw a dark shadow. Thinking it was Spike, she gave the first genuine smile she'd had since the incident, and took flight to go meet him in the air.

The princess was halfway across Canterlot in less than a second, and went to meet the dragon head on. Imagine her surprise when it turned out to be a much smaller red dragon carrying a depressed looking zebra. She came to a halt before him, and the dragon bowed in mid-air.

"Kulaas se fin vulon," he greeted.

"Nonvul Vahlok," Luna replied.

"It is all one word, thank you princess. I had the honour of meeting the Eternal in my travels. He had suffered a great indignity at the hands of ponies in a city in the Everfree. He is dealing with it now, but he requested I bring this zebra here to you. I believe he is a member of the Zeymah Se Mun."

Luna raised an eyebrow.

"A Brotherhood pony? Or zebra, rather? Yes, I believe our guests mentioned you. Ze!zar, am I right?"

The zebra looked bitterly at her, and nodded silently.

"I will have him dealt with. Thank you Nonvulvahlok. You have been a great help."

The dragon looked down at her sadly for a moment.

"My brother Feynsetafiirre is dead, isn't he?"

Luna sighed.

"The archives were attacked, he was released, and killed a number of royal guards. My captain had to put him down to escape with his own life. I am sorry."

Nonvulvahlok closed his eyes in respect for the fallen dragon.

"And that makes us the Eighteen."

***

Second vaulted over the car door and walked into the centre of the room. The ponies all around him grouped up and stood together before him, all of them becoming tense and ready for a fight.

"Well," Second said casually, "Looks like I finally found the time to get down here. Sort things out myself. Not that I need to of course. My alicorn minion Host is around here, and she-"

He turned around and saw Host laying dead against the wall, ripped apart by the minigun. The human just stared at the body for a minute.

"...Well fuck me with a jam-covered pogo stick. You actually did it."

He turned around again and eyed the minigun laying on the floor.

"I guess I should have figured. That thing shouldn't be able to kill alicorns either. What is it with guns and doing impossible shit? This one was built here in Equestria. I didn't bring this in from my world! So why can it kill alicorns too?!"

He got an angry look on his face and pointed up at the ceiling.

"You! Script writer! That is fucking lazy! I'm calling you out, you cheap cunt! Give me a proper explanation for this!"

Silence.

"Ah well," Second sighed, turning back to the ponies, "Oh, Chain Mail! I see you overcame my mind control. Good job on that. Very inspirational."

He clapped sarcastically.

"And then there's...you. Gold Coin, right? You know I'm a God, don't you? I can hear when people use my name in vain. What was that you said? 'Second's wrinkly ballsack'? Really now? I don't recall ever showing you it, so I can only conclude that image came from some fantasy you've been having about me. You're kind of a sick motherfucker Gold Coin. I mean, I know Sliske has an excuse because of his, ahem, 'cultural background', but you're an actual pony. Ew, by the way."

Forgetting he was out of ammunition, Gold Coin grabbed the Reaper's Horn and tried to shoot Second with it. The human didn't even flinch as he did, and once he was done, he held out a hand and pulled the shotgun out of his mouth telekinetically and floated it back over to him. He smiled as he opened it up and saw it empty.

"Well, that was stupid considering you're all out and only I have fresh ammo for this thing. If you hadn't picked it up and drawn attention to it, I may have missed it completely, and then I wouldn't have a God-killer in my possession yet again."

He waved his hand, and a small red box floated out from one of his inside pockets. It opened up, and eight metal cylinders came out and were loaded into the gun.

"Really, considering I control this weapon completely, to the point I can tear it out of your grip without touching it, what did you really think was going to happen?"

Second smirked.

"You'd have to be pretty stupid to try and use this against me."

Broad Sword stomped a hoof.

"It worked on that other stupid human a thousand years ago! It'll work on you too!"

Second kept smiling, but all semblance of joy or amusement left his face instantly, replaced by barely supressed rage. He leaned in and pushed out an ear.

"I'm sorry, what was that you just said?"

Now Broad Sword was suddenly nervous. He'd said something he really shouldn't have.

"Ummm..."

"Something about 'that other human a thousand years ago'?"

"I said..."

"Because it sounded to me like you just called my dead son stupid."

What?!

"Wait!" the guard protested, "You mean...Lord First was...your son?!"

Second didn't say another word. The smile disappeared completely, and he stopped trying to hide his fury. He raised the shotgun, aimed at Broad Sword and fired. The other five ponies jumped back in horror as the guard's head suddenly exploded into a gory red mess which sprayed over the wall behind him. His headless body fell over and landed with a thump, bleeding all over the floor.

Broad Sword was dead.

The other ponies just stared, unable to believe what they had just witnessed. Soft Spoken couldn't move. Gold Coin blinked rapidly to try and make sure he was really seeing this. Explodey was trembling, Chain Mail almost lost his balance, and Sliske was silently crying. No, not Mystic Chant this time. Sliske, was crying.

They all turned in unison to look at Lord Second, who was still pointing the smoking gun at where Broad Sword had been standing before. Then, the human turned the Reaper's Horn on the rest of them.

"WOULD ANYONE ELSE LIKE TO SHARE AN OPINION?!"

END

Author's notes:

This chapter is dedicated to that one guy who keeps telling me how much he hates my story and how much it sucks and yet keeps reading anyway. Through over one hundred and twenty thousand words. I love you too bro. We should get together and shoot some clay pigeons or something. You honestly fascinate me.

Inb4 doin' it for the shock value.
Inb4 out of left field.
Inb4 threats of genital mutilation.

Trust me people, I am going somewhere with this. This is a single story with a planned ending, not a DC comics title. Character death doesn't happen without reason.

Also where did the people in the comments of my last chapter get this strange idea that the Reaper's Horn had unlimited ammunition? A SPAS-12 normally has eight shots. When did it ever exceed that limit?

Chapter 12: Taking a Third Option

Howard coughed into his handkerchief as he made his way towards his chair. Lauren Faust gave him an encouraging smile, which he returned. To her right, he spotted John de Lancie conversing with another of the voice actors. He didn't recall her name, but she voiced some popular recurring background ponies.

He sat down in his chair, between Daniel Ingram and another of the writers, a new guy they hired for the production of season four. With his arrival, everyone was finally present, so the announcer declared the question and answer session open. Lauren took questions first, and then Jayson. A few of the other writers who had been around since season one followed after. When Amy was finished, it was his turn. He took his first question.

"So, what can you tell us about the new villain for season four?"

Howard leaned in.

"Well, not much beyond what we've already released. His name is Sliske, and he's another of Celestia's old enemies from a thousand years ago, and his thing is that he actually has a way to stop Twilight and friends from using the Elements of Harmony. Can't say anything more for now, sorry."

The bronies in the crowd began to mutter. The revelation that Sliske could stop the main six from using the Elements was one of the few pieces of information he had been given the all-clear to reveal. Otherwise, he was instructed to be as evasive as possible, which was more fun than he thought it would be. It was rather funny seeing the fans get excited over every little detail released about the new episode. Or new season rather.

A brony in a blue t-shirt and glasses raised his hand at the back of the room. Second pointed him out.

"Yes. You sir."

"In your last episode you wrote for season three, I noticed you actually included a cameo from uh, Doctor Whooves, and you actually showed him and Derpy entering the TARDIS in the background of that one scene at the castle. Did you run into any legal issues when you wanted to include that, and if I may ask, are you a big fan of the original Doctor Who show?"

"Uh, well of course we didn't use the TARDIS verbatim. We used basically a look-alike. Bronies and Who fans recognised it as the TARDIS because it was Doctor Whooves, but we used a blue barn instead of a police box, so it wasn't really the same, and it passed legal. We just thought, that since Doctor Who threw in a pony reference in their last season, we should return the favour, and I have heard that the Moff saw it and had a good laugh at that.

"And as for your other question, yes I am a fan of the Doctor Who show. I started watching it when Tennant took over, and have followed it ever since. I went back and watched season one later, and a few episodes of the classic series, mostly Tom Baker episodes though some others obviously. To answer some follow-up questions I know some of you will have, favourite Doctor is the Eleventh, my favourite episode is Vampires of Venice, favourite classic episode is the Twin Dilemma, not even trolling, and yes I have seen Torchwood. Didn't think much of it, except Miracle Day because Lancie was in that."

John was clearly amused by that last comment. The bronies meanwhile had broken into groans and the occasional angry shout at the mention of the Twin Dilemma. Howard could only raise his hands in surrender.

"I know, I know! Don't shoot me! Please, just, next question."

Thousands of hands shot into the air.

"Not related to my taste in Doctor Who episodes preferably."

Most of the hands lowered again.

"Yes, you in the hoodie."

The man in the hoodie lowered it, revealing a familiar face underneath. He held up a cell phone.

"Mom wants to know when you'll be home."

Howard's face flushed red.

"...Three hours. Don't interrupt my Q&A again Anthony."

The crowd laughed at that.

"She also wants to know what you want for dinner."

"I don't know! Tell her to get creative! I'm trying to answer questions here! Fluttershy cosplay girl in front. Your question?"

"Ever read Fallout Equestria?"

"No. We're not allowed to read fan fiction, but I have heard of it. I have listened to some of the brony musicians' work though."

"Any favourites?"

"Tombstone and Aviators. Last question for now, and then we'll hand it over to Nathan. Yes, you?"

"Are you going to be writing anything more for season five?"

Howard considered that for a moment.

"No."

***

In Sliske's head, something snapped. One minute, he was trying to comprehend the idea that Broad Sword could be dead. Then, there was acceptance. Acceptance lasted but a millisecond, and was immediately replaced by rage. More rage than any being should conceivably be able to feel. The other ponies still stood in shock, staring at either their friend's body, or at the also furious human who was now pointing the Reaper's Horn at them.

Sliske however, was not looking at anything. He was spasming erratically, eyes twitching, stomping his hooves and trying to restrain a scream. Second turned his attention to the alien. At first he thought to try and threaten him into submission, but he knew better than that. He created Sliske. He knew what this being was capable of more than anyone.

And for the first time in a very long time, Second showed genuine fear.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!"

Mystic Chant's body burst with a sudden explosion of raw magic, and Sliske let loose a primal roar. His coat went stark white and his mane and tail were set alight. It was a transformation that the human had indirectly witnessed in a pony before, and the fact that Sliske was in such a state right now did not bode well.

"I WILL TEAR THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES, HUMAN!"

He wasn't even hissing. That was bad. In a panic Second turned to the tiny little red man standing on his shoulder.

"Don't look at me, idiot!" Ambition shouted, "Open fire!"

Second shot Sliske at point blank range with the shotgun, but Sliske raised a bubble shield around him and his friends. The shotgun shells which had killed Gods bounced off harmlessly, and the possessed colt readied another spell. A light blue glow surrounded his body, and it suddenly grew to a massive size. The human was now staring at a fully grown, alicorn-sized Mystic Chant with a fire mane and shark teeth.

This was the stuff nightmares were made of.

Sliske rushed forward and slammed into Second. He sunk his teeth into his chest and punctured the skin, slamming his hooves into the human as he ripped a large chunk of skin off him, along with most of his shirt. Second screamed in pain and scrambled back to get away from the murderous alien, and began to run away through one of the many holes in the wall behind him. Sliske spat out the human flesh and stomped so hard that the ground cracked on impact. With another cry of vengeance, he charged after the fleeing Elder God, leaving a trail of fire in his wake.

In the dust left behind, Gold Coin, Soft Spoken, Captain Chain Mail and Explodey could only continue to stare.

"Do you think he needs any help?" asked Gold Coin.

Surprisingly, it was Explodey who took command here.

"No! Leave him to his job! Sliske can handle it. Our goal should be destroying this monstrous place and taking Second and all his sick experiments with it!"

"Explodey-" the captain began.

The unicorn levitated out the small metal ring that he had shown Soft Spoken and the others earlier, and clipped it onto his own horn.

"This is the magic enhancer from earlier," he explained, "I'm going to use it to give myself a power boost and make an explosion so big that it'll take out the entire Mages' Guild! NOPONY gets away with killing my friends!"

"Explodey, please be reasonable!" Soft Spoken interrupted, "We can't fall into disarray right now! We're all together at last! We should get out and locate Spike and have him take us back to Equestria at once! We need to help Sliske get away from Second and take him with us, and we need to take Broad Sword's body back too, so that his family can at least bury him. I'm upset too, but we can't fall apart and go crazy with revenge schemes! It isn't the way!"

The unicorn and the earth pony stared each other down, but trying to win a staring contest against the Element of Kindness, no matter who bore that title, seemed to be futile. Eventually, Explodey yielded and sighed.

"We will need a way of contacting Spike," he said, "He has no idea where we are or what we've been doing. Somepony will need to get to wherever he is and tell him the whole plan."

"Even if he stayed near the embassy, that's still a good distance across the city," Gold Coin pointed out, "Or even worse, what if he's airborne?"

"We'd need a pegasus," Soft Spoken agreed, "Too bad that unlike the original Elements of Harmony, there is no balance between the races in our group. We have two unicorns, an alien and the rest of us are all earth ponies. Seriously, what the hell?"

"Hey Chains," said Explodey, "Do those wings on your suit still work?"

"Fuck no! I could clip them back on and turn them into wings again if everything was working, but that last explosion of yours completely wrecked the mechanism, and even if we fixed it the software that helps me operate this thing is shot. I can walk, but you can't reasonably expect anything beyond that from me in my current state."

He tapped his chin with a hoof.

"Although..."

"What?"

"Explodey, remember when we were fighting and I led you and Private Broad Sword through that lab area near the balcony? You'll recall there was a suit of cyan coloured armour designed for pegasus use in there."

The unicorn raised an eyebrow.

"Can you use that?" he asked.

"No. I can't. It's too small for me to wear it on top of my current armour, and as we've established, this isn't coming off ever again. However, those mechanical wings on there are powerful enough to allow flight without actual pegasus wings underneath. Softy or Gold Coin could probably pilot it, at least temporarily. It even has an in-built tutorial program, just like my suit."

The two other earth ponies exchanged a look.

"I'll do it," said the old stallion, "Goldie has already done enough for us today with taking down the alicorn."

Gold Coin nodded, and looked over to the minigun.

"Hey captain? Do you think you can help me carry that thing out with us?"

"...What are you planning?"

The business pony gave him an evil grin.

***

Spike rammed his fist through the wall of the cathedral again and sent more stone crashing down. The whole building's eastern wall was devastated, and many rooms beyond were damaged. Still, he didn't let up. Even as the Knights of Man inside scrambled and shot at him with tiny little bolts and arrows and spells, he continued to tear it apart, hoping that Second was inside so that he could destroy him once and for all.

He couldn't help it. He was angry. Far angrier than he ever should have been. Memories flashed before his eyes. Recent memories of his humiliating imprisonment inside that huge metal room interspersed with others from thousands of years ago.

Nightmare Moon attacked, and he slept through it! Twilight went and risked her life while he stayed back at home in the library! He recalled Discord's takeover. Twilight tried to make him the new Element of Loyalty and hoped he could stand in for Rainbow Dash, but he failed. That was probably more the fault of the others being discorded at the time, but it was still a pathetic affair.

Not just them either. He remembered when Sliske had burst out of that meteor and possessed Twilight's body right in front of him. How he had ran screaming and crying back to Ponyville to get the others to come help. He remembered the same thing happening when Rarity was captured by Diamond Dogs and he couldn't stop them, even though he tried his best.

He remembered running off after he first met Owlowiscious, and running in terror from that big green dragon afterwards. He remembered the time he tried to join the Great Dragon Migration, and it turned out most of his race were just inherently jerks, and they all pushed him around because he was smaller. He remembered the other great evils he had failed to stop. How he had watched helplessly from the Spider Legion's lair as they used the False Elements to drown Equestria's coastal cities. He remembered the sight of Hkrxyl, King of Atlantis, marching up the beach with his army of fish creatures to lay waste to the land.

Other failures. The Time Worm ripping apart the universe while he just stood and watched. The Nameless One disintegrating innocent ponies with a stare. Those damned humans.

"NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" he screamed as he continued to smash the cathedral.

He let out a powerful roar and drenched the cathedral in fire, incinerating Second's minions who continued to shoot at him.

No more! He would NOT be the helpless victim ever again! Those days were OVER! He was meant to be better now! He was the Light in the Sky! The Demon's Match! The Sea Wall! The Aspect! The Sword and Shield! How dare Second try to take that away?! He was the hero now! He was the one who did the rescuing!

More knights rushed out on the upper floors and ran over to the destroyed wall to continue to pepper him spells. They bounced off his scales harmlessly, as they should. Some of these spells could drop an Ursa Major, but there was no way they were going to lay a scratch on the Eternal!

And yet, even though he shrug off damage like that, walk through magma and toss Hydras like baseballs, he still felt that helplessness. He wasn't stronger. He was just better at hiding his weaknesses.

***

"Good job Howard, you absolute fucking genius!" Conscience shouted angrily, "You've really gone and done it now, haven't you?! You murdered an innocent pony, broke the story, and now you have an alien made of fire and several pissed off Elder Gods after your skin!"

Second raised the shotgun and fired, and the wall in front of him exploded. Thank Jesus for cartoon physics, or he'd have been trapped in a dead end corridor and roasted alive and/or eaten by Sliske. He jumped through the new hole and ran around a corner into a block of office cubicles.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I don't care! Leave me alone!"

There was an explosion behind Second, and he heard the distant sound of falling rubble. Presumably, that was Sliske carving his own path through the building to get to him.

"You know," Conscience interrupted, "Since I'm the closest thing you have to an avatar for reasoning and logic, I should point out that this building has already endured heavy structural damage from the Elements of Harmony battling it out here. Host and Gold Coin already went through a number of walls here on the lower floor, as have you now, and the upper levels were blasted apart by Explodey and his friends a while ago. If you keep destroying the walls to create a pathway to escape, this place is going to come down on you."

"Conscience is still a faggot, but he has a point," Ambition agreed, "Second, buddy, I think you should focus on escaping now. They already killed Host, and that's the mid-story boss over. You'll have your chance at them when the final showdown occurs in Canterlot. Remember that. The zombie apocalypse is still yet to happen. You've got all that ahead of you."

Second looked at the little man in red on his left shoulder and nodded.

"Alright," he said, "I'll keep heading in one direction until we're out of the building, and then I'll run and hide somewhere. We can cause some chaos later."

***

"Uncle Tomey!"

Ancient Tome smiled as a little dark blue unicorn filly ran over and hugged his legs. On the other side of the spacious living quarters, Frosty Morning jumped up off the sofa and stretched her wings as she made her way over. Iron Hoof emerged from the hallway at the same time, and the filly gave an equally affectionate "Uncle Iron!" and hugged him too.

"Hey Tomey, good to see you didn't go insane and kill Bullseye yet."

"I came close, believe me."

The filly interrupted them.

"Is cousin Mystic here Uncle Tomey?" she asked.

The adults exchanged an awkward look.

"Yeah, but I don't think he'll be able to see you for a while," Tome answered, "He's got a lot of homework to catch up on, so he's very busy. Maybe you'll see him later."

"Awww..."

He crouched down so that he was level with his niece.

"So how old are you now then Star? You've gotten big since I last saw you! I remember when you were only this tall."

"I'm six!"

"Six! Six already! Doesn't time fly?"

"Uncle Tomey, do you know why mommy moved us here?"

Another awkward look.

"Yes, but that's up to your mother to explain. I'm sure you'll understand when you're older."

"But why didn't grandpa come with us?"

"Because he had things to do back in Canterlot, dear," Frosty replied, "He just doesn't like moving, so he's going to stay behind and take care of the old house. You'll see him again Star. We'll go to visit."

"Alright..."

"So kid," said Iron Hoof, "Look at what I got! Is this cool or what?!"

"Wowwwwwww!"

As Iron distracted the filly with his shiny new cybernetics, Frosty and her brother-in-law moved aside to the next room to converse in private.

"Your dad didn't come?" the unicorn asked in concern.

"No," Frosty sighed, "Star just listens to me and does what I say, but my father wanted an explanation for everything. I ended up coming out and telling him everything. About Second, about the Brotherhood of Man, and everything I did for it. He...didn't take it well..."

"...How bad?"

Frosty gave him a pained look.

"...He disowned me," she murmured.

"No way!"

"...He called me a traitor, and a murderer, and said I wasn't his daughter anymore. I tried to explain everything to him, but then he called the police and said to get out before they showed up. I put Star on my back and just flew away. I think he wanted to chase after me and take her back, but with his age and his poor wing, I don't think he could."

Tome gave her a sympathetic look.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault Tomey. Nothing anypony could have done."

"Still...It's never too late to fix it. He might still come around. Second's going to march on Canterlot eventually, right? Once he shows Equestria how the world should be run and everything becomes better, he'll understand."

"...I sure hope so Tomey."

***

Soft Spoken raised an eyebrow at the sight of the cyan blue armour with the number six on the flank. It was sleek and streamlined, as befitting something that would be expected to fly and high speeds, but it was also weird looking. That helmet and visor could not be much of a help to visibility. He turned his head to look back at the rest of the group, at the forefront of which was Captain Chain Mail carrying Gold Coin's minigun.

"And you said I can fly this?" he asked.

"You should be able to," the captain replied, "Those are some powerful wings on that thing. They should be able to lift off without flesh wings underneath, as long as you use the telepathic circuits to control it mentally."

"Tele-what?"

"Telepathic circuits."

"Okay, you're just making things up now."

"I swear they're real. They shouldn't be, but they are. Some kind of multi-dimensional Elder God bullshit that Second willed into existence. He can create anything, even stuff that could not realistically function. If you think telepathic circuits are stupid and implausible, you should see his blueprints for the space colony."

The older pony shrugged.

"Fine. Just help me suit up."

Four minutes of struggling later, the earth pony was finally inside the sky-blue suit and moving around in it. He tried to control the wings, but no luck.

"Hey, it's not working. Am I not connected?" he asked, voice muffled by the helmet.

"The computers are off. Just hit the power switch," the captain replied.

"...Where is the power switch?"

"On the inside of the helmet. You switch it with your tongue."

"That's incredibly impractical."

"This suit was designed by Second while off his meds, what do you expect?"

Soft Spoken did as instructed and felt around for the switch with his tongue. Upon locating it, he flipped the position, and the armour began to hum. His vision cleared up again, having been previously dulled by the helmet's visor, and statistics began to flash before his eyes.

RAINBOW SIX ONLINE.

"What the hell is- Agghh!"

The old butler cried out as he felt a needle jab him in the flank.

"Why did the suit just stab me?!" he demanded.

He noticed that his voice was no longer muffled, and was now being relayed to the others through a speaker that gave it an odd electronic sound.

"It's giving you a strength boosting drug. The system scanned you when it went online and determined that you're too weak to walk in that thing without it."

"Hey," Gold Coin interrupted, "Any chance we can extract some of that from the suit's reserves? I could use a strength booster to carry the minigun."

"Sorry. The reserve supplies are very well protected. You can't drain the drug supplies without ripping the whole thing apart."

"How do you know so much about this suit?" Soft Spoken asked.

"That type is the precursor to my own armour. This information was put in my head when they were giving me the mental conditioning. I remember all sorts of things that I never actually experienced."

Explodey patted him on the shoulder.

"I know that feel bro."

"So what's 'Rainbow Six'?" the butler continued.

"It's the name. 'Rainbow' because it's sky blue like Rainbow Dash and 'Six' because it's the sixth one of these things made. So there are at least five other Rainbows around somewhere. The armoured suits are all named differently depending on colour. The black ones like I wear are called the Vaders. I don't know why. Mine's the Vader One. I'm not sure if there are any others."

Soft Spoken lifted a hoof, and found that movement in the armour was indeed much easier now. That drug acted fast. Following earlier prompts, he focused his thoughts, hoping he was already connected to these 'telepathic circuits', and successfully flexed his wings. He couldn't feel them at all, but it was the function that counted.

"Alright, I think I'm good to go."

WARNING! AMMUNITION LEVELS MINIMAL!

"Or not."

"What's wrong Softy?"

"There's a flashing red light in my field of vision. It's telling me I've got low ammunition."

"I wouldn't worry about it. That's only a problem if you plan on shooting a lot of ponies. Since you seem like the pacifist type, you can just set it to nonlethal rounds anyway. They should still be well stocked."

"It has nonlethal rounds?"

"There's a dart gun built into the front. Be warned though, it's basically useless against anything bigger than a griffin, and even most ponies if they're armoured too. And they're small, so you've got to be scary accurate with them."

"...Does this have any targeting software?"

"Yes. A great little thing that slows down time for you personally and allows you to line up your shots. It even highlights whatever body part you're aiming for in green and tells you what chance you have to hit, and the condition of what you're aiming at. It's called the Target Watching And Tracking System."

Soft Spoken tilted his head at the captain.

"...Or T.W.A.T.S." Gold Coin pointed out.

Chain Mail just stared at the yellow pony for a moment. Somehow, he hadn't actually noticed the acronym until now. There was no way that was unintentional. Second had planned that.

"Woah!"

The captain turned his attention back to Soft Spoken, who was now hovering a little way above the ground.

"Celestia's sun! Look at this! I'm flying! I'm actually flying!"

Explodey stepped forward to address the stallion.

"You know what to do, right Softy?"

Soft Spoken nodded.

"So what do we do now?"

"Goldie, you and Chain Mail get out of the building and head for the Secopolis Historical Museum. We'll all meet there later. Explodey, I want you to go find Sliske and get him to come with you. He knows where the museum is and he'll take you there. I'll get Spike, and once we meet up again, we can get out of the city."

Gold Coin saluted in response.

"SIR YES SIR!"

Had Softy not been wearing a helmet, the other ponies would have seen him roll his eyes. Shortly afterwards, he flew out of the room towards the destroyed remains of the balcony that Explodey, Broad Sword and Chain Mail had fought along, heading out towards the rest of the city. Once they were alone, the other ponies all turned to each other again.

"So, what's our real plan then?" asked Explodey.

"What you suggested," Gold Coin replied, "Put on that magic ring and blow the fuck out of this place."

***

Sliske took a flew slow steps forward, breathing heavily. He had run out of energy. His rage was not enough to push him anymore. Mystic Chant's body went back to blue again, though left with black marks and singes in his mane. The alien sighed deeply and slumped on the floor. He had no more hate left in him. In defeat, he retreated back into the recesses of the colt's mind, leaving Mystic Chant back in control.

Mystic at first paid attention to his now much larger adult body, but did not dwell on it. Not even bothering to climb up again, he instead talked to the voice in his head.

"Sliske, are you alright?" he asked in a much deeper voice than he was used to.

A toneless voice replied mentally.

"...He's dead Mystic. Broad Sword is gone. Ponies always die. That human...He destroyed him. Why did that have to happen? I...I actually liked him. He amused me."

Mystic had no advice to offer.

"...I...I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault. I should have done something. I could have put up a shield, or hit Second with a spell. I could have done something!"

"...Well, getting angry won't help. My mom always said that being angry just makes your problems worse, and stops you from thinking about how to solve them."

"There's no thinking my way out of this. This problem can't be solved. Death is as final as it gets."

Without any way to really comfort the creature in his brain, Mystic settled for just standing up again and trying to remember the way they came so he could get back to the others. A quick check to see if he was still on fire anywhere, and he set off through the blasted remains of the lower level of the building to find the others.

On the way, he stumbled several times, and frequently tripping over his now much longer legs.

"Hey, Sliske, is this permanent?" he asked.

"No. It'll wear off in a few minutes, or you can kill the spell now if you want."

Mystic wasn't even aware at first that he was in control of the spell, but upon having it pointed out to him, it became obvious in hindsight. He felt the magical connection, and severed it. Immediately, he returned to his regular form. He was expecting to shrink to the floor. Instead, he just suddenly snapped to normal size, temporarily suspended in the air before falling to the ground in a heap.

"Ow..." he groaned, climbing to his hooves again.

"Sorry."

"Hey, can you teach me that growth spell?"

"Later. Right now, I just want to sleep."

"Sleep?" Mystic questioned.

He received no answers though. The other presence in his mind had gone silent. Sliske was dormant, and Mystic was now all alone.

***

Flying. That was a new experience. Soft Spoken kept his focus on making the wings flap. As far as he could tell, telepathic circuits basically meant that he could control the suit through thought. He would continue to fly as long as he kept on thinking about flying. Fortunately, he didn't seem to need much concentration, so he could inspect other aspects of the system while in flight.

The weapons system was a confusing mess. For some reason, everything was referred to by ammo type rather than what the weapon actually was, so he had to deduce what each meant. Darts was easy enough to figure out, as was missiles, but then when he got to the list of different millimetre lengths of something or other, he was completely lost. Still, he didn't plan on ever using anything other than maybe the dart gun, so it mattered very little.

And then there was the chemical supplies management system. The Rainbow Six seemed to carry a large supply of different drugs made for all kinds of functions. Strength boosters, painkillers, healing supplies, and one which the description claimed was able to make his mind 'sharper', whatever that meant.

System diagnostics also caught his attention. He could access it while in flight, but it looked more like it was meant for the technician's use than anything. It commented on all the mechanical problems the suit was suffering, and there were hundreds of them, but they were all labelled as minor. And when it said minor, it meant minor. Four out of five of them were just a lack of proper greasing on some meaningless small part.

Soft Spoken kept pushing ahead, the Secopolis Cathedral and the dragon ripping it apart near the top level coming ever closer.

"Just a little way now..."

Suddenly, there was a rush of wind, and two yellow pegasi flew by him and blocked his path ahead. They fluttered in place, and both carried weapons in their hooves. While stationary, Softy got a better look at them, and realised that they weren't yellow pegasi, but just two ponies in yellow armour, much like his.

The design was similar, though their helmets seemed to feature gas masks as well as the regular features, and unlike his suit which had openings allowing his white mane and tail freedom from the armour, theirs were completely enclosed. They still had tails, but they were spiked, scorpion-like tails. Their manes though were just stuffed inside the helmet, making the two ponies look bald.

The two ponies both had numbers on their flanks as well, just like his suit did. The one on his left was number five, and the one on his right and was number three. Both of them had weird extensions on their fore hooves which allowed them to carry their odd looking weapons, seemingly modelled after human hands.

"Halt!" ordered number five, "Rainbow Six, you are not cleared for combat. Return to your post immediately."

Though her voice was synthesized, it was quite clear that number five was a mare. He really had no desire to get into an aerial battle with a pegasus, especially since there were two of them and they could very well have superior hardware to him. Plus, they were actually trained to use it. He was just, for lack of a better term, winging it.

Obviously persuasion was the way to go.

"I must be allowed through though!" he protested, "Can't you see the dragon attacking the palace? I've been sent to deal with him."

"Sent?" asked number three, also a mare, "Who sent you?"

"Second."

"The Emperor sent you? Personally?" three said sceptically.

"Can we get that in writing?" asked five.

"...My instructions are top secret," the earth pony improvised, "Second gave me explicit instructions that they are not to be shared with anypony without clearance level...alpha."

"What the hay is clearance level alpha? I thought clearance level was numerical?"

Unlucky. Best try again.

"...It is for all levels except alpha, which is special. Level alpha is just Second and me. I'm very important you see."

"Really? Just who exactly are you under that Rainbow model then?" asked three.

"That's classified information, rookie."

"ROOKIE?! WHY YOU-"

Soft Spoken stopped her in the middle of raising her weapon.

"Attack me and I'll have you court-martialled! American style!"

Three backed away fearfully.

"No! Not that! Anything but that!"

"That's what I thought! Now get out of here, and let the professionals handle this."

Obediently, the two mares flew away towards the ground, leaving Soft Spoken hovering idly above the city. Damn, he was on a roll today.

"I still got it."

***

Mystic trudged through the ruined hallways of the Mages' Guild nervously. Every few steps, he kept looking over his shoulder for potential enemies. Lord Second was probably still somewhere around here, and possibly several Knights of Man too. He could be ambushed at any second.

"Come on! He's got to be around here somewhere!"

Wait. That was Mr. Gold Coin!

The little unicorn smiled and charged in the direction of the voice. He turned a corner and ran through a hole in the wall created by one of the many recent fights that had taken place here, and emerged into another corridor where he could see Gold Coin, Explodey and Chain Mail walking towards him. They all saw him too, and immediately broke into a gallop.

"Mystic! There you are!" said Chain Mail, "We don't have much time left. Where is Second? Is Sliske still with you? What happened after you left?"

"Umm...Second got away....I think. Sliske's sleeping right now. At least, that's what he told me. He put me back in control and just went quiet. I don't know what's happened to him, but I can't hear him anymore."

The older ponies shared a concerned look.

"Well...Be that as it may, we all have to leave immediately," Chain Mail explained, "Soft Spoken went to summon Spike to take us back to Equestria, and meanwhile, we've decided to destroy the Mages' Guild. Explodey's gonna take it out for us, but we needed to find you first."

Mystic nodded along for most of the plan, but stopped and stared in horror when they announced their intentions to destroy the guild.

"Wait!" he cried, "You can't do that! There are four unicorns still in here! They're asleep in the physics lab, and they can't get away! If you destroy the building now, they'll all die!"

Gold Coin sighed loudly and rubbed his forehead.

"Fine. Chains, you take all our equipment and Mystic, and get outside. Me and Explodey will go find these unicorns and rescue them, and THEN we'll destroy the place."

The captain saluted.

"Aye sir."

***

Second ran into another room and looked around.

"Okay, I'm lost," he said to himself.

"Wow. Considering you built this place, that is quite an accomplishment," Ambition replied.

Creativity jumped down off the human's head and clung to his nose. The goblin-like creature stared right into his eyes, and Second suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

"Couldn't you just use your amazing powers to jump straight up, smash through the ceiling, get to the roof, and then jump off it?"

"That is a terrible idea!" Conscience snapped, "Do I even have to list all the ways that could go wrong?!"

"Guys!" Second shouted, "Would you all please just shut up?! I don't have to do any of this bullshit. I can just use off-screen teleportation to escape, right?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," said Conscience.

"I doubt the scene will be focused on me right now. I'm not doing anything interesting other than talking to myself. Without the audience watching me, this should still work, even if I'm technically breaking a few rules."

Second closed his eyes and focused. In his mind, he pictured the outside of the Mages' Guild. He imagined himself standing just outside the building on the grassy patch by the main entrance. He raised a hand and clicked his fingers. And...

...Nothing.

Second's eyes snapped open. He snapped his fingers again. Still nothing. He tried a third time. A fourth. A fifth. Nothing.

"What the hell?!" he shouted, "Why isn't it working?!"

"Oh...fuck..." Ambition muttered.

"What? What is it?!" Second demanded.

"I think I may know what your problem is."

"What?! What's the problem?!"

"Friendship is Magic just went meta."

"What? Meta? What does that word even mean?"

"I don't know, but what's important is what I'm trying to explain to you. I think something sinister is happening here. You are not being just portrayed as a villain, and they aren't doing the scene cut thing to remove references to the outside world and your swearing, and other such things. I think they just decided to reveal everything.

"Think about it. You just blew a main character's head off. Not even 4kids could show that scene without blood considering it splattered everywhere and got on everyone, and Broad Sword's prominence in the story so far would mean they couldn't just skip it. The show you're in now, the continuation, is way darker that the original FIM, and now the writers think they can get away with showing the full story behind you and Anthony."

Second stared at Ambition for a moment, and looked down at his hands.

"...It...So...No wait. I think I get it now. There's no way me being Second was unintentional! Some sick fuck back in the human world planned this from the very beginning! I was set up!"

Conscience looked at him sympathetically.

"Howard, listen to me-" he began.

"Nathan!" Second shouted, "It was Nathan! It must have been him!"

"Howard, you're jumping to conclusions," Conscience interrupted, "You don't want to go down this path without proof."

"Fuck proof! This isn't going to end with me! I'm not going to LET them take me down! Just watch me! I'm going to get back to Earth, and the first thing I'm going to do is stick this shotgun in Nathan's mouth and pull the trigger!"

***

"Spike! Spiiiiiiiiiike! Over here!"

The dragon pulled his fist out of a pile of rubble on the upper levels of the Cathedral and turned around to see a cyan blue pegasus hovering behind him. Something was off about it, but he couldn't tell what. He stared blankly for a few seconds, before realising that the pegasus was made of metal.

"Huh?"

"Spike, it's me! Soft Spoken!" the metal pony replied.

"Soft Spoken? Since when did you have wings? And since when were you made of metal? Where are the others? What happened with the negotiations?"

"It's an armoured suit. The artificial wings allow me to fly. I stole it from the Mages' Guild. The negotiations went sour and we barely escaped alive. Sliske's previous host is dead and he's now in Mystic, Broad Sword was killed by Second, and Chain Mail was captured and experimented on in the guild until we freed him. We need to get out of this city fast!"

The old dragon blinked.

"Broad Sword is dead?" he repeated.

Soft Spoken nodded. Spike sighed.

"My condolences to you. He was a fine pony. He will be missed."

"Spike, we want to get out of here. Follow me back to the Secopolis Museum. We're going to meet up with everypony else there, and you can fly us back to Equestria."

"Lead the way."

***

Chain Mail heard grunting, and turned around to see Gold Coin and Explodey coming out the front door to the guild. Explodey was using telekinesis to hover out two unconscious unicorns, while Gold Coin was almost crawling along with the other two laying on his back. He finally collapsed in front of the captain, and let the bodies roll off.

"Is that everything accounted for?" Gold Coin asked.

"Yep. I got all our weapons and equipment, and you got everypony out safely. All that's left is to do the deed."

The business pony looked over their inventory to make sure everything was present. There was the minigun, the two lightsabers, the wings and helmet that attached to Chains' suit, and-

"What's this?"

Gold Coin held up a sword. It didn't look like the one the captain used.

"Is this...?"

"Yeah. That's Broad Sword's. It's not the standard weapon of the royal guards. He brought his own. I think it was a gift from somepony. Take a look at the handle."

The earth pony did so.

For Swordy, from Skies.

"'Skies'. Who do you think that is?"

"I don't know. Sounds like a pegasus name to me."

"You know, Broad Sword mentioned his father was a pegasus," Explodey commented.

"I don't think it's from his dad, otherwise he wouldn't call himself by name," said Gold Coin.

"Actually..."

The group turned to Mystic.

"I...I can sort of see some of Sliske's memories...And...He met Broad Sword's mother. She was a pegasus too."

The adult ponies all looked confused.

"...Curious," said Chain Mail, "The only earth pony in a family of pegasi. That's something to think about."

"...We can talk about it later," Explodey interrupted, "Right now, we've got a job to do. I'm going to head inside and deal with this. Once I do, I'll need one of you guys to quickly go over the wreckage and scoop up as much of me as you can, so that when I regenerate I'll be with you guys instead of surrounded by pissed off Secopolitans."

"Give 'em hell, soldier," Chain Mail replied.

Explodey smiled wryly at the captain, and then ran back towards the guild.

***

Second leaned against a nearby wall, panting in exhaustion. He had been running around this place for ages now, and he was getting nowhere.

"What is even...the point anymore?" he gasped, "Why the hell can't I get out?! There has to be some exit here somewhere!"

The human's imaginary friends laid around lazily. They had long ago gotten bored of just standing around as he ran in circles, and were now doing their own thing. Creativity was asleep in his hair, some of which he was using as a blanket. Anger was doing push-ups on his right shoulder, and Ambition and Conscience were both laying on his left shoulder sharing a bottle of scotch. No sign of Sexuality, but Second had a fairly good idea of what he was doing right now, wherever he was.

"You know..." Ambition slurred, "I think....that you should...should....shtart shmashing the wallsh down again. I mean...what if there is no exit? Like...you could be stuck here forever!"

"No, don't listen to him, he doesn't know what he's talking about," Conscience replied, "That'll just bring the place down on you. Keep looking for a proper exit."

"I'm going with Conscience on this one," said Second, "Sorry Ambition, but I'm just not ready to believe this whole building is one giant fucking mobius strip."

Contrary to what he just said though, Second found himself once again emerging into the room he had crashed his car into. The bodies of Host and Broad Sword still lay nearby, though the other ponies were gone now. For a moment, Second stopped to take in his surroundings.

"Why didn't I make a map of this place?" he said to himself.

A voice answered him.

"Because you're an idiot. Now shut up and die you hairless, two-legged freak!"

Second couldn't react in time. A unicorn rammed into his back before he could turn to face it, and he felt the tip of the horn stabbing him directly in the spine. In his world, that would have either killed or at least paralyzed him for life. Here, it was a brief flash of pain and a yell, and then it closed up again.

The human turned to face Explodey McGee, who looked about ready to skin him alive.

"You're going to pay Second! Nopony gets away with hurting my friends! And I'll stop you from ever hurting anypony else again!"

In spite of everything, all Second could do was smirk at his creation's bravado.

"Well, I know I'm scared shitless. Please, please don't hurt me, oh mighty Explodey McGee! Hahaha! I'm sorry, but with a name like that, I am never going to take you seriously. Don't you get it yet? You're a joke! You were a one-off joke about a pony with a silly name! You're on the same level as Commander Throatfuck! That's how little you matter!"

Explodey horn burst with light, and a magical glow surrounded the Ferrari that Second had driven in on. He lifted the whole thing into the air and tossed it across the room at his creator. The human didn't flinch. Instead, he kicked out and sent the car flying back at Explodey. The unicorn reacted in turn and caught it in his magic again, and once again flung it in Second's direction.

This time though, Second caught the car as it flew towards him with both hands, and held it up so that the rear of the car was pointing at the ceiling. He grinned, and ran at Explodey.

Yes, he ran while carrying a car.

Explodey was too stunned by the sight to move out of the way, and once Second was in range, he swung the car around like a giant golf club and smashed Explodey against the wall with it. For a moment, the pony was in agony. He winced in pain, but on opening his eyes again he saw that he was actually in several pieces, and most of his lower body had been smeared against the wall. The car was still pressing him against it. He groaned.

Second walked over, a sadistic smile on his face, and he placed a foot on the other side of the car and pushed it, squashing his victim against the wall even more. Explodey didn't scream this time, but his eyes began to water.

"You know," Second said idly, "You would think I'd regret a lot of my decisions in life that led me to this point, but really, right now the only regret I have is that I was not more specific when creating you. If I hadn't been so careless, if I had just thought of an explanation of why you could explode and survive it on my own, instead of expecting the universe to come up with one for me, maybe you wouldn't have this healing factor."

He grinned.

"I bet you're really wishing that too right now."

Explodey glared up at Second and spat at him, hitting him right between the eyes. The human stared at the crushed unicorn for a moment, before wiping the spit off on the sleeve of his coat.

"Well, that was a mistake."

Second lunged forward over the car and grabbed Explodey's mane. With a sharp motion, he twisted his head around and snapped his neck. Explodey screamed again, and Second slammed his face onto the car bonnet.

"How dare you spit on me! I created you, you ungrateful little shit!"

Explodey's horn began to glow again. Second immediately realised what was about to happen and tried to turn and run, but a field of telekinesis wrapped around him and dragged him back towards the unicorn.

What?! No! Impossible! Magic didn't work on him! How could he-

Oh right. Dramatic Convenience.

Fuck the writers.

And then the world exploded.

***

"I don't get it," said Softy, "I told them to meet us back here, and we've been waiting for several minutes now. Why are they-"

BOOM!

The flying earth pony and the dragon both turned around to look across the landscape behind them. In the dark of the night, a gigantic fiery mushroom cloud lit up most of the city, and the sound of the cataclysm had no doubt woken up anypony trying to sleep for miles around. In the face of this awesome spectacle though, Soft Spoken could only sigh.

"Nopony ever listens to me," he complained, "I said they shouldn't destroy the Mages' Guild, and what's the first thing they do once I leave? Honestly, sometimes I really hate youngsters."

"Tell me about it," Spike replied, "You'd think a thousand years experience would make ponies respect your opinion a bit more, but noooooooooo. It's always, 'we know what we're doing', and 'things have changed since your time', and 'we do things differently now, you wouldn't understand!' Jerks."

For a moment, the two just hovered in place and watched the explosion.

"We should really go over there and see if we can find them."

"Yeah..." Spike said absently, "...I mean, yeah! Sorry. Got distracted for a moment there. Come on, let's go save your friends."

***

"AGGGHHH!" Gold Coin moaned as he clutched his ears, "SWEET FUCKING MOTHER OF SECOND THAT HURT!"

Chain Mail looked around him and saw that Mystic was similarly affected, rolling around on the grass and holding his ears with his face scrunched up in pain. Really, he didn't know what they were going on about. His ears were fine. What was their problem?

Shrugging it off, the captain cantered over towards the ruins of the Mages Guild. What little rubble was left was still on fire, but that wasn't exactly a problem for him in his armour. Heat conducted through metal, but hey, this suit regularly injected him with painkillers. He'd be fine.

Gold Coin and Mystic continued to stumble around and occasionally scream for several minutes, before it eventually got better and their hearing gradually returned. Just in time too, because a pony in winged sky blue armour landed down near them shortly afterwards.

"Okay, what do you think you were doing?" Softy demanded.

"We did it...for Broad Sword..." Gold Coin replied, "Maybe you can let it go, but not us. There was no way we were leaving this place still standing after what Second did here. You take a life, you pay for it."

"By that logic, you should be executed for what you did when you were still in the Brotherhood."

"I never killed anypony! I was in the Brotherhood, but I didn't take part in their operations. What they did sickened me as much as it does you. All I did was provide financial support."

"That still makes you an accessory to murder, Goldie. You have no right to get high and mighty over what Second did."

"Look, I was only a part of the order because I believed Second was a force of good, and I left them the moment he was released. I made my mistakes, and believe me, I am paying for it. Isn't the fact that I'm trying to stop him now enough for you?"

Soft Spoken reached up with his hooves and pulled off his helmet. He tossed it aside and marched up to Gold Coin to press his face right against his and stare him in the eye.

"You think that excuses everything?! Do you think you're somehow absolved of everything you did just because you follow us around?!"

The younger pony shrunk back under Soft Spoken's gaze.

"Are you even sorry that Princess Celestia is dead? Or do you still believe that conspiracy theory bullshit that the Brotherhood fed you? What about Luna? Huh? What would you do with her? Do you still believe she's some tyrant that needs to be destroyed?"

Gold Coin flared up again and shouted back at Softy.

"You know what?! Shut up! You have no idea what I'm going through right now! I spent my entire life believing that the thing in there that just killed Broad Sword was the ultimate saviour of ponykind, and that the best thing I could do for the world was letting him free from his statue! I learned, just today, that everything I ever thought I knew was a lie! I only wanted to help, and look what I unleashed! Do you think I don't feel guilty?! Of course I do! Stop making me think about it!"

Softy was a bit taken aback by Gold Coin's response, and was quiet for a moment.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I shouldn't have said that. I just figured...No. This needs answering. Goldie, what do you think about the princesses now? How much of that do you still believe?"

The business pony scraped a hoof against the ground in shame.

"I don't know. I really have no earthly clue what to think anymore. I thought I knew what to believe about the princesses and about Second, but it was all wrong. Maybe Celestia was a tyrant, or maybe she was everything you ever said she was. I don't know anymore, and I'm trying not to think about it."

"Well, that's a slight improvement."

Gold Coin jumped in surprise. He turned around to see Spike waiting behind him, casually leaning on the burning remains of the Mages' Guild.

"You know, I can't honestly say I'm not still disgusted with you for buying into the Brotherhood's idiocy in the first place, but I am proud of you for acknowledging that you were wrong. Even if it did take Second cackling like a pantomime villain and murdering ponies in cold blood before you realised that. You're on the path to redemption Gold Coin. Keep at it."

Captain Chain Mail emerged from behind one of Spike's legs carrying a plastic bucket. He trotted over to them and set it down before the two earth ponies, showing them that it was filled with green goo.

"This is all I could find of Explodey," he reported, "He said he should be able to regenerate from this, as long as it is the biggest concentration of him. I think it should be, but if it isn't then he'll just regenerate from the rest of the goo spread across this area and catch up with us."

"Well, that seems to be everypony accounted for..." said Soft Spoken, "...Except for Broad Sword. Did anypony collect his body?"

"No sir, we didn't," Chain Mail responded.

"What?! Why not?! Don't you realise his family will want his remains to-"

"Mr. Spoken, with all due respect, you saw what Second did to him, right? Do you really think anypony really needs to see him missing most of his head? Maybe it's not my call, but if anypony who I loved had that happen to them, I wouldn't want to know, and I wouldn't want to see the body. I'd prefer to remember them as they were before."

The old stallion sighed.

"Maybe you're right, but I still think we should have saved the body. His family have a right to make that decision themselves."

"Maybe."

Chain Mail looked over to Spike.

"Are we all ready to go then?" he asked.

"Yes," said Gold Coin, "We're all ready. Everypony get your stuff. Come on Mystic."

Spike laid down low on the ground and stretched out a wing to make a ramp for the ponies to climb onto his back. They left behind the four unicorns they had rescued and let them continue to sleep on the grass outside the Mages Guild. They'd wake up in a few hours unharmed. They weren't a problem anymore.

"Everypony on board? Good. Setting off for Equestria!"

Spike beat his wings, and the group began to ascend. Mystic looked down in wonder at Secopolis as it became smaller and smaller as they continued to rise. Chain Mail sat tight and tried to keep ahold of everything. And Soft Spoken just stared at the pile of rubble that used to be the Mages' Guild, and sighed once again.

***

A fist burst out through a pile of smashed stone and dust. A nearby pony, one of the Knights of Man, galloped over once he saw it and grabbed the hand in his teeth to try and help pull his master out from underneath the rubble. To his surprise though, Second just pulled his hand out of the pony's mouth and punched him in the nose. The knight staggered back, and Second's hand felt around for a substantially large stone.

He found one, and grabbed ahold. With a mighty pull, the human dragged himself up from underneath the rubble. The knight looked at Second, and backed away in fear.

He was an absolute wreck. Most of his skin had been burned off by the explosion, leaving only burned red flesh. His signature long coat, and for that matter most of his clothes were nothing but rags now. He had lost his moustache and most of his hair. And where before he had two eyes, now he just had one, and it was a sickly yellow colour now, like what your teeth looked like if you didn't brush for weeks.

"Well...." he said in a deep, raspy voice, "That sucked..."

The human coughed and climbed to his feet again, groaning loudly as he did. Every move he made was absolute agony.

"...You there...What's your name...?"

"...R-Racket sir."

"Racket. Go find me Dr. Apocalypse. He should be up at Fort First. Tell him I'm ready for the serum."

"Y-Yes sir!"

The knight saluted and galloped away as fast he possibly could. Left alone, Second limped out of the wreckage and over to the nearby road. Laying there were the remains of his Ferrari. He didn't know how it got from the room where he was in before to the roadside, but that wasn't important anymore. It was just a burnt out shell now. There was no saving this thing. But it did still have the rear view mirror.

He reached in and grabbed it, tearing it off and bringing it up to look at his face. He saw the disgusting image of a creature straight out of a horror movie looking back up at him with one glaring yellow eye. He grinned back at it.

"And I thought I looked ugly before..."

***

Broad Sword gasped suddenly, sucking in a large breath of air like he had been drowning underwater and had just breached the surface. He looked around him at the featureless landscape. Nothing but a stone floor and some mist and fog as far as the eye could see. He leapt up, and looked around him in a panic.

"No!" he cried, "I can't! Please tell me I didn't..."

He heard the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned around to see a human standing there. Not Second, but a different one. This new human just stood there, completely still, looking very sombre.

"I...I'm dead! I'm dead, aren't I?!"

The human nodded. Broad Sword began to cry.

"I can't though! I can't die now! My friends need me! They're still down there with Second! He has the Reaper's Horn! I can't die! We're the Elements of Harmony! What if it doesn't work without me! How can we save the world?! I CAN'T DIE!"

"I'm sorry," the human replied.

"NO! I DON'T WANT TO DIE! THEY STILL NEED ME! MY FRIENDS NEED ME!"

He ran up to the human and tried to beat him with his hooves pathetically, and continued to cry.

"SEND ME BACK! BRING ME BACK TO LIFE SO I CAN HELP THEM!"

First just stood still and looked down sadly at the pony as he kept hitting him. Eventually, Broad Sword stopped trying and just collapsed into the strange human, and continued blubbering. Awkwardly, First sat down and hugged the sobbing pony.

"You've got no body left. There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry."

END

Author's notes:

Sorry for the lateness. There were exam-related problems coming up. I'm sure you all know the kind I'm referring to. Anyway, not a problem anymore.

I've also taken to playing Fallout 3 a lot more recently. I've got to extend my thanks to the brony fandom, because it was you guys that got me into the series, via Fallout Equestria. I saw it, and I thought, "Fuck it, it's six stars and it has a LEGENDARY tag in rainbow colours. It must be awesome!" Several months later, I've read it through completely, done the same for Horizons, am halfway through Pink Eyes, just finished the actual Fallout 3, and now I'm going through Operation Anchorage and the other DLCs. After this, it's clear sailing to New Vegas, and Fallout Equestria Heroes once I finish Pink Eyes.

My God. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME KKAT?!

Also, for those who didn't see my blog post, you can see Second in a crossover with other HIE stories here, if you're into that sort of thing.

Next Chapter: GRIFFINS! AND! MIDGETS!

Chapter 13: The Bonds of Friendship

"Out in the badlands, Second and First came across a tribe of buffalo. They were confronted with that which they had seen only rarely, and the buffalo were confronted with something they had never seen before. Their first reaction, just like the ponies, was to destroy the strange beings that came to their land. Second and First did not kill them though, just as they did not kill ponies.

Instead, they battled for an entire day out in the scorching desert, man against mortal. Of course, the primitives were unable to defeat such power as Lords Second and First, even when they did not use their most powerful weapons against them. Instead, they treated them as they did the misguided ponies that they fought; ethically, and with understanding.

Then, when the battle was won, Second stood atop a pile of beaten and exhausted buffalo, looked down upon their leader who lay below him, and proclaimed to them;

'I just wanted to ask for a glass of water. No need to throw a fit over it.'

And from then on, every city the humans visited gave them their fill of water, a mark of respect for their rightful rulers, and an offering to their Gods that they might be spared their wrath. And even today, in the order of the Brotherhood of Man, the Shrine of the Second is always filled with water, to quench his thirst, should he ever need it."

-Water in the Desert, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book The Liberator.

***

So far, it had not been a good day for the new Elements of Harmony. Second had created an entire new city, and become more powerful than ever before. Sliske had been torn out of his previous host through the throat. Mystic had witnessed multiple brutal murders and now played host to an alien presence, both in his mind and on his flank too. Gold Coin was badly wounded, Chain Mail had been captured and experimented on by mad scientists, and to top it all off, they had lost a dear friend.

What they really, really needed right now, was a thunderstorm.

"Just a little way now..." Spike called over the wind.

There was a clap of thunder, and a bolt of lightning shot out of a nearby cloud and struck Spike's wings. The dragon barely seemed to notice it, and kept flying. Rain poured down on them, both from above and flying right into their faces thanks to the wind carrying it. Mystic, previously enamoured with the concept of flight, was now shivering in the cold and clinging tightly onto Soft Spoken's hooves. Gold Coin and Chain Mail meanwhile had no cover from the torrent, and so settled for just keeping ahold of the bucket of green goo than held Explodey's remains.

"No wait...I've taken a wrong turn somewhere here..."

"What's the problem now?" asked Soft Spoken.

The dragon twisted his neck around so he could address the pony standing on his back.

"I've flown off in the wrong direction. This isn't the way to Canterlot. I think we're actually just a little way off Ponyville right now. I thought this was the right direction, but it's so cloudy tonight I couldn't tell. Secopolis may be a proper city, but it still has the weather of the Everfree."

Loud as his voice may be, even Spike was a little hard to hear over the winds. It was very fortunate that Softy's companions had loud voices too.

"Stop down in Ponyville!" Gold Coin ordered, "We can't stay out in this weather a second longer!"

Spike didn't reply, but instead just took a sharp dive straight down, taking them below the cloud level. As they descended, the ponies could see the sleepy little town of Ponyville. It was late, but most of the lights in the houses were still on.

"Where do we go?" the dragon asked.

"Sweet Apple Acres! My family will have room for us and there's plenty of space in the barn for you to get some shelter!

A quick flight later, and the group hovered about the famous Apple family farm. The land was mostly the orchards and fields where they would grow their crops, but several large buildings were also present on the grounds. The big old farmhouse was the centrepiece of the land, but there were also a lot of sheds and silos, multiple barns of varying size and purpose, and if you squinted through the storm you could probably make out the factory on the far side of the Acres.

They touched down in front of the farmhouse. The front door opened, and three ponies trotted outside nervously. One was a unicorn, barely more than a teenager, levitating a comically oversized umbrella. Evidently he must have been some kind of servant or farmhand. The other two were earth ponies, one a very old looking mare who was about the same shade of yellow as Gold Coin and the other a gruff looking, light green stallion with a moustache.

"Hey son, you finally came home?" asked the green stallion.

"Hey dad," Gold Coin answered, "And yeah, I have. Just for a little while. Me and some friends need to stay the night."

The other ponies were busying themselves with picking up their equipment. Chain Mail was burdened with carrying the minigun for Gold Coin, so Softy was carrying the bucket of Explodey's remains and his helmet for him.

"I haven't heard from you in a few days. I heard Apple Tree went up to the factory yesterday to see you, but that you weren't there."

"There was a...complication in Canterlot."

"It wouldn't happen to be a complication relating to any humans, would it?" he asked.

"Well..."

"Son, I was going to ask. Since when did you ride around on a dragon?"

Gold Coin looked over to Spike, who shrugged at him.

"...He's sort of my escort for a little while. It's hard to explain."

"Hmm. Well, fair enough. You can all come inside and join us for dinner if you want to. I'm not sure what we can do about your dragon friend though."

"He can stay in the barn. He'll be fine there."

Gold Coin's father trotted up to the dragon's face.

"If that's alright with you sir, I could go unlock the old barn for you now."

"Please do."

He turned to the unicorn who had came out with him.

"Craft, go tell Boiled that we're having guests tonight. Set the table for four more."

"Five more," Gold Coin interrupted.

"Sorry son, but we don't have anything to feed a dragon here. And I don't know how we'd get him up at the table anyway."

"No. The fifth place is for Explodey."

"...Explodey?"

"He's in that bucket."

Chain Mail cantered up to Gold Coin's father and showed him the contents of the bucket.

"Son. This is bucket of green stuff."

"Yeah. That's Explodey."

"...Do I even want to know?"

"Probably not. No."

"Alrighty then. Make that five more, Craft. Ma, tell Toffee that I'll be right back."

With that, the stallion galloped away through the rain in the direction of the old barn, and Spike took flight and followed after. The unicorn named Craft soon retreated into the house, and Gold Coin went over to talk to his grandma while his friends were picking up all their stuff.

Soft Spoken collected up all the things he was meant to carry and balanced them on the outstretched wings of the Rainbow Six. It proved surprisingly capable for carrying everything, and he slowly walked over to join the others who were heading into the farmhouse. Then he froze when he saw the old mare standing next to Gold Coin. She stood still as well, and they just stared at each other.

"MAPLE?!"

"SOFTY?!"

"YOU ACTUALLY MARRIED APPLE CIDER?!"

"YOU'RE STILL ALIVE?!"

Chain Mail and Mystic had already ran inside to get out of the rain, and so were missing the delicious drama. That just left Gold Coin stuck in this awkward situation.

"So...you two know each other?" he said.

"Know her?!" Softy shouted, "We were-"

He stopped himself.

"Wait. That stallion just now, he called you-"

"Yes, that was my son."

"So you're-"

"-Goldie's grandma, yes."

"...Oh Luna. Goldie's father wouldn't happen to be seventy eight now, would he?"

Maple narrowed her eyes at him.

"No. He's not."

The old butler wiped his brow and sighed in relief.

"Phew. Dodged a bullet there."

Gold Coin's mouth just hung open.

***

Private Night Shroud was a sad little pony. For some reason, nopony actually cared about him. Not in the sense that he was unloved or had some tragic past. That would be terribly cliché. No, his issue was that everypony else was doing something important, but not him. Ancient Tome was struggling to accept that he was a terrible father, Frosty had been disowned and was now taking care of little Star, Iron Hoof and Sun Rise were both cyborgs now, and were dealing with that in entirely different ways.

Hell, even Ze!zar was off in Canterlot right now on some other adventure. Or else in prison. He didn't really know for sure. He had flown away when the dragon busted out of that oversized prison with the ridiculously sturdy walls.

And yet, nopony had seen fit to give poor little Night Shroud anything to do. That was just unfair! He was a pegasus with bat wings! He was in Luna's night guards! He had more combat experience than anypony else in the Brotherhood and if somepony had bothered to ask, he had quite the interesting story to tell about why he was doing this.

So why did nopony seem to care? Was he just invisible?

"Well, that's what I heard," said a passing knight to his friend, "Though, supposedly Second crawled out of the wreckage afterwards and was fine. Racket was up here earlier asking around for the doctor. Something about a serum, I heard."

Night Shroud saw an opportunity to insert himself into the situation and ran over to the guards.

"Excuse me, what was that about Second?" he asked.

"Oh, he was in that explosion earlier," the other knight explained, "The one that took out the Mages' Guild? Supposedly, our Lord and saviour was caught in the blast, and if what Knight Racket told us is anything to go by, he looked more like one of the doctor's experiments after coming out of it."

"Who is this doctor you keep referring to?"

"Dr. Apocalypse," said the first knight, "He ran the Mages' Guild before it blew up, along with his 'four horses', as he calls them. He did all the weird science-y stuff that Second keeps asking for to help bring his plans to life. Acting Commander Bullseye evacuated the Mages' Guild earlier today, so Dr. Apocalypse has been hanging around here since then."

"Actually," the other knight interrupted, "I heard he and Racket already left. Supposedly those unicorns have a backup base somewhere in the city, and Second's gone to meet them there."

"Good riddance. I hate those mad scientists. The last thing we need is them polluting the air around the fort."

Now Night Shroud was confused.

"Do you not like the Mages' Guild? I thought we were all on the same side here?" he said.

"If by 'all on the same side', you mean we all support Lord Second, then sure," the first knight replied, "However, it ain't no secret that those high and mighty Mages' Guild types think that they're in his good books for all their research and consider it their First-given right that they will be put in charge of Secopolis once Second moves on."

"'Moves on'?"

"Oh yeah. Second's planning to march on Canterlot any day now. He wants Equestria, and once he takes the capital he's setting up shop there. Once Second is no longer here acting in his capacity as Emperor, America's gotta start listening to its pony leaders, and nopony seems to be in agreement as to who that is."

"I thought the President was Second's immediate underling?" asked Night Shroud.

"One of many," said the second knight, "The current President technically answers to nopony but Second himself. The problem is, that also describes a number of other ponies who run certain organisations. Dr. Apocalypse, for one, does not answer to the President because the Mages' Guild is considered part of the Empire but not part of America, so he answers to nopony but Second as well. And if you think about it, that gives him as much claim to power as the President, or at least that's what he likes to think."

"...Do you think they're going to fight over it?" the pegasus asked nervously.

"I personally don't think so. Congress is as violent and bloodthirsty a bunch as you'll get, but they exist to fight each other, not to make war on civilians. The Mages' Guild might piss them off, but they're not going to start a fight as long as Second is looming in the background. If they try to start a civil war in Secopolis, the human is just going to come back down here and kill everypony, and that's hardly going to help either of them, is it?"

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," said the other knight, "The whole point of Congress is that their violent antics amuse Second. If they declared civil war and started butchering scientists, he'd probably find it hilariously funny. And I'd think so too. Don't tell me you wouldn't burst out laughing if you saw the good doctor getting skewered?"

"You're right! That is funny! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

In the presence of these two psychotics, who just thought the idea of a pony they didn't like getting murdered was a riot, Night Shroud could only chuckle nervously and quietly slink away to continue his walk around the fort.

***

Dinner was awkward. Gold Coin was constantly thinking up lies while relating their story to cover up his involvement with the Brotherhood. As he later explained to Softy, he was actually the only pony still alive in his family who was in the Brotherhood, which somewhat contradicted the Brotherhood's claims that all the families of all the Elements were a part of them.

Softy had been meaning to ask more about that, but Gold Coin could only promise to explain more tomorrow.

And that wasn't all either. Gold Coin's father, whom the group had since learned was named Apple Peel, kept looking at them like they were crazy whenever they talked about Explodey. They had kept his bucket by the dinner table all night, propped up on a chair in front of a ready meal in case he regenerated while they were eating, but he never did.

They wondered about that. Why was Explodey not regenerating? He said he should be able to. Did he regenerate from the slop left behind in Secopolis instead? Did Chain Mail not pick up enough of him? Or worse, what if he was actually permanently dead?!

And that strangeness aside, the rest of their story wasn't much better. Between telling them about Secopolis, Chain Mail getting cybernetic implants, Softy's theft of the Rainbow Six (which he continued to wear throughout the meal), Spike's imprisonment, their late friend Broad Sword and how Gold Coin had tackled both an Elder God and an alicorn head on in one day, the Apples were very firmly convinced that they were all escaped mental patients by the time they were done explaining.

"Now wait just a second," Apple Peel interrupted, "Why can you even hit a Human in the first place? I thought the legends all said they were untouchable!"

"That's what I thought too," Chain Mail explained, "But as it turns out we're the chosen ones, or Elements of Harmony or something. And somehow that allows us to hit them. We don't quite understand it ourselves. All I know is, if I stab Second it draws blood, and that's good enough for me."

There weren't that many Apples living in this particular farmhouse. While the Apple family itself was very large, they were spread out across the many regions of Equestria, and only a few ever actually stayed back at Sweet Apple Acres to maintain the land here, even less nowadays since they had so many workers and new technology to do most of the work for them.

These days, the only residents of the Acres were Apple Peel, his wife Toffee Apple, Grandma Maple, and Gold Coin's little brother Cheddar Cross. Softy was at first confused as to why an Apple family member appeared to have a cheese-themed name, but apparently Cheddar Cross was the name of a specific type of apple he had just never heard of. Go figure.

And of course there were the workers and servants who lived on-site. There weren't many of them, just the chef, Hard Boiled, Craft from earlier, and an earth pony farmhand who couldn't have been any older than sixteen named Drillhead, apparently stuck here until he made enough money to continue his journey north in search of his destiny or something.

"So whatever happened to Cider then?" asked Softy, "Last I heard, you and he were engaged. Since you're here, I'm guessing you went through with it."

Maple blushed slightly.

"Well...In spite of everything, he was a sweet fella...We married in June later that year, and we were together for a good forty seven years after that, until he had that accident with the ladder. We had two kids, one was Peel here, who was born about three years after I left you. The other was Jam, and she worked as a senior manager at the factory most her life before she handed it over to Gold Coin. She retired to some tropical resort or some such. She sends postcards sometimes."

"Oh, so Cider's dead? That's a shame. I know we didn't get along back in the day, but I liked him."

"Yeah...He didn't like you."

"I gathered. Otherwise he wouldn't have ran off with my girlfriend. Speaking of, why did you leave? I mean, really? What did I do?"

"It was nothing you did wrong, Softy. Cider just had a faster chariot. You know how we were back then. We were just stupid kids playing games."

"You were thirty seven!"

"...Umm..."

"Maple. You are a bad pony."

"And don't I know it?"

She batted her eyes at Softy and gave him a sultry smile that no mare of that age should ever be allowed to use. Gold Coin's reaction was as you'd expect.

"Yuck."

He turned back to his little brother.

"So what else is new, Cross? Are you looking after mom and dad here?"

"Well..." Cross drawled, "Not much they need help with really...Sure, both of 'em are gettin' old, but they don't really need mah help so much. They're still perfectly capable of puttin' in some work. I'm just doing the same job ah've always been doing, minus some duties that the machines have been takin' over for me."

"Don't tell me my little contraptions are putting you out of work?"

"Naw. They're just lightening the load somewhat, which I ain't got no problems with. Though if you keep sendin' over so many of them, I may have to hire additional technicians to look after 'em. Anyway, that's all for here. Now, me? I want to know more about that alicorn you keep talkin' about..."

***

"Ow..."

Second limped into the underground lab, flanked either side by pony doctors, both unicorns. Though the Mages' Guild building had been destroyed, the Mages' Guild as an organisation still lived on, and had now relocated to their secondary labs, hidden in a complex underneath the Secopolis Museum. It seemed an appropriately well hidden base if ever anything came after them, and obviously something had.

"Ow..."

"Could you please be quiet? That's starting to get on my nerves," said one of the doctors.

Second glared down at him, and the doctor immediately regretted his words.

"You say anything like that to me again, you little shit, and I will eat you. You see these teeth?"

He opened his mouth and gestured to his canines.

"They're for eating meat. Humans are an omnivorous species. You think I can't eat a pony? I can, and I will!"

The nameless unicorn doctor began to sweat. He wisely decided to shut up from then on.

Eventually, Second and his escorts walked into an operating theatre. Racket and another lab coat wearing unicorn waited for them in there. The unicorn was a deep purple stallion with a jet black mane. He wore a pair of small, square reading glasses, and his cutie mark was a biohazard symbol. This was the enigmatic head of the Mages' Guild, and one of Second's favourite minions. Dr. Apocalypse.

"Lord Second, how are you feeling?" he asked.

"Like I'm being massaged by a woman made of sandpaper. Have you got that serum for me?"

Dr. Apocalypse produced a vial from one of the pockets in his lab coat and floated it over to the human, who snatched it out of the air. Inside it was a clear liquid with a few tiny bubbles occasionally rising to the top of it. A label on the side named it as 'Authority'. Second immediately opened it up and gulped it down without any further thought.

"Are you sure you're ready for this, sir?"

He threw the empty vial down onto the floor and smashed it into tiny pieces.

"If I wasn't sure I wouldn't ask in the first place. Let's get this shit on the road!"

The badly burned human climbed up onto the operating table and laid down on his back. The doctors all looked awkwardly to each other, and Dr. Apocalypse walked over to a large box on the wall. He opened it up, revealing a large red button inside and a number of key slots. The doctors all levitated out individual keys and slid them in, and turned them in unison.

The button turned green. Dr. Apocalypse looked back at Second, who nodded.

"First have mercy on my soul..."

He pressed the button. Second screamed.

***

"Oh, well this figures. Even after I quit my job, I'm still sleeping in the servants' quarters," Softy complained, "The servants' quarters that weren't good enough for the other servants no less."

Gold Coin smiled sympathetically.

"Sorry, but it's the only spare space we have."

"And yet you get to sleep in your old room," the former butler replied.

"What? Do you want my room? You can have it if you want. I could sleep in here."

"No, don't worry about me. I'm just an old stallion complaining about things that don't matter anymore. You go sleep in your room. You deserve it."

"No Softy, I insist. I know the beds in here can be somewhat uncomfortable. These are all really old mattresses after all. And I know it's unpleasant having unwanted roommates. Back when I was young, there were a lot more ponies in this house, and me and one of my older brothers were forced to share a room. I hated it so much. I couldn't inflict that on you."

The brown earth pony opened his mouth as if to argue, but Chain Mail interrupted.

"Hey, if neither of you want Gold Coin's room, can I have it?" he asked, "I mean, nothing against this place, but I've slept in barracks most of my life."

"Sure, go nuts," Gold Coin replied.

Chain Mail smiled and trotted out the room and down the corridor towards Gold Coin's quarters.

"Well, that leaves the both of us in here with Mystic and the Explodey bucket," said Softy.

The door opened, and Maple poked her head in.

"You know Softy," she said, "If you really don't like servants quarters, my room's always available~"

Gold Coin's face went green and he put a hoof to his mouth to stop himself from puking. Soft Spoken meanwhile began to grin like a maniac.

"Sure! Give me two minutes and I'll be right along!"

Maple winked and disappeared from the doorway. The old stallion immediately walked over to a nearby dresser and looked at himself in the mirror. He licked his hoof and slicked back his long white mane. Turning to the other earth pony again, he asked;

"How do I look?"

"DUDE! She's my GRANDMA!"

"So? She's not my grandma. In fact, she's younger than me. That's fair game. Do I smell okay or should I put on some cologne?"

"...Ew, Softy. Just...Ew..."

"Pssh. You youngsters think you damn well invented it. You all came from somewhere you know."

That was all Softy had left to say before he walked out of the room and left his friend staring at the door. A minute later, Mystic Chant walked in, just finished brushing his teeth.

"Mr. Gold Coin?" he said, "Are you alright?"

The yellow earth pony crawled up in a ball on the floor and started shaking.

"I don't want to go to bed tonight, Mystic. I'm scared I'll have nightmares."

Mystic rolled his eyes and walked over to Gold Coin. With a fair amount of effort on his part, he levitated the heavy earth pony up onto one of the servants' beds and tucked him in. He pulled a book off a nearby shelf, sat down by the side of the bed, and started reading it aloud while the older pony continued to shiver.

"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria..."

***

Spike ran through the trees. The forest was burning around him. A flaming tree fell in his path and forced him to momentarily consider turning back. He looked behind him and saw that the thing was still coming for him. Tears of terror streaming down his face, he ignored his previous reluctance and scrambled over the huge burning log to keep running away. Good thing he was heavily fire resistant. Others weren't so lucky.

He passed by the charred corpses of several dead ponies. One or two of them he vaguely recognised as some of the many citizens of Ponyville that he had spent the last several years of his life around.

No time to mourn. Got to keep moving. That thing was catching up. He had to keep moving. He had to keep running. If he didn't keep running then-

A green dragon burst out of the nearby trees. Spike skidded to a halt in front of it and backed up. It was him! It was that same green dragon he had ran from all those years ago. He had almost killed him! He would have, were it not for Owlowiscious's intervention.

The dragon was just as huge and scary as Spike remembered him, and just like back then he looked like he wanted to kill something as violently as possible. He glared down at Spike, but for some reason, Spike could not feel that hatred being directed towards him. He was just as angry as he had ever been, but for now, any animosity he held was not for the scared little dragon whelp before him. For just a second, there was a mutual understanding between them.

He moved his legs aside slightly, and Spike ran between them to continue fleeing into the forest. He looked behind him as he ran. The green dragon let out a huge roar and stood up to its full height, towering above the trees. The beast that had been chasing Spike stopped looking for him, and now focused on the new arrival.

The two monsters rushed at each other and clashed in a flurry of fire and claws. The dragon spewed flames all over the thing, and the beast's armour seemed to melt into its skin, and it screamed in pain and rage. It brought a clawed hand forward and stabbed right through the dragon's thick scaly hide, and boiling hot dragon blood flowed out of a gaping wound.

The dragon didn't stop there, and it lunged forward and bit a chunk out of its opponent's neck, ripping the flesh clean off and spitting it across the trees. The beast didn't seem concerned by the loss of most of its neck, and continued to slash apart the dragon's skin like it was made of cardboard. And all throwing away its flesh had accomplished was setting another part of the Everfree on fire.

All Spike could do, was just keep running.

He shivered in his sleep.

***

Rays of sunshine poked through the window. Gold Coin yawned loudly as he awoke. All things considered, he had a very peaceful night's sleep. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. No nightmares about Softy becoming his grandpa at all. Everything was fine. Then he noticed there was a little white colt sleeping at the end of his bed.

"What the fuck...?"

Oh. He had a cutie mark of an explosion and pony body parts. The colt was just Explodey.

Mystery solved.

He went back to sleep.

...

...

...

Actually, no. There was weird, and then there was this. For once, Gold Coin was not content to just accept the strangeness in his life and try not to think about it. He woke up again and jumped right out of bed. This needed explaining right now. He marched up to the miniature Explodey and poked him in the chest with a hoof.

"Hey! HEY! Explodey! Wake the fuck up!"

Explodey yawned and his eyes fluttered open. He looked up at Gold Coin in a daze.

"What?" he asked, "What did you wake me up for?"

Wait...his voice was just as deep as before. What was...?

Looking at him again, it suddenly became obvious. He wasn't a colt at all. He still had an adult body. He was just...smaller.

That still didn't make any sense.

"Why are you all miniature now?!"

Explodey frowned.

"It's your fault! Don't shout at me!"

"HOW THE HELL IS THIS MY FAULT?!"

"You idiots didn't pick up enough of me! You expect me to regenerate a full-sized body using just a bucketful of biomass?!"

"YOU SAID YOU COULD REGENERATE FROM A SINGLE CELL!"

"And I'd be as big as a single cell as well! My regeneration doesn't work by rapid cell division! It melts down all my existing tissue and pulls it back together in working order! If you leave parts of me behind, I have to either replace the lost material, or regrow a smaller body!"

Gold Coin blinked.

"Your regeneration sucks."

The door opened, and Captain Chain Mail walked into the room, still wearing the Vader One.

"Hey guys, what's going on in h-"

He stopped and stared at the tiny Explodey, and then sighed in resignation.

"Yep. It's definitely a Tuesday."

***

Second woke up with a pounding headache. He groaned and rubbed his forehead. The first thing he noticed as he opened his eyes was that his arms were mostly red and brown. Then he held up both his hands and looked at them. They were the same. Lots of skin was still missing. In fact, his ring finger on his right hand had some bone exposed. Talking of his ring finger, his wedding ring had actually melted into it and they had merged together. It was incredibly uncomfortable. That said, at least he didn't feel any actual pain anymore.

A tiny little man in white walked along his chest and climbed up onto his chin. He looked down at Second with a raised eyebrow and folded his arms.

"Well Howard, I think that worked out about as well as you could have expected."

"Piss off..." Second muttered.

"No, I am not going away that easily. As your conscience, it is my job to-"

Second brought his fist down on the tiny little man and squashed him. He felt a body tumble off his chin and slide off his neck onto the operating table. In a puff of smoke, Ambition appeared.

"Huh. You just killed Conscience. I'm sure this is symbolic of something, but I'm not sure what."

"He'll be back. He's my crazy. He isn't going away..."

"Until then though, that makes me sole advice provider. Now, me and Creativity had a long talk, and we think-"

"Ah, my Lord, you are awake."

Dr. Apocalypse loomed into view above Second. The unicorn smiled down at him enthusiastically. Right now, he was like an obsessive fan that somehow got to be his idol's personal assistant.

"What happened, doctor?" Second asked.

"The serum knocked you out. Good thing it did, I say. Your body did not react well to the formula. In fact, you evacuated your bowels."

Second blinked.

"I'll leave you to dwell on that for a bit. Besides, you need rest. I shall be back later with a full diagnostic of your condition. Until then, just lay still and don't do anything."

The doctor trotted out of the room again, leaving Second alone with his hallucinations once more.

"You know what I just realised?" said Second, "I really hate ponies."

***

"Are you sure this will help?" asked Chain Mail.

"Trust me Chains, I know what I'm talking about."

The tiny Explodey McGee and Captain Chain Mail made their way through Ponyville market square together. The little town was busy today, and all the residents were happily going about their business, buying and selling or passing through on their way to work. Most of the pegasi at this time were on weather duty and were getting rid of the clouds above. The town seemed a very friendly place, and Chain Mail got a wave or smile from a number of citizens as he passed through.

"Quality produce! Half price today only! Fresh carrots, cabbage, parsnips, potatoes, and anything else you need!"

The mare advertising the produce was an orange earth pony with a rake for a cutie mark. She cheerfully called out to passers-by from behind a line of several tables, all stacked high with many varieties of vegetables and some fruit, more of which could be seen stacked up in a cart parked behind her stand.

Chain Mail trotted over.

"Hi," he said.

"Hello there stranger! What can I getcha?"

"Umm...I'm not sure. What do we want?"

He looked down at Explodey.

"Cabbages are bigger. Get them."

"A dozen cabbages please."

The mare smirked as she began to gather up cabbages and put them in a plastic bag.

"You let your boy decide what's for dinner tonight?"

"He's not my son," Chain Mail replied.

Explodey gave his friend an evil smile, but quickly hid it and instead put on his best sad face.

"Why do you always say that dad?! Why do you never acknowledge me in public?!"

Chain Mail's eye twitched.

"Explodey, now is not the time-"

"It's never the time! Why don't you ever want to spend time with me?!"

The mare working the stand was eyeing him suspiciously now.

"He's not my son! He's really not!" the captain protested.

Explodey just continued to pout. Other ponies around the square were staring at them now. The mare working the stand looked at him through narrowed eyes as she finished putting his cabbages in the bag.

"One hundred and twenty bits," she said.

"One hundred and twenty?! I thought everything was half price today?!"

"Sixty then."

Chain Mail paid the money and walked away with a bag of cabbages, the mare still glaring at him as he left. Once they were away from her and ponies no longer paid attention to them, he whispered to Explodey.

"You little bastard..."

Explodey just giggled.

"That was too fun! I'm tempted to cause another scene right now, just to see how far I can push it before these ponies form a mob and try to drive you out of town!"

"Believe me, I'm leaving the second you try anything else, and you can get this shit on your own."

"Oh, come on captain! Have a sense of humour!"

"Explodey, I am not really in a cheerful mood right now. I don't know if you've forgotten, but Broad Sword died just yesterday. You do remember that, right?"

Explodey stopped smiling, and suddenly looked very sombre.

"Yeah. I remember. I just don't think it helps to be all morbid all the time..."

"I personally think it's rather disrespectful to act like nothing happened. I wasn't exactly the closest one to him, but he was a good soldier, he was a loyal friend, and I owe him and you my freedom. I'm in mourning right now, Explodey."

"So am I! I just don't think he would have wanted us to be all mopey about it. I haven't forgotten about him. I'm just keeping things light. I don't want to be miserable when I think about Broad Sword."

Chain Mail looked down at his companion thoughtfully.

"I can respect that, I suppose," he conceded.

"Hey, Chains?"

"Yes Explodey?"

"Who do you think Skies was?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"No reason," Explodey sighed, "Just thinking..."

***

Gold Coin walked out onto the front porch of the farmhouse and was surprised to see Mystic Chant sitting on top of a tractor parked over by the edge of the orchard. From his vantage point, he must have had a good view of most of the Acres. The business pony made his way over and climbed atop the tractor as well. Once he reached the top, he put a hoof on the colt's shoulder, and drew it back when he turned his head and revealed Sliske's features.

"Oh," said the earth pony, "I see you're back again."

Sliske sighed.

"Yessssssss. I needed ssssssome time alone."

"...Are you thinking about Broad Sword?"

Sliske glared sideways at him, and didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry. I know you must miss him."

"Do not pressssssssume to know how I feel, you ignorant mortal!" Sliske shouted, "You haven't the sssssslightesssssst clue what isssssss going through my mind right now!"

"Sliske, I know how loss feels. I've lost family and friends before. I know what you're going through, even if you think I don't."

Sliske continued to glare angrily.

"Come on. You've been around for, what? Two thousand years? More? This can't be a new concept to you."

Sliske sighed.

"Broad Ssssssword wassssss...different. He wassssss...Thisssss issss....the firssssst time I've ever cared about a pony dying."

Gold Coin sat down next to the alien.

"Okay. So maybe it is new to you."

"Broad Sssssword wassssss...I jussssst...Gold Coin. Lissssssten. I know you poniessssss are creaturesssss of friendsssssship by nature, but that issssss not true of my ssssspeciessssss. If I am completely honesssssst with you...Broad Ssssword wasssss the firssssst friend I ever had."

Gold Coin remained silent.

"It jussssst botherssss me that he issss gone now. Whenever poniesssss died before, it either didn't matter, wasssssss a good thing, or jusssssst meant that I had to find a new hossssst. Thissssss time I feel like...like I losssssst ssssomething important."

"That's normal to feel," the earth pony explained, "I don't know why you felt so close to Broad Sword out of everypony you've ever met, but I think you're right to feel like something important was lost. Broad Sword was what showed you ponies at their best. He's what changed the famous 'Sliske the Destroyer' into an Element of Harmony. I think that's a hell of a thing to lose."

Sliske looked away and went back to staring across Sweet Apple Acres.

"You know you always have your other friends if you need help, right?"

"What other friendsssssss? Who are you poniessss to me? You don't even like me. You jussssssst tolerate my pressssenccce."

"I like you."

"Liessssss. If you liked me, you wouldn't shout at me sssso much. You and Sssssoft Sssspoken do nothing but argue with me and talk down to me, and then there'ssssss the captain. I ssssssee the fear in hissssss eyessss. I wassssssss a childhood nightmare of hissssss, and the very firsssssst thing I did when I wassss releasssssed from my vault wassssss to nearly choke him to death crawling down hissssss throat to posssssessssss him."

Soft Spoken's words echoed in Gold Coin's mind.

You need to calm down. Not swear so much. Not argue so much. Just try to be a little more sociable.

"...I can't speak for the others, but...Sliske. Just because I argue with you a lot doesn't mean I hate you. Friends can disagree on things. Friends can disagree very strongly on things. And friends can be very passionate about voicing their disagreements. At the end of the day though, I think friendship isn't about how much you agree with other ponies, but more about how you feel about them as individuals.

"And as an individual, I like you. You're not the nicest character I've ever met, but you've got good intentions in spite of everything, and you're learning to do better, albeit rather slowly. You're becoming a pony. Seeing you right now, actually experiencing an emotional reaction to the loss of a friend, is what cements that in my mind."

Sliske looked back at Gold Coin, and the earth pony could see he was actually a little teary-eyed. The alien raised hoof and wiped his tears away, and then stared at his hoof for a moment, seeming to have only just actually realised he was crying.

"...Ssssssweet Luna, you're right. I'm going native..."

***

Spike only reluctantly emerged from the barn the following day, and peaked his head outside to see Gold Coin's brother Cheddar Cross waiting.

"Uhh...Morning?" he said.

"Afternoon," Cross replied.

"Hmm..."

"So...Dad was tellin' the truth then. I've never seen a real life dragon b'fore, mister. I'm quite honoured."

"Likewise."

"Yer him, ain't ya? The Eternal. They tell stories 'bout you out east. I heard you once froze an oncoming tidal wave with a single breath, and pushed the ice block back out to sea. Is it true?"

"It's true. The ponies living in the region took to calling me the Sea Wall, though most of the zebra tribes around the area better know me as the Aspect."

"They say you knew the original Elements of Harmony. You knew Applejack, didn't ya?"

"Knew her, yes. She was one of my best friends. I knew most of the Apple family back in the day, even if most of them only in passing. In fact, the first time I ever met her was during the middle of an Apple family reunion. Do you still have those, by any chance?"

"Once a year, like clockwork."

"Must be a lot of you by now."

"Hundreds, I'd wager. Haven't even met all of them myself, though pa tells me I will eventually. The Apple family have roots all over Equestria by this point. Hoofington, Fillydelphia, Las Pegasus, even some up in Canterlot. Appleloosa practically belongs to us, and our distant cousins the Orange family have since taken over most of Manehattan."

"I'm aware. I was around back when Appleloosa was just beginning to grow. Did you know I actually helped settle the original land dispute between the Appleloosa settlers and the native Buffalo?"

"Really? I never heard that one before."

"Well, you wouldn't have. That was before I was the legendary Spike the Eternal. Back then I was just little Spike, Twilight's number one assistant. They were simpler times. I didn't really do much by myself. I was just one contributor out of seven, and for that reason history doesn't really remember most of my earlier adventures.

"To be honest, I'm rather glad about that. Some of those times were not my finest moments by any stretch. Not to say it was all bad experiences. Really, they were some of the happiest times of my life. I just have a lot of regrets as well. Mistakes I made, ponies I couldn't save, ponies I hurt by accident..."

Spike briefly remembered sitting on a bridge looking down at a giant claw print.

"I'm sorry. I'm boring you. Forgive an old dragon for rambling on. Being in Ponyville again just gets me a bit nostalgic."

"Aw, ain't nothing wrong with reminiscing. Grandma Maple's always telling stories about her youth. I like 'em, really. I weren't there, so there's no better way to learn about yesteryear than from the ponies that was."

Spike crawled out of the barn all the way and spread his wings. At his full height, he towered over the barn. He had to stop himself from leaning on it, remembering that it was likely not able to support his weight.

"An admirable attitude. I would like to talk more, but even dragons need time to eat, and the area around Ponyville is always good for a few hidden gem deposits, if you know where to look. I think I even hid a stash of rubies in an abandoned mine somewhere around here...If I can remember where that was..."

"Hey, mister?"

"Yes?"

"If I could ask...What do ya think Applejack would've thought of us today?"

Spike paused to consider it.

"Well, Applejack never really approved of ponies like the Oranges. She never really liked those elitist types, and with good reason, but she never had any aversion to being successful, and in fact that's what she strived for with every venture. The Apple family are well off for their hard work, and I think she would have been glad of that.

"What's important, is that you never forgot your roots. Any family business that can have both members like Gold Coin, working in finance and managerial positions, and members like you doing hard work down on the farm, is one that's never lost sight of what's important. If you still put in the hard work, Applejack would have been proud of you."

Cross smiled and tipped his hat.

"Thank you mister. It's been a pleasure talkin' to ya."

"And to you too."

***

Explodey sat up at the large dinner table and looked at the twelve cabbages that they had brought back from the market. It was a lot of food, Explodey wasn't even hungry, and yet he had to not only eat all of it, but he had to hold it down and absorb the biomass, which meant not digesting any of it.

Challenge accepted.

He began to dig in. Nearby, Captain Chain Mail watched on curiously, waiting to see if he could eat it all. Apple Peel watched with equal interest. As the undersized unicorn began to eat, Soft Spoken walked through a nearby doorway. His mane was messed up and his eyes were half closed like he was still mostly asleep, but he was smiling serenely nonetheless.

"Morning everypony," he said dreamily.

Chain Mail's eyes darted upwards for a second as he checked the digital clock which was displayed in the corner of his vision.

"Softy, it's like, half past twelve. Did you only just get up?"

"...Yeah..."

"...You know that's really unhealthy, right? Why are you oversleeping like that?"

"...I had a really late night..."

"Well so did the rest of us, but I got up at seven thirty."

"Mine was slightly later than everypony else's..."

"Huh?"

"I'm sure Gold Coin will explain it later. So, what's for breakfast around here? Cabbages?"

Explodey jumped up onto the table and pulled all the cabbages into a pile. He leapt atop it and pointed a hoof at Softy.

"MINE!" he screamed, "NOPONY CHALLENGES THE CABBAGE KING!"

Soft Spoken just continued to smile stupidly at him.

"Haha! Explodey's little!"

***

Second looked at himself in the mirror. Face still burnt, eye patch covering his empty right eye socket, a convincing wig to replace his old hair, and a nice old cream coloured business suit. His hands were now covered with black leather gloves, he had some shiny new shoes that looked pretty damn swanky all things considered, and a dark red tie to go with the suit.

He thought to ask for a briefcase to see how well it looked with him, but decided not to.

"Well, my Lord? What do you think?"

The fashion pony whom the department store had tasked with suiting him up was rightly nervous considering Second's habit of flying off the handle for no reason, but fortunately for him, his master was in a very good mood right now.

"I think I pull off the suit and tie look rather well, even if I do look like a fucking ghoul."

He felt his face with a gloved hand.

"I am a little annoyed about the loss of my moustache. I had that thing for...what? It must be...One thousand and fifteen years now. I think. I'm going to want it back. Hmm...Maybe I can magically invent some kind of miracle hair-growth formula with my God-like powers that will bring it back? It shouldn't be outside the realms of possibility..."

"Forgive me for my intrusion, my Lord," said the fashion pony, "but if you could use your powers to bring back your moustache, why not use them to heal your physical body?"

"Because that's not how Dramatic Convenience works. Observe: I planned a zombie apocalypse that should occur in two or three days time depending on how you count it. Then a pony explodes in my face and suddenly I look like a zombie. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously, this is the script writer's way of telling me that I have to lead the undead hordes as one of them instead of as some uninfected guy that they for some reason listen to.

"Personally, I am more comfortable with this idea. If I was uninfected, the writers could easily take me out by having the zombies turn on me at the last moment and eat me alive. The heroes will pull some stupid plot device out of their asses, the zombies will switch sides, and then I am going to get massacred, and I don't plan to go out like a bitch.

"No. If I'm going to die, I'm going to go out like a goddamn terminator. Wrestling with a living goddess, getting nuked, being shot by, like, eighteen tanks at once. Something like that. And when it happens, I want to take as many ponies down with me as possible. I just wish I could see the looks on the viewers' faces when they see how incredibly over-the-top epic my death is going to be."

The fashion pony stood there awkwardly for a moment.

"Sir-"

"SHUT UP! THIS IS A GOOD IDEA!"

***

"Ugggggghhhhhh..." Explodey moaned.

"What the hell happened in here?"

Gold Coin and Sliske stood in the doorway and stared at the carnage left on the kitchen table. Explodey was laying in a pile of half devoured cabbages and clutching his stomach in pain. Soft Spoken and Chain Mail just stood nearby watching, more amused than anything. Apple Peel stood to the side, completely stunned.

"Son," said Apple Peel, "What in Celestia's name have you brought into my house?"

"Now, wait, I know Sliske is a little weird, but I explained this last night-"

"I don't mean your dang alien friend! I'm talking about THIS thing!"

He gestured to the still tiny Explodey McGee laying on the table.

"It's one thing after another! First he's a bucket of green slop, then he's a colt, and then he's some cabbage-devouring abomination the likes of which I have never seen before! What even is he?!"

"I told you already! He's the spawn of an Elder God!"

Gold Coin paused, and pondered his own words.

"Huh. Having just said it, that description I just came up with suddenly adds a whole new level of horror to Explodey. I don't know why I never thought of him like that before."

Explodey continued to moan in pain.

"...If I may ask, why did he decide to gorge himself on cabbages?"

"Oh, it's to help with his re-growth," Chain Mail explained, "To regain his original size, he needs more biomass to replace all the flesh he lost. So we brought a load of cabbages and he ate them all. He's in pain right now because he needs to absorb the cabbage into himself without digesting it, because if he digests it then it breaks down. Once he absorbs it, he can then repurpose the biomass and turn it into new flesh to replace what he lost. His body has some kind of function that allows it to suppress digestion somewhat, but not completely, and in any case his stomach is almost full to bursting right now. I'm told it's incredibly painful."

Sliske slapped his own face.

"Are you ssssssserioussssss? Cabbagessss? That wassssss hisssssss besssst idea? If he wantssssssss to regain hisssssss original sssssssize, thisssss isssssss not the way to go about it. You poniesssssss are all idiotssssssss."

"Well what do you propose, Sliske?" asked Gold Coin.

The alien gave him an evil grin.

***

Night Shroud was still suffering the exact same problem as before. NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.

Really, what was even the point of his life before now? He had devoted all his free time since joining the Brotherhood to reawakening Second. He had longed for and dreamed of the day when the Human would shatter his stone prison, march up to Celestia, blast her in the face with his ancient death spell, and then go on to create Utopia.

Now he had, and everything was just so boring. It had happened! This was it! Celestia was dead, and Second had already created Utopia! Secopolis was just paradise city, only not named as such, (presumably because it would be too obvious). The problem though, was that he couldn't just kick back and relax and enjoy his retirement in paradise, because there were still enemies out there.

Those enemies had attacked and destroyed the Mages' Guild, the Church of Humanity, and the dragon had even tried to take down the Cathedral. The threats to Second's reign were still clear and present. He wanted to go out and deal with them. March into battle like some glorious soldier of fortune and heroically defeat those who would threaten the peace that Second was going to bring about!

And yet...nothing. The Knights of Man weren't gearing up for war. They were hanging around Fort First like flies around a dead coyote. Where was the action? Where were the professionals? Why wasn't anypony preparing to go take down those terrorists? Hell, even if the army was doing fuck all, he at least expected a few assassins to be sent out.

In fact, there was an idea. If nopony would give him a job, he would ask for one. He had the perfect suggestion. It was right there. Assassinate the ponies that tried to destroy Secopolis. A no doubt brilliant plan that would save thousands of lives. Those Elements of Harmony were dangerous criminals.

Even now, they were probably doing something nefarious...

***

Gold Coin stared in horror. The group were standing outside Ponyville cemetery. In the distance, a funeral was being held by a pony family. Explodey was sitting in a little red pull-cart that Chain Mail was dragging along, and everypony else in the group seemed equally shocked as Gold Coin.

"THIS was your big idea?!" Soft Spoken demanded.

"What?" said Sliske, "If you want to replaccccce pony flesh, get pony flesh. Don't try and ssssscrew around rearranging the ccccellular sssssstructure of cabbagesssssss. That isssss jussssst not going to end well."

"Sliske..." Explodey moaned, "Look...bro...I know you mean well....ugh...but I don't think cannibalism is the answer here..."

He vomited up a load of cabbage leaves.

"...GACK! Ugh...Sorry, but I just don't think I'm at that stage in my life yet."

Sliske frowned at the tiny pony.

"Argue sssssspeccccificsssss all you want, but what it all boilssss down to issssss that if you want to regrow meat, you need to ssssstart eating meat. Cabbagesssss are bassssically uselessssss for what you're trying. I don't doubt it'll work, but it'sssss going to keep giving you sssssstomach painsssss, and you're going to need a hell of a lot of them. If we get you a niccccce ssssteak or ssssspit roasssssst or ssssomething, thissss could be over a lot quicker."

"But Sliske..." Chain Mail said desperately, "WHY was your first thought cannibalism?!"

"Why wouldn't it be? You poniesssssss are delicioussssss."

The others all backed away from him.

"Oh, don't act like that. It'sssss not like I would. Anymore. I'm jussssst ssssaying..."

"I think he actually has a point about meat though," said Gold Coin, "Isn't that right Explodey? It would be easier to regrow meat with meat rather than with cabbages, right?"

"...Ugh...meat would be easier to assimilate...less complications...less time to repurpose it into flesh...still wouldn't be pleasant though...Ugh...Luna damn these fucking cabbages..."

Gold Coin nodded and trotted off back towards Sweet Apple Acres.

"Where are you going?" called Softy.

"Going to find an employee of mine. Somepony who might be able to help with our little problem."

***

Second yawned as he walked up the steps to the Cathedral. Another of his many personal assistants whom he had never bothered to name was following behind him writing stuff on a clipboard with magic, and all around the human other ponies were scurrying about and picking up large chunks of stone, either levitating or flying them up towards the top of the Cathedral.

"Looks like the repairs are coming along well here..." he commented.

"Yes, my Lord. We predict that the outer walls will be repaired by tonight."

"Good. Because despite the large amounts of alcohol consumed last night, I did not really feel the party mood after that concert. Maybe because I got into a fight and most of my skin was burnt off. That wasn't my idea of a good time. We're going to have to have another party to make up for it!"

"Umm...My Lord?"

"I don't care. Whatever you were about to say, I do not give a shit. Get to work repairing the ball room on the upper level and set up a party. A decent one. Get a disco ball, neon lights, an old-school turntable, find a DJ with a wide variety of musical tastes, and I want a snack table too! Get some coke and lemonade, sausage rolls, pork pies are good, some pastries too, the sweeter the better, and I think we can get some hot food in as well. Pizza sounds nice. I haven't had pizza for over a millennium. I rather miss it."

The hapless assistant saluted nervously.

"Y-Yes, my Lord!"

"And while you're at it, install some stripper poles and get some more alcohol. Not whiskey this time. I'm in a classy mood. Get some champagne."

The assistant saluted again and ran off without saying a word, leaving Second alone, staring up at the Cathedral.

***

"CALLING GRETTA TO THE MANAGER'S OFFICE. REPEAT. GRETTA TO THE MANAGER'S OFFICE."

Gold Coin put the microphone aside and looked down at the factory floor. Down below, a brown and white griffin looked up at him in confusion. He remained expressionless. She worriedly conversed with two mares she was working the packaging line with. The business pony could just imagine the conversation they were having. No doubt they were speculating on what she had done wrong to catch the manager's attention.

Maybe it was cruel not to give any her any indication of what she was wanted for, but he never told anypony else in his announcements, so it was only fair. Besides, she wasn't really in trouble. That much would become obvious soon. He stepped off the catwalk and back into his small little office, decorated with a few framed pictures and potted plants, and not much else.

Eventually, Gretta landed on the catwalk and walked inside. She smiled nervously and closed the door behind her with a soft click.

"Yes, Mr. Gold Coin?" she asked.

"Gretta, how'd you like two weeks paid holiday?"

She blinked.

"Uh...sure. What for?"

"I need your help with something. You griffins eat meat don't you?"

She scratched behind her neck awkwardly.

"...Yeah..."

"Where do you get it?"

"I- Wait, why?"

"Just answer the question."

"...Well...It depends on the day...Ponyville folk don't like dead animals around or near the town, so most of the time I hunt in the Everfree in the early morning. There are a few griffin traders from out east though, and they pass through here once a month. They usually get the good stuff and most of my pay check goes to saving up for whatever they bring along."

"I have a need to acquire a large amount of meat on short notice. Can you get some for me?"

"...Mr. Gold Coin, have you taken up carnivorism?"

"Me? No. But I have a friend who it turns out is badly in need of meat. It's either this, or he has to eat another pony, because we already tried cabbages and they made him violently ill."

Gretta blinked.

"Is this real life?"

"You know, I've been asking myself the same question. You think this is weird? I dropped an alicorn yesterday."

"An alicorn?"

"Yes. Giant alicorn, mane made of fire, and a healing factor. Dead serious. I still have no idea how I actually did it."

"...Sir, is this what you usually do when you're off work?"

"Well, it's what I do now. I used to be in an evil cult, but we had a fight and split up. So now I fight alicorns in my spare time. Now are you going to find this meat for me or not? It's very important we get it soon, or else my friend is going to be a quarter of his normal size forever."

"...Uh...Yeah...Sure...I'll...get right on that..."

"Great. Get what you can and meet me back here. And while you're out, I want you to stop by the farmhouse on the Acres and fetch a bunch of chumps for me. One is old enough to be my grandpa, and probably will be if he has his way, one is permanently attached to some ugly looking black armour with a control panel on it, one's a colt with huge teeth and some serious psychological issues, and the last one is an exploding midget who was shat out by Cthulhu. You'll know them when you see them. Bring them back here with you, and for Celestia's sake, don't tell them why."

Gretta backed slowly out of the room, never taking her eyes off Gold Coin the whole time.

***

Night Shroud looked around him in wonder as he made his way through the central hall of the Cathedral. The magnificent palace of Lord Second was designed with big entrances in mind. It was a structure made to intimidate, and bolster the mythos of the great leader of the Humans. And it that regard, it was highly successful.

Walking into the Cathedral, one could see stained glass windows either side of the great hall that rose high above, all depicting great events in the lives of Second and First. There was one image showing Second and First standing before a rearing Princess Celestia, with First trying to grapple with Second, and Second holding First back with one hand and pointing the Reaper's Horn at the rampaging alicorn with the other.

The bat pegasus recognised it as a scene from The Liberator, the first of the Brotherhood of Man's holy books. They had several of them. The Liberator was mostly a chronicle of the events of Second and First's actions on Equestria, at least up until their fall, so a lot of the stained glass windows' scenes were from The Liberator.

Their second book, Fall From Grace was more focused on the Brotherhood's beliefs and their mythology. Things such as their speculation of what the Human world of Texas looked like and the idea that First now ruled over the afterlife were all explained in Fall From Grace, along with details about the defeat of Second and First. Most of the theories about the ‘Firstian afterlife‘, as it was sometimes called, were gleaned from an account given by a pony who lived hundreds of years ago, who claimed to have temporarily died and seen a human waiting for him at the gate between worlds.

Then there were there was the final of the original trilogy of holy books, A Darker World, which was about the Brotherhood of Man's trials and tribulations post-Second. It detailed the efforts of the royal family to root out and destroy them, the guidelines by which the modern Brotherhood lived, and it also had a brief history of the events that occured five years after the Humans' defeat, including the Eclipse Crisis and the often overlooked advent of the Harbinger's rise and fall.

Idly, Night Shroud wondered how the new book Golden Age would be when it was finished.

At the end of the great hall, Lord Second sat back lazily in his giant, oversized throne and rested his chin on one hand, looking half asleep. One of the many stained glass windows dominated the wall above him, this time a depiction of Second and First's arrival in Appleloosa and their vow to bring law to the west, immediately before their great battle against the buffalo raiders.

The Second in the window was wearing an old brown Stetson that he tipped down low over his eyes, and was grinning out at him, and was also for some reason wearing spurred boots and an odd variant of his usual long coat. It looked similar, but it was definitely not the same, chiefly because it was sort of navy blue instead of his usual colours.

First stood behind him in the background. He had a cowpony's hat too, but his face was fully visible, and he had a genuine smile as opposed to Second's arrogant half-visible grin. He lacked any kind of coat, but he was wearing a nice looking vest and a badge that proclaimed him to be a deputy. Maybe that implied Second was meant to be a sheriff, but he didn't have a badge, so that wasn't clear.

As the former night guard approached, he instinctively bowed before his master, and Second suddenly shook his head, as if waking himself up.

"Huh? Yeah. Sorry. What did you want?" he asked.

Those knights had been right. Second looked like he had just crawled out of a volcano. His skin was still burnt and red, and his facial hair was all gone. Which was a shame, because it seemed almost an integral part of his identity. Night Shroud hoped the condition was not permanent.

"I wanted to request, my Lord, if I might be given some kind of job, or purpose. Something to do. Anything. The traitors even now flee to Canterlot, and I feel useless standing around here in this city, doing nothing while they escape."

"What? Do you want my permission to hunt them down or something? Do whatever the fuck you like. I don't care. I'm preparing for a party. You're one of the High Priests of Man now. If you want to go down to the armoury at Fort First and demand they hand over all their shit so you can go assassinate someone, they're not going to stop you. Go wild."

Night Shroud stared at him for a moment.

"So...I have your consent to hunt down the Elements of Harmony?"

Second sighed.

"Maybe I'm not being blunt enough. I. DON'T. CARE."

"...I'll take that as a yes."

"Good. Now go away, random side character. I do not care for your presence here and you are annoying me. Good luck with your continuing battle against your own irrelevance, and don't let me see you here again until you've either actually accomplished something or have a reason to be here."

The former night guard could only give a confused but dutiful salute and fly off out the doors.

***

The group sat around a picnic table outside the Sweet Apple Acres farmhouse in the afternoon sun. Softy was out of the Rainbow Six armour today, while Sliske had returned control to Mystic for the time being. Currently, Mystic was poking a small yellow fruit that he had found earlier.

"Hey, Softy?"

"Yes Mystic?"

"If quinces are poisonous to ponies, why do we grow them, or even allow them to grow?"

Soft Spoken stopped to consider that. He opened his mouth to reply, but had no answer. He closed his mouth again and continued to ponder the question. He repeated this several times, before eventually shrugging and replying with a simple;

"I dunno."

Then a griffin carrying a bloody red sack landed nearby.

"Hey," she said, "Just hazarding a guess here, but are you guys friends of Mr. Gold Coin?"

"Why? What's he done now?" asked Chain Mail.

"I'm told I have to collect you. He wants you up at the factory."

Then there was a loud crashing sound in the distance. The assembled ponies and griffins all turned in the direction of the sound.

***

Success! Spike finally dug out that gem deposit that he knew was here. It had been really deep underground. Far too deep for ponies to have retrieved without drilling equipment, but Spike had claws. He popped the individual gems into his mouth, savouring every one. He had his own hoard of gems in his cave out east, of course, but he couldn't exactly fly all the way there just for a late breakfast. Moving at that speed was exhausting. In hindsight, it was tiring himself out doing that that probably caused him to nearly lose against Second and Sliske.

As he chewed on a few sapphires, there was a loud rumbling sound behind him, and he turned to see Nonvulvahlok standing there patiently. The red dragon was significantly smaller than him, and Spike wasn't one to talk down to anyone, dragon or pony, so he crouched down slightly so as to be level with him.

"Hello again," he greeted, "Did you deliver that zebra like I asked you to?"

"I did. The Kulaas se fin vulon took him."

"You can call her Princess Luna. It's okay to not use the dragon language all the time. I made the whole thing up anyway, I don't know why you take it so seriously..."

"Forgive me, Bormahsedov, but these habits are hard to break."

Spike sighed.

"Again with the 'Bormahsedov' thing..."

"Do you not like the title?"

"Not particularly. No."

"Well, what would to prefer me to call you?"

"'Dad' would be nice, considering the time I put into raising you and your brothers."

"Really? But it is so informal..."

"Which is the point. I sometimes think I went overboard trying to teach you that whole 'noble polite hero' thing. You don't have to be like that all the time. Just because the old dragons were a bunch of jerks doesn't mean you have to be a saint to make up for it."

"...What about Feynsetafiirre?"

"What about him?"

"He abandoned those principals. Look at what happened to him. I assume you do know of what fate befell him, do you not?"

"...Yes. I do. But that could not have been avoided. Feynsetafiirre was a mindless beast. You taking an occasional break from formality is not even comparable to what he did. What he did, was to lose himself completely, and that's something I don't think you're even capable of. You're like me. You had a pony's upbringing. Feynsetafiirre...He was a dragon through and through."

The smaller red dragon puffed smoke out of his nostrils.

"I will consider what you have told me here today. If you would, I think I need to take a break."

"That would be a good idea. I'll see you around 'Vahlok."

The red dragon nodded at him and took flight. Moments later, he was a speck in the distance, heading back out east again. Spike stood there in amongst the trees for a moment. He popped another load of rubies in his mouth and chewed as he turned away. Just as he was walking out of the forest again, he found the group of ponies he was travelling waiting at the edge of the tree line.

"Family issues?" asked Softy.

"It's complicated. My family is a little different from most."

Chain Mail stepped forward.

"I...didn't know you knew about that other dragon."

"I'm aware of a surprising amount. And yes, I do know that you killed him too."

The captain looked at the ground in shame.

"Don't lose any sleep over it. Feynsetafiirre was no family of mine. He was a stupid beast, whose only purpose in life seemed to be to remind me of why I hate dragons. I only wish he was the only one of his kind."

Why I hate dragons...?

"Where did the griffin come from?"

"Huh?"

Oh yeah. Gretta was still here.

"And why is Explodey so small now?"

"Ummm..."

"And why are you carrying around a bloody sack?"

"Oh, this is going to take a while to explain..."

***

Explodey stared down at the table and the huge plate of bloody meat resting on it. Gold Coin, Soft Spoken, Mystic Chant, Chain Mail and Gretta were all standing around the table, waiting patiently. They were all gathered in the cafeteria of Gold Coin's factory. Spike was waiting just outside the factory and one of his large green eyes was staring in through one of the lower windows at them.

In the background the unicorn was vaguely aware of the sound of the factory continuing to work in spite of both dragons and the colourful assortment of ponies gathering in the employees' lunch hall.

"Seriously?" he asked, looking between all the ponies, "Seriously, seriously?"

"Quit moaning and eat it midget boy," Gold Coin snapped, "I'm giving away two weeks worth of wages for this. Show a little gratitude."

"Goldie," Soft Spoken warned, "We talked about this. Stop being a dick for no reason."

Gold Coin gave his friend a scowl and then sighed.

"Sorry Explodey. What I mean to say is...I went through a lot of trouble for this, and Gretta did too. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of eating meat as well, but you said yourself that this would be easier on you than the cabbages, and I'm just trying to save you unnecessary pain, because you're my friend, and I care. Even if I don't act like I do."

Explodey gave the business pony a weak smile and levitated up a knife and fork.

"If you guys don't mind, this might take a while, and I get uncomfortable when ponies watch me eat. Especially considering it's meat. What kind of meat anyway? I never asked."

"Cockatrice," Gretta replied.

"Yeah...This is definitely going to take a while..."

"Come on guys. Let's give him his space..."

***

Explodey had not been kidding. It was already stretching into evening, and still Explodey was downstairs, forcing himself to go through the large chunk of meat one bite at a time, and gagging on each one. About half an hour ago, Sliske had reappeared and brought up that it might be less disgusting for him if they had thought to cook it first rather than making him eat it raw, but nopony really had the heart to go down at tell him that he could have been eating it cooked all along. On some level, they all suspected he might kill whoever told him.

Gretta had left to go back to wherever it was she lived. Where did griffins live? Did they have houses like everypony else or did they build nests or live in caves or something? Softy had considered asking, but it seemed kinda racist, so in the end he decided against it. The rest of the group were now hanging around the offices and doing nothing.

Gold Coin's office connected both to a catwalk overlooking the factory floor and a complex of office cubicles in another room as well, built into an extension on the side of the factory. Softy and him were waiting in Gold Coin's offices and doing nothing, while the others wandered around the office block in the extension, also doing nothing. Since the factory had already closed down for the day, it was all eerily quiet around the place.

The only sounds in the office were the scratching of the yellow pony's pen as he tried to catch up on some of his paperwork and the low buzzing of the office lights. And the ticking clock hanging on the wall, but that was so quiet you could have sworn it was broken.

What happened to Spike?

The former butler sighed deeply and looked around the room at the various framed portraits. He recognised some of them as members of the Apple family that he had met yesterday. They were just about all earth ponies, but one in particular stood out.

"Hey? Goldie? Are all these pictures on the wall your family?" he asked.

"Uh...No," Gold Coin replied, finishing up with his paperwork, "Some are, most are friends or famous figures. Why?"

"I was wondering about the unicorn."

Gold Coin turned his gaze to the portrait Softy was pointing to. It was a detailed painting of a smiling, mint green unicorn mare, resting her hoof on a wooden instrument that laid by her side.

"That's Lyra," he answered.

"Who's Lyra?"

"Orchestral musician. She played the lyre. Lived over a thousand years ago. Started out in Ponyville, lived most of her late life in Hoofington. She got famous playing in a lot of big orchestras, and that's officially why I have her portrait up here."

"'Officially'?" Softy repeated.

"Yeah. It works as an excuse. I've heard her work, but I'm not into her style. I don't like orchestral music. The real reason I have her picture up, is because that mare right there was the founder of the Brotherhood of Man."

Soft Spoken blinked and stared back at the picture.

"Her?"

"Yep. She drew in the original members, wrote all three of the original holy books by herself, and the poems that populate them, and she was a major force in making the Brotherhood what it is today. Half of Darker World is dedicated to her life and times. It was said she personally witnessed most of Second and First's supposed heroics. Appleloosa, the Ursa attack, Manehattan..."

"Hmmm...So she's the pony responsible for all this..."

"For what it's worth, I don't think she was evil. She couldn't have had any idea what Second really was. You're looking at her right now. Does she seem like the type of mare that would have wanted all this?"

The old stallion sighed.

"No, I don't think she does."

"...See, that's what makes this whole thing so tragic. So many good ponies devoted their life to this cause and never realised they were committing evil, while others were evil and had no problem with doing evil deeds and conveniently excused their actions by claiming to do it all in the name of the greater good. What makes it hard, is that even after knowing the other twelve for all those years, I still don't think I could tell apart the evil ones from the misguided ones. And that scares me to death."

***

Second sat back in a red velvet chair in the corner of the hall where the party was taking place. It was tiny compared to the grand entrance hall which also acted as his throne room on the lower levels, but it was more than enough to host a large party. The whole place had been redesigned to make it seem smaller and more intimate, and most of the room was now the large tables full of various kinds of food, though that still left plenty of space for a dance floor full of mad ponies.

The flashing lights and colours and blaring disco music were drowning out Second's senses, so he sat back in the chair, wine glass full of champagne clutched in his right hand, and he just sulked miserably as he took a sip. It was his own fault really. He asked them to install stripper poles, and by proxy had asked them to hire strippers, and he had completely forgotten the fact that he now lived in the world of talking horses and that there were no humans here other than him.

On the flipside, the stallions were having a great time.

A little man dressed in red appeared on Second's right shoulder and leaned against his head. The human didn't acknowledge him, and just took another sip of his drink.

"Well, okay. So you didn't get your strippers. At least not how you wanted. That's not so bad though, right? That's just one aspect of the party gone wrong. The rest of it is still fine. You got your alcohol and you got all that party food and disco music like you asked for. Be happy! And hey, think about it, if you actually did get some proper strippers in here, that would just make Carol mad anyway."

"HAH!" Second shouted, "Good one, drug-induced hallucination! Implying my wife is even alive after one thousand years! Do you think I'm ever going to see her again?! Do you think I'm ever going to see ANY of my family again?! Because even if I get out of this fucking pony dimension, where is that going to leave me? If I travel to the pony universe in 2014 and spend a thousand years here, then when I get ejected from it, what year in earth's history will that deposit me in?"

Ambition remained silent. In the background, the ponies continued to party, oblivious to their God's delusional ravings.

"No. Everything I ever knew is dead and gone, and I've already dealt with that. I had a thousand years in a pitch black void to deal with that. Not much to do but think about your issues and scream when there's literally nothing else. To be honest, much as I hate you, I think you would have been welcome company back then. It would have helped stave off the crushing boredom. I couldn't even fucking sleep."

Second felt a tickling on his chest, and suddenly another tiny man crawled out from under the collar of his suit and climbed up onto his other shoulder. A tiny naked man. Wonderful.

"You know, I think you're going about this the wrong way," said Sexuality, "So what? You got ponies instead of humans? Make do with what you have!"

Second and Ambition both stared at him.

"No," the human said finally.

"Why not?"

"BECAUSE I HAVE STANDARDS, GODDAMNIT!"

"Oh come on! Why are you being so picky?!" Sexuality demanded, "And ungrateful too! You're the lord and master of these ponies! Click your fingers, and they do what you want! Do you have any idea of how many men would kill to be in your position?"

"Then they can have my position. I'm really not that attached to it."

"Howard-"

"Stop calling me fucking Howard! I'm not Howard! I haven't been Howard for ages! I am Lord Second, the ruling God of Equestria, and like all great Gods, I have a rule against fornication with mortals."

Second leaned back and finished his champagne. He smashed the glass against the floor and continued to pout. Ambition said nothing, but Sexuality apparently was not getting the hint.

"Alright, so if the rule is 'no mortals' instead of 'no ponies', then maybe your problem lies in the types of ponies you've got in here? I see mostly unicorns and earth ponies on those stripper poles. Maybe what we need is to get some alicorns in here?"

Second's eye twitched, and his head snapped around to face the little man on his shoulder.

"And just what is that meant to imply?!"

"I'm not implying anything. Why are you getting so defensive?"

"Don't you give me that! You know exactly what I'm talking about! Out with it you warped little psycho!"

Sexuality stood there awkwardly for a moment before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Second turned his attention back to Ambition.

"You!" he said, "Wherever the fuck you hallucinations go when you're not manifesting like this, follow him there and kill him."

Ambition saluted him.

"SIR YES SIR!"

Then he vanished too. Too pissed to hang around a minute longer, Second climbed out of his chair and walked over to the exit, pushing his way through the dance floor and carelessly shoving aside the ponies in his way, who being his loyal servants and followers would then apologise to him for being in the way. As he reached the doorway, he looked back over the crowd populating the room and sighed again.

"I really fucking hate ponies..."

***

Soft Spoken wandered around the office block, wondering what else he could do to pass the time until Explodey was done with his meat. They kept going down to check on him periodically to see how close he was to being finished. Softy had checked last time, and he was about three quarters of the way through it and actually getting close to his normal size again. Gold Coin would be going to check on him next.

The old stallion walked into a small office cubicle. He was surprised to find that Apple needed so many ponies to go through all their paperwork. Being that their main purpose was growing, packaging and selling fruit and vegetables, he wouldn't think that an entire office block full of workers in cubicles would be necessary, but apparently so.

This cubicle in particular had a few framed photographs on the desk that caught Softy's attention, likely of friends or family. He smiled at a picture of what was presumably the cubicle owner's family out at the park. Whoever the worker was, he or she had several foals to look after.

Speaking of foals, Mystic Chant had just wandered in behind him.

"Softy?"

"Hmm? Oh, hello Mystic. What's wrong?"

"I...umm...wanted to ask you about something."

"Yes? What is it?" the old stallion asked in concern.

"I was wondering if...you...would be my new dad?"

To say Soft Spoken was surprised would be an understatement. He was momentarily rendered unable to say anything coherent.

"...I...Uh...Well...Mystic..."

The little blue colt just continued looking sadly at him.

"...I don't know if I could! I'm one hundred and thirty now! I know I look like I'm fit and healthy, but I honestly don't think I'll be around much longer...I could very well be gone before you're even fourteen!"

"Yeah, but my dad told me that all my old family were all evil ponies and they were in the Brotherhood, and they let the human out, and...I think he wanted to make me a part of them as well! And I don't want to! I want to stay with you and Mr. Gold Coin and Mr. Chain Mail, because you're all so nice to me and you're trying to stop Second, and you always took care of me when dad was away, and when dad went crazy, you and Mr. Gold Coin saved me and took care of me instead, and I think you'd make a better dad than my last dad did...So would you be?"

"I..."

Oh Celestia, he was doing the puppy dog eyes.

"Look, I'll think about it Mystic. I can't make you any promises right now, but I'll give thought to it."

Mystic didn't say anything else. He just smiled and ran up to Softy and hugged his legs. The old butler stayed still and waited until he was done, and then Mystic broke away and ran off happily out of the office cubicle to continue exploring the building.

***

"You okay, Explodey?"

The unicorn looked queasy. He nodded quickly at Gold Coin and levitated up another napkin to wipe the blood off his muzzle again, which he then immediately discarded into a nearby pile of identical bloody napkins.

"I'm getting through it..." he replied, "It tastes disgusting, but it doesn't hurt as much as eating all those whole cabbages did. I'm assimilating it faster too. My body seems to be growing at roughly the same rate I'm eating...I think I'm about seven eighths of my normal size right now...."

Seven eighths wasn't so bad. Visually, he seemed about the same as he did before. Maybe a tiny bit smaller, but not by a noticeable amount.

"Couldn't you just stop here?" Gold Coin suggested.

"...I don't know. I've never done that before. I don't know what will happen."

"You've never done this before either."

"No, I mean, not even in my memories. I..."

He went quiet.

"...My memories may not have happened, but I still consider them part of my life. If I remember it, as far as I'm concerned, I experienced it."

Gold Coin trotted over and took a seat opposite him.

"You can't let those memories dictate your life. They're part of a past that never happened."

"...But everything important that ever happened to me is in those memories! Job, friends, family, how I discovered all my abilities and how to work them..."

He stared at the table sadly.

"None of my friends or family are real, are they?"

"...Chain Mail told me that he did ask around, but that your parents at least definitely aren't real. I think it's safe to assume most of your friends weren't either."

Explodey smiled weakly.

"That's fine. I still have you guys. Even if there's only a few of you..."

He poked at the remaining meat with a fork.

"And hey! If I really was born when I woke up in that shack, I can honestly say that I've known you guys almost all my life!"

That got a smile out of Gold Coin.

"I'm just glad to see you're taking all this in stride."

"Well...You know me...A good laugh can always cheer me up."

"Me and Softy talked about that before, back in Secopolis. We both said we thought you were the Element of Laughter."

"That makes sense. Who else did you think was who?"

"We think that Mystic and Sliske are both supposed to personify Magic together, though that's only a guess. And we both agreed that Broad Sword was Loyalty."

He sighed.

"...Still no idea what I am though..."

"Generosity," Explodey replied.

"...Why do you say that?"

"Well, you went out of your way to get this for me, for one thing. Gave two weeks paid holiday to that griffin girl. And then there's the fact that you were sleeping in the servants quarters of your own house when your old room was still there. You gave it away to Chain Mail, didn't you?"

"...Yeah!"

"And how did you know the Princesses again?"

"...I met them at a charity function!"

"And your role in the Brotherhood was?"

"Providing funds!"

"See? Generosity. I'd bet my life on it."

***

Second stumbled across the throne room without purpose or direction. There were no guards around the room keeping watch or knights at the doorways. He was all alone for once. In the silence of the empty room, he looked at all the stained glass windows around him. All scenes from his life in Equestria. He smiled.

He heard hooves behind him. It was one of the knights on patrol. He wasn't alone after all. She was a pegasus, and had been hovering above the ground before. She was there the whole time. He just hadn't noticed her.

"Evening, my Lord," she said politely.

"Yeah...Evening..." Second replied.

He looked up at the stained glass window above the throne, the one of him as the sheriff and Anthony as the deputy. He had that Stetson hat that obscured his eyes and that navy blue duster coat on. He had pulled those from aethers when he first arrived in Appleloosa, seeking to fit in with the whole wild west theme. The knight trotted over to his side and sat down next to him.

"Is that story about the buffalo true?" she asked.

"What story?"

"Water in the Desert. The story of how you fought the buffalo around Appleloosa because they attacked you on sight, when you only wanted to ask for a glass of water."

"Well...As it turned out they were actually bandits, not just a peaceful tribe. So yeah, it was true. And kinda my fault."

"So you did bring the law to the west?"

"I did what now?"

"They say that you and the First came into Appleloosa and declared to the locals that you were going to bring law to the west, and then you went out and confronted the buffalo raiders. That's what happened, right? That window is you and First as you announced your intentions?"

Second stared at her for a moment and then chuckled.

"Is that so?" he asked, sounding amused, "Pony history must be so interesting if that's how you interpret everything..."

"So you didn't go to bring law to the west?"

"No. Me and Anthony just got up on the roof of the train station and started singing Wild Wild West by Will Smith. It just so happens that the lyrics are about a guy who was going to stop outlaws."

He smirked.

"And you actually took that as a declaration that we were going to hunt down outlaws for real? Oh...I take back what I said about hating ponies. You amuse me to no end..."

The knight just stood there staring, at both him and the window, while Second walked away, over to the big open door leading out of the Cathedral. As he did, he sung quietly to himself.

"Any damsel that's in distress...be outta that dress when she meet Jim West...Rough neck so go check the law and abide...Watch your step with flex and get a hole in your side..."

***

"Ssssssoft Sssssspoken, we need to talk."

Softy turned around to see Mystic had walked into the cubicle again, this time sporting a row of teeth way too big for his mouth.

"What is it?"

"You will adopt Mysssssstic without further quessstion."

"Why?"

"No further quesssssstion I said."

"No, Sliske, why? Why are you suddenly so invested in this?"

"Misssssster Sssspoken, I don't think you're quite aware of jussssssst how badly Mysssssstic needsssss you. You can't tell becausssse you're out there, but I am actually in hisssss mind, and it issssss a wreck in here. Do you have any idea what thissssss colt hasssssss been through in the passssst few daysssss? Hisssss auntie wassss murdered, he killed Chameleon, he witnesssssed the death of the princcccessssss firssssst hand, and on top of everything he left hisss family. He issss traumatisssssed."

"He sure hasn't acted traumatised," the earth pony pointed out.

"And why do you think that isssssss? I've been helping him. Sssssssupressssssing memoriesssss, blocking bad thoughtsssssss, keeping the emotional ccccccentre under control and preventing him from having nightmaresssss. It issss not enough though. I can't hold back the flood forever. Mysssssstic isssss a ticking time bomb ready to explode."

"What?! You've been messing with his head this whole time?!"

"For hissssss own good! I know what you're going to ssssssay Ssssssoft Sssssspoken, but believe me, I know better than anypony how important memoriessssss are to usssss, and I know exactly what I'm doing when I take them away. Mysssssstic hassssss sssssseen and done thingsss no child should. I am jusssst trying to easssssse hisssss burden. The only reasssson he isss not insssssane already isssss becaussssse I have been in here doing maintenanccccce."

Soft Spoken sighed in defeat.

"So what then?"

"Sssssso? You adopt him, that'ssssss what. I'm keeping it all under control right now, but he isssss going to break eventually, and when he doessssss he needssssss a father to run to who will tell him it'sssss all okay and talk to him about it. I can't do that. I am an evil alien who ssssssstealssss the bodiessss of other poniesssss. I'm assssss unrelatable assssss it getsssss, but he knowsssss you, and he adoresssssss you. When I fail and Myssssstic ssssstartssss crying again, I want you there to comfort him. Can you do that?"

"I..." Softy stared down at the floor for a moment, before looking up to face Sliske again, "I still can't guarantee that I'll be there as a father, but if Mystic ever needs me, I will always be there for him. That much I can promise."

"...Closssssse enough."

Sliske turned and walked out of the office. As he tried to leave, the old butler stopped him.

"Wait! Can't Mystic see and hear everything you do?"

"Yesss, but not thissss converssssssation. I put him to bed for thisssss one. Anything we dissssscusssssed will remain between ussss."

"Is it alright if I talk to Gold Coin about this?"

"If you wish."

And then he left.

***

Night Shroud could see the sun setting in the distance as he landed on a cloud just outside the village of Ponyville. He grinned and drew his newest toy, provided for him by the good ponies of the Fort First armoury. They called it a sniper rifle.

He set up on his cloud and kept an eye on Sweet Apple Acres. He was going to enjoy this...

***

Soft Spoken knocked on the door to Gold Coin's office and walked inside without waiting for a response. His friend was still sitting at the desk going through his papers, just as he was when Softy left him.

"Hey, Goldie? I need to talk to you about something rather personal..."

"Really? So do I, actually."

"You do?"

"Yes. About my grandmother."

"Oh. Yeah."

"I've been trying to find a way to adequately word this all day, and I think I've found it. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!"

"What? Did I do something wrong? I wasn't planning to just leave if that's what you were thinking."

"...What?"

"Nope. I was thinking of sticking around. I knew Maple years ago, we went out for a while, she left me, she's alone again, I've been alone since my wife left me...It all works out rather conveniently really. You're never too old for love, as they say. Hell, I might even live long enough to marry her. I could be your new grandpa! Won't that be fun?"

Gold Coin stared at him in horror.

"I...I actually can't tell if that's better or worse..."

"Come on, Goldie. You didn't think I was the type of stallion that'd stay one night with her and run off again, did you?"

"Well...no...but..."

"But you still had an entire speech prepared in case I was?"

"Umm..."

"Hahaha! You know something Goldie? I think we're all one big dysfunctional family already. You, me, Mystic, Sliske, Explodey and Chains. We're going to make it somehow. And when this whole ordeal with Second is over, we're all going to stop and realise how awkward our entire situation is, and just how mismatched we all are, and then we're going to laugh about it forever."

"Heh...yeah...maybe we will..."

***

Second sat on the steps outside the Cathedral and stared up at the sky. It was all orange now from the sunset, and the city seemed to be winding down in preparation for the night. All the ponies that were still in the street were heading home, children were going indoors, and only the guards patrolling the grounds around the Cathedral were still at work. Second sighed and took another drink from a glass of wine he had a servant fetch for him a few minutes ago.

A tiny man popped up on his shoulder again.

"Oh great," said Second, "You again. Did Ambition not kill you already?"

"He tried, but I had to come back," Sexuality explained, "Because I just had an epiphany that I wanted to share with you!"

The human raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. What?"

"You know how you were a character on FIM for two episodes?"

"...Yeah?" Second replied nervously, not liking where this was going.

"Then remember that Rule Thirty Four states that porn is made of everything."

Second's eyes widened.

"...And then remember that the only other characters on the show at the time were Anthony and a bunch of ponies."

He dropped his wine glass, and it shattered on the stone. Sexuality just started laughing.

"Sweet dreams, oh mighty Lord Second!"

He vanished into thin air, and the human was just left staring into space, almost in a state of shock. A dark shadow dramatically fell across half his face.

"Oh God, why?!"

END

Author's notes:

Oh, I can feel the controversy oozing out of this one. There's a very fine line between which jokes are in good taste and which ones are not. I like to think this story as a whole walks that line but doesn't cross it, but I'm sure this is going to land in that zone of poor taste for someone. Hell, one guy I know managed to take issue with a character being named Throatfuck. And really, if you can't laugh at something as astoundingly stupid as a name like that, what can you laugh at?

Damn...Yet another new record for word count. Oh well. No matter. I'm sure you'll get through it eventually. In fact, if you're reading these notes, you probably have. Congratulations!

I've noticed that now the biggest criticism I've been getting is with the grammar, and while I can go back and correct spelling mistakes that are pointed out to me, this is not as easily done when people tell me I'm missing commas and I'm entirely unaware of where they should go where I'm not putting them. I'm sure it's more than just one or two instances, so clearly there's some general rule of comma placement that I'm just unaware of. Could someone who actually knows their grammar please point out what exactly I'm doing wrong, so I can avoid those mistakes in future? I'd appreciate it.

Since these Author's notes are practically a blog anyway, I also felt I should mention that I finished reading Pink Eyes, I thought it was pretty good, and I reccommend it if you haven't read it already. Even if you don't like either Fallout or Fallout Equestria, it's very accessible, and it's primarily a comedy, and I know you're all comedy fans if you're still reading this story, so you'll like it. It was actually hilarious.

Also got started on New Vegas. So far it plays basically like 3. I'm only as far as Primm right now, but I do have some overall thoughts on it so far. One, I like the abundance of colour and the fact that there seems to be actual civilisation in this game. Makes a nice change from the Capital Wasteland. Two, the faction aspect hasn't really come into play for me yet, but so far I'm liking it. Three, the karma system is FUCKED.

Are you serious?! I get no positive karma for saving a little town, but I get negative karma if I steal supplies from the fucking Powder Gangers?! They're practically fucking raiders! Why even have a karma system when you have the reputations anyway? This is such an easy fix. Stealing from the Powder Gangers results in a loss of reputation with the Powder Gangers. Simple! Why am I getting pinned as a bad guy because I wanted to use stimpaks belonging to a bunch of dead escaped convicts with an explosives fetish when I'm dying in the desert?!

Anyway, enough of my nitpicks. I got shit to do.

Next Chapter: Drinking, gambling and the Canterlot nightlife.

Interlude 2: On Your Head Be It

The first thing that the group of friends decided to do once they were done at the factory was get on their way to Canterlot. It had been a rough night. Since Explodey took so damn long to eat his plate of meat, everypony ended up sleeping at the factory, mostly laying their heads on various desks, though Mystic was small enough that he could curl up on one of the comfy chairs in the executives' meeting room.

It had been an awkward scene for Explodey the night prior when after hours chipping away at the load of cockatrice remains, he finally ascended the stairs and strode proudly into Gold Coin's office to announce that he was done and they could go, and found Gold Coin laying sprawled over his desk and Soft Spoken nearly falling out of his little plastic chair.

Well, after a whole day of ingesting animal flesh, Explodey had no intentions of sleeping at any time in the near future, so he had mostly spent the night walking in circles around the factory and messing with the machinery. In an astounding coincidence, that was also the same night that a saboteur from a rival corporation broke into the factory, with intentions of breaking all their sensitive equipment.

Or at least, that was the story he was going to give if anypony asked.

Fortunately, nopony seemed to have noticed yet, so Explodey merely had to say nothing and silently pray that the damage would not be noticed until after they all left. Today, he seemed to have gotten lucky, because they were already packing all the stuff they had taken to carrying around into convenient trunks and suitcases, and Chain Mail was loading them onto Spike's back outside the farmhouse. Soon, they'd be on their way.

On the other side of Ponyville though, a lone sniper was lining up his shots.

"Heh heh heh..." Night Shroud muttered under his breath, "I've got you now, Goldie...It took fourteen hours of waiting on this cloud, I've been shit on by twelve different birds in the past hour alone, and I'm fairly sure I caught a cold while up here, but I've finally got you in my sights..."

***

"Well...I guess this is goodbye again, son."

"Oh come on, dad," Gold Coin said dismissively, "It's not like you're never going to see me again or something. I come around to visit all the time!"

"It's been two months since you were last here," his mother interjected.

The business pony blinked in surprise.

"Two months? Really?"

"Ayep," said Cheddar Cross, "Two months, one week an' three days ta be precise."

"Wow. Well now I just feel like an asshole."

"Ahem."

The yellow earth pony turned around to see Soft Spoken waiting patiently behind him. He had once again suited up in the Rainbow Six armour, minus the helmet which he was holding by his side.

"Goldie? We should be on our way soon. Chain Mail tells me the princess is expecting us. We can't keep royalty waiting."

"Yeah, I suppose..."

Just over by the front door meanwhile, Sliske leaned casually against the farmhouse wall. At first, he seemed quietly bored, but then a small hole popped in the wood next to him, and a loud bang rang out across Ponyville. Sliske cringed from the sound of it, but was surprised to see when he opened his eyes again that nopony else seemed to have noticed it.

"Well, I'm sorry," Gold Coin said sincerely, addressing his parents again, "I had no idea it had been so long since my last visit. I've just been spending all my time at work these last few months, among...other things. I won't do that again. I promise I'll visit more often after this. I'll come down here again once this whole business with Second is resolved and I'll take a week off here. Help around the farm a bit. Like I did in the old days."

Toffee Apple and her husband had nothing more to say. Both just smiled appreciatively. Gold Coin's mother gave him a quick goodbye hug, and his father too. Cross just gave him a hoof shake. Sliske meanwhile walked over to try and warn his friend.

"I don't mean to intrude, but we may have a problem here..."

"Yes, just give me a minute, Sliske. I'm saying goodbye to my folks."

There was another deafening bang, and Sliske reflexively ducked down. An old oil lamp hanging from the porch of the farmhouse shattered spectacularly, and a particularly large shard of glass embedded itself in the ground just at Sliske's hooves. He stared incredulously at it, and then at the ponies around him. They were all continuing to saunter about and not do anything. Could they really not hear that?

An old mare walked out the front door of the house, carrying a plastic bag full of small bread rolls by her teeth. She trotted up to Gold Coin and laid them down in front of him.

"I buttered some of those special bread rolls that Sugarcube Corner does. I know they're your favourite."

"Aw, you didn't have to do that..."

Gold Coin tried to give his grandma a quick hug as well, but being a grandma she didn't let go, and he had to struggle for several minutes before she got the hint and released him. Afterwards, he was just left embarrassed by the fact that his elderly grandmother could still overpower him. Softy was right. He was badly out of shape. What happened to all that strength he suddenly had when he was fighting Host?

There was another shot, and Sliske looked up to see that one of the windows on the upper floor now had a large hole in one of the panes.

"Guysssss, thissssss issssss important..."

"In a minute, Sliske," said Softy.

He turned to Maple and gave her a confident smile.

"I guess I'll also be seeing you again soon," he said.

Sliske groaned loudly and trotted away back over to the porch.

"Once that business with Second is over, right?" the old mare asked.

"I'll be back the minute he's gone. You'll see. You will wait for me, won't you?"

Maple giggled like a schoolfilly.

"Oh, look at you Softy! Old Softy, now a big brave soldier going off to fight humans..."

"Heh," the stallion chuckled, "The suit's just for flying. I'm not a fighter."

"Oh, you know what I mean..."

Much to Gold Coin's revulsion, Maple and Softy exchanged a long, lingering kiss. In the background, Sliske jumped back as a milk bottle laying on the porch next to him exploded and its contents sprayed all over him. Soaked in milk, he angrily stomped over to the rest of the group again.

"Guyssssss! Ssssssseriousssssly! Pay attention to me!"

Maple and Softy broke apart.

"I'll be waiting. Hurry back soon, right Softy?"

The old stallion grinned and put on the cyan helmet, which clipped onto his suit automatically and started displaying the data in his vision. He saluted.

"Yes ma'am!"

He turned to his friend again.

"Are we all ready Goldie?"

The business pony picked up the plastic bag full of rolls.

"Ready."

Sliske jumped in front of them both.

"You two! Lissssssten! There issssss a-"

Another shot interrupted the alien. A bullet flew by and struck the ground not mere inches from Softy's right back leg, kicking up a bit of dust. Again, nopony seemed to notice except Sliske, and he ducked down and covered his head when he heard the shot. The other ponies were just looking at him like he was crazy.

"Sliske, I don't have time for you to start acting erratically again. I put up with your bizarreness most the time, but you just need to chill right now. You're acting all panicky."

"But-"

"No buts. Get on the dragon."

And despite Sliske's grumblings, two minutes later they were all on the dragon's back and waving goodbye to the Apples, as Spike and his passengers rose into the sky.

***

Night Shroud stood on a cloud on the other side of Ponyville and stared into the distance in a state of shock. He looked down at his weapon.

"What the hell was that?!" he demanded, "Did somepony fuck with the scope or something?!"

The former night guard dug into the pockets of his armour and pulled out the instruction manual that the pony running the Fort First armoury had given him. This thing had to have some kind of explanation for this weirdness.

"'Congratulations on your purchase of a SEC Mk. III sniper rifle, the best and finest in Secopolis-produced military ordnance and non-lethal target elimination'."

He paused and read that part back.

"'Non-lethal'?"

The contents page indicated that there was a section elaborating on the capabilities of the weapon. Impatiently, the bat pegasus skipped ahead to that page and read it out. He scanned it until he found what he wanted.

"'In the event that lethal rounds were mistakenly loaded, the SEC Mk. III has a backup target redirection spell built in, that will ensure that any ammunition type other than the tranquilisers made for use with the SEC Mk. III will automatically redirect to targets other than living creatures, such as hostile robots or possible shooting range targets, thus allowing for preservation of pony life with no fear of possible accidental death caused by discharge of incorrect ammunition from the SEC Mk. III.'"

Night Shroud blinked in disbelief, mouth hanging open. He looked back at the rifle.

"THIS IS A GUN DESIGNED BY HIPPIES!"

END

Author's notes:

Sorry. I just couldn't fit these scenes into the next chapter, and they needed to be in the story somewhere. They were very nearly in the last chapter, but that was already seventeen thousand words, and I didn't want to push it any further. The next chapter is also taking me longer than usual. Not due to any specific problem, I've just been having trouble getting around to it. For more on that, see my last blog, along with a quick summation of my thoughts on the finale and some ramblings about Fallout.

Seriously though, next chapter is Canterlot for realz. So look forward to all the craziness I promised last week, including an exclusive look into the fucked up little world inside Second's head.

Chapter 14: Pay Evil Unto Evil

"Howie, don't touch that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a fire. It hurts when you touch it."

"Does it hurt a lot?"

"Yes! Of course it hurts a lot!"

"...Like that time when I got my fingers caught in the door?"

"Far worse than that...No! Howie don't-"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"Oh shit! Fuck! Howie, I told you not to- Ah! Jesus! Look at that...Oh my God, dad is going to kill me! I TOLD YOU not to touch the fire!"

"WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Alright...Calm down! Stop crying! Fuck! Let's get into the kitchen and put your hand under some water and stop the burning...I think there's a first aid box around somewhere...I can probably get some soothing cream or a bandage or something...Whatever the fuck you use to treat burns...I don't know..."

"IT HURTS!"

"Yeah, I know it hurts, you little idiot! I told you it would hurt, but you still did it anyway!"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Alright, I'm sorry, just please shush for a moment and put your hand under the tap here..."

Screams subsided, and gave way to quiet sobbing.

"See, this is why you should always listen to me. Can you remember that in future Howie?"

The crying child nodded several times between wiping away tears.

"Always listen to the people in charge, because they know what they're actually talking about, and they know what's best. That's why you listen to your elders, and that's why you listen to your big bro."

"...I-I-I'm s-sorry..."

***

Lord Second, ruling Emperor of the New Human Empire, worshipped as a God by a secret society for over a thousand years, hailed by some as a hero and others as the ultimate evil, the man who threatened to bring the apocalypse down upon Equestria, promising an army of dead to march across the land and consume all in their path, who claimed that his words alone held the power to destroy nations, and whom had brought down Princess Celestia herself, staggered out into the street outside his palace, fell on his knees and puked into the gutter.

"Ugh..."

The human stared down into the drain at the strangely coloured liquid he had brought up. It was glowing.

"I'm never drinking again..." he swore.

He collapsed on the sidewalk and turned over onto his back, staring up at the cloudless blue sky.

"Fucking Equestria...I hate this place...I hate everything about this place...I fucking hate that my bodily fluids glow for no reason, I fucking hate that I don't have any skin, I fucking miss my fucking moustache, and I fucking miss shaving in the morning and having a shower in the evening and going to bed with my wife at night and seeing Anthony off to school and kicking his ass when he wouldn't get out of bed, and karaoke night on a wednesday...Fuck...I even miss that tramp who lived in the alley behind the coffee place..."

A familiar pegasus mare stepped into view. It was that knight he had encountered previously, the one who he talked to about Appleloosa. She looked down at him in concern, her head partially obscuring the sun and casting a shadow over Second's vision.

"Are you alright, my Lord?" she asked.

"No I'm fucking not..." the human replied, "I drank way too much last night after my mind decided to betray me, and I never got any sleep. I shouldn't be surprised. I haven't slept in a thousand years now, unless you count brief spells of unconsciousness, but I would have thought it'd come eventually..."

"Can I help in any way?" she asked.

"No. You cannot. Believe me, there is nothing that you can do for me that I am not perfectly capable of doing myself, and trust me when I say that none of them would make me feel better. Other than suicide that is, but that's assuming I can even die in the first place, and the Pantheon wouldn't want that, because then they wouldn't have a puppet to torment!"

"Are you sure? Maybe you'd like a drink of water or something?"

"Oh, go away you goddamn construct! Fucking mortals, honestly!"

Second rolled over onto his side again and was sick again. Against his will, he felt himself being dragged up from the pavement by the knight and tossed onto her back, where he laid limply.

"You are not well," she said, "I'm taking you to go see Dr. Apocalypse right away."

Second didn't even bother to question it. He sighed and resigned himself to whatever fate the narrative had in mind for him. Wherever this subplot was going, he didn't care. And the best part of all, was that sleep finally came. The slight bobbing up and down every time the knight stepped forward lulled him into a relaxed state, and as he closed his eyes, he drifted off into an uncomfortable, but nonetheless welcome sleep. Finally, Lord Second could dream.

And he had nightmares.

***

Princess Luna had come out to greet the returning heroes personally. While not normally awake in the daylight hours, her entire normal daily schedule had already been completely messed up, so her sleeping patterns changing around was nothing too unexpected. And it didn't seem to be affecting her ability to raise the sun and moon, so it obviously didn't matter much.

Chain Mail lead the group into the palace, being the only one of them with any kind of authority that the royal guards recognised. Most of them drew their weapons and watched warily when they recognised the telltale signs of Sliske's possession on Mystic Chant. Spike waited behind them patiently, unable to come inside the palace until the ponies got out of the way to allow him through.

Rather than meeting in the throne room or somewhere more formal, Luna had come outside and was waiting at the top of the steps leading up to the entrance. By her side was a colossal hulk of a minotaur, twice the size of the princess herself with hands that could have crushed a pony's skull like a grapefruit. He glared at them with barely disguised contempt.

Luna smiled at them as they approached. She didn't exactly look happy, but she seemed less miserable than when they had left Canterlot, even if a tad tired. Chain Mail gave a salute and everypony else bowed in respect, except for Sliske because he was being obnoxious right now.

"You may rise."

The ponies all did so. The princess addressed Chain Mail directly.

"Captain," she said, "How did your mission go? Did you establish peace with Second and the Americans?"

"Nope," he replied, trying to keep an even tone.

Luna frowned.

"Well, then what of our prisoners?"

"Escaped."

"Where is Private Broad Sword?"

"Dead."

"...Arcane Arts?"

"Also dead."

Now the poor pony just looked depressed.

"...Is there anything else I should know?"

"Second created a fully populated city bigger than Canterlot, and we're technically considered terrorists there. Also I'm a cyberpony now, and most of my organs are failing. I don't think it'll kill me, but it's damn itchy."

Well, that seemed to break her spirit. Luna's head drooped and she sighed sadly.

"I see."

The other ponies looked to each other in concern. Soft Spoken decided to voice what was on their minds.

"Your majesty?" he said, "We were all wondering...Since Broad Sword was an Element, and he's now dead...Will the Elements of Harmony themselves still work for us?"

Luna looked up at the sky.

"There are still six of you," she replied, "I was under the impression that you were all needed to operate them, but I could have been mistaken. We'd have to experiment with it first..."

"So what now?" asked Gold Coin, "What are we supposed to do next?"

"Hmm? Nothing. We can't do anything until Second makes his move. Blueblood has been diligently putting up more defences around Canterlot to protect it from attack, and we're currently searching for trustworthy and sufficiently powerful unicorns to put up a shield around the city, but other than that, there's not much we can do. We've been working overtime clearing up and repairing the royal archives, and the Elements of Harmony have been retrieved for you. We will give you some more thorough training in their use later on, if you're still willing."

"We may as well," said Gold Coin, "We've come this far, so why not finish the job?"

The others all murmured in passive agreement.

"Well, I won't keep you any longer," Luna said reluctantly as she turned and left, "Please, feel free to go about your business. Explore Canterlot for a while. See the sights. Get in some relaxation before you're needed again. Just be back in the palace by this evening. You'll all be provided rooms here for tonight."

The princess of the night disappeared back into the palace, followed by the angry looking minotaur, who everypony else was giving a wide berth. The guards and the Elements moved aside some more to make way for Spike, who crawled through the front door and followed the princess inside. Once they were alone again, Chain Mail immediately turned around and addressed Sliske.

"Sliske. You went to Broad Sword's house once, didn't you?"

"Yesssss. I did."

"Can you show me where it is?"

"Of courssssse."

"Why are you going to Broad Sword's house?" asked Gold Coin.

"He lived with his mother. Somepony has to tell the family. It might as well be me."

"Hey, if you're going, I'm coming too."

"Me too," Softy agreed.

"And don't leave me out either," Explodey added.

Chain Mail nodded appreciatively. Sliske turned and took the lead, and the group set off back down into the streets of Canterlot.

***

Ancient Tome knocked on the door to Sun Rise's room hesitantly. The racing pegasus had not emerged from that room since they arrived at Fort First, and he was beginning to get concerned. He wasn't exactly friends with him, but given that the Brotherhood of Man had almost halved in number since Second was released, he needed to keep a closer eye on its individual members. The last thing he needed was one of his ponies getting killed or going rogue.

Hell, he still had no idea what had happened to his auntie. Theoretically, she should have been among the prisoners that the Mages' Guild freed. Then again, last he saw her she was acting as a host for Sliske, and last he had seen Sliske he was using his son instead. Presumably she was free, but when he asked Lord Second about what had happened to her, he said they hadn't any clue where she went.

And that was another thing he had to worry about. His son was now playing host to some alien monstrosity and being corralled from place to place by the new Elements of Harmony, including that backstabber, Gold Coin. Did Sliske have some kind of grudge against his family or something?

He still regretted his knee-jerk reaction to that betrayal. If he had shot Gold Coin in front of his son, he probably never would have forgiven himself, but he also knew that Mystic still hadn't forgiven him anyway. And what's more, Gold Coin was still entirely unrepentant for destroying his life, betraying their order and kidnapping his only child.

Tome wondered about Gold Coin. If he encountered him again, could he actually kill him this time? He wanted to. True, he would have felt bad if he had shot Gold Coin back in the field, but that was only because that was something his son did not need to see. The actual act of killing him though, he didn't really see any problem with. After everything the business pony had done to ruin things for him, he would have no problem blasting his head off like Second did to Celestia.

All these thoughts took Ancient Tome several minutes to process, and after returning to reality, he realised how long he had been waiting for somepony to answer the door. He slammed it again, louder this time.

"Sun Rise!" he shouted, "I know you're in there! Answer the door!"

No response. Ancient Tome's horn glowed, and a field of magical energy covered the door and pushed against it. The door flung open with a crack as they broke the multiple locks holding it closed, and the old unicorn found the room dark inside. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. There was no light, so he used his horn to light the way and look around. He soon discovered the curtains and tore them open to let in some natural light, which only revealed the disgusting state of the room.

All the furniture was overturned and ripped. The miniature fridge that came with the room was hanging open, completely emptied out. Its contents spilled over the carpet, and most of it had been half eaten and then tossed away. Crushed food was abound in the room, and the carpet had a large collection of colourful stains. Worst of all though, there were real, actual rats crawling through some of the piles of discarded food.

"Oh Tomey..."

The old unicorn turned around just in time to dodge a shovel that slammed into the carpeted floor, sliced through it, and actually smashed through the wood underneath. A messy orange pegasus pony held onto the handle with his jaw, and looked angrily at his visitor through one organic eye and one burning red light.

He was a mess. The previously shiny chrome parts that had covered his back legs, right fore hoof and parts of his chest were now all dulled and grey, as if they had been ripped off and replaced with identical parts made of old iron. His artificial skeletal wing was bent horribly out of shape and the leathery material that covered it was ripped. His mane and tail were tangled and knotted, and both full of crumbs, and his natural coat was also dirty and seemingly covered with grease or oil.

What the hell had happened to him?

"...From now on...stay the fuck out of my room..." he said quietly.

"Sun Rise? Are you alright?" Ancient Tome asked in concern.

"Of course I am. I'm fine! Are YOU alright?!"

"Uhhh...Yes?"

"'CAUSE I DON'T THINK YOU ARE!" he screamed, "I THINK YOU HAVE A PROBLEM! SOME KIND OF MENTAL DISORDER THAT MAKES YOU BREAK INTO OTHER PONIES' ROOMS WITHOUT PERMISSION! BUT DON'T WORRY! I GOT YOUR CURE RIGHT HERE!"

He yanked the shovel out of the hole he had smashed through his floor and prepared to either stab Tome with it or launch it at him like a javelin. Either way, the unicorn caught both it and him in his magical field before he could try anything stupid.

"...Okay..." Tome said slowly, "...Clearly you're not alright. We need to get you to one of those unicorn doctors and see if they can perform some maintenance on you. I think all those cybernetics are leaking oil into your brain or something...Or at least that's the only explanation I can think of..."

Sun Rise struggled to escape the magical field.

"LET ME GO! LET ME GO NOW! GET ME OUT OF THIS OR I SWEAR I WILL DESTROY ALL OF YOU!"

"Then again, I'm not saying that demonic possession isn't a possibility..."

***

The old green mare shuffled over to the other counter and picked up the kettle in her teeth. She began to pour tea into a number of fragile flower-patterned cups, which she placed on tiny little saucers and added to a tray filled with a number of other identical cups, these ones filled with coffee. Over by the kitchen table, her guests waited patiently.

"Thank you, Mrs. Sword," said Soft Spoken as she put the tray on the table.

The old pegasus smiled weakly.

"It's Mrs. Smith, actually," she replied, "Sword Smith. I used to work a forge."

Soft Spoken and Explodey both took a tea from the tray, while the captain, Gold Coin and little Mystic all helped themselves to one of the coffees. Sliske had disappeared again once he was done reintroducing himself, and had not yet returned.

"...Mrs. Smith," Chain Mail began, "I want you to know that I'm sorry for what happened to your son. And I'm not just saying that because I have to. I really mean it. I liked Broad Sword. He was a loyal friend, and I owed him more than I could have ever repaid. I know how you must feel to have lost somepony so dear."

Mrs. Smith sighed and leaned on the table, looking up at the ceiling forlornly.

"Swordy always was a good boy," she said quietly, "Always came home on time. Never got into fights like his brothers. He made a real effort with his studies and I was so proud of him the day he told me he was applying to be a royal guard...After all the trouble we had when he was first born, he just seemed to handle everything so well..."

"...There was trouble?" asked Gold Coin.

Soft Spoken shot a look at the business pony, silently scolding him for prying, but Mrs. Smith seemed happy enough to tell the story.

"Well...Swordy was the only earth pony of the family. His father was a doctor from around here, while I lived up in Cloudsdale for the longest time. Both of us being pegasi, we moved up there when we were together, and our first two kids were too. Then Swordy came along, and by chance, thanks to some distant ancestry of my husband's, we suddenly had an earth pony foal to take care of. As you can imagine, a city made of clouds is not the most ideal place for that."

"Didn't you have unicorns to perform a cloud walking spell?" asked Softy.

"Well, of course we did. But it wasn't the most convenient thing in the world, having to go see somepony every three days to make sure your son wouldn't fall through the floor. And that still didn't solve the problem of all those sheer drops and holes in the cloud layer where a flightless foal could fall through. He couldn't have lived life in Cloudsdale. So we moved back down here nearer to my husband's family. It can't have been easy for him. The whole family being able to fly other than him. I think he felt left out, the poor dear."

So much of my life would have been easier if I was a pegasus like dad. I bet I wouldn't be afraid of heights if I could fly.

Mrs. Smith smiled as she remembered happier times.

"Oh, but he did try ever so hard to make up for it...Played for all the sports teams he could sign up for...You should have seen him when he was trying to earn his cutie mark. He spent hours at a time over at Crusaders with the other foals..."

The old mare sighed again and leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling as she occasionally sipped her coffee. The other ponies had nothing else to say, and so the room remained in silence for several minutes. Mrs. Smith seemed sadly resigned, as if she had expected something like this might one day happen, rare as it was that a royal guard actually died in the line of duty.

Then again, thanks to the Brotherhood of Man, several had. Mrs. Smith was not the only grieving mother in Canterlot right now. Those other guards that had been stabbed to death or burned to ash all had family and friends mourning them too.

A grim thought crossed Captain Chain Mail's mind as he realised that the last time Mrs. Smith had seen her son was before the Brotherhood's initial attack. The attack had been in all the papers the next day, and had mentioned that several guards stationed at the palace had died, but so soon after it had lacked all the details, like the names of the dead. And since he had been arrested, Broad Sword hadn't returned home the day after the attack...

That explained why she seemed to accept the bad news so quickly. She already thought her son was dead. All they had done was inform her that he died in different circumstances.

***

"...So when is the funeral?"

Spike crawled through the corridor on all fours to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. It was annoying, but necessary to get through the palace. The guards all stood as far to the side as possible to clear a path for him, and most of them saluted as he passed. Princess Luna and the strange minotaur kept ahead of him and led him through the palace towards the throne room.

"It's rather short notice, but we're doing it tomorrow," Luna replied, "With Second's attack occurring in only three days, and the very real possibility that Canterlot may sustain heavy damage during the attack, I want to get formalities out of the way as quickly as possible."

"Understandable," said Spike, "...So, who's coming?"

"I extended invitations to most of the nobles," Luna explained, "I expect that they'll all be there, if only to keep up appearances, though since most of them are relatives of ours, I'm sure that we'll have some genuine grievers. Blueblood and Cadance will definitely be there."

"Of course."

"A few invites have been sent out to a number of politicians and business ponies who she knew. A few foreign ambassadors, I think the griffin royal family will be in attendance, no reply back from Atlantis yet, but I doubt their chancellor would dare risk offending us by not showing up. As for the other races of Equestria, I really couldn't call. Though, I doubt that diamond dogs' leader will show up. He and 'Tia never got on well."

The three of them turned a corner and walked ahead towards the entrance hall that led into the throne room, Spike ducking down low to avoid the ceiling, which crept ever closer to the floor.

"...Is that all? What about...him?"

Luna looked back at him.

"I have no idea," she confessed, "He can be a difficult pony to contact. I'd like to think he'll show up for something this important, but he has missed bigger events before."

She turned back and continued to trot towards the entrance hall.

"I'm sure he doesn't do it on purpose."

"Oh, I don't believe he does. I never said I thought he'd deliberately miss it. I was just saying that if he didn't show up for Second's initial return, it might be hoping too much for him to show up to a funeral."

"That's true I suppose."

"Blueblood should be just through here. He's been dying to meet you properly. Those Trottingham types really respect the dragons."

"Which Blueblood is this?" Spike asked, "Blueblood the Four Hundredth? Blueblood the Eighteenth? Blueblood the Seventy Third?"

"I'm just as clueless as you. I stopped counting them centuries ago, and I think everypony else did too. I'm fairly certain it's a triple digit number, but I haven't checked or anything. I believe this Blueblood's father is aware of their numbers, but the one we're about to meet certainly isn't. Honestly, I don't think he'd even call himself prince most of the time if the title wasn't basically part of his name."

"That doesn't sound like a Blueblood to me. A lot must have changed in the past few hundred years if a Blueblood is actually humble."

"Oh, you have no idea..."

***

After almost quarter of an hour of sitting in the kitchen and slowly draining their teacups, eventually Chain Mail rose to his hooves again and indicated for the others to finish up as well.

"Come along, everypony," he said, "We'd best be off now. We can't stay here all day."

"Of course," Mrs. Smith agreed, "Don't let me keep you. Thank you all for coming to tell me in person. It means a lot to me. And tell that to Dr. Fluttershy when he comes back as well."

A ghost of a smile crossed Mystic Chant's face.

The five ponies all made their way back out to the front door and one by one marched outside. Just at the end of the front garden were skid marks on the road leading up to where Second had parked his car three days ago. In the back of Mystic's mind, Sliske wondered how exactly it was that Second tracked him to Broad Sword's house in the first place.

As the green pegasus stepped out into the garden to wave goodbye, Chain Mail suddenly remembered something and slapped his own face. He trotted back over to their host and drew a well-crafted sword from an additional scabbard he had attached to the outside of the Vader One. He presented it to her.

"This was Broad Sword's," he explained as he laid it in front of her, "It was all we could recover before...it...happened. I thought you should have it."

Mrs. Smith smiled at him and looked down at it. She picked it up and balanced it on one of her fore hooves so she could inspect it more closely.

"Heh...He was still using this old thing..." she muttered.

"...Did it mean a lot to him?" asked the captain.

The rest of the group had walked back over and gathered around now.

"It was his favourite. Given to him the day he enrolled in the royal guard. Present from Skies."

"Who's Skies?" asked Explodey.

"His ex. Colt from up in Cloudsdale. They didn't work out."

Explodey blinked in surprise.

"A colt?" he repeated, "Broad Sword was gay?"

"Yeah," Mrs. Smith replied, still distracted by the sword itself, "He didn't want anypony to know, but he was never really good at keeping secrets, bless him."

The unicorn took a moment to process that information. Then, a few occasions from the last few days played back in his head. He looked at his friend's actions and reactions, and suddenly those events were cast in a whole new light. Explodey just looked away from the others and stared into the distance absently.

"Oh, Swordy...Why didn't you ever say anything?"

***

Howard wandered through a dark corridor. There were rooms either side of him, all with locked doors. Shadows obscured most of the corridor, and the only light came from candles mounted on the walls. At the end of the corridor stood a human dressed in black, grinning at him from under a low tipped Stetson.

"Who are you?!" Howard shouted down the corridor.

The man opened a door and walked inside. Howard ran after him, but stopped when he realised one of the doors next to him was slightly ajar. He looked over to the door at the end of the corridor which the man in black had disappeared into. He really should have gone after him, but curiosity got the best of him, and the human pushed the closer door open and stepped inside.

He stared in wonder as he entered the room. It was a hallway. A massive ancient hallway, like an old English church, or what the Palace of Kings had been designed to look like. The walls all held mirrors, or portals, or gateways. What they were was not clear. All that could be seen through them was a swirling misty void.

Howard walked over to one of them and looked inside. He saw Celestia walk by, not seeming to notice him. She was in the void on the other side, and was looking around curiously. She turned, and saw him. For a moment, they stared at each other. Then she charged a spell. The human tried to grab the Reaper's Horn, but realised he didn't have it with him.

The fireball impacted with the mirror surface. For a moment, the portal went orange. Then it was back to showing the mist, and there was no Celestia on the other side.

Howard backed away from that particular mirror and went over to examine another. He peered inside, and Spike's giant green eye suddenly flashed into existence. The human jumped back in surprise, and the dragon on the other side flew away and vanished.

He turned around, and immediately ran over to another mirror on the other side of the room. On the other side, he saw Anthony. His back was turned for a moment, but then he looked over his shoulder and saw him. He faced his father.

"What have you done?" he asked darkly, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

Howard tried to reach out to him, but then looked at his hand as it turned red before his eyes, leaving the burned flesh he now had instead of skin. He noticed his clothes were different. He was in the navy blue duster again. He reached down to his side, and found that he had the Reaper's Horn once more. He stared at it for a moment, but then suddenly he lost half his vision. His eyeball fell out, and he caught it in his right hand, which he noticed now sported a bit of exposed bone on one finger and a mass of melted gold covering most of one of his knuckles.

He looked up at Anthony again.

"I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! IT WAS THE PANTHEON!" he shouted, "THEY DID THIS! IT WAS THEM! THE STRINGS ARE EVERYWHERE!"

Then he realised that there were indeed strings all over the room. They formed a huge web all around him that he had somehow not noticed before. Worst of all, there were strings attached to his legs and feet. Anthony disappeared into the aethers again, and the strings pulled his limbs in different directions. The human was suspended in the air above the mirror room.

The man in black floated up in front of him, and glared at him evilly. He had teeth just like Sliske, which gave him an almost predatory look. Seeing him up close and in slightly better light, Howard could see that the man in black was wearing a duster just like his own, aside from the colour. The newcomer reached forward and grabbed his victim by the cheek, pulling him and forcing him to look directly into his eyes.

"For shame, Second...Blaming all your troubles on invisible strings. Don't pretend this is not your fault. You're a murderer, and if you say you're not, then you're lying to yourself."

He took off his hat and placed it on his captive's head.

"This was all your idea. Don't try to bring your old rivals into this..."

Second spat in his captor's face.

"Fuck you, Nathan."

His saliva sizzled on contact with the man's face, and he laughed arrogantly.

"Spoken like an Elder God, that's for sure. You think I'm Nathan? You think Nathan's even responsible? Even alive by your time? You listening to your hallucinations again? Do you think the Pantheon is your worst enemy? Are you entertaining fantasies of coming up here and getting us back for it? Don't you find that a little at odds with what you actually believe happened to you?"

He looked into the human's remaining eye.

"Do you even know why you're in Equestria in the first place?"

Second gulped.

The floating man exploded into smoke, and everything went dark. The strings snapped, and Second fell to the ground in a heap. Echoing laughter filled the chambers, and all the mirrors shattered at once, spraying glass everywhere.

The human climbed to his feet again, coughing loudly and trying to keep his balance. He looked ahead and saw one mirror remaining. He walked over to it.

At first, it was misty on the other side, just like before, but as he approached it, the mist turned to smoke, and he could see flickers of orange behind it. He stopped just in front of the mirror. A face appeared in the darkness. It was the face of what could only be a demon, like the old classical paintings portrayed them. It had ram's horns and was red all over, dirty in places, like it had just crawled out of a coal mine, and there were bits of flesh missing from its neck and cheek, which allowed him to see through into its mouth. The lips were burned away, exposing his yellow teeth and black gums, and his eyes were just two dark orbs, with a faint yellow light in their darkest depths.

The beast roared at him. Unlike with the previous mirrors, Second did not back up or run away. He stood still, face to face with the demon. It glared at him. He stepped forward and place a hand up to the mirror. It was stopped by some invisible wall. He leaned in, so that he was looking directly into the dark pits of the demon's eyes.

"Hello there..." Second said quietly, "You seem awfully familiar...Have we met?"

The ground shook. There was the sound of an explosion behind Second. His single remaining eye widened in fear, and the demon gave him a discomforting smile. Everything became warmer, and brighter. Second screamed as fire consumed him again. The demon began to laugh at him mockingly. And as he watched his own arms burn away until there was nothing left but his bones, he realised that something was different.

The fire was rainbow coloured.

Second woke up.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"My Lord! You're awake! What-"

Second jumped forward and punched the doctor in the face.

"STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT WHAT'S BEST! YOU ARE A FUCKING LIAR!"

He grabbed a nearby wooden chair and brought it down on the nameless unicorn doctor, smashing it over his head and causing him to fall unconscious. The knights around the room stepped back in fear, and the doctors all went running. Second turned around and put a fist through the window above his bed, shattering it completely. Before anyone could even ask what the hell was wrong with him, the human jumped out through the window and disappeared from view.

***

The bartender raised an eyebrow when he saw a young colt no older than nine sitting on a barstool along with the other four ponies. Surely they weren't expecting him to serve a child? There were laws against that, right? Yet, they were all looking at him as if he was being rude by not asking him what he wanted too. Who were these ponies? Why weren't they being responsible adults? In fact, wasn't that stallion the new captain of the royal guard?

He fully expected that this was some kind of sting operation. He'd probably get arrested the moment he gave that colt a drink. Still, he hadn't actually asked anything yet. Probably because those huge fake teeth of his were making it difficult to talk. Still, the way the colt was looking at him was unnerving.

"Are you going to assssssssk me what I want or not?" said the colt.

What was the deal with this kid?

"Look here, sonny-"

The bar pony suddenly choked as a blue magical field appeared around his neck.

"If you sssay what I think you're going to ssssssay, I will crawl insssssside your head and keep breaking thingsssss until you think you're a giant octopusssss named Leonard."

The barkeep looked in desperation over to the captain. Chain Mail just shrugged.

"...Wouldn't...dream of it..." he gasped.

Sliske released the pony.

"Ssssame assss the otherssssss."

The barkeep walked off to go get a glass for his strange new customer. Sliske settled down again, but Soft Spoken just looked at him in concern.

"I didn't know aliens drank," he commented.

"Of coursssssse we do. We take over all functionssssss of a body, sssssso we have all the requirementsssss of that body. Food, sssssleep, everything. My sssspeciesssss even reproduccccesss ussssing our hosssst bodiesss."

"No kidding?" said Gold Coin.

"No, I knew you needed to drink. I just didn't think an alien would be into alcohol," Softy clarified.

"Normally, we would not. However, I've taken enough pony hosssstssss in my time to get attached to ssssome of your creationssss. Magic issss another of my favouritessss. We had magic back on Zarlow asssss well, but it wasssssn't nearly sssso refined."

"What was that you said about reproducing through your hosts?" asked Gold Coin again, "How does that work exactly?"

"It'sssss not that complex. Two Ssssakrassssssi meet in the wild-"

"Sakrassi?" Chain Mail repeated.

"-That issssss my ssssspeciesssss' name. It'sssss Zarlan for Pessssssstilencccce."

"That's a stupid name."

"Deal with it, mortal. Asssssss I wassss sssssaying, we reproduccccce through the ussssssse of hosssstssss. The teeth and eyesssss that our hossssstsssss gain when we usssse them allow ussss to identify each other, and in the breeding ssssseassson we are able to channel magical energy through the mutated featuressssss to create infant Ssssssakrassssssi, which usssssually ressssssultssssss in the death of at leasssssst one of the parentssssss. Fortunately, Ssssssssakrasssssi are born in batchessss of nine or ten, sssso our numbersssss never ssssuffer from thisssss."

"Did that happen with you? One of your parents dying I mean?" asked Gold Coin.

"Here'sssssss a better quesssssstion, do you remember what the room temperature wasss at the time you were born?"

"Uhhh...No?"

"Of courssssse not. Becaussssse how are you ssssupposssssed to remember that? Now you have an idea of exactly how sssssstupid that quessstion sssoundsss to me."

"You're joking, right?" asked Softy, "You honestly don't even remember if either of your parents died?"

"Being a parent meansssssssss an entirely different thing on Zarlow. They don't ssssstick around to raisssssse their ssssspawn. They create ussssss and leave. If they're feeling particularly generousssssss, they might catch sssssssome sssssssmall animalsssssss to give to usssss asssss hossssstssss. If they're feeling particularly cruel, they'll give ssssssome of ussssss bugssss and ssssssssome of usssssss birdsssssss and watch asssss the newborn Ssssssakrasssssi eat their ssssiblingsss."

The rest of the group just stared at him.

"Your species is a special kind of fucked up," said Gold Coin.

It was then that Sliske realised the barkeep had been standing right in front of him levitating a beer glass for the past five minutes, just listening to them talk. Upon noticing this, the alien used his own magic to take the drink off him.

"Thanksssss."

The barkeep slinked off again.

"Explodey, you haven't said anything in a while," Chain Mail pointed out, "What's your take on this?"

The unicorn looked down at his drink.

"...I have to go."

"What? Go where?"

Explodey didn't answer. He just got up and walked out of the bar, leaving his drink behind. Now everypony was staring at the door instead of Sliske.

"...Well that was rather abrupt," said Softy, "Did we do something to offend him?"

"Explodey's a little weird," Chain Mail replied, "Sometimes he can get over a tragedy by remembering to laugh, but sometimes the smallest things will set him off into a downward spiral. He didn't start crying when he discovered his whole life was a lie, or when Broad Sword was murdered in front of him, but I'm told he bawled like a baby when he showed up in Celestia's court to perform a demolition job for her and she told him he wasn't needed. I sometimes wonder what it's like in his head..."

Sliske shuddered at the thought.

***

On the highest level of the Cathedral, a lone human laid back on one of the platforms circling one of the spires. It was a little stone walkway, just big enough for him to sit on without falling off. His legs dangled over the side and he leaned back against the spire wearily. In his right hand, he clung onto a SEC. Mk. III, which he swung back and forth idly. Every once in a while, he'd bring the rifle up to eye level and look through the scope, and take a few shots at ponies out in the city.

The tranquiliser dart hit some beauracrat over in the finance district. Second smiled for a moment and scratched another notch onto a tally he had made on the spire behind him. He looked back through the scope again as some other civilians gathered around his last victim's unconscious body and looked around them in fear. He hit a mare in a smart business suit right between the eyes, and she quickly fell down in a heap too.

"Head shot," Second said to himself.

He raised the rifle again and looked across the city, searching for a better target. He wondered if he could find any of the Brotherhood of Man from up here. He had decided since he started this game that they were worth bonus points. He was interrupted in the middle of this thought when a giant pair of eyes appeared in his vision.

"AAAAAAH!"

He almost fell off the platform in surprise. He dropped his rifle, which fell down to a lower part of the roof. He reached out and grabbed for it helplessly, but could only flail about in protest as he lost yet another gun. He sighed in acceptance, and turned his attention to the pony who had interrupted him. By chance, it was that same mare who kept showing up recently.

"What now?" he asked.

"I was told to come and see if you were alright, my Lord," she explained.

"Of course I'm alright. I was having great fun until you just interrupted me. Go get my sniper back."

The knight saluted dutifully and fluttered down to go get it. Second turned around to pull his whole body back onto the stone platform and laid back on it, putting his hands behind his head like he was sunbathing. The mare soon returned with the SEC Mk. III, which she laid down next to him.

"Thanks," the human said begrudgingly.

"Why did you attack the doctor when you woke up?" she asked, continuing to hover next to him.

"Because I thought he was going to stab me."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he's a pony."

Second stared up at the sky and ignored his visitor a while. Eventually, the knight got tired of hovering in place and landed on the stone platform with him.

"Did you have bad dreams or something?"

"I don't see what business it is of yours. Who the hell are you, trying to talk to me? Have you forgotten that I am Lord Second, and that you are supposed to be my subordinate who obeys my every order without question and does not interfere with my business? Because what you've been doing so far violates those regulations. I'm not happy about this arrangement."

"You created the Knights of Man to act within your best interests," the mare replied, "That was one of the fundamental aspects of our design. What I'm doing by badgering you about these minor details is nothing short of my purpose in life."

The human muttered something under his breath that sounded like "fucking ponies..."

"So what are you doing now then? Do you just plan to stay up here shooting ponies for the rest of the day?"

"I'll stay up here shooting ponies until the next ice age if I want to. I like the sun. It's warmer up here and there's a surprising lack of wind. I'm just going to stay here and work on my tan for a little while, and if the sun goes away too soon then I'll just bring it back up again and extend the day for however long I want to."

The knight raised an eyebrow.

"You can do that?"

"Probably."

Still laying on his back, Second grabbed the SEC Mk. III again and aimed it out into the distance. He didn't look through the scope this time, instead just holding it out in front of him as if it were a handgun. He pulled the trigger, and in the distance he saw a pegasus in flight suddenly fall down above the park.

"Woah," he said, "No-scoped. That's worth three points at once."

Getting back into the game again, the human sat up and crossed his legs. His back to the wall again, he looked through the scope once more and searched out his next target.

"Really though, what happened back there?" his visitor pressed, "Whatever it was, it was really bad. You seemed afraid of something."

Second looked sideways at the knight. She was beginning to annoy him.

"I'm Lord Second. I fear nothing."

"Really? Absolutely nothing?" the knight asked sceptically.

He turned his attention back to the city. Another tranquiliser knocked out a pony handing out pamphlets outside of the aquarium.

"All the things I ever feared already came true. There's nothing left for me to be scared of."

"You sure seemed scared of something back there," the mare said sympathetically, "Come on. Tell me what is was? Please?"

The human sighed and put down his weapon.

"Out of everything in this world, I'm not really scared of anything anymore. Except for one thing."

He turned to look at her.

"Ever since I was a little boy, I have always been completely, utterly terrified of fire."

He held up one of his burnt hands.

"So as you can imagine, I've not been having the best time in Equestria."

He looked back out across the city. In the distance, he could still see the ruined remains of the Mages' Guild, now just a mass of black stuff in the middle of a large patch of grass.

"You, what's your name?"

"It's-"

"Never mind. I don't care. Listen, I got a job for you."

"Yes, my Lord?"

"The SPAS-12, which you primitives like to call the Reaper's Horn, is buried under some rubble out over there. I want you to go get it back for me. It holds some sentimental value to me, and I'd rather not lose it."

"Of course, my Lord!"

As the mare flew off in the direction of the ruins of the Mages' Guild, Second laid back against the wall again and went back to looking at the sky. A little puff of smoke on his left shoulder indicated the return of one of his many hallucinations. He turned to see Ambition looking at him with a strange solemnity. On his right shoulder, another figure emerged, and Second saw his Conscience, wearing crutches.

"We know about the dream, Howard," said Conscience, "And you're in trouble right now."

"You think?" the human replied sarcastically.

"No, we're being serious," Ambition replied, "No more fucking around. You've got to straighten up and deal with this right now."

"Deal with what?"

"Elder Gods!" Conscience snapped, "Your whole life is being ran by your old co-workers up there, and they're jerking you around even now! Don't you dare listen to what that damn chimera said when he had you on the strings. You can fight the Pantheon of B. They're not all powerful. As long as you can act freely while you're off screen, you can act against them. Set up their downfall. Make your escape and find a way to bring them down to your level, or else rise to theirs."

"But how?!" Second demanded, "How am I supposed to beat them?! They're literally omnipotent!"

"You force yourself outside their view. They can't control you constantly. There will be moments where you will be off-screen. Seize those moments. Throw a spanner into the works of your own plans, contradict yourself in dialogue. Say one thing will happen, and then ensure that something completely different does. Get the other characters in on the action. And most of all, ensure that the camera stays off you. You do that, you'll fuck their story, and if you fuck their story then you fuck them."

Second rubbed his chin in contemplation.

"...Television must still have restraints..." he mused, "...So if I...Could I?"

"Have you got an idea Howard?"

"...I do, but I'm hesitant to act on it. Actually, I have a few ideas, some better than others. I think I'm going to give the most reasonable ones the first try. I've got a plan, but it'll have to wait until my defeat in Canterlot. It'll take a lot of coordination, and I'll need to do some fast talking and even faster thinking to improvise a situation where it would work, but I think it could. If it does work though, I could take down all my enemies at once. The Pantheon, the Elements, Luna, Nathan, and every single other fucker back in the human world who had a hand in this. All gone."

"That's the kind of talk I like to hear," Ambition said with a grin, "Okay then, so what have you got in mind?"

***

The remaining ponies all exited the bar together. Sliske retreated back into Mystic's mind, leaving only a slightly intoxicated child in his wake. Soft Spoken didn't drink much, but it was actually Chain Mail who was the most sober. And ironically, also in the worst condition.

"Fuck..." the captain moaned, "How could I forget I don't have a stomach anymore?"

"...Are you going to be alright?" asked Gold Coin.

"I think I'm dying."

"Of course you are. It could never be something simple, could it?"

"Goldie, this is serious," said Chain Mail, "This is incredibly pain-"

His eyes glazed over.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh...That's the stuff..."

The cyberpony began to sway back and forth, his face nothing but a dreamy and distant smile. Gold Coin waved a hoof in front of his face.

"I think we lost him," he reported.

Soft Spoken slapped his forehead.

"I suppose we should get him back up to the castle then..." he sighed.

Chain Mail sprung to life again.

"Castle? What castle? I don't want to go back to the castle. The castle is where I work. Castle bad. Work bad. I don't like work. It's boring and nothing happens all day, except when I get kidnapped and lose all my organs. That was fun! Let's do it again! Let's go paint the town! I don't even care that I don't have a stomach! I'm going to drink ALL the alcohol in this city and then piss it out again as rocket fuel!"

The captain laughed maniacally and charged off without them. Mystic, Softy and Gold Coin just stood and stared at the slowly shrinking pony in the distance. He was fast.

"We should really go and stop him," said Gold Coin.

"Yep."

"Ummm...Softy?"

Both the older ponies turned their attention to Mystic.

"I know that now might not be the best time...but Sliske says that we should stop by Crusaders while we're in Canterlot and get my cutie mark registered and interpreted, since we don't actually know what it means."

Soft Spoken groaned.

"It's one distraction after another, I swear..."

"Look, I'll go deal with Chain Mail," Gold Coin suggested, "Why don't you go take Mystic to get this done? Crusaders is only open for another few hours anyway."

"So...are we going?" asked Mystic.

"Yes, we're going," Softy replied, "We've got nothing better to do, so we might as well get this out of the way. Goldie, I'll see you back at the palace later."

"'Kay. See you then."

***

"YOUR BONES WILL SNAP, YOUR BLOOD WILL FLOW, YOUR FLESH WILL BURN, AND I WILL BE THERE WHEN IT HAPPENS, TRAMPLING YOU INTO THE DUST!"

Sun Rise struggled against his restraints like a mad pony. It was frightening just how insanely angry he was at that moment. For now, he was held in place by multiple straps and harnesses, wings bound and all four legs shackled to the wall behind him in the cell in Fort First prison. It was the best Dr. Apocalypse could come up with until they could move him to the Mages' Guild's secret base under the museum.

"What is wrong with him?" asked Iron Hoof.

"I'm going to be brutally honest with you," Dr. Apocalypse said ominously, "I haven't the faintest fucking clue. If he had been given brain implants, I would have said that they were malfunctioning and causing his condition. He hasn't though. He's devolved into this state all on his own."

Frosty Morning looked through the bars of the cell door at the restrained pegasus, who thrashed about, snarling at her. She shook her head.

"Well, what can you do?" she asked, "There's got to be some way to help him?"

"Sure. A lethal injection," Apocalypse replied, deadly serious.

"You are not going to kill another of my ponies," Ancient Tome said sternly, "Not after everything we went through to keep him alive. You find a way to fix his brain right now!"

"I'm telling you, there's nothing I can do! If you want, I'll open his head up and poke around a bit, but I warn you, I'd just be bashing rocks together. I wouldn't be able to actually do anything other than stab random squishy bits until I get a reaction."

"Well then give him fucking therapy, bonesaw!" Tome shouted, "How hard can it be?! He's not got some super rare condition or anything! He's just a bit violent! This shouldn't be that difficult to solve!"

In the cell, Sun Rise began frothing at the mouth.

"I'm not a therapist!"

"No, you're a terrible fucking doctor!"

A tan coloured pegasus walked through the doorway.

"What the hell are you all shouting about in here?" asked Bullseye.

"This pony should not be allowed to have a medical license!" Tome shouted.

"I don't have a medical license. I was created with basic medical knowledge already in my head, and I just started doing the job."

"This pony should not be allowed to live, period," Tome amended.

"Tome, shut up," said Bullseye, "Doctor, what the fuck is going on in here?"

"Sun Rise went crazy, these idiots are demanding I fix him, and I have no idea what happened, so I can't."

"Then why haven't you called Lord Second in yet?"

"What could Lord Second do?" the unicorn asked.

"What can't he do?" Ancient Tome replied, "Are you implying that this problem is somehow beyond Lord Second's abilities?"

"What?! No! I meant-"

"I know what you meant. Commander Bullseye? Could you contact Lord Second for us?"

The pegasus glared at Ancient Tome, and then looked over to the writhing creature in the cell next to them that used to be Sun Rise.

"I'll see if I can find him."

***

Crusaders Inc.

Founded many years ago by a trio of ponies, the business was one based around that which foals dedicate most of their early life to; self discovery. While very often, cutie marks would just come in their own time to those who wait, many ponies don't get them until much later. Often, so called 'blank flanks' were mocked by their peers and became outcasts, and this was a social prejudice that had lasted throughout the ages.

Sure, just about everypony grew out of it quickly enough, but it was a staple of childhood that those without their cutie marks would get teased by those who did have them. And sometimes, the problem persisted past childhood. Though cases were rare, some ponies still managed to go their whole lives without discovering what made them special.

Not anymore though! This was the problem that Crusaders was there to help with. Those who had yet to discover what made them special could always rely on Crusaders to point them in the right direction. Personality and skills analysis often revealed the general field in which a given pony's destiny lied, and their massive facilities allowed young ponies to try out a range of different activities likely to lead to the discovery of a cutie mark, while also allowing them to socialise with other foals their age and make friends.

"Yes, I'm afraid we don't know what his talent is exactly," Soft Spoken explained to the receptionist, "That's why I wanted to see an interpreter too."

Given the strange circumstances of how he obtained his mark, Mystic Chant's talent was far from obvious. Since letting Crusaders know what his talent was exactly was the entire point of registering in the first place, this was a problem.

Fortunately, as a secondary service, Crusaders also had specialists who existed to help determine what existing cutie marks meant. It was not uncommon for ponies to discover that they had gained their cutie mark without realising exactly what it meant, and still being unsure of what their special talent was. Also frequent users of this service were older and disillusioned ponies who had grown bored of their job and role in life and couldn't help but wonder if there was something more to their special talent that they were missing.

"I can book you in for an appointment right now if you want? You'd have to wait for half an hour first though."

Having been a member of the Crusaders for a long time, Mystic Chant was required to return here now that he had his cutie mark at long last, and have it registered. Since most foals were members of Crusaders at some point in their lives, this meant that just about everypony in Equestria had their cutie mark and related talent listed on their records, which helped immensely when young ponies just coming of age found themselves in need of a job, or when businesses found themselves short of staff and in need of new employees.

"Yes, get us an appointment please. We're only in Canterlot for a short while, so I want to get this done today, if possible."

"Of course, sir. Please proceed to the waiting room."

***

Gold Coin poked his head through the door to the bar and looked around inside, finally spotting the captain over by the bar, trotting in place impatiently while waiting for a drink. The place was not dissimilar to the bar they had left before, except this place also doubled as a restaurant. It was more brightly lit and had a very diverse patronage. Over in one corner, a few ponies with gambling-themed cutie marks and a single diamond dog played cards around a large round table, drinking and chatting together.

"Captain? Are you alright?" Gold Coin asked as he approached his crazed friend.

"Never better! I'm full of ENERGY! I've got ADRENALINE! I'm feeling PSYCHED! I just wanna go out and PUNCH SOMETHING, but I'm a royal guard so I'm gonna do it while DEFENDING THE LAW! AWWWWWWW YEAAAAAAAAAH!"

He slammed his hoof against the floor for emphasis, and the metal thudded loudly against it, even through the red carpet around the bar.

"...I'll take that as a no. That suit's pumped you full of too much crap. We need to get that thing off you somehow. Put you through detox. This can't be healthy."

"HEALTHY?! Goldie, that's a silly idea! This thing was built in SECOPOLIS, world capital of TECHNOLOGY! Its drugs are even BETTER! Far from UNHEALTHY, these are guaranteed to DOUBLE my lifespan if I get a constant SUPPLY!"

"Sir, could you please stop that shouting?" asked the bartender, "It's making everypony nervous."

"I APOLOGISE, my GOOD SIR."

The pony behind the bar walked away to comb his mane back to into its original style.

"You need to fucking stop," said Gold Coin, "If there's any way you can stop that thing from constantly administering drugs to you, then do it. You're acting all crazy right now."

"CRAZY?! ME?! That's NONSENSE Goldie, why just the other DAY, I was-"

The captain stopped, and his eyes dilated. He was completely still.

"...What the hell...?" the earth pony muttered.

"Interesting friend you've got there."

Gold Coin turned to see one of the gamblers from the corner table collecting drinks with magic. He was a cobalt blue unicorn with a red mane, and a cutie mark of a pair of die.

"Don't even get me started. I've only known him for a few days, and already I've somehow become his caretaker."

"Ain't it always the way? My name's Easy Eight."

"Gold Coin."

"Gold Coin, eh? Sounds like another gambler to me."

"Not a regular player, but I don't mind a game."

"Don't ya now? Why not come join us for a round of poker?"

"Sure thing."

***

"Perfect."

Lord Second held up the Reaper's Horn and looked it over. It had been damaged in the explosion, but the weapon was still functional. It probably needed some repairs and cleaning, but it was fine nonetheless. Its durability was actually rather impressive. Second himself had fared far worse.

"You did good," he said to the pegasus mare.

She smiled in appreciation.

"I'll see to it that you're rewarded for your efforts. What actually was your name?"

"Silver Vein."

Second cocked an eyebrow.

"'Silver Vein'?"

"As in a vein of silver. Like what you mine for."

"...If you're a knight, why is your name related to mining?"

"I dunno. You named us."

"No I didn't."

"Then how were we named?"

"How the fuck should I know?! I just wrote down a description of Secopolis and its citizens on paper and you all popped up! I didn't pen a backstory for each individual pony in this goddamn city! Do you know how much time that would take?"

Silver shrugged.

"Well, whatever you did to make us is no concern of mine. I'm just here to guard stuff."

"Yeah. You get back to that. I'll send a pony to arrange something for you later. For now, just give me some time alone with my gun."

Silver Vein saluted again and dived down out of sight, leaving Second alone on his perch again. He turned the shotgun over in his hands and ran his hand along the barrel.

"So many memories..." he thought to himself, "I still remember how much of a bitch you were to smuggle into Canada that one time..."

"Sir!"

From one pegasus underling pestering him to another, here came Commander Bullseye.

"What?!" Second shouted, "What could possibly be so important that you have to interrupt me again?!"

Bullseye, unlike most, was not dissuaded by Second shouting. If he felt that what he had to say was important, he could remain resolute even in the face of an angry human, and he did this now.

"It's High Priest Sun Rise, sir," he explained, "He's gone crazy, and we need you to fix him!"

"So what? The Brotherhood of Man have always been crazy fucks. What makes this Sun Rise guy any different?"

"He's gone...feral...sir."

"Feral? Sure. Why the fuck not? Stranger things have happened. Now, why is this my problem?"

"Dr. Apocalypse can't do anything to help. He says that you should be able to use your powers to fix it instead."

"So now you believe I can heal the sick and insane just by touching them? That's Jesus you're thinking of, not me."

Bullseye gave him a confused look.

"Who's Jesus?"

Second sighed.

"Never mind. Let's just go deal with this..."

***

Soft Spoken leaned over one of the low tables in the waiting room and read one of the magazines laying open in front of him. He was skimming a health article, looking to see which harmless food the so called 'experts' had decided was bad for him this week. This time it was broccoli. He sighed and shook his head periodically, which usually indicated he had read something particularly stupid.

Mystic meanwhile just sat in the chair next to him and looked around the room. There wasn't much to keep him occupied, so he just settled for staring at the paintings on the walls. Even they couldn't keep his interest though. Even the most interesting one was just a splattering of colours and shapes without meaning or direction, though an art student could no doubt spend hours pondering its meaning and write a thesis on its chaotic nature.

The little unicorn perked up when a mare walked in with two other foals, one colt and one filly. They looked like they were twins, both being cream coloured earth ponies like the older mare who they came in with. They were also both blank flanks, hence why they were at Crusaders he guessed.

"Hi!" the filly said cheerfully as the mother took a seat in the corner.

Mystic jumped off his chair and went over to say hello.

"Hi! I'm Mystic Chant! What're your names?"

"I'm Melody! This is my brother Rhythm!"

"'Sup," said Rhythm.

"I haven't seen you here before," Mystic commented.

"Yeah, it's our first time here," Melody admitted, "Mom said we should sign up to find our special talents together. We kept trying to find them on our own, but mom says twins often have talents related to each other, so we both had to come."

"Hey, you already have your cutie mark!" Rhythm pointed out.

"Yeah! I know! It showed up two days ago. We just came back here to register it."

"Woah...Cool!" said Melody, "Ummm...What is it? Is it uh...like a puff of smoke?"

"It's a Sliske!" Mystic answered proudly.

Over by the table, Softy looked at Mystic worriedly. He pretended to still be paying attention to his magazine, but secretly prepared to jump in at a moment's notice.

"You mean like the alien from those old mare's tales?" asked Melody.

"Yep!"

"Yeah right!" Rhythm said sceptically, "It's probably just a storm cloud! I bet your special talent is weather or something!"

"But he's not a pegasus!" Melody pointed out.

"It is too of Sliske!" Mystic argued.

"Is not!" shouted Rhythm.

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

Two deep green serpentine eyes and several massive rows of sharp teeth pressed almost against Rhythm's face.

"Issssssssssssss too..."

Rhythm pissed himself on the spot and ran out the door screaming. Melody stared in amazement for a moment before a huge smile spread across her face.

"Wow! That was awesome! How did you do that?! Can you teach me?!"

The mother immediately left and ran outside after Rhythm. Softy bolted out his chair and followed after them both to help. Sliske meanwhile turned to face Melody and took a bow as he returned control to Mystic.

"All in the pressssssssentation."

***

Chain Mail snapped back to reality with an unpleasant suddenness. As the drugs wore off again, he felt dazed and confused, and nearly lost his balance and fell. He stopped himself just in time to avoid smashing his face against the table where he now found himself sitting. Gold Coin was next to him, holding a few cards in his hooves.

He stared at the cards for a moment. He really admired ponies who could actually do that. He had never got the hang of it.

"Ah, you're back again," said Gold Coin, "Are you back to normal now?"

"I...think so," the captain answered, "I don't even know what happened. I was really out of it for a while there..."

"So, what's your story?"

Chain Mail looked up at the source of the voice, and saw that it was a diamond dog in a purple vest. He was sitting between two other ponies, one a white unicorn mare with a weirdly coloured mane and the other a mauve earth pony stallion.

"What do you mean 'my story'?" he asked.

"You know what I mean," the dog replied in a gruff voice, "Everypony has a story. About who we are, what we do, how we came to be here...stuff like that. I'm sure you have one too."

Chain Mail looked over to Gold Coin.

"Goldie, who are all these ponies?"

"Friends. We're playing poker. The dog is Remus."

Remus offered his hand.

"Pleased to meet you."

Chain Mail held out a hoof and shook his hand.

"Pleasure."

"So then, Captain Chain Mail is it? What's your story?"

Chain Mail rolled his eyes.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," the dog challenged.

"I'm one of the new Elements of Harmony. As part of my job, I was expected to kill Lord Second, the human of legend. I went to a city in the Everfree which was built three days ago, had a sword fight with him, got badly injured, and next thing I know shit was blowing up and I'm suddenly a cyberpony. We got out, and then headed here, except for one day where we had to wait for my friend Explodey to return to normal size because he's got a healing factor that allows him to recover from any injury, but for some reason he came back small this time."

"Oh yeah, I've been there," said the white unicorn mare, nodding sagely.

Chain Mail narrowed his eyes at her.

"Of course you have."

"That actually is a pretty interesting story," said another pony.

The captain looked to the side and saw that the other pony was a cobalt blue stallion with a cutie mark of a pair of die.

"Wait," said Chain Mail, "Do you actually believe me?"

"Yeah, of course we do," he replied, "We've all seen some crazy shit before. You're not the only one on a grand, epic adventure you know."

"Really?"

"Yeah! Like, take me for instance. I'm actually a time traveller from the distant future, and I came back to collect several pieces from an ancient tablet that was scattered throughout history in an attempt to restore the space-time continuum."

Chain Mail stared at the Gold Coin's new friend for a moment, but then the mauve pony sitting next to Remus interrupted.

"I'm the last living descendent of an old family of nobles," he explained, "And I'm travelling across the land seeking out the ancient vault where my ancestors hid their greatest treasure, which I need to retrieve before I can prove my legitimacy and claim my place among Canterlot royalty."

"I'm actually over six hundred years old," said Remus, "And I've been journeying to seek out an order of monks who might know what caused my unexplained immortality.

"The government runs a secret bioweapons program," added another pony at the table, "And I'm working with a retired cop and a sassy female sidekick to try and uncover the truth behind their conspiracy."

The captain almost jumped out of his seat when a black unicorn with an eye patch leaned over from the table behind him to join in the conversation.

"The changelings are having a civil war, and I'm a no-nonsense mercenary type who's working with the rebels to assassinate key individuals in the enemy's ranks, some of whom are undercover here in this very city."

Then a pegasus mare from another nearby table chimed in.

"I'm the only survivor of a devastating attack on my home town by a vicious gang of criminals. I've dedicated my life for the past twenty years to hunting down and murdering every member of that gang."

Then other ponies around the bar started standing up and shouting out their bizarre stories.

"I am also a time traveller," declared one, "but I came here from exactly two thousand and five years ago, just after Nightmare Moon was first banished. I've only been here in the future for two weeks, and modern Canterlot really scares me."

"I'm really an alicorn!" shouted another, tearing off a coat to reveal a pair of wings, "I never wanted to be one though! I just want to be normal! My life is so hard and nopony understands me!"

"I was framed for murder by my best friend, and I'm on the run from the law!"

"My wife was kidnapped by mobsters, and I'm here searching for information on where they might be keeping her, so I can go off on a rescue mission!"

"I sometimes black out, and when I wake up again I'm covered in blood."

"I'm being stalked by a supernatural entity that feeds off my fear, and if it gets strong enough it will open a portal to its home world and Equestria is doomed."

"I keep living the same day over and over!"

"I eat other ponies, and when I do, I gain their memories!"

"I'm a government agent, here to assassinate a pony who's investigating our bioweapons program."

"I hunt aliens for a living."

"I actually am an alien."

"My father was abducted by aliens."

"I'm several fillies in a trench coat!"

"I'm from an alternate universe where everything is the same except mares and stallions are switched!"

"I'm a celebrity faking my own death and living a quiet life of retirement."

"I'm the reincarnation of Commander Hurricane!"

"I'm not really a mare!"

"I'm the most wanted terrorist in Equestria."

"I have super powers, thanks to being exposed to normally lethal levels of gamma radiation!"

"I'm half plant!"

"I am literally the fattest pony currently alive."

"My mother was Princess Luna!"

"My family are all ninjas!"

"I can drink fifteen gallons of milk in under six seconds."

"I'm actually in a hospital bed in Ponyville, this whole world is a fever dream, and when I wake up you will all die."

Chain Mail just stared at all the ponies in the bar. They were all looking at him, and every single one of them were deadly serious. Then, they all simultaneously turned their heads to the bartender.

He shrugged at them.

"I serve drinks to you freaks and get paid for it," he said simply, "That's about it."

***

"So what's going on?" asked Second as he marched into the lab, "This had better be damn important, or I swear-"

He stopped as he reached the cell, and saw the snarling, thrashing form of Sun Rise chained up to the wall inside. The human folded his arms and looked between the insane pony and Dr. Apocalypse, who shrugged at him.

"And you think I can cure this?"

"Well...I haven't seen anything so far you can't do..."

"I can't fucking fly. Jump really high, maybe, but I can't fly. That's at least one thing that two thirds of all ponies can do that I can't. Think about that for a minute."

"Sir, self levitation with unicorn magic can hardly be counted as-"

Second punched Dr. Apocalypse in the face and sent him sprawling.

"God, I love being able to do that! I can't count the number of times back in the human world I just wanted to punch some annoying prick in the face and I couldn't. You provide a valuable service to me, doctor."

Dr. Apocalypse smiled as he clutched his bleeding nose.

"Any time, sir!" he said cheerfully.

"Alright, someone open the cell and let me in."

A nearby knight obediently procured a ring of keys and unlocked the cell door. He and another knight, plus Dr. Apocalypse and the other Brotherhood ponies all followed the human inside, where he stood within arms reach of Sun Rise. Second rolled up his sleeves.

"Okay, let's see what other bullshit magic powers I have now..."

He placed his hand on Sun Rise's face. The pegasus immediately went still, but the human began convulsing. He screamed as he connected, and everything went dark.

***

"Where the fuck am I now?"

Second looked around. He was in a dark, featureless void. He could move around freely, and he seemed to have a physical presence, but there was nothing here. Just blackness everywhere.

"Hello?!" he shouted, "Anybody out there?!"

There were footsteps behind him. Not hoofsteps. Footsteps. For a moment, Second felt a glimmer of hope, but when he turned around he saw only his imaginary friends. Conscience limped over to his side, shadowed by Ambition in his red suit, Sexuality, still completely naked, the little goblin that represented his creativity and the cartoon devil that was the avatar of his anger.

Damn. Anger looked like he was on steroids.

"Just us, Howard," Conscience said sadly.

"So, you all have a physical presence here?" Second asked.

"There's nothing physical about any of us," Ambition explained, "This is the mental landscape of Sun Rise's mind, and since we're all a part of you, when you came in here we followed after."

"What even are you? Just hallucinations? Some kind of punishment I have to endure? Magic?"

"You went a little crazy while trapped in stone, and developed a split personality disorder. We're your other personalities. It's just that we never take over, because we're too polite for that."

Second blinked.

"That is NOT how split personality disorder works!" Second shouted, "I don't think there's even a number high enough for me to count all the ways that's completely wrong! In fact, that's so off the mark, it's almost insulting to people who actually do suffer from it!"

"Howard," Ambition interrupted, "Are you seriously expecting My Little Pony to be scientifically accurate?"

"No! This is bullshit, and that's a bullshit excuse! I want you all to go away, and don't come back until you have a better explanation of your origins! You are all a disgrace to everything that is good and logical in the world, and your existence would make a real psychologist ball up and cry."

"Howard, stop raging," Conscience replied "We can't help it if we were written by a hack. What we can do though, is help you out. We're here to fix Sun Rise's mind, and that's gotta be easier with all of us, right?"

The human sighed.

"Fine. Just don't get in my way. Now, let's go see what's wrong with this pony. Whatever's causing Sun Rise's insanity, it must be-"

Everything was suddenly much brighter, as an orange glow came from somewhere behind Second. All the hallucinations stared in horror at something behind him. Second slowly turned around, and his jaw nearly dropped on the floor when he saw the demon from the mirror in his dream, standing just two hundred feet away. Except not exactly the same. This one didn't have any of the injuries of the mirror demon, it was the size of the house, and it had a whip made of fire. Of course it would be fire.

It stared at him blankly. Second turned around to face his hallucinations again.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" he screamed, "THE DEVIL?! SUN RISE IS BEING DRIVEN CRAZY BY THE DEVIL?!"

"...Yeah...Sure looks that way..." Conscience muttered.

"As the avatar of your ambition, I would like to remind you that living would be of the greatest benefit to your future prospects."

"And as your conscience, I would like to remind you that a pony out there is relying on you to clean things up in here."

Second stared is disbelief at Conscience.

"HE'S THE DEVIL! I CANNOT FIGHT HIM, BECAUSE HE IS THE DEVIL! HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO FIGHT THE DEVIL?! I SURE FUCKING HAVEN'T, AND I'M NOT EAGER TO START NOW!"

"Tell you what," Conscience suggested, "Let's put it to a vote. Since we're pieces of your mind, our decision will dictate your course of action. I throw my vote in for fighting him."

"I'm against it," said Ambition.

"Of course you are. Creativity?"

"Nope. Living sounds good."

"Anger?"

"SATAN IS A PUSSY-ASS BITCH TRYING TO INTIMDATE US BY BEING REALLY TALL AND RED! WE CAN TAKE THIS GUY!"

This coming from a guy who looked slightly like a demon himself.

"Mmhmm. Sexuality?"

"Kill him and rape the corpse."

"That's a majority in favour of fighting, Howard," said Conscience, "Now go over there and challenge that demon to fisticuffs."

"...You guys suck."

END

Author's notes:

Ending theme of Chapter 14

Sorry this took so long. I had a lot of ideas for this chapter that got cut back to avoid making another behemoth of a chapter like the last one turned out. Some may think more is better, but I think we can all agree that no-one wants to read that many words all in one go if it can be avoided. I thought of this and split it up again. The rest of this chapter has now become the next chapter, so you can look forward to that.

Also, I started work on another story too, unrelated to this one. I'll talk more about it for those interested when I actually produce the first chapter, but for now just understand that it may take some time away from this, and I'm already working on two other projects aside from this, plus school work, so delays will be far from uncommon in the near future. I can't say I'm not disappointed in myself, but I know better than to try and rush a story out to meet deadlines.

And finally I would like to let you all know that some guy on Deviantart went to the trouble of converting Human to e-reader format. I don't know what that means exactly, because I have no idea what an e-reader is, but hey, I'm sure that's exciting news for those of you that do. You can find it here.

Next Chapter: Second vs. Satan, no holds barred. PLACE. YOUR. BETS.

Chapter 15: Under Celestia's Sun

Howard sighed as he climbed back into the car. He picked up the bottle of whiskey that he had stashed under the driver's seat and took a swig.

"You know you're not supposed to drink and drive, right?"

He almost sprayed his drink everywhere in surprise. Turning around, he saw his son sitting in the back seat.

"Anthony?! What the hell are you doing back there?! I left you with your mother! You're supposed to have school!"

"I wanted to come with you," his son replied innocently.

"Anthony, I'm going to a funeral. It's not going to be a fun road trip or anything. That's why I'm drinking again. Because I'm depressed and this is stressing me out."

"Yeah, but I want to come. I want to meet your side of the family. You talk about my uncles all the time, but I've never met either of them."

"That's because they're not nice people. My side of the family are all redneck assholes, and the only one of them who isn't, is an asshole for other reasons. I'm attending this out of respect, but I really don't want to go back to Texas either, and there's a reason I didn't invite you and your mother."

"What's so wrong with them?"

Howard sighed again.

"Look, you don't know. Some families love each other, some families do nothing but hurt each other. My family...they were somewhere in between. There was love there. There was affection. I think my father did care for me, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering to drive all the way back home to attend this, but...there's a lot of bad memories there too, and I'd be lying if I said I trusted any of them. I didn't take you to meet them, because I think you'd be genuinely better off if you didn't."

"They're still family though, aren't they dad?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then I want to meet them!"

"...Fuck. I should turn around right now and take you back home. It's Wednesday for Christ's sake! And don't you have homework to hand in?"

"Yeah, but not for anything important."

"...Alright, you win. You can come with me the rest of the way. We're nearly at the border anyway. Fuck if this isn't irresponsible of me though. Where's my phone? I need to call your mother and tell her where you are..."

***

So...demons...

Second walked hesitantly up to Satan, who just stood in place staring down at him through those dark black eyes. He turned and looked over his shoulder at his hallucinations, who were all giving him encouraging looks. Sexuality was wearing a giant foam finger which announced that Second was 'number two'.

Ha ha.

Turning back to the matter at hand, Second stood at the demon's feet and looked up at him. For a moment, neither of them said or did anything. Second was pondering how exactly to start conversation. It was the devil. He was not the sort of guy you'd just stroll up to and casually tell to fuck off. Deciding not to get on the Lord of Darkness's bad side right away, he figured he should at least try being diplomatic.

"Sooooooo..." he began, "You're the ruler of all evil, huh? What's that like?"

The demon just snorted, and some smoke escaped from his nostrils.

"Yeah, I've got that whole 'malevolent cosmic entity' thing going on too. They call me Lord Second back in Equestria. Don't suppose you've heard of me?"

Satan scratched his nose.

"No? Lord Second? The Human? Last Man Standing? Elder God and creator of Equestria? Ruler of the New Human Empire? Killer of Celestia? Nothing?"

The devil tilted his head.

"Okay!" said Second, clapping his hands together, "Well, I'll cut to the chase. You seem to be affecting this pony's mind here, some guy called Sun Rise I believe, and he's kind of a big deal, because he's the high priest in the Church of Man..."

The ruler of all evil raised an eyebrow.

"...And I know that as the devil you have a bit of a history with organised religion...But believe me, Humanism...or whatever you call a religion that worships humans, I have no idea what they named it...is most definitely not Christianity. In fact, they're worshipping me."

Satan folded his arms sceptically.

"No really! They are. And as the God of this particular religion, I would just like to say that I really have no beef with you, and I think it would be in the best interests of both of us, if you would kindly vacate my priest's mind, and move onto some other pony that I care less about. Preferably one in another city altogether, because Secopolis is sort of my city, and I just don't feel comfortable with the idea of demons running around in it. I'm sure you understand?"

The unholy one nodded in agreement.

"Great! So uh...when's the soonest you can move on?"

Then suddenly, there was music. Not just any music either. That was Tenacious D's Tribute. Satan held up a finger to indicate for Second to wait a moment, and reached behind him. Then, the fallen angel pulled a giant cell phone out of nowhere.

...The universe was strange.

Second stood there awkwardly while the demon as big as a house pressed a cell phone against one ear and listened to whoever was on the other side. The human couldn't quite make out what was being said, as it was too badly distorted to his ears, but someone was definitely talking. Once or twice Satan would nod again, but he never said anything. Once he saw done, he pressed a button on the cell to end the call, and put it away again.

"...So who was that?"

The devil immediately drew his giant fire whip and cracked it against the floor almost right next to Second, who jumped away instinctively. The human was at first surprised, but surprise quickly gave way to anger.

"Fine!" he shouted, "I wanted us to be civilised about this, but if you can't act mature and talk this out with me like an adult, then put up your fucking dukes!"

Second cracked his knuckles and jumped up at the devil.

***

Mystic Chant rolled his eyes as he walked into the interpreter’s room. Softy was still angry at him and Sliske for scaring Rhythm. There had been quite a lot of drama about it afterwards. Mystic was forced to apologise, and so was Rhythm too, for arguing with him in the first place, and Softy also had to make extensive apologies to the twins' mother as well. She left rather indignantly after that, probably so Rhythm could clean off all the urine, though Melody wanted to stay and hang out with Mystic some more.

They had only just barely got away with it. Softy had told the mother and her children that Mystic's special talent was transformation magic that could make ponies temporarily resemble famous monsters. It was a rather shoddy story, but anypony would easily believe that over the idea that Mystic was really possessed by the legendary Sliske.

"Alright you, have a seat over here," said the interpreter, a pink unicorn mare, "My name is Dr. Shrink, and you are...let's see here...ah! Mystic Chant. Oooh...from the House of Sparkle! I've never had nobility in here before!"

Mystic looked over at Softy.

"Nobility? Me?" he asked.

"...In the very loosest definition of the term," Softy explained, "You don't have any kind of title or anything, but you should technically be in line to inherit your father's. It's not a particularly major one though."

"Huh...I...did not know that..."

"Anyway!" Dr. Shrink interrupted, "You wanted me to do some cutie mark interpretation, correct? Well, let's see what we're dealing with."

Mystic turned to the side to show his mark. Dr. Shrink stood next to him and closely scrutinized the mark.

"Hmmm...Well this is new..." she muttered, "I'm not familiar with this kind of mark...hold on, let me get my books..."

***

"Hgggggggrrrrrr..."

Chain Mail groaned as he pulled along the gigantic sack of money behind him. It took a lot to make him actually strain now that he had cybernetic enhancements and was constantly being administered strength-boosting drugs, but somehow this bag of gold was enough to do it. Next to him, Gold Coin grunted as he tugged along a much smaller but still incredibly heavy sack, also filled with cash.

"How...did you...even...win this much money?!" Chain Mail panted.

"Bitch...My name...is Gold Coin..." the business pony replied, gasping for breath, "That's because...I never...lose a single...bit...Celestia fuck me with the sun, this is heavy!"

The two ponies collapsed at the bottom of the steps leading up to the palace's main entrance. Two nearby royal guards trotted over and stood to attention in front of their captain, who laid on the floor in exhaustion.

"Sir! Do you require assistance?" one of them asked.

"Please..."

The captain sighed in relief as the two guards took over his hauling duties for a while. With two of his soldiers taking over his carry load, Chain Mail moved over to assist his friend in pulling along the other bag. With two ponies carrying each, they moved a lot faster, and soon both were deposited in the entrance hall of the royal palace.

"...Let's...Let's let the...the servants carry it the rest of the way..." suggested one of the exhausted guards.

"Good call," said Chain Mail, "Get a unicorn to handle this. Somepony who won't break their back lugging these all over Canterlot, like I would have if my spine weren't mostly metal alloys now."

"I think we should go find Princess Luna," Gold Coin interjected, "She said we should return to her once we were done. We've got to be trained in the use of the Elements of Harmony, right?"

"Can we even do that with just the two of us?" asked Chain Mail

"No idea, but the first step towards all six of us being there is the two of us being there. We'll just have to wait for the others."

"Fine then. I trust you two have got this covered?"

"Yes sir!"

"Aye sir!"

Chain Mail turned back to Gold Coin.

"She'll probably be in the throne room. Follow me."

***

Second was batted aside by a wide sweep of Satan's arm, knocking him across the plain mental landscape of Sun Rise's mind. His hallucinations all winced as he struck the floor and bounced across it for a few feet, before coming to a stop. The demon immediately took advantage of Second's fall and jumped further and higher than he should have ever been able to, landing on top of the human.

He brought one of his hooves down on Second's stomach, the contents of the which sprayed out like an exploding fire hydrant right into the devil's face. Second's stomach acid splashed all over him, and the demon roared in pain and backed away, clutching his burned face. And just like his puke from a few hours before in the outside world, Second's stomach acid was glowing bright green, like how cartoons depicted a nuclear spillage.

That couldn't be natural.

Satan quickly recovered his faculties and tried to stomp Second again, but this time the human rolled out of the way and found himself laying on his back between the devil's legs. For a moment, he thought to punch Satan in the dick, but a quick inspection revealed that he didn't seem to have one. Just like with most cartoon characters who were technically naked, the sexual organs were not visible.

And yet whenever anyone got hit in the crotch in cartoons, they always reacted as if they had taken a direct punch to the balls. Weird that.

Remembering that there was no situation in which a crotch punch did not hurt, Second jumped up and launched a fist into that hauntingly empty region. Sure enough, the Lord of Darkness cried out in pain and fell over, as if he actually had testicles that Second had hit.

"Hah!" Second cried in triumph, "I have bested the devil! I am victorious!"

The demon reached out with a clawed hand and grabbed him by the torso. Soon, he was back to his full height and he held Second up to his face, snarling angrily at him. Unfortunately for him, he left his victim's arms free, and always a dirty fighter, Second took the chance to poke him in the eyes. Both eyes. At the same time.

Satan let go of the human to cup his hands over his eyes, but instead of dropping, Second grabbed ahold of the ram's horns sticking out of his enemy's head and swung in front of his face on them. When the demon moved his hands off his eyes, he swung forward and kicked him in the right eye again, prompting another scream of pain and a lot of wild flailing.

In the chaos, the human somehow landed on the devil's bald head, just behind the horns. His adversary knew where he was though and tried to pull him off. When it became apparent that Second wasn't moving, he began punching him. Yes, Satan was essentially hitting himself in the head as well, but it still hurt Second more to have a giant fist continually smashing into his spine.

After a substantial battering, Second gathered his strength and pulled at the right horn, and with some difficulty was able to snap it in half.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" cried the demon.

The human swung around on his other horn and hung in front of his face again. Satan looked right into his eyes. Second held up the piece of his other horn and grinned. He lunged forward and planted the broken ram's horn right in the dark one's already badly injured eye, drawing a gush of black, almost tar-like blood.

Satan fell over on his back. Second tumbled with him and failed to recover, landing face first on the ground next to him. However, he still at least climbed back to his feet again, unlike the beast, who just laid on the floor, writhing and screaming with a horn sticking out his eye.

"What's that devil? You want me to put you out of your misery? Why, I thought you'd never ask!"

Second jumped onto the demon's chest and leaned over his face. He placed a foot on the ram's horn.

"Well, it's been fun, but we've got to wrap it up now. Goodbye Satan. From one dark lord to another, I'll see you in Hell."

He raised his boot and smashed it down again, driving the ram's horn into the beast's brain and seeming to finally kill him. There was another squirt of the black substance that seemed to substitute for blood, the monster screamed again, and then the writhing stopped and he went still.

Second's hallucinations cheered as they ran over to him.

"OH YEAH!" Second shouted as he stood atop the dead demon, "WHO'S YOUR FUCKING DADDY?! LORD SECOND, THAT'S RIGHT!"

He did a little dance on the Lord of Darkness's corpse.

"Good job, Howard!" said Conscience.

"Well, I'll be fucked," Ambition agreed.

"I TOLD YOU HE WAS A BITCH!"

"Gotta say, looks like I was wrong."

"Yeah. Now rape the corpse."

"Very funny, Sexuality," said Second, "Anyway though, we should get out of here now..."

"Not before I see some action," the naked man insisted.

Second blinked.

"Wait, are you being serious?"

"Did I stutter or something? Lower your trousers and get to work."

Second looked at Conscience.

"Hey, since we're on a mental landscape, if I kill him here, will he actually permanently die?"

"Probably," Conscience replied, "I wouldn't recommend it though. Physically murdering a manifestation of your own psyche is like performing brain surgery with a plastic fork."

"...That would be bad."

"Hey guys?" Ambition interrupted, "I don't mean to break up the fun, but did anyone else think Howard had a surprisingly easy time of defeating the devil in single combat?"

"WHAT DID I SAY?!" screamed Anger, "SATAN: PUSSY. ASS. BITCH."

"Actually, I agree," said Second, "That was too easy. For the ruler of all evil, I'm actually rather disappointed."

"Don't question good things," Conscience begged, "You're just tempting fate..."

"No really though, if that was the devil, why was he such a pushover?"

"Howard..."

"This whole thing was just no challenge. There's got to be-"

"Hey, Howard? I think I may have an answer for you."

Second looked over to Creativity.

"What?"

"That wasn't Satan."

"Huh?"

"That was just a regular demon."

"Oh."

"And I know this because-"

"-Because there's a fucking army of them standing right behind me, isn't there?"

The hallucinations all nodded in unison. Howard turned around to see a line of twenty demons identical to the one he just killed, all carrying different fire-based weapons, and all looking extremely pissed.

"Fuck this," said Second, "We're getting out of here. Screw Sun Rise, and screw whatever fucked up theology decided this world needed to be populated with demons."

***

"Hmmm..." said Dr. Shrink, "My studies reveal that Mystic Chant's cutie mark appears to be that of the legendary Sliske the Destroyer, also known as Sliske the Scourge and Sliske of Seven Hundred Souls."

"Yes, we knew that," Soft Spoken said irritably, "What I want to know is what it means."

The doctor sighed.

"Not good things I'm afraid. I'm not sure what it means exactly. Could be that Mystic has a special talent for sucking out souls, could be that he's good at murder, I have no idea. What I am certain of is that the cutie mark represents something he has in common with the Sliske of the legend, and that can't be a good thing in any way, because Sliske was an irredeemably evil psychopath, if you read the old stories."

Mystic immediately sprouted rows of sharp teeth and jumped over to the doctor.

"I ressssssssssssent that!" he hissed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The doctor screamed and ran out of the room, knocking over a few chairs as she went. Left in the empty office, Sliske turned to look at Soft Spoken apologetically. The old stallion crossed his forelegs and raised an eyebrow at him.

"That's twice in one day you've done that," he said sternly.

"...Sssssssorry."

"No, no, no, don't be sorry. Just stop doing it."

"Well, you heard what he wassssss sssssssaying!"

"Yes, but what he was saying was true."

"I am not an irredeemably evil pssssssssychopath!"

"Aren't you? How many ponies have you killed again?"

"...Are we jussssst talking recccccccently, or...?"

"No, in total."

"...One thousssssssand two hundred and sssssseventeen..."

Soft Spoken was surprised.

"You actually kept count?" he asked.

"Ummm...No...I jussssst remember them rather vividly..."

"Well, if you remember all your victims, answer me this; How many of them actually deserved it?"

Sliske was quiet.

"How many of them were just everyday ponies, trying to get by? Innocent bystanders? Families?"

"Sssssstop it."

"How many, Sliske?"

The teeth and eyes disappeared, leaving Mystic Chant behind. At first, neither of them said anything. Mystic was looking up at the ceiling, listening to a voice only he could hear. He turned to Softy.

"...He's saying something in Zarlan. I don't understand it."

Through the door, a trio of ponies in blue uniform and black combat armour burst in. They were all wearing helmets and carrying riot shields and nightsticks.

"EVERYPONY GET DOWN ON THE GROUND! YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!"

***

"...I think we went the wrong way," said Chain Mail, "It's my fault. I wasn't paying attention. I thought I was going on my patrol route for a moment there..."

"I didn't think you'd have a patrol route, being captain of the royal guard," Gold Coin commented.

"Not officially, no. However, I still like to keep up my old guarding duties alongside my regular work. I never want to be accused of not doing my share, and there is a kind of peaceful monotony in walking in circles around the palace that office work simply doesn't give me. Unless of course your patrol route happens to take you through the royal archives, in which case there may be a chance of crazy dragons or cultist attacks, but I digress..."

Gold Coin recognised this room. This was the infirmary where he had recovered after his fight with Chameleon.

"Hey, maybe we should stop here a while," Gold Coin suggested, "Maybe the doctors here can fix you up a bit."

"Why would I need fixing up?" Chain Mail asked defensively.

"Well, for starters, you've got that ugly armoured suit stuck to your skin, you're being periodically pumped full of drugs of unknown content, and most of your real organs are missing and have been for a while, preventing you from eating or drinking without violent side effects. And according to you, the systems on that thing don't even work, so you don't even have access to all your built-in super weapons to compensate. Frankly, if it were anypony else, I'd consider you a cripple."

"...Point taken."

The two ponies marched through the door and into the infirmary once again. In the centre of the cross shaped room, just by the reception desk, Chain Mail spotted a cerulean blue unicorn doctor with a pink mane, shouting at two uncharacteristically thin and bony looking royal guards.

"AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING!" he screamed, "ONE UNICORN TO MAINTAIN A SHIELD OVER ALL OF CANTERLOT?! ONE UNICORN?! SURE, IF YOUR SPECIAL TALENT IS DEFENCE, YOU MAY BE REALLY GOOD AT SHIELD SPELLS, BUT FUCKING SERIOUSLY?! THE PRINCESS ONLY EVER ASSIGNS ONE SINGLE UNICORN TO MAINTAIN A CITY-SIZED SHIELD AROUND THE CLOCK?! I DON'T CARE HOW SKILLED YOU ARE, THAT'S GOT TO BE FUCKING EXHAUSTING! AND WHY THE FUCK DOES THE PRINCESS NEED A UNICORN FOR THAT?! SHE'S A MOTHERFUCKING GODDESS! THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!"

Chain Mail looked at the two guards. They were pleading for him to come to their rescue. The captain thought something was off about them. It took him a moment to notice, but then it hit him. Those were the exact same two unicorns that Dr. Heart Beat had been shouting at the last time he came in here!

Oh dear Luna, had the doctor been shouting at those two guards for three days straight?! No wonder they looked like they were almost skeletal. They had been starving to death for days, unable to move from that spot because Dr. Heart Beat was continuing to shout at them and wouldn't stop. Now he felt really bad about abandoning them to their fate the last few times he saw them.

Okay, that was it. Time for an intervention. Captain Chain Mail strolled over while Dr. Heart Beat was in mid-rant and lightly tapped the unicorn on the shoulder.

"Ahem," he said, trying to get his attention, "Dr. Heart Beat?"

"WHAT?!" the doctor shouted as he turned to face Chain Mail.

"You've been shouting at those guards a while now. I think they need a break."

"Oh, really? I apologise, I wasn't aware of the time. Sorry you two, you're free to go."

Dr. Heart Beat turned and left, walking off to the other side of the infirmary with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. The two starved guards wept tears of joy and both crawled over to Chain Mail to hug his legs.

"Celestia bless you!"

"I will love you forever!"

Chain Mail pulled his legs away, and the two guards got the hint and galloped as fast as they could out of the infirmary, heading in the direction of the royal kitchens.

"Well, that was an amusing diversion," Gold Coin commented, "Let's go ask the good doctor what he can do about your metal parts now."

***

"Lord Second! You're back!" said Ancient Tome.

Sun Rise was still strapped to the wall in front of the human, eyes wide and staring blankly at nothing. Second turned to face the other ponies, who were all waiting in the room just outside Sun Rise's prison cell.

"Did you fix him?" asked Dr. Apocalypse, "What was wrong?"

"I fixed one twenty first of the problem," Second replied, "And it was demons."

"...Demons?"

"Demons."

"...Are you serious sir?"

"What? You don't believe me? Are demons really that implausible?"

"...I..."

"Shut up. I have a new job for you doctor. Make me a serum that will ensure I won't dream if I go to sleep and then pump me full of it. I'm tired, and I want to go to bed without fear of weirdoes in black coats stalking me through old English churches."

"Uhhhh...Sir?"

"GET TO FUCKING WORK!"

***

"Seriously! I'm telling the truth!" Soft Spoken protested as he was escorted through the prison, "Me and Sliske are representatives of the princess! The new Elements of Harmony! Go ask her! Sliske is allowed to be free! This all a huge misunderstanding!"

The guards threw both Soft Spoken and Mystic Chant into their cell unceremoniously. Both had been cuffed and chained at the hooves, and Mystic also had a magic restraining bolt on.

"Yeah right," sneered the guard, "And I'm a Wonderbolt! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Once the guard had walked off again, Mystic's face mutated again to signify the return of Sliske.

"Sssssssssso much for your legendary ssssskillsssss of perssssssuasssssssion."

"...Shut up Sliske..."

There was a rustling in the corner.

"Huh? Have I got visitors?"

Sliske and Soft Spoken were both surprised to see Explodey emerge from a pile of hay in the corner of the cell.

"Oh, hey guys! What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing!" Softy replied, "What are you doing in prison?!"

"Oh...Ummm...Let me see...Uhh...I think...armed robbery...several murders...uhhh...extortion? I think the guard said extortion. I don't know what that means though. Uhhh...blackmail was another...assault...attempted murder...bribery...and a few traffic violations. I think."

Soft Spoken blinked.

"You've only been gone for four hours!" he shouted, "How did you rack up all those charges in four hours?!"

Explodey shrugged.

"I dunno. I don't remember doing any of it. I think the guards think I'm somepony else, what with the way they keep calling me Don Dynamite. Hey, who's Don Dynamite by the way?"

"Mafia crime lord," Sliske replied, "Runssssss the Dynamite family. Mainly basssssssed out of Manehattan, but they have a few operationssssss here in Canterlot. Dynamite issssss a white unicorn with a cutie mark of pony body partssssss flying out of an explossssion. It'sssss not hard to sssssssee why they thought you were him."

"...How do you know this?" asked Softy.

"I posssssessssssed a pegassssssussssss guard recccccently, jussssst before I left Sssssssecond. Private Ssssssssskysssssssword. Asssssss a royal guard, he had a lot of experiencccce dealing with them."

"Huh..."

"Hey, Sliske?" said Explodey, "If I may ask, how does the whole memories thing work? Like, do you automatically have all your host's memories when you take them over, or do you have to actively search through them?"

"I have all of them right away, but it'sssssss not like I sssssuddenly experiencccce a whole life time at oncccccccce. I get the memoriesssssss, and I can think back on them and remember thingsssss at any time afterwardsssss. If I posssssessssss an electrician for inssssssstanccccce, I will have all hisssssss life experiencccce and training in my head, but I won't be able to actually fix anything until I look back over thossssse memoriessssss and recall him learning thosssse thingssss in the firsssst placccccce. Ssssso short anssssssswer, a bit of both."

"So, hypothetically speaking, you have all of Chain Mail and Broad Sword's memories, right? Since you possessed them both at least once each?"

"Not Broad Ssssssword'sss. He made me promisssse not to look at hisssss memoriesssssss."

"Really? Why?"

"I don't know. He had a right to keep ssssssecretsssss, and I didn't quessssstion it. Pressssumably it wasss to hide what we found out earlier today."

Explodey laid his head down on the floor and sighed.

"Yeah...Probably..."

***

"Hmmm..." Dr. Heart Beat mumbled, "No...that's not right...that shouldn't be there...you should be dead without that...this isn't even an organ naturally found in ponies...that has got to be some kind of mutation...this is synthetic...and I'm not even sure that that is biologically possible..."

Chain Mail laid on his back in the hospital bed. The armour on his underbelly had been ripped open, and the doctor had reopened a large scar he found on his stomach so he could poke around his insides. He was currently prodding one of Chain Mail's many mechanical organs and listening to it through a stethoscope. Once he was done he pulled it away.

"Well, I've done a full inspection. Yep. You're pretty fucked up captain."

"Gee, thanks. I didn't know that."

"Good news first. For reasons I'm still not quite certain of, though my working hypothesis is that those drugs caused it, you are now perfectly capable of surviving without oxygen. Good thing too, because the automatic breathing failed. And so did your regular breathing actually, but your lungs are still moving, even if not holding air. It's...surreal. I've never seen anything like this outside of a carnival freak show before."

"And the bad news?"

"I'm not done with the good news yet. You've also greatly developed most of your legs muscles, again probably due to the drugs, and you have an immune system stronger than any I've seen before. I am concerned about the fact that you can no longer eat or drink, but it seems that the suit power gives you energy regardless, and what's more, it's solar powered. About an hour of exposure to direct sunlight should be roughly equivalent to one of your three daily meals, assuming you had a balanced diet before."

"Are you done now?"

"Yes. The bad news is despite biological enhancements, you're still going to die slowly and in agony if I remove the mechanical parts. You're basically dependent on them now, even if none of them work. Even worse, you're also semi-dependent on the drugs too. You don't need the constant supply of painkillers, and I'm fairly sure that's a software glitch of some kind, but you DO need whatever it was that mutated you like this. Your biological enhancements are primarily magical in nature, and are likely to relapse if the drug isn't administered regularly. And if you relapse back into your need for oxygen when your lungs don't even work...yeah...that won't be pleasant."

Chain Mail's eyes widened in fear.

"Wait! But this suit only has a finite drug supply! It'll run out in only a few days!"

"Yep. Probably a tactic to ensure you stay loyal to Second's army by making you dependent on a drug that only they can supply. Fortunately I was able to pick up some trace amounts of it in blood samples, and if I had some time I might be able to extract the pure version from the suit's reserves. Give me a day and some of my best researchers, and I might be able to crack the formula and replicate it myself."

"Can you extract the pure version now?"

"I'd need a decent technician. The armour's a tough nut to crack."

"Hey," Gold Coin interrupted, "If you can get a technician in here, can he also get to repairing some of Chain Mail's cybernetics? If he's dependent on it now, I don't want him running around with faulty hardware."

"I'll see what I can do," the doctor promised, "This is going to be the most interesting surgical operation of my entire career..."

***

Second opened the doors to the walk-in wardrobe in his private bedroom.

"My God, I have horrible taste in fashion."

Second ripped a load of clothes off their coat hangers and threw them behind him out onto his king-sized four poster bed.

"Crap. Crap. Mega-crap. What the hell is this doing here?"

He held up a pink night gown.

"...I am still a man, right?"

The human looked down at his trousers, and then lifted his right arm to smell his armpit.

"Yep. Definitely a man. Whoever brought this for me is getting shot."

He tossed the night gown behind him with the rest of the ugly stuff.

"And then there's...Wait. Is this a...? Ewwwwwww!"

He tossed the object that would haunt his nightmares for the next week behind him, this time aiming for the bin on the other side of the room.

"Where the hell is...? AHA!"

There it was. A navy blue duster coat, just like the one he had worn to Appleloosa. Not exactly the same as his normal long coat that had been incinerated with the rest of the Mages' Guild, but close enough to his familiar style that he felt at ease again. And look. It even came with a Stetson.

***

"...Sliske?"

"Hmm?"

"Tell me about the Sakrassi."

The alien looked at Soft Spoken in surprise.

"Tell you what?"

"Nothing specific. I'm just curious. I want to know more about them. What sort of people are you? What's your culture? What kind of sciences do you study? Do Sakrassi have any kind of religious figures? Any leaders? Tell me about your political and justice systems. What kind of society do you run? What food do you eat and what relations do you have with the other races on your home world? Just anything really."

Explodey sat up again, gaining an interest in the conversation as well. Sliske however just looked ashamed.

"We..." he stammered, "I...It's not...It's hard to explain..."

There were 'S' noises in that sentence, and Sliske didn't hiss. This was not lost on either of the ponies.

"Well, come on," said Explodey, "Just tell us what you can."

"...We don't have a sssssoccccciety assss sssssuch...Sssssee, the thing about Sssssakrassssi issss that we're all jussssst a little bit telepathic. Thisss isssss meaninglesss here in Equessssstria, but back on Zarlow, every member of our sssspeccccciessss isssss connected through the Sssssakrassssi Overmind. I guessss you could conssssider him our leader. The Overmind issssss biologically determined. The oldesssst living Sssssakrassssi automatically inheritsssss the posssition, and all the abilitiesssss that come with it."

"Abilities?" Soft Spoken prodded.

"Yesssss. The Overmind, connected to every other member of the raccce through telepathy, automatically inheritsssss the collective memoriesssss and a blend of the persssssonality of every other Ssssssakrasssssi alive, and can dissssstribute memoriessssss to individualssss too. Mosssssstly thisssss isssss ussssed to help Sssssakrasssssi find each other during the breeding sssssseasssson or to know where there might be Klkrmizk."

"What's a Klkrmizk?" asked Explodey.

"...Oh. Sssssorry. I forgot you don't know about that yet. I already told Broad Sssssword about thissss. Bassssically, they're the Sakrasssssi'sss natural predatorssss. Klkrmizk issss Zarlan for Ghossssst Eater. They're called that becausssse they can ussse magic to ressstrain usssss in our energy form, or even pull ussss out of our hossssstssss like Ssssecond did to me, sssso that they can absorb ussss. We're food to them."

That caught Softy's attention.

"You have predators?"

"Yessss. Powerful onessss too. Many of the mutated featuresss our hosssstssss gain are evolved for fighting them off. My tongue for insssstancccce isssss a natural defenccccce mechanissssm againssssst their magic. A Ssssakrassssi'ssss ssssaliva nullifiessss magic. That'ssss why I ussssse my tongue when taking unicorn hosssstsssss; If they try to usssse magic againsssst me, I can canccccel their ssssspellsssss by wrapping the tongue around their hornssss. Back on Zarlow, it wassssss usssssed to sssssstop Ghosssst Eatersssss' from pulling ussss out of our hossssstssss."

"So is that why you take host bodies?" asked Explodey, "To hide from these Ghost Eaters?"

"Yesssss."

"But you didn't always?"

"Millionssss of yearsss ago, the anccccessstorssss of the Ssssakrasssssi would have lived without taking hossssstsssss, and we can sssstill technically live without them if we want to, floating around in our energy form and ssssurviving off the sssunlight."

"Sakrassi can live on sunlight?" Explodey asked.

"Only when not in hosssst bodiesssss, but yesssss. In our natural formssss, we feed on sssssolar energy. That'ssssss why I targeted Princccccccessssss Cccccelessssssstia when I firsssst arrived on thisss planet all thosssse yearsssss ago. I wassss intending to bring about an eternal daytime."

Explodey looked at Sliske suspiciously.

"An energy being...intending to possess Princess Celestia...who would mutate her features and give her serpentine eyes and strange teeth...who knows transformation magic as well...and who would bring about eternal daytime..."

The unicorn inched slightly closer.

"The Sakrassi wouldn't happen to have any kind of distant cousins that feed on moonlight instead of sunlight or something, would they?"

Sliske just looked confused.

"No. What gave you that idea?"

"Oh...nothing..."

Soft Spoken raised an eyebrow.

"Sliske, I notice that you've been talking a lot about your biology, but I've heard nothing about what Sakrassi are really like though. You talk a lot about predators and survival. Are you a tribal culture? Do you all go it alone? Or do you actually have organised civilisation?"

Sliske winced.

"None of thosssse thingsssss."

"Well then what?!"

"We're animalssssssss!" Sliske shouted, "Don't you undersssstand me?! We are not normally even sssssentient beingssssss! We're like insssssectsssssss or dogsssss. We're not a sssssocccccciety, and we don't have a civilisssssation! Sssssssakrassssssi are wildlife, farm animalssssss and petssssss of the actual cccccccivilissssed ssssspeccccciessss! It'ssss called Planet Zarlow becausssse it isssss ruled by the Zarlanssss! I'm not ssssssome cccccitizen of an alien civilissssssation. I'm jusssssst a freak accccccident!"

Sliske slumped on the floor and covered his face with his hooves. Soft Spoken moved to comfort the alien, but the features immediately retracted again, leaving behind only a confused looking Mystic Chant.

***

The following morning...

***

"...Making a grave mistake..."

"What?! No! He can't be!"

"I'm taking him with me to Texas."

"I'm your uncle Brian."

"I left for good reason."

"How could you?!"

"At a funeral..."

"You deserve to be in here."

"Aren't so civilised after all, are we?"

"You bastard!"

"And to think I ever respected either of you..."

"This is awful."

"And now we're handing over to Lauren again..."

"I'm still here!"

"Why though, dad? What did he do?"

"You got this job because of me you fucking leach!"

"The worst thing a man can ever do..."

"I recommend immediate rewrites."

"Burn in Hell."

"SURE IS CIVILISED IN HERE!"

"This is why we should not be put to the mercy of the marketing department."

"You didn't know him like I did."

"That's my father you're talking about."

"What a fucking paragon of virtue you are."

"And to think I thought Canada would be quieter..."

"Hey Howie! Long time no see."

"You and I have nothing to say to each other."

"No. This time, it's me. You're not going to fuck up my last chance at this."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll prove your little theory wrong. Just watch me."

"End it. Now."

"They've commissioned a season five!"

"Already?!"

"He's made a script so awful, it would make God himself cry."

"Nathan! Get in here!"

"So what do you propose?"

"Sir, with all due respect, I resign."

"I've got the perfect idea for a villain..."

Second's eyes shot open.

"...That fucking serum did not work..."

***

Chain Mail's eyes fluttered open again, and the first thing he saw in his disturbingly clear, cybernetically-enhanced vision was Princess Luna leaning right over him. If looks could kill, the one she was giving him would have pushed ponykind to extinction.

"Uhh...Hello...your majesty?" the captain said nervously.

"I waited in the throne room for you and the other Elements to show up," she explained, "I waited for SIX HOURS!"

The liberal use of the royal Canterlot voice almost seemed to physically push the cyberpony down into the mattress, though that could have just as easily been metal parts weighing him down.

"SIX HOURS, AND NOT ONE OF YOU SHOWED UP?!"

"IT WAS GOLD COIN'S IDEA!" Chain Mail cried, "HE SAID I SHOULD GET THE CYBERNETICS SEEN TO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"

Luna pressed her face almost up against his.

"Thin. Ice."

She pulled away.

"You're getting off easy," she continued, "I shouted at Gold Coin so much that he had to have his eardrums magically treated. And believe it or not, your other four friends actually all got themselves arrested last night. I had to grant them all royal pardons! Do you know how time consuming that is with the recent reforms?! I was hoping that with the fate of the world resting in your hooves, you and the other Elements would take this seriously!"

"I am taking this seriously!" Chain Mail protested, "If I hadn't come here so the doctor could find the formula for some of the drugs in this suit, I could have dropped dead in a matter of days!"

"I'm aware, and for that reason I'm not going to be enforcing any punishment on you, but you still disobeyed my instructions to meet with me and your friends for training. The Elements of Harmony will never work without all their bearers present! They'll be even less effective if nopony shows up!"

"...I apologise, your highness."

"Hmph," Luna replied, "No matter. Get in uniform captain. My sister's funeral is today, and I want this to go off without a hitch."

"Come on your majesty, what could possibly go wrong?"

***

Second marched back and forth in front of a line of ponies in multicoloured power armour, who all stood to attention listening to the human's speech.

"Now, I know that none of you have much prior experience in causing the apocalypse..." he began.

"I have!"

"...But that's why we're all here today. This is going to be a team building exercise, and it'll help you all learn the specifics of causing the maximum amount of devastation, both on the environment and population. Before we begin, has anyone got any questions?"

A pegasus in cyan coloured power armour raised his hoof.

"Rainbow Twelve, your question?"

"Uh, yes sir!" said Rainbow Twelve nervously, "Umm...I was wondering why it specifically had to be zombies that you destroy Equestria with? Because it seems to me that it would be a lot easier to just...I don't know...nuke it?"

"Excellent question! Well, the thing is, that this battle coming up here is the climax of the story. Right? And as such, we're expected to lose this battle. What's coming up in Canterlot is our ultimate defeat at the hands of the Equestrians, and for them to defeat us, we must fight with conventional weapons. Maybe zombies aren't exactly conventional, but they're something that our enemies can fight back against.

"So we're just using zombies because it's fairer that way. We've got to give them a sporting chance, and unless some time in the past thousand years Stable-Tec became a real thing, using nuclear weapons just would not be sporting. If I used nukes, I'd win with no challenge. It'd be like shooting fish in a barrel, except the fish are all blind and crippled, and instead of shooting them, I'm filling their barrel with live grenades and running away. Incidentally, I want to try that some time. Any more questions?"

A unicorn in purple power armour raised his hoof as well.

"Starpoint Seven?"

"If we're going to lose because of story conventions, does that mean that all of us are going to die on this mission?"

"Yes. Most likely. Is that a problem?"

"No sir. Just making sure we're all on the same page."

"Good. Is that it?"

One of the ponies in the yellow armour spoke up.

"Sir, settle a bet. Is there such a thing as clearance level alpha?"

"What? No. Why would you even think that?"

"No reason..."

"...Anyway. If everyone is finished asking questions-"

"Oh wait! I've got another!"

Second sighed in frustration.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Where are Rainbow Six and Butterfly One?"

"Both dead, though by entirely different means. Rainbow Six let his armour fall into enemy hands, so I had him crucified. Butterfly One choked to death on a piece of celery yesterday. You can expect a replacement squad leader to be chosen soon. Anything else?"

"...That's all, sir."

"Good. Now, you'll all be split into pairs. We're going to start with a trust exercise. Everyone stand up on your hind legs and put on your blindfolds..."

The ponies all stared blankly through their visors at Second.

"...And I only just realised how that sounded, so forget that. Everyone give me fifty push-ups."

***

Luna stared into the mirror forlornly. Her reflection offered her no comfort. A white unicorn stallion tapped the floor impatiently behind her.

"...Blue, do you think the black dress is a bit much?" she asked, "I know it's traditional, but it just feels weird to wear clothes when the last time I wore anything was two centuries ago..."

"I'm really not fussed, your maj," Blueblood replied, "I think you c'n go in whatever you wanna, and sod whatever ponies would want you ta do. As long as you don't go in a clown suit or nuffin, I don't see how it'd be at all disrespectful."

The princess seemed to be thinking it over, but then a distant sound interrupted her train of thought. A sort of wheezing, whooshing sound that was difficult to describe. The corner of her mouth twitched, almost as if she was about to smile again. Blueblood cocked an eyebrow, and Luna passed by him and walked out onto the balcony.

He followed her outside, and saw nothing particularly notable in the courtyard below. Nothing but the hundreds of ponies all passing through on their way to the funeral out on the palace green, and the usual decorative scenery.

Despite that though, Luna seemed to have seen something he did not.

"Excuse me for a minute," she said, "An old friend just arrived."

***

"...There you are."

Chain Mail turned away from the mirror to see Gold Coin in the doorway.

"Oh, hello there. What are you here for?"

"I was looking for you. I heard you were up and about again."

The captain turned around again and continued trying to change.

"Yeah, and not a moment too soon. I have to be in full uniform for a formal occasion like this, and this weird red thing is ill suited to being worn over the top of another set of armour. If it weren't for Second grafting this damn thing on...I'm going to miss wearing clothes."

"...Sorry about last night. I shouldn't have talked you out of your orders. We should have gone to meet with the princess, like she asked."

"Don't worry about it. It probably saved my life. I had no idea just how much those Mages' Guild sadists messed me up. Honestly, I felt fine. Maybe a little empty without all those major organs, but I didn't think I was actually in any danger of dying."

"...Did it hurt?" asked Gold Coin, "What the Mages' Guild did, I mean?"

Chain Mail looked at him briefly through the mirror's reflection.

"They made a point of not using anaesthetic. I don't remember most of it now though, so I'm not so bothered anymore. Everything after we marched into the Palace of Kings up until Broad Sword's death is kind of a hazy blur for me now, and I really wouldn't have it any other way. I went to a dark place for a while there."

He finished putting on the jacket.

"...Hate this thing...Where are Explodey and the others?"

"In the suite upstairs. Softy's choosing a tie right now, and Mystic and Explodey are arguing."

"...Over what?"

"Game of hangpony as far as I can tell. Or something about obscure zebra history. I don't fucking know."

"...And Sliske?"

"All quiet on that front. Mystic says he can't even hear him in his head anymore. It's like he went to sleep and never woke up."

"Hmph," Chain Mail snorted, "That alien puts us at a severe disadvantage with that ability of his. I don't know how we're supposed to get through to him at all when he has the ability to duck out of any conversation and just hide inside Mystic for days at a time."

"You've just got to wait for him to regain his senses," Gold Coin explained, "I know he can be a bit intimidating, but he's much more open to a heart-to-heart talk than you'd think."

"Who said he was intimidating? I'm not intimidated," the captain said defensively.

"...Captain, I know all about your fears. Sliske's been in your head, remember? He told me he knew you were afraid of him."

"...I'm not afraid. Just a little hesitant to trust him. I'm a guard, see? Letting my defences down around a potential threat is not something I'm eager to do."

"He's not a threat. I know he seems like one, what with the teeth and all, but if-"

"Soft Spoken told you how many ponies he killed, right?"

"He might have mentioned it."

"One thousand two hundred and seventeen, Goldie. That's almost as much as the entire Spider Legion combined!"

"It's different now though! He's not the same pony who did all that. He's changed. Literally. His actual personality has been rewritten entirely since he first escaped."

"...Alright, fine. I'm scared of him. Happy now?"

"Well, I'm happy that you're being honest with me at least."

"Oh hey, honesty!" Chain Mail interrupted, suddenly sounding jovial, "I just realised that that's probably my Element! I actually feel kind of stupid it took me this long to realise that..."

"Chains, don't try to change the subject on me."

"...Damn."

"You don't have to be scared of him. He's not a monster anymore. Mostly. I've talked with him, and Softy's talked with him, and we both agree. He's becoming a pony. Maybe a pointy-toothed pony who's a little sensitive about his past, but still..."

"And I can respect that. But forgive me for remaining a little apprehensive around the three times would-be conqueror of Equestria."

"Captain, I should let you know that he's genuinely upset about your attitude. He confided in me, and said that Broad Sword was actually his first ever friend. And he doesn't think that we're his friends. He thinks we just keep him around because we have to, or because Broad Sword did. If we're the Elements of Harmony, that means that we can't think of each other like that. He knows that you fear him, and he really doesn't want you to. I think he actually does want to be our friend."

"...I will talk to him. I can't promise that I will miraculously get over my fears or anything, but if he really desires nothing more than to be my friend, then I'll at least try, for his sake."

"That's all I'm asking, captain."

***

"Doctor!"

Luna galloped over to the familiar blue box that remained hidden out of plain site just behind the corner of the royal hedge maze. Stepping out of a door somewhat that looked like it was designed with a much taller species in mind, was a young brown earth pony stallion with an hourglass cutie mark, who turned to her as she ran at him.

"Oh! Hello, princess," he said solemnly, "I heard all about it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault," Luna replied, "I know you can't be expected to show up for everything. Greater needs of the universe, etcetera."

"Yeah...but still, I'm sorry anyway. I know there's no real excuse for-"

"Hey, princess!"

A grey pegasus mare with a blonde mane jumped out of the TARDIS and tackled Luna to the ground. The princess of the night grunted as she fell, but did not try to resist her very affectionate attacker. Instead she just rolled her eyes and patted her on the head.

"Hello Derpy, it's nice to see you again."

As her old friend finally climbed off her, Luna noticed that she was frowning.

"'Derpy'?" she repeated, "Who's Derpy? My name is Ditzy Doo! Duh!"

Luna looked over to the Doctor in confusion.

"...I thought her name was...?"

"It was. But there was some kind of time anomaly. I'm not sure who, but somepony altered the timeline and her name with it. Also her voice, if you pay close attention. I still don't know why. They didn't change anything else. It happened a long time ago, and it's a mystery that I'm still trying to solve today."

"Ooh! Doctor! Where's this place! Are we in the future again?! Is this Canterlot?! Look at the statues! There's so many of them! Way more than present Canterlot!"

The Doctor smiled slightly.

"I love travelling with her. She never stops being amazed by the new places."

Ditzy Doo was flying around above the maze and looking across the landscape. Her face was the very picture of joy, and a stark contrast to the mood of everypony else present. Luna wondered if she was even aware what they were there for. She voiced her concerns to the Doctor.

"No. I was going to tell her when we got here, but then you arrived and she got all excited like this. From her perspective, she hasn't seen you for almost a year and a half now."

"Hmm. Very well. Regardless, I hope you know how much it means to me that you would be in attendance for an event such as this. I don't have many friends as long-lived as I am, and with Tia gone, I just...I don't know how I would get through any of this without my friends."

The Doctor seemed about to respond, but then was interrupted as a grey stallion in a top hat, with a cutie mark identical to his own, came charging across the grass and skidded to a halt in front of him.

"Hello me! I'm you from the future! Very majorly bad crisis coming up, Eclipse Crisis even, need to borrow your TARDIS, mine got stolen! Hope you don't mind, ta for now!"

He disappeared into the blue box. The three ponies just stared in confusion as the blue box began to make that wheezing noise and flash its light, as it slowly faded out of existence.

"...What in Equestria was that?" asked Luna.

"I'm not sure, but I think my eleventh incarnation just stole my TARDIS."

"...Should we go after him?"

"Nah! If my future self had a TARDIS to lose, I must get it back at some point. Best leave the timeline to play out, and I'll discover first hand what prompted this when I become him. All I can do is hope that it's not any time soon."

***

"Sir!"

Second looked up from his newspaper, and saw a pony in yellow power armour and with a large number one emblazoned on the flank fly over to land next to his table.

He had decided to eat out at one of Secopolis's many cafes today, and avoid going through the hassle that was the palace servants desperately trying and failing to meet his standards. Best just to order from a pre-prepared menu of choices. He had been enjoying a coffee and a cheese and ham sandwich until he was interrupted.

Anyway, power armoured pony.

"Yes, what is it?"

Butterfly One took off her helmet to reveal a familiar face.

"It's me!" Silver Vein shouted enthusiastically, "They let me into the Butterflies, and I was promoted to squad leader!"

"Yes, I know. I was the one who chose you for the position."

"You did?!"

"I did say I would arrange a reward for you, didn't I?"

"Oh thank you sir! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The mare jumped forward and grabbed Second, and proceeded to try and crush him in her hooves. Or it may have been a hug. It was hard to tell with power armour.

"Right, yeah. Get out of my face," Second wheezed.

Silver Vein let go and backed away, looking embarrassed.

"Well...really though, thank you sir," she said sincerely.

"Don't be thanking me. You'll be on the front lines. All I've done is ensured that you will die sooner."

"Not necessarily."

"Not necessarily, no, but probably."

"I really don't mind. I've always wanted to see some real action! It's been my dream ever since I was a little filly..."

"I created you four days ago. You were never at any point a filly."

"Yeah, but I still have memories!" Silver Vein protested.

"Which still doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. Anyway, we'll be heading out to Canterlot tomorrow for the apocalypse. Make sure that you're prepared. Oh, and get a saddle fitted onto your armour."

The mare's eyes went wide.

"W-Why?!"

Second raised an eyebrow at her.

"Why the hell do you think? I need to get from one major city to another, my car was destroyed, and I'm dressed like a cowboy. Do the math."

"Oh. Oh, is that all? Sure, I can do that."

The human tilted his head.

"I have to be going now, sir!" Silver explained, "Thanks again!"

The knight placed her helmet back on and spread her wings, and seconds later, she was gone. Second just shook his head as he went back to reading his paper.

"Strange mare..."

***

Soft Spoken, Gold Coin and Explodey kept together as they marched through the crowd, with Mystic following close behind. They were allowed a place up front for this, and had chairs reserved. Because the funeral was a public event, many ponies were forced to stand in the crowds around the palace grounds and pay their respects from afar, but those that personally knew Celestia, mostly nobles, politicians, business ponies or palace staff all had seats up closer to the front.

The group soon arrived at their places, third row from the front to the left of the small aisle that had been made between the chairs. This was a surprisingly good spot, considering that they had only known the princess for part of a day before she got killed. Maybe being the Elements of Harmony carried more weight than they thought.

On the green, a large platform had been constructed, atop which lied a huge white marble tomb. A podium had been set up nearby, and a pony was currently adjusting the microphone to make sure it would work. Sitting off to the side, a priest struggled to think of some way to adapt the usual prayer calling for Celestia to watch over the deceased, which would not have made much sense for a number of reasons in this context.

At one of the front-most seats, Princess Luna sat with a few other ponies, trying her best to keep her composure. Prince Blueblood sat to her right, looking uncharacteristically dignified in that tuxedo, and beyond him a number of other ponies, mostly unicorns, though one earth pony and pegasus sat almost right next to Blueblood. And to the princess's left were a few alicorns who, despite probably being celebrities, Soft Spoken and the others had never seen before. Except the pink one, who was Princess Cadance if he was not mistaken.

Wait, was that black one even an alicorn at all? There was no way a pony could ever naturally grow insect wings. Then again, the night guards...

Also around were representatives from a number of other species. Though only a few of them were on the front rows, Gold Coin spotted at least three diamond dogs, one of which was albino, nine griffins, four smartly dressed zebras, two minotaurs including that huge one that was with Luna yesterday, three donkeys, a cow, a strange creature that looked like a cross between a fish and a human, wielding a trident and wearing a spiky gold crown, and one fellow who he would have sworn was a gargoyle if he didn't know for a fact that they were extinct now.

And of course, Spike the Eternal and his dragons all lined the top of the palace, the only place they could be without taking up space that the ponies would need. At first, he thought that the Eighteen were there in full, but an actual count revealed that two had not seen fit to attend.

The priest tapped the microphone as he stepped up to the podium, and the feedback stopped what little chatter still persisted.

"Ahem. If we could all please have a moment of silence, and then we can begin..."

***

Meanwhile, half way across the galaxy and in another time, a massive explosion rippled across space. The Eleventh Doctor ripped open the doors to his TARDIS and stared down at the devastation caused. Below him, Gallifrey burned. His planet was dying before his eyes, his people being wiped out, while he could do nothing. Dozens, maybe hundreds of undisguised TARDISes fled the planet, spreading out in all directions as long as they could escape the cataclysm, and fading away from view as they fled through the time vortex in hope of safety from the disaster.

Not the disaster that had already happened however. The explosion that destroyed the planet was nothing compared to what they were actually fleeing from. They knew what was about to happen. The planet itself was but a mere fraction of the destruction about to be unleashed. The Doctor stared in horror, a single tear escaping, as Gallifrey's sun went supernova.

And with the fall of the Time Lords, there in the centre of the explosion that was once a sun, cosmic horrors crawled through into the universe.

***

"...Amen," the priest finished.

"Amen," the crowd repeated.

Mystic leaned over to Softy and whispered in his ear.

"What does 'Amen' mean?"

"No idea."

The priest nodded to Princess Luna and vacated his place at the podium. The princess in turn got up and moved to the front, and stood behind the same podium. Unlike the much smaller pony who was managing the service before, she did not need to climb up and rest her hooves on the podium to use the microphone, being tall enough on her own to reach it.

Luna cleared her throat and looked over the crowd. Her horn lit up, and she drew a number of small cue cards with the notes for her speech on them. She shuffled them nervously.

"Keep your composure, Luna," she reminded herself, "You've managed it so far. Don't break down. Be strong for your subjects."

"A little over two thousand..." she began.

No, that was wrong. She was missing a card. She searched them and picked out the right card again. She cleared her throat again and tried a second time.

"...My sister was the dearest pony in my life. I've lost many friends, and even family before. Death seems to take everypony in the end...but I've never lost anypony quite like my sister before. Tia...Princess Celestia, I mean...she was always the best of us. She always found it in her heart to forgive, she always wanted to take the peaceful route, and even when she fought monsters like Discord and Lord Second, she still refused to kill.

"A little over two thousand years ago, my jealousy nearly led Equestria to the brink of disaster, and even as I was committing so many atrocities, my sister still wanted nothing more than for us to stop fighting and be friends again. I think the day she used the Elements to seal me in the moon was the worst day of her life. And one thousand years later, I returned. The very first thing I did when I came back was to try and do it all again, and when I was beaten, even after all that, she still forgave me right away. Just like that..."

The princess felt her eyes beginning to water.

No! Stay strong! They need you to be strong!

"When she and I were together again, my sister made a promise to me. She promised me that we would never be apart again. That she'd never leave me alone. And she kept that promise. It's been one thousand and five years since that day, and we ruled side by side all that time. So many years spent together...and it still doesn't make up for all the time we lost.

"I regret so many things, but the one thing I think I regret the most, is letting Tia down. She always loved me, and she always looked out for me. She did what a big sister was supposed to. And I never saw that. Not even after I came back. It wasn't until she was gone, that I realised just how big a part of my life she was. Maybe she could continue on for one thousand years without me, no matter how much it hurt, but...I still don't know if I could ever rule alone without her..."

Don't show weakness. Stay strong!

"I just feel..."

Don't cry!

"I can't..."

Don't!

Princess Luna began to cry. She covered her face with her hooves and leaned on the podium. The crowd remained quiet, and their immortal alicorn ruler just sobbed into the microphone.

"I miss you, Tia..." she whispered, "Don't leave me alone...please come back...please?"

But the white marble tomb stayed silent.

***

One day later...

***

Second stepped outside. Below him, lined up in the street, were the squads of ponies in multicoloured power armour. Gathered around them, he could see a number of other ponies all present and waiting for orders. Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof, Frosty Morning, Night Shroud, Commander Bullseye, Dr. Apocalypse, a few dozen Knights of Man, and the doctor's four favourite unicorns all waited for his order.

"We are ready," Second announced, "We shall march on Canterlot today! The plague that now flows through my veins will be spread, and an army of the dead will rise to heed my call. They will cut a great swathe across this land, Equestria will burn, and Princess Luna and her Elements of Harmony shall fall! On this day, we bring the end of the world as we know it!"

"YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

The knights and armoured ponies all cheered and whooped. Out of all of them, only the Brotherhood of Man seemed unenthusiastic, and looked to each other nervously.

"So let us go, my minions! Now we fly! To Canterlot!"

The pegasus ponies all spread their wings, and the unicorns in the group all partnered up with an earth pony as their horns began to glow. Second walked down the steps to the Cathedral, and stopped in front of the Butterfly squad.

"You ready?" he asked the squad leader.

"I...think so, sir," Silver Vein reported.

Second gave her an evil grin.

"Good, because I've always wanted to do this."

Without warning, he jumped into the air, and the pegasus grunted in pain as Second landed directly on her back, just on the saddle. He yanked the reigns that had also been fitted onto her armour, causing her to rear up.

"HI HO SILVER AWAY!"

END

Author's notes:

I'm thinking I should start adding an ending theme for all future chapters. What do you guys think?

As usual, apologies for lateness, but I'm doing exams right now. I'm doing better than I thought I would actually, but hey. The next chapter may also be delayed, but once May is over, I should be getting back to a regular schedule.

Inb4 complaints about the lack of Celestia. Soon, I promise.

Next Chapter: FUCKING ZOMBIES BRO.

Chapter 16: Anarchy For its Own Sake

"Now let's talk about Order #17. Most agents will be given this at some point in their careers, if not for training purposes then because it is one of those rare times where it actually has become necessary. In either case, you're an agent of the Equestrian Secret Service now, so you should be able to deal with anything sent your way whether this is a serious threat or not. And if you can't deal with it, chances are you're up against some kind of God of Chaos or cosmic avatar of destruction, in which case, nopony really expects you to go up against it and survive anyway, so you will be excused for failures in those areas

In a nutshell, Order #17 is E.S.S. speak for, 'you are now a very well paid bodyguard for the princesses'. They're immortal anyway, and can't actually be killed except by some special weapons and other equally powerful divine entities, but nevertheless alicorns can still experience pain, and that's never pleasant. You on the other hand are perfectly capable of dying, (unless you happen to be Agent W), so asking you to put your life on the line for the princesses may at first seem unreasonable.

Then you remember to 'shut up, maggot', because the E.S.S. is still technically part of the army, and that means you do as you're told no matter how unfair it is. Life's tough, deal with it. Not for us of course. Our lives are wonderful. We live in safety and security, have families happily oblivious to our shady dealings, and we get buckets of money to sit around telling you stupid grunts what to do. Yep, being an E.S.S. boss is pretty chill.

Anyway, get out there and start jumping in front of oncoming projectiles."

-Order #17, extract from the Equestrian Secret Service Agent's Pocket Field Guide.

***

To someone observing, the appearance of Lord Second's invading army was anything but ominous. A formation of yellow and blue pegasi flew in tandem towards Canterlot mountain, music blasting out of a sound system attached to their armour. Second rode on the lead pegasus, wearing his favourite duster and Stetson hat, and singing along to the music. All the while, he was backed up by a chorus of other ponies, their voices auto tuned to perfection by the speakers in their helmets.

"OH! I'm a cowboy! On a steel horse I riiiiiiiiiiiiiide!"

The pegasi were almost at the mountain now. They were level with the city itself, but Second's target was the graveyard located halfway down it. It was not the only burial place in the area, but if Second wanted to get his zombie army before he actually entered the city, they'd need to stop there first. So he directed them towards it. As they got in close, he prepared to dismount.

"I'm wanted!"

He leapt off of Silver Vein's saddle and plunged towards the graveyard, landing with a loud thud and causing the ground to crack at the point of impact. He rose to his full height.

"Dead or alive!"

Butterfly and Rainbow squads hovered up behind him, while a number of earth ponies and unicorns who had teleported here earlier trotted up from their position lower down on the mountain to meet them. Second walked through the gate to the graveyard. It was still way smaller than the graveyard up in Canterlot proper, but the one here still held hundreds of ponies. He smiled.

"Wakey wakey..."

He formed a claw with his hand and gestured for his new minions to rise, like he was conducting an orchestra. There was a rumbling sound. The ponies in power armour exchanged fearful looks as the ground began to churn. The earth around the graves was pushed away, and the rotting corpses of hundreds of ponies burrowed their way out.

They were a disgusting sight. Ponies of all races with sickly green or rotten grey skin, manes and tails dry and lifeless, pieces of flesh missing, bits of bone revealed, exposed innards, and all of them with a look of psychotic rage in their eyes. They shambled forwards towards Second. They weren't exactly running, but they were moving at a decent speed considering most of them didn't have all four of their legs functioning. Some of the pegasus zombies lacked even feathers on their wings. Could they still fly?

Second cackled like a madman, and the zombies all shuffled past, seemingly ignoring him completely. Most of them turned towards the main pathway and began to walk up the mountain towards Canterlot. One or two stray zombies wandered over to Second's troops in power armour.

"By First..." muttered Starpoint Two.

A zombie unicorn in the tattered remains of a grey suit, broken glasses hanging off his face and worms crawling out of his eye socket, lunged forward at Starpoint Two and tried to take a bite out of his neck. The pony inside the armour screamed and shook about to try and get the zombie off.

Ever heard auto tuned screaming? Hilarious.

"Stop whining, you pussy," said Second, "He's a corpse armed only with his teeth. He isn't going to get through that."

"I DON'T CARE! GET HIM OFF!" the pony shouted

Second casually backhanded the zombie, which hissed at him and then slinked off with the rest of the horde. Starpoint Two scraped a hoof against the ground in shame, while Second folded his arms and shook his head.

"Son, I am disappoint. VERY disappoint."

***

Soft Spoken, Gold Coin, Mystic Chant, Explodey McGee, and Captain Chain Mail all stood on the balcony leading out from their shared luxury suite in Canterlot Castle. Though the giant bubble shield of magical energy tinted their view a slight purple, they could still see the land outside the city clear as day. And what they saw was about two hundred undead monstrosities running up towards Canterlot's main gates.

The ponies were unclear about what to feel as they saw the zombies approaching. On the one hand, the dead had risen and were walking once again, forever cursed to shamble on, feeding on the flesh of the living and doomed to wander the places they had known in life out of some vague instinctual memory, a horrifying reminder of what they once were.

Then on the other hand, it was a bunch of corpses legging it down a cobblestone road, occasionally tripping up, and then rushing head-on into a giant purple shield which they would bounce off of and knock down their comrades like bowling pins.

Actually, they knew exactly how to feel about this. The zombie apocalypse was profoundly silly.

"So, looks like the end of the world guys," said Gold Coin, "Anypony want to play a round of blackjack before we die?"

"I would," Chain Mail replied, "but the royal guard is needed to repel our attackers, even if this does end up being pointless. As captain, I am required to help coordinate the resistance."

"And I can't play," said Mystic.

"We can teach you, can't we Softy?" asked Gold Coin.

"Yeah, I think we've got time," the old pony answered.

Chain Mail sighed.

"Well, you guys have a nice game. I'm off to die for my country now. See you."

"Actually, would it be alright if I came with you?" asked Explodey, "I'm immortal anyway, apparently. I could be useful."

"...That is a good point. Alright, you can come."

"Hooray!" said Explodey, "Suck it, you guys! I'm going to fight zombies! Can you say you've ever fought zombies? I can say that I have! Or will."

"Was that a challenge?" asked Gold Coin, "You think you can fight zombies and I can't?"

"Can't you?"

"I bet I can kill a hundred times more zombies than you ever could!"

"Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, huh?"

The earth pony grinned.

"Are you sure you want to bet against Gold Coin? Because Gold Coin never loses a single bit."

"Bring it on!" Explodey replied enthusiastically.

Gold Coin looked over to Chain Mail.

"Captain, go get me my minigun."

"Yeah, and get me one of the lightsabers!"

Chain Mail rolled his eyes and walked back into the suite again.

"Softy? Are you game?"

"I've never killed anypony in my life, and I don't plan to start now."

"What?" said Gold Coin, "You're not gonna kill zombies with us? You're not even willing to kill mindless, shambling monsters with no real life or personality anyway? And when you have the BEST weapons?"

"Huh?"

"Rainbow Six, dude! You've got Secopolis power armour! That's worth, like, ten miniguns!"

"Goldie, I'm a pacifist."

"Then tranquilise the zombies or something! Fucks' sake!"

"What will TRANQUILISERS do to a zombie?!"

"Oh, I don't know, it might fucking tranquilise them."

"Their own deaths didn't stop them! Making them sleepy won't do shit!"

Gold Coin facehoofed.

"Fine. Be that way. Me and Explodey are going to go blow shit up and have fun. And you can stay here and be a hippie!"

Soft Spoken's eyes widened in shock.

"What, did you call me?"

"I said you're a hippie, grandpa."

Soft Spoken butted his head against Gold Coin's.

"Nopony call me a hippie, sonny."

"Well then?"

Chain Mail walked back onto the balcony again, and dropped a minigun, two lightsabers and the Rainbow Six armour onto the floor. Soft Spoken began to suit up.

"First to a hundred kills wins."

***

"Your majesty!"

Commander Hail of Luna's night guards charged across the throne room, where he found Luna conversing with Prince Blueblood. He stopped just short of her, panting for breath for a second before saluting and giving her the news.

"Second's forces are at the gate and are trying to breach the shield! It's holding him back right now, but we're certain he'll find a way past it. He's got an army out there. It's an entire army of these...creatures...ma'am. The risen dead."

"What? You mean zombies?" said Luna.

"Ssssh!" Commander Hail whispered, "Don't use the 'Z' word!"

Luna rolled her eyes.

"So how many zombies are we looking at then?"

***

"...Are we all ready for this?" asked Chain Mail, as the group exited the palace, "I know that none of you have guard training, so I don't expect you to be capable fighters-"

"I killed an alicorn," Gold Coin interrupted.

"Yes, I know, but-"

"I destroyed the entire Mages' Guild," said Explodey.

"You're still not-"

"I'm wearing power armour equipped with missile launchers."

"Oh, fucking forget it!"

The group came to a stop as they passed the gates that separated the palace grounds from the rest of Canterlot. It was being watched by two very familiar guards, who both looked extremely nervous. The same ones that Dr. Heart Beat had been holding hostage for the past few days. They were looking much better now.

Chain Mail gave them an encouraging nod as they opened the gates to let them pass, and they smiled in return.

"Anyway, so if we are going to turn this into a contest, how are we going to keep count of kills?" asked Softy.

"We could just call it every time we get one," Gold Coin suggested.

"Actually," said Chain Mail, "I think it would be better if we all just kept count of our own kills, and call it when you reach one hundred. The winner would be the first to call it. That is if I can trust you guys not to cheat by calling it early?"

"Of course we won't cheat!" Gold Coin shouted, "What do you take us for?!"

"Well, be fair, I don't actually know any of you that well. It's easy to forget this little factoid what with us being the Elements of Harmony and everything, but do remember that I've only known you for five days."

"He's right," Softy agreed, "We really don't know anything about each other. It's no wonder our group dynamic is so dysfunctional and we argue all the time."

"No wait," Gold Coin interrupted, "That's bullshit. Twilight Sparkle and the original Elements only knew each other for a few hours before they fought Nightmare Moon together for the first time, and they got along fine even before that!"

"Ah," said Chain Mail, "But these are mares we're talking about. Notice that we're all stallions this time around."

Gold Coin looked from Chain Mail, to Softy, to Mystic, to Explodey, and then back to Chain Mail again.

"Holy shit, you're right. Is that why we're always at each other's throats and they weren't? Gender differences?"

"Makes sense to me," Explodey volunteered, "It's all that testosterone in the air. You can almost smell it. Or I can at least. That's normal, right?"

"Maybe this is our problem," Gold Coin suggested, "We're all approaching this Elements of Harmony business like the mares did. Emotional talks, hugs, and crying. Are we not stallions?!"

"YEAH!" the group shouted in unison.

"So we should do macho things to strengthen our friendship! Like...life weights! And...hoof wrestle! Or...we could..."

"Go for ice cream?" Explodey suggested.

"...That's not macho, Explodey," Gold Coin said flatly.

"I'm not a macho guy."

"Neither am I, truthfully," said Softy.

"Me either," said the captain.

Gold Coin looked surprised.

"You're not, Chains? I thought with the way you're captain of the royal guard and everything, being macho was kind of a requirement?"

"I skipped all our work-out sessions the moment my rank allowed for it, my office up at the castle is full of pictures of cats and my mother, and I keep a diary."

"...Well okay then. Everypony forget my suggestions. Ice cream is fine."

"...We don't have to keep up with the hugs and emotional talks though, do we?" asked Softy.

"I don't know. I think Sliske kinda needs it. Poor guy is a wreck."

Mystic sprouted fangs.

"Am not!"

"Oh hi, Sliske. Have you got anything to contribute?"

"I want to sssssay that I'm all in favour of our zombie hunting challenge. Count me in on that wager."

"The pot's up to five hundred bits guys! Whoever wins is buying the ice cream."

"Actually, can we get ice cream now? The zombie apocalypse begins in about five minutes, and I think we should go see the ice cream vendor ASAP, because if we wait until after the challenge is over, he may be dead or infected by then, thus no ice cream."

"This is true. Okay everypony! Ice cream, and then we kill zombies. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"To Donut Joe's!"

***

Second strolled up to the very edge of the giant purple shield that covered the city. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched it. Nothing happened. It was like touching a wall. He expected it to burn, or shock him, or ripple, or bounce back against him like rubber. Nothing though. It was just solid. Solid and boring.

The human rolled his eyes. If there was going to be a final battle at all, he needed to get inside. Fortunately, he knew that Dramatic Convenience would find a way to get him past that shield. He pondered how best to bring it down for a moment, and decided that he may as well just attack it.

He stood and balanced on one leg and pretended to be a ninja for a moment, (and wasn't that a contradiction when he was still dressed like a zombie cowboy), before lashing out and karate kicking the bubble shield. Sure enough, the thing cracked, and the crack spread all the way across it. And just like that, the giant invincible shield that had foiled his entire zombie army so far shattered like a light bulb under the impact of a single kick.

Goddamn this story was stupid.

***

"THE SHIELD HAS FALLEN!" Commander Hail shouted.

"Curses!" shouted one of the guard ponies, "Who would have thought that a single unicorn was not enough to maintain a city sized shield?!"

Luna looked out through the window at the shield falling apart in stunned disbelief.

"We're in trouble," she muttered, "Everypony! To attention! We must coordinate a defence and protect the citizens of Canterlot! Commander, I want you to head to the roof and tell Spike and his dragons to gather as many civilians as possible on the outskirts of the city and bring them up to the palace here! We can fortify this place against Second's forces and evacuate them all together if things get bad."

She looked over to the giant minotaur sitting in the corner of the room, filing his nails casually.

"Agent C?"

He glared at her.

"You're up."

***

Once the shield was down, the zombies had no problem chewing their way through the wooden gates and forcing their way into the city proper. Ponies of all races screamed and fled as the undead began to swarm the street. Second sauntered through the chaos like he was taking a leisurely sunday walk, smiling all the while as terrified civilians got ripped apart and eaten before his eyes.

Two ponies in power armour kept pace beside him, one a unicorn in white armour and the other an earth pony in pink, both acting as his bodyguards during this battle while the rest of their squad mates flew about above or dashed around on the ground helping to blow shit up and kill the royal guards trying to fight off the zombies. They were hardly even necessary with all the zombies around, but once the horde spread out across the entire city, the ponies in power armour, who Second had just realised he had no other name for, would be necessary to defend individual zombies from the Equestrian military. Zombies didn't have much of a sense of self-preservation.

Second snapped his fingers, and the pink armoured pony produced a microphone for him. He held it up and addressed the fleeing civilians.

"Guess who's back in da muthafucking house, with a fat dick in yo muthfucking mouths? Lord Second, ladies and gentlemen! I'll be here all night!"

Nearby, a pink mare with a blonde mane screamed as a zombie ripped open her stomach and began to eat her intestines. Second raised his shotgun and blasted her head off to silence her.

"Oh hush, my rhymes aren't that bad."

He turned back to the rest of the city. Several buildings were on fire, and there was blood and dead bodies everywhere in the street. Most of the zombies were already progressing down several side streets or heading further into the city. Up ahead, a large crowd of ponies ran away down mane street, chased by an equally large crowd of zombies and being sniped at by armoured pegasi in the air.

"Play track twelve!" Second ordered.

The pink pony hit a button on his suit and music began to play. The human held up his microphone again.

"One of my favourites..."

***

"...What the fuck is that?"

Chain Mail twisted his head around to look down the street and saw a huge cloud of dust moving in their direction. He slowly climbed out of his seat and turned to face it, while his companions all just squinted at it, trying to decipher what was causing it. Then, a dozen or so royal guards emerged from the dust cloud, bloodied and sporting a wide range of injuries, all galloping as fast as they could down the street.

Then, from the same dust cloud, hundreds of zombies, running way faster than a dead body had any right to. They snarled and growled and gnashed at the air, and above them a number of pegasi in power armour emerged from the crowd. They all carried rifles in their hooves with the help of special weapon grips on the forelegs, and were casually sniping off the fleeing guards.

"...Time to go," the captain said quietly.

"Fuck that!" Gold Coin shouted, "Time for me to rack up some kills!"

The yellow earth pony slipped on the harness rigged up to his minigun, designed especially for his use, and he tugged at the strings on the front. The monstrous weapon came to life and began whirring. A second later, a hail of bullets sprayed from the end, and Gold Coin cackled maniacally as he mowed down the incoming horde of zombies.

"Hey!" Chain Mail said indignantly, "Don't aim for the zombies! Those winged shitheads are the ones killing my guys! You've got a gun, take them out!"

Though there were no established rules about whether or not Second's living minions counted towards their game, Gold Coin shrugged and turned his weapon on the yellow and blue ponies shooting at them from the sky. The minigun was surprisingly effective against their armour, and three dropped almost right away.

The others quickly learned that they were in trouble and began trying to evade, but Gold Coin kept on target and caught them one by one. Every time one fell out of the sky, a portion of the zombie horde running down the street would split off and jump on the corpse, desperately trying to rip through the armour and get at the body.

The best part about this, was that the group were able to take one look at all the undead unicorns trying to much their way through metal armour, and conclude that zombies were too stupid to use their magic. That was a major point in their favour.

"I want in on thissssssss," said Sliske.

Mystic Chant's horn glowed, and at the other end of the street, the fallen pegasus troops were lifted into the air. With some slight effort, Sliske ripped the guns off the hoof attachments of the armour and brought them down the street to them. The alien grinned with glee as he inspected the four new loaded rifles he had obtained.

"Oh, I haven't had anything like thisssssss in my possssssessssssion sssssince Zarlow. Bringssssss back fond memoriessssss of time on the target range...Not my memoriessssss of courssssse, but sssssstill..."

He floated them up and pointed them at the crowd.

"Let'sssssss ssssssee if I've ssssstill got it..."

Four zombies at the far end of the street suddenly had their heads burst like water balloons and fell over. Chain Mail meanwhile reached to the side and pulled out the black helmet with the triangular mouth.

"The tech guys were able to figure out how it worked and repair it," he explained, "The Vader One is back in working order."

The earth pony slipped the helmet on, and from the forehead, the metal horn emerged that allowed him to use Secopolis's special brand of artificial magic. From his side, a familiar silver cylinder slipped out of its confines. With a press of a button, a blade of red energy exploded out of the end, and he swished his weapon about in the air experimentally. Explodey used his magic to draw and activate the blue one.

"You ready?" the captain asked.

Explodey looked uneasy with his friend wearing the full suit again, as last time he had the helmet on they had been fighting, and Broad Sword nearly died. However, Chains was himself again now, and they were about to fight together, on the same side this time.

"Ready."

The two ponies nodded in unison.

"CHARGE!"

Lightsabers drawn, Explodey McGee and ponified Darth Vader charged down the street at the oncoming zombie horde.

And it was glorious.

***

"OH! I can't decide, whether you should live or die!"

Second grabbed a nearby royal guard by the throat and pulled him up so he was face to face with him.

"Oh, you'd probably go to Heaven, please don't hang your head and cry!"

The guard wet himself in fear. Second put his one hand on his heart and used the other to hold his victim at arm's length.

"No wonder why! My heart feels dead inside! It's cold and hard and petrified! Lock the doors and close the blinds, we're going for a ride!"

He tossed the pony away behind him into the middle of a crowd of ravenous zombies. He scrambled to try and get away, while Lord Second continued his musical number with his back turned, seemingly oblivious to him.

"Oh, I could throw you in the lake, or feed you poison birthday cake..."

The guard tried to run past Second to escape, but the human seemed to anticipate his movement and stuck out a leg to trip him up.

"...I won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone..."

He placed a foot on the guard's back to hold him down as the zombies caught up.

"...Oh I could bury you alive, but you might crawl out with a knife, and kill me when I'm sleeping, that's why..."

He released the guard just as the zombies caught up, and he moved for all he was worth to get away.

"...I can't decide, whether you should live or die! Oh, you'd probably go to Heaven..."

The guard was cut off as more zombies emerged from side streets ahead.

"...Please don't hang your head and cry..."

The nameless guard turned around again to look at Second and the zombies approaching from the other angle. He looked positively terrified.

"...No wonder why! My heart feels dead inside! It's cold and hard and petrified!"

He drew the Reaper's Horn.

"Lock the doors and close the blinds, we're going for a ride!"

Then the guard remembered he was a pegasus, and flew off.

"...Fuck."

***

"HOLD THE LINE BOYS! NO ROTTING FREAK PASSES THIS POINT! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!"

"SIR YES SIR!" the soldiers chanted.

The lieutenant, a batpony of Luna's night guard, turned to face Spike. The purple dragon was laying on his belly in the middle of the road. His wings were stiffened and being used as ramps, as the ponies living in the residential areas around the block climbed onto his back in hope of safety. Most of the pegasus population had already made it to the castle, but a few who had unicorn and earth pony friends or family fluttered above Spike to make sure they got out alright, while saving space for more passengers.

"How long do you need?" the lieutenant asked.

"Hold them back for ten minutes," Spike instructed, "That should be enough time for me to get these ponies up to the castle and come back for the other half. Nonvulvahlok will be with you later to pick up any stragglers, so if I missed anypony, keep them with you until he arrives."

The lieutenant saluted.

"Sir."

From underneath Spike's wing, a giant minotaur marched over to him. The batpony nearly cringed in his presence, expecting that he was going to beat him to death on the spot, but instead he just produced a card.

"Agent C, representing the E.S.S.," the minotaur said in a gruff voice, "I have clearance to enter the battlefield."

The lieutenant nodded and stepped out of his way. The soldiers didn't move in time, and Agent C casually shoved them aside as he marched through into the war zone. He had a gigantic axe strapped to his back, but he didn't draw it. Instead, when zombies came near him, he just kicked them out of the way. Spike's eyes widened as he saw one corpse splatter all over the wall the minotaur kicked him into, painting the whole thing red.

"Dear Celestia..." muttered one of the soldiers, "I'm glad he's on our side."

The lieutenant glared at the guard who had uttered that last sentence, and began to throttle him.

"YOU SAY THAT WHEN WE'RE UP AGAINST ZOMBIES?! DON'T FUCKING JINX IT YOU ASSWIPE!"

***

The zombies at the end of the street were thinned out to just a half dozen now, and the sky seemed to be virtually clear of freaks in power armour. The group began to wind down again. Sliske was inspecting his rifles and tossing them away one by one as he discovered each one to be out of ammo.

Soft Spoken meanwhile, who despite claiming he would take part in the challenge still had not yet killed a single zombie, helped Gold Coin reload his back-mounted minigun. Chain Mail and Explodey returned from the front lines, both deactivating their lightsabers, and both covered in blood.

"We did good, team," Chain Mail said proudly, "I think we may have saved a few lives back there."

A cheery looking pony emerged from Donut Joe's.

"Hey guys, what's going on out h-"

His eyes went wide when he saw the five ponies outside the store coated in blood and armed to the teeth, and then he looked up and down the street at the mountains of bodies.

"This totally isn't what it looks like," said Gold Coin.

"GUYS!"

The ponies had barely noticed a lone zombie wander out of an alleyway behind Donut Joe's. It was close enough to the new pony who had just emerged from the store to bite him in the neck before Sliske grabbed it with his magic.

"AGGGGGGHHHHHHH!" the pony cried.

The zombie thrashed about in the air for a moment, before Sliske ripped its head off and threw it away from them.

"Aggggghhhh!" the injured pony moaned, "That stallion bit me! Actually bit me!"

Soft Spoken took charge.

"Don't worry! You're going to be alright! Chains, check that alley and make sure we've got no more coming! Sliske, keep watch in that direction."

Explodey trotted over and tried to calm the stallion, who was now losing a large amount of blood through the neck wound, while Gold Coin whispered to Softy.

"He got bitten! He's going to turn! Haven't you ever seen any zombie story before?! We should mercy kill him now before the infection takes hold. At least that way he'll die as himself."

"There might still be a cure," Soft Spoken argued, "Medical cure, magical one, hell, maybe the Elements of Harmony can cure the zombies."

"Is that why you're still refusing to kill these things?"

The old pony was quiet.

"You're the best of us, I hope you know."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!"

The ponies all twisted back around to see Explodey now sporting a similar neck wound as the donut store pony, and donut store pony now with rotting skin, empty eyes and blood pouring from the mouth, lunging at Explodey again. Softy shot him with one of the tranquilisers from the Rainbow Six's dart gun, and to his surprise it still affected zombies, and his target dropped immediately.

"Shit!" Gold Coin cursed, "That virus acts fucking fast! That couldn't have been more than thirty seconds!"

Chain Mail was back from the alleyway. Despite Soft Spoken's attempts to take the zombie alive, he casually crushed its head under hoof.

"Explodey got bitten. Is he next?"

"Grrrrrmmm..." Explodey grumbled, "I'm fine...I just..."

The skin around his neck began to turn grey. The unicorn began to breathe heavily.

"NO! Please don't let me..."

The wound around his neck closed up with a swirl of green fluid, but the skin stayed grey and rotten. It stopped spreading, but it wasn't healing either. He sighed in relief.

"I think...I think I'm fine...I just..."

The grey patch began expanding again at a rapid pace, almost reaching his face before stopping again.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Help me guys! Do something! I don't know how long I can hold it back!"

"Explode, you idiot!" Sliske shouted, "Regenerate from ssssssscratch!"

"Good idea!" Explodey agreed manically, "Everypony back away! I need to make this a big one!"

"Get into the alleyway," Chain Mail suggested, "That way you won't spray your infected fluids all over us."

Explodey nodded and charged into the alleyway, out of sight. The rest of the Elements waited in anticipation.

BOOM!

There was a trickling sound as the green liquid flowed back to form a single mass again. They waited for a second, and then a unicorn walked back out into view again, rotten grey skin covering half his face as he smiled cheerfully at them.

"Hey guys, I think it worked! I'm feeling much better! Say, does anypony else feel really hungry right now?"

***

Second blasted the head off the lieutenant and then pulled out another box of shells to reload the shotgun. Zombified royal guards shambled about around him, and began eating and infecting nearby civilians. Above them, dragons flew about Canterlot, most of them heading in the direction of the palace.

"Sir!"

The human turned looked over his shoulder to see a pair of ponies in pink armour.

"Party Balloon One, what's the situation?" he asked.

"Rainbow squad has been wiped out sir!" the stallion in the armour repeated, "Butterfly leader is still active and reports half of her squad are down! Ground based troops are still going strong! Starpoint and Diamond squads report zero casualties, Party Balloon only three, and Apple just one!"

"Hmm," Second grunted, "That's still most of my aerial team down, and they're the most vital part of this operation. We'd best bring in the heavy artillery to compensate. Authorise full use of all tactical weapons."

"Sir!"

There was a crackle on Party Balloon One's radio.

"Sir! We got hostiles! It's a...OH FU-"

Static.

"What the hell was-"

Party Balloon One did not get to finish his sentence before he was sliced clean in half by a giant axe as big as he was. The axe embedded itself in the road and the ground cracked around it. Second looked up at a nearby building. A minotaur big enough to give the demon he faced in Sun Rise's mind a challenge jumped off, and fell down towards him and the remaining pony with his fist outstretched.

His fist smashed into the other pony's back, bending the power armour out of shape. Second could actually hear the pony's spine crack, but the minotaur's fist was fine. He pulled up to his full height. A number of zombies moved in towards him, but he yanked his axe out of the ground along with a piece of road, and used it to swat away the undead like flies, leaving just him and Second.

"Well, you're clearly a badass," said Second, "That means that you're either here to join me, or we're going to throw down."

Agent C raised his axe.

"Throw down it is."

Second of course started by punching him in the nuts.

***

"Daddy!"

Soft Spoken looked across the road to see a filly running at a zombie with a crippled foreleg. Her mother jumped forward and grabbed her, and dragged her away kicking and screaming.

"NO! NO LET ME GO! IT'S DADDY! DADDY CAME BACK!"

This was sick. This whole thing was sick and disgusting. Only a truly awful individual could conceive of horrors like this.

"FOUR!"

Soft Spoken turned to the other side of the street. A survivor out in his front garden had pinned down a zombie unicorn and was holding a golf club in his teeth. He watched as he smashed it into the zombie's head, which came clean off and flew fifty feet. It hit a board and fell through a basketball hoop in a distant playground.

"HOLE IN ONE!" the golfing pony proclaimed.

Nope. Scratch that. The zombie apocalypse was still unbelievably silly.

"Softy!" Chain Mail shouted, "Stop gawking! We need to keep moving!"

The earth pony was shook out of his stupor and continued to run ahead after the rest of his friends. Explodey followed a little way behind them, still unaware of what was happening to him.

"What do we do?!" asked Softy, "He's only got so long before he changes too! Then what?!"

"We'll deal with that when the time comes," Chain Mail answered, "For now, just make sure he stays behind us. If he does turn, we should still be able to outrun him."

"Goldie can't outrun him, especially not carrying a minigun."

"So then you'll fly him. Either way though, if we can't kill Explodey, we've got to be able to escape him."

"Kill me?"

"GAH!"

Explodey had caught up and was now galloping along between them.

"Why would you want to kill me? I thought we were friends?"

"Explodey..."

"You know what? If you never liked me, you should have said so! I can go find new friends! Meanies!"

He charged past them, catching up to the others instantly. They didn't even know he could move that fast.

Up ahead meanwhile, things went from bad to worse.

"So, Gold Coin, you're smelling delicious today. I mean good! You smell good. Damn I feel hungry. Is it lunchtime already? I feel like that ice cream should have filled me up more. What about you Sliske? Do you feel hungry? You smell hungry."

Sliske gave Gold Coin a confused look.

"Issssss he coming onto ussss?"

Despite the fact that they were running at full speed, Gold Coin still managed to facehoof again.

***

"Your maj?"

Luna ignored Blueblood and kept watching the city as the undead swarmed through it. Things were getting worse and worse. At first she thought they were turning the tide. From up here with her telescope, she observed the Elements of Harmony, Agent C, and the dedicated ponies of the royal guard wiping out zombies in droves, as well as the occasional heroic civilian with an improvised weapon. One resourceful pony was driving down the finance district in a bulldozer and running the zombies over.

Then the zombies reached the cemetery in the centre of Canterlot. And that's how Luna learned that as well as biting living ponies, the zombies could also propagate themselves with other corpses. They dug up the graveyard, tried to eat its contents, and then suddenly the zombie horde had a fresh supply of troops.

This was bad.

"Your maj?"

Still, at least the evacuations were going better. Despite a few slip ups, Spike and his dragons had rescued hundreds so far. Maybe thousands. The front gates of the palace were locked, and made of steel. The zombies couldn't get through that on their own, and Second was being handled already.

A green dragon landed on the grass below and let off a load of earth ponies. Most of them were sick and elderly, and they were accompanied by many doctors and nurses. That particular dragon had just come back from rescuing the ponies in the general hospital. At least they were all okay.

"LUNA!"

"WHAT, Blue?!"

"I dunno 'bout you, maj, but I'm not feelin' very safe 'ere. I's not gonna take Second more than a minute ta get through those gates, and when he does we're all in barney. I suggest once we get everypony 'ere in the palace, we get 'em all on dragon back again and abandon the city."

"No! We will not surrender! My guard will stand strong! It will take more than a cowardly murderer like Lord Second to take down Canterlot! This city has stood strong for thousands of years! We've come close to defeat before, but we never back down, and we never give up!"

She turned back to the city.

"Lord Second will meet his match yet."

***

CRACK!

Agent C smashed through the wall of a suburban house, flew through the living room, through the kitchen, out into the garden, cleared the fence, and landed on his back in the back garden of another house. He climbed to his feet again, and saw Second now standing on the roof of the house he had just been smashed through.

"Bitch, I'm putting you into prostitution."

The minotaur snorted and grabbed his axe, which lay next to him in the grass. He aimed it at the human and threw it. The thing spun through the air towards Lord Second, but fuelled by supernatural powers from beyond the universe, he avoided it with a back flip that would make Olympian acrobats green with envy.

He landed on the grass the other side of the large wooden fence, putting him just out of view. Agent C struck a pose, preparing for hand to hand combat. Then there was a loud crashing sound, and the fence suddenly came flying at him.

"BOOM, MOTHERFUCKER!"

Agent C soon found himself sandwiched between the wall of a house and part of a fence. The fence fell down, and he saw Second standing in the other garden still.

"You're so much fun, you know that?"

The minotaur went red in the face and screamed in rage. You could almost see the steam escaping from his ears.

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! IF SOMEPONY IS BEING A CUNT, GIVE THEM A GOOD PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!"

Fist outstretched, he ran at Second again, who just stepped aside and tripped him up. He landed face first on the ground. Before he could get up, Second sat down on his back. Surprisingly, he then found that he couldn't get up. It was like he had a steamroller parked on his back.

"Grrrrrrr..." he moaned, "How are you doing this?! How are you this heavy?!"

Second lit a cigarette and took a puff.

"Dramatic Convenience, my big blue retard."

"...What are you talking about?!"

"Never mind me. I've said too much already. Damn. That was an easy fight. I don't think it was even because I was particularly skilful. You just suck."

"Grrrr..."

"What's your deal anyway? Elite super soldier? Government experiment?"

"Equestrian Secret Service!"

"They must have some low fucking standards."

"...I only joined last week. This was meant to be my training course..."

"Awww...I almost have sympathy for you. But I don't. Oh look!"

The minotaur looked up as a lone zombie shambled into the garden.

"Get off me! Please! Do not let him get me!"

Second exhaled some more smoke.

"Sorry chief."

"NO! DON'T DO THIS TO ME! HAVE MERCY!"

"Ehhhh...Nope."

The minotaur thrashed about helplessly under Second's weight as the zombie reached him. It crouched down and began eating him alive. The human didn't pay any attention, just sitting in place as blood was sprayed over him and screams filled the air. He took another drag of his cigarette, and coughed loudly.

"What the fuck am I doing? I don't even smoke."

He tossed away his cigarette unceremoniously. He shrugged and walked off, and was soon followed back into the street by a zombie minotaur.

"It's good to be the Lord."

***

"We're fucked. We're so completely fucked," Gold Coin repeated, "What the shit are we going to do?!"

"Goldie! Shut up! We'll figure it out!" Softy shouted.

The group finally approached the gates.

"Let us in! We're citizens!"

The guards on the other side of the gate, still the same guards from before, looked hesitant. Chain Mail trotted up, and then they immediately opened the gates before he even had to say anything. The palace green was surprisingly empty, actually. Although the dragons kept on dropping off the evacuees outside, they were all heading into the palace for safety, not trusting the stone walls and steel gates to keep the undead out for long.

A number of guards waited outside on the green, most of them setting up defensive barricades and armed with crossbows, which sadly was the closest the royal guards had to the guns used by the Secopolis armed forces. Fortunately, zombies had neither, so they still technically had the advantage here.

Assuming they were all capable of performing perfect headshots with those things.

They looked up at the tallest tower of the palace. Princess Luna spotted them and flew down to meet them all.

"Thank goodness you're all okay!" she said, "The city's almost completely under their control now. We got most of the citizens to safety here, but many of them have since joined the enemy's ranks, and one of our best fighters just fell to Second. We must defend the palace at all costs. Fortunately, as luck would have it, there are plenty of capable fighters still here with us. Visitors to Canterlot who came for my sister's funeral, old friends and family of mine, and a few truly exceptional ponies who hang around this bar on the east side of town-"

"Princess."

"Yes, captain?"

"Explodey was bitten."

Luna blinked.

"...Somepony up there is conspiring against me to try and crush my spirit. No matter though! We shall persevere. If Explodey has not succumbed so far, he may still last yet. The Elements of Harmony may be able to save us. If we're lucky, they will be able to cure the zombie plague, including that in your friend."

Explodey was looking worried again.

"Wait, I'm still infected?! Why did nopony tell me?!"

"It just seemed sort of cruel when you were in such a good mood," Softy replied lamely.

"What do we do now though, princess?" Chain Mail pressed.

"Head into the palace, as quickly as possible. I want you to go to the throne room on the lower level. Find my steward, and tell him to take you to my sister's study. I had the Elements of Harmony retrieved from the royal archives and waiting there for you. Just reactivate them, and use them to cure Explodey and the rest of Canterlot. Simple!"

"That doesssssss not ssssssound sssssimple," Sliske protested.

"Oh, but it is! Just use the spark of friendship, and the stone balls should turn into your element necklaces. Then the Element of Magic can unleash their power just like any other spell with help from the rest of you. Sound good?"

"Uh..."

"Great! Get moving! Now! GO!"

The gang obeyed and ran off towards the palace, with the exception of Captain Chain Mail, who paused and looked back at the princess.

"Your highness, what will you do now?" he asked.

Luna spread her wings and rose into the air.

"I'm going to protect my subjects."

***

Prince Blueblood emerged onto the roof of the palace. This place was not meant to be so crowded, but nevertheless it was almost completely full with frightened ponies, huddling together in groups and whispering fearfully amongst themselves. Dragons surrounded the roof, either hovering in place or precariously perched on the tops of one of the many towers of the castle, or hanging from the spires.

Spike the Eternal was one of the many who chose to hover nearby, looking out at the city.

"Spike!" Blueblood shouted over the din of the other ponies, "Oi! Spike!"

"Yes?" the dragon replied.

"Canterlot is in a right state, and that mad bastard is gonna break down those gates any moment now! I don't trust this palace to protect us! I want you to get all your dragons to take everypony you've gathered up 'ere and on the lower levels and fly them to safety! Get 'em as far from Canterlot as possible! Take 'em wherever! Trottin'am, Las Pegasus, I don't care! Just make sure they're clear of here!"

Spike raised an eyebrow.

"Does Princess Luna know of this plan?"

"O' course she does! She asked me to tell you! Come on, shake a leg! We need to get everypony out of this place before those corpses get smart enough to learn how ta climb!"

***

"I, am, the, LORD!" sung Second.

"He is the Lord!" replied a chorus consisting mostly of surviving Starpoint squad soldiers.

"Lord of All!"

"He sees it all!"

"I see it all, this world is small and ready to fall!"

"It's gonna fall!"

"It's gonna burn!"

"Crash and burn!"

"It's your turn!"

"Equestria's turn!"

"It's their turn, to watch in concern, as I kill everything that they've learned, that lives in their world from the biggest beasts to the smallest leafy ferns!"

"Those leafy ferns!"

"Equestria you're up!"

"Yeah, you're up!"

"You're all fucked!"

"Completely fucked!"

"About to get fucked by an angry biker, out back of a bar in the middle of nowhere, where if you go screamin' no-one will save ya, 'cause Lord Second's here to explain that-"

CRASH!

"STOP WITH THAT INCESSANT SINGING!"

Royal Canterlot Voice. Now Second had to rearrange his hair. He did so, while he surveyed the alicorn who stood before him. Luna's eyes had gone pure white from the raw power of her magic. Storm clouds drew over the city and lightning cracked, and the princess inched towards him one step at a time, seething with rage like the human had never seen in her before.

"YOU MURDERER! YOU SHAN'T LIVE ANOTHER DAY, HUMAN! YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES, AS A TYRANT SHOULD!"

"Yawn. I'm bored. Where are the Elements of Harmony? Aren't they meant to be the ones saving the day?"

Luna lowered her head and charged. Second spinned off sideways to avoid her attack and kicked her in the flank with enough force to throw her across the street. She recovered in the air before she struck anything however, and turned to face the human. Now airborne she raised her horn towards the sky and brang a thunderstorm down on her enemy.

Second jumped aside and dodged the bolts of lightning, running over to the building near her. To her surprise, instead of hitting the wall, he ran directly up it, gravity clearly not affecting him at all, and he flipped off it at the end to jump up and kick her underside. It sent her sprawling, but not knocking her out of the sky, unlike Second himself who fell back to ground level after his attack.

Luna focused magic into her hooves and dropped like a rock. She smashed into the ground with enough force to cause a gigantic shockwave which ripped up the entire street and caused a particularly damaged house to collapse entirely. Second was thrown off his feet, but recovered mid-air and landed just fine.

The two stood at opposite ends of the street now. Both were still. Around them, there used to be zombies and ponies in power armour. Now, all other combatants lay dead or unconscious around them.

The princess charged magic in her horn and unleashed a beam of power. Second inexplicably shot an identical beam out of his right hand, and both beams met in the middle and struggled against each other. She was certain Second was just making up new powers on the spot. There was no way he could always do all this.

Where the beams met in the middle, a ball of energy was beginning to form. At first it was about the size of a football, but it kept growing and growing until it was easily bigger than they were. At that point, it reached critical mass and exploded. The cataclysm was gigantic. Ponies up at the palace witnessed it, and the explosion wiped out the entire street, leaving just a black scorch mark and flat ground where there were once homes.

When the smoke cleared, Luna was still fine, though coughing and choking on all the dust. She looked around her in search of the human. Despite the power of the explosion, she still did not have a scratch on her. That was the nature of alicorns. They could feel pain, but you could never wound them, and without lasting injuries, not even the pain lasted long. The only thing that could kill an alicorn, was another alicorn, or at least something with enough power to do a decent imitation of one.

Of course, they weren't the only beings with a form of immortality.

Second leapt out of the cloud of smoke and grabbed the princess by the throat. He forced her to the ground and stood over her, holding her down with his impossible strength.

"So what's it to be then?!" he asked manically, also not seeming to have any additional injuries, "I can be injured, but can never be hit, and you can be hit but I can inflict no lasting wounds on you! So what do we do? Just fight forever until one of us gives up?"

"I'm never giving up!" Luna shouted, "You murdered my sister! You slaughtered innocent ponies! You've committed too many atrocities to even count!"

"You're breaking my cold, undead heart."

He smashed a fist into her face. She spat in his and tried to ram her horn through his exposed eye socket, but he jumped back off her and out of range. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out...that thing...

"Good thing I have a tie-breaker, no? And with one shot left as well!"

Her blood ran cold.

"NO!"

She tried to get away, but she was too slow, and Second shot her at point blank range.

He had done this to Celestia twice, but Luna never experienced it herself. She had only her sister's descriptions to help her imagine what it was like, but even her most vivid nightmares never compared to the act itself. She actually felt mortality, and it was the worst experience that could ever be inflicted on an alicorn.

She collapsed, crying and screaming in pain, and fear, and rage, but she didn't know how lucky she was. Second hadn't managed a killing shot. She would live. Thing was though, Second shot her in the horn. It shattered at the base, and the whole thing flew off, leaving a stump where it once was.

"Oh look, a trophy."

Second knelt down and picked up Luna's horn.

"Hmmm...I wonder if I can make this into a necklace..."

Luna continued sobbing on the floor.

"Do you mind being quiet? I need to gather myself. I must find some more zombies to lead into the palace."

The princess of the night was tougher than he gave her credit for though. Missing horn or not, she climbed right back onto her hooves, and tried to tackle him again, though not nearly as fast or energetic as before.

"YOU. WILL. NOT. HARM. MY. SUBJECTS."

Second grabbed her by the nose and held her in place.

"Luna, you've got no horn anymore. You're useless now. Go home."

He held up the horn to her eye. She winced, thinking he was about to stab her with it, but instead he just tapped the end of it, and it shot magic into her face. The princess vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Heh, heh, heh...Now...Elements of Harmony..."

He looked over in the direction of the palace. Behind him, he could hear the shuffling of his loyal undead minions, at the forefront of which was zombified Agent C, and the last survivors of his armoured ponies, including, miraculously, Silver Vein. Second gave them all an evil grin, and pointed at the castle.

"Onwards!"

***

Luna crashed onto the floor of her sister's study, much to the surprise of her steward and the Elements of Harmony. They were all gathered around Celestia's desk, upon which laid five stone balls, all inert and lifeless. Sliske was also standing on the desk, horn pressed to one of them. He was shooting sparks at it.

"Princess!" her steward cried in concern, "What happened?! Are you okay?!"

"Fine, Quill Tip," she lied, "I just need...time...to recover..."

"What's going on with Second?!" Chain Mail demanded, "Has he entered the grounds yet?! What are we to do?! Explodey is no better and we are no closer to repowering the Elements! These sparks do not work!"

"It's the wrong...kind of spark..." the princess gasped, "You need...the spark...of friendship...Realise how close your bonds have made you...that you are true friends...That is the spark you need..."

The ponies just looked to each other in confusion.

"I don't follow," said Gold Coin.

"Which one of you is the Element of Magic?!" Luna shouted.

"Well, our working hypothesis is that it's Sliske and Mystic together as one."

"What?! But that- There's only six of you now! Six ponies, six elements! Each can represent only one! The Element of Magic must have a moment of mental clarity, and realise their friendship with the other five of you, and realise which virtue, which aspect of friendship and harmony each represent! That's the spark!"

"But none of us know what any of us represent!" Softy protested, "We've made guesses but we don't know anything for sure! Especially if our theory about Sliske and Mystic is wrong!"

Luna groaned loudly.

"We don't have time for this!" she said desperately, "That psycho is out there now! He's going to bring down the gates any moment, and when he does...!"

There was a crash of thunder, and the ground shook. The ponies all fell over in a heap, and the Elements of Harmony fell off the desk and rolled across the floor like loose marbles.

"What was that?!"

***

Second kicked down the gates effortlessly. The guards fled the moment they saw him coming. Even the soldiers beyond, on the palace green with all their fortifications and all their weapons, just fled at the sight of him. Such was the power of Lord Second. His dark legend made entire armies turn and run at the mention of his name. Not even back in the old days did he manage that.

He stepped through the gates and strode across the lawn, up towards the palace. In his way, the white marble tomb of Princess Celestia blocked his path. He intended to walk around it, but stopped instead. He looked above him at the clouds. They all swirled around the spot where he stood, like the beginnings of a tornado.

Through the eye of the storm, the sun was visible. It shone down beams of light through the darkness and illuminated the area around Second and his army. From the angry storm clouds that circled that patch of clear sky, thunder and lightning struck. There was a loud boom like nothing ever heard before, and a beam of light shot down from the sky, though from where exactly, Second could not tell.

The beam hit the cover of the marble tomb, which exploded into tiny pieces and rained everywhere. The ground shook, and the human cringed as pieces of sharp stone rained down on him, and averted his gaze from the tomb. He knew what he'd see when he looked back though. He knew he'd see that regal alicorn in all her glory, floating above and ready to strike him down with righteous fury.

He looked back.

...He was sort of right. She wasn't flying, and this certainly wasn't all her glory.

The princess remained a corpse. She dragged herself out of her tomb, and glared at him with all the fury he expected her to. She was a mess; coat dulled grey, already rotting, and her face was nothing like it once was. She only had an actual head at all because it had been put back together to make her look presentable for her burial, and even the best cosmetic magic couldn't disguise the worst of it. This was a zombie through and through.

She still wore her weird little golden hoof-boot things, and they clinked gently on the stone as she climbed out of her tomb and onto the ground again. She spread her wings, and several feathers fell out of them, and in doing so she also exposed her scarred underside, from where she had been hit the very first time she did battle with Second.

For his part, the human did not break down crying and beg for mercy, even though that was clearly the most sensible option here. Instead, he merely gulped and held his ground. He raised the Reaper's Horn defensively, even though it was currently unloaded. He was such an idiot. He should have brought more ammunition with him. There was more back in Secopolis, but he had none on his person. He used his last shot on Luna.

What was he even thinking?! He couldn't fight her! Shooting her in the face with a 12-gauge only pissed her off! Where do you even go from there?!

"SECOND!" she screamed, "WE END THIS NOW!"

END

Author's notes:

Awwwwwwwww shit son.

You know, I love writing Second. Much as I hate him, he is incredibly fun to write scenes for, especially when he reaches such incredible levels of bastardry as he does here, and it's always a good time writing when he gets his ass kicked as well. You get a real feeling of catharsis, you know? I love writing villains.

Anyway, this chapter here may be a fair bit darker than you're used to. I really didn't want it to turn out like that, but even the campiest and most light hearted of zombie flicks feature excessive blood and gore, and if I'm going to write a zombie story, blood and gore was necessary. I have tried to balance it out with lots of comedy and silly moments, and not going into detail about the gore, but it's probably still pretty heavy compared to our usual fare. Especially towards the end, and for that I apologise. I can't make any promises, but I don't think the fic will ever get this dark again from hereon out, so you can sleep easy knowing that this is as bad as it gets.

I will promise you a happy ending if nothing else. 'Kay?

Next Chapter: Zombie Celestia vs. Zombie Second.

Chapter 17: Last Legs

"Second round of questioning," said the announcer, "Let's mix it up a bit this time. We'll start off with...Nathan."

At the end of the long table that made up the special guests, Nathan waved to the crowd.

"Yep," he said, "Taking questions. Sensible ones this time, if you please."

Howard rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Unlike the rest of the special guests answering questions, who all looked down the table to Nathan as he spoke, Howard had no interest in anything he had to say.

"Yes, you?"

A dark haired woman in a t-shirt lowered her hand as she was acknowledged.

"Where did you get the inspiration for Foalsom Prison Blues? It was pretty different from most other episodes of last season."

"Honestly? Stole it from Howard."

"He did as well," Howard replied, muttering into his microphone.

"But in all seriousness, Howard was the one who came up the original idea. I just developed it a bit. He was of course writing the season four opening at the time, Beyond the Stars Parts 1 and 2, and I didn't want to see the idea go to waste, or get pushed back to next season. So he told me to just go ahead with it, and that's how we ended up doing it."

He looked around the room.

"You in the back."

"Were there any ideas you had while writing that you wanted to implement but never could, either because of time or because Hasbro said no?"

"Not because of anything Hasbro said," Nathan said carefully, "Though Jayson has ordered a few inappropriate jokes cut. I can't help it. With this fan base, I keep getting confused about who our audience is. The show's been more primarily marketed towards the brony community for a while now, but the show has still got to be appropriate for young children."

"What kind of jokes got cut?" asked a young man in spectacles.

"Let's just say that one of them, if it stayed in, would have canonised PinkieDash."

That got a few cheers out of some of the crowd, and laughs out of all the rest. Howard covered his face to try and hide his smirk.

"Umm...Right...you in front?"

"Who is best pony?"

"Celestia is clearly best pony," Nathan answered.

"Same questions to the others as well!"

That got a few chuckles out of the rest of the guests. The panel all took time out of Nathan's Q&A to all declare their favourite pony.

"Fluttershy."

"Pinkie."

"Fluttershy."

"Fluttershy."

"Rainbow Dash."

"Discord."

"Rarity."

"Trixie."

"Twilight."

"Applejack, because someone has to say so."

"Rarity."

"Luna."

"Rainbow Dash."

"Twilight."

Howard's turn.

"Yep, going with Celestia too."

***

"NOW BOARDING THE TWO SIX SIX FLIGHT TO CANTERLOT. REPEAT. ALL PASSENGERS FOR THE TWO SIX SIX FLIGHT TO CANTERLOT NOW BOARDING AT GATE THIRTY SEVEN."

Ancient Tome and the ponies of the Brotherhood stared in wonder as they walked through the Secopolis International Airport. Through giant glass windows, they could see dozens of huge metal monsters outside, long and sleek, and with giant wheels and massive wings.

"The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only," announced a disembodied voice over the speakers, "There is no stopping in the red zone."

The airport was deserted. There were almost no other ponies around except other representatives of Second's government. They were being escorted by Dr. Apocalypse and Commander Bullseye for the moment, heading for this mysterious Flight Two Six Six that they had been told they were taking.

"So what is this again?" asked Frosty.

"Second's invasion of Canterlot is in full swing," Bullseye explained, "Unfortunately his power armour troops are suffering heavy losses. Considering that there's only ninety of them total, we can't afford to lose many more of them. A little while ago, we received a signal from Party Balloon One, who said that Second had asked for heavy artillery and authorised full use of all tactical weapons.

"The purpose of our flight is to deliver those weapons. We're going in a special purpose craft, a warship called the Prometheus made just for this eventuality. The Prometheus has enough explosives and heavy weapons to level Canterlot completely, and we may very well do that if it proves necessary."

"What?!" Night Shroud demanded, "Destroy Canterlot?! Why?!"

"The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone."

"Why else? To fuck things up. Lord Second really doesn't like ponies."

"But...How does killing innocent bystanders help in liberating ponykind from the alicorn tyrants?!" asked Iron Hoof.

Dr. Apocalypse looked at the commander.

"Do you want to tell them, or should I?"

"No. Go ahead."

"Alright...How best to put this..."

The doctor scratched his chin.

"Your religion is wrong, you're all idiots, Second's plan is to destroy ponykind, not save it, and you've dedicated one thousand years of time, effort and planning to releasing a creature who's basically just an even more powerful and malevolent Discord."

The ponies' jaws dropped.

"The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone."

"No! No that can't be right!" Ancient Tome protested, "But...Second and First never wanted to kill anypony when they first appeared! They just tried to fight the princesses, and they-"

"Look, trust us on this one," Bullseye interrupted, "We were directly created by the man. We know what we're talking about. Second and First didn't kill anypony because they just didn't feel like it. They were two Elder Gods on vacation to the mortal world who pissed off the locals and got themselves trapped in stone and killed respectively for their troubles. There was never a holy crusade, there was never any notion of righteous justice, and your entire order is based around misconceptions and delusions. Second only even keeps you around because he finds your idiocy amusing."

The PA system continued to blare in the background.

"The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone."

"So...then Lord Second...?"

"Lord Second is the bad guy. He's the villain of this story. And those are his exact words. He stopped caring about pony life a long time ago. All he wants right now, is to kill the Pantheon of B, kill the Elements of Harmony, kill Princess Luna, and kill as many innocent bystanders as possible, in that order. And we're here to help with that, as are you."

"What makes you think we will?!" Frosty Morning demanded, "We all did bad things in the Brotherhood, sure. We're no strangers to committing acts of evil...But we got through the day, and still slept at night, because we convinced ourselves it was for the greater good! But if Lord Second does not represent the greater good, then I would stand against even him!"

Bullseye reached to his side and drew his crossbow. The mare barely had time to react before he shot her in the throat. The icy blue pegasus flew back and landed on the floor of the airport, a metal shaft sticking out of her neck and blood pouring from the wound.

"FROSTY!"

"NO!"

"The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the white zone."

The remaining three Brotherhood ponies all gathered around the body, but Frosty had been dead before she hit the ground. Behind them, Commander Bullseye put his weapon away, and Dr. Apocalypse spoke up.

"Lord Second said you might protest when you learned of his true nature," he explained, "He also said that as soon as any of you start showing signs of that annoying thing we call a conscience, you should be immediately shot."

"Yes," Bullseye agreed, "So then Tome, Night Shroud, Iron Hoof, I'll ask again. Want to come kill some civilians with us?"

"By the way," the speakers announced, temporarily distracting the ponies, "This is an Airplane! reference. Just thought you should know."

***

Second was knocked back as Celestia's hooves slammed into him. The princess lifted into the air and dove towards him again, head bowed so her horn was pointing out in front of her. She never liked violence. She hated conflict of all kinds, but she knew it to be a necessary evil to bring an end to the kind of monsters Equestria fought with. Monsters like Second.

Celestia hit the human head on just as he pulled himself to his feet again. Her horn pierced his chest and stabbed straight through him. She continued charging through the street. Up ahead was a broken and burning house. She weaved and dodged through the crowd of zombies and smashed into the front wall.

The house came down. Celestia pulled back, and Second flew off the end of her horn into the flaming wreckage. From within the burning pile of rubble, she heard screaming.

She winced. This was never pleasant. Even when facing truly irredeemable foes, she believed that killing was never the answer. That's why she spared her enemies, and resorted to imprisonment instead. Nightmare Moon did awful things, but she still did not kill her. She spared her life, and one thousand years later she was rewarded for her mercy, and her baby sister came back. That had been the happiest day of her life.

Nevertheless, it was all different now. Much as she wished it could happen any other way, Second had to die. Lord First had been very clear on that. She had to destroy him, so that they could be reunited. He promised that under his watch, Second would be a problem no longer. If she killed him, he would still live on, and he'd be happier and saner for it.

Much as she hated to admit it, killing was the most merciful thing she could do to a creature like him.

"RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH!"

The debris flew into the air, leaving Second standing where the house once was. He was even more badly burned than before, most of his clothes little more than rags now, and large portions of his skin were burnt black. He pointed a finger at her, then Celestia jumped back as the remains of the house rained down where she had been standing, seemingly thrown at her by telekinesis.

He ran forward. Before the princess could even take flight again, Second got within range, cracked his knuckles and socked her in the face. It was a momentary distraction. Celestia flew up into the air and ignited herself. She controlled the sun itself. Fire based magic was second nature to her.

A shield of flames now protected her from all sides, and she dived towards Second again. The human jumped out of her way and onto the roof of another house. He ripped the chimney off and tossed it in her direction, but it was an easy attack to dodge.

The princess threw a wave of flames down towards him. Second leapt to the roof of the next house just as the last one was completely incinerated. The street they were fighting on was towards the upper levels of Canterlot, and most of the rest of the city was a little way below them. Second jumped off the house he was on, and headed down into the rest of the city, away from the palace.

Celestia gave chase, launching balls of explosive fire after the human. Even though Lord First's work had made her able to hit him now though, Second was still insanely powerful, and a very skilled fighter and acrobat. He jumped right over spires and towers, dashed along rooftops, leapt through windows into high rise buildings, and whenever the princess came around to try and find a big enough entrance to the same building, Second had an annoying habit of smashing through walls and nearly grabbing her in the air.

Second had just failed to do exactly that while leaping out of a large tower with a domed roof, and he plummeted past her towards the street below.

***

"WHAT DO WE DO?!" shouted Chain Mail, "THERE'S GOT TO BE SOME WAY TO GET THESE THINGS TO WORK!"

"Look, it doesn't matter if you're not sure what your elements are!" Luna said rapidly, "Just...just try based on what you know! You can make an educated guess, right?! You must know each other well enough by now! Whoever the Element of Magic is, just guess, and if you aren't sure which one of you is Magic, then all of you guess! What's important is that Element of Magic, whoever that may be, realises that all of you are friends, and what virtues you embody! Come on!"

"This doesn't seem very harmonious," Soft Spoken commented.

"Fuck Harmony! We just need the friendship!" Gold Coin interrupted, "Sliske! You know spells! Let's just say that you're Magic! Guess what our elements are, and accept our friendship!"

"But we're not friendssssssss!" Sliske replied.

"Fuck's sake! We're going to all get killed!" the business pony raged, "Look, Sliske! Seriously! We're friends! I like you! I gave you that emotional talk back on Sweet Apple Acres and everything! Come on! Does that not mean anything to you?!"

"Thissssss issssss true. Okay. Gold Coin issssss my friend."

"THANK YOU!"

"AND WHAT ELEMENT DOES HE REPRESENT?!" screamed Luna, butting into the conversation again, "YOU HAVE TO SAY IT!"

Sliske cringed as the princess got right up in his face.

"Gah! Generossssssssity! Get away from me you creepy mare!"

One of the stone balls that now laid in the corner of the room rose into the air. The group all watched as it began to glow a blinding white light and exploded into little stone ships. The stone chips swirled around in the air for a moment and floated over to Gold Coin, before reforming in another flash of light.

Nopony could see what actually happened because of the light, but when they looked back again, the yellow earth pony was wearing a large golden necklace. The front held a green gem shaped like an apple with a bite taken out of it, and lodged in the bite mark was a smaller yellow gem shaped like a coin. It was his cutie mark replicated in gem form.

"FUCK YEAH!" he shouted, "I got my element! We're making progress guys!"

He rubbed the gem on the front, seeming to admire it.

"How does it look?" he asked.

"Pretty gay, actually," said Chain Mail.

"Well...maybe not gay...but certainly feminine," Soft Spoken added.

"Yep. It's gay," Explodey agreed.

"You look like a huge flaming homosssssssexual, Gold Coin. And I onccccce posssssesssssed a pony who had a real, actual gaydar, ssssssso I know what I'm talking about."

"Bah! You guys are a bunch of dicks! What do you think, princess?"

"...Yeah, these things were never meant to be worn by stallions."

"You know what? I don't care. Because at the end of the day, it's still a magic gem that grants incredible powers, I'm still the chosen one, and I know that you guys are going to have to wear a bunch of equally girly necklaces! Except Sliske, who in a nice act of karmic justice, I know will have to wear a pretty little princess tiara. Let's see you keep your dignity intact after that!"

"Joke'sssss on you, ssssissster. Sssssakrassssi are gender neutral."

"Oh come on!"

"Now the rest!" Luna urged, "Sliske is clearly our Element of Magic, so he has to realise his friendship with the rest of you!"

"I ssssstill don't conssssider mosssst of you my friendsssss."

"Seriously?!" Chain Mail shouted, "The world is ending, and you still won't acknowledge that we're friends?!"

"How are we friendsssss?! You fear and hate me, and I feel nothing but apathy towardsssss you!"

Chain Mail's mouth hung open.

"Apathy?!"

"Yessss! Apathy! Why should I have any sssssstrong feelingsssss towardsssss you? What interaction have we had beyond me ussssssing your body onccccce and you avoiding me and talking down to me ssssssincccce we sssstarted travelling?"

Chain Mail went red in the face and picked up Sliske with his hooves. Since Sliske was still in Mystic's body, and thus only the size of a colt, it was remarkably easy. He held him up to his face and stared right into his eyes.

"BE MY FRIEND, YOU ABSOLUTE CUNT!"

Sliske kicked the captain in the face, causing him to drop him back onto the floor.

"Agh! What the fuck was that for?!"

"Nopony touchesssss me! The lassssst time a pony tried to pick me up like that, I ripped hissssss throat out with my bare teeth!"

"This is not friendship!" Luna shouted over the din, "You're all doing it wrong!"

"We're stallions," Gold Coin replied, "We do this. Apparently. Testosterone, or whatever. Explodey will tell you."

"I am so hungry right now, I think I would willingly eat meat," Explodey interrupted.

Explodey was covered in grey splotches all over his body. The zombie infection he had caught while the group were out fighting in the city was spreading, though not as one mass. Most of Explodey's normally white coat remained the same, but the grey patches where his skin was rotting were still quite prominent, and one especially huge patch which covered most of his neck and the entire right side of his face was particularly worrying.

"Forget Chain Mail for now!" said Luna, "Sliske, try focusing on somepony else! Soft Spoken! He's easy to get along with! Surely you're both friends!"

"Not really. He isssss very dissssapproving of my actionsssssss, and very condesssscending. I don't like it."

"Why do you have to make this so hard?!" Soft Spoken demanded, "We'd already have the Elements reactivated if you didn't keep insulting us and insisting we're not friends!"

"We aren't though! Do you think if I jusssssssst ssssay that we're all friendssss, they'll ssssstart working again? Lying doessss nothing, and if I'm honessssst about my feelingsssss, I don't think we're really friendssssss. None of you like me, except Gold Coin, maybe."

"Of course we do!" the old stallion tried to explain, "Look, I know that we argue! I'm sorry! I'm an argumentative pony! It's who I am! I spent a lifetime talking, and debating, and convincing, and arguing with thousands of different ponies, griffins or what-have-you, and it's a habit I've fallen into. I outlived most of my other friends, and I didn't have to do it as a job anymore when I retired! I stopped arguing when I stopped having ponies to talk to, and I took a submissive role being a butler in somepony else's household. But I don't have that anymore! I'm allowed to speak freely again, I have ponies to talk to, and damnit, I will speak my mind, because it's what I do!

"It's who I am, Sliske. I convince ponies to do things differently, to take what I believe is the right course of action. If I sound condescending to you, I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to steer you onto the right path. I'm a hundred a thirty now, and I just love to talk, and I love to argue! An old stallion always feels like he has to pass on what he believes in, and I'm just trying to do the same.

"Please, I don't hate you! I really don't! I think we're friends. I just have a funny way of acting around friends, because I'm a pony who enjoys those parts of a friendship, where we don't always agree and we end up having a verbal sparring match over our opinions. I'm not trying to belittle you, and I'm not trying to be condescending! I just sometimes take issue with the things you do and the views you express, and I let you know because I feel it's important, and I feel like you might want to hear it. I want to be honest with you Sliske, because friends are honest with each other! Can't we be friends? Please?"

Sliske sighed.

"Your sssspecial talent issss talking, hmm? Convinccccing poniesssss to change their mindssss? I think I can ssssssee that now. And you are telling the truth. You do conssssider me a friend, don't you?"

Softy nodded.

"...Then...I think I can call you the sssssame."

He smiled.

"Thank you, Sliske."

"Element~" Luna said in a singsong voice.

"Oh. Ummm...I don't know."

Softy's smile dropped immediately.

"What."

"Sssssssorry. I thought you were kindnesssss before, but that ssssspeech you jusssst did remindssssss me more of the virtue of honesssssssty than kindnessssss, and now I can't deccccide which one you are. I've got nothing."

Gold Coin collapsed and covered his head with his hooves.

"We're all going to die."

***

Second hit the ground running and dashed down the street with the princess in hot pursuit. Up above, she coated herself in flames again and began to spin through the air like a drill, with her horn at the forefront. The spinning fiery tornado of death reminded Second very much of another alicorn he'd briefly known, before it inexplicably got itself killed by a regular pony with a gun.

As he turned a corner and ran off down a side street, Second saw an opportunity ahead of him.

Up above, Celestia tracked Second's movements and tore down the street he had just ran along. She was near ground level now, and she ploughed through the other zombies crowding the street effortlessly. She felt far less guilty about them than she did about Second, as zombies were by their very nature just mindless, soulless drones. Except Second apparently.

Wait, if Second still had intelligence despite being undead, did that technically make him a lich?

Celestia made a sharp turn around the corner, heading into the side street where Second had fled. She saw him up above on a nearby rooftop, so she adjusted her angle and rushed up at him, continuing to drill through the air. As she got within range, Second pulled out a light grey filly from behind him and held her up in her path.

"STOP RIGHT THERE OR THE KID DIES!"

She stopped dead in her tracks just a few feet away from the human. That turned out to be a mistake, as the very moment she had stopped, Second dropped the filly, wound up a kick, and launched her half a mile skyward before she hit the floor.

"Catch her if you can, princess!"

Second ran off in the other direction, while Princess Celestia just stood shock still with her jaw hanging open, stunned at what she had just witnessed.

Did Second just punt a foal into the sky?!

Yep. He sure did. Celestia took to the skies after the figure that was quickly descending again. Though she knew Second needed to be stopped, she couldn't in good conscience abandon that foal when she might still be alive. After a kick like that, it was unlikely, but that didn't mean it was impossible.

She flew as fast as she could, travelling to the other side of the city in mere seconds. When the falling foal came into range, she caught her upside down in her magic, and sighed in relief when the filly started moving again, struggling and wriggling about in the air. She was fine.

Princess Celestia turned the foal right-side up again, and jumped back away again when it turned out she had just grabbed not a foal with a grey coat, but a zombie foal. It gnashed at her hungrily, and the princess dropped it in surprise. The zombie foal landed on a rooftop a little way below them, and immediately got up and started jumping to try and reach her again.

Goddamn that was macabre.

She hovered in place in stunned silence for a moment, fully taking in this unique horror. What she didn't realise was that Second had not done this merely as an escape tactic, but as a distraction so he could prepare his next move. While she hovered in place, Second had been busy running to the other side of Canterlot and climbing to the tallest building he could find, so he could take a running long-jump off it.

Equestrian physics being what they were, that long-jump was long enough to send him flying across the city right towards Celestia. Arms outstretched in front of him like Superman, and moving at a speed and velocity worthy of him too, Second crashed right into her and sent her flying.

The princess and Second got tangled up in the air, but Second came out on top. Celestia hit the ground hard and went skidding across it, while the human stood on her side and body surfed her through the streets of Canterlot, knocking aside legions of the undead as he went.

Suddenly, and without warning, the road ended and they reached the edge of Canterlot. This was the place where the cobblestone roads gave way to the well kept grasslands and flower patches and waterfalls. There were now hills instead of flat roads, and Second lost his balance and fell off.

Both human and alicorn tumbled down the grassy slope and towards the river at the bottom of a nearby waterfall. Predictably, both fell into it.

***

The Prometheus turned out to be a giant blimp almost as big some of the runways that the more modern air vehicles were taking off from, and with a gondola large enough to make the Congress coliseum blush. As it happened, the size was necessary for the massive stockpile of weapons it held on board. Going inside the gondola, they found out that the cockpit, (or more accurately bridge) and passenger areas were only a small percentage of it, and behind every third door was either access to a miniature warehouse full of enough explosives to destroy a small country, or an armoury that you would be forgiven for thinking contained the entire arsenal of Secopolis.

In short, somepony was compensating big time.

Tome and the two remaining Brotherhood ponies were forced to pass many of these rooms on their way to the on-board clinic of the Prometheus, where they were told they needed to see Dr. Apocalypse for some kind of inoculation, that they needed before they landed in Canterlot.

For the moment, the three of them were alone. Taking advantage of their moment of relative privacy from the two other ponies in charge of this operation, they conversed amongst themselves.

"What do we do?!" Iron Hoof whispered frantically, "We've all made a terrible mistake here! I've got nothing against killing if it means more lives will be saved in the long run, but I don't want to be part of any kind of needless slaughter! These ponies are crazy! We have to back out of this, somehow!"

"...Maybe it's all a test!" Ancient Tome suggested, "Yeah! That's got to be it! Lord Second is just testing our faith! To see how loyal we are to him! Maybe this is all a ruse to see if we're worthy followers!"

"Tomey...Are you alright?" asked Iron.

"NO! No, I'm not alright! This is all wrong!" the bearded stallion cried, "It was never meant to be like this! I lost all my family, my friends, and the entire rest of the Brotherhood for this cause! It can't all be for nothing! I can't have sacrificed that much in vain! Frosty can't have died for this!"

"Mr. Tome, you know that's not the case," Night Shroud said gravely, "I didn't want to believe it either, but you must admit, Second never acted anything like a benevolent ruler. He was loud, obnoxious and violent from the moment we released him. And there's no way that any real force for good would have somepony murdered in cold blood like that just to test her friends' loyalty. And even if he did, a heroic leader would expect his followers to do the right thing, rather than what they think would please him."

"I just...damnit!" Tome shouted, "I fucked up. I fucked up so bad and I never even realised it! Is this really what I went through all that for?! I became a part of this because I thought it was for the greater good! What good am I accomplishing though? If Second is a force of evil...then what hope do we have? A thousand years of history, the Brotherhood's ultimate goal...and it was all a lie..."

His head drooped.

"We can't do this anymore," said Night Shroud, "Maybe not all of our members joined for selfless reasons, but the Brotherhood always did what it did out of a sense of duty and obligation. A duty to do what is best for ponykind, Gods and rulers be damned. We thought the princesses were evil, and we thought Second to be good, so we let him free. If Second is evil too, then that doesn't mean our goal changes from fighting evil to defending it. It means our enemies have changed, and Second is now among them."

"Frosty got killed for opposing Second, and he didn't even do it himself!" Iron replied, "What hope do we have?! What can we do?! We're just mortal ponies! We can't fight Gods!"

"Why can't we?!" the batpony demanded, "What have we been doing ever since our inception?! Celestia was invincible, immortal, and in command of armies of thousands, and we still outlived her!"

"Yes, but we didn't fight her ourselves!" Tome protested, "And we still can't fight now! We're not powerful! We couldn't do anything to the princesses, let alone Second!"

"No. We're not powerful. We're smart. Our order is based around finding creative solutions to our problems, and I propose that we do that here. We can take these tyrants! All of them! If the princesses are evil, and the humans are evil, then we'll just take the fight to both of them!"

The old unicorn rubbed his beard. A sly grin crept across his face.

"You know what? You're right. We're not going to lay down and take this. After everything we've been through, this will not be the end of it. You're a clever pony, Mr. Night Shroud. Probably more so than myself, blind old fool that I am. I wish I had known you better before now."

"Likewise."

"So, what's our plan then?" asked Iron Hoof, "What do we do now?"

Tome looked up and down the corridor.

"We hijack the Prometheus."

***

The door to Celestia's study burst down as a pair of white coated day guards rushed into the room, shadowed by two mares. One was a frightened dark green unicorn in a smart looking suit, and the other was a much less frightened, but much more badly injured yellow earth pony with a light green mane.

"Your majesty!" one of the guards called, "The undead have broken through the outer gates and are swarming the grounds! The palace's main entrances have been sealed, but we don't expect them to last much longer! Prince Blueblood has ordered that everypony who is not a combatant should be escorted to the upper levels of the castle for evacuation!"

"Blueblood started evacuation?" Luna questioned, "Tsk. And I told him not to...Just as well. I assumed we could beat Second before it got this bad, but my arrogance got the better of me. If he's started getting everypony out now, we might still have hope."

"Are we going then, your highness?" asked Quill Tip, Luna's steward.

"Of course! We must make haste to the upper levels! Bring the elements with us. There is still a chance we can activate them before the battle is completely lost."

Luna trotted out the door, followed closely by Gold Coin and Explodey. Chain Mail began talking with one of the guards, while Softy and Sliske gathered up the remaining stone balls, Sliske carrying them with his telekinesis. They were stopped at the door by the earth pony mare.

"Mystic? Is that you?" she asked.

"Oh, hello Missssssss Chalk Board. What are you doing here?"

Sliske stopped, and shook his head.

"Wait, why am I ssssaying hello to you? I'm not Mysssssstic. We don't even know each other. Sssstop talking to me."

He continued through the door again, the Elements of Harmony floating behind him. The bewildered teacher looked to Soft Spoken for some kind of answer.

"Possessed by an alien parasite."

"Oh right."

"Volunteered his body for use by Sliske the Destroyer."

"As you do."

"Mmhmm."

"...You seem pretty jaded about the whole thing. Is this normal to you?"

"Pretty much."

***

"Shit."

Second's head breached the surface of the water, as did Celestia's. The river was not very deep, but it was deep enough that the human's feet didn't touch the bottom. It was very clean and clear water too, so he could see it was mostly devoid of plant life below, instead being mostly plain grey rocks. Though still very sharp rocks.

The waterfall drowned out most of the noise of Canterlot behind them, crashing down on an island of those sharp rocks and thundering as it churned up white water. Though it was weak, a current caused both the fighters to slowly flow down the river.

"You!" Celestia shouted, "You will do no more damage!"

"Come and stop me, princess!"

She rose to his challenge and swam over towards him as quickly as she could. So far, despite Second hitting her pretty bad a few times, he still hadn't inflicted any lasting wounds. Powerful though he was, humans did not share enough similarities with alicorns to be able to permanently wound them, at least without the Reaper's Horn. And Second had not used it yet, though he did still have it.

She nearly reached him, but was then surprised when one hand came out of the water again, and he was clutching a dark blue horn. He stabbed her with it like a knife, right in the shoulder below the neck, and Celestia cried out in pain. She stared at the place where he had hit her, and she saw he had actually punctured the skin.

"No..."

Celestia was broken out of her stupor when she felt a rock bump into her side. It was then that she realised both she and Second were still being carried down the river. The current was gentle right now, but she knew that it eventually lead to a second waterf-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

She was too surprised to use her wings. She and Second both fell a short distance down the next waterfall, which thankfully had no sharp rocks at the bottom of it like the last one did. The river here was much deeper, and Celestia swam under water for a moment before she came up to the surface again.

"You! That horn!" she shouted, "If you can harm me with that...then it must be...WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SISTER?!"

"Only roughed her up a bit, Celly. Nothing to worry your pretty little head over. Now shut up and die!"

He lunged at her through the water and struck her in her right wing this time, temporarily crippling it. She grunted in pain, but took the opportunity once he was in range to shove her own horn into his neck. He screamed, or more accurately gurgled when she did, but he didn't die. What's worse, he started leaking a glowing green fluid over her forehead, which really burned.

Is that his blood?!

"Is that my blood?!"

Oh, even worse. The moment she pulled out, his throat immediately healed. That healing factor wasn't infallible, but it acted fast.

"How do you not know what your own blood looks like?!"

"It's never been fucking green before! I- AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

They fell down another waterfall. This one did have jagged rocks at the bottom. Celestia hit a large pointy boulder, but didn't actually land on the point. She slid down the side of it and narrowly avoided some smaller rocks. She floated down the river a few more feet and was then stopped by a small island, which was right on the edge of yet another waterfall that they hadn't fallen down yet, and this next one was a long drop too.

Second had less luck, and seemed to have been impaled on a smaller rock. Once again, there was green stuff everywhere, and it had him freaking out.

He pulled himself off it, and his stomach wound seemed to close up quickly enough. He was on a rock island too now, but a different one. And his was directly under the waterfall, so he was getting water crashing down on top of him as well. He stumbled slightly and jumped from that one across to Celestia's. Finally, they were both on solid ground again.

So the first thing Second did was rugby tackle the princess and send them both careening off the edge of the next waterfall to repeat the cycle anew.

***

"Just up these steps now, and down the far end!" Luna called, "There's a hidden passageway here that leads straight to the roof through one of the smaller towers. It will allow us to bypass the crowd of ponies on the top three floors."

They ascended a flight of stairs, and a group of other royal guards charged past them in the opposite direction, going to join the fight down below. The two mares and their guard escort had since been joined by a few other stragglers whom they had stumbled across on their journey, including Dr. Heart Beat. Once they reached the top of the stairs, they progressed onwards through a long hallway with stained glass windows.

"Guys!" Explodey called, "I'm really hungry! My stomach hurts!"

"Please, shut up Explodey!" Gold Coin shouted, "I can't deal with this when you're driving me to insanity! Just be thankful that infection seems to have stopped spreading for the moment."

"Oh, it's stopped, has it?"

Gold Coin turned around to see that Explodey's grey patches had gotten slightly larger since he last looked at him. They still covered only a small proportion of his body, but they were definitely getting worse. The business pony could only groan in frustration, and the rest of the group stopped momentarily. He turned away from Explodey again to address Sliske.

"Is there anything we can do to help him?" he asked.

"Not that I know of. Asssssss it issssss an infectioussss disssseassssse and not magic, a cure should be theoretically possssssible, but it would take a lot of resssssearch firssssssst."

Dr. Heart Beat spoke up.

"If we can keep Explodey sedated after he turns, I could experiment on the zombie until I come up with something to at least preserve his intelligence. It'd take a while, but as long as Explodey remains alive, I don't see why we should assume he's beyond help."

"That is a viable plan," Soft Spoken agreed, "I have a tranquiliser gun built into this suit. If he turns, I could knock him out and we can carry him with us until we find a way to fix him."

"Is that really all we can hope for?" Gold Coin asked sadly, "Experimenting on him for a cure after he's already succumbed? Isn't there anything we can do to help him before then?"

He froze as two white hooves wrapped around his neck, and he felt a pony behind him pull him into an embrace.

"Explodey? What are you doing?"

The unicorn leaned in close and sniffed the yellow earth pony's mane. He whispered into his ear;

"You smell like apples."

Gold Coin looked extremely uncomfortable. He looked over to Softy desperately.

"Help me," he mouthed.

And then Soft Spoken shot Explodey in the face.

***

Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof and Night Shroud all walked into the clinic together, where Dr. Apocalypse was preparing a needle, and two other unicorns in lab coats wandered about the lab tinkering with various experiments. In the corner, a single Knight of Man, who Tome recognised as Racket, kept watch on their operations.

Tome nodded discreetly to his two companions.

"So what is this then, doctor?" he asked.

"Sit still for a moment," Dr. Apocalypse muttered.

When he was satisfied that everything was up to standards, he trotted over to Tome's side and injected a clear liquid into his neck.

"This stuff is called 'Authority'," he explained, "It's an agent designed to counteract the effects of the zombie virus. The infection used to create the undead was devised by the Mages' Guild at Second's request, for the purposes of his invasion. It allows zombies to spread the infection by biting, and it's what allows them to survive even with most of their body missing. It also has the effect of making them all unable to feel pain, and making them mindless, shambling monstrosities."

He let Tome go and gestured for Iron Hoof to come over.

"The catch is that Second predicted, correctly I might add, that he would have to join the zombie horde to properly command them. He did so after an injection of the zombie serum following the destruction the Mages' Guild headquarters."

He gave Iron his shot, and quickly shooed him away to let Night Shroud have his turn.

"However, he didn't want to lose his conscious mind, so he had us created Authority. In essence, Authority allows a zombie to keep their mind and remain themselves. When injected into the living, it also acts as zombie repellent. All the power armour troops and most of the Knights of Man have been given a shot of Authority so that they won't have to fear getting eaten. It's doesn't guarantee safety from the zombies, but it betters your chances. As we're going to Canterlot, you all need this shot too."

He finished with Night Shroud, who rubbed his neck awkwardly.

"So, we're all good then?" the batpony asked, "The zombies won't be hostile to us anymore?"

"Nope."

"Is that all we need for Canterlot?" asked Iron, "No more extra inoculations or anything?"

"No, you're fine," Apocalypse said dismissively, "You're free to go now."

The three ponies all looked to each other, and simultaneously broke out into evil grins.

"Good to know," said Ancient Tome, "ATTACK!"

Both former royal guards, Iron Hoof and Night Shroud drew their old swords from their scabbards and went on the offensive.

Night Shroud went right for Knight Racket, and decapitated him before he could even draw his own weapon in defence. Iron Hoof rushed the two other unicorn scientists, and impaled them both at once, before smashing them into the wall, pulling his sword out, and slicing both of their throats open.

Ancient Tome meanwhile blasted Dr. Apocalypse with magic, pounding him with raw magical energy. The unicorn was thrown back across the room, but to Tome's surprise, he kept focus on his own magic and teleported before he hit the ground.

The bearded stallion twisted around just in time to see his attacker, and jump out of the way of a fireball aimed at his back. The fireball struck a desk behind him and it shattered into tiny flaming splinters.

The doctor teleported again, this time appearing in the air above Tome and coming down on top of him. He smashed a hoof into his face and sent him sprawling, and then vanished again before the two melee fighters could come to Tome's aid.

Gotta think, gotta think, gotta think, think, think.

Ancient Tome stood up again and used the first spell that came to mind. Just like when he would have to put up defences to make sure that no unwanted visitors came dropping into the meetings of the Brotherhood, he let out a wave of magic that covered the room, implementing an anti-teleport barrier.

The barrier was weak. Pathetically weak. It took time to set up any kind of effective version of one, and even the professionally constructed barriers like the one made to defend the royal archives were never one hundred percent effective. Most of the time they just deposited the teleporter a little off-target or temporarily disable them. A barrier this weak would hardly stop Dr. Apocalypse.

He didn't need it to though.

The doctor teleported in just like he intended, once again positioned behind Ancient Tome's back. However, this time he grunted in pain and stumbled slightly upon re-entry. The barrier didn't stop him, but it did disorient him slightly, and that split second of distraction was all that was needed for the unicorn to buck him in the chest, while Night Shroud and Iron rushed over and both plunged their swords into his side.

"AGH!" he screamed.

Dr. Apocalypse stared down at his side. The two guards withdrew their blades, and he collapsed against the nearest wall.

"Fuck...You'll regret this!" he raged, "You'll all be sorry! One day you'll see how foalish it was to stand against Lord Second's forces!"

"Maybe," Tome admitted, "But not today. Iron?"

The earth pony raised his replacement hoof over the doctor's face.

"Hey doc, thanks again for the mechanical leg," he said, "I really, really like it."

And then Dr. Apocalypse's head was jelly.

***

"I DIDN'T THINK THIS THROUGH!"

Alicorn and human hit the water again and were once more picked up by the current.

Second shot up from underwater and stabbed at Celestia with her sister's horn, while the princess just tried to paddle away from him. They both came to a stop when they hit a large wooden log. It was stuck between some smaller rocks which prevented it from moving further downstream.

Since it wasn't moving any time soon, Celestia gratefully climbed up onto it and used her magic to balance herself and keep grip on the slippery rotten wood. Second climbed onto the log as well, though without magic to assist him. He held up the horn and pointed it at Celestia, brandishing it like a sword.

A spell shot out of the end and hit her in the chest. It wasn't a very damaging spell, but it broke her concentration. Her magic imploded, and she lost her grip. She slipped on the log, but rather than falling off, the whole log began to spin around, and she trotted in place to stay on it. Second was thrown off and into the river again, while Celestia barely kept her balance. Also, the spinning log came loose from rocks, and started flowing down the river again.

The log stopped spinning and Celestia regained her grip when Second grabbed the end and hoisted himself out of the river again. He drew Luna's horn, but this time thought better than to use another spell, especially since he really knew nothing about magic. Instead, he lunged at her and tried to use it as a knife again.

The alicorn swished her head and blocked the incoming strike with her own horn. They clacked on contact, and Second drew back. A grin spread across his face.

"En garde!"

He attacked again, but this time he treated the horn less like a dagger and more like a rapier. She saw what he was trying to do, and agreed to match his challenge. Both of them using alicorn horns in place of the traditional weapons, Celestia and Second entered a deadly duel atop the rotten log, which both of them barely seemed to notice was still moving down the river, and still picking up speed.

***

Luna and the other ponies emerged onto the roof to find it still in chaos. They exited through a hidden door to one of the towers, having used the secret passage that the princess suggested to avoid the crowd. The top four floors of the palace were almost full to bursting with ponies, which was understandable given that the entire surviving population of Canterlot was stuffed in there.

In the centre of the roof, several dragons laid on their stomachs with wings outstretched as the flightless ponies climbed onto their backs. They were transporting them in large groups, but they were still hard pressed to get everypony out in time. Even at this altitude, the moans of the zombies below as they tried to scratch and bite through the doors to the palace were clearly audible.

Including Spike, there had only been seventeen dragons present at the funeral, and one of them had already left yesterday to head back up north again. The remaining dragons were working overtime to get all the civilians to safety, and even with the pegasus population making the journey themselves, and the much larger Spike also directly assisting, it was still barely enough to get everypony out.

Confounding matters more was the fact that the dragons were too large for all of them to land on the roof at once, so some of them that had returned from dropping off ponies in other small towns around Canterlot were hovering in the air above the palace, impatiently waiting for their brothers to get out of the way so that they could get their next load of passengers.

Although it was chaos and anarchy, Luna still smiled slightly. It was a blessing that the dragons were willing to help out at all. The dragons of a thousand years ago were never this selfless. She was glad that it had been Spike to lead the remnants of their race. They couldn't have asked for a better mentor.

"Oi!"

Princess Luna's head snapped to the side as she saw Blueblood pushing through the crowd.

"I'm sorry I went be'ind your back, your maj, but it needed to be done. I saw your fight with that mad bastard earlier. Cor, I thought you got killed! We needed to start evacuatin' early, less we all get eaten. 'Ope you don't mind, your maj."

"No..." Luna sighed, "You were right, Blue. I asked you to come here so that you could make the decisions. I'm not fit for making decisions when I'm still in such an emotional state. I've not been myself lately..."

Blueblood gave her a sad smile, and cleared his throat.

"Right. Gotcha. Anyway, Spike an' 'is dragons have got a few 'undred ponies clear of Canterlot already, but evacuation is still slow. I'm not really sure we can get everypony out in time, so the royal guard and a few volunteer fighters 'ave agreed to stay behind while everypony else gets clear, and help fight off the zombies if they make their way inside."

"Understandable. Who are our volunteers?"

"They're just over 'ere, your maj."

***

"Hey, what are you doing- HGGRRR!"

The knight went silent and collapsed in a heap as Iron Hoof withdrew his sword from his gut. They opened a door and progressed into the corridor beyond. Three knights were in this one. There was one guarding a door half way between where they were and their ultimate goal, the door to the bridge. The other two were patrolling up and down it, one just meters away and facing them, and the other with his back turned and almost at the other end of the corridor.

Night Shroud stepped forward and casually slit the throat of the knight closest to them. The one guarding the door jumped in surprise and went for his own blade. He had just about drawn it by the time Iron had rushed up and decapitated him. The sounds of death alerted the final knight at the far end of the corridor.

He turned to face the Brotherhood. This one had the sense to grab a ranged weapon, and drew a crossbow like Bullseye used. Ancient Tome yanked Night Shroud's sword out of his mouth, pointed it in his direction, and then used his magic to launch it like a harpoon down the corridor. It shot right through his head and embedded in the door behind the knight.

"All clear?" Tome asked, as he pulled Night Shroud's sword back to them, and returned it to its owner.

Iron Hoof smashed down the door that the second knight had been guarding.

"Nothing in here," he called, "Low grade body armour, a couple of SEC Mk. IIIs, and ammunition for a weapon entirely too large for any of us to effectively use, even if we did find it."

They trotted past the room and continued to the end, passing the knight with a hole in his face.

"This will likely be full of guards," Night Shroud explained, "And Bullseye himself is probably no slouch either. If Dr. Apocalypse was just a research and development guy, then I'd hate to see what the trained soldier is like."

"We've been mowing down the trained soldiers by the dozens," Iron growled, "This guy stands no chance."

"Don't be so sure. Remember that this guy is the commander, and was one of Second's hand picked bodyguards. This won't be an easy fight."

The three stallions nodded to each other as they stopped in front of the door. Tome twisted around and bucked it down, and the other two charged in. He followed after, and they emerged onto the bridge.

The bridge of the Prometheus was certainly an impressive sight. They were on a raised 'T' shaped platform, with stairs leading downwards into control rooms full of computers and navigation equipment either side of them, and the platform's point ahead of them ending with a guard rail around a small desk and computer terminal, and a single chair in which Commander Bullseye sat.

Massive windows gave a view of the Equestrian countryside all around them, showing green fields and forests below, while directly ahead of them they could see Canterlot. They were about the same level as the towers of the palace, and from their position could see a number of multicoloured dragons flying above it, and several others approaching the palace coming from the direction of Ponyville.

"YOU!" Tome screamed, "YOU DIE NOW!"

Bullseye twisted his head around to look at them. He wore an expression of mild shock when he saw the unicorn and his two blood splattered henchponies, knowing full well just how many of his best troops they would have had to murder to reach this point.

He turned his whole body around and rested his hooves on the back of his chair.

"I surrender."

It was then that the Brotherhood noticed that there were no other knights stationed on the bridge. There were a few ponies on the lower level operating the computer terminals and flying the ship, most of whom were nervously looking over their shoulders at the new arrivals, but no additional security.

It sort of made sense. The only way in or out of this room was already defended. Why place more guards in here too?

"You what?" asked Tome.

"I said I surrender. You win. I'm your prisoner. The ship is yours, the weapons are yours, the staff are yours, and I am at your mercy. May Lord Second spare us all."

Iron Hoof chuckled.

"Hehehe...Cute. He thinks he can kill our friends and get away with it. Ain't that funny, Tomey?"

"Hilarious. Gut this slimy worm."

Bullseye fluttered out of his seat and hovered over the control room, looking nervous.

"Hey now!" he protested, "You can't kill me! I'm surrendering! I give up!"

"Acknowledged."

The bearded unicorn enveloped Bullseye in magic and yanked him out of the air. He hit the ground and tried to grab ahold of the guard rail near his computer terminal, but he was not strong enough.

"This is murder!" he shouted, "If you kill me now while I'm helpless, you'll all be murderers! You think just because you're against Lord Second now, that makes you heroes?!"

"Did I say we were fucking heroes?!" Tome shouted in response.

He held the pegasus upside down with his magic. Bullseye sighed.

"So what's the plan then, hmm?" he asked, "Steal control of the Prometheus, turn its weapons on Second, and just hope he dies? What then? Run off to the princesses and hope they'll forgive you?"

"No. That's not the plan at all," the unicorn answered, "We're going to take the Prometheus, we're going to rescue Ze!zar from captivity, save the entire surviving population of Canterlot from zombies, flood the city with enough Authority to give every single one of those zombies their minds back, take over Secopolis, cure Sun Rise, get little Star Wish and my boy Mystic back, and then we're going to kill Second, and Luna, and Spike the Eternal, and the Elements of Harmony, and everypony else who would support evil! And when we're through, there will be a new Equestria!"

Bullseye gaped at him.

"You're mad!" he shouted, "You're completely, utterly insane! How can you even be expected to do half of those things?!"

"Easily! That Chain Mail asshole called us incompetent...Well, we're not! The Brotherhood of Man has lasted one thousand years! A millennium of secret warfare! Striking from the shadows against the royals throughout the ages, and accomplishing so much that ponies would not dare even speak our name aloud!

"And I would see that age return again! We will fight ALL the tyrants, we will rescue ALL the victims, and then we will disappear into the shadows once more, as a new order is established. One of democracy. No more royals, no more alicorns, no more humans. Just ponies of the people. And when ponykind emerges, blinking in the sunlight, to see their new golden age, they will reflect on what brought them to that point, and they will be reminded of why ponies once feared the name of the Brotherhood of Man!"

Iron Hoof sliced the suspended pegasus clean in half. The body fell on the floor in a squishy pile of gore. Ancient Tome spat on it.

"Just a little overdramatic there, Tomey," Night Shroud commented.

"Really? I thought I was pretty cool."

"Well yeah, as the last thing he ever saw, that must have been intimidating," Iron agreed, "But, it did sound kind of over the top, if you know what I mean?"

"I was just...describing the plan."

"Yeah, but the ranting and raving, and talking about fear, and exaggerating the Brotherhood's reputation...It was still a bit silly."

"It was true though!"

"Yeah, yeah, of course it was."

"Hijacking time now?" asked Night Shroud.

"Hell yeah."

***

Prince Blueblood led them back the way he came, over to the edge of the roof. The crowd he had to push through before had already climbed onto another red dragon's back, so Luna, Quill Tip and the Elements of Harmony had no trouble following him, while Dr. Heat Beat, the two mares and the other stragglers they had picked up on their way through the palace went to go board another dragon flight.

They came over to edge of the roof, where they found a few familiar faces. There was that black alicorn with the weird wings from the funeral, flanked by two other normal ponies they didn't know. There was that fish/human hybrid with his trident. There was that creature that looked like a gargoyle, (but couldn't be because they were meant to be extinct), and there was a regular pony in a Wonderbolts uniform too.

Also accompanying them were a few of the ponies from that bar Gold Coin and Chain Mail had stopped by. Easy Eight, Remus the diamond dog, that weird black unicorn stallion with the eye patch, and a few other ponies who he only partially remembered the extremely convoluted backstories of.

"Ah, Gold Coin," Easy Eight said cheerfully, "Good to see you survived! We were worried you wouldn't make it!"

"No risk of that," the business pony replied, "So what's going on here?"

"The undead are swarming the palace grounds. Most of the royal guard who were outside when they first arrived fled inside when Second showed up, but he disappeared soon after. Nopony is really sure about what happened because most of us only just arrived on the roof. It's been chaos. The doors to the palace itself seem to be holding, but there are ponies in power armour back out in the main city, and they'll be heading this way soon. Once they start blasting us, those doors won't hold.

"Ideally, the dragons would go down there and flash fry them when that happens, but with Second easily able to kill dragons, and them being needed to get everypony out safely, right now we're just preparing to send some of our best down there to deal with it ourselves. Remus can't die, so he can probably take out a fair number of them without personal risk."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Gold Coin replied, "Our friend Explodey can't die either, but he still managed to get himself infected."

"Good point."

"Who else have we got fighting here? I don't know many of the rest of you."

"Oh yes, forgive me," said Luna, "Everypony, allow me to make introductions."

Luna gestured to the walking fish creature with the trident.

"This here is Chancellor Zyukrxyls, of Atlantis. Leader of both the sea ponies and merfolk, collectively known as the Atlanteans."

The chancellor made an indistinguishable gurgling sound, and bubbly water fell out of his mouth.

"And this one is...He has a name, but it can't be pronounced by pony tongues."

"Are you a gargoyle?" Mystic asked him.

The creature gave the colt a dark smile, and replied in a haunting, echoey voice.

"There are no such thing as gargoyles anymore. They all died out ages ago. How could I be one? You silly pony."

Mystic just looked confused. Luna shrugged with her wings.

"And this here is Chrysalis," she continued, "Former-"

"Current, Queen of the Changelings, if you please," the dark mare interrupted, "Those rebels have not ousted me yet."

"Oh!" said Gold Coin, "I thought you looked strange for a pony! So are these two here-?"

The two guards by her side flashed green momentarily leaving behind two dark, insectoid ponies with jagged but short horns, fly wings, empty blue eyes and sharp fangs rather reminiscent of Sliske's teeth, except much smaller.

"Yep, also changelings," the one on the left answered, "Representing her majesty's personal guard."

"Huh..." Soft Spoken muttered, "I haven't seen a changeling in years. Hey, do either of you know Ambassador Vanish? Whatever happened to him?"

"Vanish died of old age sixty years ago," Chrysalis replied, "Why?"

"Oh...Never mind..."

The old stallion sighed.

"What's this about rebels I'm hearing?" asked Chain Mail, "I'm not very up to date on foreign politics, but this isn't the first I've heard about an uprising with the changelings. I think somepony mentioned a civil war...In a bar somewhere I think..."

He turned around and looked at the black unicorn with the eye patch, who he had recognised earlier. He hadn't said anything since they had arrived.

"In fact, it was you, right? You're that mercenary who-"

"DIE ROYALIST SCUM!"

The eye patch pony pulled a knife out of nowhere and rushed at Chrysalis, but her horn lit up with green magic and she casually tossed him off the side of the castle, not even bothering to look down after he fell.

"I get at least three of those every day now," she muttered, "It is incredibly annoying."

Luna, for her part, just looked disturbed.

"Hey, ponies," said Remus, "If we're all done with formalities, there's a horde of walking corpses down there that need stomping."

"Quite right," said the unnamed Wonderbolt, "Let's put these things out of their misery."

Remus, Easy Eight, the Chancellor, and a few of the bar ponies all took a running jump off the roof and plummeted down to the grounds below. The gargoyle, the Wonderbolt, Chrysalis and her bodyguards, and the bar ponies who were also pegasi took flight and swooped down out of sight.

"...That was insanely cool," Gold Coin commented.

"I want to see the superhero fight!" Mystic complained, "I can't see it!"

The wall at the edge of the roof, made to prevent ponies from falling off, was too tall for Mystic to see over. Feeling sorry for the frustrated colt, Soft Spoken leaned down so that he could climb on his back. He propped himself up on the edge so that his passenger could peer down at the raging battle below, as all the exotic visitors to Canterlot ripped through legions of the undead.

"Front row seats, sonny," he replied.

Mystic smiled as he watched the action going on below. Remus was tearing zombies apart with his bare hands. Easy Eight was using some kind of future laser technology to disintegrate his attackers. The Atlantean chancellor was impaling zombies on his trident, and occasionally spewing water from his mouth like a fire hose.

The three changelings were mostly using magic to fight, flying above the scene and raining sickly green fire on the zombies to burn them alive. The Wonderbolt was mostly airborne, but kept flying down to smash zombies with his hooves. The gargoyle was doing something similar except using hands.

And of course there were several of the other bar ponies with their amazing, unexplained superpowers.

All in all, it made for a very entertaining fight. Especially when Agent C showed up, now as a zombie, and started fighting one on one against Remus. Soft Spoken, Gold Coin and Chain Mail all cheered loudly as the diamond dog recovered all his wounds instantly, much like Explodey did, and got right up to claw the minotaur in the face.

Despite that though, Luna and Mystic both remained silent. They shared horrified glances, as they had both seen what the other stallions had missed in their enthusiasm for the fight. Down below, they noticed the cover missing from Princess Celestia's tomb, and the body was absent.

Mystic leapt off Softy's back and stood by the princess's side as she began to weep.

***

The duel was getting more and more intense. Neither Celestia nor Second could spare any of their effort towards actual magic, and kept their balance on the log through a combination of skill and luck. As it continued to jet along the ever widening river at ever greater speeds, and water continued to splash up and periodically drench them both, they kept up their attacks.

Second was more aggressive and risky with his strikes. He was less worried about falling off the log for whatever reason, and was very daring in his fighting style. Celestia in turn was on the defensive for most of the fight, deflecting Second's blows and only counterattacking when there was a clear window of opportunity. This more reserved fighting style was definitely getting her hit less, and she did a lot of damage on the human, but with his damned healing factor, none of it was sticking.

There was a roar of water up ahead. The princess took her attention off Second for a moment to look downstream. There was another waterfall coming up. She looked back at her crippled wing, and cursed her bad luck. Second had stopped attacking for the moment, realising their dilemma.

"There are some rocks at the edge of the waterfall over there!" Celestia shouted, "I will use my magic to steer us into them!"

Second nodded, and Celestia's horn glowed along with the log they were on. It did not spin in place again, but still the princess managed to guide its movements. They were getting scarily close to the edge now, but Celestia just closed her eyes and concentrated. The human looked over the edge at the sheer drop below, and was glad when the log came to a stop, getting mostly caught behind another rock.

Celestia opened her eyes again, just in time to see Second raise Luna's horn again. This time it was a telekinesis spell. He lifted the princess into the air and threw her off the top of the waterfall, knowing that she could no longer fly.

"Hah!"

Then he realised that Celestia's magical field was still covering the log. As she fell, she tugged at it, and the log came out from behind the rocks again.

"OHGODTHATWASSTUPIDI'MGONNADIE!"

Not a sheer drop onto sharp rocks this time though. This time the log shot through the air like a rocket, with Second barely keeping ahold on top of it. Celestia pulled the log towards her in freefall, intending to catch herself with it. Second had other plans though. He jumped off the log in the air and grabbed Celestia instead, hanging off her neck and pushing her away from the log.

They had a long drop, but even the largest drops still only took a few seconds.

The princess hit the water backwards, while Second laid on top of her to use her body to break his fall. They both sank underwater, but the human was able to get back up to the surface first, while simultaneously trying to hold his opponent underwater with his legs. He didn't even know if alicorns could die by drowning, but he was still going to try.

Celestia also did not know if humans could die by drowning, but she had a similar line of thought. Using both hooves and her magic, she grabbed Second by the legs and yanked him back underwater again. She actually couldn't drown, so she remained underwater too, making sure to hold down Second and ensure he did.

He kicked her off and moved through the water towards her. Unfortunately for him, water seemed to slow humans down a lot. Celestia almost cracked a smile when she saw Second moving at a snail's pace towards her. She also enjoyed the look of stunned disbelief on his face when she leapt and bound through the water like it was air to avoid his next attack.

"Okay, the goddess of the sun and fire has the advantage underwater," he thought, "How is that fair?! Grrr...No matter...Guess I've got to clear out all this water!"

He raised his fist. Rather than hit Celestia with it though, he brought it down onto the river bed. It was slow moving, but the laws of physics buckled before the human once again, and he hit the river bed with enough power and force to cause a small scale earthquake.

All the water in the river jumped into the air as the ground shook. Second and Celestia barely managed to remain standing after the impact, but both looked up in shock at the mass of water above them. Celestia was wondering what the hell the human had done, while Second was both amazed that his plan had actually worked, and horrified because he had just forgotten that what goes up must come down.

The mass of water rained down again, and both Second and Celestia were nearly knocked unconscious as it hit them like a tonne of bricks.

***

The ponies in power armour had finally shown up for the battle, and things weren't looking good. Down below, explosive barrages breached the door to the palace, and zombies began to swarm inside, despite the best efforts of the royal guard and civilian and foreign volunteers. Remus and the Gargoyle were willing to keep up the fight, but Easy Eight and the Chancellor both nearly got killed by the power armour troops, and Chrysalis withdrew once one of he bodyguards dropped.

"I's not looking good," said Blueblood, "I don't think we'll be able to get everypony out in time."

"No..." Luna muttered, "These poor ponies...They're not going to make it...Are they, Blue?"

She grabbed the prince and almost crushed him with a hug.

"I can't do this..." she cried, "I'm a terrible princess! I can't even protect my little ponies! Tia would have never let this happen! Tia would have been strong...And now she's gone...and one of them...and I'm stuck up here, being useless. I tried, Blue! I tried so hard!"

"Uhh...Princess?" Soft Spoken interrupted.

"WHAT?!"

He pointed above them. Luna looked up, and her jaw dropped as a gigantic airship flew above them, approaching Canterlot mountain. It cast a massive shadow, and had it stopped closer to the castle itself, the thing would have been large enough to blot out the sun. The gondola, also massive in its scale, opened a cargo door on the side to reveal a large empty space that could have probably fit Spike inside if he folded his wings.

"CITIZENS OF CANTERLOT. THIS IS THE AIRSHIP PROMETHEUS. WE ARE HERE TO RESCUE YOU. EVERYPONY REMAIN CALM AND BOARD THE SHIP THROUGH THE CARGO DOOR. THERE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH SPACE TO ACCOMODATE EVERYPONY."

The ship began to lower, and turn on its side so that the open cargo door was level with the rooftop. It edged closer, and the sky did indeed darken as its form eclipsed the sun. Eventually, the cargo door touched the roof and made a ramp up into the large, empty room within. The dragons all took off at once and cleared space on the roof, as the citizens of Canterlot all made a mad dash for the Prometheus.

The crowd began to stampede. Luna, the Elements, the volunteers and the royal guards all hung back to clear the way for the civilians. Without having to line up for the dragon flights, the citizens had all boarded within mere minutes, leaving the roof clear except for the fighters.

The royal guards began to retreat onto the roof as well. Commander Hail was among the guards pulling out, and he explained that the lower levels of the castle were already lost to the zombies. A few brave soldiers had offered to sacrifice themselves to hold the doors closed down below, hoping to resist the onslaught for long enough for everypony to get clear.

"Thank you, Commander," Luna said sincerely, "They will not be forgotten."

The night guard saluted, and flew off towards the open door of the Prometheus. The last of the civilians and palace staff were just boarding now, including Quill Tip and the volunteers, followed closely by the last of the guards. Chrysalis and Blueblood were some of the few to stay behind.

"...Princess?" said Soft Spoken, "Shouldn't we be going as well?"

"Yeah, just about everypony else is boarding now, even the guards," Gold Coin agreed, "Why are we waiting around?"

Mystic looked at them sadly.

"Princess Celestia's tomb is open," he explained.

Immediately, the friends understood Luna's hesitation.

"...I am sorry, your highness," the old stallion replied, "I understand how you must feel, but if somepony like her now walks among those creatures pouring into the castle, that's all the more reason to leave."

"You're right. I apologise. Come, let us be on our way."

There was a flash of light, and just in front of the group, Ancient Tome appeared. Just like when he confronted Gold Coin and Mystic Chant as they attempted to flee Sparkle Manor, he was once again dressed in the robes of the Equestrian military's elite warlocks. The robes were all star patterned, and came with a pointy hat which drooped over at the top, and just inside the cloak was a sheathed sword which the warlocks only ever used in emergencies anyway, and was made even more pointless by the fact that he was levitating a semi-automatic rifle, pointed right at them.

"Nopony move, or you all get the Celestia treatment."

***

"Gah..."

Second pulled himself out of the water and onto a muddy river bank. His outer clothes were all mostly gone now, and all that was left behind now were a few soaked and tattered rags, his underwear, mercifully, and his exposed burnt skin.

He laid back on the river bank, breathing heavy and coughing up water. He felt his face; the eye patch had long since been lost. He wasn't sure when it came off, but at some point he had lost it. This probably meant that he had a load of dirty river water flowing into his head through his eye socket, and drowning his brain. It certainly felt like it.

He coughed again, and brought up a live fish, which flopped about on the bank near him, before sliding down the muddy incline and back into the river. Then he saw Princess Celestia also pulling herself out of the water. She crawled out onto the same river bank, just as he did, and collapsed next to him. She was also coughing up river water and breathing heavily.

"...So was it good for you too?"

Celestia looked up angrily at the human. She tried to climb to her hooves again, but couldn't do it. She was too fatigued, and her legs ached. Turns out that alicorns could still tire, even if they could not be injured by conventional means.

Second chuckled, and rolled over so that he had his back to her.

"Be quiet, don't move, don't say a word, don't even change your facial expression. Imagine you're frozen for a minute, and just listen to what I have to say."

Celestia was still. She didn't know where he was going with this, but she decided to hear him out.

"You can hit me now. How come?"

It was a struggle to keep the same pose and facial expression as she spoke, but the princess managed it.

"I discovered the truth about what we are. I know what you were talking about now. You can only be hit by...main characters..."

Referring to herself or her ponies as fictional characters in a story still left a bad taste in the princess's mouth, but she had to be clear to Second that she knew what he knew.

"Heh...And you didn't go mad? Maybe I should have given you more credit..."

"Yes. You should have."

"But you learned of the true nature of your world. How?"

Your son told me, is what she tried to say. Something stopped her though. Celestia tried to explain, tried to tell him the truth, but there was something preventing her. An outside force that she could almost feel the presence of clogged up her throat when she tried to speak the words, and clouded her mind when she thought them.

"The universe revealed its own secrets to me."

What?! That's not what happened at all!

"...Did it now?"

Is this what First was talking about? Is this that force...that...Dramatic Convenience...There to keep the story going? Second said something about it too...just before he killed me...

"This is a three act story!"

But he must know about First! If I could only tell him! But...

"...So you know of Dramatic Convenience? That accursed tool of bad writers, that allows them to ignore the status quo, and the laws of common sense?"

Yes. It's actively hindering my efforts to communicate with you right now.

"...And the source of your power."

The human cleared his throat.

"And the source of my power, yes. More importantly though, it is a tool of great evil."

"...How do you mean?"

"Celestia, think. My people made your entire universe. Studio B, who for the sake of the primitives I like to call the Pantheon, planned out every detail of your world. Including the history of it, and the physics, and the laws of the universe."

The princess raised an eyebrow.

"And?"

"So think about it. Think about the history of Equestria, and this planet, and yourself. Think about them in their entirety. I want you to remember every innocent death, every tragedy to ever occur, every natural disaster, every disease, every famine, every war, and every single misfortune ever visited on anypony throughout all of time. And then remember that as the architects of history, they're responsible for every single one of them."

Celestia's eyes widened in realisation. Second just let out a low, raspy chuckle.

"Yes. You see our problem now? A group of nigh omnipotent beings, outside of your universe, and responsible for everything bad that ever happened to it, including me. And it's not just your precious little ponies they've been jerking around. They set us against each other. Our initial conflict one thousand years ago was a story, penned by human writers. Neither of us were fully in control of our own destinies, and we still aren't."

"This Pantheon is still active?"

"They're playing a long game, Celestia. Setting up a conflict that has lasted millennia. They've brought in other factions as well, creatures from thousands of years before either of us. We're both pawns in the most elaborate game of chess ever played. The board spans all of Creation, and we're both getting played by a grand master."

"...So what are we going to do?"

"I heard 'we' in there, Celestia. I like that, because I was about to propose a plan that I think you might like."

"Go on..."

"Now, you could take me down here and now...Or we could use the screen time we have to buy ourselves more space to act freely outside of it. Plan a counter attack. This Pantheon is completely omnipotent, that is true. However, they are not omniscient. We can take them by surprise, and as long as that is possible...We can take them down."

"But how though?"

"I'm still working on the specifics, but I know something that may help us. I helped design the cosmos. All the stars and galaxies out there, princess...they're hiding secrets. Secrets that I can use. Weapons to allow us to take the fight to our mutual enemies. Something that may even physically harm them through the universal barriers, if it were ever possible.

"I can harness this power, I can obtain those weapons, but I can't do it unassisted. I need to work around the constraints of this god-awful story, and then I can strike back. It'll be the biggest gamble anyone's ever taken, but if we win, we win everything. I can give you a world of no Gods and no masters, where you are the ultimate authority.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Not just taking down one Elder God...but taking down every single one of them at once! Imagine one world under ponykind...With no human hands clutching the globe, and no extra-dimensional forces warping time and space around you. Your world could be...complete."

"...And yourself?"

"Me? I'd disappear and never bother you again. I want nothing more than my freedom, but I'm a prisoner of story conventions just like you. That's what this is though. We're planning a jailbreak. And once we're both over that barbed wire and the prison lies in flaming ruins behind us, we can both go our separate ways, and you'll never need to worry about me again. I've got a home already, and I miss it dearly."

The princess sighed.

"Why should I trust you? And why should I take your side over this Pantheon? What makes you any better than them?"

"You want an honest answer? You shouldn't trust me. I would not trust a human, were I you. We're not a trustworthy people, and not known for being benevolent. However, I am the only one who can help you against the Pantheon. As for why I'm better than them? Well...truth is, I'm not. In fact, depending on how you look at it, I may be worse.

"But that's just a matter of opinion. Do you define what makes us better by actions or intent? If you go by intent, I am undoubtedly your worst enemy. I have caused deliberate damage to you on a scale almost not seen before. I planned to do all of it, I wanted to do all of it, and I'm not even sorry. The Pantheon? They don't even know that you're real thinking beings. They're just writing a story. They don't know that they've caused so much actual harm.

"However, if you go by actions, if it's what we actually do that matters to you, then the Pantheon becomes your enemy, because despite everything I've done it still does not compare to them. Think about it. Every tragedy in history can all be laid at their feet, and they're the ones who are writing the stories about me, so you can also technically count them responsible for all the stuff I did as well.

"In the end, princess, there's no way for us to communicate with them. The Pantheon is out of our reach, and they don't believe that we're real. So if we don't stop them, they will continue to inflict disasters and plagues on Equestria, and they will never, ever stop. You can side with them if you want to, and you might even kill me, but this whole scenario to me seems like a pilot for a new TV series.

"What's the bet that once I die, they'll just make another villain for you to fight? Or release an old one? How'd you like to see Discord loose again? They could do it. Just a scratch of a pencil, and that draconequus could break out and wreak havoc on Equestria all over again. They'd probably do it, too. Humans love Discord."

Celestia laid still, taking in his words. She closed her eyes and contemplated the idea of the Pantheon. These humans were obscenely powerful. She was having enough trouble just stopping one. If she ever wanted to deal with this Pantheon, it would have to be by siding with Second...Wouldn't it?

Could Lord First also be capable of opposing the Pantheon? Would she even be able to get in contact with him again? Was there any way to communicate with the realm of the afterlife?

No. There couldn't be, or else there would have been before. And First had expressed no desire to take down the Pantheon when she spoke with him. Did he not care about their presence? About the damage they did? Did he simply believe they were not a problem? Or...could it be that he actually still supported them? She didn't know how human society worked, but she didn't think it too unreasonable to believe that humans were likely to be more loyal to each other than to ponies.

"This Pantheon..." she said, "They're writing stories about us...but they support the ponies, don't they? We're the heroes of the story. That means we'd always win if there were new villains, right?"

Second looked over his shoulder at her.

"Yes. You'd always win. But that doesn't guarantee that everything will be peachy perfect by the end of it. You can still have casualties. Innocent ponies can still die. Equestria can still suffer, and it won't necessarily recover. Don't think that just because they support you, they care about your feelings or comfort. They only want to make you dance for their amusement, and if bad things happen in the meantime, then they won't care.

"So that's your choice. Side with the Pantheon, and I'll lose. I will probably suffer a horrific, but karmic death for my actions, Equestria will survive, and it's guaranteed to survive for a long time, but you may have to put up with more monsters like me dropping in to destroy things every once in a while. Or, side with me. We destroy the Pantheon, I leave, then there's no guarantee of victory anymore, but also no more meddling, invisible overlords, and no more new monsters being unleashed on your world. Those are your choices, princess."

Damn it! It was like he knew exactly what to say! She could easily put him out of his misery, but he was actually offering to sell out the rest of the humans menacing her world from afar in exchange for his life! And what's more, these humans were responsible for even more atrocities than he was! It was like choosing between helping Discord or helping windigoes! What was she supposed to do?!

"Can you promise me that your plan will work?"

"Yes."

"And that no more innocents will be harmed?"

"No."

"What?! But-"

"I'm not going to go out of my way to hurt anyone, but even I do not have total control. I cannot promise that no-one will come to harm, because sometimes people get hurt by accident."

"Second-"

"Celestia, you've heard my offer. Take it or leave it."

It was honestly remarkable how even when pleading for his life, he still managed to remain arrogant and rude. And still managed to act like he was the one who held all the cards. He was laying on a muddy river bank, mostly naked and shivering in the cold. He certainly didn't look like anyone in a position to make demands.

Nevertheless....

"What do you need from me?"

Though Celestia could not see him, Second grinned.

***

Spike swooped down towards Ancient Tome. He was not willing to give the stallion a chance to inflict any more harm on the princess or her friends. They had already suffered enough without this pony trying to do more damage. He got ready to let loose a torrent of fire to incinerate him where he stood.

The Prometheus however, had other plans.

Several hatches in the side of the airship opened up, and the Prometheus brought its massive cannons to bear. The ponies flinched as they fired, and Spike was knocked sideways mid-flight, crashing down below the castle. Luna ran over to the edge of the roof again.

"SPIKE!" she cried.

"I'm okay, princess," her friend replied as he flew back up to her level again, "It'll take more than that to bring this old dragon down. That barely left a scratch."

"NOPONY MOVE," ordered the voice coming from the Prometheus's speakers, "ANCIENT TOME REPRESENTS THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. AS A BROTHERHOOD SHIP, THE PROMETHEUS WILL OPEN FIRE ON ANY TARGETS HOSTILE TO HIM."

The colour drained from the princess's face. She had just left the entire civilian population of Canterlot in the hooves of a heavily armed terrorist group. The civilians themselves seemed to notice this, and attempted to flee back out onto the roof, but the cargo door quickly slammed shut, locking them inside. Now the dragons couldn't even attack the vessel, because it was full of helpless innocents.

Tome meanwhile inched closer to them. The rifle switched targets between the Elements of Harmony, Blueblood, Luna and Chrysalis, him making sure to keep them all in line.

"I want no more trouble from any of you," he said calmly, "I am just here for my son, and maybe to kill Gold Coin. Maybe. Depends on how cooperative you're all feeling. Mystic, come here now."

"No!"

"Son, please..."

"No! Go away! I hate you!"

"Mystic, as your father I am ordering you-"

Mystic sprouted fangs and hissed at him.

"He sssssssaid 'no'. Back off, before ssssssomepony getssss hurt."

Threatening the unicorn seemed to do nothing but make him angrier however. He raised the gun again and looked down the sights at him.

"You get out of him, you monster!" he ordered, "You shouldn't even be here! You deserve to rot in whatever prison you spent the last thousand years in!"

"Maybe I do, but sssssinccccccce I am here, you can lissssssten to me and-"

The alien stopped. He looked up at his own forehead.

"...Are you sssure?"

There was a pause.

"Fine."

The teeth disappeared again, leaving Mystic back in control.

"I said, go away!" he shouted, "You're a terrible dad, and I hate you! I never want to see you again!"

"Mystic..." Tome sighed, "Look, I know I made mistakes. The whole Brotherhood did. We realise that now. We've turned against Second, and we want to fight him too. We're only trying to do what's right, son. I'm trying to make a better world. I did it for you! So did your auntie Arts, and Frosty, your uncle Mystic Rites...And your mother. We did it all because we thought it was best!"

Mystic shook his head angrily, and his horn burst with light. He threw dozens of tiny thunderbolts at his father. Tome didn't think to put up a shield, but it turned out it wasn't necessary, as they only lightly stung him and left small black singes on his coat, before he did make a half hearted attempt at a shield spell which blocked them all effortlessly.

Without Sliske, Mystic still had all the magic of a foal.

Tome just looked at his son sadly while he kept throwing pathetic jolts of electricity at him, before wearing himself out and collapsing. The exhausted unicorn panted as he ran away again and hid behind Soft Spoken.

"Make him go away, Softy!" he cried.

Tome tried to approach, but Gold Coin held out a hoof to stop him in his path.

"Ah!" he scolded, "Don't come any closer! He's made it clear you're not welcome here, so you might as well just go."

Ancient Tome's face contorted in rage, and he aimed at Gold Coin.

"You're the one who turned him against me!" he shouted, "You made me take Second back to my house! You're the reason he found out! And when I tried to just keep him somewhere safe so I could explain to him in private, you kidnapped him and ran away! You ruined my life!"

He turned the gun on Softy.

"And you! I didn't want to hurt you either, old friend, but you betrayed me too! You were never even supposed to be involved! You were just my butler! Another pony out of many I wanted to make a better world for! Why did you have to ruin everything?!"

"We did nothing to you," Softy replied coldly, "You're just a fool, and a deluded fool at that. You hide behind your conspiracy theories and hold them up as validation for your crimes. You talk of the greater good and a better world, and think that excuses everything you did. You don't get forgiven just for having good intention. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions show that you're still a cowardly idiot who blames everypony else for all his problems. You're dangerous to your foal, and I could never in good conscience let Mystic leave with you."

"...Softy-"

"And don't call me that. You don't get to call me by nicknames and talk as if we're friends. We are not friends, Mr. Tome, and we never were. You were my employer, and nothing more. You were a fair employer, and you paid well, but you're an awful pony, and I despise you. Please leave."

Tome looked at the rifle floating in front of him. The world flashed around him, and for a moment, he was back on that little grassy hill holding the original Reaper's Horn, looking down at Gold Coin and his terrified son again.

He sighed, and tossed it aside.

"Fine."

Ancient Tome disappeared in a flash of light, and the Prometheus roared to life as it began to fly away. Meanwhile, the little blue colt hugged Soft Spoken's legs and cried.

***

Celestia sighed dejectedly. Surely no master plan to liberate the universe from invisible overlords was worth humiliation like this?

Second was carrying her back towards Canterlot. She was slung over his shoulder and held with one arm like a roll of carpet, and with every step the human took she would bob up and down uncomfortably. Her head hung limply, and all she could see was the blurry motion of the muddy ground beneath them, and occasionally she would wince as Second's shoulder dug into her stomach when he climbed or ascended steps of some kind.

The idea was meant to be that she was to act as if she had been defeated. She was meant to be unconscious, and Second was taking her back to the city to show her limp and lifeless body to the Elements of Harmony as proof of his victory, when he made the formal challenge for them to come down and face them himself. Though she had gained main character status, and thus could hurt him, the story was still meant to be about the Elements of Harmony, and thus it had to be them who defeated him.

And when they did defeat him, it would be Celestia's job to use her magic to protect him from the worst of it. When they unleashed their power to finally stop him and cleanse Canterlot of the zombie plague, her magic would protect him from being permanently turned to stone, or banished, or killed, or whatever else could happen to him, and allow him to return shortly after his defeat.

His explanation was that after the zombies were returned to normal and he was defeated by the new Elements, the story would be considered 'over', and thus his role in it, and the outside force pressuring him to do villainous things would also cease. With him no longer having to play the role of a petty, baby strangling maniac, he could then focus all his efforts on the ultimate plan to stop the Pantheon of B, and Celestia could freely explain the full situation to her sister and the Elements of Harmony, and they could openly work together on it.

At least, that was the theory. Second freely admitted that this could easily go horribly wrong.

What's more, he was placing an awful amount of trust in her. He was fully planning on going up against the Elements and losing, expecting to take the full power of their magic. Only her protective spells would save him from another eternity trapped in stone, or an extended vacation on the moon. She could very easily betray him, and his reign of terror would be over. And he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. He put all his faith in her keeping her word.

"...So, Second?"

"Mmhmm?"

"If I may ask, why was I not allowed to move while you were explaining this plan to me on the river bank?"

"It's all about the split-second cuts," the human replied, "The show that you were originally a part of, Friendship is Magic, was primarily made for children. Thus it had to be child friendly, and thus was subject to a lot of censorship. A work for children cannot have any swearing, extreme violence, sexual content, or anything like that. And in case you didn't notice, I have a gutter mouth that would make even the most vulgar of comedy performers blush. You can thank my redneck upbringing for that.

"Of course, since I was part of a show meant to be for children, and my actions in this world are roughly what the television audience would see, obviously that means that cuts in the middle of my sentences would have occured so that my swearing wouldn't make it into the show. The same must have happened to cut out references to the real world, as I doubt that the show would explicitly feature one of the writers as a character, especially since from the perspective of the real world, everyone must think I'm dead by now, as I disappeared and never came back. Humans would consider that disrespectful to my memory.

"After all, me and Anthony's rampage across Equestria lasted several weeks, but your average FiM episode is only twenty two minutes, and at most two of them would have focused on us. That leaves less than three quarters of an hour out of several weeks of actions that would have been shown. It only focuses on the interesting stuff, and time skips occur between cuts, so if nothing interesting is happening, then it probably wouldn't be part of those forty five minutes shown on television."

Celestia was confused.

"...And your point is...?"

"A fight between you and me is certainly an important enough event that it would get a scene. However, our fight lasted a long time, so there would be cuts even in the middle of that so as to only focus on the interesting stuff. They couldn't show the full fifteen minutes or so of us fighting, could they? No. There would be cuts. And by staying still and doing nothing like we did, we ensured nothing interesting was happening other than our conversation, which could not be shown anyway because of the subject matter we were discussing, thus it would have occured off screen and would not be part of a writer's script or an animator's art work, and THAT is how you act outside the constraints of the story's narrative."

"...You've really given this a lot of thought, haven't you?"

"With the kind of people we're up against, that is a necessity."

They continued on in silence for several minutes more. Then, out of nowhere, Second started speaking to himself.

"I've got a better idea, why don't you fuck off?"

"Excuse me?" Celestia replied.

"Not talking to you."

"Who are you talking to then?"

"A tiny naked man who lives in my head."

"...What?"

"I'm perfectly normal. There's nothing wrong with me."

"OH PLEASE DON'T SING THAT AGAIN!"

***

Tome appeared again on the bridge of the Prometheus, where he found Iron Hoof and Night Shroud waiting.

"Sorry, Tomey," Iron said sympathetically, "You did all you could."

"Yeah...Enough of that. We still have duties to attend to. Since we can't kill Luna with my son still down there, and we can't kill Spike with all the rest of these dragons around, that means our next objective should be getting these ponies to safety and picking up Sun Rise and Star Wish back in Secopolis. Speaking of, did you get Ze!zar?"

"We did," Night Shroud replied, "One of the unicorn crew members teleported down to collect him from the prison under threat of death. He returned two minutes ago. Ze!zar is currently unconscious in the medical bay. We sent another unicorn to clear out the corpses down there and sterilise it."

"Excellent. Well, we all know what to do now then. Turn us around and head back for Secopolis."

***

Spike landed back on the roof again and stuck out a wing for the ponies to climb on.

"We're almost out of time. Hurry!"

Luna, the Elements and Blueblood all climbed onto the dragon's back, and he prepared to take off again.

"Are you not coming, Chrysalis?" Luna asked.

"Not now," the changeling queen replied, "Much as I would like to, I've already been away too long, and my forces need me for morale purposes. We'll never overcome these rebels if we don't all pitch in."

"I understand."

She fluttered over and landed on Spike's back as well.

"For what it's worth, I am sorry for your loss. I hope you'll get past this eventually, with some help from your friends of course..."

"Chrysalis, I know that look, and now is really not the time."

The changeling scowled at her.

"I'll get you one day, princess..."

She jumped up and took to the sky again, followed closely by her surviving bodyguard.

Gold Coin raised an eyebrow curiously.

"Did she just-?"

There was a sudden gasping of air that nearly made the business pony jump out of his skin. Everypony looked over to Explodey, who was awake again, and looking panicked. The grey hadn't spread much further than when they last checked on him, but the fact he was awake again wasn't good.

"Oh shit," said Chain Mail, "I just realised that Dr. Heart Beat left in the Prometheus! That means we don't have anypony left to find a cure for Explodey!"

These words did nothing to help Explodey, who began to freak out even more.

"Oh..." the captain continued, "Even worse. Dr. Heart Beat hadn't yet cracked the formula for the drugs in my suit! I need that formula, or I could drop dead from oxygen deprivation when this suit runs out!"

Explodey began hyperventilating.

Nearby, a pair of doors leading back down into the castle burst open, and several zombie ponies rushed out onto the rooftop. Among their ranks were Agent C and several zombified royal guards.

"And now there are super zombies too!" Gold Coin shouted.

This finally pushed Explodey over the edge, and he started spasming erratically. Spike finally took off, and the other dragons waiting on standby flew out of his way as he rose, and then swooped down once he was clear to begin bathing the rooftop in fire.

"Explodey!" Softy shouted, "Are you okay?!"

"AGGHH!" he screamed, "NO I'M NOT! I THINK I'M DYING!"

"Oh, this is just fucking wonderful!" Gold Coin raged, "This is EXACTLY what we needed right now!"

Already the wind was rushing past them as Spike climbed higher and higher. They passed through the cloud layer and up into the sunny blue sky above. Everything became bright again, and the air was crisp and fresh.

"Guys..." Explodey muttered, "I'm...I think...Something's wrong...I'm not just dying...I'm...."

He closed his eyes.

***

"...The hell?"

Everything was misty and white. What was this place? What was going on?

"Oh yeah...I like that..."

Explodey turned around and saw a comfy chair facing away from him. There was a little stand next to it with a lamp on it; the sole feature in this empty void.

The unicorn sneaked over to the side and peered over the top of the chair. He saw that it was occupied by a human, though not Lord Second. This human was much younger looking, with light brown hair and a t-shirt, which had a curious red stain on the stomach, and wearing a pair of reading glasses. He was using the lamp light to read a magazine with lots of pictures of humans in it, though different from the humans he was used to seeing, and wearing less clothes.

"Uh...hello?" he said.

"GAH!"

The human nearly jumped out of his chair and dropped the magazine. His spectacles also fell off.

"HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET HERE?!" he demanded, "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DIE!"

"Wait, I'm dead?!" Explodey demanded, "I can actually die?! Then this is...Is this the afterlife?!"

"Uh..."

"Who are you? Wait! You're the First, aren't you?!"

First's eyes darted down to the magazine on the floor. He slowly lowered his hand towards it, but Explodey grabbed it in his telekinesis.

"Hey, what is this?"

First snatched it out of the air.

"It's a...human history book. Yeah, that's it. Very sensitive. Not for pony eyes. Could burn your eyes out and drive you to insanity. Eldritch knowledge, and all that. Mmhmm."

Explodey grabbed it again and ripped it open. He quickly scanned the pages.

"Hey, what's that one human doing to that other human?" he asked.

First grabbed it again.

"I TOLD YOU-"

There was a pop, and Explodey vanished again. First looked around him in confusion, and saw that he was nowhere to be found.

"...Huh..."

***

Second stood in place, staring in disbelief at the sight of Canterlot Castle. The whole place was a ghost town. Zombies shuffled in and out of the front door, occasionally moaning, though not often. Up above, the sky was free from dragons, and he heard no sounds of a fight or struggle. He put Celestia down on the floor just next to her tomb and leapt up to the rooftop. There he discovered no fleeing civilians, no survivors, no refugees of any kind. Just piles of ash and one or two zombies wandering out of a rooftop exit. And a pair of minotaur horns.

What had happened? Where were all the ponies? Where were the military fighting back? Where were the heroes, using their Elements of Harmony to save the day? There was nothing here. Canterlot had gone quiet. All he could hear was the wind and the unenthusiastic grumblings of a rotting earth pony as it shambled past. The thing glared at him through one single yellowed eye. He was well aware of the feeling, and felt his own empty eye socket.

He jumped back off the roof and landed on the green again. Celestia sat up and looked at him. He shrugged.

"Nothing," he reported, "They all disappeared."

He walked past her, up to the remains of her tomb. With an angry kick, he smashed the rest of it to tiny stone chips.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" he screamed, "WHAT KIND OF STORY IS THIS?! ISN'T THIS THE CLIMAX?! WHERE ARE THE HEROES?! I'M SUPPOSED TO BE STOPPED HERE! THE PONIES ARE MEANT TO FIX EVERYTHING! WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY?!"

He sat down on the steps leading up to the tomb and buried his face in his hands.

"I just don't understand it," he groaned, "I have no clue where the writers are going with this. None of this makes even the slightest fucking sense. What kind of heroes turn and run when they're meant to be saving the world? They're the Elements of Harmony! They can cure the zombies! They can stop me! So why did they run? Why leave Canterlot to its fate? How could I have...won?"

He looked up again.

"Holy shit. I won. I actually won..."

He looked at his hands.

"How did that happen?"

"This isn't going to plan, is it?" Celestia said dryly.

"No, it's not. I've become too competent for my own good. I underestimated my own forces. I didn't think they'd be able to take the city before we all got wiped out."

"So what now?"

Second stood up and massaged his temples.

"I don't know...Something...I need to revise my plan. I didn't foresee this possibility. The writer is trickier than I thought he was. He went through all the trouble of setting up a fake climax...All the elements were there! The heroes knew what their role was, and had the capability to stop me. I had my army, arguably at the height of its power. We knew enough about what was going on, and I just assumed that it would all come to a head in Canterlot. But it didn't...It's bigger than that. The scale of it is..."

He froze.

"No wait!" he shouted, "I've got it! This is perfect! The heroes aren't strong enough! That's what this is! They're going away for an extended training montage! What we're experiencing now is second act, not the third! They'll learn of their true potential and unlock greater power, building up their strength for the true final conflict. Not you and me, but me and them! The new Elements of Harmony, versus a demon from the old days who fought the originals! A battle of such epic proportion that the foundations of the world will shake! The war of the century, Celestia!"

"I don't understand. How does this help us?"

"It helps us immensely! Because what it means is that the focus is on the heroes as they better themselves! We've got our time off screen! The story won't focus on me anymore, because it's all on them! They're the heart and soul of the piece, while I'm just supposed to sit around and wait for my defeat! But while I do that, I can get to work on my plan! We can strike back against the Pantheon right at the very end!"

Celestia tilted her head.

"So what you're saying is that while they prepare to fight you, you'll be free to prepare to fight the Pantheon, and then when the times comes we can all fight the Pantheon together?"

"Yes! Exactly! But we've got to do it just perfectly. If I mess this up even slightly, it'll more than likely just kill everyone."

"You need to actually explain this plan to me. What kind of weapon are you banking on, that you think will harm Elder Gods?"

"I can't go into detail I'm afraid, but trust me, it's brilliant."

"Second, I don't trust you. You've given me no reason to. I should kill you and put an end to all of this. After what you did to Canterlot, to my little ponies, to my sister...I think letting you live is the worst thing I've ever done. And after this is all over, I'm going to step down from the throne, because letting a creature like you run free is the ultimate proof that I'm not a worthy ruler."

Second rolled his eyes.

"Always the serious one, aren't you? Never could embrace the chaotic side of life. Always the pretty little princess, so good and pure. It's what I like about you, but damn if it isn't also your most annoying trait. Of course, being as you are now, maybe we can look forward to that changing a little?"

"...What?"

"Have you looked in a mirror recently, Celestia?"

"What are you talking about?"

The human smiled.

"You'll find out yourself in due time. By the way, I think you have something on your face."

***

Explodey opened his eyes again. Once more, he was looking at a blue sky.

"...Guys?"

"Holy shit!" Gold Coin shouted, "What was that?!"

"Uhh..."

"Explodey, you've been dead for twelve minutes! How the fuck did you do that?!"

"I don't-"

Mystic Chant leapt over and tackled Explodey to the ground. It took the unicorn a moment to realise he was being hugged.

"Don't ever leave again!" he ordered.

"I'm so confused!" Explodey shouted, "What just happened?! Why are we all hugging?!"

Softy, Gold Coin, and Chain Mail had all joined Mystic, and everypony was now hugging the confused and disoriented unicorn. He was having trouble breathing.

"Guys? Does anypony have a sandwich, or a cupcake or something? I'm still hungry."

***

Silver Vein staggered up to the steps of Canterlot Castle. Her armour was covered in the blood of her fallen comrades, and the yellow Butterfly model armour was sparking and twitching with every step. A large black scorch mark on one side showed where she had been burned by a dragon, and a deep scratch along her front showed where a pegasus guard had attempted to carve through her armour.

The mare reached up and ripped off her helmet, clearing her vision and letting her take a deep breath. The suit's air conditioning had failed, and she was sweating heavily. A light breeze helped cool her down. She threw the helmet aside and continued up the steps.

"Must...take over...Canterlot..." she muttered.

She looked up at the entrance to the palace, and was surprised when she saw Second walk into view. He seemed equally surprised to see her.

"Oh," he said, "You survived. Wow. I didn't think anyone would have made it out of that."

"Just me, sir," Silver reported.

"How did you survive?"

"Luck, I guess."

"Hmm. Well consider me impressed."

He looked across the rest of the city.

"There was supposed to be a supply ship coming in from Secopolis. I have no idea what happened to it. Seems we don't have any medical staff on hand to help you, though."

"I'll survive, sir."

"If you're sure. I do believe that there is a medical centre somewhere in the castle though. I don't know anything about treating wounds, but if you think you're able, I'd advise you to go and find it."

"Thank you, sir."

Silver Vein limped up the steps past the human, who observed her curiously as she passed.

"Oh, and by the way?"

She turned to look at him.

"I've got another job for you after you're back up again. Come meet me up in the throne room once you're walking properly, and I'll introduce you to Princess Celestia."

***

"Tomey!" shouted Iron Hoof, "We've got a problem!"

The old stallion whipped his head around to face Iron as he rushed back onto the bridge.

"There's...something down there!"

"Down where?"

"On the lower levels, with the civilians! This blue thing appeared in the cargo hold, and it's got everypony riled up! There's a riot going on down there. I think they want to take over the Prometheus! Ze!zar has disappeared from the clinic and we have no idea what happened to him, and half the engineers in the maintenance sector are gone too!"

"What the hell?" Tome muttered, "Something's wrong here...Where is Night Shroud?"

"I don't know sir! Last I saw him was with you when I left to go check down below!"

BOOM!

The whole airship shook with the sound of the explosion, and both the ponies struggled to keep their balance.

"WHAT WAS THAT?!" Tome demanded.

"We're under attack, sir!" shouted one of the ponies maintaining the flight controls, "Whatever it is, it's small and armed with missiles!"

"Is it attacking the balloon, or the gondola?" asked Iron.

"Just the gondola, sir! Or more precisely, just the bridge! Whatever it is, it's after us specifically!"

"The universe clearly hates us," Tome deadpanned, "Alright! Return fire and reduce whatever's attacking us to ash! Iron! Get down below and find out what the fuck's going on! Find Night Shroud and Ze!zar if you can, and put down this riot, peacefully if possible. I don't want our attempts to save ponies to turn into a bloodbath."

"Sir! Radio transmission!" shouted another pony.

"Turn it up!"

The pony hit a few controls at his terminal. There was a loud burst of static which began to slowly die down as the radio signal became clearer. Then, a voice could be heard over the speakers.

"Attention Prometheus, this is the Vader One," the voice reported, "We understand that you have a unicorn doctor on board that we wish to speak to."

Everypony was silent.

"Also, do you have any food?"

END

Author's notes:

Finally.

Before anyone asks, my choice for the name of the airship had nothing to do with the recent movie. I took the name from the actual mythological character and thought it sounded cool, and then later discovered it was also the name of the ship in the movie Prometheus. Kay?

This was a difficult chapter to write for, because while I had no shortage of story material, I was lacking for decent comedy this time. Not because I had no ideas. I had plenty of A-grade material I wanted to use, but the way the story is set up, I couldn't fit it in anywhere. It had to be saved for future chapters. So if this chapter was too ultra srs for you, I apologise.

As an aside, I didn't get to say this in my last journal or story update because they both lacked any real place to say it, but I'd like to thank Derpity for designing my current icon, which he so graciously offered to do for me. Thanks for that, bro.

If you haven't checked out Shades of Grey by Draven Eclipse yet, be sure you do. It won't be required reading for understanding anything in this story, as it is basically doing its own thing, but they are canon to one another, and I can vouch for its quality.

And while I'm recommending stories, I finished Fallout Equestria: Heroes recently, and it is a pretty decent story too. Basically, it's another ponified New Vegas, but it's pretty much the best one. It's long, well written, and it distinguished itself enough to get its own EqD post. What more can you ask for? If you're any kind of FOE fan, give it a look.

Next Chapter: More First, more Celestia, and fortunately no more zombie foal football.

Chapter 18: A Bargain Once Struck

Howard sat on a bench out in the cemetery, his face only showing the slightest signs of barely suppressed anger from behind the bloody handkerchief he was holding over his nose. He had a black eye on the right side of his face, and as he pulled the handkerchief away, he tilted his head back so that he didn't drip blood over himself.

"Dad, are you okay?"

Howard looked to the side to see his twelve year old son, Anthony approaching. He sat down on the bench next to his father and looked at him with concern.

"He hit you pretty hard, huh?"

"Well, what do you think?" Howard replied as he put the handkerchief over his nose again.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Are you okay?"

"Never better. I've been wanting to punch my brother for years. I hope you see now why we don't get along?"

"Yeah..."

"This was always what it was like when I was your age. Me and your uncles fighting over every little thing. Of course, at least back then, those two went easy on me because I was little. Brian is a lazy, redneck cunt, and he never did anything in his whole life. He's been perfectly content living here and leaching off our father literally until the day he died. And then that greasy fuck has the nerve to start a fight at his funeral, because he's jealous that I went out and actually did something with my life. Left Texas, left it all behind, and I left it precisely because of people like him."

The man shook his head and pulled the handkerchief away when it was apparent the bleeding had stopped. He felt his face and made sure it was okay.

"And to think he has the nerve to say I never cared for my father! I did! I loved him like any son loves his father, even if we didn't speak often. But I always came up on his birthday to see him! I always lent him money when he was in trouble. And that's more than can be said for Brian! He's done nothing for the past thirty years but hang around dad's house, run up his bills and eat his food, and I know because dad told me as such!

"I didn't though! I made him proud! I went to university! I got a job! I got a family of my own and a nice house...Maybe my life didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, but at least I did something with it! What right does he have to talk about me like that?!"

Anthony cringed as he shouted.

"Dad, you're shouting..."

Howard sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm just venting. I shouldn't be unloading all this on you. It isn't fair."

"It's alright..."

"No it isn't. I'm being immature. You're only a boy. You don't need to hear me complain about my life."

He looked across from the bench. Conveniently, he was sitting almost exactly opposite the plot where his father was buried. It was a very simple grave, with a brand new tombstone at the head of it. On grey stone, bold black letters read;

Henry Carson-Summers

1935-2010

Gone but not forgotten

"Hey dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I always thought your dad's last name was Carson and your mom was Summers. I didn't think he was called Carson-Summers too."

"Nah. The name's way older than that. My mom's maiden name was Cooke, with an 'E'."

"...What was she like?"

"I don't know. She died when I was eight. I barely remember her. Do you by any chance remember your uncle Tony? He died when you were about that age. I don't suppose you can remember him very well?"

"Eh...a little bit. I remember his name, but not what he looked like. He used to invite us to barbecues, didn't he?"

"Yeah, that's him."

The two sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, as that line of conversation seemed to trail off and go nowhere. Howard rubbed his face where the blood had dried around his nose and nursed his black eye.

"So what now?" asked Anthony.

"Well...I don't know. I guess I'll go apologise for causing a such a stir."

"But he hit you first!" Anthony complained, "Why should you have to apologise to him?!"

Howard sat back and stretched his arms.

"My dear old dad taught me a valuable lesson when I was your age," he explained, "I think it's about time you learned that same lesson, and remember this well, because it'll help you through your whole life."

"Yeah?"

"My daddy always told me, 'If you're polite to cunts, that makes you less cunty than they are, and therefore you can kick their ass from the moral high ground.'"

Anthony blinked.

"It's sound advice, boy. Remember it, and one day you can teach it to your kids too."

He climbed to his feet and groaned as he stood up straight.

"Ohhhhh...come on...I need a drink..."

***

"...Why did I ever agree to this?"

Celestia never thought of herself as arrogant. She tried to be a fair ruler, to keep in touch with the needs and feelings of the public, to be down-to-earth and grounded in reality, so that she never let the class barrier that existed between her and her subjects distort her judgement. She liked to think of herself as one of them, just with extra responsibilities, and who was respected a lot for it. She never really felt like she was entitled to anything.

That said, she had become accustomed to some degree of respect and dignity being afforded to her. Though they were comparatively rare in Equestria, there were a few ponies and a lot more individuals among other races who didn't like Celestia very much. Despite that, however, they still begrudgingly respected her authority and treated her like an equal at the very least.

Lord Second was probably the only creature she had ever met that seemed to regard her as beneath him.

And he was making that very clear now as he sat in her throne, sipping fine wine from her cellars out of a glass taken from her dining table, dressed in yet another new coat conjured from the aethers, and with her sat on the steps at the base of the throne, chained up to it like some kind of exotic pet. Her right eye was twitching in irritation, and she was grinding her teeth, trying to stop herself from breaking the chains like dental floss and impaling him with her horn.

It was a surreal feeling to actually want to kill somepony. She had never felt like that before, and she didn't like it.

"You agreed, princess, because I'm the man who has the master plan, while you are just another of my many pawns who are forced to take part in it."

She looked back and scowled at him.

"Why is this necessary?!" she demanded, "Faking defeat was undignified, but I could at least see the point in it! Fool the Elements into thinking you had won so as to draw them out and begin the finale. That was great, I get that. But they aren't coming! At least not for a while. Why do I need to pretend to be captured too?!"

"So that you can escape!" Second explained, talking as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "When you reunite with the Elements and your sister, it needs to be explained how you went from being defeated by me to meeting them. So I captured you, and then you broke out. That's a great explanation!"

"But WHY do I need to be chained up to my throne like this?!"

"Oh, you don't. That was just my idea of a good laugh."

She growled.

"Second, so help me, if I didn't need you for this plan-"

"You'd what?" the human challenged, "What more can you do to me? Have you fucking seen me? Most of my skin is already burnt to nothing thanks to that fucking healing factor deciding to be finicky, I've already lost everything else I care about with no hope of recovering any of it, and to top it off I can't even die until the very end of this story at the soonest. Any punishment you inflict upon me would just be so much white noise."

"Are you fishing for sympathy or something?" Celestia asked, "Because I'm the only pony here to listen to your self-pitying whining, and you're not going to get me to feel bad for you after you shot me in the face."

"And your sister too," Second pointed out.

"And my sister too."

"I also wiped out the population of your capital city."

"...And you wiped out Canterlot, yes."

"Almost caused your friend Spike to get possessed by Sliske."

"...That too..."

"Destroyed multiple buildings. Mostly houses in Canterlot, but I did smash the tower where Luna's room used to be the first time I fought Spike."

"...Yes..."

"Created a pony who was a living bomb and sent him to kill you and demolish your castle."

"..."

"Don't forget that one time I sunk your yacht."

Celestia narrowed her eyes at him.

"While singing a Lonely Island song no less," Second recalled fondly, "Sweet times..."

He sipped from the wine glass. The princess felt her eye begin to twitch again.

"Second, I don't get you!" she screamed, "I just don't understand! How can you be this callously destructive?! I've met some monsters in my time, but I've never seen an intelligent being so determined to hurt so many ponies for no reason! And I've never seen anypony show as little remorse as you have! Why?! Why are you like this?!"

Second swirled the wine in his glass for a moment and placed a finger on his chin as he pondered the question.

"Hmm...That is a good one," he admitted, "Honestly...I dunno. I ain't a psychologist. But if I had to guess Celestia, let me ask you a question; What's the difference between a nice pony like you, and a cold, hard bastard like me?"

Celestia raised an eyebrow.

"Basically everything except our language for some reason?" she suggested.

"Close, but not quite. The answer you're looking for, is that you grew up in a world where friendship and love is literally the most powerful force around, so that only good can ever prevail by nature. I, on the other hand, am a human. And while it would be incredibly misanthropic, not to mention naive of me to say that we're a race of complete assholes, I think it's fair to say that we're darker by nature, and in the right conditions, that dark side can be allowed to fester and run rampant.

"Don't get me wrong; I'm far from an accurate representation of my people. Maybe I'm just a special case. Whatever the way you look at it though, entities like Discord, or Nightmare Moon, they're long lived creatures. A thousand years of imprisonment is annoying, but they can take it, because that fits comfortably within their normal lifespan. They don't go mad, in the same way that humans who spend most of their lives in prison don't.

"Thing is though, us humans? We're not these larger than life beings like you, to whom imprisonment forever is a survivable thing. Unlike every other poor sap you ever put a life sentence on, us little humans have fragile minds only made for about ninety years of life at best. And then you make us live forever. And in the worst conditions possible. When you put us under pressure like that, sometimes we just...snap... "

Second certainly looked like he had snapped. Even now he was grinning that psychotic slasher smile, staring at Celestia in the same way a starving hobo would look at a free buffet table at a public event. It was hard not to feel unnerved just looking at him.

"So what then? That's just what this is? You've lived too long and gone crazy? Is that your only explanation for your behaviour?"

Second jumped out of the throne and grabbed Celestia by the horn. Against her will, he dragged her up, pressed his forehead against hers, and stared directly into her eyes.

"Tia...At this very second, there is a little man on my right shoulder reading erotic fiction aloud and making all the appropriate sound effects in a plea for attention. On my other shoulder, there is a goblin, who is suggesting to me that I should try acting out a scenario I thought of earlier, about tossing a grenade into a barrel of live fish. I have plans for starting a football league with all my zombie minions, using a foal as the ball, because it was just so damn fun the last time I did it, and next time I see that fuckstick Dr. Apocalypse, who was supposed to arrive here in an airship hours ago, I plan to eat him, just because I've never eaten pony before and I hate him. Yeah, I think I'm pretty fucking crazy."

Even one of those revelations would have made Celestia cringe slightly, and here were all these at once, and she found herself unable to move because he still had her by the horn.

"...Let me go," she said quietly.

The human did so, and she backed away from him, almost looking ill.

"Alright, fuck this. I'm going to go find Silver. Your misery has stopped being entertaining to me."

Second jumped from the throne all the way to the other side of the room in a single bound. He kicked the large double doors open and stormed through them, every footstep echoing through the hall as he deliberately stomped out. He grabbed the ends of both doors and turned to look at her.

"Arrivederci!"

He slammed the doors loudly.

"He's Discord all over again," the princess thought grimly, "I had so hoped that Equestria would never suffer another disaster like this...I worked so hard..."

"Yeah...You did..."

Lord First patted her on the shoulder and sat down on the steps next to her.

***

"All personnel to combat positions!" the speakers ordered, "The Prometheus is under attack! Repeat, we are under attack!"

CRASH!

"Damn!" Tome screamed as the entire airship shook, "What was that?!"

"I don't know!" Iron Hoof replied as he drew his sword, "But whatever it was, it was big. Scarily big. I think it might be the dragons!"

"The dragons wouldn't dare attack while there are innocents on board!" Tome shouted, "There's something going on here. Night Shroud, Zezzy, the engineers, the riot, the blue thing, and now this Vader One as well. Something's going on here, and I suspect we're under attack by more than one faction. One from within and one from without."

"Tomey?"

"Iron, you stay here on the bridge. If Vader One makes further contact or comes near us, get what information you can. I'll leave what to do with him to your discretion. I'm going down below to see what the fuck's happening."

Ancient Tome grabbed nearby a rifle with his magic; the ship was practically littered with them. This was both a good and bad thing, as it meant that he could easily procure new weapons and ammunition should he need it, but so could his potential enemies.

The old unicorn nodded to Iron, who returned a salute. With that, he opened the door to the lower levels of the Prometheus and charged down.

The corridor was still bloody and full of bodies from when the trio had fought their way up to the bridge on their quest to take the Prometheus in the first place. It was unnerving, but Tome didn't dwell on it, instead rushing past and trying not to pay any mind to them. He passed through several similar looking corridors before coming to a stairwell that led both up and down.

He froze.

There were hoofsteps above him. Ancient Tome backed away and hid in a side room as he heard them coming. They were most likely the crew of the Prometheus. After the Brotherhood's hostile takeover and the death of all the Knights of Man onboard, the rest of the crew surrendered peacefully and agreed to follow orders.

They weren't combatants as far as he knew, so he didn't particularly fear them, but there were a lot of variables to consider. The strange reports from down below could easily be a mutiny. These ponies were created by Lord Second after all. It was a very real possibility that the civilian crew were just biding their time and plotting to take back the ship from behind the scenes.

That would give a decent explanation for the riot; they may have tried to stir up trouble to better their chances of revolution. Given the public opinion of the Brotherhood, they wouldn't have been short for volunteers. Whether they saved them all or not, he had not a doubt in his mind that the ponies in the cargo hold wanted him and his fellows dead.

"It is simple!" said one of the ponies above, giggling maniacally, "First we take the ship, then we slaughter the undesirables!"

"Yes! Hahahaha!" his companion agreed, sounding equally psychotic, "But this is not what I meant! I asked...who do we kill...and who do we take?"

Take?

"We take those we have taken already!" the first pony shouted, "No more taking! We kill everything! All must die! The master says it must be so!"

Tome had heard enough. Whoever they were, these were definitely the ponies he was looking for. He left the side room and charged up the stairs. Just a single flight above, he saw the ponies who were conversing before. They were crew alright. Both of them were wearing dirty blue jumpsuits, indicating that they worked in maintenance. That explained where those missing ponies went.

They were surprised by his sudden appearance and turned to look at him. For a brief moment, Ancient Tome stared into their eyes. The irises were glowing fiery red, and looked almost alien. The two engineers were startled by his sudden appearance and didn't have time to attack before Tome did. The unicorn raised his rifle and fired it.

It was the first time he ever did use a gun, though he had threatened ponies with them often enough. Even though he held it telekinetically, he could feel the recoil as it fired. He gave a satisfied smile as his shots hit home and perforated the rogue engineers, who crumpled dead before him.

"You won't be taking anypony today, I'm afraid," he said smugly.

Damn, that was so suave. If they had still been alive, that would have finished them. I should be an action star!

"MORTAL. YOU HAVE MADE A GRAVE MISTAKE IN CHALLENGING ME."

The hell was that?!

"YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU FACE. YOUR DEFIANCE SHALL BE PUNISHED."

"Huh...?"

"KNOW THIS, FOOLISH PONY. THOSE WHO SEEK TO DEFY THEIR GODS FOR THE SAKE OF MORTALS WILL KNOW ONLY PAIN IN RETURN FOR THEIR SINS. THIS SHIP IS NAMED FOR ONE SUCH FOOL. YOU ARE MARKED, ANCIENT TOME."

Tome raised his rifle and looked around him nervously. Then, before his eyes, the bodies of the two engineers burst into flames. An evil cackling could be heard, and pillars of fire rose up from where the corpses lied. Eventually, it dissipated again, leaving only piles of ash.

"...I've got to warn the others."

***

The windows shattered with the explosion. Iron Hoof covered his eyes to protect himself from the wave of broken glass that washed over the bridge of the Prometheus. Down below, the ponies at the controls all took cover beneath their desks, and Iron raised his sword as two metal pegasi swooped in through the frame of the broken windows.

They landed just in front of him, armoured hooves clanking loudly on the metal floor. One of them was wearing cyan coloured armour with a six emblazoned on the flank, relatively normal shaped wings, and his white mane and tail were free from the suit. The other pony's armour was all black with a number one on the flank, armour plating covering his tail as well, and his wings were razor sharp and deadly looking.

He knew who it was.

"Captain Chain Mail!" Iron shouted, "I should have known you'd be behind this treachery! You shall not-"

CRACK!

The grey earth pony hit the ground hard, the side of his face going numb from where Chain Mail's hoof connected. He raised his head slightly and spat out a tooth. The captain meanwhile pulled his helmet off and held it at his side as he stood over the former guard's beaten form.

"Sorry," he said, "I just had to get that out of my system. I really don't like you."

"Yeah...That's obvious..." Iron groaned.

He tried to get up again, but then Chain Mail stamped a hoof on his throat. He let out a cry of pain.

"I should clarify. I'm sorry I hit you the first time, but that's not an invitation to get up again. You stay down there, where you belong."

Iron Hoof glared at his fellow cyberpony.

"...Yes sir," he replied sarcastically.

"Glad we understand each other, private. Now, here's how this is going to work. You are going to stay there and do nothing. Your friends in the Brotherhood are going to surrender without question. Your ponies here are going to turn this ship towards Ponyville right away and let everypony have their freedom, and me and my friends are going to look for a Dr. Heart Beat on board here, who we have to discuss some matters with."

"Why are you telling me this if I'm just a prisoner?"

"Because you're going to tell the rest of the Brotherhood to surrender, and tell the passengers and crew what's happening, using that loudspeaker you used back at the palace."

Iron grumbled.

"Fine. You'll need to let me up first though, and take your hoof off my throat."

"I'm not letting you up. You can crawl."

***

Celestia blinked disbelievingly as the human sat down on the steps next to her. He seemed remarkably casual given the situation. Almost resigned in fact. Unlike the last time she saw him, he had foregone his casual clothes in favour of a coat like his father normally wore, and a trilby hat that seemed to serve no other purpose than to make him look weird.

Ancient cosmic being or not, he still looked sixteen years old, and no sixteen year old ever pulled off wearing a trilby hat. This was true of all races of creatures, without exception.

"How are you here?" she asked.

First cocked an eyebrow, and pulled the hat off his head to lay it down next to him.

"Just came down. Travel between the afterlife and the mortal world is easy. At least for me anyway. You lot need your bodies to be intact, but I can subsist in a ghost form."

Celestia reached out and poked his arm with a hoof. He felt solid enough.

"I...If you could come down here at any time, why didn't you just appear to your father and-"

"Dramatic Convenience," First interrupted, "Do you really think I haven't tried? I spent the first thirty years of my death trying to find a way to get back down here so I could see dad's statue. I've spent every waking moment since his return trying to see him as well. I can't though. Travel to the mortal world is easily accomplished, but I can only do it if my appearance won't derail the story.

"If me and my dad met, he'd give up immediately, and this whole thing would be over. No more ponies would suffer. And then we'd have no story. That's what DC is; a force to subvert the laws of common sense and what would realistically happen for the sake of drama. DC has to step in and prevent me from seeing him, because in any realistic situation this whole sorry business would have been resolved ages ago. It's had an effect on you too, hasn't it? You haven't told him about my situation, have you?"

The princess bowed her head shamefully.

"I tried to."

"I know you did. I don't blame you for failing. Nopony can resist DC in action. Not even me."

Celestia sighed.

"What are you here for, First?"

The human's expression darkened.

"I'm here because you reneged on our deal. I thought I made it clear that he had to die?"

"Didn't you hear him though?" Celestia asked, "You must know what he offered?"

"I do."

"This Pantheon...If they're responsible for everything that happened to my world-"

"Then you ignore them," First said coldly, "They are not a force that you should concern yourself with. They created your world, they looked after it, and they're what's ensured your continued survival and your victory over the forces of evil. You have no reason to side against them."

Celestia stomped her hoof angrily.

"They're the reason we suffered so dearly! Everypony who ever died in tragedy...The many wars with changelings and the Spider Legion and the Atlanteans...Discord, windigoes, humans, the Nameless One, the Time Worm, Tirac, Sliske, my sister's corruption...They did it all! Didn't they?!"

First kept a neutral expression.

"They did."

"Then I have plenty of reason to side against them! Second may be evil, but this Pantheon is made of dozens of humans just like him, and they've done more to harm Equestria than he ever did! I'm not proud of my decision, but evil like that needs to be put down, for the sake of the majority!"

She turned away from him.

"Princess, how do you justify killing my father? In your sense of morality, why were you okay with the idea of killing him up until you decided to switch sides?"

Celestia looked back over her shoulder.

"...Because you told me to. And he would come to no real harm. He'd just end up in your afterlife, wouldn't he?"

"Exactly. Here's a thought though. The Pantheon doesn't exist in Equestria. They live in the human world. And in the human world, I have no idea if there exists any kind of afterlife at all. What if there isn't an equivalent to me back in my universe? For all I know, in the human world, death is death, and you just cease to exist. Knowing that, Celestia, could you still kill the Pantheon?"

"...I..."

"And what for? I don't doubt you believe Second deserves to die, because of all the evil he has committed. What about them though? They're not even evil."

"How can they not be evil?!" Celestia demanded, "After all the lives they've ruined?! All the disasters and monsters they've inflicted on this world?!"

"They're no more evil than any author writing a book!" First snapped, "Understand what I'm saying here. The Pantheon is not evil. It just doesn't care."

"Doesn't care about all the lives it is ruining?!"

"No. Not because they're sociopaths or whatever, but because you're simply meaningless to them. Try to think of it this way. Before I told you everything, did you consider characters in books to be real living creatures?"

"No."

"No. And neither do they. You're not real to them. They can't come here, and we can't go up there, so they'll always believe that. Even if they are doing an experiment in meta storytelling about fictional characters realising what they are, those humans back in the human world still won't actually believe that fictional characters are real, they never will, and they can never be convinced.

"They're not just a bunch of all-powerful deities who don't care about the mortals. They simply don't understand that they're causing pain and suffering, because as far as they're concerned, you don't exist. In their eyes, you are not a real being. You are words on paper and digital drawings on a computer. You are so much less than an actual living being in their eyes, so far below them on a cosmic scale, that they barely recognise your existence, and even then only as a pony would regard an insect, if that.

"They could destroy you and this entire universe and think nothing of it, or feel nothing about it, because the idea of thinking of fictional characters as real is bizarre and alien to them. In their eyes you, your sister, your little ponies, and even me and my father are all just that insignificant."

Celestia stared at him in horror.

"Maybe now you see why I use so many Lovecraft comparisons? I don't refer to us as Elder Gods for nothing."

***

Second strolled into the infirmary and looked around at all the destruction. Beds were overturned, sheets were on the floor, medical equipment had been dropped in places, paperwork littered the room, and one or two zombies shuffled about lifelessly. There was a corpse at the foot of a nearby bed, and just behind it was yet another zombie, still ripping chunks out of the stomach of a royal guard laying in the bed, who may have been a patient at some point.

By one of the beds nearest to the medical storage area of the clinic, Silver Vein was sitting in place and treating her injuries. She had wrapped a few bandages around her midsection and was rubbing something on a light chest wound. Her armour lay next to the bed.

"Came to check up on you," Second explained as he walked past, "You're the very last power armour trooper left alive. That's quite an accomplishment, if I do say so."

"Thank you sir," Silver replied as she finished with the cut, "Ahh...I think I'm done."

"Good. None of the zombies give you any trouble? Authority is holding up?"

"No sir. They've ignored me for the most part."

"At least that hack is doing something right. Dr. Apocalypse has disappointed me one too many times. The Prometheus still hasn't arrived, and I'm getting more than a little pissed off. The moment he gets here, I'm giving him a formal execution."

"Who would that leave in charge of Mages' Guild, sir?" Silver asked.

"Probably the Four Horses. I don't quite know what to expect of them, because Apocalypse chose them himself, but if they're all sharing the position then at least I know they'd put a lot of thought into their decisions. And while I'm at it, Commander Bullseye is a useless waste of space too. He's also got to die."

Being one of the Knights of Man herself, the revelation of Bullseye's impending death caught Silver's interest.

"Commander Bullseye, sir? But...who would replace him?"

"You're obviously competent. You want the job?"

"I...but...sir!"

"Yes or no?"

"Ummm...Yes?"

Second narrowed his eyes.

"You don't sound very certain."

"I am certain!" Silver insisted, "I'm just...surprised is all! I've only had this job a few days...Seems a bit early for a promotion..."

"You can keep the power armour if you want. You don't need to downgrade to Bullseye's equipment if that's what you're worried about."

"That's not what I meant, sir."

"Well then what-"

Second stopped. He twisted his head around and looked about the infirmary.

"What was that?"

"What sir?" Silver asked in concern.

"Something...It's not quite there, but I can..."

He sniffed at the air.

"For just a minute there, I thought..."

He didn't say another word. He just turned away and walked off.

***

"ATTENTION, PONIES OF THE PROMETHEUS!" the speakers blared, "THIS SHIP IS BEING COMMANDEERED BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE EQUESTRIAN ROYAL GUARD. THE PROMETHEUS WILL MAKE AN IMMEDIATE STOP IN PONYVILLE, WHERE YOU WILL ALL BE FREE TO LEAVE. ALL REPRESENTATIVES OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN ARE ADVISED TO SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY AND NOT RESIST. ALL CREW SHOULD GO ABOUT THEIR USUAL BUSINESS UNIMPEDED, AND ALL CITIZENS AND REFUGEES SHOULD NOT PANIC. THE ROYAL GUARD ALSO REQUESTS THE PRESENCE OF DR. HEART BEAT ON THE BRIDGE IMMEDIATELY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME."

"What?!" Tome thought to himself, "A representative of...But all the guards boarded the Prometheus! They're in the cargo hold with...Chain Mail!"

The old unicorn shook his head.

Chain Mail was left back at Canterlot...No! That must mean...the Elements of Harmony! And Princess Luna! They're the ones behind this. They were attacking the ship...from outside. The inside attack though...I was right. We're under attack from two different groups at once. The Elements want to take the Prometheus by force, free the ponies on board and find this Dr. Heart Beat fellow. And this other group is lead by some kind of supernatural force that is possessing the engineers. Possibly Lord Second?

Tome stroked his beard as he pondered the possibilities.

Could it be Lord Second? Is he capable of this? What if...

"Well, well, well...Look who it is..."

Tome turned around, and his mouth hung open in shock when he saw that he was being confronted by Sun Rise.

The cyborg pegasus glared at him angrily. His back legs, right fore hoof, parts of his chest and his flank on the right side were all still covered in metal, now polished back to its shiny chrome look after the last time Tome had seen him, where it looked more like iron from how dirty it had gotten. He seemed to have been groomed recently and no longer looked greasy and filthy, back to his clean orange coat, at least where he still had a coat.

And the places where he still was an actual pony were very rare. He was mostly machine now, with the mechanical parts having robbed him of right eye as well, which was now just a burning red light inside a ring of metal, and even his cutie mark on the right side. Whereas his left flank still proudly displayed the pair of flaming wings, the right side held the insignia of the Brotherhood of Man; a human fist raised to the sky.

"Ancient Tome..." he snarled, "I've been waiting to find you again..."

"Sun Rise..." the old unicorn said nervously, "You're looking much better than last time I saw you! Hehe...Uh...Are you...feeling better?"

"I'm on top of the world," Sun Rise replied in monotone, never changing his expression, "My eyes have been opened to the full majesty of Creation. I understand the world now, and I appreciate it for what it is. We live in a flawed world, but those flaws exist for a reason. I was always meant to be, because I am special. I have a destiny. And I would see it fulfilled, for the sake of the greater good."

Tome smiled awkwardly.

"That's uh...wonderful! I'm glad you're over your...little problem. Second said it was demons. Haha! Imagine that! Demons!"

Sun Rise broke into a huge smile.

"Yes...What a silly notion..."

Tome had only just noticed that Sun Rise's organic eye had a glowing red iris just like the engineers. He hadn't picked up on it before because Sun Rise normally had red eyes anyway, but unlike before, they were burning brightly, like fire. Not like any real pony's eyes.

"...What are you?"

"I am Sun Rise. I always have been. I'm just...better now..."

The cyborg eye began to glow brightly as well, but not in the same way as his organic eye. Ancient Tome knew what was about to happen. He leapt to the side and into a storage room, just in time to avoid a red laser blast that tore down the corridor where he had been standing and left a glowing orange scar of melted metal in its wake.

***

Explodey coughed loudly.

"Guys..." he gasped, "I think it's catching up to me...I can't fight this infection much longer...I just don't want to end up like that! I don't want to be one of them! "

The group still stood atop Spike's back, who had since landed on the top of the Prometheus's balloon. A few more of the dragons from Canterlot were missing. Most had left after Spike got clear of the city and headed back home, while three others insisted on following him. Of those three, Nonvulvahlok was one. He and the other dragons had landed on top of the balloon as well, and were awaiting orders.

Given how massive the Prometheus was, the balloon seemed to actually be able to hold their weight, but it was still relatively fragile. Though they had landed, the dragons still flapped their wings to ease the weight off the airship and avoid damaging it. The last thing they needed was to crash it while the ponies of Canterlot were still on board.

"It's okay, Explodey," Gold Coin said soothingly, "It's all going to be alright."

"No it's not!" the unicorn cried, "It's not going to be alright, because if I die then I just come back, and every moment I'm alive it keeps getting stronger! I'm going to be like that forever! I'm scared, guys! I am so scared!"

"You'll be fine! Really!" the earth pony replied, "Softy and Chains are on it right now! They're going to find Dr. Heart Beat and they'll find a cure! We can still save you!"

"AGGGGGHHHHH..."

Explodey held up his left hoof to find it had gone completely grey.

"I need to eat something right now!" he shouted.

Sliske stepped forward and cast a spell on Explodey. His cries of pain became softer and finally died out as he stabilised again.

"Ahhh...Thank you..."

"Thisssss isssn't going to work forever. The painkiller sssspell losesssss itssssss effectivenesssss the more it issss usssssed."

"We'll only need to use it a few more times," Gold Coin answered, "Explodey will be cured soon, and everything will be back to normal!"

Sliske frowned.

"Realissssstically ssspeaking-"

Gold Coin glared at him.

"Never mind."

"Guys...?" Explodey moaned.

The yellow earth pony trotted over to his side.

"Yes, Explodey?"

"Come closer..."

He sat down right next to him.

"What is it?"

Explodey whispered in a hushed voice, that even sitting right next to him Gold Coin could barely hear.

"...Where do zombies go swimming?"

"...Huh?"

"The Dead Sea."

Gold Coin raised an eyebrow in confusion, while Explodey broke out into a huge grin. It was only then he got it.

"...That was fucking stupid."

***

First climbed to his feet and walked around a bit, taking in the scenery of the throne room. Celestia remained sitting down on the steps next to her throne.

"So what then?" she asked, "Am I just supposed to ignore this Pantheon? Ignore everything they ever did and betray Second after the deal I made with him?"

"You betrayed me after we struck a deal," First replied, "I am not happy about that."

"Second said that Canterlot was a fake climax though!" Celestia argued, "And he said that it still had to be the Elements of Harmony to finish him anyway! Dramatic Convenience would have stopped me from doing anything either way!"

"No! It doesn't work like that! DC is an influence, but it does NOT control everything! The writers may have total control over your words and actions, but that doesn't mean you have no free will at all. It's not like you're being controlled and forced to do things you don't want to do. You choose what to do by yourself, and the writers are just the influence behind your choice. You chose to join him, and that's not something you can blame on DC.

"If you had tried to kill him, like I told you to, there is every possibility that you could have done. Maybe the writers would be feeling avant-garde, and subvert the usual rules of story telling by having our heroes fail their task and you killing the main villain instead. I read a book that did something like that once. It was called the Hobbit, and most of the book was building up to a confrontation with this dragon, but then towards the end some other guy kills it instead. Caught me by surprise, let me tell you."

"I still can't ignore what the Pantheon has done, First."

The human sighed.

"Celestia, ponies may die, but there is always an afterlife. Monsters may attack, but they will always be defeated. Old enemies may return, but there will always be a chance for their redemption or a more final defeat. And take solace in the fact that all TV series end eventually, so the reign of the Pantheon and that accursed DC is not forever.

"What I'm saying is, what they've done is bad, true. However, they don't know they've done such wrong in the first place, and whatever my father has planned for them, I can assure you that they do not deserve it. Even if you do go through with it, it won't undo what they've done. Revenge this late into the game is pointless. They're a problem, but they're a manageable problem. Second, is not."

"First-"

"Listen to me. I like you, Celestia. I respect you. I want to believe that we're on the same side, and I do not want to make an enemy of you. More importantly, you do not want to make an enemy of me. You can side with me, or you can side with my father, but be warned that if you choose not to help me after all I've done for you, then you'll get no further support from me when he inevitably betrays you too. And he will. I know he will."

First held out a hand and the trilby hat flew across the room and into his grasp. He placed it on his head and looked over his shoulder at her.

"Choose wisely."

He walked away, and vanished into thin air.

***

Second stopped in the middle of the corridor. Something was definitely off. He felt a presence in the air. There was no overt signs of any kind of foreign entity in the palace. It was just a general feeling of uncomfortableness, like he was being watched. He shifted and looked around him.

"I'm going mad," he sighed, "Well and truly mad..."

He strolled over to the wall and leaned back on it, collapsing to the floor and crouching in place while he buried his face in his hands. Rogue thoughts kept tormenting him. He felt paranoid.

"Howard? Are you alright?"

He moved a thumb out of the way so he could look to his right at a man dressed entirely in white crouching down next to him, smiling sympathetically. Conscience was now the same size as he was, unlike every other time he appeared in which he had been a miniature figure that stood on his shoulders.

"Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"

Second dropped his hands and stared at his hallucination.

"Who do you work for?" he asked.

"What?"

Conscience seemed surprised.

"I said, who do you work for?"

The man in white began to splutter.

"Wha- I- Of all the- I'm your conscience! I work for you!"

Second got up and turned around so he stood in front of the crouching man. He looked down at him, as Conscience remained on the floor and smiled up at him nervously. Second reached down and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet.

"BULLSHIT. You're way too big an element in this! Why do you show up so prominently?! Why do you have so much to say about the plot?! Why do you argue with Ambition like you're supposed to be mortal enemies sometimes, but other times you're both in complete agreement and act like old friends?! And most of all, whose fucking side are you on?!"

"I swear, I'm on no-one's side but yours!" Conscience screamed, "I'm just a manifestation of your own psyche trying to make a living! Don't kill me! Please!"

"Ahaaaaaa!" Second crowed triumphantly, "So you can be killed...Well, let's see if some shotgun mouthwash does the trick..."

He let go of Conscience with one hand and reached into his coat, using it to draw out the Reaper's Horn and stick the end of it between his victim's teeth.

"Now, there's an easy way and a hard way we can go about this...Option one, you can keep silent, your head becomes a liquid, and I repeat this process with all the other hallucinations until I finally either have some answers or have some inner peace, or option two, you start spilling and I'll settle for banishment forever."

"Pantheon," Conscience whimpered, "I'm with the Pantheon. They're going into meta storytelling. Me and the other hallucinations are there as a device to steer your actions and drive the plot. Please don't kill me!"

Second's eyes bulged and he bared his teeth as he pushed the shotgun almost completely down Conscience's throat.

"You..." he seethed, "They're anticipating my attack, aren't they?"

The man in white nodded. Second sighed.

"Then my course of action is clear."

BLAM!

***

"We're approaching Ponyville now!" one of the pilots called.

"Good," Soft Spoken replied, "Keep on course."

Behind them, the door to the bridge opened up to admit entrance to Dr. Heart Beat. At first he seemed tense and worried, but he eased up when he recognised Captain Chain Mail.

"It's you, captain," he said as he trotted over, "I was wondering what I was needed for."

"You left with the rest of the citizens on the Prometheus," Chain Mail explained, "Unfortunately we still need you, because you haven't yet cracked the formula for the drugs I need, and we need somepony with medical experience who can help Explodey."

"What the fuck is an Explodey, and what's wrong with it?"

The doctor looked down at the source of the voice, and found a grey earth pony laying on the floor, with his face held under Chain Mail's hoof.

"One of my dear friends," the captain answered, "And he got bitten by a zombie."

"Ha!" Iron laughed, "And you're still carrying him around?! Most other ponies by now left those feral monsters behind! It takes a special kind of stupid to actually keep a zombie with you and give it a chance to infect the rest of you!"

"He's not a zombie, he's just been bitten. We need to do something to help him before he succumbs."

The earth pony frowned.

"You mean he hasn't turned yet?"

"No."

"How long ago was he bitten?"

"A few hours."

"And he still hasn't turned?! Are you sure he was even bitten at all?!"

Dr. Heart Beat interrupted to explain to the former guard.

"Explodey McGee is a...special case. He possesses some kind of innate healing abilities that seem to counteract the virus, but it hasn't been able to fully halt its progress. Or at least, it hadn't last time I saw him when I was with you lot."

Iron's eyes went wide.

"No wait! I heard about him! Isn't he the one who can't die?"

"Well..." Chain Mail muttered, "As it turns out, he can die. It just doesn't stick."

The earth pony blinked.

"Are you serious?! A functionally immortal zombie?! What the fuck are we supposed to do against that?!"

"Cure it," Chain Mail answered, "Hence our presence here. Now, if you don't mind, I was talking to the doctor."

"Wait!" Iron interrupted, "Look, I didn't want to mention this because he's associated with you, and we're enemies and everything, but I can't have an un-killable zombie running around. I just can't. So..."

"So...?"

"...There's a clinic on board the Prometheus a few levels down from here. It was used by Dr. Apocalypse, head of the Mages' Guild in Secopolis. Me and the rest of the Brotherhood killed him just before we staged our coup and took the ship.

"Before we killed him, he gave us an inoculation. There's this chemical, called Authority, which is designed to act as a zombie repellent when injected into the living and to allow a pony to keep their conscious mind should they get infected. That's why Second is undead too, but still intelligent. If you give some of that to your friend..."

Dr. Heart Beat and Chain Mail exchanged a look.

"Softy!" the captain called.

"What?"

"Could you come over here and step on Private Iron Hoof's face for me? It seems I have a need to visit the lower levels."

***

Sun Rise jumped through the doorway into the side room where Ancient Tome had fled. The unicorn had hidden just next to the door, out of sight, and he ambushed Sun Rise as he came in. Tome levitated up the rifle he had obtained earlier and fired a few shots at him, but the bullets just struck the many metal plates covering Sun Rise's torso and glanced off them, leaving only dents and scratches.

The element of surprise was now lost, and his sneak attack had failed. Rather than waste time reloading, Tome backed away and used his telekinesis to grab another of the many guns kept in the store room. His grip found a sniper rifle of some kind, mercifully not a SEC Mk. III, but it was little help anyway.

Tome stupidly tried to use the scope on the thing at close range, and in the time he was fumbling with the weapon, Sun Rise rushed forward and brought a heavy metal hoof down on his face. The bearded stallion dropped onto the floor, and Sun Rise used his normal hoof to stamp on his beard and use it to hold him down.

"Gah! Get off!"

The unicorn wrapped Sun Rise in a field of magic, but he was too slow to act. Sun Rise raised his metal hoof again and struck Ancient Tome's horn, which killed his magic instantly and left him in immense pain.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The pegasus lent down and bit Tome in the throat, adding to his agony. It wasn't an attack though. He was just pulling him back to standing position so he could turn around and buck him into the wall.

"Ugh..." Tome groaned, "Stop spinning..."

The former Wonderbolt stood over his enemy's beaten form, a smug grin of victory on his face.

"Don't you just feel young again?" he taunted, "I haven't had this much fun since I was still performing."

Tome looked up at the orange pegasus. His eyes were watering from the pain and blurring his vision.

"Shouldn't have retired then."

"Couldn't help it. Needed to get out of the game. After the accident and everything after that...Well...You were there. You know what I'm talking about."

The old pony sighed in resignation.

"If you're going to kill me, then kill me."

"HAHAHAHA!"

Tome looked up in surprise.

"Kill you?! I don't want to kill you! Imagine how bored I'd get! I need a nemesis, Ancient Tome! I need some heroic fool who would always fail to see the bigger picture! I need a pony like you! A challenge! A competitor! A worthy rival, the kind I haven't had since me and Lightning raced side by side! You...you see...you...complete me...in so many ways..."

He grabbed Tome and pulled him up again, using his hooves this time.

"Don't you see that?" he asked, staring directly into his eyes.

"...Well, this is extremely homoerotic."

Both the ponies turned around to see Night Shroud standing in the doorway.

"Night Shroud! Help me out here! This pony is crazy!" Tome shouted, "I fear for my safety!"

"No need for that!" Sun Rise shouted, dropping Tome casually, "Me and my compatriots shall be leaving now."

He walked over to the doorway, passing by a confused looking Night Shroud.

"Why?" he asked the other pegasus, "Why are you leaving already? Didn't you come to...take over the ship, or take ponies, or kill ponies...or whatever it was you were trying to achieve?"

Sun Rise smiled at Night Shroud.

"You silly thing. We have what we came for. Besides, everypony's already dead."

He turned around and went on his way. Night Shroud and Tome exchanged a look of confusion.

"Already dead...?" Tome repeated, "But how can...?"

The speakers blared again, and their message rang throughout the ship.

"ATTENTION EVERYPONY, THE PROMETHEUS HAS LANDED IN PONYVILLE. THE DOORS WILL OPEN MOMENTARILY, AND YOU WILL BE FREE TO GO."

The old unicorn's expression gradually changed from neutral, to confused, to thoughtful, to horrified.

"The ponies in the cargo hold...there was a riot...and they're...'already dead'..."

Night Shroud shared his look of dread.

"Oh no."

***

Celestia passed through a pair of doors and moved into the corridor beyond. She stopped in surprise when she saw Lord Second leaning against a nearby wall with one hand and clutching the Reaper's Horn in another. He was panting, and mysteriously covered in blood stains. There was no indication of who or what he killed to get them, and no bodies anywhere. She wondered who it was.

He looked up and saw her.

"Ah, making your escape I see," he commented, "Good timing. A new distraction just showed up. I'm dealing with it now. Some...thing...is wandering the palace, and I need to hunt it down."

"What is it?" asked Celestia.

"Nothing for you to worry about. It's a human matter."

Second bit his nails and paced back and forth.

"Listen, Second, I have to go. My sister needs me. The Elements of Harmony need me. I can't stay around here any longer. I have a lot of hard decisions to make."

"Of course. Completely understandable. Just go. Be on your way."

The princess was about to leave, but instead she just turned around to face Second instead.

"Second?"

"Hmm?"

"Are all humans capable of what you are? You said you...go mad...if you live too long. Is that true for all of you?"

"Everyone has a breaking point. I reached mine, but not everyone does. Why?"

"It makes me wonder what other humans are like, inside that is. Or what they'd become if they lived as long as you have."

Second shook his head.

"You can't even grasp our physical appearance. If you tried to understand human psychology, it would destroy you. Believe me, generations of people have tried and still ended up as mystified as when they began."

"'Can't grasp our physical appearance'? What is that supposed to mean?"

Second held up his hand.

"What colour is my skin, princess?"

"It's sort of-"

"Is it a single colour?"

"What?"

"Is my hand a single colour?"

"Well...Yes."

"To you. That's because I look like a fucking drawing in your world. That's how you perceive me, because how I look in the real world is a blend of thousands of different colours that coalesce into an image more real than can be represented by the sketches and doodles that your world is made from. Humans are more complex, and perfect and terrible than you can ever imagine, and if you saw me in my true form, you would just despair."

Second stopped leaning on the wall and walked past her into the corridor she just came from, heading in the direction of the throne room. As he went, he reloaded his shotgun. Once Second was gone, Celestia shuddered.

I don't refer to us as Elder Gods for nothing.

***

"...I hope you know that unlike Chain Mail, I derive no pleasure from this."

"Yeah. I know," a tired voice replied from underneath Softy's armoured hoof.

"I'm just doing this because I have to, you understand."

"Of course."

"...I'm not a sadist or anything. Really. I've never had to fight anypony in my life."

"I...didn't say you were?"

"Not that Chain Mail is! I never said he was a sadist or anything. I think he just really doesn't like you. You know, because you betrayed the royal guards and tried to kill him twice?"

"Yes, thank you, I know."

"...I mean, I know I'd be upset if you killed ponies I knew."

Iron Hoof stopped bothering to respond.

"Do you kill a lot of ponies?"

"Are you always this talkative?"

"Yes. Why?"

The door smashed open. Dr. Heart Beat jumped in surprise, and Softy looked up to see Ancient Tome, and armed the Rainbow Six's tranquiliser gun.

"Wait!" Tome shouted, "Everypony stop! Stop everything right now!"

A batpony flew in after him and landed right in front of Soft Spoken. He looked just as panicky and frightened as Tome did.

"He's right! Everypony cease your actions! We've got an emergency!"

"What kind of emergency?" asked Softy.

"There was a riot going on in the cargo hold before you boarded us," Tome explained, "We've just found out what caused it. There was an infected pony among the crowd, and the chaos down below was the infection spreading. The cargo hold is full of zombies! If you open the main doors and let them out now, Ponyville is going to get swarmed by the undead!"

Soft Spoken blinked and looked over at Dr. Heart Beat.

"Is this true?" he asked.

"I don't know! They certainly weren't all zombies when I left the hold, but there was a lot of fighting and screaming going on. I didn't pay much attention to it. I assumed they were scared because we thought we were all being kidnapped by the Brotherhood. I was just trying to make sure I didn't get trampled."

"Wait..." said Night Shroud, "You left the cargo hold? How? We sealed all the exits to the cargo hold when we finished picking everypony up! How did you get here?!"

"We remotely unlocked a side door," Soft Spoken answered.

"...Did you lock it again afterwards?"

"Umm..."

"Captain Chain Mail is still down below!" Dr. Heart Beat shouted, "He went looking for Dr. Apocalypse's clinic, so he could get a sample of Authority! He could be in danger!"

Night Shroud fluttered above the main terminal where Commander Bullseye once sat and watched the bridge of the ship. He addressed the many ponies below him who were all operating the controls.

"Everypony! Seal off all the entrances and exits to the cargo hold!" he ordered, "We can't do anything for the zombies that already got out into the rest of the ship, but we can prevent any more from escaping! And while you're at it, I want to get us in the air again! Those zombies cannot find their way onto the ground by any means! We have to protect Ponyville!"

"What's our plan?" Softy asked, "How are we going to stop this?"

"The only way I can see," Tome replied, "Is that we get the Prometheus as high up as possible with the zombies still on it, all of us living folk bail out with the help of your dragon friend, and we use whatever weapons we have on board to set this thing to explode. We'll get clear, and the Prometheus goes up in a giant fireball and takes all the infected with it."

"Or..."

The ponies all turned around to see the crew that had been previously maintaining the controls all standing in a line behind them, all with glowing, fiery red eyes. The speaker was a unicorn levitating a small black gun of a make they had not seen before.

"...We could open the main cargo doors, and Ponyville can die screaming."

***

Spike glided down from the top of the Prometheus and landed in a small Ponyville square right next to where the cargo doors would open up onto the town. Nonvulvahlok landed next to Spike on top of a thatched cottage, while the other dragons all kept their position on top of the airship.

He laid still as his passengers slid down his wings and onto solid ground again. Luna, Blueblood and the Elements all trotted out towards the middle of the square together.

"Not much time left," said Luna, "I hope that Captain Chain Mail and Mr. Spoken found Dr. Heart Beat. I don't know how long it could take him to create a cure, but if anypony can, it is him. He's the very best, you know."

"Wonderful," Explodey coughed.

"Are you going to last?" asked Gold Coin, "How much longer do you think you can stay lucid?"

"Probably longer if I die again. The infection didn't spread much through me when I was dead. That doesn't make much sense since it's meant to work on the dead specifically, but I'm not going to question a good thing."

"Would it help if I suffocated you to death?"

"It might just."

"I was joking."

"Oh. See, I didn't get that. I thought you were genuinely offering."

"...Can't detect a joke, and surprisingly morbid. You're some Element of Laughter, Explodey."

"It's not my fault you're normally so humourless."

Gold Coin looked offended.

"Why does everypony keep saying that?! I'm always joking around!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

That must have been the first time they had heard Sliske laugh...ever. It seemed very deep and pronounced considering he usually spoke in a constant hiss.

"Good one, missssssery gutsssss!"

***

Soft Spoken brought his guns to bear. The older stallion aimed the tranquiliser at the lead pony and activated the auto targeting system. The whole world stopped, frozen in time, and for a moment it was just him and the strange symbols across his vision. An interface popped up in front of him.

Welcome to T.W.A.T.S.

Wait, I have to read the instructions first? There's a scrolling function as well. It's in my vision. How do I scroll down?

He moved his eyes slightly.

What was that? Oh wait, that's how you move it. And...that text is small. And everywhere! Luna's mane! So much text! So much text! How am I supposed to read all this?!

Well, this was hopeless. Softy pulled out of T.W.A.T.S. and re-entered real time. He was immediately shot for his troubles.

"GAH!"

The ponies with the guns had somehow obtained armour-piercing rounds. The bullets penetrated the power armour and he felt the sting as one found a home in his chest.

Not normally one for combat situations, this single injury immediately crippled Soft Spoken, who fell over onto his side with a loud clank and tried to nurse his wounds, which was a futile effort when both his chest and hooves were still stuck inside the metal shell.

Ancient Tome, Night Shroud and Iron Hoof however were all ponies of a military background, even if Tome had only served a short while for the sake of his title. As the fire fight started, they all leapt behind cover at different points around the room, just in time for the lead unicorn's entourage to draw their own concealed weapons and join the fight.

Tome had a ranged weapon, but he was the only one who did. Iron and Night Shroud both had swords, but they were no good in a gun fight. Fortunately, telekinesis leant itself well to these conditions. Using his magic, he raised his rifle out from behind its cover and sprayed gunfire all over the bridge. He couldn't see anything, but even if he hit nothing, its primary purpose was still to provide suppressing fire.

The remaining demon crew also ran for cover, and at this moment the Brotherhood withdrew from theirs and went on the offensive. A pony laid dead just by the stairs leading into the lower levels. Demonic powers or not, a jumpsuit was still terrible protection. Soft Spoken still laid on his side just next to the other body. Through the armour and the way he wasn't moving, they couldn't tell if he was alive or dead.

"Both of you go down both sides!" Tome ordered.

There were two sets of steps leading into the slightly lower levels below the raised platform, on either side of the outstretched part where Bullseye's terminal and chair were placed. The crew had all fled into the lower levels to hide behind all the sensitive equipment, but there were only a few of them left, and they were scattered now.

Night Shroud took the stairs to the left while Iron went right. Both ponies ran down to the lower levels and took the demon crew by surprise, rushing behind their cover and carving them up. Tome meanwhile ran up to the end of the outstretched platform and jumped up onto Bullseye's chair. From above, he got a good view of the entire lower level. He exposed himself as well, but with attackers coming from all three directions, the remaining enemies stood no chance.

Tome picked off the only two that immediately saw him, and then shot another who was about to get a drop on Iron. By the time he did, Iron had already taken out another and Night Shroud had killed three on his side with deadly efficiency. The unicorn couldn't see any more at that precise moment, but suspected that they were just better hidden. He teleported down next to Iron Hoof and reloaded the rifle.

"How many crew were there on the bridge?" he asked.

"Eleven," Iron replied, "I think we've taken out-"

"Eight, including the one up there. That still leaves three more, but there's nowhere else down here to hide. This is only a small area."

Night Shroud trotted over to them as well.

"No more here," he reported, "Some of them were unicorns. Do you think they might have invisibility spells?"

"They might. Let me-"

"AGH!"

The sound came from above. The Brotherhood of Man ran up the stairs to the raised platform again, weapons readied, but relaxed when they saw that it was just Captain Chain Mail. His armour had some blood splatters where he had just killed one of the demon crew, and he was crouched down next to Soft Spoken. On the floor at his side was a vial of clear liquid.

"Agggghhh..." Soft Spoken moaned, "I'm hit, Chains...I don't think I'm going to make it..."

"Nonsense," the captain replied, "The suit's medical systems will keep you stable for now, and Dr. Heart Beat can easily- Oh."

Dr. Heart Beat was laying dead on the floor with a neat round hole in his forehead.

"...Well, this mission was a waste of time."

The Brotherhood lowered their weapons and approached Chain Mail.

"They're demons," Tome explained, "The crew of the Prometheus have all been possessed by them. Sun Rise, formerly one of us, appears to be their leader. We received reports from below, around about the time you began your attack, that there was a riot in the cargo hold, and that Z and a number of engineers down in the maintenance areas had vanished."

"Z?" Chain Mail repeated, "Do you mean the zebra? Ze!zar?"

"Yeah."

"What happened to him?"

"We're not sure," Night Shroud answered, "I was looking for him after I went to the clinic and found him missing. I came across a bunch of the crew while out there, and overheard them talking about 'taking' ponies or some such. They tried to kill me."

"Not good," said Chain Mail.

"CARGO DOORS NOW OPENING."

"WHAT?!" Softy shouted, trying to stand up again, "No! They can't open! Where's the controls for the doors?!"

"Oh, damn..." Iron muttered, "The cargo door controls aren't up there! The bridge is just for piloting the ship! Back in Canterlot, we ordered somepony to go to the lower levels and open the door with the controls down there. But we've all been fighting the demons here!

Night Shroud blinked.

"We've been played. While the rest of them were attacking us, the two missing demons must have slipped away and gone to the lower levels to open the doors. These guys are organised!"

Chain Mail pushed the vial of Authority over to the Brotherhood.

"Guard this with your life, and look after Softy. I've got to warn the others."

***

Celestia galloped through the palace as quickly as she could. She had to find her sister and the Elements of Harmony as soon as possible. They needed her. She had to help them prepare for the final fight. She knew exactly what they needed, and who could help them. If she could point them in the right direction, maybe things would turn out alright after all.

The princess ran past a small door. She stopped and looked at it. The door was only built for regular ponies, not made with alicorns in mind. That's because it was the door to the staff bathroom. This was the mares'. The stallion's was at the other end of the corridor.

I think you have something on your face.

A chill ran down her spine as she recalled Lord Second's words. She vividly remembered that when he...killed her... it had been by shooting her in...

Celestia raised a hoof to look closely at it. Her normally pristine white coat was definitely much duller than she remembered it. Was that because she was dirtier now from all the fighting? The princess placed the hoof on her chest and felt for her heartbeat. She couldn't feel it. Frantically, she thumped her chest and felt again. Still nothing.

No! I can't be...

She didn't want to be. She kept denying it. She had been subconsciously ignoring it, but that would do her no good anymore.

Celestia ducked her head low to get into the door frame and edged her way into the staff bathroom. There were a line of stalls on one wall, and a line of sinks on the other. A row of mirrors were positioned above every sink, and between them were soap dispensers.

The princess was tall enough that her horn nearly touched the ceiling, so her face was above most of the mirrors' level. She saw her dulled grey lower body in the mirror though. When she was facing the nearest one, she crouched down slightly to get a better look at herself, and stepped back in surprise.

Well...give them credit; whoever they were, the ponies who were tasked at making her look presentable for her funeral did a damn fine job considering that her head had been so much red paste after what Second did to it. Still though, there was no disguising the worst of it. Obvious stitches all over, make-up over the small stuff, and cosmetic magic which was already fading. She still looked like a broken vase that had been hastily glued back together.

Celestia didn't let her despair get the better of her. After years of having suffered far worse than just looking ugly, she knew that there were worse tragedies to get upset over. She had no right to cry for her looks when ponies had died needlessly by the thousands today, and she proudly kept her composure as she took in the reality of what had been done to her.

Still though, looking at her reflection, there was still a slight pang of sadness.

I'm an undead wretch...

***

"Your majesty!"

The ponies and dragons looked up to see Chain Mail gliding down towards them. He had just jumped out through one of the broken windows on the bridge of the Prometheus. He was missing his helmet, and wasn't carrying it with him.

"What happened?!" the princess demanded.

"The crew turned on us, me, Softy, and the Brotherhood," the captain gasped, "It was a set up. They were waiting for the right moment! They even had concealed guns, with armour-piercing rounds!"

"Armour-what rounds?!" shouted Gold Coin.

"It's worse than that though!" Chain Mail tried to explain.

"What could be worse than that?! We've already experienced the fucking apocalypse today, don't you dare tell me that there's anything worse than that on board that ship!"

"Demon. Zombies. With guns."

Explodey sat up again suddenly.

"Please tell me you're kidding."

"Nope. The entire cargo hold is infected, there are demons on board, they're lead by some weirdo cyberpony apparently, the crew are working with them, Dr. Heart Beat is dead, Softy got shot and is dying, and the door is already in the process of opening. And when it does, Ponyville is going to get swarmed."

There was a whir of machinery and groaning metal. The ponies all turned around to see the cargo door beginning to open.

"OKAY! THAT IS ENOUGH!"

The group were all surprised by the sudden outburst, which came from Explodey of all ponies, who immediately seemed to forget about his sickness and climb back onto his hooves again. The cargo door continued lower, and was halfway open already.

"I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH THE WORLD SUCKING! THIS IS EQUESTRIA, GODDAMNIT! LAND OF SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS!"

The two dragons perched on the Prometheus stared down as he marched angrily across the square towards the slowly opening cargo door.

"ZOMBIES SHOULD NOT EXIST. HUMANS HAVE NO PLACE IN THIS WORLD. AND PONIES SHOULD NOT DIE IN SUCH NUMBERS! ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME, ZOMBIES?!"

The cargo door opened enough that the infected horde of ponies from Canterlot began to rush out towards the exit. Those closest to the door as it opened already fell out and began spreading.

"FINE! BE LIKE THAT! YOU'RE ALL MEAN! YOU GET TO GO TO THE BAD PLACE!"

Explodey's horn lit up, and then he detonated.

***

Second sat up in his throne.

"What was that?!"

Hahahahahaha...

***

The dust began to settle.

In a fit of hacking coughs, the Elements dared to open their eyes again. Strewn all over the square were stunned and dazed zombies. And only stunned and dazed. They were still very much alive and still infected, and some were already getting back up again. On the one hoof, they were all glad that Explodey was somehow able to cause an explosion in a public area without killing anypony. Then again, his final attack seemed to have done nothing to the zombies but just spread them all over the area.

And speaking of spreading, there was green stuff everywhere!

A thick, scummy green paste like the kind that usually reformed into their unicorn friend had been sprayed over almost all of Ponyville. There was way too much of it to have come just from Explodey. The goop was everywhere though. It was sprayed across walls, dripped off of sign posts and street lamps, slid down rooftops and into gutters, and it sat in puddles all across the cobblestone roads.

"Wha...?" Soft Spoken whispered, "What did he do?"

"Ow! Owowowowow! What is that?!"

Spike felt a glob of the green stuff that had landed on his back. It was sizzling and giving off steam, and making a strange hissing sound. The disgusting slime began to move, and it flowed across Spike's back, dropped off onto the ground, and slithered past the ponies.

Looking around the square, they could see that the rest of it was doing something quite similar.

...Or not.

As the green mass passed by a zombie near them, it reached out and grabbed it by the legs. The zombie was already crippled by the explosion earlier, but the sludge restrained it with a mass of tendrils which it formed spontaneously, and began to drag the zombie along the street with it.

The zombie thrashed and kicked, but to no avail. The rest of the goo was following suit, reaching out and grabbing nearby undead, though seemingly avoiding the living ponies still around it. As they came together in the square, globs began to merge into larger globs, and as larger and larger globs formed, they engulfed their prisoners completely.

The slime all congregated in the exact spot Explodey had stood before he detonated, and the larger globs seemed to vanish as they merged into each other in that spot, almost as if the separate larger masses of the strange substance were somehow being compressed into a substantially smaller whole.

The ponies all stood staring with their jaws slack and their eyes wide. The green sludge finally all came together and shrank until it was about as big as a single pony. Then it began to take pony shape, sprouting legs and a head, lifting itself into a standing position, and then finally changing colour and sprouting additional features until it left behind only a white unicorn, staring into space. The last things to appear were his eyes.

Explodey McGee had just turned into a giant, living sludge monster and absorbed half the former population of Canterlot into his body.

I told you already! He's the spawn of an Elder God!

He turned to look at them. His expression was blank and emotionless.

"...I don't like the way he's looking at us," Gold Coin commented.

Everyone in Ponyville then trembled as they felt a foreign presence; a thousand voices in their head all speaking in unison, echoing each other.

"We Have Become Legion. All Are Welcome In The Mental Plains. Paradise Forever Awaits All. We Shall Consume All, And All Shall Be Grateful, For We Shall Be All. Exploding. Forever. Like The Heart Of A Sun."

The ponies all shared worried looks.

"Why do I get the feeling we just exchanged one Explodey-related problem for another?"

Tendrils grew out of Explodey's back, and he walked calmly towards them, his expression still unreadable. They were white this time, like his coat, but still had the same consistency of the sludge. His friends backed away fearfully. Luna, Blueblood and Spike were all equally disturbed.

"Explodey..."

The unicorn turned to look behind him, and the group saw Soft Spoken standing there. The cyan armour of the Rainbow Six laid in pieces behind him. Now, he was just another plain brown earth pony. He limped forward while holding his chest, where he was still bleeding from the bullet wound.

"...Don't do this," he pleaded, "We're your friends. We can help you. Don't let this overcome you!"

"You Are Wounded," the pony shaped creature observed.

"Yes..."

The tendrils shot forward and grabbed the old stallion around the middle, and lifted him into the air.

"There Is No Pain In Unity."

"SOFTY!" Mystic Chant cried.

The tendrils reached out and grabbed the young colt too.

"NO!" he cried, "LET ME GO, EXPLODEY! PLEASE!"

Gold Coin and Chain Mail also cried out in protest as they felt yet more tendrils wrap around their legs and pull them into the air.

"All Will Join Us. Prepare To Be Assimilated."

"CEASE THIS IMMEDIATELY!" Luna ordered.

Tendril'd.

"Your maj!"

Blueblood too.

"STOP NOW!" Spike shouted.

"There Is Room For Everyone."

A new mass of the tendrils burst out of Explodey's chest and all wrapped around Spike's neck.

"WHAT?! NO!"

All the victims wriggled about and tried to escape, but once all the protesters were in his grasp, the unicorn began to draw them in. Soon, the bodies of all six ponies and Spike's head were all held to Explodey's side, as if he were giving them all a giant hug with his many gooey appendages. Then they began to feel his flesh give way as if it were liquid, and they were being pulled inside.

They all collectively screamed as they were assimilated into Explodey McGee.

***

"Arrghh...I just had the weirdest nightmare..."

Soft Spoken sat up at his desk and looked around the cabin. Everything was finally back to normal. No more weirdness. Just him and his ship once again. The old trophies and models strewn about the place, paintings and pictures, a sword hung up on the wall, and in the corner of the room a locked safe, where he kept his personal share of all their plunder.

"...Must be the rum. We've been sailing fer too long, and it's starting ta get the best o' me," he reasoned.

There was a distant shout.

"Cap'n!"

The door burst down and a colt who couldn't be any older than sixteen burst in. He was wearing an eye patch and a ratty vest, and clutching a cutlass in his teeth. Pegasus, of course. They made for the best lookouts, because they could easily fly between the deck and crows nest. The earth ponies would have had to climb the rigging instead.

"ARGH!" Softy shouted angrily, "What ye be disturbin' me for, ye stinkin' bilge rat?!"

"Thar's an Equestrian royal navy ship on tha' horizon, cap'n! Looks like they might be transportin' some valuables! They've come with quite a lot o' protection though. Heavy guns and lots o' soldiers, but all earth ponies. Nought in the way of magic users."

Soft Spoken stood up and put on his tricorn hat.

"Right. Fetch me our shaman, go wake the crew and tell them to load the cannons! It's been weeks since we did some good, honest pirating!"

"AYE SIR!"

The colt rushed out of the cabin enthusiastically. Softy grinned slyly and opened the top draw of his desk, from within which he drew a loaded flintlock.

"Ye be mine now, Commodore Cider," he said to himself, "I know ye be on that ship. And I'll send ye back to Davy Jones' locker..."

END

Author's notes:

WELCOME, TO OPERATION MINDFUCK.

Not much to say this time. If you didn't get your fix of Second being a bastard this chapter, some guy made this thing, in which Second kills a puppy. I linked it in my blog entry a while ago, but not all of you follow me, so it's here too. I have no idea who this guy is or what he was thinking, but this is far from the weirdest thing I've ever seen on the internet. It's there if you want to read it.

Also, I'm planning to revise the earlier chapters at some point to bring them all up to code with the newer ones. If I do, rest assured that there will be no need for you to do any re-reading. I'm one of the first to oppose massive revisions to a story, on the basis that I believe it is unreasonable to expect your readers to go through your story a second time. So I promise you, I won't be changing any major story elements. It'll just be to make it all look more grammatically correct and presentable for new first time readers. You'd hardly notice any differences.

Next Chapter: A psychedelic psychological journey.

Chapter 19: Master Mind

"In darkest depths where there is no sun,
the minds of many will all become one,
But the power of thought in the mental plains,
means they'll never be united under one name.

Assimilation means not the end of you,
Your will is too strong, and you will break through,
The cloud of lies only works for a while;
The truth hides behind a thousand false smiles.

And when it becomes apparent that the world is a fake,
kill the one who defends such mistakes.
The walls will shatter, reality torn asunder,
and you will see the world beyond, in a flash of thunder.

And you will then meet, beyond that veil,
the true mind of madness who the collective hails,
The one who made this mockery of what's right,
And show him no mercy. Show him your might."

-Explodian Psychology, extract from A History of Harmony Part IV: New World Awakening, by Ancient Tome.

***

"Hahahaha! What's the matter, man?! Too much to drink?!"

The gaggle of ponies laughing continued to walk past him down the street, as Gold Coin woke up and pulled himself up out of the gutter.

In the background there was...

"What the fuck...?"

Music. Familiar music too, but off. It took Goldie a moment to recognise it.

"Blue moon...You saw me standing alone..."

Huh?

"Without a dream in my heart...Without a love of my own..."

Gold Coin picked himself up and really looked around, and then realised exactly where he was.

Las Pegasus. City of lights.

This was the Las Pegasus strip. For as far as the eyes could see, there were brightly lit casinos with huge flashing neon signs, some with interesting designs and themes, like one which was basically a giant north Zebrican pyramid, and another which was shaped like a hot air balloon. There was a neon sign with a old Appleloosan cowpony smiling and pointing over his shoulder while casually smoking a cigarette, and another building with a huge fountain display out front, and-

Damn, this city was huge! So many lights, everywhere!

And then there was that music. It took Gold Coin a moment to realise it, but this music was weird. It seemed like a parody of some kind, because it was a lot like another song by Frank Stallionatra, called Blue Moon, but for some reason this version dropped all the references to Princess Luna and was using non-pony specific language.

Actually, the tune was way different as well. The Frank Stallionatra version had longer instrumental sections, and his voice was slightly different, as were the instruments. This one was obviously some kind of remix. The only reason he recognised it at all was because the vocals were the same, but then again, they really weren't. It had a different tune and different vocals. It wasn't like the original at all. It was just oddly similar in some key ways.

Also strange was the fact it was based on Stallionatra in the first place. His music was old now. Why was a modern Las Pegasus casino blasting it out to attract customers, let alone this warped version? He couldn't deny though, it did make the place seem inviting, and gave it a classy sort of look. Though, he was probably offsetting that by laying in the street outside it.

Come to think of it, Las Pegasus did have a sizeable griffin and zebra population. Perhaps this version didn't use pony language for the sake of mass appeal?

Now that he looked down at himself, he realised he was filthy. Had he really got drunk and collapsed in a gutter? That didn't sound much like something he would do. Sure, he did have a few incidents in his youth with the hard apple cider his grandfather used to make, but he never had a night quite as bad as this. He liked to think himself more dignified than that, and getting wasted in a Pegasus casino wasn't like him at all.

"Just what is going on here?"

And then there were those youths from earlier that had laughed at him. Had they really called him 'man'? He wasn't a human! What were they talking about? This whole thing was just surreal, and strange. What was he even doing in Las Pegasus in the first place? He hadn't been here for at least ten years. Last thing he remembered was...

"Softy! Explodey! No!"

The earth pony turned around and looked up and down the strip desperately, looking for any sign of his friends. They were nowhere to be seen.

"Where are they?!" he said to nopony in particular.

"Goldie! There you are, bro! I've been lookin' all over for ya!"

Gold Coin turned around and jumped when he saw Soft Spoken stumbling drunkenly out of an alleyway. This was wrong in almost every way. One, Softy was also more dignified than this. He drank, but he never got drunk, at least from what he had seen of him. Two, no way would Soft Spoken ever call Goldie his 'bro'. Three, he wasn't a pegasus.

"Watcha starin' at? Have I spilt somethin' down me?"

"Uhh...Softy? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me!" the old stallion replied, "Who else would it be?"

"But you're-"

"Hey! Goldie! Come with me. You'll never believe what I found back here."

"What is it?" the earth pony asked curiously.

"Come and see! This is the best shit ever."

Reluctantly, Gold Coin trotted into the alleyway after the stranger that resembled his friend.

***

Chain Mail blinked in confusion.

"Wuuuhhhh...?"

"What are you doing on the floor?!"

The disturbed earth pony scrambled back onto his hooves again.

"Nothing, mommy!" he said frantically, "I tripped and fell!"

The old mare got right up in his face and glared at him.

"...Lazy boy, lounging about the place when you should be working towards your degree."

Chain Mail looked around him and saw he was in a dingy apartment full of discarded clothes and pizza boxes. A pile of books laid in the corner, and there was paper strewn everywhere.

"My degree. Of course."

"Look at the state of this place!" his mother continued, "You insist you need all your time for revision! Can't work a job, can you?! 'Need all the time for study'! Need to get dear old mommy to pay your rent for you while you leave her all alone in a cold, empty house to go off and study at some...fancy schmancy college! And what do you do while you're here?!"

She eyed a particular pile of clothes in the corner of the room. Trotting over to it, she sorted through it by hoof and pulled out some...undergarments.

"Had a mare around, hmm?"

Chain Mail turned ever so slightly red.

"...It was...uhh...she's...just a friend..."

Chain Mail's mother glared at him.

"Clean this place up. Now."

***

"WAKE UP!"

Mystic was startled as he was slapped around the face.

"Wha-?!" he responded in a panic.

"Come on, boy. We need to keep alert. We've only got one opportunity for this, and if we miss it, that's it."

The stallion who had slapped Mystic in the face turned and walked away. Mystic looked around, and saw that they were all sitting around in a dusty, burnt out apartment building. All around them were destroyed and burnt furniture and fresh litter from where the squad had been casually throwing stuff away. There were a few other ponies around the room, all wearing camo-coloured uniforms, and all armed with their own weapons.

Sitting on a crate nearby, a blue earth pony smoked a cigarette as he polished a rifle. Behind him, a yellow unicorn mare leaned against the wall, levitating what appeared to be a rocket launcher in front of her. In the corner, another mare, this one an apple green pegasus, was inspecting a grenade. And just over by the window, the stallion who had slapped him, a white earth pony by the looks of it, was standing on his hind legs and using his forelegs to hold up a pair of binoculars.

"Damn..." he grumbled, "Security looks tight. Our contact wasn't wrong."

His voice was gruff, but clear and authorative. It was the voice of a leader.

"Private Chant, do you think you can make the shot?"

Mystic looked down at himself and balked when he saw that he was in his adult body again, just like Sliske had used back at the Mages' Guild, before he went chasing after Second. Though mercifully he was not on fire this time. Instead, he was wearing a uniform like the other ponies, and he saw a similar rifle to the one the blue earth pony was polishing leaning against the stool he was sitting on. This one had a scope.

"Ummm..."

"Get over here and take a look."

Mystic climbed out of his seat and walked over to the window. Or at least, he thought of it as a window. A whole section of wall was missing there, looking like it had been blasted off. Looking out through it, Mystic saw a war-torn city beyond, with ruined buildings and a grey, cloudy sky above. It was late in the day, as it was very dark out even with the cloud layer taken into account, and a number of airships just like the Prometheus except smaller floated across the city. In the distance, he heard the faint sound of an explosion.

At the other pony's prompting, Mystic picked up the binoculars with his magic and looked down at the street below. There were a few ponies marching up and down. They were in uniform too, though different to the ones he and his squad were wearing. These ponies all had machine guns, and were all exclusively unicorns.

"What am I looking for?" he asked.

"There!"

The other ponies around the room sat up with interest at the pony's tone of voice. Mystic looked down the street a little way and saw a building with the lights still on inside and looking relatively intact, from which emerged a navy green earth pony with a tiny moustache and a short, combed black mane. He looked to be in his late forties, and his cutie mark was some weird red symbol Mystic didn't recognise.

Flanking him either side were a pair of uniformed unicorns, each maintaining a spell that kept a barrier around the mysterious earth pony.

"That's him," the white pony said venomously, "Ol' Adolf, out in the open. We've only got so long. You ready?"

Mystic Chant had so many questions. Why was he here? Where were his friends? Why was he an adult? Who were these ponies he was with? Who was Adolf? What did he need to do? What happened to this city? Where were they? What was going on?

Instead of asking any of these though, the words that came out of his mouth were;

"The barrier's strong but a magic-piercing round should punch through just fine. It'd need to be weakened first though. These ponies' shields aren't ultra strong like the Canterlot barrier, but two unicorns putting all their magic into it in a concentrated effort still makes for damn good protection. We'd need to stun them first, and hopefully take them out afterwards."

The white earth pony nodded.

"Private Smith!" he called.

The green pegasus mare wandered over.

"Sergeant?"

"We'll need stun grenades."

The mare smiled.

"I've got just the thing."

The sergeant broke out into a huge grin.

"We're in business!" he said enthusiastically, "Get your rifle, Private Chant. Today, we're going down in history!"

***

Sliske sat up in bed and blinked.

"Huh?"

A tiny clock sitting on the nearby bedside cabinet suddenly burst into a round of loud ringing.

"AHHH!"

The alien jumped right into the air and landed at the end of the bed, balancing on all four hooves right on the bed knob, the hairs on his back raised and trembling at the unexpected shock of the alarm clock.

"What was...?"

Sliske felt odd. He raised a hoof to look at it. Not Mystic Chant's body, that was for certain. His coat was black.

"Who...?"

Sliske retreated into the recesses of his mind, and tried to dig around to find the original owner of this body. He wanted to know why he had decided to take this pony, and who it was exactly. After minutes of searching though, he came to stunning revelation.

"There's no other mind in here..."

Sliske walked out of the bedroom in a trance. The curtains were still pulled, but sunlight slipped through regardless. He was so confused. Every host body had a mind. What could possibly have caused this? Was he currently inhabiting a brain-dead pony? That was extremely unsettling for some reason.

He marched into the bathroom and walked up to a mirror on the wall above the sink. Looking back at him was what appeared to be a regular black unicorn, with a white mane, and-

"WHERE ARE MY TEETH?! WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY EYES?!"

There were some very basic rules about Sakrassi. One of the fundamental characteristics of the species were that when they took over a host body, they would use inherent magic to temporarily mutate additional features onto it. Those features were the snake eyes and the rows of giant teeth that often did not fit in the mouth. Having neither of those while in a host body was like a pegasus waking up without their wings.

"I am freaking out," he muttered, "...And what's with my voice?"

He felt his throat.

"Feels less...raspy..."

His eyes darted back and forth momentarily.

"Raspy," he said experimentally, "Hissing. Session. Sagittarius. Several. Something. Caesar salad. Oh, by the Overmind, I'm talking like a pony!"

He grabbed his long mane with his hooves and pulled at it. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he was beginning to panic.

"What's wrong with me?!"

He covered his face with one hoof and sat on his haunches. As he did, he stopped, and looked up again.

"Wait..."

He looked at his flank. No cutie mark, even though he was in an adult body, but that wasn't what caught his attention. He lifted a leg, and-

"...I'm a mare."

He looked back at his reflection in the mirror.

"And that's the least strange thing about this."

***

"YAAAAARGGGGH!" one of the pirates screamed gleefully, as he charged off towards the end of the ship.

Soft Spoken smiled from beneath his tricorn hat as he turned the ship's wheel and guided them towards the Equestrian royal navy's vessel. They were approaching the side of the navy ship head on, not giving its crew a very easy shot at them.

His ship was a mighty Equestrian galleon by the name of the Celestia, once the pride of the royal navy until he and his cutthroat crew had commandeered it one fateful stormy night, and sailed it out of Pony Harbour virtually unchallenged. It was easily double the size of the ship it was about to victimise, and with a mostly earth pony crew, their enemy stood no chance.

"FIRE THA FORWARD CANNONS!" Softy bellowed.

The air was filled with the sound of explosions, and the cannons at the front of the ship jumped back at the force of the blasts they unleashed on their rival. The pirate captain cackled as he saw the red coated Equestrian soldiers they hit go flying into the air.

"Captain," said a deep, accented voice, "You was right."

Softy looked over his shoulder to see their resident zebra shaman sitting in the middle of a circle of salts and powders, marked in some places with rare herbs. He opened his eyes and looked at him coldly.

"The commodore you seek, he be on the ship."

Softy broke out into another evil grin and turned back to the wheel. As his crew rushed about below, getting gunpowder and preparing cannons, or helping to adjust the sails, he shouted out his next order.

"PREPARE TA BOARD! KILL THA CREW, BUT REMEMBER WE'RE TAKIN' PRISONERS! WE MIGHT JUST GET SOME NEW RECRUITS OUT O' THIS!"

He took his hooves off the ship wheel and pulled out his cutlass.

"Ze!zar," he said, "Can I trust ye to take the wheel?"

"Aye, captain."

"Ram that ship head-on," Softy instructed, "Give me an' the crew a good chance ta board."

***

Chain Mail's eyes were stinging. He trudged into the classroom in a daze and swayed on his hooves as he made his way over to his desk. He had not had any sleep last night. The ponies he was unfortunate enough to share an apartment complex with had thrown a massive party, and the music had been thumping in his ears until three AM. He was barely even able to get up this morning. He had though, of course. Thanks to his dear old mother.

"Why are you late?"

He looked up and saw the teacher sitting behind another desk near the front of the class next to the white board. The teacher was a fifty year old mare with a straight, white mane and reading glasses. She held a neutral expression for the moment, but Chain Mail seized up as he remembered who she was.

Mrs. Bittersweet.

He was momentarily confused. He could have sworn he remembered celebrating when he read her obituary in the Equestria Daily, some seven years ago now. That was just silly though. He was only seventeen now, and he had only met her at the beginning of this year. How absurd.

Still though, this naturally led him to remember why this was a mare whose death he felt cause for celebrating in the first place. With that in mind, he brutally beat to death the little pony in his mind that told him to stand up for himself and defend what he believed in. He knew from experience that if you were anything other than meek and submissive around Mrs. Bittersweet, it was grounds for her to call for your expulsion.

"I...Well, all the books fell out of my locker, so I-" he began, keeping as calm and even a tone as possible.

"Not good enough," Mrs. Bittersweet interrupted, her voice and expression remaining neutral, "Show up to my lesson on time, or I'll have you removed from the course entirely."

This was only the second time he had been late for a class all year, and it was only two minutes since the bell! She hadn't even started the lesson yet! Hell, she didn't even let him finish explaining! How did she know the excuse wasn't good enough if he couldn't even give all of it?! This was unfair, and if it were anypony else, he'd have pointed that out. Still though, this wasn't anypony else, so instead he answered;

"Yes miss."

"Sit down."

Their minimal required interaction over with, Chain Mail trotted over to his place in the back, between his two closest friends. They were a pink pegasus mare named Cloudwing, and-

"Broad Sword?"

The other white earth pony grinned at him.

"Hi cappy!"

Chain Mail just stared at him for a moment.

"Don't call me cappy."

Why would you even? My name sounds nothing like cappy.

"NO TALKING IN THE BACK."

***

"Check DIS shit out!"

Gold Coin moved around the dumpster in the secluded alleyway behind the casino, to see what it was that this bizarre pegasus version of Softy wanted to show him. As it slowly came into view, he realised what it was.

"IS THAT A DEAD BODY?!"

"Sure is!" Bizarro Softy replied, "And even bettah, 'e was a junkie! Check him! He's got a whole satchel of drugs on him!"

This version of Softy's accent was hard to pin down. More importantly though;

"THAT'S A DEAD BODY!"

Soft Spoken rolled his eyes.

"You're too uptight, bro. Loosen up! Chillax! Come smoke this shit with me."

He sat down and leaned against the wall next to the dead pony, and leaned on his shoulder like they were old friends hanging out.

"Hey, buddy, give us some, eh?"

He reached into the dead pony's satchel and pulled out a bag of white powder.

"Awwwww yeah..."

"SURE IS FUCKING VEGAS IN HERE!"

Gold Coin looked up at the rooftops, and saw that almost directly above them, a human in a suit and tie stood at the edge of the roof, glaring down. Without another word, he jumped off and landed right next to them. Up close, the yellow earth pony could see that it was in fact Lord Second...except...

"Why has your skin changed colour?"

Second cocked an eyebrow.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, "I've always been black."

"But that's not-"

"ANYWAY!" Second shouted over them, "I'm here to announce that I finally finished my ultimate weapon! BEHOLD!"

There was a thumping in the distance.

Gold Coin's jaw dropped and his eye twitched as a giant robot appeared on top of a nearby roof, climbing over it as a pony would climb over a wooden fence. It stepped into the same alleyway they were in and stomped past them. It was a bipedal robot, designed after a human obviously, with a heavily armoured chest and no face, save for a single blue visor where the eyes should be, and it had a case attached to its back filled with a lot of round, metal objects.

"DESIGNATION: LIBERTY PRIME. MISSION: THE LIBERATION OF LAS VEGAS, NEVADA FROM EQUESTRIAN PONY FORCES."

"OH YEAH!" Second shouted, "THAT'S RIGHT! WE'RE ABOUT TO AMERICANIZE YOUR ASSES!"

He broke out into maniacal laughter again and ran down the alleyway after Liberty Prime.

"Come on!" Gold Coin shouted to Softy.

The earth pony charged off in pursuit of the human with the Bizarro Soft Spoken stumbling along behind him. The two ran out of the alleyway and emerged back onto the Las Pegasus strip. Or was it the Las Pegasus strip? Second and the robot had both called this place Vegas. Either way, they emerged onto the strip.

In the ten second head start he had on them, Bizarro Lord Second had climbed onto Liberty Prime's head and was now clinging onto a huge pole flying a red, white and blue flag, which he waved about as the giant robot ploughed down the strip, crushing some ponies under its giant feet and killing others with lasers which it shot from its eyes. Visor. Whatever.

"SUCK ON MY TRUTH, JUSTICE AND FREEDOM!" Second shouted.

"DEMOCRACY, IS NON NEGOTIABLE," Liberty chimed in.

"Daaaaaaaaaaayum son," Bizarro Softy commented, "I'm not even American, and that still brings a tear to the eye."

There was an explosion in the distance. Gold Coin looked back to see that Liberty Prime had blown up a casino, and now money was flying everywhere. There were pegasi darting about in the smoke cloud above the blaze trying to catch it all.

"...Yeah, I agree actually," he confessed, "This is the single most amazing thing I've seen in my entire life."

***

Sliske walked out the front door and looked up at the sunny sky. He, or more accurately she now, recognised the small houses, thatched roofs and cobblestone streets that often characterised Ponyville. Around the place, ponies of all races and colours were milling about, on their way to work or errands or whatever else they did to kill time and help their miserable, pointless lives pass slightly faster.

The alien took a tentative step forward, reluctant to actually go out and do anything. He...she...had no real goal in mind. She was lost, confused, and had no idea where her friends had disappeared to or what had happened before. There were vague memories of Explodey slowly dying and a bunch of dragons landing on top of an airship, but everything after Canterlot was just a big hazy blur.

Almost unconsciously, Sliske began to sing an old tune under her breath.

"Calm, little prince, don't cry for this shame; one day you'll be king, and they all will know your name..."

A pair of foals skipped by. Sliske followed them with her eyes as they passed.

"Your dark days will be over, but for others they'll start anew....One day you'll be king, and the tyrant will be you..."

She sighed.

"Hey! There you are! I've been looking all over for you!"

I recognise that voice anywhere.

Twilight Sparkle trotted over to her wearing a pair of saddlebags. She looked almost relieved. Sliske automatically went into a defensive combat position, ready to do battle. Last time she and Twilight came face to face, she had been in Applejack and was being tossed against walls while Princess Celestia readied the exorcism spell.

"Woah! Calm down, Sunny!" said Twilight, "Are you alright? Did you have another late night?"

Sliske awkwardly returned to normal stance.

Sunny?

"Umm...Sorry. It's been a weird day..."

"Uh-huh," the other unicorn replied, "Well, I needed to come and see you! Spike's been acting really weird all morning."

Sliske tilted her head.

"How so?"

"Well, for one, he's really clingy right now. He keeps hugging everypony he sees until they kick him off or he finds somepony else. He's broken out into tears a few times now, and occasionally he starts shouting and talking about bad dreams. I've tried to get him to explain, but he won't say anything to me. I just keep getting hugged again."

Really? How interesting...

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

Twilight placed a hoof on her chin as she thought about it seriously.

"Well...You always did know a lot more about psychology and the mind. I was hoping you might be able to give some insight on this. Maybe talk to him? I think he needs a decent therapist, and since he doesn't know you as well as the others he's been annoying, I'm hoping maybe he won't...you know...hug you."

Sliske just looked at her blankly.

"Uhhh...Sure?"

"Great!" Twilight replied, breaking into a smile, "Come on! I left him at Rarity's."

Without another word, Sliske followed after.

***

Two flash bang grenades hit just at the base of the shield and exploded. They did their jobs. The unicorns maintaining the shield were blinded, and this moment of distraction caused their magic to falter. Mystic Chant raised the rifle and aimed precisely at the horn.

BLAM!

The magic piercing bullet tore through the shield and made contact with the unicorn's horn. He screamed in pain as it shattered and crumpled to the floor in a quivering heap. The shield dropped. Mystic immediately turned on the other surprised unicorn, who had just regained his sight.

BLAM!

The second shield unicorn went down too. Just like the first one, his horn exploded into tiny pieces, and the rest of him was left unharmed. Part of the mission directives of course. When nonlethal force could be applied, use it. Mystic gritted his teeth as he turned the rifle on Adolf.

BLAM!

The bullet made a clanging sound as it impacted the confused earth pony's forehead. A tiny bit of skin peeled away where it struck, and the sniper caught a glimpse of silver.

No way!

"CODE GREY!" the sergeant shouted, "CHAMELEON! GET OVER HERE!"

The yellow unicorn mare broke into a huge grin and ran over with a bloodthirsty look on her face. She unceremoniously booted Mystic out of the way and raised her rocket launcher. She fired it, and the missile went flying into the street below. Neither of the other two unicorns were able to get clear before the projectile slammed right into its target and went up in a huge fireball.

A miniature mushroom cloud formed where it happened, but eventually the dust cleared, and the sergeant, Chameleon and Mystic all stared in disbelief as they saw a shiny chrome pony android with glowing red eyes pull itself back up, a suit of burnt green flesh falling off it as it rose.

"OH MY GOD, HITLER WAS A ROBOT THE WHOLE TIME!" the sergeant screamed.

Mecha Hitler looked up at them, and his reaction was immediate. The menacing robotic dictator charged towards the building they were in and jumped at the wall. The ponies looked down in horror as his hooves hit the wall and stuck to them, and Mecha Hitler began running up the side of the building towards them.

"ANTI-MACHINE ROUNDS NOW!"

***

Soft Spoken hit the deck of the navy ship and dodged to the side as an earth pony barrelled past and failed to kill him with his own sword. He swung around and buried the cutlass in the pony's back.

"YAAAARRHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Two more earth ponies in red coats charged at him with their muskets drawn, but they were shot down by magic from his unicorn crewmates, who jumped onto the ship behind him.

"Come on boys!" Softy shouted, "It's ours for the takin'!"

The boat rocked and spun in the water. After the navy ship was rammed by the Celestia, it went spinning out of control, foiling any attempts to get a clear shot with the cannons. Not that these ponies could shoot them anyway with all the pirates running around on deck and slicing them up.

In the chaos, Soft Spoken ran across the deck towards the cabin at the far end. He smashed the door down and charged on in, drawing his flintlock as he did.

"Where be ye, commodore?"

There was a clicking sound behind him.

"Right by the door, Mister Spoken."

Softy turned around to see Commodore Apple Cider of the Equestrian royal navy holding a flintlock of his own, and giving him a smug, self satisfied grin.

"Cider, ye stinkin' squid! Ye'll not live another day longer!"

"Oh, Mister Spoken...Always so angry...Are you still upset I stole your woman?"

"She be more than that! Maple was-"

Softy paused.

"'Woman'?" he said quietly to himself, "Shouldn't that be mar..."

He stopped, and went back to staring angrily at Apple Cider.

"She be more than that! And ye be a treacherous snake, for driving an old man to piracy!"

He shook his head.

"Stallion! I apologise."

He shook again.

"I mean, how dare ye, scurvy dog?!"

Apple Cider raised an eyebrow.

"Mister Spoken, are you feeling quite alright?"

The pirate captain looked down at his hooves for a moment, and then looked back at his bloodied cutlass.

"...Dear Celestia..."

CRASH!

"What was that?!" the previously confident commodore said in a panic.

"I don't know," Softy said in his usual voice, "But whatever it was, it was big. Larger even than the Celestia, and that's a damn big ship."

Cider blinked.

"Mister Spoken, what happened to your accent?"

Softy threw off the tricorn hat and dropped all his weapons.

"I think I was sick with something. Never mind that now though, there's something going on!"

The two earth ponies charged out of the cabin and onto the deck again, and found both the original crew and the pirates running around in circles screaming like idiots, as huge monstrous suckered tentacles bigger than the mast of the Celestia rose out of the ocean, water dripping off the giant appendages.

"IT'S A KRAKEN!" screamed one of the pirates.

"WORSE!" shouted another.

Softy and the commodore stared as one of the tentacles coming out of the sea rose to the same level as the ship's deck, and balancing atop the very end of it was-

"'Sup bitches? My name be Lord Second, fo' shizzle."

And he was a goddamn alicorn now.

***

Chain Mail had decided that he really hated Mrs. Bittersweet. There was being fussy, there was being pedantic, there was being an outright bitch, and then there was threatening to get him expelled because he sighed after she gave him his workbook. After that he had walked out of the class, and now he was going to the coffee place to get a drink and blow off some steam before he started raging.

Actually, this sort of thing had happened before. He couldn't really say he was surprised by any of this. Mrs. Bittersweet had a history, but everypony put up with her regardless. Sure, she was enough of a nuisance that even the other staff were willing to admit it, and the teachers NEVER talked negatively about each other aside from her, but she was also the only teacher whose entire class boasted straight 'A's through the whole year.

You couldn't deny, she got results.

"...Still a bitch though..." Chain Mail mumbled under his breath, clearly not bitter at all.

"Hey cappy! Are you alright?"

Chain Mail looked up to see Broad Sword approach.

"...How are you-?"

"It's the mid-lesson break," the earth pony said cheerfully.

"No...I mean..." Chain Mail sighed, "Broad Sword? Can I be honest with you?"

"Sure!"

"...I think the world is wrong."

Broad Sword frowned and sat down at a nearby table. Chain Mail joined him.

"Wrong how?"

"I don't know. I keep having flashes of memory, but...they're things that couldn't ever happen. I feel like...I'm not even sure. Like this already all happened, ages ago, but I'm living through it again, and I'm living it differently."

"'Differently'?" Broad Sword repeated.

"Like this didn't happen like this last time...You! You're different! I never went to college with you! We didn't meet until years later!"

Broad Sword scratched his chin.

"Hmmm...Sounds to me like this is an illusion created from your memories that didn't translate well into an actual setting. Maybe I'm here because you met me later in life, but you're trying to fit everything important about your life into these years specifically?"

Chain Mail blinked.

"You believe me?"

"Uh-huh."

"Even when I'm saying that the whole world is a fake including you?"

Broad Sword shrugged.

"Eh, I'm only thinking of you here. If I am real, I'd know it beyond all doubt, but I'd never be able to prove it to you. On the other hoof, if I am some kind of illusion meant to act like the real Broad Sword, I'd do everything he would, including acting like I am certain I'm real, but it'd all be an act to fool you. It's like, what's the point?"

Chain Mail raised an eyebrow.

"So...you don't believe you're real?"

"Oh, I know I'm not real. I'm just a construct created by Explodey to talk to you and make you feel better. But, at least tell me I'm doing a good job of it?"

The captain sighed in defeat.

"Explodey. He assimilated me."

"Yep. Sure did."

He glared at the Broad Sword construct.

"Why?" he said icily.

"I dunno. Because he's fucked in the head? Because he's got weird alien biology? Because he thought it'd be good for a laugh? You'd really have to ask him."

"How do I even find him?"

"This place exists inside Explodey's imagination. You're in his mind. As is everypony else he absorbed. You have to find a way to move through the rest of the brain. Find the dominant Explodey consciousness. Maybe if you find him and give him a little support, he might be able to get the legion under control?"

Chain Mail sipped his coffee.

"This is fucking weird."

"You're telling me. I'm an imaginary pony based on a dead guy. How do you think I feel?"

"I think you won't be feeling anything, because you aren't even real."

'Broad Sword' slapped Chain Mail on the back.

"Now you're getting it!"

"Hmmm..."

"What?"

"So if this is all taking place in somepony's imagination, does that mean I can use my thoughts to influence the world? Like...say...get my captain's armour back and return to my normal age?"

The construct shrugged.

"Anything's possible."

The captain looked to his side and found himself wearing the traditional armour of his station, and once again carrying a sword by his side. He picked up the sword with his teeth and held it in front of him.

"Ohhh boy...I've always wanted to do something like this consequence free..."

***

"Spike! Darling, I'm happy to see you too, but isn't this a little...much?"

Sliske walked into the Carousel Boutique to find a familiar white unicorn mare trying to move across the shop, but being weighed down by a blubbering baby dragon latched onto her back leg. She looked back at Twilight, who just shrugged.

"Oh, Sunny!" said Rarity, perking up as she saw Sliske, "Finally somepony qualified to deal with this! Could you help me here? Please?"

I'm qualified now? In what, exactly?

Sliske nevertheless trudged over to Rarity's side and yanked the baby dragon off of her. She held him upside down in the air and glared at him. Spike had stopped crying, and now just looked confused.

"Wait, who are you?" he asked.

"Spike!" Twilight chided, "Don't be rude! You know Sunny!"

Spike raised an eyebrow. It looked extremely comical when he was still being held upside down.

"I do?"

Sliske leaned in closely.

"Yessssss."

Now that she was doing it deliberately, she realised how stupid the hissing sounded. Spike seemed to get something else entirely from it, as he immediately went white as a sheet.

"Could we get some privacy please?" Sliske asked, "This poor dragon is quite obviously traumatised. He will need some speaking to."

Twilight smiled and nodded.

"Of course."

Rarity looked uneasy, but followed Twilight out of the room anyway, sparing a concerned glance back in Spike's direction as she left. Once the two ponies were gone, Sliske turned around and addressed Spike.

"You! Dragon! What the fuck is going on?!"

"Sliske? Is that you?" Spike asked.

"Of course it is! Now what's going on here?! What the hell are you even doing?!

Spike bowed his head in shame and began awkwardly wringing his tail.

"I...I just...It's been like nine hundred years since I saw any of them...When I woke up here..."

Sliske sighed.

"This isn't real," she said, "You do know that, right?"

Spike frowned at her.

"Why are you a mare now?"

"Is that seriously your biggest question right now?"

"I know what you're trying to do, and no. I will not blindly accept this. I've been alive for over a thousand years now, and even with everything I've seen, I am proud to say that I'm still not as jaded as you and those strange ponies you hang around with. Now explain why you're suddenly a mare, right now."

Sliske tilted her head.

"I think I liked you better when you were large and intimidating. You talked less often then."

"Explain. Now."

"Well, I don't know for sure, but my best guess is..."

The proceeding explanation continued for twelve minutes, and Spike remained floating upside down the entire time, occasionally nodding or interjecting with the occasional question. Eventually though, Sliske came to the end of her story, and Spike was mostly satisfied with it.

"Okay," he admitted, "I guess that's as good an explanation as any. Although, I didn't get parts of it. Like why did you have to hide in a sugar plantation in the first place?"

Sliske rolled her eyes.

"Weren't you paying attention? Because the ice cubes were cracked! Duh!"

"Oh right. Sorry, I forgot. Now this whole thing makes total, total sense."

"Yep. This is now a rational occurrence, and in hindsight it's pretty obvious. Why, you'd have to be a complete dumbass to think this doesn't make sense!"

"Yeah!" Spike agreed, "But who wouldn't get something this simple, right? You'd have to be a total moron to not understand what's going on right now!"

"And that's why I'm glad we live in a world as sane and logical as we do."

***

"'MURRICA FUCK YEAH!" the black version of Lord Second shouted from atop his giant robot as it fired radioactive lasers from its eyes and melted another casino.

"DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO PONIES," Liberty Prime agreed.

Sane and logical as fuck.

"We really need to do something," Gold Coin sighed, "Awesome as this is, he is killing ponies out there."

"Yeah..." Bizarro Softy answered, "Mebby we can...I dunno...fuggen...drive a car into his legs, like? And...like...knock over the robot?"

"Your accent keeps changing! I don't care what it is, but pick one and stick to it! This is confusing enough as it is!"

Down the Las Pegasus strip, another casino was melted into glowing green slag, along with all its inhabitants.

"AMERICA WILL NEVER FALL TO PONY INVASION."

Gold Coin began to tear up.

"I can't help it!" he cried, "It's a giant robot rampaging down the Las Pegasus strip! This is the best thing ever. How can anyone bring themselves to stop something that gloriously beautiful?! It's a crime against art!"

It was true. Even the police and military ponies who were supposed to be fighting Liberty Prime just stood in place gaping at it, even as it melted their comrades and destroyed buildings and roads around them. The spectacle of it was just...amazing.

Then suddenly...

"GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!"

A blur of red, white and blue flew through the air and smashed into Liberty Prime's chest. The robot staggered back, but did not fall. Lord Second in contrast tumbled off the thing and landed in the street below, seemingly breaking his spine. Of course, he had a healing factor, so that wouldn't keep him down for long, but in the meantime, the confrontation of the century was about to take place.

"IS THAT FUCKING PRINCE BLUEBLOOD?!" Gold Coin shouted.

Yes it was. And he was wearing the most ridiculous outfit ever conceived by a pony. It was a full body suit with a primarily blue background and was covered all over by a red and white cross. Or two red and white crosses. Or a red and white asterix...red and white star...? What the hell was that?!

...Oh, and he could fly now too.

"Alright you bloody yank! Now we finally decide the oldest argument! This battle right 'ere will determine once and f'rall who's bettah! Giant robots, or ponies!"

"TACTICAL ASSESSMENT: PONY VICTORY, IMPOSSIBLE."

And then they started wrestling.

No, not punching each other. Liberty Prime actually put Blueblood in a headlock even though he was tiny compared to him, and Blueblood kicked out Prime's legs from under him. The giant robot and the tiny but brightly coloured pony began rolling around across the strip, throwing each other into things and fighting.

And then Prime started the hair pulling and Blueblood bit one of his fingers, which somehow the robot not only felt, but wailed in pain over. It was less like an epic battle between bitter rivals, and more like two teenage girls having a catfight.

"...I'm so confused," Gold Coin muttered.

"About what?" asked Bizarro Softy.

"Everything! What the actual fuck is going on here?! Why the giant robot?! Since when was Blueblood a superhero?! What happened to Second?! Why are you a pegasus?! Why is the language ponies are using so different?! What's with the Stallionatra-but-not-quite songs?! "

"I shall never be defeated!"

Gold Coin turned around to see Lord Second stumbling onto the sidewalk.

"You ponies will never overcome-"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up. Listen, Second, maybe you know what's going on? What the fuck is happening here?!"

"Fool! Blueblood and Liberty Prime's confrontation is going on as we speak! The battle of the century! And you're asking me inane questions?! I should-"

"Oh wow," said Softy, "The fight just suddenly turned into a make-out session."

"WHAT?!" Gold Coin and Second said in unison.

Blueblood and Liberty Prime were now...doing things...

"SAY YOU LOVE DEMOCRACY!"

"I love democracy!"

"SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT! DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE!"

"I LOVE DEMOCRACY! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SO MANY ELECTIONS TOGETHER!"

Gold Coin curled up in a ball on the floor.

"I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

***

Meanwhile in nazi-occupied Stalliongrad...

***

Mecha Hitler jumped through the window and skidded across the floor on his hooves. At the right moment, the robotic dictator swung around on his fore hooves and bucked Chameleon into the wall, seemingly breaking her skull open. He then turned to Private Smith, and his laser eyes immediately turned her into ash as well.

The sergeant ran forward with a knife in his teeth and slashed at Hitler, who dodged and backed away as he swung. Mecha Hitler began to charge his eye beams again, but then he jumped back as something struck him in the side.

Mystic levitated his rifle up again, now loaded with the anti-machine rounds, and shot another round right into Mecha Hitler's face, but the robot just absorbed the damage and charged his eye beams to attack Mystic instead this time.

The sergeant then jumped in the way and plunged his combat knife into Mecha Hitler's right eye as he charged the laser. The red light immediately died, but in return the sergeant was electrocuted through the knife by the robot's circuitry, and this gave Mecha Hitler time to shake him off and throw him into a wall as well.

This told Mystic all he needed to know though. Those eyes could be taken out. He looked through the scope of his sniper rifle, aimed right at Mecha Hitler's other eye, and fired a perfect shot right through it. No easy feat at such close range.

The lasers disabled, the despotic android went for melee, and blindly charged at Mystic to buck him into a wall. Fortunately, he was able to sidestep the attack, and Hitler crashed into a wall and stunned himself.

"Gotcha!"

Mystic moved aside as the sergeant grabbed ahold of Mecha Hitler while he was temporarily out of action and lifted him into the air with his hooves. Those earth ponies were damn strong.

"You're going down, fuckface!"

He staggered backwards while carrying Mecha Hitler with him still, and once they reached the window, he leaned over and threw him out of it. Mystic ran over to the window and looked down just in time to see him hit the ground and break. The legs were bent out of shape and small parts flew off the head as it shattered. Most of all, the thing finally stopped moving.

"We did it!" Mystic cheered, "We killed Hitler!"

"Mecha Hitler even!" the sergeant added, "Damn, this is like, the best day ever!"

The sergeant felt a pony poking his shoulder. He turned around to see the blue earth pony, who had somehow kept out of the earlier fight.

"I don't mean to hurt your mood sergeant, but the rest of the squad are dead."

The sergeant was about to speak, when an automated voice echoed through the streets.

"ADOLF-1 DISABLED. ACTIVATING BACKUP HITLER."

"...There's a backup Hitler?" the sergeant asked.

CRASH!

The three surviving ponies looked out the window across the dusty grey city, and saw that one of the many airships flying above it had just dropped in another Mecha Hitler. This one just happened to be roughly as big as most of the buildings in the city, and it was coming straight for them.

The sergeant could only sigh.

"The things I have to put up with. Honestly, fuck the military."

***

Alicorn Second stepped onto the deck of the ship and casually used his magic to pick up the ponies who got in his way, be they pirates or navy, and toss them overboard or in the direction of one of his Kraken's tentacles.

He was a very different sort of creature now. He had a dull white coat, like a less radiant version of Celestia, and a grey mane of the same shade he had in his human form. He retained the moustache he used to have before the explosion, and he had also acquired a pony-appropriate version of that damn long coat. His cutie mark appeared to be a stylised '2'.

He smiled at Softy and the commodore as he sauntered over to them.

"Why, hello there my good sirs!" he said in an exaggerated posh accent, "I've got good news and bad news! The bad news is that you're all going to die, and until you do, you'll suffer horribly. The good news is that I actually do not control the Kraken. I just woke it up, and now it's doing whatever the fuck it wants, meaning I can't stop it if it does something I'd rather it didn't."

He paused.

"No wait. Wrong way around. Reverse those."

Human or alicorn, you could always count on Lord Second to be unpleasant.

"Well, what are you here for?" the commodore asked.

"To kill you. Obviously."

The commodore looked sideways at Softy.

"Last I heard, alicorns are invincible. Got any ideas?"

Softy looked side to side for a moment. The screams of sailors continued in the distance as Second and Apple Cider both waited patiently for him to think of a response.

"...Wait, I think I got it."

He walked off back into the captain's cabin behind them, leaving the two other ponies behind. Commodore Cider coughed awkwardly as they both waited.

"So...You're an alicorn, huh? What's that like?"

Second looked down at him blankly.

"My God, you look delicious. I wonder what you'd taste like spit roasted..."

Apple Cider looked back towards the direction of the cabin nervously.

"Captain Spoken? A little help? Please?"

"I'm back! Don't worry!"

Softy emerged from the cabin holding the flintlock pistol in his teeth. He walked over and gave it to the commodore.

"Guns can kill alicorns for some reason. We still don't know why, but it works. Go nuts."

Commodore Cider shrugged and pointed the pistol at Lord Second. He fired a single shot right through the alicorn's forehead, and then he dropped dead. Second didn't even try to move out of the way. He just stood there and waited to die, like he was bored. Clearly, this was natural selection in action. Cider was so surprised by how effectively he had just killed a god that he didn't even bother to point out to Softy that he still had his own pistol.

"Well, what now?" Cider asked as he threw Softy's gun aside.

A gigantic tentacle came down on the boat and smashed through the deck. The entire ship rocked violently as it got torn in half. The Celestia was not under direct attack by the Kraken and seemed to be holding up better, but it wasn't helping out in the fight. Ze!zar and a few other crew members were content to just run around like idiots and and let the smaller ship die, seemingly missing that the Kraken would then come after them.

"Well, this ship's going down. I suggest we flee to the Celestia and try to organise my crew. Maybe we can blast this thing to death with the cannons."

"Lead the way, captain."

***

Gold Coin clutched his head as if in pain.

"No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, FUCKING NO!" he screamed.

The earth pony jumped up again and pointed and accusing hoof at Second and Bizarro Softy.

"I've had enough! YOU PONIES ARE CRAZY! This is NOT how the world works! Actions are supposed to have reasons and consequences! Ponies and humans do not randomly change their race! Modern fucking Las Pegasus does not play sixty year old music! ROBOTS AND PONIES CANNOT. HAVE. INTERCOURSE!"

He turned around and shouted down the street at Blueblood and Liberty Prime.

"NO, SERIOUSLY. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?! PRIME IS LIKE- LOOK AT THE SIZE OF- HOW DOES THAT FUCKING FIT IN THERE?!"

Bizarro Softy whispered to Second discreetly.

"What's his problem?"

Second shrugged.

Gold Coin slowly turned to look over his shoulder at them.

"...I see what this is!" he laughed, "I get it now!"

Softy and Second exchanged a worried glance.

"This is all a conspiracy to drive me insane! You're all trying to throw so much random shit at me that my mind breaks! And then when I've become accustomed to the insanity of the world around me, then you're going to make me like you!"

"Like us?" Second repeated.

"Yes! LIKE YOU! A fucked up, weird, pseudo-parody of myself living in some la-la land version of Equestria that only barely resembles the real thing!"

He grinned at them.

"Well, it's not going to work! Fuck that noise! Do you know who I am?! I am Gold Coin, mighty alicorn hunter! I worshipped the real Second as a god for most of my life, and then when I found out he wasn't who I thought he was, I bucked my god in the face! YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN DO OVER THE TOP SHIT?! WELL TAKE A GANDER AT THIS, CITY FOLKS!"

Gold Coin turned and charged at them. Softy and Second tried to back away to get out of range, but then the earth pony leapt into the air and spun around. The world seemed to slow to a standstill, as he flew through the air towards them in slow motion.

"FLYING...APPLEBUCK...SPIN...ATTACK!"

He kicked out with his legs mid-air and hit the pegasus version of Soft Spoken. He was much more lightweight than his earth pony counterpart and went flying backwards, smashing into the brick wall of a building. The impact was so hard that his skull split open and his brains flew out and spread themselves over the wall like so much mushy paste.

Gold Coin hit the ground again, and he broke into a huge smile when white beams of energy began to emerge from the corpse.

No, not energy. Those were cracks. Not in any kind of surface though. He had cracked reality itself, and like a window, the world around them seemed to be slowly weakening as the cracks spread out in all directions, in a three dimensional manner. Gold Coin backed away, while Second just stood in place gawping.

The cracks turned out to be dangerous. A straight white line of light that was part of one of the cracks came within arm's length of Second, and then when it split again into yet more cracks, they actually impaled Second as if they were solid and drew thick red blood. The human pulled himself off them and staggered back for a bit before collapsing.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Gold Coin cackled, "I WAS RIGHT!"

The centre point of the cracks near the corpse of the mock-Softy collapsed in on itself. Rather than just cracks, soon it was a blank void. A hole in the fabric of space and time beyond which there was nothing but an empty whiteness. The space beyond was a vacuum, and the winds began to blow as it sucked the air in towards it. The hole began to expand.

Gold Coin stood his ground against it, hooves planted firmly on the floor even as the other ponies on the Las Pegasus strip, alive and dead, flew threw the air past him and into the ever expanding abyss. The pull strengthened. Some ponies were even more unlucky than the void's victims, and were impaled on the still spreading cracks coming out of the edge of it, just like Second was.

Blueblood came flying past Gold Coin.

"PRIME! NOOOOOOO!"

He vanished into the aether. The earth pony continued to hold his ground. There was a clanking sound, and he barely moved aside in time as Liberty Prime was also slowly dragged past him into the emptiness.

"I DIE...SO THAT DEMOCRACY...MIGHT...LIVE..."

Bricks began flying off the buildings. Puddles of glowing green plasma and neon signs were sucked through. The road began to tear up and trees were uprooted. The whole city began to disintegrate into dust and vanish through the void. As he watched the false reality die around him, Gold Coin just continued to laugh.

"I AM GOLD COIN, WORLD BREAKER!"

With a final maniacal cackle, he ran forward and jumped into the rift.

***

Chain Mail bucked down the door to his classroom and marched in proudly.

"I am Captain Chain Mail of her majesty's royal guard, and Mrs. Bittersweet, you are under arrest! For bitchiness!"

The classroom stared blankly at him. In the corner, his friend Cloudwing buried her face in her hooves, and Mrs. Bittersweet just blinked.

"Mister Chain Mail, this is most unorthodox," she said haughtily, "Take off that ridiculous armour, sit down, and do not disrupt my lesson or dare threaten me again, or else I will be speaking to your tutor."

Now it was Chain Mail's turn to blink disbelievingly. She had threatened to have him suspended for using sarcasm in her presence once, and now he had burst through the door waving a sword around, called her a bitch and said she was under arrest, and she just told him to sit down and get on with his work. This mare had some serious consistency problems, no doubt about it.

"I said you're under arrest!" he shouted, "Get down on the ground now!"

Mrs. Bittersweet raised an eyebrow, and then immediately reached under the desk and pulled out a sticky note. She scrawled something hastily on it and beckoned Chain Mail to come over, whereupon she reached out and gave it to him. The note read;

"Mr. Chain Mail has been disruptive in lessons and used threatening language and behaviour. Time out of lesson and phone call home recommended. -BS."

"Take that to Mr. Breaker's office and let him see it. You're out of this lesson for the rest of the period."

"But-" Chain Mail spluttered.

"Out."

Chain Mail sighed and hung his head.

"Yes miss..."

And so, Captain Chain Mail of the Equestrian royal guard passively walked out of the room like a spineless little wimp.

***

"We need to find a way out of here," Sliske said, more to herself than anypony else.

"How though?" Spike wondered, "Obviously this has got to be some kind of false reality...We're caged in this place. How do you get out of a prison like this?"

"By rejecting the reality," Sliske replied, "I'm a creature of consciousness. Sakrassi bodies are made out of the same ethereal material as pony souls. We exist in a mental state all the time. This is a mental landscape...I made places like this before. When I trapped the consciousness of a host body in a kind of false reality, to prevent them from distracting me or fighting back to regain control..."

Spike looked at her.

"So, rejecting this reality? How do you do that? How do we get out?"

Sliske looked around Carousel Boutique.

"There's an avatar. A tiny, almost insignificant portion of the mastermind behind everything, who takes a form of an individual in here and acts to reinforce the fantasy. It's an extension of the consciousness of whatever being controls this place, but it isn't exactly. The master in this case probably being Explodey, the avatar of our world isn't really a piece of Explodey's mind, so much as an agent of his created using Explodey's mind as a kind of template...if that makes any sense."

"Not in the slightest," Spike replied.

"The avatar though is the one who holds the world together. The more physical proximity you have to the avatar, the more chance the world has of suckering you in, making you ignore the inconsistencies between this place and the real world, and getting you absorbed into the fantasy. The avatar was nowhere near me when I awoke, so I knew something was wrong right from the get-go. You however seemed to be more affected."

Spike looked ashamed.

"It's no fault of your own. It takes extraordinary strong will to overcome the avatar face to face with them. But we have an edge now. We've already figured out that the world is a fake, thus our will is strong enough to overcome it. If we can find the avatar and kill it, the world with shatter around us, and we can drift freely into the rest of the mind, where I hope we can find the others."

That seemed to help the little dragon perk up a bit.

"Yeah!" he said confidently, "We'll find your friends, and Blueblood and the princess too! I'd rather have the real Luna than some fake copies of my old friends anyway."

He sighed.

"Still..."

Sliske swallowed her dignity and walked over to Spike's side to give him a quick hug.

"I've lost friends too. You're not alone."

***

Mystic, the sergeant and the blue earth pony soldier all stood still and waited for their deaths as the massive lumbering form of Super Mecha Hitler marched down the street towards them. Unlike regular Hitler, this one didn't bother with the skin suit, and was quite clearly just a giant metal pony with glowing red eyes, though it still had the little moustache and the short mane.

"Gentlecolts, it's been an honour," the sergeant said sincerely.

Mystic and the other private saluted in response. As the robot came for them, they all took off their hats and held them to their chests, closing their eyes and waiting for the inevitable.

Then, there was a loud booming sound, like a strike of thunder. Their eyes shot open and they looked up above them at the cloudy sky as a large white disc-shaped hole in the universe appeared. From within this strange portal, another large mechanical being dropped in. They all cringed as it crashed in the street below them, tearing up the asphalt and causing a shockwave that collapsed a bombed out building across from them.

They looked down to see that this new robot was human-shaped, standing upright and sporting a pair of arms with hands and fingers. Its head had no face other than a blue visor, and it had some sort of storage device on its back, full of what were probably bombs of some kind.

It had landed on its feet, and was crouched on the ground, crackling with electricity after just recovering from a malfunction. Soon though, it stood proud and tall before Super Mecha Hitler, coming up to the same height as him. It pointed at him with one of its fingers.

"LIBERTY PRIME, ONLINE. NEW MISSION: THE DESTRUCTION OF ANY AND ALL NAZI FORCES IN STALLIONGRAD."

"Oh, HELL yeah!" the sergeant cheered, "That's Liberty motherfucking Prime! The boys back home have come to help!"

"Back home?" Mystic repeated.

"Yep! I knew the good ol' U.S. of A wouldn't leave us hanging!"

"Wait, are we Americans?" asked the other soldier, "I thought we were Russian?"

"What the hell is Russia?"

"I thought we were Equestrian," said Mystic.

"Well we're not," the sergeant explained, "We're here on behalf of the American military. The Americans fought the nazis. Nopony else."

"Is it nopony or no-one? And hey, wait a minute! There were loads of ponies fighting the nazis! Russians for one, and the British for another."

"What the hell is Britain? Soldier, I'm beginning to think you're just making up countries now!"

"You know the British! They speak in posh accents, drink tea, have their own royal family and all of their successful wealthy businessmen turn out to be secretly evil and in the possession of nuclear weapons or space lasers, and most often find their plans foiled by suave secret agents with impractical gadgets."

"Oh, you're thinking of Trottingham. Which is not a country by the way. It's a city in Equestria."

Mystic raised an eyebrow.

"Wait...Are we living in a world where Britain and Trottingham both exist simultaneously? Russia and Stalliongrad? America and Equestria? And are we still talking about Second's America here? I have so many questions."

"Who's Second?"

Out in the street, Super Mecha Hitler's mouth opened up and revealed that inside his jaw was a cockpit, with a large control panel and a chair for the pilot, in which sat a familiar human.

"YO, Mystic Chant, homie! I heard yo needed an epic battle in dese giant robots an' shit. Dontcha worry, man. Your boy Second got it covered!"

Mystic didn't even know how to respond to that.

"Oh yeah! That's right!" Second continued, "I was really Hitler the whole time!"

"OHHHHHHHHHH SHIT! GODWIN'D SON!" the sergeant shouted.

Liberty Prime turned around and grabbed Mystic with his giant robot hands and pulled him out of the building. The confused and terrified unicorn went stiff with fear as Prime placed him on his shoulder.

"PILOT PROTOCOLS INITIATED. CURRENT DIRECTIVE: DESTROY SUPER MECHA HITLER."

***

Soft Spoken and the commodore leapt from the crow's nest of the rapidly sinking navy ship and just barely caught the edge of the Celestia. As they scrambled up onto the deck, Ze!zar came bounding over towards them to assist his captain.

"Sir," he greeted, "The Kraken is going to come for us next. What's your recommended course of action?"

Softy clutched his head. He felt a brief headache coming on, joined by a sudden urge to talk like a pirate, but he resisted for the moment and quickly recovered all his mental faculties.

"Load all the cannons and fire when the tentacles get in the way of them. We might be able to blast some of them off. This old ship may hold out a little longer than the other one, so we've got some time. Commodore Cider, try to get your ponies to help out as well!"

Cider nodded and ran off to go organise his crew, and Ze!zar headed back towards the ship's wheel. Softy was about to bark out some orders to his own ponies, but then there was a sound like a thunder strike, and a hole was torn in the sky. He looked up in confusion as a bunch of neon signs fell out of it and crashed into the ocean around them, splashing large waves of water over the deck of the Celestia and rocking the ship.

One particular sign fell into the water over by the other ship's wreckage and seemed to land right on top of the Kraken. The sign got caught in the monster's giant gaping maw and the beast began to thrash about to try and remove it, churning up more water around them. The waves began to carry the Celestia slowly away from it and placed it directly under the portal, from within which fell another pony.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!"

Gold Coin hit the deck hard. There was a sickening cracking sound, and tears welled up in his eyes. He didn't scream again though, and instead bit his tongue and nursed his broken leg.

"Somepony please kill me..." he whimpered.

"Goldie?!"

The yellow earth pony looked up to see Soft Spoken, and any traces of pain or discomfort vanished from his expression and were replaced with relief and gratitude.

"Softy! Thank Celestia I found you! The real you! You have no idea what I've been through! There was a pegasus version of you, and a black version of Second, and a giant robot, and I was in Las Pegasus, and Prince Blueblood became a superhero, and then Blueblood and the robot had sex in the street, and then-"

"STOP!"

"But-"

"NO! STOP THERE!" Softy ordered, "Look, I don't care. I stopped listening after you told me Blueblood fucked a robot. And in case you haven't noticed, I've got problems of my own. I woke up as a pirate, attacked a royal navy ship, and then an alicorn Second showed up with a Kraken, and me and Commodore Apple Cider-"

"Apple Cider?!" Gold Coin shouted, "Grandpa's here?!"

Softy paused.

"Ohhhhh...yeah...you're related...I forgot that..."

"You forgot that we were related? How? You only know about him because of me- Oh wait. Yeah, you said grandma left you for him...Oh. And he was a commodore...and you were a pirate raiding his ship...This is all kinds of awkward..."

Gold Coin scraped a hoof on the decking.

"Hmm...Actually, you're looking a lot younger than normal. Your mane even has colour! Is this...Is this based on real life?!"

Softy's eyes darted from side to side.

"I was in Las Pegasus because I actually went there before! Don't tell me you were a pirate Softy?!"

"Of course I wasn't!"

"Then why the maritime fantasy?!"

"I...Because..." he sighed, "My dad was a pirate. Okay? There. I said it. I grew up in a pirate port, lived on a pirate ship, my dad did pirate things, and I was adopted and taken back to Equestria by a very nice gentlecolt, who made a career of killing shitloads of pirates. There, that's the story of my childhood."

Gold Coin stared at him disbelievingly.

"You know, when we first met and you were shouting at Ancient Tome outside Sparkle Manor, I thought you were one of the normal ones. Especially after meeting freaks like Sliske and Explodey, and after Chain Mail became a cyborg and Mystic got possessed. I thought for a brief while that you and I were the only normal ones. But between you turning out to be a hundred and thirty years old, the power armour, the stare, and now this, I just don't know what to think of you anymore."

Commodore Cider jumped in to interrupt the conversation.

"These ponies aren't listening to me!" he shouted, "We've only got a few minutes before the Kraken kills us all! Captain Spoken, please, think of something!"

Gold Coin was briefly immobilised by the sight of a younger version of his grandfather, but quickly shook himself out of it, reminding himself that none of it was real.

"Softy!" he shouted, "I escaped the Las Pegasus world by killing the messed up version of you and breaking the universe! Maybe if we kill some bizarro version of somepony else you know here, it'll break this pirate world too and take the Kraken with it!"

The other stallion turned his attention to Apple Cider, who backed away nervously. Neither of the two ponies could bring themselves to attack him, to murder in cold blood, even if it was just an illusion. To Gold Coin he was family, and to Softy, now back to his usual self, the idea of doing such a thing was just wrong. He couldn't shake himself out of it. The world was too real for him to convince himself that it wouldn't be just as wrong to kill here as it would out there.

Not to worry though. They were spared their moral dilemma as one of the Kraken's tentacles reached out of the water, wrapped around him, and crushed his head.

"Ewwww..." Softy shuddered.

"Who else is there on board that we know?!" Gold Coin demanded.

"Ponies we know from real life?" Softy asked, "Let me think...Uh..."

"Sir! Orders?!" Ze!zar shouted as he ran over to Softy's side again.

Gold Coin took one look at him.

"AHA!"

He immediately rushed around behind Ze!zar, twisted in place and bucked him as hard as he could. The zebra was launched through the air and over the side of Celestia. Softy ran over to the side of the ship and stared as Ze!zar plunged right into the open mouth of Kraken.

Beneath the water, the ponies could see white cracks piercing through the skin of the monster. More came out of its mouth, and the cracks soon breached the surface and began to crawl through the air. Then the beast seemed to shrink and distort, and if it was being compressed.

The portal this time had opened inside of the Kraken's stomach, and it was being sucked into it from the inside out. It was a gruesome sight to see, but eventually the eldritch sea horror disappeared into the void, and then the giant white emptiness began to expand, sucking in more and more sea water as it grew.

"That's the way forward!" Gold Coin shouted, "Sail into the abyss! Full speed ahead!"

***

There was a thunderclap above. Spike and Sliske both looked at the ceiling of Carousel Boutique, wondering what was going on outside.

"What was that?" asked Spike.

Sliske was about to answer, but then was cut off as she heard a distant scream that was slowly getting louder.

"AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

CRASH!

The roof shattered and bits of timber and miscellaneous items stored in the attic came tumbling down on top of the two of them. A body hit the floor before them, and laid in a heap. Sliske and Spike were knocked back into the far wall of the room, where they laid for a moment before shakily climbing to their hooves again.

"What in Equestria just- WHO BROKE MY ROOF?!"

Rarity had just come through the door, and was now staring incredulously at the hole that somepony had punched through the upper floors of her shop. Her eyes darted over to Spike and Sliske, who both shrugged, and then homed in on a unicorn in red, white and blue who was coughing and slowly standing up again.

"Who are you!? And what did you just do to my roof?!" she demanded.

Prince Blueblood looked up at her and smiled.

"Cap'n Trottin'am at your service ma'am, supersoldier, 'ero, an' all around dashin'ly 'andsome stallion."

Rarity blinked.

"YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU! I haven't forgotten you from the gala you- you- "

"TACTICAL DEFENCE!" Blueblood shouted.

The prince pulled a big round shield emblazoned with the same symbol that was on his uniform out of nowhere, and raised it in front of him to hide from Rarity's fit of rage.

"Oh, don't think you can hide from me by-"

The ponies all looked around them in confusion. There was that sound of thunder again. What was-

CRASH!

Everypony jumped out of the way just in time, as a huge slimly tentacle smashed through the side of the building and nearly crushed them. It landed right on top of Blueblood, but fortunately he was able to use his shield to protect himself and crawl out from underneath it.

"What the 'ell?"

There was a primal roar coming from outside. An entire wall of the boutique had been destroyed, and the damage was spreading. Sliske and Spike looked up, and saw that the cracks in the ceiling were moving over towards them.

"Uh-oh," said Spike.

Blueblood made a dive in their direction, landing on top of the both of them. He angled his shield upwards just as the roof caved in, and the rubble bounced off the top and protected the two other from harm. Stone rained down and dust was kicked up everywhere, and soon they were all choking in the dust cloud, but they were alive. Blueblood pushed up with his shield and shoved another load of rubble off them, and the three both stood up to see the damage.

Carousel Boutique was gone. The whole place had collapsed, and they were now just standing on top of a pile of broken stone. Laying half buried under some of it was the tentacle that caused the damage, and following it to its source, the ponies saw that it belonged to a gigantic Kraken that laid in the middle of Ponyville, roughly where the town hall used to be. From the glassy look in its one visible eye, it was already dead.

"...Huh..." Sliske muttered, "I have no idea what actually just happened."

Then, an ominous sound began to fill the air...

"Oh no, what now?" asked Spike.

Sliske tapped his shoulder and pointed over to the other side of the wreckage of Carousel Boutique, where a bunch of cracks were growing out from underneath a piece of roof.

"What's going on?" asked Blueblood.

"Kill a world's avatar, we can escape the world and move to a different one," Sliske explained quickly, "Guess that means Rarity was it."

"I think that happened to me," Blueblood replied, "Tha's how I got separated from Prime and Goldie in Las Pegasus."

"Well, let's not get separated from each other again."

Sliske put her hooves around Spike and Blueblood's necks and held them both close. A white portal began to emerge from beneath the wreckage which was slowly expanding, and they began to feel a light pull as they were drawn towards it.

"Hold on everypony, we're in for a bumpy ride!"

***

"I'm very disappointed in you, boy."

Chain Mail cringed and marched along behind his mother obediently. Across the street, another pony waved sympathetically at him.

"Yes mommy."

"Getting suspended! For shame! I thought you weren't the kind to mess around in class! I thought you were taking your studies seriously!"

Chain Mail sat up and glared at his mother.

"I am!" he shouted, "Mrs. Bittersweet is a bitch! She can and will suspend you for anything! I don't even have to do something wrong for her to demand my suspension!"

"You threatened her with a sword and told her to get up against the wall."

"...Oh yeah."

The mare rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Chains, I'm not angry. I'm just very disappointed. You were doing so well! What even brought on this business anyway? Look, I know you're very happy that you finally got your cutie mark. If it took me seventeen years, I know I'd be enthusiastic about it too, but sweetie, there's a time and a place for this sort of thing, and this is no way to-"

"It's not about that!" he protested, "It was about...It was Broad Sword! He made me do it!"

The mare blinked once, and then sighed.

"Seventeen years old, and still doing stupid bets with your friends? Chains, you need to grow up. Start taking things seriously. I'm not going to let all that money I saved so you could go here go to waste. When we get home, you and I are going to have a proper discussion, and sort this whole business out. And we're going to start with getting you focused back on your studies. You want to be a royal guard so bad? Prove it. Because I'm not letting you go for tryouts until you can impress me academically."

The two ponies continued to walk along in silence uninterrupted for about twelve minutes. Eventually though, they passed by a bush, and Chain Mail stopped as he heard somepony hiding inside it trying to catch his attention.

"Psssssst."

He looked over at the bush. It momentarily parted to reveal Broad Sword's face. Chain Mail went over to talk to him as his mother continued on ahead, not noticing that he had stopped.

"What is it?"

"If you want to escape this world, I need to die, and you can't bring your mother with you."

Chain Mail looked back down the street at his mother, who continued to be oblivious that he had hung back.

"But-"

"She's not real. None of us are. What is real, is your friends. And they're coming to rescue you, just like back in the Mages' Guild. Remember?"

"No! I don't remember! And I don't want to! That was...I was in that suit...And you and Explodey and me were...And then you...Second...he..."

He fell down on the sidewalk.

"Why would he do this to me?" he sobbed quietly, "I thought Explodey was my friend..."

"He is your friend," the Broad Sword construct said comfortingly, "He's just not himself right now. It's the zombies. He's part of a legion of thousands of other voices. Go and find him. Out there, somewhere in the labyrinth of thoughts, is a unicorn that badly needs some help from his friends. That's you, Softy, Sliske, Gold Coin, and Mystic. Find them, find him, and get out of here."

Chain Mail looked back down the street once more and nodded tearfully. Broad Sword reached deeper into the bush and drew his own weapon, which passed to the other stallion and pointed at his own throat.

"Ready when you are, cappy."

***

Liberty Prime and Super Mecha Hitler rushed at each other and collided full force. The metal pony reared up on his back legs and crashed down on Liberty, while the more humanoid robot wrapped his arms around Super Mecha Hitler's neck and pushed back. The robots wrestled in the middle of Stalliongrad, with Second still in the cockpit laughing maniacally, and Mystic barely clinging onto Prime's shoulder and shouting instructions into his ear, which the robot seemed to listen to.

"Blast him!" the blue unicorn ordered.

Prime's eyebeams activated, and Super Mecha Hitler was thrown back. There was a massive scorch on his armour where the green plasma beams hit, and both he and his pilot seemed none too pleased about that.

The despotic dictator activated his own eyebeams as Prime countered again, and the lasers met in the middle of the air. Liberty Prime's green rays and Hitler's red ones both began to form a ball of pure energy in the middle ground between them, which built up and exploded, demolishing several nearby buildings and slightly damaging both of them, but also taking out several nazi patrols on the street below.

"Mini-nukes!" Mystic shouted.

Prime reached into the case on his back and pulled out one of the bombs he was carrying. With a well placed throw, he launched it like a grenade over to Super Mecha Hitler, who closed his jaw just in time to prevent Second being hit by the blast. There was nothing he could do to save his eyebeams however, and just like with regular Hitler, his eyes were blasted out and his laser functions were disabled.

"Now punch him!"

"FASCISM IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF FAILURE."

Liberty Prime ran full pelt towards Hitler, pulling back one arm and readying a mighty punch. He jumped as he got in range and smashed the massive metal monster right in the face. The jaw flew off, and so did the cockpit with Second still inside. The human screamed as he fell and landed in the street below.

"That's Second down there!" said Mystic, "Kill him with radioactive lasers!"

"FREEDOM IS THE SOVERIGN RIGHT OF EVERY AMERICAN!"

Prime blasted the ground where Second landed with laser and plasma weaponry. The ground was melted into glowing green mush before long, and Second was disintegrated by the unparalleled force of the attack. However, much like Prime was capable of acting independently, so was Super Mecha Hitler.

"ACTIVATING AUTOPILOT," Super Mecha Hitler announced.

Liberty Prime tried to ready another mini-nuke, but Super Mecha Hitler caught him by surprise and charged into him, smashing the patriotic hero into a wall and crushing one of his arms under a giant metal hoof.

Prime glared at his assailant through his visor.

"DEMOCRACY WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED."

His eye beams blasted Super Mecha Hitler in the face again, and the furious fuehrer staggered backwards, seemingly in pain. He let out a rage-fuelled scream and prepared to attack again, but the damaged but still functional Liberty Prime rushed forward and grabbed his head in his good hand.

"THE LAST DOMINO FALLS HERE."

His fingers tightened around the giant metal pony head and Liberty Prime squeezed for all he was worth. The metal began to bend out of shape, and Super Mecha Hitler gave one last cry of terror as Prime crushed his head in his hand.

The giant robot thrashed about for a few seconds more before going limp and still. Liberty Prime let go of Super Mecha Hitler, who fell to the floor unceremoniously. Just to be safe, Prime blasted him with lasers once more, and didn't let up until the whole robot was nothing but highly radioactive slag.

"...I can't believe we actually did it!" said Mystic, "We killed TWO Hitlers!"

There was a thunderous boom, and Mystic looked up at the sky to see a gigantic portal opening above them. At first, nothing came from it, but then suddenly it started raining tonnes and tonnes of water. The streets around them quickly became flooded, and Stalliongrad filled up with water until it was up to Liberty Prime's neck.

Mystic climbed onto the robot's head to get clear, but then a huge Equestrian galleon fell out of the hole too, and crashed into the flooded street near him. The impact created a huge wave of water, which splashed over him and Prime. The robot seemed fine, but Mystic was drenched by the wave, and nearly fell off.

"Wha...?"

"Hey, is that Mystic?" said a voice, "HEY MYSTIC! OVER HERE!"

The unicorn looked over at the galleon, and was surprised to see that it was being sailed by Soft Spoken and Gold Coin. Softy was dressed a pirate and had taken the ship wheel, while Gold Coin was preparing a rope to throw to him.

"Softy! Gold Coin!" he shouted, "Please get me out of here! This place is freaky, and I just fought a giant robot with another giant robot!"

"I saw a giant robot too!" said Gold Coin, "What are the chances, amirite?"

Mystic grabbed onto the rope and pulled himself through the water and over to the galleon. Once he was near, Softy and Gold Coin came over to the edge to help hoist him up and get him on board.

"Okay, basically, we're in Explodey's mind," Softy explained, "To get out, we need to kill a specific pony. That's how Goldie escaped Las Pegasus, and that's how I escaped the pirate world. Is there anypony here who's still alive?"

Up above them, the sergeant stuck his head out the window.

"Hey, Private Chant! You did good, kid! There'll be a promotion ready for you when we get back home!"

Softy looked at Gold Coin.

"Fire the cannons."

***

Three portals burst open at the same time. Through one, an unclothed prince, a now fully-sized purple dragon and a dark unicorn mare fell into the place and landed in a heap on the floor. Through another stepped Captain Chain Mail in his traditional royal guard armour. And through the third, Soft Spoken, Gold Coin and Mystic Chant, back to being a colt again, sailed in on a pirate ship.

The three groups had emerged onto the surface of the moon by the looks of it, and looked above them simultaneously to see the beautiful sight of Equestria hanging in the sky above. The ponies on the pirate ship climbed off and cantered over to the others, and the seven of them all met as one.

"Sooooo..." Softy said awkwardly, "What happened to you guys then?"

"I revisited my old college," Chain Mail answered.

"I woke up as a unicorn mare and still haven't changed back," Sliske replied.

"I got to see all my old friends again, before they were crushed by a falling Kraken."

"I became a super'ero, and then fucked a giant robot."

Gold Coin cringed.

"I sadly was there to watch him fuck the giant robot."

"And I piloted a giant robot to fight another giant robot," Mystic chimed in.

They all looked to Softy.

"I became a pirate and fought a Kraken, with no giant robots involved."

"Hmm..." Spike pondered, "Coincidences keep piling up."

"I'm sure all these incidents are unrelated," said Gold Coin, "What's important right now, is where the fuck are we?"

Good question. Yes, it did appear to be the moon, but that was only a guess. They'd never been to the moon before, after all. And they seemed to be able to breathe here just fine, which according to every physics class every one of them had ever taken, should not be possible. Then again, by this point they were all very much aware of the fact that this was a dream world, so the laws and physics and logic didn't necessarily apply.

"I think..." Spike began, "I think this is Princess Luna's dream."

"That makes sense," Chain Mail agreed, "The princess did spent a whole thousand years of her life on the moon. Or in the moon. I'm not sure which. It isn't really clear."

"But where is she?" asked Softy.

Spike loudly shushed the group, and held still. Everypony was silent, and for a moment, they could hear the very faint sound of crying. Spike shifted looking around the desolate surface of the moon in search of the source of the noise. Eventually, he pointed them in the direction of a crater a short walk away from where they'd parked the pirate ship.

The group approached the crater as stealthily as possible, and once they reached the edge, they peeked over the side.

In the centre of the crater below, two alicorns held each other softly. Luna looked far smaller and younger than they normally knew her, with a plain blue mane made of normal hair far removed from her usual style, which looked like a piece of the night sky itself and rippled as if being blown by invisible cosmic winds. The other mare who they assumed to be a younger Celestia was much the same, with a regular if unusually long pink mane instead of the rainbow of colours usually associated with her.

"I'm sorry, sister...I'm so sorry..." Luna cried as she embraced the illusion of Celestia.

The illusion meanwhile just continued to hold her close and comfort her. It didn't speak any words or even move much. Evidently, Luna had been repeating those words to herself over and over again for a while now, and the two had spent the whole time so far just laying here.

Soft Spoken looked at the others sadly. They all looked somewhat sombre right now, but he noticed that Spike was the only one actually shedding a tear. They were trying to silently decide among themselves whether to go down and confront them, but Spike didn't wait for them to decide on anything, ignoring them entirely.

This had nothing to do with them.

The dragon crawled down on all fours and slid into the crater and over to the two alicorns in the middle. Luna briefly opened her eyes between bouts of crying and looked up at Spike in confusion. He picked the princess up in a single clawed hand, despite her protests at being separated from Celestia, and held her up to his cheek.

"You still haven't forgotten, have you?"

His voice was still powerful, particularly in the dead silence of space, but he spoke softly as he could.

"I...I could n-never forget," the princess sobbed, "I t-turned my back on my sister...and I hurt her...and...I was so alone for so long...I thought I was lonely before...b-because nopony appreciated my n-night...but I never realised how m-much she m-meant to me..."

"She took you back. She forgave you for everything."

"I know. It just...hurts..."

Luna sniffled and dried her tears.

"She did though...She took me back, even after everything I did to her, and it was like it always used to be...and now she's...gone...I don't know what I'm going to do without her, Spike...She wasn't just a sister to me. She was my best friend too. Without her...Or...with her, out there as one of those...things..."

"...I miss her too."

The others suddenly felt like they were intruding on a very private moment.

"Ah-hem."

The group turned their attention to the Celestia construct. Luna and Spike hadn't even noticed that it had wandered away while they were talking. Now it came to them, and seemed to want to speak.

"You're here to see the master," it said matter-of-factly.

Being the one most experienced dealing with the princess, Captain Chain Mail stepped forward to address her ghost.

"We are," he answered.

"Luna's world is the last barrier," the fake Celestia said softly, "When this place crumbles, you'll meet him."

"You're the one tied to this world," Chain Mail observed, "Like Broad Sword in mine."

The construct nodded.

"If you wish, I can end it now."

Chain Mail looked over at Spike and Luna. The dragon was staring in their direction, and he gave an affirmative nod.

"Do it."

'Celestia' spread her wings, and everything went white.

***

"...Okay," said Gold Coin, "NOW where are we?"

Somehow, the group had moved from the moon to an even more barren and featureless environment. Before, they had as many as five different colours around them. White for the moon's surface, black for the space around them, yellow for the distant sun and blue and green for Equestria above. This place...everything was just fog.

Luna was back to her normal form as well, and looking down at her hooves as if seeing them for the first time. She had only just realised that she was in the company of the other Elements of Harmony and Blueblood, and was now feeling a little self conscious about her emotional display earlier.

Actually, her change was the latest in a noticeable trend. After everypony left their respective world, they all changed into more immediately recognisable forms, except Blueblood who wasn't normal until leaving Sliske and Spike's world.

Soft Spoken was old again, Gold Coin was no longer filthy from sleeping in a gutter, Chain Mail...still was not a cyborg, but was no longer college age at least. Mystic was a colt again, Prince Blueblood no longer looked like something out of a gay pride parade, and Spike was once more twice the size of your average hydra.

And then there was Sliske, who despite everypony else's changes, remained a regular dark unicorn mare. It was starting to get more and more noticeable to the others. At first they had dismissed it like all the other strangeness they'd come across, but Sliske's form was the one persistent remnant of their dreams.

"I'm not sure..." Softy replied, "Let's have a look around. Everypony stay here..."

The old stallion began to walk off into the mists, but before he could take more than a single step forward, a tall dark figure came barrelling out of the empty whiteness and tackled him to the ground.

"SOFTY!"

"GAH! GET OFF ME!"

Soft Spoken scrambled away from the figure, who then stood up to his full height, revealing himself to be a young human wearing a big yellow hardhat. He grinned at them.

"Guys! It's you again!" he said happily, "You have no idea what I've been through the past few hours! Check this out! I have hands! You gotta feel this, guys. I am tripping balls right now."

Softy raised an eyebrow.

"Explodey?" he asked.

"Yep!"

Gold Coin's expression darkened, and he growled in anger.

"You..." he seethed.

Explodey stopped smiling.

"Uh..."

The yellow earth pony leapt forward and knocked Explodey over onto his back. Once he hit the ground, Gold Coin immediately jumped on top of him and pinned his arms to the floor.

"Goldie!" Explodey cried in surprise, "Look, isn't this a little sudden?! You haven't even taken me out for dinner yet!"

"YOU!" the business pony raged, "YOU ASSIMILATED US, YOU BASTARD!"

Explodey blinked.

"Oh. Did I?"

"YES YOU DID!"

"Uhh...Sorry?"

"SORRY?! IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?! YOU PRACTICALLY FUCKING ATE US!"

Explodey's face screwed up in disgust.

"Eww...Goldie, trust you to think of that."

Gold Coin slammed Explodey against the ground again.

"GET US OUT NOW!" he demanded.

"Alright! Alright!" the transformed unicorn yielded, "Sheesh Goldie, anger issues much? And can you please get off me?"

The earth pony reluctantly climbed off, still fuming. Explodey sat up again cracked his fingers.

"Alright, let's do this."

He held out his hands in front of him for a moment, and remained completely still. For a moment, the others didn't interrupt him, thinking it was part of the ritual. But then Explodey began to look more and more concerned, and stared at his own hands.

"Uh...Guys? Bit of a problem. I don't really know how to get us out. As in...any of us. I think I'm trapped too."

"How?!" Chain Mail asked disbelievingly, "You're the one who brought us here! This is your mind and body! How can you be trapped too?!"

Explodey shrugged.

"Hell if I know. I wasn't even aware this wasn't real until about a few minutes ago."

"What? This place?" said Gold Coin, "How can you think this is real? It's a goddamn empty misty mind land. What about this place at all resembles real life?!"

"I thought I'd died again," Explodey answered, "As I recall, the afterlife looked a lot like this..."

"Leaving aside the massive theological implications of a real actual afterlife for a moment," Chain Mail interrupted, "I think we need to address why you aren't in control."

Explodey looked at him blankly.

"In my own world, there was a construct of some kind that took the shape of Broad Sword, who said he was partially based on your own mindset. He talked about the legion. The legion of voices from the other zombies you absorbed. But he said you were a part of them. Where are they? Are they in control right now? How does this whole hive mind thing actually work? I certainly don't feel like I'm part of some greater collective."

"Hmm..." Explodey pondered, "Well...I remember I exploded...And then I was a sludge monster...After that, I reached out and grabbed all the zombies I could and started assimilating them...I just wanted to put them all out of sight and out of mind, so I quarantined them."

"'Quarantined'? The hell is that supposed to mean?" Gold Coin demanded.

"I found them all their own mind space and stuffed them in there. Just as a place to hold them while I figured something out. As far as I know, all that biomass is still in my actual body, just compressed. I should be able to eject them all completely whole again, but that assumes I'm actually in control, and I have somewhere to dump a couple thousand zombies.

"But...I think I may have made a teeny tiny little mistake, because the little bit of mind space I set aside from them was bigger than the one I'm in, which is this. Control of the body goes to whoever has the most control over the brain. The zombies were already a hive mind when I absorbed them, so they act like a single indvidual. If we occupied the same space, they'd just be voices in my head while I would be in control.

"Thing is though, they're not. I separated us, and most of my mind is being used to host them. They've got the majority of the brain under control, and that means I'm no longer in control, and no longer able to bring down the barrier by myself to take back control. And what's worse, being partially merged into my own mind seems to have lended the zombie hive mind some degree of intelligence. And I may be mistaken, but I think that they think that they're me."

"You think...that they're thinking that they're them and..."

Gold Coin trailed off and just stared into space looking confused.

"The zombies think they're Explodey," Sliske summed up.

"Yes! Exactly!" their friend exclaimed, pointing at Sliske, "By the way, why are you a mare now?"

"Why are you a human now?"

"Touché."

"No, that was a legitimate question."

"ANYWAY! So the collective of zombies is basically the mastermind behind this. It's a legion of zombies, who think they're me, except a me who is also a part of a collective of zombies, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't."

"The zombies all believe that they are Explodey," Sliske translated, "but they also believe that they are part of the zombie hive mind, so they believe that they are Explodey, and that they absorbed the zombies and now are in control of them."

"And they are who put you all in your personal fantasy worlds," Explodey continued, "which were based on what they interpret your wants and desires as from your memories, which both they and I have access to. Like for example, they placed Gold Coin in Las Pegasus because that was where he lost his virginity, to a changeling hooker."

Gold Coin's cheeks burned and the others all turned to stare at him.

"SHE WAS NOT A HOOKER. SHE QUIT THAT JOB."

"Goldie!" Chain Mail chided, "I can't believe you! Really? A changeling? You know they don't really mean anything they say right? You NEVER get intimate with one of them. I know they try to sucker you in with that whole 'I can be anypony you want me to be' schtick, and promise to love you forever, but really all they do is suck you dry, in every possible sense of the term."

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience, cappy!" Gold Coin snapped.

Chain Mail was taken aback.

"I am not!" he replied indignantly, "I just happen to be a little wiser than you apparently."

"Nope. He is," Explodey added helpfully.

Chain Mail glared at the former unicorn.

"This doesn't matter!" Gold Coin shouted, "The point is, the mastermind fucked up, because I hate Las Pegasus and I never went back there again for a reason!"

Explodey looked crestfallen.

"Oh," he said, "Well, at least tell me the rest of you liked your fantasy worlds? It was a version of me that created them after all, and I like to think I'm a good judge of character. What about you Softy? How was the pirate world?"

"It's going to haunt me forever."

"But...It was based on your childhood! Memories of your father, and other such things!"

"Explodey?"

"Yes, Softy?"

"I hated my father."

Explodey looked around at the others. He settled on Chain Mail, who answered immediately.

"You made me relive going to Mrs. Bittersweet's classes. Fuck you."

He turned to Mystic.

"I'm now terrified by the thought of ever daydreaming again."

Then to Blueblood.

"You made me realise I'm sexually attracted t' robots. I 'ope yer proud of y'self."

"Mine wasn't so bad..." Sliske mumbled, "At least until the Kraken showed up and killed everypony..."

Chain Mail cleared his throat.

"Explodey, weren't you explaining something?"

"Oh right! Yeah. So...ahem. So, point is, the legion of zombies that has convinced itself that it is led by me currently controls my body. The rest of us are all stuck in my headspace, in which there is no avatar to kill to break the walls down. The legion is unaware of my existence or what happened to the rest of you, and we've got no way of escaping from my mind or my body either."

Sliske gasped.

"I...I know how we can get out!" she announced.

"How?!" Chain Mail demanded.

Sliske turned to Princess Luna and Spike.

"Princess! Do you remember the exorcism spell? Developed during my original arrival in Equestria, and used most recently when you prevented me from taking over Spike's mind?"

"...Of course," Luna answered, "I don't see how it will help us though. It's meant for-"

"-Forcibly removing a Sakrassi from a pony host body. Use it on a pony in here and their very soul would be torn out of Explodey, separate from their body, which would remain absorbed. It'd likely kill them. But Sakrassi like myself are practically ghosts! We're beings of energy, and thought, and spirituality. We're disembodied souls already! Use that on me, and I can break free in my normal form and confront the legion-controlled Explodey in the outer world!"

Luna looked back over her shoulder at Spike, who just shrugged at her.

"How do we know this will actually work?" she asked, "I'm using magic in a dream world! What if it just rips you out of the imaginary host body that you're inhabiting in here?"

"That's the thing, princess. I'm not in a host. It took me a while to fully grasp it, but this is my natural form in here. Haven't you all noticed it when you went between worlds and snapped back to the way you are now? We're all taking the forms of our own perceptions of ourselves! That's why Chain Mail isn't a cyborg in here, but he still has his royal guard armour! It's an integral part of his identity!"

Soft Spoken blinked.

"So...You...Think of yourself as a unicorn mare?"

Sliske looked about awkwardly.

"...I guess I do. Truth be told...I have spent most of my life on this planet. Little over two thousand years now. And when I came here, I was only slightly older than Softy is now. Too much time around ponies...Yeah. I think I've gone native. What can I say? You've all rubbed off on me."

The group then turned their attention to Explodey.

"And he thinks of himself as a male human?" Softy asked.

"I have a head full of weird leftover knowledge about humans from Second," he explained, "It gets so confusing at times. I think I inherited more from my creator than I thought I did."

"Yes, your random ability to turn into a sludge monster and absorb pony souls would seem to indicate that."

"Everypony! Focus!" Sliske snapped, "Princess, ready the spell."

Luna sighed and stepped forward.

"You'd better be right about this."

***

"Agggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!"

The creature that thought itself to be Explodey McGee staggered back as what appeared to be a black cloud of smoke burst out of its chest and swirled around the room. It fell onto its knees, and the new entity looked up at Sliske as his simplistic but distinctive teeth and eyes formed on the outside of the smoke cloud.

"Sliske," it said, "How Did You Escape? Why Did You? Did We Not Do It For You? We Sought To Bring Eternal Bliss. A Paradise For You And Our Friends To Enjoy, In The Mental Landscape We Devised. We Could Have Been Friends Forever."

The ghost-like alien replied telepathically, just as the legion were.

"No, Explodey. We will never be friends. Because you're ugly, and you smell. Also, the others said your fantasy worlds suck and are poorly designed. Did you know Softy hated his father? I certainly didn't. I suggest you break down the walls in your mind and go find them. They want to talk to you."

Legion-Explodey looked cross.

"How Dare They! I Shall Go Give Them A Piece Of My Mind Immediately..."

The unicorn thing squinted its eyes as it concentrated for a second. Sliske waited. Then, the eyes snapped wide open again.

"NO!"

Then it began to cough and fell over onto the floor.

"AGH!" Explodey screamed in his regular voice as he began rolling about, "OH FUCK I'VE GOT A HEADACHE! IT'S LIKE I WAS JUST HIT WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER!"

"Explodey!" said Sliske, "Can you hear me?!"

"Just a second...UMPH..."

Explodey laid down on his side again, seeming to rest easy.

"Okay..." he sighed, "I'm good now...I've got them under control...They're locked away in isolation again...And this time, I have a majority stake in the brain."

He slowly stood up again and looked around them curiously. They appeared to be locked in the cargo hold of the Prometheus. Clearly somepony knew what they were doing. Trapping him in here probably saved all of Ponyville. They probably had the Brotherhood of Man to thank for that.

"Well, what now?" asked the alien, "Are you going to get the others out yet?"

"Oh, right. Yeah. They're still inside me, aren't they?"

He shrugged.

"Alright. Let's do this. Sliske, fetch me some toilet paper."

END

Author's notes:

...Jesus.

Anyway, that was Master Mind. This fucking chapter...So many ideas all the way through, and then when I got to the final scenes my creative process just ground to a halt. You can blame that for the delay, and I apologise for it. I'll make it up somehow. Gonna try not to take this long again, though no promises.

I've never suffered a lack of inspiration before, but there's a first time for everything. Maybe the rest of the chapter just drained me. You've seen all the weirdness I threw into this, right? Maybe my imagination just suffered an overload. Especially after I got the idea to put Liberty Prime in this. I like to think of his and Blueblood's sequences as a metaphor for internet racists. Ever go to a Youtube comments section or a forum thread, and see a Brit and an American arguing over which country is best and shouting racial slurs at each other? I've seen that, and my first thought was always, "Just fuck already!"

Well, onto other things. First of all, Shades of Grey is still ongoing and Draven's coming along nicely with it. For those of you that have not yet read it, I suggest you do. Even people who disliked this story liked that one, and some readers of both have said they actually prefer it. Take the hint, people.

And secondly, spoiler alert, I had a look at some of the song previews for season three. Crystal ponies? Goddamn does that sound awesome. And I heard another mention of Cadance in there. Sounds like she's going to be a recurring character. Fucking called it, and so psyched for it too.

Sadly, the way Human's universe is set up, I probably won't be able to adapt the story to season three canon the way I adapted it for the season two finale, at least not without creating large plot holes and making it feel really forced. Looks like the story's shaping up to become AU, with the timeline branching off after the royal wedding. Then again, that was the plan anyway, so nothing's changed really.

Lastly, I went out a few days ago to see the new Spiderman movie. It's amazing, and you should all see it.

Next Chapter: I get back on my meds, and things get more sane.

Interlude 3: Family and Friends

From within the depths of a large wooden barrel of fresh water, a number of fish cowered at the bottom, looking up fearfully towards the surface of the water. A face loomed over them. A scarred, burnt face with a psychotic grin straight out of the nightmares of a traumatised child. It leaned in close, so that its nose was almost touching the water, and it opened its mouth to speak. To the primitive brains of the fish, the sound it made was indescribable.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY FISHIES!" Second screamed at the water barrel, "I GOT YOU A GRENADE!"

The human pulled the pin and threw the grenade into the water. It immediately began to sink, and he turned away from the barrel and ran across the throne room to escape the coming blast.

"TAKE COVER!"

He scooped up Silver Vein in his arms and dove over an overturned table resting on its side. The two peeked out over the top of it as the grenade detonated and the barrel exploded in a glorious spectacle of wood splinters and flying water. The dead fish scattered across the throne room afterward were just the icing on the cake.

Second laughed heartily.

"Oh boy! That was classic! We are so doing that again!"

"Heh...Yeah..." Silver said nervously.

"You don't look like you're having fun."

"...I kept fish when I was a little filly."

Second ruffled her mane and vaulted over the table to go retrieve the remains of the barrel. He casually lifted all the wood and water off the floor with his developing telekinesis and began to reform it for another go.

"Go down to Celestia's aquarium and get me some more," he instructed.

Silver smiled and gave a dutiful salute. As she left, Second continued reconstructing the barrel and collecting up the water to refill it. There had once been a time where he could only use his telekinesis to affect Sliske, or other elements of the MLP world that he was ultimately responsible for creating. For whatever reason though, his powers were growing.

It was a noticeable growth too. The fact that he was able to use such powers on just about anything now was indication that his span of control was increasing. Having enhanced abilities was always welcome, but he couldn't help but feel like it was an omen of sorts. It felt to him like the universe wasn't confident in his ability to fight. Like he needed this power boost if he was going to match his opponent in the final battle.

And that just made him wonder. If he wasn't strong enough yet to take on his final enemy, just who was he supposed to fight?

Hahahahaha...

There it was again. A distant echoing sound that made the human's hairs stand on end. There was a chill in the throne room, and he remained frozen in place.

"...Where are you?" he asked.

He was answered by the sound of footsteps behind him. He didn't dare move. He was terrified by what he thought he would see, but he was very aware that it was getting closer to him. The thing was wearing a pair of heavy boots that echoed loudly on the stone floor. When it was just a short distance away, it stopped walking.

Second swallowed, and looked over at his shoulder at the visitor. He turned around to face him properly as he recognised the skinny, middle-aged man standing before him. The man looked at him blankly through a pair of square glasses, and he wore a grey suit and a tie, all for the purposes of emphasising his mundaneness, and his lack of a soul.

"Howard," he said simply.

"Nathan..."

***

Several thousand light years away from Equestria meanwhile, a meeting took place. In the heart of the Chellgrad system, on the planet of Nostos, a high council composed of the oldest and wisest members of all the united alien races that made up their society, met to discuss the coming danger.

"Order! Order!" the Chairman shouted over the din, "We've much to go over..."

The tentacle faced being sat back down in his chair again, and drummed on the table with his many slimy fingers.

"Now," he began, finally with the attention of the whole room, "As you are all no doubt aware, we're dealing with a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale here. Whole worlds consumed; gone, in the blink of an eye. It's my sad duty to report that we most recently lost contact with the Gelrocksyss system in the outer rim of our native galaxy. My sincerest condolences to all of our Galsranth representatives."

A number of mostly liquid creatures inside robotic suits bowed slightly, in a gesture indicating sadness or displeasure, though they were silent of any kind of vocal response.

"What we're dealing with here, we aren't quite sure," the Chairman continued, "Refugees that came back from the forefront of these lost systems report an amorphous yellow mass, moving through space at an alarming speed. Some call it 'indescribable', but others have managed to give vague details all the same. All reports do consistently show for example, that our mysterious enemy is a being of great size, almost unimaginable to us; fully capable of engulfing entire planetary systems."

The Chairman's fifth and sixth eyes, which were located on the end of a pair of stalks jutting out of the side of his head, looked around the room at the rest of the council members.

"So, what do we plan to do about this?" he questioned.

"What can we do?!" shouted a burly crustacean alien, "You heard what the surviving Time Lords said! If Gallifrey can fall before this monster, what chance do the rest of us have?!"

"I would like to point out, Councilman Kralquest," said a bug-eyed female with an extremely long neck, "that the accounts we got from the Time Lords suggested that Gallifrey's fall was not the work of the monster itself. It may have been destroyed, but we still do not know if it was the monster's work, or that of an inside saboteur, and the Time Lords are still being tight lipped about where this thing actually came from in the first place."

"Are you accusing the Time Lords of keeping secrets from us?" asked the Chairman.

"I did not mean to imply the Time Lords were keeping anything from us in any official capacity. The refugees do not represent their government after all, and we've heard no word from Councilman Rassilon one way or another, including whether or not he even survived in the first place. What I am saying, is that as far as we know, Gallifrey was the first planet this monstrosity devoured, and so the Time Lords of all people are more likely to know about its origins."

"And..." interjected a Galsranth, speaking in a creepy synthetic voice, "As a fully time travel capable species, they'd be more able than most to mount an investigation into the origins of our aggressor."

The Chairman sighed.

"What few survivors from the incident we do have were all civilians, escaping the destruction. We're no more able to ask them to mount an investigation than we are any non-government group or organisation, and certainly not individuals, no matter how reputable they may be."

Councilman Kralquest tilted his head.

"But surely the Doctor-"

"-Is unqualified, councilman," the Chairman cut in, "By all rights he should be considered an outlaw and a terrorist by the Alliance, but we let him continue on his way despite that, even though I've yet to hear a good reason why. Actively seeking him out for assistance is unnecessary. The Alliance has enough resources to deal with this on our own, without resorting to begging for help from that rogue."

There was an awkward silence for a moment.

"As members of the Alliance, the Time Lords are obligated to help investigate this," said a hairy biped with six arms, "Though they may not be government, the surviving Time Lords, if they are unwilling or unable to investigate this for us, should be made to hand over their TARDISes so that certified Alliance scouts can conduct the operation themselves."

The Chairman stared at him.

"Councilman Mestrav, I hope you realise the serious implications behind such a suggestion. Councilman Rassilon, were he present, would have considered such an act nothing less than a declaration of war."

"I am aware, Chairman. However, he is not present, and it is quite clear to me by now that the Time Lords no longer have an organised government. With that in mind, the survivors of their race carry the burden of responsibility, and continue to hold the same roles within the Alliance. They are obligated by the same promises, and given that this has harmed them too, we should expect nothing less than their full cooperation."

"Or they may see it as an aggressive takeover," Kralquest replied, "They're a proud people, and traditionally isolationist. It was enough of a saga just getting them to join us. If we start demanding that they surrender technology that has been integral to their culture for billions of years, and previously one of their most well guarded secrets, in this moment while they're weakened and in need?

"That doesn't sound to me like a benevolent alliance looking to help. It sounds like a greedy empire, looking to steal what little its fallen ally has left. And even in their current state, they're not a force to be trifled with. If whichever new leader they choose is anything like Councilman Rassilon, that won't end well. And when we're dealing with a crisis like this, the last thing we need is internal disputes or civil war, because you all know what that can lead to. I'm sure many of you remember well what happened to Zarlow..."

The council collectively shuddered.

"...Nevertheless," the Chairman said warily, "We must still-"

The room went red. Lights began to flash, and a distant alarm began to sound. It broadcasted its emergency warning on all frequencies, both audio and telepathic. The council members all looked to each other in horror.

"No..."

"It can't be..."

"Already?!"

The speakers flared up.

"THE ENTITY IS APPROACHING. REPEAT. THE ENTITY IS APPROACHING. ALL LIFE FORMS EVACUATE THE PLANET IMMEDIATELY."

***

Gold Coin's head breached the surface of the muck.

"GAH!" he gasped as he reached the open air, "Finally I can breathe again! I feel so much better now that I'm no longer buried in..."

His pupils shrank as he realised that the mush he had just emerged from was a rather dark brown, and had an unpleasant smell.

"No..." he said to himself, shaking his head, "No...NO...NO!"

He looked around, and saw Softy, Mystic, Chain Mail, Luna and Blueblood all standing nearby, soaking wet, and looking at him in pity. They appeared to be inside the cargo hold of the Prometheus. The door opened up onto Ponyville, now enjoying a bright orange sunset.

The massive storage space was surprisingly empty without all the zombies/refugees cluttering it up. In fact, the only things present in the cargo hold other than themselves and the stuff Gold Coin had crawled out of were a long fire hose that came out of a grate in the floor, and what appeared to be a blue storage crate on the other side of the hold.

The stunned earth pony followed the hose pipe with his eyes, and eventually traced it back to somewhere behind him, where Explodey was alternating between it and a giant soapy sponge to clean a very uncomfortable looking dragon.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Gold Coin demanded.

Explodey glanced in his direction.

"What does it look like? I took a great big lumpy shit. And I did it all for you guys. You so totally owe me. This, right here, is what friendship is all about."

"Yes," Gold Coin replied sarcastically, "My friendship with you is much like a piece of shit. I don't ever want to think about it too much, or else I become violently ill. HOW WAS THIS NECESSARY?!"

"Use your indoor voice, Goldie."

Grumbling, the yellow earth pony pulled himself out of the huge pile of faeces and stepped onto the metal floor of the cargo hold.

"Think fast."

"Wh-?"

Gold Coin was knocked down by a sudden high pressure blast from the fire hose.

"There. That'll teach you not to be so ungrateful. Not many ponies are actually willing to shit their friends out, still live and wriggling. I am a saint, and you know it."

Gold Coin, completely drenched but substantially cleaner now, angrily turned to face Explodey.

"That's because nopony in history before now has ever needed to! This is a situation unique to you specifically, because most ponies don't fucking eat their friends alive, to make shitting them out again necessary in the first place! You are fucking disgusting, and I hope that this was as painful for you as it is mentally scarring for me."

"Believe me, I am suffering for this like you wouldn't believe. Fortunately we met with the Brotherhood of Man earlier, who were the ones who trapped me in here after I went all legion on you, to save anypony else getting absorbed, and that nice Iron Hoof guy got me this cream-"

"Explodey, shut up. I don't care. At all. Screw all of you guys. I'm going for a walk."

Gold Coin about turned and indignantly trotted away from the others, heading towards the open doors. Just as he was about to emerge into Ponyville however, he spotted a dull grey alicorn with rotten flesh and a torn apart head gliding down towards him, feathers falling off her wings and trailing behind her as she approached.

"OH FUCK!"

Gold Coin turned around and ran back into the cargo hold.

"RUN! RUUUUUN! IT'S THE FUCKING GRIM REAPER! I ALWAYS KNEW HE WOULD COME FOR ME ONE DAY!"

***

Celestia touched down lightly on the ramp leading into the immobile airship; she had seen it in the distance as she approached the town, and figured that such an out of place aircraft was as good a place as any to start searching for her sister, and the new Elements of Harmony.

She was very eager to meet them actually. She had briefly seen a few of them before she died, but it wasn't even discovered that they held the power until after she was already gone. This was an important first meeting, and she had to make a good impression.

Confidently, the princess strode into cargo hold, and noticed that there was a yellow earth pony running away from her extremely fast before she even landed, screaming something along the lines of;

"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE! TAKE SOFTY INSTEAD! HE'S WAY OVERDUE!"

He was running towards a group of ponies at the other end of the cargo hold, who were gathered around a pile of unidentified brown stuff. Spike was also nearby, back turned to her and being cleaned with a fire hose. She recognised a few faces from the group.

One of them was a member of the Blueblood family. The one cleaning Spike was that unicorn Second had created. And the one in the strange black armour was Chain Mail, who she recalled was recently made captain of the royal guard, after his predecessor retired about a month ago. She hadn't had many dealings with him. Luna was mainly the one who handled their military anyway.

And speaking of Luna, isn't that...

Her face lit up as she spotted her sister, and galloped over to say hello.

The others had seen her first though, thanks to Gold Coin's screaming and panicking. Spike and the other ponies all took a moment staring at her before springing into combat position.

"NO!" Luna shouted over them, "Normal ponies can't hurt alicorns. You all stand back. This is my duty."

The Elements of Harmony obediently stepped aside, and Luna approached Celestia. She was doing her utmost to keep her composure and appear confident, but years of knowing her allowed Celestia to see past her facade. To the older alicorn, her sister's insecurities were obvious.

"You...Get back, you...you monster!" Luna shouted, "You dare defile our dead? My sister no less?! Back away!"

She jumped forward at Celestia, lunging at her in a move that would have been very threatening had she still had her horn. Unfortunately, without it, she was just making jabbing motions with her head.

"Luna, please..."

The younger sister only looked even more unnerved when she spoke, and continued her aggressive movements. Celestia stepped forward.

"I said back! Get away from me, you abomination!"

The undead princess continued to walk towards her, and Luna was the one who began to slowly back away instead. Celestia broke into a run, and Luna reared up to attack the zombie. When she came close enough however, Luna was surprised when she just pulled her into a close embrace and nuzzled her.

She winced, expecting to be bitten, but it never happened.

"...S-sister?" she said fearfully.

"I'm still here. It's still me, Luna."

"But...I saw Second kill you! I buried you! ...You're dead, Tia..."

"I'd never leave you alone again," said Celestia, "I made a promise, remember? And not even Second can make me break that."

She had so many questions. She was so confused. Nothing really seemed to make sense. But for the moment, none of those things mattered. What was important right now, was that her sister had come back for her, despite everything that told her she couldn't have.

Without the need for any more words, she quietly returned her sister's hug, and for the first time since five days ago, she was finally happy again.

***

Second began moving towards Nathan. At first it was a slow walk, but then he began to pick up the pace, moving into a light jog, and then finally breaking out into full-on sprinting. Nathan stood completely still, though looking surprised as he rushed towards him, and only reacted when Second was just a few feet away. By then though, it was too late for him to do anything.

CRACK!

Second smashed a fist right into the other human's face, breaking his nose. Nathan staggered back in pain as blood spurted out, and Second followed up with another punch to the other side of his head, knocking out several teeth this time as he struck his jaw. He cried in pain as Second hit him again, and again, and again.

Each strike was more furious than the last and did more and more damage. His blood flew through the air; it pooled on the floor, ran down his face and stained his clothes, and his attacker was practically soaked in it.

Eventually, Nathan fell on his back, screaming in agony. Second jumped on top of him and smashed his fists into his face again. The impacts were so powerful, that when Nathan moved his head to the side to avoid a blow, Second broke cracks in the stonework.

This continued for four minutes straight. Nothing but Second viciously and brutally beating Nathan into submission, until eventually he shattered his skull into tiny chips of bone and crushed his brain into paste. Second climbed off his victim, panting in exhaustion, and looked down at Nathan's corpse. He didn't even have a head any more. It was just red ruin.

He spat on it.

"Tell the devil he's next, prick."

He slowly turned away from the body, and meandered away across the throne room without any regard to where he was going. In his head, all his thoughts were jumbled and confused, all of them drowned out by rage.

He stopped when he heard an annoyingly familiar sound behind him. It was the same sound Explodey McGee made when all his loose biological material melted into that green liquid and came together again to reform. He sighed loudly, disappointed that he had failed to properly murder the object of his contempt.

He heard Nathan sit up.

"You were always jealous, Howard!" he shouted, "You always resented me because I did it first! I got out first! You kept trying to stick up for Brian, even though you knew what an irredeemable sack of shit he was! I bet the worst day of your life was when you had to admit that I was right, and move out of that redneck shithole! If it weren't for me, you would have stayed what you always were; a goddamn, ungrateful fucking leech, just like him! And you would have lived off dad just like him too, and I would have fucking punched you at his funeral just like you fucking punched him, you fucking hypocrite! You owe me your life!"

Second turned again to face him.

"WHY WON'T YOU JUST DIE?!"

He wound up a punch and rushed across the room at his brother, and this time Nathan responded in kind.

END

Author's notes:

Obligatory ending theme.

I saw the new Batman film yesterday. In my opinion, it's the best one so far, but only if you like it heavy on the character moments. Comparatively little action, but so much good stuff. Go see it.

Next Chapter: Two elder gods beat the ever-loving shit out of each other.

Chapter 20: A Message From Back Home

Second looked into the camera. A little red light on the side indicated it was recording. Behind him, one could see the four poster bed and ornate, regal decorations of Celestia's bedroom in Canterlot Castle, which he had since claimed as his own after a successful invasion. He sighed and folded his arms, leaning back in a chair.

"Alright...Where to begin..." he said to himself, "Well, I guess with the situation..."

He sat up.

"I'm recording this, because...Shit. Okay, trying again. I'm recording this, because about half an hour ago, my brother died in front of me. And he had some words for me. Words that were important. I've been thinking them over since then...and I've just been wondering how to feel. My big brother. My stupid big brother, who's responsible for all my suffering, and may yet have saved my life...

"I...Would it be accurate to say I have regrets? I'm not so sure. I still believe he deserved every single punch I gave him. I still don't actually feel sorry he 'died', for reasons I'm about to explain. I certainly don't feel bad about anything I've done to the ponies of this world. Fuck them. They're all under-evolved, subhuman peasants, even the royalty. But all the same, I look down at that blighted landscape, that the zombie horde now crawls over, and I feel...something. I'm not sure what. Disappointment maybe? Resentment? I think it's fear.

"Yes. Fear. Not of them. I made them. I have nothing to fear from them. But I fear what they represent. They're something I willingly unleashed on this world, and I don't fully understand why. Zombie apocalypses are funny. I thought it'd be good for a laugh. Then again though, I also thought that they'd be stopped in Canterlot. As it turns out, they weren't. Even though they're basically mindless, they still figured out how to use the portal stations, and now they're spreading across all of Equestria. Go figure.

"Last I heard they were already overrunning some small town outside Canterlot called Rainbow's Rest, and individual zombies were spotted as far away as Baltimare. Though, as it turns out the inhabitants of this cartoon world are a little more savvy than your average zombie movie character, because in all towns where the outbreak was small enough they've been quarantining the victims and themselves to keep them safe and the infection contained.

"I heard that the zombie pegasi can no longer fly for some inane reason, so Cloudsdale is Equestria's number one safe zone right now, and the pegasi are working overtime to make sure all the quarantined cities are getting food. Normally the food suppliers across the country would just take regular delivery routes, but everything's going by air now to avoid zombie attacks.

"I'm glad. I honestly am. That means getting a snack is as simple as shooting some stupid fuck out of the sky.

"Whatever though. I'm way off topic. I wanted to talk about what they represent to me, and that's all down to something my brother said with his final words. But...I can't really talk about his final words without talking about how he died...And I can't talk about that without talking about why I attacked him in the first place. And that my friends, is a long story indeed.

"So let me start at the beginning. Let me take you back to my youth. 1970s, small town Texas, where a God was born."

***

Second and Nathan met in the middle of the room and punched at each other at the exact same time, both with their right arms. Both humans hit the other in the cheek, and both withdrew and staggered back in perfect synchronisation. They took a moment to recover and then ran towards each other again. This time, they didn't punch, and instead went into a grapple.

Nathan head-butted Second and kneed him in the crotch while he was distracted. Second followed up with a roundhouse kick that floored his brother immediately. He didn't stay down for long though, and flipped back onto his feet effortlessly and flew at Second with a flying kick that he just barely dodged.

His enemy a big enough distance away, Second threw a hand out and shot a blast of energy at him. To his surprise though, Nathan turned out to share more of his powers than just the regeneration, and he leapt almost to the ceiling to avoid the explosion, landing clear on the other side of the room, right by Celestia's throne.

"THIS IS POINTLESS, HOWARD!" he shouted, "YOU'RE JUST WASTING ENERGY!"

Second reached up towards the ceiling. He channelled his telekinesis and ripped blocks of stone out of the walls around them. They gathered near him and swirled around like a tornado. With a motion of his arm, he sent them shooting across the throne room at Nathan, who avoided them with a series of flips and jumps, in some cases actually flipping off the projectiles midair.

The stone blocks hit the wall behind him and shattered into dust.

"I DIDN'T WANT TO DO THIS!"

The human began to glow. At first, Second stopped in his tracks, wondering what he was about to unleash. Then, Nathan burst into flames, and grew to an enormous size. He became an great titan of fire, which soon solidified into glowing red skin, though flames still danced over his body. He was playing to his brother's worst fear.

"YOU AREN'T SCARING ME OFF, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" Second shouted up at him.

The ground beneath him burst up, and a column of stone rose from the floor until he was level with the fire titan. More and more bricks flew off the walls, just like when he was summoning them to attack Nathan. This time though, they instead formed around him, and soon he was buried within a huge mountain of stone, that came together to give him a golem-like body of the same size and power as the fire titan that Nathan commanded.

He opened his eyes, and saw the world through the golem's. Its body was now his, and he pointed a giant stone finger at Nathan.

"ROUND TWO, ASSHOLE!"

Nathan's fire titan planted a fist in the golem's stomach, but Howard wasn't stupid enough to allow him to feel this body's pain, so it was just a distant sensation. He grabbed the titan's right arm with his left, and used his free one to smash it at the elbow, almost snapping it off. Nathan evidently also couldn't feel the pain of his avatar's body, and ignored it, instead opening its mouth and spewing magma over the golem's front.

Second's golem fell backwards and had to support itself on one of the walls of the tall building. Nathan stepped forward.

"YOU KEEP FUCKING PUSHING ME, HOWARD!" he screamed, "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! WHY DID YOU ALWAYS ANTAGONISE ME?!"

"BECAUSE YOU WERE A CUNT!"

Second kicked the fire titan's legs out from under it, and it fell on its front. He wound up another kick and sent it flying into the opposite wall. It jumped up again and ran across the throne room to grab the golem by the throat and hold it up against the wall.

"JUST FUCKING STOP IT!"

Nathan was surprised as a comparatively tiny pegasus in power armour flew up in front of his face and launched several missiles at his hand, blowing it off and causing him to drop Second. She turned and stared right into his huge eyes.

"You leave him alone!" she ordered.

Nathan grabbed her out of the air as if she were a fly, and held her between a finger and a thumb.

"STAY OUT OF THIS, MORTAL. THE GODS ARE FIGHTING."

He casually flicked her to the other side of the room, where she hit the wall and was seemingly knocked unconscious. She tumbled to the floor, and in the few seconds Nathan spent watching her, Second was back on his feet and had rugby tackled him. He ran across the room at full speed, carrying the fire titan by the legs, before impacting the wall so hard that they broke right through it, went flying out of the palace, and emerged into Canterlot, where they both immediately fell into the moat.

***

Ancient Tome emerged into the cargo hold of the Prometheus, fully dressed in his old warlock robes and carrying his sword with him. Iron Hoof and Night Shroud followed close behind him. He warily avoided the giant turd as he approached the group of ponies who were watching the two princesses hugging in the middle of the hold.

He was interested to see an apparently intelligent Zombie Celestia present, but the last few days had been nothing but a constant barrage of strangeness, and he was quickly becoming accustomed to such things. He tried to ignore them as he approached the Elements of Harmony.

"Ahem."

They all turned to face him. Ancient Tome noted sadly that his son hid behind Softy's legs when he saw who it was.

"What do you want?" Gold Coin asked bitterly.

"Help," Tome answered, to their surprise, "In case you haven't forgotten, this airship is crawling with demons. There are at the very least two of them still running around, and that's not even accounting for all the other weirdness we have to check out. Sun Rise was on board somewhere when we were in flight, and we haven't seen him leave yet. We've been watching the entrances and exits closely. There's no way he could have gotten off this ship without unicorn magic, which he may well have, but we don't know that.

"Then there's the small matter of the ponies of Canterlot, all of whom are currently zombified and inside of your friend, while we have a cure readily available on this ship in the form of Authority. We may be able to devise a way to cure them all at once while still inside him, and he can reject them again intact.

"We've got the dragons to think of who accompanied you and Spike. We have no idea where they went. You left a lot of your equipment all over the ship. We still don't know what that damn blue box is, and this ship needs to be checked for sabotage before it can fly again, and we need to get it flying again because me and my friends have somepony waiting for us back in Secopolis, in need of rescue."

"I don't see why-" Gold Coin began.

"Goldie, now's not the time," Soft Spoken interrupted, "Mister Tome, we will assist you, on the agreement that we cease hostilities here. That means no more violence, and no more threats, and I mean that in regards to all of us. Not just myself, but to Gold Coin too, to your son, Spike, the princesses, and everypony else here. We're all on the same side. It's time you started acting like it."

Ancient Tome grumbled.

"Fine," he agreed, "Truce for now. Come on, we have much to do..."

***

"See, when I was a kid, the dynamic in our house was not that of a nuclear family, though it began that way. There were seven of us. My father, my mother, myself, Brian, Nathan, grandpa, and the dog. The dog was called Rover, because my dad was unoriginal.

"Anyway, that was just early days. My grandpa was around when I was first born, yes, but I only know that through pictures and what my elders told me. He died when I was two, so I remember nothing about the man. He was my dad's dad, I think. I'm not sure what killed him. Probably some kind of illness. But he wasn't the last to go.

"My mother died when I was eight. I don't remember her well either. When you're eight, you're already smart enough to be learning and talking, but you don't remember stuff too well. I don't really remember much earlier than when I was fourteen. So those years are a blur, and unfortunately, so is she. I wish I had known her better.

"My point though, is that without her, the family had a strange way of getting by, one which I was sure at the time was unique to us. I had two older brothers, as I said. Nathan was seven years older than me, and Brian was four. They got along well enough with each other, and me and Brian were also okay, but Nathan hated me.

"There was never any particular reason for it. I was the little brother. I was annoying and had a screechy voice, and all my friends that I brought around were the same. I'd charge about and cause chaos, and I often made a mess. Great fun if you're a kid, but I guess a moody, older teenage brother is less tolerant of that kind of shit.

"So we would fight. Yeah, I was little and he was not. So our fights often ended with me crying. That didn't stop me from initiating them though, because they were great sporty fun for a lad my age, and I knew I could get away with them. I'd get disciplined sometimes, but it wasn't like dad actively tried to step in and sort things. For the most part, if I didn't listen to the warnings telling me to fuck off, Nathan basically had to beat the shit out of me, because there was no other way to get the message across.

"See, after both mom and grandpa died in a short span of years, father had just stopped caring. He continued to work and buy food, he'd cook some awful crap and put it in front of us, fill out forms or whatever was needed for school and take us to the hospital in the rare instance that something serious would happen. Beyond that though, he just didn't bother. He did the bare minimum he needed to, and nothing more.

"This made an interesting power dynamic in later years. Dad was clearly responsible for taking care of all of us, but by the time he was eighteen, it was quite clear that Nathan was the man of the house. Brian would sooner listen to him than dad, and so would I. And dad? He just didn't care. He was content to let us stay there and do nothing, as long as it didn't bother him. He never even asked us to do chores or get a job when we reached the appropriate age. It's like he had no expectations for us at all.

"And then there was Brian. Talking about it from the perspective of the youngest brother, you'd think I had it worst. Really though, I think it was Brian who life was hardest on. He was the middle kid. He got on with both of us, and when we were constantly in conflict, he kept having to pick a side. That means that no matter what happened, one of us was always pissed at him at any given time. We were both quick to forgive him, but...

"See, this divided loyalties thing was always tough on him, but that's just when it was me and Nathan. Now, when Nathan finally became a man however, suddenly he was on the bad side of dad as well. Dad may not have really cared about what went on under his roof, but he still had some basic demands and basic expectations, and one of those was that he personally was shown respect.

"But for Nathan, that simply wasn't possible. He was eighteen, and we were just entering the eighties. If there's anything the late twentieth century was known for, it was social upheaval. Kids rebelling against their elders and taking charge, bringing about radical change. Nathan liked that idea. He thought himself a revolutionary. He wanted to be 'new' and 'different', and wanted to follow the trends of the pseudo-intellectuals that came before.

"So he antagonised dad, and he challenged his authority wherever possible. Started asking questions, like 'what do we even actually need you for?' and 'what right have you got to tell us what to do?'

"And as you'd expect, one day, big brother stormed out and left us. He said goodbye to the both of us and ran off, hoping to get out there and do something earth shattering; something that would bring about change, and would remake the world into something new.

"So he became a writer for a TV show. Fucking idiot."

***

The water was boiling and steam was coming from its body as Nathan's fire titan pulled itself out of the moat and onto the drawbridge of Canterlot Castle. It fell onto its back, taking a moment to recover the damage it had taken from its underwater adventure. This turned out to be a mistake. As Nathan laid there, Howard's golem rocketed up beneath the drawbridge and knocked it closed, launching the titan back into the entrance of the castle.

The castle's front entrance turned out to be far too small to fit either of them, and Nathan found himself sandwiched between the drawbridge and the castle. Howard climbed up onto solid ground on the other side of the moat and raised a hand to ready an energy blast.

Nathan's golem pushed the drawbridge down again. It fell briefly onto its knees, but quickly got up and ran at Howard to punch him. It was struck by the blasts, but shook them off and continued running anyway, until it could reach him and ram him hard enough to knock him over onto his back.

"NOW ARE YOU GOING TO STOP, HOWARD?!"

The golem punched the fire titan's knee feebly.

"FINE."

Nathan reached down and grabbed Howard's golem by the throat. It held it down with one arm, and used the other to repeatedly smash its face in. Rocks and bricks flew through the air as he pulverised his brother's avatar. The air became dusty, and the force soon formed a crater in the ground just beneath the golem's head.

"DOESN'T. FEEL. SO. GOOD. WHEN. SOMEONE. DOES. IT. TO. YOU. DOES. IT?!" Nathan screamed, punctuating each word with an additional strike.

Suddenly, the golem's chest exploded, and the real human Howard launched out of it like a missile, straight into the fire titan's chest. He hit it so hard that he broke right through the surface, went through the body, grabbed the real Nathan as well, and smashed through its back again. He emerged flying into the air with a bruised and angry looking Nathan held in one hand, as they both rose high above the city.

"COMBO BREAKER!" Howard shouted as he launched Nathan through the air into a tower on the other side of Canterlot.

Nathan hit the giant domed roof of the tower hard and went sprawling across the room inside. He looked up through the hole in the ceiling to see that his brother was now actually hovering in the air. Yet even more new powers he was just picking up as he went along.

Howard meanwhile reached towards the now inert golem and fire titan and caused them to both rise up again, both now under his command. With a flick of his hand, he sent them both rampaging across Canterlot towards Nathan.

The older brother jumped out of the dome and onto the outisde of the tower. As the two monstrosities ran towards him, he used his own telekinetic abilities to rip the tower he was on out of the ground. As it rose, he jumped off and counted on Dramatic Convenience to boost his powers to match Howard's, and he too achieved flight.

Now airborne, Nathan flew back to get a more whole view of the battlefield, and he commanded the tower he was just in as if it were a giant sword. With a powerful swing, he knocked over both giant monsters, and followed up by burying them underneath a pile of rubble from several much bigger collapsed buildings.

"BUILDING SWORD FIGHT?!" Howard asked.

He looked over towards Canterlot Castle and chose a familiar looking domed tower that he was certain was once Twilight Sparkle's original library. With barely any effort, he mentally pulled it off of its foundations and floated it over the city to challenge his brother's.

"BUILDING SWORD FIGHT."

***

Mystic Chant stared miserably at the ground as the ponies walked through the corridors of the Prometheus. Accompanying him were Softy, Chain Mail, Princess Luna, and the still walking corpse of Princess Celestia, who was uncomfortably cheery right now.

"And then," Celestia explained, "I woke up in this misty void. Nothing but fog all around me, and the stone beneath my hooves. Then I heard footsteps. I turned around and-"

"This is the place," Chain Mail interrupted.

The group cautiously entered Dr. Apocalypse's medical clinic. The bodies of several unicorns were scattered around the room. Most of them seemed to have died from sword wounds. Ancient Tome and the others had already explained how they took the Prometheus in the first place, so they knew to expect this. Didn't make it any less unsettling though.

"Last time I was here, they had plenty of Authority around," Chain Mail explained, "If we can find a formula or recipe somewhere around here, and the chemicals we need are easy enough to obtain or at least synthesize, we might be able to solve our little zombie problem with Explodey."

"Mister Chain Mail?" Mystic asked, "When Explodey did that...thing...was that...because of the zombie virus? Or, was that normal for him?"

Chain Mail and Soft Spoken looked at each other.

"This is a good question," Softy admitted, "We really don't know anything about Explodey's biology. He's really a mystery to us. For all we know, that sludge creature thing he did could have been completely natural to him. It still raises a lot of questions though. How did he produce that much sludge when he exploded? Surely that can't have all come from him?"

"When we lost some of his biomass in Secopolis," Chain Mail responded, "he came back little. He needed to eat before he was restored to full size. This sort of contradicts what we saw when he exploded and produced enough green stuff to cover almost all of Ponyville, and this was before he absorbed everypony. Something's definitely off about him."

"We really need to study him at some point..." Softy muttered.

Mystic looked around at the lab, and his eyes lingered on some of the test tubes and over chemistry equipment. He blinked, as ideas formed in his mind.

"Mister Chain Mail," he said, "I just had an idea! With all the things in this lab...and since you need them so badly and all...do you think we could mix up some more of those drugs your suit use in here?"

The adults all stared at him.

"...Sliske?"

"No, I'm Mystic," the colt replied, sounding annoyed, "Sliske's not even in me right now."

That made Soft Spoken do a double take.

"Wait, if he's not in you then where is he?!"

***

Sliske looked around Ponyville curiously. There were no signs of the dragons anywhere.

Before the assimilation, the group had stormed the Prometheus accompanied not just by Spike, but by three other dragons, including one that Spike had identified to them as Nonvulvahlok, the Noble Guardian. When they were being assimilated though, Sliske definitely remembered that only Spike was absorbed. The other dragons were clear at the time.

Things is, there was no way the dragons would leave behind their elder when he was in danger. Had they attacked Explodey and gotten absorbed too without them knowing? Had they lost their nerves and fled? Had they gone to rally the other dragons? Or were they just hiding somewhere around here and waiting for Spike to return?

When he first freed Explodey and the two of them had used the intercom to contact the Brotherhood and let them know what had happened, they made it quite clear that they had no idea where the dragons went either. It was one of many mysteries they were currently investigating. Well, with them all tied up on board the ship, that meant it fell to Sliske to discover the fate of the other dragons. And what better way to do that than to ask the locals?

Sliske spotted a mare walking away from the marketplace and flew up in front of her.

"Hello," he said telepathically, in the cheeriest tone he could manage, "My name is Sliske the Destroyer. I was hoping you could-"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

The mare turned and ran away.

"...Huh."

He looked around and spotted a pegasus colt napping on a cloud just above him. He floated up in front of his face and tapped him on the forehead with an incorporeal appendage. The colt slowly opened his eyes, and they shot wide open when he saw Sliske's face.

"Hi! My name is Sliske, of Seven Hundred Souls. I was wondering-"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

He jumped around and grabbed ahold of the cloud tightly, before flapping his wings for dear life and propelling himself and the cloud away from Sliske very fast.

"This is getting annoying."

He looked down below and saw another mare, this one a pink pegasus of about twenty years of age, emerging from a small cottage.

"...Screw it. Questions are overrated. Let's just go straight for the memories."

***

With a glow of magic, the doors to the armoury of the Prometheus swung open to reveal several racks of guns, blades, armour, explosives and other assorted combat gear. Night Shroud and Iron Hoof stepped inside and began to drag a sack out into the corridor outside, where Tome and Gold Coin were waiting patiently.

"When you were all absorbed by Explodey, you dropped most of your stuff," Tome explained, "After we dealt with him by sealing him in the cargo hold, we gathered it all up and decided to keep ahold of it. Since you're back now, I guess its yours again."

"What is this place?" Gold Coin asked.

"The armoury. This ship was made for war. It's onboard weapons alone are capable of levelling cities, so it stands to reasons that it has a lot of stuff for troopers as well. We discovered this place and others like it while you were all incapacitated. There's all sorts of good stuff around here. Power armour, like Second's troops had, enough guns and bullets to kill a billion alicorns, Dr. Apocalypse's clinic and stores are full of medicine and there are kitchens and freezers and mess halls scattered all around with food to feed an army. This ship is huge. A pony could conquer a nation with the Prometheus."

"And are you going to?" the earth pony asked in concern.

"Old friend, our goal was always the enlightenment of ponykind, not rulership over it. You of all ponies should know that."

Gold Coin walked around in front of him and stared him in the eye.

"Tell me straight, Tomey. Are you planning to kill the princesses with this? Because I've learned a lot in the time I was away from the Brotherhood. We've made a terrible mistake in becoming what we are. They're not our enemies. They never were. Second. He's the true evil here."

"We realise that now," the unicorn replied, "And we're trying to make amends."

"Back in Canterlot, you wanted to leave behind myself and the princesses, and even the rest of the us too. You were going to abandon us to the zombies, even though the Elements of Harmony are the best chance for stopping Second."

"Frosty's dead, Goldie."

They were both silent.

"...I'm-"

"Do you remember Frosty?"

"What? Of course I-"

"She had integrity. She joined our cause because she wanted justice to be done, and what was best for ponies as a whole. She wasn't like Chameleon or Sun Rise, who joined hoping for a chance at power and glory. She just wanted what was right. When Commander Bullseye and Dr. Apocalypse told her straight out that Second was the true evil, she immediately told them that she would fight him too if that was what was right. And then they killed her. Right in front of me."

"I'm sorry."

"When the Prometheus took flight, heading for Canterlot, we decided to step up and do what was right. Those two are dead now, and the three of us together seized the ship. When we did so, we did it with the intention of using it to destroy all evil everywhere. That means no more humans, no more alicorns, no more royalty, no more nobles, no more tyrants. Essentially, we're just doing what the Brotherhood always wanted to do, only instead of expecting Second to save the world, we're doing it ourselves, and he's been moved to the enemies list instead."

"The princesses are not our enemies, Tomey. I thought they were too, once. We were wrong though. They only want to see Second put down so we can go back to our age of peace."

"What proof have you got of this?" Tome asked, "How do you know they're as wonderful as they claim to be? Have you seen anything to suggest that Lyra's good book, A Darker World was wrong in its assertions?"

"Our entire belief in their malevolence is based around the old stories of them mistreating the humans! Now that we know the humans were the true evil, surely that invalidates these claims about the princesses? You have to look at the old holy books in a new light. Remember what we've learned as you read them. See the contradictions, the things that don't add up. Think about it."

The old unicorn frowned at him.

"Those are just with regards to the humans' treatment though! You forget, Brother Gold Coin, that they were just the spark of inspiration that started our order's questioning of the royals' true motives. Abstract Theory did not base his entire case against them around just what they did to humans. That's just what got us asking questions in the first place.

"What about the questions themselves though? What about all the holes the story of Nightmare Moon? What about the contradictions between official history and what empirical evidence otherwise suggests? What about the numerous incidents of alleged royalist abuse of power? What about all the secrecy employed during the advent of the Harbinger? What about Third's reign, can you explain that? Do you actually think you could explain away everything?"

That gave Gold Coin pause for thought.

"...Listen, old friend-"

"We're not friends, Tomey. Stop that."

"...Gold Coin. I want to do right. I want to earn the forgiveness of my son. I know now I shouldn't have done what I did. I went about everything the wrong way. I scared him. He's afraid of me. And I don't want him to be. That's not what his mother would have wanted. I was supposed to protect them both, but I couldn't stop her death. And now I couldn't stop Frosty's either. He's all that I've got left, and he hates me."

"Well that's your own fault."

"I know. And I'm going to make it up to him. This is me, taking a stand against evil. You ran off when we released Second. You were fighting him right from the start. But you were still the one who poured the salts and let him out in the first place, and you're no less responsible than the rest of us. If you think though that just because the princesses also want to stop him, that somehow means we're all on the same side, you're wrong.

"You asked me to think, Goldie. Think about the old holy books in a new context. And I will do that, because they got a lot wrong. But I don't think it's right either to entirely disregard them. Those two alicorns that you're apparently so chummy with now, as far as we know, are no more innocent than Second is. So I want you to think as well, Goldie. Keep an eye on them.

"They made you into a Element of Harmony. That's something I'm proud of. While we once vilified them because they stopped the humans, now I see that they are a blessing, and our best hope. You may well still be ponykind's saviour. I want you to remember though, that being an Element does not mean you owe that Celestia any loyalty.

"Just because our ancestors took orders from her, doesn't mean we need to. So when the time comes, and you strike Second down, don't let her step in and claim credit for instilling the virtue in you that was always there, and don't let yourself become her pawn. If I am proven right, and the princesses are what we always said they were, then don't become a minion of evil. Do what you were always raised to, and oppose tyranny in all its forms."

***

Howard rubbed his chin.

"Nathan had this thing...about human civilisation. He was so enamoured by the intellectuals and the leaders. He took interest in politics. It got him to thinking. He questioned everything, and that included the virtues instilled into us by our father. Dad was a southern conservative. He was a religious man. He didn't like gays. He was mildly racist, though he wasn't a Klansman for anything.

"These were things Nathan came to see as symbolising the previous generation. Like I said, he wanted to be revolutionary. He thought it was a bold, edgy new idea to proudly proclaim that he was an atheist, and that actually, blacks and gay people aren't all that bad. He kicked up a stinker about it and went all 'social justice' on us.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with those sentiments. I just think the people who act all high and mighty about it are smug pricks. One group I really take issue with are these goddamn hippie fucktards. You know who I'm talking about. 'Save the whales', global warming, picket protesting, oversensitive fucks who write angry letters to conservative talk show hosts. I fucking hate people like that.

"And Nathan was one of them. You can see the issue. So he cast off the beliefs of our father and boldly went out to the big cities of the north, seeking his fortune. He told us that we were all yokels and hicks, that religion and a conservative political view were outdated relics of a bygone age, and that the only way to really save ourselves was to be like him, and go to the civilised north.

"He hated Texas, or at least the town we lived in. He thought it was stagnating. Personally, I think he saw too many TV shows that stereotyped southerners and bought into it. It wasn't like dad or our neighbours were all like Cletus from the Simpsons. It just so happened that dad embraced traditional values. Nathan was a prick. That's the long and short of it.

"I never really took a side. Liberal? Conservative? These words were meaningless to a preteen kid. All I really picked up was that the grown-ups were fighting again. Nathan kept in contact though. He still called up regularly. He talked to dad, and to Brian, and to me. And ironically, it's when he became this paragon of smug self righteousness that I got on best with him, because by then I was old enough to stop being a retard for no reason.

"We started to have conversations. Actual dialogue. It was something new to me, and he told me great stories of his travels around Washington and San Francisco. To hear him talk of it, you'd think he had died and gone to Heaven. Though, I suspect he was less happy than he let on. Despite that though, I still think those were probably the best years of his life. It was after he had moved out of the quote unquote 'redneck shithole,' and before he grew up and realised that he wasn't going to be the next Ghandi.

"Meanwhile, he'd try to fill Brian's head with ideas. Poor Brian, who had always been made to choose between him and me, and was now torn between him and dad too. Nathan kept wanting Brian to leave home when he became old enough and be like him. He wanted him to travel up north, to become a civilised man, to cast off the ways of old and embrace the future.

"Really though, as much as Nathan was a huge prick, it was the best possible advice he could have given Brian. Despite everything, big brother still found employment easily enough, he was living a comfortable lifestyle, and as you already know he eventually became a screenwriter. That's not too shabby considering he didn't have any particularly impressive qualifications when he left education, and can't actually write for shit. Oh, we'll get into that later.

"Brian though? He was completely fucking useless. He was destined to be a stereotypical redneck of exactly the kind that Nathan thought we all were. Brian didn't take him up on his offer. He told Nathan to fuck off, apparently getting angry with him for leaving us and for his attitude, and when he got older he got low paying jobs at local places. Cashier for a local corner store, worked at a gas station for a while, and I think his best job was working as an assistant mechanic at some garage, but eventually he got fired for showing up to work drunk too many times.

"And so began his long life of failure, misery and disappointment. Nathan came to hate Brian for embodying all that he despised, while Brian hated Nathan for leaving everything behind and treating him and dad like such garbage. By then, I was fast approaching young adulthood myself, and suddenly the roles had changed.

"Now I was the one who Nathan actually liked. This time, it was me who was the neutral party in the ongoing war between two brothers. Now I was the one who had to make the choice and side with one or the other. This is how I came to sympathise so much with Brian, who had put up with this for so many years, and it's why I say he had it worst. Because I decided to follow in Nathan's footsteps, and leave Texas to go up north, where I eventually settled in Connecticut.

"And he was right. It was the worst day of my life."

***

Buildings are hard. Nathan learned this in a very unpleasant way as Howard broke one on his head and sent him flying.

"COME ON FUCKTARD! PUT UP A FIGHT!"

Nathan telekinetically swung the tower he was wielding, but without one of his own to block it anymore, Howard had to dodge. Being much smaller than a building, the other human was easily able to weave between his strikes, and Howard flew right at his brother, fist outstretched, and hit him with incredible force.

The two flew across the city. Howard steered them towards several tall buildings and used Nathan as a battering ram to break through all of them. Their fight had easily demolished half of Canterlot already, and the rest was rapidly falling as well.

After several minutes of smashing Nathan through buildings, Howard was content, and finished up his attack by stopping abruptly and leaving him to fall to the ground. Nathan caught himself and resumed flight before he hit the cobblestone road, but Howard didn't like that, and summoned up a tornado which began to tear through the city.

The twister came out of nowhere, and Nathan was immediately sucked up into it. He wasn’t so easily beaten though. He used his own telekinetic pull to drag Howard in too, and the both soon found themselves floating in the middle of a tornado which was launching rubble all over the place.

The two kept trying to throw pieces of buildings at each other, but the wind speeds kept making for inaccurate throws. They eventually decided to settle matters with another melee, and both dropped down to a passing house that flew beneath them.

There was an audible crash as they touched down on the roof of the flying house and the tiles cracked beneath their feet. Standing on opposite ends of the roof, they charged at each other and met in the middle, before both unleashing a series of impressive martial arts moves that neither of them had ever actually learned in the real world.

A well placed kick by Howard knocked Nathan onto his back, and a powerful punch to his stomach was enough to break the roof beneath them and send both humans falling down into the house itself.

***

Explodey turned off the hose and lowered it. With a critical eye, he walked around Spike and inspected him from every angle.

"...Yeah, I think I got the last of it," he commented, "You're all good."

"Finally," the dragon answered, "Let us never speak of this again."

"'Cor, blimey. You oughta see the weather out there," said Prince Blueblood as he walked over to them.

"Why?" asked Explodey, "What's going on?"

"Only a fucking tornado, mate. I's tearin' up Can'erlot right now!"

"Sure it is, Blueblood," Spike replied, "We all believe you."

"Well go out there and see fer y'self then. It's only a couple o' steps for you."

"I'm not doing any more walking today. I fought off a zombie apocalypse, acted as a taxi for a bunch of ingrate ponies, and I got eaten and pushed out again by something a fraction of my size. After a day like that, I want to go to bed, and just be content with my nightmares, which I'm sure are going to be much more vivid than usual after this."

Spike laid down on his stomach and closed his eyes.

"What?!" shouted Explodey, "You can't go to sleep now! It's not even that late!"

"Don't care. Dragon. Sleepy time," Spike answered.

"Hey! HEY! Don't you go to sleep right now! What if we need you for something?! How do we wake you?!"

Spike just began snoring. Prince Blueblood trotted up to Explodey's side and put a hoof on his shoulder.

"Let it go, 'splodey. I's dragon town."

"Hey guys! What have we missed?"

Explodey and Blueblood turned around to see Softy's group returning with several test tubes and syringes of chemicals that they had recovered from the clinic. The princesses were carrying most of them, though Mystic held some too, and Softy and Chains held a few small ones in their teeth.

"Alright," Chain Mail began as he put his load down, "While we were in Dr. Apocalypse's lab, we were able to hunt around and find the recipes for most of the drugs that I need to live, as well as the partial zombie cure known as Authority. It won't turn the zombies in you back to normal ponies, but it'll let them live as themselves rather than as shambling, mindless nightmares. That's some progress. So, we're thinking, if we inject it into you before you expel the rest of the zombies, maybe they'll come back differently."

"Oh, no need for that," Explodey said casually, "I already made a cure."

Chain Mail stared at him.

"What."

"Yeah. Didn't you wonder about the fact that the zombie virus stopped affecting me after I absorbed more zombies? My immune system finally came up with a proper cure, and lucky that it did, otherwise I would have become some kind of super zombie. Can you even imagine? So yeah, I can now naturally produce a zombie cure. I spit on the floor, it makes some blue stuff. Blue means cure."

Chain Mail tilted his head and squinted at Explodey, as if he was trying to read a really far away sign while looking into the sun.

"...You fucking WHAT?!"

"...Did I do something wrong?"

"IF YOU CAN NATURALLY PRODUCE A ZOMBIE CURE, WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF US CHASING DOWN THE PROMETHEUS?!"

"...To save the citizens of Canterlot?" Explodey suggested meekly.

"You mean the citizens that you ate?" Softy replied.

"Ate, and used to create a cure, I remind you," said Explodey.

"Wait. Was this fucking deliberate?! Were you always planning to absorb everypony?!"

"What?! No! No way! I didn't know everypony on board was infected. That was just a happy coincidence."

"Happy coinci-" Chain mail spluttered, "He- I fucking- What- AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!"

The captain slammed his head into the floor repeatedly.

"WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!"

***

"So what comes next then?" asked Gold Coin as he and Ancient Tome trotted towards the bridge of the ship.

"Next? Next, we're going back to Secopolis to lay siege to Fort First. We'll slaughter every last one of the Knights of Man who get in our way, and take Star Wish back by force. Her mother's gone, her father's gone, so it's just me to take care of her now. I'm not leaving her alone in the company of those psychopaths."

The two reached the door to the bridge, which automatically opened to permit them entrance.

"And Mystic? What do you plan to do to win him over again?"

"I don't know. I'm hoping that with his cousin with me, he might be a little less nervous around me. Maybe he'll feel more comfortable approaching me. I might be able to sit him down for a good talk."

"The way I hear, every talk you've had with him since this started just made him hate you more."

Tome sighed.

"I know."

They emerged onto the bridge, where they found Iron Hoof waiting for them. He gave both the ponies a salute and gestured down to the lower levels, where a unicorn pony in an engineer's jumpsuit and with a broken horn was wriggling about. He had been tied up and gagged, and was futilely trying to escape.

"He's the only survivor, sir," Iron reported, "The rest of the crew are all dead."

"So how are we going to do this?" Gold Coin asked, "Are you two gonna go 'good cop, bad cop' on him?"

"I'm not sure how effective that will be against a demon, but it's worth a shot," Tome replied.

He approached their captive and glared at him.

"Alright you," he said menacingly, "Who are you working for?!"

"I'm a fucking demon," the possessed pony replied.

"...That's not an answer."

"I'm a demon and I work for demons, you stupid fuck."

"...I'm still not hearing a name."

"If I gave you the name of the arch-demon who sent me on this mission, would it actually mean anything to you?"

"Uhhh...It might."

"Ramstarflokrinhir."

"...Is that his name?"

"Yes it is."

"Could I get that again? Iron, note it down."

"Ramstarflokrinhir."

"Great. Is that...uh...How do you spell that?"

"R-A-M-S-T-A-R-F-L-O-K-R-I-N-H-I-R."

"Is that all one word?"

"Yes, and I was spelling that phonetically for your benefit too. When his name is actually written, it begins with a silent 'Q', but that's useless information to you."

"So it's actually 'Quramstarflokrinhir'?"

"Silent 'Q', mortal. And when written, just the 'Q'. No 'U' after it."

"But that just doesn't make any sense grammatically!"

"ARCH-FUCKING-DEMON, YOU IGNORANT MORTAL!"

Ancient Tome looked over his shoulder at Gold Coin.

"Goldie, can you be the bad cop, please? I'm really terrible at this."

Gold Coin nodded and stepped up in front of the prisoner. Without a word, he turned around and bucked him in the face, knocking him into a small terminal.

"No more fucking around," he declared, "Tell us straight out; why did you attack the Prometheus, what was your plan, and whose idea was it? And most important of all, what the fuck has Sun Rise got to do with it?"

The demon sat up and looked up at Gold Coin with his glowing red eyes, and grinned.

"The one you call Sun Rise was weak. He was disfigured in unholy fire, brought about by a creature more powerful than any other, that even the Lord fears."

"The Lord? Who is the Lord? Do you mean Second?" asked Gold Coin.

"Lord Tirac. The great master. The one who unites all evil in him. Though, even he recognises that your Lord, the one you call Second, is not a force to be taken lightly."

Tome and Gold Coin shared a grave look.

"I've heard the legends of Tirac," Ancient Tome said quietly, "His last coming to Equestria was known as the Eclipse Crisis. That was how the dragons died out."

"Except for the Eternal, and the Nineteen," Gold Coin replied, "But we have nothing to fear. The dragon who overthrew Tirac is out in the cargo hold right now, and he's only gotten stronger with age."

"You miss the point, mortal," the demon snickered, "Tirac seeks not a takeover, like what he pursued back in the old days. He now has other motives. A greater plan."

"What?"

"The one you call Sun Rise was weak, until the demonic legion called out to him. He accepted them. They became a part of him. The metal body you gave him served only to hurt his perception of himself, and hurt his will and ability. He was given strength by supernatural means, through us, and he embraced it wholly, now serving both human and demon alike."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"That under Tirac's instruction, he does Second's will, and we follow him. Sun Rise is a leader, a demon of great power now. One of us. And as one of us he chooses to carry out Second's orders, and led the demonic horde against the Prometheus, so that we could enact the plan."

"Second is in league with the demons?" asked Tome, "That is simply not possible. When he was informed of Sun Rise's condition, he travelled into his mind to stop the demons. He knew nothing about this."

"Deception. Second is our ally."

Tome scrutinised the demon, as if trying to tell if he was lying to them. Then again, demons were masters of trickery and lies. All the information he had been giving them so far could just as easily be false as his last statement. They had no reason to doubt his claim about Second more than anything else he was telling them.

"Continue."

"Second's orders were that the Prometheus be attacked. He knew of your treachery. That the famous Brotherhood of Man had turned from the virtues of old, had killed his chosen commander, Bullseye, and had forcibly taken that which was not theirs. He said that the Prometheus was needed, for the final plan. We were to kill the Brotherhood, and to infect the scum in the cargo hold, so that the ship might be reclaimed when the time was right."

"That doesn't make sense though," Tome pointed out, "Sun Rise spared both me and Night Shroud when he had opportunity to kill us. We can't have been the end goal if he let us live. And even if we weren't, he still fucked up the other end goal. We still hold the Prometheus."

The demon smiled and shook his head.

"Poor foolish mortal. The intent was not capture. It was to allow the means to capture."

"...What?"

"You will see soon enough..."

The demon tilted his head back and began to laugh maniacally. Tome was about to step in and stop him when he then spontaneously burst into flames. The mad hellspawn continued to cackle in glee right up until it fell down dead, leaving only a burnt husk. The three ponies stared at it in shock for a moment, before Gold Coin had a stunning realisation.

"Wait...Sun Rise was 'disfigured in unholy fire' by 'a creature more powerful than any other', that even Tirac is afraid of. And Sun Rise was...in the Church of Man...when it...IS TIRAC FUCKING SCARED OF EXPLODEY?!"

***

Sliske finally established control over his new chosen host, and the screaming stopped. Confined to her own head, the mare couldn't use her mouth to make that awful screechy noise anymore, giving Sliske the peace and quiet he needed to search her memories to find where the dragons had gone.

"Let'ssssssss have a look in here...Jusssst...ugh..."

Sliske swayed slightly and stumbled.

"What...?"

Was there something wrong with this body? He was trying to walk with it, but he felt so uncoordinated. His vision was off too. Everything seemed so grey and lifeless. In fact, all his senses were dulled. It was as if he was trying to perceive the world while half asleep and intoxicated. What was going on?

"Thissss issssn't right..." Sliske moaned, "I don't feel good..."

The alien stumbled forward again, and this time outright vomited over the road. There wasn't much of it though. The mare he was inhabiting hadn't eaten much recently. Though, given the opportunity, Sliske quickly looked over the previous contents of her stomach and found nothing that would have made her ill.

He searched her recent memories. He found what he was originally looking for. After the goo that Explodey produced had drawn in all the zombies and Spike was assimilated, the mare had witnessed the other dragons panic and fly away. Explodey had evidently tried to assimilate them too, because she saw a few really long white tendrils shooting into the sky as the dragons fled.

The mission was technically accomplished, but Sliske was still confused as to his condition. He kept searching the mare's memories, but found no indication that she was sick with anything before he came along. All evidence seemed to suggest that the sickness was something wrong with him.

That didn't make any sense though! He was a spiritual being! A ghostly alien with no true physical form! He couldn't get sick!

Ugh...I never had this kind of trouble with Mystic...Everything was always great when he was my host...

Sliske heard a noise. It was...strange sounding. Like a ping, or small bird chirping, or...

The alien looked at his host's flank and stared in confusion, as he saw her old cutie mark had been replaced by one depicting a blue silhouette of a unicorn.

He blinked.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

***

Howard stared at the floor, away from his camera. He folded his arms and closed his eyes as he remembered long ago.

"So..." he continued, "I got away. I left my dad and my other brother behind. And just like Nathan I made my way north. See, even though we both clearly didn't get along, it was him that made me get into this whole 'civilization' business. He felt responsible for me, so he helped me.

"It was in Connecticut where I found him. His life since Texas wasn't so much a single job, or seeking jobs, as it was travelling all around the country and finding work where he went. He felt that if anything, he was overqualified for most work. Ah, the delusions of youth. Still though, he did have a lot of experience under his belt in a number of fields. I guess you could say he dabbled.

"Well, truth be told I left home earlier than I should have. I had just left college when I made the journey, and I had aspirations of university. Nathan had wanted to go to one, but it was already too late for him, and had been for a while. So he contented himself by staying put in Connecticut and giving me room and board while I went into higher education.

"This is why he said he made me. Why he feels like I owe him so much. He thinks that he's the one ultimately responsible for how I turned out, and trust me when I say that that's both wrong, and not something to be proud of if it wasn't.

Howard's eyes flicked back up to the camera.

"University was great, for me. I made some great friends there, among others...But then there was home life. Nathan was going through so many different things. His worldview collapsed as I lived with him. Finances and other such mundane aspects of everyday life began to put pressure on him, and he slowly realised that life wouldn't accommodate him. He had to conform to society's standards, not the other way around.

"Sure. You'd think that'd be obvious, but it wasn't to him. Nathan was naive, and idealistic. Sure, he was a smug cunt about it, but he did genuinely want to change things for the better. And when he realised that he couldn't do it, and that he would have to be like everyone else and get a fixed job and stay living in one place...That was so different for him. It's like the opposite of what ponies go through. He truly became an adult, when he realised he wasn't special.

"And I got to see that transformation first hand. That's when he started dressing in suits and talking more formally. Practice for job interviews he told me. He went for a number of fields, based on what he had some basic experience with. It took him a while, but eventually he got in with a film studio. By the time I left university, he was a screenwriter for some shitty sitcom I had never heard of. And he was so proud of himself.

"And there was me. Little Howie, who wanted to grow up to sing and dance, but whose father told him not to. And even though the whole point of joining Nathan was supposedly that I didn't have to listen to dad anymore, I guess his words stuck by me. Because by the time I left university, I was different than I was back then. Sure, I still liked singing...but I had tried my hand at a few pieces for English classes over the years.

"I was skilled at it. I knew. So I took one look at Nathan's new job, and that cemented it in my mind. I wanted to be a writer."

***

Howard and Nathan both picked themselves up from the floor of the house and glared at each other. They both leaned on the walls for support as the house rocked and tumbled, carried by the force of the tornado outside. The windows were shattered, and beyond all that could be seen was grey, and the occasional flying object.

The winds ripped through the house and tossed furniture and bits of paper around. It was chaos, but that didn't distract either of the men. Howard charged down the hallway and slammed into Nathan, throwing him back into the kitchen. Nathan supported himself on the table as he tried to get up, but his brother ran over and punched him again.

He grabbed a chair in one hand and smashed it over Howard's head, causing him to stagger back. Howard in turn grabbed a nearby kitchen knife and threw it into the wall just behind Nathan, who only barely dodged out of the way.

The older man looked at the kitchen draws, which laid open, displaying several sharp knives. He used his telekinesis and floated them all out. Howard stopped in his tracks as Nathan lined them all up and launched them at high speed across the room, right into his chest.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"

There was a sizzling sound, and the knives dropped off his body. Or at least, the handles did. The actual knife blades were gone, seemingly melted off. Howard pulled off his shirt to inspect his rapidly closing wounds, (while somehow leaving his coat on), and saw dripping green blood where he had been stabbed.

While both humans stared at it for a second, Howard suddenly reached behind him and grabbed the kitchen table by a single leg and tossed it across the room at his brother, who dived to the side to avoid it, and was struck by flying debris as it shattered into a few blocks of wood that were quickly picked up by the raging storm.

Howard made another run at him, but Nathan kicked at the right moment and launched Howard backwards and straight through a wall, into the living room.

He got up and ran over to him, but was stopped when there was a monstrous screeching coming from his left. He almost wet himself in fear when a zombie that he previously wasn't aware was in the house at all, emerged from the shadows to try and take a bite of him.

"GAH! GET AWAY!" he screamed.

Howard appeared behind the zombie and put it in a headlock. He placed a hand on its forehead and twisted it around, snapping the zombie's neck. Nathan was about to thank his brother for saving him, but then Howard held the corpse by the throat and used it to smack Nathan around the face as if it were a giant rubber chicken.

Nathan prepared to punch him, but then his eyes went wide as he saw something flying straight at the front door.

"WE'VE GOT MORE OF THEM!"

A number of zombies came flying out of the tornado and crashed into the front of the house. They flew through broken windows and into the front porch, smashed through glass and bits of wall, and many of them broke limbs or injured themselves on impact. That didn't matter though. They saw Nathan, a living creature, within the house. And everything alive had to be killed.

While Howard was looking away at the zombies though, Nathan charged up another attack. He didn't notice until too late. Howard turned around and was immediately hit by a blast of energy point blank. He was launched back through the porch, knocking the zombies away and clearing a path.

Nathan followed that path. He charged down the hall, through the porch, leapt into the air after Howard and left the house to fall behind them. The tornado began to die, and the rubble it had picked up all fell around them. As the dust cleared, Nathan searched around for any sign of his brother.

He looked up, and saw Howard was flying higher and higher into the sky. He gritted his teeth and flew up after him.

***

Night Shroud returned to the cargo hold to find everypony else already present. Chain Mail was now in a foetal position for some reason, Spike was fast asleep, Soft Spoken was trying to explain something to the princesses, who both looked completely baffled. Explodey was doing squat thrusts, Blueblood was laying on his back and staring at the ceiling and Mystic was just looking around curiously.

"Ahem," he called out, catching their attention, "As Tome ordered, here's all your stuff back."

He tossed the sack of equipment they retrieved from the armoury earlier onto the ground.

"Included here is one set of Rainbow model Secopolis power armour, one red lightsaber, one minigun, now out of ammo, and six Elements of Harmony, one in necklace form and the others still stone balls. Also included are the extra parts to the cyborg's armour. Helmet, wings, etc."

Softy, Chain Mail and Explodey all came over to claim their stuff. Soft Spoken began to suit up in the Rainbow Six in case they needed to fight any time soon, while Chain Mail took everything else but the minigun.

"Hey!" Explodey protested, "Where's my lightsaber? I distinctly remember that I used to have one!"

"You probably destroyed it in an explosion, just like that magic enhancing ring," Chain Mail suggested, "Either way, the red one is mine."

From the same door that Night Shroud had came from, Gold Coin and the rest of the Brotherhood all entered as well.

"Hey!" the yellow earth pony called out, "We checked all around for demons. Only one left, and he told us some potentially useful information and then killed himself. It's gonna take a while to explain, but..."

"Night Shroud!" Ancient Tome barked, "Did you check the engineering levels for sabotage?"

"I did, sir," the night guard replied, "Everything is clear."

"Hmm...We'd best double check later. That demon seemed to suggest that their mission was to plant something on the ship that would make it easy to capture."

"What did you find out from the demons, Goldie?" asked Chain Mail.

"Ah! Wait," Softy interrupted, "While we all have a lot of questions, we can sit down and compare notes later. Right now, we've still got one more major problem to sort out: Explodey and the Canterlot zombies. He still has to release them."

Gold Coin sighed.

"And so continues Ponyville's proud tradition of getting shat on by inequine monstrosities."

***

"But there it was. After years of us both working as writers on so many separate projects, we finally came together again to work on MLP. We joined towards the end of the production of season three. Nathan was known mostly for writing terrible sitcoms by then. Mostly live action television, though he had done some animated projects. And me? I was well known in children's TV circles. I had done a lot of work for a few Cartoon Network and Nick shows. So then when I heard all the buzz this My Little Pony thing was generating on the internet, naturally I wanted in on it.

"By this point, my son Anthony was...how old? Twelve? Thirteen? Either way, old enough to be using the internet. And because I was so close to him, I too knew a lot about internet culture. I didn't exactly spend my time on 4chan or anything, but I was aware of trends and ongoing drama there, through Anthony. So when My Little Pony was suddenly getting real popular on /co/, I knew that something was up.

"First chance I got, I was in with Studio B and writing for a popular animated TV show. People really liked it, and I saw a chance to do some work that would really be appreciated, and that I could point to later on as a major accomplishment. With my credentials, they were happy to have me. But then when I made the move up to Canada and actually saw the studio, and I found Nathan there?

"Well...Things were awkward. In spite of everything, he was still a prick. He still didn't like me, and I still didn't like him, and after me and Brian got into a punch up at dad's funeral, he really resented me. I don't blame him, but after all his conflict with dad, I was just surprised Brian didn't attack him instead of me. It was an argument of principal. We both thought Brian was a useless, lazy cunt just like dad did, and he thought that we were snobs and had turned our backs on the family.

"Truth be told, I think dad was cheering us on. Dad made no secret of the fact that he didn't like Brian leeching off him, and he always seemed proud of our independence in a strange way. Nathan didn't really accept his pride, because he was a dick like that, while Brian tried to pretend that he was dad's favourite for sticking by him, even if that did mean he just made his life harder.

"And in the end, that conflict of beliefs drove a wedge between us. Everyone hated everyone, and there was barely any common ground for us to work on. I knew Nathan was the one who made sure I got the job there. Maybe he wanted to patch things up. He didn't manage though. Instead, all it did was make us fight more and more, mostly about how shitty his scripts were. The man was terrible. He had some of the most god-awful ideas I had ever heard of.

"Did you know he wanted to write an episode about Pinkie having deals with the mafia? I mean...Jesus. I know the show did some risky things, but it at least censored itself. Season one retold the genocide of the native Americans, but it at least made the ending happy and had the good sense not to show anyone getting killed, by using pies instead of weapons. Nathan's original script had no less than four pony deaths. On a kid's show. You think that's enough?

"My brother being a twat aside though, there was too much friction. After season four was finished, I wanted to step out. It was either me or him, and I had other job prospects anyway. Unlike Nathan, I was actually respected outside of the brony community. I could have gone and found a job elsewhere. Him though? He stayed on. He wrote the opening for season five.

"'Two of a Kind, Parts 1 & 2'. Featuring two new villains, the Second and the First, going up against Twilight Sparkle and her Elements of Harmony. It was bigger, better and so incredibly epic, featuring humans in Equestria for the first time, at least outside of fanfiction, and was written by Nathan Carson-Summers as well, prestigious writer of such gold as 'Foalsom Prison Blues' and 'Apple a Day'.

"Supposedly, and this is just a rumour mind you, when Nathan wrote the character of Second, he partially based him on his little brother Howard, sort of as petty revenge for years of fighting. And wouldn't you know it? On the day it aired, Howard Carson-Summers and his son Anthony disappeared from their home and were never seen again.

"And that's why I killed Nathan."

***

Nathan flew after Howard. They were far above Equestria now, almost on the edge of space. His brother had stopped a little way above him. Finally catching up, Nathan rose until he was level with him.

"Look, just stop it, Howard!" he shouted, "This isn't achieving anything! I only came here to talk!"

"The time for talking is over!" Howard roared, "Now is the time for vengeance!"

He rushed forward and punched Nathan. The human went reeling, and had no time to recover before he was hit again. It was just like in the throne room. Howard struck him repeatedly, each time further damaging him. Blood flew and bone broke, and Nathan's attacker let loose a thousand years of built up rage and hatred.

Nathan kept healing his wounds with every hit, but it wasn't going to save his life. It only prolonged the pain. It was the same principal that allowed First and Host to die, even though they both had healing factors too; It only repaired wounds. It didn't grant immortality.

He had survived his brain being crushed, but enough damage dealt eventually proved too much for Nathan to handle, and he just stopped healing. When Howard was sure he had done enough, he grabbed him by the throat, and they shot down towards the ground.

From the very edge of the atmosphere, they streaked towards Canterlot. They weren't just falling. Howard was flying them down, pushing them as fast as they could go. A cone formed around them. They broke the sound barrier. Once. Twice. Thrice. And then Nathan hit the top of the mountain head first.

There was a monstrous sound, and all of Equestria shuddered, as if about to be struck by an earthquake. Ponies around Canterlot stared in shock, their jaws hitting the floor, as a massive crack broke down the centre of the mountain. Then, for all of Equestria to see, the entire mountain split clean in two.

Both halves of the mountain fell to one side. Neither collapsed entirely. They just pointed off in different directions, forming a giant 'V' shape. The half which the city of Canterlot was attached to remained standing relatively upright, saving the city itself aside from a few minor building collapses, while its twin sagged to the side, only barely keeping upright. The mountain was mangled almost beyond recognition.

In between the two halves, there was now a small valley, at the bottom of which were two humans. Nathan laid on his back, and stared up at the sky. He could see the innards of the old mountain around them. Old gem mines and underground labyrinths that were once hidden, now laid exposed to the elements.

Howard stood up, and glared at Nathan.

"Take the hint, prick. I don't want to talk to you."

He turned to walk away, but Nathan reached out and grabbed his leg. Howard turned to look down at him in surprise. He crawled forward, bruised and beaten, and spat out some blood.

"Little bro, I came here for you...I wanted to help..."

"Help me?! You?! You're the one responsible for all my pain! YOU DID THIS TO ME!"

He reached down and yanked Nathan up onto his feet.

"You wrote me into your motherfucking episode, didn't you?! Me, and my boy too! You killed him! You trapped me in stone! You took my life away and his, and replaced it with this mockery! You and I have nothing to say to each other!"

He threw Nathan onto the floor again, and once more tried to leave.

"...I know."

Howard stopped.

"...Hmm?"

"You've been gone from the human world, for...twenty years now. Everyone thinks you and Anthony both died...but I knew better. I sort of figured it out...even if it doesn't make much sense...I mean...you can't travel to a cartoon world...they don't exist..."

"You managed it," Howard pointed out, "How did you get here?"

"Word of God, Howie. You're familiar with it?"

"...'If the creator or creators of a work of fiction give details on a fictional setting that are not contradicted in the work itself, it can generally be taken to be canon'."

"I was once a writer. I once was with Studio B. Not now, but I still have a say in everything. Just like you. If I imagine...in my head...that between that one scene with you in the throne room, and that other later scene...I briefly went to Equestria and talked with my brother again...well..."

"So this isn't a part of the narrative?"

"No. Not the official one anyway. I just came here to tell you what's going on."

"Then what IS going on? Back in the human world, what is causing these new events?"

"The twenty fifth anniversary of Friendship is Magic. It ran for nine seasons, and ended with a movie. Now they're making movies again. Three of them. Set nearly one thousand years later and bringing back several classic villains, and hopefully setting the stage for G5, focusing on new characters this time. The new Elements of Harmony, this time all of them stallions, as part of some directive by marketing to appeal specifically to bronies, and refocusing the show as an action/adventure comedy series."

"...That is the single most retarded idea I've ever heard. Was it yours?"

Nathan chuckled.

"No. It wasn't anyone's. Anyone that we know anyway. All the old staff left years ago. Studio B is made up of entirely different people now. A bunch of newbies, who don't really understand what made everyone like the original show. Faust and Jayson have nothing to with this. These new guys, they think everyone will be fine with the retooling, but as I'm speaking to you, the second movie just finished airing for the first time, and everyone online hates it. I don't think that new series is ever going to happen."

Howard crouched down next to Nathan.

"Listen, Howard...I haven't got much time left. You need to hear this..."

"What is it?"

"The trilogy is going meta. The thing about the old series, was that I never really wrote in a backstory for you. The new guys think they can be clever, and explain that you were an actual MLP writer back in the day. Based on your case and what I did obviously, though they aren't explicitly stating that it's Howard Carson-Summers. With everyone thinking that you're dead, that would just be plain disrespectful.

"Still though, the inspiration is obvious. And going with that explanation, they're setting themselves up as the villains. You're supposed to turn around and become a good guy at the last moment, and fight off some cartoon world avatars of them, and then that'll be them defeated and you get to go home, happy ending for everyone."

"It doesn't work like that though," Howard pointed out, "If it's part of the story that I defeat them and go home, I'll just go to some fictional version of home. They won't actually be defeated, and I won't actually be in the human world again! I'll just be in some disgusting imitation! I'll be trapped here forever!"

"I don't actually know that that's the plan," Nathan confessed, "That's just my guess. I know writing trends and I've seen the first two movies. That's what I think is going to happen. Point is, part of your plan to stop them is actually part of the overall narrative, influenced with the help of your hallucinations, like Conscience and Ambition. Even though you think you're going to fight the real people and win back your freedom, you're still playing into their hands."

"Meta within meta," Howard grumbled, "Damn, this is beginning to make my head hurt."

"Point is...fighting them won't be enough. That's why I'm here. I'm hoping...that if I let you know this, that you'll make it out properly. Maybe you'll come back. I don't know. The 'me' that's dying here is just an avatar of myself. I'm back in the human world right now, daydreaming about this very scenario, and thinking myself an idiot for believing to any degree that this is actually what happened to you."

Howard raised an eyebrow.

"This whole thing with you coming here. It came about just from you imagining it?"

Nathan nodded.

"Including the fight? Where I nearly just killed you?"

"...I figured you'd want to kill me, after everything..."

Howard looked at him sadly.

"You know me so well."

"Just remember, Howard: Aim high."

He closed his eyes, and stopped breathing.

"I always aim high."

***

"And then I came straight back up here, to make this recording," Second concluded, "I felt that context was necessary to explain all this. And to explain what Nathan meant, and what my plan actually is. I know I've been rather cryptic so far, Celestia. And when you take back Canterlot and I'm already gone, you'll find this, and you'll understand exactly what I need to do, and what you need to do, if we're going to make this work and stop these fuckhead kids who think they're being clever by putting themselves in my line of fire.

"I hope, I pray to God above that you can still bring yourself to actually side with me when you hear exactly what the plan is, because it's a terrible one. I spoke of the zombies earlier. Something Nathan said, made me think of this. He said 'I figured you'd want to kill me'. He accurately predicted that I would have remorselessly murdered him.

"Now that I know he wasn't the real Nathan, but just some representation of the real him, I feel a little better. Especially since he is actually trying to do right by me. It makes me realise how much of my life I wasted. But even more, it makes me wonder. What kind of man am I, that I could have actually beaten my brother to death on the throne room floor and think nothing of it?

"I've killed plenty of ponies by now in cold blood, but they never mattered to me. It took me killing a human, and someone close to me, to realise the full extent of my crimes. I've gone too far. I'm barely human anymore. The fact that I could create something like those zombies and feel nothing even as I see them bring about the end of a civilization is testament to that. I've lost too much of who I once was. Humans are better than this. I am not.

"And what scares me the most, is that by the time this is over, it won't even be the worst thing I'll have done. So I wanted to take this brief moment of clarity between my bouts of psychotic bastardry to tell you; if there was another way, I'd take it. But there isn't.

"So tremble in fear ponykind. You thought the apocalypse was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet."

***

Explodey laid back on the operating table in Dr. Apocalypse's clinic.

"Uh...Is this going to hurt?" he asked.

"No more than shitting out a dragon, trust me," Gold Coin said reassuringly, "Still though, this will be more constant. We can't have you just pushing out every single Canterlot citizen in one gigantic turd. That'd take forever, and be disgusting. So we do it this way. One by one, until they're all out."

The unicorn winced.

"Can I at least take some painkillers first?"

"Why don't you 'naturally produce' some?" Chain Mail taunted.

Soft Spoken sighed and trotted over to a medicine cabinet, returning with a box of pills.

"We only have so many of these," he warned, "You can take them now, but they won't last forever. This is going to fucking hurt, one way or another."

"Consider it your punishment in advance for traumatising an entire city," Gold Coin suggested helpfully.

"You guys are dicks," Explodey said bitterly.

"Well, that explains why you love us so much. OH SNAP!"

"BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN!" Chain Mail shouted.

"Quite," Softy replied.

In the corner of the clinic meanwhile, Mystic just sat alone, an air of melancholy around him.

When is Sliske getting back...?

***

The room was full of lights and the sound of music. People all over the place were mingling, just standing and talking, or laying on the sofas. Some were dancing, and others were drinking. A lot of people were gathered around the refreshment table, all taking shots and laughing at jokes that some guy was repeating from a television show he saw.

Howard made his way over to that group. One of the men at the table saw him approach, and threw up his arms happily.

"Howie! Ya made it!" he slurred drunkenly.

"Sure did. Happy birthday, Stu."

"Hey! Fuckin'...great to have ya! I was worried you was all depressed an' the like right now. I heard Joanne was cheatin'?"

"Yeah. I got into the drink for a while. It was bad for me. And I found out that I'm not a pleasant drunk. I'm not doing that anymore. My brother said it isn't good for me."

Stu patted his friend on the back.

"Good on ya! Don't s'pose you'll be drinking tonight then?"

"No way. After last night, I'm never drinking again."

"'Kay. I guess I c'n respect that. But hey! At least tell me you'll get up and do us a song like you did at my last party? Huh?!"

"Oh. I don't know..."

"Come on! Everyone loves your singing!"

He nudged him with an elbow.

"I heard Carol from our class really loves it, if you know what I mean.."

"Is she here?"

Stu pointed behind him. Howard twisted his head around and looked back across the crowd to see her sitting on a sofa in the other room, talking and laughing with some of her friends.

"Come on..."

"...Alright. I will."

"YESSSSS!" Stu crowed triumphantly, "Oh! Come on! Gary's band bought along their instruments and everything! They said they'd play if you'd sing."

"Did Clyde bring along his keyboard too?"

"Hell yeah he did! What have you got in mind?"

"Figured I might do some Elton John."

Stu slapped him on the back again.

"Go for it! Liven this place up! Fucking get crazy!"

Twelve minutes later, Howard was up on the stage and holding the microphone, as Stu ran around trying to get everyone's attention.

"COME ON!" he shouted, "Everyone quieten down! Ol' Howie's gonna sing for us again!"

The small crowd cheered.

"An'...Gary and 'is people are gonna play too!"

Even more cheering.

"Right! Go on, Howie! Let's hear it!"

Stu got off the stage and ran off to the side, while everyone looked on expectantly. Over the back, Howard saw Carol smiling, waiting for it to start. He smiled and nodded at her once, before turning back to Gary and the band and signalling them to start.

And they played, and he sung.

END

Author's notes:

Ending theme's already playing I guess.

You know, I was surprised by how easy this chapter was to write considering how much of central character Second is to it. He's a forty five year old guy with most the major parts of life behind him and a lot of family conflict, and I have no personal experience with those sorts things to base it on. Luckily I have two uncles to hate each other, so I'm not completely in the dark about how to write a character like that. Hopefully it did come off at least somewhat believably, especially in the bits where it started getting political. I hope it didn't go too far or personally offend anyone.

Well, whatever. If you only write what's familiar to you and don't take risks, you just stagnate. Even if it doesn't always work, this story if anything should show that I like to be experimental when writing. It helps me learn, I think. Push limits, make mistakes, learn from mistakes, try again. It's a great philosophy to live by.

On a less serious note, last chapter I closed off with Vortal Combat from Half Life as the ending theme, just as Second and Nathan began to fight. If you haven't already, actually go back and read the fight scenes in this chapter with that music playing. It is fucking awesome.

Next Chapter: BATMAN.

Chapter 21: Showing a Darker Side

Howard pulled back his cuffs to look at his watch. He gave another nervous grin and continued to tap his feet in anticipation.

"How do I look?" he whispered.

"Fine, Howie," Stu replied, somewhat irritably, "You were fine the last time you asked, and nothing has changed."

Howard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow.

"...Oh God. Stu, I'm just...I'm fucking terrified. I have literally never been frightened in my life."

"What have you got to be afraid of?"

"What if I screw things up? What if I don't say the words right?! What if...I dunno...What if I trip on something and face plant in the middle of the ceremony?! What if I just explode?!"

"Howie, are you actually saying these words? Are these really things you're concerned about happening?"

The nervous man's eyes darted back and forth.

"I'm just...I'm worried, is all. This is the biggest day of my life, and I'm..."

"It's gonna be alright, man! Everything will be fine! A wedding ceremony is no different than those karaoke performances you do. If anything, your audience here will be less critical, and you don't have to put on such a show. Just be genuine. Alright?"

Howard gulped.

"Alright. As long as you've got my back."

"Of course. Of course. Hey! Here she comes."

The wedding march began to play on the piano, and Carol walked through into the front door of the church, a long white dress trailing behind her and a veil over her face. The bridesmaids all came down the aisle too, all of them beaming just as much as Carol was, and one of them crying in joy.

Alright, Howard. Moment of truth.

***

Second stood on the balcony outside of Celestia's bedroom and stared down at the city of Canterlot below him.

This city looks like all the other, bigger cities decided it was the prison bitch, and systematically gangbanged it over and over.

Yes. That seemed like an apt metaphor. Half of Canterlot was just ruins now. He was astounded that as much of it was still standing as it was. Still though, there was no way this place was ever going to recover. Second and Nathan had done a number on this city, no doubt about it. Canterlot had been beaten down for one final time, and it wasn't ever getting back up.

In a way, Second respected how much damage it took before it finally crumbled. Canterlot had been subject to numerous invasions and natural disasters over many centuries. It had taken the full brunt of Discord and suffered the wrath of the Spider Legion, and stood tall before Chrysalis's changelings.

Finally though, after so many thousands of years, a combination of zombies, fire, tornados, rampaging giant monsters, mountain-shattering earthquakes, heavy explosives and pissed off humans had finished it off. Talk about hard to kill. Rasputin would have been green with envy.

Real great accomplishment, right there. I'm so proud of myself.

With a roll of his eyes, Second jumped off the balcony and floated down towards the ground, into the ruined gardens of the palace. Like everything else, it had been ravaged by the disasters. The ground was scorched in places where his troops had laid siege to the area with missiles and flamethrowers. Zombies roamed around with no clear goal or destination in mind. A tower had collapsed into rubble off to the side, thanks to the shaking of the mountain as it split earlier that day.

He walked through the gardens and went around the side of the castle, coming back to the front entrance. The drawbridge remained hanging open, and a little way above the moat he could see a massive hole in the palace wall where his golem and Nathan's titan had smashed through.

Utilising his newly gained powers, he flew up to it and floated through into the throne room. Several of the pillars had fallen and the floor was cracked in places, but it had overall held up better than some other places he had seen. He touched down again, and slowly walked over to a heap of painted yellow metal laying off to one side of the room.

"Silver?" he said, "Are you alright?"

There was a moaning, and the mare turned over to face him. She was still in her suit of power armour, minus the helmet, and looked dazed and confused.

"...Sir?" she muttered.

"Hey, Silver, I FINALLY thought of a name for the power armour guys to distinguish you from the Knights of Man. How about, 'Heavy Troopers'? Because of the heavy equipment you all carry? Right?"

Silver smiled weakly at him.

"That's a great name, sir."

"I only wish I had thought of it before every single one of them were wiped out except you. Then I could have saved myself using the phrase 'power armour ponies' so many times. I could have shortened my sentences by an entire word! Do you know how much extra time I would have had if I had done that from the start? A lot!"

Silver Vein coughed loudly.

"Yeah, I agree completely sir," she said between choking.

"...Are you okay?"

"I think I'm dying."

"Pssh. Death! You mortals, honestly."

He knelt down next to her and placed a finger on her neck.

"Sir, what are you..? Ahh..."

A serene look went over her face, and she felt a calmness. The pain began to dull, and eventually vanished, and her senses all seemed crisper and clearer. Suddenly much more aware, she looked up at him properly.

"What did you just do?" she asked.

"Healed the sick and dying by touching them, apparently. I've been gaining all sorts of new powers lately. As far as I can tell, if I just act like I should be able to do it, I generally can. Since you last saw me, I discovered that I can fly, summon tornados, and break the sound barrier. This is small potatoes to me now. I could probably do anything. I'm half tempted to destroy the sun, just to see if I could survive without it. I probably could as well. It'd be an interesting experiment if nothing else. Anyway, I'm rambling. What I'm trying to say, is that I'm basically like Jesus."

Silver blinked.

"Anyway, get off the floor and go clean up. It'll be time for dinner soon."

"Dinner, sir?"

"You know it. Go up to the dining room in about an hour. I'm going to go explore the kitchens and see if my nigh omnipotence has made me any better as a cook."

***

"Wah?!"

A unicorn in a top hat and monocle fell to the floor. The first thing he noticed was the smell.

"UGH! What is that foul odour?!"

Then suddenly he was soaking wet, as another pony pushed him into what appeared to be a shower cubicle and yet another twisted some knobs on a control panel outside it. The previous smell immediately disappeared, replaced by one of somepony who fell into a vat in a chemical plant.

The disoriented unicorn was magically forced out of the pseudo shower and tossed into another cubicle. Dryers activated, and within seconds he was no longer wet either, though the awful smell remained, and his mane was a mess. He looked back out of the cubicle and saw that he was in a medical clinic of some kind. Right next to the place where he fell before, a white unicorn strapped to an operating table was screaming in pain.

"What is going on here?!" he demanded of his captors, "This is most unorthodox!"

An earth pony who he recognised from the many charity functions he and the other nobles attended stepped forward and helped him out of the cubicle. He looked extremely bored, and half asleep. He unenthusiastically gave him a pamphlet.

"The apocalypse just happened," Gold Coin mumbled, "You were a zombie, and then you were absorbed by a sludge monster. It just shat you out, and now you're normal again. We just sterilised and dried you. Canterlot is destroyed, but you have been provided quarters here on the Prometheus. Your room key is included in the pamphlet, which provides coping advice for these trying times. We hope you enjoy your stay on board the Prometheus, sponsored by Brotherhood of Man. The Brotherhood of Man - we usher in the end of days in style."

Gold Coin didn't say another word, and gestured towards the door. The confused unicorn gave him an odd look and slowly walked out into the corridor, looking over his shoulder at the earth pony, who remained as bored as ever. As he exited, he heard the echoing screams of the unicorn on the operating table as he prepared to eject another pony.

The unicorn looked down at the pamphlet, and saw that a numbered key was taped to the front. Using his magic, he removed the key and placed it underneath his top hat for safe keeping. Curious about the situation, he raised the pamphlet, and read the title.

"So, you're a piece of shit..."

***

Soft Spoken, Chain Mail, Mystic, and Iron Hoof walked slowly through the quiet corridors of the Prometheus. They had found the crews' quarters and living areas, and the place was huge. No amount of repeating would ever really describe just how massive the ship was, and being aware of its size, it came to no surprise to the ponies to find that there were almost hundreds of rooms, each filled with at least three bunk beds.

It had been their idea after discovering these rooms to offer them to the newly cured citizens of Canterlot, since they probably had no other homes. Or most of them, anyway. Up ahead, they could see a pegasus mare fiddling with a locked door for a moment before she got it and wandered inside.

"So, turning in already?" Chain Mail asked.

"I know it's early," Softy replied, "However, I always made it a point to go to bed at quarter to ten. The earlier I go to bed, the earlier I rise, and there's always lots to do in the morning."

"Understandable."

"I heard the princesses also went for an early night," Iron commented, "I wasn't surprised to see Celestia retire to her designated room when she finished lowering the sun, though Luna always stayed up at night. I'm assuming her sleeping pattern must have been disrupted by recent events?"

"So I'm told," Chain Mail answered, "It's been a trying day for everypony. Maybe if we get some rest we'll be able to finally sit down and figure everything out tomorrow. Celestia knows, we've got a lot to cover."

"That we have," said Softy, "I'll see you all in the morning."

He looked down at Mystic, who continued to be miserable. He gave him a quick hug.

"Listen, sonny. Sliske's a big boy now. He can take care of himself. He'll be back before you know it. Alright?"

Mystic nodded.

"There you go."

He stood up again.

"Take care of him, Chains," he whispered.

"Good night, Mister Spoken."

"Call me Softy."

***

Soft Spoken was on a train. He sat up from the small table he had been leaning on and stared out the window, smiling as he saw the quaint countryside. Tramplevania was a remote location, far removed from Equestria's capital. Modernisation hadn't quite reached this new place yet. The fact that trains were still used here instead of the portal network was testament to that.

The train came grinding to a halt as they approached the platform. Softy climbed onto his hooves again and quickly exited the train, looking around him as the simple country ponies around the station greeted arriving relatives or ponies returning from visits.

"Cousin, you made it! Welcome to Tramplevania!"

Softy turned around to see a leaf green unicorn with a huge smile approaching him.

"Helsing!" Softy replied, "It's been forever since I last saw you!"

"Don't I know it? How is your father?"

"Oh, he's well. Just got back from another voyage. Getting old now though. I think he's ready to retire from mercenary work soon. It's not something a pony his age should be doing, what with the bad hip..."

"That's a shame. I was hoping we might still be able to call him up here once he was available. Help deal with our raging vampire infestation."

"Is that still a problem?" Softy asked in concern, "I thought you and the villagers wiped them out four years ago?"

"So did I, but last spring they came back in force. We think they're hiding out in forest, but that's neither here nor there. They're a manageable problem. Right now, the big news is you! I heard you're taking over for the ambassador!"

"Well, of course. I have more than proven my worth elsewhere, and no other positions are looking to free up any time soon. Though, I was of course saddened to hear about Ambassador Scroll. Nopony deserves to have that happen to them."

Helsing bowed his head sadly.

"I know," he sighed.

"...Do they know who did it yet?"

"Well, I know who did it. Fucking vampires are who did it. Of course, we can't go around saying the vampires are back and are killing important ponies. The count says they don't want to incite panic, and has been pressuring the media to keep this whole business under wraps and sending out small strike teams to seek out and destroy them discreetly. I don't see the point really. The locals know vampire attacks when they see them, so everypony around here who COULD be panicked by the news already knows what's going on. We're just not allowed to say it. That's why they need ponies like me to deal with it. Make sure the attacks don't spread beyond this village to menace the rest of Tramplevania."

Softy gave his cousin a sympathetic smile.

"They're lucky to have you."

"Thanks, cousin."

"Come along then. I need to report to the embassy before they close."

***

Sliske gasped for air as he walked into his host's home. Everything was blurry and he couldn't see.

"I can't...Everything's..."

He collapsed on the sofa. The sickness was getting worse. The mysterious cutie mark only added to his confusion, and his poor state of health was giving him a headache too.

"I..."

He fell asleep.

***

General Sliske the Destroyer fell back against the wall, almost choking.

"...What?" he said aloud, "I could have sworn that I was just possessed. That sakrassi jumped right down my throat. Is it...still in me?"

The warlord hit his chest with both his right arms at once. He then felt his hearts. All three of them were beating normally, and his stomachs were free of any feeling of illness or indigestion. He felt completely normal.

"...Did it die inside me?" he asked in disgust.

He held his forehead.

"I need to rest, and see a healer."

The burly Zarlan turned away from the enclosure of his personal zoo and made his way out into the corridor of his fortress. The rough wooden construction of everything and animal skin rugs, made from native red-furred Krishtinfalth, made the fortress feel rustic, and showed off the great power and wealth of the general.

When most of his people were but peasants, your common Zarlan living in simple huts or crude houses built from whatever could be scrounged from the environment, it was a mark of great importance that the general lived in such luxury.

A great, massive building made entirely from wooden logs taken from the now long dead forest of Krubreth. Trophies from many big game animals, both local and exotic. Actual heating, with burning coal in stone fireplaces in every room to combat the bitter cold of the plains, and gas lanterns hanging from the ceilings to light the way in the dark.

And that was not to mention their great food stores and an armoury with only the toughest of armour made by the finest smiths, and weapons for his entire army, including his ancestral battleaxe, which had slain thousands of foes in bloody battle with the primitive tribes of the north and the cannibalistic savages to the west.

By far his proudest acquisitions though, were the mirrors, an invention of the eastern Grelmokrik people, who they had conquered and absorbed into the Zarlan empire long ago. They were placed in every room and every corridor, and allowed the general to appreciate his handsomeness in his reflection every time he strode through those great halls.

He passed by one and looked into it, seeing the form of a proud, hairless biped looking back at him. His four arms were strong and powerful, and the nine eyes dotted around a completely bald head that allowed him to see in every direction all blinked in perfect synchronisation, homing in on themselves in the reflection, and focusing on the fact that they appeared much different than before.

The Zarlan stroked the side of his face with one hand, feeling a scar over on cheek and leaning in close to get a better look at his eyes. They seemed so alien to him.

"What strangeness is..."

He stopped mid sentence. His eyes widened and his jaw hung open as he saw his teeth in the mirror, and found that they had grown to an absurd length and were sharp and pointy now. All of them were like that, instead of just his canines like usual. He began to breathe heavily as he slowly realised that they were all signs of sakrassi possession.

So why wasn't it in control instead of him?

And then the realisation hit him. He felt his knees become weak and he had to support himself against the wall. He closed all his eyes at once and searched his memories again, trying to find some kind of evidence of self. He plunged into the deepest recesses of his mind, and heard a voice. It was his voice, screaming in rage.

YOU DISGUSTING CREATURE! YOU WILL RELEASE ME! I AM GENERAL SLISKE THE DESTROYER, RULER OF THE ZARLAN EMPIRE! YOUR PAIN WILL BE IMMENSE, AND YOUR SCREAMS WILL ECHO THROUGH THE MINDS OF EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR PATHETIC RACE! I WILL THROW YOU TO THE KLKRMIZK AND BASK IN YOUR DYING AGONY AS THEY RIP YOU ASSUNDER AND FEED OFF OF YOUR VERY SOUL!

He pulled back out to block out the voice.

"NO!" he shouted, "I CANNOT be one of those...those...parasites! They're...I'm..."

The general was astounded to see what appeared to be a tear falling from one of his eyes in the mirror. It was a sign of great sadness, and also one of weakness. In Zarlan culture, it was seen as the greatest sin to indulge in such a thing, and was punishable by death, something he and previous generals had enforced ruthlessly. He immediately ceased the display and wiped it off.

"No...I have no time for an identity crisis right now," he resolved, "For now, I am who I always thought I was. I am Sliske, and I have an army to lead."

The thing that thought itself Sliske then turned away from the mirror and stomped angrily down the corridor.

"And I will destroy anyone who dares say otherwise."

***

Sliske woke up in cold sweat, and crying. He didn't care. It had been over two thousand years since it was possible for anyone to punish him for it.

"...I'm sssso ssssorry," he whispered to the darkness, "Pleasssse forgive me, Drelmary..."

But the darkness had no response.

***

Silver entered the dining room through a side door and emerged near the far end of a long table, where Second was sitting. She had changed out of her power armour and was happy to see her master again.

"Good evening, my Lord!" she said cheerfully.

"Yeah, whatever," Second replied.

She noticed he wasn't so much eating the food on his plate as just pushing it around with a fork.

"...Something wrong?"

"There was no meat," the human said miserably, "I was hoping that the royal kitchens might have at least some stored away from visiting representatives of other species. I know that griffins are carnivorous at least. But there's nothing."

Silver gave him a sympathetic smile as she sat down at the table.

"I'm sure you'll find something eventually," she said.

"Yeah..." Second mused, "Hmmm...I did find the remains of Butterfly Nine while I was roaming the grounds earlier. She was stuck inside a suit of power armour, so the zombies probably haven't gotten to her yet. If I go out there and drag her inside sometime this evening, we could have canned food tomorrow. What do you think?"

Silver looked at him with mild concern. He wasn't smiling or anything. Nothing to suggest he was joking. There was a very real possibility that he was legitimately suggesting this.

"...I personally would not eat it, but if you want to, that's up to you my Lord," she answered carefully.

Second went back to stabbing at the cabbage leaves on his plate.

"I've never tasted pony before. I really should try it some time."

Silver tried to ignore that, and dug into her steamed carrots, broccoli and greens. It was a very simple meal, and likely all that Second was capable of preparing by himself. Still, it could have been worse. Simple didn't necessarily mean bad.

"Hey, sir?" she said between chewing.

"Hmm?"

"So, that guy who was trying to kill you earlier. Who was he?"

"My brother, Nathan. Or an earthly representation of him anyway. He came to help me in my plan. Warn me about something bad the Pantheon of B were planning. Needed to warn me so I could adapt my strategy accordingly. I've got some extra problems to deal with now..."

"So why did you attack him if he was there to help?"

"We have a history. Nathan's not the most agreeable of people. That, and the fact he's responsible for sending me here and causing all my suffering. Me and Anthony's arrival here, his death, my imprisonment, it all happened because of him. He didn't know he was doing it of course, but it's still his fault."

"Oh..." said Silver, "By Anthony, you mean-"

"Lord First. My son. Yes."

Silver looked surprised.

"Lord First was your son?"

"Yes. He was. Why is everyone always so surprised to hear that? It's not hard to figure out."

"...So if he was your son, I assume at some point you...?"

Second held up his right hand and showed her a lump of melted gold that was stuck to his knuckle.

"This thing here used to be a wedding ring, once."

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Not your fault," Second replied.

He suddenly perked up.

"If anything, I feel better about it since Nathan arrived! He said it's been twenty years for him in the human world, instead of a thousand. That means if I ever go home, it'll probably be twenty years into the future too. My wife might still be alive...Maybe...If I'm lucky..."

His happiness slowly died down again, and he began to return to his previous subdued tone.

"Twenty years..." he calculated, "She was a year older than me when we started dating...Her birthday is...And I disappeared...Hmm...I think she'd be...sixty six by now."

He once again began to poke the vegetables.

"Still, I'm sorry."

Second smiled weakly at her.

"I'm over it," he said, "A thousand years alone with your thoughts gets you thinking. Just because I might still get a little moody over sensitive matters, does not mean I didn't accept the state of things long ago. This right here?"

He gestured around the room.

"This is the new status quo. I've been in Equestria for longer than I ever lived in my real home. For all the years I spent with my wife, I spent more than fifty times that stuck in stone. This place...It's sickeningly familiar to me. The whole world around me is just an amusing novelty that long ago wore off.

"I once set foot in this land and was in wonder at how everything looked like a drawing. I thought it was so charming. And then I spent so much of my time here, and now I just long to look at something real again. When I look at my own hands now, all I can ever think about is how simple they look. They make me feel like so much less than I should be."

He looked at the melted ring.

"...And they're not the only things that makes me think that."

Silver tried to think of something to say.

"You might still see her again one day."

"I know I'll see her again one day," Second said darkly, "Because after everything I've been through, there is no force in this universe that could ever stop me."

***

"...We usher in the end of days in style," Gold Coin finished.

The confused and disturbed looking earth pony backed slowly out of the room. As he did, Gold Coin released a huge sigh.

"Explodey, take five!" he shouted.

Gold Coin walked over to the other side of the room and filled up a plastic cup from the water cooler than somepony had hauled into the clinic. As he drank, the other assistants left to go walk about for a bit and stretch their legs, maybe take a smoke break, leaving him alone with the other pony supervising the project.

"Everything alright?" Night Shroud asked.

"Everything is fine. I'm just fucking bored."

"You could go up to your room and go to bed if you're tired. I'm normally nocturnal anyway. I got this."

"I'm not tired. I'm just bored," Gold Coin clarified, "It's not sleep, I need to do something to break up the monotony."

"Oh. Well...You could still take an hour long break and come back when you're feeling rejuvenated. I can still cover for you. It's not like your job is vital or anything."

"Explaining to these ponies what the fuck is going on is vital, Night Shroud."

"Yeah, but it doesn't have to be you specifically to do it. I can do that, and get another volunteer to take over the 'shoving them into the sterilisation chamber' job for me."

"You make a good point. I'll go and take a look at my room. With the state of things right now, we may be living on the Prometheus for a while. I should get to personalising it. Maybe hang up a couple of decorations? Get a lava lamp? I dunno."

"Sounds like a plan," Night Shroud agreed.

Gold Coin quickly finished his drink and yawned.

"Right. I think I'll do that. I'll come back whenever. If you're sure you've got this?"

"I'm sure, Goldie."

"'Kay."

He trotted out into the corridor, somewhat more energetically now.

"Oh," he said, turning and looking back at Night Shroud, "And if Explodey should produce some friends of mine, a diamond dog named Remus and a blue unicorn called Easy Eight, do tell me, and send Easy Eight my way. I have business to settle with him."

***

"...Captain Chain Mail?"

The captain looked at Iron Hoof in surprise.

"If it's all good with you sir, Tome wanted me to do additional checks for sabotage in the engineering sections about this time, and I've got to see about some of the royal guards Explodey had been rejecting too. I was told to see if I can go convince them to help patrol the ship."

"Calling me 'sir' and 'captain' again, private?" said Chain Mail, "Whatever happened to the soldier who tried to kill me twice for defending the princesses, exactly like he was supposed to do?"

"...Force of habit. Don't think you're suddenly in charge of me again, captain."

He smiled.

"I expected as much. Though if I'm not your boss anymore, surely you don't need to ask me first if you want to leave and do your own thing?"

Iron blinked.

"You're right. I don't need to ask you. I've got more important things to do. Goodbye, captain."

The grey earth pony galloped off down the corridor without another word, leaving the captain behind with Mystic Chant.

"...So kid, are you feeling tired yet?" he asked.

Mystic shook his head.

"Huh...Well...I guess we could always go to the cafeteria. I heard Tome got it up and running again."

"Alright," Mystic murmured.

"Yeah. Come on. I could go for a late dinner."

***

In their shared quarters, two alicorn princesses held each other as they slept. The bunk beds were too small for them, so they had stripped the sheets off and thrown the bed frames out in the corridor, instead making some makeshift bedding on the floor.

It had been many years since both the princesses slept at the same time of day, let alone together. The last time it had happened was three hundred years ago, when Celestia's last protégé had died and she had been in need of somepony to talk to. These rare times together always happened when there was tragedy, and the sisters needed somepony to lean on.

And as they slept, they both dreamed.

***

Princess Celestia landed on the rooftop and looked over the darkness of the city. The moon hung in the sky above her, and she stepped forward cautiously. As she came to the edge of the roof, she peered into the alleyway below. A back entrance to a restaurant was lit by a single yellow light, the sole source of illumination in the alley.

Thanks to the light, she could see a number of ponies, two earths, one pegasus and three unicorns all gathered in a circle. They all wore trench coats and trilby hats, and a few were smoking cigars.

"So when's the boss gonna arrive?" asked one of the earth ponies.

"Soon," said the pegasus, with a gruff voice, "He won't want to miss out."

"Are you sure it's safe for us to be meeting out in the open like this?" asked a unicorn, "I mean, what if the Batmare-"

"ENOUGH," the pegasus interrupted, "about the Batmare. Her tactic is fear, and the shadows. We got light here. Nopony wander off, and just watch around you. If she can't get the drop on us, she won't be doin' nothing."

Through her cowl, Celestia grinned.

"Oh how wrong you are, my little ponies..." she muttered to herself.

"Hey, here he comes!"

The ponies all turned their attention to the end of the alleyway, where a long black car drove in. As it entered the alleyway though, rather than stopping, it began to pick up speed.

"Uhh..." said an earth pony, "Is it just me, or is the boss's car going a little bit-"

The car rammed right into the group of ponies and mowed them all down, save for the pegasus who took to the air just in time to dodge. The others were all crushed under the car, bar one unlucky fellow who got sandwiched between the car and a wall when it spun around and crashed after the vehicular homicide.

The pegasus stared in shock at the carnage left in the its wake. The car door opened, and a human stepped out of it. A human in a purple suit with an orange jacket underneath, and a green bow tie. He had white paint all over his face, even over the moustache, except his mouth which was painted red, and his hair was bright green too.

"Sorry," he said in a deliberately strange sounding voice, "You know what they say about male drivers."

"W-Who are you?! Where's the boss?!"

"He was feeling a little down. I decided to throw him a party to cheer him up, Pinkie Pie style. And speaking of..."

He reached down to his side and whipped out a massive novelty handgun, mostly yellow with blue stripes all around it and a bright purple scope on the top.

"How about I give you a demonstration of my portable party cannon?"

Suddenly, he pointed it behind him up at the roof, and before Celestia could react he pulled the trigger. A firework flew right up and exploded into confetti and streamers right in front of her face, and the caped alicorn lost her balance and fell down into the alley, grunting as she landed on her back.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The human was cackling like a madman, and while Celestia was down he grabbed the pegasus he had left alive by the throat and tossed him into the car, before bundling in after him and closing the door. The machine roared to life and backed up.

Celestia rose to her hooves again, scowling. The car drove past her and back out into the streets. The windows rolled down as it passed and the clown-like human stuck his head out the window and ran his fingers through his hair.

"See ya, Batsy!" he shouted.

And then the car vanished into the night, as the psychotic laughter of its driver echoed across the city.

"Grrrrr..."

Celestia regained her balance again and her vision slowly returned to normal, after she had been almost blinded by the explosion before. Flexing her bat-like wings, she flew up above the rooftops again. She saw the car rolling down main street in the distance, and grinned.

"Oh no, Second. You aren't getting away from me."

***

"Helsing!"

Softy pushed through the crowd gathering in the village square and came to the middle, where his cousin laid on the ground coughing up blood. Another pony laid dead next to him, this one with fangs and blood red eyes, and a wooden stake sticking out of its chest. It was one of many littering the streets.

"Softy..." he gasped, "Cousin, I don't have much...time..."

The earth pony knelt by his side and put a hoof under his head to hold him up.

"You saved us," he said tearfully.

"I did my duty, cousin. To Equestria, and Tramplevania, like I always have. Like our family always has."

He reached up and touched his face.

"I know we may have never been related by blood, but you are my cousin, and your father's son just as surely as I am mine. You've served Equestria too."

Softy shook his head.

"No, I just talk. I'm no good for anything! I spend all day in offices and meetings and writing out trade agreements! I'm no hero like you or dad or mother or-"

"Softy!" Helsing cried, "Listen to me. You serve Equestria with your words, just as I serve it with stakes and garlic. You've served Tramplevania and its citizens for twelve years now...And you've done great...Never sell yourself short...Or ever believe that your gifts are no good...Because the ponies here, they would disagree."

He used his teeth to pull off his necklace of garlic, and put it over Softy's neck.

"They need a new hero now. You're it, cousin."

"Me?! But I can't-"

"You can do anything you set your mind to, Softy," said Helsing, "I've finally failed. Now...somepony new has to carry the torch. Will you do it for me?"

"...I will, cousin. I will."

***

"...And so then I..." Second paused mid sentence to belch, "Then I...fucking...smashed his face into the mountain...and split it open...the mountain that is...and that's why everything is sort of tilted and slanty right now."

He filled up another wine glass and downed it in one shot. Silver hadn't even been aware there was alcohol at the table until Second had suddenly started gulping down whole bottles full of it. She had a glass of her own, but she was only half way through her first glass right now. Second was into the double digits already and was completely plastered.

"...Teach him to mess with ME!"

"Still seems a little harsh," said Silver.

"Bah! You dunno nothin'! Nathan fucking deserved it! Just like every other one of those fucking...pantheon scumbags...I'll fucking...skin them. And wear them as coats. That'll show 'em..."

"So...what have the pantheon done then?" the pegasus asked.

"Huh?"

"You're angry at the pantheon too. What did they do?"

Second just stared at her.

"Silver, if I trapped you on an alien world, left you to the mercy of a pack of weirdoes completely unlike anything that should exist, and periodically used my Elder God magic to make you dance for my amusement while laughing gleefully at your pain, would you not resent that, ever so slightly?"

"Uh...If you did it, sir?"

"...What?"

"Nothing sir."

Second eyed her suspiciously.

"Mortals..." he muttered.

***

Sliske didn't leave his host the normal way. Rather than floating out through the mouth like cloud of smoke as he usually did, or becoming the tongue and crawling out, he seemed to take on an almost liquid form and dribble out of his host's mouth, pooling onto the floor in a puddle of sticky black goo of the same consistency as Explodey after detonating.

He trickled across the floor, slowly returning to gaseous form and rising into the air as he moved across the room. He finally became his usual ghost-like self as he reached the front door, which he phased through. Once more, the alien found himself out in the streets of Ponyville, only now it was night time.

Street lights illuminated the small town nearby him, but everything was so different than usual. Once upon a time, you could see the lights of the city of Canterlot up above and in the distance, from the top of a great mountain. Now that mountain was barely visible, because no lights came from it. There was just a distant dark shape that may or may not have been the mountain.

Now, most of the light in Ponyville came from the Prometheus. The giant airship was parked on the far side of the town, blocking almost the entire skyline in that direction from view with its massive scale. Even the gondola alone was huge, and its many windows showed that inside, all the lights were on and the ship was still very much operational, even if not flying. In fact, he could even see unfamiliar ponies milling about in there, on their way to some other part of the ship.

Sliske sighed.

Guess I had better go back...

***

Gold Coin lifted his arc welding helmet and smiled at his work. Despite his choice in head gear, he was actually using a chainsaw right now, and had felt the need to get the helmet because it was cooler that way. Either way, he had just finished sawing the top half off of the bunk bed.

He tossed the chainsaw aside and bucked open the door to his quarters. Gripping the top half of bed frame in his teeth, he then dragged it back into the corridor, earning him some strange looks from a passing pegasus on his way to his own room.

"Ha!" Gold Coin thought, "No stupid bunk beds for me! Never again, Cheddar Cross. Never again!"

He rushed back into the room and jumped onto his now relatively normal bed happily. Looking around, he contemplated whether or not to get a water cooler in here, like they had in the clinic now. This ship probably had loads of extras in storage somewhere.

Hey, with the recent apocalypse and the fall of Canterlot, the Prometheus was very likely to be the new base of operations for both the princesses and him and his friends. If he was going to be spending any amount of time here, he had to get to personalising the place. Make it feel more like home.

Hmm...We are in Ponyville. I could probably stop by my mansion on the far side of the acres and pick up some of my stuff...Like my mini fridge!

There was a knock on the door. Rather pointless since it was still hanging open, but it got his attention, because he sat up and saw that Easy Eight was waiting for him. Gold Coin jumped off the bed as the red maned, blue unicorn stepped in and closed the door behind him.

"I just came from the clinic," he said, "They explained everything about what happened...That batpony said you wanted to see me about something?"

The earth pony rushed forward and grabbed him, pressing his face against his and staring right into his eyes.

"You. Fuck me. Now."

"Meep..."

***

"DISPENSING RATIONS!" a chrome coloured pony android screamed.

Chain Mail and Mystic both leaned far back to try and distance themselves from the robot chef as it opened its mouth and spewed green stuff all over their plastic dinner trays.

"...What is this?" asked Chain Mail, almost afraid of the answer.

"HIGH PROTEIN MILITARY GRADE GRUEL, CITIZEN. SPECIALLY MIXED TO PROVIDE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE NUTRIENTS FOR THE PONY FORM."

Mystic looked traumatised.

"...Is there anything else?" he said meekly.

"NEGATIVE. ENJOY YOUR MEAL, CITIZEN."

Ancient Tome popped up from behind the counter, covered in grease and magically wiping sweat off his brow with an oversized handkerchief.

"That isn't true," he said, "There are ample supplies of actual food. I'm just having trouble getting the robot chef to dispense them. Bear with me for a moment and I'll get this working."

He disappeared below the counter again, and the two ponies heard the sound of clanking metal and bolts being turned.

"THIS UNIT IS BEING VIOLATED. SECURITY HAS BEEN ALERTED."

"Security is disabled," Tome called from below, "Nothing to worry about. You two just go eat your slop."

The cafeteria of the Prometheus wasn't exactly busy, but neither was it empty. Though many of the former zombies returned and wanted to go to their rooms and get some sleep, still others were hungry and wanted to visit the cafeteria first instead.

About nine or ten other ponies were dotted around the large mess hall eating their gruel with varying states of enthusiasm or satisfaction, most of them getting an entire table to themselves, though a few of them sat together. With so much free space, Chain Mail and Mystic just took the first table they could, and sat there waiting for Tome to fix the chef.

"So..." Chain Mail began.

He quickly realised he had nothing to say as Mystic just looked at him and waited for him to say whatever he was going to. The captain searched for something to talk about.

I am no good with kids.

"...So...Ancient Tome. He's your father, right? What's he like with you?"

"He scares me," Mystic said quietly.

"...Umm...What about your mother?" he asked, "Is she not...?"

"She died..."

Chain Mail slumped on the table, trying to think of anything that would make the conversation less awkward.

"...I...I know what that's like," he said eventually, "To lose a mother. Mine died when I was twenty three, but she was sort of my only carer. I never knew my father."

"Was she nice?"

"No. She wasn't nice. But she was caring. She was a harsh mistress, but everything she ever did was for my sake, and that's really what a mother should be, in my opinion. She did love me though. I do miss her sometimes..."

"Was she a guard like you?" asked Mystic, finally getting more open with the captain.

"Eh...No..."

"Was it your dad then?"

"Not as far as I'm aware..."

"So why'd they call you 'Chain Mail' then?"

Chains' eyes darted back and forth, making sure they weren't being watched and he leaned in closer.

"Between you and me, I'm not named after the type of armour. My mother was a mailmare. She delivered letters. Everypony in our family worked in postage in some way, as a sort of tradition, going back hundreds of years. 'Chain Mail' is actually supposed to be a weird way of saying 'chain letter', those weird messages you get that say 'pass this along to ten other ponies you know or else you will die in five days' or something stupid like that. Seriously."

Mystic stared at him briefly, before breaking out into fits of laughter.

"It's not funny!" said Chain Mail, sounding embarrassed.

"Hahahahahaha!"

He grumbled.

"Damn kids..."

***

In the cargo hold, curled up off to one side, a dragon kicked in his sleep, as he always did. As he had every single night for a thousand years...

***

The forest was dying. As the great beast lurched forward, everything he passed withered and crumbled into ash. The trees shrank until they were mere sticks and snapped. The grass became black and shrivelled back into the earth which bore it. The bushes and flowers all just fell apart and became dust in the wind. Overhead, the ponies and their dragon companion could see the sun, blocked by the moon in a grand eclipse.

"FOOLISH MORTALS. DO YOU NOT REALISE THAT THE WORLD BELONGS TO TIRAC? MY INFINITE MAJESTY SHALL SPREAD ACROSS THIS PATHETIC WORLD, AND ALL SHALL PERISH. EVERYTHING WILL BECOME AS IT ONCE WAS. I WILL STAND TRIUMPHANT IN THE FACE OF HARMONY, IN THE FACE OF THE DRAGONS WHO DARED OPPOSE ME, AND SOON EVEN THEY WILL BECOME ONE WITH THE DARKNESS."

"Keep running everypony!" Twilight cried, "I need to think of something! I just need more time!"

Spike kept a steady pace by her side. He was crying in fear and running as fast as his little legs could carry him. It was just him now. He was the last one left. All the dragons in all the world, from the new hatchlings to the great dragon elders of old, were all gone. Tirac took them. He was powerful. So powerful that the Elements of Harmony themselves did nothing to him. But he had one weakness. Dragon fire.

"Twilight!" Applejack cried over the chaos, "If we don't make it out of this-"

"No Applejack! We'll make it! We just need to think of something!"

His awakening was said to herald the end of days. Tirac burst out of a volcano on the day of the eclipse. The sun and moon had frozen in the sky. Celestia and Luna had gone to the dragon elders for assistance. Tirac was their enemy. They were the only ones able to fight him. His one single weakness. But they had come too late. The demon had defeated them all.

Then he came for the others. The rest of dragonkind were powerless to stop him. He fought every single member of Spike's race to the death, and took their souls as trophies. Twilight and her friends had been fighting tooth and nail ever since to defend Spike. He was only little, but as of four hours ago, he was the last dragon in Equestria.

"Twilight look!" called Pinkie.

The seven of them skidded to a stop in front of a huge cliff face. It had been blocked from view by the trees before, but now they realised they had ran straight into a dead end. The stomping of the huge demon behind them turned their attention back to the path they just came from. The trees suddenly turned grey and crumbled, revealing the huge armoured red beast. He sneered at them.

"YOU HAVE FAILED, AVATARS OF HARMONY. YOUR WEAPONS ARE USELESS. YOUR PRINCESSES LAY DEFEATED. THE DRAGONS ELDERS ARE ALL DEAD. THEIR SOULS ARE MINE. AND NOW I SHALL WIPE THE STENCH OF THE LAST OF YOU WRETCHED LIZARDS FROM MY NEW WORLD."

The six ponies all huddled around Spike defiantly. Twilight grew angry.

"You are NOT taking him!" she shouted, "I don't care WHO you are, Tirac! NOPONY harms our friends! Not EVER!"

"YOUR VALIANCE IS ADMIRABLE, MORTAL. YOUR DEATH SHALL BE SWIFT."

Spike turned to look at the faces of six mares. Fluttershy was cowering with her eyes closed, genuinely believing that it was the end for them all. Rainbow Dash was experiencing a rare moment of showing true fear, and was trying hard not to tremble. Pinkie Pie and Rarity both stood ready, grim but determined. Applejack was angry looking as well, defiant to the end, and Twilight...she was Twilight.

"Stand in front of him girls," Twilight ordered, "We're not letting him get Spike!"

"No Twilight! You might get hurt!" Spike protested.

"Spike, you're the only one left," Rarity explained, "If he takes you now, he wins! And I could never live with myself either if anything were to happen to you. You're just a baby dragon Spike!"

The demon grinned at them. Spike wiped away his tears.

"No."

"What?" said Twilight.

"I said no!" he screamed, "I'm not a baby anymore! I'm not going to let this jerk get away with everything he's done!"

"Spikey!" Pinkie interrupted, "You can't hurt him! You're just an itty-bitty little dragon, and he's HUGE like a...a...house!"

Tirac let out a might fit of laughter.

"SHE IS RIGHT, DRAGON WHELP. YOU LACK THE SIZE AND POWER TO STAND UP TO ME. SURELY YOU CANNOT PRESUME TO DEFEAT ME WHEN EVEN THE ELDERS COULD NOT?"

"I may be little," said Spike, "But I'm the only one who can do anything. Maybe I can't defeat you..."

The little dragon held up both his fists.

"...But I can still try!"

***

Celestia galloped along the rooftops alongside the main road. Every time she reached a gap between buildings she would make a mighty leap and glide to the other side, but she stuck to the rooftops themselves rather than completely taking to the air.

Down below, Second's car tore down the street, knocking others aside. It moved onto the sidewalk and began to knock down ponies and send them flying into the air. Second himself was leaning out the window, giggling with glee as he pulled a giant bazooka and fired at the rooftop where Celestia was keeping pace with him.

The princess had to time her jumps right to avoid him. No flying. Not yet.

"TAG. YOU'RE IT!"

Another rocket struck near her hooves, and this time Celestia failed to dodge. She went tumbling again down towards the road itself, but opened her wings before she hit the ground and continued to glide downwards towards Second's car.

The human ducked back inside the window and then popped out of the sun roof like a Jack-in-a-box. This time he had a much larger weapon. What did that thing even shoot?!

Celestia quickly found out, as what appeared to be a tank shell shot past her and struck the road behind her. She looked back quickly and saw a small mushroom cloud where it hit, and a few cars being knocked off the road by the force of it. More than that though, one single car dodged past the explosion and continued racing towards them.

Second readied another shot, but Celestia folded her wings and dropped straight out of the sky.

The car was racing so fast, that by the time the alicorn was about to hit the ground, it was already below her, and she landed on the roof. She looked down through the windscreen to see a dark mare within, dressed in a red, green and yellow outfit and with a mask over her face as well. Luna grinned at her, and accelerated. The streamlined black sports car shot forward as the turbine flared up, and it left a trail of burning tyre tracks in its wake.

Up ahead, Second ducked back into the car and turned to his driver.

"Floor it, pony!" he shouted.

"Yes sir, whoever you are!" cried the terrified pegasus.

Second backhanded the pony.

"I'm the Joker, moron!"

"Of course sir! Please don't kill me!"

***

Soft Spoken frowned with determination as he approached the light in the distance. Through the thick trees of the forest, he could make out the shape of a ruined old shack, overgrown with moss and ivy, one wall falling apart, and graffitied all over. The front door was hanging open, and on the porch outside it, a number of ponies sat around on old wooden chairs, talking.

They were mostly earth ponies, though not all of them. More than a few wore straw hats and overalls, and an earth pony sitting on a chair right next to the door was sharpening a giant knife. One next to him was taking a swig of what appeared to be moonshine. Hanging from the top of the porch was a small firefly lantern, which was the source of the light he had seen.

With a sigh, Softy emerged from the trees and onto the pathway leading up to the shack. It wasn't long before the ponies noticed him and walked out to greet him.

"Well, look what we've got here..." said the earth pony with the knife, smiling confidently, "What are you doing out here, pony? Long way from home, ain't ya...?"

He licked his lips in anticipation, but one of the other ponies was scrutinising him closely.

"Wait...Aren't you the Tramplevania ambassador?"

"Mister Spoken," Softy introduced, "My cousin was Van Helsing. You might have known him."

Suddenly, there was fear in the ponies' eyes.

"Get him!"

They were about to lunge, but Softy reached behind him and whipped out a blessed emblem of the sun and moon and held it out in front of him, stopping them in their tracks. They had revealed their true forms the moment they had tried to attack, and their fangs and blood red eyes were now clearly visible.

"And just like him, I know all about how to deal with vampires. I come from a family of mercenaries and soldiers, and I could easily take up his mantle and continue to slay your kind in the name of avenging him. I'm not going to however, because I'm nice, and I want to give you a chance. I'm here to the negotiate an end to your attacks on the ponies of Equestria, and I mean ALL of Equestria, not just Tramplevania. You can listen to what I have to say, or we can fight. And be warned, I will destroy all of you."

"Put down the knife," hissed one of the vampires to the other.

The vampire with the knife reluctantly lowered it, grumbling under his breath.

"You have three minutes to make your case, pony. Convince us."

***

Second leaned against the wall and tried to support himself. He had had way too much to drink, and was barely able to support himself or walk straight. Silver tried to move over to help him, but he shooed her away.

"I'm nearly there..." he mumbled, "I don't need nobody's help...fucking...ponies...and shit...I AM LORD SECOND!"

"Sir, I think you may have a drinking problem..." Silver said quietly.

"An' what the fuck do you know?!" the human shouted, pointing at her accusingly, "Do you even know how alcohol works for humans?! What if this is my natural state, and when I talk to you normally, that's a sign that I'm badly ill?! Did ya think about that?! HUH?!"

Silver backed away as Second stumbled the rest of the way down the corridor, until he eventually reached Celestia's bedroom.

"I'll be here if you need me..." he slurred, "And please...don't need me. I need to fucking sleep...goddamn ponies..."

He kicked open the door and stormed inside, continuing to rant to himself. Since he had forgotten to do it himself, Silver closed the door for him.

Finally alone, Second walked over to one of Celestia's mirrors. On a desk to the side was the camera he had used to records his logs earlier in here. Laying next to it was a video tape in the old VHS format, and a player and TV to view it for when Celestia eventually retook Canterlot, as he was sure she would.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face was still a horrible mess. Too much fire. He hated fire. It had left him not with skin so much as just scorched and burnt flesh. He was still missing an eye as well. He had an eye patch at one point to go over the empty socket, but he'd lost it fighting Celestia.

Though, he was surprised how little the loss of an eye seemed to affect his vision.

"Screw this," he sighed, "I don't even care anymore."

***

"SECONDARY FOOD SUPPLIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW," announced the robot chef, "THIS UNIT NOW DISPENSING."

Chain Mail and Mystic were this time at the front of a much larger queue as more and more ponies had slowly been coming into the room, and those that were already there before were eagerly awaiting actual food.

"SECONDARY FOOD SUPPLIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW. THIS UNIT NOW-"

It cut off mid-sentence. An exhausted Ancient Tome climbed up and over the counter, practically coloured black from all the grease staining his coat.

"Okay..." he gasped, "Everything's fine now. It should all...work..."

Chain Mail turned back to the chef.

"MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER?"

"I'll have anything that isn't gruel."

"DISPENSING EGGS AND BACON."

"Can I not have anything with meat in it either?"

"DISPENSING EGGS AND BAKED BEANS."

"Does that come with toast?"

"CONFIRMED. AND ORANGE JUICE."

Unlike last time when the robot chef vomited their meal onto the tray, this time it spat out a neat little square shaped package. Once it hit the tray, the package bounced slightly and then burst open, and a plate of already hot eggs, baked beans and toast, a filled glass of orange juice, and cutlery and a napkin all fell back down onto the tray.

"ENJOY YOUR MEAL, CITIZEN."

Chain Mail smiled.

"Wow. That's surprisingly efficient. Good job!"

"YOUR THANKS HAVE BEEN NOTED. ENJOY YOUR MEAL, CITIZEN."

Now it was Mystic's turn to order.

"Got any sponge cake?!" he asked.

"CONFIRMED. DISPENSING SPONGE CAKE."

"Mystic, don't you think you should get something healthier?" asked Chain Mail.

Too late. Mystic's package had already released a sponge cake.

"ENJOY YOUR MEAL, CITIZEN."

"Hey!" Chain Mail protested, "He needs a proper meal! Give him something more substantial."

The android gave him a look that would have made lesser ponies tremble.

"THIS UNIT HAS A NO REFUND POLICY."

"Refund? What refund? We don't have to pay you any-"

Ancient Tome shot forward and put a hoof over the captain's mouth.

"Shut up you stupid fool!" he whispered into his ear, "You're supposed to pay the android Secopolis credits! He doesn't know I disabled that subroutine!"

"ENJOY. YOUR. MEAL. CITIZEN," the chef said insistently.

Mystic grabbed his tray full of cake and happily ran off to one of the tables. Chain Mail just smiled awkwardly and backed away from it.

"Uhh...Thank you, robot...chef...guy..."

"YOUR THANKS HAVE BEEN NOTED. ENJOY YOUR MEAL, CITIZEN."

***

Easy Eight stared at the ceiling.

"Wow," he said.

"Yeah, that's what they all say," Gold Coin replied smugly as he reclined.

"I learned a lot of things about myself today. I'm not sure if I like them or not."

"Are you complaining?"

"No..."

"Well then."

"Mr. Gold Coin, I didn't even know you liked-"

"I don't. I'm just not picky."

The unicorn frowned.

"But when I met you in that bar in Canterlot, I could have sworn you were straight."

"Easy, this is Equestria; nopony is straight."

***

"Alright, half hour break," Night Shroud announced, "Everypony who wants something to eat, the cafeteria is open and I'm informed the food dispensers are working properly now. You've all got thirty, be back here by the end of it."

The volunteers all cheered and rushed out of the clinic in a stampede, leaving only Night Shroud and Explodey in the room.

"Can somepony unstrap me now?" asked Explodey, "If I don't need to do anything while we're on break, I want to be able to walk around at least."

The batpony walked over to the operating table and released the straps, freeing the unicorn who groaned as he stretched his legs and began to trot in place.

"Ah! That's more like it!"

Night Shroud ignored him and went to get a drink from the water cooler. Explodey followed him over.

"So...you're an evil cultist, huh? What's that like? Do you have to sacrifice virgins?" he asked conversationally.

The former night guard raised an eyebrow and put his water down on the counter.

"I don't know. What's it like being an inequine abomination?"

"It's awesome. I can't ever die, I have super explosion powers, and I've got all this knowledge about the human world in my head, including several movies that I have memorised! In fact, for the last half an hour, I've been playing a human movie called 'Austin Powers' in my head, about this guy called-"

"Alright! Great!" Night Shroud interrupted, "Forget I asked!"

"You sound mad. Did I say something wrong?"

The batpony looked like he was about to say something, but then stopped.

"Actually, while we've got time, I have a real question for you. I consider myself a pony of science. I like to know how things work. So, tell me how you 'naturally produce' a zombie cure within your body? I want to know the specifics of it."

"Oh. You sure? That could take a while."

Night Shroud pulled out a pair of spectacles and put them on, and drew a pencil and notepad.

"I'm sure."

***

The batmobile and the other car were neck and neck. Moving at roughly the same speed, Celestia was able to jump from the top of her car onto the next. She moved up to the front of the car and smashed a hoof through the windscreen. The pegasus inside screamed in fear, but she reached past him and yanked out the clown-suited Second.

He punched her in the gut and made her drop him. He fell out of her grip and onto the roof of the car, and went rolling towards the hood. The princess caught him in her magic before he fell off and dragged him back, but this just brought him in range to punch her again, and they began to brawl.

"Getting a little excessive, aren't we?!" Second gasped as Celestia choked him.

She smashed a hoof into his face, and he spat out a tooth right up into her eye. She recoiled as he did and tried to remove it, and in that split second he put his arms around her mid-section, lifted her up and tossed her off the back of the car.

Celestia landed in the road and dodged to the side just in time to avoid being ran over by the cars behind him. Second meanwhile was still atop his car, and he laughed as he leapt from on top of it over onto the batmobile.

The princess got up and took flight, rushing towards Second.

She didn't move fast enough though, as he pulled a fist back and punched through the windscreen of the batmobile just as she had done to his car and climbed inside. It began to skid across the road and swerve from side to side, knocking other traffic aside carelessly. Evidently he and Luna were fighting too.

The other car he was in before tried to drive away, the pegasus obviously thinking he had a chance to escape Second, but the batmobile went in pursuit of it even as it barely managed to keep control of itself. As they swerved over the road, Celestia flew overhead of them, and landed on the roof of the batmobile just in time before it took a sudden turn towards an alleyway off to the side.

It rammed the other car in the side and pushed it into the alleyway. The alley was on the other side of the road, and thus they went through another line of traffic coming from the side, which narrowly dodged them, before the batmobile rammed the car it was pushing into an alleyway too small for it, and the whole front half came clean off.

The batmobile continued driving into the long alleyway, pushing along the mangled remains of the back half of Second's original car, the front having been long left behind. Inside the wreckage, the terrified pegasus curled up in a ball and started crying.

Celestia leapt from the batmobile onto the wreckage and turned to face her own vehicle head on, and was unsurprised, though still upset to find it was now Second who was at the wheel. She charged a spell to attack him, but he then reached behind him and grabbed her unconscious sister, who he tossed out through the broken windscreen to knock her off.

Both the alicorns landed on their backs on the solid ground, just in front of the wreckage. They noticed however that it was no longer being pushed forward, otherwise it would have been pushing them along too or ran over them. Second had instead bailed out of the batmobile and ran off down the alley in the direction they came from.

Luna was out cold, so Celestia got back on her hooves and watched as Second rushed towards a closed door halfway down the alley, which he unlocked with a key he pulled out of his inside pocket and disappeared into.

A whimpering pegasus gangster remained inside the ruined car, presumably once the possession of his boss. Frightened or not though, he was still a criminal. More than that, he was one of the criminals she had originally set out this night with the purpose of stopping. Of course, now that had changed. Now he was also a witness, with information she needed.

He squealed in fear as a large mare with bat wings and a horn, clad in a dark costume and cowl, ripped the door off the car with her magic and reached in to grab him. She glared at him.

"What did he want with you?!" she demanded.

"Needed to find the warehouse..." he gasped as the princess choked him, "This warehouse...He said got the key when he killed the boss, but not the location...made me drive us here...GAH! Please let go of my throat!"

Celestia growled and knocked the pegasus unconscious by slamming his head against the car. As he fell down in a heap, she spared a glance at her sister.

She'll be fine.

Then she rushed over to the door to follow her nemesis into the warehouse.

***

The mayor and a number of the villagers holding torches waited at the edge of the forest, looking at Softy expectantly as he emerged from the trees. He smiled at them all, and the mayor stepped forward to greet him.

"Mister Spoken?" he asked nervously, "How did it go? Did you end the threat?"

"Indeed I did. I was able to negotiate an end to the hostilities against Equestria and Tramplevania. We need not fear their kind anymore."

The old pony just looked stunned.

"You...you actually convinced them to stop?!"

"Bargained with them. I worked out a deal. We may have peace with their kind and they will bother us no more. In exchange, every month the ponies of Tramplevania will provide a blood tithe. A few pints of blood, nothing they can't live without."

"What?!" the mayor said angrily, "Out of the question! We will not-"

"The vampires need blood to live," Softy explained, "If they don't feed, they die. They're not keen on the idea of starving to death, and if nopony gives them blood willingly, they're forced to take it, hence their continuing war against our village. If every villager were to willingly provide a paltry donation of blood only once a month for their continued survival, they would never have any need to resort to violence again. We could put an end to this conflict, and nopony would need to die."

"Bribery and blackmail!" the mayor spat, "Pay tithes to undead tyrants in exchange for mercy, and the promise that they won't kill us?! And I don't trust the word of bloodsuckers anyway! Those monsters can say they attack us out of necessity, but that doesn't mean they don't love every minute of it too!"

"I don't deny that, but this way we can put a stop to the fighting. No more deaths. They might enjoy it, but if they have no need to use violence, they won't restart a war for the fun of it."

The mayor pondered his proposition. The townsfolk behind him murmured to each other as well.

"...Mister Spoken, I trust your word. You and your cousin did great things for Tramplevania. We do not dispute this. However, I don't think it's fair to expect my ponies to pay a blood tithe just in exchange for not being killed. That's practically blackmail. I'm not against peaceful solutions though. If we could set this up a different way, turn it into commerce, TRADE blood to the vampires instead..."

"I agree that that would be the ideal solution, but it was difficult enough just arguing them down to the idea of tithes in the first place."

"I do not believe it is too unreasonable for us to expect something in exchange for such a thing. Not attempting to murder us all shouldn't be something we have to pay for. That's just common courtesy."

"You raise legitimate points," Softy admitted, "I will return to the forest and tell them your terms."

***

Gold Coin wandered back into the clinic to find Explodey off the operating table and sharing a conversation with Night Shroud over by the water cooler, who was listening intently and nodding his head every so often. All the other volunteer ponies who were there before seemed to have left.

"Hey, where is everypony?" he asked as he approached.

"On break," Explodey explained, "They should be back in about ten minutes though. Hey...What is that in your mane?"

"What's what in my mane?"

"Yeah, what is that?" asked Night Shroud, "It's sort of...Is that mayonnaise?"

Gold Coin's eyes darted back and forth.

"Ehh...I'm not sure that's mayonnaise..." said Explodey.

He reached forward and ran a hoof through Gold Coin's mane. The earth pony was disturbed when he saw that Explodey had some white stuff on his hoof, which disgustingly enough he then licked.

"Hmm...I think that's semen..."

"What?" Night Shroud said sceptically, "No way."

Explodey licked it again, and then held out his hoof to the batpony.

"Taste that. That is definitely semen."

Gold Coin was surprised to find that Night Shroud tasted it too. His face scrunched up as he seemed to analyse it, before nodding.

"Yeah, I think you're right. That's semen."

The earth pony stared at them.

"...Do I even want to know how either of you know what semen tastes like?"

"Hey, we have equally awkward questions we could be asking you right now," Night Shroud pointed out.

"...I think we should all agree not to think too hard about this."

"Agreed."

***

The atmosphere at the table was awkward. Mystic tried to just enjoy his cake, but his father sat immediately opposite him next to Captain Chain Mail. Every time the colt looked up, Tome would smile at him or try to initiate conversation, and Mystic would just shy away.

"Son, please...Just talk to me..." Tome begged.

The little unicorn ducked to hide behind the rest of his cake.

"Mystic, what will it take to get you to forgive me?"

No answer.

"I just want to be your father again. I'd give up everything for things to be the way they used to be. If I made mistakes, I'm sorry. I was just doing what I thought was right. Can't you give me a second chance? Let me make it up to you? Please?"

Mystic laid down on his plastic stool and turned his back to Tome. Still he didn't give any kind of vocal response, continuing to ignore him.

"...Okay. If you're not ready yet, I understand."

Tome got up out of his seat and began to leave, floating his dinner tray along behind him.

"I'll just leave you with the captain, and go check on some other things. I'll probably see you tomorrow. If you want to come talk to me before then...well...you can talk to me anytime you want. I've always got time. Just come find me. Okay?"

The old unicorn walked away sadly, leaving Mystic and Chain Mail alone at their table. Once Ancient Tome was gone, the captain moved over to the other side of the table to sit next to Mystic, who remained turned away from him.

"Are you alright, kid?" he asked.

"Fine..."

"...I know he did some bad things, but he is still your father. You shouldn't cut him out like that. He's trying to make up for it, and he still loves you. Don't you think you should at least give him a chance?"

"He's a bad pony though...He tried to hurt Softy, and Mr. Gold Coin when he saved me, and back in Canterlot too..."

"Look, I know," said Chain Mail, "I know what it's like to see somepony you trusted do a bad thing. I once trusted Private Iron Hoof, as I did all my soldiers, and then he tried to kill me twice in the name of his precious Brotherhood. You do know which one is Iron Hoof, right?"

"...I always called him Uncle Iron," Mystic said sadly.

Still no good with kids...

"...I...Sorry. But I do know what it's like to feel that kind of betrayal. It hurts. More for you than anypony, I imagine. Thing is though, Tome never meant to hurt you. He was just-"

"No. He just wanted to hurt other ponies. That excuses everything. As long as he didn't mean to hurt me personally, everything's just fine."

The captain was surprised by the colt's response. It sounded like nothing a nine year old would ever come out with. It was cold, and firm, and it gave an impression that Mystic had a solid moral code that he was absolutely sure of. It was very different than his usual self.

"...Sliske?"

"I AM NOT SLISKE!"

Mystic turned to face him properly. Anger was written across his face, and his eyes clearly resembled that of his alien friend, though he didn't have the teeth. He was like some sort of hybrid of the two.

"...Mystic, calm down."

He stopped, and his eyes looked normal again.

"...I...I'm sorry, Mr. Chain Mail. I didn't mean to..."

"It's alright. We all get angry sometimes. I didn't mean to upset you. I was just trying to help..."

"I'm sorry..."

Chain Mail smiled at him.

"Hey, don't worry about it. Everything's fine, right? We're okay?"

"...Yeah."

"Friends?"

"Friends."

"Ahem."

The two ponies turned to look behind them, and found a big cloud of smoke with a face floating behind them.

"Is this a bad time?" asked Sliske, "Only, I have a really serious problem..."

***

Softy gawked as he walked through the ruins of the small village. Thatched cottages burned around him, ponies laid dead on the ground, withered husks drained of all their blood. One pony was impaled by a pitchfork and had been stuck in the wall of his house. Written across the house in dried blood were words:

SPOKEN'S LAW.

"Mister Spoken..."

He heard the soft whisper of his name, and searched around for its source. Among the bodies, he found one pony still alive. It was the mayor, slowly dying as the town he had helped build crumbled before his eyes.

"Mayor...What happened?"

"They came back...so many of them...They said the tithe was due. We said you had only just told us about it, and we were still coming to a decision...We said you had just left to go back to them and tell them our terms. Then the leader, he got this big smile on his face...Grinned at us and said, 'Spoken's not here, eh?', and then they attacked...caught us off guard...slaughtered everypony..."

"No...No!" Softy protested, "They...!"

"I'm sorry, Mister Spoken...You did try..."

The mayor's head fell back and his eyes closed. Softy tried to shake him awake, but he was gone.

"Mayor, please..."

There was no sound in the village except for the crackling of the fires. As he laid down the mayor's head, Soft Spoken stood up tall, a look of firm resolve crossing his features. He looked back towards the forest.

"I tried my way, cousin. Now I'll do it the proper way."

Then everything became a blur. Suddenly, it was no longer a destroyed village. Suddenly, Soft Spoken was back at the shack, running through the woods, tracking lights through the forest to find a bunch of other similar shacks.

He was in a shantytown. Vampires saw him coming, and lunged towards him.

It all became hazy. Red mist descended. Wooden stakes flew, garlic was tossed, sword strikes were narrowly avoided. A vampire died in slow agony as it was drenched in holy water, and burned as if it had been thrown on a pyre. Monstrous, fanged creatures jumped through the darkness to attack...no, to escape...

They weren't fast enough. And soon a single earth pony stood as the sole survivor as yet another village burned, the undead piled up around him. They were undead no longer. He had returned them to the grave.

He looked around at the victims of his massacre. Monsters, all of them. They were a plague that needed to die for the good of Equestria. They had taken his offer of peace and spat it back in his face. He knew that it could have never ended any other way.

That didn't make him feel any better though. This had been the first time he had ever raised a hoof against another living creature, and he was horrified to see what he was capable of.

"...No more..." he said to himself, "I'm done with this. From this day forward, I'm never picking up a weapon in anger again. I can't trust myself with them."

He tossed his last wooden stake on the ground behind him and walked off through the trees, leaving the remains of the vampires' settlement to be lost to time.

***

The old stallion woke up, and stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.

I've never killed anypony in my life, and I don't plan to start now.

And to think, Sliske had thought he could have been the Element of Honesty. The idea he could have been an element at all, much less that one, astounded him. The idea anypony thought he could be kindness was equally impossible in his eyes. Because as he remembered that night, so many decades ago and so far away, he was convinced that there was nopony in the world worse than he was.

One hundred and thirty years. That's a lot of regret.

***

Celestia walked into the warehouse and looked around her. Tall stacks of crates either side of her formed a singular pathway. Assuming the most sensible option, that Second hadn't tried to climb over them, she followed the pathway through the crates.

To her surprise, she eventually ended up in a large open area, though not a warehouse. Instead, she was in some kind of carnival show.

There was even what sounded like carnival music.

She looked around at the environment, at the bouncy castle, at the hall of mirrors, at a giant slide attraction and many other interesting looking things. Hanging from the ceiling over the entire carnival was a giant picture of a pony clown's face, positioned just above a small portable ticket booth.

Was this still inside the warehouse?

Then suddenly there was organ music. It was loud and intruding. Celestia looked all around her trying to discern its source, but could find nothing. Then on the other side of the carnival, Second emerged from the ticket booth. He held his arms out either side of him, basking in the absurdity of their situation, as if the chaos and nonsensity of it gave him strength.

He smiled at her as he walked over, and as the organ music died and a somehwat more quiet and subtle tune began to play instead. As it did, Second sung.

"Grinning down through the gates,
Watch the night suffocate,
All the light as it smothers the sun...
I can tell by the moon,
You'll be joining me soon,
As a guest in my fortress of fun!"

He jumped up into her face.

"And I can't wait to see you,
And once again free you,
Released from your humourless air!
Someday I will replace,
That big frown on your face,
With a smile and a murderous glare..."

The music flared up again as it reached what Celestia assumed to be the chorus.

"We are two of a kind,
Violent, unsound of mind!
You're the yin to my yang, can't you see?
And if I were to leave ,
You would grumble and grieve,
Face it, Bats...
You'd be lost without me!"

He turned and walked away from her.

"You'd be lost..."

Invisible voices from nowhere joined him.

"(You'd be lost)."

"You'd be lost..."

"(You'd be lost)."

He turned back and pointed at her.

"Face it, Bats...You'd be lost without me!"

He adopted a softer tone as he continued the song, and Celestia just stood staring at him.

"I'm just trying to show you,
Just how well I know you,
I understand just how you feel.
Threw your reason away,
'Cause you had one bad day,
And your mind let go of the wheel."

His voice picked up again.

"Still we're fated to battle,
You pout and I prattle!
Don't you ever tire of this game?
But you'll not make it end,
'Cause I'm your only friend!
We are opposites but we're the same!"

The chorus started up again, and Second continued to bound about the room and make grand gestures with his arms, while the music from nowhere continued to fill the room. When it came time, his mysterious backup singers returned.

"...Face it, Bats, you'd be lost without me! You'd be lost..."

"(You'd be lost)."

"You'd be lost..."

"(You'd be lost)."

"Face it, Tia. You'd be lost without me!"

Did he just change a word?

No time to question it, he had already moved onto the final verse.

"We have so many wonderful stories,
I have studied the mind of this bat,
A hero with no praise or glory,
Just his cape and his cave and his..."

He made a noise that Celestia couldn't make out, and then broke into fits of maniacal laughter as the organ music returned once more. Whatever he was laughing at, he found it hysterical, as he was holding his sides and leaning over. He approached Celestia as he did, and the princess couldn't help but join in the final chorus.

They sung in unison.

"We are two of a kind."

"We are two of a kind."

"Violent, unsound of mind."

"Violent, unsound of mind."

"You're the yin to my yang, can't you see?"

"You're the yin to my yang, can't you see?"

"And if I were to leave, you would grumble and grieve."

"And if I were to leave, you would grumble and grieve."

"Face it, Tia!"

"Face it, Second!"

"You'd be lost without me!"

Second sung the final lines alone, save for the other voices.

"You'd be lost."

"(You'd be lost)."

"You'd be lost."

"(You'd be lost)."

He began to cough.

"Face it, Bats...You'd be lost without me!"

***

As the dream faded, Celestia too awoke. Luna still laid next to her, evidently having more peaceful dreams as she smiled in her sleep. The older sister though just looked around the dark room and thought back on her dream.

She realised in that moment just how strange her relation to Second was. Though she hadn't know him the longest by far out of her rogues gallery, him being a comparatively recent enemy in contrast to others like Sliske or Discord, he had had such an impact on her in the brief time he had been free.

How many of her other enemies could claim to have successfully killed her?

And even though he had done that, shot her with his magical god-killer on at least two occasions, ripped off her sister's horn, destroyed the capital of her beloved kingdom and murdered thousands, she was still working with him, and he had made her promises that she actually took his word for. Was she insane? Was that what the dream was trying to tell her?

She had to be. There was no way any sane mare would have trusted Lord Second for anything. Especially not over the word of his son. Lord First had proven far more worthy of her help, and he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, who wanted to put an end to the bloodshed. And yet...she couldn't convince herself that his idea was what was best for Equestria.

This Pantheon needed to be taken down. At any cost.

The princess hugged Luna and settled back down to sleep, and hoped to dream of more pleasant things next time. She thought of a thousand years ago. Of the day her sister came back to her and they reunited in the ruins of their old castle. She thought of reading friendship reports with a cup of tea and a warm fire. She thought of Equestria during peacetime.

Though, one rogue thought crossed her mind as she fell back to sleep.

I wonder what Second dreams about...

***

"AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

Second brought his boot down again, and he sang happily over Celestia's screams.

"I'm, a-stomping on the priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiincess, all the live-long day!"

Because sometimes, a relationship isn't nearly as complicated as it might seem. Sometimes, people just hate each other.

END

Author's notes:

There's a Simpsons reference in this chapter, if you can spot it.

Sorry if I was light on the comedy this chapter too. I had some other material lined up that I found no place for, and all my effort went into the Batman parts. Guess you guys will have to make do with character development for now. Don't worry though. Soon we will move onto something more adventurous, as our heroes travel to distant lands and strange shit happens on a mountain.

Also, before anyone tells me that my depiction of Zarlow in this chapter contradicts Sliske's line in earlier chapters about having experience using guns, (assuming any of you noticed that at all), this is not a plot hole. That's going to be explained later. I plan these things out to an insane degree. Give me some credit.

Next Chapter: Second tries pegasus.

Chapter 23: Braving the Elements

"Along the north western coast of Equestria, just south of the fishing village known as Catch, lies a long stretch of scorched earth where once there were fields, and an entire beach of glass. This land is known as Dragon's Fury, and was the site of the battle colloquially referred to as the Roasting.

In a coordinated effort involving no less than twelve Equestrian allied dragons, the Spider Legion invasion force camp situated on the beach in this location was attacked and destroyed under the order of then-captain Shining Armor, as part of the final, crushing blow that led to Equestria's victory in the Equestria-Legion war of '08.

The Legion remnants, following the defeat of the Legion proper, were scattered throughout Equestria for a remaining two years, during which time most of them were eventually rounded up and executed for war crimes, at the direction of Princess Luna.

Modern historians have come to condemn the acts taken against the surviving veterans of the Legion, stating that the known destruction of the Legion's homeland of Arachnia and the 'no mercy' policy of Equestria post-war, effectively makes Equestria responsible for the genocide of the spiders.

Others however, have argued that the aggression with which the Legion remnants continued their activities and atrocities committed by the Legion proper during the war, more than warrant the actions taken against them, and that the death of the spiders as a race was an unavoidable consequence of the proper punishments being levied against war criminals, with only the spiders themselves to blame for their ultimate fate.

In the end, the Spider Legion's rise and fall was naught but a tragic tale in the footnotes of history, of a nation driven mad by desperation, which simply did terrible things out of necessity.

Whether this refers to the Legion or Equestria is a matter still debated."

-Final defeat, extract from History of the Spider Legion and associated conflicts.

***

Chain Mail poked his head through the door into the clinic, where Night Shroud was directing a number of ponies in lab coats. Over on the other side of the room, Explodey laid in a chair staring at the ceiling, and Sliske floated next to him, free of any host.

"Private Night Shroud?" he said, "You called?"

"Oh, yes," the batpony replied, "Give me a moment...Uh...Doctor? Could you...?"

A yellow unicorn mare with a blue mane and glasses trotted over to Chain Mail's side levitating a number of glass cylinders that seemed not to have any kind of lid, but which had coloured pipes coming form the top. They all contained different things. One had some kind of white powder, another was full of blue liquid, and another appeared to contain an unknown gel.

"If you could stay still, captain," she requested.

He stood in place while the mare called over another pony in a lab coat. They both crouched down next to him, and the second pony withdrew a screwdriver and some other tools and began to open up a side panel to his armour.

"So, how goes the research?" he asked Night Shroud.

"Awful. We've still got nothing for Sliske, and Explodey's results absolutely terrify me. On the other hoof, it turns out we do have some qualified doctors leftover from Canterlot who stayed behind to help, so we don't have to rely solely on my sub-par training anymore. Now my job is mostly management."

Chain Mail winced as he felt a needle jabbing his side and heard a clang of metal.

"Explodey's condition. It's nothing serious, I hope?"

"Deadly fucking serious, captain. Every single pony who shared physical contact with Explodey should have died several times over. They're not, so I think we're safe, but it should be noted that he is still a freak."

"Well I knew that already."

"Either way, I've looked at his test results, and it's never been more obvious that he was created by a psychotic elder god. He probably shares a lot more in common with the humans than we first thought."

Chain Mail thought back to the grinning human in the yellow hardhat he had met in the false reality.

"I think you may be onto something. How's he taking the news?"

"He's quiet right now. He just got back from the afterlife again. He and Sliske had me cook up a poison capable of killing him, so he could go see your friend Broad Sword. He stayed dead for about fifteen minutes, but he says it was even less from his perspective."

The captain's eyes widened.

"Really?"

He tried to turn to face Sliske and Explodey, but was held in place by the doctors, who were now replacing the armour panel. Instead he just turned his head.

"Did you meet Broad Sword?" he asked.

Explodey looked in his direction, surprisingly lacking his usual enthusiasm.

"Yeah. For a bit. Never got to say much to him though."

"Is he doing okay up there?"

"Never got the chance to ask. I assume he is."

"Hmm."

"Done."

The mare stood up again and gave him a smile.

"Your drug supplies have been replenished in full," she explained, "What little was left over we placed into the reserve. What you've got should last you at least six months."

"And after that?"

"Then you're going to have to obtain or brew up some more. For good measure we put the recipes on your onboard database."

"Well, that's a big help, but how do you even know how to use my database? I can't even use my database! I can't use half the systems on this armour."

"My special talent is computers."

Chain Mail looked at her flank to see a picture of a computer monitor like the ones found in Secopolis and across the Prometheus.

"...But...Equestria doesn't have computers...Those only exist on this ship and in Secopolis...That's a human thing...And...Aren't you an Equestrian?"

"Yeah. Can you even imagine what it's like when your special talent is something that didn't even exist for most of your life? I'm glad it does now though. Saves me the trouble of having to invent computers myself."

"...Uh...huh...Anyway, Night Shroud. I just wanted to let you know that we've arrived at the mountain. You, Explodey and Sliske need to meet with the rest of us in the cargo hold in a few minutes, and we'll venture out. We've got a long climb before we reach the village."

"Am I really needed for this?" he grumbled.

"If you don't want to go to Mt. Celestia with me, that's fine. I'll just do it by myself."

"...Wait, what?"

***

"So remind me again why we aren't just flying up to the village?" asked Soft Spoken.

"The Harmonites are a stubborn bunch, unfortunately," Luna replied.

The princess knocked on the door to the armoury with a hoof, and it opened up to reveal Gold Coin, Ancient Tome and a few royal guards all carrying heavy saddlebags full of weapons that they had collected. Nothing quite as heavy as the minigun they stole from the Mages' Guild however. In the interest of keeping things light, the earth pony had abandoned it.

Without a word, Luna and Softy turned away and continued their walk down the corridor. Gold Coin nodded at them and gestured for Tome and the guards to follow, and they all marched out in a line carrying the equipment that had been chosen for the soldiers on the journey, mostly swords and maces.

"Access to the village is heavily restricted. The frozen north is crawling with demons, so before you can enter, you have to prove that you are not a demon, or else they will attack. This applies to even myself and Celestia, as demons can easily imitate the forms of ponies as well, or possess them."

"And climbing the mountain on hoof proves that we aren't demons? How does that work?" asked Softy.

"It's not climbing the mountains. It is that we must light the seven torches. The pathway up Mt. Celestia is a difficult one, but alongside it are seven stone beacons, made by ponies pure of heart and sound of mind, so they say. They must be aflame before the village will open its gates and allow entrance, and they may only be activated by righteous ponies.

"Any creature of evil that comes in contact with them simply burst into flames themselves instead of lighting the fires. And if you are righteous and being deceived or forced by evil to light the beacons for them, then you too will be unable to light them, and you too will cause all evil that touches you to die a painful death by fire."

"That sounds harsh," Gold Coin commented.

Luna nodded.

"It is, but understand that 'evil' as the torches define it usually means the demons that regularly menace the village and its inhabitants. Fire is one of the kinder ways one can destroy a demon. It is comparatively fast. To show love, or friendship, to a creature of such darkness...That, for them, is true agony."

***

"ALRIGHT!" Second shouted, "I have reached Secopolis at long last, and I've finally got some answers. Turns out that the Prometheus did indeed leave the airport, but never arrived here. So something's happened to it. No idea what. I assume it either got stolen or shot down, but either way it can't be too hard to find. In the meantime, they're arranged for a helicopter that will come and pick us up. We have business there to take care of."

"But sir," Silver protested, "Who will hold Canterlot?"

"No-one. Because I don't care about Canterlot. Let the zombies have it. All that matters is that we are back here in time for the final battle. Anything that happens to this place in the meantime is inconsequential. There's nothing of value here."

"True dat," Thug Lyfe agreed.

Silver gave him a suspicious look.

"But before we set off, I do want to check out some of the caves and mines below Canterlot. I don't know why, but I just get the strangest feeling that that's where the story wants me to go. There may be something plot relevant down there that I need to discover. Since this is explicitly story related, or at least that's what my hunch tells me, I will want to be on screen for it. That means you can't come, Thug Lyfe."

"Damn, man."

"Sorry."

"I's cool."

"Also I forgot to lock the gates to the palace last night and there are some zombies roaming the halls. Thug Lyfe unfortunately does not have a shot of Authority, and thus may be the victim of attacks. He has a weapon to defend himself, but he may still be overwhelmed. Therefore, Silver, you're in charge of protecting him."

The pegasus mare raised an eyebrow.

"Really, sir?"

"Yes. Be vigilant. Any number of things in this ruined, post apocalyptic city could bring your zebra companion to a most untimely demise. Take your eyes off him for a second, he could be dead the next. You would not believe just how easy it is for him to be accidentally killed in a number of painful and tragic ways, and that would be bad."

Silver smiled evilly.

"Yes, sir. Yes it would."

***

"OKAY, PONIES! ALL IN LINE!"

It was startling how commanding Chain Mail could be. A number of royal guards followed his order and lined up in a single long row in front of the ramp leading up into the cargo hold. The captain marched back and forth in front of the line, while his friends and the Brotherhood of Man all gathered behind him in an unorganised cluster.

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna stood immediately in front of the group, but remained still instead of pacing like the captain as he gave his speech. Rising up behind them was the mountain itself, tall and rocky. A lot of stone was exposed from this angle, but it was still very snowy, particularly higher up and closer to the peak. No life of any kind could be seen could be seen, but there was a good view of the edge of the village they were heading to.

"NOW! Today, we're all going to Mt. Celestia."

"All of us sir?" asked one of the guards at the front.

"ALL OF US!" Chain Mail confirmed, "At once no less! Now soldiers, I hope you're all prepared for this. The task ahead will be long and hard-"

"Isn't that a given sir?" another guard interrupted.

"Why yes, I suppose it is now that you mention it. Still though, as you may have noticed from the sheer size, you'll all have a bit of a climb ahead of you."

"I've handled bigger," said one of them smugly.

"Oooh..." the others all responded in unison.

"Impressive, soldier!" the captain replied, "You must tell us all about it later, when we go for drinks."

"It was quite an adventure, sir."

"No doubt. Also there's a lot of snow around. For that and other reasons, things might get slippery."

"Also a given," pointed out another guard.

"And you also may have noticed that the weather is rather shit, so we have a few unicorn mages on hoof, and they'll be momentarily casting some warming spells to make sure you don't freeze in your armour."

"Wait, we're doing it outside, sir?"

"Absolutely! I too would like to use the Prometheus, but apparently the Harmonites have some weird...thing...Before we can access their village, we have to do this religious ritual about lighting some fires, and that requires actually climbing, otherwise we'd just fly up. So yeah."

"Damn, this is starting to sound really complicated," said one of them, "I can't even begin to imagine the physics of how we're going to do this, especially if all of us need to be involved."

"Yeah, is there even enough room for everypony?"

"What if we don't want to?"

Everypony all turned their attention to a single royal guard at the end.

"What was that, private?" asked Chain Mail with a hint of warning in his voice.

"Well...What if we don't want to go to Mt. Celestia? It's old, and grey, and not much to look at anymore."

Chain Mail looked over his shoulder at both the mountain and the princesses, who both seemed confused.

"...Well, that's true..." the captain said carefully, "However, orders are still orders, I remind you."

"...I'm sorry sir, I just don't feel comfortable with the idea of this mountain."

"Hmmm..." the earth pony pondered, "Princess, what would you recommend?"

Celestia was giving him an odd look.

"...We are talking about climbing a mountain, aren't we?"

"Of course, princess. What else would we be talking about?"

"Yes, sister, I too am curious. What else could this conversation be about?" asked Luna, "So far it seems to pertain mostly to mountains and the climbing thereof."

"I'm a little embarrassed to say..."

"Well whisper it to me then."

The older sister leaned over and whispered into Luna's ear. After a few seconds, the dark alicorn pulled away in shock and stared at Celestia, blushing.

"Sister!" she chided, "Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"But-"

"Oh, wait, THAT'S what you..." said Chain Mail, "Oh...OH! Princess, ugh. I can't believe you. We're just having an innocent discussion about mountains. What's wrong with you?!"

"Wait, so we're not talking about having sex with the princess?" asked one of the guards bluntly, "Phew. Glad for that. I'm pretty sure that'd count as necrophilia now anyway."

Chain Mail facehoofed so hard, he bruised his face.

"Honestly, the fucking idiots I have to work with..." he muttered, "OKAY! JUST TO BE CLEAR, NOPONY HERE IS HAVING SEX TONIGHT!"

There was a collective groan.

"Is that just with the princesses?" asked one, "Can we still have sex with each other?"

"What? Umm...I guess so."

The guards all cheered.

"YEAH!"

"ALRIGHT!"

There was an exchange of brohoofs and manly flexing, followed by assurances that the presence of Private Sunshine in the planned royal guard orgy later made it most certainly straight.

"Well...If we're done here, can all of you please get back into formation so we can begin the climb? I want to reach the village before the day is out! We only have so much sunlight!"

The guards scrambled to get back in line, while Chain Mail turned to go speak to his friends again. He instead found his path blocked by Princess Celestia, who was giving him the evil eye.

"I'm watching you, captain," she warned, "I may be old, but don't think for a second I won't know when you're making crude jokes and trying to disguise it. I'm not that out of touch."

"I..."

He tried to think of an excuse, but just sighed instead.

"Sorry, your majesty."

"That's better."

***

The insides of the mountain were once concealed, hidden away from the outside world and only accessible by teleportation or some very well hidden entrances. Canterlot was an old city, with a long history.

It hid many secrets beneath its surface. Underground labyrinths built by the ponies of long ago, the crystal mines that were dug out by greedy unicorns, and in the darkest depths there were even remnants of the very early pony tribes, who had made homes in the natural caves before they could build cities.

Normally all these relics of history would be unreachable except by those actively looking for them, but since Second and Nathan's final battle, the mountain was broken open. Levitating in the middle of the valley formed between the two halves of the old mountain, Second could see multiple levels of the labyrinths and mines, now exposed to the elements.

The place called to him. He could hear the siren sound from within the depths. Not the outermost parts though. Deeper. Some of the ancient caves and ruins further in were still hidden. And that was where he was needed.

One way or another, the story needed to advance. He flew down, and into the labyrinth.

***

Silver stood on the battlements of Canterlot Castle, staring out into the distance. From Canterlot, one could see the city of Secopolis where a large part of the Everfree Forest used to be. It was not as easily visible as it should have been, but the city had a number of defences to make it more concealed.

As a child of Secopolis, she could see it clear as day. The illusion spells had no effect on her, because it was the city of her birth. All of Second's creations were different from normal ponies in subtle ways, though that usually manifested in the form of talents and expertise in areas Equestrians ponies wouldn't know about, or in-built knowledge of the human world and its customs, or just that ability to see Secopolis despite it appearing just as forest from a distance to other ponies.

Of course, then you had the special cases, like Explodey McGee, who had been blessed by Second with extraordinary power, or Host, who had been created an alicorn. His was the power to create ponies in any shape or form he saw fit, or as he had demonstrated with Thug Lyfe, to change them into what he wanted.

She wondered if he would ever decide to change her.

'Not that he'll ever even notice me,' she thought bitterly, 'As long as that damned zebra has his favour...'

She glanced behind her to see Thug Lyfe wandering around aimlessly, staring up at the sky or admiring the scenery.

He needs to die.

But how? That was the question...

...I need my power armour...

***

The trek up the mountain was proving a difficult one. Of the seven torches, they'd passed three so far, though only two of those really counted as actual accomplishments because the very first one was at the beginning of the path before they had even began the climb.

Princess Luna had suggested that since there were seven of them too, that each of the Elements of Harmony should light one torch. No real purpose or anything, but she thought that symbolism of it was nice. Really, it didn't even have to be them. One of the soldiers could just as easily light the torches while the rest of them marched on, but she insisted.

Hero's journey or something.

"So who's lighting the next one?" Soft Spoken asked wearily.

"I am!" Mystic proclaimed.

"Mystic's doing the next one!"

"Thank you Softy, we heard," Gold Coin replied, "Shut up."

"You're in a bad mood," Chain Mail commented.

"I can literally feel the ice forming around my balls. Sorry if I seem a little cranky."

"Well you should have worn some thicker clothes, idiot."

Gold Coin's eye twitched, and he turned to the floating cloud of darkness to his left.

"Don't you start too, you freak of nature! You can't even feel the cold, so you can't comment on it!"

"How do you know I can't feel the cold?" asked Sliske, "For all you know, sakrassi could be even more sensitive to temperature than ponies."

"And ARE you?!"

"Well...no. But you didn't know that."

"In fact, I did know that, by virtue of guessing correctly based on evidence. So shut up."

"Has anypony ever told you that you're really unpleasant sometimes?"

"Yes. Shut up."

"Sliske, stop trying to talk to him," Chain Mail advised, "It's not going to work."

The alien sighed. Telepathically. He thought about a sighing sound. Because you can't actually sigh without lungs. It was weird.

"It didn't always used to be like this. I once had acres of land, and an empire with no rival. I ruled over many and enjoyed only the finest luxuries. Nothing by pony standards, but in Zarlan society...I lived a king, I did. And then I came to this planet...and look what happened to me then..."

"Tell me about Zarlow then."

Sliske gave Chain Mail an odd look.

"Come on. Help pass the time. Give us all something to focus on other than the cold."

"Well...My first host was the warrior king of the Zarlan empire, known as General Sliske the Destroyer-"

"Wait a second!" Softy interrupted, "You mean you took your name from your first host? You're not really called Sliske?"

Sliske snarled at him.

"I AM CALLED SLISKE!" he insisted, "...I told you...Sakrassi aren't...people. We're primal. Nameless and without identity. It's not like I would have ever been given a name of my own. I'm Sliske, because I became Sliske. We mentally become our first hosts. From the moment I possessed the general, I was him."

"So...Wait," said Gold Coin, "I'm a bit lost here. How does this factor into your personality as of now?"

"Every new host I take, I gain their memories. Memories are what make us. They form who we are. I had a base personality, which was basically General Sliske's, and every new host's memories change me in subtle ways. They make me something different. I'm a composite of every host I ever took, with the general being the dominant part of me. Though even he has been drowned out in time. I still like to imagine the general as the definitive version of myself."

"I thought your definitive version of yourself was a black unicorn mare?"

Sliske scowled.

"Too many pony hosts. I've spent most of my life on this planet or orbiting it. You locals keep changing me. Being me is very confusing as far as gender goes. My first ever host was a male zarlan, and that's the base personality that the rest of me is built upon. However, most of the hosts I've taken while on this planet were mares, specifically unicorns, because for some reason there was a three to one ratio of mares to stallions one thousand years ago, though it seems a bit more even as of late."

"So what even are we supposed to think of you as?" asked Chain Mail, "Should we even bother applying gender pronouns to you?"

"It is ultimately futile. Normally I get called either he or she depending on the sex of my current host. When I'm in this form I honestly couldn't say what to call me, though most of you ponies insist on thinking of me as a male, to simplify things in your own mind at least."

"Well what would you prefer? Would you want us to call you he or she?"

"You might as well be trying to apply gender pronouns to a sponge."

"Well what do you think of yourself as?"

"A sakrassi."

"STOP BEING DELIBERATELY VAGUE!" Chain Mail shouted.

"Get fucked, captain."

"Oh, for the love of-" Gold Coin grumbled, "SLISKE! Answer this question: Would you read a celebrity gossip magazine by choice?"

"I might."

"Sliske's a mare. There. Argument over."

***

The cold stone walls of the labyrinth surrounded Second on all sides. Behind him, daylight was pouring in from the rooms that could be seen from the valley, one of which he had just entered through. That light wouldn't reach all the way into the depths of the labyrinth, so he had plucked a torch off the wall in preparation. Once he ran out of sunshine, he'd light it and use that to find the rest of the way.

These old caverns and corridors held a lot of history in them. To most, their stories would have been lost to time. Second knew them though. He had written those stories.

To Everything There is a Season was the fourth episode he wrote, which took place mid-season four. A great epic compressed into twenty two minutes, styled after previous historical episodes like Hearth's Warming Eve. He told the story of the founding of Canterlot and the early days of Equestria when Princess Celestia first came into power too.

Through flashbacks and history lessons in other episodes he had written, he'd also told stories of the War of the Night, the origins of alicorn princesses, and Discord's reign as well. He wrote a lot of those history pieces.

In a way, it was what gave him his power. You could say that he had specialised in world building, because that was usually what his episodes did. They expanded on Equestria and especially its ancient past.

His was the power over history. He told the origins of everything and how it all came to be. Sliske he had particular power over, because he had created him directly. But in a way, he had created a lot of Equestria. He had power over the whole world to some degree. It just wasn't a lot of power. Not enough to do anything of note.

"...Wait."

Second stopped in his tracks. He recognised this hallway, and not in the way he recognised normal set pieces from the show. No, he recognised this as a real place. It was somewhere he had been before.

"No..."

He stepped forward into the darkened corridor, and recognised it in full. This was the hallway , the place where he first saw the man in black, where he stood before he entered that room with the mirrors.

It was the place from his nightmare.

***

Silver Vein returned to the roof again, this time properly prepared. A suit of yellow power armour around her, damaged but working, ensured that she was safe from anything either the zombies or the zebra could dish out. She needed the protection, just in case.

"Thug Lyfe!" she called out, "We need to get off this roof right now! There are zombies coming!"

"Aww shit!" the zebra cried in distress, "Get me outta here! I don't wanna get eaten by some hungry-ass shambling nigga!"

"Don't worry! I shall carry you off the roof to safety!"

"No way, bitch. Imma 'fraid of heights!"

"Umm..."

"C'mon. Stairs are THIS way."

Silver Vein ran over and blocked the way to the stairs.

"NO! That's where the zombies are coming in from!"

"'s cool. We can take the other stairwell!"

"That one has zombies too!"

Thug Lyfe raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well...how many?"

"Umm...dozens!"

"...Shiiieeet, man. Guess we're gonna have to turn dis into a fire fight."

Silver was getting annoyed now.

"Really. I can pick you up and we can fly down to ground level right now."

"Why ground level, ho?! Ain't it easier t' just find a defensible position in the motherfucking castle?!"

Silver's eye twitched.

Fuck it.

Thug Lyfe turned and fled as the mare whipped out her suit's heavy weapons and began to bombard the rooftop of Canterlot Castle with explosives. For good measure, she also covered the area in a steady stream of bullets and energy beams.

"DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE! I WANT YOU TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!"

From above the din of the explosions, lasers and gunfire, a voice called out.

"BITCH, YOU TRIPPIN'!"

***

"My turn!" Mystic announced.

The colt carried a lit torch with his magic and placed it within the large stone beacon at the side of the path. It was shaped like a giant pot, but with a square cut out the side so that you could see within it. The beacon had no firewood or flammable gas inside it. The fire by itself was enough to light it, such was the magic of these extremely pointless beacons.

No really, why were these even here? Wouldn't having just one of them at the actual entrance of the village serve the same purpose of keeping out evildoers without requiring that multiple flight capable ponies climb a mountain by hoof?

Clearly these things were built by sadists.

"Hooray," Gold Coin said, sounding bored, "Next one? Come on, ponies."

"You're lighting the next one, you miserable fuck," Chain Mail replied.

"Whatever you say, cappy."

Luna frowned as she trotted out in front of him.

"What is your problem?" she asked in concern, "You're way crankier than usual."

"Why, it's fucking cold, your majesty," Gold Coin answered, "Not sure if you've noticed, but it is."

"And that's why we've all had warming spells cast on us."

"I haven't."

Oh. Ohhhhh...

"...Are you saying I should have had it?"

Luna smiled awkwardly. Gold Coin turned around to face the nearest group of soldiers.

"WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO CAST THE WARMING SPELL ON ME?!" he demanded, "BECAUSE WHOEVER IT WAS, YOU DIDN'T!"

"It was me!"

The earth pony whipped his head around and looked back to the front of the train of ponies. A short way further up the mountain, Ancient Tome was smiling cheerfully at him and waving a hoof.

"That's it, Tome! You're a dead pony!"

Gold Coin charged up the path, pushing aside his friends and the other soldiers and chasing after the bearded unicorn. Once he came within range he lunged at him, but Tome teleported before he could reach and left the business pony face down in the snow.

"Oops, too slow!" he taunted as he appeared behind him again.

"GET BACK HERE!"

And thus began a game of a cat and mouse. As the rest of the ponies all slowly made their way up the mountain path towards the fifth beacon torch thingy, Gold Coin and Ancient Tome alternately moved up and down. The latter teleported all over the place and the former gave chase, always failing to reach his enemy by mere seconds before he disappeared in another flash of light.

"OH! So close!"

"I'M GOING TO MURDER YOU!"

"Nearly, but not good enough!"

"WHEN I CATCH YOU, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!"

"Come and get me, Goldie!"

"STOP FUCKING RUNNING!"

"I'm right behind you!"

"RAAGGGHH!"

"Or, I was!"

"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"You're quite a sad, slow little pony, aren't you, Goldie?"

"I am surrounded by children," Soft Spoken commented as he rolled his eyes.

He looked over to Chain Mail, who he had just noticed had stopped dead in his tracks and was staring off at something behind him.

"Chains? What is it?" the old stallion asked.

The captain raised a hoof to point over his shoulder. Softy turned to look, and his eyes went wide.

"Oh...dear..."

A streak of orange and silver shot towards them. A group of pegasi followed behind it in a 'V' formation. As they approached, they all caught fire.

"TOME! GOLDIE!" Chain Mail screamed.

The royal guards and the other ponies present all finally noticed their attackers and drew their weapons. Gold Coin and Ancient Tome even stopped their chase, and the unicorn pulled out his sword in preparation, just in case this was something his magic couldn't deal with. The princesses took to the air as well, along with all the pegasus guards.

"FORMATION NINETEEN!"

The captain put his helmet on and activated the artificial wings, preparing to take to the sky himself. The burning ponies came closer and closer.

Suddenly, all of them except the leader exploded. Body parts flew out in all directions, and where before there had been pegasi, now there were dozens of gigantic demons falling from the sky down towards the mountain, most of them twice the size of the princesses.

They fell almost to the bottom of the mountain, actually really far away from where they were. Those demons would have a lot of climbing to do before they reached them. Chain Mail considered this for a split second, wondering why they had chosen to fall down there instead of raining down right on top of them. Then he noticed the single one still coming towards them.

Sun Rise.

"NO WAIT! GET ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW!" he shouted.

Too late. Sun Rise shot forward, breaking the sound barrier. He streaked right past the mountain and flew off behind them. At the precise point he had gone supersonic, a ring of fire exploded outwards.

It hit the mountain, and all the snow that was near it melted. It hit a few ponies lower down on the winding trail and incinerated them in seconds. And the force of the shockwave knocked all the airborne ponies right out of the sky, including the princesses, who tumbled down and landed right next to them.

It wasn't just the pegasi either. Everypony all fell to their knees from the sheer force of Sun Rise's move, while the pony himself flew away leaving a trail of fire in his wake.

It was a trick that had ran in his family for generations. All the way back to Rainbow Dash, every one of them that had made it into the Wonderbolts usually had their own version of it, and their own name for it, but most knew it by the name of the original. The sonic rainboom.

"Owww..." Gold Coin groaned as he pulled himself up again, "What just...happened...?"

"TIME TO DIE, MORTALS!"

The demons that had fallen to the bottom of the mountain were back. It had taken them seconds to scale the entire thing. And now there were eight of them, completely untouched so far, and standing over the fallen bodies of the royal guard. And more of them were coming.

This was going to be a slaughter.

***

Second looked at the corridor before him. In his dream, he had stood here. At the other end of it had stood the man in black. The doors all along the corridor were locked, save for two. One, the man in black had vanished into, and another, Second had entered himself, which had led him into the hall of mirrors.

This time, he wanted to take a look at the other door. The one the man in black had gone to.

He walked to the other end of the corridor and tried the door. Unlike in the dream, he found it locked. This wasn't a problem though. What kind of elder god was stopped by a wooden door? He didn't even need to kick it. A tap of his finger on the knob and a stern look caused it to automatically open for him.

The human looked inside, and recoiled.

"EUGH! What happened in here?!" he cried out as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose with it.

Corpses. Rotting corpses everywhere. The fact that there was flesh on them means that they must have died recently, but there was no real reason for anyone to have recently been down here. Who even were these ponies? What were they doing here? How did they reach this room?

More importantly, what was the purpose of this room? It was completely featureless aside from the bodies. Just an empty room. The door was a normal wooden door with a standard lock, so it probably wasn't a prison. Storage room, maybe? Was this place connected to the mines, or the older parts of the underground? Most likely mines. But...

No. The mines were far above here. This didn't make any sense. Something more was going on here.

"There must be some..."

Howard stopped. He walked further into the room and looked at the other side of the door. He just had a feeling that he should. There was a paper note there, waiting for him. The ink was fresh too. He tore it off the wall and examined it.

Lord Second,

You are moving in a direction that the Pantheon of B does not approve of.

Cease your plans to overthrow us immediately, or else you will be seeing more and more of your little minions ending up here. Especially the ones that are important to you.

Surrender to the narrative, and you may yet survive this adventure.

Yours sincerely, Johnson B. Garrick,

Show runner and supervising director,

My Little Pony: Future Imperfect

He stared at the paper for a second.

"...They're calling G5 'Future Imperfect'?" he asked aloud, "As in, after the Star Trek episode?"

Second's arm dropped back to his side and he tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. He sighed deeply, and then looked around the rest of the room. So these corpses were his minions? Apparently so. He didn't recognise most of them, but then again, he probably wouldn't.

No wait. Actually yes. One of them was an alicorn, so that was probably Host. She wasn't recognisable anymore, because her fiery mane had burned out and she was rotting, but...still...Oh, and that one there had the standard commander's armour, so that might have been Throatfuck. Or as he liked to call him, Ulysses. And there was also a pegasus with an odd hat that may or may not have been Buckshot, short-lived brother of Commander Bullseye.

How'd they get here again? They had all died in Secopolis last he had checked.

Oh wait, that's right. I'm living in a world where making sense is antithetical to accomplishing things.

"Alright," he said, speaking to the ceiling, "I've given it some thought, and come to a decision. And that is that you can go fuck yourself, Mister Garrick. I mean it too. Go fuck yourself, with a rusty shovel, no lube, and don't stop until you're torn in half."

The door slammed closed behind him. Second jumped at the sound and tried to force it open again, but suddenly not even his powers were effective. There was a stirring. The bodies began to sit up, and all of them were making an unearthly moaning. There was a flash of green fire in front of the human, and a scroll appeared floating in the air in front of him.

It unfurled to reveal two words.

Wrong answer.

***

Silver ran down the spiral staircase after the zebra, launching grenade after grenade down the steps and hoping that it detonated before she caught up with it. Sometimes she even came close to hitting her actual target.

"GET BACK HERE AND DIE!" she screamed.

"You's a crazy bitch!" Thug Lyfe shouted back.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and ran off through an archway into a corridor. Seconds later, Silver reached the bottom too, and ran through the same arch to see Thug Lyfe running in the distance. Or, at least, a shape that resembled him. The corridor wasn't lit, so she couldn't tell.

"Fire in the hole!"

She launched two missiles down the corridor in his general direction. One struck the floor several feet away from the zebra and sent him flying through the air with the force of the explosion, while one actually hit the ceiling and caused a cave in.

There was a rumbling, and Silver turned her head away as debris fell down and blocked her path ahead. Mostly it was rubble, but there was also the occasional bit of furniture from the upper floors. In fact, an alicorn-sized bathtub laid upside down on top of the pile like a giant crown, making this wreckage the most regal debris of them all.

"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Thug Lyfe's voice crowed from the other side, "Can't get me now, can ya, bitch?!"

"I've got more grenades!" Silver shouted back, amplifying her voice with the armour's speakers.

"Do ya now?"

"Yes I do! And I'm going to keep throwing explosives at you until you stop living!"

"Well ain't that just a fucking- THINK FAST!"

Thug Lyfe's head popped out from behind one of the lower parts of the pile of rubble, revealing that he now had the 9MM pistol given to him by Second held in his teeth. Somehow, he managed to fire it. It wasn't clear how. Silver was also not happy to learn that the zebra had access to armour piercing rounds.

"OW!" she screamed, "YOU SHOT ME IN THE LEG!"

Silver launched another missile down the corridor and limped back out of the archway to safety while her foe fired more shots behind her, which whizzed past her helmet and barely missed.

"Oh, you are dead...You are SO dead!" she muttered.

She felt a jab in her flank as the Butterfly armour injected a mixture of a healing solution and a painkiller. Ten minutes would clear up that bullet wound. That assumed though that she wasn't going to get shot again.

That zebra had gone quiet.

"I know you're still there!" she shouted, "I'm not done with you!"

No response.

Where could he have-

CRASH!

The wall had exploded. The terrified mare jumped away from it in shock. She looked back at the place where there was once a solid marble wall and part of a staircase, and instead saw a grinning zebra driving a bulldozer.

"WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET THAT?!"

"Payback's a bitch, an' so are you!"

He fired his gun at her again, which he was now holding in one of his hooves as if he had an invisible hand and fingers, and with his other hoof he moved the gear stick and caused the bulldozer to lurch forwards.

Silver had no choice but to take flight and flee down the corridor she had just blocked off at the other end, hoping to find another way. She certainly couldn't walk given the state of her leg. And behind her, she heard the bulldozer turn in her direction to give chase, and the sound of more gunfire from Thug Lyfe.

"Quit running, ho! Get yo skanky ass back here!"

***

"TARTARUS SHALL BE AVENGED!"

Soft Spoken jumped to the side just in time to avoid a huge red claw slicing him in half. Instead, it scraped along the ground and carved a deep wound in the rock, as if it were a knife cutting through butter. The monster roared and lunged at him again.

Nearby, another demon grabbed one of the royal guards and smashed him against a rock, crushing him into red paste which he smeared everywhere. Two other royal guards attacked it with swords. They only came up to the demon's waistline, but that just put it in the perfect position to get stabbed in the kneecap, causing it to fall over screaming.

"BACK! BACK I SAY!"

One of the bigger demons, probably a leader of some kind, grasped its claws around Princess Luna and was trying to tear her wings off. It wasn't making any progress though, and the dark alicorn thrashed about until she freed a hoof. The moment she was no longer restrained, she hit her attacker in the face, causing a sickening crack as she snapped its neck in a single blow.

Celestia was far less brutal with her attacks, but was nonetheless showing sufficient fighting prowess. Gold Coin cowered as a demon stood over him, ready to kill, but the undead princess slammed into its side and knocked it off the mountain trail and down into the snowy abyss below. He got up and jumped to the side as another, smaller demon attempted to tackle her, and found itself struck by a bolt of magical lightning called from above.

"They're coming in stronger from the south!" Chain Mail shouted over the din, "Cover our rears!"

The captain staggered over to the lit beacon further down the trail, which was where the designated safe point was. A single other royal guard and Soft Spoken were recuperating there while the battle raged around them.

"Chains! What happened to you?!" asked Softy, "Where's Mystic?! I can't see him anywhere!"

The side of the captain's black armour had been cut open by a demon's claws, and revealed more layers of metal and exposed circuits underneath. A patch of what may have been skin was also revealed, but it was just bare skin, lacking his white coat, and was horribly burned as well.

"I'm fine, but I don't see Mystic either!" he gasped, "Just give me a minute, I think the medical systems are still onli- AGGGGGGGH!"

He fell to the ground in pain, clutching the damaged area.

"I DON'T THINK THIS THING IS WORKING RIGHT!" he screamed.

"Sir?! Are you okay?" asked the royal guard, "Can I help?!"

Chain Mail's eyes opened, and he looked over at the guard. Another pegasus, and he still had his wings. That gave him an idea.

"No. I have another job for you, private! Get back to the Prometheus! Go to the cargo hold, and wake up Spike the Eternal. Tell him we've got demons!"

The guard saluted.

"Aye, sir!"

The guard took flight and turned to the south, heading down the mountain towards the parked airship. As he did, the two remaining ponies looked up at the sky again, and saw Sun Rise had turned around and was heading back towards them, ready for a second strike.

"Softy..." he groaned, "You've got armour, you can fly. This one's on you."

***

A number of corpses began to rise up and shamble over towards Second. This would have been creepy and terrifying, but he had already seen thousands of them in the past few days, all of which he was directly responsible for creating. Zombies at this point were not something scary and intimidating. They were just another thing.

Not that he wanted those creatures anywhere near him.

He backed against the door as they approached. As they came closer, their eyes began glowing green too, and a strange vapour of the same colour escaped from their mouths. They continued to groan and shuffle as always, except now one of them, Commander Throatfuck to be precise, seemed to suddenly gain the ability of speech.

"You killed us..." he said in an echoey, distorted voice.

Second titled his head.

"Did you just speak?"

The zombie pinned him against the wall and leaned in close, so that Second was staring into its vacant, dead eyes. It repeated its earlier statement.

"You...killed...us..."

The human's response was to furrow his brow in confusion.

"No. No I really didn't."

The zombies all stood still around him. Zombie Throatfuck backed off, but remained the closest to him. There wasn't much they could actually do to him. They just stood and stared at him through their glowing green eyes, being unsettling.

"You killed us," they chanted in unison.

"...Again. No I didn't."

"You killed us."

They really weren't doing anything at all now. Just repeating themselves. It was annoying.

"Okay, fine. If you say so. Apparently I killed you. You had nothing to do with it, of course! It's not like any of you lack proper self-preservation instincts. Nope. It's ALL my fault! And now that we've established it's my fault...What are you gonna do about it, you ugly motherfuckers?"

They all stood by silently. Second slowly began to smile.

"Oh...I see what this is. Your whole plan was to...Ohohoho! You were hoping to play off the horrible emotional burden I am no doubt feeling because you all died, and try to guilt-trip me into submission!"

He pointed a finger at the resurrected corpses of his former minions and burst out laughing.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The zombies all looked to each other, though their facial expressions didn't change.

"Hahaha...heh...Oh wow...Your whole plan relied on me feeling remorse. Oh God, you guys are idiots!"

Still grinning, he lunged forward and grabbed Commander Throatfuck by the remains of his mane with his left hand. He curled his right into a fist, and smashed it through his face, like he was punching through a hollowed out pumpkin. Seconds later, he tore it out again, this time clutching an equine brain, which he held up to show the others.

"I made all of you!" he proclaimed, "You are my creations! Your life is mine to play with and throw away as I see fit, and no-one can tell me otherwise! The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away!"

He threw the once again lifeless body of the commander aside and crushed the brain in his hand.

"Any objections?"

The zombies didn't say a word or move an inch. They all just immediately evaporated into green smoke, which floated away as if through some unseen, invisible ventilation in the ceiling. Even the commander vanished. As they did, another load of green smoke of a slightly different hue flittered through the air and manifested into a scroll, just like the last one.

You have made a foolish decision here today. The Pantheon will be seeing you soon.

***

There are some times in your life, like when you're flying through a palace covered from head to hoof in power armour, nursing a crippled leg, being chased by a gangsta-stereotype zebra in a bulldozer, who keeps firing at you and crashing through walls, that you just have to stop and ask yourself how it came to this.

Silver Vein however had no intention of stopping. As far as she was concerned, this was a pretty average day for a trooper in Second's army. It was a far sight closer to normalcy than getting caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and your orders being to support the zombies.

"IMMA GET YOU, BITCH! THINK YOU CAN FUCK WITH ME?! I LEAVE YOUR WHOLE FAMILY FULLA LEAD!"

Of course, this was still rather strange.

Silver rounded a corner and found herself in a large, long hall with high ceilings. The best part about it though, was that it had windows near the top. Expensive, stained glass windows, which nonetheless were easily broken and could provide an escape route.

She smiled as she gained altitude, and the Butterfly model power armour kicked into gear as the miniguns whirled to life and fired at the window until there wasn't a window anymore.

"I'M COMING FOR YO ASS!

The bulldozer came around the corner too. Or, it cut through the corner. Thug Lyfe fired the pistol at her two more times, and then stopped to reload. Silver took the opportunity to fly out the now glass-less window.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she emerged into the fresh air of Canterlot. She was actually really high up. The corridor she had been in was on the upper levels of the palace, and it was at the very edge of the castle. Below the window she had exited from was a sheer drop. Had she not been flight capable, she would have crawled out of that window and fallen from halfway up Canterlot mountain all the way down into the river.

Then she smiled, as she realised exactly what was going to happen next.

She took off her helmet so that she could see properly, and take in the full beauty of the scene. A hole was punched in the wall below the window she came from. A bulldozer flew out of it. Driving it was a very surprised and angry zebra, who barely glanced at her in his panic as he fell to his probable death.

"BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch..."

There was a distant splashing sound far below.

"HA!" Silver shouted, "Dumb fuck! That'll teach you! Nopony is sir's favourite except ME!"

She closed her eyes and hovered in place, smiling in satisfaction for a minute. Then she opened them abruptly.

"Wow, I just straight up killed a guy because I was jealous," she realised.

She held up her hooves and looked at them.

"...I'm beginning to think that sir is a bad influence on me."

***

A trail of flame followed behind Sun Rise as he picked up speed. He was reaching the critical point before he could pull off another ring of fire, and he had timed it to perfection. It would occur the moment he was above the mountain trail, and it'd incinerate most of the ponies present below.

Sorry it had to end this way, Tomey.

The cone had already began to form around his fore hooves, and he could feel himself coming closer. Just a little further, and-

WHAM!

The former Wonderbolt was snapped out of his thoughts and sent reeling off to the side as something large and metal slammed into him and knocked him off-course. He flapped his wings and caught himself before he fell, grunting in frustration. His ribs ached where he had been hit, and he was certain that a bruise would come up there.

While he was assessing himself, there was a streak of blue in front of him, and suddenly he found himself face to face with a cyan pegasus with a white mane. It took him a moment to recognise that it wasn't actually the pony's natural colour. He was wearing Secopolis power armour, Rainbow model.

"Give it up now, sonny!" he warned, "I don't like fighting, but if you force me to, I will stop you!"

Sun Rise's cybernetic eye lit up, and the armoured pony dodged out of the way before he unleashed a laser blast from it which burned a black line into the rock below them and sliced a royal guard in half.

That just brought more attention to him though. And now that there was no danger of a second ring of fire, the other pegasi were getting confident. Night Shroud led the charge as a number of the winged royal guards took to the sky, all of them looking for a chance to test their mettle against the legendary former Wonderbolt.

Arguably his biggest mistake though was being distracted by the flock of pegasi heading his way. He shouldn't have taken his eyes off Soft Spoken, not even for a second. Because while he wasn't looking, the old stallion had put some distance between himself and Sun Rise, and taken the time to align his targeting software. The demonic cyborg noticed all too late what was being aimed at him.

"Oh...shit..."

Softy's suit fired the missile launcher.

***

After exiting the room, Second promptly checked all the other locked doors in the corridor. One of them was open and of course led into the hall of mirrors, but he didn't want that one. He wanted to check the rest of them first to see if they also held anything of significance. They were all locked in the dream while the other two were not, so he assumed they were irrelevant, but it never hurt to check.

Just as he suspected, they were all empty, featureless rooms just like the one where the bodies were before. He would have gone with his guess that they were all store rooms, but thinking more about it, these rooms were probably only here because he had a scene here.

Nathan had said that they were planning this movie trilogy to have a "meta" plot. That meant that the Studio B staff and this Johnson guy were making avatars of themselves as the main villains of the story, who he would eventually team up with the heroes to defeat. And he had sensed that these scenes would be relevant to the story. So him being antagonised by the Pantheon of B through things like those zombies back there was part of the movie's story.

These rooms didn't have any real reason to be here. They were just here because that was part of the story. No real rhyme or reason.

"...Morons..." he muttered.

Well, nothing else for it.

With an underlying sense of dread, he moved over to the final door. He grabbed the handle and opened it, and stepped through into the hall of mirrors.

***

At the bottom of Canterlot mountain, a very angry zebra breached the surface of the river.

"...Aw HELL no! This nigga DID NOT just make me fall off a mountain!"

He looked up at the palace he had fallen from, and could find no trace of his assailant anywhere.

"Imma kill somepony for dis shit!"

***

There was a flash of light, and two unicorns appeared inside the cave. The entrance was small and barely let in any natural light, but through it, one could see the mountain trail a little way below, where the battle continued to rage.

"LET ME GO, DAD! LET ME GO!"

Ancient Tome released his grip on Mystic Chant, and the colt fell to the floor in a heap. As he struggled to get up again, the older unicorn walked over to the entrance to the cave to peer out at the rest of the battle.

"Take me back!" Mystic demanded, "I can help them!"

"No, you, can't," Tome replied firmly, "Sliske's been with you too long. You've started to get it into your head that you're meant to fight, and that you stand more chance than all those trained professional soldiers dying in numbers out there. Well I'm not having it! Whatever you may think of me, son, I am not going to let you run out into danger. You're staying here where's it's safe."

"But dad-!"

"NO. I am not arguing this with you! Stay here, and do as you are told!"

Mystic glared at him, but said nothing. He just stood still, silently fuming. Tome was wary, but took this as a sign of acceptance. With another flash, he was gone again.

***

The explosion as Softy's missile struck its target drew the attention of everypony on the mountain trail below, distracting them, however briefly, and resulting in some grievous injuries. More guards continued to drop down dead, Iron Hoof suffered a brutal beating at the hands of a lesser demon, and Celestia also got slapped around quite a bit before she regained her concentration and magically launched her opponent down the trail into the beacon, where he immediately caught fire and burned alive.

Up in the air meanwhile, the smoke finally cleared, and Softy gawked as he saw Sun Rise emerge unscathed from the explosion. He immediately rocketed forward and smashed into the armoured stallion. He attacked the wings with his laser eyes and shot them off, causing him to fall to his most certain death.

Sun Rise then turned his attention to the approaching flock of pegasi. By now there was no time to build up speed for a ring of fire, so it was time for conventional aerial combat. Fortunately, that was what he was best at.

The cyberpony darted between them, twisting around in the air in a seemingly random pattern to throw off any attempt to anticipate his next move or react in time to stop him. Every time he was at the right angle, he bucked with his hind legs or struck with a single fore hoof, usually aiming for the face to knock his targets unconscious.

Others he aimed for the wings, just like with Softy, aiming to cripple instead of kill but almost certainly killing them anyway thanks to the sheer drop. Their armour made attempting to hit them in the body or the back of the head extremely pointless, but it had several glaring weak points that he exploited again and again.

After he had taken down half a dozen of them, the rest flew outwards more to get out of his range. He charged the laser eye again as he went for the closest remaining pony, whom he beat to death in seconds. Once it was at full power, he activated it and spun around in a circle, taking down seven more guards in a single attack.

"Equestria will fall!" he proclaimed, "Long live the New Human Empire!"

He instinctively dodged to the side, and a batpony flew up in front of him with an outstretched hoof, having clearly been attempting to hit him from underneath.

"You're going down, Sun Rise!" shouted Night Shroud.

The demented cyborg grinned.

"Finally a challenge!"

***

Mirrors.

Just like in the dream, the old ancient hall was full of mirrors either side of him. Well, he called the mirrors, but they could have been anything. Windows? Portals? He wasn't sure. He just went with mirrors because that sounded right, but they showed anything but his reflection. Through each of them all that could be seen was a cloudy mist.

He suspected that the mists would reveal something if he looked into them more closely. Just like in the dream. So he went to the one immediately to his left and stood before it. Back in the dream, this one had shown him Celestia walking in the mists, before she had noticed and attacked him. He wondered if it was the same here.

No. It was not.

Instead, the mists parted to reveal the desolate surface of the moon. He could tell it was the moon from the green and blue planet hanging in the sky above it. Just behind it, he could see the sun, and the ground was all white and dusty.

In the middle of it, Princess Luna sat on her haunches, staring up at the planet mournfully. More notably, it was season one Luna, with the plain blue hair instead of whatever her mane was made of now.

He reached out and tapped on the surface of the mirror, seeing if he could get her attention, like he had with Celestia in the dream. No response though.

"Hmm," he said, "Well this is uninteresting."

Second walked across to the opposite side of the room. In the dream, this one had briefly showed him Spike opening his eye. And this time...

Well, this time the mirror revealed an image of Ponyville as of the era of the show, burning under a blood red sky. He could see demons prowling around the streets. Several background ponies he recognised were running around the town screaming in fear. One of the demons grabbed a minor character called Thunderlane and tore him limb from limb.

The human backed slowly away from the mirror until it returned to mist.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, "Someone has a sick mind."

He looked at the mirror more closely, trying to see if it had any distinguishing markings that set it apart from the previous one. He was sure that the mirrors were all linked, all showing different things, but all connected by a theme. What was the difference though...?

Aha!

This mirror had a symbol above it. It was tiny, but it was definitely something. It was a symbol of a dragon claw.

"So...dragon claw...and..."

He turned over to looked at the mirror that had shown him Luna. Above that was a different symbol, which confirmed his theory. The mirrors were all about a different character from the show. The one showing the ruined Ponyville was obviously Spike, and the one showing Luna on the moon was obviously...

Celestia?

Yeah. The symbol above the mirror which had shown Luna was Celestia's cutie mark. Not Luna's. So that made it the Celestia mirror, right?

...I don't get it.

***

Silver winced as she felt the bullet being pushed out of her leg wound, but gave a sigh of relief as it fell away and the flesh began to regrow over it. The drugs the suit had administered eased the pain and fixed the damage, and she was never more thankful for it. There was a helpful ding! in her helmet's audio sensors to indicate that she was back in peak condition again.

"Finally, I can take this off!"

She took off her helmet first, and then began to remove the rest of the power armour piece by piece. It took her a few minutes, but she was soon unrestrained by the heavy suit and stretched her wings and limbs in celebration.

Thoughts of Thug Lyfe entered her mind. She was already regretting killing him. Mostly because murder was wrong, but it'd be dishonest to imply that she wasn't also worried about what Second would think, considering Thug Lyfe was important to his plans. He was going to be so mad!

A zombie shuffled past, moaning as it walked down the mountain.

"What am I going to do?!" Silver whispered to herself, "Sir is going to find out I killed his new favourite minion! Then I'll never be his favourite again! What will he do to me?!"

She laid down in the grass and looked out across the landscape. She was sitting near the edge of a cliff overlooking the pathway down Canterlot mountain, just outside the main gates to the city. Down below, zombies were dotted all over the place. The fall of Canterlot yesterday had meant that there was no new fresh meat around the city, so the zombies ever since last night had began to move down the mountain towards the outlying settlements.

Silver sighed.

"...I guess I'll have to tell him the truth."

"Uuughhh..." cried a zombie somewhere behind her.

The pegasus looked over her shoulder, and saw that it wasn't just one or two, but a whole cluster of zombies shuffling out of Canterlot to head down the trail.

That's odd...They don't usually all head out together like this...

There was a sound of gunfire down below. Silver froze in place as she realised that the only ones who had access to guns in this city were her, Second and the zebra.

Feeling apprehensive, she inched along the ground until she was at the very edge of the cliff, and she peered down over the edge, at the winding pathway the zombies were following. She saw a number of them further down the trail falling down in pools of blood as their heads exploded, and a striped figure fighting his way through them.

Carried on the wind, she heard his voice.

"Keep tryin' to eat me, will ya?! I kill all y'all bitch-ass undead niggas!"

Oh, joy. He survived.

***

Explodey charged at one of the larger demons and impaled it with his horn. The monster screamed, and dropped Gold Coin, who scrambled away while trying to stand up again. It reached down and grabbed him instead, pulling him out of its chest and biting his head off and swallowing it, before tossing his lifeless body aside.

"MORTAL!" it screamed at Gold Coin, "YOU SHALL BURN IN THE ETERNAL FIRES!"

The demon stepped forward, preparing to massacre the helpless earth pony, when it noticed something. There was a load of green sludge crawling up his leg.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!"

It slithered up his body and began to move towards his mouth and crawl down his throat.

"WHAT?! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The demon's screams were soon drowned out and devolved into gurgling as he choked on the disgusting slime. He didn't quite die yet though, instead clutching his belly in pain as it bulged outwards. There was an explosion, and demon body parts went flying all over the snowy battlefield and soaked it red with blood.

Where the creature had stood before, now there was Explodey, covered in blood as well.

"Ewwww!" he screamed, "I'm covered in blood! Get it off, get it off, get it off!"

He ran around in circles in a panic, freaked out by the new circumstances. Gold Coin just stood off to the side, watching the scene with no small amount of concern for the not-unicorn.

Then he was snapped out of his thoughts as three more demons came crawling up from side of the trail behind him, apparently emerging from the lower side of the mountain. Where were they all coming from?! He had seen exactly how many demons there were when Sun Rise first attacked, and he was certain his friends and the princesses alone had killed more than there initially were.

And yet there was still a substantial number of demons, and the battle continued to rage on. These demons were discreetly teleporting in reinforcements, and if they could do that, then this battle was well and truly hopeless. It was just a matter of how long they could last before-

"Zu fen krii pah se fin nivahriin sivaasse!"

A purple dragon swooped down over them and grabbed all three of the demons that had just appeared his claws. He flew further up the mountain trail where nopony had reached yet and landed. He stood just on his back legs, so he towered over the entire battlefield.

Spike held up the demons in his hand, opened his mouth, and burned them alive for all the demonic horde to see.

"THE ETERNAL COMES!" screamed one of the demons.

"VENGEANCE WILL BE OURS!" added another.

"LORD TIRAC WILL RULE AGAIN!"

The demons all immediately dropped what they were doing, abandoned the fight with the ponies, and all rushed the dragon.

***

Second decided to check as many of the mirrors as possible. He wanted to see what all of them had to show him. He counted twenty one of them in all. Ten of them on either side of the hall, plus a single one at the very end, opposite the door he had come in from. The twenty first mirror was of course the one he had seen the demon in before. He decided he would check that one last.

So, he had found Celestia's and Spike's so far. What did the others have to offer?

Well, one of the mirrors had sported Fluttershy's cutie mark of the three butterflies, interestingly enough, and had shown him an image of a barren and lifeless wasteland. That was it. Nothing happened, it was just the static image of the wasteland.

The next one he had consulted had been Sliske's. He knew it was Sliske's, even if he didn't know what the symbol of a rearing blue unicorn meant, because this mirror depicted an image that he recognised from his imagination, of the sakrassi home world of Zarlow, as seen from orbit, burning.

Moving onto the next mirror, he found it playing a strange scene of himself dressed up like a king sitting in Celestia's throne. A look at the symbol for this mirror showed that it was of an apple that had been bitten into with a coin sticking out of it. He didn't remember the cutie mark of every pony he’d met, but he was fairly sure that this mirror was associated with that yellow earth pony, Gold Coin.

"Hmm..." he pondered, "Me as king...Huh..."

He still wasn't sure what these mirrors were showing exactly. The linked person's worst fear? Their most traumatic memory? Well, it couldn't be the latter because some of these things never happened. At the very least, he had never dressed up in that exact outfit. He was going to guess that these were worst fears.

The fear theory made sense. Gold Coin feared him winning. Fluttershy feared the idea of a lifeless world, apparently. Spike feared...Armageddon was the only way to describe that horror. And he guessed Celestia feared her little sister being alone again. Which was an odd thing for her to fear the most, considering all the things that had happened to her.

Though Sliske's one didn't make sense. How could he fear Zarlow burning? Zarlow had already burned a long time ago. What, was he afraid of the lifeless husk of his planet spontaneously catching fire for a second time and burning all those poor, defenceless ashes?

Well, let's check the other mirrors, and see if my guess is right.

Rainbow Dash's mirror showed her failing. Made sense. Pinkie Pie and Twilight both feared the same thing, that being the end of their friendship with the rest of the main six. Applejack had a variant on this where she lost her friendship with the others, but hers also showed her family dying in disturbing ways.

Disturbing for most people, at least. Second however burst out laughing at the image of Applebloom falling down a flight of stairs and cracking her head open like a watermelon. It was just so darkly comic. He was hoping for Rarity's mirror next, but they were randomly arranged with no pattern in mind, so not all the main six or all the new heroes were together. No, in fact his next mirror was Explodey's.

Explodey was afraid of giant mantis men taking over the world.

Moving on.

Luna! He had found Luna's mirror. And as if he hadn't guessed it already, her worst fear was...actually not going back to the moon. Her worst fear was her sister shouting at her. At least that's what it looked like. None of the mirrors had audio, unlike in his dream where he had clearly heard the sound of Celestia's fire attack in her mirror. So the image of Celestia shouting at her sister could be interpreted multiple ways.

And next up is...oh...

This was the mirror he had seen his son in, back in the dream. And following the trends, that made this one his mirror, right? He glanced up at this mirror's symbol, which was a large black number one. One for First? He assumed that was what it meant.

...What did Anthony fear most then?

He stepped forward and waited as the mist cleared. And it revealed...a reflection. Nothing strange in it either. It was just a reflection of the hall that he was in, and himself standing there looking at the mirror.

Howard didn't really want to think about what that could mean.

***

Thug Lyfe had taken barely any time at all to get all the way up the mountain. Silver had wanted to change back into the Butterfly power armour, but she hadn't had enough time. By the time she had reactivated the suit's computer systems and commanded it to open again, the zebra was almost upon her.

In the end, she just decided to abandon her armour and fly away naked. She had wings, he didn't, so she could probably escape to safety until he ran out of ammo. And that had to be soon, because he was firing that pistol like it was a machine gun.

"BIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!"

She barrel rolled to the side to avoid another bullet as he continued to fire at her. Already he had expended three entire clips trying to shoot her down. The chase had taken them back into Canterlot proper now, and Silver was slowly putting distance between her and the zebra. He could run like an Olympian though. She was going to have trouble losing him.

Maybe if I land in the upper floor of one of these taller buildings and then fly back to the palace to find sir while he climbs it by the stairs to get to me...

Silver never got to finish that thought though.

BLAM!

Thug Lyfe shot again, and this time he hit her.

"AGHH!" Silver cried out.

Blood streaked from her right wing, and the pegasus dropped out the sky.

***

The demons were all busy rushing Spike and getting themselves roasted now, allowing the rest of the army to fall back to lower down on the trail where they were safer. The beacon was the natural place to congregate, but only those right next to it were truly "safe", and that space was reserved for the injured.

Chain Mail groaned as he stepped away from the beacon to approach the royal sisters.

"How are we, princess?" he asked.

"Not good," Celestia answered, "Those monsters killed a lot of good ponies. What about you? Are you badly hurt?"

The captain looked at the massive hole in the side of his armour.

"A little."

"Chains!"

Gold Coin, Explodey and Iron Hoof came out of the crowd of ponies to his right, most of them looking a little bloodier now, though Explodey was as always completely uninjured.

"I can't find Softy, Mystic or Sliske!" Gold Coin asked, "Where are they?!"

"I sent Softy to stop Sun Rise, but I think he lost a wing. Not seen either of the others."

"What?!"

Gold Coin ran over to the edge of the trail and looked into the emptiness below. There were a number of bodies down there, most of them pegasus soldiers that had been downed by Sun Rise, who speaking of, was still kicking the shit out of Night Shroud a little way above them. One of those down there could have been Softy.

"Shit...I need to go down and help him."

"No way!" Chain Mail disagreed, "It's too dangerous, and Sun Rise or a demon could pick you off at any time if you go alone. You stay here, and I'll go look for Softy. I've at least got better protection."

"You're crippled!"

"Am not!"

Explodey poked Chain Mail's exposed flesh through the hole in the armour. He immediately fell on his side and screamed.

"AAAAGHHHHH! DON'T FUCKING DO THAT, EXPLODEY!"

"Sorry."

"Guys, I dealt with your demon problem."

The friends turned their attention back to Spike, who was now on all fours and sitting atop a great pile of ash, and with not a demon in sight. The dragon looked very pleased with himself.

"Now, all that leaves is-"

Right on cue, a bloodied and beaten Night Shroud fell onto the mountain trail between Spike and the surviving ponies. Sun Rise followed right after, landing right on top of him.

CRUNCH!

The batpony winced as the orange pegasus broke several of his bones in just that single motion. Sun Rise pressed a metallic hoof against his forehead, and turned to look at Princess Celestia, who he gave a psychotic grin.

"Princess! I am thinking of a number between one and twelve! If you can guess it right, I won't kill this worthless mutant."

Celestia was caught off guard. She didn't know how to respond to that.

"Fifteen seconds, princess!" Sun Rise urged.

"Ahhh...! Umm...! Six!" she answered.

His smile became much more subdued.

"Tsk, tsk," he replied, "Wrong answer. You could have saved him, but you failed. Don't ever forget that this is your fault."

Before anypony could stop him, he raised his hoof and brought it down, and crushed Night Shroud's head.

"NO!"

Sun Rise spread his wings and shot straight up before any guards could rush him or Spike could burn him to death, cackling all the way.

"Come on!" he taunted, "Let's see you try and stop me! Sun Rise is now taking all comers!"

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a giant spider wielding eight swords flying through the air.

"FOR THE LEGION!"

***

Broad Sword, it turned out, still had a mirror even though he was now dead. Then again, so were the original main six, so it wasn't exactly strange that a dead pony had a mirror, but Second still thought it odd that he was deemed worthy of a mirror when he was no longer a relevant character. Unless of course he was going to get resurrected somehow later on, like Celestia was?

Hmm...

Either way, his greatest fear was being outed as a homosexual and becoming a social pariah for it. Which was a stupid thing to worry about, because if you asked the crazy fandom then Equestria was at least seventy percent homosexuals, and he hadn't seen much yet to contradict that.

The next few mirrors contained equally stupid things. Soft Spoken was afraid of vampires, which weren't even real anyway, Rarity had some fashion-related bullshit, and if Mystic Chant's mirror was anything to go by, he still believed in the bogeyman.

Also interesting was the fact that the Equestrian version of the bogeyman was a generic human.

"Which one is this...?" Second muttered as he moved to the next one.

This mirror seemed to be portraying the fall of Equestria and the collapse of pony civilization, beginning with the death of both princesses, subsequently descending into lawlessness and chaos, and ending with Discord breaking loose and ruining whatever was left. It was very vivid as well.

"...Is this one Chain Mail's...?"

The symbol was of a map with a pin in it. Was that Chain Mail's cutie mark? What did it represent?

Well, the next mirror's symbol was two crossed swords laying over an actual chain mail, superimposed over an Equestrian flag, and that seemed a much more likely candidate for Chain Mail's cutie mark for obvious reasons. So he had no idea who the last one was connected to if this was Chain Mail. The new mirror was much more ambiguous, and simply showed a skeletal unicorn in a cloak, levitating a scythe with his magic. Second guessed that it represented a fear of death. Maybe. Perhaps.

And then there was...

"...The fuck?"

The symbol over this mirror was a three. Just like there was a one over Anthony's. It was a stylised sort of three which was a lot curlier than how one would normally write it. In fact, he recognised the font. That was French script.

I can recognise font types on sight and remember their names. What is wrong with me?

Well whoever this was, the mirror claimed that they were terrified of the Lovecraft mythos, because a look through it revealed the sight of a fuck ugly monster that could only be described as Lovecraftian. Howard had to turn away from it for fear of being blinded by its hideousness, and did not begrudge the mystery person fearing whatever that was at all.

"Okay, just two left."

Second stood in front of the penultimate mirror and waited for the mists to part. As they did, he looked up at the mirror's symbol to see another unfamiliar mark. Wait. No, he had seen that somewhere before. It was an unnaturally sharp pickaxe embedded in a lump of rock, the side of which had a single vein of-

"Wait, why the fuck does Silver get a mirror?!"

The mists cleared, and Silver's memories revealed what she feared the most.

It was gangsta zebras driving bulldozers.

"...There is something wrong with that mare."

***

Silver ran behind another building to take cover. Bullets whizzed past in the street she had just came from. A voice called out to her.

"You are NOT getting out of here alive!"

"You've got to run out of ammo eventually!" Silver shouted back.

Thug Lyfe came around the corner, and the two stood barely a single step apart. He held the gun in his hoof still, and smiled at her.

"Ain't gonna be soon, bitch!"

"Hiyah!"

Silver jumped into the air and kicked the zebra in the face with her back legs. Thug Lyfe was launched across the street and smacked into a wall, leaving cracks where he hit and dropping the gun. Silver rolled over and uprighted herself mid-air, and landed perfectly.

She followed up by charging across the streets to tackle Thug Lyfe, but he pulled himself out of the wall he was embedded in just in time to jump out of her way. Thug Lyfe stood straight up on his hind legs. Silver charged him again, but he flipped over and landed on all fours behind her. She tried to react, but he then bucked her into a nearby street light.

CLANG!

She staggered slightly, disoriented by the blow to the head, but noticed when he was moving to hit her again and rolled to the side. The zebra grinned maniacally and bit the street light with his teeth, and to her horror he ripped the whole thing out of the ground and began to swing it like a huge buster sword.

"Come on, bitch! That all you got?!"

The pegasus gritted her teeth and ran at him.

"YAAAAAAAAAGH!" she screamed.

Silver jumped as he swung the street light, and by either great fortune or great skill managed to land right on the tip of it. She ran along the narrow metal pole until she was right in his face and knocked him back on his ass with a blow to the face. By bad luck, one of his teeth got caught on the edge of the street light and was ripped out of his mouth as she hit him.

He landed on his back a little way down the street. Silver got up on her hind legs just as he had and taunted her fallen opponent, daring him to come over and try again.

Thug Lyfe growled as he flipped back onto his hooves, and then jumped almost ten feet into the air from a stationary position. He hit the wall of the nearest building and ran sideways along it in a physics defying display of badassery, before leaping off right at the end and launching himself through the air towards Silver.

"NOW YOU GONNA DIE!"

Silver saw him coming. She raised a leg and blocked his initial strike. She followed up with a series of kicks, juggling him about. She struck him twelve times before he hit the ground, and finished up with one final stomp to a very sensitive area.

"AGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" Thug Lyfe cried.

He began crying and grabbed his crotch.

"AWWW SHIT, NIGGA! MY POOR FUCKING BALLS!"

***

Sun Rise was knocked back down onto the trail. The royal guards all instinctively backed away in fear as the spider followed after. Sun Rise groaned as he stood up again, but the spider jumped into the air and spun around while holding out each of his swords.

He turned into a brown and grey spinning disc of death, and the pegasus' chest and face, at least in the places where they were still organic, were carved up like a cabbage stuck in a blender. The metal parts sparked when they were hit and soon had massive scratches all over the previously flawless surfaces.

"AGHHHHhhh..."

What began as a scream of pain soon turned into a choking and gasping as Sun Rise noticed his throat had been cut open, and blood began to pour from his mouth.

"...Re...re..." he struggled to say, "Retreat..."

Everyone present, including the spider, all flinched slightly as a dark hole appeared in the ground where Sun Rise was standing, and let out an ominous red light. From the blackened ground, demonic hands rose up and grabbed the former Wonderbolt. He did not attempt to fight them as they dragged him down below.

Once he was gone, the red light vanished, and the blackened ground returned to its usual grey stony colour, only a pentagram symbol remaining. The spider turned to Princess Celestia. He placed all of his swords back in their respective scabbards, which were attached to his underbelly, and bowed respectfully.

"Greetings, your highnesses," he said in a pleasant, yet formal manner, "We have been expecting you. The spider elders wished me to welcome you to Mt. Celestia, and asked that I might escort your party the rest of the way to New Arachnia."

"Thank you," Celestia replied, "It's very nice to meet you...?"

"Legionnaire Arcelio. And likewise. Please follow me, for the weather gets worse the longer we wait. I trust you have no desire to be caught in another demonic snowstorm?"

As Arcelio walked away, Gold Coin just stared in disbelief.

"What the fuck just happened?!"

***

Second approached his mirror, marked by the number two in French script, following the style of his son and the mystery man. It was the one that showed him the demon before, in the dream, before he burned to death.

"Is it going to be fire?" he wondered, "I know what I'm afraid of. It's going to be fire."

The mists vanished. It wasn't fire.

"...Oh...Of course...I can't believe I never realised..."

END

Author's notes:

They're going to learn from the spiders how to be the best.

I mentioned in a blog that this chapter would be thirty thousand words long. However, as you may have noticed, it is not. This is because I made a new discovery during the course of editing, and that is that I am a retard. I pasted the story into the document I do the spellcheck in twice and didn't even notice it, even when I corrected the same mistakes multiple times and kept wondering why it was making me do them twice. Sorry.

So yeah, I guess it really is just late because I'm a fuck-up. The actual word count is roughly fifteen thousand. I'm sorry. Rest assured, I have already cut myself with a red hot knife and poured salt in the wounds in recompense. On the flipside though, this does still push Human past the 300K word count mark, so there's that.

I also never actually delivered on my promise of showing Steroid Abuser this chapter. I'll get to him later. Again, sorry.

Please don't kill me.

Next Chapter: Old guys dispensing sagely wisdom.

Oh, and by the way...

Interlude 4: And Now Everyone's Miserable

"OH YEAH!" Silver shouted at the fallen zebra, "You were all smug before, weren't you?! Then you got kicked in your nuts!"

"Agghhh..." Thug Lyfe moaned quietly, "Fuckin' bitch..."

"Yep! I did it! All me! Beware these hooves, because I'm dangerous! Go Silver! Mmhmm! Go Silver!"

Silver enjoyed her victory by doing a little dance.

"Imma...Imma get you...ho..."

The pegasus jumped right on top of Thug Lyfe and pulled his face up to hers.

"NOPE! You aren't! And do you know why?! Because I am Silver Vein! I am an artist! And your testicles are my canvas!"

"Ahem."

Silver and Thug Lyfe's eyes both widened in surprise, and they looked over to an alleyway just a little way away from them, where Second was leaning against the wall and giving them both an odd look.

"Am I interrupting something?"

"SIR! I- This isn't what it-"

"Now, now, Silver. You don't have to justify yourself to me. I'm an open minded guy. If you want to pursue a relationship with a brainwashed zebra, that's entirely your business, and I won't be judging anyone for it. Though, in future, I'd prefer if you two could keep it private? I don't know what possessed you to take this display out in public, much less this street in particular, but there are some things a human just doesn't want to see, you know?"

Silver spluttered in disbelief.

"BUT I-"

Thug Lyfe put a hoof over her mouth.

"Sorry L.S. my nigga. Bitches just all be like, 'baby, I want you now', and I be all like 'fo sure, fo sure', and den they be all 'let's take it outside', and I'm like 'I'm DOWN for a good time'. 'Cause Thug Lyfe don't mind the kinky shit. Ya know? Ya know what I'm saying dawg?"

"Yeah, for real. I know that shit bro," Second said like the forty five year old white southerner he was.

And all the while, Silver was still struggling to explain things.

"Sir, he-!"

"Bitch, shut yo whore mouth! You wanna be Thug Lyfe's bitch, you play by Thug Lyfe's rules. Ain't that right, homie?"

"Sure is," Second replied, "Gangsta bitches gotta do what they're told, Silver. That is a rule."

There is no way to describe the absolute despair on Silver's face at that moment.

"Anyway, I'm letting myself get distracted," said Second, "I finished up in the caves earlier. I found what I wanted. In fact, I found a lot more than what I wanted. There are some things I just...don't want to think about right now. What's important is that we continue with the plan. Secopolis awaits, and so does Project Pandora."

Silver wanted to ask what Project Pandora was, but she was still frozen up right now. Second seemed annoyed by this.

"Fine. Don't ask about my ultimate secret plan. I just won't tell you. You'll be left in the dark, and I'll just do all the black ops shit by myself. See how you feel when I leave you out of the loop!"

Second turned his back to them and marched away down the street.

"...I..." Silver whispered to herself.

Thug Lyfe leaned in and whispered into her ear.

"I'm still gonna get you later, bitch."

***

Soft Spoken's eyes opened, and he found himself staring up at a cloudy sky. Snow fell all around him, but he didn't feel the cold. What he did feel was heavy, and bruised. Also, somepony was carrying him.

"Huh?"

Actually...this wasn't a pony. It was almost certainly not a pony.

"Who are you?!" he shouted.

A spider's eyes are on the side of their body, and Soft Spoken was being carried on its back, so his rescuer wasn't able to really look at him. Though, he did reply to his question.

"Legionnaire Arcelio, my good sir," he answered in a refined accent, "Your friends told me that you fell down here, so I came to retrieve you. And any other fallen pegasi of course, but sadly most of them didn't make it. The impact of the fall killed everypony else. 'Tis a sad day, but fortunately you survived. You probably have your armour to thank for that. A wonderful construction, if I do say so, though I'm guessing not in the best of shape right now?"

That was an understatement. The Rainbow Six was badly damaged. The metal surface was dented, the paint was scratched away in places, a wing was burned off, demon claws had torn a gash in the armour's back, though not as bad as the damage to Chain Mail's, and the lack of displays over the helmet's visor indicated that all the systems were offline.

"I..." Softy gasped, "I can't move...I'm hurt..."

"Terribly sad to hear, old chap. I wouldn't worry though. Your movement is probably just restricted because of the armour's shutdown. We can get you out of it once we reach New Arachnia near the summit. We can get a Legion doctor to look at you too. Our medicine is based on the ancient tribal techniques of our ancestors, combined with the best of modern science. You'll be feeling right as rain in no time."

Softy coughed.

"Thank you."

"What is your name, if you don't mind me asking?"

"...Soft Spoken."

"Ah! A stallion of words! A pony of great intelligence and wisdom no doubt. I'm sure you have a great many worldly insights for a young recruit such as myself."

"...How young are you?"

"Oh, only twenty three. I am not the most experienced legionnaire, but the elders felt that my youth would make me a better friendly face to greet you all. Some of the veterans can be quite intimidating."

"...You've already met my friends then?"

"Yes, and your pony princesses as well. Good friends of the Legion, and the Harmonites. They are the ones who provided us with our home here, the only home my people have known since the Great Eruption."

Softy winced inside his helmet as he felt a headache coming on.

"I'm confused though," he said, "I thought the Spider Legion was dead? I thought they were enemies of Equestria? The history books all said you invaded us about a thousand years ago and then we wiped you out completely."

"Hoho! How quaint. But no, sir. The Legion is far from dead."

"...How though?"

"I'm sure the elders will be glad to give you a proper history lesson. For now though, we must press on. Your friends wait for us near the fourth beacon, and we had best not delay! Every second spent out in the cold is another opportunity for Qramstarflokrinhir and his ilk to strike again."

***

Secopolis had military helicopters.

It had a lot of them.

Second, Silver, and Thug Lyfe walked through the Canterlot city gate out to the grassy cliffside where a massive, dark green helicopter with two rotors was parked. The side doors were open, and inside the helicopter and around it were several knights in standard uniform, plus a few unicorns in lab coats that were probably from the Mages' Guild.

One thing that had changed about the Knights of Man was that they had now taken to using firearms. Each one of them had a rifle hung around their neck by a strap in addition to their sheathed melee weapons that they had used before. They also each had a holster on their right foreleg containing a standard pistol much like Thug Lyfe's, and a similar one on the left for a combat knife.

The unicorns levitated their guns, while the earth ponies and pegasi all had them held in a single hoof. As Silver looked closely at them, she realised that all the non-magical ponies had been fitted with a bionic hand on one hoof. It was something that the Mages' Guild had been working on. She had thought the project would have been scrapped after their headquarters was destroyed, but apparently they had kept backups.

Those crafty devils.

"LORD SECOND, SIR!"

Silver balked as an earth pony stepped out of the helicopter and approached them. He was huge! It was not an exaggeration to say that this pony was alicorn size. Rather than having the thin, tall legs and slender body of an alicorn though, he was just a great hulking brute with bulging muscles.

His eyes were blood red and his mane was a dark blue buzz cut. He had a burnt orange coat, and his armour was seemingly custom built for his sheer size. Additionally, his helmet wasn't like the regular helms used by the other Knights of Man, or even the Equestrian royal guards, but a monstrous horned thing that made him look like an ancient Zebrican tribal warrior.

"I AM MOST PLEASED TO SEE YOU SUCEEDED IN YOUR MISSION," he thundered, "MY NAME IS COMMANDER STEROID ABUSER. I HAVE BEEN RUNNING THE KNIGHTS OF MAN SINCE THE DEATH OF COMMANDER BULLSEYE, AND HOLDING SECOPOLIS AGAINST THE REBEL INSURGENTS."

Silver and Thug Lyfe stared at the horrific beast of a pony in wide eyed shock, neither quite believing what they were seeing. Second however was treating this as completely normal, and didn't act any differently than if it had been any other pony.

"Rebel insurgents you say?" he repeated, "What kind of rebels would these be then?"

"THE PRETENDERS THAT CALL THEMSELVES 'CONGRESS', AND WHO HAVE ATTEMPTED TO ESTABLISH DOMINANCE OVER THE CITY IN YOUR ABSENCE, SIR. THE KNIGHTS OF MAN HAVE BEEN FIGHTING THEM FURIOUSLY, AS HAVE THE BRAVE UNICORN SCIENTISTS OF THE MAGES' GUILD. WE FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT, SIR. EVERY DAY."

"Congress?!" Second shouted, "What the fuck are you doing fighting Congress?! Congress are the ones who are SUPPOSED to be in charge! Have you ignorant fucks already forgotten that?!"

"WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, SIR, THEY ATTACKED US FIRST. THE MAGES GUILD AND KNIGHTS OF MAN CAME UNDER A HEAVY ASSAULT. WE ARE DOING WHAT WE ARE DOING OUT OF SELF DEFENCE, AND A NECESSITY TO KEEP THE PONIES OF SECOPOLIS SAFE FROM THEIR DANGEROUS IDEALS."

Second bitch slapped the hulk-pony across the face.

"OW. THAT HURT, SIR."

"As it should, you gigantic retard! I'm gone for one day and you idiots start a civil war?! What am I supposed to say?! 'Oh good job, commander! I love all the blood and guts you've applied to the buildings! The burning flags and angry mob are a particularly nice touch! I sure am glad you fucked my city into the ground!"

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT, SIR. I HAVE LIMITED RESOURCES AND CAME UNDER ATTACK UNEXPECTEDLY. COORDINATING NEGOTIATIONS FOR A NONVIOLENT SOLUTION WAS IMPRACTICAL AT BEST UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES."

"Excuses, excuses! Just shut the fuck up and take me back to Secopolis! I was hoping we could just move right ahead to Project Pandora and fixing all the shit that needs to be in place before my plan can go off, but no! It looks like I'm going to have to stop a civil war too! A civil war that wouldn't have happened in the first place if you ignorant motherfuckers hadn't decided to act like a bunch of goddamn humans!"

"BUT YOU TOLD US TO ACT LIKE HUMANS, SIR. YOU SAID IT WOULD LEND PURPOSE TO OUR MEANINGLESS AND EMPTY LIVES."

"I meant be like humans in terms of science, industry and economics! You know! The things humans are good at and can be looked up to for! Don't act like humans socially! Human society is a broken fucking mess of a system that can't be abandoned fast enough! Why do you think I created my city state as a dictatorship and turned the only semblance of democracy into a total farce? It's because you primitive bunch of backward fucking savages need someone to rule you like a king otherwise you keep fucking things up! Case in point, motherfucking revolution! Jesus Christ!"

Second kicked Steroid Abuser in the chest and knocked him over. He let out an inequine wail of pain, remarkably while staying completely still otherwise and not moving any of his limbs. Second just kept grumbling and walked over to the helicopter.

"Hmm. Chinook. Nice choice," he commented to a nearby knight.

"Sir," the knight said, saluting.

"Hey, lovebirds! Come on! We're going!"

***

"Arcelio?"

"Worry not, pony visitors! I have retrieved your friend from the snow banks below."

The spider dropped Soft Spoken before the princesses and his friends.

"A heavy stallion too, though that's probably thanks to his rather robust protective suit. A fine piece of equipment. Your people have come far, princesses."

"Oh, we didn't build these. It's all stolen," Luna replied.

"No matter! Issues of theft can be spoken of over tea later on, and we can all share stories and many a laugh! I for one have a great story I could regale you with about the time I stole my older brother's toothbrush! Hahaha!"

The legionnaire became more subdued and stared at the ground.

"Of course, then he became angry and ate our mother. 'Twas not the best of circumstances, but she was rather delicious, so not all was lost."

He noticed the ponies were staring at him.

"What?"

"Nothing," said Celestia.

"Quite. Anyway, on we go. Follow me old chaps! The good spiders of New Arachnia await you with open arms!"

Legionnaire Arcelio scuttled away up the mountain path.

"You heard him everypony!" Chain Mail called, "Get a move on!"

The survivors of the battle with the demons, though reluctant, followed their captain's lead and continued the trek. Ancient Tome stepped in and claimed the honour of magically carrying Soft Spoken the rest of the way up.

"Mr. Gold Coin?"

The yellow earth pony looked down and found Mystic by his side.

"Oh, hey there. I didn't see you around in the battle. Find a good place to hide, I hope?"

Mystic grumbled something in response.

"What was that?"

"...Nothing."

"Hey, where did Sliske go?"

"I don't know, Mr. Gold Coin. He just vanished."

"She. It's she now. We're trying to be consistent."

"Sorry, Mr. Gold Coin."

"And stop calling me that, kid. You can just call me Goldie. It's what everypony else does. Like how we call that other old fool Softy."

"Sorry Mist- I mean, Goldie."

The older stallion smiled and crouched down lower.

"Here. Get on my back; I'll carry you the rest of the way."

Mystic returned his smile and climbed on. He put his forelegs around the earth pony's neck and held on as they began their ascent.

"So...Goldie. Is Softy going to be alright?"

"Just fine, Mystic. Don't you worry about him. He's tougher than he looks."

The colt went quiet again, and just held on as they continued their journey.

"Hey kid?"

"Yeah?"

"Softy told me you've been getting better with your magic recently."

"Sure am!" Mystic said proudly, "Sliske's been teaching me stuff! It's really cool!"

"Hey, that's great. Listen, I might be getting my hopes up, but do you know how to do that warming spell at all?"

***

Meanwhile, down in the snowy abyss just alongside the main path, a dark mare opened her eyes, and growled in rage.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHhhhhh...Agghhh..."

And then broke down crying.

END

Author's notes:

Surprise! Fast update.

But hey, Silver didn't get in trouble for trying to kill Thug Lyfe, Softy survived, and everything turned out for the best! OR DID IT?!

Well, I finally introduced Steroid Abuser like I promised, so yes. Yes it did.

Next Chapter: Maybe a next chapter segment that actually delivers on its promises?

Chapter 24: A Healthy Diet and Exorcise

Chapter 24: A Healthy Diet and Exorcise

"Legion life was a strange state of being. The spiders that made up the population of Arachnia were not one united front, but were instead composed of many different races and species of spider, many of which had different habits, cultural customs, or biological urges. Many of them were initially considered disgusting by the spiders who didn't share them, but the need for cooperation to create a greater empire eventually lead to widespread acceptance of a lot of unsavoury things.

Certain species for example were venomous, and could not be allowed near the same water sources as other spiders for fear of poisoning it. They often did this to smaller springs to easily hunt prey, being immune to their own poisons in the water, and they killed all of their prey and war prisoners through poison, slowly torturing them and drawing out their pain.

Other spider tribes were cannibalistic, and ate their relatives alive under certain circumstances. For some species, it was the children that ate their mother directly after birth. For others, the female would eat her mate after intercourse. There were extremely rare cases of the inverse of both happening as well.

Since these acts were practiced by entire tribes and species of spiders, stamping them out was simply not feasible, and this led to the Spider Legion as a whole being forced to socially accept and condone acts of cannibalism and torture by poison, and this is often why the Spider Legion came to be seen as a savage and unfeeling entity.

In truth though, they were not. The Legion as a whole never did widely practice such acts as policy, and these disturbing habits usually remained within the domain of the tribes and species they originated from, with very little spread through the rest of Legion culture. Poison torture in particular was always discouraged, though never outlawed, and the Legion did continue to hold a dim view of the practice for a long time.

Despite that though, the stigma attached to the Legion has forever been an unforgiving one, and they were always remembered for their less pleasant side."

-Crimes against nature, extract from History of the Spider Legion and associated conflicts.

***

Second stood near the open door of the Chinook, looking down at the landscape as it rolled beneath them and the tall buildings of Secopolis came ever closer. Behind him, Thug Lyfe was deep in conversation with one of the knights, and Commander Steroid Abuser just remained stoic and unmoving.

Silver looked at the brutish freak with no small amount of disdain.

"Sir?" she said.

"What, Silver?"

"Who even is this pony? I was a knight too before you promoted me, and I don't remember this guy ever being around. Where did he come from? And why is he the commander?! I thought you made me the commander!"

"...Shit. You're right. I forgot about that."

Second turned to Steroid Abuser.

"Hey, you. How did you get promoted anyway? What happened to Bullseye again?"

"COMMANDER BULLSEYE DIED FOLLOWING THE LOSS OF THE PROMETHEUS, SIR. DOCTOR APOCALYPSE TOO. THE AIRSHIP'S AUTOMATIC STATUS REPORTS INDICATE THE LOSS OF MOST THE CREW, MINUS ROBOTS. I WAS MADE ACTING COMMANDER IN HIS ABSENCE, AND THE FOUR HORSES TOOK OVER MANAGEMENT OF THE MAGES' GUILD."

"Hmm. Well, we have a problem then, because I already told Silver Vein she was the new commander."

"DID YOU KNOW OF COMMANDER BULLSEYE'S FATE THEN, SIR?"

"No, but I was planning to execute him when he arrived, because I hate him. I named Silver his successor."

"YOU SHOULD HAVE SENT WORD BACK TO US ON THIS MATTER, SIR. I WAS ALREADY MADE COMMANDER WHILE YOU WERE AWAY."

Second shrugged.

"Sorry, Silver."

"IF I MAY ASK, WHO IS THIS AGAIN?"

"Silver Vein," Second replied, "She's the replacement Butterfly One, and also the only surviving heavy trooper following the invasion of Canterlot. The rest all died in a spectacularly gory fashion, and most were eventually eaten."

"ONLY SURVIVOR? YOU MUST HAVE IMPECCABLE SKILLS TO SUCEED WHERE SO MANY OTHERS HAVE FAILED."

It was abundantly clear that this was normal speaking volume for Steroid Abuser, but Silver still had to stand back when he addressed her directly for fear of going deaf. She took a moment to wipe the spit off her face before replying.

"Thank you, sir."

"THOUGH, MY LORD, DOES THIS MEAN THAT THERE WILL BE NO MORE SOLDIERS IN POWER ARMOUR AT ALL?"

"I named the power armour users the heavy troopers. That's the new official terminology. Keep up."

"I APOLOGISE."

"And no. I fully intend to re-establish the unit, though maybe not in colour coded squads this time, and maybe not divided by race. When we build the next batch, I want a uniform standard. All models will be one colour, and they will also support all types of ponies. All suits will be fitted with artificial horns, wings, and...whatever the fuck earth ponies have. Someone note that all down."

"Already have," said a unicorn in a lab coat.

"SIR, IF I MIGHT MAKE A SUGGESTION?"

"What is it, commander?"

"WHAT IF I AM ALLOWED TO REMAIN COMMANDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF MAN, AND THE NEW HEAVY TROOPERS ARE SPLIT OFF INTO A SEPARATE ORGANISATION, WHILE COMMANDER SILVER VEIN IS PLACED IN CHARGE OF THEM? SHE COULD OVERSEE THE RECRUITING OF REPLACEMENTS AND ESTABLISHING THE NEW HEIRARCHY."

"Hmm..."

Second looked over his shoulder at Silver, who gave a noncommittal shrug.

"Yes. That sounds fair. Henceforth, the heavy troopers are their own group, independent of the Knights of Man, and are led by Commander Silver Vein. Someone note that down too."

"I'm on it," said the unicorn again.

"Silver, begin recruitment whenever you please. Anything you need, come ask me, and I'll allocate resources for you."

"Umm...Thank you, sir."

"SIR!" the pilot called, "We're above Secopolis now."

Second moved back over to the door and peered over the edge.

They were very high up, roughly level with the tip of the Palace of Kings' tallest spire. Directly below them, he could see the Congress coliseum having a session. All its seats were taken by multi-coloured ponies, and in the middle of the arena, a war was taking place. Not just one or two gladiators fighting, but hundreds of them, and not all of them congressmen.

"Looks like this is where I get off," Second announced.

"SIR, INCOMING!"

There was an explosion, and the helicopter rocked from side to side. A blinding flash of light and a deafening sound somewhere below Howard briefly stunned him, and he fell on his back. Going by the sound it was making, at least one of the rotors was damaged, or slowing down. That wasn't good.

"What the fuck just happened?!" Second demanded.

"It's Congress, sir! They've identified this as a Knights and Guild affiliated gunship and fired on us!"

"Firing on us how?! The coliseum doesn't have surface to air missiles! Do they?!"

There was another massive explosion, and smoke began filling the helicopter. Both of the rotors were now making that ominous sound.

"It's not a missile system!" one of the knights explained between coughing and choking, "It's a guy on the ground with an RPG!"

"What?! Bullshit!" Second shouted, "There's no fucking way anyone can be this accurate with an RPG across that much distance!"

"You clearly haven't met the new president, sir!"

Second rolled his eyes.

I should have known. If you win power through succeeding in death matches, it stands to reason that the president is the deadliest motherfucker on the battlefield.

The human stepped back over to the edge as another projectile narrowly missed the helicopter and exploded near them.

"What's his name again?"

"President John Fist, sir."

Second cracked his knuckles, and looked back over his shoulders at Silver.

"Looks like I'm going skydiving."

He jumped out the helicopter.

***

The great wooden gates to New Arachnia swung open to admit entrance to the princesses and their entourage. The pathway right up to the gate was extremely narrow, so Spike had been forced to hover above the group awkwardly until they were permitted to enter the village, and land on the roof of a hut on the other side.

And when they entered, it was simultaneously exactly what they expected, and nothing like it.

New Arachnia was mostly wooden huts. They came in many sizes and shapes, but they all adhered to the same basic rules; all built upon a solid foundation of stone, and all of them with no windows at all. The doors were low, but wide, made to cater to the needs of the spider population without any mind paid to pony visitors, and they all had signs above the doors indicating the purpose of the structure.

Every residential hut had the name of the individual or family living in there written in elegant script on its sign. It wasn't all just houses though, because as the ponies walked through the village and glanced at certain huts, they found that the spider village also had its own general store, grocers, butchers, (whatever that was), blacksmiths, apothecary, doctor's office, mead hall, library and even a public bath house.

The streets meanwhile were full of activity. In spite of the raging snowstorm and biting cold, spiders scuttled all about the place, performing their daily activities.

A few of them in armour like Arcelio patrolled back and forth, those obviously being the town guards, and they glared at the ponies and Spike with no small amount of suspicion. Nearby, a spider with a moustache and eye patch sharpened a sword on a grindstone, and growled at them.

As they passed one of the homes, Gold Coin noticed a pair of female spiders standing just inside the porch of one of the larger huts, gossiping about some recent family drama their mutual neighbours were experiencing. Explodey meanwhile had to stop abruptly as two tiny spiders rushed past him, and one of them tackled the other to the ground.

"Haha!" the dominant spider proclaimed, "I have bested you, fiend! Prepare to taste Legion justice!"

"No!" said the other, "You can never defeat a demon king! Roar!"

Wooden swords came out, and the little spiders stood up on just four of their legs and began a surprisingly skilful duel, indicating that they probably had actual combat training.

"...This is so alien to me..." Gold Coin muttered.

"Can I play with the other kids, Goldie?" Mystic asked.

"Mystic, come on. You know we have a job to do," Chain Mail interrupted, "We've got to meet the Harmonites right away, don't we, Arcelio?"

"What?" the legionnaire replied.

"The Harmonites. Aren't we going to meet them?"

"Oho! No, my good sir, we are not. They will come down from the monastery to meet you themselves when they're good and ready! Right now, I've been instructed to make proper preparations, and find yourselves and the pony soldiers a residence here. The child is free to do as he pleases."

Mystic grinned and jumped off Gold Coin's back, and ran off into the village in the direction the spiders went.

"Mystic, come back!"

"Don't you worry, equine. New Arachnia is small, and it's very well protected. He shall come to no harm around here."

"ARCELIO!"

The legionnaire turned his attention to another spider walking down the road towards them. At first, Gold Coin hoped it was something to do with the Harmonites, but then he noticed the other spider was wearing an eight sleeved lab coat.

"Dr. Cornelius, my friend. What is it?"

"The eggs are about to hatch, that's what! You and your wife are about to have lots of spider babies."

Arcelio's eyes widened. All of them.

"Oh..."

That tone of voice gave Gold Coin a bad feeling, and so did the fact that the legionnaire then immediately walked over to a nearby stump and picked up a woodcutting axe.

"Excuse me, fellows. An issue has arisen that I must deal with. Feel free to explore the village, and come back to meet me here in half an hour's time. You are free to use any of the village's facilities. Equestrian currency is accepted here, begrudgingly. Oh, and please don't irritate the veterans."

"Ahem."

"Yes. Coming, doctor."

The two spiders marched off down the road, launching into a conversation the moment they turned around. The last words the ponies heard before their guide was out of earshot was;

"So have we got an exorcist at the ready, or am I going to have to get a monk down here?"

***

"YAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!"

Second flew downwards, fist outstretched in front of him. As missiles and bullets flew up at him, he barrel rolled side to the side to avoid them. The coliseum came closer and closer every nanosecond, and he locked onto his target.

The maroon unicorn with a straw coloured mane, known to the ponies of Secopolis as President John Fist, recognised his lord and master all too late. He realised his mistake, and immediately dropped the RPG launcher on the ground, silently begging for forgiveness. Second didn't even slow down though.

He wasn't incapable of forgiveness, but idiocy still had to be punished.

"LET'S SEE YOU GRIT THOSE TEETH!"

CRACK!

The human hit the ground in a crouching position, with his fist buried in the sand. The president was knocked halfway across the arena and smacked straight into a wall. His jaw was broken where Second hit him.

Considering the sheer force he had been struck with though, punched in the face by a man whose fist had shattered mountains, the president's ability to not just survive, but actually remain conscious after that blow would cause him to go down in history as one of the most hardcore badasses to ever live.

And as Lord Second, God-Emperor of Secopolis, Killer of Celestia and Bringer of the Apocalypse stood over the president's fallen form and glared at him with seething anger, he had only one thing to say:

"...So you find time to go skydive punching ponies, but you can't even pick up your fucking phone?!"

***

Halfway up the mountain path, struggling against the bitter winds, a dark mare staggered along...

***

"Welcome to the Frosty Web! Please, have a seat! Can I get you anything?"

The bartender spider seemed cheerful enough. He was cleaning two glasses at the same time with four of his legs, and using two others to serve a glass of bitter to an off-duty legionnaire at the same time. He gave the two of them a smile.

"Yes, I'll have a whiskey," said Gold Coin, "Explodey, what do you take?"

"Umm...I dunno. I've never drunk before."

"You went with us to that bar in Canterlot."

"I never drank anything there. You guys just got me one of what you were having and I let it sit in front of me for a few minutes before I left."

"For the supposed Element of Laughter, you are fucking depressing, Explodey."

The bartender smiled at them knowingly as he shook his head, or did the closest approximation to that gesture as possible for a spider. He finished pouring Gold Coin's whiskey and set it down on the bar.

"Tsk. New Elements of Harmony, are you? Oh, you'll be having great fun with the Harmonites later today, that's for darn sure."

Gold Coin and Explodey both sat on a bar stool each.

"What do you know about the Harmonites?" the earth pony asked.

"Oh...Not much, really. Reclusive bunch, they are. Usually stay up in their monastery. It's that big stone temple closer to the peak. You have to pass through the rest of the village to reach it."

"Are they also spiders?" asked Explodey.

"Of course they are. What else would they be?"

"At this point, I'm half expecting them to be humans," Gold Coin muttered, "That would be in line with our usual luck."

"So what are they all about then?" Explodey continued.

"They're monks, and scholars. They believe in a kind of unifying force represented by the five virtues of friendship, which usually expresses itself in a magical form. They believe that by studying friendship, and Harmony itself, that they can achieve a state of enlightenment and find a higher purpose in existence.

"This higher purpose, they teach us, will justify the existence of the spiders as a race, and allow for us to eventually makes amends for crimes of long ago. They say that only through Harmony, can our people ever know true redemption, and that when we are allowed redemption, our demons can menace us no more."

Gold Coin gave the bartender an odd look.

"And is this a philosophy that all of you follow?"

"Harmonism is the official religion of the Spider Legion. Some feel less passionately about it than others, but it is a belief that we are all indoctrinated in from youth. Those that believe strongly enough in it go up to the summit to become monks. The rest of us meanwhile sit down here and keep society going. We farm, we hunt, we fight, we eat, sleep, and eventually die. And every day we hope and pray for our salvation to come along."

Gold Coin had finished his whiskey, and gestured for a refill.

"Is the Legion just the name of your town guard now, or...?"

"Long ago, the country our people lived in was called Arachnia. Spider Legion was the name of our government, because our government was ran by our military. The head of state was the high general, and any non-military matters related to running the country, such as agriculture and economy, was left to the business of small committees set up by the Legion and spread throughout Arachnia.

"Today we continue the same trend. New Arachnia is the name of the geographical location we live in, namely this village, and the Spider Legion is our military and government, though obviously they're much smaller now, and 'town guard' would be a more accurate descriptor than 'military'."

Gold Coin smiled at the spider bartender, and began to raise the glass of whiskey to his lips, when he stopped. He stared at the wall for a second, completely still, blinked once, and then set the glass down again and stared at the floor.

"I'm talking to a giant fucking spider in a bar on top of a mountain. Explodey, when did our lives get so weird?"

Explodey was holding a hoof right up in front of his eye, and was staring at a large vein there.

"Hey, Goldie! Check it out! My blood's green now!"

He stole the off-duty legionnaire's dagger with his magic and slashed the vein on his hoof to demonstrate his discovery to his friend. A glowing green fluid poured out and hit the bar, where it began steaming and hissing.

A minute later, the wood caught fire. Three minutes later, Explodey and Gold Coin stood outside the bar with a bunch of pissed off spiders as they watched it burn down.

"I think that went well."

***

A hush had come over the coliseum as Second walked into the middle of it and dropped the president on the ground, whom he had been holding by the neck.

"Are you fuckwits going to stop now?!" he asked.

The congressmen and knights spread across the arena all immediately dropped their weapons.

"Listen up, you primitive bunch of grass-munching, shit-flinging tribals. Your pissing match ends now. Daddy's back, and he's very disappointed, so from this point onwards, you're all grounded. That means none of you are allowed any weapons, or armour, none of you may leave your respective bases, and no wings or magic either. And this applies to Congress, the knights, and the guild. I want you all to sit still, shut the fuck up, and do as you're told."

Second paused, before adding;

"And also perform a routine decimation. Maybe that will teach you not to immediately start stabbing each other the moment you think I won't notice."

He kicked the president in the chest one last time before turning around and storming over to the exit angrily.

"Goddamn ponies..."

***

"Hi there!"

The two duelling spiders ceased their epic battle to look at Mystic.

"Hi!" one of them returned, a lighter shade of brown than the other.

"Hey," said the darker one.

"My name's Mystic Chant! What's yours?"

"I'm Lucian," the lighter one replied.

"And I'm Magnus!"

"Say, are you a unicorn?"

"Yep!"

"Cool! We've never had a pony in our village before. Do you come from Equestria?"

"Yeah," said Mystic, "Me and my friends came here to learn from the...the...Harmonites!"

"Oooh...Those guys are creepy," said Magnus, "They wear these really weird robes and are always doing these spooky chants late at night. Sometimes you can hear them up in their monastery when the wind's not so loud."

"Yeah, they're pretty unsettling," Lucian agreed, "They come down into the village sometimes to kill the newborns, but even then we don't see much of them."

Mystic blinked.

"They come down to do what now?"

"Kill the newborns," Magnus repeated, "You know. Whenever a spider has kids, you gotta get a monk down to exorcise the demons out of the ones that can be saved, and you gotta kill the ones that can't. Or else you've got demonic spider babies crawling down throats and poisoning the water supply."

The unicorn stared at them.

"...Do they not do that where you're from?" asked Lucian.

"...No."

"Then what do you do to stop the demons?"

"...We don't have demon problems."

The lighter spider grumbled to himself.

"Ponies have it so easy..."

Magnus ignored his friend and shrugged.

"Hey, Mystic? You wanna play war with us?"

That was all it took to get the colt to forget the business about demons and child killing.

"Sure! Who's fighting who?"

"Um...Lucian is the demon king Tirac, and I'm High General Silas!"

"Who am I then?"

"You can be Princess Celestia!"

"Huh? But I'm not a filly!"

"Aren't you?" asked Lucian, "Sorry. We've never seen a pony before."

"Well, I've never seen spiders before!"

Magnus tapped his chin as he thought on this.

"Well then you can be...Spike the Eternal! And that means you're on my side!"

He and Lucian both tossed one of their swords to Mystic, who grabbed them with his magic and twirled them around in the air experimentally.

"Time to die, demon king!"

***

Nearby meanwhile, Spike sat comfortably on the roof of one of the larger buildings, most likely some kind of meeting hall or the home of a particularly rich spider. If he curled up and held his tail in, he could just about fit on the roof, and for a wooden construction it was surprisingly sturdy. That said, he didn't want to spend too much time here and risk weakening it.

He wanted to find some more open place to stand. The village was too small, and most of it was either buildings too small for him to sit on, or pathways around the village that he'd be blocking off if he went there.

The Prometheus was almost calling out to him. The airship may have had tiny corridors, too small for him to crawl through like he just about managed in Canterlot Castle, but it had at least sported a rather spacious cargo hold with a door directly to the outside world where he could sleep for the night.

Being a dragon, he was no stranger to sleeping out in the open, not even in snowstorms as it happened, but it was still not as nice as being inside somewhere warm and cosy. The palace back in Canterlot was warm. So was the Prometheus. Though neither of them really had the comfort factor of his volcanic cave out in the southern ocean.

Now that was luxury.

"Dragon!"

Spike sat up and looked around. Who had said that?

"Hey! Spike!"

He looked down over the edge of the building, and saw two ponies below. Sir Ancient Tome, and Private Iron Hoof, both of the Brotherhood of Man.

"Oh. It's you," he said distastefully, "What do you want, cultist?"

Tome frowned at him.

"Okay, I get it. You don't like the Brotherhood. That's fine. We don't like you either. But we wanted to talk to you."

Spike raised an eyebrow.

"I should warn you that even my whispering could be heard by most of the village. If this is anything you want to keep between us, this would be better discussed in more private conditions."

"Then just listen to what I have to say, and you can give yes or no answers," Tome suggested.

"...Very well. What do you want?"

Tome's horn began to glow, and he and Iron both flashed away. They reappeared on the roof almost right next to Spike.

"We wanted to discuss something important with you," he said, "Thing is...We're all of one mind about the humans, more or less. Aren't we?"

"Hmm?" Spike responded.

"We all agree, don't we? Second is a threat and needs to be removed, regardless of any deal he and Princess Celestia might think they have."

"...That's true," Spike said carefully, "Though I would still take her side if she thinks that's a bad idea."

"And we also both agree that First also needs to go, don't we?" Iron Hoof added.

"Yes. Definitely."

"So the way I see it, we all need a plan," Tome explained, "Neither of us are anywhere near capable of taking down a human, let alone two. Princess Luna tried and failed to fight Second, and she only survived because he spared her from what I heard. So even though she also agrees with us, she won't be of much help. And that's not even getting into if we go with Iron's plan and go after the Pantheon too."

"Your point?" Spike urged.

"Can you fight a human?" asked Iron.

"...Perhaps. I'm not so sure."

Spike had almost lost his first battle with Second, when he first attacked the palace. Then again, that was more due to Sliske than Second. The human had actually lost in the end and been captured. But...that was more due to his own incompetence than anything he did, and Second had grown massively stronger since then.

It was impossible to determine at this point who would win one on one. All Spike did know, was that Second was among his most powerful opponents, right up there with Tirac and the Crystal Demon of the Everfree.

"We know the Elements of Harmony can stop a human, maybe even kill one," the unicorn continued, "but both Chain Mail and Gold Coin are against the idea of betraying Second and actually getting rid of him. They both want to support his plan to go after the Pantheon of B. And we don't want that, do we?"

"No."

"And even less of them want to get rid of First as well. And if they're not all in agreement, who's to say whether the elements will work when used? We need a way to sway the others into seeing our way, and if we can't, we need you to stop the humans for us."

"Hmm..."

Spike scratched his chin with a claw.

"Most importantly," said Iron, "We need someone to convince Princess Celestia to support us. She still hasn't decided whose side she's taking. We need to make sure it's ours. Maybe she can argue with her sister alone, but if both her oldest friends pressured her into it, maybe she might come around. And perhaps she can influence the rest of the Elements of Harmony into taking our side too."

"...I will think about it," Spike conceded, "But remember this, pony: My loyalty will always lie with the princesses. If Celestia says no, then no matter what I think about the humans, I'm doing what she says. Not what you say."

Tome nodded.

"That's understandable. We wouldn't expect anything other from you."

"Then we have an accord?" asked Iron, holding out his mechanical forehoof.

Spike gently held it between the tips of two claws, and being careful not to crush it, shook it amiably.

"Yes."

***

Second stopped at a coffee place on his way back to his palace. It was a Starbucks, one of many large business chains from back in the human world that he had brought to his own little paradise. Secopolis also sported a lot of his other favourites, including a McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and others. The mall uptown had a lot more, but he was glad that there happened to be a Starbucks right on the route between the coliseum and the palace.

"Ahh..." he sighed as he sipped again.

"Sir!"

He stopped and turned around, and found Silver limping towards him, minus her power armour. Her coat was burned in places, but not severely. She seemed to be okay overall, because she was still smiling.

"I found you. At last!"

"What the fuck happened to you?"

"The helicopter crashed."

"Oh."

"Into a gas station."

"Oh."

"Which exploded."

"Ohhhhh..."

"Twice."

"..."

"And killed everypony except me, the commander and Thug Lyfe."

"...Damn."

Second looked her over again.

"Do you...need to go to the hospital?"

"I'll be fine, sir. You should see the other guys."

"...Where's your power armour?"

"Melted."

"...Melted?"

"It's liquid metal now, sir."

Second blinked.

"How are you even still alive?"

"I'm a pegasus."

"Then how did the others survive?"

"Steroid Abuser is also a pegasus, and he carried Thug Lyfe because I mentioned that he was important to you."

"No fucking way. That freak was an earth pony. I'm sure of it."

"Nope. Pegasus."

"Then how come I never saw his wings?"

Silver giggled.

"You should ask him when you see him."

"Silver, what's funny?"

"Oh, you'll see..."

***

Sliske ran up to the gates of New Arachnia. They were locked shut, but that would be no deterrent.

"RAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!"

The dark mare smashed her hooves against it, and the wood broke like a dry cracker. She burst through to the other side.

Nearby, a spider legionnaire's eyes went wide, and he jumped into combat position. All eight legs drew a sword from a sheath attached to the underbelly, and he jumped onto just two legs, using two of the swords as stilts while twirling the other six around menacingly. Four other legionnaires within Sliske's line of sight spotted her as well and copied their comrade's actions

They all rushed her at once.

"I WILL KILL ALL OF YOU!"

***

Celestia and Luna smiled as they stepped into the back rooms of the bath house. The spider attendant bowed to them as he stepped out of the room and drew the curtains that they had in place of doors here.

The two alicorns climbed a short set of steps and lowered themselves into the water. Wisps of steam rose from the surface, and Celestia sighed contently as she let it wash over her. Her sister sat at the other end and leaned back against the wall.

"Not quite like the Jacuzzi back at the palace," Luna commented, "but better than I expected from the Spider Legion at any rate."

"They've come a long way in a thousand years, sister."

"That's true."

Celestia closed her eyes and just let herself relax.

"It feels like forever since I had a proper rest...The last few days have just been utter chaos..."

"Life's a bitch, ain't it?"

The princess's eyes shot open. So did Luna's. The younger sister actually screamed when she saw that Lord First was sitting between them in the tub, casually smoking a cigar. Also shirtless.

"What's going on in here?!"

The attendant rushed back through the door and looked around in a panic. He didn't seem to react to First's presence at all.

"Umm...Nothing! Luna thought she saw a moth. She doesn't like little fluttery things. They scare her."

Luna looked embarrassed, but didn't say anything. The spider still didn't notice First, even though he was in plain sight, and still smoking his cigar.

"Oh. But you didn't?"

"No..." said Luna, "I...overreacted. There was no moth."

"Shame. Those are quite the delicacy. But if everything is alright, your highnesses...?"

"Yes. Super. You may go."

The attendant bowed again and backed out of the room. Luna immediately turned to First and gave him a furious look.

"What are you doing here?! How did you get here?! What's going on?!"

"God of the afterlife, remember?" First answered, "I can be a ghost if I want to. Who's gonna stop me? You?"

He put out his cigar by dipping it into the water and tossing it across the room, where it phased through the wall and vanished.

"But whatever. I came here because I've got warnings for you, and you need to listen to them."

"I-" Luna began.

"Shut up, princess. I'm not talking to you. You want to invade my realm and try to overthrow me. You and Spike and Tome and Iron Hoof. Think I didn't know about that? You're mean, princess. You're a mean person. Pony, sorry. And to think I went to all that trouble to get you your sister back..."

"You brought her back to me as a half rotten corpse!" Luna shouted.

"Hey! I am not rotten!" Celestia said indignantly, "I'm just...a little greyer than before..."

"She still had a body, so she had to go in it. Those are the rules."

"Why are they the rules?! Why couldn't she come back as a ghost like you?!"

"Because if I let Princess Celestia come back as a ghost, then every Tom, Dick and Harry who accidentally falls into a trash compactor is going to want ghost privileges too, and the last fucking thing you ponies need right now is an army of invincible, immortal spirits traipsing across the land.

"I let some ponies with grief-stricken relatives appear to them in dreams, and even that's too much in my opinion. The afterlife needs to be regulated, and it just so happens that I am the universe's most efficient celestial beauracrat. So don't try to talk about things you don't understand, pony. I've been at this job for a long time."

This man was most definitely the son of Second.

"But anyway. Warnings. I came to give you some. So if either of you care to listen?"

"What is it?" asked Celestia.

"As I have told you princess, I can control the flow of time while in the realm of the afterlife. For that reason, it does not move at the same speed between worlds, and there's a bit of a disconnect. So whenever I peer into the mortal realm, I often catch glimpses of the future or recent past of your world. Well...It just so happens that I've seen a bit of your future, and...well...let's just say it could be better."

"...What happens?"

"Okay, spoiler alert here, but the destruction is going to get way worse before it gets better. Canterlot has already been destroyed, but it's only the first domino. My father is constrained by the narrative. The people of the so called Pantheon of B are not very happy with him, and since they basically control his actions whenever he's onscreen, that means they're going act through him to sabotage his plans. In spite of the promise he made to you, Celestia, he is going to kill a lot of innocent ponies very soon. And the worst part is, there's nothing he can do to stop himself. Literally nothing."

Celestia stared at him.

"...How many?"

"Oooooh...Tough question..."

First drummed his fingers on the side of the bath.

"Manehattan. What's its population?" he asked.

"Roughly seven million," Luna answered.

"Mmhmm. Las Pegasus?"

"Including Paradise?"

"Naturally."

"Eight hundred thousand."

"Los Pegasus?"

"Three point five million."

"And Baltimare? Cloudsdale?"

"Six hundred and fifty thousand and nine hundred thousand respectively."

"I'd estimate eleven million dead."

"ELEVEN MILLION?!" Celestia screamed.

First winced and covered his ears as she spoke.

"Not so loud, please."

"How?! How does he kill eleven million ponies?!"

"That's complicated to explain . The long and short of it is that he's got a bunch of bombs, but it won't be the explosion that does the killing. Contrary to what you might think though, time can be changed, and that's why I'm warning you. And stupid as it might sound, the only way you can save the rest of Equestria is if you make those bombs fall on you instead."

The princess's mouth hung open.

"...You're insane. I'm going to stop listening to you, because you're completely mad."

"The bombs release a thing called nuclear radiation. It's rather deadly. The bombs will detonate in the sky above the named cities, and the radiation will slowly kill most of the population. Not everypony will die, but most of them will."

"And what about the ones that don't die?" asked Luna.

"Well, either they'll become hideously mutated freaks, or they'll gain superpowers. It's a bit of a toss up."

"And you want us to make the bombs fall on...where exactly?"

"In a few days, you'll be heading back to Canterlot for the final battle with my father, which needs to occur to progress the story, and where he will fake his death and slip away so that he can work on his plan to defeat the Pantheon with your help, assuming you agree with his plan and decide to help him with it, which is still foolish in my opinion. It is at the climax of this battle that he will launch the nukes.

"Use your magic. Make them fall on Canterlot and the surrounding area instead. You can then use the Elements of Harmony to immediately purge it. Surrounding towns like Ponyville and Rainbow's Rest might still be slightly affected, but there will be a massively lower death toll. You can't stop the deaths, princesses. You can only reduce them."

Luna gritted her teeth,

"And where will you be during this, Lord First?" she said venomously, "Not helping us save anypony, I assume?"

"I will be busy as fuck. Sorting out souls and moving them to the right valleys. I may even have to call in extra help from my assistant manager, and I never do that unless I'm desperate. But, what can I say? These are desperate times. Or they will be. Or not. Depends. How good are you with your magic?"

Celestia opened her mouth to answer, but First interrupted her.

"Never mind. That was rhetorical. You're okay with magic. You're no Dr. Strange, but I think you can handle a few nukes just fine. But remember what I said. Drop them on Canterlot. That city's fucked anyway. And if you've got a large army in Canterlot and can't risk early deaths, then drop them on Ponyville instead. Just keep them off the big cities. The more ponies that are alive at the end of this, the less work I have to do. And really, isn't that the most important thing?"

He smiled at the two princesses. They were both trying to kill him with their glares.

"Well, I think it's clear that I'm not welcome here," First said offhandedly, "I'll take my leave."

The man snapped his fingers, and was gone. Celestia turned to her sister.

"When he told me he had reformed, I thought of him as a possible ally. But I am really beginning to dislike him again."

Suddenly, there was a loud thumping sound against the wall.

"What was that?" asked Luna.

***

"WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY CATHEDRAL?!"

Second's coffee laid in the road, draining into the gutter. His mouth hung open, his eyes were wide and unblinking, and his hands were flailing about to try and properly express his disbelief and frustration.

"WHAT DID YOU FUCKING ASSCLOWNS DO TO MY PRECIOUS PALACE?! WHAT?!"

Nearby, a knight of man who laid bleeding on the ground tried to explain with his last breath.

"It was...Congress...sir...There was a contingency...of knights...based here..."

He spat out a mouthful of blood onto the ground. It nearly got on Second's shoes, causing him to step back in disgust.

"They wanted...to wipe us out...They stole a bomb...and set it off..."

Well, that explained why there was a wall missing from the side of the cathedral and all the stained glass windows in the main hall were blown out. Though, the series of holes going through all the upper floors, diagonally from the north end of the palace's upper level to the south end of the bottom floor, were evidently caused by the crashed helicopter that now laid where his throne used to be, rather than any kind of explosive.

"...And where did THAT come from?" he asked.

"...Congress gunship...Knights shot it down with heavy artillery."

Second stamped on the pony's head and left only a red mess behind.

"FUCK," he screamed, "Now what am I supposed to do?!"

He grabbed his hair and pulled it.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Why can't any of my minions not be complete idiots?"

Silver walked over to his side and gave him a huge grin.

"Not now, Silver. Busy thinking."

She bowed her head sadly.

"...Whelp. Guess I'm checking into a hotel. Maybe the private sector of Secopolis is less incompetent."

***

Chain Mail rushed out of the doctor's office, where he had been keeping Soft Spoken company, when he heard the screams. Gold Coin and Explodey soon arrived on the scene too, though he had no idea where they had been.

"What's going on?!" he shouted.

"I don't know!" Gold Coin replied.

An armoured spider flew over a nearby rooftop and landed in front of the three of them. Yellowish blood, or some kind of vital fluid anyway, leaked from the corpse.

"...Demons?" Explodey suggested.

"I thought this place had defences against demons?" said Chain Mail.

"MY LEG!"

There was an explosion in the distance, over the other side of the village. Then there was the sound of Spike, who by the sound of it was breathing fire over something.

"Fuck it. We need to get over there."

***

Spiders rushed Sliske at all sides, but she was too good for them. She jumped out of the way of every single sword strike, and tore them apart with her bare hooves. Spider limbs were very weak compared to the meatier joints of most ponies, and she magically tore them off with barely any effort.

The legionnaires were evidently trained in functioning without at least some of their limbs, so doing so only reduced their effectiveness, but Sliske wasn't running out of magic any time soon. She was utterly destroying the legionnaires.

Swords clattered to the ground all around her, and she picked those up too. Back in the day, legion weapons would have been treated to make them resistant to pony magic, so that they couldn't be stolen on the battlefield by creative unicorns, but the legion hadn't been to war with ponies in centuries. Those enchantments weren't in effect anymore, and Sliske abused that to no end.

Swords flew up off the floor, guided by the alien's magic to tear up her enemies. Spiders were dropping left, right and centre. She aimed for the weak spots between their armour, and struck where they were vulnerable. She stabbed one right through the eye, and manipulated another into slicing off his own legs. The streets ran yellow with spider blood.

Then came the pony princesses.

"SLISKE! STOP!" Celestia ordered.

"YOU WILL DIE TOO!"

She rushed at the two alicorns twirled around in the air while slicing at them with the swords. It left no scars or permanent damage, but Celestia still felt the pain, and cried out as the blades cut at her. Luna could not use her magic anymore, thanks to her newfound lack of a horn, but tried to buck at Sliske instead.

To her surprise, even though Sliske appeared to have a physical body, it phased right through her.

And then, Sliske started to get creative. She phased her head through Luna's body, and then became physical again. This would have been painful enough on its own, but her head was right inside the princess's chest, and the alien bit her heart. Luna was in a whole new world of pain.

Sliske phased out again and got out of the way. Luna crumpled to the floor, nursing her chest.

Then Sliske lunged for Celestia.

"AAARRRRRGGGHHHHHAAAAAFFFFRRAAA!"

The older sister winced, expecting to be mauled as well, but she opened her eyes to find the dark mare thrashing about, foaming at the mouth, but more importantly restrained in somepony's magical hold.

Ancient Tome rushed in from the side, accompanied by Iron Hoof.

"Do something, princess!" the unicorn shouted, "I can't hold her forever!"

Do what?! Sliske was insane and out of control. She couldn't kill Sliske, because she was an element, but they couldn't let her go either. The only option was to calm her down, but at this point the alien was almost feral.

What happened?!

"Sliske!"

Celestia turned her head and saw Chain Mail, Gold Coin and Explodey rush in from the side.

"What?!" Chain Mail gasped, "What...I...!"

He looked like he was going to be ill. The sight of the many dismembered spiders was a gruesome one.

A number of nearby buildings were also scorched and covered in frost, where Spike had been attempting to help by breathing fire over Sliske, before realising that all he was doing was burning the village, and attempting to put it out with frost breath. The purple dragon was currently sat just outside the village gates on the mountain trail, looking in at them sadly.

"Sliske?! What the fuck?!" Gold Coin shouted.

"RRRAGGGHHH!"

Celestia used her magic to hold Sliske instead, taking the strain off of Ancient Tome. She then felt first hoof just how hard Sliske was resisting. It was actually genuinely difficult to hold her, and for the mare who raised the sun each morning, that was really something.

"Oh my..."

The ponies then noticed Legionnaire Arcelio walking into the fray. He was still carrying his axe and was covered in spider blood himself, but he still looked horrified by the sight before him.

"...We're going to need the Harmonites for this one."

***

Second stood in the lobby of the hotel he had chosen. The Henry Carson-Summers Memorial Hotel to be precise. He hadn't intentionally created a hotel with that name, but one had sprung up in the city when he created it regardless. He thought it only appropriate to see what his imagination had conjured up by staying here. Fortunately, it appeared to be a five star place.

"Hmm..."

He looked around the place, enjoying the aesthetic of the room. A rich red carpet, and soothing white washed walls. No wallpaper, it was just the marble bricks. Very fancy. Very upper class.

"Here are your keys, my Lord."

The receptionist smiled as she handed him the room key. He had ordered the presidential suite, which was on the top floor. Room 101.

"Thank you," he said politely, "Silver?"

The pegasus lifted up his suitcase with her mouth, packed with everything of his that he had been able to salvage from his room in the Secopolis Cathedral.

"Come on then. Let's go. Oh! Wait."

He turned to the receptionist again.

"Is there another presidential suite on that floor?"

"Room 103, directly across from yours, is available," the mare replied.

"It got a king size bed?"

"Of course."

"Give me that one too. For Silver and Thug Lyfe, once we find him."

"Of course."

Silver paled.

"Umm, you don't need to do that sir. I can just sleep on your couch or something...And Thug Lyfe can stay in the toilet."

"Nonsense!" Second said cheerfully, "I would never deny you two your private time!"

"...Thank you, sir..."

The receptionist gave him another key, which he passed to Silver. Had she not been in public, she probably would have cried.

I'm going to be murdered in my sleep...

***

The Harmonites were rather small spiders. Much smaller than most of the legionnaires. They moved pretty slowly too, possibly thanks to old age. It was difficult to tell how old spiders were at a glance, but they seemed to be older at least. They gave off an air of wisdom, and experience.

The crowd of spiders and ponies around the entrance to village parted to make way for them. They instantly recognised them by their dusty robes, which were either a very faint blue or grey depending on who you asked and what mood they were in.

There were three of them, walking in a triangular formation. The lead spider walked right up to Sliske, suspended in the air and wriggling about defiantly. He did not flinch as the alien lunged at him and bit at the air, instead examining her with the kind of curiosity of a biologist who discovered a particularly interesting blood sample.

"Curious," the spider said.

He spoke with the same refined accent that Arcelio and a few other spiders had been speaking with. Not all of them talked like that, but most did.

"This...creature...appears to be an amalgamation of two spirits. One is one of Tirac's demons, which is what is in control and struggling before us now. The other...I cannot say what it is. It appears to not be as malevolent, but this is not its body."

"That other one is a sakrassi, called Sliske," Celestia explained, "He's a friend of ours, and also, we think, one of the new Elements of Harmony that we came to see you about. If he's in there, he needs rescuing."

"She."

Celestia looked over to Gold Coin.

"We're calling Sliske she now."

The spider went back to examining Sliske.

"By the look of it, your friend Sliske attempted to possess the body of a demon during a battle. And it backfired on her. Demons are tricky creatures. Their bodies are corporeal back in their homeland of Tartarus, but outside of that land, they become something in between. Part monster, and part spirit. The spiritual side of them allows them to possess others, and to terrorise our land so effectively. And it's also what screwed her over."

The Harmonite turned again and began to address the ponies directly, while the other two began to circle Sliske to study her from every angle.

"Demons can't be possessed themselves, because they are simultaneously a body and a spiritual being. Their body is treated like it is already possessed. And when two spirits try to possess the same body, it's a battle of wills between them for who get to control it. And if both are strong, they both exert partial influence. A demon, instead of being a mind that a creature like Sliske can conquer, is also a rival spirit that will battle for control of its body. It can fight back more effectively than most."

"So the demon is still in control?" asked Explodey.

"Partially. Sliske is something quite special. She has influence too, but not in the right areas. One thing about demons, is that they choose their form. They are hideous monsters because they know that is what gives them strength and power, and makes them intimidating to the mortal eye. But Sliske's changed that body into the one you see here. This dark mare.

"However, the demonic presence is still strong, and this body's original owner still controls its actions, if not its form. And the battle inside their mind is driving it to less controlled actions. Memories are mixing, and their shared sanity is being degraded. Demons are bad enough when intelligent, but a feral demon..."

The Harmonite shuddered.

"We need to separate them as soon as possible, and lessen the damage."

"Can you perform an exorcism?" asked Celestia.

"We can try. But who would we be banishing? Shall we force your friend out of this body she tried to take, for her own sake? Or do you want me to try and exorcise a demon from its own body?"

"Can you do that?" Gold Coin asked, "Remove a demon soul from its own body? That sounds really surreal."

"It is theoretically possible."

"Remove the demon," the earth pony replied eagerly, "I want to see this!"

***

"Well isn't this nice?" asked Second.

The human sat back in a comfortable chair, and looked around his hotel room appreciatively. In his hands, he held a small cup of tea in a saucer. He had already had coffee. Now it was time for tea. Silver sat in the seat opposite him, eating a chocolate biscuit.

"Very nice, sir."

Second looked at his watch.

"Thug Lyfe should be here soon."

"Wonderful," Silver said bitterly.

"Something wrong? You don't seem happy."

"...It's just that-"

At that point, the door burst open. Second was expecting Thug Lyfe, but it was actually an odd grey pegasus stallion. He wore a little cap and overalls, and was holding a toolbox in his teeth. One of his wings was missing for some odd reason.

"Can I help you?" Second asked irritably.

He set his toolbox on the floor.

"Ah'm Water Treatment. Ah'm here ta fix y'ure toilet."

"I wasn't aware my toilet had problems."

"Well, it does. Last resident complained 'bout it a lot. Ah'm here ta fix it."

"Whatever. Get to work."

Water Treatment nodded, picked up his toolbox again, and walked past the two of them and into the bathroom. The door was right next to the king sized bed, which Second was facing away from. He and Silver's chairs and the table between them were right next to a big glass window instead, which looked out across the city and gave a view of the uptown business district and the public park.

"So, you were saying, Silver?"

"I was saying-"

"DAYUM, that is NASTY!" called a voice from the bathroom, "Got ta have been backed up for months in here!"

"Hey, Water Treatment? Shut up," Second called.

"Can do!"

"Anyway?"

"I'm upset because you keep assuming-"

There was a wet lurching sound from the next room, and a splashing. The toilet spluttered, and Water Treatment shouted again.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum. I done never seen shit like this before!"

"-Because you keep assuming that me and Thug Lyfe-"

There was a sound like an explosion, and more splashing. A pony could be heard choking and shaking water off their coat.

"-That me and Thug Lyfe-"

There was another explosion. This time, Silver jumped back into her seat as a massive wave of brown sludge shot out the bathroom door and covered the entire presidential suite behind Second, including the bed.

It never reached them, because the door wasn't lined up with their table, but individual globs of it sprayed over their side of the room too. One lump even landed on the table between them both, right on the biscuit plate, and another hit the back of Second's seat, though not him personally.

Second calmly sipped his tea again, and then placed it back down on the table next to the plate of ruined biscuits. He held up his index finger.

"Just a moment."

He stood up and walked across the room, moving through the disgusting brown liquid and into the bathroom. Silver couldn't see anything, but she then heard the sound of grunting, screaming, and punching. There was an occasional clang as well, meaning there was something metal in there that Second was ramming the pony's face into.

A minute later, he stepped out of the room again, this time covered in the brown stuff and carrying the pegasus under his arm. He walked right over to Silver, past her, and to the window.

"Get the fuck out!"

He tossed the beaten pegasus through the glass and shattered it, while keeping ahold of his one good wing, which tore off as the rest of the pony's body was thrown out. He let out a scream as he fell, which gradually faded away. This room was really high up after all.

Second sat down in his chair and picked up the tea again, tossing the wing aside.

"Now, where were we?"

"...Sir, you threw a pony out the window."

"He's a pegasus. He'll be fine!"

"You tore off his wing!"

"Only one."

"He only had one to begin with!"

"Well that's God's fault, not mine."

"But you're God!"

"Hey, fuck you. I move in mysterious ways!"

He sipped the tea again.

"Anyway. What were you saying about you and Thug Lyfe?"

Silver blinked.

"I need to get some air..."

***

"And now, we say the holy phrase!" declared the head Harmonite, "GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" shouted the other two.

The rest of the ponies looked on uncomfortably as Sliske writhed around. Celestia, Ancient Tome, Explodey and three other royal guards were using their magic to hold her in place and ease the individual burden. They all kept their distance however, and the three Harmonites were the ones up close and personal. They danced around Sliske, circling her and throwing their arms up in the air while chanting.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" said one.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" added another.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

Sometimes it was said in unison, but sometimes only an individual spider would say it. Other spiders in the crowd around them began to join in.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"Hey, why are we asking the demon to torment ponies?!" Gold Coin demanded, "That's not cool, guys!"

"IT'S JUST THE TRADITIONAL CHANT!" the Harmonite leader called back, "WE DON'T MEAN ANYTHING BY IT! GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

Explodey shrugged.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" he shouted.

"Explodey!" Gold Coin scolded.

"Hey, I'm not a pony. We've established this. GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" Luna added.

"Princess!"

"Alicorn. Doesn't count. GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" Spike thundered.

"Go torment the ponies instead!"

"Mystic! Not you too! And where have you even been?!"

Two smaller spiders barged in.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" said Magnus.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!" said Lucian.

Finally, the whole crowd chanted as one.

"GO TORMENT THE PONIES INSTEAD!"

The eyes of the dark mare's body glowed red, and she opened her mouth to let out a stream of flames. They shot straight up into the sky, and the fire curled into the shape of a demon above them, clutching its head and screaming in pain.

"RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I'M GOING TO GET YOU, SPIDERS! I'LL GET YOUUUUUuuuuuu..."

It soon dissipated, leaving behind just Sliske in her new body. And it was hard won. The unicorns slowly lowered her to the ground again and let go of their magic. Sliske stood still and stared at the ground, doing nothing. It was as if she were shell-shocked.

It was odd. The new body didn't have the sharp teeth or the strange eyes of Sliske at all. Outwardly, she was a completely normal unicorn mare. But inside...

"Sliske?"

Mystic tried to approach. He looked over to her flank, and saw that cutie mark. The one of the blue silhouette of the rearing unicorn. He looked back at his own, of Sliske's true face. That, if anything else, symbolised a connection. He reached out to her.

"Are you okay?"

Sliske reached out and grabbed him. Mystic tried to protest, but she pulled him over to her and embraced him. And then she began to cry. Loudly.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

Mystic looked back at the others, who looked just as weirded out as he was. He rolled his eyes.

"Mares. Amirite?"

***

"Second, my nigga!"

"Yo."

"Umm...What happened in here, homie?"

"Some busta fucked with the plumbing and wrecked my pad. I showed that nigga how we handle that kind of shit on the streets."

"Threw him out the window?"

"You know it."

"Word."

Brofists/hooves took place, and Second directed Thug Lyfe to the mini-fridge where the beers could be found. It was the other side of the brown mess, but a wave of the human's hand parted the sea of liquefied faeces and made a path for the zebra.

"Hey, where's mah bitch?" he called from the kitchen.

"Silver? Went out to get some air. She'll be back soon. By the way, I got the two of you a room. It's 103, across from here. She has the key."

Thug Lyfe poked his head out the kitchen, smiling evilly.

"That a fact?"

***

It was approaching nightfall now, and Sliske was still a wreck. It had taken some effort to detach her from Mystic, and then she had just latched onto Gold Coin instead. Now he was being forced to drag her along behind him.

"Sliske. GET THE FUCK OFF ME!"

"Waaaaaahahahahaaaaaaaa..."

He sighed in exhaustion.

"Look, please, it's getting really annoying now. It's been three hours. Get off me."

Sliske let go and fell face down in the snow.

"Jeez...Chains! Can you take her? Please?"

"And have her stuck to me like an overly persistent leech for the rest of the night?"

"It's your turn. Take her. Now."

Chain Mail grumbled and pulled Sliske to her hooves. She still hadn't said a word since the exorcism. Just a series of sobs, wails and screams. But hey, she wasn't trying to hug him. That was a plus.

"Damnit Sliske, you are a real piece of work. I almost miss when you were being unnecessarily cruel to everypony."

Sliske sniffed like she had a cold, which she probably did being in this weather.

"Ponies!"

The two earth ponies looked over to a spider walking towards them. Out of his armour, they almost didn't recognise Legionnaire Arcelio.

"Hey there," said Gold Coin, "So...Did you have spider babies then?"

"Yes," Arcelio replied happily, "I now have a son and three daughters. Can you believe it?"

"Congratulations," Chain Mail replied.

"Shame I had to kill all the others..."

The ponies looked to each other uncomfortably, both silently reminding themselves that the Legion had very different customs to them. Killing their own children and frequent mentions of cannibalism throughout the day had painted a picture of a very different culture than Equestria. They tried not to judge the spiders too harshly for it, but it was difficult to do.

Spiders were disgusting.

"...But anyway. I came to inform you that the Harmonites have agreed to meet yourselves, your friends, and the princesses tomorrow. I will be escorting you to the monastery for your first lessons."

"Lessons?"

"Friendship lessons. If what Princess Luna has told us about is anything to go by, you need them badly."

"...If you say so."

Arcelio smiled, and gave them a salute.

"Enjoy the rest of your night, gents."

He scuttled away into the night, leaving the two stallions alone with the broken mess that was Sliske the Destroyer.

"...So, where are we tonight?" asked Chain Mail.

"Spike's sleeping in the big building on the east side of town. Some kind of meeting hall. Us and the guards are all staying in the Legion barracks."

Gold Coin began to trot away, and the captain followed after, presumably going to the barracks. Sliske followed behind closely, still not saying anything and just staring at the floor.

"Don't the legionnaires need it?"

"The legionnaires are sleeping in their normal homes for tonight to make room for us. Some of them lost friends and family today, so a lot of them would have been going home anyway."

Sliske broke out into sobs again.

"Oh, SHUT UP will you?!"

"You know what? Let me take her. You can go your own way and you won't be bothered anymore."

"Please."

Chain Mail tapped the ground in front of Sliske to get her attention, and then gestured for her to follow him, which she did without complaint. Finally, Gold Coin was left alone.

"Fucking aliens..." he muttered.

***

"There you go, sir! All clean!"

The attendant smiled at Second and sat in place while he inspected the room.

"...It's flawless. Considering how it was earlier, that's quite something. I think you've earned a substantial tip."

He pulled out his wallet and withdrew several notes. Secopolis used American currency, and Second had become quite wealthy since he became god-emperor.

"Here you go. Sorry I killed your plumber."

"That's okay, sir," the attendant said cheerfully, "All that matters is that you're satisfied."

"I am. Very."

The pony saluted again and left the room, leaving the human alone with Silver and Thug Lyfe again.

"Well, I'm feeling rather tired now. I think it's time for bed. I was hoping to get started on Pandora today, but I guess it can wait. We've still got tomorrow."

"I hear dat."

"Anyway, you two can go now."

Silver looked around nervously.

"Uh...sir, are you sure we-"

Second opened the door and ushered them out.

"Don't worry about a thing!" he said, "I've already thought of everything!"

He pushed the door to their suite open, which was identical to his own.

"I instructed the hotel staff to soundproof the room, and they did so. Very thoroughly I might add. You can be as loud as you want, and you don't need to worry about disturbing me. You could scream bloody murder in here and no-one would ever hear you."

Thug Lyfe grinned.

"But sir-!"

"Now Silver, don't pretend you're not a screamer. I know you are. You have that look about you. I know that look. But that's what the soundproofing is for."

"SIR-!"

"It's okay, kids! You can thank me in the morning."

He shoved the both of them through the door into the hotel room.

"Good night!"

"SIR!"

Second locked the door.

"Ahhh...Finally some peace..."

And on the other side of it, the zebra continued to grin at Silver.

"I can still kick your ass," she reminded him.

***

Chain Mail was given a bed on the top floor of the barracks. He looked around to try and find Soft Spoken, but he was nowhere to be found. He eventually figured that the doctors must have been keeping him overnight to be healed. He had been rather badly injured in the fight with the demons.

The others were all there though. Explodey was lying on his back in a bed in the corner, staring at the ceiling. Mystic was already asleep in the bed next to Chain Mail's. And Iron Hoof was at the far end of the room doing something with his sheets.

Sliske walked past him and through a nearby door. Chain Mail hadn't even noticed that door, because it was very dim in the room, but it seemed to lead outside onto a balcony. Out of curiosity, he followed her outside, where she was leaning on the edge and staring up at the sky.

"You know, you've been weeping since we rescued you, but you haven't said a word to us. I think that would help you get over your problems a lot better than just crying. Talk to me."

The alien glared at him.

"Talk? To you? Why should I, Chains? Who are you to me?"

"You opened up to Gold Coin. Why not me?"

"Because you despise and fear me, and I don't like you either."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"I've been in your head, remember? I know you, captain. You fear me, and you hate me, and you've got good reason to. I don't blame you, but you can still go fuck yourself."

"...I've only just noticed you're not hissing anymore."

Sliske frowned. She bared her teeth and felt them with her hooves.

"...Gone..."

"Sliske, after the pathetic display I witnessed today, there is no possible way you could ever intimidate me again. I'm not scared of you, and I don't hate you. More than anything, I've come to pity you."

"Gee, thanks."

"You can talk to me. We're meant to be friends. So I'm trying to be friendly."

Again, Sliske glared at the captain.

"...I..."

"Yes?"

"It was that demon, Chains...His memories...I took those memories into myself...A little piece of him...Oh sweet Luna! It was awful! Nothing but pain, and rage, and guilt and sorrow! And I felt it! I lived it! It's all in me now. I feel like I'm dirty, or contaminated. Bits of that monster swimming around in my mind!"

She grabbed her head.

"I just feel so angry! I want to hurt somepony! But I also don't want to! It's like I'm in that midway point where I'm still changing into something else..."

"What point?"

"Like when I was still the old me...still the conqueror from Zarlow, but I was slowly changing into...something more pacifistic. Spending time with you. I was aware I was changing, but I didn't mind. And now I'm changing again. I'm changing back. And I DON'T WANT TO!"

Sliske laid down on the balcony still clutching her head and now banging it against the wood while Chain Mail looked on.

"I want it to stop! My head's a mess! So many memories, so many emotions! None of them are mine, and the ones that are the worst of all!"

Chain Mail sat down next to the alien mare and held her, stopping her from smashing her head against the floor again. She didn't resist.

"Sliske, I know you did some bad things one thousand years ago-"

"I did way worse things before that..."

"Yes, that too. Those ponies you killed...I know. That's bad. And I know I was the one who made a big deal about it, but-"

"There were more."

Chain Mail paused.

"...More?"

"When I said...one thousand two hundred and seventeen...I was only counting the ponies. The actual number is...higher...A lot higher..."

The captain didn't let go.

"How many was it?"

"It was..."

Sliske began to tear up again, and pulled herself closer to Chain Mail, even though his metal parts were freezing thanks to the weather.

"I killed my home planet, Chains! Everyone! Zarlans, sakrassi, grelmoks...males, females...warriors, farmers...adults, children...There must have been billions of them! And I killed all of them!"

Chain Mail stared down at her in disbelief.

"...I'm sorry..." she cried, "I'm so...so sorry..."

***

Silver poked Second in the head.

"Sir," she whispered, "Sir. Are you awake?"

"Hrrmm?"

Second's eyes fluttered open, and he looked hazily through the darkness. Silver was standing right next to his bed.

"Sir, can I sleep in with you tonight? I think Thug Lyfe is going to rape me."

"Hmm? What?"

"Can I sleep in with you tonight?"

Second yawned.

"Whatever."

Silver broke out into a huge grin.

Holy shit, it worked!

"Lemme make some space for you.." the human mumbled.

He laid his head back on the pillow again and raised his hand. He snapped his fingers, and there was a flash of light. A large blue dog basket appeared in the air next to the bed and fell to the floor in front of Silver.

"Umm...Sir?"

"Oh, right. Sorry."

Second reached across to the other side of his bed and took one of the spare pillows, and tossed it down into the basket.

"There you go."

He turned away from her and yawned again.

"G'night, Silver."

And then he was asleep again.

...Son of a BITCH.

END.

Author's notes:

Boy, is this ever a character turnaround for Sliske.

This has been in the works for a while now though. Sliske's breakdown that is. And the reveal of what exactly happened back on planet Zarlow. That'll be next time, which will probably be another interlude, so it may come sooner, but I can never tell ahead of time. Things can turn out any way.

Also you're all wonderful people and I love you.

Next Chapter: Aliens, nightmares, and other scary things.

Chapter 25: Monster, Gangster, Soldier, Cyborg

"And I heard, as it were, the sound of thunder. The human saying, 'come and see.' And I saw, and beheld four horses. One looked to me, a pale horse, and he said to me 'come closer.' And his name was Death, and all of Tartarus trembled, as I did upon looking on his visage, and I relieved myself on the floor of his office. And Death did look at me, strike me blind, and then call for the janitor."

-The Four Horses of the Apocalypse, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book Golden Age.

***

Silver angrily kicked down the door to her hotel room.

"How can a god be so dense?!" she screamed.

The mare stormed inside and kicked the door shut again behind her, and continued to grumble.

"Stupid human...with his stupid hands and stupid suit and stupid cyber eye and stupid way of walking with only two of his legs..."

She sighed.

"What else could go wrong?"

"IMMA KILL YA, BITCH ASS HO!"

Thug Lyfe jumped on her from behind. He had been hiding just to the side of the door when she walked in, perfectly hidden from view. In seconds, he was on top of her and he had both his forelegs around her throat. He pulled back and began to choke her.

"NOW YOU GONNA DIE!"

"Thug Lyfe!" Silver coughed, "I'm not...in the mood...for your bullshit...right now..."

She gasped for breath.

"Get OFF!"

Silver backed up as fast as she could and hit the wall hard. She jumped onto her hind legs and threw herself against the wall. With Thug Lyfe and herself between it, it didn't hurt at all. The zebra's spine absorbed the impact.

"AGH! Fuckin' bitch!"

She slammed him back into the wall again.

"GET. OFF. ME. NOW," she screamed, punctuating each word with another impact.

Thug Lyfe fell off and groaned in pain as he hit the ground. Silver turned to face her attacker head on. He grinned as he climbed back to his hooves again, one of which he then scraped against the carpet. He charged at her again.

THWACK!

Before he could hit Silver, she was in the air, and had kicked him in the nose with a back leg.

She flew up above him, dropped down, and hit him in the back with all four hooves. Her target crumpled to the floor again. Before he could recover this time though, Silver landed behind him, facing away, and bucked him across the room.

CRASH!

The flying zebra hit the king sized bed and bounced off it, launching him into a large wooden wardrobe and bringing it down on top of him. It shattered on his skull, and the ruined wardrobe laid in pieces around Thug Lyfe.

"Oooh...I'm not...feeling so good..." he groaned as he dragged himself out of the wreckage.

Before he even knew what had hit him, Silver was back next to him again and hauling him up.

"You keep trying to kill me. Stop it."

Thug Lyfe growled at her.

"You tried to kill me first, bitch! You's a BUSTA, Silver! Straight busta!"

"I know. I tried to kill you out of jealousy. Then I thought I did. Then I felt terrible about it. And then you came back. And now I want to kill you for your repugnant personality and constant attempts to get back at me. Now drop it, otherwise I will do things to your genitals with a cheese grater."

He didn't say anything. He just continued to glare.

"Get in the bed," Silver ordered.

That got his attention.

"What?"

"You heard me. I'm very frustrated right now, you owe me for the multiple attempts on my life, and we've got a soundproof room."

The zebra paled.

"Umm..."

"I SAID MOVE IT, MAGGOT! THAT'S AN ORDER FROM YOUR NEW SUPERIOR OFFICER!"

Thug Lyfe frantically saluted.

"Yes, bitch- I mean ma'am!"

***

Sliske and Chain Mail looked into the warm fireplace. They were in the lower levels of the guard barracks. A few other ponies they knew were already asleep or falling asleep in beds all around the place. The royal guards all were accommodated elsewhere though. It was just the princesses and their friends in the barracks, and they were spread between two floors, so most of the beds remained empty

The two of them were on an old, but comfortable rug. It was an animal skin, but Chain Mail either didn't care right now or wasn't aware of it. He sat there silently, the metal of his armour finally warming again after their time out in the snow. Sliske laid on her belly just by his side, staring into the flames with a distant look on her face.

"Tell me about it then," said the captain.

Sliske gave him a sad look.

"...I was a year old at most," she began, "I was a pet...a zoo exhibit of sorts. I was one of many rare species in the personal menagerie of General Sliske the Destroyer. He was a conqueror, and a tyrant. He ruled the great Zarlan Empire, which stretched from where the sun rose to where it set. From what I understand, I was bred in captivity, and so I never had a host, unlike my parents."

"...Go on."

"One day, the general made a mistake. He thought I was tame. That I could be trusted. He got too careless, leaned in too close, and I crawled down his throat and stole his mind. And then...Suddenly, for the first time ever...a sakrassi became sentient."

Sliske closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

"Did Softy or Explodey tell you? About how all sakrassi were connected through species-wide telepathy?"

"...Yes."

"Well, then you'll know that the Overmind of the sakrassi has access to the collective memories of every one of us out there."

"Oh..."

"The moment I took the general's mind, and I mentally became him, the Overmind gained that same intelligence, that same sentience. And then, seconds later, so did every single one of my brothers and sisters, across all of Zarlow."

Sliske became quiet again. Chain Mail put a hoof on her shoulder.

"And then what happened?"

"Well...a few million previously unintelligent parasitic life forms all suddenly gained pony level intelligence, realised how horrible their lives were, and suddenly gained the insight and experience needed to catch zarlan hosts of their own and use their own weapons and tactics against them. What do you think?"

"...War?"

"War. The bloodiest, most brutal, gruelling war in all the memories of every host I ever took. Zarlans were primitive. They were an early civilization, still blooming. The most advanced mechanism they ever managed to invent before they were wiped out was a giant catapult for launching rocks at large fortresses. And they were up against an army of body snatchers who took their own.

"There were telltale signs of possession of course, but they were too subtle. Sakrassi infiltrated everywhere and struck the zarlans where they were vulnerable. And when it came to open warfare, there were so many of them. And every host they took, all their memories, and experience, went straight to the Overmind. And the Overmind redistributed the memories, so that every single one of its soldiers had the fighting experience of a hundred thousand zarlan warriors."

"...And what did you do?"

Sliske looked sideways at Chain Mail.

"I fought the onslaught to my last breath," she answered.

"...You didn't fight with your people?"

"They weren't my people. I was a zarlan. Sakrassi mentally become their first hosts for a time, and I had mentally become the leader of this empire that the sakrassi wanted to bring down and take for themselves. I wasn't going to let a bunch of parasites take that from me, even if I was one of them. I personally marched out into the battlefield and led my forces against theirs. And we slaughtered them by the thousands."

Sliske smiled, and stared into the flame with a disturbing glee.

"They were animals...and like animals, I hunted them down and tore them apart...And I made them suffer."

"Sliske."

The alien looked over to him suddenly.

"I-" she stammered, "I- I'm sorry...Chains, I didn't mean..."

She groaned as she buried her face in the rug.

"This is what I mean...That part of me..."

***

"ALERT. ALERT. SUBJECT UNSTABLE."

"Oh shit..." one of the scientists cursed, "WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM IN HERE!"

"ALERT. ALERT," the alarm blared.

"What the hell is going on in here?"

The senior unicorn marched into the room with a purpose. All the junior staff of the Mages' Guild rushed about the lab in a panic. In addition to the annoying voice, a klaxon was going off in the background, and the lights were all flashing red. On a large monitor at the front of the room, a warning came up.

PROJECT ATOM ONLINE.

"What's Project Atom?!" the head scientist demanded.

"We've got not idea! You're the boss, we thought you would know!"

The older unicorn sighed, and magically pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow.

"I've never seen this before...Atom...Atom...I've never even..."

BOOM!

"What was that?!"

"Sounded like an explosion on the lower floors, sir!"

"SHIT! This is serious, whatever it is. This tower is still under construction! We can't afford any structural damage below us, or these labs and several other floors could topple right off the building!"

"What do we do?!"

"CALL SECURITY! Override Lord Second's order! I want the Knights of Man here right away! In fact, I want Commander Steroid Abuser himself to help us out with this! We do NOT have the resources to deal with a rogue experiment smashing things up around here!"

"Sir?!"

"JUST DO IT!"

The junior scientist nodded and ran off out the room, leaving the others to continue frantically checking the lab equipment, while the boss was sweating buckets.

"I'm too old for this..." he gasped, "What is Atom?! What is it?!"

He reached into the top pocket of his lab coat with magic and pulled out a small black device. With a few button presses, he opened channel with the office of his superiors.

"Hello? This is the Four Horses' office."

"I need the bosses to get down to Blackspire Research Tower immediately. We've got problems in here, pertaining to a 'Project Atom'. I have no idea what this is, but they will, and we need their help."

***

Second stood in the hall of mirrors. Before him was his own. Facing him, just like the last time he saw this place in a dream, was a great fiery demon. The same one as before, only this time he recognised it better. He realised that it was not the same one that he had killed inside Sun Rise's mind. This demon was...greater, somehow.

"So what's the deal with this then?" he asked, "In the real world, these mirrors showed what people feared most. What do they show in the dream?"

"WHAT THOSE SAME PEOPLE THINK OF YOU."

"Namely that they all want to attack me on sight?"

"INDEED."

"And you? You were inside my mirror, why?"

"BECAUSE YOU PUT ME HERE."

Second tilted his head.

"And why would I do that?"

"YOU HAVE A DARK SOUL, LORD SECOND, AND YOU NEEDED TO BE SHOWN THAT."

"Like I didn't know that already..."

He paused.

"Who are you, anyway?"

"QRAMSTARFLOKRINHIR, YOUR LOYAL SERVANT."

"My servant?"

"ETERNALLY."

"If you demons are my servants, then what were you doing screwing with Sun Rise's mind? Why did that other one I killed attack me? And what have you been doing since then?"

"CHERNOBOG ATTACKED YOU BECAUSE YOU TOLD HIM TO, BOTH IN THIS DREAM AND IN SUN RISE'S MIND."

"Chernobog?"

"YOU WILL ALSO KNOW HIM AS 'THE MAN IN BLACK'."

Second was quiet.

"So apparently, I asked you people to give me a nightmare of this mirror place that I would later find beneath Canterlot, I asked you to take the form of a man in black to taunt and toy with me, I asked you to appear to me in my mirror, I asked you to burn me alive with rainbow fire, I asked you to possess Sun Rise, and I asked you to attack me and battle to the death when I went in there to kick the demon out?"

"YES, THAT IS ACCURATE."

"And precisely WHEN did I ask any of this of you?"

"ON THE DAY YOU BROKE FROM YOUR STONE PRISON, MY LORD."

Second nodded, and said nothing more.

"So you'd take my orders if I gave them to you now?"

"YES."

"I want to know where I can find a complete history of the demons and all that they've done. If you're going to be sticking around, I want to know what it is I'm dealing with."

"I HEAR THAT PONYVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY HAS THE TOMES YOU NEED."

"Bring them to me."

"BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY?"

"Key word is 'necessary'. I'd rather avoid a needless slaughter."

"WHY? DO YOU NOT INTEND A MASS SLAUGHTER YOURSELF? FOR WHAT REASON WOULD YOU HAVE US SPARE PONYVILLE?"

"The same reason I don't simply tell Equestria's people that they aren't real and let them rip themselves apart in an existential crisis. I don't want to actively destroy ponies. If I wanted Equestria gone, I'd have already wiped it off the map. Immediately after my son was killed, I wanted nothing more than to destroy everything, but I have self control. I became calm, and argued myself down to what you see before you now: pure, unrelenting apathy."

"IF YOU TRULY DO NOT CARE, THEN LET US BURN THAT VILLAGE TO THE GROUND AND RETURN WITH THE BOOKS YOU DESIRE."

"There will be no burning. Do exactly as I asked, and don't try to screw with me. I am an elder god, and you are as pitiful to me as that crippled pegasus I murdered earlier today."

Qramstarflokrinhir smiled at his master.

"IT WILL BE DONE."

Then Second awoke.

"...Oh no..."

He immediately jumped out of bed and ran over to the wardrobe.

***

Thug Lyfe's head poked out from underneath the quilt and rested on the pillow. He was sweating all over and trying to catch his breath. Silver just looked down at him disdainfully.

"So?" he asked, "How'd I do?"

"You're a virgin, aren't you?" Silver said flatly.

"...I was..."

"It showed. I give that a minus two out of ten; worst lay ever."

The zebra immediately burst into tears and buried his face in the pillow.

"I want you to apologise to me for that, and go sleep on the couch."

"Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am..." Thug Lyfe replied as he crawled out the bed and trudged over to the other side of the room.

Well, that's one way to deal with a guy trying to kill you all the time; destroy his confidence. Surprised I didn't think of it sooner.

Then the door burst open and Second ran into the room in a dressing gown and brandishing a revolver.

"GUYS! PROBLEM! SERIOUS FUCKING PROBLEM! SILVER, GET YOUR GUNS, GET YOUR ARMOUR, AND FOLLOW ME!"

He looked around the room frantically, and then noticed Thug Lyfe sobbing on the couch. He then looked over to Silver.

"...Yeah, sorry for interrupting by the way. Still important though! Come on!"

Second ran out the room again, leaving Silver staring at the door.

Mental note: Having sex with Thug Lyfe did nothing to correct sir's mistaken impression that I was having sex with Thug Lyfe.

She glanced to her side at the bawling zebra.

Damn, I never realised I was so cruel.

***

"Sliske?" Chain Mail said softly, "Tell me. What happened next?"

The alien continued to lay flat on the carpet, staring into the fire.

"They came."

"The sakrassi?"

"No. The Alliance. The Galactic Alliance."

"Who are the Galactic Alliance?"

Sliske sat up.

"The Galactic Alliance is basically what it sounds like. It's a space nation, a grand republic encompassing multiple alien planets, its citizens and government a diverse population of races, both biological and otherwise, and stretching all across our galaxy."

Chain Mail nodded to show he understood.

"It's not the only one of its kind of course. There are other civilizations between Equestria and the Alliance. The Delkrampic Empire for one. What matters though, is that back in those days, the Alliance made a habit of sending down scouts and missionaries to primitive planets that supported life, like Zarlow, and trying to educate us and make us part of them.

"It was a way of bolstering their numbers and allowing them more resources and power. Back then, it was seen as a very admirable tactic. In later years though, the Alliance would come to see this as unethical, and leave blooming civilizations to advance on their own, without interference. They would not approach them with an offer to join until a planet's natives had already proven themselves able to develop space travel on their own, and at minimum already reached their own moon, if they had one."

"Sounds sensible."

"Well, I lived on Zarlow before this policy was in place, so in the middle of the sakrassi and zarlan civil war, we were visited by a scout by the name of Quokromfar. He was a member of a vaguely avian looking race known as the giapelsh. They had an Alliance ship in orbit, a mighty vessel whose name roughly translates to 'War-Ender', because its weapons could destroy whole planets in a single blast."

"Oh no..." Chain Mail sighed, "I think I know where this is going..."

"Well, of course, Quokromfar and his people were aware of the war going on down on the surface, and so negotiators were sent to leaders of both sides. Both scouts took precautions to help protect them from sakrassi possession, and went to meet their assigned leader with the hope of either bringing about peace or deciding which side to take in our war. The other went to see the Overmind, and Quokromfar came to see me."

"And what did you do?"

"Zarlans had never met non-terrestrials before, so I and most others were pretty freaked out. But the Alliance was offering to try and end our war, either by taking a side or bringing peace. I said that there was no chance of peace with the sakrassi, so he told me to come with him up to their mothership and make my case for why the Alliance should assist the Zarlan Empire."

"And...?"

Sliske was quiet.

"Sliske, tell me."

She looked sideways at the captain.

"The Overmind came up there too. It had access to my memories after all, and it knew I was up on the ship making arguments why the Alliance should help my side. It wanted the same opportunity, so it was taken up to that same ship to argue too.

"The War-Ender had a conference room with an audio and visual link to the Alliance capital, and we both had to go into the same room, in the middle of this giant arena, and speak side by side, arguing why the other should be destroyed. However, I was a warrior king. The moment the Overmind stepped into the room, I did not bother to speak. I ran right up to the Overmind's host and ripped its heart out."

"Oh, Sliske..."

"Security went crazy. The guards opened fire on the both of us as we began to fight. My host, General Sliske the Destroyer, was dead in seconds. But I had a self preservation instinct. In my panic, I abandoned my host, for the first time ever. Mentally, I was still the general, but now I had a sakrassi body and powers, and I was fighting one on one against the Overmind itself. And all the while, a bunch of alien security guards were trying to shoot us both down, oblivious to the fact that lasers can't kill ghosts."

"So what happened to the Overmind?"

"It was a long battle. Both of us kept failing to destroy each other in sakrassi form, so we kept jumping hosts. Every time I did, my mind was flooded with new memories, telling me all about the Alliance, and the capability of the vessel. Most importantly, it taught me that the giapelsh had taken surface samples of Zarlow's native wildlife, including several klkrmizk."

"Klkrmizk..." the captain repeated, "I've heard that before..."

"I told the others about it already. They're my kind's natural predators."

Chain Mail's eyes widened.

"Oh. Those."

"Yes. And I set them loose."

The captain stared at the dark mare.

"I took a host to protect myself and got a gun. I killed the ones that came after me, and I killed all the other giapelsh I saw, including the Overmind's host. Soon, the Overmind was stuck in its natural form, out in the open, and with no new hosts. I watched it as it was eaten alive. And then I made a run for the bridge..."

***

The other scientists trembled and stepped aside as the Four Horses of the Apocalypse walked into the main lab of Blackspire Research Tower. They were the successors, the new owners of the Mages' Guild following the good doctor's death on board the Prometheus; genetically engineered super unicorns, all with great intellect, and all capable of bringing down a small army by themselves.

War stepped forward first, a red unicorn with a mane and tail of pure fire, and empty white eyes. He closely examined the screen, raising an eyebrow at it.

"'Project Atom'?" he said aloud, in a distorted voice, "We have never heard of this so called Project Atom."

The unicorn who had called him in went pale.

"How can you not know what it is?!" he asked, also addressing the other three, "You're the most senior members of the guild! You MUST know what this is!"

"We do not. Our brother speaks the truth," said the pale horse, known as Death, "Whatever entity is behind this so called Project Atom, it is nothing We were notified of. Perhaps the Lord himself is responsible?"

The tower shook, as there was another explosion downstairs.

"What is that infernal sound?" asked Pestilence.

"It's coming from within a vault downstairs," the scientist answered, "We've been trying to breach it, but we've never seen the vault before either! The entry code isn't on any of our systems, and nopony knows what's in there! We never even noticed it before, because it was hidden behind a bunch of stacked crates!"

Death snorted.

"Then let us go down to the vault and see this Project Atom for ourselves."

***

Celestia stumbled into the darkness and closed the door behind her. She was outside somewhere. The building she had just came from was lifeless inside. Long abandoned. This place was overgrown too. The skies were cloudy and she could barely see her sister's stars or moon through them. No sign of the moon at all, in fact.

The place she was in was strange. The building she had just exited rose high above them, but it was large and cuboid in shape. Half a mile in front of her though was another building, this one a gigantic tower shaped like a needle, with a disc shape at the top spinning slowly. It too was dark, and there were no signs of life from within it.

Between the two buildings, the land was grassy and wild, with rising and falling ditches and hills. Neither were very large. They didn't really make the landscape anything more than a little uneven. Dotted around the landscape were evergreen trees, but they were surprisingly few, and around the place one could see mossy fallen logs, rocks, and there was a stream running through the place.

Most perplexing of all though was that scattered around the place were chunks of rusted metal. They laid in ditches and were scattered around on the grass, and one laid at the base of an evergreen that had snapped at the trunk and fallen over, implying that the metal had fallen from above and crashed into it.

Directly in front of the princess was a vehicle. She recognised it slightly. Second had owned one for a brief time before both he and it were captured during their initial assault on the palace, before he killed her. It had been called both a car and a Ferrari by him, and she wasn't aware what its true name was. This one was ruined though. Rusted brown, the windows smashed, the seats inside torn apart...

What happened here?

Celestia approached the car and ran a hoof over it. She jumped when a cat that was sleeping inside it hissed at her and swiped a claw in her direction. It jumped out and climbed onto the roof, where it continued to munch on a rat that it had been enjoying when the princess interrupted it.

There was a scuttling to the side. The alicorn did not move for fear of giving away that she was aware of her enemy's presence, but her eyes darted in the direction of the noise. She saw the retreating form of something brown and eight-legged.

Legion soldiers?

She shook her head. If there was one, there were more. She could be surrounded for all she knew, and she couldn't see in this darkness. She needed some light. Not necessarily sunlight. Luna would never appreciate her sister forcing the night to an early end just because it was a bit too dark for her, but at the very least she needed the light of the moon. These clouds were making it impossible.

She tried to flap her wings to rise into the air, but found that she couldn't. That was alarming in and of itself, but she found that her magic still worked. For a pegasus, clearing the clouds meant flying up and pushing them all away. For an alicorn, weather was like clay that could be moulded any which way.

With barely any effort, the clouds all shot aside, clearing the sky in seconds. Then the princess gaped as she saw what was in the sky, lighting it up in place of the moon.

A great six pointed star, much like Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark, with the elongated top and bottom. It was brilliant white and very close to the ground, unlike the moon. She could see that it was solid instead of just being made of light or something, and this close she could also tell that it was massive. It sparkled, as if its entire outside were coated in diamonds, and it pulsed with an unnatural glow.

"WHAT ARE YOU?!" she shouted up at it.

The spiders were no longer a concern. Now it was that thing that caught her attention. She couldn't explain it. That thing, whatever it was, it was...wrong.

It did not answer her, but merely persisted in its presence and in making her uncomfortable.

"I oppose you!"

She did not know why she said that. It just felt right. Like anything good in this world would have said the same. Like it needed to be stated that such evil would not get to her, or else it would try to work its corrupting influence.

OH? REALLY NOW?

A tendril shot out of the thing. From the base of the star, a long black rope flew in her direction. The princess jumped aside to avoid it, and it instead hit a piece of scrap metal behind her. Up close, she saw that the rope was gooey and sticky, as if the whole thing were made of some kind of paste. It attached to the metal and tried to pull itself off, but to her amusement it was stuck.

She was glad it didn't get her.

Then it ripped the scrap metal out of the ground, and it turned out to be the very tip of another car just like the one next to her. The thing then began to wind back the tendrils, lifting it into the air and dropping it when it was a short distance away.

Now the star wasn't fooling around anymore. It released a billion tendrils, which fell straight down towards the ground. None of them were aiming for her this time. They just drooped down, directly onto the needle-like tower opposite her.

The tower was engulfed in blackness as the tendrils crawled over it and spread, eventually covering the entire structure. Then they hit the ground, and began to move across the hills and ditches towards her. She tried to fly to get off the ground, but it was still useless. All she could do was climb on top of the car as the whole world around her went black. In the darkness, she could hear spiders screaming.

Soon, the ground and both the buildings were covered in black, and the car she was standing on was a lone oasis in the darkness, and even then the tendrils were slowly crawling up the side. Much more slowly than they took the rest of the place. It was deliberate. Taunting her.

RECONSIDER YOUR POSITION, PRINCESS.

"...Who are you?"

And then she woke up.

***

"Where are we going?!" Silver called out.

"No idea!" Second shouted back over his shoulder, "Just follow me!"

A lightning storm was forming over Secopolis. That wasn't a good sign. Even worse was the fact that these storm clouds were almost the same level that clouds were in the human world, rather than hovering just a little way off the ground like Equestrian clouds were wont to do. It was worrying.

Second stopped mid-flight and looked around him. He was still in his dressing gown, his only addition to his apparel since bursting into the hotel room being a holster for his revolver. Why he had foregone his favourite shotgun in favour of the much smaller weapon wasn't clear, but Silver was sure he had a reason.

"THERE!"

He pointed to a large skyscraper in the downtown area.

"Blackspire Research?" Silver repeated.

"You know it?"

"Surprised you don't. It's one of the Mages' Guild's largest labs, alongside their old headquarters and lab beneath the museum. They take all the dangerous experiments that way."

"Oh fuck..."

"Is something wrong sir?"

Lightning struck above them.

"We need to get over there before everything goes to shit."

***

"The bridge is where it happened," Sliske said quietly, "The controls for their weapons systems were laid out in front of me. Understand, while I had gained new memories from all the giapelsh hosts I had taken, they had not made any real changes to my personality. That takes a large number of hosts. At that point, I was basically still General Sliske, only now I had the body of a sakrassi and knowledge of the War-Ender's capabilities."

She smiled grimly.

"I wanted to wipe out the sakrassi. All of them. At once. And I knew that there was one particular forest from which they originated. The biggest hive of our kind, and where the Overmind made its residence before I killed it."

Chain Mail winced.

"I took control of the weapon systems, aimed the planet-buster down at Zarlow, lined up with the sakrassi's forest, and I opened fire."

The captain dared to speak up.

"And it destroyed more than just the forest...didn't it?"

Sliske nodded.

"A mistake on my part. Still in the mentality of an impulsive warlord who barely understood the concept of such technology. I was a poor combination of a primitive, violent savage and several space faring aliens who had no idea what was happening. My host at the time was another giapelsh, and he was screaming in my head...I couldn't think because he was so terrified that it drowned out everything else..."

"So you destroyed your planet?"

"It burned, you know. It was slow. I stood on the bridge, face pressed against the glass, and stayed there for days waiting for the fire to go out. And it never did. I assume it must have, but I wasn't around to see it end...All I know is, nothing on the surface could have ever survived that."

Sliske looked at the floor again.

"Possibly the lava snakes, but even they'd have eventually starved without their regular prey. Unless they turned to cannibalism I suppose..."

The alien pondered that for a moment.

"Hmm. Actually, that would make what remains of Zarlow even more horrific."

Chain Mail put a foreleg around Sliske and held her close.

"I'm sorry."

"I lost everyone. All I had ever known was that simple life. Suddenly my whole race was dead. Both the races I considered myself a part of were dead. Even my family...and Drelmary..."

"Drelmary?" Chain Mail repeated.

"My wife."

What?!

"Well...General Sliske's wife...but...you know..."

Chain Mail stared at her in disbelief. He had known, of course he had known, that Sliske had some kind of life before becoming the monster of Equestrian legend. She had referenced that past life often enough when talking with the others. But he had never even considered the idea that Sliske might have once had people she considered family.

He tried to say something, but nothing seemed right.

"Do you know what the worst part was though, Chains?"

That wasn't the worst part?

"Our species are telepathically connected. There is always an Overmind. And the Overmind is always the oldest living member of our kind. It gets passed on whenever the previous one dies, along with all their memories. All the memories of a sakrassi, upon death, are absorbed into the collective. Adapt to survive, you see?

"Well...remember that Zarlow burned. Everything died. Every sakrassi died. All of them. And that made me the only one, and thus the oldest..."

"Oh sweet merciful Celestia..."

"I think you can guess what happened," Sliske said simply.

"You became the new Overmind."

"And felt, and lived through the dying moments of every single one of my kind. I saw Zarlow destroyed from all perspectives at once. I quite literally died a billion times over, and experienced an entire race's worth of dying agony all in the same minute."

Once again, tears began to fall from Sliske's eyes.

"The Overmind is telepathically connected to every one of us. And that's how I knew, once it was over, that I was completely alone; there was nothing but silence."

***

Meanwhile, approximately twelve thousand years into the past and on a planet that was then barren, lifeless, undiscovered and unnamed, a number of pony shaped aliens gathered inside a old cave in the side of a cliff. Outside the mouth of the cave were a number of strangely shaped rocks, and every minute, more and more of them would appear, open up, and release another one of these beings, who would then head into the cave.

Inside, they gathered, dressed in robes of red and gold and mumbling amongst themselves. They all gathered in a circle around the edges of the cavern, while a single one of their number stood in the centre, using magic to adjust a microphone.

"Can we all please come to attention?" he asked seriously.

The cave slowly went silent, as the others all listened.

"The destruction of our home was unpreventable disaster," he began, "None of us could have foreseen such a thing. Now the greatest civilization in all the universe has fallen, and it is up to us now to hold the torch and continue on in the name of old Gallifrey. Us, the survivors, who have been scattered across time and space for whatever reason.

"I know that none of you, my fellow lords, represent the council or any other form of time lord government. Not even Rassilon made it out of the inferno. Instead, our people survive only in the form of rogues and rebels, who ran off long ago, and those few of you who happened to be in your TARDISes already when it began. And despite this, I notice there is one particularly famous rogue time lord, whose face I do not see here!"

The crowd began to grumble.

"You know who I'm talking about!" he shouted, "I think that's the number one question right now! With EVERYTHING that's been happening, all the cosmic destruction, the loss of entire systems, including his own home...Where. Is. The Doctor?!"

"NOT COMING!"

The group all froze and looked to the entrance of the cave. Standing there was another time lord. Like the others, he resembled a pony, specifically a unicorn. He was green all over, except for a blue mane and red eyes, and he glared at them all hungrily with a big toothy grin. His cutie mark was of a radiation hazard symbol.

"What the- Who are you?!" the head time lord demanded, "Whoever you are, state your-"

Then he had another moment of shock, as he finally noticed it. The cutie mark. Time lords all had an hourglass. His was different. The visitor wasn't one of them at all! He was of some other species that resembled them! It was a...No!

"Who are you?!" he repeated.

The unicorn continued to grin at them.

"My name is Nuclear Anomaly. I'm here representing my master, and he isn't done with you lot yet."

"Listen you-!"

The time lord leader stuck a hoof out to point at him, but then saw that it was glowing gold. He began to feel ill, and clutched his chest. The others were all doing the same.

"Wha- What have you done to us?!"

"This room was more irradiated than a nuclear blast site from the moment I walked in here. I needed to induce you all into regeneration..."

"No! NO!"

Every time lord in the room suddenly exploded in a flash of gold, the energy crashing about the room violently as they all simultaneously began to regenerate, a trick that their kind possessed that allowed them to heal normally fatal damage and survive, at the cost of a change of body and a slight personality reshuffling.

Except it wasn't enough.

"...Because if I kill you all mid-regeneration, you'll stay dead."

The unicorn's horn lit up. Then he detonated.

***

Second pulled back his fist as he flew at the skyscraper and punched through the wall. He rolled across the floor of the laboratory inside and came to a stop in front of a great vault door. He stood up straight as Silver fluttered in after and settled next to him. Nearby, several of the Knights of Man glanced at them momentarily, before immediately returning to prepping their weapons.

Closest to them were the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, who all gave Lord Second a curious look.

"My Lord," Death said politely, "We weren't expecting you. Tell us, do you know anything about this?"

"No," Second said bluntly, "What is it?"

"The systems indicate that something called Project Atom is waking up in there, but we don't know what it is."

"Aren't you the heads of the guild?" asked Silver.

"Yes," War answered, "But We do not know what it is either. That's why We are worried. We were hoping it had been commissioned by you, Lord."

"Well it's not. Pandora was, but I've never heard of 'Project Atom'."

"...That's what We were afraid of," Famine muttered.

BOOM!

That came from behind the vault door, and what's worse was that it was immediately followed by the sound of something slamming into it on the other side.

"It is a good thing We called in the knights," Pestilence commented, "Though We do apologise, sir, for breaking your curfew."

"You know, I think I'll overlook it," said Second, a hint of worry creeping into his voice, "In fact, where is Commander Steroid Abuser? I'd feel a lot more comfortable if he were here too..."

"PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR, SIR."

The half pony, half giant living mass of muscle tissue walked into the room behind them and stood the other side of Second from Silver. He was still in the custom made knight armour that they had first met him in, though this drew Silver's attention to the fact that she no longer had the power armour that had been keeping her alive so far.

"Well..." Second said nervously, "Looks like the gang's all here..."

"Sir? What's wrong?"

Second looked down at her.

"Do you ever have that feeling like things have been going too well for too long, and you just feel like everything's about to blow up in your face to balance it out?"

"...No sir. Can't say I do."

"...Good. Me neither."

BOOM!

"IN POSITION, KNIGHTS!" the commander bellowed.

A number of knights gathered in formation around the group and all pointed their guns at the vault door, which Second now noticed was sporting large dents in places.

CLANG!

Another dent appeared. The knights who were also unicorns took comfort in also magically drawing their daggers, so that they were armed for close quarters combat too. The others made do with just their rifles.

BOOM! CLANG!

Yet more dents. One nervous knight very quickly unloaded his gun and switched to the armour piercing rounds, just to be safe.

"...Fuck," Second said to himself.

One final time...

BOOM!

This time the vault door flew off. It shot straight towards them. Second would have dodged under normal circumstances, but Steroid Abuser punched it with a single forehoof as it came near them and knocked it back. It flew over the other knights, who all shielded their eyes as a blinding white light poured out from the other side of the now doorless vault entrance. Standing in their way, there was a silhouette of what looked like a human male.

With horns.

Second could barely contain his irritation as a vaguely demonic looking man stepped into the light and grinned at them. He knew him well, from his hallucinations.

"Anger."

"LORD SECOND YOU SHIT GARGLING, COCK GOBBLING, SON OF A PIG MOLESTER! I AM HERE TO PUT SECOPOLIS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT! HAIL THE PANTHEON, NOW AND FOREVER!"

Second blinked, and looked back at the Four Horses.

"Is this guy serious?! This guy's serious isn't he?!"

***

Sliske had being crying on and off. Whenever she wasn't, she just stared into the fire with that haunted look.

"It's never stopped, you know..." she continued, "From Zarlow, it was the same thing over and over and over...I'd go to a new planet, try to make my new home there, and everything would crumble into ruin. The giapelsh home world was the first place I visited. Giapelsh were the only hosts I'd ever known not native to Zarlow. Even though I didn't feel like one of them, the giapelsh were the only people left alive for me to feel a connection to. And I had murdered an entire warship full of them.

"I went to their home world of Giagracious in hopes of finding a new home. It never happened though. The Galactic Alliance soon found out about what happened to my planet. They knew that the War-Ender was in the hands of an enemy. They sent an entire fleet to take me down. The War-Ender was destroyed without much of a fight. I could hardly pilot a behemoth like that by myself...

"Of course, that just gave me opportunity to escape. I survived in my natural form. I floated through the emptiness of space, moving as quickly as I could, just barely surviving off the sunlight of whichever system was closest. I spent years just travelling through the emptiness, until I got lucky and phased into another Alliance ship scouting the sector.

"I took other hosts, went to other worlds. They learned what I was though. The Alliance quickly found ways of identifying me, and worked on ways to kill me too. They never could though. After all, you can't kill a ghost, right? Oh, but they tried. I spent so many thousands of years jumping from one side of the galaxy to the other, hunted by some of the greatest assassins and mercenaries of all time."

Sliske smiled again, almost like an old mare recalling her youth.

"Those that tried to kill me, they are what shaped me. I learned so much from my interactions with all these different alien beings. I possessed doctors, and scientists. Philosophers. Business tycoons. War heroes. Ruthless criminals. Greedy merchants. Charismatic politicians. And of course, my assassins. I built up a very unique skill set over time.

"And the more I did, the more effective I became at outrunning and outfighting my pursuers. And they were adamant that they catch me. After they'd lost so much already, they weren't willing to give up the fight. I almost drove a hundred planets to economic ruin thanks to the amount they spent on going after me."

Chain Mail looked surprised.

"Just how badly did they want you?"

"For every species living on Zarlow, both sentient and otherwise, one count of genocide was added to my record. And they created a new crime with which to charge me for the destruction. Planetary demolition. To date, I am the only one I know of to have committed it outside of a full scale galactic war, and certainly the only one to have ever done it to a planet in Alliance territory.

"You're looking at this galaxy's most wanted terrorist for nearing six thousand four hundred and thirty years running."

***

Out in Ponyville meanwhile, the sound of moaning and the rattling of metal fences filled the air. On the outskirts of town, a great chain link fence protected the residents from being eaten by the hordes of the undead, who were waiting just outside and trying to force their way in. Were they still intelligent enough to use their wings or magic, they would have already been overrun. As it stood, the only thing protecting them was a thin piece of metal.

On patrol that night, a pair of officers from the Ponyville Police shone their flashlights at the fence and the zombie ponies gnawing on it. They had to keep watch on the place. Just the other day, a young foal had gone up to the fence and gotten bitten. They'd been forced to throw him over the other side to save him infecting the rest of the town. It was a hard job, but somepony had to do it.

And tonight, that somepony was Jimmy, a former portal station security guard from Rainbow's Rest, who didn't believe in zebras and thought they were just ponies who'd been soaked in industrial chemicals.

"...Jeez, these guys are ugly..." he whispered to the other officer.

"Yeah..." his co-worker agreed, "Reminds me of my son's comic books..."

"...Hey, is that a griffin?"

The other officer pointed his flashlight through the fence at the place Jimmy was pointing to. It was indeed a zombie griffin.

"...Gretta," the officer replied, "I knew her. She worked up in the Apple factory. She was probably working there when it was overrun...Celestia have mercy...I saw her just four days ago...I held a door open for her as she left Sugarcube Corner..."

The officer became quiet and bowed his head. Jimmy turned to him and patted his back lightly.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah..."

"Just...Take some comfort in the fact it can't get any worse..."

Jimmy then noticed that there was a slight orange glow coming from their side. He and the other officer looked back to the fence simultaneously. Standing on the other side of it, completely silent and yet glowing like a bonfire, was a gigantic demon straight out of the old legends, easily three storeys tall, and backed up by lots of smaller ones, which nonetheless still all dwarfed the two patrol ponies. The zombies seemed to be ignoring them.

"...Well...On the bright side..." Jimmy began, "...Nope. Sorry. I got nothing. We're all going to die."

The demon stepped forward and trod on the metal fence. He ignored the both of them completely, as did all the other demons. They just marched dutifully past the two ponies heading into the centre of town. Unfortunately, the zombies did not offer that same courtesy, and rushed down the street towards them.

"Should we kill each other?" the other officer suggested.

Jimmy picked up his dagger.

"Make sure to stab me in the head."

***

"SO WHAT SHALL IT BE, SECOND?!" Anger shouted, "WILL YOU SURRENDER TO THE WILLS OF THE PANTHEON NOW, OR SUFFER MORE?"

Second cracked his knuckles.

"You know, it's a real shame Sexuality's dead now. I'm sure he would have loved to have been here for this, because I am about to fuck you in the eye socket, long and hard."

"YOU STAND NO CHANCE AGAINST ME. I AM THE LIVING PERSONIFICATION OF YOUR ANGER, AND ANY RAGE YOU FEEL ONLY MAKES ME STRONGER!"

"Thank you for sharing. Now go stick a gun in your mouth and contemplate why I would ever care."

He rushed forward and punched at Anger, but the demonic entity caught his fist mid-punch. Second struggled against it, but Anger began to squeeze. There was a loud, bony crunch. The human's eyes slowly widened, and then began to water. He tried to pull Anger's hand off with his other hand, but couldn't move it. Eventually, Second was on his knees screaming.

'This is new,' he thought to himself, 'I may actually lose this one...'

The Secopolitans meanwhile looked on with disbelief and shock. The one absolute that united them all, the one thing that they all believed in, was the infallibility of their lord and god, who was now being crippled by this demon creature.

"Don't just stand there, you fucking slack jawed idiots!" Second shouted, breaking them out of their stupor, "Help me!"

The Four Horses looked to each other for a split second, to confirm that they were all thinking the same thing. They all nodded in unison. Four horns glowed together, and they all vanished.

Commander Steroid Abuser meanwhile scraped a hoof against the floor and charged across the room at Anger. The rage fuelled entity tossed their god aside casually and raised his fists to fight the muscle-bound pony. He threw a punch at him as he came near, but Steroid Abuser dodged to the side and out of his way in a display of agility that would have normally been impossible for a pony of his build.

The other knights were all terrified, and with their god before and their commander now blocking them, they didn't dare fire their guns, instead all retreating to the furthest corners of the room and trying to flee.

Silver Vein was the one exception, and she rushed forward into the fray to assist her fellow commander.

"We have returned!"

The Four Horses of the Apocalypse teleported back into the room, this time all wearing the bastard children of Mages' Guild power armour and the Knights of Man's standard outfit. Each had also chosen their own weapons. War, Famine, Pestilence and Death had chosen a flail, a whip, twin daggers and a giant scythe respectively, and they surrounded Anger at all sides.

Silver and Steroid Abuser backed away to give the Four Horses their shot, and Anger looked to each one of them, silently daring them to attack.

"You're one fucking stubborn son of a bitch."

Second was back on his feet too, and wrapping some boxing tape around his hands. He finished up and threw the reel away just as he walked into the fight.

"So you think you're so tough?! Come on! Fight like a man!"

***

"So how did you come to Equestria?" Chain Mail asked.

"...Spaceship," Sliske answered.

She looked down at the floor thoughtfully.

"It was an engineering and rescue vessel, not designed for warfare. It came to assist in the repairs of a civilian cruise shuttle. Unfortunately for them, one of the civilians on board was me and my then current host. I had gotten discovered and was forced to fight against the security guards of the cruise shuttle. It of course ended in a slaughter, but enough of the crew survived to call for aid. When the engineer and rescue ship arrived, I stole it, and flew for the nearest planet."

"Which was the Equestria of two thousand years ago?"

"Longer than two thousand years. I don't remember it too well, but it was definitely pre-Nightmare Moon."

"So you left your spaceship, and-"

"I never left the spaceship. I crashed it, and my host was rescued from the wreckage."

"...The ponies saved you?"

"Oh yes. And that's how the killing started."

The captain furrowed his brow.

"I don't understand."

"My host was an alien being from another world. Diseases and viruses that were to his species as the common cold is to ponies were lethal. The pony village that rescued me was dead within two days."

"Oh Celestia..."

"I know. I abandoned my host as soon as I learned that. I was incorporeal. No body to carry disease, and that made me safe. It didn't save those already infected though, and the corpses of the dead still carried it. My host, once I had left him...He took responsibility. He knew he was toxic to the natives, so he got a biohazard suit for himself and went out to put a perimeter around the area. Sealed the whole place off and tried to disinfect it. He wiped out the diseases and stopped them spreading, then retreated back into his ship and killed himself."

"...Sounds like he was a hero."

"He was. I barely even remember his name, but he saved your whole planet that day. And while he was doing all that, I had already taken a roaming pegasus for my newest host and was heading for the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, with intentions of taking Celestia's body and enjoying an eternal daytime to feed from."

"...Damn it, Sliske..."

"I'm sorry."

She had stopped crying altogether. Now she just sounded...empty.

"I tried to take her. I failed. I took other hosts. I gradually learned more and more about pony customs and culture. My ship was wrecked, and that meant I wasn't going anywhere, so I set myself to work trying to conquer Equestria.

"Well, the sisters got help; they developed an exorcism spell to force me out of bodies, and eventually they got the Elements of Harmony and forced me into temporary state of corporeal helplessness. I took a liquid form, and the sisters stuck me inside a giant hollow rock, froze me, and launched me back into space. And I spent the following thousand years floating around the solar system, stuck inside."

Chain Mail couldn't believe it.

"Tha- That's horrible!"

"It was what they did. Discord was trapped in stone...even Celestia's own sister was trapped in the moon. Evil was punished, particularly evil that was too powerful to be destroyed. That was my fate too. I was frozen liquid in a meteor that floated freely in space. If enough heat was generated that it melted, I could have been free again, but there's not much of that in space. Until, that is, it fell back down into Equestria's atmosphere one thousand years later. And then, I was discovered by one Twilight Sparkle..."

***

He was having that dream. Again.

Spike opened the door to the Ponyville library, rubbing his eyes from how tired he was. This was way too late to be getting him up, but Twilight had asked him to see who it was. Outside though, he couldn't see anything. It was just darkness. Vaguely purple darkness, but darkness all the same. He only had a single candle to light the way, so he wasn't surprised he was half blind.

"Hello?" he called out.

The purple mass backed away. Spike found that despite the darkness, he actually could see just fine. It was just that something had been blocking the door. He looked up at that something, and found a slightly lizard-like face, except sporting an awesome orange moustache.

"Why hello, little darling!" he said flamboyantly, "I don't suppose you're Spike, are you?"

"Uh...Yeah. That's me," Spike answered nervously.

"I'm so glad I found you! I'm the closest dragon to Ponyville, so the elders asked me to come find you, and inform you of the situation. Is your mother home?"

Spike raised an eyebrow.

"...I don't know about my mother, but Twilight pretty much takes care of me. I could get her, if you want?"

Yeah, he was twenty something by now, and Spike did get frustrated when ponies treated him as a child. But when addressing other dragons, (even if they were very unlike most dragons he had met), there was no point in pretending he wasn't still very young by his species' standards.

"That would be splendid! She's the purple unicorn, right?"

"Yeah. How do you know Twilight?"

"Oh, she's an old acquaintance. Friend of a friend. I helped her save the world once."

"Uh...huh...What is it you want to talk to her about anyway?"

"Oh, just little things, darling. Tell her it's about the upcoming apocalypse."

"...The what?"

"Oh, now I've said too much..."

Spike glared at the strange serpentine dragon.

"Tell me everything, right now."

***

Up against seven opponents just by himself, Anger did not hesitate to restart the fight.

Second rushed at him first, but he dodged to the side and kicked him in the ribs. While he was recovering, War ran his way and swung the flail. The spiked head flew just over him as he leaned back to escape its hit. Pestilence came at him from the other direction with the daggers flying, but he dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way.

When opportunity presented itself, Anger snatched a dagger out of the air and turned on Pestilence. He slashed at him three times and cut up his chest, and kicked the Horse of the Apocalypse out of his way. He turned on War again, dodging to the side as the flail kept coming and then picking him up and throwing him across the room.

Second flew in out of nowhere, but he nimbly avoided him, and also Steroid Abuser coming at him from behind, whom he kicked in the back of the leg and knocked on the floor.

Silver flew in from above and hit the ground in front of Anger, having been aiming for the hallucination's head. She jumped onto her back legs and tried to strike him again, but he punched her in the stomach and knocked her back. Death was behind her, and he had to jump over the pegasus's fallen body to get in range of Anger and slash at him with the giant scythe.

Anger still had the dagger, and launched it into Death's eye. While he cried out in pain, he grabbed the scythe by the bladed end and smacked him in the head with the handle, causing him to fall unconscious. War came at him from the side, but he picked up Death and threw him at War, knocking both ponies out of the fight.

Commander Steroid Abuser rushed in, and threw a series of punches in Anger's direction. Anger countered each one, blocking the flurry of hooves with his forearms and waiting for an opening. When one came, he made a sweeping kick with his leg that floored the commander.

Famine was suddenly upon him, as a whip struck the ground where he had been standing. He lashed at Anger a second time, but this time the demonic looking being grabbed the end of the whip just before it struck and yanked on it, pulling it out of the magical field. Famine grabbed it in his teeth to prevent it from being stolen like how his brothers' weapons were, but he himself was then forced across the room and right into Anger's outstretched fist.

He didn't let go of the whip though, giving his opponent opportunity to throw the whip and its owner over his head and launch them into Lord Second.

"AGH! Fuck you, ugly piece of shit!" the human cried out as he moved to attack again.

Once again, sidestep, and kick in the back. Second hit the wall behind them and went down.

War and Pestilence charged in alongside Silver and the commander again. The latter Horse of the Apocalypse had recovered from his knife wounds and was once again making use of the dagger that had not been embedded in Death's eye. He kept his distance and made his dagger do all the fighting. War however was now carrying the flail in his mouth, apparently thanks to an injured horn.

Silver was flying above them, and she tried to kick the humanoid in his forehead. Instead, Anger grabbed her by the hoof and pulled her down. She was about to scream in surprise, but he was too fast for even that, as he swung her around and used her body to block War's flail.

"AGHHHH!"

Her faced was bloodied as the head of the flail struck her right in the eye, but Anger didn't let up, and immediately turned to block an incoming strike from Steroid Abuser.

Fortunately, he saw it coming, and stopped his attack just short of hurting the pegasus again. Unfortunately, this was the perfect time for Anger to hit him again. And he did. Hard.

Steroid Abuser staggered back, and a dagger in a magic field flew past Anger's shoulder, just barely missing him. It turned around and flew at him again. It was sweeping side to side and trying to stab the devil horned creature, but always stopping before it could get a hit in, as he kept holding Silver up as a pony shield.

Pestilence and War were behind Anger now. The former kicked him in the back of the knees, landing the first blow against him for the entire fight so far. War's magic was working again, and he manipulated his flail to come in from one side while he kicked from the other.

Second came in again. He raised a hand, and so did Anger, expecting an attack of some kind. Instead, he found Silver ripped out of his arms by the human's telekinetic grip, and now down a shield, War's flail head smashed against his shoulder and made him cry out in pain.

"Get out, Silver!" Second ordered.

"I'm not done with this guy!" she hissed in response.

Her boss gave her a stern look, and Silver growled in response. Reluctantly, she ran back out the room again, leaving a trail of blood behind her as it leaked from her face. Second watched as she left, and thanks to this distraction did not see War's body thrown over towards him. Both human and pony hit the nearby wall. Second got up again, but War was unconscious.

Second rose again and returned to the fight, which was down to just Steroid Abuser and Pestilence now. Famine was still conscious, but he was still mewling pitifully on the floor, though that stopped when Anger landed next to him, after back flipping out of the way of a flying dagger, and stomped on his head.

"COME ON, LORD SECOND!" Anger shouted over the chaos, "THIS IS PATHETIC!"

"Out the way!" Second ordered.

Steroid Abuser and Pestilence leapt aside to get themselves clear, as Second charged up an energy attack like he had used against Luna and his brother. He threw an open palm forward and released a giant ball of energy, bigger than Anger himself.

However, his hallucination proved capable of weathering even that. He kicked - actually physically kicked - the energy ball back at him. Second was hit by his own energy attack and thrown through the wall of the room this time, ending up in the lab on the other side of it.

***

"...And that's how they stopped me. One final blast of the Elements of Harmony, and once again I was beaten."

"...Wow," Chain Mail said quietly.

"This time they decided the meteor strategy was too unreliable. So they just stuck me in a vault in the archives and magically treated it so I couldn't escape. I'd later find out that the spaceship I originally came to Equestria in, or what was left anyway, was actually stored in another vault in those same archives. Vault 9F.

"It was kept along with all her other rare treasures, like a primitive mechanical walking tank, captured in a war, a few special magical artefacts, a secret recipe for some griffin delicacy and of course, Luna's foalhood drawings."

Chain Mail seemed confused.

"Why would they be kept in the royal archives?"

Sliske slowly turned her head to look Chain Mail in the eyes.

"So that those abominations never saw the light of day."

"...You saw them?"

"Celestia showed me them one year. I will never ever forget them. Or talk about them. So don't ask."

"Why would Celestia show you them?"

"The princess would come to visit me once a year. She was nice like that. She'd tell me all about recent events, and provide some artificial sunlight to keep me alive. It was from her I heard about the humans the first time they showed up. When I broke out of the vault, just before I met Broad Sword, the very first thing I wanted to do was track down Second and take him as a host. He sounded more powerful than anything I'd ever heard of. Then of course, I met him, and he talked me out of it...

"I think I'm glad really, that I never did possess Second. If a demon fucked me up this bad...just think about what a human could have done to my mental state..."

She shivered.

"...And that's it. That's the story of my life."

Sliske blinked, and looked to Chain Mail again.

"I've never told anypony that before. My story, I mean. Not even short bits of it. I've told them what I am, and where I came from, how my biology works and why I do...what I do...but you're the first pony I've ever told about...what I did..."

She embraced him again.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I've told you all this, and...I just...I needed to tell somepony...My mind is in chaos, and I just keep feeling all these emotions...And I've burdened you and the others with being in this state all night and crying all over you..."

She let go and rolled onto her back, laying in front of the fire again.

"Did you know on Zarlow, crying was considered the greatest dishonour? Children still did it, but it was stamped out...discouraged...that was a rule of our society, enforced by my empire...If you cried, it was seen as shameful, and disgusting. Zarlans over five who still cried were killed for it, usually by their families because they felt unclean having one of their kin partake in such a thing..."

The tears began to flow again.

"And look at me now..."

Sliske covered her face and curled up into a ball.

"And you hate me now too. Now that I've told you all of this. Don't you?" she said with a muffled voice.

Chain Mail paused, as he considered that.

"No."

"No?" Sliske repeated looking up warily at him, "But...you thought I was a monster when it was only a few thousand...It was trillions, Chains!"

"I know. But...look at you. It's tearing you up. You're feeling guilt, and regret, and remorse. A monster wouldn't feel those things. Above all, you think that the demon's influence is turning you evil and you're trying to fight it. And that means to me that you must have some good."

Sliske smiled faintly.

"...Thank you."

She hugged him again.

"...And I'm also sorry for being clingy tonight," she muttered, "I'm not normally a huggy sort of pony, but I think I really needed some affection tonight...And I'm surprised it was you to show it."

Chain Mail returned her smile as she let go.

"Hey, what are friends for?"

Sliske returned to staring into the fire.

"Yes...We're friends now," she said, more to herself than anything, "I'm glad."

The alien sat up properly and sighed.

"It's late. We've been up too long," she observed, "I'm going to bed. Are you coming?"

"Wait, what?" Chain Mail asked with surprise.

"You need sleep too, right? Last time I checked, those cybernetics didn't force you to stay constantly awake."

"Oh...Right. Sorry. I didn't understand for a minute there. I was thinking of something else."

"Well, whatever. Come on, lets-"

Suddenly, Chain Mail's suit began to make a whirring noise of some kind. There was a clicking noise, and one of the speakers on his neck began to play an audio recording of a mare's voice.

"Erection detected. Mental conditioning no longer in effect. Activating Secopolis Power Armour Theft Revenge Protocol Two-Zero-Seven-Dash-F."

"Ow!" the captain cried out, feeling a pain in his flank, "What was that?!"

There was a second clicking sound, and the female voice returned.

"Herpes injected. Please proceed."

Chain Mail stared at the flank of his armour, and then turned back to Sliske, who was staring at him too.

"...I'm...going to leave..." she said slowly, creeping backwards towards the stairs as she did, "You have a good night, captain..."

And then the cyberpony was left alone in front of the fire with his permanently attached power armour and his herpes, left to contemplate his life, the universe, and the nature of fate and tragedy.

"...I have a sudden, inexplicable urge to kill or grievously wound some humans..."

***

"Ohhhhhhh..." Second groaned as he lied on his back.

"Sir!"

"Hmm?!"

The human sat up to find Silver in the lab with him, suited up minus the helmet in Mages' Guild power armour. It was much like her old set, except this didn't have the yellow colouring of the Butterfly model, and instead was just plain silvery grey, like her actual coat was. Also, this one had a flamethrower on the back.

"Silver, what are you-?!"

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

Pestilence flew through the hole in the wall and hit a lab table. It was knocked over, and he laid in a heap as a number of chemicals spilled over him.

"MY LORD, A LITTLE HELP HERE?"

Steroid Abuser retreated through the same hole, ending up in the lab with them. Anger followed after, practically foaming at the mouth.

"YES, SECOND. HELP HIM, SO THAT YOU CAN FAIL WITH YOUR WASTES OF AIR THAT YOU CALL SOLDIERS!"

Silver didn't wait a moment longer to jump back into the fight, smashing an armoured hoof into the hallucination's chest and forcing him back, however briefly.

Fuck it.

Second reached out with his telekinesis and homed in on Death's scythe from the next room. The bladed weapon floated through the hole and over towards him as Steroid Abuser jumped on Anger and tried to wrestle him to the ground. The demonic beast didn't go down so easily though, and flipped onto his back to throw him off.

The scythe landed in Second's hand, and he charged Anger with it. To his frustration, Anger dodged again, sliding beneath the attack and uppercutting him in the chin. The scythe went flying again. Silver tried to grab it, but Anger jumped in her way and caught it instead.

Steroid Abuser was up again, and he charged at his enemy. Anger swung around and struck with the scythe. It cut right through his neck. Commander Steroid Abuser's head fell off, and his neck stump sprayed blood over the rest of the lab, and Silver.

The headless body hit the floor. Second stared incredulously at it. Anger turned on Silver next and embedded the scythe in her side, cutting through the power armour like it was butter. She cried out as it hit her, and her eyes went wide.

Anger placed a foot on her shoulder, wrapped both hands around the scythe's handle, and yanked it out again. Silver fell on the floor, and the scythe's blade was now stained red. He pointed it at Second.

"THIS IS THE POWER THAT YOU ARE UP AGAINST, LORD SECOND!" he bellowed, "YOU ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE PANTHEON MAKES YOU, AND IF YOU DEFY THEM, THEY CAN TAKE THAT POWER, AND GIVE IT TO THOSE LIKE ME, THOSE LOYAL TO THEM AND THEIR CAUSE! AND THEIR FINAL PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR INSOLENCE STILL AWAITS, IN PROJECT ATOM, BEYOND THE VAULT DOOR!"

He was right. Silver, the commander, the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, and himself. All beaten. Some even dead. And the rest of the Knights of Man had just fled in terror at the sight of him. Was this the Pantheon's true power?

The human's face contorted in rage. Maybe not a good thing considering his enemy, but it was what he felt.

"You motherfucking..."

He held out a hand. Death's scythe was wrenched from Anger's hand and flew into his own. He raised it and prepared to strike at Anger, but his hallucination raised a hand too. He evidently also had telekinesis now, because War's flail from the next room came to join them just in time to block Second's attack.

"YOU CANNOT WIN. THIS IS A HOPELESS FIGHT. IT IS PRE-DETERMINED. THE PANTHEON HAS SENT ME HERE TO BREAK YOU, AND MAKE YOU OBEDIENT. AND THEN YOU WILL CONTINUE AS THE NARRATIVE DEMANDS. YOU WILL DO AS WE SAY. KILL WHO WE TELL YOU TO. CEASE YOUR FRUITLESS PLANS TO FIGHT US. AND WHEN THE FINAL BATTLE COMES, AND EQUESTRIA IS ASHES, YOU HAVE OUR PERMISSION TO DIE."

"Quoting Bane now, are we?" Second muttered, "And you call me pathetic. You can't even come up with your own boasts!"

Anger struck him with the flail, and the human fell on the floor, winded.

"ANY FURTHER SARCASTIC COMMENTS? WE WILL BE GLAD TO HEAR THEM."

Second looked up at him and grit his teeth.

"No. Just my rebuttal."

He climbed up slowly, supporting himself on the scythe.

"You can fuck with the ponies all you want, because that's what you're good at. What we all were! But I'm not a fucking pony! If you fuck with Lord Second, then I will fuck you right back! And believe me, when you fuck with Lord Second, you get fucked so hard that legends are written about it! Ever heard of Revelations? It's all about the Second coming! HA!"

He raised scythe again and pulled back, as if ready to strike. He grinned maniacally.

"So I suggest you bend over and just accept it."

Anger raised the flail again to defend himself from the attack, but then, the human did something he never expected.

He pointed the scythe's blade at himself, and slashed his own throat open.

"AGGHHH!"

Second screamed in pain, but as his throat was cut open, glowing green blood came shooting out, and it splattered all over the personification of his anger, who screamed in agony as his skin was burned off. A nearby wooden desk was also soaked in the fluid, and it began to hiss. The table caught fire. Soon, so did Anger.

"WHAT?! NOOOOOOOO!"

The human smiled wearily as his throat wound closed back up again, and he looked at the burning lab around him.

"Huh. My blood sets things on fire," he said as smoke began to fill the room, "Ironic..."

He stumbled back.

"I'm feeling...a little woozy..."

Howard fell over and landed on his back, drifting off into unconsciousness as the screams of his enemy filled his ears.

To him, it was like the sweetest lullaby.

END.

Author's notes:

Well, I was wrong about it being an interlude, like I'm wrong about everything.

I don't often say this, but I'd like to thank someone for helping me with a chapter; Garion, who I think made this one slightly better thanks to his criticism and advice. Sometimes I need some perspective.

Also, I just want to take a poll. How many of my audience are Fallout junkies like I am? I'm writing Fallout fiction as well right now, and I want to see how many of you would be interested in seeing it. And no, not Fallout Equestria. Regular Fallout. You know. The one with those scruffy looking two legged things?

Next Chapter: FRIENDSHIP TRAINING.

Chapter 26: Spirit of Harmony

"But the princesses had mercy, and the spiders were so few, and so pitiful. Their way of life already destroyed, the home they once knew gone, and their two attempts and taking a new one both foiled. Though they had done terrible things, the spiders were desperate, and only wanted some place in this world to live.

Princess Celestia looked down at these poor creatures, and showed them kindness. She took them far north, to the mountains, knowing that the prejudices of ponies after the war would lead to them being hunted down, were she to give them asylum in Equestria, and the general public was informed, for the most part, that the Legion had been eradicated completely.

Let this record show the truth of what really happened, so that when Equestria is ready to forgive, and let the spiders back into their country with open arms, that they can learn not of the cruelty and ruthlessness of their princesses that led to spider genocide, as the censored history books will let you believe, but of their mercy and kindness, that gave even Equestria's enemies a second chance.

Because there are always better alternatives than death and war."

-Princesses' mercy, extract from The Truth of the Spider Legion, by Cpt. Shining Armor, all copies currently held in Canterlot Royal Archives Vault 4K.

***

"Morning, Chains!" Gold Coin said cheerfully, "After last night, I'm feeling refreshed. Did you sleep well? What about Sliske? I'm assuming she was with you all night."

Chain Mail grumbled.

"She was. And I caught herpes."

"...What?"

The captain continued on past Gold Coin, leaving the business pony to just stare at him in confusion as he left.

"No way..." he said to himself, "He didn't...I hope he didn't..."

He was beginning to feel a little ill.

"Ewww...Chains...Why would you even?"

***

"Seriously!" Gold Coin insisted, "I swear it's true! Chain Mail and Sliske fucked and she gave him herpes!"

Soft Spoken laid back on his bed in the doctor's office and shivered.

"I always knew there was something off about that captain...Damn creepy xenophile..."

Dr. Cornelius walked over to them.

"Everything checks out," he said, "You're free to go, Mister Spoken. Just try not to get yourself hurt again too soon. That armour's medical systems are rather badly damaged, and they were hardly miracle workers to begin with."

"Thank you, doctor."

The lab coated spider watched the two of them closely as they left.

***

"No, I mean it!" Dr. Cornelius whispered, "The alien and your captain were screwing all night. At least that's what I heard. She's got a demon's body now! An infected one! That's just plain unhealthy."

Luna blanched.

"Why did you feel the need to share that?" she groaned, "Doctor-patient confidentiality used to mean something..."

"Thank you for your concern, doctor. Don't worry about a thing. We'll sort it out," Celestia promised.

Dr. Cornelius nodded, and then scuttled out the room again.

"...What are we supposed to do?" the older sister asked.

"Don't look at me!" Luna replied, "I have no experience in cross-species relationships! Ask Spike."

***

"Really? That's messed up," Spike commented, "And before you say anything, princess, it was totally different with me and Rarity, because I am not a diseased demon space ghost. And I never actually did anything with her. Much as I would have liked to."

"Shhh!" Celestia replied, looking over her shoulder at the rest of the snow covered village, "Don't say stuff like that too loud! I don't want to it to get around that Chain Mail and Sliske are doing it!"

"What was that princess?" asked Spike, "I can't hear you over the wind!"

"I SAID I DON'T WANT IT TO GET AROUND THAT CHAIN MAIL AND SLISKE ARE DOING IT!"

Explodey walked out from behind a nearby building, and gave them an odd look.

"Chain Mail and Sliske are doing it? Good for them! Never knew they had it in them!"

***

"Explodey?"

The unicorn looked down to see Mystic Chant in his way.

"Oh, hi Mystic!" he said cheerfully, "Have you packed up yet? Arcelio says we might be staying the night at the monastery!"

"Yeah, but I wanted to ask you a question. A few of the spiders were saying that Mr. Chain Mail and Sliske were 'doing it'. What does that mean?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked! Has your father given you the talk about how foals are made yet?"

"My school did," Mystic recalled.

"Well it's that!"

"Oh."

The colt was rather under whelmed.

"And Mr. Chain Mail and Sliske are doing that?"

"Yep!"

Mystic raised an eyebrow.

This requires additional research.

***

"MR. CHAIN MAIL!" Mystic shouted as he walked into the bunk, "IS IT TRUE YOU AND SLISKE ARE GOING TO HAVE A FOAL?!"

A vein popped on the captain's forehead.

"Fuck my life..."

***

Second tried to open his eyes. Unfortunately, one of them would not, that being his organic eye. His artificial one was still functioning, at least so far as he could see out of it, but even that he couldn't really look around with. There was something covering his face too, and he found himself unable to breathe.

Damn it...

He grabbed at his face and pulled. It was painful, but seconds later he ripped off a mass of melted pink plastic that used to be his mask. It made him look...human, again. Now it was gone.

His skin was screaming at him, but the pain stopped quickly enough. His healing factor took care of it, repairing the damage, at least up until he was only as wounded as he always was since the zombie serum was injected. The burns from the Mages' Guild would never go away, so long as he carried the plague to help him command the zombies.

The zombies which weren't even around anymore, and pretty much functioned independently. He was beginning to think zombifying himself was a stupid idea.

"Where am I?" he muttered.

Well, by the looks of it, a burned out laboratory.

That's when it came back to him. Anger. The battle. Blackspire Research. He had set the place on fire with his mutated blood in an attempt to kill the phantom that menaced him. Looking just to his right at a roughly humanoid corpse, charred and black, he smiled.

"Now where are the others...?"

He pulled himself back to his proper height and strode through the hole in the wall. In the room beyond, he found yet more fire damage, suggesting it had spread. The bodies of the Four Horses were not present, while Anger's still was. And no-one had bothered to wake him. So that ruled out a team coming in here to collect bodies. The Four Horses probably got out okay.

Commander Steroid Abuser was less lucky, as evidenced when Second nearly tripped over his severed head.

"Ewwwww..."

He backed away from the remains of the commander, and his foot clanged against something metal. He turned around and looked down at it, seeing a suit of warped power armour lying before him. Its occupant had not worn a helmet, so he could clearly see the skinless, blackened skull of the mare who'd once worn it, limply resting on the floor.

Second sighed.

"Silver..."

There was a moment of silence. He just stared down at the dead mare, still in her armour.

Then he frowned and kicked it.

"Silver! Stop sleeping on the job!

He bent down and placed two fingers on the skull. Immediately, a speck of red appeared where he had touched it, and it spread out across the skull, growing into flesh, which then grew skin and a coat over the top, forming a pony head. The head immediately sprouted a long white mane before opening its eyes.

Silver sucked in a deep breath of air, as if she had just surfaced after nearly drowning. She stared around her in bewilderment.

"What happened?! Where am I?!" she shouted.

"Where you are, is Blackspire Research, where SOMEONE, not naming any names here, decided to selfishly go die on me, and leave me to fight the personification of my own anger all alone. I had to burn down the fucking lab! I had melted plastic dry on my face! My robot eye is malfunctioning! And then along came you, little miss 'oh look at me, I'm going to sacrifice my own life to protect an immortal superpowered deity and it'll be all poignant and shit', with your useless power armour and your ability to intercept incoming sharp objects! Real fucking good work there!"

Silver stared up at him.

"Hey, sir? FUCK YOU. If you just brought me back to shout at me some more, then I'd rather just stay dead! At least then I got some peace!"

She laid her head back down on the floor and simmered angrily.

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Did you ever think about me down here though? Surrounded by these fucking yokels pretending to be civilised! Do you want to know why I don't just bring back every single one of my dead soldiers like I just did to you?"

Silver looked over to him again.

"Because they're all completely drop-dead retarded! They get killed by the fucking hundreds, because they're useless! And idiots like that deserve to stay dead! And if their own idiocy doesn't kill them, then it falls to me to do Charles Darwin's job for him, like in the hotel with Water Treatment! You are one, single, solitary pony I've met so far with any degree of competency or value, at least who's on my side. Do NOT go getting yourself killed for stupid reasons, and that's an order!"

The pegasus tried to think of something to say, but Second was already storming out the lab again. She struggled to try and get up, but the power armour's systems had failed. Without the appropriate programs running, this armour was impossible to move in without a significant degree of effort. It was a chore to even take it off like this.

Her mane fell in front of her eyes. She tried to blow it out the way, but then looked more closely at it.

"Why is my mane white now?!" she called out.

Second walked back into the room, this time carrying a giant knife.

"Wasn't it always white?"

He knelt down next to her and stuck the knife in the armour. It pierced surprisingly easy, but stopped short of Silver herself. He began to cut the armour open.

"No! It wasn't!"

"Then what colour was it?"

When the cut was large enough, Second stuck his fingers between the two halves and wrenched the metal apart, tearing the upper part of the armour off and freeing Silver to move some more.

"Are you seriously telling me you don't remember what colour my mane was?!"

"I really wasn't paying attention. A lot of stuff's been happening, in case you didn't notice."

"Why did you make my mane white?!"

"That's what I thought it was! Shut up! If you don't like it white then you can dye it!"

Enough of the power armour was ripped off now that Silver could crawl out of what remained of it. She looked herself over for any more differences in physiology, because apparently Second recreated her body from memory rather than what she was actually like. She was glad he got the cutie mark right at least. Coat was still the same too.

"...Did I always have muscles like that?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Second, "Ask Thug Lyfe. I'm sure he'd be able to tell you."

He tossed the knife over his shoulder and began strolling around the room again. Silver followed him with her eyes.

"...Sir, about Thug Lyfe-"

"Not now, Silver."

The human reached down and pulled two damaged weapons from underneath some wreckage, the flail that War had used and the scythe belonging to Death. He tossed the flail over to her, and she caught it by the handle in her teeth.

"First thing's first. When Anger attacked he came busting out of a vault that no-one knew about, and before I killed him he was raving about Project Atom or some such. We need to see what's in there."

***

"Morning," Chain Mail said curtly as he stepped into line with his friends.

Legionnaire Arcelio stood in front of them. They were just waiting on the princesses now. Normally the captain was the one to lead the others ahead, but this time he, his friends, and the princesses were the ones waiting to be escorted, so he just stood besides Soft Spoken at the end of the line and looked around him distantly.

His friend was staring at him. Chain Mail noticed, and looked the old stallion in the eyes.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," Softy replied.

"It must be something. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Hey, I'm not looking at you," Softy said defensively, "Certainly not judging you either, no siree."

Chain Mail advanced on him.

"If you have something to say, grandpa, say it."

"I heard about your herpes."

"Please tell me you-"

"And also about relations with certain nameless demonic alien mares."

The white earth pony groaned.

"I am never going to live this down, am I?" he muttered, "SLISKE!"

"What?"

The dark mare who had been standing at the other end of the line trotted over to their end. The others all looked on curiously too.

"Could you please tell Softy that we didn't sleep together, and that you didn't give me herpes?"

Sliske raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, Chain Mail is right. I'm not the one who gave him herpes."

"But he does have herpes, right?" asked Gold Coin, inserting himself into the conversation.

"Yes. Yes he does."

Chain Mail tried to speak up to explain himself, but Mystic interrupted.

"Did he give you herpes? "

"Hmm..." Sliske replied, "I don't think so."

"You don't think so", Explodey prodded, "But it's a possibility?"

"Lots of things are possibilities. Unlikely, but still possible. I certainly would be upset if Chains did give me something."

Chain Mail felt betrayed.

"Guys-" he began.

"So you did sleep together?" said Gold Coin.

"I never said that," Sliske answered.

"Look, you don't have to lie to us," said Softy, "As damn creepy as that is, I have seen worse."

"What's wrong with their relationship?" asked Explodey.

Gold Coin snorted.

"You mean aside from the fact that one of them's not even a pony, but some inequine thing that just sort of...looks...like one..."

Explodey didn't change his expression. Gold Coin blinked.

"Okay. Point taken."

"I AM NOT SLEEPING WITH SLISKE!" Chain Mail shouted, blushing deeply, "SLISKE, TELL THEM!"

"Yes, dear. Chain Mail is not sleeping with me."

Explodey grabbed Chain Mail and pulled him into a hug that would have choked the captain to death if he still needed oxygen to live.

And yes, he did this in spite of the armour.

"IT'S OKAY, CAPPY!" he shouted over the wind, "YOU'RE WITH FRIENDS NOW! FRIENDS WHO WON'T JUDGE YOU FOR YOUR BIZARRE TASTE IN MARES!"

Regardless of the fact he didn't need air, Chain Mail still found it unpleasant to be without, and was gasping for breath and kicking about, trying to throw the unicorn off.

"Let me go, Explodey, you fucking jackass!"

Chain Mail stood up on his hind legs and began walking backwards, while Explodey clung to his neck and swung back and forth from it like a pendulum. They nearly both fell over, but they were caught in a soft, golden glow.

Princess Celestia's magic pulled them both apart and floated them besides each other in the air. The captain fidgeted awkwardly, while Explodey hung upside down in the magical field and looked up at her.

"What is going on here?" Luna asked as she came up the steps behind her sister too.

"Oh, just a good old scuffle between friends, your majesty!" said Arcelio as he approached, "Have you brought along the elements?"

Luna gestured to a pair of saddlebags she was carrying. With her magic, she opened them up and floated out four stone balls and one golden necklace with a gem shaped like Gold Coin's cutie mark.

"Very good! We're all here now by the looks of it too! If you're ready, it's time we made our way up to the monastery! The Harmonites await!"

***

The vault turned out to be a giant freezer. Oh sure, there was lab equipment and terminals and tables and chairs underneath the ice. But that was it; everything was covered in ice. Like none of it was relevant.

The thing with the most prominence though was undoubtedly the shivering green unicorn with the blue mane, strapped to a giant metal table to the left side of the room. His eyes were darting back and forth, and his breath was visible in the air. He noticed them.

"H-h-h-help me..."

Second looked down at him curiously. His eyes searched for the pony's cutie mark, half expecting it to be a map with a pin in it, and the other half expecting it to be a number three in French script. Instead, he found a radiation hazard symbol.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The pony closed his eyes and winced, giving the impression that he was desperately trying to remember.

"N-Nuclear Anomaly!" he answered, loudly, "C-Can you g-get me out? It's f-f-freezing in here!"

The human remained wary, but nevertheless, a quick wave of his hand released the pony from his shackles, and Nuclear Anomaly rolled sideways off the table.

"Now that I've released you, I want some answers. Where did you come from, and what are you doing here?"

The unicorn nodded, and crawled back onto his hooves again. He began to explain as he slowly limped towards the vault exit, his rescuers just behind him.

"I-I was b-b-born in this vault, s-several days ago. I th-think I'm cloned from s-somepony, but I don't know who. That red m-monster. He was m-my guard."

They had crossed the threshold back into the empty room outside the vault door. Finally out of the cold, Nuclear Anomaly collapsed back onto his knees, and rolled over onto his side.

"He wasn't...the one who made me...though..."

Second stood over the pony and looked down at him with concern.

"Who made you then?"

"It was...some kind of...mutated human, I guess? He was a bit like you...but he was short, and green, and he had these pointy ears, and he-"

"Creativity."

Second turned away from the unicorn and threw his arms up in the air.

"FUCK!"

He slammed a fist into the closest wall, smashing right through it. He leaned up against that same wall as he groaned.

"Why? Why can't I catch a break? All I want is to work on my super secret project in peace. I want to get to work on Pandora! Why do these people keep making my life difficult?"

He pulled his fist out of the wall, and turned again to lean his back against it as he slid to the floor.

"These Pantheon dickheads won't stop until I'm tearing my own hair out..."

He buried his face in his hands and laid there against the wall. Nuclear Anomaly continued to shiver by himself on the other side of the room.

Silver shrugged, and went over to her boss to comfort him.

"Are you okay, sir?"

"No, I'm not. Because I know, sooner or later, that I'm going to have to confront Creativity. And he..."

Second pulled his hands away from his face, and tilted his head back. A look of slow realization crossed his features, gradually moving into horror and fear.

"He called me..."

Now Silver was worried too.

"What did who call you sir?"

"He called me Howard! Sexuality did it first. They addressed me by first name. And...even though they were working for the Pantheon...it was Conscience and Ambition who first suggested to me the idea that there was a meta narrative. And then my brother..."

Second stood up again.

"I've been a fool."

"Sir, what's wrong?"

"Layers, Silver! This meta thing goes deeper than I thought. There are far more layers of meta fiction within meta fiction. The core movie, about me versus the Elements of Harmony. Then the meta movie, made by the new Studio B, explaining me as an animator for the original show who got stuck here, but which never mentions me by name according to my brother. This is the level that hallucinations are acting upon. They're characters in this meta movie..."

He turned to Silver, and began to smile.

"But there's a third. This story about the Pantheon of B making a meta movie, my brother coming to warn me, and the hallucinations addressing me by my real name and initially suggesting the possibility of a meta narrative when they would all be part of that meta narrative are all indicative of a third layer of meta fiction. There are at least two fake versions of the Pantheon of B, both lower on the hierarchy than whatever is controlling them..."

Silver blinked.

"Well...then what are we going to do about it, sir?"

"I'll tell you what we're going to do, Silver. We're going to keep digging. I will stop at nothing to find the big boss responsible for all this. And when I meet the highest authority, I am going to kill them."

***

The ponies could not help but admire the architecture as they entered the grand monastery of the Harmonites, and looked at the large open hall before them. Celestia had called it a repurposed temple of demon worship, built by the heathens of long ago. Now, it was home to the elusive spiders, the very last of their kind, studying and learning in secret, of the values of friendship and harmony.

On the walls, there were carvings. It was clear from the way it was cut that there were once different murals underneath, likely those of the demon worshiping builders of the temple, but they had been smoothed over by the new residents and changed into different images.

Arcelio bowed, and went ahead to fetch the monks. The princesses idly stood in the middle of the room, as did Mystic Chant, but the rest all were drawn to the murals on the walls of the grand hall.

Soft Spoken and Chain Mail stood side by side as they looked upon an elaborate carving depicting the original war between Equestria and the Legion. On the left side of the mural, one could see a volcano, and a great demonic beast trapped within it, as villages of spiders gathered around the base, farming and hunting animals.

Moving right, the volcano could be seen erupting, and the villages dropping dead. Demons crawled out, and the spiders could be seen taking to longboats and moving across the ocean. Around the middle of the mural, they land on Equestrian shores, and one odd image depicted demons and spiders fighting side by side against the ponies.

Gold Coin meanwhile stood on the other side of the room, looking at a different one. This carving didn't depict a series of events or tell a narrative, but was instead one static image, of a pair of rainbows forming a double helix and rising up to the moon, while six spiders and six demons stood at the bottom of it on a rocky island, in the centre of a raging storm in the middle of the ocean.

Explodey and Sliske though had found the most interesting image, depicting an army of spiders, Atlanteans and changelings under attack from some almost indescribable monstrosity that took up half the picture. And in the middle of it all, facing the diverse crowd of creatures, a human riding on the back of a dark alicorn, drawing his arm back as if preparing to whip them with the long metal chain trailing through the air behind him.

Sliske noticed words beneath the carving, and pointed them out to Explodey excitedly. They both bent down to get a better view of it, and backed away to get better light. It was in Equestrian, but the script style was ancient. It was a title for the carving;

"The Rider and the Four Armies..."

The ponies all turned around suddenly at the sound of the new voice. Standing at the far end of the great hall were six relatively small spiders covered in robes of grey or faint blue. The lead spider's robes were actually purple.

"What you all see on these walls, is the story of the old Legion, and how the Harmonites came to be."

The ponies gradually returned to the centre of the room where Celestia and Luna had been standing, as the rest of the spiders moved across the great hall to meet them.

"Long ago..." the head continued, "There was an eruption. The Great Eruption, it was known as. Our homelands to the west, mighty Arachnia, had been a home to billions. But the spiders are a dark people. We have evil in our souls. We are not born good, and corrupted, as ponies are. We are born to murder and destroy, and we must overcome our own natures to become better. The demons, they know this. It's why we are so susceptible to possession. Our hearts are more open to that darkness than most. And in Arachnia, we fought long, bloody wars against the demons."

The two groups finally came face to face, and the ponies could see the spider elders up close. The old spider in the purple robes smiled.

"Eons ago, the spiders learned that you needed good to conquer evil, but the problem was, that we were never that good ourselves. It wasn't light and dark in our war, it was all shades of grey. But the early spiders did not believe that there could only be evil in the world.

"They searched all of the kingdom, and all their neighbouring kingdoms, and brought together those purest of heart and those most virtuous of spirit. The original Elements of Harmony, who ended the war in favour of the spiders, and put an end to the darkness in our lands, by trapping the monster who menaced us in the volcano. And thus ended the reign of the demon king Beelzebub, who would later be succeeded by Tirac."

"But there was the eruption, wasn't there?" asked Gold Coin, "Arachnia was destroyed."

The Harmonite nodded.

"The demon kings have a strict line of succession. A new leader is chosen when they destroy the previous one. Beelzebub himself took power by slaying Lucifer, who came before. The demon king had the most power. But Tirac stole that power by destroying him, which he did by erupting the volcano that we had imprisoned our enemy within, and taking the land of the spiders with it. After his defeat in the Eclipse Crisis, Tirac could have been succeeded by another, younger demon as well, had they been able to kill him. The fact that he is still their leader proves that any would-be challengers must have failed, though we do suspect that Qramstarflokrinhir may one day take his throne."

"So your country was destroyed...and you went to war with Equestria?" said Soft Spoken.

"To find a new home, correct. The demons had not even been intending to wipe us out. We were collateral damage, in the demons' own civil war. But we had lost everything regardless. Our spirits were weak, and we were desperate, and we allowed our inner darkness to overcome us thanks to that. The Legion did a terrible thing, fighting the Equestrians of long ago. And worse than that, the tidal destruction."

"Moving the moon," Chain Mail clarified.

"Indeed. The images you see on the walls, of the demons fighting with the spiders, is metaphorical. It represents how the Legion of the time surrendered to their darker sides, and put to use their knowledge of Harmony to create its inverse. For we knew, that although we needed the purity of true Harmony to fight demons, mortals were another matter. We drew on our own inner darkness that we had allowed to fester, and channelled their power into five necklaces and one crown, cast from platinum, to create Harmony's darker twin."

The other spiders behind the leader looked visibly uncomfortable as he described them.

"Deception, Treachery, Cruelty, Greed, Misery, and the sum of all of them, Death. Together, they formed the Elements of Conquest. Unlike precious Harmony, where magic grew from friendship and virtue, the derivatives we crafted fed on our darkness. And by then, our inner darkness had run so rampant, that we were a force to be reckoned with. In one fell swoop, the moon was pulled out of its regular orbit, the ocean tides went wild, and we had wiped out your coastline. And thus began our war."

"And how, after all that, did anypony let your ancestors get away alive?" asked Gold Coin, "All the history books say that your people were wiped out in a barrage of dragon fire for your crimes."

"We showed mercy."

Everypony looked to Celestia.

"The war continued for two years after their initial appearance, that's true. But it didn't end in a needless slaughter. When the spiders were beaten back, at their most vulnerable, their leaders finally overthrown and most of their remaining military helpless, we said 'stop'. Me, and my sister, and Twilight, and her friends. We realized we had to better than them. Most of all though, it was Fluttershy that brought us to our senses. She told us that we were supposed to be good, and that everyone deserved a second chance."

"And a second chance we were given," the Harmonite said, "Even after all that, the princesses here took us north, took us to this mountain, once home to worshippers of the very demons that had tried to destroy us. We cleansed it, and settled here.

"It was our second chance, and the mercy we were shown inspired us. We were reminded of what we were before. Of how it was our good sides that helped us against the demons, not the darkness we tried to weaponize in our war against the ponies. The Harmonites were born, making our home in the monastery here, and we spent one thousand years in this snowy land seeking our redemption, and trying to reconnect with that side of ourselves."

The ponies found that they had nothing to really say to that. It was that awkward period of silence, as the two sides just stood there, neither saying anything, that Explodey decided to interrupt.

"Where did Arcelio go?"

"He wanted to make a dramatic re-entrance," said one of the Harmonites at the back.

"...What?"

"You'll see."

And indeed they did. At the far end of the hall where the Harmonites had emerged from, so too did Arcelio, now covered in dark grey armour all over, instead of just his main body. He stood on his four back legs, so that they could see a red cape trailing down behind him. He walked slowly, and deliberately over to them, the metal of his armour clanking on the stone with every step, and dropped back onto all eights as he stood before them.

The lead Harmonite sighed.

"Might I introduce High General Arcelio, leader of the Spider Legion..."

"Yes, we've met," Gold Coin replied, uninterested.

Only a slight portion of Arcelio's face could be seen, but he was clearly offended.

"Aren't you the least bit impressed?" he asked, "I have secretly been the head of the entire Legion this whole time!"

"Not really," Gold Coin answered, "The village is just as small as before, and we're here to see the Harmonites, not your legion, so you're not really that much more important to us than when you were just our escort."

Arcelio spluttered.

"I- But- Wasn't the reveal at least a little surprising?"

"No. I think it's actually rather stupid and contrived. Why did you feel the need to hide this from us again?"

"Because-"

"Come to think of it, if your weird spider religion is all about learning the virtues of the elements of harmony, then isn't this in breach of that? You know, being a deceptive act, and everything? Doesn't seem very honest."

"And that's why the high general is not an official Harmonite monk," the purple robed spider said quietly.

And that's how Gold Coin, corporate executive and regular earth pony, made the high general of the Spider Legion cry.

***

The Four Horses of the Apocalypse were all laying in their beds in the infirmary of Blackspire Research, on the bottom floor of the building. They laid in a row before Second, all still unconscious from the beating they had received at the hands of Anger the previous night.

A unicorn doctor was reading data from a clipboard at the foot of War's bed, while another was reapplying the safety spell to prevent him setting his own bed on fire with his mane.

"Are we ready yet?" Second called.

"Yes, sir."

The human turned back to the bed behind him, where Nuclear Anomaly laid, wrapped up in blankets. Three other doctors were gathered around him, two of them talking to each other about the tests while levitating their own clipboards, and another adjusting some monitoring equipment in preparation for hooking it up to their newest patient.

"We'll soon get to the bottom of this," the head doctor to Second's left promised, "Just need a small blood sample, and we can run it against the database and find who our friend here was cloned from."

The human nodded, and the doctor pulled a syringe and trotted up to the bed. The other three moved aside to make room. To Second's right, Silver watched in morbid curiosity as well.

"This won't hurt a bit," the doctor assured, "Just please try not to struggle for me, okay?"

Nuclear Anomaly nodded in understanding.

"Good."

He tensed as the needle pierced his foreleg, just by his shoulder. There was an ominous sizzling sound.

"...That doesn't sound good," the unicorn said, frowning.

He tried to remove the blood sample, but that turned out to be a mistake. The syringe filled with a glowing green liquid, and it instantly melted through the plastic and began to spill on the floor. Without coming into contact with wood, nothing set on fire this time, but it still made that hissing, sizzling noise and let off fumes.

The doctor stood completely still, staring down at it. Had he not been holding that with his magic, he could have melted his face or hooves off. Second meanwhile looked down at the substance too, and then held up his own forearm to stare at the slightly green veins he could see in his wrist.

"...We're gonna need a bigger lab."

***

"...I won't lie, ponies, these next few days will be the most gruelling of your entire lives."

"I doubt that," Softy muttered.

The spiders had led them out of the spacious entrance hall, and the group were now following them through a series of dark, candlelit corridors. The ceiling was really high, and every few steps or so they'd pass a small alcove where the spiders had stored some sacks or crates, or in one instance a giant vase full of grain.

"We speak only the truth," the head Harmonite continued, "These exercises will kick your ass and make you cry for your mothers. But if you can survive them, if you can endure, then you will become something much more than mere mortals."

They emerged into another hall. This one was small, about the size of the barracks they had stayed in last night. The most interesting feature of the room was that in the middle of it, a semicircle of six plastic folding chairs awaited them. They were all facing a small wooden podium and an easel holding a giant pad of paper. The front page of it read "QUALITIES".

"Please, everypony take a seat," said one of the lesser Harmonites as the others all stood behind a different chair, sans the lead spider who stood by the easel.

Gold Coin looked around warily as he took his place.

"Is this our training? Or is this an Alcoholics Anonymous meet?"

"Ahem. I believe it is time that formal introductions were made."

The purple robed spider scuttled up to the podium to speak to the ponies.

"My name is Elder Agostinho. The five other Harmonites in the room with us, going from my left to my right around the circle of chairs, are Cassian, Quintillus, Julius, Regulus, and Seneca. You may recognise Seneca as the one who led the exorcism the previous day, and Julius and Quintillus as the two who assisted him."

"So..." Chain Mail said awkwardly, "What are we doing?"

"TRAINING!" Agostinho bellowed, "You six are the foulest, most gutter-mouthed, argumentative, mean-spirited, self-loathing, dysfunctional group of idiots that the elements of harmony have ever chosen as their avatars. Oh, you'll use them, because they've chosen you. But you need to be friends for that to work. Proper friends. And before you can become friends, you have to start with actually liking each other."

He gestured to the easel.

"So let's start with some positives. Each one of you must list one good trait about Gold Coin. Starting now."

"What?" the yellow earth pony said, taken by surprise.

"Mr. Spoken, you first!" the elder urged, "One good thing about Gold Coin!"

"Ummm..." the old stallion struggled, "Uh...He...He makes for a good debate. I can have a disagreement with him, and he can defend his views."

Gold Coin gave him an odd look.

"That's good," said Agostinho, "Mystic?"

"He saved me when my dad went crazy..." the unicorn mumbled.

The Harmonite looked to Explodey now.

"He can be understanding at times. When he's not shouting at or insulting everypony, he sometimes has some good advice."

"Well..." Gold Coin began.

"Great! Sliske?"

"He killed an alicorn."

"Doesn't count," said the Harmonite behind Sliske's chair.

"Okay...Uhh...Let's see...Well, to be fair to him, when he found out that the god that his mysterious evil cult worshipped was, in fact, evil, he seemed to take it pretty well."

Gold Coin glared at Sliske, who shrugged nonchalantly. As Chain Mail was the only one left, he decided to give his answer.

"Gold Coin is very committed to his morality and the greater good," he pointed out, "His entire reason for helping the Brotherhood originally was that he thought it'd be best for Equestria, and when that turned out to not be the case, he was immediately willing to fight against Second."

Agostinho nodded sagely.

"Now," he said solemnly, "In the same order, each of you list out a negative trait of Gold Coin's."

"You're so stupid that you couldn't tell that history's greatest monster wasn't actually a messiah."

"You sweat all the time, and smell bad."

"You're extremely unattractive, and have a terrible physique for your age and racial background."

"You shout, scream, and yell obscenities at the most inappropriate times."

"You're a douche and nopony likes you."

Gold Coin stared at the other five, shocked by the sheer speed of how quickly they came up with all that.

"I...You..." he spluttered, "Fuck you guys too!"

The elder sighed.

"We've got a lot of work to do..."

***

"SAMPLE STABALISED," the synthetic voice of the supercomputer reported, "HUMAN DNA ACQUIRED."

A large transparent beaker almost the size of Second himself sat on the table in front of him and the other researchers. Inside, a single drop of green blood that the human had donated had now expanded to encompass half the container, and was thrashing about violently inside, almost as if alive and trying to smash its way out.

Tubes and testing equipment were attached to the beaker and its lid. Most led back to the supercomputer attached to the wall behind them, which was now displaying all manner of graphs, charts, diagrams, figures and research articles it was pulling up copies of to consult.

On the table right next to it, an identical beaker with identical monitoring equipment was hooked up to an identical supercomputer on the opposite wall. That one contained a blood sample not from Second, but from Nuclear Anomaly. From looking at it, you would never have been able to tell.

"Sir?" said Silver, "I'm completely lost. What's going on here again?"

"Shit's fucked up and weird, so we gots to 'splain it with science."

There really was no response to a sentence like that.

"All ready?!" shouted the assigned leader of the research team, "And...Synchronise!"

The supercomputers both started pulling up data from each other. Graphs were ran against graphs, figures against figures, and all test data was compared, analysed, and speculated on in the span of minutes.

Then, the words came up on both screens in all red capital letters, as the synthetic voice read them out in case of blindness or illiteracy.

"FORTY THREE PERCENT MATCH."

Second slapped his own forehead.

"As the exasperated porn director said to the racist unicorn actor, fuck this gay earth."

***

"Honesty exercises will help you get to know each other. What you need to learn here is absolute trust. I want each of you to reveal to the rest of us one secret that you've never told anypony before."

The elder looked around the group.

"Explodey. Let's start with you."

"Umm..." the unicorn pondered, "Oh! Sometimes, at night, I have vivid dreams that I'm a detective in a crime drama story, and at the end of it, I find out that it was really a split personality of me that did it!"

"That makes a disturbing amount of sense..." Gold Coin commented.

"Mr. Gold Coin, why don't you share a story with the group?"

"Kay..."

He rubbed his chin as he thought of something to contribute.

"...When I was a colt, my family took me to Manehattan to learn business skills from some relatives out there. I pretended like I was really slow and didn't get it, so that they'd have to take longer to teach me, because I was secretly stealing their expensive champagne and selling it cheap in an underground gambling den I stumbled on. I made almost three hundred bits before I had to go home and give up the business."

"Wow!" said Mystic, clearly impressed, "That's cool!"

"No, it is not cool, it is very, very bad," Soft Spoken chastised, "And shame on you, Goldie. You're a bad influence."

"What? I was asked to share a secret! That's mine. I'm not ashamed. I'm not even sorry. The bits I made kept me entertained for months."

"Might you want to share something, Mr. Spoken?" asked Agostinho.

The old stallion sighed.

I guess it's time...

"Well...I don't think there's anypony still alive today, save the princesses, who was around to remember my days as the ambassador of Tramplevania..."

***

"Is it good news?" asked Second hopefully, "Tell me it's good news."

"Depends on what you think of as good news, I guess," the researcher answered.

He levitated a clipboard and a rolled up scroll in front of him.

"Now...For a start, how many chromosomes are humans supposed to have?"

"...How many does it say I have?"

"Sixty."

"Not that."

"Well, bad news first then. On the off chance you ever encounter one of your own kind again, you're no longer able to have children."

Second sighed.

"On the bright side though," the researcher continued, levitating the scroll up, "You now can have children with all of these..."

He unfurled the scroll, which turned out to be massively long. The unicorn held the top of it in the air, while the roll hit the floor and rolled across the lab, past Silver, and right out the door. Second grabbed the scroll and started reading through it.

"...You couldn't have organised these alphabetically?"

"We pretty much wrote them down as we thought of them."

Second pulled a pair of reading glasses out of an inner pocket and began to read through the massive list, skipping large sections and skimming it as quickly as possible.

"...What the flying fuck is a kappa?"

"Oh, now that's a long story..."

"And a...wait...windigoes? Seriously?"

"Yep."

"They have actual bodies?"

"Sorta. They're extinct now though, so it's a moot point."

"...Minotaurs?"

"Eh..."

"...Domestic piranha?! How is there even such a thing?!"

"Ummm..."

"A fucking desert cactus?!"

"Theoretically-"

Second tossed the scroll behind him.

"I'm going to stop reading these now. My brain hurts. Silver, you've got a sixty minute break. I'm going up to the roof to wallow in despair and self pity. Don't interrupt me."

The human stormed out of the room angrily, smashing a fist into the wall as he left just to emphasise his displeasure.

"Ah...I'm never appreciated..." the researcher bemoaned as he magically rolled up the scroll again.

"I know that feeling..." Silver agreed.

She paused.

"Can I have that?"

***

"...And then I stomped on his throat," Softy finished, "And...yeah. That's why there are no vampires anymore."

All the others, including the princesses and the spiders, were staring at him in abject horror.

"It's always the quiet ones..." Chain Mail muttered.

"That's also why I swore off violence. I don't let myself get involved in conflicts, because I don't trust myself. I thought I wasn't the kind of pony that'd hurt others, even in anger. Not like other ponies. Then after that day...after my cousin died...I realised that I'm not above that. Forget about being the same as other ponies, though. I was worse than other ponies. I don't think even Helsing ever completely massacred his enemies like that..."

He closed his eyes.

"I had nightmares for years afterwards. I've carried that with me ever since. And now I just...try not to think about it. I went to a dark place there, and I'm never going back."

"...Damn, Softy," said Gold Coin, "And all this time I've been thinking of you as that harmless old guy who tags along with us. You're fucking scary."

"I'd never do anything like it again!" the old stallion protested, "I swear, I've never another incident since that day!"

"But you still did it, right? And that's terrible. You are an awful, awful pony, and you should feel bad."

"Goldie!" Chain Mail chided.

"HE'S RIGHT!" Softy cried, "I DON'T EVEN DESERVE TO BE HERE!"

He curled up in a ball in his chair and buried his face under his hooves. Everypony angrily glared at Gold Coin.

"What?" he asked, "I was being hyperbolic. I thought it'd be funny."

"You are not funny," Explodey bluntly stated.

"Oh, and you are?"

Soft Spoken continued to remain curled up in a ball. The Harmonite behind his chair tapped him on the shoulder lightly, and gave a concerned look to the rest of them.

"I think he's gone into a state of shutdown. A remorse-induced coma, if you will."

"Bullshit. There's no such thing," said Gold Coin.

"Oh, but there is, little pony," Agostinho replied, "Sadly though, the only known cure is for another to make a confession of something just as bad or worse. But what are the odds that we could even find-"

"I'm responsible for multiple genocides!" Sliske called out.

Softy immediately sat up again, so that he could join the rest of his friends in staring at Sliske.

"What?"

"Oh, damn it!" Chain Mail shouted, "Now you're going to have to explain to them like you did to me! We're going to be here all night now! Thanks, Sliske. Thanks a bunch."

***

Silver smiled to herself as she read through her list. Off to the right, there was a dinging sound as the door opened and rang the bell. She looked over to see a purple unicorn mare with an orange mane trotting over to her.

"Hey, Silver!" she said as she hopped up into the chair next to hers, "You weren't kidding about the mane. How did that even happen?"

"Second did it. Accidentally. I think."

A very tall and very thin unicorn stallion appeared next to them, dressed in a simple shirt and bow tie, and giving them a cheerful grin as he levitated a small notepad and a pencil in front of him.

"Hello, ladies! What can I get for you?"

"I'll have a tea and a salad," Silver answered, "Glade, what about you?"

"Umm..."

The other mare picked up the menu on their table with magic and studied it.

"...I'll have a tea as well, and also a cheese and tomato sandwich, and...I think one of the muffins too."

The waiter smiled and nodded, before leaving. Glade turned back to Silver.

"Are those weird to have together?"

"What, muffins and a cheese and tomato sandwich? I'd argue no more so than some of your other combinations."

"Hmm," the unicorn grunted, "So anyway, what's up with you, Silver? I haven't seen you in days! Did you really join our lord and master in assaulting the capital?"

"I did," Silver answered, unable to keep the pride from her voice, "In fact, I was the sole survivor of the attack. Second called me the only competent pony he's ever met."

"Ooh...Now that's a compliment, especially coming from a human."

"And, get this - He was planning to execute Commander Bullseye when next he saw him, without knowing he'd already died and been replaced, so he named me his successor."

Glade let out a small gasp.

"You are possibly looking at the new captain of the Knights of Man."

"Oh, Silver! That's wonderful!" Glade exclaimed, "Oh! Wait. Does this mean you'll be moving out of our apartment?"

"What? Why would I do that?"

"Well...I imagine you must be getting a higher pay grade now...Probably don't need a roommate anymore. You could go get your own place..."

"Oh," said Silver, "I...didn't think about that..."

The two sat in awkward silence for a minute.

"So...What are you reading, Silver?" Glade asked.

She picked up the list with her magic and floated it over to her side of the table.

"Oh, it's...something I picked up while I was with sir in Blackspire Research. He's suffering some mutations lately, and is no longer able to reproduce with his own kind if he ever met any again. But he can with any species on that list."

Glade raised an eyebrow.

"Let me guess. You're looking through this hoping to find 'pegasus' somewhere on the list, right?"

Silver sunk in her chair and hid her face beneath the table.

"Girl, have I ever told you that you've got strange tastes?"

She returned to looking through Silver's list.

"Wow. A hydra? Really?"

"Oh, it doesn't even matter!" Silver complained, emerging from beneath the table again, "It's not like he ever notices me! I've been around him two days already, and he still hasn't picked up on anything! I'm not even being subtle about it!"

"Well..." said Glade, "Be even less subtle. If he doesn't get it, make him get it. March right into his room as say, 'can I sleep with you?'"

"I tried that."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"And he still didn't get it?"

"He got me a dog basket."

Glade smirked, and covered her mouth with a hoof.

"I'm sorry," she giggled, "I know I shouldn't laugh, but that is pretty funny."

"Two teas, a small salad, a cheese and tomato sandwich, and a muffin," the waiter from earlier listed as he placed a tray with their orders on the table.

"Thank you," both mares said in unison.

"So what now?" asked Silver as she tried to pick up the tea with a hoof, "...Damn it, I think they gave me the wrong cup..."

"You've got mine. Hold on."

They switched tea cups so that Silver could now slip a hoof around the handle and lift it.

"Anyway," Glade continued, "God or not, this guys sounds dense as all hell. If I were you, I'd just drop any pretence of subtlety altogether. Next time you see him, jump him."

"Really?" said Silver, "You don't see any way that could go wrong?"

"If there's a problem, I'm sure he'd let you know. But it's clear to me that nothing short of that is going to make him get a clue. Where is he now?"

"Wallowing in self pity on the roof of Blackspire."

"Definitely sounds like the perfect guy."

"Hey, shut up!" Silver responded, "You don't know anything about Lord Second!"

"Okay. Tell me about Lord Second then."

"Well, he...umm...He's very...He gets angry a lot...Smashes things all the time...Uh...Drinks often...Occasionally gets solemn and contemplative. I've heard him mention his family a few times. But he takes a lot of pride in his work! Especially when he's...um...killing things..."

Silver and Glade sat in silence for another half a minute.

"Oh, and he eats ponies."

"Why are you attracted to him again?"

"I DON'T EVEN KNOW!"

***

"I need to step in here," Agostinho announced, "Because it needs to be properly stated. You are all awful, awful ponies. Do you know who the original Elements of Harmony were? A magical student, an apple farmer, a dress maker, a weather manager, a pastry chef, and an animal caretaker.

"And who are the Elements of Harmony this time? A foal, a stallion who murdered a village, a former member of an evil cult, a soldier, an inequine spawn of the very evil you're attempting to destroy, and the most notorious war criminal in the history of the galaxy. If you're meant to be the greatest representation of the virtues of Harmony, I'm almost convinced that there's no good left in the world."

"Yeah? Up yours too," Gold Coin shouted back.

"Hey, don't be rude to the spider guy!" Chain Mail ordered.

"He was rude first!"

"He was trying to make a point!" Explodey added.

"Your face is a point!"

"Well that may be true, but you're still ugly!"

"SILENCE!" Agostinho bellowed.

The argument immediately ceased.

"Okay, you idiots asked for it. Exercises in the snow. NOW."

***

After an hour of pacing on the roof of Blackspire Research, occasionally punching dents in ventilation equipment or knocking over scaffolding, Second was beginning to calm down.

"Okay," he said to himself, "Deep breaths. In...and out...There we go...I'm calm. I'm calm. So calm. Not even going to get angry at the stupid Pantheon and their stupid mutations."

He approached the door leading into the stairwell.

"Everything is going to be fine..." he reassured himself.

He reached down to grab the door handle, when it suddenly swung open, and the metal door slammed into his forehead.

"AHHHH!" he cried out, "Son of a bitch!"

"Sir?! Oh, I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?!"

Silver emerged from the stairs and began to move towards him, but he held up a hand to stop her and shooed her away, while clutching his forehead with the other.

"Fine! I'm fine. Fuck. I HATE when that happens!"

Now's the moment. Make your move!

"Look, sir-"

"This isn't healing! Why the fuck isn't it healing?!" Second shouted, "I think I'm going to get an actual bruise there!"

"Sir."

"I am going to have a big brown bruise on my forehead!"

"Sir."

"This shitty thing is-"

"SIR!"

"WHAT, SILVER?!"

The pegasus steeled herself.

"I just wanted to tell you-"

She was interrupted by an ominous sizzling sound, and a little drop of green that appeared on the human's forehead.

"Ah, damn it..." he said, "Silver, I'm sorry, whatever it is will have to wait. I need to contain this situation somehow. My blood can literally be weaponized, so I don't want to be bleeding all over the place..."

Before she could stop him, he sprinted over to the edge of the roof and leapt off, disappearing from view.

Silver stared up at the sky.

"Hey, Pantheon? Or whatever higher power controls this world? I don't like you."

***

"Fifty push-ups! Now!"

After ascending through the upper levels of the temple, the ponies had once again emerged onto the snowy blankness of Mt. Celestia. Only now, they were even higher up, standing on a huge stone platform sticking out the side of the mountain.

In the middle of it, there was what appeared to be a mausoleum, with an open door. It looked to have been the resting place of some important demon worshipper once, but it had been emptied out and left.

Despite the fact that they were now far above the village of New Arachnia, they had still not reached the peak. They had assumed that the monastery was on the peak, but apparently not.

"Are you fucking serious?"

"Mr. Gold Coin, do not question the wisdom of the Harmonites," Celestia chided.

"You heard the zombie princess," Agostinho agreed, "I want all six of you exercising right now."

"Why? What would that even accomplish?" Gold Coin pressed.

There was a loud cracking, as another Harmonite lashed a whip right near Gold Coin's hooves.

"Do it," the whip-wielding spider commanded, "Or we will break you."

The six of them all looked at each other briefly, and shrugged. They stood in a line together, and all crouched down to begin. Agostinho, the Harmonites and the princesses stood in a line before them.

"Okay, go!"

The Harmonites watched curiously as Gold Coin immediately faltered and failed, and Mystic followed soon after. Soft Spoken was next, but Chain Mail, Sliske and Explodey seemed to be doing fine, and continued with no regard for their fallen comrades.

"...This is a failure in the making," Agostinho said after less than three minutes, "I can't work with this, princess! Look at what you've given me!"

One of the blue robed spiders jumped right up in his leader's face.

"Are you suggesting, Elder Agostinho, that there is no chance of harmony between these ponies?"

"I am, Brother Seneca!"

Brother Seneca then immediately drew a sword out from under his robe and sliced off all eight of the elder's legs in two swipes.

"AGH! Curses! I had forgotten!"

Seneca stood over the legless body of the elder, closed his eyes, and crossed his chest with one of his legs.

"Harmony forgive you, friend."

He then drove the sword through Agostinho's head and killed him, leaving a trail of yellow spider blood in the snow.

The ponies all stared in shock at Brother Seneca, as he then began to pull the robes off the dead elder and put them on himself.

"...What the fuck was that?!" Chain Mail shouted, "Seriously! What the FUCK just happened?!"

"The scriptures are very clear," another Harmonite explained, "He had given up on the idea of your redemption and the possibility of harmony. It is a fundamental tenet of our beliefs that that potential exists in every living being, aside from demons. To give up on the idea of your redemption is the ultimate sin, punishable by death. Elder Seneca still has hope for you. He shall continue your training for now, and later, we shall eat Agostinho's body in his memory and honour."

They all looked to Celestia and Luna in unison, both of whom shrugged with their wings.

"NO," Gold Coin shouted, "Fuck. That. I am NOT hanging around here any longer! You things are fucking disgusting, and scary as shit! I'm not going to stay more than twelve seconds in a place where what you just did is considered socially acceptable! You're all fucked in the head, and the world would be a better place if you were all killed by dragons!"

Elder Seneca sighed.

"Looks like we have to do this the hard way..."

The spider that threatened them before cracked his whip near their hooves again.

"EXERCISES CONTINUE!" the new elder screamed, "THIS TIME, FIVE HUNDRED!"

***

"Hey, Dr. Ball Licker?"

The unicorn sighed, as he addressed Lord Second.

"It's Boot Licker, sir."

"Not anymore it isn't."

"Of course, sir."

"I've calmed down now, and I want to hear the rest of that report. Nuclear Anomaly especially. What's his deal?"

Dr. Boot/Ball Licker floated up a clipboard in front of him and looked between it and Second.

"...Well, there are minor differences, but we're pretty sure we know who he's based on. This pony is a modified clone of a Secopolis pony, one of your creations called Explodey McGee."

Second blinked.

"Uhm...what?"

"Your blood and that of this Nuclear Anomaly fellow had a forty three percent match. It's only forty three because it has been modified. Project Atom appears to have been an attempt to clone Explodey McGee but...improve on the design, so to speak."

"Fucking WHAT?!"

"And that's why the match is only forty three percent rather than an even fifty, like Explodey should-"

"HOW THE FUCK DOES EXPLODEY HAVE A FIFTY PERCENT MATCH FOR MY DNA?!"

Second had screamed at the doctor so loudly that his mane had blown back and his glasses came loose and hung down his face. Stoically, he readjusted both so that they were as before.

"Well, I would have thought that the obvious answer is-"

"NO. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE ABOUT TO SAY, AND NO. I CREATED EXPLODEY THE SAME WAY I MADE THE REST OF YOU CUNTS. I WROTE WORDS ON SOME PAPER. AND NOTHING ELSE."

"Well..."

Dr. Ball Licker struggled to think of something to say.

"Look, sir, I don't know what to tell you. The unicorn has a fifty percent match for your blood. How? I don't know. Especially if what you say about how you created him is true. But that's the situation. And Nuclear Anomaly is his clone brother or something."

Second placed a finger and a thumb on his forehead, and closed his eyes.

"...I know I'm going to regret this, but what's the other fifty percent of Explodey a match for?"

"Doesn't look to be anything, actually. Mostly a generic genetic jumble. No real match for any individual pony on our DNA database, and do remember that the database was made to be the most comprehensive one of its kind to ever exist."

"Right...That's one positive at least..."

Second paused.

"There aren't any other ponies in that database with traces of my DNA, are there?"

"Nothing's shown up on an immediate search."

"Good. This problem looks to be contained to just these two. Though they're still a problem..."

The human began pulling his hair.

"I should never have made that fucking unicorn...I think his existence must be the biggest screw-up I've ever made. If he's got even some of my capabilities, or even just the fucking potential for them, then he's more dangerous to me than all the alicorn princesses and hallucinations combined."

Second reached down to his side, hoping that the holster was still there. He had changed clothes so many times over the last few weeks that he sometimes forgot exactly what he had with him. To his delight, he found it was still there, along with the revolver he had chosen for it.

Holding up the handgun, he tapped the tip of it with a finger. From that point outwards, a gold coating spread over the surface of the gun, until it covered it. He looked over to the doorway of the lab and spotted a knight standing guard.

"You!"

The guard was surprised as Second tossed the golden revolver over to him.

"That's now got infinite ammunition and has no need to reload. It's also been magically treated to inhibit Explodey McGee's healing factor. I want you and a squad of knights to find him, wherever the fuck he is, and blast him with it repeatedly until he stops living."

The knight saluted.

"Yes sir!"

***

"Okay. Twelve minute break."

The six ponies all gasped in relief and collapsed in the snow together in a pile. Elder Seneca scuttled away without another word, leaving them panting in exhaustion. Across on the other side of the platform, he vanished back inside the temple with the princesses and the other monks.

"I can't...take much more of this..." Softy gasped, "These spiders are going to kill us..."

"Agostinho was right..." Gold Coin agreed, "They're kicking our asses here! In fact, I think this Seneca guy is actually worse!"

"Five hundred push-ups in a row..." Explodey panted, "I think I've found the one area where conventional physics still apply to me..."

"And he wants us to do more!" Mystic complained, "I can't do any more! I'm tired, Softy!"

"We all are, Mystic..."

Sliske groaned.

"Guys?" she said quietly, "We can't do this. I think this may actually, literally kill us. These spiders are insane. They need to be stopped."

"Well yeah, that's a given," Chain Mail replied, "What can we do though? We need them to unlock the elements of harmony. We're the only hope Equestria has. We need these guys and their friendship training to make this work."

From the other side of the pile, Gold Coin raised a hoof and lazily slapped the captain across the face.

"Ow. That was uncalled for."

"You're a fucking idiot," the yellow earth pony stated, "In fact, we all are! What the fuck are we doing here?! Friendship training? Are we really, seriously doing this?!"

"Yes," Softy answered, "We are doing this. Because we need it. Agostinho said himself. We argue too much. We need to find harmony for the elements to work. We need to be true friends."

"We are true friends!" said Explodey.

"...What?" asked Chain Mail.

"Yeah, come again?" said Sliske.

"Guys, I'm with Goldie here; why are we even listening to the spiders?"

The other five all looked to each other momentarily, before turning back to Explodey, who had climbed to the top of the heap of bodies.

"They just shout a lot at us, and tell us that we aren't really friends and that we hate each other. And why do they think that about us? Because we shout at each other? Because we argue? Well, they're shouting at us and arguing too! And they consider themselves experts on this. The spiders said that we need to be real friends for the elements to work for us, but...the way I see it, aren't we already?"

"Well, I don't know..." Chain Mail replied, "I mean...Remember back in Canterlot? When Sliske said that she hated me?"

"But I don't anymore," said Sliske, "I don't hate any of you. I find you annoying, I think most of you are pricks, but honestly? There's no other sentient beings in this galaxy that I'd rather spend my time with."

"This is what I mean!" Explodey continued, "We just argue, because I think that's who we are! We're friends. We're just not friends who always get along. But we stay together, because I think really, we want to. Goldie, for all the times you've gotten angry and argued with us, have you ever actually wanted to leave, and do something else? Find more agreeable ponies to hang out with?"

"...No."

"And Chains, what about you? Don't you like us really, in some sense?"

"Well, definitely," he said without hesitation, "All of you...I never really had close friends before. Work friends, maybe. Drinking buddies. But I like to think I'm closer with all the rest of you. It's only been a few days we've known each other, but it's like I know you all."

"I've had close friends before," said Softy, "Thing is, that was all when I was young. I outlived most of them. Everything was lonely for a time. But you kids, you're alright. You remind me of that time. I guess you could say, I've gained a new lease on life since I left that mansion."

"And I just think you're all really cool!" Mystic added.

Gold Coin pulled himself out of the pile of fallen ponies and stood up properly. The others gradually hauled themselves up too.

"...You know, you're right, Explodey," the business pony announced, "This whole thing is stupid! Of course we're friends! We don't need this fucking training, and we don't need these fucking pretentious, cannibalistic spider monks!"

"YEAH!" the others all cried in unison.

"I say, we prove the strength of our bonds together, by giving these old bastards a collective kick in the nuts! WHO'S WITH ME?!"

"YEAH!"

"LET'S SIT DOWN QUIETLY AND PLAN HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS!"

"YEAH!"

***

The human sat back in his chair and sighed. He had just finished changing again into yet another replica of his old outfit, complete with yet another new long coat. He wasn't sure why, but that was the look he kept reverting to when his new ones kept getting destroyed, maybe because that was the one he came into Equestria with. Complimenting it was another new skin mask and mechanical eye to mask his hideous deformities.

"I hate my life..."

A bottle of whiskey floated across the hotel room and into his waiting hand. He leaned back and took a long swig of it. Once finished, he looked to that hand, where a large, misshapen lump of gold was melded to his knuckle. He ran his fingers over it gently.

"...Till death do us part..." he recited.

"AM I INTERRUPTING SOMETHING?"

Howard didn't flinch as he heard the distorted, offsetting voice of the demon. Not even as the room began to tint an ominous red, and there was a flickering effect coming from somewhere behind him. He merely remained in his chair, and placed the whiskey on the small table in front of him.

"Qramstarflokrinhir."

"LORD SECOND."

"Are you here to bring me what I asked for, or was that dream just my imagination getting out of hand, and you're here because you think you can take me?"

The demon laughed.

"NO. THE DREAM WAS REAL, AND WE HAVE SHARED CONTACT. I AM HERE TO DELIVER THE TOME ON DEMON LORE, AS PROMISED."

There was a rumbling sound as the demon walked forward across the hotel room. Second turned his head slightly to face his new visitor, looking over his should at him.

Qramstarflokrinhir was not the most obscenely huge creature he had ever seen, as that was a title still held by Spike, but the demon was definitely larger than he was expecting. He was taller than the room itself. His legs were bent so much that his knees were nearly touching the ground, and he was hunched over too. His back was scraping the ceiling, and so were his horns, even though he was bowing his head as well.

He reached forward towards Second. He held a normal sized book between the tips of two razor sharp claws, both of them several times the length of his actual fingers.

"Thank you."

Second plucked the book out between the claws. Qramstarflokrinhir let go, though he still left a scratch mark on both covers.

Flipping the books open, Second began to read the contents page.

"I trust there were no issues..." he muttered as he skimmed the page.

"NONE."

Second frowned as he looked the page over. A snap of his fingers, and a pair of reading glasses appeared in his hand, which he put on immediately.

"No harm was done to Ponyville, or its residents?" he asked casually.

"NO DEMON SO MUCH AS TOUCHED A PONY WHILE THERE. WE ENTERED THE TOWN, AND TOOK THE BOOK. NOTHING MORE."

"That's some suspiciously specific wording," Second commented.

He continued to study the book, still not actually looking Qramstarflokrinhir in the eye.

"Tell me then. The demons apparently didn't do anything to harm the ponies. But did any kind of harm happen to them through other means, either while you were there or some time before or after?"

Smoke billowed from the demon's nostrils. It was irritated that it had been found out.

"DURING THE LIBERATION OF THE BOOK, PONYVILLE WAS COINCIDENTALLY OVERRUN BY AN INFESTATION OF THE UNDEAD."

Second smiled grimly.

"Completely coincidentally? Be honest with me now."

"I...MAY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY TRODDEN ON THE FENCE KEEPING THE CREATURES OUT OF THE TOWN."

"I knew it," said the human, finally looking the demon in the eye, "I fucking knew it."

"I REMIND YOU, THAT I WAS NOT THE ONE WHO PUT THE UNDEAD THERE. THOSE WERE A CREATION OF YOUR OWN."

"So they were..."

He put the book down on the table and removed the glasses.

"That will be all. You're dismissed."

"THANK YOU."

Qramstarflokrinhir immediately burst into flames and burned to ashes in a matter of seconds, leaving only his dusty grey remains in his wake.

"...What a freak..."

***

"I'm just concerned," Celestia explained, "You're pushing them very hard..."

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing," Elder Seneca insisted, "These are the disciplinary techniques passed down through generations of spiders. Their effectiveness and necessity is no question."

The princess sighed.

"If you really think so..."

"HEY, SPIDER GUY!"

Celestia, Luna, Seneca, and the other three Harmonites all snapped their heads around to face Gold Coin, who had just burst through the door into the temple.

"It's Sliske!" the earth pony exclaimed, "Her demon came back! She went fucking crazy on us! Explodey's trying to hold her with his magic inside the mausoleum, but he's getting brutalised in there! We need another exorcism!"

Seneca looked to the other three, and nodded. They all rushed past Gold Coin and headed outside. The others soon followed.

Once outside, Celestia looked over to the mausoleum. Soft Spoken and Chain Mail were desperately trying to hold the door closed while it rattled against them, and Mystic was just around the corner from them, huddling against the wall of the tomb and shivering either from the cold or from fear.

The spiders moved as quick as they could, making a run for the mausoleum. Seeing them coming, Soft Spoken and Chain Mail moved aside and opened the door for them. Elder Seneca approached at the same time.

Inside, he saw Sliske snarling and lashing at a bloodied, but already regenerating Explodey, who winced with every strike. Seeing the door open, he stepped back out, using his magic to hold the struggling demonic mare.

"Don't worry, we shall handle this!" Seneca promised, "Harmonites! Prepare for the traditional exorcism!"

The Elder stood before the doorway and held two arms to the sky, while the other three went inside the mausoleum and began dancing around Sliske.

"And now we say the holy phrase-" Seneca began.

At that moment, Explodey's magic released Sliske, and instead grabbed the spider elder. He yelped in surprise as the unicorn casually tossed him into the mausoleum with Sliske and the other spiders, and slammed the door behind him.

Seconds later, Sliske jumped through the walls in her intangible form before becoming solid again, and locked the door tight with a spell of her own.

"LET'S TORMENT THE SPIDERS INSTEAD!" she roared.

"BOO-YA!" Gold Coin shouted at the magically sealed tomb, "HEAR THAT, YOU GERIATRIC OLD FUCKS? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ALL THE PUSH-UPS THAT WE'RE NEVER DOING!"

Celestia and Luna both stared, mouths agape at what they had just witnessed. The Elements of Harmony, having gone on a quest to learn the magic of friendship from an order of mountain-dwelling monks, had locked the monks in a small building and were now congratulating themselves for it.

Meanwhile, High General Arcelio walked up next to the two of them, one of his eyes twitching as he looked on at the sight.

"...I think it's time we pulled out the big guns," he said quietly.

***

The doors to the lab of Blackspire Research's main lab burst open suddenly, and a confident human strode into the room.

"All right, you bunch of foul smelling, perma-virgin nerds, enough of the bullshit!" he shouted, "I want all efforts taken off of Nuclear Anomaly right now. We can worry about him later! I want my own projects taken care of!"

He reached into his coat and drew a dossier file.

"Ball Licker! Over here!"

"What is it, sir?" asked the unicorn.

THWACK!

"OW!"

Second had just smashed the dossier over his head.

"You deserved that."

"Of course, my Lord!"

The human dropped the files on the pony laying on the floor.

"Read these. Those are my specifications for Project Pandora. Also included you will find a few files on its sister project, which I like to call Project Beacon, and a few of the people that will be involved in this. Most notably, I want you to look at files 3Q, 19G and 17K. Because those are who you're doing this for."

"Yes, my Lord! Of course, my Lord!"

The doctor scrambled to pick up everything and ran off to start reading through his newest assignment, leaving all his assistants alone in the room with their god-emperor.

"And what are the rest of you inbreds staring at? Back to work!"

***

"Ow! Ow! I'm sorry!"

"Yeah, me too!"

"Me three!"

Celestia magically dragged six ponies along with her by their ears as they followed a pathway towards the very peak of Mt. Celestia, higher than even the monastery itself. Luna stood by her side, wanting to help but unable to do so without a horn of her own anymore, and Arcelio and some extremely indignant spider monks led the way ahead.

"Don't lie to me!" the princess thundered, "You aren't sorry! Any of you! You're all a bunch of childish little foals acting up because you're not getting your own way!"

"It's not about getting our way! Ow!" Softy explained as he unwillingly followed the princess, "It's about the redundancy of this exercise! We don't need this! We've decided, we're friends already, and we can be friends, and be the Elements of Harmony, without all this training!"

"That is admirable," Luna commented, "But you must understand. Even if you are true friends now, you must still realise your virtues, and you must still come to understand which of the elements all six of you embody. So far, only Gold Coin and maybe Sliske seem to have definite traits that can be tied to an element. We need to realise the potential of the rest of you."

"And that is why we are all heading to the summit, old chaps," Arcelio explained, "You've resisted the Harmonites attempts to educate you, so now you must be taken before our true leader."

"True leader?" Chain Mail echoed, "Isn't Elder Seneca supposed to be in charge?"

"I am but the Harmonites' earthly guidance, as Agostinho was before me," the purpled robed spider replied.

"Yes," another continued, "The Harmonites all follow a higher being than us."

"...Who?"

"You shall see, when we reach the peak..."

***

Silver nudged the door to Second's hotel room open. Inside, she saw him and Thug Lyfe conversing. She paused for a moment to listen in.

"...So can you?" asked the human, "Can you do this for me? This was your true purpose. Your reason for being."

"Yeah...I can do it," the gangster answered, "Y'all ask me for help in this...Project Pandora...I mean, I don't understand none of that science shit, nigga. But imma help where EVER I can. You and me are homies, y'know?"

"Thanks, man."

"A'ight. Respect."

The door opened properly, as Silver jumped back. Thug Lyfe stood before her, surprised to find her there. Meekly, he saluted her.

"Ma'am."

He passed by without saying anything more, and Silver proceeded into the room. When she did, she found that Second had already sat down in his chair again and was picking up another whiskey bottle.

"Sir?"

"Hello, Silver..."

"...Are you alright? Is something wrong?"

Second smiled weakly at her, before turning back to his whiskey bottle.

"Just feeling a little drained. I'm lacking confidence. My enemies are bigger and more numerous than I thought they were. To tell you the truth, I'm feeling a little outgunned."

"But, you're an elder god! I'm sure you can stand up to whatever it is that you're afraid of."

"I'm not afraid of them," he clarified, "What I'm afraid of is what happens if I fail. And from what I've seen, failure is very likely."

"I'm sure it's not as bad as you think, sir."

"You don't know who my enemies are..."

"The Pantheon of B, right?"

"Worse."

That gave Silver pause.

"...What then?"

"Can't say. Not yet. Suffice to say, we've got dark days ahead."

"...Sir?"

"Silver, the Pantheon want me to do a bad thing. And I fully intend to do it. Nuclear Anomaly and Anger were a message. Thing is, the Pantheon is subject to higher power as well. Other versions of themselves, in a way. I don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, really. It's a great big meta-fiction clusterfuck, and I don't know if I can really actually manoeuvre around most of it enough to enact my plan."

"And what is your plan?"

"To kill my tormentors. Just not in a story way. Not on their terms. I'm not letting them decide how they die, or what my fate is."

He turned to her again, giving her a piercing stare.

"Don't worry about me, though. I'm feeling down now, but I will win. I have never doubted my own ability for even a second. Because my advantage is in my strategy. I can plan. I can be creative. I'm smart. And I swear to you, I will move Heaven and Earth if that's what it takes."

***

The Elements of Harmony reached the top of the path and looked over the top of the mountain. Up here, there were a few boulders off to one side, a small mural and altar on a raised platform to the other, and all the rest of it was snow. Not really much of interest.

Gold Coin snorted.

"So where is this true leader of y-"

The very ground around them shook as something huge landed in the snow before them. Something scaly, and lizard-like.

The ponies all gasped.

"OH CELESTIA, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" Gold Coin shouted, "ALL THIS TIME, THE TRUE LEADER OF THE HARMONITES WAS A DRAGON!"

He breathed in deeply.

"Oh, wait a minute. That's just Spike! My bad. Sorry guys, false alarm!"

Spike raised an eyebrow at them.

"What are you guys doing up here?" he asked.

"What are YOU doing up here?!" Softy countered.

"Yes, that's a VERY good question!" Arcelio pressed.

"Oh, get off my back! I was feeling claustrophobic inside your stupid buildings, and they aren't comfortable to sit on either."

"I cannot believe this!" Seneca complained, "You were feeling uncomfortable, so you decided to just park yourself here in our most holy of holy grounds?!"

"If you'd rather let an irritated dragon who might have a cold hang around in your highly flammable, wooden village-"

"No! That's fine!" Arcelio interrupted, "The Harmonites are just kidding around! You're free to stay here however long you want! Just please don't destroy us all, Mr. Giant Dragon Person."

"My name is Spike."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

The Harmonites were less than pleased with this new arrangement.

"Grr..." Seneca grumbled, "Fine...Let's just continue this anyway. Harmonites! The summoning!"

The four spiders scuttled around Spike, who backed up so that he was almost sitting on the pile of boulders instead. The six friends, the princesses and Arcelio both stood by and watched as the Harmonites formed a semicircle around the altar on the raised platform.

"And now, we call!" Seneca shouted to the sky, "Harmony, come guide us!"

"GUIDE US!" the other three chanted.

A ball of light appeared above the altar before the spiders. They all backed off of the platform, as it became brighter and brighter. They shielded their eyes as they looked upon it, as did all the other mortals present, but even Spike and the two alicorn sisters had to flinch slightly at the brightness of it, as it exploded outwards in a blinding flash.

And when they looked back, they were all left stunned.

The six slightly transparent forms of Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Applejack lightly stepped forward off of the platform and onto the snowy ground. It was only then that all present recognised that the mural behind the altar was a depiction of their cutie marks, and each pony stood before their respective icon.

Twilight was the first to open her eyes and look upon the group, and she immediately broke into a warm smile. The others followed suit.

"Oh...It's been such a long time..." she said happily, looking both to the princesses and her not-so-little dragon assistant.

Spike was trying to hold back tears. He wasn't doing very good at it.

And meanwhile, Mystic leaned in really close to the older brown stallion next to him.

"Softy," he whispered, "I see dead ponies."

END.

Author's notes:

There. I put the main six into the story. Are you happy now?

This chapter took longer thanks to several issues going on at home that I had to take care of. Nothing serious. I just had to deal with those things first. It's all sorted now, and hopefully we can resume our regular schedule soon. If you're wondering about my thoughts on the season three opening, my most recent blog post addresses it, among other things.

You may have also noticed that I changed the regular description to make it seem more immediately obvious that it's a comedy. I'm pretty sure a good number of my dislikers are people who read that old description and assumed that this whole thing is completely serious. When in fact, it's not. Human is ludicrously silly, but you'd never guess it from the description on Equestria Daily.

Anyway, there's your bloody chapter. Now fuck off and let me write the next one.

I'm just kidding, I love you all really.

Next Chapter: Reunions.

Chapter 27: The Unholy Trinity.

Chapter 27: The Unholy Trinity.

"TO THE SOLDIER!" Second screamed into the air.

"THE CIVILIAN!" First responded.

"THE MARTYR!"

"THE VICTIM!"

They joined in unison for the next line.

"THIS...IS...WAR!"

Just in front of them, dozens of royal guards charged in. The earth ponies carried swords, maces and javelins with their mouths, the pegasi flew above shooting at them with ranged weapons, be it arrows or crossbow bolts, and the unicorns were all launching heavy objects their way.

The two humans almost unconsciously leapt aside and twisted mid-air to avoid all the projectiles, and rolled across the floor to land next to each other again.

"IT'S THE MOMENT OF TRUTH AND THE MOMENT TO LIE!" Second yelled as he pulled back his hands.

"THE MOMENT TO LIVE, AND THE MOMENT TO DIE!" his son continued

The soldiers backed away as a ball of dust and sand began to swirl around between the older human's hands.

"THE MOMENT TO FIGHT!"

"THE MOMENT TO FIGHT!"

"TO FIGHT!"

"TO FIGHT!"

"TO FIGHT!"

On the last word, Second threw his hands forward and released a tornado. The ponies all screamed in fear as a whirlwind ripped down the streets of Canterlot, tearing up the pavement and stripping nearby structures of their paint. Trees planted by the roadside lost their leaves, and stray bricks and shards of glass that came off the weaker buildings shot through the air and hit soldiers left and right.

The unlucky ones got bricked in the face and fell unconscious, getting caught up in the storm and pulled into the chaos. Others had the good fortune to merely be pelted with flying debris in armoured places, and were able to escape to safety, either running into alleyways, or flying away if they were blessed with wings.

As the storm cleared, Second and First still stood exactly where they were before. The music that had been accompanying their singing was still playing in the background, only now with a different voice to be put to it. Second had stopped, and was instead clutching his chest and laughing.

"Harsh," First commented.

"Hahaha! Harsh, but fair!" his father responded, "They step up their game, so do we."

"To the edge! Of the Earth!" the other voice continued, "It's a brave new-"

The voice and the accompanying music was silenced as First pulled a little black square thing out of his pocket and tapped it with a thumb.

"I'm bored," said Second, "Let's see if there are any cafes around here. If they want to run away screaming again we'll just take whatever we want and leave the money on the counter. I'm tired of walking into restaurants full of food and still walking out hungry..."

They began to head back down the street they just came from, when First saw something out the corner of his eye.

"Hey, look! It's best pony."

"Celestia? Where?"

First slapped his father around the head.

"Fluttershy."

Just as he said, the familiar pegasus flew in above them and landed right in front of the two. Second and First looked to each other briefly, First with a shrug of confusion and Second with a very slight smile tugging the corner of his lips.

"Stop right there!" Fluttershy ordered, raising her voice almost to the point it was the volume of a normal pony's, "You will stop hurting ponies right now! How dare you do all this?!"

"Oh, look who's growing a spine!" Second taunted, "Watchu gonna do to me? I can shoot lasers! From my hands!"

Fluttershy's eyes homed in on Second's, boring into him as she gave the most fierce stare of her life.

"No. More. Violence."

Second buckled under the strain on it, and began clutching his head as if in pain. First looked to him in surprise as he heard the man wracked with sobs.

"No! Please!" he begged, "Stop it! I'm sorry! Please stop..."

Fluttershy eased up, and gave him a look of sympathy. Second was balled up on the floor helplessly, and First just looked on in horror. She trotted slowly towards him, and lifted a hoof to pat him on the back.

"There now-"

"PSYCH!"

Once she was in range, the human grabbed her by the throat and stood up again.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I GOT YOU MY FIST!"

First was still staring in horror, this time as his father punched Fluttershy in the stomach eight times before dropping her onto the floor. She didn't cry, but she was gasping for breath. So was Second, actually, because he had broken out into maniacal laughter.

"BAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHA!" he giggled, "Oh lawdy, that was the best! Don't you just love it when you subvert expectations?"

"...Dad. You just punched Fluttershy in the stomach. Repeatedly."

"I KNOW RIGHT?!"

"That's kinda fucked up."

"Language, boy. This is a kid's show."

***

Twilight and her friends were barely standing before their altar for a moment before a large purple claw snatched them all up and mashed them into the dragon's cheek. Tears ran down Spike's face as he held them close to himself, while the ponies wriggled about in his grasp trying to get into a more comfortable position.

He soon realised his mistake and pulled them back, holding his palm open instead and just letting them stand on it. He brought them up to his eye level.

"...Sorry...I just...I can't believe it's really you...All these years, and I've been so..."

Spike held them up to his face again, gently this time.

"I've missed you all so much."

Twilight nuzzled his cheek.

"We've missed you too, Spike," she said softly.

The others had a mixture of reactions. Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy also returned the affectionate gestures, while Rainbow and Applejack, neither being quite as touchy-feely, just sort of stayed at the back and smiled at him.

"I did what you said to. I kept saving ponies. I kept being a hero. I always remembered what you taught me. And the other dragons...I think they turned out good. Thanks to you guys."

"Aw, we didn't do anything. That was your good work, big guy," Rainbow Dash replied as she flew up in front of his nose.

As the dragon and the ponies continued to smile at each other, a different group of ponies on the ground just stared in bewilderment.

"...What the fuck is going on?" asked Gold Coin, "I'm so lost..."

***

"Come on, you slackers! Get back to work!"

The pony who Second had chosen as the foreman (forepony?) of his project continued to bark orders at the rest of the construction crew below, as he and Silver passed by him on the walkway. They were on the very edge of what appeared to be a giant silo.

Above them an open roof revealed the blue sky of day, and several vehicles parked on the edge of silo's top, along with cranes lowering materials down to the workers inside. At the bottom of the great pit, a giant steel cube was surrounded by many much smaller parts that seemed to be pieces of a more complex mechanism yet to be built.

Second looked down over the railing at it grimly. Silver sat next to him, also looking down at the same thing, but she had no idea what exactly it was, or what the significance was. Second's plan was as much a mystery to her as anything else he did.

"...You know," the human said nostalgically, "I remember a time...it was so long ago now...where I was just another guy. I'd wake up in the morning, roll over in the bed and swat at the alarm clock as it woke me up, and then my wife would lean over and get it for me. She'd get out of bed first and go take her morning shower, and I'd just lay there another half hour, trying to put off getting up, because I didn't feel like going to work that day. But I always ultimately did, because I needed the money..."

He looked at his melted ring.

"...And now, I am literally a cartoon supervillain. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN AGAIN?!"

***

Spike's hogging of the six mares didn't last forever. He eventually let them all go to speak to the others. Now he laid on his belly on the other side of the mountain, conversing with just Rarity alone.

"Oh, I am so sorry to hear, darling..." she said sympathetically.

"It's okay. Feynsetafiirre always was a problem child. I can't really say he surprised me. I tried to raise him right. I tried so hard..."

The unicorn spirit stroked the tip of his nose with a hoof.

"I know you did, Spike. Sometimes these things can't be helped, but you simply can't blame yourself just because one of them turned out such a brute. Besides, eighteen out of nineteen isn't bad..."

Spike just smiled at her.

"I think I have something in my eye. Both of them."

Twilight meanwhile was enjoying a reunion with her old mentor, Princess Celestia, who just like the old dragon had been crying her eyes out. She attempted to maintain her composure, but it just wasn't working. Though, these were tears of joy, and she felt no shame in that.

"I'm so glad to see you again, dear Twilight. It's been many long years since I saw you. Far too long. And you don't a day older than when I sent you off to Ponyville..."

Twilight chuckled.

"That's what happens with us mortals. Roughly a hundred years or so growing and aging, and then we die and snap back decades. I couldn't begin to tell you how good it felt to be able to walk without a stick again!"

"I'm just so glad I found you here!" she said, "After I went to the afterlife, and First told me you weren't there-"

"Oh. First."

That was Rainbow Dash butting into the conversation. She landed next to the two, and rolled her eyes with irritation.

"Don't get me started on First," she ranted, "That had to have been the worst day of my life, or...unlife...when I arrived in what was supposed to be pony heaven, and found it was being ran by one of the bad guys that we thought we'd defeated! Then there was the mind control, and the torture pits, and the-"

"Wait. What?!" Celestia demanded, "Torture?! When did this happen?"

"First keeps the ponies he deems to be wicked and beyond redemption out of the regular realms of the afterlife," Twilight explained, "He likes to think himself a god, passing judgement on evil. If he thinks they deserve it, he throws ponies into this netherworld he created, where they all experience their own personal hell. Forever."

The alicorn's mouth hung open.

"He...I can't believe it..." she muttered, "He never mentioned anything like that when I was with him..."

"Well he wouldn't do," Rainbow Dash replied, "because he's a liar. Like all humans are. Did you really think he'd tell you the truth if he thought you wouldn't do what he told you to?"

"Yeah," Twilight agreed, "And he seemed to completely miss the irony of him of all beings passing judgement on evil. He's not the most virtuous soul himself, and that hasn't changed in the past thousand years. Trust us, we know."

"That's why we all refused to stay there," Rainbow continued, "We didn't want to have First ruling over us, especially knowing what he can do. We couldn't beat him though. Not even attack him in his realm. He's all-powerful there, like Discord times a million. We could only do what he'd let us. And the most he'd allow was for us to all leave together and live as ghosts down here."

"So we became mentors to the Harmonites. They needed our wisdom, and we needed a permanent home. Not many places for a ghost to live in Equestria."

"I haunted my gigantic memorial for a while, playing pranks on the ponies living near it, but it just wasn't the same. Got too old too quick."

"And I went on a tour of the major libraries of Equestria. I eventually read everything ever, and then I had the same problem as Dash."

Celestia had become somewhat melancholy.

"Why didn't you come to visit me?" she asked, "Or Spike? Or any of your children or other family? You must have known that we were all grieving for you..."

"We all left the afterlife together. As one. Sure, you were all still mourning Applejack at the time, but the rest of us had all been dead for a number of years, and everypony had already moved on. We didn't think it'd be good to upset that, and open up old wounds. Besides, we did come see you a few times, to see how you were doing. Just...invisibly."

The princess smiled.

"Really though, it all comes down to Dramatic Convenience."

The smile was dropped immediately.

"You know about that?"

"First explained it to all of us when we initially showed up, so yes, we do know. It was disconcerting, definitely, but no worse than the revelations about First himself. And because it was still acting on us to stop us seeing you, we pretty much guessed that the Eclipse Crisis wasn't the last tale ever told about Equestria..."

As the two ponies explained the situation to Celestia, Luna was busy introducing Fluttershy, Applejack and Pinkie to the living ponies.

"And this here is Explodey McGee," said Luna, feeling strange just saying the name, "He's some kind of pony-shaped sludge monster, and likely our element of laughter."

Pinkie trotted up to Explodey, and she pulled a magnifying glass out from nowhere to begin examining the unicorn closely. She walked in circles around him, occasionally summoning other tools from some unseen pocket dimension to better scrutinise her target. At one point she lifted one of his forelegs and took a tape measure to his hooves to see how large they were, and after that she obtained an otoscope to look inside his ear.

Once she finished, she backed away and squinted at him, like she was trying to read a book that was on the other side of the room, and rubbed her chin.

"Hmmm..." she mumbled suspiciously, "You don't seem like you're full of laughter..."

She grabbed him by the shoulders and loomed over him, staring into his soul.

"What's your deal, Mr. McGee?" she whispered, "IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME!"

Explodey for his part seemed undisturbed by this.

"The doctors said that I'm an abomination," he explained cheerfully, smiling at her even as she glared at him, "I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. I just follow my friends around and try not to think too hard about the many horrors I witness and participate in on a daily basis."

Pinkie continued to eye him suspiciously for a moment, before breaking into a huge grin as well.

"Okie dokey! Just checkin'!"

"...And this is Gold Coin," Luna continued, ignoring the strangeness that just occured, "He's from the modern day Apple family, and helps run the financial side of things. He's also the element of generosity."

"Ah know who he is," Applejack responded, "Ah've always followed what became of my family."

She looked her great great great etc. grandson in the eyes.

"And...Gold Coin?" she said quietly.

"...Yes?"

Unexpectedly, the ghostly mare twisted around and bucked him right in the nose, knocking him onto his back and leaving him laying in the snow.

"AGH!" he wailed, "YOU FUCKING KICKED ME!"

Applejack stood over him, giving him a stern look.

"That's fer joinin' the Brotherhood of Man, ya stupid pony!" she yelled, "And Ah'd do the same to every one of the family before you who made the same mistake if Ah could!"

Her expression softened as the groaning stallion pulled himself up again.

"Though, credit where credit is due. Good on ya fer being the first one to leave it."

His eyes were watering as he looked back at her again, wiping blood off his nose.

"Thank you," he said venomously.

Luna again tried to ignore how oddly that encounter went, and tried to move on and introduce the others.

"...And this dark mare here is-"

"SUNNY," Sliske interrupted, "My name is Sunny. I'm a unicorn. Possibly the element of magic. Not an evil alien mind parasite at all. In fact, nopony is! Aliens are made up!"

The three ghosts looked to each other for a second, and all shrugged. Luna on the other hoof was growing increasingly more uncomfortable with the responses.

"...The stallion in the power armour is Soft Spoken."

"Pleasure," Softy greeted, holding out a hoof to the others.

They all shook it one after the other.

"Um, nice to meet you too..." whispered Fluttershy.

"Howdy."

"You remind me of Big Mac when he got older!"

"I don't know who that is, but thank you," Softy replied.

"Wow. That was surprisingly normal," Luna commented, "And this here is Canterlot's very own Captain Chain Mail, current head of the royal guard. Basically, the new Shining Armor."

"Please, your majesty."

Being compared to Shining Armor was a little excessive, in the captain's opinion. After all, Captain Armor had married into royalty and led Equestria to victory in several of the greatest wars in its history. Chain Mail was relatively new to the job, and had no such accomplishments to his name.

Unless this whole element of harmony thing could be counted in his military record?

"Can you make a giant, city-sized shield?" asked Pinkie.

"Well...no..."

"Shining Armor could make a giant shield. It was all purple and really cool and stuff, but it kept getting smashed by armies and supervillains."

"I can explode and regenerate!" Explodey boasted, "Chains, do you have a superpower?"

"...I can...survive without oxygen..." he said lamely.

"Well most of us here can do that," Luna pointed out, "Captain, if I were you, I'd think long and hard about getting yourself better superpowers if you want to fit in here."

"What?! But what about Gold Coin?! He's not got any powers either! He's not even a cyborg!"

"Correction, my friend. I do have a super power. It's called, being Gold Coin. It works by me being my usual awesome self and fighting alicorns and humans, sometimes with just my bare hooves, and winning through sheer determination alone. I am the Batmare of this team, while you are a B-lister nopony cares about."

"I thought you won those fights through sheer retarded luck?"

"You take that back!"

Gold Coin leapt at Chain Mail and they both tumbled to the floor and began fighting in the snow. Luna, the three ghosts and the rest of the living beings present all watched silently as the fight spiralled out of control, eventually ending with the two of them trapped in a giant sphere of snow that rolled over the edge of the platform and tumbled down the mountain.

***

"Sir, I really need to talk to you-" Silver began.

"Not. Now. Silver."

The pegasus stared incredulously at Lord Second as he kicked open another door and entered an empty but still lit lab, full of test tubes and other chemistry equipment, and began rifling through papers on the desk.

They had left the silo just a short while ago to begin wandering the underground science complex, one of many other properties ran by the Mages' Guild. Unlike most of their other research and development centres, this place looked like the inside of a submarine, with its many grey walls and metal doors. Some of them even had those weird wheel handles for no reason.

"Why won't you let me tell you this?!" Silver shouted, "I've been trying to confess to you all day that I-"

"Silver, do you know what I've been doing all day?" Second said tonelessly, "I've been making preparations to nuke several major cities, in between which I am also growing a cornfield, constructing an elevator, and building a shrink ray. Do you know how I even BEGIN explaining to you why I'm doing all this?"

Admittedly, she really couldn't see why he'd need to do any of those things.

"I don't have time for you to tell me whatever, because I am working overtime to pull off nine hundred different multi-stage villainous schemes, at once no less, just to make sure that I'm still alive a few days from now. Do you want me to list everything I have to do in the next few days alone? I'll do it right now for you. Pay attention:

"One. I have to get back to Canterlot and fight whatever armada Celestia conjures up to lead against me, and raise my own army to counter it, which I haven't even begun to do yet. Two. I need to contact Celestia and let her know in advance about my plans for nuclear Armageddon so she can prevent it. Three, I have to construct and launch multiple nukes, which I am forced to do by the will of the Pantheon, as penance for defying them before.

"Three. I need to coordinate with Celestia and the heroes a way for me to take a direct blast from the elements of harmony themselves and survive it without getting stoned or banished or some other horrible fate like I suffered last time, and hope they don't betray me. Four. I need to deal with Explodey McGee somehow so that I don't get fucked over later on.

"Five. I need to execute Project Pandora and Project Beacon as part of my next major plan, and somehow reach and kill the Pantheon of B. Twice. First the fake versions of them in the meta movie within a meta movie. Then the less fake but still not the real them versions that exist within the regular meta movie.

"Six. I then need to use Pandora to reach my real aggressors, however many levels up the cosmic hierarchy they may go, and fuck them in the eye socket. Seven. I get the fuck out of this damn pony universe and go home, and the rest of you can all die in ignorance for all I care."

Second was holding up seven fingers. He quickly counted them all up.

"...Yes, I think that's everything."

He lowered his hands.

"And I've got maybe four days, tops, to do all that."

Silver blinked.

"So tell me then. Now that you've heard about my problems, what is it that's such a problem for you that I have to be bothered with it?"

"...Nothing, sir..." Silver said dejectedly, "I'll tell you later..."

***

Gold Coin grumbled as he limped into line with the rest of his friends, the brace around his neck irritating him with every step. Chain Mail stood next to him, lacking any such injuries himself thanks to the armour, and with a smug grin on his face reminding his friend of that every second.

"You okay there, buddy?" he asked, "I'm sorry for doing that to you. I know I must be such a...pain in the neck sometimes!"

Chain Mail received a death glare the likes of which are only ever spoken of in legend.

"You two! Cut it out!"

The two snapped to attention, as the ghostly apparition of Twilight Sparkle marched in front of them. The others minus Rarity all stood in a line as well, directly facing them. In the far corner of the room, the princesses were holding a discussion with the spiders about something.

"If you really need our help with reactivating the elements so badly," the mare continued, "that means we all need to work together. That also means no more bickering, from either of you. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Chain Mail replied mechanically, giving her a salute as he did.

Twilight put a hoof on her face.

"...I'm not a drill sergeant. You don't have to salute me."

"...Sorry."

"But Rainbow Dash is, so salute her."

"Wait, what?"

The mare in question immediately flew over above them and landed in front of the two, where she began pacing back and forth. Twilight quietly withdrew.

"Alright, boys! Listen up!" she announced, "From this point onwards, you're all soldiers in the army of Rainbow Dash, the most awesome army ever assembled, and we don't tolerate embarrassments here! So you're going to do what I say, when I say it, and not make mules of yourselves. Do you hear me?!"

"Not make...mules...of ourselves?" asked Softy.

"THAT'S RACIST!" Explodey shouted.

"Nopony cares, you damn mutant," Gold Coin responded.

Rainbow Dash knocked the yellow earth pony on the nose in response.

"Ow! That's still sore!"

"No trading insults! No talking out of line! And no more fighting either! We need to shape you up, and every time you act like idiots, it becomes harder and harder to reactivate the elements!"

"She's right," Twilight added, "Friendship by itself really isn't enough. There does have to be actual harmony between the bearers for the elements to work. Every time any of the six of you fight each other, you only make our job more difficult."

"Looks like we're fucked then," Gold Coin commented.

"Why are y'all so foul mouthed?" asked Applejack, "Nopony in our day ever talked like that."

"The world is full of assholes, and we need words to describe them."

"BE QUIET!" Twilight snapped.

The room fell into silence.

"Good. Honestly, some ponies..."

"Alright, everypony!" Rainbow Dash continued, "We've got a lotta work to do to unlock these elements, so let's not waste any time! We're all going to bunch up in groups to help you train. We'll keep up the training until an element unlocks. If we keep at it and get no results, you'll be given a different group to try and bring out a different element. All clear?"

The six living ponies nodded in unison.

"Okay, so let's begin! First of all, Soft Spoken! You're with Fluttershy."

Fluttershy meekly trotted over to the old stallion's side.

"Captain, you're with me and Applejack."

"Huh? Okay..."

"Mister...Explodey..." she paused momentarily to facehoof, "You get Pinkie Pie."

"Hooray!" said Pinkie.

"Hooray!" Explodey said at the exact same time.

"...Dear Celestia, there's two of them..." muttered Gold Coin.

"And Twilight is going to be with Mystic and Sliske."

The alien spluttered.

"Sliske?! I am not Sliske! My name is Sunny, and I-"

"Give it a rest," said Applejack, "We all know who ya are. An' you're a terrible liar."

Sliske's head drooped.

"Hey, what group am I in?" asked Gold Coin.

"You already have your element," Twilight pointed out, "I'm not sure how, given that you're the hardest to work with of the bunch, but that means that you and Rarity can both sit this one out."

"...Where even is Rarity?" asked Soft Spoken.

***

"And just a little more detail on the side, and...done!"

Spike smiled at the cliff face in front of him, and then looked up to Rarity standing on the edge of it in front of him.

"Come take a look."

Unaffected by conventional physics anymore, Rarity leapt off the cliff without a second thought and floated down gently to land on the great dragon's nose. She turned around to see what he had made, and recoiled at the sight.

"Is this...me?" she asked, turning to look back at him with an awkward smile on her face.

"Yeah. Do you like it?" Spike asked, as he crossed his eyes to look back at her.

It looked like a foal's drawing of a pony, except carved into rock with claws instead of drawn on paper.

"Spike, darling, in the interest in being honest with you, you're not an artist."

Spike frowned at her.

"Well, fine then. We'll start again on another cliff."

***

Silver so dearly wished that she knew exactly what was going on. Exploring the lower levels of the silo however, watching all the technicians performing unknown upgrades to the cube, she really had no idea. Second's plan was an enigma, and she was still trying to piece it together in her mind.

From behind her, she heard a familiar voice.

"...Talkin' shit about me, thinkin' I wouldn't know, so I went up to him and I was all like, 'nigga, you been spreadin' shit around? You been dissin' me behind my back?!' And then lil' punk bitch was all-"

Silver turned around just in time to see Thug Lyfe emerge from behind the cube, along with one of the scientists.

"Thug Lyfe? What are you doing here?"

The brainwashed zebra suddenly became a lot less confident and boastful, and lot more unnerved and submissive.

"I was...doin' my job. My nigga Second told me to be here. Told me I gotta help keep dis extra shit the scientists are doin' to the cube secret. From the Pantheon."

"...Extra? What's being done to the cube?"

"Aw, hell no! Second said I can't let nopony say aloud what's actually goin' on, 'cause then the Pantheon could use that as exposition and make his plans part of the narrative. And my homie don't LIKE the narrative."

Silver glared at him. He began to falter under her gaze, but she nevertheless sighed in defeat.

"Fine then...Let him keep his secrets."

***

The groups had since left for different parts of the temple. Though Spike couldn't come inside due to his size, the spiders and princesses figured that he would be okay with Rarity to keep him company, and that they would go out to check on them later. For now though, the friendship training was underway.

"So, um..." Fluttershy muttered, "Let's start with learning a little bit about you, Mr. Spoken."

"Okay," the old stallion replied, "What do you want to know?"

"Well...The Harmonites said you did some bad things. Tell me about those."

He fidgeted.

"Bad things...They'll be talking about the vampires..."

"Vampires?"

"Yeah. You've heard of vampires, right?"

"Twilight's talked a bit about them in the past...but I've never really asked. I know that they drink blood to survive."

"Well, not exactly. They do drink blood, but it doesn't replace normal food for them, and they certainly don't die without it. For a vampire, it acts to counter the aging process. If they drink once every three days they'll perpetually stay at the age they were when they were turned. They normally live forever anyway, it's just that age makes you weak and they'd rather not be decrepit.

"The myth that they need it to survive was circulated by them to better justify their actions. Some vampires, very rarely, would try to bargain for blood in the old days. If ponies thought that they would die in agony without it, they were more likely to be charitable and make the trade. I played that card myself when I was trying to broker peace between the ponies of Tramplevania and a village of vampires in a nearby forest."

"Oh. I see."

Fluttershy's voice and expression stayed neutral, and she remained silent other than those three words, expecting him to continue.

"See, my family, or my adopted family rather, were all mercenaries, or soldiers, or hunters, or slayers. Ponies of war. My cousin, Van Helsing, he made a career as a vampire slayer. Tramplevania had a pretty bad infestation back then, so he made it his duty to protect this town he lived in at all costs at night, and hunt down their kind in the day when they slept."

"Oh, vampires are weak in the day! I know that too!" Fluttershy exclaimed, "Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt! Sorry. Please go on."

"Again, not really. Daylight by itself doesn't harm vampires. It just makes them more vulnerable to their actual weaknesses, which are garlic, stakes, and blessings of Celestia, which are usually placed upon holy symbols. It can be blessings of both princesses, but it can never be Luna by herself, because the night is a friend to vampires. Holy water or sacred fire is best, though water and fire by themselves are useless."

"Hm."

Fluttershy's lack of comment on that surprised him.

"Anyway, like I was saying. My cousin worked as the local slayer for a Tramplevanian village, and it was that same village where I came to work as ambassador for a time. Though it is Equestrian territory, Tramplevania is actually east of griffin country, far from the mainland."

He sighed.

"One night, during an attack, a vampire killed my cousin."

"Oh, I'm so sorry..."

"It's alright...But before he died, he passed on his mantle to me. He wanted me to deal with the problem. Told me not to sell myself short, just because I wasn't a fighter like the rest of the family. So I tried to do it my way. Went into the forest, found the vampires, tried to reach an agreement with them to stop the attacks and get them the blood they wanted."

"And it didn't work out?"

"No. The mayor wanted a better deal. He saw paying blood in exchange for peace as blackmail. He wanted to set up a more even trade. When I went back to look for the vampires again, they came to the village and massacred everypony."

Fluttershy paled.

"So then I...did the same to them..."

For a moment, there was quiet.

"...It always stayed with me. What I did to them, I mean. Before that day, I didn't even know I had that side to me. I never intentionally hurt anything before that day. And then..."

"I know what that's like," the pegasus said quietly, "I discovered that I could be mean too."

"You? Get out of here..."

"It's true. When I tried to be assertive, to stop being a pushover, I got...aggressive. I was mean to my friends, and other ponies...I made Rarity and Pinkie Pie cry."

"Oh..."

"When I realised what I was doing, I stopped. And then I knew I had to find a balance. Learning how to not let other ponies walk all over me, but...not be the one walking over them instead."

Softy pondered that.

"Sounds like my situation, in a way," he mused, "I never found any balance though. That side of me is dangerous. I don't want to be a fighter, and I never wanted to be. I'm not Helsing. I could never do that."

"It's not good to bottle up those feelings."

"They're not bottled up. I have no inner aggression to get out, and no need for violence to sate. I had a bad day, and it made me do bad things. It's just that simple. Now I just...I try to have more self control when I have those days."

Fluttershy smiled at him.

"Then, I think you've already learned your lesson."

"Yeah. Doesn't change what I did though. I keep trying to think of a way it could have gone differently, but looking back, I realise now that peace was never an option. It never could have ended any other way."

"Oh...Well, then it sounds like you really did do all you could."

"I know."

"Then, you can't keep feeling bad over what happened. You tried to fix things without violence, and that's what's important. Even if it didn't work, you still tried. You still did the right thing."

Softy wearily returned her smile.

"But what element does that make me? All my friends thought I must have been kindness. So does Rainbow Dash apparently, since she paired you with me. But how can I be when I did something like that?"

"Because even if they did throw it back in your face, you still showed them kindness. You still tried with them. And sometimes, trying is all we can do."

***

"So then, Mystic Chant, is it?"

The colt idly rubbed a hoof against the stone floor of the temple, trying not to look the ghostly unicorn in the eye.

"You're part of my family, aren't you?" asked Twilight, "The Sparkles?"

He nodded quietly. Twilight frowned.

"You don't talk much, do you?"

He shook his head.

"It's not because I'm a ghost, is it? I hope I'm not scaring you."

"No, miss."

"Well, then what is it?"

She looked over to Sliske, who was sat nearby and being very still.

"...Mystic has been through a lot," she explained, "With everything that's been going on in the past few days, he gets really uncomfortable if there isn't somepony he trusts around to watch him. Normally he sticks close to Soft Spoken."

"Doesn't he trust you?"

"He does, but normally I'm inside his mind, and I take over when there's danger."

Twilight looked to Mystic, and then back to Sliske again.

"I...see..."

She sighed.

"Look, Sliske, I know this is awkward, given how things were the last time we met..."

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, you've said that three times now."

"Well, I am."

"You don't have to keep apologising. I know all about what you've been through since your release. I know you're sorry, and I know you've changed. Looking at you now, I can see that for myself. So, don't feel that things need to be uncomfortable between us. I'm here to help teach you both how to use your element. I have nothing but your best interests at heart."

"Isn't it weird for you though?" asked Sliske, "You once used the elements to defeat me. And now you're teaching me how to use them against others?"

"No. If anything, I'm proud to see that somepony who was bad enough that we had to use the elements against them, has changed enough to use them herself. I think it gives me faith that there's good in everyone."

***

The grin on Second's face as he read the tome of demonic lore could only be described as cartoonishly evil, which was appropriate given everything. He turned the pages with a slow, deliberate savouring. It was everything he wanted to know and more. Everything he had suspected was true. All his theories were confirmed. And his plan would require no modifications.

He had guessed everything exactly right.

"Someone's pleased with himself."

The smile was wiped from Second's face. His expression darkened, and he sat back in his chair and laid the book down on the table in front of him. Behind him, he heard the footsteps as the new visitor walked over to his side. He looked towards Nathan, as he pulled over the chair opposite him and sat down as well.

His brother leaned in slightly, sitting on the edge of the seat.

"Nice to see you again, Howard."

"Likewise. What are you doing here again?"

Nathan twiddled his thumbs idly.

"Got news for you. The movie is cancelled."

"Cancelled?" asked Howard, sitting up again suddenly.

"They made two out of three. The movies were meant to be a trilogy. A cash-in. But they bombed. The first movie did poorly, and everyone who saw it decided that the second one wasn't worth it. Considering they were made to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary of Friendship is Magic, not including any of the original show's main characters turned out to be a massive mistake. The modern day continuation of the brony fandom were not happy about how it all turned out, and with very little chance of financial success, the studios cancelled the third movie and left the trilogy untied."

Howard closed his eyes and sighed.

"So what does this mean for me then?"

"It means you're saved."

"Huh?"

"The movies were cancelled because there was little chance of profit. But a feature length animated project is much more expensive to produce than a book."

"Wait..."

"I was a writer for the original show, and I've still got much respect for that. And after TV and movie writing, I moved into books as well. You're now looking at the author who was chosen to novelise the first two movies of the trilogy, and round out the story by concluding it in a third book, which will be mostly my original material with light inspiration from the early draft scripts for the planned third movie."

Howard was stunned.

"So...You're calling the shots now?"

"That I am, little bro. And because I'm feeling generous, I'm going to do you a solid by facilitating your escape."

"You don't mean-?"

"No. I won't be writing into the story that you return to the human world. Because that wouldn't work. I can't control our home universe like I can this one. It doesn't work like that. What I can do though, is leave enough open space for your plans to work. So, here's how this is going to happen.

"Point one, your defeat at Canterlot. It's coming soon, a few days at most, but I'll make sure you survive it. The Elements of Harmony will use their powers for the first time there. They will put an end to the zombie problem, including your own condition, and you will appear to die. That will resolve the first level of the story, the one which is meant to be Equestria's fictional reality.

"Point two, we have to resolve this meta bullshit that the idiots behind the failed movies thought up. I won't lie, I'm throwing a large amount of continuity down the crapper during the novelisations, and ignoring a lot of plot holes. It'll be your job to keep track of all the side characters, and make sure that you can abuse and exploit any element that I forgot to its fullest extent.

"We resolve the meta movie how it was intended to though. Your plan's first level will execute after Canterlot. You bring the fictional Pantheon of B to Equestria. You can expect them to be maniacally evil and about as powerful as you. Kill them, and move on. That's the second level resolved."

"And the third level?"

"The third level is us. Actual reality. This is where things get tricky. In the second level, after the Pantheon of B go down, we're going to skip to an epilogue. There will be a big party, and all the subplots will be resolved, and you'll be accepted by all the ponies, and we can have a nice moral about redemption and the good in everyone and yada, yada, yada.

"I'm going to end the book on a line by you during your speech at this party, giving you free reign to do whatever you need a little while before and after it. This is where you'll take down the big boss himself, and find your way home. That part will not be in the novel.

"Just like this conversation we're having now, and our last one in Canterlot, the only guidance from me you'll be getting is head canon. Only it will be head canon I've canonised without telling anyone. Little details I added in the novelisation of the second movie, such as Canterlot Mountain being split open...Helps glue everything together."

"This is insanely complicated, I hope you realise."

"Trust me, Howard, I had to make a flow chart to understand it myself. But to put it in simple terms, all you have to do is continue with whatever plans you had before. And I can save you the trouble of worrying about screen time and that racist caricature of a zebra too. I've got a schedule for you right here."

Nathan reached into a pocket at his side and pulled out a large black square with a smooth screen.

"...Is this an iPad?"

"It's kinda sorta like one, but not really. Apple makes the iPads, but nowadays every big company has their own version of it. I don't even remember all the brand names half the time. I think this is Samsung..."

Howard tapped it, and it turned on. Surprisingly, the screen began projecting a 3D hologram of a chart in front of him.

"...You have holograms in your iPads now?"

"Yep."

"God, I miss Earth..."

"You'll find in there a list of all the scenes in all the books, and describing exactly what will happen. Additionally, a digital copy of the book itself. I encourage you not to read ahead, because spoilers, but if you need to make alterations to your plans for any reasons, check to see whether or not it's in the book first. If it is, you're gonna need to make further changes to remain outside of the narrative."

Howard powered down the holographic device and set it down next to the demon tome.

"...Thank you."

"Anything to help."

"Nathan? Did you canonise me being named Howard in your books?"

"Of course."

"...I thought you did."

"Is there a problem with that?"

Howard sighed.

"Oh, where to begin..."

***

"So...what do I need to do?"

"First thing's first!" Pinkie announced, "Let's see how good you are at making ponies laugh!"

"I can do that!" Explodey replied.

"Great! Let's see some!"

"Oh...Umm..."

Explodey looked around.

"Wait a moment. I need to get some props..."

Pinkie waited patiently as Explodey dashed in and out of various doors around the temple, returning with a table, a lamp, a cash register, some shelves, several bird cages, plastic boxes, packets of animal food, and many other strange items.

"Mr. Explodey? What's all this for?"

"It's part of a sketch!" Explodey said excitedly as he dropped a load of dog bowls on the floor, "When Lord Second created me, he made me with an inherent knowledge of some aspects of human culture. I don't know lots about them as a race, but I do know about human TV shows and movies."

"Oooh! That sounds fun!"

"It is!"

Explodey ran out and came back again with a roll of carpet which he began to lay underneath all the other items of furniture.

"I'm going to re-enact a sketch from a TV show I saw in my memories, called Monty Python."

"Sounds great!"

"It will be, just wait! I need a parrot..."

Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out a plastic green parrot, just as Explodey wanted. It was transparent like her, but she tossed it over to him, and he was able to catch it as if it were solid.

"Perfect!"

He placed the parrot inside the cage.

"Now, I'll have to play both parts, but bare with me here."

He levitated the birdcage with the parrot laying inside, and marched up to the counter.

"Ahem-" he began.

KABOOM!

The nearby wall exploded, showering chips of ancient stone brick everywhere. Explodey and the Pinkie were sent flying, along with all the props of the recreated pet shop.

"Ow..."

They both stood up at the same time, and found themselves looking out through a massive hole in the wall at a raging snowstorm outside, and floating just next to them, a hot air balloon being flown by several ponies in black armour. Explodey recognised them as the Knights of Man.

"Uh oh."

The bulkiest knight leapt out of the basket and into the temple, crawling through the hole in the wall. As he marched up to Explodey, he reached to a holster at his side, and drew a golden revolver, which he held using a mechanism attached to the hoof of his armour.

"You quote a single line of dialogue from that fucking sketch and I kill you where you stand."

Without missing a beat, Pinkie jumped in front of his gun.

"Betcha can't kill me though!" she giggled.

"Shit. She's right, boss," said one of the ponies in the basket, "We'd better retreat. I ain't down for fighting ghosts. That just ain't fair."

"Silence!" said the leader, "We can and will! For we have been given, SUPERNATURAL POWER, by our lord and master, Emperor Second, hallowed be his name!"

"Why worship Second though?" Explodey interrupted, "He's not the messiah! He's a very-"

BANG!

He shot through the transparent mare in front of him, and hit Explodey in the head. The unicorn immediately dropped.

"I TOLD YOU ABOUT QUOTING! DIDN'T I TELL YOU?!"

***

Explodey awoke to find himself in the afterlife. Again.

Huh? I'm dead again? What happened this...Oh wait. Yeah, I remember. Some ponies can't appreciate good comedy.

He looked around to try and find First. Though he appeared to be alone in the mist initially, he eventually saw a light in the distance, and began to gallop towards it.

"Hey! First! Is that you?!"

Sure enough, it was. First was sitting at a big wooden desk, dressed in a smart business suit and sweating heavily. He had a number of telephones sat in a semicircle on the desk before him, all of them ringing. Two he had pressed the receivers of against the sides of his head, being held in place by his shoulder muscles, while he held another one away from him in his left hand.

Simultaneously, he was signing documents with his right hand and filling out forms. A waste paper basket was overflowing at the side of the desk, and several stacks of folders were built up next to it, all marked with a big red stamp saying 'CLEARED'.

"Yes, I know he wasn't supposed to die, but sometimes the schedule gets fucked and nopony deigns to tell me. I- Hang on. No! Next Wednesday! Not this one. Sorry. Back again. Yes? Kay. Send out one of our replacement reapers. No, right now. This can't wait any longer."

He took a break from the document signing to hang up one of the phones, and grabbed another, which he brought up to his ear.

"You're on hold. Just a minute."

He held the new phone away from him and brought the one he held in his left up to his now free ear.

"Steel, I don't fucking care. If they're unsatisfied with the service, tell them to find a new afterlife ran by a deity that gives a shit."

He switched to the phone in his right hand that he had most recently picked up.

"This is Lord First, thank you for waiting. No, I don't care about your grandchildren. We operate a no-ghost policy. Six exceptions only, and they've already been made."

He hung up yet again and grabbed the next ringing phone.

"Hey, you're on. Oh, it's you. Hang on."

He turned to Steel's phone.

"Sorry, you'll have to be put on hold. I got another call from someone important."

He put down that phone and returned to the new one.

"Back. What do you fucking want now? ...Look, I know it's tedious work, but I need you for this. Please don't put me in this position. I like to think that we're friends, and I need you for this, I literally do not have the time to- Well fuck you too then! If you've got a problem with the way I run things then you can ferry the fucking souls yourself! I am up to my neck in shit right here! I'm a god! I don't have to deal with this!"

There was a slight pause.

"Go fuck yourself."

He slammed the phone down, but this time didn't pick up another, even though they were still ringing. His attention was directed to the other phone still being held against his ear with his shoulder muscles.

"What?! What do you mean you let him into-?! Bitch, he was a fucking serial killer! Get him out of there and put him where he belongs! ...No, the mail sorting room. OF COURSE I MEAN THE SEVENTH CIRCLE YOU MORON!"

He hung up again and picked up the last active phone laying on his desk.

"Please tell me it's good news."

Silence.

"Well, kill him then, and I'll have a chat with him personally."

More silence.

"Cancer, preferably. Make it lingering and painful too. I always hated him."

He slammed down the final phone and turned to Explodey.

"What the fuck do YOU want?" he asked, "The afterlife is meant to be your final destination. You can't keep just coming and going as you please! And in case you haven't noticed, I'm a little busy here! We just had an apocalypse, and I still haven't got an accurate death toll! I can't leave these ponies alone for a second, so whatever you have to say, please just make it quick, so I can get back to my incredibly stressful cosmic office job!"

"I was hoping to see Broad Sword again while I'm here."

"Go look for him yourself then! What do I look like?! Your fucking tour guide?!"

"Jeez, calm down. What's wrong with you?"

"APOCALYPSE?! HELLO?! WHAT DO YOU THINK IS WRONG WITH ME?! NO WONDER MY WORLD STILL HASN'T HAD ARMAGEDDON YET, IF THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT THAT GOD HAS TO DEAL WITH! I WOULD PROCRASTINATE TOO!"

***

"I really think," said Howard, "That this was all our fault. The both of us. We're ultimately responsible for this fate. More specifically, you, and your actual use of my name in the text. I think that's what did it. I think the reason that this character, Lord Second the MLP villain, is me, is because you used my name here in this book. Not my full name, but there's enough of me in it. It's..."

"Something I wouldn't have done if not for the fact that you already disappeared into Equestria."

"Which may have been because of this. It's a big circle. Time between our universes is really screwy..."

Nathan bowed his head.

"Self fulfilling prophecy," he commented.

Howard looked at him for a moment, and then stood up to walk over to the other side of the room, where he leaned against the wall.

"Why do you think it happened?" he asked, "Why do you think it was me?"

Nathan shrugged.

"Multiverse theory states that all possibilities exist simultaneously," he suggested, "Of course some universes will perfectly mirror works of fiction. I think that's what's going on here. I don't think this universe is below or controlled by our own. I think all universes are probably equal and all influence each other."

"Makes sense."

"Then again...Fiction often involves travel between universes. You write a story about a guy being removed from a universe of humans and dumped into a universe full of ponies...I mean, that was the premise the two parter that introduced the Lord Second character."

"So Lord Second had to be a human pulled from another universe."

"And maybe that's what happened. I don't think anything special was going on. I don't think I wrote that story and caused you to be here and be this person. I think...I think you were randomly picked out of a hat. One person who most resembled Lord Second as I wrote him. I based him on you, so you fit the bill. And the powers that be just randomly decided that the character would be removed from the same universe that his writer lived in. Just luck. Really bad luck. I think that's what it is."

Howard sighed.

"And those writers are just...made to be the gods of other universes," he mused, "You wonder sometimes, don't you? What if all realities are fictional somewhere else? What if all the all-powerful gods are just regular people who write, on the other side of that dimensional wall?"

Nathan smirked.

"That'd be pretty funny, actually. I'd like to imagine a world where Jesus is some kid, writing stories about himself and his dad as saviours of a race of fictional beings called humans that he made up."

Howard smiled slightly.

"...That would be funny," he agreed.

Both the men chuckled slightly.

"...I miss this, you know," said Howard, "I miss when we got along."

"Yeah...Didn't happen often, did it?"

"...You ever think we were too tough on Brian?"

"Brian was...He..." Nathan tried to find the words. "Brian was human. Just like you and me. I think he made mistakes. We did too. Our whole family was one giant screw up since dad was left on his own. You probably don't remember mom, but...I do. If she'd lived...maybe we would have all been closer."

Howard smiled.

"If I ever do come back to the real world again, I want to start things over. With you, and Brian. I'll not forget all this."

"If. Big if. I still don't know if any of this will have an impact at all. I'm writing these books, like I said, but it's just a circumstance I came into. It's not like I desperately went begging for the job because I thought it'd bring you back. For me this is all...idle daydreaming. A what-if fantasy playing out in my mind that I decided to indulge for kicks. In all honesty, I don't think I ever will see you again."

"...Glad you have such faith in me."

"Maybe I will, though. Maybe you'll come back one day. Perhaps one of these days, your body will be found somewhere up in Canada, or you'll return alive with Anthony in tow, and explain that you were taken by a human trafficking ring the whole time, or something like that. Or maybe, my optimism will pay off, and I'll look up one day, and see a portal open in the skies over Connecticut."

"It'll happen. I'll make it so."

"At least you're confident."

"Why shouldn't I be? I've got a god to watch my back now."

"So you do. Now go work on your plan, little brother, or else I'll have to smite you."

Howard strolled back over to his chair and sat in it again. He picked up the hologram pad and began playing around with it.

"One last thing," said Howard, as he focused on the pad, "Carol. Is she...?"

Nathan paused.

"She's alive. Tried remarrying, but it never worked out for her. She lives by herself in your old home in Vancouver."

Howard nodded.

"Thank you."

"I'll be off, then."

"...Try to patch things up with Brian."

"I will. Bye."

Nathan turned away from Howard and began to walk across the room again. He didn't go for the door though. He just trudged slowly towards the opposite wall, arms held out either side of him. Halfway across the floor, he began to crumble. Before he could reach the wall, he had collapsed into a pile of ash and a now dirty suit.

Second snorted.

"Show-off."

***

"Hmm..."

Twilight levitated Sliske and studied her curiously. She flipped her over and poked her belly like a biologist examining a dissected frog, while the alien just lay awkwardly still and put up no resistance. Celestia loomed over her former student's shoulder, overjoyed to once again be participating in experiments and studies with her.

"Your opinion, princess?" asked Twilight.

"Honestly, this is the first I've heard about this."

Twilight donned a pair of glasses and a pencil and notepad.

"So, tell me more about this illness."

"Well..." Sliske recalled, "It happened immediately after I escaped from Explodey's mind. Mystic and I were forcibly separated in there. He returned in his own body later, but I was the first one to escape, in my natural form. Shortly thereafter, I left to go into Ponyville and find out from the residents what happened to the dragons while we were all absorbed.

"I possessed a mare there to search her memories, and immediately after doing so, I became violently ill. I was physically sick, my senses were dulled, and it didn't improve until I left the host. She was definitely not ill before, so it was something to do with me. While in that body, I also gained that cutie mark I told you about."

"And none of this happened again when you took the demon host?"

"No."

Twilight tapped the pencil against her chin.

"Hmm...Show me the cutie mark. What did it look like?"

A demon's body was capable of changing shape, but it wasn't done often, and not easily either. Sliske had to concentrate to make the cutie mark she had before appear on her flank, which until now had remained bare.

"There."

Sliske now bore a mark of a blue silhouette of a rearing unicorn, just like before. Twilight looked at it briefly, and then her eyes darted over to Mystic, who was wandering around the temple and idly kicking at the floor just a few feet away.

"Interesting," she said, "Sliske? If you could perhaps vacate the demon body for a moment? I'd like to perform some tests."

"Will it be safe? What if the demon I took it from comes back trying to reclaim it once I'm gone?"

"I don't think that's very likely. Besides, even if it does, we can just kick it out again. Please, now."

Sliske sighed. As she did, a black smoke escaped from her mouth, and her body went limp and lifeless, which was Twilight's cue to end her levitation and drop it. The smoke reformed in the air, growing eyes and a row of sharp teeth again.

Twilight winced.

"Is my natural form unsettling to you?" Sliske asked telepathically.

"A little bit. You're essentially a cloud of shadow with a face. I don't like those."

"Well...What do you want me to do?"

"Mystic?"

The unicorn colt turned his head when he heard his name, and trotted over.

"What?" he asked.

"Would you be okay with Sliske using your body again? Just for a bit?"

Until now, Mystic had been quiet and subdued. Hearing that though, he immediately perked up.

"Yes! I mean, sure!"

Twilight turned to the alien again.

"If you please?"

Sliske's facial features vanished again as the cloud of darkness swarmed down towards Mystic, who inhaled it all one second and sprouted giant teeth and a long serpentine tongue the next.

Twilight's eyes immediately darted to the cutie mark, which was also changing shape. Sliske noticed, and looked back at it as it changed from an imitation of her natural form into a Yin-Yang symbol, only with the white representing the Yang side replaced by cobalt blue instead. The darker parts remained the normal colour.

"...I thought so," said Twilight.

"Thought what? What did you think?"

Sliske's raspy hissing voice had returned now, too.

"The cutie marks. They represent synthesis. Mystic's means that he works best with, perhaps even depends on you, and yours means the same about him! You're extremely different, but you're not opposing forces. Your contrasts come together to form a greater whole."

Sliske looked at the cutie mark again.

"That hassssssss never happened to me with a hossssst before..."

"The times are changing, and so are you."

The alien sighed.

"...Sssso what caussssed my sssssicknessssss then?"

"If I had to take a guess, it was you rejecting the host out of inadequacy. You and Mystic are such a perfect combination that any other pony host seems terrible in comparison now."

"Ssssssso why can I ussssse the demon hosssst body without consssssssequencccccce?"

"Because a demon body is half spirit anyway," Twilight explained, "That's why you're not rejecting it like that other pony; it's like just being your normal self, only more physical, rather than possessing another entity outright. Or maybe it's because that body has no other consciousness for you to wrestle with? I can only speculate.

"But that's what I think. It's almost like not being in a host at all. It's closer to your natural form, only you can change its shape to suit you. That's also probably why the demon body doesn't mutate the teeth like your normal hosts do."

"Hmm..."

At that moment, Pinkie leapt through the nearby wall.

"Twilight! There are some bad ponies here with a hot air balloon!"

"A hot air balloon?!" Twilight responded, "How DARE they?! Come on, Pinkie!"

The two ghosts galloped away in a hurry, and jumped through the walls.

Well...Looks like we might be seeing some action.

Can we go see it, Sliske?! Please?!

Sure. Here, let me show you how we do an intangibility spell.

Celestia watched as Mystic then suddenly turned transparent and leapt right through the wall as well, giving chase after the two ghosts.

"...Did everypony just forget I was here?"

***

The afterlife was sweet. Everywhere Explodey looked, ponies were having fun and enjoying life. Or unlife. Afterlife? Post-life?

There were hundreds of thousands of ponies everywhere though, of all different colours and races and talents. Some frolicked around aimlessly, just enjoying the scenery, some ate and drank at picnic tables, some played board games with each other at little tables or flew kites or sang songs or read books or performed or attended shows.

At one point he saw some ponies in lab coats huddled together around a large table, upon which they had set up many test tubes of oddly coloured chemicals. The ponies all had science themed cutie marks and were gleefully mixing the chemicals together. Explodey stopped for a second to observe as the chemicals all exploded in their faces, leaving black scorch marks over their clothes and bodies. The scientists all laughed together.

Scientists in life, and after they die they spend all eternity doing experiments together...

He wondered if there was something in this vast valley for everypony. Would pegasi who loved racing have set up a flight course somewhere around here? Was there a restaurant around for the passionate chefs who lived for their culinary designs? Did the great artists all congregate somewhere in a grand gallery of all their most amazing creations?

A foal ran past Explodey's legs, nearly tripping him over and breaking him out of his trance. He remembered what he was down here for. He'd only be dead for so long, and then he would have to leave.

He needed to find Broad Sword. What were the chances of doing that though? He could ask around if anypony had seen him anywhere, but how likely was it that anypony would even know him?

Explodey turned to the nearest pony, a green pegasus mare.

"Excuse me, have you seen a pony called Broad Sword around here?"

The mare turned around to reveal Mrs. Smith.

"Oh, hello deary!" she replied cheerfully, "Nice to see you again!"

One has to remember that in a world ruled by the laws of Dramatic Convenience, a pony like Explodey McGee spat in the face of laws of physics and took a dump on probability's lawn.

"Mrs. Smith? Since when did you die?"

"Attack on Canterlot. Got eaten by a zombie. How about you?"

"Shot. It's temporary though."

"Good for you, deary. Not enough ponies get to see the mortal world again after we leave it."

There was an awkward pause.

"So...Broad Sword?"

"Oh, right! Let me get him. SWORDY!"

From a nearby crowd of ponies, Broad Sword emerged, looking confused.

"What is it, m-"

His eyes widened as he saw Explodey waiting for him.

"Y-You!"

"I'll leave you two alone," the old mare said as she cantered away.

"Swordy!"

"Ow! Explodey...You're doing it again..."

"Doing what?"

"Hugging me too tight to breathe."

"Sorry."

"...You're still hugging me."

"But you can breathe now."

"Explodey...This is a public place...There are ponies watching..."

"No there aren't."

"But ponies can still see us! Come on! You know I get easily embarrassed!"

"You're cute when you blush."

"Explodey!"

"You aren't giving me much incentive to let go here..."

Broad Sword looked left and right, and then whispered something into the unicorn's ear.

"...Now there's a convincing argument," Explodey replied.

He dropped Broad Sword immediately.

"Come on! Let's go right now!" he said excitedly as he bounced up and down.

"Yeah, sure..."

Broad Sword looked around.

"Umm...I think the ice cream place was this way..."

***

"I'MSORRYI'MSORRYI'MSORRYI'MSORRY!"

The lead knight struggled and screamed as a ghostly Twilight Sparkle held him against the wall with her magic, anger burning in her eyes. The rest of the knights were pressed against the same wall either side of him in a line.

In the middle of the room, Sliske examined the body of Explodey, which for once was not regenerating or doing anything weird. To say it was a cause for concern would be massively understating things.

"This doessssssn't look good..." said Sliske, "I think there'sssss a real danger he may actually be dead thisssssss time."

"He'd better not be," Pinkie sulked, "He didn't even get to show me his sketch yet. He'll be so disappointed if he's trapped in First's land and can't show me!"

"If First has him, I don't know what we could do..." Twilight muttered.

"Twilight!"

The ponies looked over to one of the other walls as Celestia galloped through, just deactivating her own intangibility spell.

"Twilight, what...happened..."

She covered her mouth as she saw the state of Explodey.

"No...not again..."

"Princess. Go get your sister and the others. We've got a major problem."

***

"You two!"

Silver and Thug Lyfe, previously sitting and staring as the scientists worked on the cube at the bottom of the silo, were surprised to hear Second's voice behind them. He emerged from a nearby elevator. Behind him, Nuclear Anomaly followed closely, looking just as confused as they usually were.

"I've got extremely good news!"

His broad grin seemed to suggest the same.

"We're in the clear!" he announced, "All my plans have guaranteed success, and I no longer have a need for a racist stereotype to keep them hidden! So Thug Lyfe, mission accomplished. Job well done, my friend! You can finally have your dignity back."

"No prob, L.S."

"NOW. Since everything is on track here and the scientists know exactly what I want, that means that there's nothing more for me to do until after I am defeated at Canterlot. So very shortly, I am going to be leaving Secopolis again to set the stage for my defeat."

Nuclear Anomaly had left Second's side, and now stood between Silver and Thug Lyfe.

"You three...You're the most important part of this. You're my best soldiers. My unholy trinity. And you're going to be what makes it all possible. I want you right there at ground zero when everything goes down, because I need you all with me for this. Can I depend on you?"

"YES, SIR!" they responded in unison.

"Great! Now pay close attention..."

***

"Hello! Welcome! Glad you could make it!"

The mare coughed and waved her hoof around to clear the smoke. She was a pegasus, at least in appearance. Youthful looking, an aquamarine coat and a frizzled mane that was the colour of sand. She was scorched in places, but nothing bad. Behind her was a giant boulder laying in the grass, with a perfectly square shaped hole in it that was pouring smoke into the sky.

"Activate...extractor fans..." she gasped.

There was a whirring sound and the smoke began to clear. As the mare leaned against this boulder, an upbeat mauve unicorn with a yellow mane stood nearby, smiling at her.

"Will you be wanting to check in?" she asked.

The pegasus nodded silently. Behind her, the square closed up, and now it appeared to be just a rock.

"Come on, let's get you to the main building."

She followed her new acquaintance back towards the red and yellow two storey building on the other side of the field. Between them and it, the grass was littered with all kinds of things. Trees, other rocks, lawn decorations, umbrellas, tables and chairs; the list went on.

"...I see I'm not the first here..."

"Nope! We've been flooded with refugees for months now. I know it only happened a few days ago relative to my time, but a lot of your friends went further back to escape."

"...How many?"

The unicorn bowed her head.

"Just a couple dozen. Not many survivors at all, sadly...I'm sorry about your planet."

"Don't worry about it...It's not your problem..."

She looked over the unicorn, and then noticed something odd. On her flank, she didn't have an hourglass. Instead, it was a stopwatch.

"...Wait, I've heard of you! Dinky, right? You're the Doctor's kid! The one who's half pony!"

Dinky smiled at her uneasily.

"In the flesh," she replied.

"I almost can't believe it. What are you doing here?!"

"...Taking in refugees," Dinky replied flatly.

"No, I mean in this time period! I heard you died a year ago in a nuclear explosion!"

"Oh, spoilers! Thank you!" Dinky said sarcastically.

The two of them continued to trot along towards the building, when Dinky stopped them.

"Wait, a year ago normal time, or a year ago for you?"

The time lady paused.

"...Yes, a year ago for me. A friend told me he had been tracking a distress signal sent by his future self. He said he found you dead in an irradiated wasteland on this very planet. The radiation was what caused him to regenerate into his fourth body."

"Uh-oh..." Dinky muttered, "His future self? Your friend wouldn't happen to have been a renegade called the Keeper, would he?"

"...He's in there sending out a distress signal right now, isn't he?"

Dinky nodded her head slowly.

They both looked over to the house.

"Well...I guess this is the end..." the unicorn said, sounding resigned.

And at that precise moment, the whole building exploded, and gave birth to a mushroom cloud.

***

"Nuclear Anomaly," Second began, crouching in front of the stallion in question, "Your job is two fold. For the moment, I need you here, in Secopolis."

"Okay," said Anomaly, "What for?"

"Your special talent lends itself well to the creation and launching of nuclear missiles. The scientists here are just putting the finishing touches into creating several for me. You're going to provide the core materials for them to complete the project. That, was what Project Atom was intended to be. It's a start-up kit for making nukes."

"Oh..." the unicorn responded, "Was that...why I was made?"

"Yes. This was the purpose of your creation. I stated my defiance to the Pantheon, refusing to let their narrative absorb me. Their response was to send Anger, Ambition and Creativity to create you, and force me through Project Atom to nuke several Equestrian cities during the attack on Canterlot."

Anomaly's eyes widened.

"And...I'm...going to help you do that?"

"Yes. And I'm sorry. But we haven't got a choice in the matter right now. However, thanks to a friend of mine, I happen to know the exact results of the nuclear attacks, and everything the Pantheon had planned is going to explode in their faces. All I need to do is send a letter, and all you need to do is fulfil your original purpose."

"...Okay. I'll do it."

"Good. And the second thing you need to do, is that once you're done here and the scientists no longer need you, you're to make your way to Canterlot to join me immediately. There, you'll finally meet your brother."

***

"I can't believe it! They still have ice cream parlours in the afterlife!"

"Yeah, I thought you'd like it."

Explodey buried his face in a bucket full of ice cream, not bothering with the scoop he had been provided with.

"So...How are the others? Are you all getting by alright without me?"

"Mhhfff, fffhmm..."

Explodey pulled his head out of the bucket and swallowed, though ice cream was still all around his face.

"It could be worse," he explained, "When you died, everypony got more angry than sad about it. We were upset that you were gone, but there were a million things happening at once, and there still are, so there wasn't much time to dwell on it. There was a zombie apocalypse just a few days after it happened, and we see so many ponies die on an almost daily basis that it loses a lot of its punch. Though I was still super depressed."

His head disappeared into the bucket again briefly while he got another mouthful.

"We still had a lot of moments though, where everything would just stop while everypony remembered you and became all sad. Like when we went to see your mother!"

"Uh...She didn't...reveal anything else private, did she?"

"Like showing us all your baby pictures?"

"She didn't! Did she?! Please tell me she didn't?!"

Explodey only grinned.

"WHY?!"

Broad Sword smashed his face against the counter.

"I'm kidding! She didn't."

The earth pony sat up again.

"I really hate you sometimes."

"Oh, don't be like that! Let me have my fun. I'm only here for a little while anyway."

"Hmph."

Broad Sword turned his head away and crossed his forelegs indignantly.

"Hey, Broad Sword?"

He turned back again.

"What, Expl-?"

Next thing he knew, Explodey was kissing him.

It was brief. The other stallion pulled away a second later, leaving Broad Sword frozen stiff, eyes wide in surprise. He tried to say something, but the moment he did, he realised that he now had some of the ice cream on his face too, some of which dripped off onto the ground between them. He grumbled, before grabbing a napkin to clean the rest off his face.

"...Okay," he said, "Never do that immediately after eating ever again."

"Killjoy."

***

Second turned to the zebra.

"Thug Lyfe. You I want right by my side in Canterlot."

"F'real?"

"You're not my best fighter, but you're damn good either way, and you're undoubtedly the loudest and most obnoxious of all my elite special forces. Your purpose will be to assist me in the battle, making a final stand against the heroes when they breach the palace. You may also meet some friends of yours there. Your main objective will be distraction, holding off the Elements as long as possible, so that I can get clear before all the shit goes down."

"...Kay. I can do that."

"Good man!"

The human finally turned his attention to Silver.

"And you..."

***

The room was cold from the chill winds drifting through the hole in the temple wall. Two alicorn princesses, six ghostly mares, three stallions, a colt possessed by an alien and a number of spiders all stood in a circle around Explodey's still unmoving body.

Through the hole in the wall, one could see the massive eye of a dragon, clinging onto the outside of the temple and looking in at them, while in the corner, several whimpering knights huddled together, stripped of their armour and trying not to look directly at the extremely angry spider who towered over them, giving them intimidating glares from all of his eyes.

"He's still not getting up..." Chain Mail observed.

"Your brilliance knows no bounds," Gold Coin responded dryly.

"Agghhh!" Twilight groaned in frustration, "I can't believe this! We were getting so close as well! We might have even been able to unlock the elements today!"

"And we can't do that now...why?" asked Sliske.

The unicorn gestured to the knights in the corner.

"Because these jokers shot him with a weapon designed to suppress his regeneration! And now he might actually be permanently dead! Now we're down an element, and the rest are all useless!"

"Well, we've been down an element for a while," said Softy, "Broad Sword, who was intended as our element of loyalty, died several days before we even arrived here. You still seemed pretty confident that you could get the elements working for us."

"Yes, but at least there were still six of you then!"

Twilight began pulling her hair.

"Agghhhhh! Why can nothing ever- Just- Just, aggghh!"

Having flashbacks to the last time her friend was this stressed, Rarity sat by her side and put a hoof on her shoulder.

"Calm down, Twilight. Everything is going to be fine. He might still be okay. And if not...then we'll just have to think of something."

Twilight looked up and sighed.

"No," she said, "We can't do this without him. We need to get Explodey back."

"And how, if he's actually dead, are we going to do that?" asked Gold Coin.

"Simple," Twilight answered, "We go to First's afterlife, and take him back."

Celestia felt a sudden chill in the air, and it wasn't the wind from outside.

I don't care if you say he's reformed. I know what I saw.

Second rules with an iron fist on Earth, and his son First does the same in Heaven!

I can be a ghost if I want to. Who's gonna stop me? You?

But if you'll recall, even the seemingly good humans can't be trusted.

A creature like that has no right to rulership over ponies, living or dead.

You betrayed me after we struck a deal. I am not happy about that.

As soon as we stop Second, we should find a way into the afterlife and reclaim it from First.

Don't try to talk about things you don't understand, pony. I've been at this job for a long time.

I am really beginning to dislike him again.

More importantly, you do not want to make an enemy of me.

Don't get me started on First

But remember what I said. Drop them on Canterlot. That city's fucked anyway. And if you've got a large army in Canterlot and can't risk early deaths, then drop them on Ponyville instead.

Wait. What?! Torture?! When did this happen?

The afterlife needs to be regulated, and it just so happens that I am the universe's most efficient celestial beauracrat.

If he thinks they deserve it, he throws ponies into this netherworld he created, where they all experience their own personal hell. Forever.

I'd estimate eleven million dead.

We couldn't beat him though. Not even attack him in his realm. He's all-powerful there, like Discord times a million.

Life's a bitch, ain't it?

Well he wouldn't do, because he's a liar. Like all humans are.

Choose wisely.

Celestia looked to her sister, who had tried to keep a neutral expression, but whose eyes betrayed the fear she really felt. By the hole in the wall, she could see Spike's eye too had widened slightly after hearing Twilight's proposal.

"...Hmph. Really?" Gold Coin responded, "Rescue from the afterlife? Sounds like a good time. I hope you know the way there..."

***

"You I need to stay here."

Silver was surprised at her instruction.

"Pardon, sir?"

He placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Silver, you're my best mare. You're the smartest and strongest soldier of all my forces as far as I'm aware. You outlasted the Horses of the Apocalypse against Anger, you're the sole survivor of Canterlot, and I'm confident in your abilities.

"I need you to stay here in Secopolis and keep it running in my absence. Because after Canterlot, I need to come back here for stage two, and to execute the plan. And when I do, I need my city clean. No civil wars. Everyone where they should be. Projects Pandora and Beacon ready to activate at my command. And most important of all, I want to see the place well defended, because something big is coming our way. You'll know when you see it.

"So, Silver? Can I do that? Can I trust you with my city?"

Silver opened her mouth to respond. It remained hanging open for several seconds while she tried to formulate a response. Words failed her.

"Can I?"

"...Yes, sir. Of course you can trust me. I won't let you down!"

Second smiled at her.

"I knew I could depend on you. Build your forces, Commander Silver Vein. When I return, I expect a standing army of a thousand heavy troopers ready and waiting. Our enemies will burn together, and you will be the instrument of our divine vengeance."

***

"NO. Fuck you. FUCK you!"

First didn't just slam the phone down this time. He smashed it into the desk so hard that the phone shattered into pieces of plastic and wiring, and the desk itself broke cleanly in half, causing all the other phones to clatter to the floor around him, even as they continued to ring.

He grabbed his hair and covered his face with his forearms, before letting out an anguished moan.

"WHY?!" he demanded, screaming to no-one in particular, "What is WRONG with these idiots?! Am I exclusively hiring the mentally retarded to assist me?! Why is NO-ONE around here competent?! Why is EVERYONE such a problem except me?!"

His blood was boiling, and he could tell because his stomach was being scalded where it poured out of his permanent wound. That was the downside to being a spiritual being. Some expressions applied to him were disgustingly literal.

With a click of his fingers, the top draw of the broken desk opened up and a roll of bandages floated out. He pulled off his suit jacket and began to remove his shirt to address the issue, but he stopped just after he finished unbuttoning it.

He looked over his shoulder, and turned around.

"What the...?"

He stepped over the desk and walked into the mist a little way. There was a strange sensation on the wind. New, but also strangely familiar, like he had seen it before but it was different this time. In the silence of the void, he closed his eyes and took a long sniff of the air.

"...Rebellion," he uttered, treating the word with disgust and contempt.

He clicked his fingers with his left hand, and a rapier materialised in his right.

"Fine then, Twilight Sparkle. You want to play this game again? Let's see if you've gotten any better since last time..."

END.

Author's Note

JAYZUS that took a long time!

For which I apologise, but inspiration simply wasn't striking and there was little I could do. I got it eventually though, in a big way, and I've got more plans than ever now for future instalments.

If anyone cares about what I think of season three so far, see the accompanying blog post, which also discusses my other big three projects right now, for those interested, including my ongoing series based on the Fallout games called Wanderer's Diary. Not pony, but still DannyJ style, so expect bizarreness. It's linked on my user page.

By the way, merry Christmas.

Next Chapter: The afterlife gets invaded.

Interlude 5: Locked Out of Heaven

"So, what's our plan?" asked Gold Coin, "If we even have a plan?"

Twilight smiled at him him briefly, and turned back to pouring magic into the spell, which coalesced in the air in front of her as a swirling blue vortex.

"First's afterlife isn't any kind of physical realm," she explained, "More like a higher plane that exists everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. You can enter it from almost anywhere in the known universe, but only under the right circumstances. For one, you must be physically dead."

"Well, that might be a problem then," Softy replied, "How are the rest of us supposed to go?"

"There are a number of technicalities that can help you enter. For example, ghosts and the undead are not counted as living beings, so ourselves and Sliske will have no trouble getting in. Highly magical beings such as alicorns and demons are also safe, so we can take the princesses without trouble. As for the rest of you though..."

She took a quick break from charging the magical vortex.

"Well, the obvious solution is to temporarily separate your spirits from their physical bodies. However, that poses the risk of greater vulnerability to First's powers, and you may not necessarily come back."

"Are there any other possibilities, Twilight?" asked Luna.

"An intangiability spell works by temporarily elevating the body to a spiritual plane. Somepony under its effects could theoretically pass as a spirit and enter the realm as well. The spell would need to be constantly in effect while there though, which could be exhausting for whichever unicorn has to keep it going. And if it wears off at any point..."

Chain Mail raised an eyebrow.

"What? What happens if it wears off?"

"You'll fall into the void of time."

"That sounds bad."

"It is. It's like an earth pony falling through a cloud layer, except you can end up anywhere in history, possibly with no hope of return."

"And these are our only options?"

"They are."

Soft Spoken sighed.

"Guys, we can't leave Explodey. I think we're going to have to do this."

"Wonderful..." Sliske grumbled, "So who's going? Obviously we can only take so many."

"We can't take Spike," said Twilight, "Too large. And the Harmonites wouldn't be much help. They'd be better off here guarding the knights. I think it should be just you ponies."

"Us?" asked Gold Coin.

"Yes, us," Chain Mail confirmed, "Not counting Sliske and Mystic, there are only three of us. If Sliske, the princess and Twilight all casted the spell on just one pony without having to split their attention-"

"Actually, Sliske will need to be either in her natural form or in the demon body to enter the realm unharmed," Twilight interrupted, "So Mystic will be a fourth. We still might have enough unicorns though. Rarity isn't quite as magically skilled, but I could teach her the spell quickly, and she could take care of Mystic. He'd be the easiest one to protect."

The surviving stallions all looked to each other.

"Sounds like a plan," said Gold Coin, "Tell us what to do."

***

Ancient Tome didn't notice Spike's presence until the dragon swooped right over him. The old unicorn yelped in surprise and fell over in the snow, as Spike landed on top of the nearest wooden building, which seemed to just barely support his weight.

"E-Eternal!" he exclaimed, "What was that for?!"

Spike looked left and right very quickly, and then leaned in very close, stretching his long neck down to ground level and resting it on the floor right next to Tome.

"I have some information."

His voice was still much louder than normal speaking volume for a pony, but for a dragon it was but a whisper.

"What about?" Tome asked.

"Lord First."

***

"Ready?!" Twilight called out.

Rarity, Celestia and Sliske all responded as one.

"Ready!"

The four magic users all leaned down and touched their horns on the heads of their partners. Twilight had Soft Spoken, Celestia had Gold Coin, Sliske had Chain Mail and Rarity had Mystic.

"Now, go!" Twilight shouted the moment the spell was over, "Everypony into the vortex! We can't waste a single minute's worth of magic!"

The alicorns, ghosts and living ponies alike all gave a triumphant battle cry and rushed forward into the blue portal of magical energy. To the side, the Harmonites shielded their eyes as the vortex flashed brightly every time somepony entered it.

"Good luck!" Arcelio called out as Luna vanished into the portal, the last one to go.

CRASH!

The temple shuddered. Arcelio and the Harmonites looked to the hole in the wall, and saw a mass of purple and green outside. The crashing had been the dragon, Spike, landing on the outside of the temple again.

Arcelio was about to chastise him for almost causing further damage to the Harmonites' dwelling, but then a massive clawed hand shot through the hole, and opened up to reveal two more ponies. One was a light grey unicorn with a beard and star patterend blue robes, while the other was a much darker grey earth pony in royal guard armour.

"Quickly! Before it closes!" Spike ordered.

Ancient Tome's horn burst with light, and both he and his companion turned very slightly transparent as they jumped from Spike's claw and galloped across the room towards the portal.

"We're coming!" Tome shouted.

The two ponies leapt into the magical vortex just before it closed.

***

"So then," Explodey continued, "We all decided to have a competition to see who could kill the most zombies. And then I got bitten by one!"

Broad Sword remained quiet, continuing to eat his ice cream while Explodey told the extremely bizarre story.

"And then there's the time that I turned into a giant sludge monster and ate the population of Canterlot-"

"Okay, STOP!"

"Something wrong, Swordy?"

"I need you to repeat that last part."

"What part?"

"The Canterlot part."

"I...ate the population of Canterlot?"

"Yeah. That's the part."

"I ate the population of Canterlot!"

"Right...Why?"

"Oh, well you see that's a long story! Some of which I've already told you, but the important part is the dream world part, in which-"

"Excuse me."

Explodey turned his head to face a cloaked unicorn standing behind them. She had a dark grey coat and a mane of the same colour, and had an expression of disinterested apathy. That was odd to see in a kingdom where boredom was supposedly impossible.

"Are you Explodey McGee?" she asked.

"...Yah."

Her horn lit up, and from within the cloak she produced a small ID badge.

"Seeing Eye," she announced, "Inspector and junior overseer for the Department of Demonic, Eldritch and Otherwise Unnatural Creatures."

Explodey looked back at Broad Sword.

"They have bureaucrats here? I thought this was meant to be Heaven!"

"Eh...First isn't exactly the most imaginative deity," his friend answered, "I guess that when he finds that he needs assistance, the first thing that springs to mind is what us mortals do."

"But the invention of bureacracy was ponykind's original sin!" Explodey complained.

Broad Sword could only shrug.

"Ahem. I'm still here."

"Yes! Sorry," Explodey replied, returning attention to the cloaked mare, "What can I help you with then?"

He found a small plastic folder shoved in his face, which he magically gripped and opened up in silence. Broad Sword leaned over his shoulder to look at the files, which were a lot of really tiny text with two or three illustrations. One was of Explodey midway through healing after an explosion, one was of a double helix, and one was of a desert cactus with a big red question mark superimposed over it.

"We have reason to believe that you, Explodey McGee, can be legally classified under Firstian law as your own separate species. More to the point, that species technically counts as an eldritch abomination, and as such it falls to my department to take you in for questioning, and put you through trials and processing to determine whether we need to move you to your own valley, keep you here, or possibly even lock you in one of the circles. This is non-negotiable."

"This is bullshit is what it is!" Broad Sword shouted.

The former royal guard got off his seat at the bar and stood face to face with the mare, while Explodey continued to read the files floating in front of him, apparently completely unaware of the argument.

"Explodey is as much as pony as you or me! You have no right to-"

"I have divine authority," Seeing Eye interrupted, "And he is not a pony."

"Is too!"

"Mister McGee, could you please turn to the third page of that folder?"

Explodey looked at her uncertainly for a second, and then did as requested. He smiled slightly at the sight of it, and showed it to the other stallion.

"Hey, Swordy! Look! It's a questionnaire! It's even got little illustrations at the bottom!"

Broad Sword stared into the picture at the bottom of the page. It looked to be a glypth of some kind, but the angles of the lines inside it were all wrong. Almost physically impossible even. He began to enter a trance-like state, and he could feel a headache building.

"Uh-uh."

His head was pulled away from the questionnaire by the cloaked mare.

"The illustration is a fifteen-dimensional image, and looking upon it is fatal for mortal creatures. If you weren't already dead, that would have killed you."

Explodey looked at it again.

"...Why include it then?"

"It's an attachment to question six. 'Describe the image at the bottom of the page.' It's meant to determine how many planes of existence you occupy."

He tilted his head.

"It's a hot air balloon!" he announced.

"Well damn. That's the full fifteen," Seeing Eye responded, "That's one mark."

"One mark?" Broad Sword repeated.

"One mark out of a possible twenty seven. If you can get twelve or more, you officially qualify as an elder god according to Firstian theological classification. It's like a quiz."

"Oh boy, I love quizzes!" Explodey said happily, "Somepony get me a pen!"

***

"Where are we?"

"We've been separated, Mr. Spoken."

Twilight and Softy were alone in the white void of the Firstian afterlife. Here, both of them appeared solid, though the old stallion still felt rather light in spite of everything.

"Is this First's doing?" he asked.

"Definitely. He doesn't want all of the Elements of Harmony assembled against him. Either group. He might be almost unstoppable in this world, but he'd still be a fool to not take precautions."

Softy turned around on the spot, trying to search for any sign of presence other than themselves. All he saw in every direction though, was endless mist and fog.

"Where is this place?"

"This is Limbo, the first circle of Hell. All ponies who die come here first, and must walk through it, usually guided by First himself, to reach the paradise of valleys of Heaven. Or, if he deems them guilty but redeemable, he takes them to Purgatory instead, where they have to wait until he says they can continue."

"That sounds unpleasant," Softy commented.

"That's the kindest fate that Lord First sentences his enemies to. I said this is the first circle. There are more."

"How many more?"

"This circle is the first of nine. Purgatory and the valleys aren't circles though."

"What happens in the other circles?"

Twilight looked back at Soft Spoken, a sad look on her face.

"Have you ever lost a friend, or family member, who...might have done some bad things?"

He winced.

"...A few."

"Then you don't want me to tell you."

***

Sliske and Chain Mail were surprised when they appeared on what seemed to be the edge of a large cliff, next to a waterfall. They were looking over a beautiful green valley below them, with laughing and frolicking ponies as far as the eye could see.

"What the...?" the captain muttered, "Where are we?"

"The Firstian afterlife, I would guess," Sliske responded, "I'm not sure what happened to the others though..."

"Damn...Look at all those ponies down there...Do you think we can even find Explodey in a place this big?"

"Can't hurt to try..."

***

"No...He's separated us!"

"What's happening?!" Mystic asked, fear evident in his voice.

"That snake!" Rainbow Dash cursed, "He's split up everypony and dumped them in different places all over the realm!"

"Oh no..." said Rarity, "It's far worse than that. Especially for us..."

"You don't mean...?"

"That beastly human has trapped us in Purgatory!"

"What's Purgatory?!" Mystic shouted, "Where are we?! I'm scared!"

"It's alright, darling! There's nothing dangerous here. We may just have some trouble getting out..."

Rarity wandered off into the blank whiteness around them. Unlike Limbo, there wasn't even any mist or rocky ground here. Everything was just a white void in all directions. The little blue colt shivered in fear, while Rainbow Dash landed next to him.

"Hey, squirt. Don't get scared. We'll figure a way out of this," she assured him, "Me and my friends have gotten out of worse scrapes before."

Rarity walked around them in a circle, her horn glowing as she probed at something unseeable to the other two.

"No!" she said angrily, "I can't believe it! We should have known he would try something like this! And we all blundered in without-"

Hahahahahaha...

Rainbow Dash was in the air again, twisting around to look in all directions and punching at the air with her hooves. Rarity in contrast remained completely still, eyes slowly scanning the void.

"Mystic Chant, dear?" she said calmly, "Get behind me."

The younger unicorn complied, standing behind the older mare's legs. In front of them, a large ball of light about the size of a pony began to slowly fade into the world, and it became brighter and brighter every second until it exploded in a blinding flash and with a loud pop.

There was a thumping sound, as a heavily armoured stallion appeared before them. Stylistically, his armour evoked the Canterlot royal guard, but this was a full body suit that covered him completely. The only openings on the bright golden armour were for his eyes, mouth, nostrils and tail. Most notably, the chest plate of the armour was decorated with a bright purple gemstone that glowed softly.

He stepped forward, and a pair of war hammers that the ponies hadn't noticed before floated up from his sides and twirled in the air. Rarity noticed immediately that there was no space in his helmet for a horn. So the pony was not a unicorn. She guessed that the gem on his armour was likely providing the magic instead. That or the will of First himself.

As the stallion slowly walked towards them, he smiled, and the twin war hammers spun around in the air in a menacing fashion, forcing them to step back.

"Hello," he said in a clear Canterlot accent, "My name is Private Steel Hammer. Former Equestrian Royal Guard, personal assistant to Lord First, and senior first class grim reaper. I kill ponies, I sort their souls, and I keep my Lord happy. And I can do all three of my jobs right now by eliminating you."

He stood up on his hind legs, and pointed one of the hammers at them as one would point the tip of a blade at an enemy's throat. Despite the threat, Rarity and Rainbow Dash both got into combat stance, the latter even dropping down onto the ground and scraping a hoof against the floor.

"You think we're going to be that easy?" she challenged, "Bring it on."

***

Celestia, Gold Coin and Applejack stumbled forward a few steps, before realising that all the others that had been ahead of and behind them were all gone.

"What? Where did they go?" asked Gold Coin.

"I sent them away."

The three turned to face their fronts again, and found that in the split second they had looked away, First materialised in front of them.

Behind him was a desk that had been smashed in half. He was wearing very smart looking suit trousers, but instead of an appropriate jacket and tie to go with it, he just had a shirt. At that, the shirt was unbuttoned, exposing a still oozing wound on his stomach. And in his right hand, he clutched a rapier.

"You have all made a grave mistake in coming here," he warned them, "This is my realm. My rules are absolute. I do not tolerate any deviation, and if you attempt to force a change that I do not approve, then you will suffer dire consequences."

"Can it, First!" Applejack shouted, "We're here for Explodey! Where is he?!"

"You're here for Explodey, are you?" First repeated, "Funny. Because I could have sworn you and the rest of your friends came into this realm on the false hope that bringing your precious pony princesses and your successors would somehow help overthrow me. Sorry, Applejack, but it doesn't work that way. You are all equally powerless."

"So you say!" Gold Coin replied, walking up to First, "But your father wasn't infallible, despite all his power, and I don't think you are either!"

"SILENCE."

First didn't touch Gold Coin. He just held out a palm at him, and the earth pony was knocked away and sent sprawling, much to the shock of Celestia.

"YOU, Mr. Gold Coin! You're one of the scum that they call the Brotherhood of Man! I have a spot reserved for you in the sixth circle for heretics!"

"FIRST," Celestia ordered, "Stand down! This is going too far!"

"TOO FAR?!"

He held out a hand to Celestia, and even though he was not physically touching her, she felt the force of his fingers squeezing her neck and choking the air out of her.

"YOU MISERABLE CREATURES HAVE THE AUDACITY, THE NERVE, TO COME TO MY REALM AND STAND BEFORE ME, THE MIGHTY LORD FIRST, AND MAKE DEMANDS LIKE A PETULANT CHILD?!"

Celestia felt herself being involuntarily raised into the air. Applejack and Gold Coin soon felt the same.

"I TRIED TO SHOW YOU ALL THE RESPECT I THOUGHT YOU DESERVED, AND YOU SPAT IN MY FACE!" he thundered, "Well NO MORE! I am DONE with you WORMS! You are INSECTS to a being like me! And you will share an insect's fate! You will be SQUASHED!"

The three ponies tried to struggle to escape, but it was no use.

"I BANISH YOU TO THE NINTH CIRCLE, FOR TRAITORS!"

END.

Author's Note

You have no idea how much of a nightmare it was to write this.

I'm sorry for the lateness, but...What can I say? Shit happens, and I'm sorry. I'll try to get a proper chapter out some time sooner. We'll see. Season finale discussion can be found on my most recent blog, and also check out my other stories, Wanderer's Diary, When Suddenly a Manticore... and the most recent addition to the Human universe, Van Helsing.

Next Chapter: GOD WARS.

Chapter 28: The Promised Land

"Remember, soldiers! You are facing GODS! The two humans! But we are the Equestrian Royal Guard! We stand tall before even the strongest of foes, without fear in our hearts! These monsters, they would see us cower in terror! They would see us trodden on, and toyed with for their amusement! But though we are mere mortals, that does NOT mean that we are weak! Even against all odds, Equestria WILL stand tall!"

The words of Captain Blade Edge replayed in Steel Hammer's mind. The pony who spoke those inspiring words just before the battle began galloped alongside him across the large grassy plains, towards the crowd of ponies engaging the humans.

"Come at me!" Lord Second shouted as he knocked aside four other squads at once. "You started this war! FINISH IT!"

"Stop encouraging them!" First yelled back to him.

"Make me!"

The two ponies reached the humans and drew their weapons. Blade Edge had his sword and charged Second, slashing at him repeatedly while his opponent ducked and weaved out of the way.

"Hahaha!" he laughed. "What's this?! A pony that finally got in range to at least try to hit me?! You're something special, sonny!"

He stopped dodging and grabbed the sword by the blade with his miraculously uninjured hand. He swiftly yanked it away and then whacked the captain hard on the nose with the handle. He drew blood, and Blade Edge fell to the floor. Second followed up by stomping on his throat.

Steel Hammer meanwhile had got in range of First, and was swiping at him with the war hammers. First was dodging them as well, but unlike his partner he had a much more serious expression, and wasn't taunting the guards. Steel could see in his eyes. He wasn't enjoying this quite as much as the other one. He actually treated it like a battle, rather than a game.

"Quit dodging me, human!" Steel growled. "Fight me like a stallion!"

First hesitated, but complied. He lunged forward and grabbed one of the war hammers in mid-strike. He smashed it into the side of his armour, and prepared for a second strike, when he saw another pony coming in to his right and threw the hammer at them instead.

Steel groaned as he tried to recover from the blow, but then looked up into the sky.

"ARTILLERY STRIKE!" he screamed to the captain.

Blade Edge looked up in horror as the rockets flew through the air towards them, ready to rain down death upon them.

First looked to Second.

"Give me!"

Second reached into his coat and pulled out the Reaper's horn. For a moment, the ponies were terrified, but then Second tossed it over to First, who pointed the weapon into the air and fired several shots. The rockets exploded in the air before they could reach them.

"Dang it, who ordered that artillery strike?!" the captain demanded.

While the two humans stared up at the sky, Steel Hammer seized the brief moment of inaction. He ran at First again, and grabbed the barrel of the weapon in his teeth, trying to wrench it out of First's hands. The human struggled against him, his own strength easily enough to overpower the soldier. Until he made a mistake.

The distinctive sound of the gun going off echoed across the battlefield, even amongst the chaos. Second noticed, and so did First, both looking down to see Steel Hammer bleeding from the chest where he had been shot.

First let go of the weapon, and backed away, staring at the wound that he had inadvertently caused. Steel was already beginning to feel his vision fade.

No... Not like this...

Struggling to stay conscious, he shook his head so that the weapon swung around one hundred and eighty degrees between his teeth, and he locked them down on the handle of the gun this time. First was still too shocked by what he had done to react. The soldier's tongue found the trigger, and pulled it back.

It fired again. First was hit right in the stomach, and immediately fell over. Second screamed. The recoil knocked Steel Hammer back and the shotgun went flying out of his mouth as he fell over as well, and went rolling down a small incline towards several other stunned royal guards.

"Steel!" Captain Blade Edge came into view, looming over the dying guard. "Damn it! I told you, we were to capture or subdue! What have you done?!"

Steel Hammer gasped for breath.

"...My duty to Equestria..."

He closed his eyes.

***

War hammers flew back and forth, and Rarity and Rainbow Dash were dodging as best they could. The latter was doing much better at avoiding the blows, speed and agility being her speciality, but Rarity kept getting hit. There wasn't enough force behind the attacks for them to be crippling, but it was still much more pain than she was used to.

"What, is, even, your, deal?!" asked Rainbow Dash, each word punctuated by another maneuver to avoid further strikes.

"Let all the Earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him!" Steel Hammer shouted back. "For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm!"

A hammer struck Rainbow in the face, and the pegasus went down.

"No!" Mystic cried out.

"STAY BACK!" Rarity shouted. "I can still do this!"

"But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine!"

Rarity was hit with both hammers, smashing her in the ribs from either side at once.

"Aghhh!" she screamed.

"Rarity!"

Rainbow Dash was back on her hooves, and flew up to grab one of the hammers right out of the air. She held it in her own teeth and charged Steel with it, who blocked it with his own and pushed back against her as Rarity staggered, trying to catch her breath. He smiled at the pegasus, even as she gave him an intense glare of hatred.

"A wise person fears the Lord and shuns evil, but a fool is hotheaded and reckless."

He shoved Rainbow back and dropped his hammer, instead choosing to hit her in the face with a heavily armoured hoof and sending her sprawling. Only then did he lift the hammer and smash it down on her. His victim cried out in pain again and he put the hammer back in place, after briefly turning his attention back to Rarity and striking her in horn. She hit the floor hard.

He looked over to Mystic, who was shaking. The two older ponies both groaned as they lied before him.

"You are sinners, and unworthy," Steel Hammer declared. "Rarity. Rainbow Dash. I consign your souls to the fifth circle, for the angry. And Mystic Chant. You will remain in the first circle of Limbo for all your days."

***

In the darkness, Celestia opened her eyes.

"...Where am I?"

The air was chill around her. She could feel herself shivering. Surprisingly, she found that she unable to move. Her lower half was absolutely freezing. It felt like...

Ice.

The darkness began to fade, and the lights that dimly illuminated her location revealed that she did indeed have her lower half trapped in ice. All around her, everything was frozen solid. She appeared to be in some kind of cavern. In the middle of the cavern was a pillar of ice that rose right up to the dome shaped roof, the sole feature of the otherwise empty place.

"Welcome to the ninth circle, princess."

Celestia twisted her neck around to see the human now standing behind her. He leaned on a cane and looked down at her with mild amusement.

"First! Please, I implore you. Stop this madness now! I thought you'd learned to do better! Don't give in to insanity like your father did!"

"Oh, would that I could..." First said wistfully. "Unfortunately, even in a playground where I can do anything I please, with every sapient creature in all of creation, past, present and future all worshipping the very ground that I walk on... I can still get a little stir crazy."

"First. I beg you. You're better than this. If there is any goodness in you, then you'll—"

"I'll what? I'll surrender my control of the eternal kingdom, so I can let those self-righteous mares dictate the proper moral code for the entire universe? What makes them the ones worthy to deal out the punishments for every guilty soul to ever exist? Why are they right to condemn me? What are their qualifications?"

"They're the Elements of Harmony," said Celestia. "They represent the most fundamental virtues of the world we live in!"

First leaned down, so that he was face to face with her.

"And that's why they're too soft."

He stood up and turned away, pacing a few steps before coming to a stop. He kept his back to her as he spoke.

"You know... This afterlife was here before I arrived. Back then, it was ran by Mortality, the alicorn of death, who would choose the exact moment that every living thing died and then keep their souls here, so that they could continue life in this realm while she observed and learned from them.

"She was one of my favourite characters in this great story. Morally ambiguous, a menacing presence, and one who brought up a lot of interesting philosophical questions. A method for me to contemplate higher concepts at a time in my life where I was feeling rather spiritual."

First looked back at Celestia and smiled.

"Unfortunately, while an interesting character, not the sort of person you want running the afterlife in any sort of realistic situation. When I found that this world was real, and I found that she really was the one who ruled the land of the dead, I knew something needed to be done."

His grin broadened.

"So I killed her."

He began giggling.

"I killed death!"

Then cackling.

"I. KILLED. DEATH."

He rushed over to Celestia, grabbed her by the horn, and forced her to look at him. She could see a glint of demonic red in his eyes as he gloated.

"AND DO YOU KNOW HOW I DID IT? BECAUSE I MADE HER! DEATH WAS MY CREATION, AND I WIPED HER FROM EXISTENCE WITH A WAVE OF MY HAND. AND NOW. NOW, PRINCESS. I. AM. DEATH."

***

Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof materialised into being before a wooden desk. It was the sole feature of an otherwise empty void of fog and stone floor. Stacked on the desk itself were several papers and other strange devices that appeared to be electronic, as they were wired into some green cube thing in front of the desk.

"What is this?" Tome asked curiously. "First's office?"

Iron cantered behind the desk and propped himself up on it with his forehooves.

"...Death certificates," he said grimly. "Naming everypony who died today by the look of it."

Tome levitated one over to examine it.

Gradual Progress.

Age 24.

Earth pony.

Junior scientist - Chemistry.

Brown coat, yellow mane, blue eyes, cutie mark of a test tube over a bunsen burner.

Died May 12th 1005 SSR. Killed by Lieutenant Meticulous Planning of the 501st legion, (File 7-BQ8R), as a mercy after zombie infection, in the Hoofmarch Military Research Facility.

Sins minimal.

Sentence: Paradise.

"...Hmm. Interesting."

Iron emerged from under the desk at that point. Tome hadn't even noticed his disappearance, but he was back now, and carrying a huge folder in his teeth.

"I found this in the bottom draw," he explained. "It's labelled 'register,' and I think it contains archives of past deaths."

Tome grabbed it and opened it up. He marvelled at what he saw.

"This folder is bigger on the inside..."

"Well, that's elder god magic for ya," Iron replied.

"Yeah... There must be millions of files in here, Iron. How does he find individual entries? There must be some kind of vocal command to summon them..."

He paused.

"Velocity."

A small paper sheet flew out of the folder, and levitated before the old unicorn. He snatched it out of the air and dropped the folder back on the desk.

Velocity Tome.

Age 36.

Pegasus.

Government weather inspector - Canterlot region.

Blue coat, white mane, green eyes, cutie mark of a tornado carrying snow.

Died September 15th 1001 SSR. Killed by disease in her bed in Sparkle Manor, surrounded by family in her last moments.

Committed heresy by joining the Brotherhood of Man, and deceived several of her friends, family and co-workers by denying said involvement. Also guilty of treachery/treason - Conspiring to overthrow the Equestrian government via the resurrection of Second.

Unrepentant.

Sentence: Sixth circle.

Tome's eyes watered as he read the file.

"No..."

He set it down again, and rushed for the folder.

"Frosty Morning!" he barked.

Another file floated out.

Frosty Morning.

Age 44.

Pegasus.

Weather pony - Canterlot region.

Light blue coat, white mane, brown eyes, cutie mark of a frosty patch of grass.

Died May 10th 1005 SSR. Killed by Commander Bullseye of the Knights of Man, (File 7-XG0P) for rebellion, in the Secopolis International Airport on the way to board the airship Prometheus.

Committed heresy by joining the Brotherhood of Man. Deceived several of her friends, family and co-workers by denying said involvement. Committed treachery/treason, first by conspiring to overthrow the Equestrian government via the resurrection of Second, and then further betrayed Second once aligned with him. Guilty of theft, of the Reaper's horn from the Canterlot archives, and murder, killing several royal guards in that same heist.

Repentant for heresy and deception, but not other sins, violence being most prominent.

Sentence: Seventh circle.

"...Arcane Arts!"

Lady Arcane Arts.

Age 73.

Unicorn.

Arch-mage of Canterlot (retired).

Lavender coat, white mane, yellow eyes, cutie mark of a series of magical runes, both ones outdated by her time and modern.

Died May 6th 1005 SSR. Killed by Lord Second (File 0-0000) while fighting an entity that was inhabiting her body at the time, in the throne room of the Palace of Kings in the city of Secopolis.

Committed heresy by joining the Brotherhood of Man. Deceived several of her friends, family and co-workers by denying said involvement. Committed treachery/treason by conspiring to overthrow the Equestrian government via the resurrection of Second. Also guilty of theft, of Second's statue from the royal gardens, and murder, later killing several royal guards during an assault on the palace.

Unrepentant.

Sentence: Seventh circle.

"Night Shroud!"

Private Night Shroud.

Age 37.

Lunar Pegasus.

Night guard and field medic.

Dark coat, dark mane, yellow eyes, cutie mark of a billowing cloak.

Died May 11th 1005 SSR. Killed by High Priest Sun Rise of the Secopolis Church of Humanity, (File 7-HQ6R) during a battle between the forces of the Equestrian Royal Guard and Lord Tirac's 54th Demon Legion, halfway up the Thousand Steps pathway to New Arachnia on the summit of Mt. Celestia.

Committed heresy by joining the Brotherhood of Man. Deceived several of his friends, family and co-workers by denying said involvement. Also committed treachery/treason, first by conspiring to overthrow the Equestrian government via the resurrection of Second, and then further betrayed Second once aligned with him.

Repentant for heresy and the first instance of treachery, but not other sins, deception being most prominent.

Sentence: Eighth circle.

"CHAMELEON!"

Chameleon Camouflage.

Age 46.

Unicorn, with large changeling heritage.

Regional head of Rare Gems Fashion legal department.

Yellow coat, orange mane, green eyes, cutie mark of a green flash.

Died May 5th 1005 SSR. Killed accidentally by Mystic Chant (File 7-PQ6R) in an attempt to defend another pony from her, in one of the guest rooms of the Canterlot Royal Palace.

Committed heresy by joining the Brotherhood of Man. Deceived multiple ponies throughout her life, primarily for the purposes of financial fraud. Also deceived several of her friends, family and co-workers by denying involvement with the Brotherhood, and impersonated another mare to seduce the mare’s coltfriend during her teenage years. Committed treachery/treason by conspiring to overthrow the Equestrian government via the resurrection of Second. Guilty of murder and attempted murder on several counts throughout her life, most prominently during a Brotherhood assault on the palace where she died. Also guilty of rape, via the above mentioned deception of a stallion while impersonating his marefriend.

Unrepentant.

Sentence: Eighth circle.

Tome threw the files down on the desk and collapsed against it.

"...Tome?"

"Leave me alone."

"Come on, Tomey..."

"They're damned, Iron! I mean... Chameleon I understand, but Frosty, my wife, my auntie... They're all in Hell. He sentenced them all to an eternity of..."

Iron walked over to Tome's side and placed a hoof on his shoulder.

"Then let's go rescue them."

***

Still sat at the bar with Broad Sword and Inspector Seeing Eye, Explodey magically raised his pen to begin the quiz.

"So... first question," Explodey read aloud. "'Is your true name an unspeakable word or phrase that would cause damage, physical or mental, to mortal beings when spoken?' Hmm... I don't think it is. I'm gonna go with 'no' for that one."

He ticked a little box on the form.

"Number two. 'Same question, but regarding your true form.' True form? I don't understand."

"It means what you naturally look like," Seeing Eye explained. "Without disguising yourself or anything. It doesn't matter though. You do normally look like a pony, even if you aren't one, so you can skip this question."

Explodey moved onto the next one without comment.

"'Do you have any knowledge of other dimensions, universes, or planes of existence other than this one?' Well, I know a fair bit about the human world. I guess that qualifies. Check!"

Explodey was smiling obliviously to himself, but Broad Sword shot a concerned glance over to the inspector, who remained as unreadable as ever.

"Question four! 'Do you have any of the following innate abilities achieved through non-magical or technological means; telepathy, telekinesis, wingless flight, shape changing, mind control, matter manipulation, time travel, phasing through solid objects, immunity to any form of normally fatal bodily damage e.g. disease or fire, regeneration of lost tissue, or any other form of extreme healing factor, including an ability to resurrect after death?'"

He paused a moment.

"That's a long question..."

"You get a point for every one of those you check," said Seeing Eye.

"Well let's see... Immunity to normally fatal damage... check... Self resurrection, check. Shape changing, I guess, if you count the sludge monster form... Regeneration... I don't think I can regenerate flesh, actually. After all, before I could regrow everything I had to consume all that—"

"It counts."

"Oh. Okay."

He checked that box too.

"Five. 'Are you incapable of aging?' I think so. Check. Six. That's the picture question. Seven. 'Are you capable of consuming the souls of the living or dead?'"

Broad Sword snorted.

"Well we know that's—"

"Check!"

The guard just stared at him.

"...I'm not even surprised."

***

Though they had decided where they were going and what they were doing, Tome and Iron quickly realised that they had no clue about how exactly to reach Hell's lower circles. They had wandered away from First's office, but it didn't take them long to realise that the lone desk was really the only thing in this place other than the ground a whole lot of mist.

"Where do we even go?" asked Iron. "There must be some route to the circles from here... Where is it?"

"I don't know," the Tome admitted. "I'm beginning to worry that there is no direct way out, and First just teleports to and from this place..."

"Can you teleport us then?"

"Not without knowing our destination..."

They both stopped walking and looked around the empty void.

"Damn it!" Tome shouted, stomping on the floor. "Is it too much to ask that the afterlife just have a convenient elevator or something for this?!"

Almost on cue, a patch of the ground in the distance ahead of them began glowing an ominous red. The unicorn and the earth pony looked at each other nervously, and walked over to it to see what it was. The light was coming from a glowing pentagram carved into the rock. Then the light became more intense, and a cuboid shape about the size of a really big wardrobe rose from the circle.

The shape was dark at first. Completely black, as if it was sucking in all light around it, except for the edges which were glowing the same red colour as the rest of the light coming from the pentagram. Then there was a flash, and the mysterious shape gained a metallic grey colour.

The pentagram itself remained glowing with obviously evil magic, but the previously menacing cuboid was revealed to be exactly what Tome had asked for. It was an elevator. And looking up, they even saw that it was suspended by cables, just like a real one. Though the cables didn't seem to actually connect to anything. They disappeared or went invisible a few feet up.

"That was convenient," said Iron.

"Contrived. The word is contrived. And suspicious. And obviously evil. Look at this thing! It'll probably eat our souls the moment we step inside it!"

"What would be the point of having a soul consuming elevator in the afterlife? Souls don't die. They just go to this place. The worst that can happen is we'll go to Hell. And considering that's what we're trying to do in the first place, that's not even actually a bad thing."

Tome grumbled.

"I still don't like this."

The elevator opened its door, revealing a cosy looking interior with mirrors on the walls and a jazzy background tune. Iron shrugged and headed inside.

"Come on. What could possibly go wrong, Tomey?"

The old unicorn sighed.

"Famous last words..."

Once Tome stepped inside, the doors closed automatically, and the two stood facing the door. Next to the door was a small panel with fifteen buttons, separated into two sections.

The first section of buttons were to select destination. Nine of them were numerically labelled, presumably indicating the circles, and with a glowing ring around the one. There were two others labelled Purgatory and Paradise. The second section was for technical stuff. There was the button to stop the elevator, the button to hold the doors open, the button to call for a technician, and curiously, a button simply labelled "incinerate," which Tome regarded warily.

"Sixth circle," Tome instructed.

Iron leaned in to press the button, but the elevator started moving before he could.

"Sixth circle," a monotone voice repeated. "Heretics, heathens, vampires, and Brotherhood of Man."

"I've got a baaaaaaaaaaaaad feeling about this..." Tome muttered.

"Yeah. You keep saying. I get it."

The trip lasted for two minutes. Just long enough for Iron Hoof to start really getting into the jazzy little tune that played throughout. He was bobbing his head to the music by the time the elevator opened up again with a ding! and granted them entrance to the sixth circle.

The two ponies marvelled at the sight as they stepped outside. They were circles in a very literal sense. The sixth circle was contained by a stone wall that rose up high above it. It was built with ancient bricks, sturdy and resilient, and the walls were topped by battlements, upon which they could see patrolling demons.

In the middle of the circle meanwhile, they could see a crater of an almost impossible depth and size. Tome and Iron stood right near the edge of it, and below them they could see that the crater shrunk in size the deeper it got, much like a funnel. This wasn't due to any kind of slope, but instead a series of rings around the outside of the crater that broke up the sheer drops, forming ledges. Presumably, the lower circles.

Those circles were busy with activity, as the two stallions could see a number of creatures milling about below, though they were too far to determine who was down there or what was happening. Though, one of the circles was quite clearly full of sand, and one of the higher ones seemed to have a river running through it, which emerged from and disappeared into the cliff face, and flowed red with blood.

The apparent seventh circle was also emitting an almost unbearable stench that caused Tome and Iron to blanch when they caught a whiff of it, and back away from the edge. They turned to face the direction of the city wall, and then observed the circle they were currently in.

All around them, there were tombs everywhere. Some were grey and stoney, others were white marble, and some were even gold or silver, a few even bold enough to have jewels encrusted into them. Most were surrounded by fire. Hot coals were scattered around the base of the tombs, or over them, and were constantly burning with an orange glow to warn others away.

The tombs were so numerous and so large, it was practically a maze.

"Yeesh," said Tome. "Look at this place... And they're all down here..."

"I know," Iron replied as he trotted forward into the maze. "So let's find them. They've got to be in one of these tombs."

Tome followed his friend into the chaos, looking back at the elevator as they left it behind. It was still parked in place with its doors open. The floor below it had a glowing pentagram, just like the one the elevator emerged from in the first circle, and just as before, the cables holding up the elevator seemed to disappear into oblivion a few feet up.

"Hey, check it out."

The old unicorn snapped his attention back to Iron, who was standing by a stone tomb and gesturing to a silver rectangle by his hoof. It took him a moment to realise that it was a plaque, bolted into a large rock at the edge of the coals.

Rope Burn.

Vampirism

"Rope Burn. vampirism," Iron read out. "Sounds like the first is a name and the second is the crime that got them here. Hopefully any Brotherhood ponies trapped here will be labelled as well?"

Tome frowned.

"Why are the tombs made of different materials? Most of them are stone, but..."

He looked over to one of the gold tombs in the distance.

"Maybe the tombs are just what they were buried in, and those are rich guys?" Iron suggested.

"If that's it, then why do the vampires have tombs? Nopony would bother burying a vampire. And what about the ones without tombs?"

"...The ones in the metal tombs are the ones considered to be the worst."

Tome looked back at his friend.

"Hm?"

Iron raised his mechanical hoof to show Tome.

"Metal conducts heat. The ponies in the gold and silver tombs must be in the worst pain."

The unicorn didn't say anything, but instead turned around and ran through the tombs towards the nearest gold tomb.

"Tome! Wait up!"

It wasn't too far away, and the two reached their destination in about half a minute. Tome immediately galloped in a circle around the tomb, trying to find the plaque, but didn't locate it until his second run around.

Prism Flash.

Brotherhood.

"BROTHERHOOD! I FOUND ONE!"

"Who is it?" asked Iron.

"Somepony called Prism Flash. Not our group. Older generation. Still though..."

Tome's horn lit up, and the lid of the tomb was surrounded by a glow and then torn right off. The old stallion tossed it aside and magically summoned a spray of water to start dousing the fire and clear a path to the tomb. Iron noticed as he did that the inside of the golden tomb lid's was just steel, which glowed hotly.

"Hold on! I'm here!"

Iron looked back to Tome as he levitated a mauve coloured pegasus mare with a rainbow mane out of the tomb. She was curled up in a ball and faced away from him, and kept twitching her wings or spasming.

"It's okay now..."

He placed her on the ground and let go, but the mare did not sit up or speak. She continued to just lie on the ground and wriggle slightly.

"Miss?"

Iron trotted over to her side and turned her over. Their eyes met. Hers were old and tired, but they glimmered with a slight hope.

"Is it... over?" she asked in a voice with a dry, throaty rasping.

"Yes. It's over. You're free."

She smiled weakly at him.

"...Can I... die now?"

"...You're already dead," Iron answered.

She turned onto her side again, and began crying.

"No, please don't cry! I told you, you're free! You can leave now! First can't hurt you anymore!"

The pegasus continued to weep.

"...Iron..."

"I know, Tomey."

"...She won't be the only one of her kind. There must be hundreds of other Brotherhood ponies trapped in here. We need to rescue as many as possible."

"We can't leave her like this!"

Tome sighed.

"Okay. Iron, you stay here and try to help this mare. I'm going to see if I can find a tomb with another unicorn, preferably one not as traumatised as Miss Flash here, so that I can get some more help with this. Ripping these tombs open is going to drain my magic fast, and I need it to maintain our intangibility spell so we don't get lost in time."

Iron nodded.

"I'll be right here."

***

First's grip around Celestia's horn tightened, and he yanked her upwards with considerable force. The princess screamed in pain as she was torn from the ice by force, which broke into shards and scattered when she was ripped out of it. The human tossed her onto the floor, and she shakily climbed onto her hooves again.

"F-First..." she muttered.

"Come with me."

He began to walk away across the ice, heading towards the pillar in the centre of the cavern. Celestia began to hobble after him, but her hind legs were numb from the cold, and she instead decided to use her wings and hover above the ice.

As she caught up, First began to monologue.

"THIS is deepest circle that the damned may enter, though, not the deepest part of the circle as a whole. You find yourselves now in the fourth round of the ninth circle. It is known as Judecca, named for the biblical traitor, Judas Iscariot. In a human religion, Judas betrayed his friend and the saviour of mankind, the son of God and preacher of peace, for thirty pieces of silver. Jesus, the man he betrayed, was nailed to a cross and crucified."

"This explains a lot, actually," said Celestia. "If that's what you do to those that try to teach peace, it's no wonder your race seems to be nothing but violent psychopaths."

First immediately turned around and grabbed her by the wing. Before she could even put her hooves on the ground again, he suddenly twisted it and broke the wing with a loud crack. Celestia screamed in pain again and fell down face first onto the ice.

"Don't you DARE presume to know anything of my people!" First snarled. "I don't care what you may think you can deduce from me and the other two! Three individuals are NOT enough for you to get an accurate representation of an entire race! And I don't care how much of a monster you may think I am, but I will NOT allow you to judge humanity like that, or write us off so easily!"

He hauled her up by the horn again, and forced her to look him in the eyes.

"And lest we forget, it's not OUR fault that we even became what we did! What were we before?! A screenwriter, a worker in a marketing department, and an unemployed teenager only just out of high school! We weren't creatures of legend, princess, we were mundane! It's YOUR land that turned us into living nightmares!"

He thrust a forearm in front of her face and let the sleeve fall down, revealing a pulsing artery with a sickly green colouring.

"The corruption that flows through my veins is YOUR fault, and don't you EVER forget it."

He threw her aside again, and continued walking. Her wing crippled, this time Celestia was forced to limp after him, even though it caused her pain.

"Judecca is the round for traitors to their lords and benefactors. The other three rounds are Ptolomaea, for those who betray their guests, Antenora, for traitors to countries and communities, and Caïna, which is for traitors to family. Despite what you may think though, it is betraying family that is considered the least serious betrayal, because the bonds of family are forced, and the traitor has no say in who they are related to. Whereas with house guests and benefactors, those are entirely voluntary relationships."

First gestured at the floor.

"Look down, and you'll see the traitors held here."

The alicorn almost jumped back in shock. Beneath her hooves, she had only just noticed the thousands of ponies frozen in the ice, looking up at them, their mouths open as if screaming, but all perfectly still. All unmoving. She would have said they looked dead, were it not for where they were.

First chuckled.

"Traitors in the other rounds are less completely frozen, and given slightly more movement. Here though? All the way beneath they go. Total entrapment in the ice. Just like in Inferno, the story on which I based my vision of Hell."

Celestia gaped at him.

"Please tell me they can't feel this?! Please at least tell me they're all asleep, or unconscious, or... something!"

First grinned.

"Oh, no. Like my father in stone before them, they can see and hear everything. They're conscious every second of every day, and I don't even allow them food, water, sleep, or air. They can exist without it."

"At least I didn't know what kind of awful punishment I was inflicting on your father!" Celestia shouted. "Discord never made it sound that bad when he complained about it! I made an assumption, and I was wrong, and if you want me to say it, yes! YES! I regret what we did to Second! Not a day has gone by since this started that I haven’t! But First, this is NOT okay to do to other ponies, no matter what they did!"

"Excuses, excuses."

The human continued to walk on, and Celestia limped after him as fast as she could. She didn't even notice that they had almost reached the great icy pillar in the centre of the cavern.

"First, this is barbaric! You need to let them out! Bad ponies need to be punished, I get that, but an eternity of this?! You can't possibly think that that's okay!"

"Celestia, I'm ignoring you right now. And we've reached the entrance to the centre. I hope you're ready for a few old friends, because we're about to meet some familiar faces from your past, including one guy who's been skipping out on your family reunions for a few millennia now!"

First touched a finger against the ice, and it began to melt. A tunnel was carved into the pillar, leading through into some other room inside. The ice that used to occupy the space where the newly formed tunnel now stood became water, and washed away harmlessly. Celestia felt her hooves become even colder as the water splashed around them.

Her guide strode inside, and then turned to look back at her. He continued walking backwards down the tunnel and grinning at her, holding his arms out and scraping his fingernails along the ice wall.

"Come on, Tia. He's dying to meet you..."

***

Revolution was happening in the sixth circle.

Though he had at first been worried that everypony down here would be like Prism Flash, he did find a sizeable number of ponies who were actually okay, all things considered at least.

The second and third Brotherhood tombs he had opened after Prism's were filled with equally broken ponies, whom he pointed in Iron's direction, but the fourth one had a mare who still seemed mentally sound and emotionally unscarred. Yes, she was filled with an all-consuming rage and wanted to tear Lord First himself limb from limb, but she was able to get up, walk, and assist Tome in freeing other ponies from other tombs.

From there, it had spread. The two of them found more metal tombs, scattered across the area, and began busting them all open to rescue their comrades. All the ones still traumatised congregated with Iron, Prism and the others, while everypony still in a decent state of mind joined in the rescue attempts.

While the circle itself was absolutely huge, the Brotherhood only had a few hundred members over the course of its history, and they were all clustered together on this side of the circle. It wasn't taking that long to free most of them, and they were making good progress.

"Aha!" said Tome as he spotted another tomb and galloped over. "Don't worry in there! I'm coming!"

He stopped in front of the tomb just as another pony rushed in at the same time, a white unicorn with a light blue mane and moustache. He didn't recognise him, so he was likely rescued by one of his helpers.

"I've got this one, old chap!" he announced.

Tome was about to nod and run for the next nearest tomb, when he noticed the name on the plaque.

"No wait! That's my wife!"

He grabbed the lid of the tomb and tore it off like he did the others, pulling her out as fast as he could. The other stallion backed away as Tome lifted out a blue coated pegasus with a white mane, and placed her on the ground next to him.

"Velocity! Velocity, it's me! Are you alright?! Say something to me!"

She coughed a few times, smoke escaping from her lungs, and looked up at him.

"Tomey?" she whispered. "Tomey, is that you?"

She reached up and touched his face as she realised that it was.

"Oh, Tomey... Look at you..."

"I know, I've aged horribly. Are you alright though? Are you hurt?"

Velocity groaned as she sat up properly.

"I'm... I’m fine, dear..." She coughed again. "Could be better, I admit..."

Tome pulled her into a hug.

"Thank heavens... I was worried that you'd be... Just... I’m so glad you’re still sane..."

The other mare wrapped her wings around him to return the hug, and smiled for the first time in ages.

“It takes more than a few years of torture by a maniacal elder god to break me. Honestly, Tomey. I thought you knew me by now.”

Feeling like he was intruding on a private moment, the other stallion there gave Tome a simple nod and then galloped away again.

“It-It’s been so long though... I’ve missed you these long years. After you died I was... I didn't leave the house for months. And Mystic’s grown so much! You should see him. He’s been wonderful. Nine years old now.”

“Oh, that’s great, Tomey... Has he started school yet? He must have. Does he like it? What about his cutie mark? Does he have that yet?”

Tome paused and released her from the hug. Velocity stopped smiling as she saw his expression, and her concern began to grow.

“Well... Look, stuff happened since you died... ” he said delicately. “I'm not here because I’m dead too. I’m here because... Well...”

“Long story?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Okay, well, just shorten it then. You can tell me more once we leave this literal hell hole.”

“Now that I think about it, there really isn’t any way to shorten it in a way that won’t just make you immediately demand I explain more. It’s all very convoluted and confusing, and I don’t understand most of it myself. All you need to know right now is that we’re here to free all the Brotherhood members in the other tombs. And there are still members in the seventh and eighth circles that could be suffering even worse that need our aid, including your sister.”

Velocity gasped.

“My sister is down here too?! Where?! How long has she been here?! Tomey, we’ve got to help her!”

“I know! We’re going to! Don’t worry about it though. She only died a few days ago. She hasn’t had it nearly as bad as you so far. And if we rescue her today, she never will.”

“What can I do to help?”

Tome grinned.

“Fly over the area. Look for gold and silver tombs and try to break them open. Put out the fires and push the lids off, or point it out to a unicorn so they can do it. There’ll be plenty of those around.”

The blue pegasus flapped her wings and lifted off the ground.

“I’ll get right on it! And once we’re done here, then we go and save Frosty, right?”

“Definitely.”

“And stop First?”

“...Maybe. I’m not sure what we can even do to First here. I know that it’s tempting to try and get a little payback, but the best we can do right now is to avoid him. I don’t like our chances against an omnipotent being in his own realm, and I don’t want you getting hurt any more than you already have been. I especially don’t want to lose you again.”

Velocity sighed.

“Fine. I’ll go do what I can. After this though, I’m coming with you to find my sister.”

“No argument from me.”

***

"...And lastly, 'Do you have an evil cult dedicated to worshipping you, or any prophecies predicting that your return to the mortal realm would bring about the end of days?' Nope."

Explodey returned the questionnaire to the inspector and smiled at her. Behind him, Broad Sword fidgeted on his barstool, nervously peering over Explodey's shoulder at the mare as she judged his results.

"So how did I do?"

Seeing Eye remained expressionless as she scanned the paper.

"...Thirteen points," she answered. "It's close, but unfortunately, you qualify as an elder god."

"Hooray!"

"Explodey! That's a bad thing!" said Broad Sword.

Explodey twisted his neck around in a way that looked incredibly painful to show him his confused expression.

"Huh? Why? I wasn't paying attention."

"It means you're going on trial!"

Explodey's eyes widened.

"B-But I hate lawyers!" he protested.

Seeing Eye sighed.

"Wonderful," she muttered. "This is just what I needed today..."

***

The amount of ponies that were loose and running around the sixth circle had risen exponentially.

Each pony freed, if they were in any way capable of helping, became part of the collective and did their best to help. The pegasi zipped around above, looking for other Brotherhood tombs and using their wings to put out the fires or cool the metal lids for the non magical ponies to pull them off. The unicorns were of course far faster at the job.

Most ponies weren't really able to help at all, and instead joined the ever growing group started by Iron and Prism. The emotional wrecks all gathered together and were comforted either by each other or by some of the less affected Brotherhood members that they personally knew, such as family members or friends of theirs that they'd been in the cult together with.

This is what began to attract the attention of the guards. Though the demons had been content to ignore the few ponies wandering down below until now, thinking them to be other minions of First, they had since realised what they were dealing with and sprung into action. About two dozen of them descended from their wall to try and subdue the crowd. But they didn’t think first.

Arrogance was always the weakness of demonkind. Never once did they stop to consider their numbers against the Brotherhood's, and come to the conclusion that they might be outmatched. And they remembered being killing machines in their own lives, but forgot to factor in that everyone in the afterlife was immortal.

They may as well have run headlong into an oncoming tidal wave for all the good they did. Many of the Brotherhood relished the opportunity to physically harm a part of the hell that they had been in, and the crowd of ponies vastly outnumbered the demons, even just counting the ones actually fighting. It didn't help the demons at all that many of the Brotherhood's older generations included veteran warriors.

Things didn't really get bad for them though until the Brotherhood realised that the demons were just as immortal as they were. They saw that they were wasting their time physically fighting them, which had still eluded the demons' notice, and so began getting their unicorns to pick the demons up with magic and start sealing them inside the flaming tombs. Not having magic of their own, this was not something the demons could do in turn.

In a matter of minutes, the pathetically incompetent guards were beaten and given the most ironic punishment possible, and the Brotherhood had finished up the liberation shortly afterwards. Soon, that particular side of the sixth circle was well populated with a mixture of joyous, frightened, miserable, confused, and angry ponies, who were already gathering into various cliques depending on which generation they belonged to.

There was one feeling that seemed to dominate all others though, and that was rebellion. Tome could feel this in most of the ponies that he saw. They were betrayed by something that they did nothing but glorify and worship; a thing that eternally damned them for being a part of the organisation that they thought it would have wanted. Those that still had the faculties to rage against the heavens were crying for blood.

Tome decided to take the initiative to lead the mob of scarred ponies, or at least inform them. But not only were there a lot of them over a large ground to communicate with, the area that they were in sounded as loud as a elementary school lunch room filled with kids screaming. This is why it was very fortunate that Tome's entire family were known for being magically gifted and diverse spellcasters.

"SILENCE!" he ordered.

The royal Canterlot voice was a natural talent of the princesses and a select few others, not a spell. Tome was not among those trained in its use. Voice amplification spells on the hoof were dime a dozen, and for a unicorn as powerful as Ancient Tome, it was a simple trick. Climbing on top of one of the metal tombs that some resourceful pony had cooled with an ice spell, he used this spell to help him address the crowd, and hoped as best he could that they could all hear him.

Sure enough, all chatter ceased, and virtually every head turned to look at him up on his perch.

“Comrades! My name is Ancient Tome, current leader of the Brotherhood of Man as of the year one thousand and five SSR! In case you couldn't tell already, or if any of you somehow missed it, you are all dead! Welcome to the afterlife, domain of Lord First himself! And yes, for those still struggling to comprehend it, our supposed lord and saviour is the one responsible for the torment you have all gone through!

"Myself and my dear friend, Iron Hoof, came here on a mission of mercy! Liberation of all our friends and forefathers from this unjust system, and potentially the defeat of even the human lord himself! I cannot fathom the horrors that you all must have been put through here, but I can tell you that those days are over now! You are free! And Paradise is yours for the taking!"

The crowd erupted with cheers of jubilation and agreement, but they ceased as he started to speak again.

“Yes, you are free, but you need to listen to my warning! Though it may be tempting to break out of this nightmarish prison and go after First for revenge, I ask that you all let it go! In this realm, his power is infinite, and beings far stronger than ourselves are already trying to stop him! The alicorn princesses, the mares that history remembers as the Elements of Harmony, and even today's successor Elements are up there now, fighting an eldritch creature from beyond our universe in hopes of saving us all!

"I ask that you all stay out of the fight! Though many of us fought valiantly against the demons just now, we are not ready to do battle with First! Be rational, and let the professionals handle this! Until then, do not attract attention to yourselves! Stay here, try not to get caught, don't draw attention to yourselves, and... good luck."

With that, Tome hopped off the tomb and began making his way through the crowd, heading back in the direction of the elevator. The gathered ponies began mumbling amongst themselves once he stepped down, except those he passed by who often had things to say to him personally.

Several congratulated him on his leadership, or gave their thanks for orchestrating their rescue, or wanted to wish him luck on overthrowing First, but he had little time for them. He merely gave them a smile and a thanks of his own for their kind words, and continued to push through towards the other end of the crowd.

When he finally broke away from the throng of ponies, he found several others waiting by the elevator. Velocity beamed at him, and Iron Hoof looked just as proud, even if his smile wasn't quite as wide. They weren't the only ones there though, as he also recognised the white unicorn from before, and none other than Rail Way, one of his other deceased colleagues.

For now though, he just went straight to his wife and hugged her again.

“Tome, honey, you did great. I almost didn't think it possible, what you and Iron have done here today... He's been telling me all about how you got here."

"...ALL about how we got here?" he replied skeptically as he broke away.

"Well, uh... bare bones of it," Iron admitted. "I explained about how the Elements of Harmony and Lord Second came back... what the Brotherhood did... Secopolis... and how we took the Prometheus and ended up working with the princesses and going to the afterlife."

"I always knew that Goldie was smarter than we gave him credit for," Velocity mused. "Figures that he'd be the first one to see something was wrong with the humans..."

Tome rolled his eyes.

"Gold Coin left us because he felt his duty was done. He ran off with our son and the butler because he had nowhere else to go, and didn't side with the princesses properly until far later on. Though, I do still hope to prise him out of their grasp again... Mystic too, if I can get him to forgive me..."

"And Mystic!" Velocity continued. "Is it true? Our little Mystic? The new element of magic?"

The old stallion sighed and smiled.

"Yes. It's true."

"Oh, I'm so proud of him... Does that mean he's here in the afterlife too? Working to save us?"

"I should think so, though I don't know where. He'll probably be with Goldie and Spoken. We can find them later and have a big reunion."

"I hope so... Does he even remember me anymore?"

"Of course he does! How could he ever forget you?"

"I just worry, Tomey... I haven't been a part of his life for so long, and he's been growing up all this time without his mother—"

"Velocity." Tome put his hooves on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Trust me. He remembers. And I've taken good care of him while you were away. I'm not the best father. Not by a long shot. But I think I did okay."

The mare seemed to take comfort in his words.

"Thanks, dear. And don't sell yourself short. I'm sure you were a great father to him."

"Well... That's debatable. I've definitely made some mistakes since this whole human thing started... I'd tell you more, but this is going to be a long discussion, and..."

He looked over to their other present company.

"Ahem."

He turned away from Velocity and Iron again, to face Rail Way and the white stallion, addressing the latter first.

"So. How can I help you, sir?" he asked.

His fellow unicorn simply took his hoof and shook it.

"Just wanted to give my personal thanks, old chap," he responded. "I'm well aware I'm not the only one, but I felt I should do it, on behalf of myself and many others."

"Oh. Well, you're welcome, mister...?"

"Fancy Pants."

Tome stopped shaking his hoof.

"Fancy Pants? The Fancy Pants? Fancy Pants from the Brotherhood's five founders?"

The other stallion nodded and took a bow.

"The very same."

"Wow. You must have been here longer than anypony else! Nearly a thousand years of this stuff! I thought that all of the founders would have gone insane like most others seem to have by now."

"Oh, pish posh," said Fancy. "First is nothing but another brute, and I like to think I have stronger character than that. I won't pretend what I went through these last centuries hasn't been unpleasant... I daresay it'll never leave me. But my resolve is too strong to be so easily broken. There's more to me than that. "

"That's... honestly incredible. It's admirable how well you've taken this."

"I'm not without my scars for this, dear fellow, but I'm nothing if not an optimist. We're free now. All thanks to you."

"Well... Thank you, sir. You do me great kindness with your words."

"You're worthy of the praise, m'boy. The Brotherhood has had many leaders in its long years, and you've done more for us than any of them. Lyra even said so herself."

Tome's eyes widened.

"Is Lyra here?"

"Oh, she's here. Around. I spoke to her earlier. Not in the best of conditions, admittedly, but she's a trooper. She shan't be coming over to thank you though. That's why I'm here. She needs to comfort her brother. Abstract Theory is..."

He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes as he exhaled.

"Well. It all began with him. So he's had it worst. I think he needs the support right now."

"I understand," Tome replied. "Well... wish him the best from me. And the other founders too. I'm sorry that this is what became of your legacy. You were all great ponies, and you made something great."

Fancy Pants gave him a pained smile as he turned away.

"But not, I fear, great enough."

As he trotted away into the crowd again, Tome realised that there were still other ponies present and returned his attention to them.

"Right!" he said loudly. "So! We've got a mission to complete! Frosty, auntie, and several others are all still waiting for us in the lower levels. This rescue mission is not over yet!"

"Gotcha!" Iron replied.

He hit a button to open the elevator doors again, and the very out-of-place music came pouring out. Iron gestured for them to enter. Though cautious, Tome did so. He still didn't like this thing. Velocity stood in the doorway for a little while,

"Is this safe?" she asked, gazing down at the pentagram just below the elevator. "It looks... evil."

"You know, I said exactly the same thing," Tome agreed.

She didn't wait for any further answer before stepping inside too, and Iron followed. Rail Way also tried to enter, but Tome held up a hoof to stop him.

"Woah, there. What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm... coming with you, boss," the middle-aged stallion answered.

"No you're not."

"Okay... Why not?"

"Because this is a personal matter," Tome said bluntly. "Between family, not necessarily Brotherhood business. And besides, you weren't the only one of our generation to die in the church. The rest are probably out there in that crowd somewhere. You're going to be needed up here. Track them down."

"...Okay then, sir. I'll do that then."

"Good work, Rail Way. I'll see you in Paradise."

That was the last thing Tome said to the other pony before the doors closed on him. Iron gave a wry smile.

"I love how we've apparently set up a 'cool kids club' within the Brotherhood and just started randomly excluding the ones we don't like or don't know all that well. Class act, Tomey. Really."

"Shut up, Iron."

"Is this really an elevator?" asked Velocity, still looking worried. "I know it seems like it inside, but out there..."

“Yes, it actually is an elevator, and no, it won’t eat your soul,” Tome answered. “One thing you’re going to have to learn when you travel with us is to not question shit like this.”

“I don’t know why you two are so paranoid about that elevator," Iron interjected. "Besides, that jazzy waiting music is so catchy.”

“Yes, because being paranoid about a cryptic machine that came from an ominous, glowing pentagram in the ground while we’re in an alien dimension where its all powerful god is out to get us, is SO wrong.”

“You just don't like the music, do you? You shouldn’t be so mean to it. It might leave.”

Tome produced a defeated, irritated sigh.

“You know what; I’m through with this idiocy. Just think whatever you want to. We have more important things to do. We’ve spent long enough here. It’s time we pay the seventh circle of Hell a visit.”

Tome looked up at the ceiling.

"Well? You heard me! Seventh circle! Now!" he commanded.

“Did you mean 'incinerate'? Respond yes or no,” the familiar monotone voice responded.

Tome sighed.

“No.”

“Error. Command not recognised. Did you mean 'incinerate'? Respond yes or no.”

“No! I said seventh circle, you stupid piece of crap!”

“Error. Command not recognised. Did you mean—”

Tome, tired of dealing with the horrors of voice commands, simply slammed the elevator button labeled with a seven.

“Seventh circle. Murderers, blasphemers, suicides, and profligates.”

Tome raised an eyebrow.

Suicide is a punishable sin now?

“You really shouldn’t be so mean to it, you know,” Iron said skittishly.

“Oh, not this shit again! It’s a fucking inanimate object! It’s not going to feel or do anything!”

Angriest Iron had seen his friend since Frosty died.

“Well, somepony woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning...”

Velocity joined in.

“He does have a point, you know. You’re getting really mad over such trivial things.”

“Not you too! Now you’re on his side? I’m not mad, okay! I just don't trust the thing! Can we drop this?!”

At that moment, the friendly jazzy background music, which Iron was still thoroughly enjoying, stopped as the doors opened with their distinct ding! and revealed the seventh circle. Gingerly, the trio exited their place of safety, and stepped out into a whole new nightmare.

***

There stood a huge beast, with a body like a demon's, except with three different heads all on the end of long, snake-like necks that towered to the ceiling like a hydra's. And even that was only half of the beast's height, as it was frozen up to its waist in the ice. The backs of the necks scraped against the roof of the cavern, and then they moved down again, so that the heads themselves all rested on the floor.

Each head had different features, one looking very reptilian and draconic, one looking substantially more equine, and the centre head resembling that of most other demons. All three of the heads were weeping and all had their mouths full, each constantly chewing on a different screaming unicorn.

Celestia first looked to the demonic centre head, incidentally also the most humanoid, where she recognised Shining Armor being ground by teeth stuck between his ribs. His eyes were clenched shut, and his body mangled, but still he lived on. Still he suffered.

In the reptilian head’s jaws, another old stallion was gasping for breath between screams. Star-patterned robes much like Ancient Tome's and the ones worn by the rest of the Canterlot war mages filled the back of that head's throat, and a similarly coloured hat was impaled on one of the fangs, its bells ringing every time the head moved.

And the final head was chewing on a blue mare who was not screaming like the other two, but instead crying to herself, much like the very beast that was devouring her. Robes and a pointy hat of her own also laid tattered in the mouth with her, just like with the stallion trapped in the centre head.

Yet, even despite all this suffering, it was the beast itself that made her feel most nostalgic, and old memories came rushing back as she looked into its tormented eyes.

"...Uncle?"

"Isn't it beautiful?" First commented. "It's just like Inferno; Satan in the centre of Hell, frozen up to his waist, forever suffering and forever torturing the three greatest traitors in history. Shining Armor, Starswirl the Bearded, and the Great and Powerful Trixie, AKA the three biggest collaborators of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, who with them, led the rebellion that I had to put down."

"You're sick."

"Perhaps."

First faced the demon again.

"Take five, ugly. You've all earned your break early this year."

Satan's heads rose off the ground slightly, opened their mouths wide and shook as hard as they could to drop the three unicorns onto the ice again. First began to walk over to them.

"Come on, princess!" he said cheerfully. "Say hello to your old friends."

He stood over Shining Armor, who was sobbing as Celestia watched his wounds close up instantly. The human placed a boot on his ribs and rolled him over, so that he was forced to look up at him.

"Hello, Shining. I gave you your break early this year. I've been very generous. What do you say?"

The unicorn crawled over to First and hugged his legs, still crying.

"Th-Thank you, m-my master..." he stuttered.

"Of course, this means we'll have to skip next year's break to make up for it. Otherwise the lack of productivity down here could just bring the whole system screeching to a halt."

"Y-Yes, master. Sorry, master... I'll be good..."

First reached down and playfully ruffled his mane.

"So cute."

He pulled his leg out of Shining's grasp and slid across the ice, back to Celestia's side.

"Well? What do you think?" he asked.

"I think you're possibly even more psychotic than your father was," she replied flatly.

First's smug grin immediately dropped.

"Wrong answer."

He formed a fist and pulled his arm back. Celestia saw it coming, but was in no condition to move out of the way before he socked her in the face. She grunted in pain when he struck, but this time did not give him any more than that, even as she once more fell onto her side and went skidding across the ice.

"I don't think you understood the question. What do you think of your plans to overthrow me now? Now that you've seen all this?"

Celestia winced as she stood up again.

"Twilight told me that you abused your power. That you tortured ponies, that your mind control was worse than you let on, and that you did all these horrible things... Until now, I didn't want to believe it. I really did come here only so that we could get Explodey McGee back. But seeing this has convinced me. My student was right; you do need to be stopped."

"Alright then, confession time."

First casually walked towards her, cracking his knuckles.

"I do use mind control a lot more than I implied. It's not just to fight boredom. It's to ensure complacency. I need to keep the people obedient, otherwise we get incidents like the rebellion that terribly troublesome Twilight was responsible for."

He reached her, and prepared to punch her again. Celestia cringed this time as he smashed his fist into her forehead, beating her to the ground once more.

"And these jokers that fill the ninth circle, or at least Judecca, are mostly the ones that went along with her plans of revolution, but I let the Elements go anyway, because I have a nostalgic fondness for them."

He leant down and grabbed her mane. Yanking her to her hooves, he then wrapped it around her neck and began to strangle her with the ethereal mass of hair. She gasped for breath.

"You too, and that's why you're only getting off this lightly, but I never liked Shining Armor. The way he and his wife came out of nowhere in season two just rubbed me the wrong way."

He grabbed Celestia's neck and forced her into a headlock, releasing her mane but now choking her with his forearm instead.

"And that's why we have this monument to suffering down here. Blatant favouritism. The ones I like, I forgive, and the ones I don't like, I have all manner of creative punishments for. Capiche?"

He dropped her again. The alicorn princess coughed as she lay on the frozen floor. She could see a pony in the ice below her, but their figure was too dark to make out who it was. It hardly mattered anyway.

"So?!" she spluttered, trying pathetically to stand again. "You're a monster! I get it! But why show me this?! What's the point?!"

First growled.

"I'm trying to show you why a worthless, piece of garbage mortal like yourself trying to fight ME is a hopeless waste of both our time! Do you SEE what I've done to the progenitor of the demons?!"

He gestured to Satan.

"If I can do THAT to HIM, then what do you think YOU can do to ME?!"

Celestia smiled grimly.

"So that's it, is it? You showed me all this to intimidate me? Thinking you can break my will, make me cry, beg forgiveness and go home?"

"Something like that, yes."

"You obviously don't know me that well."

Through the aching pain, the alicorn climbed to her hooves again. It was uniquely humbling to be in this much agony. Wounds never normally lasted on her, but this was First's realm, so all the rules were out the window. Despite the significant disadvantage though, she would not back down here.

"I am Princess Celestia," she said, limping towards First. "I am the ruler of Equestria, the goddess who raises the sun every morning, and a guardian to my little ponies. And I'm not afraid of you. Or your power. Or your weapons. Or any other human. Not anymore. In fact, I think you're afraid of me."

First returned her smile.

"Is that so?"

He grabbed her by the horn, (she was noticing that humans seemed to do that a lot), and then went back to his previous state of red-faced rage.

"I'm afraid of you?! How?! You're no sun goddess! Alicorns are a cut above the rest, but you're still a sketch on a drawing pad to me! I'M a deity! Not YOU! What makes you think YOU'RE scary?!"

Celestia struggled against him this time, even attempting to actually use magic to blast him back, but it wasn’t working. Probably because he knew she could hit him now and had taken the precaution of disabling her magic. Nevertheless, she gave him her answer.

"Because even with all your power, you still need to bully me into submission like a coward instead! Next it'll be mind control. It'll have to be. Because all this isn't making me give up. It's given me a reason to fight you. And you will fall. Do you know why? Because my little ponies are all out there still, and they can fight you even if I can't. I have faith in them, just as they have faith in me, and that makes me feel like a stronger goddess than any of you monsters."

First glared at her, and threw her to the ground again.

"Just wait. You'll see. I've broken far more powerful beings than yourself. All life everywhere in the universe comes here eventually, so you're far from the biggest fish I've fried. You won't even take long."

"No doubt," Celestia agreed. "Though I have to wonder, since we're in a story and I'm on the side of the heroes... doesn't that make you a villain?"

First's eyes widened.

"And don't villains lose?"

He staggered backwards in surprise. First looked down at his shirt, still stained red from his ever present stomach wound. Then he looked at his wrist again, within which he could still see the green blood. It looked like he had only just noticed the contradiction.

"...I have to go," he said.

***

The seventh circle had the same rocky ground, but it was definitely different. The elevator had once again delivered them very close to the edge of the cliff leading to the lower levels, from which they had a good view.

The seventh circle appeared to be divided into three separate rings, distinguished from the other circles by the lesser distance in height between them; the seventh circle and the sixth circle were separated by a massively tall cliff, and the only thing connecting them was a huge stairway carved into the cliff face. The rings of the seventh circle though were close enough together that one could conceivably jump a level down and survive it, though that still probably would not be pleasant.

The lowest ring appeared to be the one containing that isolated desert they had seen above, as it was filled with sand and burning fires, though what exactly was burning they couldn't tell. Surely the sand itself couldn't burn?

The ring immediately below them meanwhile was some kind of forest. In a way. There were no trees there, but plenty of thorny bushes and other overgrown plants. Plant Hell, perhaps? They also noticed a few rare ponies that ran in amongst the bushes, being chased down by demonic looking red dogs, with large fangs and pointed ears, and spiked collars around their necks.

And then there was their ring, which was even more horrible than what they saw in the last circle.

A vast, glowing river of boiling blood, which resembled a more aqueous magma, ran around the ring. In the river were hundreds of ponies, all submerged at various different levels, many screaming out against their damnation, and all suffering. Near the banks of the fiery river, dozens of patrolling creatures, armed with bows and arrows, keenly watching the damned in case they were to try and escape their torture.

The creatures themselves were also extremely odd, being a kind of hybrid of human and pony. They had the bodies of ponies, even sporting a variety of different colours and cutie marks, but where ponies had their necks and heads, these things instead had the upper bodies of humans, with a human chest, a pair of arms, and a human head as well.

And they were huge. Their upper halves were perfectly proportioned for humans, but their pony halves as a result were massive, making them practically giants.

And to top it all off, the entire circle smelled awful. A special kind of awful that would have probably made even the ponies here damned for suicide want to kill themselves all over again. Tome and the others all held their noses as they walked through the place, but found that it was not enough. Even a single particle entering their noses made them wretch and want to cut out their entire olfactory systems.

“Urgh... Do you have a spell for this or something, Tomey?” Iron asked as he hobbled along behind his friend.

“I do, but it’d be a waste of my magic," Tome answered, his voice sounding funny from holding his nose. "We just need to deal with it. If we don't, then I risk not having enough power to maintain the intangibility spell, and we fall through into the void.”

As they approached the edge of the river, the three looked at a nearby pony floating past them. He was just on the surface, thrashing to try and escape, and he looked at them with a pleading desperation. He passed them by before they could do anything, and disappeared downstream.

They were interrupted at that moment, as one of the patrolling creatures trotted up to them. He was a serious looking individual, with an auburn coat and hair, and a cutie mark of green bow and arrow that looked exactly like the one he was actually carrying.

"Can I help you?" he asked, his voice deep and powerful.

Thinking fast, Tome responded with the first lie he thought of.

"We're here on behalf of Lord First," he said. "Two prisoners here need relocating. Part of a new strategy."

The creature raised an eyebrow.

"Aye. Who do you need?"

"A pegasus named Frosty Morning, and an old unicorn named Lady Arcane Arts. Both will have died only recently."

"Certainly. Follow me."

They began walking upriver at a casual pace. Their escort seemed completely uninterested in the sights all around him, and kept the same stern expression the whole way. Occasionally, they would pass another of his kind, who would greet him or be greeted by him, but they never exchanged any words beyond either a hello or saying each other's names. It was thanks to this that Tome learned their guide's name was Angelo.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, Mr. Angelo..." Tome began.

"Just Angelo is fine."

"Angelo. What exactly are you?"

"Ha!" he barked, showing the first real break from his stoicism since they'd met him. "You mean to tell me you work for Lord First and you've not been educated on the nature of centaurs?"

"We're new," Velocity answered. "So why don't you tell us? What's a centaur? You look a lot like humans."

"Hardly."

Angelo raised his bow and shot an arrow into the river. None of them saw what it hit. It just disappeared beneath the blood.

"A centaur is a creature of myth in the human world. In their mythology, a crossbreed of human and horse. There are no centaurs native to Equestria, however. We were created by Lord First to patrol the Phlegethon, made from a perverse experiment that merged willing ponies and the rapidly degenerating forms of First's experiments.

"His attempts to recreate other humans for companionship ended with empty shells or maddened animals in humanoid bodies. He could make life all he wanted, but the only thing he could never bring into being were his own people. So he took the remnants of them and put them into us. Turning our former selves, his most loyal servants, into the only essence of humanity left to be found in this place."

Angelo loaded another arrow and shot it into the river again.

"You would think it makes us stronger. Some think of us as demigods. They see our humanity as power, and think it gives us the ruthlessness to do this job that First asks of us. To do this to the creatures in the river."

He sighed.

"In truth though, it makes my heart ache for them."

He stopped suddenly, holding an arm out to stop the Brotherhood.

"We're here."

This time, as he drew another pair of arrows, he also pulled out a long piece of string. Tying either ends of the string around the arrow shafts, he then loaded them both into the bow and shot them out into the river regardless. The string was long enough that he was able to keep hold of the middle of it without losing it all, and the rest of the string sailed out across the river and followed the arrows below the surface.

Tome and the others watched as the string floated on the surface and followed the rest of the current downstream for a while before going taut. The centaur took this as an indication that he had hit his targets and began reeling them in. It was like fishing.

The river parted as the figures were dragged up from beneath it and pulled towards them. An elderly lavender unicorn and a light blue pegasus breached the surface together, and shortly afterwards both laid gasping on the river's banks. They were still wet, and their skin, wherever it could be seen, was scalded red.

Quickly, it began to return to its normal state. Prisoners of Hell seemed to recover fast from injuries inflicted on them down here, presumably so it could be done to them again. It was sick, but it had its uses; in a matter of moments, Tome's aunt and sister-in-law were devoid of any injuries. At least, they were once Angelo bent down and ripped the arrows out.

“Frosty! Frosty, it’s you! Thank the stars!” Velocity shouted joyfully as she hauled the icy blue pegasus up and gave her a hug.

"Vel... Velocity?" Frosty mumbled. "Izzat you, sis...?"

She was exhausted, but as she saw her long lost sister, her energy seemed to return to her. Her eyes gradually opened wider, and her mouth curled up into a smile.

"Heh... What took you so long?" she quipped.

"Yeah, sorry. Spent the last several years in the sixth circle. Hell of a trip to get down here."

She then looked over to Iron and Ancient Tome, who were both helping the elderly Arcane Arts up as well, who was still groaning despite her injuries having already left her.

"Good to see you two again as well... What even happened? The last thing I remember was being in the airport with Commander Bullseyes and Dr. Apocalypse... I think... Did they murder me?"

Iron gave her a solemn look.

"Yes. They did. Don't worry though. They never got away with it. We personally made sure to kill both of the bastards ourselves, and now we're here to save you all."

"Tomey rescued me from the sixth circle," Velocity explained. "They rescued all of the Brotherhood! Broke them out of the tombs, and organised a great big riot to fight off the demons guarding us up there! It was awesome!"

Frosty frowned.

"I always miss the good stuff."

For the first time, Arcane Arts spoke up.

"Is that true, deary?" she asked. "Did you save the rest of the Brotherhood from First's prison?"

"I did, auntie," Tome answered.

She beamed with pride.

"Just like your parents, you are. Such a fighter."

Then her eyes went wide.

"Oh! Your parents! Would they be down here?"

"I shouldn't think so..." said Tome. "I mean, they were never officially in the Brotherhood themselves, so I don't see why they'd have been—"

"AHEM."

The five ponies looked back to see that Angelo was right there, and that they had been talking about their involvement with the Brotherhood right in front of him.

"Umm... I can explain."

Angelo rolled his eyes.

"Look, just get out of here, right now. I'm raising the alarm in about three minutes, and if you're still here by then, I'm throwing all five of you back into the Phlegethon."

The Brotherhood all looked to each other once, and then immediately galloped away, Tome calling out his thanks to the gruff centaur as they left.

***

"Hear ye, hear ye!" cried a griffin in a wig. "The court will now come to session, for the trial of the elder god known as Explodey McGee!"

The court room snickered.

"The honourable judge Steel Hammer presiding!"

Explodey and Broad Sword sat side by side at the defendant's table, where they had nothing. Though the former royal guard had been given a suit, briefcase and a pair of glasses to at least pretend to have some kind of legal knowledge, he really had nothing prepared. This was a problem, because the court had not seen fit to provide their side with a qualified lawyer.

On the prosecution's side, Seeing Eye laid her head down on the desk, looking half asleep. She was obviously not happy to be there, and the fact that she was made to be the prosecution when she was supposed to be an inspector was a clear indicator that someone didn't put a lot of thought into this courtroom scenario. It was almost as if this entire trial thing had been a spur of the moment decision with no time or planning put into it.

From the side of the court room, a door opened up, and a stallion in a suit of very gaudy golden armour trotted in.

"Sorry I'm late, everypony!" he announced. "I was busy beating up some mares!"

The courtroom gasped.

"No guilt! Lord First told me to do it!"

The courtroom applauded with a round of hoof stomping. Even Broad Sword, causing Explodey to look at him oddly.

"Why are you applauding?" he asked.

Broad Sword stopped.

"...I don't know."

So did everyone else, and then the court abruptly went silent.

"...Yeah, why do we do that?" asked a mare behind them.

"In fact, why are we even here at this trial?" asked another.

"And why have we never questioned anything about this until now?"

Steel Hammer frowned.

"PRAISE LORD FIRST!" he shouted.

"PRAISE LORD FIRST!" everyone in the courtroom including Broad Sword replied in unison.

"And forget that you're being mind controlled!"

The crowd all blinked as one. Explodey leaned over to his friend and waved a hoof in front of his face, snapping him out of it.

"Sorry! I was in a bit of a trance there!" said Swordy. "So! Let's get this trial started!"

Steel Hammer meanwhile had climbed up onto his judge's chair.

"Yes! That's a good idea!" he agreed. "Trial time!"

"Swordy? Are you aware you're being mind controlled?" asked Explodey.

"What?"

"Yes. The judge just ordered everypony to forget about it after he shouted 'praise Lord First' at the room."

"PRAISE LORD FIRST!" Broad Sword shouted.

"PRAISE LORD FIRST!" the crowd echoed.

Steel Hammer slapped his forehead.

"Okay. Screw it. This is too sensitive a matter for public trial. Bailiffs, escort these two out. This issue will be decided in a private hearing with Lord First himself instead."

"PRAISE LORD FIRST!"

***

After a long run across the seventh circle to get back to the elevator, the five ponies dashed into the now extremely cramped metal box and closed the doors behind them. They all breathed a collective sigh that they were able to get out of the place before the alarm was raised. Angelo was doing them a great favour by delaying it as much as he was.

Perhaps there was a potential ally to be found in him? It seemed that there was dissent even among First's own creations.

The relaxing jazz music returned as Tome scanned through the buttons, not wanting to try out the voice commands again. He slapped the button labeled with the eight, and the whole elevator jolted as it began its descent. The usual humdrum voice informed them of their chosen destination.

“Eighth circle. Seducers, thieves, counterfeiters, false prophets, and imposters.”

Frosty was the first to speak up. “Okay, Tomey, since we're out of danger now... What is going on? If you're here against First's will, then how come he hasn't stopped you? How did you even get here? Are you dead too? I don't understand any of this.”

"Yes, deary, I'm also a bit confused," Auntie Arts added. "I'm still a little shaken up from being in the river... Just where are we going?"

"It's a long story that would take forever to explain," said Iron. "To give you both the abridged version, we realised how much of a tremendous cock Second really is, and we ended up travelling with the princesses, Gold Coin and the rest of the Elements of Harmony to stop him. We went to some mountain place, met the ghosts of the original Elements of Harmony, and they all came here to the afterlife through a portal looking to stop First. We followed through, found out you were stuck in Hell, and here we are."

“Right now, we’re going to the eighth circle to rescue Night Shroud and Chameleon," Tome added. "After that, we’re getting the hell out of here. No pun intended.”

"Ew, Chameleon," said Velocity. "Bleugh. Do we have to?"

"Yes dear, I know she's a bitch, but we have an obligation. My father knew her father, and she's done some stuff for me, and she's also probably one of the most loyal members of the group, so..."

"She's still a bitch..." Velocity mumbled.

“So, do we have a way of getting out then?” asked Frosty. "How do we get back to regular world? You can’t open up that portal you took to get here again, can you, Tomey?”

There was a long pause.

“No... No I can’t, but that doesn't mean that we should all lose hope. All we have to do is find Celestia or someone like that, and we should be fine.”

“But we don’t even have a general idea of where she is!” Iron Hoof argued. “Oh great, we’re going to trapped here forever! This is all my fault! I was the one who suggested we come down here...”

“Stop being so dramatic. Besides, right now, all we need to focus on is saving Night and Chameleon.”

The now familiar ding! was heard again as their ride came to an end, and the doors split open to display the eighth circle of Hell. The group of ponies happily walked out the cramped box, and observed their new terrain.

The first thing that they all noticed is how much deeper this circle was. It was so much farther down, they had to squint to see the top of the cliff. The next thing they noticed was that this circle, unlike the seventh, was comprised not of a series of rings that sank ever deeper the closer they got to the centre, but several different ditches, with elevated slivers of land about twenty feet in length in-between that, like the rings, formed concentric circles, each one just barely lower and smaller than the last.

Being this far down on the funnel, the ditches had a much smaller circumference than the previous rings, with the smallest one’s diameter being about the length of a hoofball field. There were ten ditches in total. Every ditch except for sixth one had an arched stone bridge that crossed over it and connected the slivers of land between the ditches.

Their elevator landed them just before the outermost ditch, with the bridge going crossing it immediately in front of them. Eager to see what the first ditch contained, they all advanced onto the bridge and looked down off of its railing.

Down below them, they could see condemned ponies march in separate lines in opposite directions, similar to how a conventional road worked. There were also several of those demon guards whipping the marching ponies. And actually, they soon realised that they weren't just ponies either. Plenty of other races were present, griffins being most prominent.

“So, what do we do? Should I fly over it and just do a scan?” Frosty asked.

“Sure, that would be our best option,” Tome agreed. “You and Velocity will go both directions, scan the full circle, and meet back here with us. You aren’t too tired, are you, Frosty?”

“Nah, that fiery blood stuff seemed to drain a lot of me, but I’m still ready to stretch my wings a little.”

Well, wasn't that convenient?

“That’s good to hear. Now you two better get going. Also, remember that speed is crucial here. When First gets done being a dick wherever he is, he’ll come down here, and then we’ll all be screwed. So we've got to be fast."

The two pegasi nodded and took off into the air. They dipped down into the ditch to the point where they could identify individual ponies, and began their search. They diligently performed the scan of the entire circle, with Frosty going clockwise and Velocity going counter clockwise. Some of the guards saw them, but didn’t seem to care too much and just continued to get back to whipping.

The ground bound ponies all waited patiently at the very edge of the eighth circle, bored at first. They perked up however when on the far side of the circle, they saw Frosty rise up out of the trench again carrying a struggling yellow unicorn. Though Chameleon was too heavy to fly all across the eighth circle to get back to them, Frosty deposited her on the edge of the cliff and flew back into the ditch and out of sight again.

From across the hellscape, they could see her waving a hoof at them. Though not in the friendly, "Hi guys! Good to see you!" kind of way. More like the irritated, "I'm over HERE, assholes!" way.

Frosty then came back, this time accompanied by Velocity. The two of them flew over to Chameleon's side and picked her up, and slowly, the two carried her across back towards Tome and the others. The three soon landed together right at the edge of the cliff, and Chameleon threw off her two rescuers as soon as she could do so without falling.

"Took you long enough, Tome, you bastard!" she shouted. "I've been here for days! DAYS! Your worthless idiot kid killed me! He dropped a statue on my head! And I was this close to smashing that traitor Gold Coin as well!"

"Give it a rest," said Iron. "We got you out. Have some gratitude. I would have just left you here."

"Dear, is it true what she's saying?" asked Velocity, approaching Tome. "Did our son really... kill her?"

Tome sighed.

"Well... First's records support her story. I don't know how it happened, but... it seems so."

"Didn't he mention it at all to you?"

"We... haven't been speaking much since this whole incident started. But when I did talk to him, he never said anything about it."

"Oh, wonderful!" Chameleon whined. "So I die, nopony even cares, and my murderer doesn't even think it's worth mentioning?!"

"To be fair, you are kind of a bitch," said Frosty.

"It must have been an accident," Tome reasoned. "No way he could have done that on purpose..."

Chameleon sneered.

"Yeah. I guess. Because that totally makes up for it. I'm just saying, Tomey, don't let me near that brat of yours again, because the next time I see him, I'm going to strangle him."

"HA!" Iron laughed. "With his entourage?! I know you've been out of the loop since dying, Chameleon, so let me bring you up to speed; Mystic Chant is un-fucking-touchable. Element of magic, don'tcha know? And travelling with a posse of alicorns, aliens, cyborgs and other superpowered freaks right now. You lay a hoof on him, you'd get killed all over again."

The yellow unicorn started at him for a moment, before her eyes darted down to his foreleg.

"...Is that a robotic hoof?"

"Like I said, out of the loop."

"Hey, back on topic," said Tome. "You two. Any sign of Night Shroud down there?"

"Not a one," Frosty answered. "A few other batponies, but not him."

"Okay then. Seems we need to start searching the other ditches."

"Bolgias," Chameleon cut in. "They're called bolgias."

"Whatever."

***

Left alone in the ninth circle, Celestia turned her attention to the other four present. Shining Armor still lay on the ice at her hooves, curled up into a ball and shivering. She crouched down next to him.

"Shining? Shining Armor?"

He looked up at her. His eyes were still reddened from tears, but he blinked with a strange kind of curiosity. He was looking at her like he was trying to remember. There was familiarity there, but he was distant. The princess didn't miss this.

"You... You do remember me. Don't you?" she asked.

Uneasily, Shining raised a forehoof to salute, but he didn't seem to understand why. It was just an instinct that told him he should.

"Oh, Shining... What has he done to you?"

"M-My master is kind," the stallion replied. "And he is wise. I-I live only to serve. My pain is my own f-fault."

"Do you remember it all?" Celestia asked. "Do you remember Equestria? Your sister? Your wife? The Crystal Empire? Your daughter, Neptune?"

Shining winced, and turned away from her.

"I don't need to r-remember. I have e-everything I need here."

"Please, captain... I can save you from First, but I need you to remember. I need you to be you again."

He looked back at her, and she was taken aback by the look he gave her. Those eyes were haunted. This pony had seen true darkness.

"Don't need to remember," he repeated, shaking his head. "Don't want to be free."

He laid his head down on the ice again.

"Master cares for me. Master loves me. I don't need to be free."

Celestia sighed and stood up again. She looked at the other two ponies laying a short distance away, and stepped over to them. She had a feeling that these two would be in just as bad a state as Shining, but she had to try.

"Starswirl?"

She walked over to the bearded old stallion's side and shook him gently to grab his attention.

"It's me, old friend. Are you still in there?"

The unicorn did not respond. He just gave her a sad look and returned to lying on his side.

"Starswirl, please. It's Celestia. Remember me? Little Celestia? You and my father—"

"Don't remember!" Starswirl snapped. "Can't remember. Not allowed. The master says remembering isn't good for me."

"Starswirl, First is lying to you. He's the one that did this to you in the first place! I can help you. I can make it all better."

"Doesn't need to be better. Master provides for us. Safe here. Can't die again. Not with his protection. Everything is better since he took me here."

Celestia reached out to him again, but he rolled over onto his other side to avoid her.

"GO AWAY!" he thundered. "I don't need anypony else."

As she backed away, she considered going over to the other mare, Trixie. Then, she instead heard a muttering.

"There's no hope, you know."

The draconic head that had been chewing on Starswirl before also rested on the surface of the ice a short distance away. It turned to look at the injured alicorn, and she quickly limped over to it. The old demon gave her a tired smile, though still he managed to bare his razor sharp teeth.

"Uncle..." Celestia said nervously as she approached.

"Little Tia..." he responded. "Look at how you've grown. I remember when you were but a speck of cosmic dust on the solar winds..."

"What happened here? What has First done to you all?"

Satan chuckled wearily.

"I was already a prisoner when he arrived. All the coming of Lord First did was bring a change of quarters. And duties. Now I'm forced to torture my fellow prisoners here. For what reason? What incentive? None. There is only existence here, and it will never end. I do as I must, because to not do so is to displease a being too powerful for me to contend with, and that brings only pain."

He sat up slightly.

"Mortality was a cruel mistress, but a fair one. Though she caused me great suffering, her judgement was to be expected. After all, I am the disgraced one, the traitor who killed a billion ponies and created their greatest menace. Windigos... first of the demons. So proud I was at the time, to have a standing army to challenge your father, self righteous cretin that he was. Now I live only in regret, and dream of what I could have been. And even my errant creations turned against me in the end... and against each other. Poor, stupid Beelzebub..."

Then the demon smiled properly, with true happiness.

"Oh, but at least I did pass on my ideals. At least they found their way down my bloodline. I can't say I'm not still proud of them in a twisted kind of way. And even my foolish brother's children still had that essence in them, despite his attempts to keep you both pure. Look at you and your sister. How receptive she was to one of my kind's infection, and how quick you were to fight her, and bind her in the moon that she moved. It warms my black heart to see that even you are not missing that little spark of cruelty."

Celestia looked away from him.

"I had no choice. She was beyond my ability to save."

"Ahhh... but what of the others?"

"Don't."

"Discord, the old fool. Did you ever know that he never had a friend in his life? He was driven to amuse himself as he did because he was lonely. I bet you never even tried to give him a chance. Did you ever consider that had you, the embodiments of friendship itself, tried to be his friend rather than attacking straight away, he might have stopped?"

"...I... I never..."

"And yet consider the punishment you gave to him instead. Thousands of years trapped in a stone prison, and aware of every minute of it. Be glad at least that he was already mad. Unlike Second, who you drove to insanity with the same punishment. Unlike First, who overthrew an eternal kingdom and then wallowed in despair for a millennium.

"You were influenced by me. An alicorn would know better, but a demon thinks of punishment. And just look at the beasts you created. I made demonkind and thought myself impressive, but you have outdone even me. You made Lord First, the greatest monster of them all."

Celestia sighed.

"I said no to your offer before, and that hasn't changed. I'm not like you, nor will I ever be. And you can stay away from Luna as well. I'm sorry for what First has done for you, and if I could help you then I would, but you're still the monster that betrayed my father and brought the world to the brink of ruin, and it doesn't sound like you're sorry for it either."

Satan tilted his head slightly, and gave her a curious look.

"So be it. But remember, you have no friends down here except for me. Even your old comrades that I eternally feast upon are nothing but slaves to First. And under the ice out there is a billion lifeforms who joined Twilight Sparkle in her rebellion, and met a grisly fate. Even in this very room are two of the ponies you came here with, only the most recent additions to the neverending torment."

The princess looked back over to the place where she had seen the dark figures beneath the ice. She felt another pang of sorrow, but by this point she was well aware of how little she could do. It still didn't matter who was beneath the ice. Without her magic, there was no saving them.

"First needs to be stopped," she said simply.

Satan laughed. Smoke spewed out of his mouth as he did.

"Indeed he does, but how would you ever do that? He is an elder god. Not even I could challenge him in single combat in his own realm."

"I don't know," Celestia admitted. "I'll think of something though. Losing hope never helped anypony..."

***

The group fell into a routine of progressing down the bridges and scanning each bolgia for any sign of their imprisoned companions. The fact that they were getting closer to the centre with each subsequent bolgia meant that the searches got slightly shorter every time, which was a godsend considering that they didn't know how much time they had.

And every time they passed over a bolgia, they'd get to see another unique horror being inflicted upon its inhabitants. Tome's favourite was the fourth bolgia for users of dark magic, where all the prisoners walked around with their heads twisted backwards, because it was empty enough that he could recognise individuals in the crowd and pick out the occasional celebrity damned soul.

Among others, he spotted the notorious Raven of Sorrow, a warlord of the old kingdom who staged a coup against Princess Platinum, the earth pony Steadfast, who sold his soul for a horn and magic for him to slay his enemies with, and Sombra, the tyrant king of the Crystal Empire.

The fourth bolgia wasn't the only interesting one though. The second one was filled up to neck level with feces, and its inhabitants were left to wallow or trudge through it. That bolgia had caught Tome's attention not just for the smell, but because there was a big red contraption submerged in the muck immediately below the bridge.

A lone island in the sea of shit, a number of ponies had taken refuge on it and called up to them as they passed, begging to be rescued. Two yellow unicorn stallions with red manes, identical except for one's lack of a moustache, perched on the very highest part of the machine. They shouted for help and waved their hooves the moment they had spotted them. And soon, many of the others stewing in the filth around them joined in the pleading.

"...I'm sorry," Tome had muttered as he backed away from the edge.

It was at the tenth bolgia that they finally found their prize, however. Frosty and Velocity landed after their flyover, but this time they didn't have that look of disappointment that had so far indicated a lack of success. They instead looked alert, like they'd rushed back to give the rest of the group the news.

"We found Night Shroud," Frosty reported.

"You don't sound happy about it," Iron observed.

"They're all ill with something," Velocity explained. "It looks like this bolgia's punishment is that its residents are all constantly sick. We don't know if what Night Shroud has is infectious. We talked to him, and said we were going to help, but... I don't know if it's safe to touch him. Looks pretty bad."

"Okay," said Tome. "Doesn't sound like anything I can't handle. My medical magic could be better, but I like to think I know more than most."

"Should I carry you down then, dear?"

"Please do."

They descended into the abyss together, with Frosty coming along too just for good measure, and flew over to where Night Shroud was waiting. Ancient Tome, sitting on his wife's back as she fluttered over towards him, had to lean slightly to get a good look at him. The bolgia wasn't exactly dark, but it was dim.

"Night Shroud?"

"Tome?" The batpony coughed loudly. "Eugh. Sorry. Frosty and your wife explained everything to me. Here to rescue little old me, huh?"

He chuckled. Tome's horn lit up, and he used the glow of his magic to get a better look at Night Shroud and examine him. He didn't have his night guard armour anymore. He was naked and shivering, but somehow Tome doubted that he was shivering from the cold.

"We need to be quick," Tome explained. "Tell me all your symptoms right now. Depending on what you have, I might be able to cure it, but I need to know what it is you have."

"I know what I have," Night Shroud replied with a sneeze. "It's just a really strong variant of the common cold. Nothing serious. You don't even need to cure it, just carry me out of here and I'll be fine."

"No. He won't be."

The four ponies looked over nearby to see a horribly deformed white stallion with a blond mane. His face and limbs looked grotesquely misshapen, and Tome almost recoiled on seeing him. Frosty actually did. He held out a forehoof to them and spoke again, in what Tome had only just realised was a Canterlot accent.

"Prince Blueblood. Charmed to meet you."

Nopony said anything or moved, causing him to eventually sigh and drop his hoof.

"Sorry about the face. Leprosy. Some disease from the human's world that he decided to inflict on me as my punishment. Try to look past it."

He was trying. Every second Tome was trying not to stare or be sick, or do anything else rude. Yet, he couldn't help it. Right now, the only thing on his mind was what kind of horrifying place the human world must have been to produce a disease like that.

"Like I was saying," Blueblood continued, "he won't be alright. The diseases aren't an effect of the bolgia. First places the afflictions on each one of us individually, and we're meant to suffer them forever. It's not like when we were all alive and we'd just get better over time. If you don't cure his cold, it's never going to go away."

Tome blinked.

"What... What did..." he stammered. "What did you DO to make First do... THAT to you?!"

Blueblood's mouth curled up at the edge into a tiny smile.

"The tenth bolgia is for falsifiers of any kind that do not fit elsewhere in the circle. This normally means liars. And while I would normally have been placed in the fifth or eighth ones for corrupt politicians or advisors, or even in the second circle for cheating on my wife all those times, First decided that lying was my most prominent sin."

"...So... you lied a lot in life... and for that First decided that you should have... THIS happen to you?!"

"Yes."

Tome blinked.

"Velocity, let me off."

"Are you sure, dear?"

"Just do it!"

As he asked, Velocity set her husband down and let him climb off her back and approach Blueblood.

"I'm not standing for any more of this!" Tome announced. "This whole punishment system is fucked! Corrupt politician, and cheating on your wife to boot? Yes, that's a dick move. But no way in hell does that warrant this! I'm going to tear this whole damn establishment down, one pony at a time!"

"Didn't you hear me? You can't cure us. We don't have diseases in the same way mortals do! They're a part of us now, not something you can shake out with healing magic!"

"Don't you talk to me about magic!" Tome shouted, his horn glowing again. "I know magic! And I know enough to tell that you, and all the others souls down here, are made of the stuff! And if I can't manipulate magic, then what kind of unicorn am I?!"

Blueblood cried out in surprise and spasmed involuntarily. Tome's magical glow bathed him, and he could feel the massive physiological changes taking root. His body transformed with a suddenness and ease that surprised even the other Brotherhood ponies. It wasn't like watching a pony be transformed by magic; it was like watching Tome shape a piece of clay.

In mere seconds, the deformed creature that was Prince Blueblood before gave way to a relatively normal looking, perhaps even handsome pony, who laid face down on the floor. He pushed himself up and blinked in surprise, staring at his hooves. He sat up, and looked more closely at them. He grabbed a bit of his blond mane and examined it, and looked down at his chest and behind him at his back and tail.

Then he began laughing.

"I'm free!" he cried out. "FREE!"

Without warning, he grabbed Tome and hugged him. Not very like him, but this was an emotional moment for the prince.

"Thank you, sir!" He pulled back, and settled for shaking Tome's hoof vigorously instead. "You are a gentlecolt and a scholar! This won't be forgotten!"

"We're not done here yet."

Tome turned back to Night Shroud and blasted him with some magic too. In even less time than it had taken to cure Blueblood, Night Shroud felt his cold disappear too.

"Come on, Night Shroud! We're getting you out of here, and then we're getting help for everypony else here!"

"But I can't fly anymore!" Night Shroud complained. "Don't you think somepony would have escaped this already if they didn't take away our wings and magic?"

"Just another of First's punishments. It's gone with your cold. Now fly."

Experimentally, Night stretched his wings and began flapping them. To his surprise, he was able to get airborne again. Simultaneously, Blueblood tried to use his horn and found that his magic was back. He let out a girlish squeal of delight when he lifted a nearby rock with it.

"Tomey, what are we even doing?" asked Frosty, "You want to free everypony in the circle?"

"We freed the sixth circle. Or some of it, at least. We can free these ponies too."

"But that'll take forever!"

Tome looked back to Velocity.

"We'll get help from the Brotherhood. Return to the sixth circle, start bringing them down here, and they'll help us get this revolution started. Auntie can stay down here and work on beginning to free everypony while we're getting them."

She shrugged.

"If you think we can, dear."

"I do." Tome turned to Blueblood. "And you can help."

"Very well."

"You're a prince, so be a leader. Help rally the ponies down here. I'm going to leave for now, but I'm sending down a mare who's going to help you. We're ending First's reign of terror, here and now."

Blueblood saluted.

"Anything you say."

***

Explodey and Broad Sword walked through the misty emptiness of Limbo together as they were led on by Steel Hammer. The bailiffs from the court had long ago left them, and now the two were alone with the gold armoured stallion. He seemed unamused by their antics in court, and had ordered them to be quiet as they approached Lord First's office.

Neither of them were ones to blindly follow rules though, so when Steel Hammer wandered far enough ahead that they thought he couldn't hear, they began whispering.

"I didn't even know I was being mind controlled!" Broad Sword explained. "I mean, talk about nerve! Mind controlling a pony and not even telling them about it!"

"I know, right?" Explodey replied. "And to think he does that to everypony! What a jerk. When I meet First again, I'll have some choice words for him. I don't even care if he is the god of death."

"Yeah. Me too. Totally."

Steel Hammer turned his head back to look at them, and gave them another glare.

"I can hear the both of you," he said bluntly. "Stop it."

Reluctantly, both other ponies settled back into silence as they walked through the rest of the circle. Eventually, they began to see a desk in the distance, which Explodey recognised from when he came in. Except this time, First wasn't present.

"What the...?" Steel muttered as he approached the desk.

He began looking over the broken telephones and circled the smashed desk.

"The death register was stolen!" he shouted. "How can this have happened?! Nopony can even get into... Damn it!"

He threw his hooves up into the air and stomped away into the mist again, leaving the two alone with the desk. Broad Sword looked at it inquisitively, and picked up a broken telephone in his hooves. He turned it over and looked at the underside, and then followed the wire that led to the green cube on the floor in front of the desk.

"What is this?" he muttered to himself.

"It's a car battery," said Explodey. "Some human vehicles use them. Odd choice of power for a telephone though."

Swordy didn't question any further, instead prodding the car battery again with childlike curiosity. Explodey meanwhile took interest in the papers on the desk. He jumped into First's chair without a care in the world, and magically lifted the closest paper to him.

"Ooh. Swordy, check this out."

The other pony's head popped up from beneath the desk as Explodey began to read out the letter he had found.

Anthony,

This is your 'assistant manager'. I've been handling this situation for a few days now, and it shows no sign of slowing down. Whatever it is that's wiping out all these star systems, it's fucking relentless. If you think you're overworked dealing with that apocalypse in Equestria, just be glad that you only have to deal with the one. This is some serious end of the universe kind of shit you've put me on, and I'm easily dealing with several trillion times your workload. That's not an exaggeration, those are accurate figures. I counted.

This would go a lot smoother if you'd stop with the Saint Peter shit and put someone else on greeter duty. I don't do that, and none of these aliens care. Ponies shouldn't care either. In fact, being greeted into the afterlife by a human is just unnecessarily scary for them. So cut it out. Also I'd appreciate a larger budget and more staff over here. Aliens are difficult to deal with, especially when it's weirdo slug aliens who spent most of their lives in cyborg suits that they now lack. Oh, and just so you know? I read your emo poetry, and it's still shit.

Go fuck a cactus,

'Mister Mxyzptlk'

Swordy tilted his head.

"Huh. Sounds like there's trouble in paradise," he commented.

The unicorn began levitating the other papers around him and looking between them all. He began to come to a realisation.

"Oh my god..." he said. "I thought it was all jokes to begin with, but... it's true."

"What is?"

"First really does run the afterlife with a bureaucracy! That letter wasn't kidding! There are budget allocations here! Budget allocations! In the afterlife! Do they even have an economy here?!"

"Kind of," Broad Sword replied with a shrug. "I mean, loads of ponies have cutie marks related to finance and the economy in some way. An afterlife without commerce would be pretty depressing for them."

Explodey blinked at Swordy and then went back to staring at his papers.

"...This is monstrous."

"What is?"

"I see it now. It's true. They told me that First was bad but I never..."

A tear ran down his cheek.

"I never believed..."

Broad Sword walked around the desk and climbed up into the chair with him.

"...What is it? Tell me."

"Swordy... First employs tax collectors. They have taxes here."

Explodey threw down the papers onto the desk.

"That's it. Game over. The world ends here. You. Me. Overthrowing First. Right now."

He hopped off the chair, and gestured for Broad Sword to follow him.

"Come, my comrade! We must liberate this world from the tyranny of First and his tax collectors and lawyers and health and safety inspectors, and all manner of other scum! This world SHALL BE FREE!"

Then Steel stepped out of the mist again and pressed a hammer against Explodey's nose.

"You know, there are two things in this reality that I despise more than the devil himself. One of them is the Spider Legion, and I take every opportunity I get to abuse them when they show up here. The other is anarchists, because anarchists just want to fuck everything up for everybody else, and don't even put in enough thought to realise that we have governments for a reason. Because they fucking WORK. What I'm saying is, I don't appreciate your anarchist talk."

Explodey put a hoof on the hammer and gently pushed it down out of his face.

"Bro. Relax. We were doing a bit. It's called joking. Do you remember what that is through all the brainwashing?"

Steel Hammer looked offended.

"I am NOT brainwashed!" he snarled, pointing a hammer at Explodey again. "Lord First and I are great friends! This is a voluntary relationship!"

"So... you just help with brainwashing everypony else?" asked Broad Sword.

Steel’s face was going red with rage.

"I- He- It's necessary!" he spluttered. "First needs to keep control! I obey my master!"

"Your master?" Explodey repeated. "I thought you were friends, not master and servant?"

"We're both!"

Broad Sword hopped off the chair at First's desk, and advanced on Steel Hammer. Despite the old soldier's greater armour and magic granted to him by it, he still backed away, as if intimidated.

"Why were you so quick to side with him?" Broad Sword asked. "History says you're the one that killed First. Are you seriously telling me he wasn't the slightest bit angry at that?"

"Well, at first he was—" Steel began.

"I'm not finished!" Broad Sword interrupted. "Why were you also so quick to swear loyalty to him? He was your enemy on the battlefield, and in the royal guard, we're taught to remember our duty to Equestria first and foremost."

He stopped, and his expression darkened.

"In fact, that was what I was doing. When I died several days ago, First was right there to greet me. I tried to argue with him. I wanted to get him to send me back to Equestria, even when he insisted it was impossible. I was crying, I was angry, and then... I stopped caring. Why did I stop caring?"

Explodey frowned.

"Because that's when the mind control set in," he answered. "It made you stop caring because it was convenient for First."

He turned back to Steel.

"Did you stop caring?"

Steel stood staring at them for a few seconds. The two sides were at a stalemate, until the silence was broken by the sound of a ringing phone. Steel looked over to it, and the two other ponies wordlessly stepped aside to let him walk over to the desk and answer it.

"Hello?"

"This is Lieutenant Lake of the 15th centaur division. The sixth and seventh circles are chaos right now! Brotherhood of Man prisoners are breaking out all over on sixth, and we've got jailbreaks down here too! We can't contain them by ourselves. We need immediate reinforcements! Demons, reapers, I don't care! Just send help!"

"What?!" Steel demanded. "How did that happen?! The Brotherhood were all sealed inside superheated metal tombs! They should be writhing in constant agony and mostly in states of gibbering insanity! What gives?!"

Explodey and Broad Sword exchanged a worried look.

"Looks like outsiders broke them out, sir."

"...Outsiders?"

"Not sure who, but they're not reapers. Either we've got another rebellion, or they came with that group of mortals. I don't see any of the individuals we were warned about in the crowd though."

"Damn it... Okay, I'll send who I can spare. Sit tight down there, 15th."

Steel Hammer hung up and began to pick up another phone and dial a number.

"They mentioned outsiders coming here," said Explodey. "Which outsiders?"

"Your irritating friends," Steel answered as he finished dialling. "They came here on a rescue mission for you a short time ago. We intercepted them before they reached you, however. First took Celestia down to the ninth circle himself to beat the insubordination out of her, and I personally saw to Rainbow Dash and Rarity's capture. Seems a few got away and started stirring up trouble in the circles though, and now we're going to have to exterminate them."

The guy on the other end of the phone finally picked up.

"Reapers Department. How may I help you?"

"Hi. This is St—"

Before Steel could say anything however, the phone was pulled out of his grasp by Explodey's magic, and smashed against the floor.

"Not today, sorry. You're not hurting our friends."

The soldier lifted his pair of warhammers again and began twirling them in the air.

"You've made a grave mistake, boy. I was blessed by Lord First himself! I am invinci—"

With an almost insulting level of ease, Explodey telekinetically lifted First's desk off the ground and smashed it over Steel Hammer's head. He wasn't knocked out, but he did seem dazed, and stumbled forward for a few steps before he got his bearings again.

"Invin... vinci... vincible..."

Then he fell over onto his face.

"Great. Now First's going to be mad at us," said Swordy. "We'd better save our friends quick. I don't want to get caught by an angry elder god in the place he's most powerful."

"Relax," Explodey reassured. "We've got this."

***

"Well... if you think I can handle it, deary," Arcane agreed.

"Excellent. Me and the others will be back with more Brotherhood ponies to help you out in just a minute."

Tome and company stood by the side of the tenth bolgia together. Frosty and Night Shroud had agreed to stay behind to help lift ponies out of the huge ditches, at least until they freed more pegasi to help with the problem. Arcane Arts would be taking Tome's place for the actual curing procedure.

And she wouldn't be alone, either. Blueblood was still in the trench below them, ready and waiting to start liberating his fellow prisoners. Not to mention Chameleon, who was also being made to help, albeit reluctantly.

"Don't take too long," said Frosty. "I'm not sure how much we'll be able to do by ourselves."

"We'll be back before you know it," Velocity assured. "You didn't see the sixth circle. There are hundreds of ponies there. All the help we could ever need. Together, we'll overcome this place."

"I hope you're right, sis."

Chameleon groaned.

"Can we get on with the fucking job already?!"

With that outburst, they got right to work. Frosty and Night Shroud carried Arcane and Chameleon down into the tenth bolgia to start the doctor work. Tome, Iron and Velocity meanwhile headed back towards the elevator on the far side of the circle. It greeted them as they approached with an ominous red glow.

"Seriously, why is this thing so evil looking?" asked Tome.

“Okay, Tomey, that elevator has done nothing but good things to us," Iron objected. "I don’t know why you're so paranoid about it!”

“Oh, come on! Everypony but you has seen that it’s obviously evil or a trap or something! Is it so wrong for me to feel suspicious of a thing this menacing?”

The elevator doors opened to admit them, and the sound of the cheery jazz music returned.

“You need to stop judging it by its appearance. It’s not the elevator's fault.”

“You know that? Why don’t you and the elevator just go fuck each other?”

“If you’re going to be immature, then I don’t want to talk to you about it, Tomey.”

The bearded unicorn looked to his wife.

"You've got my back on this, haven't you?"

The elevator doors closed. Velocity tried to avoid looking directly at him.

"Well... I agree that it does look a little sinister, but I still think you're being a bit paranoid..."

“Great. When this elevator fucks us all over, I will be overjoyed, just so I can prove to you all that you’re wrong. This thing is evil, and I know it.”

Tome pushed his way over to the button panel and pressed the one labelled six.

"I'm right. I know I am."

Then there was the sound of groaning metal. The elevator had began to move but stopped abruptly, jolting with an unexpectedness that threw all the ponies inside off their hooves. They slumped against the sides of the elevator together, and were all suddenly terrified.

"Oh, please don't let me be right!"

There was the sound of snapping rope, followed by the immediate plunge. They felt the elevator lurch, and then go shooting down into the deepest depths of Hell that it could take them to. Panicked screams ensued.

***

Celestia sat up suddenly. She could hear screaming. Not pained screaming, but screams of fear instead. And the screams were getting louder and louder. Satan seemed to notice the noise too, and he raised his head off the ground to look around for it. It was the first time she had seen him not slouching on the ice.

"What is that?" she asked.

"I don't kn—"

CRASH!

Out of nowhere, a metal box fell from the ceiling and slammed into the ice just a few feet away from the two of them. A little to the right and it would have crushed Starswirl the Bearded's leg. As is, he didn't seem to even react to it, but Celestia and the demon certainly did.

"What the...?"

The metal cube had doors on the outside, and they opened up to reveal a cosy interior and a number of disoriented ponies laying about inside. They all groaned together. The elevator itself had a speaker that was spitting out some garbled tune. It sounded at times like some kind of cheery jazz piece, but it quickly puttered out and died.

Then the elevator fell onto its side, and the ponies tumbled over with it. Ancient Tome, Velocity and Iron Hoof had to crawl out of the wreckage of the elevator, barely even paying attention to where they were and just wanting to get out of that thing.

As he crawled along the ice on his belly, Tome looked up to see Celestia standing over him, and one of the many heads of a hydra-like demon that he just realised filled most of the entire cavern they were in. His eyes widened in fear, and he jumped back, raising a magical shield around him and the other two.

None of them said anything, just keeping back and keeping behind the shield. Tome at least was taking the deepest breaths he could draw, in a futile attempt to calm himself in his state of panic. And looking over the three ponies, Satan broke into a huge toothy grin.

"Celestia, my dear. It seems these ponies still have their magic," he observed. "I think we just found our way out of here."

***

In the empty void of Limbo, a lone colt shivered. He was all alone in his prison. Unable to leave, unable to save himself from the inevitable. He wasn't even sure if anypony was coming to help him.

A nearby flash of light caught his attention, as a human appeared.

"Mystic! There you are!"

First rushed over to the little unicorn and grabbed him. He squeaked in surprise as he was lifted into the air and up to face level with him.

"Good! Good!" First said enthusiastically, smiling widely as he did. "You're here! You can save me!"

Mystic gave him a confused look.

"Huh?"

First set him back on the ground again, and crouched down to Mystic's level.

"You're one of the protagonists!" he explained. "That means you can save me! All you have to do is forgive me for all the bad things I did!"

Mystic only just noticed how forced that smile was. He hadn't seen it before, but it could be seen in the human's eyes; he was afraid, and desperate.

"...I don't understand. What?"

"Look, it's very simple. All you need to do is forgive me for everything I did wrong, and all the people I hurt, and then I won't be a villain anymore and I'll get to live! You can forgive me, right? Because I'm really, really sorry."

"Uhh..." said Mystic. "Get to... I still don't get it. What are you afraid of?"

First stopped smiling, and he grabbed Mystic again pulling him over to look him in the eyes.

"I'm a villain! It's happened again! I'm STILL a bad guy! It's going to happen AGAIN, Mystic! Celestia and your friends are coming to stop me! They're going to KILL me!"

"Aren't you already dead?"

Tears welled from First's eyes.

"That's not going to stop them," he whispered. "I don't know how, but I can still die. And it'll happen very soon."

He smiled again.

"But that's okay, because you're a hero! You're one of the Elements of Harmony! And that means that you can forgive me, and I'll be redeemed and not a villain anymore, and that means I'll get to live!"

"Forgive you for... what?"

"For torturing those ponies in Hell. But, you can hardly blame me, right? They're all pretty bad individuals. Nothing I can't be forgiven for. Right?"

"I... I don't think that's up to me to forgive you for, Mr. First..."

Anthony's smile faltered.

"Mystic, I'll level with you here. The only reason you've not fallen into the void of time so far is because you've got an intangibility spell protecting you, and it's running out fast without its original caster nearby. If you forgive me, I'll save you. You do me a favour, and I do you a favour. See?"

Mystic backed away from First slightly.

"...Okay. I forgive you then."

First's lip trembled for a moment, and then his expression darkened.

"You don't really mean it," he growled. "You're just saying that!"

"Well, you threatened to let me fall into that void thingy!" Mystic said defensively, still backing away.

First lunged at Mystic again and grabbed his head in both his hands. He pulled him into the air as he stood up to his full height.

"FORGIVE ME!" he screamed.

"I forgive you! I forgive you!" Mystic cried. "Please stop hurting me!"

First's eyes widened, and he dropped the colt on the floor again. Mystic bounced when he hit the ground, and scrambled to get back onto his hooves. He looked up at First in fear, and the human looked at him the exact same way.

"...I'm not a villain," First insisted.

He began walking away backwards.

"I'm not."

He turned around and sprinted away from Mystic, disappearing into the fog.

END.

Author's Note

This was a fucking nightmare to write. Even worse than the last chapter.

Partial credit for finally getting this out has to go to Mr. Spiffy, who wrote large segments of the Brotherhood scenes for me. He’s also the reason why this ended up being so long, even though I’ve cut a lot of his additions. There were originally at least half the number of Brotherhood scenes this chapter, but that proved inadequate for me to get the story done with.

And this chapter was originally going to be even longer. This chapter, plus the next two, were all originally envisioned as just one. Fuck if that’s going to happen though. I’m not writing a sixty thousand word chapter. Even this is pushing it.

I’d also like to apologise for the relative lack of comedy this chapter. There’s a lot less to do with this material than I thought there was, but I’m going to try and make up for that next chapter, however I can. For now, I’m just sorry that this chapter is so dark. Unless you’re one of the readers who likes the dark stuff, in which case, you’re welcome.

Next Chapter: Brotherhood of Man, Princess Celestia and Satan SUPER TEAM UP.

Meanwhile in the Lowlands...

THIS IS WAR! GRAND APOCALYPSE PLUNGES EQUESTRIA INTO CONFLICT.

A mere five days after our beloved Princess Celestia was slain by a monster straight out of Equestrian legend, the human known as Lord Second returned to deal another fatal blow, this time to the country itself. The creatures (debate still continues whether to call them zombies, the undead, the infected, walkers, ghouls, inferi, Zack, draugr, or some other strange variation), were first seen rising from their graves in a small cemetery halfway up the Canterlot Mountain, and have since spread far and wide across the country.

In the days since the fall of Canterlot, national attention has turned to the crisis that followed that event, as Equestria now finds itself without a capital, head of state, or clear idea of what to do. And it doesn't help that many cities all have very different ideas of what exactly is the appropriate response.

Cloudsdale, central hub of pegasus activity in the country, has declared itself the number one safe spot for ponies right now, pointing out that the zombies (because let's be honest with ourselves, they are zombies), and various other dangers brought by the Grand Apocalypse are all ground-bound.

Indeed, the Cloudsdale city council has been in debate for several days now arguing over whether it would be a good idea to just bring every pegasus above the clouds and cover all of Equestria in a cloud curtain, in hopes that Lord Second and the zombies would leave them alone.

This proposal, conceived by Councillor Eden, was promptly opposed by every other member of the council except for severe brain damage sufferer Councillor Binks, pointing out that Lord Second can fly now and that the idea for starting a so-called "pegasus enclave" would accomplish nothing but earning the ire of the rest of Equestria and making the situation even worse. Councillor Binks, who won his seat in office after accidentally helping to save the life of his predecessor, says that his support of Eden is part of a new strategy.

Due to archaic laws from the days of the three tribes requiring unanimous agreement to bring an argument to rest in all council matters, and Councillors Eden and Binks's continued refusal to drop the matter, this "debate" looks to go on for a long time.

Hoofington meanwhile has further devolved into chaos and anarchy, with the city returning to the ancient pseudo-tribal culture for which it is famous and declaring itself independent of the rest of Equestria, and no longer recognising its old name.

Though the city is still open to "everyone except brain-munchers," it steadfastly refuses to listen to directives of any government bodies not based within its own walls, and insists that all visitors must pay tribute to their new leader, "The King in Green," with a reminder to "hail his majesty, his divine webbed feet, and his gloriously vile tongue, for he is the great slimy one to whom we owe our greatness and who protects us all from the unenlightened ones and the ugly grey things."

The city's spokespony further added "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Third Kaprea wgah'nagl fhtagn." When further questioned on what exactly was wrong with all of them, Hoofington officials refused to speak further to our reporters.

And the big cities aren't the only ones holding out against the onslaught of the undead. Small towns such as Ponyville and Rainbow's Rest nearest to Canterlot have already made fortifications to hold out against the hordes of the damned. Though many such towns have already been overrun, small pockets of survivors still hold out wherever they can. I spoke to one Toffee Apple while visiting Ponyville to get her word on the situation.

"We're doing okay," she told me. "Ponyville has plenty of fortifications, and plenty of able-bodied mares and stallions to hold them back. Of course, right now we're all cowering in this single building because those defences came down when the town was invaded by literal demons from Tartarus for some reason, but we're cautiously optimistic that things will get better."

"Indeed," I said. "And have you suffered many casualties in defending the town?"

"Oh, loads! Before the fence was destroyed, we had nine times the number you see here now. Zombies ate and infected most of us. We've all lost friends and loved ones. But it could be worse, I suppose. I mean, we could have zombie dragons."

"Yes, and how do you feel about the reports that Trottingham is in fact currently being beseiged by a zombie dragon?"

"Well, it's terrible! That's why I said it could be worse for us. We don't have zombie dragons here. Just regular zombies. I wish the ponies of Trottingham all the best."

CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO.

Lord Second threw his newspaper aside callously.

"Gay. I wonder what's on TV?"

He sat down on Celestia's throne and picked up a remote control. A television the size of a cinema screen came to life with a burst of static on the other side of the hall, and its speakers began blaring a distorted sound. Second covered his ears for a moment, and then snapped his fingers. The picture and audio corrected.

"AND COMING UP NEXT ON THE SECOPOLIS CHANNEL, IT'S APOCALYPSE WATCH! ONE SOLID HOUR OF EQUESTRIANS BEING EATEN BY ZOMBIES!"

Howard gasped.

"My favourite!"

He reached down to the side of the throne, and lifted up a bag of popcorn.

"Today is a good day!"

END.

Author's Note

This isn't a real update, it's just something to pass the time until the next chapter does come. I'm sorry they've all been so slow lately, but they were all meant to be one huge chapter and splitting them up has made organisation complicated. Plus with everything else going on in my life right now, I've been struggling with it. The new chapter is coming, and I promise I won't make you wait forever. Just give me a little longer.

Next Chapter: Satan does stuff.

Chapter 29: A Life Defined by Mistakes

"Hi, princess! Check it out! I got you a present! Aren't I nice?"

An ursa major lay across the front lawn of the palace, its body large enough to block the view of the entire outer wall. Its limbs were splayed out, and its eyes were closed. A sparkling purple fluid leaked from a cut on its head, and a small river of it trickled across the grounds and dripped into the moat, which was beginning to tint the same colour. Atop the dead monster, a very much alive monster smiled and waved.

Princess Celestia spread her wings and flew across the grounds to meet Lord Second. She stopped, and hovered in place just to the side of the slain beast.

"WHAT have you DONE?!" she demanded.

Second was taken aback.

"Why, I was just bringing you a present, as I said!" he replied. "Can't you see? We went to great lengths to find and kill an ursa that was big enough to show how sorry we are!"

Celestia looked down at the ursa for a second, and then her eyes flicked back up to Second.

"So what? Is this meant to be some kind of apology? 'Sorry I permanently crippled several thousand ponies and threw your kingdom into chaos; have a dead bear'? I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"But it's true!" Second insisted, placing a hand on his heart. "I feel simply dreadful for all that I have done. All that we have both done! And with your grace, we wish to make amends! Forgive and forget, yes? That's what you ponies love doing, isn't it? Forgiving people for shit?"

He smiled at her. Celestia remained stoic. She didn't trust this man for nothing, but if he truly wanted to apologise and put a stop to all this, then she was obligated to give him a chance. And considering the revelations that Twilight had brought her from the Ponyville investigation, she had to face the possibility that this all might have come from a great misunderstanding.

"Second..." she said carefully. "After me and Blade Edge met you two, I had some of my ponies look into what happened."

"Oh?" The human sat up. "And what did they tell you?"

"Well, for one thing, I know about your... shall we say, dramatic arrival. And I know how it was you came to be fighting an entire army before we arrived. The denizens of Ponyville spoke about how the police tried to arrest you both, and how you fought back against them. And continued to fight as they called more reinforcements, until this eventually led to the circumstances of our first encounter."

Second leaned back into the ursa's skin again.

"Mmhmm," he said. "That sounds about right."

Celestia frowned.

"During that meeting, you said that 'they' started it, presumably referring to the police that tried to arrest you. Am I right?"

"Ya."

"Except that 'they' were arresting you both for disturbing the peace, and according to my reports, it was very much warranted. Forgive me, Second, but I'm failing to see why either of you felt the need to do this. Especially given the lengths to which you took it. Why, Second? What did you do all this for?"

Second groaned loudly.

"We didn't think you'd all be so damn persistent about it, right?! It was a charge of disturbing the peace! Let it go! Christ!"

"'Disturbing the peace' is putting it very mildly, Second. I've seen the craters—"

"Craters schmaters! Ponyville is built right next to the Everfree Forest! It suffers severe property damage all the time!"

"And maybe that alone wouldn't have been worth calling in the army over, but when you factor in several hundred cases of assaulting a police officer—"

Second jumped up onto his feet again, his face red.

"OKAY! FINE! Fuck! So we shouldn't have attacked your goddamn police force when they tried to arrest us! Whatever! Can you please just accept the apology ursa already?!"

He gestured down at the beast that he still stood upon. Once more, Celestia spared a glance at it too, before turning her attention back to Second. She sighed.

"I really can't tell if this is actually a sincere gesture or not. If so, I should tell you that most ponies don't really appreciate dead animals as gifts. We're a vegetarian species, you understand."

"Well no shit," the human said flatly.

"Then this is just an attempt to antagonise me further?"

The princess almost flinched when Second suddenly leapt off the ursa and onto the ground below. He ran to its side and placed both arms beneath it. The body began to shift, and Celestia flew out of the way as the comparatively tiny man lifted the cosmic bear and launched it skyward.

She gaped as he then jumped into the sky as well, almost just as far, and kicked the corpse as it began falling again. The dead ursa flew far off into the distance, seeming to disappear over the horizon. All the way it went, she could see a faint trail of purple blood streaming over Equestria and staining the countryside below.

Second landed back on the ground again, and shouted up to her.

"THERE! I got rid of the star bear! Happy now?!"

The princess landed on the grass again as well.

"...It'll have to do."

"Beautiful. So, what do you say? Friends?"

Second held out his hand to her, in a gesture that Celestia recognised as an offer of a hoofshake.

To say she was hesitant was understanding it. The reason why she tried to talk with him was to give the human a chance to explain himself, since he claimed the police had started it while everything else she heard was about how they were the ones responsible. So far though, Second had done nothing but confirm that they were the ones at fault, even if he didn't act like he thought so. Still, blame could be decided later. What was important was that the violence would stop.

Celestia began to reach out.

"...If it means we can end this destructive conflict, then..." She stopped. "Wait. Where is the other human?"

Her hoof dropped back to the floor. Second just looked confused.

"What other human?"

"Your partner! The First! The one without the moustache! Where is he, Second?"

"One without a moustache? Celestia, I honestly have no idea who you're talking about. I came here alone, remember?"

The alicorn twisted around on the spot, looking in all directions. She stopped turning as she came to face the statue garden, and she took a long sniff of the air. Her expression darkened as she looked back over her shoulder at Second.

"A perception filter?" she said incredulously. "I knew I was missing something. What is he doing?!"

Second didn't say anything, and instead rushed past her in the direction of the hedge maze. He ran too fast for her to catch him on hoof. Even if she flew, she had her doubts. Fortunately, she didn't need to bother with either option. She channeled power through her horn, and in a burst of light she immediately warped directly to the maze.

Celestia flashed back into being in the statue garden just outside it. Second ran in from the side and stopped, grinning at her. Directly between the two of them, Lord First stood next to the statue of Discord, holding his index finger just millimeters away from the surface of the stone. He was looking sideways at Celestia, surprised to see her there.

"Don't. You. DARE," she warned.

First broke into a smile that wouldn't have looked out of place on Pinkie Pie. Celestia's heart nearly gave out.

"I'M GONNA DO IT!" First shouted.

"HE'S GONNA DO IT, PRINCESS!" Second gleefully repeated.

"I'M SO GONNA DO IT!"

"HE'S GONNA FUCKING DO IT!"

"I'M GONNA DO IT! I'M GONNA DO IT RIGHT NOW!"

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE A CRAZY PERSON!"

"JUST WATCH ME DO IT!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The two of them screaming was what did it. Celestia's nerves got the better of her, and she had to put a stop to this before she had three problems to deal with. Magic couldn't affect them and they dodged anything thrown their way, so Celestia did the first thing she thought of. She grabbed a nearby statue with her magic and flung it at First.

Just as she predicted, he dodged to the side to avoid being struck. Celestia grabbed Discord's statue as well and tossed it right at the palace with all her strength. It smashed through a stained glass window and disappeared from view. The day was saved.

Then she saw a third statue flying right at her, and rolled to the side to avoid it.

"Well, I can't say I didn't try for peace!" Second called mockingly.

That's it, Celestia thought. If I can't defeat these two myself, I've got no choice. I have to bring in the Elements of Harmony.

***

It was in Limbo that the God of Death fell.

Anthony Carson-Summers thought of a life before the madness. So distant now, the days of Xbox and stealing dad's beer. He saw the tidal wave of pulsating green ichor coming towards him, and knew that it was the end of his reign. The place was a void, and there was nothing that mattered. Just him, and his oncoming destruction. Not even the ponies behind him even registered.

He had only seconds to reflect on his thousand years of existence. Looking back, he saw it all, and replayed it in its entirety. One thing that struck him was the contrasts; the sheer extremes in which he'd lived his life.

He'd began it so humbly, living in a small house, going to school, learning to read... Most kids' first books had been such simple things. Fairy tales, mostly. His first book had been The Hobbit. Mom was reading it at the time, and she liked it so much that she read it to little Anthony every night as a bedtime story, and taught him to read along with her as she did. He must have re-read it at least twelve times during his short stay on Earth.

Then he thought of later life. Standing against an army that swarmed from all sides, he'd called down lightning from the sky with his right hand and raised all the water of the ocean with his left. Terror had been in the mortals' eyes as he crushed them effortlessly, and their bodies were strewn across the beach. None of them died. He was too careful for that. He was precision, and he was efficiency. He was Lord First, and he was the most feared being in all of Equestria.

It was Christmas, 2011. Anthony was thirteen. He sat in his room with the lights on and the curtains drawn, even though it was early in the day. Howard sat next to him on the bed, watching intently as he did battle with a dragon. Afterwards, Anthony handed over the controller, and his father struggled with learning the buttons until he was confident enough to walk over to a giant's camp and attack a mammoth. He died in less than two minutes. It was the first time either of them had ever played Skyrim.

It was years later. Anthony was dead. He was standing in this very space, facing down an alicorn the size of a dump truck as she snorted fire and crackled with the life energy of a universe behind her. He remembered how he'd slain her, holding up his hand as she had struggled and gasped for breath.

He took her apart. She was a soul with no real physical presence, but he nonetheless divided every atom of her existence. She exploded in a cloud of dust with a terrified scream, and all the cosmos shook. In that moment, the whole universe felt the death of the closest thing to a god it had ever had. A chill swept over the mortal realm. Nobody knew what it was, but on a fundamental level, they knew that something was now missing from the world.

Anthony Carson-Summers cried as he failed his first spelling test. His mother had to be called in to get him to calm down. He'd never messed up anything so badly in his life, and he kept telling his teacher he was sorry. She told him it was okay, but he had to hear it from his mother before he really believed it. He learned from them that everybody made mistakes, and that messing up one spelling test was not the end of the world. He smiled as his teacher told him that she'd let him retake it if it was that important.

One thousand years later, it was the end of the world. Lord First, the God of Death, screamed in primal rage as he flipped over his table and demanded that his assistants bring him a drink. Steel Hammer brought him a glass of scotch, and he backhanded him. He needed something a lot stronger. As the pony left to get him another drink, First waved his hand and summoned one into existence by himself. He took a long swig of it and sat down at his desk again. So many souls to judge, so little time.

Little Anthony was grabbed from behind without warning. A man picked him up and bolted to the island in the middle of the road, where he put him down. Cars rushed past. Howard turned him around and crouched down so that he was level with his son. He scolded him, and Anthony learned all about the dangers of crossing the road. For years to come, he would never cross a road without someone else being with him, even if he could see that the road was empty.

Lord First walked over to the edge of a great firepit, and came face to face with Satan, bound in chains. He sneered at the progenitor of the demons as the monster attempted to bargain for his freedom. With a cruel smile, First told him that he was giving him a break from his usual torture, and asked how he felt about ice.

Anthony Carson-Summers didn't like ice cream anymore. It made his teeth cold and he was tired of it. Howard was surprised by this. His son had never turned down an ice cream before. Instead, they went to get candyfloss. It was sunny today, and the beach looked inviting.

First's smile faltered as he saw the look of horror on Twilight Sparkle's face. It had been going so well. She looked like she was ready to forgive him for all the chaos he and his father had caused. All he'd wanted was to make amends with her, and she and her friends seemed perfectly willing to forgive and forget. But as they saw the river of blood and heard the agonised screams, it was the last thing on their mind. He tried to explain that he only put ponies who deserved it through this, but they didn't seem to hear him. Twilight stood completely still and remained quiet as tears ran down her face.

In 2008, Anthony learned how to click his fingers for the first time. It took him three times after his mother showed it to him, and she smiled and told him what a quick learner he was.

In 2015, First was in Equestria. He clicked his fingers, and a song started playing. He and Second belted out their rendition of "I'm On a Boat" by the Lonely Island as Celestia's yacht began sinking with all of them still on it.

And finally, back to the present, he was about to die for the second time as the sludge loomed over him. Looking back on his whole life, he felt that somewhere he'd made a mistake. What was the critical moment where it had all gone wrong? Dying the first time? Coming to Equestria? When he threw that very first punch? Or was it that spelling test, the original mistake in a long string of them that defined his life?

Who knew for sure?

***

So. Let's review.

First floated alone in the void of time. This was not his afterlife. It was outside of conventional reality, at least for this particular universe. Physically, it resembled a great tunnel of swirling colours. It was very linear, but there existed space beyond it. The walls of the tunnel weren't actual physical matter. They were just energy. He could easily push through and see what was beyond, but there was nothing out there.

This place was what was important.

"Right..." he muttered. "So... How to fix this?"

A mote of purple light drifted by his face, moving at a leisurely pace down the tunnel to who knew where.

"Ah. Perfect."

He reached out and grabbed it.

The time void bled away, and an environment began to build itself around Anthony. He saw that it was a familiar place. A classroom.

There were many small desks arranged in a neat formation before a whiteboard. In the corner were beanbags and a small shelf of books, mostly fiction. The back wall was decorated with paintings and art projects. The other two walls were almost entirely windows. On one side the windows gave a view of an overgrown courtyard, potted plants lining the windowsill, and the other side had a view of the corridor.

In the middle of the room, a small child sat at one of the desks, sobbing. He was the only one there. The rest of the room was all empty. The crying boy had his face down, and a hand hung limply to the side of the table clutching a piece of paper.

Anthony stepped over to the side of the desk and crouched next to it.

Mistake number one. The first mistake I ever made. I remember this.

The adult First remained unemotional and dispassionate. It had seemed so important at the time, but hindsight meant that he had little sympathy for his younger self at this point. Still, this memory was important. He had to view this. Perhaps in here, he reasoned, he might find the point where his life started to go wrong. He doubted it, but this was as good a place as any to start.

Two women walked into the room. Anthony looked up at them. Both of him did, his younger self revealing a red face and teary eyes.

"Anthony, baby..."

One of the women crouched down next to the desk, next to where the invisible, older man was sitting. She was a pretty woman. Blonde hair, brown eyes, putting on a little weight, but that was to be at least partly expected by her age. Carrying children did a woman no favours for her figure. That was what she always said anyway. He smiled at the sight of his mother comforting his younger self.

"I f-failed, mom!" the little Anthony cried. "I tried my h-hardest, a-and I still failed!"

She had to move around the desk to pull him into a hug. The older Anthony rolled his eyes. This was embarrassing to look back at. He could scarcely believe he'd once cried at failing a spelling test, but here it was. The very first time he'd ever failed something in his life. At least, failed something that was apparently important.

To the side, his teacher had her arms crossed and was looking away from them. She had had to go outside and fetch Carol, bringing her in to help calm her student down. It was the end of the school day. Normally, all the children just walked out and met their parents to walk them home. Anthony had stayed in here crying until his mother actually came in.

"It's okay, sweetie..." she assured him. "It's only a little test. You can try again next time."

"But I c-couldn't do it! I m-messed it up! R-robbie said it was bec-cause I was stupid!"

"You're not stupid, Anthony, come on... Everybody makes mistakes..."

Older Anthony shook his head. This was pointless. He knew the mistakes didn't begin here, because this wasn't truly a mistake. His mother was entirely right. It had never been his fault that he failed the spelling test at all. But this was important for another reason. Because it was from this that he had learned that making mistakes was okay. And THAT he felt was his first true mistake.

It was good for him to learn that he couldn't beat himself up like this every time something didn't go his way. Every child had to eventually mature, and a big part of that was learning that one couldn't be perfect. However, he felt he had taken it too far. He'd learned to accept mediocrity. He let himself make mistakes, and he never dwelled on them enough.

His younger self here was showing a lot more anguish over this failed spelling test than he was right now over a lifetime of mistakes that he was sure were about to culminate in a second death. He wondered if a better lesson for him to take from this memory was that he had to be more aware of his failures.

"Mrs. Carson-Summers," his teacher began. "Anthony has had trouble with his spellings for a long time, but far from being stupid, I think he's actually quite a bright young boy. Language is a difficult subject, but... there is a distinct possibility that he might suffer from dyslexia."

He couldn't listen to any more of this. The older Anthony snapped his fingers, and the memory faded away. Alone in the time void again, he crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

"Right..." he said with a sigh. "Not there..."

How much time did he have available? He wasn't sure. Would there be enough for him to examine everything? It was vital that he have time to review all that he learned and try to pinpoint that moment. Only if he did that might he possibly survive this.

In a moment of weakness, he turned to the nearest wall of the tunnel and stepped through it, emerging back into his realm and entering something he called the overseer state. From here, First had a vantage point that overlooked all of Creation. Omnipotence didn't necessarily translate to omniscience, and complete control over a realm didn't always mean that he knew what was going on in it at all times. He had to consciously enter this state to achieve such a complete awareness.

His attention was immediately drawn to the sixth circle. What was this madness? Brotherhood ponies running free? His demonic legions defeated? This couldn't be right.

Reversing time a little way, he astrally projected himself into the middle of the rebellion as it occurred. All around him were the burning tombs that made up the sixth circle, and he was standing in the centre of an epic battle between ponies and demons. He needed to see how this happened.

He counted the demons. Twenty-four of them joined the battle. There were of course far more than twenty-four demons in the sixth circle, but the Brotherhood's tombs were all clustered on this side of the circle. The breakout was localised. Only the demons closest to the action were involved in trying to stop it, and that was this twenty-four.

Demons were powerful, but he was seeing the flaw in his security right away. They were trying to kill the escaped ponies, and these weren't mortals anymore. They were souls. They could not be killed, just like the demons couldn't. More than that, the demons could not even inflict lasting wounds. It was like they were fighting a crowd of alicorns.

The reverse was also true, but the demons were far fewer in number than the Brotherhood. They were getting beaten up far more than the ponies. And then when the unicorns began magically lifting the demons and sealing them inside the tombs that they had opened...

"Damn it," First grumbled. "What is even the point of having legions of immortal demons guarding your prisoners if THIS can still happen?!"

Slapping his forehead, he just groaned and fast-forwarded time to see how this ended. Just as expected, the demons were all eventually defeated. He looked over to the other side of the circle to see if any of the other demons on patrol had noticed what happened in this sector, and were going to do anything about it.

None of them were.

"I am surrounded by fools."

With another irritated sigh, First snapped his fingers and withdrew back into the void.

***

The world was blurry and unclear for Gold Coin. Dark too. He opened his eyes and tried to focus on something, but nothing was visible. Instead, he focused on other sensations. The distant voices of concern and the freezing cold all around him both painted a picture of a bad situation. He shivered as he crawled out of some kind of hole, hooves slipping on the edge. He was surrounded by ice, but there was a way out. Above him, he could hear the voices.

"Come on, Goldie... Here. Let me help you."

A hoof gripped around his, and helped pull him up the rest of the way.

"Are you okay?"

The voice was female. She sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. Definitely not one of the princesses.

"Umm... I'm fine. I can't see. Where am I?"

"He can't see!" she called out. "Tomey, dear? See if you can help him."

"Dear"?

"Velocity? Is that you?" Gold Coin asked incredulously.

There was a flash of purple light that broke through Gold Coin's haze, and in a second his vision was back. The mare he had expected it to be was indeed standing there, smiling back at him.

"In the flesh," she replied.

"Huh. Guess I should have expected that you'd be here somewhere, but this is still a surprise."

Then he noticed Tome standing on his other side.

"You think that's surprising? You haven't seen anything yet," the old unicorn said with a wry smile.

Gold Coin was about to question just how exactly Tome got here, but then he noticed him looking at something behind him and to his right. The businesspony slowly looked back, and saw a great hulking red beast with three different heads on the end of long necks like a hydra's. The one immediately behind him looked like those of the demons he'd met on the mountain, and it was giving him a wide grin and staring at him with its glowing eyes.

"Pleased to meet you," it said in a soft but skin-crawlingly repulsive voice. "My name is Satan. I created the demons. I'm also your new best friend."

Gold Coin turned his head back to Tome and Velocity again, just as slowly as before. They both smiled at him too. He looked around the place some more.

A short distance away, Applejack was staring at Satan as well and talking with Princess Celestia. Both were next to a deep pit in the ice, identical to the one he had just crawled out of. A stallion that he clearly recognised as the famous historical military commander Shining Armor was balled up and laying on his side, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. He spotted another two ponies also lounging about and doing the same thing. And Iron Hoof was attending to what looked like a crashed elevator.

"I quit," said Gold Coin. "The world doesn't make any sense, so I'm going to stop trying to rationalise it."

***

Explodey and Broad Sword both stood over the fallen body of Steel Hammer. The former guard lay on the floor unconscious, the shattered remains of First's desk scattered around him. A broken telephone continued to ring forlornly, and the car battery had begun leaking some kind of fluid over the floor. It looked every bit like a crime scene.

"First is going to murder us," Broad Sword pointed out.

"Nonsense!" Explodey replied. "We're already dead, aren't we?"

"That isn't going to stop him!"

"Swordy, you worry too much."

Explodey glanced at the still-ringing telephone. He reached out a hoof to answer it, but thought better and pulled it back.

"So, uh... our friends are in danger. Wanna go rescue them?" he asked.

"Well of course I do," Broad Sword answered. "I'm just worried about the consequences of making an enemy of the lord of the dead when we're in the afterlife."

Explodey chuckled.

"Swordy, you forget who you're with! I'm the most overpowered thing since Second. I think you're safe with me."

"Hmph. So what's in the circles then? I don't know what they're like. We aren't allowed down there."

Explodey thought for a moment.

"Well... I'm not sure, but I think the human world had this book or poem or something called Inferno that was about a Hell which the author divided into nine circles... The Firstian Hell may be based on that."

"What's in the ninth circle? That's where he said First took the princess."

"The ninth circle was for traitors, I think. I don't know much about it though. I know of things from the human world, but the things I know specifics about are random. So I don't really know much about Inferno."

Explodey grinned.

"But I could tell you all about this thing that humans have called the internet, and there are these people who—"

"Maybe later, yeah? We have ponies to save."

"Oh, right!" Explodey looked left and right, seeing nothing but mist in both directions. "Uh... let's go... this way!"

Before Broad Sword could stop him, the unicorn then charged off in search of the entrance to the circles. Swordy could only groan in frustration and give chase.

***

Chain Mail and Sliske found a winding path down the cliff that led from where they emerged at the top of the waterfall down into the valley below. As they came towards the end of the path near the bottom of the waterfall, where the white water crashed against the rocks and then calmed as it flowed into a long winding river, they admired the view of the paradise.

"It's really quite beautiful," Chain Mail commented as they trotted along. "I don't think I would actually mind dying anymore."

"Did you fear death?" asked Sliske.

"Yes. I think it's what I'm most afraid of. Or I was, until now, I think. I was always frightened that I would die one day and it would just be inky blackness for the rest of time. I used to have nightmares that dead ponies never actually left their bodies, just that they stopped being able to control them.

"I dreamt that I'd die, but I still saw out of my own corpse's eyes and heard with my ears. My mother would cry over my body, and I'd be unable to say anything to let her know I was still there. And then they'd take me off to be cremated, and I'd actually live through it and be aware of it, and continue life as a blind, deaf, unfeeling pile of ash."

Sliske stared at the captain.

"You have some disturbing nightmares," she commented.

"I conjured up that horror when I was just six years old," Chain Mail replied, "I had all kinds of bad dreams like that. It was because of my mother. She used to come up with all kinds of scary stories. I was never scared when she was the one telling them, but when nighttime came and I was left alone in the dark..."

They had reached the bottom of the path now, and stood side by side next to the edge of the river.

"Did you ever get over the nightmares?" asked Sliske.

"Eventually, yes. Just like all other colts who had bad dreams, I did eventually find peace when Princess Luna came to visit me in my nightmares. She helped put rest to those demons. I never forgot that. She helps so many hundreds of ponies during the night, and never expects anything in return. I thought I should give something back though. That's part of the reason why I joined the guard."

"What happened to your mother?"

"She died. Natural causes. She was pretty old..."

Sliske gave him a sympathetic smile.

"...We're in the afterlife, you know," she said. "If you want, we could go find her?"

"That would be nice, Sliske, but would you have enough magic to keep the intangibility spell going for long enough?"

"Don't worry about me. I've got magic to spare. Come on. Let's go find her."

The dark mare trotted on ahead, following the river out into the valley where the rest of the ponies were gathered. Chains smiled at her.

"You really are a true friend."

Chain Mail and Sliske weren't quite sure at first where to go. The whole valley was laid bare before them, but it was vast. Were they in the mortal realm still, Chain Mail doubted that they'd even be able to traverse all of it in a day. And his mother could be anywhere in it.

How fortunate for them that they happened to run into some of First's hired help.

"Hey! Hey you in the cloak!"

A pink unicorn mare paused and looked over his shoulder, and smiled at the two as they rushed over to her.

"You're one of the staff around here, right?" Chain Mail asked.

"Oh, yes sir. Yes I am."

She held out a foreleg, offering a hoofshake, which they both took.

"Marvelous is the name!" she said cheerfully. "Reaper-in-training, fifth division. How can I help you?"

"We're looking for a mare," Sliske explained. "Her name is—"

"Chain Letter," the captain cut in. "She's an earth pony, and her coat's sort of... A bit darker than my colour. A bit. Yellow and blue striped mane. Cutie mark of a pair of 952 Equestrian postage stamps. Can you help us find her?"

Marvelous reached into her cloak and withdrew a small brown book. She flipped it open to the centre page, and her eyes ran back and forth across it.

"Certainly, sir!" she said after a minute, snapping the book closed. "Follow me!"

***

I haven't much time. I must find the right memory.

The human looked at the other motes of light passing him by. One of these had to be the right one. On a whim, he picked the closest one to him, reaching out and grabbing it as it tried to pass. The world faded, and he once again found himself drew into a world recreated from his memories.

This was Ponyville, show era. To be precise, the season five opening episodes. He knew because he could see himself as he was one thousand years ago.

Oh God, I don't want to be here...

The moment was frozen in time. It was outside of Sugarcube Corner. Mr. and Mrs. Cake had their eyes wide open and were recoiling. Two other patrons of the shop were the same, equally shocked and just beginning to back away. Nearby, his father's face displayed mild surprise, but he also seemed amused, perhaps even a little smug.

In the centre of it all, a mare with an aquamarine coat was suspended in the air, laying on her back as she hung there. A blue police jacket with a gold badge covered her chest, and a little hat was floating just an inch off the ground below her. The mare's head was twisted to the side, and a tooth had been knocked out of her mouth and was flying away from her as her eyes locked on it. Just next to the mare, a round, plastic table of the kind often seen outside of cafes in the summer was teetering on the edge of falling over.

And then there was First, leaning forwards, fist outstretched, and a grin on his face as he punched the police mare. His older self gave the scene a distasteful look, mentally cringing at what he had initiated here, now that he knew what it would eventually lead to.

"The stupid things we do when we're young..."

He walked up to the mare and the other him, and once again crouched down. He could see the place where he had punched her. Right in the mouth.

In a second from now, she would hit the ground neck-first and nearly break it. Her partner, who was standing on the other side of the square right now and witnessing these events from afar, would turn and run away. He would find other police ponies and call for backup. A fight would initiate, during which the younger First and his father would discover that they held extraordinary powers. In two hours from now, they would face down an army. In three, a princess.

A minute ago, this mare had demanded that the two of them freeze. She was intending to arrest the two of them for disturbing the peace.

After their explosive entrance to Equestria, the ponies had panicked. They were afraid and running scared from the two aliens that had dropped out of the sky. Any humans in the same situation would not have behaved differently. This police mare here had been the only one unafraid of the two of them. She perceived them as the cause of a massive public disturbance, which they were, even if they had not intended to be.

Howard had said that it was best to allow themselves to be arrested. To resist arrest in America was illegal, even if you were being arrested for something you did not do. If you were innocent, it could be proven later, and the police would be forced to let you go and apologise. That was how it worked in the real world, and at first, they were intending to treat this the same. Let the ponies bring them in for now, and they could clear up this whole mess later.

Anthony had been the one to protest. He had been the one to say, "We haven't done anything though!" and fight back against the police officer when she tried to cuff him anyway. An immature response. Had he done such a thing in real life, it would have ended with him on the floor and several men with nightsticks beating him. Here though, it led to an entire army of ponies being crippled, and him and his father passing into legend.

Staring at the frozen mare, First gave a slight smile. It was strange, in a way. She had never seen a big scary alien and ran away. She had seen what she thought was a criminal, and tried to make an arrest. Their species had never mattered to her. This mare indirectly started this whole debacle because she was the LEAST prejudiced and panicky in this town. And look what it had gotten her.

He tried to remember what happened to her after she died. If he recalled correctly, he had her tossed into the second circle for having an affair some time in her early forties. Then again, maybe he was confusing her with that other police mare from Fillydelphia? It became hard to keep track sometimes.

"Okay," First said to himself. "Definitely a mistake here."

This was a mistake alright. One of many. There were any number of things he could have done differently here. Quietly allow himself to be arrested and inevitably let out and apologised to later, keep his temper and try to explain what was going on, shut up and let his father explain things instead, or even just run away. But he didn't. He had given the most impulsive, reckless, immature and juvenile response possible. And for some reason, it led to him becoming a part of Equestria's pantheon of dark gods. Karma was confusing like that.

Was it THE mistake though? The exact one where it all had gone wrong? He wasn't so sure. He had to compare it first. Certainly this had been what set the ball rolling. This is what made him the the target of entire armies. It was what eventually led to his death. But he doubted that the universe wanted to kill him all over again because he had punched this specific mare in the face.

Waste of time. Need to go further.

Once again the world bled away, depositing First back in the time void.

How much time left now?

It couldn't hurt to check, and so he phased through the wall of the tunnel again...

***

"You're insane. All of you!" Gold Coin admonished. "You're fucking crazy, and I'm not going along with this plan!"

As the stallion tried to march away, Ancient Tome grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

"Brother Gold Coin, I don't like it either, but—"

"Don't you 'brother' me, you bearded idiot!" the businesspony replied, throwing him off. "You're the worst one of all! All that, 'oh, Goldie, don't trust the princesses! They might still be secretly evil! Just because Second turned out to be a fucking lunatic doesn't mean you should trust them!' And then what do you do?! A princess suggests letting loose a demon comparable in strength to Tirac himself, and your response is, 'Yeah, this seems legit!' FUCK! What is WRONG with you?!"

"Wait, what?" said Celestia.

Ancient Tome cringed as the alicorn walked over to their side to join the conversation.

"Is it true, Ancient Tome? Even after everything that happened at Canterlot, you and your ponies are still against me?"

Tome at first gave her an apologetic look, but his resolve hardened as he answered her.

"No offence, your majesty, but we still can't be sure if you can be trusted."

Celestia frowned.

"And why not? What have I done to show I can't be trusted?"

"...Well..."

"Various things, according to some bullshit conspiracy theories," Gold Coin interrupted. "The Brotherhood's entire anti-royalist stance is based chiefly on the writings of two of our founders, who in the years after the Eclipse Crisis began retroactively coming up with reasons to hold up the humans as heroes while vilifying those who stood against them. You're the Brotherhood's enemy because you opposed Second while we were stupid enough to like him. You've done nothing wrong, princess. Until recently, anyway. Tome here is just a moron."

"Goldie!" Tome hissed. "What are you doing?! You're not supposed to reveal the Brotherhood's workings to outsiders! Especially not her!"

"Fuck you." Gold Coin turned back to Celestia. "And this is still a stupid plan you've made! Give me one good reason why we should trust that monster to not eat us the moment we let him loose!"

Celestia shrugged with her wings.

"No reason. We just don't have any better alternatives. He's the only one strong enough to break through the ceiling and get us out of here."

The earth pony facehoofed.

"Fine then. I don't care anymore. Second's lap-dancing midget maidens, this is a horrible idea."

Celestia rolled her eyes.

"Whenever you're ready, Gold Coin."

She walked off, leaving the two Brotherhood ponies alone. The earth pony grumbled and turned on Tome again.

"Just to reiterate: Fuck you. Fuck your Brotherhood. Fuck her too. Fuck humans. And fuck this awful plan."

"You're so eloquent," said Tome. "Just go get on the demon, okay?! We've got a god to overthrow!"

***

Sliske and Chain Mail followed Marvelous through Paradise on hoof. Though it would have logically taken a long time to walk where they wanted to go, the subtle liberties taken with the laws of physics in this realm meant that they arrived in no time at all.

The captain froze when he saw his mother up ahead, conversing with a few other mares. Chain Mail recognised them as friends of hers. It was the first time in years he had looked into the old mare's eyes. He had never seen her look so young before. While he stood in place, Sliske by his side, their reaper escort trotted over to Chain Letter's side and whispered something to her. It was then that she turned her head and noticed her son standing there.

His mouth twitched slightly, and he also smiled as he ran over to her side and hugged her without warning. She was less happy about it. While she returned his hug, her voice was filled only with concern.

"Chain Mail? My poor boy, don't tell me you died already? You're still so young..."

"I'm not dead, mommy. Just visiting."

She looked ready to question him, but for the moment just decided to return to the embrace. Sliske approached as well, more apprehensive than her friend, but encouraged by their Marvelous.

"Um... Hello, Mrs. Chain Letter. It's nice to meet you."

The other mare looked up.

"Oh. Hello there. And... who might you be?"

"Uh... Sunny. My name is Sunny."

Letter's smile came back.

"Pleased to meet you. Are you a friend of my son, or...? "

"Friend. Yes."

She nodded, and then looked back down at the captain again.

"Ahem. Chains, dear?"

"Sorry..."

He reluctantly let go of his mother, and stood up again.

"It's just that I'm so happy to see you again, because it's been so many years since—"

"I know, darling. I've been watching you too, now and again. Captain of the royal guard now, are you? I'm so proud."

"She's right, ya know," said a gruff-sounding voice. "Cap'n of the royal guard? Never thought I'd see th' day. Kinda didn't, actually. Sorry 'bout that."

The voice's owner turned out to be an earth pony stallion with a dark grey coat and stubble around his face. He beamed at the captain as he trotted over to him and Letter.

"...Sorry, but... Who are you?" Chains asked carefully.

"Chain Mail, darling, this is your father," the older mare answered.

The two stallions stared at each other for a moment, before the captain grabbed his father and pulled him into a hug as well.

Sliske smiled as she watched the reunion, but was interrupted when Marvelous tapped her on the shoulder and whispered something into her ear. The alien's eyes shot wide open, and she turned to look at her escort.

"Really?"

She nodded.

"Chains, I'll catch up with you in a bit!" she called. "It's my people! They're alive here!"

***

"What is THAT?!" First shouted to no-one. "What the FUCK is THAT?!"

He zoomed in closer. He was floating over the ninth circle again now. Still invisible, he stared down in abject shock as Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof, Velocity, Gold Coin, Applejack and Princess Celestia were all busily breaking Satan out of the ice.

"WHAT?!" he screamed. "WHY?! WHY WOULD YOU EVEN?! IT'S FUCKING SATAN! WHO TEAMS UP WITH SATAN?!"

This couldn't be real. There was no possible way that the people who were teaming up with the literal devil were considered the good guys compared to him. This was either tremendously stupid or a wilful act of evil, and yet he was still the one who would be considered the villain in this situation.

And then there was the presence of Ancient Tome. When did he die and get sent to the ninth circle?

"Alright, I need to stop this..." With a wave of his hand, First stopped time. "When did this madness start?"

He rewound to the moment that the ponies arrived in the afterlife. Twilight Sparkle led them all through the portal. He had caught them all. He watched closely as his past self divided them into several more manageable groups. One of those had been Celestia's group, and of course, he knew what had happened with them. Applejack and Gold Coin were placed under the ice that they were now breaking out of, while he had handled the princess himself, with disastrous results.

Chain Mail and Sliske were released into Paradise and wandered around aimlessly. He observed as they came across a young reaper mare, one of the more recent additions to his workforce, and with her help found Chain Mail's parents. The guard captain found his mother again after so many years. They hugged and cried and had a great reunion. Chains introduced Sliske to his mother, and she introduced him to his father, a stallion he had never even known until now.

Soft Spoken and Twilight were stuck together in the first circle. There was Mystic, who was alone in it. He'd been left there ever since Rarity and Rainbow Dash were banished to the fifth circle by Steel Hammer. Speaking of... Yes. Rainbow and Rarity were still imprisoned. They at least had the good manners to stay put, even if they were struggling to get out. And then there was Luna, Pinkie and Fluttershy's group, who appeared to be in one of the many other versions of Paradise created for one of the various alien races.

Well, that seemed to be everybody accounted for... Almost. When did the Brotherhood show up? That was the real question.

First turned his gaze back towards the moment of the arrival. He had separated the groups, and then left to torment Celestia. Ancient Tome had arrived... immediately after everyone else. Looking back at that moment, First stared at the two Brotherhood ponies entering the afterlife as one would stare at an unfamiliar dead cat laying in the middle of their kitchen.

He blinked in disbelief.

"Are you telling me that if I had kept my eyes on that portal for just four seconds longer, I would have seen this whole thing coming?" he asked the air.

It was called Dramatic Convenience for a reason, he supposed. With a loud groan, he began fast-forwarding Ancient Tome's personal timeline so he could observe that too. He had to know to just what extent this unicorn had screwed everything up.

First didn't speak further as he watched all that had happened. He raised his eyebrow as the two stallions rifled through his desk and looked at his files. He frowned as they stole his folder of death certificates. He rolled his eyes at Tome's reluctance to enter the elevator, slapped his head when this inevitably tied back into the sixth circle break-out, and placed his face in his palms and groaned even louder when they proceeded down into the seventh and eighth circles to wreck his carefully-organised sorting system even more.

"Screw it. I don't care."

He waved a hand and dismissed the visions, returning to the void.

***

The eighth circle was in chaos. Ponies were escaping from the various pits en masse, carried by the pegasi up onto the relatively small platforms between the bolgias. It was they that were able to see down into the dark abyss that was the very centre of the circle. After the tenth bolgia, there was a great hole in the middle of the platform that was impossibly deep and had no visible bottom.

From within that chasm, the escapees saw Satan himself vigorously scaling the pit’s walls with his claws, which easily dug through the solid rock. The beast snarled and roared as it made progress moving upwards. His intentions were simply to make First pay for all the torture he had suffered, and he had been threatened by his niece to not touch any of the souls trapped in this realm with him. But he was still a terrifying, colossal, monstrous, three-headed, snake-necked, incarnation of all things evil, and besides all that, the ponies knew nothing about the circumstances of his escape.

“DEMON! GIANT DEMON! EVERYPONY, RUN!” shouted a pegasus mare near the edge.

Even if only the ponies near the centre were able to see what looked to be the oncoming apocalypse, it did not take long for panic to erupt all across the eighth circle. The revolutionaries and escapees might have been courageous against the demon guards that had been sent to subdue them before, but all of them went running or flying away in fear as Satan's hand grabbed the edge of the pit and he began to hoist himself up and out.

The beast let out a tremendous roar, opening all of its mouths to reveal multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth in every one of them. The bridges linking the platforms between the bolgias were congested from all the ponies trying to escape over them, but a few stopped as they heard this sound, and came to a realisation as they saw the ponies stood atop the titan.

Applejack, Gold Coin, Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof and Velocity all clung onto the bottom of the necks, sitting either between them or on Satan's shoulders. Most of them were merely trying to keep ahold and looked just as terrified as the fleeing ponies below, but Tome was instead working some kind of spell, while Gold Coin was relishing the moment and loudly shouting obscenities. Meanwhile, Celestia rode on the centre head, hooves planted firmly and ordering the demon onwards.

Satan crouched slightly once he was out of the hole, and then sprung up. The ponies below were shocked to see such a large creature leap so far, but he cleared all ten bolgias in a single bound and sailed right over the crowd. He slammed into the wall of the cliff leading up to the seventh circle, and began scaling that just as easily as he had the pit he had just emerged from.

The souls of the eighth circle stopped their chaotic rioting when they saw him beginning to leave, instead watching with interest as he rose higher and higher. They all saw the ponies on his shoulder then, and began to realise the truth. He was just like them. Another prisoner escaping the bondage of First. Those nearest the outside of the circle immediately began to rush for one of the many staircases leading up to the seventh circle, now confident that First was about to fall.

In the seventh circle, the centaurs did not even try to fight. They had heard Satan coming, his arrival heralded by the roaring and the screams from the eighth circle, and knew better than to attempt to do anything themselves. Instead, they all ran to get out of the way and called for support from First's other forces.

Eighth circle escapees began emerging from below, coming up the staircases. Hearing their various anti-First chants and seeing the centaurs fleeing before Satan's might, thousands upon thousands of murderers began to crawl out of the Phlegethon and onto the shores, quickly joining the mob. The violent and the criminally insane mingled with the liars and the deceptive, and together they formed one great mass that chased down the centaurs and followed the path of destruction that the progenitor of the demons was carving through Hell.

It took four minutes for Satan to make his way through both circles, and the sixth was still to come.

***

Sliske and Marvelous landed on the top of a large mountain peak. They had left the valley of ponies long behind them, and many other valleys with more terrestrial life too. Far across First's realm, they now stood looking down at an alien landscape. Or at least, it was alien to the reaper escort. For Sliske, it was like coming home again.

She floated down towards the rocky red plains. In the distance, she could see bleached-white forests of trees that towered miles into the sky. They passed over lakes and rivers of discoloured water, poisonous and toxic to ponies, but to a Zarlan, a magnificent hot spring for bathing and religious rituals.

There were purple plants that oozed a glowing substance, considered a delicacy in all major Zarlan civilizations. The slight gold tint on the tips of the red blades of grass they walked over indicated a rich soil. Places like these were home to burrows of montegnals, the rarest and most beautiful of the ground-dwelling zishtigs, and said in Zarlan myth to grant long life and good fortune to all who saw them.

And of course, there were the Zarlans themselves. All huge, burly creatures with four arms and nine eyes, dotted around a bald head so that they could see in all directions at once. They walked on two legs and towered high above Sliske's comparatively tiny pony form. She was in wonder as she trotted around the strange environment, looking at all the different Zarlans going about their daily post-life.

One of them stopped as he walked by the two, looking at them oddly.

"Grrrrrm... More aliens from the other valleys..." he said.

Sliske ignored the wariness in his tone and jumped up to hug the alien.

"I HAVE MISSED YOU SO MUCH!" she screamed.

"...Do we know each other?"

"No. But I've missed you anyway."

The Zarlan prised Sliske off with some difficulty, and deposited her back on the ground.

"...Indeed."

He stomped away again, no longer so apprehensive or cautious, but now simply confused. Sliske couldn't help herself from running around in circles for a bit.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"You look like you're having fun," Marvelous commented.

"Oh, I am! Yes! A thousand times yes!" Sliske stopped, and gasped. "Wait! Do you have a name register for all the Zarlans in the afterlife too?!"

The reaper smiled.

"Yes, ma'am. Of course."

"Can you look up a Zarlan named Drelmary for me?"

"Certainly."

After a few moments of page-turning, she looked up from her book with a grim expression.

“I’m so sorry, but she appears to be in the fourth circle of Hell.”

***

The ground was rumbling in the sixth circle, and the rioters occupying it took notice. It progressed into a full-on earthquake soon after, before the towering form of the devil himself emerged from within the pit and loomed over the field of flaming tombs. From atop his shoulders, the ponies riding him could see all of Dis, and even the swamplands of the fifth circle beyond the outer walls.

The mob from the lower circles charged up the stairs and rushed in to continue the fight. In one particular area of the sixth circle, the recently-freed Brotherhood of Man ponies lost each other and were separated in the chaos. All over, the rioters began busting open more tombs and freeing their prisoners, seemingly unaware that the majority of the prisoners they were letting out were vampires.

Meanwhile, the demons who were meant to be guarding the wall and preventing all this could only grin to each other as they saw Satan beginning to stomp his way through the tombs. Their forefather had returned, and not a single one of them took more than a second to betray First and all their oaths after millenia of loyal service. The demon guards all threw down their weapons and began tearing down the wall themselves, allowing the mob to spread further. Chunks of masonry were sent flying, and a great cloud of dust blanketed the area around the demolition zone.

Satan stomped across the tombs, crushing them carelessly, and passed through the ruined wall into the fifth circle. Looking up, he saw the layout of upper Hell. It was similar to how it been lower down, following the funnel layout of concentric circles and with each one getting larger as it went up. The only real difference was that the previously cavernous-looking walls were now taking on the appearance of some sort of monolithic crypt.

Looking down, he saw that his foot had been submerged in an expanse of murky, swampy, bubbling water. A massive brawl between those who were condemned there was taking place both on and beneath the surface. All sorts of creatures were biting, punching, kicking, wrestling, and tackling each other for no apparent reason, and not even the horde of revolutionaries pouring in from the wall seemed to distract them from their combat.

The sight of it all was very senseless and violent, which was something Satan could appreciate, but sadly he had promised Celestia that he would not intentionally cause harm to the ponies here, so he was unable to partake in it himself. Instead, he ignored them, and began trudging through the swamp. Let the rioters and revolutionaries do as they would with them.

Tome looked over what he had started from his perch. It warmed his heart to see such a violent and bloody uprising, even if wasn't against the mare he had spent his life planning this for. He looked over at Celestia, who he saw was instead mildly disgusted by the sight. Tome was at first tempted to write it off as the tyrant foreseeing her own future, but then he looked back at it again.

This was turning into an uncivilized, nasty thing. Far from an organised revolution against a common foe, this was nothing but chaos and anarchy. With how many ponies were down there, he was certain that they weren't all innocent. He remembered quite clearly that Hell did indeed contain many murderers and other criminals, who were all likely even more psychotic after years of torture.

Tome sat back and looked down at his own hooves as he thought about what he and the others had done here today. Had they just unleashed all that on Paradise? Was this destruction going to spread across this whole realm? Perhaps they were about to stop First, and there was no doubt that he did need to be stopped, but what then? Who would replace him? What would happen to this realm and all its inhabitants?

He was broken from his thoughts by the sound of a shouting pony.

“Hey, princess!”

Everypony riding the demon all looked off to the left as a light blue pegasus with a rainbow mane flew in. Right by her side was a brown and white griffin, and the two of them were both holding up a white unicorn. Even though this was the first he had seen the two mares in person, Tome knew who they were right away.

The three landed on top of Satan's dragon head, and Rarity had to grab ahold of a scale for fear of falling off again. The fliers were less phased. Satan for his part just ignored them, and kept tearing through the swamps.

"Dash! Rarity! Down here!" Applejack called up to them.

"'Sup, AJ!" Rainbow answered. "I see you guys found a ride out of here!"

"A sky carriage would have been more comfortable!" Rarity shouted back as she nearly fell off again.

"Rainbow Dash, Rarity, it's good to see you again," said Celestia. "How are you here though? Where did you go when we were separated?"

Satan stuck his leg in an especially deep pool and Rarity let out a squeal at the sudden drop. He was only submerged up to his thigh though, and the demon pulled himself out again with a growl to continue crossing the circle. Looking behind them as they passed the pool, Tome saw a number of other pegasi from around the swamp taking flight and trying to go straight for the rocky ceiling of Hell, though it was so far up he doubted they'd ever reach it.

"One of First's brainwashed ponies got to us and sent us here. Mystic too, but they sent him to the first circle."

Tome and Velocity both sat up and turned their full attention to Dash. She didn't seem to notice them.

"We both landed down here and started getting attacked by everypony," she continued. "We kept fighting them off for a while, and then I realised one of them was my old pal here!"

Applejack looked at the griffin.

"Gilda? That you?"

The griffin sighed, but said nothing.

"She's been stuck here fighting for nine hundred years too, but when she recognised us again, she snapped out of it! Pretty weak mind control if you ask me!"

"I told you, it's not mind control! It's psychological!" Gilda snapped. "I was just fighting because everyone else was attacking me! And that's the same reason everyone else is fighting too!"

"A self-perpetuating torture..." Celestia mused.

“So, what’s the plan here?” Rainbow asked to no-one in particular.

Gold Coin answered her.

"We go through Hell, fuck everything up, find everypony, kill First, get the fuck out of here, and save the universe. It's SIMPLE. It's fucking TUESDAY for us. ALL ABOARD THE MADNESS TRAIN!"

***

Chain Mail gave Sliske a confused looked.

“So you want me to come with you to the fourth circle of Hell?”

“Yes.”

Sliske quickly looked back at Marvelous, who stood with her back to them a short distance away. The reaper mare looked like she was talking with some other pony, so Sliske was reasonably sure that she wasn't listening. She leaned in and whispered to Chain Mail.

“First sentenced my wife, Drelmary, to eternal torment for being greedy. Greedy! On Zarlow! I know greed isn't an attractive trait, but... Chains, you've got to understand! It's Zarlow! She used to live in a mud hut before we married! Almost nobody on our planet lived in the kind of luxury that I did! You can't judge her for getting taken up in it! Of course she got a little greedy! She never experienced anything like it before! She doesn't deserve this!"

Chain Mail took a step back.

"I... never said she did?" he offered.

"But we need to get her out of there, Chains!"

The stallion paused, and glanced over Sliske's shoulder at Marvellous.

“Okay, I can see where you’re coming from," he admitted, facing Sliske again, "and I completely agree with you, but are you sure we can just waltz into Hell and do something like that? Don't you think there'd be security?”

“We have our reaper to escort us, and she says that relatives are allowed to visit. They just have to consent to having their memories wiped afterwards so that knowledge of Hell doesn't spread to the rest of the ponies here.”

“And when she finds out that we’re really doing down there?”

“We get out as fast as possible and try not to get caught.”

Chain Mail frowned at her.

"Really? That's all we've got?"

"Well, what else can we do?!"

He sighed.

“I guess that’s as good of a plan as we’re going to get. Fine, I’ll do it. I’ve gotten to meet my dead parents, I suppose it's only fair for you to meet your dead wife. Just give me a moment to say goodbye.”

The soldier turned around and trotted back over to where his parents were conversing. The two stopped talking to each other and brought their attention to their son, who looked upon them with a bittersweet smile.

“I’m going to have to go now. I promise that I’ll make you proud when I get back to the living world.”

“Ha, that what’s I like t' hear!” his father cheered, “Now I know that Equestria ain’t in the best shape right now, so you be careful out there.”

“And keep up your manners. I’ll be watching,” his mother reminded.

“Oh, I will,” Chain Mail assured. “Well… I guess this is it. I’ll see you when my time comes. Goodbye.”

“See ya, son.”

“Goodbye!"

Chain Mail cantered back over to Sliske. Marvelous was already by her side, as cheerful as ever.

"Are we ready?" she asked.

Both Sliske and Chains nodded.

"Great!" she chirped. "Good thing I know a really fast way to Hell, so hold on!”

The horn on the pink unicorn flashed to life. With its glow came a large, inscribed, crimson-red pentagram that surrounded the ground under them. Dotting the symbol were several cryptic-looking runes and glyphs. Muffled screams and moans emanated from the center where they stood. Eldritch, purple energy leaked out from the lines, obscuring their vision.

The reaper, who had now started to hum as if she were baking a cake, pulled out a small glass bottle of blood from her cloak and started to pour its contents in certain areas, causing the purple energy to greatly intensify. Chain Mail and Sliske both looked sideways at each other, both starting to regret their decision already.

The energy grew and grew until it engulfed the three ponies and caused them to disappear.

***

First decided to skip his death. That was definitely a mistake, but it was a different kind of mistake. Not a moral mistake that he would deserve to be killed again for. It was a practical mistake. An accident that resulted in misfortune for him. So instead he decided to jump straight to his arrival in this realm.

His ascension to godhood.

***

Anthony stood before a mighty beast. An alicorn as big as a house glared down at him, with a deep purple coat and a long, flowing black mane that shimmered in the light of an artificial sun. Her wings were oversized even in proportion to the rest of her body, almost as big as aeroplane wings, and their every flap was heavy and lumbering. Her horn was like a great harpoon, easily big enough to run all the way through a dragon's gut. Her hooves were larger than Anthony's whole torso.

She had her head turned to the side and was watching him with just one eye, much like a hawk. Electricity crackled over her body, the power of an entire universe coursing through her. This mare was the alpha and omega of this realm. The universe that Equestria inhabited fell under her rule. Though many of its living inhabitants did not know it, this was the supreme being to which they were all subservient.

Mortality leaned down. As the two floated in the expanse over the valleys of Paradise, she gave a wicked smile.

"Could it be? A little thing like you, challenging me?" she asked. "Such a thing has not happened in twelve thousand years!"

Her voice echoed across the realm. The souls below all heard her mocking laughter and her belittling of the human she was facing.

"I do so love mortals," she commented. "Such brave things. So eager to throw their lives away. So unaware."

Anthony stood his ground. He floated before her, taking a combative stance. His fists were raised and guarding his face, like he was expecting a boxing match.

"I'm not afraid of you, Mortality!" he shouted back. "This universe does not need a despot like you controlling their existence!"

Again, she laughed.

"Why, young First, this universe could scarcely function without me! What sort of world would it be? Would you condemn these poor souls to an eternity without my guidance?"

She gestured with one of her giant hooves towards the ground, where Mortality's subjects all stared up at them, eyes alive with hope.

"They might need guidance, but they don't need it from you!"

First made a sweeping motion with his arm and pointed a finger up at her.

"Your lies mean nothing to me!" he shouted. "Because I made you, and I know what you are! I know what you did to become this! I know what you really do here! And I know that the universe can survive without you! This world does not need Mortality to survive, it only needs its people! And if those people need a guide, then I can be it! But you are no guide!"

Mortality began to laugh again, but her laughter died in her throat and she instead found herself gasping for breath. Anthony kept a solemn expression as he kept his hand held out, only instead of pointing at her, now he was making a choking motion. The giant alicorn began thrashing about in panic. She looked down at her body and began clawing at her neck with her hooves, trying to stop whatever was being done to her.

What looked like purple snowflakes began peeling away from her and drifting through the air. Black ones soon joined them, floating in front of Mortality's face as they parted from her mane. Then from her side, she saw red ones.

"No! NO!" she begged. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!"

Anthony bowed his head, unable to look her in the eye.

"I am bringing you peace."

Death incarnate cried in fear for her life. Seconds later she exploded, leaving only coloured dust.

Later that day, First would take his place as Lord of the Dead.

***

Was that it? Harsh, yes, but could even the most diehard of moralists argue that he deserved to be killed because he took down Mortality? She was just as cruel a god as he was, perhaps even more so depending on how you looked at things. He had been a hero then. The ponies of this realm had gladly accepted him as their new leader after he stopped her.

First considered Hell. A moralist could argue that he deserved karmic punishment for that, couldn't they? He thought back to the main six and how he had shown them the truth of his kingdom. How he had revealed where the bad ones go.

Only one thing for it. Next memory.

***

Explodey and Broad Sword had been walking for a little less than hour in the foggy realm of Limbo. Their trek had seemingly brought them nowhere, and the only thing that had changed was their patience wearing ever thinner.

“Man, it sure is boring here,” Explodey complained. “I liked Paradise so much better.”

“I think that’s kind of the point. This place was meant for punishment,” Broad Sword pointed out.

“Like a hardcore time-out. I would hate to get sent here.”

“It can’t be as bad as the other circles. There you’d have a little more to complain about than just boredom.”

“At least you’d have some company. I bet we could walk around here forever and not run into a single pony to talk to.”

Just as Explodey said that, the figures of two ponies appeared through the mist. The two stallions quickened their pace, and soon were close enough to identify them as Twilight Sparkle and Soft Spoken. The two sides stopped and stared at each other.

"I should say things like that more often..." Explodey mumbled.

Twilight looked up and down at Explodey.

“Hello,” she said while she appraised him. "Explodey McGee, right?"

“Yep. Hi, Twilight! And hi, Softy!”

"Ahem. Yes. Hello, Explodey. Nice to see you too," the old stallion replied.

It went quiet for a second.

“How did you know me?” asked Twilight.

“Dramatic convenience?” Broad Sword suggested.

Twilight looked at the former royal guard, and then turned to Softy.

“That’s Broad Sword. He was with us until Second murdered him,” he informed.

"And I notice someone hasn't said hello to me yet," Broad Sword interrupted. "Come on! Not even a 'I was so sad you died'?"

"Yes, but, well, you're here again now. I was sad you died, but then... afterlife. It's... really disorienting. I'm not sure how to feel about death anymore. The mourning process is all about accepting that you'll never see somepony again, and this kind of messes with that."

"How did you get here?" asked Twilight. "Something about this is wrong. There shouldn't be any other ponies here, let alone exactly the one we came here looking for."

"Looooooooong story," Broad Sword answered. "What about you guys? What happened with you?"

"I think we declared war on First," said Softy.

"Wait, you did what? How? Why?"

"First did some bad things, Twilight and her friends were part of a rebellion, it ended badly the first time and now we're here... It's a whole thing, but it'll take a while to explain... I think I've lost my talent for talking somehow, because I'm completely unable to explain any of this in a satisfying way."

"There was a previous rebellion?" asked Broad Sword, looking to Twilight.

She nodded.

"I didn't hear anything about that. What happened?"

Twilight slumped and sat on the ground. The other ponies gathered in a half-circle around her, waiting to hear the story.

"...Most of the damned trapped in the ninth circle are there because they participated in the first rebellion. When we arrived in the afterlife and found it being ran by First, we tried to give him a chance, because he insisted that he was redeemed. Then we found out that most of the Firstian Hell was populated by ponies thrown into the circles for minor crimes.

"Not just murderers, thieves and rapists as First would have you believe, but ponies who lied too often, griffins who he thought had too much fun hunting for food, diamond dogs who hoarded their gems even if they were legitimately earned, merchants who charged too much, and so many others. None of those things are pleasant, but it's hardly grounds for an eternity of torture.

"We didn't stand for it. We demanded that he stop, and he refused. So we did the next best thing, and went to rally support. We were the first ones other than his staff that were trusted with the secret of what happened in the circles, so everypony else had remained ignorant. We broke that. Told the truth to everypony, and tried to get enough support that First would have no choice but to stop."

"When the Third came along all those years ago, I wanted to believe that not all humans were bad. He took that hope and crushed it. And then First convinced us that he'd reformed, only to do the same thing. I just so wanted to believe that at least one of them wasn't all bad that I didn't think to question him more..."

The other three let her words sink in.

"And I thought the tax collectors were bad," said Explodey.

Twilight then jumped back on to her hooves, standing up straight and proud.

"But it's alright. Because now we're going to have a second rebellion. This time we won't fail!"

The others cheered. Except for Soft Spoken.

"Yeah, uh... about that... Where exactly are we going?"

"The same place we have been ever since we arrived," Twilight answered. "The elevator of the damned."

"That is an AWESOME name!" Explodey shouted.

"Miss Sparkle," Softy began, "I hardly think we're going to find the elevator, or anything for that matter, just by aimlessly wandering about. We need a plan here. We can't always rely on Dramatic Convenience to make us keep running into exactly what we—"

"Hey, guys, look, it's Mystic!" Broad Sword interrupted.

Miraculously, Mystic Chant stumbled through the mist and stood in front of them, looking between the adult ponies almost in disbelief at his luck. They in turn stared at him, stunned.

"Silly me." Softy rolled his eyes. "I forgot where I was."

Twilight just sighed and threw a hoof up.

"I don't think we should question it. Logic really doesn't always work too well here. Let's just get Mystic and keep looking."

Mystic didn't even bother speaking. He just gave the old stallion a questioning look, which was met with a noncommittal shrug. Accepting that he'd get no better answer than that, the colt trotted over to Softy's side and climbed onto his back again.

"Shall we press on, then?" Twilight asked.

As if on cue, a dark purple portal tore open right in front of him, depositing two screaming ponies and one giggling reaper. Sliske and Chain Mail crashed onto the floor while the bubbly pink unicorn floated down like an air filled balloon and touched down.

Soft Spoken's eye twitched ever so slightly.

"Okay, I'm done!" he shouted. "I'm done with trying to actually think like an intelligent pony."

"Dramatic Convenience," Twilight muttered under her breath.

"You know, even for Dramatic Convenience, this is pushing it," Broad Sword commented.

Sliske and Chain Mail stumbled up onto their hooves, each one silently cursing and rubbing their heads.

"Cappy!" Broad Sword shouted out as went over to hug his aching captain.

"Broad Sword? Explodey? Mystic? Wait, where have you all been, but better yet…" Chain Mail pulled himself away from Broad Sword's hug and pointed his hoof accusingly at their bubbly escort. "What the hell did you just do to us, you demonic freak?! I thought we were going to the first circle of Hell!"

"Oh, but I did take you!" Marvellous replied with her usual chipperness. "I just did it the super speedy fun way! How'd you think I did with it? I'm still not that good with my blood rituals."

Chain Mail gritted his teeth and was about to respond, but was cut off by Sliske.

"You did fine. Now, can we go down further?" The alien mare looked over towards her comrades. "And can all of these ponies come with us? They were all very… uh… close to my wife."

"Oh, so you're going to Hell to free everyone and start a revolution against First too?" Explodey casually asked.

"Why would we ever do that?" Sliske asked, glaring at Explodey threateningly. "We all love First and don't want to arouse suspicion by having any intention to break any of the rules of the afterlife in any way. Right, guys?"

Silence.

"Right?"

"Oh, yeah! Totally!" said Broad Sword "I've NEVER even THOUGHT about leading a glorious revolution to overthrow First in vengeance for what he did to me. I love him like a father!"

"Well, you guys seem like a nice bunch, so I guess I can take you all down." Marvelous giggled. "Just don't tell anyone about this little adventure, okay? I could get into some serious trouble if they found out I was fitting more people in the elevator than I'm supposed to."

She turned away and cantered in a seemingly random direction, disappearing briefly into the mist.

"Follow me to the fourth circle!" she called out.

The entire group minus Explodey, Broad Sword and Mystic all simultaneously facehoofed, the sound of their collective motion almost echoing through the first circle.

***

"Here we are! This handy elevator will take us do—"

The reaper gasped. The elevator was no longer there in its usual spot. It was instead replaced by a square shaft that went stretched down into utter darkness. She looked down into it for a moment, her eternally upbeat nature for once disrupted just a little bit. In seconds, she recovered, and her smile returned.

"Well, it looks like we're in for a little climb, visitors!" she chirped. "Be careful though! This elevator shaft goes down for over five miles, so you wouldn't want to fall!"

The others looked alarmed at how dangerous this would be, especially since none of them were exactly inclined to climbing down rope. Even though they knew full well that they couldn't die, the situation of falling down to the deepest part of Hell wasn't very tantalizing.

"And how are we all supposed to climb down some thin rope? We aren't exactly monkeys!" Chain Mail raged.

The escort giggled.

"Oh, just kidding you guys! We can go down the handy-dandy maintenance stairs."

The pink unicorn cast a spell on the perimeter of the shaft opening, which caused a dusty stone spiral staircase to slowly slide out from the sides.

Relief passed over the group, and they all started to descend along the stairs into the imposing blackness. As they started to get to where the light was no longer reaching them, Twilight provided all the luminescence that they needed to climb down the unrailed set of stairs from her magic, insisting that she had plenty to spare and that light spells were hardly draining.

It didn't take long for them to reach the top of the second circle. But before they could descend into the chamber beneath them, Marvelous, who was at the front, signaled for everyone to stop.

"Okay, everypony! We need to be extra super careful when we're passing through down there. The second circle, reserved for the lustful, has powerful winds that could woosh us away with ease! But no need to worry, because as long as we stay within the area that elevator shaft would cover, the dangers of Hell won't affect us! So just don't jump away from the staircase and we'll be A-OK!"

She talked as if she were addressing a kindergarten tour, but the other ponies nonetheless nodded in response.

"Super. And I know that this is probably your first time in Hell, so if you have any questions, just pipe up and ask me. I aced my last exam on Hell, so I know a thing or two. Now, let's get going again!"

They followed their escort down through the opening into the main part of Hell. From their vantage point, they could make out the rough layout of the first three circles underneath them, each one getting smaller and deeper, forming the first and widest parts of a funnel that led to bottom.

The one immediately under them could be clearly seen. Creatures there were being blown about by what they assumed to be the winds Marvelous had told them about. It was like watching a gigantic circular wave pool, but instead of waves there were powerful gusts of wind.

The third circle was covered up by gloomy rain clouds hovering just above the cliff that dropped down into it. This had the effect of obscuring the third circle itself, as well as the fourth and any lower circles, from their view. All that was clear was that there were definitely more circles below, and at least one of them probably had some kind of fire or lava, judging by the (appropriately) hellish red glow piercing the clouds.

The stairs beneath them continued straight down through the rocky ground of the second circle without the guidance of the elevator shaft walls. As they descended nearer to the surface of the circle, they could clearly hear the tempest that was raging. They had gotten to the level where they could see the expressions on the faces of the damned creatures. Most expressions were blank, some were pleading, some were scared, and some where just confused.

Out of the sea of tumbling creatures Chain Mail miraculously spotted something worth stopping for. He stopped walking, gave Sliske a nudge, and pointed his hoof over to a certain earth pony.

"Hey, Sliske. Look."

Sliske turned her head to follow the direction of his hoof. She frowned as she recognised the pony he was pointing out.

"Isn't that... That's Gold Coin's brother. Cheddar Cross. Wasn't he alive last week?"

Light red coat, brown mane, a cutie mark of something apple-related though it was hard to make out given that he was in motion and flying around them... Yeah, that was definitely him.

"We need to free him too," Chain Mail whispered. "Can you do something about Marvelous?"

Sliske gave a sly smile.

"Like this?"

She casually trotted up to the front of the crowd and pushed their escort into the middle of the spiral staircase. The reaper mare yelped in surprise as she tumbled over the edge, falling down the length of the entire elevator shaft and disappearing from sight. As she fell, her last words echoed back up the shaft.

"Oopsies!"

Everypony stared at Sliske.

"Not what I had in mind, I admit..." said Chain Mail.

"Excuse me, but what the hell was that for?" Softy asked bluntly.

Chain Mail again pointed to Cheddar Cross, who once again flew past their position, being blown even closer towards the staircase this time. Soft Spoken took a second to recognize him, and gave out an brief "oh" when he did. The group stood mesmerised as they watched him circle the staircase, like they were in the centre of a tornado and he was a piece of flying debris.

"It's hypnotic..." Broad Sword mumbled.

"Ahem," Softy interrupted, breaking them all out of their reverie. "Quite right, yes. We should get him out. Twilight, are you able to— Oh."

Twilight had already grabbed the pony in question and pulled him into the safe zone surrounding the staircase before the old pony even finished speaking. Cheddar Cross, for his part, seemed like he was waking up from a long nap. He slurred his words as he spoke up, looking between all of them.

"Wha-what's goin' on? Are y-ya Twilight Sparkle? A-and ya'll are those folk Gold Coin had over at the farm?" Cheddar stammered.

"Yes and yes," Soft Spoken answered, "But before we explain anything, how did you get here? You were alive the last time we checked."

Cheddar shook his head and started to regain his composure.

"A-ah don't rightly know where ta start. There was a Celestia-derned apocalypse goin' on! Them zombies is what got us. The fences didn't hold long. Ah don' know how many got outta there alive."

"Your accent is thicker," Explodey noted.

Everyone ignored him.

"What are you doing in this circle though?" Softy pressed. "This is the second circle, isn't it? For the lustful? Mister Cross, what did you do?"

"Ah... Ah don't rightly know..." There was a moment of tense silence as the other ponies all glared at him. "There... might've been married mare Ah had relations with..."

"There we go," Twilight muttered. "Eternal torture for adultery. Sounds like First, alright."

Softy looked over the rest of the circle.

"Should we be helping the ponies in this circle too?"

"I wouldn't," Twilight warned. "First groups anypony considered guilty together with no regard to the severity or scale of their crimes. Mr. Cross here might just be an adulterer, but the rapists and other, similar ponies would have been tossed in there with him. Let the whole second circle free, and who knows what we'd be unleashing?"

***

A full-on stampede was raging through the Fourth Circle, spearheaded by the Satan himself. What had started as a mob had grown into an immeasurable, unstoppable swarm of rioters, all of them now shouting various chants about First and where he could stick it. The guards of Hell didn't even attempt to fight back anymore as the horde steamrolled any opposition. It was a brilliant display of the snowball effect, and the snowball was still not done growing.

The fourth circle had once been the punishment zone for the greedy and wasteful, where the damned literally eternally jousted each other with giant bags of their life's accumulated wealth. Now it was the revolution's newest conquest, and they crawled over it like a billion ants over a family picnic, absorbing its inhabitants and guards into themselves to become an even larger mass of pure chaos.

By this point, the circles were practically child's play. The security actually got lesser as they ascended, making it all the easier to stomp through it all and climb the next cliff. Satan took no time at all to stride across the entire fourth circle, scale the wall, and emerge into the third.

This one was unique in that it seemed to have weather. An overcast of ominous, dark clouds produced a constant torrent of icy-cold water that showered down onto the muddy pool of a floor where circle's prisoners were writhing in. A swipe of Satan's claws pushed the clouds aside and began to clear the area. Not many knew that the demons had pegasus magic, but that was one of the benefits of being descended from the alicorns.

Nearly through his trip through the third circle, Satan stopped as they came across an out of place stone staircase coming out from the side of the cliff divider and down into the ground. Running down those stairs were a group that included four unicorns and four earth ponies. It was also a group of ponies that Celestia recognized.

"Uncle, stop!" she ordered. "We all need to get off here. You can keep going forward without us."

The titan did as he was told. He stopped where he was and lowered his shoulder to ground level so that it was safe for his flightless riders to jump off of. Once free of them, he gleefully continued crashing the rest of the way through the third circle, heading off into the distance towards his next climb. The ponies watched him go, at once both glad to be rid of him, and fearful of what they had done in letting him go.

At the base of the maintenance stairs, Celestia's group finally met Twilight's again. Instead of going leaving the staircase and joining everypony else in the third circle though, Sliske kept going downwards, only briefly shouting something back up at Chain Mail as he held back to ask what she was doing. The rest all trotted across the surface of the third circle to meet the others.

On one side, Twilight, Mystic, Explodey, Broad Sword, Soft Spoken, Chain Mail and Cheddar Cross approached. On the other side, Celestia approached with Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Gold Coin, Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof, Velocity and Gilda in tow. As Celestia looked over both her own group and the other, she couldn't help but notice the few that were missing, including her sister. Both sides began to intermingle again, ponies generally bunching up in smaller sub-groups to converse with somepony from the other group.

Celestia herself was approached by Twilight.

"Princess..." she said uneasily, "Was that a demon king I just saw you riding?"

"...It's a really long story, Twilight."

Rainbow Dash flew over to the Princess's shoulder.

"But an AWESOME one! You'll never believe what happened! So, when we..."

Over with Gold Coin meanwhile, a much more heated conversation was occurring.

"Hey, bro," Cheddar said nervously. "Ah was just—"

"FUCK you!" he shouted. "I've had a shit enough day already, and then YOU show up here! Fucking HERE of all places! Celestia damn it, Cross! You couldn't even have the decency to die a natural death at an age where I could at least say you lived a full life! You had to go get yourself fucking MURDERED by zombies in the fucking apocalypse, didn't you?!"

He turned away from his brother and covered his face in his hooves. Cross looked off to the side awkwardly.

"Not the reaction Ah was expectin'..."

"Damn it, Cross. Just please, at least tell me that the rest of the family made it?"

"Well, they was comin' at us from all sides, the barriers had just broken when Ah bit it, and our kin ain't exactly pegasi, Goldie..."

Gold Coin twisted back around to face his brother again, revealing that his face was wet. He at no point stopped looked furiously angry.

"GREAT!" he yelled. "So my whole FAMILY is dead! WONDERFUL!"

He pressed his forehead up against Cross's.

"You fucking thank your lucky stars that there's an afterlife, you bastard! And especially that I came along when I did to put it under new management! If this is me right now, just imagine what I would be like if I had to actually go through some kind of mourning process for you guys."

Cross chuckled nervously.

"It's, uh... good that you don't then, right?"

Gold Coin pulled him into a hug.

"I fucking hate you," he muttered.

Not too far away, a young colt hugged his mother's foreleg. It had been what seemed like an eternity since Mystic had seen his mother. And after being a part of a traumatizing quest to defeat a maniacal elder god, the reunion was even more powerful. For almost a minute, Velocity didn't talk and only gave her son a loving muzzle. She pulled away and donned a warm smile.

"How has Tome taken care of you?" she asked.

Mystic stopped and pulled away slightly.

"Oh, he's been doing alright, I guess... But I've had to do a lot of things without him. I can tell you about them if you want!"

"I'd love that. Tell me everything."

And elsewhere around them, even more talks were going on. Iron and Tome placed bets on how long Equestria would last. Chain Mail was telling Soft Spoken what he had seen of Paradise. Gilda and Broad Sword were even chatting it up for reasons not clear. Everywhere around the stairway, the ponies took this brief respite for all they could get. It was the only time many of them had had to relax after the last few hectic hours, and they knew that it would resume at any moment.

Even then, the revolutionaries from the lower circles were still ascending.

***

Anthony stood off to the side, watching a younger him walking through the first circle. A cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane fluttered just next to his shoulder on his right side, scrutinising him closely. On his left, Twilight Sparkle trotted along, looking much less hostile. In fact, she was smiling. The other four trailed behind them.

"I'm telling you, Dash, it's true!" Twilight insisted. "First is not the monster we once knew. It's been almost a century. He's changed."

Ugh, her.

He had never liked Rainbow Dash. Even when he used to watch the show, she was one of his least favorites. She had always came off as a overly-haughty jerk, more so in the flesh. And her skepticism didn't help. At that moment, he had just explained to her and the other Elements how he had freed the afterlife from it's tyrannical overlord and instated a new system that made every good living thing's afterlife a literal paradise, and the pegasus still didn't think he was good.

Maybe he shouldn't have done Paradise first? Maybe he should have gotten Hell out of the way first, and won them back by showing them Paradise. Well, there was one mistake, but maybe it was more in his presentation of Hell. Perhaps he came off as too cold or cruel.

At least the other five were with him for just that moment. It was probably the closest he had ever gotten.

"I'd hafta go with Twi' here, Dash," Applejack agreed. "Paradise sure ain't somethin' the old First woulda done."

Rainbow stopped to consider this but remained skeptical.

"Okay, but is this afterlife all just a bunch of laid-back fun and games? What about the ponies who don't deserve it? Where do they go?" she interrogated.

"I can see why you'd be concerned, Rainbow Dash," First assured, making sure to use a friendly tone in spite of feeling what his future self remembered as seething hatred at that moment. "Not to worry though. They go to a special section."

First could see how that already had frightened Fluttershy. She especially seemed like she hated punishments. She had been leaning more towards liking First the moment she had discovered animals in paradise (he seemed to remember her being terrified that animals wouldn't make it to the afterlife for whatever reason), but she was now questioning that.

"What do you mean, 'special'?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Why, I was just about to give you the tour of it, so you can see for yourself," First replied. "I present to you all, Hell! You see, right now we are all walking in the first section of it, the first circle of Hell. It's also my office."

Rarity produced a clearly audible "hmph".

"Well, I can't say I'm a fan of this dreary 'office'. You could have at least given it some decor."

First shrugged.

"Eh, I wanted a silent, distractionless place to work, and this fits the bill. But anyways, there's nothing to really see here. Let's go deeper. There you'll really see my work."

With a snap of the human's fingers, they all immediately found themselves in an entirely new setting. They were standing on a rocky ledge that overlooked the beginning of an impossibly large cavern, more precisely the second circle.

The current First looked at the pony's expression as they gazed upon the real body of Hell for the first time. It was painful to watch.

Why did I ever let them see Hell in the first place? What did I even expect? That's the real mistake here... Ah, no. They would have found out about it eventually. They would just be even angrier with me if they found out I had been hiding it from them. This was my only shot to convince them.

When they first saw it, the sight of seeing all of the creatures below being blown about by hurricane-force winds just confused them. They then seemed to give it some thought and came out looking very uncomfortable. Their stares directed towards First wordlessly demanded a good reason for such a punishment.

"This, if you couldn't figure it out, is the second circle. In that large ring you see right below us are a great many sinners. These sinners in particular are the ones who have indulged in the the sin of lust, such adulterers or rapists. These damned souls have to suffer being tossed around by powerful winds, which symbolizes how lust controlled their lives and aimlessly blew them about. Kind of. I based this whole thing on Dante, and I'm pretty sure he came up with the punishments first and thought of the sins to match them later."

They all put on expressions of surprise and irritation. Not even Rainbow Dash seemed to have suspected such a thing out of First. Still, they knew how powerful he was. They weren't bold enough then to get on his bad side by directly insulting his system. That would change soon.

"Is something wrong?" First asked.

Twilight spoke up for the group.

"Oh, no. We're… uh... fine. We really shouldn't judge this before we see it all. Go ahead and show us some more."

Twilight legitimately seemed to be trying to give him a chance, although disbelief could be seen all over her face.

Was I really that oblivious? the present First asked himself. Or maybe I was just so convinced they would agree with me that I was blind to anything else? Even a century old, I still wasn't that much of a sage. I should have just stopped it there and given them my argument. They were at least willing to hear me out then.

After that circle, it only got worse. With each circle and its respective punishment that he showed them and described, he could see his audience containing more and more rage. They did a good job of it though, as it took until the seventh circle for them to finally crack.

"...And in the inner ring, you can see the damned souls wandering flaming sand dunes with fiery flakes raining down overh—"

"Alright, I've heard just about enough of this!" Rainbow shouted.

By then, everyone looked like they were about to throttle the human, if only they could. They no longer tried to hide it. First was surprised that his past self had managed to remain oblivious for that long.

"Yeah, I ain't gonna just stand here and accept it no more!" Applejack joined in.

"This is completely unjustifiable! Nopony deserves such brutish punishments!" Rarity continued.

Maybe this is it. I'm pretty sure I've gone past the point of no return, but what do I do here?

First had kept up a deteriorating friendly attitude so far, but that seemed to just fly out the window. He addressed them with volume, with burning anger, and with a touch of superiority in his voice.

"Silence! Ponies like you don't know how to make the tough decisions! You're kept in a sheltered set of moral standards that say that friendship can just go and solve everything! It's not like that in reality. In reality, the only way to deal the bad, the sinners of the universe, is to separate and discipline them!"

Twilight even joined in, but tried a more diplomatic approach.

"First, I understand the need for separation of the good and bad ponies, but all these awful punishments are completely unnecessary! We can work out a resolution. We can make a new version of Hell where the bad ponies are still punished, but it doesn't have to be this!"

Present First froze.

What?!

First paused the memory and ran over to crouch down next to the memory version of Twilight.

"YOU DIDN'T SAY THAT!" he shouted. "I WOULD HAVE AGREED TO THAT! I REMEMBER THIS! YOU WERE AN ASSHOLE AND I WAS THE REASONABLE ONE WHO LAID DOWN THE LAW! THAT'S WHY YOU STARTED A WAR! BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T ACCEPT THAT YOU NEEDED ME!"

He unpaused the memory and looked back at his past self. To his shock and horror, the past First looked positively offended by Twilight's words.

"What?! You dare?! I have thousands of things on my schedule for this week, and you really want me to take off time to listen to and implement your terrible ideas? No! I'm already doing you all a favor by giving you this tour, so how about you all be quiet and let me continue?!"

"Actually, I think we should stop it here. I just need to go somewhere to think," Twilight replied.

"Oh my God..." the future Anthony said. "This isn't me! I'm not this much of a raging douchebag! I'm not a villain!"

The memory bled away, and First returned to the void once more, now much more frantic. The real memory was clear in his mind. The real memory that he had just witnessed. He knew that he had just observed the true events that set this in motion. Though he didn't remember it, he knew in his heart that he had spoken those words and meant them at the time. He looked down at his hands, and just for a second, he thought he saw the shimmer of a thin line of strings.

"...I found my mistake," he whispered. "And it wasn't even my fault..."

A quick glance at the situation developing in Hell was enough to tell him that his time was about the reach an end. People were now rallying behind Satan like he was some shining leader. He could hardly get ponies to do that with his mind control. The revolution was sweeping through the last circles, and it wouldn't be long now before they reach Limbo.

The question though was what to do now. He had found and identified his mistake, and it wasn't even anything inside his ability to control. It was Dramatic Convenience. It was always Dramatic Convenience. He was forever a puppet without the ability to cut his own strings, and even though this whole memory exercise was meant to allow him a way to escape his current fate, he still had no idea how to apply what he learned to this situation.

Unless...

He knew what he had to do to survive this.

***

Sliske hurried down the spiraling path, a few times almost tripping, until she reached the point where the the stone staircase turned into a long platform leading out of the cliffside dividing the third and fourth circles. Entering out into the open space, she was surprised to see that there wasn't any saving left for her to do. The ponies who were previously chained to massive, generic-looking money bags were now having various rioters break off their chains to free them. Many of those who got their liberation followed the river of revolutionaries up to the next circle.

As happy as she was to see that they were no longer being imprisoned, it worried her, because Drelmary might have already gone ahead. Still, she decided on getting down to surface to find her lost love. Despite the large number of creatures below, a hulking biped with four arms and nine eyes would be easy to spot in the crowd.

Touching the cavernous ground, Sliske started to make her way through the busy crowd. She moved as discreetly as possible and tried to avoid physical contact with the other ponies. At one point she bumped into a pair of earth pony mares, one pink and one grey, who yelled at her. She ignored them and kept moving. Soon, she spotted a Zarlan in the distance and rushed over to the scene.

When she got there, she saw three unicorns all trying their utmost to blast through the significantly thicker chain that connected the Zarlan to a significantly larger money bag. Although the alien didn't posses many differences from her kin, Sliske instantly recognized her.

"Drelmary! It's me, Sliske! I've come to save you from this undeserved torture! Here, I'll help you with that chain."

She joined the other unicorns in their attempt to cut through the metal, proving to be the last bit of power needed to complete the job. Once it was broken, Drelmary stepped away from her former prison as the rest of the unicorns all turned and fled, shouting general curses to First. Sliske smiled at Drelmary, waiting for a thank you or sign of acknowledgement. Instead, she just received a very confused look.

"No, it seriously is me! I know I must look alien to you, but I really am the Sliske you loved! You have to come with me. I can get us out of this insane place!"

Drelmary slowly shook her head.

"My husband has taken the form of a Zarlan in this afterlife. He is probably on his way up from the seventh circle, where I know him to have been sentenced. There is no possible way you could be him."

Sliske's smile died a slow death.

Of course she doesn't think it's her husband. I'm not really him. I just possessed him and took the name.

Defeated and disappointed, the unicorn mare turned away and drifted back to the stairs, not even attempting to argue the point.

After an uneventful journey back up the winding stone stairs, she meet up with the waiting group of ponies, who eagerly welcomed her. After a few words with Celestia, the group started up the staircase at a brisk pace, all headed for the topmost section of Hell.

***

Luna was extremely bored. She had been sitting in the same corner of the same elevator that had been going the same speed for the last several hours. The prospect of spending large amounts of time with Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, two ponies she hadn't had the chance to talk to in the last nine centuries, at first seemed like a wonderful thing, but even they could grow bored by waiting so long.

The only thing that seemed to have some activity to it in the cramped and surprisingly elegant interior was a blue progress meter with a digital display above it tracking what percentage it was on. Now it had finally creeped up to a whooping 3%. The bar under it was still just a sliver.

The princess took a moment to recall just how she had gotten into this torture. It wasn't a grand story or anything. She, Fluttershy, and Pinkie had simply been teleported to fancy-looking office, found this elevator, and asked it to take them to First. And that had led directly to their current confinement.

Luna wondered if she could have done something to save herself from this fate. How long would she be stuck here? She in fact couldn't even remember when she really got in the elevator to begin with. Had it been hours, days, weeks? Was she just being overdramatic? Did she have reason to? Her sister and friends could need her help.

Whatever the situation was, she couldn't stand the stale silence any longer. She took shattered it with as much volume as possible.

"I WILL NO LONGER STAND FOR THIS! GO FASTER, YOU INFERNAL MACHINE!"

The yell seemed to daze the other two passengers, so Luna was surprised to hear a response.

"Increasing speed," a mechanical but cheery voice announced.

Luna then watch with wide eyes as the progress bar slowly filled up. When it reached 100%, a ding signaled that they had arrived. The alicorn shook the other two from their daze and watched as the two metal doors slid open to reveal a very interesting scene.

Masses of ponies were pouring out of a hole in the blank white floor of Limbo. Many had already reached the surface and were now occupying it, yelling for First to come face his punishment. A horrendous three-headed behemoth that made Tirac look cute was casually resting on the ground near the rioters. Amidst the chaos, a wooden desk that had been split in half lay on the ground.

They had obviously missed something, so they began to head out into the crowd. At the very moment they left the elevator, Luna almost bumped into her sister by accident. She looked Celestia up and down, not quite believing her luck.

"Sister," she said curtly.

Celestia looked over the group gathered around her. There were six stallions and one ghost alien thing of ambiguous gender, together forming a group that now called themselves the Elements of Harmony. Standing together with them were the previous bearers, the six mares. And others contributing the collective that they had made were three Brotherhood members, a farmer, a griffin, and her very own sister.

"It appears that we've all made it back together again," Celestia observed. "Now there's only one matter left to take care of."

Luna looked upwards to where a sky should have been were this still Equestria.

"He should be here soon," she agreed. "Chaos like this is bound to get his attention."

Then, in an instant, it all vanished. The rioters were gone. Limbo was clear. Even Cheddar Cross and Gilda were sucked up by whatever had abducted them, though not the Brotherhood, for some odd reason. The two alicorns, the thirteen Elements of Harmony, and the three ponies of the Brotherhood of Man stood alone. Oh, and Satan.

At that point, silence fell as the ponies heard the sound of a slow clap. To the princesses and the new Elements, memories of Second walking into the throne room in Canterlot came rushing back. They recalled how badly that had ended, and so it was with almost palpable dread that they all turned their heads slowly towards the figure emerging from the mist.

Lord First though was not nearly as pleased with himself about all this as Second had been. His face was completely stoic and humourless, and he had cast aside his previous outfit in favour of a simple white t-shirt and jeans. The shirt was stained red near the stomach as a result of the ever-present wound, but he seemed to pay it no mind.

The human stopped not far away from them, but still kept his distance. He dropped his hands to his side and sighed.

"I give up," he said. "Consider this my official surrender. I place myself at your mercy, and humbly request that you show more than I did."

With that, he bent down and got on his knees. He placed his hands behind his head, and looked up at Celestia and Luna from his place kneeling before them.

"...What?" asked Gold Coin. "I'm sorry, but WHAT?!"

"I said I surrender. Do with me as you wish."

Gold Coin blinked disbelievingly, and then turned to the older stallion next to him.

"Are you seeing this, Softy?!" he demanded. "Is this fucker being serious right now?!"

"Gold Coin! Calm yourself!" Celestia snapped. "And, First, why would any of us have any reason to believe you, much less show you mercy after seeing what you've done?!"

"I can't make you trust me," he answered. "I wouldn't be surprised if nobody ever trusted me again. All I know is that you're a good pony who would never stoop to violence when there is a chance for diplomacy, and I'm asking you, begging you, to let me live."

"Fat fucking chance, you bastard!" Gold Coin yelled. "If you're so afraid of death right now, even though you're already dead, then I think we can harm you! So how about we kick your ass into non-existence right fucking now?!"

He galloped forward at first, but was restrained by Sliske's magic.

"No!" she ordered as she pulled him back. "Bad idea!"

Celestia trotted forward, despite still sporting her injuries that First gave her earlier, and came to meet him in the middle ground. She held out a hoof to him.

"If you mean what you say," she said reluctantly, "and you are willing to listen to us, we will give you one more chance. One. Do we have your agreement, First?"

He climbed to his feet and raised a hand to accept her hoof. As he held it out, he could see that he was shaking.

Reach out and take it, he told himself.

This moment was crucial. This was his one chance to prove to them that he was worth saving. First's whole life flashed before his eyes in that moment. It was a whole life of mistakes. He knew why it was so hard to identify where he had gone wrong now.

He never got it right in the first place.

In an involuntary movement, he clenched his hand into a fist, leapt forward, and punched Celestia in the face. She fell over onto her side. Some of the ponies, such as Fluttershy and Broad Sword, were surprised by his action. The vast majority of them seemed to expect it. Sliske stopped restraining Gold Coin, who ran towards First, only to get hit with a backhand powerful enough to send him flying right back over to the rest of them.

NO, NO, NO, NO! First screamed in his head.

Despite his attempts to stop himself though, he reached down and grabbed Celestia by the throat, hauling her back up and pressing her against himself to use as a shield, his forearm around her neck.

"I AM LORD FIRST!" he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. "I AM THE GOD OF DEATH, AND YOU ARE INSECTS COMPARED TO MY POWER! THIS REALM IS MINE! THIS UNIVERSE IS MINE! THE MORTALS ARE MY PLAYTHINGS, AND THE IMMORTALS ARE MERELY AN ANNOYANCE! YOU! ARE! TINY!"

He gave it his all to try and regain control, but whatever had made him its puppet was impossibly strong. This was all strange to him. He was omnipotent, wasn't he? What was so powerful that an omnipotent elder god of death couldn't stop? He then took a second to remember what really dictated this universe.

He felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. This was how the story was going to go from the beginning. He was a villain, and nothing he could do or say would stop his fate. He thought he could outsmart it, but he had forgotten one key principle about the universe he had been sent to: free will was a lie here.

He internally wept as he maniacally laughed, grabbed Celestia by the throat, and slammed her to the rocky ground. The looks of shock and anger he got from those gathered told him that he had blown his very last chance at salvation. He had lost. He would fade away and forever be remembered as the villain of a singular story arc. It was over.

Luna blasted some magic at him out of what remained of her horn, but he caught it in his hands and threw it back at her. Ancient Tome charged at him and tried to gore him with his horn, but he grabbed him and threw him skyward and out of sight. Celestia tried to crawl away, but he kicked her like a football to knock over Twilight and friends like bowling pins.

"GUYS!" Chain Mail called out. "Fall back!"

Satan began stomping forward to meet First in combat. The demon laughed like a maniac. First laughed too, flew upwards towards him, and knocked him to the ground. Satan landed on his back, the human jumping onto his chest as he began repeatedly beating him into submission.

Inside his head, First knew that he was already dead. These were his death throes.

***

The seven ponies of the new Elements of Harmony ran from the fight as the rest tried to hold out.

"What are we doing then?!" Gold Coin demanded. "What's the plan?!"

"I don't know!" Chain Mail responded. "But if we're the Elements of Harmony now, and the story is on our side, this is the part where we save the day, right?!"

"Yes, but we can't just do nothing and expect the situation to resolve itself!" Soft Spoken added. "There has to be some action that we take!"

"You know, this would be a great time for us to all discover which Element we are," said Explodey.

Everypony looked at him.

"Wait, remember what Luna said!" said Gold Coin. "Sliske, what did she say?"

"I don't know. What did she say?"

"She said to take an educated guess! If we're not sure which Elements we all are, fucking guess! There are only so many possible combinations, right?!"

They all looked to each other again.

"Okay! Easy!" Softy agreed. "Sliske, merge with Mystic again! I think we've established that you two are meant to be magic together!"

Sliske closed her eyes, and her pony body seemed to dissolve into smoke. It soon coalesced into Sliske's more familiar form, with the very simply facial features at the forefront of the cloud. Then she swooped down towards Mystic. The colt blinked as Sliske entered his body and took control once more, and soon the familiar mutations began to grow.

"Okay, I'm back insssssssside..." She stopped and looked down at her mouth. Her snake-like tongue ran over her teeth. "I can hear the hisssssssss now. I'm not ssssssssure if I misssssed it or if it makesssss me feel weird now."

"Pay attention!" Chain Mail ordered. "Now, we've already decided on Gold Coin as generosity. Guess the rest of our elements, and if you get it wrong, keep guessing! Brute force hacking! Come on!"

"Okay! Sssssssoft Sssssssspoken represssssssentsssssss the ssssssspirit of... kindnessssss? I think?"

A mass of white light rose from the ground and surrounded Soft Spoken, temporarily blinding all the other ponies. When they could see again, he was wearing a golden necklace with a jewel shaped like his cutie mark.

"...Did anypony else just realise that we didn't actually bring the physical Elements of Harmony with us?" asked Explodey.

"It doesn't seem like the story cares," Gold Coin commented. "See, I'm not wearing my necklace either. I left it behind. I bet you it'll show up in a few minutes though. I bet you anything. Watch. Oh, magical necklace of bullshit magic! I summon you!"

Gold Coin's necklace appeared on his neck. This one didn't come with a light show. It just popped into existence. Literally popped. They could hear the popping sound. Gold Coin looked down at it as if he couldn't quite believe that he'd been right.

"Whoever it is that's writing our story just doesn't care at all..." he groaned.

"Thisssssss isssssss eassssssier than we thought it'd be, at least," Sliske reminded them. "Ssso, who'sssss nexxxxt?"

"Broad Sword is the spirit of loyalty!" Explodey called out.

"Yessssss, Broad Ssssssword issss the sssssspirit of loyalty."

Light began to surround Broad Sword too. In the distance, the ponies could see First still fighting off Satan and the alicorns. At that moment, Fluttershy ran over.

"Are you all discovering your elements now?" she asked.

"Yesssss. Jusssssst a moment. Uh... Let'sssss sssssee. I'm going to sssssay... Exxxplodey issss laughter, Chain Mail issssss honesssssssty, and that makessssss me magic, right?"

The lightshow came and went for the remaining few stallions, and once it was all cleared, the six (technically seven) all wore their own necklaces with their cutie marks represented by a gem in the centre, except for Sliske/Mystic, who had a crown thingy. They were officially the Elements of Harmony now.

"What a thrilling and inspiring way for us to discover such an important part of ourselves," said Broad Sword.

"You realise that if we'd just done this from the start, we could have stopped the zombie invasion in Canterlot and probably saved thousands of lives, right?" Gold Coin added.

"Can we go save the world now?" asked Softy. "I think we're overdue."

***

"YOUR DEFIANCE DISGUSTS ME!" First shouted. "YOU WRETCHED CREATURES HAVE NO IDEA JUST HOW GRAVE A MISTAKE YOU HAVE MADE! EVEN NOW, YOU HAVE SEEN BUT A FRACTION OF MY TRUE POWER! AND WHEN I LAY MY JUDGEMENT UPON YOU, YOU WILL DESPAIR! FOR THEN, YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUE WRATH OF AN ANGRY GOD!"

First held Celestia over his head by one of her hooves and swung her around to knock away Twilight and her friends. As Luna prepared to attack again, he launched Celestia through the air, knocking her over and leaving the two alicorns in a heap.

"NONE CAN STAND AGAINST ME!"

"Oh yes we can!"

First twisted his head around a hundred and eighty degrees to see that the new Elements of Harmony were gathered behind him, all with their necklaces. He turned to face them properly. In his mind, he cringed, knowing that this was the moment. Outwardly though, he grinned and stomped across the floor to meet them. Explodey defiantly stood at the forefront of the group, pointing a hoof at first.

"You think you're so great, don't you?! Well let me tell you something, First! We are so much stronger than—"

First picked up Explodey and threw him over his shoulder. The other ponies watched with wide eyes as he disappeared into the distance. Even First was surprised that he had done such a thing, though he obviously didn't show it on his face. Instead, he gave them his best evil grin and a sarcastic shrug.

"Oops! Look what I did! Seems you're down an element!"

He kicked Soft Spoken onto his side and grabbed Chain Mail by the scruff of his neck.

"SO LET'S HAVE SOME FUN!"

First noticed Velocity attempting to divebomb him out of the corner of his eye, and so abruptly turned around and threw Chain Mail up at her, knocking the pegasus out of the sky. Then he saw Broad Sword also attempting to attack him. He jumped off the ground and slammed back down again, ramming a fist into the stallion's back and knocking him to the floor.

"NONE OF YOU GET IT, DO YOU?! THIS IS A HOPELESS FIGHT! I AM A GOD! I CANNOT BE—"

"hUmaN BEinGs iN A MOb..."

First stopped. A distorted sound, like a thousand voices speaking in unison interrupted him. It was like he was hearing a voice being filtered through some kind of otherworldly power. It felt wrong.

"WHAt's a MoB to A kinG?"

He turned around to face where it was coming from, and found himself staring at a great wall of green sludge that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, lumpy and pulsating. Tendrils crawled across the floor at the bottom of it, and the shape of what looked very vaguely like a pony's head stuck out of the front of solid barrier of the liquid.

"wHAT's A KING To A gOd?"

It was only a head in the loosest sense of the term though, lacking eyes or a mouth of any kind, and just retaining the shape of a unicorn stallion's head, only it was so massively huge that the horn alone dwarfed most Manehattan skyscrapers.

First realised that the voice wasn't even actually making real sound. It was speaking in his mind.

"whAt'S a GoD tO a nON-BELievER..."

The thing leaned in close to where First stood.

"...WhO dON't beLievE IN... AnyTHing?"

On the floor, all the ponies and even Satan himself had stopped trying to fight first, and were instead remaining perfectly still, dumbstruck by the sight and jaws almost on the floor. The progenitor of the demons himself couldn't help but bow in reverence, for even he was dwarfed by the size of the monster before them.

Gold Coin was the first pony to speak.

"...Explodey?" he muttered in disbelief.

First looked at Gold Coin for a moment, and then back at the creature above him. It stared directly at him, seemingly expecting an answer. First laughed nervously.

"Ah... heh... Um..." he stuttered. "I can... explain?"

Explodey's giant gooey construct that was standing in for a head tilted slightly to the side.

"gO ON, theN."

"I... uh... um... I was... just pretending?"

There was utter silence for a few seconds.

Then the creature pulled back, losing its solid shape as it did. It rose up and came crashing down towards First like a tidal wave of sludge.

"OH JESUS CHRIST, NO!"

And then the self-proclaimed Lord of the Dead was drowned under an ocean of Explodey.

***

PONY AFTERLIFE BOOK ONE: HEAVEN AND HELL
FIRST DRAFT
BY ANTHONY CARSON-SUMMERS

(Hey, TY for agreeing to proofread for me. I'm not so good with the grammar aspects. I'd like to go to my dad about this, 'cause he knows all about grammar corrections and everything, but I kinda want to surprise him with it. He's always taken an interest in my writing, and I think he'll like this.

I couldn't do this without you, man. Thanks again.

BTW, LOVED the latest chapter of KtYOC. Keep it up! And try not to take four months with the next one, kay? lol JK.)

END.

Author's Note

Theme.

Oh fuck, this chapter is TERRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIBLE! I can't believe how much I came to despise this chapter by the time I was done with it. You want to know why this took so long? Because I was so fucking sick of the afterlife arc in general that I just didn't want to keep on with it. Thank FUCK we're mostly done with all this bullshit now. I'm not sure how many of you have noticed a decline in quality for the past few chapters, but I know I sure as shit can't help but be familiar with every single minute flaw in this, and the story in general lately. The afterlife arc as a whole was a bad idea, and I regret it utterly.

From next chapter onwards, I'm going to stop writing like such a fucking tard. The story from here on out should be much better. And once I'm done writing the good part of the story, I'm going to go back and revise everything before this so that it doesn't suck so many squirrel nuts. The story events themselves won't change, as I've regrettably spent too long on the afterlife arc now to just remove the whole thing and try to forget it, but I can at least fix all the grammatical and mechanical problems and try to iron out all my writing quirks. You tend to learn a lot in a year, and it's been almost a year now I think since this arc started. And you know what I've learned? I have a major show vs. tell problem. I'm going to fix that in future. I'm going to stop being such a hack. Trust me, readers, you'll notice sharp increase in your story enjoyment once I stop that shit next chapter.

Just like last chapter, partial credit to Mr. Spiffy for writing this, who again handled most of the scenes in Hell itself before the confrontation with First, and without whom this might have taken even longer to get out. I swear I'll stop relying on him to get things done after this. From here on out, I'll never write a chapter with this many characters again. Shit gets confusing, and it pads the word count immensely.

Seriously, fuck this chapter.

Next Chapter: We leave the afterlife and put this abysmal story arc behind us.

Interlude 6?: A Sudden Shift in Perspective

You open your eyes again to find yourself alone. Welcome back. You were gone for a very long time.

Author's Note

This place is new to you. Surrounding you on all sides is an empty blackness. It is a void that stretches forever in all directions. Much like Purgatory, this is a realm of endless nothing. For a while, you wonder if that might be exactly where you are, but such a thing is impossible. Even Purgatory had light. Purgatory had a floor. Here, you cannot feel your feet on anything. It is as if you are floating, for you cannot feel the sensation of falling. This place has no gravity either, it seems.

But how did this happen? How did you come to be in this place? You clutch your forehead and try to search your memories. What was the last thing that you...

Oh. That's right. You died. Again.

Your hands drop your side. Now you remember it clearly. They killed you again. You had tried your best to prevent your fate, but it was out of your hands. The higher forces had decided that it was time for you to die again. You did not even think it possible, for you were already a spirit, but it happened. The wave crashed over you, and all that could be perceived was blinding pain. You lost consciousness, and then... you were here.

How sad.

And how unfair too, you think. You did do wrong, and you know that now, but where was your second chance? Was this not a world of hope? Of optimism? A universe built on magic, and friendship, and the innate goodness in all of us? Where was your redemption? Where was your opportunity to show them that you didn't want it to end that way?

No mercy for human beings, it seems. No mercy for monsters.

You drift onto your back, still floating, and curl up into a ball. You hug your own knees and bury your head in your arms. This is your final reward, it seems. The lord of the dead has finally met his end, and now he is left to rot in a dark prison like a corpse. You'd say that it was at least a thematically appropriate fate, but you have no energy left to be snide.

It's strange. You were a god, but you were still never the master of your own destiny. You still never had any free will. Not even you, king of your own ethereal realm, endless and eternal, could decide your future for yourself. If you had only had that one power, the ability to decide and let it be your decision alone, you would have traded everything in the world for it. For a thousand years you slaved away to create a home for every lost soul in universe. You would have given it all up for a chance to be truly free.

Perhaps, you realise, it is that selfishness which is why don't deserve to be free.

Yes, you are selfish. No matter how many years you devoted to the lives and afterlives of others, what was it all for in the end? Did you truly do it because it was the right thing to do?

"Yes. I did it for them. I did it because I cared."

No you didn't. You're lying to yourself. You did it because you were bored, and because you thought that you could escape higher judgement that way. Your most recent death proved that you were wrong about that. You have always been, and still remain, a terrible person. You deserve to be here.

"N-no I don't..." you whisper to yourself as you close your eyes and try to block out the truth.

It is futile though. You know it is true. "Lord First" you called yourself. Truly the name of a humble and penitent soul. Ask yourself then, if you really did make the afterlife what it was out of kindness, then why did you make Hell into such a nightmare? And how can you expect redemption and forgiveness now, when you were the embodiment of harsh justice, cruel punishment, and the absolute rule of law?

As tears roll down your face, you look up again and scream into the void.

"I'M SORRY! I WANT TO TAKE IT BACK, BUT I CAN'T! I WAS NEVER ABLE TO!"

You stretch out again and cover your face with your hands. Though you can see nothing still, your eyes look out from between your fingers, and your screams are muffled by your palms. You feel them getting wet from your crying, and your anguished cries soon become quiet sobbing.

"I was as much a puppet as anyone else," you say. "I never had a choice."

Oh, but you did. A puppet-master can make their toy stab someone in the back, but the puppet itself needs to be carrying a knife first. Much as you like to say you were controlled, the Pantheon could never have made you do anything you weren't already willing and able to do. Anything you want to blame on invisible strings could just as easily have happened without them. And that's the truth of it all. Blame shadowy overlords all you want. It is still you who did all those horrible things.

"Please," you beg. "Someone, anyone, just give me a chance to make it all right again. I'll do anything!"

Anything, you say? That's quite a promise.

You feel something across your face. Something thin and long, like a thread. Actually, you notice a lot of them. As you pull your hands back, you find that the darkness is not quite so oppressive anymore. You can see your own limbs at the very least, and you can perceive your own hands in front of you. Most important though, you can see the strings.

Those invisible strings aren't so invisible anymore. They're tiny, and they give out no light of their own, but you can clearly see them. One at the end of each finger, others at your wrists and elbows, and as you look over the rest of yourself, you notice them around your ankles, knees, waist, and you can feel them on the back of your neck too. They are not tied to you. They are a part of you. They disappear beneath the skin, digging into your very soul.

They have been there ever since you stepped foot in Equestria. These are the strings that took away your precious freedom. Do they sting, Lord First? Are they painful?

"...What are you?" you ask the strings.

It doesn't matter what they are though, for you are a puppet, and you know not to question your masters now. As you stare at the strings for minutes on end, you realise that it no longer matters what you ever thought before, what you ever did, and whose fault any of it was. You wanted redemption? Here it is. Earn your forgiveness through obedience. You are a man of great potential and great power, and you have been rescued from the oblivion of non-existence after what should have been a second and final death. You are now being given that opportunity you begged for.

Any notion of freedom leaves your mind. You don't deserve freedom, you wretched creature. And you acknowledge that now. You have become something so much better than that. Yes, you are not free, but think about it. Now, at least, you are innocent. You committed your crimes, and you were executed for them. Clean slate now. Everything you do from here on out, you do at the bidding of greater powers that you cannot disobey. And through your service, you will be granted peace. You will have your redemption. And whatever you do in the cause of that redemption, your conscience can remain clear.

That is a promise.

"That is a promise... Wait... What am I hearing? Who's talking to me?"

Nobody is talking to you.

"I'm still being controlled... Who is controlling me?"

You stop caring about who is controlling you. Everything is fine. You are done with your previous life, and now it is time to begin a new one.

"Of course..."

You stand up, and your feet find purchase on a cold stone floor this time. The darkness of the void bleeds away, and it becomes bright again. You stand now in a foggy place that could almost be the first circle of Limbo were it not for your inability to connect with it as you did with the afterlife that you once ruled.

You turn around and see a man standing behind you. He is bald, and wears a suit and a pair of glasses. His shoes are a shiny black, and his tie is red. He holds his hands behind his back, his expression completely neutral. You do not recognise him, but you do feel as if you know him. In fact, you do know him.

"You... I know you... You fucking BAST—!"

Halfway through your foolish attempt to assault an omnipotent being, you stop yourself. At that moment, you remember that you are obedient now, and that you have no freedom, and so cannot punch your master. Furthermore, you know that your master is benevolent and kind (far more than you ever were), and that your anger is completely misguided.

You stop, and lower your fist. A great sense of shame overcomes you. How could you have even thought of harming this man? You love him. He is like a father to you. He has given you everything, both the gifts that you had before which you squandered, and the new gifts that you have now which he will generously ensure that you use properly. Why are you so ungrateful?

It is exactly as said earlier. You are a terrible person. But he will help you get better.

"I-I'm sorry, sir..." you stammer out.

The man says nothing, simply turning and walking away through the fog. He beckons you to follow, not turning to look back at you as he does. You feel the strings tighten and pull at you more, dragging you in his direction. You are forced to do as he says and walk after him. It is excruciatingly painful, and every tug rips away what little free will or independent thought you have left. You wonder if you should be resisting it, but then you wonder why you would ever want to do that. Here is what you wanted. Redemption. Penance for your sins. It is wonderful.

You smile as you walk after the other man, willingly now. After being a monster for so long, held on the end of a chain and lashing out at everyone, the leash has tightened, and you are tame again. This is what you were meant to be.

You are truly happy.

END.

Author's Note?:

...

This is the most fucking pretentious thing I've ever done in my life.

Chapter 30: End of an Era

A number of ponies walked by First's side as they strode through the mist. They all talked, all passed him things, each vitally important to the existence of billions of lifeforms. The papers they gave to him, asked him to sign, asked him to read over, would decide the fate of nations and the destiny of individuals for centuries to come.

None of it mattered to him. Normally he'd have recognised the importance of what they were telling him and pay attention, but today was different. He nodded his head and gave them his assurances that he was listening. He made it seem like he was involved, while in reality he was trying his best to filter out their babbling.

They reached his office. The same little wooden desk with the car battery and telephones that had always been there. The closest thing he had to personal space. Time to kick out the strays.

"Sorry, but we need to continue this later," he said. "I have matters to attend to."

"But my lord!" one of the ponies responded. "This is very—"

"Yes, yes, I'll have a look at it later," First promised. "For now, just leave me to this. All of you. Out."

Steel Hammer, who had been following them with everypony else, ushered them out as instructed.

"Come on, everypony! You heard the man!"

"You too, Steel."

Steel didn't seem to expect that.

"Really? You don't need me for...?"

"I need to be alone for a little while."

The stallion did as told and left with the rest of the crowd. First would have felt worse about it, but he was in no mood for fake friendships right now. Steel Hammer was nothing more than walking propaganda. He was evidence of First's benevolence and love; there to convince anyone who needed convincing that he was a good guy. "I'm friends with my own killer! How bad can I be?" was the implication. It wasn't true friendship though. Steel Hammer was just another puppet in a world full of them.

None of that mattered now.

Sitting at the desk, First opened the top drawer and drew a whiskey bottle and shot glass from within, which he began to fill. In his life, he had never been a drinker. He was too young for that before. Now though, despite being perpetually young on the outside, his mind had aged significantly. And he was a god. No-one could stop him from drinking if he wanted to. Cthulhu couldn't stop him.

So he raised the glass. Not his first choice, but whiskey was dad's drink.

"Cheers," he said to nobody.

He downed the glass in one gulp.

Five hundred years now. Five hundred years to the day since his father was trapped in stone. The anniversary of his own death had already come and gone, and that was bad enough, but it was this exact point of the year where he really started to lose it.

First's eyes wandered to his forearm as he began to pour himself a second shot. The veins looked a sickly green. He sighed loudly. The corruption was getting worse, day by day. It had slowed significantly since those early years when he first noticed it, but it was still there, and still slowly working through his system. It was bad enough that it would be a problem soon. Give it another few centuries, and he'd fall to it as well.

And then there was Equestria and the mortal realm. First rolled his eyes at the thought of them. Stagnating. Static. Nothing ever changing. A pointless paradise, its only function being to exist and look pretty, but the residents in it were so happy and complacent that no decent progress had been made in an age.

All he ever hoped for was that Equestria over time might come to more resemble his beloved Earth, all skyscrapers and highways, with cars and iPods and a decent video game and movie industry. But no. It never happened. Equestria was as it always was, only with a few minor gadgets here and there to spice it up a bit.

The kind of tools that would be laughed at for their pointlessness in his world, such as the dog umbrella or the electric cheese grater, were the only new creations of note in five centuries. It was enough to convince an omnipotent elder god of death that all this really wasn't worth the time and stress.

"Right..."

Putting down the alcohol, he opened another drawer of his desk and pulled out a small remote control. It had a short antenna sticking out of it, and only a single red button. Below it, a label quite clearly stated the button's function.

KILL EVERYTHING.

First's finger hovered over it. He tapped it lightly a few times, not enough to depress the button, but enough to terrify any hypothetical witnesses. It would be so easy to press down and end it all. No more Equestria. No more mortals. No more souls. No universe. No afterlife. Nothing. Just end all existence and let there be nothing but peaceful oblivion.

He tilted his head from side to side as he regarded the button. Despite the power he held in his hands right now, his expression was dull and his eyes were glazed over. He turned the remote over like he would a newly-discovered seashell, inspecting its every element and playing around with it for as long as possible.

"Hmmm..."

He reached into his back pocket and drew a copper coin with a picture of an old president on it. With a grim look, he flipped it into the air. The penny landed on the desk in front of him, spinning for a bit before finally coming to a rest. First craned his neck to better look at it, and saw that it had come up tails.

"Oh well," he said.

He opened the drawer again and placed the doomsday device back inside. With a shrug, he returned to pouring himself a third glass.

"Here's to another five hundred years."

First gulped it down. He poured again. This time, he leaned back in his chair as he did. A haze began to come across his mind, and he sang quietly to himself.

"There's no time for us... There's no place for us... What is this thing, that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us?"

His hands shook, and he began to spill the whiskey over himself and the floor.

"Who wants... to live... forever?"

He stopped swinging on his chair and leaned forwards again. He tried to refill the glass that he had never got to taste, but instead his hands shook even more.

"Who wants... to live..."

Anthony dropped both the glass and the bottle, which clattered to the floor, and slumped over his desk.

"...Forever?"

***

The green mass was already shrinking. Previously too big to even be fully perceived, Explodey had already returned to something resembling his usual size. It didn't stop the crowd from backing away as the sludge pony limped towards them. Gradually, his features began to melt back in. The sludge stopped bubbling and solidified. It became a pinkish skin colour, and white hair grew out of it to form a coat. A cutie mark faded into being on the flank. The face was the last thing to come back.

All the while, Explodey didn't stop moving towards his friends. They ceased trying to back away once he was mostly himself again, and he smiled at them as he became fully formed and picked up his pace.

"Hey, guys! Wasn't that just crazy? I mean, even I wasn't expect—"

He stopped in his tracks and his eyes bugged out. Explodey began coughing. None of the other ponies, even the alicorn princesses, dared move. Instead, they watched with wide eyes as the stallion beat his chest with a hoof three times, before finally retching and spitting out a human skull. The last remains of Lord First clattered on the stone floor and bounced across it, landing just before Celestia's hooves.

Everyone stared down at it, even Satan. Then they collectively stared back at Explodey again, who belched.

"Eugh," he said, hitting his chest a fourth time. "Elder gods are hard to digest."

***

It was another thirty minutes before everyone got over the shock of what they had just witnessed and finally decided to get on with it. Though First was evidently dead, it wasn't over yet. All Hell had literally broken loose, the afterlife as a whole was in need of a new leader, and none of them had any idea how to control or influence this realm the way that First did. His power over the afterlife had been something that came uniquely from him. Replicating it would be problematic at best, and impossible at worst.

Celestia had already gotten rid of Satan, sending him off back into the lower circles and instructing him to make sure that nothing escaped into Paradise. Though there were many innocents trapped down there, they could not risk opening the floodgates when there were just as many murderers and rapists mixed in. It would be a disaster.

Everypony else remained in Limbo, deciding to keep together and not risk splitting up and getting lost again. No longer needing to present a unified front against First though, they had now split up into their groups. Velocity and Mystic were off by themselves, the original bearers of the Elements of Harmony minus Twilight were all together, and Broad Sword, Sliske and Explodey formed a trio of their own.

The remaining eight, that being the princesses, Twilight, Soft Spoken, Gold Coin, Chain Mail, Iron Hoof and Tome, were instead all clustered around the remains of First's desk. It had not survived the onslaught of rioters from the lower circles, but its pieces were all there and waiting to be salvaged. Twilight Sparkle had already painstakingly collected up all the loose paperwork that had been scattered in the chaos and put it in a pile next to the wreckage.

The drawers had all been removed from the destroyed desk, and Twilight was now rummaging through one of them. They turned out to be much larger inside than out, so it was a job for several ponies. While she worked on the one drawer, Iron Hoof, Ancient Tome, Celestia and Gold Coin all had drawers of their own that they were sorting through as they conversed, while the others stood to the side and pored over the files they had already recovered.

"I just don't get it though," said Twilight, removing another folder from her drawer. "If First was as afraid of dying as he seemed, if he predicted that something like what Explodey did would happen, then why would he still attack us? I know he's a megalomaniac, but it just doesn't make sense for him."

"More to the point," added Luna, "why would he choose to be our enemies at all? If he's aware of the fourth wall and the Pantheon, and he knows that this... this... narrative is on our side, then why would he willingly choose to oppose us?"

"Maybe he wasn't willing?" Celestia suggested.

The elder sister pulled a snowglobe out of the drawer she was searching with her magic. It had a miniature Canterlot inside, replicating the city as it was circa 1000 CR. Looking it over, she saw that it had a caption at the bottom. "Home to the best and the worst." She lingered on it for a moment, before setting it aside with everything else and shrugging.

"Are you suggesting that he may have been being controlled, sister?"

"Perhaps. He once told me that being influenced by DC didn't truly remove one's free will, but if he was being influenced by it himself, then I'm not sure I trust his word on that."

"Well it hardly matters anymore," Ancient Tome grumbled. "He's dead, so we can't ask, and his answers wouldn't change anything."

Over by the piles of paper that he was sifting through with Luna, Soft Spoken's eyes darted to Twilight as he held up a file in his hoof.

"These papers keep referencing a larger death register," he explained, catching her attention. "It seems like there are meant to be a whole lot more older files, but I'm not sure that they're here."

Twilight looked back into her drawer.

"It's probably in one of these somewhere, but I haven't found anything yet," she replied. "I'll let you know if it turns up."

Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof looked to each other.

"Actually... Um..." Tome began. "When we arrived here, we might have stolen something like that. It's why we went down to the sixth circle to free the rest of the Brotherhood. The death register told us where they all were."

Gold Coin's head shot out from within his drawer.

"Do you still have it?!" he demanded.

Tome lifted his hat and floated out folder that he had been hiding beneath it. The word "register" was clearly stamped on it in red. He was about to throw it over to Gold Coin, but he then caught Soft Spoken's eye, and passed it over to him instead. The old stallion opened it up and began flipping through, noticing that it too was bigger on the inside.

"Violating physics just as much as the drawers, I see," he commented.

"It responds to vocal commands," Tome explained. "Say a name and it'll bring up their file."

Soft Spoken raised an eyebrow.

"Really now?" He paused, looking down at the death register. "Captain Bloody Barnable Cutlass."

A file floated out from within the folder, and Soft Spoken grabbed it with his hooves, placing the register itself on the floor next to him. Most of the other ponies, including Twilight, took a pause from their searching to watch him as he read it. After a moment, he put it down and sighed.

"Seventh circle. Can't say I'm surprised."

Everypony there who had seen much of the seventh circle all winced.

"I'm sorry, my little pony," said Celestia.

"Don't be," Soft Spoken replied, picking up the register again. "If anypony ever deserved First's punishments, it would have been him."

"...If it helps, when we take over running this realm, we won't be continuing the old ways," said Twilight. "We won't let all the guilty ponies go free, but they won't suffer like they have been until now."

Softy nodded and looked away from her.

"Thank you." He picked up the death register again. "Hmm... True Shot and Cotton Wool."

Two more files floated out. This time, Softy didn't take them in his hooves, but simply read them as they were suspended in the air in front of him. Gold Coin noticed him smiling as he looked at this pair.

"Seems my real parents fared a lot better," he commented. "Good."

Chain Mail nudged his shoulder and grinned at him.

"It's not all bad news, huh?"

Softy briefly returned his smile, but then became grim again as he looked back at the folder. He spoke the next name with trepidation.

"...Professor Van Helsing."

The staring and the lingering silence became even worse when no file seemed to emerge.

"Van Helsing," he repeated.

Still nothing.

"Professor Abraham Van Helsing."

Softy frowned.

"Professor Van Helsing Hunter? Hunter Van Helsing?"

Still no file came out. Softy dropped the death register, now visibly worried, and stood up again. He took a step back from it, shaking his head.

"Okaaaay..." he muttered. "That's not possible..."

Chain Mail, already sat nearby Softy, tried to reach out a hoof to him. Before he could, the older pony turned his back and began to walk away from the group. Everypony's attention was still on Softy as he slapped his own head and groaned.

"One hundred and thirty years! Of course!"

He galloped away, leaving the rest of the ponies to just be confused.

***

Over with Sliske, Broad Sword and Explodey meanwhile, a very different conversation was going on. The three "ponies" formed a circle and either sat or lay around on the stone floor, not far enough away from the other groups that they weren't visible to each other, but out of earshot so that they could have their own conversations. Laying on her side, Sliske in her pony form watched Mystic Chant and his mother talking, until she noticed Soft Spoken breaking away from Twilight's group and galloping off somewhere.

"Hmm..." she intoned.

"It's not what I'd have expected when this all started," said Broad Sword.

Sliske tore her attention away and turned it back to her other friends.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"I was just saying, when all this started, I'd have never expected it to turn into this."

Broad Sword was opposite her, sitting up straight instead of lounging around. Explodey leaned his back against Broad Sword's side, a serene look on his face as he stared at the endless nothing above them.

"What's 'this'?" asked Sliske.

Broad Sword raised a hoof and gestured to the expanse around them.

"Just this. Things were pretty crazy to begin with. Explodey was some kind of artificial pony who could regenerate. I was friends with a ghost alien who terrorised ancient Equestria. Chain Mail was a cyberpony and Soft Spoken was really really old and Celestia was dead. And we were all supposed to be the Elements of Harmony now, and fight against elder gods and alicorns and all this..."

He sighed.

"Just a few days on, look at what happened! Now I'm dead, you're suddenly a mare, Equestria is being ravaged while Princess Celestia is back as a zombie now. I don't even know what's up with Explodey..."

"Believe me, neither do I," Explodey commented.

"But it's just insane, isn't it?"

Sliske knowingly rolled her eyes.

"That's putting it lightly, I think."

"It's gonna get worse, you know," said Explodey.

The other two both looked to him.

"Why do you say that?" asked Broad Sword.

Explodey sat up properly.

"It just seems like that's where this is all going," he explained. "Stories have themes, don't they? If we're a story now, and if this whole adventure is meant to result in some kind of message, what are we supposed to take from all this? What is the theme?"

"Sometimes crazy shit happens?" Broad Sword suggested.

"Always rely on your friends?" Sliske added.

"Nah," said Explodey, waving a hoof dismissively. "If I had to call it, I'd say that the theme of this story is entropy. The idea that everything always deteriorates and gets worse. For everything that's already gone wrong today alone, I guarantee you that something even more horrible is about to happen to us very soon."

Sliske and Broad Sword exchanged a look.

"Well, that's depressing," Broad Sword muttered.

"I don't see what could go wrong now though," Sliske argued. "First is dead, Second is far away and doing something else, and Satan is containing the chaos in Hell. What else could happen?"

***

Iron Hoof reached into the desk drawer and removed something. It was a remote control. He held it between his two hooves and looked at the ominous label just below the big red button. Looking to see if anypony had noticed him picking it up, he quietly tucked it away in his tail.

"This is interesting..." said Celestia as she read through some files. "It seems that First's so-called 'reapers' were allowed to enter the mortal realm as ghosts."

"Why is that?" asked Chain Mail. "Do they go around killing ponies who First told them to?"

"Far from it." Celestia floated the paper over to Chain Mail. "This is the reaper mission statement. It says that part of a reaper's duty is to extract souls trapped in the mortal realm by certain kinds of monsters. Cockatrices, assimilators, deathlords, vampires; they're all capable of killing ponies in ways that leave their souls unable to pass on. This document says that the reapers had to go down into our world and rescue them."

"We came across reapers sometimes while wandering the world," said Twilight. "It takes a brave sort of pony to volunteer for that kind of job. Just being a ghost doesn't mean you can't be hurt. Equestria has plenty of monsters that feed on spiritual energy. They normally try to remove it from the living, but they can eat ghosts too. I remember this one time that Pinkie nearly got herself eaten by a deathlord, so me and Rainbow Dash had to—"

While still rummaging through the desk, Twilight removed a small television set. She held it up in her magic just in front of her, giving it a bewildered look.

"What the...?"

The machine buzzed to life, a flicker of static crossing the screen before it gave way to an image of First's desk and the chair behind it. Iron Hoof's eyes flicked up to it. First himself appeared on the monitor, walking up to his chair and sitting down. He looked through the screen at them and cleared his throat. The sound made everypony who hadn't already turn to look at Twilight and the TV set. Luna shuffled forward to see it better, while Chain Mail got up to walk over and get a front-row seat.

Twilight set it down on top of a stack of paper. She and everypony else all crowded in front of it. On the screen, First looked down at his own hands. He seemed to be struggling to find the words.

"...Log entry seventy-nine," he said eventually. "It has been some months since my last update, but things have been busy. Hell seems to have taken proper shape at long last, and I believe that the demons are beginning to see my way. I may still be able to ensure their loyalty. Their unique abilities will be well-suited to managing a lot of the technical problems in making this realm run properly. If I can get enough of them onto my side, I might be able to seal the rift exposing us to the void of time at last. Maybe then this place won't be so rife with paradoxes, and I won't keep finding chronovores nibbling on my future. They're annoying, and I don't like the timeskips."

First shifted in his chair and looked down at his desk, away from the camera.

"Mxy is settling in well to his new job. I don't think he goes through quite as many formalities as I do. Since he manages the whole rest of the universe, I imagine he doesn't have the time for it. I wonder sometimes if I gave him too much freedom. He doesn't hold most of the aliens to the same standards that I do, but I still insisted that the Zarlan races remain subject to my judgement. I don't know if Sliske the Destroyer, the sakrassi that is, will ever truly die, but if he does, then I want the jurisdiction to punish him. He has it coming."

He faced the camera again.

"And on a final note... the corruption is getting worse. It's spread through most of my left side already, and I can already feel my control waning. It makes me feel sick. I wake up in cold sweats some nights. Sometimes I'll have memory lapses. I'll be doing my job as usual, filling in papers and taking calls, and then I'll realise that I don't remember what I did yesterday. Whatever this thing is that permeates my being, I feel my body trying to fight it. Every second of every hour of every day, my blood is boiling, red against green, both trying to force out the other. And the rage problems... I can't help it. I feel so angry all the time and I can't help myself."

First turned his head, staring off to the side. He swiveled his chair around so that it faced the same way and leaned back.

"I don't know how long I have left before it takes over completely, and I don't know what will happen when it does. Maybe I'll die again. Maybe I'll become somebody else. All I know is... I'm scared. Anything could happen, and I can do nothing about it. I'm omnipotent, and I'm helpless. How pathetic is that?"

He gave a bitter laugh and closed his eyes.

"I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I only wish I could make it right. I've not lived a long life, but I have so many regrets. I miss my father. I miss my mother. I wish I could say sorry to Celestia and Luna and the main six. I didn't mean to cause all that chaos... I just wanted to have fun. And now I'm stuck in this universe, running this afterlife, and it seems that just being in this world at all is making me into... something I'm not."

He opened his eyes again and looked back at the camera.

"I will continue to oversee this realm. It needs me now. As much as I'd like to leave and try to find a way back to my own universe... I have responsibilities here. Nobody is incorruptible. I can trust no-one with this place. Least of all myself, but with no possible successors to pass my power onto, what can I do?"

First sighed and swiveled his chair back around. He opened the desk and removed a glass and a bottle of whiskey. He began pouring it, his eyes darting back up to the camera as he did.

"I started drinking too. Did I mention?" He finished pouring, put down the bottle, and took a long drink from the glass before slamming it down on the desk again. "I can only hope... that I find someone trustworthy soon. I don't want to still be running this place when the corruption takes me. God only knows... heh... God... God only knows what will happen if the ponies of this realm are left to my mercy when I'm probably too insane to even think straight. If I'm like this right now... I shudder to think what I can become in another hundred years."

He picked up his glass again and swirled it around, staring down at its contents.

"Mxy is a good guy. He sacrificed a lot, and it wasn't fair what happened to him, but I don't trust him to run this place in my absence. He might not be suffering corruption like I am, but he has his own inner darkness. It doesn't surface often, but I see it there. It's in his eyes."

He took another drink.

"One day," he said, looking at the camera again, "I'll kill myself. If I can't cure this thing, whatever it is, then I'll have to make my peace with the idea that nobody is perfect, and pick someone anyway. And when I do, for better or for worse, I'll leave them to it. I'll give them the keys, all my power, and I'll leave this place for good. Maybe find a nice supernova and fling myself into it. Either way, I can't live forever. I just can't. Not like this."

First took one last look at his whisky before gulping down the rest of it all at once and throwing it aside. He chuckled and threw the glass as well. The sound of it shattering could be heard through the TV. First looked directly into the camera, and suddenly he seemed so tired, slouching in his chair and his eyes red with bloodshot. He gave a wan smile.

"I just realised that I don't remember last month at all. I wonder if I'll remember any of this a few years down the line?"

His smile died.

"That's all for now. End log seventy-nine."

The television set cut out and gave way to static again, leaving the ponies to stare in silence. Many of them looked to each other or down at the floor. None of them seemed to have any words in light of First's message. Alone and unnoticed, Iron Hoof inspected his mechanical leg, and noticed a drop of green liquid trailing down the metal.

***

Soft Spoken descended into the second circle, emerging at the top of the staircase that the group came down last time. The circle was surprisingly bare. There were crowds of ponies off in the distance, but most of the ground around the staircase was clear for several miles. This was likely thanks to the demon king who stood by the base of the stairs, standing resolute and unyielding. A small garrison of regular demons formed a line of defence around the base of the stairs in all other directions.

Softy didn't go all the way down, instead stopping when he was level with Satan's head.

"Hey!" he called out.

The demon twisted his centre head around to face the earth pony, leering at him.

"Yes?"

It took a moment for Softy to remember what he was going to say, but he steeled himself and stood up to the demon.

"I need to be allowed into the lower circles, preferably with protection."

Satan's dragon head also twisted to face Soft Spoken, and it leaned in closer than his other one.

"HELL IS OFF-LIMITS!" it thundered.

"By which I mean," Satan continued with his centre head, "that Celestia has instructed me to keep this prison secure. I could not go to protect you during whatever business you have down here. I must guard this stairway. I am the only one powerful enough to hold off all the forces of Hell. An entire demon legion would struggle to do the same."

"Then let me go alone!" Softy pleaded.

The dragon head snorted and turned away, but Satan's demon head only leaned in closer and took a long sniff of him.

"Why?" he asked.

"I need to talk to somepony. A vampire. Well, a dhampir. She might know something important. First sent all the vampires to Hell, didn't he?"

"Indeed," Satan answered with a large, toothy grin. "However, I cannot allow you entrance unless my niece tells me to relent. Come back with her by your side. I may be inclined to listen then. Otherwise, you had best leave. No other force has any power over me like she has, and it is best not to tempt the wrath of a demon king."

There was a distant rumbling. Softy wasn't sure what to make of it, but Satan's eyes suddenly went wide and he looked back over the rest of the second circle.

"Oh..." he said. "It seems that the afterlife is about to explode."

***

Several minutes earlier, Iron Hoof nursed a growing pain in his leg just above the mechanical part, as the rest of the ponies obliviously continued with their duties.

"Mxy... Who is Mxy?!" Celestia demanded, tossing aside some more papers. "He's obviously an important figure! Possibly even First's chief lieutenant aside from Steel Hammer! Yet I can't find any other references to him!"

"Mxy..." Chain Mail mused. "Could he be... where is it...?"

Twilight perked up.

"What is it?" she asked.

"There was a document, or a letter around..." Chain Mail explained, rifling through his pile of papers. "I remembered it because it was signed with a name, that was... well, it looked like I couldn't pronounce it, but it could have been shortened to Mxy. It was... Ah! Here it is!"

Chain Mail produced a letter from the pile and flattened it on the ground. Pinning its corners with his forehooves, he cleared his throat and began reading it out loud.

"'Anthony, I write you now because I believe that the impending crisis is worse than we thought. It seems that you were right to assume that there should be more souls pouring in from the galactic disaster than we have been so far receiving. For as much as I am swamped by all the additional work from the entire planets and races of beings arriving in our realm as of late, my inquiries to the leaders of these dead worlds have yielded a disturbing find. Of all the alien races that were wiped out in their entirety, the only ones whose souls have come to our realm are those that...'"

Chain Mail stopped reading. His mouth opened and he blinked.

"'...are those that killed themselves through destroying their own planets or other forms of mass-suicide, so terrified were they of the coming beast. The planets and races that did not go through with suicide, and instead allowed themselves to be annihilated by this unknown cosmic horror... have not passed on. I can only conclude that this thing, whatever it is, possesses the capability to either trap or destroy souls. Those that die to the beast go no afterlife. Those that die to the beast belong to it forever. I know not what we face, and I look to you for wisdom and guidance, as I always do. It is your decision. Do we evacuate the universe, or do we fight this thing?'"

Twilight looked ill. Luna looked horrified. Celestia tapped her forehead with a hoof, her face scrunching up and her eyes closing in concentration.

"This doesn't make sense..." she muttered. "What was going on here before we interfered? What were First and this Mxy DOING here?! What are we facing?!"

She threw her hooves down and fell over, landing on her back and spreading her wings over the floor. Luna looked either side of her at the ponies around them, before walking over to her sister's side.

"Tia..."

"I can't, Luna. Every step forward is another two steps back. For the first time, I have no idea what to do. Before, even when I was in such unfamiliar territory, dying and coming back to life, I at least had First and Second's advice. I didn't trust either of them, but at least it was something. Now, First is dead, and I don't know if Second will be any help at all with this."

Celestia sighed.

"Sister, please—"

"For over two-thousand years, we never needed anypony else's help to make decisions or be leaders. Why do I feel so lost now, sister?"

"It would be because of Us."

All eyes were on Iron Hoof as he trotted over to the remains of First's desk, climbed up on top of them and faced the rest of the ponies around the wreckage. He grinned.

"Iron!" Tome shouted. "What are you doing?!"

"Stuff it, grandpa!" Iron shouted back. "We are not Iron Hoof! That fool is dead. He has been dead for a very long time. He just didn't know it yet."

The thing wearing Iron's skin looked back to the princesses. Celestia sat up again and entered a combative stance, confronting the creature.

"Who are you?! And what have you done with the pony you are speaking through?!"

"We are the Pantheon, at your service," it said with a flourish. "No need to worry about strange voices with Us. We do not speak with the voice of the legion, even though We are many. Nor do We care for the unearthly noise that the demons speak in. A pony with simple, mortal vocal chords is sufficient for Our needs, and enough to get Our point across. It just so happened that Iron Hoof was a convenient host to ride along in. The greatest of all zealots and most irrational of all stuck-up revolutionary wannabes. He's a pathetic excuse for an individual, and not at all a significant character in the story we have built around your adventures. Were he to disappear at some point offscreen, he would not be missed. The perfect disguise, you might say."

Tome glared at the impostor.

"How long?" he asked seethingly.

There was a flash of green in Iron's eyes. The Pantheon smiled at him.

"There was never a point where we weren't here."

Sliske, Explodey and Broad Sword had all wandered over to the group as well now. The rest of Twilight's friends and Mystic and his mother were making their way over too

"Guys? What's going on here?" asked Broad Sword. "Is Iron giving a speech?"

Chain Mail leaned over and answered him.

"He's not Iron. He's the Pantheon."

"Oh," Broad Sword said simply, seeming to not need any further explanation.

The Pantheon laughed.

"That's right! And now, We are afraid to inform you that it is time to end this farce. First is beaten, and We congratulate you on a job well done, but you cannot be allowed to interfere with our plans further. The narrative must be followed. Your destinies are set in stone. And Our story makes no mention of afterlives. This realm is a side-effect. A byproduct. A toxic creation of a poor fanfiction that was incorporated into Our perfect world by accident and family connection that should never have been. It must be burned down and replaced."

Though Iron Hoof was not a unicorn and shouldn't have had magic, a remote control nonetheless emerged from his tail and floated up to the Pantheon's side, suspended in the air by a glowing green magical field. They pointed it in the ponies' direction to show them the "KILL EVERYTHING" label underneath. Iron's eyes began glowing the same green colour.

"We have repurposed First's tool to fit Our needs, much like We have done to this pony. This world does not need such chaos as a Heaven and a Hell. It has enough of that already. Too many tyrants have already risen from it, and We need not give another individual the same power that First once wielded. He was right. Nobody can be trusted."

They looked directly at Twilight.

"Not even you, marketable though you may be. Perhaps things might have been different if the winds blew another way. We still think that the previous Pantheon should have gone through with making you a princess. It would have been far less painful for all involved. Another thing you can blame Lord Second for."

The Pantheon reached out to press the button, but Celestia blundered forward to stop them.

"NO! WAIT!" she shouted. "You can't! It's murder! You'll be killing uncountable trillions if you do this! You'll be the greatest mass murderers in the history of the universe!"

The Pantheon-possessed Iron Hoof gave her another grin.

"Oh, not to worry. We shall be replacing the current system with a cycle of reincarnation. This realm was getting overcrowded anyway. Goodbye seven deadly sins, hello KARMA!"

They drew back, raising the remote control over the rest of the ponies.

"Celestia, Luna, you and the Elements of Harmony will survive this no matter what. We need you for the rest of the narrative. We will even give you back Explodey and Broad Sword. Go to Canterlot and kill Lord Second. He's been a throbbing pain in Our side for too long. Do that, and We will let you go. All of you. Do be warned though, this entire plane of existence is going to start collapsing in on itself the moment We press this button. You'd best escape quickly."

Gold Coin looked over his shoulder in the direction of lower Hell, sweat running down his face and panic in his eyes.

"My brother is down there!" he protested, bounding up to the Pantheon. "Possibly the rest of my family too! What'll happen to them?!"

"Reincarnated. I'm beginning to count down from ten now. Ten!"

Chain Mail pushed aside Gold Coin.

"What about my mother?! And my father?! What about them?!"

"Same! Nine!"

"Soft Spoken isn't here! Where is he?!" shouted Broad Sword. "We can't escape without him!"

"I don't know! He ran off looking for something, I think!" Twilight shouted back.

"Eight!"

"Twilight, what's going to happen to us?" asked Fluttershy. "Are we still going to be ghosts? Or are we...?"

"That's a negatory! Reincarnation for EVERYONE! SEVEN!"

"Uncle Iron!" Mystic cried.

"Iron, don't do this!" Tome agreed. "I know you're in there! Fight it!"

"Oh, that'll be fun!" the Pantheon said with a chuckle. "Let's let the puppet out to play one last time! He can say his final goodbyes! Six!"

Iron shook his head suddenly, and his eyes weren't green anymore. Instead, they were red and bloodshot, just like First's eyes towards the end of the video. Tears escaped them. Behind him, Celestia and Twilight were ripping open a portal back to the mortal realm.

"Tome! Velocity! Mystic! I'm sorry! I'm sorry for everything! I can't fight it! Five!"

"Yes you can! I know you can! You're the strongest pony I know!" Tome yelled, running up to Iron and grabbing him.

Iron laughed as the green glow returned to his eyes.

"No he's not. He's generic. What we in the business call an underdeveloped character. I hope you weep for him, Ancient Tome! None of the audience will! HA! FOUR!"

Luna rushed away from the rest of the group, looking out over the empty landscape of the first circle around them. She called out at the loudest volume she could without resorting to the royal Canterlot voice.

"HAYATO! I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE!" she screamed. "IF YOU EVER CARED FOR ME AT ALL, WE NEED YOU NOW! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!"

Nobody appeared.

"Uncle Iron!" Mystic called again.

Celestia scooped him up and ushered him through the portal. Most of the other ponies had already left. Twilight and her friends remained behind, as did Celestia, Luna, Velocity and Broad Sword.

"Mom!"

"I'm sorry, sweetie! I can't come with you!" Velocity hurriedly explained. "You be strong for me, right?! Take care of your father!"

"MOOOOOM!"

"Oh, this is such FUN! So many dramatics! I LOVE it! THREE!"

Ancient Tome grit his teeth and stared down the Pantheon through the glow of his friend's eyes.

"You won't get away with this! I will find you again one day, Pantheon, and I will fucking kill you all for this! I'VE KILLED ONE GOD TODAY! WHAT'S ANOTHER FEW DOZEN?!"

The Pantheon smirked.

"You didn't kill any gods. You never did. You're a poser, Ancient Tome. Nobody fucking cares about you. As your beloved Second would say, eat my elder god dick. TWO!"

Tome blinked. The sudden vulgarity was unexpected, but then again, he had started it. At that moment, Celestia picked him up and tossed him through the portal as well before he could have any last words.

"What about Softy?!" Broad Sword reminded them.

"Only one thing for it..." Twilight said grimly. "I'm canceling his spell. He'll fall through the void of time, but at least he won't be here."

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!"

Broad Sword gave Twilight a desperate look as she cancelled the spell. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he couldn't find the words. A glance back at the Pantheon and their remote control was all it took to convince him to jump through the portal as well. At the same time, Celestia rushed forward and wrapped Twilight in a wing hug, her sister now standing by the edge of the portal and staring through it back at the mortal world.

"Goodbye, my faithful student," Celestia whispered. "Whoever you are in the next life, make it a good one."

Twilight nodded as she pulled away.

"SISTER!" Luna called.

With reluctance, Celestia turned and fled through the portal as well, her sister following and closing it behind them. Now alone with the avatar of the Pantheon, Twilight and her friends turned to face him down, backed up only by a terrified Velocity.

"Oh, it seems we've reached the end of the countdown," Iron said with a giggle. "Aren'tcha proud, Mistuh J?"

The green burst out of his eyes and began flowing across the ground like liquid as he pressed the button. Twilight pulled her friends into a hug. Pinkie dragged Velocity in as well in their last moments. All the while, the Pantheon laughed.

***

"What's going on?!" Softy demanded.

"I told you. The afterlife is exploding. This entire realm is about to be consumed."

"WHAT?! What happens then?! Where do we all go?"

Satan puffed out a small cloud of smoke through his nostrils.

"I couldn't say."

Softy turned back to climb the stairs.

"I need to get back to the others! We need to leave!"

"They've already left."

The rumbling was getting worse. Rocks were falling from the ceiling in the distance. Softy's blood ran cold.

"...What?" he nearly whispered.

"They have gone. I know not why. But they... hmm..."

"What? What?!"

It was a curious sight to see a demon king raising his eyebrow at you, but Satan was doing so.

"...You no longer have the intangibility spell around you. You should have fallen into the void of time. Perhaps a tactic of your friends to allow you to escape without them. Yet... here you remain. What are you, Soft Spoken?"

Softy frowned.

"I think we both know the answer to that, demon. But if I can't get out of here by falling through into the void, how do I escape?!"

Satan laughed.

"Simple. You must be thrown through, rather than be expected to fall."

The demon king raised a finger and placed it next to the stairs. He moved it in a circular motion four times, and a trail of light followed the movement of his finger, giving way after the fourth rotation to a portal to a hazy-looking purple dimension.

"One last favour for your kind before I die. How you will make your way back to Celestia, I know not, but if you do, tell her that my last act was to save you. It is not sufficient to atone for my sins, for I am sin incarnate, but I'm sure she will be happy that I tried at least."

Soft Spoken nodded. With a grim finality, he walked back a few paces, galloped forwards, and then leapt off the stairway and into the portal. He disappeared through it, and it closed just as the ceiling gave way.

***

The portal was imperfect, not dropping the ponies exactly where they had left from. It was instead suspended in the middle of the air above the entrance hall of the Harmonite temple. Celestia had no time to right herself in the air or catch herself with her wings before she face-planted on the temple floor. Her sister was right beside her, already getting up.

Celestia dragged herself to her hooves also, though it was slow and arduous for her. The injuries that First had given her were still giving her whole body a dull ache, and her eyes were heavy after the experience. For all that they had all gone through, it was probably she that had suffered the most from that journey.

Arcelio and the Harmonites entered the room from the far end.

"What the devil happened?!" asked Elder Seneca, rushing to the princess's side and helping her up.

"Where are the rest of the spirits of harmony?" asked Arcelio. "In fact, where is that Soft Spoken fellow?"

Princess Celestia didn't say anything. Instead, she turned to the door and headed for the exit. She could hear the spiders and the ponies begin talking behind her as she left, opening the door and emerging into the snowstorm outside again. New Arachnia lay below. Further down the mountain, though it was obscured by the weather, she could see the Prometheus, still waiting for her.

The door opened again. Celestia looked back as Luna also walked out into the snow.

"Sister, where are you going?"

Celestia could see her breath from all the cold, but she barely felt it herself. Though it had only really been a few hours at most, it felt like a year since she had last been in the physical world again. She turned away from Luna, looking south, towards Equestria. Even now, her subjects out there were suffering.

She chose her words carefully.

"I must make a detour," she explained. "After what just happened... I think I need to speak with Second. I owe him a visit."

Celestia spread her wings and took off. Luna reached out a hoof to stop her, but wasn't fast enough. She cried out to her, but her sister paid no attention. Soon, Luna was left alone outside the temple, hoof still outstretched as the older alicorn disappeared, blending into the snow and clouds as she soared away.

***

Back in the temple, Gold Coin sat by himself by the mural depicting the Battle of the Four Armies. The princesses had left, and Explodey and Chain Mail were left trying to explain to Arcelio and the Harmonites just what had happened. Needless to say, it was a very long and complicated story, so this looked like it would be going on for a while. Over in the corner, Ancient Tome sat by himself, head bowed and trying his hardest not to be seen. Broad Sword and Sliske stood in the middle of the room, just talking to each other.

And as for Mystic, he was creeping up to Goldie's side. The stallion looked aside at him, giving Mystic pause, before putting his eyes on the mural again. Mystic took this as a sign to sit down next to him.

"Mr. Gold Coin?" he said in what could almost be described as a squeak.

"Yes?" Gold Coin replied with a sigh.

"What will happen to Softy? Will he be okay?"

"I don't know, kid. Twilight said that he fell into the void of time. That means he could end up anywhere in history. I hope that means that he could only fall into the past. If he fell into the future then we might never see him again. If he fell into the past, he might still find a way back to us somehow. I don't know how, but it's possible. Still, even then... history is dangerous. And if he could go anywhere in history..."

Mystic hugged his leg.

"I'm worried about him, Mr. Gold Coin."

Gold Coin smiled and ruffled the colt's hair with his other foreleg.

"Me too, kid. Me too."

***

Luna stayed outside. Though Celestia was gone, she couldn't help but stay there, transfixed, staring off into the distance at Equestria just as her sister had been doing.

"What are you thinking, Tia?" she muttered to herself.

Down below, she noticed a hooded figure ascending the path to the Harmonite temple, carrying a wooden walking stick in one hoof. She kept watch on this figure for a moment, trying to decipher what it was about him that she found so strange. It was then that she remembered where they were. There weren't any ponies in New Arachnia, and this was a pony. It must have been one of the crew from the Prometheus, coming up to deliver news. She wondered what could have gone wrong now.

Luna cantered down the path to meet the hooded pony, who stopped in front of her when he saw her approach.

"What is it?" she asked.

The pony threw back his hood. Luna gaped.

"Soft Spoken?!"

The much, much older Soft Spoken only smiled back at her.

"That any way to greet an old friend?" he cracked, before devolving into a fit of coughing.

***

"So what do we do?" asked Mystic, still hugging Gold Coin's leg.

"What do you mean?"

"How do we find Softy?"

Gold Coin tilted his head back and considered the question.

"I guess... if it's true that the Pantheon really do need us all together again for the Elements of Harmony to work, then they'll get Softy back to us somehow. I don't know what to do, personally. All we can do is just... hope that he turns up."

A hoof tapped Gold Coin's shoulder.

"Ahem."

The both of them turned around to see Princess Luna and Soft Spoken standing behind them, the latter in a hooded cloak and carrying a walking stick. He smiled and waved at them.

"SOFTY?!" the businesspony shouted.

Everyone else in the room, ponies and spiders alike, heard him and all turned to look their way. Softy lowered his hood so that they could all see, and the rest of their friends rushed over to their side. Explodey galloped over the fastest, almost tackling Softy as he pulled him into a hug as well. Broad Sword joined them. The old stallion let out a pained groan.

"Ahhh...! Please don't do that! These old bones are fragile!" he begged in a much more strained voice than they were used to hearing from him.

Explodey and Broad Sword both pulled away again, though they both kept grinning at him. Mystic wandered over and gave him a much gentler embrace, although like usual for Mystic, he was only tall enough to hug his foreleg. Chain Mail and Sliske stood aside, while Gold Coin was still wearing that bewildered look.

"How though?! What?! Where did you...?! How?!" he spluttered.

Softy chuckled, having to stop when he began coughing again.

"No need to worry," he assured them. "I know what happened... sort of. You dropped me into the void to save me. It's fine. I only went back a few years anyway. It's been a long, long wait, but I'm glad to finally be with you all again."

Gold Coin reached out and touched Softy's face, running a hoof over it. It was indeed the same Soft Spoken, but somehow even older. Before, he looked old enough to be seventy. Now, he really did look one hundred and thirty, with his wrinkles being worse than ever before, a few new liver spots, and his eyes looked so weary now. More than that, even though his body was covered by the cloak, it was evident that he was much thinner now. The pony was practically a skeleton.

Gold Coin pulled his hoof away.

"Dear Celestia... What happened to you?"

"Time. Just time."

"Softy, answer me honestly now," Gold Coin said in a low voice. "How long were you waiting for us?"

Softy tried to deflect the question with a casual laugh.

"Oh, not that long! A few years! It looks bad, but I was old anyway. You age a lot faster towards the end. Trust me though, I think I've still got a good few years left."

He again coughed. Gold Coin frowned.

"You didn't answer the question. How long, Softy?"

Soft Spoken's smile faltered for a moment, but he kept it up.

"Not long. Two, three years..."

"You're lying." Gold Coin advanced on his friend. "Don't you lie to me! I can tell that you're lying. Nopony ages that much in three years! How long, Softy?! How old are you now?!"

Fangs popped from Soft Spoken's mouth as he leaned in and shouted in Gold Coin's face.

"FIVE! HUNDRED! AND! TWELVE!"

Everyone's eyes widened and they all took a step back from him. Softy began crying.

"I'm five hundred and twelve..." he sobbed.

He collapsed, and Gold Coin caught him, the older stallion crying into his shoulder.

END.

Author's Note

Entire new chapter of Human written and edited from scratch in two weeks and with no help. I am officially back in the zone.

So, as you may have noticed, I think I had some personal issues with the afterlife arc that I needed to work out. NAMELY THAT IT FUCKING SUCKED. So I destroyed it, and all the characters that came out of it. Boom. Problem solved.

Well, technically they're not any more dead than before. Twilight and friends didn't stop existing or anything. But with reincarnation, I think there's more of a balance now. The point of the Firstian afterlife was to make the deaths less grim and keep the tone from getting too heavy, but I know it also had the effect of removing a lot of tension and making it seem like there were no true consequences for death. The new reincarnation cycle, I think, finds a happier balance between death not being the end and death still being tragic and something to avoid. The dead from now on are never truly gone, but they are gone as we knew them.

All this death talk unfortunately seemed to weigh heavily on this chapter, and I think it was a bit more lacking for comedy than usual, but the events and subject matter demanded it. I'm going to try not to have the tone bounce around so much anymore. From now on, I'm going to try to keep every scene in a given chapter a fairly even mix of comedic and serious, and chapters as a whole will have a more consistent feel, being either overall comedic or overall dark, and with plenty of lead-in from the previous chapter if we do shift tone between them. I don't think I'll ever manage a completely happy marriage of comedy and drama, but I can try.

Another thing you'll notice with this chapter that's different is that I'm trying to ease up on the telling. No more (or at least, far less) directly stating the emotions of the characters. Gonna try to convey it more through dialogue and body language if I can. So if you got a clear sense of what emotions the characters were feeling this chapter, despite me not using as many "he screamed in fury" or "said sadly" statements or whatever, then I'm doing my job right at last.

As always, I encourage any criticism or even just minor nitpicks that any of you have. I know I'm trying a lot different with this chapter, and I'd like to know how most if it came across to see if you all agree that I'm moving in the right direction, or if you think some stuff could still use work. Human is a learning tool for me, and all of you are my teachers.

Thank you for reading all my bullshit, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Next Chapter: Jekyll and Hyde.

Chapter 31: Jekyll and Hyde

"And it was the tyrant, Celestia, who gave the order that the remaining human lord be sentenced to an imprisonment in stone for the rest of all his days. The Elements of Harmony, ignorant of the truth and blind to the princess's lies, obeyed her. Lord Second could only give up when they came for him, despair and grief taking over in his final moments. He stood still for them as they blasted him, and the world would never know the freedom that he could have offered."

–The Evil of Celestia, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book Fall From Grace.

***

Celestia was a fast flyer. Not many realised this, but the princess at her top speed could outrace half the Wonderbolts when she really tried. Celestia was also a highly magical pony, able to teleport distances that every arch-mage in Equestrian history would swear was impossible for a single pony without aid. It was a level of skill and power unique to an alicorn, at least on this world. A combination of her physiology and more than two thousand years of experience had made her this way, and she used it all at this moment to cross the country in minutes where it had taken the Prometheus hours.

There was a burst of flight nearing supersonic speed for a distance, then when she had charged enough magic, she would teleport further ahead. She maintained her momentum through the jumps, keeping her speed constant. They were infrequent, as they required a lot of power even by an alicorn's standards, but they shaved minutes off the journey.

As the princess exited another teleport jump, Canterlot Mountain sprawled out below her. Halfway up the mountain, on the side facing her, she could see the city for which it was named. Just as it was before, the mountain was split down the middle, exposing the various caves, mines and labyrinths inside. The half of the mountain containing the city of Canterlot remained mostly upright, though it sagged slightly and looked far too dangerous to ever be habitable again, while the other half looked on the verge of collapse, pointing away from its twin at a forty-five degree angle.

Below and around the mountain, a number of small towns and hamlets were visible. There were splotches of dulled colour all over the countryside where the zombie hordes roamed aimlessly. Ponyville was on fire, smoke rising from thatched buildings in the distance. Rainbow's Rest looked intact, but blackened and desolate. Even from this distance, the princess could make out the remains of a barricade around the town's perimeter that had fallen apart. It was stone, so she wondered how it was ever able to burn at all, but it had.

And then there was the cloud layer above her. It had only showed up a few miles back, but here it blanketed the whole sky. This wasn't wild weather. It was manufactured. Either Second had placed it here himself, or the pegasi of the nearest cloud city had kicked their weather factory into overdrive and covered the region around Canterlot completely.

Celestia wasn't sure of the purpose, especially when the clouds were up this high. They weren't producing rain, and no pegasus would take refuge this high up where there was so little oxygen. It seemed that the only purpose was to blot out the sun. Perhaps they thought they could kill the zombies by starving them of sunlight?

Approaching the city, Celestia stopped flapping and let herself glide the rest of the way. She aimed for the top of the mountain path that led to the city's gates, letting herself fall towards it. Her hooves impacted the ground, and the stone cracked on contact. Standing beside what used to be a guard outpost, Celestia looked down the entire length of Main Street.

"Oh, Canterlot..." she sighed.

She trotted into the city, following along Main Street. The buildings looked terrible. They were all dilapidated and damaged. Some were burnt. Some looked structurally weak. Most, if not all, were missing their windows. The street itself was littered with detritus. Overturned carts, rubble from the buildings that had collapsed all the way, rotting vegetables, and battered and dented armour and weapons that looked to mostly originate from her Royal Guard were spread everywhere.

What struck her most were the remains of the dead ponies, because these weren't corpses, but instead skeletons. There were plenty of bones and dried blood stains, but all the flesh had been picked clean. It gave the impression that the apocalypse had been long ago, when she knew it had been going on for only a few days at most. The zombies moved fast.

Speaking of zombies, one of them wandered out of an alleyway next to Celestia. It shambled forward, moaning incoherently. Celestia looked to the skeleton of a guard and used her magic to take the sword lying next to him. She levitated it in front of her, assuming the proper stance and daring the creature to make the first move. It went right past her. Celestia turned in place, watching as it ignored her entirely and mindlessly shuffled off down the road.

She was silent for a moment, looking down at her hooves, now dulled and greying where once they were a brilliant white. She sighed again and tossed the sword aside. She would not need it in this place.

Still Celestia made herself walk through the whole place rather than fly straight to the palace. She had to see it all. She had to make herself see what she had wrought here. The destruction only got worse the further she went into the city. Celestia could see the bodies of zombies lying in the streets here, their flesh surprisingly untouched by their brethren. The state of the buildings also got worse. Once or twice, Celestia passed by a pile of rubble where there was once a home or tower of some sort, and wondered if it was one of the victims of her duel with Second.

The worst part was when she passed the church. She had never liked being worshipped as a goddess, but she had still always appreciated the loyalty and devotion that the Church of the Royal Sisters (or Church of the Holy Sun for a time) had shown her. She had found their faith in her touching on some level. To pass by the remnants of one of their churches, and see those words painted in blood across the front wall, was disheartening.

"CELESTIA HATES US ALL," it read.

The sides of the church had many other smaller messages. Far fewer were written in blood. Most of them were just standard graffiti. But they all had a similar message.

"WE LET HER DIE. SHE DOESN'T LET US DIE."

"CELESTIA HAS DAMNED US."

"CELESTIA HAS COME TO PUNISH THE GUILTY. WE ARE ALL GUILTY."

"WE DESERVE THIS."

She had to turn away. The palace, and Second, still awaited her.

***

Celestia kept a brisk pace as she trotted through her old palace again. Being here again was strange. Some rooms were immaculate and untouched. Others showed clear evidence of the apocalypse. She smiled as she passed through one of her long corridors and saw all the old portraits still hanging on the wall, unsullied by Second's presence. At other times, she had to cringe and look away as she came across skeletons or large holes in the wall.

At one point, she had entered a small dining room that was meant for the staff, where a few plates were laid out on the table. The door to the kitchen had opened and a figure had emerged from it, and Celestia had smiled and looked up, seeing his chef's hat in her peripheral vision. Then when she looked at him properly, she had realised that this chef was just another zombie passing through, seemingly trapped in this sequence of rooms.

The throne room had been the worst. It was missing an entire wall, now exposing it to the elements, and Second had at some point set up a gigantic TV monitor in there. It was like a much larger version of the set that had been in First's desk, only this one was showing footage of ponies being eaten by zombies. Celestia had had to turn it off.

She was now approaching the upper floors of the palace and coming near the roof. Ascending the stairs, she mentally checked off a list of possible places that Second could be if he wasn't up here. The throne room had really been where she was expecting him to be. For a moment, she considered the possibility that he may have temporarily left. Should she have waited in the throne room for him to return?

The princess stopped and gasped as she reached the final level of stairs before the roof. In the stairwell, between floors, a human was lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. It was Second, except... he looked normal again. He wasn't a zombie, he didn't have a mechanical eye, and he wasn't even dressed the way he usually was. His longcoat was missing, and her old enemy was wearing, of all things, a blue t-shirt and jeans. Though he still had the moustache.

"...Second?"

He didn't get up, but he turned his head to look at her. His face was wet and red around the eyes, but his expression was neutral.

"No," he answered. "Second is on the roof."

She trotted over to his side, standing just by his head.

"Second, what happened to you?" she asked.

"I told you, I'm not Second," he insisted, his face screwing up on the last word.

Celestia sat down and tried to pull him back up. She grabbed his shoulders with her magic and tried to force him to sit upright, which he did, giving her a disdainful look. It was only after a few seconds that Celestia realised she had just affected him with magic, which she had never been able to do before.

"Wha...? How?" she asked, looking up at her horn. She tested it again by grabbing his hand with her magic and moving it about some more.

"I told you why!" Second snapped, yanking his hand out of her magical field.

"Have you been crying?" she asked, putting a hoof on his shoulder.

"No!" He pulled away from her again. "Yes. Maybe."

"Sec—" Celestia stopped when the human turned to glare at her. "...Whoever. What happened here?"

Second opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as a shadow was cast over the two of them. He looked up and past Celestia at the doorway leading to the roof. Celestia looked back at it too, and saw another Second standing up there, this one looking more like he should've, with the coat and the eye and the rotting skin and everything. It was a second Second.

Celestia blinked. The other Second marched down the stairs towards them and hauled the more human-looking Second to his feet again. He held his other self by the throat and stared him in the eyes.

"Jekyll, are you embarrassing us in front of our archenemy?" he asked.

"No sir," the first Second, the one apparently called Jekyll, responded.

The zombie Second smiled at him.

"Good."

He dropped Jekyll, who fell to the floor in a heap. Jekyll scrambled to get away, standing up again and backing into the corner. His face was still expressionless, but he kept his eyes on the his counterpart, who turned to Celestia next.

"Princess," he said curtly.

"Second," she replied. "What is going on here? What did you do? Who is this?"

Second cocked his head and looked over at his double in the corner.

"Why, this is Dr. Henry Jekyll," he said. "Surely you've heard of him? I know that in your world his name is probably a retarded horse pun, but there's no way that some iteration of his story doesn't exist."

"...You mean from the tale of Jekyll and Hyde?" Celestia asked.

Second frowned at her pronunciation.

"Jeekul?" he repeated. "I don't get it. What's it a play on?"

"It's not a play on anything," Celestia explained. "That's just her name. I've heard other ponies pronounce it the way that you did, but I remember when the book first came out, and it was originally pronounced—"

"I don't care," Second interrupted. "Also, 'her'? Not surprising that the ponification is female, given that this is MLP, but that's strange to me. So wait, was the title of the book here Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde?"

Celestia was about to answer, but Second interrupted her again.

"No! Wait! I still don't care! Don't answer that. Fuck off. What are you doing here?"

He pointed at her to emphasise his question. Celestia took a step back from him.

"I... came here to talk to you. I see that I probably picked a bad time."

Second smiled and waved dismissively.

"Not at all!" he replied. "You can come talk with me. Just ignore Jekyll. He's a bit of a tard."

Second leapt up the stairs in the single bound and looked over his shoulder at Celestia. He beckoned for her to follow.

"Come along, Celestia!"

She did as told, climbing the stairs and heading out onto the roof, sparing a sympathetic glance back at Jekyll, who nodded at her.

Out on the roof, there was what looked like a large zoo enclosure. An artificial meadow with grass and plants and bushes was set up, surrounded by a chainlink fence. It was full of zombies. All of them shuffled around in a circle, moving in a clockwise pattern around their habitat. Lining the ground inside the enclosure was a number of small red meat chunks, which the zombies were curiously not eating. On this side of the fence was a small brick building that Celestia was sure hadn't been there before, and right next to it was a large green metal box with a pipe sticking out the top which was pointing away from enclosure.

"So, if he's Jekyll, does that make you Hyde?" Celestia asked as they approached the machine.

"Of course not!" Second said. "Hyde's in the shed."

They stopped next to the green box, which seemed to be some kind of machine. Celestia took a closer look at the small brick building.

"You mean this?"

"He's chained up inside. It's safe to open the door if you want to see."

Second began adjusting some dials and knobs on a control panel attached to the machine. The princess eyed the door to the "shed" and grabbed the handle with her magic.

This is a bad idea, she thought to herself.

The door swung open, and Celestia immediately had to back away as a pair of rotting human hands lunged for her. A third Second, this one also infected but missing the cybernetic eye, cleared the door and was almost in grabbing distance of the princess. Chains bound his wrists and ankles, and though he pulled against them and fought them, they held him. The chains were pulled taut, as he was as close as he could get. Hyde grinned at her, his one remaining eye yellowed and mad.

"Hello, princess," he giggled, baring his teeth. "What bring you to my neck of the woods, hmm? Did you miss me?"

Though she was already out of reach, Celestia had to take another two steps back.

"Hardly," she answered.

Hyde rolled his eye.

"Shame. I know I missed you. See, I had a dream about you while I was locked away in my shed here. I dreamt that I had my hands around your pretty little neck, and I was choking the life out of you."

Again, Celestia had to take a step back. Hyde's grin only got wider.

"I throttled you again, and again, and again! You begged for your life! You cried for mercy! You pleaded for it to stop! And then I cut your throat and let you bleed all over the bedsheets as I fucked your open wound! And it was the most goddamn erotic thing I ever dreamt about in my life! Fuck! I'm getting hard just thinking about it!"

Hyde descended into hysterical laughing. Celestia resisted the urge to retch.

"We should do that sometime! It'll be fun! Whadayasay? You and me! You up for it? We're immortals, ain't we? We could do it several times a day for all eternity! We'll watch the universe fade to nothing as we fuck time away! Just the two of us! Hating each other! Forever!"

Celestia wasn't sure if magic would work on Hyde like it did with Jekyll, so she physically kicked him back into the shed before she slammed the door shut on him. From within, she could hear him knocking on the metal.

"Come oooooooooooon!" Hyde whined from inside. "You know you wanna! Come and take it, you fucking whore!"

She ignored it, and turned to Second, who was still nonchalantly attending the machine.

"What in Equestria is this, Second? Where did these two come from? What did you do?"

Second looked back at her for only a moment before returning to work on the machine.

"I was bored. I decided to split myself into my id, ego and superego to see what would happen. I'm not up on my psychology, so I don't remember if those concepts were debunked or not, but I think they are, because it didn't work exactly. Instead I created Jekyll and Hyde. Except it's not exactly like the story because, well, they have their own bodies. And also I'm still here. I may be wrong, but I think that I'm basically the original Second. I have a complete personality, and I still have all my powers while those two don't. Make of that what you will."

Celestia glanced at the shed again.

"He's a part of you?" she asked.

"Yep," said Second kicking the machine.

"I never knew that you could be so... vile. What Hyde said, that was... that was disgusting, even for you."

Second smiled at her.

"Hyde is me without morality or restraint. Pure evil. Darkness run rampant. You shouldn't expect my dark side to play nice, Celestia. I'm not exactly a nice guy to begin with." He punched the control panel. "Work, you fucking piece of trash!"

"Still... are those really the sort of thoughts you have about me?"

"No." Second walked behind the machine and crouched down out of sight. "Hyde just likes to say the things that he knows will shock and disgust you the most. He hates you. Possibly even more than I hate you."

Celestia could hear a power drill behind the machine, which was soon joined by the sound of groaning metal. There was a loud snap, and then a mechanical crunch. She wondered what he was doing, but decided it best not to ask.

"Listen, Second, I came here to apologise."

Second's head popped up from behind the machine. He gave her a blank look, which quickly gave way to rancorous laughter.

"Yeah right," he said before disappearing beneath the machine again.

"No, really. I had an... experience, recently. It put a lot of what I've done in perspective. You and First did need to be stopped. There was never any doubt of that. But I could have done better. I trapped you in stone and left you there, and I shouldn't have. You were a problem, but you were never cruel. You were never a sadist. It was First's death that made you so angry and destructive, and it was what I and the Elements of Harmony did to stop you that made you into... this. I never knew that you'd be awake through those thousand years. I never knew why you really did everything you did. I'm sorry for what I took from you, and for what I did to you."

There was silence. Second once again came up from behind the machine, now covered in grease and wearing a pair of overalls and gloves. He twirled a wrench in his right hand and gave her an unamused look.

"Y'know, the apology is appreciated, but it's a little fucking late," he replied. "My son is already dead, I'm already a monster, Equestria is already in the middle of a full-scale apocalypse, and honey, you haven't even seen the worst of it yet."

"An apology never undoes our mistakes. It's only to show that we know they were mistakes, and that we resolve to never repeat them. I know that I can never take back what happened to you, Second. I'm just trying to let you know that I understand what I did wrong now. I know what part I played in creating you, and... him in the shed."

Second wrung his hands and looked down. There was a banging on the door of the shed, and from inside, Hyde could be heard singing.

"So I try to save face and I rest my case! The judge pulls me aside, says, 'C'est la vie! Let your darker side come out to feed!'"

Second got up and walked over to the shed. He opened the front door and pulled Hyde out. Celestia watched him grab his double by the hair and punch him in the face, knocking him to the floor.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Second replied in a similarly singsong voice, repeatedly kicking Hyde in the ribs. "Sit up, sit up, sit up! It's a kangaroo court!"

With a final stomp on the forehead, he booted Hyde back into the shed and slammed the door on him. Hyde laughed, despite the punishment he just endured, while Second returned to the machine. Noticing the look Celestia was giving him, he looked back at the shed. Hyde's cackling was still plainly audible.

"My dark side is a masochist, apparently," he explained.

The machine roared to life as he touched it. Second's face lit up with a wide grin, and he dashed around to the other side of the machine.

"It's working!"

"You found the viagra at last? Mazel tov!" said Hyde's muffled voice.

Second ignored him and pushed the machine around, exposing a large square chute. The pipe was now aimed into the zombie enclosure. Celestia looked into the chute and saw that the inside was caked with dry blood. She was also getting sickening feeling that she knew what this machine was.

"Second, uh... is this a woodchipper?"

"Why, yes. Yes it is." He didn't elaborate on that, instead walking over to the zombie enclosure and leaning against the fence. "Anyway, what were you saying before?"

"I was apologising."

A zombie foal floated out from within the enclosure, Second pointing his finger at it and guiding its movement. It landed in his arms, and he held it tight as it squirmed and tried to get away from him. He didn't look at Celestia as he carried it over to the woodchipper.

"Go on."

"And I was trying to say how I... think I misunderstood you, and that you're not completely to blame for everything that happened. Because you were a better person than that before."

"Ya-huh."

Second nonchalantly tossed the zombie foal into the woodchipper. There was a crunching, grinding sound, and more red meat chunks were shot out into the zombie enclosure. Quite a bit of it splashed back, drenching Second in blood, though he didn't seem to react to it at all. He turned to look at her again, this time wearing a cheerful smile, and pointed at the enclosure again, levitating out a second zombie.

"No, really. I'm listening. Please continue."

The princess could only watch in silence as he minced the next zombie. This time, the machine made an even louder grinding sound, and in addition to spraying blood everywhere, ground-up and broken pieces of bone flew out as well, one of them hitting Celestia in the face as she stared on.

"I... I don't think I can finish what I was going to say," she relented. "This is simply not the setting for it. I'm going to come back when you're being less intentionally disgusting."

Celestia trotted back towards the stairwell.

"Wait!"

She stopped. Second ran over to her, discarding his gloves.

"If you're going to bum around the palace for a while, I just wanted to warn you not to go into your old bedroom, because it is filled with landmines right now."

She groaned and resumed her journey. Entering the stairwell again, Princess Celestia found Jekyll lying where she left him. He remained slumped against the wall and staring into space, sparing her only the briefest glance as she came into view, and only then because she blocked the light while she stood in the doorway to the roof. The princess trod lightly as she approached him again, looking back at the "original" Second for a moment as he continued his zombie-mincing, and then regarding Jekyll.

"So..." she began, "I'm informed that you're Lord Second's good side?"

Jekyll gave her a wry smile.

"Why else do you think I look so weak and miserable?"

Celestia held out a hoof to him, surprising the human. His eyes lingered on it, as if he were unsure whether to take it. The princess gave him a nod, and he took her hoof and let her pull him up onto his feet.

"Perhaps, at least, you'll be more pleasant conversation than your counterparts," Celestia commented.

Jekyll let go of her and dusted himself off.

"If you say so, your highness."

Was that a gesture of respect for her title? Said non-sarcastically? That was certainly not like the real Second. Before she could contemplate that further, Jekyll began heading down the stairs. He stopped midway down the first flight and looked back to Celestia.

"Are you hungry?" he asked. "The kitchens are all still stocked, I think. If you want, I can cook."

"I seem to recall you once appearing in my throne room to request food specifically because you couldn't cook."

Jekyll shrugged.

"I never said it'd be good."

He continued off downstairs. Celestia followed, a subdued, but genuine smile daring to cross her face for the first time in what felt like far too long.

***

"No powers then?"

"Nope. I am, as you might say, completely at your mercy."

The frying pan sizzled as Jekyll flipped a pancake and caught it again. He stood in front of a stove in one of the many kitchens scattered through the palace, this one right next to a dining room and connected to it not just by a door, but also by a hole in the wall, through which Celestia could see and talk to him. She lounged across a cushioned chair in a very un-princesslike manner in the dining room just beyond. It wasn't the kind of chair meant for a dining room, but Jekyll had talked her into hauling it in from an adjacent lounge area. As far as ancient enemies of Equestria indulging their moments of spontaneity went, it was one of the less destructive she had ever seen.

"Does Hyde have powers?" Celestia asked.

Jekyll looked back over his shoulder at her.

"Hyde is complicated," he said. "I don't think my original self really appreciates just what he's created. He is a complete person, and the combination of both of us, but we are still linked to him, and everything in him is contained in the two of us, including his powers. Hyde has his powers. He just can't use them because Second is still there. Still stronger than him."

He finished at the stove and walked over to the table, putting down the pancakes onto a pair of plates, one of which he passed to Celestia.

"Why does Hyde get the powers?"

"Because it's my dark side that uses them against you all the time. Think it through."

Jekyll pulled out a chair and seated himself. Celestia floated her pancakes in the air to inspect them, while Jekyll immediately dug into his.

"And he's also the side of you that got the zombie virus?"

"Yes," Jekyll replied with a mouthful of pancake. "He got most of the extraneous material. I am our human side. He is Equestria's corruption. What ravaged my original self and made him into the monster you now know."

Celestia looked up at the ceiling, presumably in the direction of Hyde.

"He's the end result of everything I did to you. Your son's death... your imprisonment... he's what came of it all, isn't he?"

Jekyll swallowed and looked down at his plate. With a clatter, he dropped his cutlery and leaned over the table, bringing Celestia's attention back to him.

"Listen to me," he said, looking her in the eyes. "None of the three men in this building right now are in any way an accurate representation of the man I was, least of all me. I was never without evil in my heart. Hyde was always in me. He was in me when I abandoned my family in Texas, he was in me when I was drinking away the pain of a broken heart. He was what made me punch my brother at my father's funeral, and he was there for every act of violence I ever inflicted on you or your ponies.

"While it's true that Equestria was a special kind of hell for me, don't think that my bad behaviour came from nowhere. You are not solely responsible for Lord Second. A man's actions rest on his own shoulders, even if he is driven to do terrible things. And besides which, you had no way of knowing what you were doing to me. Yes, perhaps this whole business can be thought of as being your fault if one is particularly unforgiving... but I don't think anyone in this world can reasonably blame you for it in the end."

He laid back and sighed.

"I know you didn't want to put me through a nightmare like that, and I know that my son's death was an accident. In the end, what else could have been done? We were the arrogant gods who brought strife and chaos to the land. You were our victims and you defended yourselves. All that has happened to me since then is just karma."

She hadn't even started on her pancakes yet. Celestia was still holding them in her magic. She looked at them, and then put them down on the table.

"Second—" she started.

"My name is Jekyll."

"Jekyll," she amended. "Perhaps you might think I can't be blamed, but ever since you told me in the interrogation room that you were conscious throughout your imprisonment, I've had to live with it."

Jekyll went back to eating his pancakes.

"Only you would come all the way out here to apologise to a man who unleashed a zombie apocalypse on your nation." He took a bite and smiled at her. "If our positions were reversed, I don't think I ever would have bothered. I took out my rage on an entire country twice because of what one pony did a thousand years ago. You made a single man suffer by accident while trying to show undue mercy. One of these crimes is worse than the other."

He shook his head.

"In fact, come to think of it, you weren't even the one who used the Elements of Harmony on me. That was Twilight and her friends. I can't even really hold you responsible for that."

Celestia sighed.

"It's... Jekyll, I can't just let you tell me that. There's more to this. Because it really isn't all your fault, no matter how you look at it. I've since learned that... you might not be responsible for your own actions at all."

Jekyll looked up from his plate and frowned at her.

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"Is your blood still green?"

Jekyll held up his wrist to show Celestia something that she hadn't noticed before. It had a bloody red bandage wrapped around it. Her mouth hung open, but as she looked Jekyll in the eyes again, he smiled at her, and they went green.

"It doesn't need to be green for Us to have influence. Being in this world is enough. It is only the colour of the Pantheon when Our control is at its strongest."

Celestia jumped back and out of her chair, fluttering her wings to catch herself before she hit the floor.

"So, it's true. You have been controlling him..."

The Pantheon stepped forward.

"Celestia, do you really think I am that weak-willed?"

The Pantheon frowned and turned its head to the left.

"What?" it asked.

It turned its head to the right and smiled again.

"Mr. Garrick, would you kindly get the fuck out of my head?"

Left again, and this time the Pantheon's glowing green eyes were wide and staring off into space.

"That... that's impossible. How are you doing that?"

Right.

"Johnson, did you not hear me? I said get out."

Left.

"But this ignores all the rules!"

Right.

"Because I'm usually so obedient, right?"

Left.

"But this makes no sense!"

Right.

"Get out. Get out. Get out! Get out!"

Jekyll slammed his head into the table and fell onto the floor. Celestia rushed to his side to see him bleeding from the forehead, but his eyes were normal again. His blood was green, but as she observed, it slowly returned to red again.

"Jekyll! Are you alright?"

He placed a hand on his forehead and groaned.

"Mortal body. Mortal wounds. I've missed these, in a twisted kind of way..."

Out of the corner of her eye, Celestia noticed another Second walking through the walls, his body initially made of smoke but becoming physical again, and she turned to face him. She could tell by his lack of a robotic eye which of the other two it was.

"You want some physical injuries again?" he asked. "I can oblige."

Celestia swished her horn and conjured a magical shield between her and Hyde.

"You will come no further!" she ordered.

Hyde strode across the room towards her.

"Oh, that's cute. It thinks it can stop me." He kicked her shield and shattered it like glass. "What deluded fantasy."

Hyde grabbed her by the throat and threw her back onto the table, pinning the princess down.

"So, you're concerned that the Pantheon are in here with me?" he asked, tapping the side of his head. "Well, here's a newsflash for you: I am Lord-motherfucking-Second, and I am the most powerful being in your universe, bar only one, and I'm not talking about the man upstairs. The Pantheon, as they like to call themselves, are a bunch of snot-nosed brats who think they can play gods, but they are so far below me that I can shit on them and it'll reach terminal velocity before impact. Green blood and glowing eyes? You think that's all it takes to control me? Ha! I'm not a puppet in any of my incarnations, unlike you, Celestia, you sanctimonious bitch!"

He raised a fist, but someone else caught it.

"Hyde, this isn't the way," said Jekyll.

Hyde dropped Celestia, who teleported to the other side of the table immediately and watched as the two humans circled each other.

"We're doing this now, are we?" asked Hyde.

"As long as we disagree, then yes, we are."

"We'll be disagreeing for a long time then, you fucking boy scout. I'm Mister Hyde! That means that I bury you and we die as me!"

"That means that you're the brutish, stupid monster and that I'm the one who everyone hopes to see win."

Hyde grabbed Jekyll by the hair and pulled his head back.

"That means that I have the power and you don't, so don't push your fucking luck." He threw Jekyll aside and then advanced on Celestia again. "And then there's you."

"Hyde, I don't want to fight you," said Celestia. "I came here because I wanted to apologise to you. To all of you! I made a terrible mistake, and I'm trying to make it right!"

She backed across the room, but Hyde was too quick, and before she could run out he was behind her and had her in a headlock. He leaned his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes.

"Oh, is that so? What is it you're apologising for?"

"For... For the..." she gasped, choking.

Hyde grabbed her throat again and pushed her against the wall.

"Oh, I know!" He held up his wrist, and she could see the green glow in his veins. "You think that because I have this crap in me, that I was under control! You think that I had no free will, and that I was tragically forced into becoming this monster! You think that the famous Mister Hyde is nothing more than Pantheon meddling, created by you through their manipulation!"

He dropped her on the floor and laughed.

"That's rich!" He leaned down and smiled at her. "'Tia, dear, I was always in here. And I'm no more a victim of the strings than you are. If anything, I am far, far more free."

Jekyll pulled himself up over the table.

"Hyde, don't do this..."

"She needs to see!" Hyde hissed. "Let her see!"

He grabbed her again, holding her head with both hands and forcing her to look at him.

"You're going to see this. You're going to see what I see."

Suddenly, there were strings everywhere. Long, thin lines of thread were attached to every object in the room at multiple points, in such a way that any of them could be easily manipulated. Some of them were taut, and some of them were slack, but all of them glowed the same bright green as a human's blood. They all disappeared higher up, vanishing into thin air as they approached the ceiling.

Celestia looked at herself and saw that she too was covered in them. They wrapped around her ankles, around her neck, around her torso and thighs and horn and jaw... she could taste the one tied around her tongue, and as she reeled back she could feel the ones on her wings rubbing against the carpet. All of them dug into her flesh, none of them in a painful way, but definitely in a noticeable one.

Hyde grabbed a cluster of the strings and yanked them upwards, and Celestia felt herself lifted off the ground. Now it hurt. The princess's breathing became more rapid, but she tried to keep herself composed. Still her eyes darted all around, seeing everything the strings were attached to. Above all else, she noticed how Jekyll's strings were all snapped and lying lifelessly on the floor, not even a single mote of light coming off them, and how Hyde had no strings at all.

"Ever wanted to take up puppetry? I know I have."

"Please." Celestia felt the strings around her mouth pull at her as she spoke. "Please, Hyde, can't you understand that I don't want to be enemies anymore?"

"Well maybe I do!" Hyde growled. "Maybe I still fucking hate your guts no matter how much you want to tell me you're sorry! Maybe I want to run this whole world into the ground just because I think it fucking deserves it, rather than just because those fucking brats who call themselves the Pantheon said to! Maybe... just fucking maybe..."

He leaned in close to her and held her by her lower jaw.

"...I know what you did in the afterlife." He dropped her. "And I will never, ever forgive you."

Hyde walked away from her, backwards, and turned to smoke to phase through the wall again just as the princess picked herself up.

The strings were still there, hanging loosely and strewn around the floor. She tried to throw them off, but they were ingrained deep in her flesh and couldn't be removed. Celestia scratched at the points where they dug in, but couldn't touch them. She reached out with her magic, but it was like they weren't there. Again she composed herself. She had taken a lot of battering, both physical and emotional, since this turmoil began. If she kept letting herself break down from it, it would destroy her.

Jekyll limped over to her side and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Calm down," he said. "Breathe. Try to focus."

She did, closing her eyes and taking a long, deep breath.

"Is this what you see all the time?" she asked.

"No. There are no strings. It's an illusion he created with his powers. A visual metaphor. Don't pay attention to them and they'll go away."

Still she kept her eyes closed.

"If it's magic, then why can't I dispel it?"

"It's not magic. I said it was created with his powers. There are forces in this universe far stronger than magic. That's what we tap into."

"Then what is it?"

"An entity. Something impossibly strong and godlike in every sense of the term. Our powers come from what we are in our world, but they must have an in-universe explanation too. And that is that there's something about us, be it our biology, or our brainwaves, or something, that means we can siphon it."

"Siphon it from what?"

"I daren't say. But it's coming."

Celestia opened her eyes and looked back at Jekyll. The strings were all still there.

"What's coming? Jekyll, what is going on?"

Jekyll let go and went back over to his chair to lean on it. He held his forehead and looked away from her.

"All I desire, all I ever have desired, is to go back home. My original self plans to get there at all costs. And Celestia, the cost is heavy indeed. I came up with a plan. A horrible, horrible plan. The sort of plan that only a tortured and insane man would even consider. I created a tape. A video that explains who I was before I came here, what made me the man I was when I first came to Equestria, and what the plan entails. It doesn't even cover the whole plan, but..."

He looked back at her, and his eyes were wet with tears again.

"Celestia, we're not going to remain separate for much longer. Pretty soon, Second will merge myself and Hyde back into him. You will arrive here for the second battle for Canterlot. You will defeat us, likely with the new Elements of Harmony. And then you will discover the tape. Once you see it, you'll be horrified, but I promise you, it gets worse. It gets so much worse."

Jekyll pulled out the chair and sat down again.

"I just want to warn you how bad it will be. You'll give up on saving me. Despite this apology, you will give up. And even if you can find it in you to help me through the plan, which I'm not even certain you could do with how it would weigh on your conscience, you cannot ever trust me. I will betray you, and you will see how much worse it will get even beyond that."

Celestia walked over to his side and raised a hoof to him. He turned away from her. Her mind went back to several days ago, before her death, when she had first met Explodey McGee in the throne room and had needed to comfort him as well. Tentatively, she wrapped her forehooves around Jekyll and leaned into him.

"Don't feel guilty for Hyde's horribleness," she said to him. "I know you're not the same."

Jekyll sniffled.

"We will be the same. When you come here next, I won't exist anymore. I'll just be the good part of Lord Second. And I am such a small, insignificant part... Not even you will consider me worth saving."

"That's not true. That will never be true. I didn't know for sure until now that Second had a good side at all, but you do exist, and you're here right now. Second is not Hyde only because he has you in him, and Jekyll, I will protect you."

Jekyll kept crying.

"It's true what he said. In the book, Jekyll lost. He died as Hyde."

"Then let's forget that book, hmm? You don't have to keep calling yourself that. What's your name? Your real name?"

He turned back and returned the hug.

"Howard," he whispered. "My name is Howard Carson-Summers."

***

Up on the roof, Second stopped just as he was about to put another zombie into the woodchipper and took a long whiff of the air. He gave a loud, drawn-out groan and threw the zombie aside. It tried to limp away towards the stairwell, but he kicked it over the edge of the roof as he went to the shed and opened the door, finding Hyde missing.

"For fuck's sake." He slammed the door closed.

Second crouched down, closed his eyes, and placed a finger on his forehead. His brow furrowed as the sounds of his other selves flitted through his mind. Dissatisfied with what he heard, he stood up again, sighed, and summoned a revolver into existence. With purpose, he strided over towards the stairwell, loading his weapon as he went.

"Goddamnit, Jekyll. I warned you about being a pussy in front of our archenemy."

END.

Author's Note

Okay. Fuck. Sorry it's been so long since my last update, guys. Real life happened. I might explain in a blog later.

Regardless, yes, the next chapter is finally here. I've been excited for this one for a long while. It's shorter than I intended, mostly because I kept to only one perspective this time. I wanted to try a chapter that did that for once, instead of jumping perspectives all the time. A kind of experiment, if you will. Let me know how it turns out. I expect some people might not like it, because a story this big with an ensemble cast means that people will have their favourites, and Celestia and Second may not be among them for a lot of you. I thought I'd give it a whirl though and see if this works as a format at all.

Also, the more articulate among you (or all of you, because I'm not that subtle) might have noticed that a lot of this chapter's purpose was addressing some of the common complaints leveled towards Celestia as a character. I thought her role in all of this was clear from the beginning, and I didn't think she needed to externalise her regret for it to be plain to see, but sometimes, I guess, I need to be a little more blatant with these things. And while I never exactly speak through my characters, I'll say that Jekyll's opinion on the matter is at least pretty close to how I've personally viewed Celestia's actions and character throughout this story. You're all still free to continue disagreeing, of course. It's not my job as an author to get heavy-handed and force my opinions on you. But I felt it best to address the issue here, and I have wanted to do the Jekyll and Hyde thing for a long time.

Next Chapter: The dragons return.

When All is Dead and Still and Forever Unchanging

"Did you really think it would be that easy? Did you think you were just going to get away like that? You of all people should know, some stories never really end..."

In the void that was once the universe, Second breathed a deep sigh.

"Well then..." he said, trying to muster one last smile. "Only one thing for it, I suppose..."

He raised a trembling hand and closed his eyes, cringing. Time to die.

With great trepidation, Lord Second snapped his fingers, and the sound echoed throughout the darkness.

"Let there be light."

Author's Note

You know what? I can't run away from my mistakes forever. Let's write some sequels. Neo-Elements fans, look out for The Universe is Doughnut-Shaped. Second and Silver fans, look out for The King Machine. ETA whenever. Harass me more to make them go faster.

Chapter 1: All is Not as it Seems

Captain Blade Edge trotted briskly along the top of the fortress walls and looked out across the rolling green hills beyond. The skies were dark today. That was to be expected. The weather ponies were not going out there to clean it up considering the potential risks. They told horror stories of what those things out there were capable of.

He passed by a group of three soldiers, one of whom was shivering slightly.

"Feeling cold, private?" he asked.

The soldier, a white coated earth pony in the standard golden armour of the royal guards, turned to face his captain.

"Something like that, sir," he answered.

"What's your name, son?"

"...Steel Hammer, sir."

"If you're scared, Steel Hammer, I wouldn't blame you," Blade Edge confided, "This is my first time leading a major battle too. It's unnerving to say the least. There hasn't been a war like this in our lifetimes."

"Can it even be called a war sir?" asked another of the soldiers, a light brown pegasus, "It seems to me that 'war' would imply we're up against an army."

"Is it even true?" asked the other one, this one a light grey earth pony, "I don't know if I even believe those reports. There's no way just two of these creatures could take down an entire legion by themselves!"

"It's true," Blade Edge said grimly, "I'm not sure how they do it either, but I saw it myself. It's definitely just the two of them."

"What even are they?" the brown pegasus asked, "Has the princess given us an answer yet?"

"All we've got is the name. Human," the captain replied, "I've never heard of them, and the boys have been scouring the library for weeks trying to find some reference to them in any of the ancient texts. Nothing. It's as if they just appeared and started causing chaos."

"CAPTAIN!"

Blade Edge turned his head and looked up at one of the watchtowers. The soldiers followed his gaze and met the sight of a red unicorn mare. She looked panicked.

"What is it?"

"I saw them!" she shouted urgently, "Both of them! The two humans are just over the hill and approaching the fortress as we speak!"

"No doubt just returning from Manehattan," the captain commented, "All right! Everypony get into position! This could get really brutal!"

He looked at the brown pegasus and the grey earth pony.

"You," he said, "Go sound the alarm. Get the whole fortress on red alert. We've got to be prepared! And you! Go down to the keep, see if the Elements of Harmony have arrived yet. We're going to need them for this."

"Aye sir!"

"On it sir!"

The two soldiers saluted and ran off in different directions.

"And you..."

Steel Hammer gulped.

"You'll keep by my side for this coming battle. You protect me, and I'll protect you."

***

One thousand years later...

***

"...The following battle, referred to by historians as the Fall of the First, was where the forces of the Equestrian royal guard were finally able to win some kind of victory over the invading force. Though the other of the two humans escaped for a brief while, this battle marked the death of the human who assisted him. Since he was never actually named, he was dubbed the First by the ponies of the time, while the other human was named as the Second."

The teacher, a yellow mare with an apple green mane named Chalk Board, paused for a moment and gestured at the display case. The young fillies and colts of her class gathered around the museum piece and looked inside. Underneath the glass was a model where the battle had taken place, depicting hills and rivers and bridges, a large stone grey fortress at the back, and thousands of tiny model ponies posed around in various locations.

"Ooohh..."

"Cool!"

"Wow..."

"Any questions?" she asked cheerfully.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I have one!"

Chalk Board looked down at the young colt, a cobalt blue unicorn with a huge smile on his face, who was bouncing up and down hyperactively.

"Yes, Mystic Chant?"

He stopped bouncing.

"How did they kill First?" he asked.

"That's a very good question, Mystic," the teacher replied, "Well, historical records show that the First was defeated by one brave pony who managed to charge right at the First and wrench his favoured weapon, the Reaper's horn from him. First was killed when the soldier attempted to use the Reaper's horn against him, which destroyed them both."

Chalk Board walked over to another display cabinet, inside displaying a life size model of a white pony in royal guard armour. In his teeth, he was clutching a chunky black lump of metal that looked more like a mace or club than any kind of horn. On his hindquarters, the class could see that the stallion's cutie mark was of two war hammers forming a cross.

"Is that the horn?" asked a pegasus filly.

"No, it's just a replica," the teacher answered, "However, it is an accurate recreation. The real Reaper's horn is of course held by the princesses in the royal archives."

Mystic raised a hoof again.

"Yes?"

"What happened to Second?" he asked.

"Ah, now that's where the story gets really interesting. Everypony follow me outside to the sculpture garden..."

***

Ancient Tome was an old unicorn. Or at least, he looked old. He wasn't exactly young, but he had the white beard and wrinkles of a stallion far beyond his years. Whenever he’d be out and about with his young son, many would assume he was actually his grandfather, a common mistake that he had come to resent.

Still, even he couldn't deny it. He had been degrading for years. Ever since the boy's mother died, he had lost a lot of his youthful energy. Nowadays, he spent his time in the study. It was his calling after all.

Tome was descended from a long line of respected magicians and researchers. His great uncle had once been the head of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and his grandmother was the inventor of the portal network. The family had a long history, and he had always tried his best to live up to that, always researching and experimenting with new spells. He had more than a few major achievements to his name as well.

However, that was neither here nor there. Tonight, Ancient Tome was awaiting the arrival of a few old friends. As he paced back and forth in the study, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror leaning against a dusty bookcase by the side of the fire. One look at the dull grey stallion staring back at him, monocle over his right eye and ungroomed beard hanging down loosely, and he turned away from it sadly, sighing to himself.

Two flashes of light nearby indicated the arrival of the ponies he was expecting. His face lit up as he walked over to join them.

"Iron! Frosty!" he said happily, "Good to see you both again! I see you both made it out okay. Any trouble with the escape?"

"A lot," the first pony replied, "We had to fight our way out of there, and it wasn't pretty. We must have gone through at least nine ponies!"

He was Iron Hoof, supposed royal guard for Celestia and childhood friend of Tome's. He was a grey pony as well, but it was a dark solid grey, unlike Ancient Tome's wispy light shade. Also unlike Tome, he was an earth pony, so he was fitter and consequently had taken the years better. His cutie mark was a stylised sword slashing through the air.

"Oh, that's not even the worst of it!"

The other pony was Frosty Morning, an icy blue weather pegasus, and also his sister-in-law. Her cutie mark was a frozen patch of grass.

"Well what was the worst of it then?" Ancient Tome asked with concern.

"The guards locked down the archives when we were inside," Frosty elaborated, "We were trapped in the place. And then, some foal released the guard dragon. I think that thing killed more of them than we did. We never actually fought it because it didn't find us, but it was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life."

"So that was the worst part?"

"No! Actually it wasn't!" Frosty said indignantly, "The worst part was what we did to escape the dragon. We used the enchanted stone you gave us. The idiot here, tried to teleport us out with the stone, through an anti-teleport barrier."

Iron Hoof hung his head. Ancient Tome just stared at him.

"She's right," he agreed, "You are an idiot. I'm surprised both of you are still alive."

"Especially considering where we ended up," Frosty commented.

"Where?" asked Ancient Tome, "I'm curious now. Where did you end up?"

"Underground."

Tome's eyes almost popped out of his head.

"Seriously?!"

"We almost suffocated to death! We had to dig our way back to the surface! Good thing we were at least close. Any deeper and we'd have died. And here's the best part; we actually ended up emerging in a graveyard! Some grieving family saw us and went running because they thought it was the zombie apocalypse. That was not fun trying to explain to the authorities."

Ancient Tome stood awkwardly for a moment, scraping his front hoof against the floor.

"Well," he grunted, "At least tell me you retrieved it?"

Iron Hoof turned his head and opened up one of the saddlebags laying on his back. He reached inside and pulled out a large black piece of metal, which he held in his teeth. Ancient Tome eyed it greedily and then grabbed it with his telekinesis, pulling it over and floating it in front of his face.

"Good work, Iron," he said appreciatively, "We're a step closer to our goal now. You've both done the Brotherhood proud."

"I'm just happy to help," Iron Hoof replied.

Frosty rolled her eyes, but the soldier didn't catch it. Rather than draw attention to it and pointlessly draw out the conversation, Ancient Tome levitated the weapon of legend over into a small rucksack laying on a nearby desk.

"We will need to call together the rest of the Brotherhood," Tome explained, "Not at my mansion again though. We've met here one too many times already. I don't want Soft Spoken or my son to suspect anything."

"I can't host twelve ponies," said Iron Hoof, "You've seen my house, you KNOW I can't."

"Well I'm not holding it," Frosty added, "I held it five times already!"

The old unicorn sighed and rubbed forehead wearily.

"Fine, I'll ask Gold Coin to host," he conceded, "but I'm telling him it's your fault he has to."

"Oh no. Not Gold Coin getting angry. He might throw a pencil at me or something. Anything but that. Please."

Tome just gave his friend an annoyed frown.

"SOFTY! GET IN HERE!" he shouted.

A door opened nearby, and a wrinkled brown earth pony with a white mane stuck his head through the door and looked inside.

"You called, sir?" he asked.

"Iron and Frosty are visiting. Make them comfortable."

The pony nodded and opened the door the whole way, gesturing into the corridor beyond. He retreated that way himself first, with Iron Hoof following soon after. As he left, the weather pegasus turned back to her brother-in-law as he opened up the rucksack on the table and levitated out a large slab of crystal.

"Tomey?" she said, "What are you doing?"

"Making a call..."

***

Princess Celestia of Equestria laid down on the soft purple bedding in her private chamber, eyes closed and resting in a state of half sleep. The sun was overhead, and she was only barely keeping consciousness because she knew that she would be needed in another few hours to lower it to make way for Luna's moon. Her eyes flickered slightly and she kicked a bit as an image flashed across her mind, a memory from long ago...

"How though?" Celestia asked, "What could have possibly done this to my little ponies?"

A tear fell from the sun princess's eyes as she looked across the battlefield. Down below, across the rolling green hills and the over the little bridge that crossed the river, and well onto the flat ground on the other side of it, thousands of ponies of all colours, races and talents laid strewn about, many of them sporting bruises and dented armour and with more than a few bleeding in places.

"Your highness, it's actually not as bad as it looks," the captain said reassuringly.

Celestia turned to look at him and crouched slightly to be face to face with her lieutenant.

"How can it not be?!" she screamed, "Look at them, Blade Edge!"

"That's the thing though!" he replied, "They're not dead!"

Celestia raised back to her full height.

"What?"

"They're all alive! Not a single death! We checked! They're all just unconscious. May need a bit of treatment from our medical ponies, but they're all otherwise fine. Honestly, I'm as shocked as you are. Whatever did this is either really merciful or really incompetent."

"Go with the first."

Celestia and her captain whipped their heads around and saw two strange pink creatures sitting in the princess's chariot. They were both hairless everywhere except the top of their head, and they appeared to be sitting in what should have been a very awkward position, with their back legs bent forward over the edge of the seats they were sitting on and dangling limply below. Curiously both creatures were wearing a lot of clothing too.

They were so strange looking. It took Celestia a little while to notice their hands, and realise that they were probably bipedal, like diamond dogs. There was also something else about them that seemed off to her. She couldn't quite place it.

"Who are you?" she asked, "Was this your doing?"

One of the creatures looked sideways at the other.

"I think the god princess of ponies may be mad at us," he whispered.

The other one stifled a giggle.

"Her problem, not ours," he said, "No use crying over spilt milk. I mean, we're trapped here forever, and we've made peace with that. I think the princess can get over losing a single battle in which no-one actually even died."

Well, whoever they were, they were definitely arrogant. That in itself was a bad sign.

"I demand to know who you are!"

"Well, we'd like to tell you, princess. Honestly we would," the first creature replied.

"It's just that there's a bit of a problem with that," the second one added, "That being that we're both holders of eldritch knowledge far beyond your poor little pony minds, and even telling you who we are alone could destroy all of civilisation."

"So please understand that when we act like condescending pricks, it's only out of respect for you."

"Could have worded that a bit better."

"Yeah, I know."

Celestia was more than a little off-put by the strange direction this conversation had taken.

"I demand an explanation!" she shouted at the creatures, "Who are you?! Why did you do this?! How did you do this?!"

"To which the answers are; 'can't tell you', 'they started it', and 'can't tell you' respectively," the second replied.

"If you refuse to answer my questions, I shall force the information out of you. I am not a mare to be trifled with, and I take threats to my citizens very seriously."

The first frowned at her.

"You know, I don't remember you being this angry before."

"Rules one and two!" the second shouted at his companion.

"Oh, shut it. It's not like she even knows what we're talking about. How is she going to make the connection?"

"Yes, well be smart and don't say anything more. If you let something slip, and pony civilisation destroys itself in an existential crisis, I've got to say I'll be more than a little upset."

"I didn't know you cared."

"Well I do. They're real aren't they? I mean, look at the princess. Even now she's listening in to what we're saying and trying to make sense of it, and slowly getting angrier and angrier because she can't, and giving me an evil glare, and trying really poorly to hide it in front of the other pony, but failing because I just pointed it out, and now she's probably thinking of some kind of threat or leverage to use against us..."

"By the way, usual wager that you know what does nothing."

"You're on."

Tired of her enemies talking about her like she wasn't there, Celestia finally snapped.

"Okay, fine! If that's the way it's going to be, you can answer all my questions in the palace dungeon in Canterlot!"

Celestia closed her eyes and focused on a spell. She fixed onto her targets and pictured their cell in her mind. Her horn glowed brightly with yellow light, and the princess let loose her power, banishing the two creatures to their prison. She opened her eyes and stepped back again in surprise upon seeing that the two were still there. Captain Blade Edge just stood awkwardly to the side throughout, and exchanged a worried look with her.

"Aha!" said the first, "I was right! Celestia's magic doesn't work on us either! I win the bet!"

"Ugh," the second groaned, "Fine then. What do you want me to sing?"

"Well, what would be appropriately awkward for this moment?"

"If you choose what I think you're going to choose, I will fucking kill you."

"Oh don't worry, I'm not."

"Good."

"I choose '3-way' by Lonely Island."

Second narrowed his eyes and looked at First.

"I'll sing it, because I honour my bets, but I am going to whip you with my belt after I'm done. Also you chose a duet song, moron, so you're singing it with me."

"Okay, fine, we'll do something else."

"Good."

"Jizz in my pants. That's a solo song. Or can be anyway."

"You little ba-"

"And you have to sing it directly to the princess."

"You're a cruel little man."

"Do it."

The second stood up in the chariot and balanced on two legs, confirming Celestia's earlier theory, and front flipped out of it to land in front of the still shocked princess. Second cleared his throat and dusted off his coat. First snapped his fingers. A beat from an unknown source began to fill the air, and the creature began to sing a song that neither alcohol nor the passage of time could make the princess forget.

Celestia's reminiscing was mercifully interrupted by a knocking at the door. Celestia opened her eyes and looked over at it.

"Yes? Come in."

The doors opened and one of the white coated pegasus guards rushed into the room, sweating profusely.

"Your highness!" he gasped, "There's been an emergency! There was a break in at the royal archives! Only the new captain survived, and he's out cold in the infirmary right now!"

Celestia groaned and pulled herself up. The guard looked at the massive alicorn as she stretched her wings, revealing scars all over her underside. The princess climbed off her bed wearily and stood on all fours again.

"Let's go then."

***

Ancient Tome adjusted the controls on his communicator, and it began to grumble with light static and emit sounds. The device was essentially a giant slab of enchanted crystal, one of his own inventions, and it was still in the prototype phases right now. In essence, it acted as a long distance transmitter and receiver for audio and visual signals. He could speak to somepony elsewhere in Equestria face to face instead of through letters. If only the enchantment wasn't so clunky he could have sold the design already.

That was the problem of being the inventor of a new technology; you were forced to work with the earliest and poorest versions of it. Others would later come and improve his designs once it was out there, perhaps succeeding where he could not and making it in colour and without the static, but for now he had to put up with what he had. The sad fact of it was that he would probably be dead long before his device was in common use.

"Hello?" said a voice on the other end with a Manehattan accent, "Who is it? Oh. Hello, Tome."

The yellow earth pony's face came into view from behind the wall of static. Not that he could tell it was yellow through the black and white of the screen. He only knew he was yellow because he had met the other pony in person.

"Gold Coin," Tome said happily, "I have good news! Iron and Frosty got it! The Reaper's horn is now- "

They were interrupted.

"Cousin? What's that thing?"

Gold Coin disappeared from view for a second.

"Nothing! Get out now!" he thundered.

"Well excuse me, princess."

The pony returned to the screen.

"Family visiting," he explained, "Nothing to worry about. You said you got the Reaper's horn?"

"That I did!" Ancient Tome replied, "We can at last move onto the final phase, and then the ritual!"

"Yeah...About that..." the other pony said awkwardly, "I know pulling off a theft like that at the archives was quite something, but I think stealing a statue will be a bit harder."

"We'll take these problems as we come," Tome replied, "That's what we do. Our entire order is based around finding creative solutions to problems like these. It’s a skill we value most highly."

"This is going to cost me, isn't it?" Gold Coin asked dryly.

"I ask nothing of you," his friend replied, "I am merely informing you of the situation. If you wish to contribute time, effort or funds towards furthering our cause, your generosity is greatly appreciated, but you are under no pressure to do anything, and you never have been. Your mere presence is enough for me, old friend."

Gold Coin exhaled and rolled his eyes.

"I guess I'd better get to work then. It was nice talking to you Tomey. Gold Coin out."

"Wait!" Tome interrupted, "I'm not done yet. I'm calling together a meeting of the Brotherhood tonight."

The figure on the screen stopped for a second.

"Tonight?" he asked.

"Yes, tonight. And it has to be at your place."

"Wait, what? My place? Tomey I can't-"

"It's your place, or the Everfree," the old unicorn insisted, "I've got no other volunteers tonight, and holding the meeting at my own mansion would be less than ideal for a number of reasons."

"Has Mystic not moved out already?"

"He's nine!"

"So? When I was nine I was already on the board of directors. Your son has no excuse."

Tome narrowed his eyes at the vague pony shape on the screen in front of him.

"Touché."

***

The little blue unicorn stared up with wide eyes at the huge statue of the human. It had a lot in common with some native Equestrian races. Like the diamond dogs and minotaurs, this being was blessed a pair of hands where ponies and a number of other races only had hooves. It too had a kind of mane like ponies and a similar, though different facial structure. It lacked a muzzle, but it still had a mouth and nose. What set it apart was that the human lacked any kind of fur or coat over the rest of it's body, even though it appeared to still be a mammal.

Second was preserved exactly as he was when he was first frozen like this, just like mighty Discord before him. Like ponies, Second wore clothes, though they were different to the kind that ponies wore, seemingly having been specifically tailored to his unique body shape. Not much could be seen of the clothes underneath since he was a statue now, but it was quite obvious that Second was wearing some kind of coat.

Mystic Chant thought that Second actually looked a bit sad. Discord was difficult to look at in his stone prison because his expression showed fear and horror when he was frozen all those years ago by the Elements of Harmony, as if he knew what was happening to him and was deathly afraid of it. He was frozen with that horrified look forever.

The human on the other hand was not. He stood still, arms folded and eyes closed, as if he had accepted his fate. It wasn't like he was content and waiting to be struck down though. He was wincing, like a pony who was about to be punched in the face.

The young colt's eyes were drawn to the golden plaque on the base of the statue.

"If I speak the truth, the world will die,
it's people will perish in an anguished cry,
the same fate that they delivered to him last night,
when they shot him dead, and took away his light.

Should I help, or should I kill?
Every pony, or just the ones on the hill?
I'll keep silent, and spare them that fate,
because he wouldn't want that; He wouldn't act out of hate."

Mystic raised an eyebrow. Those last two lines seemed very uncharacteristic of the being whom historians generally agreed to be the most dangerous enemy of Equestria to have ever lived. It wasn't just in class that one learned about Second and First. They were spoken of in legends. The feats they accomplished were still talked about and speculated on today. When ponies wanted to scare each other, they told ghost stories. When ghosts wanted to scare each other, they told human stories.

"Miss Chalk Board?"

The teacher heard him and walked over. Mystic Chant was now the last pony looking at the statue, as the rest of the class had already left to look around at the other parts of the sculpture garden.

"Yes, Mystic? What is it?" she said.

"Where did the poem come from?"

The teacher paused for a moment.

"I'm not actually sure. Maybe it's something Second wrote?"

Mystic considered this.

"That doesn't make sense though," he argued, "The last line of the poem talks about how he didn't want to kill ponies! I thought Second and First were famous for killing loads of ponies!"

"Not quite," Chalk Board replied, "That's the curious thing about them. You'd assume they'd have killed hundreds, but in actuality there were as little as five pony casualties in the entire war."

Mystic Chant's jaw dropped.

"See that's the thing," she continued, "Ponies like to forget that the humans weren't famous for killing. They were famous because nopony could kill them, at least until somepony did. They didn't try to take over Equestria, or bring about eternal night, or steal treasures. They weren't even doing it for revenge. One day they just dropped out of the sky and tore down our whole world.

“And nothing could stop them. No weapon could hit them, no spell would affect them, and no matter how many waves of soldiers were thrown at them, they took down everypony no matter what, and non-lethally too. That's why it was such a shock when First was killed. Everypony thought that the humans were immortal. Some even considered them to be gods."

The blue unicorn looked back at the statue. Somehow, the knowledge that the imprisoned entity before him had brought a nation to it's knees almost without a single death made it even more terrifying, like it had just been toying with all the soldiers it took down. That was what scared him; the idea that in spite of everything he could do, Second may have been holding back.

***

Celestia just stared. There was nothing that could be said that was adequate to describe her feelings at that moment. The entire central chamber of the royal archives laid in ruin before her. Somepony had made especially sure that nothing remained of the column in the middle of the cylindrical chamber.

The archives were built with the intention of making it as inconvenient as possible to reach any of the forbidden treasures housed within it's walls. Every single floor of the chamber had a series of numbered vaults in the walls, sealed up with huge stone doors that could only be reached by means of a wooden bridge. There were two of these wooden bridges on each floor, both sticking out of the stone pillar that normally dominated the central chamber, that would rotate to reach the doors at the edges of the room.

The idea was meant to be that one pony would maintain the control platform placed on top of this pillar and from there rotate the whole column and thus the wooden bridges so that a second pony positioned on those bridges could reach the vault required. It was needlessly complex and it made retrieving anything from the vaults a pain. Which was the point. None of these vaults were ever meant to be opened again, save two or three. The bridge system was just supposed to slow down would be thieves.

However, the concept seemed rather pointless now. Whoever the thieves were, they obviously had no trouble getting into the vaults and stealing whatever they wanted, and they had demolished the entire chamber in doing so. Somehow. The stone pillar had collapsed, the wooden bridges were splintered and burnt, and the vault doors around the edges of the room were all cracked and broken. The only item that seemed to be completely intact was the control platform, which rested atop a pile of rubble from the pillar. Underneath that rubble, the corpse of a giant scaly red dragon laid on it's belly, blood leaking out from the head.

A memory flashed across the forefront of Celestia's mind, momentarily distracting her.

"Hey, dragon? Settle a bet. If I cut out part of your heart and put it in myself, would we then be able to feel each other’s pain and would we both die if one of us were killed?"

"What? No! Of course not! Where did you strange creatures get such a notion?"

"Alright, so Equestrian dragons are not like the ones from that Sean Connery movie. I win the bet again. Now to think of a suitably humiliating song choice..."

The princess shook herself out of her stupor and focused on the task at hoof. What had her worried the most out of all this was the broken vaults. On every level at least one vault was now open. Some had swung open by accident, others had their doors destroyed, either smashed into pieces or ripped clean off the wall, and at least one on the upper levels had been opened properly. Considering the state of most of the other doors had, the one that had been opened properly was clearly out of place.

"Somepony go check that door up there," Celestia ordered, "Tell me what vault number that is. I can't make it out from down here."

Three pegasi took flight and ascended towards the vault above, and Celestia looked around at the other vaults. She tried to remember their contents, but was hard pressed to keep track of most of them. To her right, a unicorn guard levitated the body of another pony who appeared to have been stabbed to death past her. She watched the guard morbidly, and was slightly surprised by the sudden appearance of another guard to her left.

"Your majesty," he said, taking a bow, "I have the archive records, as requested."

Celestia levitated the ancient book of records out from between the guard’s teeth and brought it up in front of her. She flicked through the pages quickly and made count of all the broken vaults.

"Let's see," she muttered, "Vault 3G, that's the Elements of Harmony...4K...the uncensored history books. 9F, the alien spaceship, 4Q, Luna's foalhood drawings, 4Z, Metal Gear, 3D, those damn glasses, 5T, the elder scroll, 2W, that compass that doesn't point north, 7S...Oh. Oh dear."

Celestia looked up from her record book.

"Somepony check 7S! I swear if they took anything from 7S then we're all-"

"They didn't take it your highness!" one of the pegasi on the upper levels called back.

Celestia breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness," she said, "The colonel would kill me if I let somepony steal his secret recipe."

"Also by the way your highness," the pegasi called down again, "The opened vault you asked us to check is 12J."

"12J. Good. Right. No, wait."

The princess stopped dead in her tracks, and her eyes widened in realisation. She flipped through the pages of the book again.

"Is it empty?!" she shouted back at the guard.

"Yes your highness."

If it was even possible, Celestia went even whiter.

"They took the Reaper's horn."

Nothing in this world really scared the princess. There was nothing she truly feared, not even death. However, that wasn't because the idea of her dying didn't phase her. It was because she was the normally immortal princess of Equestria. Under normal circumstances, she couldn't be killed anyway, and any attempt made by anything less than another alicorn would inevitably fail. Except, if her would-be assassin were armed with the Reaper's horn. Then and there, for the first time in almost a thousand years, the princess was afraid.

Celestia trembled slightly and closed the record book. She stared at the floor for a second. The guard next to her began to take notice, so Celestia quickly regained her composure and shoved the book back in his face, ordering him to place it back where he got it from. She thought she had heard the worst of it. If only she had kept reading, and realised what else was missing from the archives.

***

In the infirmary of Canterlot Castle, a lone doctor wandered about the ward checking on his patients. He was a unicorn, cerulean blue, pink mane, and with a syringe for a cutie mark, and he was currently busying himself by checking on the condition of his patients.

The infirmary was currently filled with just as many bodies as living patients, which annoyed the doctor to no end. Especially since both kinds of patients were equally motionless and hard to tell apart at a distance. There was a virus going around the palace right now, and he needed all those beds for the living thank you very much. Didn't the castle have a morgue anywhere?

"Alright...Let's see..."

He levitated a clipboard in front of him as he walked over to the bedside of a particularly important royal guard, who he had heard from the ponies that brought him in had survived an attack on the royal archives. He was a white earth pony with a short blond mane. He was cut and bruised in several places thanks to the attack, and his armour which laid at the side of his bed was soaked in blood, though of whom or what was anypony's guess.

The guard opened his eyes.

"Ah, you're awake," the doctor said warmly, "Captain...Chain Mail is it? How are you feeling?"

Captain Chain Mail stared up at the doctor. It was a cold, piercing glare, and his eyes were green and serpentine. The doctor was unnerved. He was sure they weren't like that when he came in. The captain opened his mouth and snarled, revealing lines of jagged teeth and a long forked tongue. The medical pony jumped back away from him in surprise, not expecting such a reaction. Chain Mail leapt out of his bed across the infirmary at the unicorn and knocked him to the ground.

"I need...magic..." he hissed.

The huge earth pony was standing right on top of the floored doctor and stared right into his soul. He could only cringe as this thing, whatever it really was, stomped it hooves down on top of him and stopped him squirming and trying to escape. He closed his eyes and tried to pull his head away, but the captain pulled his head back so he was facing him again. He screamed, and as he did, the creature's snake-like tongue shot down his throat. He began to choke.

The possessed earth pony pulled back, and the tongue snapped. The rest of it came flying out of his mouth and the doctor swallowed it. The green eyes and the jagged teeth disappeared, and Chain Mail fell unconscious again. His victim stood up again and tried to catch his breath, but then the tongue in his mouth started wriggling. It crawled down his throat and into his stomach, and then he felt it shift form inside of him. It became lighter and it lost its solidity. He could no longer feel it so much as he felt a sensation as the thing floated up through him into his brain.

The doctor's eyes tinted green and his mouth hung open again, revealing that he had gained the same forked tongue and sharp teeth of his attacker. The unicorn had only a moment of thought left before he lost his mind, and another entity took over.

Suddenly, his eyes were its eyes, and it was in control. He could still see and hear and touch and taste and smell, but the entity could as well. And unlike him, it was in full control of the body, including his voice and memories.

"Magic..."

Inside his mind, the terrified medical pony screamed, but the sound did not leave his mouth. It remained a muted thought. The creature in control of his body didn't respond, either unable to hear him or not caring. It turned to the huge glass windows that dominated one side of the room and lit up his horn. The windows all shattered spectacularly, raining down shards of broken glass on the room regardless of the many still sleeping patients in the beds below the windows who were hit by it.

Just like the captain had done while he was possessed, the unicorn jumped across the room further and higher than he should have been physically able to, jumping right into the now empty window frame. He looked down on the landscape of the city of Canterlot, the orange sun dying on the horizon, and grinned.

"More magic..." he said, "I need more magic. Need the human..."

***

"Welcome one and all!" Ancient Tome called out dramatically, "To this, the meeting of the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN!"

Thunder and lightning struck outside to punctuate the sentence, which was weird because it wasn't even cloudy a few minutes ago.

"Wonderful," said Gold Coin, "Can we please get on with it?"

"Ahem."

Tome's horn lit up as he reached into the saddlebags he brought with him, drawing out the black lump of metal. He was met with a respectful silence as he laid the weapon down on the desk in front of the circle of ponies.

"Fillies and gentlecolts," said Tome, "I introduce, the Reaper's horn, aka the divine judgement, aka the god-killer, aka the one and only thing in this world capable of taking down the sun tyrant. If this isn't a sign that our time is at hand, I don't know what is. Any questions?"

"Uh, I have one."

The words came from a middle aged stallion who appeared to have not shaved much recently.

"Yes?"

"How does this help with the ritual? Sure, Lord Second will appreciate having his weapon back when he's free, but I don't see how this furthers our goal of actually freeing him in the first place."

"Excellent question, Rail Way," Ancient Tome replied, "And the answer is ‘shut up’. You'd already know this if you paid attention to previous meetings. We have the salts, we have the ritual markings, we have the energy supply, and in five days we will have the full moon and the correct star alignment as well, but we're still missing an ingredient. Do you remember what it is?"

The stallion opened his mouth to answer, but then realised he actually didn't know. He stopped, and put a hoof on his chin as he contemplated the question. Realising that this would take all day, Frosty Morning cut in to answer for him.

"We need some of Second's essence," she explained.

"Oh, right! Gotcha," Rail Way replied.

"And the only place we can get that since he's stuck in a statue is through objects he touched in his life a thousand years ago. Such as..."

"...the Reaper's horn," Tome finished, "Now you see why we need this?"

"...Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, since not all of you were involved in creating the ritual markings, only a few of you have been to where this whole thing is going to take place. So you know, we found a nice empty clearing in the Everfree, and I sent auntie ahead to set up camp there and make it habitable. When the ritual takes place, I'm going to want everypony present there. This is important, guys. Don't screw this up."

"Are you sure the freaking Everfree forest of all places is a good location for this?" asked a yellow unicorn mare, "That just seems to me like it's asking for trouble."

"It's safe thanks to our protective wards, it's outdoors so we don't have to find a building with a skylight, and it's far away from where anypony can find us to interrupt the ritual. I think it's perfect."

"It's a forest full of wild animals!"

"It's where we're doing the ritual, Chameleon! Deal with it!"

"Tomey, this is a terrible idea, and I think-"

"Shush," Ancient Tome interrupted, "We are not having this discussion. I'm the leader, and I say it's the Everfree. Now, onto our next topic; How are we going to steal Second's statue?"

***

Mystic Chant approached the front door of the mansion and knocked a hoof against the old wooden doors. He turned around and looked across the garden outside as he waited for the butler to open the door. Everything was dark out now. The weather ponies had scheduled a three day rain storm, so it was going to be like this for a while. The statues of famous family members dotted the landscape outside. In the distance, at the very edge of the estate, Mystic could see the statue of his father still under construction.

The door clicked and opened up, and Mystic turned around to see the kindly face of the old butler, who smiled warmly at him.

"Hello there, Mystic," he said between coughs, "Sorry about my voice, I'm not feeling too good today. I regret to inform you that your father is busy with some official business tonight. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I understand that it's very important."

Mystic Chant stepped over the threshold and wiped his hooves on the mat. The butler closed the doors behind him. He was an old stallion. A genuinely old stallion. Not just somepony who looked old like father was. Mystic never asked him his age because he was told that it was considered rude, but father hinted that he was somewhere between seventy and eighty now. He too had a wispy white mane and wrinkles, but his coat was chocolate brown, and he never grew a beard like his father had. He did have a powerful moustache though.

"That's okay, Softy," said Mystic, "He always has something."

Soft Spoken smiled weakly at the young colt and glanced down the hallway.

"Would you like me to get you anything?" he asked.

"I'm fine thanks," Mystic replied dully.

"No tea? Do you want me to make you a sandwich perhaps?"

"No thank you."

The old butler thought for a moment, trying to think of something to cheer up the unicorn, but he quickly realised that he couldn't think of anything. Mystic Chant wasn't exactly depressed; that was a difficult emotion to feel when surrounded by such luxury, but when his father wasn't around he was still rather quiet, and outside his capacity to act as a servant to him, there was little that the old stallion could do to cheer him up when he was down. At times like these, the little unicorn would retreat to his room and either play games or read something.

Soft Spoken paused for a second as he considered that. A grin spread across his face as a new idea came to him.

"Hey Mystic," he said, "How would you like to read something from Tome's study today? I know you've already read most the books in your room. Maybe you can borrow one of his?"

Mystic Chant's eyes lit up.

"Has he got any books about humans?" he asked excitedly.

He nodded and turned to walk down the corridor. His young charge followed after him, bouncing up and down in excitement.

Success.

***

Celestia trotted through the large hallway towards the infirmary. Two guards stood either side of her and accompanied their princess through the hallways. The torches were lighting up the hallways now, as the solar princess had not twelve minutes ago lowered her sun to make way for Luna. She normally liked to watch her sister raise the moon and talk with her for a while, as this was one of the few times of the day that both of them were awake outside of certain special occasions, but right now she had more pressing issues.

They turned a corner and entered the infirmary. The first thing that the princess noted was how cold the room was. The windows at the top of the room had been completely destroyed, and it was letting a draft in. Several other royal guards, mostly the batponies that served Luna, could all be seen milling about the room and checking on various aspects of the scene.

Some were carrying out the patients and/or corpses to take them somewhere else, while others were inspecting the damage done to the room or talking about it. One night guard in particular was having a heated discussion with a white earth pony, whom Celestia assumed to be one of her day guards out of his armour.

Celestia approached the scene quietly and cleared her throat to gain the guards' attention. They both noticed her and very quickly bowed down to greet her. Celestia just rolled her eyes and waited for them to rise of their own accord, which thankfully took less time for guards than it did for most.

"Your majesty," said the night guard, "We were unable to determine the cause of this disturbance, however it-"

"It was Sliske," the princess interrupted.

"Uh, pardon, your highness?"

"It was Sliske. Or as he always liked to call himself, Ssssssslisssssssske."

Princess Celestia hissing was way scarier than it should have been.

"He's an old foe of mine from several thousand years ago with a serious attitude problem. He's a body snatcher. He shifts form and possesses ponies to take control of them and use them to carry out his tasks. His biggest weakness is that he can only control one pony at a time, and while he can read his host's memories and learn from them, he can never carry over the powers of any one pony, so he's only ever as powerful as his host. For this reason, it's been a lifelong ambition of his to one day possess an alicorn. And for some reason he hisses whenever he talks."

"Uh...huh..." the night guard replied, "How do you know this is him, princess? If I may ask?"

"Because until recently, he was imprisoned in the royal archives," Celestia answered, "However when I visited there earlier today to check the damages and see what was taken by the thieves, I discovered that he was missing from his vault. He can't move long distances in his gaseous form, at least not at night, so that means he must have taken control of somepony to escape. So either he's in one of thieves who took the Reaper's horn, or he inhabited the body of the lone survivor of the attack."

The princess looked up at the destroyed windows, and then turned to the unarmoured day guard.

"I'm guessing that was you?" she asked.

"Yes. That's me. Captain Chain Mail, at your service."

For the captain of the royal guard, she didn’t know him too well. He had only recently been promoted, and Luna had overseen the ceremony when it happened. She had only had passing interactions with him so far.

"Do you have any memory of being possessed?"

"No, ma'am. Should I?"

"Hard to say. Sometimes the victims remembered it, and sometimes they didn't. Does anypony here know which doctor was on duty when this attack took place?"

"There is a sign-in register for staff," the night guard replied, "Going by it, the doctor on duty was Heart Beat."

"Who is a unicorn," Celestia recalled, "This makes sense. Sliske preferred unicorns because he was a better magic user than anything else. He never minded pegasi, but he absolutely hated controlling earth ponies, because their skills did not easily lend themselves to his goals. It's no wonder he skipped over Chain Mail in favour of taking Dr. Heart Beat."

As the princess considered the situation, she was reminded that she now had two completely separate problems on her hands. She hoped they were separate anyway. There was every possibility that the attack on the archives was a rescue mission for Sliske and that taking the Reaper's horn was just a bonus. If that were the case, all her enemies were on the same side, and thus were even more dangerous. She could only hope that these seemingly unrelated problems remained unrelated.

The last thing she wanted was that maniac learning about the human.

***

Five days later...

***

In the Everfree forest, miles away from any kind of civilisation, a group of cloaked ponies met. A clearing in the in the forest played host to the group, who had set up tents and a campfire. Six of the small tents formed a semicircle around the fire, while two larger ones sat the other side of it, used as storage by the group, and contained a number of crates and barrels.

Ten ponies moved around the clearing and busied themselves with various activities. They all had their hoods down for the moment, not having to worry about anypony finding them. Their clothing would have disguised them perfectly were it not for that. Even though some were unicorns, some were pegasi, some were earth ponies, and at least one of them was a huge zebra, subtle enchantments on the robes meant that once those hoods were up, everypony looked identical, save for Ancient Tome, who had a symbol of a stylised two on the front of his robes to signify leadership, representing that he was a follower of Second.

Ancient Tome smiled happily to himself as he laid down by the fire and levitated a book in front of him, a fantasy series he had been following. His sister-in-law Frosty Morning trotted up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the book. She grinned.

"I didn't know you read those kinds of books, Tomey," she said.

Ancient Tome almost jumped thirty feet into the air. He slammed the book shut quickly and turned to face her, using his telekinesis to hide it behind himself.

"I don't!" he protested, "It was recommended to me by a friend!"

"Yoink!"

Tome turned around just in time to see Iron Hoof leap over his back and grab the book in his teeth. He also grinned at Tome and cantered over to Frosty Morning to show it to her. He dropped it on the ground, opening it at an earlier point in the book. The two friends began to giggle as they read the page, whilst Ancient Tome pulled the hood back over his head and laid on the ground.

"Why, this is something special Tomey," Frosty teased, "This Shadowfax pony sounds just like you."

"Except he's cooler," said Iron Hoof, "Shadowfax fought a big fire demon. Tomey never did that."

Ancient Tome sat up.

"Wait, how did you know about that?" he asked.

"There's a stage play version of this," Iron replied, "Didn't you know? It's been around for years."

"What?! No! I didn't know! Why didn't anypony tell me?!" Ancient Tome shouted.

Another of the ponies in cloaks passed by, hood also down and revealing an orange head and red mane. He turned to the three as Ancient Tome was having his fit.

"Spoiler alert," he said, "He comes back to life in the sequel."

Tome just stared at the pony as he passed by on his way to the supply tent.

"Not cool, Sun Rise!" he yelled, "Not cool at all!"

"Would somepony come and help us over here?!"

Ancient Tome and the most of the other cloaked ponies looked over to the other side of the clearing. From between the trees emerged two earth ponies, one of them an apple green mare and the other one a familiar yellow stallion. Both of them were wearing harnesses and were dragging along a huge long cart with a grey mass on it. Behind them both, an even more familiar elderly lavender unicorn used her magic to push the cart forward. As they entered the clearing, she smiled and walked over to Tome and the others, whilst the two earth ponies collapsed, and a few of the cloaked ponies from elsewhere in the camp went over to assist.

"Tomey!" she greeted, "How are you dear? Is everything going well? How's the little 'un?"

"Mystic is fine, auntie," the grey unicorn replied, "He's growing fast, and he has taken a lot of interest in human stories as of late. His teacher covered it in class a week ago, and he's been really into it ever since. He doesn't know about what we're doing though. I do wonder what his reaction would be if he found out..."

"Ah well, that's all good then. What about you, Frosty? How's your little girl?"

"Excited. She's got tickets to a Wonderbolts show next month," Frosty answered, "She’s very enthusiastic about it. She loves the airshows. You know how fillies are."

The lavender unicorn nodded.

"So then," she began, "Me and the other two did it. We pulled off the heist perfectly. Somehow we got the statue out of the gardens and past guard patrols. We have Justice to thank for that. She was able to use her authority to redirect one of the guards elsewhere."

"Good to see old Goldie pull through as well," Iron Hoof commented, "I wouldn't have expected a pencil pusher like him to be able to do any heavy lifting."

"Don't be so quick to judge," Frosty scolded, "He works in finance now, but don't forget he spent all his early life working the farm with the rest of the family. He knows how pull his weight."

"Quite right," Ancient Tome agreed, "Now come on everypony. We have all the supplies we need, and all of us are here now. Let's get everything set up and begin the ritual."

END.

Author's Note

Welcome one and all to the insanity that is Human.

What you’re reading here is the revised edition of chapter one. No plot points have changed in the revision, I assure you, it’s just cleanup and fixing plot holes and early installment weirdness caused by later updates. Also adding a theme song to every chapter like I started doing from chapter fourteen onwards, for consistency.

For new readers, I want you to know three important things right now. If the story so far seems too serious for you and you were expecting more comedy, it gets far sillier as it progresses, to absurd degrees. If referential humour isn’t your thing and you don’t find it funny, don’t worry, because almost no other chapter uses it as heavily as this one, (I improved as I wrote). And if you find the humans annoying, or overpowered, and you’re worried about Mary-Sue-ism, then rest easy. They’re not our protagonists. They’re our villains.

Next chapter: The downward spiral begins.

Chapter 8: A Man's Place in the World

"Come my children, come to me. For we shall venture into the forest deep and slay the beasts that lay there. If you follow me, you too shall find respite in the wilderness, for in amongst the Hell of the Everfree, there is that which is truly free, free from the forest itself. It is there that you will find my city, the city of the Lord, that is mighty Secopolis, capital of America. And you my citizens shall live there and prosper, and those that flock to it can enjoy a golden age, a thousand years of lasting peace, under the protection of your Gods in the Pantheon of B, and the New Human Empire."

-Secopolis, from the Brotherhood of Man's holy book Golden Age.

***

The ponies were speechless. The impossibility of an entire city springing up overnight was was just something that none of them could fathom. Not even Sliske, who had seen and done things well beyond the capabilities of mortal ponies, could think of any kind of explanation for this. Second had well and truly achieved the impossible. Here it was. A city three times the size of Canterlot and already fully populated by thousands upon thousands of ponies.

They looked left and right as they made their way down the hillside road towards the city. Ponies pulling carts through the streets or conversing with friends by the roadside. Ponies walking into shops to buy things or telling their children off for running in the road and getting in the way of the ponies pulling carts. There were police ponies and traffic wardens, there were street performers here and there playing instruments, and up above there were pegasi clearing out rouge clouds that were congregating over some of the more built up areas.

"How...?" said Soft Spoken, "I...I just don't understand...Where did this city come from?"

Buckshot, their cheerful pegasus tour guide, jumped in to explain.

"Well, Secopolis here was created by our mighty Emperor, Second I of America. Bein' a human, and an earthly representative of the Pantheon of B, he was gifted with amazin' powers that allow him to control and manipulate the physics of our world. Since he didn't have anything better to do, he decided to start building a home for himself. So he created the Palace of Kings."

The pegasus turned and pointed a hoof in the direction of the cathedral which dominated the centre of the town.

"That right there is the palace. O' course, it was only the start for him. After that, he created servants for himself to run the palace. Then he created himself some bodyguards, and then a number of general security guys, and he kept on creatin' more an' more ponies until he didn't have space for them in his palace anymore. So, he took out a pencil and created the city around the palace you see now, and filled it with other civilian ponies to make it run like a real city too. He created industry, leisure facilities, entertainment, food service places, homes for all the citizens. Hell, he created everythin' you see before you."

Soft Spoken blinked.

"Wait, you mean to tell me that Second just snapped his fingers and made all this?" asked Captain Chain Mail.

"Ayep. I was there when he built most of it. I was one of his original bodyguards. Still am, technically, but I ain't never been called into service, on account of me only being twelve hours old."

"You're twelve hours old?" said Broad Sword, "You don't look it."

"Neither does Explodey," Buckshot replied.

"Well why would I look twelve hours old?" asked Explodey, "I'm a real pony, with a life, and memories, and all that jazz."

Chain Mail coughed. Explodey turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Chain Mail...Is there something you're not telling me?"

The captain shifted awkwardly.

"I'm sorry Explodey...We're not supposed to tell prisoners anything. Truth is...You're another creation of Second. He said so himself when Celestia interviewed him. The first time you met Second in the shack was in fact when you were born. All your memories are false. I'm sorry."

The unicorn just stared at the captain and didn't say anything. He turned away and looked off down the street.

"I think you broke him captain," said Gold Coin.

Soft Spoken moved past the business pony and over to Explodey.

"Hey! Look at me kid."

Explodey looked the old butler in the eye.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Explodey swallowed and nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Of course I am."

"I know it's a lot to take in..."

"No really, I'm just fine. Give me just an hour or two to myself. I'll catch up with you guys later."

Explodey turned and walked off down one of the side streets.

"Wait, no come back!" Softy protested.

Explodey ignored him, and slowly shrunk into the distance.

"Ah wouldn't worry 'bout him," said Buckshot, "All children o' Second know their way 'round Secopolis. Knowledge of the city's layout is one of the fundamental parts of our being. That an' our unique skills. He'll find you again eventually."

Broad Sword looked to the others.

"If it's alright you guys, I think I'll go with him. He needs somepony keep an eye on him."

"Stay with him at all times soldier," warned Chain Mail, "If something happens to that pony I will not forgive you for it."

In a rare serious moment, Broad Sword saluted the captain without further comment, and made his way down the side street after the retreating figure of the unicorn.

"Ahem," said Buckshot, "If we're done here, I'll show you ponies the museum, and y'all can learn all about the history of Secopolis."

***

Spike landed with a thud on a hilltop just outside of Secopolis. He had seen the city from a distance while flying in from Canterlot, and was just as bewildered now as he was before. This entire city was definitely not here yesterday, and he knew because he passed by the Everfree when he was on his way to Canterlot from Pony Harbour. What was it? Illusion spell? Models? Or did Second just rewrite the book on Equestrian physics?

He set the crate containing the Ferrari and his prisoners down next to him. Inside that wooden box were two of the ponies he hated most in this world, Ancient Tome and Iron Hoof, descendents of Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy respectively. It still boggled his mind that the lineage of some of his closest friends could produce these Brotherhood scum. It was like an insult to their good nature.

He looked down into the city below. Second had clearly outdone himself, whatever it was he did to build all this.

"Halt dragon!"

Spike was startled by the sudden interruption and looked side to side searching for the source of the voice. He eventually settled his eyes on a group of four ponies just emerging from the trees to the left of him. They were all heavily armoured ponies, mostly pegasi and unicorns, and all of them had their weapons drawn. Spike had to chuckle a little at the site of that. It had been a long time since he had met a pony who posed any kind of physical threat to him.

"Hello there," he replied, his voice echoing through the forest, "Who might you be?"

The ponies didn't seem fazed.

"We're the Knights of Man, professional dragon slayers and protectors of Lord Second! We demand your immediate unconditional surrender!"

The scaly purple giant smirked at their threat.

"Professional dragon slayers, huh?" he asked, "I'm really curious as to how you earned a title like that when only a single dragon has died in the past millennium, and that was at the hands of one of Celestia's royal guards several days ago."

The Knights of Man looked to each other uncertainly.

"We...have never actually slain a dragon before," the head knight admitted, "We were created as dragon slayers by Lord Second. We even have cutie marks of dragon slaying!"

"Uh-huh," said Spike, "Professional dragon slayers who've never slain a dragon before. And for your very first attempt at it, you decided to try and threaten the biggest and most powerful dragon currently alive. You're a smart bunch, aren't you?"

"Biggest?" one of the knight repeated.

"And most powerful?" said another.

"Yes. I'm Spike, in case you didn't notice. As in Spike the Eternal? The Light in the Sky?"

The knights looked at each other again quizzically.

"Oh, you genuinely don't know who I am, do you?" said Spike, "Well this is rich. Dragon slayers who know nothing about the history of the dragons. Really, this is a level of ignorance I just don't encounter in day to day life."

The knight in charge appeared to become very flustered, and angrily pointed a hoof up at Spike.

"This is irrelevant! Surrender immediately or face the wrath of the knights!"

Spike leant down so that his face was level with the ponies. He breathed in deeply, and then exhaled a large black cloud of smoke, which sent the ponies flying harmlessly back into the forest. Spike laughed as the knights were knocked off their feet and landed in the forest beyond. He grabbed the crate he was carrying before in his right hand and lifted it up onto his shoulder.

"Sorry boys, but I've got plans."

***

The Secopolis Historical Museum was only a short walk from the street where they had split up with Broad Sword and Explodey, and was easy enough to spot. The building was huge, inside and out, but fortunately for them Buckshot knew which exhibits to skip so as to only show them the important stuff. Currently, they were making their way through the wing dedicated to the founding of the city.

"This particular piece here dates back to two hours AF, (that's after founding), which makes it roughly eight hours old. Archaeologists 'ave examined the piece, and they all agree that it appears to be some kind of ancient building stone, possibly used in the construction of the Secopolis Cathedral."

Buckshot was showing them a giant brick. It wasn't even an intact brick. It was smashed into tiny pieces. Additional details provided by the notes to the side of the display case indicated that it was thought to have fallen off the cathedral through old age.

Seriously, old age? It said right there that this block of stone was freshly created hours ago!

"And this over here," the pegasus continued, "Is the Declaration of Independence, signed by Second himself and stating America's independence from Equestria."

The group all gathered around another display case and looked in, Mystic having to jump up onto Soft Spoken's back to get high enough to see. It was a piece of parchment, looking positively ancient despite the fact it couldn't be any older than the rest of the city really, and it was written in one of those really fancy scripts that took some squinting to decipher. It read;

"Dear Equestria

Fuck you.

Trololololololol

Sincerely Emperor Second I of the United States of America."

Soft Spoken just shook his head and moved on, deciding not to question it. Chain Mail, Gold Coin and Sliske stayed to stare at it a while longer.

"An' this over here," said Buckshot, "Is the Bill o' Rights, which determines the freedoms and rights of all American citizens."

The earth pony raised an eyebrow sceptically, but walked over to read it nonetheless, the little blue unicorn still clinging to his neck and reading the same document over his shoulder. The new parchment was just as ancient as the declaration was, but was somehow even shorter. This one just said;

"If Second says you can do it, it's A-OK!"

Gold Coin raised a hoof.

"I have a question," he said.

"Shoot," replied Buckshot.

"When are we going to actually meet Lord Second?"

"I dunno. Some time after the concert I assume."

"Wait," Chain Mail interrupted, "There's a concert?"

"Ayep. The emperor loves to sing. So tonight there's gonna be a concert to mark the twelve hour anniversary of the city's founding, and then a follow-up concert for the twenty four hour anniversary later on. 'Course, them being so close together an' all, it'll probably just be one big twelve hour long concert with a break in the middle."

"And Lord Ssssssssssecond will be performing in thisssssssss?"

"Ayep. Should be beginning in two hours. Until then, I figured I could take ya to see Congress. One of the senators is challenging the president for his position today, and I wanna be there to see it."

"Why would you want to see that?" asked Chain Mail, "Who wants to hear politicians bicker at each other?"

Buckshot grinned.

"Y'all ain't seen how we do we politics in America."

***

"So," Lord First began as they approached the cliff edge overlooking the valley, "You have a very important job coming up. Your role is vital to the survival of Equestria and in bringing an end to the chaos currently occurring in it. You need to take action. I want you to kill Second."

Celestia looked over at the human in shock.

"But...Isn't he...?"

"Celestia, think of it this way," First interrupted, "Having been here, you have confirmed proof that there is an afterlife, and that it's run by me. If you kill Second, he's just going to pop up here again, and since we're in my domain he'll be completely under my power. He's just doing this right now because he believes he has to, and because he's cracked without me there to keep him stable. Kill him, and he can be with his family again. I'll take good care of my dear old dad. He'll be far happier up here with me than anywhere else he could be."

"Well...I suppose..." the princess said reluctantly, "I really hate killing anypony though! It just doesn't feel right!"

"You'll be doing Equestria a favour," First replied, "It isn't like killing him will destroy him forever. You'll just be making him my problem instead of yours, and I'm far better equipped to deal with him. If it helps, just think of it as teleporting him."

Celestia sighed.

"Fine."

"Good. Now, if you'll allow me a moment to explain?"

The princess sat near the cliff edge facing Lord First, waiting for him to begin the lecture.

"Before I explain to you how to fight humans, you need to understand the rules of Dramatic Convenience. In a nutshell, Dramatic Convenience, or DC for short, is the invisible force acting on your world controlled by the script writers that makes a story hold together where it wouldn't if played completely realistically. For example if a character is injured in one scene, but is needed to take part in a chase or fight a few scenes later, it will be the DC that sees to it the character is healed in time for that to happen.

"Now the thing about DC is that it affects your universe internally, but the force itself and its source lies beyond the fourth wall. It is not a part of Equestria as a fictional setting, and thus is not a part of it as a real place either. Its effects however are clear and concrete, and this was demonstrated in one of Twilight's early adventures attempting to analyse and explain Pinkie Sense. She got injured badly by a falling piano during her research, but DC kicked in, and she went from wheelchair bound to running full pelt from a Hydra in a matter of hours. Similarly, it is DC which allows ponies like Twilight to sustain serious injuries like that without dying, because in the context of a fictional Equestria, that scene was played as slapstick comedy.

"The thing about DC though is that it also acts to protect itself from view, because Equestria must be portrayed as being unaware of its true nature. For this reason, ponies who heal quickly and survive serious injuries thanks to the influence of DC do not notice it or comment on it unless it has an in-story explanation. However, as a writer, Second was able to spot DC in action from a mile away, and he drew attention to it. He hurt himself, DC healed him, and then he pointed out that he had accelerated healing, and that opened up a whole new can of worms called continuity.

"See, even though DC's healing effects were a part of the universe, DC itself was not. The only time advanced healing or similar effects are explicitly pointed out in a story is if there is an actual explanation for it. By pointing out his healing powers, Second severed the connection to the DC, and the universe retroactively came up with an explanation for his powers, and thus Second's advanced healing became canon."

Celestia put a hoof to her chin.

"So...this power, this DC, originally gave him a temporary healing factor, and merely by pointing it out it to somepony it became permanent?"

"Yes. This is also the source of most our other powers. Second and I accidentally injured a pony when we first came here in an over the top way that in a realistic situation, she shouldn't have been able to survive. By pointing this out, it also became canon that we had an uncanny ability for badly injuring ponies without killing them, and that was how we were able to defeat your entire army mostly without casualties."

"And what about the fact that Second and you can't be hit by weapons or affected by magic?"

"Same source, though this one works less on the rule of funny that the healing factor and knockout powers are derived from, and more from its darker cousin the rule of cool. Though we didn't know it until after I was already dead, me and Second were characters in a story too. Maybe Luna told you a little bit about Second ranting about invisible strings. What he was referring to, was that me and him were both characters in another episode of the show. Only, we were cast as the villains."

Celestia raised an eyebrow. First just sighed.

"Being a villain in MLP is something of a double edged sword. We had to be threatening and a credible threat to the Elements of Harmony, and for that reason the rule of cool made it so that when we were first attacked by the royal guards and police ponies, we demonstrated superior fighting skills by dodging all their attacks and fighting back. And just like with the healing factor, dad pointed it out, and it became cannon that we were literally untouchable. Those were the advantages.

"The disadvantages however, are painful in their scale. Being the villains guaranteed that we would lose in the end, though what form that took was up for debate, and it also meant that DC would be working against us to aid the heroes in overcoming the challenge we posed. As I said, the DC was severed when we pointed our powers out, and it was replaced by in-universe explanations instead.

"Now, for the healing powers, it was a biological explanation. When in Equestria our bodies change so that cells repair themselves several hundred times faster than before. For our immunity to magic, it was also biological, and it was explained that humans are just naturally magic resistant thanks to our non magical nature. The ability to beat multiple enemies nonlethally and dodge with such precision however has the in-universe explanation of us just being extremely skilled at fighting. And since the in-universe explanation is physical in nature, not some kind of mystic power, that means the ability for it to be negated is still there.

"And that's what happened. Being the main characters, Twilight and the other Elements of Harmony had the backup of Dramatic Convenience, which temporarily granted them the luck and fighting skill they needed to overcome us, and thus they were able to actually hurt us in battle, whereas you failed because DC did not come to help you, because you were not the main character and thus could not be the one to defeat us."

Celestia blinked.

"So that's it then? I can't hurt Second because this supernatural power refuses to come to my aid?"

"Yes," First replied, "Only a main character can hurt Second, and you and Luna are not main characters. You're just background ponies right now."

It was a rare occurrence that the princess of all of Equestria felt humbled, but now was one of those times. She bowed her head shamefully.

"So," the human continued, "I think it's time we gave you a cosmic promotion."

***

Congress, it turned out, was the name of a gigantic coliseum. It still paled in comparison to the sheer size of the Secopolis Cathedral, behind which it hid, but it was still amazingly huge. Soft Spoken, Gold Coin, Mystic Chant, Chain Mail and Sliske all followed their tour guide into the arena, where they soon discovered that he had already booked seats for them along the top row.

Getting up there was an awkward climb, but it was worth it for the view alone. From such a height, the group got a good look at both the central area where the action would be taking place, and of the rest of the crowded stands below them. It really did allow them to see everything. A pony passed through selling popcorn and other assorted snacks.

"Can I have some popcorn Softy?" asked Mystic.

The old butler gave him a half smile and turned to Gold Coin.

"Have you got any bits?" he asked, "I didn't bring my wallet with me when I abandoned Sparkle Manor."

His yellow earth pony reached into one of the upper pockets of his suit and drew out his own wallet, but Buckshot held out a hoof to stop him.

"Trust me," he said, "Yer money ain't no good here. America has its own currency, and they don't accept bits as payment."

Mystic hung his head in disappointment.

"Hey, don't worry kid," the pegasus said cheerfully, "I'll pay for it just this once. I'd kinda in my job description to accommodate y'all anyway."

Several minutes later, the unicorn colt dug into his popcorn, as the adults all sat together for discussion. Except for Sliske, who was his usual distant self. Must be an evil snake alien thing.

"So then, tell me about Congress," said Chain Mail, "You said the president was being challenged for his position. What do you mean? What's going on?"

"Well," Buckshot began, "The thing is, the United States of America and the New Human Empire are two different things. Whereas America is a country, the Empire is...well...an empire, and it encompasses multiple countries, or will once we start our conquest anyway. So though Emperor Second is the ruler of the empire, he doesn't want to be stuck running all the individual countries. So America has its own ruler who answers to the emperor only, and that is our president."

"Who is your president?" asked Gold Coin.

"Oh, it changes constantly," Buckshot answered, "See, what happens is that one president always succeeds the next by defeating the previous president in a death match, and the president can be challenged at any time by the leader of another party. There are various different political parties, all seeking to run things differently. If a party gets enough votes from the coliseum audience, then they send out their leader to challenge the president, and the winner's party gets to rule the country."

The assorted ponies just stared at him.

"That is the single worst system for succession of government I have ever heard of in my entire life," said Soft Spoken.

"Yeah...It is..." the pegasus agreed, "Makes for some mighty entertaining games though. Especially since the leader of the opposin' parties are also determined by a death match. Not even just one though. It's a whole dang tournament!"

Over the coliseum, a creamy white pegasus with a microphone flew out somewhere above the centre of the event and began to adjust his voice piece.

"FILLIES AND GENTLECOLTS," the amplified voice of the announcer called out, "WELCOME ONE AND ALL TO YET ANOTHER POLITICAL DEATH MATCH!"

The crowd burst out into cheers and hoof stomping all around.

"AND TODAY, IT'S THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES! WE GOT AT LEAST THREE BIG BATTLES COMING UP FOLKS, BUT LET'S KICK IT OFF RIGHT AWAY WITH RON PAUL VS. RICK SANTORUM!"

"Odd names for ponies," Chain Mail commented.

The two gates either side of the coliseum opened up and released the two fighters. One of them was an older unicorn stallion with thinning white hair, who was wearing a suit which covered him almost completely. Hardly appropriate for a death match. The other pony was a somewhat younger pegasus, who still wore a suit, but his didn't cover him completely, so unlike his opponent his cutie mark was visible. It appeared to be a...What was that? What even was that? Some kind of brown liquid?

"So, what form does this battle take then?" asked Gold Coin, "Do they just try to beat each other to death?"

"Eenope. Take a look."

They were choosing their weapons now from a table that had mysteriously sprung up out of nowhere in the middle of the arena. Not just one weapon each either. Oh no. They got to have their pick of several, plus armour. The pegasus with the odd cutie mark was decked out in samurai armour and clutching a katana in his teeth, and had a belt full of so much stuff nopony could tell what most of it was, though Chain Mail definitely recognised that this guy was carrying at least twelve grenades. The older unicorn was no better, having donned a massive suit of metal armour that completely encased his entire body, with what appeared to be missile launchers attached to the back. He was decked out like a space marine.

Soft Spoken covered his eyes with his hooves.

"Oh sweet Celestia, I can't look."

***

"There is a train, that's headin' straight, to Heaven's gate, to Heaven's gate~"

Second reached over and picked up a bottle of shampoo, which he began to pour over his head.

"And on the way, child an' man, and woman wait, watch and wait, for redemption day~"

Suddenly the shower curtain was pulled back, revealing a teal blue earth pony on the other side wearing a suit of bronze coloured armour. He remained stoic and completely serious even as the self styled Elder God of Equestria shrieked like a little girl and fell over in the shower. The human ripped the shower curtain off and put it around his waist.

"Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a unicycle!" he shouted at the pony, "This is the first time I've had a shower in a thousand years! Whatever the fuck it is you've interrupted me for, it had better be damn important, or I swear I will castrate you personally!"

The pony didn't even flinch.

"I apologise my Lord, but there's a rather large purple dragon in the entrance hall of the cathedral carrying a shipping crate. He claims it contains the Ferrari, the prisoners you wanted, and four of the Knights of Man."

Second stood completely still and remained silent, thinking back on his life so far and wondering just how he had reached a point where that sentence made perfect sense to him and was not even the strangest thing he had heard all day. Eventually, he dismissed it like all the batshittery in his life.

"Well, if he's here to negotiate, I'm the wrong person to go to. Tell him to take it to the embassy. And while you're at it, tell the embassy to prepare the dragon room."

"Yes sir!" the armoured stallion replied.

"Oh, and commander?"

"Yes sir?"

"You are banned from ever coming in here again."

"Very well sir."

***

A unicorn and an earth pony kept moved through the back streets of Secopolis aimlessly. Explodey had his head hung low and wasn't talking much, while Broad Sword was just trying to keep him close by and offer him words of support. Nothing seemed to get through to his friend though, who remained uncharacteristically quiet for the whole walk.

"Come on Explodey," Broad Sword begged, "Talk to me! You'll always feel better if you talk about your problems. Don't shut me out. I'm here to help."

They stopped in their tracks and the unicorn sighed, looking longingly up at the sky.

"I just..." he began, "I can't...I mean...If I'm not real, then does that mean-"

"No stop there," the guard interrupted, "Don't talk about yourself as if you're not real. You're still here, aren't you? And thinking? I mean, look at all these other ponies in this city. They were all creations of Second too, and they're obviously real living ponies. It just means you come from someplace different than anypony else."

Explodey looked off to the side.

"Does it though? I mean, just how real am I? I know I think I am, but what if I'm not? Maybe I'm just being projected into reality by Second? What if when we stop him, I stop as well?"

Broad Sword could only smile sympathetically.

"Look, if it really worries you that much, we can find somepony to put your fears to rest. Now maybe the citizens might not be any help, but I bet those Brotherhood bastards would know all about Second's powers. We could go find one of them and get some answers for you."

"Speak of the devil..." said Explodey.

Broad Sword turned behind him and looked skywards, where he saw a pegasus floating around looking for something. He recognised him from somewhere.

"Softy claimed that the former racing champ Sun Rise was part of the Brotherhood, didn't he?" asked Explodey, "If I'm not mistaken, that's him right up there."

The guard smiled darkly.

"Good eye," he said, "Let's bring him down here."

"Already on it," Explodey replied, a vengeance in his voice.

The pegasus was startled as he was suddenly enveloped in a milky white glow. He beat his wings and tried to pull back, but was yanked hard by the telekinetic force behind the field, pulling him down towards the earth. He was moved over some rooftops on his way, and Sun Rise crashed down in an alleyway just off a small side street, and was pinned to the ground by the magic.

"What the fuck is this?!" he shouted, "Whoever this is, you're dead, you hear me?! You're fucking dead!"

At the end of the alley, a unicorn with a glowing white horn and an even whiter earth pony in golden armour stepped into view, both of them grinning evilly at him.

"Alright you, we want some answers," said Broad Sword, putting on his best guard voice, "We want to know everything about Second's powers and the way he created this city, right now!"

Sun Rise blinked.

"Are you seriously trying force information out me? ME? I'm one of the High Priests of Man! I fucking own this city! You picked a bad place to try and start shit!"

As if to vindicate his claims, Explodey was then immediately knocked out by a baton to the back of the head. The spell cut, and the pegasus was freed. Broad Sword turned in time to see the police pony coming at him as well and dodge out of the way, but doing so left his back exposed, and Sun Rise took the opportunity to smash a hoof right into the back of the guards neck between weak points in the armour. Unlike his friend, Broad Sword was not knocked unconscious, but the strike did completely cripple him for the time being.

Sun Rise and the police pony stood above him and looked down at the fallen guard, their heads blocking out the sun.

"Well, this was a stupid idea," thought Broad Sword.

Those were his final thoughts before the pegasus brought a hoof down on his head and knocked him out too.

***

Buckshot's tour group just stared down into the arena with wide eyes as the competitors were escorted out of arena on stretchers. Miraculously, both the senators had survived the battle, even though they had both lost limbs and gallons of blood. The senator who had used the space marine armour had paid for it with decreased mobility, and as it turned out the samurai senator’s katana was sharp enough to slice through steel. However, he paid for extra agility with lighter armour, and he hadn't survived that bombardment from the missile launcher unscathed. As it turns out, explosives hurt.

"LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A DRAW FOLKS!" the announcement pony shouted into the microphone, "WE'LL HAVE TO HOLD A REMATCH LATER, BUT FOR NOW EVERYPONY GIVE IT UP FOR PAUL AND SANTORUM!"

The group did not join in with the enthusiastic stomping of hooves. Buckshot was worried by this, and asked them what their problem was.

"The problem," Soft Spoken replied, "Is that this barbarianism exists at all! I ought to call Princess Luna back and tell her to send the army out here to wipe this city off the map for this alone, and I don't even know what other depravity you ponies get up to here!"

Heedless of Soft Spoken's words, Sliske interrupted.

"Hey, do you think anypony will mind if I go down there and collect up all the leftover blood? I don't want to sssssee it go to wasssssssste."

The ponies all turned to stare at him.

"What?" he said defensively.

"You know what? I don't care about any of this," said Chain Mail, "We're here to negotiate for peace with Lord Second. If you could please just direct us to him? These distractions have gone on long enough."

The pegasus shrugged and put a hoof to his ear.

"Buckshot to Bullseye, are ya there?"

At first the ponies were confused about what he was doing, but then a crackling noise came from their tour guide's ear, and a voice replied.

"This is Bullseye."

"The Equestrians are demandin' t'see the Emperor."

There was a pause.

"Bring them to the Cathedral."

***

Spike followed the teal blue stallion through the streets carefully. Being out in the open, he had a much easier time of getting around than he did inside Canterlot Castle, but he still had to manoeuvre carefully to avoid squishing some careless foal that wandered into his path of ponies crossing the street.

"We're nearly there," the blue pony informed him.

The embassy looked to be a large building. Maybe even large enough to accommodate dragons. The stallion in the armour made his way up the front steps to the main entrance, but half way there stopped to turn and look at Spike.

"I apologise for the inconvenience sir," he said, "but the embassy's front entrance is not suited to your size. You will have to go to the dragon entrance around the back. There's a large section of wall there that pops off and will lead you into the waiting room. The ambassador will be with you shortly."

The dragon raised an eyebrow, but did not question his fortune in finding a building actually designed with his kind in mind. If ever there once were buildings made with dragon entrances, they had long since stopped existing. With only nineteen dragons left in the world aside from him, or eighteen rather since Chain Mail killed one of them, most ponies didn't think a visit from a dragon was ever likely enough to warrant special provisions being made for them.

Between the presence of a dragon door and the ignorance of the Knights of Man, Spike was beginning to wonder if Second was even aware the Eclipse Crisis had occured at all. He was trapped in stone when it happened after all, and he had only been released days ago. It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that he had just missed that chapter of history.

Spike made his way around back and found the loose wall, which moved aside obediently for him. Inside was a huge chamber with great steel walls and another dragon door inside, as well as a few regular pony doors. Though he was hesitant, he nevertheless walked into the large room and sat in place, waiting for the ambassador. He laid the crate down next to him.

A quad of unicorns teleported into the room right on top of the shipping crate. Their appearance took Spike completely by surprise. He brought his spiked tail up in front of him to go on the defensive if they turned out hostile, but instead they all simultaneously lit up their horns again and disappeared, along with the crate he had been defending.

Spike grinned. Those unicorns couldn't have gotten far with a crate that size. At best they could have made it to the other side of the embassy, and if they were going to try to screw him over, he had no inhibitions about destroying all of them. He turned to make his way out the door again, but it slammed shut behind him, leaving Spike trapped in the room.

"Hah!" he boasted, "You ponies think metal will stop me? Nice try, but not good enough."

Spike breathed in a let out a torrent of green fire, and the liquid metal began to flow.

***

A series of knocks on the door caused Luna to pull her head out from under her pillow. She looked around the room miserably. It used to be her study, but after the destruction of her regular bedroom, the place was converted into a replacement, while her study was moved halfway across the castle. She groaned as she saw the saw the sunlight pouring into the room.

"Come in," she called.

The door opened, and Prince Blueblood entered. He had not shaven recently, it was clear, thanks to the stubble now growing around his face. He yawned.

"Wotcher," he said, "Look, I 'ate to bother you your maj, but it's pretty clear you ain't doin' too well right now. Since I'm on break from royal duties now, I thought we could talk it out and stuff. Y'know?"

Princess Luna smiled up at the eccentric prince.

"I appreciate the sentiment Blue, but I don't think there's much you can say that would help me at all."

"I could jus' listen, if you'd prefer that."

Luna stared down at her quilt cover.

"I miss her Blue," she said sadly, "I miss her so much. My sister and I have been together longer than most ponies live at all. I needed her. After I came back from the moon, big sister promised me that we'd never be alone again, and she'd always stay with me. We're alicorns. We don't normally die. So I believed her. I really believed she'd stay with me forever, and we'd never have to be apart again. It just hurts to think that I can't even rely on that anymore..."

The alicorn planted her face down in the quilt and covered her head with her hooves. Blueblood jumped up onto the bed and sat down next to her.

"Y'know," he began, "I knew this bloke called Vinny once. Short for Vinegared Chips. He and his brother Salty ran this chippie together fer years after their mum died, and said that they'd always split everything between them. They both ran the business, so they both got 'alf of everything. Then one day, burglars come around the brothers' flat and steal all Salty's cash, but not 'is brother's, 'cause ol' Vinny hid it too well.

"After that, Salty was skint for a while, and he had to keep borrowing money from Vinny. 'Cause they normally split everything all even like though, and neither of them usually lent or borrowed nothin', it divided 'em a bit, and when Salty tried to take a larger share of the profits to comp'nsate for his loss, the brothers had a falling out, and Salty stormed out of the place. That was the last time Vinny saw his brother alive, 'cause Salty went out drinkin' and got into a fight with some bad ponies."

Luna sat up and looked Blueblood in the eye.

"Is there a point to this story, or are you just trying to depress me even more?" she asked.

"'Course there is! Bloody cheek! It's that there ain't nothin' worse than partin' from this world on bad terms with the only ponies you really love, or even worse, because o' them, because then everypony involved just feels even worse for it. Celly can't reasonably be expected to never die. Not even Alicorns can resist everythin', as that mad bastard Second proved. What you should take from this, is that Celestia promised to stay with you for the rest of her life, and when you think about it, she kept that promise."

Luna smiled weakly at Blueblood, and looked out the window at the blue skies outside.

"What do I do now though Blue?" she asked, "Where do I go from here?"

"Well, you've lived a long time. You've had mortal friends you've known all your life die on you. Hell, it'll 'appen to me one day. What do you do when that usually happens?"

"...I go to Celestia and cry..."

"So now, you go to one of your mortal friends an' cry."

Luna grabbed ahold of the prince and hugged him, nearly choking Blueblood with how hard she was squeezing. The surprised prince's head rested on her shoulder, and the princess of the night began to cry into him. When he got some air back, Blueblood sighed and rolled his eyes. He patted Luna on the back gently, mumbling to himself.

"I 'ate it when they get all weepy..."

***

Broad Sword woke up feeling groggy.

"Uh...where am I?" he groaned.

"Church of Humanity."

The guard rolled his head in the direction of the voice and saw Explodey McGee sitting next to him, bound in so many ropes that almost none of his coat was visible underneath all the brown. The ropes spread across the room like a spider web and attached to various support beams and walls. The room itself was very simple otherwise, appearing to just be a large empty hall, though the stained glass windows full of pictures of humans did make for some interesting features. It didn't take him long to discover that he too was tied up in a similar fashion.

"You know," Broad Sword began, "In retrospect, maybe it was a bad idea to just randomly attack one of the most powerful ponies in the city for no good reason."

Explodey nodded.

"So why are we tied up to the support beams and walls like this?"

"...No idea."

"...Well fuck."

***

Soft Spoken, Gold Coin and Sliske all stood in a line together at the bottom of the steps leading up into entrance to the cathedral, and at the top of another set of steps. Mystic Chant cowered behind them in fear, while Chain Mail and their tour guide Buckshot stood ahead of the group to greet the pony coming out to meet them.

He was almost exactly like Buckshot in every way. Like they were twins. The only difference was that this pony had a scar on his right eye, and his cutie mark was a bullseye, as opposed to Buckshot who had something he called a shell for his, except it was red and looked nothing like a shell. Going by the cutie mark, the captain guessed that this was the pony who Buckshot had been speaking to earlier through the ear phone.

"Emperor Second awaits you in the throne room," he said, "He is most displeased at having to deal with this personally. You ponies are unwise to demand his attention."

"We'll accept the consequences as they come," said Chain Mail.

Bullseye grinned evilly, much unlike the warm and welcoming smile of his apparent twin.

"Will ya now? I'll keep that in mind. Better be careful making promises like that though. If Second really doesn't like you, he may just schedule you for a visit with the commander."

That sounded ominous, but Chain Mail really didn't want to ask about it. He much preferred to deal with Second right now. After a few more of Bullseye's vague threats, the ponies made their way into the cathedral, passing through several rooms filled with some of the most elaborate and beautiful craftsmanship ever seen. The stained glass windows, the patterns carved into the stone, the painting on the ceiling, the tile work on the floor, it was just spectacular.

Eventually, they were led into Second's throne room. It appeared to be a smaller replica of Celestia's at first, though there were of course some differences. For one the fact that there was only one throne, and the human appeared to have made the entire thing out of solid gold. He laid back in his seat, one arm laying on the armrest, and the other on his chin as he smiled at them in the way a cat smiled at a cornered mouse.

The group of ponies came to a stop in front of the throne. The twins meanwhile stopped even further back, and now stood behind the group at either side of them.

"Well then?" said Second, "Speak."

Chain Mail stepped forward again.

"We've been sent from Equestria by the princess to negotiate peace with the United States."

"Uh-huh."

"The Knights of Man came to our palace and said that we had to return all our prisoners and the Ferrari."

"Yeah."

"They should be on their way right now, being transported by Spike the Eternal."

"Mmhmm."

The captain stopped. The human had never sounded less interested in the situation.

"...So...Do we have peace?"

"Fuck no!" Second replied, "All that means is that you've given me my stuff back. Make no mistake, I still plan to ravage your entire world."

The ponies jaws dropped.

"My Lord...?"

Everypony turned their attention to Gold Coin, who now stepped forward to speak in place of the captain.

"My order, the Brotherhood of Man. We always believed that you were here to save ponykind. Did you not come from the stars to save our world from the alicorn tyrants?"

"'Alicorn tyrants'? Boy, what have you been smoking? I dare say that Celestia and Luna were the best things to ever happen to your miserable little planet. I'm not here to save anyone. I'm here to fuck everything up and cause as much chaos and destruction as I can before someone kills me."

Tears welled up in Gold Coin's eye, tears of a loyal follower who had just been told by their God that he didn't care about him or anyone else. And Explodey thought he had it bad being created by this man. Gold Coin had just had his faith shattered by the one thing he ever believed in.

"Now Sliske," the human continued, now addressing the possessed unicorn, "I know that chaos and destruction is a big thing for you. You like that stuff, don't you? We can still work together if you want. I could always use a sidekick."

"Don't listen to him Sliske," said Soft Spoken, "You know you can't. That man is nothing but trouble. We need you for this."

"Of course," Second continued, "I could always find a better body for you in exchange. That unicorn mare you're in now is probably dying of old age even as we speak, and besides, she's one of the Brotherhood. They're followers of mine. It wouldn't be nice to just steal her body permanently now, would it?"

"Sliske..." said Chain Mail.

"How about this instead?"

Second snapped his fingers, and next to him a new pony appeared, a huge white alicorn with a mane of fire, pupil-less eyes and no cutie mark. She stood there completely still save for her breathing.

"This is Host," the human explained, "She has no higher brain functions at all and all the power of the princesses. How about it Sliske? You always wanted an alicorn host, didn't you?"

Sliske was quite literally watering at the mouth now.

"Ssssssssshe isssssssss perfect..."

"SLISKE!" Chain Mail shouted, "SNAP OUT OF IT!"

The possessed unicorn looked in surprise at the captain, and then the rest of the ponies in their group. An angry look crossed her face, and Sliske turned back to Second.

"No."

"What?!"

"No. Thisssssss isssssssss a trap. You sssssssay ssssssshe hassssss no higher brain functionsssssssss, but I bet you sssssssssstill added ssssssome memoriesssssssss, didn't you?"

"Huh?" said Mystic, speaking up the first time in the conversation, "Why would that matter?"

Sliske turned to face the little blue unicorn.

"Becausssssssse my racccccccce are born without persssssssonalitiessssssss of our own. We develop them basssssssssed on the hosssssssssstssssssss we have. I tried to take over Equessssssssstria in the firssssssssst placccccce becaussssse my original hosssssst wassssss a conqueror and a tyrant back on my world. It hasssssssss only been through posssssssssesssssssssing sssssssseveral of the ssssssssspirits of Harmony both thoussssssssandsssss of yearssssss ago and recccccccently that I have sssssssstarted to turn. Knowing Ssssssssssecond, the alicorn issssssssss probably a trap to change my persssssssonality to make me obedient to him again!"

Second's face contorted with rage.

"FINE THEN!" he shouted, "IF YOU WON'T GO WILLINGLY, I'LL FORCE YOU OUT OF THAT BODY!"

The emperor got up from the throne and reached out a hand towards Sliske. Through some kind of unseen invisible force, Sliske's host, Lady Arcane Arts, was lifted into the air. Second's hand began to shake, and he formed a claw shape with it. Sliske began to choke.

"NO!" cried Gold Coin.

Arcane Arts' throat burst open and let loose a river of blood, which poured all over the throne room floor. The old unicorn was dead almost immediately, but even so, an unnatural screeching sound came from within the body. Black smoke poured out through the gaping wound and began to draw nearer to Second. As it was pulled towards him, the end of it facing the ponies formed into a simple face with huge teeth, and it was screaming in absolute terror.

The body of the unicorn dropped to the floor. Mystic began crying right on the spot and ran over to her. Even though she was an evil cultist, she was still his auntie. Or great auntie rather. He had felt uncomfortable enough with Sliske controlling her, but this was even worse. It was a thousand times worse than even the gruesome fate of Chameleon.

Gold Coin, screaming in rage, rushed forward and twisted on his forelegs, bucking Second right in the stomach. The human was launched back into his throne, and his grip on the smoke creature that seemed to be Sliske's true form was severed. Chain Mail drew his sword.

There was a clicking sound. Buckshot and Bullseye both drew weapons, as if from nowhere. Bullseye was armed with a crossbow and poison tipped bolts, while Buckshot actually pulled out the Reaper's Horn of all things!

Soft Spoken turned to face Bullseye while Chain Mail went for Buckshot. The captain acted with cold precision and brought his sword up at an angle, effortlessly decapitating the pegasus who until now had been their eccentric and cheerful tour guide. He didn't care even slightly.

Bullseye meanwhile had also turned on the captain, obviously deciding that Soft Spoken was no threat. He shot a bolt across the throne room and hit him in an exposed point in his armour. The wound was not fatal, but it still hurt badly, and Chain Mail let out an anguished scream when it hit. Soft Spoken jumped into his line of sight.

"You will drop that weapon, now," he ordered.

Bullseye grinned and raised the crossbow, intending to shoot the old stallion point blank, but then realised he couldn't. His body was seizing up. He stared into the earth pony's eyes, and he stared back at him. He began to tremble and shake. He suddenly had a splitting headache, like he had just been whacked in the head with a sledgehammer. Bullseye screamed.

"AGGGGGGGHHH!"

The crossbow clattered to the floor and fired again, but didn't hit anything. Soft Spoken turned away from the beaten pegasus and ran over to Chain Mail and Mystic. Sliske was free again, and was floating around in circles above them both, leaving a trail of black smoke behind him.

Second and Gold Coin meanwhile were fighting the old fashioned way. The business pony channelled his memories of youth, of bucking the orchards on Sweet Apple Acres. He drew on earth pony strength and will and attacked the human with everything he had. Luckily for him, being an Element of Harmony seemed to make him one of the chosen few who could hit humans, and Second failed to dodge, only being able to block his strikes.

And without his Godly powers to protect him from being hit, Second was just as frail as any old man. Hooves struck him in the face and blood poured from his nose, and he grunted in pain as he was winded by a blow to the stomach. Not that he wasn't fighting back too. The human still had his own strength to rely on, and those hands of his allowed him to get creative.

He grabbed Gold Coin's mane with his fingers and held the angry stallion away. Gold Coin couldn't move for fear of the agony that having his mane pulled caused, and Second brought a knee up into the earth pony's chin, breaking one of his teeth. He kept pulling and moved to his side, and brought a foot up underneath him to kick Gold Coin in roughly the area he expected his privates to be. He struck home, and his victim wailed in pain.

Then he got stabbed again.

"AGGGGH! FUCK! WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?!"

"Gold Coin! Get out of here! I got this!"

Second let go of Gold Coin's mane and moved forward to pull himself off the blade going through his back. In spite of his injuries, he could still keep going, and turned around to face the captain. While Gold Coin staggered away to the side, Chain Mail began to advance on the human. In desperation, Second reached into his coat and pulled out a pencil. He began to move it back and forth in the air, and to the royal guard's amazement, words formed.

He didn't get to read them before the floating words vanished, and in their place formed a small silver cylinder. Second grabbed it out of the air. Chain Mail looked off to the side, and saw that Sliske was flying away and leading Gold Coin and the others out of the throne room.

"Let's do this the cool way!" Second shouted enthusiastically.

He held up the cylinder, and a beam of solid red light exploded out of it, coming to a halt a little way out. Yes. Second had in fact just summoned a laser sword. He spread his arms out wide either side of him.

"Come at me bro."

***

The ponies ran down the steps as fast as they could, thankful that the entrance for some reason was not heavily guarded. Gold Coin limped down the steps, while Soft Spoken was going as fast as he could without leaving his friend behind, a still crying little blue unicorn sitting on his back with his hooves around the old butler's neck.

Sliske floated alongside them. They heard a voice in their heads. It was much unlike the raspy way that Sliske usually spoke, and it lacked the stretched out 'S' sounds, probably because the alien was now communicating telepathically.

"I need a host," he said, "I'll need to get into a body soon or I'll be helpless. Second's forces can easily kill me in this state."

"Use me!" shouted Gold Coin right away.

The ponies reached the roads and galloped away from the cathedral down a busy street.

"No. It can't be you. You're injured, and I'm just as vulnerable in you as I am like this. And I don't really handle earth ponies well. No offence."

"Well then use me!" said Soft Spoken.

"I'm a more skilled magic user than anything else. I need a unicorn."

They turned a corner into a side street.

"Oh hell no!" Gold Coin protested, "You are NOT using Mystic!"

"I must! With him I can use some defensive magic to protect us and heal Gold Coin as well. He's our best bet."

"You are not using that child."

"And how will you use magic with Mystic?" asked Soft Spoken, "He's only a foal! He barely has any power at all!"

"That is not how it works. He has the raw power of a full grown unicorn already. Young colts just don't appear as magical as adults because they don't know how to properly channel it yet, but I do. From all the unicorns I possessed over the years, I have knowledge of a wide variety of spells, and I know exactly how to perform all of them, even in a child's body."

They came to the end of the side street and emerged into another, and found their way blockaded by a teal blue earth pony and ten pegasi in black armour.

"Surrender, or be destroyed!" the earth pony ordered.

Soft Spoken twisted his head around to look at the unicorn clinging to his back. He was still teary eyed, but he nodded anyway.

"Make it quick Sliske," the old butler ordered.

Sliske shot towards Mystic Chant and down his throat. Unlike his previous victims, the blue unicorn did not make any effort to protest, so he had a much easier job this time. He took control almost immediately, and the huge teeth and long tongue sprouted out of the colt's mouth instantly. In control again, Sliske jumped down off of Soft Spoken's back and faced the gang of ponies.

"I'm back bitchesssssssssss."

END

Author's notes:

Yeah, Second just became a Sith lord. What of it?

Anyway, since is the first chapter since five to have fight scenes, I took into account the criticisms I had last time, of which there were two. One was that there was a lack of emotional attachment to the fights, and another was that the more violent aspects of the fic seemed to come out of nowhere. Well, merely by having a previous chapter in which violent shit happened, I think the second problem is solved, but the emotional aspect is up for debate. Last time, I made the mistake of thinking readers would just assume what emotions the characters involved in a battle were feeling, which I shouldn't have done. I'm the writer. Of course *I* know what they're feeling, but how will anyone else? So, do tell me in the comments how well I handled that. Did you get more of an emotional insight into the characters fighting? Less? Let me know.

For news relating to writing, the new cover art has actually not been started yet because the artist I hired is busy with other comissions, but she will get to it eventually, and I'm not one to rush her. For those who like the current cover art, don't worry, I'm not going to banish it off the face of the internet. It'll just be moved to a gallery on the Equestria Daily post, if they allow it. I don't know if they will. Maybe a fic needs a significant ammount of fanart before a gallery is allowed. Either way though, if they don't, I'll upload it somewhere and post a link for you all.

I'm also working with a friend of mine on another writing project right now. It's not complete yet, but I'll put up a link when it's done for those of you who are interested.

Other than that, I hope you all laughed at the funny bits and cried at the sad bits like usual, and I hope you all enjoyed it. I noticed a few days ago that the story climbed all the way to a 4.7 here. Maybe that's not so impressive considering I have seen other fics with higher ratings, and the EqD post is still just 4/5, but for an HiE story I think that's a mjor accomplishment, and I'm glad to have done that well. It was an uphill battle reaching this point. Thanks for reading, I love every single one of you.

Chapter 22: Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today I learned that sometimes, life will just shit all over you. I like to think of my life so far as one gigantic long rope of a turd, continuously coming out a guy's asshole and piling up in the bottom of a toilet. In this metaphor, the toilet represents my mind, and the water, yellowed with piss, is my sanity and self respect. The giant ass which is producing all this shit is in fact God, and slowly, as my life passes by, that shit is rising to ever higher levels.

By now, because I have lived so long, there is so much of that faecal matter in the toilet that you can barely see the water anymore. It's just all crap. And similarly, my sanity has vanished beneath the pile of brown that is my memories.

In the end, that guy will finish reading the newspaper and get off the toilet, and if you're following the metaphor so far, that indicates my death. And once that has happened, there is no chance of ever getting untainted pure water out of that mess. I'll die an insane, raging, vengeful alcoholic, and when all is said and done, all we'll be left with is the tremendous spectacle of the legacy I left behind.

In the real world context, that means history will remember me forever. In the context of our metaphor, think of how massive that turd must be! The toilet would be fucking overflowing! The shit would be piled up so high that the guy's knuckles would brush against it when he goes to wipe his ass! Can you even imagine?!

Anyway, thanks for reading. You've been a darn good sport about this whole thing. Especially about me murdering you. Good times.

Your faithful student, master, overlord,

Lord Second Funkmaster Fantastic.

***

"ATTENTION. ALL CANTERLOT REFUGEES REPORT TO THE CARGO HOLD IN THIRTY MINUTES. REPEAT. ALL CANTERLOT REFUGEES REPORT TO THE CARGO HOLD IN THIRTY MINUTES."

Soft Spoken looked up at the ceiling as the speakers blared, as did many of the other ponies now crowding the cafeteria. In contrast to the previous night, the entire room was bustling with hundreds of ponies lining up for a breakfast of their choice, being dispensed by an extremely loud robot chef.

Gold Coin sat across from the old stallion, seemingly ignoring the message as he munched on a slice of white bread toast, and next to him, Explodey was prodding his scrambled eggs with a fork, as if they were something he had never seen before.

"What are the refugees wanted in the cargo hold for?" he asked.

Gold Coin held up a hoof, indicating for him to wait a moment so he could finish his toast.

"...Relocation," he said once he swallowed, "Tome said that though the Prometheus has served as adequate temporary housing for the refugees while Explodey was still rejecting them, now that they're all out and have rested up and been fed, we need to offload them somewhere so that the Brotherhood can use the ship to continue their plans."

"Really?"

"Yes. So Blueblood has been negotiating with the mayor of Ponyville, hoping to get rid of as many of them as possible here, before we have to move on. The wealthy Canterlot elite probably have other properties or can afford to rent or buy them elsewhere in Equestria, but of course we didn't just evacuate the elite. The lower and middle classes need a place to stay as well. Ponyville being full of such charitable souls, we're hoping they might have space here for them, and that we won't have to drop them all off in some Manehattan hostel."

"Guys!"

The three ponies looked over to see Chain Mail approaching, holding a newspaper in his mouth.

"You are not going to believe this," he said as he dropped it on the table.

A copy of the Equestria Daily lied before them. Three quarters of the page were taken up by a picture of Canterlot mountain split in two. The city itself was located halfway down the left side, while the right side sagged almost to the point of falling over. In bold capital letters beneath it was the headline:

EQUESTRIA'S FINISHED!

"...The mountain was split open?" Softy said disbelievingly, "When did that happen?!"

"I don't know," Chain Mail answered, "But that's a real picture. I saw it myself outside while I was wandering Ponyville. That's when I picked this up. I've read it through entirely. They're saying that with the fall of Canterlot, Equestria no longer has any centralised government. It's basically anarchy now. Or so they say."

"What?!" Gold Coin replied, "No fucking way! The princesses are still alive, and so's a good majority of Canterlot's ponies. Sure, the city was destroyed, but the people in charge are still around, and even if they weren't, there are still high ranking officials and representatives of the government based in every major city! Surely if Canterlot was wiped out, that just means that Manehattan or Hoofington takes over running the country?"

"Yes, that is the system," Chain Mail confirmed, "Don't believe what the papers say. This is just sensationalism. The end of civilization is for some reason a very appealing idea to some ponies. Make no mistake, it takes a lot more than this to kill a nation. This has a lot of ponies worried though."

"...Where's Mystic?" asked Softy.

"Huh?" the captain responded.

"Where's Mystic?"

"...Oh! Right, yeah! He's in the clinic. Sliske got back to him last night, and he's been ill with something, which he says should not be possible. So once Night Shroud was done helping with Explodey, he decided to stay up the rest of the night to look at Sliske too, since he was trained as a field medic and thus is the closest thing we have to a qualified doctor. Mystic and I stayed the night in the clinic, and he was still asleep when I left."

"ATTENTION. ALL ELEMENTS OF HARMONY AND ROYAL ALICORNS TO THE BRIDGE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. REPEAT. ALL ELEMENTS OF HARMONY AND ROYAL ALICORNS TO THE BRIDGE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES."

"...What the hell do they want with us now?"

***

Second sighed as he awoke and stretched his arms.

"...No nightmares this time..." he mused, "Things are finally looking up."

"THEY SURE ARE, FAGGOT!"

The human screamed in surprise and tumbled out of the bed along with the covers. He scrambled to get back onto his feet again, making sure to hold the quilt cover around himself, as he slept naked. Also, so did his least favourite hallucination, apparently.

"Hi there, Howard. Been a while, hasn't it?" said Sexuality.

"Oh fuck...I forgot there were more of you people..."

Maybe it was a rather baseless assumption, but after he shot his conscience in the face, Second was certain that the others wouldn't be bothering him anymore. Unfortunately, this did not seem to be the case. Sexuality was still with him, and just like Conscience was last time he was seen alive, he was now fully sized instead of being a miniature man who occupied his shoulder.

"Now that's not very nice. I'm only here to do my job."

"And that is?"

"To get you laid. You're so tense all the time! Need to loosen up! That's why I'm here."

"Sexuality, you cannot even begin to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the fuck I do not give. Please die, slowly and painfully."

"Not until you screw someone."

Second's eyes scanned the room.

"You know what? Never mind. I'll kill you myself. Where's my shotgun?"

Suddenly, the hallucination started to treat things more seriously.

"Hey now, Howie, don't do anything you'll regret..."

The human smiled as he located the familiar SPAS-12 laying on the floor on the other side of the bed, and telekinetically pulled it into his hands.

"Don't worry. I won't regret anything. I killed my conscience, remember?"

Just as he began to load the shotgun though, Sexuality suddenly leapt off the bed like a ninja and smashed a foot into Second's face, knocking him back against the wall where he slumped down in a heap, still covered only by the quilt.

"Sorry, Howard. I can't let you be killing me and the other hallucinations. We're still needed to drive the story forward."

Second's head poked out from underneath the quilt.

"Drink a can of bleach, you fucking parasite."

Then he jumped again, and before Second could even blink, the naked man was on top of him, grabbing his hair with one hand and punching him in the face with the other.

"I'm not fucking around anymore, Howard!" he shouted, "You start listening to me when I say things!"

"Eat shit and die!"

Sexuality punched him again. Second tried to raise a hand to blast him with lasers, but to his surprise he found that his hallucination was at least twice as strong as he was, because he then held both his wrists in one hand and continued to punch him with the other. With each strike, Second wailed in pain.

"AGGGGGH! FUCK! OW! FUCKING- AAAAAAAH! STOP IT! SILVER! GET IN HERE, SILVER! AGH! FUUUUUUUCK!"

Silver Vein opened the door and walked into the bedroom not seconds later, looking extremely confused. And why wouldn't she be? Sexuality was an aspect of Second's psychology exclusively, and could only be sensed or interacted with by him. From her perspective, all she could see was a single human wrapped in blankets, writhing around on the floor and screaming.

"Sir? You called?"

"HELP ME! I'M HAVING ISSUES WITH MY SEXUALITY!"

Her face lit up.

"I'll get my saddle!"

She immediately turned and ran back out into the corridor, disappearing from view.

"NO! DON'T GO! I NEED- AAAAGHHHHHH!"

The punching stopped, Second winced, expecting another strike, but it never came. He opened one eye to see Sexuality was still sitting on top of him, arm held back ready for another punch.

"All right, we're on track. Now, are you going to do exactly as I say from now on?"

Second spat in his eye.

"AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!"

This time it was Sexuality doing the screaming. Second was surprised, but absolutely overjoyed to find out that it was no longer just his blood that was glowing green and highly acidic. Now his saliva apparently had face melting capability too. And that just made him beam with delight.

The naked man was stumbling back across the room, covering his now disfigured face. Second grinned evilly as he stood up again and advanced on him.

"Oh, you've had this coming for a long time..."

Things were getting boring, Second decided. Too many fistfights, heads getting blasted with shotguns and zombie bites. He needed to mix things up a bit. Have fun with killing people. Get creative, so to speak. So he did that.

He reached forward, grabbed Sexuality by the dick, and ripped it right off. His victim cried out in agony, grabbed his bleeding crotch, and fell over onto his back. Second laughed.

"Back to Hell with thee, demon! So sayeth THE LORD!"

And then he beat a man to death with his own cock. Because why not?

***

"I'm so sorry for what I must have put you through," said Celestia, "I did try to come back as fast as I could, but from my perspective it was only a few hours from when I died to when I returned."

"It's okay, sister."

The two princesses strode through the corridors of the Prometheus, heading towards the bridge to see what the summons was about. It was a rarity that they be actually ordered to do something when they were the highest authority in the land, so it must have been important.

"It's not okay though. You withdrew from the kingdom and handed the decisions over to Blueblood. You broke down crying at the funeral, in front of all your subjects. You never did that when anypony else died. Not even your closest friends. I...I had no idea I was really that important to you."

"Of course you are!" Luna snapped, "How could you not be? You're my big sister. You looked after me, you were always there for me, and you forgave me for even my greatest mistakes. Why wouldn't I be upset when something like that happened to you?"

"But to the point you couldn't even function? That you would lock yourself away in your room for days at a time crying, and couldn't even keep your composure in public? When you have thousands of years of experience doing exactly that, even in the face of tragedy?"

Luna bowed her head shamefully.

"I'm sorry...It's just that...You promised me. After Nightmare Moon, you promised me I'd never be alone again, and I wanted to believe that you and I would rule side by side forever. I didn't think you'd ever die. You were like...even when everypony else eventually died, you were always there. And everything was going to be okay in the end, because even though nopony else lived forever, I'd always have my big sister. But then you..."

Celestia put a wing over her.

"I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have made you so dependent on me. I guess it's not that surprising, and I can't really blame you for acting like you did. When you were banished all those years ago, I was the same. I had a regent running the country for almost a year afterwards."

The dark alicorn smiled and nuzzled her sister.

"We're back together again now. That's all that matters to me."

"...Luna-"

"We're here."

Celestia realised that they had already reached the door to the bridge, which swung open to admit them as they approached. The two sisters separated and slowly ascended the stairs.

They emerged onto the bridge to find it crowded with ponies. Ancient Tome, Iron Hoof, Night Shroud, Soft Spoken, Mystic Chant, Gold Coin, Chain Mail, Explodey, and Sliske who was curiously enough outside of a host body all stood in a semicircle around the entrance, waiting for them. The front windows were broken thanks to Chain Mail's assault on the ship yesterday, and Spike was standing outside the Prometheus too, his head almost poking through the window.

"Morning," he greeted, "Lovely sunrise today."

"Oh, thank you," Celestia replied.

"What is this about?" asked Luna.

"Things have been getting strange around here lately," Ancient Tome explained, "Second, demons attacks, these damned zombies. We're dealing with too many mysteries. Now, all of us have questions. Different questions. We also all have answers to other ponies' questions. Everypony in this room knows something that somepony else does not. We're here to trade information so that we can all get a full picture."

"Starting with the most obvious question," Soft Spoken continued, "Explodey. Princess Celestia. During the course of our adventures, both of you died at least once, and mentioned an afterlife. We want to know everything."

Celestia gulped.

"My little ponies, I will tell you everything, if that is what you want. But, be warned, I didn't take this information the best either. You may not be ready to hear it."

Tome glared at her.

"No more secrets. No more lies. Tell us everything. Now."

***

"Alright! I'm ready to- Sir. Why are you covered in blood?"

Second pushed Silver aside as he walked out of the bedroom and looked up and down the corridor.

"Where is the bathroom? I need a shower. I've got bits of dead guy all over me."

"Uhh...I think it's the next floor down..."

"Great. Could you clean up this room here while I go find it?"

"...Sir?"

"Hey, why are you wearing a saddle?"

"Ummm..."

"I don't have time for your games, Silver. Come on, we're on a schedule here. I need to get back in contact with Secopolis today, and there were a few places around the palace I need to check in on. It's been a weird enough day already, and I only just woke up. Still, at least I'm alert now. Nothing like a murder first thing in the morning to get the blood pumping. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"...No reason, sir."

Second grumbled.

"Mortals..."

***

Celestia explained everything.

She spoke of the beautiful valley and the barren misty wasteland that was the Firstian afterlife. She told them about its ruler, the enigmatic human who taught her the secret to stopping Second, and gave her an ultimatum in the palace throne room. She explained their world as he explained it, telling them of the fourth wall, of Dramatic Convenience, of what made the humans powerful and why they chose to do what they did one thousand years prior. She spared no detail of her story, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

This was the first time she spoke to anypony of what she experienced. Not even after all her time with Luna did she tell her what she actually saw on the other side. She had not asked, as if afraid of the answer. Even though some ponies in Equestria saw the alicorns as gods just as the Brotherhood saw humans, and believed that the princesses knew of the afterlife, the truth was that nopony knew for sure what actually happened when you died, until now.

Idly, Celestia wondered if her recent death had made atheists of those religious groups that worshipped her and her sister.

Her audience went through a range of reactions. Ancient Tome and the Brotherhood of Man, even former member Gold Coin, all seemed much less surprised by the revelation that First was the guardian of the afterlife. Apparently that was a central tenet of their religious beliefs, though they had assumed those to be wrong following their turn against Second.

Spike and the rest of the ponies in contrast seemed horrified by the thought that death meant an eternity ruled by a human, and especially by the idea that killing First had only made him stronger, or that he psychologically altered the ponies living under his rule. She had tried to explain that he was no menace like Second was, that he was different from the old days and just wanted to help, but many were slow to believe her on that account.

Surprisingly, it was Gold Coin and the Brotherhood who were the most sceptical of her claims. Though they had always believed humans to be benevolent, they all learned the hard way that Second was anything but. They seemed to have retroactively taken to thinking of First the same way, so hearing Celestia talking of him as if he were an ally made them distrustful.

Luna agreed with them.

Chain Mail, Soft Spoken and Mystic though were much more open to the idea of a human who may not wish them harm, while Explodey and Sliske seemed to have no opinion whatsoever and just listened intently to the princess's story.

Then when they learned that they were all fictional characters, that's when the arguing started.

"No FUCKING way!" Gold Coin shouted, "That's bullshit! That's gotta be bullshit!"

"It isn't though, my little pony," Celestia argued, "He was right. I tested his theories. After I came back as 'main character', I was able to hit Second again. I talked to him, and he confirmed it, even though I told him nothing about First or the afterlife. It explains their powers! It explains their abilities! It explains so much about our world, and us, and who we are!"

Convincing living, thinking beings that they were fictional characters was no easy task, and even when she was successful, Celestia still felt bad, as they all inevitably went through some kind of existential crisis in varying levels of seriousness.

Some, like Soft Spoken and Chain Mail took it well, treating it as a thought exercise and musing on the exact mechanics of a real fictional world, and what that implied about other works of fiction. Others, like Explodey and Sliske, went quiet and didn't say anything.

Spike became solemn and contemplative, while Ancient Tome needed to leave the room for a moment and Iron and Night Shroud became horribly depressed. Gold Coin just seemed angry, and Luna and Mystic took it the worst, with the blue colt silently clinging to Softy's leg and Luna having a moment of deep seated denial and needing to be consoled, much like Celestia had been when First broke it to her.

The conversation was derailed after that. Learning how small you were in the context of a universe like that, and all the questions such a thing raised, caused everypony to stop caring about their need for answers for a while and talk among themselves about what Celestia's news meant. It took a further half hour of directionless talking and an interruption by Blueblood over the intercom to snap them out of it.

"Your maj? Are you up there your maj?" a speaker in the ceiling blared, "I's Blueblood, mate. I'm callin' from the little box thingy in the cargo 'old. I jus' spoke to Mayor Mare, an' she's agreed to 'elp take in all the refugees that ain't got nowhere else ta go, at least until they can get in contact with somewhere bettah to take 'em."

Everypony went quiet, while Celestia approached the communication terminal and picked up the microphone.

"Thank you, Prince Blueblood. Your help is much appreciated."

"I's not a problem, your maj."

As she lowered the mic again, she saw everypony was quiet again, and waiting for her to pick up where she had left off before.

The final subject of discussion she had to share with them was the deal. Or deals. Second and First had both approached her separately, and they had both made her an offer and asked for her help in executing their plans.

First wanted Second dead, so he could bring him back under control. He had given the princess the means to kill him, and had promised that no harm would come to Second, and that Equestria would be saved from his wrath if she did. The downside was that the Pantheon of B would maintain absolute power over Equestria, and she and her subjects would be continually subjected to wars and monster attacks for the entertainment of higher beings who she would never even meet, though with the promise that everything would always turn out okay in the end.

Second on the other hoof wanted the Pantheon of B dead. He had set up some kind of ultimate super secret plan that she wasn't privy to the details of, that if he executed properly would end in their defeat, and his and Equestria's freedom. He promised to go home and never bother them again, they wouldn't have to worry about human overlords anymore, which meant that ponies would have to forge their own destiny. No more monster attacks, but no guarantee of victory in conflicts either, which they technically had before.

The downside to Second's plan was that First would withdraw all support for them, while promising that Second was very likely to betray them, and that there would be probable harm to an unknown number of humans who wished them no wrong, but were merely ignorant of the damage they were causing.

Once she was done explaining, she looked around the room at the other ponies.

"Well?" she said, "What do you all think?"

***

Second exited the bathroom feeling refreshed. Though he may have been infected with a zombie virus and cooked extra crispy, he was still a lot cleaner than before. More than that, he was finally able change into some better apparel. He crossed the hallway and entered another room where a large mirror was waiting in front of him, along with a pile of clothes.

"Okay!" he announced to no-one, "Enough of the raggy old coats! Time to make myself look presentable."

Step one. Whenever he replaced his eye patch he kept losing it. The solution? Robot eye.

"AGH! OW! FUCK!" he shouted as he shoved his replacement eye into its socket, "WHY DOESN'T THE ZOMBIE INFECTION PREVENT ME FROM FEELING PAIN ANYMORE?! I MISS WHEN IT DID THAT! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"

Step two. His moustache and actual hair had been gone since the explosion. He had been wearing a wig ever since, and a convincing wig, but the only way he managed to avoid losing it like he kept losing his eye patch was because he actually glued it to his head. That was less than ideal for a number of reasons. It needed to go, and he needed to find a better way to fix his hair problem.

"AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed as he ripped off his wig, "MOTHERFUCKER! I THINK I TORE SOME SKIN OFF MY HEAD!"

Step three. Regrow that skin.

"Mommy..." Second whimpered as he applied a skin-grow lotion to his head.

Yeah, Second could just make anything out of nothing. Like he did when he created those lightsabers, or his Ferrari, or Secopolis. So now he had to create some more products to help his situation.

Which led conveniently into step four. Miracle baldness cure! A real one. Not like that fake stuff they sell on TV. Damn, those things sucked.

"Hmmm...Comes with a money back guarantee," Second read from the label, "That would be really useful if I had anyone to get a refund from. Eh, fuck it."

Step five. Haircut.

"OH SWEET JESUS, LOOK AT MY BEARD!"

Once he shaved his new hair, both facial and scalpel, almost back to the length of a normal person, he realised something strange.

"...My hair has colour again."

Step six. Dye that shit.

"Nope. I've been grey for longer than most people have been alive at all. I am NOT changing now."

Step seven. Perfect the moustache.

"Oh, Stashy...I have missed you so..."

Step eight. Face mask, to hide the fact he currently looked like a particularly well groomed corpse.

"Ooh...This is surprisingly comfortable...Fits nice...And hey! It even looks like my old face. Isn't that just lovely?"

Step nine. Pimp that face.

"Gold teeth. Awww yeah..."

Step ten. Suit up!

"Nothing like a nice tuxedo...Hmm...I like the bow tie too. Bow ties are cool."

Step eleven. Accessories!

"Got mah top hat. Got mah diamond cane. Got mah fancy shoes. That's 'cause I'm a gentleman, and finally..."

Step twelve. Personal armament.

"...Got mah hidden holster, and a handy revolver. That's because I'm a dangerous gentleman."

Step thirteen. Music!

Second skipped out of the room, twirling around and making gestures with his cane as he sung, all the way down the corridor.

"If you're blue, and you don't know where to go, why don't you go, where fashion sits? Puttin' on the Ritz!"

***

Gold Coin was the first to speak.

"I think it should be obvious what we do. We side with Second. This Pantheon, if what we're being told is true, is responsible for everything that both of them ever did and more. Ponykind cannot cast off oppressors like that fast enough. If Second has the means to kill them, we do it."

"Goldie!" Softy shouted in surprise, "I can't believe you would say something like that! Think about this-"

"I agree with him," Chain Mail interrupted, "Second is a bastard, no two ways about it. But we have the means to fight Second if he turns on us. We do not have the means to take on an omnipotent pantheon full of multiple beings just like him, who are not even found in our universe. I don't like the idea of it, but realistically speaking, we should take Second's side in this."

Sliske grew angry, and flew up right in front of the captain's face.

"HE. MURDERED. BROAD SWORD," the alien screamed telepathically, "And not just him either! Countless others! Innocents! Families! ALL OF CANTERLOT! Weren't you there when it happened?!"

"Mighty hypocritical coming from you, Scourge!" Chain Mail spat.

"THAT IS BESIDES THE POINT! Second is a rabid animal that needs to be put down for the good of the majority!"

"And what?! How would we fight the Pantheon then?!"

"Who needs to fight the Pantheon?!" Sliske demanded, "I agree with Lord First! They're a manageable problem, and despite their indifference, they're what keeps Equestria winning against the forces of evil, and they're not even aware that they're hurting anypony!"

"Winning against evil that they created!"

"Irrelevant! Equestria has always had problems! Where they come from is no matter! The Pantheon is harmless. Second is not, and he needs to die!"

"I'm backing up the alien on this," Night Shroud announced, stepping over to Sliske's side, "The Pantheon has good and bad elements, but I believe that they're more of a help than a hindrance. Second on the other hand is undeniably evil. We can't let that slide."

"Me too," said Explodey, "This Lord First guy sounds like the only human who has our best interests at heart, and we need all the allies we can get. He only wants to have his father back, and really, doesn't Second only want his son back? If they can be together again, we could put an end to all of this! Maybe then it won't all have been in vain."

Princess Celestia looked to Softy.

"Mr. Spoken?" she asked, "What's your take on this?"

The old stallion scraped the ground with his hoof and furrowed his brow, as if in thought. He took his time in answering, as all his friends watched him carefully.

"I believe, that both sides make good points. First is clearly not a bad guy, and he only wants their family back together. Second is a dick, but he wants the same, plus revenge on those that ruined his life. And those that ruined his life also want to ruin our lives too. I don't believe the Pantheon can just be excused for everything they've done because sometimes they do something good, and ignorance of the consequences of their actions do not mean we can let them continue doing it.

"Maybe it's an awful thing to say, but I think both need to be stopped. Second, and the Pantheon. I'm not sure how we can do it, but we've got to put an end to both of them. Second has a plan to bring them down. I suggest we play both sides here. We agree to kill Second, and we agree to help him. Let him carry out his plan, assist where necessary, and eventually he'll destroy the Pantheon and put a stop to one problem for us. Then when he turns on us, if he does, we kill him too and fulfil our promise to First.

"If he doesn't turn on us, either we strike first and kill him when we have opportunity, or preferably, once the Pantheon is dead and Dramatic Convenience is no longer hindering our ability to tell him, we inform him of First's survival into the afterlife, and he will willingly rejoin with his son. And everypony's happy."

They all stared at him.

"Well?" he said.

"No," Gold Coin replied, "I think if we intend to turn on Second, he'll know, and planning to betray something that powerful is never a smart move. He promised he would leave us alone if we assist him, and unless he does betray us first, we have no reason to do anything other than give him our full support. And besides, whether you plan to eventually kill him or not, if you're going against the Pantheon, that isn't going to earn First's favour when he specifically said not to."

"I'm still with Gold Coin," Chain Mail answered.

"I think I agree with Softy," Mystic murmured.

"Like I said, I don't believe the Pantheon is our enemy, so I disagree," said Night Shroud.

"Same."

"Me too," Explodey added.

"...I don't think the Pantheon is our enemy either."

The group all turned to Spike with surprise.

"I think...Umm..."

He sighed.

"Could somepony cast a soundproofing spell around these windows? My voice is very loud, and I don't want anypony outside this room hearing what I have to say."

Ancient Tome obliged, and a bubble-like shield of energy coated the windows of the bridge and the single doorway out. Spike winced as the shield went through his neck, but it didn't harm him and he could still move, so he continued right away.

"Like I said, I don't believe the Pantheon are our enemy to fight, unlike Second," he explained, "However. I do not trust First either."

Celestia was confused.

"How do you mean?" she inquired.

"You were there, weren't you?" Spike asked, "We both saw what First was capable of. Sure, maybe he wasn't as bad as Second. He never pulled the trigger and caused your injury. But I distinctly remember it being said that the weapon was his, and not Second's. Second just borrowed it to use. And whether he was the lesser of two evils or not, he still helped Second, and they still terrorised the land together, just for fun.

"I don't care if you say he's reformed. I know what I saw. I met First face to face, long ago, and he was no better than Second back then. Second himself wasn't nearly as bad then as he is now, but as we've seen, and as we both know all too well, humans can change. Second changed for the worst. First, you claim, changed for the better. But if you'll recall, even the seemingly good humans can't be trusted. I don't think I need to remind you of that."

The princess looked at him sadly.

"Spike...Hayato was-"

"Save it, princess. We've had this talk before."

She sighed.

"My point is, while I think the Pantheon is relatively harmless and Second needs to be stopped, I am not going to throw in my support for Lord First, whether you say he's changed or not. A creature like that has no right to rulership over ponies, living or dead. Especially not if manipulates them. As soon as we stop Second, we should find a way into the afterlife and reclaim it from First."

"You're mad!" Softy replied, "Are you seriously suggesting that when we have opportunity to have support from either one of the humans, or possibly even both, that we take neither and declare war on a potential ally too?! That's suicidal!"

"Yeah. No. Fucking. Way," Chain Mail agreed, "I may not think we should take his side over Second, but First means us no harm. If we help Second in his plan, he'll just leave us alone and not help us. Actively fighting him is pointless!"

"They're right, dragon," Sliske added, "What you're proposing is nothing short of idiotic."

"No it's not. He's the only one so far I actually agree with."

Night Shroud sighed.

"Not you too, Tome..."

Ancient Tome stepped into the centre of the room.

"The Brotherhood exists to oppose tyranny! We once thought that that was represented in the princesses and their supporters! As we discovered, that was wrong. Tyranny is in fact embodied by the humans! Second rules with an iron fist on Earth, and his son First does the same in Heaven! BOTH of those places should belong to ponies! They both need to be stopped, by any means necessary!"

"And what of the Pantheon of B?" asked Iron Hoof, stepping into the conversation for the first time so far.

"What about them?"

"Do they not also represent tyranny? For the injustices that they've visited upon us?"

Tome took a moment to think, and smiled slyly at Iron.

"No," he said, turning to face him fully, "Second is a selfish tyrant who intentionally causes pain and misery. First might have good intentions, but can just as easily turn the same way, and has just as much power and in fact already abuses it in small ways, in a place where ponies are vulnerable. More than that, he knows exactly what he is doing. The Pantheon are just ignorant.

"They rule our world as conventional gods would. They cause problems, which they then fix in recompense, and they never intend harm. I am of the belief that they are by themselves little more than a nuisance, whereas it is the monsters they create, like Second and First, that we should take issue with. Besides, trying to go up against them implies relying on Second's plan, which I am unwilling to do. He needs to be destroyed as soon as the opportunity arises."

Iron snorted.

"Can't say I agree," he replied, "If you're going to oppose tyranny in all its forms, you shouldn't half-ass it."

All the others in the room stared at him in shock.

"No..." Softy said, "Please tell me you're not actually saying-"

"YES!" Iron interrupted, "I am. We do more than side with one or the other, or try to play both sides. We should go against ALL of them. No Second. No First. And NO. PANTHEON."

Softy's jaw was on the floor.

"I- But- How can-?!" he spluttered.

"Private Iron Hoof!"

Iron looked over to Princess Luna, who was the one addressing him.

"I am in agreement with you."

Celestia was stunned.

"R-Really?" said Iron.

"You have the right idea," the princess of the night confirmed, smiling at him, "Chain Mail and Gold Coin are correct about their assessment of the dangers of the Pantheon, Sliske absolutely nailed my opinion of Lord Second, murdering scum that he is, and Spike knew, as he should, just how little we should trust a creature like the First, who takes the guise of being better than his father, and yet we have no real evidence for. You, like me, see that ALL the humans are a problem, in their own way. The only true way we can save Equestria, and the afterlife, is if we stop ALL of them."

All eyes turned on Celestia.

"Well, sister?" asked Luna, "Whose side are you on?"

***

Second stopped before the statue. He smiled at it, stood still to admire it for a moment. With a click of his fingers, a wooden bench appeared behind him, and he sat down. He took off his top hat and placed it on the seat next to him along with his cane, and sat back.

"Can you hear me?" he asked.

Discord's statue did not answer him.

"I don't think you can. I couldn't see anything outside the statue when I was imprisoned...It was all just black. I'm not sure if I ever heard anything...but then again, I don't think anyone ever came to talk to me."

He drummed his fingers on the bench.

"Maybe it's different for a draconequus. I don't know. Perhaps you can see or hear me. I don't hold out hope though."

There were another few moments of silence.

"The Elements of Harmony died long ago. They've got new ones now. Last time the elements changed hands, from the princesses to Twilight and her friends...then a bit of chaos freed you again. Really, with all the chaos that's been kicking off around here since I showed up, I still don't know why you aren't free already."

He sighed.

"I would, you know," he said quietly, "I honestly would let you out if I could. I don't really know how though. Breaking out of stone was always the one thing I could never do by myself, and I think it applies to others too. Hmm. Maybe I'm just an idiot. But I know what it feels like."

He got up, and walked over to the statue.

"See, you and me, Discy? We're the same. Agents of chaos. Maybe I'm violent about it while you're just playful. Maybe we have very different styles. Maybe while I went off on a crusade of revenge against Celestia, you just liked to toy with her. But those are just differences of methodology. At heart, you and me, we're like...kindred spirits. We are as brothers, I hope you know.

"I'm not sure what you think of me. But I think the world of you. You made me laugh so much when I first saw you. Ponies may not appreciate what you did, but I'm one of those few that can see the funny side. In another world, we could have been drinking buddies together. There's a whole land of people, just like me, and so full of chaos, that I know you'd just love."

He bowed his head sadly.

"Still. Things don't turn out well for everyone. Someone always has to lose. You and I are just the ones who got the short end of the stick. I'd free you if I could, but some things are beyond even me. I'm sorry, Discord. But I thought I should let you know, before it all goes to shit for me too, that you aren't the only one who appreciates the finer things in life. And you aren't alone in your fate."

Second held out his hand and his top hat and cane flew into it. He placed that hat on his head and turned away.

"I've got to go now. It was nice visiting. Maybe I'll do it again some day."

He looked back over his shoulder and smiled.

"You're a real inspiration."

Second left, and headed back towards the palace.

***

"ATTENTION. THE PROMETHEUS IS LEAVING IN TWENTY MINUTES. ALL REFUGEES PLEASE VACATE THE SHIP IMMEDIATELY."

"Come on, everypony! You heard the disembodied voice!" Gold Coin shouted across the cargo hold, "All of you off! Now! Come on! Get!"

Chain Mail stood by his side as the two of them watched the ponies of Canterlot shuffle out into Ponyville, where they were crowding in the town square.

"Any sign of her?" he asked.

"No," Gold Coin replied, "I couldn't see Mrs. Smith anywhere. I hope she got out okay, but I haven't seen her. Maybe you should ask Explodey or Night Shroud? They would have personally met every one of them."

"That's true."

"Mr. Gold Coin!"

The yellow earth pony looked to his right to see a familiar blue unicorn approaching, shadowed by a diamond dog.

"Easy. Remus."

"I just thought we should tell you that we'll be going on our way with the other refugees now. This zombie apocalypse diversion has been interesting for sure, but we both have things to be getting to. Remus still has to locate that order of monks he was talking about, and I need to get to finding that tablet fragment, or else we risk a universal collapse. Doesn't help that the walls of reality have been weakened recently."

"Weakened, really? By who?" Gold Coin asked.

"Not sure. Something big. I'm sure it's nothing that won't be dealt with in due time. Whatever it is, it's light years from here, and there are a number of alien alliances, republics, empires and federations between here and there who can deal with it. If all else fails, the Time Lords are usually available to sort it out. In fact, I think I saw a TARDIS in here the other day. It's gone now though. I'm not sure where it went..."

Chain Mail looked confused.

"...What the hell are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing. Never mind me. I'm just rambling. We'll be on our way now. Goldie, I hope I'll see you again?"

Gold Coin cleared his throat.

"Ahem. Yes. Of course. I'll be around. You come and find me when you're done with...whatever. Me and my friends have a mission of our own of course."

"Of course. Some other time then?"

"Yeah. Later."

Easy Eight smiled and nodded, and trotted back towards the crowd. Remus looked back at him and waved as they left too.

"Those guys are so fucking weird..." Chain Mail muttered.

"No disagreements from me. They're pleasant company though."

"GOLD COIN AND CAPTAIN CHAIN MAIL TO NAVIGATIONAL. REPEAT. GOLD COIN AND CAPTAIN CHAIN MAIL TO NAVIGATIONAL."

"...Seems we're needed."

"Indeed."

"You go ahead," Chain Mail offered, "Somepony needs to stay behind to close the cargo doors once everypony is out."

"I'll tell them to wait for you."

***

Second had not gone back to the palace. Instead, he now stood on a pegasus landing platform that led into a small tower on the castle grounds, staring at another, similar tower a short distance away. He looked to his side to see a pegasus flying towards him, and she soon landed quietly on the same platform he was standing on.

"Silver, come over here, I want you to look at this."

"...Yes sir?"

He walked inside the tower, and Silver followed after. Once inside, she could see that the entire inside of the tower was hollow aside from a spiral staircase leading towards the bottom.

"Now, look down here. This tower has no rooms inside it. It's like a lighthouse. The entire thing is just a single spiral staircase leading to the ground level. At the ground level though, there's no door. Instead, you've got a single trap door that leads into some tunnels. The only way in or out of this tower is through this pegasus landing platform we're on now, or through those tunnels. Are you following me?"

"Mmhmm."

"Now, I know this, because I came from the tunnels to get here in the first place. And do you know where the tunnels come from?"

"Uh...No?"

"That tower over there."

He walked back out onto the landing platform and pointed at the other tower he had been staring at.

"Oh."

"And do you know what's different about that tower?"

"No sir."

"It has an actual doorway at ground level, but no pegasus landing platform at the top. But aside from that, it's identical. Even has the same damn spiral staircase. The one in that tower just stops abruptly at the top, meaning it serves no purpose at all. Ultimately though, the only way in or out of it is through the tunnels beneath the towers, and through the front door. And do you know what's in the tunnels?"

Silver stared at him.

"Again; no sir."

"NOTHING! Fucking nothing! It's one single long underground passage between the two towers with no side rooms, no alternate paths, no place for storage....Nothing. It's just a route between them."

Second sighed and massaged his forehead.

"And that got me to thinking; The tunnels only connected the two towers, right? Now, this tower can only be accessed by a pegasus, and once they're in here, they'd have to go through the underground tunnels, and they'd end up in an identical tower which they can leave at ground level, but there's no landing platform at the top they can take off from again.

He looked back at the other tower.

"And any kind of pony can enter the other tower, but with nothing at the top and nothing inside, the only reason they would have to go in there is to go through the tunnels to get here, and once they get here, the only other exit is this damn landing platform, and that's only useful to pegasi anyway, and if they were a pegasus, they could simply come straight here!"

Silver raised an eyebrow.

"...What's your point, sir?"

"THAT THERE IS NONE!" Second raged, "THERE IS NO DAMN POINT TO THESE TOWERS! THIS HAS NO REASON TO EXIST! IT'S JUST HERE TO CONFUSE ME AND MAKE MY FUCKING BRAIN HURT! WHO WAS THE FUCKING GENIUS WHO CAME UP WITH THIS?!"

***

Chain Mail bucked the door closed behind him as he entered the navigational room. Princess Celestia, Ancient Tome, Gold Coin and Soft Spoken all stood around the room, along with a number of royal guards, all of them Canterlot survivors too. Most of them were monitoring terminals or other electronic equipment, while others like the princess were gathered around a circular table in the middle of the room with a 3D map of Equestria on it.

"Hey, what's this?" asked Chain Mail as he looked at the map.

"It's called a hologram," Tome explained, "This one isn't magical. I don't know how it works, but it's easy enough to use. Well, if you have an instruction manual anyway. Like I have."

He floated a giant book the size of a slab of concrete out from beneath the table to show it to the captain. Printed on the front were the words 'Prometheus internal electronic and robotic systems instruction, maintenance and repair manual. Volume 1 of 37'.

"If you find any of the other thirty six, do let me know," he said as he put it down again, "I'd really like to get the laser turrets up and running again."

"...Right...So, princess. Where are we going?"

Celestia nodded to Ancient Tome, who waved a hoof and made the holo-map zoom into a snowy mountain far to the north. It was fairly non-descript aside from a model of a little wooden village towards the top, and a stone structure somewhere above that.

"This place," she replied, "It's on the very edge of Equestrian territory, far into the frozen wastelands of the north. Its inhabitants named it after me. It's called Mt. Celestia."

Gold Coin smirked.

"...Is something funny?"

"No, your majesty. Please, tell us more."

"It's home to a small settlement of Equestrians who have a village located at the top of the mountain. They're a very out of the way group, and devoutly religious. First and foremost, their devotion is to the virtues of Harmony, and the elements that you and your friends embody, which they believe that by upholding and learning from, they can achieve enlightenment through."

"Isn't living in an isolated village in the middle of nowhere rather counterproductive to learning about friendship?" asked Chain Mail.

"Not really. They all have each other, and the village has a fairly sizeable population. Really though, the village is just a settlement like any other. The real study and devotion goes on in the temple at the top, where an order of monks known as the Harmonites are based. It used to be a headquarters for a demon worshipping cult thousands and thousands of years ago, but the Harmonites moved in some time ago and repurposed it."

"I've never heard of them," Soft Spoken commented, "They sound like a strange bunch of ponies though."

Celestia's eyes darted back and forth suspiciously.

"Yes...ponies..."

Ancient Tome looked over at Gold Coin and raised an eyebrow.

I told you so.

***

"Any answers yet?" Sliske asked hopefully.

"Not a one."

Night Shroud frowned as he looked at the collected data printed on the sheets in front of him. He had analysed Sliske top to bottom, and found nothing. There was no indication of what was wrong with him that caused his reaction to entering his previous host, nothing that shed any light on the appearance of a new cutie mark on that host, or anything of the sort.

"ATTENTION. THE PROMETHEUS IS NOW TAKING FLIGHT."

"Sounds like we're on our way..." muttered Iron Hoof in the corner of the room.

"Where are we heading again?" asked Night Shroud as he went back to examining the data.

"No fucking clue," the earth pony replied, "I'm hoping Secopolis, because we still have to rescue Star Wish. I don't want to keep putting that off. She's still at the mercy of the Knights of Man."

"Yes, we know," Night Shroud grumbled, "Let's just leave Tomey to handle things. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."

The batpony then moved over to the other operating table, where Explodey McGee was strapped down.

"Now, YOU. You, we've had more luck with. I've finished running through your blood samples, and we finally know for sure what's different about you."

Explodey looked hopeful.

"And what is it?"

"You aren't a pony. You don't even resemble one."

Night Shroud stomped a hoof on the floor, and a royal guard who he had recruited to assist him marched to his side, holding a graph in his teeth showing a picture of a double helix in the top corner and some other complex diagrams with paragraphs of annotations over the rest of it.

"This here is an analysis of your DNA," he explained, "Turn it over."

The guard showed him the other side of the page. It was structured the same, but the diagrams were different in subtle ways, such as being shaped slightly different or coloured something else.

"This here is unicorn pony DNA."

Another guard walked over, holding up another page with diagrams that looked closer to Explodey's results, though still different.

"And this, is your closest genetic match that we could find. Do you know where we got this sample?"

Explodey shook his head.

"This? This is a FUCKING CACTUS."

"...What?"

"I'm serious. You have more in common biologically with a desert cactus than you do with most ponies, or for that matter, any other living creature. Oh, don't get me wrong, that's not to say that you're at all similar to cacti either. That's just the closest terrestrial life has come so far to imitating you.

"You look like us outside, you may even have some of the same internal organs, but you are so far removed from normal pony biology, I am astounded that you can even survive in Equestria's atmosphere. The microbes in your body should be toxic to us. You should reproduce through eggs.

"I'm pretty sure your magic comes from a gland on the inside of your throat rather than your horn, and you weren't kidding about being able to internally produce a zombie cure, because your blood is mixed with the stuff right now, it's bright blue, it's fucking glowing, and when I tried to put it in a test tube it melted through the bottom. The stuff is also radioactive.

"In short, you are fucking scary, and you need to stay away from me."

Explodey smiled sheepishly.

"Eh...Well..."

"Is he dangerous to the rest of us?"

Night Shroud turned around to find Sliske floating behind him.

"He should be. The substances and fluids his body produce by all rights should be having violent chemical reactions almost constantly, and should be highly poisonous to ponies. The fact that he's shared physical contact with a number of you and nopony immediately dropped dead is making me question everything I know about science. If he hasn't killed any of us so far, I guess we're safe, but I have no idea why that is."

"So..." Explodey said conversationally, "If I'm not a pony, then what do we call me?"

"I'm going to call you what you are. An abomination," Night Shroud replied, "Though feel free to pick whatever name for yourself you want."

The batpony casually walked out of the clinic, leaving Explodey strapped to the table and Sliske floating next to him while everyone else stared at the door.

Explodey turned to the alien.

"Sliske? Am I an abomination?" he asked sincerely.

"Yes. You are. But so am I, so I'm not going to judge."

***

Second flicked his wrist and the door in front of him opened to admit him entrance, and closed behind him once he crossed its threshold. To his left and right were more doors, leading into multiple prison cells with varying levels of security around them. He was in the Canterlot dungeons, where he himself had been held for a brief time.

The dungeons were not what one thought of when the word 'dungeon' was said. To him, 'dungeon' invoked images of a dirty old stone corridor, with cells held by iron bars containing nothing but a bed of straw and a crap bucket in the corner, maybe with the occasional rat running in and out of the cells and optional shackles on the walls.

And sure enough, parts of the dungeon were like that, but it was the old part. Apparently the whole dungeon had been doing through a restoration or renovation or something, but it had been stopped for some reason mid-way. So now, the most north-western part of the dungeons were exactly like what you'd think a dungeon would look like, only with way more cobwebs, and it was off limits.

The rest of them meanwhile, where he and a few other ponies had been held when all this began, looked pretty much like a police station from Earth. The floors of the corridor had carpet; rough carpet mind, but still carpet. The walls were all plastered over and had pleasant, brightly coloured wallpaper that periodically changed colour depending on the corridor.

And the cells did still have iron bars, but they were new and shiny, rather than old and rusted. Most surprisingly of all, shock of all shocks, these bunch of primitives had the foresight to not use padlocks to keep the cell locked.

As well as that, the dungeon, if you could still call it that, wasn't just the cells. Walking around, Second found storerooms, a kitchen for the prisoner's meals that looked very under stocked and underused, (for all the cells down here, he doubted that more than five of them ever saw use every year), and of course the interrogation room where Celestia had questioned him.

Well...not exactly. The interrogation room had been converted to hold him when he was first captured. The princess had removed all the windows and doors and made sure that nothing could get in or out, and had included magical protection to prevent teleporting as well and hoping to nullify his powers. That was supposed to make it escape-proof.

If only the poor mare had realised that Dramatic Convenience and off-screen teleportation made a mockery of Equestrian physics. He really felt like he had been cheating by just snapping his fingers and appearing outside his cell. It was like a designer went through all the trouble of setting up a ten mile looping obstacle course for him to jump through, and he had just walked three feet in the opposite direction and touched the finish line right away.

Well, that's what you get for being confident in your abilities. Your plans fail, and some asshole takes a shotgun to your face.

So no, he hadn't found the interrogation room's entrance because there was no door leading into it. He had actually found the door leading to the observation room that allowed one to see into the interrogation room.

Out of curiosity, he opened it and stepped inside, and his jaw hit the floor as he saw that the interrogation room was already occupied.

In the room beyond, a starved and dying zebra whimpered pathetically as he tried to lick any moisture he could out of the jug on the table that used to contain water, and when that failed, tried the same with the glass, which he threw against the wall in frustration and shattered when that too yielded nothing. He slammed his head on the table and cried.

Second broke out into a huge, evil grin, and began rubbing his hands together.

"Oh...This is too perfect...You are beautiful...You are going to save my life..."

***

Spike kicked again and turned over.

"No..." he muttered, "...Get a...get away from...you...monsters..."

From across the cargo hold, Mystic watched the slumbering dragon with Prince Blueblood at his side, taking care of him while the other adults were making sure that everything was working right and directing the Prometheus to whichever destination they had chosen.

"Why does he always do that?" asked the colt.

"I's 'cause 'e has nightmares," Blueblood replied, "Way I 'eard it, from her maj Celestia, the Eternal over there's suffered 'em e'ry night of 'is life since he was as big as you are."

Mystic furrowed his brow.

"But...If he always has nightmares...why does he sleep all the time?"

"Dunno, mate. Maybe dragons jus' need their sleep? Or maybe he's not bothered by 'em anymore?"

"...Rarity...Please don't...nuhh..."

Spike's nostrils released small puffs of smoke.

"...I'm going to wake him up," Mystic declared.

Blueblood's eyes widened and he reached forward and grabbed Mystic as he tried to run off.

"No!" he scolded, "You DON'T go wakin' up a sleepin' dragon! He'll fuckin' massacre you, mate!"

"No he won't," Mystic said irritably, "I'm sure he's been woken up by somepony before."

The prince gave him an odd look and let go of him.

"I s'pose. Do you actually need to talk to him about anything though?"

"Yeah. I want to know what he's like. I talk to everypony else. Why not talk to him just because he's a dragon?"

Blueblood shrugged.

"You're a smart kid, y'know?"

Mystic smiled.

"Sliske teaches me things," he said helpfully.

"...Right."

With Blueblood's permission, the blue unicorn slowly edged across the cargo hold towards Spike, who continued to stir every so often until Mystic finally reached him.

"Mr. Spike?" he said.

The dragon's eyes slowly opened, and he looked around him trying to find the source of the voice, before crossing his eyes to see Mystic standing almost directly in front of his nose and practically hidden from view with how small he was.

"Oh. Hello."

He sat up and stretched, yawning, and his bones cracking as he did.

"What did you want?" he asked.

"I just...wanted to talk," Mystic replied, "I wanted to know more about you. We never learned much about dragons in school."

Spike raised an eyebrow and lowered his head so he could more closely examine him.

"...How old are you, exactly?"

"Nine."

"Ah. That'll be why then. The dragons, me especially, are often involved in some unpleasant, bloody affairs. The kind they don't want to teach kids your age about. Since for the past thousand years, Equestria has been without any Elements of Harmony to deal with the really big monsters, me and the Nineteen are often made to deal with it instead. Why, before I came to help in Canterlot, I had just finished dealing with a hydra attack on Pony Harbour..."

The purple dragon scratched the underside of his chin with a claw.

"...Come to think of it, I should probably get back there at some point and make sure he hasn't attacked the place again in the time I've been away. He might not have, but he was never a trustworthy one. I hope he hasn't. His Uncle Tommy kept ignoring my warnings, and I gave him a bath in a volcano for his troubles. That wasn't a good day for me."

Mystic blinked.

"...Yeah, see this is why they don't teach you about us."

"No, it's okay," the colt said quietly, "I understand if you have to do stuff like that sometimes..."

"I don't like doing it," Spike replied, "I try not to kill unless I have to. Twilight Sparkle, your ancestor, she was the same. Her and her friends regularly went up against dangerous enemies, but rarely was there bloodshed. I remember the first time I ever met a diamond dog. I was out with Rarity, I assume you know Rarity? I was out with her, and we were searching for gems..."

***

"So, did you see the Firstian afterlife too?" asked Sliske as they sat alone in the clinic.

Explodey nodded.

"I met First himself, actually," he revealed.

"Really? What was he like?"

"I dunno. I was only there for about thirty seconds."

The alien paused for a moment.

"Was Broad Sword there?"

"...I don't know. I only saw First. I wasn't there long enough to ask about anypony else."

"...You can't die, right? You just come back if you get killed?"

"...Yep."

Sliske grinned.

"...I propose an experiment..."

***

"Sir? Are you in here? Sir?"

Silver trotted away from the entrance to the throne room, frowning to herself as she searched the palace for any trace of Second. Deciding to head down to one of the lower levels, she approached the door leading to the stairwell, but was interrupted as it burst open and a zebra strode out.

She stared at him for a second. He was bizarre looking. He was wearing a dark hoodie but had the hood itself down, revealing his ear piercings. Around his neck he had multiple gold chains, one of which had a pendant shaped like a 'T' on it studded with diamonds. He had a holster attached to his side, inside of which was a handgun that he would have had real trouble using, being non-magical, and he had tattoos on his hooves. Tattoos! Seriously!

He glared at her.

"Watchu starin' at, bitch?"

"...I..." she stuttered.

"What? Ain't never seen a zebra b'fore, cracker-ass pony?"

"But- I..."

"Quit starin' at me, hoe!" he shouted.

At that moment, Second came through the door.

"Sir! Who is this?!" asked Silver.

"Oh, hey Silver," Second replied cheerfully, "Allow me to introduce you. This here is a zebra. His name used to be Ze!zar, and yes, that clicking sound in the middle was part of his actual name. It was stupid. So I used my magical Elder God powers to brainwash him and give him a makeover. Now his name is Thug Lyfe, spelled with a 'Y'. Thug Lyfe, this is Silver Vein."

"Ballin'."

He held out a hoof to her. Silver was unsure what to do, so she hesitantly tried to shake it. Thug Lyfe started giving her the glare again.

"Umm...Why is he here?" she asked.

"Well, I'm glad you asked! See, I have a lot of plans to pull off. Plans which I don't want the writers and viewers to know about. If I'm in a scene, I can't discuss my plans. I'd be fucked. And with the recent news from Nathan telling me that everything is going meta, that means that even talking about things on the other side of the fourth wall is no guarantee of safety. I need a way to ensure that I won't be onscreen. So I thought, if swearing isn't bad enough for me to get taken off of television, what is? And then I thought...RACISM!"

Silver tilted her head.

"Yep. Even Tom and Jerry cartoons can get censored thanks to the blackface stuff. So if I turn our token zebra character into a racist caricature of African American people, and make it as offensive as humanly possible, and I keep him by me at all times, I will therefore not be on television, as long as he is always doing something stereotypical and offensive."

Second reached into his coat and pulled out a chicken drumstick, which he offered to Thug Lyfe.

"Feeling hungry?"

The zebra took it and started eating without comment. Silver just alternated between staring at the both of them.

"I don't get it," she replied.

"Well of course YOU wouldn't," Second snapped, "Unlike me and Thug Lyfe. We understand this sort of shit. We're from the STREETS, you dig?"

"...No. No I really don't, sir."

Thug Lyfe finished eating and tossed aside the chicken bone.

"You don't understand, 'cause you ain't DOWN with us, dawg," he interjected, "We're GHETTO. Me and my boy Second are like...brothers, man. We're together for LIFE. No homo."

"Oh, Thug Lyfe! You always know what to say," Second replied, "And that's why you're my favourite minion."

The two of them walked off down the corridor, while Silver just stared after them longingly, a sad look on her face.

"...Favourite...minion...?" she repeated.

She looked at the floor, and then her head shot up again, fire in her eyes.

"Oh no you don't."

***

Night Shroud cleared his throat and gently placed the test tube on the desk in front of the two. Inside was a bubbly amber liquid with a layer of froth at the top, prevented from overflowing by an old cork. Sliske and Explodey looked expectantly at him.

"I had to make a whole new formula for this," the batpony explained, "Understand that Explodey's condition will foil just about any conventional method of killing him. The zombie virus only managed it because it was engineered especially for the purpose of killing anything alive. Well, that and reanimating them afterwards. So, I hope you know how insanely hard it was to find a poison that would overwhelm a healing factor that potent."

"So what is this stuff?" asked Explodey.

Night Shroud motioned to the test tube.

"That thing there is a mixture of over eighty seven different varieties of poison, utilising venom from several species of insects and reptiles, industrial solvents, pesticides, and just general toxic chemicals. Basically, whatever I could find. Several of my additions required other chemicals to stabilise them and prevent a violent reaction."

He knelt down and peered into the tube, admiring his own work.

"As well as the chemical elements, it also makes use of a lot of magical ones too, such as some powderized gems enchanted with spells for slowing down the immune system and inhibiting cell growth and regrowth, and it's important that the immune system is attacked because I also used magic to allow several lethal diseases to survive in that mixture, and they and the poisons will be attacking you simultaneously. I also made sure it was highly irradiated too, just for good measure.

"It's fast acting too. Essentially, the ultimate killer. One single drop of that stuff would kill a dragon in twelve seconds. A hydra in five. Anything smaller than an elephant would shrivel up and die immediately on contact with the stuff."

His eyes darted back up to Explodey.

"The whole test tube. You? I'd say it'll keep you dead for...about...an hour and a half."

***

"...And, well, that was the end of that," Spike concluded, "I told him he was an idiot, Pinkie Pie agreed with me, and then the guy started throwing things. Surprisingly, it was Fluttershy who actually put him in his place. That mare could be downright scary when somepony made her angry. And after that we all left, and I swore off citrus fruits for life."

"Cor, blimey," said Blueblood, "After that? I'm surprised you didn't give up on fruit period."

"Well...I didn't promise to do that, though I can't say I eat much in the way of fruit nowadays anyway...Fruit flavoured gems, maybe. It's more out of a lack of opportunity than anything else. Not like I carry bits around with me and go bargaining with traders. Too big to fit in most marketplaces."

"Tell me about when the Legion invaded!" Mystic said enthusiastically.

"Umm...Are you sure you want to hear about that? 'Cause...uh...I got more stories about my friends' other adventures...Like...Did I ever tell you about the time Rainbow Dash went to prison?"

Mystic's jaw dropped.

"No. Tell me!"

"Well, it all started when this thief walked into Sugarcube Corner, which was this bakery that Pinkie Pie and this family called the Cakes used to run here in Ponyville. I don't think it's around anymore. Anyway, Rainbow Dash was back in the kitchen helping with some baking at the time, because nopony else was available and Pinkie had needed volunteers. Well, of course, when the thief got caught stealing things she went to stop him, but then..."

***

Silver nudged the side door to the dining room open and entered. Second and Thug Lyfe were sat at the table already, Thug Lyfe taking a chair right next to Second and leaving her usual seat free. She smiled as she walked over to take her place, but her expression quickly changed into one of shock as she noticed a skinned and roasted pegasus sitting on the table.

It was right next to Thug Lyfe, and rather than being on a platter of some sort, it was laying inside a suit of Secopolis power armour that had been cracked open down the middle to expose its occupant. Evidently, the armour was being used as some kind of novelty tin foil.

And what's more, Second and Thug Lyfe were already eating it. The zebra was gnawing hungrily on a torn off wing, while the human was holding a leg with both hands and had already chewed it down to the bone in the middle, and was working along it.

Silver just stared at them. Second noticed.

"...What?"

"Uh...my Lord? Why are you...?"

"Why am I what?" Second asked innocently.

"Umm..."

"Are you going to sit down?"

Silver Vein awkwardly walked over to the table and took a seat opposite Second. He continued to munch on the roasted leg as if it were completely normal, making Silver Vein somewhat queasy. Thug Lyfe finished off the wing and moved onto the vegetables on his plate.

"You look nervous," said Second.

"Sir, why are you eating a pony?" she finally asked.

"Why not? You people are fucking delicious."

He held out the half eaten pegasus leg to her.

"Want some?"

"NO!"

Second shrugged.

"Okay then."

He took another bite out of it nonchalantly.

"I mean...What even gave you the idea to...?"

"What? To eat this pony? I haven't tried pony before, and figured being in Equestria will give me as good an opportunity as any. I mean, some eastern cultures on my home world eat horses. It's sort of uncommon and frowned upon, but they must do it for some reason. I figured, maybe I was missing out. Gotta say, I think they were onto something. The leg parts taste like pork, but the wings and the area around them tasted like poultry. There's just so much variety!"

He happily finished off the leg and moved onto a jacket potato. It was at this point Silver noticed that she had her own meal as well, hers fortunately lacking any meat, pony or otherwise. There were a few carrots and greens, broccoli, cooked mushrooms and buttered bread. All things she enjoyed, so she just tried to ignore Second and focus on that.

"You know," Second mused in between chewing, "I've been thinking. There are a lot of parallels between me and the Christian god lately, what with my touchy healing powers, and the way I call myself the Lord, and all that stuff. It occurs to me, maybe that's not the best way to go about this whole business? I'd be terrible trying to act like the deities of the major religions of my world.

"Those great gods like Yahweh, and Allah, and most the ones that are still worshipped today, they've all got these great moral values and shit in their religions. Nah, that ain't me. Then you look at all the ancient gods, the ones that aren't worshipped anymore and no-one really believes in or cares about, even if they are really well known. The not so great, as it were. You know the ones I mean. Thor, Zeus, fucking...Poseidon. Those guys. They're much more like me.

"THAT is what I should be more like. The Greeks didn't try to pretend their gods were anything other than psychopathic tyrants. I think they're a much better fit for the sort of thing I'm doing."

"...Sir?"

"Oh, even better. You know what I should do? I should be like those tribal heathen gods. You know, like Baal? Pony civilisation is rapidly declining thanks to the zombies anyway. Pretty soon, society will collapse entirely, and in a few generations ponies will probably live in tribes again. I could take advantage of that. Become a tribal god, and get ponies to sacrifice virgins to me and shit. That would be so boss. I could have a meal like this every week."

"Sir, please. You're making me uncomfortable."

Second tilted his head at her.

"'Uncomfortable'? That's all you have to say about this? I'm eating a pegasus right in front of you and talking about virgin sacrifices, and you're just 'uncomfortable'?"

"Umm..."

"I'll be honest. I'm actually doing this because I wanted to see how far I'd have to go before you complained. Damn, you have a high tolerance for my bullshit."

He turned to Thug Lyfe.

"You. You're overdue to say something stereotypical."

"Cracker be trippin'."

"Mmhmm."

Second tore the other wing off the pegasus and held it out to Silver once again.

"It's really not actually a pegasus. These are a bunch of different meats I conjured up and changed to resemble a pony to test you. These wings are chicken. They're actually quite nice. You're good to eat them if you want to."

Silver stared at the wing for a second and hesitantly accepted it out of curiosity. She took a small nibble, feeling extremely uncomfortable about the whole thing.

"It's...alright," she confessed, "Surprisingly good, actually. Not excellent, but I could eat it if I had to."

"I was lying, of course. You just ate Private Black Pepper."

Silver turned to the side and vomited. Second and the zebra just burst into laughter.

"That was hilarious! Best idea ever, Thug Lyfe. You and I should go on a pranking spree next time we're in Secopolis. Fuck with all the other military types. We could make a day of it! What do you think, Silver?"

The pegasus mare gave Thug Lyfe the evil eye.

"That sounds wonderful, sir," she said icily.

You're dead, zebra.

***

"There it is," said Celestia as they walked onto the bridge, "Mt. Celestia. Home of the Harmonites, and the secret to getting your elements working again."

A blizzard raged outside the airship, the snow only prevented from coming inside by Ancient Tome's magical shields over the window frames, which he had not removed since the group meeting earlier that day. Though their view was tinted slightly purple, they could clearly see the mountain beyond, taller than even Canterlot used to be and snow white from top to bottom.

"What's causing this weather?" asked Gold Coin as he stepped over to her side, "Surely this isn't pony made? You said this was isolated up here. Are the Harmonites responsible for this blizzard?"

"This area has wild weather, like the Everfree forest once had."

The ponies looked over to the side to see Princess Luna approaching. She had been here on the bridge for most of their journey, acting as captain and guiding the Prometheus with their help from navigation.

"Why is that?" asked Tome, "What causes the weather anomalies?"

"Demons, I would imagine," Celestia replied, grimness obvious in her voice, "Long time ago, before my rule, demonic entities called the windigoes that fed off of the disharmony between ponies caused great blizzards like this that forced a pony migration from the old kingdom to what is known as Equestria today.

"For many thousands of years even after the Eclipse Crisis, the Everfree forest also used to have wild weather, because it was home to a being called the Crystal Demon, and the strange weather in there ceased when it was slain by Spike. Tartarus, native home of the demons, also suffers weather issues, and we had rogue weather all across Equestria when Tirac invaded one thousand years ago.

"The recognisable pattern is, if there's unnatural weather, it's usually a demonic force to blame. The frozen north has always been like it, so whatever's causing it has been here a while. I imagine the Harmonites would know more about it."

"Well," said Softy, "Let's hope they're not as organised as the last ones."

***

The chairman was forced onto his knees in the centre of the circular room. All around him, a number of red-skinned lizard creatures laughed.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" bellowed the largest one, sat at a podium in front of him, "FINALLY! We meet face to face! Chairman Gringdigrok of the Galactic Alliance, who dares show himself in the territory of the mighty Delkrampic Empire!"

Gringdigrok bowed his head in frustration. His restraints prevented any major movement. There was little else he could do.

"You were foolish, to come here when you knew that our warships raid and destroy any Alliance vessel we see! Good thing we did not outright destroy yours however, so that we could finally bring to justice the leader of our empire's greatest opponent! Not that your pitiful Alliance is much of a match for us now! For we have heard stories, of a new enemy you face! Tell us, is it true what they say? Was your weakling little planet really wiped out?"

The chairman nodded uncomfortably.

"It is true. Nostos is gone. As is the entire Chellgrad system. Indeed, all Alliance systems beyond Chellgrad can be reasonably assumed to have been destroyed as well."

The lizard creature gave a big toothy grin.

"Oh, hoho! Isn't this a day for joyous celebration?! The ever self righteous Galactic Alliance, who condemned us so for our endorsement of slavery and our war tactics, now lies in ruins, while the Empire remains strong!"

Gringdigrok looked up at them.

"It won't for long. Whatever it was that was doing it, our new enemy is a great mass of destruction, the likes of which no-one has ever seen before. It is moving in the direction of your empire, and it ruins all in its path. In so little time, just two standard days, it has wiped out nearly half of the Alliance. The Delkrampic Empire stands even less chance. We were unable to save ourselves even with the Time Lords on our side. You are nothing."

"YOU SPEAK OF THE EMPIRE AS NOTHING?!"

"I do, Emperor Friegrelsh. Your reckoning is coming. What you do to me matters not now, and I have no desire to further put off my own death. It is coming either way, and when it arrives, we will all die together. If you hadn't had my fellow councilmen executed when your raiding party took our ship, they'd have stood by my side and told you the same."

The emperor growled at him, but then sighed in defeat as he realised the truth of his words.

"It seems...perhaps we have a need to help each other," he offered, "My empire has resources too. What can be done to combat this thing?"

A klaxon alarm began blaring throughout the complex. Everyone but the chairman and the emperor looked up at the ceiling or to each other, fear evident in their reptilian features. Friegrelsh remained completely still, shocked into silence and inaction, while Gringdigrok smiled sympathetically at him.

Suddenly, the chairman began to feel somewhat colder, and dust began to fly around in the air as if the wind was picking up. How though? They were inside...

Then he heard that familiar noise, and he knew he was saved.

***

Explodey sat up. He was once again in the void. Just in front of him, First was sitting in the same comfy chair as last time, wearing a pair of reading glasses and holding an open book. He looked up to see the unicorn, and removed his reading glasses to stare disbelievingly at him. Explodey looked around him to examine his surroundings.

"Waking up in a strange place with a guy I barely know," he commented, "It's just another morning, for Explodey McGee."

"...Seriously. How the FUCK do you keep getting here?!" First demanded.

Explodey jumped up right in front of the human and leaned over him and his chair.

"You! Where's Broad Sword?! I'm here on official business!"

First sunk into his chair to try and distance himself from Explodey, who was uncomfortably close. Without a word he snapped his fingers, and there was a flash of light to his left. He slipped out from under Explodey and got away while his harasser turned to face the other pony.

"Broad Sword?"

"Explodey? How did you-? HHGHHNN!"

He began to gasp for air.

"Explodey...I can't breathe..." he rasped, "Stop hugging me..."

"Sorry."

Broad Sword fell to ground as his friend let go.

"Now, you have some explaining to do!" Explodey began, "Point the first, you getting killed. Why did you go and do that? Point the second, the Second. He's still out there being a douche, and we've got no Element of Loyalty to help us get rid of him because you're all dead and stuff. Point the third, Sliske. Did you know you were his first ever friend? He didn't take that whole 'you dying' business too well. Point the fourth. You never told me you were gay! In fact, you explicitly denied that you were! Lying to my face, Swordy. Shame on you."

"Well, what reason would I have to tell you?" the earth pony replied, "I did that a few times before in some other social circles and it just made things awkward. Nopony needs to know about whether or not I like stallions when it's not relevant! Besides, you would have just teased me even more! Kept getting me all...flustered."

"I wouldn't have if you didn't want me to! I was just having fun with you. And you just looked so cute when you were blushing...Yeah, like you are now."

Broad Sword looked away from him in embarrassment.

"Hey, come on. Look at me."

"...What?"

"See, I think it was relevant. You just didn't want to tell me, and I think I can guess why."

Broad Sword scraped the ground with a hoof.

"Damn, you are REALLY shy, aren't you? Swordy, am I going to have to make the first move?"

The earth pony smiled meekly at him.

"...It would help."

Explodey trotted over to his side and sat next to him, and pulled Broad Sword into another embrace, gentler this time.

"Now, I'm only here for a short time," he said quietly, "Any death I can experience is very temporary. So...while I'm here, I want you to know that-"

There was another flash of light. Explodey disappeared and Broad Sword fell flat on his face.

"...MOTHERF-"

***

"OH GOD, YES!"

Second slammed a fist on the table as he convulsed.

"Sir?! What's wrong?"

"NOTHING'S WRONG, SILVER! I'M ON TOP OF THE WORLD!"

"Yo Second, my pasty white nigga, why you be moaning like yo ridin' a fat bitch?"

"BECAUSE SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, EXPLODEY MCGEE IS MISERABLE! AND HIS PAIN IS DELICIOUS TO ME!"

END

Author's notes:

This chapter was approved by several black people, so you know.

So anyway, sorry for the delays, I'll release more deleted scenes to compensate. As usual I hope no-one got offended, and if they didn't, then I'm really beginning to wonder just what I'd have to do to actually offend someone. I'm sure there must be some sort of line I'm not allowed to cross, but for the life of me, I can't find the damn thing.

This and the next chapter were going to be a single one, but...you know...fuck it.

In other news, Draven's continuing work on Shades, I am gradually coming close to finishing the initial planning and writing of King Machine, I read a whole book in a day because I'm a boss, Draven's threatening to make a porn spin-off unless I keep in line, and pretty soon I'm going to finish Fallout: New Vegas at long last, so those of you that care can look forward to my feature length review of that game, its DLCs and my contribution to the Vegas vs. 3 debate in my blog. Because as we all know, people arguing about video games on the internet is the height of entertainment.

Next chapter: A pony unironically named Steroid Abuser.

Chapter 32: Captain Cometson's Lunacy Adventure

"Quotes! A random, out of context quote! It is framed as if from an in-universe book, and is there at the beginning of each chapter to give the illusion that everything is much deeper than it actually is. Except when it isn't. Because sometimes we have a flashback instead. Sometimes two. And very occasionally, they'll even have some actual relevance to the chapter about to follow. Of course, even that is but a legend..."

-Passenger 46B, extract from a conversation that occurred on a plane sometime last March.

***

Nathan's eyes scanned the document for what must have been the fiftieth time that night. The bags under his eyes grew ever more noticeable, and the aging writer could only sigh and clutch his own head in his hands, out of coffee as he was. He banged his head on the desk, but there was nobody to hear him in the dark room. He pulled at his own skin, as if trying to tear the mask off, but he couldn't. Because it was his face. Nathan was dumb.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck it." He sat up in his chair and pushed himself back from the computer. "I'm done."

He got up from his chair and headed through the darkened hallway in search of the kitchen. He stepped into the other room and turned on the light, revealing another man leaning against the refridgerator. Nathan ignored him as he prepared another cup of coffee.

"That's it?" asked Howard. "You're giving up?"

"Sure am."

"So if you were just going to giving up halfway, then what was the point of all this?"

Nathan didn't answer at first, instead keeping his full attention on the coffee. There was silence in the kitchen, aside from the gentle clink of a teaspoon as Nathan stirred it. When he was done, he looked back to his brother.

"If there was ever a point, I think I lost it. This bullshit just got too complicated, and I think that trying to keep this whole endeavour going is a lost cause. Seriously, Howie, what the fuck am I doing with my life? Look at me! I haven't slept in days! I've created a monster! I'm hallucinating that you're here, and holding a fucking conversation with you, and all the while that abomination is sitting out there on my computer, plotting to take even more of my sanity with it."

He stared down into his coffee with the haunted eyes of a shell-shocked veteran.

"I can't let this go on anymore, Howard. This story is evil and it needs to be stopped."

The coffee mug shattered into pieces as Nathan slammed it down on the kitchen counter, having not even taken a single sip of it. He scalded his hand in the process, but he didn't seem to care. Instead, he dashed into the other room, throwing on the lights and leaping into his computer seat. The hallucination of his brother followed in after him.

"Nathan, come on, let's not do anything crazy here... You're sleep deprived. You're not rational. Let's think things through."

"No, I am rational!" Nathan said with a manic grin. "I think I'm thinking clearly for the first time in years!"

"...Nathan, what are you doing?"

"I'm writing the ending. Everybody fucking dies."

***

Soft Spoken, in all his fanged and frail glory, stood before his friends in the Harmonite temple. The other new Elements of Harmony, the spider monks, and Princess Luna could all only stare at him, none of them quite sure how to respond to this latest revelation.

"It's... a long story..." Softy began. "But how it basically goes is—"

At that moment, they were all interrupted by a big glowing green orb that suddenly appeared in the room. It popped up out of nowhere, just between Soft Spoken and the rest of the ponies, and from it emerged two very serious ponies with visored helmets and blue full-body armour. They stepped out into the temple, and the portal vanished behind them.

"...And who might you ponies be?" asked Princess Luna.

"Space police," said one. "Super serious time travel division."

"We're here to cleanse this timeline. The Codex Gravis empowers us to police the space-time continuum and enforce the rule of seriousness in the face of the mad and deranged."

"Your timeline is in violation of laws of seriousness. It's just too silly."

"In fact, you have beached maximum silliness restrictions several times. This would be fine if you were a silly universe, you understand, but since so many serious things happen here, we are forced to conclude that this is a serious timeline that you have somehow perverted."

The remaining ponies all looked to each other.

"So... what happens now?" asked Gold Coin.

The space police exchanged a look.

"Now we sterilise."

And then they pulled their laser guns and shot everybody.

***

"Ohohoho! Quite amusing!" Lord Second chuckled. "Why, I can't believe I was almost about to kill you all!"

Celestia, Jekyll and Hyde all laughed with him as they sipped their tea in the lounge.

"You know," Second said with a sigh, "I'm glad that we all finally sat down and had this talk. All this time I've just been a mass-murdering crazy person with a deranged sense of humour, no empathy for other living things, and a tragic backstory which causes me to angst all the time and provides a sort of excuse for my actions but not really, when all I needed this whole time a good sit down and talk with some friends to get it out of my system! Whew! I wish we'd done this earlier so that all those ponies could still be alive! Oh well, you win some, you lose some!"

"Haha! Murder! I love it!" said Hyde, taking a bite out of a crumpet.

"I'm just happy that we were finally able to reach a peaceful resolution," Celestia agreed.

"You know, I think everything's going to turn out just great," said Jekyll, giving not one shit about tempting the irony gods.

There was a knock. The four of them all turned their heads as one to see Thug Lyfe open the door and poke his head inside.

"Yo, LS, my nigga, there's some cracker with all mismatched limbs here for ya."

Second raised an eyebrow. "Send him in."

Thug Lyfe stepped aside, admitting an angry draconequus into the room, covered in stone dust. Celestia's eyes widened.

"D-Discord!" she stuttered, "How did you—?"

"Zip it, Celestia," he interrupted, creating an actual zip to close her mouth up.

Discord turned on the three humans.

"You have been stealing my thunder for far too long," he said, point an accusatory claw at Second.

"Me? What did I do?"

"Oh, 'what did I do?' he asks! Like you don't know!"

Discord wiped the remaining stone dust off of himself and grabbed a pinch of it as it fell from his shoulders. He held it out to show Second.

"Turning into a statue? Godlike powers? Mysterious past that is never elaborated on before your defeat? Lord Second, while I am flattered that you chose to model yourself off of me, I'm afraid I must protest this shameless unoriginality that surrounds you and everything involved with you."

Second became indignant.

"Are you accusing me of being derivative, sir?"

With a flash of magic, one of the helmets of the Secopolis power armour appeared in Discord's talon. He thrust it into Second's face and glared at him.

"You tell me!" he hissed.

Second's eyes darted between the power helmet, Celestia, and his two clones. Finally, he looked Discord in the eye again.

"Okay, point taken. But look, we don't have to be this way! I've always been a fan of yours, Discord! I was thinking—"

"Stop. Just stop."

Discord floated over to Celestia and removed her mouth zip. He put an arm around her and used the other to gesture to her for second.

"Look at this poor mare here! Look at what you've put her through!" He then gestured to the room in general. "In fact, look at all of this!"

Second did so.

"I'm not seeing what you want me to see."

A loud sigh preceded Discord snapping his talons and suddenly teleporting all of them to the castle roof. From up here, they had a view of the twisted remains of Canterlot.

"Look at this! It's a mess! Fitting for a man with no creativity, you're not a creator, but a destroyer. This is all utterly pointless. Who on Earth goes into a land like Equestria, stuffy and full of pompous idiot ponies though it may be, and thinks, 'Yeah, I'll just kill everything here! Won't that be great!' I'd ask if you were mentally deficient, but I'm not sure where it'd get me."

Second appeared to struggle for words.

"...Wuh... well... I can always fix it. Y'know. With my powers."

"I don't care," Discord replied. "That you can fix it isn't the point. I can fix it too. That's not the important part. The important part is that despite the fact that you reduced Equestria to an anarchy, you are an affront to the chaos I represent. Creative chaos. You're an avatar of entropy and decay. Your existence offends me. And I will not stand for it!"

The draconequus folded his arms in a gesture of finality, floating out away from the castle with his back to the horizon, so that he could face them all. Second's expression darkened at the obvious challenge.

"Very well, Discord. If you really want to fight me, then—"

"Oh, I don't. I can't win in a fight with you. But this is why a god needs to have brains to back up their power."

There was a roar and a burst of blue and purple. All of Second's bravado disappeared, while Discord grew a wide grin and held his arms wide. A portal opened behind him, a gaping maw that sucked in the buildings of Canterlot into a vortex of colour and sound.

"What did you do?!" Second yelled.

"System restore!" Discord shouted back. "I'm returning Equestria to factory settings! No more humans!"

Even for all his magnificent powers, Lord Second and his clones could not help but be sucked into the void, Celestia and Thug Lyfe following after. Soon, Discord was pulled inside too, laughing all the way. The portal continued to grow, and expand outwards.

***

"Oh boy! What a sweet-looking planet!" said Captain Cometson, Eater of Worlds, as his gigantic body drifted by a small sun. "I think I will eat it and the souls of all its inhabitants!"

The yellow space god cheerfully plucked the planet out of its orbit and tossed it down his gullet, swallowing it whole.

"Mmmm! That hit the spot!"

But Captain Cometson felt an odd feeling in his stomach. In response to his terrible tummy ache, he pulled back his many slick yellow tentacles from the distant corners of time and rubbed his belly mournfully.

"Uh-oh..."

That planet had had a matter-consuming portal on it. And now Captain Cometson would be absorbed into it from the inside out, which would cause it to expands to all points in space and time and effectively end reality.

"My horoscope came true!" he gasped.

And then he died, along with everything else ever.

***

All matter was condensed into a single point. A new Big Bang occurred. Billions of years passed, great and powerful entities rose and fell, and eventually a planet would form which gave rise to life. This life came in the shape of ponies, as well as many other creatures. And it just so happened that one of those ponies was named Twilight Sparkle, and she had a series of wonderful adventures with her friends that resulted in some bullshit involving a magic crystal castle-tree, which she partially had thanks to her good friend named Discord.

And that, dear readers, is where I come in.

***

"Nathan, what in the fucking motherfuck are you fucking doing?"

"Shush, Howie," said Nathan. "I am concluding the meta bullshit."

***

For you see, children, the end of the universe was not truly the end of Lord Second! You did not think that, did you? No! Because in fact, he visited me! As a hallucination! And he helped me through my many tough times in my life. He gave me good advice, such as telling me to set people on fire when they caused me trouble, and life became easier. And I was happy again, because my dear brother never disappeared at all, but instead became the god-ghost of ponies who lives inside my head. And everything was perfect always and forever.

At least until the night terrors came. At least until the fucking endless screams in the night, where they won't leave me alone, and all they ever fucking do is remind me that I'm still writing this fucking shit because it's the nightmares that always inspired the story, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life, because this wasn't how it was supposed to go, and I have no idea how I turned out a product this mediocre and GODDAMN IT I JUST WANT IT TO END WHY WON'T IT END WHY AM I STILL WRITING THIS PIECE OF SHIT I JUST WANT SOME FUCKING PEACEFUL SLEEP

***

Shortly afterwards, Nathan started crying and drinking heavily. He send off the final chapter to his publisher, left the house the next morning, assaulted a vagrant, got arrested, and eventually he found his way to a decent psychiatric hospital where he stayed for several months and got the pills he needed to cope with life. After that, he returned home, hallucination free, and now with a carer. His dear brother, Brian, was there to take care of him from then on. And Nathan lived a life of happiness, never writing metafiction about overpowered humans in a world of cartoon ponies ever again.

And as for Hasbro? Well, they never did make Future Imperfect. It was a little too imperfect. But instead, they took the lessons to heart, now knowing the depths to which a brand can sink, and thanking their lucky stars that however terrible the adaptations of their properties might become, at least it will never be as bad as fanfiction written on a dare by a teenager who doesn't know shit about good writing.

***

With a light chuckle, DannyJ closed the book and removed the pipe from his mouth. He leaned forward on his rocking chair, smiling to the circle of children sat by the fireplace in front of him.

"And the moral of the story is that you cannot apologise for bad fiction. You can only apologise for yourself."

He stopped smiling at them.

"And really. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry for me."

Danny tossed the book in the fire.

"Well, at least that disaster is over with." He looked back at the surprised children. "And nobody will ever adopt any of you!"

And to a chorus of crying children, DannyJ smashed the window, climbed out, and escaped into the night, long gone by the time security arrived.

Such is the way of the maverick writer.

THE END.

Author's Note

META!

Yeah, but that's it. Story's over. Go home.