Thunder grumbled to himself, first there was Vapour’s unneeded attempt at rescue; Then Nex had ordered him of all bots to get the workers to safety and to top it all off he wound up getting hit by a stray rocket, and all this hype counted toward the construction site being worse off than before, and a terrible pain right in the middle of his robotic spine. “Just one more month and I’ll be released.” He sighed. “If only I could think of what I could do for work.” The clanking of footsteps brought him out of his train of thought. He stood up and walked over to the bars. Several of the other villains were jeering at the poor sap that got caught.
“We’ve been waitin’ for ya!”
“Voltix!”
“Hey Voltix! Now the party can start!”
“Poor, poor Voltix!”
Thunder just grumbled. He had no interest in the new capture. He snorted to himself. “What kind of lame name is that.” He heard the sound of a cell coming down for the new villain. He looked down to see Furno and a golden clad hero escort him to the new cell.
“Welcome to your new home Voltix.” The red hero said, gesturing to the cell
The golden hero shoved Voltix forward “the bad news is you’ll be staying here for a long, long time.”
The tall robot came to a stop before the cell door, and Furno moved to take off the cuffs. “But the good news is the rent is free.” With a quick jerk, the cuffs came off, and the villain stumbled into the cell. Voltix turned around to see the laser bars activate, barring his escape.
“Finally” the villain mumbled, smirking.
Furno then returned the cuffs to Rocka, fitted with a new armor system and weaponry. “Nice villain catching, Rocka. I’m sure Mr. Makuro will give you a commendation when he gets back to Makuhero city.”
“Yeah! With this new upgrade, it was almost too easy!” the hero boasted proudly. The cell containing the newly captured Voltix lifted up. Behind it was a staff belonging to the most feared villain in the galaxy.
Furno flinched at the sight of the staff, when Stormer and he had fought against Von nebula; Stormer had taken the staff and sealed the villain inside of it. “Whoa… that thing still gives me the creeps.”
“Von nebula’s black hole staff?” Voltix sneered. “That’s funny, it gives me HOPE!” he then began crackling with energy.
“What’s he doing!?” Rocka shouted
As if to answer him, a black cloud of smoke erupted from Voltix’s body and flew out of the cell. Furno stared at the cloud; just barely he could make out the dark form in the cloud. Furno stood dumbfounded as the cloud flew around the workers in the cell block… until he saw what it was going after.
“The staff!” but it was too late. The ghostly form of Von nebula touched the staff, and the casing exploded, sending a shockwave out, knocking workers about.
*KRA-KOOM*
An explosion blew a hole through the roof, and a column of stars and darkness appeared through the hole. A few moments later, the laser security system failed, and Voltix jumped from his still rising cell to the floor below.
“That’s our ride, let’s go everyone!”
High up on the roof of the hero factory, two tall dark figures stood. In front of them, a recently blown hole in the roof, and below. The villain storage facility and ensuing chaos. Black phantom gazed down at the chaos interested. A blue hero was foolish trying to stop a rush of villains from escaping. A red hero punched Toxic Reapa towards the black hole; a white hero took a barrage of punches from Jawblade, shrugging it off like nothing.
“When do I get to rip more cores out?” a voice behind him grumbled. Black phantom scowled and turned to his partner, or as he himself would prefer, cannon fodder.
“You’ll get your chance eventually…bête…”
“I don’t speak German”
Black phantom did not like this plan. Sure, it was working sure it went of flawlessly, sure there was only nine heroes that could go after them, but he was partnered with Core Hunter. The black villain stood just barely shorter than him, he had quaza spikes jutting out of his soldiers, a chain gun in his right hand and his core remover. (Which he for von nebula knows why dubbed ‘pinchy’) he had a huge ammo pack on his back and a bandolier with nine hero cores adorned his front. “Its French dummkopf“he retorted, hiding his smirk.
“Oh…” the black and red villain went back to counting the shells he had in his ammo belt. In the meanwhile, Black phantom started counting.
“54… 55… 56…”
“What are you counting?”
Black phantom cradled his head in his hand. The moron he was partnered with was dense as iridium. And to make matters worse, he was the only thing between him and any heroes that were in the factory. “What do you think?”
Core hunter thought for a moment; however this miracle was disrupted by something he spotted near the black hole. A yellow hero had rushed over to the vortex and had tossed something through, sticking to Xplode as he passed through the portal. “They stuck a tracking device to Xplode!” black phantom looked over and was about to tell him off, but the villain had jumped into the vortex and disappeared.
“They all have tracking devices you moron!”
Core hunter soon found himself unceremoniously dumped in the middle of a dark crumbling stone complex. He glanced back and forth through the wreckage. Some broken windows, a bit over overgrowth, and some weird looking broken blue sparkling armor at the far end of the room. However all Core hunter cared about was smashing that tracking beacon attached to Xplode’s back… at least, until something in his head clicked.
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
He figured out what bête meant.
“Sorry about the damages…” Voltix cackled, staring back at the heroes. “Send us the bill!” and he jumped back into the vortex. He flew through the vortex towards the light. “At last, I finally can get back to work.” He was briefly blinded by a flash of light. When he regained his vision, he found himself falling through the air, a bright light from behind him illuminating the ground below. He landed on the ground, slightly shaken, but without damage. He looked around. Grass surrounded him in all directions. It was nighttime. He looked up in the sky. He saw a star fade from existence in the heavens above. He scanned the area. “There is power here, lots of it, but never in large clusters.” He heard a rumble in the distance. He turned to the southwest. A storm was blowing in his direction. He smiled. “Not the best way to gather power, but it will do…”
“Ugh… what happened…?” Thunder sat up. He went over what happened in the last two minutes. Voltix did something to the staff, the security system failed, everyone started escaping… but him. He thought harder. He remembered Rotor had jumped down and landed on the roof of his cell, the weight tipping the cell. Then he fell straight into the vortex. “Mystery solved” he muttered sarcastically to no one around. “Now to figure out where I am.” He looked around he was in the middle of a large forest. He saw the top of a tower in the distance. Deciding there was no other place to go; he stood up and walked towards the tower.
Black Phantom watched as Voltix jumped into the void, followed by its subsequent disappearance. He listen closely to the heroes below.
“Oh no! That was every villain in high security! What do we do!?” an orange hero stammered.
“Calm down rookie! We’re heroes! We don’t panic in a crisis!” the white hero shouted at the latter.
A voice came over the intercom; “all heroes report to mission command.”
He saw a red hero talk to the orange rookie, but he couldn’t make out the words. But he did hear the reverberating echo of the hero running straight into the door. When he was sure that the two had left, he rappelled down to the room below.
“Arachnix.” A silver drone spider crawled off his shoulder. “Wait for my signal.” The metal bug skittered off. The tall, lean black villain grinned. Without Core Hunter, it would be easier to sneak around.
“Twilight! Twilight! Twilight!” the pink pony shook her friend back and forth trying to wake her up. She panicked. “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” she thought. “Of course! Granny pie’s super special wake em’ up juice! She rushed into the kitchen and came back out almost instantaneously with a glass of a reddish liquid. However she tripped and spilled the glass over a pile of books.
“Whoopsie”
As if it were the magic words, the books instantly caught fire, which, as if by instinct woke the bookworm pony up
“The books!” with her magic she grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the flames. She quickly turned to Pinkie Pie. “What were you thinking!?”
“Imsorrytwilightit’sjustthatyoucollapsedafteryoulookedintothatlightandyouwouldn’twakeupandiwassoworried-“ Twilight covered her friends mouth
“On second thought, never mind.” She trotted back to her telescope on the balcony. Peering through it she saw the star fade away into nothingness, a cloudy nebula in its place. She didn’t say it, but she was worried. The sound of something exploding did not help. “Pinkie!”
“It wasn’t me! It was outside of the town.” Pinkie was staring out of one of the windows. Twilight rushed over and looked outside there was the glow of a small fire outside the town’s edge. “Come on!” she shouted, and rushed outside, her party loving companion bouncing along beside her.
“Rainbow Dash!” a worried voice called. “Rainbow Dash!”
The cyan Pegasus stirred “what’s wrong Frostbite.” after the icy Pegasus had chewed her out about her reckless flying, she had dozed off to ignore him.
“I was just making sure you were alright.”
“What? Why wouldn’t I be?” she stood up and walked to the edge of the cloud.
“There was a huge flash of light, I was wondering if you hadn’t fallen off.”
“Trust me I’m all right.” She was about to go back to sleep when she noticed something.
“Frostbite, why aren’t we moving?”
“I… I can’t move”
“Were you struck by lightning?” Rainbow’s voice had changed from curiosity to concern.
“No, it isn’t that…” Rainbow dash noticed something, he wasn’t looking directly at her.
“Frostbite, how many feathers am I holding up?” she raised her unhurt wing in front of Frostbite.
“…two?”
“And now?”
“…five?”
“How about now?”
“……… eleven?”
Rainbow dash grabbed Frostbite by his front hooves and pulled him onto the cloud. “Frostbite, I’m going to take your mask off alright?” she pulled the ski mask off of his face. The stallion’s eyes were pure white, void of color. She waved a hoof in front of his face. “Frostbite, what was the last thing you did before waking me up?”
“I saw a bright flash out of the corner of my eye…”
“You’re blind.”
The stallion flinched at Rainbow Dash’s brutal honesty. “You mean the flash blinded me?”
“Yeah pretty much…”
“We’re stranded up here too, aren’t we?”
Rainbow dash thought for a moment. “Well… darn.”
Twilight came to a stop near the edge of town, a few ponies were barring the way, and the mayor was addressing the crowd.
“We are quite certain that the situation is under control! He have extinguished the fires and have roped off the area. Please return to your homes, we will be investigating this occurrence more thoroughly tomorrow morning!” the crowd slowly dispersed until only Twilight, Pinkie pie, the mayor, and the ponies who were roping off the area were left.
Twilight stepped forward. “Miss Mayor!” the mayor turned to face her. “Twilight, I already told everyone that we will be investigating this in the morning.”
“Miss Mayor, I’m princess Celestia’s student, and one of the bearers of the elements of harmony! This should be reported immediately!”
The mayor sighed. “I’m afraid it’s too dangerous to see up close, but you should be able to see it from the edge.” She led twilight sparkle to the edge of the crater, and the lavender pony looked down.
At the bottom of the pit, she could barely make out a twisted mass of metal. She couldn’t make out all the details, but she could make out the shape of a large rotary saw, something similar to an eagles talon, a few hoses, and two metal stakes. “It’s too dangerous to examine in the darkness with sharp objects like those down there.” The mayor continued. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Twilight Sparkle nodded, and turned to go home. The mayor looked back at the heap of metal, and walked away slowly.
*click-whirr*
In the middle of the mass of metal, a red glow appeared.
“XT4 reboot process complete.”
Princess Celestia sat upright in her bed, heavily breathing. “Another nightmare…” she got out of bed and walked to the balcony in her room. She glanced toward the heavens, seeing a lone star fade away. “Something’s not right…” she walked back into her study and looked over the letter that was sent from the research center in the Everfree forest. “Three days… but it’s only been two…” she smiled as she read the note at the end of the letter. Overload had wound up crashing through the wall again as usual, her cheerfully innocent smile and here obliviousness to the trouble she caused was always amusing, Like the look on the temporary guard captain’s face when she crashed through the wall of the barracks to leave. She then turn away and left her chamber. The royal guards by her door were surprised, she almost never was awake in at nighttime. “I’m leaving for the research facility in the Everfree forest, if my sister is curious to where I am.” The guards nodded as Celestia hastily made her way to the castle doors, and flew away. Her sudden departure was observed by her sister, standing on her balcony, as Celestia was only a minute ago.
“So, she’s troubled by it too…” she muttered to herself.
“Who wouldn’t be?”
The voice startled her. This was her private chamber, and the guards stood at her door day and night. “Who’s there?” she demanded “show thyself!”
The voice came again. It sounded familiar to her, but different. It spoke smoothly and coldly. “My, my, what a dreadful temper… all I did was speak my mind.” A star filled wisp of smoke gathered in the center of her room. “But it is rude of me to not introduce myself…” a tall black figure emerged from the fog. He stood as tall as Celestia, but his color was darker than that of a memory of Luna’s, one she wished to be forgotten. He stood on two legs, and had two claws, one of which held a strange staff. “I am Von Nebula, and I have a message for you… Princess Luna…”