Just One Last Dance with the Devil
Twilight burst into Canterlot's town hall, slamming the doors opened, horn ready to fire, a cold angry look on her face.
In this tall circular tower sculpted in the finest clay around and laced with gold, enchanted to last beyond the generations, there was a mare. An old mare, with a long and blue rolled mane, flying in the room, around a gigantic column of a greenish magic reaching to the roof.
The pegasus turned her head when she heard the alicorn coming in.
"This ends now, Cozy!" Twilight shouted.
The old mare smirked, going behind the pillar of incandescent mana, right when Twilight threw her spell. The ray of paralyzing magic was swallowed immediately by the emerald glimmer, while the pegasus only slyly agreed:
"Oh, it does end now, princess. Or at least, today."
She reached to pat a little ancient tablet of old scriptures, laying on the stone wall surrounding the pillar. The elder device was glowing with two dots of red magic on it, with two more empty slots ready to turn on, as the villainous mare followed:
"It took me some time to find one of the old stones of Faust. I thought they would all be destroyed by now, yet I still found the Ardor one. I would have preferred Unity, but oh well."
"I know what you've been up to!" Twilight said through gritted teeth. "But I won't let you charge it!"
"I've already halfway won on that front, princess," Cozy said with a smirk.
"You'll need twenty more minutes to charge the two other nodes," Twilight contradicted. "How do you intend on stalling me long enough for that?"
"Oh, you think I'd reveal my plan like that?" the old pegasus mocked. "Why don't you try and probe at it?"
The two of them stared at one another, on each side of the pillar of greenish mana. The devilish aged eyes of the pegasus, filled with a mischief similar to the one she had always bared, albeit more wise, tamed by the years, looking into the eyes of the princess, who was now as tall as her mentor had been, determined yet cautious, evaluating the situation with decades worth of experience in dealing with villains.
Or, at least, Twilight appeared so. Because behind that facade of seriousness, of carefulness in front of an old threat, she wasn't scared nor worried.
There was nothing Cozy could do.
Her thing was deceiving people, and that mask had fallen off a lifetime ago now. Sure, her plotting schemes had been somewhat menacing, but always relied on artifacts from ancient times and elaborated uses of other's powers. Because she didn't have any herself, outside of her brain and acting, and even those weren't outstanding either. She was a marvelous foe for a pegasus, by all accounts, but only a decent villain. Twilight had come to that conclusion a while ago already.
And now, she was old. As in "should have been retired for at least a decade" old. Her wings flapped slightly slower than before, her movements were unsure, her witty words less sharp and taking just fractions of seconds more to come out. Twilight could see it. Twilight knew her. Even the numbers of her plotting schemes had thinned out throughout the last few years, the princess could recall her last world domination attempt dated back to half a decade ago.
That pegasus wasn't a threat to Equestria anymore. Which didn't prevent Twilight from being cautious, aware of her surroundings, but she couldn't see any reason to be afraid, or even worried. No discernible traps were laid and Cozy didn't seem to be hiding anything. Was she only counting on bluff to keep Twilight away? Or had she been caught earlier than expected?
"What's the matter, princess?" the old pegasus mocked, seeing her hesitation. "Too scared to make a move?"
"I know your tricks, Cozy!"
But she wasn't scared. Confused, at best. Mostly, she was just looking for a way to end this confrontation without humiliating her opponent. Weirdly enough, she cared about that. She had fought Cozy for decades and, through it, had gained a kind of respect towards her. Because despite never succeeding, Cozy had always managed to get away, to hold on, either by planned route of escape, or by simply breaking out of her most recent jail. That pegasus had been planning the doom of Equestria for a long time, yet Twilight... admired some of her dedication.
Not in any way enough to forgive her, nor to let her have a win for once. But she was just... an old mare, following the only goal she ever had in life. Twilight couldn't remain insensitive to that assessment, but she couldn't show pity or mercy either. The fate of Equestria was still resting on her.
"Oooh, I get it," Cozy suddenly said, tired of seeing her stay there. "You're scared because you can't pull out the Elements of Harmony card against me or whatnot."
Twilight's frown went from wary to slightly hurt. If she didn't know the pegasus would play on it, she would have told her to be careful about what she was saying. Because this was a really sensitive topic right now.
But that small change in expression was enough for the sly mare. Cozy's smile only grew more falsely pleasant, as she followed:
"It's really hard to use the power of friendship when you only have two of them remaining, isn't it?"
The spell was cast on its own. Two purple streams of magic went around the pillar of magic, avoiding the suction by using opposite polarities repulsing one another, joining back straight onto the pegasus, causing a small explosion and a puff of smoke.
When it dissipated, Cozy was still standing there, a smug triumphant smile on her face.
"Sounds like I hit a nerve."
"Do not tread on grounds you know nothing about..." the princess warned with a suddenly cold tone.
Twilight wasn't going to ask how she had dodged it, she knew Cozy was waiting for that question with baited breath. But she couldn't let her say such things either.
"Well, I do know how it feels to lose all power," the pegasus contradicted. "So, I think I can guess how it feels to lose friendships. All those precious allies that you can't use anymore."
The ground around Cozy began to move on its own, or rather impulsed by Twilight's magic, surrounding the old pegasus like a golem of ancient stones reaching its massive hands around her.
"Oh, that's new," the evil mare noted, before pulling out of her curled hair a long pin made of something similar to copper.
She poked the animated hands with it, and the magic flew away from their bodies of rock, crumbling onto the now peeled off ground.
"A dart of nullification," Twilight muttered, still angry from her comments, while Cozy was putting the pin back into her mane. "You went all the way to Neighna just for that?"
"They don't make them anymore," Cozy sighed with the regrets of an old lady. "I managed to find one in an abandoned shrine. It's a shame."
"You do realize it doesn't protect you from kinetic projectiles? Even if I throw them with magic?"
The two of them stared at each other, their faces illuminated by the green tower of mana separating them, only for Cozy Glow to frown, wondering with suspicions:
"Why are you telling me that?"
"Because I don't want you to get smashed by the next stone I'm going to throw your way," Twilight seriously replied, lifting one of said stones with her magic.
"Why?"
The question struck Twilight more than it should have. She had slipped. In her desire to spare her opponent from a terrible fate, she had shown too much kindness to someone she was supposed to despise, and Cozy had seen through that. But maybe it was still recoverable.
"I'm not a villain, I don't take people by surprise when their life might be on the line. Defeating you doesn't have to imply hurting you physically."
"So why are you still threatening to do it?" Cozy asked, her frown getting slightly angry. "If you think it's a way to defeat me by surprise, then why are you telling me? I'll just dodge that rock now that you've said it. Not that I needed your help to know that."
"You're muddying the water," Twilight almost cut. "You're trying to gain time, but it won't work on me."
"I'm not!" the pegasus defended through gritted teeth. "I don't need to buy time, I already had as much of it as I wanted! I know I can't stall you with dialogues for the next twenty minutes, why would I EVER rely on that!? I'm just offended by you telling me your dumb idea!"
She was legitimately angry to have her plans been compared to such a stupid tactic, and Twilight saw she had made a faux pas by acting like Cozy wouldn't have anything better in store. Though it was still a bit weird to try not to offend her enemy.
"You want to see what I can do!?" Cozy shouted, raising a hoof in the air, even more pissed off, probably after some internal rambling. "Do you really want to provoke me, Cozy Glow, the only pegasus who ever opposed you, the great Twilight Sparkle!? Who fought for so many years, despite having no powers other than her intelligence, relying on the naivety of all the species living in this stupid world that I'm trying to-"
She had to stop. Her eyes went wide with shock, yet Twilight hadn't done anything. The old pegasus' gaze lost itself in the void, her jaw began to shake and was soon joined by her whole body. Her wings missed a flap, causing her to lose balance and altitude, as she suddenly held a hoof against her torso, wincing in pain.
"Hgnn...!" she let out, her breath cut, her face scared, the hoof on her heart clenching.
Twilight immediately understood what was happening to that old mare. She rushed to her, as Cozy's legs touched the floor, threatening to collapse on it.
"Cozy!" the alicorn said in panic, reaching for her.
"DON'T YOU DARE!" the pegasus suddenly shouted before she could even touch her, glaring at the princess with all the hatred she could muster through that pain, the voice shaky. "Don't you dare touch me...!"
Her breath was coming back. Slowly. Her wings had stopped, and she was standing on the floor, legs slightly bent, while Twilight was still hovering in the air, in front of her.
The princess saw it in her eyes. The hurt. Beyond the shame of being stopped by a weakened heart in front of her lifelong nemesis, her own ego had just been shredded by Twilight's helping attempt. The Princess of Friendship was worried for her well being, could there be any greater insult?
Twilight moved back, slowly. Still concerned, but admitting that Cozy would probably see it as the worst way to leave this world.
The pegasus couldn't even straighten back up fully, but she still mocked the princess nonetheless, catching her breath.
"So... I could fool you by pretending to be in pain... That's good to know... I almost got you, huh?"
Twilight frowned slightly. Was she...? Cozy may have been old, but she hadn't become a fool. She knew Twilight knew it wasn't an act. They both understood that. And sure, she was trying to defend her own pride, but... was she also trying to protect Twilight's own image? Did she think that the princess rushing to help her would be bad press for both of them?
Or would it... ruin everything?
As Twilight took another step back in the air, Cozy straightened up, reaching for her long pin, brandishing it weakly with a shaky hoof.
"I would have drained your magic if you had gotten any closer."
Twilight's eyes went to the long runic stick, then to the angry and threatening exhausted face of her opponent, before falling onto the still halfway charged tablet. And it clicked in her head.
Cozy wasn't trying to conquer Equestria. This was all a play. A realization that once would have caused a panic in the princess' mind. "Why? Is there something more important happening somewhere else? Is this a distraction?" would have been the questions running through her mind after such an observation. But not here. This wasn't bait, this wasn't a poorly thought out plan, nor anything truly worrying.
This was a last dance. One Cozy couldn't admit, with her pride still painted all over her face. But this was only a make believe. A farce, a final face-off for her, against a foe which had prevented her world domination attempts all her life. An alicorn princess, struggling to fight off a simple pegasus. Of course she would be proud of that. Maybe...
... it was the only thing she could be proud of in her life?
Either way, this told Twilight one thing: She couldn't let her down. Cozy had come here, wanting to fight her nemesis one last time. The pegasus respected her enough for that, and that feeling was mutual for Twilight.
How could she do it? How could she follow with the script Cozy had probably envisioned, with Twilight winning, yet letting her enemy run away one last time?
She looked at the setup. Everything was here, in fact. All had been carefully planned for that exact play to happen.
"Look who's scared now..." the old pegasus let out with a somewhat back to normal breath. "All alone, with no more help... Everyone grew old..."
Unlike before, this wasn't a shot directed at Twilight. Yes, the words weren't kind, but the intent behind was... empathetic? Or even... Was Cozy including herself in all of this? Was this her way of saying she wouldn't be here either before long?
All of this was too much to think about for Twilight. Too many doubts, in a situation that called for her reactivity. The fate of Equestria was still hanging in that encounter, it could all be a trick by the clever pegasus. So, instead, she stepped back and turned on her horn once again.
Cozy readied her pin, but there was no magic to be neutralized coming her way, as Twilight only threw modestly sized rocks and debris her way. The pegasus was forced to use her copper needle as a foil, blocking the incoming and somewhat dangerous assaults coming at a moderate pace. Enough to give the impression that Twilight was actually trying to put her in a bad posture, enough that Cozy had to take a few steps back, wincing from anger.
"Stop it!" she shouted.
"Make me!" Twilight replied, before suddenly throwing a substantially larger rock at her, just to reaffirm her determination to give Cozy a challenge.
The pegasus' eyes went wide and she had to leap on the side to avoid the massive stone. It crashed into the walls right behind her, collapsing it and letting the light from outside get in, while the old mare was lying on her side, panting, holding her painful torso.
When Cozy turned her eyes back onto the alicorn, she realized Twilight was now busy looking at the pillar and the tablet, searching for a way to deactivate the charging mechanism, willingly turning her back away from her nemesis.
The pegasus looked at the alicorn with a slight frown, then at the light coming from outside, on this afternoon, the obvious escape laying in front of her, before she turned to the alicorn again. She caught Twilight, briefly glancing her way, sneakily checking, not as a precaution, but to make sure Cozy was considering the way out offered to her, free of shame and dishonor.
But the frown on the old mare's face only grew slightly offended and disappointed. She stood up, mumbling:
"You've never been good at playing, haven't you...?"
Twilight pretended to ignore her, finally pulling the tablet out of its socket and – officially – putting an end to that threat. The pillar of mana was slowly turning off, but she acted like she was making sure it was properly ending. The princess couldn't find anything better to do, she had tried her best improvisation on the spot, to not ridicule the pegasus, to give her one last stand-off.
Cozy began to turn towards the exit, seemingly accepting that this would be her fate, for that ultimate encounter. Yet, she still said in a surprisingly regretful tone:
"Maybe I was the one being too obvious about it... Maybe I should have kept a real facade, like those last times..."
Twilight stopped what she was doing, still back turned-away from the pegasus, not sure to understand the meaning of that last sentence. Had her previous attempts also been... fake ones?
"Or maybe I'm just getting old indeed..." Cozy followed, her eyes going down on the pavement. "I might have become senile over time. Like your friends."
That last part still hit Twilight's feelings the wrong way, but she didn't reply. Saying anything, turning around and breaking that last remnant of illusion would have been the worst. She could still pretend she wasn't hearing her, she could tell everyone she had thought her enemy was monologuing on the floor, unable to escape.
"I do have friends too..." Cozy said, her voice becoming slower. "But I don't think they realize that I'm... That soon..."
Her words died out on their own, tainted with regrets, the kind that only come after acceptance has been reached. She took in a hesitant breath.
"But you do, princess, don't you? You know what it's like, to see the people you've known go before you. You know how it goes, how it feels, you can see it coming now. I'm sure you accompanied your friends well through that whole... process. Staying by their side, sharing your last times with them, making sure they would be happy..."
Twilight's eyes went down, a bit lost by what she was hearing. After more than three quarters of a century spent arguing with her, reasoning with that unwavering corrupted mind, was this the first time she was hearing an honest jealousy in her words? Not one birthed from the envy of Twilight's power, but a genuine longing for a similar treatment?
Did she feel that much alone?
"I wonder if you tried to hide it from them..." Cozy slowly wondered. "The fact that you were sad. That you would cry for weeks after their disappearance..."
Cozy took another hesitant breath. Twilight couldn't look. She was afraid to look. To meet eyes with a face she had seen grow old, while unable to save it from its own hate. She was terrified that, if she were to turn around, she would see tears in Cozy Glow's eyes.
"Well, rejoice..." the pegasus said through a shaky voice. "For once, it won't be someone you'll have to mourn. It'll just be one less... nuisance."
Twilight felt her heart tightening. That last word, it didn't sound like this was how Cozy was seeing herself. Rather, it was another attempt at making this play convincing. To try and persuade the both of them that, after all those years, after all those encounters, the fights, the unending dialogues, the trials and attempts at redemption and corruption, the mutual respect and the shared times, they weren't... more than simple enemies, hissing at each other from a distance. They had to be nuisances for one another, how could things be any different? What else could explain all that wasted time?
The answer was simple. Habit. Exterior pressures, from both their ends. And reassurance in the only thing they had known themselves for.
But Twilight wouldn't rejoice. Neither now, or after...
"I didn't want to make history..." the pegasus confessed, as if the alicorn could have thought this of her. "I gave up on that world-domination thing one or two decades ago, can't even recall. I don't care about being set into the very essence of Equestria, staying in its legends and tales, owning the title of the most threatening pegasus that ever lived... I just... Next time you meet someone or something that poses a serious danger, don't think how your friends being there would have made that threat more manageable... Think about how much worse it could have been if I was still there..."
The alicorn froze, a slight shiver running through her feathers. Optimism instead of regrets, relativism in place of grief. Was this Cozy's offering? Was the only thing that mattered to her being remembered by Twilight, and Twilight only?
"Either way... It was a nice life spent fighting you. Goodbye, princess, I'll wave your friends for you."
The princess hesitated during the small silence that followed. Should she answer? Say something? What could that something be? A confession?
Her hesitation cost her her only chance. Cozy followed, in a whisper:
"Until we never meet again..."
Twilight heard the distinct sound of wings being deployed, followed by a takeoff. But then, something rocky fell onto the floor, right where Cozy had stood a second prior. The alicorn turned around, only to see a tablet laying there. The one of Unity, with its four purple dots of magic shining, fully loaded, ready to be used and bend anyone to its user's will. But it hadn't been.
Twilight frowned, looking at the collapsed wall by which her nemesis had gone away. And gone for good she was, after a last openhearted monologue.
Out of all the books that had closed recently, all the pages Twilight had to turn, never to be read again, it felt surprising and unexpected to find yet another painful one. Because this one came from a place she never thought would wring her heart. Cozy was supposed to be a villain. She was supposed to be bad.
But all that she wanted was to live through her, as she had done her whole life, as her nemesis. All she desired was to be recalled, in the princess' next adventure.
Author's Note
I don't know, it doesn't click emotionally for me. But I had to get that idea out of my system.
